Cavalcade Of Whimsy: Trevor Knight’s Wild Day

    E-mail Pete FiutakFollow me … don’t cost nothin’ @PeteFiutak   Sorry if this column sucks, it’s not my fault … Iowa State athletic director Jamie Pollard

    E-mail Pete Fiutak
    Follow me … don’t cost nothin’ @PeteFiutak  

    Sorry if this column sucks, it’s not my fault … Iowa State athletic director Jamie Pollard ripped me a new one for reversing a blurb at the end of the first half and saying Oklahoma State running back Desmond Roland really did score. 

    Fully aware that there are approximately 4 bazillion bigger things to dive into from this last weekend … Look, Jamie, bro – by the way, use of the term bro should never, ever,ever be tolerated except for extreme circumstances, like now – the frustration and anger at Big 12 officiating is fine if you think your football team is on the wrong end of some key calls, but if you’re going to go to the wall, if you’re going to rant that hard, if you’re going to call out the media outlets for not going apespit over the obvious grand-scale conspiracy by the entire planet to keep Iowa State football from ever reaching its full potential, don’t scream about the officials and lose 37-20. 

    Mmmmm, Carl’s Jr. … Trevor Knight threw a key pick six and Oklahoma lost to TCU, but Katy Perry just became Brent Musburger to Knight’s Katherine Webb and made him into a household name and star. That loss to the Horned Frogs might suck right now, but in the grand scheme of things, someday way too soon, Knight’s 45-year-old married-with-kids-and-life ego will look back on Saturday, October 4th as a push. Just like that throw to Paul Dawson, Trev, you’re not getting that Perry moment back. 

    It’s one of the funny things about college football – and sports, in general – that’s being pointed out to me more and more. To me, the truly oblivious, I’m dealing with college football players and evaluating them on their talent – to me, they’re just dudes playing football. However, to those who don’t care about sports and rather like looking at 18-to-22-year-old young men, depending on the position, some of these guys are among the most amazing and best-looking physical specimens on the planet. I have friends who make the NFL Combine appointment viewing every year, and they don’t care a lick about football.

    It all might’ve worked out had Russell Brand been able to beat Alabama … The entire conversation between Perry and Knight on their first date … 
    Trevor: “So … uhhhhh … do you like football, and stuff?” 
    Katy: “On the pick six, were they showing you a single-high safety look out of their 4-2-5 alignment, and why didn’t you check out of the play when it looked like the linebackers might shoot through the B-gap and blow the play up before you could check down and get the hot read the ball in space? Sorry … I didn’t get a chance to actually see it.” 
    Trevor: “You’re pretty.” 

    The LSU blowout loss to Auburn didn’t exactly get the Les Miles camp fired up …Michigan people, no, you’re not going to get Jim Harbaugh. Being the head coach at Michigan is among the most powerful, prestigious and important jobs in all of sports, but you don’t go from movies to TV unless you absolutely have to. Harbaugh might be on the outs with San Francisco, but if I show you the hottest coach in the world, and you’ll show me the guy who’s sick of him, and then I’ll show you 20 more guys who’ll be right there waiting to swoop in – that’s what several pro teams are going to think with Harbaugh available. 

    NFL coaches don’t really want to be college coaches unless that’s their only real option – the NFL is the NFL. That’s the league. That’s the show. That’s why several Texas types were absolutely delusional when they thought they could get Mike Tomlin, or a Harbaugh, any Harbaugh. The other reason, Michigan, you’re not getting Harbaugh is that my life just isn’t that charmed. Jim Harbaugh and Urban Meyer in the same division as part of the Michigan-Ohio State rivalry?! As a football writer, just wrap that up and call it Christmas. 

    Those who don’t learn from history are doomed to sit through a replay of the 2013 BCS championship … You do, of course, realize that Alabama and Oregon are still probably going to play each other for the national championship, right? 

    If you’re baseball on Saturday, October 4th, you didn’t stand a chance … This Saturday was as much fun as you can possibly have watching college football, and the entire weekend was as wild and crazy as it gets, but there’s one thing to remember as you’re coming down off your college football high this week. 

    It’s quite possible that nothing that just happened actually made a difference in what’s going to happen come early January. 

    It’s my weekly reminder – the ballgame has changed, and the rules of the past don’t apply. I have to keep saying this again and again and again and again, the playoff and its four teams are going to come down to perception as well as merit, but in this first year, I can guarantee that the 13-member committee will make a big, giant deal out of winning your conference championship before anything else. That means that if you’re an Ohio State, and you’re rocking and rolling over the last two months of the season on the way to a Big Ten title and a 12-1 record, that Virginia Tech loss of a few weeks ago probably won’t matter. 

    That means that Oregon losing to Arizona doesn’t really matter. The Ducks aren’t in unless they win the Pac-12 title anyway, since no conference outside of the SEC has a prayer of getting two teams in. There’s no more margin for error – all bets are off for a Power 5 conference champ with two losses or more – but if Oregon runs the table, it’ll be in. The same goes for Alabama, Texas A&M, Oklahoma and Nebraska, too, because no, Ole Miss, Mississippi State and TCU are almost certainly not going to get through life unscathed, and Michigan State continuing to win probably helps the Huskers’ cause. 

    And, of course, it’s not a real leg injury until Joe Theisman tweets about it … Of course, there was absolutely nothing remotely funny about the horrific and tragic leg injury suffered by Alabama RB Kenyan Drake against Ole Miss – except for CBS’s Allie LaForce’s halftime update that informed the world that yes, Drake had been ruled “out” for the second half. 

    Oh, and by the way, O.J. Howard – FIGHT FOR THE BALL … C’mon, Blake Sims. Don’t you know the drill? You’re supposed to put on bad H&M t-shirt, sound like a 13-year-old gum-chomping girl talking in a speed-rush run-on sentence, and then promise that a lot of good will come out of this and that we’ll never see someone push the rest of the team as hard as you will. And then you’ll bless us, and then you’ll pretend that you’re a pro quarterback, Deion Sanders’ “mocabulary” won’t be “inept” enough to define what it is you do, and then you’ll end up on Good Morning America … c’mon! It’s all there in the How To Lose A Gigantic Game To Ole Miss handbook. 

    Somewhere, the BCS is walking around with a “Miss me yet?” t-shirt … I’m well aware that there are far more pressing issues in the world. We’re all about to get our heads cut off by Ebola, or we’re going to catch the Isis virus, or vice versa, or something like that, and I know that the Coaches Poll is now just a novelty in the College Football Playoff world, but still, consider my hide chapped. 

    I don’t know if the 13-member playoff committee is going to know its stuff, but I do know this, whatever they come up with is going to be better than the schlock the coaches threw together in their latest poll. 

    At the very least, USA Today, if you’re going to sponsor this, spring for a TV for all of your voters. TCU actually beat Oklahoma and is still unbeaten, right? So of course TCU should be ranked higher – Oklahoma No. 9, TCU No. 12. 

    I could be wrong, but I believe last Thursday night Arizona remained unbeaten after beating Oregon at Oregon, so of course the fighting RichRods were celebrating a giant move up in the polls … Oregon No. 11, Arizona No. 13. 

    And Michigan State did lose to Oregon, who lost to Arizona, so it should be Arizona, Oregon, Michigan State, in that order .. Michigan State is No. 8. 

    Look, coaches, we all get it. We’re all tired and there’s stuff to do, but at least try. 

    ”Yeah, we gotta word for that kinda odd in English, it’s called, suspicious.” …America. I hear you. I understand your frustration, non-SECers. I’ve read your e-mails screaming and yelling about how this all might be brutally unfair and how something about last weekend just didn’t quite seem kosher. I get it, and I know the allegations of the recent past should at least be discussed when trying to analyze how some of college football’s nouveau riche might have risen up to their 2014 powerhouse status, but if I’m being totally honest, I sort of don’t care anymore when it comes to how the sausage is made. 

    If this was 2010, my pretentious moral code detector would’ve blown a gasket by now, and I’d have gotten into at least ten message board wars with various fan bases, but after Penn State, and with the NCAA not bothering to pretend to want to police things anymore, and with the players getting so royally pantsed when they tried to finally make things fair through unionization, and considering how massive the stakes are now for the networks, the schools, and the big business of college athletics, I just want to see fun football. If you want to think some of these teams are corking their bats, go right ahead, but if they are, that’s life as we know it, and it really just doesn’t matter. 

    I tried. Real Sports tried. Yahoo! Sports tried. Sports Illustrated tried. Everyone found out the same truth that I did when it came to wondering about how some programs over the years might have acquired their talent – no one, absolutely no one, cares, especially after the ball is kicked off. 

    I’m more interested now in player safety, a more equitable distribution of the pot – not to be confused with a more equitable distribution of pot, which is fine, too – and player rights in general. It’s a new era, and a lot of the petty rules of the past don’t apply anymore. If this bothers you as a big-time college sports fan, the Ivy League would be happy to make your acquaintance. 

    ”Now I say to you, if every student on this campus were to starve, it would be worth it to save the life of a cow, or a calf …” … Speaking of Penn State, Penn State, by any chance did you notice how a few hundred Michigan students rallied and protested against the football program and athletic department for making their school look bad after handling of the Shane Morris controversy? Of course, a lot of this had to do with students wanting a better football team this year and cloaking their anger under the guise of player safety, but yes, it really is okay to rage, rage against the dying of the football culture. That’s what’s been missing from the very start of the Penn State nightmare and continues to be absent – the educated protestor who can drown out the doorknob factor. 

    There literally is no D in LA … Lazy research alert. I promise to put it in my next column if someone else can come up with the answer, but until then, I’ll make the call that no player in college football history has ever thrown for more yards in his first two starts (998) than Arizona State’s Mike Bercovici, who threw for 488 yards and three scores against UCLA and 510 yards and five touchdowns against USC. 

    It’s not Colt Brennan, it’s not Timmy Chang, it’s not Case Keenum, it’s not Connor Halliday, it’s not Andre Ware, it’s not David Klingler. I thought about going all in on Texas Tech, and Taylor Potts was in the mix, starting out the 2009 season with 861 yards against North Dakota and Rice. It’s not Baker Mayfield, who kicked off 2013 with 413 yards against SMU and 367 against Stephen F. Austin. It’s not Graham Harrell, it’s not Kliff Kingsbury, and it’s not Sonny Cumbie, who probably came the closest by starting out the 2004 season with 470 yards against SMU and 449 against New Mexico. 

    The same goes for your golf game and your fantasy football win … Yes, absolutely, I might disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it, unless you’re making the world a better place by gracing us all with who your top four is for the College Football Playoff because it’s probably really dumb and I’m almost certain it’s wrong. As soon as I hear any talking head say that Florida State is the No. 1 team in the country – click. The Seminoles might end up there, and I do think they’ll make it into the fun, but no, this team isn’t playing anywhere near like the top team in college football. 

    Part One would’ve been better … but I ate too many Katy Perry corndogs. 

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