Weekend winners (Alabama division)
Nick Saban. Dude is the GOAT, and there will be no further discussion. He has made his outpost downright dead-solid perfectly predictable in the most unpredictable regular season in all of sports.
Every wide receiver - current, past and future - that plays at Alabama under Saban. Wow. Look around. Julio back on the field and going crazy. (And Calvin Ridley on the other side going crazy. I kind of believe that Matt Ryan is a super-charged Ryan Fitzpatrick but had the pleasure of a decade of Julio's greatness.) We saw what the current Tide WRs did against a secondary full of future NFL dudes. If you are a five-star high school wide out, would you look anywhere else.
Derrick 'bleepin' Henry. My Lord. Henry, at 6-foot-4 and close to 250 pounds, is a grown man among grown men.
Tua Tagovailoa. He made his NFL debut Sunday in a blowout, roughly 11 months after a hip injury threatened his football career. And the image of Tua soaking it all in and facetiming his parents after the game, sitting alone on the field, was powerful.
Elsewhere Defenses in Pittsburgh and Tampa Bay; Trevor Lawrence - wow, that's 404 yards on 24-for-32 passing and five scores in a half and a drive; Tampa Bay sports fans, who have the Bucs looking strong, Lord Stanley's Cup and the Rays in the World Series; Cody Bellinger, who crushed the NLCS winning homer to get the Dodgers to the Series; the entire 5-at-10 clan, who had a blast at Cape San Blas, and the fishing trip with JC (of SaltyCharters.com) was awesome in its awesomeness; a super majority of the players in the Intimidator Pool, because more than 75 percent of the crew still standing had Miami, which blasted the Jets: Hugh Freeze, because forget about the call girls on the phone records, Freeze can coach his whistle off, and the fact that Liberty housed Syracuse is impressive, but the fact that Liberty was favored on the road against a Power Five foe is even more telling.
Weekend losers
Braves fans. I know a lot of them. A lot of you guys are among them. And there are few things that reach the gut-punch level of professional sports than losing a 3-1 lead in a best-of-seven. And the Braves snatched defeat from the perch of victory. My heart aches for so many Braves fans, who have had their heart-broken so many times. So, so many times. And the base-running miscue when the Braves were up 3-1 and looking for insurance Oh my. Oh. My. There are no words.
Bill Belichick. Look around and the phrases stability and its synonyms are magnified in this time of unknown and disruption. But the Pats and Belichick are under .500 after five games for the first time. Read that again. And for all the folks who said multiple times something akin to "Belichick with two weeks to prepare for Denver" Well, 18-12 Bronocs, who were without their best offensive and defensive players.
Baker Mayfield. Is Mayfield good? Is he bad? Does he have a chance to be a franchise guy, because, yes, the Steelers defense is elite, but the Browns have a slew of pieces around him and he took any chance Cleveland had and flushed it Sunday. Wow.
North Carolina. Hey, Mack Brown has reconstructed and resuscitated the entire Tar Heels football program to a place that they are contenders and have a legit presence on the recruiting trail. But FSU stinks and FSU - Brown's alma mater, and a team he's never bested - trucked UNC.
SEC fan despair
We all know that being an Alabama fan right now is like being born with the last name Gates or Busch? (Seriously, what would be the best last name, all things considered, to be born with these days?)
Everything comes up rosy, because Saban is the perfect mix of all the good qualities of Oz and Pop Warner and Tony Robbins and Gen. Patton.
Arkansas fans are pretty giddy right now, considering they are 2-2 after losing 19 straight SEC games, and are a missed call at Auburn from being an inexplicably impressive 3-1.
UK fans have a similar beef, and a similar sense of contentment with a 2-2 mark that could be 3-1 and maybe even 4-0.
But beyond that, which fan base in the SEC is happy. Missouri? Not really. Texas A&M? Maybe pleased right now but not actually happy. Florida? Yeah the Gators have the feel of redirecting the process.
(And we know that the five-year rule - if your team wins the big trophy, you can't really gripe for five years - means LSU fans' complaints will fall on deaf ears since they won it all last January.)
Georgia fans are looking around and wondering if Kirby is an alum at heart but really just Mark Right 2.0 (with better talent) on Saturdays.
LSU fans have to wonder if Coach O is Gene Chizik 2.0 and look at the Sunday magic of last year's meaningful names - Brady, Burrow, JJ, among others - and wonder what's ahead.
Texas A&M fans have to realize that this is the lightning in a bottle situation with that many starters back before remembering they are married to Jimbo for a while.
Both of the Mississippi schools want to believe in the guy they got but the unknowns of the now and the speed bumps of history make that a want to rather than a "We got" if that makes sense.
And that leaves the legion of the truly miserable, UT, Auburn and South Carolina.
I offer this with this firm caveat: Unless any of those lose out, I don't see an SEC team firing its coach this offseason. There is too much uncertainty, there are too many variables, and there are too many unknowns.
Plus, there are not the wads of money laying around the football building that there was 12 months ago. Period, so unless the Gus Bus goes bagel the rest of the way or the wings fall off the Jeremy Jet or the Coach Boom Bonneville veers off the interstate, even those dudes will get one more year.
(Speaking of losing the weekend, Chad Morris has to be looking around and realize he's the Adam Gase of college football right now. Everywhere he goes gets worse, and everywhere he leaves gets better. That's not a LinkedIn endorsement by any measure.)
South Carolina played hard Saturday, which is a testament to how the players feel about Will Muschamp. Truly. But I'm not sure Boom has the goods to be the guy.
As for Gus, well, whatever is happening right now is downright 2012 bad, because Auburn is going to go from top 10 to 4-6 (at best) and the fights on the sideline and the overwhelming amounts of trash-talking (and being unable to back it up and doing it while losing, mind you) are troubling.
Nevermind there is something clearly wrong with the relationships, tutelage, interaction or lack of discipline with Bo Nix, who was dreadful Saturday. DEE-readful.
And that leads us to Knoxville, where Jeremy Pruitt continues to ride the roller coaster up and down Kingston Pike without a helmet, a seat belt or apparently a plan.
Why Nix or Jarrett Guarantano was not pulled Saturday is downright puzzling.
I know a lot of UT fans - who also are Braves fans, too, so this was a truly rotten weekend - and Pruitt's Southern charm comes across as backwoods ignorance when UK comes to Neyland walks all over the Orange.
So, who in the SEC other than Bama (and Arkansas and UK) are truly tickled right now?
This and that
- This is a staggering headline: "Former Black Iowa players demand $20 million, Kirk Ferentz's job after alleged racial issues." Oh my.
- You need this this morning. Trust me. It's Jimmy Roberts voicing the hope that springs eternal at Augusta National, whether the Masters is a spring sensation or its own special fall classic. It's why we love sports.
- You know the rules, and Paschall had a busy weekend. Extremely busy. Here's breaking news that UT has sacked defensive line coach Jimmy Brumbaugh, and here is his must-read column rounding up the movings and shakings of the SEC weekend that was.
- Speaking of golf, a few things jumped off the board for me at The CJ Cup. First, The CJ Cup had a prize pool of $9.75 million. That's KER-razy. Second Jason Kokrak won and made $1.755 million; it was his first career win, and with the Tiger-proofing of the paydays, he now has $14.9 million in golf earnings. (For context, Greg Norman won $14.48 million playing the game.) While we're here, Harris English continues to make the most of every time he puts a peg in the ground, finishing 10th and making $243,750.
Today's question
We will get to the Multiple Choice Monday in a second, but in quick essay form, thoughts about this type of vitriol toward Kirstie Alley, who was battered and bashed on Twitter for saying she was going to vote for Donald Trump? Is there an example of someone of some form of celebrity voicing support of Biden, which would also be just as vitriolic and hateful.
Seriously, all Alley did is voice support, but I guess that's not OK anymore either. Also of note, Diddy - for Puff Daddy or Sean Combs - says there will be a race war if Trump wins reelection. Wow.
As for Multiple Choice Monday, and I ask this with nothing but empathy, which is worse as a sports fan
> Loving a team that forever stinks like the Jets;
> Loving a team that is occasionally great and occasionally terrible, yet completely unpredictable, like Auburn;
> Loving a team that has been consistently good to very good, if not great at times, for decades but can never, ever win the big one, like the Braves or the Bulldogs?
Discuss.
As for today, Oct. 19, well, happy birthdays to Jon Favreau, who is 54 today and has made a monster impact as a director. (Side note: He has a sneaky strong Rushmore of Rudy, The Replacements, Spider Man: Far From Home, among others.)
Evander Holyfield is 58 today.
"Dances With Wolves" was released on this day 30 years ago. It has not aged well, and that it beat Goodfellas for a gold statue is one of the biggest crimes across the entire arts and entertainment realm.
Mordecai "Three Finger" Brown was born on this day in 1876.
Rushmore of nicknames that in including a number. Go.