Duff’d It! Rankings and Other Accolades: THE CHAOS HAS BEGUN

The Duff’d It! Rankings committee ended up tailgating a bit too hard on Thursday and only remembers the Georgia Tech-Clemson game in bits and pieces. Looking at the game recaps, though, we think we ended up better off than those of you who were sober for it. Also, to those of you who stayed sober during that game: how did you manage to stay sober for all of that my god

Fortunately, the rest of week 4 brought ALL OF THE FUN AND CHAOS! Overranked teams getting blown up on the road! Notre Dame losing to Duke! A “loser leaves the SEC” matchup, which, oh man, that was at least a four star match right there. It even had Kennesaw State make an impact! We know SB Nation college football editor and KSU alum Jason Kirk had to have been proud.

(If any of y’all are wondering where the Duff’d It! Rankings fit in all of this, we’re the Auburn girl catching kickoffs with her face.)

Duff’d It! Rankings, Week 4

5. The entire dang state of Georgia. Man, Georgia, what the hell happened? You spotted Ole Miss a 17 point lead, which is almost where you’d want them. Everyone knows the Rebels can’t hold a three score lead! But then y’all let it get out to three, then four, then.... all the way to 45 points before you found the endzone? DANG IT DAWGS HOW COULD YOU GIVE UP SO MANY POINTS TO OLE MISS FIRE BOBO GO TO COLORADO STATE HIRE HIM BACK AND FIRE HIM AGAIN

And oh no, Georgia Tech, don’t think you can slink away from the rankings even though you were ten point home dogs. Everyone saw what y’all did against Clemson. Or what y’all didn’t do, which was really anything. Well, there was that one thing, but we’ll get to that later.

Oh, oh, oh, and Georgia Southern got blown out by Western Michigan in Kalamazoo. PJ Fleck is rowing the boat up and down Eagle Creek; also it’s Bronco Creek now.

Georgia State did not play this weekend, but they’re 0-3 and also Georgia State, so.

4. Notre Dame. Holy crap, Irish, you lost to Duke! And not even one of the actually pretty good Duke teams from the past few years either; no, this is Duke who lost by double digits to Wake Forest and Northwestern. Luckily, the staid Irish reacted calmly and I’m just kidding they scapegoated the hell out of Brian van Gorder. At least now he’ll have all his time to dedicate to his true passion.

3. Florida. Last week Florida cornerback Quincy Wilson guaranteed a victory over Tennessee by making an obscure reference to a TV show that aired before he was born, and whose origin he was evidently unaware of, likely for that reason. In response, trucks were pulled, ducks were fed, and, oh yeah, the Vols scored 35 points in the second half to end their 11 year losing streak versus the Gators. Seriously, the last time it happened Facebook was still called “thefacebook”.

(Florida also had a hell of a time with fair catches. Might wanna look into that, Gators.)

2. Michigan State. Yeah, Mark Dantonio, getting flattened at home by Wisconsin sucks. But if things continue to go south, we know you’ll stick around. Sure, we hear there’s a new head coach position that just opened up but - uh, hey, Coach Dantonio? Where’d you go?

1. LSU. Wait, no, Auburn. Wait, okay, yeah, LSU. The Fired Bowl: two coaches enter, one coach leaves, and boy oh boy did the 2016 edition deliver on that and so much more. You know a game involving the words “fired” and “Les Miles” would have a finish that defied time and logic, and indeed it ended on a play that may have torn a hole in the space-time continuum. LSU won! Except they didn’t. It was a quantum finish, and the damn scientist refs changed the outcome by measuring it.

When you play in the Fired Bowl the punishment for losing is, of course, getting fired. Les Miles was no doubt aware of this heading into Saturday, having cheated death once last season and and having been living on borrowed time likely a good while before then. Miles is in many ways a victim of his early successes at LSU, who seemingly refused to evolve his strategies after two BCS championship game appearances, the first being a victory. For us, we’re not worried on losing out on Miles’ trademark brand of insanity, for he will surely have found a new home in six months’ time; meanwhile the Tigers will soldier on with a heapin’ helpin’ of DACOACHO.

Honorable mention: Oregon. The Ducks got hyped for their game against Colorado by dressing up like actual ducks, or rather their actual duck mascot. Which actually sounds pretty cool! Can you imagine a school like Nebraska or USC doing something like this? I’d probably be neat. (Not Georgia Tech, though. We don’t want to give Russell any ideas.) Anyway, none of that helped them to beat Colorado. Oregon wanted to tap into the powers of Puddles, but they accidentally tapped Roboduck instead.

Bozo of the week: Ken Starr. No, Ken, we don’t want to read the book on your time at Baylor, and we don’t want to hear your thoughts on preventing sexual assault. We just want you to go away forever. Sh. Shhh. Stop talking.

ACC Conference Play of the Week

Despite falling squarely into the millennial age range, we’re not exactly hip to the emoji phenomenon. Nonetheless, here is our attempt to illustrate our reactions to this play using them:

Georgia Tech football: it’ll make you wish you were drunk.

We know, Hayden Hurst. You’ve seen tons of football players hurdling over defenders and it looked fun, and you wanted to try it for yourself. Unfortunately, Chris Westry was there, waiting to give you a spinebuster. (Seriously, all this needs is a Jim Ross call to make it perfect. “As god as my witness, he is broken in half!”)

McCaffrey Watch

26 carries for 138 yards, 2 catches for 13 yards, and one kick return for 14 yards as Stanford notched a 22-13 bad beat victory with a FAT GUY TOUCHDOWN at the buzzer. Look, man, we started this section after the records you set last year and the things you did to Iowa in the Rose Bowl, some of which can’t be discussed on broadcast television. You gotta step it up. This week you get a Friday night game against #10 Washington. This is your chance, Christian. Do something amazing.

McCaffrey total yardage counter: 635

Employee of the Month of the Week

Matthew O'Haren-USA TODAY Sports

Joey “Big Toe” Julius, K, Penn State

We’re suspending our normal Employee of the Month of the Week judging criteria to recognize Julius because 1) they’re our rules and we can do what we want, and 2) dear lord, look at this large man and realize he will run down half the field and hit you with his entire 270 pounds if he has to. Jabrill Peppers (#5 for Michigan) was smart to move out of the way of the bison-man headed towards him, but Jourdan Lewis was not so lucky: