Just Don’t Watch!
That’s my advice to anyone who wishes to voice their protest over the latest BCS outrage. We go through this every year. The regular season games are played, and right before the conference championships get decided, we get the usual round of columnists, television talking heads, radio show hosts, and fans going on and on about how awful the BCS is and how it’s such a travesty that college football is the only sport that doesn’t not decide it’s champion in some kind of tournament or playoffs. Some of the really good ones, find a way to put a fresh take on the same argument every year. We might even get some good social commentary about exploitation of athletes and what not. But after all of that, enough people watch the bowl games and the BCS title game to make the powers that be in college football enough money to keep the farce going.
If you really want a playoff then you have to stop watching the bowl games, especially the BCS games and the title game. They will not respond to your complaints, but they will respond to you not watching and not buying tickets. Period. Vote with your remote controls and with your feet. What’s that you say? Too much work? You like football, and just want something to watch during December and early January? The games are too entertaining to turn away from, even the low level bowl games? Well, OK then. Keep watching. Just don’t complain about it. Face it folks, the BCS is that beautiful woman who’s mean, manipulative, and all other kinds of bad things. She’s only with you for what she can get out of you, and you know it, but you just can’t quit her. Every time you get close to leaving, she smiles at you and uses that seductive voice of hers to lure you back in. And you hate yourself for it, but at the end of the day having a pretty girl on your arm trumps your self respect. That’s the BCS in a nutshell. Yes we have our integrity and our outrage over a ludicrous situation but once the game comes on then we gladly flush them all for a few hours of entertainment.
RIP, Chicago Bears
This is too bad, really. The Bears have the consistency and the overall quality to outlast their main competitors for the wildcard spots, all of whom are too mercurial to be counted on. The Cowboys, Lions, Falcons, and Giants are all too inconsistent to put together any kind of run to either go thorough the playoffs or lock up a spot early. But the Bears have been slain by the injury bug; first to Jay Cutler and now to Matt Forte. Cutler was playing quarterback at a very high level, making chicken salad out of the chicken you-know-what that is the Bears receiving corps, while Forte has been putting up an MVP caliber performance at running back. And now they are both gone for the rest of the regular season. With Caleb hanie at QB, the Bears can’t score in a whorehouse. They put up a whopping three points against a bad Chiefs team, and Hanie threw three picks; Forte went down in the first quarter and after that the Bears were only able to muster 81 yards on the ground.
The Bears, for all intents and purposes, are done. Their remaining games are against Denver, Seattle, Green Bay, and Minnesota. It’s hard to imagine them being able to score enough on offense to win any of those games. The defense can slow down all of those teams, save the Packers, but even if they can keep them all in the 10 to 17 point range I don’t see how this team gets to 20 points for the win, which is what it would need. So we’re looking at a 7-3 start that turned into 7-9 season. That’s too bad, but it shows just how fragile things are in the NFL. There just aren’t enough quarterbacks to start and provide depth for 32 teams. If you look around the league, a lot of the contenders are a quarterback injury away from being unable to win a game. Just ask the Colts.
Welcome back Tiger!
Yes it was lower tier event, a small field money grab.. But it was a win for Tiger, something that hasn’t happened since 2009. And that’s good for him and for golf. I don’t know about you, but I don’t care much about golf if Tiger isn’t playing. Say what you want about him, and I’ve said plenty myself, but he makes golf interesting to all of us casual fans who don’t care one way or the other about Phil Mickleson, Vijay Singh, or Rory Mcelroy. As far as I’m concerned, those are just the guys who will probably win if Tiger isn’t playing, or is playing but sucking. Those guys are good, but Tiger is more than good. He’s interesting. And golf, like any other sport, needs interesting people at the top in order to get people like me to pay attention.
