2002 Week 8
October 16, 2002
I had a good time last weekend watching all the games. College football is much more enjoyable these days than it was in the 70's when you had maybe one game a week on TV. Now you've got dozens of games on at the same time, going on for about 14 hours straight, with action going on at every minute.
Because of all the excitement, I don't even bother to get up out of my chair anymore, and the resultant fluid retention is the main reason why I look a bit bloated on my midnight appearances on ESPN.
If they'd show me in the morning, right after my daily colonic and before I start in on the Rolling Rock, you'd all see that normally I'm about as scrawny as that Falista Lockhart girl.
There was an apparent error in what I told you folks last week. I had stated that the University of Miami had played Yukon, and I was quite critical of the Hurricanes for scheduling such some school from the Canadian wilderness.
This wasn't quite correct, as the school isn't from Canada but rather is from the northeast part of the U.S. And the school isn't named "Yukon", but rather "U-Con".
The Big East has expanded to add this "U-Con", which is an unusual school. It's called U-Con because it's one of those colleges for prisoners (its sister school is "State Penn").
Apparently they let these criminals out every so often to play football games. Of course I'm sure the felons felt right at home in downtown Miami. Though I'd guess that the concessionaires probably didn't make much money on confusing tee-shirts that said "CONVICTS vs CONVICTS".
On Saturday I enjoyed watching my Pitt Panthers take on the Fighting Irish. I was kind of surprised to see that Notre Dame didn't have any of those guys from the police force that protects the Pope in Rome, the Irish Guard.
There's always a few Irish Guards assigned to protect the coach of the Pope's team, Notre Dame. Instead Coach Dillingham made like the Bear and had Indiana state troopers protecting him. I will say that the state troopers did look a bit odd wearing funny black hats and mini-skirts.
Last week apparently was the start of the Bowel System (BS) playoffs. This year they're expanding to allow more than just two teams play for the title. We saw #2 vs. #3 playing off in Dallas but #1 Miami for some reason played #12 Florida State.
Even worse, the #4 team, Virginia Tech, was forced to compete in a play-in game on a Thursday night. You'd think they'd just line up the Cavs against Miami and have that winner play Oklahoma for the BS championship later this month.
One of the nicer stories this year is the performance of the teams from the great state of Iowa. Both Iowa State and Iowa are playing really well and each has a real shot at the Big Ten title.
It's been a long wait for fans of those two schools and it's great to see the people of Iowa excited. The last time there was this much excitement in Iowa was when the people of Iowa finally were exposed to music, which was the subject of a fascinating documentary a few years back.
Apparently the story started because swimming had become a big-time sport in the state, thanks to famed Iowa native son Duke Kahanamoku. This fellow from Gary Indiana, named Harry Hill, came to town.
Harry was one of those Methodist guys who said that swimming was far too similar to dancing to be morally acceptable. So he came to town and preached against swimming and said that the root of all evil in the state were the existence of the many swimming pools.
Harry offered an alternative to the evils of the horizontal expression of a vertical act--he wanted to start a band to get the kids' minds off their pools.
During this campaign he met the lovely Madame Marian Partridge, who was the proprietor of a local adult bookstore. Madame Marian sold a lot more than books, she introduced Harry to all her lady employees and they were glad to demonstrate their prowess with musical instruments, which led Harry to compose a song called "69 Trombones".
By the end of that summer Harry and Madame Marian had taught a bunch of clean-scrubbed Iowa college students to play with their instruments, and they formed an Iowa band that is still fondly recalled today: The Parliament of Funk.