College football is finally underway, and some of our writers and editors have strong opinions about their teams and the first weekend of the season. Their views are as follows:
Daniel, A&E Editor
College football is back. Chaos is back. Just ask the poor souls who were sitting in Neyland Stadium this weekend. Across the South, watching the slate of Southeastern Conference games was comparable to listening to a band playing in the wrong key. Drops, missed tackles and penalties ran amuck, and for several SEC programs, the season started with large abhorrent failures.
My own blood belongs to Mississippi State, and our first Saturday was neither pretty, nor included the abominations found in some of our neighborly states. We played shorthanded, due to the fact that last season several players thought it would be cute to have a tutor handle the whole student part of being a student-athlete.
Due to those players’ suspensions and a hearty amount of turnovers in the first half, it looked as if we might be starting the year on the losing end like almost half of the SEC. Thankfully a strong second half secured the win and allowed my mental health to return to respectable levels. Our rivals up north from Oxford were not so lucky.
It is fair to point out that the Ole Miss Rebels, and/or Bears, and/or Landsharks, were actually the underdogs against the Memphis Tigers, but the one thing Ole Miss fans weren’t expecting was a look at their supposedly explosive offense. They scored ten points; so much for that.
Even Alabama looked dormant for a single quarter before promptly disposing of a competitive Duke squad. Needless to say, the SEC left much to be desired on the opening week of the new season, which will surely have critics delivering deserved blows.
Lastly, I would also like to scream as loudly as possible that receiver Seth Williams deserves the credit for Auburn’s go-ahead touchdown over Oregon, not Bo Nix’s underthrown ball.
Okay, that’s all. I’m off my soapbox. Next week I will be ready to obtain new hot takes, as me and my roommates go from violently screaming to nervously shaking in the floor, all while my cowbell sits proudly on the living room table.
SB, Sports Editor
I grew up in a divided household: Tennessee vs. Alabama. There have always been fights about which game we are going to watch if our teams play at the same time. Alabama normally wins because, ya know, they’re actually good at football. The return of football makes me reminisce on Saturdays past of sitting on the couch on cool, crisp fall days while yelling at the TV because the Vols ran it up the middle. Again. And didn’t gain any yardage (probably lost a couple yards actually.) Again. All the while my dad critiques each play because it’s Tennessee, and he’s a Bama fan.
After wins against Auburn and Kentucky last season and heading into a second season with Jeremy Pruitt, this season was shaping up to feel like ‘98. I expected the first three games to be fairly easy wins, putting us at 3-0 heading into five straight conference games. But I got my hopes up once again for nothing. The Vols let me down again by losing to Georgia State. Why am I not surprised?
I have a new challenge this football season: my boyfriend is a South Carolina fan. I visited his family over the long weekend, and I was quickly warned of his behavior during Carolina games (note to self: don’t sit on his left because he will swing and hit the couch.) This Saturday was no exception thanks to Jake Bentley and Will Muschamp.
Both Jarrett Guarantano and Bentley were ranked in the middle in preseason SEC quarterback rankings, but those hopes went down the drain this weekend. Neither QB acted like they had any heart for the game or their respective schools.
With Bentley out indefinitely with a broken foot, and rumors of a possible transfer, the team will be in the hands of freshman quarterback Ryan Hilinski beginning Saturday against Charleston Southern. The Gamecocks need a win to get the bad taste out of their mouths before going into the Alabama game on Sept. 7, plus six more SEC games in a row.
As for my Vols, I have no clue what the future holds. Predictions still say we have a chance against BYU this week, but after paying Georgia State $950K to whoop our tails, I’m not so sure. Vol Twitter is joking about wide receiver Jauan Jennings, who played quarterback in high school, getting the start at QB; this is a decision I can get behind. Jennings accepts responsibility as a leader on the team and wants to win. I’ll take that over Guarantano any day.
All in all, the SEC didn’t do too hot this weekend. Five of the 14 teams lost. Vandy to Georgia (understandable). Missouri to Wyoming (not understandable). Tennessee to Georgia State (a complete upset and possibly the worst loss in school history). South Carolina to North Carolina (stings a little). Ole Miss to Memphis (somewhat expected). The SEC didn’t really mean more this weekend.
Chap, Staff Writer
I’ve been known to blatantly rip off Shea Serrano in the past, so here’s me on memory heroes and UT football (I’m ashamed to this day to admit that I claimed both Vanderbilt and Tennessee in college football until around the time I turned 10 and disowned the lousy Vols):
Erik Ainge never eclipsed 3,000 passing yards or twenty touchdowns for Tennessee until his senior year at Tennessee, but if you would have asked me before I looked up his stats, I would’ve guessed he never had under 4,000 yards and 30 touchdowns in a season.
I vividly remember a narrow win against Air Force when I was eight. Air Force wasn’t good, but I assumed they were since, for some reason, I wanted to be an Air Force pilot at the time. Gage Gwartney’s dad was telling me about all the championships Nebraska and Oklahoma used to win with the triple option offense Air Force ran. Ainge had an awesome game, as awesome as I had seen in the few years I’d been watching football. He threw three touchdowns and only missed five passes, and I was hooked on football.
I miss the times when I could be so in awe of someone just for playing well against a team like Air Force, but I know these memory heroes are being created every Saturday. When I watched Georgia State upset Tennessee the other day, I couldn’t help but think of the kids who would one day think of Dan Ellington how I think of Ainge. I hope Georgia State fans really exist, and that kids in Atlanta were watching that game in absolute awe, falling in love with football while their dads exaggerate Tennessee’s powers and the significance of it all.
Gage, Staff Writer
It’s been a rough six months in my life, a time of struggle and depression that is almost unbearable. The only good thing about this hard time is that everyone is going through it with me, and as long as we’re all on the same page, we can all get through this one way- together. And we have gotten through it together! It’s back! It’s yet another season of the sport that everyone has been waiting for all year- college football! Now I know we all wish that college football could somehow last all-year round to save us such a long and painful period of our lives, but we need to have rough days in our lives in order to enjoy and appreciate the good ones. This is what makes college football that much better.
My whole life I’ve been surrounded by SEC fans. For real, I was literally born minutes before Florida State University lost to the Tennessee Volunteers in the BCS National Championship. My dad held me in his arms, watching his favorite team make it so close yet so far at the same time. He was in tears and so was I. If you haven’t already picked up on it already, I am a huge FSU fan, and probably the biggest one you’ll ever meet in person. I’ve got to say, my life as a college football fan is a totally different experience than the average fan.
I’ve grown up in the same state I have always lived in, hearing the same comments every week: “FSU is in an easier conference,” “Florida State would be one of the worst teams in the SEC,” “Tennessee would be the best team in the ACC,” etc.
You’d think as laughable as these statements are, that they were said to me in middle school or elementary school, but you’d be wrong! I still hear these statements to this very day from college students and adults. I will admit that FSU has struggled the past few years in football, so it isn’t too much of a stretch to hear these comments made. Even when FSU won the National Championship back in 2013 against Auburn behind the one of the best college football quarterbacks to ever play the game, Jameis Winston, I still got hate from everyone.
“This championship wasn’t even legit,” “Y’all didn’t even play our best SEC team,” “You guys barely won that game,” “If y’all had played BAMA, y’all would’ve gotten killed!” etc.
Even when FSU went undefeated and won the best honor you could possibly receive, I still had shade thrown at me. This is when I realized that no matter how good of a season Florida State has, no matter how many wins we get in a row, as long as FSU stays in the ACC, I will remain irrelevant. Ever since that realization hit me, I’ve never been happier to call myself an FSU fan, and I’m sure as heck glad I am not a Tennessee fan.
Life’s been a crazy ride and continues to be one being so different than everyone else, having different opinions and even different beliefs. (I’m still talking about college football just in case you thought I was talking about something else.) I’m still pushing forward in my world full of SEC fans and haters of the ACC. I haven’t always been a fan of FSU, but I will always feel a part of the team’s spirit. I always refer to Florida State as “we” as in I am a part of what makes the team what it is today. After saying all of that, I will wrap this up by saying “we” will be back and Go Noles!
