American Football Discussion

[seph]

That makes the London Warriors moving to AFLE look inspired.

[Statto]

Staying up to watch England play a 1am kick-off in a World Cup knockout game in an iconic venue:

Staying up to watch Alabama play a 1am kick-off in an effectively meaningless non-conference game against a 2-8 FCS squad:

[Statto]

Apologies for the double post (and the shameless reminiscing) but it's related and hopefully might generate some fun chat - seeing everyone talking about staying up last night, how tense/exciting it was in the middle of the night and in particular @Chilly McFreeze's comment about not being able to get to sleep until 6am has made me reminisce on some times the old gridiron has done that for/to me.

The one that leaps to mind immediately is the 2018 National Championship game. The Natty is always on a Monday night and "starts" at 1am, so a good 25 past 1 before toe actually met leather. I'd booked the Tuesday off work but had worked that day, so had already been up a solid 18 hours at kick.

Long story short(ish), Bama were down 13-0 at the half and could do nothing on offence. The bit everyone always remembers is that true freshman Tua Tagovailoa came in for Jalen Hurts (who was 26-2 in 2 seasons as a starter) at halftime, but it sometimes gets lost that two other true freshmen in Devonta Smith and Najee Harris (who had been sprinkled in over the year) became massive contributors as Bama came back to have it tied 20-20. As time expired, Bama missed a very makeable field goal to win it. So off to OT we go.

Georgia start with the ball and get held to a field goal. Bama get the ball and on the first play Tua takes a ridiculous 16 yard sack. And then, at like 20 to 5 in the morning, this:

I mean you don't just head off to bed after that, do you? I think I eventually did so at about 8:30am. Long day, that one was.

So yeah - what's your favourite tale of middle of the night heart pounding?

[Statto]

Triple post but with nearly 2 months in between, can be forgiven right?

So I was planning a "hey NFL fan, college football (kinda) starts today and it's completely free to watch on DAZN so why not give it a try cos it's great" post... but DAZN announced this week it's not free this year (specific college sports subscription starting at £8.99 per month). BUT - Disney+ to the rescue! Not free of course but something you might already have. 

So this is college football's "Week 0" - the weekend before the season starts properly but where there's a small slate of games to whet the appetite (and provide some TV inventory). They're still proper games that count for these teams, not a pre-season exhibition.

Of the stuff that's available on Disney+, your pick of the day is probably the game that starts in about 45mins (5pm), with TCU taking on North Carolina in Dublin. For the NFL fan, your interest/enjoyment here is likely to be found in watching a fairly disinterested Bill Belichick coaching a really, really bad team.

The actual pick of the day starts at 3am tomorrow and is behind the DAZN paywall so not one for the casual to try, with Memphis @ UNLV in a game that has genuine College Football Playoff implications (both teams are among the favourites to win their respective conferences and the win here could be a real resume builder when it comes to playoff selection time).

Next Saturday, the real fun begins...

[Dead Mike]

Heads up.....if you're a member of 'Tickets For Good' you can get tickets for the Commanders/Colts in London for £9 currently. 

[Statto]

Cheers Mike - hopefully it helps someone out and it's broken up my run of posts 😊

We're only at the appetiser stage of Week 1 and college football already providing the dramatic finishes and special teams adventures it does so often:

In the second of the series of "Statto recommends a college football game you might want to dip into until someone expressly tells him to stop", I'm left in the slightly awkward position of telling you to give Baylor @ Auburn a try. This is because it meets my self-imposed parameters of 1) available on Disney+ & 2) not on in the middle of the night (this one's at 8:30pm).

You've got a pair of dynamic, mobile QBs (trying) to run a couple of wide-open offences. If it's good it could ve fun, if it's not it could be hilarious.

If you do give it a try, please don't become an Auburn fan.

(This could also act as bait to bring @Lion_of_the_Midlands back)

Edit: WE ARE SO BACK BABY!!

Western Michigan got hosed.

Edited September 6 by Statto
To avoid effectively quintuple posting...

[BigJag]

I'm not familiar with either athlete. Garrett is refining his tackling. The coach is a former Rugby player. 

Gavin Hastings was a decent rugby to Gridiron transfer from what I remember.

[Statto]

So with the NFL just getting underway, week 2 of college football brings us what is on paper quite possibly the regular season game of the year with #1Ohio State @ #4Texas. If you were in the market for a game to give you a flavour of what college football is all about, two of the bluest bloods in the game meeting in front of over 100k people would be the one.

But whilst it's on Disney+ that's a 1am Sunday kick-off so by my own rules I'm recommending you join me at 8:30pm for #12Alabama @ Kentucky. Another meeting of two college sports blue bloods... just the wrong sport for Kentucky's hoopers.

Nonetheless it's an intriguing conference matchup with Kentucky having an exciting offensive innovator as their new head coach and many people putting Alabama on upset alert with it being the first road start for new starting QB Keelon Russell (who is by the way the highest rated recruit in Alabama history which is saying something).

If you do watch - feel free to become an Alabama fan, but be warned it could well be like signing up to be a Man Utd fan in 2016 (couple of years removed from the retirement of the greatest coach the sport has ever seen and getting left behind in a financial arms race meaning that while you'll continue to actually be pretty good in the grand scheme, you won't be anywhere near as good as you were in the preceeding 2 decades so everyone will want to give you pelters for *only* being like the 7th or 8th best team in the land)

[Tim Healys Chutney Spoon]

If anyone wants Arizona v Kansas City college football tickets they are free on BLC. Happy to order for anyone interested 

[Statto]

That'd be Arizona State and Kansas but the sentiment is appreciated 😁

Been expecting that for a little while - this whole thing has turned slightly farcical. Whilst there is definitely growing interest in the college game in the UK (and God knows I'm trying with you fuckers 😆) it's not been marketed well and the pricing was iffy - I've not actually done the comparison myself but understand the get-in price (£56) was higher than for the NFL games. If they'd done a load of £20 tickets you might have sold a load more on curiosity. They've closed the upper tier this week meaning a load of people who did buy tickets (including fans travelling from the States) who'd chosen upper tier seats around the 50 (a pretty damn good place to watch a football game) are now in the bottom tier at one endzone and they're calling it an upgrade... I think they really wanted to put the game in Week 0 too (where the overseas games usually sit) but couldn't because Wembley was unavailable (some wrestling show IIRC...)

In and of itself it's not a terrible match-up to have over here - it's a conference game and will likely be much less lopsided than some of the Dublin games have been. When it was first announced I was gung ho about going, but actually don't think I'm going to bother (even though my wife had Blue Light as do 2 of the 3 guys I'd discussed possibly going with) - mostly because the bar in Westminster I'd have wanted to shoot over to afterwards to watch the Bama game seems to have changed hands and isn't doing the CFB until 5am thing anymore, which is a shame.

Finally - if you stayed up for OSU & Texas, you're welcome. If you watched Bama & Kentucky, I hope you turned on at half time.

[Devon Malcolm]

@Frankie Crisp and I had our fun, and that's all that matters.

 

[Frankie Crisp]

If the fry-ups don’t kill me, the Bears will.

[Devon Malcolm]

32 minutes ago, Frankie Crisp said:

If the fry-ups don’t kill me, the Bears will.

The decision not to punt on 4th and 1 on our own 20 in the FIRST QUARTER had me reaching for the Cardioace.

[Mr_Danger]

I didn’t catch any of the games but I have been following The Bills more than any team for a couple of seasons for none gay reasons. Can anyone tell me, how handsome was Josh Allen looking yesterday?

[johnnyboy]

12 hours ago, Mr_Danger said:

Can anyone tell me, how handsome was Josh Allen looking yesterday?

10/10, as always.