The McDouble — A College Football Analogy

The McDouble is like Notre Dame. It’s tried and true — a fixture of the fast food scene, just as the midwestern Catholic school is a fixture of the college football landscape. It’s enduring, well followed, and it’s on everywhere. Turn on your radio in Albuquerque or West Friendship and you’ll be getting the same appeal to the cheapo inside of you to buy the two beef patties with good old American slice for just a buck, just as you can turn on your TV to any NBC station throughout America to pick up a Notre Dame football game.

Both have loyal followings. Rabid, some would claim. The followers swear by, uphold it, and defend it against all doubters and haters. Oh, and are there ever haters. “It’s two hocky pucks and tasteless, semi-melted cheese” they say. “Are you kidding me, Notre Dame’s schedule consists of Navy and Army,” they make note, asking when the last time the Irish actually mattered was. Pointing to other menu items, or teams, which are better represented in today’s “premium” trend of fast food or SEC-dominated college football landscape, it could be argued that both the McDouble, and the Irish, are in decline.

Manti Te’o and the 2012 Notre Dame football team would argue differently. I’ll be straight-up in that I had my doubts coming into the year. But with their 4-0 start, Notre Dame deserves their status in the Top 10 of the latest AP poll. This is a dominating defense, and one which does not quit despite knowing full well it can’t always get help from the offense. And that offense, under either Everett Golson or Tommy Rees, is doing something it rarely has done over the last few season — namely, avoiding making enough mistakes to lose games. I know the season is only a third of the way done, but after being skeptical coming into the year, I’m buying the Irish.

I’m also buying the McDouble after trying it for the first time last week. I know. Having gone 23 years without eating one of fast food’s most iconic items is like going 23 years as a college football fan without actually watching a Notre Dame football game, but curiosity and a stingy but growling stomach finally got the best of me.

I don’t know how much longer the McDouble will last at a dollar given the upcharge for the “Daily Double” that many McDonalds’ have adopted. Just as I don’t know how long Notre Dame can last as a power player in college football. I hope they lasts forever though. Why does the McDouble work? Heck, why does Bob Diaco’s defensive scheme work? It just does, that’s why.

Maybe it’s Te’o. He’s your beef, he’s got to be. Yes, the patties are small, but there’s two of them, and despite their small size and well done nature you seem to be hit with an altogether beefy taste with those characteristic sweet notes on the backend. Can you say sideline to sideline? Of course there’s help. That cheese – bulky, mishapen – that’s Stephon Tuitt. A one man wrecking crew inside, the cheese is waxy and unrefined at first. But give it a quarter (ok, 15 mins steaming in the wrapper on a hot day) and it gets melty and gooey and serves that essential component of being that salty-fatty-awsome binder so essential to cheeseburger construction. To continue the analogy, Tuitt, the big cheese if you will, plugs up the middle to allow Te’o to shine.

Now, don’t forget your supporting cast. I’m talking Danny Spond, whose timely big plays hits you like the umami and vinegar blast of a pickle and chopped onion. Or that hard-hitting, omnipresent Zeke Motta – that would be your sweet and salty ketchup — coming in to add a needed zing just when the defense needs an open field stop. And that bun, that squishy, sweet, slightly malty bun which combines flavors and textures in the general mess of mechanical digestion I like to call chewing — well, that’s everyone else. From Prince Shembo on the line to cornerback  Bennett Jackson, it works together and gets the job done, allowing the stars to shine but also contributing the needed glue to hold it all together.

Not actual glue though. That would be gross. And the McDouble? That magnificent, cheap, but of just so good value hamburger amidst a sea of bigger and faster hamburgers? Wake up the echoes my friend, because if September has shown us anything, it’s that that relevance is far from lost.

Week One Observations

I spent the better part of the best years of my life writing about college football (and for that, they pretty much turned out to be the most unhappy years of my life), so like it or not, I’m subjecting you to my thoughts from each week’s action. DEAL WITH IT.

Games I Watched

Notre Dame 50, Navy 10

• After years of working as a credentialed beat writer covering Navy athletics, I’ve come to mentally cringe every time Navy plays in a game on national television (read: not CBSCS.) Like the Army-Navy game and every ESPN game, the attention paid to the Navy football team bordered more on what it represents than what it is. We all know the clichés about hard-work and physicality and being great student athletes and Americans; but can we actually talk about what’s going on on the field?
• What was going on on the field was about what I expected. Scratch that, it was worse. I somehow forced myself to watch the entire game, but between seeing the Navy defensive front give more ground than the Polish cavalry against the Blitzkrieg and Trey Miller taking snaps from the shotgun, I nearly lost my sanity.
• If Navy can’t find a way to commit to running the actual triple option with, key phrase, the first option (fullback dive) being established, it’s going to be a long season. After hearing all about him all summer, it was disappointing to see that Noah Copeland was a complete non-factor.
• Gary Danielson said some absolutely stupid things during the broadcast, but he hit the nail on the head when he summed up how the Navy coaches handled the end of the first half. Try’s fumble killed any spark the team might have been able to recover, and not taking a time out to give Miller a breather wasted a gutsy performance from  first-year starter.
• If I’m a Notre Dame fan (and I am, kind of) I am feeling pretty good. I know most Navy fans hate the Irish, but as a Catholic and as someone who enjoys the play of real or semi-real student athletes, I can’t help but pull for the school against most opponents. Not Navy, mind you, but pretty much everything else. I thought the Irish O and D-lines were dominant, and hope Saturday wasn’t all on Navy just sucking.

 Ohio 24, Penn State 14

• The people I discuss college football with tend to think Penn State’s football program should be banished like those dudes in the floating mirror in outerspace from that one Superman movie, but my thoughts are more conflicted. Seeing Beaver Stadium on Saturday, and seeing the emotion in the eyes of the Penn State athletes, I’d be lying if I said a part of me was not pulling for them.
• Of course, I was also pulling for Ohio, which I like for no other reason than the combination of Tyler Tettleton and Beau Blankenship. What can I say? As a short white dude myself, I tend to have a politically incorrect tendency to pull 5-foot-8 white running backs. SUE ME.
• Looking at some of the other MAC teams which played major BCS opponents Saturday (and looking at their collapses) I attribute Ohio’s success to one factor; coaching. Frank Solich is the kind of guy who can keep a team of 21 year-old cool and collected. Even when down, his plauers knew they could win the game, and didn’t press. Lucky bounces, I think, often go towards the team which stays composed. And a composed, well coached team can make some serious noise later in the season.

Utah State 34, Southern Utah 3

• I don’t think anyone who closely follows USU — not the least of whom is this former Aggie Sports Editor — was surprised at the play of Joe Hill. We Aggie fans have been spoiled with Robert Turbin and Michael Smith for the last four years, but any one keeping an eye on the pipeline knew their was talent behind them. Kerwynn – we called him ‘Hey Arnold’ when I was in Logan because they teased him for having a football shaped head – was solid, and both he and Hill will keep the Aggie ground game humming. Both are fast, shifty, and have great vision, but their surprising power will catch teams off gaurd all year. Oh yea, Chuckie Keeton was pretty swell, too, and don’t overlook that offensive line.
• Matt Austin might just be the most fundamentally sound wide receiver in the country when it comes to body country and sideline awareness. And no, that’s not a homeristic statement.
• I was worried how the offense would look in terms of tempo and design with Dave Baldwin moving on to Colorado State, but Matt Wells seems to have everything under control. The thing I love about the “power spread” and the way USU runs it is it keeps other teams so off-tempo. Baldwin used to tell me the offense ”is complex, not complicated,” and I like the way he describes it. With all the different packages and formations, it makes defenses play off-balance, and imposes a north-south but also east-west hurry-up style of play on you. The most important thing for USU moving forward will be ball control. If that can be maintained, there’s no reason this offense can’t be Xbox good this year.

Stock Report

Stock up:

FOX: Gus Johnson calls every game like it’s March Madness. Pair him with Charles Davis, who might just be the most intelligent play-by-play guy in all of college football commentary-dom, and you’ve got the most underrated announcing duo this side of the Joe Tessitore effect.

Nebraska’s running game: Ok, so it was Southern Miss. But the 278 yards (6.2 per) on the ground was impressive given the fact that Heisman candidate Rex Burkhead took to the sideline after only three carries (albeit, one for along touchdown). Ameer Abdullah showed some toughness between the tackles, but most of all, Taylor Martinez looked like he actually knew what he was doing with both his feet and his arm. And later in the season, with Burkhead back and hopefully healthy, you’ve got to think the latter part of that statement will open up thinks for the run game.

Turner Gill: When he was back at Buffalo, Turner Gill was the first FBS head football coach I met and interviewed. At the time, my credentials were that I had graduated high school and had once written a blog about Navy football. Yea, impressive stuff, I know. Yet the man treated me like a veteran, and at that Buffalo practice I attended, I saw first hand the kind of program that Gill looked to create. Most people know he struck out at Kansas, but few know he just coached his first FCS game. And while his Liberty Flames came up a dropped pass short of upending Wake Forest in week one, something tells me the efforts of first-time starter Brian Hudson will have Liberty staying near the top of FCS competition.

Stock Down:

ESPN: I think I saw an Obama commercial between each TV timeout. Never mind for a second that I’m a conservative and consider this; isn’t the beauty of the college football season the fact that we can (kind of) ignore this politics stuff? Way to spoil a Saturday, ESPN.

Savannah State: I’m sure it’s a fine place to go to college and all, but how would you like to be the kid who has to respond to “yea, the team that was blown out 84-0 by Oklahoma State” when explaining where you go to college? Week One games are usually ugly. Like Battle of Hoth ugly. But this was the equivalent of the Death Star blowing up Alderaan.

Navy’s Use of the Shotgun: Did I mention how much I sincerely dislike it?

Coming tommarow…Week One Football Eats