Welcome to Year Two of the Report Card, a weekly series at USA TODAY Sports, where yours truly comments and takes a light-hearted look at the wonderful plays, the boneheaded decisions, the crazy fans and the absolute absurdity that comes along with every college football Saturday.
The same thing goes as far as grading from last season: High marks will be only for the spectacular, and failing grades have no chance of being reversed. Also, mean tweeters will be blocked and emails to the inbox to complain will directly enter the trash folder.
With that being said, here is the Week 0 analysis of how fans, teams, players and coaches fared:
Week 0: Wait, what?
Whoever came up with the title “Week 0” to signify the start of the college football season needs their head examined. In this case, it certainly applied to the slate of games fans had to choose from. Zero top 25 teams played. Lots of zeroes at the end of paychecks for guaranteed money games. Zero shame. Maximum excitement!
After going eight months without football anything would be considered entertainment at this point. Networks certainly don’t care about the lackluster slate as they need to fill their airtime with something – hence we get Northwestern and Nebraska across the pond in Ireland just because, and we got to watch the Huskers melt down again.
The artist formerly known as Week 1: D-
Before we get to the action that happened on Saturday….
Putting ‘Spygate’ to shame
Perhaps the craziest “If you ain’t cheating, you ain’t trying” story of the summer comes from Jacksonville State (Alabama, not Florida) and head coach Rich Rodriguez (so, that’s where he ended up?!?) claiming their Week 1 opponent, Stephen F. Austin, sent a spy to get intel on their plays.
Supposedly, SFA assistants were lurking in the shadows during Jacksonville’s Spring Game to get the lowdown on RichRod’s offensive schemes. Fast forward a couple of months, after the Gamecocks changed the names of their plays and signals – Rodriguez’s eagle-eyed daughter allegedly spotted a cameraman during a recent practice.
Rodriguez then promptly sent his assistant strength coach, a man he says is about 6-foot-7 and 350 pounds, to search the bleachers for the culprit. Cue the Benny Hill music. Oh, by the way, Jacksonville State didn’t have anything to worry about: it beat its allegedly spying opponent 42-17.
On to Davidson: Incomplete
‘Griddy’ latest craze to jump the shark
This one will be short and sweet….