Seattle Sports Insider

Spec's College Nickel Package -- Preseason

Our five things for the week

Posted by

8/29/13

Since we're not just a baseball blog, we get to noodle about other things if folks are willing to put up with it. Jeff's been tossing out some Seahawks and soccer stuff, and I'll be chiming in on college sports.

I grew up steeped in the old Big Eight. That was when conferences had numbers in their names that actually corresponded to the number of teams in the conference. Weird, huh?

Then I spent a lot of time attending institutions of higher learning affiliated with the ACC.

Short answer: basketball, great; football, not so much.

Since we are required by federal regulations, including, but not limited to, the Economic Recovery Through Cheesy Sports Blogging Act of 2009, to come up with a catchy name, we've chosen to blog about five things each week (during football season) and call it our "Nickel Package." During basketball, I suppose we'll switch to calling it the "Starting Five."

Here goes:

1. American Athletic Conference

The AAC is not the ACC. Oh no.

The AAC is the old, former football version of the "Big" "East." Which was the "Holy" "Roman" "Empire" of sports. [The new-old basketball Big East, will, on the other hand, be both "Big" and (mostly) "East" -- good for them.]

Q: How does one distinguish the new AAC from the old Conference-USA? or the existing version of Conference-USA?

A: Not in any way that any human being would care about.

Oh, wait ... so you're a fan of Rice. OK. Rice is in one of them, probably, and may be switching from one to the other, but, really, it doesn't matter which. There will be weeks when they play East Carolina.

2. Johnny Manziel

Well, it was quite a year.

Unknown
Wow! Who's that guy?
The Feel-Good Story of the Year!
Johnny Football!
Heisman?
Heisman!
Huh?
Yuk!
The Feel-Slimy Story of the Year!
Can he just go fail in the NFL already?

3. Mark Helfrich and David Shaw

Do you know who these guys are?

4. Jadeveon Clowney

Q: Can the best player in college be a defensive lineman?

A: Yes!

Q: Can he win the Heisman?

A: Given the above (folks getting tired of Johnny Football before they barely knew what he looked like), yes.

5. Domers

Who did Alabama play in the title game? Why did we care about Mantei Te'o?

I forget.

Blog:

Mariners Prospect Talk

Comments

Shaw

I know Shaw. Nerd Nation all the way! Awesome year coming up for the Cardinal.
This is actually why, as a Seahawks fan, I find it hard to dislike the 49ers. They have such an awesome coach! =) And I used to *hate* Pete Carroll... the whole 'What's your deal?" thing between he and Harbaugh was absolutely hilarious, and I enjoy watching them butt heads. Even if I'm now rooting for Carroll's team over Harbaugh's, which is STILL weird to me.
But what does that have to do with David Shaw? Not much, I suppose... oh well, you did say we were noodling here.

Clowney is gonna be one of the most fun things in college ball

I love that dude. Still don't think they'll let him win the Heisman, unless every QB or RB who should put up pretty numbers face-plants - but I love defense and he's one of my favorite players to watch.
Football is my first love - pro, not college, but I've come around to college ball over the last 5 or 6 years. I didn't come to baseball til I was an adult, but I made banners for the 80s Broncos Super Bowl teams when I was a wee lad, using a dot matrix printer and the paper you had to tear the sides off of. Football's in my blood.
For college I like PAC-12 football best, but I watch em all. Updates for the upcoming season will be welcome. ;)
~G

Ha, 80's AFC West Football

Those were some fun times. Every division matchup regardless of the 2 teams felt like a heated rivalry. Remember typing in / updating the Seahawks individual season totals each Monday from the newspaper to my TI-99/4A. Drawing my own Raiderbuster and Broncobuster t-shirts when I outgrew the real ones.
Finally getting into the NFC West a little, but still not the same as the old AFC West. Easy to hate the Niners with Harbaugh but I can't work up much animosity for the Cardinals or Rams.

Agreed

The Chargers were kind of "meh" but I always had great respect for Fouts as their QB. But the Raiders and Broncos? There's no player in the NFC West now that's quite as hate-able as Elway was. You just can't believe how satisfying it was in 1992, with a 2-14 team and an offense so pitiful it eclipses the Mariners past few years in ineptitude, to beat Elway in the 'Dome.
I have a hard time hating the 49ers since I grew up in the Bay Area as a Giants and 49ers fan - back when it was John Brodie, Ken Willard and John David Crow. That's when I learned to hate the Raiders - they were my older brother's team, so of course I went with the 49ers. When the Seahawks were in the AFC, it was easy to have the Seahawks as my AFC team and the 49ers as my NFC team. The Rams were, of course, the big rival to the 49ers back then but since they moved to St. Louis I don't have that whole Los Angeles hate going with them anymore. Even when they were "The Greatest Show on Turf" it was more "can we please just beat these guys?" rather than "I hate these guys!"

UNC - welcome to Clowney College?

Every few decades Carolina puts together a good football program.
Charlie Justice
"Famous" Amos Lawrence and Lawrence Taylor
The Mack Brown years
....
today, UNC is emerging from the most recent reputation marring scandal ... (y'know, at least when Miami was the model of every evil in college football, they actually won a lot).
Anyway ... UNC had a good year last year ... and there are some expectations of an 8-4 or 9-3 season this year. But, losing Gio Benard to the NFL makes for awfully big shoes to fill. I'd love to say I think the Tar Heels can pull an upset. After all, the 1st game of the season often is one that exposes pretenders, (App State beating Michigan ring any bells?) ... but to be brutally honest ... UNC isn't up to the competitive level of top tier SEC schools.
Without the running threat they had last year, I hate to say it, but I suspect UNC will be EXACTLY what Clowney needs to begin a genuine campaign to make a run at the Heisman. This isn't a Georgia Tech or Wake Forest "option madness" game of trickery and deception where you can just spend the night running away from Clowney to keep him at bay. UNC's best player probably is its QB, Renner. That means, to move the ball Carolina *MUST* pass the ball.
Problem is not that Renner isn't a good college QB. The problem is Renner is not an All American lineman blocking Clowney.
Televised ... new UNC backfield ... at USC ... pass-first offense ...
For me, hoping for a UNC win is a huge reach. I'll be happy if Renner survives intact.

I went to Rice, so I do care!

I went to Rice, so I do care! Go Owls! (I think our last conference championship was in '58).

Grumpy, we got your back

Rice was historically part of the Texas-based Southwesetern Conference until the big boys therein decided that they needed a higher national TV profile and decided to enter into the uneasy marriage with the old Big Eight known as the Big XII, but in order to reach XII, they needed to round out their foursome so they chose politically-connected Baylor and left Rice, SMU, TCU and Houston out in the cold, leading the first three of which to join a greatly expanded WAC, which expanded to an unwieldy 16 teams to absorb the Texas schools, a situation that the original Rocky Mountain schools found they didn't like, so they broke off to form the Mountain West, leaving the WAC as a far-flung group of schools that had little to do with the original WAC (and eventually would have even less to do with), but it was a satisfactory home until the ACC started pecking away at the carcass of the "Big" "East" by snagging Miami (which, ironically, had wanted to join the ACC when Florida State did, but was turned down), Virginia Tech and BC, and that left the "Big" "East" needing to replenish itself by picking off schools from Conference-USA, which, in turn, left C-USA needing to pick off schools from the WAC, and since the WAC didn't make any sense anyway, it was easy for Rice and a few others to bolt the WAC for C-USA (although, oddly enough, always-restless TCU, which had already abandoned the WAC for C-USA, reversed course and joined the Mountain West, the conference that didn't want the Texas schools, before jumping ship again to sign up with the remnants of the "Big" "East" but it never played a down in that conference before reversing course again and signing on with the Big XII, which needed new members after its messy divorce with Nebraska, Colorado, Missouri and Texas A&M, just to get back to X members, even though it kept the "XII" moniker), and then with all Hades breaking loose, the basketball part of the "Big" "East" decided to go back to being a basketball conference known as the Big East (no quotes needed), leaving whatever was left of the "Big" "East" to re-brand itself as the American Athletic Conference and scoop up a few more refugees from C-USA, including SMU, Tulsa, Tulane, East Carolina and Central Florida ... but ... not Rice ... leaving Rice in what's left of C-USA, which is just pretty much Southern Miss and some other teams that they found sitting along the side of the road and asked if they needed a conference and they said "sure, why not" including Middle Tennessee, Western Kentucky and Florida International, the latter of which is most notable as the alma mater of our own Jabari Henry!
See how easy that is?