Observations and Ruminations

What Have We Learned This Week?

• A comforting thought for Clipper fans is that just in case someone drives a Kia onto the court in hopes of stopping Blake Griffin, he will still fly over that ineffective defense and dunk it in your face!

• It’s nice to know that some things don’t change.  Like Kobe Bryant’s egocentrism.

He can’t play in the fourth quarter against Charlotte and Cleveland (Cleveland!), but he can give a herculean effort in the final 12 in the fun but meaningless showcase of the All-Star Game to keep the “young guys” from grabbing his MVP.

Good work, Kobe.  You're the All-Star MVP.  Just be sure that you can flip the switch to “ON” again in the playoffs when the bright lights are shining again.

Observations and Ruminations

What Have We Learned This Week?

  There is a reason why they play the game.  How many times does that phrase get brought out after a game like the Seahawks/Saints game?  But it’s deserved after a week of the national media treating the Seahawks like an eight-seed in a six-team tournament.  When NFL segments got into picks throughout the week, the hosts and analysts would just breeze through this matchup that really was not worth discussion to get on to other “real” contests.

  I mean, it’s not like we should take into consideration that a good quarterback might have a stellar performance at least one more time in his career.  We could discount the fact that the stronger defense might leave holes in coverage that the above quarterback could pick apart.  That strong defense of the defending world champions just might not bring it for 60 minutes and at the end allow one of the most impressive runs in NFL playoff history because eight players missed tackles.

 No, this one did not play out “like it should have” on paper.  But the Seahawks did win that game.  It might mean a thing in Sunday’s matchup in Chicago, but for now at least, a team that still has a losing record is alive and well in the NFL playoffs.

Observations and Ruminations

What Have We Learned This Week?
• There is no question now (and really never should have been) that TCU can play with the “Big Boys”.  It was a close win, but a win nonetheless.  And though Andy Dalton and the offense get a lot of deserved credit for what the Horned Frogs do on the field, the performance of the defense on New Year’s Day was impressive. A Wisconsin team that had been very hot at the end of the season, scoring 48.2 ppg in their final 7 games (all wins), was held to just 19 points in the Rose Bowl.

  It’s a shame that this school felt the need to ignore geography and join the Big East just to get a chance to play for a national title.

• The Big Ten started off 2011 with a complete thud!  Oh-fer five on Jan.1.   Wow.

  Hey, Nebraska, how inviting does that league look right now?  Well, I suppose with the loss to a mediocre Washington team in a rematch it makes you feel right at home.

  If you’re a Big Ten fan, you have to feel at least a little better about the fact that Ohio State finally got over its fear of the Big Bad SEC and won a bowl game against them for the first time in school history.

• In an effort to make the final week of the season mean more than just a week for playoff-bound teams to rest their starters, the NFL set up the schedule so that all of the Game 17 matchups would be between division rivals.  It was a good decision.

  Yes, there were games in which first-stringers (read here Dallas) took on second- and third-stringers (read here Philadelphia).  But it also gave us the Seattle/St. Louis matchup for a division title and the final playoff spot in the season’s final game.  And likely will bring more intrigue in future seasons if they decide to stick with this format.

Observations and Ruminations

What have we learned this week?

► The next time that you hear that a conference might put 10 teams in the NCAA tournament, go ahead and laugh out loud. Not just the lol version, I mean actually embarrass the person that said it by Laughing Out Loud! It’s probably not going to hurt that person’s feelings anyway because they are most likely from the East and the clear East Coast Bias that would allow them to make such a reality-abandoned statement will filter out any pain that being laughed at might cause another human.
No, the Big East did not get 10 teams in the Tournament. They got 7 in. Not bad, but not 10. And that’s OK and appropriate. The Big East is good league, but no conference is that much better than the others, even with the principle that the Committee uses in disregarding conference affiliation. Sorry to all of you northeastern media-types. No matter how much you campaign for the Big East throughout the regular season, the Selection Committee is still in control. Thankfully.
Now, having said all that, the fact that three of the four #1 seeds coming out of the Big East – well-deserved.

► The #2 seed given to Oklahoma (albeit in a very tough subregion) is proof that the Committee does consider many factors. The injury sustained by Blake Griffin made a huge difference in the Sooners’ win-loss record at the end of the season. Here’s to hoping that OU lives up to the faith of the Committee and makes it to at least the Elite Eight, and in doing so shuts up Seth Davis, who doesn’t give them a snowball’s chance against either Syracuse or Clemson.

► In women’s basketball this season, Southeastern and Central are incredibly evenly matched. Period. Yeah, that’s all I have to say about that.


From my vantage...

First United Bank Center (Home of the West Texas A&M Aggies) – OTA rating 9 out of 10

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.