College football. Bangs and poofs

So OK. Michigan opened up their season by barely squeaking out a 50 point win over Central Michigan. Not bad, Brady.
Ohio State defeated Buffalo by 20. I didn't know Buffalo even HAD a college football team. Pretty cool waterfall nearby, though. If you want to stay #2 in the country Urban, you're going to have to do a lot better than that.

Both of which brought on the same response from yours truly. Yawn. What is it with some of these big-time college football powerhouses scheduling their opening games every year against teams that would probably get run out of Dodge by the Campfire Girls? UM and OSU are both infamous for such petty shenanigans. Both know they will pack the house for opening day (these games are always at home for such football behemoths), and their fans seem to love nothing better than watching their pack of rabid T-Rex's tear their prey limb from limb.

Yes, they'll eat their hot dogs, various nasty stuff with even nastier cheese poured over it, and wash it all down with various soft drinks, or whatever else they smuggled in. They'll do the "wave" and the marching band will constantly strike up the fight song. The other school gets a big fat check for having sent their boys off to a slaughterhouse, so they're probably happy too. Not so sure about their players, though. That sort of thing can be demoralizing -- for a long time -- maybe life. But nobody seems to think, much less care, about that. The home team won. We're 1-0, and the sky's the limit. Yay.

Then I stumbled across another opening game. #5 Georgia at #8 Clemson. And what a game it was. From start to finish, it was fast-paced, hard-hitting, and featured a little bit of everything between two really good teams. Electrifying runs, every pass play in the book, a fake punt, you name it. They let it all hang out. Even a botched snap on a gimme field goal, and a weird play that nobody had ever seen before -- at least not me. Somebody had to look deep into the rule book to finally sort it out. And after all, what would a football game be without a couple of blown or missed calls by the refs? They had that too.

Now THAT'S more like it. Georgia and Clemson didn't concern themselves with scheduling a patsy for their opening games. They both knew this would be a rock-em, sock-em contest. Somebody had to win, and somebody had to lose. But they did it anyway.

Kudos to the folks at Georgia and Clemson that make such decisions for having the "stones" to start the season out with a bang. BTW, Clemson won, barely.

Here's hoping the powers that be in Ann Arbor and Columbus were paying attention. While their games likely brought on a collective yawn from anybody channel surfing, Georgia and Clemson lit it up for a national audience.

Maybe they'll learn some year soon. One can only hope.