The Monday Musings

Hope your weekend was as swell as mine, because mine was pretty freaking swell. Onto it then...

* Hey they got a Heisman vote right! Congrats to all the people who vote for sports' most overrated and overhyped award. I do not like how voters and pundits get all worked up about tradition and not voting for sophomores, and wanting to uphold the image of the award by voting for players that will make good pros because guys like Jason White, Gino Torretta, Danny Wuerfell...holy crap there's been a lot of great college players who were craptastic in the NFL...and the rest "tarnished" the Heisman because they sucked in the pros. First of all, was that the longest run-on sentence I've ever typed? Quite possibly was. But more importantly, last time I checked, and for the sake of accuracy let me just check again here...hang on...yup- the Heisman is still an award for the most outstanding COLLEGE FOOTBALL PLAYER. Not the best pro prospect, not the best quarterback on the best team, but the best player from that year. Tim Tebow was the best college player this year. His 22 rushing TD's broke the SEC's single-season record for rushing TD's by any player at any position. Pretty sure the SEC has had a couple of good players over the years, especially running backs, so that's pretty impressive. As a passer, he had the second best QB rating in the country, his 3132 passing yds were third in the SEC, and his 29 TD's tied for second. As one college football scribe said before the vote (I think it was E!SPN's Bruce Feldman, but I can't remember and I'm not going back to look right now), just the rushing TD's are incredibly impressive, and his passing totals by themselves are also Heisman worthy. Put them together, and it's a no-brainer.

* By the way, how are you feeling about the bowl games? Good? Bad? Indifferent? I'm personally excited for Georgia-Hawaii. Georgia's been one of the best teams in the country since Tennessee took them out to the woodshed in October, and I really want to see how good Colt Brennan and the Warriors are against a real team. That'll be a fun one. USC/Illinois? Good gawd almighty, I love the Pac 10/Big 10 Rose Bowl tradition, but Illinois? Really? I thought the incentive for WINNING the Big 10 was to go to the Rose Bowl? Now apparently you finish second, lose three games, and hey "you're Rose Bowl material". At this point, what would be wrong with everybody playing everybody in the Big 10 and only having 2 non conference games a year? Would anybody be against this? Oh right, the school presidents would. Just like how they're against a playoff system. They're against these things, but they're for adding a 12th game against a 1-AA school to pad their team's stats. I love that almost as much as I love the mediocrity and parity that's running roughshod over this game right now like Tebow ran over defenses this year. We're just a few years away from handing out bowl invitations to every school that fields a D-1 team. That's probably Notre Dame's best hope for a bowl right now. ZING!

* Did you ever think there'd be a time when I'd need to get my dominance/Evil Empire fix from the NFL? Me neither. Didn't see that one coming. Damn did the Pats ever look good again. Um, hey Andy Smith or Adam Smith? Aaron Smith? Anthony Smith? A-hole Smith? Whoever the Smith guy is for the Steelers who decided it'd be a good idea to "guarantee" a victory over the Pats really should have talked to me before he went ahead and lost the game for Pittsburgh before it even started. It's bad enough I'd never heard of you before you made your genius guarantee (trust me, if I haven't heard of you, neither has 99.9% of NFL fans), but is that not the one thing the Pats were hoping for? This is a team that's been using the fact they got caught cheating as motivation as a "slight" against them. So you thought it'd be a good idea to give them a legitimate slight by guaranteeing a victory? How'd that work out for you? 34-13, that's how. Nice move. You should have to play for the 49ers the rest of the year as punishment.

* Wow the Niners are awesome right now, eh? Beyond words, really. The Sports Guy couldn't have been more wrong about his super sleeper (Atlanta), but he was bang on again in predicting that the fashionable sleeper would go down in flames big time this year. As he accurately pointed out, there's a "sleeper" every year that the public and media just love, and every year that team sucks. I gotta admit, although I didn't love the Niners as much as some, I sure didn't see this coming. It's like they decided "hey remember the '89 49ers? Let's be just like them- except the exact opposite!!" The only thing they're good at is throwing to defensive tackles. The Vikes set an NFL record with three different DT's getting picks today. So they've got that going for them, which is nice.

* Hahaha oh Lovie Smith, you're such a character! Looks like the Chicago Bears head coach pulled a fast one on ol' Vikes coach Brad Childress by sneaking the Bears' Adrian Peterson into the lineup in place of the Vikes Adrian Peterson. Because there's no way in hell the REAL AP would have 14 carries for three yards against a team as bad as San Francisco. Wait what? He did? That was him? No freaking way.

* Call me cynical, and some have, but I still don't trust this Vikes team. Now, please keep in mind that I didn't get to see the game today, so I'm just going by highlights and stats. There's the little tidbit about the Niners OUTGAINING the Vikes 284 to 280, most of that done with something called Sean Hill at quarterback. Hill also had as many rushing yards as AP. 84 of Minny's 280 came on one Chester Taylor TD run in the second quarter. Against a good team that's not going to turn the ball over five times, do the Vikes win today? Don't get me wrong, I'm glad they won, but I still don't trust them.

* Fine, since you're probably wondering, here's who I do trust: Pats, Colts, Cowboys. Kinda trust: Pack, Steelers, Jags, and...yup that's it. Everybody else has major holes. The Chargers? Not with Phil Rivers. The Browns? They're the Browns. It never works out for them. It's a 4.5 team league right now.

* Finally, good to have the Colts back. You wonder if tonight's woodshed-style beatdown of the Ravens (um how does Brian Billick still have a job? Anyone? Look at that team and tell me how they're just 4-9? Anyone?) wasn't a message to the nation that the Colts are still going to be a force in the playoffs, and that we should all be getting ready for Colts/Pats II in the AFC Championship game. Giddyup I say!


Alrighty then, that's all for now. If you need me, I'll be tis'ing the season. Tis'ing the crap out of it, to be exact. You tis that season and you tis it good!