What to read while buying season four of The Wire on DVD

by Mike Rutherford on Dec 4, 2007 8:06 AM EST in News Comment 2 comments

So excited. You don't even know.

The weekly Big East bloggers power poll was released yesterday, and Louisville edged Marquette for second place by a single point. Georgetown received each of the 17 first-place votes, and Pittsburgh and Villanova rounded out the top five.

The bloggers voted Notre Dame's Kyle McAlarney as the player of the week, and South Florida's Dominique Jones as the freshman of the week.

In a move that falls into the "would have the been the coolest thing to happen in the history of the world...EVER" category, Brian Bennett tells us that Art Carmody actually had a plan to point to the camera - ala Jeremy Ito - after knocking down his 33-yard game-winner last Thursday.

The game mirrored last year's game in a lot of ways. 18-point deficit erased, won by a kicker in the final minute. One difference: Rutgers' Jeremy Ito pointed to the camera when he hit the gamewinner last year. Carmody said he and snapper Dane Mattingly had made plans to do the same thing tonight.

"But when you make a kick like that, so many different emotions go on your head that you forget about it," he said.

Somebody also asked Carmody how many autographs he signed after the game.

"A lot more than I signed before," he said.

In retrospect, it's probably a good thing that this didn't go down because I doubt my family would have approved of me spending my entire Christmas morning watching the same 30 second clip of a football game that I'd spent that past 25 days watching.

USA Today has released the ballots of each voter for the final coaches poll, and you absolutely must check out what went down.

Bob Stoops - who said on ESPN that he voted Oklahoma second and LSU third - actually voted his Sooners number one and the Tigers...SIXTH. Frank Beamer voted LSU one, his Virginia Tech team second, and Georgia sixth. In a move that confirmed by belief that Georgia is the only team in the SEC besides Vanderbilt that's worthy of respect, Mark Richt voted his team second and - very respectably - put LSU at No. 3. And Dennis Franchione ranked undefeated Hawaii 22nd.

College football's postseason...it's faaaaannntastic...ly disgusting.

Mel Kiper - poised for his upcoming glory months - has unveiled his top five seniors and juniors by position. Brian Brohm is Kiper's number one senior quarterback, Harry Douglas is his No. 3 wide receiver, and Art Carmody is his No. 3 kicker (two spots ahead of Jeremy Ito). In the junior class, Hunter Cantwell is Kiper's third-rated quarterback, and Brock Bolen is his No. 2 fullback.

Slate.com's Josh Levin (an admitted LSU fan) made the case one week ago that this season's national championship game should be canceled. His argument rings even more true today.

Since every team has proven itself undeserving of this year's title, there's only one truly fitting way to end the season, by calling off the BCS title game. Vacate the title as they do in boxing, give everyone a trophy as they do in youth soccer--but don't make anyone national champion.

Engraving "N/A" onto a crystal football might look ridiculous. What's far sillier is the sports world's fixation on looking out for No. 1. Consider: The Pulitzer board often decides that no play, novel, or symphony is deserving of its yearly honors. The Nobel Prize also on occasion goes unawarded.

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The fluidity of this year's rankings has been unprecedented. Never before have so many teams gone in and out--and in again and out again--of title contention. Poor college-football columnists would print their bowl predictions on Friday, only to see them made ridiculous by Saturday's results. The teams at the top of this week's BCS standings, West Virginia and Missouri, got there by attrition rather than accomplishment--both had the good fortune to lose early in the season, before everyone else's losing binge began. If they survive this weekend and make the title game, it will be thanks to timing more than talent. Someone has to be in the chairs when the music stops.

The BCS was created in 1998 to bring some semblance of order to the college postseason. Every year, we discover a new scenario the system can't deal with. But the BCS isn't what's wrong with college football. The problem is trying to overlay any kind of rational framework onto an irrational sport. College football's design makes it nearly impossible to compare teams: Since schools in different conferences have few common opponents, the regular season hardly ever settles which team is best. In college football, an undefeated season has always been difficult but attainable--a useful proxy for greatness if not direct evidence of a team's immortality. When two and only two major-conference teams (sorry, Hawaii) survive the season without a loss, a championship game provides the perfect ending. In every other situation, a one-off title game is guaranteed to be an unsatisfying conclusion. As the BCS has shown, for every year in which there are two and only two great teams, there are several more in which there are four great teams, or three, or one. And then there's this year, where there happen to be none.

If Alex Legion's mom tells you that you're going to win the lottery, you might want to go ahead and come on in to work anyway just to be sure.

Cardinals dominated the honors handed out for the last week of the Big East's regular season as Brock Bolen was named the conference's offensive player of the week, and Art Carmody was named special teams player of the week. Bilal Powell (BILAL POWELL!) was named to the weekly honor roll.

Should be a big Friday night in Freedom Hall as famed Lincoln High School (Brooklyn, N.Y.) led by arguably the top junior in the country, Lance Stephenson will take on Louisville St. Xavier at 7 p.m., and then Tyreke Evans, Lamont Jones and American Christian (Ashton, Pa.) will do battle with Jared Swopshire and IMG Academy (Bradenton, Fla.) afterwards. Swopshire and Jones have both committed to Louisville, while Evans and Stephenson both have U of L on their short lists.

In addition, Adam Zagoria reports that Stephenson and his father will stay in town on Saturday to take in U of L's game against Dayton. Evans, however, will have to leave for D.C. early on Saturday so that he and his teammates can be ready for a Sunday game against The Patterson School (N.C.).

Lastly, if you're looking for a good Dayton blog to get you in the mood for Saturday's tussle, check out Flyers Fieldhouse, the pride of Kiefaber Street.

Have a good Tuesday all.

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