The College
Football Czar
Week 6
Week five in review: It was a zany, topsy-turvy weekend of college football, and if you're interpreting that as a rationalization of the College Football Czar's abysmal record, you are correct. Three teams in the Top Ten were defeated, one of those being inevitable, with #4 Alabama bumping off #2 Georgia. Kentucky, which had come so close to upending UGA two weeks earlier, shut down #6 Ole Miss, and #10 Utah, without its starting quarterback, fell to visiting Arizona.
At least the Czar didn't lose the Liberty-Appalachian State game, because it was canceled due to the flooding in Boone, NC. After that announcement was made, LU quarterback Kaidon Salter posted a duck emoji, appearing to signify that ASU was ducking the Flames. According to Athlon Sports, this "has led to many calling out the quarterback for being insensitive to the millions of people affected by the hurricane." As of this writing, Salter has not issued an apology, and the Czar hopes he never does.
At worst, the QB was unaware of the extent of the destruction, which is understandable, considering how rare it is for a hurricane to do its worst damage so far inland. Remember that this was last Saturday, right after the storm hit, and not after images of the devastation dominated the news for several days. If Salter seriously believed they could have played the game in Boone on Saturday, it cannot possibly be that he knew how bad it was, but was simply indifferent to the victims. It would not exactly have been unprecedented for a game to be canceled unnecessarily. We've all seen how this works. As soon as somebody suggests calling a game off, anybody who questions the necessity of it will be accused of being insufficiently concerned for fill-in-the-blank. If that's what Salter had assumed to be the case, he would have been right three times out of four, just not this time.
It might be, however, that Salter completely understood that the game couldn't be played last weekend, and instead objected to the fact that App State immediately announced that it would not be rescheduled. Liberty is idle in Week 9. App State plays on a Wednesday in Week 9 and is idle in Week 10. Might they have rescheduled their game for Week 9, but bumped it until Sunday so that the Mountaineers could have an additional day between games? Could they have asked Conference USA and/or the Sun Belt Conference to adjust their schedules to create an open date for both of these teams? It would at least have been worth looking into, but instead Appalachian State said right away that its game against the Flames would never be played. If Salter says the Mountaineers are ducking his team because of that, the Czar fails to see any controversy in it. But then again, we don't even know that. All we know is that he posted a duck.
People who chirp "it's only a game" at every opportunity can be pretty callous themselves. Because App State won't even try to reschedule, Liberty will lose revenue. The players, whose careers aren't very long, will miss out on an opportunity to play. Liberty, which could be in contention for a playoff bid if it remains undefeated, has just had its chances diminished with the loss of a quality nonconference game from its schedule. Nobody is saying that these are matters of life and death, but neither are they completely insignificant.
Another person off whose case should be gotten is Lee Corso. As the season goes on, complaints are mounting about the way the 89-year-old coach is visibly struggling. We're not talking about the President of the United States, helplessly watching a Chinese spy balloon slowly waft its way across all of our military installations. We're talking about the co-host of a college football preview show. How big a deal is it if Kirk Herbstreit has to help him finish a sentence once in a while? It's not as if it affects our national security, or anything.
Yes, it's difficult to watch, but so what? Pat McAfee is difficult to watch. Nick Saban is difficult to watch. "Betting analyst" Stanford Steve is difficult to watch. Why be selectively annoyed by the one guy who's got an excuse? Lee Corso obviously loves what he does. For all we know, it might be the one thing that's keeping him going. Surely, it's not too much to ask the rest of us to tolerate that for as long as we have to.
The College Football Czar's record for the week was 7-12, and if that's not bad enough, he's tempted to score a bonus loss for himself because, at the end of his analysis of the Washington State-Boise State game, he mistakenly picked Wazzu to defeat Oregon State instead of BSU. The Czar will have to have words with the editor about that. In the meantime, his season record has fallen to 55-43, for a .561 winning percentage.
Oct.
4
Syracuse at UNLV
Sluka, schmuka. The Rebels got along more than all right
without their controversial quarterback, as they clobbered presumptive Mountain
West contender Fresno State, 59-14. Hajj-Malik
Williams stepped in behind center, and if it sounds like there might be two of
him, it looked that way too, as the new starting QB rushed for 119 yards, to go
along with 182 through the air.
The 3-1 Orange hit the road for five
of their next six games, after playing their first four at home. Around this same time last season, they hit a
patch of three consecutive road games, and lost them all badly, to North
Carolina, Florida State and Virginia Tech, by a combined score of 119-20.
There had been lots of sitement at
the big S after a 31-28 upset of a then-ranked Georgia Tech team, but since
then, the Cuse has been beaten at home by Stanford, and scored a mundane 42-14
win over Division I-AA Holy Cross.
As college football fans learned
last week, what happens in Vegas does not necessarily stay in Vegas. Those who say it does must be confusing it
with Syracuse, so maybe that town ought to be the destination for people who
have something to hide. Or for people
who are afraid of accidentally meeting Penn and Teller. Whichever.
UNLV 44, Syracuse 39
Oct. 5
Pitt at North Carolina
The Panthers are looking to go 5-0
for the first time since 1991, when they fell to 6-5 by the end of the season,
and did not get invited to a bowl game.
The College Football Czar would say they should therefore strategically
lose this game, if he were a lardhead.
UNC leads the overall series 12-5,
and has gone 7-0. In the four games they've
played in Kenan Stadium since Pitt joined the ACC, they held a second-half lead
against the Tar Heels in every one, only to go home empty-handed yet
again. What's different this time is
that this might be the most demoralized Carolina club they've ever visited.
In taking a 20-0 third-quarter lead
at Duke, the Heels looked as if they had put their defensive disintegration
against James Madison behind them. Then,
they gave up three second-half touchdowns and lost, 21-20. Longtime coach Mack Brown says he didn't mean
it when he asked his players if he should resign after that 70-50 JMU
defeat. Of course they said no, but to a
lot of the UNC faithful it sounded like a pretty good idea.
Last game, against Division I-AA
Youngstown State, Panther coach Pat Narduzzi wore a tie in honor of his father,
who was head coach at YSU from 1975-85.
A lot of other coaches were probably thinking it's too bad his dad did not
also wear a sock in his mouth.
Pitt 41, North Carolina 31
UCLA at Penn State
On the brink of getting blown out in
the first half, the Bruins put up a pretty good fight in a 34-13 loss to
Oregon. Quarterback Ethan Garbers was
hobbled in the fourth quarter, however, which was exactly what they didn't need
as they face a second consecutive Top Ten opponent, this time on the road.
The Nittany Lion defense surrendered
a scoring drive on the opening possession last week, but then stifled the
Illinois offense the rest of the way through a 21-7 victory. Before the season, the College Football Czar
figured that a weak schedule would keep PSU out of the playoff, because if they
finished tied for third in the conference, they would lose out to the other
team. At this point, it sure doesn't
look like Michigan can keep pace with them, which means they could be in a
commanding position if they can win next week at USC. Not that they're looking past this week's
opponent, but how could they not?
Last week, Penn State defiled its
uniforms by putting numbers on the helmets.
This week, they unveiled a new logo, which looks like a golf club head
cover. Perhaps the school will soon
eschew its traditions in other ways, such as the following: welcoming visiting fans; calling the police
when the law requires it; having the nerve to insult somebody without being
backed up by eleven other guys; either waving pom-poms or trying to flex
muscles, but not both simultaneously; understanding the difference between
beating Michigan and beating East Shlobobia State.
Scratch that last one. The Czar forgot that the East Shlobobia State
game is the Super Bowl!
Penn State 28, UCLA 3
West Virginia at Oklahoma State
At this point in the season, it
should come as no surprise that there are twelve teams in contention in the Big
XII, but who would have thought the Cowboys would not be among them? OSU fell to 0-2, and they fell hard, in a
42-20 trouncing by Kansas State. It
looked as if it would be the anticipated breakout game for RB Ollie Gordonii,
but his carries dwindled as his team drifted farther behind, leaving him with a
modest total of 76 yards.
One game after blowing a very late
ten-point lead in a four-point loss to Pitt, the Mountaineers found themselves
with an eleven-point deficit with less than six minutes to play against Kansas,
and came back with two Garrett Greene TD passes to win, 32-28. In the KU possession between those two
scores, WVU watched the Jayhawks make the same mistake they had made in that
previous game, by basically conceding a three-and-out when they couldn't
possibly wind enough time off the clock to make it worthwhile.
In that Pitt game, when the West
Virginians tried to kill the clock, it wasn't so much a tactical decision as
one driven by their hatred of things they don't understand.
Oklahoma State 23, West Virginia 21
Missouri at Texas A&M
Mizzou may be 4-0, but it has not
backed up its Top Ten ranking so far. In
two games against competent opposition, the Tigers barely staved off Boston
College 27-21, and then needed double-overtime to put away Vanderbilt, 30-27.
The Conjunction Boys are all alone
in first place in the SEC, with a conference record of 2-0, although the five
teams that trail them by half a game are probably not terribly concerned. Freshman QB Marcel Reed is reading defenses
well enough not to have been picked off yet, but he's competing barely more
than half of his passes.
When those two defected from the Big
XII to the SEC together in 2012, A&M was the marquee team, while Missouri
was an afterthought, but the Tigers have been to two conference title games,
and the Aggies none.
The fans in College Station are
known for holding yell practice, but what do they yell? "&! &! &! ... &! &! &!"
Missouri 21, Texas A&M 19
Iowa at Ohio State
It's Week 6, and the College
Football Czar is just now getting around to picking a Buckeye game. Perhaps that's because he has decided it's
time to pad his record a bit. But
seriously, the Hawkeyes are OSU's first competent opponent. It really doesn't matter anymore who is
ranked #1, but for anyone who cares, a team that has beaten up on Akron,
Western Michigan, Marshall and Michigan State obviously doesn't belong at the
top of the rankings over Alabama and Texas.
The Hawkeyes have to count on their
defense to keep them in this game, but so far, it is only seventh-best in the
conference. In their loss to cross-state
rival Iowa State, they uncharacteristically let a 13-0 lead slip away, yielding
20 points in the second half.
The Iowans don't stand much of a
chance in this game, but at least they can spell the name of their state,
unless the people at O-goal post-triangle-O.
They never have mastered the alphabet over there at Katzenmoyer U.
Ohio State 31, Iowa 10
Boston College at Virginia
Brown looked better than expected on
the teal turf at Myrtle Beach, as Cavalier RB Xavier Brown better than doubled
his previous career high with 171 yards on only 9 carries against CCU. The Cavs as a team are now averaging 5.1
yards per carry.
BC quarterback Thomas Castellanos
missed last week's 21-20 win over Western Kentucky with an undisclosed
injury. It appears that he is going to
return this week, but if he doesn't, the only dual-threat on the field would be
UVa sophomore Anthony Colandrea, who scrambled for 46 yards in a 43-24 victory
against Coastal Carolina, while completing 13 of 20 with two TDs. This week, he'll have to contend with Eagle
DE Donovan Ezeiruaku, who leads the nation with eight sacks. Against WKU, he recorded three of them, among
his 14 tackles.
It's a little-known fact that when the
Eagles hired head coach Bill O'Brien, they were really just trying to order
Beef O'Brady's. When the non-English-speaking
DoorDash guy showed up with the former Houston Texans coach instead, it wasn't
worth arguing with him, so they just accepted the delivery.
Boston College 25, Virginia 21
Michigan at Washington
The 4-1 Wolverines and the 3-2
Huskies square off in the most anticlimactic national championship rematch
you'll ever see. Compared to this game,
that 34-13 Michigan victory in the CFP final will seem downright interesting.
The maize and blue have won both
games since making a change at quarterback, even though new starter Alex Orji
is about as torturous to watch as Eyes Wide Shut. So far, Orji is completing only 55.6 percent
of his passes, even though he has yet to have a completion over 16 yards.
Last Friday's 21-18 loss at Rutgers
was positively revolting for Grady Gross.
The Husky kicker missed three field goals, although the last-second
55-yarder was literally a long shot. That
outing was an aberration, though. Gross
successfully booted 18 field goals out of 22 in 2023, and 6 of 7 this year, prior
to that game.
For legendary director Stanley
Kubrick to return after more than a decade just to produce that shallow, 160-minute
snobfest was about as sad as Deion Sanders coming out of retirement to play for
the Baltimore Ravens.
Michigan 23, Washington 10
Virginia Tech at Stanford
In spite of having their winning
touchdown against Miami taken away, the Gobblers looked last Friday like the
team they were supposed to be this season.
At 2-3, they have lost to Vanderbilt in overtime, to Rutgers on a field
goal with less than two minutes remaining, and last week to the Hurricanes,
when an overrule after a long review nullified a last-second 30-yard TD
reception by Da'Quan Felton.
The last outing for the Ferd was
such a comedy of errors, it was not unlike a Ferd'nand comic strip. In their 40-14 loss to Clemson, junior
quarterback Ashton Daniels only completed 9 of 19, with three interceptions. If you're too young to remember Ferd'nand, it
was kind of like a still-frame version of Mr. Bean. And please don't tell the College Football
Czar that you're too young to remember Mr. Bean.
Rumor has it that the Netflix reboot
of Ferd'nand will be called Da'Quan.
That's because the test marketers have scientifically proven once and
for all that apostrophes are funny.
Virginia Tech 15, Stanford 12
Baylor at Iowa State
The Bears are only 2-3, but in those
three losses, they blanked Utah in the second half, only lost to Colorado after
a series of unlikely events, and nearly came back to beat BYU. If they can win at least one of these close
games, they'll be able to take advantage of a soft November schedule.
The Cyclones shut out Houston last
week, which is apparently about as great an accomplishment as getting past the
first screen in a game of Space Invaders.
Nevertheless, they are 4-0, with remarkably little standing in their way
between now and the week before Thanksgiving.
If they win the Big XII championship and its accompanying playoff bye,
while Georgia has to play a first-round game, the playoff cultists will demand
expansion to at least 16 by next season.
And all the media toadies who now tell us the 12-team format is ideal
will immediately adapt to the New Truth.
ISU running back Abu Sama III ended
the 2023 regular season with a 276-yard, three-TD performance in a snowy road
victory over Kansas State. So why is he
getting so few carries this year? The sophomore
scooter is averaging 5.6 yards per carry, but he is only handling the ball ten
times a game.
Thank heaven there aren't really any
space invaders, or else we would be putting them on public assistance and
registering them to vote.
Iowa State 37, Baylor 33
USC at Minnesota
Each team has lost to Michigan by a
score of 27-24. For the Trojans, that
defeat was a tremendous disappointment, whereas the radiant rodents seem to
have drawn inspiration from it. Those
contrasting expectations ought to tell us something.
The Golden Gophers rallied from a
21-point deficit to trail Michigan by three, when they seemingly recovered an
onside kick, only to have it nullified by an offside penalty (correctly, in the
College Football Czar's judgment).
Reactions to the call have been largely irresponsible and stupid. Fox studio analyst and former Boise State and
Washington head coach Chris Petersen said after the game, "I just hate to see
this when the officials are making something up. Like, I don't know why they would throw that
flag." He's not even arguing that it was
a blown call. Instead, he charges that
the officials concocted the whole thing,
So the game was fixed, right?
Either that, or the officials just find P.J. Fleck really annoying and
made the call to spite him.
After the game, Fleck requested a
review from the Big Ten, which is reasonable enough, but the league's response
was not. Demonstrating a fundamental
misunderstanding of the entire concept of a rule, the Big Ten Coordinator of
Officials declared the play to have been "too tight to flag." That cannot be. Either it was a penalty or it wasn't. If so, then it doesn't matter how close it
was, or who feels that it should not have been called. The Czar thinks the video shows that
linebacker Matt Kingsbury, who proceeded to recover the kick, was indeed
offside. It also looked as if the ball
might have been touched before traveling ten yards, which would disallow the
recovery all the same. Nevertheless, the
league validated the criticisms by declaring a rule modification, requiring
that the line judge and head line judge be positioned on either side of the
restraining line for onside kicks.
The Czar doesn't know which
officials were in those positions for this controversial play, but there was
clearly one on either end of the 35, at a perfect angle to make the call. To pass a rule requiring two different
officials to be there suggests that the ones who were in those positions were
not competent to judge when a helmet breaks the plane of a yard line. It should not have mattered to the Big Ten
that the video, without a camera looking straight down the line, made the call
look "tight." As long as it didn't
refute the call, the league should have stood by its on-field officials,
instead of insulting them.
Although the competition was
intense, the Czar has decided that the Lardhead of the Year Award nomination
goes to Fox officiating analyst Mike Pereira, for having a rare chance to
justify his employment with that network, and opting not to do so. As usual, he did not offer any clarification
of the rule, but only narrated the replay, which we had already seen for
ourselves. He said without explanation
that he did not think the play was offside, and left it at that. Had he explained to the viewers (and to Coach
Petersen) that the position of the player's feet is not the relevant factor on
an offside call, and that most of the time offside is called on a kickoff, it
is because a player is leaning forward over the restraining line, then the
overreactions might not have gotten so carried away.
The Czar did not want to hand out
multiple nominations for this one episode, because that would be a cop-out,
like selecting an entire offensive line as the MVP. There were so many possibilities, however,
that choosing only one among them was like being a kid in a lard store.
Okay, let's say the kid is Larry
Mondello, and lard stores are something they had back in those days, like
butcher shops. So who are you, the
analogy police?
USC 38, Minnesota 31
Ole Miss at South Carolina
South Carolina beat Kentucky, and
Kentucky beat Ole Miss. Therefore, South
Carolina will beat Ole Miss. Or so one
would think, were one a lardhead.
Since "The Sip" lost on the home
field that calls them that, perhaps they'll reject the new nomenclature, but
the Czar does not think so. The
university has obviously decided to start calling the team something other than
the Rebels, and they'll eventually settle on something, however
embarrassing. If they wouldn't get sued
over it, they'd even rather call themselves the Bay City Rollers.
The Gamecocks' only loss has been a
wild seesaw game against LSU, and the 31-6 bruising they put on Kentucky looks
a lot more impressive in hindsight. Most
recently, they ack-acked Akron 50-7, as senior scrambler Robby Ashford threw
for 243 yards, and ran for 133 more, with a total of three touchdowns.
The Rebs won't lose two in a
row. The fortunate thing about being The
Sip is that it means they suck only a little bit.
Ole Miss 22, South Carolina 16
Duke at Georgia Tech
The Yellowjackets were the toast of
college football after their Emerald Isle Classic victory against Florida
State. Now, they're in danger of simply
becoming toast. Already having two
losses, and with games remaining against ranked opponents Notre Dame, Miami and
Georgia, they need very badly to halt their two-game ACC losing skid.
This Blue Devil team is another one
that could go a long way, thanks to poor schedule strength. Their 21-point second half rally to beat
North Carolina improved their record to 5-0, with victories against I-AA Elon,
Northwestern, Uconn and the MT-heads. If
they can pass this critical road test, a 10-win regular season will be a real
possibility. One big stumbling block
could be their ground game, however. Considering
the level of competition, a team average of 3.5 yards per carry is alarming.
Bobby Dodd Stadium is the oldest
facility in major college football, having been built in 1913. Bobby Dodd was only four years old at the
time, but evidently they had the utmost confidence in him.
Duke 16, Georgia Tech 13
SMU at Louisville
In the Cardinals' 31-24 defeat at
Notre Dame, they were officially only minus-1 in turnovers, but they also got
stopped on fourth down four times. Why
did they keep going for it when they weren't succeeding? Analytics must have said they were due. If they can keep from coughing it up, they stand
a fair chance of returning to the ACC championship game, led by a defense that
is allowing only 271.5 yards per game.
Southern Methodist smashed Florida
State 42-16, in its first-ever ACC home game.
It was the first time they've been willing to let QB Kevin Jennings open
up the passing attack, which he did with 254 yards and three TDs. One of those
was on a 42-yard flea flicker, which makes the College Football Czar not want
to meet anybody who gets a lot of practice flicking fleas.
Mustangs are not really red, and
Kentucky grass is not really blue. Those
are misperceptions that came about when these teams last met in Old Cardinal
Stadium back in 1984. Must have been a
Mizlou production.
Louisville 29, SMU 20
Rutgers at Nebraska
The 4-0 Scarlet Knights were
statistically dominated by Washington last Friday night, but they stopped the
Huskies on downs twice, and watched them miss three field goals, in a 21-18
upset. Of their own 299 total yards, 132
came from running back Kyle Monangai, who is already more than halfway to 1,000
yards in only a third of the season.
The N-men pounded Purdue 28-10,
holding the Boilermakers out of the end zone until only a minute and a half remained. Earlier in the fourth quarter, Cornhusker
linebacker John Bullock scored on an interception return. Bullock did not need to be taught how to play
football by Sandra Bullock in a blonde wig, which is a good thing, because he
doesn't own one.
Hopefully, the Knights will not
accidentally fly to Hong Kong to play in this game, instead of Nebraska. If a brilliant football mind like Coach Tim
Walz can get those two places confused, then so can anybody.
Nebraska 30, Rutgers 17
a sports publication from The
Shinbone