Tuesday Afternoon Linebacker

The Official Football Teams of TALB both played against bird-based teams this week, leading to the oh so witty “cock fight” theme of the post. Falcons I can understand, they are considered pretty fierce birds. But a Gamecock? In other words, the University of South Carolina Fighting Chickens. I wonder if they’ve ever played against the Univeristy of Delaware.

Cock and Roll
It was tough to watch the first quarter. Then it got much better. Six touchdowns from Leak is a pretty good day, don’t you think? The defense played well enough in the middle of the game to allow for the blow out. Hopefully we can take some of this momentum into next week’s collision with the hated Seminoles.

On another note, the announcing crew was terrible. Whenever they mentioned the “Zook Situation” they acted as if they guy had won two national championships and was only fired because he lost to lowly Mississippi State. I know that Bill Curry is disgruntled about how his coaching career turned out, but he needs to stop blaming everyone but the coach for a team’s problems.

Dirty Birdies
We got beat. But not until the second half. The first quarter was kind of bad. But the second and third turned out pretty well. The Bucs played a good half of a game. The other half, not so much. Things need to change at One Buc. Either we need to commit to this current offensive line and work on making it better, or blow it up and start over. With the lore lun of success that this team had, we were bound to encounter some rebuilding years. It happens, get used to it. This team is almost good enough right now to make a run. But there are a few things missing (the above mentioned o-line, more defensive help, kicker) that once resolved will put the Bucs on top again soon. And with this year’s remaining schedule, it’s not unreasonable to think the Bucs can’t finish 8-8 or even 9-7. And with the state of the NFC, 9-7 might be Wild Card worthy.

Avast Matey
Ironically, the East Carolina Pirates were the Bulls’ opponent this past weekend. And they performed about as well as the normal pirates who play at Ray Jay (har har). For the first time that I’ve seen, the Bulls actually put it all together in all phases of the game. They managed a 41-17 drubbing of the Pirates. I’m a little disappointed that this was the last game that we had tickets for. But the Professor and the Twins can look forward to the Memphis and Pittsburgh games upcoming. And for the Memphis game they’ll get to use the flat side of the grill for bacon and eggs. I hear that Mimosas and Bloody Mary’s are good drinks for the morning.

My Ass Got Clowned
Like the Buccaneers, my playoff hopes were hanging on this week’s outcome. Our league has an 8 team playoff and I went into the week in 9th place. In fact, I’m still there after this week’s loss to Prof. Savage. With four weeks remaining until the playoffs and the week 1 tie only puts me a half game out. And Jason Witten at Dallas finally had the break out game everyone’s been promising. But with naughts from my QB (Harrington) and two of the wide outs, I was facing an uphill battle. Plummer’s back this week, so I should get off the schneid.

Lines Of Site
I frequent both Espn.com and Cnnsi.com for my sports news, with Sportsline a distant third. However I find myself going to ESPN less and less. ESPN has begun to put way too much crap on their site. The ads are intrusive and their little ESPN Motion sidebar sometimes take forever to load.

Stevie-O-Stevie
Spurrier has stated that he will not return to the NFL anytime soon. And that if he returned to coaching it would be at the college level. That should make Josh happy. ESPN is reporting that the aforementioned Gamecocks are possibly interested in Steve-o. I wonder if Steve would really take a job where he had to try and beat the Gators every year.

Poor Maurice
ESPN The Magazine has an interview with Maurice Clarett. Where he tells his sad story of how he was run out of Ohio State. Are we supposed to feel sorry for this man? He was given, by his own account, more perks that anyone could ever imagine receiving. Then when he and the school were caught, the lied. Then he got kicked out of school. And of course, he then embarked on his ill-advised attempt to enter the NFL. [more]

We Are The Champions (Sort Of)
In the effort to crown a Mythical National Champion of Division I-A college football many schemes have been devised. Of course the current method is the oft criticized BCS. My problem with the system is not the same one that many others have with it. My problem is that after each season the media puffs up some controversy about which team got left out that really should have been in the Mythical Championship Game. So in the off season that follows the great minds at the BCS then “tweak” the formulas to make is such that if it were enacted retroactively, the “wronged” team would be sent to it’s “proper” place in the bowl system. Which of course amounts to a whole pile of nothing. They don’t go back and play the games over with the newly calculated opponents.

With full knowledge that Division I-A college football will never resort to crowning a champion based on concrete on-field activities (like, I don’t know, winning your conference) the only way to do it is to come up with some kind of ranking system. And that system absolutely needs to take into account who you beat and by how many points you beat them. To start off, after a minimum number of games*, you rank every team in the nation based on their statistics. You’d create some kind of algorithm that takes in all of the offensive, defensive, and special teams stats (except the final score) and spits out a ranking, the Initial Ranking. With the Initial Rankings in place we can now move on to the Expected Outcomes. This component would be a chart of what to expect in a game between two teams. For example, if #4 plays #68 the Expected Outcome would be that #4 blows-out #68. Statistics would still be the core of the ranking system. But the EO would determine a bonus or penalty depending on the actual outcome. If #4 does kill #68 there would be no bonus to #4 and no penalty to #68. But if #4 wins by, say, 3 over #68 then a penalty is applied to #4 and a bonus to #68. And so on. It’s not perfect yet. But maybe if I can get some people to help me out this can get off the ground.

*I would propose that the threshold be around 3 games. And each team in a conference will need to have played at least one conference game as well. In the case of a team that may have played five games in the time it takes others to play their first three, only that team’s most recent three games would count toward their Initial Ranking.

Running Items
WTF?
This week’s BCS Top Ten features Utah (6), Boise State (9), and Louisville (10).

Breath Of A Salesman
Pepsi Holiday Spice. Why? Let’s take Pepsi (already wretched) and add spices. But the commercial with the elves trying to drive the truck is kind of funny.

Worst. Call. Ever.
SEC refs at it again. This is the same crew that “worked” the UF-Tennessee game earlier this year. And we know that they called a flawless game that time too…

Super Bowl XXXIX
Steelers vs. Eagles

Next Week: Further proof that Seminoles need help spelling.