2007 Week 13
November 29, 2007
Lots of stuff got cleared up over this wonderful Thanksgiving weekend. Great holiday, this Thanksgiving.
I told my guests "I hope you enjoyed your turkey as much as I enjoyed it before preparing it". For some reason people started making excuses and left, which just meant more food for me to eat.
The weekend's games featured some scintillating non-conference games for the pride of the West. Stanford fought mightily but came up just short against Notre Dame. I predict that Stanford Coach Jack Harbaugh will be named the "Liver Transplants Thanks to Brain Injuries" Society's "Man of the Year". And let's not forget perennial Pac-8 power Southern Cal's pounding of the pride of the WAC, Arizona State.
One of the trends we've seen in education is the splitting of schools when they get very large. You can take a town like Altoona, PA. They'll have one high school, but the school grows and it gets unmanageable to have thousands of students, so they go out and build a second high school. So that's how you end up with Altoona North High School and regular old Altoona High School. Then you end up with two football teams and you get headlines like "Altoona N beats Altoona".
This also happened in another Pennsylvania town located in a valley where they built a second high school, but instead of using directions the town used a different approach, putting the new school in the bottom of the valley. Then the newer school played a cross-state rival and those of us in the Pittsburgh metroplex got to read how "Intercourse Drills Lower Beaver".
Apparently this whole trend of splitting growing schools into new schools has spread to colleges too. Those folks in Manhattan have seen an enrollment increase. And I guess they were looking at a map and saw that the new school was on the right side of the map. So while regular Kansas faced the difficult task of toppling Missouri, their new school pulled a great upset of the #1 team down in Baton Rouge. So congratulations to R. Kansas University on their big win!
Now that almost all the regular season games are over, it's time to focus on the most important aspect of the college season: The individual awards.
Here are some of my predictions for the top awards:
The Fred Biletnikoff Award for the player who took the most punishment growing up: I never knew that Fred had a rough childhood, boy he was a great player for the LA Raiders. Florida State will take this trophy home, in the name of DeCody Fagg.
The Lou Grant Award for the best kicker: The old-school coach who kicked the most asses this year had to be Mike Gundy of Oklahoma State. Way to show that lass who wears the pants in the press room, coach!
The Jim Thorpe Award will go to Juice Williams of the Fightin' Illini, as he was the best player on a team with an Indian nickname.
The Davie O'Brien Award for the worst broadcaster. Named for Bob Davie and Pat O'Brien, this year's award goes to Paul Maguire. Please, Paul, my good friend Bob Greasy says the smell is unbearable, so buy some of my product, Beeno.
The Maxwell Smart Award for the player with the top WonderLick score: My good friend Herb Street was telling me about the wonders of Song Girls and licking, so I'll defer to his judgement and give it to Amber.
The Hessman Trophy for the MVP in Cincinnati: This award will go to quarterback Ben Mauk.
The Guy Lombardi Trophy for the best band: The Parliament of Funk.
The Outlandish Trophy for the weirdest lineman: Named for legendary Irish tackle Ziggy Czarobski, this award goes to LSU lineman Glenn Dorsey. Just after the players took the field for a night contest at Tiger Stadium, Glenn asked that the lights be turned out, then matched the purple in the stands with a 3-foot tower ignart.
The Butkus Award for the biggest media suck-up: Brent Musberger has kissed more butts than my good friends Lee Corso and Mark May combined. Really, Brent, ease up a bit.
And, of course, we cannot forget the most important and most famous trophy of them all:
The Theisman Trophy for the player suffering the grossest national TV injury: Dennis Dixon of Oregon.