Holiday Weekend Football Recap 11/29/2021
I guess I have been on a bit of a kick (pun intended) lately making these graphics for my recurring posts. I know they are pretty rudimentary, but I feel like they help to spice up my posts a little, so I am not to sad about that. Hopefully you aren't either.
As I mentioned in one of my previous posts, the Thanksgiving Weekend is pretty much synoymous with football in the US. There are always at least one ore two games on Thanksgiving day that people lay around on the couch and watch after they are stuffed with turkey.
In my case, we eat our Thanksgiving Dinner a bit later in the day, so I was watching the game as much as I could until we hit the road to spend time with family.
I know myself and a lot of other people had high hopes for the Lions on Thanksgiving day. We really have nothing else to hold onto with that team, so hope is all we have left. There will be a day when we get a win. I don't know how or when, but it will happen.
Unfortunately, it wasn't on Thanksgiving.
It could have been, but once again, they gave the game away at the last minute. I will be honest, I didn't see the end of the game because I was at my wife's aunts spending time with family, but my brother in law who showed up a little later did tell me about it.
I'm just going to move on from there and not talk about it too much. Next week is a new week and maybe they will finally get that win...
Before we get to the big events that happened on Saturday, the NCAA and Big 10 slipped in a surprise game on Friday. It was Iowa versus Nebraska and let me tell you, it was an absolute heartbreaker.
Although he doesn't get a chance to watch the games @gooddream most likely can tell you how unlucky the Corn Huskers have been most of the season if not most of the past five years. Most of their football games have been lost by single digit deficits.
They were absolutely crushing Iowa through the first half of Friday's game. It was amazing to watch. With their starting quarterback injured, they were starting a new QB in Smothers. He was doing fantastic. Everything just seemed to be clicking for him and he has some legs of his own. It was kind of magical.
Then the second half hit and things started going bad. I don't think it was that they were playing worse, they were just unlucky. It was really sad to watch. They ended up losing the game of course and that moves Iowa into the Big 10 Championsship game instead of Wisconsin. Though I think Minnesota beat down Wisconsin too, so I am not sure what would have happened had Nebraska held on to win.
Saturday gave us "The Game" between Ohio State and Michigan. Given the fact that Ohio State had just finished beating us down, I was kind of hoping that they would do the same to Michigan. This is a really hard game as a Michigan State fan. You really don't want to cheer for either team.
Ultimately Michigan was victorious. It feels more like it was a bad day for the Buckeye's more than it was stellar play for the Wolverines. I think had the weather conditions been different and Ohio State been on their A game, it likely would have turned out different.
Now Michigan gets to go to the BIG 10 championship game and possibly on to a College football playoff berth. I don't really feel like they belong in that latter category, but whatever. Let's say they do make it and by some miracle they win the national championship. That just means the Michigan State Spartans beat the team that won the national championship. I'd kind of be okay with that.
After "The Game", we were treated to the final Michigan State football game of the regular season. They were playing Penn State and although Penn State hasn't been great this year, I was still a bit nervous. We have neve really seen Thorne play in the snow and it was snowing like a beast in southern Michigan on Saturday.
Add to that the fact that Michigan State just has some horrible pass defense and it was a recipie for disaster. Thankfully, there was nothing to worry about and State pulled out the win. It was a really good game. I would have liked to see them play a bit better, but with the win, they should move on to a decent bowl game this Christmas seson. Hopefully one of the bigger ones on New Years day or something like that.
Finally, we were left with the NFL games yesterday. I was really excited about the Rams/Packers game, but then I realized Joe Buck was one of the annoucers and I really can't stand him, so I didn't bother watching the game. Instead I spent the evening watching some Netflix with my wife.
It turns out LA lost the game and that has to be really tough for Stafford. He is now in a three game losing streak and it probably is startin got feel really familiar for him. Hopefully the Rams can reboud and still keep their playoff hopes alive. I think the deserve it. Stafford does for sure.
That's all I've got for this week.
Check back next week for likely a more condensed version of the wrap-up given college football is nearly over.
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I kinda figured Ohio State was going to lose after seeing the unimpressive Oregon got blown out by Utah (and they are playing each other again for the Pac-12 championship).
Oregon's claim to fame this year was that they beat Ohio State.
I think the Playoff is going to be Georgia, Big 12 champ, Michigan, and Cincinnati.
It is kind shaping up that way (your prediction). It would be cool to see if Cincinnati can hang with the others. They have taken a lot of flack this season for strength of schedule despite their success. Ohio State had some really mediocre defensive games this year. They just got lucky in the other ones. I think if State gets their Defensive struggles taken care of, they should be decent moving forward.
That made me lol in my office. While I don't feel this way about Buck there are several announcers in many sports where there's just something about the words they choose, or simply the sound of their voice that makes me want to mute the sound. A good way to remedy this is to go to Buffalo Wild Wings because they don't have the sound on for any of the TV's for the most part.
I often watch sports at home with the sound off. Some commentators are obviously bias, so it really detracts from the game for me. Usually because I am cheering for the underdog and they never talk about the underdog as much as they talk about the big dog.
Thanks for the tag. I wouldn't have known about this at all if you hadn't talked about it. The only way to get college games over here is to have one of those shady black boxes and then be the only person in the bar that is actually interested in it. Combine this with the fact that most of the games are on in the middle of the night and well, I don't end up seeing any of them.
The result isn't surprising but yeah, pretty heartbreaking to go up 21-9, totally control 3 quarters and then completely fall apart in the 4th. In front of a home crowd too.
I suppose completely missing a 3-9 season has been good for my mental health
Yes, it has been a really depressing season for them. I was honestly so excited for them in that game. It was looking so good. Totally heartbreaking!
It would have been a great ending to an otherwise horrible season. It was many years ago that I last checked but someone was telling me that despite their rather lackluster performance in the past decade the season tickets for the Huskers are still a 10 year waiting list or something like that. I'm sure Covid affected that but if the Big Red fans are still turning up en masse, that would make me happy that they aren't just fair-weather fans.
Does Tom Osbourne have any offspring we don't know about?
Haha, I guess I don't know... The facility looks really beautiful, so I guess maybe it is the experience of going to watch them lose that is worth the money more than the actual game. I don't know. I will be interested to see if they stick with Smothers and how he grows over the next couple of years if they do. It could be really good for them.