2002 Week 11
November 6, 2002
Things are starting to settle out in the world of college football. There were a number of stunning upsets last weekend, as several teams fell from the ranks of the unbeaten.
Perhaps most shocking was the win by Boston College in South Bend. It's hard to believe that it was only a few years ago that BC dropped football, but they're back with a vengeance.
Of course it was also disconcerting to see the referees take away that one Notre Dame touchdown on a bad call. I'd hate to think those officials favored BC over ND because they were anti-Catholic or something like that.
In other action, Nebraska was upset by Texas in a game that came down to the wire. The Aggies scored first in overtime, then Nebraska went for the win instead of kicking the tying field goal, but threw an interception.
Michigan laid the wood on Michigan State, though I don't think it was fair for Floyd Carr to distract the Chippewas by placing fresh chalk and little baggies on the field.
One of the problems with the current BS system is that it puts the jackass before the cart, so to speak. They always hype these conference title games, then they play them at the oddest times.
For instance, last week they had the SEC championship game, between the SEC South champion, Georgia, and the SEC North champion, Florida, in Jacksonville. I had thought that these conference title games were supposed to be at neutral sites, so I was a bit confused when they held it at UF's home stadium, the Florida Gators' Bowels.
Florida won the game in an upset, thus clinching the SEC title. What's strange is that Florida still has some key SEC games left, such as the battle with archrival Florida State.
But the thing that really upset me was the fact that this Florida vs. Georgia game was billed as the world's biggest cocktail party and yet I wasn't invited to be grand marshal for the festivities.
You'd think that someone who buys Southern Comfort by the barrel would get the nod sometime--and you'd be right. My good friend Brent Musberger was crowned grand marshal at a ceremony last week.
There's been a lot of talk about how everyone having a computer and the Innernet and all that has changed things for coaches. There's lots of gossip that gets out in the open right away, not to mention lots of interesting pictures of life on the farm from those nice folks at Texas A&M. I never knew horses could do things like that.
The other big change are all these coaching web sites, like www.firebobbywilliams.com (now changed to www.rehirenicksatan.com), www.reassignronzook.com, www.beenothehut.com, and www.feedmackbrowntopiranhas.com.
Back in the old days if you wanted a coach fired you couldn't start a web site and you couldn't call talk radio. Heck, you didn't even have a radio unless you got one of those crystal radio sets, and when you put those together the glue would smell so good that you'd be putting it up to your nose and pretty soon you'd forget about the crystal radio and instead start banging your head on the furniture.
No, if you wanted a coach fired you had to do what the good folks at Southern Cal did some 70 years ago when they got rid of Howard Jones. No, not that wussy singer from a few years back, that was Howard's soccer-playing grandson.
USC wasn't doing too well, and the fans had enough of the head coach, so 100 of them showed up one night with torches, grabbed the coach, tarred and feathered him, and stuck him on the flagpole. From high above Coach Jones served as a message to any future USC coach who failed, and USC moved on to bigger and better things.
The fans of Indiana University had a coaching problem a few years ago and tried something similar to what the USC fans did, but it backfired. My good friend Lee Corso said that being impaled on a flagpole was the "most pleasurable experience of my life. I'd like to be stuck up here forever".
That wasn't what the IU faithful had in mind, so they lifted him off the flagpole then threw him into a gymnasium, where head basketball coach Robert Montgomery Clift Knight beat him into submission.
Of course Lee enjoyed that beating too, so, finally, IU had to do the difficult thing and they fired him, and that's how Coach Corso ended up on ESPN. Now if only Lee would stop asking me to rest my chins on his head and jiggle my jowls.