Weekend Notes: Rivalry Weekend

First off, you should notice some changes to the site today. I’ll write more about that later but just wanted to confirm the change in case you don’t trust your eyes.

OMG, so many sports this weekend! A veritable Smorgasbord of things to watch! Let’s break it down, I’ll try to keep it kind of brief.

Friday

We began our evening by driving down to BCHS. Not to watch our Irish take on their arch rivals. Rather, we were going down for the basketball tailgate.1 We talked to some BCHS friends from St. P’s. Mingled with our crew. Found out some interesting tidbits about our schedule this season. More on that when hoops rolls around.

At game time we skedaddled back home; S had some charting to do and I had a college game to watch later. We missed a great game.

BCHS had a touchdown taken off the board by a holding call, and CHS stuffed them on 4th and goal three plays later. The Irish then romped 97 yards to take a 10-0 halftime lead. Only to give up a 95 yard kickoff return for a touchdown to start the second half. The Trojans eventually went up 14-13, and dropped a sure touchdown that would have put them up more. CHS countered with a 40 yard field goal early in the fourth to go up 16-14.

The last 2:00 of the game were wild. A bunch of calls went against CHS. Since the school are two miles apart, I doubt there was some great homer-ism involved, but it sure seemed like everything was trending for the 4A #1 Trojans to steal the victory. In fact, they kicked a field goal that seemed to win the game. Only CHS had jumped offsides. So BC had to kick again from five yards closer. And this time their poor kicker pushed it.

16-14 CHS win. The CHS kids rushed the field from the visiting stands. Our family goes out 7-1 against BCHS in football. This flukey win kind of balances the only BC win, which was super flukey three years ago.2

After a very rough start the Irish are now 2-2 and have some momentum going into their easiest game of the season.3

The second half of the CHS game overlapped with the first half of the KU-MU game. A nice start for KU. Two blocked field goals! One run back for a touchdown! The run defense looked really nice for the most part! But the offensive line was concerning. The whole offense, in fact, seemed a little suspect. The DBs the same, Charmin-soft DBs we’ve had 90% of my life.

But it was tied at halftime, which was a nice surprise.

And then it all fell apart in the course of about two minutes.

These things happen when you have big holes on your team, and a very young, inexperienced quarterback. I sure hope the bad turnovers Isaiah Marshall committed were more a function of his youth and first time playing against a legit team than some lingering virus about giving the ball to the other team Jalen Daniels left behind.4

It was funny when the games were overlapping how I reacted. I had the KU game on the TV, muted, with the CHS radio feed on my phone. I’d yell at one angrily, then at the other happily. I’d scream for someone to run and S would get confused which game I was screaming at. KU’s blocked field goal for a TD happened at the exact same moment CHS scooped up a BCHS fumble inside the ten yard line. Mizzou scored their first touchdown at the same moment CHS was being flagged for a suspect penalty.

Sadly the final results did not line up.

A few years ago this would be a classic rebuilding year for KU. You let Marshall take his lumps and learn, and build around him. In the NIL/portal era, I’m not sure you can have any hope that pain this year will translate to success next year or beyond. Maybe Marshall’s potential means skill players and linemen want to transfer in and play with him. Maybe he gets beat up so much this year he flees for a team that can protect him. Nothing is a given anymore.

Also a few years ago I would have gotten all fired up and written 1000 words about the nonsense Mizzou’s coach shared in his media session after the game. I don’t have the energy to do that anymore. So I’ll just call him a clown and move on.

Oh, and I was checking on the Ben Shelton - Frances Tiafoe match during all of this. I was fine with either American winning, but leaned slightly towards Tiafoe since this may have been his last, best shot at an Open title. I would not be disappointed if he proved me wrong next year.

Shame the Royals aren’t in the Wild Card race so I had to work them into the rotation, too.

Saturday

It rained here in Indy most of the day, so I sat on the couch and dabbled with football throughout. I switched between IU’s absolute housing of Howard and the Oklahoma-Michigan game until the US Open women’s final began. That wasn’t quite a classic, but it was tense and fun to watch. In the first week of the tournament one commentator, maybe Andy Roddick, wondered if Elena Rybakina’s team wasn’t pushing her to play after getting injured a week earlier just because reaching the semifinals would give her the #1 ranking. He questioned whether she was healthy enough to compete. I guess she showed him! She got stronger each round and while it took three sets to eliminate two-time defending champ Aryna Sabalenka, Rybakina always seemed in control. And Sabalenka gave us a nice meltdown at the end.

Also in the afternoon was the Spain-US semifinal in the FIBA women’s world cup. Another slow start for the Americans but they took control and advanced to the finals with a 10-point win.

The highlight of the day was the Ohio State - Texas game in prime time. I hate both teams, so wanted a result that humiliated the losers. For three quarters, when Ohio State looked like an NFL team, I was looking forward to Texas’ balloon getting burst early again. Then the Longhorns pulled off a wild, improbable 21-point rally to steal the win. Which makes Ohio State look bad, and I am fine with that.

The only bummer is that the narrative will be that this was Arch Manning’s win. He did play well in the fourth quarter. But the real credit goes to the Texas defense, which shut down Ohio State in the second half. The consecutive three-and-outs they forced early in the fourth quarter changed the game completely, and gave the Longhorns the time they needed to rally. But Arch is a Manning, and the entire sports media complex revolves around making sure he succeeds, so he’ll get all the credit.

Too bad I hate both teams because that was a great game. Well, other than being forced to watch ads telling me that Democratic senate candidates in Ohio and Texas are horrible people. Why does it seem like only conservative groups do these national ad buys on ABC prime time games?

Sunday

The final rivalry of my weekend was the Colts season opener against the Ravens. I guess this is just a rivalry for old people in Baltimore, but I’m still counting it.

We were doing some projects outside and by the time we wrapped them up the Colts were down 14-6. It never got better. I sat down and ate lunch while watching Baltimore score two more times and that was enough for me. I saw nothing from the Colts to be positive about. With games against the Chiefs and Texans the next two weeks, an 0-3 start is nearly certain.

By then the FIBA championship game had started. France was all over the US early, taking a 14-point lead in the first half. The US got within two by halftime and then destroyed the Frenchies in the second half, winning by 18. And the US won without Aja Wilson, who was back home injured.

There were some clunky moments, all because the US didn’t really train together before going to Germany. I enjoyed seeing the contrast in lineups, the older starters who had been through this before, then the seven first-timers who came off the bench and changed the tempo. It was also fun seeing when these groups overlapped, like how Caitlyn Clark and Rhyne Howard developed this crazy chemistry in their limited minutes together. Like on the men’s side, the world is creeping up on the US. The women have a crazy-deep roster of young players to take over as the older guard begins aging out.

That said, Breanna Stewart is a beast and clearly the American’s best player. Fingers crossed she can keep playing at a high level through the next Olympic cycle.

While basketball was being playing in Berlin, the Alexander Zverev and Ben Shelton started their championship match in New York. I tried the four-panel multiview to show the Colts, hoops, tennis, and the Chicago-Carolina game. I was having a hard time reading the scores, so switched to hoops on the TV, tennis on my laptop.

Shelton gave it a good run. Winning the third set was an electric moment. But this was Zverev’s year and he was not letting this title slip away. I’m not really sure how he didn’t realize he had won. They put big, graphic displays proclaiming MATCH POINT all over the stadium! That made for a funny 10 seconds or so while he figured it out. Hopefully the first of many grand slam finals appearances for Shelton.

With the Colts getting crushed I watched the last quarter of that Bears-Panthers game. Holy crap that was amazing! I should have watched that game from the start. I love teams with unstoppable offenses and horrific defenses. I’m watching as many Bears games as I can the rest of the season.

After dinner S and I caught up on two weeks of Ted Lasso so I missed the Packers falling apart in the second half of their game. The Chargers lost to Arizona??? Houston’s defense gave up 36 points? I did watch the Cowboys stumble in their opener against the Giants. You don’t want to draw broad conclusions from one game, but it seemed like everyone wrote off John Harbaugh as washed up and checked out, while the Cowboys were a popular dark-horse pick to make the Super Bowl.

It was an awesome first week for the NFL. So many points scored. Hopefully that was not a weird, week-one fluke and we see offenses continue to dominate going forward.

  1. Why we picked the game AT our arch rival for our tailgate I have no idea. ↩︎

  2. That included CHS going up 21-0 in the first quarter, a power outage that forced the second half to be played the following day and moved from CHS’ home field to BC’s, and BC’s best player being eligible to play when he was not eligible on Friday night. ↩︎

  3. Not sure I can jinx that game but we’ll find out Friday… ↩︎

  4. That would be Tampa Bay QB2 Jalen Daniels, foolish blogger. ↩︎