Saw*Kick Media

“When God created Autumn he said, THIS is when we’re going to play college football.” – Beano Cook

College football is back! The tradition. The passion. The Notre Dame jokes. I love it all. And lucky for you, I’m turning this collegiate pigskin love into a weekly column! But it’s really more than a column. It’s a weekly college football extravaganza!

Why is College Football so Great?

This question cannot be answered in a single column or a series of columns. You either understand it, or you don’t. But I’m going to answer it anyway. What the hell.

I’m not sure when it happened, but D-1 college football has become my favorite sports season. Baseball is still the best sport. Golf is still life. Bocce is still the most fun; (And until the Browns finally show me otherwise, the NFL still makes me cut myself.) but the college football season brings a distinct joy that the others don’t.

College football sweats drama and craps out excitement. It generates fervid and passionate debate. It connects you in a very real way to the players of yesterday and the traditions of the past. Honestly, it becomes your life – not just during the season but year round. The intensity of the college football ties are so powerful that I’ve ended friendships after arguments. (Notice I never said college football made you a better person.)

Picking a team to root for is picking an identity. It’s a branding. And it’s not just the team you pick – it’s the conference. The conference you follow defines who you are as a person - much more than any National League vs. American League or East vs. West rivalry that is forced by a commissioners office. Are you Pac 10? Then you are a wuss who wears puka shells. Are you Big 12? Then you own livestock and drive a rusty Ford pickup that has hay bales in the back. Are you SEC? Then I’ll try to use smaller words so you can keep up. Are you Mountain West, Sun Belt, or Conference USA? Then, technically, you might not actually exist. You should look into that. (Are you Big 10? Then you are a charming, well-reasoned human being.)

See how fun it was to make fun of the SEC’s rampant stupidity and the Pac 10’s wussiness? You don’t even need a reason! I know that the SEC is perhaps the most dominant conference at the moment, and that the Pac-10 may be tough this year, and my beloved Big 10 looks awful (more on that later. I’m looking at you Michigan), but another great thing about college football is that logic never has to enter your argument.

Here’s an example: I say the Big 10 is the best conference. You tell me that, statistically, that is absurd. I then punch you in the throat. Why did I punch you in the throat solely for being a reasonable human being? Well, it’s twofold: 1) the Big 10 is the toughest conference on earth and you deserved it. 2) Because it is my identity, if you tell me the Big 10 sucks, you are telling me I suck. 3) College football isn’t for rational human beings.

(But odds are if you tell me I suck directly, I won’t punch you in the throat. Therefore, it is possible that college football is MORE than a self-definition. I’m open to that theory.)

Everything else about a school or conference - SAT scores or graduation rates - is unimportant compared to its football prowess. Even its basketball program doesn’t matter. College basketball is more like a month-long gambling problem. College football consumes your life for months on end. Every weekend. Whether it’s USC on the schedule or CSU, every snap counts. Every game matters.

And there’s another reason why the college football season reigns supreme: every game matters. Every week the drama is thicker than Mark May’s head. A college football Saturday becomes the most important day in your life – every Saturday.

It’s because of this incredible hard-on I have for college football that I want to write this rambly college football column every week. I won’t be speaking to you as any sort of expert or insider, just a rabid drinker of college football Kool-Aid.

Let’s move on to the introduction of the latest and greatest polling system in college athletics: Double C’s Awesome Poll (DCA). The DCA Poll is a complicated; yet exact formula for team ranking. It’s like the Pythagorean theorem only it shows you why the Pac-10 is a joke. The DCA is a top 20 list instead of a top 25. The reason: twenty is a rounder number, I never care about the last five of the top 25, and if I’m going to actually do this every week I need to find some way to be lazy. Before explaining the other intricacies of the system, let’s look at the debut poll:

The Double C’s Awesome Poll for week 1

1. Florida
2. Cal
3. LSU
4. USC
5. Wisconsin
6. Georgia
7. Louisville
8. West Va.
9. Ohio St.
10. Clemson
11. Penn St.
12. Oklahoma
13. Texas
14. Nebraska
15. Va. Tech
16. Arkansas
17. Georgia Tech
18. UCLA
19. Boise St.
20. Appalachian St.

1,567. Notre Dame
1,568. Michigan

I put Florida at No.1, despite my abject hatred for them and the SEC, because my DCA formula strongly believes the previous year’s champ should start the next season as the reigning No.1 team. The DCA enjoys the concept of championship reigns. The BCS champ should get some benefit for being champion, and The DCA will always let the previous champ sit atop the poll until they are beat.

I put Cal No.2 because, let’s face it, they are the only team that earned any respect the first week. They played a good Tennessee team and soundly beat them. The DCA doesn’t give too much unnecessary weight to preseason polls. Quite frankly, no poll should. The preseason polls are based on projections and only exist to feed the public’s need to debate stuff about college football. Therefore, these projections should go away when it’s time for the actual polls because the actual polls are very important. The actual polls determine the future of every team. Carving a majority of that in stone before a single game is played is a bit silly and unfair. I don’t even think a real poll should come out until about Week 4, after we’ve all gotten a chance to see these teams actually play games. This is why Cal shot up the DCA. They earned it. (They must have because Pac 10 teams normal have a 5 percent bias against them.)

“So why do you got OSU so high, asshole?” Astute question, SEC fan. The reasons are: I created the DCA and I love Ohio State. So eat it. The DCA acknowledges a 10 percent Big 10 bias in every poll.

“So why’d you drop Michigan into the lowest spot ever calculated? They’re Big 10!” Thanks Michigan fan. Not only did you embarrass the conference by getting beat by an Arn Anderson (Double A) school, you also asked a dumber question than an SEC fan. Nice.

Michigan laid an egg bigger than Mark May’s head and does not deserve to resurface in a poll for five years. I thought it was funny, and that they deserved it, and that it proved that they are a joke and all that…. but mostly I am upset about it. I’ll be getting to that shortly.

The only other team that really helped itself in The DCA is Clemson. The Tigers took down a ranked Florida State team in impressive fashion. FSU may not be any good, and Clemson may prove to be a joke later in the year, but the DCA cannot assume that. The Tigers looked good in week 1, so they jumped up. And the Clemson running attack is fun to watch. A team’s “fun” quality can help it out as well. That’s why you shouldn’t be surprised to see Hawaii move up into the argument in the near future.

A lot of nationally lauded teams like Oklahoma, Texas and UCLA are penalized in the DCA by playing weak competition compared to other teams - and not being Big 10. In the early going, when half of America is 1-0 and the other half is 0-1, rankings are fairly arbitrary. The DCA could look completely different next week. Who knows.

Most unimpressive top 20 team? Va. Tech. I don’t like the Hokies chances this week against LSU at all. Glennon did not look as terrible as I thought he would though, so I guess that’s a plus. But his chances of going into the Bayou and coming out better than a levee? We shall see.

My Thoughts on the Wolverines: I hate them.

Listen: Due to the preseason rankings, an inferior schedule and an already down Big 1, Ohio State had only one shot at returning to the championship: We had to beat a good Penn St, Wisconsin and Michigan. Beating undefeated or one-loss teams of that caliber, with that name recognition, would have gotten us in the argument, depending on how many undefeateds there were at the end. But no. Michigan screwed us.

I think they did it on purpose too. The Wolverines had no shot of submarining our season by actually beating us, so they did the only thing they could - embarrassed themselves out of relevance and lost to the second worst team on its schedule (Go Notre Dame!). This way, when we play at the end of the season, the win doesn’t help us get to the championship game. God, I hate Michigan.

Here’s another reason this loss upset me: The Wolverines are a laughingstock. The Wolverines are in the Big 10. Ohio State is in the Big 10. My soul is in the Big 10. Therefore, Michigan has made my soul a laughingstock. Not since I laughed real hard and farted in front of everyone in sixth grade have I been this embarrassed.

And that’s not fair. My archrival shouldn’t be allowed to LOSE, EMBARRASS itself in front of the world in the BIGGEST COLLEGE FOOTBALL UPSET EVER and cause ME to get upset. But such is the lunacy of college football. In the end, it’s just another unique charm of the season – you need to rely on your fiercest rivals to help you look good.

(Or maybe I’m taking this too seriously and it’s actually the funniest thing that’s ever happened. If that’s the case, let’s all re-live the moment, shall we? Oh, while we’re at it, go here and listen to “Chad Henne.”)

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And now, here is a weekly segment involving my girlfriend that may never see the light of day again, so enjoy it while you can. Every week, I’ll read her off a chunk of games. She will then select her surefire picks and say a quick quip explaining why. In the words of Brent Musberger, “You can take these to the bank, folks.”

Hannah’s Picks and Quips

Oregon St. Beavers over Cincinnati Bearcats – “I swear to god this is the absolute truth. When you told me to do this, I thought to myself that if any team is named the Beavers, I’m picking them. Like that was my first thought, and that was the first game. That’s crazy.”

Wake Forrest Demon Deacons over Nebraska Cornhuskers – “I always pick Wake Forrest in March Madness, so I’ll pick them here.”

California Golden Bears over Colorado St. Rams – “Hahahah. That’s silly. Bears aren’t golden. Haha. [Pause] Are they though? Are California bears golden?”

N.C. St. Wolfpack over Boston College Eagles – “I will never, ever, ever pick or root for Boston College because Elizabeth fucking Hasselbeck went there and there is no one I hate more than her.”

Oregon Ducks over Michigan Wolverines – “I guess I sort of like non-ferocious animals as mascots. Having said that though, and this doesn’t change my answer, when I was like 5-years-old, my mom and my grandma took me to the duck pond to feed the ducks, and the ducks must have been really hungry because they were coming really close to us, and I got really scared and ran away, but I still had the bag of bread with me, and they chased me, and they were trying to bite me. In my head, I remember the sounds of my grandma and mom laughing at me. That’s what hurts the most.”

South Carolina Gamecocks over Georgia Bulldogs – “Hahahahahahaha.”

TCU Horned Frogs over Texas Longhorns – “The picture in my head for horned frogs, I don’t know why, is a frog with a crown on.”

KSU over Kentucky – Go Flashes!!

Big Cane Pulls Me Off Stage

I hope all of you enjoyed this first unnamed extravaganza as much as I did. I look forward to talking college football with all of you for the duration of the season. Next week, I’ll pee on the Big 10 Network, debut the latest The DCA Poll, give one of my arch enemies time to share his thoughts, and compare Lloyd Carr to John Kerry. Until then, Go Bucks!

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