ESPN is extremely obnoxious in their over-coverage of #2 Florida State football and Jameis Winston. Bristol will ratchet that up even more this week as their partner, ABC, is televising this contest and their preview show, College Gameday is coming to Tallahassee. If FSU wins, the World Wide Leader will go full on CNN-with-the-missing-airplane on Jameis Winston and Florida St. the rest of the season.
They won’t be quite as obnoxious with over-covering #5 Notre Dame if the Irish win because they’re not the broadcast rights holder for Fighting Irish home games; NBC is. And all sports networks, not just ESPN included, are over-bearing in their coverage of teams/leagues where they hold the rights.
SPREAD: Florida State football -13 to -9 (the books are all over the map on this one)
TV: ABC/ESPN 7PM CST
Brent Musburger, Kirk Herbstreit, Heather Cox
More vivisection of the analysis of Jameis Winston analysis
As Halloween approaches, now is the season of curses. And all things scary, creepy, disturbing and weird. Time to re-investigate my curse of the #5 jersey; which Jameis Winston is embodying more and more by the hour.
All the off-the-field issues for Winston have utterly destroyed his NFL Draft stock. This has been verified by Fox Sports Jay Glazer. Hey, when your moral authority, character voucher and voice of reason is named Jimbo, well…I’m trying to keep the Jameis portion of this preview short because, you already have enough Winston in your life probably.
But you can always go here if you want more on the curse of the #5 (which has struck South Bend three different times: Golson, Teo, Hornung)
Florida State football preview:
So if Winston isn’t selected, there’s still plenty of Florida State football players who will. It’s insane how much future NFL talent they have. We enlisted the help of our friends at Walter Football.
Upon perusing their 2015 NFL mock draft, the second round of their 2015 mock, and their 2016 NFL mock draft we find all these Florida State football players projected to play at the next level.
That’s four defensive backs and three offensive linemen projected to go in the first two rounds in the next years. Just an insane amount of professional talent on this Florida State football team.
This is the game where Notre Dame really could use DaVaris Daniels versus that all-star FSU secondary. And KeiVarae Russell would be a great addition to try and slow down the Seminoles air attack lead by Winston. (here’s the latest on the ND 5)
And here’s our preview of this game, podcast version, with Chicago Tribune ND beat writer Chris Hine.
Max Redfield • ND Sophomore • Free Safety
On next week’s matchup against Florida State…
“It’s obviously going to be a heightened awareness of who we’re playing. We need to increase intensity, increase focus, increase execution, communication, all that kind of stuff. Florida State is a great team. We know it’s going to be a challenge and we love it.”
On whether North Carolina offense was a good test for what Notre Dame will face next week…
“It was good to see a higher tempo offense like that. We haven’t seen that all year. So it was good to further prepare us for the rest of the season if we see it again. Obviously, we don’t like the way we played today, too many points on the board.”
Notre Dame preview:
Last week was the most points allowed in a Notre Dame win in 23 years. The previous high was 42 by Hawaii in a 48-42 Notre Dame victory in November 30, 1991 at Hawaii. North Carolina totaled 510 yards of offense. The last time the Irish allowed 500 or more yards of offense was against Alabama in the 2012 BCS National Championship, when the Crimson Tide totaled 529 yards of offense.
The 1,029 yards of combined offense (519 yards for Notre Dame, 510 yards for North Carolina) was the highest since October 8, 2011 when the Irish and Air Force combined for 1,125 yards (560 yards for Notre Dame, 565 yards for Air Force). Notre Dame won the contest against Air Force 59-33 win.
Joe Schmidt • Senior. • Linebacker
On Notre Dame’s keys to success on defense in this game…
“We have to make sure we’re right emotionally and come ready to play. I’m not saying we didn’t do that today, but we didn’t start very fast and that’s something we have to make sure we’re ready for. It’s going to be a big week of preparation.”
In order for the Irish to upset this Florida State football team, they’ll need the Money Team to make it happen. Will Fuller needs to continue his development into the number #1 wide receiver, and Tarean Folston must further progress as the feature back
More vivisection of the analysis of Everett Golson analysis
Golson is one of four Notre Dame quarterbacks with at least three career 300-yard games, joining Brady Quinn, Jimmy Clausen and Tommy Rees. Golson threw for 3 touchdowns in a game for the fourth time in his career. He had the most bipolar, split-personality game possible versus a.) Syracuse b.) North Carolina c.) both.
Obviously, the answer is C. There is indeed much ado about his turnovers, and rightfully so
Sandwiched in between those two games however, was the true Heisman moment he had to close out the win over Stanford. Which reinvigorated the Heisman hype again. However, in two of the past three weeks, for #5 individually, it was the best of times, and it was the worst of times. Through it all, he is still undefeated.
Golson came through and got the win versus North Carolina in the “roughing the snapper” game, but it’s probably time to put the Heisman talk to bed.
PREDICTION TIME: Florida State football 30, Notre Dame 24
This probably is not a college football playoff elimination game. Nor is it a “play-in game.” However, the winner will probably still be okay to make the Final Four, even if they suffer another set back in the second half of the season. Provided schedule strength breaks their way of course. The loser of this this game, will need to run the table the rest of the way in order to make the playoff.
Regardless, the winner of this game will soon absorb a lot of new fans into their base- the front-runner, fraternity type fan boys. They could become the Miami Heat of college football.
Paul M. Banks owns, operates and very often writes The Sports Bank.net ,which is partners with Fox Sports. Read his features stories in the Chicago Tribune RedEye edition. Listen to him on 1620 The Zone. Follow him on Twitter (@paulmbanks). His work has been featured in hundreds of media outlets including The Washington Post and ESPN 2