My Adventures In College Football In Real Life and Online

College football season is upon us. For me, the good news is I got to enjoy an SEC game in person with my 17-year-old daughter. The bad news is I wasn’t able to watch 21-year-old Arch Manning in the heavily hyped matchup between Texas and Ohio State.

My 19-year-old daughter is in her second year at Ole Miss, where Arch’s grandfather Archie’s and uncle Eli’s numbers are honored on the stadium walls. The crowd in Oxford turned out for a white-out game, with female students uniformly attired in white dresses and cowboy boots. The atmosphere was electric, supplemented by marching bands, fireworks and an odd “Purge” video. 

The Rebels were expected to crush the season-opening opponent, the Georgia State Panthers, and eventually they did. But while quarterback Austin Simmons, in his first start, led a 65-yard, three-pass drive to open the scoring in the first quarter, two interruptions helped keep the game relatively close (25-7)  in the first half.

The final score was a more respectable 63-7 win for Ole Miss.

Simmon’s early performance contrasted with last year’s first-half blowout in the season opener against Furman, another game I was lucky enough to attend. In that game QB Jaxson Dart, now a promising rookie for the New York Giants (where Eli Manning won two Super Bowls). When Dart appeared on the screen at Vaught-Hemingway Stadium–once in a roll-call of Rebels on NFL squads, and one identifying him as a standout in pre-season NFL action–the crowd roared.

Before the game, I was frustrated in my attempts to watch the Texas-Ohio State game. I pay a lot for cable TV and several streaming services, but I was unable to get the game on a variety of devices.

I tried my Xfinity Stream app, but was told I couldn’t watch my local Chicago Fox affiliate from my location in Mississippi. And when I tried to log onto Fox’s new streaming service, Fox One, I was told that I couldn’t authenticate with my provider, Xfinity. (It seemed to work fine the next day.) I even attempted to find a stray, unauthorized stream of the game, but not being a member of Gen Z I was thwarted. I did find a service willing to charge me $21 to stream the game, but by that point, it just wasn’t worth it. 

Just as well. I probably wouldn’t have much enjoyed the low-scoring 14-7 Ohio State win much anyway.

BLUE BLOOMS

The youthful success of Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher Pau Skene has had the benefit of bringing some attention back to one of the first non-hometown baseball players I rooted for. 

Skenes is in his second season after winning rookie of the year in the National League last.year. In his first 50 starts he has a career earned run average of 2.02, lower than Dwight Gooden’s 2.27. 

There is only one pitcher since 1920 whose ERA was lower than Skenes’ for his first 50 starts and that’s Vida Blue, who came up with the Oakland A’s in 1970. (Coincidentally, both pitchers had 351 strikeouts through 50 starts, though Blue pitched more innings.)

I remember first reading (yes, reading in a newspaper) about a rookie pitcher hurling a no-hitter. It was a West Coast game in September, so a day or so later there was a small box in the sports pages about a rookie named Vida Blue. How could you not root for the guy with a name like that? And as a lefty I had a soft spot for southpaws (which is why I rooted for Jerry Koosman more than Tom Seaver.)

Blue had a kick-butt season in 1971, with a 24-8 record and 1.82 era, winning the American League MVP award as well as the Cy Young.

Because of Blue, I started following the Oakland A’s as they put together a powerhouse team starring colorful characters including Catfish Hunter, Blue Moon Odom, Joe Rudi, Campy Campanaris and the straw who stirred the drink, Reggie Jackson. Blue and the A’s were three-time World Series champions from 1972 to 1974. 

Blue died in 2023 at age 73, but he left great memories. And it’s not just me. I bought a Vida Blue A’s jersey and the first time I wore it, I had a dozen conversations with people who remembered those A’s teams and Blue. RIP.

CORSO FAREWELL

Speaking of college football, ESPN pulled out the stops in celebrating Lee Corso’s long run on College Game Day. 

The 90-year-old football coach turned broadcaster has been on the show for 38 years. He’s famous for picking the winner of each week’s big game by putting on the headgear of the mascot for the team he favors. 

On Saturday, he put on an Ohio State Buckeye head, saying “give me my first love.” He picked Ohio State the first time he did the headgear trick back on October 4 1996. Over the course of his career he’s done that trick 431 times.

And the Buckeye did indeed beat No. 1 Texas.

Later during its telecast of the LSU-Clemson game, ESPN’s bottom line ran Corso’s final stats, showing that he’d donned Ohio State Buckeye headgear the most–46 times–followed by Alabama 38 times, LSA 25 times, Florida 22 times and Oregon 21 times.

He finished his Game Day run with a 287-144 record in games where he put on a mascot’s headgear. A pretty good record. 

All of the effort paid off with record rating for Game Day. Viewership peaked at 5.1 million viewers according to preliminary figures from Nielsen and the episode averaged 3.5 million viewers, topping the old high by 1 million. 

Fox, which is looking to challenge Game Day’s dominance, is starting the season in a hole, a final gift from Corso. 

Here’s a good story from ESPN about the preparations involved in celebrating Corso’s last game.

IT’S IN THE HOLE

It’s good to be at the top of the PGA Tour Leaderboard. Ten golfers make more than $10 million this season including bonuses. 

Here’s the list according to Front Office Sports:

1. Scottie Scheffler: $26.58 million ($49.58 million)

2. Tommy Fleetwood: $18.49 million ($22.7 million)

3. Rory McIlroy: $16.99 million ($30.49 million)

4. Russell Henley: $14.63 million ($20.73 million)

5. J.J. Spaun: $12.89 million ($18.49 million)

6. Justin Thomas: $10.88 million ($16.05 million)

7. Sepp Straka: $10.65 million ($17.23 million)

8. Ben Griffin: $9.99 million ($14.99 million)

9. Patrick Cantlay: $9.4 million ($9.67 million)

10. Justin Rose: $8.86 million ($10.36 million)

WHERE YOU BEEN?

Chicago radio mainstay Dan Bernstein started his new podcast and explained why he’d been fired by The Score 670.

“How did we get here? Yes, well, we got here primarily because I went psycho on a Twitter troll. That's why,” he said.

“Is my fault entirely. Everything that was coming to me, I've earned. I am facing, still facing, the consequences of my actions. It's because of what I chose to do. There's nobody ganged up against me. There's no vast conspiracy here. It's my fault because of my shortcomings, and I've learned a lot about those shortcomings,” he said. 

Bernstein noted that he’d previously told listeners about his OCD condition. And he added that he’s now working with his therapist to work through his Twitter melt down. 

The nature of Twitter contributed to that meltdown, according to Bernstein.

“I've learned that the way for me, Twitter specifically rewired my brain for the worse, and a lot of shitty things that have happened in my career, and bad decisions that I've made have been related to Twitter,” he said. 

“Twitter has found a way into that mechanism of the dopamine outrage cycle of little hits here and there, and feeding an actual chemical addiction . . . Bottom line, Twitter's bad for me. I don't think I need to tell you that Twitter, Twitter is unhealthy for me.

Bernstain added that it would be stupid for him to flush the 70,000 followers on his Twitter account. But he asserted he would use Twitter only as a marketing message, and respond to DMs from people he knows. 

“ I don't need to tell you, but Twitter has made itself worse on purpose, and it's tried to be worse on purpose. And congratulations,” he added. “I don't read my notifications because it's bad for me. I have a clinical doctor's order not to do so.”

Chicago writer  Jon Greenberg interviewed Bernstein for The Athletic in a piece you can check out here.

Thanks for reading.