by John Walters
Starting Five
Blacknall’s 70-yard TD catch early in the 3rd quarter cut the deficit to 7 points
Full of Sound And Fury, Signifying Nothing
The SEC Championship Game begin in 1992, long before the BCS or the 4-team playoff.
The Big 12 Championship Game began in 1996, then stopped in 2010, then will start up again next year.
The ACC Championship Game? 2005-present.
The Big Ten and Pac-12 Championship Games? 2011-present.
All of these were set up by the individual conferences with the main intent to earn more money, both by selling tickets and creating a product to sell to ESPN and Fox, both of whom are only too happy to promote these products during an otherwise slow sports weekend on the first big weekend of holiday shopping. You can’t expect the voices on these networks to give you the real dope on why these games should and do play a minor role in picking the playoff, because they’d be undercutting their own product.
Friday night, Brady Quinn, Fox: “Penn State’s gotta be in if it wins, otherwise what are these championship games for?” I just told you.
If this year’s records used next year’s Big 12 set-up, Bedlam would have to be repeated the following week in Arlington, Texas, for the ultimate anti-climactic game.
Props to ESPN’s Chris Fowler, who after announcing Saturday night’s ACC championship game, made an excellent point about why the four teams who were in a week earlier still belonged: “No one’s non-conference schedule got any weaker between this week and last week.” Basically, he was saying, “This bed’s already been made.”
Conferences are akin to political parties, each acting in its own best self-interest. The 4-team playoff, which aspires to pick, in the words of selection committee chairman Kirby Hocutt, “the four very best teams” in the country, should not and is not held hostage to this balkanization. May the four best teams go forward. May the conference championships be recognized for what they are: a way to reward the teams that finished with the best intra-conference records within that conference. Nothing more, nothing less.
And so when a Philadelphia media person, @NickKayal , tweeted that Penn State being omitted from the four-team playoff was “the biggest sports tragedy of all time” (yes, someone stumping for Penn State used those words to discuss a football game), I wondered when everyone went down that rabbit hole. Nick has since deleted that tweet.
Ghost Ship
The blaze in the makeshift artists’ colony claimed 33 lives
The death toll now is at 36, three dozen, in the Ghost Ship Warehouse fire in Oakland. If you’ve seen photos of the interior of the venue from before the fire, it looked like the East Bay’s coolest hangout for those who knew about it. You could totally picture Green Day playing a show there. You could also envision it being a total tinder box, with wood and dirty laundry and hoarder material strewn about. It was a monument to clutter.
I heard one survivor say she barely had time to grab her coat and shoes. She’s lucky. When you’re inside a burning building, you don’t stop to grab anything. You run.
3. Mutually Assured Distraction
Did China ask us if it was OK to devalue their currency (making it hard for our companies to compete), heavily tax our products going into..
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 4, 2016
Maybe president-elect Donald Trump isn’t crazy. Maybe he’s just crazy like a fox. Or crazy like a guy with a fox sitting on top of his head. What if Trump watched an old black comedy, or a political satire (Wag The Dog?) and realized the best way to hide your flaws as a president is to get into a war. Who needs domestic policy when you’re fighting to save the republic?
This is the president of the most populous nation on earth. And you don’t even know his name, do you? (Either did I)
Think about it: absent the loss of life (we can always get more people; we’re very good at making them), a war between China and the United States would greatly benefit both countries. Unemployment would go down, domestic manufacturing would go up. We’d stop importing good from China. They’re living in a land mass smaller than the continental U.S. and they have FOUR TIMES the amount of people we do. I imagine China would love to shed a little dead weight.
You’d have to agree not to use nukes. Fine, done. Then, China and the U.S. could be like Nick Saban and say, “We’ll play you, sure, but at a neutral site.” So we’d have to get someone to host the land war phase. I recommend Vietnam (they did such a wonderful job the last time). Think about it: Trump gets to save the U.S.A., even if it’s his tweets that incited the whole conflagration. It’s genius.
4. Very Berry
Berry scored the game-winning points on a pick-two
Maybe I don’t pay enough attention to the NFL. Maybe I’m just following the wrong people on Twitter. Or maybe no one cares all that much because the NFL season really doesn’t begin until Week 15 (of 17).
All I know is that if this had happened in college football, my timeline would have been buzzing about it. The second-place AFC West Kansas City Chiefs (8-3) were visiting the first-place NFC South Atlanta Falcons. With 4:32 to play, the Falcons scored to go up 28-27. At home. But why kick a PAT that’ll only put you up two?
So the Falcons go for a two-point try, a slant-in pass by Matt Ryan that Chief super safety Eric Berry not only picks off but returns the other way. That’s two poinst. Now the Chiefs are up again, 29-28. And that, rightfully, was the score when the game ended. K.C. is now 9-3 and still breathing down 10-2 Oakland’s neck.
Oh, Berry had a pick-six earlier in the game. He’s a safety who accounted for four safeties worth of scoring.
5. Greenville, Not Grinnell
It’s usually this time of year, or a few weeks earlier, when Division III Grinnell College of Iowa puts up 150 or points on some opponent without hap and then the purists look for their soap boxes and wag a finger or two (“Harrumph! Harrumph! Harrumph!”) at coach David Arsenault or his son, Dave Jr.
And while Grinnell did put up 167 versus Silver Lake on November 19, we are happy to report that another Midwest D-3 program has already outdone them this young season. Three nights later, on November 22, Greenville College, located in downstate Illinois, took down Lincoln Christian, 178-125. As the score suggests, overtime was not necessary.The Panthers had four players score at least 23 points led by Shane Smith’s 36. They scored 103 in the second half.
Curious trivia note: Despite putting up 178, Greenville only made seven free throws and shot less than 50% (7-15) from the line. They shot better (51%) from beyond the arc and attempted nearly five times as many shots (37-72) from there.
We need to set up a Greenville vs. Grinnell matchup next season.
Music 101
So Far Away
Just because her songs don’t measure up to Taylor Doose’s standards doesn’t mean they’re not good enough for MH. This is one of SEVEN monster hits off Carole King‘s 1971 classic Tapestry, which everyone’s big sister owned in the Seventies (the album stayed on the charts for six straight years). It’s odd that she never even approached having commercial success with any subsequent albums or singles—the Brooklyn-raised alum of the Brill Building songwriters packed them all on this one. And yes, that’s James Taylor on the acoustic guitar. He probably thinks this song is about him (wait; wrong early Seventies monster-hit female artist).
Remote Patrol
Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show
CBS 10 p.m.
And nobody has to answer any questions about world peace
Why is this televised? Who cares! It’s next-level lingerie talent strutting in Paris as Bruno Mars, Lady Gaga and The Weekend perform. It’s a thing, babe. Don’t fight it.