All About the Rout

Lots of routs in college football this Saturday. Nice for the ranked teams, I suppose, but this is what makes it tough for me to get too much into College Football. Why do these big programs play these scrubs? So the alumni can get all hammered and point to the screen and slur out something like "see, the skoool I vwent to shuurre can praay froootball gauuddammmmettt!!" To get those all important wins for the bowl games, I know, but why be such wusses about it? I mean, you should have heard Mack Brown whine about having to play Ohio State this year and next, before the Longhorn's actually won the game of course. Yeah, and if you lose a game your chances of winning the National Championship are lowered, but any thoughts that if you can't beat a good team, you don't deserve it?!

Anyway, lots of blowouts this weekend. Made for really boring TV. With only a few exceptions. #1 USC came back from 18 pts down at half to win by 10 against the #14 Sun Devils of AZ St., in Tempe, no doubt. The Trojans proved they can take it on the chin (Leinart, literally took a couple of shots to the head, including a late hit). Much more exciting and telling game than the #2 Longhorns beatdown of unranked 2-2 Mizzou. Who outside of Austin really cared about this one?

#3 Va Tech rolled on West Virginia. #4 LSU punked 2-3 Miss. St. #6 Florida St. beat up on 1-3 Syracuse. #10 Tennessee downed 1-3 Mississippi. #9 Miami took out little South Florida.

YAWN!!!!

But, Mike Shula showed the world the # 15 (soon to be rocket up the charts) Tide are ready to play. They rolled over #5 Florida, dominating them in every way. Florida, who made Tennessee look overrated a few weeks ago (and the Volunteers still are), got whooped by Shula's 'Bama squad. That Nov 12 game at home vs. LSU will determine who plays Georgia for the SEC title and the BCS Bowl game. OK, OK, Auburn will have something to say about that too, but that's the week after LSU.

Michigan's Overtime win over Michigan St. made for exciting football as well. The Spartans offense is good, and Stanton is a great quarterback, better NFL skills than Vince Young and Reggie McNeal, but the defense in East Lansing needs some help. Especially against the run.

Speaking of McNeal, the Texas A&M Aggies sure had their hands full with the Baylor Bears. Yes, those Baylor Bears. For the second year in a row, the Aggies had to go to overtime (this time at home) to defeat the less-than-powerhouse Bears. Reggie saved the team with a late second half run for his life to get the squad into field goal range to tie the game, but his passing line of 12/31 for 132 yards, 0 TD and 2 INT is just not all that good. We're talking about a team that gave up 249 passing yards and 2 passing touchdowns to the Samford Bulldogs.

OK, I'd better stop there before Matt won't take my calls for a while. At least they got the win, right buddy?

Notre Dame pounded on Purdue as well (while I'm pissing off my co-writers, might as well get my Bro too). Brady Quinn of the Irish threw for 440 yards on 29/36 with 3 TD and 1 INT. I'd call that a nice day. He's BMOC in South Bend this weekend, for sure. Well, Purdue has now given up 24, 24, 42 and 49 points, so I'd say defense is definitely an issue in West Lafayette. Especially that first 24, since it was against the Akron Zips. Yes, there's a team called the Zips, and the Boilermakers gave up 362 yards and 3 TD through the air to them.

Now no one is going to talk to me for a while. Oh well, the Hoosiers got stomped by Wisconsin if that's any consolation. I am a Hoosier and I went to Indiana University for seven years or so (think Animal House), but anyone who went there knew that fooball was just a reason to get drunk and party like rock stars (like we needed a reason), and the real sports out there are Hoops and Soccer, if you like wins at least. That's why I never lost my fervor for the Fighting Irish. They take football just a tiny bit more seriously at Notre Dame.

Speaking of seriously, calling the USC v. ND game next Saturday "Must See TV" is not doing it justice. With Touchdown Jesus looking on, we'll see what both teams are made of that day. USC is the better team, for sure, with the better horses in the stable, but maybe the Irish can get some of that notorious Luck on their side and pull off a big one. I wouldn't necessarily bet on it, but I'm sure my Longhorn fan friends out here wouldn't mind seeing that one, since Texas will surely run all over the hapless Oklahoma Sooners next weekend at the Red River Shootout.

Right??

Well, that's all I've got for the College game today. Oh, one more thing. I almost forgot to bash all over Wannstedt at Pitt (ok, too easy) for going down to the Scarlet Knights of Rutgers. They did their best to come back, scoring 29 second half points, but the Panthers are in real trouble, along with their coach, starting off the season 1-4 and 0-3 on the road. Their schedule gets much easier now, with Cincy, South Florida and Syracuse on the horizon, but can they even win those games?

And, for the best upset of the day, the Vanderbilt Commodores aren't celebrating today as they lost, AT HOME, to the Middle Tennessee State Blue Raiders. The who? Exactly. I mean, North Texas even beat the Blue Raiders. So did the Zips. Get the picture? Hahahahahah.

Y'all have a good day and I hope you get to watch more NFL than I do. I'm off to watch some Seahawks v. Redskins. Which brings me to a tangent (no, imagine that, Graham on a tangent). WTF is the Sports Community doing, renaming all these Native American named teams, in college ball and the like, and not getting all pissed off about the Redskins. The frickin' RED SKINS for chrissake!!! If they were called the Blackskins, this shit'd be over long ago. Seriously. The Redskins must go. It should have been the first one to be changed. Please, for all that is intelligent and worthy, rename this racist-monikered team.

OK. Off the soapbox now. Back to football and the final day of baseball.

As far as baseball goes, the Cubs signed Ryan Dempster for three years and $15.5 mil (up to $18 with incentives). I posted about it at A Cub Fan Rants, but thought I'd touch on it here too. I think it's good for the Cubs, since it solidifies their bullpen and sends an immediate message to the team that they're ready to prepare to win in 2006. Yeah, yeah, wait 'til next year. Hendry/MacPhail, Inc. have some more work to do, but

Later.

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