Irish Trojan in Tennessee

Sox down, Rockies on verge

By Brendan Loy

The Red Sox have just fallen behind 2 games to 1 in the American League Championship Series against the Indians. D'oh.

Meanwhile, the Colorado Rockies are trying to sweep the Arizona Diamonbacks tonight in Denver and advance to their first-ever World Series. The Rockies have won nine straight games and 20 of 21 -- the latter a feat "which has been done a handful of times in the 100-plus years of baseball history, but never like this, never with each of the wins so crucial, never with [six] (and counting) in the playoffs." Ironically, Colorado's only loss in the last 21 games was Arizona's playoff-clinching win. Now the D-Backs face elimination at the hands of the apparently unstoppable Rockies.

UPDATE: Make that 21 of 22. The Rockies are going to the World Series!

College football pollster philosophy 101

By Brendan Loy

College football blogger Sunday Morning Quarterback expresses better than I could his rationale for ranking teams based purely on their "resumés" instead of using a "power ranking" method.

See also this post from last year comparing and contrasting the different polling methods. I wish more voters would put as much thought as SMQ has into their personal philosophy of polling.

Nebraska A.D. fired, Callahan likely next; UB's Turner Gill to replace him?

By Brendan Loy

Nebraska athletic director Steve Pederson was fired Monday, and it seems almost inevitable that football coach Bill Callahan will be next.

If Callahan is shown the door, some Buffalo fans are worried that Nebraska might try to lure Heisman finalist and former Osborn/Solich/Callahan assistant Turner Gill away from resurgent UB*. Gill interviewed for the top job in Lincoln back in 2004 before it was ultimately offered to Callahan. He was hired by Buffalo in '06.

Columnist Steve Sipple of the Lincoln Journal-Star mentioned Gill as a possibility in a column Sunday: "Turner Gill? Well, he’s doing wonders at Buffalo. The Bulls are 3-4 overall and 3-1 in the Mid-American Conference. Their three league victories equal the most since joining the MAC and returning to Division I-A in 1999. The former Husker quarterback is calling the plays for an offense that features elements of a West Coast attack, a power-I formation and even some option." Gill's name is also floated at the Fire Coach Callahan blog. And FanIQ asks: "Will Turner Gill be coming back?"

*Can you be "resurgent" if you've never been good before? Hmm. Maybe the Bulls are just "surgent."

UPDATE: Stewart Mandel writes:

[University Chancellor Harvey] Perlman said Monday that he would soon appoint an interim athletic director with "full authority to assess the state of the athletic department and its athletic programs and to make any decision necessary to advance those programs." Translation: The guy can fire coaches -- and, barring a dramatic turnaround, he will.

As a result, Perlman is facing an unusually important "interim AD selection" -- because the identity of that person could go a long way in determining the identity of Nebraska's next football coach. The popular rumor du jour is that of Huskers legend/Congressman Tom Osborne temporarily taking the reins and bringing back favorite son Turner Gill, who, in his second season at Buffalo, has the long-inept Bulls sitting a half-game out of first in the MAC's East Division with a 3-1 conference record.

UPDATE 2: Fox Sports also mentions Gill in its article about the Nebraska situation: "Turner Gill, the former Husker great and architect behind a minor MAC uprising at Buffalo, has been bandied about as a possible replacement as head coach. Yet others still hope that with Pederson out of the picture, Nebraska will get a second chance to hire LSU's Bo Pelini, a fan favorite in 2003."

Lexington is a football town, and other such insanity

By Brendan Loy

A few short days ago, it looked like ESPN College GameDay would be making its first-ever visit to basketball-centric Champaign, Illinois for next Saturday's Michigan-Illinois game. Then the Illini lost to previously hapless Iowa, taking the air out of what would have been a battle of two unbeaten-in-conference Big Ten teams. (And by the way, thanks a lot, Illinois, for reducing the conference race, again, to Ohio State vs. Michigan -- which, at this point, is about as exciting to people outside the gravitational pull of Ann Arbor and Columbus as Red Sox-Yankees is to people outside the Northeast.)

So where is GameDay going instead? To yet another locale whose residents are just discovering this wonderful game called "football": Lexington, Kentucky, that strangest of SEC towns where football comes in second to basketball in the local consciousness. Or perhaps it's third; does UK have a JV hoops team? Anyway, the Wildcats host Florida on Saturday -- which, come to think of it, would be a hell of a basketball game as well; can we tweak the b-ball schedule a bit and have a doubleheader? -- and the Kirk & Corso circus will be there.

Of course, in this season of nonsensical mayhem, Kentucky being a football powerhouse is nothing to write home about. At this rate, George Mason (of the mighty Sea Board Conference) will be cracking the BCS standings by November, with Gonzaga close behind -- and the Zags haven't played a football game since two weeks before Pearl Harbor was attacked. Apropos of which, Every Day Should Be Saturday nicely summarizes the current state of college football's national championship race:

The science fiction scenario of falling asleep for decades, awakening, and finding the world inhabited only by eyeless nuclear mutants has arrived: you are, whether you like it or not, staggering around the streets yelling “IS ANYONE OUT THERE?” at the fact that South Florida is the second-ranked team in the BCS.

Ohio State claims spot one, followed by South Florida at two, Boston College at three, LSU at four, and Oklahoma at five. Army’s 1947 squad is number six, the nation of Bolivia is at seven; acclaimed chef Eric Ripert and his kitchen staff are at eight, and finally, the nine spot is occupied by a sweet 2005 Dodge Ram dualie and chrome pipes with the Idaho plates 323 AAJE. The truck’s owner, Steve Redding of Boise, Idaho: “What the f**k is my truck doing in the BCS standings?”

Heh.

Oh, and speaking of Kentucky, here's the ending of Saturday's thriller, sans commentary, seen from field level:

(Hat tip: AOL Fanhouse.) I love college football.

Rudy Giuliani will protect us from aliens

By Brendan Loy

Not illegal aliens... space aliens! A kid in New Hampshire asked him the question yesterday:

I think it's a legit question! But I want more specifics on Rudy's plan to prepare us for an alien attack. Also an asteroid impact, and that La Palma volcano. No, really! I will vote for the candidate who hires that kid as a disaster-preparedness consultant. :)

P.S. I also want to know the candidates' positions on protecting our senior citizens from robot attacks.

October 15

By Brendan Loy

It's Irish-Trojan Week here at the Irish Trojan's Blog, and what better way to kick it off than by noting that today is the second anniversary of the greatest day in college football history?

I'll never forget October 15, 2005 -- and, specifically, the USC-Notre Dame epic that was the centerpiece of that madcap day of football mayhem -- as long as I live. If I ever go senile, it'll probably be one of the last things I remember: I might forget my own name, what year it is, and where the hell I am, but you can be sure the employees at the nursing home will know all about Leinart-to-Jarrett and the Bush Push.

More imminently, you can bet that eighteen years from today, our teenage daughter will roll her eyes as her 43-year-old dad starts waxing nostalgic again about the Greatest Game He Ever Saw, 20 years ago that very day: the hype and build-up; the pep rally with Joe Montana and Rudy (but not, alas, Bon Jovi); the green jerseys; the nail-biting first three quarters; the full moon rising over Notre Dame Stadium in the fourth quarter; the surreal, larger-than-life, echoes-awakened atmosphere of those final minutes, like something out of a movie and yet so much better than any movie; the flash bulbs popping from one end of the stadium to the other; the impossibly loud, ear-shattering screams of eighty thousand Irish fans when Brady Quinn scored the go-ahead TD; the insanity of 4th and 9; the delirious, premature field-rushing; our jubilation and the crushing heartbreak all around us moments later; how we stayed put and let the stadium clear out before we left, and then steered clear of Turtle Creek on our walk home, lest our USC sweatshirts provoke drunken Domers like a matador's cape provokes an angry bull; and so on, and so forth. I know, Dad, I know. You've told me all about it a million times. Can I borrow the car?

As I wrote last year on this day:

The game was tense throughout, a real back-and-forth affair, and man, was I nervous. Never in my life had I been so emotionally invested in a sporting event. For weeks leading up to the game, I had repeatedly joked that if USC lost, I would “have to drop out of law school” because I’d never hear the end of it. That’s an exaggeration, of course, but the fact is, I’m the unabashed, unrepentant Trojan at Notre Dame, so my friends would have ripped on me something fierce if the Irish had won, and rightfully so. As a result, I felt like my personal pride was at stake on that field. Besides which, all personal considerations aside, I just really, really, really wanted the Trojans to win.

A funny thing happened in the final minutes of the game, though. As intense as it was, I went from being a nervous wreck to being remarkably sanguine about the game’s outcome. I know that’s counterintuitive, given how incredibly close and exciting the final minutes were, but the closer we got to the end — especially after Brady Quinn scored the go-ahead touchdown and the entire crowd went so unbelievably crazy that I was literally hearing static because it was too loud for my ears to really process the level of sound — the more I realized, you know what, no matter who ends up winning this game, it is just so freakin’ cool that I am here.

As I watched the full moon rise over the eastern side of the stadium, and listened to the crowd scream its collective lungs out, all the while witnessing a truly epic battle unfolding on the field below, I realized that I would literally someday tell my grandkids that I had been at this game.

And then it got better.

Read the whole thing. Also, here are my photos of the game (and of the events that preceded it).

Anyway... with the Irish a historically awful 1-6 and the Trojans an uncharacteristically uninspiring 5-1, this year's showdown in South Bend doesn't have 0.01% of the hype or build-up that the last one did. Still, I'll have plenty to say about it in due course. But for now, let's look back on the events of two years ago today, as seen from my unique vantage point: a Trojan in the midst of the Irish student section.

And, from a somewhat more expansive vantage point, a clip showing some more of the events of that incredible Saturday in October:

What a day. What a damn day.

Boise State is at it again

By Brendan Loy

Can you say Boise State 69, Nevada 67 in 4OT? It was the most points scored in an NCAA Division I-A game since official record-keeping began in 1937.

Boise State is one of 15 remaining one-loss teams, and the only one from a non-BCS conference. Can the Broncos become the first non-BCS team to qualify for a BCS bowl with a loss? Probably not, but this season, who knows? If everybody else in the country has three losses by the time the season's over... :)