2009 Week 4
October 1, 2009
I started to doze off on Saturday while watching Iowa play at Penn State. Those teams have played some scintillating games over the years, I can remember than classic 6-4 game a few years ago. So I wasn't too surprised to see a 10-5 baseball type score (I'm just kidding, 10-5 would be more offense than you'd see in a week's worth of baseball games).
People often ask me how you end up with unusual scores like 10-5, 6-4, or 17-3. You need to get into the arithmetic of scoring to figure out how that happens. That 6-4 game had its unusual score due to multiple safeties. You have three safeties for one team and the other team kicked a field goal and an extra point. Even a more conventional 11-2 score can represent something like three field goals for the one team and two-point conversions for both teams.
There were some shockers last Saturday. Florida State got blown by BJ Daniels and South Florida.
Perhaps the biggest game of the week was the SEC South showdown between Miami and Virginia Tech. I guess they've started an SEC tournament like in basketball. I noticed the numbers next to the teams' names when the score was shown, it's like they do in basketball, showing the seeds. So I was a bit surprised to see Miami seeded at #9. The SEC is tough but Miami is pretty good this year. And Va Tech seeded #11? Wow.
After I woke up from the Penn State snoozer, I tuned in the Notre Dame game at Purdue. I had heard all about this star quarterback for the Irish, how "J C" was going to lead them to victory.
Then I watched the game and saw who "J C" was. Believe it or not, the Irish were playing Christ at quarterback. And here I thought Christ played for Florida.
I've always said that Notre Dame had a lot of pull, but being able to put our Lord and Savior on the field takes things to another level. What surprised me is that he wore #10. It's like what my good friend Sal Paolantonio said, "if God had meant for us to use the metric system, why did Jesus have 12 apostles?"
Then my good friend Lee Corso said "if God had meant for us to run around naked, he would have made us born that way".
So we'll see how Notre Dame does this year with their newfound advantage. I personally predict that Christ will win three Heisman Trophies and the NHL's Lady Bing sportsmanship Trophy.
There has been a lot of talk about some of the unusual formations in college football. The "Wildcat" is pretty popular these days, with a running back taking a direct snap.
It actually all got started years ago at a small school, Texas Western at Texarkana. They had a small enrollment and actually had some women on the team. In fact TW-T had quite a snapper. And their halfback who took the snaps, Marion, wasn't half-bad either.
Their offense chalked up a lot of yards and the idea caught on and they started calling the offense the "Cougar". That animal nickname eventually inspired the nickname given to the Wildcat offense.
After her college football career Marion moved on into academia. Two decades later, she starred in a documentary about a small college where her husband was dean. She was quite popular among the guys at the Delta fraternity house, who started referring to her as the "Cougar". And that's why young women in their 40's even today are known as Cougars.