College football recap
I debate whether or not it's even worth revisiting this as I do, but college football is really a pathetic spectacle. The institution's concept of fairness is so far out of whack as to be comical. Jim Crow boosters have created a coaching fraternity that is nearly as wholly-white as the driven snow. And the organizational structure, in terms of team competition, is no fairer.In 1996, running back Troy Davis of my alma mater, Iowa State, rushed for 2,185 yards, the third highest single-season total in collegiate history. He scored 21 touchdowns and became the first college player ever to rush for 2,000 yards in two different seasons. He accomplished this as essentially the only offensive threat on a team that played seven of its 11 games against nationally-ranked opponents in the top-rated Big 12 Conference. Yet, Davis, an African-American with a speech impediment, lost the Heisman Trophy to Florida's white quarterback Danny Wuerffel, who was playing in the same backfield that year as future NFL standouts Fred Taylor and Ike Hilliard and who had very publicly given his life to Christ. Davis should have been the biggest no-doubter since Barry Sanders eight years earlier.
More preposterous than even a series of these Heisman clusterfucks has been the history of awarding the sport's national championship to the wrong team, if any at all. Absent a playoff system that works marvelously in every other team sport, the antiquated collegiate bowl system allows sportswriters to vote the championship based on their favorite brand name, and the national championship ends annually in dispute.
This year's national champion will be the winner of the Florida/Oklahoma game on Thursday when the two favorites of the BCS power conferences square off. Yet there's only one unbeaten Division One team in the nation-- the Utah Utes. Were they beneficiaries of a weak schedule? That was the poorly researched argument against Troy Davis when he competed for a low profile team in a premier conference a decade ago. The Utes may play in the little-known Mountain West conference, but they beat three teams currently ranked in the Top 16, and another, Oregon State, that will finish in the Top 25. They won at Michigan and Air Force, and in the Sugar Bowl this weekend in New Orleans, they beat Alabama 31-17 in a game that's annually a home game for an SEC representative.
Keep your eyes peeled for the final voting Friday. The national champion is never decided on the field, but it typically warrants a headline in your local paper.
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A recognizable actor died Saturday. Pat Hingle had more than 100 roles to his credit on stage and screen, and even if his name doesn't ring a bell, I suspect you'll recognize his face. Hingle was the type of guy you'd come across on television when you didn't intend to, but he had a terrific presence. Obituaries today are primarily recalling his role as Commissioner Gordon in four "Batman" films during the 1980s and '90s, but he was also part of the original Broadway cast of "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof," appeared uncredited in Elia Kazan's "On the Waterfront" on the big screen, and according to his lengthy page on the Internet Movie Database, played different characters in three separate episodes of television's "Murder She Wrote."
My most indelible memories of Hingle on screen are as an army colonel who finds himself a victim of April Fool's pranksterism in a Season 8 episode of "M*A*S*H"; as loveable, doddering old Gus O'Malley, the pre-Sam Malone proprietor of "Cheers" on the series of the same, and as Joe and Brian Hackett's grandfather on "Wings." Hingle was cast as fathers and father figures as far back as Warren Beatty's in 1961's "Splendor in the Grass."
He always seemed a very warm and friendly fellow. His death is really a shame.
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Now if you'll excuse me, I have to begin watching my new "WKRP" DVDs, which arrived via the USPS today. That's Ted Nugent you're hearing in the background.
posted by CM @ 6:45 PM
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