TruffleShuffle

No, an opening kickoff return for a TD ought to do it. The Lions couldn't score in a Singapore whore house Purdue's defense is bad, even Penn State will be able to put up some points on them. But, Purdue has a good offense and PSU won't be able to shut them down the way they could shut down Northwestern or teams like that. For the first time this year (finally) the local paper started questioning the team's play calling. As they put it "why buy a Ferrari if you don't take it out of the garage once in awhile." If you are so high on Morelli's ability to throw the ball 60 yards, quit throwing WR screens and HB swing routes. Oh, and don't run the ball up the middle 30 times a game. yeah... what time is the game? I'm probably just going to sleep through it - I am not in the mood to watch Penn State lose this week.

Yeah, I know I'll be right. But I'm just losing interest. I love sports and I'll always watch, but at some point I'm just going to get tired of being disappointed and just watch for the fun of it - not really root for anybody. When you get kicked in the groin too many times, it'd be stupid to keep letting it happen.

The Flyers, Eagles and Cubs are legit reasons to feel doomed. I don't think those PSU losses were all that surprising, and you simply can't count Holy Cross tourney losses when discussing disappointing sports results that ruin your faith. The Michigan loss last year was brutal. In 2002 I was at the Big House when Penn State completed a long pass in the last minute, but Bryant Johnson had both feet in bounds and was ruled out. That was a hard pill to swallow as well. You guys actually have it easy. Most years, the Cubs just suck outright. The Eagles and Flyers have a way of getting your hopes down, but then doing something great to get your hopes back up, only to crush them again. The Phillies did it this season. The Eagles did it last game. The Flyers do it at least half the time they make the playoffs. That type of losing, year in and year out, is not fun.

They'll bounce back Truffle. It's early in the season and they still have games left with the Cowboys and Giants. Donny made some bad reads and TB made him pay. Yeah, I've been telling myself that my teams would bounce back for the past 20 years. Games against the Cowboys and Giants don't cheer me up, because those teams are better than the Eagles and are playing at home. After the Eagles lose this week they'll be 4-4 going into the bye, and looking at their second half schedule, that will pretty much sink them. I guess the good side of this is that I'm not going to bother watching the games, since I just get pissed off and don't even enjoy it. And if you're not enjoying what you're doing in your free time, why bother even doing it? I guess it would be hypocritical of me to called you a pessimist. It must have been frustrating to watch them get through that 5 year stretch of greatness without a SB win. Worse than Bears fans who still regret only getting 1 SB out of that great 80's team. The Eagles should be able to win their next 3 games, but the playoffs are still in doubt this season. I remember listening to a lot of preseason talk, and the consensus was they'd suck, right up until around the Stallworth trade, and people really thought they were unfairly overlooked by the experts. The optimist inside me died and was replaced with a realist. Too many Flyers playoff chokes, too many Eagles disappointments, Cubs 2003, Penn State losses to Michigan... hell even Holy Cross got my hopes up 3 years in a row in the NCAA Tourney only to lose close games each time. I watch my teams waiting for the other shoe to drop. And on the rare occasion that I think they'll pull out a close one - after all, how can a guy make a 60+ yarder when he's never made one over 50? - they find a way to lose again. Anyway, I'll watch the Eagles when I don't have anything else going on. But I work overnights, so most weeks from now on I'm just going to sleep through the games after I get back from work.

Why would the Reds ever agree to that? Kearns Lopez Wagner for Majewski Bray Thomspon Harris Clayton Freel for Izturus is even more ridiculous than that trade, though.

They'll bounce back Truffle. It's early in the season and they still have games left with the Cowboys and Giants. Donny made some bad reads and TB made him pay. Yeah, I've been telling myself that my teams would bounce back for the past 20 years. Games against the Cowboys and Giants don't cheer me up, because those teams are better than the Eagles and are playing at home. After the Eagles lose this week they'll be 4-4 going into the bye, and looking at their second half schedule, that will pretty much sink them. I guess the good side of this is that I'm not going to bother watching the games, since I just get pissed off and don't even enjoy it. And if you're not enjoying what you're doing in your free time, why bother even doing it?

That doesn't work... Tavarez did that and everyone knew he was cheating.

This isn't even close to being an accurate statement. Kimo von Oelhoffen caused Palmer's knee injury. He played for the Steelers and now plays for the Jets. He's not even in the same conference as E.J. Henderson. I will laugh manically when I watch Seneca Wallace attempt to quarterback an NFL team.

No, an opening kickoff return for a TD ought to do it. The Lions couldn't score in a Singapore whore house Purdue's defense is bad, even Penn State will be able to put up some points on them. But, Purdue has a good offense and PSU won't be able to shut them down the way they could shut down Northwestern or teams like that.

when people look back at my life, they might identify 10/22/2006 as the day I gave up on sports.

i bet purdont wins, probably on a hail mary or 75 yard field goal as time expires

So this is how we determine which conference is better? Look at the results when the dregs of the two conferences play each other? That's ridiculous. Syracuse, UConn, Cincy and USF are not good. WVU and Louisville will have no trouble with them, just like the top teams in the SEC will have no trouble against Kentucky, Mississippi St, and Ole Miss. But, if you're in the SEC you have to go through 3-5 good teams during the year. If you're West Virginia or Louisville, you play four pretty lousy teams, two teams in the same league as South Carolina, and then one really good team. That's not exactly running the gauntlet like LSU has to do this year (@Florida, @Auburn, @Tennessee, @Arkansas). Very good? Come on. Navy has beaten East Carolina (barely) UMass (a 1-AA team, by one point), Stanford (whose next win will be their first), UConn (well they're in the Big East, so they must be good) and Air Force (3-3). What in there suggests they're a very good team? So did Southern Miss and Akron.

Record of teams Louisville beat last year: 37-63 Louisville wins over bowl-eligible teams: 1 - vs Rutgers (7-5) Losses by 31 points to teams that finished with a .500 record: 1 Record of teams Florida beat last year: 52-52 Florida wins over bowl-eligible teams: 4 - vs Louisiana Tech (7-4), vs Georgia (10-3), vs Florida State (8-5), vs Iowa (7-5) Losses by 31 points to teams that finished with a .500 record: 0 Record of teams Auburn beat last year (excluding 1-AA team): 44-48 Auburn wins over bowl-eligible teams: 3 - vs South Carolina (7-5), @Georgia (10-3), vs Alabama (11-2) Losses by 31 points to teams that finished with a .500 record: 0 So yes, each team did finish the year 9-3. But two of them actually beat some good teams to get that record, and the other basically lost to every good team they played.

There's simply no way this is true. There are 3 downright bad teams out of only 8. What are the bad teams? Syracuse that lost to once beaten Wake Forrest by 10 and Iowa in OT and beat Illinois. UConn beat Indiana. S.Florida beat North Carolina but did lose to Kansas, Cincy played Ohio St and VTech tough so tell me how are they god awful? Mississippi, Vanderbuilt, Miss St, South Carolina and Kentucky haven't beaten one major conference team this year...none and have blown out when they have. Georgia played a 1-6 Colorado, LSU a 3-4 Arizona, Alabama a 0-7 Duke and the only one that acutally plays teams Tenn which beat Cal and Air Force by 1. By this, tell me why this is the best conference? Is it your perception of what you think is good? I admit the wonderful stadiums being full and the great tradition they have is something the Big East does not have but in 2006 they are not better or deeper. I'd say the PAC 10 would be the toughest top to bottom if Stanford didn't suck. Man, this is homerism at its finest. UConn beat a bad Indiana team, Syracuse beat a bad South Florida beat a North Carolina team that hasn't won a game against a I-A opponent, and Cincy lost all their non-conference games against good competition. I'm pretty sure that just about all those teams listed above could've beaten Indiana, Illinois or North Carolina. It's pretty easy to say that South Carolina hasn't beaten a big conference team in an OOC game, because they haven't played one. Mississippi State played one, West Virginia, and they got hammered because they suck. Ole Miss lost two (Mizzou, Wake) because they aren't very good. Vandy hasn't beaten a major conference team because the only one they played happens to be the #2 team in the country. That's a little more of a challenge than taking on Indiana or UNC. Kentucky played Louisville on the road, and of course they got killed because Louisville is good and Kentucky clearly is not. You give credit to USF for beating UNC, but then goof on LSU for playing a 3-4 Arizona team? Come on. And while we're at it, let's compile a list of the Big East non-conference games this year: WVU - vs Marshall, vs Eastern Washington, vs Maryland, @East Carolina, @Mississippi State Louisville - Kentucky, @Temple, vs Miami, @Kansas State, @Middle Tennessee State Rutgers - @UNC, vs Illinois, vs Ohio, vs Howard, @Navy Pitt - vs Virginia, vs Michigan State (loss), vs Citadel, vs Toledo, @UCF USF - vs McNeese St, vs FIU, @UCF, @Kansas (loss), @UNC Cincy - vs Eastern Kentucky, @Ohio State (loss), @Virginia Tech (loss), vs Miami OH, vs Akron UConn - vs URI, vs Wake Forest (loss), @Indiana, vs Navy (loss), vs Army Syracuse - @Wake Forest (loss), vs Iowa (loss), @Illinois, vs Miami OH, vs Wyoming Wow, quite the illustrious record there. The best win is Louisville at home against a Miami team that barely beat Duke. The second best is probably West Virginia beating Maryland at home - by the way, Maryland barely beat Florida International at home. Then there's Rutgers' win over a physically outmatched Navy team. USF's best win is over a team that has only beaten Furman. I could go on, but it's pretty obvious that there really isn't much to brag about there, and that's putting it mildly. And, I'll remind you now that Florida plays F$U later in the year, Georgia plays Georgia Tech, and South Carolina goes to Clemson. Georgia Tech and Clemson are better than any non-conference team that West Virginia, Louisville, Pitt or Rutgers will have faced this year.

See Derek Lowe's 2004 season and the contract that he got. He was downright bad that year, but redeemed himself in the playoffs and parlayed that into $9M/year.

He's also one of, if not THE best shortstop not in the HOF.

UConn? Cincy? South Florida? As for out of conference schedule, I guess not every team can run the gauntlet of UNC, Illinois, Ohio, Howard and Navy like Rutgers did. Or USF, they really challenged themselves by playing McNeese State, FIU, UCF, Kansas and UNC. And Pitt's schedule is a joke. Even the best team in the Big East, West Virginia. I'm sure they enjoyed fattening up on Marshall, Eastern Washington, Maryland, East Carolina and Mississippi State. Not a good team in the lot. Playing 1 good team and 3 bad ones is more dangerous than playing 4 or 5 pretty bad teams. If Big East teams could have a schedule that includes road games against Florida, Auburn, Tennessee and Arkansas - which LSU has this year - I'd be just fine with them playing soft OOC schedule. But what does WVU have to be afraid of? They walked over Syracuse and UConn; home games against Cincy and USF are easy too. So, they go to Louisivile - yes, tough game. They go to Pitt, whose best wins en route to a 6-2 record have been over Syracuse and Virginia. And then Rutgers, whose best wins are over Pitt and Navy. Come on. The fact of the matter is, if Florida, Auburn, LSU, Tennessee, Arkansas, and probably South Carolina and Alabama had played Rutgers' schedule, they'd be undefeated too.

Auburn #2? They lost a game. I was being sarcastic. The SEC is so good they might as well just have the top 2 teams play for he National Championship. it's not that good, but it's the best conference in college football. it's hard to argue otherwise. Why? Because Auburn, Florida, LSU and Tennessee are all very good teams; Arkansas may be in that group, and South Carolina, Georgia and Alabama all have very good defenses and can be dangerous to any of the teams above. Even Vandy has won at Georgia and played Arkansas tough. Ole Miss has been pretty competitive too... only Mississippi State and Kentucky pretty much suck. Other conferences? ACC is way down this year; only Clemson and perhaps Ga Tech can be considered really good teams. UNC and Duke are atrocious, and NC St, Maryland, Virginia and hell even Miami are mediocre. The Big East has two top teams - WVU and Louisville. Pitt got hammered at home by Michigan State and is 6-1 because all the other teams they've played are crappy. Rutgers' best win is over Navy. USF is mediocre and Syracuse, UConn and Cincy are all pretty bad. I'll do the others later.

Yeah, McFadden is a very good player, but he doesn't account for 36 points. And yes, USC clearly hasn't played a team as good as Michigan. But the Irish were not even competitive in that game. Even if you ignore the two defensive TDs by Michigan, they gave up 33 points to Michigan and showed no ability to stop Hart or Henne & Co. In the five games after that, Michigan has scored 27, 28, 31, 17 and 20 points, with two of those games coming against average defenses (MSU and Minnesota). USC may be overrated, but ND's defense is just not very good. USC's offense is underachieving, but if ND can get lit up by offenses like Michigan and MSU, I'm sure USC will put up plenty of points on them too.

Auburn #2? They lost a game. I was being sarcastic. The SEC is so good they might as well just have the top 2 teams play for he National Championship. it's not that good, but it's the best conference in college football. it's hard to argue otherwise.

Who unfortunately for most of this board is just as overrated. not really... at least they haven't lost a game yet, and they did beat the crap out of an arkansas team which has proven to be a very good team. On the road, Wazzu never really came close on their final drive, and as they are showing today against Oregon, they're a decent team. Washington only got to the 35 yard line, and Arizona State did nothing after USC took the lead. So yes, they've had some narrow margins of victory, but in none of those games was there a really serious chance for them to lose in the end. Contrast that against Notre Dame. They got crushed by Michigan. That might only be their only loss, but they would've lost against Michigan State if the Spartans hadn't given the game away. And then today, they had to score in the last minute to win. That's 3 games that have been more dangerous for them than anything USC has played.

regardless, nd is overrated and will hopefully get spanked by usc guess oregon decided to take the week off

btw Minnesota blocked a FG as time ran out to hold on and beat North Dakota St., 10-9. The gophers have really mailed it in after losing to Penn State.

haha good job cal

nice D UCLA. gotta love the announcers kissing brady and nd's rear... never mind the fact that got lucky to beat two average teams in UCLA and Michigan State