:format(webp)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/photo_images/4008875/124672777.jpg)
I try to spread the love around in this column and try to take it as good as I give it—and Michigan has done a lot of taking it over the past three years. But I can't overlook Notre Dame despite the Irish being featured here last week when Brian Kelly turned into a blueberry and exploded.
One week later, they lose to Michigan twice in the last 72 seconds, the world explodes, and Everyone Quits Life. A single ND message board has swept every Fake Bold Award the column gives out. I have to put them above the fold.
Here is your Scott Tenorman Of The Week with a special side of This Institution Is Dead (emphasis mine):
ND as I knew it is dead
by Acrossdmiddle (2011-09-11 00:54:21)There's no more pride. It's just another good school with a bad football team. I remember waking up each Saturday as a student, particularly on home gamedays, with magic in the air. Now I'm surprised kids make it to the games at all with the s---ty product they're forced to endure. When someone mentions they went to ND I don't even say anything anymore. I just don't want to talk about a place that no longer exists.
Here is your This Guy Of The Week:
I cried like an asshole.......
by guilfordnd (2011-09-11 00:32:33)
......for `15 minutes in the bathroom. and i[''m still drunk. I wanted to be as positive as I could the entire game until the pass. I crumpled up after that and cried and cried like I lost a good friend or some s--- after that pass. Tonight I let the small bluegill and two other panfish that were in my aquirium into the creek down the street. I figured I can't have anymore pussies in my man cave. I will catch some fish that will be a f---ing asshole ( like a bass) where every time I feed it it will dominate, and then s--- out the remains. call me wierd but I got nothing left. I don't know what else to do. I look forward to the fall but the gets harder and harder each year.
I think this guy might be the This Guy Of The Year.
Here is your Exchange Of The Week:
Del Griffith: I fell in love with a Michigan girl and I was the biggest asshole at the bar tonight with her friend (an Ohio state grad no less rooting for us) and said things I'm not proud of…. Alcohol and notre dame football post Lou are not a good combination.
irishbarrister: Did you stare at her chest as she caught 3 TDs too?
And then there's This Poor Bastard:
It could be worse!
by seanfl (2011-09-11 01:04:28)
My poor brother had to work tonight. He is watching the dvr right now and it is just the start of the 4th quarter. He does not want to know what happens. I feel like a crappy brother. It's like going back in time and not warning the people boarding the Titanic.
That is a hellacious ethical dilemma right there. As a spoiler-loathing dude who once almost lost a friend because I received a text about Giuseppe Rossi… no. No, I would want to be told, and then handed a glass of whiskey.
Notre Dame, you receive the Tears of Infinite Sadness. They are only slightly yummy and sweet because even I feel pretty bad for you at this point.
The rest of the week in spleen:
ACC
It was one thing to lose to Northwestern without Persa, but when Boston College lost to UCF 30-3(!) people started making the logical conclusion. That's Shut It Down:
BC Should Give Up Football
(2 votes)
Spoke at length last night to somebody familiar with the trustees and overall management of BC. Guys - you are beating your heads against a brick wall. It is never going to get significantly better at BC. There is a genetic code built in to ensure failure in football at that place. Its endemic and institutional. Football is a big time operation and BC is not big time in the slightest sense of the word. …
IF YOU CAN"T DO SOMETHING GOOD - DON"T DO IT AT ALL - we should stop kidding ourselves and stop embarrassing the school on a national stage with this horrible football program and horrible athletic administration.
That's from BC's scout message board, which is all but abandoned except for one maniac named "oncore" who posts 90% of new threads. He's a little odd…
ALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL ABOARD!!!!
The "Spaziani Spazoo Special Excuse" train now leaving Union Station for all stops, Orlando, Death Valley, Blacksburg, College Park, South Bend, and back to Miami!
THE CUPBOARD IS BARE LOCAL EXCUSE SPECIAL!!!
Conductors, Matt Millen, Sean McDonough, Pete Cronan, Spazoo, GDF and now..... Jack...
JACK..... you don't know JACK!
…but you have to admire the dedication of the Boston College message board lone wacko. I bet he goes to sports bars on Saturday and asks them to change it from the Sox to BC football.
Elsewhere in fanbases who think Tom O'Brien isn't a good idea, NC State lost to Wake Forest. Again. State Fans Nation doesn't need much more than a headline to establish their state of mind:
The Abyss 34, State 27
The commenters are resorting to Excessive Punctuation:
So wait, wait, wait……. 5 years of crap (minus one season), and it’s ok for us to continue to make excuses for injuries? So lets say Tom O’Brien has a 5-win season this year. Do you claim that we can’t hold O’Brien responsible for only being successful 20% of the time he coaches?!?!?!?!?!?! Man, I wish I could work a job where I only had to successfully do what I’m asked to do 20% of the time.
Boston College would probably take that at this point.
BIG EAST
Louisville was supposed to be on the upswing under Charlie Strong, but upswings don't usually include losses to FIU unless you're North Texas. On Lousiville blogs it's Still The Other Guy's Fault, but Strong really needs to read some books on leading with leadership:
In fact, the most depressing thing about this presser compared to last week’s was Coach Strong’s demeanor, and overall tone and posture. As a professional business consultant by day, I observe things like that.
Last week he was clearly irritated, but in charge….. body language -wise, and eye contact-wise when answering questions. This week– he honestly looked and acted beaten. His tone was not irritated. It was more like: "Acceptance of the fairly sad reality that faces me and my team this year."
His posture was less erect, his speech volume more subdued, and his talk was now peppered with phrases to try to eliminate any expectations for this season. And when answering questions, he avoided much direct eye-to-eye contact. All not good things to see in your leader.
Also from that post: Louisville's dance team is the stripperest in all the land. Not in a good way.
UConn was vaguely a BCS team last year. This year they're losing to Vandy and the side judge is telling Paul Pasqualoni to talk to the hand. Wait… what? Paul Pasqualoni?
/consults chart of offseason coach movement in New England
/puts on Kenny G record for thematic unity
Well, then. It's safe to say the honeymoon is over:
UConn's 24-21 loss to Vanderbilt Saturday night was absolutely disgraceful, not because it was a loss to Vanderbilt, a team that may score negative points against the better SEC teams. Nor was it disgraceful because it was a game that the Huskies deserved to win - they didn't. It was disgraceful because it shows that the new UConn football coach is just as stubborn as the old UConn football coach.
Whatever Pasqualoni's justification for sticking with Johnny McEntee (who put up a disastrous 10-for-27, 99-yard, 3-INT line), it is wrong, and he is wrong.
Or that there was no honeymoon, which there shouldn't be when you dig up a 60-some fossil who hasn't been on a date since "I Want To Sex You Up" was the jam. No one wants two weeks of watching Paul Pasqualoni gyrate to Color Me Badd. Except the UConn administration, apparently.
BIG TEN
A lot to choose from here after a week during which the conference threw up all over itself. Iowa lost the interim Cyhawk trophy in a triple overtime game in which Kirk Ferentz had the ball at his 20 with 90 seconds and two timeouts and chose to run out the clock. This is not surprising whatsoever but it is frustrating even to Patrick Vint, one of the main authors of Iowa megablog Black Heart Gold Pants:
Anyone with have a brain and a bit of guts would look at the progression of that game, where Iowa couldn’t stop ISU’s offense on four consecutive series, and especially in the last series where they had ISU in 3rd and 16 and 3rd and 20 and let them escape, and realize that the best chance of winning was taking advantage of having a final possession. Ferentz, instead, sat on the ball like an egg.
Anyone with brains and guts would have realized that, in the third overtime, there was basically no chance of us stopping Iowa State’s offense (again) and taken that beautiful five-yard penalty as a sign from the gods that the 4th and 1 should be converted (especially because the running game was working). … These were obvious mistakes, made by a man who is either an idiot or a coward. He wasn’t that way before. He’s somehow become it now.
Yipes. Also:
My 2c
F---.
But hey, Iowa, at least you're not Purdue, which lost to Rice. It's time for our first Newspaper Or Guy In Basement of the year. (All paragraphs have been normalized for internet.) Door number A:
Boilermakers utterly clueless
Quarterback Caleb Terbush lined up his group momentarily, then walked away and a timeout was called. The offense came back out briefly and was replaced by the punt team.
"I don't know if Caleb heard that or didn't hear it," Hope said. "But that was the conversation we had on the headset."
Huh? Can we just take Hope's timeout privileges away from him?
Wait, what? Who is in charge here? And there was really that much consternation over a call that a pee wee coach could have made?
Drumroll… Door A is Bob Kravitz of the Indy Star. Door B is Boiled Sports. Also, here's A Sad College Girl:
But hey, Purdue, at least you're not Minnesota, which lost to Not Even The Good New Mexico Team! There's a running diary of this abomination? Yes, yes there is. Oh, Lord:
2:40 p.m. - My esteemed colleague MV informs us on Twitter that after the first run, NMST already has more rushing yards than they did all of last game. … Running back Robert Clay had 10 carries for 14 yards. This was against Ohio. As I said before, this should be a rout.
2:59 p.m. - Captain Knee Jerk sends me the following text: "Your qb sucks. Nice ball."
3:44 p.m. - I don't think there's enough Surly Coffee Bender in my fridge to sedate me enough for what's happening right now.
5:36 p.m. - Gophers will go from the one-yard line on fourth down, possible play action waggle opportunity?! Yes. But no, the Gophers line up in the shotgun. Which instantly makes this a dumb play; Gray hands off to Edwards, who gets stuffed.
Somewhere, John McEnroe is yelling, "You cannot be serious!" By John McEnroe and somewhere, I mean "myself" and "in my living room." My dog has woken back up and seems worried. This has to be some kind of bad dream.
5:30 p.m. - Commercial break: You know, go f--- yourself Pitbull. I am not having a "real good time." No, I don't want any Dr. Pepper.
Finally, Penn State's No Mas moment didn't go over well:
Thirteen minutes left in the game, down 17 points, 4th-and-6 on the Alabama 40 yard line. Penn State hasn't been past this point on the field since the opening drive of the game. They needed three scores, so exactly why the hell were they punting? A mind-blowing, cowardly decision. This exact decision has been a feature of the Penn State coaching philosophy, not a bug. Why are you giving up on your team? It was a neutering, faithless insult to players who put in countless hours and years of hard work, and to fans who are paying top dollar for a decaying product ambitiously labeled as "The Great Show".
Evidently it's "call your coach a coward" week in the league.
BIG 12
via Really Sad Fans
Mizzou ate it against Arizona State. But this lady is no longer being spied upon by the CIA, so she's got that going for her.
PAC-12
Oregon State was erroneously omitted after losing to a I-AA team last week. This week they got Wisconsin, and that went about as well as you might expect. Making things worse is a lumberjack on the sidelines. No, seriously:
I think they're aping the awesome Portland Timbers lumberjack, but they're the Beavers. Beavers are in direct competition with lumberjacks. This is like Coke putting a Pepsi mascot on the sideline. It's going about as well as the football:
This is an embarrassment to Beaver Nation , makes us look like buffoons. Why did you post this ? Damn man . Haven't you read the previous posts , Beaver Nation wants this idiot gone !
Oh I agree it is an embarrassment! I'm just posting so that those who did not attend Sac St. are not striken with shock when they see this rip off at the UCLA game.
Well I am hoping that whoever came up with Deliverance man knows how put out we are with him and doesn't bring him back . Otherwise if he shows up again , I hope Beaver Nation becomes a Stadium full of boo birds whenever he goes into his act . That should kill the logger man
At least hating on him is distracting them from a 35-0 bludgeoning, right?
SEC
All forms of Georgia mascot were not so good this weekend, whether you were real dog or fake dog:
What? All right… fine. Georgia message boards. I'm headed in.
grantham must have been shocked !!!!
(4 votes)
that lattimore got the ball just about every damn time in the 4th quarter !! i mean who would have thunk that usc would let lattimore carry the ball when the game was on the line??? garcia seemed out of sorts all game, but who could have known that usc would go to lattimore so much ??
only everyone watching the game on tv and everyone in the stadium except the uga defensive coordinator !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
It's actually not that bad. I think the insane indie board I hit up last year was either folded into Scout and tamed or just folded. There's a lot of Richt defending on the main sites, what with people saying they're proud or encouraged. Boo, rational Georgia fans. Boo.
Mississippi State suffered a painful loss when Chris Relf was chopped down at about the inch line on the last play. The fact it was the last play when Mississippi State had ten seconds on the clock has State fans in mind of another SEC coach:
Mullens been taking clock mgmt from the grass eater.
He needs that surgically implanted horseshoe if it's going to work. The rest of the board settles into a common pastime after a loss: You Are Stupid, Stupid.
clydefrazier: blame the officials???? what game were you five year olds watching
thatsbaseball: Hey dumass that blown 4th down call led directly to a late TD. emotions ? I get emotional everytime I get cheated and most people who have a pair do too.
repeatoffender: we should not even try to challenge plays even if there is conclusive video evidence. We might win the challenge, but we could really 17 up the next play. That is the dumbest s--- that I have ever read.
And then there's Vague Racism That Makes You Want To Take A Shower:
Only thing that has changed from the Tuscaloosa turd to Mullen is the losses are closer. And we beat OM. But I will get ready for LSU the same way I did when the turd walked the sidelines....by finding something else to do that night. You are right State aint LSU and will be a Croom style beating.
Moving on.
Kentucky, still s'posed to be SEC, makes a repeat appearance despite stumbling past one out over Central Michigan because this is their trash-talk:
WOOOHOOO SATURDAY WE ARE GOING TO KICK YOUR...nevermind
Both these teams are so bad it is not even fun to try to talk any smack. good luck to y'all, may the worse team lose
NEXT WEEK: Miami or OSU fans get really dumb for real. Auburn's horseshoe falls out or, much more likely, calls for Dabo Swinney's head start in earnest. And three Big Ten teams will suffer humilating losses, guaranteed.