September 14, 2025
OH, IT’S HATE WEEK
Burn…you will burn…you will burn in hell, yeah you’ll burn in hell…
There is a special place in our blackest of hearts for Tennessee, and it is entirely personal. We don’t especially like where we’re from, mostly because it’s one of those places where ketchup is considered spicy, the slightest wrinkle of oddity is cause for grave concern, and country music of deplorable quality bubbles from its pores like congealed fat hardening on the surface of fetid stew. You like it? Great. We don’t, and that’s why we live in Atlanta, home of Adult Swim, a quiet but huge adult industry, a horde of swamp real estate investors spending money poorly, and a crumbling infrastructure and half-assedness more suitable for our tastes. Interstates are magnificent things.
We have, from birth, hated Tennessee: the indigestible-to-the-eyes shade of orange, the somnolent pre-games, the sludgy brand of football designed to eke out wins by field goals, their abuse of a fine coonhound by putting an inherently curious dog in front of 100K and daring it not to go insane with overstimulation. (Watch Smokey sometime: he is seconds away from cracking into an insane rage. We can’t blame them.)
In terms of rivalry, though, things had gone limp in recent years thanks to Urban Meyer’s superior coaching acumen, Erik Ainge’s ability to cough up a game when you most needed him to, and Tennessee’s complete inability to score points when it mattered. It felt hollow, after a while: rivalry requires a certain degree of competence on the part of your opponent, a bare minimum of respect for their inability. It is difficult to respect an opponent who lets you play the part of Dr. Manhattan: you point, they explode, and suddenly you’re the child giddily holding the magnifying glass.
This all assumes you don’t find someone to genuinely loathe on the other team. Ahem.
IT’S GROUNDHOG DAY
I have been stabbed by Texas, shot by Florida, poisoned by LSU, frozen by USC, hung, electrocuted, and burned by the media…and every morning I wake up without a scratch on me, not a dent in the fender… I am an immortal.
(See Chris’s post on Sweatervest at Doc Saturday. Jeremiad-y in its intensity, cold science in its accuracy.)
BLOGPOLL DRAFT, WEEK THREE
The Blogpoll draft for week three follows. It’s all still total guessing, but as long as you’re aware that it’s a street enchilada filled with mystery meat, dive in, please. Explanations and scantily reasoned justifications follow.
| Rank | Team | Delta |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Southern Cal | 2 |
| 2 | Alabama | 1 |
| 3 | Florida | 1 |
| 4 | Texas | 2 |
| 5 | Brigham Young | |
| 6 | Penn State | 3 |
| 7 | Ohio State | 7 |
| 8 | Boise State | 2 |
| 9 | Oklahoma | 3 |
| 10 | California | 2 |
| 11 | Virginia Tech | 8 |
| 12 | Cincinnati | 1 |
| 13 | Houston | |
| 14 | Mississippi | 4 |
| 15 | Miami (Florida) | 1 |
| 16 | Georgia Tech | 2 |
| 17 | TCU | |
| 18 | Oklahoma State | 11 |
| 19 | LSU | 4 |
| 20 | Michigan | |
| 21 | Utah | 1 |
| 22 | Notre Dame | 5 |
| 23 | Nebraska | |
| 24 | Georgia | |
| 25 | Missouri | 14 |
| Last week’s ballot | ||
Dropped Out: Kansas (#21), Florida State (#22), Texas Tech (#25).
Endless coups. Number one should not be a static thing this early in the season, especially with our tiny but growing sample size. Going into Columbus and surviving in front of scarlet maelstrom (and a game OSU defense) gets USC the top spot, especially since they did so with a hobbled Taylor Mays and a freshman quarterback who could not feel his right shoulder for the third quarter. The degree separating them from Alabama in terms of absolute demonstrated value is marginal at best; we give USC the nod for playing a full road game, as opposed to the half-road game they played in a split crowd in ATL.
Florida bumps up for digesting Troy properly, a tougher game offensively than one might think as Troy’s defense will size up nicely by the end of the year, and was just blown out by a Florida team that snoozed through the first quarter. Texas also played a deceptively tough game at Laramie, where they too struggled early before hitting the afterburners in the second half. BYU hangs steady at five for the moment, riding largely on last week and the proper disposal of Tulane.
The rest: Oklahoma and VT bounced back nicely, and we try to actually reward teams that play people early and play them tight. Ditto for OSU, still the likely Big Ten champ, and for Georgia, whose defense supplied the butt against South Carolina in lieu of last week’s offensive butt-supplying. Houston pops in as this year’s Texas Tech.
Dropped: Texas Tech, for playing next to no one; Kansas, largely as a result of other teams moving up, not because of anything they did; Florida State, for almost losing to Jacksonville State Florida State almost lost to Jacksonville State type that a lot it feels soooooo good.
CURIOUS INDEX, 9/14/09
Morning Wood, SEC Style. UF Mike, thank you:
Other notable image juxtaposition may be found here, Thrilla-in Manila style. Tennessee coaches lack the textbook on how to be a former coach. Read between the line here, and you will see two very clear sentences written in red donut frosting: “We didn’t have a very good season last year. I certainly take full responsibility for that. And now it’s (Kiffin’s) turn to do it as he thinks he needs to do it. But the problem in this league is you’re going to play great football teams every week once you get into the Southeastern Conference schedule. So, if you’re going to be brash, you’d better be able to back it up.” One: “I’m going to be just as bitchy in retirement to my successor/usurper as Johnny Majors was to me,” and two, “ME WANT HAM DONUT NOM NOM NOM NOM.” Kiffin, to his credit as someone who can affix proper adjectives to reality, called Tennessee’s performance “embarrassing,” and recognized in a post-game show that the Vols had no ability to pass the ball whatsoever. Giant catfish is on the bench, just waiting or his chance, Coach. HATE WEEK STARTS NOW. Let’s just all go overboard now WHHEEEEEE. Two passes do not a legend make, and Matt Barkley’s decent-to-good performance against Ohio State was owed more to the devastating blocking of USC’s o-line late than Barkley channeling Elway late. His march toward instant enshrinement as THE GREATEST QB EVAR may already be in jeopardy due to a bruised shoulder, which may force him to miss the Washington game. Aaron Corp and his only slightly fractured leg will take over. No one seems to be very concerned by this, because they are USC and concern does not help you win forever. UW’s Quentin Richardson, meanwhile, guaranteed a win by UW over the Trojans. Go big or go home, indeed, though he and running back Chris Polk have their reasons. You don’t just get away with photoshopping someone as Al Bundy, Trojan fans. “They put my face on Al Bundy’s body,” he said, referring to a character from the 1990s television show Married With Children. “So I feel like I’ve got to prove myself.” That’s fucking right, USC fans. No way you accuse him of being America’s most beloved failure of a shoe salesman, or of having a stacked Amazon of a wife in gold lame pants. (Peg Bundy can get it, too. Anytime, even now that she’s divorced Al, moved to rural Utah, and taken up with a biker gang.) Headscratchy. Eleven Warriors gets itchy metaphorical scalp over some of Jim Tressel’s gametime decisions. No better contrast between Carroll and Tressel can be found outside of the last USC drive of the first half. Sitting with :48 on the clock, Pete Carroll elected to maximize the time on the clock and go for points. The Trojans got a field goal where Tressel would have squatted on the clock, and Pete Carroll put Tressel’s checkers into check mate. We have this tattoo on our ass. Except on us, it reads “God’s Gift” (to Dockers suppliers and other makers of pants designed for the bigger-butted man. Holla at Dave Barry!) |
||
NUMBERED OBSERVATIONS ON A GAMEDAY IN COLUMBUS
1. Uniforms. Columbus, Ohio is the kind of place where people, in one regard or another, still respect the notion of a uniform. This makes sense; this is where Professor Hayes wore a short sleeve white button down, a tie that appeared to be fitted for a man a full foot shorter than Hayes, geek glasses, a black hat, and pants pulled up to his navel no matter the weather, all the while wondering what particular handbasket the world had decided to go to hell in, and how he could put the hippies in it and send it to Gay Commie China or wherever the hell they wanted to take this fine, red-blooded America to in the first place.
Columbus is still the kind of place where people wear a uniform, and not just a code. (more…)
