While Saturday’s Georgia-Tennessee game was the biggest contest in the history of that matchup and the de facto headliner for Week 10, it was the SEC rivalry that has defined the conference for most of this century that once again stole the limelight. In his first time helming LSU against Alabama, coach Brian Kelly got his revenge in his third try against Nick Saban.

In his first two meetings against the Tide, Kelly’s team got outscored 73-28, and the Fighting Irish never had a chance to steal a win. One could argue that even though the meetings were held at a neutral site, the playing field was never level.

That wasn’t the case at Tiger Stadium on Saturday as Jayden Daniels, Kayshon Boutte, and Co. — with the help of a sauced-up home crowd — looked like they belonged on any field with any team.

Yet we know that if you want to end Bama’s pursuit of another College Football Playoff and another national title, you’re going to have to KO them. And that’s exactly the kind of swing Kelly took at the end of the first and final extra period.

Tired of watching Bryce Young wiggle out of the grasp of rushing Tigers and into the red zone, Kelly opted to leave his offense on the field after Daniels responded to a Tide TD on his team’s first offensive play in OT.

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In real time, it felt like the LSU coach was outsmarting himself with a gamble worthy of Les Miles, a desperate man rolling the dice against a superior adversary. I thought whatever play he called was going to fall hilariously flat, and well, then this happened.

Of course, the fans rushed the field because they were in a state of euphoria and probably blacked out. But also because this was the first time they witnessed a win over Bama in Death Valley since 2010.

The Bayou Bengals are always a recruiting period away from having the type of players to hang with any school in college football. The issue has always been the coach. Kelly deserved every bit of shit he received for ditching Notre Dame, filming TikToks with teenaged recruits, and faking a Southern accent.

He’s also pretty damn shrewd for recognizing the limitations in South Bend and going to one of the top three programs in college football when the opportunity presented itself for a pickup bed full of money. LSU is now an Arkansas and Texas A&M win away from the conference title game. No two-loss team has ever earned a spot in the playoff, but no SEC champion has ever been held out of it either.

Even though I’m not sure how smart it is to actively seek Georgia’s attention, LSU has it — and a chance to send the CFP selection process further into chaos.

Vols lose but catch a couple of breaks

Nothing about Tennessee’s visit to Georgia went well. Hendon Hooker never found his rhythm, the defense’s aggressive approach backfired, and even the Dawgs’ special teams outplayed their counterpart.

On Friday, I wrote that the loser of this game will need a lot of help to get into the playoff. I guess “write and you shall receive,” as not only did the SEC’s most significant threat for a second bid lose, but so did Clemson.

Dabo Swinney’s Tigers went into South Bend and got dismantled. The 35-14 win salvaged Marcus Freeman’s first season leading Notre Dame, and also exposed a team that a lot of pundits weren’t high on.

The loser of the Ohio State-Michigan game will be in a similar position as Tennessee, and they’ll have to keep the contest close because neither the Buckeyes nor the Wolverines have a resume on par with UT.

We’ll see how the standings shake up after three of the top six lost, but, as experts love to point out, a lot of these rankings will take care of themselves in the ensuing weeks. The Volunteers magical season flirted with reverting into a big, rotting, orange pumpkin, and yet, within a few hours, it was still alive, looking for a glass slipper that fits.

 

 

 

 

 

 

When the Astros’ 2017 cheating scandal was exposed in 2019, team owner Jim Crane wanted to make sure everyone knew the championship wasn’t tainted. “Our opinion is that this didn’t impact the game,” Crane said. “We had a good team. We won the World Series and we’ll leave it at that.” Then-right fielder Josh Reddick chimed in with a similar sentiment: “I think it’s just a matter of, we’re still a good team and it wasn’t a necessary point of us winning. We still went out there and won ballgames on the road as well.”

Essentially, this argument boils down to “We were such a good team. It was only a matter of time before we won. The cheating wasn’t necessary, it just expedited the process.”

The team’s 2022 championship is evidence that both Crane and Reddick’s statements were true. They were good enough to win…so why cheat at all?

I know this 2022 team isn’t similar to the 2017 squad, but the Astros’ continued dominance since the 2017 World Series — three World Series appearances and five straight ALCS appearances — is evidence that even no matter how their team has changed over the years, the sentiment of those two statements above has remained intact.

This organization was so well-built from a player standpoint. Even after the cheating scandal was exposed, they reached the ALCS in the COVID-shortened 2020 season followed by two consecutive World Series appearances and a World Series title. They were built for the future. Everybody in the baseball world knew that the Astros would be contenders for years to come. Clearly, the 2017 series wasn’t their only shot to win it all.

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I’m very happy for the 2022 Astros. I’m not minimizing this accomplishment. I’ve never been one of those haters who claimed that the Astros couldn’t win without cheating. That title is in the distant past. They’ve continued to win and win and win. I feel especially great for Jeremy Peña, Dusty Baker, Trey Mancini, Martín Maldonado, Mattress Mack, and the people of Houston who get their mattress money back. I’m not disparaging this moment for them or the city of Houston. They deserve it. However, I don’t know how anyone can look at this title and think it redeems the Astros’ franchise for their crimes in 2017.

Congrats to the Astros! You’ve been good for a very long time and deserve this championship. But you were arguably an even better team in 2017. You didn’t have to cheat, and although I hate continuing to bring it up five years removed, it needs to be said, because I just know there are going to be people claiming that this title absolves the 2017 Astros from any wrongdoing. It obviously doesn’t.

 

 

 

 

 

 

There has been an interesting aura around the Missouri football program for decades essentially boiling down to weird things will happen to this team. It’s just a matter of when chaos ensues. In today’s edition of batshit crazy Southeastern Conference football, we found out a tackle box for a punter extends from Mizzou’s home in Columbia to St. Louis, over 100 miles away. It’s a bit of an exaggeration, but only a bit. And the officials calling a tackle box half the size of the Show-Me State screwed the Tigers out of their best chance to win.

Missouri’s defense played lights out for most of Saturday’s SEC East game against Kentucky, with crucial bowl eligibility implications. Wildcats quarterback Will Levis is a consensus top-10 pick in next year’s NFL Draft and is at worst the third-highest rated player at his position for draft scouts behind Bryce Young and C.J. Stroud. He looked pedestrian against Missouri, a credit to how good the Tigers’ defense has been for most of the season. After the MU defense forced a Kentucky punt to give the ball back to its offense late in the game, the weirdest application of roughing the kicker I’ve ever seen took place.

Kentucky’s long snapper heaved the ball through his legs so far over the head of Wildcats’ punter Colin Goodfellow that he had to frantically sprint over 20 yards to pick up the fumble. Miraculously, he did beat any Missouri play to the ball. And had a split second to turn around and boot it away to not give the Tigers’ first-and-goal to start their next drive. As Goodfellow smartly does so, he’s blasted by Missouri’s Will Norris, and a penalty flag is almost immediately thrown for roughing the kicker.

Was the hit brutal? Sure. It’s also football and if Goodfellow is that fragile, Norris made the right move to take him out. The ball would’ve popped loose and an easy touchdown would’ve come the Tigers’ way. But somehow, the punter is a protected player 37 yards behind the line of scrimmage. I never knew tackle boxes were that big! Next time Josh Allen scrambles away from pressure and is about to be sacked, why doesn’t he kick it? It’ll be roughing the passer by this thinking.

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Missouri’s offense only scored 17 points and didn’t by itself play well enough to win the game. You can’t win most SEC games going 2-13 on third down. But dammit, MU got screwed on this one. And full disclosure — I used to cover Missouri for three years as the hometown daily newspaper’s beat reporter. I called out Mizzou for anything they did wrong and still would today. This one’s indefensible, and Tigers’ fans have every reason to be pissed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

As tired as you are of reading about Kyrie Irving, sports writers are equally as exhausted trying to come up with good ledes for stories about the guard who’s currently suspended by the Brooklyn Nets. I wish it would’ve been Pepsi that suspended its relationship with Irving in addition to Nike because I feel like there’s an Uncle Drew joke waiting to be penned.

Something along the lines of, “Everyone has that crazy relative who says problematic stuff at family gatherings, and Pepsi is your aunt who’s had enough as she formally filed divorce papers with Uncle Drew.”

Unfortunately, I don’t have anything nearly that good for Nike issuing a statement saying it suspended its relationship with Irving and will not release his newest shoe.

“At Nike, we believe there is no place for hate speech and we condemn any form of antisemitism. To that end, we’ve made the decision to suspend our relationship with Kyrie Irving effective immediately and will no longer launch the Kyrie 8.

“We are deeply saddened and disappointed by the situation and its impact on everyone.”

We knew this was coming. We may not have been able to predict what the action was that finally caught up with Irving, but after not learning a damn thing from his anti-vax agenda — other than if you throw a tantrum long enough, someone will acquiesce — a comeuppance was in his future. The fact that it was his own tweet that got him wasn’t as poetic as if it had been COVID. This is funnier though. (Not the antisemitism; Irving going full Plaxico Burress with his Twitter account.)

Being the smartest person in the room is hard work, which is why valedictorians can typically be found in the library during their free periods. I doubt Kyrie even knew where that building was during his semester at Duke, because if he had, he’d know how to differentiate between credible sources and some jackass spouting debunked antisemitic tropes in a documentary cooked up on iMovie.

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By the way, the Anti-Defamation League and the Nets sent a letter to aspiring NFL owner Jeff Bezos and Amazon leaders asking them to stop selling the material or at least add a disclaimer to it. (Wow, that sounds eerily like what critics have been asking social media companies to do with similar misinformation for years. Supervillains exist in real life; they’ve just already acquired their $10 billion dollars.)

Early Friday, Nets GM Sean Marks said Irving’s apology wasn’t enough to cut short his five-game suspension and that more work needs to be done. Your guess is as good as any whether the Judaism 101 course, or his sit down with the principal, takes, but my guess is we’ll see him back on the court this season.

While I’m not sure how sponsorships work/if Irving can still sport his Nikes on the court, maybe Skechers has an extra pair of sneakers he can lace up.

 

 

 

 

 

 

With Kyrie Irving dominating the news cycle in recent days, now seems like as good a time as any to remind you that even if you take all the Brooklyn Nets’ off-court issues out of the equation, they’re still a really bad basketball team.

I don’t think it’s the least bit hyperbolic to say that over the past few years, the Nets have proven themselves to be the biggest disappointment — the biggest failure — in the NBA of the 21st century, and maybe of all time. No matter what team of yesteryear failed to live up to the hype, none has done it with quite the pizazz of Brooklyn.

The Nets have severely underperformed so much that the disappointing Kobe Bryant-Dwight Howard-Pau Gasol Lakers team that earned the No. 7 seed and was swept in the first round of the playoffs, or the ringless Kevin Durant-Russell Westbrook-James Harden Thunder squads — with three eventual MVPs on the roster — don’t even come close to this unmitigated disaster.

It seems like an impossibly long time ago, but think back to how concerned you were for the rest of the league when you found out that Harden was traded to the Nets to join Irving and Durant. Many believed that a team with two of the greatest scorers the game has ever seen and one guy with nice handles wouldn’t just win one championship, but several. They might’ve been the next NBA dynasty.

Three years into Kyrie and KD’s tenure in Brooklyn — with seemingly dozens of controversies under their belt and Harden swapped for Ben Simmons — there’s only a single playoff series win to show for it.

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So far, the Nets are 3-6 in their first nine games to start this year, have the worst defensive rating in the league, fired their coach, suspended their mercurial point guard, and at best are a play-in team for the second year in a row — if they’re lucky.

Even if you focus on just the basketball aspect, no team has ever done less with more.

“But if Kevin Durant was a shoe size smaller.” Well, he’s not. That’s the lamest excuse I’ve ever heard and one that for some reason people only apply here. You’ve never heard, “Well if Lebron James’ wingspan was a little bit shorter, Andre Iguadola would’ve made that layup.”

“Well if New York City didn’t have a vaccine mandate for most of last season, Kyrie would’ve played the whole year and the Nets would’ve been a higher seed with better team chemistry.” But it did, and it was Kyrie’s decision not to get vaccinated. Plus it’s far from guaranteed they would’ve actually been good enough to get past the Eastern Conference champion Celtics, who swept Brooklyn.

This team is completely broken, from top to bottom. The Nets have accomplished nothing since this particular group of stars was brought together, and they will accomplish nothing in the future. Harden was able to get out, and now the Nets have Simmons who looks even worse to start this season than when we last saw him playing basketball, passing up dunks in the playoffs.

It doesn’t matter how good the individual players are, they’re just not a good team. When Irving comes back from suspension, I’m sure he’ll continue to score 26.9 points per game on 21.5 field goal attempts until the All-Star break when he decides to move to Belize to start a religion. Durant will get his 30 as well, but it will come during an awful lot of losses.

There’s no clear path for how to move on from this particular iteration of the Brooklyn Nets. Durant has already requested a trade that didn’t happen, seemingly because he’s worth more than any team is willing to give up. He’s not a free agent until 2026. Simmons isn’t a free agent until 2025, and I can’t imagine any team that isn’t rostered with a Harden who wants to leave would trade for him.

There have been rumors about Irving to the Lakers, but it seems increasingly unlikely because what team would want that distraction? The silver lining is that he’s a free agent this offseason, so Brooklyn could always let him walk. The Nets have two first-round picks in this upcoming draft and then don’t have another until 2027.

This team’s present looks pretty bleak and the future doesn’t look much better. They did it to themselves by assembling this group of talented but ill-fitting pieces like a toddler defiantly trying to make the triangle fit into the square-shaped hole.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thursday Night Football saw the Philadelphia Eagles win their eighth game in a row, a 29-17 victory over the woeful Houston Texans. While many people have claimed the Eagles are frauds due to their lackluster schedule, it’s hard to deny just how electric their offense has looked and how stout their defense has been. Regardless of opponent, Nick Sirianni’s crew passes the eye test with flying colors, hence why so many experts have Philly near or at the top of their NFL power rankings.

Eight consecutive wins to start the season is no light task. While the regular season still isn’t even halfway over for this team, people have started looking forward, predicting a potential undefeated season. Hell, even I’ve done that. But what is an undefeated regular season worth if you don’t win the chip?

The 1972 Dolphins have a ring. The 2007 Patriots don’t. Regular season accomplishments are hollow if a victorious postseason does not follow. Unfortunately for the Eagles, the history behind other teams to start the season 8-0 isn’t very flattering.

Since 2010, 11 teams have started the season with a record of 8-0 or better. None have gone on to win the Super Bowl. The most recent team to start with at least eight consecutive wins and win the Lombardi Trophy was the 2009 Drew Brees-led Saints. Since then, we’ve seen quarterbacks like Aaron Rodgers, Matt Ryan, Alex Smith, Andy Dalton, Tom Brady (twice), Cam Newton, Jared Goff, Ben Roethlisberger, and Jimmy Garoppolo all fall victim to the 8-0 curse. Only three of them — Garoppolo, Newton, and Goff — reached the Super Bowl. Of the other seven, five were eliminated in their first-round playoff game. Now, it’s Jalen Hurts’ turn to try to break the streak.

If we go back further than 2010, there is reason to be optimistic. There were 17 other teams in the Super Bowl Era to start 8-0 or better. Eight of them went on to win the Super Bowl, including two consecutive winners in the 1990 Giants and ‘91 Redskins. But it’s been slim pickings ever since.

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There is some worry that the Eagles’ will suffer the same fate as most who have come before. Their weak schedule has lots of NFL fans thinking about the 2020 Steelers who never looked dominant during their 11-game win streak and had their hopes of a perfect season dashed by a reincarnated Alex Smith. That loss opened the floodgates and L’s started piling up left and right. Pittsburgh lost four of its final five games, with the lone win being a four-point victory over the Indianapolis Colts. The Steelers were so bad in the final stretch that they didn’t even get a first-round bye.

Luckily for Philly fans, the Eagles won’t have to play teams as high-caliber as the 2020 Bills or as favored by the football gods as the 2020 Washington Football Team. But that won’t help in the postseason when the masterful run defense of the 49ers comes into town. Aside from them though, I’m not sure there’s a team in the NFC that matches up well with the Eagles. The Cowboys, maybe? We know the Vikings don’t. Minnesota looked more like frail children than Norse warriors during their Week 2 matchup with the Birds.

Basically, the Eagles have looked good, but maybe not as great as we’d like an 8-0 team to be. That said, the NFC seems about as easy as the Eastern Conference was for most of LeBron James’ career, and that’s a good sign for Philly’s Super Bowl aspirations.