Welcome to TV Party, a weekly segment where we preview ten of the week’s most exciting match-ups in college football so you know when to grab some beer and ignore the outside world.
This week’s party is high risk, high reward. It’s like going to a club recommended by Weekend Update’s city correspondent Stefan. You will either having one of the best times of your life, or it could be the weirdest, most random and disastrous experience you have ever had.
The world watched as Jameis Winston and the Florida State Seminoles crushed Clemson into a miserable solid orange pulp. The Seminole defense would not stand for any magnificent Tajh Boyd to Sammy Watkins or Martavius Bryant connections. There would certainly be no running game either. The Tigers were relegated to punt after punt after punt which turned into a lesson in why you never want Winston, or the Florida State offense in general, to have possession.
Winston zinged, lobbed and floated passes to Kelvin Benjamin, Rashad Greene, and Nick O’Leary that forced one of the loudest atmospheres into hushed tones. There were plenty of shots provided by ESPN cameras of Tiger fans whose disbelief was on display for all of America. After all, this wasn’t supposed to happen to Clemson. This team was returning more play makers than Florida State had lost to the NFL. If anything, this game was supposed to be a shoot out; not a day of reckoning for The Wonderful Monster.
In the end, the score was 51-14 and the best summation of this beat down is the universal Clemson fan base coping mechanism: “I still love my Tigers, y’all”.
The ACC “game of the century” with the grand introduction of the Tigers and the subtle insert of Jaboo’s pre-game pep talk gave the nation goosebumps. I felt the electricity from my seat on the virtual bus ride over from the home locker room in Death Valley to Howard’s Rock. All those warm, fuzzy feelings of competitive football washed away after the 1st half. At this point, LSU-Ole Miss was waaaay more intriguing than a game where Lamarcus Joyner was single handily shutting down both Martavius Bryant and Sammy Watkins.
That’s not to say that Florida State’s demolishing act was like watching Alabama. Quite the opposite, actually.
Alabama, in their 52-0 victory over Arkansas, is moving through the SEC West as if the path to a national championship is paved in gold. The Tide is like Prairie Home Companion: successful, inoffensive (on-the-field, of course), and mired in the mundane. That’s why it’s the least interesting team that stands atop the first BCS rankings of the season while the teams below are a gaggle of personalities and chutzpah.
Florida State may have been methodical in their approach but Winston certainly offers a panache that other quarterbacks certainly lack to keep things interesting.
Aside from learning that Clemson has become one of the most GIF-able environs in college football, what other nuggets of information did we learn?
Welcome to a better late than never edition of Drop Picks On ‘Em where Jacory Harris Stephen Morris almost lost this week’s picks by way of a helmet deflected interception. Hey, that ACC is a spunky little league, man. If you’re not careful, you can find yourself playing a team wearing alternate jerseys named after a play on words of a successful Navy Seals operation. Zero Dark Thursday? More like Bay of Pigs, AMIRITE?!
In honor of the conference that stretches itself from South Beach to the shores of Plymouth Rock, this intro will be designed to highlight all things ACC not named Clemson or Florida State. Yeah, I get it – it’s the biggest game the conference has going for it so far this year. That’s great! Good for them. #goacc and all that jazz but this conference still has Paul Johnson and the slow, R.Kelly grind of the triple option. This is a place where the adjective spunky applies to three teams and the rest have varying self-confidence and identity issues. Let’s break it down, shall we?
Syracuse and Georgia Tech play each other which means you get to see two of the most horrifying color schemes and uniforms (we see you, Russell Athletic) face off against each other in Atlanta. Virginia still plays football and they do so against Bear Bryant protege, David Cutcliffe, in a battle of the privileged East Coast fan bases. Wine and cheese, indeed! If you want something a little bit more blue collar, Pittsburgh is right up your alley. They play Old Dominion this week and I’m sure there will be a lot of Schlitz and Primanti Bros. sandwiches consumed as a topper to a great win and a fatality free day at the steel mill.
Also, I’d be remiss if I didn’t comment on Maryland and Wake Forest. This is going to be a tough road test for the Terps as they take on a feisty Wake Forest team, who in recent years has played heart breaker to multiple teams. Wait, that’s not right. Sounds like a basketball preview. How about this? Have fun trying to stop anything, Demon Deacs!
And there you have it – the ACC Week 8 preview you’ve been clamoring for. No fancy pants Jameis Winston or Tajh Boyd here. Just some good ole fashioned Mid-Atlantic to barely into the southern most tip of America football. Now that that is out of the way – let us discuss the ranked teams playing, shall we?
This week’s College Gameday is heading to the University of Washington for the first time ever since the show’s first broadcast in 1987. This is huge news for the Huskies, who find themselves in the middle of a period of resurgence as of late. But if you’re an individual on the East Coast (such as myself), you probably know very little about Seattle, the city that houses UDub. In fact, the only thing you probably know is that Seattle is the home of Starbucks, rain and grunge. And that’s fine. Be prepared to face the unknown. Seattle is strange to you, but don’t fret, it’s not Portland weird.
Also – I am not really sure what the Washington fan base is like. I’ve seen them pop on random message boards from time to time recalling the Don James era, but I am really unfamiliar with how these people operate or how they tail- WAIT, WHAT? THEY TAILGATE ON BOATS? CAN WE GO TO THE GAME NOW? PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASEEEEEEEEEEE.
Enough of this wishful thinking about boatgating – LET’S GET IT.
If getting fired after being pulled off the team bus from LAX to campus isn’t the most Hollywood thing ever, please give me another example. This felt like a seedy termination. A scene, not unlike the one in Dog Day Afternoon, where the main character fails, and the repercussions involve a swift execution. Lane Kiffin didn’t even step foot on the USC’s campus before Haden uttered the words that put Kiffin out of job and Ed Orgeron in control of a faltering program. Now, the hunt begins anew for the Trojans, who have slowly started to slide into irrelevancy as the Pac-12 has started to gain notoriety as the second-best conference in America. Gone are the days of USC and everybody else. USC can’t compete with Arizona State, or even downtrodden Washington State. The whole country says “adieu” to Kiffykins, the man responsible for Tennessee fever dreams and the underdevelopment of all-around awesome Marqise Lee.
While your favorite team’s coach may not have been fired as soon as he exited the plane, his days as head man may be numbered. Look at UConn. Now Earl Campbell’s taking shots at Mack Brown? The coaching carousel may be fired up sooner than expected.
Aside from learning that, yes, the world of college football is on fiiiiiireeeeee, what else did we take away from this marvelous weekend?
In a week that was supposed to be relatively quiet, it seemed like the world was on fire. First, the noon games were punctuated by a win by the Miami Hurricanes who won a turnover battle against an absolutely ugly Florida offense that reached its logical endpoint on a penalty to end the game. Then, the late afternoon games were highlighted by Georgia’s victory over South Carolina where Mark Richt seemed like he was going to be fired if he didn’t win. The prime time spot featured a dominant Michigan team led by Devin Gardner and Jeremy Gallon’s beautiful display of football. Yet Michigan’s time in the light would soon be eclipsed by a Texas defense that proved that the following axiom has not been altered in the slightest: Texas is still Texas. Calls for Mack Brown’s head in Austin were interrupted by a “Fire Kiffin” chant that could be heard alllllll the way from the East Coast due to USC’s terrible, terrible, terrrrrible loss to Washington State. Yes – the world is burning specifically Los Angeles and yes, also Austin. Week 2, you are an unpolished gem.
Welp, here we are, gang. The second week of college football. The second AP poll of the year has been released and some have dropped (Ohio State, Georgia) while others have seen their stock rise faster than Anacott Steel (Washington, Oklahoma State). This week, College Gameday will be focused on Ann Arbor, Michigan which makes the nonsensical, unimportant historic, traditional rivalry one of the focal points in a week that features other rivalry games such as Florida-Miami and Georgia-South Carolina. It’s also a week of firsts for the Stanford Cardinal who got to sit in their dorms in Palo Alto and watch their eyes melt at the sight of a Lane Kiffin offense on their parents’ hand-me-down 52-inch, LED TV. I am excited because I am going to be at home base in Charlotte and not off on Ocracoke Island trying to watch the game while people waft their savory crab cakes in my face. My excitement will probably crash once I realize that the remaining games consist of match-ups against Tennessee Tech, UTSA, UAB, and Sam Houston State. Oh, brother. In the name of all things holy (REESUS), LET’S GET IT.
Tuesdays With Horry 