College Football Angst Watch 2024: Week 10 (BASKETBALL!!!)
Angst Watch is a weekly recap of the existential misery caused by college football. It’s also my ongoing tracking of Colorado, USC, Texas A&M, and Ohio State, four programs I thought were going to cause their fanbases a great deal of misery.
The State of Angst
That the basketball season begins well into the football season is a happy accident. It allows some sports fans and alumni of schools having a mediocre season to say, “well, you know, we’re really a basketball school.” Then, later in February when their favorite basketball team is stinking up the joint and everyone has forgotten how bad their football team is, the same person can say “well, you know, we’re really a football school.”
That’s because in high level college athletics, there are two types of schools. There are basketball schools and there are football schools. Some will claim that they are both. But they are wrong. They are liars. That type of school does not exist. Great basketball and football programs cannot coexist. It is written in the stars. If one is good, the other must not be good.
The perennially great basketball programs, the so called “blue bloods,” are North Carolina, Duke, Kentucky, UCLA, and Kansas. This year, their respective football programs are mediocre, mediocre, bad, bad, and regressing back to the historical mean (which is bad).
It’s hard to say who equivalent blue bloods are in college football. It’s a sport with a commentariat that’s considerably more insane and prone to recency bias than any other, but saying that Alabama, Ohio State, Notre Dame, Oklahoma, and Michigan are the five “best” football programs based on their historical win percentage is unlikely to start a bar fight.
This year, Alabama, Ohio State, Notre Dame, Oklahoma, and Michigan’s respective basketball programs are starting the basketball season rated 3rd, 33rd, 65th, 42nd, and 25th by an advanced statistical ranking kept by Ken Pomeroy, who is to college basketball as Bill James is to baseball/Moneyball.
On the surface, you might think this doesn’t sound so bad. There are 364 Division I college basketball teams, after all, and the he worst in that bunch is Notre Dame at 65th.
That is good for the 83rd percentile of the sport. That’s a B-. That’ll get you your degree. It’s fine, I guess. But it’s not good. If you’re getting straight A’s in another subject and come home with a B-, no self-respecting parent is going to hang that test on the fridge.
For the sake of this argument, it is top ten or bust. Ohio State, Oklahoma, Michigan, and Notre Dame, you all put up a noble effort. Your basketball programs are okay. You’re fine. You’re goodish, but you’re not in that upper tier. Also, your football programs are all teetering on the precipice this year, but that’s neither here nor there.
What is here, right now, salient to my point, is Alabama.
Their basketball team might be elite, but their football program is only elite at causing their fanbase angst.
The Crimson Tide blew it against Vanderbilt, a historically awful team which is currently playing in an incomplete stadium. The loss was so embarrassingly bad that an Alabama safety threw a tantrum on the field and had to issue an apology for it.
Then the Tide blew a close one against Tennessee and managed to pull away with a two point win over South Carolina despite their best efforts to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
And it is because their basketball team is good now, and you can’t have a good basketball team with a good football team. It is like physics, an immutable law of nature which cannot be negotiated with or skirted around.
Unless you’re Indiana. They’re probably going to have a good football team and a good basketball team this year. Whodathunk it.
Colorado (Not Unranked in the AP Poll)
This week: Had a bye week.
Recap of the game: Colorado didn’t play, so there’s nothing to recap but Travis Hunter’s Heisman campaign. Vegas betting odds have the wildly athletic two-way player tied with Miami quarterback Cam Ward. Ashton Jeanty, the Boise State running back who is averaging a jaw dropping 8 yards per carry, is a darkhorse candidate, but is unlikely to win given Heisman-caliber running backs’ tendency to have a body part spontaneously explode.
Fanbase Angst Level = 2 out of 10 (Baseline 5, -4 for peace, love, and understanding, +1 for Rocky Mountain winter is coming)
This team is as angsty as: Hippie commune guys who still busk.
Colorado’s next game: Texas Tech on November 9.
USC (Not Ranked in the AP Poll)
Latest result: Lost to Washington, 26-21
Recap of the game: After being relegated to the Friday night 11:00 PM ET time slot last week that felt like is normally used to sell kitchen knives to senior citizens, USC lost in primetime on basic cable. USC people are bitter about the team losing four of their last five games by a touchdown or less, and the head coach just threw gasoline on the fire by saying “it’s not like we’re getting our ass kicked, you know?”
Fanbase Angst Level = 8 out of 10 (Baseline 5, +3 for we’re not getting our asses kicked which makes this feeling worse)
This team is as angsty as: an intellectually stunted teenager discovering solipsism for the first time.
USC’s next game: Bye week then Nebraska at home.
Texas A&M (Down to #15 in the AP Poll)
Latest result: Lost to South Carolina by a bajillion points.
Recap of the game: After a brief stint in the top ten, Texas A&M lost by over three touchdowns to a frisky but inconsistent University of South Carolina Gamecocks team that gashed them for 286 yards on the ground. South Carolina played Alabama tight a couple of weeks ago and came staggeringly close to upsetting LSU. It was only a matter of time before they pulled off the upset, and Texas A&M just happened to draw the shortstraw. It’s unclear what this means for Texas A&M’s national title aspirations, but it’s definitely not a great omen.
Fanbase Angst Level = 15 out of 10 (Baseline 5, +5 for years of disappointment, +3 for drawing the shortstraw)
This team is as angsty as: The Linkin Park song that goes, “I TRIED SO HARDDDD AND GOT SO FARRRR BUT IN THE END IT DOESN’T EVEN MATTER.”
Texas A&M’s next game: New Mexico State comes to College Station.
Teh Ohio State University (#3 in the AP Poll)
(NOTE: Teh Ohio State University is not a typo. It’s just what I insist on calling them ever since they hired a doofus crypto guy as their commencement speaker.)
Latest result: Beat Penn State, 20-13.
Recap of the game: Penn State head coach James Franklin is something like 1-13 against top 5 competition while holding the job. I watch his games against Ohio State and for some reason I always expect his team to eek out a win against the Buckeyes. They never do. I think it’s because James Franklin reeks of the unmistaken stench of loserdom. He should sell a cologne. Franklinology, we’d call it, a fragrance for men pathologically incapable of doing anything but skirking from the moment, whether it’s on or off the field.
Fanbase Angst Level: 12,050 out of 10 (Baseline 5, +1 for living in Ohio, +3 for the Cleveland Browns suck this year, +10,943 for having lost to Michigan three years in a row, +201 for the problem of evil)
Ohio State fans can relax about: Michigan. They’re still not good!
Ohio State fans should angst about: Possibly losing to a not good Michigan team!
Ohio State’s next game: A Purdon’t Purdope Purdoh Purdue team that is statistically the worst team in the Big Ten conference.