1. It’s Always Prime Time
Deion Sanders is my favorite athlete of all time. Growing up in Atlanta in the ‘80s and ‘90s, Deion was not only the best player on the Atlanta Falcons, he also managed to end up on the Atlanta Braves, where he was the most exciting player on an otherwise pretty boring team. And it feels like I’ve spent most of life having to defend Deion, because he manages to attract haters in almost equal measure with fans.
After Colorado’s win over TCU on Saturday, Deion called out a reporter who had an article doubting him. Instead of applauding Deion for bothering to read our content, many media members expressed outrage. But my mind immediately went back to the fall of 1992, when Deion was playing professional baseball and football at the same time, and then-CBS announcer Tim McCarver criticized Deion, I guess for not prioritizing the Braves over the Falcons.
When the Braves beat the Pirates to move on to the World Series, Deion called out McCarver, albeit not really verbally…
(I guess at least this time Deion didn’t use water?)
Deion has always been a terrific promoter, and sometimes that flash can overshadow the results. But my thing with Deion has forever been that if you can sort through the talk, the man always, always, always gets results.
Credit the portal, credit NIL money, credit the coaching staff hires, but at the end of the day, give Deion credit. And like I said last week on The Odds Couple, Colorado may have been terrible last year, but now they’ve got at least three of the best offensive players on the field no matter who they’re playing against. Colorado is going to be good right away. And maybe even great.
Culture or not.
2. Does It Still Mean More?
I’m a big believer in SEC exceptionalism, a theory I’ve honed over the years which holds that in inter conference matchups involving SEC teams, the SEC team will generally win. This theory is usually in play when it comes to early season matchups, before teams have fully defined identities. And for the most part, this has worked well for my picking/gambling purposes. Why? I think it’s because the SEC has mostly had an embarrassment of riches over the last decade, in terms of personnel, facilities, resources, etc.
But maybe we’re starting to see the SEC get reeled back in a bit. This weekend we saw LSU lose to Florida State, South Carolina lose to North Carolina, and Florida lose to Utah. (Also, UGA didn’t seem particularly great against Tennessee-Martin.)
The SEC’s reign isn’t over, not by any means, but I think it’s worth considering that perhaps all these rule changes have helped everyone else chip away at the SEC, even just a tiny bit.
3. Ain’t It Funny How Time Slips Away
Speaking of rule changes, last week I mentioned the new rules around clock stoppages, and how it was probably too soon to see if they would have any tangible effect on the games.
I think it’s still too soon to come to any conclusions around game play/scoring, but we can make some clear notes about the fan experience, and it ain’t pretty.
A reddit user noted that during the LSU/FSU game, there was an hour of just commercials. I went to the UGA game in Athens, and whenever a player went down injured, it was an automatic three-minute stoppage so the broadcast could show more ads. When three Tennessee-Martin players went down right in a row at the start of the second half, we got three straight long breaks, even though the players were mostly up and off the field within a minute or so.
Hey, I get it. TV pays the bills. TV is why conferences are all scrambled up. TV is why we can sit on our couch and flip around and find games to watch all day long on Saturdays.
But the in-person experience seems pretty bad now, and I say this as an unabashed college football supporter. At least at home you can change the channel.