Weekend winners
- The NFL. We have talked openly about the ratings slump the league is in. Whether it's protests or off-the-field issues or the presidential election, the bottom line is the NFL TV numbers - the numbers that have driven the league from being a popular sport to being far and away the most important TV asset in pop culture - have dipped drastically. Another complaint has been bad football and lack of star power. Well, Sunday evening - from the back-and-forth Falcons-Packers game to the Cowboys-Eagles overtime thriller - the football was fun and fantastic.
- Baseball. The Cubs won Game 5 in a tight and well-played 3-2 win Sunday night. It gave Cubs fans a World Series win at Wrigley, which is the baseline of hope for this enterprise. It gives the Indians the chance to clinch at home and do something not even the Cavs did last June. It also gives Fox another date with the ratings monster that has been delivered by the Cubs. Game 3 Friday night pulled 19.4 million viewers, the most watched Game 3 since 2004. Saturday's Game drew roughly 17 million viewers - against some competitive college football mind you - and was up 23 percent from last year. The lesson here - and one the NFL is actually feeling too - is star power, be it player or team, really matters.
- Ohio State. Yes, the Buckeyes won an awfully ugly game at home 24-20 over Northwestern. But the losses in the Big 12 and the positioning around college football means the Buckeyes now again control their own destiny. And that's all any team can ask for. Remember, as Oklahoma emerges as the best-looking Big 12 team, THE Ohio State beat Oklahoma, which still has two losses.
- Tom Brady. Yes, the hits just keep on coming, and Brady added four more TD passes in Sunday's win over Buffalo. At this pace, Brady will finish the season with a completion percentage better than 73 percent, with 3,957 passing yards and 36 TDs with no picks. In 12 games. Also of note: The last six times the Patriots have lost their first division game against an opponent, New England has won the rematch by an average of 28 points.
- Russell Westbrook. Dude is the first NBA player to get more than 100 points, 30 assists and 30 rebounds in his team's first three games.
- Bonus one: The Fab 4 picks went 3-2, hitting big on San Diego State and Kentucky and escaping with the under on Wisconsin-Nebraska. We had a big loss on MTSU and Miami rallying before giving away a game to Notre Dame. We are now 30-24 against the spread. That's 55.6 percent.
FILE - This Sept. 16, 2013 file photo shows the ESPN logo prior to an NFL football game between the Cincinnati Bengals and the Pittsburgh Steelers, in Cincinnati. ESPN. Disney's ESPN on Wednesday, Oct. 21, 2015 confirmed it is cutting about 300 jobs, or 4 percent of its staff, amid signs that the traditional cable bundle is less far-reaching than it once was. (AP Photo/David Kohl, File) Weekend losers
- ESPN. Tonight's quarterback-challenged Monday Night Football aside, it's been a rough stretch for the Worldwide Leader. They have lost a lot of big-named (not necessarily big-talented, mind you) to other networks. The MNF train has stalled - down almost 25 percent this year compared to last - and that's a very high-priced ticket item for ESPN. Now, according to Neilsen.com, ESPN is on track to lose 600,000 subscribers, the worst month in the channel's history. How big a dip is that? Well, ESPN gets more than $5 off every cable bill, every month. The math, when there was almost 100,000,000 cable subscribers, is pretty simple and $6 billion means you can pay Chris Berman whatever he wants and exorbitant fees for the rights to show Trail Blazers-Rockets at 10:30 on a Wednesday. Now, ESPN is down to about 86 million subscribers. Yes, a lot of this is cord-cutting from folks who simply do not see the need to spending big money on cable TV. But ESPN, which is on the hook for more than $7 billion in rights fees in 2017 to everything from the NFL to the Pac 12, is paying a larger price for it than everyone else. And Heaven help ESPN if we ever get to a place with a la carte cabling packages.
- The Big 12. The last two Big 12 unbeatens were dumped Saturday as West Virginia and Baylor lost to Oklahoma State and Texas. That means, barring multiple upsets among multiple frontrunners in every other Power 5 conference, the Big 12 seems destined to be out of the playoffs again. And if the loss by the Bears was not enough, there were some more sordid details that emerged this weekend from the Art Briles scandal at Baylor. Oy, it boggles the mind to think adults would act this way. http://www.cbssports.com/college-football/news/four-things-to-know-baylor-regents-detail-briles-response-to-sexual-assault-scandal/
- Anyone that can't follow the simple rules of offensive costumes. Hey, we're far from the leader of the PC committee. By any measure. But can we not all agree that there are three words that start with N that we need to just retire from any realm of believing it's appropriate. First, there's the N-word. The big daddy of the offensive. Then there's Nazi and we all know that Hitler is never funny - unless it's from the genius of Mel Brooks, an aged Jewish fellow. And finally, there's the noose, which ranks as the single worst accessory, especially when it's around the neck of the Commander-in-Chief, like this fan at the Nebraska-Wisconsin game.
- Golf manufacturing. Here's the news that Titleist's IPO underwhelmed greatly. This comes on the heels this summer of Nike bagging its golf equipment arm.
- The people of Tennessee. No, not for that stink bomb floater that Butch Jones and Co. dropped in Columbia. (More on that in a moment. A lot more.) Nope, on this All Hallow's Eve, here's the chart showing the most popular candy by state in the U.S. from last year's Halloween. Yes, Tennesseans voted for Candy Corn. Candy Corn. And because irony is a fun tidbit, Alabama's favorite? Airheads.
Tennessee's Evan Berry returns a kickoff 100 yards for a touchdown during the Vols' 24-21 upset loss to South Carolina at Williams-Brice Stadium on Oct. 29, 2016. (Photo By Hayley Pennesi/Tennessee Athletics)Tennessee aches
Well, it's safe to say that every Tennessee fan in every nook and cranny of this great land who watched Saturday night's uninspired and unimpressive and unmotivated and underwhelming 24-21 loss to a South Carolina team that started a quarterback who should be completing his high school season in Alabama collectively took a deep breath and wondered aloud in unison:
"What in the &^%&(% was that Butch?"
We'll start this with the caveat that coaches, like quarterbacks, get too much blame when they lose and too much credit when they win.
That's part of this drill, and a part everyone simply excepts almost always.
Was Butch a bad game coach when UT lost to Georgia and needed a Florida secondary meltdown to rally in those games? Was he a bad motivator when the team consistently came out flat despite having lofty goals and more returning starters and experience than any team in the SEC? Was he little more than lucky to win the App State game, when Jalen Hurd fell on a fumble in the end zone in overtime?
The answer to all of those is yes. A resounding yes, but victory is the salve that covers a lot of burn marks, whether we want to see them or not. Whether we want to believe them or not. But the burns are still there, scars of experience that we hope were one time miscues or absent-minded mistakes.
They are not that, however. They are exactly what we know them to be. Scars. Painful and lasting scars that have accumulated from the lessons of poor gamed leadership. What would you describe a team that has been dominated in the first half by everyone opponent they have faced?
Slow starters? OK, we can see that if it happened a time or three. But every Saturday, like these Vols, who have been outscored 83-24 in the first quarter and 133-72 in the first half this year? That seems like you are simply not prepared. Not prepared to play mentally or physically, because let's face it, half of those eight games - App State, Ohio, a bad Georgia team and a really bad South Carolina team, which had one SEC win (at Vandy by 3 in the opener) - were against teams UT has way, Way, WAY more talent than.
And if you are a pro-Butch supporter, and that's understandable because he has done a lot of very good things to make UT football relevant again, you can argue that they adjust at halftime since UT's cumulative scores in the second half are almost completely inverted. In fact, that Tennessee has scored 234 points this year and allowed 233 maybe more telling than we actually realize.
Maybe, just maybe, under Jones and this staff - and the fool's gold that Alvin Kamara offers to protect Mike DeBord's uber-conservative playbook is simply staggering - is a break even bunch. (Side note: DeBord has what, about 8 plays, and none of them worked without Kamara on Saturday and with Josh Hobbs playing his worst game of his career.)
UT is a disappointing 5-3 with all three losses coming in SEC play. The thoughts of Atlanta are somewhere between Gisele leaving Tom Brady for Ken Bone and the possibility of riding unicorns with Sasquatch. By every measure, the season turned from building to frustrating and that crossroad was Saturday night in South Carolina. But that crossroad was a long time coming.
Name one game Tennessee - a team preseason picked in the top 10 and one that had the sixth best odds in Vegas' eyes of winning the national championship - that Tennessee played a complete, well-coached game and dominated from start to finish.
Yes, the Virginia Tech game likely comes the closest since it was a three-touchdown win and the Hokies are playing better every week. But Tennessee was outgunned by Virginia Tech 400-330 in yards and needed five turnovers.
It's a fool's exercise to get into the 'what ifs' when it comes to football, so the what if Jauan Jennings hadn't caught the Hail Mary against Georgia is easily traded with what if UT had not had seven turnovers at Texas A&M. (And if you want to get into what ifs, be dang glad Johnny Vols Fan, that Derek Barnett was not among the injured players. Dude is a monster and kept Saturday closer than it deserved to be and won the Florida game.)
The ebbs and flows in college football lead us, more times than not, to the places we should be. Good teams make their own breaks, which means there is a good team in Knoxville, somewhere between the wretched play calls, the uninspired starts and the brilliance of Barnett. Of course well-coached teams protect the football and avoid penalties, two things that have been huge problems with these Vols.
We have forever said the biggest compliment we can pay a coaching staff is their collective product is better than the sum of their parts. That's maximizing talent and opportunity, and whether that's running a news team, a youth team, a sales team or a major college football team, that's the marks of well-defined leadership.
The reverse of that description has to be the biggest indictment for leaders and coaches is when you have a team that appears to be much better during the week than they are when the lights come on. In year one Butch used motivation and mirrors to reach the former. Saturday's stinker put the exclamation point on this year being a text book case of the latter.
There is no doubt this UT football team is better than the product on the field on most Saturdays. And that's on Butch. Know what else is on Butch? Attracting all that talent to Knoxville. So maybe Butch is somewhere in the middle, his brick laying between good and bad.
And after four years, is mediocre enough? After tasting relevance on a national scale again - remember UT was the CBS game four weeks in a row - is coasting to 8-4 and spending the holidays bouncing between Atlanta, Orlando and the occasional trip to Nashville enough?
Yes, four years ago, 8-4 seemed like a pipe dream. A harbinger of the golden years of Fulmer when a bad year meant 8-4. But four days ago, 8-4 was the worst case scenario for a program that always dominated the stretch run and was still pointed to 10 wins and a potential trip to New Orleans.
That would have been progress. Saturday was major regression.
And now the questions are building and the wonderment increasing and the frustration mounting. And answers, for specifics such as the slow starts and the lax ball security to the metaphysical of whether this is the staff to take the next step from good to elite, are harder to find today that ever.
This and that
- Many congrats to Luke List, the former Baylor School golfer who was in the mix to the very end Sunday in the PGA Tour event. He finished tied for second, shooting 70 on Sunday. Cody Gribble was lights out on the back nine to win the event at 20 under, four shots ahead of List and the rest of the dudes in second. In two PGA Tour events this season, List has finished 26th and tied for second and has made $354,433.
- Jim Harbaugh is a strange duck in a college football coaching profession that is filled with strange ducks. Harbaugh brought a glove to Game 5 of the World Series. Of course he did. And why? Because he's Jim Bleepin' Harbaugh people. The TV screen shot had him from the stomach up, but here's hoping that Harbaugh had on baseball pants, stirrup socks and cleats, ready too make any play at anytime.
- Speaking of Harbaugh, since today is Halloween and all, this seems like the time to share this story. Harbaugh earlier this month on the Dan LeBatard Show, Harbaugh shared his father tactics an making sure his kids 'won' Halloweed. Step 1: Sprint house to house, to make sure you get the most candy and you get there as early as possible to get the early choices of the prime candy. Step 2: Return home after canvassing the neighborhood, go home and change into costume No. 2 and repeat Step 1.
- Across the Halloween landscape, here's an 'F' for Ken Bone dressing up like Ken Bone. Here's an 'A' for the Denver Broncos cheerleader in the T-Rex costume and killing the dance routine. Golf clap - except, T-Rexes with their little bitty arms can't exactly clap. Golf snap, maybe?
- UTC handled its business Saturday beating a Western Carolina team it was supposed to beat. But handling your business is the baseline of expectation, until it isn't. And if you think one bad Saturday can't change the entire perception of just about anything, ask Butch Jones about that.
- Fun column from TFP ace sports columnist Mark Widener here, telling the story of a Signal Mountain man's dad who played for the Cubs back in the day.
Today's question
Busy day. Who won the weekend? Who lost it?
It's Halloween. Boo.
Tons of Halloween options to discuss. Favorite costume - either yours or someone you have witnessed. (Ours was going as the Selson Blue dandruff guy with a crafted table around us, the hair treatments and telling everyone, "This side tingles; this side, no tingle.)
Also a great collection of Halloween birthdays, including Lord Nick Saban himself. (Also Vanilla Ice is 49; Chris Columbus would be 565, which would be a record; John Candy would have been 66 today.)
Pick anyone of those dudes and trot out your own Rushmore if needed. Also, which of those would be the best Halloween costume. We'll rank them John Candy as Uncle Buck, Columbus, Vanilla Ice and then Candy as Barf from Space Ball. We almost went as Saban this year - Alabama gear and walking door-to-door on our knees (we're 6-4, Saban is assuredly not 6-4) - but ruled against it for obvious reasons.