Happy New Year!

I won't be around for a few days.

We're off to sunny Tempe tonight to watch Weis E. Coyote use his Acme Playbook in a futile attempt to keep up with the Buckeyes.

Incidentally, I was thinking about this last night; Notre Dame players touch this famous sign every time they take the field at home.



But they haven't won a National Championship since 1988.

They obviously haven't ever won a conference championship.

They haven't won a bowl championship since the 1994 Cotton Bowl.

Unless you want to count the glorious triumph in the 2002 Kickoff Classic, it has been more than a decade since Notre Dame football has played like a champion.

Just thought that was worth mentioning.

Measure twice, buy once...

Here's a holiday gift-giving tip: If your wife says "I want a flag for my school to go next to yours outside", don't just try to remember how big yours is. Measure it or at least hold it up and look at it.



Now I need a new flag. Damn it.

Come back, Shane!

Probably bullshit, but interesting.

At the very least it won't help recruiting much.

The Pac-one in South Central and nine piles of crap...

Dear Whichever Crappy Overrated Pac-10 Team Happens To Finish Second In The League Next Year Because Someone Has To (You can't just go from first to third in the standings, right?),
When you get left out of the BCS... and you will get left out of the BCS... do us all a favor and STFU. Stop whining. Until you can beat a mediocre team from another one-team conference, you probably don't have much room to talk.
Sincerely,
The Rest Of College Football

Of course we all know why Oregon lost last night. It's the same reason Cal got waxed by a so-so Texas Tech team last year.
East Coast Bias.

I'm blind, I'm deaf, I wanna be...

Yeah... Michigan got fucked pretty thoroughly. Having to burn two timeouts for replays ended up costing them big time, and the circus that was the final play was just a fitting end to an all-around ass-raping by the semi-trained monkeys from the Sun Belt.

This is one of the games where Lloyd Carr has a legitimate beef that his guys got screwed. Unfortunately, since he has a habit of making excuses virtually every time his team loses, it sort of loses its meaning, like when JoePa does the same thing.

But yes, Michigan got fucked.

Why do they always seem to lose the games I actually want them to win?

It's write your own punchline day...

Former Expos, Twins and Red Sox closer Jeff Reardon was arrested for robbing a jewelry store.

Fourth Street and D!

I'm heading home to the NYC area for a couple days this week.

This is always a highlight of my year-- the chance to spend time in a city that actually possesses some of the benefits of city living in addition to the negatives (which are so apparent in Detroit).

Of course this year, my trip coincides nicely with a threatened transit strike that would serve as the functional equivalent of having everyone's cars just stop running at the same instant in the middle of rush hour in any other city.

If the subways and busses shut down, forget it. That city is going to be impossible to get around. Well... unless you feel like waiting three hours to go half a mile in traffic or walking 80 blocks in 15 degree weather.

So I'm asking you, you wonderful transit workers, please don't go out on strike this week. Because it would really fuck up my holidays.

Kthxbye.

UPDATE: Fuck.

Ummm... oops.

Indianapolis TV at its finest.

Flamers.

I'm not sure how to explain this super-duper piece of video. It's sort of The Brass Bonanza crossed with The Super Bowl Shuffle with plenty of western province facial hair mixed in.

I think you could make a somewhat compelling case that it should be the official music video of Mustache Wednesday celebrations around the world.

"Gimme five bees for a quarter," you'd say!

Joe Paterno to Kirk Herbstreit, "It's nice to finally meet somebody from Ohio State that speaks English."

Complete this analogy.

Rambling, stumbling, incoherant Joe Paterno ripping on the way someone else speaks English is like:
A) Charlie Weis saying, "It's nice to finally meet somebody from Ohio State who weighs less than 250 pounds."
B) Lloyd Carr saying, "It's nice to finally meet somebody from Ohio State who doesn't cry like a baby and make pathetic, transparent excuses every time he loses a game."
C) Bobby Bowden saying, "It's nice to finally meet somebody from Ohio State who doesn't say 'dadgummit' a lot and frequently blow his nose into a handkerchief the size of a circus tent."
D) (For the Michigan fans) Jim Tressel. Paying Players. Dirty Program. Blah blah blah.

Goodbye. Forever.

I've been reflecting on my life today, ever since I heard that the OMG Death Storm of Death and Snow and DEATH (!!111!11!!!) was bearing down on the area I call home.

Six inches of snow? In December? In Michigan? The end times are nigh.

No applicable data

This is probably old but I laughed my ass off anyway.

Frankly, it seems pretty accurate from my experience.

Total, total B.S.

A quick glace at the Harris poll voter grid shows a few Notre Dame-related acts of shadiness.

Pat Hadan has Notre Dame #3 (presumably one spot for each of those three wins over teams with winning record)

Rocket Ismail has Oregon #11 (although if you ever listened to him talk on Gameday, he could actually legitmately be that ignorant.

Add in some random retards (Joe Biddle has OSU #9, as does Don Maynard), and you've got a poll that should certainly be playing a significant role in determining who should play for the national championship.

Fiesta = Party

Plane tickets? Check.
Hotel? Check.
Rental Car? Check.

And in honor of our friends from Ann Arbor, I rented from Alamo.

Laugh it up now, Tubby

Q: Why is Charlie The Tuna With Extra Mayo in such a good mood?
A: He hasn't started watching Ohio State film yet.

God bless the internets...

I just read through the post comparing college football programs to Simpsons characters, and must say it was pretty damn funny.

I would compare Tressel and OSU more to Reverand Lovejoy than Drederick Tatum. Both Tress and the Rev are very open about the fact that they love the baby Jesus, but both aren't quite as holy as they'd have you believe. Both also have cute daughters.

And if we're going to start incorporating fanbases into this, I'd like to nominate Michigan fans as the two guys from the Shelbyville gas station in Lemon of Troy.

Flanders: [nervous, with OSU hat on] Well, a friendly OSU "Hello" there, neighbors. Uh, you know, we think some kids of ours may be missing in your town.
Michigan Fan 1: Missing children?
Michigan Fan 2: Sounds like Ohio State's got a discipline problem.
Michigan Fan 3: Maybe that why we beat them at football nearly half the time, huh?

Michigan fans love to talk about discipline problems whenever they crop up at OSU. The only problem is the "beat them at football nearly half the time."

The spoils of victory

Of course this could hurt OSU's production on fourth-and-short...

Challenging

Now that another Big Ten/ACC Challenge has gone horribly wrong for the good guys (thanks again Wisconsin, Purdue, Penn State, Minnesota, Northwestern and Indiana!) I think we should perhaps shift our focus to a sport where such a challenge would really make some waves. How about a Big Ten/SEC Challenge weekend in football.

Set aside one weekend where all 11 Big Ten teams and 11 of the 12 members of the SEC would square off-- say, the third week of the season. You would obviously need to start this a few years in the future, but I can't imagine this being anything other than just a huge event.

Just for fun, here's one proposed set of pairings. I would think doing it a couple years in a row (home-and-home) would be a good idea.

Of course, this would all be contingent on someone from the SEC actually playing a non-conference game somewhere outside the south and against living, breathing competition, no less. I'm pretty sure would violate their league charter.

Ohio State vs. Florida (I would have to stop reading EDSBS for a week)
Michigan vs. LSU (Les Miles' job interview)
Penn State vs. Georgia (Would have been Tennessee, but I think everyone is sick of Wisconsin playing Georgia)
Wisconsin vs. Tennessee (A perfect matchup of fat, somewhat unlikeable coaches until Alvarez retired)
Iowa vs. Auburn (Not looking good because of Iowa's tendency to dump stupid OOC games)
Purdue vs. Alabama
Michigan State vs. Ole Miss
Minnesota vs. Arkansas
Illinois vs. Mississippi State (How did they possibly make a BCS bowl in the last decade vs. How did they possibly make the Final Four in the last decade)
Indiana vs. Kentucky (they play this one already)
Northwestern vs. Vanderbilt (Nerd Bowl)

I left out South Carolina, because the Big Ten always used to leave out a couple mid-level teams when the ACC had only nine teams.

These pairings are based more on success over the span of the last decade or so, so a few would have been mismatches this year.

My guess as to how it would have shaken out this year (ignoring homefield for the moment)
Ohio State beats Florida (1-0 Big Ten)
LSU beats Michigan (1-1)
Penn State beats Georgia (2-1 Big Ten)
Wisconsin beats Tennessee (3-1 Big Ten)
Auburn beats Iowa (3-2)
Alabama beats Purdue (3-3)
Michigan State beats Ole Miss (4-3 Big Ten)
Minnesota beats Arkansas (5-3 Big Ten)
Mississippi State beats Illinois (5-4 Big Ten)
Indiana beats Kentucky (6-4 Big Ten)
Vanderbilt beats Northwestern (6-5 Big Ten)