NCAA Football
Boise State 28, BYU 27: If last week was the Week of the Missed Extra Point, this was the Week of the Missed Field Goal. In case you're wondering: the story about birds confusing the blue turf for water and nosediving to their deaths? Pure urban legend.
USC 31, Stanford 28: What a first half. After falling behind 10-0, Stanford put up 3 straight sustained TD drives. With less than two minutes before the half, USC scores a touchdown to cut the lead to 21-17, and most of the upset talk started to fade. But, as Stanford went to run out the clock, their back broke it right up the middle (boy, did the USC safeties look stupid on that one) to make it 28-17 at the half. Of course, come the second half, the Trojan D went into upset-crushing shutdown mode (making it look like Stanford shouldn't have been able to put up 3 total yards all day), and 2 USC touchdowns gives us a final of 31-28.
West Virginia 45, James Madison 10: What, wasn't the Big East schedule easy enough for you this year?
Tennessee 42, Lousiana Tech 17: LaTech this year is taking the Troy State approach: play an insanely hard schedule, get hopelessly blown out every time, but get in the BCS rankings anyways due to schedule strength. Hasn't quite worked yet, but the TV time has done some good things for Troy lately.
Purdue 38, Illinois 30: Hey, Purdue has no defense! I hope the ND coaches were taking notes. Or, maybe Purdue was just blinded by those monochrome orange uniforms.
UConn 40, Army 3: Do you get to a point where you feel guilty about blowing out a service academy during wartime? Or was Gino Auriemma coaching?
South Florida 45, TCU 44.: After USF scored a TD in the second overtime to go up 45-38, it was TCU's turn. This game ended, however, when the TCU kicker missed the tying extra point. Ten bucks says he got distracted by Cronk's Sister. Dah.
South Carolina 17, Troy 7: I'll tell you what: 39-year-old South Carolina receiver "Pops" Frisby sure makes me feel like a fat mess.
Utah State Fighting Lane Weavers 31, UNLV Running FromTheLaws 21
NFL
Giants 27, Browns 10: Ugh. Either one side of the ball was working, or the other. But never both at the same time. Moving on.
Vikings 27, Bears 22: The NFL.com stats page for this game was reporting Dante Culpepper had 465 passing yards in this game. Great, I thought, my whole fantasy team hasn't scored that many points yet. It was a typo, but of course, Pete still beat me.
Colts 45, Packers 31: I'm now convinced that Peyton Manning is just mailing it in in any game where less than 3 of his receivers have 100 receiving yards. There had to be a point where Brett Favre was saying, "A running play? What's the point? They're not using them."
Raiders 30, Bucs 20: I watched this game, and I still don't know how these teams combined for 50 points. Of course, I have been watching the Browns these past two weeks, so I probably should just keep my mouth shut.
Cowboys 21, Redskins 18: Don't be "Dat Guy."
Transaction Wire
- Mets activate Jose Reyes and Kaz Matsui from the 15 day DL. Art Howe thinks, "what's the point? They'll just be back there in 3 days anyways."
- Bears sign Chad Hutchinson. The Bears probably had the same reaction I did - "Holy crap, Grossman's hurt and the only options are Craig Krenzel and some guy named Quinn that I've never heard of before. The Hutchinson signing is a bit of a slap in the face to Tim Couch, who is still very available. I guess it's also a slap in the face to Akili Smith, too, but....
- Cavs sign some random center named Scott Williams, who had been with Dallas. Hopefully, he was their token "guy who can can play center and actually rebound competently."
Miscellaneous Ramblings
- If you get a chance, please check out The Surreal Life on VH1. This year's cast is testing the limits of the UCR scale. There's Dave Coulier, Uncle Joey from "Full House." Flava Flav is at least a 97 on the UCR, especially since his wardrobe consists of a clock around his neck (occasionally digital!) and Siegfried horns. Former New Kid on the Block Jordan Knight is being "that guy" - when not being antisocial, he's making some inappropriate comments about a girl, including one about the Olsen twins right to Dave's face. Charo is easily an 80+ on the UCR, especially when she sits down in front of the camera to recap something. Former Sylvester Stallone wife/Arnold Schwarzenegger movie leading lady Brigitte Nielsen is just... well... odd. Rounding out the cast is Ryan Starr, who is apparently a former American Idol contestant, but in reality she's the token hot young girl of the show.
- Ichiro watch: Six games to go, six hits to beat the record. By the way, Ichiro has raised his average to .372 whilst in pursuit of the streak. For those of you who would like to get nit-picky about Ichiro playing more games than George Sisler (the current record holder), I'll offer this: at the moment, Ichiro has 46 more at bats than Sisler did in his record setting year.
- Senators III? In case you haven't heard yet, the Expos will more than likely be in Washington DC this year. That's good news for Washington fans - after losing the first two versions of the Senators - first to Texas, then to Minnesota, they decided to steal someone else's team for a change.
- Speaking of stealing teams, maybe we should start calling the AFC North the AFC Art Modell. After all, he's responsible for the creation of three of the four teams. Paul Brown created the Bengals after Modell unceremoniously dumped him as Cleveland's head coach. The Ravens were formed when... well, I still can't talk about it. And the Browns, of course, were re-created a few years after that incident.
- So, we have the digital cable at home (ooh, look at me!), and as a part of that, we're able to pull up a quick blurb about every show that's on at the current time. The writeup for White Men Can't Jump: "Two basketball hustlers, white and black, count on a racial myth to win street games." You can't make this up.
- If you haven't noticed, NDNation's regulars are apparently giving out refunds for the proposed "Save ND Football" t-shirts. Dah.
OK, yeah, that's all I've got. See you Thursday night/Friday morning with a Beat Purdue preview.
