Wednesday, January 7, 2009

One more day

Everyone's loking for a different angle on tomorrow night's BCS showdown, and in Los Angeles there's still lots of people arguing USC's really the best. Emmanuel Moody, who would know a thing or two about the subject since he transferred from USC to UF, makes it clear the Gators could outrun the Trojans. I'm getting really tired of USC using the Big Ten as a pinata every year in a virtual home game at the Rose Bowl and then using that to assert how dominant they are. Had they played Texas in the Fiesta the way they nearly did (had Oregon not beaten Oregon State) and won decisively on roughly neutral territory, that would have shown me something. No one with a brain thought Penn State had a chance in Pasadena, much like Illinois last year.

It's an annual ritual in college football: someone gets a raw deal from the BCS. This year has more contenders than usual, but the school who probably has the most to complain about since they're undefeated is Utah. This leads to the second part of the ritual, where politicians looking to score cheap PR points by pandering to fans threaten to do something about the BCS. This year's winner is Mark Shurtleff, attorney general of Utah, who's claiming he'll build an antitrust case against the BCS. Sure he will. I'd be much more impressed with a politician who had the foresight to address this before their team got the short end of the stick.

Reports out of Athens indicate that Matthew Stafford and Knowshown Moreno have made their decisions and both will announce today they're going pro. Whoever gets Stafford is getting a kid with great physical tools who does not impress me at all with his decision making. I would not want him with a high draft pick. Moreno is making the right move - the next hit could be the career wrecker for any running back. Time to go get paid.

It's possible I'll see something else this year stupider and more surreal than Skip Bayless debating the merits of Oklahoma's BCS trash talking with rapper Lil' Wayne on ESPN's First and Ten program, but I'm not sure exactly what that could turn out to be. The good news for Skip is that soon he may have Rob Parker back in that chair (once they've had it drycleaned so people don't get a contact high from Lil' Wayne's leftover residue). That's because Parker is out at the Detroit News two weeks after his embarassingly unprofessional questioning of Rod Marinelli in the wake of the Lions losing again. Lots of good people in the newspaper business are losing jobs right now through no fault of their own. Parker earned his exile.

If you're looking for a way to be part of the Super Bowl in Tampa but don't have the cash to drop on tickets, they're looking for two thousand people to jump around and pretend to be enthralled by Bruce Springsteen's halftime show. I love Bruce's music, but this isn't a great venue for him. The Springsteen live experience is about him playing lots of tunes from three decades of great material for hours, not racing through three songs. I'll still tune in, of course, but I'll take a pass on waiting outside during the first half.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

It was at least entertaining to watch Skip squirm in his chair and go out of his way to make sure there was absolutely no way he would offend Lil' Wayne. The guy looked scared for his life.

Thanks for all of your hard work on the blog, Heath. It's funny, I was at a med school interview and my interviewer had gone to Illinois so we started talking about Illini football. I don't remember if I heard it from your show or blog but I remembered you bringing up the Mendenhall/Zook situation and so I started talking about that and the state of the program. We pretty much spent the whole interview talking about that and he was very impressed with my "sports knowledge." A couple weeks later I got in, so thanks for keeping us educated on the state of the sports world. You never know when that information is going to come in handy!

Phil said...

Sounds like the admission staff is really making it tough.