The Larry King-ish Stream of Consciousness Column for 9/28

In this edition of the LKSOC…Notre Dame can’t stop anybody, the Segway guy meets his end on a Segway and the new Terry Dean:

◊ The generosity of the Irish

Notre Dame has played three teams this season that are currently ranked (Michigan, Michigan State and Stanford). In those contests, the Irish rolled up an extremely robust 1,347 combined yards of total offense (449 ypg). What do they have to show for that fine body of offensive work? An 0-3 record in those games.

That’s because Notre Dame hasn’t come close to stopping any of the aforementioned teams. Total yards per game allowed against that trio? 471. Total yards per play given up to those same teams? A brutal 6.0 per snap.

It’s the same old same old in regard to Brian Kelly-coached teams playing ranked opposition. Last season, his Cincinnati Bearcats averaged 447.5 ypg of total offense against three ranked opponents but also yielded 472.7 ypg in those same games.  To take the next step, Kelly’s got to figure out how to slow down good teams.

◊ Who NOT to hug after a big win

Word of advice to Auburn quarterback Cameron Newton…after winning a big game, try to refrain from hugging the referee like you did as the clock ran down to 0:00 in your team’s 35-27 victory over South Carolina.  It just looks, well, sort of odd:

◊ I know why the caged Stephen Garcia sings

When does one generation end and the next one begin?  I ask this because we’re not that far removed from Steve Spurrier tossing Terry Dean aside in favor of Danny Wuerrfel.  So is it too soon to call Stephen Garcia this generation’s Terry Dean?  Or should I just call him Terry Dean Part 2?

This past Saturday, Garcia looked pretty damn masterful in leading South Carolina to a 20-7 lead over Auburn.  But after he caught a case of the fumbles that Auburn took advantage of, Spurrier yanked him in favor of true freshman Connor Shaw.  Of course Shaw proceeded to throw two interceptions, because that’s what a wet behind the ears kid does when he’s thrown into the fire that way.

The funny thing is, the move was such a head scratcher that a friend of mine who was surfing multiple games texted me to ask how Garcia got hurt.  You know, because that’s the only logical reason why a true freshman would have replaced him at that point in the game.  My reply?  “Hurt?  No, Garcia just got Terry Deaned.”

Jesus, OBC, I know you were pissed at Garcia, but in lieu of taking it out on him the way you did, why not wait until the next practice to scream at him in front of the team?  Instead, you chose to take away your team’s best chance to win a meaningful SEC road game.

I know people want to knock the production of Spurrier’s quarterbacks at South Carolina and imply that means that the studs he had at Florida were infinitely better.  While that’s true to a point, I also think defenses back in the 1990’s were slightly less evolved than they are now.  Back then, a Spurrier quarterback could just throw the skinny post at will.  Today, they just can’t, and the last person who seems to understand that is Steve Spurrier.

In regard to Dean, here’s a fascinating quote from Spurrier from 1994:

“I’ve done a lousy job coaching Terry Dean, and I felt like at this time Danny deserved a chance to be our player based on performance,” coach Steve Spurrier said Tuesday.  “I just haven’t been able to get Terry to play the way I’d like him to. I just haven’t done a very good job preparing him.” (Orlando Sentinel)

If Shaw assumes the starting quarterback job on a full-time basis, expect a very similar quote from the OBC in about a month regarding Garcia.

◊ Would this be like Burger King’s CEO choking to death on a Whopper?

Talk about a screwed up way to meet your end: Jimi Heselden, the owner of the company that manufactures Segways, died after driving his own personal Segway over a cliff.  This picture from the Daily Mail provides all the details you need to know:

◊ A big road test = a first for an awful lot of Volunteer players

As if you need any more proof that Tennessee’s football program is essentially starting over from scratch, Volunteer coach Derek Dooley dropped the following nugget concerning his team’s trip to LSU this coming Saturday:

“The bigger challenge besides that is it’s going to be the first road game for almost half of our travel squad. I think I counted about 30 guys out of the – we’ll probably travel 66 to 68 guys — 30 of them have never even been on a road trip at Tennessee. So we’ll have to talk a lot about that and how we handle it professionally and how we handle the crowd, and a hostile environment. So a lot of challenges this week.” (Chattanoogan.com)

◊ The Big 12 race is interesting again…maybe

This Thursday night’s contest between Texas A&M and Oklahoma State is mighty intriguing on a couple of levels.  First off, if you like points, this one should have plenty of them: OSU is currently first nationally in total offense (596 ypg) while Texas A&M checks in at #10 (501.3 ypg).

The second is that the Big 12 is suddenly a helluva lot more wide open than it initially appeared to be.  With Texas getting kicked in the teeth by UCLA, Oklahoma not exactly looking invincible and Nebraska looking to be very good but not quite great, who’s to say an A&M or OSU couldn’t make this thing very interesting by season’s end?  Hell, even K-State is 4-0 right now.

A road win over OSU might give Mike Sherman the in with Aggie fans that he’s so desperately wanted.  Is it just me, or have they wanted him fired since BEFORE he was actually hired?  It’s hard to tell who Aggie fans dislike more, Sherman or Mack Brown.

As for Oklahoma State, how about the season Brandon Weedon’s been having at quarterback?  I know, I know, there are 6-A schools in Texas high school football that have played a tougher schedule to this point, but try to turn your nose down for just a second and give the kid a break.  He’s averaging 325 ypg passing on 9.7 yards an attempt, and unlike Houston’s Case Keenum, Weedon doesn’t keep throwing it to the other team.

◊ Calipari’s silly excuses

Here is an excerpt of John Calipari’s interview with Jon Soloman of the Birmingham News this week:

Calipari suggested Kentucky lost to West Virginia in the Elite Eight last season in part because the Wildcats were looking ahead to Duke in the Final Four.

“Do you know how badly we wanted to play Duke?” Calipari said. “I think that’s why we played so badly against West Virginia. We wanted Duke so badly we couldn’t see straight.”

Kentucky shot 4 of 32 on 3-pointers in the loss to West Virginia. (Birmingham News)

That’s a pretty good excuse…except for the fact that at the time of his own team’s loss, Duke hadn’t played Baylor yet in its own regional final.  Kind of hard to look ahead to playing a team that hasn’t yet advanced.

◊ This and that

LSU is apparently staying with Jordan Jefferson at quarterback.  Yeah, as if there’s a more attractive option on the depth chart…Talk about a couple of teams that dodged bullets this past Saturday: UCF had Kansas State dead to rights before losing, and UAB was shoveling dirt on Tennessee’s coffin before letting that one slip away…Speaking of ones that got away, what a couple of batshit stupid 4th quarter throws by Arkansas quarterback Ryan Mallett in his team’s narrow loss to top ranked Alabama.  Heisman my ass…Because no intraconference play has yet to begin in the Big East, the overall records of its teams are used to sort them out in the standings.  So as of right now, Syracuse sits atop the league at 3-1 while Cincinnati is 1-3 and in last place.  It’s still VERY early, but what a difference a season makes.

Seasons I still can’t believe actually happened: Barry Sanders in ‘88

Back in the glorious decade of the 80’s, my friends and I played a computer game by Epyx called “Summer Games.” There’s a clip of the actual game below, but before you start laughing hysterically while watching it, keep in mind it was the friggin’ 80’s.  Back then, this damn thing might as well have been “Halo”:

If you skip to the 1:30 mark of the video, you’ll see the 100 meter dash portion of the game.  It was painful watching that pixelated guy take upwards of 11 or 12 seconds to finish the race when I knew good and well Carl Lewis could do it in 10.

So I devoted an inordinate amount of time to getting this bastard to move faster.  Oh yes, this is what passed for an actual, honest to goodness goal during my wasted youth.  Practice my jump shot?  Get better at math?  Help the elderly?  Nah, those pursuits were of no interest to me, I was much more concerned with doing better at a crappy video game.

After much trial and error, I figured out that I could (try to follow this) bend my knees, force the joystick snugly between the calf and thigh of my left leg (with the stick pointed at my other leg) and then use a rapid up and down motion with my right hand to make the guy run faster…MUCH faster.  If my mom had walked in, she would have thought I had a masturbation problem, but that was still at least two years down the road.

My somewhat vulgar but effective method yielded a 7.37 time (yes, I remember it to the tenth of a second) that the game saved as a world record.  When my friends saw that number on the screen they stared in amazement.  You know that look of awe the nerds had when they saw Molly Ringwald’s underwear in “Sixteen Candles?”  That’s the same reaction that a 7.37 in “Summer Games” generated.

I bring that story up because it’s the only frame of reference I have for the numbers Barry Sanders put up at Oklahoma State in 1988, the year he won the Heisman.  Whenever I come across them in print I get a slack jawed look of wonder.

That season, if you count the bowl game, Sanders ran for 2,850 yards.  TWO THOUSAND EIGHT HUNDRED AND FIFTY YARDS.  He had nearly as many games of 300+ rushing yards (4) as he had games in which he ran for between 150 and 200 yards (5).  The guy gained 1,152 yards in OSU’s last five regular season games alone.

His regular season total of 2,628 yards came in the old days when the only way you got a 12th game on your schedule was to get into the Kickoff Classic in the Meadowlands or play a road game against Hawaii.  Yup, Barry blew it up against the old fashioned 11-game schedule. What he could have done with an extra game or two, as players get these days…

This was the old Big 8, before Bill McCartney got Colorado’s house in order and Nebraska and Oklahoma shared dominion over the league.  Against the Huskers on October 15, Sanders put up 189 yards and 4 scores.  Three weeks later he ran for 215 yards and 2 touchdowns against the Sooners.

Oklahoma State lost both of those contests (their only losses that season), but Sanders sent a message to the league’s power duo.  Not since Gale Sayers had an opposing player in the Big 8’s little six bombarded the Huskers and Sooners that way.

I’ve basically only touched on the yardage to this point, but the number of times Sanders found the end zone was just as impressive.  He broke the single season TD record of 31 in OSU’s ninth game.  He would push that record to 37 once the dust had settled.

Then came five more touchdowns in Oklahoma State’s Holiday Bowl win over a hopelessly outmatched Wyoming team. That’s a total of 42 touchdowns that season.  FORTY FRIGGIN’ TWO.  At this moment, if you don’t look as if you’ve just seen Molly Ringwald’s underwear, then you’re not much of a college football fan.

Here’s Rick Reilly singing Sanders’s praises in October of that year, before most of America realized how special the guy was (that would be Sanders, not Reilly).  You’ll notice in his writing that Reilly hadn’t fully committed to the general douchebaggery that’s come to dominate his persona.

The reference I made to my goofy “Summer Games” obsession is relevant not just because of the impressive nature of the numbers, but also for how unattainable they are.  Back then I taught everyone my pseudo-masturbatory 100-meter method, but try as they might, they couldn’t match that 7.37.  Oh, there were some low 8’s and such generated by others, but they couldn’t quite get to the promised land.

It’s been two plus decades since Sanders ran wild across the heartland, but nobody’s really come close to matching his production.  In the pantheon of sports records, 2,850 yards rushing in a college football season is looking as unbreakable as Rickey Henderson’s 1,406 career stolen bases or Latrell Sprewell’s track record of knuckleheadedness.

Plays I still can’t believe actually happened: Miracle at the Meadowlands

Plays I still can’t believe actually happened: Matt Davison in ‘97