WE TOOK THE EXTRA YOU GAVE US AND MADE CONTENT SAUSAGE OUT OF IT

The readers were asked for bold submissions, and bold submissions they provided. On this week’s preview podcast, we took all of the following on-air about Week Three’s slate. They included all of the following football things, and also Ryan’s deeply held opinions on vans.

See! It’s right there. VANS.

• Why aren’t vans cool anymore?
• Is Steve Addazio actually Poseidon’s personal trainer?
• What happens if Bama has to score 60 points to beat Ole Miss?
• Why did Jason bet real American money on UMass?
• What is up with Miami’s road schedule?
• Who’s gonna get a big ole dose of self-confidence this weekend by beating up a bad team?
• Where does Spencer think Woody Hayes’s severed leg would have ended up?

Those weren’t all the bold predictions, however. Let’s address a few of them here, and also clarify the fine line between “bold” and “insane.”

The first part of this ain’t bad. Mizzou is more than capable of beating Purdue, a team with no discernible pass defense rolling into a contest where they will face the passer with the fourth-highest total passing yardage of any currently eligible college QB: Drew Lock. That makes sense, there is a clear path to Mizzou winning this game, and this is sensible.

The second part will not happen, because Georgia will pound Mizzou out like a cheap steak.

The top three current active leaders in passing yardage are less predictable than we thought they’d be. Number one is Boise State’s Brett Rypien with 10540 yards, number two on the list is Jake Browning with 9,713 yards, and number three is...

Brent Stockstill of MTSU? YOU BET YOUR ASS MURFREESBORO IS IN THE BUILDING. Stockstill has quietly piled up 9483 passing yards going into his fifth year with the Blue Raiders and his fourth as starter.

This is all fine and interesting, but we really worked all the way here just to share with you the heart of this story: Brent Stockstill, to stay eligible after acquiring an undergraduate and a masters degree in Leisure, Sport, and Tourism, is taking an athletic training class, a course on teaching water safety, a class about coaching and umpiring youth baseball, and...water aerobics.

The only bold prediction we’re totally certain of is that Brent Stockstill is enjoying the shit out of his fifth year and probably getting really, really good at Fortnite.

We put this by Mr. Stockstill, water aerobics enthusiast, intentionally. Kentucky’s got Murray State, it’s something plausible but still painful like losing to MTSU that really scans with the rest of Kentucky’s history.

SCORCHING. Not happening, mimnd you, because Nebraska isn’t the only one breaking in a new quarterback. Troy suffered badly at the hands of Boise State, but that result was misleading because that was junior QB Kaleb Hunter’s first start, and also because they were playing Boise State. Boise State is going to incinerate everyone they face this year, and do it twice for teams with new starters at key positions.

So yeah: Troy might not be as bad as they looked in their first game against real competition, but they’re also not going to beat Nebraska by 21 after the Huskers lost their first game by a single score to a Buffs team with a legit good QB/WR combo — Steven Montez to Laviska Chenault — killing them in the second half.

(And even then, if they do, it won’t be by twenty-one points. WATCH ME HEDGE. WATCH ME NAY-NAY.)

Wouldn’t even make Wazzu fans mad, since losing to FCS competition usually means beating USC or winning nine games in the same season. Sure, go ahead, EWU. It’s not fair considering how Eastern already cursed Wazzu by gifting them Paul Wulff, the worst coach in the history of the Cougs’ long, troubled history as a football program. (And maybe a top five worst to ever do it, at least in the modern era.)

This is the cruelty of football, however, where the word “fair” only describes a catch. Go ahead and torch ‘em if you can. When you have blood red home turf, it really should be expected in advance.

Okay, it’s a testament to how staggeringly disjointed the Noles have looked on offense so far that we’re even considering Syracuse beating FSU to be a realistic occasion at any margin. The two teams have played eleven times. Syracuse won the first matchup, a 37-21 victory over the Noles in a time just before the school got running water, but well after it founded its internationally renowned School of Subtropical Vagrancy.

The other ten games since then: Straight losses for Syracuse. A victory alone would be an aberration, so start there, Syracuse. That is a bold prediction. Scoring fifty points is well north of the line between bold and insane here, because that 37 point total in the 1966 win over Florida State? That’s the most points the Orangemen have ever scored against FSU in any game, win or loss.

Oh, and the 2018 FSU defense is eleventh in the nation in yards per play, too. There’s that very surprising speed bump on the way to half a hundred, too. Unless the offense somehow gets worse — which, in our experience, doesn’t usually ever happen against Syracuse with any team, ever.

1. I don’t think Oklahoma State will underestimate Boise after seeing three seconds of their 2018 game tape. If that doesn’t work, then the fourth and fifth seconds will do what the first three didn’t.
2. I don’t know that it will matter because if the state-of-game slips to something like Boise grabbing a two score lead in any game, then there is no reason why it couldn’t be three or four. They’re capable of landsliding people right now.
3. Take those statements and replace Boise with “Oklahoma State” and “Oklahoma State” with “Boise” and they’re probably true, also, because so far in two gimmes Taylor Cornelius has looked pretty much like Mason Rudolph with a receding hairline
4. Respect to Cornelius for embracing his mature hairline early in life. That’s a display of confidence that teammates pick up on in a leader.
5. Taylor Cornelius passes the UGA quarterback test because Cornelius Taylor works as a QB name, too.

Our only hope for all involved is that this game is so ugly that it will be treated like a spectacularly convoluted multi-car pileup on an icy interstate. The results will be so confusing, the wreckage so ghastly, that ultimately both insurer and investigator wave hands over the scene before cleaning it all up and forgetting it ever happened.

Yet another reason Les Miles is an outlier and a marvel in his profession. Most coaches leave LSU/Auburn without a single meaningful data point in or against their favor. How? Because the overwhelming sentiment from watching the headbutt buffet of Auburn/LSU should be: What makes anyone watching that game think any of this happened by design?

Les Miles? Les Miles remains a miracle because he somesomehow ow hgot fired over this game.