STARTING FIVE
Tre Mason, 304 rushing yards vs Mizzou. Auburn’s top offensive weapon is from Florida, and FSU’s top offensive weapon is from Alabama.
1. Going to California
It’s about a three-and-a-half hour drive through some of the more rural South that you will ever encounter to get from Auburn, Ala,, to Tallahassee, Fla., but those are the homes of the campuses of the nation’s top two ranked football programs. No. 2 Auburn. No. 1 Florida State.
George T. Bagby State Park, about midway between Jordan-Hare and Doak Campbell Stadiums.
Both schools will be traveling to alien territory –a land west of College Station, Texas — to meet in the final BCS National Championship Game on January 6. It’s about a five-hour flight from both campuses to Pasadena, Calif., site of the Rose Bowl (THE best place to watch a college football game, bar none). Excluding bowl games, the last time Auburn ventured to California was in 2002, when it lost its season opener at Southern California, 24-17. The last time Florida State made a non-bowl pilgrimage to the Golden State was in 1997, when the Seminoles beat the Trojans at the Coliseum, 14-7.
A good midpoint, if the Seminoles and Tigers just wanted to settle it like the back yard brawl that it is, would be George T. Bagby State Park in southwest Georgia.
Seminoles open up a 9-point favorite. FSU has won every game by at least 14 points and in their last five game have been up at halftime by an aggregate score of 156-7. The Tigers have trailed in the fourth quarter in two of their past three games, and only led by a field goal at the start of the final quarter in the other game.
So, naturally, I like Auburn here. Only because the Seminoles, as dominant as they are, don’t know from pressure. In their last pressure game, at Doak Campbell, FSU only led Miami 21-14 at the half.
All that said, I do love Seminole wide receiver Kelvin Benjamin and if I had a Heisman vote I’d find a way to put him somewhere on my ballot.
2. Pan-Demonium
Atkinson pans “A Charlie Brown Christmas”: “Neurotic 7 year-olds and smooth jazz.”
Everyone’s a critic, but no one seems to enjoy it as much Jebidiah Atkinson, 19th-century newspaper panner deluxe, as portrayed by Taran Killam on “Saturday Night Live.” The character sprang from a real-life news event — last month the Harrisburg Patriot & Union printed a retraction of its initial remarks, some “seven score and ten years ago”, in which it had dismissed President Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address as “silly remarks.”
That’s when an inspired SNL writer hatched the idea to create Atkinson as the unrepentant critic who first panned the most famous speech in American history. This weekend he returned to destroy Christmas specials, going so far as to criticize the birth of Jesus as a rip-off of “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation.”
Jebidiah Atkinson is the lone breakout character on SNL thus far this season, and Killam, 31, is the cast’s most talented male performer (he’s married to Cobie Smulders of “How I Melt Your Mother”, and it didn’t take them 9 seasons to figure out they were going to wed). If you stuck around to the end of this weekend’s show, you saw a skit, a revision of the Bill Brasky sketches that Will Ferrell created when he was a cast member, that included host Paul Rudd, Ferrell, David Koechner (the man who plays Champ Kind in “Anchorman”) and one current SNL performer: Killam. It was like Killam was being invited to the big kids’ table.
3. Cox Populi?
Cox’s fifth question to Jameis Winston incited a walkaway.
The most memorable moment of Florida State’s 45-0 45-7 defeat of Duke in the ACC Championship Game came moments after the game ended. ABC’s Heather Cox corraled Seminole quarterback Jameis Winston for an on-field interview, which if you have not yet seen, you may watch here.
Cox asked a total of five questions. The first four were solid inquiries and Winston, who after all is 19 and had a pretty intense week by anyone’s standards, handled them with grace. “I gotta get more mature,” he said after the fourth question.
At Cox’s fifth question, “And Jameis, how come you decided not to talk?”, an FSU handler shoved him away. And that’s Joe Schad chasing Winston for a follow-up interview while Jameis asks others, “Where’s Kirkman at?”
Cue the media debate as to whether Cox crossed the line.
I gotta be honest: I adore Heather Cox. I’ve known her for almost 10 years and she’s one of my favorite people in this sports media biz. Like Alex Flanagan, she’s doing the whole career woman/wife/mom thing while never trying to sell me a fitness video or a pill that supports both digestive health AND immune health. She’s a pro.
I think Heather went one question too far here. This isn’t the sit-down with Jeremy Schaap. It’s an impromptu moment and this is a college student whose reputation has been forever sullied concerning a crime that he was never even charged for. Winston answered four questions, he gave you the quote that America yearned for –“I gotta get more mature” — and after that it just got a little uncomfortable.
Jameis Winston never even spoke to Willie Meggs. He gave ABC 90 seconds. Is Cox wrong for pursuing this line of questioning? That’s up to you. But Winston, and the FSU handler who pushed him away, were certainly entitled to react in the manner that they did.
Let’s wait to see what Jebidiah Atkinson thought of the encounter.
4. Some Day Love Will Find You
And now I come to you, with open arms…
He’s the lead guitarist for Journey, responsible for embedded-in-your-brain riffs on “Don’t Stop Believin'” and my favorite, as far as opening licks go, “Stone In Love.” ( <—- My favorite amateur video ever made; this is how summer camp counselors kill time). She’s a publicity whore who once crashed a White House party.
And now these crazy kids, Neal Schon and Michaele Salahi, are going to get married! And you’re invited to their December 15 wedding, for just $14.95. Yes, the wedding will be broadcast on pay-per-view. Not only will you witness the nuptials, but Schon and his current Journey band members will debut a new song.
High-pitched legendary and erstwhile Journey lead singer Steve Perry will not attend. Why not? Because he and Schon have gone their…separate ways.
5. Chris Davis Did Not Return This One
That’s Britton Colquitt holding. Somebody needs to give him love.
Matt Prater of the Denver Broncos kicks an NFL-record 64 yard-field goal on the last play of the first half at Invesco Field. Not much more to say about that other than there had been four men tied at 63 yards — Tom Dempsey, Jason Elam, Sebastian Janikowski and David Akers. Two of those kicks, like Prater’s, had come in the friendly Mile High atmosphere of Denver.
Most impressive about Prater’s boot? He made that kick in 18-degree weather. That may be why more Bronco teammates did not mob him at midfield…because they were anxious to get indoors.
That’s Leon Washington of the Titans standing in the end zone with the best view of it all.
The next barrier? A field goal that is snapped from the 50 or beyond, which would be at least a 67-yarder.
Reserves
NBC takes the Lowe road. The British native is in as their next female marquee “presenter.”
Michelle Beadle is out and Rebecca Lowe is in at NBC Sports, where Sam Flood will brook no snark when it comes to Olympics coverage. “Beads” was perfect for “Sports Nation”, but it only took me two telecasts watching her at the London Games to discern that either she was going to have to modify her act or that this marriage would be briefer than Schon’s and Salahi’s. It may be too much to hope for, but I’d like to see just one sports chat show with only females, with your hosts Rebecca Lowe and Rebecca Lobo.
*****
“The last time I had eight months off I was in the womb” — Kobe Bryant, upon his return to the Lakers last night.
We’ve missed you, Mamba. Welcome back. But can someone on the Lakers hold Amir Johnson to below 32 points, please?
***
The Knicks lost by 41? At home? To Brad Stevens??? Wow, that’s bad. The Knicks are, may I say it, “guffawful.”
*****
The Chiefs (insert comically inappropriate and racially insensitive verb here) the Redskins, 45-10, in the Geronimo Bowl.
****
It’s now December 9, all the college football games that don’t end in “Bowl” or “-Navy” have been played, and we still haven’t heard a peep from Thayer Evans since mid-September. No tweets. No bylines. Could it be that SI will not fire him because they could open themselves up to a wrongful termination suit? Or do they just feel he needs a break? Where are you when we need you, Brooks Melchior?
*****
By the way, if you eliminate the regional cover, the last three college football teams to appear on the cover of SI are the Oregon Ducks, Alabama Crimson Tide, and Ohio State Buckeyes. If I’m Florida State, I’d prefer a return visit from Heather Cox over one from SI.
Lone Survivor
Luttrell (your far right) and his three SEAL teammates who perished.
An outstanding piece on “60 Minutes” last night on Marcus Luttrell, the only SEAL who survived an ill-fated covert mission in 2005 that claimed 19 lives of U.S. military men in Afghanistan. The book, “Lone Survivor”, is already a best-seller and a film starring Mark Wahlberg in the title role will be released later this month. Oh, and Wahlberg has some anger issues.
Haven’t seen it, but was impressed to see Killam is part of the cast of “12 Years a Slave.” Needless to say, a departure from his normal fare.
The Thayer-today, gone-tomorrow deal is very strange.