Irish Trojan in Tennessee

Irish, Trojans in NCAA semifinals

By Brendan Loy

...in women's soccer, that is. On ESPN2 right now, Notre Dame is playing Florida State in the first semifinal -- and with just over 22 minutes left in the second half, it's tied 2-2.

Up next? USC vs. UCLA, in the second national semifinal. Alas, that game is on ESPNU, not ESPN2.

Go Irish! Go Trojans!

UPDATE: Seminoles win, 3-2. So there will be no USC-Notre Dame title game. :(

UPDATE 2: USC stuns top-ranked fUCLA!! Woohoo!!!

The win broke a nine-game USC losing streak against the Bruins. Nice timing, ladies!! It also ended UCLA's overall 17-game winning streak, which dated back to mid-September.

So the tournament of surprises will end with a most unlikely pairing: the USC Trojans Women of Troy, ranked #9 in the final regular-season coaches poll, against the #14-ranked Florida State Seminoles in the national championship game, Sunday at 2:00 PM on ESPN2.

Fight on!! Stop the chop!!

Heisman history set for tomorrow night

By Brendan Loy

For the first time in history, a sophomore will win the Heisman tomorrow night. The finalists are Florida's Tim Tebow, Arkansas's Darren McFadden, Missouri's Chase Daniel and Hawaii's Colt Brennan, but the result is already a foregone conclusion: Tebow will win, according to StiffArmTrophy.com, which tabulates actual declared ballots, and has never been wrong.

In other Heisman-related news, sports writers Don Jaeger and Jim Henry are releasing a book in January called "Tarnished Heisman," containing transcripts of conversations of Reggie Bush supposedly "acknowledging he owed money" to his would-be New Era agents. The upshot is that, at the least, Bush could lose his Heisman if the transcripts are taken seriously. As always, Yahoo! Sports is at the forefront of reporting this story, though their headline is oddly uninformative and actually kind of funny: "Bush hit with book." I have this mental picture of somebody whacking Reggie over the head with a Harry Potter book or something. Heh.

UPDATE: James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal's Opinion Journal had a slightly different take, prefacing its reference to the headline "Bush hit with book" by quipping, "That Laura Sure Can Throw." Heh.

I wonder which book Bush was hit with?

The media's obsession with race is hurting black coaches

By Brendan Loy

Quick, everybody get out your race cards! Apparently the reason Nebraska hired LSU's Bo Pelini instead of Buffalo's Turner Gill is because Gill is black. Yup, there's no other possible explanation. Cornhusker Nation is a bunch of dirty racists!! [rolls eyes]

Look, it sucks that there are only five black head coaches in Division I-A college football. (Based on percentage of the population, there should be 15.) But it truly boggles my mind that the race-obsessed media doesn't grasp the degree to which they're making the situation worse by focusing so heavily on race, to the exclusion of other relevant issues, whenever a black coach is hired, fired or considered for a coaching job.