Irish Trojan in Tennessee

Pregnancy in a nutshell

By Brendan Loy

WARNING: Clip contains profanity!

From Knocked Up:

Heh.

A very funny movie, that is -- especially when you're expecting. :)

Penalties galore, then and now

By Brendan Loy

USC's 16 penalties against Washington last night "was not a school record, it just felt like one," Scott Wolf points out. Well, yeah -- I could have told you that. I remember vividly when USC set its school record for penalties, which was also the Pac-10 record for penalties: 21 of 'em. It was September 25, 1999, and the #16-ranked Trojans lost to upstart Oregon, 33-30 in the first conference game of my freshman year. The Trojans would ultimately finish the season 6-6, 3-5 in conference, though head coach Paul Hackett would save his job for one more year by beating UCLA for the first time in nine tries (despite committing 16 penalties in that game as well). Only after following up that season with a 5-7 mark in 2000 (after again starting the season in the Top 25, #15 to be exact) did Hackett finally get canned.

I mention the 1999 Oregon game because you might recall me referencing it a week-and-a-half ago in my post "On being an Irish fan," as an example of me mocking the Trojans back when they were laughably bad:

[I]f I dig through my old photos...I believe I'd find a picture from the fall of 1999 of my dorm-room whiteboard after a USC-Oregon contest in which Paul Hackett's Trojans set a new Pac-10 record for penalties in a game. My reaction wasn't to wail and scream and gnash my teeth and wring my hands; I don't do teeth-gnashing and hand-wringing; it's not my thing. Instead, my reaction was mockery. I don't remember exactly what the whiteboard said, but it was something along the lines of congratulating the Trojans for their glorious Pac-10 record.

I found that photo, BTW:

Anyway... back to last night. What to make of USC's performance? Boi From Troy is happy because pretty much everything that could go wrong, did go wrong, and the Trojans still won. This sentiment was expressed last night at the college-football blog 100% Injury Rate:

The only team that can beat USC is USC. And let me tell you why. Quite simply, there is no team in college that can go on the road, commit three turnovers, have a punt blocked, commit 16 penalties for 160+ yards, and lose two great O-linemen - all against a decent opponent - and win. No one. LSU can't do that, Cal can't do that, Ohio State can't do that. USC played one of those games where they literally did everything they could to keep shooting themselves in the foot and still beat a decent Washington team. That is incredibly impressive. Of course, if USC plays like they did on Saturday against LSU, Cal or Ohio St. they'd be crushed. But the fact remains, they did everything wrong on Saturday against Washington and still won. That's pretty remarkable. USC is the only team that can stop USC. And they almost did it on Saturday.

On the list of things that went wrong, in Boi's view, was the officiating:

Tropical update

By Brendan Loy

Another tropical storm, Melissa, has come and gone this weekend while I've been too busy blogging about college football to pay attention to the tropics. Also since my last update, Lorenzo has made landfall and died over Mexico, and Karen has petered out over the Atlantic. Alan Sullivan explains:

This season is just plain strange: it has brought an exceptional number of duds. Evidently long-range forecasters like Dr. Gray were half-right. Preconditions for a real storm-fest were present, but tropical systems have been snuffed by unusual upper winds that I began to notice in May. Only Dean and Felix escaped, running straight west at very low latitude.

Sullivan also thinks the National Hurricane Center is "getting sensitive to blogosphere charges of count-padding." He notes a line in the discussion from when Karen was designated that he interprets as meaning, effectively, "Hey, guys, we didn’t even want to name this one, so back off."

The great LSU-USC debate, 2007 edition

By Brendan Loy

The new college football polls are out. In the AP poll, LSU moves ahead of USC by a meaningless margin of 2 points and one first-place vote; the Tigers and Trojans are essentially tied. USC maintains a reasonably comfortable lead in the coaches' poll. (The new Harris Poll -- which, unlike the AP, actually counts for BCS purposes -- isn't out yet.)

Frankly, I agree with the AP on this one. As I said yesterday, I'd have put LSU #1 on my ballot this week, if I had a vote. But it doesn't really matter anyway. If both teams win out, they'll play in the title game. It's only if one or both falters that the race gets interesting.

Apropos of which: Cal is #3, Ohio State #4 and Wisconsin #5 in both polls. South Florida rockets all the way from #18 in both polls to #6 in the AP poll, #9 in the coaches' poll. Boston College, Kentucky, Florida and Oklahoma make up, in differing orders, the rest of the Top 10.

The Gators clearly have the inside track to the title game among the one-loss teams, IMHO. If they win out, which would entail capturing the SEC crown and probably beating LSU twice in the process, they will certainly be ahead of any other one-loss teams in the pecking order, and possibly ahead of any undefeateds from the Big East as well (though I don't think it would be justifiable to put them ahead of USF, given the Bulls' win at Auburn). I imagine there might even be an argument about a one-loss Florida team vs. an undefeated Big Ten or ACC team, given the number of "quality wins" Florida would have to collect along the way (and given how last year turned out).

Anyway, next week's supposed marquee games will, as it turns out, feature #1/2 LSU vs. #9/7 Florida and #10 Oklahoma vs. #19/16 Texas. Looming larger now are Ohio State-Wisconsin on November 3 (though I suspect the Badgers will lose before then, possibly next week at resurgent Illinois) and USC-Cal on November 10 -- the latter a very possible #1 vs. #2 matchup, if both teams win out till then and LSU loses to Florida next week (or to Kentucky, Auburn or Alabama in the weeks that follow).

P.S. Florida's loss yesterday means one thing for sure: we won't have to deal with the nightmare scenario of LSU and Florida splitting the season series (i.e., the winner of next week's game then loses in the SEC title game), each finishing with one loss (to the other), and then arguing over who deserves a spot in the BCS championship game -- or even contending that they deserve a championship-game rematch. Now we know for sure that at least one of them will finish with at least two losses. Thank goodness.

"This is not a class in temporal logic!"

By Brendan Loy

And now, for a little change of pace from football... here's one of my all-time favorite bits of Star Trek dialogue. It's from the episode "A Matter of Time," and Captain Picard is trying to convince a time-traveler -- who claims to be a historian from the future -- to use his foreknowledge to help Picard decide whether to take a risky action that could save, or kill, millions of people on the planet below. Here it is, for your viewing and/or Brendan-mocking pleasure:

"It's not theoretical, it's not hypothetical, it's real!"

Kill the Rally Monkey

By JLR

Kill the Rally Monkey.

*Signed*: Red Sox Nation

PS: And go Indians--kill the Bronx Bastards!

Trojans survive Upset Saturday carnage

By Brendan Loy

USC survives, 27-24. Phew.

Good effort, Huskies. Way to hang in there till the end and make a game of it. As for the Trojans, it's nice to see that we can still win while playing like we're sleepwalking, committing 843 penalties for 458,629 yards (or something like that), and generally looking kinda crappy. But this sort of effort won't cut it when we travel to Oregon, Cal and Arizona State.

Meanwhile, Auburn stunned Florida, 20-17, hitting a last-second field goal to win it. Wow.

The #4 Gators join #3 Oklahoma, #5 West Virginia, #7 Texas and #10 Rutgers as losers this weekend. Again, wow. Check out next week's likely Top 4:

1. USC or LSU
2. LSU or USC
3. Cal
4. Ohio State

Holy hell!

If Florida beats LSU next week, and the Trojans and Bears win out through October and the first week of November, the Cal-USC game on November 10 could be #1 vs. #2!!!

By the way, let the record show that I was the first person who labelled today "Upset Saturday." And that was at 2:02 PM, before any of the day's Top 10 losses! :)

P.S. Auburn's win over Florida isn't just big for Auburn. It's huge for Big East co-leader South Florida, which knocked off Auburn on the Tigers' home field two weeks ago. It was starting to look like USF's win over Auburn was going to lose some of its lustre, but not anymore!

If the Bulls can run the table in the Big East, they can present themselves as serious national-title contenders. Imagine the following scenario: USC wins out and finishes #1. Florida recovers from tonight's loss, knocks off LSU next week, wins out and captures the SEC crown. The Big Ten, ACC and Big 12 don't produce any undefeated teams. South Florida, however, wins the Big East at 12-0. So... who is USC's opponent in the BCS title game? Florida, the SEC champion and defending national champ, can make a case for itself at 12-1... but what about USF? They'd be 12-0, Big East champs, and with a win over the team that beat Florida. Seems to me, the proper matchup in that scenario would be Trojans vs. Bulls.

Of course, that exact scenario probably won't happen, but in any conceivable scenario, it's very good news for USF that Auburn picked up this victory, and it'd be even better news if the Tigers seize on this win and really turn around their season.

Needless to say, any national-title talk is a long way off -- and personally, I doubt USF will win out. Based on watching them play, I don't actually think they're all that good. But it's still fun to speculate about such things. :) A more immediate question is where the Bulls will be ranked next week. They were #18 this week, but the combination of their win over West Virginia with Auburn's win over Florida, plus all the other upset losses, should allow them to move up significantly.

If I had a vote, here's what I think my ballot would look like, off the top of my head:

1. LSU
2. USC
3. Cal
4. Ohio State
5. Kentucky
6. Boston College
7. South Florida
8. Wisconsin
9. Florida
10. Oklahoma

P.P.S. The Terrific Twenty-Three is down to a Fantastic Fifteen: Boston College from the ACC; Kansas and Missouri from the Big 12; Cincinnati, South Florida and UConn from the Big East; Purdue, Ohio State and Wisconsin from the Big Ten; Arizona State, Cal and USC from the Pac-10; Kentucky and LSU from the SEC; and Hawaii from the WAC. And with three of the four participants in next Saturday's supposed Games of the Century (OU-Texas, LSU-Florida) suffering losses today, the only unbeaten-vs.-unbeaten matchup next week is Ohio State at Purdue.

P.P.P.S. If anybody's wondering why I still haven't posted the pick 'em contest standings... I've misplaced the spreadsheet that I need to calculate 'em. It must be on one of my external drives. I'll try to find it tomorrow. :) Sorry!

BEAT THE HUSKIES!!!

By Brendan Loy

Er, sorry, forgot to post a USC-Washington game thread earlier. It's a scoreless tie at the end of the first quarter, with USC looking very sloppy so far. Oh yeah, and two of our starting offensive linesmen got injured on the same play. D'oh!

Meanwhile, Auburn is beating Florida 7-0 early.

UPDATE: UW scored, USC answered, and it's 7-7. Meanwhile, Auburn's lead is now 14-0! War Eagle!

UPDATE 2: Another Trojan injury! Good grief!

Forget the third string. Could USC's all-gimp team beat Notre Dame? :)

UPDATE 3: Trojans 17, Huskies 14 at halftime.

UPDATE 4: Heeeere we go. Bring on the Pete Carroll Second-Half Magic!^TM

UPDATE 5: UW looks asleep, but USC hasn't done anything yet either. Still 17-14. Meanwhile, it's now the fourth quarter in Gainsville, and Auburn leads 17-3. Woooo!

According to Brent Musberger, if either USC or Florida loses tonight, it'll be the first time since October 11, 2003 that five Top 10 teams have lost in one weekend. I remember that day very well: it was two weeks after USC's triple-overtime loss to Cal, which had dropped the Trojans from #3 to #10 in the polls. They had climbed back to #9 the week before, on the strength of their win at Arizona State; I lived in New York City at that time, but I was visiting Becky the weekend of October 4, and we were at Sun Devil Stadium for the game -- which turned out to be the first win of the 34-game winning streak. Anyway, I was back in New York on October 11, and Dane happened to be in town, so we got together and went down to the bar where the USC alumni club was meeting to watch the Trojans play Stanford. We watched the scoreboard giddily as one Top 10 team after another lost: #3 Ohio State, #5 Florida State, #6 LSU, #7 Arkansas and #10 Nebraska. I think we may have had a few drinks to celebrate those losses and USC's win; I recall stumbling toward the subway later, marvelling at the beauty of being in a city where picking a designated driver isn't an issue. :) Anyway, as a result of those losses by previously undefeated teams, and of USC's easy win over the Farm, the Trojans climbed all the way back to #5 in the AP poll and #4 in the coaches poll the following week. It was almost like the Cal loss had never happened. October 11, 2003 set the stage for USC's eventual split championship with LSU. (In fact, if I'm being honest, the biggest reason USC was ranked #1 in the final regular-season AP poll, with LSU #2, is because the Trojans suffered their loss two weeks before the Tigers did.)

UPDATE 6: USC 24, Washington 17 with 11:01 left in the fourth quarter. This one may actually go down to the wire!

UPDATE 7: 15 penalties, 151 yards. Is this a Paul Hackett-coached team???

Also, will Brent Musberger and Kirk Herbstreit please stop talking about irrelevant s**t and TALK ABOUT THE GAME?!? It would be different it this were a blowout, but it's a close, exciting game!! The endless headshots of the two announcers are getting extremely old, too. Show the field, show the players, show the coaches, show the fans, show the cheerleaders... show something other than two white guys sitting in a bland booth talking to each other! Ugh!

UPDATE 8: AUBURN WINS!!!! WOOOO!!!!!!

Meanwhile, it looked like Washington had intercepted the ball in their own end zone with 3:06 left down by just 7, but it now appears it will be overturned on replay and USC can go for a field goal to take a 10-point lead.

UPDATE 9: Field goal good! 27-17 Trojans.

Colorado stuns Oklahoma! [and Texas loses, too!]

By Brendan Loy

WOOOOOO!!!

HUGE win for the Colorado program, needless to say. It was 24-7 Sooners late in the third quarter, and 24-10 going into the fourth, but the Buffaloes scored 20 unanswered (17 of those in the fourth) to win it, 27-24. Wow!!

I'm super annoyed at myself for not watching. The game was televised here, but I had the TV on the Clemson-Georgia Tech game (on mute) because the OU-CU game wasn't close the last time I checked. D'oh!

Anyway, now we probably won't have to worry about any damn LSU-USC-Oklahoma controversy this year. Thank goodness. If the Trojans and Tigers both go undefeated, I'd love to have an undisputed title game between 'em. It'd put about four years of angst to rest.

I guess this means I'm rooting for Oklahoma against Texas next week. The more undefeated teams lose, the better! Not only to facilitate a possible USC-LSU battle, but also to facilitate a possible Rutgers or South Florida title-game appearance if USC is the only undefeated team left at the end of the season. (Obviously I refuse on principle to contemplate scenarios that involve USC losing. :)

P.S. Maybe I won't have to worry about Texas: they're losing 24-14 to Kansas State at halftime! Woo!!! Texas & Oklahoma suck!!! :)

UPDATE: Texas is going to lose!!! YEEEEEAAAH!!!! WOOOOO!!!!! Second year in a row they've lost to Kansas State.

But it looks like the Rutgers dream is going to die. They're trailing Maryland 27-17 with 6:45 to play. This hasn't been a good 24 hours for the Big East. First the #5-ranked Mountaineers, considered the conference's one true "elite" team, loses in conference play, and now Rutgers, the presumptive class of the conference in the wake of WVU's loss and Louisville's collapse, is losing to a middling ACC team. Yuck.

UPDATE 2: Kansas State 41, Texas 21, final. Woohoo!

So much for next Saturday's Red River Shootout having massive national-title implications. The Big 12 is now, in all likelihood, irrelevant to the BCS race. The Pac-10 and SEC have the inside track to the title game.

Wouldn't it be awesome if Auburn could stun Florida at the Swamp tonight? It would totally cap off the day. (And, um, you know what wouldn't totally cap off the day? USC losing to Washington. Yeah. Let's have none of that.)

Meanwhile, Rutgers scored a TD, and is within 3.

UPDATE 3: Maryland wins, 34-24. So much for the Scarlet Knights inserting themselves into the national-championship discussion. The remaining undefeated teams in the Big East are... Cincinnati, South Florida and UConn!

So, four Top Ten teams have been upset in the last 24 hours: #3 Oklahoma, #5 West Virginia, #7 Texas and #10 Rutgers. In addition, previously undefeated Clemson, Michigan State and Oregon lost today. So the Terrific 23 is down to 16 and counting. Still to play: #1 USC (at Washington), #4 Florida (vs. Auburn), #8 Ohio State (at Minnesota) and #24 Cincinnati (at San Diego State).

UPDATE 4: Another reason to like Colorado: their coach is a Great Big Sea fan!

Suddenly it's a ballgame!

By Brendan Loy

It's Purdue 26, Notre Dame 19 with 7:58 to go. Evan Sharpley, replacing the injured Jimmy Clausen, is looking Brady Quinn-esque all of a sudden; Tennessee's own Golden Tate is looking Jeff Samardzija-esque; and Purdue is looking Michigan State-esque, circa 2006, as they "pucker pucker pucker" away a big lead. And of course, that lead could have been bigger (like, 42-19) if they had more of a red-zone offense. On the other hand, it could have been smaller (like, 26-24) if Notre Dame could kick a freakin' field goal or extra point. Apropos of which, apparently Charlie Weis plans to go for 2 and the win if the Irish score again. Seems sensible to me, given that the kicker is 1-for-3 on PAT attempts that counted, 2-for-5 when you include the ones that were nullified by penalties. First, though, we need to stop Purdue on this drive.

GOOOO IRISH!!! BEEEEAT BOILERS!!!

UPDATE: Can someone explain to me how the F*** that was a touchdown?? His ass was on the ground!! WTF??? Why do we even have replay, if they aren't going to take extra time to look at a play like that??

Regardless, 33-19 Purdue, 5:33 left. So much for that.

UPDATE 2: Aaaand an interception in the end zone effectively ends the game.

0-8.

UPDATE 3: 33-19, final.

So, was this a "moral victory" for the Irish? Certainly, they played better in the second half than they have all year. On the other hand, Purdue was definitely puckering. From what the announcers were saying, the Boilermakers have made a habit of playing lazy in the second half this season, and they continued that habit against the Irish today. No way do the next three teams on Notre Dame's schedule let them back into the game like Purdue did. (Well, UCLA might, but only if they're having one of their Karl Dorrell Special^TM "lay an egg" games.)

On the other other hand, the Notre Dame team that took the field two weeks ago against Michigan wouldn't have taken advantage of the opportunities Purdue gave them. So yes, there's improvement. But let's not get too far ahead of ourselves. I agree with AlGoldenDomer that "the 1st half may have been our worst of the year" -- well, maybe not worst, but certainly worse than anything except the Michigan game -- and that matters too. I think Camarillo Brillo puts it best:

We did show some heart. Sharpley played well. Tate and Kamara came on big, and they deserve more PT. Defense stepped it up a bit in the 2nd half.

However....

We were getting our asses kicked in the first half. [Defensive coordinator] Corwin Brown's scheme for the Purdue offense was for s**t. We sat back in a passive base defense, like Minter and let Purdue shove the ball down our throat. We got very little pass rush on Painter. The wide-outs on Purdue were abusing our secondary.

Our special teams are beyond bad. Two missed PATs a missed FG, numerous poor squibs that gave Purdue great field position, terrible blocking on punt returns and kick returns.

Weis made some bad decisions. Where was Robert Hughes? Okay, he got stuffed on 4th and 1, who hasn't? Bronco F***ing Nagurski couldn't pick up 4th and 1 with this line. Tate was all over the field making great catches. Why put him on the bench? Why put Brian Smith on the field after that stupid personal foul? (two fouls if you count the uncalled one before that)?

It was a nice comeback but on the main this team is an undisciplined mess.

I'll say it again. Charlie, you are the head coach. You are the man who swaggered into South Bend and proclaimed that when it came down to Xs and Os you would not get beat very often. Charlie, it's about alot more than X's and O's right now. It's about managing the game, preparation, making smart substitutions and keeping your players in line. The reality is, Charlie, you are 0-5. That has never happened before in the history of Notre Dame. Your contract was extended after 7 games in your first season. You are getting paid millions of dollars. This is your team, these are your recruits. Fix the problem, Coach Weis.

Upset Saturday?

By Brendan Loy

A few halftime scores from around the country:

LSU 10, Tulane 9 (Tulane was up 9-7 until the Tigers got a field goal just before halftime)

Northwestern 16, Michigan 7

Illinois 21, Penn State 17

Indiana 21, Iowa 7

UPDATE: Looks like LSU is pulling away. No surprise there. But how about Duke being within 3 points of Miami in the fourth quarter? The same Miami that crushed Texas A&M last week?

UPDATE 2: LSU and Michigan won, but Illinois and Indiana pulled the upsets.

Meanwhile, undefeated Division I-AA team UMass is making it a ballgame against undefeated Division I-A team Boston College.

It's now or November: let's get a win, boys

By Brendan Loy

[Well, I suppose I can let the blasphemy below stand, but I'm going to bump this post above it, at least. :) -ed.]

*    *    *

With apologies to the Neudorffs...

GOOOOO IRISH!!! BEEEEEAT BOILERS!!!

UPDATE: We've got Erin Andrews! w00t! And apparently she's been looking deeply into Charlie Weis's eyes.

UPDATE 2: If you look deeply into Charlie Weis's eyes right now, you'd probably see... panic. It's 10-0 Purdue already, with 5:49 left in the first quarter, and the defense looks like s**t. Boilermakers moving the ball at will.

On the bright side, here's one of the many reasons I love Becky: for the last three Saturdays in a row, she's made some sort of a yummy dip for us to eat while watching football:

Mmm... vegetables.

UPDATE 3: What the hell was that? Darrin Walls just gave up on that tackle. It was like he just sort of assumed Greg Orton would go out of bounds... and as a result, Orton got loose for an extra 10 yards. Completely pathetic.

UPDATE 4: A sampling of commentary from ND Nation:

how f'n embarrassing

It cannot get worse than this.

HOLY F**K

F**k this. Good thing I have a kid's soccer game to get to.

this is just bloody awful.

Unf**kingreal.

We Are TOAST

USC will beat us by 80

UPDATE 5: I wrote earlier this week that "I feel like some of my fellow Irish fans aren't fully grappling with the enormity of the team's suckiness." Well, over on ND Nation, I think the "grappling" process is beginning. There are several comments along the lines of, "This is the worst team I have ever seen," and there's this post, which I agree with 100 percent:

We are inexplicably bad...in EVERY facet of the game. I can understand rebuilding. There is no excuse to be this bad, across the board. Yes, it's Ty's fault. But this is Weis' fault primarily. This team should be competitive by this point, and they're not even close.

The combination of our "improvement" against a very mediocre Michigan State team and our "brutal" early schedule (whose already clearly overrated "brutality" is looking even less fierce at the moment, with Penn State losing to Illinois, and Michigan -- whose big "quality win" is over Penn State -- losing to Northwestern) allowed some Domers to fool themselves into thinking that we'd be doing much better if we were playing weaker teams. Now, they're saying things like this: "The sad thing is PU isn't even good. That's how bad we are." "Nope. They're a .500 Big 11 team."

It's 23-0 with 2:50 left in the first half. Two touchdowns and three field goals. If Purdue had any kind of a red-zone offense -- if, say, we were playing USC or Boston College today -- it'd be 35-0 right now. We're lucky to be "only" behind 23-0.

Well, I was going to wait until after the game

By Trisha Neudorff

However, seeing as how Brendan has just picked on the BBD (Big Bass Drum, for you non-Purdue people), I just can't let that go.

GO BOILERS! BEAT THE IRISH!

(Yes, I realize I may have just forfeited my guest-blogger privileges, lol. It was worth it ;))

Black is white, up is down in Big East

By Brendan Loy

#18-ranked South Florida upset #5 West Virginia tonight, 21-13, in a sloppy but entertaining Big East showtown that ESPN2's Sean McDonough introduced as "the biggest game in the history of our Friday-night telecast." And the outcome makes it the biggest win in the history of USF's young football program.

With the loss, the Mountaineers join Louisville and Pittsburgh in a tie for last place in the Big East, while South Florida is tied with UConn and Syracuse for first. No, it's not opposite day: those are really the current conference standings. Who'd have thunk it? Huskies and Orange and Bulls, oh my!

Of course, the standings don't mean much at this point (everybody is either 1-0, 0-1 or 0-0 in conference play), but the more important point is that South Florida and Rutgers are now the presumptive front-runners for the Big East title (although, don't sleep on Cincinnati). McDonough even suggested that USF, which has a pretty favorable schedule outside of the Thursday-night showdown at Rutgers on October 18, could find itself in the national title discussion if it runs the table.

Methinks it would take a lot of attrition among the other members of the Terrific Twenty-ThreeTwo before most people would start seriously considering the Bulls for a title-game spot -- but hey, that does tend to happen, so it's certainly within the realm of possibility. (It would help USF's case if Auburn could turn its season around, thus making the Bulls' win at the Tigers' home stadium look more impressive. That could be especially helpful if we end up having a BCS debate between an undefeated South Florida team and, say, a one-loss Florida or LSU team.)

Personally, I don't think USF is actually good enough to be true national-championship material. In fact, notwithstanding my bias toward mid-majors and other little-team-that-could success stories, I don't think they're close. In both of their games that I've watched -- tonight's sloppy triumph, and the even sloppier win over Auburn three weeks ago -- the Bulls won largely by taking advantage of a ton of unforced errors (and a few forced ones, too, in fairness), and would have won more easily if they hadn't made a fair number of bad mistakes themselves. I suspect that'll catch up with them at some point, and they'll eventually lose a game or two.

But their rise to prominence is a great story regardless, and if they do end up running the table, they certainly deserve to be duly considered as a national-title contender out of the very competitive league that the Big East has become.

The Red Sox are the AL East champions!!!

By Brendan Loy

Woohoo!!!

Thanks, Orioles!

Yankees suck!

P.S. This is the first time Boston has won the American Leage East since 1995, and it breaks a string of nine consecutive Yankees division titles.

UPDATE: And the Cubs are NL Central champs!

P.P.S. I can say this without risking a jinx now, right? BOSTON'S MAGIC NUMBER IS ZERO!!! :)

I must say, though, I don't think the Red Sox should be stealing the White Sox's song:

BOSTON (AP) -- Jonathan Papelbon danced barefoot in the infield. Daisuke Matsuzaka smiled and bowed to a group surrounding him. And the sound system played "Don't Stop Believin'."

Huh? Anyway, the article continues:

Ecstatic fans joined in to savor Boston's first division title in 12 years -- and the end of the New York Yankees' long run on top.

More than an hour after the Red Sox beat Minnesota 5-2, the Yankees lost at Baltimore to make it official. Moments later, Boston players popped champagne corks in the clubhouse while a few thousand fans left at Fenway Park let loose, the echoes of their cheers spreading through the mostly empty stadium.

"I pulled my hamstring jumping off the couch," said manager Terry Francona, who watched the end of the Yankees game in his office with general manager Theo Epstein and owners John Henry and Tom Werner. "It's fun to see grown men act like little kids."

With Boston's win, New York's loss and Cleveland's 5-3 victory over Kansas City, the AL playoff pairings were set: The Los Angeles Angels will open at Boston, and the wild-card Yankees will start at Cleveland.

Beat the Angels!!

Beat the drum

By Brendan Loy

Jay at The Blue-Gray Sky has a Top 10 list of superstitious rituals that might help break Notre Dame's six-game losing streak. I particularly like #4:

Collect the poison of a Yellow Jacket, the tooth of a Nittany Lion, the hair of a Wolverine, and the sweat of a Spartan. Mix together in a large pot and boil for 24 hours, chanting the ancient Celtic Rite of Purification. Pour mixture in the trash and immediately shotgun 12 Keystone Lights.

Heh. #6 is good, too: "Zahm Hall shall remain celibate until the first win. Zahm is delighted to finally have an excuse."

Whatever it takes, I hope the Irish can find some way to pull out a win tomorrow against Purdue. If they don't, there's an excellent chance the November 3 home game against Navy will become a "something's gotta give" matchup, and not in a good way. I can hear the pregame commentary already in my mind's ear: Which streak will end today? Navy's 43-year string of futility against the Irish, or Notre Dame's 10-game losing streak? Somebody's gotta win! ... Yeah, that wouldn't be fun. Not fun at all. Blech.

Go Irish. Beat Boilers.

The Terrific Twenty-Three

By Brendan Loy

For the second week in a row, Friday-night football on ESPN2 features a matchup between two undefeated teams tonight. This week's showdown, West Virginia at South Florida, is a much bigger deal than last week's Oklahoma-Tulsa nonconference curiosity. Tonight's game will go a long way toward determining who wins the Big East, and the folks in Tampa are ready -- they've been ready for some time, actually -- for the biggest game in their young football program's history (not to mention their first home sellout). The visiting, #5-ranked Mountaineers, whose BCS hopes were derailed last season by a stunning home loss to South Florida, are a one-touchdown favorite.

Saturday will feature two more unbeaten-versus-unbeaten showdowns, both at 3:30 PM. In the Big Ten, Michigan State visits Wisconsin, and in the Pac-10, Cal visits Oregon. The latter, which is basically the battle to see who will challenge USC for the conference title (though Arizona State may also have something to say about that), is the ESPN GameDay game, though most of the country won't get to see it because of other ABC games airing at the same time. (Here in Knoxville, for example, we get Clemson-Georgia Tech instead. Harumph.) There's also, technically speaking, another unbeaten-versus-unbeaten showdown between Boston College at UMass at 1:00 PM, but the Minutemen are a Division I-AA team, so that doesn't really count.

There's only one unbeaten-vs.-winless game this week: Notre Dame (0-4) at Purdue (4-0). If the Irish keep losing, they could potentially face a grand total of five such games before the season is over (not counting the season-opening 0-0 vs. 0-0 game against Georgia Tech) -- vs. Penn State, vs. Michigan State, vs. Purdue, vs. Boston College and vs. USC. I wonder if that would be some kind of record? Anyway, the Irish are 22-point underdogs against Purdue.

Easily the heaviest favorite among the unbeatens this weekend is LSU, which visits a Tulane team that Vegas has pegged as a 41-point underdog. Ouch. The second-heaviest favorite is Hawaii, the lone remaining undefeated team from a non-BCS conference, which resumes its WAC schedule at Idaho -- and is favored by 25.

Outside of the three games between a pair of Division I-A unbeatens, the only game featuring one of the Terrific 23 with a point-spread of less than 14 points is the aforementioned Clemson at Georgia Tech contest; the Tigers are favored by just 3. Other than that, all the unbeatens are heavily favored -- even the runt of the group, UConn, which hosts 15.5-point underdog Akron at East Hartford's Rentschler Field. The Huskies, by the way, got three votes in this week's AP poll, courtesy of a 23rd-place vote by Doug Doughty of the Roanoke (Va.) Times. That means all 23 undefeated teams are now getting at least some recognition in the polls.

Anyway, the Terrific 23 will definitely shrink to at most 20 this weekend, thanks to the three unbeaten-vs.-unbeaten games, and a Clemson loss would drop the total to 19... but any further attrition would entail a major upset.

The full "Terrific 23" schedule is after the jump.

P.S. Stay tuned for pick 'em contest standings! Really! Tonight! (Hopefully.)

Jones to Cincy

By Brendan Loy

Demetrius Jones, who disastrously started Notre Dame's season opener at QB and then notoriously quit the team right before the Michigan game without telling anybody his plans, is going to Cincinnati instead of Northern Illinois. (Hat tip: Patrick.)

The sad thing is, that's a step up at this point. The Bearcats are 4-0 and ranked for the first time since 1976. Notre Dame... eh, you all know how Notre Dame is doing. In any event, I wish him well.

On an unrelated note, I'm really, really going to try to make time tomorrow evening to finally get the pick 'em contest online. Considering the regular season is basically one-third over, I figure it's time. :) Also coming tomorrow, hopefully: an update on the Terrific Twenty-Three (i.e., the remaining undefeated teams), and who they play this weekend. If I have time, I'll do the Egregious Eleven as well (the winless teams).

UPDATE BY DAVID K.: The South Bend Tribune is reporting that Notre Dame sophomore lineman Chris Stewart has traveled home to Texas to spend time with his family, and is considering leaving the school and the team. If he leaves, Stewart would be the third player to leave the team in the past two weeks and the 17th to leave since Charlie Weis took over the program.

(Hat tip: Timugen in comments.)

Another out-of-the-blue Gulf hurricane

By Brendan Loy

Hurricane Lorenzo is about to make landfall along the central Mexican Gulf coast. If you don't remember hearing me mention Lorenzo before on the blog, that's because I haven't: like Humberto before him, Lorenzo blew up very quickly, from a tropical depression as late as 11:00 AM today to a hurricane as of 8:00 PM. Now he's at 80 mph, and some additional slight strengthening is possible before landfall in the next few hours.

Meanwhile, out in the middle of the Atlantic is Tropical Storm Karen, struggling with wind shear and currently no threat to land. That could change eventually, but it's very hard to say at this point. Alan Sullivan writes: "If conditions were right, this would have been a mighty hurricane. As it is, we will see a feeble, sputtering tropical storm headed slowly northwest then west for days to come. The GFS model keeps Karen alive long enough to recover strength off the East Coast, recurve, and pass just off Cape Cod as a sizeable hurricane." That's just one computer model, though, and it's trying to predict something a long way off (like ~10 days), so take it with several buckets full of salt.

Apparently we've killed some bad guys in Iraq

By Brendan Loy

One of the things that struck me watching the first part of Ken Burns's The War last night on my TiVo was the focus on body counts. Whenever he would talk about a battle in the Pacific, it was always the comparitive body count that seemed to matter most: yeah, we lost X number of men, but the Japanese lost more, so it was a success! And it wasn't just Burns. One of the soldiers he interviewed talked about a failed Japanese ambush on Guadalcanal in which 900+ Japanese soldiers were killed, but only 36 Americans died. "That was really great for morale," the soldier said. And of course, I understand why -- that's a huge victory -- but at the same time, I thought, wow, it really shows how your perspective changes in war. Those 36 dead Americans undoubtedly had good friends in the unit who were devastated to lose them. And yet it was "great" for morale that they were the only ones who died.

With that in mind, I was struck by the top headline in today's issue of USA Today as I walked past a news box in downtown Knoxville this afternoon:

"19,000 militant fatalities since '03." My initial, instinctive reaction upon reading that was: "Really? 19,000? Well, hey, that puts those 3,800 American fatalities in perspective, doesn't it?" To which I think, upon reflection, that the correct answer is: yes and no. On the one hand, this is a very, very different kind of war than the mass-mobilization, fight-to-the-last-man battle that was World War II, so the cruel arithmetic of body counts doesn't have the same significance. Plus, unlike in conventional wars, we have to ask whether our presence in Iraq is breeding anger to such a degree that two new militants are popping up for every militant who dies. (I don't presume to know the answer to that question; I'm just saying it has to be asked.) But on the other hand, it is nice to know that we're more efficient at killing the enemy than they are at killing us. I mean, I think we all suspect that instinctively, but it's nice to have hard numbers to back it up.

Here's the full story. It points out that "U.S. commanders consider the number of enemy deaths a poor measure of progress in an insurgency." I sort of figured that, but even so, seeing the headline got me thinking along lines similar to the question I asked earlier this month in reference to blogger Michael Totten's account of the surge's success: "why aren't we hearing more about this sort of thing?" The subheadline on the USA Today story reads, "Military discloses stats for first time." Well, for heaven's sake, what's taken them so long?

Leaving aside the merits for a moment, and looking at this purely as a P.R. issue, it strikes me as head-smackingly stupid for the Bush Administration to not publicize these numbers. Even if they're not terribly meaningful in reality, an awful lot of people will have the same initial reaction I did -- or perhaps even a more rah-rah version of it, along the lines of Hey! We're kickin' ass! -- and many won't then retreat to the more philosophical "yes and no" answer that I eventually settled on. They'll stick with instinctual "hell yeah!" sort of response. Needless to say, from President Bush's perspective, such reactions are pure gold.

Memo to the Bush Administration: If you want people to support an ongoing war, you need to tell them we're killing the bad guys. It helps with morale. It gives people something to rally around. It prevents them from feeling like the whole effort is pointless and we're just wasting money and lives. Helping the Iraqi people build a stable democracy -- that's a worthy goal, but an esoteric one, hard to wrap your mind around. But killing bad guys: everybody understands that.

Ideally, you'd like to be able to say that we're killing the bad guys more efficiently and consistently than they're killing us. The government understood that in World War II, which is why they initially suppressed the news of how bad the death toll at Pearl Harbor was, and how poorly things were going in some early Pacific battles. They had to lie to rally support. All the Bush Administration needs to do is tell the truth! So what's taken them so long? Why aren't they shouting these numbers from the rooftops?

The article explains that the answer is at least partially a reaction to Vietnam:

The U.S. military rarely discusses the numbers of enemy dead, fearful of raising parallels with the Vietnam War when the U.S. military's reliance on "body counts" led to allegations of inflated figures because of political pressure to show results.

Well, I understand that fear, I guess, but isn't this a case of the pendulum swinging too far in the other direction? Just because you don't want to exaggerate body counts, which I certainly agree with, doesn't mean you shouldn't even release accurate ones! Especially with the media being veritably obsessed with the body count on our side, doesn't it make sense to tell 'em the count on the other side, to provide some context? Yet the military didn't even release this data of its own accord. It was "provided at USA TODAY's request."

Say what you will about the media and its biases, but one thing I know for sure is this: journalists love numbers. You give them a number that quantifies, or purports to quantify, a major news story, and they will report it far and wide. This is a reality that Rudy Giuliani understood when he refused to speculate about the death toll on 9/11, and that Ray Nagin, Kathleen Blanco and others failed to understand when they shot off their mouths about "10,000 body bags" after Katrina. (Giuliani, like everyone else, probably feared the World Trade Center toll was well into the five digits, but he knew better than to give voice to that fear, since his pessimistic estimate, based on nothing, would have been treated like gospel in the media. Instead, he said the toll would be "more than any of us can bear" -- a pitch-perfect answer, even if it frustrated the number-hungry journos. By contrast, the Louisiana officials had no such self-restraint, and the result was widespread and long-lasting overreporting of Katrina's toll.) Whether they love the war or hate it, the media would report these numbers if the administration was harping on them regularly, and the numbers would provide a valuable counterweight -- in media coverage and public perception, regardless of the realities on the ground -- to the ever-growing, always-heavily-reported "milestones" in the death toll among U.S. soldiers.

I am continually baffled and amazed by this administration's incompetence, not only in mismanaging the war in Iraq, but in mismanaging the propaganda war at home. Good grief.

Winds of change

By Brendan Loy

Those crazy liberal Al Gore-worshipping nutjobs in the Bush White House are officially on the global-warming bandwagon.

Also, I am officially a bad person for categorizing this post under "Weather." It's climate, not weather, you moron!  Yeah, but I don't have a "climate" category...

Before Mike Gundy, there was...

By Brendan Loy

...Jim Boeheim. (Warning: clip contains profanity!)

God, I love that clip. Best. Rant. Ever. I can't believe I didn't think of posting it earlier, in relation to the Gundy incident.

How did Notre Dame get so bad, so fast?

By Brendan Loy

As noted previously here and here, I've been planning for some time -- since the Michigan game, in fact -- to write a serious post about Notre Dame's struggles this season. I've been working on it mentally for almost two weeks, and I actually started typing it up shortly before the Michigan State game. I was hoping that game would render the post moot, but alas, no. So, here goes.

Admittedly, against the Spartans, the Irish showed some improvement over the previous week's performance -- going "from total ineptitude to just sucking" -- to the point where it's now at least possible to envision them beating the likes of Navy and Duke. But make no mistake, they're still horrible. In terms of quality of play, the Irish have got to be in the bottom 25% of Division I-A right now, and probably the bottom 10%. And so the question must be asked: Why? How? What the hell has happened?

I realize Notre Dame graduated a lot of good players last year. I realize there's inexperience at key positions. I realize the talent and depth are thin on the offensive line, among other places. I realize Jimmy Clausen is young, green, and getting pushed around like nobody's business. I accept all that. And believe me, I didn't expect the Irish to be good this year. But I still don't understand how they got this bad, this quickly. It simply boggles my mind.

Perhaps the boggling of my mind is not too surprising in itself. I'm not a terribly good football analysisist when it comes to the actual nuts and bolts of the game; I've never claimed to be. (I can explain to you all about the BCS, though. I'm better with the nerdy stuff than with the actual game.) But when I read the analyses from people who do know what they're talking about... I still don't get it. None of the explanations for the Irish's sudden and calamitous fall from grace seem adequate. Many seem, if I can be uncharitable for a moment, more like apologias than analyses.

I feel like some of my fellow Irish fans aren't fully grappling with the enormity of the team's suckiness. Maybe I'm wrong, but that's the feeling I get -- and as a result, their explanations ring hollow and inadequate, and leave me feeling continually confused over what the heck is going on in South Bend.

The Integer That Must Not Be Named

By Brendan Loy

Lest I invoke a jinx or hex of some kind (the "curse of the Brendino"?), I'm not going to mention any baseball-related terms that rhyme with "tragic lumber." However, the Red Sox won yesterday to stretch their AL East lead over the Yankees to 3 games, with each team having 4 games left to play. (Ahem, you do the math.)

In some ways, this divisional "race" is academic. No matter the outcome, both teams are going to the playoffs -- one as the AL East champ, the other as the wild card -- and since two teams from the same division can't meet in the opening round, we could be building toward another epic ALCS clash regardless. However, as a Boston fan, I would be much happier if it's the Sox who are the champs and the Yanks the chumps wild-card winners. Not only does it mean home-field advantage in a possible ALCS meeting, but it's a matter of pride: as I wrote previously, "We broke the Curse in 2004, and in the process we humiliated the Yankees in historic back-from-3-0 fashion, but we still haven't beaten them in the division race -- that is to say, been better than them over the course of the entire regular season -- since, like, forever." So... GO SAWX!

P.S. My Uncle Scott calls me "Brendino," if anybody is wondering where on earth that came from.

My family's "greatest generation"

By Brendan Loy

[UPDATE: Welcome, InstaPundit readers! I published this post yesterday (Wednesday) evening. However, as noted below, the referenced episode of The War can be seen this Sunday, when the first five episodes will be aired back-to-back starting at 11:00 AM.]

*   *   *

Tonight at 8:00 PM, the fourth episode of Ken Burns's documentary on World War II, The War, will air on PBS.  (It'll be rerun at 10:30 PM and 2:30 AM, and on Sunday at 5:30 PM.  The first five episodes will be aired consecutively on Sunday from 11:00 AM to 10:30 PM.)  The episode, titled "Pride of Our Nation," details the events that occurred from June through August of 1944, including D-Day and the battles of Tarawa, Saipan and Tinian.

As I've mentioned before, my Grandpa Loomer was a Marine, and he fought in all three of those battles.  Here's a photo of him -- wearing the fatigue jacket that he would later give to me -- sitting on a wrecked Japanese airplane along a captured airstrip in Tinian:

My mom, who has been watching The War with considerable interest these last two nights, e-mailed me yesterday to share some more details about our family history vis a vis World War II.  (My paternal grandfather was in his 30s by the time the war broke out, so he didn't fight.  As a result, it was on my mother's side that the war's impact was most acutely felt.)  Ken Burns's focus on the impact that the war had on ordinary people has gotten my mom thinking about how it affected her own family.  She wrote, in part:

We are from a family wrapped around World War II.  Grandpa started going out with Grandma in the summer of '42, while planning to enlist in the service as a carpenter 4th class.  When he found out how much more officers earned, he decided to do that [instead], [so] that he could support a wife, and proposed to Grandma.  They were married in Fredericksburg VA, right near Quantico VA [home of the Marine Officer Candidate School.  He was 26 years old, and she was 25.]  They had to wait to have a wedding reception when he got 30 day's leave, a month later (and they had gotten married on a 3-day pass at Christmas). 

When he shipped out it was with the 2nd Marine Division, seeing combat on Tarawa, then Saipan [and] Tinian ... He and Grandma didn't know when they would be able to start a family, with all the danger Grandpa was in, so they were married from Dec. 1942 through 1944 putting it off.  It finally reached the point where they thought if they waited any longer, they might have to wait ten years (which before the bomb seemed likely).  So when he was sent back in California (as it turned out for his last leave), in late 1944, he and Grandma stayed together there for three months, and it was then that they decided they shouldn't wait any longer.  When Grandma saw him off and took the train back home to Wisconsin, she was 1 month pregnant with Patty.  As a result, Patty was born before the end of the war (4 days before Roosevelt died).  Grandpa got posted to Japan for the occupation and didn't get home until early 1946, when Patty was 8 months old.  (That was the first time he saw her.)  But not knowing what lay ahead, their going ahead as they did was pretty brave.  Patty's best friend in high school was raised by just her mother.  Her dad had died in the war.  We knew of other families like that, young widows raising small children alone. ...

When we were little kids, there were assorted things around the house that we never thought were unusual -- a (real) Japanese kimono for a small child (for Patty), a stuffy named Zealy that Grandpa had bought in New Zealand (also for Patty - it's a rabbit).  We also had a ceremonial Japanese sword in the attic, Grandpa's full-dress uniform, his rifle and bayonet, the fatigue jacket he gave you, some really cool toy military vehicles -- scale models, very accurate and well-made.  He also had a book of photographs that had been made and published for the veterans of one of the above battles.  Lots of images like on the Ken Burns special, flame-throwers shooting into caves, burnt corpses of Japanese soldiers, battle landscape, etc.  Grandpa had a rising sun flag (red circle on white) with a lot of Japanese characters on it.  Much, much later, he decided to try to find the family of the soldier it had belonged to.  He actually did locate them (with the help of someone who could read Japanese, and a few other contacts) and sent them the flag.  They were grateful -- they had lost their son in the war and it was something of him being returned.   

As I know I've told you, Grandpa never talked much about the war to us.  I remember (idiot that I was) asking him how many Japs he had killed, but I don't remember whether he gave me an answer to that.  Once, when a relative of one of our Macomb neighbors visited who happened to have been a soldier under Grandpa's command, the two of them sat out in the backyard for quite awhile one evening reminiscing.  That's the only time I remember him talking about it.  Even the fact that he got flashbacks when he was too close under fireworks, I didn't learn until you were a little kiddo and we were spending the 4th of July in Arkansas with him and Grandma.

Grandpa was away at war when his mother died.  Of course a person can't come home for something like that in the middle of the war, but I think he never got over that.  I told Grandma once [years later, after Grandpa died] that it seemed so unfair that she and Grandpa had had to sacrifice so much as a couple -- the first four years of their marriage, delay in starting their family, getting married alone far from home, having the fear of death always hanging over them for 4 years because of Grandpa's combat -- and she just smiled and said that everybody was doing it.  I found a letter she wrote to her mother when she and Grandpa were traveling west as newlyweds to get him to San Diego, and she was telling her how exciting it was to be starting off into the big world with their whole lives before them.

Very interesting stuff, to me at least.  When I asked if it would be OK for me to blog what she had written, my mom replied, "Sure.  I think Grandma would be proud."  As well she should be, and Grandpa too.

Semper Fi.

The perils of righteous rage

By Brendan Loy

These words don't just apply to sports; they apply to blog comment-wars as well -- and many other aspects of life, for that matter:

Your righteous indignation never looks as righteous as you think. It really doesn't matter if you have a good reason to lose it. You still look like a maniac.

I plead guilty, Your Honor, to forgetting that principle every now and then, most often here on the blog but occasionally elsewhere too (like the time I went off on an insurance supervisor, or rather on his voicemail, because his company was totally screwing me over... which they were, and he had the power to fix it, and was infuriatingly stonewalling me at every turn... but nevertheless, my approach was all wrong).

"Your righteous indignation never looks as righteous as you think" is a good lesson to try to keep in mind -- even if doing so is difficult for us logical-and-articulate-but-occasionally-hot-headed lawyer types. :)

756*

By JLR

*The ball which was (un)fortunate enough to be the record-breaking 756th hit out of a ballpark by Barry Bonds will be branded with an asterisk.  The ball is headed to Cooperstown.

In other Bonds-related news, the team on which he has played for more than a dozen seasons has decided to cut its ties with him.  Here is an interesting post trying to figure out who might actually want the steroid-tainted-home-run-king.

Karen and proto-Lorenzo

By Brendan Loy

Tropical Storm Karen, which I first blogged about yesterday, has strengthened to 50 mph and is expected to become a minimal hurricane tomorrow before weakening due to increased shear. Karen appears to be no threat to land. Meanwhile, Tropical Depression 13 has formed in the Gulf of Mexico. It could become T.S. Lorenzo as it meanders westward toward the Mexican coast, but is unlikely to reach hurricane strength. SciGuy has more.

Hook 'em, Hitlers!

By Brendan Loy

Following hot on the heels of yesterday's proof that Bush is Hitler, now we have proof that the Texas Longhorns are evil -- or at least, that they're supported by both President Bush, who the Left believes is Hitler, and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who the Right believes is Hitler! Texas: favorite team of the Little Hitlers! Mack Brown, Colt McCoy and Limas Sweed are the new axis of evil!

P.S. This post invokes Godwin's Law on the Texas football season, which means the Longhorns are now obligated to forfeit all of their remaining games. Congratulations, Oklahoma, you've just won the Big 12 South. :)

New dad killed in Iraq one day after his son's birth

By Brendan Loy

This story, out of Hendersonville, Tennessee, is the sort of thing that's liable to make Becky cry these days. Hell, it might make me cry, if I think too hard about it. It's really, really sad. Excerpt:

On Friday, Mrs. Reeves delivered her seven-pound, 14-ounce boy into this world without complications. Soon afterward she phoned Iraq to deliver the happy news. There, Spc. Joshua H. Reeves, her soldier-husband of two years, was stationed with troops from Fort Riley, Kan. ...

One day's joy turned to sorrow on Saturday as a bomb detonated as Joshua Reeves' Humvee drove down a Baghdad street. Leslie Reeves...was still in the hospital with her new baby when she learned she was a widow.

Proof!

By David K.

Chimpy McBushitler for real!!!

Obligatory disclaimer:  The above post is a joke.  Anyone who takes it seriously is also a joke.  We now return you to your regular scheduled blogging.

Auriemma slams Summitt for ending Huskies-Vols series

By Brendan Loy

Back in June, Tennessee women's basketball coach Pat Summitt announced she was cancelling the annual UConn-Tennessee rivalry series. Turns out, UConn coach Geno Auriemma is pissed at her:

"I think she should just come out and say she's not playing us because she hates my guts," Auriemma told The Courant. "And I think people would buy that. Then everyone [who seeks a reason] would be happy. She should just say that [Geno is] a dope, a smart-ass, and then everyone could say that they agree with her."

Geno added that he would never have cancelled the series: "You know what? I would never want to. This game is bigger than any individual."

"Besides," he added, "Brendan Loy just moved to Knoxville, so it's really poor timing to end the series now."

Okay, maybe he didn't say that last part. But it's true! (Hat tip: my dad.)

Scary stuff

By Brendan Loy

An attempted kidnapping on 27th Street near USC.

Becky used to live on 27th on the west side of Hoover, right near where this happened.

Minimum system requirements for OS X Leopard released

By Jay Johnson

Looks like Apple is bumping the minimum system requirements for the new OS. 

"Leopard will now require Macs with "an Intel processor or a PowerPC G4 (867 MHz or faster) or G5 processor." Other system requirements include a DVD drive, built-in FireWire, at least 512MB of RAM (additional recommended), and at least 9GB of hard disk space."

Now, how long do I wait before hopping on the Leopard train?

Tropics to heat up this week?

By Brendan Loy

We're two weeks past the climatological peak of hurricane season, but still in the "active" part of the season historically, and it looks like things could get a bit more active this week. Dr. Jeff Masters says "three tropical depressions may form by Wedneday in the Atlantic."

UPDATE: One down, two to go!

MORNING UPDATE: T.D. 12 is now Tropical Storm Karen.

Two years on

By Brendan Loy

I neglected to note that, a week ago Sunday, the second anniversary of Sarah LeFoll's death came and went. I think I subconsciously knew it, though: I've thought of Sarah several times in the last week or so, and until now I wasn't sure what caused my mind to wander in her direction. But of course: it was this time of year in 2005 -- the night after the Michigan State game, no less -- that I got that awful call from Steve Kenny. I was getting ready to head out to Dmytro's "3-0" party (reconstituted as a "2-1" party after the Irish's overtime loss) when tragic news arrived via cell phone like a bolt out of the blue. Needless to say, I never made it to the party.

For Sarah's immediate family and close friends, I imagine the grief is still acute and constant. For me, "closure," whatever that means, has long since come. And yet: every now and then, I still think about her, and about what happened to her, and it makes me so sad. Death is so damn permanent. Sarah had much yet to offer this world when she died, and no trite turn of bloggy phrase can ever resurrect that potential, forever lost.

Rest in peace, Sarah. We still miss you.

Tastes like chicken... yummy, yummy chicken

By Brendan Loy

Becky just roasted her first chicken.

It was delicious.

Mmmmmmmm... chicken.

Aww, Becky is becoming all domestic and stuff. :)

There are no cats in America gays in Iran

By Brendan Loy

So says Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. It would be funny, because of its blatant absurdity, if it weren't coming from someone whose government executes gays as a matter of policy.

Also, it seems Columbia President Lee Bollinger gave Mad Mahmoud quite a mouthful in his introductory remarks. (Hat tip: InstaPundit.) I haven't watched the