FSU Hate Week

What can I say about Tallahassee that hasn’t already been said about Downtown Baghdad?

Look, we get to a certain point with these things where all the hatred starts to blur together. I get it.

I could keep going on and on about how FSU players beat the hell out of women and get caught on videotape, or beat the hell out of women and don’t get caught on videotape, or shoot up apartment complexes with BB guns, or flee the scene of a car accident, or steal crab legs from a Publix, or sexually assault a woman and then get covering fire from the university and the local police department, or….ya know what, like I said, you guys get it.

We’ve done that.

To get mad about FSU players getting away with crimes is like getting mad at Donald Trump for making finger guns when talking about a school shooting. Sure, it is THE WORST, but who can we really blame except for ourselves? Stuff happens, ya know?

(Sidenote: you know who probably loves Donald Trump? #FSUTwitter)

I really hate that Al Golden is such a dipshit, and our team is so constantly mediocre, that FSU…the Fox News of fan-bases (humorless, self-important, delusional, artificially enhanced)…actually has out-funnied us with this in their on-campus bookstore:

 Gotta hand it to them. Never let a good crisis go to waste.

Anytime college football’s equivalent of Larry the Cable Guy makes an objectively funny joke at your expense, it might be time to reconsider your program’s future.

But not Al Golden.

At this point, this dude seemingly wants to get fired.

Per the Miami Herald’s Manny Navarro, the players have been flat at practice this week and seem “unbothered” by last week’s loss to Cincy. Effing Cincy. The team that was being quarterbacked by a freshman making his first career start, coming off a loss to Memphis.

Then, per Matt Porter of the Palm Beach Post, came news that the staff isn’t playing the War Chant at practice this week.

In years past, coaches would play FSU’s horrific fight song all week long. It got the players ready for the noise that 50,000 mouth-breathers can create when the team that represents everything they hate ---urban intelligence, people that aren’t white, etc.---comes to town.

It ALSO got them pissed off, because anyone forced to listen to that crap for 7 days would be ready to gnaw their own leg off to make it stop. Honestly I think this was on the Gitmo playlist.

But, not Al Golden! Not this year!

This year is about everyone being, and I quote, a “McDonald’s Hamburger”.

Consistent. Predictable. Filled with poisonous preservatives that will kill you over time.

You can almost hear Al’s excuse cannon getting fired up now: “Well, it was a hostile environment on the road, really louder than any place we’ve played this year Joe. Had a lot of adversity and we just couldn’t overcome all of it.”

Someone posted a video on my message board this week of our old strength coach from the 90s, Tommy Moffitt (currently at LSU), putting the players through a summer workout.

A few things stood out to me.

One, Tommy was a crazy person. Like, actually crazy.

Two, our players were really big and really fast. No wonder Leonard Fournette is the second coming of Herschel Walker.

Three, at one point he said “the pride and tradition of the University of Miami Hurricanes will not be entrusted to the timid or weak.”

Now, aside from the fact that this is Meathead 101 and sounds like the type of thing that the douchebag on your high school’s football team--the one that shouldered people into lockers and made gay jokes-- would have said, it is pretty interesting to contrast it with Al Golden’s pre-game speech from last week against Cincy, which essentially consisted of “don’t rise to the occasion”.

Al Golden thinks you win big games by telling players NOT to rise to the occasion.

The last time we played a team with Everett Golson at quarterback was in 2012 against Notre Dame, and we lost that game 41-3 and gave up 561 yards of offense. Last thing we would want is someone stepping up on defense.

You can tell this team has already effectively given up hope.

Safety Rayshawn Jenkins is lashing out at high school sophomores on Instagram.

Linebacker Tyriq McCord is threatening fans in Facebook comments. Knowing Facebook it was probably someone’s uncle that has some * interesting* views on gun control, but still, that isn’t what you want during rivalry week.

Cornerback Tracy Howard, the first big recruiting win of Al Golden’s tenure, actually was quoted in a newspaper this week with the following:

“At the end of the day, it is what it is. That’s life. People are going to criticize you. When you’re doing good, people are going to love you. When you’re doing bad, people are going to be down on you. At the end of the day, you have to stay levelheaded, be the same person. It is what it is. It’s life,” corner Tracy Howard said. “I’m sure my coaches, I’m sure they’re tough. They can handle it. And we can handle it. I know everybody doesn’t like our coaches, but at the end of the day, it is what it is. We still have to go out there and perform and they still have to go out there and call plays. We still have to play for them, so, I mean…we can’t do much about it.”

That reads like a ransom note sent by the hostage.

At the beginning of the season, players talked about the FSU game playing too central a role in the team’s psyche and thus creating the post-loss collapses we witnessed the past 2 years.

They said that they were intent on net letting the game define their season this year.

The thing is, absent of larger goals, all your fans can hope for is a win against the rival.

And for a guy like Al Golden, whose response to that is to try to eliminate the idea of a rivalry at all, that win is just never going to happen.