sports: September 2005 Archives

I've had football on in the background as I've tended to various and sundry tasks today, and from that experience, I am prepared to draw three entirely separate conclusions:

1. The more I know about football, apparently, the less I know. Predicting winners against the spread seems to be a virtual impossibility for me. It's gotten so bad, in fact, that I'm thinking about pulling the old reverso next week: pick the winners as I think they'll happen, and then reverse each of my picks. Yes, it's gotten to that point.

2. There's a VISA commercial with Tom Brady and his linemen, who follow him everywhere. When he asks why, one of them replies that they're not linemen, but in fact "figurative metaphors," who represent the 5 layers of VISA security. Okay, kind of clever, but wait a sec. "Figurative metaphors" is redundant--all metaphors are figurative.

3. Finally, when Jimmy Smith caught an overtime TD pass in the Jaguars' victory over the J-E-T-S, Jets, Jets, Jets, I had to listen to three different sets of announcers wax enthusiastic over the "timeless," "ageless," "old man" that was Smith. Smith's age? Yeah, it's the same as mine. I've never really been one of those people who worried too much about passing the age of my sports idols, mostly because I never imagined myself playing. But still. Old man? Ugh.

It's clearly getting to the point where even I don't want to watch football with me. That is all.

For as much as I seem to talk about sports, and given that the Carrier Dome is literally about 30 yards from my office, you would think that I had been to countless football games at the Dome. Not so, my friend.

Today's contest between SU and the Mountaineers of West Virginia was in fact the first college football game I've been to in a long long time, and my first ever football game at the Dome. Caught the game with Derek, who offers the following photoset for my nostalgia and your viewing pleasure. Back in the day, my family and I used to run up to Iowa City and tailgate outside Kinnick Stadium on a regular basis, but since then, I've been at four schools without real programs, and then Syracuse. And, to be entirely unfair, it's debatable whether SU has been much of a real program for the past few.

Today's game wouldn't have been especially strong evidence to the contrary. SU racked up an anemic 114 yards of total offense, and while their defense was generally tough (forcing 5 turnovers and setting up their lone touchdown), it wasn't enough. In fact, SU's offense actually outscored themselves, giving WVU eight points on an interception return and a safety, and claiming only seven points for themselves. They were struggggling to move the ball all day long--too many more performances like that, and the Greg Robinson era is going to be a short one.

The offense seemed to be working from an extremely limited playbook--they were running the same plays and the same routes over and over, whether they worked or not, and usually they didn't. SU's QB was remarkably inaccurate, even on fairly simple throws. In short, it was ugly. I'm willing to give the new coach a couple of years to import schemes, personnel, etc., but that's about it. And if their offense is as predictable as it was today, even that's not going to help much. And if not, well, there's always pleasure at a distance to be had following the lads in Iowa City or watching Oklahoma get roughed up by the Horned Frogs...