I live in a shell.
I only discovered last week that there were two voters in the AP poll who were continually casting their number one votes for WVU. (For the uninitiated, the Mountaineers are my team.) They opened the season voting for WV, and have stuck to their guns.

After a few moments of scanning the web, I’ve discovered who the two voters are.
It’s really cool that it’s so easy to see the voters’ ballots. Just head here to find out who the AP’s 65 voters are and click the links next to their entries for their ballots.

I fully expected to find that the guy from the Charleston (WV) Gazette was one of those crazies.
Nope.
One is a reporter on all things USC for the LA Daily News (Scott Wolf). The other is a reporter on all things UCLA (Kevin Pearson).

Wolf doesn’t present his rationale for his selections anywhere that I could find (but I didn’t look very hard). Pearson mentioned two weeks ago that he simply likes better what he’s seen on the field from WVU than OSU. It’s not a compelling argument, but it’s something.

I can’t help but think it’s an anti-Big Ten bias, though. One can imagine that because the Rose Bowl traditionally pits the Big Ten v. the Pac Ten that there’s either uncelebrated honor for or hatred of the Big Ten out on the left coast.

It’s interesting to note that Dan Shanoff (of espn.com page two fame (?) ) did this week with his Top 25 what I’ve done with mine. And that’s drop Michigan down a spot to number three.

And his rationale is right in line with mine, as well. Does that mean I should be a sidebar on a withering side page on the biggest sports site (I’ve done no research on this; it could very well be fourth on the list) on the web?
Probably not. But, at least it validates my thinking.
I don’t know if WVU could beat Ohio State. I don’t even know if WVU can go to Louisville and win. (I believe that they can, but they’ll have to play their best game of the year to date, by a lot.) But, I’ve grown weary of the one-note sound coming from the Michigan band. With Manningham out, Michigan’s offense isn’t just unimpressive, it’s nearly nonexistent. I like a grind-it-out, three yards and a cloud of dust offense as much as anyone, but come on. I mean it. Come on. Seems to me like Michigan’s conservative play calling could cost them when they least expect it.
Oh, and OSU wil blow their farging doors off.

So, what are those two guys on the left coast doing? I have no idea. But, it’s interesting to say the least. AP voters have their own biases. More than likely, these two guys are simply playing out a bet or something similarly stupid.

I like the idea of the Mountaineers getting votes for #1 in a poll. I just wish I had faith their votes were made in good faith.
If WVU wins at UofL on Thursday, though, I’ll have a hard time not giving them at least half the #1 vote.
It’s one thing to go to a place and beat a freshman QB starting his first game against real competition in that team’s first real game. Quite another to head into a conference opponent’s place to ostensibly determine the conference champion. The charge that WVU will be facing its first real competition on Thursday gets no argument from me, but the stakes are much bigger, and Brian Brohm is no week two Colt McCoy. More pointedly, Bobby “Kill Temple” Petrino is no Mack Brown.

Other notes:
YAY Temple!! I’m glad the Owls got off the schnide, but can Temple please just shut down their football program now. Please? Or drop to DII, where it belongs.

I’m not surprised the Trojans lost. I’m surprised they lost to the Beavers, though.

Saturday night, around 9.30p, the apocalypse looked ready to occur. Tennesse was trailing South Carolina 17-14 on ESPN. Texas was trailing Texas Tech 21-10 on TBS. And Florida State was trailing Maryland 17-7 on ESPN2. Only one of those upsets held, though. Not surprisingly, the one game that probably wasn’t an upset so much as a nail in the FSU coffin was the only result that held.

I completely forgot about the UConn-Rutgers game last night. Haven’t really had an opportunity to check out the Scarlet Knights yet, and I missed an opportunity to scout them against a common opponent. Oh, well. (Meanwhile, I think Drew Bledsoe’s career as an NFL starter is finally over. He’d been holding on for the last five years, but we’ve seen the end of his time at Dallas, methinks. He’ll probably retire at season’s end, and it was musings like these that distracted me from the Sunday Night College Football Game.)

Final note (non-sports): While I haven’t blogged here in a while, I wanted to warn it’ll likely be another long while before I’m back (unless I’m moved to blog after the WVU-UofL game). I’ll be partaking of another writing adventure doing National Novel Writing Month, for which I’m incredibly unprepared this year. No ideas for a novel AT ALL this year. At least last year I had an inkling of what I was doing at this point. Not so this year, and I’m a little scared. Ah, well.

Haven’t blogged in awhile (as you can see), but I wanted to check in so no one thinks I’ve abandoned the site.

 And today I’ll even do a little teaching.  You’re welcome.

I don’t really gamble on sports often, and if I do it’s for chump change, but I’m drawn nevertheless to the sports wagering world…I love reading people’s picks, why this team will cover, that team won’t, sharps, squares, etc., and I recently discovered a new term in the football betting that I just love.

When you bet on a football game, you don’t have to pick it against the pointspread.  You can also just bet on just who you think will win, straight up.  And how much you risk vs. how much you win depends on who you are picking.

So if  you pick Indianapolis to beat the Texans at home, you’re not really going out on a limb there.  The books might pay you $10 for picking that if you wager $100 (I just made that figure up, but you get the idea).   But if you bet $100 on the Texans to win and somehow they do, you just turned your $100 into $1,000 (again, I’m making numbers up).

There are some people who make their living by betting tons and tons of money on  heavy, heavy college football favorites to win straight up.   In other words, they might bet (did I mention I’m making numbers up?)  $50,000 to win $1,000.  But it’s an EASY $1,000, because all they have to do to is hope the Texases of the world beat the Louisiana-Monroes of the world.   Again, they don’t have to cover the spread, just win.

But sometimes, even in those games, the unthinkable happens, and that’s what gives such games their great nickname:

 Bridgejumpers.

I just noticed this article on espn.com. ESPN.com – NCF – Clemson’s McElrathbey brothers featured on Oprah. Before reading it, I was about to blog about this bit from espn.com’s Dave Revsine’s weekly “Between the Numbers” column:

$1,500: Temple has shown up a lot in the futility items in this column this year, so it feels good to have something nice to write about the Owls this week. Before their game against Clemson Oct. 12, Temple’s players voted unanimously to donate their per diem checks, $1,500 in all, to the Fahmarr McElrathbey Trust Fund.

Fahmarr is the younger brother of Clemson’s Ray-Ray McElrathbey. As you may have heard, Ray-Ray took temporary custody of his 11-year-old brother this summer to get him out of the house of their mother, who is struggling with drug addiction. The NCAA has allowed Ray-Ray to accept donations to a fund for his brother’s care. Classy move by Al Golden’s kids to make the donation.

I think this is something of an amazing move, and I’m disheartened that I’m finding out about this on Friday afternoon. I understand that the story of the week is what it is, but man, this is actually an important and good story. A bit about some players giving away their travel cash to support an opponent and his brother certainly warrants some mention aside from the Revsine article, isn’t it?

Especially when it’s coming from a team whose only apparent existence is to be traveling whipping boys.

I continue to be find Sunday Morning Quarterback to be mandatory reading for both pleasure and for information.   His post-Saturday posts this week deal with a number of things, such as Fresno State’s demise and the Tennessee-Georgia game, that we only touched upon.  His best, though, dealt with that 7-overtime affair between Florida International and North Texas.  It turns out that all of those zeroes in the OT columns were the result of missed field goals.   SMQ:

 “[T]he extended series of extra frames resulted in an astonishing eight missed field goal attempts among 13 attempted kicks altogether by both teams, featuring four straight misses in the third and fourth OTs and three straight in the sixth and seventh before Adam Vinatieri was flown in to commit suicide on the fifty, after which a beleaguered ball symbolizing the oceans of human blood spilled in futility throughout man’s dark and lonely existence finally went hurtling through for what was deemed ‘victory.’”

Inspired. 

It’s becoming a obsessive meme of mine, something I will be ranting about to nursing home staff when I am unable to talk about anything else: Treat kickers as a recruiting afterthought at your own peril.  Hell, I might even crazily make it my number ONE recruiting priority if I were putting together a squad, thinking that if I could get someone as automatic as an Elam or a Nugent (college version), then no matter how bad my team sucked we should still be able to get some points out of it any time we blunder past the opponent’s 35.

Kevin, toward the end of the day, complains about the end of the UW-USC game. He suggests that maybe, just maybe, UW might have been able to pull out the upset if they’d had that extra time back taken away by the rules changes.

And I can’t help but want to fucking barf. I mean, really. Can you at least get the fucking story straight?

For a month, complaints centered on how in these rules-shortened games, the upset would be more likely, because the time to rally a comeback would be gone.

And we’ve experienced one of the most predictable (talking strictly won-loss, btw, I don’t pay spreads much mind at all) seasons in recent memory, if not even longer than that.

So, apparently the mantra of the four-hour-long game folks is going to try to appeal to my underdog sensibilities. Well, you know what? It won’t work.

I have a family. I have a five-year old. And while I enjoy watching college football, I (and my daughter) appreciate the ten or fifteen minutes back. There’s a quick game of Go Fish, a dash to the swing set out back, or a quick jaunt around the block that I can fit into that time back.

Or, even better from a football point of view, broadcasters with rights enough to pull it off (like Disney Sports), can let us watch the end of another game, and another game, till they decide they’ve shown us enough endings, and present us with WSOP coverage or some other garbage that makes my eyes bleed.

A final comment: Do you think an extra ten seconds would really have made a difference? Of course it could have, but a quick glance at the recent history of the Trojans suggests that UW/underdog supporters would have been disappointed given another ten or ninety seconds. And why was no play called, the line not in place, etc., etc., when the ball was put into play? The Huskies gave it what they had, and what they had wasn’t enough. Give ‘em another minute, give ‘em another hour… they still lose that game.

Of course, the rules changes are bad simply because you say they are…

Big Day in sports with the MLB playoffs, college football, European Cup qualifying, and even NHL action, which I normally don’t get into at all, but since NHL Center Ice is free until the 10th, I might just give it a look. Anyway, I plan to blog all day on what I am watching, and if any of the other authors of this blog drop by, I hope they feel free to add on to this post with their own thoughts. 1:35 PM: I’m presently on Scotland v. France on TV (Scotland up 1-0 and 15 minutes from the big upset) and looking at England v. Macedonia on the computer, where another upset of sorts is brewing there as it is still scoreless with 15 minutes remaining as well. I also note that Auburn is looking beatable early for the second week in a row (trailing Arkansas by a TD at home at halftime), Illinois is trying to establish that last week’s win was no fluke as they blow out Indiana, and it now seems that Wake Forest in the ACC championship game is a very real possibility. They lead Clemson 14-3 at halftime.

2:04 PM. The Arran is flowing in Edinbugh tonight as the two scores I wrote about above held. Not only did Scotland get a better result against France than England did against Macedonia at Old Trafford, but the result puts Scotland at the top of group B. World Cup champs Italy, on the other hand, have gotten just one point (draw at home to Lithuania, loss at France) in two games and have a tough match coming up a bit later against Ukraine. I spoke to soon, perhaps, about Illinois. They were up 25-7 when I wrote the bit above, now it’s 25-21 at halftime.

2:34PM: Now Indiana has pulled ahead of Illinois, and Arkansas is now up to a 14 point lead on Auburn with a TD set up by a trick play inspired by the pee-wee leagues (one of those teeny Warrick Dunn-type halfbacks ducked down behind the line beside the quarterback so the defense couldn’t see/account for him, and he rattled off a 20 yard run.

2:58: Clemson has scored 24 unanswered in the fourth quarter to put Wake Forest away. Indiana and Illinois has devolved into a defense-free shootout (32-31 Illini as I write this).

3:12: I just turned it to PSU-Minnesota in time to see the Gophers convert a must-make fourth and 2 deep in their own territory, with a 50 yard pass play. Then Minnesota punhced it in to tie a few plays later. Looks like PSU is conceding to OT. And erase Auburn from the board of undefeateds, it’s all over against Arkansas (27-10).

3:31. For the second week in a row, I’m screwed in the SCMB College Football Pick’em contest by a touchdown in the last minute in a game involving Texas A&M. This time, the Aggies come out on top. And the ending of the Penn State-Minnesota games is already, I’m sure, blowing up message boards everywhere. Minnesota scores the big TD (on third and 10 from the 25) to take the lead in OT but misses the PAT. Then PSU converts on a fourth down via pass interference penalty that did not look like PI to me, Mike Gottfried, or (I imagine) most neutral viewers, and Penn State goes on to punch it in and win 28-27.

5:08: Think of the dumbest thing you rver heard an announcer say. Have it in you mind? Good. I’m watching Akron vs. Cincinnati on ESPN 360, and analyst Ron Brown said, on a incomplete pass ruling being reviewed, “Now, we know that the ground cannot cause an incomplete pass…”

Is the thing you had in mind still the dumbest?

5:52: Dave’s in the house. I’m still catching up with the early events of the day after hanging out with five and six years olds for the last several hours. I’ve just joined the NYY-DET game, and Lidle was just pulled after allowing two runs in the fifth with no outs. He’s responsible for runners on second and third, and I can’t help but point out how much I loved Jim Leyland’s comment after game two: “I hope tonight’s game was a reminder to everyone that we are a playoff team.” Either that comment by itself scared the Yanks into submission, or they thought they were playing an All-Star series or something. As I finish this entry, the score’s Tigers 7, Yanks 0, and Bonderman… I won’t jinx him, let’s just say he’s been… not just good, but fucking great.

6.10p: Dave again. Okay, I can say it now, Bonderman had thrown a perfect game through five innings. Cano reached in the top of the 6th, but was just forced on Arod’s impotent grounder to third.

Florida is asserting itself v. LSU, which surprises me a little bit. WVU scored a relatively easy win in Starksville 42-14. Slaton returns to the Heisman discussion with a 182 yard day. (Northern Illinois v. Miami on a Sunday?! What did ESPN do to break the NFL’s monopoly on Sundays? Is this a normal thing, or something that had to be done to alleviate some conflict of which I’m unaware.)

6.30p: Dave. Since the Tigers have an 8-0 death grip on the Yankees as they enter the seventh, I’ve tuned into the really interesting-looking USC-Washington game. The Trojans lead 23-20 with 5.30 to go in the game. I think Kevin’s noted how nice it is to see that Ty Willingham’s coaching ability has been somewhat re-proven. It would go some way to bringing him the accolades he had been getting at Stanford if he were to lead the Huskies through this upset.

Though, as the Trojans run off tackle and behind the guard for six and nine yards at a time, the Huskies look like they’re not going to keep the score as close as it seems it’s been to this juncture. This game is also the quietest damn 3-point game I’ve ever heard.

Is the NFL really serious about putting a team in the area? Just because there are TV viewers there doesn’t mean there are people who’d go to the stadium.

Auburn lost, leaving a slot for WVU to move up. I’m not sure, but the jump to #3 will be the highest the Mountaineers have been ranked since possibly 1988, and definitely since 1993.

Texas is slaughtering the Sooners in usual conservative fashion.

6:59 Kevin. I’m gonna assume everyone saw the end of the UW-USC game. It took a few weeks, but rule 3-2-5-e finally cost a team, in real black-and-white fashion, a chance to a win a game. It would have been a great upset, I’m sure most people were rooting for Washington at the end (other than USC fans), but it was worth it! Because now games are a brisk 2:55 instead of an ungodly, please-make-it-stop 3:10, and we didn’t lose any of our beloved commericials. Let’s keep our eyes on the prize.

7:34 Kevin I was flipping through the different CFB games when I came to Duke-Alabama. Duke was inside the Alabama 5, and the producers showed an astonishing statistic: Duke is 1 for 9 this year scoring TDs inside the red zone this year, including four fumbles.

Two plays after they showed that, Duke fumbled and Alabama recovered.

9.52 Dave The other day, a friend at the office asked if I thought Tennessee could beat Georgia. “Is Tennessee for real?” were his words. I furrowed my brow, and replied, “It’s not a matter of whether Tennessee is for real, but just how big a fraud the Bulldogs are.”

To this point, Georgia’s looked much better behind Tereshinski. I can only imagine that this means that both are ginormous frauds. Georgia leads midway through the 3rd by a FG, but look like they’re about to take at least a six point lead.

My favorite moment in the Detroit over NYY celebration was when Kenny Rogers, after dousing several dozen fans in champagne wrapped his arm around a cop and poured some of the bottle on the officer’s hat. Great stuff. Emotional stuff. I love that stuff. Especially at the Yankees’ expense.

10.02 Dave This has nothing to do with today’s sports, but I just checked my TV listings for tomorrow, and it turns out tomorrow’s one of those days I absolutely hate, because I live in an NFL market. I get Miami @ New England as my only early game. Then I get no choice for my late game, stuck with the damned TO v Philly soap opera. Fortunately, the game has meaning beyond it’s tired serial-style storyline, with both teams looking for some sort of upper hand in the division.

Missouri is the Big 12’s lone undefeated team, as they put the finishing touches on Texas Tech.

Oh, I think I didn’t mention it yet, but my Mountaineers currently own the nation’s longest winning streak, having won their last twelve. (TCU had owned the title before losing their last two games.)

11:14 Kevin As I write this, Florida International and North Texas are headed to overtime #6, tied at 22. Afer being tied at 15 at the end of regulation. That’s some serious offensive inepitude. There was no scoring at all in the first, third, or fourth overtimes.

So Georgia finds their offense the very same game they lose their defense.

Cal is the best team in the Pac 10 and is gonna beat USC. First! How bad must Cal want that game against Tennessee back?

Last year, the knock on Fresno State was they put so much focus on their brutal out-of-conference schedule that they were unprepared for key WAC games. This year, they opened with a victory over defending WAC champs Nevada, and I wondered if they learned their lesson and shaken that monkey off their back. Then they lost to Oregon by a TD, but that’s okay, Oregon’s very good. Then they lost a close one to Washington, but that’s okay, they were on the road and the Huskies are vastly improved. Then they lost to Colorado State by 12. Umm, harder to spin that one positively. Tonight, they lost to Utah State. As one of those non-BCS teams that demand attention, Fresno State’s time has officially and emphatically passed.

Not to sound like like Gregg Easterbrook, but Duke played so ridiculously conservately against Alabama – a game they were in – that I am pretty disgusted with their coach, Ted Roof. Early in the fourth quarter, down 16-14 at about the Alabama 48, they punted on fourth and half a yard. They had already put together a couple of first downs on the drive, and had put together far more yards in the game then they had all season. Duke’s Duke, but they were clicking pretty well. Earlier, up 14-10 with about 4 minutes left in the first half, with the ball near midfield, they went run, run, run, and punt and ran down the play clock as far as they could on each play…that’s right, they decided to just try to take it to the locker room with four minutes left in the half, with the ball at midfield, while they were playing their best game of the year…and Alabama nearly made them pay, missing a short field goal to end the first half (can ANYBODY kick a football anymore?). Roof called a game like he didn’t believe in his kids no matter how well they were playing. It was a shame.

No one scored in the sixth overtime either, but UNT’s field goal in the seventh extra frame was good enought to put away Florida International.

Finally, it gives me some pleasure to correct Dave and point out that the nation’s longest winning streak actually belongs to my Buckeyes, who have won 13 straight. The nation’s shortest winning streak is zero (several teams tied).

Dave Right. The ‘Eers were off last week, while OSU played, which… yadda yadda yadda.

Not quite sure why that’s pleasurable. Of course, we’re on a collision course for a meeting on Jan 8. In fact, I recently played the 2006 season on my PS2, and guess who WVU met in the title game. You got it.

I struggled for a quarter, but eventually won by 28.

I doubt real life would be quite so fruitful, but… I can imagine, right?

Kenny Rogers just strode confidently from the mound, looking a little frustrated by a bad strike call, but triumphantly, after registering his eighth strikeout against the New York Yankees. He went seven and two-thirds innings, devastating the Yankees lineup in a way that most pundits would have considered impossible.

As he walked to the dugout, he removed his ballcap and tipped it ever so slightly to the cheering Tigers fans who so appreciated his performance that they were erupting in awe of every swing-and-miss that he threw. Only his final strike-looking to Abreu received a greater reception. He waved and met the team in the dugout, each member of bench up to greet him at the bottom of the stairs, all of them getting their high-five due.

Prior to tonight, Kenny Rogers had never won a postseason game. Ever.

This night, he led the dealing of a shutout of the highest-scoring team in the majors this regular season.

For all the man’s past foibles, the tip of the hat to the adoring crowd at Comerica Park really grabbed me. He knew just how great a game he’d pitched. The crowd knew it, too. And knowing just how awful this club was three years ago, I couldn’t help but literally applaud from my couch, and shook back a bit of that emotion that always fills me when the underdog team takes it the Goliath.

Watching his postgame interview with Erin Andrews, he seems a little overwhelmed about it all, too.

My hat’s off to The Gambler tonight.

It’ll be difficult to stay tuned into the LSU-Florida/Oklahoma-Texas games with the Yankees fending off playoff elimination, though.

Tonight, and through these playoffs, I’m a Tigers fan. Thanks for giving us something to root for, Kenny.

What can I say? There are baseball playoffs. There’s the start of hockey (my favorite club actually won its opener, after waiting some thirty-odd games or something before winning a game last season). But, I’m watching college football.

Just three weeks ago, we were comparing Chuck Amato’s race to the unemployment line with Larry Coker’s own run to the unemployment line. A funny thing happened between then and tonight.

Last time we saw the Wolfpack, Kevin was noting just how bad they were, and predicting they would lose badly to Boston College. Then, somehow, the Wolfpack pulled an amazing comeback and won in the final seconds at Chestnut Hill. Of course, the world sort of ignored this win, because it coincided with Notre Dame’s incredible come from behind win over Michigan State.

Tonight, the Wolfpack proved a couple things:

1. Never declare a program dead in the vastly overrated ACC.

2. Bobby Bowden is probably done as coach of an elite program.

NC State is undefeated in conference games, while the ‘Noles have their win over woeful Miami and two league losses to Clemson and NCSU. The Wolfpack have a tough road remaining, but have had a much nicer start to their conference schedule than the Seminoles have had.

Unless the wheels fall off the bus between now and the season’s end, the demise of Chuck Amato’s career seems to have been greatly exaggerated.

I was going to post the story below, but got distracted by that damn TO guy. Why a guy nicknamed for the word timeout garners so much press is beyond me.

Why TO has so many slobbering doberman pincer-like detractors also baffles me. I don’t often find myself wanting to side with Dan Le Batard, but I can’t help but want to punch out the likes of Peter King and anyone else who’s voiced the opinion that they know best, they think he’s a nutcase, or whatever they’ve said in the several days. Shut the hell up, I say. If he tried to commit suicide or not, he had his girlfriend/publicist there to keep him alive. And he’s alive. And he caught passes against the Titans yesterday. And, oh yeah, SHUT UP.

If the media didn’t write about him everytime he crossed the fucking street, there’d be none of his antics. But, since whether or not he takes his next breath or not is somehow critical to how Peter King feels about himself, well… he’ll keep on trying to be a the center of some storm or another.

On to non-rant behavior.

Hoeppner Gets Back to Work With Hoosiers:
Indiana’s Terry Hoeppner walked into his weekly news conference Tuesday and got right back to business. He took off his hat and tried to talk about football, even if everyone else wanted to know about his health.

Here’s a health story that isn’t surrounded by side-taking media or mysteries. It’s too bad that the Hoosiers aren’t very good. Or that they had the misfortune of playing against the Badgers (who are kinda good, btw, Michigan game notwithstanding) in his first game back.

I never did post anything college football related last week, but I won’t do that again this week. I’ll have something, if nothing more than a post to a new blog I’ve been slow-cooking (ignoring/procrastinating) for about a year now.

Did anyone really enjoy the celebration displayed by ESPN last night as the New Orleans Saints defeated the Atlanta Falcons in the first game in the New Orleans Superdome since the devastation of Hurricane Katrina? I mean, did we honestly have to have President George W. Bush, Green Day and U2 celebrate the opening of a football venue that has seen nearly $170 million in state and federal money spent in the last year to provide multi-millionaire athletes a workplace on Sunday afternoons (and Monday evenings)?