“I came here to chew bubblegum, and kick ass. And I’m all out of bubblegum.”
To honor the memory of the dearly departed Rowdy Roddy Piper, the only wrestler ever worth anything, the baddest man ever to don a kilt, and the most quotable guy in sports not named Yogi or Schnellenberger, I hereby cut through the muck on some of the more nettlesome issues of the day.
Ever the EmbellIRISHment. In the prologue to the zine’s College Football predictions, the folks at Sports Illustrated admit their boneheaded pre-season rankings from the past. They admit what a false positive, woooo pig sooey in a poke a big bowl game victory can be in assessing a team prior to the following season.
Then those same dunderheads go out and dub the Notre Dame Fighting Irish the 4th best team in the land, a projected participant in Football’s Final Four.
I can just hear my man Rowdy Roddy now: “Your stupidity is something you’re born with.”
So, you gotta assume SI’s prognosticators are putting too much store in the Irish’s much ado about nothing, zebra-enhanced 31-28 W over bored LSU in NashVegas’s Music City Bowl.1 Rather than ND’s five losses in its last six, including four Ls in a row to end the regular season.
Which less than stellar run consisted of a 24 point setback to Arizona State as two-point dog, a FG-sized putdown by Northwestern as a -17 fave, the L under TD Jesus’s covered eyes to Louisville as a favorite, and that disastrous finale, a 14-49 evisceration at Southern Cal.
I guess SI is somehow impressed it’s an improvement that ND’s best QB, Everett Golson, skipped off to Florida State, a school where he need be less concerned with, you know, academics and discipline, than the one he abandoned in South Bend.
Sure Notre Dame, as always, shall get the benefit of the doubt when it comes to assessing how good they are. By officials. By pundits. By the folks at NBC.
But Final Four? I don’t think so.
Rowdy Roddy would let one of his lessers take care of the Irish. Jimmy “Superfly” Snuka perhaps.
Drunk with Deflaterade. Keith Richards, you know the Rolling Stone with a constitution proving way stronger and more resilient than that of the United States, has called the Beatles’ “Sgt. Pepper,” “a mishmash of rubbish.”
When I first heard the quote, I thought he was talking about the totally over-bloviated subject we’ve come to know as Deflategate, a/k/a Ballghali.
Hey I’ve always considered daily reports from the practice field — college or pro — to be absurd. ESPN, NFL TV and a football-obsessed fan base appear to hang on the import of every drill.
Traditionally I could care less. Not this year though. Because, finally, we have something actually football related to talk about, other than a slightly under-inflated football, the destroyed cellphone of pro football’s Golden Boy (With A Hot Wife) and what an idiot and unevenhanded non-leader Roger Goodall is proving to be.
When Jaws lurches back to his catacombs to watch the tape today, it won’t be of court proceedings, but actual footage of players on a gridiron, competing for turf time.
Sure, I’m glad Tom Brady will more than likely have to sit for four games. It’ll make that division more interesting. But I’m not sure the Pats QB deserved the penalty handed down, then confirmed on appeal by the same guy who meted out the punishment in the first place.
Somewhere Franz Kafka is smiling. While, of course, sorting out who he wants in the fantasy draft.
Depth Chart, Depth Charge. We media types love to caterwaul when our job is made even a might more difficult.2
So, there was much chatter among we disenchanted at Bobby Petrino’s pre-practice Wednesday press conference, about the school’s failure to provide a team depth chart. How are we to know where the players stand, especially in the QB competition, and the battle for snaps among the Big Uns on the OL?
There was even a humorous suggestion that the absence of same was the work of football SID Rocco Gasparro.3
Let’s face it. Football coaches, for the most part, are seriously paranoid. And, according to the anthropologists in my crowd, the most controlling species roaming this rock.
So, there’s nothing unusual about Bobby Petrino’s stranglehold on all matters U of L football, about his propensity to control — Read: limit — the flow of info.
But, I just read an interesting article about Pete Carroll, which highly successful coach maintains control, but with a long leash, and wins.{ref]Except when passing on 2d down in the Super Bowl from point blank range, with the game’s best running back lining up beside his QB.[/ref]
Maybe football coaches should let the reigns just a smidge.
I’m not holding my breath.
Passing the Buck(eye). Ohio State is the consensus choice to repeat as national champ.
Pope Urban Meyer is 38-3 in his triad of seasons in the Horseshoe. And there would appear to be anything but a depreciation in talent.
Yet . . . I am here to disagree.
One, it’s hard to repeat.
Two, having two outstanding, relatively equal and deserving QBs vying for PT is fraught with peril. It seems to me the possibility of a fractured squad is great.
Last season, there was never controversy. Braxton Miller got hurt. JT Barrett was brilliant, then he got hurt. Cardale Jones was ready.
This year, both Barrett and Jones feel entitled. Both are healthy. It could cause issues.
Just sayin’.
* * * * *
Anyway, ye chinstrap acolytes, football season is almost at hand, and as my man Rowdy Roddy Piper would say, “The boss is back.”
That would be me, kids, winner of two consecutive Joey the Vig Bowl Pools, and so full of himself and his bellyfull of delusional expertise he’s about ready to burst.
— Seedy K