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.

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.

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.

I would offer my thanks to the commenter who pointed out that Mike Lowell as a cancer survivor would probably be unlikely to take performance enhancing substances if I were convinced. After all, even the great Lance Armstrong wasn't above suspicion. And look at the roster of baseball players who have been suspended under the terms of the new policy. None of them are super-ripped, to use the technical term.

The point I was trying to make, in case I wasn't clear, is that Lowell's numbers in 2005 declined from what they were in 2004. And it wasn't a small dip. It was almost as though his offensive performance emulated a cartoon character who went over a cliff without realizing it. Perhaps his stats windmilled their metaphorical arms comically before they fell off the way they did. But the fact is that his stats dipped just as the MLB steroids scandal was at its peak and then picked up considerably when the story lost its momentum.

It just struck me as a strange coincidence that this process coincided with his trade to a team with the leader of the steroid witch hunt on its board of directors. 33 isn't tremendously old in this day and age, that's true. But I don't believe that professional athletes can turn back the clock, no matter how talented they are. Particularly if they have grey beards and play for inveterately corrupt franchises.

Thank goodness it rained tonight in Blacksburg, VA. Boston College fans will not have to overtax their meager intellectual capacities to explain why the #2 ranked Eagles were the second best team on the field this evening for 59:10. Unfortunately football games last 60 minutes and Virgina Tech couldn't hold its collective water this evening. If it is any consolation, if the offense plays like this against Ohio State (assuming that the next scare isn't the big one), Boston College won't lose by more than 50.

Fortunately, the second overall ranking in the BCS was not the most fraudulent aspect of BC athletics in the last few weeks. There is this video in parody of the Bud Light Real Men of Genius series contrasting the current miraculous success of Boston College's football program against the failure of ND this season.

In a sense, like Boston College itself, this video is a sickening affront against intellectual honesty.

While it mocks Notre Dame's football tradition, it reveals an inherent jealousy on the part of the BC fan who created it. Yes, Notre Dame hasn't won a bowl game since 1994. But is it better to lose the Orange Bowl, the Fiesta Bowl (twice), the Sugar Bowl and the Gator Bowl than it is to win the I Can't Believe It's Not Butter Bowl. It must warm the cockles of a fan's heart to see Fabio present that spray bottle of butter substitute to the winning coach, but I'm an old fashioned sort of guy, I'd rather lose big than win small.At least Notre Dame has made it to a BCS bowl on three occasions. However, with this nice run, BC just might play a game that nets its athletic department a little more than car fare to the game and a canned ham for a change.

For some reason, the creator of this video decided to claim that BC has better Christians than Notre Dame. Perhaps going to an Ignatian evening to say a decade and talk about how a retreat changed your life before visiting a debauch that would make Caligula cringe in the Mods makes you a good Christian, but I must have missed that page in the Baltimore catechism. There are 19 locations on the University of Notre Dame campus which host Eucharistic adoration. By an astonishing coincidence, there are 19 people on the Boston College campus who know what Eucharistic adoration is and 19 roving bands of atheists who would assault any man, woman or child who have adored the Blessed Sacrament.

Notre Dame is the preeminent Catholic university in the world. Every other Catholic college or university is fighting for third place (the eminence of Notre Dame is so great that it occupies two positions). Whatever the reputation of the Jesuits as educators, it was earned long before the Four Horsemen took the field for Knute Rockne. But, to paraphrase Rick Pitino, Ignatius Loyola isn't walking through that door. Francis Xavier isn't walking through that door. Robert Bellarmine isn't walking through that door. As a quick note to BC fans reading this, all three were Jesuit priests and are Catholic saints.

I do not know what would happen should they walk through the door of which Pitino spoke, but I doubt it would end well for the New England Province of the Society of Jesus. I doubt very highly whether they would be mollified by the settlement of their own piece of the sex abuse scandal. It's hard to say what is the crown jewel in the New England Provinces galaxy of stars Boston College, with its litany of athletic scandals running the gamut from fixed games in the 50s to general gambling in the 90s to the rambunctiousness and misdemeanoring of the basketball team under Al Skinner or the high school soccer coach who used to wrestle his players in their jocks after practice at the flagship high school in the province.

And for those of you who might get angry at my lack of respect for Jesuit education, whatever you'd like to throw at me for my writing and whatever syntactical and grammatical miscues I made, it still hits home and proves my point. I went to a Jesuit high school myself, but I've never bought the party line on BC. I think it was better as a commuter school than it is as what they have made it. BC students are crass, boorish and bullying as a rule when they leave campus, I see no reason to suspect that they are any better in a classroom.

And while the Red Sox took a 2-0 lead on this fine autumn evening, I wonder how Sox fans felt when they saw the team's principal owner with his fingers in his ears as Papelbon struck out the final batter of the game. Truly it's a labor of love and not a profit seeking venture for John Henry.

What with the way the Cleveland Indians seem desperate to save Major League Baseball from the indignity of a World Series that somehow lacks a major market team despite the fact that both Denver and Cleveland are much bigger cities than Boston, I spent a lot of time searching for something to watch. The Illinois vs. Michigan game would have been a great candidate but for three serious questions.

First, why do the Marching Illini wear capes? Are they super heroes? Even the silly helmets on the USC band (the real USC not that disco with books that stands out for its subpar academic repute in the desert of ignorance that is the SEC) look far less ridiculous than the capes.

Second, could Brent Musberger be more biased in favor of the Michigan Wolverines? Ryan Mallet fumbled two snaps, and Musberger still raved about him as though he threw for 300 yards and 5 TDs. In the drive to respond to the Illin field goal which tied it at 17, Musberger raved about Mallett as though he led a drive reminiscent of Joe Montana's game winner in Super Bowl XXII. The only differences between the two drives, Michigan gained the bulk of its yards on the ground, not through the air, and the drive ended in an interception not a TD.

Third, why is it that no one talks about Rashard Mendenhall from Illinois as a potential Heisman candidate? I know Matt Ryan has the inside track because BC plays the very best Division 1-AA has to offer and a very bad Notre Dame team. Just because Illinois will have to wait until it plays Ball State to hope for some crumbs of attention in a Jason Whitlock piece doesn't mean Mendenhall hasn't earned some consideration.

I would be remiss if I didn't talk about the Red Sox game to some degree. There is some consolation for a person with my viewpoint in Curt Schilling's performance. It means that he basically can dictate his contract terms to Theo Epstein. Of course Theo lost any slight degree of leverage he had when Schilling put his house up for sale in September and started saying that he'd like to play in a place like Tampa. There is no way that Tampa is an empty threat. Schilling would definitely go to a team that will likely lost 90 games next season to pass the twilight of his career.

Of course no one can fairly blame Theo for being manipulated and outmaneuvered by a fraud who plays Everquest for hours on end. After all, getting into a bidding war with the Yankees for the services of Roger Clemens couldn't possibly hurt the club as it makes its decision to pursue or not pursue Schilling. There's no way offering a prorated $18 million to Clemens will embolden Curt Schilling.

In part, it made sense to offer Clemens that type of deal. Why not? There was a chance they could sign him. And making the Yankees go all the way up to $28 million (prorated, to be sure) was a big dent in the vast, vast, vast resources of the Bronx Bombers. After all, Boston had a lot of appeal to Clemens, with the patient, tolerant and very nearly but not quite human media and all. And Clemens really needed to break the tie with Cy Young for most wins in club history to cement his legacy right.

The question now becomes, given the humble bearing and equanimity with which Schilling approaches every situation, whether Schilling will be avaricious enough to demand certain concessions from the team. After all, it wouldn't surprise me with the way the team bent over backwards to throw money at guys who had nowhere near the track record Schilling brought with him when he signed in '04, if Schilling felt himself entitled to demand that his General Manager clean his pool or serve as human foot stool. Could it really be any more humiliating than paying JD Drew the remainder of his $70 million over the next four years, because the grand slam tonight didn't really wipe the slate clean?

Even if the Red Sox come all the way back to go to the World Series, is it going to change the fact that Julio Lugo was paid $8.3 to be 1/2 of a baseball player? Will their be no repercussions for that little anomaly? Will Jacoby Ellsbury pushing Coco Crisp out of the lineup be sloughed off as a curious but not unpleasant quirk of the game? I understand that Red Sox fans are hypocrites, but Red Sox Nation might want to think twice about ripping the Yankee spending machine, even if it might be more intellectual activity than would kill a Red Sox fan or two million.

And speaking of hypocrites, it's been too long since I ripped Jay Mariotti. There is something very sickening about this recent column Mariotti wrote ripping the Bears for the Adrian Peterson performance last week. It seemed to me as though Mariotti was implying that the Bears somehow passed on Peterson despite Mariotti's urging and giggling while he did it. Perhaps I'm not as intelligent as Mariotti is, but I just don't see how the Bears could have drafted Adrian Peterson.

In a sense, it's possible to say that the Bears passed on Peterson by not taking a trade with the Washington Redskins which would have given the Bears the sixth overall pick in return for Lance Briggs. Mariotti did call for the Bears to trade for that pick, but he called for the Bears to acquire that pick with the express purpose of drafting Ohio State wide receiver/kick returner Ted Ginn Jr.

Ted Ginn is not playing particularly well right now, to be charitable. Moreover, he would provide the Bears with an adequate player whose skills might overlap with Devin Hester and Bernard Berrian without providing an upgrade on either player. Perhaps Adrian Peterson would do a better job running behind this offensive line than Cedric Benson, but there is no way to prove that. However, given the fact that Mariotti is a douche and universally loathed, perhaps it would serve his ends better to praise Cedric Benson than to bury him. Then, perhaps Benson would be benched.

I know that you who read this aren't tremendously interested in what books I read and when I read them. But tonight, I feel compelled to tell you, as it seems to dovetail very nicely with this travesty of a sports weekend. The book is The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul by Douglas Adams, who wrote The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. It is appropriate because that's what I'm going through as both sports fan and blogger.

As a kid, I never thought I'd live to see the day where BC would be ranked #3 overall, and Notre Dame would be a sinking ship grasping at minor trivialities to see signs of hope going forward. And yet that is where we stand right now. Before they start popping champagne corks, or perhaps buying all the Natty Light in Cleveland Circle, BC fans might want to remember that ND was a lot closer to pulling an upset than they should have been.

If the left guard weren't flagged for holding (and God knows, BC has gotten away with a million holds building a mysterious reputation as Lineman U these past 15 years or so), it's a seven point game. Half of BC's points came on drives that started in fantastic field position thanks to a botched snap on a punt and a kickoff from the Notre Dame 15 yard line following the excessive celebration penalty. I hope the Heisman voters weren't watching those sequences.

That said, Charlie Weis has some difficult questions to answer. In no particular order, here are some that have been vexing me. Why wasn't Evan Sharpley the starting quarterback from jump street in this nightmare season? Why, when Demetrius Jones showed no capacity to move the team or hold the football wasn't Evan Sharpley the second option? Why after Jimmy Clausen couldn't move the ball against any team at any time this season was Evan Sharpley not the starting quarterback? I guess you can probably notice a trend here, unless of course you happen to be a BC fan, and anything short of a meat hammer upside your head is far too subtle.

Evan Sharpley has consistently moved the football when he has been called upon to spell Jimmy Clausen. Jimmy Clausen has not moved the football consistently. He hasn't moved the football at all, really. I understand that he's only a freshman, and yanking him now could ruin his confidence. Unfortunately, I am not even remotely sensitive. So yank him. Send him to Northern Illinois to room with Demetrius Jones, or to the North Pole. Just don't let him start another game for a very long time. And send Ron Powlus with him.

Gerry Faust, by all accounts, was a very nice man. He was a great man for considering his players' feelings and trying not to hurt them. He was also a spectacular failure as coach at Notre Dame. The one incident from his tenure I remember most vividly is Jimmy Johnson's response to Faust complaining that the convicts had run up the score on the Catholics. Johnson said: "If you don't want to get blown out, recruit better players."

I said all that to say this: Charlie Weis isn't paid to be sensitive. He is paid to win football games. And paid very well at that. At the end of the day, protecting Jimmy Clausen's ego is right up there with buying the director's cut of the Astronaut Farmer, getting a pedicure and giving up red meat on the list of things to do posted on my wall.

And for those people who would say that coaching is, at least in part, about teaching life lessons, I have this to say. What if you produced as well Jimmy Clausen has in your professional capacities? Would your boss string you along as projects stalled around you, or would you be out on your ass? That's a real life lesson. So what if he's only 20. As John Fogerty said: "You better learn it fast and you better learn it young."

I demand the firing of Ron Powlus. I never liked him as a player. I thought he was in no way, shape or form qualified for the job. He underachieved and failed to handle the pressure of playing QB at ND, and what has Jimmy Clausen done under his tutelage? And I remember that when Lou Holtz retired as coach at ND, Ron Powlus threw a party and came back for one more season at Notre Dame. That was a bad day, and the University should left him where they found him.

But back to Charlie Weis. I don't think the school should fire him. There are signs of hope on this team. The freshman OLBs are great. They get better each week. James Aldridge gets better each week at tailback, and Robert Hughes the freshman shows promise as a big back.

There are some other unpleasant questions one must ask about this team. The most important, other than the quarterback issue, is why weren't the wide receivers that have played well of late playing sooner? I think, and I'm not thrilled to say it, that Weis is finally learning to coach college players. He inherited a veteran team from Ty Willingham, one that could be coached in much the same fashion as the pros he worked with in New England. Now he finally has to learn how to coach a college team, even though he should have after the two bowl blowouts. I'm not ready to see him fired until he shows that he can't learn to coach college kids.

In other Notre Dame related matters, two players probably passed each other in the upcoming draft ratings. Trevor Laws has shown over the last two years that he will in all likelihood be a very good defensive tackle in the NFL for some time to come. He's blocked three kicks this season, he leads college linemen in tackles and he's playing end in a 3-4, when he's naturally suited to play tackle in a 4-3. I'm rooting for the Bears to draft him in the second round.

And the player who passed him is on the way down. I know who's responsible and I assume Charlie Weis will take appropriate steps to ensure that he's punished. The player responsible is Kery Neal, the rising star at rush end for Notre Dame. And the player who is plummeting down draft lists as we speak is Gosder Cherilus, the heir to the mantle of overrated fraud from the offensive line tradition dating back to Pete Kendall.

Charlie Weis should have made sure that Kerry Neal read the scouting reports and paeans in the Boston media prior to the game, then Neal would have thought twice before he destroyed Cherilus' livelihood. He probably cost Cherilus $20 million or so by beating him the way he did. Kerry Neal should have been told that BC is now Lineman U. Look at the way guys like Chris Snee and Jeremy Trueblood rule the NFL landscape, who is better than a BC lineman? At least NFL scouts now have warning when guys like Freeney and DeMarcus Ware feast on him.

And then there is the other thing that happened this weekend. I won't admit that I was wrong in my prediction. To say that wouldn't come close to doing it justice. I was spectacularly wrong. I'm still not sure that the Patriots are as awesome as people seem determined to tell me. But they had one hell of a plan when Dallas hit them, taking the first second half lead against the Pats this season.

Maybe the Cowboys were like one of those basketball teams that comes back from a huge deficit, but just runs out of gas. But I still say that Terrell Owens is better than Randy Moss. I'd still take him over any day of the week. I am deeply disappointed that Wade Philips kicked a field goal on 4th and 5, down the way they were in the game. Like it mattered down two TDs. Go for it, and make the Pats go 95 yards. They won by 21 any way.

But the most surprising thing about the game from my point of view is the Bum Philips is still alive. I may sound callous, mean, cruel and insensitive, but you were thinking the same thing, if you even knew who he was (and I'm sure a lot of young fans would believe me if I said Bum Philips was the crazy homeless guy who rode that strange three wheeled bike and screamed like a siren down Comm Ave). So in the privacy of your cubicle, office or home, feel free to raise your hand if you thought Bum Philips was dead until they showed him in the crowd in Dallas.

What disappointed me most about the Cowboys was the performance of DeMarcus Ware. He had one great series in the second quarter and a few flashes in other spots. But he has the talent to take over a game, not quite the way the real LT used to, but as close as any one playing today can, but he didn't show up the way I had hoped.

I don't have a lot to say about the Red Sox going down 2-1 in the ALCS. As I've said, I don't have much enthusiasm for the Indians. Plus I won't believe that the Red Sox are down and out until it's over for good. The ALCS nightmare of 2004 taught me to be cautious. But it was pretty damn funny to see David Prtiz run himself into a big out in the 4th. Especially since Little Leaguers usually know enough not to get hit by a ball running from second to third. I wouldn't have expected a player of his caliber and his talent to waste his own leadoff double in such a silly way. But there is a lot of time left in this series.

I know I promised my take on the Joe Torre situation with the Yankees, but a few things have come up to interfere with my blogging. Not the least of which is that I recently checked Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut out of the local library. I realize I just 86ed my street cred, since no one who is any one between the ages of 18 and 65 checks books out of the library. And if they do, it's certainly not to read them for edification. That said, if you get a chance and you are in the habit of reading, I highly recommend this book. It's short, it's funny and it offers some chilling insights into the way people act.

But Joe Torre will have to wait, because this afternoon, a more pressing concern is on my mind. This Sunday, two undefeated teams square off on the field beneath the half-assed open roof at Texas Stadium. They are the loathsome New England Patriots and the Dallas Cowboys. And, as you might expect, only one of these teams can emerge with a victory.

Conventional wisdom tells us that the Patriots will win the game. Rodney Harrison is back from his little slap on the wrist for taking illicit performance enhancing substances. Tom Brady is something like 29-2 on artificial playing surfaces in his illustrious career. The Patriots have steamrolled over every opponent they have encountered this season, and the pasting the Chargers put on the Broncos suddenly makes it look as though the Pats have faced a half-decent team. And on top of that, the Patriots have the second best player to wear number 81 on the field at Texas Stadium in recent memory on their side. No one can stand in the way of this juggernaut, and only a fool would believe that any team has a chance against them.

Call me a fool, but I think Dallas will win this game. Any reasonably competent high school algebra student can tell you that in accordance with the transitive property, since New England destroyed the Bills and Dallas barely escaped Buffalo with an improbable win, New England will beat Dallas handily. Alas, the transitive property works much better in a math book than it does in the real, honest to goodness, no fooling three dimensional world of pro football.

I am fond of quoting the Michael Douglas character from the Ghost and the Darkness who said that in prize fighting, everybody has a plan until they get hit. Dallas has been hit, and hit hard. They have shown that they can overcome adversity, silly mistakes and a hostile crowd in a strange environment and survive. New England has shown that they can get a lead and front-run with the best of them. No one has hit the Pats yet. And that is in large part due to the fact that the Pats have been great so far, but what will this version of the Pats do should the breaks start beating the boys?

Recently, a good friend sent me a cold analysis of the Notre Dame game vs. UCLA which pointed out that when the UCLA starting QB went down, they were forced to play a walk on with no game experience. Although the author's intent was to caution fans like me from getting to happy about ND's first win, it had the unintended effect of reminding me that New England knocked JP Losman out of their game against Buffalo and got to face the untested rookie Trent Edwards. Edwards had a few games to adjust before he faced the Cowboys. And yet Buffalo managed to score precisely zero offensive TDs against the Cowboys.

What worries me about the Cowboys is how their pass protection will hold up against the Patriots, or any team for that matter. I am not overly concerned with their ability to run the ball. The Patriots have a big defensive line and they have been able to push around lighter offensive lines to this point. However, Vince Wilfork will encounter a creature nearly as rare as the Loch Ness Monster in the form of Dallas guard Leonard Davis - a man actually bigger than Vince Wilfork and not on one of those TLC shows about an enormously fat shut-in who is moved from point to point by a piece of construction machinery. Dallas is much bigger on the offensive line than any team NE will face this season, and I'm not sure the Pats can handle it.

I think barring holding penalties or some sort of deal with the devil, Matt Light will be made to look ridiculous (at least in a professional capacity, he does his own work making himself look ridiculous off the field) by DeMarcus Ware and Anthony Spencer. No matter what Shawne Merriman and the pharmaceutical industry tell you, Ware is the best OLB in the game right now. And the Pats o-line just isn't ready for him.

And make no mistake about it, take any combination of three Patriots you want, and you'll still be a man and a half short of covering Terrell Owens. And for all the highlight reel TDs Randy Moss has caught this season, show me one play where he threw one block 1/3 as good as any TO threw to spring Creighton for the long TD in St. Louis. That's why TO is that much better than Moss, he's not as fast, but he's tougher, smarter and braver about going over the middle. He may drop a pass here and there on account of a lack of concentration, but I'd much rather have him than Moss any day of the week, and twice on Sunday.

Dallas is a better team than New England. And unless Belichick has some sort of trick up his sleeve involving compromising photos of Tony Romo or illicitly obtained video of the Dallas coaching staff's signals, I'm confident that for once, right will prevail.

In other news, the Red Sox and the Cleveland Indians face one another for the right to represent the AL in the World Series. I really tried the last day or so to generate any interest, any hope of rooting for the Indians, and I can't. My hatred for the Red Sox is in no way diminished, and I still want them to lose every game by 100 runs, but I never wanted Cleveland to be the team facing them. As Victor Frankenstein said, it wasn't supposed to be this way. It wasn't supposed to be this way at all. It was supposed to be a thing of beauty.

And I run a risk doing this, as I try to avoid political matters in this space, but I have to rip some one for this. Al Gore shared the Nobel Peace Prize? How is that possible? Maybe he has done some nice work on global warming whoring himself out to the Day after Tomorrow's promotional campaign and appearing in an Inconvenient Truth. But has that made the world a more peaceful place in any way, shape or form?

For instance, when Teddy Roosevelt won it, he got it for brokering the treaty that stopped the Russo-Japanese War. That is making the world more peaceful for his efforts. Al Gore and his UN group have gotten emerging economic powers like China and India to reduce what percentage of their greenhouse emissions? They've increased liberal guilt in the G8, but that's not Nobel worthy. Even if it were, how is it worth a peace prize? It might be worth an eighth grade environmental science bee prize, but not the Nobel Peace Prize.

Start spreading the news. The Yankees aren't quite dead, at least not for the moment. Maybe it was George Steinbrenner and his statement that Joe Torre would be looking for something to do with his time other than managing the New York Yankees if the team did not prevail in this series. Or maybe the announcers were right when they compared the Yankee offense to a 2 liter bottle of soda that had been shaken and shaken and was due to explode at any moment. Whatever it was, it happened. The Yankees won and they play again tomorrow.

Unfortunately, the Angels lacked the will of a warrior and fell victim to Humpty Dumpty and the Boston Red Sox. So now the Red Sox have a chance to rest and reset their rotation as they wait to see whether the Yankees can come back or the Indians will win their divisional series matchup. If this were another team with another group of players, perhaps one might worry that this lag time might dull their wits and adversely impact their readiness to play.

However, with this version of the Boston Red Sox, one needn't worry about any situation having an adverse impact on the wits of these players. In fact, with titans of the intellect like Kevin Youkilis, Dustin Pedroia and Jonathan Papelbon in prominent roles, one could fairly say that the wits are this team's least vulnerable spot.

It is a good thing that the Yankees came back tonight, if for no other reason than it redeemed Roger Clemens, at least until his next turn to pitch. Unlike a certain element of Red Sox fans, led by Bill Simmons, I harbor no resentment for the way Clemens left town. I don't believe athletes owe the fans a damn thing. Especially after winning a few Cy Youngs, having a couple of 20 win seasons and setting the MLB record for Ks in a game.

I'm not sure I'm ready to see Clemens retire. He's been such a big part of my memories of watching baseball for so long, I just don't remember a time when he wasn't pitching. I think Bill Simmons is just a total d bag. After all, he whines about the Yankees bringing Ronan Tynan in to sing God Bless America in the seventh inning stretch. Even if it is a long version, it's still the best rendition out there now.

Perhaps the Yankees should trot out 14 year olds who couldn't carry a tune if their lives depended on it, as the Red Sox have been known to do. Or maybe they could resurrect hard rock has beens who haven't had a decent song since Carter was President like Steven Tyler. Speaking of Aerosmith, I wish someone could explain their comeback. Outside of Dream On, their songbook is weak, to say the least. If Run DMC hadn't covered Walk this Way, would anyone have remembered them to stick a banal song on the Armageddon soundtrack?

To make a long story short, I still have hope that a team can step in and stop the Red Sox. And the Indians, even with Carmona and Sabathia don't seem to be the team to do it. I realize that Colorado and Arizona had success against Boston earlier this season, but that was a long time ago now. Plus I don't see the Red Sox folding like the Cubs. Nor do I see the Colorado lefties laughing at Ortiz and the other Sox lefties the way Howard and Utley did.

No matter what Red Sox fans tell you, you know that they fear the Yankees a little bit. 2004 is ancient history. Beckett might have been lights out in Game 1 against the Angels, but there's no guarantee that he can do it again. And if Matsuzaka pitches the way he did in Game 2, something tells me the Yankees might do a tad more damage than the Angels did. And Schill might want to sit this one out, unless he can whip up another ready-made "blood"-stained garment for the occasion.

As for this weekend's football games, Notre Dame finally won. Say what you want about the UCLA quarterback situation and their offensive ineptitude, but the Irish won a game no one thought they could. This could be the start of something interesting. I'm not holding my breath, but it's possible.

The Patriots continue to roll, but then who really thought the Browns would be the team to end the streak. The Chiefs and their subpar offensive line continue to drag my fantasy team down because they can't block for LJ. Far more vexing is the fact that I shall soon lose Travis Henry to his pending suspension for violating the league's substance abuse policy for the third time.

I'm not going to be the guy to pile on him when he's down. I just have to laugh a bit at his grand sense of timing. Henry was due to rotate out of the substance abuse program on October 1st, and he had to get high in September. I realize that a guy might need a little pick me up to take the edge of the whole 9 illegitimate kids situation. But it might have been nice if he thought of me and my fantasy team in all of this.

I think the real story of the NFL weekend came from the Seattle Pittsbugh game. It was a very good thing that the Seahawks were motivated by the outcome of Super Bowl XL. Otherwise the 21-0 beating the Steelers hung on them this afternoon would be quite humiliating. Perhaps this was some novel strategy of Mike Holmgren's. After all, letting Denver score a TD to get the ball back in Super Boxl XXXII worked so well, maybe letting Pittsburgh score three unanswered touchdowns today is just setting them up for some vague game to be played in the not too distant future.

I hate to see guys like Matt Hasselbeck and Shaun Alexander unhappy. They have done so much to elevate the profile of the NFL the way they whined about the officiating in that Super Bowl, they deserved better than what they got today. I think the only way to evaluate that officiating, which did leave a lot to be desired, is to ask whether Seattle would have objected had calls like that gone in their favor. If they would have been quiet if the calls went against Pittsburgh, then they should let it go at this point.

In tonight's Bears vs. Packers game, I was interested to hear John Madden mention that the Green Bay Packers expect AJ Hawk to start having a bigger impact on their defensive performance. Perhaps they need to find the man who wielded the ugly stick to such great effect on Hawk's wife, the sister of Brady Quinn and the fleabag who sported the trashy makeup and jersey tailor made to show her divided loyalty when the Irish met the Ohio State Buckeyes in the Fiesta Bowl two years ago. Surely he could motivate Hawk to perform up to expectations.

I have been defending Cedric Benson for so long now, it has become a habit. He did get plenty of carries tonight, for a change. And he didn't gain enough yards to justify his salary, or the Thomas Jones trade today, even though Jones didn't exactly reverse the rotation of the Earth in the Giants Jets game. He had some very promising runs, but he wasn't consistent.

I thought the offensive line was better tonight than they were against Detroit, and better than they have been in any game this season, for that matter. That said, this group still hasn't been good enough at any point in 2007. For what the Bears do in running the ball, relying on play action passes and using deep drops in the passing offense, the offensive line needs to stay on their assignments longer and generate more push up front. So I'm not ready to turn on Benson yet. I think I'll wait until Mariotti praises him.

Even though Griese finished with 2 TDs and came out on the winning end, I'm not thrilled about him as the Bears try to dig their way out the hole that they still haven't escaped. It was good to see both TEs involved in the game plan. The Bears still have albatrosses around their neck and will have them as long as the O-line underperforms, and they need much more production from the wide receivers. Tonight the best wide receiver on the team was Mark Bradley, and that just can't happen every game if the Bears are to get back to where they were last season.

For all the Bears did, and with Benson's decent numbers, I still need a very good game for Tony Romo and Terrell Owens tomorrow night. So I have a lot on the line, with the Yankees playing for their lives, with the Cowboys playing for my hopes of a Patriots humiliation and my fantasy life (I am one game back in a playoff race, with a log jam at 2-2). So I'll either be very happy, or very unhappy tomorrow. Even if the Cowboys are outstanding, but the Yankees fail, I will be disappointed, in case you care.

I should, while I think of it, address the recent comments on my posts. To answer Alle, yes Guerrero might have left on account of the pitch that hit him. But unless he needed some sort of critical operation, there is no reason a guy should leave a game his team desperately needed to win. If he can hold a bat, he has to stay in that game.

And to the author of the anonymous comment pointing out that I was mistaken when I attributed the song "Uncle Albert" to the Beatles instead of Paul McCartney, I would apologize, provided that I gave a damn. I guess the only reason the song impressed me as having any merit is that only one of the Beatles was involved in the project so the collective power of the suck factor couldn't taint the entire song. So my bad.

This was not a very good week in Sedition in Red Sox Nation land. I think, at this point, that I just might be out of things to say about Notre Dame. Maybe I might have something to throw out there if they ever manage to win a game, but that isn't looking very likely at the moment. Who knows what Navy is capable of after the last 40 years of losing to the Irish? And Duke is looking tremendously better than they have in living memory.

It is true that the last two weeks have seen some improvement. They seem to be moving closer to victory, but that's not the way things are supposed to be. That's not the way things are supposed to be at all. It was supposed to be a thing of beauty. Even if they manage to beat BC, it's still depressing. BC is supposed to be the spoiler of seasons, not Notre Dame.

And then for the first time since 1995, the Boston Red Sox have won the AL East. The Yankees twelve year reign of terror is over. If I were a Red Sox fan, however, I wonder just how optimistic I'd be as the playoffs open. In one way of looking at this matter, the Red Sox are rolling into the playoffs tied with the Indians for the best record in Major League Baseball. But that's only part of the story.

The Red Sox finished the season 42-30 against the AL East. The Yankees ended up at 39-33 in the division. There could be some small cause for concern there. After all, I'm sure Red Sox fans remember that the Yankees took the season series 10-8. That means the Sox won five more games against the Blue Jays, Orioles and Devil Rays than the Yankees did.

I hope Sox fans will forgive me for going the long way around to make this point, but the rest of the AL East wasn't particularly good this season. Toronto did finish two games over .500, which really surprised me. I haven't paid much attention to them, even when they play the Red Sox. But the Orioles finished twelve games under .500, and the Devil Rays ended the year two games behind them.

I said all that to say this - managing to beat these teams more than the Yankees did isn't a tremendously encouraging sign going forward. Last I looked, none of these teams are going to be playing in this postseason. The competition facing the Red Sox as they chase that World Series trophy is going to be slightly more formidable.

The Red Sox did win the season series against the Indians and the Angels. But it seemed that their victories against the Angels came early in the season and then later on the Angels got the better of the Sox. One wonders just how much this matters when the division series starts. I wish it weren't the case, but the Angels and the Indians scare me. And not in the good way. The matchups seems all wrong to me. I can't stand either team, so it will be a lot harder to root for them than it would be to root for the Yankees.

The last time the Red Sox and Angels met in the playoffs was in 2004, and the Sox swept them in the ALDS. I know that's all in the past now, but I don't see the Angels winning this one, to tell the truth. I know all about his stats and his talent, but something about Vlad Guerrero doesn't inspire confidence in me. Their running game could pose problems for Varitek whose arm isn't really all that good. But that hinges on them getting on base, and I'm not entirely sure that they will do it consistently.

Should the Red Sox win and the Indians prevail, I won't much enjoy the ALCS. Until guys like Travis Hafner and Grady Sizemore show me that they can produce in pressure situations, I won't be too optimistic about their chances. Obviously it's kind of hard to build a postseason resume when your team hasn't gotten into the playoff. But I don't remember them burning it up two years ago when they chased the White Sox down the stretch.

Of course the Yankees might be a more formidable opponent, and I'd love to see them beat the Red Sox because it will vex Red Sox fans much more than any other team taking an ALCS from them. Should the Red Sox fall to the Angels, that would be interesting, since they have had a nasty habit of beating the Yankees in playoff series lately. But I'm not too worried about that since, as I've said, I'm not holding out hope for an Angel win.

In unrelated matters, Donovan McNabb really showed me how wrong I was when I ripped him last week. He really took over tonight's game against the Giants, right? Getting sacked 12 times showed that his knee is completely healed, that he is the answer for the Eagles and the best QB of all time. Of course the dozen sacks weren't all his fault. Obviously the line sucked, and the coaches might have wanted to think about taking a different approach to blocking that guy who got six sacks by himself somewhere between sack two and sack six, but that's just me. But you can't tell me that McNabb couldn't have thrown it away two or three of those plays, can you?

Well, our long national nightmare is dragging on and on and on some more. For the first time in the illustrious 120 year history of the Notre Dame Fighting Irish football program, the team has started a season 0-4. In my experience, when the Notre Dame football team makes history of late, it is not a good thing.

The first first I remember in the last few years was in Bob Davie's final season when Notre Dame started 0-3 for the first time ever. Ty Willingham's last season when Notre Dame allowed Tyler Palko of Pittsburgh to throw 5 TD passes, the first time an opposing QB had accomplished that feat against Notre Dame. And now, the school is 0-4 to start a season. But I'm not convinced that this should be Charlie Weis' last season.

For the first time after having watched a Notre Dame game this year, I am not utterly depressed. After losing 31-14 to Michigan State this week, I'm certainly not sitting here with a big smile on my face wearing my happy hat. It would be very difficult for me to wear a happy hat under an circumstance, since I do not own, nor do I have a desire to purchase such a garment. But I'm not moping the way I did last week.

Among the encouraging aspects of today's game...not only did Notre Dame score it's first offensive touchdown of the season at the 10:01 mark of the first quarter, but they also scored the second offensive touchdown of the season not too long after the fact. They played a very good first half, for a change. If the game only lasted two quarters, the team would have very nearly been in business. But even that mathematical impossibility couldn't have saved the Irish today.

The team also had a 100 yard rusher for the first time, but that ray of sunshine only served to illuminate another glaring weakness. Thanks to Irish announcer Pat Hayden for pointing it out, as I hadn't noticed (I'm not being sarcastic for a change). But the Notre Dame wide receivers are not very good. In my defense, the offensive line and running game have been so bad up until today that no one could stand in the pocket long enough to contemplate throwing the ball to the wide receivers.

Another problem that was very nearly rectified was the pass rush. When the two freshman outside linebackers (#56, Kerry Neal and #58, who hasn't played quite well enough for me to learn his name but he does have three years and a bit to go) were in the game, the Irish were able to bring heat on the QB for the first time all year. Unfortunately, when they were in the game, the Irish were more vulnerable against the run, particularly against the monstrous tailback Michigan State had.

I thought Maurice Crum Jr. held up better against the run, for the most part, in his new position in the Irish linebacking corps when they played in base defense. Unfortunately, their secondary let them down when they tried to play base defense. But at least there were some signs of life and more importantly some signs of fight in the Fighting Irish.

I was not too happy with the way the team came out in the second half. It's hard to evaluate the defense's performance when the offense was terrible and the punter looked like he just might have had the rent money on Michigan State. I don't mean to insinuate that he was corrupt. But he did have a pretty damn bad day. And he killed the team with short kicks that died in Notre Dame territory, even if his first kick did set up the poor field position which led to the turnover and the first touchdown of the season.

I realize that it's a sad day for fans of the Irish to have me grasping at straws to find small bright spots like this to try to redeem yet another brutal loss. I was right, though it's not much consolation, about James Aldridge being the answer at tailback (number 34, from last week's post), he was the 100 yard rusher today. And I guess I owe Travis Thomas an apology as he scored the first TD, so that makes only 10 or 12 negative plays for which he must make restitution.

I apologize for the coherence, or lack thereof, of this post. But you have to bear with me. It's been a bad day. And I have to live and die with Larry Johnson and Cedric Benson and their inability to get in the end zone as my fantasy team girds itself for what Fox Sports predicts will be a slaughter this week. Unfortunately, with Herman Edwards and Ron Turner involved, I think I might have to agree.

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 is September 8, 2007 and at this point all I have left to which to look forward in this college football is what I am going to bill as the futility bowl. Notre Dame and its catastrophically dreadful offense travels to the Big House to face the tragically inept Michigan defense next Saturday. Both will be coming off embarrassing losses when they meet.

Conventional wisdom tells us that one team will win its first game of the year in this confrontation. The trouble, however, with conventional wisdom is that it is precisely that. Conventional. I don't believe that either team is capable of winning a football game at this point. I don't think either team deserves to win.

Alas, if I were a betting man, I would have to put my money on the Wolverines. Not only because they are the home team, but because the Notre Dame medical facilities will be overwhelmed this week. After the time they have spent on the field in the first two games, I expect at least a half dozen or so members of the Notre Dame defense to be hospitalized for exhaustion. As a result, they will have a tough time fielding an 11 man defensive unit against Michigan.

What I find mind boggling is the extent of the dreadfulness of the Notre Dame offensive line. I remember growing up watching outstanding offensive line play for the Fighting Irish every year. I guess I got as used to it as I did to Red Sox collapses in October and leaves changing color. It's just one more thing that makes me lament the passing of the years.

This current crop of offensive linemen are basically stealing $130,000 from the university. It's not fair, I suppose to shred 18-22 year old kids for not meeting expectations, but then I guess I'm a terrible person. These guys can't run block and they can't pass block. They can't pick up the blitz, but then I can't figure out why opposing teams even bother to blitz Notre Dame, since they haven't shown any capacity to contain even the most basic defensive fronts.

It's also impossible to evaluate the young running backs with defensive linemen and linebackers pouring through the front line as if it weren't even there. It is not impossible to evaluate the performance of Travis Thomas, who still blows. It was, however, awfully nice of him to commit the personal foul on the Penn State punt that seemed to change the momentum of the game in the first half.

Notre Dame did show some signs of improvement. They came oh so close to scoring their first offensive touchdown of the year. Clausen looked good on that drive. I thought Weis should have abandoned the short passing game plan a lot sooner than he did. I think that has been the fatal flaw in this Notre Dame season to date. In their first two games, Notre Dame has always seemed on the verge of having a plan A. They are currently organizing search parties to find traces of a Plan B as we speak.

I am not going to call for Weis' dismissal. Nor am I going to get all nostalgic for the Ty Willingham era. I'm not even going to get slightly nostalgic for the Ty WIllingham era. So what if Weis won with Willingham's recruits? So what if Willingham is 2-0 at Washington this year? Those are nice facts, but they ignore the bigger picture.

Willingham might have recruited the players Weis led to back to back BCS appearances, but he didn't manage to win with thos recruits when he had the chance. While Weis has yet to beat USC, at least he coached a team that fought USC down to the wire once; in his three years at Notre Dame, Willingham never managed to beat the Trojans, a feat that is doubly impossible when you never get within 26 points of said adversary. And Willingham's most successful season came in his first years, with players recruited by Bob Davies. So forgive me if I don't tear up as I remember the Willingham era's abrupt termination.

I do have to question Charlie Weis' judgement. Seeing footage of Jimmy Clausen arriving at his signing press conference in a white Hummer limousine thanks to the ESPN telecast this evening vexed me greatly. Take a limo to the prom. Take a limo to a wedding. Don't take a damn white stretch Hummer to sign a letter of intent. It makes you look like a total douche. Especially if you fall short of expectations. As a coach, it's on Weis to stop foolishness like that from dragging a kid down before he even gets to campus.

Another sparkling example of poor judgement on Weis' part was his decision to pursue the malpractice suit against the doctors who performed his gastric bypass surgery. I understand the anger that would remain after he nearly died from the surgery. But after the first trial ended in a mistrial because the doctors intervened to save the life of a juror who was having a heart attack, it was time to punt on the legal system. That was a bad omen, and there was no way people weren't going to be prejudiced going into a jury pool, no matter what we pretend about the legal system and impartiality.

There are some who would say showing up in the white stretch limo is like talking smack before the first game of a fantasy season. However, when your running backs are LJ, Cedric Benson and Travis Henry and the best player on the opposing team is Laurence Maroney, it's hard not to talk trash. Of course, there is a distinct possibility that I could recant this time tomorrow with Tony Romo as my QB, but I doubt it.

Since my last post, I've been doing some thinking about the whole John Cougar Mellencamp problem. I realize I have absolutely no influence with any group of people anywhere in the world as I write this, but I think it's time we called for a boycott of Mellencamp. Let him go back to his little pink house and get misty as he remembers Jack and Diane. He can come out of his cave to help the farmers, but the rest of the year he should just lurk in his lair.

God knows, he must have made enough of whoring his terrible little ode to America to hock shitboxes which will be recalled in 2 years for Chevrolet and appearance fees for events that would have been better served had he stayed at home that he's not going to go hungry. Plus the longer he stays out and visible, the less effective he'll be as a spokesperson for the Democratic drive for the White House in 2008.

You'll have to forgive me for violating my ban against obscenity. Notre Dame taking a second consecutive savage beating has taken the jam out of my doughnut. Hell, I'm sitting here wasting a Saturday night blogging when I could be getting drunk. It's even taken the wind out of the Orioles "tuning up" Red Sox pitching in the words of the guy I go to for my Red Sox info.

I must apologize for not posting in the last few days. I've been feeling a little depressed, what with Notre Dame collapsing against Georgia Tech and the Red Sox temporarily returning to form after the sweep at the hands of the Yankees. I had been looking forward to this evening and the beginning of the NFL regular season, but then I guess I'm too much of an optimist for my own good.

First, I must confess, I now spend about 2 minutes a day looking forward to a time when America can experience an important event in the realm of popular culture without the immortal John Cougar Mellencamp. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe his music did somehow improve as though by magic because his politics are acceptable to a large enough segment of the populace. Perhaps I ought to give up my reluctance to discuss political issues in this blog and embrace an anti Bush stand in this space.

I don't know if I heard things properly, between the waste of time that was the concert and the disappointment I felt as they unfurled the Indianapolis Colts World Champions banner. But I could swear that I caught the strains of "Won't Get Fooled Again" by the Who. Now I enjoy the song as much as the next person, I just think people ought to choose songs more carefully. It will serve the Colts right if the song jinxes their campaign to defend that championship.

Tonight has also made it clear that I have to spend more time and more space ripping the NBC studio show for its dreadful NFL coverage. Even tonight, with an understrength booth and a show mercifully shortened for the affront against good taste that was the concert, the show managed to fall short of mediocrity by a wide margin. It seems like every personality and every segment the producers add takes things away from the table with an almost mystical capability to make bad worse.

Keith Olberman is now back into sports broadcasting in a very small way. He has adapted his Worst Person in the World segment from his show no one watches on MSNBC to the context of the NFL. So every time we tune in to the NFL on NBC we will be subjected to Keith Olberman's version of the Worst Person in the NFL. I guess it could be worse, we could have the "Cris Collinsworth Introspective on How to Bear up Under the Strain of Being the World's Biggest Douche" segment.

Tonight, Keith Olberman pronounced himself the Worst Person in the NFL. Interestingly, I had considered using that as a joke because I assumed that he would pronounce some other deserving tool as the worst person in the NFL. I was going to dismiss the notion out of hand because Olberman really isn't in the NFL. He is only tangentially connected to the NFL. Apparently his ego didn't see it that way.

I think it would be nice if some concerned soul in Olberman's inner circle could take ten or so seconds to point one salient fact to the anchor. Just as Tony Bennett left his heart in San Francisco, Keith Olberman left whatever small glimmer of relevance and legitimacy he had behind when he left ESPN. Maybe Keith is so insulated in his own ego that he hasn't noticed that his subsequent career ventures haven't exactly been unbridled successes, or even bridled successes (if such a thing exists).

I don't want to give the impression that I am one of the legion of tools who rhapsodize about the Olberman-Patrick era of Sportscenter the way Donovan sang about Atlantis. I'll leave that to Bill Simmons and his disciples. I thought they were adequate, very average. They told me what the out of town scores were, but I could have done without the affected, cynical ennui repartee they used to charm the masses. Maybe if I were the sort of person who cared more about the personalities behind the curtain, I would have gone into mourning, but that's just not who I am.

I might be wrong in this, it's not something that I cared enough about to research. But I blame the Olberman-Patrick era of Sportscenter for the abomination that was the Aaron Sorkin show Sportsnight. Even though the world was crying out for a vision of what a sports highlight show produced by hipsters for hipsters, I think the world would not be a better place if it were still on the air. Nor would much have been lost if it had never seen the light of day.

All that on the NFL on NBC, and we haven't even mentioned Tiki Barber's latest cloying, attention seeking cry for help. As I may have mentioned, I don't like Tiki Barber. Nor do I like Tom Coughlin. As much as I like seeing Coughlin criticized, I don't like to see ungrateful frauds reposition themselves via revisionist history.

It seems almost universally conceded that Tom Coughlin is not a very cool guy. Most people don't like playing football for him. However, there is a substantial body of empirical evidence to show that he had a profound effect for the better on Tiki Barber's career. Before Coughlin came to the Giants, Tiki was an inveterate fumbler. It was his trade mark.

Under Coughlin's reign of terror, whatever else might have happened, Tiki fumbled quite a bit less than he did previously. I don't know how much of that was directly due to Coughlin's intervention, but it doesn't seem like a simple coincidence. No matter how you look at it, Tiki was not mentioned as any kind of Hall of Fame candidate in the Jim Fassel era. It was only in the Coughlin era that Tiki blossomed into a very, very, very marginal candidate for the Hall of Fame.

We all could have done without Tiki Barber's memoirs. We all could have done without Tiki Barber bashing Tom Coughlin for triggering his early retirement. FOr my part, I have believed that Tiki's retirement was a calculated ploy. Not just a career change to the lucrative and far less physically demanding world of the TV journalist, but his only shot at the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

His numbers were good, but not really great. His early fumble troubles were always going to haunt him. He never really excelled in the postseason. The only way he'd get in to Canton is if he had a mystique attached to his name, like Lynn Swann with his amazing postseason performances trumping subpar regular season numbers or Gayle Sayers with his impressive highlights and lamentable injury history killing a promising career. So walking away before his perceived time was the only way for Tiki to become a Hall of Famer. Too bad for him this negative notoriety is murdering that slim chance as we speak.

In other news, a game was played and, alas, the Colts won. So much for the Saints as a Super Bowl contender. I was impressed by their run last year. I never thought they could duplicate it, though. First, their schedule is a lot harder. And they had a lot of breaks go their way, and I don't see it happening a second time. The blocked punt TD against Atlanta in their Monday Night home opener last year was a big catalyst for the magic season. That atmosphere will not be replicated, though.

I stil hate Peyton Manning. I do applaud Sprint. In their new commercial series, they have stumbled on something I believed to be as rare as a Jurassic Era remnant still walking the earth - Peyton Manning's mind. Between the Manning omnipresence in every commercial under the sun and the teethmarks John Mellencamp will leave on this reincarnated fame he enjoys when it too disappears, I foresee dark times for Sedition in Red Sox Nation.

Well, it was a nice season of college football while it lasted. And then the Fighting Irish kicked off in South Bend today. Even with the score being as lopsided as it ended up being, I think there were some signs that this team has some potential. This season is going to be a long ordeal, but it is (with some notable exceptions like center John Sullivan, "tailback" Travis Thomas and safety Tom Zbikowsi) a fairly young team.

I thought the defense played very well until the abject horror show that was the Notre Dame offense abandoned them on the field and they collapsed from exhaustion. With the exception of the personal foul/ejection on number 94 extending a drive that should have been a 3 and out, the defense exceeded my expectations. This new 3-4 under the leadership of the incredibly surprisingly competent Corwin Brown was fast. They covered well, but their pressure on the QB left a bit to be desired. I think they played the run fairly well, but it's hard to gauge when they were on the field for 2/3 of the game.

I was deeply disappointed in the offense. I am not sure whether Demetrius Jones was unprepared for the game, unprepared for the stage, totally overmatched or some combination thereof. Either way, he sucked. I don't particularly enjoy being that harsh, but when you play for the better part of two quarters and you have 1/2 as many fumbles (2) as passing yards (4), then you might want to rethink playing quarterback.

Evan Shipley was better, at least as far as passing goes. But I don't think he's the long term answer either. As for Jimmy Clausen, the time and tide were against him. I don't know whether I'm prepared to see him start for ND. He didn't bring a lot to the table, but at least he didn't fumble. Alas, one of these three must start at quarterback as this team moves forward.

The biggest disappointment of the day was Coach Weis. I appreciate what he was trying to do by delaying the announcement of his starting quarterback to minimize the pressure on the sacrificial lamb. I do not appreciate his refusal to adjust his pass protection and pass routes to help his quarterbacks deal with the Georgia Tech blitz that was clearly more than his team could handle in the first half. I can see the logic in running deep drops and having receivers run routes that take a while to develop when the opponent is breaking through the offensive line as though it weren't even there. That's great stuff, unless of course you want to win.

They did make some adjustments in the second half and Shipley moved the ball effectively through the air on the first drive of the second half (the one where they got points). They ran quick slants, they got the ball out of the quarterback's hand quickly. And it worked. They got the ball into the red zone, and came tantalizingly close to scoring a TD. If only that counted for something, that would be good stuff.

I also hold Weis responsible for the team's inability to run the ball. I am aware that Notre Dame seems impressed with its stable of backs. That's nice. That does not, however, mean that it is a good idea to throw a half dozen different tailbacks into the action in the first half. Establishing momentum would have been better than trying to see what you have on hand.

And when Notre Dame did choose one back to stick with it was Travis Thomas, the tailback who became a linebacker who became a tailback again. Now if you're the general who became a slave who became a gladiator like Maximus, then you might be able to do some damage. But if you're a tailback who was dispensable enough to become a very average linebacker, maybe you might not be the best ball carrier on the squad.

I thought the slow, downhill stretch run to Travis Thomas played into Georgia Tech's hands. I thought that one play killed the opening drive of the second half. They ran it thrice and lost yards every time. Notre Dame had the ball 3 and less than a yard inside the five yard line the last time they called it. Georgia Tech shot the gap and blew it up. Actually, they didn't shoot the gap, there was no gap. Tech just blew it up, Thomas lost five yards and they kicked a field goal to cut the lead to 16. A TD would have been oh so much better.

I appreciate loyalty. Thomas took one for the team in changing positions. It's nice that Weis wanted to reward him for his sacrifice. But the time for rewarding a good soldier probably isn't a key game that could derail the entire season. This was just one more bad decision in a series of bad decisions that was this game on Notre Dame's part. Georgia Tech had a great game plan and they executed it very well. Notre Dame had a terrible game plan and they executed it incredibly poorly.

There is hardly any reason for a ND fan to be optimistic going forward. Quarterback play is a huge problem, and it's probably going to be worse before it gets better. I said it was discouraging at the time, and now it's downright terrifying. But this offseason, the school brought distinguished alumnus Ron Powlus back to be the quarterbacks coach. It's kind of like bringing Michael Myers back to the nuthouse to lead group therapy. Powlus was horrendous. How does he help these guys get better? If he could have done it, he would have done it. Not to get all biblical here, but this is a textbook physician heal thyself situation here.

Statistically, this was the worst season opening loss in Notre Dame history. And now Penn State is looming on the horizon. And Notre Dame ran up the score on Penn State last year. I wouldn't be a very good Catholic (and I'm probably not a very good Catholic, but for other reasons) if I didn't believe in miracles. But I am downright terrified to think of this team going into Happy Valley. Who knows, though? Maybe this loss will awaken some measure of pride in the Fighting Irish. Or maybe Georgia Tech is much better than I think they are. But we'll see.

And after Penn State, ND plays Michigan, who comes off one of the more improbable upsets of all time, losing at home to Appalachian State this afternoon. That could be a good sign, but I doubt it. Even with the immortal Lloyd Carr at the helm, the Wolverines are going to be pissed. I could see them coming off this loss with a vengeance.

But there is some small measure of good news today. Rodney Harrison was suspended for using human growth hormone. I understand that there is a new emphasis on punishing players who have used illicit performance enhancing substances thanks to the corrupt bargain baseball made with chemically enhanced hitters. But that doesn't mean a great gentleman like Rodney Harrison should lose a portion of his season merely because a paper trails documents his foray into the wonderland of banned substances. What a world we live in.

Apparantly, Roger Goddell and his minions did not read this heartfelt, impassioned apology to the fans of New England which Rodney Harrison published in the Boston press today. If the commissioner had read it, surely he would have issued a special dispensation. After all, it wasn't to enhance his performance that Harrison took this substance. No, he took growth hormone to bounce back from injury.

Not being much of a fan of this style of speaking and writing which has become the default for celebrities who get themselves in trouble, I hate it when some one tries to give their actions a dishonest sheen. Of course he took growth hormone to get a competitive advantage. Getting back on the field after an injury more quickly than you would have naturally seems to be a competitive advantage to me. But I guess I'm just old fashioned that way.

With any luck, this is the beginning of bad things to come for the Patriots. The team was already thin in the secondary, with Chad Scott hurt and Samuel only being in camp for a few days. Now there's even more pressure on rookie Brandon Merriweather to step in a contribute. And if that weren't enough, FX is showing the Bridget Moynahan vehicle I Robot tonight. That's got to be a good omen for those who dislike the Patriots.

And from the weird, wild stuff file... Cowboys quarterback coach Wade Wilson is also being suspended by the NFL. Like Harrison, he's going for growth hormone, but he gets five games as opposed to the four games for the Pats safety. This surprised the hell out of me when I saw it on the ESPN ticker. If a coach is taking performance enhancing drugs, that's just strange. If he's distributing them to his players or any players then he ought to be fired outright.

The other thing that troubles me is I recently acquired (or reacquired) Tony Romo to quarterback my fantasy team. I don't know whether losing his QB coach is a good thing or a bad thing. Wade Wilson wasn't exactly Joe Montana in his playing days. But he wasn't horrendous like Ron Powlus. I haven't been overwhelmed by the players he's coached to date, but I was prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt. We'll see how this works out, but I'm thinking Big Ben might be my starting QB before long.

I'm not too worried, though. I have LJ, Cedric Benson, Travis Henry and Deuce McAllister on my team, so my running back production should carry me. Plus I'm far and away the smartest guy in my league, so I'll manage. Unless people start weaseling kick returners into the lineup. Even if Bill Simmons, the arbiter of NFL history, thinks that the recent trend in production falling off for the last few guys who set the career carries record will claim LJ before his time, I have faith in him. It seems to me that a guy like Jim Brown must have set the record a time or two in his day for the 12 game schedule and he had a nice career. But I'll have more on this story as the season progresses.