Tonight, I find myself defending Mike Wilbon for the first time in this space. In general, I think Wilbon is full of himself, a shameless homer, rabidly anti-Notre Dame and a tool. That said, I do not share the opinion of Mr. Irrelevant, the loser blogger who condemned Wilbon to an eternity in the infernal region.

This is all in relation to the tragic death of Redskins safety Sean Taylor last night. On the Monday edition of PTI, Wilbon said he was saddened, but not shocked that Taylor was shot in an apparent home invasion late Sunday night. Wilbon's rationale was that Taylor had been involved in some troubling off-field incidents in his first two seasons in the NFL. Mr. Irrelevant condemns Wilbon to Hell because Wilbon didn't stress the fact that Taylor had calmed down and lived a much different life in the last year or so with enough emphasis to satisfy Mr. Irrelevant.

As a Catholic, I have it on reliable rumor that no blogger, not even the greatest living authority on the DC sports scene in his own mind, is counted among the few authorities with the power to condemn a soul to an eternity in hell. I also didn't find the comments Wilbon made to be tremendously out of line, but then I am notoriously insensitive. It struck me that this was Wilbon's honest reaction to a tragic situation, and it's much better that he should come out and say this as opposed to shedding crocodile tears for the people involved.

Among Wilbon's words with which Mr. Irrelevant took issue is this sentence: "Whether this incident is or isn’t random, Taylor grew up in a violent world, embraced it, claimed it, loved to run in it and refused to divorce himself from it." Wilbon actually makes a good point there. One simply doesn't announce to all that one is retiring from a violent subculture because one has had a child and expect any and all bad blood to evaporate.

That's not the way the world works. People have long memories and regardless of race, culture or creed, there are very few people who are patient enough and rational enough to walk away from a grudge. I know I don't often give up grudges easily, and very little of any lasting emotional significance has happened to me in my life.

It was great that Sean Taylor changed his life. It was great that his coaches, teammates and fans loved and admired him. Sean Taylor didn't deserve to be murdered. But that doesn't mean that all people felt that way, simply because it was the correct and rational viewpoint. And that's what Wilbon was trying to say. He wasn't saying Taylor got what he deserved. He was saying that the world is a violent and irrational place and we can't count on everybody to change for the better because one safety on one NFL team got his life in order.

Far worse, I think, than what Wilbon said about Taylor was what Mr. Irrelevant seems to regard as Wilbon's real crime in this. WIlbon said something that wasn't nice to the blogging community. Wilbon came out and said this: "There’s a ton of speculation about the details of his condition and the details of the incident, but this isn’t a blog and we’re not going to get into wild guessing and speculating here". Can you imagine the gall of the man? Even the voice of reason that is the fanhouse at AOL couldn't stand Wilbon's obvious fear and contempt for Establishment-challenging blogs.

I hate to be the one to break this story on the blogosphere, but bloggers do engage in wild flights of fancy and speculation from time to time. Case in point, check out this guy and his bizarre predictions motivated in large part by personal antipathy rather than deductive reasoning. That's part of the point of a blog, isn't it? The freedom to say things, to take chances and not worry about the pressures exerted on conventional media.

Most blogs are a total waste of time. How many blogs are out there publishing something substantially different from or more insightful than the things average people email their friends about sports or politics or movies? It's just something that most bloggers don't want to admit, probably because they cherish the dream that they might through hard work and begging other sites for links and references vault themselves over every other site saying essentially the same damn thing to become the Marcel Proust of the 21st century.

If by that you mean an uber-tool admired by a legion of lesser tools, then, yes one blogger might become this generation's Proust. But if you mean by that that you have something to say to start an intellectual movement, then you might just want to cut the dose on your meds. With my luck, if there is a next generation Proust waiting in the wings in the blogosphere, it will probably be me. In case you haven't realized, I hate Proust.

On a lighter note, I couldn't help but chuckle at this story. Great Britain's vaunted MI-6 thinks that James Bond movies are hurting their efforts to recruit quality people, particularly in the minority communities and especially among Islamic populations. That's pretty funny. Apparently, British nationals who watch Bond movies are no cooler than their American counterparts. Too many of MI-6 applicants turn out to be losers who think they can seduce beautiful spies and destroy cutting edge gadgets for Queen and Country, rather than practical people with useful skills. It's nice to know that the next time the fate of the free world rests in a British dude's hands, he won't be wearing a tux and playing baccarat with a European floozy.

I know I haven't been very consistent with my posts lately. It's been a very depressing fall so far for me. The damn Red Sox won it all. The damn Patriots are undefeated. And the damn Celtics are playing entirely too well to date. Things just keep getting worse for Sedition in Red Sox Nation. Now BC is one game away from the first major bowl bid since Harry Truman was an obscure senator from Missouri and FDR was running against Wendell Wilke. Bad times.

In the last year or so, Hollywood has seen fit to release a wave of movies showcasing outnumbered and outmatched forces defending their territory or their interests at all costs. The Spartans stood against the mighty invading army from Persia in 300. Beowulf takes out Grendel and Grendel's mom. And it all ties in nicely with the NFL season to date.

A brave, heroic, disciplined unit met a powerful enemy this past weekend and prevailed in Foxboro. The Pats defended their turf against a very average football team starting its backup quarterback, playing on the road and snatched victory from the jaws of defeat in the final minutes. It was truly an inspiring sight.

I'm not going to get carried away like many of the commentators who have stated that the Eagles have shown the rest of the NFL how to compete with the Patriot juggernaut. Maybe they have, maybe they haven't, but it's not worth getting overly excited about until some team does what the Eagles did, only slightly better or slightly longer, and the Patriots finally lose a game. After all, the Colts came very close to prevailing a few weeks ago, and there was no talk of a road map after that game.

I will say this. A friend of mine sent me an interesting question via email this afternoon. He offered the suggestion that the Patriot defense might be showing its age and tiring as the season nears completion. It's an interesting point to consider.

The Eagles were moving the ball with considerable success throwing deep ins. The Patriots linebackers are a very old group, particularly when Bruschi and/or Junior Seau are forced to play in space in certain zone coverages. The deep ins are run right into the space behind the linebackers and in front of the safeties. It's possible my friend had a point.

Prior to the strange, sloppy game in Pittsburgh tonight, I was intrigued at the prospect of Ricky Williams return to the Dolphins. I remember not feeling tremendously sad when Cedric Benson ran over Junior Seau last season, breaking his arm and looking for all the world like he ended the career of one of the great self-promoting frauds of all time (nevertheless, in the interest of fairness, I must praise Seau for his charitable work in the wake of the Southern California fires this fall).

I was looking forward to seeing a slightly older, slightly slower, slightly weaker Seau take on a well-rested Ricky Williams fresh off his 18 month exile from the NFL due to past marijuana infractions. In general, I try as hard to avoid taking undue amusement from the physical suffering and professional failures of total strangers as the next person. But I hate Seau. Maybe its because of the USC thing, but more likely because I have watched him come up a step slow, a yard short and one or two plays away from succeeding in the biggest moments for the better part of my life now, and still announcers, commentators and reporters rave about him as though he were the reincarnation of Dick Butkus (who is not dead, I realize).

To make a long story short, I think I need to see this phenomenon exploited by the Eagles recur in a game or two before I'll accept that the Patriots are showing their age on defense. I think the problem last night was that the Patriots secondary is overrated. I think they're beatable.

Yes, Samuel picked a pass off and returned it for a TD in the first quarter. That was a very nice play, and quite impressive. His second interception was not at all impressive. I have a four year old niece who could have made that play. Feely threw up a pass that had no business being thrown on a route that had no business being called at that point in the game.

Samuel had been aggressively jumping routes early in the game, like the play that resulted in his first interception and another pass deflection that was very nearly a second TD. That much is true. But the routes he jumped were out cuts. The play the Eagles ran to exploit his aggressiveness was a slant and go. Perhaps a better play to test Samuel's discipline would have been an out and up, if double moves were the order of the day. The Eagles weren't running slants. They weren't completing slants. So why would an experienced player like Assante Samuel take the chance on jumping a slant when he had safety help to his inside? This is football, not rocket science.

If another team can move the ball exploiting a weakness in the Patriots pass coverage, then maybe it is the age factor. Maybe Rodney Harrison and Junior Seau have been at this game too long. Or maybe Harrison might need to get back on the HGH. But if it's not the age thing, maybe it's time to be nervous that James Sanders and Randall Gay might not be ready for prime time. Because prime time is coming, and God knows how I'd hate to see the Pats upset in the divisional round of the playoffs.

In other, unrelated news about which you care very little, my fantasy team is dying. The combination of a team that relies on Mike Shanahan's running backs and an owner that was playing golf at 11AM this Sunday proved disastrous. I left Selvin Young in the lineup, but Shanahan had other ideas. That zero spot killed me.

Cedric Benson getting carted off the field certainly didn't help. And wouldn't you know it was just when he was starting to come on like a house afire. He gained 89 yards on 11 carries against the Seahawks, and only Ron Turner knows why he didn't get that 12th carry or carries 13-20. He was averaging over 5 yards a carry against Denver, and know he's hurt. And I'm not entirely sure how hurt he is. I don't know whether the Bears simply shut him down because they have too many teams ahead of them in the playoff race, or he's really in serious career trouble now.

I do know that I have a team with only two wide receivers now, in Bernard Berrian and TO. I had to cut Santonio Holmes to pick up Adrian Peterson of Chicago, and I couldn't cut Benson because he's locked in the lineup until tomorrow. I now have two Denver backs (Henry and Young), two Kansas City backs (LJ and Kolby Smith) and the two Chicago backs. And I lost two games this year to a woman who watches very little football, studies opera singing and was recently in a recital with a damn harpsichord in the damn 21st century.

There isn't enough depth left at running back for me to fire any of these guys (except Benson) because the bottom of the barrel has been scraped. I know, I scraped it myself. I also have Ricky Williams on my team. I feel like Jack Burton from Big Trouble in Little China. I am a reasonable guy, but I've just experienced some pretty unreasonable things.

And even if I wanted to cut LJ, and I don't since I'm not convinced Herm Edwards is the type of coach to shut him down and pull the plug on the faint hopes of KC making the playoffs, it's a keeper league. The KC o-line might have turned a corner (even though they were dominating the overrated Raiders), and LJ might just return to form next season. I have no idea what Shanahan will do from one week to the next, so I need Young and Henry. And there is no other RB available in my league that will get 1/2 as many touches from game to game as the non-rookie Adrian Peterson will from here on out.

I general managed myself into a corner. So right now, I need to win next week to make the playoffs. And the only realistic shot to win rests on a huge game for Romo, Owens and Nick Folk (the Dallas kicker). So it's kind of funny that I could resent an innocent woman with an interest in baroque music because I picked a terrible team and I forced myself to depend on a notoriously mercurial person who just might be clinically insane because he's my favorite player in the league. I have become everything I have ever hated, at least for fantasy football purposes.

In the 17th century, an English poet started a poem with the line "If we had but world enough and time." A recent news story got me thinking of that line, but in a far different context than the poet intended. In case you haven't read about this, Heather Mills wants all of us to consume less dairy in the interest of protecting the environment.

This story has forced me to confront the fact that I am simply not a very good person. I didn't rush right out and picket the nearest dairy farm or milk processing plant. As a matter of fact, I'm sitting here right now drinking a pint of 2% as I compose this post. Even though Heather Mills, that most eminent of intellectuals, thinks it's wrong, it's disgusting, it's morally and ecologically indefensible, I'm drinking milk.

But back to the line if we had but world enough and time. When I read a story to the effect that a certain celebrity or even a regular person thinks that I ought to become a vegetarian in the interest of the environment, I find myself getting angry. I find myself wishing that I had but world enough and time to kill the cattle that turn into my steak, the birds that turn into my poultry products, the pigs that turn into my ham and the fabulous, nebulous, chimerical animals that turn into bologna, hot dogs and sausage (the king of the processed meat).

I understand that a considerable amount of energy goes into the industries which enable me to consume animal products with only the minor inconvenience of having to obtain said products from a grocery concern. But I wonder if, as both model and the single most important voice on any issue at any moment, Ms. Mills could tell me how much energy, how many natural resources and what manner of carbon footprint come out of her public appearances, photo shoots and bilking a has-been of some of his wealth. I'm going to go out on a limb and bet that she consumes more of the world's resources than I do.

Not only that, there are a number of people employed in industries that provide meat to the masses. I'm willing to bet that not very many of these people are capable of inducing a deluded old fraud with millions into marrying them. Perhaps these people might have a bit more pride or decency than to marry a man in order to fleece him in a divorce settlement and come away with an enhanced platform to rage against the dying of the light. But all sins are washed clean when one lectures from the left on any given issue, right?

At the end of the day, the creatures that go from the field to my bill of fare are animals. I'm not too worried about the death of cows, chickens, pigs, fish and whatever other animals are sacrificed to sustain me. It's not like they were people. God knows, people do enough horrible stuff to other people and still other people expect me to be up in arms over it that I just don't have the energy to care about the fate of animals.

It is true, or at least mainly true, as Ms. Mills points, out that humans are the only people that consume milk from another species on a regular basis. It's also true that no other species has the cranial capacity and opposable thumbs to milk another animal. That said, have you ever seen a domestic cat that would pass up milk put in front of it? I think dogs will drink milk, too, if they get the chance but I don't know for sure, since I hate dogs and spend little time around them.

There was a time when people had to eat meat, consume dairy products and wear animal skins and furs to survive the winter in most of the world. Now, with the Industrial Revolution and the consumption of fossil fuels, people can survive winter without living as our ancestors did. But the instinct to eat meat and drink milk still lingers in the recesses of our brain, deep in Jung's collective consciousness. It will be part of our mindsets for generations to come.

While there are some who say that we can, and ought to, rise above those instincts to live a vegetarian lifestyle, I don't believe it. If that were the case, a million vegetarians wouldn't sit down at table this Thanksgiving to eat Tofurkey. There wouldn't be a market for tofu based ice cream substitutes. Vegetarians want to have their soy-based cake and eat it too.

As I am not a vegetarian and I refuse to eat something that looks like chalk flavored jello, I know very little about tofu. I do know that it doesn't grow on tofu trees, and none of the people I know who do eat tofu seem to be able to make it from scratch. So tofu must be made somewhere, right? And if it is made somewhere, it must be a byproduct of some of the same ecologically unfriendly practices that go into meat packing and processing, right?

I do have vegetarian friends, and while I don't necessarily respect their choice, I do respect their right to it. I just find it slightly more hypocritical than my choice to follow my ancestors and eat meat. If my eating meat has a carbon footprint, so too does vegetarian living. The protein supplements and whatever other nutrient replacement devices vegetarians to which vegetarians resort to replace what they miss by not eating meat don't come from magical elves. They have to be made in a factory somewhere with the attendant environmental consequences. Plus it's unnatural to be taking pills all the damn time.

On the off chance that a vegetarian or vegan or other such crank reads this and wants to scare me by pointing out the unsanitary conditions associated with the factory farming of food animals or an Upton Sinclair style expose on conditions in the meat packing facilities, bring it on, I can take it. I hope the FDA is on the ball and things are clean and safe.

But at the end of the day, any person who eats food they didn't watch from the very beginning to the moment of consumption runs the same risk. Who really knows whether various and sundry pests are finding their way into the hot dog machine? Who knows if Doug at the Dole Salad packing center isn't coughing up flu germs in such a way as to have a microbe or two in the mixed greens bag you buy at the store? We all rely on the good will of our fellow men and the forbearance of reptiles when we eat.

So I am going to sit down at Thanksgiving dinner and eat a turkey leg so big you'd think I was Henry VIII, but for the wives and the whole Protestant thing. And I'm going to drink Bud Lights and root against the Jets and the Lions and the Colts. And I just might think of Orwell when he wrote that "the food-crank is by definition a person willing to cut himself off from human society in hopes of adding five years on to the life of his carcass; that is, a person out of touch with common humanity."

I'm sorry I haven't been more diligent about posting new material lately. What do you want from me? I've been more than a little disappointed by the recent run of success for the Boston teams that I hate. And the more I post to complain about them, the better they seem to do. It's just some sort of terrible nightmare, although admittedly of very minor proportions.

I have decided to take a new tack in dealing with the Celtics. Even though Ainge's panic moves seem, for the moment, to have worked out as well as could be expected, my distaste for the current regime still lingers from the Antoine situation. I also have serious qualms about jumping on a bandwagon, so I'm not rooting for the Cs. I have, after about 14 seconds of intense thought on the matter, decided to root against the Celtics a little less aggressively than I've rooted against the Pats, the Sox and BC.

Either way, it should be win win for me. If I am somehow bringing good karma to the Red Sox, Patriots and other teams/causes I root against, then maybe by taking a low key approach I might somehow reverse that trend. And if the Cs should stay healthy and stay selfless long enough to go deep into the playoffs, at least I won't have a seven month body of work to show how short-sighted and wrong I can be at my worst.

And so it appears that the Patriots are on the verge of another blowout victory. At this point, I have given up on watching the game. It is now to the point of turning my stomach to see them do what they're doing. Running up the score is not tremendously cool to begin with, but to go for it on fourth down inside the ten yard line when you're up by four touchdowns is just a bit too excessive.

I know I quote and refer to Jimmy Johnson's maxim that one ought to get better players if one has a problem with being blown out by one's opponents. And in the main I agree with the saying. The rest of the NFL teams had their chances to acquire the players who now make up this team. They also had their chances to get better players than the ones who can't stand up to the Patriots. So it's their fault that the Pats kick their asses, and kick them hard week in and week out as though they were General Sherman marching through Georgia.

But it's gone on long enough. Bill Belichick, and to a lesser extent his players, are emulating two of the more admired figures in the pantheon of dbags - the petulant child and the bully. Perhaps the NFL overreacted in their sanctions following the scandal in the Meadowlands. Maybe every single other owner, player, front office functionary and concession stand worker in the NFL failed miserably to do their moral duty and come to Bill Belichick's defense. After all, the man is the heart and soul not only of the NFL but of the American Republic as a whole. Just ask him, and if he's not too vexed by the weight of the world on his shoulders, he'll tell you.

Maybe it will be a sublime comeuppance should the Patriots march to 19-0 and net a top three pick in the upcoming NFL draft thanks to the 49ers finding new and different ways to get worse from week to week. Is that really the object of the exercise, or should it be? For five years now, I've had to sit and listen to every talking head even peripherally associated with the industry that is American professional football tell the world that the New England Patriots are the model for the way the game ought to be played. For five years we were told that the Patriots won with class and dignity, with an overall team concept and without the trappings of ego that seem to turn off so many fans.

Now, for the sake of avenging a slight in the form of an official overreaction to what was a moderately dirty deed, the Patriots have essentially taken that notion out back and put a bullet in its brain. There was nothing classy, dignified or admirable about the manner in which the Patriots defeated the Bills. Even worse, it's unsound business, or it will be after a certain point. I am a huge football fan, and I'm not watching the only football game on the air at the moment because it's not that entertaining to see a team be destroyed for 60 minutes of football.

I'm also tired of the whole get-up that Belichick rocks on the sidelines. Yeah, we get the point, it's the whole ironic commentary on the NFL deal with Reebok to provide coaches apparel and the foolish consistencies which are the hobgoblins of little minds. Unfortunately a fifty year old dude doesn't wear the shallow teen-aged rebellion particularly well.

I wonder if and/or when more people will start to feel that the Patriots have ceased doing the right thing for some time now. I know that there are Patriots fans who see this as payback for all those blissful years when the Patriots were so bad for so long and so often on the receiving end of lopsided scores. Maybe they're right. I just know I'm becoming less interested in watching this team play. And I'm a guy that has been known to make time to watch the Senior Bowl practice sessions.

As this season gets closer to the end, I have my own version of the perfect ending to this storybook season. I would like to see the Patriots go 16-0 in the regular season and then lose in the divisional round of the playoffs on the hallowed 13 month old field turf at Gillette Stadium. Perhaps a more conventional ending might have them make it all the way to the Super Bowl before they finally lost, but I like my scenario better. It would hurt Pats fans more, I think, if they lost out of the blue in their house right off that coveted first round bye.

If a few other wrinkles were added to the story line, such as a visiting player grabbing that ridiculous cut-off hoodie and pulling it over Belichick's head as though it were a hockey fight, that would put a smile on my face. I try, for the most part, not to condone violence in this space, but I am an imperfect man in many respects. I think it would be too much to ask to have some concerned citizen hurl a football into his groin to reenact the George C. Scott in Man Being Hit By Football bit from the Simpsons of yesteryear. But that would be damn funny also.

And so, Notre Dame finally won a home game. Yes, it was against Duke which just might be the worst team in the Bowl Subdivision series. But Robert Hughes looked very good. If they could ever sort out the abysmal play of the offensive line and the young backs can build on the strides they've made this season, perhaps James Aldridge and Robert Hughes can form a 1-2 punch in the backfield sort of like Cadillac Williams and Ronnie Brown at Auburn. But that's probably too optimistic an outlook to take.

I don't have too much more to say at this point, though I will be posting more material over the next couple of days. I'm going to see Springsteen tomorrow night, so I'm taking it easy tonight. I'll have a lot to say about his show, I'm sure.

There are some occasions when I wish I were a Patriots fan. Not to enjoy this undefeated season in the making, not to jump on the bandwagon and not to find out if, as the old saying goes, ignorance is bliss. But to be able to quip after the Patriots bye this week that the NFL finally found a way to stop the Pats from scoring. I imagine that if I were as dumb as the average Pats fan, I could convince myself that I were clever dropping a line like that.

Thanks to Mike Shanahan's hesitation and a fair-sized hangover, I left Travis Henry in my fantasy lineup this week. So his DNP didn't help, and Manning's epic six interception performance still ending up netting 21 points thanks to a FFL commissioner whose struggles with incompetence should make him the subject of a made-for-TV movie of the week, I came in to tonight's game trailing by 1.5 points. All I needed was one catch for six yards from 49ers TE Vernon Davis to win. That didn't seem like an unreasonable expectation, did it?

Of course, with the brilliant pass protection scheme of the San Francisco offense keeping Davis in for max protection, even though it didn't work at any point in the game, that simple hope was doomed from the start.

This season has forced me to face an unpleasant reality. So much attention has been paid to Tony Romo's new contract, Brett Favre's milestones, Peyton Manning's Super Bowl championship and Tom Brady's illegitimate kid and amazing stats. But there has been a vast, dishonest, corrupt conspiracy to divert attention away from the greatest quarterback in the game - Matt Hasselbeck. With the way he put up numbers against the 49ers in tonight's game, the NFL must waive the whole retirement for five years requirement to induct him into the Hall of Fame immediately.

I've been wondering why Hasselbeck is shunted aside in favor of guys like Manning and Brady. It can't be a question of talent, numbers or overall success. It has to be because he's bald and he has that sad little emasculated voice that distinguishes true he men like Hasselbeck and Bill Simmons. Hell, field generals like Joe Montana and Johnny Unitas wish they could have an epic moment like the overtime playoff game when Hasselbeck announced over the stadium PA when the Seahawks won the coin toss that the Hawks would take the ball and win the game. Alas, Hasselbeck threw an INT which Al Harris returned for the winning TD.

It must be a conspiracy, though. It can't be because Hasselbeck is barely above-average at his position. Nor can it be that he is more prepared to provide an excuse for his failure than to drive his team to success. Nor can it be tied to the fact that he plays in a dick town whose most notable football tradition was shamelessly ripped from Texas A & M. As an aside, why couldn't Seahawks fans have stolen the bonfires which collapse and kill the builders instead of the 12th man.

Unfortunately, the story didn't garner the national attention it deserved, but Hasselbeck and his teammates made sure to remind themselves of Super Bowl XL prior to this season's meeting with the Steelers. They brought motivation from the bad calls which they felt deprived their team of the championship they so richly deserved. Whether it was because he spent too much time reading his playbook out loud to clam his children, because State Farm wasn't there for him, because they dwelt too much in the past or because the Steelers are just that much better, the Seahawks were soundly beaten.

This game against San Francisco is fairly typical of Hasselbeck's career. The Seahawks came in expected to win, even without Deion Branch and Shaun Alexander. San Francisco has been dreadful all season, no matter how much they spent this offseason. And Hasselbeck was throwing the ball all over the place. He's always very good in the games he's expected to win. But when the team plays a better team, he folds.

I said all that because Steve Young appeared in the broadcast booth tonight, complaining that Hasselbeck is ignored because he plays in the Pacific Northwest and toils on a team with very little tradition of excellence, so they don't draw media attention. That isn't the case, necessarily. With so much coverage by ESPN, ESPN2 the NFL Network and FSN, with the interest in fantasy football and with the internet, fans have so much access to so much football information at every minute of every day. If fans aren't focused on a player it's performance based, not regional bias. Maybe Hasselbeck is the fifth best QB playing right now, but the Grand Canyon separates him from 1-4.

In other news, BC lost again this week. It seems like an annual rite of passage, like the swallows returning to Capistrano in California in March. Thanksgiving approaches, BC controls its own destiny for an automatic berth to a BCS bowl and a .500 team upsets them. And all of a sudden, there is no BCS berth. And then the whining about BC missing out on higher profile bowls because of the perception that BC fans don't travel well begins in earnest.

Congratulations to Illinois, who upset Ohio State today. And shame on the Buckeyes for trying to protect their house when Illinois players wanted to celebrate at midfield in the Horseshoe after the game. The Horseshoe might be a cathedral of the game, but the Buckeyes had 60 minutes of football to protect their house. They failed in the task. If Illinois players want to disrespect the house, they earned the right by beating the Buckeyes on the field in the time allotted. Losing hurts, but it can be done with dignity.

Words, by this point, have long since failed me to describe what a nightmare this season of Notre Dame football. I have friends and relatives who have as solid a track record of supporting this team as I do who have given up watching the games. It's just that depressing. But I'm still watching. Even though the Ohio State game against Illinois was much better than this contest against Air Force, I still watched the entire sad spectacle.

I said all that to say this. I find myself in the unenviable position of defending the indefensible Charlie Weis from the various people in the media who insist on attacking him or criticizing him. This piece by Kevin Blackistone is well thought out, but it operates on a faulty premise. This season has made history in all the wrong ways and for all the wrong reasons. But that doesn't gild the memory of the Tyrone Willingham era.

I am sorry for the man in that firing situation. Tyrone Willingham struck me as an intelligent, decent man of integrity. He seemed like a thoroughly nice man, but we all know where the nice guy finishes. He did have a winning record (barely) at the University of Notre Dame. In his final season, Notre Dame did finish above .500 and limped into eligibility for one of the more minor of the minor bowls. In his best season, the team fell apart down the stretch after a start in which the breaks beat his opponents and then suffered abject humiliation at the hands of NC State in the Gator Bowl (one of the most major of the minor bowls).

Charlie Weis is a stubborn, somewhat difficult man with the media. And for that I admire him. Why appear chastened and contrite before the self appointed kingmakers? Would that make a 1-9 season hurt any less? Would losing to Air Force, Navy and BC be less humiliating? No, so you might as well go down with pride and arrogance.

One can talk about Weis taking a team to two BCS bowls with a core group of players recruited by Ty Willingham. But one should analyze that statement to the fullest. Did Willingham take those guys to a BCS bowl? The answer - not only a rousing no, but it should be coupled with the reminder that Ty himself enjoyed his most successful season with players recruited by Bob Davie.

A more interesting sideline in this debate is to consider another question. Of those Willingham recruits who formed the core of the BCS teams, how many had draft stock and NFL prospects improved under the new regime? The answer has to be just about all of them. Brady Quinn was looking at mid to late 4th round status prior to Weis coming to town. Jeff Samardzja chose baseball, but he would have been a first round pick and he tripled his career catches by Wies' second game.

Anthony Fasano became a second round pick under Weis, as opposed to a 5th/6th round pick before. Chienedum Ndukwe wouldn't have been drafted prior to that. Mike Richardson was a sixth round pick, but he had to take a year to recover from a game against USC. Thanks to Ty Willingham's belief in regionalization (that players from a certain geographic area will play better in games played near where they grew up), Richardson was thrown to the wolves against USC before he was ready to cover guys like Mike Williams and Kerry Colbert. Richardson was eaten alive, in a sad sight to see.

The trouble is, Weis didn't have to adjust from the NFL to recruiting and motivating teenagers in his first two years. That team was experienced, this team was not. Maybe he was arrogant and didn't consider the ramifications as a college coach should, but that's life. Hopefully he learned a thing or two to adjust in the upcoming offseason.

There is hope in the young players who have been thrown into the fire this season. James Aldridge has the potential to be a very, very, very good tailback. Jimmy Clausen will not be the guy, I don't believe. But the freshman linebackers Dwight Stephenson Jr., Kerry Neal and Ryan Smith will develop into an outstanding unit. Robbie Parris and Deval Camarra are exciting young receivers.

I haven't seen enough of the defensive linemen of the future to comment on them. Trevor Laws has had such an outstanding season on such a terrible team that I've been guilty of concentrating on his play and trying to project his draft status that I've overlooked his peers. The offensive line, frankly, terrifies me. If they don't learn to block even the most rudimentary of blitzes, there is no point in taking the field. I don't see any hope on the horizon there, but I've been spectacularly wrong.

Blackistone made the point that Willingham was the first Notre Dame coach who was terminated prior to his contract's natural extent. I'll take his word for that, but I think there had to be at least one guy who lasted less than three years. Maybe he wasn't fired, but it must have been as good as a firing.

I'm not sure how I feel about changing the traditions of the school and the program. But maybe it's time. I've been told that in order to become a sophomore at Notre Dame, one must pass calculus. That makes the school unique among serious football programs. It's also a daunting prospect. I have a MA in a humanities discipline, and I've never had to pass calculus. Perhaps you might not believe that, with the record of minor, silly mistakes in this frivolous little blog of mine, but it's true. So why should every football player at Notre Dame have to do so much more than every football player at every other school? Isn't the university rigorous enough as it is?

Perhaps it's unfair that the expectations for academic and athletic performance at Notre Dame are so much higher than they are at any other school. I do admire the school for its commitment to providing an excellent education, but can one obtain an excellent education without calculus? But this is also a slippery slope. If they make this compromise, what stands between them and institutions of ill academic repute like the one in Chestnut Hill or Miami?

As usual, when I raise a question, or series of questions, I don't have an answer. The one thing I do know is that a season like this demands a scapegoat. For a change, I do have a suggestion. It's the guy upon whose hiring I screamed bloody murder...Ron Powlus. It made no sense to me, to bring in a guy who put up numbers everywhere but where and when it really mattered to try to shepherd and mold another Notre Dame QB. Quarterback play has not been good. Offensive line play stank like rotten compost (and if they let the o-line coach seek greener pastures, I won't weep), but it took Clausen seven starts to learn that he can throw the ball away to avoid a sack. Powlus must go. And immediately.

In a rare serious note, today marks the 232nd anniversary of the establishment of the United States Marine Corps. Tomorrow is Veterans Day. I wouldn't be able to write this silly little waste of a time of a blog without the sacrifices of generations of Americans who served in the military. I may hail from a region of the country not noted historically for patriotism and self-sacrifice, but I am eternally grateful to those who are better men (and women) than I am. God bless you, men and women of the Marines and the American Armed Forces and God keep you.

Since I last posted, I've been wondering whether the Steelers are the team to beat the Patriots. On Monday Night Football, provided that you could sit through the forced banter between the three hosts who have no business working with each other and stomach Tony Kornheiser desperately failing to channel Howard Cosel and/or be funny, you'd have seen a team look just about as good as a team can. But it was against the wreckage of the Baltimore Ravens.

The Patriots are slightly better than the Ravens offensively, in the same way that eating Thanksgiving dinner is slightly better than getting kicked in the shins a half dozen times. But the Steelers, more than any of the teams the Pats have played to this point, have all the pieces on defense to give stopping this juggernaut the old college try. Having the pieces and bringing them to the game and having them work the way the coaches drew it up isn't as easy as one could hope, though.

No matter how good they are, the Steelers cornerbacks are all considerably shorter than Randy Moss. And with Moss getting away with offensive pass interference the way no one on this Earth has since Michael Irvin brought his talents to the broadcast booth, he is a disconcerting prospect. And there is the question of whether or not the Steelers can find a way to stop Wes Welker finding every little hole in every zone. If they can't do that a handful of times, they're not going to get the Pats off the field on third down.

Then there is the zone blitz scheme which Dick Lebeau practically invented. It's greatest strength is its capacity to baffle, confuse and frustrate pass protection schemes and force them to break down while closing off the quarterback's outlets. Unfortunately, you can't do that to Tom Brady and his offensive linemen. As a group, the five linemen and their field general do not possess enough intelligence to be baffled, confused or frustrated. And while there are coaching staffs and teams that can come up with plans to outsmart any opponent, is there a plan to outdumb the morons on the Patriots?

On offense, the Steelers can run the ball, even though they didn't do much of that against Baltimore. Even if the size and strength of the Patriots defensive line leads you to believe that Fast Willie Parker will be contained, don't forget that the Steelers can throw Najeh Davenport at the Pats. Even though he's best remembered for being arrested after an ex-girlfriend awoke to discover him befouling her closet in the middle of the night, he still has the potential to run all over the Patriots like Marion Barber did in Dallas.

Pass protection could be a problem, since Mike Vrabel seems to have borrowed Rodney Harrison's fountain of youth. And Big Ben loves to hang on to the ball, even though he moves well in the pocket and shrugs off defenders because of his size and strength, this could hurt the Steelers. If he makes even one mistake when it comes to ball security, that could provide the Patriots with the opportunity to take a lead which no sign seen to date points to them relinquishing.

One thing this secondary for the Pats has yet to face is a deep threat like Santonio Holmes. If the Steelers can protect Big Ben, this could burn the Pats badly. Then again, if any of the ifs I have brought up to this point in the season had amounted to anything more than a small colossal waste of time in this giant colossal waste of time that is this blog, the damn Patriots wouldn't be undefeated and I'd look like less of a tool.

Speaking of tools, it provides an inelegant segue into a group of people who badly need criticism. NBC is saving the environment, whether we like it or not. I was reluctant to blog about this a few days ago, because I expected the Bush Administration to have a change of heart along the lines of Scrooge in A Christmas Carol when Matt Lauer went to Greenland to break the story of global warming, but I was disappointed.

While NBC is making hypocritical gestures like sending a waste of space to Greenland to waste even more time and space than he usually wastes and shutting off a few lights in its studio, a serious question is going unanswered. NBC wants me to be conscious of my carbon footprint (and as a subsidiary of GE, the network is far less a threat to the general environmental health of the planet than a guy who doesn't even own an automobile, right?), but did they really need to send one of their talking heads to Greenland to do it?

I'm going out on a limb here, but I'm assuming that Matt Lauer didn't row himself up to Greenland in a boat. So he must have taken a plane or a boat to Greenland. And since NBC probably didn't buy him and whatever personnel were required to support him and his crew tickets on a Southwest Airlines flight to the middle of nowhere in Greenland, some genius must have chartered a plane or a ship to move those people and their equipment to Greenland, unless of course the natives there have all the necessary equipment for broadcasting "news" across the globe.

So NBC spent how much money, transported how many people and how much equipment to Greenland to get me and a few million other people to think about their impact on fragile ecosystems? It seems like that could have been done more efficiently. What with the fact that these people (unless Matt Lauer can provide heat, shelter, food fresh drinking water and whatever other necessities a film crew in the middle of nowhere Greenland require with the powers of his mind) must have done some damage to the pristine ecosystem they visited, how much do I have to scale back my carbon footprint to offset what they did while they went up there to tell me to scale back my carbon footprint in the first place? Good job NBC.

Well, it's been a while since I last posted...for obvious reasons. There hasn't been a lot to talk about with the Sox winning it all and the Pats rolling along the way they are. What could I say, for instance, to make fun of Papelbon. Yeah, he looked like a total tool with his silly dancing? So what if he looked like a douche with the Bud Light box on his head?

Do you care that I know of a Sox fan who let his kid rock a Bud Light box on his head as a Halloween costume? Is that a sign of the decline of American civilization or the end of the world as we know it? Probably not. It's also not going to be the one irreversible step that leads to the most heinous of societal ills...underage drinking. It's probably not boding well for the kid's chances of becoming a well adjusted adult at some point, but how many of us are actually well adjusted adults?

I don't have a whole lot to say about Navy beating ND. Sooner or later, it had to happen. I know I ripped Tommy Tuberville for playing for the tie earlier this season against South Florida, and I should rip Weis for not trying a field goal with less than a minute to go in a tie game. But he didn't play for the tie, he went for it on fourth and eight. Not a very good idea, but aggressive. It blew up when the play resulted in a sack and a loss of eight yards (a double negative play when a missed FG would have ended in a turnover on downs at a spot seven yards from the original line of scrimmage). So what can I say, is this loss somehow worse than any of the other terrible losses this season? I'm out of things to say.

The worst thing about losing to Navy is that it still gives BC fans a little something to smile at, even though this FSU loss stuck a dagger in their national title game dreams. For as much as this season delights BC fans, and as much as Notre Dame has fallen off the face of the Earth for a year, it's not all glory in Chestnut Hill. If they lose another game this year, they will not got to a BCS bowl. So there's that to look forward to, small consolation to be sure, but a little bright spot.

And the Patriots survived a game that they could have lost. At the end of the day, all that matters is the final result, but this game presented quite a scare to the Patriots. Some of the calls were questionable, particularly the pass interference on Ellis Hobbs, but that's part of the game. There were too many penalties. The pass protection left a little to be desired. If Indy played a bit more aggressively, who knows whether they could have hled the lead. But as they say, if grasshoppers were armed to the teeth, perhaps they'd have less difficulty with birds eating them.

I have a friend who has a theory that winning this game might not be the best thing for the Pats. They clearly didn't play their best game today, but they still won. It might be a positive because they have so many different ways to beat teams. But it might be a negative, since this might lend even more confidence which might blow up in their face.

If you take LSU as an example, the Bayou Bengals are so far ahead of the teams they play talent wise that they have fallen into the habit of coasting till the fourth quarter till they spring the big comeback on their opponent. Unfortunately, they couldn't quite comeback far enough to beat Kentucky, who won that wild game in Lexington in triple OT. If BC hadn't lost, that might have ended up costing the Tigers a shot at the BCS title game.

The thing about this is that these are conditions and hypotheticals. I hate admitting it, but based on the games to this point in the season, the Patriots are the best team in the NFL. When the dust clears and all the games are played, that might not be the case, but that's too far down the road to see as of today. I think the Pats are vulnerable but that might be true or it might be my own prejudice against the team leading me into a conclusion that isn't accurate.

With their massive offensive output (at least prior to the game today), the Pats have been compared a lot lately to the St Louis Rams. Perhaps this could present a glimmer of hope. Those high powered Rams played the Patriots twice in 2001. We all remember the stunning victory in the Super Bowl, but how many recall the beating the Pats took in the regular season? Obviously the Super Bowl is the much bigger game, and that's why we remember it, but maybe one of these teams the Pats have beaten could sneak up on the juggernaut should they meat again? It doesn't seem likely, but it's not impossible.

It's getting late now, and I'll have more to say as this week goes on about the rest of the NFL games, and some other things that have been neglected over the course of the postseason baseball nightmare.