Friday, August 24, 2007

Just a Week Away


Attached is Sport Illustrated's projected match-ups for this season's college football bowl games. Many of these bowl games are locked into taking teams depending on how they finished in the standings for their particular conference, so a couple things were noted. First, the Holiday Bowl here in San Diego got downgraded from being locked into the Big 12's #3 team to now having to take its 4th place finisher. The opponent will still be the Pac-10's #2 team.


And much has been made regarding the number of bowl games and thus the watered-down quality of the teams that play in all the bowl games. As big a fans we are of college football, even we blushed when looking at the lineups and seeing that the 6th place Conference USA team is assured a spot in something called the Texas Bowl. Conference USA? 6th place? yikes.



Also, in one of the worst kept secrets of this off-season, former high school phenom and Notre Dame freshman quarterback, Jimmy Clausen, admitted to having surgery in the spring to remove a bone spur in his throwing arm. Clausen, who played his high school ball in Westlake Village, CA, has come in with about as much hype as Ron Powlus did to Notre Dame nearly 15 years ago.


Powlus, who never lived up to the hype was under constant scrutiny from the media for being nothing other than the starting quarterback for Notre Dame. The expectations for any Irish QB are so great that we recall a story that took place at Powlus' press conference where he announced he was going to attend Notre Dame. After the announcement, a reporter came up to Powlus' Mom and as the story goes, apologized ahead of time on behalf of the media for, "... ruining your son's life."


Good luck, Jimmy.


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