The CFB Degenerate's Newsletter: Pandemonium Strikes in Week Two

Plus: VP almost dies (twice) on Saturday morning.

I can't even wear a skirt and a top without looking like a fat pig.

- Jennifer Carpenter, White Chicks (2004)

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Hello pigs, welcome back. Before getting into the meat and potatoes of this article, here are four nuggets for you to chew on:

THREE. There are currently three FBS programs averaging less than 20 seconds per play, and it’s the three we all suspected: Old Dominion, Pittsburgh, and Oklahoma State.

ZERO. That’s the number of passing TDs Notre Dame has completed through two weeks. Head coach Marcus Freeman said this week that he believes Purdue is going to stack the box and force the Irish to pass… yeah, I think so too.

ONE. There are nine players with over 40 carries currently, and one of those is a QB—Nevada’s Brenden Lewis. But, if we adjust for the fact that he’s played three games, that’s only an average of 13.3 attempts per game. Vanderbilt’s Diego Pavia is next, with 39 through two appearances. Extrapolating Pavia’s two-game average, he’d be at 58 carries by now if he played in week zero, which would be 12 more than the leading RB, Kyle Monangai.

FOUR. There are currently only four WRs with over 300 yards receiving, and two of those players are Maryland’s Tai Felton and Fresno State’s Mac Dalena.

As is customary during the season, this past Saturday I left my home in the early hours of the morning to embark on a bike ride through the city of Toronto. This is a route that I bike four times a week and am intimately familiar with. It was a normal start to a seemingly normal Saturday.

Somehow, someway, I found myself in a position not 30 minutes into my ride where my life flashed before my eyes. Biking along at a good speed I turned my head to find that an automobile, operated by a white woman, was going very fast directly behind me.

I imagine the look on my face was something resembling Mike Norvell’s the first time he observed DJ Uiagalelei attempt a pass in practice. In that moment, I knew it was all over. This was it. I’d never get the chance to say goodbye to my loved ones. Never get to see week two play out (and I was feeling really good about my lineups). Never know the answer to who wins Michigan vs. Texas… well, I think I knew the answer ahead of time on that one.

By the grace of god, she came back down to earth from what I imagine was but a brief pause from a deep contemplation of what she’d be ordering at ‘brunch with the girls’ later that morning, and slowed down at the very last moment. Thank you Jesus. 🙏

Not in the farthest confines of my imagination could I have seen what was coming next. No, not Donovan Edwards averaging over five yards per carry in an FBS football game. It was the fact that my life would flash before my eyes yet again, about a half an hour later as yet another white woman, this one younger, refused to check the road where she was turning her vehicle and almost T-Boned my bicycle (going through a bike lane). Yet again, by the grace of god she pulled back at the last moment. Thank you Jesus.

Let me just say this here and now: it’s a truly sick and perverse phenomenon that we have in our society—akin to over ranking Notre Dame every year—where we allow this subset of the population to operate motorized vehicles at the expense of the rest of us.

At the end of the ride I reflected on the experience and thought: that’s another one of my nine lives that has now been expended. I assume Oregon head coach Dan Lanning and I were connected via spirit animal because he was probably thinking the same thing as the clock struck zero vs. Boise State later that evening.

Miraculously, I made it back to my place that morning in one piece. I explained to my wife that today was a special day because Texas Tech and Wazzou were playing ‘after hours’ that evening, and that we could be in for a 100-point game! The look on her face was a mix of disdain and utter indifference, which disturbed me greatly.

I suppose I should have taken her lack of enthusiasm as an omen for the things to come (like a combined total of 53). In fact, after last weekend some are raising the question of who’s the more impressive RB out west: John Mateer, or Ashton Jeanty?

I then shifted gears abruptly to lament about the happenings on my morning ride. My wife, a woman born in Asia who moved to Canada when she was six, wholeheartedly agrees with me when it comes to the topic of the dangers that are presented by the average Toronto white woman’s negligence and/or incompetence.

She particularly enjoys a joke that I make about our neighbourhood being “infested with dogs walking their white women”. Most of these people have little-to-no control of the animals that they are responsible for. A truly sickening thing to witness in real time #WHERE IS GAVIN SAWCHUK??

And you know who else let the dogs loose on Saturday? Our old pal Dabo ‘East Atlanta Santa’ Swinney. Shoot, I told ya’ll Clemson’s coming back with a vengeance after that public execution in week one (otherwise known as a neutral site game vs. UGA). And comeback with a vengeance they did.

Cade ‘Seven TD Daddy’ Klubnik looked like the long lost cousin of Trevor Lawrence on Saturday vs. those hapless nerds at App State. I sincerely hope he heard me cuss his name out loud thousands of miles away as he stole not one, but two rushing TDs from Phil Mafah, which resulted in a humiliating defeat to that bastard Nate Marchese in my home league.

Ouch. Maybe those white women in their cars were doing me a favour by potentially putting me out of misery earlier that morning. Anyhoo, Clemson looked good. They looked really good.

Now here’s a question for the audience: given this schedule, are you really telling me that Clemson can’t go 11-1 this season?

In other news, the #10 spot in the AP poll is officially cursed in the year of 2024. First FSU gets the doors blown off them vs. Georgia Tech and Boston College, and then Michigan suffers the same fate via Texas a week later. Of course, this could also be simply due to the fact that both teams were exceptionally overrated this year. But I like the idea of a haunted placement in the poll better, especially as we approach halloween season.

So who’s #10 this week? The Miami Hurricanes, who play… Ball State DUN DUN DUN. We’ve seen this play before (yes, VP, literally last week…). Here we have an ACC team (or pseudo ACC team) matching up against a prideful MAC program yet again from the #10 seed. Am I about to bet the condo on Ball State, aka Ball so-hard University? Only time will tell (no).

If the Canes pull a Notre Dame this week then the theory is basically scientifically proven. I don’t see that happening (shocker, I know). Miami looks for real this year. Both them and the Clemson Tigers have cakewalks to the ACC championship game, and it would not surprise me if that were the matchup at the end of the season.

Oh and by the way, I saw Amy Adams in person on Sunday. Yes, it’s true. My friend and I attended TIFF, each wearing cardigans and matching scarves (OK, that part is a lie). The movie was forgettable, but it did provide some time for me to contemplate the sheer carnage that transpired (or was narrowly avoided) on Saturday…

Pandemonium in Week Two of CFB… Yes? Yes.

While week two of the 2024 season will be remembered as a day of upsets, the carnage could have been so much worse if the wind blew a few directions opposite. Yes, Notre Dame enacted their annual tradition of losing to an underdog early in the season à la Marshall two years ago, but many others narrowly avoided embarrassment.

PSU was on the ropes all afternoon vs. a plucky Bowling Green team. I keep telling people the MAC is back this year and nobody seems to be listening. How many P4 opponents must nearly fall by the sword before we recognize the pattern that lies before us. WMU vs. Wisconsin, Ohio vs. Syracuse, and now: BGSU vs. PSU.

But that wasn’t the only G5 vs. P4 matchup that went awry. Oregon needed two special teams TDs to overcome Ashton Jeanty and the Broncos late Saturday evening. They eventually won by three, but I am now officially starting to question whether Oregon hasn’t been massively overrated this year. I was willing to give the Vandals of Idaho the benefit of the doubt, but now I’m not so sure.

By all indications, the Oklahoma Sooners are in for a rough season in the SEC. Houston kept them to 14 points on the day. And sure, maybe Houston has a good defence this year, but the Sooners had a talent disparity in that game that demanded a quick disposal of their opponent, and they didn’t do that. Not even close.

And how about for the second year in a row Alex Golesh’s Bulls keeping things competitive vs. Alabama. Granted, this was a different Alabama team than last year, and the final box score this go around suggested a beatdown that just simply wasn’t the case on Saturday. I know people are going to look at that one and think that Alabama isn’t very good. In particular, my fellow Dawg fans may be feeling more confident about Sept. 28 than previously thought.

However, I will say this as a warning: no matter how bad the Tide look in other games, they will find a way to play otherworldly vs. UGA. That’s a guarantee. It’s similar to how Auburn can play absolutely dreadful football all season, and then—somehow, someway—conjure up an NFL-like performance vs. the Tide when they play late in November. Happens every year, right?

Tell me if you’ve heard this one before UGA fans: “Alabama’s OLine is looking shaky this year…”

Uh huh, yea, OK. I don’t know who currently starts for Alabama’s OLine, nor do I want to know. But I can tell you who will be in the game on Sept. 28 in Tuscaloosa wearing that goofy ‘A’ on his helmet: the second coming of Jonathan fucking Ogden in his prime printed five times over, that’s who.

Jalen Milroe will probably be oscillating back and forth between a spirit animal of 2010 Cam Newton and 2018 Patrick Mahomes. If he’s feeling particularly spiteful he’ll even channel some 2022 Stetson Bennett-level clutch gene around the fourth quarter when the Dawgs just have to get a stop. ◾

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Poll of the Week

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