I happen to live in Los Angeles, where we’ve been in the throes of baseball nirvana for the past week. From the thrilling 18-inning walk-off win courtesy of Freddie Freeman that began it that saw Shohei Ohtani reach base in all nine plate appearances, to last night’s championship-determining 11-inning walk off win courtesy of Will Smith that the very same Ohtani as its starting pitcher on three days rest–and being won in relief by the previous night’s starter on ZERO days test–you’d have to look extremely hard to find someone who wasn’t laser focused on Los Doyers. And yes, I’m including a whole bunch of fans who some high-minded killjoys are in disbelief that they would waste their valuable time showing any support for because their owner apparently supports the guy who occasionally occupies that owner-builder project on Pennsylvania Avenue that supports an organization desperate to jail and deport as many of them as possible.
But as any of you who have spent any quality time whatsoever outside of this environs, you know darn well that the first day of November is not an end but rather a beginning to a home stretch of crucial college football games that by month’s end will reveal which will be going on to play meaningful games in December and which will merely be filling out a bunch of sponsored exhibition games otherwise known as bowls to give their dejected alumni a communal out-of-town location to drown their sorrows and perhaps nominate which well-heeled obsessive will put up the cache to run another coach prematurely out of town on a rail.
Safe for the moment would appear to Brent Venables, whose team scored an impressive and needed win last night as THE ATHLETIC’s David Ubben and Joe Rexrode wrote early this morning:
The Oklahoma Sooners are still in this thing. The Tennessee Volunteers aren’t. That’s the fallout from Oklahoma’s 33-27 win Saturday at Neyland Stadium in what was essentially a College Football Playoff elimination game.
The No. 18 Sooners (7-2, 3-2 SEC) hung around by forcing three turnovers in a first half in which they were largely dominated, then turned things around on the No. 14 Volunteers (6-3, 3-3) in the second half. Oklahoma quarterback John Mateer used his legs to torment Tennessee — though his tipped pick with 4:18 remaining gave Tennessee some life.
And you can likely add Steve Sarkisian to the “nice” list as well, as USA TODAY’s Blake Toppmeyer crowed:
The preseason No. 1 team emerged from witness protection. Where had these Texas Longhorns been hiding? This 34-31 win over No. 11 Vanderbilt came without preamble or warning, though it did come with some suspense after the Longhorns nearly gave it all away, turning a three-score lead into a three-point win.
And the guy in burnt orange named Manning finally played like someone with his surname should. Arch, he’s alive! He’s alive! Ten straight completions, Manning fired, throughout the first half. Out of concussion protocol, and into the best performance of his career. The stats gleamed: 328 yards, three touchdowns and no interceptions.
On the other end of the SEC pendulum is this chestnut ready for roasting, appropriately surnamed the polar opposite of hot, which the intrepid UNTIL SATURDAY team of Jason Kirk and Alex Kirshner led off their ATHLETIC-supplied newsletter with this morning:
Auburn’s Hugh Freeze lost to previously-winless-in-the-SEC Kentucky, 10-3 at home. That’s 53 fewer points than Tennessee scored on the Wildcats last week. Remember Freeze is by trade a coach of offenses.
He is now 6-15 in SEC games during this tenure, moving into the realm where his firing could feasibly come at any time. Getting chased out of his job by the also-hot-seated Mark Stoops would be quite a closing act... Oh, and the 4-5 Tigers still have to play Freeze nemesis Diego Pavia in Nashville, plus No. 4 Alabama. His third straight seven-loss season is likely.
But that’s what life is like in cities that are far from where quality major league baseball are being played or even being thought about this time of year. You’re only as good as your last victory, and you’d better be sure you’ve got more than your fair share of them to meet expectations.
But K and K also reminded that maybe I hadn’t quite looked long and hard enough around my own town for some sort of proof that perhaps folks found ways to incorporate a second screen into their viewing venues last night:
Second-best Saturday Night by a Los Angeles Team: No. 23 USC 21, Nebraska 17. The 6-2 Trojans got one of their biggest wins of the Lincoln Riley era, as Nebraska’s already-iffy offense couldn’t do anything after Dylan Raiola exited with an ankle injury. USC QB Jayden Maiava made plays when he had to, and so did his defense, for a change.
And now that Game Seven is finally history, even my city can now move on unfettered to Game Nine and beyond. Not that a lot of them didn’t already.