What’s up y’all? After a much needed open date that allowed Clemson to recover from the rock fight against The Citadel, the Tigers have (scans schedule) UVA on the docket this week.

I’m going to get straight to the point. I don’t care about Virginia football. Like most UVA fans, I usually don’t remember that UVA football is even a thing. I’ve got a few things to say about UVA, but this year I’m taking my hate nationwide. Hating on basketball schools gets boring and I’m running out of material. Clemson is a national brand and I can no longer limit myself to regional hate.

Let’s get after it.

UVA

We consider UNC to be a “wine and cheese” fan base, but let’s be honest, 99% of UNC fans are rednecks in pastel polo shirts doing their best impression of Virginia fans. If a UVA fan showed up to a tailgate with a box of wine and a Publix cheese platter like their UNC brethren, they would be denied entry. If you show up to a UVA game and don’t bring a bottle of wine recovered from an ancient ship wreck off the coast of Sicily and a block of cheese partially digested by a specific type of maggot, your kid isn’t going to make the traveling lacrosse team. It doesn’t matter if little Jaxtyn is good at....doing whatever it is you do on a lacrosse field (is it called a field?)... he’s staying home while Weston Snodberry XIX goes to the tournament in Dubai in his stead.

If you’re looking for true snobbery in the ACC, all roads lead to Charlottesville, and it makes sense. Football teams, in my opinion, mirror their fanbases. South Carolina football, for example, is the perfect reflection of their fanbase; Over-hyped, undisciplined, and ruthlessly mocked outside of Columbia. Virginia football, much like their fanbase, is as soft as the 576 dollar a pound Pule cheese (made from donkey milk) served up by Cavalier fans in their 300K luxury motor homes outside the stadium. Sure, last season they beat up on the lowly ACC and snuck into the ACC Championship game, but when they faced an actual football team they fell apart.

Notre Dame? L

Clemson? L

Florida? L

Hell, they couldn’t even knock off a 6-7 Miami squad.

When you punch UVA in the mouth, they immediately assume the fetal position and sob until the other team walks away in disgust. Like I said earlier, they’re a perfect reflection of their fanbase.

Bronco

To UVA’s credit, they understand they lack toughness, and subsequently brought in a coach named Bronco to toughen the program up. Folks, if you’re looking to toughen up, maybe don’t hire BYU’s head coach, even if his name sounds like he belongs on the PBR tour.

Oh, but Bronco took them to the ACC CHAMPIONSHIP GAME!

Yawn, just another hapless victim for the Tigers to dispatch in the first half before focusing on loftier goals.

In an interview currently posted on Wahoos247, Bronco had this to say about the 62-17 mauling

“But without that game, and the outcome of that game and how it was played, we wouldn’t have been as effective or played the way we did versus Florida, so I thought we played a better football game against the University of Florida because of what we learned in our game against Clemson.”

First off, maybe they should have leaned that lesson after losing to Notre Dame, or Miami, or Louisville, and provided Clemson with a challenge. The ACC Championship game shouldn’t be a “growth experience” for a team. There is nothing positive about getting your ass beat on national television unless it leads to Brent Venables becoming your defensive coordinator, and Brent ain’t walking through that door.

Next, let’s not overlook the fact that they lost to Florida.

Bronco is talking up a moral victory. The ACC Championship debacle helped propel his team to a 36-28 loss to Florida in the Orange Bowl. I didn’t watch the game because I don’t care about either team, but according to the box score, they gave up 549 yards of offense to the Gators and scored a garbage time touchdown with 38 seconds remaining to make the game appear close. I guess Bronco is banking on the fact that no one else watched the Orange Bowl either, because it’s not even a moral victory unless you consider a game where Florida pulled ahead for good at the 9:34 mark of the second quarter a success.

You know what?

I’m tired of talking about UVA football. They don’t deserve my attention, and they’re in for the same transformative beating this year that they experienced last year.

I’m sure Bronco will thank Dabo for the lesson after the game.

Oklahoma

I do my best to avoid hating on 18 and 19 year old college kids, but I told y’all the “Spencer Rattler is a serious Heisman threat” frenzy was premature. I’m not even hating on Rattler because he’s a talented guy with a bright future, but man, does sports media love it when Lincoln Riley inflates stats to push his QB into the Heisman discussion.

Speaking of Lincoln Riley, he’s looking more and more like a fraud. The Sooners were up 35-14 with 3 minutes left to go in the 3rd quarter and lost to a Kansas State team that barely managed to cross the requisite number of players threshold to play the game. All they had to do was run the ball, not turn it over, and coast to victory. Instead of coaching to win, he coached to pump up Rattler’s stats, and lost.

If you’re curious how to lose a game where you not only have a decisive talent advantage, but also a decisive lead in the 3rd quarter, it looks something like this:

(I’m picking this up at 35-14 Oklahoma with 2:46 left in the 3rd quarter)

KSU: 3 plays - 75 yards - TD - 1:10 drive - KSU 21 - O.U. 35

O.U.: 2 plays, 13 yards - Lost Fumble - 21 second drive

KSU: 8 plays, 38 yards - TD - 3:47 drive - KSU 28 - O.U. 35

O.U.: 8 plays, 33 yards - Blocked Punt - 4:01 drive

KSU: 2 plays 38 yards - TD - 10 second drive - KSU 35 - O.U. 35

O.U.: 5 plays, 1 yard - Punt - 1:45 drive

KSU: 5 plays, 29 yards - FG - 2:00 drive - KSU 38 - O.U. 35

O.U.: 3 plays, 3 yards - Punt - 1:43 drive

KSU: 3 plays, 7 yards - Punt - 2:00 drive

OU: 2 plays, 0 yards - INT - 15 second drive

KSU: Kneel down for the win

You’ve got to wonder how many rabbit ear TVs in the Oklahoma trailer parks suffered the wrath of drunkenly enraged O.U. fans. Those folks gave up their rent check to watch the Sooners crush Missouri State on pay-per-view and then they lost the next time out on free television.

People act like LSU losing was the upset of the week, but O.U. had the game in hand, got cute, and got beat. Riley’s team had the focus of a 5-year-old at an amusement park, hopped up on cotton candy. All they had to do was make one play and they couldn’t do it.

The sad part is, we’ve seen this before. This week begins the O.U. redemption tour. They’ll beat up on the bad defenses in the Big12, knock off the mentally fragile Longhorns twice, and cry their way into the CFP only to give up 1,000 yards and 60 points to whatever real team they draw in the semi-final.

I sincerely hope that real team is Clemson, because something about beating Oklahoma while their fans talk about the 1970’s hits differently.

Ohio State

I haven’t forgotten about the Buckeyes.

They are enemy number one on my radar this season. They’ve yet to play, but have already crowned themselves the “unofficial 2020 National Champions” before the Big10 decided to jump back into the college football season. It would have been in Ohio State’s best interest to sit this one out, because the only Championship they’re going to win is the unofficial one they gave themselves. Now their fans are going to have to make excuses for their inevitable loss instead of claiming an imaginary National Championship they totally would have won if they had been allowed to play.

Ohio State, in a lot of ways, is Oklahoma. They’re a soft team, with soft fans, living in a crappy state, who think beating up on bad teams makes them elite. Hell, the only notable victories for either program in the last 5 years are against each other. When they leave their antiquated conferences and step up to real college football powerhouses, they’re constantly found lacking. No one is afraid of Ohio State or Oklahoma outside of their respective conferences (and Kansas State isn’t afraid of them inside their own conference).

To take it one step further, their hated rivals, Michigan, are identical to Texas. The Wolverines and Longhorns trade on their pasts, because their presents are bankrupt. They have overpaid, under-performing coaches who implode when faced with the smallest touch of adversity. I guarantee you, if O.U. was up 35-14 on either Texas or Michigan, those programs would quit because their coaches are S-O-F-T and their players have been pumped up to the point where they think they deserve to win because of the logo on their jerseys.

LSU

I mentioned LSU earlier, and I won’t spend much time on them now, but they are who we thought they were. A flash in the pan led by a red hot offensive coordinator and quarterback.

Coach O isn’t a good coach. He’s not a program builder. They’ll return to winning 9 games on talent alone and getting curb stomped by Bama now that the Joes have left the bayou. I hope they enjoyed their Championship run, because it’s going to be a long time before they sniff one of those again.

Mississippi State scored two more touchdowns while I was typing this blurb.

See y’all next week. I’ve got plenty to say about THE U.