Posted 6:11 PM by Alfred

Waccin’ It - Week 1 in the Western Athletic Conference

Howdy pards. Wacky football action kicked off in your fave football conference. The one whose proud history and unparalleled excellence leaves you gasping for breath on a weekly basis.

I won’t even explain myself there. You should (don’t) know the sordid history. Ok I’ll explain a little bit. The WAC is, how do you say, ragtag? Reassembled annually? The dregs of modern NCAA 1-A society? A band of misfits thrown together to tackle the perennial grand poobahs of college football royalty? Yeah, sure, something like that.

Anyway, let’s break the week down, starting with the University of Hawaii, my better half’s alma mater and the home team.

University of Hawaii at Alabama - LOST

UH put up a damn good fight against a pretty game looking Bama squad, IN Alabama at the opening of their newly renovated and now packing over 90K stadium. They only lost by a touchdown, and the spread was, what, 17? Not bad, not bad at all, and a couple turnovers avoided, couple calls going the other way, hey, who knows, but the only real revisions of history come if you manage to take over the government, er, a government, and put an iron mask on and crush booweevils under your steel toed boot. Um, sidetracked.

Boise State vs. Sacramento St. – WON

Wow. Dan Hawkins must be pining for the fjords like a mofo right about now. After having jumped ship to the, admittedly, bigger budget, bigger name, bigger job at Colorado, his buffaloes got beat by 1-AA Montana State in his first game as head coach. OUCH. Anyway, Boise St. should be in good hands, cuz new coach whuthisname has been with the program like forevah, so it should be biz as uzhe (yoooj?), and this was a gimme game (against 1AA) on the blue field, but time will tell if Boise continues to be the class of the WAC (ding ding) or if Fresno state, UH, or Nevada will be able to claw them down off their perch at the highest level of the trash heap.

New Mexico State vs. Southeast Louisiana – WON

Wow. Nice work. This was New Mexico state’s first win in over a year, (they snapped the currently longest division 1A streak) as they did the big oh-fer last year. not sure what the story is with southeast Louisiana, but they must suck pretty bad (hey, they’re 1AA). For NMSU, a win is a win, even if it’s against the Sacred Heart Women’s lacrosse squad. Nice won, boys.

Fresno State at Nevada – WON / LOST

The only WAC intra-conference game of the week, these two squads are considered basically 2nd echelon under Boise state, the (pretty much) undisputed favorite to win the conference again. Either team could have won & it wouldn’t have been any kind of huge upset. Fresno pulled it out, so, hey, hats off. Pat Hill always seems to have his boys ready for war, so they could be dangerous this year. Both these teams should actually have decent years, along with UH and possibly Louisiana Tech (despite the thrashing by Nebraska), but time will tell, as it always does (except with Joan Collins).

Those were the main games of interest in my mind, NMSU only because of the losing streak snapped. San Jose State got beat at home (although it was pretty close) by PAC10 team Washington (who are the crap of the PAC10, at least apparently) Utah State got crushed at Wyoming, Nebraska demolished Louisiana Tech in Louisiana, and Idaho went to East Lansing and lost to Michigan State by only 10 points, which actually could almost be considered an odd type of unsatisfying victory.

So rest assured, the WAC still sucks. They went 2-5 against the non-WAC, but the two wins were against 1AA competition. Let’s see if anything can be done about all this. Until next week, then.

An abridged version of this idiocy appears in blogritics' weekly NCAA Tailgate Cleanup

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