If you don't know what makes college football so glorious (and are not a Maryland fan) check out the Maryland-Temple game from Saturday. There are good crazy games in college football and then there are the bad ones. That was one of the ugliest, craziest, most glorious games you will ever see. But more on that later.
You are not going to get anything like that in the NFL. And here's the thing, that was just one game! Every week is full of those crazy moments!
Here are the six craziest things that happened in Week 3.
Kansas beat a Power 5 team on the road!
A win for Kansas in and of itself is crazy. The fact that it came against a Power Five and on the road team is downright shocking.
The Jayhawks' 48-24 win over Boston College snapped a 48-game Power Five road losing streak. They have not won a Power Five game on the road since 2008. They were considered 20-point underdogs and managed the blowout win!
In all seriousness, it may be early but you have to tip your cap to the Mad Hatter. Les Miles' decision to take the Kansas job was widely scoffed, but he has won two of his first three games which is already better than most people probably expected.
By the way, from a local angle, this does not bode well for Virginia Tech who lost the Boston College in the opening week of the season. The Hokies had to rally from a 14-3 deficit just to beat Furman on Saturday. This could be a very long season in Blacksburg.
Maryland and Temple played the most absurd game ever
I don't know if I am going to be able to do this game justice by trying to describe the mayhem that happened in Philadelphia. Basically, neither team wanted to win the game and they both made that very clear...repeatedly.
Just to try to give you an idea, this game featured a muffed punt, a goal-line stand, a safety off a bad snap on a punt, a horrendous fake field goal attempt, a missed field goal, an interception negated by a penalty, seven Maryland players failing to pick up a fumble, a defensive holding call on third down which led to first and goal and eventually the go-ahead touchdown, a second goal-line stand and a seven-yard punt.
Maryland recovered a muffed punt on Temple's 19-yard line, returned a punt to Temple's 4-yard line and started a drive at Temple's 10-yard line after a seven-yard punt. That's three drives that began inside Temple's 20 and the Terps earned exactly 0 points off those three drives.
If you want to read more about it, here are the ugliest plays from Maryland's first loss of the season.
Pat Narduzzi seriously thinks he was being bold by calling the most conservative game ever
Coaching is hard and requires a lot of split-second decisions that will be second-guessed repeatedly whenever you get something wrong. It's a tough job, I get it. What I don't get is when a coach makes a bad decision, it blows up in his face and he continues to argue it was the right decision afterward because...reasons.
Pitt and Penn State played on Saturday in the last scheduled meeting between these two rivals. In a big rivalry game on the road against a highly ranked opponent, you would expect the Panthers would be aggressive looking for the upset. Instead, Pat Narduzzi called the most conservative game ever then tried to tell everyone who dared question him how he was right and they were wrong.
Pitt punted from the Penn State 37 in the first quarter, lost five yards on a third-and-goal from the two which force a field goal and punted from the Penn State 48 in the fourth quarter instead of going for it on fourth-and-two.
But wait, it gets worse.
Down 17-10 with less than five minutes in the game, Pitt had a fourth-and-goal at the 1-yard line. Again, this is a rivalry game on the road against a top-15 team and Narduzzi decided it was a good time to go for the field goal. A field goal!
Karma, no doubt reacting to the universal disgust from everyone watching, immediately struck and the Panthers missed the field goal. Pitt would go on to lose 17-10.
And what did Narduzzi have to say for himself after the game?
"You need two scores to win the football game, unless you guys are playing for overtime," Narduzzi said. "We're trying to win the football game."
So...Narduzzi's answer is that he wasn't playing for overtime? Well, I guess he's right since Pitt lost in regulation.
The defiance is my favorite part. Narduzzi evidently thinks he was being aggressive by not going for it on fourth down because, hey, he's not playing for overtime. OK, so why not try to score the touchdown and go for two? Or maybe they should have intentionally turned the ball over at the 1 and tried to force a safety.
But how dare you question the wisdom of Narduzzi!
"Again, we can look back at all the calls, guys," Narduzzi said. "All the armchair quarterbacks, you guys got those armchair desks there. It's easy to make those decisions."
Yeah, it's easy to make those obvious decisions because literally everyone knew you were wrong, coach.
The game-tying field goal called back when Michigan State called for too many men
This one is going to sting in East Lansing for a long time.
With Arizona State leading 10-7, the Spartans attempted a 42-yard field goal with 11 seconds left to tie the game. Kicker Matt Coghlin nailed the kick and the game headed to overt...oh wait, that's not what happened.
The kick was good, but Michigan State had 12 men on the field which is generally frowned upon. The Spartans were flagged and moved back five yards and...well, you can probably guess what happened next.
Clemson is pretty much getting a bye to the ACC title game
The Tigers are ranked No. 1 and deservedly so. They are the defending national champs and are a dominant football team. As good as Clemson is, however, its conference is...not.
Here are some of the highlights from the ACC's week:
- Boston College was blown out at home by perennial punchline Kansas.
- Pitt lost to Penn State because its coach decided not to go for a game-tying touchdown
- NC State was blown out by a bad West Virginia team
- Virginia Tech had to rally back from a 14-3 deficit just to beat FCS Furman.
- Georgia Tech lost to its FCS opponent, The Citadel, in overtime.
So...yeah. Clemson pretty much has a bye from here to the conference championship game.
Iowa State loses game off a muffed punt after Cyclone knocks over his own punt returner
Trailing by one point, Iowa State forced Iowa to punt with 1:37 left in the game. This was the Cyclones' chance to erase a four-game losing streak to its heated rival. This was going to be their moment to announce to the world that Iowa State has arr...what's that? They muffed the punt? Oh no.
Generally smashing into your own teammate is not a good strategy. That is especially true when you are trying to field a punt and your teammate is the returner.
Now that's how you close out a rivalry game.
