September 21st, 2015

The Bruins finally played some real competition on Saturday at the Rose Bowl, and they dodged a major bullet by beating BYU 24-23.  UCLA moved up one spot in the AP Poll to #9.  The guy who really dodged the bullet was Josh Rosen, who looked a lot less like the “Chosen One” and more like the “Frozen One”, barely able to complete a pass in the first half.  Maybe we should all stop calling this guy the next Andrew Luck? Rosen showed he’s going to take time to develop, and that has the potential to cost a talented Bruins team in their quest to make the College Football Playoff.  Rosen did a pretty good job of getting the hell out of the way, giving the ball to Paul Perkins and Nate Starks to let them run wild.  Jim Mora also deserves a lot of credit for making the right adjustments by speeding up the tempo, as well as not benching Rosen in favor of Jerry Neuheisel, allowing him to learn from his mistakes.  Up next is the duel in the desert with Arizona, which is another land mind in the Bruins schedule.

Although Bruin fans might be amused at the disaster that took place at the Coliseum for the Trojans, their loss to Stanford is bad for everybody else playing USC.  The Trojans took a 21-10 lead against the first real competition of the season, and then decided to stop playing football, and coaching it as well.  The Cardinal then imposed their blue collar style of play, controlling the tempo with long drives, dominating the line of scrimmage, and piling up 41 points along with 471 yards in total offense.  That’s right Trojan fan….we’ve reached the point where Stanford and their super nerds with 4.0 GPA’s are winning football games against USC.  Sark must have been reading Tom Coughlin’s clock management playbook at halftime, because he couldn’t have mismanaged this one any worse.  His defense was absolutely exhausted, unable to get off the field, yet he refused to use most of his timeouts until the final minute.  He also should have kicked an easy field goal down by two scores in the final minute and then went for the onside kick, as opposed to stubbornly trying to go for the touchdown.  USC only dropped to #19 in the polls, and has plenty of chances to move back up again, but this wasn’t some one game let down.  This is a team with good (not elite) talent, coached by a man with questionable decision making on and off the field.  Now the heat is really on Sark, who will probably be out with an underwhelming 8 or 9 win season.

Very impressive win by Notre Dame over Georgia Tech on Saturday in South Bend.  At this rate the Irish are going to make the playoff, but have too many injured players to participate in it.  I think Michigan State has a great chance to knock off Ohio State after what we saw this weekend.  The Buckeyes don’t play anybody until then.  LSU and Georgia are the most dangerous SEC teams to me.  Ole Miss suddenly has Alabama’s number, but both are extremely overrated.  I wonder if the AP Poll voters all get in a room before casting their weekly votes, throw back 6 or 7 shots of tequila then put pen to paper.  Seems like a reasonable question given what the poll looks like.  Stanford beats USC on the road, yet they are ranked two spots behind them?  Oregon loses to #2 Michigan State in a close one, yet they are #13, one spot behind Alabama, who lost to #15 Ole Miss at home? Obviously AP stands for “Alabama Pollsters”.  This is classic “luck of the Irish”……

When Alabama fan realizes that their cousin isn’t going to be in the mood tonight……..

Let me sum up week 2 of the NFL for you.  All the teams that suck won: Raiders, Jaguars, Browns, Bucs, and Redskins.  That sentence will never be written again in the history of civilization.  In typical Charger fashion, the Bolts followed up last week’s win with an undisciplined, turnover filled performance against the Bengals.  Cowboy fans are losing their minds after losing Tony Romo to a broken clavicle.  Good thing for them the NFC East stinks.  We reached that awkward moment where Brandon Weeden had more rushing yards than DeMarco Murray.  The Giants had more trouble hanging onto balls than Caitlyn Jenner.  The Falcons improved to 2-0.  Until Tom Brady is dead, I will never fall for the notion that the Bills are ready to take the AFC East.  The Ravens would like to point out that even though they lost, the city of Baltimore had two less murders than Oakland last year.  Jay Cutler threw a pick six and then blew out his hamstring on the same play.  That’s the first pick 6 in history that has actually helped the team throwing it.  The Cardinals gave the Bears a beat down.  The Browns treated Marcus Mariota like they treat their own quarterbacks.  If you’re still alive in a survivor league you must be some sort of Einstein, or you should go buy a lotto ticket.  After fumbling away a game to the Broncos on Thursday, here’s what Chiefs Running Back Jamaal Charles text inbox looked like……. I’m having my doubts that this story is true, but either way, it’s damn good entertainment.  There’s a Bills fan that posted on Craigslist, looking for the dude she jerked off at last Sunday’s game. Here’s the post……. Since there’s really no good segway from that story, let’s just go to baseball, where I’m trying not to write the Angels off yet.  They are right in the thick of the AL wild card race, but the next three games will determine the fate of the season.  The Halos are 2.5 games back of the Astros, who hold the AL’s final Wild Card spot.  They took a big two of three against Minnesota over the weekend, but the pitching is falling apart on and off the field.  Matt Shoemaker got lit up again yesterday.  Hector Santiago was once a very good pitcher for them, but lately he’s been tanking harder than the S&P 500.  I never know what Jered Weaver is going to show up anymore, and both those dudes are going to be pitching against the ‘Stros.  To make matters worse, set up man, Joe Smith, sprained his ankle coming down the stairs of his hotel over the weekend.  It’s amazing that these guys are world class athletes, yet they can’t seem to get out of the way of one step.  The Halos aren’t dead, but it just feels like they are barely hanging on.

Then there’s the Dodgers who are close to clinching the NL West, but in the big picture, have some issues to work through.  One thing the Dodgers don’t need to be doing is playing 16 inning games, where they use 11 pitchers and 28 players, like they did against the Rockies earlier in the week.  Every win is important and all with home field on the line, but keeping this team healthy, rested, and sharp  is also important.  By the 10th inning, I would have said “Sorry guys…..we’re going home in twenty minutes.”  The fans sure did on that night.  Does anybody even remember Yasiel Puig? Do you even want the guy back for the playoffs?  Puig is talented, but hasn’t played in ages, and it’s going to take him forever to re-discover his magic in time for October baseball.  The Dodgers have too many reliable players that are playing well to gamble on Puig.  At this point, Justin Ruggiano, Carl Crawford, and Scott Van Slyke are way more steady performers.  The Dodgers are also going to have to give strong consideration to playing Corey Seager regularly, even when Jimmy Rollins returns.  Rollins has had success against some of the Mets starters, their likely divisional playoff opponent.  However, Seager has been on fire.  Don Mattingly is going to have to consider matchups.  Too bad there are no good choices to consider in the bullpen, because that is going to be this team’s downfall.

The Kings and Ducks have both opened training camp, and hockey season is only a couple of weeks away.  The bad news for the Kings is that defenseman Slava Voynov just deported himself from the country, permanently leaving the kings without one of their better defensemen.  The reality of it is however, that it was probably right that Voynov is no longer playing for the Kings after beating his wife.  Now that the Voynov drama has been resolved and the Kings have some financial clarity, hopefully they can take care of the Anze Kopitar contract extension.  Meanwhile, the Ducks have overturned about 1/3rd of their roster, and added some nice depth.  Expect another fast start in Anaheim and a strong regular season.  As usual, the jury is out after that…..especially on coach Bruce Boudreau’s future.

Is the GOP debate over?  Are you sure? How come nobody said, “live from New York It’s Saturday Night Live?” If there’s one thing I learned from the last debate it’s that Carly Fiorina should be the Republican nominee if they really have a chance to take back the White House from the Democrats.  However, the level of ignorance of voters in this country is amazing, and Donald Trump is smart enough to realize that, which could very well win him the nomination.  Plenty of voters never came out to vote prior to the 2008 election, yet they all decided to come out and vote for Obama.  People will do the same for Trump.  Why? Simply because of name recognition, and pop culture.  People aren’t voting for Trump because he understands the economy, or will cut taxes.  It will be because it’s the cool thing to do.  People are also dumb enough to focus on what religion their candidates are, and let that influence their decision.  It sounds like I’m oversimplyfying it, but that is the simplicity of the average American voters’ mind.  It’s a sad but true reality.

Finally, a new episode of Fear The Walking Dead went down on AMC last night.  Spoiler alert for those of you who have yet to see it.  Oddly enough. there wasn’t a single zombie that was seen or killed in this episode.  It was simply an emotional and mournful look at a slowly decaying society.   Now the real villain of the show appears to be the military, who are killing people who aren’t even sick.  That plot is about as predictable as the Dodgers losing every October to the Cardinals.  How stupid is Alice? The military is killing people with the slightest splatter of blood on them, so carving a tattoo onto your arm to honor your dead boyfriend probably isn’t the best idea.  Nick’s drug addiction couldn’t be any more over the top when we see him hiding under the bed stealing a taste of the morphine drip.  When Maddy slaps Nick, most of us probably cheered for hopefully knocking some sense into the drug addict.  However, it’s simply a moment between two people that love each other, who’s behavior reflects their realization that their lives are circling the drain.  I still don’t really understand why the military decided to take Nick instead of Daniel? I guess that’s the real cliff hanger that this show needed with only two episodes left.