I apologize for the message board being down. Feel free to email at my normal account, or to my other account through the link above.

ND/Stanford: 57 points? I haven't seen that in a while. It was as if a bitter NDNation poster took out his frustrations on Monk's aspirational peerdom by setting NCAA 2004 to ubereasy. A solid game by all. Ryan Grant had the easy job by benefiting from all of Julius's hard work. The D was aggressive. Quinn continues to show flashes of brilliance, and the receivers are finally putting it together. What? We only have one game left this season? Dah. On a personal note, I was actually able to see this game, thanks to the now infamous Cleveland Dave and Buster's subscription to ESPN Game Plan. There also was a tribe of ND students watching the game there, but I must be getting old because I didn't recognize a single one.
FSU/Florida: Bobby Bowden again proves his idiocy, this time by letting his players stomp and dance on the Florida "F" after their win. If any Florida players are punished for trying to stop those idiots, I'll be greatly disappointed. Also, I can't wait to see what Bobby does to his players, as he plans on "review[ing] the situation... [to] see if any action needs to be taken." Good good.
BGSU/Toledo: In a game that had major implications for 10s and 10s of people I know from high school, Bowling Green (not a state) was lead by a Steve McNair-esque Josh Harris to a victory that puts them in the conference championship against Miami U this Thursday in Bowling Green.
Miami/Pitt: Got to watch this at the same time as the ND game and the Cavs double overtime choke (dah). Pittsburgh has no defense, Larry Fitzgerald once again emulates his idol Randy Moss, and Miami rolls.

NFL
Browns/Seahawks: Ugh. Next.
Lions/Packers: In a move that surely delighted the Hatton household, the Packers simply forgot to show up, and the Lions were able to hold on for an 8 point win. Still, I was just waiting for the Pack to run back an INT for the tying score as the annoucers were going on and on about their lack of enthousiasm. In case you were wondering, those were the Packer throwback uniforms. Their facemask color, sleeve stripe pattern, pants stripe pattern, and socks were different. Hey, I'm a Browns fan. That's more than what's changed on the Browns unforms since the dawn of time (except for the great orange pants of the Kardiac Kid days and the awful orange jerseys of the current Brownies).
Jets/Titans: The introductions were somewhat bland this week, and I missed most of the action due to the ND game (more later). My only question: did Ellen's dad introduce Dave to John Madden?

NCAA Men's Basketball:
ND/Marquette: Just like last year's team, the men started slow, came back, but didn't have enough. The shooting was off. Quinn had a bad night, but that will happen. Thomas needs to settle down. His shooting percentage has been terrible in each game this season. Cornette still has Ryan Humphrey Small Forward Syndrome. Marquette is still a good team. Novak (Steve, not Kelly) and Merritt once again put up big numbers against ND. This year's Irish Men will have their ups and downs, but it's still early.
CSU/UNC: Cleveland is not a state, but Cleveland State is the Alma Mater of Mr. Kanka. He wasn't at this near-upset, but I was, with Matt of BYU-weekend fame. In his homecoming, UNC's Jawad Williams was supposed to be the star. His whole family sat front row in powder blue #21 jerseys. Unfortunately, there were no "That's My Baby" signs, and none of the jerseys read "Jawad's Mom." There were, however, many locals posing as bandwagon UNC fans. Jordan left 20 years ago - you can put his jersey away. I'd like to interject here and say that "Jawad" and "Craphonso" have officially replaced "Dick" and "Gaylord" as the top "I want my kid beat up in school" names. Moving on. UNC got of to a quick lead behind swarming defense. But, as soon as they backed off, CSU came back. UNC wide body Shawn May was neutralized by CSU wider body (and fan favorite) Pete Ritzema. 7-2, 280? There had to have been at least one MAC O-Line coach knocking on his door. CSU doesn't have their own football program, but it might be time to start one. Once again, back to the game. CSU star Omari Westley and juco transfer Amadou Koundoul were everywhere, and CSU had the lead at the half. Whenever UNC threatened, Percell Coles answered with a 3. Over time, the bandwagoners who started the game by saying "I can't believe were watching North Carolina" and proceeded to refer to the Tarheels as "us" and "we," were soon pleading the crowd to "represent Cleveland." The game was reffed fairly. The calls went in spurts, but they evened themselves out. RoyBoy (Williams) wasn't able to intimidate the refs, as I had originally feared. Unfortunately, with 1:27 left and down 1, UNC misses the back half of a 1-and-1 (the bonus!), and the rebound gets kicked out to hometown Jawad, who hits the go ahead three right in front of his mom. UNC never looks back, and only then did the bandwagoners start cheering and chanting for their tarheels.
Some other game notes:
Since I'm sure you're concerned, Mike, the band was wearing green Hawaiian shirts with white floral print, and foam Viking hats (the Vikings are CSU's mascot; they used to use Hagar the Horrible's likeness, but now their mascot is a weird, green-headed guy in viking horns). Their song selection was not massive, but I was very fired up that they played the sackbut cheer after every player introduction and key play.
The student section was very small, only about 30 people, and it consisted mainly of a few overly-drunk frat kids and many of the basketball players' posse members.

Obscure College Scores
All obscure PA colleges we follow are done for the year. I'll let you know if local favorites Mount Union or John Carroll do anything special in the playoffs.

The Trading Block
Richie Sexson to Arizona for 6 players and a kitchen sink to be named later. Arizona gets rid of some guys who didn't work out, or who they were going to get rid of anyways. Milwaukee at least takes a stab at rebuilding. Not a bad trade, but this doesn't make Arizona an overnight contender, unless Brandon Webb et al. can prove me wrong.
Bruce Chen, who has been with almost every single NL Central team, has now signed with the Blue Jays. Baseball Primer (link above) says this is his 8th team, and he's still under the age of 27. Also by clicking on the link above, you can see other transactions involving many Gammons-esque names.
Other rumors:
The Schilling deal did go down, obviously.
Scanning NDNation's Back Room, I see Manny for A-Rod and Jeff Weaver for Kevin Brown.
The Manny trade would be bad for Texas. If you're going to have an overpriced player on a bad team, it might as well be the one that isn't a clubhouse cancer. John Hart once again proves that you can look smart without actually being smart. (Schilling! Pedro! We could have had them both! Dah!)

Visits
This site has begun to show up on web searches, and thanks to Blogger being owned by Google, this page often shows up high on the list. Things people have searched for that have lead to this page:
Sportscenter NFL Love Song (it helped that I mentioned "I Love the 70s" in the same paragraph here)
"Schilling Saga" (I called it the same exact thing last week)
"Never Scared" + "Football"
nd vs stanford 11/29/2003
"Kathleen Eich" (mentioned in the BYU weekend article; judging by the computer name, Kathleen was searching for herself)
Greg Bosl (ND basketball transfer, mentioned in the preview)
but the winner is... "Elizabeth Hasselbeck", generating at least 8 hits so far. I'll assume you've come looking for pictures, so here they are, running a Google Image Search on her maiden name, Elisabeth Filarski.

"What I'm Reading" Update
Shake Down the Thunder is a very long, very wordy book. I'll have a review as soon as I finish it, which should be before Christmas, hopefully.

Kanka Nation
The message board has been completely down the past couple days. I'll look at a few new ones tomorrow and hopefully have a new one up soon if this one doesn't come back.
Until then,

Go Irish, Eat Leftovers!