Did People Play Football Last Weekend?

We were pretty excited about the beginning of college football last week. The problem was that we didn't really get much chance to enjoy it. Hurricane Gustav ended up occupying most of our limited TV time through the weekend, but one of us did make it to Austin for the Texas game (hint: it was Jeff) where the most entertaining moment appears to have been the Vince Young jersey retirement. Have we mentioned that we like Vince Young?

LSU also put on quite a show against a lesser opponent, easily handling last year's Cinderella Appalachian State in Baton Rouge. Herr Gustav then responded with a pounding of Baton Rouge that will suspend the LSU-Troy game until November.

And that's about all we knew before finally having a little bit of time to get online and read some information about opening weekend. And, as always, Pat Forde of ESPN.com proved to be the pick of the mainstream media litter. We particularly enjoyed this seemingly random tidbit:

One Of Them Academic Schools?
The Dash doesn't want to accuse LSU of putting on airs, but what exactly is going on in Baton Rouge when the starting quarterback is Harvard transfer Andrew Hatch (27), new athletic director Joe Alleva (28) came from Duke and new basketball coach Trent Johnson (29) was imported from Stanford?

If Les Miles (30) starts quoting Shakespeare, it will officially be getting weird on the bayou.

That's somewhat amusing.

As for this weekend, UTEP is a potential trap game for the Longhorns. It's on the road and it will be the biggest game in El Paso since they started playing football in El Paso. That means that all 54 UTEP fans will be out in force to try and yell Texas into submission. If the 'Horns come out fired up and bury the Miners it will be an excellent sign for a tough season ahead. Our biggest hope coming into this season, at least in terms of intangibles, was that the team would begin to reflect Will Muschamp's attitude and intensity on the field. It will be absolutely necessary against a slate that could banish even a good team into the Land of Eight and Four.

On the other hand, UTEP lost to Buffalo and therefore probably isn't good enough to give Texas a game even without a high level of intensity from the Longhorns.

We are, however, particularly excited about the fact that the game doesn't start until 9:15, which means we should still be watching Texas football past midnight. That's pretty sweet.