Our Honor Defend

Mmm… alliteration.

Anyways, I mentioned last week that I would try to upload a Drive-Thru compilation clip relevant to this week’s opponent, but that I didn’t have any interesting Wisconsin game on hand.  So, in lieu of uploading the 2007 game, I uploaded the 1993 Holiday Bowl. Yes, the one against the Mormons where Cooper got his first bowl victory.

No, I don’t pretend there’s any inherent, essential qualities connecting BYU’s Mormon appeal to the Wisconsin football program or the state in general.  It was just a good game to watch.

To summarize, this was an odd game coming in for the Buckeyes.  They were the co-Big Ten champions and went to California… albeit San Diego, and not Pasadena.  They played a six win BYU team under LaVell Edwards.  Jayson Gwinn, a backup defensive end, died in a car crash near campus in December.  His high school teammate and fellow Buckeye, Marlon Kerner, wore his jersey number in tribute.  Perhaps in spite of himself, John Cooper made a rather infamous guarantee that, notwithstanding his 0-4 record in bowls at Ohio State, that he would bring a trophy back to Columbus.  The Buckeyes started out red hot, scoring 3 touchdowns on their first four possessions and jumping out to a 21-7 lead.  BYU, however, closed the gap at halftime to 21 all.  On their second possession of the second half, the Buckeyes rode Raymont Harris (39 rushes, 235 yards, 3 TDs: an Ohio State bowl record) all the way to the end zone to take a 28-21 lead.  After a stalemate consumed almost all of the clock, the Buckeyes made a catastrophic blunder in the prevent defense that put BYU from half field all the way to within the 5 yard line with under 30 seconds left to play.  However, the Buckeyes were able to hang on to make good on Cooper’s guarantee.

This same year that the Buckeyes split a Big Ten title, Wisconsin ended up going to the Rose Bowl by virtue of a tiebreaker.  See… it does all come back to Wisconsin.

This weekend of college football was certainly a week of upsets, having us review things to try to make sense of them.

The biggest one appears to be USC’s stunning loss to an unranked Oregon State team.  Further, they lost for the second straight time in Corvallis, and did so in spite of taking every measure possible to pump themselves up.  They had gotten this game on national television to avoid any kind of let down of motivation.  They were calm and collected in their pregame walkthroughs.  They were going to take it one game at a time.  Each game was a national championship game.  And still: they blew it.  Worse yet, now I can’t even claim to that the Buckeyes lost by 32 to the 2008 version of the greatest team in the history of college football (ESPN always seems to attach that “greatest team in the history of college football” tag on ESPN every year).  No no, we lost by 32 to the team that got punked by the team that lost by 31 to Penn State.

Thanks, USC. Thanks.

My favorite upset, however, was Ole Miss punking Florida.  Just to let you know what we were doing by this time, we were still in a bar down here and had gotten into some back-and-forths with some of the natives who were rooting for Minnesota for no apparent reason other than to get our attention.  There was certainly some tension, but after the Ohio State game ended, all of our eyeballs were glued to the Raycom Sports Network to watch this game unfold.  Suffice to say: we were all pullin for Ole Miss. Hard. Gator fans aren’t well liked down here, and, well, the whole program isn’t well liked by any one of us.  We were all high-fiving each other on Shay Hodge’s 86 yard TD catch, celebrating Major Wright (I think it was him) for his busted coverage.  When Florida responded with a TD, everyone had looked away, but turned back after I yelled “BLOCKED IT” on the missed PAT. Lots of high-fives going around after that.

That 4th and 1 was, suffice to say, awesome.  We knew Florida had gotten a very generous spot, and were rightly backed up a yard and a half after Houston Nutt contested the spot (or after it was reviewed, whichever one happened).  So, just on the fringe of FG range, Florida felt the need to go for it.  So what does Urban Meyer dial up? A fullhouse backfield with Tebow out of the shotgun.  We all knew what was coming from the formation (Tebow right).  Evidently, so did Ole Miss.  11 Ole Miss players jumped it and got Tebow behind the line of scrimmage.  Naturally, we all went crazy.  There were lots of cheers, shots being had and elevated hand slaps being shared.  I even got a chestbump from the bartender.  Mind you, the bartender was a female.  That was interesting.

But let’s not lose sight of the playcall.  4th and 1.  More accurately a yard and half.  So what does Meyer dial up? A play that puts Tebow in the shotgun and, thus, 5 yards behind the line of scrimmage.  Evidently lining up under center is illegal in Gainesville.  We weren’t fooled. Neither was Ole Miss.  Just an odd playcall for the defending Heisman QB who is very quickly becoming Jared Lorenzen for a new generation of SEC football patrons.

Florida’s upset loss to Ole Miss, combined with Bama running over Georgia, leaves just four teams in the SEC undefeated.  Two of them are in the SEC West: Alabama and LSU.  One of these two will be knocked out of the picture in Baton Rouge later this season. Two are in the SEC East: Vanderbilt and Kentucky.  Kentucky has yet to play an SEC game.  Naturally, this leaves only one logical conclusion to the SEC season:

Vanderbilt must win the SEC title.

Though I’ll squash any attempt to degenerate discussion here into something on contemporary politics, there’s something to draw out of this electoral season.  That is, this is the year of “Change”.  And college football needs Change We Can Believe In ™.  Vanderbilt is that Change We Can Believe In ™.  At this stage, Max and I, after talking it over, have agreed that pulling hard for Vanderbilt is the only appropriate course of action regarding the SEC this year.  We don’t know precisely what their chances are to win the SEC, but quite frankly, we don’t care.  We’re all aboard the Vanderbilt bandwagon.  So after Vanderbilt runs through the SEC East and beats Alabama by 40 in Atlanta, you can look to us as the vanguards of the Vanderbilt revolution in SEC football.

I’ve indicated elsewhere on this blog that I’m a big fan of service academy football.  I think everyone should be.  Naturally, I loved Navy going to Wake Forest and beating the pride of the ACC #16 ranked Wake Forest Demon Deacons.  It was Navy’s first victory over a ranked team since 1985.  Navy also won the game in spite of its star QB, Kaipo-Noa Kaheaku Enhada, leaving the game in the second quarter with a hamstring injury.

Fans of Big Ten football must send a gift basket to the ACC.  Basically, they’re ineptitude has taken a lot of the heat off of the Big Ten.  With Wake Forest, conference favorites, losing to Navy, the Atlantic Coast Conference now has no unbeatens. None.  A few of those losses have been particularly embarrassing as well.  Indeed, probably the best victories for the ACC include a 42-3 Georgia Tech win over a crappy Miss State team (1-4), UNC’s beatdown of Rutgers (still winless against 1-A teams) and Miami’s beatdown of the Aggies (2-2, with two unimpressive wins against New Mexico and Army).  With Navy’s victory over Wake Forest, only one logical conclusion can be reached:

Navy must be declared the ACC champions… or, at the very least, get their designated BCS spot.

Now I’m not claiming Navy is ipso facto the greatest team among all the ACC competitors.  However, the idea that I could even spin an argument that they could hang with most everyone in the conference (in spite of their loss to Duke) isn’t pretty for the ACC.  This one, like the plea for Vandy’s SEC championship, is a basic one of equity.  Besides, should I get this in my little bizarro world, it would set up an awesome Sugar Bowl. Navy (ACC Champion) v. Vanderbilt (SEC Champion) in the Superdome.

I’d watch it.