It seems my role as a sports Jonah continues. All I had to do to sink Notre Dame's chances in the BCS championship game was to declare that, for the first time ever, I was rooting for the Irish to pull off an upset. Of course, the fact that I'm often rooting for upsets may have something to do with my lousy record.
Also, some credit has to go to Nick Saban and his lads in the red helmets, who thoroughly dominated the game. I arrived at the Chip Shop about halfway through the first quarter, got a pint of IPA, and saw the score was already 7-0 Tide. Not bad, I thought; N.D. has a way of falling behind early and then coming back with a vengeance. But then it quickly went to 14-0, and the Irish offense couldn't seem to get anything going. At halftime I got another pint, this time of Fuller's porter, and hoped for things to get better. They didn't. I topped the evening off with a hot toddy made with Irish whiskey and honey, and left late in the third quarter.
I was backing Notre Dame partly out of respect for the memory of my late friend Pete Demmerle, a hero in the Irish victory over 'Bama in 1973, and partly because Notre Dame is one of the few BCS schools where one may say "scholar athlete" without a knowing smirk.
I used to hate Notre Dame. This came to a climax with the 1992 Sugar Bowl, in which the third ranked Florida Gators, my favorites, led by Heisman candidate QB Shane Matthews, played the eighteenth ranked Fighting Irish. Florida was a heavy favorite, and I saw this as their big opportunity to crash into college football's elite by beating a team that epitomized the game's establishment. Over time, I had become sick and tired of the panjandrums of pigskin punditry going on, as I once put it, like a minyan of Reb Tevyes chanting Knut Rockne, tra-DI-shon!; Four Horsemen, tra-DI-shon!; Golden Dome, tra-DI-shon!; subway alumni, tra-DI-shon!; ad nauseam. Much to my dismay as I sat at the Lion's Head bar that New Year's Day afternoon, tra-DI-shon was to prevail, as usual. The game started well for me, with the Gators holding a 16-7 lead at halftime. In the third quarter the Irish got a quick TD and field goal to go ahead 17-16, but Florida responded with another FG to regain the lead, 19-17. The final quarter proved really ugly. Florida's Arden Czyzewski notched his fifth three pointer to build the lead to 22-17. Then the ND offense went to work, propelled by the running of Jerome Bettis, later to become one of the NFL's leading rushers and gain the nickname "The Bus." His two quick TDs, one followed by a two point conversion, put the Irish ahead 32-22. Florida scored again on a Matthews to Harrison Houston pass; a failed conversion made it 32-28. But Bettis went back to work, breaking loose for a 39 yard scoring run that iced the game at 39-28 with less than two minutes left. I chugged what was left of the last of a series of beers I'd had during the game, paid my tab, and left before the post-game commentators could break into their Tevye dance.* Some time after that I offered Peter Demmerle (photo) my grudging congratulations.
I had known Pete, a rising star at LeBoeuf, Lamb, my law firm alma mater, for several years. I knew he had played football at Notre Dame, and would occasionally make friendly wagers with him on games in which I thought the Irish might be upset. He always won. In 1989 undefeated Notre Dame and West Virginia teams were slated to play for the national championship at the Fiesta Bowl. I offered to bet on the Mountaineers; Pete's response was, "You really want those guys to win? How about if they do I beat you up?" I was saved by a 34-21 Irish victory.
Our conversations weren't always about football. We both worked in the same area of law: insurance transactional and regulatory matters. Pete was instrumental in planning the restructuring of the Lloyd's of London insurance market in the 1990s.
One day in 1999 or 2000 I ran into Pete on a Midtown street around noontime, and stopped to chat. I noticed that his speech seemed slurred. From another friend I learned that he had been diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, "ALS" or "Lou Gherig's disease." He died in 2007, leaving a wife and four daughters. During his final years, he supported and advocated ALS research.
While I knew Pete had played at Notre Dame, I knew nothing about his career there, since I never followed the team except when they were playing someone I hoped might beat them. I once asked him what position he played; he said he was a pass receiver. Since nothing was said about an NFL career, which would have to had been quite brief considering his having spent three years in law school, then gone through the lengthy apprenticeship of being a law firm associate before being made a partner, I guessed he was a second stringer who spent much of his college career warming the bench. I was wrong.
On December 9 The New York Times sports section included an article by Bill Pennington, "Culture Clash,", about the meeting between the Notre Dame and Alabama football teams, in the 1973 Sugar Bowlthat decided what was then sometimes called the "mythical" national college football championship. Both the Irish and the Crimson Tide were undefeated in regular season play, but 'Bama had the number one ranking going into the bowls. The Tide, as was customary for the Southeastern Conference champion, accepted a bid to play in the Sugar Bowl, in New Orleans. Paul "Bear" Bryant, 'Bama's by then legendary coach, said he wanted Notre Dame to be their opponent. As Pennington puts it:
Thirty-nine years ago, there was a college football national championship game arranged not by computer rankings or a rubric of poll results like this season's Alabama-Notre Dame matchup for the Bowl Championship Series title, but by the kind of primitive challenge heard in a sandlot.
The game had historic dimensions. It was the first meeting of two of college football's dominant teams, and it had the north versus south angle. Despite this, I have no memory of it. I may or may not have watched. I didn't have any rooting interest, as I disliked both teams, Notre Dame for the reasons given above, and Alabama because they were a frequent nemesis of the Florida Gators. Nor was I a fan of the stern, authoritarian Bear Bryant, although I did get a chuckle from one of the several motivational signs he was said to have posted in the training room: "A moral victory is like kissing your sister." Having no sister, I could only use my imagination.
If I did miss the game, I missed a good one. Indeed, it's hard to fathom how I could have forgotten it if I did see it. If you have six minutes to watch the highlights clip above, you'll see what an important part Pete Demmerle played in Notre Dame's victory, with his name being called twice for important receptions, one for a two point conversion.
Doing research for this post, I learned why Pete didn't have a successful NFL career, despite having been a college All-American. The championship Sugar Bowl game was during his junior year. The following year, Alabama and Notre Dame met again, though not with a national championship at stake, in the Gator Bowl. During that game, Pete suffered a knee injury that, while not severe enough to preclude his playing again, was sufficient to drop him to being a thirteenth round draft choice. He chose law school instead.
So, on the night of Monday, January 7, I will be watching the BCS championship game, once again pitting Alabama against Notre Dame. This time, with apologies to my friends from the Heart of Dixie, I'll be backing the guys in the gold helmets, thinking (maybe even yelling) "Win one for Pete!" Maybe I'll even discover my inner Tevye.
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*This brings to mind Super Bowl III, which I watched in the room of my law school classmate, the late Michael Francis Vincent Peter Vaccaro, owner of the only TV on my dorm floor. The moment the game ended, Mike jumped up and turned off the TV. Asked why, he said, "I couldn't stand to hear Howard Cosell say, 'Broadway Joe Namath, the New York Jets, and the American Football League all came of age today.'"
I don't think Joe Paterno, who died today at 85, will have the fate Shakespeare's Antony described in Juluis Caesar, Act 3, scene ii: "The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interred with their bones". The evil of which Paterno was accused so near the end of his life was a sin of omission, but one that may have had very bad consequences. Fellow blogger Mark Koltko-Rivera, writing at the time the scandal had just broken and before Paterno was fired as Penn State's football coach, made a case, on both consequentialist and deontological (if, indeed, there is a real difference between the two) grounds, for firing Paterno immediately, thereby denying him a "last hurrah" at the Nittany Lions' then forthcoming end-of-season game.
Joe Paterno was a native of my now beloved adopted home, Brooklyn. He coached at a university near where my mother was born and raised and where I was born, whose teams I rooted for whenever they weren't playing against Florida or Florida State. I believed, and still believe, in his reputation as a good coach, not only in the sense of being a winning coach, but one who inspired respect and love from his players while instilling or reinforcing in them ideals of good conduct and devotion to learning, as well as to football. I don't think this reputation will "be interred with [his] bones", nor should it. The "evil" will also be remembered, and should serve to caution others who find themselves in a situation similar to that in which Paterno found himself when confronted with the information he was given.
My alma mater must have been quite the party scene last night, as its football team upset the highly favored, nationally ranked Fighting Irish of Notre Dame. I expected the Bulls to give the Irish a good fight, but years of watching upstart teams appear to have the South Bend boys on the ropes, only for Notre Dame to bounce off, come back swinging, and prevail in the final seconds, clouded my hope for an upset. I wasn't surprised to see the Bulls take an early lead, but was that the Irish failed to score in the first half. Still, a 16-0 halftime lead would be easily surmountable.
When halftime turned into a two hour weather delay, I felt sure that Notre Dame would use the extra time to make the adjustments they needed to overcome their numerous first half mistakes and to circumvent the South Florida defense. Their "d" had done well so far; the Bulls' scores had come on a fumble return and three field goals. The Irish did come back, with a new quarterback, scoring a TD halfway through the third quarter. Early in the fourth, the Bulls answered with their first TD scored by the offense. ND then scored again, and tried a two point conversion, which failed despite a penalty against USF on the first attempt. So the score was 23-13 with about four minutes left on the game clock when another weather emergency was declared and the teams left the field.
Horrid visions filled my head: the Irish come back with a quick TD, get the two point conversion, succeed with an onside kick, get within field goal range, and win as the final seconds tick down. As it was, when the second storm passed, ND did get another TD, settled for the safe one extra point, then tried an onside kick, which the Bulls recovered and ran out the clock for a 23-20 win. For once, in my experience, luck was not with the Irish.
As a USF alum, I should be elated by this victory. I am glad they were able to beat yet another (they have, in past seasons, beaten Auburn, Florida State, Miami, West Virginia twice, and Louisville when they were ranked tenth in the AP poll) highly regarded team. But the argument can be made, and undoubtedly has been by some pundits, that South Florida didn't win this game so much as Notre Dame lost it. The Bulls, not even among the "others receiving votes" in the preseason AP poll, will probably be ranked somewhere between 20th and 25th in the coming week's poll. Wins over their next three opponents--Ball State, Florida A&M, and Texas-El Paso--are unlikely to improve their standing much, while a loss to any of them will drop them off the chart. Their real test begins September 29, when they begin their round of Big East Conference games at Pittsburgh. Historically, while the Bulls have had great success outside their conference, they've had great difficulty with Pitt, Connecticut, Cincinnati, and Rutgers, all of which they play in that order this year, all on the road except Cincy, which they've scheduled for Homecoming on October 22 (see Bulls schedule here).
Is this the Year of the Bull? I used to subscribe to the conventional wisdom that there would never be a Year of the Gator, and was proved wrong. I like being wrong about these things.
Update: My prediction about South Florida's AP poll ranking was on the money. They're number 22 this week. What I didn't expect was for Notre Dame to fall out of the top 25.
The South Florida Bulls took an early lead, then withstood a fourth quarter rally by the favored Clemson Tigers to win the Meineke Car Care Bowl, 31-26. New coach Skip Holtz (photo from gousfbulls.com) claims an 8-5 record for his first season in Tampa. Nice work, Coach.
This was USF's first bowl win over a team from a BCS conference (they lost to Pac-10 team Oregon in the 2005 Sun Bowl, 51-26). They have now made six consecutive bowl appearances, with a record of 4-2. This was the fifth consecutive season in which they won at least eight games.
My alma mater has a way of pleasantly surprising me on the gridiron, as the South Florida Bulls did Saturday with their 23-20 overtime victory, at Miami, (the AP story includes the interesting factoid that the Bulls have never lost in overtime) over a demoralized Hurricane team whose coach was fired shortly after the game. Miami was 7-4 going into the game, and regarded well enough to have been ranked in the AP top 25 two times this season. Next Saturday, the Bulls have a home game against the Connecticut Huskies who, at 7-4, aren't ranked, but could still get a BCS bid by beating USF. The Bulls, also at 7-4, could likewise get a major bowl bid if they win.
In the other major intra-Florida game, Florida State beat Florida for the first time in seven tries. I had expected the Gators, who are having a miserable season, especially by their recent standards, to play spoiler, but they didn't.
I have friends on both sides of the Iron Bowl, so I had no favorite, but it proved to be a great game to watch.
I was pleased to see Boise State booted from the ranks of the unbeaten, if only because I can't forgive Idaho for giving us Sarah Palin. It was nice to see the job done by Nevada, a state that had the good sense not to send Sharron Angle to the Senate.
Texas Christian is joining the Big East, a move that's about as geographically logical as, say, Nebraska joining the SEC or Minnesota the Pac 10. Nowadays, though, it's all about getting that automatic BCS bid. I look forward to the first Bulls versus Horned Frogs game.
Once again, I missed The Game. Only effete Eastern liberal elitists like me call it The Game. (Wait a minute: I've usually thought of Florida/FSU as The Game.* Oh, well; please don't tell any of my friends in The New England Society in the City of Brooklyn.) I was tempted by an e-mailed invitation to watch it at the Harvard Club of New York City, and thought of going there, drinking beer, and live blogging it on my BlackBerry just as I did the Florida/Georgia game from the Tapper Pub in South-by-God Tampa last year. But this pleasant prospect was chilled by the vision of some broomstick-up-the-arse type coming to me and saying, "Excuse me, sir, but the use of personal communication devices on Club premises is prohibited."
Anyway, this year's version of The Game wasn't quite the cliffhanger last year's was. The first half was all Yale, but after the bands did their thing, ol' Mo (as the pundits love to say), perhaps having liked Harvard's halftime show better, went over to the Crimson side and stayed there until the final score was Harvard 28, Yale 21.
While this will leave Cantab fans happy with the season as a whole, Harvard failed to win the Ivy crown many pundits had predicted it would. Thomas Kaplan of the Times proved prescient in picking Penn.
Meanwhile, in the world of what most of you call real college football, Miami got thrashed by Virginia Tech, and was thereby banished from the AP top 25 for the second time this year. But Florida State's drubbing of Maryland put them back in the rankings at 22nd, thereby confirming my theory that it's become a fundamental law of nature, on par with f=ma, or Bristol Palin is a lousy dancer who nevertheless gets lots of votes, that at least one team from the State of Florida must be in the top 25 at all times.
My USF Bulls had their usual troubles with Pitt, and next week face the humiliated Hurricanes. I fear it won't be pretty; nevertheless, USF is assured of a winning season under new coach Skip Holtz.
Can anyone beat Boise State? I'm rooting for Nevada.
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*By Florida standards, this marks me as hopelessly nouveau. If I were really old school, Florida/Georgia would be The Game.
On Sunday there was an epic battle of the beatens, with the Buffalo Bills, winless in eight starts going into the game, hosting the 2-6 Detroit Lions, who hadn't won a road game in 24 tries. Both teams were playing with backup quarterbacks, having lost their starters to early season injuries. The game was played on a chilly, rainy western New York day, and culminated in a 14-12 Bills win.
The Bills' QB for this, and for six previous games, was Harvard alum Ryan Fitzpatrick. Despite the six losses, Fitzpatrick played well enough that, going into the Detroit game, Forbes magazine rated him the NFL's best QB for the buck. Who said Harvard grads can't be cost-effective?
Fitzpatrick's success got me thinking: how many Ivy League players had made it into the NFL in recent years, defined for me as since I was in college, i.e. since the mid to late 1960s? As luck would have it, a quick Google search got me to the blog of someone who has listed all the Ivy players drafted by NFL teams from 1967 through this year. They number 81; more than I had expected. The majority of these players were seventh or later round picks, and most, I'm sure, never made the team rosters. Fitzpatrick was a seventh round pick by the Rams in 2005. He saw little action in two years in St. Louis, then went to Cincinnati, where he appeared in 13 games in the 2008-9 season, then to Buffalo, where he had ten appearances in 2009-10 and seven so far as a starter this season.
Over this period, only two Ivy players were first round picks. Calvin Hill, from Yale's great 1968 team, is the only Ivy grad to have achieved stardom of those drafted during these 43 years. He was the first Dallas Cowboy running back to gain over 1,000 yards in a season (1972), a feat he repeated in the following season. (One of Hill's predecessors as an Eli running back, Chuck "the Truck" Mercein, was drafted by the Giants in 1965 and had an undistinguished career except for his heroics as a Green Bay Packer in the 1967 "Ice Bowl" NFL championship game.) The other was Columbia QB Marty Domres, taken in the first round of the 1969 draft by the Chargers, but never a great success with them or, subsequently, with the Colts, 49ers or Jets.
One second round pick, Cornell RB Ed Marinaro, taken by the Vikings in the 1972 draft, achieved at least minor stardom in the world of film and TV after six lackluster seasons in the NFL. You can see him as Coach Marty Daniels on Blue Mountain State.
On other football matters, this must be the first time in I don't know how long that Florida has not been in the AP college football top 25. The Gators dropped off thanks to a loss to former coach Steve Spurrier's South Carolina Gamecocks. The Central Florida Knights were knocked out of their brief first appearance in the rankings by a loss to Southern Mississippi, which led me to think this would be the first time in God knows how long that no team from the State of Florida was in the top 25. However, the Miami Hurricanes snuck back in at 24th on the wings of a 35-10 thrashing of Georgia Tech. My South Florida Bulls, 6-3 under their new coach, Skip Holtz, get a shot at the 'Canes on the 27th, but first must face the always-tough Pitt Panthers.
The Harvard Crimson are the consensus favorites to win the Ivy crown this year, though the New York Times' Thomas Kaplan likes Penn's prospects. Do I care? Last year I mused about the fine points of Ivy football, as opposed to we-need-new-machines-for-the-training-room-so-let's-fire-the-philosophy-department football. But for which Ivy team would I root? For the reason given in the post to which I linked above, Harvard is out of the question. Penn is a possibility; after all, I'm a Keystone State native. If I chose based on my present location, it would be Columbia. I believe the Lions actually had a winning season five or six years ago. Backing them would be in character with my sports masochism: see under Mets, New York.
Anyway, I have my undergraduate alma mater, South Florida, to root for now. When I was a student (1964-67), President John Allen's policy was to allow only "participant-oriented athletics", which, I suppose, meant anything not likely to draw a crowd. It was huge when, in 1971 (after Allen's retirement), they got into basketball. Football didn't happen until 1997, initially as an independent in what was then called the NCAA's Division 1AA. The Bulls are now a BCS team, playing in the Big East Conference. They have a fairly impressive record, with only two losing seasons (1997 and 2004) and one break-even (2005), and bowl appearances every year since joining the Big East (their bowl record is 3-2; last year, they beat Northern Illinois 27-3 at the International Bowl, in Toronto). This year, they have a new coach, Skip Holz, who had a creditable record at East Carolina, and has impeccable coaching DNA. For the first time in several years, the Bulls didn't figure in the pre-season rankings (though they were among the "others receiving votes" in the USA Today coaches' poll, no doubt reflecting admiration for the Holz brand). They opened with a 59-14 trouncing of the Stony Brook Seawolves. It was news to me that Stony Brook, a unit of the State University of New York system located about forty miles from my home, has a football team. I was doubly surprised to learn that they play in the Big South Conference, along with teams like Charleston Southern, Coastal Carolina, and VMI. (Then, again, the University of Richmond used to be part of something called the Yankee Conference, which must have had Robert E. Lee spinning in his grave.)
This coming Saturday, South Florida has its first ever game against the Florida Gators, currently ranked fourth in the AP and third in the USA Today poll. The Bulls have a history of pulling off big upsets: in 2007, they beat Auburn and West Virginia when both were ranked in the AP top 25, and last year they unhorsed the Florida State Seminoles. Florida's season got off to a slow start Saturday as they defeated Miami University of Ohio by the closer than expected score of 34-12, in a game characterized by sloppy offensive play. I see this as bad news for the Bulls, as Gator coach Urban Meyer will crack the whip and the players will be motivated to make up for a poor showing in their opener. I used to be good at predicting the Gators' fortunes from game to game, but lately I've lost my touch. Last year, I thought they would lose to arch-rival Georgia, and was happy to see that prediction come a cropper. Nevertheless, I'll go out on the limb again and predict Florida 45, South Florida 17.
I'll end this piece on a sad note, with a farewell to yet another of my Lion's Head companions of yore, the sportswriter Vic Ziegel. I enjoyed many a chat with Vic at the Head's bar, mostly about baseball back in the days when the Dodgers were still in Brooklyn and the Giants inhabited Coogan's Bluff. College football wasn't Vic's game. When I mentioned it to him once, he shrugged and said, "Well, you've got Notre Dame, Michigan, Southern Cal...what else?" Another time, I remarked on the fact that every profile of a quarterback I had read in recent memory somewhere included the words, "his profound Christian faith". This led me to ask Vic if the great Chicago Bears quarterback of the 1940s, Sid Luckman, was Jewish. "Yes, he is" Vic answered, "I just saw him last week. Looks great." He also told me that Luckman was a Brooklyn native and played college ball at Columbia.
Goodbye, Vic. I'll miss you.
Update: Unfortunately, my prognostication for Florida/USF was pretty accurate.
I've never been much of an NFL fan. As I've explained before, I came of sports fan age in Florida long before there were Bucs or Jaguars, or even Dolphins. Back in the 1950s and '60s, the college game was the Real Deal. I took an occasional interest in pro ball; for a while, I was a fan of the Baltimore Colts because my dad and I had watched their star running back, Lenny Moore, when he played for the Eglin Air Force Base Eagles. (For a time, I thought the horseshoe design on the Colts' helmet was a "U" for Unitas.) Still, I was always more interested in the fortunes of the Florida Gators and Florida State Seminoles. Having no connection to either school, I rooted for both, but usually rooted for State when they played Florida because of my weakness for underdogs. This later changed when Bobby Bowden built the 'Noles into a superpower; my algorithm then was to back whichever team had the best shot at post-season glory.
After moving to New York, and having read Fred Exley'sA Fan's Notes, I declared myself a Giants fan. In 1976, however, the Tampa Bay Bucs came on the scene, tempting me with old hometown loyalty. I went to the Lion's Head to watch them play the Giants, who had just forsaken the City to play in their new stadium in the New Jersey meadowlands. I arrived, checked the score on the TV, and said to Tommy the bartender, "Looks like my home town team isn't doing so hot." "Yeah," Tommy said, "Jersey's beating 'em."
After that, my interest in baseball began to eclipse that in football, though I still followed the college game. I would watch the Super Bowl, usually rooting for whichever team was rated the underdog. I did root for the Giants in 1986, when they beat the Broncos in Super Bowl XXI. However, in 1990, when they played the Bills in XXV, I secretly (since I watched the game at the apartment of a Giants fan) rooted for Buffalo because of their underdog status and my (some would say perverse) liking for the Queen City of the Niagara Frontier.
This year I was impressed by the Saints, and thought it would be a good thing for poor New Orleans, another city I love, to get a championship. Then along came the Jets, rising from mid-season near disaster to defeat the Colts, I team I have loathed since Robert Irsay deliberately sabotaged the franchise in Baltimore, then shipped the team's equipment out of town under cover of night. I thought the Bengals would prove the Jets' nemesis, but against all conventional wisdom they won two games from them, both decisively. It seemed too much to hope they could pull off a fourth miracle, and it was.
Had the Vikings won the NFC crown, I'd have sat out this year's Super Bowl, but Brees and company came through, so I'll cast my lot with them.
Maybe I should, though. When I was in my first year of law school, I went to a couple of Harvard football games. South Florida, my undergraduate alma mater didn't have football back then, so it was a new experience for me to be able to take a Saturday afternoon off, walk a short distance, and catch some gridiron action. I cheered for the Crimson, to no avail on either occasion, as I saw them defeated, first by Dartmouth, who edged them 23-21 for their first loss of the season after four wins, then by a Princeton team that demolished them 45-6 using the single wing offense, which was considered archaic even in 1967. Later, I read a piece in the law school newspaper that instructed 1Ls like me about a point of etiquette: it is uncool, as a law student, to root for Harvard athletic teams unless you are a graduate of that college located a block down Mass Ave. There was no exculpatory provision for having gone to a college that allowed only "participant oriented sports".
So, I went back to following the fortunes of Florida and Florida State, though news of either was hard to get in the Boston area. I remember being surprised by a late night jock on one of the local radio stations saying, "Well, I've got to hand it to my old Florida State team. They beat Florida today." I did get caught up in the celebration of Harvard's 1968 "victory" (actually a 29-29 tie--this was before overtime was introduced to college football) over a Yale team that had Brian Dowling, model for Doonesbury's "BD", at quarterback and Calvin Hill, later a running back for the Dallas Cowboys, and which, going into The Game, was ranked tenth in the nation in the AP poll. After leaving Cambridge, though, I scarcely gave Harvard football a thought.
That is, until I read this account of this year's Harvard-Yale game. It made me wish I could have been in the Yale Bowl for this nail-biter with a finish in doubt until the end, unlike today's Alabama-Auburn game, which was closer than anyone (except Auburn's coach, players and fans) expected, and featured some razzle-dazzle by Auburn early on, but in which I knew that other Crimson (the Tide) would prevail. (Update: See Pete Thamel's analysis in today's New York Times.)
Scanning the comments on the Harvard Magazine article, I found this by my friend and neighbor Bronson Binger:
My first cousin once removed, who graduated from Harvard around 1918, used to say that the Harvard-Yale game was called “The Game” because it was held to decide the amateur championship of the US.
I think that may be more true now than it was in 1918, because much of college football has become distinctly non-amateur. The BCS teams are, in effect, a minor league for the NFL, from which the most promising players are often taken before their college careers are done. Coaches, too, often rise from the BCS schools to the pros (though, unlike players, they may go in the opposite direction as well). I've never been a great fan of the concept of amateurism in athletics, which has historically been used to keep poor people from competing. Still, it's refreshing to see a college game in which the players can all be called "student athletes" without a knowing smirk, and where, perhaps, the game is played with a bit more brio because it's regarded as a game, not a career move.
For the First Time Ever in History, Georgia wears black helmets. Dawgs won toss, chose to kick. Gators promptly marched to TD.
On their first possession, Georgia can't buy a thrill, but get a good punt to put Gators deep.
Florida receiver Brandon James could maybe double as a juggler--nice try.
Tebow throws a strke to Rodney Cooper, his roomie, for another TD. 14-0 Gators, Still 1st Q.
First play of second possession, Georgia penalized for false start. Gator LB Brandon Spikes (how many Florida players are named for this Tampa suburb?) has great dreads.
End of 1Q. Georgia passing game starting to click.
Start of 2Q. Georgia march stalled, but Dawgs get on board with a FG.
Second is all Georgia so far, as they get a pretty TD on a pass by QB Cox over the middle.
Gator offense gets stuffed, but Sturgis notches 56 yard FG.
Nice Georgia run nullified by holding, but Urban Meyer still looks as if his patience is sorely tried.
A Dawg defender also has impressive dreads, so long I can't read the name on his jersey.
Tebow scores on a dive play, passes Herschel Walker for SEC rushing TD record. 24-10 Gators.
Cox sacked. Shades of Watergate! Halftime.
Watching halftime report. Northwestern has a QB named Kafka. Wonder if he's subjected to inexplicable penalties.
Start of second half. A.J. Jones hits Georgia QB Cox, ball goes up and Jones grabs it for interception. Next play produces another Tebow rushing TD.
Georgia drives and gets a TD on a strike from Cox to a receiver with magnificent dreads. 31-17 Gators.
At this point, I had to forsake the Tapper when a call on my cell phone brought the unexpected but welcome news that my mother was about to be discharged from the hospital and sent to a skilled nursing and rehabilitation facility. Earlier in the day I had been told that, for administrative reasons, this wouldn't happen until Monday.
With Mom safely and comfortably in her new place, I stole a glance at the game's final minute on the activities room TV. From the highlights, I gather that after I stopped watching Florida got another FG, then the aforementioned Brandon Spikes scored on an interception to make the final score Gators 41, Dawgs 17. Apparently, having knock-'em-dead dreads was very important in this game.
So, my latest fearless prediction about the Gators, just like my previous one, has proved wrong. Once again, I'm glad it did.
My skepticism about my alma mater, South Florida, also was unfounded, as they rebounded from their drubbing by Pitt to defeat the 20th ranked West Virginia Mountaineers, 30-19.
Addendum: Tebow has a thing about putting scriptural citations in the little black anti-glare patches on his cheekbones. For the Georgia game it was Phil. 11-something (I never could discern the verse number). From Georgia's point of view, however, it probably should have been Hebrews 13:8.
Second addendum: Here's a photo of the Tapper's proprietor, and my high school friend, Kay Groetsch, tending the bar:
As you can see from Kay's welcoming smile, the Tapper is a friendly place. If you find yourself on Dale Mabry Highway (once designated the ugliest stretch of road in the U.S.) in the vicinity of Britton Plaza, a strip mall that has been around for about fifty years and should probably be on the National Register of Historic Places, and feel like having a brew or two, by all means drop in.
The South Florida Bulls, designated gladiators of my alma mater, appear to be reiterating a familiar process, i.e. start hot, get a big upset victory, lose a tough one, then fall to pieces. Have the sports gods cursed me by making me both a Mets and Bulls fan?
Meanwhile, the Florida Gators, my arch-loyalty from the days before USF football existed, managed to keep the longest winning streak in college ball going with a victory over Mississippi State. Last week, I wrote that this game had upset potential, and it was something of a struggle for the Gators, though not as much as their previous game against Arkansas. Next Saturday, though, Florida faces a different set of Bulldogs: their arch-rival Georgia. Here is my fearless prediction: Dawgs over Gators, in a close one. (Note, however, that my last fearless prediction came a cropper.)
I've held back on my usual commentary on college football this season, waiting for the shoes to drop. As of now, one has, but the other hasn't. The one that has is that my alma mater, South Florida, has continued its pattern of starting hot, pulling off a stunning upset (this year of Florida State), getting nationally ranked, then losing. This year's nemesis is Cincinnati, which comes out of the game still unbeaten and ranked fifth in both the AP poll and the BCS. It wasn't an instance of the Bulls getting the vapors because of their previous week's ranking of 21st in the AP poll and being on national TV; Cincy was just a better team. What remains to be seen is whether USF can prove resilient instead of going into a funk, as they have after their first loss in the past two seasons. It won't be easy: their next game is away against Pitt, 6-1 and 20th in both AP and BCS, after which they come home to face West Virginia, 5-1, 22nd in AP and 23rd in BCS.
The shoe that didn't drop, at least not yet, was Florida losing to an unranked team, as they did last year to Ole Miss, though the Gators rebounded from that and went on to win the SEC and the BCS championship. While they dodged disaster in the Arkansas game, their next two have, in my view, high upset potential. Next Saturday the visit Mississippi State, which has upset their applecart in the past. A week after that, they face Ur-rival Georgia which, though thrice beaten and unranked, will be hungry for revenge after a string of losses and well-rested, having this weekend off.
They've won the BCS title for the second time in three years, again holding a team many pundits (though this time not the bettors) thought an unstoppable scoring machine to a mere two TDs. Is this enough to silence that portion of the commentatoriate that, every year, finds some reason to declare SEC teams inferior to the Big 10, Pac 10, Big 12, whatever is the flavor of the moment? Probably not.
But, for me, the Gators have committed the unforgivable transgression: they're no longer underdogs.
I was tempted to predict that the Tide would roll over Florida in the SEC championship game this weekend, but with fresh memory of my last prognostication failure, I was fortunate by being reticent. Now I feel the same temptation concerning the BCS championship game against Oklahoma, a team I've never much liked. But I had the same misgivings concerning the Gators in their championship matchup with Ohio State a couple of years ago, and was proved wrong. I used to have an uncanny sense of when Florida was going to go flat, but they seem to have lost their once unfailing ability to break their fans' hearts. Even their one loss this season, to Ole Miss, seems less embarassing now that the Rebels have cracked the top 25 in the BCS rankings.
The Gators are number one and the Sooners second in the AP poll, while their positions are reversed in the USA Today coaches' poll. Does this mean that Bob Stoops is now more popular with fellow coaches, or Urban Meyer less so?
Why? The Gators are 10-1, second in the BCS ranking, and expected both to win the SEC and play Texas for the national championship. The 'Noles are 8-3, ranked 23rd in the AP poll, and could play in a BCS bowl provided they win the ACC championship. Trust me, this situation is custom-made for an upset. Look for State to take an early lead, then find ways to contain Harvin and disorient Tebow long enough to withstand a late Gator rally.
Shame-faced 11/29 update: It looks like I've lost my touch. I used to be able to see clearly when a Gator upset was coming, and when it wasn't.
Just as I wrote last week that I feared, my South Florida Bulls were eviscerated by the Pittsburgh Panthers. The Bulls, as I've written before, have enough Gator DNA that there always comes a time, fairly early in the season, when they succumb to cockiness and get blindsided by a team they're supposed to beat.
Maybe I'm just imagining it: I haven't looked back at what happened in previous seasons, but I have this feeling that around the fifth week, sometime on the cusp of September/October, there's this weekend when lots of highly ranked teams get their comeuppance. Here's who got theirs this weekend:
Number one, USC, falling to unranked Oregon State 27-21 on Thursday night, as previously reported here.
Number three, Georgia, losing to number eight, Alabama, 41-30.
Number four, Florida, embarassed by unranked Ole Miss, 31-30. I kind of expected this after the Gators' romp over Tennessee last week. This seems to be the time every season at which their heads swell so much they can barely fit in their helmets.
Number nine, Wisconsin, edged by unranked Michigan, 27-25.
Number sixteen, Wake Forest, upended by unranked Navy, 24-16. Deacons coach Jim Grobe had the following enlightening observation about his team's loss: "I think the ability to not throw the football without turning the ball over was what hurt us today."
Number twenty, Clemson, bested by unranked Maryland, 20-17. The Terps established themselves as giant killers a couple of weeks ago by upsetting California.
Number 24, East Carolina, trounced by unranked Houston, 41-24. Pirates sunk twice in a row, so goodbye to top 25 and a Cinderella season.
Non-upset of the day: my South Florida Bullscrushed North Carolina State, 41-10. Perpetual fusspot that I am, I worry about Pitt next week.
9/29 update: AP and USA Today polls both have South Florida ranked tenth. All the more reason to worry about Pitt next Saturday. Then, again, they got all the way to number two last year before losing to Rutgers. Speaking of the Big East, Connecticut has just cracked the top 25, on the strength of victories over Hofstra, Temple, Virginia, Baylor, and Louisville.
Have I managed to get this far into the season without mentioning the Nittany Lions? They're 5-0 and ranked sixth. Hope I didn't curse them by mentioning this.
Once again, the pundits have to eat crow for declaring Southern Cal a presumptive national champ early in the season. Last year it was the Stanford Cardinal who pulled off the big upset. This time it was Oregon State, by a score of 27-21. There's cacophony in Corvallis tonight.
Update: My Sitemeter tells me that someone in Seattle hit on this post by doing a Google search for "Beavers contain Trojans". By coincidence, one of my favorite perhaps unintentionally raunchy headlines came from the Seattle area. This was told to me at the bar of the Lion's Head by a friend who had worked as a journalist in Seattle before moving to New York. It concerned the outcome of a congressional race between incumbent Democrat Norm Dicks and a Republican named Beaver in a mostly suburban district south of the city. The morning after the election, the paper proclaimed: "Dicks Drills Beaver in Bedroom Community Race."
And, while we're on that subject, Mike McLaughlin of The Brooklyn Paper recently came up with this. Considering his present state of mind, I don't think it was unintentional.
