DATRES AT THE DESK: The Rants
Thursday, September 27th, 2007
LAST WEEK – 12-12 (5-7 college, 7-5 pro ) SEASON — 56-30 (35-15 college, 21-15 pro) Last weekend can only be classified for what it was – a VERY BAD FOOTBALL WEEKEND. Penn State goes conservative and slinks out of the Out House with yet another loss. The Bears look okay for a half and then fall apart against the Cowgirls as Rex Grossman pretty much ends his career as a Bear. And worse yet, The Rants goes a measly .500 for the week’s schedule. It’s almost enough to make you light one up and go for a few puffs. But Michael Vick’s in enough trouble as it is so we’ll stop piling on his criminal record. Let’s just save our dignity for the moment and move on to some serious picks. We have some major league catching up to do!! COLLEGE Southern Miss at Boise State So we’re back on the Smurf Turf this week for a battle between teams who had aspirations of crashing the BCS party this year. That won’t be happening this year. However, if you like “mid-major” football, this is the place for you on Thursday night. Just make sure to turn down the chroma on your TV screen as that blue turf might play games with your mind. If you smoke up like Ron Mexico though, it might not bug you. PICK – BOISE West Virginia at South Florida Talk about an explosive Friday night of football!! Let’s count the different subplots in this game – 1. West Virginia is highly pissed off about losing to a sub-500 USF team at home last year and ruining their title chances. 2. South Florida is ranked 18th, just the second week they’ve ever been ranked. Oh, did I mention they’ve only played football for 11 years? 3. USF plays in Raymond James Stadium, home of the Bucs, where they will have a SELLOUT for the game, for the first time in history. 4. Both teams are undefeated and while West-By-God gets all the hype, USF has quickly gelled into a potential giant killer. They beat Auburn on the road in overtime and dismantled Carolina last week. They get Louisville at home in a couple of weeks. If they can get by WVU, the Bulls might rise to #2 in the state. The biggest question – can that Bulls defense stop the run of White, Slaton, and Devine? PICK – SOUTH FLORIDA Notre Dame at Purdue Memo to national media – It’s over. Stop with the coverage of an 0-4 team. I don’t care if it’s Notre Shame, just stop it. I don’t see Temple or Utah State or Florida International getting this kind of coverage. Guess what? They’ll be 0-5 after this week and may be 0-8 before they finally beat someone. With any luck (and we know how much luck the Irish have), they’ll go winless this year and thus, end their long winning streak against Navy. If only there is a God. But would God allow ND to go winless? PICK – PURDUE Air Force at Navy Speaking of Navy, their coach Paul Johnson had an interesting response to a reporter’s question earlier this week. When asked if there was any truth to the fact that he blames the losing on the players’ execution and applauds the coaching strategy in the wins, he challenged the reporter to tell the guy who suggested that he even ask the question to meet him at his home…and proceeded to give out his address. He’s certainly got some stones doing that. You don’t know what kind of clowns are hanging around Annapolis these days. As for Air Force, they couldn’t keep their upset-minded ways going against the Polygamists. The aircraft carriers bomb the planes out of the sky. PICK – NAVY Syracuse at Miami, Ohio You could flip a coin 100 times on this game and still not come up a winner. Syracuse’s win last week over Louisville was bigger than Appy State’s win over Michigan…at least, according to Vegas. Miami is pretty brutal themselves. So what do we make of this game? Well, it’s a classic letdown game for the ‘Cuse, playing on the road at a MAC opponent a week after that huge win. As for the Redhawks, it’s Family Weekend and this game could be rated ‘M’ for mature. PICK – MIAMI Cal at Oregon Note to self – Pac-10 teams don’t play defense. Check the ‘over’. Ok, got it. This is the best game in the Pac-10 on Saturday and yet ABC sticks us with USC-Washington as the night game. It’s no wonder that certain teams don’t get the respect they deserve – TV dictates who gets the publicity. Well, the winner of this game could end up winning the conference since USC has to go on the road to both schools. I think Cal has the better team here by a smidge. I think Oregon has the best cheerleaders BY FAR. Too bad that doesn’t count for anything. PICK – CAL Michigan State at Wisconsin One team here was expected to be undefeated at this point. The other wasn’t. Michigan State’s been riding a great defense to their unblemished mark. Wisconsin’s been riding a Winnebago – running back P.J. Hill. I don’t think the Spartans have enough to stop the large 239-pound express. Plus, I’m not sure they can handle having to listen to House of Pain’s “Jump Around”, which is played between the 3rd and 4th quarter at Camp Randall Stadium – by far, the best between quarters entertainment in college football. PICK – WISCONSIN Clemson at Georgia Tech I had already made a Choice earlier this evening. But when I found out that Tech back Tashard Choice wasn’t going to play, I changed that Choice. As a result, I’m going with Clemson because Tech has an allergy to orange – they already lost to Virginia last week. Besides, any team that screws me in the money department deserves my dislike. PICK – CLEMSON Alabama at Florida State BREAKING NEWS – Florida State has a cheating scandal on campus involving 23 athletes in 9 sports, though no one and no sport has been identified. It couldn’t have involved the football team because they have a PRISTINE reputation – no one has ever received free shoes from Foot Locker, no one has ever received free merchandise from Dillard’s, and certainly no player caused any problems at a bar a couple weeks ago. No, not the Criminoles!! PICK – BAMA UCLA at Oregon State Here’s another note – no one in the Pac-10 plays any defense. Ok, I wrote that one down too. UCLA is like a Red Cross unit at quarterback right now. Starting quarterback Drew Olson didn’t play last week because he had headaches, no doubt from the beatings he took at the hands of Utah. Then Pat Cowan goes down with a sprained knee last week against Washington. So now that leaves the third-stringer to possibly go at the Beavers. UCLA re-discovered their running attack as they ran on 18 of the final 19 plays with that third-stringer in the game. Well, Olson might be back but even if he isn’t, Oregon State is AWFUL. And they can’t play defense either. But then, I already established that. PICK – UCLA East Carolina at Houston It’s very difficult to pick the Cougars after finding out that the guy who is in the mascot costume who got his butt kicked by the Oregon mascot a few weeks back is also a walk-on football player. But then again, he also was a member of the band too. So really, he started out questionable, tried to cover it up, and then went back to being questionable again. Discuss. PICK – HOUSTON USC at Washington One more note – no one except USC plays any defense in the Pac-10. But USC takes care of that by scoring bundles of points. As I said earlier, this isn’t the best game in the conference yet we’re stuck with it on ABC. They’d better at least give us PLENTY of shots of the USC Song Girls. PICK – USC NFL Crows at Brownies This is the twice-annual hatefest between Cleveland fans and the team that left Cleveland back in the mid-90’s. Three years ago, Jamal Lewis carved up the Browns defense for over 400 yards in the 2 games. Now he is a Brown and coming off a 230-yard game against the Bungles in his last home game. However, I don’t think Ray-Ray and his hurt tricep on his stabbing arm will stand for that. PICK – CROWS Lambs at Cowgirls Someone get Al Michaels a towel. With as much fawning that he did over Tony Romo on Sunday night, you’d think that he has rugburn on his knees. As for the Lambs, no Steven Jackson to fumble the ball away and Marc Bulger has two broken ribs and no support from his offensive line. That spells 0-4 in the land of the Arch. PICK – COWGIRLS Jets at Bills This one’s another tough one to digest. JP Losman is questionable after getting his knee rolled up on in New England. Paul Posluszny broke his arm and is out for the season. So the Bills are pretty much done, right? Well, NO ONE CIRCLES THE WAGONS LIKE THE BUFFALO BILLS. And at 0-3, they’re going to get dizzy with all the circling they’ll do. PICK – BILLS (cuz I can’t trust the Jets on the road) Bears at Lions The Bears finally benched Rex. It’s about stinkin time. I’ve supported him for as long as I could take but seeing that pathetic performance against the Cowgirls last week was too much. Get him out and go find another QB in the offseason. The other problem that the Bears had in that game was that the pass defense couldn’t stop Terrell Owens. Well, Roy Williams has certainly had some great games against the Bears. Hopefully he’s too busy catching balls and not paying attention to the scoreboard telling him that he’s hopelessly behind. PICK – BEARS Texans at Falcons Once again, the NFL throws another rough game to pick at us. The Falcons looked like they might have turned the corner a bit against the Panthers last week. And then D’Angelo Hall went crazy nuts on just about everyone and virtually cost his team the game. Meanwhile, the Texans gave the Colts all they could handle with that solid defense of theirs. The Texans already disposed of the Panthers on the road. I don’t see any reason why they can’t make the Falcons bark like the dogs that they are in this one. PICK – TEXANS Raiders at Fish If I had my choice between the Raiders cheerleaders and the Dolphins cheerleaders, I’d say ‘yes’. PICK – DOLPHINS Packers at Vikings Fact – Brett Favre will set the all-time touchdown pass record in this game. Fact – Brett Favre HATES playing in the Metrodome. Fact – the Vikings’ offense makes Notre Dame look like Hawaii. PICK – PACKERS Steelers at Cardinals BEWARE, BEWARE, BEWARE. The betting man says take the points with home underdog, especially if Hines Ward doesn’t play. However, the Steelers aren’t dumb enough to be taken by surprise by the Cardinals hurry-up offense that they executed so well last week to make their comeback against the Crows last week. PICK – STEELERS Bucs at Panthers This game will be fun to pick in a few weeks when they play in Tampa. We call that a tease in my business. You’ll have to find out what I’m getting at when that time comes. As for this week, maybe the Bucs have finally figured out how to play football after a couple of years of going 3-and-out and not scoring any points. PICK – PANTHERS Seahawks at 49ers The 49ers really haven’t show me any kind of offense yet this season. It’s so bad that in their MNF win against the Cardinals, the font kings at ESPN called them the 48ers in a graphic. So they’ve already been dropped down a notch. But here comes Seattle and I still don’t have a real firm grasp on them yet, either. I guess this game will tell us who the fraud 2-1 team really is. PICK – 49ERS Eagles at Giants Note to Eagles management – as ugly as they are, stick with the yellow and blue pastel Easter egg jerseys…at least until you lose with them on. Besides, with as good as your cheerleaders looked in THEIR yellow and blue get-ups, the fans really didn’t pay any attention to what the players were wearing on the field. PICK – EAGLES Patriots at Bungles I think the Pats will score 38 points in this game. Just a hunch (hint – they’ve scored 38 in each of their first 3!!). PICK — PATRIOTS
DATRES AT THE DESK:
The Rants
