The Rest of Saturday - StateFans Nation StateFans Nation

The perfect example of why any serious college football fan simply MUST have ESPN Gameplan – the fact that ABC showed the USC/Arizona State showdown to only a tiny sliver of the national broadcast audience. And it wasn’t like there were other compelling choices that ABC simply had to show – middle America got pedestrian Iowa State/Nebraska and Penn State/Minnesota matchups (yes, their records were good, but does anyone really care?). Even worse, the entire eastern seaboard (including North Carolina) got a terrible, lopsided Syracuse/FSU matchup. Simply inexcusable. Put simply, ESPN Gameplan is the best $100 you will ever spend.

Rant aside – what a game. USC has incredible resilience, and they can beat you so many different ways. I also liked seeing the Trojan defense pressure ASU QB Sam Keller in the last 2 minutes, rather than laying back and making the Sun Devils one onside kick away from a real chance at victory. Take note, coaches of America.

The night games on the main channels all sucked (ND spanking fraudulent Purdue, Auburn woodshedding Visor Boy, Oklahoma surprisingly smashing Kansas State), so I spent an unexpected amount of time watching MTSU/Vandy on Gameplan. Now, alot of bubbles burst on Saturday (Baylor, Indiana, Kansas, Minnesota), but none quite as spectacularly as Vandy. Only Vandy could find a way to avoid its first 5-0 start in nearly 50 years by losing to an 0-3 doormat like Middle Tennessee State. And find a way they did. So, you probably won’t see Vandy in a bowl after all, which is a good sign for all of us who aren’t ready to witness the Apocalypse just yet.

5 Responses to The Rest of Saturday

Alpha Wolf 10/02/2005 at 9:43 AM #

The USC-ASU game was on here in Raleigh on cable.

Agreed about the national package though, but it would be much to my wife’s chagrin.
newswolf 10/02/2005 at 4:50 PM #

it is a shame that they have so many good games at 330, when they have no good games at noon.
Alpha Wolf 10/03/2005 at 7:37 AM #

I dunno — I enjoyed the Hokie-Mountaineer contest. It was a great appetizer for the Bama-Florida game, and the USC-ASU game.
Clarksa 10/04/2005 at 2:28 PM #

USC/ASU was only put on here in Raleigh after the FSU/Sorrycuse was a blowout and it seems that USC might lose.
Sacco 10/04/2005 at 4:27 PM #

Since USC is the #1-ranked team in college football, how are they absent from regular national broadcasts. I am, however, glad that ABC switched from Va Tech-WVU to Mich/Mich. State because it allowed me to see what I already knew to be true … John L. Smith is like Mike O’Cain, he’ll beat a team he’s not supposed to beat, but lose at home to a lesser team.
Back to coverage of sports in general, I’ve been keeping my eyes recently on college football because I feel that there has not been significant coverage regionally of top match-ups. Considering our location (NC) to be well inside the Raycom/JP borders, I’m disheartened to find them only showing certain games. Though this week’s game between UVA and Maryland was perfect, I think the last few years have been down years for Raycom because the quality of the games they’ve chosen to broadcast weren’t on par with ABC’s national (regional) coverage. Hopefully this trend won’t continue because the last two weeks for ABC in this area have been abyssmal. FSU-Syracuse was horrible and Va Tech’s killing of WVU weren’t nearly as significant as some of the national matchups going on.