This week's rundown hopes for increased chaos output from everyone besides the West Coast conference, starting with you, Notre Dame-Florida State.
Chaos
Notre Dame vs. Florida State should get you excited, if for no other reason than this: one team has to lose and will deserve to, for one reason or another.
Florida State has a 22-game winning streak, a quarterback incapable of making a single good decision off the field, and an inconsistent defense. It is the defending national title-holder, sitting on an undefeated record against some of the weakest competition in the nation. It is college football's John Cena. The people who love it have a palate no sane person can understand, it will not stop winning, and their defense for any wrongdoing off the field is to say, "Can't see me." Other than all that, it's a fine football team.
The other one is Notre Dame, still on some kind of football probation following the 2012 BCS Championship against Alabama. The real phobia -- and it is so very real, with persuadable people being part of the College Football Playoff selection process -- is that Notre Dame might win this game, advance to one of the four precious slots in the Playoff, and then immediately be run down by the oncoming train of the first really good opponent it faces. This could happen, because Notre Dame gets ratings, though exactly why is a good question. Either America adores watching it get rent limb from limb, or people who don't normally pay attention to college football suddenly tune in when the Irish play.*
*This category could include many Notre Dame fans.
It's a fear, but a few things should allay that fear. In fact, if you are loyal only to full-blown college football anarchy, you want Notre Dame to beat Florida State in Tallahassee this weekend. You want it close, mind you; nothing too decisive, and nothing making the decision at the end of the season too simple. Everett Golson scrambles late for a TD, or makes a fourth-and-11 play as he did against Stanford. Maybe, just for history's bitter sake, a Florida State field goal that flies wide right.
The point is that you want it close, and then you want the following things to happen, for maximum disorder:
- Notre Dame beats Florida State, then loses to Arizona State, USC, or Louisville.
- Florida State whips through the rest of its schedule and finishes with one loss.
- Baylor does something silly like losing to WVU, then beats Oklahoma.
- The SEC West digests itself and has everyone finish with at least one loss.
All of that is totally realistic, but it matters much less without Notre Dame beating Florida State in Tallahassee this weekend. This Mardi Gras float's brake lines are right there, Irish. Cut them, and we won't tell anyone who did it.
Virginia
There is also an outside shot at UVA being ACC champion at this point. Georgia Tech is also still very much in play. The ACC is, and has been, the most underrated office comedy on television for quite some time now.
Seduction
The Pac-12 has already complied neatly with its requirements for a year of total chaos, and for that and more we should thank it.
A little-known fact about the Pac-12: due to TV arrangements, every single game has been played at 10:30 p.m. ET. Don't look back at previous weeks' schedules. They're all lies. And though normal people go to bed around then, it's been glorious knowing that after the 7 o'clock games, lying in wait somewhere on ESPN or the Pac-12 Network, there is utter West Coast madness.
So far, the Adult Swim Pac-12 slate has produced Wazzu losing a late heartbreaker to Rutgers, UCLA nearly losing at home to Memphis (MEMPHIS!), Wazzu losing a late heartbreaker to Oregon, Arizona beating Cal on a Hail Mary, Wazzu losing a late heartbreaker to Cal in a game in which Connor Halliday threw for almost a half-mile's worth of yards, Arizona State stealing a rollicking game from USC on a Hail Mary, Utah handing UCLA its first defeat, and Arizona ripping Oregon's national title hopes out of the Ducks' hands.
Berkovici
So if you missed that same Arizona team making the most difficult kick (an onside) and missing one of its easiest (a chipshot field goal) in its first loss, last week against USC, it's not too late.
Stanford beat Arizona State twice last year, thanks to a rematch in the Pac-12 title game, and neither one was particularly competitive. This is the Pac-12 in 2014, though, so expect some total reversal like Stanford suddenly discovering 500 yards passing, or Arizona State (still likely playing with backup quarterback Mike Berkovici) turning into a defensive juggernaut with zero offense.
TL;DR: Eyes Wide Shut is on replay every single week in the Pac-12, and they show everything, man.
Atrocious
Emoji time, Tar Heels!
That's for you, North Carolina, because your defense is ranked 103rd in defensive FEI, just gave up 50 to Notre Dame, and now has to put its face into the path of Georgia Tech's Bush Hog of an offense.
UNC's defense isn't merely bad; it's, like, 2011 Kansas Jayhawks defense bad. That defense allowed 50 or more points four times, something the Tar Heels have already done three times this season (50, 50, and 70 points respectively against Notre Dame, Clemson, and East Carolina). Georgia Tech scored 66 points on that 2011 Kansas football team, and Larry Fedora might just want to let the XBox call the defense this game. It can't be any worse than what's happening already.
New Haven
The birth town of Michael Bolton, provider of the soundtrack for Lane Kiffin and Nick Saban this week:
Not happy, no, but working on it and asking questions like "How can we stop fighting?" and "How can we start over when the fighting never ends?" and "Why the hell can't a team with Derrick Henry and T.J. Yeldon just drop a train on its opponents at any time?" Texas A&M's defense is still a glorified pair of barn doors, but that won't matter if Kiffin refuses to drive EL TRACTORCITO straight through them. (For the record: El Tractorcito, aka Alabama running back Henry, had seven carries last week. FREE DERRICK HENRY.)
Gear
"A full, lead-lined radiation suit; cobalt-tinted blast goggles; 20 gallons of clean drinking water in a lead-lined, vacuum-sealed reservoir; canned food to last for two weeks, minimum; satellite phone; full range of antibiotics; temporary fireproof shelters; emergency vaccine kit; whatever guns you can carry, plus adequate ammo; snacks."
"What I need to survive watching UCLA at Cal?"
"Correct."
Endless
Arkansas at Georgia presents a panoply of ways Arkansas could lose in an agonizing fashion. (Again.) Let's look at the odds:
- 5/1 on failed early two-point conversion that comes back to haunt
- 8/1 on missed field goal following successful field goal called dead
- 12/1 on tragic late fumble
- 17/1 on fumbling through endzone on last-ditch winning TD drive
- 35/1 on Bret Bielema being served warrant and arrested for unpaid parking tickets midway through third quarter
- 50/1 on Alabama false start call, somehow
- 100/1 on winning the thing outright, everyone being happy, and everything being okay for a week
- 4/1 on rain of frogs cancelling game (standard odds for all Arkansas games)
Reloading
Will Muschamp is going to start two quarterbacks against Mizzou. Which is more frightening: that Will Muschamp is allowed to shoot randomly if he feels threatened in the state of Florida, or that he's allowed to start two quarterbacks, ever? Probably the latter, since Will Muschamp only hits targets if he writes, "FOUR WINS AND A LOSS TO GEORGIA," on them.
Steve
As in Johnson, a thousand-yard receiver for the 2007 Kentucky Wildcats football team. That was the last Kentucky team to beat LSU, in a 43-37 win over the eventual BCS champions. Circle back to the beginning of this piece and remember that Kentucky winning things is generally associated with a year in which everything goes delightfully off course.
Your word this week: CVS BANGERS, of course.