Well, maybe "confessions" isn't the right word.  But it's a dark tale nonetheless.  Read it and be warned.

     They say you have to hit bottom before you can start the long climb up.  I'm not sure, but I may have found the depth beneath which I can no longer sink.  Maybe my epiphany came from watching the Kotex Panty Liner Why Should I Really Care Bowl between Mississippi State and UCF, a contest that seemed less a football game than a historical re-enactment of a long-forgotten era.  Namely, the time before the forward pass.

Maybe it was during the cavalcade of futility and blandness as the Indianapolis Fighting Sorgis, playing with nothing at stake, nearly held off the playof####esperate Tennessee Titans.  But at some point in this past few days, I had my moment of clarity and realization: I just love watching football - good football, bad football, day games, night games, Central Freaking Michigan against Purdue.  My name is John, and I am an addict.  And I see no need to rise above that.  In fact, I think I'm proud of it.  So I'm going to wallow in the filth of my sporting complacency and enjoy my debased self. 

 Not quite sure how my face got cropped out of this picture, but I was there, and I remain.  And while I'm here, I think it's about time I see a few changes from the rest of you.

     First, let's just end the charade about bowls versus playoffs in college football.  I know all the dumb arguments for bowls, so save it.  The tradition?  Yeah, so is this, but most of us eventually move on from that to this

and eventually, inevitably, to internet porn.  It's the Circle of Life, dammit.  Grow up and get with the program.  The extra burden on our "scholar-athletes" from the couple of extra games involved in a plus-four or plus-eight playoff?  Sorry, but our nation's universities lost their credibility on that one when they allowed a twelfth game, then an exception for a thirteenth for teams playing the Kickoff Classic.  College football players are today's equivalent of Roman gladiators, unpaid endurers of pain for our entertainment.  A select few may earn their freedom in the form of actual paychecks from the NFL one day, but for the rest this is bloodsport and public spectacle, not higher education.  And the argument that it reduces the urgency and meaning of the regular season?  You seriously cannot find me a less meaningful game than Minnesota/Iowa this November.  Ooh, it made the Hawkeyes bowl eligible!  Oops, lost to Western Michigan the next week.  You also cannot tell me that having a playoff at the end of the season is going to make Ohio State hate Michigan or Auburn despise Alabama one iota less.  If the only way to get in is by winning a conference championship, the urgency is still there, with the added bonus of being able to distill all of the tedious my-conference-is-better-than-yours arguments into a couple of games each year.  End the charade.  Playoff.  Now.  TCU and Houston can still play in some erectile-dysfunction-sponsored bowl, while everyone else can figure out who really is the best team.

     Next topic.  We all talk about steroids.  I'm tired of it.  For crying out loud, does Ed Hochuli

get tested?  Don't tell me you don't see some 'roid rage behind some of those penalty calls.  And you have to admit that there is a certain similarity between the near-aneurysmal, veins-bulging, my-chin-can-break-blocks-of-solid-granite photo in the middle and recent Sylvester Stallone.  If you're going to be one-sided about it, why should I care?  And why should I care about steroids in baseball?  I didn't hear a peep out of any of you "purists" when a solid majority of baseball players took advantage of LASIK surgery to improve their vision and, presumably, their batting averages.  I'm sure that since LASIK only involves natural medicinal herbs and Native American healing dances, it doesn't fall into the same category as steroids, right?  Shut up.  Now.  You make all of us dumber and less rational by harping on one while ignoring the other.

     Next: you nerds holding up signs at games with the televising network's name "cleverly" included in some slogan supporting your team.  Not only was it not that clever the first time it was done, not only does it call attention to your undone fly and general lack of a reason for existence ("but I was on TV, dude!"), but it's just plain past its sell-by date.  My own sign:

                              sign-waving crEtins

                                               
                                                    Slurp

                                               
                                              Sal Paolantonio's

                                               
                                                goNads

     We trudge onward.  Excelsior, or something.  How about instant-replay challenges of an "incorrect" ball spot?  How can you pick one arbitrary play to challenge the accuracy of something that is essentially arbitrary on every single play of the game?  Yeah, I'd still be mad if it was my  team that got shafted on an obvious bad spot, but the pretension to micromeasurement is a bit much to take when the aforementioned Hochuli heaves his massive arms into the air to demonstrate, by an inch of space between his muscled fingertips, the exact distance (correct to the nanometer) required for a first down.

     Kill the commercial.  No, I mean it.  I'm all with $8 Beers and the essential evil/unconstitutionality of the touchdown-extra point-commercial-kickoff-commercial sequence, but I think he stops short of the real solution.  Eliminate all commercials not directly related to halftime or timeouts.  Instead, sell advertising space directly on the players' uniforms like soccer teams do.  Oh, the "purists" will squeal.  The sanctity of the uniform, and all that.  Take one look at the Bengals, or any of the various monstrosities sported by the Oregon Ducks.  Tell me you can take those any lower.  No cheating by drinking a lot to get "uniform beer-goggles."  It's time.  Kill the commercial.  You could even stretch the rules elsewhere to accommodate - for instance, Joe Horn's end-zone cell-phone celebration would be allowable if arranged beforehand with Verizon Wireless as an advertising buy.  That, of course, would require Joe getting back into the end zone, but one thing at a time here.

     Can we get some kind of federal oversight over football commentators as well?  Specifically, I'd like to see some kind of system in place to implement proportional penalties for certain mis-uses of the microphone when talking about football.  To wit:

• Using the word "athlete," "athleticism," or any derivative of the terms to describe a defensive/offensive lineman with more than 3 inches' worth of belly clearing his belt
• Any use of the word "genius"
• Trying to coin your own nickname for a player (I'm looking at you, Merrill Hoge)
• Especially if it's a dumb nickname
• Calling any player "underrated"; if you really want to be interesting, insightful, and bold, tell me who's overrated.  And let us see the film footage when the player comes to discuss it with you later.
• Any use of any microphone by Joe Buck will be considered an offense of the highest nature, under penalty of having his mouth surgically sealed, then being stripped naked and tied to a pole while a crowd of steroid-enhanced five-year-olds play testicle pinata with Wiffle-bats (link shamelessly lifted from $8 Beers).

     OK, I think I'm finished.  I think I've made a lot of progress today in accepting my condition, and I hope the rest of you have gained some insight into how you need to re-order your lives and actions to accommodate it.  If you feel compelled to tell me that I need to change anything related to my addiction, I will give any suggestions you offer all attention due them - roughly the same attention I will give anything my wife says about taking out garbage, shoveling snow, cleaning the house, walking the dogs, or anything else during the Tennessee-Wisconsin game.  Thank you, goodnight, and go Volunteers.

and then I thought better of it.  A few random musings from the addled mind of a football junkie in mid-season heaven:

I can't remember a year in college football when so many teams had a legitimate claim to being the number two team in the country - and when all of those teams had such major flaws.  Meanwhile, for all of the doubts about its strength of schedule, Ohio State keeps playing it low-key:

They're not sexy, exciting, or even mildly entertaining.  But they win.  Week in and week out.  The Michigan game will be an interesting test if the Wolverines can get completely healthy, but I'm not sure I see an upset.

Bill Belichick may be the most hated figure in football  

but Bill Callahan isn't far behind.  It's a good thing Nebraska wears red - the blood doesn't show quite as much that way.  Meanwhile, somehow Charlie Weis holds a get-out-of-jail-free card given by Notre Dame fans who have suddenly discovered patience.

Three minutes o####ood college football game is worth three seasons of baseball.  The NBA exchange rate?  Go away, sir, your money is no good here.

Colts-Patriots didn't tell us anything we didn't already know.  Brady and Moss are really, really good.  Marvin Harrison is a difference-maker.  And these are the two best teams in the NFL.

For all the fawning about the Packers and "Good Brett" Favre, he's really the same guy.  Schizo Brett, I mean.  He's had a lot of gift-wrapped picks dropped, and eventually that luck runs out.  Hopefully in the playoffs against my Saints.

The beautiful sound you're hearing from Los Angeles, Chicago and Philly?

Millions of Eagles, Bears and Trojans fans finally, blessedly, shutting up.  Expect the same in Dallas in February.

Are we seriously considering Hawaii and Boise State as real football teams? When your signature wins are over Idaho and Southern Miss, respectively, it begins to look

a bit like you're getting off easy compared to

what the big boys are dealing with.

Les Miles and Pete Carroll look increasingly like two mediocre coaches bailed out by good talent.  Take it from a Tennessee fan: I know this song by heart. 

AFC superiority ain't what it's cracked up to be.  Season record so far: AFC, 20 wins; NFC, 19.

If Oregon runs the table, I don't know how you can argue that LSU is the more deserving championship-game team.  Memo to Tiger fans: when defense is your calling card,

 makes a stronger case than.

Thank God Boston College lost.  I'm not sure my eardrums could have survived the Boston braying that would have ensued had the Red Sox, Eagles and Patriots all won their respective titles.  Remind me never to take BC seriously.  Ever.

Except when they play Notre Dame.

Just for the sake of having maybe one college football post whose responses aren't all variations on "my conference is better than your conference" (the grownup's equivalent to "my dad can beat up your dad")...

The Most Hate-Filled Rivalries in College Football

5. BYU-Utah.  No, neither is a first-tier program at the moment, but that doesn't make the cauldron of revulsion bubble any less merrily.  This one's got everything: private-school pretty boys vs. ordinary public-university types, Mormons vs. everyone else, and the crushing realization afterwards that even when you win, you still live in Utah.

4. Michigan-Ohio State.  When a good three-fourths of your year is spent in god-awful cold weather, you gotta have something to keep you warm at night.  For these guys, that ruddy glow comes from the inner heat of utmost loathing.  I think the Woody Hayes quote said it best - when asked why, already up 34 points, he went for two after a touchdown against the Wolverines: "because I couldn't go for three."

3. Oklahoma-Texas.  While Texas leads the overall series, it's been pretty much even over the last 60 years, which always makes for a good grudge match.  Texas fans hate Oklahoma because it's damn near blasphemy to suggest that anyone or anything is as good as its equivalent in Texas.  And Oklahoma people hate Texas because, well, hating Texas is just plain common sense.

2. Army-Navy.  You'd think that this would be a good-natured rivalry, given that in the end all of these guys are fighting for the same side.  Yeah, right.  The only reason this one isn't numero uno is that there aren't actual killings at the yearly game (of which I am aware).

1. Auburn-Alabama.  No contest.  Not even close.  It's like two trailer park women staging their yearly scheduled catfight.  Just awe-inspiring hatred.  I think if you told an Auburn fan that Jesus rooted for Bama, he might just offer to bring his own hammer and nails and do the job himself.

So there are my top five - tell me who I've slighted, and why I'm wrong.

I watched a bit of the Patriots' demolition of the Redskins on Sunday, the latest in a series of dismemberments by Bill Belichick and his crew.  I can't say that I was surprised, as the Redskins still look like they are a year or two away from being legitimate contenders.  Nor can I say that I am quite as riled up as a lot of the sports world seems to be

about the Patriots' continuing efforts to give the scoreboard operator an aneurysm, long after the game's outcome had been decided.  Was it poor sportsmanship?  Of course.  In everyday life, we have an expression for the kind of person who does this: we call him an

 He is the guywho tells homeless people to "get a job."  He is the one who can't shut up about how much money he makes, what kind of car he drives, how important he is   He is the person for whom success is not enough - to fully realize that success requires him also to make others acknowledge just how superior he is.  This is usually the hallmark of a deeply insecure and arguably sociopathic person (Bill in his Unabomber outfits certainly seems to be dressing the part).

But this is professional sports, you say - the entire point is in proving your superiority to the other team.  You are completely correct.  That first five touchdowns probably proved that.  If not, then the sixth must have provided another, less subtle hint:

But after that, what is the point in more points?  The Redskins were a beaten team, the Patriots had proven their superiority in every facet of the game, so we could just take a knee and go home, right?  Well, Bill had other ideas.

So now I've spent a lot of time talking about what a dingleberry Belichick is, right after saying I wasn't that riled up about it.  Oh well, I suppose I have to get back to what was going to be my original point, which is this:

It's not just that he's a jerk, it's that he's a bad coach.

Yes, you read that correctly.  Oh, he does X's and O's as well as anyone has the last few decades.  But he's letting his man-with-a-small-wiener syndrome make him do things that a good coach doesn't do.  Like leave his stars exposed to injury, long after games have been decided.  Like build up incentive for other teams to take New England down.  Like deprive his backups of useful game experience.  Has everyone here forgotten that the Pats' backup QB, Matt Cassel, has never taken a meaningful snap in an NFL game?  Does anyone remember that he never took one in college, either?  Give Belichick credit for at least putting him on the field in the closing minutes of the Redskins game.  But to have Brady on the field with the score 38-0 just doesn't make any sense.  He's getting a pass on this from all of the sports commentators out there at the moment, but what do you think will happen if Tom Terrific separates his shoulder or blows out his knee on a meaningless fourth-quarter drive in a rout?  What if a frustrated team decides to make a dive for Moss's knees instead of just making a tackle?  I don't want this to happen - I don't like the Patriots, but I like watching these guys play, because they do it well.  I'm just stating the obvious, which is that Belichick is taking a needless risk, in the name of I don't know what, and eventually it's going to get one of his key players hurt.  Do you think the pundits, or the New England homers who currently defend him, will call Belichick a "genius" then? 

Funny thing, karma.  Your actions tend to pack a bigger wallop when they double back on you.

So I've heard something the past couple of days that I haven't heard in several weeks.  Something about a team...somewhere down south...New Orleans, I think.  Yeah, that's it.  The Saints.  Somebody mentioning that they had a pulse.  A couple even saying that they still had a chance at the division.

Now, I like a feel-good story as much as anybody.  And when somebody comes to town handing out presents, I'll be the first in line - whether he looks like this

or like this

The problem is that the NFL, no matter what you might believe from its feel-good ads, is not by nature a charity organization.  It is, by and large, more like an episode of Wild Kingdom - a weekly survey of the interaction between various forms of life, from the majestic and terrifying lion and tiger, to the teeming herds of seemingly identical wildebeests.  In general, most prefer not to be the wildebeest.

There's the rub.  Teams generally fall into one category or the other.  You either eat grass, or you eat the others on the scene.  A particularly big wildebeest may claim first grazing rights or whatever passes for privilege in those parts, but in the end he will eventually be someone else's lunch.  And I can't yet say that these Saints look like the carnivores of last year.

Just look at the numbers against the Falcons.  The hated Dirty Birds outgained the Saints, held the ball for 11 more minutes, and held a +1 turnover differential.  If not for an injury to Byron Leftwich, it is likely the outcome would have been much different.  Even without him, the Falcons had multiple opportunities to win this game, failing less due to the Saints' skill than to their own ineptitude.  The botched shotgun mis-snap alone (leading to a 19-yard loss and killing a Falcon drive) would take its place in the pantheon of sports infamy

if it weren't in such a sloppy, inconsequential game between bottom-dwellers.

So no, I'm not convinced.  The Saints still haven't shown that they can run the ball effectively without Deuce McAllister - having to pass on third-and-one doesn't exactly inspire confidence in the ground game.  They still struggle to get pressure on the quarterback without large-scale blitzing (which good quarterbacks will eventually turn into big plays if you do it too much), and they still show a propensity for spectacularly stupid penalties and other mistakes.  All season long, Devery Henderson has regarded the ball as if it was contaminated with plutonium, but in this game he caught a long touchdown pass - to be immediately followed by an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty and instant field position for Atlanta.  The offensive line, the most pleasant surprise of last year, is playing disorganized and inconsistent ball.  And I'm still convinced that a mysterious stranger somehow snuck into the locker room wearing a Drew Brees mask and is parading around in the #9 jersey.

There are bright spots.  Reggie Bush is finally showing signs of learning how to run in the NFL (don't be fooled by the low average - he had several big running plays called back due to penalties).  Marques Colston seemed to emerge from his previous funk, and Lance Moore is looking more and more like a real gem.  If Henderson can get his gloves lined with something other than concrete, this could still be a receiving corps to reckon with (assuming Dranny Bruerffel isn't either on his back or short-arming potential scoring passes).  But this defense still isn't going to win a lot of games on its own, so the offense needs to figure out its issues pretty quickly - Atlanta hardly constitutes a true test for an NFL offense.

There is still time to get to respectability.  But it's still a long way off, and the Saints better have something better in their gameplan next week than waiting for Santa Claus.

I found rationalizations after the Cal game.  A couple of bad breaks.  A group of inexperienced wide receivers.  A game against a national championship contender with a handful of truly remarkable playmakers.  Maybe my boys had just rolled snake-eyes with their scheduling this year.  Maybe they could pull it together.

But then, after a brief interlude against Southern Miss, the men in orange volunteered this:

A game against the hated Gators that was less a defeat than a nationally-televised castration.  With Tim Tebow mincing around like some kind of seizure-afflicted kangaroo after his various scores, and with Urban Meyer continuing to fire bullets into the Vols' lifeless corpse, I began to realize that I had overlooked some truly ominous signs in the opening loss.  Like poor tackling.  Timid play-calling.  Mental mistakes.  These are the hallmarks of a poorly-coached team, and they don't bode well for midseason improvement.

Still, I let myself be fooled.  I saw the Volunteers open up a can on Georgia, thought at the time to represent a pretty decent team.  Maybe there was light at the end of the tunnel.  The team just needed time to jell. 

Oh, but that was before the Crimson Tide decided it was time for the Vols to learn a lesson.

Now don't get me wrong, Alabama is a pretty decent football team.  They may have a quarterback with the name of a serial killer, but Terry Grant looks like the real thing, and DJ Hall will eventually make his Sportscenter highlights on Sunday instead of Saturday.  But man for man, the Tide don't yet really stack up with Tennessee talent-wise.  This was a tough road game, but one that a good team wins.  Well, the bad news is that Tennessee is not that good team you're looking for. 

It was an all-too-familiar litany that led to this defeat.  The running game was a near non-factor, despite the fact that Arian Foster was running effectively when he actually got the ball.  For reasons that elude those of us not receiving signals directly from outer space, he accumulated only 13 carries in a game that was close for quite a while longer than the final score indicates.   Then there was the sharp contrast of coaching ####: Saban opening the game with an onside kick, Fulmer opting out of two different fourth-down chances of less than a yard.  And even when Fat Phil tried to throw a wrinkle in, like the attempted reverse in the third quarter, he was undone by the final hallmark of his team: poor preparation.  Botched handoff, fumble, turnover.  You can excuse being out-executed by another team on occasion.  But to routinely display bad tackling technique, poor special-teams coverage, mistakes of inadequate preparation (like the fumble) and mental errors (the first rule of kick return play is to check against the onside kick) suggests a team with severe coaching deficiencies.  The once-ferocious Large Orange One

is starting to look more like the Great Pumpkin.

Unfortunately, Tennessee has the look of a team that has missed its window.  Florida faded a bit under Ron Zook, but UT was unable to assert itself over Georgia and missed its chance.  Now the Gators have found their feet under Meyer and appear poised to dominate the SEC East again.  That might be borderline tolerable, but South Carolina, Kentucky, and even reliable whipping-boy Vanderbilt show the telltale signs of teams on the rise.  On Rocky Top, on the other hand, the compass needle is wandering elsewhere.  The free-fall hasn't begun yet, but it won't be long at this rate.  Unless we find Phil a barstool next to Charlie Weis in the Overrated/Overstuffed Lounge,  future direction is likely to be nothing but southward.

I remember as a kid, days when I would actually be happy to abandon backyard games of wiffle-ball and football (my idea of heaven, both then and now) in favor of watching a baseball game on TV.  OK, not just any baseball game, especially not one involving Harry Caray in any way, shape, or slobbering hal####runk form.  But the point is that I just liked watching baseball.  Somewhere along the line, though, something changed.

Some of it might just be a product of growing up.  Especially when you're talking about televised games, a three-hour-plus contest is a pretty big time investment when you're on a college class schedule, or later when you've actually got a job.  If you're going to watch a game that absorbs so much precious leisure time, it's pretty hard to argue for the compelling nature of one baseball game out of a regular season of 162 - "We lost?  Oh, bother.  Maybe tomorrow.  Or the next day.  Or next week.  Hell, let's take a month off and just come back refreshed."  Other sports offer more immediate do-or-die pressure: in the NFL, one or two losses in sixteen games constitutes a dangerous or fatal slide, and a single defeat in college football (or March Madness in basketball) can end a season.  With so much more on the line, it is not a difficult decision to switch over to the game in which you can feel each second bringing a team closer to nirvana or oblivion.

So, playoff baseball then.  The pressure is there.  Hell, only seven games in a series.  That's just 25 or 30 hours of watching.  We in baseball can accommodate, you say.  Sheee-it, we'll even give you a five-game series to start the playoffs, just for shits and giggles.  That ought to appease all you instant-gratification-addicted, XBox-addled, drooling little ####.

Except that the basic problem is still there - it's the sport itself.  Perhaps it is a flaw in my attention span, but I have a hard time getting all that interested in a sport that spends three times as much time on ####-adjustment and spitting than on actual gameplay.  A sport that makes a mockery of balanced competition by allowing two teams (yes, Boston, I 'm looking at you too.  Don't gloat, Cubs fans - you're not far behind.  Plus, you still suck.) to, in effect, attempt to buy a title.  A sport that lives and dies by its sacred statistics (Maris and his infamous asterisk), yet shows such hypocrisy about various methods of tampering with the validity of those numbers (how is Bonds' steroid use materially different from all of the players getting LASIK surgery on their eyes?).  In short, my give-a-damn is pretty much busted as far as baseball is concerned.

Or so I thought.  I moved from Denver a bit over a year ago, but during my time there I had become a bit of a fan of the Rockies in spite of myself.  I went to a fair number of games, since in my view the atmosphere of a live baseball game makes up for a lot of the shortcomings of the game itself.  I got used to the way each year brought a new batch of the best baseball  players you could get for minimum wage - scrappy, energetic, but still essentially AAA material.  I rooted for Jeff Francis, who seemed like a good kid, and who in the early (read: rocket-ball) days of Coors Field seemed kind of like a sailboat in a hurricane - fragile, probably doomed, but somehow inspiring.  I rooted for Todd Helton, my old Tennessee homeboy, doomed to continue plugging away in the role of Archie Manning on the bumbling Saints teams of the 1970s. 

But in the last couple of years, something had started to change.  It wasn't anything flashy, but you could see that the front office was starting to get its farm system and its act together.  As I was leaving Denver, there was a sense that the team had turned a corner, even in what turned out to be a losing season.  And this year, with the amazing rocket ride they took to the playoffs, it seems like there might just be a baseball team that can make me care again.  Homegrown talent, playing with the abandon and stupidity of youth.  A bunch of guys who, at least by the Rockefelleresque standards of baseball salaries, don't really get paid all that much.  And playing in front of a packed house of delirious fans (funny, I don't remember having any trouble getting seats while I was living there), seemingly drinking in each moment with the eagerness of a sixteen-year-old shotgunning his first crappy beer. 

This is unheard-of.  This is dangerous.  This is a team that could almost make me care about baseball again.

Now, if they can just work on keeping that ####-adjustment thing to the dugout. 

Is this really what it's come to?  Does college football really have to follow the sordid example set by our politicians?  If we continue on the trajectory of recent years, that appears to be the logical conclusion - that before long, we can expect the Heisman handicapping to start a full two years before the year it is awarded?  I suppose by that point the actual award ceremony will be an afterthought, as we will already have known the current year's winner since before the season started.  I'm just looking at the inevitable endpoint of a process that has people lining up Colt Brennan as the front-runner after his team barely squeaked by one of the bottom-feeders of the NCAA's football bowl division.  I give up - no more purple nurples!

I saw one prognosticator listing Tim Tebow as one of the possible dark-horse candidates.  Tim Tebow!  This is the same guy who has all of two college starts, against...wait for it...Western Kentucky and Troy!  He has put up positively Heismanesque numbers against those two, so it stands to reason that he will have a good chance of the same success against SEC defenses.  Don't underestimate the quality of those two early-season opponents - I hear that throwing against Western Kentucky's clubfooted left cornerback actually presents unique challenges to a quarterback trying to recognize pass coverages.  And the fact that Florida receivers' combined 40-yard times probably fit comfortably under that of Troy's free safety doesn't automatically mean that Tebow has been looking at wide-open guys on every play; on the running plays, pretty much all of the receivers are covered.  Oh, yeah, I mean blocking.

Just to throw out one potential wrench in the gears: what if, against the odds, the deadly Tebow jump-pass loses its magic against Tennessee this weekend in the Swamp?  What if Erik Ainge (who has put up nice, if unspectacular, numbers in his two games) absolutely lights up the Gator defense and the Vols come home with a win?  Unlikely, yes.  But if it happens, then all of a sudden Tebow is dead in the water and a guy who wasn't even in the discussion ten minutes ago is among the contenders.  So just what the hell is the point of even talking about it two games into the season?

The larger question, of course, is why anyone should even care.  The award has deviated so far from its original stated purpose as to be virtually meaningless.  What was once intended to honor the most outstanding collegiate football player has now been narrowed to a more exclusive definition: the most attention-grabbing player on a team that wins all or nearly all of its games.  That means that a player like Mike Hart can forget about it for this year.  Before you complain, Michigan fans, I didn't say that I don't think he's deserving - he plays with guts and emotion, and he seems to be doing about all a player can do to single-handedly keep his team in games.  But if you're going to argue that a team's losses shouldn't disqualify a player from consideration, then go back in time and take away Charles Woodson's statue (Peyton Manning lost almost solely on the basis of a loss to Florida, after an extensive campaign against him by the ESPN guys) - then we can talk.  The Heisman has already gone down the road to darkness; you know that of which I speak, the path that leads to Weinke and Crouch, Ward and Torretta.  Best to let those beyond hope continue on that path, without notice and without pulling down the innocent along with the damned.

Five elephants, really.  In watching the damn-near-unwatchable dismantling of my Saints by the Colts the other night. it occurred to me how thin is the line between NFL success and failure, and how little attention people normally pay to where that line is.  And the line, in this case, is exactly that - the offensive and defensive lines of the New Orleans Saints.

There were a few people last year who noticed the combination of good breaks and pixie dust that turned what had previously been a mediocre offensive line into a good one, but for the most part commentators focused on the flash - the skill-position players who emerged (or re-emerged) to lead a high-powered offense.  A few people remarked about the guy from freakin' Bloomsburg University showing up as a rookie (big goofy glasses and all) in the starting lineup of an NFL team, but not many really commented on how Deuce McAllister suddenly had some actual holes through which to run.  A few caught the unexpected turn in the straight-up Bentley-for-Faine trade in which the Saints unexpectedly caught the better end of the deal and the Browns continued their abysmal luck.  But  I didn't hear any commentator try to explain, or even note the existence of, the new cohesion with which the line played.  Simply put, they played as a unit.

This is the dirty little secret of line play, especially on offense, in the NFL.  For all of the talk about big names when they change teams, a player can only be understood in context.  Steve Hutchinson didn't magically change things when he went to Minnesota.  Nor, by re-signing with Seattle, did Walter Jones guarantee Shaun Alexander another huge season.  The job an individual lineman does is determined in part by the quality of the guy(s) next to him, and to an even bigger extent by how well they communicate.  A guy like Jones can be an All-Pro caliber talent, but still have a miserable year, if he's next to a guy who doesn't slide to help out with an overload, who doesn't quickly let him know when that extra rusher's coming.  Likewise, a guy like Jahri Evans (who appears to be the real deal, as best I can tell) can plug right in as a rookie and do well if he works well with the guys around him.  What happened last season for the Saints was the emergence of that mysterious intangible group-mind among the linemen that (I think) allowed them to play above their collective talent level for most of the season.

And if I had to take one biggest concern away from the opener in Indy, it wouldn't be Jason David - I think the kid's going to be all right, especially after seeing how he faced up to getting torched when he talked to the press.  It's the way the offensive line turned into a sieve against what for most of last year was not a very good defense.  Perhaps it was the mystical power of Bob Sanders and his Dreadlocks From Iowa that pulled things together, but the O-line didn't show much cohesion either in pass blocking (understandable against some pretty good pass rushers), or in grinding it out against defenders who are undersized across the board.  The Saints' defensive struggles went about as expected - when matched up against a superb tactician and executor like Manning, you keep your guys back and avoid big plays.  But in that context, the Colts' offensive line opened up big holes and established the run.  When the Saints tried to counter with blitzes, Manning did what Manning does and lit them up for their impertinence.

I expected the Saints' defense to continue to be the weak link this year, and I expected the Colts to win this game.  But the essence of the team's hopes - an offense that last year seemed to be able to score almost at will, and which promised to do the same this year - was absent on Thursday night.  And the foundation of that offense, the offensive line, appeared confused and indecisive - a situation that must be remedied if the team is to have any chance of living up to the suddenly lofty expectations of its fans this year.

I'm sure I'll catch some flak for saying this, but I just can't buy into the hype about the Patriots' off-season signings; specifically, I have a feeling that by midseason the position they worked the hardest to upgrade will be just as suspect, if not worse, than before.  Yes, I'm talking about the wide receivers.

I guess I'm wasting breath if I say not to get your panties in a bunch at this idea, but make some effort to untwist them knickers anyway.  Before you go quoting me a bunch of tired statistics from days of yore when Randy Moss was a game-changing receiver and Donte Stallworth was posting mind-bending numbers at the NFL combine, give this your consideration:

The Pats just cut their top receiver from last year.  Reche Caldwell wasn't going to make anyone push Jerry Rice's bust in Canton to the side to make room, but aside from a couple of big drops in the playoffs he was a consistent producer.  Take into account that he played in all 16 regular-season games and that he improved as the year went on (515 of his 760 yards, 3 of his 4 touchdowns in the last half of the season), and he doesn't look half bad - especially when you consider those numbers came with a quarterback who is known to spread the ball among his receivers as well as anyone in the league.

So what, right?  There's megawatts of star power coming in, making Caldwell expendable.  No sweat.  Well, let's see...

Randy Moss.  Insert joke here.  His history is well-documented, and he is the ultimate "me" player coming onto the ultimate "we" team.  Big deal, you say - Belichick and Brady can keep him under control.  Well, the truth is that I'm less concerned about his attitude than his wheels.  Word before was that he was already losing a step compared to the Randy Moss of old (no surprise - he's 30 years old).  Add to that a hamstring injury, and you have a recipe for trouble.  "But he says it's feeling a lot better," you say.  Yeah, that's the problem with hamstrings.  They take forever to heal, and they have this unfortunate way of seeming better when they're really not, only to pop the next time a player accelerates hard.  Don't be surprised if this becomes a recurring story.

Speaking of which, don't pin too much of your hopes on Donte Stallworth, the Sultan of Strain.  His hammies have been bad since day 1 in the league, as I can attest from many years of high optimism and subsequent dashed hopes as a Saints fan.  He teases but doesn't deliver, and you can go ahead and mark your calendar for his date on the injured list about two-thirds of the way through the season.  Add to that the fact that he was becoming known as something of a "me" player while on the Saints, and you have a potentially bad chemical reaction brewing with Moss.  The day he goes on IR may turn out to be a happy one for the Pats organization in retrospect (especially if it occurs early enough).

And Kelley Washington?  Please.  When was the last time he was a meaningful contributor?  Oh yeah, when he was at Tennessee as a sophomore.  And he's remembered in Knoxville as much for his attitude as for his talent.  There seems to be a trend developing here, don't you think?

Mark my words, the Patriots may roll Yahtzee on all of these signings and have a truly devastating receiving corps; but if I were a betting man, my money would be on hearing whispers around deadline time that the Pats are looking for a legitimate receiver to keep teams from double-teaming Wes Welker.

I think Philip Fulmer's seat finally has to be getting a bit warm.  He's been riding the goodwill from 1998 for quite some time, and recent seasons have not been as successful as the Tennessee faithful have come to expect.

You could make a lot of arguments about why he should be nervous - difficulties winning the big games, lack of recent SEC championships, the poor overall record against archrival Florida just to name a few.  But the biggest argument for me is just to take a glance at his team.

The game against Cal was by no means a true blowout; take away the first touchdown (as it should have been, since the fumble was caused by as clear an example of spearing as you could find), and it was a one-touchdown game.  Add in the question of whether the dynamics of the game would have been affected by taking that touchdown away (and the possibility of Tennessee actually scoring first), and you have what might really be quite an even contest.  For the most part, the personnel on both sides seemed pretty evenly matched (although with Coker out, Tennessee didn't seem to have any playmakers with quite the electricity that Jackson and Best bring to the table).  But look at how they played, specifically on defense and special teams.  Consistently out of position on ST, consistently missing tackles on defense - is there any more damning indictment of a coaching staff than poor performance of things as fundamental as tackling?

I'm not even touching on the issue of play-calling (also pretty atrocious), which is probably handled more by the offensive coordinator and is also affected by which of his reads Ainge chose to target.  But for me the specific complaint is that the things a head coach can do the most to eliminate - poor fundamentals, dumb penalties and mistakes, poor positioning - are exactly the things that have been consistently wrong at Tennessee for the last few years.  And the decision to kick to Jackson is hard to figure as anything but spectacular hubris or unforgivable cluelessness.

Beating Florida is a salve for any UT coach's woes, and winning the SEC title after an opening hiccup would erase all bad feelings, but I don't see either happening.  Without these gold stars on his report card, I think Fulmer's going to be feeling the heat.  With a couple of pretty tough games in the next two weeks (Southern Miss is a trap game if I ever saw one, sandwiched between a tough loss and a game against the Gators), Fat Phil could be looking at a much tougher situation than just having used up all of his Weight Watchers points for the week.