If TCU's athletic director thanked Gordon Gee for dissing on the mid-major folk banging down the BCS's door, Boise State fans should build a statue of me for headlining them here. (It can be a small, tasteful statue.) But when you're one ridiculously short field goal on a ridiculous how-did-that-happen bomb away from salvaging the 24-7 lead you squandered en route to an undefeated season and the on-deck circle in case Oregon or Auburn loses, and that kicker shanks it, and then shanks an even shorter field goal in the first over time, and then you lose, you've earned the Tears of Unfathomable Sadness.
To be fair, Boise message boards are full of admonition for anyone who would attempt to make Kyle Brotzman feel worse—if such a thing is possible, which I doubt—and there's not much anger. Hard to be angry when you've just lost for the first time in forever. You can be very, very sad, and maybe compare yourself to the 1980 Russian Olympic hockey team:
Kinda reminded me a little of Miracle On Ice.
Crap in WAC football we are the Russians, the ones everybody tries to take down every year. We have been the most important game on everybodies schedule in the WAC for years. … it just seemed like we were not mentally prepared for that game to be that hard, we looked alittle lost at the end of the game, kinda of like the Russians in Miracle on Ice.
You can be pissed off at shots of Nevada fans taunting the crushed Boise State players as they rush the field. Or you could take a picture of your six-year-old daughter crying because for the first time in her life the answer to "did Boise State win" is "no," and then post that picture on the internet:
This little girl is the most unfortunate Scott Tenorman of the Week ever, but even though Radiohead doesn't think she's cool we all do, right? Yeah. Please feel better. (I don't have to say this, I'm sure, but please for the love of God do not be internet to this crying six year old. Okay, internet? Do not be internet.)
God, I feel terrible just looking at that. WHY, GOD, DID YOU NOT MAKE FOOTBALL GAMES THAT BOTH TEAMS CAN WIN? THIS SIX YEAR OLD WANTS TO KNOW AND SO DO I. Look, little girl, look at this awesome person dressed up like a "muscle hamster." There is justice and beauty in the world after all.
Week in spleen starts now:
ACC
If you were wondering "which ACC program is reminding the author of a 1989 Don Henley song he's disappointed he even remembers," its Miami (That Miami):
This Is The End Of The Innocence
The Miami Hurricanes lost today.
Randy Shannon was fired today.
The disappointing, sad and at times tumultuous reign of "The Boss" has finally reached its brutal, bitter end.
For many Hurricane fans this is the end of the innocence.
We're going to take a five minute break so everyone can regain their composure after reading the words "innocence" and "Hurricanes" in the same sentence.
Right, then. Canespace continues on with what may be the most emo post in college football blogging history—and as a man who's referenced Morrissey dozens of times over the past three years, I know from emo. Srs:
Shannon, a former UM player, graduate, defensive coordinator and most recently head coach was not up to the task of leading ther Hurricanes back to the promised land.
Now he sits in the middle of nowhere, his dreams dashed, all hope lost and a shell of a man.
It's lighter time, kids:
God. Now I have that awful Mike and the Mechanics song stuck in my head. Why am I ten years old listening to dad radio again? THIS IS RANDY SHANNON'S FAULT. [Please be our defensive coordinator. Please.]
Big East
Pitt went from preseason favorite and top 25 team to just another indistinguishable school in the Big East's pile o' crap and the natives are turning on native son Dave Wannstedt. Pitt Script describes the season as a "disaster beyond disasters," which seems like a little much, but when you can't even sell out your year-ending rivalry game it's clear your time is running short. Here's a good reason to fire Wanny:
Louisville was not paralized by fear. They didn't think, "we could do a lot worse than Steve Kragthorpe." They demanded better. And it appears they got it. Pitt, for all it's former prestige and 9 claimed national championships, could learn a lot from a program that was in C-USA just a few years ago.
Did anyone think "we could do a lot worse than Steve Kragthorpe?" Like, ever? Over at Pitt Blather, the entertaining, beat-poetry-influenced commenters have apparently nicknamed the AD "Smug Smile Steve." This guy manages to drop bombs on Pitt and Notre Dame simultaneously:
Forget the National championship or Big East Championship. Could we get to the level of Notre Dame? You know play 6-6 ball against name opponents.
Comment by PittinTampa 11.28.10 @ 9:41 am
I love you, PittinTampa. So hard.
Other losers are Syracuse, Rutgers, and Cincinnati. Syracuse fans are saying things like "who knew 7-5 would feel so disappointing," Rutgers is again Rutgers, and anyone who finds a Bearcat fan loose on the internet should inform me. Moving on…
Big Ten
Would you believe that a post titled…
Iowa football...Why care anymore?
…and featuring the Meatballs "it just doesn't matter" scene went up before Iowa lost to Minnesota? Yeah. Serious. That post explains the metaphysical quandary facing Hawkeye fans real smart-like:
Win and you really win nothing. Lose and you lose everything. If you are an existentialist you really don't care because it's all meaningless entertainment, a happy-go-lucky distraction from your weekend chores.
That was pre-game. What's going on post-game?
I experimented with Four Loko to deaden the pain of the loss.
It smelled like a hobo. It tasted like a combination of jolly ranchers, Colt 45, and sweaty socks.
As for the effects of this tasty beverage, I consumed the entire can in a controlled environment... my basement. With all of the hype, I was happily underwhelmed with the results.
This is not an isolated incident. The entire state of Iowa was drinking Four Loko last night. This guy exceeded the recommended one can dose of Four Loko by a factor of two and paid the price/reaped the rewards:
I go to the gas station in Richland, IA (home of…no one really), the only flavor of Four Loko they have is grape. (Remember this, you will be tested on it later). I buy two. I cracked open my first can, and the flavor did not remind me of grape. "Canned Ass" seems like a better name. …
Here’s what I can piece together from multiple reports:
I brought my rugby cleats in to try to get everyone to "Shoot the Boot," no one did it, it probably didn’t help that…
I was apparently shirtless most of the night. In fact, I was shirtless so long that I actually lost my shirt and the bartender had to give me another one. (Note: Why was I shirtless? I’m 6’0" 300lbs, I have "Corn Fed" tattooed TuPac "Thug Life" style across my gut, and there is universal humor in a naked fat man.)
I tried to start a "fat man wet t-shirt contest" by pouring a pitcher of beer on myself, no one else wanted to play.
Here’s what I know from the following morning:
I woke up on my friend’s couch cuddling his Rottweiler.
My debit card was gone.
I was covered in change. I had no cash nor change when I left the bar in Richland. (Perhaps I used my debit card to get cash, then immediately converted the cash to change, and there were multiple denominations, then used the change as confetti in celebration of the fat man wet t-shirt contest.)
My pants were FILTHY!
My knee was bleeding, yet my pants were not harmed, which means that I fell on my knee, with my pants off, at some point in the night.
I had sent over 60 text messages, mostly such insightful stuff as "I luv yooo," "what is my name," "it’s so awful," and "W0000000!"
Finally, and I told you that you’d be tested, another unexpected surprise was that the 4 loko had turned my poop blue.
Scumdog0331, you and your shirtless blue-poopin' 300 pound body Win The Internet. Elsewhere in that same thread, an 82-year-old grandmother* discusses how she spent the weekend combining Four Loko Blue Raspberry with Watermelon with Sparx "yellow"—which is not a flavor. The resulting porridge looks like "chunky green seaweed" and tastes like "Jolly Rancher (wrapped in shit), then it tasted like horrible cheap red wine, then Bigfoot’s dick as an aftertaste."
Existentialism to Four Loko: losing to Minnesota is like being hit in the head by a two-by-four sixty times.
Meanwhile in Wisconsin, the Badgers continued their reign of terror across the league—Michigan State is the only Big Ten team to hold the Badgers under 30 points this year, and even there they scored 24—by dropping 70(!) on Northwestern a week after bombing Michigan for 48 and two weeks after annihilating Indiana 83-20. Sippin' On Purple has a new mascot:
I'm still watching, but I'm not waiting for the end of this game to put this post up.
This is a guy named Francis the Vomiting Man, who Seth from Posting and Toasting used to put up when the Knicks were losing by 25-40 points against other NBA teams. On this site, his name will be Amado. Welcome, Amado the Vomiting Man. We shall be good friends for years to come.
The site proprietor also adds:
hey, anybody got any good eye-gouging techniques?
i’ve been going at it with this spoon but its not quite convex enough
At this point in in the day Iowa fans were busy mixing Four Loko with cat poop to see what happened and Northwestern guy is still busting out "convex," so that's a point in Northwestern's ongoing Smarter Than You So It's Okay war.
Michigan also lost uncompetitively to Ohio State again, but nothing particularly fun came up in my comprehensive feed, just the usual complaining. Here's this thread about Michigan players talking trash about Michigan during the game, though.
*(Probably.)
Big 12
Texas is spent by now. Losing to "Aggy" is not an unexpected indignity that wrecks anything, it's a "mercy killing" that "finally put a stop to the madness." They're not even mad. They don't have to watch the Big 12 equivalent of the Motor City Bowl. Etc.
Moving on, there are teams that saw horrible things that matter happen to them this weekend. Like Oklahoma State, poised for its first-ever Big 12 Championship game, losing Bedlam and seeing BCS tiebreakers give the spot to the hated Sooners. The number one independent Cowboy message board has an entire sub-board dedicated to "posts about sooners, by sooners, or anyone that needs to vent frustrations about Oklahoma State." This sounds like it should be amazing but it's just a lot of OU flaming at the moment. There is this, an I Am 16 And Have Never Broken Up With A Girl:
I have never been as sad as I am tonight.
This was laid out for us to beat the goons, go to the Big 12 championship game, avenge our only loss of the season and then beat a middle of the road UConn team in our first ever BSC game.
It will be a long time before I get over this loss.
And then there's this:
Sometimes I wish Gundy would show more passion while coaching.
Not sure if serious?
He does. He shows as much as he thinks he can get away with. He was just never the same after The Rant.
Serious. Also apparently serious is this guy's desire for Nebraska to take their pot of money to the Big Ten, championship trophy in tow, entirely out of spite:
NU winning this crappy conference would be golden
I think it would be cool. Go Big Red.
Little 12 sucks. I have no problem letting them make a mockery of it. Who cares about conference strength? It doesn't matter because the SEC could be the crappiest conference in the world and people would still always rank it as the best, hardest conference in the country because their hick power is off the charts. And conference strength obviously hasn't hurt UConn or the ACC any.
It's a joke. I just want to be able to laugh at it, in order for which to happen, NU needs to smoke the goons.
As a northerner, I'm not well placed to make a determination about whose hick power leads to the greatest hick SOS. Also I don't like bombs.
Pac-10
Er. So Cal lost again but they're pretty nondescript this year and there's that one guy at that one message board and I can't wait to see what he's said about Goatboy (bet: "I HOPE HE DIES AND EVERYONE HE'S EVER MET DIES AND THEIR SOULS TURN INTO SPAM SO MARK MANGINO CAN EAT IT AAAAAH THERE'S A FERRET ON MY FACE OH NO THAT'S JUST A CHEERIO I HAVE A DRUG PROBLEM HELP HELP HELP GOATBOY.") But apparently I can't yet because…
Please, Brian Cook of This Week In Schadenfreude, join me after the jump, so we can further discuss why you should immediately disband Team Schadenfreude and retire This Week In Schadenfreude. I want to tell you about the most Perfectly Cal Game Ever Played.
Er. Okay. After the jump we find out that Cal is not good this year and is playing Washington so they can go to a crappy bowl game. It is the last game ever before Cal vacates Memorial Stadium for Corporate Park in San Francisco as the university undertakes renovations so extensive the new place won't be much like the old place. It is a historic game that Washington wins by running the clock down to two seconds on their last drive and plunging into the endzone on fourth and goal from the one. Washington celebrates like madmen.
This is when our story starts:
Immediately (and I mean immediately) Chariots Of Fire, that always inspirational song, starts blasting through the loud speakers. A similarly inspirational montage regarding Memorial Stadium appears on the big screen. Cal fans stare dumbfounded, assaulted by the twin images of UW fans/players celebrating wildly, just like Cal's arch-nemesis Stanford had a week prior, while the post-game "celebration" began. The incongruity of this moment can not, could not, and will not ever be overstated.
I could wax philosophically for hours about what it means to be a Cal fan. About the ups. About the downs. Or I could just show you a video of those final 2 seconds and the face punchingly confusing moments that came after. Since I don't have such a video, I thought I could at least write this post, because, seriously, you need to retire This Week In Schadenfreude. Seriously, dude. Seriously.
Jebus H. Pickle Christ in a handbasket. While the schadenfreude must go on, at least we can declare a new Random Bold Thing and track the top Chariots Of Fire Epic Self Inflicted Schadenfreude—COFESIS—moments from here on out. Our current listings:
1. Cal Plays "Chariots Of Fire" To Celebrate Last Second Win… By Washington.
Goatboy… whatever.
SEC
The current funniest thing in the world is anyone on EDSBS invoking "Pawwwwwwl" in reference to the deranged callers (and REGISTERED VOTERS) to the Paul Finebaum show. And there's a blog in the reader that is the electronic equivalent of Finebaum—one of the guys who posts got in some sort of tiff with Tim Brando that featured the two guys yelling at each other. So, yeah. Is this a call to fire Saban?
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Pluto Says:
November 27th, 2010 at 7:21 pmI think that EVERYTHING needs to be reevaluated – top to bottom. This Mental Collapse has got to be addressed first. Not with overpaid Shrinks. It must be solved with HUNGRY Pipe Hitting players.
Phuck Auburn. Nothing Matters now except doing an forensic autopsy. This Nation has got to move forward and cleanse itself.
Tampa will be the Start – or further proof we need to do the Deal. No matter who it pisses off.
Do "the Deal"? Can Saban? Pay guys (again)? I don't understand your crazy lingo, Finebaum listener. Meanwhile, this guy definitely has AOL and is probably Bill Stewart:
Pride is a terrible sin and we all pay the price sooner or later, we all are proud of our teams and what they representand in Alabama’s case I have witnessed since 1960 on raido and on black and white right up to color TV what we all had that made Alabama the State it was the Pride we had in our football Team , we didnt have much else, many of us were poor scraping out livings in coal mines and steel mills, this was the Pride of Alabama and Bear Bryant was the leader of our team. Now, all these years later we really (most of us) dont care what Auburn does, because they are what they have always been , a team over close to Georgia that has tried to become the States Flagship Team, They never will do that and most people know this, it is like comparing Notre Dame with Tennesse Tech, there isnt any comparison, the only thing Barners have is a few good years and a few individuals ,some like Charles Barkley that is a walking idiot, that love that team, Do what you can this year because all of you know it isnt about just one person or one year , it has to be about what the Team as a whole year after nw year has done, what they have brought to the State in regards to long term Team Accomplishments.
This man is a former police chief who knows the FBI does not get involved lightly, people. Finally, This Guy, Eh:
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crimson hammah Says:
November 29th, 2010 at 1:11 pmonly the mind of a pedophile – sick twisted perverted rebrobate mind cannot see the au being hammered unmercifully by the ncaa
Pawwwwwwwwwl, only the mind of a pedophile can see Auburn coming back from 24-0 down in Bryant-Denny.
And wrapping up with Florida DB Dee Finley's twitter thoughts:
Chris Rainey retweeted this, right?