If you’re wondering why I wasn’t live-blogging or live-tweeting the BCS selections Sunday evening, the above video is your answer. While the college football gods were conspiring to give us TCU vs. Boise State in the Tostitos Die-Cinderella-Die Bowl, Becky and I were busy hosting the 15th (give or take) Annual (more or less) Loy Family Christmas Lights Extravaganza. It’s… Read more »
Marty West, frequent blog commenter and die-hard Iowa fan, had more than just a Hawkeyes invite to the Orange Bowl to celebrate this weekend. Thanks to a win by Washington and a near-win by Nebraska, West edged out Phillip Price to capture the championship of the first annual Living Room Times College Football Pick ’em Contest by one point, 153-152…. Read more »
The BCS show was as predicted, and all the other bowl games have shaken out at this point, with one exception: the EagleBank Bowl has to wait for the result of the Army/Navy game next Saturday. If Army wins, the Black Knights will edge out the UCLA Bruins. Here’s the BCS setup: Championship: #1 Alabama vs #2 Texas Rose: #7… Read more »
Stewart Mandel writes: In another, 11th-hour BCS development, sources tell me the Fiesta Bowl committee took an unexpected turn in its deliberations this week and is now leaning heavily toward a matchup of the two undefeated mid-majors, TCU and Boise State. That would leave the Orange Bowl free to select Iowa or Penn State and send Cincinnati to the Sugar… Read more »
This afternoon, as I was driving home from work, I was listening to NPR’s “All Things Considered,” as per usual. They’d just finished up a story about Afghanistan or some such thing, when, out of the blue, host Melissa Block stated, as the lead-in to a new story: “Bob Dylan once called Liam Clancy ‘the best ballad singer I’ve ever… Read more »
Game recap here.
In her column today about President Obama’s speech on Afghanistan, Peggy Noonan makes an important observation — neither pro-war nor anti-war, IMHO, but simply true: Here we should think about and emblazon on the national memory the biggest lesson of the uses of American power circa 2001-09. The minute American troops are committed anywhere in the world, there are, immediately,… Read more »
I didn’t get to watch last night’s Gonzaga-Wazzu game — I had a lengthy choir practice — which is a bummer, because Andy Katz calls it “one of the best games” of a “classic night of hoops.” The Zags won, 74-69, rallying from a 13-point second-half deficit to improve their record to 6-1 and defend their #17 AP / #16… Read more »
Tomorrow night, Oregon hosts Oregon State in the annual “Civil War,” which is also the de facto Pac-10 championship game this year. The stakes could hardly be higher. The winner goes to the Rose Bowl to face Ohio State. The loser, if it’s Oregon, goes to the Holiday Bowl to face (probably) Nebraska, or, if it’s Oregon State, probably tumbles… Read more »
On Facebook yesterday, one of my law-school classmates made an observation about Charlie Weis’s then-imminent departure that I suspect will be heard in certain corners the sports media this week, as Weis’s firing is used to advance the evergreen storyline of Notre Dame’s fall from grace. (The only story the sports media likes better than “Notre Dame’s fall from grace”… Read more »