You have already seen my SEC predictions and my national forecasts, so my initial set of college football prognostications for Labor Day weekend is almost complete. There is, however, a final game on the slate that is noteworthy chiefly due to its utter lack of noteworthiness.
I refer, of course, to the national game of disinterest.
For the benefit of those who are new to the site, the national game of disinterest is that college football contest each week which is so bereft of any intrigue, suspense, or other distinguishing characteristics that I refuse on principle to forecast its outcome, as I would not want to have to pay enough attention to it to find out the final score once it was done.
Ladies and gentlemen, the inaugural 2011 national game of disinterest is . . .
All right, seriously? You’re giving me an ACC game on Labor Day night? Not an ACC-SEC interconference clash in the Georgia Dome or under the lights in Sanford Stadium, but a straight-up ACC conference game between teams Georgia Tech fans mistakenly believe I should care enough to be able to place in their proper divisions? No, thanks.
If you’re going to give me an ACC game on Labor Day night, though, could you at least please give me Florida State-Miami, which isn’t much of a rivalry anymore for those of us who neither live in nor care about the Sunshine State, but which at least offers the hope of seeing slatternly cowgirls making their families ashamed of them during commercial bumps?
Apparently not. Apparently, what we deserve, after what felt like the longest hottest offseason of them all, is a Labor Day night barn-burner between a Miami club that is looking the death penalty straight in the face and a Maryland club that is batting its eyelashes at the Big Ten. For crying out loud, we’re being forced to watch an ACC conference game, and it doesn’t even feel like an ACC conference game?
To top it all off, no one we expected to be there is going to be there. The ‘Canes have an unspecified number of ineligible players, while the Terps saw their head coach in waiting quit waiting, canned their conference coach of the year, and hired the most nondescript successor they could find. I mean, are they trying to get me not to watch this game?
Uh-uh. No way. Hall and Oates said it best: I can’t go for that; no can do. This is weak, even by ACC standards, and that is saying something. I’m not picking this game, because I just don’t care who wins.
Coming Soon: Too Much Information.
Go ‘Dawgs!