In the interest of better informing you of the context surrounding this post:
Truly Madly Deeply is stuck in my head right now. I feel like this has some connection to the Bears and Jaguars playing in London.
The vibes! Let’s check ‘em.
1. More Vanderbilt
The best vibes of the week do not go to Eugene, Oregon, or to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, or even to Austin, Texas, where Dua Lipa wore a Longhorn jersey last night at ACL. (Someone told me in high school that burnt orange is a complimentary color when your skin has fall tones, like mine and Dua Lipa’s.) No, the best vibes remain in Nashville, where your Vanderbilt Commodores have a winning record in SEC play.
How is Vandy doing it?
I think it’s a false sense of security.
Vanderbilt spent the last 100 years lulling the SEC to sleep. Now, they’re cashing checks. Congratulations to Missouri, the last team to play Vandy before the ‘Dores opened up. You caught a break there, Eliah.
2. Ducks
Ok yeah the Ducks are vibing.
I feel like the difference between the Dan Lanning Ducks and the Chip Kelly Ducks is that Chip Kelly’s were about Nike and Dan Lanning’s are about Puddles, which may or may not be the official name of Oregon’s mascot. When Chip Kelly’s Oregon was doing its thing, we kept looking at them saying, “Wow. That’s a lot of uniforms!” Now, every college has one thousand possible uniform combinations. That part is normal to us. This allows us to focus our attention on the big silly anthropomorphic waterfowl, one who’s right at that Gritty level of being unrestrained yet not performatively over the line (like the Stanford marching band). To be clear, that’s the Gritty level. Not a gritty level.
3. Bryson Daily
Hopefully Travis Hunter’s shoulder’s ok. But if he isn’t, may I interest Heisman voters in some Bryson Daily? The man is averaging three or four touchdowns a game, mostly on the ground. The man is leading one of the most efficient offenses in all of college football. The man is preparing to serve our country.
You’re not going to support the troops? In an election year?? Nice try, journos.
4. Death Valley
The biggest testament to the unrelenting vibrational power of Death Valley is that Brian Kelly has been LSU’s coach for three years now and the vibes are still good. You could watch Elizabeth Warren and Ted Cruz debate one another, and if that debate took place at Tiger Stadium in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, you would have a good time.
Especially if it was a night game.
5. Silas Bolden
The moment Texas stole Oklahoma’s soul did not come early in the second quarter, when the Longhorns finally took the lead after a sputtering start to the game. It didn’t come after the game, when the Longhorns inexplicably brought a Baker Mayfield jersey to midfield and stabbed it with a flagpole. The moment Texas reduced Oklahoma to an SEC filler program came when Quintrevion Wisner fumbled the football the way a cartoon fumbles a football and Silas Bolden somehow managed to win the race to it, dive on it, and control it in his hands before he slid out the back of the endzone.
I don’t know whether Bolden was hustling to stay involved in the play or hustling because he wanted to be the first one to celebrate with Wisner if he scored. Either way: Vibes guy.
6. Tyler Warren
How has Penn State not had a transcendent tight end before? This feels like a miss. Penn State is nothing if not a cross between Notre Dame and Iowa. Tyler Warren is overdue.
7. Onside Kickers
There are fewer greater joys in life than a successful onside kick. Recognition, then, for Kai Kroeger of South Carolina, Everett Hayes of Oregon State, Andrew Boyle of Oregon, and Ben Freehill of Purdue. I’m sorry if I missed any successful onsides yesterday. Those four were all a blast. Each unique, too!
8. Lane (Not Kiffin)
Lane Thomas: Bad man.
The Cleveland Guardians: Bad men.
Surely this will work out perfectly for Major League Baseball and Rob Manfred will get either a Subway Series or Yankees/Dodgers, right?
9. Skatte-Boo!
Great work by Arizona State committing to the October theme. Few things scarier than Cam Skattebo. He’s like a polar bear. Incredibly dangerous but so bouncy that you want to pick him up and hug him. Boo!
10. BYU
BYU’s funny when they’re good because they’ll bring you into their beautiful home, entertain you with a gymnastically trained mascot who spins fire between his legs, and give you ice cream between quarters, all while kicking your ass. They should have made a scene in the Book of Mormon where Cal fans went to Provo, begrudgingly had a great time, and lost by 40 points while a bunch of Samoans gave their quarterbacks’ grandchildren CTE.
1. Ryan Day While a Game’s Going On
Hey guys, here’s a fun joke about Will Howard’s run on last night’s final play:
Looks like Ryan Day finally found a quarterback as smart as he is!
The wonderful silly thing about Ryan Day—besides his personal rivalry with Lou Holtz*—is that he’s a very good coach for 99% of the year. Almost every day, Ryan Day is a great head football coach at the college level. Then, he gets stressed out. Once he gets stressed out, he gets overwhelmed, and bad things happen to him. I’m sure somebody has a good account of whose fault it was that the Buckeyes didn’t snap the ball sooner after the offensive pass interference, but it’s so fun to blame it on Day, especially because you just know it bothers him like nothing else. “Stupid Ryan!” you can see him muttering to himself, sitting in his booster seat on the flight back to Columbus. But then: “But Seth should have snapped it!!!”
Poor Ryan Day.
*I loved that they called the basketball Avery Johnson from the booth during the football Avery Johnson’s game last night. I wish, though, that somebody had a camera on Lou Holtz sleeping peacefully while Oregon held off Ohio State. I want a Lou Holtz Cam during every Ohio State game, and I want him to be eating pudding and watching Fox News and going to bed at 8 PM.
2. Oklahoma
The biggest indictment of were Oklahoma’s at these days is that a blowout loss to their ostensible biggest rival doesn’t even have us doing “Is Brent Venables on the hot seat??”
If Ohio State lost to Michigan like that, Ohio State fans would find Ryan Day’s childhood home and schedule an implosion, like it was the Tropicana.
3. Kirby Smart
This is a funny way to reach this conclusion, because Kirby Smart has done a lot of other bad things in the public eye, but for some reason, seeing Kirby Smart push Michael Van Buren was what clarified it for me. That was the moment it all clicked into place. Kirby Smart’s not a good dude!
It’s not like Smart went full Woody Hayes or anything, but it was a wild move, and it’s helpful how much of Goergia football can be explained by reminding oneself that Kirby Smart does not behave in a particularly upstanding manner. Of course Kirby Smart doesn’t care that he’s running a burgeoning manslaughter syndicate. Kirby Smart is an asshole. And not in the redeeming, gruff way.
4. Tuscaloosa
Meanwhile, Alabama’s chosen tack in responding to the Vanderbilt upset was to make it look less surprising in hindsight. “Sorry, haters, but actually? We’re just not that good!”
Bummer that we didn’t get the second straight unranked loss. I’d love to see Alabama fans after two straight unranked losses. They might also implode Ryan Day’s childhood home, along with other vast swaths of this country.
5. Mack Brown
I’ve got a theory about UNC football, and it goes like this:
Someone in this program is losing games on purpose.
I don’t think it’s Mack Brown. I think he’s a victim here. But Georgia Tech was trying to run out the clock yesterday and get the game to overtime, and UNC managed to allow a 68-yard go-ahead touchdown run in the final thirty seconds. Something weird’s going on in Chapel Hill.
6. The Cam Rising Experience™
It was one thing when Kyle Whittingham kept not letting us know whether Cam Rising would play. It was another when he started demonstrating why he’d been so hesitant. If anybody thought Utah had been babying Rising with his injuries, Friday night’s “quarterback who can’t grip the ball” demonstration was a dizzying counterpoint. In hindsight, it’s crazy that the Utes came so close to a win.
7. Pac-12 Kickers
A counterweight to the onside kick celebrations. We had bad and/or untimely and/or one–too–many misses from Washington’s Grady Gross, Cal’s Ryan Coe, USC’s Michael Lantz (who has big frat villain energy in his official photo), and Oregon’s Atticus Sappington. Sappington eventually made the game-winning kick, but he’s also played both sides of the Civil War*, so we won’t apologize for including him on the bad vibes list.
*The Oregon/Oregon State Civil War. Not the Union/Confederacy one. To our knowledge, Atticus Sappington has never expressed controversial views regarding slavery. Wouldn’t put it past him, though!!!!!! (Kidding. I would put it past him.)
8. Lincoln Riley
What if Lincoln Riley’s defensive coordinator position is cursed now, and every year we’ll get a new one who meets some terrible fate at the end of the school year?
9. MACtion
Shoutout Purdue, who nearly escaped MAC status with a furious comeback against Illinois. Shoutout also to Buffalo, who keeps murdering its conference office’s hopes and dreams. You want a favorite, MAC? Well maybe you shouldn’t have added a SUNY school back in the 90’s.
10. Not Brian Kelly This Week
There were moments. He mf’d a kicker, a quarterback, and probably that referee he was beseeching when they came out of the commercial break. But the man got a big win, and we aren’t here to pick on Brian Kelly. We’re just here to check vibes. He still gets this spot—we’re not going to kick him out of house and home—but this week, Brian Kelly’s vibes were not the tenth-worst in the country.
