2005 Week 7
October 20, 2005
Whoa nellie, we had a mighty fine weekend of college football.
I don't think I can remember one weekend where so many important games were decided in the closing minutes.
You had Virginia holding on for the exciting win over Florida State, giving the Hokies an edge up in the new expanded Big East.
Wisconsin blocked a late punt by Minnesota's Golden Buffaloes to win the rights to Paul Bunyan's ass.
But even better than those finishes were the many exciting overtime contests.
West Virginia and the St Louisville Cardinals played three overtimes in Morgantown, then the Cardinals decided to go home and play baseball, so West Virginia was declared the winner.
I'm still a bit confused on these overtime rules. I understand that when overtime begins that action starts in the opponents' territory, but it appears that various games went by different rules.
Michigan and Penn State had a strange overtime game, with Michigan winning in sudden death. I guess in the Big Ten not only do they do sudden death, they let Michigan run its play from the Penn State 10 yard line.
When the game from Anne Arbor was over I tuned in the Notre Dame vs Southern Cal tussle.
As soon as I had changed the channel, the clock ran out and the Notre Dame students ran out onto the field to celebrate the end of regulation. Then in the sudden death overtime they gave USC the ball on the Notre Dame 1 yard line!
Quarterback Matt Leinart scored as the President's new son-in-law Reggie Busch pushed Matt into the end zone. When I spoke to my good friend Lee Corso, he said that Reggie had perfected the reach-around move and that not only had Leinart scored, but Reggie had too.
I don't understand Lee at times.
I couldn't believe Notre Dame coach Charles White would agree to give USC such a huge advantage, to start from the 1 in sudden death. Then I remembered that Charles was a former USC star player. I think the officials at Notre Dame better look into whether Charles is a fifth column kind of guy. Or was that a fifth chin kind of guy?
These new varied rules are not the first time the NCAA tried to break ties, as I noted in a story I shared with you a few years ago:
There was plenty of controversy in the early 30's, when Bennie Bierman's Minnesota Golden Gophers tied about 5 games one season. The NCAA, knowing that Bennie only had 4 sisters, figured it had to do something before one of them got kissed twice and Bennie got hauled up on incest charges.
So, the next year, the NCAA instituted a tie-breaker system. Sure enough, a couple of weeks into the season the annual Virginia vs. Maryland showdown ended in a 13-13 tie. So the teams went to overtime.
The NCAA first had been inspired by the World Cup soccer tournament, which had begun mere years earlier. This still-obscure form of "football" involves a bunch of wormy little 5'6 guys running around in shorts, then falling down and screaming for their mommies every time someone nicks their shin. Trust me, you don't want to watch it unless your only alternative is "Oprah" or something like that.
Anyway, the NCAA thought that the "shootout" rule in soccer could be applied to college football as well.
Then, one day, the NCAA sent someone to watch a game played with a little disc designed by Ed Whamo, where teams threw the disk at each other and tried to hit the other team and the other team tried to catch the disc. It was originally thought to be a stupid game, so it was called "Nuts", but then they started noticing where people were getting hit and they changed the name to "Guts", and that served as the inspiration for the college football tie-breaker.
The method chosen was for a given player at the 10 yard line to throw the football directly at an opposing team's player stationed near the goal line. If the opposing player caught the ball his team scored a point, but if it touched him without him catching it or he dropped it, the other team scored a point. Misses were worth 0 points. Each team got to match up 5 players with 5 opponents and the team with the most points at the end would be the winner. If it was still tied the one-on-ones went on and on until there was a break in the tie.
Well, both teams had trained long and hard for this tie-breaker and could whip the ball with amazing accuracy from 10 yards. And both teams managed to score on every throw as neither team had a player who could catch the ball. The injuries mounted, the rounds went on, and every throw was a hit but none of the throws was caught. The favored throw was one right at the groin, which players usually couldn't dodge due to their center of gravity and would usually inflict tremendous damage.
After 40 rounds both teams ran out of players due to all the injuries (most of them were lying on the ground moaning by then, just like in "The Longest Yard") and the game was declared to be over, in a tie. Both Virginia and Maryland had to forfeit the next two weeks due to all the groin injuries (one errand throw caught a player right in the sternum and he was out too). And by then the NCAA thought better of using tie-breakers and went back to allowing games to end in ties.
I like it a lot better these days that we settle things on the field, even in spite of these goofy sudden death rules. Though it might have been fun to see two teams decide the winner by throwing footballs from 10 yards at one another's groin, except it might remind me a little too much of some of those all-guy movies Mom has me pick up for her at the video store.