A feeble attempt to cover every single thing that's happened in college football over the past four days. It's already a failure, but at least it will be an interesting one.
THURSDAY
--Larry Coker's bald head is of the shiny variety, not the slick Julius Caesar/Ben Kingsley glare-free kind. We say if he'd dampened that down a bit he would have gotten another year, since being bald just makes everything a little bit harder.
--Boston College is a weird, weird, weird team. Even when they win you're never entirely convinced that they actually just won the game; in Bill's words, like their coach, they're too good to fire, too bad to embrace.
Case in point: Miami starting having petit-fours and champagne in the BC backfield around the beginning of the second quarter. Big time, as in Baraka Atkins coming through on repeated occasions and blocking out the sun for Matt Ryan. Ryan, who took an unholy beating this year like a champ, is told to throw the same crossing pattern against the pressure in the second quarter. His receiver drop it repeatedly, mostly because they're being hammered by linebacker/safety with brick in hand just waiting for the route. Matt Ryan, who gets brain cells knocked off weekly in this offense, is getting no help.
The half comes and goes, and with Atkins and company now moving on in the course of the meal--you know, really getting to know Ryan, his likes and dislikes, bonding over their families while getting pretty deep into a bottle of Remy Martin--what do BC's offensive coaches do to help out their iron-sternumed but rattled qb? Call the same crossing pattern, which Miami gleefully explodes for the rest of the night. Matt Ryan, who lost his sense of smell in the third quarter from a nasty hit, gets no help in this offense.
--Kirby! Freeman! Kirby inhaled the opportunity to impress by playing like the reckless, untrained second-stringer he is--and it was the best thing that happened to Miami all night. He jettisoned the Captain Checkdown tendencies of the offense under Kyle Wright and winged the ball downfield with a regularity that surely stopped the hearts of his coaches on a few occasions. He threw three picks, but also gave Miami something it hadn't seen against quality competition all year long: the sight a fleet wide receiver running under a deep ball and gliding to a score.
Kirby!
Friday!
--Dennis Franchione never, never, never fails to amaze. Lining up against a pass defense bleeding yardage, he opts to attack the Texas defense with...the option. In what should have been an idiot move seemingly designed to commit career suicide, the Aggies actually swallow whole quarters whole. In the fourth quarter alone the Aggies mount an eight-minute drive for the winning TD, and that's with the clock stopping. for first downs. Idiocy abounded--our favorite plays being the ones where they pitched the ball to 450 pound RB Jorvorskie Lane on the outside, which is akin to running your midget third down back on first down.
--Despite Dennis Franchione's self-destructive gameplanning, it worked, mostly because Colt McCoy got punch drunk early and stayed punch drunk. Coaching demerit to Mack Brown for not pulling the rubber-shouldered McCoy earlier, since he lofted easy picks and dying quail in the air all day. With the Aggies ganging up on the run, McCoy spiralled; went from uneasy to totally fogged somewhere in the third quarter. His misery came to a head when an Aggie defender speared him late as he walked to the bench, earning him an ejection for his patented Joe Buck Disgusting Display.
When the Aggies put helmet to shoulder and pinched a nerve in his shoulder, McCoy was done for the day, and Coach Fran got downright weepy at his kids' triumph over his mad gameplanning. If you're an Alabama fan, this video may induce vomiting and ruin what is an otherwise happy day for you:
McCoy's brilliant freshman season ended with a whimper, but that shouldn't diminish the fact that he outplayed every freshman quarterback in Texas history and nearly set the NCAA record for TD throws by a freshman. Injury and the attrition of the season got to him. Despite his obviously fake name, he's going to be really dangerous for at least the next two years, provided someone can donate a shoulder for a transplant. (It's Texas--they'll find someone who'll hand one over.)
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