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Weekend winners
Football fans everywhere. From high school games wherever you live — me and the rest of the 5-at-10 clan were at Hixson for the Wildcats’ 19-7 win over Signal — to a full slate of college games Saturday and a full Sunday of the NFL model. What a football-packed weekend.
Coco Gauff and the Joker. That was cool, and I could not care less about tennis. Side question: Is there a phrase more commonly flip-flopped than the “I couldn’t care less/I could care less” and of course the latter means you actually care some? Coco became the first U.S. teenager to win a major since some lady named Serena. Novak Djokovic just won his 24th major singles title. Yeah, that works.
The Pac-12. This may be the last year of a league that has been ravaged by poor leadership, conference expansion raiders and perplexing decisions. As Paschall wrote on Friday to the response to a mailbag query, “The Kick Six is the greatest play in college football history; the Cal-Stanford Band of the Field play likely is the best play in ACC history,” but the Pac-12ers are going out in style. Before Arizona lost to Mississippi State — and Cal eventually gave a game away to Auburn as well as Stanford losing to USC — the Pac-12 started 18-0, which is a record-setting start to the season for any conference since the FBS/FCS split in 1978. And that league has had some QBs people. Caleb Williams is a bona fide dude. Bo Nix is playing like the 14-year, seasoned veteran that he is. Michael Penix Jr. is slinging it at Washington. And right now Shedeur Sanders at Colorado is the Heisman front runner. (And remember Jayden Daniels was out there before transferring to LSU.)