2012 Week 9
November 6, 2012
I know I've gotten a lot of questions from my many readers. I'll try to address a couple of them here:
I was asked what's up with Coach Paterno. I asked around, it's apparently a pretty sensitive topic up here and nobody will tell me.
People wonder what the arrangements are, where do I hang out? I'm mostly with family and old friends, but we also get grouped with colleagues. No, I haven't seen Cosell anywhere.
I have gotten to know former baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn. After the hostages came back from Iran in 1981, Kuhn gave them lifetime major league baseball passes and I famously said "haven't they suffered enough?"
Turns out Bowie has a pretty good sense of humor. He's even confided in me that he hates baseball as much as I do. In fact, to get through the cold dreary baseball post-season, he usually took a lot of mescaline.
There were some huge showdowns for undefeated teams this past weekend. Kansas City State had an impressive win over Oklahoma State. KC State certainly had a better day than cross-state rival Missouri, who lost a close SEC South tilt to the Florida Gators.
Oregon visited Southern Cal and outscored the Trojans 62-51. That's higher scoring than many NBA games these days. The Men of Troy may have been at a disadvantage, as they apparently did the split squad thing and sent part of their team to play Tennessee, where they lost another high scoring matchup 55-48. I don't quite understand what Mr. Layla Kiffin is doing with his team these days.
The game that got the most attention was in Baton Rouge, as top-rated Alabama and Nick Satan pulled off a last-minute touchdown drive to knock off the Bayou Bengals, 21-17. As I've always said, LSU is like Dracula, they suck the most at night.
Probably the most dramatic game took place in South Bend, as my Pitt Panthers took the Fighting Irish to triple overtime before losing 29-26. Now I'm still not sure about these overtime rules. They say that teams have to go for two points starting in the third overtime, but I looked at the box score and Notre Dame didn't do so.
Not only that, Pitt chose to kick a field goal in the third overtime and so came up three points short. You'd think they would have tried to get a touchdown to tie it up and get to the fourth overtime. You'd think a coach named Chryst would make more infallible decisions. It's not like the old days at Pitt -- I've seen Johnny make better decisions than that even after drinking a couple fifths.
Now today of course is a big day in America. We've all been hearing the pundits give their opinions about tonight's contest. Some people favor the red, some the blue. But the important thing is what we share in common, a love of our great traditions.
People ask me who I pick in tonight's big showdown, what to look for on TV. I'm thinking it will be a blue night in Ohio, with the Toledo Mud Rockets knocking off the scarlet Ball State Cardinals. Talk to you next week.