Wednesday, January 04, 2006

I Get One Right.

No, not this one. This one. I told you Texas was more likely to win the championship than Duke. No, I wasn't talking about basketball then, whatever gave you that idea? For those of you scoring at home (or, Keith Olberman, even for those of you by yourself), in the past few months, I have picked the Red Sox over the White Sox, the Astros over the White Sox, Texas hoops to do better than Duke, and now USC as nattie champs. Let me boldly go out on a limb and say the MFY's will win it all in '06 with Canon-Arm Damon hitting .403 with 34 HRs this year.

As to the game - Pete Carroll, What. The. Hell? Did USC not practice tackling once in the last month? What the hell with the swing pass to some yutz (not the Pres, not LenDale, not Jarrett) on 2nd and 7, up 5 with :50 to go. Hand the ball off. And say what you will about C-Webb, but you can at least fathom why he would call time out. I can think of no rational explanation (other than Simmons being right, he is Coach Fredo) for USC using their last time out before a two-point conversion. And his explanation after the game was to make the Pete Carroll Face and find 3 different ways to say "We were confused, we couldn't get it done." No shit.

I'll be honest, the main reason I was rooting for USC was because Texas football fans are incorrigible. Even a transplant like Fletcher is going to be hooting and hollerin' about this one. About the only two worse groups are Nebraska football fans and especially Kentucky hoops fans.

I went to the Final Four in 1998, UK was playing in the second semi. Two Wildcat sweetguys were sitting in the seats directly in front of me - they were drunk and passed out until 5 minutes into the Kentucky game before they woke up and chanted "S-A-T!" at Stanford for the whole game. Then, during the championship game against Utah, the whole game all they could think of (aside from "Pass the binoculars so I can ogle Ashley Judd") was yelling "Hey! Doli-ass!" at Michael Doleac. Chumps...

UPDATE: Sports Guy's Rose Bowl Diary is outstanding. A few quick samples:
8:30 -- Fouts compares Bush to Barry Sanders AND Walter Payton on the same exciting 10-yard run. And you know what? It worked. I was thinking the same thing. I watched a record (for me) 10 college football games this year, including seven USC games, and only because of Reggie Bush. He's so close to Gale Sayers in so many ways, I would almost be afraid to be a white fullback on his NFL team next year.
or
9:17 -- Texas rolls down the field and settles for a 46-yard field goal. 7-3, USC. Hey, after the game, do you think Vince Young will give Johnny Damon his throwing arm back?
You had to know that one will get me.

Update #2 - Law 'Humor' Edition: Heh - "I predicted that it would be close and could have gone either way when Justice O'Connor did the coin toss."

2 comments:

Kierkegaard Lives said...

A few thoughts about this game and the postgame interviews.

First, will ESPN please, please, now take out a full page ad apologizing for forcing all this "this USC team is the greatest team ever" crap before they had managed to win anything at all? The weeks' long comparison of this team to the greats of all time, before the National Championship game had even been played was just insulting and ridiculous. I'm not a Texas fan, and I don't think this Texas team is one of the all-time greatest. But given all the talk about USC being the single greatest team ever before this game, why isn't ESPN now proclaiming this Texas team the kings of history?

Second, this was, although mostly the "Vince Young show," a great team performance. The team was blocking. The receivers were getting open and not dropping the ball. The defense was making sure no big plays were had. The defense came up with the only big stop they needed. And they came up with the two big turnovers. The whole team was avoiding penalties (really, for the most part, both teams).

Third, my thoughts on the post-game interviews: Pete Carrol was a class guy in the interviews, giving credit to Texas (although perhaps he was just trying to divert attention from some suspect decisions on his own part); Reggie Bush came across as a class act, doing the same thing and taking responsibility for his own bad decisions; Matt Leinart was (surprisingly?) an ass. Every word out of Leinart's mouth was how USC was still the better team, that they just came up half a yard short, that USC beat themselves, etc. I did not expect him to be such an ungracious loser; perhaps it was just the heat of the moment or something.

This was a great game to watch. You can't possibly ask for more than to have the game basically decided on a 4th and 5 with less than 30 seconds to go. As a college football fan, I enjoyed watching this. Seeing this over-hyped USC team get beat only made it the better.

Pooh said...

Yes she was there. Because I had binoculars too...