What game are you looking forward to watching this week?
TAMU South Carolina
What game are you looking forward to watching this week?
Illinois has 27 individual uniform combinations. I hate week 1.
Uncalled forHey, Illinois, shiny new uniform combinations won't mask that your team is a turd on the field. Now they'll just look like turds too.
Man, what a whoopin' by A&M. Love it. Never knew where the SC love was coming from, but their terrible defense did hide the fact that they've got a pretty solid QB.
UCF opens against Penn State tomorrow. Should be a good game.
Go Knights!!!
Uncalled for
What a ending to a game to start off college football Saturday!
The first half was a little slow but the second half was back and forth, fast paced, and after that big 4th down conversion UCF scored way to quick.
Good game from Dublin
Yeah, tough loss for the Knights.![]()
Tough win for Bama. Sims played fairly well despite some errors, but D was horrible. Dropped passes and Adam Griffith saved them. Fortunately they have a couple of games to get their act in order.
Bama played so terribly against a vastly inferior opponent that they should drop in the polls, even with a win. The pollsters won't, though, because they're weak-minded and lazy.
Now that said, I think they have more than enough time to make the necessary tweaks to be the fearsome team I think everyone believes they are capable of becoming. The time to for someone to beat Bama is now when they don't have all the pieces in place - not later. The last thing you (well, all us non-Bama fans) want is Bama on a roll.
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This FSU/Ok State game sure is interesting, while Wisconsin/LSU hasn't disappointed after one half.
The Florida-Idaho football game officially is now a non-event, with the schools announcing Wednesday afternoon that it will not be replayed after being terminated by a massive electrical storm Aug. 30.
There will be no makeup date.
But the non-game did serve one purpose. It allowed Florida coach Will Muschamp to free three players from disciplinary jail based on time served. Gators Darious Cummings, Demarcus Robinson and Jay-nard Bostwick were reinstated after being suspended for a game that wasnt played.
Its a clever accounting trick, even if it boils down to a lack of accountability. Players broke rules and didnt have to pay the price that hurts the most: playing time.
But these are the kinds of odd developments that arise when a thousand lightning bolts turn the season opener into fiasco. Its complicated.
Well get back to Muschamp and the players in a moment. First, the cancellation fallout.
Neither the Gators nor Vandals got to play a game theyd been looking forward to for months. Idaho will still receive $950,000 of what was a guarantee of $975,000, so the low-budget school gets the payday it badly needs. And Florida will make good to the fans who purchased tickets and will get one less home game than they paid for.
There was a mutual open date, Oct. 25, but that certainly wasnt attractive to Florida and perhaps not to Idaho, either. It falls between league games for both the Gators play defending SEC East champion Missouri on Oct. 18 and 2014 SEC East favorite Georgia on Nov. 1. The Vandals also would be squeezing in a cross-country trip between conference games: Sun Belt brethren New Mexico State before and Arkansas State after.
Florida absolutely didnt want to surrender its bye week before a game that could decide the division. Idaho probably wasnt crazy about signing up for a beatdown at that point in the schedule, either.
Truth is, this game only was valuable to Florida as a dress rehearsal. It was a low-stress chance to get quarterback Jeff Driskel up to game speed in coordinator Kurt Ropers new offense, to see new offensive line coach Mike Summers unit in action, and to get freshmen indoctrinated into college ball. With that opportunity gone, rescheduling made risk higher than reward.
In addition to the loss in mental preparation time and physical recovery time for the Cocktail Party game, what if this turns out to be a magical season for Florida? What if the Gators wind up in the hunt for a playoff berth? Playing Idaho almost certainly is not going to help their strength of schedule. Better to play 11 regular season games than a 12th that serves as a power-rating anchor.
Florida has another patsy lined up for this Saturday in Eastern Michigan, which was last seen comically trying to flail its way through a cinder block wall in a moment that is emblematic of the programs historic futility. So this would seem to be a low-risk opportunity to roll over the player suspensions from week one.
But Muschamp opted not to do that. Instead, all three will be back in uniform.
To be fair, they did miss a play. Singular. There was an opening kickoff against Idaho before the game was canceled. Apparently that is penalty enough.
The un-suspensions drew plenty of scorn and mocking from the world outside Gainesville, and Muschamp did not take kindly to that. He got a little chesty on the weekly Southeastern Conference teleconference Wednesday.
"It's not just about suspending players for games," Muschamp said. "There's a lot of things that go into discipline. It's about altering and changing behavior, which we've done. I think our discipline speaks for itself and how we've handled our football team, OK? If it was about suspension, you'd never have an issue. Right?
"At the end of the day, it's more than that. There's a lot of things that go into those situations, a lot more than people know. And it's very frustrating for me as a coach ... to have someone being critical and you don't even have all the information."
Muschamp wasnt going to supply that information, of course. But it can be presumed that in the case of the two defensive linemen (Robinsons discipline was a university decision, whereas the other two broke unspecified team rules) they got the usual treatment: running stairs or other physical exercise, sitting out key periods of practice and not being involved in the game plan or game prep. When kickoff came (and went) they were not suited up to play.
So there was some punishment involved. And the intent was there to have them sit a game. But the follow-through was weak.
Bringing them back for Eastern Michigan is not a move to ensure winning the game. If the Gators couldnt win without those three this week, Muschamp wont be around to see Kentucky arrive for the SEC opener Sept. 6. And truth be told, Muschamps disciplinary record is solid in his time at Florida certainly better than predecessor Urban Meyers.
"At the end of the day, I make the decisions in this program, I handle the discipline in this program and it's been handled very well," Muschamp said on the teleconference.
But at the end of the day, Will Muschamp also went back on what he (or someone) believed was the appropriate penalty for violating rules. That squishy line of discipline may not resonate well with the players who have always stayed on the right side of it. And it feels like a coach who will scurry through an available loophole to avoid administering the only kind of penalty with teeth.
So if there is a winner from The Opener That Never Happened, its the three Florida Gators who got off with time served. One play.
Bama vs FAU (don't judge me) Roll Tide
Oregon vs Michigan St
USC vs Stanford
This game is critical for the B1G. A one loss B1G team probably won't make a playoff.
I'm really looking forward to see how msu handles this fast paced offense