iggymcfly

Well, JJ Arrington carried the Bears again tonight. He had 261 yards on a night where Aaron Rodgers was relatively ineffective. If Cal does manage to sneak into the Rose Bowl, Arrington will be the reason why. Honestly, if the Heisman Trophy was based just on performance and not hype or number of nationally televised games, everybody would have already conceded the trophy to JJ Arrington.

The computer rankings should stay the same since they don't count margin of victory, but Texas only needs to move up five or six points combined in the polls in order to pass Cal in the BCS standings. (Since there are more media members that vote than coaches, coaches votes count slightly more.) That means that if three voters move Texas ahead of Cal or two move Texas ahead of them, and one or two move Utah ahead of Cal, then Texas gets the BCS berth. Right or wrong, even with a win tonight, Cal will probably drop out of the Rose Bowl and move down to the Holiday Bowl instead. I know that in my rankings, I'd drop Cal a point after this game, as even if they're better than Texas, I'd say the performance tonight shows that they aren't as solid all-around as Utah. Here's the BCS bowls as they'll actually look: Orange Bowl: Oklahoma vs. USC Rose Bowl: Utah vs. Michigan Sugar Bowl: Auburn vs. Virginia Tech Fiesta Bowl: Texas vs. Pittsburgh

No, it's not. Notre Dame actually has it's own rule written into the standings, which is separate from the at-large qualifications, and actually has equal precedence with the Top 6 from a mid-major conference rule. From the BCS official site:

Every time I actually watch USC play, the thing that hits me is how much more valuable Reggie Bush is than Matt Leinart. The Trojans offense only scores when someone like Bush hits a big play. Leinart can complete four yard passes all day, but they never actually lead to any points, (unless of course Bush breaks ten tackles and runs it in himself.) Anyway, on to the more important game of the day, Montana vs. New Hampshire! The Grizzlies have national TV on ESPN2, and they're dominating because that's what they do. The way they're playing now, the Grizzlies are basically in the national championship. They do not lose at home when they get hot like this. I know they lost to Sam Houston earlier, but if they come to Missoula in December when it's 10 degrees out, they'll be lucky to be within 30 points. EWU might be able to kind of keep it close, but if they couldn't win the game in Cheney, there's no way they win in Missoula.

Do you know anything about college football at all? First off, if Texas passes Cal for #4, they get an automatic BCS berth, and it doesn't matter what the Rose Bowl committee thinks. Second, if Cal does go to the Rose Bowl, Utah automatically gets the other at-large berth as a Top 6 team. The Big 12's representative will be Oklahoma in the Orange Bowl.

That is FUNNY! I bet Notre Dame's AD is just sitting in his garage running the car with the garage door closed to see if he can end it all. Urban Meyer was the only real reason they fired Willingham and now he's not coming. As for Florida, they should consider themselves lucky that Spurrier didn't come back. Meyer's gonna take them to the top of the SEC in no time. I say the Gators go maybe 10-2 losing in the SEC Championship next year, and in two years they win the SEC, and maybe even go to the national title. No one really knows quite how good of a recruiter Meyer is, but with that much talent around him, he'll get Florida into the elite right now. By the way, as part of the endless archive of sports trivia that I know off the top of my head, the buyout for Urban Meyer's contract is actually $500,000. His contract actually said he could get out for free to go to Michigan, MSU, or Notre Dame, so really he was just looking for any big-time job he thought he had a chance at. Finally, as for the bowl game, as long as he's staying around to do a good job coaching for the next few weeks, it's not that bad. Price just kind of ran out on the program, but Meyer will make sure they win the Fiesta Bowl before he leaves.

I've heard of it, and I watch a lot of South Park, but I didn't see any episodes that would lead me to believe that they have anything to do with one another.

The lack of proper competition is definitely a problem with a lot of sports games, specifically NCAA 2005. The difference between All-American and Heisman is so vast that I have a really hard time getting a good game. After I went undefeated and won a national championship on All-American, I started to get bored, and I stopped playing for a while. After not playing for a month or so, I found that I was still able to win by 30 or so points. So, I switch it up to All-American, and all of a sudden it's impossible to find an open receiver, and I'm down 31-0 at halftime. Then, I switch the difficulty at halftime, and I end up only one possession short of making the comeback. It's just too big of a difference. Of course the thing that really annoys me is that when I'm stuck at college with my shitty TV, the color never looks remotely right, no matter how many hours I spend fucking with it, and it pretty much ruins video games for me. For instance, no matter where the color's set, or how low the brightness/contrast are, the floor's always a shiny bright white in NBA Live, and there are a lot of spots either way too bright or way too dark on NCAA. If it doesn't bother me so much that I quit playing, it at least hurts my eyes, and I find that I play about a tenth as many video games when I'm here, as I do when I'm home with a decent TV, or as I did last year when my roommate had a nice one.

If it's only four, I'd guess it's White, Peterson, Leinart, and Smith. Alex Smith has actually been getting quite a bit of hype in the media lately, and I think he'd get the spot over Bush or Benson.

I don't really agree. Indiana and Michigan both got plenty of love from ESPN until they started sucking. Since the ACC, Big East, and Big Ten all have TV deals with ESPN, they're naturally going to get the lion's share of their attention, but it's certainly not any conspiracy to build them up. Back when the SEC was the best conference in America, most of the announcers on ESPN recognized it, and said that the ACC was only number two. However, for the last few years, the ACC has been so far ahead of the rest of the country, that ESPN had no choice but to stand up and take notice. They had what, maybe 6 Sweet 16 teams last year? Georgia Tech was only fourth in the conference at 9-7, but they still managed to make it all the way to the national title game, blowing through the two premier midwestern teams in Kansas and Oklahoma State. Meanwhile, Stanford was the big story all through the regular season with their undefeated record, but when it came tournament time, they predictably got knocked off by Alabama, and then the other two Pac-Ten teams both lost in the first round. I watched almost every Cougar home game last year, so I'd stand up for West Coast hoops if I could, but it's really not anywhere near the same quality basketball that you get in the ACC.

I guess there were only four finalists last year. That's weird, as every other year, (or at least the five or ten I was around for), they had five finalists. I searched the web to try to find an article on why they changed it, but I came up empty.

I really like rugby, and try to catch it whenever I can, but I didn't hear about this match. If they'd just put a little effort into promoting this kind of thing, I certainly would have made it a priority to watch. Also, when did the US national team started being known as the Tomahawks. Whenever I saw them on TV, I always heard them being called the Eagles. Maybe they switched it the other way because it wasn't PC, and they just still refer to them as Tomahawks in Australia. I don't know.

Nah, if they waited until after conference play started, everybody would just forget about all the things that ACC teams did outside of their conferences, and they'd get hosed worse than they usually do once they beat each other down in the conference slate.

Actually, Missoula's really into football. It's only I-AA, but they always lead the country in attendance and everybody follows the football team. There's only 100,000 people in the whole county, and there are no other real cities for 60 or 70 miles, but they can still sell out a 24,000 seat stadium with only a small student presence. They actually have a lot of conference games where their traveling contingent represents half the fans in attendance at the stadium.

Yes, Okafor got a lengthy rest in the first half, but even if Krzyzewski had rested Williams for Shavlik Randolph when Okafor was out, it wouldn't have mattered. They both guarded Okafor fine, and they both fouled out. Unless Coach K anticipated that both of his big men were going to foul out for probably the only time all year, and gave third-stringer Nick Horvath time while Okafor was out, there was nothing he could do. When your two top post defenders foul out, that's more indicative of a freaky coincidence than it is indicative of poor coaching.

The reason UConn blew teams out early in the tourney is that they had one of hte easiest draws I've ever seen. All the good teams got knocked out ahead of time, and they just kind of breezed into the Final Four. Then, when they got there, Okafor did get shut down by Shelden Williams, and it wasn't until the last five minutes when both Williams and Randolph fouled out that Okafor finally managed to bring the Huskies back. Now, back to what I came to talk about; is anyone else extremely impressed with Illinois? They dominated Gonzaga by much more than the final margin of about 20, and then they did even better tonight against Wake Forest. I'd say they're definitely a Final Four team, and have looked more impressive than anyone else in the country thus far.

I agree that Wake shouldn't be ranked #1 and will probably only finish third in the ACC, but if your criteria for "doing anything" is winning the ACC, they actually did do that with Tim Duncan. I still remember the championship game, because that was when Ga. Tech had Stephon Marbury, and they still couldn't quite win the game. Back on Georgia Tech quick, I was saying they should be preseason #1 over Kansas, UNC, and Wake right away, and this game only gave me a little bit of reason for support. UIC's not that bad as they probably are a tournament team, and even in their championship run last year, Ga. Tech almost lost to a mid-major squad, only beating N. Iowa by 2 or 3 in the first round of the tournament. I was just saying the Michigan game showed what they can do when motivated. I say Tech will probably go somewhere along the lines of 34-4 this year and win the NCAA title.

They always have five finalist for the Heisman, not four. The commercial doesn't mean a single thing, and the finalists aren't announced until the ballots are in anyway. Smith and/or Benson will likely be finalists, while Bush will probably be just short.

Yeah, but if you think about it, they lost to BC and Pitt this year. Are they really better off being lumped in with all the other shitty teams that couldn't win the Big East than they are being the only major independent, and going 6-5 with the "toughest schedule in America." I don't think so. If they rebuild the program first, then I could see them wanting to join the Big Ten, but the first year they're not competitive in a mediocre conference, the remainder of the Notre Dame mystique that does still exist will be shattered forever.

The idea that this is racially motivated, while predictable, is still ridiculous. Tyrone Willingham is doing a very mediocre job at Notre Dame, and they probably have a chance to pick up one of the five best coaches in the country in Urban Meyer. This is way more reasonable than the Frank Solich firing, and is ultimately probably the right decision for Notre Dame. If anything, I'm surprised they had the balls to fire him, when they had the tradition, and when the media was so obviously receptive to a black head coach.

Yeah, I must have said that exact quote at least 15 times last year. He could actually still be a junior this year and be anchoring the defending national champions. And they would have been the champions, because Bosh would have completely shut down Okafor. As for the ACC, they're far and away the best conference in college basketball every year. People just forget becuase the conference schedule beats them down. I mean Georgia Tech was 12-1 with one loss before the conference schedule started, and then they went 9-7 in the ACC. Miami and VT are gonna be lucky to get five conference wins combined this year, including their two wins over each other.

It's kinda funny that Vince used SNL in his analogy. I remember when SNL used to be the funniest show on TV, and I remember when I used to count the minutes until Raw would start. Now though, I can hardly stand to watch either one for more than 15 or 20 minutes.

The title reigns were certainly too short then, but in a way it made more sense than it does now. I mean, back then if Foley and Rock had six matches, they could just split them 4-2 with Foley getting in a couple title runs and it made sense. Now we'll have situations like Benoit where he can't win for years, then absolutely can't lose for a few months, and then always ends up just short again. Of course, I guess that kind of broken kayfabe's not that bad compared to using the stupid "tied" finish twice in the same night. WWE's really got a hard-on for that one. I swear they've used it on over half of their battle royals for the last three years, and they've used it at the end of a championship match at least three or four times too.

Actually, if you're seeding by the position in the bracket, then it should be more like this: 5. Montana 6. Delaware 7. Lehigh 8. Sam Houston However, they really don't seed the lower schools. They put the shitty teams against the top four seeds, and give out home games based on who has the best fans. For instance, Montana can actually pull in about 18 to 20 thousand paid even in the dead of winter, so the I-AA committee gives them home games whenever remotely possible. EWU was apparently classified as a "shitty team", but after picking up the victory, they get a home game for having better fan support than Sam Houston. I really hope the Montana/New Hampshire game's on TV. I'm not driving 300 miles back to Missoula to watch it, but I would like to at least catch it on TV. I don't think FSN has a daytime conflict; they should grab it if ESPN2 doesn't.

Well, I didn't see any WWF before 1997, but this is the worst year that I've actually seen some of. The storylines are SO bad right now that I can't even watch the product. It seems like they just throw all the people they have out on Raw and Smackdown, build no storylines, and then let the Raw and Smackdown matches run a little longer when they have a PPV. The last thing the WWE did that was worth watching at all was the beginning of the Orton/HHH feud.