A is for Ataxia The "gross lack of coordination of muscle movements." Penn State would have played some of the least coordinated football of the year thus far, but fortunately Ole Miss played Thursday night, and thus bumped them from the week's top spot in football dysfunctionality. Correction: on further review, that would be Cal, the team that faceplanted on 152 straight plays against Oregon. (Jahvid Best had 55 total yards. We have no idea how this happened, and we watched it twice just to make sure. Yup: 55 yards.)
Miami looked like Larry Coker was back at the controls. Florida State lost at home to a USF team with its backup quarterback making his first start on the road. LSU came within a quarterback sneak of losing to Mississippi State. Besides Alabama beating Arkansas soundly at home, no team displayed the ability to play consistent football with a sneering dominance in the manner befitting a proper college football Leviathan. With Alabama excepted, the national scene is a slapfight between one-armed men at this point, and far murkier than it was last week.
B is for Barricades, Man Them. Refunds not accepted for this event: 42 points, 524 yards, and a rampaging Jeremiah Masoli ensured Chip Kelly will be answering no emailed requests for refunds for this week's performance. Oregon had as bad a start as one could imagine to the season; nay, one most people wouldn't believe if you gave it to them in the form of a terrible ESPN movie pitch.
(Counter-punch! The Oregon 2009 Story. An ESPN Feature Featuring Billy Bob Thornton as Chris Petersen, Kevin James as Chip Kelly, and introducing Rampage Jackson as LeGarrette Blount. Animals were harmed in the making of this movie. Namely people, five of them fatally in the filming of the stands scene when Rampage's handlers lost control of him.)
Oregon will now lose by twenty to Washington State after staging the most impressive recovery of the year to date, because this is 2009 and consistent effort from week to week was banned as a small but now tightly enforced provision in the Federal Stimulus Act of 2009. Blame that bastard Orrin Hatch, the meddler, for slipping it in when no one was looking to make the BCS look bad.
C Is For Cockpunched. Minnesota is recruiting a new and unusually literate wave of poet-warriors if they can remember to call their dick a "penis" when cursing wayward down markers crotch-first.
(HT: Deadspin.)
D is for Detours. The sheer amount of commentary FAIL generated by Tim Tebow's presence is impressive from day-to-day, but get him injured and suddenly the Redbird reading group comes crawling out from the carcass of AOLdom to heave garbage through your virtual mail-slot.
If you despite Urban Meyer, then he left Tebow in too long in a blowout; if you despise Tebow, then somehow he deserved to suffer a freak concussion falling skull-first into a teammate's knee because...well, because UR N IDIYUT. It's like a Rorschach/litmus test for the rhetorically negligent: show anyone the footage, and if they leave a comment like this on your website:
Karma!
...then Buddha's dragging his fat robed carcass to boot you back down the wheel of creation for a few cycles as a cicada or slime mold until you learn a lesson in basic digestion and respiration, since most functions above that are too elaborate for you to handle, and even the basics might be dicey. (If this is you, that straining noise is your mouth struggling to open to breathe. Open it with your hands, or perhaps attempt breathing through your nose. There, better? We're here to help.)
He's injured, shouldn't play for three weeks, and it's football, and not worth scrambling your brain over. But if you like, please: don't assume a basic level of humanity on a coach's part, and that he'd lie about what his qb said while boggled and dazed on the ground, even if he stayed with said qb after the team left for home, and had no reason to tell what would be an outlandish and despicable lie about his favorite player ever. If anyone would pull a line like that out of his sainted ass, it would be Tim Tebow, even a concussed one, but please: feel free to assume a subhuman level of morality about an opposing coach and assume he would weave a recruiting pitch into a description of his star player's concussed state.
E is for Economy Offense, Please.
Tyrod Taylor had four completions on nine attempts Saturday in a victory. Don't lie, Frank Beamer: your nipples get stiff when you beat a top ten team in a game featuring a blocked punt and single digit passing attempts. Please note that: attempts, not completions, as in Jevan Snead's abysmal 7/21 night. Tyrod Taylor was economically mediocre, as opposed to throwing around profligate mediocrity like Snead did.
Imagine Virginia Tech with an offensive coordinator. Seriously, imagine it. It's all starry and filled with wonder, isn't it? Paired with the defense and special teams singlehandedly brickbatting Miami's return to greatness Saturday, it would be something fearsome, indeed.
F is for Fear. Oh, Bradley Sowell, Ole Miss lineman: you will sleep, sure, sometimes for hours straight. You may even have sweet dreams where you row along the shore of a willow-lined lake with a gorgeous lady in a white dress in perfect idyllic peace. She will look at you, and you will look at her, and then you will say, "This is what love is." And she will begin to speak back to you, saying inaudible words of love to you. You will lean in closer across the boat to hear what she says, because for an instant you will know that whatever she says holds the key to your happiness and the only true joy you will ever know in this wretched life. Then, without warning, Eric Norwood will jump out of the water and eat her like a shark in shoulder pads. You will have this dream forever, because Eric Norwood is a nightmare that never ends and sometimes toasts his alma mater in the middle of interviews. The all-time sack leader for South Carolina victimized you horribly, but take solace in not being the only one in the SEC who has Norwood nightmares where he ruins your life.
G is for Gonez0rz. This week's sad tally of people checking the warranty to see if parts are covered includes two particularly grievous injuries. First, Robert Griffin, out with a tear to an Always Crumbling Ligament in his knee suffered in a 68-13 win over Northwestern State. Dont'a Hightower, Alabama linebacker, is also out for the year with ligament damage in his knee Z is for Fired. If you spell it Z-O-O-K, that is.