Bowl Season Wrap-up - Slightly Delayed - Again

With the Big12 barely clinging two life, I thought it might be a good idea to finally finish this post that I started back in January. Two years back, I did a round up of the BCS bowl games by compiling the records of the different conferences. I repeated this little exercise with the results from the 2009-2010 bowl season but to make up for the missing year I also did a cumulative record from the past 3 years. So, is there anything here of interest? Well, the not quite departed but surely to be renamed Big 12 has enjoyed both more recent and long term success than the two conferences that stole their teams. But then again, the moves of those teams weren't driven by seeking a more winning tradition. A bigger TV paycheck was the draw. Oh yeah, and academic alliances - and if you believe that I have some picturesque Louisiana beach front property to sell you. In fact, the two teams that bolted weren't the ones really driving that success of the conference so if anything, they left for a conference that gives them a better chance at winning.

But what I think is the most striking thing about the below results and the recent realignment announcements is what is happening with the Mountain West Conference. The success of the MWC puts the Big East and ACC to shame. They should not be begging to be included in the BCS. The Big East and ACC should be begging to remain a BCS conference. And now the MWC has added Boise State, the most successful non-BCS school outside of the MWC. Yet the MWC is still a second class conference. Ahhh, yet another reason to pay very little attention to college sports. They make money like professionals. They chase money like professionals. They give lip service to the student athlete but care for their education as much semi-intelligent individuals cared for the Lost finale. And they treat the everyone like a typical Glen Beck fan by thinking we will fall for the line that they actually care about crowning the best team as champion. As I have said before, I have no problem with the old bowl system. It never gave us a definitive champion but then it never pretended to. The current system that relegates the MWC to the ghettos of college football with the likes of Northern Illinois and Toledo insults everyone's intelligence.

Final College Football Bowl Standings

Conference	W	L	GB
MWC	5	1	-
SEC	6	4	1
Big East	4	2	1
Big Ten	4	3	1.5
Ind	1	0	1.5
Big12	4	4	2
Sun Belt	1	1	2
ACC	3	4	2.5
WAC	1	2	2.5
C-USA	2	4	3
Pac10	2	5	3.5
MAC	1	4	3.5

Bowl Season Performance - 2007-2009

Conference	W	L	GB
SEC	19	8	-
MWC	12	4	1.5
Big 12	13	7	2.5
Pac-10	11	7	3.5
Sun Belt	3	2	5
Ind.	2	2	5.5
Big Ten	11	12	6
C-USA	8	10	6.5
Big East	8	11	7
WAC	3	9	8.5
ACC	9	16	9
MAC	1	12	11

This blog post is sponsored by International Genetic Technologies, Incorporated.

It's Saturday Night !!!

Despite Saturday Night Live's long history of producing comedy superstars, it has an equally long history of not being funny. With each passing year, critics like to sound the bell that Saturday Night Live has lost its way. It relies to heavily on catch-phrase spewing stereotypes. Skits are based on a single joke stretched out for 5 minutes. The skits meander with no real ending. Blah. Blah. Blah. The complaints don't change. Just the date on the columns. The problem is the complaints could justifiably apply to any year of the show's existence. It has always been the way it is currently described. Our collective memory is just clouded because of the post-SNL success of the actors. Because they are funny now, they must have been hilarious on the show. And then when they cherry pick the best parts of the few good comedy bits for those retrospectives, our distorted memory is confirmed. From the Eddie Murphy era to the Will Ferrell era to the glorious current rein of the Fred Armisten era, the show was and is 95% awful on a weekly basis. The current version of the show only has two parts that work. The Weekend Update is always worthwhile although it was at its best when it paired Amy Poehler and Tina Fey. Secondly, SNL does musical comedy well, particularly as part of their internet-driven Digital Shorts. Surprisingly, one of my favorite resent musical jokes came outside of this format in a normal skit. I have to say, I continue to laugh when I see. In fact it was so good that is accomplished the primary goal of all SNL shows, to advertise and sell its host and musical guest. I was so taken with the tune that I went looking for a Micheal Buble song that sported the same melody and what I found wasn't half bad.

This blog post is sponsored by MacMillian Toys.

Two Great Tastes That Taste Great Together

I first became acquainted with Star Trek through syndicated reruns of the "Star Trek Classic". The timing of my introduction to the 5 year voyage couldn't have been more perfect as it came within spitting distance of the premiere of Star Trek:The Next Generation. Because of my temporal proximity to first adventures of the USS Enterprise, I had to check out the new intellectual property. TGN, as the cool people refer to it, took the original concept and built a show that was actually worthy of it. In fact, it was so far beyond the original in quality that it was hard to believe they came from the gene pool. Heck, TGN cast an actual actor instead of a pompous hack at the head of impressive cast of memorable characters such as nerdy son of the ship's doctor that grows up to be time traveling demigod and proliferative blogger, a ship's engineer that teaches kids to read in his spare time, and, my favorite, the omnipotent Q. Sure every Star Trek series to follow TGN, including critics' favorite Deep Space Nine, was a pale imitation of TGN and a waste of hours of my time, but the sheer joy of a weekly sci-fi show with brains when there were no other sci-fi shows on TV will live with me for a long time. The fact that TGN featured the best ever series premiere-series finale bookends doesn't hurt either. It is just too bad they could never successfully translate TGN to big screen, necessitating that overpraised, underwhelming, and internally illogical Star Trek reboot of this last summer (I never would have thought a young Captain Kirk would have such an effeminate speaking voice). At least J.J. Abrams didn't use the bomb in the brain gimmick for the 15th time in this movie.

I say all this to set up the following clip. A mash-up of that same overpraised, underwhelming, and internally illogical Star Trek reboot with the A-team theme song. The A-team - a gloriously cheesy 80's show that I ate up as a kid. Of course they really don't make shows that light weight any more. Too bad. (By the way, the new A-Team movie looks down right awful)

Make it so Number One.

This blog post is sponsored by Biffco Enterprises.

Inexperience Is No Excuse

One of the many joys us parents are able to derive from our children is a continual feeling of superiority. You can stand back and laugh at their inability to execute such simple tasks as tying their shoes or solving for pi. Anytime the world is kicking your butt, just come home and challenge your kid to a game of SpongeBob branded "Operation" and quickly establish that indeed there is one person in the world that you are better than. That is of course until you reach that sad, sad day when your child reaches their physical peak any you have long since passed yours.

This blog post is sponsored by the Every Brown Bear Gets a Sandwich Fund.

Getting Off Lightly

This goalie is darn lucky that wasn't Elizabeth Lambert participating in the shootout. For taunting her with cartwheels, she would have intentionally kicked the ball in his face, then ripped off one of the posts of the goal to beat him with it, and then charged into the stands to roundhouse punch his mother. So consider yourself lucky that you only got embarrassed.

This blog post is sponsored by the Brown Detective Agency.

What's Your Damage, Elizabeth?

Yes, this particular news item is now about a month old but I am not what you would call trendsetter. But I repeat myself. Instead, I just couldn't pass up the opportunity to stash this piece of video away in a convenient location for continued reviewing. Our dear Elizabeth Lambert exacted on the BYU soccer team what just about every high school girl imagines doing to her female classmates (but doesn't). Or so Hollywood tells me (that and actual life experience). To see this level of visceral girl-on-girl violence outside of the theaters or an episode of "Cheaters" is an uncommon a site as a well-acted ABC Family Channel Show. There were two parts of the video that I found the particularly interesting but were left relatively unmentioned in the resulting blanket TV reaction. The first was when a BYU player responded with the old "Scoreboard" rejoinder to the Lambert onslaught (very last scene of the below clip). Always a solid comeback to issue to a rampaging sore loser because it is sure to make them angrier. The second was a flailing slap-kick delivered after booting the ball away. Although the hair pull was the action that got most of the attention, for some reason it was the final exchange in the below video that really captured my attention. The hair pull was so quick while this seemed like a more prolonged, directed effort with intent to cause harm. Sure, the fact that this event involved pretty young women led the majority of the attention - anyone with a women in their life knows women can be everything a man can be including hypercompetative and physical. I just can't believe she didn't get kicked out of this game. In the end, though, I take my hat off to Elizabeth Lambert. You finally got people to care about a female sporting event.

This blog post is sponsored by Clampett Oil.

And Starting at First Base, Aaron Carter

I have always been a sucker for All-Star games. Despite the fact that the games last half the day and no one under 50 watches the sport on a regular basis, I still make time to take in baseball's Mid-Season Classic every year. Despite the fact that the NFL has to typically go to its seventh choice at each position to get enough players to actually field a team, I willingly extend my football watching by a weekend for the Pro Bowl. Even though I know that the entire sport is rigged by the league and gamblers, I will even channel surf to the NBA All-Star Game. (Sorry, nothing can convince me to waste my time on the NHL defenseless shoot out) There is something about seeing all of those famous faces in unique arrangements that has always tickled my fancy. Stockton to Drexler. Ozzie Smith turning the double play with Ryno.

My fondness for the athletic mash-up carries over to other arenas as well. As a kid I always enjoyed those cheesy 80's TV movies that were cast with actors from that network's current line-up of shows. Spotting the next familiar face as it popped up was sport. The same goes today for any surprise TV and movie cameo's. Seeing the big star pop up unexpectedly in a flamboyantly out of character supporting spot (Madea Goes to Star Fleet Academy). Quality doesn't matter (Cannonball Run), I still get joy out of it. The only version of this phenomenon that I can't get behind is the reality show variation (Dancing with the Stars is the NHL of the celebrity all-star game). I have no interest in actors being themselves. They are only interesting as empty vessles for the manipulation of writers and directors.

A final variation on this theme is the name-dropping song which brings me to the below posted videos. Both feature catchy toons centered around random assemblages of real and fictitious characters (although how Aaron Carter warrants the same air space as luminaries like Chuck Norris, Batman, and Abe Lincoln is beyond me). In case of the first video, I can't stop myself from repeating the chorus of "Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny" in my head on a continuous loop. In the case of second, the gratuitous Jake Gyllenhaal appearance is the perfect cap to the completely hilarious send-up of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

This blog post is sponsored by Speaker City.