Another one bites the

dust!  And another one down, another one

bites the dust! 

After former unbeatens Alabama and Penn State both lost last weekend, there are now just five unbeaten teams remaining in the SwampSwami College Football Top 25 rankings for Week #11 ending Saturday, November 8, 2019.

The two showcase games of last weekend made for a glorious afternoon of college football viewing!

First, the Minnesota Golden Gophers (who were ranked #17 by the so-called experts of the BCS last week but #7 in my survey last week) jumped ahead early and then held-off BCS #4 Penn State (#5 in my rankings last week).  The final score of 31-26 looks closer than this game felt while watching it.  The Golden Gophers unleashed a pinpoint passing attack, a rugged running game, and a big-play defense on Saturday.  Penn State never recovered.

The second battle of unbeatens had 8-0 Alabama hosting 8-0 LSU.  Like Minnesota, LSU led from start to finish and grabbed a 5-point final victory margin.  However, unlike the Minnesota game, the Bayou Bengals raced to a 20-point halftime lead at 33-13 and stunned the previously confident Bama crowd.  Alabama mounted a second half rally, but LSU never lost the lead in winning 46-41 and breaking an 8-game losing streak to the Crimson Tide.

Let’s now reveal the latest SwampSwami College Football Top 25 for the week ending November 8:

In my poll, you’re ranked on fewest losses and who is the best team you have beaten this season!

With an incredible number of

grudge match-ups this coming weekend, there are bound to be a few surprises in

store for our elite group.

On the other end of the scale, the bottom ten teams out of the 130 FBS large division schools is now comprised of 2-win, 1-win, and three teams still seeking their first win of 2019.   Leading the way in this futility grouping is the Arkansas Razorbacks. 

After being embarrassed at home to a mid-level Western Kentucky team 45-19 on Saturday, the Razorbacks fired head football coach Chad Morris before the end of his second season in Fayetteville.  Before coming to Arkansas, Morris had led a turnaround at SMU in taking a 2-10 team to 7-5 over a three year period. 

Chad Morris has a degree in Mathematics with a minor in Statistics from Texas A&M.  He is also one of the few major school head coaches never to have played college football.   After signing a 6-year deal to coach the Hogs in Arkansas, the 50-year old Morris can “count” on being paid about $10 million over the next four years to not coach college football.

Nice work if you can get it!

Let’s reveal this week’s Bottom Ten teams:

There’s still a glimmer of hope for Rice, New Mexico State, and Akron…

Your SwampSwami is pulling for Rice, New Mexico State, and Akron to find

a way to break into the win column at least once before this season ends.   

The Rice Owls appear to have the best chance as they will play three consecutive Conference USA opponents with losing records to finish the year.  The Owls fly to 3-6 Middle Tennessee this week, then return home versus 4-6 North Texas, and fly west to play 1-8 at UT-El Paso to end their season.   

New Mexico State (who is an independent this season) also gets a chance to beat 1-8 UTEP on the week before Thanksgiving.   UTEP must feel like a piñata being targeted by these two hungry but winless squads!

Akron?  Well,

This week marks the 150th birthday of the first recorded college football game.  It occurred on November 6, 1869.  Would you care to take a guess who played in the inaugural college football game? 

A.  Texas vs. Texas A&M

B.  Georgia vs. Georgia Tech

C.  Rutgers vs. Princeton

D.  Ohio State vs. Michigan

The answer is “C”! 

The first college football game was played between Rutgers (the state university of New Jersey) and its arch-rival from twenty miles down the road, Princeton University.  The first game was played on the grounds of the Rutgers campus.

Look, Ma! No Helmets!

With about 100 interested

spectators watching along a fence, Rutgers prevailed by the score of 6-4. 

The teams were playing a “ten

point game” in which every score counted as a “game” and just one single point.

The initial rules were rugby-like,

but the first game invented something called “The Flying Wedge” (No, Sergio

Garcia!  It’s not that kind of wedge!).  The

person carrying the ball had a V-like group of blockers surrounding him to keep

him from being tackled before trying to cross the opponent’s goal line.

During the middle of this

unusual new game, the ball rolled near the fence where the students were

sitting.  Two of the bigger players ran

hard into the fence in order to get the ball, and the impact with the wooden

fence sent the students crashing to the ground! 

 

After the successful initial game,

the teams shared a meal together and planned next year’s event.  Word spread and other Eastern colleges

decided to give this new game a try, too.

You have to wonder what those

gentlemen in 1869 would think about their game’s evolution 150 years

later! 

This weekend, Alabama and LSU

will play a college football game in Tuscaloosa with over 100,000 fans paying

up to $500 per ticket to watch the event and a possible record of television

viewers for CBS on Saturday afternoon. 

Times have really changed in

150 years! 

ESPN put together a nifty list of the “The Greatest 150 Teams” in college football’s illustrious history.  I reviewed the entire list and found something interesting about many of these teams.

#144 – 1951 San Francisco Dons – The team went 9-0 for the season.  The Orange Bowl in Miami offered them a slot

in their bowl game with a “caveat”.  The

team was asked to leave their two African American players at home before

coming to Florida.  The team refused the

bowl bid.  Despite the perfect season,

the Dons finished ranked #14 by the AP!

#136 – 1919 Notre Dame Fighting Irish – The 9-0 Irish featured running back, George

Gipp.  Yes, the same one as in “Win One

for the Gipper”!  Coach Knute Rockne considered

Gipp to be the greatest player in Notre Dame History.   

#120 – 1942 Grambling University Tigers – Due to World War II, Grambling fielded a team with

just 33 players.  They became known as

the “UN” team.  Grambling went 8-0 and

was undefeated, untied,

Playing in a weekly fantasy

football league should be fun, but you would at least like your team to be

competitive every week. 

Not so for my Yahoo! Sports fantasy football team called Swamp Gas.  The Methane Marauders dropped their second straight game and fell to 5-4 with four games remaining in the regular season.

This week, we were KO’d by a whopping 48 points in losing big again, 120-72. 

A 48 point defeat? Ugh…

My fantasy football team

apparently has a fear of close games.  Our

four losses have been by 48, 18, 39, and 46 points.  That averages out to nearly 38 points per

loss! 

Despite another poor weekly showing, my Swamp Gas team is still in fifth place in the ten team league.  More concerning, though, is that we remain the lowest scoring team in the league. 

With the lowest point total in the league, it’s a miracle that our team is still in 5th place!

There is a little bit of good news on the horizon.  Starting quarterback Drew Brees returns to our line-up this week.  Maybe our Hall-of-Fame quarterback will lead by example and motivate the rest of the squad!

General Manager’s comments – The GM has tried hard to find enough healthy bodies to put on the field every week.   On Sunday, we were forced to wait until just before game time to know whether two of our first three draft choices were available to play.  Wide receiver Adam Thielen (Vikings) and Davante Adams (Packers) were literally game-time decisions so we needed a back-up to be ready for both of our starters.

This week, your GM is going to dump back-up QB Gardner Minshew (Jaguars) after laying an egg last week while Drew Brees was still off.  Minshew threw two interceptions, had two fumbles, and scored a puny seven points in an ugly loss to the Texans.  You’re gone!    

We’ll also drop our extra

kicker (Robbie Gould – 49ers) who was only needed with Saints starter Wil Lutz

on a bye week, too.  Only four points

from the back-up kicker?  GOOD

BYE! 

In their places, we will look

to grab another running back and wide receiver to add temporary depth at those

injury-prone positions.  We’ll see if

Miami receiver Davante Parker (that would give us two Davante’s on our team!)

or Ted Ginn of the Saints is available.  At

running back, perhaps Ronald Jones of the Bucs might be able to provide a little

insurance on the bench.

Coach’s Corner

– In my defense, it doesn’t matter what combination of players you put on the

field when your team loses by 48 points. 

Yes, quarterback Gardner “The Mustache” Minshew failed miserably this

week (7 fantasy points vs. a projected 20). 

The same goes for Adam

Thielen (Vikings).   On Sunday at literally the last minute, he was

announced to start so I inserted our third round pick into the line-up.  Then, he re-injured his hamstring while

running for his first pass of the day.  He

scored zero points (vs. a projected 10) and is now sidelined again with the

same leg injury.

We’re awaiting information about a possible knee injury for RB Le’Veon Bell (Jets).  He had an MRI on Monday, and we await the news.

Another likely bench warmer is tight end T.J. Hockenson (Lions) who was injured Sunday.  If  T.J’s injury is a concussion (which would be his second of the season), he might be finished for this year.

Through the week ending

Saturday, November 2, we are now down to just seven teams with an unbeaten

record in the 2019 college football season.

The newest SwampSwami College Football Top 25 rankings indicate that we lost Appalachian State and SMU from the unbeaten group over the weekend as each lost their first game of the season.  Both teams, though, still stay in this week’s Top 25 with just one loss on the year.

And then there were only 7 unbeaten teams!

The seven remaining unblemished teams will dwindle to five (or less) after this upcoming weekend’s college football games. 

SEC titans Alabama and LSU will battle it out Saturday afternoon in Tuscaloosa (2:30PM Central on CBS).  The other polls show them as #1 and #2 (which is fine), but I have the two teams at #2 and #4 respectively. 

Alabama’s head coach, Nick Saban, formerly coached the LSU Tigers in the 2000’s and led them to a national championship in 2003.  He left Baton Rouge for a chance to coach the NFL’s Miami Dolphins.  As a result, LSU grabbed Les Miles away from Oklahoma State while Saban stayed just two seasons in Miami before wanting to return back to college football.

Saban landed at Alabama in

2007 (one of LSU’s long-time most-hated rivals) and immediately became persona

non-grata with Tiger Nation in Baton Rouge. 

After a few years of

competitive battles with LSU, Nick Saban’s Alabama Crimson Tide has now won

eight consecutive match-ups with LSU. 

Last season, then #1 Bama came to Baton Rouge and put an embarrassing

29-0 skunking on then #4 LSU. 

In last year’s game, Alabama not only quieted the always rowdy LSU fans but also outgained the Tigers by a rolling up 576 yards on offense compared to LSU’s measly 196 total yards for the game. 

Holy beatdowns, Batman! Bama really put it on LSU’s Tigers last year!

Will LSU’s newfound offensive spark be enough to break this eight game losing streak?  Will Alabama dust-off the “How we beat LSU” playbook again this year and administer another beat-down? 

Regardless of what happens,

one of our unbeaten team will disappear this Saturday.

The same thing will happen on Saturday in Minneapolis as the surprising 8-0 Minnesota Golden Gophers (#7 in my poll but #13 in those other two polls) will host the 8-0 Penn State Nittany Lions (#5 in all three polls) at 11AM Central time on ABC.

Minnesotans are quite disappointed that ESPN’s College Game Day did not come to showcase this game as it would have been the crew’s first visit to Minnesota.  Instead, Game Day will set-up shop at Alabama for the game with LSU. 

This will be a fascinating

game to watch as most of the nation has no idea what to expect from the

surprising Golden Gophers.  Penn State is

used to playing in big games, but I am hoping that Minnesota rises to the

occasion on the national television stage.

The bottom portion of this week’s SwampSwami College Football Top 25 involves several teams with two losses.    If your favorite two or three-loss team isn’t shown, check out the list below to see how far your team has to climb to make it into my Top 25!

If your favorite team is in this group, “Just keep winning!” and they will eventually move up!

It must be really difficult to be in your position today.  After the state of California recently passed a law allowing college athletes to personally profit from their name, image, and likeness, it appears that a modern-day Pandora’s Box of problems has been unleashed.

For over 100 years, your tax-exempt non-profit organization has regulated athletics for over 1,200 colleges and universities and nearly 500,000 students annually.   With over $1 Billion in annual revenues, your organization really generates a lot of money for a nonprofit! 

I understand that about 80% of your annual revenues come from the annual “March Madness” College Basketball tournament.  I guess that putting nearly $800 million in your bank account every year might have raised the eyebrows of some of those young men who are competing in your annual month-long fundraising telethon. 

Oops!

With your beginnings in the early 1900’s as a response to the federal government about the alarming number of injuries and deaths associated with college football, you have a long history of cooperation with the great majority of colleges and universities in developing the rules and competition for most college sports.

For most of your 100 years,

your organization appeared to be focused on the students as well as their

athletics, right?  According to your television

commercials, the vast majority of college men and women students participating

in college sports will never turn professional. 

I am not aware of very many cross

country runners or field hockey players going pro (yet).

To me, it looks like your biggest problem seems to be that pesky television issue.  By allowing television to take root into your sports, those media capitalists have found a way to pass along their costs to unsuspecting home viewers by increasing monthly cable fees (such as ESPN) or by adding an extra half hour of those obscene profit breaks called commercials (such as CBS, for example). 

Those television pirates are in hot competition against one another for the right to bring college sports to the masses of interested citizens and widespread alumni of colleges and universities.  Television makes incredibly profitable offers to the biggest regional conferences under your NCAA umbrella. 

ESPN’s SEC Network, for example, earns about $5 Billion per year as the Southeastern Conference reportedly splits about half of that pot of gold with the network every year. 

Golly, NCAA.  It must be really tough to regulate all of this television money coming into college sports and those big conferences over the past few decades.

I can’t imagine where these college athletes would get the idea that, without them, this multi-billion dollar money spigot could dry up really quickly.

Sure, most of the big conferences return most of that money back to the athletic departments of their universities. 

Without that college football and basketball money, most of the other sports programs (like baseball, track and field, golf, tennis, etc.) wouldn’t be able to operate at the same high level as they do now. 

Today, the athletes in the biggest money-generating sports are being told that they should be happy knowing that the $30,

“You take it.  No, YOU take it!” 

These two World Series baseball teams were so courteous to each other!   

Heading into October’s World Series between the Houston Astros and the Washington Nationals, what were the chances that the home team would lose all seven World Series games?

According to one report, there was a 0.47% chance of that home team would fail to win a single game in baseball’s final seven games. 

The Washington Nationals are

going to address 25 “Thank You” notes to the pitchers and batters in the

Houston Astros line-up for being such great hosts on Wednesday night as the

Nationals went home with a 6-2 victory and grabbed their first World Series

title.

While they’re sending “Thank You” notes, the Nationals might want to include a special one to Houston manager, A. J. Hinch, for generously leaving the Astros’ pitching ace, Gerrit Cole, on the bench in the seventh inning instead of bringing him in to save the win.

In the seventh inning, Houston’s gutty starter Zack Greinke had just given up a solo home run to Houston native and Rice University’s Anthony Rendon, which cut Houston’s lead to a tenuous 2-1.  Greinke then walked the next batter.  After a terrific outing by the 36-year old starting pitcher, Grienke was lifted from the game. 

That is the point in Game 7 where A. J. Hinch earned his place on the Houston sports hot seat for years to come.  All-Star pitcher Gerrit Cole, who had just pitched a gem in Washington three days earlier, had told his manager that he could go “up to three innings” in Game 7 if that would help the team win.

Instead, Hinch opted to put

reliever Will Harris into the game. 

Harris then proceeded to give-up a two-run home run to the Nationals’ slumping

designated hitter Howie Kendrick. 

In one pitch, the Nationals grabbed

a 3-2 lead and never looked back.   

Houston’s skipper said that he preferred to save Gerrit Cole for the final inning to nail-down the win.   

How about that for Southern hospitality!  

The Astros kept their best pitcher on the bench in order to be nice to the visiting team and not hurt the feelings of his own relief pitchers!

The Houston relief pitchers promptly extended their own courtesies to the visitors by serving up run after run in the seventh and eighth innings to hand this year’s Hospitality Series trophy to the visiting Washington Nationals.

Not to be outdone by their

manager or relief pitchers, the Houston Astros’ formerly fearsome batting

line-up played a role, too.  The Astros

scored two early runs to lead 2-0 heading into the seventh inning.  It could have been a much larger lead,

though, as the Astros left 10 men on base through the first six innings. 

Houston’s first four hitters

(George Springer, Jose Altuve, Michael Brantley, and MVP-candidate Alex

Bregman) went a collective 2-for-16 in Game 7 as they apparently got the word

that it wasn’t nice to blow-out the visiting team in this Hospitality Series.

Washington did their part to reciprocate, too.  After Houston handed the visiting Nationals Game 1 and 2 in Houston, the Nationals proceeded to return the “Good Host” favors by losing all three games last weekend in their own ballpark.

2019 has been a bad year for non-NFL professional football leagues.   

Earlier this year, the Association of American Football (AAF) began operations in February and then abruptly ended after playing just eight weeks.  They were losing significantly more money than the league had budgeted.

Today, the 22-year old Arena Football League announced that it was ceasing operations for the remaining six franchises.   The league’s statement included the following reasons:

“These

closures have resulted in the elimination of various staff positions, and is a

direct consequence of the current financial constraints facing the AFL, which

include extensive legacy liabilities and a recent multimillion-dollar

litigation filed against the League by an insurance carrier that provided

coverage for the AFL between 2009 and 2012. Those liabilities, which are all

related to prior League operations, severely constrain the League’s ability to

expand and operate.”

Translated

– they are broke.  The league can no

longer cover its costs of operations.

After being a nationwide operation for most of its 22 years, the Arena Football League had contracted to six teams in the northeastern United States in 2019.    This year, the Albany Empire, Atlantic City Blackjacks, Baltimore Brigade, Columbus Destroyers, Philadelphia Soul, and Washington Valor will be remembered as the final teams to play in the league.

Arena

football was born in 1987 to give football players a chance to continue playing

after college and a chance to be noticed by the NFL.  The teams play in basketball and hockey arenas

on a field that is about ¼ the size of a traditional football field.   Arena football

featured high scoring games with a much faster pace than the NFL. 

In

the beginning, the Arena Football League had a nationwide footprint and a

television contract with broadcasters including ESPN.   The

Tampa Bay Storm and the Arizona Rattlers franchises each won five Arena League

titles and are considered among the league’s biggest success stories.

The

Arena Football League left no stones unturned in search of possible markets to

play their games.  Sources indicate that

up to 85 communities in the United States have been host to Arena Football

League games! 

In

addition to bringing legendary Arena quarterback Kurt Warner to the NFL’s

then-St. Louis Cardinals and leading them to an NFL title, the vast majority of

Arena Football League players never made the next step-up. 

There have been some big names as owners of now-defunct Arena Football League teams.  Dallas Cowboys boss Jerry Jones also owned the Dallas Desperados of the Arena League in the 2000’s.  Saints owner Tom Benson operated the New Orleans Voodoo.   Motley Crue vocalist Vince Neil was an owner of the defunct Jacksonville Sharks. 

The

league was known for many of the creative team nicknames for many of those 85

Arena Football League franchises. 

The Miami Hooters operated from 1993-1995 in a joint marketing arrangement with the restaurant chain.

The

Texas Terror (1996) became the Houston ThunderBears for the next five seasons.

Dallas

had the Texans (1993), Desperados (2000’s),

In our season-long quest to keep you informed about how my Yahoo! Sports fantasy football team (Swamp Gas) is performing, the Methane Marauders took it on the chin again last weekend and fell to 5-3 on the season with a 104-86 loss to my long-term nemesis, Dead Crab.  

Ouch!

My fantasy football team is now in fourth place out of our ten-team league.

Don’t get me wrong.  My team’s 5-3 record is still terrific given the number of key injuries that this team has weathered.  

Just this past weekend, we were without the services of two starting receivers and our top tight end.   WR Davante Adams (Packers – turf toe) and Adam Thielen (Vikings – hamstring) along with TE Jared Cook (Saints – ankle) were unavailable to us last week. 

The good news?  New Orleans Saints QB Drew Brees returned

after being sidelined since Week #2 and looked sharp with over 300 yards

passing and three touchdowns in a Saints victory over Arizona. 

The bad news?  The Saints are on a “bye” week this coming weekend, so we’ll have to wait yet another week to put our Hall-of-Fame quarterback into the starting line-up again.

Note – We have the fewest points scored in the league but are in 4th place!

General Manager’s comments – Our Swamp Gas fantasy football team has been put

together with Band-Aids for several weeks due to the number of key injuries to

our initial draft group.  We picked-up

quarterbacks Josh Allen (Bills) and Gardner Minshew (Jaguars) and kept Drew

Brees on the roster awaiting his return. 

We’ll likely drop either Allen or Minshew (in that order) to give us

more roster flexibility. 

What do we need to add this week?  A placekicker to replace Wil Lutz of New Orleans is needed with the Saints bye week .  That means we will drop a player (likely to be Bills WR Cole Beasley) and hope that we can grab 49ers kicker Robbie Gould from the pool of available kickers. 

We also noticed that our injured (former LSU) running back Darrius Guice (Washington) will be coming off the injured reserve list and able to play in two weeks.  We might drop another running back (LeSean McCoy – Chiefs) in order to pick-up Guice to strengthen our bench down the stretch. 

Coach’s corner

– Our team just can’t generate enough offense right now.  You generally need 100 or more points to win

on a weekly basis. 

How badly are we doing?  We are now in tenth place (yes, last place) in scoring this season! 

Our team’s 5-3 record with such a lousy offensive output means that we have been VERY lucky to sport a winning record at this point in the season.

If they keep this up, we may have to give our General Manager, Head Coach, and players a raise!

It’s time to snap out of this scoring slump!  This week, we are going to return our starting wide receivers Davante Adams (Packers) and Adam Thielen (Vikings) into the line-up this week assuming their injuries have healed. 

With the Saints’ bye week, we’ll

go with Mr. Mustache, Gardner Minshew (Jaguars), again as our starting

quarterback.  Minshew has a hot hand

right now, and let’s give him the ball another week!   

By Sunday, we will add a placekicker to the line-up, so our projected scoring should be near the Magic Number of 100 points again!

Now, let’s meet this week’s opponent.  “I Hate My Helmet” has an odd name, doesn’t he?  That team is also 5-3 so they seem to perform well...

Depending on which poll you are following (the Associated Press, the USA Today/Coaches poll, or our very own SwampSwami.com Top 25), there are three different #1 teams in college football this week.

The Associated Press elevated the LSU Tigers to the #1 position this week.  The Bayou Bengals have certainly earned the lofty consideration.  After downing Auburn on Saturday, the Tigers have defeated three teams in the AP Top 10 rankings this season (Texas, Florida, and Auburn).

The AP’s top four teams are

LSU, Alabama, Ohio State, and Clemson.

The USA Today/Coaches Poll has Alabama as their #1 team this week.  Bama has run roughshod over every opponent this season, but the Crimson Tide’s best win has come over 5-3 Texas A&M.  Other than the Aggies, none of Alabama’s other seven opponents currently sports a winning record. 

The USA Today/Coaches poll

has a top four comprised of Alabama, LSU, Clemson, and Ohio State.

Before I bring you the SwampSwami.com #1 team for this week, let’s briefly discuss Ohio State.  This steamroller of the Big Ten Conference has beaten every opponent by more than 20 points per game.  The 8-0 Buckeyes handed 7-1 Cincinnati a 42-0 thrashing in week 2 and just clobbered 6-2 Wisconsin 38-7 on Saturday. 

Penn State and a trip to Michigan

come in the final two weeks of the season for Ohio State.  Are they for real?  We’ll find out soon.

That brings us to my

SwampSwami.com College Football Top 25 rankings this week. 

Let’s cover how my rankings are done.  We start the season with the final AP poll from the previous season.   That just seems fair to me.  Once one of last season’s Top 25 teams lose their first game this year, they are dropped back into the “pool” of one-loss schools.  From there, the team’s ranking is based on their “best” victory of the new season.  A win over a 7-1 team trumps your best win over a 5-3 squad (Pay attention, Alabama!). 

At the end of last season, Clemson won the championship game and was rated #1 by the Associated Press.  Alabama finished second, and Ohio State was third.  LSU finished sixth and Penn State was #17 at the end of last year.  All of the other Top 25 teams from the end of last season have now lost one or more games in 2019.  They are mixed into our one and two-loss pool of teams. 

As of the week ending Saturday, October 26, there are only nine undefeated teams remaining out of the 130 FBS large division college football schools.  If a team hasn’t lost a game this season, I believe they should be ranked higher than ANY university which has lost game this season. 

My poll doesn’t care about how many points a team blasts their homecoming opponent.  It is simply based on wins and losses.  If you lose, you better hope that your squad has beaten a good team in 2019.  Otherwise, you will sink among that group with the same record.

This week, we say “Good bye” to 6-2 Notre Dame after they were steamrolled by 6-2 Michigan 45-14 on Saturday. 

We also welcome 6-2 Kansas State back into our Top 25 this week (at #24) after they dropped 7-1 Oklahoma from the elite unbeatens.  The Sooners dropped from #4 last week to #16 this week.  To have a chance at the college football playoffs, OU will need to win its remaining games and then hope for a few others to fall from the ranks of the unbeatens.

In addition to the nine remaining undefeated teams, there are now just 13 schools with one loss for the season.  That means that we are now considering the remaining 13 two-loss teams this week.   Auburn,

I remember it like it just happened yesterday.  Twenty years ago on October 25, 1999, professional golfer Payne Stewart boarded a private jet near his family’s home in Orlando, Florida. 

After the jet climbed to its

assigned cruising altitude, the cabin quickly lost air pressure.  As a result, both pilots and the four

passengers (including Payne Stewart) aboard died of asphyxia.  The plane, though, continued to fly under its

own guidance system until it ran out of fuel and crashed in a field in rural South

Dakota. 

I was at home that morning when the news reports first came out on Golf Channel about the plane’s disappearance.  At first, the reporting was uncertain as to why the plane had failed to respond to air traffic controllers.  Within minutes, though, the concern had changed as to when and where the jet would run out of fuel and crash land.  

Fortunately, no others were injured when the plane crashed itself in South Dakota. 

Payne Stewart was 42 years of age at the time of his tragic death.  Stewart won 11 times on the PGA tour.  He was also a three-time major championship winner with his first coming at the 1989 PGA Championship.  The other two major wins came in the U.S. Opens of 1991 and 1999. 

It was at the 1999 US Open in Pinehurst, North Carolina that Payne Stewart held off a charging Phil Mickelson by draining a 20-foot putt for par on the final hole.  Though the loss was another runner-up finish for Mickelson, the tournament’s lasting memory for me is the close-up on the 18th green of the two friends congratulating each other with Stewart telling Phil, “Good luck with the baby.  There is nothing like being a father!”

The very next day, Phil

Mickelson’s first daughter, Amanda, was born. 

And just a few months later, Payne Stewart’s life tragically ended aboard that plane.

Stewart was born and raised in Springfield, Missouri and attended SMU in Dallas on a golf scholarship.  After graduation, he embarked on a long journey to make the PGA Tour. 

While participating on the Asian PGA tour coming out of college, he met his wife, Tracey, during a stop in Malaysia.  

In an interview for a golf magazine, Tracey laughed saying that Payne had been in Asia for so many weeks that finally seeing a blond probably gave her an unfair advantage. 

They married a year later in 1981, and Payne Stewart earned his PGA card at the Tour’s qualifying school championships later that year. 

The PGA Tour was then introduced to one of the most unusual dressers in years.  Payne Stewart was known for wearing bright colors, knickers, argyle socks, and a unique flat (Tam o’shanter) golf cap while on the course.   His late father had advised him that a little style on the golf course would make it easier for fans to remember him. 

Payne Stewart stylin’

Boy, was Dad ever right about

that! 

After winning in 1982 at the

Quad Cities Open during his first season on the big tour, Stewart earned a big

following on tour with his fluid golf swing, a fan-friendly smile, and, of

course, his signature knickers and golf caps.

Payne Stewart played on five

U.S. Ryder Cup teams (going 3-1-1) and was a very patriotic American

representative during those events. 

Payne’s fun-loving style carried-over off the course with fellow tour members Peter Jacobsen and Larry Rinker as part of a band called “Jake Trout and the Flounders”.