Author: Stagger Lee

I’m going over to MarsEdit for the time being – for some reason, you have to repost from ecto five or six times before stuff shows up. I’m not crazy about how MarsEdit formats with raw HTML, but whatever. I can’t believe ecto hasn’t been updated in years…

Still sick btw. Sinuses mostly under control, but coughing is out of control. Meanwhile, I finally had the cervical MRI yesterday – it was certainly more open than the last one, but I’d be lying if I said it was fun and enjoyable. I’m starting to seriously question my loadout – it may be time to go for a one-shoulder bag over the right shoulder, with as little as possible in it…I swear this is not just an excuse to look at Timbuk2 bags again ;]

Sinus infection again. Felt it coming on as early as Sunday night and jumped on the usual bandwagon of salt gargles, vitamin C, lots of ech eck eca herbs, plenty of liquids. Yesterday was irksome but tolerable. Today…well, it’s on. Couldn’t breathe from my bad nostril all night, even lying on the opposite side.
Every freakin’ year. Same side, too. I’m starting to wonder if there’s just something wrong with my right sinus…
ETA: Got worse as the day went on, to the point where I left early – and passed out on the couch during the Vandy-Illinois disaster despite having two Sudafed in my system. Why do we lose as soon as we get ranked?

1) The SEC has never lost a BCS title game.

2) Alabama has never beaten Texas.

3) From 2002 on, the #1 team has lost every BCS title game but one.

Offhand, you don’t like to see that math.

On the other hand, the Big 12 was dreadful this year – the Big 12 North produced exactly one bowl-eligible team, and they lost to Texas on a neutral site by one point, holding them to 13.

Much will depend, ultimately, on how well Bama prepares. The memory of last year’s humiliation in the Sugar Bowl should be ever-present. With a month to watch tape, Texas will presumably be prepared to stack the box against Mark Ingram and force Greg McElroy to throw. Whether Terrence Cody can replicate Nebraska’s success in threatening McCoy with a big space-eating defensive lineman remains to be seen.

Be afraid. Be very afraid. And then make the fear work for you.

They didn’t back into it, they didn’t stumble into it, they didn’t pull it off in the last second on a miracle play – Alabama went out, took the ball to start, and beat down the Florida Gators like they’d stolen something. The #1 team in the country held scoreless in the second half, the #1 defense in the country shredded for 32 points and almost 500 yards…and Greg McElroy playing like some other guys who wore a #12 on their back for the Tide.

The only thing to give pause is that Alabama has never beaten Texas in eight tries. 0-7-1, the last one a 14-12 Cotton Bowl loss in 1982. Assuming they get by Nebraska (and the Big XII has a history of bad upsets in their title game), the Longhorns – perhaps Alabama’s most implacable nemesis among the big-ticket programs of college football – will be waiting in Pasadena.

From what I’ve seen, Texas has no shot to defend Alabama – every team in that conference seems content to give up 35 if they can score 40. The matchup would be Colt McCoy against an Alabama defense that, to the best of my knowledge, hasn’t really been confronted with a high-powered passing game all year, bar perhaps Ole Miss. But then, I didn’t start paying attention until the Tennessee game, so I don’t know what the deal is at this point.

NOW…the matchups in 1990, if the old rules were still in effect:

SUGAR: Alabama vs TCU

ORANGE: Georgia Tech vs Texas

ROSE: Ohio State vs Oregon

FIESTA: Iowa vs Cincinnati

COTTON: Florida vs Boise State

(I assume that the Big 12 takes the Big 8 tie-in, and that the only other locks are Sugar and Rose.)

Basically, the look of things is this: Alabama beats TCU, national champs. Alabama loses and Texas beats Ga Tech – Texas national champs. Alabama and Texas both lose – TCU national champs.

But right now, it’s almost a mortal lock that the matchup is Alabama-Texas, and most Bama fans will tell you that they’d much rather take a chance with the Horns than with TCU or Cincy, both of whom are red hot. The problem, if you assume the legitimacy of Boise State, is that there is no mechanism to cope with FIVE UNDEFEATED TEAMS.

BTW, to steal a line from a couple of years ago…”Dr Pepper Big 12 Championship. Somewhere, Mr Pibb is laughing his ass off.”

So a couple of weeks ago, I was up in Moraga for a Vandy game at St Mary’s. If you ever cross over Checkpoint Caldecott, I strongly recommend a trip to see the Gaels in action – their little 3500-seat bandbox gym lights up with as loud and rowdy a crowd as you’ll find in college hoops, and the team (chock full of Aussies) is actually pretty damn good. Vandy managed to blow an 11-point lead and won by 2, and St Mary’s had a shot at the end that would have won it.

But that is not the point of this post. The point of this post is that they played a LOT of recorded music, much to my chagrin as a former stalwart of my undergrad basketball pep band* – and sprinkled in among Miley Cyrus and random hip-hop was Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing”. (Believing? Believin’? Whatever.)

Not only did the students go apeshit when the opening piano hit, they sang along. The whole damn song.

When the hell did a Journey track from my elementary school days turn into some sort of Gen-Z youth anthem? How does shit like this happen? My God, it’s not like we were all singing and dancing along to a Doors song back when I was in high sch–

–what?

Never mind.

One year ago today, I got a phone call I had been dreading. I had interviewed for a new job the week of Veterans Day, but owing to a combination of circumstances, I wound up posting 45 minutes late to the interview. I faced the guns against something like 9 potential interviewers (as it turns out, most of the rest of the workgroup) and went home knowing that if the lateness didn’t get me, the salary would (even if I’d volunteered to take the cut).

So I was fully anticipating the “thank you for your interest but we’ve decided to go in another direction” call. Instead, I got the “we’d like to offer you a job and a chunk of change (which with benefits will be more or less what you get now) starting first of the year.” That was my Christmas miracle.

Three hundred sixty-five days later, I have to say it was the best present I could have gotten. Because of this job, I don’t drive to work much anymore – I can commute by train and on foot, for free. Because of this job, I have enough sick leave to see the doctors to check out the pain in my shoulder, or rehab my bum knee, or not go to work if I’m spewing flu-like symptoms. Because of this job, I have enough leave to go to Colorado, Alabama, Oregon, Washington, Canada, all over California, and still have enough time to take off and squire Team Black Swan around the city. (Y’all come back now, y’hear?) Because of this job, my cellphone is mostly paid for and I can work out three times a week for no money. Because of this job, I’m typing this on a Mac that was made this year, instead of one that was already obsolete when I came to California. (Yes, the first machine I was issued at the last job was a TiBook G4. In 2007.)

Mostly, though, because of this job I am no longer occupationally miserable on a daily basis. The last time I could say that reliably was in 2006. Maybe the first couple weeks of 2007, when I was still at the Big Fruit.

Pair that with some growth in other areas, some necessary adjustment, and I daresay my life has turned around pretty much 180 degrees from where it was at the end of 2007, which was about as shitty a year as I’ve ever had without losing a parent. It’s good to be back above water. And so, once again, ladies and gents…welcome to Christmas. =)

I am not getting any free shit for writing this blog. I am kind of bitter about this. I would like some free shit. I’m not proud. Specifically, if the Coca-Cola Corporation wants to send me a shit-ton of Coke Zero or Mexican-bottled Coca-Cola, that would be fine. If the Dr Pepper folks want to send me case upon case of the Imperial Cane Sugar Dr Pepper, that will be awesome. If Dell wants to ship me a free Inspiron Mini 10v (NOT Mini 10), I will take back roughly 1/3 of the stuff I have said about them (but probably not about Michael Dell himself, as he is a big box of douche). If the fine folks at Dr Martens want to send me more free boots, please do, as that is the only way I’ll ever get new Docs after buying two more pair this year.

This has been your full disclosure. We now return to your regularly scheduled bullshit.

So I didn’t post a whole hell of a lot this month. Part of it was football angst and not wanting to keep beating a dead horse. Part of it was down to Thanksgiving and a good bit of travel and company and the like. There were some parties, there was out-of-town dinner company from twenty years ago, there was babysitting (some) and church (on Thursdays?) and a lot of outerwear purchasing – after buying NO new outerwear for myself in 2005, 2006, 2007 or 2008, I’m up to 3 and counting in 2009, plus one or two as gifts.

But the big thing that ate up my free time was NaNoWriMo.

Yes, at long last, five years after first considering it, I knuckled down and churned out fifty THOUSAND words in thirty days. Now, in fairness, some of it was a rehash of stuff I’d thought up before, and a lot of it is thinly-veiled personal history, and things like characterization and plot went out the window in favor or raw narrative. It’s honestly not fit for consumption, which is kind of the point – the goal here was to get fifty thousand words out into the keyboard just to show that I could physically do the dump.

The next one will be a little more serious. Inasmuch as it was a pitch for “why I need a netbook,” it kind of fell flat – the 13″ Macbook is still the straw that stirs the drink for blogger and NaNoWriter alike.

A great finish, though. I’m glad I pulled it off, just like the old days – a wild finish, but I’m done before the office closes.

Vandy finishes at 2-10. Not pretty at all – the last time they were this bad was 2002, Bobby Johnson’s first year as coach – and at least then they had the potential of a freshman named Jay Cutler to hang their hopes on. This year, the injuries were just too much, and whatever idiot scheduled 12 straight weeks with no byes should be shot.

But Warren Norman wrote his name into the SEC record books, smashing Herschel Walker’s 30-year-old conference record for all-purpose yards by a freshman. The future has some promise.

More importantly, the Dores are shifting gears to basketball. And I was there Friday night, in beautiful Moraga, California, on the campus of St Mary’s College. Where the Gaels – West Coast Conference stalwarts and NCAA tournament threats – had only lost twice in the last three years. At first glance, you might dismiss their 3500-seat gym as a high school bandbox. But it’s LOUD and rowdy and the students are right on top of everything, and they’ll make you eat your assumptions. And you can run out to a 14-point lead in the second half, but you’ll escape with a 72-70 win and be happy to get away with it.

That’s a QUALITY victory when tournament time comes around. And with AJ Ogilvy and Brad Tinsley combining for 5 points, it’s good to know that guys like Jeffery “The 44 Killer” Taylor can fill it up. Also great was the fact that I attended with a LOT of Vandy alumni. Who knew that the Vanderbilt-Cal pairing was so common in this part of the world? A good time was had by all, if I do say so myself.

It was my first Vandy game in 12 years, and only my second or third college hoops game in as long. And I forgot how absolutely intoxicating it is – the roar of the crowd, the wail of the band, the indefatigable energy of the student section. I’ve said it over and over, but it bears repeating: football is for the alums. Basketball is for the students. And it’s AWESOME.

On to Maui!! WHO YA WIT!!!

…the Pac-10 picture:

1) Oregon vs Oregon State. The nastiest rivalry in the Pac-10 has become the Pac-10 title game – winner goes to the Rose Bowl (OSU would have the head-to-head win with an identical record and give Stanford 2nd place on the tiebreak, while an Oregon win would give them sole possession of the championship) and send the Beavers for a Holiday in San Diego – and probably a wholesale disemboweling of whatever scrub from the “Big” 12* shows up.

2) Everything else is a complete clusterfuck. There are four teams with three losses – USC and Arizona have to play each other as well as their main rivals, Cal still has to go to Seattle and deal with Washington, and Stanford can do nothing but try to look good against Notre Dame and see how the tiebreakers shake out. Cal has the tiebreak advantage on all of those but USC, and it’s entirely possible that Cal, USC and Arizona could all end up 5-4 in the conference. At that point, it would depend on who beat who, and since USC beat Cal beat Arizona, if ‘Zona beats USC things officially go pear-shaped. If Arizona and UCLA BOTH beat the Trojans, they could fall clean into the Poinsettia Bowl.

If I had to guess, this is how I see it going:

1) Arizona runs the table, pounding a truly terrible Arizona State squad for the Territorial Cup before narrowly edging USC.

2) USC, surprising no one, puts the beatdown on UCLA.

3) The Huskies complete the defenestration of Wazzu in the Apple Cup, getting revenge for last year and turning the tables on their rivals as the most awful team in major college football.

4) Cal gets a narrow win at UW, thanks to two weeks to prepare and maybe a cameo trick play to backup RB Jahvid Best.

5) Stanford, their bowl destiny out of their hands and with no Roses to play for, mails it in against Notre Dame and scores a sloppy and uninspiring win. Talk of Harbaugh in South Bend drops to church mouse levels.

6) Oregon rides the sheer intimidation of Autzen Stadium to a close-fought win over the Beavers, and punches their ticket to take on that other OSU in Pasadena on New Years Day.

Which leaves us with:

1) Oregon (8-1) – ROSE

2) Oregon State (6-3, tiebreak over Cal and Stanford but not Arizona)- HOLIDAY

3) Cal (6-3, tiebreak over Stanford & Arizona but not Oregon State) – SUN

4) Arizona (6-3, tiebreak over Stanford but not Cal or Oregon State) – LAS VEGAS

5) Stanford (6-3, no tiebreaks) – EMERALD

6) USC (5-4) – POINSETTIA

I don’t know the tiebreaks up and down, but that’s my best guess. Do the math – that’s Oregon on 10-2 overall, followed by four – FOUR – teams with IDENTICAL records of 6-3 in the conference. And USC, darling of the media this last decade, winds up behind them all with a record of 8-4 but 5-4 in the conference, and finishes up in the lesser of the San Diego bowls.

The thing that has to make the Cardinal crazy – aside from losing the Ax for the seventh time in eight years – is that they are done. They have no more Pac-10 games left to play. Their conference season is through – and they could still wind up anywhere from second to fifth place, and they won’t know for two weeks.

If you don’t think the Pac-10 has swooped in and nicked the SEC’s title as toughest top-to-bottom conference in the country…you better Ax somebody.

* That conference is Tex-ass** and a bunch of spastics. When one of your divisions may not have a single team bowl eligible, you are a suck-tastic conference.

** Mack Brown can talk his way into a title game, but on the field, I haven’t seen anything to suggest that the Florida or Bama defenses wouldn’t eat the Horns alive.