Did Y’all See That? Week Six Edition: The Iceman Cometh

Look, I’ll level with you all. After I was done watching TCU-Iowa State, I didn’t watch another minute of college football on Saturday. I whipped up some homemade pasta sauce and my roommates and I watched The Meg, starring Jason Statham. I’m assuming that won every Academy Award that year — I didn’t bother researching that.

And I don’t blame you if you didn’t watch any more college football after that game, either. But no fear! I scoured the internet and found things that were definitely worth seeing from the weekend, and a couple from the Monday news cycle, as well. Let’s get to it!

Did Y’all See: Purdue and UCF’s Moonfight?

Purdue is a strong academic university with a long history of churning out engineers and astronauts, including Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon. I know this because Purdue fans can’t go five minutes without talking about it.

UCF, the largest school in the United States, is located in Orlando, the pierced navel of Florida. Apparently it was founded as a school to help funnel students to the NASA program a short drive away in Cape Canaveral, but I had no idea that was the case until Monday.

Why Monday? Well, Purdue announced a special Moon Landing jersey.

It’s fine! It’s a good jersey. But the design drew the ire of the UCF community. It seems the Knights had their own moon-themed jersey a few years ago, and Purdue’s version is similar.

There are a lot questions about this tweet, which drew plenty of ire Monday night, but my biggest question is — how is “a picture of the moon” an original design? What are they teaching at the UCF School of Copyright Law?

And then there’s this:

Tremendous.

Did Y’all See: Northwestern’s attempts to stop Nebraska?

In a week full of rock-fights in the Big 10 — more on that later — Nebraska and Northwestern threw stones at each other for a few hours in Lincoln. The Cornhuskers were down to their third-string quarterback at one point, but had a 24-yard field goal to win at the buzzer.

I should stop and mention here that Nebraska was also playing a safety at kicker. The official Nebraska site describes Lane McCallum as an “emergency place-kicker,” but there he was on Saturday with the chance to win the Cornhuskers the game. As expected, Northwestern coach Pat Fitzgerald decided to call a timeout to ice McCallum. That’s all fine and good.

Then he called his second time out. Okay, sure, whatever.

Then he called his third timeout.

And then McCallum nailed the field goal to win.

As Good Charlotte sang in their classic teen angst jam “The Anthem”: Shake it once, that’s fine/shake it twice, that’s okay/shake it three times, you’re playing with yourself. I haven’t seen an icing attempt go that poorly since someone handed me a 32-oz Peach Bellini Smirnoff Ice in college.

Did Y’all See: Michigan fans slowly lose sanity against Iowa?

The biggest rock fight of them all started at 11 a.m. in the Big House in Ann Arbor. Michigan beat Iowa 10-3 in a matchup between two supposed Top-25 teams. I now present to you the second half drive chart:

Iowa INT. Michigan punt. Iowa punt. Michigan punt. Iowa punt. Michigan missed FG. Iowa punt. Michigan punt. Iowa punt. Michigan punt. Iowa drive ends on final whistle.

Brutal, every bit of it. And as you can imagine, the fine folks at mgoblog were none too happy, despite the win. Let’s go there now!

What I like about this game is that it rid Michigan fans of all their stereotypical stodginess, and turned even the most diehard Wolverines into your average college football watcher who was slowly losing sanity watching Iowa and Michigan pound their head against the wall for three hours. It’s almost heartwarming to see.

Did Y’all See: Rutgers’ starting QB and RB are redshirting?

The Scarlet Knights are in the middle of a tough season, which is the kindest way to say they’re in the middle of a putrid stretch that dates back to when Ray Rice was in uniform. Head coach Chris Ash was fired last week, with assistant Nunzo Campanile — that’s a real name, mind you — filling in as interim.

Now starting quarterback Art Sitkowski and running back Raheem Blackshear apparently asked Campanile not to play them on Saturday against Maryland, thus ensuring their ability to redshirt. Campanile is not happy about that, and brought out the old “I guess that’s the way the world is now” gripe.

Personally, I’m impressed by the awareness Sitkowski and Blackshear have to just opt out of the entire year. It started bad and was only going to get worse. No shame in that, just pack it in and start again next season.

Did Y’all See: A D3 team cancelled its season?

Grinnell College — best known as that little school in Iowa where that guy scored an obscene amount of points in a basketball game — is done playing football in 2019.

The Pioneers had just 39 players on the roster to start the season, and a rash of injuries dropped that number to 28. The team was 0-3 so far, and concerns about safety were rampant. Grinnell made an official statement announcing the forfeiture of its remaining games, and then appended an apology to that statement, making it clear the players were on board and helped make the decision:

“The players themselves voted overwhelmingly to forfeit the remaining seven games of the season prior to the announcement of the cancellation. We applaud the students for making this difficult decision and what, for some, may be a sacrifice for the good of their teammates. We apologize for not acknowledging their role in this decision in the initial announcement.”

I’m sure this stinks for the players, and I don’t want to minimize that at all. But — how wild is this! A university just straight up said “no, we’re done for the year.” I didn’t even know that was legal.

Maybe Rutgers should try it!