2023 Football (College & NFL)

Not much should change in the rankings after this week.  Everyone who was supposed to win did.  Georgia has reverted to looking unbeatable after crushing a pretty good Tennessee team.  The Dawgs have won 28 straight, tying two different Alabama teams for the record for an SEC team.  Only the annual win over Georgia Tech next week stands between them and the record.  Although Tech did win as recently as 2016.

Rizzuto's LSU boy Jayden Daniels has accounted for over 1,100 yards in his past two games.  Serious Heisman numbers.  What's the story with this guy?  Although Bo Nix of Oregon is something special too.  Six TD passes in the first half against an overmatched Arizona State.

Matt's Gators lost a tough one to Ole Miss, and also lost their starting QB with a broken collarbone going into the game against Florida State next week.  Although the Seminoles also lost their starting QB, so it will be backups facing off.  We need Matt's quick take on this one.  I love rivalry games.

Staying in the SEC -- Auburn lost 31-10 at home to 25-point underdog New Mexico State.  How does that happen?  Time for War Eagle to buy out another coaching contract.  I just discovered that former Auburn coach Terry Bowden is still coaching, at Louisiana-Monroe.  Did anyone besides Rizz know this?

USC wins the Most Underachieving Award after getting outplayed by crosstown rivals UCLA.  The Trojans were considered legitimate national championship contenders and will finish the year at 7-5, losing five of their last six games.  I thought Lincoln Riley was supposed to have the magic formula after getting all of those transfers to come to Troy.  Meanwhile despite the win Chip Kelly at UCLA is allegedly close to being fired with the team at 7-4.  He's still a better college coach than an NFL coach.

Big one next week is Ohio State-Michigan.  Maryland gave the Wolverines all they could handle.  A noon game at The Big House, number two versus number three.  How can you not love this stuff despite all the crap that swirls around it?  My Nittany Lions did what they needed against a very respectable Rutgers team.  I don't know, a bowl game against LSU is not out of the question Rizz.  It could get a little tense around here.

Like I said, I love rivalry games.  I always make a point of watching at least some of Army-Navy, USC-Notre Dame, Alabama-Auburn, Stanford-Cal, etc.  But I love the non-FCS  clashes too.  I watched a bit of both The Game -- Harvard-Yale -- and The Rivalry -- Lehigh-Lafayette -- while we were commemorating the arrival of this year's Beaujolais Nouveau.  (Anybody else here do that?)  Those games are very intense and taken quite seriously by the schools, no matter what else is going on in the world.  Yale beat Harvard to create a three-way tie for the Ivy League title. Bulldog, Bulldog, Bow Wow Wow, Eli Yale.

Lehigh-Lafayette is a classic.  This was their 159th meeting!  First was in 1884 -- back in the nineteenth century they sometimes played each other twice a year because there weren't enough other schools playing football yet.  And the series has stayed relatively even through the years.  Lots of good-natured (?) vandalism associated with this one, mostly associated with paint and hammers.  It's one of those fun-to-do-once events as I did back in the 70s and it's every bit as bitter as Ohio State-Michigan, albeit with a much smaller crowd.

Jayden Daniels was brought to LSU after multiple seasons with Arizona State and some recruiting violations there.  Daniels won the battle against a group of QBs at LSU, and he was dynamic with his ability to escape and to run with the ball.  However, he was up and down when it came to throwing the ball.  Not that he couldn't throw the ball well.  Seemingly, his first response to trouble or after his first option was to tuck the ball and depend on his legs, missing many opportunities to take advantage of top flight wide receivers for the Tigers.  He showed flashes of being an all-around QB but wasn't consistent.  

This season, he has really grown to understand that LSU has three big, fast, athletic receivers who can run after the catch, mimicking the kind of talent (almost) that Burrow had in his last season at Baton Rouge. In his last game, Daniels tied Joe Burrow with six total touchdowns (Of course, Burrow did that against Oklahoma in the CFS semi-finals) and three different wideouts had over 100 yards receiving.  Right now, Daniels is a difficult match up to defend.  The only two things getting in his way are an average offensive line and a porous defense.  In total, Daniels is turning in the second best season for an LSU QB since 2019's Joe Burrow.  And, Daniels' teammates seem to love him, much like Burrow's did.  

Terry Bowden is quite the enigma.  He's been all over, with some success - but he's not his father.  Terry has a degree in accounting in which he graduated magna cum laude; he attended Oxford University (the real one, not Ole Miss) for post-grad; and he got his Juris Doctorate at Florida State University Law School.  Nevertheless, he took an unpaid intern job at Clemson to coach and received another graduate degree there.  He became head ball coach at Louisiana-Monroe (pronounced MUN-row in those parts) following Clemson in 2021.  It has been a struggle since he's been there.  Tough place to build a program of any kind.  

LSU burned their chances this season with an awful performance against Ole Miss at Oxford, then Daniels was knocked out of the second half with a concussion against Alabama.  The defense is to blame and has been the weak link this entire season.   LSU-Penn State would be an interesting Bowl Game in which either team could claim victory.

Thanks for bringing me up to speed on Daniels.  As for Terry Bowden, it's been 25 years since he left Auburn, which was the last big-time coaching job he had.  He was pretty successful there, I'm not sure why he hasn't gotten a major gig since then.  I would think his name alone would open some doors to the big programs.  I always liked his TV commentary.  It seems like he can't pass through a town without stopping to get a degree in his spare time.

Penn State-LSU would be your problematic defense against our problematic offense.  Something would have to give.

There are so many bowl games now that the NCAA is having trouble finding teams that qualify.  It waived the normal restrictions against teams still transitioning from FCS to FBS to allow James Madison and Jacksonville State to play in a bowl game, but one more team is still needed to reach the required 82 teams for 41 bowls.  So now the search is on for the best 5-7 team in the country, and the early money is on the Minnesota Golden Gophers.  Maybe that would alleviate the pain of losing the Little Brown Jug to Michigan for the fourth straight time.  They also lost the Paul Bunyan Axe to Wisconsin.  Although they won the Floyd of Rosedale trophy against Iowa, so there is that.

On the subject of Iowa -- its game against Nebraska this weekend had a Vegas over/under of 25.5, the lowest such number in this century.  The under still won as Iowa took it 13-10.  There have been eleven NCAA games since 2000 in which the Vegas point line was 34 or less.  Iowa has been involved in eight of those games.

Purdue did retain the Old Oaken Bucket, after which Indiana fired its coach Tom Allen, who will get a $20 million buyout.  Even non-football schools like Indiana are joining in the buyout frenzy.

Penn State took the Land Grant Trophy by drubbing Michigan State.  This trophy is the ugliest piece of junk -- it looks like a booby prize from a yard sale -- it was initiated in 1993 when Penn State joined the Big Ten and since we no longer played our natural rival Pitt every year, Michigan State was designated as our new "rival" with a trophy as fake as the rivalry itself.

I only learned recently that Rizzuto's LSU Tigers fight for the Tiger Rag against Tulane, although I'm not sure how much intensity goes into that one.

Washington retained the Apple Cup by beating Washington State 24-21 in a great game, the last time they will face each other as PAC-12 rivals, although the series has been extended while the Huskies go off to the Big 10.  Unfortunately, after 127 meetings, Oregon and Oregon State will discontinue the Civil War as the Ducks follow Washington to the midwest.

Auburn blew the Iron Bowl in miraculous fashion.  How can you allow Alabama to score a touchdown on fourth and goal from the 31 with 43 seconds left?  I told the group I was watching with that I guaranteed Alabama would score on that play, that's how much Auburn sucks this year.  But how can you allow that?  How can you not at least take a pass interference penalty to put them on the two yard line?

Well it will come down to Georgia-Alabama for the SEC title and I assume a spot in the championship.  Georgia Tech gave Georgia all it could handle, but it wasn't enough.  Another great rivalry game.  Since the son of our friends goes to Georgia, we have learned that they refer to Tech as Northern Avenue Trade School.  I thought Tech was more selective than Georgia, but none of that matters when it comes to football.

Michigan-Ohio State did nothing to change my mind that it's the best college football rivalry there is.  And I don't like either school, but it's almost always a great game.  And it seems like always at noon, the way it should be for Big Ten games.

Sorry about the Gators Matt.  They played Noetsi's gang very tough. 

Beautiful and interesting run down of the various rivalry trophies, Pipps!  "Tiger Rag" is also a staple song for the LSU Marching Band, also called the "Golden Band From Tiger Land":



LSU and Tulane played home-and-home games annually from 1893 to 1994, but they have not played against each other since 2009, won by LSU 42-0.  LSU winning the last 18 in a row has something to do with that; however, the most likely reason the rivalry was discontinued is LSU decided it could add another home game each year to its schedule and reap the financial benefits that go along with over 100,000 in attendance.  Overall, it wasn't much of a rivalry, with LSU leading the outcomes 69-22-7 for a .740 winning percentage.  Also, Tulane called the trophy the "Victory Flag."  At one time, though, the rivalry was quite real with a riot breaking out in 1938 after a Tulane victory.  The trophy (a satin flag) was created in 1940 to foster "good-sportsmanship" between the two fan bases.

The only rivalry trophy that LSU has currently that I know of is "The Boot" or "The Battle for the Golden Boot," which is awarded between LSU and its northern neighbor Arkansas.  Essentially, it is a huge and heavy metal (molded out of 24-karat gold) trophy depicting the two states, like a geographical cut-out from a map of the United States.  Though the two first met in 1901, the annual series did not start until Arkansas joined the SEC in 1992.  LSU leads the head-to-head 42-23-2.  As a trophy, "The Boot" was first awarded in 1996.  It is four feet tall and weighs 200 pounds, the heaviest trophy in college football:



LSU leads in keeping the trophy 19-9.  The trophy itself was designed and created by former Arkansas Razorback linebacker David Bazzel, who said he wanted it to be "as big and gaudy as possible."

As far as rivalry, I think that Texas A&M fosters the most enmity, which is why that game is the final on each team's schedule every season, but I doubt the teams or fans feel that way.  LSU probably considers Alabama its greatest rival, but I doubt the Crimson Tide agrees.  Ole Miss and LSU certainly might be considered, yet LSU would likely trade a loss to the Rebels to beat Saban and Alabama.  It does say something that LSU and Alabama have a bye week each year prior to their head-to-head SEC West match up entitled "The First Saturday Night in November" or "The Saban Bowl."  But, Alabama leads the series 56-27-5, with LSU winning their first meeting in 1895.  The worst stretch was during Bear Bryant's tenure, with LSU losing 11 in a row from 1971 to 1981.  They have played annually and uninterrupted since 1964.  

I wrote not long ago that in recent years the home teams have struggled since 1981, with Alabama going 7-12 at home and LSU is 4-17-1 playing in Louisiana.  Most recently, there have been five overtime games:  2005, 2008, 2011, 2014, and 2022.  Since Bear Bryant retired in 1982, Alabama leads the series 23-15-1.  Let's face it, with Bryant and Saban, the Tigers are almost always out-coached.  LSU fans refer to their former coach as Nick Satan.  Not long ago, Saban admitted that he never should have left Baton Rouge for the NFL.  Don Shula agreed, as he absolutely hated Nick Saban, saying that Saban had "run away from the challenge" and that “The guy likes to hear himself talk and then doesn’t follow up on what he says.”  Shula also said about Saban that “There were four or five direct statements that were blatant lies.”

If you recall, Don's son Mike Shula was fired from Alabama and replaced by Nick Saban, who had three years remaining on his Miami Dolphins' contract.  

Every school goes through it at some point.  They'll be back.  Too much talent in that state alone.