Saturday, October 20, 2007

College Football and Salted Fish

This is not any kind of excuse to be literary. I really just wanted to write about college football and I'm reading Salt by Mark Kurlansky right now. So the title makes sense. Why college football? Because I like it. Why Salt? Because a friend gave it to me to read and it's fucking fascinating. Why am I writing right now instead of running or working (which would be writing too, I suppose) on something larger, like getting my book published or finishing a screenplay that has dragged on for two years of writing or working on a treatment that I set a deadline of today to write? Um, my ankle is broken or something. I haven't actually gone to the doctor but it's swollen and turned a bluish-purple color. Also it hurts to walk. Which makes writing something more profound or money-worthy damned near impossible. Doesn't matter. I'm also writing because after ten months of posting absolutley nothing on this site I've been getting traffic the last three weeks. I'm intrigued by the idea of people looking over and over again at the nothing that this site is. So I'm giving something to those 17 readers who have been here. Hope you read this.

College football: I will give you some totally biased un-expert and un-examined game picks at the end of this article. But my impetus for writing about college football is my new favorite player. As per usual with me I have never seen this guy play. For all I know he is rather unspectacular to watch. But I happened upon the leaders in receiving yards for the year and my jaw actually fell off of my face, but it was inside of my skin so it just slid down to my chest area. the skin was too tight down there for it to go any further so it stopped and got lodged in there. that's annoying so I knocked it out of that position but it was so tight that my chest just exploded and a torrent of blood went all over my keyboard. Anyone want to give me a new computer? I've had this PC since 2002. And it wasn't that great when I bought it. Now it is virus consumed and horrid. More of an albatross than an ally. In short, looking at the stats was a bloody fucking mess. Has anybody else noticed this guy Michael Crabtree? He's a freshman on pace for a 2,000 yard season with close to 30 touchdowns. I can't say it's entirely unprecedented becasue he's a redshirt freshman and I think Randy Moss had similar numbers his first year of college football (he was technically a sophomore but he wasn't allowed to play as a freshman because he smoked pot and punched some girl in the face. Yeah, I know, they were separate incidents.) But who the fuck is this guy? I've heard about his QB putting up nuts numbers but every QB at Texas Tech for the last ten years has done that. Why can't the receiver putting up sort of historical numbers (ah, sports history...) get his name in the Heisman ballots on ESPN? Other than the fact that everybody that makes a decision as to what gets on the air at ESPN is some bozo looking for a human interest angle on everything (note to all the networks that show sporting events, pay huge money to show sporting events, and make massive investments in the broadcast of said sporting events: You are not selling to your core audience. It has gotten to the point where I feel relief when I miss a sunday of NFL games. I am completely drawn in out of habit and then get angry listening to bad impressions of a horrible sportscaster who is more popular as the title of a video game, which is truly awesome, than he has been as an NFL announcer for the past 12 years. Nobody watches football for the half-time show, the pre-game show or the fucking lame-ass local highlight shows. Nobody watches ESPN because they like the personalities of the broadcasters. These things were hugely successful in the first place because of attention to things that sociologically tend to interest a large percentage of men: team sports, violence, speed, and statistics. If you want to throw in cheerleaders fine. Everything else is just uncomfortable and intrinsically unprofessional. Nobody on the planet will ever make me feel like I know less than the brainless ex-jocks on TV in their ugly but expensive suits and ugly but expensive haircuts about anything especially, ironically, the sports they played. They come across to me as walking billboards for why the NFL needs to seriously reform their concussion policies. No joke, ex-athletes who have suffered severe brain trauma are a threat to the communities they live in. Please, ESPN, Fox, CBS, ABC, whoever the fuck else shows sporting programs, please for the love of God stop trying to pander to a wider audience. You are killing your core audience and not, absolutely not, bringing in new viewers. Watch a soccer broadcast - they show you nothing but the game. They don't even break for commercials just build them into the flow of the game. Women watch sports mainly because men watch sports. Now back to the regularly scheduled blawgghe:) Michael Crabtree is putting up stupid numbers. Seven games into his college career he has: 78 catches for 1244 yards and 17 TD's. WTF? WTF? WTF? WTF? I mean, seriously, what the fuck yo? He has 400 more yards than any other receiver in the country. He's a freshman. If a WR at Ohio State University (goddamit why do they have to lose to Michigan? Michigan is even more unsufferable than The Ohio State University but I can not stomach the thought of another Big 10 team wasting our time pretending to be on the same level with any other conference in the country and so I comfort myself with the thought that Wolverines! will beat the school with no legitimate national titles in a looooooong time. Seriously, the fucking Hurricanes won that game.) he would have been elected Jesus by now. I know what you're thinking: Ohio State hasn't thrown for that many yards in the last sixteen seasons combined. In fact they didn't even gain that many yards as a team in six of those years. To you I say: That's why I have tape on my nose. Michael Crabtree should be elected Jesus. Until I actually watch him play. When I will probably surmise that he isn't that great. But that's the same feeling I have for Matt Ryan and his numbers aren't even all that great. He's getting Heisman hype. Until his team loses to Virginia Tech. Who really isn't a great team. Have I mentioned how much I hate every sports team from Boston? Go Indians. And you're weird red face-painted, wittingly or unwittingly, racist jerk fans. God bless Cleveland for being the low-life place that it is. Baltimore without the glamour. Tape on the fucking nose.

I'm sick of this. Here are some football picks. Sorry if the games already started. You weren't reading this site and going out to place bets based on anything I say anyway:

OCTOBER 20th (and 21st? Why is that shitty game being played tomorrow?)
Blue team wins. I picked half of them by random guess, one third of them by who I want to win and the rest I actually have any opinion on. Guess which ones are which!)

#23 Cincinnati at Pittsburgh
Army at Georgia Tech
Penn State at Indiana
North Dakota State at Minnesota
Miami (OH) at Temple
Central Michigan at Clemson
Iowa at Purdue
Northern Illinois at Wisconsin
#5 Oklahoma at Iowa State
Vanderbilt at #6 South Carolina
#21 Tennessee at Alabama
#22 Texas at Baylor
Wake Forest at Navy
Arkansas at Mississippi
Western Kentucky at Indiana State
Wyoming at Air Force
Ball State at Western Michigan
Texas A&M at Nebraska
Memphis at Rice
Nevada at Utah State
Michigan State at #1 Ohio State
#15 Florida at #7 Kentucky
Mississippi State at #9 West Virginia
#12 California at UCLA
#14 USC at Notre Dame
#24 Texas Tech at #16 Missouri - Michael “Christ Reincarnated” Crabtree will catch 13 passes for 244 yds and 6 TDs
Miami (FL) at Florida State
Arkansas State at Middle Tennessee
North Texas at Troy
Buffalo at Syracuse
Tulsa at UCF
Bowling Green at Kent State
North Carolina State at East Carolina
San Jose State at Fresno State
Florida Atlantic at Louisiana-Lafayette - GAME OF THE WEEK
#13
Kansas at Colorado
Eastern Washington at Brigham Young
Houston at UAB
Boise State at Louisiana Tech
Florida International at Louisiana-Monroe
Ohio at Toledo
Kansas State at Oklahoma State
Stanford at Arizona
#10 Oregon at Washington
#19 Virginia at Maryland - OK, I'll give it up on this one. I actually think UMD will win, but I'm rooting for the Hoos so fuck off. I like both teams anyway.
#25 Michigan at Illinois
Idaho at New Mexico State
Tulane at Southern Methodist
New Mexico at San Diego State
#17 Auburn at #4 LSU
Colorado State at UNLV

Southern Miss at Marshall – but really, both teams lose. Why is this game being played on Sunday? These kids would all be better off if they got to have their normal leisurely Sunday morning gay orgies or whatever it is college football players are doing when they aren’t at practice or playing in a game.

So there it is. That LSU-Auburn game is really fucking tough. I know some of these games are probably already half-over and wrong. Oh, well. I had some difficulty getting the formats right. If I knew anything about HTML I could probably keep the highlighting plan I originally attempted. But I'm not that smart or motivated by such things. I like food. And I like to rub one off every now and again. That's most of it.