Two of the morgues of college football have been located in Palo Alto and Albuquerque. What a tonic Saturday proved to be courtesy of upsets, weirdly by the identical 38-35 score! In both cases, the favorites threw away double-digit second half leads.
The disinterest in football in Stanford football had become so high that former players had dubbed their playing locale to be “The Library” because it was so quiet. When the Odyssey was in attendance at Virginia Tech’s visit last month on a beautiful afternoon, we were appalled at the lack of fannies in attendance.
Yesterday, a solid 6-3 Louisville paid a visit to a woebegone Stanford outfit totally out-of-synch in an NIL era where student athletes have been supplanted by paid merceneries. The Cardinal surprisingly jumped off to a 10-0 over the plural Cardinals. The Cardinals, a 21-point favorite, seemed to restore reality by rebounding to take a 21-13 lead at halftime. 2024 Stanford seemed ready to cave in for the second half. Except the beaten down Stanford team fought back from a 35-21 deficit to tie the game at 35 with 45 seconds left as run-first QB Justin Lansom threw his only pass of the game, a 25-yard TD strike. Louisville inexplicably left Stanford about 6 ticks on the clock with an ill-fated Hail Mary attempt. Normally, no big deal EXCEPT Louisville became guilty of a personal foul on the ensuing play. Then, a Louisville player was offsides on Stanford’s 57-yard field goal attempt. A 52-yard field goal by Emmet Kenney provided a stunning walkoff upset viewed by almost nobody. A real shame since the last 45 seconds were served on a platter from Rod Serling’s Twilight Zone.
Late Saturday evening, before we nodded off, Washington State was seemingly in control over New Mexico 28-14 in the third quarter. Imagine our surprise when we woke up this morning and found out that their wunderkind QB, Devon Dampier, engineered a 38-35 comback over Wazzu and their wunderkind QB, John Mateer.
This was the 5th victory of the season for first-year coach, Bronco Mendenhall. Sadly, a cold night in Albuquerque held down the crowd to an announced 14,000. Which means that at most half that number stuck around for New Mexico’s fourth quarter heroics. Albuquerque has been a football graveyard since they stupidly sheparded Rocky Long out as head man. While non-playoff bowl season has become a joke, a sixth win for New Mexico in Honolulu on November 30rd would provide some meaningful bowl relevance for a school badly in need of all the good vibes thrown in its direction.
In both upsets, all the ingredients existed for a great field storm except for one key element: people.