The opening week of college football is now behind us, and so is the first week of our local ESPN College Pick ‘Em Contest. Mark Peacock, who happens to be my brother, and Justin Jensen are tied for first place in the local standings. Mark and Justin picked eight out of 10 games correctly last Saturday to lead the pack.
Rod Sims and LaBarin Banks are tied for third place overall. Four players are tied for fifth place. They are Nick Klaetsch, David Price, Jacob Ramer and someone who goes by “15hn.” Johnny Davis is in ninth place, and Travis Presley is in tenth place.
For the record, me and four other people are tied for eleventh place overall.
The one thing that’s nice about this contest is that it’s a marathon, not a sprint. We’ve got 13 more weeks to go, and if this year’s contest is like year’s past, the standings will change a lot as we progress through the season. Only time will tell as to who will win this year’s local “Mr. Football” crown.
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SEC football is also in full swing and here are my picks for this week. I like Alabama over Western Kentucky, Arkansas over Louisiana-Monroe, Mississippi State over Auburn, LSU over Washington, Ole Miss over UTEP, Texas A&M over Florida, Georgia over Missouri, Kentucky over Kent State, South Carolina over East Carolina, Tennessee over Georgia State and Vanderbilt over Northwestern. Last week: 13-0. So far this season: 13-0.
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If you’re looking for a good book to read this week, you might want to check out “Paterno” by Joe Posnanski.
Released on Aug. 28, this biography of legendary Penn State head football coach Joe Paterno replaced "The Amateur" by Edward Klein as the top book on Publishers Weekly’s hardcover nonfiction best-sellers list.
I kind of feel sorry for the guy who wrote this book. He agreed to pen the Paterno biography long before the notorious Penn State child sex abuse scandal became big news. Posnanski had been granted an “all-access pass” to Paterno, his family and the football program to write the book only to have it all nearly derailed by what many have called the biggest scandal in the history of college football.
I haven’t read this book (yet), but I’ve heard that it barely touches on the scandal because the book was nearly complete when all of that became big news. Many have critized Posnanski for not going more in depth into the scandal, but when you consider that the book had basically already gone to press when the story broke, it’s hard to blame him for not making a bigger deal about it.
It’ll be interesting to see how this book fares when it comes to sales. It’s obviously already a best-seller, but I have heard that some stores are refusing to carry the title out of disgust over the scandal at Penn State. In my mind, this may cause some people who otherwise wouldn’t read it to rush out and buy a copy of it. Posnanski, a longtime Sports Illustrated columnist, may end up laughing all the way to the bank, despite criticism over the book’s content.
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