Weekend winners
– Miami. Mark Richt and his collection of athletes dominated Virginia Tech, and now the Hurricanes look the part of contender. Saturday against Notre Dame should be fun.
– Baker Mayfield. The Oklahoma quarterback grabbed the Heisman race by the stiff arm with an amazing performance in the annual Bedlam game that featured something close to 104,428 yards of total offense. How about this stat: Mayfield is 13-0 in true road games with 55 total TDs with an average of 330-plus passing yards per game.
– Fab 4 picks. Man, our college picks crushed it. A tidy 5-1 against the spread puts us at 34-20-1 against the number this year, which is right at 63 percent, which is highly entertaining. Side note: When we miss, well, we go big. We picked THE Ohio State minus-17 and THE Buckeyes lost by 31 points. So we only missed that one by almost seven TDs.
– Different paths for Baylor School golfers to find success. Try this: Luke List finished at 3 under and ranked in the top five in average drive (331.4 yards) and longest drive (389 yards). List finished tied for 20th. In that group tied for 20th and cashing a check worth more than $61K was Baylor alum Stephen Jaeger, who finished in the top five in driving accuracy.
– James Franklin. Yes, Penn State lost. Yes, that lost ended any and all hopes for the Nittany Lions to get into the playoff. But despite the heartache and angst of that fact, Franklin raced off the field after the final gun and grabbed his players to make sure they returned to the field to shake hands. Class move, Coach.
– Bonus pick: All the Friday night heroes who get at least one more high school football game after the first week of the state playoffs. Enjoy young men. It’s a lifetime memory.
– Bonus pick, II. Man, UAB coach Bill Clark is a magician. After not having a program in 2015 and 2016 because of sketchy leadership, Clark has the Blazers bowl eligible after a 52-21 win over Rice. Clark got a five-year extension Friday night.
FILE – In this Sunday, Sept. 3, 2017, file photo, Texas A&M head coach Kevin Sumlin gestures during an NCAA college football game against UCLA, in Pasadena, Calif. Sumlin was already on the hot seat before the team squandered a 34-point lead in a loss to UCLA in its opener on Sunday night. Now there are many more questions about Sumlin’s future as the Aggies prepare to host Nicholls State on Saturday. (AP Photo/Danny Moloshok, File) Weekend losers
– THE Big Ten. THE Ohio State got hammered. (Nice pick, huh?) THE Penn State got beat for the second straight weekend in which they could not hold a fourth-quarter lead. Unbeaten Wisconsin carries the water for that conference to get into the playoff, and yes, feel free to raise your hand f you are comfortable with that fact.
– Everyone involved with the Florida football program. Gross. Front-to-back gross. Maybe, just maybe, if Gators fans are looking for a silver lining, after that debacle, there’s no way the brass can make the same God-awful mistake that LSU did and hand the job to a player-approved interim coach like Ed Orgeron. So you got that going for you, which is nice.
– Kevin Sumlin. As an Auburn alum we watched the Tigers’ destruction of A&M from front to back. Sumlin’s bunch had the upset remedy working through a good chunk of the first half and then they folded. Like a tent. Like a regular sheet. (Because let’s face it, folding the fitted sheet is about as hard as translating the Koran into Sanskrit.) That was a death blow game for so many reasons, including this one: A&M is spending elite money for its coach and has not beaten and SEC West opponent at home in 763 days.
– Yes, NBA regular-season stuff should not start until Christmas. That said, the Lonzo Ball’s offensive limitations and the variety of stink-pants teams in the league leave us puzzled.
– All of us. How long is it going to take before we stop politicizing control and address this. Hey, I firmly believe in the Constitution and am OK will people owning guns. But what in the name of Remington Rifles leads any of us to believe that someone needs an AK-47 for personal business.
Tennessee head coach Butch Jones, right, meets with Southern Mississippi head coach Jay Hopson at midfield following Tennessee’s 24-10 victory over Southern Mississippi during an NCAA football game at Neyland Stadium on Saturday, Nov. 4, 2017 in Knoxville, Tenn.Was that enough?
We believe Butch Jones to be out of job, and the question is not if but rather when.
Or considering that UT is a double-digit underdog at Missouri, that question of finding the next UT coach may be a version of maybe “If and can he win?”
So this is the time, wherever everyone places all-told pressure on everyone. And that’s how it should be considering the stakes.
The stakes for the program, the fan base, the administration and especially the coach who makes more than $4 million per season.
Yes a win is a win; UT toppled Southern Miss for its first win since September. But it’s hard to follow the Vols and feel victorious right about now. Add to the fact that Vegas has UT as a 10-point underdog is this amazing stat we saw on Twitter Sunday: If UT loses Saturday in Columbia, the Vols would have a current losing streak against every other SEC program.
Let that sink in friends.
So, yes a win is a win, and we get to another Monday and Butch Jones is still running the ship. But truth be told, I’m not sure how many people really care any more. And that growing apathy now falls on the shoulders of John Currie.
This and that
– Did you guys see the story that the 49ers asked about trading for Tom Brady when they traded for Jimmy Garoppolo last week before the trading deadline? Crazy right? Here’s more.
– Speaking of picks earlier, the worst beat of the weekend had to be FAU, which was a 6.5-point-favorite . Up 30-23 with less than 30 seconds left, FAU coach Lane Kiffin elected to take a safety rather than punting from his end zone. To make matters worse, Kiffin heckled everyone about it on social media.
– Normally a winner of the weekend – and his team won again to move to 9-0 for the first time since some dude named Herschel was in Athens – we feel inclined to mention that Kirby Smart triggered a $150,000 bonus this weekend for winning the SEC East. Yes, winning the SEC East right now is like being the world’s best-looking blind date who really is a good cook and really does have a good personality as well as being the world’s tallest little person (or whatever the correct phrase may be).
– Man, the Cavs suck. That is all.
– Side note: Tiger Woods thinks the ball and the distance of said balls in today’s game is a big issue for the game of golf. We have two quick question: 1) Why do we refer to it as the spot of football or the sport of basketball or any of the others, yet we call it the game (not match or round, mind you) of golf? 2) It’s more than a little bit curious that Tiger, who crushed Tilteists the Nike balls into the stratosphere in his heyday, has not spoken out about the technology of the ball before now.
– And maybe we should have found room in the winners category, but it already felt pretty full: The Saints are the third team in the modern era to win six games in a row after an 0-2 start. The other two were the 1993 Cowboys and 2007 Giants, and each of those teams won the Super Bowl in those years.
Today’s question
Weekend winners and losers. Yes please.
On this day in 1860, Abe Lincoln was elected president.
On this day in 1995, Art Modell announced he was moving the Cleveland Browns to Baltimore.
James Naismth, Walter “Big Train” Johnson and Emma Stone were all born on this day.
So too was Sally Field, who is 71.
Rushmore of Sally Field movies.
Go.