A Circular Motion: Looking Back to Look Forward At Week 6

Because if you stare into the great abyss looking for the future, what you're really seeing is the past, we preview this weekends games by looking back through History.com's "This Week in History."

Baylor at Texas Tech (12 pm EST)/Lincoln Observes Military Balloon Demonstration (11:22 am EST)

Controversial new aerial technology is demonsrated before big-eared executive, who is dubious of its actual worth in battlefield conditions. Decision is made to stick to Naploeonic formation tactics with the occasional calvary/wildcat charge.

Minnesota at Wisconsin (12 pm EST)/Minnesotan Circles The Globe On Foot (10:45 pm GMT)
Disenchanted Minnesota natives hit the road. When asked why they've decided to subject themselves to the pain of a journey that's going to inevitably bring them to exactly where they started, said "I was tired of Waseca, tired of my job, tired of a lot of little people who don't want to think, and tired of my wife."

Tennessee at Georgia (12:21 EST)/Chief Joselph Surrenders, Still Screwed (5:30 MST)
After attempting to lead honorably in the face of a dishonest world, a tired chief tries in vein once more for a victory for his people. After failing, he declares, "Hear me, my chiefs: My heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever." Then, limps to Canada.

UCLA at California (12:30 pm PT)/90210 Premieres on Fox (8:00 PT)
Counting on drama and sensantionalism to bring them into competition with more staid industry stalwarts, a network under edgy new leadership brings the bad boy with the dark past to lay wreck to any notions of academia, scholarly pursuit or free love with illicit substances, unplanned pregnancies and cutthroat tactics. On the way out, a tree burns and a nation embraces its guilty pleasures.

Alabama at South Carolina (3:30 pm EST)/Stalin Demands the Liberation of Stalingrad (6:12 am MSK)
The humbled once-brash dictator stares down the new, seemingly irresitable darkness on his doorstep and perpares for a final, depserate push to turn them back. Meanwhile, the rest of the free world watches and waits to meet their new overlord.

Clemson at UNC (3:30 PM EST)/Dalton Gang Gets Greedy, Ambushed, Decimated (1:15 pm MST)
Pushing their luck in an effort to take a shortcut to long-term prosperity, well-known outlaws are caught in a firefight that results in severe attrition. Those who survived offer only solemn warnings to others who think about challenging the law: "The biggest fool on earth is the one who thinks he can beat the law, that crime can be made to pay. It never paid and it never will and that was the one big lesson of the Coffeyville raid/Miami Yacht Party."

LSU at Florida (7:30 pm EST)/Sputnik Launched Into Space (10:29 pm MSK)
Supposedly less technically-advanced nation under leadership of questionable sanity continues to shock and confound the world with feats of success that seem to far outstrip their perceived abilities or performance in basic functions.

Auburn at Kentucky (7:30 pm CST)/James Bakker Indicted, Jessica Hahn Cashes In (8:30 am EST)
A fraudulent faith healer's scam finally gets exposed, while the underling he screwed over on his way out of the door makes the most of a bad situation to pad the wallet and build notoriety.

USC at Stanford (5:00 pm PT)/Liz Taylor Marries Construction Worker (8:30 pm PT)
Legendary Hollywood institution, tired from scandal and battered from the spotlight, goes slumming in rehab with the first swinging dick with a full head of hair who winks and slaps the ass. Everyone involved assumes it will end in either divorce or matricide, possibly by arsenic.

MSU at Houston (7:00 pm CST)/Work Begins On Mount Rushmore (6:15 am CST)
An ambitious visionary struggles to manipulate hard, formless nature into a lasting work of art in a desolate landscape. Little does he know, he will never live long enough to see his efforts come to fruition.

What Did We Learn?

There are two scenes that might depict how Mark Richt could have handled the results of the UGA/LSU game and both of them are found in the last three minutes of Burn After Reading (admittedly, a disappointingly mediocre film, but the final scene is brilliant).

Richt is a superior coaching mind who makes the most of his resources with well-designed gameplans, motivational tactics and by all accounts, is a genuinely decent human being in a profession that almost demands asshole bravado and OCD personality usually found in top-level chefs and cavalry officers. So, coming off a series of seasons ending up inches short of real glory, Richt has taken a comparatively weak talent pool and made them into a surprisingly competent force by putting what resources he has in the optimal position to produce. So it came to pass that Joe Cox lobbed a jump ball to AJ Green on what should have been the finishing touch on a masterfully planned and executed strategy against an athletically superior, highly ranked opponent. Then, a more than questionable celebration penalty gives LSU field position to set them up for an abbreviated comeback march.



Despite past talented teams built after taking over a proud program in a rut and said good nature and diligent planning, Richt has not managed to get over the hump for a national championship. Whereas Les Miles, the brash doofus with the high hat, falls balls first into a ready-made program at its peak and, despite calling plays like a whiskey-drunk frat boy playing a South Koren pre-teen on Xbox Live at 3 in the morning, manages a national championship in a season where he didn’t even win his own division.

The Hatchet Option
Mark Richt: I know you. You're the guy from the gym.
Les Miles: I'm not here representing HardBodies.
Mark Richt: Oh, yes. I know very well what you represent.
[pause]
Mark Richt: You represent the idiocy of today.
Les Miles: No, I don't represent that either.
Mark Richt: Oh, yes. You see, you're one of the morons I've been fighting my whole life. My whole fucking life. But guess what... Today, I win.

No one could blame Richt, and in the Les Miles death pool, the odds of “Maniacal Hatchet Attack” are probably better than anybody since Custer. More likely, though, he’d opt for the defeatist sit down and search for meaning.

The Search For Meaning Option
Richt: What did we learn, Mike?
Bobo: I don't know, sir.
Richt: I don't fuckin' know either. I guess we learned not to do it again.
Bobo: Yes, sir.
Richt: I'm fucked if I know what we did.
Bobo: Yes, sir, it's, uh, hard to say
Richt: Jesus Fucking Christ.

Les Miles has a lucky horseshoe implanted in his colon. There’s really no other explanation for it. LSU fans are enjoying it, as well they should. It’s the college football fandom equivalent of having a drunken, dancing bear in your living room tethered to a coffee table with a piece of twine.

Eventually, Miles is going to pass that horseshoe in a scene so horrific that it will turn Skip Bertman Catholic. Because afterward, he will have no choice but to admit that Satan is very real.



Speaking of Catholic, the Washington Huskies WR targeted on the last play of the game was the victim of one of the sickest hits on a football field not to end in a compound fracture and a Lawrence Taylor cocaine-fueled war cry. Jake Locker envies him, because Locker will actually remember watching Jimmy Clausen doing a celebratory song in a gentle sway while a man slips into a Days Of Our Lives coma on the 2-yard line.

Tennessee fans are now learning the lesson the CIA Officer at the end of Burn After Reading didn’t grasp—the wide-eyed delusional generally ends up getting capped between the eyes in a closet. This may well be the fate of the Lane Kiffin era.



As Basil recounts, the Razorbacks took care of Texas A&M in the Jerry Dome in satisfactory fashion. However, the Big 12 is home to a collection of impotent formerly-proud powers not seen outside of the Mediterranean, and I don’t think it gets talked about nearly enough. It’s an elephant graveyard and Oklahoma and Texas get credit for kicking around bones in the dust.