College Football Awards Week 5 (2017) October 2, 2017

(Note:  All rankings are current AP [week 5] unless otherwise noted.)

COACHES
Wish I were him: Kirby Smart, Georgia

Glad I’m not him: Butch Jones, Tennessee

Lucky guy: Mike Gundy, Oklahoma State

Poor guy: P.J. Fleck, Minnesota

Desperately seeking a wake-up call: Mike Gundy, Oklahoma State

Desperately seeking a P.R. man: Mike Bobo, Colorado State

Desperately seeking sunglasses and a fake beard: Ed Orgeron, LSU

Desperately seeking … anything:  Mike Jinks, Bowling Green

TEAMS
Thought you’d kick butt, you did: Louisville (defeated Murray State 55-10)

Thought you’d kick butt, you didn’t: Florida State (defeated Wake Forest 26-19)

Thought you’d get your butt kicked, you did: Miami (OH) (lost to No. 22 Notre Dame 52-17)

Thought you’d get your butt kicked, you didn’t:  Wake Forest (lost to Florida State 26-19)

Thought you wouldn’t kick butt, you did:  Georgia (defeated Tennessee 45-0)

Dang, they’re good: Alabama

Dang, they’re bad:  San Jose State

Can’t Stand Prosperity:  USC

Did the season start?  North Carolina

Can the season end?  Bowling Green

Can the season never end?  Georgia

GAMES
Play this again:  No. 16 Washington State 30, No. 5 USC 27

Play this again, too:  UCLA 27, Colorado 23

Never play this again: No. 11 Ohio State 56, Rutgers 0

What? Utah State 40, BYU 24

Huh?  New Mexico 49, Air Force 38

Are you kidding me??  Troy 24, No. 25 LSU 21

Oh – my – God:  No. 16 Washington State 30, No. 5 USC 27

NEXT WEEK

(rankings are current AP (post-week 4, pre-week 5)
Ticket to die for:  No. 23 West Virginia @ No. 8 TCU: either that, or No. 1 Alabama @ Texas A&M?

Best non-Power Five vs. Power Five  matchup: Eastern Michigan @ Kentucky

Best non-Power Five matchup: Colorado State @ Utah State

Upset alert: No. 5 Georgia @ Vanderbilt  also:  Maryland @ No. 10 Ohio State

Must win: No. 17 Louisville @ No. 24 NC State

Offensive explosion: No. 23 West Virginia @ No. 8 TCU

Defensive struggle: LSU @ No. 21 Florida

Great game no one is talking about: Arkansas @ South Carolina  also:  Duke @ Virginia

Intriguing coaching matchup:  Jeff Brohm of Purdue vs. P.J. Fleck of Minnesota

Who’s bringing the body bags? No. 19 San Diego State @ UNLV

Why are they playing? Charleston Southern @ Indiana

Plenty of good seats remaining: Georgia State @ Coastal Carolina

They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?  Missouri @ Kentucky

Week 5 Take-aways:

There were so few upsets this week that I had to scape near the bottom of the barrel in order to fill in all four degrees of upset slot, and even then I barely made it.  However, similar to last week, there were lots of near-misses.  Unlike last week, however, there were few near-misses of major consequences.  Nevertheless, to wit:

Northwestern has unexpectedly struggled this year, yet for a good portion of the game actually led formidable Wisconsin, before the Badgers eventually came back and beat the Wildcats, 33-24.  Still, given how weak the Wildcats have seemed up until now, such a loss to such a strong team is hardly disgraceful.

Florida State had to struggle to beat lowly Wake Forest 26-19, much like Louisville had to do last year to beat the Demon Deacons.  Thus, Wake Forest remains one of the most enigmatic of teams.  Kentucky, who has proven to be a decent team, only beat Eastern Michigan 24-20.  To be sure, part of the reason is that the Eagles are no longer a gutter team.  In case you forgot, they were actually a bowl-bound team last year.  No, that was not a dream.

Lowly Charlotte almost earned their first “W” of the year (of the program?) before just missing out at the end to gradually-improving Florida International.  In case you have forgotten, Butch Davis is now the Panthers’ head coach, so that would explain the improvement.  Meanwhile, it has been established that Ohio U is a decent team.  Under Frank Solich’s leadership, they contend perennially for the MAC title.  How then does one explain THIS?  By “this,” I mean A) beating UMass by only eight points, and B), allowing the Minutemen to score 50 points on the Bobcats.  Yes, the score was 58-50.  Try not to overthink this, or you too will be sucked into a quandary vortex.

One of the most interesting studies in uniform contrast was the Oklahoma State at Texas Tech game.  The Cowboys wore matte-black helmets with chrome-silver grilles, along with trendy, gray pants.  Meanwhile, the Red Raiders, who have been associated with black helmets for 15+ years, wore white helmets with a plain-looking “TT” logo, red jerseys, and white pants with traditional red-black striping.  The contrast was thus the trendy vs. traditional look, which was all the more intriguing since, from what I surmise after looking over things on The Helmet Project, Texas Tech chose this evening, for some reason, to wear throwback unis from ca. 1974:  weird.

Speaking of weird, “body bag games,” so-called because of the gross mis-matches on paper, are supposed to be ‘gimme’ games for the heavily favored team.  Apparently Troy never got that memo when they ventured into Baton Rouge to take on the Bayou Bengals.  That’s right, the Trojans upset the Tigers – again, in Death Valley – 24-21.  Coach Orgeron’s backside, meet chair that overnight just got really hot.

Speaking of hot seats, after Tennessee’s historically embarrassing loss to Georgia at home, Butch Jones’ hot seat has reached the most extreme of levels of hot, colloquially known as the “ejection seat”.  We all know that at this rate, it’s just a matter of time, folks.