August 27, 2019
Good Day Grover Pickers,
As we ease into the season over a long holiday weekend, just 10 picks this week. Nothing too challenging yet, and avoiding all the Thursday/Friday matches.
Gators V Miami Recap
Almost every Grover Picker is tied for first place this week because we only picked one game. Yay for You!
We Grover Pickers are like every football team, pro or college, this week. We have high hopes and we are all undefeated.
Except Miami, Arizona, CHATTABABY, ALL ABOUT THE U, MXKING, R_MONROE12, AND RYAN P R. All of these are already wondering if a one loss team can get into the college playoff.
The rest of us are undefeated!
As for the Florida v Miami game… it was fun and as always America’s Favorite Football Coach, Steve Spurrier, summed it up best for fans of both teams.
The Prediction Game
In the prediction game, like the Grover Picks, nothing that matters ever happens unless someone is able to say, “I told you so.” So I present to you here and now the NFL playoff teams for the upcoming 2019-20 season. This list was developed during a tense, high level meeting at Dolly’s Diner in Princeton, West Virginiain late July.
Among the select committee were 23 of American Football’s top people and several available diner patrons. This list includes:
Two women and two men named Peyton, all 23 years old and all from Knoxville
Kanye
Peter King
Condoleeza Rice
Dolly (owner of the diner, not the singer)
Beano Cook (via The Seance Channel. Call your cable provider today!)
Megan Rapinoe
Peter Dinklage
Cris Collinsworth
Bobby Petrino (plus two leather-jacketed ‘dudes’ and one ‘babe’ from his motorcycle ‘gang’)
Bill Belichik’s nephew Oliver
PROGNOSTIG8R
Dolly (the singer not the diner owner)
Marshawn Lynch
Alan Greenspan
Awkwafina
The Commissioner
After we all shared plates of chicken fried steak, hush puppies and fried flounder followed by a banana cream pie, robust and surprisingly coherent debate ensued.
Presented here is the committee’s unanimous consensus as reached on the 17th ballot and only after we had to put Kanye and Dolly (the diner owner not the singer) at separate ends of the counter.
2019 Grover Picks Predicted NFL Playoff Teams
AFC
Patriots
Steelers
Colts (NOPE)
Chiefs
Jaguars
Bills
NFC
Eagles
Vikings
Falcons
Seahawks
Saints
Giants
Our children and historians will note in the years after 2055 when they study these things that Andrew Luck’s retirement was a surprise even to this committee, although it’s obvious now that Beano had an inkling.
Enjoy the season, even though you now know the outcome. If you have differing opinions, you may take those up with the committee’s PR rep, Kanye.
GAMES OF THE WEEK
We are picking all college games this week because that’s the only choice we have.
Ole Miss at Memphis
In which the SEC loses to a team from America’s Worst City Ever. There are toxic waste dumps in Ohio more pleasant than Memphis. Memphis barbecue is a bigger hoax than Sasquatch. It’s a testament to the innate greatness of Elvis Presley that he could overcome starting his recording career in this ditch of despair. Memphis’ city motto is “Memphis. We Make Newark Look Good.”
Georgia State at Tennessee
A gift for our Vol fans. Maybe. These teams played each other only once before. The Vols won 51-13, but finished that season, 2012, at 5-7. That makes this a meaningless August football game. Good Luck, Vols!
South Carolina v North Carolina
A bitter border war without any bitterness, save for The Commissioner’s ongoing bitterness about South Carolina registered vehicles clogging the roads of Charlotte with incompetence.
We’ll pick this game in honor of Grover Picking Tar Heels CATDADDYTARHEEL and current UNC sophomore LUKE_DAVIS. Do we have any Gamecocks left in the contest?
Duke V Alabama
Alabama is all about excellence.
All. The. Time.
On the field, in the classroom, and on the town after another victory, the Crimson Tide are the greatest example in the history of college football of how coaches, administrators, players, cheerleaders, bands and fans can achieve excellence.
Always.
To disparage this institution or its coach, Nick Saban, is only to point out your own flaws and insecurities. In the bright and wonderful state of Alabama, a season renews this weekend with more joy and pageantry than any other fan base could ever hope to generate.
What about Duke, the stout boys from Durham, New Jersey? Well, even they must be honored to serve as the sacrifice so we may all enjoy the everlasting greatness of Alabama Football.
If you are reading this now, please join me in a heartfelt salute with that famous Bama cheer we all know and love. On the count of three, shout so loud that all the young women on sorority row in Tuscaloosa can giggle with you… One. Two. Three.
“War Eagle!”
Northwestern v Stanford
Northwestern’s acceptance rate in 2019 rose to 8.9% for the class of 2023, up from a record low of 8.4% for the previous class. That is elite.
It’s not Stanford elite. Stanford no longer publishes an acceptance rate. Turns out that so many wealthy families were using the ‘side door’ of fake athletic skill to get their sub-standard students into Stanford that the school no longer has to accept anybody through the front door. If you don’t know if you can get into Stanford, that is how you know you can’t get into Stanford.
In Northwestern’s student paper, the Cardinal are listed as a 7 point favorite over the visiting Wildcats. Meanwhile, at the Stanford Daily, the Cardinal are listed as a favorite “for undisclosed reasons and by an undisclosed margin.” Also: The Leland J. Stanford Marching Band is currently NOT on suspension for 2019.
Boise St. V FSU
In the continuing delightful stuttering of a once proud program, former Group of 5 darling Boise State tries to continue rebuilding against FSU.
If you are a Seminole fan, you are actually concerned. You can’t really know if your team is going to trounce the Broncos, or embarrass themselves in the Gator Bowl in Jacksonville.
It does not help FSU that the Seminoles wear the ugliest uniforms in all of college sports. Winning makes them look better, but losing, or even this current state of bowl ineligibility, reveals the truth. Garnet and gold is a color combination designed by a pack of drunk, blind aardvarks on weekend bender in Myrtle Beach. And not to worry FSU fans any further, but Boise State will be in the Gator Bowl wearing… orange and blue, the colors of righteousness and truth. Have fun, ’Noles.
Georgia V Vanderbilt
All this game is, besides an SEC opener, is a throwback to a time before 1976 when there was an annual game between a professional all-star team and a college all-star team.
Representing the professionals, I give you UGA, a team just two or three plays away from being a National Champion, maybe twice. A team that spends $2milliion per year just to visit high school athletes and ask them to play in Athens.
On the other side, Vandy, the only school in Division 1 without an athletic department that is separate from the university. Football is administered by the Division of Student Life at Vanderbilt, the way one would run an amateur sport among student athletes.
Bless you, Commodores, but Saturday is going to be painful.
Academic Progress
The following list includes the most shocking fact of the young season.
This is an adjusted list showing only the top FBS teams in terms of academic progress for last year. So, these are the schools where students are also athletes and are matriculating at an expected rate. The full list includes the Ivy League teams near the top and a host of small private, earnest institutions that pretend to put athletics into proper perspective, so I’ve removed them from this list to only show actual universities.
Here’s the shocker. Clemson is #3 for academic progress in football and #1 in actually playing football.
Is it possible that Dabo’s boys are also going to class? Is it possible that if you pay a coach $5million to coach amateurs, he can bring out the full potential in these young men both in the classroom and on the field? Could it be that the ideal of college athletics really does work and its greatest current champion is also its actual current champion? Should Clemson consider switching to D3 to align with more culturally relatable schools?
D1 FS Academic Progress Rate For Football (top potential score is 999)
- U.S. Air Force Academy 997
- Northwestern University 996
- Clemson University 992
- Duke University 992
- University of Dayton 992
- U.S. Naval Academy 991
- University of Washington 991
- Vanderbilt University 991
- Boston College 989
- University of Nevada 989
Oregon V Auburn
Apparently the SEC now deems the PAC 12 an acceptable cupcake foe for an opening game. How will the FCS teams meet their budgets now?
Get it together PAC 12! This game feels like a bunch of yoga-loving, granola-eating, jam band-loving, cross-fit dudes in a battle with country strong farm boys who plow the fields with one mule and eat raw chickens they chase and catch in the yard. Vegan is a great diet, unless you are the vegans defending fourth and goal at the one against Auburn. Good luck, Ducks!
Houston V Oklahoma
The Sooners history includes:
7 Heisman winners, including the last two, Baker Mayfield and Kyler Murray
896 all-time wins (8th best)
652 modern era wins (since WWII), most of any school by a wide margin
1,274 games played, but never, not once have they played on a Sunday.
Until this Sunday!*
These two teams averaged a combined 93 points per game last season, and now Dana Holgersen’s haircut is coaching Houston.
Get out the fried chicken and mac and cheese. Brew the tea and find two bottles of scotch for Holgersen. Sunday dinner’s gonna be a hoot!
*Playing amateur football on Sunday should not be construed as ‘Professionalizing’ our wholesome college boys. It’s merely the convenience of television schedules on a holiday weekend celebrating labor in which we watch games featuring unpaid, but not uncompensated, laborers.
Notre Dame V Louisville
It was the only game on Monday so I added it to the picks list, but The Commissioner regrets the decision.
Our sources among the leprechaun-American community have confirmed that this game is boring even for leprechauns.
Andrew Luck
The Colts QB retired. As previously reported here, the Twitter account “Captain Andrew Luck” was a humorous feed in which Andrew Luck was portrayed as a Civil War officer. Each week he would tweet short notes home to his mother, as in a Civil War diary. Here is the entry from last week after the retirement announcement.
JUST ANNOUNCED: Our Commissioner sources have learned that Kanye and Dolly (the singer not the diner owner) are working on a new music collaboration. It’s a contry/rap single with the working title, “Beano Had An Inkling”. Eat that Lil’ Nas X!
Happy Picking!
The Commissioner
The Grover Picks 