Flames24Rulz

Cardinals just pushed a dagger through the Rams on a fumble recovery for a TD by Dockett. Looks like Arizona is punching a ticket to the postseason.

How is the ACC the 2nd best conference in the country?

Care to wager?

Shocking. Almost a repeat of last week. Whatever, we better lose out now.

We're getting so lucky today, and yet we're still trailing the Texans.

Blackmon returned it to the house but a holding call wipes it out. That just about sums up our season.

Gus' call on the Lee TD reception was amazing. And yes, justin.tv is great. 10-7 Texans with 1:50 left in the half, but it could be much worse. Hopefully we can get 3 heading into the locker room.

I would absolutely love to see the title game be Oklahoma-Texas. I'm not really buying it Meph, but you seem pretty sure about this, so we'll see.

Considering Rose was leading the league in minutes per game as a rookie, I really don't have any problem with it. The guy will need some rest eventually and that was as good of time as any to let him get a breather.

SIU lost to a 1-6 Charlotte team at home today after Charlotte was fouled with 4 seconds left. They hit both FT's, then SIU called a timeout to draw up a play only to have the inbound play tapped around for a couple of seconds and never being able to get possession of the ball. Awful loss. It's going to be that sort of year for us. I expected growing pains with this young team and well, here they are.

I liked truffle's bet better.

Yeah, if the Lions win, all of a sudden the NFC North swings from "Vikings in the drivers' seat" to complete chaos. Even if the Lions don't win, Minnesota has three straight games against playoff teams to end the year. Without their two big run-stuffers, I'd be shocked if they win more than one of those games. Without them yes. Depending on the results of the hearing tomorrow, they may still play. Even with them, playing against Arizona, ATL, and the Giants will be tough. Arizona doesn't run the ball much anyway, so they shouldn't have a bearing on that game. Atlanta does, but Matt Ryan and White and Douglas have proven that they can throw the ball on you when you stack the box. And Eli Manning has been great for the Giants. That's a very tough slate. I think all three of those teams should be able to beat a team that really isn't that much better (if at all, really) than the Bears and Packers.

Just beat the Vikings please.

I'm not a fan of Jason Whitlock (who is?), but I actually enjoyed his latest article: http://msn.foxsports.com/cfb/story/8853534/The-story-ESPN-doesn%27t-want-you-to-know There's a lot of Ball St. bias in there, but I really can't disagree with his major points.

Yeah, if the Lions win, all of a sudden the NFC North swings from "Vikings in the drivers' seat" to complete chaos. Even if the Lions don't win, Minnesota has three straight games against playoff teams to end the year. Without their two big run-stuffers, I'd be shocked if they win more than one of those games.

I don't think teams should be able to host bowl games. It pretty much runs directly against the entire point of bowl games (which is two similarly talented teams meeting on a neutral field) Disclaimer: I'm a Big Ten homer (I know you're a PSU guy) How do you feel about USC getting to play in the Rose Bowl, LSU in the Sugar Bowl, ASU (once in a blue moon) in the Fiesta, or Miami in the Orange Bowl? Hawaii in the Hawaii Bowl, Georgia Tech in the Peach Bowl (or whatever they call it now), UAB in the GMAC Bowl, etc etc etc. College football bowls are littered with these examples. Whenever New Mexico is bowl eligible, they're always in the New Mexico Bowl. It's kind of tough for two teams to play on a "neutral" field when you have 184 teams that make bowls.

I'm in the minority I'm sure, but I personally consider Auburn to have won a National Championship in 2004. It's the SEC homer in me, I suppose. It was one of the biggest travesties the BCS has wrought yet. It should have been USC and Auburn in that game. Why? Because Oklahoma ended up getting beat down in the title game? I don't remember anybody complaining about Auburn getting left out of the title game (in terms of them being more deserving, not that there should be a playoff) before it happened. Also, if Oklahoma loses that game by a touchdown, nobody is complaining either. USC and Oklahoma were regarded as the top two teams in the nation going into the year and everybody wanted to see the matchup between the two at the end of the year. Also, people thought Auburn deserved to get a share of the National Title, they would have gotten plenty of first place votes. Instead, they got 3 in the AP poll and none in the Coaches Poll. USC the year before (when they were the 1-loss team that got left out) got 48 of the 65 AP votes and was ranked first after the bowls. Well they got none in the Coaches poll because that poll has a committment with the BCS. Whoever wins the BCS Title game gets a unanimous vote for the best team in the final Coaches poll. That said, I agree with you. I think it was pretty evident that USC and Oklahoma were the two best teams in the nation all year long that season. It wasn't until after the BCS Title Game (or right after Mark Bradley did one of the dumbest things I've ever seen a football player do) that people were clamoring for Auburn to get their fair share.

If we can't beat the freaking Texans at home in December, we better lose out. That said, please win and hopefully the Lions get their first win of the year this weekend.

SIU beat Saint Louis 64-48. Watching Rick Majerus roam the sidelines in person is incredible btw. And it was nice to see us finally play some defense for the first time all year. Another somewhat easy game on Saturday against 1-6 Charlotte before we hit the road for three in a row.

Don't blow this. 17 seconds in the NBA is a freakin' eternity.

This. I do agree that Noc is painful to watch though.

I don't really understand this. After the Harden trade, I was more than willing to give Hendry the benefit of the doubt. But to not even offer Wood arbitration? What the heck is that?

I only got to watch about half the game, but I saw that Tramon Williams was on Smith a LOT today. Then Woodson was covering him on the deep pass at the end of the game. Uh McCarthy, you do realize that Al Harris absolutely shuts down Steve Smith every time we play Carolina, don't you? Once again this game came down to some stupid coaching mistakes. We were getting destroyed on special teams the whole game, so we kick it off deep? And I know that he was in a tough situation on 4th and goal at the 1 at the 2 minute warning, but I personally would've went for it because if you don't get in, Carolina has to drive at least 60 yards in under 2 minutes to get in field goal range. Plus, Rodgers has quite a few QB sneaks for TD's this year, so I don't understand why we just didn't do that again. I think we can win 3 of our final 4, but the tossup will be the Bears game. Our season is officially on life support, which really sucks. I know if/when we don't make the playoffs, the talking heads are going to be blaming Rodgers for this season which doesn't make any sense at all. He's been about as good as anyone could have hoped for. It's just a shame our offensive line took a major step back this year and our defense doesn't know how to stop the run either.

They're still the Blackhawks. Nothing's easy.

Yeah it was. Those Mizzou gold jerseys were hideous though. SIU's season comes to an end as we lost a home playoff game to New Hampshire. Just really bad coaching today as we elected to punt on two 4th and short situations at midfield which resulted in 10 points for New Hampshire. Disappointing, but I didn't think we were going to get much further if we were to beat New Hampshire today.