BYU Football 2011

I decided to kick this football season off the right way, with a road trip to watch BYU play Ole Miss! I think my favorite part about the Cougars independence is that they will play out here more.

We drove down to Memphis Friday, then headed to Oxford Saturday morning. We arrived about noon to find this:

There was an abosulte Sea of tailgating, and most of it was with high-class Southern etiquette. It was awesome; the only people who were even slightly impolite to us were students; and most of the rude ones appeared to be pretty drunk. The older an Ole Miss fan was, the more likely they were to be exquisitely polite and thank us for driving all the way down, especially when we told them we drove from D.C.

BYU was well represented at the game.

That was the official visitor's section.

This was us in the cheap seats in the end zone. For being the cheap seats, they were really pretty good, and they were on metal bleachers, so we could make lots of noise stomping. You might have heard the BYU fans yelling "Defense!" a few times; that was us.

The concessions weren't bad, either. They were expensive, but at least one item was worth whatever they could have asked for:


And... a few actual football pictures:




Oh, and who's the goof in this picture?

Saturday

Saturday's schedule:

Wake up.
Help friends move into new house.
Go to ward Christmas party (we arrived right after the benediction)
Watch Afton cry on Santa's lap.
Go to Lowes for materials for attic hatch replacement, plus a staple gun.
Get a haircut.
Tracy goes to work.

While tending Afton:

• Take friends who we helped move into their house to Dulles for Christmas vacation.
• Buy new chipset fan for PC.
  
• Measure Attic Hatch
• Cut plywood to fit
• Paint Plywood (spray paint primer)
• Feed Afton
• Swap Northbridge chipset fans on the PC so it's about 10 db quieter.
• Clean up spit-up from the motherboard!!! after Afton dirties it.
• Put Afton down
  

Staple fiberglass insulation to the back of the new attic hatch.
Put foam insulation around edges of hatch.
Install hatch while making sure Afton doesn't wake up.
Watch BYU lose to Arizona.
Explain to Tracy why I hate watching BYU lose in such a pathetic way.
Go to bed.

I'll admit it: It's our fault.

Over the last two weeks, the stock market has become increasingly unstable. Rather than focus on quarterly profit reports, dropping oil prices, etc., it has been tossed about by the whims of the Fed and the brokers.

Why? Because BYU beat UCLA -- by a whole stinking lot:

From The BCS Guru:

UCLA made the biggest splash by getting mauled by Brigham Young, 59-0. The last time the Bruins lost that badly - in 1929 - the stock market crashed and the Great Depression began shortly thereafter.

Yes. The economic turmoil surrounding our nation's financial markets is because of BYU football. How was the economy after BYU's greatest teams won? Can someone check that out for me?

Cougar baby!!

Yes, she's one cute Cougar! And I'm "Fully Invested" in "The Quest for Perfection".

I credit Afton's cuteness with the win. She's 2 and 0 while wearing the cuteness shirt!

Also, it's hard to get both of us in the picture when I'm also taking the picture and I'm trying to get our shirts in frame.

College football!

Apparently, there are some side effects to being raised in Ohio, such as an unhealthy focus on college football for 4 months in the fall of every year.

This fall is the first time that people out here in the East can watch BYU's football games on "the Mtn.", the Mountain West Conference's own TV network. So, today we're having a big party to celebrate the game and watch it on our TV. I'll post some pictures to demonstrate the crowd when the game starts.

The menu for our tailgate party? I'm glad you asked: Buffalo and BBQ wings, tortillas with every dip you can imagine, I'm making a veggie tray for those who don't want cholesterol, and maybe some other options, too.

Maybe if we're lucky we'll see Janet in the end zone seating!

Football madness

Okay, I can't help it. The So-called "Bowl Championship Series" has again failed to deliver on its promise of a definitive championship, and the game hasn't even been played yet.

This season has been a crazy mess, but still leaves one question, to my mind, unanswered. Why is the only undefeated team in the nation not playing in the "championship" game?
Yes,yes, I know the official answer. Due to Hawaii's a weak schedule and poor rankings in the polls, Hawaii is not number one or two in the nation.

How can a team's schedule be held as the definition of whether they're a good team or not? The majority of the schedule is guaranteed to be against conference teams. If the non-BCS conferences aren't considered major, your conference opponents don't matter. So, if you aren't in a BCS conference, you're schedule is guaranteed to be considered weaker it would if you were in one.
That leaves two, maybe three non-conference games.

In order to be taken seriously as a non-BCS conference school, you have to schedule against two teams that are considered "major" teams.

1. Choose opponents from BCS conferences.


2. Choose good (hopefully Top-Ten ranked) opponents from those conferences. A number 5 ranked Michigan from the Big 10 would be good. Oh, wait, they aren't even ranked now, at the end of the year. If you can't get them to agree to a game, how about number 14, UCLA. Oops again.

I believe the point has been illustrated, but to make it truly real, add this particular part of reality:

3. Take the previous two steps and expand them to the next 3 years.

If you can do that, you should apply for a job in the athletic department of a Division I-A school.

Hawaii played, and beat, two non-conference teams from Divison I-A teams, in the PAC-10 and MWC, and one Division I-AA team and was still only ranked #10.

Just for a final dose of the craziness, take a look at the Wikipedia entry for the BCS, here. Go ahead, I'll still be here when you're done.
Does it seem to you that the rules section is pretty long? You're right.
Does it seem like the 'controversies' section is as long as the rules section? You're right.
Does it seem like the formula changed every single season? You're right.

The best thing that could happen to college football would be for the NCAA to kill off the BCS. I'd love to see the game start with an official disclaimer from the NCAA stating that "this game is not an NCAA-sanctioned championship game". After all, they're the official organization of college sports, and they don't recognize any Divison I-A football champion. Unfortunately, the BCS will hang around as long as the conferences that run the BCS still get to make money from it for their cash-cow football programs.

They don't seem to care that the cash smells like crap.