Loser of the Week - Week 7
College Football's Losers Bless Us... Baby Blue... Chuck Dickens... Everyone!
‘The game was a kind of tale of two cities’
-- Loser of the Week coach, North Carolina’s Butch Davis
The Loser of the Week (LoW) offices are overflowing with faxed messages of dissent. ‘Losing is for losers — stick with LSU’ reads a (now dated) note featuring a photocopied print of a fist less one single middle finger raised upward. But LoW HQ makes no apologies. Losing well is always more heroic and memorable.
Don’t believe it? Take Charles Dickens. In one Hallmark movie classic The Tale of Two Cities, the English drunk fullback Sydney Carton loved Lucie Manette, but she loved quarterback Charles Darney. Helmets off, heavy metal-haired Sydney and ponytailed Charles looked a lot alike, but Lucie didn’t ‘go for’ the Sydster. ‘Gimme the guy who makes the calls; you keep the gin-hound,’ said the dizzy English flirt, tipsy herself on the glory of the game. Charles’ post-game quips regularly led to tabloid scandals and court cases (eg a treason case). Finally Charles' royal Bowden blood got jailed in Paris and a one-way ticket to a guillotine, but Sydney drugged Charles in prison (not the smartest spatula atop the armoire, Charles isn't) and ‘switched places’ (Syd put on Charles' ruby red pony tail band; easy enough swap). And Syd lost his head so Charles and Lucie could keep their Sunday brunch appointment after the game. Heroic stuff, though Syd did have a T.O. moment as the fourth quarter wound down, saying his play was ‘the best thing ever done’ or something, but you can’t argue it’s losing with style.
Below, Charles Dickens contemplates his bad goal-keeping in a Authors vs Publishers friendly in Cheltenham:
Go ahead and talk about winners like Charles if you have to, but the real story is Syd's severed head in the French-made basket of wicker.
LOSER OF THE WEEK: NORTH CAROLINA
Some say #7 South Carolina is the real USC this year, only losing on the road to LSU. And North Carolina (2-5), whose baby blue is looking better and better on the green gridiron, has now lost three close calls this season. Dominated in the first half (down 3-21), NC’s defense made halftime tweaks (big ones) and gave up only a single first down on the first series of the second half. And the offense, led by redshirt freshman QB TJ Yates, outgained SC 398 to 282 yards on the day. Alas, many missed chances for NC — a field goal, a dropped TD pass, a missed blocked punt, turnover on downs at the SC 10, an interception at the SC 6, a Hail Mary pass that didn’t reach the endzone — stopped short a 12-point fourth quarter rally that pulled baby blue within six. NC Coach Butch Davis (who has beaten cancer and his former team Miami this year) likened it to a Charles Dickens novel, a horrible first half, a good second one. ‘I hope they take [the close loss] as encouragement,’ and assistant coach Chuck Pagano said the loss was the team’s ‘finest performance of the season.’ A loss!
Meanwhile, SC coach Steven Spurrier talked about their second-half ‘run, run crap’ offense. He last won in Chapel Hill with nearby rival Duke in 1989, a shocking 41-0 beat-down of Mack Brown’s Tarheel. By the way, Spurrier called Mack ‘Mr Football’ and slashed the clap-clap coach for focusing on ‘recruiting and public relations, rather than play-calling and strategy.’ That's funny.
North Carolina lost 15-21.
LoW PENALTY BOX
Ties Overtime can be fun, but there needs to be a time to say ‘enough, this is getting ridiculous.’ Boise State — and raise your hand if you’re not sick of this team — needed four overtimes on their pukish blue field to beat lowly 2-5 Nevada 69-67. ESPN analyst Bill Curry said, ‘Three overtimes are enough. It bothers me that the big guys start to get hurt after playing that many downs.’ Actually he’s right. Let them have two or three overtimes, then call it a tie.
USA Today/Coaches Poll Remains in the box for another two weeks for putting Southern California at #7 a week ago (they dropped them to #9 this week after needing a fourth-quarter comeback to beat 1-5 Arizona, at home).
THIS WEEK'S BEST THINGS OF ALL TIME
- Discovery of water
- Kentucky’s bounce-back overtime win over LSU
- The debut of Louisville’s defense, in a 28-24 win over previously undefeated Cincy.
- The spoof of Mike Gundy’s rant by an Oklahoma car dealership; this thing is far from tired.
- Discovery of fire
LoW CRYSTAL BALL
Next week’s best losers will be Navy, who is quietly putting together a pretty good season but will fall short in a rally at home against Wake Forest, and Auburn who will keep LSU in the teens, but not get enough offense to pull off a Florida/LSU duofecta.
PAST LoW LOSERS
Last week’s loser Florida Atlantic took the week off to trim their coaches moustache.
One the year, LoW Losers Record after their attention-getting loss:
- Central Florida 2-2
- Duke 0-2
- Florida Atlantic 0-0
- Norfolk State 4-0
- Oregon 1-0
- Texas Tech 3-0
- Tulsa 2-1
- Total Low Losers 12-5
LoW ARCHIVE
Week 3
Week 4
Week 5
Week 6
