Monday, September 7, 2009

Weekend Review - 9/8/2009

If you're just here to read about the shitty Gopher football team, feel free to jump right on down to the "WHO SUCKED" section.

WHO WAS AWESOME

1.  BYU.   What an excellent win for the Cougars, upsetting the #3 team in the country Oklahoma Sooners 14-13 Saturday.  A lot of morons will point out that returning Heisman Trophy winner Sam "Sixkiller" Bradford was knocked out right before halftime with an injury, and will point to that as the reason why BYU was able to win this game.  Sure, that didn't hurt, but when Bradford went down the score was just 10-7 in favor of the Sooners.  Make no mistake, BYU is a very good team and this is a very impressive win.  The fighting Mormons will still take on Florida State in their non-conference and have Utah and TCU has conference foes, which gives them three more top 20 opponents this season.  If they can run the table after this win, things will be very interesting come year end.  And by interesting I mean they will get screwed out of the BCS championship and there will be a lot of bitching but in the end nothing will change because "money makes the world go round, and ain't nothin' free in the world in life, no matter who you are in life everybody got their price."

Also I just read that Bradford reads the David vs. Goliath story from the Bible before every game.  Dude.  You're favored every time.  That makes no damn sense.  Think on that whilst you peruse this:



2.  Oklahoma State football.  In what was a very good week for the Big 12 (10-2 overall), the Cowboys' week one victory over #13 Georgia is certainly the most impressive.  Dez Bryant (aka the next Michael Crabtree) caught 2 TD passes from gayly named QB Zac Robinson and OSU picked up a big win, 24-10.  You know how good Bryant will be?  I'm going to go ahead and tag this post with his name, just because I know I will be referencing him again in the future.  Yeah.  I did that.

3.   Ralph Bolden.  Yeah, I don't know who he is either, but when a Big Ten running back, in this case a Boiler, goes off for 234 rushing yards and two scores, I figure I should pay some attention.  Since I didn't watch the game, I went to check on what my boys over at Boiled Sports had to say, but I got distracted because Purdue has a fullback with the name "Jared Crank."  Is that the coolest thing you've ever heard or what?  I don't even remember what else I was going to say.  How fun would it be to introduce yourself to people if that was you name?  And you know he hits the emphasis on the Crank, just to make the old white establishment a little uncomfortable.

4.  Wade Davis.  Do the Rays just have an unending stream of completely ridiculous awesome prospects or what?  Davis was the team's #2 prospect going into the season (behind David Price) and made his first start yesterday.  How'd he do?  Seven innings, three hits, a walk, one run, and nine strikeouts.  Seriously, they just have an unending stream of top prospects who actually pan out, so much so that they can go ahead and trade someone like Scott Kazmir.  Meanwhile I'm stuck watching the Twins and the constant "upside = 4th starter" boners they trot out.  Anthony Swarzak in the Twins' system is like Davis for the Rays right now.  Remember when the Twins had a deep farm system?  How do you screw that all up without actually bringing in any kind of worthwhile veteran player?  I'm super crabby right now.

5.  Jared Crank.  Just so awesome.  And he's only a sophomore.  The next Mike Alstott?  Sure, why not.  Abso-freakin-lutely.  Career stat tracker:  1 catch, 4 yds.  0 rushing attempts.  Stay tuned for greatness.

WHO SUCKED

1.  Gopher football.  I know they won, and maybe sucked is a bit rough since they managed to come back and win in overtime, but this was an ugly, horrible, mistake-filled, boring, lame, crappy game - but yes they did win.  Weber was essentially worthless all game, up until the last drive, and our new "weapon" MarQueis Gray got what, two snaps?  Ugly game, luckily the 'Cuse was so awful (although I found myself impressed a bit by Paulus, I expected much worse) that it didn't matter in the end, when Weber finally got his shit together.  Expectations have been tempered, with the defense looking like the same porous unit we saw last year, but, if you want to be an optimist, a win is a win, and a win on the road against a BCS conference team is a good win.  I, on the other hand, prefer to look at this as a reminder that Gopher football sucks, and they'll be lucky to make a bowl game.

I also wanted to quickly say, and this is very difficult for me, that I was wrong about Eric Decker.  I've always thought he was more a product of Weber having radar lock on him, but it turns out he's actually a very, very good receiver.  I don't know what it was about this particular game that won me over (probably that catch in double coverage he had no business coming down with), but I have been won and now think he would be a good second round pick for somebody.

That hurt. 

2.  Big Ten football.  The whole, "The Big Ten Conference sucks" talk is going to start even earlier this season and likely get even more annoying than usual thanks to a lackluster first weekend amongst the teams.  Not only did the Gophers get taken to OT by the Orange, but Ohio State, Iowa, Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin were all disappointments as well.  Nobody moreso than the Illini, who welcomed their hated rival Missouri into Champaign and ended up getting their tails kicked, 37-9 as Juice Williams continues to do his best Vince Young impression (the pro version).  Iowa (a 30 point favorite) had to block two Northern Iowa field goals in the last few seconds thanks to a rule that I still don't understand to avoid losing to the I-AA school (or whatever it's called now).  Wisconsin (a 19 point favorite) only beat Northern Illinois by 8 and Indiana, a 30 point favorite over Eastern Kentucky, prevailed by just six after not scoring the entire second half.  Even Ohio State, the jewel of the conference and a 21 point favorite, needed an interception on a 2-pt conversion attempt to beat Navy.  If OSU gets their doors blown off this week by USC (and if Michigan loses to Notre Dame) expect the Big Ten bashing to reach epic proportions.

3.  The Minnesota Twins.  The stupid Twins lost 2 of 3 this weekend to the piece of crap Indians, while the Tigers swept the Rays to extend their lead in the central to an almost certainly insurmountable seven game lead.  The suddenly offensively challenged Twins scored all of seven runs in the three games, which is understandable considering they faced Cy Young contenders Jeremy Sowers, Justin Masterson, and David Huff.  Special shout out to Justin Morneau, who went 0-11 in the series, running his hitless streak to 19 straight at-bats.  Remember those MVP dreams?  Or worrying about Morneau stealing MVP votes from Mauer?  Yeah.  I think we're good.

4.  Josh Hamilton.  Remember last year how everybody was so madly in love with Hamilton because he had the talent to make millions playing a kids' game but pissed it away crack and then got clean because his grandma yelled at him and then made it back to the pros and hit 11 billion home runs in the home run derby but lost to Justin Morneau but nobody remembers that and then this year he has sucked and fell off the wagon that one time with the booze?  Remember all that?  Well Hamilton still stucks this year, but now he is battling a bad back and even had to get an epidural this weekend, as is looking at getting another shot tomorrow.  You know what they say; Epidurals are a gateway drug.  I fully expect a backslide, leading to some time in a Tijuana prison for drug trafficking.  I'm just stating the obvious.  Also I want to use this space to tell you that Ben Stiller is really not that funny.  Stop it.

5.  Pittsburgh Pirates.  Seventeen straight losing seasons.  Seventeen.  They actually held it off yesterday with a walk-off Garrett Jones hit (GARRETT JONES!!!) to beat the Cards, but they aren't going to run the table, and as such are going to hit the record for consecutive losing seasons by a major american sport team.  I do like what the Pirates are doing finally, blowing up the whole deal and essentially starting over.  They have shipped off almost any "veteran" with talent, and with the exception of the McLouth trade they all make a ton of sense, and they are stockpiling arms and prospects and have a little hope for the first time in a long time.  That, of course, doesn't change the fact that they haven't had a winning season since 1992.  Zane freaking Smith was on that team.  As were Gary Redus, Cecil Espy. Lloyd Mcclendon, Steve Buechele, Mike LaValliere, tom Prince, and Bob Walk.  If you're not getting how long ago that was just yet, how about these things which happened in 1992:
  • The Redskins won the Super Bowl over the Bills at the Metrodome
  • Mike Tyson was convicted of rape (yeah, right)
  • The English FA Premier League was formed
  • Jeff Dahmer was framed and sentenced to life in prison
  • John Gotti was framed and sentenced to life in prison
  • Microsoft releases Windows 3.1
  • Johnny Carson retires from The Tonight Show
  • Brett Favre made his first start for the Pack
Uh.  Yeah.


The last thing I want to mention is that if you aren't watching Greek on ABC Family, you need to start.  It's really an excellent show, and if you need more convincing here are four very good reasons:



8 comments:

Anonymous said...

"with the defense looking like the same porous unit we saw last year"

2.9 yards per rush for Syracuse? 1-for-12 on third downs for Syracuse? 257 total yards for Syracuse?

WWWWWW said...

This guy just hit over 250 of the posts with the same comment. I thought I added a "word verification" thing to stop this crap.

Anonymous said...

I like free fun.

Anonymous said...

Maybe Sam (I hate Pale faces) Bradford reads David vs Goliath because he thinks of OU as Goliath and doesn't want to take his opponents lightly. Ever think of that retard? You are as open minded as the people who kicked Ryan White out of school.

WWWWWW said...

Who the hell is Ryan White?

Anonymous said...

Ryan White was the Aids kid from middle school who parents didn't want giving their kids the HIV. Apparently not knowing why a kid reads the story makes you not like homo's now. Racist, homophobe you are in line for the triple crown WWWW, keep it up.

Anonymous said...

WWWWW hates Jews so the triple crown is complete.

WWWWWW said...

Oh come on.

Everybody hates Jews.