Everything We Learned From The Dolphins’ Historic 70-20 Beatdown Of Sean Payton And The Broncos

We need to talk about the Miami Dolphins scoring 70 on the Denver Broncos, and all of the things that scoring 70 in an NFL game means. 

First up- Mike McDaniel is that Dude

That doesn’t mean that what owner Stephen Ross did to try and ruin Brian Flores’ career chasing Joe Burrow, Tom Brady, and the man that just got 70 dropped on his head- Sean Payton, is something we can excuse. 

But McDaniel can coach. 

Just look at the development of Tua Tagovailoa. He took the offense from 25th ranked in 2021, to sixth in 2022. And this year, they’re first by a longshot. And they haven’t really fallen off defensively in yards allowed. 

Mike McDaniel’s credibility is set in stone. You have to score to win in this league, and a game like this on the back of the season he had last year ensures that he’ll be employed in this league for as long as he wants to be. 

At a minimum this man is the next Norv Turner.

Next, Tua is Enough

Tua Tagovailoa can run this offense, and he can run it as well as anyone you might want to be in his position. 

As long as this offensive line can keep him healthy. 

The Miami Dolphins have been desperate for a franchise QB as much as any franchise over the last 30 years outside of the Chicago Bears, and even though Tua has had some good games in his first four seasons, there’s always that little bit of doubt.

70 points, plus the fact that he’s on pace for a 5,800 yard season should put all those doubts to a permanent rest.

Third- Sean Payton Hates Russell Wilson

He has to.

If you have a franchise QB getting franchise money, you protect him. Trotting this man out there in the second half down 50 points is embarrassing. It means you don’t care if you lose him. 

If it’s really like that, then get the Jets on the phone and start the process to move him so you can score some assets and maybe get the Dolphins back for this game by giving their division rival a chance to win this season.

Four- Vance Joseph Has to Go… Again

Sean Payton making the decision to bring one of the least-liked Head Coaches in Denver Broncos history back to be his defensive coordinator was as head-scratching as Vance Joseph’s decision to accept it. 

Denver Broncos Head Coaching history is a long list of extraordinary winners- Red Miller, Dan Reeves, Mike Shanahan, John Fox, and Gary Kubiak kept this franchise relevant for the overwhelming majority of four decades. A lot of Broncos fans believe their downfall started when Vance Joseph was first hired, and having him around again, and in charge of the unit that just gave up a historic number, is a true exercise in hubris for Sean Payton.

And finally, the last thing we learned for this 70-point game is that…

…Mercy is Worse than Death.

Mike McDaniels, a former Denver Broncos ball boy that didn’t even get an interview from his hometown team in 2022, had the ability to break the NFL record of 72, and he decided that didn’t fit with the message he was trying to send his team. 

This man said we have bigger goals than setting records, in the middle of setting a modern record. 

That is a whole different level of viciousness. 

Because the only thing worse than giving up 70, is having to carry the knowledge around that it could have been worse, but the team doing it to you felt sorry for you. 

10 touchdowns with a side of pity. 

Let that sink in.

Why The Backlash To The Deion Sanders Hype Is NOT Racist (Even Though Some Think It Feels That Way)

Deion Colorado

There’s a backlash to the Deion Sanders hype, and an even bigger backlash to the backlash.

What’s really going on here?

Let’s talk about it.

If you’re a millennial college football fan, this message isn’t for you. Deion Sanders has been famous your entire life. You watched him be a four year starter at Florida State, spending his last two years as the best player on a team that never left the top 10. You watched him be a first round pick and go to pro bowls in Atlanta, and win Super Bowls in San Francisco- where he won a defensive MVP, and Dallas- where he played on both sides of the ball. You watched him take several years off and then come back in his late 30’s and play at a high level with the Ravens. He’s likely a top 3 corner, and a top 3 kick returner of your lifetime. And if you’re a baseball fan, you watched this man play in New York, the Bay, in Cincinnati, and you watched him hit over .500 in a World Series with five stolen bases in four games in Atlanta. This man led the league in triples once despite only being available for 60% of the season.

On top of all that, Prime has been the coolest man in whatever room he’s been in going on five decades now, and he’s been in a lot of very important rooms. 

He’s the Elvis of sports. He doesn’t just move the needle, he hypercharges it. And if you’re a certain age, you get exactly why Big Noon Kickoff is following him around the country like a puppy dog. They’re in the attention business. It’s the same reason Notre Dame gets a TV channel all to themselves

And that’s the common ground that we should all be able to agree on- that for better or worse, there is an extreme appetite to consume all things related to Deion Sanders. 

Think of it in food terms, there wasn’t a fast food chicken sandwich war because people weren’t eating chicken sandwiches. 

College football is a business, and the market picks and chooses what people want to see, It might not be what you want to see, but we live in a “majority rules” society, and there’s no college football capitol you can go storm if you don’t get your way.

But to be fair to the people that are sick of hearing about Deion, that needle is getting moved by people that aren’t just fans of college football, but people who are fans of celebrity, and by people who also just get caught up in whatever is trending.

Deion Sanders is growing the game. He’s making new college football fans. And what’s a synonym for a brand new person? A baby. 

Babies are a lot of things. They’re cute. They represent hope for a bright future. But they’re also loud. And emotional. And needy. And they believe the world ends and begins with their mom or dad. 

And so this last weekend, you had a bunch of toddler Colorado fans running around saying “my dad could beat up your dad” in regards to Oregon, because what they do know is that they love their dad, and they’ve seen him do wonderful things.

But what they don’t know is that the other dad they’re talking about spent the last decade as a professional Buffalo hunting maniac.

Deion’s fans are going to learn what every young college football fan learns, the field tells the truth. 

Just because you can get on stage with Lil’ Wayne at 9am in Boulder, Colorado on game day, doesn’t mean that your offensive line can stop some of the best defensive linemen in the country from making your quarterback’s life hell. 

In the end, it’s worth it to deal with these new fans. The ends will justify the means, I promise you that. There’s nothing like college football, and seeing Colorado games sold out at home, and on the road, is incredible. 

But just because these fans are new, doesn’t mean that some of their complaints aren’t rooted in truth.

Let’s get into the backlash to the backlash- and if you think I’m going to say it’s boiler-plate racism, you’re wrong.

College football has a scarcity issue. 

There are only a handful of teams that make the playoff. There are only a handful of game-changing recruits. There are only a handful of, excuse the pun, primetime television spots. 

The entire point of this sport is to scratch and claw your way to the top of the mountain, and then once you’re up there, turn around and kick the people that are trying to get on your level, right in the face. 

Guys like Dan Lanning, Marcus Freeman, Ryan Day and Mike Norvell are on their way up that Mountain. Guys like Nick Saban, Dabo Swinney, and Kirby Smart are already there.

Colorado’s slogan is “We Coming.”

And what Deion Sanders means by that, is “we coming up that mountain to throw your ass down it.”

Nobody that isn’t a Colorado fan, a Deion fan, or a fan of a team that will never reach the top themselves, wants that to happen.

And real college football fans know this movement has substance. Do you think the best athletes on earth want to play in Tuscaloosa, Alabama because of its pristine beaches and majestic waterfalls? No, they want to be on the biggest stage. And wherever Deion Sanders goes, he brings a pretty damn big stage with him. 

And that stage that Deion brings makes the people aware of the scarcity of college football feel a little bit of fear, and a whole lot of jealousy.

So yes, they are rooting on Deion Sanders to fail. Because his success means someone else is falling down that cliffside. And they aren’t just rooting for Deion to fail because he’s black- they want that same level of failure for Lincoln Riley, Steve Sarkisian, and Billy Napier. The whitest of whites.

But we’d be fools to not address the elephant in the room.

Deion Sanders is black. He’s proud of being black. More importantly, he’s proud of being a non-sanitized version of a black man. He’s proud to be himself. And he’s extremely outspoken about his desire to see black Americans prosper.

And the objective truth in this country is that black men and women have been systematically excluded from sharing in all of the privileges that this wonderful country, with all of its wonderful ideals, has allowed to some of its lesser melanized citizens.

Things are better than they’ve ever been, and I’m grateful for that, but the football coaching profession is one of those things that you’d have to be an actual robe-wearing klansmen to say has made “too much” progress. 

So you have to understand how the exclusionary nature of college football, whose entire point is to get yours and keep others from getting theirs, looks and feels to black fans that are used to that particular mindset being the exact delivery method for real issues of racism that they face out in the real world. 

From an outside perspective, you have a successful black man that doesn’t drink, doesn’t cuss, loves Jesus, loves his mama, and uses his platform to promote hard work and education to the youth of this country, making waves in a profession where not many people in power look like him, and nobody in power acts like him- and the negative response to that is often very loud, and very critical.

Excuse me if I don’t blame people for feeling like this is race issue, even if that’s not the whole truth.

And I know I’m going to get people in my mentions saying that I’m just sticking up for Deion and his fans because I’m black too. They’ve been there every single time I’ve mentioned Deion Sanders’ name. 

But I’m not worried about those people. They’re not in positions of power. In fact, it’s because those people have never had any power or control over a single thing in their entire life, that they get mad when they turn on the TV and see an interracial couple in a Mountain Dew commercial. So of course they’re gonna be mad when every channel on their television is talking about “Coach Prime.” 

Hopefully this helped explain the disconnect. New college football fans, and the ones that have been in the trenches have about as much in common as an infant and a boomer. Outside of the fact they both get a little cranky. 

College football isn’t inherently racist, and even though it’s structure has plenty of evidence that systematic racism is at play, it also boasts as good of a merit-based system as any industry in America. 

Most people that hate Deion Sanders don’t hate him because he’s a threatening black man, they just hate him because he’s threatening their place in the college football ecosystem, and he happens to be black. 

And Colorado is better at football than they’ve been in a long time because of Deion Sanders, but that doesn’t mean your dad can beat up my dad. 

Let that sink in.

Pac-12 Apostles Podcast (9/21/2023): Travis Hunter Hit, Lincoln Riley vs the Media, Week 3 Recap, Week 4 Preview

All anybody can talk about is the big hit against Travis Hunter… and we are no different. The Pac-12 Apostles Podcast covers all the hot topics of the week- George Wrighster goes off on the AP for slighting the west coast teams, and Ralph Amsden takes Lincoln Riley to task for suspending a beat reporter. The guys also review the last week of non-conference games, and preview the first week of conference action.

Apple Podcasts // Spotify // PocketCasts // Google Play // Stitcher // RadioPublic // iHeart

The Pac-12 Apostles is a podcast for fans who love the Pac-12 conference. George Wrighster and Ralph Amsden are committed to the honest and fair conversation about the conference. Join us by becoming a Pac-12 Apostle. Subscribe and share the podcast.

Please leave a rating and review of our podcast on iTunes! We record a podcast once a week with emergency episodes when necessary. Our podcasts are always heavy on Pac-12 football. But we make it a point to also try and cover the other notable Men’s and Women’s Pac-12 sports. We cover recruiting and any other major storyline in the Pac-12 universe.

George Wrighster is a former Pac-12 and long-time NFL tight end. As a television/radio host, opinionist, and analyst, who is UNAFRAID to speak the truth. Contrary to industry norms he uses, facts, stats, and common sense to win an argument. He has covered college football, basketball, NFL, NBA, MLB since 2014. Through years of playing college football, covering bowl games, coaching changes, and scandals, he has a great pulse for the conference and national perspective.

Ralph Amsden is a sportswriter and podcaster. He is the publisher of Rivals’ ArizonaVarsity.com, Content Director for UnafraidShow.com, and was previously the managing editor of the Arizona State University Rivals affiliate, DevilsDigest.com. Wyoming born, Arizona raised, and now based in Charlotte, North Carolina with his wife and four kids, Amsden made his mark in Arizona sports media through investigative reporting, and being one of the first people to leverage social media and the podcast medium to grow his platform. . Ralph might be sub-.500 in spousal disputes and schoolyard fights, but whether the topic is food, movies, music, parenting, politics, sports, television, religion, or zoological factoids, he’s always UNAFRAID to square up.

Mat Ishbia Is Eating Tens Of Millions Of Dollars In Revenue While Becoming The Hero Pro Sports Needs

The best ability is availability.

How many of you have heard this phrase in relation to the need for athletes to study the playbook and take care of their bodies? 

I’m here to tell you that the benefits of availability don’t just apply to the players on the field or court, but it’s also the most important thing when it comes to the ability to consume what happens on the field or court.

Phoenix Suns owner Mat Ishbia just sacrificed tens of millions of dollars every single year to make sure that his team’s games are available to local fans for free, and it could be the game changer that the entire sports world needs to keep fans from being collateral damage in the war between cable companies and streaming platforms.

To understand why he did this, and why there was a need for him to do this, let’s go back to the beginning. 

As social media and streamers started to take attention away from the live TV experience, it became clear to TV executives and advertising agencies that the future of fixed consumer attention was going to be live sports. 

This kicked off a nuclear war for broadcast rights, which meant that only a handful of billion dollar national corporations would be able to compete for the ability to show you games. It also meant that local TV corporations were squeezed out of the market, as were people that didn’t have the monthly income to be able to budget for ever-increasing cable bills.

The sales of these broadcast rights end up putting a giant pile of guaranteed money into a pool for the teams in each league to split. Owners loved it for the obvious reason that it rapidly increased their personal wealth, as well as their franchise value- but it also provided them with the stability of an expected income and operating budget. 

For the involved and competitive owners, the guaranteed income from broadcast rights gave them ways to innovate and compete- which offset the inconvenience and added expense to the fans.

For the unengaged slumlord weirdos like Donald Sterling, it just meant he got richer while Clippers fans suffered. Which is why the fact Clippers fans exist will never make sense to me, but that’s another rant for another day. 

The bottom line is this- as less and less of the operational budget came from local fans, owners were less and less motivated to appease the local fans. Tickets became less affordable. Players became less relatable. 

We went from four NBA players making $7+ million per year in 1995, to the Houston Rockets paying John Wall $40 million a year just to stay home. Mike Conley is going to surpass $270 million in career earnings this season and has made one all star game. 

And in order to watch John Wall not play, or see Mike Conley put up Jeff Hornacek stat lines for ten times the cost, fans were having to shell out more and more money every single year.

It’s unsustainable, but when you’re profiting from it, there’s no motivation to see things change.

I grew up watching the Lakers on KCal on channel 9. Those were formative experiences for me. Experiences that I know haven’t been available to more and more families who, even if they had the ability to afford cable, are having to make sacrifices to simply pay their increasing grocery bills. 

So that’s where Mat Ishbia comes in- when Disney bought 21st Century Fox, they had to sell off the regional sports networks to avoid the government coming down on them for a monopoly. 

They auctioned the RSN’s to Diamond Sports Group, a Sinclair Broadcasting company. The pandemic hits, and Sinclair starts to panic. They used billions in debt to buy these networks, and they’re bleeding money. The choices are- declare bankruptcy, or pass the cost to consumers via a streaming platform of their own. 

In August of 2022, Diamond Sports Group announced Bally Sports+, which lost $1.2 billion dollars in its first three months of operation. 

In February of this year, right before a $140 million dollar interest payment is due, and with $1.8 billion in rights fees owed for the following year, Diamond Sports Group declares bankruptcy, and starts to skip payments to the professional teams it owes money to. 

Teams like the Phoenix Suns were faced with a tough choice to negotiate lesser payments in their revenue share agreements- and when you’re talking about millions and millions of dollars, it really seemed like the only choice.

But not only did Mat Ishbia say no, he sold the rights to Gray television, a free basic cable broadcasting company in Arizona, and is giving away free television antennas to anyone in Arizona that requests one.

Get this- The switch to local over-the-air stations will triple the reach of Suns and Mercury games to more than 2.8 million households. 

Availability.

As a college football fan, this is both music to my ears, and the most infuriating thing on the planet. The Pac-12 spent the last decade throttling availability in order to preserve and protect its television rights, and the conference died alone in its home like a hoarder surrounded by old newspapers.

Meanwhile the SEC’s deal with CBS, the channel that most televisions just get left on all day in boomer households, resulted in a three billion dollar rights deal with Disney. Is it because it really just means more in the south?

No! It was availability!

Mat Ishbia might be sacrificing tens of millions per year in the short term, but when you invest in your fans, it comes back to you. Hopefully, for the future of sports, and the longterm benefit of everyone, more rich men in suits follow Ishbia’s lead on this. 

Let that sink in.

Let’s Talk About How Preseason Top 25 Rankings And AP Voter Confirmation Bias Hurts College Football

We need to talk about the AP rankings. 

What is it going to take for the people that are entrusted with these votes to not be enslaved to their own confirmation bias?

So what if you started the season by thinking Georgia was the best team in the country?

Carson Beck struggled to move the ball at home against South Carolina, and what you’re saying to the public is that it doesn’t matter how ugly a team comes up with a victory, you’ll ignore those warts because of the final number on the scoreboard.

And you know these rankings have me pissed because I’m about to pound the table for the school I hate the most.

Look at the domination of Washington. Domination

But Penn State and Ohio State get to be ahead of them in the rankings? For what?

And the worst part about it is if Notre Dame exposes Ohio State this weekend, it’s not going to be an abject lesson to the people that rank these teams with an overly obvious bias against the teams out west. 

It’s going to give them license to leapfrog Notre Dame over Washington, and probably USC too. 

And if Penn State gets baited into a rock fight with Iowa, and gets a 13-10 win, while Washington puts up another 500+ yards of offense on Cal, do you think you’re going to see these voters drop Penn State below the Huskies?

No, you won’t. 

And the reason why is simple- instead of judging these teams on their merits, AP voters are rooting for their preseason guesses to be correct. 

This is the toxicity of preseason rankings- you have people that don’t see every team making guesses based on a mix of the previous season’s results, and a quick glance at recruiting rankings, and then doing everything they can to justify that initial guess as the season unfolds. 

Anyone with half a brain knows that if the first AP poll came out after three weeks instead of before the season started, it would look extremely different than it does now.

You definitely wouldn’t have Tennessee ranked two spots above Florida just one day after Florida pounded them into dust. 

So if we know that to be true, why do we keep this ridiculous system in place?

For content? We have plenty of content.

People complain about the fanboy nature of modern media, and these AP voters might be able to walk around thinking they’re a cut above because they don’t openly root for the teams they cover.

But they’re still fans. Fans of themselves. And that fanboy nature is making the AP Poll look as useless as the Coaches Poll that gets filled out by grad assistants and sports information directors. 

Let that sink in.

The Real Reason Why A 39-Year-Old LeBron James Is Ready To Assemble a Paris Olympics Supreme Team

LeBron James of the Los Angeles Lakers

We need to talk about the rumors that LeBron James is trying to assemble an Olympic super team to take one last ride in Paris next summer.

The USA’s men just took fourth place in the FIBA World Cup, dropping games to Lithuania, Germany, and Canada. 

To quote Donald Trump in a vastly different context- “They’re not sending their best.”

The starting lineup of this summer’s iteration of the Men’s National Team was an average age of 26, and had three combined all-star appearances between them. 

The bench of this roster had four players that weren’t even full time starters for their NBA teams last year. 

But help is on the way, as Shams Charania is reporting that LeBron James seeks to build what some are calling the “Supreme Team,” and put together a squad that would rival in talent and accolades the Olympic teams of 1992 and 1996. 

We’re talking Steph Curry, Kevin Durant, Anthony Davis, Jayson Tatum, Draymond Green. 

Basketball’s own version of The Expendables. 

You even have Devin Booker out here on social media volunteering to join up to be a 3-and-D wing player just to be able to take part in this. 

So this begs the question, why on earth is LeBron James planning to take part in the grueling Olympic slate at age 39, when there have only ever been 31 professional basketball players in the history of the game to even take the court at the highest level after age 40. 

Is this going to be his swan song? Retire in Paris? Absolutely not. I fully expect to see LeBron playing two full seasons beyond the 2024 Olympics, and so do some of his corporate partners. 

Think about it this way- has anyone ever been more aware of the entire concept of “legacy” while still in their playing days? This is an opportunity for LeBron to publicly give back to the game, while bridging the old and the new on the world’s largest stage. 

This crop of FIBA kids? That was an audition. Expect to see maybe 3-4 players from this team, paired with some of the NBA’s current stars in their 20’s like Jayson Tatum, and a handful of twilight legends as well. 

Look at what Tom Brady did in his final two years in the NFL to make himself more accessible and soften his persona on the way into the next phase of his career. Think of this a little like that. 

LeBron isn’t trying to win anyone over that hates him for the stances he’s taken off the court. Some Americans have already shown their willingness to root on the downfall of the competitors representing them based on their personal views- case in point, the US Women’s National Soccer Team

No, this is more like the frilly frosting on the decorative cake that has been one of the greatest and most scrutinized athletic careers in the history of sport.

And it won’t be without pressure or adversity, them boys around the world can play. The fact that there’s a risk of losing involved is what makes this such an intriguing possibility. 

The embarrassment of a loss on the national stage with a dozen future Hall of Famers on the roster is immense. But the reward, both for LeBron James’ legacy, and the future of basketball, can’t be ignored. 

Let that sink in.

Michigan State’s Ulterior Motives Make It Impossible To Find Truth For Brenda Tracy And Mel Tucker

We need to talk about this Mel Tucker/Brenda Tracy situation.

But maybe not in the way you’d expect. 

For those who don’t know, Brenda Tracy, founder of Set The Expectation, a nonprofit dedicated to ending sexual and interpersonal violence through prevention work, accused Michigan State Head Coach Mel Tucker of repeatedly refusing to acknowledge their eight month professional relationship should not progress into a romantic one, as well as sexually harassing her on a phone call in April 2022. 

She also accuses him of canceling a July 2022 speaking engagement in retaliation for Brenda rebuffing his advances.

For Mel Tucker’s part, he says the relationship had mutually progressed beyond professional, that his actions on the April 2022 phone call were consensual, and that his personal feelings about her had nothing to do with his decision to postpone, not cancel, her summer 2022 training in East Lansing. 

He essentially accuses Brenda Tracy of wanting to extort him for financial gain in order to drop the Title IX complaint she made to Michigan State in December 2022.

I’m not going to get into who should be believed here. Accusations deserve investigation. Trust enough to make an earnest attempt to verify. 

But what happens when the people you have to trust in order to sort out the details of a serious matter have their own ulterior motives and no regard for your welfare?

Because that’s what seems to be the case in Michigan State’s internal investigation of this matter. 

Brenda Tracy and Mel Tucker are on opposing sides of a very serious issue, but the one place they might have common ground is their grievance with the investigative process.

This investigation is now tainted and playing out in the court of public opinion because someone leaked Brenda Tracy’s name to USA Today ahead of the October hearings. 

The person Branda Tracy had shared investigative documentation with, USA Today reporter Kenny Jacoby, confirmed that he had access to the documentation of the case since June 2023, and has known Brenda Tracy for six years. 

But the condition of USA Today having exclusive access to the documentation of the case was that none of it was to be used until the completion of the investigation.

And the longer the hearing was delayed, the bigger the risk that Tracy’s name came out in the media. The hearings were initially set for late August, but Tucker and his attorney delayed the proceedings until October 5th.

Over the last two months, the whispers of the story coming out grew louder, and an MSU Title IX coordinator even emailed Brenda Tracy’s attorney back in late August to warn them that media outlets were investigating the matter and might be ready to publish a story. 

When USA Today contacted Brenda Tracy last week to tell her that her name had been brought up, she greenlit the story. And you might be saying to yourself, “Well then this whole thing getting out before October is Brenda Tracy trying to gain an advantage.”

But what you’re not considering is that this story getting out before there’s an investigative conclusion means that Brenda Tracy’s organization is essentially toast. College coaches are not going to bring Set The Expectation onto their campus if there’s even a one percent chance that they feel Tracy isn’t a consummate professional.

The contextless details about long phone calls and the formation of a deeply personal relationship with a married coach, regardless of the claim Mel Tucker pushed the relationship into sexual territory after being asked not to, give enough reasonable doubt to any athletic administration to seek guidance and training on sexual violence and consent from literally anyone but Brenda Tracy.

This information being out there does not help Brenda Tracy at all.

And it damn sure doesn’t help Mel Tucker. I’m not sure he can be helped, but if the only people aware that this investigation had concluded, and was awaiting a hearing, were out here spilling secrets- how on earth is it even possible for Mel Tucker to have a fair adjudication of his counterclaims?

The answer? It isn’t. And maybe that’s the point. 

The leaker definitely has no regard for Brenda Tracy’s well-being, and the entire thing seems to be an attempt to hurt Tucker’s chances of surviving this scandal and being able to earn the massive contract that Spartan boosters gave him.

This case is complicated and messy enough without the ulterior motives of a third party being driven by a desire for success on the football field. 

Let that sink in.

The Illegal Hit On Colorado’s Travis Hunter Exposes The Hypocrisy Of NCAA Targeting Rules

We need to talk about Travis Hunter’s injury on the cheapshot by Henry Blackburn in the Colorado/Colorado State game. 

If you didn’t see it, Blackburn came over from his safety position and put his shoulder into Hunter’s ribs well after a sideline pass had already sailed over Hunter’s head. 

Blackburn was trying to knock Hunter out of the game, and it worked. After being pulled from the game and sent to the hospital for evaluation, we now know that Travis Hunter is knocked out of several games. 

https://x.com/espn/status/1703245484553293976?s=20

And until he gets back, Henry Blackburn should be suspended too. But he won’t be. Because you can intentionally try to injure anyone you want in college football, so long as you don’t lower your head when you do it. 

Lower your head and whiff on a tackle like Weber State’s Naseme Colvin did against Utah last weekend? Kicked out of the game.

Lower your shoulder into the ribs of the best player on the field at full speed well after the play has ended? Stay in the game, but the ball gets moved 45 feet ahead. 

Now, Henry Blackburn isn’t going to go unpunished. This is a young man FROM Boulder Colorado. Walking around in his hometown is gonna be a little less comfortable now that people like LeBron James are tweeting about his dirty hit. However, he will be able to play the first half next week against Middle Tennessee State, while his teammate Mohamed Kamara will have to sit out because he got flagged for targeting on his hit of Sheduer Sanders.

But this is less about Henry Blackburn, and more about how it exposes the NCAA’s ridiculous refusal to address the fact that a massive portion of targeting calls involve accidental contact and end up being judgment calls from referees watching who are watching slow motion replays.

There needs to be a differentiation between incidental, non-malicious contact on the field that the NCAA still wants to discourage, and the intentional type of plays that can ruin careers, and endanger someone’s physical wellbeing. 

Nobody understands the need to keep players as safe as possible in an intensely physical game more than I do. I had to take these hits. But I’m a former offensive player out here telling you that trying to take the football out of football by not differentiating between things that happen when a defender is trying to make a play, like when Mississippi State’s Shawn Preston Jr. got tossed for tackling a non-sliding Jayden Daniels in their game against LSU. 

At most that should have been a penalty for leading with the helmet. I could live with that, but for the rules as they’re written to create the reality that it’s less egregious for a safety to use his shoulder as a weapon on a defenseless receiver after the play ends?

That’s a joke. 

We can try and rid the game of lowered crowns and launching- that’s a noble pursuit. Stuff like what the Denver Broncos Kareem Jackson did to Washington Commanders TE Logan Thomas on Sunday needs to involve punishments that span the length of the injuries they might cause. I feel the same way about Henry Blackburn. 

But if the illegal contact seems unintentional, throw the flag and make it a teachable moment instead of an overly punitive action that shifts the balance of competition in the game. 

Let that sink in.

Pac-12 Apostles Podcast (9/14/2023): Oregon State and Washington State Sue. 8 Ranked Teams, Week 2 Review/Week 3 Preview

On this episode of the Pac-12 Apostles, George Wrighster and Ralph Amsden talk about Oregon State and Washington State’s decision to sue the Pac-12 for control of the conferences finances, plus the fact that 8 ranked teams is as good as the conference has ever looked through two weeks. The guys recap last week’s games, and preview a Pac-12 Network heavy week that will see two pregame shows set up shop in Boulder, Colorado.

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The Pac-12 Apostles is a podcast for fans who love the Pac-12 conference. George Wrighster and Ralph Amsden are committed to the honest and fair conversation about the conference. Join us by becoming a Pac-12 Apostle. Subscribe and share the podcast.

Please leave a rating and review of our podcast on iTunes! We record a podcast once a week with emergency episodes when necessary. Our podcasts are always heavy on Pac-12 football. But we make it a point to also try and cover the other notable Men’s and Women’s Pac-12 sports. We cover recruiting and any other major storyline in the Pac-12 universe.

George Wrighster is a former Pac-12 and long-time NFL tight end. As a television/radio host, opinionist, and analyst, who is UNAFRAID to speak the truth. Contrary to industry norms he uses, facts, stats, and common sense to win an argument. He has covered college football, basketball, NFL, NBA, MLB since 2014. Through years of playing college football, covering bowl games, coaching changes, and scandals, he has a great pulse for the conference and national perspective.

Ralph Amsden is a sportswriter and podcaster. He is the publisher of Rivals’ ArizonaVarsity.com, Content Director for UnafraidShow.com, and was previously the managing editor of the Arizona State University Rivals affiliate, DevilsDigest.com. Wyoming born, Arizona raised, and now based in Charlotte, North Carolina with his wife and four kids, Amsden made his mark in Arizona sports media through investigative reporting, and being one of the first people to leverage social media and the podcast medium to grow his platform. . Ralph might be sub-.500 in spousal disputes and schoolyard fights, but whether the topic is food, movies, music, parenting, politics, sports, television, religion, or zoological factoids, he’s always UNAFRAID to square up.