Unverified Voracity Finds A Delightful Tag
File under "Phil Knight is an immature wheel of cheese." Since you are not related to someone on West Virginia's football team you did not see the Orange Bowl postgame—or the second half—and thus could not boggle at Nike's latest foray into puns a six-year-old thinks are played out:
I'm just like… man. Man. Democracy is over. When can we be ruled by machines? Is it soon? I hope it's soon.
The mind further reels at the notion that there's another one of these things left and Nike has already used their finest Def Leppard reference. What's left? "SHOW ME YOUR TITTLES" is left. Search your heart. You know it to be true.
BONUS: how about that dynamic offense in Morgantown winning a BCS game? We should hire that Holgorsen chap, I think. What could go wrong?
Just one more time, six more times. Hinton's sworn off shooting the rapidly cooling corpse of the BCS but can't help pointing out that no matter the outcome of the game I probably won't bother to watch, Alabama cannot have a better season than LSU:
With a win in the title game, the Crimson Tide will finish the year 12-1 with two wins over teams ranked in the final polls, none of them from outside of the SEC. With a loss, LSU will finish 13-1 with four or five wins over teams ranked in the final polls (give or take West Virginia [ED: that would be take]), four of them coming outside of Baton Rouge and two of them coming against fellow conference champions (West Virginia and Oregon) who are also playing in BCS bowls. The Tigers and Tide would be be 1-1 against one another, with LSU's win coming at Alabama. LSU will still be the champion of the division and the conference.
In a system that continues to defer to polls and resumés, there is virtually nothing Alabama can do short of ritually sacrificing the Tigers to the sun that can make its season better than LSU's season.
Every game counts except the national title game. Whenever you think the BCS has reached its maximum cockup level, just wait two years. I can't wait to see what 2014 has in store. Possibilities:
- Alabama versus LSU
- LSU versus Alabama
- Alabama versus Alabama
- Alabama versus the entire Pac-12 with assault rifles
- Alabama versus crippling ennui
- The Los Angeles Angels of Alabama versus Giant Catfish
- Tiny Alabama versus Ditka
- The 1996 Olympics' rhythmic gymnastics competition versus the Large Hadron Collider
- Just, like, Harvey Updyke wanking it for three hours
I have Updyke –3 over the Higgs Boson. Elsewhere in controversy needlessly barged into, Jacobi wonders what's to be done about "rogue" AP voters in an article with one of those jarring in-post links to another column. This is from Doyel:
That's settled. AP voters who will not vote for Alabama under any circumstances are to be given a cookie and a certificate vouching for their cognitive abilities. This is essentially Jacobi's conclusion as well.
Flantastic. Darryl Stonum, this is not so good:
Michigan wide receiver Darryl Stonum… was ticketed this morning in Ann Arbor for driving on a revoked license, 15th District Court records show.
Stonum, 21, was stopped by Ann Arbor police after he checked in with probation at 7:03 a.m., said Steve Hill, Stonum's probation officer. Hill said Stonum was not taken into custody.
A probation violation form is being completed, but so far Stonum has not been charged with violating probation.
Reading between the lines it seems like the court is not hugely peeved by this, but thin ice and all that. I don't think this should have an impact on his availability next year as long as he successfully jumps through all his hoops. This probably adds another half-dozen. Stonum needs an understanding brunette to wake up at 6 with him.
Turnover in Madison. Bielema got raided pretty good this month:
Wisconsin lost two assistant coaches Wednesday -- wide receivers coach DelVaughn Alexander and linebackers coach Dave Huxtable -- bringing the total number of departures to four. Huxtable will join former Badgers aides Paul Chryst and Bob Bostad in Pittsburgh as the Panthers' defensive coordinator. Chryst is Pitt's new head coach, while Bostad will serve as his offensive coordinator. Alexander is joining Arizona State's staff.
Bielema initially thought Bostad would be the only assistant joining Chryst at Pitt. It appears as though Huxtable will be the last departure.
It'll be interesting to see how Wisconsin copes. Their offense went from decent to lethal with Chryst's arrival. Losing him is kind of a deal. The hot name right now is Oklahoma "co-OC" Jay Norvell, which sounds like a good idea. Why does Wisconsin consistently have good ideas that no one else in the Big Ten does?
Longhorn fail. A major opportunity for ESPN to strongarm the Longhorn Network onto someone, anyone's cable has come and gone:
Comcast and the Walt Disney Company announced a 10-year, multiplatform distribution deal Wednesday that brings the “TV Everywhere” concept one step closer to reality. The Longhorn Network however, is not a part of the ESPN channels included in the agreement.
I'm rooting for the LHN to be an ignominious failure for many reasons: irritation at Texas for being one of two main parties that screwed up the structure of college football, a desire for the Big Ten's model to remain cromulent, etc. If the LHN doesn't get on cable by this fall it probably won't ever. At least it got a commenter on the above article to call Texas "the Ted DiBiase of college football."
No, not so much. From a Daily article on Molk:
“How we came in and how my first four seasons went, I thought we were the stain on Michigan tradition,” Molk said, walking slowly toward the winner’s podium on the turf. “But the reality is that we came back from everything and we’re back to where Michigan is.”
This is why people like Michael Wienreb don't Get It. Also the HSR referenced small-caps DEATH, which is an autolink.
A big game. Basketball takes on Indiana tonight in Bloomington. Vegas and Kenpom both have them 8 point underdogs against the resurgent Hoosiers, which makes this a gravy outing. Win and that's a major bonus; lose and eh, we're okay.
Rumors be rumoring. There was some recent chatter from the OSU side of the rivalry that moving The Game was inevitable and had a good chance of happening when the new set of schedules came out. Dave Brandon says this is not so:
"That's just Internet rumor that has no factual basis," he said. "It's not going to happen."
Good.
Etc.: more postgame react from the Key Play. Getting a bit ornery (justifiably in cases that are not the overturned TD) as the shock fades. Shakin' the Southland reacts to the Orange Bowl fallout. Via On The Banks, a NYT report on Penn State documents unveiled by FOIA requests shows the institutional reaction to the media firestorm. I'm surprised the NYT can manage this since Pennsylvania has somehow exempted Penn State from transparency laws.
Wallpaper from the MZone.
January 5th, 2012 at 2:13 PM ^
even if we had a playoff, whatever team beat LSU still wouldn't have a better resume than LSU.
January 5th, 2012 at 2:56 PM ^
Agreed... Winner of the game is the champion regardless of the resume.. period. Even if we had a playoff (which I would still prefer) you can easily get champions with worse resumes (see NY Giants - Super Bowl XLII vs undefeated Pats)
January 6th, 2012 at 1:46 AM ^
were not voted onto the super bowl. they qualified by an objective measure.
January 6th, 2012 at 3:53 PM ^
(I don't think). The winner of this game is NOT the champion. LSU had the better season and is better than Bama no matter what.
January 5th, 2012 at 5:37 PM ^
Isn't his point more to the result of a split championship? Alabama could win the rematch and still not considered to be the better team which becomes very subjective when the results are determined through polling.
January 5th, 2012 at 2:15 PM ^
It seems like Wisconsin hiring Oklahoma's pass-happy offensive coordinator would be counterproductive for a team that plays in Wisconsin and built a juggernaut of an offense based on running the ball over and over and over again.
January 5th, 2012 at 2:18 PM ^
Surprise! More examples of Grantland sucking.
Tiny Alabama vs. Ditka is hilarious.
January 5th, 2012 at 11:34 PM ^
By Simmons been anything but garbage? I mean Simmons NBA obsession makes him practically unreadable at times too, but the total college sports knowledge on that site wouldn't fill a thimble.
January 6th, 2012 at 8:22 AM ^
Go find the stuff he wrote for the Boston Phoenix before ESPN hired him. He was pretty good! He's more or less a hipster sportswriter. He stopped being cool when he got big.
January 5th, 2012 at 2:21 PM ^
At least the Rose Bowl, Sugar Bowl, and Orange Bowl shirts made their grade school puns using the actual name of the bowl game (Rose to Power, Pour Some Sugar on Me, and Orange You Glad We Won). The Fiesta Bowl shirt (Nacho Victory) references the sponser, not the name of the bowl.
January 5th, 2012 at 2:51 PM ^
Tiempo Para La Fiesta
January 5th, 2012 at 2:23 PM ^
Stonum needs an understanding brunette to wake up at 6 with him.
Don't we all?
January 5th, 2012 at 2:28 PM ^
Oh god lol @ that shirt. That's absolutely terrible.
January 5th, 2012 at 2:40 PM ^
cromulent is a perfectly cromulent word.
January 5th, 2012 at 2:41 PM ^
I don't think our shirts were too bad. Plenty of people I know were using "Pour Some Sugar on Me" as tweets and facebook status in the weeks leading up to the game. Oregon's was pretty good too. That being said, Ok State and WV's shirts are terrible.
January 5th, 2012 at 2:51 PM ^
"u mad"
January 5th, 2012 at 2:51 PM ^
football before our very eyes. I will support the first corporation to suggest "the rise above it" bowl. Nah, Pillsbury would probably decide that was a great one to sponsor.
January 5th, 2012 at 2:52 PM ^
Something tells me DB doesn't like the Interwebz
January 5th, 2012 at 3:03 PM ^
november to october, but have no idea why? similar reason to the thought behind UM 0su moving?
January 5th, 2012 at 5:59 PM ^
Stanford and Cal are in the same division. No conference in the country has a more obvious set of natural rivalries or a more obvious split into two divisions, and they're still moving their rivalry games off the last weekend.
I have regretfully come to the conclusion that it doesn't matter what anyone does--rearrange the B1G divisions, whatever--in the end we're all screwed.
January 5th, 2012 at 6:19 PM ^
Pretty sure Stanford played ND and Cal played Arizona St on the last weekend of the regular season this year.
January 5th, 2012 at 3:03 PM ^
... creating the best season (body-of-work/mountain-of-skulls), best game (finding the best opponent for LSU) and matching the two best teams in the country (LSU and probably Alabama).
The disconnect is that the BCS aims for matching the two best teams, the bowls want the best game (for some variation on best which includes both team quality and number of fans to attend), and everyone else wants the best season.
January 5th, 2012 at 3:13 PM ^
I've got the Lannister Lions of Casterly Rock -3 against the Winterfell Direwolves. Any takers?
January 5th, 2012 at 3:28 PM ^
For you and ca_prophet, for very different reasons.
January 5th, 2012 at 5:48 PM ^
No, I'm looking for the Dragonstone Dragons to make a comeback.
Fire and Blood!
January 5th, 2012 at 7:31 PM ^
Nicely done
January 5th, 2012 at 7:47 PM ^
Well, with Ned Stark suffering a career-ending neck injury, and heir apparent Robb Stark having that major off-field incident, winter has surely come.
January 5th, 2012 at 3:23 PM ^
Which is the other party that screwed up the structure of college football, besides Texas?
January 5th, 2012 at 3:24 PM ^
I would assume.
January 5th, 2012 at 5:07 PM ^
ND and NBC
January 5th, 2012 at 5:20 PM ^
So according to Brian's thought process, would the 2006 Tigers be your World Series Champions?
We beat the Cards 4 times that year, they beat us 4 times.
We won 95 games in the regular season against a tougher schedule, they won 83.
We went 8-5 in the playoffs, they went 11-5.
They won their division, we didn't.
Close call but I will give it to the Cards
Not sure what my point is but the BCS game was made to put the best 2 teams in the game, they did that.
By the way this post sounded alot better in my head than it came out.
January 5th, 2012 at 5:41 PM ^
I think the issue is the use of polls. MLB (and really any other major sport) doesn't take polls into consideration when naming a champion.
January 5th, 2012 at 5:45 PM ^
Well, you have a sample size of 8 there, which is way better than the 2 you'll see between Bama and LSU. And it was a result of a playoff in which multiple teams had multiple opportunities to play for the championship. With the BCS, they decided that a 1-loss Bama team with fewer marquee wins deserved a repeat shot at LSU, while a 1-loss Okie St. team with a "worse" loss but better wins was set to battle another 1-loss team (Stanford) with a single loss to a top-10 team and some big wins as well.
The problem with the BCS is that it rarely ever gets the "best" two teams because that is an incredibly subjective metric. And to be fair, championships are consistently awarded to teams that might not be the "best" in terms of one metric but maybe are the best by another criteria. The Cards were the champions because they won the playoffs; the Tigers had the better overall record even counting the playoffs, and (I believe) the best regular-season teams that year were the NY Mets and Yankees, so maybe we should have had a split title. But regardless, the BCS just seems the most arbitrary of the group unless two teams are undefeated and played comparable schedules (like USC-Texas in 2006), and even then you'd probably hear complaints like what happened with Auburn when they were also undefeated.
Based on what happened this year, I'd love to have seen Bama play OSU, LSU take on Stanford, and then those winners playing for the title. Yeah, the #5 team will complain, but at least with 4 you get all the 0- and 1-loss teams together. But with a 1 vs. 2 decided by some flawed computer rankings and ballots filled out by biased parties, you don't have anything approximating a fair system for determining the matchup, and thus you create a situation in which Bama could be the #1 team at the end of the year despite not being the best team (on paper) in its own division.
Also, that Cards team may have been the biggest "luck" champion as long as I've been alive (30 years).
January 5th, 2012 at 6:35 PM ^
Bill James did some work on this and it's a lot more relevant now than it was at the time. The ideal team for winning in the playoffs is different from the team you'd put together to maximize regular season wins. Pitching depth matters little--your fourth starter might or might not start, your fifth starter goes to long relief. Speed and power are more valuable, singles and doubles are less valuable. It's harder to string singles to get a big inning against good pitching, and you see a lot more good pitching in the playoffs because the teams are better and the games are spaced farther apart (again, no fourth or fifth starters).
What's changed since he wrote the articles is that now, with smaller divisions and a wild card, it takes less wins to get into the playoffs and it's possible to build a team with this in mind, especially if you're in a weak division like the Cardinals were.
January 5th, 2012 at 5:31 PM ^
the Ted DiBiase of college football
So that means the LHN once "owned the services" of an African-American man who was dressed like a Chippendale's dancer imitating a Harlem Globetrotter, teamed with the IRS, hung out with Fezzik, and ultimately will become a Christian minister? I'd be impressed if they could find a Globetrotter's uniform and help storm a castle.
/ Long-time fan
// Longer-time single man
/// Now married, wife's judgmental looks notwithstanding.
January 5th, 2012 at 5:34 PM ^
Am I the only one that likes the NIke BCS shirts?
Championship shirts are usually ho-hum, boring, nothing creative or distinctive. Yes these are cheesy, but cheesy is fun sometimes. At least Nike is doing something creative, fun, and interesting. I'm going to be buying a "Pour Some Sugar On Me" shirt for sure.
January 5th, 2012 at 7:12 PM ^
You ARE the only one.
January 5th, 2012 at 5:54 PM ^
On the plus side, Stonum evidently wasn't drunk when he was pulled over this time, so I suppose that shows progress, right?
January 5th, 2012 at 5:56 PM ^
I want to see Godzilla vs Alabama. He will stomp them until the field is soaked by a crimson tide. #ohthehumanity!
And then he'll smash Bryant-Denny Stadium just because.
January 5th, 2012 at 8:10 PM ^
This is off the subject but I know you guys will know. What is AD Brandon's email address? I want to tell him to stop screwing with Michigan's iconic football uniforms. Those jersey #s looked like a first grader put them on with a black magic marker and the color of the #s on the helmets don't match the wing yellow color.Thank you.
January 5th, 2012 at 9:55 PM ^
I actually am related to somebody on West Virginia's football team.
January 6th, 2012 at 9:41 AM ^
I feel like it'll be simple, something like "WE Are The Champions" or "The Champs are HERE"
However, for the sake of the corny topic...
"Time to pop the CHAMPagne"
"Roll Champs" (Bama Only)
"Geaux Champs" (LSU Only)
"Champing at the bit" (LSU Only)
"Champs not Chumps"
"No Shampoo...it's CHAMPoo"
"No Sham, we're Champs"
"Welcome to Champrock"
"We won the National Championship...show me your boobies"
January 8th, 2012 at 11:09 PM ^
a) Texas didn't do fuck all to screw up college football's structure.
b) Already got paid for the LHN.
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