PD’s Picks & Pans: Florida Gators vs. Tennessee Week

I am so angry right now! I was scheduled to go on the next episode of Shark Tank and pitch “BRANgelina”, an exciting new high-fiber breakfast cereal made into the shape of Brad and Angelina’s faces. I already paid for 6,000 boxes of the multi-colored marshmallows pressed into the shape of orphaned Third World adoptees.

Nevertheless, despite all the pain and suffering it will cause me and the rest of the world, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are going busto. Angie hired private investigators to catch him cheating on her, which raises the question, just how good at cheating do you have to be to be one of the two or three most recognizable and paparazzi-blanketed men in the world – with every move you make watched, recorded and broadcast – and you still get away with cheating?

That sound you hear is the knowing chuckle of Nick Saban. You couldn’t have recognized it because it is the first time he has made a laugh-like or laugh-adjacent sound since 1998 when he first watched The Deer Hunter.

So this week as I give you your can’t-miss Vegas picks (please bet your life savings on every one of them, trust me), I’m going to look at some other famous marriages that are about to end in ugly divorce.

 

Kent State @ #1 Alabama 12:00 (SECN)

The celebrity couple here that is about to punch its one-way tickets to Splitsville: Nick Saban and Lane Kiffin. When they first aligned, they transformed the translation of “UA” from University of Alabama to Unholy Alliance. But soon they just became known by the strongest Crimson Tide supporters (you know, residents of Tuscaloosa, the SEC Network, Paul Finebaum’s emu farm) as Sabiffin.

Sabiffin can most closely be compared to the former celebrity couple Sean Penn and Madonna. Penn was a very talented professional with a nasty disposition and foul temper who took every opportunity to bash the media to their faces (and often in their faces). Sound like anyone we know in crimson and white? Then there’s Madonna, a very talented, very spoiled, self-obsessed, primpy diva who is always getting herself into hot water by opening her big mouth. True Kiffin blood lines right there. And as did Seandonna, Sabiffin is about to explode, perhaps before the season ends. Just call Steve Sarkisian Saban’s Robin Wright, waiting in the wings to take Kiffin’s place.

Alabama: Name it

AlaTakeMyCheckAndGo: Is there any way to score half a point?

 

#12 Georgia @ #23 Ole Miss 12:00 (ESPN)

It would be easy to look at Hugh Freeze and Ole Miss and see an NCAA-mandated split on the horizon, but we can never underestimate the ineptness or refusal of the NCAA to punish teams outside of Gainesville in proportion to their crimes. No, this breakup on tap will be a much more pleasurable one for Gator fans to watch unfold: Kirby Smart and his Honeymoon Period. Yes, the shine is about to come off of this squeaky shoe pert quick. Kirby’s fan-allotted grace period and early love-fest is Christie Brinkley: Beautiful and intoxicating, but superficial and very short-lived. Kirby himself is Billy Joel: a guy who is very talented at one thing (coordinating defenses), but when you look past that one quality, you realize you are sleeping with one of those goldfish with the giant distended bubble eyes. Ole Miss has roared out to big first half leads against two pretty good teams and them self-destructed into losses. They will get out to a big early lead against Georgia, too, but the Dawgs are not a pretty good team. And Kirby’s living on the edge in his first season is about to become falling off of it. The way Kirby has treated his local media members, don’t expect them to write him out of the target range of angry fans who expect an SEC and national title this year, because he has treated them about as bad as a first year coach could.

Oh, and please don’t tell anyone at Ole Miss about the dissolution of Brangelina. The state of Mississippi is so far back in the stone age, they think Brad Pitt is still dating Jennifer Anniston. In some areas of Oxford, they think he’s still with Juliette Lewis. They are not natural born thinkers.

Ole Bliss: 37

Kirbunneymoon: 17

#18 LSU @ Auburn 6:00 (ESPN)

We actually have two college football celebrity couples in this game who will be untying the knot at some point before we start seeing claymation Christmas specials on our TVs. The first is Les Miles and LSU, the couple lovingly known as “Milesdogs”. The corn doggers tried to jettison him from the bayou last year and couldn’t muster the juice. After another year of floundering in the no-championships friendship zone, LSU will finally cut ties with the Hatter. They need space. They have been like Angelina Jolie – Billy Bob Thornton. LSU is Angelina: everyone regards them both as one of the most iconic and beautiful entities in their industry…but get up close to them and you see they are gaunt, unattractive and they smell funny. And if you just swap out the vial of blood with a mouth full of field turf, is there any closer match in the football world to Billy Bob than Les? These two broke into a crazy pill factory and ate the entire inventory.

The other couple that is about to have a relation-ship-off, is of course Gus Malzahn and Auburn. Malzauburn is the college football equivalent of TomKat: Tom Cruise & Katie Holmes. Remember that day when the world learned a new definition for the world “uncomfortable”, when Cruise freakishly declared his love for Holmes by jumping on a couch on “Oprah” (the show, not the person)? Well that was Auburn Nation when Gus was hired. And like when TomKat tried to repress their marital problems by having a child to recharge their excitement, Auburn fans also tried to recharge their Gus batteries from the let down of throwing away the national title game and then falling from the elite faster than Jameis Winston could spit out an incoherent post-game monologue about how the stadium turned into God at halftime. They tried to pump up their Gus buzz by buying in hook, line and sinker to (drum roll please) “GusChamp”. But the allegiance of Gus the offensive genius and Muschamp the defensive genius was over in just one year, and the fans’ tolerance for the further sliding program lasted even less time. Now Muschamp is coaching at South Carolina (more on that later when I preview their game) and TomKat’s baby girl is seeing a team of psychologists to deal with the fact that she is named Suri (more on that when I ask her for turn-by-turn directions to the closest In-and-Out Burger).

A Couple More Losses and You Can Get on the Bus, Gus: 13

Like the Eagles, Les is Already Gone: 27

 

Penn State @ #4 Michigan 3:30 (ABC)

This divorce has been in the works for over a week already. That’s right, they’re separating: Harbaugh’s finger…and Harbaugh’s booger. I just think this is too important to let slip out of the news cycle. It’s too big to just be flicked aside. The sports media should chew on it a little longer. This is Julia Roberts-Lyle Lovett all over again. Harbaugh and Roberts are great talents who are insufferably annoying, and, well….do I really need to draw the solid line between Lovett and…? Lyle is a wonderful songwriter and performer, of course, with outstanding musical taste. Only Harbaugh could tell us about the other participant’s taste.

Harbooger: 45

Penn State: 17 (14 of which will be given back to Michigan)

 

South Carolina @ Kentucky 7:30 (SECN)

You know you saw this one coming. Will Muschamp and the South Carolina Gamecocks. The coach who was dumped midseason by his school, and the school that was dumped midseason by its coach. Together again, for the first time, for the last time. They are on the way out. South Caroluschamp is the college football equivalent of Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee. Pam and Tommy got married a mere 96 hours after they met, and you can bet ‘Cock fans are wishing they would have dated a little longer and played the field a little more, before tying the knot with Will. Carolina is the perfect analogy to Anderson, because like her, they always pass the eye test and have all the program “pieces” to be a top tier SEC player, but neither are ever more than bit players or stars of small shows and small games, because the talent just isn’t there. Tommy Lee is of course the perfect mirror of Muschamp: he is extremely talented in one skill and one skill only, and can be extremely effective in that one skill as part of a truly great group – but only if he stays in the back of the stage, out of sight, keeping his foul temper to himself, just doing his one job. A lot of Gator fans would draw another comparison…that one of them has a big one, and one of them is a big one…but we don’t traffic in that kind of stuff here.

I don’t know if it will be one year, two years or even three, but pretty soon Muschamp will be headed back to home sweet home. Wherever that is.

‘Catty: 24

‘Cocky: 20

#19 Florida @ #14 Tennessee 3:30 (CBS)

Butch betta have my money!

Yeah, this one is obvious. Butch Jones and Tennessee are not long for this world. They keep on appearing in public together, forcing fake smiles and telling everyone that they are awesome, doing great, on the verge of being the biggest power couple in the industry, and then fading into nervous laughter and another inevitable public embarrassment. Of course, the celebrity couple we are watching here is Roseanne Barr and Tom Arnold. Picture Tom Arnold and tell me there isn’t a likeness; tell me he isn’t an equally fidgety, jar-headed nonsense-spitter as Jones is. And you don’t have to close your eyes to know that if you put Roseanne in Tennessee orange (or is it yellow?), she and her cackling squawks would fade right into the backdrop of toothless jelly doughnuts in Neyland Stadium. And the divorce of Bucthessee is going to be even uglier than they are.

As for the game and our little quarterback quandary, I expect the results for Florida will not be much different with Appleby than they would have been with Del Rio. Luke is clearly the better choice, but they are comparable in most ways. The expectation will be for Tennessee to (repeat after me) “load the box and bring lots of pressure.” Has there ever been a defensive plan in the history of the game that wasn’t predicated on stopping the run and pressuring the quarterback? Put your hand down, Hoke!!

I would have expected the exact same approach from Sgt Carter’s creamsicle crew had Del Rio not been injured. And we expect them to be even more quarterback pressurey and box-loadingy with a backup quarterback in there. Right? That’s the same philosophy behind peeing down our own leg because Quincy Wilson guaranteed a win, yes? That somehow information like this will make Tennessee prepare harder, practice harder and play harder, implying that they were to some degree just going to Cadillac their way through the motions without this extra incentive. However, even if that were a real thing (and it isn’t, except in the mind of us fans), our backup signal caller has 370% more experience starting college football games than our starter does. That should actually work this axiom in reverse: they should be less willing to force Appleby to beat them because he actually has a lot more experience starting and playing Power 5 football. What’s more, Appleby has also made 5 road starts, including a trip to storied Memorial Stadium in Lincoln, Nebraska and to Champaign, Illinois, where the Purdue Cannon is decided each year against one of Purdue’s three traditional archrivals. And he went 1-1 in those two games. That was his only road win as a starter, but he still has 5 games of experience starting in hostile environments. Luke Del Rio has zero.

The Gator Boys Are Still Hot: 26

Twelvessee: 13

And that’s a look at Week 4 and the CFB celebrity divorces on their way. Keep watch for my upcoming GoFundMe account to try to cover the losses on the marshmallows I ordered for BRANgelina. Of course, Mick Hubert told me to get in line. He is still sitting on 12,000 toaster pastries with frosting decorated to look like Bruce Willis and Demi Moore. And of course Steve Spurrier is still trying to recover from the financial hit he took when he tried to broker an endorsement deal for Bennifer. But the deal to have Ben Affleck and Jennifer Anniston do a series of commercials titled, “Bennifer for Benefiber” fell through because much like the users of the product, nobody could give a crap.

 

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.