Alabama Football: Last slow (and dull) weekend in college football

The Alabama football team takes a rest this weekend. They may not watch much college football.

Alabama football players and fans are still waiting to move past four iterations of week zero in college football. The first ‘week zero’ was a single game, played in the state of Alabama between two FCS teams. The second ‘week zero’ had seven games and two postponements and no FBS teams. In a prelude to the following week, South Alabama took down Southern M.ississippi. The highest-profile teams that played were Memphis, BYU, Army and Navy.  The way Navy played erased any previous high-profile status.

The third of the ‘week zeros’ saw FBS teams swing into action. The five highest-ranked teams who played had little or no actual competition. Who played who does not much matter, but some of the cannon fodder in those games were Missouri State, UTEP and Syracuse. There were four postponed games and four embarrassments in the third ‘week zero.’ The Sun Belt served up three of the embarrassments, dished out by Coastal Carolina, Arkansas State and Louisiana. The state of Kansas might want to join the Pac 12 and skip the 2020 season, with its two big in-state programs losing to Coastal and Arkansas State.

The ACC had an interesting contest between two of its teams. The loser, Florida State continued to show the mediocrity of its program, losing to last season’s, 3-9 Georgia Tech team. FSU can only hope memories fade quickly.

Texas Tech nearly had the most shocking loss of any Big 12 team. Houston Baptist was a failed two-point attempt short of the Red Raiders, losing 35-33. The previous week, the Huskies (yes, Google revealed the Baptists are also Huskies) were pummeled by North Texas, losing by 26 points.

All of the above is proof to an earlier Bama Hammer claim. There is no week one in a CFB season until the Alabama Crimson Tide has a game.

Sadly, the fourth week of ‘zero’ is not much better than what preceded it. The rest of CFB, whomever that may be on a given day, are calling Sept. 18-19, ‘Week 3.’ The Crimson Tide and the rest of the SEC will provide real football on Sept. 26, in ‘Week 4.’

Until then, Alabama football fans will have to settle for less tasty morsels. The best choices are Boston College at Duke; UCF at Georgia Tech and two ranked (possibly over ranked) ACC teams, Miami at Louisville. Four other FBS games have been postponed.

Sept. 26 cannot get here soon enough. We Alabama football fans can then cease being arrogant about what is not happening and return to being arrogant about what is. RTR.