What a depressing weekend. I never would have believed that the Yankees could take two out of three from the Red Sox and it wouldn't make me smile. What is happening to the football team at Notre Dame is just that depressing. And the instability and unpredictability of the early stages of the NFL season isn't helping.

It's hard to find words to describe what Michigan did to Notre Dame this weekend. Suffice it to say, there just isn't a lot of fight in this vintage of the Fighting Irish. I guess the one moment that best encapsulated the debacle in the Big House this week came when the ABC telecast wound down mercifully. As they do for each team in each game, they chose the Chevrolet Players of the Game.

I didn't bother to remember which individual was singled out for Notre Dame, I just remember that he was a defensive player who recorded 9 tackles, including one for a loss. The team was beaten 38-0, and the player of the game was a defensive player. The bright spots were so few and far between that a guy who made a tackle behind the opponent's line of scrimmage merited a $1,000 donation in his name to the University of Notre Dame's general scholarship fund. How the mighty have fallen.

And as for the telecast itself, if ABC had dragged 3 of the inbred hayseeds who made up the home crowd in Ann Arbor, the network could hardly have assembled a crew more biased toward the Wolverines. That wouldn't have been such a big deal if they were at least decent announcers. Paul McGuire gets worse with each word that leaves his mouth. The world might be better served if they paid him more to stay home than they pay him to show up for work. Or at least unplugged his mike periodically. Let him think he's calling the game if they don't have the heart to get rid of him.

I found the brief segments where individual Wolverines were allowed to share fun little snippets of their thoughts and feelings about the game to be the most galling aspects this particular telecast. Granted, I have searched far and wide to see Jake Long give his own opinion of his strengths. And I was deeply shocked to see that literacy and the ability to point out forks in his family tree weren't among them.

A close second on the list of things that continue to vex me from the Michigan game is that Mike Hart delivered on his guarantee, so now this win will probably be cataloged in history with Babe Ruth's called shot and Namath's guarantee in Super Bowl III. Of course the fact that I predicted a Michigan victory in this space last week is absolutely no consolation. A blind man could have seen it coming with the way Notre Dame has played to this point.

Even with Ryan Mallett making his first start (and knowing Mallett would be a tool, with that name and all) I didn't expect Notre Dame to be 3-0. I knew with their opening schedule and a slate of untested players at key positions like QB, RB and WR that this 0-3 start was a very real possibility. What I did not expect, however, was that after 180 minutes of football I would find myself on a vision quest to see the Fighting Irish score their first offensive touchdown of this season. I could live with 0-3 if even one of the games were close enough to make me think that 0-7 weren't on the horizon.

The season has been so disappointing and surprising that I have struggled to find a good analogy. The closest I have been able to come to it is if I were to walk by one of those Dance Dance Revolutions games and hear Born to Run. Hearing that foolish machine play an Elvis song would hurt more, but surprise me less with the way Elvis Presley Enterprises operates. No, finding that Springsteen sold out in such a shameful manner would be the only equivalent to this travesty of a season.

Two final thoughts on Notre Dame-Michigan. First, I don't know now when I'll see 3:10 to Yuma. Russell Crowe attended Saturday's game in Michigan regalia as Lloyd Carr's personal guest. Eventually, I'll get over it because I love the movie Gladiator. But I hate Michigan, so it will take a while. And good riddance to Demetrius Jones as he transfers to Northern Illinois. Maybe he wouldn't have been as hurt by losing his job to Jimmy Clausen if he had tried to play a bit less terribly.

Then there is the bizarre NFL season to date. These weekend's games didn't do much to improve my state of mind. In fact, it made things much worse. First, no one on my fantasy team got in the end zone. So that put the kibosh on the Pork Chop Express. It didn't help that Chad Johnson had such a big game, as he was on the opposing team. I don't know if I've mentioned it before, but I hate Chad Johnson. TO made his shtick possible when he signed that ball in Seattle all those years ago, but every one loves Chad and hates TO.

Since the Cleveland vs. Cincinnati game was so surprising, it has been covered to death. I, however, have my own unique angle. I am (or more accurately now, was) in a suicide pool. For those who might not be familiar with the term, the people against whom I compete and I pick one team per week. If that team wins, we advance, When the team you pick loses, that's it for the pool entry. To make a long story short, I picked Cincinnati this week.

I had my reasons. In no particular order, here they are. As I understand it, the rules said I could only choose a team once. So I was trying to save teams who looked more like a guaranteed win for later on in the season. Fat lot of good that did me. In my inimitable wisdom, I decided that I was going to target teams that weren't very good and pick their opponent in the early going.

In week one, I chose San Fran over Arizona and that nearly blew up in my face. So I decided to pick against a team that looked dreadful in week one. So I chose Cleveland, who was so bad against Pittsburgh that they cut the guy who started at QB. And go figure, they scored 51 points. I would have bet going into the game that they wouldn't have scored 51 points by week 5.

It might be due to some neurotic streak in my personality, but I am not going to eat any crow on this Patriots win. Yes, the Chargers have an vastly superior pass rush than the Jets. But if you recall, the Patriots did just as good a job containing the same defensive package last season in the playoffs. And then when all New England seemed ready to fall in love with the Pats O-line, Dwight Freeny and Robert Matthis carved them up as though that were the object of pass protection and not the antithesis of pass protection just one week later. So I am not sold on this offensive line.

And the Chargers do have a better secondary than the Jets, so it was a more impressive performance for Brady, Moss and the rest. But the Chargers are not really that good in the defensive backfield. Maybe you think Quentin "Bad Mamma" Jammer qualifies as a front-line, shutdown corner. I don't. He's adequate, forgettable and occasionally regrettable to steal a line from the Simpsons President's Day Pageant in the Ralph Loves Lisa episode.

I hate to sound like a broken record, but Moss has always been a great front-runner. On national TV in the regular season, he just might be the best of all time. However, that isn't what gets players to Canton. Lynn Swann got into the Hall of Fame with weak regular season stats because he was incredible in huge games like Super Bowls. Moss hasn't gotten there yet, but he's fallen short in NFC championships. So forgive me for not putting on sackcloth and streaking my face with ashes as though I were a penitent man.

I didn't have much time for watching highlight shows or Sportscenter these past few days, but I wonder how much attention has been paid to another oddity at this stage of the season. During the four minute offense when the Colts had a chance to shut the door on the Titans, Manning threw two incompletions and took a big sack with under 3 minutes to go in the game.

If I remember correctly, the Titans only had one timeout, so even three running plays would have all but killed their chances to win, even if they went for no gain. Hell, even kneeling the ball three times would have run time and forced the Titans to burn their last timeout. It certainly would have been better than two incompletions which burnt mere seconds off the clock and a sack which forced the Colts to punt.

Granted it's all academic, as Indy went on to win the game, but for all the praise given Manning for his inexpressible brilliance it would be nice to see him take some heat for this one. Indy might have come up with a TD on one of those passes, but then again there could have been a deflection that turned into an interception or that sack could have turned into a fumble. Or Vince Young could have engineered game-winning drive when they only needed a field goal. You can't get lucky all the time, but you can be smart every day, as they say.

I don't have very much to say on the cheating scandal. Yes, every one tries to steal signs and signals. That's just one of the things that happens in professional sports. But having some front office flunkies sneaking around in the bowels of Giants Stadium with video recording equipment is a little bit excessive, no? All we need now is to find out that Kraft or Belichick referred to these guys as plumbers or a revelation to inform us that there is a recording system in the Patriots front office with a number of suspicious gaps in the tapes and then we have the NFL's version of Watergate.

I don't expect that there will be any kind of consensus on this issue. It's tricky. It seems to me that the Patriots and their apologists are dead wrong, because they're falling back on a defense that never got any of us out of punishment when we were kids. Just because every body else steals signs doesn't make it alright that your flunkies skulk around with cameras. Granted, Patriots fans as a group struggle to compose a more reasoned defense, but that's no fit excuse. But I have a strong antipathy to the Patriots, their fans and their management, so I might be wrong.

I guess I would be remiss if I didn't talk a little about this weekend's Red Sox Yankees series. I will keep my comments to a minimum since I fear my lengthy posts following the August sweep might have jinxed the Yankees a little bit, since they didn't gain any ground in the standings until very recently.

I will also refrain from making too many cracks about the three homer performance from Frank Thomas. I'd hate to beat Dan Shaughnessy to the punch by making some quip to the effect that the Big Hurt put a big hurting on Big Schill. Hell if I could work in blogboy blowhard, I'd write his whole column for him. I'd hate myself for it, since I'm sure the CHB all but wet himself with excitement when that third bomb left the Sky Dome or the Rodgers Centre or whatever the call it in Toronto.

I don't know what to make of Joba Chamberlain. It was nice to see him unveil his curveball for all of about ten seconds. He locked up Pedroia with it, but probably wasted it on JD Drew. JD Drew couldn't hit an eephus pitch at this point. As my old grandfather used to say, he couldn't hit the floor if he fell out of bed. My grandfather loved bad jokes and hated the Red Sox, God rest him. And then the media beat the story to death in an evening of good, hard work. Or at least work.

I'm not too worried about him letting up his first career run in the form of Lowell's homer. It had to happen at some point, as they say. Ideally, it wouldn't have come against the Red Sox, especially not in the manner in which it occurred. But Lowell is a very dangerous hitter in Fenway Park. That's part of life in baseball. If you throw heat it's not going to end well if a guy gets a hold of one.

What bothers me a little bit is that so much is being made of him now. Between the 17 and 2/3 inning scoreless streak and the "Joba Rules," he's a bad month away from being this generation's Mark "The Bird" Fydrich. Not so much from the eccentricity standpoint, but the young pitcher who gets a big buildup but never gets back to that early magic. Chamberlain's gotten too much attention. Hell, Clay Bucholtz hasn't gotten nearly as much coverage and he threw a no-hitter. This can't end well.

Finally, watching this evening's third quarter, with Charles Barkley in the booth, I am more convinced than ever that he should be announcing games. I know with the way the sports media is seeking uncontroversial controversy (think the NBC Sunday Night studio show) soon no sporting event will take place without Joe Buck or Cris Collinsworth or some similar bland, white-bread mouthpiece demanding that you take their position on an inconsequential argument.

John Madden is the last real loose cannon calling NFL games, and he's too old, fat and jolly to say anything that would hurt any one's feelings. But at least he avoids real controversy by being genuinely nice. That's why I like him, even as he nears senility. Every other announcer lacks the balls to say what's on their minds or the minds to have something to say. So Barkley should call games. Or I could to it. I'd work for food, short money and one of those set ups they use to conceal witness identities in mob trials.

It would take a Yankee fan to be naive enough to think that a three game sweep in this series means a damn thing. So what if the Red Sox had a chance to knock the Yankees out of contention in the AL East? So what if they had a chance to hurt the Yankees chances of getting the AL Wildcard? Dropping three straight games to your archrival is never a bad thing, right?

When you look at it, it's not as though the Yankees came in reeling from dropping three of four in Detroit. The Yankees threw their 1, 2 and 3 starters at Boston, while Boston countered with pitchers who weren't expected to win. And none of that would have mattered if Major League Baseball didn't pull a depressingly juvenile stunt in sending a representative to ensure that Terry Francona was wearing his uniform jersey while the Yankees had a man on base.

That one instance really cost the Red Sox the series. It had a major impact on the game played the night before and on this afternoon's game. Bud Selig owes the Red Sox an apology for that devious bit of trickeration. In all seriousness, while it was a strange incident, undoubtedly poorly timed and probably unnecessary, it's not really that big a deal.

If the Red Sox don't know how to play the Yankees with Jeter at second having faced that team 13 times prior to the game this season, then having their inspired leader on hand might not have been enough to help them there. After all, the team ought to know how to line up to defend Abreu or A Rod or Matsui in every conceiveale count no matter who's on what base. These guys in the Yankee lineup are fairly well known. The Red Sox see them on occasion, so nothing should disrupt their concentration on the task at hand.

However, nothing seems to be able to happen to the Red Sox these days that doesn't present complications. I'm not sure what to make of that incident which culminated in Joba Chamberlain's ejection. Yes, the Sox have hit A Rod a few times this season. But the Yankees don't seem to be the reactive type, or at least they haven't been in the Joe Torre era. Also, why Youkilis and why in the ninth with one out and a five run lead. It would make more sense to get him out as opposed to putting him on base and providing the Red Sox a spark to start a rally.

However, all that logic doesn't change the fact that he threw consecutive fastballs over Youkilis' head, entirely too close for comfort. I think the umpire made the right decision to eject him immediately after the second pitch. While I don't want to believe that Chamberlain was head hunting because it makes no sense in the situation, it's hard to argue with the fact that both pitches were essentially in the exact same location. One pitch can get away from you, but two is hard to explain.

Tonight, in the wake of a three game sweep at the hands of the Yankees, seems to be the perfect time for me to answer the recent attention that has been given to Red Sox Nation's presence in opposing stadiums. This is not a good thing. It's a symptom of the underlying problems in Major League Baseball.

Because the baseball season has devolved into a long, pointless tournament that only a very few teams can win because only they can afford to collect enough quality pieces to play at a high level, fans in a number of cities have long since given up on their local teams. Why pay to see a team that needs a series of major miracles to qualify for the postseason? So there are plenty of tickets to induce plenty of tools who have been priced out of attending games in Boston to travel to cities like Baltimore and Tampa and Kansas City.

Then there is the phenomenon of Red Sox Nation spreading like a virus through America. Since so many people can't afford to live in New England, there has been a diaspora of Red Sox fans. And since man businesses decided to forsake the expensive Northeast for cheaper regions, there are a ton of New England expatriates in Arizona, Florida, California and other such places. So the Red Sox have a small base in a number of other major league towns.

Also, this team and its myriad of vices draws to it with magnetic force every cutthroat, criminal, misfit, moron, hypocrite and douche in each city in which they play. Every person who thinks the infield fly rule has something to do with insects, every jackass who venerates the cliche fest that is Bull Durham, every person who always wanted to be a bully but never had the chance and every tool who thinks Bill Simmons is the lizard king is a potential Red Sox fan just waiting for the bandwagon to gather steam.

But those who remain and endure in New England are seldom any better than the new crop of Red Sox fans and the exiles. For every normal, sane, rational Red Sox fan that I know, there are at least ten that would sip the refuse at the Deer Island Sewage Treatment Plant if John Henry's crack staff of PR people broke the story that it contained vitamins and minerals. For instance, there is the fan who tells me things like JD Drew's numbers are comprable to A Rod's and Red Sox fans will regard JD Drew as a bargain next season.

And after 2004, there were those teary eyed losers who railed and raved about how much this team had meant to their ancestors of the nth degree that had endured all the losing but kept the faith. If one in thirty of that class of fan could prove an ancestor of theirs had been on of the 10,000 odd fans who managed to fill Fenway to 1/3 of its capacity for the final game of the single greatest player in the history of the franchise, then I'd be a little less vocal in my criticism.

For every fan (or informed adversary like me) who knows who Jackie Jensen was or has read the John Updike piece on Ted Williams' final game, there is a massive legion whose only connection to the days before Pedro Martinez came to town comes from nostalgia pieces by the CHB, Bob Ryan, Bill Simmons and others. Red Sox Nation is a waste of time and space. We would all be better off if they would shut up, and perhaps refrain from breeding.

What does not help is that the media, for the most part, coddles and even encourages these jackasses to even greater levels of jackassery. Bill Simmons, who ought to know better (but he's from Connecticut, so I make allowances), seems to enjoy this trend to an indecent level. Of course, I shouldn't be surprised the SPorts Guy feels that way, since these bandwagon fans seem to regard him as a spiritual leader and fall all over themselves to worship at his altar.

This piece from USA Today, which seems to have sparked this new wave of attention to Red Sox Nation, misses the key point that ought to be made about Red Sox fans. Red Sox fans are caught up in a connundrum that is all the more maddening for their inability to recognize and understand it. Red Sox fans have all of the vices of Yankee fans. They're loud, they bully people who don't see things their way, they're boring and they have an inflated sense of their own baseball IQ.

However, Red Sox fans have none of the virtues of Cubs fans, to whom they are often compared. Cubs fans are patient, they endure losing without the cynical, affected posture Red Sox fans developed and have not shed since 2004. Red Sox fans are much more like fans of the other Chicago team. Like the White Sox, the Red Sox lost for a very, very, very long time. And just as the stigma of being second team in second city has tainted the White Sox fans, constantly coming off worse than the Yankees year in and year out still wears on Red Sox fans, even in this post-2004 era.

For a change, I am not the only one railing against Red Sox Nation. Red Sox fans have become so arrogant and unpleasant that Jim Caple (author of The Devil Wears Pinstripes) has himself repented of being a Red Sox fan. Caple wrote this piece ripping Red Sox fans for the way they have comported themselves following the 2004 chamopionship run. It's really quite good. Not quite as good as a three game sweep by the Yankees, but still worth the read.

One more happy note before I sign off... The season series between the Red Sox and the Yankees stands at 8-7 in favor of the Bronx Bombers. Good times. Good times, indeed.