Monday, September 21, 2015 – The Monday Morning After College Football Awards.

Sculpture at Bush Library – 2015

Today’s awards are brought to you by the word “enervate.”

Assessment before Instruction – our vocabulary word is “enervate.” It means to deprive of force or strength; destroy the vigor.” So many teams were enervated this weekend.

So here are my awards for Week Three of College Football Season.

The Keep Calm and Keep Practicing Award goes to the Texas Aggies. In some cultures, such as East Montgomery County, this award is known as the “That Dog Ain’t Ready to Hunt” Award. This does not refer to Miss Reveille as she is from the herding group and also does not like get her nails messed up.

To the Texas Tech Red Raiders – I award the Shredded Pork with Extra Bacon Bits Award for Kliff Kingsbury kicking some koach’s pig butt with his komments. Way to go, Kliff.

In the Hippie Bowl between the school formerly known as Berkley and THE University I give the award for “Close, But to the Right” to THE University for the missed extra point that would have tied the game and possibility sent it to OT. You did not know Cal once known as Berkley? I suppose all those protesters from the sixties resulted in the name change.

The original name University of California was frequently shortened to California or Cal. UC Berkeley’s athletic teams date to this time and so are referred to as the California Golden Bears, Cal Bears, or just Cal. Today, University of California refers to a statewide school system. Referring to the University of California, Berkeley as UCB or University of California at Berkeley is discouraged and the domain name is berkeley.edu. Moreover, the term “Cal Berkeley” is not a correct reference to the school, but is occasionally used. Berkeley is unaffiliated with the Berklee College of Music or Berkeley College.

Note: Any grammatical errors in the preceding paragraph come from Wikipedia.

THE University is also awarded The Many Bright Burnt Orange Lights for showing life and a near comeback. The interval of the loss was one point.

The Interval Award is shared by TCU and Ohio State. One would think the #1 and #2/3 team could have a larger interval between the score when playing lesser teams. The Committee is watching.

BYOB – The Bring Your Own Bench Award goes to Auburn. This is awarded to the team that does not want to sit on the benches provided. Auburn proposed to bring its own cooling benches. When told that there was not enough power in Tiger Stadium, Auburn staff proposed to bring their own generators. Finally the Baton Rouge Fire Marshall said, “NO! You can sit on the same benches as the LSU team does.” Does Auburn have heated benches for the winter time?

The Great Defense, Uncle Will Award goes to the LSU Tigers for scoring on the second play of the ball game.

My Favorite Player Name Award – goes to Malachi Dupree on the LSU team. Now ain’t that a cultural masterpiece of confusion?

The Hindenburg Award for “OH THE HUMANITY!” goes to Alabama and their fans. I am not sure the Tide ever rolled in. Ole Miss enervated the Tide. Don’t start singing Bon voyage to you, new Titanic just yet. There could be a tsunami waiting for somebody.

The final award is the comparison between the Auburn Tiger and the LSU Tiger as portrayed by the half-time PR clip. One is stuffed into a mascot uniform and one is a live tiger that scares you even on TV.

The Stuffed Tiger Award goes to the LSU Tigers. According to the PR clip, the Auburn Tiger originated from Oliver Goldsmith’s poem The Deserted Village. “Sweet Auburn, loveliest village on the plain, …” It takes you about 100 or more lines to “where crouching tigers wait hapless prey.”

The LSU Tigers take their name from the Louisiana Infantry men known as Louisiana Tigers for their tenacity and ferociousness during battle.

Not mentioned in the video, but clearly noticeable in the photograph to anyone who knows their history or has seen Gone With the Wind, were the uniforms of the Louisiana Infantry. They were known for their red head gear, blue tops and striped pants. Company B of the Tigers wore distinctive uniforms similar to the French zouave, with straw hats or red cloth fezzes, blue-striped chasseur-style pants, and short dark blue jackets with red lacing or tombeaux. You can read more about the Louisiana Infantry on Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9th_Louisiana_Infantry

So Auburn takes its Tiger name from a long, dopy, whimpey poem from the 1770’s read by American Literature majors only. Auburn has a stuffed Tiger.

LSU takes its Tiger name from a tenacious fighting unit from the 1860’s and has one of the most bad ass mascots in all of college football that eats stuff tigers for dessert. No wonder Auburn was enervated.