This Week In Schadenfreude: Nov. 9

The Blue-Gray Sky has a succinct response to Notre Dame's BCS-hope-crushing loss to Navy:

I don't quite know if that's certain -- it would be tough to fire him if Notre Dame wins out and goes 10-3 -- but everyone who's taken a vague interest in Notre Dame football does. Merely suggesting otherwise is cause for NDNationites to call for your addition to the enemies list:

I recommend an instant banning for anyone who posts...
by 105Marquette (2009-11-07 23:35:37)

...any of the following sentiments:
1. I'm staying with Weis/We need to give him more time.
2. Let's limit our discussion to "realistic" candidates only.
3. Forget it. Meyer/Saban/Stoops aren't coming.
4. Weis isn't the one who fumbled/overthrew/missed the FG.
5. Weis is staying. Bankit.
6. How about X? (Where 'X' is a name that hasn't been mentioned because he isn't remotely qualified, but is suggested by the poster because it makes him look like an outside-the-box thinker.)

Yes, that's right: the groupthink at NDNation is squarely focused on Meyer, Saban, and Stoops. Seriously. You don't believe me, I know, but seriously:

So, do you take Gruden now or wait for the possibility
by FourLeafDomer (2009-11-07 23:23:48)

of Meyer or Saban after the BCS bowls are over? Tough call, I think. Announcing Gruden as our head coach on November 30th has some definite advantages over waiting until the middle of January for Meyer or Saban, one of whom would be playing in the BCS championship game. Getting Gruden on board would help preserve a pretty darn good recruiting class and improve our chances of it getting even better. Likewise the ability to attract quality assistants.

This option is growing on me, as is the idea of Chuckie on our sideline.

Even if you accept the premise that Meyer and Saban are pure mercenaries driven only by how much coin they can put in their Scrooge McDuck vault, Alabama and Florida will outbid you. You can offer any amount of money and they will fork over more.

That's the what. As to the why: there is, of course, an obvious reason for this:

Divine retribution for the Obama outrage.

tridentum | Email | Homepage | 11.08.09 - 12:50 am | #

(For the confused: that outrage was having the sitting president give a speech on your campus. Obama is pro-choice; the speech had nothing to do with that.) Defensive tackle Ian Williams has another suggestion as to why:

Yesterday, defensive tackle Ian Williams offered a candid answer in response to why the Irish were defeated by Navy. His answer? Notre Dame was "outschemed", according to Williams.

"Scheme" has been a hot-button word in South Bend ever since Weis rolled into town declaring his "decided schematic advantage" was worth a touchdown per game. Safety Kyle McCarthy dismissed a similar question, leading to another press conference question, this one to the big man himself, and this answer:

"I did hear quite contrasting answers to the same question," he said. "From what I understand, Kyle McCarthy's answer was quite different where he said it had nothing to do with the scheme. There's a reason why one guy's a captain and one guy's not."

Charlie Weis is the first actual participant in college football to grab Scott Tenorman of the Week honors, and Notre Dame is the obvious recipient of this week's Tears of Infinite Sadness.

The rest of the week in spleen after the jump.

ACC

Nothing particularly misery-inducing went down in the ACC this week, with scores going as expected and the losers all teams like Wake Forest, Duke, Virginia and Florida State. You know, losing teams who have virtually given up on the idea of bowl eligibility.

Surely no one in that bunch is going to mind an off year much...

Who in the world is running this program?? Reply

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For those that still think [Bobby Bowden] is "just fine"...Read this article. He has no idea what goes on during a football game. The players are trying their hardest to keep their conference title hopes alive and BB (their head coach and leader) has, LITERALLY, ZERO IDEA of what went on in the football game. Not even the Bobbyguards can defend this incompetence. The Trustees, President, AD, and Boosters must make sure this ends next month....not next year.

My apologies if this has already been posted. I checked the first couple of pages and did not see anything about this article.

Link: &"uhh hh..what happened again??"

...oh, right. Florida State. It's good for at least one group of people, though:

Why is Pepto Bismol pink? Reply

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I've drunk a lot of bottles by watching us play this year and was just wondering why its pink. Lol

Ugh, the dreaded self-lol.

BIG TEN

Iowa's loss to Northwestern was the most predictable in the history of top-five teams going up against three-score underdogs, but that doesn't mean it's not a comedown from Rose Bowl, or even national title, dreams:

F--- it

None of this is real. The #4 ranking, the accolades, or the undefeated record. We're just not very good. We feasted on a weak Big 10, crappy inexperienced QB's, and gift turnovers. I am done freaking out about this. I've tossed my last laptop across the room. I've cried out like a popped my groin for the last time. We suck and we're finally back to the median, where we belong. We're Iowa, after all. It was a good ride, but it's over.

I think this might have been an attempt to summon the mojo from last week, as a couple people suggest that this is a C&P from an identical post on the Black Heart Gold Pants Indiana game open thread. The lesson, as always, is that you can only reverse-jinx your team when you really mean it. When you don't, you're just right.

Iowa still has a shot at the big money, but thanks to this weekend's events they'll have to win in Columbus if they want to get there. That's because Penn State fell limply to the turf against Ohio State. No more crying Pryor pictures for PSU fans. More flashbacks to the bad old days of Penn State quarterbacks:

Why did it feel like I was watching Iowa 04Reply

 

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on Saturday? I thought Zack Mills was at QB again. Mr. Paterno I want my money back after watching that debacle.

Buckeye punt returner Ray Small averaged nearly 20 yards a pop on seven opportunities, and this has not sat well with the rabble:

MC Escher, Rube Goldberg and Tim Burton my choice for special teams coaches Reply

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...at least with these guys as special team coaches we could understand why the special teams are the way they are.

Prone to weird angles, unnecessarily complicated systems and ... um ... weird hair?

And this column is honor-bound to mention the continued suck that is the Michigan defense, which condemned the Wolverines to yet another loss on Saturday and caused your columnist to start reminiscing about the Appalachian State debacle -- known as "The Horror" on the home base -- and old, possibly hallucinated cartoons:

[W]hen Michigan was down to Purdue in the second half, some fan ten or twenty rows behind me kept shouting "they've got no heart" over and over again as the guy in the row in front of me called for Rodriguez's firing. Having a conversation about Michigan football right now is trying to remember that episode of GI Joe where Destro finds a secret ninja manual in a volcano that allows him to kill people with precisely-applied touches: if you can just remember where the red dots are you can spare everyone a lot of pain.

Meanwhile in the comments, not advocating for Rodriguez's ouster is now symptomatic of a "defensive, conformist mindset," which is something Greg Robinson could use. So ... how was your weekend?

BONUS: This isn't particularly relevant to the thrust of the column, but it may well be the dumbest thing ever seen on the internet. Doctor Saturday's comment section provides:

•  13. Posted by michiganlady Sat Nov 07, 2009 8:40 pm EST
  
  Heres what I saw today...Purdue team being cowards in the last 2 minutes by wasting 50 seconds of play time out of fear that Michigan would move the ball close enough to get a field goal and therefore beat them..

They can do that?

BIG EAST

Only three games, all of which saw the chalk prevail -- though in Cincinnati's case it was a desperately close thing -- so there's nothing to do but delve back into the wounded souls of Louisville fans in the waning days of the Kragthorpe era-type substance. Kragthorpe went with walk-on Will Stein at quarterback this week over UL's previous starters, and it didn't exactly work out:

You can't blame stein for any of this

he played as well as he could have. You blame the coach who put him in over the three other scholarship quarterbacks.

I hate you steve kragthorpe. I hate you so much

I like that guy's style. I remember muttering "I hate you so much" verbatim at Jim Herrmann in the midst of Ohio State's game-winning touchdown drive in 2005. More:

Krag runs the offense. The offensive play calling (not execution) was awful. Krag is f------ idiot who it completely overmatched

If there is one thing I won't stand for, it's people protecting Krag. The kids on the team are playing hard. Krag is a lame duck of a pitiful son of a b---- who realizes the end it near.

Louisville has the 'Cuse this weekend in what would be a fantastic basketball matchup. It is not a basketball matchup:

Someone really needs to create a bad ass Louisville/Syracuse highlight(?) video in prep for the biggest game in Big East history.

This is the week. This is our time. This is our moment.

Yes, I had to look up the schedule to see who we were playing this weekend.

Say it with me: basketball season is coming. What a weird thing to say and mean.

BIG 12

Nebraska's turnover tilt-a-whirl caught Oklahoma in a bad place, SoonerFans.com had to go with the Moderator Scolding Sticky:

The next person who starts...

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a "hate on Landry" thread is going to get one hell of a banning.
Please post your vitriol in the 27 other "Landry sucks" threads going right now.

One of 27 reasons is this picture yanked off facebook and posted for mocking:

THIS is Our Quarterback

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And tonight he provided us the worst quarterback play since the days of John Blake.

No one on the internet ever gets that you can't mock a guy who is screwing around for humor value.

And this would be quite a world, wouldn't it?

The kid had a bad game, but he deserves a chance to work it out. Enough of this knee jerk reaction BS. If the message board "experts" ran the team, there would be firings, scholarship revocations, and public floggings after every game!

 

Notre Dame should try that. It couldn't go worse than the last 15 years.

PAC-10

Stanford 51, Oregon 42, totally reasonable response to that outcome:

ARE YOU KIDDING ME??????????????????????

Seriously. In all ways, that response makes sense even though that was about the refs. There was also a guy wandering around the Oregon Scout message board during the game berating Chicken Littles, which led to this classic exchange:

greengoblin: Wow...just wow.
Duckdude1: Wow, good? or Wow, bad?
greengoblin: Wow not good. Stanfords offense owns us.
AZDuck: Your ignorance of the game is astounding.
greengoblin: your ignorance of the fact that Stanford is avg. 11 yards a play and [Andrew] Luck is avg. over 30 a completion is astounding.

Greengoblin wins the internet this week.

SEC

Nothing happened in the SEC this weekend. Virtually the entire conference took a mid-year opportunity to beat up on I-AA tomato cans. There was the LSU-Alabama game, and a rare (this year, anyway) opportunity to drop in on the bar-none battiest fanbase in college football. Tiger Droppings is the place of choice for ill-considered rants about LSU football, and this time I didn't even have to click through to the message board to get this:

The Southeastern Conference Offices in Birmingham, Alabama exist primarily to ensure the safety, fairness and integrity of the uniquely American game known as college football among its twelve member institutions. Unfortunately, money has obviously corrupted their existence, just as it has so many other American institutions, like Congress, the stock market, and even the medical and legal professions. The Southeastern Conference is sadly American greed's latest victim, evidenced by the ongoing conspiracy to name and play favorites through its compromised officials toward creating the most lucrative matchup in the SEC Championship Game.

This is not a parody. I think. I've read the whole thing, and if it's a parody I lose and they win. But it's not. Probably:

The SEC will surely stand by its replay booth official. It will tell us that what we saw, we really did not see. The camera, not the official, lied; and the Easter Bunny, Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy all concurred. Who are we to disagree as our most favored Deep Southern pastime approaches the credibility of professional boxing under Don King.

You'll have to forgive me if I'm not quite sure.

This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.