This Week In Foobaw 2017 Week 10 (In Foobaw)

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LegendaryGT

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Prepare your foobaw brains, if you can, for the most bizarre week of college football so far this season. Over four days, starting on Tuesday, every single division in power 5 football (and maybe even some in the group of five but who cares) is in position to shuffle its leaders (except the B1G, where nothing ever changes). Okay, maybe I oversold that, but there seriously are a lot of important games for both conference and playoff races. We could end up after this week in a futuristic land where all the conference races are all but decided, and only a few dotted I's and crossed T's remain for the playoff committee to consider, or we could be blasted back into the hadean days of the 2017 season, when all was sulfur and flames, none but God knew that life could even arise, let alone secure its division, and it would be yet billions of years before the first hairy ape descended from the trees to bash his friend's skull in with an old femur for a laugh, thus inventing the playoff committee ranking system we know and love today. The schedule is spaced out pretty nicely too. To commemorate this momentous week, this rapid-fire trick shot with the arrow we call time, we're going to examine the past, the present, and the future of each game. Then, polling history will be re-written on Tuesday night as the playoff selection committee does something completely, totally necessary by re-ranking the top 25 more than a month before it means anything. This week in foobaw, it's time travel week. Enjoy!

Freaking Tuesday, October 31

8:00 PM - Bowling Green at Kent State. Buffalo is 1-4 in the MAC, and both of these teams are 1-3. Buffalo has a bye, and somebody has to join them in the tie for last place in the MAC East. You should consider watching, though, because the MAC is not re-defining what days of the week you can use to play football just so it can be ignored. Push the MAC too far in its quest for attention, watch what happens.

In the distant past: In 1921, Bowling Green joined the Northwestern Ohio Intercollegiate Athletic Association (NWOIAA for short). Its first ever game in the conference was a 0-0 tie with Kent State, with an official attendance of 0 fans, because everyone was still pretty freaked out about some flu thing that ended up being just a tiny footnote in history. Bowling Green won its next game 151-0.

In the distant future: The date is Saturday, February 29, 2092. Forced into increasingly complex scheduling arrangements by lack of fan interest, the entire MAC season will be played on one leap day with the help of time dilation technology. Bowling Green goes 18-22, taking twelfth place in the 24 team East division after winning a tie with Kent State via an official NCAA Monte Carlo simulation that runs more than one sextillion games in the standard game length of 8 hours and 45 minutes (to accommodate commercials).

8:00 PM - Miami of Ohio at Ohio. The MAC East is hurting pretty bad, being led presently by Akron, which is 5-4 overall but 4-1 in the league. Ohio's overall record is 6-2, which is much better for a division front runner, but is only 3-1 and needs a win over the Redhawks to get a shot at the pole position. The spread is 9.5 to the Bobcats, but this is a freaking Tuesday night MAC game, so anything can definitely happen.

In the distant past: In 1908, Miami of Ohio met Ohio on the field of football for the first ever "battle of the bricks" (it's a rivalry, you see). Nobody knows anything about this game, except that the Redhawks won it 5-0. You may be thinking "Aha, a field goal and a safety" but you, modern human have never had the low life expectancy necessary to enjoy a proper game of pre-WWI football. You see, in this day, a touchdown was worth 5 points (a field goal 4), there were only 3 downs, and the concept of an incomplete pass hadn't fully matured yet. In fact, according to rules adopted just in time for play to begin in 1908, if a receiver touched the ball on a forward pass but didn't secure it, the defending team gained possession if they so much as touched the ball at all thereafter before it hit the ground. If the pass fell incomplete otherwise, it resulted in a 15 yard penalty from the spot it was thrown. There was also no such thing as a touchdown pass, it was illegal to pass into the end zone. What's great historical fun is, even in this primordial version of the game, with so few schools playing the game in an organized fashion, this contest was apparently just as meaningless as it is today, not showing up as noteworthy in any rankings or sports news at the time.

In the distant future: The year is 2125. After drifting too far from shore to technically remain a part of the United States, the City and University of Miami Florida enters into a partnership with the University of Ohio, mooring themselves off the tropical northern coast of the US, where Athens, Ohio (and the Old University of Ohio) sit submerged many leagues below. The newly combined universities adopt the name The University of Miami Florida at Ohio, and open the college football season on the road, against the Redhawks. The game is The University of Miami Florida at Ohio at The University of Miami (Ohio). It is not televised.

Wednesday, Jeez, November 1

8:00 PM - Central Michigan at Western Michigan. Western Michigan is a group of five terror inducing nightmare (get it, mare?), ruining seasons everywhere they play. Unfortunately for them, they sit at 3-1 in the MAC, just out of reach of NIU and Toledo, who are perfect in league play. Central Michigan is way back in the pack at 2-2 and plays a touchdown underdog here. It's all that's on, though, and WMU is one of just two teams to ever go to 7 overtimes this year, so we know they are capable of fun. Oh and this is also a rivalry, that these schools play for a golden freaking cannon.

In the distant past: In 1907, these schools tilted for the first time, then as the Western State Normal School Hilltoppers and the University of Central Michigan Chippewas. Normal won it 29-0 under Bill Spaulding who went on to coach baseball and basketball as well and was quite celebrated by fans of the school. Ralph W Thacker, the Chippewas coach at the time, moved on to several other coaching jobs, never winning more than 30% of the games he coached in any season. This was his obituary.

In the distant future: The resurgent Ojibwe nation purchases the University of Central Michigan in 2083 and renames the football team to the Central Michigan Anishinaabe. CMU joins the newly minted Three Fires conference and begins playing Canadian rules football. Owing to their recent lack of success, the Anishinaabe football program shuts down in 2140, and a brief summary at the back of a news feed reads "Sports Team to Quit. The Central Michigan Anishinaabe will stop playing football starting this year. Having played since the early 1900's, In their last four years with the Canadian Three Fires conference, CMU never finished better than third of three teams. The Anishinaabe have been with the Three Fires conference for all sports during their membership, and will continue to play basketball and baseball in the conference."

Thursday, November 2

6:00 PM - Northern Illinois at Toledo. Here we go, folks, the MAC daddy. Yeah I've been waiting all season to write that. Both teams are 4-0 in the MAC West, and Toledo's only loss is to Miami (FL). Northern Illinois lost close games to Boston College and SDSU, and so find themselves a 9 point underdog. This game is probably for all the MAC marbles, either way, as both teams are good enough that it's not likely one will be able to catch and pass the other in league play with this loss around their neck. This will be some real good football.

In the distant past: These two teams first met much more recently, in 1967, with Toledo winning 35-0. Toledo then won nine of the next ten, they split a few, then Toledo won something like 11 in a row, with a gap in the middle where they stopped playing annually for a while. This was as lopsided as it got until 2010, in a game much like this one. Toledo came in with 1 loss, NIU with 3, neither team dropping a game in conference. NIU were underdogs, and the MAC West was on the line. NIU dropped a bomb on Toledo, with the score 28-0 at half time, and decided it liked that, so the game finished 65-30 in favor of the Huskies. The next year, this rematch was the game where the hash tag #MACtion was invented, and they've been playing the most riveting series in the G-5 ever since.

In the distant future: In the great 130 team playoff reorganization of 2018, Toledo was shuffled into the New England regional bracket while Northern Illinois was sorted into the Mid American regional bracket. The year is now 2042 and these two are about to meet for the first time since, having won their regional playoffs in the same year for the first time ever, and, as luck would have it, facing each other in the first super-regional round. The ESPN8 (The Ocho) crew covering the game are digging up ancient looking photos of the venerable Herbstreit (who is retiring after his final College Game Day this year) using some super old software called twitter to "hash the MACtion tag" as one of his younger colleagues puts it, with great innocence. It's just the first of many such games to come, however, and soon, MACtion tags will be re-hashed without irony all across the land.
 
7:00 PM - Ball State vs Eastern Michigan. Both teams are 2-6 (0-4) and in the same division of the same conference, but Eastern Michigan is a 24 point favorite. Think about that for a second.

In the distant past: These two teams first met in 1936, a year before Ball State would reclassify itself as a Junior College and drift around the lower rungs of collegiate football for a half century. The fortunes of these two programs rarely align so precisely in history, and it seems as though the last year in which they were so equally bad, they didn't even play. The fault for that didn't lie with Ball State, however. In 1959, both teams would finish exactly 1-7, the first of only two times in the history of both programs that their final losing records matched (the other one featured head coach Brady Hoke in 2005, who went on to be head coach of Michigan somehow and currently coaches defense for Tennessee for probably a few more games, boy has he ever failed up). The Eastern Michigan Hurons, as they were known at the time (named for a hotel that employed somebody influential at the time the nickname was selected), had stopped giving out athletic scholarships, banned recruiting, and reduced the budget of the football team to just 15 grand. They'd record a win on October 7, 1959, then wouldn't be seen in that column again until the last week of October... 1962. Ball State's 1959 was only slightly more memorable, as 1-7 campaigns go, as they had a quarterback selected in the late rounds of the NFL draft. He'd go on to set some wonky NFL records (like, first player ever to return two kickoffs for touchdown in a single game, still one of just nine to ever do that today) and be named to the (not kidding you here) PFRA Hall of Very Good class of 2008. Looking back on it, though, that's not what really makes it worth note. Maybe it wasn't so much of a thing back then, but that QB, Thomas "Timothy" Allen Brown, went on to a long acting career of varied success, where he landed a role on the all-time classic show M*A*S*H. And it was on that show, where he portrayed the likeness and mannerisms of none other than Captain Oliver Harmon "Spearchucker" Jones.

In the distant future: The year is 2068, Eastern Michigan quarterback Brogan Roback has been named to the NFL Hall of Notable Participants and is living out his retirement in comfort and relative obscurity. This, despite his being the first NFL kick holder to throw, run for, and catch a touchdown pass in a single game, as well as holding for all three extra point attempts and three more successful field goals. That, and his tenure in the early days of the long running and fondly remembered series E*Q*U*A*L*I*T*Y, where he played Doctor Spade Bosworth "Evil" Whiteman. Ball State's program is convalescing from an odd period where they attempted to fund all athletic activities solely using bitcoin, which left them with a huge losing streak and permanent financial handicaps, and the two teams are about to meet again, sporting equally awful records. What could possibly go wrong?

8:00 PM - Navy at Temple. Temple has been better in the recent past, and still has a lot of the pieces that won this game 34-10 in 2016 (in the AAC championship), but they just aren't achieving at the same level this year, it seems. Navy is going strong, and could claim bowl eligibility in this game as an 8.5 point favorite. Get you some triple option foobaw!

In the distant past: In 2004, Temple had just concluded its final season of Big East play, and was destined for the dumps, having been evicted from the conference for its suckitude. Newly independent, and desperate for revenue, Paul Johnson's Navy team graciously agreed to play them annually (and whoop they ass). Paul Johnson moved on, and so did Temple's losing ways. They eventually put together a few really good teams, beat Penn State, and rejoined the Big East. Karma is a bitch, too, and the curse of Temple would see the Big East raided of key players and consumed to its death by the ACC. The final blow to the remnants of that name would come at the hands of a group of basketball schools, who absconded with the rights and left the remaining football members for dead. The AAC formed from the rubble, and today, Temple is the only original football member of the Big East left in it, and now Navy is too.

In the distant future: The year is 2028. Temple and Navy have put together a decade of superlative performances in the regular and bowl seasons, prompting an AAC expansion that successfully pries West Virginia from the Big 12 and Notre Dame from the clutches of the ACC, marking its rise to the Power 5 in the midst of a new expansion arms race that sees Texas finally go independent. The ACC pounces, securing Oklahoma State and Texas Tech in the melee, in exchange for kicking the flailing and unpopular Pittsburgh and Syracuse teams out into the cold, where they eventually join the MAC. The curse of Temple is nearly complete, but won't be fully realized for another decade. In 2038 Temple defeats Boston College and Miami in the regular season by a combined score of 125-27, then wins the national championship game against VT, denying them their first ever trophy in program history, effectively forever. VT fans old enough to remember being part of the Big East with Temple finally convince the rest of the world's Hokies to give up hope, and the program slowly dies from the inside out.

Friday, November 3

6:00 PM - Marshall at Florida Atlantic. The FAU Owls, under the direction of their wise leader, Lane Kiffin, have dominated C-USA so far this year. 4-0 in the East division of the conference, they set offensive records of all stripes against the leader from the West division, North Texas, in a 69-31 swirlie of a game. 69 is the only score that's appropriate for a Lane Kiffin coached team when he's absolutely dunking your head in the toilet, so you know he could have gotten more points, but opted for the symbolism. Wise. Marshall is 3-1 in the East, and looking to seize the division tiebreaker with FAU and move into first place with FIU. They are 7.5 point underdogs, but FAU's recent play makes it seem like a much taller task than that. Watch this game!

In the distant past: In 1987, the Marshall Thundering Herd faced off against the Louisville Cardinals for the first time in six years, and just the third time since Lee Corso was the head coach of the Cards. The Louisville program was deep into what every fan considers their dark ages, having had just one winning season since 1973, playing in a minor league baseball stadium they couldn't fill, and fan interest so bad that the team literally couldn't give tickets away to some games. Several years before this game took place, there was even talk of dropping Louisvile down to the 1-AA level, serious talk by administrators and boosters. Despite all that, Marshall got all it could handle from the Cards, barely winning the game 34-31. Something was changing in Louisville, and it was all at the hands of their coach, Howard Schnellenberger. Coach HS would just three seasons later take the Cardinals into the Fiesta bowl, delivering a one sided ass kicking to the Alabama Crimson Tide. Eventually, the athletic director messed things up, however, joining an upstart conference that Coach HS felt would deny his team the opportunity to play for the national championship, so he bolted for Oklahoma, which wasn't a good match to put it politely. Fast forward to 2001, and FAU is starting its first season of football play at any level in school history. Since 1998, the head of football operations, athletic director, and head coach: Howard Schnellenberger. Howard coached and administrated FAU until 2011, and was at the helm when FAU broke ground on its on-campus stadium, a key feature which allowed them to join Conference USA from the Sun Belt in 2013, where they will play this conference game today.

In the distant future: Head coach Lane Kiffin stands awkwardly on the sideline. It's not that he feels awkward, it's just how he looks on camera when he's deep in thought for some reason. People have always noticed that expression on him, and confused it for something else, usually whatever they wanted to see. And he was easy to hate, being such a confident guy in such a high profile situation all his life. Mostly people saw ineptitude, or inexperience, or some kind of sheepishness, but really he was always just thinking about the play. And that's what got him here, the sidelines of the national championship game, at the head of his record setting team: the Oklahoma Sooners. Nobody could believe it when he got the job, just three years after taking FAU to an unexpected conference championship and a bowl win in his first season; Kiffin has always had that sort of unbelievable luck. But that, again, was really just what everyone wanted to believe. Behind the scenes, it was always about skill. It was a put up or shut up world, and Lane had been around enough of the greats to know how to do the job by now. He'd go on to lose the game by an inconceivable margin to his former mentor, the nearly 70 year old Nick Saban, but he'd be back. The great ones always are.
 
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8:00 PM - #23 Memphis at Tulsa. Tulsa is an inconsistent team this year, and is dead last in the same division as Memphis. That said, Tulsa did win this game last year 59-30, so anything could happen. Mike Norvell has been at Memphis for two whole years now, so this will probably be his last game of the series (the last three Memphis coaches with a game against Tulsa in their resume departed after a single year). Tulsa's coach has been there for two years as well, which is also the average lifespan in this series of a Tulsa coach over the last three.

In the distant past: In 1961, these programs lined up for the first time to face each other. Memphis' senior quarterback was an honorable mention All-American the previous season, which had been one of Memphis best seasons in program history. It was game two of the year for the Tigers, who had expectations of going undefeated for the first time since 1939. Tulsa, on the other hand, only had 8 returning starters and had just replaced their entire coaching staff from a team that had only managed to go 5-5. Glenn Dobbs, their new coach who would help Tulsa take 2 of the first 6 games of the series, when giving the prospectus on his team for that season, quipped about his own team's expectations, "We still don't know the two or three games we're supposed to win." The results were predictable, but both programs would turn out to be stable for the long run, even though Memphis would usually have the upper hand.

In the distant future: Memphis enters the game ranked, despite coming into the game with an NCAA record 12th head coach over the last 10 seasons, after having had their head coach and his two replacements immediately hired away following their previous season. Boosters and athletic directors are thinking about doing away with the head coach position at the school altogether, since it doesn't seem to matter all that much and they are tired of paying their contract lawyers so much dang money.

9:30 PM - UCLA at Utah. Both of these teams are 4-4, with dismal records in conference, and seriously staring down the prospect of missing the post season. The Pac12 is 0-10 at this point in the season now in understanding time zones, as this is yet another game the end of which no living human shall witness. Vegas isn't sure about this one yet, and FPI gives Utah a 42% chance, so it could end up being competitive. Especially since the loser is almost certainly staying home after November concludes. UCLA fans have some justifiable opinions about the future of Jim Mora, but some Utah fans are now also calling for the head of Kyle Whittingham. That isn't the dumbest thing I've ever heard, but it's close. Utah won this game last year.

In the distant past: These teams first met in 1933, UCLA under coach Bill Spaulding (yes, that very same one from Western Michigan), and UCLA won it 22-0, eventually going 6-4-1 despite their 8th place finish in the Pacific Coast Conference that year. These two teams wouldn't meet again until 1956, and would play just 8 times total before Utah notched its first win in the series, in 2007. Under head coach Kyle Whittingham. Coach Whittingham's 44-6 beating stands as the second largest margin of victory in the entire series, edged out by the 66-16 loss Utah took from a Pepper Rodgers coached UCLA team (yes, the very same Pepper Rodgers). Kyle Wittingham has beaten every UCLA coach he's had the opportunity to play since taking over at Utah.

In the distant future: It is the year 2300. Medical technology has made death an obsolescent data point in history, and none remember its sting. Head coach Kyle Whittingham of the Utah Utes is preparing to play game 20 of the series between Utah and UCLA, these teams haven't met in more than 250 years, since Whittingham coached Utah into the NFL, but an exhibition game this year will finally reunite their sparse and storied tradition. The NFL and the NCAA are now practically indistinguishable in terms of player development, as the NCAA long ago relaxed eligibility requirements for those students obtaining up to their 35th PhD. Even still, the year has not been kind to either team, and there are dissenting voices who argue that it's time to put head coaches Whittingham and Kiffin out to pasture once and for all. Those voices are dumb.

Saturday, November 4

12:00 PM - #7 Penn State at #24 Michigan State. Good morning and welcome to the first of six ranked games today. Both teams are coming off losses, with Penn State having committed the inexcusable sin of giving the committee a reason to put Ohio State #1 on the waiting list of teams to get #In, just as we knew they'd do anyway. Michigan State just dropped a triple overtime brain fart to Northwestern, of all teams, and isn't really the kind of team that goes toe-to-toe with a full strength PSU this year. The Nittany Lions are 8.5 point favorites, but what remains to be seen is whether either team (or both) are suffering from the dreaded emotional hangover of being effectively knocked out of their division race. Penn State won this game last year by a land slide.

In the distant past: The year is 1857. Representative Justin Smith Morrill of Vermont introduces a bill into the legislature that would establish a federal program for agricultural and engineering colleges to receive land grants for the purposes of helping the United States fully realize the benefits of the industrial revolution. For a short list of long reasons, President James Buchanan vetoed the bill as it passed in 1859, but it didn't matter in the long run. Morrill would make a second run at it in 1861 right after Buchanan left office, and it became law in 1862. Even still, the feds were way behind, because Michigan and Pennsylvania already had their land-grant colleges: Michigan State and Penn State. The football rivalry between the two would go on to produce the Land Grant Trophy, one of the ugliest pieces of hardware in the NCAA today.

In the distant future: Owing to the success and popularity of the land grant, sea grant, space grant, and sun grant programs that were all enacted by or around the turn of the century, congress had enacted the cyber grant and mind grant programs by 2025 to spur on the development of information age disciplines. MSU and PSU pursued and obtained grant status from each of the now six available programs, and deciding that the name "land grant trophy" was a bit outdated, needed to come up with something new. Today, this annual rivalry game is played for the grant grant trophy, which is more or less the land grant trophy with a dozen extra things bolted on to the sides of it. It has a miniature nuclear reactor, an on-board computer which powers a Jarvis like artificial intelligence for the trophy, ballast tanks and an impeller tube so that it can be piloted when submerged, a vacuum compatible transmitter capable of interfacing with NASA's Deep Space Network, and is now made of more than 90% recycled or recyclable material.

Also in this time slot: #14 Auburn vs Texas A&M maybe, Florida vs Missouri for a laugh? Kansas State at Texas Tech? Vanderbilt / WKU, Baylor / Kansas? Pretty much just one thing going on here.

12:20 PM - Syracuse at Florida State. This could end up being a historical game, as Florida State's bowl streak, the longest in the nation and maybe the longest in history at 35* consecutive* games, may be ending. The spread here is -5 for the Seminoles, but it was -3 against Boston College, and they lost by 32 points. Syracuse has already demonstrated that if you aren't playing your A-game this year, they can be the team to rough you up, and, show of hands, who thinks FSU is playing their A-game? I'd say something like "I wouldn't want to be Jimbo Fisher right now" but honestly I would without hesitation destroy the entire FSU program for a few million dollars. No ill will or anything. It is what it is.

In the distant past: In 1966, Florida State and Syracuse lined up against each other for the first time. This might have happened earlier in history, but Florida State had been turned into a womens college in 1905 and only become co-ed again in 1947. This game involved Floyd B. "Ben" Schwartzwalder, the legendary Syracuse coach under whom the Orangemen have their only national championship of program history. He coached there for 25 years, taking his team to seven bowls, producing five Heisman winning running backs, and outrushing by a total of 22,000 yards. The Orange would win the game, but these two teams would not face off again with coach Ben at the helm. That's not to say the later series didn't involve legendary coaches. These two teams have met 9 more times since, with each of these games under a coach who either had or would go on to win a national championship. That is to say, 100% of these 9 most recent games were coached by either Bobby Bowden or Jimbo Fisher, and naturally, FSU has won them all.

In the distant future: The year is 2045. After the ACC reorganized its divisions geographically in 2022, this series is no longer played with great frequency. Even still, for the last 30 years, the worthy Jimbo Fisher has held steady the reins of the Seminoles, and Syracuse has yet to find victory in the series outside that 1966 game. With Jimbo finally retired, however, Syracuse feels like it has the edge it needs to steal one away. This time, as the new face on the other side watches, the Orange will unleash their own legendary coach. Lane Kiffin, who coached Oklahoma to two national titles over fifteen years, has come out of a very brief retirement, and will see what he can do at Syracuse.
 
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3:30 PM - Georgia Tech at Virginia. The spread is GT -10 and GT is 6-0-1 ATS on the season. Virginia is coming off a brutal loss to BC and a two touchdown loss to a brutally bad Pittsburgh team. Their only saving grace here is really the evil magic of Hooville. Watch this game!

In the distant past: The year is "the late 1940's". That's all we know. Charles K. McNeil, an underpaid banker from Chicago who turned into a professional gambler has had such success betting on football and baseball that an organization of bookmakers in his hometown have conspired to place bet limits on him. Ticked off, Charles opens his own book making operation and, suddenly freed from thinking in the terms of the odd and draconian betting constraints offered by the common bookie of the day, invents the point spread. This concept proved so popular that he bankrupted all of the books that he used to merely fleece, and it's still the international standard for sports gambling today. Charles quit book keeping in 1950 as the mafia edged into the gambling world, and as a result of the mafia's typical modus operandi, much information about the historical trends of betting have been lost to time. Thanks to some enterprising people in the information age, however, we know that Georgia Tech's current run of 10-0-1 ATS starting against VT last year is good for T-6 since 1995 among all teams.

In the distant future: The year is 2099. Data science, predictive analytics, and modeling introduced by the first round of AGI brains to focus their attention on sports at the behest of Las Vegas have inadvertently bankrupted the sports gambling industry. The algorithms and simulations that they developed proved too accurate, allowing the book makers to arrive at the exact final score of a game in their predictions with such frequency that betting is essentially no longer about chance, or the outcome of sports, so much as it is now about the psychological interaction of the book maker and the bettor. To combat the loss of usefulness of its point spread system, Vegas is now offering yes/no bets to bridge the gap until the next gambling genius comes along and saves them. The way these bets are played: Vegas publishes the predicted final score of the game, and the bettor simply wagers whether or not it is correct, with "yes" being a heavy favorite to some degree in almost every game. Georgia Tech is currently on its 11th consecutive "no".

3:30 PM - South Carolina at #1 Georgia. Sleeper agent Muschamp, the single most successful espionage agent in the history of college football, takes his Gamecocks into Athens to receive their yearly maximum dosage of adult humans barking. Coach Boom's team is 6-2, which is a sneakily good record for South Carolina, but this squad still looks a lot like the buffet of weak nobodies that has fed Georgia's overrating. The spread is understandably 23.5. UGA won this game last year, when Kirby Smart still sucked.

In the distant past: The year is 1991. Although these two teams first met in 1894, at the end of 1991 South Carolina would join the SEC and settle into a true annual rivalry with Georgia for the first time. But that's not what makes this season notable. This was the season when Will Muschamp, current head coach of South Carolina, would first suit up for the dwags. During the 1991 season, Muschamp's team would take the field against LSU, Florida, and Auburn, all places he would eventually coach. Muschamp would play 3 games against South Carolina in his time in Athens, leaving just Texas and the Miami Dolphins as the only teams he'd coach for but never play against. In each stop, he'd leave a trail of destruction in his wake as he moved on to the next team on his list.

In the distant future: The year is 2022. Nick Saban, having crushed Lane Kiffin in the national championship game, and now sporting a record of 15-0 against former assistants, finally decides to throw in the towel and enjoy his trillions of dollars and diety status in the state of Alabama as a retiree. The coaching search is far and wide, but eventually they settle on their guy. He coached for a national championship at LSU, was head coach in waiting under legendary coach Mack Brown, had pulled in top 10 recruiting classes and owned an 11 win season at Florida, and led South Carolina to a record they'd only ever seen under Steve Spurrier. Best of all, he was a Saban guy, who had even followed Saban into the NFL. The perfect fit is the current head coach of the University of Tennessee, Will Muschamp. With the hire made and the glad handing done, Ray Goff can rest. His 30 year plan to make Georgia the supreme power in the SEC through subterfuge alone is nearly complete. Although he knows that Georgia fans (and SEC fans in general) will likely never be intelligent enough to notice what he's done, that's pretty much the hall mark of successful clandestine operation, and he wouldn't have it any other way.

3:30 PM - #4 Clemson at #20 NC State. If Thursday had the MAC daddy, this one gets to feature as the ACC daddy. NC State has been eliminated from the playoff, but is actually the leader of its division, and if Clemson can not take care of business here, they could lose it all. This is an unusually dangerous NC State team, and Clemson is in the dreaded week-after-Tech curse zone. Buckle up.

In the distant past: The year is 1967. Although these teams had first crossed paths back when they were Clemson Agricultural and North Carolina A&M, few games would stand out as more memorable than the one they'd play on November 18 that year. The Wofl Pack were 8 and 1 with just 4-4 Clemson left to play in the regular season. #1 in the ACC in defense, NCST had developed a nationally known brand on that side of the ball, where every player wore white shoes (you see, shoes were black, back in the day, and that was that), although it was an idea they stole from someone on the Kansas City Chiefs roster. The guy who scored the first ever touchdown in NCST's brand new Carter-Finley Stadium on an intercepted pass brought the idea to his coach, and found he had earned the good will to make it happen. Historians of the game don't agree what happened next. Maybe State's team was just tired and out of it at the end of the season, maybe Clemson's lads were inspired to play great ball, maybe the shock of not being the most fabulous people on the field got the favored team out of their game. All we truly know is that Clemson counter-punched by taking the field in orange shoes, and won the game. This game would go on to become an annual rivalry in 1971, and would be named the Textile Bowl for very very boring reasons, as it is still known today. It's got it's own trophy and everything.

In the distant future: The year is 2040. Clemson has ridden its obnoxiously loud orange color to a national brand, one of only a few programs to sustain branding success in a time of ever-quicker changing attention spans among the fans and especially the youth of the sport. Alabama has done it by remaining Alabama, Oregon has continued to produce a dozen or more uniform designs per season, and Clemson has done it with colors that clash so harshly that you just can't ignore them. North Carolina State, however, has been taking its textile programs seriously, and is ready to unleash its secret weapon. The Wofl Pack are 4-4 coming into the game, and Clemson is once again ranked #2 in the land and of course #1 in the ACC, especially on defense. Historians will disagree about what happens next. Some will claim that NCST's digital micro-OLED fabric uniforms that allowed them to change colors, patterns, and even player numbers in between plays caused too much confusion for the Clemson players. Others will say that ground-breaking research into pure-wavelength photon filtering technology embedded in the top layer of the fabric allowed State to trigger biological and psychological reactions in the Tigers that made them lose focus. Most will say that the holographic projection of a 3D realistic looking football from the belt line of every skill player on offense probably made it impossible for Clemson to tell where the ball even was. But we will know this much: North Carolina State won the textile war in the textile bowl this year, and despite drawing an equipment-based penalty twenty eight times during the game, walked away with a victory and kicked off an arms race that will reshape the game in the years to come.
 
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18in32 said:
So... what do you do for a living?
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I work for the CIA.


3:30 PM - #21 Stanford at #25 Washington State. Stanford, for a tenuous moment, sits in the drivers seat of the Pac 12 North at 5-1. That could all be about to change, though, as Washington State attempts to gain the first of two tiebreakers they'll need to go to the championship game with 2 conference losses. Should Wazzu win this game and survive to the end, their game with Washington will then be for all the marbles. Should Stanford win, then their game next week against Washington will essentially still be for all the marbles. This isn't the time or the place for a look-ahead for either team, however, and Stanford is in very troubled waters. It looks pretty obvious at this point, despite being declared a game-time decision by the coach, that Bryce Love will not play. That could be an absolute killer in a game where the spread is just 2 points. And those two points fall to the Cougs. Throw in there that the Cougs are 6-0 at home, Stanford has notched both of its losses on the road, and it's probably going to snow during this game, and the Pac 12 could very well be ripped away from Stanford by the cold, cruel geography in this game alone.

In the distant past: These teams first met in 1937, a crazy year which saw the sparks of World War II catching. The Stanford Daily newspaper prior to the game had sections in it about fighting between colonial powers, Japan, and China in the Asian theater of war, and a picture of Benito Mussolini sitting on his new white horse -- a gift from the king of Yemen. Despite the fact that Washington State was in what many fans of the school consider its greatest era, coached by the legendary Babe Hollingberry, for whom a red field on campus is still named to this day, the buzz about the Stanford Indian "Gridders" on campus was all about the games before and after -- against USC and Cal. The beatdown Stanford put on Washington State that year, 23-0, would merit a snapshot and a footnote in the paper a week later. Stanford would go on to a real shocker over its football program later that year when, three days before their last game on the continent, their final two games of the season were cancelled and stolen by Washington. Stanford was supposed to play two games in Hawaii in December, but the only steamship headed that way and back decided to sail on Christmas instead of on the 17th, on short notice. Stanford's administration decided that the student athletes on their squad didn't have the time, but that was no problem for the Huskies. Air travel wasn't a thing, back then, you see, and they would've been stuck in Hawaii all month.

In the distant future: The year is 2035. A drifter is roaming the highways of post-apocalyptic California, years after he avenged his wife, his son, and his partner, who were all murdered by a motorcycle gang led by the evil Kneecutter. Burnt out former Californian football coach Dax Shockatansky, now known as "The Road Coordinator", searching for sources of fuel, stumbles upon a gasoline refinery home to a community of survivors who are struggling to stay alive. Our hero finds that the community is being terrorized by a band of brutal motorcyclists led by The Humengus and his finest warrior, Wezzu, who bid to loot all the gasoline from the refinery for themselves. The community hires Dax, as Dax agrees to help them transport the gasoline across the highway and fight for freedom while they are pursued by The Humengus and his insane radioactive bandits.

3:30 PM - Army at Air Force. Army begins its quest to win the CIC trophy for the first time since 1996. The Black Knights are 6-2 and playing some of the best ball they have in a very very long time, while the Falcons are 4-4, and doing quite well for a service academy, too. Air Force is favored by 6 in this contest, and winning it will be crucial to their chances of receiving a share of the trophy, as they already have a loss to Navy this year. This game will feature at least 600 yards rushing and maybe fifteen total passes.

In the distant past: The year is 1954, and the nascent United States air force has finally, after decades of legal wrangling, been given its own service academy. The site wouldn't be complete until 1955, and the academy obviously didn't have a complete set of upper classmen until 1958, and so it would be in 1959 when varsity football at Colorado Springs would finally be able to compete with its fellows. 1958 had been kind to Air Force football, seeing them end the season with a record of 9-0-1 and ranked in the AP poll for the first time, and fittingly, the 1959 squadron played its first ever inter-service game with the Army Black Knights to a 13-13 tie. The service academies would establish the Commander in Chief's trophy in 1972, which was won by Army. Air Force would not win its first CIC trophy until 1982, but it would go on to have it's own dubious firsts. To this day, the Air Force academy remains the only university in the country to be publicly threatened with the fires of nuclear war. Sorta.

In the distant future: By the mid 2040's, the development of ion thruster technology and cheap, reusable space delivery vehicles has revolutionized a new space race into the world. The United States finally acts to create a separate military branch dedicated to security above the atmosphere, the United States Space Corps. The USSC, after much legal wrangling and public hubbub, finally establishes its campus nearby in the old NORAD headquarters at Cheyenne Mountain. Notably, however, Congress agrees to grant the USSC academy land for a satellite campus. Literally. Within 15 years, the existing operational moon base at the Marius Hills caverns is expanded to accommodate field training missions for the cadets of the USSC and other services with units that may be deployed to exo-Earth environments. The frequent traffic prompts enterprising civilians at Marius Hills to build the first regulation football stadium outside of Earth's atmosphere. In 2085, citing the fact that there is still no regulation on the books that specifies the strength of gravity during a football game, they finally succeed in lobbying the NCAA, the service academies, congress, and ESPN into the ultimate game. The Army Navy game, still the final leg in the CIC trophy contest that now involves the USSC academy, will be played on the moon.
 
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ThisIsAtlanta said:
I work for the CIA.
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David Rockefeller didn’t die but they transferred his mind to a computer and now he/it/you post on ST. He’s the only guy I can think of who’s (a) dead and thus has a lot of time on his non-existent hands, (b) philanthropic and thus so concerned to lighten the burden of his fellow man, and (c) cultured enough to see the genius behind the facade Nic Cage puts up.
 
18in32 said:
David Rockefeller didn’t die but they transferred his mind to a computer and now he/it/you post on ST. He’s the only guy I can think of who’s (a) dead and thus has a lot of time on his non-existent hands, (b) philanthropic and thus so concerned to lighten the burden of his fellow man, and (c) cultured enough to see the genius behind the facade Nic Cage puts up.
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That's got to be the nicest thing anyone's ever said to me over the internet. In reality, all that stuff was about an hour and a half's worth of work while I waited for my sleep meds to kick in. Assuming that's not just how the simulation tricks my mind into accepting the shutdown command. EGADS WHAT YEAR IS IT?

gtgtgt1 said:
Where R D Girlz?
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It's a text adventure this week. Imagine, if you will, an enormous pair of boobies with barely anything covering them...

DressCheeseSideSeaboard said:
You are the most knowledgeable MAC fan I know.
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I literally woke up in a Holiday Inn Express this morning. Not sayin', just sayin'.

4:00 PM - #5 Oklahoma at #11 Oklahoma State. 7-1 (4-1) and highly ranked is the way this game was always intended to be played. Bedlam is going to be the first step forward in breaking up the 4 way tie at the top of the conference of One True Champion, which will have a championship game this year, despite still having a round robin. Oklahoma State is favored by 2.5, but surely nobody really knows what's going to happen here, since this game features a combination of explosive offenses that we simply haven't yet seen this year and certainly won't see again.

In the distant past: Legend has it that, at the first Bedlam football game, somebody punted the ball into a freezing gale, and it was blown backwards, rolled down a hill, and fell into a frozen creek. This, being very early in the development of the game of football, was still considered a live ball at the time, and so in their zeal for the game, both teams jumped into the icy water to retrieve it. Oklahoma brought it back and downed it for a touchdown, and would go on from there to win it 75-0. That was in 1904, and Oklahoma State (then Oklahoma A&M) wouldn't score a single point in the annual series until 1914. They wouldn't win the first game until three years after that. It has remained one of the most one sided rivalries in all the land to this day, Oklahoma leading the series 86-18-7.

In the distant future: Royal Carribean's Sympony of the Seas has had a long and illustrious career. When it was launched, it was the largest pleasure boat in the history of the world, but in its decades touring the seas it has since been outstripped in luxury, even if not in size, by modern peers. Before she will be decommissioned or permanently docked, though, the engineers have one last task for her: host a football game in international waters. Many games are vetted and pitched, but only one combination of fan bases has the zeal and insanity that Royal Carribean is counting on in order to manufacture the kind of buzz and attention they desire for the debut announcement of their next huge liner during the half time show. Bedlam is it, and for the first time ever, it will be played on the high seas. No news here is bad news, and this trip generates a tale for the ages. Retrofitted with an entire regulation stadium on top, complete with massive bleachers and a huge tailgating area outside, the lower decks have been converted into an enormous club-level complex for the comfort of VIP attendees of the game. Dozens of celebrities are on hand, including former president Ivanka Trump, and hundreds of news organizations, entertainers, bloggers, podcasters, streamers, and other purveyors of media scurry around the cabins feasting on the incredibly eventful party. The Merchant Marines have their hands full, too, as they are quickly called up to supplement the police precinct on board the massive boat in the hours leading up to kickoff. Crews from two Coast Guard vessels that house emergency services look on through binoculars on the decks of their ships as they trail the Symphony of the Seas out into the deep, collecting drunken survivors who have fallen overboard every few nautical miles. Then, then unimaginable happens. Legend has it that the opening kickoff was caught in an oceanic gust of wind and blown sideways, out of the stadium on a gust of upward air, where it fell into the ocean. As it careened out of site, the enormous television in the center of the stadium displayed a feed from the Goodyear blimp overhead, locked on to the location of the ball as it bobbed peacefully up and down in the swells. The referees gathered at midfield, but no whistle was blown, they argued, but couldn't find a rule in the book that provided for the play to be dead. The ball hadn't touched any part of the field, or any person, and it certainly wasn't on the ground. Sensing that the play was still ongoing, the amped up players of both teams sprinted to the side of the ship and dove in after the ball. By the time they even got to the edge, the referees had decided to blow the play dead for safety reasons, but the message didn't get to them quick enough. Although none were lost, the game was cancelled, and the resulting riots would go down in history as the worst entertainment related maritime disaster since the sinking of the Titanic.
 
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ThisIsAtlanta said:
In reality, all that stuff was about an hour and a half's worth of work while I waited for my sleep meds to kick in.
Click to expand...
I think I can actually see the point where the meds penetrated the blood-brain barrier in your narrative. Interesting stuff.
 
A lil bump. All the stuff up until Saturday is in. I'll probably write that on Friday.

7:15 PM - Texas at #8 TCU. Texas is being talked about as that "hard win" now, which I suppose is a step up from having Maryland come make a laughing stock out of you. The Longhorns beat Iowa State, the team that just upset TCU, so it's conceivable here that Texas could actually win. The spread is 7 in favor of TCU, but this will be an important one to watch for both the playoff and the Big 12 conference race, where TCU currently sits in a four way tie for first place and Texas is almost mathematically eliminated at this point.

In the distant past: In 1897, these two teams first took to the field to play football against each other. Texas won it in Waco 18-10, and it's become a frequent and long running series since, with Texas in a big overall edge. But what's interesting about Texas in 1897 has very little to do with football... or does it? You see, in April of that year, something destroyed a windmill in the town of Aurora, Texas, and the judge on whose property it sat would shock the world when he found out what it was. An alien visitor from another world had lost control of his UFO and hit the windmill while landing. The hapless traveler died on the spot, and was given a funeral by the townsfolk, along with debris from his ship. Roswell, New Mexico would go on to steal the UFO glory some 50 years later, but at a time when the first experimental powered flight of an aircraft in human history had taken place in France just 7 years ago (and went just 50 meters), the idea of spacecraft and interstellar visitors was well and truly ahead of its time. Remember, if you will, that H.G. Wells popular fiction "War of the Worlds" wouldn't even be serialized in print until December of that year, months after the fact. In a monthly periodical in Britain.

In the distant future: The year is 2097, and alien visitors from mars have just arrived in a colony ship that lands in Aurora, Texas. Alien historians inform us that their compatriot who had visited 100 years earlier had not, in fact, died, but had simply assumed the identity of David Farragut Edwards, who not so coincidentally went from being the worst coach in Ohio State history (to this very day) to winning almost every game he coached at Texas. In 1898. David, as we'll continue to call him, hid in this guise until they were able to retrieve him, in the late fall of 1930 in Alabama, at which time the David we knew "died" of "acute indigestion". Hmm. The new Martian colonists negotiate immigration status with the United States Government and establish the University of New Aurora. Head coach David Farragut Edwards, who returned to lead the colonial expedition, coaches them into the Big 12, where they beat both Texas and TCU in their first season of conference play.

8:00 PM - #19 LSU at #2 Alabama. There's no reason for LSU to have the #19 ranking. Sure, they haven't been the complete disaster they were around the time they lost to freaking Troy, and it's a real feel good story for coach O, but let's be real, the body of their work is not 19th best in the land, nor is the current state of their play, just because they beat Auburn. It really just meant that Auburn was hella overrated, not that LSU was any good, but here we go back into the SEC circle of quality. The spread here is 21 points, which might seem low, and probably will end up being low. Keep this one on the back burner, in case something LSU level crazy happens, but otherwise this will probably go down as the least entertaining ranked matchup in the 2017 season.

In the distant past: The year is 1934, and the SEC has just been founded. As the first chairman for the SEC, president Roosevelt himself selected and installed Joseph Kennedy (JFK's dad). Despite being charter members of the SEC, and despite the schools having a football history that went all the way back to 1805, LSU and Alabama wouldn't play each other after its formation until 1944, a game that ended in a 27-27 tie. The series wouldn't become something played annually until 1964, the year Georgia Tech left the SEC over unfair practices over recruit offers. At issue was the practice of oversigning, where schools in the SEC would offer many more players than they could hold on their roster, and then cut them later, denying them the ability to play at other schools due to timing tricks. In 1968, the Williams Act would pass through congress and be signed into law, and the SEC would be tasked with enforcing it. The Williams Act directly addressed several practices regarding offers, forcing those making the offers to be more up-front about the prospects of them. By this time, Tulane had left the SEC as well, and neither school would return, so the annual nature of the series stuck, and eventually became viewed as a great rivalry. This, despite the fact that two coaches, Bear Bryant and Nick Saban, hold nearly half of the total wins in the 81 game, 112 year old series.

In the distant future: The year is 2040. Significant changes have taken place in the SECs world during the last two decades. The securities markets have become truly international, and new foreign regulatory regimes have arisen. New, and materially different, alternative investment media have emerged, and the markets for securities have become increasingly automated. Technological change has affected traditional SEC activities not only in securities markets, but in disclosure and enforcement. The SEC needs to respond to and utilize new technology and to anticipate likely future technological advances. Alabama and LSU lobby for and are given permission to begin computerized high frequency trading, enabling them to manage their recruiting and rosters in between plays if need be. A speculative bubble emerges in the value of scholarship offers as a result of the new activity, which crashes in the middle of the LSU vs Alabama game when an algorithm without the proper safeguards trades the LSU starting quarterback to another team in the middle of a touchdown pass. Officials negate the play and disqualify the player, and the resulting market bloodbath leaves many LSU and Alabama fans homeless before the night is over. The Securities and Exchange Comission is asked by congress to intervene. LSU loses yet again, but there are no real winners here.

8:00 PM - #13 Virginia Tech at #10 Miami. Cue ACC daddy, part deux. Miami, the last undefeated in the ACC gets a shot at proving itself to the playoff committee and almost certainly securing a seat at the ACC championship game if it can knock down #13 1-loss Virginia Tech. The Hokies have installed themselves as 1 point favorites, which means just about anything can happen, and appear to be playing much better football than the Hurricanes, of late. Miami has won four straight games by 8 points or less, while VT has won its last three by 13 or more. That said, you just never freakin' know in this league. This should be a good one, even if one team looks out of it early, because as we seem to be seeing repeatedly about this Miami team, it only wants to play if it can play at the last possible second.

In the distant past: It is... the year two thousand. The third ranked Miami Hurricanes face off in the Big East contest of the century in the Miami Orange Bowl against the second ranked Virginia Tech Hokies. Led by Michael Vick, VT is on a collision course with a national championship under Frank Beamer -- until Vick is injured at Pittsburgh. The Hokies narrowly avoid a loss there, but aren't able to keep pace in a hugely disappointing loss to Miami, 21-41 (that they might not even have won with Vick in the game). Even Vickless and deflated, they poured it on UCF by an even wider margin because UCF has always sucked and will always suck. Still, Miami was back, putting together a dominant run in the early decade before both teams joined the ACC.

In the distant future: It is... the year 2035. After the tenure of Mark Richt came to an end, Miami un-backed once more and has languished as a shadow of its former self. Virginia Tech is coming to town again ranked #4 in the land and undefeated, but Miami is on the cusp of something itself. Second year head coach Lane Kiffin has the Hurricanes undefeated and setting offensive records all over the board, and plugged into the polls as the #8 team in the land. That won't last, though, because Miami will prevent yet another attempt at a national championship by Virginia Tech. Miami is finally back. Again.
 
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gespacho_the_slender said:
Glorious! Well written!
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Thanks. Here's the final bump. I've edited in the remainders above and here's the last bit:

10:45 PM - #22 Arizona at #17 USC. You may not have noticed the Arizona vs Washington State game last week, so let me catch you up. Washington State passed for 600 freaking yards. And lost. Meanwhile, Arizona's bonkers new QB Khalil Tate threw for 275 at an average of 16 yards a pop, then ran for another 150 on top of that. Arizona had 675 yards of offense and scored 58 freaking points. Rich Rodriguez may have put together the most powerful offense in college football, mid season, with a freshman, and now USC has to deal with all that. Some how, and this doesn't make much sense to me but what do I know, USC is a 7 point favorite despite their recent debacle against ND and the transitive result against Wazzu (USC lost that game, you know). Oh, and look out, because the winner of this game is probably going to the Pac 12 championship, as both teams sit with just 1 loss in the south division and nobody else is close enough to catch up. Watch this game! Until like 2 AM! Wew Pac 12!

In the distant past: In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “Pac 12 Football.” And there was evening, then a football game, and there was morning—the first day, and the first game none witnessed but the LORD.

In the distant future: The fifth angel sounded his trumpet, and I saw a star that had fallen from the sky to the earth. The star was given the key to the shaft of the Abyss. When he opened the Abyss, Pac 12 Football rose from it like the smoke from a gigantic furnace. The sun and sky were darkened by the Pac 12 Football from the Abyss. And out of the Pac 12 Football, talented quarterbacks came down on the earth and were given power like that of scorpions of the earth. They were told not to harm the grass of the earth or any plant or tree, but only those people who did not have the seal of God on their foreheads. They were not allowed to kill them but only to torture them for five months. And the agony they suffered was like that of the sting of a touchdown against your team when it is marked upon the scoreboard. During those days people will seek to turn off their televisions but will not find their remotes; they will long to do something else, but something else will elude them.

The first woe is past; the other woes are yet to come.
 
Sir -- I will always have what you are always having ... :drink2:
 
The only reason the SEC is even a power five conference is Alabama. 16th ranked Miss state struggling with UMass in the fourth.
 
Clem’s son just threw a pick on their opening drive
 
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