Pac 10 Recap, Final Week 2010

Excuse this minor indulgence for me, if you would:  Woooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!
(stop to give my right ring finger a rest, and….)
Wooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!
Thank you.  I feel much better now.

Onward

There are a few things I never thought I would experience in my lifetime:  visiting my grandkids on Moon Base Alpha 1, skydiving off the Eiffel Tower (mostly because I’m afraid of a) skydiving and b) France), and winning a Best Actor Oscar (because I couldn’t act hurt if someone punched me in the face).  Also on that list was seeing the Oregon Ducks football team play in the National Championship game.  But Saturday, Oregon beat arch-rival Oregon State in the 114th Civil War, 37-20.  It was easily the most stressful game I’ve ever sat through, even though I felt confident going in, even after the Ducks started to pull away in the second half.  But when it was all over, the Ducks and their fans ran on the field and celebrated their chance to complete for the National Championship (it should be noted that the Beavers actually gave permission to the Ducks, their team and their fans to celebrate on the field, an incredibly classy move).  I celebrated at home by jumping up and down, saying woo, getting bit by my dog for jumping up and down, high fiving my kids and a few close friends, and then taking a nap (I'm old!).  A few days later and it still hasn’t really sunk in:  seeing the bottom line scroll by on ESPN with the words Auburn v. Oregon, Jan. 10 National Championship is as mind-blowing as the Pink Floyd laser light show, without the accompanying distinctive smell.  I could go on and on about this, but I'll stop now because there's a line of OSU fans at my cubicle that want to punch me in the face for being overly gloaty.

Also, there were other games.  For example, Washington State, looking to build on the momentum of their 1 Pac 10 win, hoped to beat rival Washington in the Apple Cup.  And they didn’t.  The Huskies got bowl eligible by beating the Cougs, 35-28.  Washington running back Chris Polk ran for 284 (!) yards in an up and down, back and forth game.  And unlike the classy ending to the Civil War, the Apple Cup ended up with the Huskies jumping up and down on the WSU logo and the Coug fans throwing water bottles and snow balls.  So like most everything else, the state of Oregon is better than the state of Washington at finishing rivalry games.  In your face, state of Washington.

Also there was the continuation of the oldest continuous rivalry, the Territorial Cup played by ASU and Arizona.  Arizona, which at one point was looking like a legitimate contender for Pac 10 supremacy, talking about how they could win the title if this happened and that happened, entered this game on a three game losing streak.  Their coach, Mike "Mad Man" Stoops probably spent all day every day yelling at stuff:  cars in front of him for going slow, his cats for walking too loudly while he was trying to nap, the wind for blowing his hair around, air for being so necessary to breathe.  He's a little tightly wound.  And like their coach, the team tightened up as the season went along, culminating in the Wildcats' double overtime loss to ASU 30-29 (Territorial Cup Fever...catch it!).  Two, that's right, two blocked extra points was the difference.  After the second one, Mad Man Stoops ran on to the field, went into convulsions, frothed at the mouth, both eyes popped out, his hair exploded and then he ate the kicker.  Not a pretty sight.

Big cheaters USC wound down their Season of Irrelevance (probably won't be the title of the season's video montage, but if it is, I want money for that, dammit).  USC beat cross-town rival UCLA in the We're too Cool to Name Our Rivalry Cup (WTCTNORC, for short (suddenly I'm a marketing genius!)) 28-14.  Afterward, Coach Lane Kiffin, always the optimist, said "We would have gone to the Holiday Bowl.  That would have been pretty neat."  Yes, it would have been neat.  Maybe they can play a pretend Holiday Bowl (oh, sorry, a pretend Bridgeport Education Holiday Bowl) and the Trojans can win that and have a pretend trophy.  That would also be neat.  Not neat was UCLA's season.  May I be so bold as to say, ugh.  What the hell happened to UCLA?  Once a tradition rich program, they're left with this scintillating quote from their coach, talking about bringing back the glory years:  "I've got to look hard at how we're going to turn the corner.  Those are hard decisions, and that's hard analysis, but it's absolutely mandatory that we come up with positive conclusions that will make those great Bruin fans keep coming back excited."  I don't know about you, but I'm already pumped up for UCLA football next year.

Recapper’s Final Pac 10 Power Rankings 

1.        Oregon – 12-0.  National Championship game.  What a season
2.        Stanford – 11-1.  Orange Bowl bound.  A great team this year
3.        Arizona – 7-5, lost four straight to finish the season, going to the Valero Alamo Bowl
4.        Washington – 6-6, on a bit of a winning streak, going to Bridgeport Education Holiday Bowl (seriously that’s the name)
5.        USC – 8-5, going to no bowls, because they’re big cheaters
6.        ASU – 6-6, but not going to bowl because two of their wins were against D2 schools
7.        OSU – 5-7, no bowl, up and down season
8.        Cal – 5-7, see OSU
9.        UCLA – 4-8, could easily be dead last in the final standings
10.        WSU – 2-10, just didn’t really improve since last year.  Coach possibly on the outs

Ass Handers 

This week, OSU gets the award, only because they lost by more points than anyone else that played in the Pac 10 this week.  

This year's winner of the Ass Handers of the Year Award was a tough call.  I looked at the bottom two teams and did some honest to goodness research.  For example, WSU's average margin of losing in their 10 losses was 39-18.  UCLA's was 37-14.  So kind of even.  Washington State finished 42nd overall in passing, but 117th (out of 120 teams) in rushing, 106th in points for and 110th in points against.  That's not good.  UCLA managed 116th in passing, a robust 34th in rushing, 104th in points for and 85th in points against.  Also not good.  But then, I was thinking, well, WSU was more competitive than they have been in past years.  Until I looked at the scores:  65-17 loss to Oklahoma State, 42-0 to ASU, 50-16 to USC.  Other than the 60-13 loss to Oregon, UCLA didn't have as many bad losses.  So as much as I'd like to give it to someone else, this year's AHotY goes, again, to the WSU Cougars, in a squeaker.

****

Well, that's it for me and the recaps this year.  Hope you liked 'em.  God willing, I'll be back next year with more fun and pith.  Until then, some words to live by:  "So often times it happens that we live our lives in chains.  And we never even know we have the key." So true, The Eagles.  So true.