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The Chaos Index, Week 12: Chips Are Falling, One Falls Particularly Hard On USC
As college football prepares to get its King of Chaos, The Hat, back – thanks, Kansas…we, uh, hope – the Big 12 joined the Pac-12 in making a generous holiday donation of its playoff spot to [pick one] one-loss Michigan or two-loss SEC runner-up. At this rate, the highlight of the annual waste of time known as the College Football Playoff announcement show will be finding out which Power 5 powerhouse gets the honor of being shamed by Central Florida this year.
Meanwhile, television executives everywhere are no doubt thrilled to see that the nation’s largest market with actual college football programs – no, you don’t count New York/Rutgers – will be sitting out this bowl season. Good news, though. There’s an easy fix to the lack of college football entertainment coming out of America’s entertainment capital: can you say, “The Return of Lane Kiffin?!?” Ain’t happenin’, of course, but it’s funny to think about.
And now, for this week’s round of short and snarky.
- USC – ‘SC vs. ND in a desperate attempt to save a bid to the Cheez-It Bowl should be priceless. Clay Helton seems like a really nice guy. Is he unemployed yet?
- The Big 12 – This is where you all realize that every single move you’ve made as a conference was wrong and decide to bring in, say, Houston and BYU and hope for the best next year.
- West Virginia – And here we thought WVU and Oklahoma would cancel each other out.
- Oklahoma – You gave up 40 points. To Kansas…and their expiring head coach. You really, really don’t want to see Tua in the playoffs. Trust us. (And you’re not going to.)
- Ohio State – Nice win in this year’s Toxic Teams Bowl, Bucks! Chances of tOSU winding up in tCFP: slightly better than those of Clay Helton wearing red and yellow on a college sideline next year, but not much.
- Louisville – 52-10? Quick, y’all: hire Bobby Petrino back just so you can fire him again.
- FAU – Lane Kiffin, boy genius. Lane Kiffin, failed NFL coach. Lane Kiffin, Vol traitor. Lane Kiffin, failed college football head coach. Lane Kiffin, reputation restored. (Thanks, Nick!) Lane Kiffin, ’bout to return to the majors. Lane Kiffin, hoping to make the Cheribundi Tart Cherry Bowl.
- Michigan State – Anybody else notice that the whole Mark Dantonio thing seems to be heading south?
- Virginia Tech – Anybody else notice that the whole Bud Foster, Defensive Genius thing seems to be heading south?
- Illinois – Well, losing 63-0 is certainly one way to make your exit, Lovie.
- Arkansas – Going down 52-6 to Team Cowbell a week after showing promise against your sorta archrival is, shall we say, a tad disappointing.
- Colorado – Congrats on the 5-0 start and on owing Mike MacIntyre a $10 million buyout.
- Texas Tech – Whatever Kliff’s buyout is, just pay it and pray you can sucker Brent Venables into coming.
- Florida State – Whatever Willie Taggart’s buyout is, wait a year before you pay it.
- Syracuse – Welcome back to reality.
- Oregon State – This year’s Civil War will be interesting. For about five minutes.
- North Carolina – In a battle of directional schools, the Heels came out on top against Western Carolina. Verrrry impressive!
- Rutgers – Remember that week when Rutgers scored more than 17 points? Yeah, Week One is always a time of hope and playing tomato cans.
- Kansas – Don’t you dare trash The Hat’s reputation!
- New Mexico – On the other hand, we’d like to ask the Lobos to carefully consider what an awful announcer Bob Davie was before they release him from exile in Heisenbergland to potentially reinflict him on the entire college football viewing populace.
The Chaos Index, Week 11: Newly Enriched With 50% More Disappointment!
Picture this: you’re settling in to watch your beloved [insert one: Trojans, ‘Noles, Badgers, Tigers, or Whoever] prepare to smash another hapless foe. Suddenly, you realize that your beloved [whoever] are the hapless foe. Great news: there’s science behind your nightmares! Well, either that, or your coach is a pinhead who can’t recruit or coach ’em up.
Anyway, as more disappointments revealed themselves, we “enjoyed” the awfulness of college football coverage a little too much this weekend. That’s probably the reason for the slightly more NSFW nature of this week’s various rants.
- College Lame Day – We try not to make the mistake of watching the four-letter’s weekly pander fest, but this week, we did “enjoy” watching the gang blow the entire city of Boston, much less BC, complete with their exciting upset pick of the Eagles because cold weather is wayyy more important than a massive gap in playing and coaching talent. They were kinda right. In Death Valley, that score woulda been 57-7 (or whatever else Clemson would’ve wanted it to be).
- Being Physical – While we’re dealing with the media, at some point Saturday, we finally snapped. Never again do we need to hear about a coach or announcer talk about being “more physical.” No shit, Sherlocks. It’s a physical game. We get it. Now come up with a new cliché, and “flying around” doesn’t count. And now…on to the year’s most disappointing teams.
- USC (West) – Yep, Clay Helton taking over the play calling sure fixed everything in Troy. Good thing there’s no trouble with the new franchise QB. Or the soon-to-be-former OC. What are the odds that Lynn Swann calls his own audible in a couple weeks?
- Florida State – Confession time: just before kickoff, your friendly neighborhood Captain turned to a friend and said, “This is my upset special. Notre Dame’s gonna lose at some point this year, and Felony State is way too talented to not do something of note this season.” Your friendly neighborhood Captain is an idiut.
- Wisconsin – Remember when Wisco was a playoff contender? We hear Bret Bielema’s available.
- Auburn – The Tigers should be proud. They’ve lost to a lot of great teams like LSU, Georgia, Mississippi State, and Alabama. Oops, sorry. We got ahead of ourselves by a couple weeks.
- UCLA – Usually, you hire the hottest coach not named Nick or Urban after you’ve had the program’s worst season WW2. CCK got left a mess, but another year like this, and they’ll be calling him Chip Gruden.
- Louisville – We wrote this Friday night, before UL decided to penalize a Petrino: would we be offsides to suggest that Bobby P might want to turn things over to somebody new? Y’know, before the fans decommit from the program.
- TCU – Would the person who took Gary Patterson’s mojo please return it immediately?
- Kentucky – From national championship contender to massive disappointment, all in two Georgia and Tennessee (!?!) face stompings! At least the good people of Lexington can take heart in knowing they’re not Louisville.
- North Carolina State – College football’s annual biggest tease is headed for fourth place in the Atlantic, but surely things will get better when Ryan Finley’s holding a clipboard on Sundays.
- Texas Tech – We’d call TTU college football’s biggest tease, but it’s been a decade since the Red Raiders were anything other than a massive disappointment, so it’s hard to expect anything else from them.
- Manchester United – Just wanted to see if you were paying attention, though even if you don’t enjoy the kind of football that’s actually played with feet, surely you can appreciate the “New York Yankees of soccer” turning into an English version of Florida State, complete with another face-stomping by their archrival. While we warm up next week’s off-topic Oakland Raiders insult, let’s move on to the programs that we always knew would be an embarrassment.
- North Carolina – We hear that the offensive genius that is Bobby Petrino is there for the taking, Heels, and you’ve been one of the most offensive programs in the country for a while now, so go for it.
- USC (East) – Not that blowing a 17-point fourth quarter lead has the locals freaking out, but nine games in THE GAMECOCKS STILL CAN’T TACKLE!!!
- Illinois – Meh. Again.
- Purdue – Yo, Boilers: no one said, “Pass it on,” when you did that wipeout job on Ohio State. That said, how nice of you to pass it on to Minnesota, right before passing Jeff Brohm on to his alma mater.
- Rutgers – Take heart, y’all: next year, you’ve got UMass and Liberty on the schedule, so there’s a 20% chance you could double up on this year’s one-win season!
- Arkansas – If you caught any of that one-score loss to LSU, you know that, no matter how close that game got, there was exactly zero chance the Hogs were actually going to win.
- Oregon State – Sorry, but in the end, y’all are the worst major conference program not named Kansas. Well done…y’know, from a chaos point of view.
- Kansas – You all didn’t really think we could let you go, did you Jayhawks?
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