Scattershooting the rest of the season ahead, a fancy football trophy, and a nice morning cocktail.

Scattershooting while wondering whatever happened to Toby Gerhart...

- Year one of Jimbo was never going to be defined by our first four games in September. Expectations were for a 2-2 start as soon as the schedule came out. It would have take a monumental collapse to lose 3 games, same as it would have been to win 3 games. I’m excited to get the rest of the season underway at this point. Every remaining SEC game on the schedule is both winnable and losable. Even this weekend against Arkansas. After four games where the outcomes had little chance of surprising, we now have two months of real intrigue from week to week. I’m fired up to see Kellen Mond the rest of this season. Daylon Mack is having himself an damn fine senior season. This team appears ready to improve each week. Enjoy The Ride.

- As our friend Whoopy has pointed out before, we love mascots that are native to the region where the school exists. It’s even better when that particular school has a live mascot. The wild hogs are native to Arkansas, and although Tusk is technically a Russian boar, it works since the feral pigs in this area are thought to have come from Russian boars. For programs that have actual live mascots native to their area, the Colorado Buffalo would probably have to be ranked first overall. And as much as I hate it, Bevo would likely be in second. A longhorn steer for a Texas school really does fit well. And I realize several schools have live Eagles and Hawks and birds, but those aren’t associated with a particular area of the country. A few other schools with native animals have tried this but no longer have live mascots. The Florida Gators, Cal Bears, New Mexico Lobos, and Oregon State Beavers are some prime examples of that. A beaver should be fairly simple to have for a live mascot. They need to get that going again in Corvallis.

- Chad Morris and Gordon Ramsay have never been seen in the same place at the same time. In fact, Chad Morris is now Chef Chad to me.

- As a degenerate gambler, it’s really nice to have a fun and exciting Hawaii team back in our lives. High scoring offense and very little defense is the perfect recipe for placing bets around 11:00 pm on a Saturday night. Afetr a full day of football watching, drinking, and gambling, it’s nice to have that “Hawaii lay the points and parlay the over” bet in your back pocket.

- It’s 2018 and OU played a game on Pay Per View this past weekend. I honestly didn’t even realize teams still did this with their third tier media rights. What the hell Big 12. I know everyone makes fun of you for good reason, but you can’t even get your top program, the #5 team in the nation on TV every weekend?!?! And OU is fine with this? I was having to watch some periscope stream of overtime in that Army game. Get your shit together Big 12!

Rivalry Game of the Week

We didn’t have a lot of options this week, and I considered Ole Miss vs LSU for a little while. But let’s be honest, I can’t feature a game where the Magnolia Bowl Trophy appears to have been made by some 15 year old in a high school shop class. So this week, we’ll feature the Game of Legends between Stanford and Notre Dame.

The origins of this rivalry go all the way back to the 1925 Rose Bowl when Pop Warner and Knute Rockne faced off against each other in a 27-10 Notre Dame victory. They only met a few times sporadically over the next 63 years, but in 1988, the Game of Legends returned and was placed permanently on the schedule for both schools in 1997. In the 21 games since that time, the series is split 11-10 with Notre Dame holding the one game advantage. Both of these teams hold themselves to a higher academic standard with their athletes, and both recruit well nationally. And unlike those slap-asses from Mississippi and Louisiana, these two schools figured out how to get the trophy right. The Legends Trophy is made of a Northern California redwood base, and a Dublin, Ireland crystal bowl on top. This looks like a perfect vessel for some brandy. Both of these schools are a little too highfalutin for my taste, which is why I prefer a spit bucket or giant axe from the Midwest. But overall, this has been a solid rivalry game for the last 20 years and it should be a great game between two Top 10 teams on Saturday night on NBC.

Food Fight

We are dealing with our first morning game of the year with the 11:00 am kick in Arlington’s Mall of America. I realize some people complain about the early kick time, but if the Ags take care of business Saturday morning, you have the rest of the afternoon and night to kick back and watch the silliness of a CFB Saturday unfold. That’s not all bad. This week, let’s focus on breakfast/brunch. And we need to mix in some pork, so let’s go with a bacon dish. Here’s my recipe for a nice bacon frittata. You’ll need 10 eggs, 8 slices of bacon, purple onion, green onions, mushrooms, unsalted butter, spinach leaves, buttermilk, a handful of grape tomatoes, and pecorino and grated mozzarella cheese.

Get the bacon cooked and chopped up for later. Dice 1/3 of the purple onion and chop up about 3-4 green onions. Chop up the mushrooms and have about a cup or so of spinach leaves. Grate up a half cup of the pecorino cheese and a half cup of mozzarella. Crack the eggs in a bowl, whisk them up with some salt and pepper and then mix in the grated pecorino and about 1/3 cup of the buttermilk. Slice up the grape tomatoes in thirds each.

Start with 1/3 stick of unsalted butter in a nice size skillet. Once it’s melted, throw in the onions and mushrooms and give them about 5-7 minutes on the stovetop. Once they look ready, mix in the bacon and the spinach leaves and let the spinach sweat for a couple of minutes. Keep it all mixed up and add in the egg and pecorino cheese to the skillet. As soon as you pour it, give it all a quick stir to mix it all together, then let it sit for a few minutes as the eggs begin to form up around the edges. Once they are formed up nice on the edges, add the mozzarella and the tomatoes across the top, and throw the skillet in the oven on 300 and bake for about 10-15 minutes. You want it cooked all the way through, but don’t go too long or it’ll get a little dry. You can always check the middle with a toothpick to make sure the eggs are cooked well enough in the center. Bring it out, let it cool and slice it up for guests.

I’m really picky about the way I drink my Bloody Mary’s, so I’ve found for a group of football watching guests, it’s easier to go with a different beverage for the early kickoffs. Get a highball glass filled with ice and 2 oz of your favorite bourbon, 1 oz of Grand Marnier, 3 oz of Grapefruit juice, 3 oz of Topo Chico, and a couple of dashes of Angostura bitters. Stir it up, garnish with a grapefruit peel, and serve. Get the early day buzz and Beat The Hell Outta arkansas!!!