Published Jan 22, 2019
This week's most ridiculous moments in college sports
Rob Cassidy and Woody Wommack
Rivals.com

MORE RIDICULOUS MOMENTS: Jan. 15 | Jan. 8 | Jan. 1 | Dec. 25 | Full college coverage

Each week, Rivals.com recruiting analysts Woody Wommack and Rob Cassidy take a look around the world of high school and college sports to identify unique and noteworthy moments.

JUDGE FARRELL: Issuing verdicts on early entry decisions by five-stars

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1. FOOTBALL MEETS HIGH FASHION

The fashion industry is one of the few realms that routinely matches the world of college sports when it comes to general insanity, so I get excited on the rare occasion that the universe manages to combine the two.

Enter Paris Fashion Week, where American football helmets somehow became an accessory and, in some cases, a full-on look.

Slender models wore, carried, carted and dragged the proactive gear down runways, as American designer Virgil Abloh of Louis Vuitton and Off-White fame used the football helmets in his runway show.

I don’t pretend to understand high fashion, but I do understand football. And if I see people wearing a football helmet at an art show or a gallery opening at Art Basel next year -- something that seems less possible than it is if you’ve never been to the event – then I’m tackling them.

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2. TODD GURLEY’S TIMELESS TWEETS

This isn’t “ridiculous” by the word’s definition. Instead, it’s simply a coincidence. But, hey, it’s the high school and college football offseason so we have to bend to the rules established by the headline here.

Who’s gonna sue us? You?

Anyway, back in 2012, Rams running back Todd Gurley was a senior at North Carolina’s Torboro High School and the No. 42 player in the Rivals250. That year, he fired off a number of tweets discussing the 2012 NFL playoffs and, in particular, the New England Patriots, the very same franchise Gurley and the Rams will attempt to take down in this year’s Super Bowl.

Revisited now, the below tweets, which were sent over the course of that season’s playoffs, read like a prophecy.

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3. FLORIDA STATE’S BOTCHED MLK TRIBUTE

Monday was Martin Luther King Jr. Day, a holiday meant to honor one of the most important men in American history. With that being the case, several college football programs wanted to pay homage to the late Dr. King, and most did so with graphical representations featuring a notable quote.

Florida State elected to do the same with a tweet from its official football recruiting account, except the graphic in question was met with immediate and nearly unanimous outcry. The since-deleted graphic featured King photoshopped with a football glove on his hand, doing what appeared to be a “Tomahawk Chop” motion, embedded in the words “Do Something.”

The problematic nature of the tweet doesn’t really need to be explained in this space, but it’s pretty ridiculous that enough people thought it was a good idea that it was not only conceived as an idea, but then created and executed – and allowed to live in the public space before being taken down less than an hour after being posted.

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4. KLIFF’S LOVE FOR KYLER

This didn’t actually happen this week, but it’s still relevant considering how much it has been discussed over the past 10 days. Back in the fall, in an effort to praise then-Oklahoma quarterback Kyler Murray, then-Texas Tech coach Kilff Kingsbury said he would draft Murray with the No. 1 overall pick in the NFL Draft if he had the chance.

Four months later, after being fired by Texas Tech and briefly hired by USC as an assistant coach, Kingsbury now finds himself as the head coach of the NFL’s Arizona Cardinals. The team that just happens to hold the No. 1 overall pick in this year’s draft.

So is Kingsbury going to make good on that proclamation? The real answer is probably not, as the Cardinals just last year used the 10th pick to draft former five-star quarterback Josh Rosen.

Since the quote has resurfaced, some NFL media members have suggested the Cardinals trade Rosen to give Kingsbury his wish. The bottom line is that in an effort to heap praise on Murray, Kingsbury just said something that was probably a little hyperbolic, not knowing how things would unfold down the road. Now that he’s an NFL coach and has had this experience, expect for Kingsbury to pivot to “On to Cincinnati” type quotes from here on out.

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