Break their back and make them humble
National Football League
Draft King Analysis
September 5, 2010
Lou Pickney, DraftKing.com
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If you missed the end of today's Tulsa/East Carolina game, you missed a shootout that ended with a thrilling finish. 4th and 15, 5 seconds to go, down 49-45, and East Carolina QB Dominique Davis heaved a 35 yard TD pass into the end zone that the 6'8" Justin Jones managed to haul in on a high jump just above Tulsa defenders. Jones mysteriously lost his helmet on the way down, but he held onto the ball for the win. East Carolina was penalized for unsportsmanlike conduct for some of its players having the gall to celebrate on the field, and by rule ECU had to try for an extra point. But rather than kick the ball (and potentially have Tulsa block it and take it back for two the other way), they took a knee and it was over. Wow.
As exciting as that was, it doesn't match the incredible twists and turns from yesterday's double-overtime win by Jacksonville State at Ole Miss. The Rebels received good news on Friday learning that Jeremiah Masoli, a transfer from Oregon, would be allowed to suit up and play quarterback this year without having to use a redshirt season. It looked like Masoli and company would get the win with a comfortable 31-10 lead more than halfway through the 3rd quarter, but amazingly J-State rallied and forced overtime.
The rest was the stuff of legend: down seven in a second overtime session, J-State true freshman QB Coty Blanchard heaved a TD pass on 4th and 15 to WR Kevyn Cooper in the back of the end zone, then the team went all-in and scored a two-point conversion with an awkward shovel pass that somehow made its way to RB Calvin Middleton, who barely made it into the end zone. Jacksonville State 49, Ole Miss 48, F/2OT.
I've been asked to compare this with the Appalachian State win at Michigan in 2007. My take: the Ole Miss loss was actually worse. App. State was the two-time defending I-AA/FCS champion (literally true since they won in 2005 when it was I-AA and won in 2006 when it was rebranded as FCS, confusing and irritating fans everywhere) going into the Michigan game. A small school beating Michigan in the Big House is a big deal whenever it happens, but App. State had a very strong team. Jacksonville State is #17 in the FCS poll, but the fact that they not only rallied from a 31-10 defecit in the 3rd quarter but managed to overcome long odds in that double OT session has cemented that game's place among the great finishes we will see in the coming decade.
In September 2004, I-AA Maine won at Mississippi State 9-7 in the early days of Sylvester Croom trying to piece together the mess of a team that Jackie Sherrill left behind in Starkville. The difference? That game wasn't on TV, and I've never even seen highlights from it. Meanwhile, Ole Miss vs. Jacksonville State was not only on TV but also in HD (thankfully most college football games are finally now broadcast in HD), much like the 2007 Michigan/App. State game which aired in HD by chance since it was on the Big Ten Network, which has been an all-HD outlet since it debuted. It was the lead story on the SportsCenter on Saturday evening and also was the lead for ESPN's Saturday late-night College Gameday Final show.
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Houston Nutt said Saturday's loss was the worst of his career. (Icon SMI)
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For Ole Miss, the Jax State loss is like herpes -- it's not going away and will keep flaring up for Colonel Reb when he least expects it. It be there when they show the top ten plays of the week tonight on SportsCenter. It will be there when they recap the biggest moments of 2010 in one of those end-of-the-year packages. It will be shown at the ESPYs. It will be shown whenever Houston Nutt gets fired on down the line.
Ole Miss is not a bad team, particularly with Masoli on board now, but that loss was the college football equivalent of the Iron Sheik putting them in the camel clutch, breaking their back, and making them humble. Nutt and the coaching staff there have a major uphill battle ahead of them. I'll be in New Orleans this upcoming Saturday night, and if Tulane somehow beats Ole Miss, I'll be sure to take detailed notes from the scene in the French Quarter to include on here.
College football started on Thursday night, but yesterday marked the first Saturday of the season, and there's something special about that. Games started at noon eastern and spanned well into the evening, giving first looks at teams in action. It was a mix of regional non-conference matchups (Illinois vs. Missouri, Texas vs. Rice), squash matches (Georgia vs. Louisiana-Lafayette, Arizona State vs. Portland State, Michigan State vs. Western Michigan), and a couple of powerhouse battles at "neutral" sites (Oregon State vs. TCU in Dallas and LSU vs. North Carolina in Atlanta). The main event is slated for tomorrow night: Boise State vs. Virginia Tech at FedEx Field in Landover, Maryland.
UNC was missing several players against LSU due to potential improper contact by some players with an agent, but Butch Davis' squad rallied the troops he had and maneuvered the Tar Heels into position to potentially knock off the Tigers at the very end. It didn't happen, but the players for North Carolina who actually got to participate are to be credited for not giving up when they easily could have done so. Another issue is LSU's secondary, which has traditionally been good over the past decade, giving up a long bomb TD pass that looked like something more likely to happen in a video game than in real life.
The big NCAA agent crackdown of 2010 ended up impacting another highly rated prospect, with A.J. Green being held out of Georgia's 55-7 whipping of Louisiana-Lafayette on Saturday. As much as I hate the notion of victories being taken away after the fact in a revisionist history kind of way, apparently it is sufficient motivation to get schools with players suspected of having improper contact with agents to not use those players until everything is squared away.
I plan to redo my 2011 NFL Mock Draft following tomorrow's pair of NCAA football games. For guys like A.J. Green and even Marcell Dareus, I don't anticipate changing very much. But for Marvin Austin, currently positioned as the #2 pick in the draft, things could change drastically for his NFL hopes with him on an indefinite suspension from the UNC football program. Trying to project how *that* will play out is even more difficult than projecting who might go where in the draft, particularly since there is so much classified information surrounding Austin, the agent who he might have had improper contact with, and what missing all of 2010 would do for Austin relative to his NFL hopes.
