Usually when one invokes the old “gotta play the whole 60 minutes,” (or 48 minutes, or 40 minutes) it comes in response to a team that has faded down the stretch.  Also you could use “couldn’t finish” or “couldn’t close the deal.”  In this past week of upsets however, we’ve had several cases of “couldn’t start.”

Oregon State jumps out to 21-0 halftime lead on USC.  The Trojans come back but the Beavers were able to hold them off with a lone 4th quarter TD. Oregon State 27-21.

Navy jumps out to a 17-0 halftime lead on #16 Wake Forest.  Wake comes back but Navy holds them off with a lone 4th quarter TD.  Navy 24-17.

Alabama jumps out to a 31-0 halftime lead at Georgia.  The Bulldogs come back but Alabama is able to hold them off with a FG and TD in a busy 4th quarter.  Perhaps if they’d worried less about what color shirt everyone was going to wear and more about the game … ‘Bama 41-30.

I’m willing to concede that in each case the better team lost.  What happened in each second half was more indicative of the relative strength of the teams involved and had each gone 15 more minutes, the favorite would likely have prevailed.  But that’s the thing.  A game is 60 minutes and 60 minutes only.  You have to take advantage of, or at least be awake for, all of it.  Any team feels, however subconsciously, sooooo dominant that they can mail in the first half and allow an undermanned opponent to run wild is primed for what happened this week.

Karma visited the Pats again this week.

Remember last year when Belickick was still fielding his starters in the fourth quarter of blowout games last year.  Last weekend they got a nice salty helping of payback courtesy of the Miami Dolphins?  The Miami “can they even win 5 games this year?” Dolphins!

As if that weren’t juicy enough, Parcells thoroughly out-coached Belichick.  Quiz:  You see your opponent’s QB lining up as a wideout and their tailback in the shotgun.  Think there might be run coming?  OK.  OK.  You’ve seen that four times and they are lined up in the same formation again … YOU THINK THERE MIGHT BE A RUN COMING?!  Fifth time in the game Miami lines up that way and Ronnie Brown runs right up the middle for a 60 yd TD.  So much for the genius and the defensive schemes.

God, I love having Parcells in the league if for no other reason than things like this.

– B –

Are the Lions and Raiders involved in some kind of reality show that we don’t know about?  Right now the two teams appear to be locked in a battle for the title of Most Dysfunctional, Pathetic Professional Sporting Organization Ever! 

Al Davis is the only person on earth who hasn’t said that coach Lane Kiffen is going to be fired.

Not to be outdone, Bill Ford, the son of Lions’ owner William Clay Ford told a reporter that he would fire GM Matt Millen if it were in his power to do so.  Aside:  Unless you have the authority and are about to pull the trigger, you just keep those happy little thoughts under your hat.

I’m just waiting for the finale.  Ford vs. Davis in some kind of obstacle course or perhaps jousting with pugil sticks on a small platform suspended above a pool of green Jell-O.

– B –

OK, so I’m back to rooting for BCS mayhem.  The people that matter (i.e. the poll-sters) have pretty much already decided that it should be Oklahoma vs. USC if both finish undefeated.  And I agree that those two should be in the discussion.  But I believe it is a travesty any time a team runs flawless through the SEC and doesn’t get their shot.  Wisconsin has already gone on the road to beat Fresno State and gets all of their currently ranked Big 10 foes at home.  If they finish without a blemish how do you count them out?  The Big 10 may be weak but it’s still not nearly as bad as the Pac 10.  And, there are a number of non-BCS conference upstarts making noise.  Dare I hope for four undefeated teams this year?

– B –

Finally, a Ryder Cup follow-up.  Seems the Euros weren’t so enteretained with Boo Weekley’s Happy Gilmore act on Sunday.  It’s all about the freedom, dudes.  It’s why we declared independence from your sorry asses!  Well, for that and dental care.

Selective memory claims another victim.  Sign Brett Favre, you get Brett Favre.  How’s that working out for you, Jets fans?

This is not to fault Favre.  He’s pretty much the same guy that he was in 2006 and 2007, two disparate seasons that should have been instructional.  In ’06 Favre wasn’t getting much help from his team on either side of the ball, was forced to try to do too much and stunk up Lambeau Field.  This past off-season, that was conveniently forgotten behind the glow of 2007 when Favre led a solid team to within one play of the Super Bowl.  That one play:  a Favre interception.

Without a doubt, Favre lifts his team, to a point.  But he can’t take a bad, disjointed group of players and turn them into all of the crazy things that Jets fans thought were coming their way.  I don’t care what you did in the off-season, how you beefed up the offensive line.  You are cleverly concealing any improvements every time you take the field.  Favre is in “trying to do too much” mode and that version of Favre is not an improvement over Pennington.

As far as the ongoing Favre vs. Aaron Rodgers comparisons, I’m guessing that we’ll look back on this season and call it a wash.  Yeah, the Pack has contender vibe going on right now, which I don’t get.  They rolled up two weak teams and then Dallas visited Green Bay and beat them down.  And Rodgers is handling himself well, making good decisions, and showing flashes of the greatness the Packers were hoping for when they drafted him to be Favre’s replacement.  But he’s green.  He’s not yet to the point where he can load the team on his back and carry them, but he’s also not going to single-handedly lose any games either.

So yeah.  At the end of the year, I see a reasonably good season for the Packers, probably the playoffs and maybe even a first round win.  But Dallas and the Giants are way ahead of them.  And for Favre, an OK year.  No playoffs, but you can’t blame the QB for myriad of problems that the Jets still have.  Plus the AFC is tough.  So, like I said, basically a wash between Favre and Rodgers.  The only difference:  Favre has a glorious past, and Rodgers has a glorious future.  Hats off to the Packers for not losing sight of that.

I’m not a life-long Yankee fan or anything, but I can surely appreciate history.  Last night I watched as position by position they honored players past and present who have donned the pinstripes.  For a kid who grew up collecting baseball cards, and listening to games on a little 9v transistor radio this was a trip down memory lane.

Of course there are the huge names; Ruth, Gherig, Mantle, Jackson, etc.  But it seems like most of the guys who made any noise at all in baseball during my younger years wound up playing in the Bronx at some point.  Chris Chambliss.  Bobby Murcer.  “Catfish” Hunter.  Thurmon Munson.  As far as I’m concerned, legends all.

I have to hand it to the Yankees’ organization.  They did it right.  Instead of trying to dress the night up with a lot of glitz and glamor they simply let the game and the history speak for itself by honoring their alumni.  I also thought it was a good move to have the Army band play the National Anthem.  Whenever a pop star is signed on to do the honors on a big night, there is always a chance they will try to make it about themself instead of the moment.

Hats off to Yankee fans.  Judging by their reactions last night, they seem to have a good grip on what’s what.  Example:  The mention of Thurmon Munson got far more cheers than A-Rod.

Very interesting:  Roger Clemens was not mentioned while they were honoring the pitchers.  And it’s not like they were compressing for time.  Chien-Ming Wang was on there, but not Clemens?  I would certainly be interested to know the story behind that one.

So, with another page turned I wonder how today’s Yankees will be remembered.  The team is still a collection of the biggest names in the game.  But things are different today.  Fandom is jaded.  It’s hard to imagine any pro athlete garnering the kind of reverence owned by the legends of the past.

Happens all the time in the NFL.  A team rises from the league cellar one year to sudden contender status the following year.  And then, just as quickly, retreats to mediocrity the following year.  But, of course, “rags to riches” is a compelling story.  And those who should know better, the Tony Kornheiser’s and other idiots who don’t have anything remotely resembling insight, bite on the myth.  The year after the sudden rise, the NFL’s new hot item is declared “ready to take the next step.”  And, it takes 3-4 seasons of being dead wrong before TK and company wise up and begin to wonder, “Hmmm, perhaps they were not as good as I initially thought.”

The problem is, that the NFL has a semi-weighted schedule.  A number of games on each team’s schedule will pit them against teams of relatively equal stature in the previous year’s campaign.  So, a poor team will find a little relief in playing other poor teams.

Case in point:  the Cincinnati Bengals, a one-hit wonder with their 2005 season.  Before that, mediocre.  Since then, mediocre trending toward pathetic.

Data:  In their breakout season, Cincinnati’s opponents were a combined 122-134.  They were 2-3 against playoff teams, which also means they only played 5 games against playoff teams.  So, Cincinnati made hay against a mediocre team’s schedule.

But suddenly they were a good team, and faced with a good team’s schedule.  In 2006, their opponents were a combined 137-119.  They were 3-4 against playoff teams, which also means that nearly half of the time they were facing playoff caliber competition.  As a result Cincinnati was once again a .500 team.

Unfortunately, changes in fortune tend to have certain effects on a team’s foundation that can last beyond one season’s campaign.  Sudden success hides problems, while sudden failure unleashes them.

Take Chad Johnson.  During the high-flying 2005 season his antics were seen as fun-loving and he as the kind of free spirit that helps generate the kind of breakout season that the team was having.  Take away that success and suddenly he a self-absorbed cancer on the Bengals who should know better than to screw around when his team is struggling.

Of course Johnson is just one visible on-field example on a team where a number of players never saw the field of play as a result of behind the scenes run-ins with the law.  For a while there Cincinnati didn’t meet any felons that they weren’t willing to sign.

The surprise here wasn’t the sudden rise of the Bengals in ’05, nor their just as sudden decline in the years that followed.  The surprise, really, is in our surprise.  You’d think we, or at least those who are paid to analyze such things on the faulty premise that they know something, would catch on to the patter after a while.

I have to admit, this has been a pretty exciting Ryder Cup.  And the biggest surprise of all is the success of the US team sans Tiger Woods.  While I would agree that Tiger is the greatest golfer in the history of the game, I believe that his absence, or rather the presence of an additional American who isn’t Tiger is one of the keys to this surprising turn.

I’ll even go one step further and speculate that if you replaced Phil Mickelson the team would be stronger still.  Again, nothing against “Lefty” as a golfer overall.  He has shown his skill at times this weekend, but not as often as Hunter Mahan and others have bailed him out.

This is a clear “whole is greater than the sum of its parts” situation. If it were simply a matter of lining up your twelve best golfers and sending them into battle the US would have at least been competitive over the past decade.  No, the Ryder Cup stands out as a team competition in an individual sport.

Guys like Tiger and Phil spend all year approaching the game with a mindset that is very different than the other 23 players competing in the Cup.  Everyone, including themselves expect them to be in the final pairing on Sunday every week that they compete.  They have to have a “me against the world” mindset because that’s pretty much how it is.

But, you don’t ever EXPECT Boo Weekley to win.  It’s not that he can’t win.  My guess:  Even Weekley knows that if he captures one or two majors in his entire career he’ll have led a charmed life.  It is possible when the stars line up just right, but if and when that happens, few will see it coming.  Guys like Weekley and the rest aren’t forced to have such an intensely self-centered approach to the game and are thus, much more adaptable to the team competition.

You can see it in Mahan, and Weekley and J.B. Holmes.  Those guys are kicking ass and loving life this weekend.  And, they really want to win.  I’m not saying that Tiger and Mickelson won’t be happy if the US wins.  But either way, shortly after this weekend, for them, it will be time to start gearing up for another four majors next year.

One of the big stories in sports today:  NFL Ref, Ed Hochuli answers his own hate mail.  Hochuli is the referee who whistled a crucial play dead prematurely in Sunday’s Denver-San Diego game, nullifying a turnover that would have given the Chargers a win.  Instead Denver retained possession and went on to score a TD and game-winning 2-pt conversion.

Since then Hochuli has received “hundreds” of hate e-mails from disgruntled Charger fans.  Hochuli, who has owned his culpability from the moment the whistle left his lips, has been personally responding with commiseration and an apology admitting that both are feeble but are also all that he can offer.

Good for him.  Stand-up guy.  But it masks how ridiculous and misguided the fan reaction is.

First.  Hate e-mails?  Get a life!

Second.  My standard response to any athlete or team that falls prey to an officiating snafu.  If you leave the game in a state where a ref’s call CAN change the outcome, you run the risk that a ref’s call WILL change the outcome.  The nerve of San Diego to gripe about this one.  Had the Chargers stopped any one of the Broncos other five scoring drives this point would be moot.  San Diego surrendered 486 yards of total offense and is miffed that they didn’t win.  Perhaps if they could have held Brandon Marshall to under 18 receptions for 166 yards … maybe if they’d covered him on at least one play.  When your game plan is to let your opponent run wild and to keep up in hopes of squeaking it out at the end, you are giving up control of your destiny.

Third.  This ref was handicapped by the NFL’s rules.  When a QB is involved, the whistled kills the play.  And this is no random rule.  It is part of the NFL’s trend toward protecting the health of its stars.  Turn things on their head, and let Cutler suffer a season-ending knee injury when play is allowed to continue and Hochuli’s hate mails are coming from Denver instead.  In real time it was nearly impossible to distinguish whether Cutler’s arm had begun a passing motion or not.  From everything I’ve read, Hochuli is one of the league’s most respected officials.  He’s made an honest mistake.  Just because the fallout from that mistake is more extreme than normal doesn’t make him evil or deserving of hatred.

But I think I’ll stick with point #1.  If you are getting all spun up about this to the point where your blood pressure changes … get a life! 

All right, my week-long experiment with Zyrtec is over, and frankly, I don’t get all the hype.  A friend told me about how it used to be prescription but now it isn’t.  Since then it seems to be advertised all the time and is prominently displayed at any store that sells it.  But like I said, I’m underwhelmed.

My experience:  It was ok.  I calmed things down a bit.  And there weren’t really any side effects.  Well, other than the runny nose and itchy eyes that I still had because it wasn’t completely effective.  Also it is expensive and there are no generic equivalents.

So, I’m back to Actifed which rarely fails knock everything out within an hour.  The downside is that sometimes it knocks me out within an hour.  But I find that if I take it with Diet Coke then I’m just left with a pleasant little buzz for the rest of the day.  Also it is cheaper and the Walgreen’s version works just as well as the name brand.

Same Old Buckeyes:  OK, can we please be rid of Ohio State BEFORE screwing up the Championship Game?  Really.  The Buckeyes went out and did what they do every year – they were outclassed in every respect the first time they faced a quality opponent.  The difference between this year and the last two is that this year they finally took on a game that exposed them during the regular season.

No kidding though, this morning there were sports writers talking about a rematch in the championship game when OSU will have Beanie Wells back in the lineup.  Like that would have made a difference.  They lost 35-3 folks.  No running back on earth is going make a 5-TD difference by his presence or absence.

Mark my words.  If OSU skulks back to the midwest and wins the rest of their soft schedule, come December they’ll be whining about deserving a spot in the Championship game again.

– B –

Foot in Mouth Disease:  I don’t know who it was but hats off to the lame ESPN announcer who hopped on his “the PAC 10 is really good this year” bandwagon in the middle of the Cal – Maryland game.  He excitedly recounted UCLA’s big win over Tennessee last week, as well as impressive starts by Arizona State and Oregon.  His bloviation went something along the lines of, “I think it’s time we finally admit that the PAC 10 might be better than the SEC.”

The only problem was, as he gushed on about the beloved PAC 10, in the very game he was covering, unranked Maryland was 2 TD’s up on ranked Cal.  What makes it even more delicious is that Maryland went on to win the game, and later in the day BYU blew the doors off of UCLA, Arizona State lost to UNLV, and Purdue took Oregon to overtime.

– B –

We all owe South Florida:  Another pretender was exposed earlier in the week when Kansas lost at South Florida.  Hopefully this will prevent a repeat of last year’s travesty where Kansas, after skating through a soft schedule, lost to Missouri but still made off with a BCS at large bid when Missouri lost to Oklahoma in the Big XII Championship.  Seriously, they really need to re-introduce strength of schedule into the BCS formula.  Kansas is just the latest in a line of Big XII schools to follow the “play no one and slowly rise to the top as good schools lose to good opponents” formula.

– B –

Holy Cow!  Who saw Notre Dame over Michigan coming?  And I think we may have finally found the limit to Notre Dame’s badness.  Even the Irish can’t screw up and lose a game where their opponent turns the ball over 6 times.  Hmmm … probably wouldn’t want to be a Wolverine in practice this week.

I think Coach Rodriguez’s spread offense, when he finally has it fully in place with the right kind of athletes, could tip the Big 10′s balance of power toward Michigan for years to come.  However, RR can’t take too many losses like this en route, or he won’t survive in Ann Arbor long enough to find out.

Man, I’m really getting sick of this one.

Links:

McCain’s Campaign Site
McCain’s Blog
McCain’s Blog Feed
Sign up to receive email’s from McCain’s campaign
EMail Senator McCain
McCain on Facebook
McCain on MySpace
McCain on YouTube
It also appears that they’ve got something on Twitter but I couldn’t confirm whether it was official.

Wow!  That’s a pretty decent (actually standard these days) internet presence for someone who is so “out of touch.”

Now I know some will argue that there are other people doing that for him.  To this I say, Duh!  That’s the whole point.  The POTUS has a few people on staff to handle this stuff for him as well.  I mean, do you think Obama is up at night clicking through all the emails coming in from his minions?

I know, the charge is that, because he isn’t personally versed in all this stuff, McCain is … “out of touch,” “not with it,” … OLD!  That’s the real encoded message there, as Obama follows through on his campaign’s pledge to stop the pettiness and get back to the issues.  Apparently this was just a stop-gap while Obama researches to figure out where he currently stands on the issues.

Bottom line:  However it was accomplished, McCain was successfully employing technology and the internet when Obama was still back in Springfield wearing out the “present” vote.  I’m not looking for a candidate who knows everything, I’m looking for someone who can put in place and effectively lead a team that will keep him up to speed.

But hey, Obamessiah, that’s really good that you know how to send an email.  Really.  Way to go.  Go ahead and add “can surf the web” right under community organizer on your “why I should be the leader of the free world” resume.