They might not be able to race past this record
A college football attendance record was established Saturday, and it wasn’t even close. The draw: Tennessee vs. Virginia Tech. Not exactly Ohio State-Michigan, or Alabama-Louisiana State. But it’s safe to stay the football was only part of the attraction.
The game was held at Bristol Motor Speedway, which has a listed capacity of 160,000 for racing, as well as plenty of real estate for tailgating.
For the football, 156,990 showed up, far outdistancing the previous college attendance record of 115,109 when Michigan hosted Notre Dame at Michigan Stadium in 2013.
Michigan Stadium is also known as “The Big House.” So what does that make Bristol? The Humongously Huge House?
Tennessee anticipated the record showing, tweeting a photo earlier in the week of its rather large home field, Neyland Stadium (capacity 102,455), superimposed inside the speedway.
The job of converting the racetrack into a football field was no less imposing.
NASCAR held a Sprint Cup Series race at Bristol on Aug. 21. It took 450 truckloads of rock and sand, 180,000 pounds of silica and rubber, and more than 100,000 square feet of artificial turf to finish off the conversion, according to media reports.
Football had been played at Bristol before. Washington played Philadelphia in an NFL exhibition game in 1961, reportedly drawing a crowd of about 8,500.
And there is another game on Sept. 17: East Tennessee State is using the stadium for its Southern Conference opener against Western Carolina.
The attendance record seems safe for now.
New top Dawg
In Georgia’s uninspiring win over Nicholls, Jacob Eason became the first true freshman to start at quarterback for the Bulldogs since Matthew Stafford 10 years ago.
Eason, who is 6 feet 5, 235 pounds, is the son of former NFL quarterback Tony Eason.
Jacob, from Lake Stevens, Washington, was considered the nation’s top high school senior quarterback last season.
He completed 11 of 20 passes for 204 yards and a touchdown, with an interception, against the Southland Conference’s Colonels, playing ahead of Greyson Lambert, who started Georgia’s opener and also last season.
Rush toward the NFL
One thing that should not have been surprising about Central Michigan’s upset over No. 22 Oklahoma State was the performance of Chippewas quarterback Cooper Rush.
Rush, a senior, was forecast as a top-five NFL pick among quarterbacks in next year’s draft, and he bolstered his stock against the Cowboys even before that Hail Mary heave on what shouldn’t have been the game’s final play.
Rush completed 30 of 42 passes — to 12 different receivers — for 361 yards and four touchdowns, with one interception.
So Oklahoma State Coach Mike Gundy had it right earlier in the week when he said of Rush: “I’ve always been a big fan of the quarterback.”
Well, maybe not so much anymore.
There’s no place like … Kansas?
The next time Kansas is looking for a football coach, it might consider hiring Frank Solich. Because if you can’t beat ’em, hire ’em. Solich never lost to the Jayhawks in the six years he was coach at Nebraska, winning by an average margin of 40-9, and his Ohio team pounded them Saturday, 37-21.
Just for kicks
One of those good news/bad news situations is Idaho kicker Austin Rehkow.
The bad news first: His team was routed by No. 8 Washington, 59-14.
The good news: His team’s lack of offense allowed him to show off.
Rehkow was on preseason watch lists for the Ray Guy (top punter) and Lou Groza (best kicker) awards, having averaged 45.7 yards a punt and made 23 of 27 field-goal tries last season.
He didn’t try a field goal against the Huskies, but he got a lot of practice punting, booming five for a 47.4-yard average. Only two were returned, for a total of seven yards.
One liners
Before its 45-7 win over Kentucky, Florida had gone 10 consecutive games not scoring 30 points, its longest streak since a winless season in 1979. … Kentucky has dropped its last 30 games to Florida, the nation’s longest running losing streak (in a continuous series) and the fourth-longest such streak in college football history. … Ohio State, which defeated Tulsa, 48-3, on the football field, has the edge in student population, 55,000 to less than 3,500.
Looking ahead, please
Some of the nation’s top programs were lauded in the season’s opening week for scheduling tougher opponents, presumably because that’s what it takes to qualify for the new College Football Playoff.
The people issuing the plaudits clearly didn’t look at the Week 2 schedule.
No. 7 Stanford had a bye and the rest of the Associated Press top 10 lacked a marquee matchup.
The top-10 opponents: Western Kentucky (which played Alabama closer than USC), Troy (which played Clemson just as tough as Auburn), Charleston Southern, Tulsa, Central Florida, Lamar, Idaho, Nicholls (which nearly defeated Georgia) and Akron.
Fortunately, next week looks much better. Alabama-Mississippi, Florida StateLouisville, Ohio State-Oklahoma and Michigan State-Notre Dame are all top-25 matchups. And locally, there is USC at Stanford and UCLA at Brigham Young.