Oh, how I've missed you, friends in schadenfreude. Every piece of spring and summer news can be spun as a positive by fans, and that's no fun.

Player transferred out? He left because someone better is going to take his spot. Assistant got fired? New guy is definitely gonna turn his unit around by Week 3. Schedule projects to be weak? Listen, all that matters is going undefeated. Schedule looks crazy hard? Look, the committee's going to take notice of that and put us in with two losses over some garbage team that got to play Downy State.

The months between the national championship and Week 1 are nothing but hope and optimism. It's terrible, but it's also necessary. Because the offseason is where we plant that hope deep in the soil, nurture it and wait for the games to begin so we can harvest the sour bile that comes from teams jumping out of the starting block and falling right on their faces. Go get your scythe.

TEXAS

Losing badly to start the season raises a lot of questions. Are these the coaches we should be sticking with? Do we need to bench someone? At Burnt Orange Nation, the focus was more existential.

This is a waste of time

Not only do Charlie and Patterson need to go, but we might want to petition the FCS for membership. NAIA?

Who is Texas? Where does it belong in the universe?

We're just getting manhandled.

It's not that we're getting beat. It's like we don't even belong in the same Galaxy. This is what we should be doing to Rice. We are Rice for Notre Dame.

Is Texas a reality, or just an idea that we as society make real through common agreement?

This is just absolutely fucking pathetic.

seriously, we don't even deserve to be considered an FBS team.

From now on, let's agree to consider Texas football as the first sports chupacabra, believed by many to exist but largely rejected by the football scientific community.

All the same, you should fear the chupacabra's slobbery attack!

Gum Job

Toothless. Totally toothless. Perhaps there will be an opponent or two we can gum to death in the upcoming season. We certainly won't be biting, chewing or gnawing on anyone ...

A cow without teeth, desperately trying to chew up some grass. Shit, that's a sad image.

Inadvertent Commenter Poetry time!

Blowouts are becoming the norm

Three in a row

Eight months to prepare

ZERO improvement

Offense still pathetic

If anything, we are getting worse

Out-coached, again

[/uses sleeve of cardigan to wipe away single tear] You just get it, man.

But it isn't all sad imagery. Some of it is we-really-hope-you're-joking-because-well-maybe-you-aren't violent instead!

If anyone wants to bomb an abortion clinic,

Start with Bellmont

Let's focus on non-felonious approaches to solving the problems currently facing Texas. First off, we need to acknowledge who's truly at fault: selfish high schoolers who want to play for a school that might actually win 10 games.

Where the F are the Texas HS QBS?

How the F are you a Texas HS QB over the last 3 years and not see what's happening at Texas and want to come and help?? Since there are obviously 10-20 Texas QBs on the two deep out there for good schools....how can none of them want to come to Texas and help right the ship!!?? The two QBs we have are TERRIBLE!!!!

According to one brave soul at Orangebloods, the real problem is that Texas hired the wrong Louisville coach.

Don't you think it's strange that C Strong left Louisville to coach Texas and Louisville replaced him with a much better coach? That's normally not how things work when a coach leaves you for the same job at Texas Petrino > Charlie Strong

(Oh, Bobby's totally getting that job in two years. Just prepare yourself for that and watch how quickly Arkansas fans demand a home-and-home with Texas.)

Or perhaps Scipio Tex has identified the real issue: the Texas offense is caught in the worst kind of feedback loop possible.

We have a reciprocal cycle of suck, where each tendril of inadequacy feeds and somehow magnifies its other component parts. Whatever the opposite of synergy is, that's Texas. We are Un-synergy.

But let's end on a good note. One Shaggy Bevo denizen has identified a metric by which this might turn out to be a successful season of Longhorn football!

MIGHT. I said might.

WASHINGTON STATE

When you lose at home to an FCS team that went 3-9 in 2014, one of those nine being a 38-point loss to you? [/deep, impressed whistle]

I'll just stand out the way while you work this out in public, CougCenter.

Every single player should

Give up their jersey and scholarship after this. People think the ncaa is corrupt for not paying their players. The true crime is that tax dollars subsidize this athletic department.

We just lost to a big sky team

With an interim head coach. No reaction is an overreaction.

I dont wanna fire him

I just want everyone else to hate him as much as I do.

The program is maturing

The program is maturing like milk left out on a counter for a month in 90* heat.

I told myself I wasn't renewing season tickets after the listless UW game. I did. I told myself yesterday I wasn't coming back for Wyoming. I will. We're Coug fans. We signed on for this. The burden of all these lousy seasons will only increase our joy when we hit a 7 or 8 win season - (which I still believe will happen in Leach's tenure). Is that optimism, or sadism?

Being a Coug fan: it's like playing a video game that is programmed to prevent you from ever winning. Even WOPR figured out when to give up.

If you want peak indigant Cougar fan, however, you'll need to head to WazzuWatch. And don't you dare bring an umbrella, you stupid weak baby.

They're soft kids. Did you see how many guys were hiding under the tent to get out of the rain? Amazing. Not surprised they got run over on the goal line. WTF do you care if you get wet? You have a helmet on. And you have a $60M brand new facility to get warm in. Personally, I think the entire team and coaches should be using another facility on campus. Somewhere small, cramped, cold water only, no heat, generally a lousy in every way. The FOB should be earned, not given. These kids are soft.

PENN STATE

Sad Lions pic.twitter.com/YDPAKJBqAh — SB Nation GIF (@SBNationGIF) September 5, 2015

Texas doesn't know what it is anymore. Wazzu knows what it is and can't change it, no matter how badly it wants to. Penn State fans at Black Shoe Diaries, having lost to Temple for the first time since 1941, knows that everything needs to be burnt to the ground.

BURN THE STARTING QUARTERBACK.

A sentence i never thought I'd write

Fuck Christian Hackenberg, give me literally anyone else. If he were black, we'd call him Bolden 2.0.

BURN THE HEAD COACH.

Franklin is a bum.

Terrible game coach. Terrible system. This isn't Hackenberg regressing, it's trying to jam a high-school level system down the throat of a kid with pro-style skills. Franklin couldn't change to match the talent. He isn't skilled enough. He can't recruit either. The kids he won with at Vandy were his predecessors. Terrible hire.

Everyone knows Robbie Caldwell was the true architect of Vanderbilt's success.

Okay.

I am so fucking pissed at everything right now in general with this team. We have seen Franklin talk and talk and recruit and recruit, and then he takes all these tools on to the field and everybody just fucking shits the bed. Coming in, I had every reason to be optimistic, especially after the bowl win last year. There was no way it could get worse. They had to learn something. Instead, not only are we seeing they haven't learned, but it seems SOMEHOW the offense has managed to get FUCKING WORSE. Donovan is a moron, and what the fuck is Herb Hand doing with this fucking line? NINE - TEN FUCKING SACKS?!!?? AGAINST FUCKING TEMPLE? Getting our asses kicked by a team that hasn't beaten us in 70 fucking years. I'm pissed and humiliated.

Fire Franklin

Now I know he's a good spokesman for the university, he's a good talker, and most of all a great recruiter. He was the leading coaching candidate in the country when we hired him. But the bloom is off the rose, and it's not going to take much longer before recruits will see him for what he is: all style and no substance. He's a snake oil salesman. He's Zook 2.0. Find another guy. Hire the Temple guy. Hire his offensive coordinator.

Well, Illinois got rid of their Zook and hired a coach who'd taken a non-power team to impressive victories, and how'd that work out for them? Oh, right, they're 1-0. This is a good plan and I'm sorry for questioning it.

BURN THE OFFENSIVE LINE.

Next week start McSorley and a few backup O-line guys

It's time to do some 1st string shaming

"We intentionally started the backups to shame the starters and now everyone's dead" is going to be a great press conference quote, by the way.

BURN SOCIETY.

THIS was the zombie apocalypse of PSU football.

Drink heavily and eat all of the food in your refrigerator before the electricity goes out.

And, most importantly, BURN POLITICAL CORRECTN— wait, what?

The mere existence of our Athletic Director and her choices of coaches just points out, once again... if anybody actually doubted it...that Penn State is driven by political correctness; regardless of the quality of the output, from sports through academics. Having the proper balance by race, sex, sexual orientation, heritage, and all the other crap mandated by the culture at Penn State has relegated success and excellence far behind political correctness. Throughout my career in several disciplines and in 78 countries, my degree from Penn State always brought positive comments and credibility. Over the past 10 or 15 years, the reaction has so radically changed that I stopped featuring my Alma Mater and referred to my graduate work and degrees instead. What a sad situation. This terrible football team is just the canary in the coal mine...the whole system is in serious danger.

Let's make sure we give the floor to Blue White Illustrated before we move on.

I have not missed a game since 1996

That streak ends this Saturday! I have zero desire to watch these vaginas!

This is, by a country mile, the worst 45 minutes of football

I've ever seen PSU play. How ironic, our hot shot SEC bred coach is made to look ridiculous by a ex PSU LB.

See, even when Penn State loses, it wins. "At least our house was ransacked by a former Joe Paterno player. That's really more of an honor than a crime."

SB Nation presents: Texas and Penn State losing big among the weekend's top stories

VANDERBILT

Vanderbilt was the only SEC team to lose in Week 1. This is some thin gruel, though, because Vanderbilt hope supplies never built up much this offseason. In fact, some of this self-hatred at Anchor of Gold is downright happy! Ish!

I'll say one thing: I haven't wanted to kill myself yet.

Could not say that at this point last year.

Soooooo....

We've gone from "three and out" to "drive the ball 80 yards and then throw it away." #progress

Some of it is not.

THORW UP O'CLOCK!

GODDAMMIT I FUCKING HATE EVERYTHING

Some of it is nonsense.

i live foue bloxksmmmm

And some of it is wistful.

Worst part of this season for me is we can't fire Dorrell again.

Vanderbilt Football: Because Every Platter Needs A Head

LOUISVILLE

There were arguably more frustrating losses in the ACC in Week 1 -- UCLA bulldozed Virginia, UNC did an awesome impersonation of Peter by denying victory three times in the red zone against South Carolina -- but none was more symmetric than Louisville's loss to Auburn. It began with this very bad interception thrown by Lamar Jackson.

This was the reaction at CardChronicle.

Like most close games, a mixture of good and bad things happened. But then we got to the end, and Bobby Petrino took a timeout that was a stupid decision, but not as stupid as everyone believed it to be in the moment. This is the reaction to that.

Did we just call a fucking timeout?!?!

ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME!!!!!!!!!

WHY ARE WE WASTING A TIMEOUT?!

Bobby! What the fuck??????????

WHY DID WE JUST TAKE A TIME OUT? WE JUST COSTED US 25 SECONDS.

do we know rules?

From embarrassment to saving the day back to fucking embarrassment.

Holy shit. What an idiot.

WHAT. THE. FUCK. What just happened there?

ONE OF THE BEST COACHES IN THE COUNTRY. GOD DAMNED GENIUS.

You're mad now, Louisville fans, but you'll miss him when he takes that job in Austin.