A quick run through the notebook prior to EDSBS LIVE!!!'s review show tonight.
The patient in blue is unresponsive and not breathing. Put a stethoscope to his chest, and you will hear...meowing? Yes, meowing.
College football's Dien Bien Phu: it's already happened.
Take it as a given that no one--Michigan fans, App State fans, and college football fans as a whole--properly understands the magnitude of the event that occurred in Ann Arbor yesterday. And phenomenologically speaking, "event" is the correct word: something exploded, flames, hot air, and bright light followed, and no one was quite sure what happened even after looking right at the damn thing. It's football's Tunguska Event. It's the French losing Dien Bien Phu to the Vietnamese. It's like finding a sex tape starring Rosario Dawson and Seth Rogen where she's left winded and and destroyed on the mattress. Buster Douglas watched the game yesterday with approving nods, in between shoving entire cheeseburgers into his mouth.
In more prosaic terms, Michigan's tackles didn't protect Henne, All-American Jake Long included. App State's ends wheeled around them with ease throughout the game. Henne didn't need the additional pressure, since he seemed scattershot from the beginning, spraying awkward passes around like a freshly divorced 38 year old at a singles' bar. Hennebriation was the rule of the day as he consistently over/underthrew receivers, pulled down passes in fidgety indecision, and failed to convert critical passes when Michigan desperately needed them.
Other longstanding Michigan bugaboos emerged, too: an inability to cope with the spread offense, an arrogance in telegraphing plays by formation and motion, and the sneaking suspicion from watching that Michigan is locked in 1983's finest strategic nostrums and not budging, digging in the heels of their Pumas while rocking an REO Speedwagon t-shirt you'd kill to wear to the club on Saturday night.
These patients appear to have no problems, and are busy using syringes to shoot whiskey at each other, doctor. The State of Georgia flourished on the gridiron Saturday. Tech beats Notre Dame, and then UGA takes the Greatest Offense On Earth and reduces them to 14 points and squabbling on the sidelines during the game. We didn't see minute one of this game, but can say that Georgia looked far more impressive against a ballyhooed Okie State team than our own mad #6 pick South Carolina did against the Ragin' Cajuns of University of Louisiana-Lafayette, who only lost to the Gamecocks 28-14. Spurrier called the 'Cocks "just a bunch of average stiffs" after the game, where the Cajuns limited opportunities for SC by running the daylights out of the ball with quarterback Michael "It's not delivery, it's" Desourneaux.
This patient has one troubling sign, sir. Specialists are required. Only two salient points emerged from Florida's game with the Western Kentucky Hilltoppers.
1. Tim Tebow has a very, very large arm. Actually, he has two of them. One, he throws footballs a very long way with; the other administers justice to the wicked of the greater North Florida metropolitan area 24 hours a day, and sometimes takes special missions at the behest of the President of the United States.
2. Kyle Jackson is still the last man on the tackle pile and still takes bad angles on tackles. Against WKU, this is troubling. Against Tennessee, this is hemorrhaging.
This patient has multiple personality disorder; request sedation immediately. Notre Dame trotted out a Big Lots discount version of the spread option for a quarter and a half with Demetrius Jones against a Georgia Tech defense eventually happy with sacking ND's qbs nine times on the game and limiting the Irish to three points. Evan Sharpley came in to stop the bleeding, but the incineration of Jimmy Clausen's redshirt points to further schizophrenia for Notre Dame, who is not NOT rebuilding. No, not at all.
This patient has the dreadlocks of power, sir... Auburn snoozed through its opening matchup with K-State before doing what Auburn teams usually do: pulling out magical plays from deep in their ass, something they have a knack for doing on the defensive side of the ball. This year's wearer of the magical defensive end braids of power remains Quentin Groves, who inherited them from Stanley McClover. After Brandon Cox woke up and threw a fourth quarter td to put Auburn up 16-13, Groves blew past two KSU blockers who laid nary a glove on him as he hit 398 pound quarterback Josh Freeman, causing him to fumble, weep, and renounce any false gods he might have been worshipping at the time. The fumble went for a td, and thus three quarters of solid work by K-State (and three somnambulent ones for Auburn) will go down in the books as a 23-13 win.
And in the auspicious debuts department... Tom O'Brien's NC State team displays that flashy T.O.B. charisma by dropping a 25-23 matchup at home to UCF, who went up 25-3 in the first half before nearly frittering away the lead and the upset. O'Leary will later claim the win was a 65-3 blowout on his resume. Don't trifle with the Golden Flashes, son: Iowa State drops their opener 23-14 against Kent State. Gene Chizik, welcome to Hell.
Not all n00bs fumbled day one: Randy Shannon had the 'Canes looking muscular, if not offensively viable quite yet, against a decrepit Marshall team (every time we looked over, Marshall's qb was being bent in half by some brute in orange. Good signs for Miami.) And Mark Dantonio, seeking a "win of respect", hitched Michigan State to the enormous ass of the mighty Jehuu Caulcrick for a 55-18 win against UAB, who it must be mentioned was being coached in the first game of the Neal Calloway era, who spoils our "trend of two" by being a rookie coach getting shellacked in his first game.
Jake Locker is the new pirates, who are the new Chuck Norris. Syracuse continues to sink into the mire under Greg Robinson, but even with the entire team giving up on themselves in the second half, hybrid Tebow/Young type Jake Locker looked impressive in Washington's 42-12 victory in the humorously unairconditioned Carrier Dome.
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