2010 Week 12
November 23, 2010
The leaves are off the trees, there's a chill in the air, and when I came back in from grabbing the mail there was some ice between my second and third chins. The change of the seasons means we've come to crunch time in the college football season.
There were some very exciting games in the SEC as well as some clunkers. In the latter category was Alabama's 63-7 thumping of Georgia. I haven't seen Bulldogs get pounded like that since Va Tech's 2001 football player talent show.
Louisiana State continued their bizarre yet magical season with a tight win over Ole Southern Miss. I'm still a bit confused about these overtime rules. LSU scored to take the lead and had to go for two points. Then Ole Southern Miss got the ball around their own 20 yard line rather than at the opponents' 20 so didn't have time to drive the field and score before the overtime clock expired.
The naughty children from Boys' State continued to impress with a 51-0 demolishment of FSU. The Noles have fallen on hard times since Bobby departed.
In a battle of commuter schools, San Diego State blew a big lead and lost to the University of Texas at Houston. U.T.A.H. bounced back from a couple tough losses to pull out the win.
Stanford and coach Jack Harbaugh showed some versatility, as their main team pummeled Cal. Earlier in the day I watched on TV as their backup team knocked off Carolina. I was a bit surprised that the Indians are claiming an iffy national title with the "N C" surrounding the familiar block "S".
There was a key Big Ten matchup in Iowa City. NFL legend Terrell Davis's son Pryor led a late TD drive for the Bawkeyes as they beat the Iowa Huckeyes. The victory puts Ohio State in the driver's seat for a BS bowel game against whichever powerhouse wins the Big East.
It was a different Big Ten game that got most of the attention. Northwestern hosted Illinois at Chicago's venerable Wrigley Stadium. Even though they had a month to set up the field after the White Sox season ended, they still managed to screw up and put one of the walls too close to the end zone. You'd think they would do a better job of setting up the grandstands for such a game.
This was not the only game this weekend played at a baseball venue. Out east there was a lot of attention paid to the baseball stadium showdown between an old-time eastern powerhouse and a school from the Hoosier state. Penn State beat Indiana at the Washington Senators' stadium.
The other baseball stadium game last weekend was at Yankee Stadium, a rematch of some legendary games of yore between Army and Notre Dame. The Irish won this year's game fairly easily, but I must admit seeing those two teams play at that 87-year-old stadium brought back a lot of memories.
The first time Army played Notre Dame at Yankee Stadium was in the late 20's. I can remember taking the train from my dormitory at Pitt to attend the shindig.
Notre Dame was a great powerhouse coached by Newt Rockne while Army was led by Biff Jones.
But the real story was behind the scenes. The Black Knights of the Hudson, as was traditional for many underdog schools in that era, added a few ringers to improve their chances. One of them was a large lineman named George. They also added a couple of George's Columbia pals, Tony and Louie. These guys were great athletes and really would have helped Army's chances of victory.
The problem was that the ringers had spent the night before the game at a local bordello favored by George. Louie insisted on spending some time with one of the newer girls, Kay. Unfortunately Kay was not much for cleanliness and Louie came down with a nasty staph infection. The next day the entire Army team was bent over with Louie's illness and Army star Red Cagle was barely able to stand. Needless to say, Notre Dame won the game.
After the game George, known better to us as "The Bambino", turned to his vomiting teammate and said "Gehrig, you lucky bastard, they'll probably name this disease after you".
And now you know the rest of the story.