Week 2 is over. For some, that is a good thing. For some, that is bad. It’s vibe check time, college football fans. The ten best and the ten worst:
The Best Vibes
1. Texas
This goes without saying. If we didn’t rank Texas first, we would be succumbing to recency bias or the Big 12 Mafia. Texas has the best vibes in college football right now, and possibly the world.
(The Big 12 should totally start its own mafia. That would be a lot of fun until Brett Yormark told Yahoo Sports every last detail and got Kyle Whittingham the death penalty.)
2. Kyle Konrardy
“No thoughts. Just vibes.” Wise words indeed. An exchange from the postgame presser:
Reporter: What is…your routine? Your mental routine?
Konrardy: To not think.
Konrardy vibed his way to a game-winning 54-yard field goal yesterday, knocking off Iowa State’s biggest rival, Iowa. The scene was chaotic. The play clock was expiring. Konrardy, a redshirt freshman from Dubuque, vibed that thing right through the middle of the uprights, and with some room to spare.
3. NIU
Ohhhhh yeah. These guys have great vibes. They not only upset fifth-ranked Notre Dame in South Bend, but they did it in the most MAC fashion possible, winning 16–14 while blocking two field goals.
4. Philly Kyles (Schwarber, McCord)
Sometimes, as in Kyle Schwarber’s case, Philadelphia becomes you. Sometimes, as in Kyle McCord’s case, you finally let your Philly out. Kyle McCord’s a Philly kid. Went to high school at St. Joe’s Prep, grew up across the river in New Jersey. At Ohio State, he didn’t show this a whole lot. I’m sure he wasn’t silent or anything, but watching him, you didn’t see a five-star quarterback from Philadelphia. At Syracuse?
Now that is a Philly Kyle.
(Schwarber’s on here because you can’t mention Philadelphia and a guy named Kyle in a post about good vibes without bringing up Schwarbs. That’d be sacrilegious.)
5. Fernando Mendoza
Between Miller Moss and Fernando Mendoza, it’s a big year for California quarterbacks whose headshots make them look like the villainous preppy frat in an early 2000’s comedy. Mendoza, unlike Moss, is someone we can love. He plays for Cal! Little old Cal. Mendoza saw the future in 2022. A high school senior, the QB picked the Bears over Yale, realizing Cal would end up in the ACC and he’d get to play games in his native Florida. What he maybe didn’t realize is that he’d lead Cal to an upset of Auburn on the Plains in his eleventh career start.
He’s mostly on here because his name is fun to say. It’s a great name. Liked the Bears’ unis yesterday, too.
6. Mike Leach’s Ghost
I hope ghosts are real, because I feel like Mike Leach would adore being a ghost. He would find it so interesting.
Washington State’s offense didn’t exactly look Leachian in the Cougs’ win over similarly Leach-indebted Texas Tech, and neither did the Red Raiders. But the schools organized the game and invited Leach’s earthly family, and I like to think the pirate was swinging his sword in the air above Martin Stadium in celebration of the occasion. There will never be another Mike Leach.
7. GJ Kinne
Texas State is good for the first time since people were still calling it Southwest Texas State and it was playing in the FCS. The reason? Head coach GJ Kinne is a program-builder.
It started with Incarnate Word, an FCS school in San Antonio. Now Kinne’s at Texas State, a Group of Five school up I-35 in San Marcos. We can only assume he’s bound for Baylor, further up I-35, and then Dallas, where he will coach the Cowboys to a return to glory. If our vibrometer is correct, the man is on pace to win the Super Bowl in February 2029.
8. Bret Bielema? Can that be correct?
“If you die fearing God and painfully employed, you will not go to Heaven. You’ll go to Champaign, Illinois.”
Congratulations, Bret. The Big Ten West may have died, but Illinois wins over Ranked Kansas™ live forever.
9. Jason Kelce’s Marketing Agent
I refuse to become jaded by 1) hearing about Kirk Herbstreit’s dog and 2) seeing Jason Kelce during every commercial break. I refuse to let life on this Internet steal these joys from me. Every time Jason Kelce comes on my TV, I will quiet myself and listen to what he has to say. I will consider the product he is advertising, and I will be likelier to purchase said product because of Jason Kelce’s endorsement.
Whoever’s booking Jason Kelce these commercials has the easiest job in the world.
10. Lee Corso
What’s that? Coach picked road winners on each of the first two College Gamedays of the season? Give some credit where the credit’s due.
**
Those vibes? Good. These vibes? Well…
The Worst Vibes
1. Notre Dame
Has Notre Dame considered that God’s mom maybe doesn’t like them?
2. Michigan
The good news for Michigan is that they won a national championship last year. The bad news is that even though their massive cheating scandal came before the title and probably didn’t help them win it, every non-Michigan fan in the country has agreed to remember it differently. Michigan can’t argue with us, either. If Michigan tries to argue with us, they’ve already lost.
3. The Sanders Family
Did Deion Sanders remove his starting quarterback with the game still in reach? Did that quarterback—Deion Sanders’s son—leave the sideline and head to the locker room with two minutes on the clock and the game still theoretically in the balance? Yes. The answer to those questions is yes.
This is fair, of course. If the rest of Colorado’s players didn’t want their head coach and starting quarterback to abandon them, the rest of Colorado’s players shouldn’t have thrown that pick six in the first quarter or convinced everyone they knew how to coach football when they do not know how to coach football.
4. Kent State
Some FCS teams—like Idaho—are hardly FCS teams. Losing to them stinks, but there isn’t much shame in it. Other FCS teams—Saint Francis, the Pennsylvania one (the New York one got rid of sports)—are 100% FCS teams. Kent State lost to Saint Francis yesterday. Kent State lost to an FCS team’s FCS team.
5. Kentucky
Another state that starts with Kent? Kent-ucky. More like Kent-yucky!!!! (*shows self the door*)
The Cats got shitstomped yesterday by a South Carolina team that almost lost to Old Dominion. You could say it’s too bad Texas A&M didn’t take Mark Stoops from them, but saying that presumes Kentucky would have replaced Mark Stoops with someone better than Mark Stoops.
6. Utah State
Imagine you are Utah State. You’re down 41–0 to USC. Your starting quarterback missed the game with an injury. Their backup quarterback is in and has already scored a touchdown. It’s after midnight on your body clock. You want this game to end. You would really like this game to end.
The lights go out at the Coliseum.
I wonder if that delay (and the game in general) was worse in person or for players’ families back in Logan who’d had to find the game on Big Ten Network. We talk about how Cal’s affected by USC changing conferences, but we never talk about how Utah State players’ families are affected. They’re big families, too.
7. Arkansas
I was admittedly a little busy (taking a selfie with the Texas/Michigan final score), so while I had Arkansas and Oklahoma State playing on a different screen, I couldn’t tell you exactly how Arkansas managed to lose. I would love to have it recounted for me by sixty different 60-year-old Razorbacks fans, all at the same time. Someone should make an app for that.
8. Cincinnati
Cincy was so close to escaping notice for this, because the Big 12 needs a worst team and Colorado’s in a different category. But beneath that innocent “Pitt 28, Cincy 27” final score is a Bearcat squad who led 27–6 late in the third quarter. At home. Against Pitt. That Pitt. The usual Pitt. We’re not talking about a different Pitt here.
9. Western Illinois
Don’t think we didn’t notice, Western Illinois. Don’t think we didn’t see that on Friday night. 77 points? Against Indiana? The usual Indiana?
10. Brian Kelly
Nothing all that special this week (he did “scold” his kicker, as one ESPN description of the video framed it). Brian Kelly just has a standing engagement on the worst vibes list. It’s like those musicians who play the same jazz club at the same time every week.
