CURIOUS INDEX, 10/27/08

Wow Orson,

You’re getting your blog on early today… are we getting a little antsy about this weekend already?

FIRED UP! Also went to the gym at 5:30, so if we don’t write, we’ll fall back asleep.

Mark May as Snidley Whiplash works quite well, especially when you look at Golic’s enlarged head and think of Dudley Do-Right.

How do you come up with this stuff in the morning? I can barely function well enough to operate the office coffee machine to refill my IV drip.

CSI, The George Lopez Show and The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air

“What’s on TV” should be a required line on a job application. The fact that Stewart enjoys suck suckitude tells me all I need to know about him. I’d like to see some other coaches’ favorties shows.

The Orgeron: Harry and the Hendersons, Manimal, World’s Strongest Man 1979

Mark Richt: 700 Club, Little House on the Prairie, Soul Train

Unfortunately, Golic is correct and not just shilling.

Barring a colossal upset, PSU is, sadly, 1/2 of the MNC game.

It might be funny though, watching Texas or the SECC slice them from the nave to the chops, giving the Big 10 a third straight humiliating MNC loss.

Hell, I may be even rooting for that, nw that I think about it (provided the SECC is Florida, of course)

Personally, I think it’s part of some larger plot to get the Big Ten to add a conference championship game and get behind the idea of a playoff.

For the last few years, ESPN has made a sacrificial lamb of Big Ten teams by essentially hyping them into the MNC game.

Now you know….the /rest/ of the story….

Drrrr, should read “NOT Florida, of course”.

NOT NOT NOT Florida.

Geez

Oh, and hopefully that white dude dancing in that video isn’t what Georgia’s secondary looks like on Saturday, trying to follow Demps and Rainey’s cutbacks.

DarkKnight, your grasp of history is very very poor.

Herb Brooks thinks that video is terrible…and bullshit.

And so does actual Kentucky coach Rich Brooks. It’s too damn early.

@#10,

Unfortunately, Herbie doesn’t have time for that video. He needs one more drink before hitting the road for some more scouting.

I’m going to be as far away as possible from the Landing. The 904 is good for at least two or three murders that weekend. We had three the night of the game last year. All y’all Dawg causin a ruckus and shit in our fair city….

M1EK—

What was that link supposed to prove? Yes, Penn St. has had success in lower-tier bowls recently (and an OT Orange Bowl win over 5-loss FSU), but this season they simply aren’t in the same league as Texas and Bama.

…or UF, USC, UGA, OU, or even Texas Tech.

In honor of Urban Meyer, Gen. Stoopnagle is referring to himself only in the third person this week.

And Gen. Stoopnagle would not bet against Joe Paterno in a National Championship game despite the stain of Big 10 affiliation. Gen. Stoopnagle learned this lesson as a young lad as he sat stunned watching Penn State hammer Miami way back when in a Fiesta Bowl.

It does not surprise Gen. Stoopnagle that there are videos of people doing stupid shit in Jacksonville. Nope. Not at all. Please post more of this Mr. Swindle. It’s a bad deal.

Damn. Is it Coke Orgy week, already? And I haven’t even decorated the place with stripper poles and silver trays yet.

Unfortunately, Burrito, you can’t blame the game. That’s just Jacksonville.

The state of Florida is a vast wasteland. Hopeless, toothless, irredeemable packs of crackers infest the interior. Lifeless armies of the walking dead cluster on the tasteless disgusting coasts which have been denuded of any natural beauty by an army of avaricious developers aided by a legislature that was bought and sold decades ago.

Willfully lacking in natural beauty, a haven to tasteless carpetbaggers of every stripe, the final nail in your plexiglass coffin is simply this: Disney.

Playing the game in Florida annually is awful, but the alternative – inviting this rabble into the state – is worse.

Die Florida, Die! May the internal hard drive of your lifeless coach crash just before gametime.

Orson,

I think the only reason- at least the only one that makes any remote sense to me, and I actually go to PSU- that people are hyping us for the title game is that they see it as exceptionally unlikely that Texas and Alabama run the table the whole way. And then we’re an unbeaten from a major conference, blah blah blah blah. It’s not right, not entirely logical…but it’s a likely scenario.

“What was that link supposed to prove? "

That the complaint that the Big Ten can’t win in bowl games or versus the Big XII or SEC is a load of crap. It’s Ohio State (and to a lesser extent Michigan).

I remember being told over and over again by the same type of idiots that are saying it now that the Texas and Tennessee teams we spanked in Fiesta Bowls were out of our league.

Do NOT bet against Joe Paterno in a bowl game. Even in a disappointing season, like the last two with that rocket-armed drooling idiot Morelli, he’ll find a way to put up a good performance in the bowl.

I still don’t get the anti Big Televen “no conference championship game” argument. Yes the Big Ten doesn’t have a conference game. Conferences add CGs because they want more money. Now they consistently complain about how it hurts them and how the Pac10 and Big10 should have them too.

To me it sounds like a boxer cutting off one of his arms (because of lets say Golden Palace gave him a crapload of money to do so) and then complaining to be at a disadvantage and wanting every other boxer to cut a limb off. Pick a side: money or no money. You can’t have both money and complaints.

Personally I’d love to get rid of the BCS and have a tournament of the conference champs plus a couple at large spots (also forcing ND to join a conference).

14- PW

I don’t want to doubt that you could be wrong….but how do you know this? Any evidence at all?

@18. Amen. But, don’t forget, Jorts! ARP ARP ARP.

Conjecture and speculation

PW: Oh yes, the Rose, Fiesta, and Citrus/Capital One bowls are obviously “lower tier” bowls. (For that matter, even the Outback Bowl is on New Year’s, although I wouldn’t exactly call it top tier.)

I don’t believe that PSU is going to fold like a cheap suit in a NCG. They have fared well in big games against all opposition. You SEC homers just never learn. Read The Sporting Blog for the truth told by Spencer Hall. That guy knows football, and even he will admit the SEC isn’t all that this year.

On the subject of conference championship games. I hate them, they are just a money grab. I’m waiting for a 3 loss SEC team to beat an undefeated one to screw it all up for a national title berth. It already has happened in the Big 12 with KSU. Nebraska and Oklahoma got in anyhow after losing one. Results weren’t good. Just for consistency, I hate them in basketball too. One team getting lucky in one week, isn’t a season’s work. UGA winning while Spencer survived the tornado proves that.

I like how we’re all supposed to pretend that a conference whose biggest OOC win is over Miami is an unstoppable juggernaut.

that fella in the georgia jersey is George. i’ve seen him in every holiday inn bar in knoxville, opelika, columbia sc, new orleans, and yes jax (at the airport).

dude drinks yager bombs like they’re natty light.

Penn St. is in if they go undefeated, end of story. The Press will never pass up the chance to hype the Paterno Legend angle.

I’m not totally against it (who would be fully against an undefeated major confernece team being left out?), but, I just don’t agree that THIS YEAR, Penn St. would deserve that spot over a one-loss Big 12 or SEC team. PSU’s schedule just didn’t pan out. The Oregon St. win is nice, but the rest of the non-conference schedule is bogus. More importantly, Michigan sucks. Normally that would be a quality win, not so much this year. And, Illinois and Wisconsin were supposed to be high quality wins as well this year, but they ended up sucking too (though not as much as Michigan). I guess beating a Michigan St. team ranked in the teens or 20s in the last game of the season will look good, but there’s still something to be desired.

D-Nice is probably right. I mean, they started the game Saturday with some sack licking piece on Paterno…and that was just for a conference game. If there’s even a chance for Cthulu to do the apotheosis of JoePa, they’ll go for it.

That also plays into Cthulu’s strategy of making non-game things more important than the game itself. They don’t call it sportsertainment for nothing.

Ohio Dawg – “Willfully lacking in natural beauty”?

I would submit the following rebuttals: The Everglades, Siesta Key, Suwannee River, Paynes Prairie, Florida Keys….the list is endless.

Did the developers rape and pillage Florida? Absolutely yes. But who – actually – was the biggest transgressor? A: Army Corps of Engineers

We are making strides to undo the damage …wearing jorts, using our walkers, and riding in oversized pickup trucks….

I’ll take Disney over smokestacks any day of the week.

Ohio Dawg is a pseudonym for Carl Hiassen.

I’m going to enjoy the massive, Old Country Buffet-style crow eating around here when Penn State wins it all…

Ohio Dawg just needs to take a break from writing the Great American novel and get the his soot-covered head out of his ass. Way to go John Steinbeck. Give me one reason why I should visit either Ohio or Georgia. The fact that you had to live in both shitty states must make you delusional as hell. Go take your stupid red and black bifurcated-garment-wearing ass and beat off in a library.

Spartan Dan—

By “lower-tier”, I mean non-BCS bowls and by “recent” I mean since the BCS came into existence.

Hats off to Penn State…that was an awesome game. You out-tresselballed us and that was impressive. We punt and put you back on the 10 yard line and you come right back and punt to put us on the 2 yard line. That is the type of game it was. #9 made a championship caliber play on Pryor…if he misses Pryor he is gone…instead he punches the ball out. Great play!

Now, regarding Penn State and all the bullshit about not having a conference championship game or the fear of a Big Ten team playing an SEC team or Big 12 team for the NC. I’m not buying either one. Penn State is rock solid and can play with anyone in the country.

PSU is 16-16 vs. the SEC and 22-13 vs. the Big 12. They beat Georgia for a NC back in the 80’s and a Miami team in the 80’s as well.

Here’s something a little more recent:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37lg7SXs7rY

As for Ohio State that was a tough loss, but with true freshmen at QB and Center you have to expect a mistake sooner or later. Pryor will only get better and learn to SEE THE FRIGGING TE RUNNING WIDE OPEN DOWN THE MIDDLE OF THE FIELD WITH NO ONE WITHIN 20 YARDS OF HIM…lol. He’ll learn and we’ll get better.

As a Bama fan, I would rather face Georgia again.
The Quark Backs that Florida have would eventually get 1/2 a step in any direction and be gone to the house. They really dont have to run up the middle, since they only need about 20 inches of space to go all the way, plus they are wafer thin and you can never get a clean hit on them. Now if Terrence Cody were to fall on one of them, we may have a chance. But first we have to take care of the Red Wolves, a generous pick-6 Machine @ LSU in the daytime, some Starkvillers, and a “No Country For Old Men” type killing for Auburn, should really be called “There will be Blood-Lots Of It” for the painful while not all the way dead type of autopsy we will perform on Auburn….

Oh yeah, Bama won this weekend…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIE0xpwMWeo

It wouldn’t be so bad if this wasn’t so close to reality…and trust me, this is just one of the masses.

@38 I think my ears are drunk. Joe Dirt II is in preproduction it seems.

Josh @ 27

We’re pretending that the SEC is an unstoppable juggernaut. In fact, just this past weekend, the proprietor of this very blog wrote the following:

The SEC is Alabama, Georgia, Florida, and then mediocrity down the stacks . . .

I’m not alleging the SEC’s superiority over Penn St., I’m just saying that Texas and Bama, if undefeated are more deserving of a shot at a national championship. To a lesser extent, so are 1-loss UF, USC, Oklahoma, and Georgia teams.

As a UF fan, I could understand them not getting to jump PSU if they stay unbeaten, but I maintain that UF is still the better team.

That last post would make more sense if I had included the word “not” before the word “pretending”

I think there’s a huge disconnect during discussions about who should be in the MNC between who “deserves” to be there and their potential to win if they are there.

I made the point that based on their schedule, Penn St, arguably, may not “deserve” to play in the MNC over a one-loss SEC or Big 12 school (especially if those schools win the conference championship game).

That doesn’t mean that I don’t think Penn St. could win if they go. I know it seems offbase. But, whether a team should play in the MNC is based on what they’ve done BEFORE the MNC. If they’re scedule is weak, one can make the argument that they shouldn’t be there. That’s not to say that they can’t perform once in the game.

It works out in reverse as well. Just because a team left out of the MNC shows that they probably didn’t deserve to be there, doesn’t mean that based on what they did BEFORE the MNC, they dserved to be left out.

Not the best example, but when No. 1 Michigan lost to No. 2 OSU a few years ago in a close game and didn’t lose any other games, they had a legitimate argument for being in the MNC against OSU. They’re ensuing debacle against USC in the Rose Bowl showed that they probably shouldn’t have been in the MNC, but before that game, they had a decent (if not spectacular) argument for inclusion.

So, in doubting PSU’s inclusion, I’m not necessarily doubting their ability.

Did the WLOCP trip once, and that was enough. I have never heard the phrase “Oh hey, mind if we crash in your hotel room?” more often. The thing is, Jax is some bizzare petri dish: just pour alcohol over fans for 3-5 days and watch what happens— and both sets of fans are equally guilty.

And to all the PSU fans, I appreciate ya’ll’s sense of tradition and history, but since none of those past teams will be taking the field, I might suggest that you temper your enthusiasm a bit. Consider the offensive output of the “Spread HD” against OSU- the one team with a reasonably talented defense, as being the benchmark available currently: if PSU does go to the NC, odds are pretty good that they’ll see defensive talent on a par or superior to what they saw last Saturday, only this time, the opposing offense will have more than a single playmaker. I would call that a concern.

tAFKATOSUb,
I see your Bammer fan video….and I wish some people didnt have access to technology at Wal-Mart or the Pawn shop, and I’ll raise you a bunch of classy, Natural Light drinkin tOSU fans that really know how to tailgate and are in control and are emotionally stable.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PahHn2WxUlI

If a team lost two BCS National Championships back to back, losing the second by 36 points, and lost four straight BCS bowl games, including games to Big East and WAC opponents, giving up an average of 41.75 points per game in those four losses, I would hope someone would be making snide comments about the quality of their conference and their team, saying how “undeserving” they are of a BCS bowl game, even though they did win the National Championship a few years earlier.

But I don’t hear any backlash at Oklahoma sitting #4 in the BCS. In fact, if things fall right Oklahoma could find themselves in the BCS National Championship again. Double standard?

PW @ 40

It’s possible that Florida would beat PSU on a neutral field, but by losing to Ole Miss at home, they made the question moot. It’s one thing if someone like Texas runs a gauntlet and loses one away to Texas Tech… I’ll buy their “tough schedule” complaint. But Florida shat the bed against the caliber of team that Penn State has been running up the score against. The fact that Ole Miss is in the SEC is not a substitute for them actually being any good.

If southern Florida is America’s penis, then it is only logical that Jacksonville is merely America’s taint.
Not that Athens is much less mix-of-balls-and-anus-y, but i still wouldn’t go so far as to say that it’s as bad as Jacksonville….
cheers to the great weekend that is will be.

given the anatomical structure you’ve laid out here, where would america’s legs be?

For those people making arguments about an undefeated PSU making the MNC game, I would like to point out that the other undefeated teams out there not named Texas, Alabama, or Texas Tech all have similar or better strength of schedule rankings than PSU.

So if Utah goes unbeaten, with its 58th ranked schedule (as opposed to PSU’s 82nd), then by all rights they should leapfrog PSU to play in the MNC game vs. whomever the other team is at the time.

Golic needs to maybe read things that use facts. http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/news/story?page=roadtobcs/0802&lpos=spotlight&lid=tab4pos2

Fact 1: No one in their right mind thinks Penn State is jumping an undefeated Texas.
Fact 2: Bama is currently ahead of Penn State in the computers and the human polls.
Fact 3: Penn State has no “big” games left, and can only hurt its resume.
Fact 4: Bama has LSU (still for some reason seen as a big game) and the SEC Championship game left to help its cause.

Conclusion: Penn State needs to root like hell for the SEC East and/or all opponents of the Texas/TTU winner.

“f PSU does go to the NC, odds are pretty good that they’ll see defensive talent on a par or superior to what they saw last Saturday”

Alabama, maybe. But Texas’ defense, albeit strong for the Big XII, would be in the lower half of the Big Ten.

What you saw in that game was a good offense being called very conservatively (the ‘pucker-up on the road’ factor) against a good defense, and on the other side, a decent offense against a great defense.

Just keep talking, though. The same exact things were said the last 4 times we destroyed a team named UT in a bowl game.

Conference Argument Dept:

Should, should, Penn State pull it off and win the NC this year it sure would shake up the conference arguments.

Since 1997: Big 10 would have 3 (Mich, OSU, PSU) and the SEC would have 3.5 (Tenn, LSU, Florida).

I refuse to acknowledge the 96 Gator NC because our beating ASU in the Rose bowl is the only reason they were awarded the NC. /bitterness off

@49 – Perhaps. And yet, Utah and PSU actually had two common opponents this year: Michigan and Oregon State. Does that mean anything?

Utah vs. UM: 2 point win
Utah vs. OSU: last-second FG to win

PSU vs. UM: blowout
PSU vs. OSU: blowout

Utah tried to schedule a few tough OOC games; UM was a tough team when they were scheduled, and Oregon State is more than respectable.

PSU did the same. Syracuse was a 10 win team when scheduled (but they certainly blow now), and OSU is OSU. All you can do is win.

Yes, I understand the fear of a Big Ten team in the MNC after the Ohio State debacles, but tell me: when was the last time you saw a Paterno team embarrassed in a bowl game? Remember ’87 vs. The Mighty Miami? The game was only a formality on paper. And yet that one game was the impetus for the whole BCS system. An excellent read:

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/eticket/story?page=fiesta87

(sorry – no hot link)

What the hell – ’07 Michigan lost to App. State, yet they smoked Florida (OMG Florida!) by Bowl Time. No one said it meant anything.

Let things play out. Plenty of time to gripe later.

Terrell Pryor will be a Heisman candidate sooner than later. He is a guy to build around, and if Tressel can get some QuarkBacks like RichRod is trying to do, tOSU once again will rule the Big 10….and if TX and Bama(getting past Florida is a big “if” with everyone healthy) wins out and JoePa gets left out of the BCS, you will see the Big 10 commish start changing his tune bout that playoff thingy.. Just add Notre Dame into your conference..then we could have the winnars of the SEC,Big 10,Big 12 and the Pac 10(just pick someone or 2 out of the Mountain West-TCU,BYU), or an at large berth if one of the main conferences isnt in the Top 4 at yrs end..it would be a Plus 2 scenario…1v3,2v4, then winnars in the BCS,and make it the Rose Bowl…or rotate the place the BCS should be played at via the conference tie in….baby steps…..or coin flips….

AAAAAAAARGH! STOP IT, dangit!!

Penn State’s strength-of-schedule is not that bad! It is not worse than Ball State’s. It is not worse than Utah’s.

Look at every single statistical ranking used in the BCS – Colley, Wolfe, Massey, (not Billingsley because he’s insane) – Penn State’s schedule strength is only marginally worse than Alabama’s. If you look at the two schedules side-by-side, they’re not that much different. Unless you fear the massive power of Western Kentucky that much more than Coastal Carolina.

Orson, your article yesterday (the Alphabetical) used numbers on Penn State’s SOS that didn’t include this week. And teams from a BCS conference’s SOS gets stronger as the season goes on, whereas a team from a non-BCS conference gets weaker as the season goes on.

Utah? Ball State? Are you kidding me?

@54 – The Big Ten has courted Notre Dame on numerous occasions. They’ve resisted every entreaty – and I can’t really blame them, given their TV contract.

TAFK,

First of all, you’re a raging buffoon. This, however, is not news to anyone who frequents this site.

Secondly, it’s mindblowingly disingenuous for you to pretend that LSU’s BCS Championship is worth a mere half of a national title.

For better or worse, the BCS is the system used to determine the national champion. The schools (including USC) and, in turn, their conferences agreed to participate in the system and be bound by its determinations. The fact that a bunch of nerdy, hopelessly biased sportswriters decided to vote USC #1 despite not playing in the NC game does nothing to diminish the fact that LSU won the 2003 National Championship. Please stop making a fool of yourself.