Smack Zone — Smack Apparel

Welcome to the Smack Apparel weekly football picks contest, where t-shirts and bragging rights are on the line every week. To play, click this link: Smack Apparel Picks Contest. Once there, register at the top-right of the page. Next, pick your winners for every game and enter a score for the tie-breaker. Each weekly winner will receive three Smack Apparel t-shirts, and the runner-up will receive one t-shirt. Share this post on Facebook and Twitter and tag your friends. Don’t forget to remind them who’s the king of picking games with your best smack talk! To help you out, here are a few random thoughts on this week’s slate.

COLLEGE GAMES

Florida State at Boston College – Welcome to the ultimate Tea Party event. Northwestern at Duke – May the highest composite IQ win. Virginia Tech at Purdue – What’s a Boilermaker without a splash of Wild Turkey? Georgia Tech at Notre Dame – This week’s lock: A team with gold helmets will win this game. Nebraska at Miami – Hello, 2015? 1995 called. It wants its national championship game back. Auburn at LSU – So many Tigers. Rawr. South Carolina at Georgia – After last week’s shocker against Kentucky, the Ole Ball Coach needs to bounce back against his Ole Rival. Texas Tech at Arkansas – The Razorbacks have allowed one TD pass in two games. Tech’s Pat Mahomes might double that … in the first quarter. Florida at Kentucky – A chance for one of these teams to stake an early claim as an SEC East contender. California at Texas – The Horns could use a “get-better” game to right their season. This ain’t that. Rutgers at Penn State – The battle for the bottom of the Big Ten East. Pittsburgh at Iowa – Coming off a rivalry win against Iowa State, favored Hawkeyes could be ready for letdown. Stanford at USC – The last 19 times Stanford entered this game unranked, it went 1-17-1. Stanford is unranked this week. Do the math. Ole Miss at Alabama – The touchdown-underdog Rebs could win, but it would make some major history: Ole Miss is 1-27 all-time in Tuscaloosa, and the Tide has never lost consecutive games to the Rebs. BYU at UCLA – Hint for UCLA: If BYU QB Tanner Mangum drops back for a Hail Mary pass, pray.

NFL GAMES

Patriots at Bills – Rex the Wonder Coach and his upstart Bills try to announce their presence with authority against the Very Shady Brady Bunch. Seahawks at Packers – We’ll defer to Marshawn Lynch’s mom, Delisa, for commentary on this one. Actual, news-making, direct quote from her Facebook page after Seattle’s loss to St. Louis: "Too the smart azz media who wrote that's why marshawn didn't get the ball in the superbowl ,how many times did russell get sacked yesterday. Dont worry i will wait on the answer plus it was totally different at the superbowl the line was better than yesterday no blocking and to the offense caller who should have been fired yes i said it Fired !!! He is the worst play-caller ever the only reason he called that dumb azz play yesterday is to be able to justify the 1 yard that wasn't called in the superbowl ,but most fans already figured this out .were still on a mission but i know the Seahawks staff loves that play caller more than a win ,go figure ‪#‎nfldontpayme# I love this team and will stand up to anybody who tries to destroy it boom!!!!" We could not have said it better ourselves. Lions at Vikings – It won’t matter how well QB Teddy Bridgewater or RB Adrian Peterson play for Minnesota if the Vikes’ D doesn’t do much better against Detroit rookie RB Ameer Abdullah than it did against San Fran’s Carlos Hyde (168 yards on 26 carries). Texans at Panthers – Houston’s DL/LB J.J. Watt could very well be the best fantasy play of the week from this game. Cowboys at Eagles – Eagles RB DeMarco Murray had nine yards on eight carries against the Falcons in Week 1. Very, very, very safe to say he’ll perform better than that this week against the team that was too cheap to pay him after he set a Cowboys record for rushing yards in a season.

[caption id="attachment_973" align="aligncenter" width="474"] Illustration: Steve Hill[/caption] For better or worse, Jameis Winston and Marcus Mariota will be linked throughout their NFL careers. It’s an amazing quirk of the schedule that the No. 1 and No. 2 overall picks from the most recent draft will make their professional debuts together Sunday at Raymond James Stadium. Are we witnessing the birth of the next great NFL quarterback rivalry? Hard to predict. After all, the anticipated long-time rivalry between Tim Couch and Donovan McNabb (No. 1 and 2, Class of 1999) never quite materialized, did it? And the potential RGIII-Andrew Luck rivalry hasn’t exactly emerged, even though their careers began with such promise in 2012 and both are still young. What makes a great NFL QB rivalry? It requires individual greatness and superior achievement, certainly. It also requires something more. In order for a rivalry to develop, they must face each other frequently over the years, and the stakes must be high. People have to care. There has to be a buzz all week long. We all know it’s not really QB vs. QB in an NFL game. Intellectually, we know that the true competition is between the defensive coordinators and the great QBs. But history says something else. History says quarterbacks are measured not only by their team and individual achievements. They are measured by their success against one another. Fair or not, that’s how Winston and Mariota will ultimately be measured, too. And it all starts this weekend. Here is a quick look at some of the top QB rivalries in NFL history. Perhaps Winston-Mariota will join them one day: Tom Brady (Patriots)-Peyton Manning (Colts, Broncos) New England fans can argue that the 16 regular-season meetings between two of the game’s four or five all-time greatest passers have not constituted a rivalry. That’s because Brady’s teams have defeated Manning’s teams 11 of those 16 times. However, they are 2-2 in four postseason matchups, and Manning’s teams actually are 2-1 against Brady’s teams in AFC Championship Games. Still, Brady’s four championship rings trump Manning’s one pretty easily. The rivalry was stirred a bit this offseason when a less-than-complimentary email written by Brady about Manning surfaced during the Deflategate investigation. Brady apologized and Manning took the high road. They meet again Nov. 29 in Denver. Joe Namath (Jets)-Johnny Unitas (Colts) Their teams met in Super Bowl III (Unitas was sort of a bit player because of injury), then met again in 1972 when the Jets beat the Colts, 44-34. Namath passed for 496 yards and six TDs that day, which marked the official changing of the guard from the short-cropped Unitas Era to the shaggy-haired Namath Era in the NFL. Roger Staubach (Cowboys)-Terry Bradshaw (Steelers) A lot of NFL fans who grew up in the 1970s wanted to be Staubach, and just as many wanted to be Bradshaw. They both embodied bravado and charisma as much as any athletes of their generation. They met twice in the Super Bowl. Bradshaw won them both, but Staubach got two rings of his own against other teams. Dan Marino (Dolphins)-Joe Montana (49ers) They met in Super Bowl XIX, but not often after that. Still, their rivalry was more about historic production and statistics (Marino had the clear edge) versus simply winning (Montana might have been the best of all time at that). Troy Aikman (Cowboys)-Steve Young (49ers) They met three consecutive seasons (1992-94) in the NFC Championship Game. Aikman won the first two and Young won the third. Brett Favre was in the mix here, too, but Aikman-Young was the premier QB rivalry in the league for nearly half a decade. Andrew Luck (Colts)-Russell Wilson (Seahawks) This is one for the future. Both have out-shone fellow 2012 draftee RGIII, and Wilson has clearly staked his claim as the best young QB of this era. Luck, however, is poised to make a move this year and it would surprise no one if they led their teams to the Super Bowl. Sure, we know. We’ve left off a bunch. Otto Graham-Bobby Layne, John Elway-Jim Kelly, Marino-Kelly, Bradshaw-Ken Stabler, Dan Fouts-Jim Plunkett, and so many others. Where will Winston-Mariota end up on the list? It starts Sunday.

Five things worth a bit more reflection after an eventful weekend in sports:

1. As BYU backup quarterback Tyler Mangum ranged to his right and launched the game-winning 42-year Hail Mary pass in his team’s 33-28 victory against Nebraska Saturday, a fan hundreds of feet away in the opposite end zone had his camera rolling.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oU7QJ8ecLv4] We found that video on YouTube. We like it because it gives us a different look at the Play of the Year so far in college football (yeah, we said it). We LOVE it because of the fan’s burst of laughter at the :20 mark. Laugh smack is the best smack.

2. Mets ace pitcher Matt Harvey took a lot of heat in New York over the weekend for not pounding his chest and exclaiming that he would defy the recommendation of surgeon James Andrews (and, perhaps more importantly, the orders of agent Scott Boras) by blasting right through his medically mandated 180-inning limit this season.

[caption id="attachment_930" align="alignleft" width="240"] Image: NY Daily News.[/caption] Harvey, known affectionately to Mets fans as the Dark Knight, was smacked HARD by the Daily News with a pretty brilliant depiction of the big right-hander as Harvey Dent, AKA Batman’s nemesis Two Face. Harvey fired back with a first-person vow in Derek Jeter’s the Player’s Tribune that he would, in fact, pitch in the playoffs. This all seems like a big none story to us at this point. After all, the Mets still have to GET TO the postseason for Harvey to pitch there. And don’t look now, but those under-achieving Washington Nationals are coming on hard and fast.

3. There might not be a more compelling sibling rivalry in sports history than Venus vs. Serena. The Williams sisters easily won their respective U.S. Open Round of 16 matches on Sunday, so they advanced to meet one another in the quarterfinals. At stake: Serena’s quest to hold all four tennis major titles in the same calendar year.

This one has all the elements of a truly historic sports rivalry: two great champions, one (Venus) aging but still brilliant, one (Serena) among the most accomplished professional athletes in U.S. history. A historic milestone, the tennis Grand Slam. All with the added drama of sister vs. sister. We will be watching.

4. This video from a high school football game in Texas is an illustration of everything wrong with sports. Two players from San Antonio John Jay High targeted a referee with cheap shots from behind during the play.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNCrs63JeuM] The two players have reportedly been suspended by their school district (gee, ya think?). The John Jay coach apologized for the attack, but clearly that was not going to be enough to make amends. Come on, Texas. Let’s keep it civil, eh? If you have an issue with the ref, take the high road and stick to the time-honored tradition of creative insults punctuated with off-color language.

5. We don’t even know what to make of this. The Kansas State band broke into its Star Trek routine at halftime Saturday, but suddenly a giant Kansas Jayhawk appeared … in … space? And attacked … a cylindrical … what IS that? The Enterprise? REALLY?

Here’s how it was SUPPOSED to look: [caption id="attachment_931" align="aligncenter" width="474"] Image: Kansas State University.[/caption] This video shows how it ACTUALLY looked: [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKGwf7CBWuw] Um. OK. There were a number of interpretations of the band’s routine floating around the Internet this weekend. We’ll leave it to you to decide what … it … really … is.

They are the legends of smack. Sports figures who talked as good a game as they played or coached. Greats who told you what they were going to do; did it; then told you all about it. If there were a Sports Smack Hall of Fame, these guys would be elected on the first ballot. Their mugs would adorn the Mount Rushmore of Smack: Muhammad Ali. Dizzy Dean. Michael Jordan. Steve Spurrier. Oh, we know. There are many others who have raised trash talk to an art form over the years. You might prefer four completely different smack talkers, and who are we to argue? Well … We are Smack Apparel, the nation’s leading sports parody apparel company. We’ve been around since 1998. We make t-shirts for fans who love their teams -- and love to hate their rivals. And this? This is Smack Zone, our new blog dedicated to all things smack talk and sports passion. Check in daily for stories, videos, fan contests and a few surprises along the way. We wanted to kick things off today with a tip of the cap to the smack masters. After all, what would modern-day smack talk be without the breakthrough moments of trash talk engineered by pioneers like Ali, who gave us this all-time epic piece of smack moments after he defeated Sonny Liston in 1964: [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BY6_3Y7OOo8] Come on, who’s better than Ali? No one. He was correct: He is the greatest. But he shares the stage with many. For instance, where would we be today if Hall of Fame pitcher Dizzy Dean hadn’t vowed that he and his brother, Paul, would combine for at least 45 pitching victories for the 1934 St. Louis Cardinals? That was a big promise, and sure enough: They won 49 together that year. Dizzy remains the most recent National League pitcher to win 30 games in a season. It was Dizzy Dean, during his later career as a broadcaster, who gave us one of the all-time truisms of smack talk: “It ain’t bragging if you can back it up.” And who could dish it out better than His Airness? The greatest basketball player of all time also might have been the cockiest. Pity poor Craig Ehlo. The Cleveland Cavaliers All-Star drew the unenviable task of trying to guard Jordan late during a memorable game on March 28, 1990. All Jordan did that day was drop a career-best 69 points – including a sequence of plays when he informed Ehlo exactly what moves he would make and where he would shoot from, then did it. According to Ehlo, Jordan didn’t even sound a bit malicious when he said, matter-of-factly:  “You know you can’t stop this.” Then there’s the Ole Ball Coach. Steve Spurrier loves what he calls “Talkin’ Season,” and few have used the slow summer months to better verbal advantage. Remember, you still can’t spell Citrus Bowl without UT. Spur Dog has a special place in our hearts here at Smack Apparel. You see, our founder and Smack Talker in Chief, Wayne Curtiss, went to Florida State. Our very first shirt was conceived when Wayne thought about that old saying by cowboy performer Will Rogers: “I never met a man I didn’t like.” [caption id="attachment_862" align="alignleft" width="300"] The very first Smack Apparel t-shirt: an homage to one of the masters of smack, the Old Ball Coach himself.[/caption] Well, thought Wayne. Will Rogers never met Steve Spurrier. And there we had it: our first article of Ready-to-Wear Smack Talk. It was, and remains, a Smack Apparel classic. Who else deserves a spot alongside our four greatest smack talkers of all time? A few potential candidates come to mind: Joe Namath, Deion Sanders, Richard Sherman, Deacon Jones, Warren Sapp, Sean Avery, John Randle, Shannon Sharpe, Chad Johnson, Gary Payton, Floyd Mayweather, Satchel Paige, Terrell Owens, Reggie Miller, Ray Lewis, Mike Tyson, Larry Bird, Steve Smith, A.J. Pierzynski. And so many other legends. We’ll get to them all soon enough. Meanwhile, welcome to Smack Zone. We’re glad you could make it. Hang on … it’s going to be a great ride.

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Coming tomorrow: As we continue to celebrate the launch of Smack Zone and the kickoff of football season, come with us behind the scenes as founder Wayne Curtiss shows you how we do what we do at Smack Apparel. And be sure to follow us Twitter, Facebook and Instagram for a constant stream of smack throughout the day! [caption id="attachment_864" align="aligncenter" width="266"] Rosemary and Wayne Curtiss welcome you to Smack Zone. We hope you enjoy wearing our t-shirts as much as we love making them for you![/caption]