This was my first weekend home in about 3 weeks but it wasn’t a warm feeling of homecoming that seemed to define my Saturday. Rather it was a feeling of goodbye.
It seemed like no matter what I watched, it was with a sense of goodbye. So in that mindset, let’s take a run-down of the major storylines of a Saturday that had no bearing on the national title hunt thanks to an off week for Texas (meaning a game against the Big Twelve North) and the typically embarrassing non-conference scheduling of SEC teams.
Of course, the most important goodbye for me was the final home game of the Noles defensive coordinator Mickey Andrews. After Mickey planted the spear before the game and was given a new truck by the many former All-Americans he turned into NFL millionaires, you just knew that his defense was going to come out and dominate. Which they did.
For about a quarter.
Then they reverted to form against a 2-8 Maryland squad that was only playing to ensure they don’t get turned into Mrs. Lovett’s wonderful meat pies for consumption by the omni-hungry Ralph Friedgen.
There is little doubt that this season has been the worst FSU defensive showing since before I spent my afternoons watching Remote Control on MTV. But it was only fitting that on the final two Maryland drives of the game the defense rose up and played like a Nole defense should – swarming the quarterback and forcing two straight 3 and outs to clinch the win and a bowl eligible record for the 33rd straight years.
One other goodbye I hope for from this game – those horrendous uniforms. OK, I can deal with the black helmets but those all-garnet space-age unis? Yeech. They like one of those teams from the old First And Ten series on HBO where they had to use stock USFL footage and tweak the coloring of the film.
On second thought, maybe they should wear these unis all the time. Sort of like the famed Black-Shirt defense at Nebraska, the Noles would have to earn the right to wear the gold pants and helmets that defined college football in the 1990s.
The final goodbye from the final game at Doak Campbell stadium comes with a question mark. Do we really say goodbye to EJ Manuel for all of next season when Christian Ponder returns from injury? Manual has been pretty solid these last two games and he performed an option pitch this past weekend that was so pretty it was downright Holieway-esque. Ponder is really talented but can we just put EJ away for a season? Can’t Jimbo find a way to get them both on the field?
Moving beyond Leon County there were several other goodbyes this past week:
- Goodbye to Charlie Weis’s Notre Dame coaching career. Even I, devout Gold Dome hater that I am, admitted before the season that their schedule was so weak they could be looking at a BCS bowl. Instead they have to win at Stanford this weekend to even have a winning schedule. Sorry Charlie, there are no more excuses. These are your players, in your system, hiking their pants as high as you hike yours. If you can’t win with this team, you just can’t win.
- Goodbye Pac-10 Haters – After years of looking down on the Pac-10 as the USC Trojans and the nine dwarves it is time to recognize that the Pac-10 is as strong top to bottom as any league in the country. Sorry SEC, but when LSU, South Carolina, Tennessee, Auburn, Georgia and Arkansas are just mediocre and Mississippi State and Vandy are pathetic having two great teams doesn’t make you by far the best conference in the country. No Pac-10 teams are really great this year (I just can’t shake that embarrassing performance by Oregon that first Thursday of the season), but there sure are a ton that are pretty good. Stanford, Oregon, USC, Arizona, Oregon State, Cal. I wouldn’t want to see any of these teams in a bowl if I were one of those SEC teams still living on a reputation built on a rabid fan base and a long history.
- Goodbye Heisman Trophy interest – all of the talking heads on TV may talk about the Heisman race being wide open this year but is there any doubt whatsoever that after UF slaughters the Noles this coming weekend on national TV and then beats a tough Bama team in the SEC title game, that Timmy will win the Heisman? You can talk all you want about anyone else coming on the scene but that asks way too much of Heisman voters. If there is one thing you can bank on, it is that absent some incredible performance, voters will vote for the quarterback of the perceived best team in the country – it is the Gino Torretta rule. Add in the fact that the current holder of that distinction may be a direct descendent of Jesus Christ and you have the easiest Heisman race in years.
- Goodbye my first college fantasy season – while my pro fantasy team has rebounded nicely from a miserable start (sort of like the Broncos, but exactly the opposite), my college team took a bad start and rode it all the way to the end. A special thanks to Huston Nutt for barely using Dexter McCluster for the entirety of my season only to realize about 3 weeks ago that he should probably get his best player the ball more often. Thus Dexter has accounted for nearly 500 yards of offense and 4 touchdowns in the last two weeks. The two playoff weeks, if I had made the playoffs. Which I didn’t, in part because McCluster accounted for less than 400 yards total and 2 touchdowns in weeks 1-6.
Two final sad goodbyes this week.
You may be trying to understand the obscure Remote Control reference above. Well, I found out the other day that Ken Ober had died. If you are my age (and not named Turner) you probably spent a lot of afternoons after school watching Remote Control. Not only did it let some of us increase our knowledge of random trivia to the point that we are incapable of writing a joke without a pop culture reference but it also brought us Adam Sandler, Colin Quinn, Denis Leary and apparently the Talented Mr. Roto. I will leave it to you to either thank or loathe Ober for the above sentence. Special thanks however should be given to Kari Wuhrer for helping to kick start me into puberty. I hadn’t thought about the show in years, but hearing about Ober, I immediately felt old. RIP Ken.
In addition to pop culture analogies only slightly less relevant than those featured on Family Guy, if there is one thing you can count on me for, it is hating on TV announcers (Gary Danielson I am looking at you – and this is before the Tim Tebow circle-jerk I fully expect you to lead on Saturday). However one of the better ones out there is Chris Spielman. While always stuck announcing those horrendous noon Big Ten games on Saturday Spielman has always made the most of what he has to work with – which given this is typically middle-of-the-road Big Ten teams is not much.
He makes insightful comments and every once in awhile the former All-American linebacker in him comes bubbling to the surface and it sounds like Sean McDonough has to hold him back from rushing on to the field to join in. That is what I want from an announcer – insight and passion (and not the sort of passion that results in your pants around your ankles thinking about a certain spiky haired quarterback – GARY).
Well, Chris’s wife passed away last week after a twelve year battle with breast cancer. I didn’t know Stefanie Spielman, never even saw a picture of her I don’t think. But, knowing that the Spielmans raised $6million to fight the disease and listening to Sean McDonough choke up while talking about Chris and Stefanie during the OSU/UM game Saturday was enough to make you realize how important and how loved they are by the people around them.
Three years ago this week my father-in-law passed away. A loss is always hard but around the holidays, a season defined by family, it seems especially cruel.
It is cliché to say something like ‘when you are giving thanks this week, think of those that have lost someone’ so instead think about this. You spent eight Thanksgivings with Chris Spielman, as his Lions played their traditional Thanksgiving day game. So, even if you don’t know them, isn’t it only right to pause a moment and think about the Spielman family this week?
Sometimes even when you don’t know someone, it can be hard to say goodbye.
