The college football season is winding down.
Let’s make the most of what we’ve got in an action-packed November.
An ode for LSU (Arkansas Fight)
Brought to you once more courtesy of Bob Marley, Tito’s Vodka, and the maddening frustration of predictability. For all of its glorious chaos, some things in college football do not change. Nobody will ever know what targeting is. Kickers will always break your heart. A team with a superior rushing attack and superior defense will blowout a team without those things, if the team without those things allows the game to be played in the box formed between the tackles, the running backs, and the linebackers. These things are practically a mathematical constant. Last night Arkansas fought the math and the math won.
A quest for the Groza award (College and Magnolia)
Last year, Daniel Carlson’s fantastic season of kicking footballs through the uprights inspired me to take a closer look at just how good he was. Basic measures like percentage of attempts made and the number good kicks over 50 yards didn’t tell the whole story in my opinion.
A victory cigar! (Dawg Sports)
As great as our defense played on Saturday in a stunning victory over the hated Auburn Tigers, the offense - and the offensive line - manned up in a big, big way when they absolutely had to. It feels great typing that.
South Carolina opens up 2-0 (Garnet & Black Attack)
Any doubt that this edition of South Carolina Gamecocks basketball belongs to Sindarius Thornwell may have already been dispelled just two games in. After a sluggish week of practice, Carolina - led by a solid performance by their senior guard - bounced back from a less-than-stellar win over Louisiana Tech on Friday and followed that up with a 81-49 rout of Holy Cross. The Gamecocks improve to 2-0 on the young campaign with the win.
A costly 3rd quarter (Good Bull Hunting)
There are a hundred things from last night to point at and call horrible. In the interest of our own sanity, we’ve chosen to focus on just the third quarter. That bumbling, inept, shitshow of a third quarter where we allowed Ole Miss to hang around and did absolutely nothing to salt the game away despite having so many chances. Sure, the fourth quarter was bad too, but if we’d done anything at all in the third, it may not have mattered.
It’s Shea team now (Red Cup Rebellion)
Freeze elected to go with Patterson — for the most part — against Texas A&M, on the road, and in primetime. And it worked. He owned every Ole Miss freshman quarterback yardage record, and he only got better as the game sauntered on.
Mizzou gets a commit! (Rock M Nation)
Hammond, La., defensive end/outside linebacker Chris Turner officially visited Missouri this weekend for the Tigers’ win over Vanderbilt. With Missouri being his only major-conference offer, it was easy to suspect he might commit over the weekend. He did.
A scorecard for Tennessee-Kentucky (Rocky Top Talk)
Beyond Maxim 3, the game was won through the Seventh Maxim. 10.2 yards per play is Big XII-esque (or 80's era WAC-esque, if you're old enough). But the game was won in the Red Zone: Tennessee scored touchdowns, Kentucky (mostly) kicked field goals and had a back-breaking turnover. And that's how a team turns fewer big plays, more overall turnovers, and giving up over 400 yards of rushing into a double-digit win.
Kentucky takes down Canisius (A Sea of Blue)
Though they won by 24, Kentucky led Canisius by just nine points at halftime. Led by their three starting guards who combined for 58 points, the Wildcats pulled away from the Golden Griffins in the second half for a 93-69 win and move their record to 2-0.
Is the SEC bad? Maybe not! (SB Nation)
Last week on our uber professional staff conference call I said “guys, hasn’t this season been kinda boring?” It was so boring and so banal that I figured going to a wedding would be a better use of my time than watching games. Uhh, perhaps that was a mistake. But conference power rankings do not take weeks off to celebrate nuptials. The only marriage these rankings acknowledge is that of chaos and football.
Chaos leads to shakeup (SB Nation)
We're about to learn more than we ever have before about what the College Football Playoff committee thinks. That might not sound like much, considering it's only been around for less than three years now. But 2016's Week 11, which featured three undefeated teams losing and four other top-20 teams falling to unranked teams, set up scenarios that'll finally tell us exactly how much the committee values certain things.
There’s Alabama, then everyone else (SB Nation)
Everything nothing changed in college football's Week 11 action. One on hand, almost every title contender looked vulnerable and hinted at chaos on the horizon. On the other hand ... Alabama.
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