23.10.03
College Football: Today, I was buoyed. I heard people, such as Tim Brando, say that Tech will do well, and probably win, the Miami game, because it is a classic bounceback game, and that they aren't as bad as they showed last night. Now, I don't know if they were looking ahead. Whether they were or not, their heads were not in the game. West Virginia, as I noted, controlled both lines of scrimmage (West Va had more than 200 yards more on the ground than did the Hokies). Virginia Tech committed 12 penalties for 113 yards. Now, it may have been the fact (much like Ohio State a couple of weeks ago) that Va Tech hasn't faced a hostile crowd this year (no, Rutgers doesn't count), or it may have been the fact that Va Tech started to believe the press releases: that is, that they thought they could just walk in and win, or it could have been that Tech was looking ahead to 1 November. Doesn't matter. Now, I think that Virginia Tech will do better the rest of the year than they did against West Virginia. More to the point, if they can win out, they get into the BCS (they will, more than likely, have a higher rank than Miami if they beat them, and they'll have head-to-head on anyone except, assuming they win out, West Va), but not the Sugar Bowl. I'll amend that. If Va Tech wins out, and get a lot of help such as from the 6 or 7 teams in front of them (they need to lose) and the teams on their schedule (they need to win), then they have an outside shot of getting to N'Awlins. But, more likely, they'll go to the Orange Bowl to face the ACC champion (assuming that Florida State is left out of the Sugar Bowl). Someone posted, as a reply to a Sportsline article about BYU, that Virginia Tech will lose three more. Personally, if they're not careful, they can lose 4 more, plus whichever bowl game they get. Having said that, their sternest tests will be against Miami and at Pittsburgh. Miami themselves were very nearly beaten by West Virginia (which is a much better team than their 3-4 record, I think), and Pittsburgh has lost at Toledo and at home to Notre Dame. So the schedule, while perhaps daunting, isn't impossible. Personally, I think they'll lose one of the next two, but win the remaining games, and get into the Gator Bowl (most likely).
I've been meaning to post this for a while, but it kept slipping my mind. If I were serious, I would probably lament the costume, saying that it promotes the stereotypes and perhaps the disdain of women and the lifestyle. But, that's so much garbage. The costume probably isn't something that I'd wear (for a couple of years about a decade ago, I put on a suit, grabbed a briefcase, and went out as a businessman...not sure whether that speaks to my lack of creativity or my lack of faith in my creativity, but that's another discussion for another day), but it's hilarious, and if someone shows up at my door next week, I'd give a pimp extra "candy".
Bill Simmons, not satisfied with his rambling column written immediately after the game, posted this, and some letters. All very entertaining. But, since he's concerned about the fact that his column has been, so he says, "far too Boston-centric lately", one presumes that he'll make it far too NBA-centric. Ugh. Nothing kills a column like it being on the NBA. Oh well. Guess I have to deal.
Gregg Easterbrook, writer for the New Republic, and, to many, better known as Tuesday Morning Quarterback, was fired from ESPN.com for comments which were construed as insensitive toward Jews. He apologised (RyanNote: his apology contains the paragraph in which he makes the comments, and includes a link to the entire piece in which the offending paragraph originally appeared). I have thought about boycotting ESPN (which, considering that I haven't had cable in more than a year consists solely of boycotting their internet presence), because of their timidity as regards controversy. First they fire Rush Limbaugh for stating an opinion with which I agree: that Donovan McNabb is overrated, because the media wish to see a black quarterback succeed, and because the NFL has fostered this environment of "social concern". A writer from Philadelphia, writing in Slate Magazine, writes that Rush was right, comparing McNabb (unfavourably) to Brad Johnson, never known as a world beater (even if he did scalp the 'Skins 2 weeks ago). In any case, my point is that ESPN - or possibly its parent ABC, or ABC's parent Disney - is run by a bunch of scared weenies. They retreated from defending Limbaugh, and fired him quickly following his blog entry. Considering that I haven't supported ESPN's advertisers (with the occasional exceptions of Gatorade and Budweiser), I'll just use up their bandwidth (and, thus, eat up their dollars) by reading their stories. Some of their analysis is self-promoting, self-aggrandizing crap, but some is fairly cogent and penetrating.
Zuletzt: I left, perhaps, the most important item for last: The soldiers, sailors and Marines who died twenty years ago today were remembered in a ceremony at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. A sobering reminder that Bill Clinton was, in ignoring acts of terror (or acts of war) carried out by Islamofascists, merely following the precedent set by his predecessors - Ryan
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