THE MAIN CHARACTER, Week 4: The ‘Dabo Swinney without’ meme

Each weekend in college football, there is one main character. The goal is to never be it.

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. The options continue to be extensive, as college football’s comeback season has been a real mess outside of the top couple teams.

Vanderbilt

It takes a lot for a really bad team to draw attention, let alone earn Main Character consideration. Yet in Saturday’s early window, fans far and wide were captivated by a team that’s just here to cash SEC checks.

Three hours later, the Commodores emerged with a narrow victory …

… but I believe they proved their point.

The weekly list of top teams who looked kinda bad

Just gonna include this section every week, if 2021 continues this behavior.

No. 3 Oregon posted a satisfactory final score against the Pac-12’s worst team, but is surely grateful most voters had already gone to bed.

Remember how we all spent years enjoying No. 4 Oklahoma’s total lack of defense? Not so funny now that we have to watch the opposite, huh?

Colorado State — which lost to FCS South Dakota State and Vanderbilt, this week’s Team That Is In This Post Because It’s Even Worse Than Anyone Realized — played No. 5 Iowa basically even for 50 minutes or so.

No. 15 BYU goofed around with USF until the final minutes, but unless I’m missing something, USF fans are much happier about it than BYU fans are angry about it.

The same cannot be said of No. 19 Michigan fans, who watched their team get outgained by a team that’s pretty good, but is still named Rutgers.

Nebraska produced roughly twice as much stuff in every offensive category as No. 20 Michigan State did. Except points. The Spartans produced more of those.

My only note on No. 23 Auburn winning by a deceptively large 10-point margin against Georgia State is that, while in downtown Birmingham all afternoon, I overheard three strangers claim in separate conversations that Auburn had lost. I still don’t think that was inaccurate.

Basically:

Iowa State

Internet forensic report: On Saturday, most neutral parties agreed Cyclones head coach Matt Campbell should’ve left for a bigger job before this season, one in which his team has lost to Iowa again and now to unranked Baylor.

USC

After the Trojans fired Clay Helton, comedy-minded onlookers had been hoping the team’s interim coach (might be Clay Helton again, but who knows) would finish undefeated and force them to reckon with the same choice as always: Keep the really USC guy or go find somebody new for once?

Well, at least part of that is way off the table, now that Oregon State won at USC for the first time since Muhammad Ali was still an amateur boxer.

North Carolina

Georgia Tech beat UNC by 23, largely due to recovering all three of the game’s fumbles, then turning them into 17 pretty easy points. Ok, but still … by 23?

Many strange things are happening in the ACC. But the ACC is always like this, even if a couple teams have covered that up for most of the last 34 years. We’ll get to both of them shortly.

Ohio State

Defeated Akron, but not without some excitement that threatened to ripple far beyond just Columbus.

Minnesota

After Vanderbilt demonstrated one way a really bad team can seduce eyeballs, even-worse team Bowling Green found another.

The Falcons had won all of six FBS games since the end of the 2016 season and hadn’t beaten a Power 5 opponent in almost exactly six years. It gets wilder, because Minnesota entered Saturday with the country’s longest non-conference winning streak, mostly gained by playing teams such as Bowling Green.

 

Florida State

A weekly fixture in this column until … honestly, I dunno if even winning a game or two would get the Noles out of this column.

This time around, they lost to Louisville at home. Mike Norvell now needs to finish 6-2 in order to equal the record that got Willie Taggart fired as FSU head coach.

 

Texas A&M

The Aggies paid Jimbo Fisher one hundred gazillion guaranteed dollars in order to get them over the Alabama hump. That has not happened, and they are now buried beneath the Arkansas hump.

THE MAIN CHARACTER: Dabo Swinney

Speaking of Clemson! The Tigers lost to NC State, are essentially out of the College Football Playoff for the first time since 2014, and might have another loss or two on the schedule.

They’ve also inspired maybe the most ruthless meme party I’ve seen so far this season. I dunno which one of these hit hardest, but the last one is the most spine-tingling.

Previously in THE MAIN CHARACTER

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