Week 6
Thursday night football games are hard on old guys like me. What I would be doing on a normal Thursday: get up, work, lunch, work, go home and yell at kids to clean up the house, watch television with the volume turned way up while drinking whiskey, eating dinner, more television, bed by 8:30. Now that's a day. A game day Thursday involves less television, less work, way more driving, less whiskey, more beer, still yelling at kids (but not mine and in a more positive way) and bed by 1 am. Bed by 1 am on a weekday is like being punished ("but I WANT to go to bed...please let me go to bed..."). Some other bad things about Thursday night football: parking is harder, because some poor schulbs are working and they're taking up all the good spots. Also, speaking of working schlubs, they can get really grumpy when you are peeing behind their office building...is it my fault they scheduled a game on Thursday? When I'm there on Saturdays, no one can see me at all, I'm free to pee where ever I'm standing. But the very worst thing about Thursday night football games is Friday. Good lord, toughest day ever. Work? Sure, I'll get right on that, as soon as I have the strength to lift my head off my desk. Just give me an hour or so, and also, please stop talking so loudly. And typing. And breathing.
Onward
I'll start by giving a special shout out to the weather person that predicted a 30% chance of rain Thursday night in Eugene. You were spot on...it only rained for about 30% of the game. Can I just say, please, how horrible weather people are? Is there any job in the world where the only requirements are that you can speak in complete sentences, you're somewhat telegenic, and you never ever ever have to be right? I mean, besides Congress? (zing!) Anyway, it rained for much of the first part of the Ducks game vs. the Cal Bears, and it seemed, for some reason, to effect the Ducks, who were at best a bit sluggish in the first half. But they turned it on at half time and Oregon blitzed the Golden Bears, 43-15. Aside from that, the only notable part of the game was a gruesome injury sustained by stud running back LaMichael James. During a big scrummy pile up, he apparently dislocated his elbow and we all got to see it on the big screen. Which lead to this: a stadium full of people crying out, collectively, "Ohhhhh...the humanity!" It was flat sick, and reminded me of the time I dislocated my finger playing basketball (back when basketball meant actually running up and down a court with other guys, shooting and passing the basketball, as opposed to now, where "basketball" means dunking nerf hoops with thunderous authority on my kids and getting yelled at by my wife ("but honey, posterizing my kids teaches them humility!")). Unlike James, who popped his dislocated his elbow back into place (gahh!), when I dislocated my finger, I ran off the court and squatted down in the corner, mewling like a hungry kitten. My finger was actually pointing in about three directions and made me a) a bit woozy and b) wet myself. I in no way popped my finger back in, instead going to the emergency room where in a scant two hours, the helpful doctors did it for me for the low low price of "holy crap, HOW much did they charge us?"
Sad news to report: the head coach of the Arizona Wildcats, Redfaced McBulgeyeyes, has passed away. Cause of death was spontaneous explosion and evaporation, caused by his team losing to previously unvictorious Oregon State, 37-27. Coach is survived by his high-strung wife and three petrified-into-silence children. Ha, just kidding, I made that up. Everyone knows that Coach’s family went into hiding long ago. Okay, seriously, after a spirited game in which the Wildcats came from way back and made things interesting, Arizona is left with a nine game losing streak to teams in Division 1 and are, at best, WAY worse than we thought they were. Coach Stoops almost assuredly won’t keep his job after the season is over, and the day he gets fired will be a bad one for his office furniture, secretarial staff, cars parked anywhere around his car, and any animals between his office and home. On the flip side, pick your cliche on what giant animal is lifted off of what part of the Beavers' collective body, but the relief coming from Corvallis and "Beaver Nation" (ugh) is palpable. It's hard to know what to take out of a game between two pretty bad teams, so I'll save the "Beavers are back!" proclamations for crazies in the Comments section of Oregonlive.com, but nevertheless, a win is a win is a win, as Shakespeare said (or should have).
So I'm guessing Utah isn't too happy about that whole "all we need is a invitation to a BCS conference, and then we'll prove we can play with the big boys" mantra that has been the drumbeat of schools like Utah and Boise State and TCU. Just give us a chance and we'll show we belong. Well, after a 35-14 beat down at the hands of ASU, Utah sits at 0-3 in the Pac 12 and is suddenly about as relevant as soap at an Occupy Wall Street rally. This gets filed under "be careful what you wish for," just like that time I really wanted a pony and my parents got me a pony but we didn't have a backyard so the pony lived in my room and man do ponies poop a lot and they kind of smell and eat almost all the time. A room full of pony poop and six pounds of Cheerios later, my parents said "You satisfied?" and we gave the pony to a farm. Moral of the story (other than my parents, in retrospect, were REALLY mean) is that while ponies are cute, ponies gotta poop someplace. Words I think teams like Utah might want to take to heart.
Stanford smeared Colorado 48-7. While Stanford continues to be really impressive, they just haven't played anyone yet. San Jose State, Duke, Arizona, UCLA and Colorado. Not exactly Murder's Row (by the way, Murder's Row is without a doubt the WORST row, easily beating Maimer's Row, Shover's Row, Noogier's Row and I Got Your Nose Row). So while Stanford is clearly good, I just want to see them play someone. And I saw that they're in the top ten BCS rankings, which makes sense, since they've played no one. College Football is like an obnoxious relative: they do so much to bug you, and yet you can't help loving them (and yes, I'm speaking from experience, and no, I'm not talking about myself (geez...big jerks)).
Back in the day, fans of Washington State football used to use the term "Couging It" to refer to times in the games when the Cougars would do something dumb to cost them the game. Like, "they really Coug'd it on that running play." But as the fortunes of the WSU team continued to slide south, "Couging It" seemed kind of redundant, and instead they just referred to it as "Cougar Football" as in "Cougar Football is really bad." This season, that has been changing a bit, as WSU went into LA to face UCLA with a winning record and a strong offense. And they "Coug'd It." Up by 8 in the fourth quarter in front of 572 dispirited fans in the Rose Bowl, WSU allowed UCLA to come back and win 28-25. So now, it can be said, that WSU is back to the level of frustrating mediocrity, as opposed to soul-crushing awfulness. Progress!
USC and Washington had byes
Other Stuff
Not a lot of really interesting stuff happened this weekend in college football, but BCS standings come out next week, so we'll get to see how horrible computers are at football. In a world where every other movie, since the word computer entered our lexicon, is about how computers will take over the world ("Terminator," "War Games," "Eagle Eye" (awful, don't bother), "The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes"), why we are letting computers decide who the best teams are is baffling. Computers are good for doing work (but not doing work FOR us...when is that going to happen?), throwing birds at pigs, and letting me listen to Weird Al Yankovic without the public embarrassment of buying CDs from the store. But they are NOT good for choosing whether Boise State or Georgia Tech are good football teams. They just aren't. And I know that if I keep bad mouthing computers that they'll take their revenge by emptying out my bank account or making my car drive by itself, but I don't care. Screw you computers!
Pac 12 Power Rankings
1. Stanford - still haven't played anyone, but plowing through their schedule
2. Oregon - we'll see how they do without James for a while
3. ASU - looking better and better; next week, big game at Oregon
4. Washington - upper echelons of Pac 12 are there for them
5. USC - middle of the road seems about right
6. UCLA - 3 and 3 and a winning record in the league...I'm shocked, too
7. WSU - big road test, failed...next game at Stanford...uh oh
8. Cal - remember when they were a national power, with stud quarterbacks?
9. Utah - there's no place like home, there's no place like home (home = Mountain West Conference)
10. Colorado - only because they've beaten one Division 1 team
11. OSU - out of the cellar, baby! Woo!
12. Arizona - awful
Ass Hander's Award
Colorado gets the first every Ass Hander's Award, as they lost to Stanford by 41. Welcome to the Pac 12, pal.
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