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THE MAIN CHARACTER, Rivalry Week: They're scared

Welcome to the weekly college football wrapup that recognizes this sport is about nothing but feelings, primarily about enjoying the bad ones suffered by people besides you.

It’s nothing but feelings, all the way down. Made-up polls determine which teams get the most attention and best postseason invites. Friendship clubs founded 100 years ago determine which teams get to call themselves “powers.” Recruiting is about the feelings of 17-year-old boys, and even head coaches can vanish because some booster gifted the wrong color BMW.

So the college football internet is a potent stew. One does not watch one’s team win and then log off. No. One must maximize the advantage, storming rivals whose teams did not win, because the actually impactful Feelings Market never stops fluctuating. And if one’s team loses, there’s always punching down on somebody who had a worse weekend. Almost always.

Stream live college football games every week this season from conferences across the country on ESPN+.

Let’s see which of this week’s cast members earned MAIN CHARACTER honors (while acknowledging that the weekend’s biggest rubbernecking subject was Oklahoma, for losing head coach Lincoln Riley to USC).

Alabama

The Crimson Tide once again suffered a day far beneath the dignity of their caste, having to win a game whose outcome was not assured for a full 60 minutes. The poor dears! None of the 60 minutes, in fact, as Bama didn’t lead Auburn until this hideous edition of the Iron Bowl reached overtime.

Bama needed some drama, but beat their archrival, reached 11-1, and moved one win away from their seventh College Football Playoff bid in eight years. So it’s time to FIRE ALL THE ASSISTANTS! Mainly just two, for now, after their offense rushed for 1.9 yards per carry on Saturday.

Tide fans, making themselves useful, are even attempting to re-home offensive coordinator O’Brien. They’d prefer to keep him somewhere close, because it’s difficult to really say goodbye after all this time together.

There’s a ton more of that, with so many potential destinations, but the LSU ones are the funniest, because … I mean, do you have a significantly better idea at this point, Tigers?

Auburn

For the first time all year, a single game sees both teams earn Main Character consideration. The Iron Bowl is just like that.

The short version of the story is that things started somewhat great for Auburn …

… and then slowly got better before immediately becoming terrible.

 

For whatever reason, CBS’ cameras (and the internetpeople who were watching them) spent the collapse delighted by a specific type of Auburn fan.

I think she’s the only one really cut out for the Iron Bowl:

And, as pretty much always, things turned out great for Bama.

Wisconsin

Imagine being the Badgers, basing your entire personality around being all hefty and wholesome and vintage, and then seeing your biggest rival do this to you:

Everyone in Wisconsin had to be saying, “Why didn’t we frickin’ think of that first?” But Minnesota was not done forming the Badgers’ own weapons against them, also stealing their favorite 1989 rap song about jumping.

Florida State

The Noles concluded an outstanding 2021 Main Character résumé by:

  1. Losing to a likewise .500-ish Florida that’d already fired its head coach.
  2. Failing for the third time in four years to reach a bowl game, quite a downfall for the program that once had the country’s longest bowl streak.
  3. Ensuring Mike Norvell finishes his first 21 games with a record worse than the one that got predecessor Willie Taggart fired.
  4. And stamping all of this with quite possibly the bleakest onside kick ever. Onside kicks have gone worse before, sometimes even letting the other team score touchdowns, but bleaker?

Snow

Thank you, snow. You don’t really belong in this post, because everyone likes to look at you. But that’s ok.

Steve Addazio

Now that Bowling Green’s Scot Loeffler has opened the Coaches Can Get Ejected floodgates, expect constant iteration on the maneuver. The trend’s second participant: Colorado State’s Addazio, who seems to have drawn almost no attention while being banished to the shadow realms.

Washington

This happens from time to time, especially during Rivalry Weekend.

But man … like two months ago, Washington State was in the middle of the Nick Rolovich debacle. And now they’re partying in your place? Seems rough.

North Carolina

For much of this Black Friday game, onlookers were preoccupied yet again with UNC coach Mack Brown’s “Supa Dupa Fly” inflatability.

And then this happened …

… so we all just went to sleep confused. Amused, but confused.

UMass

All year, this space has tracked the race for the title of Worst Team in FBS, which has mostly boiled down to UConn and UMass. Their meeting in October seemed likely to end the conversation, but it’s impossible to ignore the work put in by the Minutemen ever since they beat the Huskies.

UMass’ 1-11 record includes two blowout losses to middling FCS teams and finished with a 44-27 loss to fellow Worst Team in FBS contender New Mexico State. We can say this race comes down to head-to-head results and give the anti-trophy to UConn, or we can consider body of work.

Or we can just give it to FIU.

Nebraska

I don’t wanna talk about it. I’ve never been a Huskers fan, and I opened the season by making fun of them, but I don’t wanna talk about it any more.

Tennessee

Defeated Vanderbilt on the football field, but proved no match on more important terrain. No, you nerd, not in the classroom. On the internet.

Oklahoma, at least until the Lincoln Riley thing

I think Oklahoma State’s Bedlam victory was so inspiring, exhausting, and bewildering that people forgot to deride the Sooners all that much, especially given they’d been the lower-ranked underdogs anyway. Mostly, that game just capped off a wild day and heralded a fresh postseason.

Little did we know the Sooners were about to help make things feel even rarer.

Texas A&M

It sure seemed like it meant something, back in October when the Aggies beat Alabama. Sure, it revealed this year’s Bama is less Thanos than usual, but that’s about it, in hindsight.

A&M lost to previously 5-6 LSU in Ed Orgeron’s last game, meaning Jimbo Fisher’s team pulled off the incredible feat of beating Alabama despite being way overrated.

The Aggies started the season No. 6 in the AP! Now they’re No. 24 with an uninspired bowl performance still to go! With Clemson clawing back from a horrendous September, it’s possible A&M finishes as the year’s most overrated team despite beating Nick Saban! Amazing stuff.

This also put to rest any lingering notions of LSU somehow convincing Jimbo Fisher to abandon his current rebuilding process for another one, something the Tigers could very much use now that Riley’s off the table and Florida’s hired Billy Napier. (I apologize for saying “put to rest.” The weirdest possible coaching carousel result might be Jimbo skating on his $100 billion contract to take over LSU now, after saying he’d be the dumbest person alive to do so. And the weirdest possible result is never beyond anyone in college football, especially not LSU.)

You know the takes are dire when the Aggies overwhelm their most rancid takes repository …

… but you also know Jimbo’s sleeping like a baby all the same.

 

THE MAIN CHARACTER: Ohio State

There was something just a little bit different from the get-go. Michigan fans are known for their wind-battered panic mode, their instant turtling at the onset of sports traumas after enduring such a disproportionate load of them in the past. Life has taught Wolverines to flinch at the first sign of football trouble, lament what has not even gone wrong yet, and bury their emotions in a basketball program they somewhat care about, because those losses hurt less.

But on the field, right after all of Ohio State’s tonnage rumbled forth from the tunnel, a fan in the front row pointed at the behemoth Buckeyes and called to everyone in sight, right under the noses of the gods who hate Michigan, “They’re scared.”

What a ridiculous thing to say about the No. 2 team, which beat Michigan State 49-7 a week prior, has owned Michigan for decades, and can only be matched in raw talent by Alabama and Georgia. The man repeated the diagnosis anyway, staring into eyes, personalizing the mantra with each high five. “They’re scared.”

About a quarter into the game, I suspected he hadn’t believed it. I began to understand he’d realized it.

Oh right, this also revealed itself during the actual football plays. Except those looked similar to the extracurricular clips, with Michigan pushing Ohio State exactly where Michigan wanted to push Ohio State.

At no point after the first couple drives did it feel the Wolverines were likely to lose. We walked all around the stadium the entire game, and I never heard any muttering of the usual “ugh, here we go again, this is when it always falls apart” variety. Few were willing to say it outright, until Hassan Haskins hurdled a Buckeye near the end zone and launched the victory party with time still on the clock, but spirits were high the entire time.

And think about that. Michigan was beating Ohio State so badly, Michigan fans declared victory before the final whistle. Michigan fans! Raised by pain to believe no win is final until it’s been formalized by treaty! Maybe the snow helped make the whole second half feel like Christmas sunrise. In the fourth quarter, as Ohio State kept moving within a single score, there was nevertheless chatter about storming the field. After all, that’s what Michigan spent the whole game doing.

Sometimes football is about television markets, social media engagement, excellence in the classroom, winning the press conference, bowl game representatives, playoff committee members in Dallas hotel lobbies, conference realignment, and a whole universe of concepts that don’t have much to do with football.

But sometimes football is about physical power and physical fear and one thing leading to the other.

And Michigan footballed the hell outta Ohio State.

Jim Harbaugh rolled into the stadium with a three-ring binder in hand, and I can only assume every page just said, “SHOVE THEM UNTIL THEY WANT TO GO HOME.” There’s no swagger quite like the bullied figure who’s become the bully, especially not once the previous bully admits it.

 

Michigan beat Ohio State exactly how Michigan daydreams of beating Ohio State. There is nothing that could more affirm the Wolverines’ faith in Jim Harbaugh …

… and there is nothing that could more trouble the Buckeyes’ faith in Ryan Day. No, nobody’s getting fired (er, some assistants are probably in jeopardy), but to look this unprepared for the exact style of football Harbaugh has spent his entire life warning you about? Woody Hayes must be looking up and crying. Well, cussing. More than usual.

And now, let’s leave you with this.

No, wait, let’s leave you with this.

Previously in THE MAIN CHARACTER

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