PD’s Picks & Pans: Week 3 Florida vs. UNT

Colorado @ #4 Michigan 3:30 (BTN)

Story lines abound here, but not about the game. Nothing about this game has any intrigue. The Wolverines are going to dismantle the Buffs. While there are many discussion-worthy dynamics around the fast-rising Michigan program, one alone is as penetrating as the one surrounding head coach Jim Harbaugh’s defining sideline decision last Saturday against Central Florida. And it’s as plain as the nose on Harbaugh’s face. Yes, I’m talking about the nasal snack cake Jimbo enjoyed on national television. Like a happy banjo player, he was a-pickin’ and a-grinnin’. Sunday’s headline read: MICHIGAN, HARBAUGH ROLL. Now we know why Harbaugh is always so salty. The video has gone viral, and it is clear this was not his first time trophy digging and eating his own catch. You don’t pull off that kind of seamless transition from nose to mouth without years of practice. He can only wish his quarterback and running backs could have that smooth a handoff during the game. And in the end, this could have a real impact on recruiting. Rival schools are already tweeting about how Jim teaches his defense to have a nose for the ball, and how both “suck it up” and “illegal pick” have a different meaning at Michgan’s practices. You can just see Urban Meyer and Mark Dantonio telling recruits, “There’s something wrong about that Harbaugh guy…I just can’t put my finger on it.”

Colorado:
Michigan: Pick’em

#3 Ohio State @ #14 Oklahoma 7:30 (FOX)

We’ve all heard of the Battle of the Bulge. The Battle of the Somme. The Battle of the Bastards (well, only Game of Thrones fans will know that one). Well, this one is the Battle of the Throat. Urban Meyer, the coach who famously or in famously (depending on what fan nation to which you belong) tore down what was then the premier college football program in the country because of esophageal spasms that he mistook for a heart attack, a stroke, and a bad case of the Mondays, matches wits with Bob Stoops, who has become the official college football poster boy for choking in BCS and playoff bowl games. Now, both of these coaches have only been down in the mouth so far that their throats imploded in the postseason, and this is the regular season, so we should not expect to see either of them rolling around on the sidelines Saturday clutching their Adam’s apple. However, one of them will certainly be in the bowels of Gaylord Family-Oklahoma Memorial Stadium, slumped over in the dark, on a golf cart, slowly gumming a cold Papa John’s pizza. Not a slice; the whole pizza.

Aren’t you glad the Gators play on Steve Spurrier-Florida Field at Ben Hill Griffin Stadium, and not Gaylord Family-Oklahoma Memorial Stadium?

Mr. Ricola: 27
Big Game Blob: 17

#2 Florida State @ #10 Louisville 12:00 (ABC)

Speaking of gumming the worst pizza on the planet, this game will be held at Papa John’s Cardinal Stadium, in Louisville Kentucky. Whether you pronounce it “LOU-ee-VILL,” or “LOU-uh-vl,” or even “LOUIS-Vill” (whaddup, Zooker!), the site of this game is very fitting. You see, in the mid-1990s, before ‘Papa’ and Peyton Manning were forcing their ubiquitous bromance reality TV show on America 90 seconds at a time, PJs was a little chain trying to make up ground on Pizza Hut. So it rolled out the now-famous slogan, “Better Ingredients, Better Pizza,” along with a long string of commercials claiming to be made with fresher ingredients and cleaner water than The Hut, and claiming to have held many taste tests with Pizza Hut’s pies and “won big time,” a result which oddly enough they never quantified. Pizza Hut sued them, claiming to have scientific evidence that Papa was lying through his crooked teeth. The court found in favor of The Hut, and even forced PJs to officially admit in open court that their claims to have a better ingredients and better-tasting pizza was puffery. Legal scholars would tell us that’s a fancy word for pants-on-fire lies. Also known as complete bull crap, or Bowdenisms. Legend has it that the PJs attorneys had to make the admission of puffery in puffy shirts, but that cannot be confirmed. And appeals court then reversed the decision because PJs shifted their defense to state that all their commercial claims of having better ingredients and better tasting pizzas were just their opinion, and therefore could not be considered puffery or even be technically wrong. The Supreme Court then refused to hear the case, claiming that it was too morbidly idiotic to waste any more taxpayers money and that both plaintiff and defendant were very silly people. Of course, nobody even knows that PJs won the lawsuit because Domino’s, which had nothing to do with the ad campaign or the lawsuit, then stepped up and ran a saturation ad campaign mocking PJs for being forced by a court of law to admit their slogan was full of bunk.

The key here is that PJs wiggled off the hook (and a $12.5 million damage is finding) by claiming it’s just their opinion. That their pizza is only a quality item in their own imagination. Enter FSU and Louisville, under the same concept. It would be hard to find two football programs with more delusional fans who are legends in their own minds so far beyond their programs actual accomplishments than these two (outside of Knoxville, at least). After all, this is the Louisville tea that for years keeps telling everyone that they are the new player in the Big East, Power 5, ACC, and never delivers, and of course FSU is the only program in history to claim to be a dynasty based on finishing in the top 4.

Then there is the angle of PJs lying to everyone about why their pizza is “better “…Can you think of a time when Jimbo Fisher, Bobby Petrino, and their coaching stabs have lied to make themselves look better? Like Jimbo preaching adamantly to the media about the high character of his team while his star quarterback who was facing two separate rape accusations among a bevy of nefarious scandals, headed up a long list of violent criminals on the roster? Or like when Bobby got into a little motorcycle crash and tried to coerce witnesses not to call 911 and then lied to his employers at Arkansas to release a statement that he was alone on the bike, all because he was in fact riding double with an Arkansas female volleyball player to whom he had illegally given a job on his coaching staff and with whom he was having an extramarital affair…oh, and to whom he paid $20,000 not to spill the beans about the crash or the affair? I won’t even mention the time Petrino while an NFL assistant snuck out of Jacksonville in the middle of the night (literally) to go work for Auburn – without telling his employer the Jaguars…and then did the exact same thing to the Falcons a few years later, only this time as the head coach and during the season, leaving a letter in the lockers of his players as his only notice of leaving.

Other examples abound, which is why the rest of the college football world can always be just like Domino’s and talk all the trash they want about them, and like Papa John’s, they won’t deny a word of it. Because they can’t.

Oh yeah, the game. Please win, Louisville!

We’ll Take Care of All Your Son’s Needs…Like Witness Intimidation: 33
At Least We Haven’t Had a Prostitution Scandal Like Our Hoops Team: 37
Yet: 3

Ohio @ #15 Tennessee 12:00 (SECN)

Quick, what is the over-under on how deep into the game the Vols wait before the players start cheer-leading to the crowd again to work up their courage to play football. Last week it took them about a quarter and a half, but Vegas had the over because nobody dreamed that VPI would derail their domination of Tennessee by handing them the ball on every possession for the rest of the game. The SEC Network has its work cut out for it trying to make this game seem interesting to the home viewers.

Tennessee: Who Cares?
Ohio: Doesn’t Matter

#1 Alabama @ #19 Ole Miss 3:30 (CBS)

♫♪”Anything you can cheat, I can cheat better! I can cheat anything better than you! No you can’t! Yes I can! No you can’t! Yes I can!….” ♪♫ Yes, Nick Saban faces off against what science has discovered is the last human in the coaching community whom he doesn’t hate and who doesn’t hate him: Hugh Freeze. They are actually friends who share vacation spots and play golf together in the offseason. This week in a press conference, Saban called Freeze one of the best coaches in the SEC…right after calling a Fox Sports reporter a male-whore of Babylon with bad breath, and right before kicking the toddler son of the Bryant-Denny Stadium groundskeeper in the head for no discernible reason. I guess Saban sees in Freeze a kindred spirit, one of the few people in the profession that is like him in so many ways and could possibly one day be the new Nick Saban. Its what the Himalayans call Namastaban: My dark malevolent soul recognizes the dark malevolent soul in you.

They’re Called Disturbing, Narcissistic Outbursts: 24
The Next Leader of the NCAA’s Chain Gaing: 20

North Texas @ #23 Florida 7:30 (ESPNU)

These are happy times for Florida fans again. No more sweating out patsies in the Swamp. No more quarterbacks calling for a fair catch on the shotgun snap. No more offensive linemen blocking each other or defenders tackling each other when they get a turnover and try to race for the end zone. No more problems with eye control or the midline. No more field trips to GNC. No more coaching zombies roaming the sidelines, planning their future of spending more time with the ESPN studios. No more offensive coordinators stealing money and testing the breaking strength of Igloo coolers. Saturdays are fun again. And this Saturday will be no different.

As for the opponent, Florida is facing off against a team called The Mean Green. The Mean Green. They have a mascot named ‘Scrappy’ who is a white eagle of fairly even temperament, but they apparently are big fans of Burt Reynolds and Eddie Albert. The Mean Green Fighting Machine was of course the name of the prison team quarterbacked by Burt Reynolds’s Paul Crewe character in the immortal 1974 sports classic The Longest Yard. The real iteration of the Mean Green Fighting Machine is very mortal and far from classic and hails from Denton, city motto “North of Ordinary” (though the state of Texas has confirmed they have no town named Ordinary). This may explain why their only notable alumnus is Joe Greene, nicknamed “Mean” Joe Greene while at North Texas after the team, since apparently fans kept forgetting who he played for. More than even his Hall of Fame NFL career, Mean Joe is probably known best for his role in the immortal Coca-Cola commercial titled “Hey, kid, catch!,” wherein he tosses his game jersey to a little boy who gave him his Coke to console and refresh him after a tough loss. It was a made-for-TV-moment. This game is not. But the iconic commercial always harkens to memories of when my then very young daughter took a field trip The World of Coke and saw this famous ad in one of the exhibits. She was very excited to tell me about this short movie they showed, wherein a big, sweaty man named “Bad Joe” met a little boy in a dark alley. The boy noticed that Bad Joe looked like he was going to die, so he gave Bad Joe a Coke to help him survive whatever happened to him. Bad Joe didn’t care and it made the boy sad. But then Bad Joe threw his filthy clothes at the little boy, and the dirty laundry made the boy very happy. Which made Bad Joe smile and finally turn into Good Joe. She said it taught a good lesson that if you see someone who is hurt or sad, give them something. Even if it is something disgusting like dirty laundry or a Coke, it will make them happy. Then she told me about how she and her friends went into another room together and tried Coke for the first time. I was glad that I had context for that revelation.

I Think I Broke His F*#@*%# Neck: 48
Game Ball: 6

David Parker
One of the original columnists when Gator Country first premiered, David “PD” Parker has been following and writing about the Gators since the eighties. From his years of regular contributions as a member of Gator Country to his weekly columns as a partner of the popular defunct niche website Gator Gurus, PD has become known in Gator Nation for his analysis, insight and humor on all things Gator.