A Large, Florida State-like Black Hole has been spotted in northern Indiana.

Well, looky-here at who’s atop the national recruiting rankings thus far in college football. According to Rivals.com, its our old friend Notre Dame in their assumed position as reaper of the choicest high school talent in the nation – a position they are seemingly in every year. Of course, given Notre Dame’s lack of success of late, this can be interpreted one of two ways: either Rivals.com overrates the players Notre Dame recruits or the fat man isn’t the coach he would like you to believe he is. Since Rivals is about the most respected recruiting service around and the ranking process too transparent, we tend to lean towards the latter.

Look, we know schadenfreude is a very unbecoming emotion but we hope that the university continues to choke on that monstrous 10-year contract they gave to Charlie Weis a couple of years ago. Like Florida St., Notre Dame is becoming the place where 4 and 5-star recruits disappear.

One of our favorite sports columnists, Jason Whitlock, had some thoughts on the Great Weis Hope, here.

John McCain doesn't appreciate your lack of respect for the military.

John McCain was stumping in Michigan and speaking on the topic of immigration when as this video shows he started drifting into mealy-mouthed Amnesty-speak. A few people in the audience (our type of people) recognizing this b.s. for what it is let out very audible groans but then McCain just shut ‘em down to wild applause with this:

“I’m not going to call up a soldier who’s fighting in Iraq today and tell him I’m deporting his mother. I'm not going to do it, you can do it”.

Huh? Did he just say that? Did the man who wants to be the most powerful man on the planet just try to link service in Iraq with illegal immigration? We’re dying to know just how many troops serving in Iraq or even Afghanistan have mothers that are here illegally. ...and what about Bosnia, McCain? – you forgot about Bosnia… like those peoples’ mothers don’t deserve some shameless pandering also? How pathetic.

If you’ve ever wondered just how tortured the logic has become and just how far gone the Amnesty cabal is, look no further than that quote.

Coming to Ruin an AFC Championship Near You

Sorry, America. Apologies for the Chargers scuttling the AFC Championship game matchup you all wanted to see. In doing so, the Chargers displayed the heart, fortitude, savvy and smarts that were all found lacking by this very blog just a few months ago, overcoming a hostile crowd, injuries to their offensive stars and some absolutely brutal officiating to achieve perhaps the most improbable victory in franchise history.

Some thoughts:
- We hate to say it because it makes us look like ungracious winners but… Roger Goddell dodged a bullet yesterday. Had the Colts won, the league office would’ve spent the entirety of this week attempting to explain away some of the calls that were made against the Chargers, namely, the holding call on Eric Weddle that negated Antonio Cromartie’s (Cro!) interception return for a touchdown at the end of the half and the pass interference call in the 4th quarter on Clinton Hart. It also appeared that Merriman and Phillips were held about every time they got to the corner on their pass rushes. After being largely immune to the same, Goddell would’ve found out what David Stern, the NBA commish has had to deal with for years now: the open secret that the Association will do whatever it can to put big market teams (especially the L.A. Lakers) in the Finals.

- It was encouraging to see some emotion from Norv Turner. Though we don’t subscribe to the theory that a coach needs to be overly demonstrative on the sidelines to be effective, we feel that every once in a while a coach needs to let the refs know, in no uncertain terms, his opinion of the officiating if for nothing else to let the players know the coach has their back. We would’ve loved to have been in the Charger locker room at halftime… we imagine the Chargers are on the hook for some damaged lockers and furniture. They channeled that emotion effectively, though in the 2nd half – something that they had been incapable of doing prior to yesterday.

- The CBS acronym of Can’t Broadcast Sports was upheld in fine fashion yesterday. We never seemed to get replays in a timely fashion and because of sloppy camera work, we never saw the alleged offsides penalty against the Chargers in the 3rd quarter that kept a Colt’s drive alive and which ultimately resulted in a touchdown. And with Joe Theismann now out of the picture, Dan Dierdorf assumes the position…. of worst game analyst in football. Words cannot describe how much we detest this man. To add insult to injury, it seemed like the team of Greg Gumbel and the ‘Dorf were assigned to about half the Charger games this year.

- Billy Freaking Volek!

- The Charger’s defense successfully executed what the Jaguars defense tried the night before against the Patriots. The scheme was to sit back in the cover-2 zone, keep everything in front of the secondary, make the offense chip its way down field and…. pray for turnovers! If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you know we are not fans of the cover-2, a defense of which the Chargers are ill-suited to play, but Ted Cottrell can successfully argue that the scheme helped produce a victory. We fully expect the Chargers to do the same thing next week, whereby Tom Brady will carve up the Chargers secondary like a Thanksgiving butterball.

- The Chargers may need to look for a placekicker in the off-season. Nate Kaeding continues to miss playoff field goals.

- Though he didn’t have the impact we were predicting because Antonio Gates did start, the one time Legedu Naanee got his hands on the ball, he acquitted himself quite nicely, rambling 27 yards on a tight end bubble screen during the Billy Volek-led game-winning scoring drive.

- In our minds, one of the most important plays of the game was Mike Scifres, with his back to the goal line, uncorking a 66 yard punt and forcing the Colts to start their last offensive series at their own 32 yard line. Aside from the obvious field position advantage gained, it’s simultaneously a psychological boost to the defense and a deflation to the Colt offense. Mike Scifres is the best punter in the game. End of discussion.

- And finally… are we going to eat some crow and admit we were wrong about Norv Turner? Nope. While we congratulate Turner and the rest of the coaching staff for taking the Bolts to the conference championship game, they could’ve saved everybody, including themselves a whole lot of grief by capitalizing on this team’s core competencies from Week 1. These Chargers are a big, physical team that is equipped to get after the quarterback on defense and run the ball to set up play-action downfield on offense. This current 8 game winning streak is not merely coincidental with the coaches playing to those strengths.

Great win. The Chargers open up as 14-1/2 pt. dogs to the Pats. Good. Let’s stay loose, go into New England, roll the bones and see what happens.

... and as Darren Spoles would say. "buh-bye".

Christopher Hitchens Reminds Us of Somehting Important

B- Daddy here. In an online article in today's Slate, Christopher Hitchens acidly reminds us why Hillary Clinton's election would be bad for America. Beyond the serial mendacity, the cock-up on health care and lying for Bill and thereby betraying fellow women, Hitchens has this to say about her support for the Iraq invasion that somehow morphed into supposed opposition just before the Iowa caucii:

"Now, it does not especially matter whether you agree or agreed with her about this (as I, for once, do and did). What does matter is that she has since altered her position and attempted, with her husband's help, to make people forget that she ever held it. And this, on a grave matter of national honor and security, merely to influence her short-term standing in the Iowa caucuses. Surely that on its own should be sufficient to disqualify her from consideration? Indifferent to truth, willing to use police-state tactics and vulgar libels against inconvenient witnesses, hopeless on health care, and flippant and fast and loose with national security: The case against Hillary Clinton for president is open-and-shut."

CHARGE!

Canada is experiencing some "separation of mosque and state" problems.

We were alerted to this via Hot Air. Attached video is from a hearing conducted by something called the Alberta Human Rights Commission in Canada. The subject of this inquisition is a gentleman named Ezra Levant. What human rights violations did Levant possibly commit, you ask? Levant, as the editor of the now-defunct Western Standard reproduced in that publication those infamous Danish cartoons that made a lot of Muslims very, very angry and which we proudly link to here, via Levant’s website.

We don’t know Levant from Adam but after watching his performance at his “hearing”, he’s got some new fans. We loved his rant because every last bit of it was 100% spot-on. And if you’re wondering what the bureaucratic thug sitting opposite him could’ve possibly been scribbling down on her legal tab while Levant was taking her to the woodshed, we think it might have been, “I wish there was a rock in this room that I could crawl under”. Too bad, sugar. You gotta suffer a little to make the world a kinder, gentler, bend-over(backward)-for-Mohammed sort of place.

Damn, makes us want to throw a link to Weasel Zippers just for the hell of it.

Embrace the hatred of hate crime laws.

The Front Fell Off

Perhaps because of our paid profession we found this video clip to be quite amusing. No idea whether or not this is a legit interview with an Australian senator but given the quirky humor of our English-speaking cousins down under, we're giving this one the benefit of the doubt.

The Gratitude Campaign

This has been sent to us by a few people. Attached video for the Gratitude Campaign encourages people to wear a red shirt on Friday, though we’ve also heard blue shirt on Friday as a sign of support for the troops from other sources. We need a ruling.

Our small-motor skills being what they are, we spent 15 minutes practicing the gratitude gesture in the mirror so as to not being taken wrongly and resulting in an ass-kicking by a Marine.

Barring successful execution of the gesture, we’ve found that buying a soldier or Marine a cold beer is very much appreciated as well.

“...and she posed in tableaux of adorable multicultural children.”

Well, we suppose that if its safe to detest Hillary again, its certainly safe for the press to prostrate themselves before her in fawning adoration, again.

Read article here for what passes as serious journalism – an account of Clinton’s campaign stop in Las Vegas.

Author Molly Ball sees a beatific Hillary gracing the homes and restaurants of Las Vegas’ citizens (and non-citizens alike). We see a “tableaux” of benign WASPy maternalism granting an audience to its pitiable little brown and black subjects.

This article is horrible. In fact, this article is such a glaring example of shameless boosterism, we’ve been seized by inspiration and are “honoring” the author by nominating it for the Beers with Demo Walter Duranty putridity in journalism award, the winner of which will be announced at the end of the year. (Duranty, New York Times’ “Man in Moscow” won a Pulitzer prize for his gallant efforts in being a Joe Stalin apologist in the 1930s. Though, thoroughly discredited, his conferment remains intact). Congratulations, Molly!

Don’t Expect to See This Guy on a Rose Parade Float Anytime Soon

In a phone interview with ESPN, political consultant James Carville is defending LSU’s 2nd championship in 5 years (which by our count numbers twice as many as victories he’s had managing campaigns in that same time span). Click here.

Nothing wrong with that but in doing so Lee Corso, Pete Carroll, the University of Georgia, the Big Ten and the Rose Bowl all get sprayed in this two-minute drive-by executed by the Ragin’ Cajun. Carville ends his bullying of host Dana Jacobsen by going Revolution No. 9, repeating “I hate the Rose Bowl….. I hate the Rose Bowl”.

More BCS hate-mongering: We’re not the only ones who think the BCS stinks. T.V. ratings are down. Read here from Awful Announcing.

This time, Chargers are in over their heads?

B-Daddy here. I copied the title of this article from a column by an idiot sportswriter (but I repeat myself) in Indianapolis. But who knows, maybe he's right. He has a list of whiny excuses for the Colts last loss to the Bolts and opines how lightning don't strike twice. Well, basically. His thesis is that the Colts are oh so more talented and the last game was such an aberration that surely the Colts will win this time. I am dead certain that it is not a matter of talent, except maybe at quarterback, that will separate the Colts from the Chargers on Sunday, but rather the man pictured at left. He has yet to convince the BwD staff that he understands how to get the most out of this talented team. Some questions:
Will we sit back in a straight 3-4 and let Manning dink it down the field ten yards at a crack? Or will we bring some pressure and force some turnovers?
Will we see some deception to get LT in open space? For example, will we see Michael Turner and LT on the field together? Or will we depend solely on Philip Rivers to punish the defense for keying on LT. (My concern with Rivers is his sprained knee and inconsistency.)
Will we wait until half-time to do some pre-game planning? That strategy does have the advantage of giving the coaches more rest during the week, but I thought it was the players who needed the rest.

Don't get me wrong, there are many hallmarks of an upset going here.
1. The Colts fans seem overconfident, can't say for sure about the players.
2. The Colts lost the last game of the season. Lack of mo' going into the playoffs is never good.
3. This is reminiscent of 1995 against Pittsburgh, where the Steelers had lost to the Chargers in a meaningless game for them at the Murph. The Chargers went back to the Steel City and pulled off the 17-13 upset and ended up in the SuperBowl.

On the negative side, the bye week host has something like a 75% winning percentage in the playoffs.

OK we'll see how our questions get answered.