College football’s Week 3 is just about in the books. It brought a handful of really good games, some incredible trickeration, and lots of embarrassment for one league in particular.
The Big Ten’s terrible, horrible, no good, very bad Saturday, and more fun Week 3 stuff
Your collection of the fun and weird in college football is mostly just that: fun and weird. But for the Big Ten, it’s bad.
Denny Medley-USA TODAY Sports
Other than a handful of games, the Big Ten had an astonishingly bad Saturday. Here’s the blow-by-blow.
A bunch of these teams lost to either mid-majors or Kansas:
- Rutgers got zapped by Kansas in this sport’s game of the century. Some highlights from this game include this thing ...
... and ...
... but, yeah.
- Nebraska lost to Troy, becoming the second Power 5 team in two years to do so.
- Maryland lost to Temple, which at least gave Texas some funny transitive losses. (Also, that makes the conference’s three newest members all dropping ugly, ugly games.)
- Illinois lost to USF, though nothing about that will surprise you.
- Northwestern lost to Akron, following an all-time Pat Fitzgerald rant about how RPOs are “the purest form of communism.”
- The league was also on the losing end of the biggest upset of the year so far: 23.5-point underdog BYU’s triumph over Wisconsin at Camp Randall.
- And 2017 upstart Purdue lost to Mizzou by a field goal, falling to 0-3.
Wrap it all together, and you get this unfortunate picture.
At least Ohio State beat TCU. The Big Ten’s best team still hasn’t lost any games, and Penn State hasn’t either. Playoff hopes remain intact, but nobody will mistake the Big Ten for a league with much depth at the moment.
Oh, and a quick shoutout to BYU and its fans.
The team jumped around to “Jump Around”
And the fans were unquestionably responsible afterward.
Keegan Brewer hit Arkansas with the ol’ IMPLIED FAIR CATCH THAT ISN’T ACTUALLY A FAIR CATCH AT ALL:
A top-10 team that wasn’t Wisconsin also went down, with No. 12 LSU winning The Tiger Bowl at No. 7 Auburn.
And Ed Orgeron just found a new defensive lineman ...
... before delivering the season’s most beautiful victory speech:
Meanwhile, Ohio State fans in Jerry World got to watch former Buckeye Joe Burrow lead the game-winning drive for the Tigers:
FSU once again failed to #DoSomething.
And you already know Dino Babers hit ‘em with another of his VICTORY SPEECHes:
We might have an early Piesman Trophy favorite in UAB’s 285-pound Garrett Marino.
Also:
And also:
This by Utah, however, might be our first-ever Piesman blooper:
CATCH OF THE DAY contender, by Boise State’s A.J. Richardson
Oklahoma State won easily, though.
If it wasn’t that, it was this:
When you outsmart the receiver by letting him get TOO open:
On Thursday night, FCS Davidson beat Division III Guilford, 91-61.
The game appeared to set both of these records:
- Most yards of offense in an FCS game by one team (964 for Davidson; record is 876 )
- Most rushing yards by one team in an FCS game (685 for Davidson; record is 681)
And there were even more records that didn’t officially count, since Guilford is DIII:
- Most points in an FCS game by both teams (152 in this game; FCS and DI record is 141)
- Most yards of offense in an FCS game by both teams (1,662; FCS record is 1,549)
- Most rushing yards in an FCS game by both teams (1,005; FCS record is 850)
All you really need to know about Bama-Ole Miss: we quit liveblogging it after 11 minutes.
And this was surely the WACKIEST play of the day.
That turned out to be a 7-point for Notre Dame, which beat Vanderbilt by 5.
It was a fun weekend, is what we’re saying, unless you’re the Big Ten or perhaps Vanderbilt.
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