Observations and Ruminations

What have we learned this week?

► Oklahoma is the hottest team in the country. There was no question as to who was the better team on Saturday night. The Sooners were far superior on offense and on defense. Even the special teams managed the game when they needed to. The bottom line of 65-21 really doesn’t even do the game justice. You really had to watch it to understand the total domination of one team over another.
Sure Texas is still ahead in the BCS rankings, and maybe rightfully so for now, due to the Longhorns’ win in October. But OU is the hottest team in the country. Let’s see what happens this weekend.

► Abilene Christian is the Division II counterpart to the Sooners in that they are also their division’s hottest team. The only difference is that the Wildcats are still undefeated. And they are coming off the first of two rematches in the playoffs. ACU beat West Texas A&M 52-35 in the regular season, but that was nothing compared to the record-setting 93-68 beatdown in Shotwell Stadium on Saturday. 93-68??!! Are you kidding?
I had a chance to see Billy Malone, Bernard Scott, Johnny Knox, and company in person this season. They were ranked #4 in the country then and then I said that I would like to see any three teams in DII that are better than the Wildcats. I still would. I don’t believe that such a team exists in 2008.
The big rematch comes this weekend when ACU faces Northwest Missouri. Abilene dispatched the then-#3 Bearcats 44-27, back in August. Take note: the biggest game in Texas this weekend doesn’t involve Longhorns, Aggies, or Red Raiders.

► The face paint and ridiculous make up and hairdo sure do look a lot better when your team is winning. It just looks really dumb when your team is getting beaten 65-21, and you can’t do a thing about it. Isn’t that right, Brandon Carter? (#76, Texas Tech OL)


The Soapbox

I know that I waited a week for this one, I just didn’t have the time to write last week. So here goes…
Why should I care whether or not Donovan McNabb knows the rules about overtime in the NFL and when games are allowed to end in a tie? Does his blazing ignorance of his own game make those rules somehow invalid?
McNabb has been in the League for 10 years. There was a tie six years ago in 2002. (Pittsburgh vs. Atlanta, 34-34) Did he not keep track of any schedules or scores during this time? Was he in his own little world in Philadelphia and no other of the teams in the NFL mattered to him? And it’s not like when he was in college, where there are over 100 teams in DI alone. There are only 32 teams in the NFL! This makes for, at MOST, 16 games per week; and even less when teams have byes. This is not hard to keep up with.
And, of course this is only for the regular season. There was a classic game back in 2004 when Carolina and St. Louis and fought through regulation and the first overtime and couldn’t settle it. A second extra period was needed. It was Jake Delhomme to Steve Smith for 69 yards and the score, which ended the fifth-longest game in NFL history, 29-23 F/2OT. Did he forget about this game, too? It was a contest that was even more recent and incredibly exciting.
So, even bypassing these two games, (which clearly meant nothing to the star QB of the Eagles) McNabb seems to be dismissive of the fact that ties have happened in the NFL numerous times. This really isn’t even what bothers me.
A] It is his apparent disdain for the ending of a ballgame, when he did not know the rules.
Win the ballgame Big Guy in the sixty minutes that you have and you won’t need an extra 15 or more. And then you won’t garner for yourself a stage to show that you haven’t learned any lessons from Abraham Lincoln: It’s better to be silent and thought a fool…
B] It is also that the media seem to have become enablers to the knowledge-challenged quarterback. Many outlets have played his comments over and over again and seem to be trying to spark debate as to whether or not there should be ties in the NFL now.
You should be having this conversation now? Now? If you didn’t like the rule, did you all collectively think that it would go away or that every ballgame until the end of time would from Steelers/Falcons on out end within 75 minutes? Why does an ignorant, albeit frustrated, second-tier QB push your buttons to decide that this issue really warrants revision?
If you really need to change the rule (and give the Rules Committee members something to do, and therefore justify them being on this committee), do it because it needs to be done. [Quite frankly, I have absolutely no problem whatsoever with a tie in the regular season. If a game is hard-fought and after a reasonable amount of time (75 minutes, including a sudden death period!), end it and go on to the next matchup.] Just don’t alter the rulebook just because someone who has been around long enough to know what he’s talking about finds a venue to dispel that notion.