McMurphy’s Law: Looking Ahead to College Football Week 5

Ohio State’s Ryan Day is mad as hell — at Lou Holtz of all people — and he’s not gonna take it anymore.

Oregon’s Dan Lanning was fired up because Team Clicks, the Colorado Buffaloes, were the nation’s media darlings through the first month of the season.

Washington State’s Jake Dickert, who actually has a legit reason to be pissed because his team was left in the scrap heat after the latest round of realignment, is pissed at Lee Corso.

These coaching rants would make an epic Coaches Gone Wild video tape — if (a) we still had videotape and (b) anyone reading this is old enough to remember the original Girls Gone Wild.

Day was mad because Holtz said the Buckeyes weren’t tough. Boo-hoo.

Lanning was tired of the 24/7 Prime coverage (and that was before video surfaced of Sanders’ son, Shilo, telling Oregon before the game “I’ll beat the f*** out of every one of y’all and your coach.” He also said to the Ducks, “Why y’all so little? We finna run through y’all ass.” How did that work out?

Dickert was offended Corso didn’t respect his Cougars and blasted the ESPN legend.

Whether you agree or disagree with their responses, Day, Lanning and Dickert all have something in common with every current — and former — coach on the planet: They will take any real (or imagined) slight or quote and use it as motivation.

Even Georgia’s Kirby Smart will stoop to manufacturing motivation. This summer at SEC media days, South Carolina’s Tonka Hemingway was asked what the toughest road venues were and — heaven forbid — simply didn’t list Georgia.

“People want to question whether or not our fans are elite,” Smart said, referring to Hemingway. “Sounds like Tonka called them out.”

Really? Who knew NIL stood for Name-calling, Idiocy & Lies?

When Gary Patterson was at TCU, he used a Kansas State T-shirt to rally the troops. In 2016, K-State had the audacity to make “2016 Texas State Champions” T-shirts after the Wildcats beat all five Texas opponents, including TCU.

So before the 2017 TCU-KSU game, Patterson displayed the “2016 Texas State Champions” T-shirt in the locker room and probably waved it in front of his team before kickoff like a matador agitating a bull. It worked. TCU won, 26-6.

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While coaches were going wild, out in New Mexico we now have Peegate! Yes, Peegate!

A video surfaced showing New Mexico State quarterback Diego Pavia allegedly urinating on the New Mexico logo inside New Mexico’s practice facility.

While I’ve done my share of investigating reporting in the past, I’m not touching this with … with anything.

Peegate has so many unknowns:

• When did the incident occur (reportedly over the summer)?
• Is it possible Pavia was holding a squirt bottle to mimic peeing (I haven’t examined the video like the Zapruder film, so I can’t tell)?
• Was a crime committed if the facility door was open and Pavia just walked in? (cue George Costanza’s excuse for having sex with the cleaning woman: “Was that wrong? Should I not have done that? I have to plead ignorance on that?”). TMZ is on the case, so I’m sure they’ll get to the bottom of it.

Both schools issued statements basically saying nothing. (I hate to admit it, but I was hoping my inbox had an email from New Mexico that said, "Lobos to Pavia: Urine Big Trouble.)

New Mexico State doesn’t play Saturday and hosts FIU on Wednesday, Nov. 4, on CBS Sports Network in a “pee-votal” Conference USA matchup.

Since the College Football Playoff started in 2014, there are eight teams that currently have a winning record against AP Top 25 teams. Of the eight teams, Oklahoma State is the only one that hasn’t made the College Football Playoff — and it ain't happening this year either. Sorry, Pokes.

The eight schools’ records since ’14 vs. Top 25 opponents entering this weekend:

• Alabama 51-12 (80.9%)
• Ohio State 35-9 (79.5%)
• Clemson 29-12 (70.7%)
• Georgia 32-16 (66.7%)
• Oklahoma 28-14 (66.7%)
• LSU 27-17 (58.7%)
• TCU 27-19 (55.2%)
• Oklahoma State 23-20 (53.4%)

If you’ve gotten this far, thank you for hanging in there.

This week’s dreamy bowl projection is the ReliaQuest Bowl. LSU, coached by former Notre Dame coach Brian Kelly, against Notre Dame.

Yeah, you’re right: it’s too good to be true. There’s no way the SEC — or LSU — would allow this to happen. We can dream at least.

Stop me if you’ve heard this, but Colorado once again was involved in the most-watched game of the week. Even though the Buffs lost big at Oregon, the game still averaged 10 million viewers, according to SportsMediaWatch. That’s three of CU’s four games winning the weekly ratings war and Colorado-Nebraska barely finishing second behind Alabama-Texas.

These numbers are from Nielsen and don’t include Peacock streaming numbers, so NBC is claiming 10.6 million viewers overall, for what it’s worth.

Last week’s top five (all times ET):

• Colorado at Oregon 10.03 million (ABC, 3:30 p.m.)
• Ohio State at Notre Dame 9.98 million (NBC, 7:30 p.m.)
• Florida State at Clemson 6.71 million (ABC, noon)
• Mississippi State at Alabama 4.61 million (CBS, 3:30 p.m.)
• Iowa at Penn State 2.75 million (CBS, 7:30 p.m.)

The good: five teams remain unbeaten against the point spread, each going 4-0 so far: Liberty, Oklahoma, Oregon, Penn State and UNLV. Honorable mention to Rutgers and Syracuse, who each are 3-0-1 vs. the spread.

Now, the bad and the ugly: Vanderbilt is 0-5 against the spread, followed by five 0-4 teams: Illinois, Minnesota, NC State, Troy and UTSA.

Something’s gotta give when Illinois visits Minnesota on Nov. 4.

In this weekend’s matchups of ranked opponents — No. 10 Utah at No. 19 Oregon State, No. 24 Kansas at No. 2 Texas, No. 13 LSU at No. 20 Ole Miss and No. 11 Notre Dame at No. 17 Duke — is there something significant to consider from what’s happened so far this season?

Maybe, maybe not.

But in the nine games between ranked opponents this year, the higher-ranked team is 6-3 straight up and 5-3-1 against the spread (listing Ohio State as -3 vs. Notre Dame).

Also, when the higher-ranked team is at home, they're 4-1 straight-up and against the spread.

Here are the results to date in ranked games:

• No. 8 Florida State (+2 ) 45, No. 5 LSU 24
• No. 11 Texas (+7) 34, No. 3 Alabama 24
• No. 20 Ole Miss (-13) 37, No. 24 Tulane 20
• No. 6 Ohio State (-3) 17, No. 9 Notre Dame 14
• No. 7 Penn State (-14) 31, No. 24 Iowa 0
• No. 10 Oregon (-21) 42, No. 19 Colorado 6
• No. 11 Utah (-3.5) 14, No. 22 UCLA 7
• No. 13 Alabama (-6.5) 24, No. 15 Ole Miss 10
• No. 21 Washington State (+3) 38, No. 14 Oregon State 35

The Golden Bears were routed, 59-32, last week at Washington, but that was deceiving. UW only outgained Cal, 529-502, as the Golden Bears had two turnovers and allowed two non-offensive touchdowns.

Meanwhile, in the desert, Arizona State scared USC but fell, 42-28. Since ASU is not bowl-eligible, USC was the Sun Devils’ Super Bowl and now must regroup against the Golden Bears.

Did I mention ASU may be down to its third, fourth or fifth-string QB? Good luck with that.

Season record (based on BBOC live show best bets): 2-2

In one year from now on Sept. 27, 2024: We step out of the time machine one year from today, and like NBC and Notre Dame, CBS announces it has reached an unprecedented multi-year agreement with a university.

Today, CBS announced it will be known as the Colorado Broadcasting Sanders network. CBS announced the billion-dollar — yes, billion with a B — deal that remains as long as Deion Sanders is Colorado’s coach.

In other news, almost a year to the day that Colorado chancellor Phil DiStefano announced his retirement, Colorado officially announces DiStefano’s replacement: Deion Sanders Jr.

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