Fighting weather delays with whiskey since 2003
[colored_box color=green]Last Week: 4-1 Straight Up (2-3 vs. Spread)
Season: 41-11 / 27-25[/colored_box]
Sometimes by the time you’ve reached November, the college football season can become a grind, even for the fans. For many of us true fanatics, the season isn’t simply 12 Saturdays spent on the couch half-napping and half-watching a couple of games. It’s months of preparation, it’s week after week of travel to exotic locales like Provo, Utah and Morgantown, West Virginia, it’s scrambling to find the time among life’s regular duties to write terrible weekly pick’em columns, and it’s a LOT of alcoholic beverages and credit card bills.
Sometimes by November it can all start to take a toll, and you start getting worn down and sleep deprived, and then you wonder why you do all of this. And maybe – you think to yourself – maybe some day you’ll take a year off, just to see how it feels. Because sometimes it feels like this is all just a bit too much.
But then one Saturday night you’re sitting under an awning in Ft. Worth Texas waiting out a 3 hour lightning delay and you’ve got nothing to do but watch thousands of soaking wet people trudge by — fans that have finally given up on the hope of the weather breaking any time soon. And you happen to see a high school kid walking with his dad, and you ask them if they’re really leaving because Did you hear they’re restarting the game at 11pm? And then that kid goes berserk. That kid yells at you that he WANTS to go back into the game, he NEEDS to go back into the game, but he can’t. Because THEYYYY, he points at his perhaps more reasonable family members, THEYYYYY want to get on the road before it gets too late.
His voice is rising now, and he’s getting even more upset at the absurd notion of leaving a Texas Football game before its conclusion is known! And before he gets into the car he has one last volley left in him. He yells at you, at the world, that TEXAS FOOTBALL IS MY LIFE! THIS IS MY LIFE! And then he murmurs a few more desperate attempts to persuade before he finally submits, falling into the backseat because he’s still young and Dad’s still the boss. Dad smiles, closes the driver’s door, and off they go.
And while you’re mostly amused by this kid’s passion, in a way you’re also inspired. And you also realize just how lucky you are to have the time, health, and resources to be “all-in†and to do this every week.
So to that kid we saw last Saturday night, wherever you are, this column’s for you, bud. You’re my hero.
Iowa State at Kansas State (-17), 2:30pm [FS1] – I’m not saying the wheels have completely fallen off at Iowa State, but Paul Rhoads is frantically dialing AAA Roadside Assistance. One thing you could always say about Iowa State in the past is that they were tough and competitive, even when not very good. You can’t say that in 2013. The Cyclones are in a death spiral at quarterback. Rhoads quelled a brief QB controversy before last week’s Oklahoma State game when he announced Sam Richardson as starter. Richardson then started the game 1-8 for 4 yards and an INT returned for touchdown, before eventually going down with a head injury in the 2nd quarter. In stepped Grant Rohach, who finished the game 12 of 23 for 97 yards. In 1984 those stats might have been acceptable. But when you have no rushing threat (Aaron Wimberly is still injured) and you’re in the Big 12, you need to move the ball with more urgency than that. To be fair, urgency’s not the problem. It’s talent – or the lack thereof. Until further notice I see no reason to side with Iowa State in any game, at any point spread.
WILDCATS – 41 Cyclones – 17
Kansas at Texas (-27.5), 2:30pm [LONGHORN NETWORK] – According to the tweets of KU beat writer Matt Tait (@mctait) Charlie Weis has resorted to playing a continuous loop of country music and music selections from the Texas Longhorn Band during practice this week. Ostensibly this was done to help Jayhawks players lather up a healthy dislike for the Horns. Come on, Charlie, don’t be so out of touch. If you really want your players to hate Austin, Texas, country music isn’t your choice. How about a looped recording of various insufferable Austin douchebags bleating on and on about their city and that secret Decemberists show they got into last South-By? Yeah, you probably never heard about it. And hey, in reality… isn’t the Weis playlist just simply preparing KU’s poor players for the inevitable on Saturday afternoon? Approximately 85,000 fans in Austin will be treated to many Longhorn scores and countless renditions of Texas Fight, including that slow version that will be played in the 4th quarter well after Tyrone Swoopes has entered the game to the delight of the 60k that remain. I don’t know if there will be country music served up as a side dish, but the main course will definitely be a Texas Beatdown.
LONGHORNS – 48 Jayhawks – 13
West Virginia at TCU (-13), 2:30pm [ESPNU] – The Horned Frogs are averaging 14.2 ppg in conference play, thanks largely to dreadful performances by their wide receivers (Seriously, do they have cinder blocks for hands?) and truly awful protection up front. The Horned Frogs rolled out an alarmingly poor performance at home against Texas – a game that should have been the biggest and most emotional on the home schedule. I don’t know if Dana Holgorsen has lost his team, or is in over his head, but the one thing that makes me stabby about West Virginia is their absolute stubborn refusal to rely on their run game. There is NO REASON why the Mountaineers should have thrown the ball 41 times and run it only 29 at Kansas State. I can’t see West Virginia winning a road game in 2013, but I also can’t trust TCU as a 13 point favorite over anybody. This is where WVU quarterback Clint Trickett throws 3 pick-6 touchdowns in the 4th quarter and TCU wins by 28 just to ruin an otherwise smart pick and to further pee on my 2013 record against the spread. Please note how my attitude worsens the closer I get to a .500 winning percentage. Next week there might be f bombs.
HORNED FROGS – 24 Mountaineers – 17
Oklahoma State at Texas Tech (-2.5), 6:00pm [FOX] – Oklahoma State reverted to the KISS method last week in Ames, resulting in a 31 point victory over Iowa State. oSu fed the ball 26 times to Desmond Roland and ran for 342 total yards as a team on 47 carries. The Pokes still can’t get any consistency through the air, as Clint Chelf was 10-26 for 78 yards passing. On the season, Ok State is completing less than 60 percent of their passes regardless of who is under center. And as Mike Gundy’s crew prepares to travel to the snakepit known as AT&T Jones Stadium in Lubbock, other ominous stats loom large. Ok State was 3-12 on third down against Iowa State (likely due to the terrible passing game). Take away the Iowa State outlier game, and Ok State has rushed for
