Category Archives: Football

Footballishness: Realignment Therapy

College Sports, Football

It’s been a running joke of mine for decades.

Invoked at moments in my mundane existence, when getting in touch with an inner Ken Kesey levity would be nice.

Where are those acid flashbacks now that I really need them, the ones our finger-wagging elders warned us about back in the day ? A few kandy-colored tracers wouldn’t be a bad thing now and again, as long as I’m not behind the wheel.

Little do I want, however, a brown acid bummer. Like the only one of mine experienced at a Chicago concert at Memorial Coliseum. Twas a very weird evening.

Anyway, that’s kind of how it felt to this college football analyst (of my own mind) with all this seismic plate-shifting conference rejiggering. Which kicked way up a notch recently, as if Emeril dumped a whole bottle of hot sauce in the roux he was concocting.

What’s coming this year is relatively benign. Four new schools in the Big Whatever.

But next season we got a transcontinental sea change a comin’. (Mixed metaphor used.)

Bicoastal nonsense. Accepting the non-presence of PAC 0.

With more possibly, hopefully not, on the way.

At any rate, to cope I have just completed Part I of a College Sports Realignment Assimilation Conversion Therapy course, presented by the Bear Bryant Institute. Part II is next summer. Continue reading Footballishness: Realignment Therapy →

U of L is a . . . What Kind o’ School?

Baseball, College Sports, Football,

As I hear tell, the University of Louisville is now a Football School.

Given how wobbly the other major men’s sport has have been lately, it could be, it might be true.

Unless, of course, it’s a Volleyball school.

Or, with good reason, arguably a Swimming school.

But, for our purposes here, I’ll buy in. Despite my deep seated belief that hoops, once the ship is righted, will be top o’ the pyramid regardless.

We all expected an uptick when legacy Jeff Brohm returned to where he once belonged. The fanbase has been apoplectic.

So too, local scribes with a propensity toward pigskin.

Like Card Chronicle’s ConorShea, who has applied his seriously complex, perhaps telling and most difficult to understand CUCFWTT. (Conor’s Ultimate Cardinal Football Win Trend Tracker.) According to which unwieldy analytical logistics the Cards are trending upward winwise. Like, if  they were a stock, they would be dubbed a buy.

Truth be told, it’s not just locals who are high on the Cards. Continue reading U of L is a . . . What Kind o’ School? →

Seedy K’s Peerless Pigskin Prognostications: Bowls

College Sports, Football, Gaming

After streaming a flick the other night — “Kimi” on HBO Max, pretty nifty technothriller — the realization came I hadn’t watched but a couple of plays in the Wake Forest/ Mizzou Gasparilla Bowl. Not that I gave a lump of coal about the game or who won.

Yet then realized how different this year’s Bowl Season has been. Something’s been missing.

Yes. No Joey the Vig’s Bowl Pool. Which would have me and about fifty others hanging on every fumble, pick and FG every silly Bad Boy Techno Taco Burpee Bowl until way after our bedtimes.

About fifteen years ago I was at a holiday party. In the corner of the den the TV was tuned without sound to the Fruit Company Cumquat Bowl or some such. What did happen to my benefit was Syracuse either made or missed a FG — who can remember details — which kept the kid alive for top spot with the Vig. I let out a scream, raising my hands in triumph, walked through the house like Ali after downing Liston.

Only The Professor, another annual bowler bozo, understood.

The Vig passed away suddenly a couple of months back.

Joey the Vig was a fictional ID fashioned for my pal John up Michigan way. A retired teacher, he loved numbers and odds and charts and data bases and football. He’d host such contests. A 13 run pool in baseball. Monthly pick ’em pool during football season.

And, my favorite, the Bowl Pool.

Not only because I could milk it for some blogs. I won it a couple of times, pocketing a little moolah.

So, to honor and in memory of dear friend Johnny Wags a/k/a Joey the Vig, find herewith America’s Premier Pigskin Prognosticator taking on the challenge of picking the winners for the remainder of the Bowl Season.

And, yes, it’s twu it’s twu, Against The Spread. (As set by Vegas Insider on 12/24.) Continue reading Seedy K’s Peerless Pigskin Prognostications: Bowls →

Seedy K’s Saturday: All Cardinals All Day

Basketball, Football, , ,

Now don’t be sad/ Cause two out of three ain’t bad/

Now don’t be sad, cause two out of three ain’t bad.

Louisville 24, Cincinnati 7.

You say Fenway, I say Feng Shui.

Because it not only sounds the same as the stadium site . . .  sorta . . . but Professor Wiki advises that it “sometimes called Chinese geomancy, is an ancient Chinese traditional practice which claims to use energy forces to harmonize individuals with their surrounding environment.”

Which is how the U of L Cardinal footballers handled the fabled ballyard surroundings where the Wasabi battle was contested under the gaze of the Big Green Monster.

And opened a big day of Cardinal sports with dominant 24-7 W over Keg o’ Nails rival Cincinnati, to finish the football campaign on the proverbial high note with an 8-5 record, and a New Era awaiting.

Plenty of heroes for the pigskin victors, but it says here you gotta start with wacky Mark Ivey and the Cardinal D.

Head butt dat, Cincy. Continue reading Seedy K’s Saturday: All Cardinals All Day →

Seedy K’s Eccentric Wasabi Fenway Bowl Primer

Football, Gaming,

Here’s everything you really don’t need to know about Saturday’s bowl matchup between U of L and Cincy.

But ought to.

What up with Wasabi?

No, it’s not a reference to that greenish, pea-ish horseradishy stuff you dab your Saba Roll in to make it more spicy. (Though I couldn’t help myself with the photo up top.)

Nor is it the name of the hottest new boutique on fashionable Newbury Street.

Also, not a reference to Southie pol Giuliani Wasabi, who is rumored to be declaring for the next mayoral race.

Ready for it? Hope so, don’t want to push my luck beyond the point of clever. Continue reading Seedy K’s Eccentric Wasabi Fenway Bowl Primer →

Seedy K’s Peerless Pigskin Prognostications: Championship Week

Football

Thanks to Caleb Williams, the latest greatest howdhedothat QB ever in the history of college football, I avoided an ofer.

Ole Miss lost. Lane Kiffin is staying. And, no, I’m not going to give myself two Ls for missing that captain not jumping ship. Ohio State had Buckeye fans jumping off those dorm towers nearby into the Olentangy. Clemson continued its slide back to the pack in the ACC. And Kentucky beat U of L fair and square.

The good news after a 1-4 weekend: I’m still 41-30 for the campaign. Meaning an ofer title week, and I’m still over .500 for the year.

This week’s winners: Continue reading Seedy K’s Peerless Pigskin Prognostications: Championship Week →

Louisville CardFile: Kentucky

Football, ,

Throughout Feast Week, the Cardinal Faithful kept asking the same question in various wordings.

“Can we beat the Cats?”

“Will the the Cardinals win Saturday?”

Your scribe’s response was always the same. Presented with an undertone of doubt.

“Of course, the Cards can beat UK.”

Though it remained U of L’s best chance to capture the Governor’s Trophy in years, there were signs to this observer of worry.

Based one supposes on that odd stat that U of L had the most Ws in the country over 7 win teams, the Cardinals snuck into the CFP rankings in the last spot.

Would that gird the Cards, or give them a false sense of security?

It seemed here it would give UK more fodder for the locker room wall. Continue reading Louisville CardFile: Kentucky →

Seedy K’s Peerless Pigskin Prognostications: Week XIII

Fandom, Football, ,

Readers who don’t understand a lot of the things they read here — and they are aplenty — have asked whether when sleepwalking at night, I type out my lede and predictions and hit Send without copyreading?

Others have wondered if there’s a warehouse somewhere with thousands of monkeys at keyboards banging away? And that I mindlessly cut and paste their senseless output and hit Send without copyreading.

Well, no. And no.

But there are times when I dazzle even myself with the senseless drivel I write.

Like this week, when I totally discarded my original opening shtick. It literally made no sense. Then I came up with the erudition above.

Anywho . . . last week . . .

. . . Minnesota and Okie State lost. My bad.

Auburn, Georgia and the now CFP #25 University of Louisville Cardinals prevailed.

Three up. Two down. 40-26 on the season.

Enough fathomless diversion.

This week’s winners: Continue reading Seedy K’s Peerless Pigskin Prognostications: Week XIII →

Seedy K’s GameCap: NC State

Football, ,

Before a recent game, long time AP beat writer Ed Peak threw out the kind of question long time fans have been arguing about forever at sports bars around the globe.

You know the kind, argued over mead and forest slaughter, “Who ya got, the Romans or the Huns in a rematch?”

The query presented: “Who was the worst U of L football coach of our lifetime? Cooper? Kragthorpe? TW Alley? Petrino II?”

Tough call, there.

But the point here is the fellow whose name never entered the discussion.

Yesterday while cherishing the Cardinals’ fifth W in their last six, Smart Guy wondered sarcastically, “Do you think Satt’s off the hot seat?”

Your scribe replied he never thought SS was really sitting on one.

Which is to underscore there was a turn of fortunes for this edition of U of L Football after the dismal L in Chestnut Hills.

Whatever happened — systematic tweaks, personnel switches, psychological motivation — it worked. Bigly. More bigly than Morgan & Morgan.

There’s an applicable descriptor for the phenomenon.

Coaching. Continue reading Seedy K’s GameCap: NC State →

Seedy K’s Peerless Pigskin Prognostications: Week XII

Football, Gaming, ,

Driving about this morning, I was listening on Channel 309 Jam On to a group that is actually named Pigeons Playing Ping Pong.

What they were playing was a seriously pedestrian tune titled “Porcupine,” but I never moved on to something else.

Which anecdote, to be brutally honest, has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the precipitous decline in my predictioneering prowess last weekend.

But is conclusive empirical evidence how far your scribe will go in a lame obviously failed attempt to be alliteratively cute.

I was rewarded for my lack of energy to change the station with an interesting Frank Zappa tune that followed.

Which is yet another, so what?

Coming off a 5-0 slate in Week X, here’s what happened last time out here.

TCU won again in Austin. UK failed to Krogerize the Dores in a home L, the next great power in college pigskin. My Cards fell in Death Valley to a former recently great power in college pigskin.

But . . . All hail to the Baby Blue Tar Heels who defrocked the Demon Deacons.

And DePauw, which recaptured the Monon Bell with a decisive 49-14 plundering of rival Wabash.

2-3 for the weekend. 37-24 on the year.

Forever Onward!

This week’s winners: Continue reading Seedy K’s Peerless Pigskin Prognostications: Week XII →