This week's installment may be a little on the brief side. Why? Because it's hard to type with broken thumbs. The beverage of choice is a bottle of Oxycontin. Schedule II narcotics make it aaaaaaall better.
LAST WEEK
Let's take an astoundingly brief moment and analyze what went right last week: Ole Miss got pummeled by texas. Other than that? NOT A DAMN THING. One and six. Awful. Putrid. A slate so dead I should be charged with necrophilia. Last week I said we were due for a few cockpunches. The entire day was one gigantic cockpunch. Just a continual assault on the entire cash-and-prizes region. A soothing bag of frozen peas has never been so cherished. Suffice it to say, it's a good thing me and the local pawn shop owner are tight. And let me tell you, those fine folks that do auto title loans? Very friendly people. Highly recommended.
THE PICKS
The up side is it's hard to be perpetually bad, and a new weekend of action has arrived. Rally hats on, people! Let's go!
THE GAME: CLEMSON +14 at FLORIDA STATE
Get excited, everyone! It's the one ACC game we'll possibly care about all year! Florida State is back. No really, this year, they PROMISE they're back. For real this time. This totally isn't like the last seven times they've been back. But unless they're gonna borrow some points from West Virginia (who just scored again), it won't be enough to truly clobber Dabo's group. Noles get the W, but learn that Climpson is a little tougher than the marshmallow soft schedule they've faced to date.
THE PICK: CLEMSON +14
THE GAME: RUTGERS +9 at ARKANSAS
SMILE! SMILE EVERYONE! OR I'M STOPPING THIS COLUMN RIGHT NOW! (Which would probably be best for all parties, but I digress...) This week I started to feel a little down, as you might have imagined, but then I looked at John L. Smith's bankruptcy filing and felt WAAAAAY better about myself. Credit to him, it may be entirely unintentional, but he can motivate. Arkansas on the whole is more than a little ill at the moment, while a Big East opponent is the tanker trunk of Pepto Bismol of the college football world. Tyler Wilson's bruised brain bucket is back and the pigs make a we're-not-quite-dead-yet statement. (Though I'd be lying if I wasn't a little morbidly curious to see what mindblowing YouTube karaoke performance is in store should Arkansas fall to Rutgers.)
THE PICK: ARKANSAS -9
THE GAME: LSU -20.5 at AUBURN
Let me put this as succinctly and nicely as I can: Auburn is not a good football team. They really had no business beating ULM last week, requiring a gadget play for a TD and a end-of-half hail mary for 14 of their 28 regulation points against Kolton Browning's mighty Warhawks. (If ever there was a college football player that should be sponsored by the NRA, it should be Kolton Browning, no? At least until Wesson Winchester comes along.) On the other side, Lesticles rarely misses an opportunity to put a floundering conference opponent's dick in the dirt. Tigers of the bayou variety blow out the Tigers of the plains variety. And Auburn boosters stock up on 25 year old volleyballin' blondes to ensure a bountiful supply for Bobby Petrino.
THE PICK: LSU -20.5
THE GAME: KENTUCKY +23 at FLORIDA
Death. Taxes. Florida beating Kentucky in football. There are few things one can be certain of in this world, but the Gators give us one annually. The last time Kentucky won this game, Hoosiers had just hit theaters. Like, the day before. I looked it up and everything. On November 14th, 1986 the world was introduced to Jimmy Chitwood, and the next day Kentucky got its most recent win over Florida. Gators coming off two big road wins handle the team from can-it-please-be-basketball-season-already. As always. But they're sort of disinterested in the whole affair, which is to say there are late night party plans that require their attention. Weed doesn't just smoke itself, gentlemen.
THE PICK: KENTUCKY +23
THE GAME: MISSOURI +10 at SOUTH CAROLINA
Tigers are beat up and making their first trip away from Columbia, going on the road to... Columbia. It's a mutual municipal celebration of European exploration and colonialism, SEC style. Head Ball Coach gets to put a "Welcome to road games in the SEC" knot on Gary Pinkel's large dome. (Gary, as a fellow cranially endowed American, I sympathize. It's impossible to find hats that fit.) Mizzou's already beat up, and the 'Cocks play big boy football to win comfortably.
THE PICK: SOUTH CAROLINA -10
THE GAME: VANDERBILT +14.5 at GEORGIA
Vandy fights hard, bless their little private school hearts, but they just don't have much of an offense. Can't trust a team to cover on the road when they've managed a total of 26 points against the only two legitimate opponents they've faced to date. And yes, I was just forced to describe Northwestern as a "legitimate opponent". Also, Jarvis Jones frightens me, and on the extremely off chance someone reads this column to him, I don't want to risk him taking umbrage.
THE PICK: GEORGIA -14.5
THE GAME: MICHIGAN +6 at NOTRE DAME
The pomp. The circumstance. The arrogance. Can one stadium contain all that smugness? And if so, is there any way we can arrange to just keep it there on a permanent basis? College football royalty collide (Ok, more like slowly run into each other. This is midwest football we're talking about here.) as the media sort of blissfully forgets that Michigan was completely embarrassed by Bama three short weeks ago. The Domers' effort in East Lansing last week was sort of impressive (though Sparty's valiant defense and utterly inept offense gave me troubling flashbacks to the RC Slocum era), and I don't trust Michigan's bailing-wire-and-duct-tape defense. Neither should you.
THE PICK: NOTRE DAME -6
In case last week wasn't evidence enough, don't follow my picks.
LAST WEEK: 1-6
SEASON RECORD: 8-13