Shutdown Fullcast - The Greatest Blood Week in the History of Week 1

Episode Date: May 14, 2019

Blood Week: the week (or weeks) in a college football season where maximum chaos is realized, and the status quo is upturned by as many upsets as the sport can stuff into its craw in one stretch. That usually happens in the middle of the schedule, but there's no rule saying Blood Week has to be then. So we decided to hunt for the bloodiest Week 1 in the sport's history. Without totally spoiling it, our choice includes: - A wasted trip to Anaheim, California - Golf clubs used as rescue devices - A mountain hero named Earl Remember - if you enjoy the Shutdown Fullcast, tell a friend and leave us a nice review! If you do not enjoy the Shutdown Fullcast, write your thoughts down on a letter that will be sent to us only upon your death! We won't be able to argue with you! Ultimate victory is within your grasp!! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to the shutdown forecast. Oh, I'm feeling, I'm feeling a little bloody this week. Jason Kirk? Hey, they make appointments for that. I'm feeling in my hemoglobin on this here. Not better. The college football podcast on this here internet. I'm feeling, I'm feeling a little low in my iron.

Spencer, what is hemoglobin? Hemoglobin is the carrier of oxygen. It's what oxygen binds to on a red blood cell. You learned that on a body. He learned that on a weightlifting message board. Darn right. How do you think you get the gains? You got to get the O2 and the steak.

That's what binds. I mean, where else do we learn any biology facts other than weightlifting message boards? Other than I got a PhD in human performance from t-nation.com university, okay? But I was using this as a way to segue clumsily through a very poorly written Wikipedia entry on blood oxygen transfer to our topic this week. Jason, you want to learn them up on our favorite thing that happens in college football, which is Blood Week. Blood Week. A couple years ago, I believe it was Ryan who coined the term of Blood Week, which has, since, as in the one season since, become a thing that members of our extended podcast universe

look forward to each college football season, Saturday, you know, like a, the weekend's falling apart. We've had a, you know, the number three team is lost or whatever. And immediately we see listeners start saying, uh-oh, uh-oh, is this the blood week? Is this the blood week? And every season is going to have at least one. And you sort of know it once it's happened or as it's happening. It's when lots of top teams are losing upsets. The bigger, the upset, the better. Everything is falling apart. Everything's going to shit. Usually it happens right around the middle of the season. Jason, can you give us a super famous example? Well, I think the two examples that we've had in the Blood Week era have been last year's week seven, which Georgia

loses to LSU. West Virginia loses as a top 10 team. Washington and Penn State lose. as top 10 teams. Colorado, Auburn, and Miami also ranked and lost upsets. The previous year's Week 7 was the one that launched this whole concept. Clemson loses the Syracuse. Washington State gets blown the fuck out by a 5 and 7 Cal team. Washington scores like two points against Arizona State's terrible defense and four other ranked teams lose to unranked teams.

So what we're going to attempt to do here is we would like to sort of view this historically. Let's find some other blood weeks throughout time. And we've taken a look at sort of, let's start with week one, which is kind of a nebulous concept of college football, because you're kind of, depending on the era of the sport, you might be lumping in a little bit of week zero, a little bit of week two. But basically, let's go with the point in the season at which everyone has played a game, and it's called that week one, basically. And I had a few contender week ones that we could have considered blood weeks to sort of run through real quick, but then there's

one that we're going to go through in detail. And you can't go past really 1950 for this if you're talking preseason because there was no preseason poll before then. Participation trophy culture, y'all. When people say what's the point of preseason rankings, I want this episode to be the answer for you

because there's so much comedy we would not have without those little numbers next to me. How can you fall if we don't put you on pedestal to start the season. Right. How can we laugh at Notre Dame and USC every year? I like it just a professor full of rum, but, you know. Go tigers.

So, 1960, you have five top 13 teams losing right away to unranked teams. One of those is number four Texas to Nebraska, I believe. Weird. Texas getting a high ranking and then forfeiting it quickly. Yeah, that never happens. 1976, four top 10 teams lose upsets and five other rank. teams lose twice, including Miami of Ohio twice as the number 20

team. And that's when we as a nation turn on them. Never again, Miami of Ohio. We've had it with your shit. You broke our hearts. You were 0 and 2 at number 20. I was going to make the noise and an actual Red Hawk into the mic, but I thought it might blow the speakers out. Scree! Scree! I think, yeah, I think once you're

Owen 2, it's like a scree. It's like a little, it's like a sad, roomy Nazool. So you have to sort of change the standards as you go through from era to era because now teams play 12 games, which means they start with a bullshit opponent. 2005. This is deep into the Cupcake era. Still, five ranked teams lose upsets right away, including an Oklahoma that had just participated in the BCS title game. I use the word participated generously. That was the one where they lost by about a billion points. uh 2007 speaking of cupcakes so basically nothing happened in week one of the craziest season in college football history except for except number five michigan lost its cupcake game to an fcs team that it was actually a cupcake made of nails you might have heard that that was that was a mistake there you ordered the just dang it do we really want to punch on

michigan this week they're having a minute they're sending guys to the pros i don't see what you're talking about Oh, that's an excellent point. I mean, I'm just reading the facts here. Just what the card said. Yeah, can I go ahead and just make fun of John Baylon for this, that his great escape at the age of 66 from Michigan was to Cleveland. Ann Arbor's a beautiful town. I wouldn't go to Cleveland from Ann Arbor.

I want to change it up. You know, I'm 66. I worked hard for things. You know where I think I'm going to go? Cleveland. Listen, just paving the way for Tom Crean, baby. Yeah, it's focus. Focus on Tom Crean.

Drain's coming home. Mama's calling. Technically, mother-in-law is calling, but still. I mean, he's from, he went to college in Michigan or whichever it was, right? His brother-in-law is Jim Harbaugh. Yeah. So, there's one thing about being related to Jim Harbaugh, it's that you want to be closer to him than you already got.

Definitely excuse for more Jim Harbaugh in your life. Oh, if only I could borrow his pants. You're bunking with me, but I can buy. my own house. No way. You're sleeping at my house. Lessons in losing with grace. Maybe Tom Crane can help them out as a mentor on that front. The other contender for a week one blood week is recent. 2016, three top 10 teams lose upsets, including number three LSU to unranked Wisconsin

and four other ranked teams lose. This was slaughter right out of the gates. And I think, I don't think it really registered to that level. Yep, sell slaughter without laughter. The greatest opening blood week in college football history comes to us from 1990, which was a crazy season in general. You had one champ that never won a title before. You had another champ that hadn't been in the top 10 at any point since 1966. 18 different teams ranked in the top five at least once, the most of any season ever.

We looked this up as part of our 2000 season package, which you should go read about on the internet. and like this was the season where like you know a team got five downs and that mattered a lot Virginia mattered this was a very stupid season it was stupid from the very beginning which it was actually a week zero actually before it got really stupid there was an early upset that sort of set the tone and would come to circle back around to mattering by the end which is a week zero kickoff game in Anaheim called the Disneyland Pickskin classic what could go wrong in New Zealand. What about a tradition of unsatisfying sporting events happening in Anaheim Stadium could possibly happen here? Well, I'll tell you. I should point out first of all that

while we're talking about, and I would like to start this off by saying that people have always thought and I have newspaper evidence I've accumulated researching this game, people have always thought these week zero neutral site games were kind of bullshit. You can look at a lot of the newspaper coverage both in, we're talking about Tennessee and Colorado, by the way. I should point this out. Colorado ranked number five coming into the 1990 season, Tennessee coming in ranked number eight.

This is the inaugural Disneyland Pigskin Classic played in Mall Country of Anaheim Stadium. And even back then, people thought these games were kind of weird. you can see it refer to in newspaper coverage from both schools as a preseason game, although I think both schools, but he might have wished that this actually had been a preseason game and then didn't end up counting. So the game ended 3131, which is kind of funny.

But, you know, Ties were a thing back then, and it's not as remarkable as it obviously would be today because they didn't take it into overtime. I applaud both teams for wanting to spend as little time in Anaheim as possible. So why did this matter? Colorado would end the season ranked number one. They would beat number five, Notre Dame, along the way. Along the way, they would also lose to Illinois, which is weird,

but Illinois was ranked number 21, which makes it even funnier. And then follow that up by immediately beating Texas in Austin. Sure. they would then beat Nebraska at Nebraska 27 to 12 and Nebraska I believe was ranked third at the time. So this game was more of a harbinger for a blood season for Colorado is what I'm really trying to get at. For Tennessee, this was not, this didn't end up affecting things a whole bunch.

Tennessee would lose, would go on to lose twice that season. They'd finish the year 8th. They would tie Auburn, also along the way, lost to Bama and Notre Dame. I don't like this season. I don't like this season at all. Although they did beat number nine, Florida, 43 to 3 because blood wheat can take a minute to work its way out of the bloodstream. Once the program becomes exposed, Tennessee and Colorado would have another common opponent. That season in Notre Dame, Tennessee lost to Notre Dame, remember, 209 to 34, won the SEC and beat Virginia in the Sugar Bowl.

So, the game itself, there were five touchdowns scored in the fourth quarter. And this is 1990. Every's on the ground. There were five touchdown scored in the fourth quarter, scored in such a fashion that Colorado blew a two-score lead twice in one period. Wow. Well, once you do it once, you know how. Tennessee did have the ball again as time expired,

but only made it as far as the 16. and there was some minor feather. If you look at the front page of the New Sentinel or the Tennessean at the time, the left-hand side says, a Disney deadlock, and it's the account of the game. And the right-hand column is all people bitching about how Johnny Major should have gone for two after UT's final touchdown. But there were five touchdown scored in that period. He had no, I'm not a Johnny Major's enthusiast, as we longtime listeners of the fan will know,

but he had no reason to think there was. wasn't going to be five or six more touchdowns. Should it kick the field goal from his own 16? Yeah, clearly. But all these questions paled next to what would be thrown at Colorado a few weeks later because Colorado was going through it, man. This was also the fifth down game season. My favorite part about the fifth down game, the Colorado, Missouri game in 1990,

is that the officials didn't lose count of the towns at the end. They lost count after the second down. actually in that series and nobody noticed. And that game was just, that game was like a layer cake of controversies. There was the lost count of downs. The did Charles Johnson, Colorado's backup quarterback, even crossed the goal line.

Bill McCartney, of course, coach of Colorado had played at Missouri. So was he a plant? Speaking of plants, Missouri's shitty field had led to a bunch of slips and falls and everyone was mad at that anyway. Um, but yeah, this was a, this Blood Week was a harbinger for things to come for Colorado, and they ended up sharing the title with an undefeated Georgia Tech. Uh, and I would like to close out my remarks on this game by pointing out that despite having two top 10 teams and Disneyland backed branding for this, uh, neutral site week zero game, only 33,000 people don't just see Colorado, Tennessee play.

early season neutral side games have always been bullshit mass has ended go in peace the um so if johnny majors had gone for two there in that situation you would either have an outright Colorado national title at the end because Colorado's strength of schedule this year was completely insane or you would have an outright Georgia Tech national title because you would have a two lost Colorado that should have been a three lost Colorado so like the tech was the only undefeated team that season but Colorado after losing to God damn Illinois and tying Tennessee in the first three weeks went on to be a one, two, three, four, five ranked teams, uh, if you count their orange bowl went over Notre Dame, uh, including, of course, number three Nebraska in the

first week of November at Lincoln. Yeah, this is, I think, uh, SRS sports references, strength of schedule metric has them, I looked at it earlier. It's either number two or number three in the country and strength of schedule, which is, is really fucking hard to go through that with only one official loss. So like, if they'd be in Tennessee, they would have the outright title, you know. But otherwise, tech would have had it.

So basically, thank you, Johnny Majors, for making this season as bullshit as it was. Hey, everybody's good at something. Solomonic in his wisdom. The weirdest thing about this is the Colorado was really good. Like, absolutely fantastically good. Yeah. Yeah. They were.

I mean, setting aside, they split the title and so we're going to make fun of them, but they won the big eight. They won the Orange Bowl. Man, they beat Nebraska and the Lincoln. I mean, I think the weirdest thing is that, I think the weirdest thing is that they lost to an Illinois team, and that wasn't disqualifying for a national championship at the time. Happen to Ohio State a few years later.

Wait, now hang on. Now I want to look at the 1990 Illinois team and see what else they ended up doing. I will tell you why they weren't coming out to the game in Anaheim. They had to go see Delta Force 2, the Colombian, Jesus. It's like norms, which came out two days prior. Congratulations, Spencer has done five minutes of Wikipedia research. Oh, brother, I'm about to dunk you in the biggest trash can of information.

Oh, wow. Illinois, so Illinois had opened that season with a loss at Arizona. Blood week. Which was the, wait, Illinois had a week one by, lost to Arizona in week two. Be Colorado in week three. and then went on through a season in which they mostly beat good teams and lost to bad teams, except they lost to Clemson in the Hall of Fame Bowl in Tampa. By a score of what?

By a score of 30 to nothing. So we're including Illinois in Blood Week one here because, like, you know, several teams just didn't play in just disrupted traditional. norms of week one as teams did at the time. And Illinois came into the season rank number 11 and lost to Arizona. So this counts. Arizona was unranked. The biggest garbage can of information is in the running for shutdown forecast tagline, just so you know. Also, this was an Illinois team that was recovering from the loss of Jeff George for strong draft pick. He can still start. He can still start today. Put him out there. They could use them. I love looking at the scores of this era and just like kind of basking in the warmth of how much they feel of a place

like the illinois beat michigan state uh 15 to 13 in that but then you scroll down and you see wait a second okay they lost to iowa iowa was ranked 13th the time they lost 28 to 54 to iowa at oh oh many many people are saying this is an iowa team that also put up 56 points on Northwestern, 45 on Iowa State, and 63 on Sinci. Welcome to our 1990 Illinois football podcast. Oh, my God. This is somebody's kink, and they are having the best time. Oh, PAPM, we're out for your audience, share.

So coming into this season and sort of like from that week zero game onward, things were making sense. Miami was your number one. They were your defending reigning national champion. and they had at least a couple dozen draft picks on the roster. They were followed by Notre Dame, FSU, teams that had finished behind them the year before. Auburn was right up there. They just won the Iron Bowl over like a number two Alabama. So like there was no reason to suspect anything was awry.

Miami, of course, number one Miami took off the week 0.5, I guess, and picked it up in week 1, Mark 2. with whom, Ryan? BYU, a road game in Utah. This was, man, this Miami team was fucking good. At least they had been the year before. The year before this game, the opponent passing yards they allowed by game,

96, 85, 301, the one outlier, 141, 109, 142, 134, 154, 163, 106, 214, an average of 149 passing yards allowed per game. I could not find the stats for the Eastern Carolina game. I'm going to guess that they didn't bump this number up. Horatious. And then Ty Detmer came along, and Ty Detmer threw 54 passes for 406 yards and two touchdowns

and one pick against the Miami Hurricanes in a game where he took several big hits, but only got sacked twice, sidestepped a bunch of other big hits. You can go back and find the full video, the full video of this game on YouTube. I won't tell you where, because that's how the authorities will catch us. But on, I believe it's what is the go-ahead touchdown

for BYU in the third quarter, he sidesteps two Miami defenders who essentially collide into each other. It's like watching a Three Stooges thing unfold in front of you. But the true hero of this game, even though Ty Detmer was great, Earl Kaufman for BYU. Earl Rising. Does anybody...

The leg of thunder. Boom and Mormon. Now, Earl Kaufman was the field goal kicker, the punter, and he handled kickoffs. In this game, he made two of three field goals. He averaged 53 yards of point. punt on four punts and all six of his kickoffs went unreturned he was snacks that's probably true yeah what's an what's an earl well jason would know what's an earl bring in snack wise to a football game well according to the internet earl coughman is a junior high school guidance counselor so

no man on earth is more qualified to bring some print cookies um who's who's who's at this game who's the who's the offensive coordinator for b yu it's norm chow who are assistants on this Miami team, Ed Orgeron and Tommy Tuberville, who's playing offensive lineman? I think he's, I don't think he was a starter. I'm not sure. Mark, can we pause for a quick game? Sure. How old is Ed Ogeron? I'm not sure I could pin him down to a decade. I know he's older than Tommy Tuberville based on when they graduated from college.

What's your guess? Everybody give me a guess. Between 20 and 180. Okay. Jason is correct. I'm putting at Ogeron at 57. Spencer hit it on the dot. Wow. 57, a couple months away from 58. Old guy.

Thank you for entertaining that. I never think of him as being any age, but whatever the hell, A.T. is now. I do recommend you go back and watch the fourth quarter of this game. The whole game is actually very entertaining, but the fourth quarter, you end the third with BYU up 2821, which is the final score. spoiler, but this is what happens. Miami starts with the ball. They already have the ball at the end of the third. They're at their own 40. They get to the BYU 15, and on first down, Craig Erickson fumbles the snap, BYU recovers. BYU goes three and out. Thanks to their boom and punter, Miami starts at their own 35, they go three and out. BYU, with good field position, loses a

fumble on their second play of the drive, giving Miami the ball in BYU territory. They get all the way down to the 11-yard line, thanks in part to a fourth-down conversion, where Craig Erickson throws a miraculously picked-off ball in the end zone. BYU goes three and out again, boom and punt. Miami starts at their own 27. They convert a fourth and seven, but effectively are dead when they can't convert a second fourth down from the BYU-25. It is, it's tense. It's an interesting clash of like, There's a little bit of a style clash there on BYU's last possession where they're basically just trying to kill clock. They run the ball on first down and then they throw the ball twice and pick up, pick it up, pick up like a third and eight to effectively kill the game.

It's also really weird to now watch a football game where there's nothing on the screen for most of the time. they will occasionally pop up the time when the ball's about to be snapped they will put up the down and distance the score is not usually up there it's just a very weird retro experience to be like yes this is how we all used to watch football in a mostly information void

if you were just new if you were just tuning in but it still worked but how did the seasons end for these two teams Well, despite Ty Detmer's Herculean efforts, it wasn't a great season for BYU, it wasn't terrible. They still made a bowl game. They still finished respectively. They got killed by Hawaii, I think, late in the year.

They lost the Holiday Bowl to Texas A&M. Miami has a very good season, but not quite enough to get into the National Championship conversation. I think they lose one other game besides this to Florida State, if memory serves. they go to the Cotton Bowl and win against Texas. Texas and Texas A&M tied together for some strange reason in the 90s. Never again, though. Never again. Can I remind everyone, by the way, as a fun fact, of the name of BYU's defensive coordinator that year?

Please do. Dick Felt. Yeah. Yeah. I don't get it. Like a puppet boner, Jason. The, um, this might. Texas game, is there anything noteworthy about the box score from that game by chance?

I would have to look. You can remind me. This is the game where this is the Randall Hill Finger Guns game. This is the Miami racked up like 780 personal fouls and they won, I think, 46 to 3. They did. This is the most Miami game of all time. And if not for fucking BYU, you would have probably clinched Miami. the second leg of a

at least partial three-peat. The hurricane set Cotton Bowl and school records for most penalties and most penalty yards in a single game. Two hundred and two yards of penalties. That's not in Florida. Nine of those penalties

were for unsportsmanlike conduct or personal fouls. You know, that's an ethos that's just ahead of its time is what I'm seeing here. And the color, the best part is for some reason on CBS, they have Mike Francesa doing color. Oh, God.

oh yeah that's right this is just a disgrace this is my favorite uh line from this wikipedia entry for the 91 cotton bowl several national publications called for miami to suspend the coach for part of the next season that's dennis ericsson parenthetical these suggestions were ignored and ericsson led miami to a national title that season i like that the most miami team of all time was beaten by dudes named Earl and Ty. Yeah. Also, BYU can fight. We've covered this. Yeah. There was

when they, when they rolled up to fight Memphis in the Miami Beach Bowl, they were really just carrying on a legacy. This wasn't a new frontier. This was a reboot. That's true. Lamar Thomas is part of this Miami team as well. You know how Matt? Do you how mad all that bike riding makes you? My favorite part of the BYU Miami

box score is other than other than the thundering leg of our man Earl is one team had five turnovers. Was it Miami? No. No, it was not. No, it was not. They're just being neighborly.

Yeah, just the generous, generous cougars. It's also, if you go back and watch this game, it's fucking loud. It is extremely loud in that stadium. I would, man, this is maybe for another episode, but have you ever played that game where you wanted to pit teams from different eras against each other not as not so much like good 92 bama beat 2019 bama but like i want this hurricane's era team to play bronco mendenhall's pete dick punching b yu teams and just see who comes out on a stretcher i want this era miami team to play like the uh let's say four years ago

Miami team Fuck y'all He comes out on a stretcher I mean coaches I don't want the players to get injured I want them to you know

hit opposing coaches Let's get Al golden has died Hey but he's already dressed for his funeral So he got that My favorite

Al golden comparison remains the time Ryan said he was like a partially melted American girl doll So sweaty

So sweaty So that game right there, BYU, Miami, is a large part of the reason that this is the greatest week one, blood week in the history of college football. You had number one, a like dominant, imposing, extremely athletic, talented number one going down. But that's not all, of course. We had, you know, Colorado had a misstep. We have number 19 Clemson losing by 13 to lower ranked Virginia, which, would matter

for a while at least for like a month Virginia football was very important Clemson coach Ken Hatfield would soon choose to leave for rice making him the second Clemson head coach to choose to leave for rice after Jess Neely in 1940

there's a pipeline you don't have those you don't have those Palmetto people love and I they didn't write that into Davo's contract you'll notice yeah yeah the buyout is quadruple if he leaves for rice you also had Colorado this isn't a loss but I'm going to count it because after that struggle with Tennessee they barely squeak past a four and four Stanford at home Colorado looking real suspect by the way before the hard games begin you of course have number 11 Illinois which would beat Colorado again Colorado quite suspicious losing by 12 to unranked Arizona number 19 UCLA loses by 20 at home to lower ranked Oklahoma why was UCLA ranked

having gone 3, 7, and 1 the year prior? Why does UCLA play football in week one? Why did they play it in the other weeks either? No, I mean, why does UCLA play football in September? Okay. Shouldn't the Pac-12 just kick off in November? That's Disneyland Pigskin Classic time, damn it. I'll go to Han.

I think the reason, of course, that UCLA was ranked was they had future XFL MVP Tommy Maddox at the helm. Oh, of course. Yeah. Meanwhile, is quarterbacked by K.L. Gundy, who is now one of, like, 14 different Oklahoma offensive coordinators. Wait, is that? Hmm. Is what?

Yeah, it's the other Gundy, yeah. Yeah, yeah. There's several Gundy's. You had number 21 Penn State losing at home to unranked Texas. No comment. This was 1990s Penn State. Well, next. Number 25, West Virginia, lost at home to unranked Maryland.

Also, the Missouri that would basically be. Colorado lost a three and five TCU. Again, Colorado is not really holding up well here. The Missouri that would basically beat Colorado would be a hell of a banner. Actual national champ, Georgia Tech, beats a seven and five NC State. Georgia Tech handled its business. So by the time the whole country had kicked off, eight ranked teams had suffered upsets, including number one.

However, I have not mentioned perhaps the most entertaining of these games. Spencer, what do you have? Well, I really want to start a year earlier because we've got to start this brewing for you, okay? Because we're talking about upsets in 1990. However, the foundations of this were laid well before then because this concerns the University of Alabama. And as we all know, the University of Alabama,

the drama never ends, and its roots go back deep. They go decades deep. They're extremely emotional men. Deeply emotional men, deeply felt about their sport. Dick felt. Dick felt about their sport, in fact. Hands on it, because that's how you show you mean. Hands on a hard body.

So Alabama comes into 1990 with a new coach. Their new coach is Gene Stallings, by the way. Because remember, after Mayor Bryant died, they kind of had a problem. Bear Bryant's not dead. He's frozen. That's right. And he will come back when Nick Saban retires. Like Captain Marvel, other planets needed him. I went to Mars. They have no cigarette machines.

Other plants, you know who could really use, like, a post-Fanos clean-up right now is Gene Stalling. That man, that man would have the grill out. It would. He'd be, you know, he'd be like, you snap, but I'm still here making books. More burgers for Gene, actually. Other planets like Arkansas and Kentucky needed Bear Bryant. Texas A&M, definitely another planet that Bear Bryant actually coached at. said of Gene Staling's, by the way, a job from which he was fired.

In fact, Staling's gets this job not because of his record. In fact, his record when he comes to Alabama in 1990, it's not real good. In fact, he said it wasn't real good either. Like, he wasn't that great a pro coach. He wasn't that great a college coach, actually. He comes to Alabama after like two gigs with a 50, 81, and two records. at both coaching the Cardinals of the NFL and A&M at college. How did he get the job?

He was a bear guy. Now, all the other guys before him... Now, when you say a bear guy? A bear guy. He, uh, as in played and coached for, uh, the man himself. That's less interesting. He always struck me as an otter. Yeah, he's an otter, man.

Oh, gracious. That's Deborah, that was more of an otter kind of guy. You can see him just shimmying down the hill at Clemson, can't you? Like, you know, they may give them a slip and slide. I can see this sailing right over your head. Yeah, no, I'm taking it a completely different direction, ignoring that one. I didn't miss that on. Just like they do at Clemson.

Yeah. This all started, though, because you would figure, oh, well, we made kind of a weird hire. And the year prior must have been sheer hell. This must have been a regime that had to go and was underperforming. No, no, no, no, no. Alabama went 10 and 2 the year before. They went 10 and 2. So when I see...

Well, what happened to the 2? Well, when I say things like, I have never told a joke about Alabama football, they'll fire 10 and 2, okay? They'll fire 10 and 2 easy. And I'll give you the usual suspects in terms of ruining people's lives. One, Auburn University. Remember, the rule with Auburn is that Auburn ruins things. Auburn ruined Bill Curry's life at Alabama, because you can win them all and beat everyone else and in fact go undefeated the entire year of 1989 and bill curry gets all the way to the

Auburn game and loses 2030 for the third time in a row never be Auburn in his tenure as alabama head coach they then go to the to play in the sugar bowl against miami miami uh convenient villain that they are hands them the 33 25 loss remember that one it comes back around so you think 10 and two, I don't know, got some stuff to go. Maybe there's a problem here, but we can fix it because, you know, surely winning 10 games will save you, because that's just outstanding performance at any university. Nope. They cheap out Bill Curry on some assistant pay.

There's a couple of other disputes. And Bill Curry does the logical thing when life gives you lemons. You go to Kentucky and you take the- You go to Kentucky, and you better take the lemons with you because they don't have citrus. Yeah. And, you know, if you're going to make some bourbon beverages, is it sort of helps cut that, right? Bill Curry goes to Kentucky, of all places, right?

To prevent scurvy. To prevent scurvy. Listen, Kentucky won't fire you if you're 10 and 2, will they? No, one would have had to have gone 10th and 2. They won't even fire. As Bill Curry learned, they won't even fire you if you go 4 and 7 or 3 and 8. We haven't talked a lot about the Alabama Kentucky coaching pipeline. You did the Bear Bryant in reverse.

Bear Bryant went from Kentucky to Alabama. Bill Curry. He just flipped the script on everybody. I'm nothing like you, Dad. Bye-bye. By the way, worst blowout I've ever seen in person, Tim Couch running the option at 95-degree heat at Florida. And Tim Couch couldn't read.

We know this now, right? Listen, if he couldn't read, if he could read before that game, he could not read afterwards. The final score of that game, 73 to 7, right? Yes, yes, that is correct. 73 to 7 because Bill Curry didn't hire Steve Spurrier when Georgia Tech was undergoing a. regime change

that curry was taking over and guess who happened to write that down in his little notebook of

motherfuckers I got a paste that's right Steve Spurrier so 1990 going into this this is

Gene Stolling's first year expectations won't we assume that they're lowered no no Alabama

everybody expects him to win every single game this is Alabama's first game of the season

versus the university of Southern Mississippi on September 8th, all right? It is also someone else's first game, though, not his team's first game. It is Brett Lorenzo Farb's first game, all right? Wait, is that for real his middle name? Yeah. God, God, God, I just, I want to live in the world, the universe that's exactly like ours,

except Brett Farve goes by his middle name. Yeah, that's, that is, that is the man. Brett Lorenzo Farf, Gulfport, Mississippi's own, raised in the small town of Kiln. This is his senior year at the University of Southern Mississippi. He's got some pro notices, but, you know, still relatively below the radar. He has a massive arm and has a unique situation coming in because he didn't play in the previous game, the Week Zero game for the University of Southern Mississippi, a lackluster 12-0 win over Delta State. 12-0 over Delta State, by the way, in 90-degree heat.

Nobody needed to do that. Nobody just didn't need to happen. I'm going to go ahead, college football reference. Strike that one from the books. Didn't happen. No one enjoyed it. Brett Farb didn't play in it. It's not important.

So he didn't play in that game. And the reason he didn't play in that game goes back to earlier that summer. He might sort of remember this. Go, oh, man, didn't like, Brett Farb had some sort of like crazy car accident. Oh, yeah. Yeah. He had an extremely crazy car accident. He was killed by Matthew Broderick.

Oh, God. Why didn't you have to remind us that Ferris Bueller killed someone with his car? Well, that took a turn. Multiple, like, you just have to throw out, like, the worst moment in people's lives. Just throwing it in there. And then later he did a car commercial, so. Yeah, I'm going to get this back on the rails. I won't have to happen?

No. None of it had to. No, no. Spencer said he's going to steer this back on the road. Which Brett Farr did not do, okay? Oh, interesting. On July 14th, 1990, Brett Farr went fishing off Dofan Island, a couple of buddies.

They've been drinking all day. The sports editor of the son, Harold, told Jeff Perlman this for his book on Brett Farrb. So by the time that they started to go, you know, like the hour and a half back to home, they were, you know, at least coming down off of being pretty well lubricated. Brett Farr was allegedly above the BAC according to the, editor of the son, Harold, and, you know, law enforcement helped keep that on the low. The wheels left the road at one point that night on the way back, and Farv's car flipped three times, all right? And he came to rest against a tree and upside down in the most

Gulf Coast thing I have heard today. His older brother, Scott, rushed to the wreck and open the door with a golf club. That's a sturdy golf club. The seven iron of life. I'm hoping he didn't pull it open. I hope he just had, he had to tee off and whack it open. It was, I believe it was a three iron, according to the Perlman book. All right.

And he broke it. But, you know, don't call for the jaws of life. When someone from the redneck Riviera has a car accident, the guy with the irons in his trunk has this, okay? So they pull Fav out before the car burst into flame. Fav hit the steering wheel so hard it bruised his liver. A contusion-grade bruised against his liver. He hit one entire side of his body is bruised.

He has a bruised vertebrae. He has multiple cuts. He suffers a complication as a result of, and I guess this is... Just to be clear, multiple cuts is the least important part that you've said so far. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, you got to do it all. You got to know how banged up this dude is because that contusion in the liver, your largest, you know, your largest non-skin organ. That's not. That's not super uncommon in like head-on collisions. No, it's not. What was the problem was the blood clot that formed afterwards and necessitated the removal of 30 inches of his intestine. Hmm. Is there a chance that he put his liver through so much that it was tough enough to survive this? Because this is a man whose liver got a workout in the early 90s. Yeah, but I think that happened because he played for the Falcons. Well, there's that, but, I mean, he moved to Wisconsin after that, so I'm pretty sure.

I'm just, I'm just going to go ahead. I'm just going to go ahead and blame that on Atlanta and Wisconsin, not on, on one accident and drinking done during college. Although, no, no, no, no, no, no, I'm saying, I'm saying his liver was so tough that it was able to withstand this. Hmm, I think that's a valid point. This is, this is liver training. It had built up like a carapace around it of bud heavy. And now my liver is a beautiful butterfly. So far, not exactly in the best shape, misses the opener.

And they play their first real game against Alabama. Okay. You go, oh, hey, you know, where was this? Yeah, this was at Southern Miss, okay? That's not right, is it? I thought this game was in Birmingham. I'm sorry, Birmingham. They played at Legion Field.

They played at Legion Field. Which, again. Again, that's how you know things. Suboptimal. Maybe you weren't right. Legion Field, the Southern Miss of Birmingham. You think your body's been through enough, Brett Farve? How about Tentis?

You've got it whether you want it or not. It's airborne. So, on one side, we've got Gene Stalling's coaching in his first game. Might I remind you, Bear Bryant lost his first game. All right. on the other side we have curly hallman every lSU fan of a certain age just puked i'm really sorry about that we should have had a curly hallman uh trigger warning here we'll put it we'll put it in the episode notes yeah he's 16 and 28 and four seasons at lSU and finishes just like dead like

ls u's just dead in the water uh and later gives his job to jerry dinardo never coaches again like curly hallman can't get a high school job after that that's how bad it is curly hallman by the way he's a bear guy as well eight and four in the year 1990 for Southern Miss. Southern Miss did, they played it close to the vest. They didn't win games by much. They didn't lose games by much. They ended up, by the way,

lose it late. They didn't lose any of their four games by more than four points. And you're thinking, oh, man, they got Brett Farr. They're really letting it loose. Brett Farrb threw for 1,500 yards that season. 1,500, option quarterbacks. There are option quarterbacks who have had more yards than Brett Farr. He also just throws seven touchdowns to six interceptions.

You go, oh, man, that doesn't, that, that, kind of sucks. That doesn't seem like exceptional performance. Oh, it is compared to Alabama's quarterback that year. Gary Hollingsworth. You ever heard of Gary Hollingsworth? No. Oh, you're going to remember this because he throws three interceptions on multiple occasions this season.

He threw four against Penn State the year prior, and they still won. All right? Gary Hollingsworth. God among men, all right? In this game, it is a weird game. Alabama is up at half time, but man, Gary Hollings

Owingsworth, he's going to chip away at that lead. He throws pick six. He throws two other interceptions. Brett Farr, you go, man, he must have had a heroic day. Yeah, he went out there. He played his first game of the season against Alabama in Birmingham, and he goes, nine for 17, with 125 yards. His biggest play is getting annihilated on a late hit on third and goal

to draw a first in goal and extend a TD drive that they finish off with a rushing TD. And he does, with a key pass, get them in position for the long field goal that seals the win to beat the Crimson Tide, 27, 24. Gary Hollingsworth, meanwhile, three interceptions, baby. And then you know what he does versus Florida the next week? He throws three more all to the same guy. Well, like Brian said, now he knows how. he had i think that's called getting reps he threw them all to will white safety for florida all right

and will just being true to your brand yeah and will white when asked about it after the game said and i quote he really looks at his receivers um hey hey who was who was um who was that fine young quarterback's position coach at the time that be oh yeah the offensive coordinator at the time was Mal Moore. Interesting. Thank you. No further questions. Yeah. Malmore later paid all this back by becoming the athletic director, helped hire Nick Saban.

Like, I don't know. He got about on the back end, y'all. Okay? He made up for not tutoring, Gary Hollingsworth correctly. Hollingsworth, by the way, finishes with four TDs. Sorry. Sorry. Did you say four? Like a single digit four? For the entire season of 1990. All right. He finishes with four touchdowns, 13 interceptions. Jesus Christ.

And averaged a whopping 3.4 yards per attempt. I think that's adjusted. That's not total yards per attempt, but it's still terrible. So it's adjusted. But you know what? I don't care. Well, like adjusted, that means like penalizing you yards for, say, interceptions. There was a lot of those.

No, yeah, you're right. No, he threw him big. He didn't like, no, I think most of his pick sixes were like 70 yards the other way. He had that Jared Lee thing of where if I'm going to throw it, I'm going to throw it real big. So Gene Stallings becomes the first Bama coach since Bear Bryant to lose his opener. He takes number 13 Alabama instantly out of national title contention by losing the Southern Miss and then ensures it by losing. I want you just imagine this, okay?

Imagine this. The guy who's the new coach at Alabama with a losing record coming in loses his next two to Florida and Georgia. And then loses 9-0 on the road and state. But it doesn't matter. Why? December 1st, 1990, they beat Auburn 16 to 7.

Woo! No, Bill Curry couldn't do. Yeah, he wins 10 games. He got numbers on the board. They go undefeated against everybody else. Can't spell 10 games about a zero, Paul. But when it comes time for Cowtown to feel some shame, guess who got that whooping stick?

That's right, she's solid. They also beat a Tennessee that was number three at the time. I already said that. We're just reviewing Bama season. Like, that's a 9-6th game. I already said that. If you go by just raw points, Bama's defense was fifth in the country. Bama's offense was out of only 107 1A teams, 69th, scoring only 21 points a game.

Yeah, because beaten up by that Bama defense and practice all week. Yeah, man, yeah. And, you know, like this was, you know, like this was kind of Southern Misses thing. They beat Florida State the year before to open the season. And then they went on to finish eight and four. And Curley Holman, Bound for Glory, takes the LSU job. And after four years, it's never seen again. Just absolutely botches it.

Meanwhile, Gene Stollings goes on to win a national title and beat who? That'd be Miami. Beats Miami in the Sugar Bowl. So he ends up coming full circle, Gene Stallings. So where you start is not where you've finished, all right. But where you start is sometimes hilariously bad. Oh, that's way too on brand for the full cast. So speaking of full circle,

here's an example of the challenge of evaluating teams by transitive victory, which is a thing people like to do during the season when it works out better for their teams. Why is my team? But we recognize in general that we just do that for fun, right? Right, of course. No, no, it is the only way to measure. yeah i mean if if you take transitive victory seriously take a real honest shot at doing the entire

top 25 based on nothing but that you'll give up around like 16 and then you'll you'll never bring it up again but i do i do i do want to raise this football is a food chain that's how it works so uh b yu beat miami 2821 miami beat texas 463 texas beat texas a and m 2827 texas a and m 2827 texas a and m beat BYU 6514 you figure out that little loop right there uh and and you know all i'm hearing Texas A&M national championship claim giggle the uh let's see nine three and one perfect