2001 Week 2
September 5, 2001
I was about to start my article for this week talking about last week's games, but I just saw that Texas A&M cloned a litter of pigs. You'd think they do a better job of keeping those Aggie cheerleaders away from the linebackers.
Oh yes, last weekend's games. Well, Bobby Bowden and FSU are off and rolling again. While I give Bobby credit for scheduling some tough non-conference games like Miami and North Carolina, and his SEC schedule is pretty tough too with Florida, he sure does play his share of patsies.
Last weekend we got to see FSU stick it to perennial PAC-10 weakling Oregon State. Year after year Bobby does the same thing, brings in some major conference weak sister to his home field, then beats the snot out of them. Oregon State had no chance in the game, they've got nowhere near the talent that Coach Bowden has. It is nice, though, to see that Bobby has modernized his look. I really like that Fu Manchu he was wearing on the sidelines.
I did see that Oregon State's coach Erickson was upset by one FSU hit on an Oregon State punt returner, where the punt return guy suffered a broken hand. Now injuries like that are unfortunate, but a former Miami QB like Craig Erickson of all people should know just how hard FSU hits. I remember some of those QB sacks from those FSU/Miami games a decade ago. Won't ever catch me in the locker room showers right after a game again.
Speaking of Miami, they took a page from all those baseball teams that do their spring training down in Florida. It's pretty common for those teams to play more than one team in a day to help prepare for the rigors of the league schedule. Miami did something similar on Saturday, playing Michigan in the afternoon and Penn State in the evening, and split the two games, both in front of crowds of over 100,000. I think it was especially impressive how quickly they got from one stadium to the other. In the future I'd suggest they schedule games in the same state so travel time isn't as much of an issue. Maybe they could play Rice and Texas Tech and cut back on the travel time between games.
This week's biggest game is Notre Dame at Nebraska. I hope Notre Dame fans will return the classy gesture made by Nebraska fans last year and buy up all the remaining tickets for the game in Lincoln. You'll remember that last year Bob Davie got a big boost when the Nebraska fans helped fill Notre Dame's stadium for the first time in years.
Many of you contacted me after my appearance on ESPN Saturday night. Or should I say, many of you contacted me *about* my appearance on ESPN. I was told beforehand that I'd be on there with a light-colored backdrop. So I wore the dark suit and dark shirt that Regis Philbin gave me after my tryout for his morning show.
Then it turned out they showed me against a black backdrop, so all you saw was my face and inches and inches of my neck. You remember those pant clips that those kids wear when riding their bikes? The ones they put on their jeans to hold the jeans back so they don't get caught in the derailer? I have something similar, a neck clip. The clip holds my neck back so I don't look like I have the world's largest goiter while on the air.
Well, turns out that we couldn't find the neck clip, so I had to go on the air without one, and apparently the result among viewers was 13 heart attacks and 47 small children who have asked their parents to "block ESPN from their cable system so we don't have to see the white monster again".
I'd like to apologize to those parents. We won't let that happen again. Turns out Ma got a little confused and thought my neck clip was her IUD. Why she needed an IUD is beyond me, she doesn't even like Big Ten football.
Anyway, I went down to the local B&D store and got myself a nice new studded neck clip, with spikes sticking out of it, and I've gotten it permanently attached. So nobody should be comparing me to Jabba the Hut-Hut-Hut anymore. Instead I'd look just like noted Dominatrix Madame Ovary. See you this Saturday, and don't forget to have the kids tune in.