BLOGPOLL BALLOT, WEEK (WHATEVER)

1. Texas
2. Southern California
3. Penn State
4. Louisiana State
5. Virginia Tech
6. Ohio State
7. UCLA
8. Oregon
9. Auburn
10. West Virginia
11. Alabama
12. Georgia
13. Miami (Florida)
14. Notre Dame
15. TCU
16. Florida
17. Boston College
18. Louisville
19. Fresno State
20. Iowa
21. Clemson
22. Wisconsin
23. Michigan
24. Georgia Tech
25. Northwestern

Didn’t watch any football this past weekend. Too busy watching the kids.

SHOOTING FOR AN EVEN HUNDRED

Maybe you saw this list of 52 reasons to hate ESPN/Disney/ABC over at EDSBS. If you did, but you haven’t seen this 32-item addendum at MGoBlog, go read it. I’ll gladly wait for you.

[Jeopardy! music]

Welcome back. Those were some good lists, huh? But, sadly, they were incomplete. I think we can get up to 100, no problem.

85. “The hhhhhRRRRaaayyyduzzz.” “The New York football Giants.” Stop it. It’s not funny, not in the “I’m offended you would say that” sense, but in the “seriously, Berman, it’s not funny” sense. It’s one thing if Boomer does it, but when almost every ESPN announcer starts talking about “the New York football Giants,” it’s cultural hegemony.

86. Regional broadcast idiocy, specifically, broadcasting nothing but Big Ten football games in the Midwest, even when these games turn out to be stinking piles of compost. Meanwhile, all the good Big 12 games? We can’t see ‘em here in Wisconsin, because Michigan State and Purdue are teein’ it up. Thanks. Orson and Stranko touched on this as well; I just wanted to let them know they’re not the only ones honked off.

87. “Cheap Seats.” I’ve been anti- that show since it premiered. It’s still not funny. “Randy, we’s so ironic.” “Jason, what’s ironic?” “I dunno, Randy . . . but we’s it! Haw!”

88. Showing SportsCenter 43 times in a row instead of showing something like, I don’t know, sports. Yes, I would rather watch, say, the CFL. Or a ping-pong tournament. But please, not the World Series of Poker. SportsCenter can be pretty good, but it’s not so good that I feel terrible if I miss it. Especially since I almost always miss it, because it’s almost always terrible.

89. Jim Rome. Brian also mentioned him, but he’s so profoundly annoying, a single mention isn’t enough.

90. Duplicity in the current Michael Irvin case. Did you catch Dan Patrick’s radio interview on Monday? I did. I can understand Patrick not wanting to challenge Irvin, since he still has to work with the guy. But if you can’t close, don’t do the interview. Don’t stop short of what we all want to hear from Irvin right now. Not “would you take a drug test?” but “will you?” Good grief, even Jim Rome would’ve gotten that one right.

91. Bill Simmons. What? Look, I love the Boston Sports Guy, but I am sick to death of all the Billy Zabka, Andy Dufresne, and Brian Austin Greene references. Dude, you can write. You’ve got to be making some decent geedus these days. Buy some new DVDs, already. You’re starting to sound like that guy from high school who stopped forming new memories three days after graduation.

92. Cold Pizza. It’s not working. If it weren’t for Skip Bayless and Woody Paige’s pointless bickering, this would be content-free, personality-free television. And if there’s anything harder to take than Skip Bayless first thing in the morning, it’s Woody Paige.

93. Bringing back halftime highlights on Monday Night Football, but thinking that Tim McGraw should somehow be involved in presenting them. Oh, right–by the time we get to Monday night, we’ve already seen every highlight 43 times on SportsCenter!

94. Refusing to acknowledge that Tommy Tuberville wasn’t entirely wrong when he went off about ESPN’s influence on popular opinion. Since college football depends on popular opinion for the bulk of its evaluatory tasks (i.e., there’s no playoff), Tuberville’s charge deserved more attention than it got.

95. Firing Gregg Easterbrook and deleting every last one of his columns from the archives, thus meaning that I can never prove I actually won the TMQ Challenge in 2001. (I got a Kenny Mayne bobblehead. By the way, where did Kenny Mayne go?)

96. Page 3. Does anybody read Page 3? If so, I just have one question for you: Why?

97. Just wanna say this: POKER IS NOT A SPORT.

98. The one really good show on ESPN–”NFL Matchup”–might as well not even exist for all it’s promoted. But that’s okay, because the NFL Network’s “Playbook” has surpassed it.

99. The total failure to realize that Brad Nessler should have Mike Patrick’s job, and Mike Patrick should have Brad Nessler’s job.

100. They’re keeping a chair warm for Terrell Owens on “Monday Night Countdown.” You know it, I know it, and the American people know it.

CAN’T GET IT OUT OF MY HEAD

Is Electric Light Orchestra good or not? I can’t decide.

OOF.

This is why I love Ron Maly:

I’m still checking, but I’m guessing Kansas’ players didn’t try to carry Mark Mangino [the guy on the left, wearing sunglasses], their coach, off the field after yesterday’s game.

They’d have been better off hoisting Iowa State placekicker Bret Culbertson [lower right] to their shoulders. He’s the guy who did a lot to help make them bowl-eligible.

SWEETLY SINGING O’ER THE PLAIN

Since last year I made note of the Christmas carols I’d like to see go away forever, I figured I’d start off this holiday season on a gentler, more positive note. Hence, here are ten Christmas songs I never seem to get tired of. No particular order, although the first one is my favorite. This list both augments and supplants last year’s shorter list.

• Angels We Have Heard On High: Not only is it great fun to listen to, it’s a blast to sing. Even the most tone-deaf throat-shredders can usually nail the “Gloria in excelsis Deo” part.
• I Heard the Bells On Christmas Day: See last year’s post for my thoughts.
• Still, Still Still: Ditto.
• Christmas Time is Here: Yes, there are secular Christmas songs I like. This one, from “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” endures. Like “Still, Still, Still,” it’s a highly evocative song that makes me think of snowy nights and the incredible excitement of knowing that something really good is coming.
• Silent Night: Though please, not the Mannheim Steamroller version.
• Mary’s Boy Child: Like “Angels We Have Heard On High,” this song is so much fun to sing you have to take it in measured doses.
• Coventry Carol: Just the right song for capturing a different side of Christmas
• Bring A Torch, Jeanette, Isabella: There’s a much better set of lyrics out there for this low-content carol, but, you know, copyright and all that. The music is dazzling, and that’s enough.
• It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year: But who tells ghost stories at Christmas?
• The First Noel: Or, if you insist, The First Nowell. The lyrics may feel a bit antiquated now, but the song still works beautifully.

Oh, and just to keep it real, I’m totally sick of Natalie Merchant’s version of “Children Go Where I Send Thee.”

A HIGH-CONCEPT TURKEY

10 Non-Obvious Things I’m Thankful For:

1. Gold-washed coffee filters, because they let me drink coffee with some body to it
2. College athletes who know they’ll never get a sniff at the pros, but bust their humps anyway
3. Toast, one of the planet’s most underrated foodstuffs
4. Since the entire family agreed to pare back the gift-giving this year, and we’re not exchanging gifts until after Christmas anyway, I may not have to go Christmas shopping at all
5. The Police Academy movies, for entertaining me when I was a teenager, and for now reminding me how absolutely flippin’ wonderful it is to be grown up
6. I never bought an SUV
7. I have permission to cook with onions now, so long as I either cut them up real fine, or leave them in big, easy-to-remove pieces
8. Slashfood, as well as Deadspin and Autoextremist
9. None of you actually seem to care what I order at Starbucks
10. Green and orange things, which are almost always more interesting than red and blue things.

PICKIN’ ON THE BIG TEN, WEEK 13

And so it has come to this: the final real weekend of the Big Ten season, Wisconsin’s Alvarezian retirement party notwithstanding. It’s been a season of dramatic hype (and before you pundits start calling Iowa “the most underachieving team in the conference,” bear in mind that, unlike Purdue, at least Iowa is bowl-eligible), gutty victories that turned out to be once-in-a-lifetime lucky shots (hi Sparty!), conventional wisdom turned upside down (Paterno’s not done, and Joe Tiller is the Brian Billick of the Big Ten) and, of course, Illinois.

So last week POTBT went . . . well, 4-1. Again. I’m glad, because my one miss was calling for Iowa to get stomped flat by Wisconsin. I was so nervous about that game I didn’t even turn it on until the second half. Anyway, our season record is now a decent 56-17, good for 76.7%.

POTBT will pick all the Big Ten bowl games approximately as soon as the bids are announced. How does the bowl picture shape up right now, heading into Cultural Expectation Rivalry Weekend? I’m glad you asked, and by “glad” I mean “not glad.” Because this goofiness is hard to figure out.

One thing we know for certain: if Penn State beats the Spartans in this weekend’s We Have No Rival For You Land Grant Trophy game, they win the conference outright and get the automatic BCS bid. If they should lose, the winner of (sigh) the Ohio State-Michigan game will get the conference crown. tOSU would win the conference outright with a Penn State loss and a victory over TSUN; a PSU loss coupled with a Michigan victory would create a three-way tie, but Michigan would hold all the tiebreaks.

Without a victory over tOSU, Michigan will finish fourth in the conference. They would be tied outright with Wisconsin, but Wisconsin holds the tie-break (as if that matters). Minnesota can finish (I think) no better than fifth with a victory over Iowa. Iowa could finish fourth if they beat Minny and Illinois beats Northw . . . Iowa can’t finish any better than fifth, either. Northwestern will finish fourth if after they beat Illinois, unless Penn State wins and Ohio State beats Michigan. Sparty can claim bowl eligibility with a win at home over Penn State, but can’t finish any higher than eighth in the conference even if that does happen. Meanwhile, Purdue, Indiana, and Illinois are naught but stale cornbread, waiting to be stuffed into the turkey butt of history.

All this is a very complicated way of saying “I’oan know” to the question “where’s my team going?” But after I’ve actually picked the games, I’ll try to put it all together for you . . . and me. Anon!

NORTHWESTERN @ ILLINOIS

This game will almost certainly be played on Saturday.

BASANEZ 48
PASSIN’ DAYS 13

PURDUE @ INDIANA

Who would have guessed, back in August, that (a) these two teams would have the same record coming into this game, and (b) there would be nothing at stake except for statewide bragging rights? Purdue is starting to pour it on, sorta, having strung two victories in a row. Over Michigan State and, of course, Illinois. Their first two victories since September 17. When they beat Arizona.

So maybe Tiller’s squad is more swagger than stagger right now. Indiana has been a bit of a disappointment, having beaten only one team in conference this year. (I’ll let you guess who.) But the Hoosiers are a lot better than I thought they would be this year. I’m just not sure that ultimately they have enough left in the tank to beat the Ravens Boilermakers.

KIRSCH ME, YOU’RE MY FAVORITE PAINTER 34
ARS LONGA, SEASON BREVIS 17

MINNESOTA @ IOWA

Hoo boy. I really don’t know what to do about this one. Minnesota is the Big Ten team nobody wants to talk about. Their only losses are to Penn State, Ohio State, and Wisconsin. That’s a pretty solid resume, although only two of their victories (Michigan and . . . uhh . . . Tulsa) are over bowl-eligible teams. Ne’ertheless, that’s one more bowl-eligible team than Iowa has beaten. Still, the Hawkeyes were impressive last week, holding Wisconsin to just 19 yards of rushing. Can they do the same thing this week, at home, against the now-healthy Laurence Maroney?

I want to say yes. I believe in the Power of the Pig. Floyd belongs at home. And it’s time to reestablish a new home winning streak. Kirk Ferentz can outcoach Glen Mason eleven Saturdays out of ten. But this is the best Gopher team since the Murray Warmarth days. I wanna believe. I just can’t.

WE’LL DROP THE PIG OFF IN AUSTIN 26
SPEAKING OF DROPOFF . . . 23

OHIO STATE @ MICHIGAN

No, I really don’t care who wins this game either. I mean, it’s obviously tremendously important. Could even decide the conference title. I see it, on paper, as a mismatch. A good-but-not-great Michigan offense against a Kaopectatian tOSU defense. A good-but-not-great Ohio State offense against an underachieving Michigan defense. Lloyd “Three Yards and a Cloud of Recriminations” Carr against Jim “We’ll Break Their Shins, and After That We’ll Hurt ‘Em” Tressel. How much is the Big House really worth in a game like this? It’s worth something . . . but not enough.

HELLO LARRY? 27
ONE DAY AT A TIME 20

PENN STATE @ MICHIGAN STATE

Conventional wisdom, POTBT style, says that, since Sparty has no chance of winning this game, they almost certainly will do so. But Sparty has controverted conventional wisdom on multiple occasions this year. The most important way is that, as the year has gone on, they’ve gotten worse. Their point-a-minute offense is now more a what’s-the-point offender. When I took golf in college, I got worse as the quarter went on. I barely passed. Sparty may not be so lucky.

EVERYTHING’S COMING UP TORTILLA CHIPS 41
GONE LIKE OLDSMOBILE 16

Oh yeah . . . and Wisconsin over Hawaii.

So at the end of the weekend, it’ll be Penn State to the BCS, tOSU in second, Wisconsin in third (?), Minnesota in fourth (??), Michigan in fifth (??!? But that’s how it would pan out if what I say comes true . . . remember, Wisky and Minny BOTH beat the Wolverines), Northwestern in sixth, and Iowa to Detroit. That is an absolutely ridiculous chain of wreckage. I suggest you don’t believe it.

Next POTBT as soon as I’ve had a chance to digest the bowl pairings. As always, thanks for reading, and don’t hurt nobody.

BLOGPOLL BALLOT, WEEK 12

Little to no commentary again this week.

1. Texas
2. Southern California
3. Penn State
4. Louisiana State
5. Miami (Florida)
6. Virginia Tech
7. UCLA
8. Alabama
9. Ohio State
10. West Virginia
11. TCU
12. Oregon
13. Notre Dame
14. Auburn
15. Georgia
16. South Carolina
17. Fresno State
18. UTEP
19. Iowa State
20. Michigan
21. Florida State
22. Louisville
23. Minnesota
24. Boston College
25. South Florida

Game I watched: Iowa @ Wisconsin (another busy weekend . . .)

FIFTY YEARS IN FIFTY MINUTES?

Now up at Blogcritics: my review of a new 50-year retrospective of Car & Driver magazine.

MEMETAGGED

So M1EK hit me with a blog meme thusly:

1. Delve into your blog archive.

B. Search the archives for the 23rd post.

2. Find the 5th sentence, or closest to.

III. Post the text of the sentence in your blog along with these instructions. Ponder it for meaning, subtext or hidden agendas.

C. Tag 5 more people

Well, this is post #23 on this blog, at least in its current incarnation, and the fifth sentence:

But if it’s true Vilsack really is electronically challenged, the damage is compounded.

That, however, is from a quote. This is the fourth sentence I wrote in that post:

The best quote on the matter, though, comes from last year’s unsuccessful GOP gubernatorial candidate Doug Gross, in this column from yesterday: “I guess I was overqualified for the job.”

He wasn’t, but it was still a good quote.

Your turn, Harry (now that you’re posting again), Orson and Stranko (since yours is bound to be funny), Eric (just to see if you’re still reading), Vidiot (again, bound to be entertaining), and Dave (since you probably have a script that will generate this automatically).