TEN RANDOM THOUGHTS: UPPER MIDWESTERN ROAD TRIP EDITION

1. Given the splashes of bright yellow and khaki in the farm fields, along with many tree leaves turning silvery, I’m guessing we’re going to have an early fall this year. Today in particular you could almost smell football in the air. I love it.
2. Another great sight: seeing “SPEED LIMIT 70″ signs on I-35 in Iowa.
3. Am I the only person who’s caught on to the fact that Drew Rosenhaus did not negotiate Terrell Owens’ current contract and therefore isn’t getting paid for representing T.O. right now? Don’t you think it’s just possible that that fact might have something to do with Owens’ intransigence a couple weeks back?
4. When I grow up, I want to be a children’s musician. You don’t have to know anything other than “oomp-da, oomp-da” in a single key. Unless you’re the xylophone player. Then you’re called on to make some of the songs sound “wacky.” (Insider musician joke: How many children’s musicians does it take to change a light bulb? One, five, one, five . . .)
5. It’s definitely the second trimester when you wife comes out of the gas station with malted milk balls and a giant bag of Munchos.
6. After a few years of experience, I think I’ve finally come to the conclusion that I like everything on the menu at Culver’s except the hamburgers and custard. Both are just a little too effulgent for me. But dang, the Philly Ribeye hit the spot tonight.
7. Speaking of Culver’s, this trip brought two more semi-regrettable Culver’s marquee sightings: CARAMEL PECAN BBQ PORK was pretty funny, except I could see somebody on the Food Network making that. I won’t hold my breath waiting for a BOSTON CREME TURKEY BLT BASKET, though.
8. We saw no signs of Katrina in the upper Mississippi valley this afternoon. I was a little surprised by that after spending the better part of Sunday night and this morning flipping back and forth between CNN and Fox News. I at least thought there would have been a little storm surge in Prairie du Chien.
9. That’s not meant to make light of the incredible devastation that happened down south today, of course. Nor is it really intended to rake the media over the coals for wall-to-wall coverage of what had the potential of being the worst storm anybody had ever seen. I expect that by the end of the week I’ll have a mailing from Lutheran Disaster Relief in the church mailbox, and yes, we’ll raise money for the victims. It’s a small effort, but I know we have to do something.
10. And if you think you weren’t affected by the storm, just wait until gas hits $3.25 a gallon.

THE DABBLER’S GUIDE TO COLLEGE FOOTBALL

With the approach of the college football season (now only eight days away), we here at The Bemusement Park, as part of our court-ordered community service efforts, are happy to provide a helpful guide for the incoming fan who wants to be able to talk a good game without all the messy investments of fandom, such as staying up until 2 AM to catch the repeat of the Ball State-Central Michigan game, listening to those “ask the coach” radio shows (since those are always sheer death), or hanging out at message boards discussing the latest rumors about recruits who may be slightly inclined to your program. We at TBP want you to know that you can be a happy, functional college football fan without resorting to such measures. Heck, you can even become a pundit! Forthwith, let’s get into the least you need to know about college football so you don’t embarrass yourself too badly at the water cooler, sports bar, or broadcast booth.

THE BIG QUESTIONS

What is college football?

College football is the most perfect sport ever. It accents everything that is great about America: the accessibility of higher education, the prominence of sport and recreation, our glorious autumn weather, enumerated lists of ten to twenty-five items, regional bigotry, mob violence, and, of course, outrageous cheating. Whosoever would understandeth America, must needs be understandeth college football.

What makes college football better than the NFL?

Basically, it’s more accessible. The typical big-time college stadium is bigger than an NFL stadium, plus there are over 100 teams playing college football at the Division I-A level, meaning there’s probably one near you. In fact, if you factor in Division I-AA, there’s a program in 49 of the 50 states. (Alaska is the lone holdout. Too bad; imagine the homefield advantage Alaska would have late in the season when it’s -30 and dark at a 1:30 kickoff.) Likewise, since the entire roster of a college program turns over every 4-5 years, the college football fan can root for an individual player much longer than the typical NFL fan.

What’s the deal with the national championship?

Prior to a couple years ago, the NCAA did not officially recognize a national champion in Division I-A football. Consequently, a “national title” meant finishing at the top of one of the myriad polls which afflictdescribe the college football scene. Reliance on polls created much controversy, such as split national titles and spurious claims to national championships based on obscure polls no one has ever heard of. (For instance, the University of Alabama claims to hold 436 national titles in college football, based on some obscure polls such as Sagarin, New York Times, and the AT&T Alphabetical Poll of College Football Programs.)

Thankfully, after a decade of the BCS, the era of split national titles or championship contenders being determined by Byzantine formulae has completely ended. This is why everyone loves the BCS so much.

What is the Heisman Trophy?

To a winner, it’s the pinnacle of achievement, a sign of a job well done. To fans of a winner’s team, it’s validation of your program’s specialness, a sign that the faith you’ve always had in your star was recognized by others as well. To fantasy football owners, it’s a warning flag, a sign that you should delete this player from your AutoDraft queue just in case you wrote down the draft time incorrectly.

Will there ever be a playoff in Division I-A?

No. Some of the players want a playoff. Most of the coaches don’t. Most sportswriters do. Pretty much all fans do. University presidents and athletic directors don’t. The reason they cite is that the players already lose too much academic time to the regular season and the bowl games (nearly all of which are played during breaks in the academic calendar). And this is correct, which is why there are no playoffs in Division I-AA, Division II, Division III, the NAIA, the NJCAA, every state high-school league, and YMCA youth flag football.

Trust me, there’s only one reason that Division I-A football has no playoffs, and that’s because it’s entirely too hard to get 75,000 fans to make travel plans with only a week’s notice. If university presidents and athletic directors thought there was a way to make money off of playoffs, March Madness would pale in comparison to December Delerium.

Is Steve Spurrier evil?

Yes.

SELECTING A TEAM

Most college football fans acquire their allegiances in early childhood and rarely waver throughout their lifetimes. Typically, fans select the team closest to them geographically, or at least another team in the same state. However, as a mere dabbler in college football, you would do well not to follow this protocol. Selecting a team near you increases the odds you’ll be exposed to deep, intense fandom, which would require you to read recruiting sites and perform other distasteful activities. Instead, we offer these three simple principles to help you select a team to follow without having to become overly invested in fanhood:

• The Separation Principle suggests that you select a team at least two states removed from your current residence, and further if possible. This decreases the amount you will actually have to know to be considered an expert on your team. For instance, a Wyoming fan in New Jersey probably wouldn’t even need to know where the University of Wyoming is located, at least not more specifically than “Wyoming.”
• The Anti-Bandwagon Principle suggests that you avoid a team which has recently won a national title, lest you be accused of being nothing more than a front runner. This is, for instance, a very dangerous time to suddenly discover a passion for Southern Cal football. Be careful, however, not to select a team which is clearly descending into irrelevance. It’s a pretty dangerous time to suddenly become a Nebraska fan, too. Good, safe choices for the dabbler include Arizona State (a team which is always one year away from a big breakthrough), UTEP (an ascending program which most people in Texas don’t even know about), Connecticut (a decent team that just joined I-A a couple years ago, thereby obviating the need for a dabbler to know anything at all about the program’s history), and Navy (because nobody can possibly question why you’re a Navy fan; that would be unpatriotic).
• The Alberts-Corso Principle demands that you shy away from any football team which, through a consensus of analysts, has become the official Brightly-Lit Dark Horse. For the 2005 season, this means stay the heck away from Louisville.

Finally (with appropriate apologies, gentlemen), avoid picking a team in the Sun Belt conference, as it will indicate a lack of familiarity with the entire enterprise of college football. The WAC is acceptable, so long as you stick to Boise State or Fresno State.

BECOMING A PUBLIC FAN

Start small. If all of a sudden you’re flying a giant Tennessee Volunteers flag from your flagpole, or you trade in your regular license plates for ones reading “ROLTIDE,” everybody’s going to know something unwholesome is going on. Hats and coffee mugs are always permissible. A static-cling sticker in your car’s back window also works, but be prepared for everyone to assume that you went to the college in question. (Or worse. I am a proud, sticker-bearing alumnus of Minnesota State University, but everybody thinks I’m just a fan of the old TV show “Coach.”)

The stickier question is when, in the course of fandom, it becomes appropriate to buy a jersey to wear on game days. While this is a decision every fan must make for himself or herself, it is well to recognize that a decent jersey (not one of those cheapo iron-on dealy-bobs) can cost upward of $70, which will get you two tickets to many college football games. Thus, when it becomes more important to you that everyone sees your solidarity with your team than that you actually see your team play in person, jersey purchasing becomes appropriate. However, at this point, you can no longer be considered a “dabbler” but are now, irrevocably, a “fan,” so it’s also time to start thinking of a witty message-board handle.

It is never appropriate to paint your vehicle in your team’s colors, and that goes double if you drive a Beetle.

DEALING WITH SUCCESS

Should your team achieve a modicum of success and be invited to a bowl game, you can anticipate being asked if you plan to go. Be prepared to have a few excuses handy to deflect such queries, lest your fandom be called into question. “We’ve already got vacation plans for the holidays” is good, because it shows that you have a Sense Of Perspective On The Game. Even better, though, is the all-purpose excuse “I just didn’t think they’d be that good this year, so I didn’t set aside any time/money for something like this.” It gives you cause to appear pleased that your team has been invited to the Farnham’s Biscuit Flour Gadsden Bowl. This greatly increases your bona fides with non-sports fans, without making you look like the kind of lunatic who would take out a second mortgage just to go to a football game.

DEALING WITH FAILURE

Low-key is the approach here. You can’t let it look like it affects you too much, but an excessive detachment will bring your sincerity into question. Stick to phrases like “I guess [other team] was better than than I thought they were,” “We got killed by sloppy execution,” or “I really wonder about [coach]’s clock management sometimes.” The last of these is especially useful, since no coach, ever, has been described as “a good clock manager.”

WHEN TO MOVE ON

There comes a time when the dabbler needs to cut his or her losses and find a new team to follow, and that time is the minute you hear the coach utter the phrase “West Coast offense.”

Hopefully, this Dabbler’s Guide has given you motivation to begin a career of pseudofandom. We here at TBP anxiously await your feedback as you attempt to put these principles into practice. If there is a topic you wish we would have covered but did not, please let us know and we’ll get on it eventually.

RIGHT BACK AT YOU

There’s a column in the Toronto Sun which nails the mess Western society is in:

The social contract between the governed and the government, between authority and citizenry, has become degraded and unbalanced. Instead of asking what our duty or responsibility might be in any given situation, we demand to know what are our privileges and rights.

At its most obvious there is the usual list of standard demands. The right to marry whomever you want, the right to be ordained a priest when you don’t qualify, the right to claim welfare even if it isn’t deserved, the right to have sex with anyone and everyone, the right to die, the right to be wrong.

The list goes on: The right to swear, the right to defy righteous authority, the right to be publicly uncouth, the right to insult a cop, the right to hide behind any excuse to escape punishment, the right to never fail, never lose, never have one’s self-esteem challenged, the right to be wrong.

He forgot to mention “the right to never be confronted with an opinion differing from our own” as one of the rights we seem to insist upon, but otherwise, good show.

DREAM VACATION

Now here’s good news: the Gear Daddies will be filling in for Lynyrd Skynyrd at the Minnesota State Fair:

Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Aug. 28 concert at the Minnesota State Fair has been canceled because of singer Johnny Van Zant’s severe throat problems. The Gear Daddies, Minnesota favorites from the ’80s and ’90s, will be the replacement for the grandstand that night.

A better question is why the Gear Daddies can’t just replace Skynyrd permanently.

THE MUCH-DREADED SHUFFLE MEME

You know the drill: Put all your MP3s on ’shuffle’ and write down the first n songs that come up, no matter how embarrassing they may be. Here’s 15 tunes from my collection.

• “Save Your Heart For Me,” Gary Lewis and the Playboys
• “Theme from Cyrano/Mr. Tambourine Man,” William Shatner (no . . . it’s funnier than you’ve heard)
• “Somewhere in My Heart,” Aztec Camera
• “Bala Bala,” Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci
• “Caroline, No,” Beach Boys
• “Robert DeNiro’s Waiting,” Bananarama
• “After All,” Al Jarreau
• “We May Never Pass This Way Again,” Seals and Crofts
• “This Is A Song,” Paula Frazer
• “I Didn’t Mean To Turn You On,” Robert Palmer
• “New Madrid,” Uncle Tupelo
• “Try A Little Tenderness,” Three Dog Night
• “Julia,” Ramsey Lewis
• “Flowers,” Galaxie 500
• “Eugene’s Lament,” Beastie Boys

AT LEAST THEY’VE GOT BARBECUE

It must be pretty tough to be a sports fan in Kansas City right now, what with the Royals dropping 18 games in a row, and every day bringing another Chief involved in a bar scuffle. So I guess it’s not too surprising that desperate times call for desperate measures.

MULTIBLOGGING

I’ve spun off. I’ve created a separate blog, Coram Deo, to hold all my faith-related writings. Not every TBP reader is interested in my writings about matters of faith, while not everybody who would be interested in, say, an overview of Lutheran confessional orthodoxy wants to read Pickin’ On The Big Ten. (Yeah, I know; some of you are interested in both.)

Rather than let TBP become even less focused and more disorganized than it already is, I decided to Balkanize myself with a separate blog. If you’re interested, head on over; my first post is a sermon on Isaiah 51:1-6.

BLOGPOLL BALLOT, PRESEASON

Submitted for your general amusement, my ballot in the inaugural BlogPoll. More ballot linkage is found over at MGoBlog, which is currently neck-and-neck with Every Day Should Be Saturday for the website sending the most visitors to TBP. And boy, have those visitors been disappointed lately . . .

1. Southern Cal: Forget it. Until somebody proves otherwise, U$C is King of the Hill. Do I think they’ll lose a couple this year? Well, I hope they do . . . but I’m a bitter Hawkeye fan who still thinks that Washington and UCLA haven’t done sufficient penance yet.

2. Tennessee: Gets the nod over everybody else for #2 because, unlike most of the other teams you could put here, the Vols don’t have to put up with internecine warfare over who’s going to get the ball.

3. Texas: No, I don’t think Mack Brown will ever break the rock. But his team played scary good football at the end of last season. Even with some holes to plug, the Horns are set to make some noise. But if they can’t beat OU this year, they never will, at least not under Mack Brown.

4. Miami: I’m not yet ready to say that Larrry Coker is more lucky than good, but all of a sudden U$C is what The U was supposed to be a few years ago. Now, they might not even be the best team in the ACC, even if that’s how I have them ranked right now.

5. Florida: It’s put up or shut up time for Urban Meyer . . . do you want to bet against him after what he’s done at Utah and Bowling Green? I certainly don’t.

6. Michigan: The class of the Big Ten, and maybe the only squad in the conference that could stand a chance in a national title game.

7. Georgia: My grandmother could run for 1,000 yards behind that offensive line, and she uses a walker.

8. LSU: Color me unconvinced about Les Miles. Not that I think he’s a bad coach, but I saw his teams lose some games they should’ve won handily. I’m not certain he’s going to have the Tigers at Sabanesque levels in his first season.

9. Virginia Tech: Their conference is a lot tougher than it used to be, and I’m still waiting for a Beamer team to go a whole season without a letdown of some sort. But the talent is there.

10. Ohio State: Most of the praise for this team seems to be based on Ted Ginn Jr’s playmaking ability, which is considerable, and Troy Smith’s performance in the Michigan game. There are a lot of people in Michigan who can explain the significance of the name “Eric Hipple” to you, Buckeye fans.

11. Oklahoma: Blah blah ‘Stoops’ blargle ‘talent’ bloopy blaga ‘Peterson’ bleedle boggu ‘Texas’ bigguh ‘rented mule.’

12. Florida State: I could see this team moving way up this list, or way down it, with equal ease.

13. Auburn: Lots of talent gone, but Tuberville can coach, and I give credit for finishing strong.

14. Iowa: No question that this team can move the ball. But will they be able to bottle up the run, or are they going to hang their DBs out to dry?

15. Purdue: Showing that I’m not giving that much credit to strength of schedule right now.

16. Arizona State: If this is your hope to knock off U$C, Pac-10, you don’t have much hope. A good team, but it’s crowded at the top.

17. Boston College: If they’d stayed in the Big East, they’d be a lock for a BCS berth.

18. California: Who got the Tedford QB Implant ™ this year, and why does the recipient always have to return that implant before the NFL season starts?

19. Texas Tech: Aw, who needs a defense, anyway?

20. Virginia: Another good team with the misfortune to be stuck in a brutal conference.

21. Pitt: I’m not a Wannstedt guy, but Walt Harris left behind enough talent that this team should breeze through the Big East. Probably nobody has an easier path to the BCS this season.

22. Boise State: Will the Broncs make any BCS noise this season? I strongly doubt it, but they’re still fun to watch.

23. Iowa State: The Cyclopaths scare me a little bit. They might grab onto the Team of Destiny meme and run with it. They’re not quite good enough to be the official Brightly-Lit Dark Horse, but they’re easily the most complete team in the Big XII North. Dang it.

24. Minnesota: Note to Glen Mason: the two-platoon system has been part of football for decades now. It’s time to start paying attention to what happens when your team doesn’t have the ball.

25. Georgia Tech: But show me an O-line.

SI: NOT MAP-READERS

Hurry, go look before they fix it. Somehow, SI.com can’t tell the difference between Iowa and Purdue. (It’s Purdue that ducks tOSU and Michigan this year, a fact you’re bound to hear 1,246 more times before Labor Day.)

SPANDAUISM, DAY 12

Maybe someday every Spandau Ballet fan will be bold enough to go public.