On Thursday night, college football returned for real. Sure, we had Week 0 and all that shamrock shakin’ madness, but there was no question as you turned on TV on Thursday to see the Backyard Brawl blasting and Penn State down late on the road in West Lafayette, that college football was finally, officially back. Those were just the marquee matchups though. Across the nation, the chaos unfolded as you might expect on the first night of the first weekend of the season. There were gastrointestinal issues and FBS teams on upset alert against FCS opposition, but as always it was an old-fashioned special teams cock-up to that stole the show. Ladies and gentlemen, please enjoy this proud college football tradition.
Needless to say, that’s not what you want to see from your punter. It’s Week 1. The jitter factor is high. Some of the guys out there are young. Mistakes happen. But you do hope for a very basic understanding of punting from the one guy on the entire roster who is supposed to have it and, well, this is not that. The kid is 12 whole yards beyond the line of scrimmage when he looks up, realizes he’s about to get decapitated by an D1 safety who has been licking his chops since the age of 13 for just one clean shot at a punter, and decides to just boot it, transfer, change his name, rethink his major, and take up tennis. When he comes off the field, he looks dazed by his own stupidity. Or was it a concussion? Hard to tell these days.
Anyway like we said, this is what Week 1 is for. You get the rock-brained mistakes out of your system. You get your ass handed to you by superior opposition. With a little luck, by October these traumas have shaped you into a football team that will do ANYTHING not to become the butt of the joke again. That’s the name of the game in college football, and we sure are glad to have it back.
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