Sunday, October 07, 2007

Wow

Yeah I don't know what else to say. USC lost to Stanford. 40 POINT FAVORITES AND THEY LOST?!?!? AT HOME?!?!?!? Seriously what the hell is going on in college football this year? Is ANYBODY ANY $&%*Q^ING GOOD? ANYBODY?

In the intro to the Common Man Dan Cole's progrum (misspelled intentionally) he plays a clip from Paul Harvey, who talks about "the Common Man" as being "the best of the lousiest and the lousiest of the best." Are we seeing a year of incredible upsets, or is college football turning into the Common Man?

If you know me at all, you know I'm not a fan of parity. Not even a little bit. A big reason I love college foos so damn much is because it's sports as it should be, where winning is rewarded and losing is not. Winners should get the best recruits and the most money. Losers get the worse recruits and have to work a lot harder to get better. Losers in college football can't whine about an unlevel playing field and get rewarded with a salary cap or revenue sharing or the #1 pick. You want to get better? Work harder, and work smarter.

Plus with more powerful "winners" it means we get to see better football because more good players are playing on the same teams. And that also makes the upsets better because they're actually upsets. Boise State beating Oklahoma was one of the most amazing sports games I've ever seen, because of how much of an underdog was, and because of how many crazy plays they had to run to win it. Two mediocre teams wouldn't have gone to the lengths Broncos coach Chris Pedersen went to to win, because they could play it safe and be boring and not take chances or risk anything.

Anyways, long story short I AM enjoying this season and all it's craziness. Seriously I am. Yet at the same time I hope this isn't the beginning of a new era where the BC's and South Florida's and Cincinnati's are on par with the LSU's, USC's, and Ohio State's of the world. I'm not against new programs rising to power, but I AM against the powers being brought down to the level of the average schools. Of course there's no evidence this is anything other than a wild year where anything can happen. For the sake of college football, I hope that's all it is, and not a new world where the best teams are simply the best of the lousiest.

7 comments:

jdmill said...

On a slightly unrelated, yet sort of on-topic note:
Holy QB's getting hurt this weekend. The first four headlines at ESPN.com at this very moment are...
Delhomme to have season-ending elbow surgury
Green suffers concussion
Leinart out with fractured collarbone
USC's Booty unsure if he'll start with broken finger

Unknown said...

Speaking of "wow", did you watch MNF tonight!?!?!? Unbelievable. How could the Bills lose that game? The Cowboys tried so hard to tank it.

Jeff said...

Luke I saw the last 4 mins of the game, and that was enough. That's a tough loss for Buffalo. Might as well hand Dallas homefield in the NFC right now.

Jer, yeah QB's are going down left and right. And don't forget Tavaris being hurt has really impacted the Vikes. Oh wait no it's made no difference.

Unknown said...

The thing that was most baffling to me about the MNF game was when the Cowboys were setup for a 63 yard field goal with 7 seconds left and no timeouts and EVERYONE watching the game knew they were going to throw a 5-10 yard out pass to the sideline. Yet, the Bills seemed to be totally anawares and left Patrick Crayton wide open with no defender within 8 yards of him. Seriously, just line your defenders up along the sidelines and allow them to catch anything over the middle. How can you just give them that pass (at least try to jump it)? I didn't hear a single announcer comment on this and it was very disappointing. Am I the only one who noticed?

Jeff said...

Luke, an excellent observation. I couldn't believe they let it happen either. Welcome to Buffalo.

Also, I heard an interesting thought on the Bills calling a timeout just before the Cowboys game winning field goal (I think it's a cheap move and one that needs to be outlawed). Former NFL punter Mitch Berger (he's from Vancouver, so that makes him an "NFL Insider" here) said that calling that cheap timeout actually helps the kicker. It gives him a practice kick to check the wind and conditions etc. He said he doesn't believe you can freeze a kicker with a timeout ("if you're a pro you should make that kick"), but if you're going to call it, do it BEFORE they get the snap off and he gets a practice kick away.

Ok, Professor Berger's class is adjourned for today. Next time we'll talk about punters: less wussie than kickers, if only by a little bit.

Unknown said...

wow. Excellent observation by Mitch. How could nobody else have pointed this out in all the conversations I've heard on this topic? I think he is probably totally correct.

I was watching football on Sunday afternoon with Jessa's grandpa and it was quite humorous because he kept commenting on how they should get rid of kickers because its stupid that games are decided by some guy with a "clean jersey."

Jeff said...

yeah kickers are one of those evil little necessities to the game. Or are they? Can you imagine football without kickers? It would deprive us of the Gramaticas injuring themselves while celebrating like girly soccer players. I, for one, would miss that.