THE SPORTS BOTTOM - September 4, 2010
Happy First-Full-Saturday-of-College-Football! Granted, not as exciting of a day as next Sunday, which is of course Opening Day of the National Football League, but it’ll do. It’s been a long time since last February and New Orleans’ awesome Super Bowl victory. Who Dat?!
Still a good day. Spent the entire day watching football, beginning with the most-inconvenient 9:30AM kickoff between my Mizzou Tigers and the Illinois Fighting Illini. Anytime you have to set an alarm to watch a football game it’s starting way too early. I guess I should be happy the game was on TV at all. It’s a long way from St. Louis, MO to San Francisco, CA.
Definitely a happy day. Especially with Ol’ Mizzou beating the Illini for the sixth consecutive season. Go Tigers! Optimism runs high at this time of the year. Everyone’s tied for first place. And especially when you win your season opener, life is very good, at least until next weekend.
What have we learned from Opening Day of College Football? Not too much. Alabama is still gonna be ranked number one. But really, San Jose State? I mean, I live in the Bay Area and even I had to remind myself: Does SJSU have a football team?
Oklahoma struggled and only beat Utah State by seven. Huh? Probably just a fluke. OU will be fine. They always are. The most important Sooner news is that OU alum Sam Bradford, the number one draft pick in this year’s NFL draft, will start the St. Louis Rams season opener next Sunday against the Big Red. Go Sam Bradford! Yeah, I’m trusting my NFL happiness to a Choke-lahoma grad, but what can I do? The Rams have won six games in the last three seasons. SIX!!!
But back to the topic-at-hand: college football opening day. What did we learn? It’s hard to learn a lot opening day due mainly to the large number of cupcake games played by the powerhouse teams. I mentioned Alabama/San Jose State. What about Miami/Florida A&M? Or Florida State/Samford? Tough to determine anything based on those games. Cupcakes take the big money and offer themselves up to powerhouse teams for large paychecks.
Sometimes it backfires for the powerhouse schools. Today’s darlings of college football: Ladies and Gentlemen your Jacksonville State Gamecocks from Jacksonville, Alabama!
They marched into Oxford, Mississippi and SEC country and beat the Ole Miss Rebels 49-48 in two overtimes! What a finish! The last two plays for the ‘cocks: 30 yard touchdown pass on FOURTH-AND-FIFTEEN, then a two-point conversion pass through a maze of arms and hands that somehow found the receiver. Awesome. Sure, Ole Miss is usually towards the bottom of the SEC standings, but it’s still an SEC team.
Jacksonville is a Football Championship Subdivision team, which used to be called Division I-AA, but I guess that was more confusing then Football Championship Subdivision? Whatever. Division I-AA! That’s huge! Careful with those cupcakes, Ole Miss. Good thing tailgating in The Grove in Oxford was in full swing, because by the end of the game Rebel fans needed something to take their minds off of the game.
Ole Miss was ranked in the Top Ten going into last season, peaking at number four, but wound up with a 9-4 record and a Cotton Bowl victory. Not too shabby. But not a national championship either. And today they fell to Jacksonville State.
The Kansas Jayhawks did the same thing, “hiring” Division I-AA North Dakota State to come to Lawrence and get killed by the Jayhawks. Guess what happened? The Bison beat the Jayhawks 6-3. Words cannot describe how truly awesome that result it. Especially to a Mizzou alum who is still bitter that the Jayhawks got the 2007 Orange Bowl bid over Mizzou even though the Tigers beat them and finished ahead of them in the Big XII standings.
Fear the ‘cocks!!! Fear the Bison!!!
