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Best game of the weekend: Texas at Texas A&M. While the Lions disappointed, the Cowboys slipped by another inferior opponent and the 49ers' offensive line fell apart, the college boys stepped up for prime time Thanksgiving theater.
One moment it looked like the Aggies were going to let out all their inferiority complex frustration on the Longhorns. The next moment it looked like the Aggies had fallen apart again and blown yet another double-digit lead.
After an inspiring touchdown drive that put A&M up in the last scheduled game in the storied rivalry, Colt McCoy’s younger brother, Case, provided the drama. Covered with grass and dirt stains, McCoy led the Longhorns to field goal range where kicker Justin Tucker won it with a 40-yard field goal. With the Aggies off to the Southeastern Conference in 2012, their fans will have to remember the score, 27-25, for a long time.
Once again, officials have to figure out the personal foul calls. It’s getting ridiculous, and the Texas-Texas A&M game had a perfect example. On the last drive of the game, an Aggie safety was called for hitting a defenseless receiver who was going after an overthrown pass along the sideline.
Contact was made, but it could have been much worse had the Aggie defender not pulled up as soon as he saw the pass was not going to be caught. The flag was thrown and the drive continued. The drive may have been stalled there with Texas’ relatively inept offense. Instead, McCoy’s heroic scramble led to the Texas win. The penalty punished the defender for doing exactly what the new safety rules are designed for — pulling up to avoid hitting a defenseless receiver.
For some reason, college football referees can’t get it straight between differing types of the many new personal foul types. Nowadays, a player can get flagged for hitting a defenseless receiver, targeting or helmet- to-helmet contact. It’s one thing to have rules to protect football players, but it’s something completely different to change the game to something other than football.
Who knows, maybe the game needs changing, but the referees need to get on the same page. They’re missing blatant calls (see Travis Uale’s hit on DeVonte Christopher in this year’s BYU-Utah game) and penalizing players for doing exactly what we want them to do. There are a handful of calls every weekend that influence the outcomes of games.
These rivalries need to stay around — badly. This past weekend is quite possibly the best weekend in sports. It’s rivalry weekend in college football. It’s a shame games like Texas-Texas A&M, Pitt-West Virginia and Utah-BYU could go away because of arrogance, pride or hurt feelings.
There’s absolutely no reason that these rivalries should go away with games like Florida-Florida State, Clemson-South Carolina and Georgia-Georgia Tech still being played. Keep the rivalry games, no matter what it takes. Rivalries are the fabric of college football. Play the games in September for now if you have to, at least until you can move it back to November if possible, but do everything possible to keep these games going.
The SEC is something special. In the massive amounts of football I watched this weekend, I have forgotten who I heard say this. Forgive me. But the quote was, “There are three conferences in football. The AFC, the NFC and the SEC.”
I’m afraid of sounding like the BCS, good ole boy homer that I’ve railed against for a long time, but the SEC is head, shoulders and waist above every other conference in college football. Watching the Alabama defense and the LSU speed is breath-taking. It’s rare to see a defense as athletic and fast, yet disciplined as Alabama’s. Watching them suffocate Auburn’s offense was exhilarating.
I don’t know if a national championship rematch between LSU and Alabama is the right thing to do, but those two teams are the best in the nation. Alabama may have lost its chance last month, but I walked away from that first game in Tuscaloosa believing that Alabama was the best team in the country, even though they got beat.
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If there’s a “Rumble in the Rockies,” it’s “the Holy War.” Let’s face it, there’s no rivalry between Utah and Colorado. There may be one budding after the big upset (that is how rivalries get started — one team begins upsetting the heavily favored one), but Colorado and Utah simply don’t hate each other, at least not yet.
As much as Ute fans don’t want to admit this as they proudly walk away from their first full year in a BCS conference, the worst part about Friday’s loss to Colorado was not the loss itself. It wasn’t even the loss of a shot at an appearance in the Pac-12 championship game or the chance at a huge payout for going to the Valero Alamo Bowl. The worst part of the Colorado loss was knowing that Cougar fans were just supplied more ammunition for their smack talk. The first thought going through Ute fans’ minds was BYU fans’ reaction. See now, that’s a rivalry.
Oh how quickly and how drastically things can change. In one cold afternoon, Utah went from taking a huge step for the program by appearing in the inaugural Pac-12 championship game and likely going on to the Alamo Bowl, a top-tier bowl game in San Antonio with a $3.175 million payout against a team like Oklahoma or Kansas State to a likely appearance in the Sun Bowl in El Paso against Virginia or Georgia Tech with a $2 million payout.
This was also almost the same case in the Michigan-Ohio State game, which was a close runner-up to Texas-Texas A&M for the best game of the weekend. Michigan was on the verge of pounding the ball into the end zone and the nail into the Ohio State coffin when a touchdown was reversed on instant replay and spotted mere inches away from the goal line and the first Michigan win over the Buckeyes in seven years. On the next play (a Denard Robinson touchdown run), the Wolverines were called for two penalties, a holding during the play and a personal foul after the play. After the penalties were marked off, the ball was spotted on the 26 yard line and nearly out of field goal range.
Had Ohio State managed to win the game, we would have never heard the end of it from Michigan fans. Suddenly Ann Arbor would have been hexed with some sort of curse. These two experiences remind all sports fans that things can change in an instant, just ask Red Sox fans.
The first regular season in the Pac-12 is over, it was a pretty wild ride. As disappointed as Ute fans may be after the loss to Colorado, they have to have loved their first season in the Pac-12. In the Mountain West Conference, the season was over after one solitary loss. There was nothing to play for after one mistake. Yes, the margin of error may be thinner on a week-to-week basis in the Pac-12, but on a yearly basis it was much thinner in the Mountain West.
Remember last season? The Utes were ranked in the top five in the country before losing to TCU. Then the season unraveled. Ute fans and players felt a huge hangover from the TCU loss. The Utes proceeded to lose to Notre Dame and look bad against BYU and San Diego State, coming away with ugly wins in both those games.
Now, in the Pac-12 the Utes at 7-5 will likely head to the Sun Bowl, a bowl one choice above the Vegas Bowl, the best bowl the Utes could hope for year-in and year-out in the Mountain West.
Trevor Amicone is the sports director at 88.1 Weber FM, "Ogden's Radio Station," and host of the sports talk radio show, "Fully Loaded Sports with Trevor Amicone." Follow him on Twitter @TrevorAmicone
