If you’re wondering, ‘who the fuck is this guy and what qualifications does he have to write a season preview’, the answer is I’m nobody and absolutely none. I’m just another jabroni sick and tired of those douche trains on the Least Coast ignoring us, except for when they happen to stumble home from the bar at 1:30AM after spending three hours trying (and failing) to impress some Maryland coed they fell in love with when she smashed a beer open against her forehead. Since we only get half-assed coverage from B-market off-season basketball writers, this should serve to fulfill two purposes. First, for those of us PAC fans with a raging hard-on for content, it’s something to kill five minutes vocally disagreeing with and telling everyone who will listen that this Utah dick head doesn’t know what the fuck he’s talking about. For everyone else, you can refer back to this to understand the story lines surrounding your favorite ‘got blue balled’ pastime; PAC-12 After Dark.
First, let’s break down the most prevalent themes you’re going to hear Jim McMahon’s bastard son and Matt Leinart’s guitar discuss on broadcasts for the next eight weeks. The most important one is; is the PAC-12 actually shit? Do any of these teams know how to play football or should they put on kilts and start throwing logs around the stadium, because nobody east of the Rockies knows what the fuck they’re doing with a pigskin? The answer is, its complicated. The PAC got Dad-dicked in out of conference play last year and there’s no sugarcoating our way out of it. In fact, only one team pulled their head out of their ass long enough to win a bowl game, and it was arguably the least prestigious school in the conference, Utah. This theme is going to get tested early, as the Goodest Boyes in Washington head east to play a “neutral-site” away game against Auburn. Whatever happens in that game is going to define the narrative from the traditional sports media for the rest of the year regardless of whether or not any later data points back it up or not, but hey, that’s what I’m here for- because those fucks are lazy. The fact of the matter is if the PAC wants to avoid being a laughing stock they need to put up or shut up on the field, and not just for one game against a quality opponent. If the conference goes anywhere near .500 out of conference we can load up on lube and grab our ankles, and we’ll deserve it.
Other than that, there will be the question of ‘can the PAC bring a Heisman back out west’? And for those keeping score at home, that’s pretty much going to come down to Bryce Love. If you don’t know who Bryce Love is just pack your shit up and get out because you only watch college football for the sweet asses in spandex, and you don’t need this guide to help you do that. It’s 2018; no one is judging you. Washington fan will be crying about Myles Gaskin and I’m sure somebody will bring up Khalil Tate, but don’t let anyone fool you. If somebody pulls it off this season, it will be “50% as good as Barry Sanders” Bryce Love. Gaskin will have to share too much of the load with Jake “Boring As Fuck” Browning and Khalil Tate is a running back pretending to be a quarterback- last season he threw for 1,591 yards and 14 TDs while rushing for 1,411 and 12 more. Tate is without a doubt the most electric player in the conference, but unfortunately, this is Kevin Sumlin’s Arizona, and that’s the end of that Heisman candidate.
So who’s going to win the PAC championship and not go the CFP? Fuck if I know. Washington is the prohibitive favorite based almost entirely on the fact that they’re a known quantity. Stanford and Oregon are hanging around like dogs watching you cook dinner hoping you drop a scrap for them to Hoover. Stanford might actually have a chance, since “50% as good as Barry Sanders” is probably the best player in the country, they’ve got an intriguing prospect in Abbott and K.J. Costello, and for some reason geniuses make great offensive lineman. They probably don’t have the across-the-board talent that Washington does, but they’ll make it interesting, and if Love has enough Hate in his heart, maybe they get lucky. Oregon has a new head coach named Mario Cristobal taking over for Willie Taggart who, dope name aside, racked up a sweet 27-47 record. At Florida International. The dude’s claim to greatness is taking a 1-11 FLORIDA INTERNATIONAL his first year to 8-5 three years later, and then falling back to 3-9 his last year.
Listen. I’m not going to pretend I follow Florida International, but when your last year coaching there is 3-9, I’m assuming you didn’t leave for a better opportunity. Oregon fans are super jacked about him, though, and seem completely fine with the idea of trotting out a starting quarterback named Justin God-damn Herbert. Seriously Oregon, I know you’re a bunch of hipsters, but between Willie Taggart, Mario Cristobal, and Justin Herbert, I’m like 80% convinced you’re just picking dudes based on how weird their name is. Suffice it to say, they’re a bit of a long shot to be legit contenders in the North.
Cal, Oregon State, and Washington State also exist.
USC, Utah, and Khalil Tate will battle it out as your Southern front-runners. USC has been, is, and will continue to be the most talented team in the conference. In fact, they will continue to be one of, if not the, most talented team in the country. Year in, year out. The only thing that changes is what new and fascinating way they can discover to fuck all that up and lose 4 games anyway. Obviously a down decade has done nothing to slow their recruiting roll, but in 2018 we get to find out if JT Daniels, who turned 18 in February and absolutely should be in college this year and please shut the fuck up about his reclassification, can carry a blue blood to former glory. They’re stacked at every position. Cam Smith is one of the most terrifying human beings in LA outside of Aaron Donald. Clay Helton is… well, he’s not a raging alcoholic or (as far as we know) buying his players families houses. So they’ve got that going for them.
Utah is the Washington of the South. They’ve got NFL-caliber players hanging out in backup roster spots in the secondary, a reputation for ‘reloading not rebuilding’ on the defensive line (Watch for: Bradlee Anae, Leki Fotu, Mika Tafua, et al), and senior linebackers Cody Barton and quarterback-gone-safety-gone-linebacker Chase Hansen get much needed backup from former-BYU linebacker Francis Bernard. As is tradition, the offense is “poised for a breakout year”. There is a 75% chance that whoever wins the South will be decided by whether or not that statement is finally true and Tyler Huntley comes out of the gates looking like the second coming of Lamar Jackson. If they are? The Utes finally reward their fans for 8 full years of footblueballs and being the ‘dark horse’ pick out of the South every year, going to the conference championship game for the first time since joining the PAC. If not? Shitty Alabama wins the South and loses to Washington and then we all pull our hair out while nobody out west goes to the CFP.
The Fighting Khalil Tate’s will make it interesting, but one Demigod and Kevin Sumlin will not win the South. Sorry, Wildcats. U can no haz title.
Other interesting news in the South? UCLA hires Oregon’s wet dream, Chip Kelly, but loses one of the best quarterbacks in the country in the process. Despite how much some of their fans inexplicably hated Rosen, he pretty much single handedly made that dumpster fire run last year, and no matter how good Chip Kelly is, he’s not going to shore up that defense which would have made that fat punter for the Raiders look like Saquon Barkley in one off-season. Oh, and Herm Edwards is a coach again, for some fucking reason. What is that reason? I have no god damn idea, but hey, that’s why we get the legendary PAC-12 After Dark memes. Its the fucking 4-Fun League.
God damn it, ASU. I just… I can’t. Let’s preview the week 1 games because, just… God damn it, ASU.
No.6 Washington Vs. No.9 Auburn
Friday 8/31, 6:00PM PDT
Auburn returns a shit load of offensive production in Jarrett Stidham, Ryan Davis, and Nate Craig-Myers. They’re not bad, but not really good enough to say that Washington’s stacked defense shouldn’t be able to handle them. The problem is, it figures to be one of, if not the best defense the Pups face this year. Washington skates USC, so the only competition the Tigers will get will be from Stanford and Utah. It’s going to be an old fashioned, ugly-as-fuck slug-fest. For those counting at home, that means the most interesting game of the week for the conference is probably going to be boring. Not for me, I love defense and violence, but yeah, sucks for you guys. Then again, this is the PAC we are talking about, so they’ll probably go 45-54 or some dumb shit like that. Defenses also typically get up to speed faster, and both teams are returning a bunch of talent. Maybe make it 63-70.
The Dumbshit’s Key to the Game: Gus Malzahn apparently thinks the Wildcat offense still counts as a trick play. Seriously. It’s all over SEC media. Going up against a Chris Petersen-coached team, WITH EXTRA TIME TO PREPARE, when you think running the god damn Wildcat is a trick play is a recipe for disaster.
Dumbshit Prediction: Washington 17, Auburn 10.
Utah Vs. Weber State
Thursday 8/30, 4:00PDT
Oh, and we have a nickelback named Javelin. So that’s pretty cool.
Dumbshit’s Key to the Game: Show up. Don’t be drunk. I’m not trying to be a dick, but with how business-like Camp Kyle has been, there shouldn’t be any issues getting out of week one clean unless Lord Chaos shoves his fat cock down our throat right out of the gate. Obviously, the players need to take this more seriously than I do.
Dumbshit Prediction: Utah 42, Weber 17.
No.13 Stanford Vs. San Diego State
Friday 8/31, 6:00PM PDT
If you want a quick and dirty breakdown of what kind of team SDSU is, they’re the kind of school who when you google ‘San Diego State’, a bunch of links to the actual school come up even during game week, and even if you obsessively google various college football teams. Do you think Google doesn’t know what kind of a freak I am? Oh, they know. And they still make me work to get to the shit I actually care about, which is definitely not what the fucking campus looks like. That being said, they’ve got an all time great bad-ass head coach name in Rocky Long. They also boast a stout rushing attack and a fine lineage- Donnel Pumphrey racked up 6,405 yards, and you may have heard of his replacement Rashaad Penny, who threw down 2,248 yards and 23 touchdowns last year; even better numbers than ‘High Ankle Sprain’ Love. This year it will be Juwan Washington who will probably torch Mountain West teams all year, but expect Stanford’s Big Beefies to keep him mostly bottled up on Friday.
Extra smartie pants in the crowd of unwashed peasants are probably saying, ‘BUT! BUT! San Diego BEAT Stanford last year!” And they’re right, they did. Unfortunately for Aztecs fans, and I say this with non-capitalized love in my heart since y’all were like my 3rd favorite team when Utah was still in the PAC… maybe 4th… either way, the difference here is Keller Chryst, the top performer for SDSU last year, is transferring out of the Stanford program and neither he nor Ryan Burns will be playing this year. Sorry, you’re going to get Who’s On Fisted.
Dumbshit’s Key to the Game: Can the pressure of a potential Heisman season get to Bryce Love and cause him to get out-Love’d by Washington? I doubt it, but it’s the only way SDSU brings this one home.
Dumbshit Prediction: Stanford 31, SDSU 24. Because why not?
Colorado Vs. CSU
Friday 8/31, 6:30PDT
This game was supposed to be a pretty good duel between KJ Magna Carta and Brown Tim Tebow, and don’t let the second half of CSU’s opener fool you. It shouldn’t be that. Dreamy Surfer-Bro Cole McDonald is most likely not actually going to run away with the Heisman race. He dropped 418 yards and 3 touchdowns on CSU on 26/37 passing and added another 96 yards and two more scores on 13 rushes, and that says a lot more about CSU’s defense than it does Hawaii. White Dread Lightning would be a sweet hashtag, and I hope I’m wrong, but CSU is just bad. The one thing that might make this game more interesting is the fact that we have yet ANOTHER amazing coach name. The CSU Bobo the Clowns could, theoretically, just have been suffering from the fact that they missed their coach for like 10 days of prep time leading up to the game. A half decent team should probably be able to overcome that to take down Hawaii at home (while the Hawaii… Hawaiian? Yeah that looks right) while the Hawaiian players are busy worrying about their family because of a God damn hurricane, but that’s about their only hope here. My hot take for 2018 is that Colorado will be better than Hawaii, and Steven Montez will start the year by roasting some CSU ass.
Dumbshit’s Key to the Game: Can Steven Montez perform at least as well as a guy who probably says “Cha, brah” unironically. (I know. That’s a California stereotype. SHOCKING NEWS. The white kid with dreads is from La Habra, CA. Stereotypes are stupid, but I’m not backing down from this one.)
Dumbshit Prediction: Colorado 41, CSU 23
Oregon State Vs. no.5 Ohio State
Saturday 9/01, 9:00AM PDT
This game marks the true return to what is so fucking glorious about being a fan of the PAC-12. This game starts before the average college student has taken their morning shit and had a cup of coffee, if college students drank coffee on the weekends. Instead, they’ll be drunk as fuck in Corvallis. Do we really need to break this down? The best thing Oregon State did in the last 18 months was free up Gary Anderson to come home to help coach Utah’s defense. Unless Jake Luton is literally the second coming of Jesus and new head coach Jonathan Smith is secretly the Hoodie in a goofy, ‘probably went to Northwestern and jacks off to analytics’ young man costume, it is going to be a long god damn year. He’s not Old Billy No Fun, though. He was a four-year starter for Oregon State back when they were, one assumes, more relevant than they are today. (They were 10-1 in 2000, arguably the greatest year in school history, and Jon-Boy went for 2,773 yards, 20 TDs, and only 7 picks on a white-hot 50% completion percentage.) My man was with the much less dysfunctional Huskies as an assistant under ‘One of the Only Legendary-Status Coaches in the PAC’ a year ago, so one can hope for our Beaver bros that he is the man to right that ship long term. I certainly do, since, did I mention they got Gary back to Utah? I like Oregon State the same way I like Utah State. They’re like my goofy little brother I never had, because I’m the goofy little brother.
Sadly, in a sick turn of fate, the entire country will be watching this game and hoping ORST can pull off what would automatically become the biggest upset of the year. Urban Meyer being a douche, pretending to have a medical malady, and covering up for a piece of shit will have everyone’s eyes on this game. Sound familiar? You really want to put to the test what happens when a coach is missing for the week before your season opener? Don’t expect a repeat of Hawaii giving a dicking to CSU. As far as I know, Jake Luton has not grown dreads this off-season, sorry about your bad luck Beavs.
Dumbshit’s Key to the Game: Can Ohio State completely self-immolate in the absence of Dickhead Meyer? Is there any justice in the universe? Find out first thing Saturday morning.
Dumbshit Prediction: Ohio State is probably extra fired up knowing their cunt-bag boss is missing the game and the entire country is watching- and rooting against them. They go full heel and run up the score, 70-3.
AT LEAST THAT IS WHAT MY HEAD WANTS ME TO SAY, BUT FUCK YOU URBAN MEYER, I BELIEVE IN MOTHERFUCKING MIRACLES. OREGON STATE SHOCKS THE WORLD AND WINS IN A PLAY FOR PLAY RECREATION OF OREGON STATE VS USC 2008 (SURPRISE FUCK YOU, MARK SANCHEZ- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hP8o5t6wrQo&t=29s), OREGON STATE 27, OHIO STATE 21.
WSU Vs. Wyoming
Saturday 9/01, 12:30PM PDT
Okay. Let’s see if I can pull a way to get excited about this game out of my ass. Mike Leach became WSU’s coach back in 2012 and with the team he inherited immediately got out to a hot 3-9 start (1-8 in PAC play). Since then he’s enjoyed being at the center of a controversy about his ridiculous $3mil/year contract that the school struggles to pay at the detriment to shit like, you know, running their institution. So what are they getting out of that investment? Well, steady improvement year-over-year, as it turns out. Not like, ‘win the PAC’ level improvement, but they ended up going a respectable 9-4 last year and 6-3 in the PAC, with a sweet loss in the Holiday Bowl for the second year in a row. Consistency, motherfucker! That being said, there’s one thing you know you can count on when it comes to Mike Leach, and thus, the Cougars of Washington. PASSING YARDS, FUCK YEAH. Last year, the Cougies put up a respectable 367 passing yards a game. Luke Falk had nearly 3,600 yards, 30 TDs, and only 13 INTs. That’s pretty dope. Unfortunately, they also only averaged 68 rushing yards per game, because I said PASSING YARDS, MOTHERFUCKER. Unfortunately, Luke Falk is gone, and as far as I can tell, not even Cougie fans know who the fuck is going to start. They’ve got like 9 QBs on the roster (and like 20 god damn receivers… that’s not even a joke, this team is seriously just quarterbacks and receivers and like 3 hobos Mike Leach found outside a 7-11 on his way to practice one day) and no matter how hard I try, I can’t figure out who’s going to start. Their own media guys are basically throwing their hands up and saying, “Fuck if I know.” Their depth chart says ‘Gardner MINSHEW II’, or ‘Anthony GORDON’, or ‘Trey TINSLEY’, or ‘Cammon COOPER’. I know coaches think its cute to obfuscate their starters early in the season, but 3 ‘ors’? Come the fuck on.
Just Mike Leach things. One of those guys will almost certainly throw for 3,000 yards, we just have no idea who it is yet. Personally, I vote for Cammon Cooper, since if that glorious, traitorous bastard is going to forgo Utah schools to go play for fucking Washington State of all places, he might as well get the start as a true froshie and give WSU a storyline of ‘Who Wore It Better’ between them and USC’s JT Daniels. And honestly, I don’t really know if it matters. I’m pretty sure Leach could put me under center and still get a 3,000 yard passing season, even though I throw about as well as koala and the last time I put pads on, it was at safety. Will any of this matter? I hope so, but I doubt it. Wyoming had a strong showing knocking off New Mexico State in week 0, but tying this back to the only game I really care about, Weber State probably could have beaten New Mexico State 29-7. Wyoming’s Tyler Wonderwall put up a merry tune of 12/21 for 133 yards, and that’s not going to be good enough to keep up with the Heavy Breathing Leaches.
Dumbshit’s Key to the Game: Can <insert player name> throw for more offense than Nico Evans can rush for on Wyoming?
Dumbshit Prediction: WSU looks pretty in their first game of the season, giving false hope to hundreds of fans. WSU 48, Wyoming 13.
Random side note- WSU and Oregon have identical websites. Not like, ‘hey these kind of operate on the same ideas’. Like, Oregon paid a developer to build them a website, and that person had no fucking idea about college football and thus that abortion of a depth chart page was born. Then WSU hit up the same developer, because there’s a shortage of those in the PNW I guess, and that person was like, ‘Oh… yeah, I suppose I can do that for you, but I’ll have to TOTALLY build that from scratch and I’m not totally going to just re-use this other one I just finished’. They’re fucking identical. I’m onto you both. I don’t know who ripped off who, but I know somebody ripped off somebody.
Cal Vs. UNC
Saturday 9/01, 1:00PM PDT
This is the game I’m dubbing the Week One Suck-Off, played annually to determine which team in the PAC-12 can suck less donkey balls than a garbage team from another conference. Even though I didn’t do a preview for the 2017 season, they’re running this one back from last year, where it was also the Week One Suck-Off. UNC was a dumpster fire last year, going 3-9 on the season and 1-7 in ACC play. Their wins were over Old Dominion, Pitt, and Western Carolina. Cal may not be a great team- they aren’t -but they do boast the dopest name in the PAC-12, and I don’t just say that because I’m a Northern Californian. I mean, they’re the fucking Golden Bears. How awesome is that? The fact that they don’t crush the competition year in and year out, I’m assuming, is due solely to the fact that they’re the Other Northern California school with crippling academic standards.
Anyhow, Cal was a mystery last year. They were crippled by injuries right out of the gates yet still managed to play a grip of incredibly entertaining games. They let the Tarheels and Weber State hang around, making those games fun to watch. They took down Ole Miss. They made a game of it with USC, beat Washington State, hung in with Stanford fueled nearly entirely on Rival Hate and the absorbed powers of all the nerd-books made of the corpses of the enemy’s mascot. Inexplicably lost to dumpster-fire UCLA, although again, in a very fun to watch kind of way. First year coach Justin Wilcox rocked out with his Cox out and gave Golden Bearies every reason to think once they got healthy, they could make a go of this thing. Well, bad news Bears, everybody’s gone! The entire team up and fled to different schools. Former no. 1 WR recruit Demetris Robertson bounced to fucking GEORGIA. Dem’s the breaks. Considering they won a tight one against this same team last year, you might be thinking, ‘Well that doesn’t bode well.’ And it wouldn’t…
But this is the Suck-Off! For one thing, UNC is calling last year a “mulligan year”. That’s not a joke, either, their media is putting that shit out there. Except college football seasons are not the third tee at your local shit hole golf course where your buddies blow softly in your ear when you’re lining up your drive and don’t care when you shank it into the vegetable patch fifteen yards off the box. Oh, and thirteen fucking players got suspended for a variety of time periods across the team’s first four games. That’s enough dudes to get a penalty if they all lined up on the field at once. So this is going to be like last year, except both teams will be worse. Truly, I can think of no more fitting narrative.
Dumbshit’s Key to the Game: Whoever has enough players left to field a team will win.
Dumbshit’s Prediction: Cal is essentially the avatar of our Lord and Savior, Lord Chaos. Cal wins on a late-4th safety, 37-35.
no.15 USC Vs. UNLV
Saturday 9/01, 1:00PM PDT
You’d think you’d have an obvious choice between choosing to watch the Suck-Off and literally ANY other FBS game, especially one featuring USC. Even if you’re like me and you just like watching USC so you can catch it when they inevitably dick off for three quarters and lose to a team they have no business losing to. You’d be wrong, though, because the Cal game is going to be way more entertaining to watch than this one. I don’t think I really need to waste much time breaking this one down; despite the East Coast Bias I’m specifically writing to counteract, everyone in the country knows about USC. They’re fucking stacked. Everywhere. Their water boys are 5* croots. The only compelling storyline for them this year is whether they can fumblefuck their way to a PAC-12 championship and whether or not JT Daniels is going to have uneducated Southern Californians jacking off to “their” quarterback for the next three years.
What is there to say about UNLV? They’re from Las Vegas, so that’s cool. But even then, the NFL is going to Vegas and ESPN openly talks about betting now, so they don’t even get to have the sexy aspect of being from a dirty shit hole where we all pretend to go to get into all the types of debauchery that we then turn around and pretend we don’t want in our back yard. UNLV isn’t good. Their best performance last year was only losing to Ohio State by 33. They lost to Howard. Howard is a school, but it might as well just be some dude named Howard from accounting.
Dumbshit’s Key to the Game: Keep Daniels’ hype from integer overflow and looping back around to Travis Wilson levels of bad.
Dumbshit’s Prediction: USC wins.
UCLA Vs. Cincinnati
Saturday 9/01, 4:00PM PDT
This game will mark the return of what other fans will start calling ‘PAC-12 After Dark’. Since it is a home game and starts at 4:00PM, and the sun sets in LA about 7:30 this time of year, very little of it will actually be played in the dark- if any at all. What can you expect from drunk Gators fans, though? The fact that both of these teams were dumpster fires last year means we would have had a serious contender to rip the 2nd consecutive banner out of Cal’s hands, but the fact that the sun will set on these two means we have a pretty solid chance of some kind of shenanigans taking the game in unexpected directions. Listen, I’m not going to sit here and tell you my 100% legit analytical take is that PAC-12 After Dark is real, but it’s completely fucking real. This game will just get a tiny dash of it, though.
The most interesting non-time related aspect of this game will be the coaches. Chip Kelly comes in to be yet another failed NFL coach to try and make the Bruins more interesting than their cross-town rivals in shitty uniforms. The fact is, everyone knows about Chip’s unique style, and how to coach against it. He will have to prove he can win despite that, and this ain’t the team he is going to do that with. Both he and Luke Fickell of the Bearcats are trying to recruit their way to relevance right now, which means we’re going to get some goofy off-talent playing in a prime time slot on ESPN. This game would be infinitely more interesting in two years, but that’s what we’ve got to work with for now.
Dumbshit’s Key to the Game: UCLA lost Josh Rosen. A lot of people like to give Rosen more than his share of criticism. We are going to find out just how much he held that team together this year. UCLA is one of the worst rush defenses in the country, as well. If there is any Bearcat who can jog, they should win this game.
Dumbshit’s Prediction: Both teams will be very tired when Cincinnati finally leaves with a victory, 54-27.
no.24 Oregon Vs. Bowling Green
Saturday 9/01, 5:00PM PDT
They’re calling this the Bowling Green Massacre. I call that a deep-state conspiracy to legitimize that skeletal cunt Kellyanne Conway. Regardless, it will be an accurate description of this game. Bowling Green beat Miami (the Ohio one) and Kent State last year; they lost to other such powers as South Dakota (that’s not even the good Dakota), Toledo, Akron, and several other cities you mostly thought were just horror writers attempts at being funny in where they set their fictional little how-do-you-do’s. Not even Oregon’s silly policy of choosing coaches and players for their names will prevent them from running away with this one.
Dumbshit’s Key to the Game: Herbert will be eating sherbet on the sidelines by the second quarter. If he isn’t back at the hotel by the third quarter, we all mock Oregon mercilessly for the rest of the season. This loss would be exponentially worse than any other game of Week 1, even worse than if Utah somehow lost to Weber State.
Dumbshit Prediction: You don’t need a Cristobal to guess what the result here is going to be.
ASU Vs. UTSA
Saturday 9/01, 7:30PM PDT
True PAC-12 After Dark returns for the new football season when the Roadrunners of UTSA make a rare foray out of Texas to play college football like they aren’t a glorified high school team. Seriously though, TEN of their games last year were played in Texas. They played once in Miami against FIU (and lost) and once in Louisiana (and lost). What the shit is that, UTSA? I literally know high school players with more travel miles under their belt.
Regardless, ASU is bad this year, they will lose lots of games, but they have Manny Wilkins and that’s more than enough to beat the Roadrunners even if you made him play 1v11. Despite that, don’t fuck around. Watch this game, and no matter how bad it gets, at least keep it on your backup channel so you can quickly flip back to it every few minutes to make sure it isn’t heating up for no apparent reason. It’s the less interesting late night Arizona-school game, but if history has taught me anything, that means it is the one more likely to give us true Chaotic glory. I’m not going to bother writing a prediction or key to the game. The only key to this game is enough of us blowing up the Game Thread to attract the attention of Lord Chaos.
Arizona Vs. BYU
Saturday 9/01, 7:45PM PDT
Arizona is getting a lot of love in the preseason and I’ve covered them to some degree a little bit already. Khalil Tate is the best running back in the country. Yes, he’s better than Bryce Love. The only problem is that he’s pretending to be a quarterback. This isn’t going to be a problem against shitty teams, because he’s just going to run all over them no matter what they do. BYU by all accounts should be one of those teams. There’s just one problem with that theory, and that is that BYU typically has a somewhat disciplined defense (at least, they do until they lose, at which point they might take a swing at you). They’re not great athletically, but they will attempt to stack up front and make Khalil go over the top to beat them. BYU does sport a physical defensive front that you can expect to give Arizona’s offensive line fits.
Arizona’s receivers should be able to beat BYU’s corners all day long, but for that to matter, Tate will have to use his arm. I still think they will have enough juice to get the job done, but they are going to give the rest of the country the recipe to beat Arizona- the Cougars just won’t actually have the talent to do it themselves. At least, they shouldn’t. That said, Kalani Sitake is an incredible defensive coach who more than earned his top dog spot by running the Ute’s defense. Coach Whit disciples litter the west, and if there is one thing they know how to do, it is to scheme for games with extended prep periods, especially against teams with flaws as obvious as Arizona’s.
Dumbshit’s Key to the Game: BYU Linebacker Sione Takitaki is going to talk mad shit to Khalil Tate all game. If Tate can manage to shut him up, Arizona will escape with a win.
Dumbshit’s Prediction: This game starts at 7:45PM PDT, and it is being played in Arizona, and BYU is the opponent. Don’t bother trying to make a prediction, and sure as fuck don’t put money on this game.
