GBH WATCHLIST: Week 4

Conference play was beginning. What happen?

By Rush Roberts, doug.keegan, Wes Davis, Jimmy Gardner, Chuck GBH, oscarwildecat, and Shooter Flatch Sep 25, 2015, 1:55pm CDT

Last week saw some mild surprises unfold, and also some mild non-surprises. Basically it was all very mild:

Doug: Tech kicked Arkansas' ass 35-24.
thacktor: SMU and TCU was reasonably close...for a while...final 56-37
Chuck: Florida crushed Kentucky's dreams of ending the dry spell in a 14-9 SEC East thriller
Dr. Norris Camacho: Iowa beat Pitt on a 57-yard field goal after Pitt's coached called timeout to ice the kicker

Last week's winner was...I guess me because we all can agree that icing is some of the dumbest shit imaginable and yet it won't go away why won't it ever go away oh my god

Anyway, that's the past. We have a brand-new addition this week to the group, so please welcome prominent GBHer Shooter Flatch. Shooter is a longtime commenter and a pretty dang good Fan Poster so check out his stuff when you get a chance.

Here's the full TV schedule for this weekend.

Dr. Norris Camacho

#21 Stanford at Oregon State, Friday 9:00 PM FS1

If nighttime Pac-12 Football is drunk football, weeknight Pac-12 Football in Corvallis is your cousin who's drunk, tweaking, and has grabbed a handful of grandma's Valium and the keys to her Town Car and is imploring you to take a ride 'cause it'll be badass, dude. You know you should want no part of it but part of you can't help but think about going along. In 2007 the Beavs trounced Utah on the opening Thursday of the season. In 2008 they took down #1 USC on a Thursday. Last year they took #20 Utah to double overtime on a Thursday. They do worse in years where they play all Saturday games. These are FACTS*.

Facts are useless. Stanford seems to have slipped into their lumbering, quietly obtrusive rhythm after a businesslike hit on USC at the Coliseum last Saturday night. That bizzarro opening loss to Northwestern won't be so funny when we get a Rose Bowl re-match**, haterz. These scrappy Beavers could be the last trap game that could fell Stanford this year. I think they take it 35-17 despite Gary Andersen's best efforts to summon inclement rain and fog out of the pleasant 60 degree evening. Enjoy the relaxed chaos of West Coast football as you ease into the weekend.

*maybe

**probably not

***I don't even remember this one

Shooter Flatch

BYU @ Michigan

11:00 am Saturday, ABC

This isn’t your normal 11:00 am B1G Dutch Oven Special. This is the rare mixture of a really good chance for an exciting start to the day, combined with a large helping of wild ass crazy. On the football side of things, BYU’s games so far this year have been nothing short of heart stopping. They ended their first two games with game-clinching Hail Mary passes. And last week they went on the road to a top 10 UCLA team, and only lost by one point in the final three minutes of the game. On the other side you have a stout Michigan defense, but an offense that face plants every time the training wheels come off. This game will likely be decided in the final 5 minutes of the game.

Now you get to add in the completely "wild ass" factor for both teams. BYU has become notorious lately for it’s dirty play and it’s extracurricular activities on the field. Let’s face it, BYU has turned into the Cobra Kai of college football and Bronco Mendenhall is the asshole sensei Kreese.

But luckily for viewers, the crazy doesn’t end there. On the opposite sideline, you have Jim Harbaugh. We’re not talking "go for it on 4th and 5" type crazy either. Harbaugh is more like "there’s a dead body in the trunk of my car" type crazy. At Stanford he had his postgame handshake confrontation with Pete Carroll. And in the NFL, he had an even crazier postgame mixup with The Schwartz. We could have a last minute score to win, fistfights, cheap shots, and two coaches going at it shirtless on the 50 yard line postgame.

So tune in for the dramatic football sure to unfold Saturday morning, and then stick around afterward to see if Jim Harbaugh bites a piece of Sensei Mendenhall’s ear off a la Tyson/Holyfield.

oscarwildecat

Georgia Tech @ Duke

Saturday 11:00AM ESPN2

First, we all need an 11AM game to cling to. Perhaps you're trying to explain away your third Bloody Mary, or maybe just enjoying #ACCtion, but in reality: we're all just trying to avoid the dregs of Big 10 football.

Georgia Tech is the most dangerous of things: a Paul Johnson team coming off a loss, where most likely none of the team has been allowed solid food for a week.

Duke is led by David Cutcliffe, perhaps the only stable personality inhabiting the sidelines of Major College Football*.

*Duke

The triple option is always enjoyable, and since Purdue will most likely burn your retinas to dust, mix that fourth bloody with pride**.

**Celery salt.

Jimmy Gards

TCU at Texas Tech | 3:45 PM | FOX

REMINDER: the final score of the 2014 matchup between these teams in Fort Worth was 82-27 Frogs. Eighty two. The last time someone from Lubbock took a beating like that oil was $40 a barrel and Barbara Sue was having to get back to earth’s oldest industry to shake out a couple nickels from a roughneck. That was Monday of this week. Now, the tables have turned a little bit. Ol sneaky CPA Patterson is having to assemble a piecemeal a team because his entire roster is either injured or suspended. Do you know what has to happen to get suspended at either Baylor or TCU? Someone has to die. I haven’t seen such selective grace since a televangelist preached the fire and brimstone of sodomy and was found with a Laotian ladyboy in a west Texas motel. But I digress, folks.

Meanwhile, Kliff got his swagger back by outfoxing the high school bully lardass. Beating the worst team in the SEC West is the best non-conference victory in Texas Tech history. I kind of like Tech in this matchup. They ARE smarter, believe it or not. Raiders have TCU GPAs but the common sense not to drop $60k per year on a degree in Fort Worth Home Ec.

Chuck

Colorado State @ UT San Antonio

Saturday 6 PM, CBSSN

This is a matchup of two of my favorite entry-level football teams and will be on my go-back button during AgHawg '15.

On the one hand you have Mike Bobo, erstwhile Georgia offensive coordinator and the latest SEC assistant coach to take charge of the Rams after Jim McElwain's departure for the Florida gig. After starting the season by head-butting Savanna State into submission, Bob has lost back-to-back OT thrillers to P5 teams. Don't let the record fool you, this is a decent CSU team.

Meanwhile, Larry Coker is down in San Antonio cokering up the situation there. "Cokering", for those unfamiliar with the term, is where you attach yourself to a team and slowly feed while doing irreparable harm to the structure. Larry Coker is a barnacle, and the submerged hulk of the Miami Hurricane football team is a living testament to the damage that he can do when he stays long enough to rupture a team's hull. He inherited the 2001 Miami Hurricanes - arguably one of the greatest football teams of all time - won a national championship, and then steadily replaced that amazing roster with his own recruits until they were just a shell of their former selves. Now he's at UTSA where he started with a 2nd place finish in C-USA West and now are still seeking their first win of the season.

CSU is favored by a ten-spot, but I still have faith that this will end in OT ridiculousness. Rams. Roadrunners. Get some college football.

thacktor

Arkansas State at Toledo

Saturday at 6:00 PM ON ESPN TR3S

Some Aggie isn't going to read this and kick my nuts in for suggesting the game as one to watch as it's during our matchup with BERT et al. I'll be dead honest with you, I'm not watching this game. I'll check the score, for sure. But I'm not watching it. We have pigs with dicks that need kicking this week, and I plan to watch us put foot to the hogs' hogs all night long.

Now, the reason I pick this game is that we're tasked with picking the weirdest matchup of the weekend, and this will for sure deliver the weirdness. Think about it, what ushered in the gilded age of Texas A&M football? Yes... a loss to Arkansas State. Don't think about it for too long, because 1. you don't want to crap those nice pants you have on and 2. we know 2 weeks ago that Toledo rolled into Little Rock and did what Texans do to feral hogs.

It's only appropriate that these two teams who've punched out of their weight class do battle this weekend. May the game end on a punt ricocheting off of an up-back's nuts and into the welcoming arms of the defense for a last second win for whichever team is down at the time because I don't care.

Doug

USC @ Arizona State

Saturday 9:30PM ESPN

How about a late night PAC game to finish off the day, with the potential for lots of points and a guarantee of crowd shots stocked with attractive coeds? And what if that game had tangential implications for A&M? Is that something you might be interested in?

If so, let me tell you about the beauty that is USC at Arizona State. It'll be played in the beautiful desert oasis of Tempe, the fertile recruiting grounds for Vivid and all of your other favorite adult entertainment enterprises. The Trojans are licking their wounds after an unexpected mollywhopping by the brutish nerds of Stanford, and ASU is a shaky 2-1, with QB Mike Bercovici still exhibiting traumatic aftereffects of his introduction to Myles Garrett and Daeshon Hall. Needless to say, a Sun Devil win here would be beneficial to A&M's profile. So get your shocker... er... pitchfork hand signs ready.

Crack open a cold one, point and laugh at Todd Graham's headset, and watch the scoreboard total sail over the Vegas number of 62. Let's all get fuzzy and share in the #SarkAfterDark experience.

ADDENDUM: When I am Commissioner of College Football, Hawaii will never play a road game. Moreover, all Rainbow Warrior kickoffs will be scheduled for midnight central and broadcast on a real network so junkies don't have to resort to shady internet streams. We only get a dozen or so college football Saturdays a year. They should all last at least 14 hours.