College football 2016 - aSECendency

[Xray the Enforcer]

1 hour ago, Pony Queen Jace said:

What about the big boy with the pick? I love that kinda stuff. And the safety, are you kidding me? I was laughing my ass off.

You and me both. It was golden.

[Ded As Ned]

I fucking hate those cowbells.  

[HokieStone]

Well, I'm back from the "Battle at Bristol".  Obviously the result wasn't what I hoped, but I'll get to that in a minute...thought you folks might be interested in the overall experience.

I'm not a NASCAR fan...I went to one race in Richmond years ago, and was bored.  So, I don't know what it's like in Bristol for a race.  For the game, it was almost like a carnival atmosphere...you could see some of it on Gameday - ferris wheels and other attractions, and vendors galore.  The race track is really in the middle of nowhere.  Other than a smallish hotel right across from the stadium, I didn't really see any hotels...but what they do have is tons and tons of fields for RVs.  And boy were there a lot of RVs.  The place holds 3x as many people as Lane Stadium in Blacksburg...but there must have been parking for 20x as many people.  I mean...there were RV and camping lots for miles - no exaggeration.

Again, I don't know what it's like for a race there, but apparently this was an entirely different experience.  One of the police officers directing traffic told us that he had never seen anything like this - I assume he does the same thing on race day.  I don't know if for a race, the fans trickle in more slowly...but it didn't seem like they were ready for crush of people entering for the game.  It took us 45 minutes to get into the stadium.  And of course...the place is huge...getting to our seats took a while.  Watching the game from seats that far away was not a great experience...but I expected that.  The "Colossus" screen hanging over the field...it was a marvel of engineering...but to be honest, it didn't really help.  That thing is so far away, that the screen still seems tiny.  I could see the players ok, but really couldn't see the ball all that well...so punts and kickoffs especially were challenging to see. 

The atmosphere was a little cheesy...they were pimping the hell out of "Pilot J".  During any stoppage in play, they had some goofballs running around doing cheesy contests with people in the crowd.  Regular TV commercials ran on the Colossus as well.  If you watched the National Anthem, you saw that a bunch of people had cards that when they held them up, looked like the flag.  What you didn't see is that they then flipped them over, so it spelled out "Pilot J" around the stadium.  Lastly, I've been to a few games in the "south" before, so I was expecting this...but it's still a little jarring to me to have someone lead a prayer before the game - especially since it's directed toward "our Lord Jesus". 

Now as for the game itself, as I said - I was disappointed - obviously.  I think Tennessee has more talent and depth overall, and I have no problem saying the better overall team won.  But I sure do feel like we shot ourselves in the foot more than got outplayed by them.  5 lost fumbles and over 100 yards in penalties is a killer.  We won every statistical category.  Perhaps this sounds like sour grapes, but I think I'm being pretty objective when I say that I think Tennessee is going to have a few losses this year, and under acheive.  They could prove me wrong...they have the talent to get it corrected.  But I think their defense is overrated.  Particularly against the run.  App St. ran all over them, and so did we - I think our RBs as a unit averaged 6 yds/carry.  Our #1 guy, Travon McMillan averaged 7.9 yds a carry, if I recall correctly from the stats I heard.  As for VT, that's 9 fumbles in 2 games.  Which is appallingly bad.  But...there is signs of a competent offense, which we've been missing for some time.  If they can cut down on the fumbles - and the penalties - we're going to win some games this year, and maybe even challenge for the Coastal Division (which is admittedly the weaker half of the ACC).  We don't have to play FSU, Clemson or Louisville in the regular season, so that should help.  I just have to remind myself that this is Fuente's first year...getting back to an annual 10 and 11 win team isn't going to happen overnight.

Sorry for the long post...but thought some of you might have interest in how the whole Bristol experience was....

[S John]

On September 10, 2016 at 3:18 PM, BLU-RAY said:

Aside from watching your team win, is there a better feeling in college football than seeing Penn State lose?

No, but it woukd have been better if Pitt had had the decency to cover!   They were 6 point favorites and didn't quite get there.

I picked Pitt to cover and VT to beat the spread (11 in the NASCAR game). As much as I hate both Pitt and VT circumstances were such that I wanted them both to win yesterday, picked them both.... and lost both picks.  

That'll teach me.  Lesson learned.

[Ferrum Aeternum]

54 minutes ago, HokieStone said:

The atmosphere was a little cheesy...they were pimping the hell out of "Pilot J".  During any stoppage in play, they had some goofballs running around doing cheesy contests with people in the crowd.  Regular TV commercials ran on the Colossus as well.  If you watched the National Anthem, you saw that a bunch of people had cards that when they held them up, looked like the flag.  What you didn't see is that they then flipped them over, so it spelled out "Pilot J" around the stadium. 

Pilot/Flying J is headquartered in Knoxville, so it makes sense they would be a big sponsor of that game. Pretty tacky marketing though, as you point out.

[Switchback the Second]

Nice win for the Gators this weekend.  After the lackluster effort on offense last week, was good to see them open things up (more along the lines of what I was expecting this year).  Del Rio continues to look very comfortable in the offense, and very calm and confident.  Nice to actually see him get his first pick of the year, since he showed that all important QB quality to shake it off and not let it snowball on him.  It's such a nice change from the last half of last year where I no longer dread seeing our QB drop back to pass.  Running backs looked sharp too, with a true freshman (nabbed from Bama no less) running for over 100 yards in addition to catching a TD.  All in all they looked really good, and a huge improvement over last week.  I think we punted maybe one time.  

Then the defense... man, when those guys are locked in they are suffocating.  We may have the best cornerback duo in the country, and I'd take our two starting linebackers over just about any others too.  Second team defense gave up a TD late, but the first stringers weren't giving up anything.  Kentucky had about 80 total yards at the start of the 4th, and their starting QB completed more of his passes to our guys than to his.  Just a dominant performance.  

Another scrub team next week in North Texas, and I'll be interested to see if we can show anywhere near the same emotion we showed for the first SEC game of the year.  Like UMass to start the year, we struggle to get fired up too often for these payday games.  Plus, Tennessee the following week and I'm nervous the 'go through the motions' Gators will show this weekend.  Hope I'm wrong.  Would love to go into Knoxville with some good positive energy.  

*Also of note, and apologies to the fine UK posters in this thread, but that was win 30 in a row against UK.  Which is a crazy number on its own, but when taken in the context of us playing them every year, and this is 30 wins in 30 years, it's just bonkers.  Hope we can keep that UT streak going too in a couple weeks...

Go Gators!

[Joe Pesci]

Can't wait for the Gameday signs with this...

http://detroit.cbslocal.com/2016/09/12/did-jim-harbaugh-pick-his-nose-and-eat-a-booger-on-national-tv/

[lokisnow]

12 hours ago, The Great Unwashed said:

I was out of commission with a bad cold most of the weekend, so I didn't get to watch much football, but I feel compelled to half-heartedly point out that the game winning play was only possible due to egregiously bad officiating on the intentional grounding penalty, which erroneously allowed CMU an untimed final play.

The call was so bad that both the MAC officiating crew and the Big 12 replay crew have been suspended for two games and from all postseason play.

That having been said, the Cowboys never should have been in that position in the first place. I feel a lot of the blame has to be laid at the feet of Yurcich's offensive scheme, which seemed to consist entirely of "pass early, pass often". The Cowboys had some success running the ball, but 70% of the called plays were passing plays, which resulted in CMU having a decisive 11 minute advantage in time of possession. And having a pass-first mentality when you're 3rd and 2 in your opponent's territory (or 1st and goal from their 5 yard line ffs!), for example, shows a lack of faith in your line.

If you combine that with the poor 3rd down execution OSU showed on both sides of the ball (1-11 OSU, 8-15 CMU), then you're practically begging to get embarrassed on your home field, which is precisely what happened. 

At this point, I don't see much to be excited about this year. After witnessing such an abysmal performance, I really only see the Iowa State and Kansas games being probable wins, with 5 probable losses and 3 toss-ups, and each of those only being toss-ups because they're being played in Stillwater. So now there's a very decent chance OSU doesn't make a bowl game, which likely precipitates a shake-up of the coaching staff and puts the heat on Gundy to perform. I have a feeling it's going to be a long season.

Still not as bad as the fifth down.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

Has anyone else seen Dabo Swinney's comments on athletes protesting?

http://deadspin.com/dabo-swinneys-broad-brush-paints-a-beautiful-america-1786596933

To sum up his comments:

Quote

Our country is great. We have freedoms. Now stop exercising your freedom of speech. And believe in my religion. If you disagree, leave the country.

 

[Ded As Ned]

I found this part of his rant quite enlightening as well:

What are the [minorities] complaining about? We've got a black two-term president and black QB's in the SEC.  If MLK was alive today, he'd tell these protestors to shut up and be happy with that they got.

[DireWolfSpirit]

The Week 3 rankings- http://www.espn.com/college-football/rankings

[Greywolf2375]

Derwin James looks like he is going to be out at least until FSU's matchup with Clemson, if not longer.  Should give plenty of time for others to step up, but not a great game to be his first back.  Looks like he will have a full recovery, so long term things look good for him.

[S John]

Mountaineers got an early bye week, but decent timing in this case.  QB has sore ribs so a week off should be good for him.  Plus going into an interesting OOC match-up against BYU next week, I don't mind the extra week to prepare for a team that we don't normally see.  

I cannot recall a year in recent memory when WVU has gotten less media attention.  I am not complaining, I think we'll have to go 4-0 before we deserve to get any attention (even though if we get to that point we'll have beaten 3 P5 schools), but I am cautiously optimistic that WVU is going to be a tough out in the Big 12.  I think we are going to be able to run the ball on anyone.  What was a good O-line and running attack last year, looks to have the potential to be even better this year.  We've got 3 RB's and a FB that are all capable of carrying the ball, and 2 are built for power and 2 are built for speed.  I really like our backfield, and we have several legit deep threats in the passing game as well.  It's all gonna come down to the defense, but I like our chances to run the ball and control time of possession against most of our conference mates.  It isn't what Holgs is known for, but we can win like that, and what we need are W's to keep Holgs around long enough to see if this program can take the next step with Will Grier at QB.

Biggest concerns early - red zone offense needs to be better, and the D needs to be better too.  They won't be the worst D in the Big 12, but they won't be the best either.

 

As for this weeks games, looking forward to:

Houston @ Cincinnati

FSU @ Louisville

Alabama @ Ole Miss

Pitt @ Oklahoma Stata

JMU @ North Carolina (Go Dukes!)

Georgia @ Missouri (wanna see how good the Tigers are against another P5 team, since WVU defeated them) 

Ohio State @ Oklahoma  

Texas @ California

[BLU-RAY]

John, Stanford-USC didn't crack the list? Not sure if I should take insult or confidence from that  I'm starting to get nervous for the game already.

Definitely interested in most of the games you listed off, though, especially FSU-Louisville.

Tywin - yeah, Dabo is not-so-secretly one of the biggest fundies in college football (which is saying something). Not great, but something something Tigers not changing their stripes.

 

 

ETA: Yowza, looking at the polls, after 'Bama at #1 in each, the next SEC team is Georgia at 13 in the Coaches' Poll and Tennessee at 15 in the AP Poll. Wonder when the last time that happened was.

[Ramsay B.]

4 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

Has anyone else seen Dabo Swinney's comments on athletes protesting?

http://deadspin.com/dabo-swinneys-broad-brush-paints-a-beautiful-america-1786596933

To sum up his comments:

 

Dude goes to an interracial church, that's obviously the end-game in racial equality throughout this country.

My little sister needs help moving saturday, so I'm probably missing the FSU game. Pretty sour about it.

[dbunting]

On ‎9‎/‎11‎/‎2016 at 6:33 PM, HokieStone said:

Well, I'm back from the "Battle at Bristol".  Obviously the result wasn't what I hoped, but I'll get to that in a minute...thought you folks might be interested in the overall experience.

 

Sorry for the long post...but thought some of you might have interest in how the whole Bristol experience was....

Yeah, I was interested in this event only from the size factor. How was the game viewing, seemed like it would be really bad in the end zones, looked really far away? I attend a few Michigan games each year so I am used to 100,000 plus crowds every game. Was there for the previously largest college crowd ever when Michigan hosted Notre Dame for a night game a few years ago, 2013 I think?

I was there Saturday and waited for the attendance announcement, the announced 109,000 but that seemed very bloated. They didn't however say the second part that they normally say, "you are a part of the largest crowd watching a college football game anywhere in the world today".

 

[HokieStone]

ACC moving neutral-site championships out of North Carolina due to HB2 -

http://www.espn.com/espnw/sports/article/17547270/acc-moving-neutral-site-championship-games-north-carolina-due-hb2

Given that the football championship game is less than 3 months away, it will be interesting to see where it ends up...

Apparently many of the obvious choices are tied up due to pro games, or HS football playoffs, or other college championship games.  FedEx field is wide open, though, as Washington is in the middle of a 3 game road trip.  Some speculation here:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/early-lead/wp/2016/09/14/where-will-the-acc-move-its-football-championship-game/

If I had to bet, I'd still say the likely choice will be somewhere in Florida...but we'll see.  Maybe they'll do a Pac12 and play it at one of the involved school's field.

[S John]

1 hour ago, BLU-RAY said:

John, Stanford-USC didn't crack the list? Not sure if I should take insult or confidence from that  I'm starting to get nervous for the game already.

Definitely interested in most of the games you listed off, though, especially FSU-Louisville.

Tywin - yeah, Dabo is not-so-secretly one of the biggest fundies in college football (which is saying something). Not great, but something something Tigers not changing their stripes.

 

 

ETA: Yowza, looking at the polls, after 'Bama at #1 in each, the next SEC team is Georgia at 13 in the Coaches' Poll and Tennessee at 15 in the AP Poll. Wonder when the last time that happened was.

Confidence.  USC was unimpressive in the opener to say the least.  I know they won their next game convincingly but I really don't think you can read much into early-season cupcake games.  Basically means nothing.  I'm sure USC has plenty talent and anything can happen, so you never know, but I expect a relatively routine Stanford win.  The line is 9.5 and I think they'll cover.   Maybe the KSU game wasn't the blowout some might have expected from Stanford, but let me tell ya from first hand experience, beating a Snyder coached KSU team is rarely easy no matter what kind of talent they have.  Those guys are a royal pain in everyone's ass.  

I think Cal is more likely to upset Texas than USC is to beat Stanford.  

Disclaimer - I am wrong about this kinda shit all the time.  

I was going to mention Stanford for something else but I forgot - that schedule is insane.  OOC games are Kansas State, @ Notre Dame, Rice (everyone gets one cupcake), then a 9 game conference slate that includes @ UCLA, @ Washington, @Cal, @Oregon.   Sheesh.  If Stanford makes it through all that, they're definitely in the playoff.  

[DireWolfSpirit]

That Oklahoma vs Ohio State will be the matchup i'm looking forward to.

[S John]

6 hours ago, DireWolfSpirit said:

That Oklahoma vs Ohio State will be the matchup i'm looking forward to.

Yea.  I think Ohio State will win, but you can't just write off OU as they do have the coaching and talent to win as well.   The line is 1.5 in favor of the Buckeyes.  Should be a good one.