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The Good, Bad and Ugly of College Football Saturday

Lots of everything to go around.

NCAA Football: Navy at Tulane Derick E. Hingle-USA TODAY Sports

Good morning, and welcome back to your weekly social media-driven look back at the Saturday that was in college football. I don’t know about you, but Saturday kind of felt like the dress rehearsal before the opening act, because next Saturday is when the SEC gets going. Well, presumably. In the meantime, we had lots of good stuff on Saturday, and we also had Bill Moos at his Bill Moosiest, which is always great for some comic relief. More on that later.

The Good

Got the day started off right during College GameDay, as Ol’ Crimson made its 244th consecutive appearance.

My man Coach Rolo looked like he was ready to impale somebody with that flagpole while simultaneously mastering the art of the figure eight. Well done!

  • More great catches

But wait, there’s more!

Seems like the Texas State Bobcats make one of these per week.

We’re giving the title of “Week’s Best Catch” to the Louisiana Tech Bulldogs. Not only was it an amazing play, but the stakes were pretty big, especially if you had La Tech +5.5 like we did!

  • How about those Navy Midshipmen! It’s not easy to pull off a big comeback when you run the ball most of the time, but come back they did. Also lol Barstool.

Yeah, about that.

  • THE U IS BACK! MAYBE FOR REAL THIS TIME!*

*Ok probably not

  • We documented the horror show of a punt during the Citadel game last week, and I thought this Pat McAfee segment on College GameDay was a pretty cool way to end the story.
  • I love a verified team account putting a point spread into a tweet. I believe this is what the kids would refer to as “throwing shade.”
  • Spencer Hall will never not be hilarious.
  • Thought this was cool, in a macabre sort of way.
  • Bundesliga started this weekend, and although I’m chronically confused by the machinations of the season and all the tournaments which seem to overlap, I do know that we won 3-0! Yes, I said “we” because I was born into BVB fandom and it will always be in my blood.
  • Although we only had one Top 25 matchup this weekend, things really heat up next Saturday. Can’t wait!

The Bad

  • Yikes. Get well soon, coach.
  • On the team front regarding COVID, the poor Memphis Tigers seem to be having all kinds of issues. Hopefully things get better and they’re able to play sooner rather than later.
  • I don’t know who is to blame for this nonsense, and I know Bill Murray is one of the funniest people alive, but sometimes it feels like he is more interested in playing Bill Murray than just being Bill Murray. In this case, did he really think we’d all howl at the fact that he was swinging in and out of the frame since he can’t figure out how to turn his screen 90 degrees? Also, does Bill still have dial-up at his house? At least he didn’t make Lee Corso bleed this time, so, progress?
  • This coach is ready to run through a wall!

Marshall Thundering Herd 17, Appalachian State Mountaineers 7.

  • Things are not going well for your team when the fans are doing this in clusters.

Or this at any point during the game.

  • Looks like the Louisville Cardinals need a minor pass coverage adjustment, much like Southern Miss did a couple weeks ago. Luckily our man Alex is here to break things down.

Here was the result of Louisville’s slight mishap:

I can’t be the only person having Washington State Cougars 2019 flashbacks.

The Ugly

Last week, the South Florida Bulls were on the right side of some unfortunate punting buffoonery, as we mentioned. This week? Not so much.

Somehow, it got worse!

The Pathetic

New category this week! The Big Ten revealed what feels like the twelfth iteration of its 2020 football schedule on Saturday, and a certain team was not happy about its draw.

King snake oil salesman Bill Moos voiced his displeasure, and just about broke the unintentional comedy scale.

I can not tell you how hilarious that quote is, and how pathetic Bill Moos seems. He says he wasn’t going to get “kicked around” shortly after admitting that he lost every argument. Excuse me, Bill? Mr. Kendall from CougCenter here. I want to make sure I’ve got this right. When the Big Ten postponed the season, you and your coach made transparently hollow threats about seeking other places to play. The conference called your nonsensical bluff and you slinked back to Lincoln with your tail between your legs. Now, after bitching and moaning for weeks, you expected the conference office to give you a break? Do you have any idea how the real world works?

But this quote was the cherry on top of the “woe is me” sundae:

“I’ve got a good football team with a great football coach that deserves a break here or there to start getting back on track to being a contender in the Big Ten West.”

How far has the Nebraska Cornhuskers football program fallen? The AD is having to request preferential treatment just so they can win a game or two! Didn’t you used to have a proud program? Look, Bill, you’ve got a bad football team with an unproven coach, and your football program is, at best, the sixth or seventh best in its conference.

This pathetic display brought to mind a family gathering during the holidays, when the little kids are relegated to the hastily-assembled card table in the corner of the room because all the seats at the main table are taken. Hey Bill, turn around and take your seat at the kiddie table, the adults at Wisconsin and Ohio State are talking.

Football

The erstwhile clown college that is Pac-12 leadership continues to try and have a semi-season in 2020. As you could probably guess, little to no progress is being made.

Six games? We really gonna do all this for six games? I’m sure many of you feel differently, and I understand. But I moved on from having a season weeks ago, and any effort to salvage some semblance of Pac-12 football 2020 is starting to smell like Jon Favreau’s answering machine debacle in Swingers. It also brought to mind this Eddie Murphy bit about hamburgers. The Pac-12 is Eddie’s mom, and the rest of the Power Five is McDonald’s. WARNING: As you can guess, there are swear words.

Pac-12 presidents delay restart decision, and frustration soars
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Covid-19 antigen tests the key to Pac-12 football restarting
To combat coronavirus, the Pac-12 has partnered with Quidel for antigen tests that are believed to be more effective than PCR tests used by the NFL.

This Week in Parenting

I was out of town for much of the week, and when I returned home Friday evening, I noticed that SportsCenter was on the DVR menu. I asked the boys why it was on there, and the 12 year-old said, “I figured you’d want to watch SportsCenter so I recorded it.” There’s hope for that kid after all. The happiness was short-lived, though, as his Boy Scout camping trip was canceled shortly before he was to depart the house. If that weren’t bad enough, he had volunteered to help cook the meals at camp, so now we have all of this damn food on hand and nowhere to put it.

On Saturday, we were watching a World War II show, and the narrator was talking about the day FDR died. The eight year-old asked me if I was alive when that happened. Sometimes I wonder, “How damn old does this kid think I am??!!” He’s really funny about this. Like, when we’re watching a show that talks about a celebrity from the 90s, for example, he almost always asks if that person is still alive. I’m always going, “How long ago do you think the 90s were?” I don’t know if it’s a funny quirk or if he has some fixation on the living and the dead. Not sure I want to find out.

This weekend - canceled campout aside - was an eye-opener, as the 12 year-old had an overnight birthday party and the youngest had a friend over until late Saturday. Then on Sunday, the youngest had baseball camp from 10-noon, and I had to go pick up the oldest from his sleepover then jump back in the car to take the youngest to a Scouting event at the zoo from 2-4, while Mrs. Kendall took the oldest to his baseball camp from 2:30 to 5:00. It was enough to make me long for the calendar-free days of lockdown.

I Wonder

I wonder, did John Mayer really go to his 10-year reunion?

Beer

Best beer I had this week: Well it certainly wasn’t the hefeweizen/pils/hefe/pils round robin of German beer in Stuttgart. Saturday night I opened a can of Hop Hooligans Unravel: Banana, and it was enough to make me want to visit Bucharest immediately.

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Non-Sports

Hang on, you mean all that plastic I put in the bin isn’t getting recycled? It’s more about satisfying lobbyists and oil companies, while patting myself on the back? WELL KNOCK ME OVER WITH A FEATHER.

Is Plastic Recycling A Lie? Oil Companies Touted Recycling To Sell More Plastic : NPR
An NPR and PBS Frontline investigation reveals how the oil and gas industry used the promise of recycling to sell more plastic, even when they knew it would never work on a large scale.

The Unfinished Story of Emmett Till’s Final Journey | by Alexandra Marvar | Sep, 2020 | GEN Till was murdered 65 years ago. Sites of commemoration across the Mississippi Delta still struggle with what’s history and what’s hearsay.