The Most Predictable Text Ever

It was the most predictable text I have gotten this year. It was from a friend of mine who is now a fancy big city lawyer, and since my attorney is currently not on retainer and I can't afford defamation lawsuits, I will refer to him here under the pseudonym "Optimus Prime." Around 8:30 pm on Saturday night, Optimus Prime sent me a text that said simply: "Dude, the Big 10 sucks this year!"

I'm the resident Big 10 fan here at the Office Tailgate and among my friends in general, so I'm used to comments like this. This one came shortly after Florida State went up 42-6 on Wisconsin, on it's way to a a 42-13 victory in the Champs Sports Bowl. This outcome was really a surprise. Florida State won 9 games this year, meanwhile Wisco won 7, one of which was a 1 point victory over Cal Poly after Poly blew the extra point to force overtime, and lost to such solid teams this year as Michigan. They started the year 3-0, then proceeded to end the year 4-6. They sucked. No one other than PJ Hill's grandma expected them to win this game. So if they lose a game they are supposed to lose, obviously the Big 10 sucks. Thanks, Optimus. How did your Hurricanes do again in the Emerald Bowl?

So once again, the Big 10 is going to wrongly be everyone's whipping boy this bowl season,. The Big 10 was not as good as it normally is this year, but this is to be expected after a major coaching change on it's flagship campus, not to mention the fact that's its the only conference that has had to replace 2! coaches who suddenly died in the last four years (Northwestern and Indiana). They also had some embarrassing performances in bowls last season, most notably Purdue losing to Central Michigan in the Motor City Bowl and Ohio State having the humiliating rank of #2 team in the country. But people also forget what they want to forget. Yes, the Big 10 has been down recently. But, as our friends at Mr. SEC point out, they are the only conference with a winning record against the SEC in bowl games since 2004.

Which one in the dress would you sleep with?
The correct answer is all of them, even the blonde Big 10

What the Big 10 as become, unfortunately, is the Donna of college football. On "90210," the greatest teen drama until McG transformed "Scenes from the Next OC" into an art form, there were plenty of hot girls. Kelly Taylor still makes my heart skip a beat when I watch reruns, Valerie/Kelly Kepowski was the pivotal figure in my entrance into puberty and sexual drive, and Claire in my opinion had one of the greatest boob jobs in Hollywood history. Then, there was Donna. Yes, her eyes pop out further than a bullfrog, yes she is as talented an actress as Gene Chizik as a head coach, yes the fact that her Dad ensured she was the one virgin on the show was both unrealistic and a blatant lie considering everyone knew she was about as prude as Paris Hilton. All of these things are true. But, at the end of the day, she still had a pretty rocking body. Same with the Big 10-- it may be down, but it's still one of the four best conferences in college football. Maybe not your first choice, but you'd definitely still hook up with it.

Case in point, the Alamo Bowl last night. Missouri was 12.5 point favorites, was at one point a Top 5 team in the country, was the runner-up in the best conference in college football this year (yes, Hoogs, they were the runner up), and feature two of the best offensive players in college football. On the other hand, you have Northwestern. Their biggest non-conference win was against Duke, their best Big 10 win was beating Iowa on the road, and their best offensive player missed most of the season and virtually all of their bowl practices with a broken wrist. This should have been a blow out, but instead, Northwestern led virtually the entire game and would have won in regulation if not for the kicker shanking one field goal and putting an extra point off the goal post. In a game that looked like a blow out on paper, the Big 10 played well against a much more talented opponent. The Big 10 is Donna. If Northwestern had won, they might've been Claire. If Ohio State beats Texas, they might be Valerie. But considering the average season in the great white North, I can live with being the conference that is "Hot, but not that hot."

This Match Up Is Right John the Money

Every now and then, a Bowl game is enhanced when the  match-up perfectly embodies the intended spirit of the sponsoring corporation. Today's PapaJohns.Com Bowl is such an occasion, but not because the uniforms of both teams prominently feature pizza sauce red.

PapaJohns.com launched as a means to feed people who were motivated enough to order food, but too lazy to pick up a phone. With 6-6 and 7-5 records respectively, North Carolina State and Rutgers are two teams that were just hungry enough to play in a bowl game, yet failed to devour the cupcake teams on their schedule earlier in the year.  

I wish I could offer an incisive analysis of this irrelevant and superfluous bowl game, however I don't know much about these two teams.  All I have been able to deduce is that the Rutgers offense primarily revolves around QB Mike Teel's demonstrated ability to grossly under throw the ball downfield and allow (rely on) his receivers to come back and make a play.  Essentially, he represents an older, poor man's version of Terrelle Pryor.

Since my unfamiliarity with these teams precludes me from predicting an outcome, the only guarantee I can offer is that the winning coach will receive a victory shower courtesy of a complimentary vat of garlic sauce.

I got a prescription . . .

So, some people find it hard to get excited about the pre-January 1 bowl games. Personally, I watched the Northern Illinois- Florida Atlantic match up in the Motor City Bowl like a film student views "No Country For Old Men": interested by the unique characters, mesmerized and enchanted by the grotesque violence, and ultimately confused by an ending that seemed to render the entire watching experience utterly meaningless.

Thankfully, now that the NFL season is over and fans in 20 of 32 cities have only the draft to look forward to, SI.com has given us these reasons to watch even the Papajohns.com bowl. Basically, it runs down all the draft prospects that each remaining bowl match up will feature. Personally, I'm intrigued by two players on the list.

Tonight, I can't wait to watch Jeremy Macklin play. Northwestern has a porous defense which should open up lanes for Macklin, but the game should also be a shootout which will keep the ball in the air for 60 minutes. Same thing with Zak Robinson and Oklahoma State. They have Oregon, which should be a high scoring game, but it's also my second chance to watch Robinson play. I saw him get smoked by Texas Tech but missed arguably his best game of the year against Texas, so I'm really interested to see how he performs in this spotlight.

Why the Media Infuriates Me

I'm not going to go in depth with this issue, because I know Hoogs has been formulating a post on this topic for a while, but I felt I had to share this article with everyone. This one is through SI.com, but ESPN and Foxsports also do similar things each year during the lull between conference championship weekend and the BCS Bowls. NEWSFLASH: the media wants a playoff! It'd be like basketball! I love basketball! Let's make football like basketball! I also like eating and sex! Next time in a restaurant, I'm going to drop trout and bone my Heart of Texas Burger.

But I digress. Why this particular article infuriates me is that the media is desperate to push a playoff down our throats, even though they refuse to consider any logistics or implications of switching systems, yet even in a playoff they'd still want the exact same match up! It's the part of the BCS that no one seems to bring up. Many people want a playoff, but at the end of the day, they still want to see the exact match up the BCS comes up with each year. This year:
we as a nation apparently still want to see Oklahamo-Florida. Last year, everyone wanted to see LSU in the championship over #2 ranked VA Tech (yes, they were the next choice for the championship game, USC was off everyone's radar until the Rose Bowl. Same with Georgia). If the match up is good, that's what matters, and I'm really excited for this game.

Cradle of Coaches

A really interesting article on how Ohio is the "Heart of It All," if by "all" you mean college football coaches, and not, say, steelworking, auto manufacturing, job creation, an educated population, winning NFL teams, etc. etc.

There were 3 stats that jumped out at me from this article. First, that Ohio has 8 1-A football schools, which is a huge number for a school it's size. Second, that Ohio has the third largest football-playing population in the country, which helps explain how it has remained a recruiting hotbed despite the fact that the state's population has continually dropped in the last thirty years. Finally, it is stunning that 14 of the last 18 head coaches in the BCS Title Game either grew up, began their coaching careers, or both, in Ohio. It's amazing that one state could have such a powerful impact in a sport that seems dominated exclusively by Florida and Texas in pop culture.

The list of names really is incredible: Brown, Shula, Noll, Schembechler, Hayes, Stoops, Meyer and others. I highly recommend the article.

Bowl Season Begins

Well, Bowl Season has finally begun. I say this because we have our first upset of the season in Honolulu. Thankfully for Notre Dame fans, this upset did not involve Charlie Weis keeping his job for another year until Urban Meyer is more "available." No, this upset actually took place on the field, as Notre Dame upset the Hawaii Warriors in a game that was a de facto home game for the Rainbow Warriors. By the way, how on earth did any football coach ever get rid of the nickname "Rainbow Warriors?" It's brilliant. Rainbows inspire fears of leprechauns, prisms, and Armageddon-- all three keep me awake late at night.

What impressed me most about this victory was the way Jimmy Clausen, a former five-star recruit on Recruits and current 3 star "Grieco Prospect" on hotchickswithdouchebags.com, played on Tuesday night. He was 22-26 for 401 yards, 5 TDs and no picks. It was a stunning performance by a kid who had been off and on all year. It also shows one of the most exciting and frustrating aspects of bowl season: watching young players develop. The extra 3-6 weeks of practice, depending on the date of the bowl game, allows some young players to transform into veterans. As a Michigan fan, believe me, watching Vince Young suddenly realize at halftime of the 2005 Rose Bowl that he was a man among boys and was going to single handedly own the sport for the next year. This game has the potential to be that type of moment for Clausen, the moment where he realizes his potential to be one of the top pro-style passers in college football.

So, who else is going to wow us with their sudden development in the next two weeks? I have two names.
1) Terrelle Pryor. Pryor has been a starter for the second half of the season for the Buckeyes, has been a decent passer this fall. He had one game where he through for over 200 yards against Penn State, but has really only average about 100 yards through the air. Instead, Pryor has primarily been a runner, and an effective one. He has a terrific coach in Jim Tressel that has already transformed Troy Smith from a runner into a Heisman Trophy winning thrower, so I'm really interested to see how Pryor has grown since Thanksgiving.
2) Mossis Madu. Madu is the backup running back behind injured Demarco Murry for the Sooners. Madu was a four-star recruit out of high school with 4.4 speed out of high school. OU is desperately searching for the next Adrian Peterson, so I can't wait to see how Madu performs on the biggest stage in the sport.

Who all are you looking forward to watching?

Pointsettia Bowl Live Blog

Hello everyone, and welcome to our live blog for the Pointsettia Bowl. Besides annoyingly festive flowers, this match up promises to deliver a great game. These two teams are diametric opposites, with TCU built around its fierce defense, while Boise State is built around a wide-open offensive attack. On the other hand, both teams are remarkably similar: both teams had terrific seasons, both teams are bitter about being snubbed from the BCS, both teams have head coaches who have inexplicably not left for higher profile jobs, and both teams are affiliated with schools that there is no chance in hell I would have ever attended. Enjoy the game

Halftime Chatter
I apologize for the delay, but family rudely interfered once again with my football watching. Regardless, here's what's being said around the water cooler at the half"

- My Christmas tree works break. We watched a lot of gametape on our 8 foot blue spruce over the break, and learned that it had a vulnerability to the left side of its branches. We attacked there early with the childhood ornaments (Baby's First Christmas, etc) then jumped to the holiday balls to the right. We were initially stymied up the middle with our graduation ornaments, but after switching our blocking scheme we were able to penetrate those branches.

- Ian Johnson scored his WAC record 56th Touchdown tonight. Rumor has it that to follow up his Fiesta Bowl celebration, if he scores the winning TD tonight he will have raw sex with his cheerleader non-stop in front of the Boise State student section until she conceives him a son

- Rece Davis just pathetically asked Jesse Palmer, "Give us one reason to watch Notre Dame in the Hawaii Bowl tomorrow." Jesse responded that his season of "The Bachelor" is having a marathon on SOAP Net tomorrow through Christmas Day.