For some reason, as the increasing weight of how far Illinois is from being good keeps stacking on top of the weight of how long it’s been since they’ve been any good, my response has been to just NARROW MY FOCUS FURTHER ON ILLINOIS FOOTBALL.

If I squint REALLY HARD, they’ll win a third game this year.

Anyway, if this keeps going it’ll be a thing where I’ll need to start throwing a 2-seamer to make up for my loss of fastball velocity. Either that or just get scratched from all my appearances. Shit happens when you just don’t have any stuff anymore. You know who still does though?

Darelle Ref-is

You can’t teach these instincts

The ball moves a bit on him from where he set up, but he adjusts and hauls it in. Hell of a play. Reminds me of the official making three lateral shuffle steps to square up and then throwing a shoulder into Stephen Garcia as he tried to scramble.

This Is Apparently A Field Goal?

If someone can help me out with any other details about this play, I’d appreciate it. The official Sportscenter instragram posted it last week, so I’m assuming it happened then.

That should count for at least 4 points.

Penn State’s Offensive Line Is Not Ready For QB2

We touched on this in the recap podcast, but Penn State apparently had around 8 false starts on the north side of the field after Sean Clifford went down, including 3 on the same down.

How does this happen? Well, it just so happens that I had watched an interesting video by former NFL journeyman JT O’Sullivan about snap counts when I heard about this. It would appear that whatever Roberson was doing for his cadence/snap counts was either not something the line was used to listening/watching for, or wasn’t loud enough while Clifford’s had been. Either way, something was very different about the way Roberson’s snap count went. This is on the Penn State coaches for not having QB2 and the first team offense ready to go.

Eli Gold Transmuted Into Pure Salt

You may have heard, but #1 Alabama finally lost this weekend, this time on the road at Texas A&M on a last second field goal.

Here’s a shot of the Alabama radio booth, helmed by broadcasting legend and exceedingly polite DM-slider Eli Gold. Just take a listen. I don’t think I ever saw Hawk Harrelson this salty.

Thirty seconds of silence, followed by an extremely roundabout way of saying they’re rushing the field. Magnificent.

You Must Act This Weird To Beat Alabama

Speaking of the Aggies! This is a lifetime-achievement Tart more than anything. I’m sure you’ve heard of the legendary Midnight Yell, where the Aggie faithful work themselves into an absolute FRENZY to get ready for their next opponent. Feast your eyes and ears on this clip from last week’s edition:

Apparently, those weird little gestures are not a tic this guy has. That’s what you do when you’re a Yell Leader (which is not a cheerleader because that would be Not Very Macho). Yes. Every time. You must do the weird little gestures.

...

...My goddamn school hasn’t had an 8-win season in 14 years.

Would You Like To Ride In My Beautiful Balloon?

Nebraska followed the script perfectly, staging a furious comeback to take the lead on Michigan before melting down on offense late and blowing their last chance to win with a backbreaking turnover.

Two hours later, this was the scene at an empty Memorial Stadium

Someone’s gonna set that to some more fitting music at some point, right? Oh to fly so high.

Be Humble. Sitdownski.

Artur Sitkowski was pressed into game action for the Fighting Illini after starting quarterback Brandon Peters got himself into sack trouble again and left with an injury.

Thirteen passes hit the turf before he found his first completion.

Art had two different defensive penalties earn him first downs, one of which wiped out the associated incompletion, so only 12 straight incompletions actually counted. He certainly did try to complete passes to linebackers, but it was no use. Sitkowski would finish 8 of 27 for 55 yards, but no interceptions!

Illinois has played 7 first quarters and scored 5 total points across them.

Six More Inches

So many things almost happened that would have seen the Southern Illinois Salukis score on this play:

It turned into a 99.9 yard fumble return touchdown instead.

Despite this, the Salukis were v good bois and came all the way back to win on the road at South Dakota State!

WOOF.

NFL Mentions

Well, these don’t count as tarts, but there’s quite a few to choose from anyway:

And then there’s the end of Packers-Bengals, which is what ties are for.

No, I’m not including that Iowa-PSU dustup. We have enough Iowa-PSU content.