Random football thoughts

A few notes on football, both college and professional:

• Memo to college football enthusiasts: As the conferences now stand, AN SEC TEAM WILL DEFEAT A BIG TEN TEAM 9 OUT OF 10 TIMES. Seriously, you can't pit a team from the best conference in the NCAA against a team in a conference that may crack the top 5 on a good day and expect that game to determine the best in the nation. That having been said, congrats to LSU and they're probably as good a guess as any in this topsy-turvy season.
  
  
• Addendum to the previous statement: some schools that have had, say, a 26-year bowl drought, could have easily made bowl games playing in lesser conferences, but chose to stick it out for the sake of competition (and, admittedly, money). Either way, I've said it before and I'll say it again: any wimp can root for a team that wins all the time, but it takes a real man to root for a team that specializes in snatching the predicted defeat from the jaws of unexpected victory, time and again, and still never give up hope.
  
  
• And finally, Joe Gibbs just retired. After checking my calendar to ensure that it was not, in fact, 1993, I reflected that this was unfortunate timing. The Redskins are just beginning to show signs of the life almost sucked out of them by Daniel Snyder and Steve Spurrier, with a legitimate chance of going places provided Jason Campbell continues maturing and the defense holds together. Oh well, I'm sure Gibbs didn't reach this decision lightly, and I wish him all the best. Hopefully likely successor Gregg Williams will be able to continue the job.
  

That's all for now. Coming soon will be the usual "Year in Review" lists (as a pure indulgence, since probably no one actually reads them).

Song lyric of the day:
"Green green youth, what about the sweetness we knew?
What about what's good, what's true from those days?
Sorry that I could never love you back
I could never care enough in these last days"
- Sun Kil Moon, Carry Me Ohio