THE MAIN CHARACTER, Week 6: Hey everybody, Alabama lost

Welcome to the weekly college football wrapup that recognizes this sport is about nothing but feelings, primarily about enjoying the bad ones suffered by people besides you. It’s nothing but feelings, all the way down. Made-up polls determine which …

Welcome to the weekly college football wrapup that recognizes this sport is about nothing but feelings, primarily about enjoying the bad ones suffered by people besides you.

It’s nothing but feelings, all the way down. Made-up polls determine which teams get the most attention and best postseason invites. Friendship clubs founded 100 years ago determine which teams get to call themselves “powers.” Recruiting is about the feelings of 17-year-old boys, and even head coaches can vanish because some booster gifted the wrong color BMW.

So the college football internet is a potent stew. One does not watch one’s team win and then log off. No. One must maximize the advantage, storming rivals whose teams did not win, because the actually impactful Feelings Market never stops fluctuating. And if one’s team loses, there’s always punching down on somebody who had a worse weekend. Almost always.

Stream live college football games every week this season from conferences across the country on ESPN+.

Let’s see which of this week’s cast members earned MAIN CHARACTER honors. Yet again, we’re able to say this season is loaded with contestants, even though the choice was quite easy this time around.

LSU

In 2010, Auburn won the BCS Championship. Head coach Gene Chizik then went 11-14 before being fired, the quickest post-championship ejection in the sport’s modern history.

In 2019, LSU won the College Football Playoff. Ed Orgeron’s program is now 8-8 since then, losing 42-21 at Kentucky and staring down as many as five more losses this season.

Making matters even stranger: Chizik’s championship team was basically Cam Newton and little else, with only one other player (DT Nick Fairley) being picked in the subsequent NFL Draft’s first six rounds. Orgeron’s team, however, was far more than just Joe Burrow. LSU has been the country’s No. 5 recruiter over the last four years. Despite Orgeron’s volatile résumé, few would’ve guessed this program would’ve reached the following status this quickly:

Searching Chizik’s name online reveals everyone is making this connection, but it gets even worse than that, since the SEC Network kinda has to talk about Coach O’s job, which means SEC Network analyst Chizik kinda has to weigh in.

 

Auburn

Chizik’s former team tried hard against new No. 1 Georgia.

UConn-UMass

The battle for the title of worst team in FBS was also a guarantee one of these downtrodden programs would get a dub. And here’s the big secret about rubbernecking at horrible football: at the end of every single game, even the worst one on TV all year, you get to see people feel really happy.

 

BYU

The No. 10 Cougars lost at home to 2-3 rival Boise State, and goodness hecking gracious, were the locals unhappy.

Because BYU lacks conference bowl tie-ins (for at least another couple years or so), one loss actually is a big deal. The Cougars had an excellent shot at a New Year’s Six bowl like the Fiesta, but are now likely to plummet all the way to the December 18 Independence Bowl against a Conference USA team in Shreveport.

 

North Carolina

The Heels insist on remaining a contender for the title of 2021’s most overrated team, falling from preseason No. 10 to 3-3. The latest loss was by 10 to Florida State, a team so challenged, it’s appeared in every edition of the Main Character so far this year. But actually, this is your fault. You clicked on a website affiliated with newspapers, the things that placed Mack Brown’s poor Heels on such a precarious pinnacle to begin with.

 

Penn State

The Nittany Lions are also in the Auburn Club of teams that tried hard (against new No. 2 Iowa) and didn’t embarrass themselves much, but still lost games everyone saw.

 

Nebraska

What a journey for the Huskers. This venture started with chuckling about how bad they looked against Illinois, but they’ve become the country’s unluckiest team, just a few bounces away from a 7-0 record and three wins over teams in the current top 10. Computers agree they’re better than a whole lot of one- or two-loss teams. Alas, after losing 32-29 against Michigan, they’re clawing to make a bowl.

 

Arkansas

No one should ever feel bad about the results of an Arkansas-Ole Miss game, because those results are randomized by a computer we cannot locate.

However, the Rebels managed to escalate this season’s Petty Social Media Managers trend to whole new levels. By Thanksgiving weekend, rival athletic department employees are gonna get in a real fistfight because of tweets such as this:

And Lane Kiffin remained college football’s only self-aware Main Character type.

Texas

The Longhorns thundered to a 28-7 lead in Red River’s first quarter.

And then Oklahoma scooted freshman quarterback Caleb Williams into the lineup. He played like a Big 12 quarterback should, stringing plays along and chucking the ball between coverage with little regard for modesty.

And it was back-and-forth … until like 15 things went wrong for Texas all at once.

The capper: Oklahoma attempting to set up a friendly field goal, but Texas’ defense being too accommodating for all that, letting Kennedy Brooks stroll 33 yards for the win.

 

In terms of drama and stakes, it was the best game of the season so far. For a few hours, at least.

Let’s be clear: this was a fantastic Saturday. The noon slot, long the sleepy realm of Big Ten puntfests, was loaded with explosions worthy of Pac-12 After Dark. And the middle shift would’ve been plenty entertaining even if it’d been nothing but Penn State-Iowa.

And then …

The Main Character: Alabama

Hey everybody, Alabama lost. To unranked Texas A&M. A 3-2 team. Coached by Jimbo Fisher, a member of the Former Nick Saban Assistants Association, who’d previously been 0-24 against their dad.

A loss by Nick Saban’s Alabama is a really big deal. Such a big deal, you might remember almost every time it’s happened.

Yeah, we know this likely doesn’t change a whole lot about the season, only fueling Saban’s march back to the SEC Championship Game, and we pity Mississippi State, Tennessee, and LSU for having to be the teams Bama takes this out on.

Don’t let the future ruin the present, though (Saban himself would tell you this). Regardless of whether Bama goes on to win the natty or not, special things happened this weekend.

And now a weird college football season looks way weirder.

So we believe. We believe in possibility. We believe in a future that is fake. But that doesn’t mean we’re wrong to believe. Because all futures are fake until they happen.

And let’s really wallow around in the Aggies’ role here. Before Saturday, Saban was calling A&M a “trap game” opponent, a bizarre way to have to describe a team that’d entered the season ranked No. 6. But after how bland Jimbo Fisher’s bunch had looked through five games, it makes sense Saban was having a hard time working the Tide up into a good froth.

Jimbo has done something kinda unfathomable. He’s not just beaten Saban, making college sports’ wildest contract seem slightly less bonkers …

… he’s delivered on talking trash about Nick Saban.

Five months earlier, Fisher replied to a fan’s question about Saban by saying, “We’re going to beat his ass.” Fisher added, “I wrote a check today that I have to cash.” Saban looked delighted to be handed bulletin-board material:

Nah! In football!

The world is so far off its axis, it doesn’t even make sense to mock the usual Aggie cringe traditions. They might be onto something. How should I know? I don’t know anything. I declared Jimbo Fisher the Main Character just seven days ago.

Let’s part on this, also from a few days prior to kickoff. When the most deranged message board posts are becoming real, it’s time to bunker up.

 

Previously in THE MAIN CHARACTER

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