Oh Well...
Mizzou lost. Very disappointing, but Mizzou fans know how to handle disappointment. Though some of us do handle it better than others.
I find it hard to be disappointed for very long when the Tigers have given me the best season of Mizzou football I've ever experienced. By the time they send Mizzou off to the completely unsexy Cotton Bowl tomorrow I'll be fine with it. When your team is simply outplayed there is nothing to say, except "Congratulations OU. Now who and when do we play next so I can focus on that?"
I would like to thank Pitt for upsetting W. Virginia so Mizzou doesn't get the blame for Ohio State in the BCS Championship as is being widely predicted. In fact, we now return to the days of yesteryear when the polls by anonymous writers and, supposedly coaches, but often actually the sports information director, decide who is "the best in college football." The speculation will be endless on sports talk on all media forums. Ohio State and someone else is the most common prediction, but I'd like to see the writers and "coaches" just sit down and pick the two teams they actually do think are "the best in college football." With no playoff to pick a real champion, why not? The votes could split so wildly that it borders on a random choice. Then perhaps people will realize that the BCS is built to do one thing: guarantee a #1 ranked team plays a #2 ranked team. That is all it does. It doesn't choose "the best two teams in college football" any more than the polls used to choose a "national champion" before the BCS began. The bowl system was seen as preventing #1 from #2 from playing one another as conferences were locked into certain bowls. So they created a #1 vs. #2 game and a system to declare who those teams are. By the way, I would write this even if Missouri had won tonight. I have witnesses to my views on this system.
Who would I pick? Based purely on what I'd like to see on Jan. 7th, I think I'd pick USC and either LSU or Georgia. I'd pick LSU if I knew their players would be healthy again, but right now they are really beat up. I don't want to watch Ohio State, Florida, Oklahoma, Kansas (PLEASE NO!) or Virginia Tech. So I'll take the healthy SEC team and the team that has gotten healthy and once again looks solid.
Who do I want Missouri to play in Dallas on New Year's Day? The chart on ESPN says "SEC 3/4" and SEC standings have Georgia 3rd and either Florida or Auburn 4th, but, again, actual standings aren't the point. The decision will be about who hasn't been picked by the BCS bowls and who the white guys in funny colored jackets from the Cotton Bowl think will make them the most money. I'd kind of like to play a Georgia or Florida and see where Mizzou stands versus two good teams from what is the top conference in the country.
And now I retire for the night and dreams of football glory for my university. Dreams that once again reside in the ephemeral world of REM sleep. At least until next year... Go Tigers!
posted by redbarb at 11:11 PM
4 Comments:
Glad you are back and posting again, even if it is all about football :)
Hope you don't have too much cold and snow...here it is has been unseasonably warm! Very weird.
Greetings!:
I would like to echo the sentiment of our mutual colleague, and, as hopefully you recall from last year, I do _NOT_ dislike the football talk!
Until I visited here a few days ago, I must confess to not having really known about the Tigers' success this season, nor, of course, that you are a Mizzou Alumna, though I am not exactly surprised, given your known-to-me loyalty to the Chiefs (by the bye, I have known that you call your University "Mizzou" for many years, but did not know how it is spelled until I read your posts, and thus wonder how this revised spelling came to be). Yet, before the Cotton Bowl, we wait to find out if your quarterback will receive college football's most prestigious award, and I wish him well toward that end, though again I know nothing about him and his qualifications! From what little I have heard, your Chiefs are not having the best of seasons, so it is good that you have something conceivably even more meaningful to cheer about! Maybe I should pull out an LP by the University of Michigan Band, which I received as a Christmas present in 1964, and play the Tigers' fight song from it some time between now and New Year's (hoping that you are not anti-Wolberine, thus not finding the tribute to your liking if you are)! _GO_ _TIGERS_!
As you might know, my favourite college team, the Midshipmen, have had a rather-wild season, losing a game or two they should have won early on, beating Notre Dame for the first time in 43 years, winning the highest-scoring regulation game in college history, over North Texas, again beating Army and Air Force, headed to their fifth straight bowl game, having one of the Nation's leading rushing attacks again while regretably having one of the worst of defenses, etc.! They will lose some key offensive players to graduation this coming May, and we Navy fans must _SINCERELY_ hope that, as players are sought to replace them, they can _SOMEHOW_ plug up those defensive holes as well! Knowing your attitude about the war (and even we conservatives cannot entirely ignore what you, and even a retired Army NCO I know, are saying, though _MAYBE_ things are _SLIGHTLY_ improving from our perspective of late), I hope you do not mind me crowing about Navy football here in what _COULD_ be called hostile? territory.
And those _DISCONCERTING_ Redskins. Your prediction about Mr. Campbell may be coming true to a degree, but all the turnovers, penalties, inconsistencies, and yes, injuries if you consider them relevant, are _NOT_ helping, and thus one wonders if the second Gibbs Era will end at the close of this season. Could it be, and my perception about this could be somewhat uninformed, that he is just being too gentle with them, though admittedly the opposite approach could have an equally-unproductive effect? What say you if you have followed them enough to comment and would care to do so? Since it made the national as well as our local news, I expect you know about the tragic death of Mr. Sean Taylor last week, and doubtless this has had its effect as well, though they seemingly should have beaten the Bills this past Sunday.
Now going off topic into your usual territory in this blog, you know that we are on virtual opposite ends of the political spectrum from one another, but, for what it is worth, I remain rather convinced that Senator Clinton will win the Democratic nomination due to her experience of a sort and name recognition, though my predecessor in these comments did not share that view when I last discussed it with her (I have been E-Mailing her this morning, so maybe I will ask her what she thinks now).
Pleased that this seems to find you well, and with best wishes,
J. V.
For what it's worth, you guys got totally hosed by the BCS. KU hasn't beaten anyone of note, and Missouri beat KU. I'm not sure how that gets Kansas a prime bowl slot.
_HAIL_ _TO_ _THE_ _REDSKINS_!, we _SOMEHOW_ got into the playoffs, and a fair amount of the credit for that presumably must go to Mr. Collins, though numerous others, Mr. Portis among them, played their own parts! The Sea Hawks have one more win than we, but I know nothing about them apart from that. I obviously hope we match up well against them!
Wishing you the best for 2008,
J. V.
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