November 5, 2011 / by bmaz

 

Tide, Tigers and Other Pro Football

ESPN tells me that the BIGGEST COLLEGE FOOTBALL GAME EVAH is being played today between Number 1 LSU and Number 2 Alabama. Got a pretty tough hill to climb to beat the Stanford/USC game last weekend though; we shall see. No question about these two teams defenses, they are both big, tough and fast. The game is at fabled Bryant-Denny Stadium in Tuscaloosa, so the home turf factor certainly goes to the Tide. But the Tigers have the Honey Badger X-Factor. The Honey Badger is LSU cornerback/roving hit man Tyrann Mathieu. Both teams have competent QBs, although neither Jarrett Lee nor AJ McCarron have really been tested so far in a situation where the game depended on their arms, so their stats are a little misleading. Really so far, it is basically a wash and the teams are pretty similar. Except Alabama has Trent Richardson, who is simply a punishingly good running back; by the end of the game, that may well be the difference.

A week or two ago, I might have thought #14 Kansas State could give #3 Oklahoma State a run for the money; but not now, and not in Stillwater. A third late game of note is #9 South Carolina at #7 Arkansas. Marcus Lattimore’s season ending knee injury cost the “Cocks maybe the best all around RB in the nation, but his fill in, Brandon Wilds has been picking right up where Lattimore left off. The Hogs just kill SC every year, but I am going to go out on a limb and say the Gamecocks get the upset. The fourth key game is yet another late game, with ASU traveling to the Rose Bowl to take on UCLA. Hard to believe, but if the Bruins manage a win, they would be in the lead for the Pac-12 Southern Division berth in the conference championship game. The Bruins have rebounded from a lousy start to the season, but I don’t think they have the horses to match points with Brock Osweiller and the Devils.

Honorable mentions go to Texas A&M/Sooners; potential upset there, but it is in Norman. In early action, Iowa is Hawking all over the Wolverweenies so far as are the Longwhores over the Texas Tech Red Raiders.

Oh, and in the sick news of the week, legendary ex-Penn State Defensive Coordinator Jerry Sandusky has been indicted on 40, count em 40, counts of various deviant sexual assault of minor boys over a fifteen year period between 1994 and 2009. Sandusky retired from PSU in 1999, but the current Athletic Director and a second school athletic oversight official have also been charged in the matter with perjury and failure to report. JoePa has been left out, presumably because he did report when he supposedly first heard of Sandusky’s conduct (which was in 2002 after Sandusky had left PSU), but it sure doesn’t look like Paterno did much in the way of followup when he had to have known nothing had come of his report. Pretty bleak day in University Park.

In more positive news, the fine folks in Deetroit have organized to try to unsuck the Lions’ home games. From the Free Press:

A petition to dislodge Nickelback from the Detroit Lions’ Thanksgiving Day game has turned into a whole mess of petitions.

Rolling into its second day, the Great Nickelback Debacle continued to generate heated Internet chatter and international headlines, as the original fan campaign against the rock band closed in on 35,000 signatures.

Now THAT is a worthy effort; here is the petition. Nickelback?? You gotta be fucking kidding me. Deetroit Motor City, what the hell were you thinking??

UPDATE: Aaaaannnddd here come the “other pro-football players”, the ones that work for money instead of Escalades, free tattoos and money. I get the choice of 49ers at Skins or the Jets Jets Jets getting Circled By Wagons. I am kind of watching both, but am more interested in the Bills. Say this though, Frank Gore is an animal. Dude is really good. San Francisco is not a fluke, they can play. Hey, look, Sanchez is on the ground getting dirty near his own end zone already! Fancy that….Hey, wait, the Sanchize drove the Jets all the way down to the Bills endzone ….. and was promptly intercepted with a 20 yard runback.

Actually, now that I look at the schedule, Skins/49ers may be the second best early game; yuk what a lousy slate. Tampa Bay and Saints might be interesting, but it is in Nawlins, and Le Bon Temps Roulet there. The late slate is much better with Bolts/Cheesers, Pats/Gents, Bengals/Titans, and Baby Jesus at the Black Hole all being pretty interesting matchups. This is the kind of weird game the Bolts often somehow win, but for the life of me, I cannot see how they are gonna stop the Cheese Offensive. I don’t think the Pats could stop Bad Eli, much less Good Eli. Isn’t this where the famed “gelling of the young Belichick defense” is supposed to be happening? No signs of that so far this year.

Most unfortunately, I will be watching none of those games, because I get the extra pleasure of being given the Rams and Cardinals as my only late afternoon game. That is a fair fight. Of losers. Oh well, the Sunday and Monday Night games are both superb this week. Big Ben and the Stillers are back in form, and they might just have some payback in the offing for the Ravens. And Flacco and the Baltimore offense are regressing. Bears at Philly just depends on which Bears show up. But it seems Vick and teh Iggles are starting to click finally, so Philly looks good here.

Crack open a cold one and shove some chips and salsa in yer maw and let’s rock.

Copyright © 2011 emptywheel. All rights reserved.
Originally Posted @ https://www.emptywheel.net/2011/11/05/tide-tigers-and-other-pro-football/