Starting 11: Bobby Petrino Is Football Jesus Edition

Let me start by praising guys who almost never get any compliments -- ESPN's college football scheduler, Ilan Ben-Hanan, and Fox's college football scheduler, Derek Crocker did an incredible job with Saturday's football schedule. I've never seen these guys both praised anywhere together and the two of them set up a perfect day for college football fans, from a noon kickoff for Florida State at Louisville to a late night Texas at California finish well after one in the morning on the east coast.

That was nearly 14 hours of scintillating college football games.

AND YOU WERE ABLE TO WATCH THEM ALL WITH REGULAR CABLE.

This is, indisputably, one way that college football gets it better than the NFL. On Sundays I'm only able to watch one NFL game that kicks off in the one eastern window unless I have NFL Sunday Ticket on DirecTV. That means I can't watch at least seven games in the early window on normal cable or broadcast television.

Why would the NFL do this? Why not put every NFL game on television all day long like college football does? It's just so dumb in this day and age when every other business is doing whatever it can to make its product as accessible as possible.

I'm going to write an entire column on this in the days or weeks ahead, but I hope that come 2022 -- when the NFL's existing TV deals end -- that the NFL decides to space out its games a bit more and put them all on television, just like the NCAA tournament has done in the past several years. Can you imagine only having one NCAA tourney game on in your home market now? Putting all the games on has actually grown the NCAA Tourney's business.

How much better would the NFL be if ESPN, FS1, TNT, TBS, CBS, Fox, NBCSN and NBC all had NFL games on every Sunday? And if you could flip around and watch any game in its entirety regardless of what part of the country you lived in?

Dare to dream. 

Anyway, on to the Starting 11.

But before we begin there, one important announcement. I am now selling all Outkick the Show ads for our daily Periscope, Facebook, and podcast. My plan is to sell no more than three live reads a day for the show. So if you want to advertise to our large, loyal and growing audience in the most technologically advanced way possible then email me at clay.travis@gmail.com

I think we're going to sell out of these ads in a hurry.

Okay, here we go with the Starting 11:

1. Holy hell Louisville is incredible.

It's early in the season, but I'm already prepared to put Lamar Jackson and Bobby Petrino up there as one of the best quarterback-coach duos that we have ever seen in college football history. Right now I'd have Tim Tebow-Urban Meyer and Cam Newton-Gus Malzahn as the two greatest quarterback and coach combos that we've seen in recent years. (Marcus Mariota-Chip Kelly would have been up there too if Chip hadn't gotten run out of town.)

And the Lamar-Petrino union one may be more like Tebow-Urban since Gus Malzahn was the offensive coordinator and he only had Cam Newton for one year. Whereas Urban and Tebow were together for four fours. Petrino at least has Lamar Jackson for the rest of this season and all of next season too. (Unless someone hires Petrino away).

And I honestly don't think you can use enough superlatives to describe Lamar Jackson's play thus far. He and Petrino look flat out unstoppable.  

I said last week that my top five coaches in college football right now looked like this:

1. Nick Saban

2. Urban Meyer

3. Mark Dantonio

4. Jim Harbaugh

5. Bobby Petrino

Of those five coaches only Urban and Harbaugh have had superlative quarterbacking talents to coach for multiple years. (Harbaugh got Andrew Luck for two years, but not his final dominant season in Palo Alto). Now it looks like Petrino finally has the best quarterback of his career and what they're going to be able to produce together is going to be remarkable to see. 

Here's a great bar debate question for you, if every single coach had identical players, can't you make an argument that Petrino could be the best coach in all of college football? Remember, Petrino has only coached at Arkansas and Louisville. He's never had top recruits. (Of course you can fairly argue that's Petrino's flaw, that recruiting is a big part of college success and Petrino has never been good enough at it. But from a pure coaching perspective is anyone better than Petrino and Duke's David Cutcliffe?) 

Essentially: what would Petrino be capable of with Alabama or Ohio State talent?

I don't know the answer to that question, but it's not absurd at all to think Louisville could win a national title this year. I absolutely love watching this team play. 

I'm not even going to throw dirt on Florida State here because I think the story wasn't how bad FSU played, I think it was just how good Louisville played. 

2. Nick Saban and Alabama survived against Ole Miss. 

Would you have ever believed that Alabama would take a freshman quarterback on the road in the SEC and throw the ball 31 times? Somehow Hurts's performance got totally overlooked in this game. 

Hurts passed the ball for 158 yards and ran it for 146. 

As a true freshman on the road in the SEC. 

That's pretty outstanding. 

Alabama ran the ball 48 times for 334 yards. The Tide averaged seven yards a carry on 48 carries.

That's like 1996 Nebraska numbers. 

Meanwhile Chad Kelly threw for 421 yards. 

And this game lasted over four hours. Welcome to the new college football. Credit to Nick Saban for adjusting to the new style of play rather than becoming a dinosaur.

After going down 24-3, Alabama put together a 45-6 run to go up 48-30 and basically put this game on ice. (Notwithstanding the late fireworks that cost us the cover.) 

Alabama gets Kent State and Kentucky the next two weekends. Can you imagine how many points Alabama is scoring on this Kentucky defense? The Wildcats gave up 42 this weekend to New Mexico State. 

I'm not kidding about this -- if Lane Kiffin wanted to score 100 points against Kentucky, he could. 

As for Ole Miss, if the Rebels lose to Georgia, which wouldn't be a total shocker, I think they have to go ahead and announce a bowl ban to put these NCAA issues behind them. At that point Ole Miss would be 1-3 and what are you playing for? A Liberty Bowl or Music City Bowl berth? Just end the story and self impose a bowl ban for a season that obviously hasn't lived up to your expectations. 

3. Urban gonna Urban.

I will no longer criticize Urban Meyer.

I just won't do it.

He's the second best coach in college football behind Nick Saban and I don't believe there's a close number three in terms of a guy who can handle all facets of a program from gameplanning to recrutiing to arguing you're being tough on your players when you don't punish them after their arrests.

This was a back alley ass kicking that Ohio State put on Oklahoma. Nothing fancy about it, no wrinkles, nothing deceptive about it. After a year of offensive malaise Ohio State came out and never left a moment's doubt about who was the better team.

Now Oklahoma has to worry how quickly this season can unravel for them. Sure, the Sooners can still win the Big 12, but how beaten is this team mentally? With a week off OU will come back to the season with games at TCU and then the neutral game against Texas.

Will the pressure on Bob Stoops grow? Oklahoma has now been beaten by double digits in three of its last four games.

As good as things look for Ohio State right now, they look that bad for Oklahoma.  

4. Georgia's Jacob Eason is a Matthew Stafford clone. 

I feel like I've gone back in time, Eason looks just like Matthew Stafford in his Georgia football uniform. 

Can you believe the onions on this true freshman to throw a touchdown pass on 4th and 10 with the entire crowd going insane on the road at Mizzou?

This Georgia fan was certainly impressed. (This is real, he had to check himself into the hospital with cuts on his arms. Seriously.)

And how about Jim Chaney letting Eason throw the ball 55 times. 

55 times!

I don't have the stats, but has any true freshman SEC quarterback ever thrown the ball 55 times in his debut start on the road? I find it impossible to believe that's ever happened before. 

Sure, it's insanely early, but I think Jacob Eason, just like Matthew Stafford before him in 2009, will be the number one overall pick in the 2019 NFL Draft.

As for Mizzou, condolences to Barry Odom and all the Mizzou fans who have been taking body blows since last November's fake protest. I already had a Tweet drafted congratulating Mizzou on a huge win when Eason dropped that touchdown pass in on fourth down. 

One thing worth keeping an eye on -- Mizzou had 15,000 open seats for its game against Georgia. While made up fake hunger strikes may get all the media attention, it certainly appears many Mizzou backers are choosing not to spend their money on the athletic department this year as their own protest against the way Mizzou buckled in the face of the fake protests.

At some point big business may come to a startling realization -- liberals bitch and moan but their protests have zero substantative impact. Conservatives don't bitch and moan as much, they just change their buying decisions. Doubt me? Ask Target how its business is going.  

5. The Big 12 is close to dead for getting a playoff spot this year.

No Big 12 team is currently ranked in the top 15. That's the first time there hasn't been a Big 12 team ranked in the top 15 since the AP poll started in 1936. (I know the Big 12 didn't exist in 1936. I mean the conferences that these teams were all members of back then.) 

Only two teams remain undefeated on the season in the Big 12 -- Baylor and West Virginia. Neither of these teams are likely to finish undefeated and the entire conference is going to be without a signature out-of-conference win other than Texas over Notre Dame, which is already not as impressive as it looked on the first week of the season.

I know it's early -- and I've been burned on this prediction before -- but it's hard to see a Big 12 team making the playoff this year. 

That means that in theory the ACC, SEC, Big Ten, and Pac 12 are in pretty decent shape right now. And that one of these conferences might even end up with a decent chance to get two teams in the playoff if another major conference stumbles at the top. 

6. HOW DO PLAYERS KEEP DROPPING THE BALL BEFORE THEY SCORE?

This happened at the end of the Texas-California game and during the Ohio State-Oklahoma game -- officials missed that call -- and it's the single most inexcusable mistake that I've ever seen a player make. 

If I were a coach my new rule would be this -- everyone is handing the ball to the official if we score or you're holding the ball all the way through the back of the end zone. 

Period.

Otherwise if you drop your ball before the goal line you lose your scholarship. 

(Also, Texas recovered this ball at the end of the Cal game, I have no idea what the rule is on how soon you have to recover the ball after a fumble happens, but this is an absurd part of the rule as well. This would have been a much bigger story if the game hadn't ended so late at night. As is, the late night Pac 12 game just gets rolled into the NFL pregame.) 

7. I have no idea what to expect from Florida at Tennessee this weekend.

The Vols have looked downright mediocre through three games, but given how bad Tennessee has been in past years I don't want to criticize them too much. This is the first time Tennessee has been 3-0 in a season since 2004 and the Vols have won nine straight games, which is tied for the second longest winning streak in college football after Alabama. 

Before the season started I predicted Tennessee would beat the Gators 45-10, but when your quarterback can't throw the football it's hard to stay committed to that pick. 

Maybe Tennessee has been saving something on offense, but at some point you become what you are. And I just think Tennessee doesn't have a very good coordinator or a consistent offensive scheme or identity. 

That still might be enough to beat Florida -- which will be starting a brand new quarterback now that Luke Del Rio is injured -- but I can't help but feel like someone this year is going to beat Tennessee by 35 points in a total toss-up game.

Will it be Florida?

I hope not.

But I've been hoping Florida wouldn't beat Tennessee for 11 years without much success.  

8. Let's discuss Texas A&M and Auburn.

I'll start with Auburn. 

Everything about Auburn's offense totally baffles me. After Auburn nearly won the national title in 2014 I would have bet my life savings on Gus Malzahn having Auburn great on offense for years to come. 

So I'm completely flabbergasted by what we've seen. Auburn has now lost seven straight home games against FBS competition. That's totally unheard of, even for Gene Chizik. But it's not just the fact that Auburn's losing, it's that their defense is now fixed and their offense is awful.  

The only hypothesis I have is that we completely underrated Nick Marshall at quarterback. We all knew how good Cam was, but I think most of us, myself included, saw what Malzahn was able to do with Marshall and incorrectly deduced that he'd be able to do that with just about any quarterback. That is, that Malzahn could make any quarterback, even a bad one, efficient in his offense. 

Three years later it's plainly the case that isn't true.

And it's hard to see how the Gus Bus keeps his job if Auburn loses to LSU this weekend. (To be fair, it's also hard to see how Les keeps his job if LSU loses at Auburn. This weekend on the Plains is kind of a loser goes home battle. The other one makes a run at Bobby Petrino. So, come to think of it, should both LSU and Auburn be rooting to lose this game.)

As for Texas A&M, the Aggies are impressing me. Every week they get a bit better on offense. Trevor Knight is progressing and that defense has some major first round. Now we wait and see what's going to happen against Arkansas. And neither I, nor you, nor anyone on either of these coaching staffs or teams has any idea what the hell will happen in this game.

I can't wait.  

9. Let's talk about Art Briles for a minute here.

Art Briles was at the Baylor-Rice game on Friday night when the Rice band decided to make fun of Baylor's handling of its Title IX issues. (I have no problem with "insensitive" band displays, but I always do think it's funny when band people seem to have no idea that what they're doing might be controversial. You're going to mock a school's response to sexual assault allegations and you didn't see any blowback coming, really? Regardless, I wouldn't apologize if I were the Rice band. You made the decision to do it, roll with it and accept the praise and the criticism. Why do you apologize when you do exactly what you intended to do?)

But back to Art Briles -- how does he compare to Bobby Petrino? Both guys helm insane offensive scoring machines who have, at different times, had off the field issues that have rendered them radioactive.

But what does Petrino teach us? As long as your talent exceeds your problems people will forget about your dark side.  

Just win, baby. 

When Petrino was fired by Arkansas for hiring his mistress, getting into a motorcycle accident, and then lying about all of this to his boss, Western Kentucky hired Petrino the next year. After one year at WKU Petrino was scooped up by Louisville and now every Louisville fan already thinks athletic director Tom Jurich made the greatest hire in human history. 

Petrino had to go to Western Kentucky for one year and serve an additional year outside the limelight before a big school could hire him. I think that's stupid, if a guy is a risk, why is it a better risk at a small school than a big school? The potential consequences are the same if you hire him and it blows up in your face. Just because Petrino was at WKU for a year doesn't protect Louisville if he starts riding around on a Harley with his mistress again. (By the way, this is why Auburn or LSU are both perfect for Petrino, particularly LSU. They don't give a damn what a coach does in his free time so long as he can beat Nick Saban.) 

Show some balls and go hire a guy if you think he's the best option for your school. 

Why wouldn't a big five conference school go hire Briles straight up instead of requiring a year's sabattical in the smaller coaching ranks to "redeem" himself? I would hire Briles it in a heartbeat if I were an AD right now and my coach sucked. The reward far outweighs the risk. Briles hasn't been proven to do anything wrong -- Baylor paid him millions to leave -- and you get one of the top seven or eight coaches in college football. 

This is the definition of buying low and selling high. 

If I were Auburn or LSU I'd already have Art Briles's agent on speed dial. Especially LSU, which hasn't scored any consistent points on offense since Justin Bieber was still in grade school. 

10. How about North Dakota State going on the road and upsetting Iowa?

Just a few days after Kirk Ferentz got an insane contract extension too. 

At least Iowa is an awesome and exciting place to live. 

By the way, with Michigan State and Ohio State posting big road wins over Notre Dame and Oklahoma, can you make the argument that the Big Ten East is a better college football division this year than the SEC West?

There's still quite a bit to be determined -- how good are Texas A&M, Arkansas and LSU, for instance -- but that's not a bad argument right now. 

11. SEC power rankings 1-14:

(I can't believe I keep having to say this, but I rank the teams on every game they've played. YES, I KNOW MISSISSIPPPI STATE BEAT SOUTH CAROLINA. But South Carolina's two wins, at Vanderbilt and East Carolina, are better than Mississippi State's lone win and two losses, South Alabama and LSU. And, unlike most of you, who just look at box scores, I know that LSU dominated that State game for about 55 minutes until Les went Les.

Having said that, I think we've established a clear floor, Vandy and Kentucky are flat out awful football teams. Given that eight of the top nine teams play each other this coming weekend, we should learn a great deal about the top part of the league in six days.)