Cobra Commander

thanks to the ESPN scroll, I am now aware that Ed McCaffrey was the coach at Northern Colorado (he was fired today)

USC/UCLA was in December from 2004-2008 but was in November before that. With USC/Notre Dames in LA taking the last weekend every other year. UCLA not playing football until 1919 means that there have been more Central/Western Michigan games than USC/UCLA, same for New Mexico State/UTEP. We're a few years from finding out if Oklahoma/Texas going to the SEC means that we get Texas/A&M back, and if Oklahoma gets to play LSU or smoke Mizzou after Thanksgiving every year. Depends on how much people actually value Arkansas/Mizzou. Obviously nothing will match Border War for the sheer amount of edgy chuds using Civil War references to talk about the games.

with the amount of flopping, do we need incentive for fake head injury flopping? even if they're playing in a desert and they need to rest because it's a million degrees every day and all.. as for the Iranian team... is singing the national anthem a widespread international thing?

the stoppage times so far Qatar/Ecuador: 5 minutes first half, 5 minutes second half (6 minutes each half) England/Iran: 14 fucking minutes first half, 10 minutes second half (second half ended at 90+14) Senegal/Netherlands: 2 minutes first half, 8 minutes second half (second half ended at 90+11) USA/Wales: 4 minutes first half, 9 minutes second half (second half ended at 90+11) So Friday's USA/England is when we find out how much of England/Iran was England being good, how much was Iran's team planning to mass-defect as soon as the tournament ends and how much was Iran's GK going out quickly today.

while it's nice that the US/Wales referee had a cousin call in a favor from the Qatari government.. having every match add 10 minutes of stoppage time isn't exactly great action.

The Iron Bowl was played between November 26th and December 4th from 1948 to 1992. So the SEC title game directly got that game bumped up. Then it got bumped to 4th Saturday in 2007. Reading Wikipedia, there was a period of time when the Border War was played outside of November once the Big 12 started (like in 1997 when the Border War was played on September 13th so that Mizzou closed the year with Baylor and KU closed with Texas) but it drifted back to November by 2004/2006. Army/Navy was being played on the same day as other games for awhile, the last November Army/Navy game was 1983 in Pasadena and it moved from first Saturday to 2nd Saturday in 2009. Looking at the 'Official Collegiate Football Guide' for 1972 ( https://archive.org/details/official-collegiate-football-guide-1972-c ) and here's how the schedule broke down back in the old days On Thanksgiving: Nebraska/Oklahoma, Texas/Texas A&M Last Saturday of November: Arizona/Arizona State, Clemson/SC, Florida/LSU, Harvard/Yale, Iowa/Illinois, Miami/Maryland, Egg Bowl, Border War, UNC/East Carolina, Ohio State/Michigan, Oklahoma State/Iowa State, Penn State/Pitt, Purdue/Indiana, Rice/TCU, SMU/Baylor, Tennessee/Kentucky, Texas Tech/Arkansas, Wisconsin/Minnesota Then the first Saturday of December: Iron Bowl, Baylor/Rice, Boston College/Holy Cross, Florida/Miami, Georgia/Georgia Tech, Hawaii/Stanford, Army/Navy, Bedlam, San Diego State/Iowa State, USC/Notre Dame, TCU/SMU, Tulane/LSU, and Vandy/Tennessee. With a Florida/UNC game scheduled for December 9th, 1972 in Jacksonville for some reason. Conference title games probably condensed the end of year rivalry games into the last weekend of November instead of having some of them bleed over to December 2nd.

The least rivalry-ish games this week Leaving Big 12 aside since there’s a reason why Bedlam isn’t played one week before their title game.. Tulane vs Cincy and Fresno State vs Wyoming on Friday. Georgia State/Marshall, Coastal Carolina/James Madison, Western Kentucky/Florida Atlantic, Middle Tennessee State/Florida International, Old Dominion/South Alabama, Troy/Arkansas State, UAB/Louisiana Tech, Memphis/SMU, Southern Miss/LA Monroe, Texas State/LA Lafayette, App State/GA Southern Cincy is about to go to the Big 12 so maybe they get to play WV in Rivalry Week soon. Not sure if Tulane has a natural rival aside from apathy. In the future, Rice/Tulane in a rivalry of schools that used to be much more prestigious in football. I think the closest school to Wyoming in the MWC is Colorado State. CSU is playing New Mexico this week. There’s 12 Mountain West teams, 8 are playing within their divisions and the rest is Fresno/Wyoming and SDSU/Air Force The Sun Belt is on here over and over. The naturalish geographic rivalries appear to be: South Alabama/Troy, Georgia State/Georgia Southern, James Madison/Old Dominion, LA Lafayette/LA Monroe, then the other 6 are on their own to figure things out (Coastal, App State, Marshall, Southern Miss, Texas State, Arkansas State) Conference USA is about to lose half the conference. I guess out of the 2023 lineup, Western Kentucky is closest to Middle Tennessee State. Florida Atlantic is leaving. Florida International has no 2023 rivalry partner. Not sure if they’re gonna act like UTEP/Sam Houston is a late November kind of game. North Texas/UTSA makes sense as a 2023 game in the American. Or UTSA/Rice and North Texas/SMU. Or maybe Memphis/Tulane if we’re inventing rivalries based on the quality of local food/music. For all we know, CUSA won’t exist for football soon. Of future moves, it wouldn’t surprise me if the Liberty Fightin Falwells jump from CUSA quickly. There’s probably good reasons why they didn’t go Sun Belt. But who’s their rival anyways? I guess we could get Charlotte/ECU late in the season soon. UAB in the American isn’t actually close to other conference members. Temple is sorta on their own island as long as someone insists they keep playing FBS football. Now that being covered… complaints about which games are being played on Saturday as opposed to Friday. (Kidding) Although the whole “stacking the weekend after Thanksgiving with rivalry games” concept isn’t as old as it seems because if you look at old schedules, you’ll see examples of current rivalry games played on different weeks, and maybe conference title games reign in some of the temptation to play Hawaii in non-conference on the first Saturday of December.

the Chiefs offense is basically a bunch of filler until the time that Mahomes and/or Kelce decide to carry the team down the field

with the World Class Tales from the Territories coming up on Tuesday, out of the territories with a lot of TV on the WWE Network, I haven't liked World Class as much as Mid-South/JCP, which is a high bar... so what era of World Class has the best TV?

he hid in the stadium overnight so he didn't have to pay for two tickets

well, the good news for the Broncos is that there's 7 games left so they haven't been mathematically eliminated from the division yet

imagine that Cowboys/Vikings double-kick scenario in a game that was closer than 20-3

and we inch closer to the Patriots making it to the playoffs

okay, Strongbow splashing Andre into buttbumping Brody was a neat spot

also Tony's love of tournaments might be a sign that he was sending money to Oliver Kopp during the late 90s

love how Tony takes the TNM7 card approach to having lots of matches on his big shows

also the HIAC match had the stip that the winner was facing Bret at Survivor Series going back to Summerslam, there was a bit of a "no way out of Bret winning the title" stip with Bret promising to never wrestle in the US again if he didn't win the title not sure if anybody who'd know has told what the plan was with Austin post-Summerslam 97 if he didn't get injured. I know there's the scenarios with four way matches in December 97 and the such and the general concept of Bret/Austin at WM14.

guessing that the Bills stadium would need to be hit by a comet for them to consider playing an NFL game at the UB Stadium as an emergency (if UB was open this weekend), especially if Syracuse (despite the Saturday basketball) wasn't gonna beat out Detroit.

No idea when the Bills were expecting to leave town if they didn’t leave yesterday.

"we're dropping field turf, the new playing surface at our stadium will be shredded glass"

time to combine 4 matches into one Jeff Jarrett, Jay Lethal, Luchasaurus, Chris Jericho, Sammy Guevara, Britt Baker vs Darby Allin, Sting, Jungle Boy, Claudio, Bryan Danielson, Saraya in.... the Chamber of Horrors

Syracuse basketball has a Saturday night home game. So how long would it take them to get the building from basketball alignment to football alignment?

if they do yet another AEW "swerve" and the Firm realigns with MJF, then MJF taking them out last night like it's a shitty action movie could be viewed a little differently

How much alcohol would need to be consumed to create a good Lucha knockoff of the Freebirds. I’m sure that the fans wouldn’t mind if Los Freebirds wore Confederate flag gear because hey it’s Mexico. And what’s the Mexican equivalent of Atlanta?

Got some announcer news in KC: Eisenberg had been the PBP radio voice of the Royals AAA team (the Omaha Storm Chasers) and had filled in on the Mets radio network a few times in 2022