Wednesday, January 05, 2005

OUch!!!

USC Demolishes OU to Win National Championship

Somewhere, Tyrone Willingham is smiling.

The erstwhile football coach at Notre Dame is sporting the traditional shit-eating grin after the USC Trojans thoroughly throttled Oklahoma, 55-19, to claim their record 11th national championship.

Willingham knew what he was up against when he marched his Irish into the Coliseum on the evening of November 27th. A few hours later, his worst fears were realized: USC is one helluva good team. Now, the rest of the sports universe is well aware of this fact as well.

Dictionaries do not have enough adjectives to describe the way USC summarily dispatched of the alleged #2 gridiron team in the land. Manhandled. Pummeled. Crushed. Whupped. Massacred. Hammered. Mauled. Waxed. Clobbered. Destroyed. The list goes on. To say that USC took OU behind the woodshed would be the understatment of the year.

In the bowels of the JACC, Notre Dame Athletic Director Kevin White sits nervously at his desk, waiting for his caller ID to light up with a 206 area code. But the recently departed Notre Dame coach will not make the call to tell White, “I told you so!” The last time Willingham said as much, it was the beginning of the end for his Notre Dame career.

Post-mortem

The Irish lost by “only” 31 (compared to OU losing by 36) points to USC, but they also only scored 10 (compared to OU scoring 19) points. So doing the math:

USC 41 ND 10
USC 55 OU 19USC 41 X 1.34 = 55
ND 10 X 1.34 = 13

Thusly ND would lose to OU:
OU 19 ND 13.

"But," you say, "ND lost AT USC...not a neutral site!"

OK. Accounting for the standard +3 pts one receives when playing at home, then the math goes as follows:

USC 41-3=38 ND 10
USC 55 OU 19
USC 38 X 1.45 = 55
ND 10 X 1.45 = 15

Thusly ND would *still* lose to OU:
OU 19 ND 15.

Pencil in ND at the #3 slot in the final 2004 college football rankings!

Notes: unconfirmed reports indicate that Notre Dame has secured an early commitment (verbal) from Reggie Bush’s younger brother, Jovon Bush for the class of 2013. An unrelated report cites that ND has also obtained rights to a vial of Matt Leinart’s sperm.

Sunday, January 02, 2005

Outgoing Coaches: Bowled Over

Since Ron Zook was shown the door he'd soon be exiting, twenty coaching changes to date have been announced. Of those twenty schools, seven teams were involved in post-season bowl games:

Florida Gators (Ron Zook) Miami 27 Florida 10
Notre Dame Fighting Irish (Tyrone Willingham) Oregon State 38 Notre Dame 21
Pittsburgh Panthers (Walt Harris) Utah 35 Pitt 7
Miami (Ohio) RedHawks (Terry Hoeppner) Iowa State 17 Miami (Ohio) 13
*Syracuse Orange (Paul Pasqualoni) Georgia Tech 51 Syracuse 14
Louisiana State Tigers (Nick Saban) Iowa 30 LSU 25
Utah Utes (Urban Meyer) Utah 35 Pitt 7

And of those seven teams, six of them lost...hmmm. [Note: the seventh (Utah), by virtue of the fact the Utes were playing Pitt, meant that the skein could not go to the full 0-7. ]

*Pasqualoni was rumored to be on the hot seat but was not fired until after the bowl game, though new Syracuse AD, Daryl Gross, did not give much of a ringing endorsement when interviewed during the Champs Sports Bowl thrashing.