It’s an early September tradition: my team’s path to a regular season with more wins than losses is, for the fifteenth straight year, obliterated.

It’s the season of hot takes right now, and somewhere in all the excitement I’m sure something will be forgotten. Have you ever come home from a trip to the grocery store having forgotten the main thing you went there for?

...Please Punt

South Carolina State’s punter was running the ball down the right side of the field when he realized he had forgotten to do the main thing he was on the field to do:

Unfortunately, this was a field-position-sensitive checkmark on the to-do-list. Can’t do that!

When Your Balls (Tate) Are Too Big For Your Own Good

The 2022 Ball State Cardinals will certainly not be accused of lacking balls (tate). They decided to throw their big ol’ bag of Balls (Tate) around from the get-go:

That’s one way to make an impression I suppose, There’s tone setting and then there’s SETTING THE TONE.

Fire The Cannon!

No, this is not a rutger post, but it does feel rutgeresque. East Tennessee State is another team that likes to shoot off cannons when they score. The timing is extremely important when you do this though:

Someone had to give the order.

Heeeee’s the guy who likes all our touchdown drives, and I think his name is Shannon, and he likes to shoot the cannon, but he knows not what it means

Knows not what it means when I say

WAIT UNTIL WE KICK THE GODDAMN EXTRA POINT!

Penn State Blasphemes The Big Ten Ethos

The 35-31 shootout that Purdue lost to Penn State by refusing to run the ball and keep the clock moving was in many ways a rebuke of everything we hold sacred here in the Big Ten, but no act was more profane than what Daequan Hardy did to a beautiful punt by Barney Amor.

This should earn you a suspension from the league.

Snap Six

Have you ever missed a long snap so badly it was a touchdown for the other team?

Virginia Tech really needed those points! They’d lose by three.

$7 Billion League Can’t Have Full Time Professional Officials

The Big Ten’s new media rights deal for their ostensibly amateur football league is worth over seven billion dollars.

Despite the enormous amount of money being thrown around, the officials are not full time employees of this multibillion dollar league.

One side effect of that decision is condemning Illinois to its eleventh straight losing season on this:

At what point does the play stop? The ball never hits the ground, Hightower catches it and rolls and then has it stripped from him. It pops up in the air and he catches it with a foot in bounds, securing it tightly in such a manner that it survives the ground.

If this isn’t a touchdown, good luck to Spencer Petras ever throwing another in this league!

Hate In An Elevator

Virginia Tech’s troubles didn’t end with the bad snap on the field goal returned for a touchdown. At halftime, this happened:

Overall, this game was an absolute shitshow

UCLA Joins The Big Ten

I know, they don’t actually play a Big Ten schedule for two more years, but watch this and tell me UCLA isn’t ready for the B1G already.

Imagine something more B1G than fucking up and giving up a stupid touchdown to open the scoring against a middling-to-bad MAC team.

Nebraska Sound Crew Needs More Reps

According to multiple Nebraska contributors, the Huskers’ first home game had an early replay review of a play that the Lincoln faithful were hoping with all their hearts to see overturned.

The stadium DJ played “Let It Be.”

...Was this an inside job?

Borne Back Ceaselessly Into The Past

The University of Southern Florida Bulls football program reached tremendous heights under Jim Leavitt, fell off under Skip Holtz and then rose back to prominence under Willie Taggart. Charlie Strong took over a pretty talented squad with high expectations that was pulling in great attendance numbers.

Between the 2019 Bulls melting down to the point of firing Strong and COVID putting a damper on attendance everywhere, it appears that they had excess gameday inventory:

What, you mean you don’t want to relive the year you got rid of Charlie Strong every time you go to a home game?

Iowa Leans Into The Meme

Apparently, the Ferentz braintrust was mighty peeved about the Internet giving the 2021 Iowa Hawkeyes all kinds of shit about having a horrible offense and basically going to the Big Ten title game with ²⁄₃ of a team. They heard your complaints and came out with a response for the ages.

“Fine,” said Kirk, pacing around angrily, “if they’re gonna complain all through a season like that, then let’s give ‘em something to complain about.”

Look at this play design. This would have gotten more yardage if Petras decided to just bootleg to the right. It’s almost as though this gameplan were drawn up specifically to punt as much as possible.

Nothing is impossible to Clan Ferentz. Go ahead, try us. Dare us to make it worse thinking we can’t find a way.

Hump Around

I don’t know what else to say about this one

Surprise Surprise, Quinn Ewers Doesn’t Understand Rules

Texas quarterback Quinn Ewers finally made his debut this past weekend. He had quite the question after the game though!

I don’t know, man, probably by parking in a tow-away zone?

Anyway, let’s hear your thoughts: