Starting 11: Seeing Crimson

On Saturday, I got Comcasted. Chances are, if you pay Comcast for anything -- I pay them almost $3,000 a year for cable, two DVRs, internet and home phone -- you've been Comcasted too. You know the feeling, something isn't working and it's impossible to get them to take care of it. In past years, my wife and I would literally fight over who had to call Comcast to rectify an error.

But this time it was personal, this time their incompetence cost me watching my team play on pay-per-view.

On Friday evening, I ordered the Tennessee's game against Ohio. The game was supposed to cost $24.95 since I was ordering it a day in advance. It cost $29.95, according to the ordering screen. So be it. no big deal. If Comcast only screws me out of $5, I consider it a blessing. I watched college football games all day, the prelude to one of the 12 chances I'll have all season to watch my team play.

Then, came kickoff of Tennessee and Ohio, nothing.

There was nothing.

To say I was furious does the word injustice.

Every sports fan knows the feeling. Especially those with Comcast. You're sitting in front of the television, hitting refresh over and over with the remote and getting nothing in return. Your blood pressure rises, you realize that the kickoff has come and gone. You want to break something, anything. But then you calm yourself and turn into a television doctor, attempting to diagnose the problem.

Initially, of course, you expect that maybe you're making an error. If only.

Because that would be easy to rectify. I went downstairs, turned off my son's Sprout Television Network -- he was watching Zobamafoo, one of the most terrifyingly uncomfortable creations in the history of children's television. He squealed when Dad changed the channel.

Nope, no game there either. The game wasn't anywhere to be found in the Travis household. I sighed, turned on Gamecast, picked up my cell phone and dialed the local Comcast number.

A busy signal.

I called three more times while walking back upstairs. The busy signals continued. Then my cell phone went dead because I forgot to charge it.

On online message boards, University of Tennessee fans came undone, the entire city of Nashville proceeded to rend their garments when Jonathan Crompton threw an interception and we had to follow it on the radio.

What follows is the typical ClayNation Starting 11 with a bonus screed against Comcast mixed in. It's a tragic opera, Madame Butterfly meets Comcast and football.

1. Julio Jones finally scored a touchdown for Alabama on a well-designed trick play in the second quarter against Arkansas. This ends 11 consecutive games without a touchdown for Jones.

Having watched all of Alabama-Arkansas, I'll tell you this: Alabama is the best team in the nation one-third of the way through the football season.

At my wit's end, I sat down on my couch and picked up my Comcast digital phone service to call them. No dial tone.

Yep, my home phone doesn't work either.

2. With Penn State's loss to Iowa, the Big Ten is eliminated from BCS Title contention. Book it. Yeah, yeah Iowa and Michigan haven't lost yet, but they will. And even if neither did, I'm sure they wouldn't get the nod over one-loss teams from the SEC or Big 12. Not to mention Boise State.

By the way, how tough were the Daryll Clark interceptions for Penn State fans to relive after last year's loss? Especially with the gauzy ESPN feature where Clark talked about spending the entire offseason thinking about those mistakes? Then he goes out and does it all over again. Only worse, three interceptions this year and only 12 completions out of 32 attempts. If you're a Penn State fan, what percentage of the blame do you place squarely at ESPN and ABC's feet simply for running this story and getting those quotes from him? 30? 40?

I then walked around to all three phone jacks and checked to make sure the phone was correctly plugged in. It was.

Meet Comcast irony: I can't call Comcast to tell them that the cable isn't working because the telephone I would call them from doesn't work either.

Comcastic!

3. Bobby Petrino required eight police officers to escort him to the locker room during halftime Saturday. Eight! On Twitter, I quipped this was because Arkansas was afraid Petrino might bolt otherwise.

Now, I think we need to start a ClayNation analysis of officers assigned to a coach. Here's the working hypothesis: The more officers, state troopers and the like assigned to your coach, the better job security he has.

Let's keep track of this and see if it holds up.

My inability to order the Tennessee game is the latest issue we've had with Comcast in the past month. Two weeks ago, our cable went out downstairs without warning. I called Comcast. One technician arrived, replaced my DVR, and pronounced the set fixed. Later, I checked the channels.

Yep, Comcast blocked the HD ones.

4. My friend Neville, a 31-year-old Indian man currently living in his parent's basement while he seeks employment, called me this week. "Have you ever considered the latent homosexuality of Southern male football fans?" he asked. "They shake pompons, wear short khaki shorts, and spend all their free time rooting for muscular black men to triumph over other muscular black men."

After the HD channels went out, I called Comcast back again and requested a new technician.

He arrived and fixed the stations.

But now the television remote doesn't work.

5. Gene Chizik has almost won as many college games after four games at Auburn as he won in 24 at Iowa If you ever doubted how much the job impacts the perception of the coach, this is perfect evidence that it does.

By the way, Auburn is 4-0, yet not ranked in the Top 25. How is this possible? Second question: How is Tennessee favored over Auburn this weekend?

I told my wife that the remote wasn't working, but that she had to call Comcast this time. She refused. We've both decided to change the stations by hand because we don't want to call Comcast again.

6. I had several friends who are Kentucky fans heading up for the Florida game. They lost 63-5 last year. On Saturday both of them swore that the Cats had a 20 percent chance of winning this year.

If you've ever questioned what fan base has the most irrationally optimistic fans in America, it's Kentucky. Here's a stat for you, in the Rich Brooks era they are 1-24 against teams in the SEC East not named Vanderbilt.

Last month the alarm company telephoned me to report that when they switched us to digital phone service, Comcast turned off our home alarm. Yep, our alarm hadn't been working for a month.

7. Georgia defensive coordinator Willie Martinez should rename each of his children, A.J. Green.

The Georgia-Arizona State game snuck up on a lot of people. It was on ESPN U, it didn't get a lot of hype, but it was an amazingly competitive game that Green singlehandedly won for the Bulldogs. First, he blocked a short field goal attempt Arizona State that would have given the Sun Devils the lead, and then caught a 36-yard pass on the final drive.

Put it this way, if Green doesn't play for the Bulldogs, they are 1-3 right now. Can you say that about any other receiver in the country, that he's responsible for three wins alone? I don't think so.

You know what you would get if Comcast ran college football? The BCS.

8. How many more ways can Les Miles find to defy probability and win?

Mississippi State had two tries from a football-length outside the goal line to win the game and the Tigers still win? On third down, your safety makes an amazing play and then on fourth down, quarterback Tyson Lee chooses not to extend the football over the goal line on a quarterback keeper. Why? I have no idea. The only possible answer is because he's playing against Miles.

Mississippi State head coach Dan Mullen didn't even seem that surprised that all probabilities ceased to make sense against LSU. After the Chad Jackson punt return for a touchdown -- fielded inside the 10-yard line with an over-the-shoulder catch, Mullen sort of nodded 93 yards later. You could almost see him thinking, "Now I get to see up close and personal what it's like to coach against the luckiest man in America."

I'm waiting for this to happen.

Les Miles strides out to midfield for the overtime coin toss after converting 14 consecutive fourth down plays to tie the game at 38.

"Heads or tails," the ref asks.

"Neither," Miles says.

The stadium goes bonkers.

The ref shrugs his shoulders, "That means if it lands on heads or tails, (insert opponent here) wins the toss."

Miles nods.

Then the ref flips the coin and it lands standing up.



A few years back a Comcast representative memorably told me that my internet wasn't working because, "When it's hot the Internet doesn't work as well." I asked her if that meant the internet never worked in Africa or Florida. "Umm hmm," she said.

9. Is there any conference in America more unpredictable than the Pac 10? And when favorites get beat, how do they get beaten so badly? Cal loses 42-3 to Oregon?

Cal was favored by seven. that's a 46-point swing against the line. That might be the biggest differential relative to expectation that happens this year.

I'm genuinely interested in how this happens. Pac-10 fans please e-mail me and explain this. I don't get it. I could see if upsets happened, but not cataclysmic, Earth-shaking upsets where one team simply gets destroyed.

Much to my relief, I received the link to a pirated feed of the Tennessee-Ohio game via Twitter. So I pulled it up on my computer and watched it there.

10. If I were ranking the top five teams in America, here's my poll: 1. Alabama 2. Texas 3. Florida 4. Boise State. 5. Cincinnati

That's changed since late Saturday night for anyone following me on Twitter. Here's my rationale. To begin, Alabama's dismantling of Virginia Tech is now the single best win by any undefeated team in America. Their body of work is the most impressive and they haven't played a truly close game yet. I think they have to be No. 1.

Regarding Texas and Florida, I think Florida's offensive explosiveness is truly in question. Not to mention that Florida is having to ride Tebow too much. (Was anyone else really uncomfortable with the idea of Tebow screaming to Urban Meyer that he needed to ride him like a horse?) Next, I think Boise has the second best win among the undefeated teams with their beat down of Oregon. That looks a lot better now that Oregon has won three consecutive games.

Finally, Cincinnati, as we've been talking about in the ClayNation column for a couple of weeks, will be favored in every game for the rest of the season. I think they're very under-ranked right now.

Despite checking throughout the entirety of the game, Tennessee-Ohio never came on my television. Right now, I'm calling my Comcast shot, there is going to be a $29.95 charge on my bill for the game that I will have to dispute.

11. Kentucky fan optimism often turns to massive consumptions of bourbon.

Received text from my Kentucky friend Tardio at the end of the first quarter as Florida went up 31-0. "Good things about today's game. A.) It's not raining B.) They undercharged me for a Coke." From my friend Weatherholt, who was also at the game, "Most embarrassing quarter of my life."

At that point, Florid had outscored Kentucky, wait for it, 94-5 in the past five quarters.

At the end of the Texas Tech- Houston game, well after midnight, as I went to turn off my television a notation flickered on my screen, "Tennessee-Ohio is now replaying."

Comcastic!
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Clay Travis is the author of three books. His latest, "On Rocky Top: A Front Row Seat to The End of an Era" chronicles the 2008 Tennessee football season and is on sale now.