Eyes on the Enemy: Florida State rival rundown

One of the great, timeless traditions of bye weeks is staying glued to the television, (or iPads or GameStations or whatever you kids are using today) hoping to earn the chance to laugh at the misfortune of others, with no chance of immediate karmic payback for it. Giggling at Miami taking a quick L courtesy of Cajun Fred Flinstone was short-lived and the comedic value of Florida’s loss to Kentucky couldn’t reach its full potential given FSU’s own miscues those weekends.

But a bye week, there lies a true opportunity to be undeservingly petty without the fear of eating crow minutes or hours later. No instead, you get a full buffer week for banter before having to confront your own limitations and insecurities.

And that’s where I come in! Arriving in the middle of the week, armed to the brim with half-recycled jokes, ready to spew my gibberish to the masses.

Let’s get to work.

Clemson

The Tigers were on a bye, which equated out to the fifth hardest game on its schedule. Presumably, Dabo Swinney spent the week at Legoland, trying to wrap his mind around the fact that the buildings and toys were supposed to be bigger than him and he in fact hadn’t been shrunk down by Rick Moranis.

NC State is next on the slate for Clemson, and so if the Tigers really are the new Florida State, that means we’re in store for a big-bellied boy waving his shirt around like a helicopter, word to Petey Pablo. Ryan Finley, the original ACC quarterback crush before Trevor Lawrence and his beautiful locks arrived on-scene, came close to upsetting Clemson last year, with an illegal formation call negating a huge pass to set up first and goal at the end of the game. The next play, Finely was picked off, and the full-on meltdown of NC State, who had led most of the game, was finalized.

You can make an argument for A&M, but likely, this is the toughest game that Clemson has on its schedule, a bit of it offset by the fact that Clemson is home. Knowing how the Tigers play, it’ll be close until they’re suddenly winning by 17 in the final two minutes.

Clemson vs. NC State kicks off at 3:30 p.m. on ESPN, with a spread of 17.5 currently in Clemson’s favor.

Miami

*chef’s kiss* that’s the good stuff.

Wait, wait, I got one more:

Ah wait, spoiler alert! We didn’t even talk about Virginia yet, and we can already start snickering at the fact that after N’Kosi Paris was crowned the new Gino Toretta (I wasn’t born yet when he played, so I have no idea if this is a sneaky burn or a legitimate observation), he’s been sent back to the bench after getting pulled in the loss on Saturday. It had echoes of when Richt pulled Malik Rosier vs. Pittsburgh last season, in the sense that it was a complete panic move that did nothing to prevent his team from collapsing in on itself at the moment when its stock was the highest. That’s for sure not something that always happens to Richt-coached teams, and Miami definitely is going to recover and not drop another meaningful game in the home stretch so that they have the chance to go to their first-ever ACC Championship. (Consider it a favor that we aren’t counting last year.)

The Hurricanes are on a bye this week, with Boston College Fighting Addazios coming after that. Good thing Richt declared Rosier the starter now, so that Parri doesn’t have to spend a whole two weeks thinking about the fact that he got pulled or anything.

Florida

We came this close to being able to live vicariously through both Vanderbilt and Virginia this week, and I felt my SAT score rise up a few points because of it. The Commodores went up early, made Florida look stupid, made Feleipe Franks look exactly the same, and even gave us the priceless gem of football comedy:

But alas, just as they did vs. Florida last year, they blew it, and let Dan Mullen’s kerfuffle with Derek Mason be the motivation they needed to um, not suck I guess. Mullen, the human embodiment of that picture of Darren Rovell playing basketball, has now exceeded expectations for Florida, meaning that he’s met the ridiculously unrealistic expectations of Florida fans, meaning now when they don’t make the Playoff, they’ll spontaneously combust.

LSU, who is responsible for all of this, gave Florida even more reason to be ridiculously confident, seeing as they cleared a pretty decent path for the Gators to make it to Atlanta and sacrificed to satisfy Nick Saban’s bloodlust. Should Florida go into Jacksonville and sneak a win out, they’ll be one Kentucky loss away from being offered up at the altar. Exciting stuff.

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Questions? Comments? Trash talk? Leave ‘em below, and I’ll see y’all at the same time next week.