Week 4 - Ten things I think I think

We're at the quarter pole of the regular season. Let's talk about it

It isn’t everyday that your little FCS-turned G5 alma mater goes on the road and hangs 70 points on a flagship ACC institution. So it was a pretty wild weekend for your boy. We talk about that and a lot more on this week’s 10 things. Let’s ride!

10 - Undefeated teams nobody is talking about

You’re talking about them if you live in Bloomington, or Ames, or Durham … but nationally nobody is talking about the following undefeated teams:

• #18 Iowa State (3-0)

  • Peep the schedule. Prepare yourself for the Clones in the Big 12 title game.

• #19 Illinois (4-0)

  • 17 point underdog at Penn State Saturday? That’s disrespectful as hell.

• #22 BYU (4-0)

  • Road underdogs at Baylor this weekend? Disrespectful as hell.

• Rutgers (3-0)

  • Kyle Monangai runs angry. Home favorites vs Washington on Friday night.

• Duke (4-0)

  • Best team in the state of North Carolina by a significant margin. If they win the Victory Bell this weekend, start building the Manny Diaz statue.

• Indiana (4-0)

  • Coach Cig is smoking up there in Bloomington. Tricky game against Maryland on Saturday but prepare yourself for a ranked Indiana team soon…

• Washington State (4-0)

  • We talked about the Cougs last week on here. No one else is. Huge game Saturday at Boise

Let’s be clear … these teams don’t want you talking about them. They thrive in the darkness. But for people (like me) who get sick of talking about the same 10 teams every week in college football, shoutout to the unbeatens who don’t get love.

9 - Well the weather outside is weather

Not a movie guy but I’ll work in a Kunu reference anytime. I tweeted about this earlier in the week, but there’s a hurricane that will make landfall along the Florida panhandle Thursday night/Friday morning. Obviously the priority is safety and making sure no one gets caught in a life-threatening storm surge or flood situation.

If you’re inland (like me here in North Carolina), you’re looking at beaucoup precipitation. This is an ideal forecast for pulling plugs and dropping some seeds. If you time this right (read: right now), you can get an accelerated start on a perfect yard for the fall and winter.

shoutout to Weather Channel for the graphic

The key here is getting the seeds into the ground, not on top of it. Anything that’s sitting on ground is going to get washed away with all this rain coming. You need to pull some plugs - aerate that bish - then drop the seeds. Ideally if you can lay down some straw or hay, that’ll keep everything in place over the heavy rains.

One more pro tip - blow all the leaves off your yard before you start. Wet leaves on top of seed ain’t a bad thing. But seeds on top of leaves aren’t going to take off. It’s like any new parent learns when the baby arrives, get that skin-to-skin contact. Same concept with those seeds and wet earth.

I seeded my side yard a week ago and it’s already germinated. This incoming system is going to crank this baby fescue all the way up over the next week. Before and after pics will be included in next week’s post, it’s got me feeling some type of way (RIP Rich Homie Quan).

8 - Nick Nash is the best player in college football you’ve never heard of.

Maybe some of you watched last week’s San Jose State at Washington State game. It kicked at 10 PM ET and featured our Cougs pulling out a 54-52 double OT thriller. Heartbreak for the Spartans.

Most of you don’t watch San Jose State games, but if you did, you’d know about WR Nick Nash who is a goddamn problem. Check the game log this season:

This cat single-handedly has more receiving yards than 25 FBS teams do combined. He cannot be stopped. Literally video game stuff going on out west. If you don’t know, now you know. Watch this dude. Root for him.

7 - Clemson is just fine, folks

Don’t let the final score fool you from the NC State game. Wolfpack put up 21 4th quarter points and over 200 yards of offense against Dabo’s friends and family walk-ons. The score that mattered from Saturday was that Clemson led 52-7 in the 3rd quarter. They vaporized an NC State team that has gone full-blown panic mode on their preseason expectations (more on that later).

The week prior it was 56-13 over App State at halftime. Maybe - and yeah, it’s only September - but maybe some of y’all shouldn’t have carved Clemson’s epitaph after the Georgia game. Cade Klubnik’s last two games: 40/50 passing, 11 total TDs, zero picks. Pretty solid from a guy who everyone said was trash after the season opener.

Tigers have one ranked team on their remaining schedule and it’s Louisville in Death Valley. Turns out, Clemson is going to be just fine. And for as bad as FSU has been this year, you know Jim Phillips is loving the potential for a Miami/Clemson ACC title game in Charlotte. Best shot the ACC has at getting two teams in the CFP is if it’s two of their biggest brands duking it out the rest of the way.

6 - Service academies not named Air Force

If you weren’t aware, Navy and Army are both undefeated. Air Force is 1-2 and it’s going to be a long season in lovely Colorado Springs. But shoutout to the Middies & Black Knights who are both out here handling the business.

We here at ‘Friends of the Program’ support our troops. Navy just went out there and waxed a Memphis team that folks were talking up as a G5 playoff contender. Army dominated a grain (Rice) but covered the spread, so they get a shoutout too.

Knights (-12.5) play at Temple Thursday night. It’s the only college game on the board. We will be watching. Navy makes it’s first-ever trip to Birmingham to play UAB on Saturday. Let’s keep this rolling and make service academy football a thing (who says no) as we progress into AAC play.

5 - Can I interest you in WKU football?

If you aren’t familiar with the Caden Veltkamp story, let me help you. We’re talking about the guy who engineered a 28-point comeback win over Old Dominion in last year’s Famous Toastery Bowl. He entered the portal, only to decide that he was going to come back, and even then WKU wanted him as a tight end, not a quarterback.

He went to high school just down the street from WKU. He’s a local kid. Once TJ Finley went down with an injury, Veltkamp came in and went a cool 27/30 in the MTSU game (aka ‘100 Miles of Hate’, one of the better college football rivalry nicknames out there). Then last week he led a comeback win over Toledo.

Again, folks, it’s the G5. Somebody is going to go dancing. And it’s going to take something special for it to be a C-USA member (looking at you, Liberty). WKU plays on the road at Boston College on Saturday, and if I was an Eagles fan, I’d be concerned. Veltkamp can play. But his story makes it even better to root for him. We are all Hilltoppers this season.

4 - The James Madison University

Look, you knew it was coming. It wasn’t just that JMU won last weekend, it was how they won. Scored an early touchdown, went for 2 (got it), recovered an on-side kick, had a blocked punt TD, had a pick 6 TD, and all of that just in the first half. It wasn’t just than a Sun Belt team went on the road at won at the ACC, it was the disrespectful nature of how it all unfolded.

Dukes went down to Chapel Hill and sent the entire panda dunk-wearing student section out of there at halftime. It looked like a goddamn fire drill at Kenan. And for those that didn’t know Bob Chesney was one handsome-ass dude who can coach football, well … now you know.

This post will age poorly when North Carolina hires Chesney to take over for Mack Brown in a few months, but for now we rejoice in a huge win for a program (JMU) that’s receiving votes in the AP poll, which - again - matters a lot more than it used to now that we’re giving someone from the G5 a spot in the CFP.

3 - The state of college football in North Carolina

It ain’t great. The flagship school just gave up a 70 spot to JMU, and the ‘Mack needs to go’ dialogue is intensifying. The Wolfpack got smoked at Clemson and have been blown our twice in the first four weeks, which, when you’re a preseason top-25 team, is generally not a great sign.

And then there’s the state’s always-feisty Cinderella, App State, which got embarrassed last weekend in Boone on national television by South Alabama. The mood in this state (I’ve lived here for going on 14 years) is various levels of panic for various football teams. Now, let me say - as someone who used to do a daily talk radio show in SEC country - this isn’t real panic. Wolfpack fans, App fans, even delusional UNC fans think this is what panic looks like. None of these teams thought they were going to the natty back in the summer. But still, there were expectations. And those have all largely evaporated.

So that brings us to Duke. Just sitting there at 4-0, minding their own business, waiting for Cooper Flagg to take the floor in his New Balance’s in a few weeks. Victory Bell is Saturday - North Carolina at Duke (-3) - and if that game goes the way of the favorite, this thing is going to even more entertaining for us neutrals.

2 - Georgia and Alabama part 1 of 2? Or Part 1 of 3? Or simply 1 of 1?

Everyone in the summer picked Georgia and Texas to play not just once in the regular season (in Austin), but twice (in Atlanta in December). There are even some who think it could happen three times (in Atlanta again, in January, for the whole enchilada). Now, that would be something. I’m sure the TV folks at Disney (who, you know, own the College Football Playoff) would love that.

But first things first, and with Georgia (-2) visiting Tuscaloosa this Saturday night, we're all fixin’ to learn something about both these teams. Can Georgia get right against an Alabama team that (arguably) kept them from a three-peat last year in the SEC Championship? The Tide are home underdogs for the first time since 2007. The Dawgs have won an astounding 42 consecutive regular season games.

I don’t want to pick the game. I’m not obsessed with being right or saying ‘told you so’. Whoever wins will have made a statement, and whoever loses, well, they’re probably still ranked in the top-10 next week. I’m just here to learn.

1- We’re going to see Wild Robot this weekend

I told you guys it can’t be all football all the time. My wife and I have been reading these Wild Robot books (there are three of them) to our kids for the last couple of years, and they’re really good. The movie comes out this week. Let’s get it.

Insert joke here. I’m not a movie guy. But as parents, it ain’t about us. I’m going to buy a $20 tub of popcorn, we’re going to put some 3D glasses on, and watch a movie in theatres - something we literally do once a year. The weather is going to be ideal for movie watching, and if the timing works out, I’ll be home in time to watch Rutgers stay undefeated on the season.

Universal

Last weekend of September, let’s make it count. And stay safe out there with Helene baring down!