The college football season got off to a great start last night, between Vanderbilt giving No. 9 South Carolina quite the scare and Minnesota pulling off a 30-27 win in thrilling triple overtime fashion. But I assume that like me, most of you were glued to a TV that was streaming the ESPN 3 action of UCF and Akron from an iPad, because that was clearly the game of the night. While we watched the Knights trounce the Zips 56-14, we did miss a few other fun moments.
But I’m pretty confident that no moment in all of yesterday’s 15 games topped Kent State football player Andre Parker’s gaffe in the first half of the Golden Flashes’ 41-21 victory over Towson. The sophomore KSU linebacker scooped up a muffed punt return by Towson’s Derrick Joseph, and thankfully the refs knew that the play was dead, because Parker didn’t, and hilarity ensued.
Again, the play is dead, but when you’re a 12-pack deep and you’ve been screaming profanities at the families of other players for an hour, rules don’t really mean much to (12 or 13) fans, so Parker probably got caught up in the excitement. And clearly Parker and Towson’s own special teams players didn’t realize the play was dead, because not only does Parker run in the wrong direction, but the Towson players stopped him. Maybe we need to take two preseason games away from the NFL and give them to college teams.
