The Top Whatever: HOGS
The Top Whatever is your weekly ranking of only the college football things that must be ranked. Sometimes it publishes at a leisurely afternoon ET hour, sure.
One good idea might be to go ahead and make sure the latest episode of Split Zone Duo is downloading while you read this blog.
1. HOGS, by Spencer
Somewhere, someone destroyed a golf cart in Arkansas on Saturday night. It was completely justified, because Arkansas snapped a 20-game SEC losing streak and turned into something it had not been for at least three years: A functional football program.
Functional covers function only. They’re ugly, the kind of ugly that didn’t even get 300 yards against a Mississippi State defense more than capable of handing them out. The Razorbacks didn’t do much offensively in the fourth quarter to guarantee the win.
They even ended by punting on fourth and 36, a terrifying down and distance that had to have Arkansas fans seeing every single possible meteor about to hit them. Fourth and 36 meant Arkansas would have the punt blocked, or maybe they’d all have to watch the snap sail clear over the punter’s head and into their own end zone for a game-crippling safety. Maybe, 35,000 feet above the stadium, an engine would fall off a passing 737, landing on the punter just before he caught the ball.
Ask any Razorback fan. Those were all on the table.
Instead, the Hogs got the ball off, defended the final 25 seconds successfully, and won a football game. Having won a conference game, Arkansas has now had the most successful season in recent program history. That’s not even a backhanded insult. It’s a start, and that’s more than Arkansas has had in a long, long time.
Now go fish the golf cart out of the trout pond. Y’all gotta celebrate with a quick 18 before dinner.
2. The Incredible Expanding/Collapsing Tom Herman, by Jason
Ant-Man can become big enough to fight this guy …
… or small enough to make friends with this guy:
Ant-Man is the perfect addition to any fight, ready to swell or shrink as the story demands, always playing up or down to his opponents.
Similarly, Texas under Tom Herman has been averaging two upsets of ranked teams per year, including Oklahoma and Georgia, but has averaged roughly the same number of losses per year to teams that are Mediocre At Best, including Maryland and Maryland.
2020 TCU might be mediocre, good, or otherwise, so the Horns’ loss to the Frogs might not even count here. But we were almost able to say all of this a week earlier, back when Texas tried to lose to Definitely Mediocre Texas Tech, now weren’t we?
Also, back at Houston, Herman paired his upsets of Louisville x2, Navy, FSU, and Oklahoma with losses against a 6-7 UConn and 5-7 SMU. Ant-Man’s origin story!
3. BYU, by Alex
Moved to 3-0 by thrashing Louisiana Tech, 45-14. They were 24-point favorites and covered without breaking a sweat (it was 45-7 in garbage time), meaning they’ve now beaten the closing spread by a combined 84.5 points in wins over Navy, Troy, and LA Tech.
In last week’s Split Zone Duo, Richard and I made it clear the Cougars would be going undefeated this fall. They’ve since added Boise State and San Diego State to the schedule, raising their number of games from eight to a planned 10. So be it. BYU is outrageously powerful on both lines, has a dart-throwing quarterback in Zach Wilson, and should beat every team on its expanding slate.
4. Campbell, by Spencer
Campbell University is tiny, but it exists. This is something I didn’t really know before the Camels ended up hustling their way onto national television multiple times this season. Everyone who, like me, did not realize Campbell was real has been missing out because:
a.) Their mascot is the noble Fighting Camel, making them the rare school with a mascot notorious for spitting at people they don’t like.
b.) Their Wikipedia thumbnail lists this:
c.) When they call a trick play, they make their entire offensive line bellyflop to the ground in unison, then sprint downfield like a roaring, winded stampede.
Even though they lost 66-14 to Wake Forest to conclude their four-game season — or maybe because they lost that badly, but still did one very interesting thing while doing so — Campbell obviously deserves your program’s future cupcake game dollars. Make them bring a real camel to the game as part of the contract, and then invest in rain gear and splash shields.
5. North Dakota State, by Alex
The Bison closed out 2020 with a 1-0 record by beating Central Arkansas at the Fargodome, 39-28. It’s NDSU’s third undefeated season in a row and leaves the Bison with a decent national title claim for FCS’ fall season, which would make nine in 10 years.
Concerningly, NDSU QB Trey Lance – who did not throw an interception in 2019 – averaged one pick per game for this season. His completion percentage was 50%. That probably won’t do any favors for his draft stock. NDSU has a lot to work on over the offseason before next year’s opener on February 21 against Youngstown State.
6. POLITICS, by Richard
Were you watching halftime of Alabama vs. Texas A&M on Saturday? There is a high likelihood that, no matter where you are in these United States, you saw an ad for Alabama’s Senate race. I saw it in New York City, for instance.
You see, this is not any Senate race. Former Ole Miss/Auburn/Cincinnati/etc. head coach Tommy Tuberville is running as a Republican against Doug Jones. Basically every poll shows that Tuberville is gonna win by a fairly comfortable margin.
But while we’re here, let’s POLITIFACT this here commercial.
“They’ll have to carry me out of [Ole Miss] in a pine box,” followed by quitting the next week: Yeah, that checks out!
“Despite Tuberville quitting, Auburn will pay buyout”: Yeah, he did that. And Auburn paid it, even though they might not have been obligated to. Sidenote: If one of his players had quit, how much would they have gotten?
“Tuberville ditched recruits at dinner”: The story goes that Tubs was at a dinner with recruits while coaching at Texas Tech and excused himself to go take the Cincinnati job, more or less. The account was actually in some dispute by multiple sources at Cincinnati at the time, so take it for what it’s worth.
“Tommy Tuberville resigns as Cincinnati head coach”: Yes this did also actually happen, but was in December. He most certainly did tell a heckler to “go to hell,” a month before he dipped out of the Queen City.
So there’s some creative editing here, but the points remain.
FACT RATING: True enough.
7. Pirates, by Richard
ECU is not a great football team, but we love to see great special teams, which the Pirates deployed to pillage (get it?) two touchdowns while down quite a bit on the scoreboard.
Someone should send this beauty to Nick Saban. This is how you run a fake field goal, and the holder is most certainly not the lead blocker.
And this punt block is wonderfully executed as well.
We gotta find silver linings in this world, and ECU has two big ones after Saturday.
8. Time, by Alex
Time is consistent. It moves at the same speed in all places on earth. There are many units of measuring it, but most organizations use the same ones week in and week out.
9. Will Muschamp, also by Alex
Ranked right below that which he does not understand.
South Carolina’s $13 million buyout man ended last weekend’s game at Tennessee by kicking a field goal while he trailed by a touchdown, all to save three yards of field position and never get the ball back.
Muschamp somehow topped it at his old office this week. The Gamecocks trailed Florida by 14 when they got the ball with eight minutes left at their own 22. They then mounted an 18-play, 74-yard drive that included six running plays, five for fewer than six yards, as well as a series of short passes. The last play of the drive came with less than one minute remaining. It was a fourth-down incompletion into the end zone.
All this time, Muschamp left two timeouts in his pocket. He decided to use them once Kyle Trask was taking kneel downs to kill the clock. These timeouts achieved nothing, because Florida had enough plays to simply kill the clock anyway. His buyout is a lot, and these are hard times, but South Carolina should fire Muschamp for cause due to his ongoing assault on math.
10. The teams at the end of Auburn’s schedule, by Jason
It’ll be interesting to see which of these teams lose to the Tigers by 37 points, in order for Gus Malzahn to keep his job one more time:
11. Peace signs, by Alex
Kentucky’s A.J. Rose had Ole Miss’ entire defense beaten, until he threw up a peace sign, slowed up a little bit, and met a predictable end prior to the end zone:
UK fumbled at the goal line a few plays later, Ole Miss recovered, and Ole Miss eventually won in overtime.
Meanwhile, at West Point, Abilene Christian’s L.J. McConnell met a similar fate:
His being tackled led to a field goal instead of a touchdown, which in turn led to me losing a bet on Abilene +30.5 when Army scored an infuriating touchdown on its last play of the game.
That’s what we both get for throwing up a peace sign against the military.
Thank you, and as always, if you would like to join us on the good internet, our Discord chat town is available via our Patreon.