College football rewind
After watching a weekend of glorious games and re-reading as much as we could from the preseason, here are five things we know feel pretty good about saying in the last month:
Alabama may have the best defense its ever had under Saban. That was incredible. Side note: FSU's kicker has more points than USC and Auburn combined heading into week two.
Nick Chubb is a man. For sure.
The Fab 4 (plus 1) picks started OK, going 3-2 after FSU's come-from-the-dead rally over Ole Miss last night. We would have been a game better if Lane Kiffin had not but that grudge TD on the board to push the Alabama-USC game over. (We also would have done at least one game better if we had remembered our gambling rule of always betting against Hawaii when they kick off atnoon Eastern.)
Texas is back. And the Longhorns' unbelievable, can't-take-your-eyes-off win over Notre Dame is a clear front runner for game of the year.
The ACC has three quarterbacks - Louisville's Lamar Jackson, FSU freshman-star-in-the-making Deondre Francois, and Clemson's Deshaun Watson - who are going to be complete and total handfuls for defensive coordinators across the country.
College football rethink
OK, here are five things we need to recalibrate after all of one weekend.
UCLA is not a playoff team, despite some wonderings about that possibility. And, with a cheesy mustache, a questionable attitude and puzzling decision-making, sophomore quarterback Josh Rosen looks more like Christian Hackenberg than Andrew Luck in terms of future potential.
Speaking of quarterbacks, man, questions at quarterback make your team hard to watch and even harder to predict. (Unless those questions come with a guy like Nick Chubb lining up at tailback.)
Speaking of questionable quarterback play, the loser of the Auburn-LSU game later this month becomes the front-runner for the Tom Herman sweepstakes.
We'll revisit this every week at this time, but here's a quick version of the top five in the SEC power poll: 1. Alabama, 2. Georgia, 3. Texas A&M, 4. Alabama's second-team, 5. Tennessee.
Finally, we'll add this to our Tuesday college football recap, too. But here is our four for the college football playoff as of this morning: Alabama, FSU, Ohio State, Houston.
Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers (12) with guard Josh Sitton (71) celebrates a touchdown during the second half of an NFL divisional playoff football game against the Dallas Cowboys Sunday, Jan. 11, 2015, in Green Bay, Wis. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh) NFL happenings
The NFL required teams to trim their rosters to 53 players this weekend.
It meant for some dizzying times with the ticker. (Seriously, during the slow summer months you kind of forget the locker is there. But now that the games have started and with all the news from the NFL dripping across the bottom of the screen, there were times this weekend that we hit rewind to catch something on the scroll. Seriously.)
There were some big names on the cut list, including former first-rounders Dee Milliner and Mark Sanchez. Also former Pro Bowl linemen Jahri Evans and Josh Sitton were released.
Of local note, former Baylor School player and UT guard Jacques McClendon was cut by the Jacksonville Jaguars and former UTC defensive lineman Derrick Lott was released by the Raiders.
Still, with a monster kickoff set for Thursday with the Super Bowl redo of Panthers-Broncos, we are about to be full-tilt into football.
Here's hoping the ticker keeps up.
This and that
- Speaking of the NFL, for a game that really had little star power going in, the Cleveland-Philly game got more interesting this weekend. Philly traded incumbent quarterback Sam Bradford to Minnesota for a first-round pick in 2017. That means that the Eagles will start rookie Carson Wentz, who they traded a truckload of picks - including a 2017 first-rounder - to Cleveland to move up in the draft to select. Of course, the Browns have been quarterback deficient for the better part of the last decade, so Wentz' future will be interesting viewing for the Browns faithful.
- Rory McIlroy rallied from a monster hole, making up six shots in Monday's final round of the Deutsche Bank Championship. It was a surreal effort as wind gusts as strong as 40-mph in Boston tormented the field. (Side note: Final round on the Monday of a holiday is a cool thing. Well-played indeed PGA Tour.)
- Ever wonder what happened to Brandon Stewart, the quarterback who came to UT in the same recruiting class as Peyton Manning? Well, he turned out OK, considering he started his own technology marketing company in 2012 that was ranked in the top 100 of privately owned companies by Inc. magazine.
- Eternal blowhard Skip Bayless made his Fox debut this morning at 9:30 a.m. with Shannon Sharpe. Hope it went well, since a) we missed it, and b) we're not really sure what channel Fox Sports One is to begin with.
- With more than 11 million viewers, the Notre Dame-Texas game on ABC Sunday night was the highest season-opener on record.
- How about the Waldron Bulldogs out of Arkansas for a late nominee of who won the weekend. Waldron had not won a high school football game since 2011 - a span of 1,786 days and 43 games - before dropping a 45-0 pasting on top-rival Mansfield last Friday. How scarce are wins for the Waldron boys? They are now 7-84 since the start of the 2007 season
- Man, Chip Kelly has some experienced dealing with controversy, from the LaGarrette Blount postgame punch at Oregon to the Riley Cooper racial slur when Kelly was at Philadelphia. Now, in addition to the protest that Colin Kaepernick is partaking in before kickoffs, comes news that the 49ers have cut fullback Bruce Miller after Miller was arrested fro assault of a 70-year-old man and the man's son. Wow.
Today's question
OK, we shared some of our revelations from the opening weekend of the college football season. (And the fact that Butch Jones said some of the UT players were doing their own thing seems particularly troubling, no?)
What are some of yours?
If you need a Rushmore, today is national coffee ice cream day. Not a really big fan of coffee ice cream, but started thing what would be on the Rushmore of ice cream flavors. We'll start with homemade peach, go to chocolate chip, orange sherbert and straight-up strawberry. Thoughts?
Go, and enjoy the day.