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College Football

Sad fans are sad, Week 2: When rankings are not enough

Jim Tomlin

By Jim Tomlin

Published:

Auburn came into Saturday’s action ranked No. 7 in the Associated Press poll, Texas A&M was No. 13 and Mississippi State was 16th.

At least the first two lost on the road against teams ranked higher than they were. That’s slight solace, but that’s more than Mississippi State has after bearing the ignominious distinction of losing at home to unranked Arkansas.

That would be a Razorbacks team that had lost 20 conference games in a row coming in. Yikes.

But let’s start with Auburn, which will be licking its wounds after a comprehensive loss to Georgia in the Deep South’s Oldest Rivalry. The Tigers gave us a #SurrenderCobra sighting and plenty of frustration for fans on The Plains:

Auburn quarterback Bo Nix certainly won’t feel any better than the fans after this one:

One could say the Tigers were stuck in neutral.

https://twitter.com/eddiec118/status/1312569305884692484?s=20

Meanwhile, Dawgs fans came up with, um, creative head coverings. We’re not sure if these pass inspection as appropriate protection against the spread of germs:

Mississippi State was riding such a high after beating LSU last week, then saw it all crashing down against Arkansas:

As for Texas A&M, the loss to Alabama was expected but it still brought out plenty of angst:

https://twitter.com/tolga_k/status/1312524952218689537?s=20

A 14-14 tie early was the high spot. After that, the Crimson Tide took away all hopes for Aggies fans:

Kentucky took it on the chin in a loss at home to Ole Miss:

LSU fans found a way to get creative in a road game at Vanderbilt.

Outside of the SEC, the Big 12 saw still more chaos, with Texas losing at home to TCU and Oklahoma losing again. The Sooners lost at Iowa State for the first time since — we are not making this up — 1960. ISU, Kansas State and Oklahoma State are tied for first in the league.

The result left Oklahoma coach Lincoln Riley in a salty mood:

And speaking of streaks ending, UCF lost at home for the first time in a few years as Tulsa rallied to pull off an upset. Early on UCF looked good:

But the Knights lost to Tulsa for the fourth straight meeting. In fact, UCF’s most recent home loss before Saturday was on Nov. 19, 2016 … against Tulsa. We’re thinking UCF will have to work extra hard to claim a “national championship” this year. …

Finally, the Pac-12 announced its schedule this week. The league will return Nov. 7 for a 6-game regular season with the conference title game Dec. 18 and the other teams playing a foe from the other division as a 7th game.

It seems extremely likely that some long-running annual rivalries will skip a year out West. That’s a familiar feeling for a lot of SEC fans — and a sad one, at that.

Jim Tomlin

Longtime newspaper veteran Jim Tomlin is a copy editor and writer with SaturdayDownSouth.com.

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