The season starts
The NFL regular season starts tonight.
Yay!
I’ve always been a pro football fan (it’s a shame that Detroit doesn’t have a pro team, y’know?), but it’s only been in the past 10-15 years that the NFL has become my favorite league, and pro football my favorite sports season. Basketball (pro or college) is nowhere near the force it was for me growing up. Baseball is still important to me, but more on a personal & nostalgic level. Hockey comes close, and the Red Wings will always be my #1 team. College football is ok, but oddly enough I haven’t cared about it quite as much ever since I actually went to college. Attending Ann Arbor for a semester cured me of living & dying by what the Wolverines did on the field (thus, the App State travesty wasn’t all that traumatic for me…).
The NFL just strikes me as the best run league out there. Labor peace. Optimal season length. Smart salary cap. Non-guaranteed contracts. Fan friendly. Fun like fantasy football (although I don’t play) & pick’em contests like those at ESPN & Yahoo. Granted, it all gets a little too over the top by Super Bowl week, but it’s an amazingly enjoyable ride to get up to that point.
In response to Hank Jr.’s question, yes, I’m ready for some football!
-ghp
BCS bllsht
So, the BCS title game will pit undefeated & #1 Ohio State vs. once beaten & “#2″ Florida…
Florida, the SEC champ, is 12-1, having lost to (then) #11 Auburn by 10 (back when Florida was #2). Pretty good credentials, no?
Yup. But not better than Michigan’s.
The BCS is flawed - everyone knows that. Even the reality-challenged NCAA Division I Presidents & bowl-pimps know that. It only serves to get a true #1 vs. #2 matchup iff there are only 2 teams with no and/or one loss. It’s also a way for hypocritical fatcats to keep themselves on the gravy-train of high-class swag.
There is no reason WHATSOEVER that there cannot be a playoff to determine the best Div-I football team in the country. Any excuse that gets offered up is no more than weak sophistry. Why? Because Div-II & Div-III do it, to no ill-effect on their “scholar-athletes”. I’ll stop there, before I get launched on a pointless (but very strongly held) screed against the current state of college athletics (especially basketball & football, wherein institutions of higher education have whored themselves out as minor league farm systems for professional leagues…).
Anyway, back to the main point of this venting - Michigan getting screwed…
When #2 loses to #1 on the road, in a rivalry game, only by 3 points (i.e., there is no definitive knockout), I think that it’s only reasonable to hold that that is a “better” loss than the aforementioned 10 point loss by (the then) #2 to #11. (And I won’t even get into the value of USC’s loss to unranked Oregon State, which was thankfully rendered moot by the Trojans’ choke job against UCLA!)
Also, as for the argument that, since Ohio State beat Michigan once, “Why should they have to do it again?” Please. This is not double-jeopardy for the conference title. If Michigan is the second best team in the country, and the BCS is truly separate from the regular season, then there is nothing unfair at all about a rematch. Would anyone complain if it happened as the result of a playoff? Would that somehow make it invalid or unfair? I think not.
Prior to yesterday, it would seem, the voters also agreed with me, as far as the ranking of Florida & Michigan. When they were comfortable with USC’s manipulated jumping of Michigan, they were cool with admitting that Michigan was better than Florida; however, once USC spit the bit, the human factors in the BCS formula had to suddenly deal with the fact that they valued the “new” (i.e., Ohio State vs. Florida) more than the “best” (i.e., an Ohio State vs. Michigan rematch).
And, I could live with that (really, I could), if only they would be honest about it and not try to dress up the subjective decision in a laughable cloak of objectivity. Florida won their conference, with one loss, as the result of a playoff. Michigan did not have that luxury — if they had, they might well have beaten Ohio State in a conference title game played on a neutral field. Just don’t expect me to agree that the crap sammich you’ve put in front of me is a gourmet meal, ok?
At least Lloyd Carr had the class not to debase himself by politicking & begging for votes, like Urban Meyer did (it was successful, but quite distasteful…). Meyer’s a putz - Notre Dame’s lucky that he spurned them.
I’ll still watch the games, and I’ll even root for Ohio State (both for the clean ending/result, and because goddaughter #1 is an OSU grad).
Besides, it’ll be a New Year’s just like growing up, being able to watch Michigan play USC in the Rose Bowl (and probably, you know, lose… 
).
-ghp
R.I.P. Bo — Liquidate Ohio State
This morning, the day before the biggest Michigan - Ohio State game since 1973 (#1 vs. #4 - a 10-10 tie), Bo Schembechler passed away.
Bo was one of the last one-name, old-school football coaches, in the same group as Woody, Bear, & JoePA. You can have any of the legendary coaches you want, and I’ll take Bo over them all. Growing up as a Michigan fan in the 70s & 80s, Bo was the MAN. His Michigan Replay recap show was appointment TV during the era when televised games were the exception, not the rule (I still have the videotape of the 1980 Michigan Replay season, which built up to Michigan winning the first Rose Bowl of the Bo era…).
There is, I’m sure, some sort of meaning and/or irony to Bo’s passing the day before the “Game of the Century” - aka #1 OSU vs. #2 Michigan. I just don’t know exactly what it is at this moment.
Screw the Dead Schembechlers (who’ve gotten an unfortunate amount of press in the past week or two)! The definitive, and appropriate, parody statement on this, the ultimate rivalry game, is the following little ditty, penned by longtime Detroit morning rush hour DJ Dick Purtan around 1977.
Thanks for everything, Bo — give Woody some hell when you watch the game with him tomorrow!
Liquidate Ohio State
(Sung to the tune of the OSU Fight Song)
Liquidate Ohio State and turn the Buckeyes blue.
They breed a lot of cattle in Columbus,
It looks just like a zoo.
Knock them off their ivory towers,
Send them crawling into the showers,
Down with Ohio State,
It’s a know-nothing party school!
They say the girls who go to O.S.U.,
Are husband hunting dames,
They dig the jocks who got the killer instinct,
Not the boys with brains.
At Columbus you’re way ahead,
With straight A’s in Physical Ed,
Down with Ohio State,
It’s a know-nothing party school.
Bust your guts for Tressel!
Move your butts for Tressel!
Liquidate Ohio State and turn the Buckeyes blue,
They breed a lot of cattle in Columbus,
It looks just like a zoo. Rah! Rah! Rah!
Knock them off their ivory towers,
Send them crawling into the showers,
Down with Ohio State,
It’s a know-nothing party schoooooooooool!
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