Nom de plume: Rivrdog

So you think you've got brass balls, eh?

Not compared to this dude, you don't.

His pair would be titanium, I'd guess.

How about those Ducks!

The Oregon Ducks (PBUTFB) put their heart and soul into the "Civil War" game last night, and so did the Oregon State Beavers, but not quite enough. The game's outcome was in doubt until the final 6 minutes, at which point the Ducks reverted to old-school football and ground it out, eating the clock up in a final drive which saw them convert two fourth-down situations. The previously-disgraced running back, LeGarrett Blount (he pronounces it "blunt", but he plays football in Eugene, OR, so that's to be expected), contributed well with his usual bruising style of running straight at his defenders, scoring a TD and several important medium distance rushes.

LaMichael James, Oregon's all-season replacement for Blount, rushed for 166 yards and three TDs, and just cemented his place in the PAC-10 record books with almost 1,500 yards rushing this season (as a freshman!).

Oregon now faces Ohio State in the Rose Bowl. Before I saw Blount, suspended for most of the season, play so well last night, I would have had my doubts, but now I think the Ducks should beat Ohio State. The Duck running attack, with James, Blount and QB Masoli, who himself has rushed for 800-900 yards this season, is virtually unstoppable, and is probably the best FBS running attack in the country. Masoli is a journeyman passer, no Colt McCoy, but he completes enough to his wide receivers to make all opponents have to spread their defense, which allows his rushers to roll up their usual huge totals.

This Rose Bowl won't be won in the trenches. A scrambling QB like Masoli usually makes up for a less-than-bruising O-line (the Ducks have had far better O-lines than this year), and takes the starch out of the strong pass rush, as Ohio State has.

Oh, and my football party went over well, too. the Winner's Wine was Taitinger Domaine Carneros Brut '05, superb bottle. The Main Meat, Wasabi Teriyaki Turkey Legs, went over well, and I WILL make those again (froze my bippy at my pit, though, outside temp 35 with a 15-20 mph wind). The gudwife made her standard, the Festive Taco Dip, and even cranked out a Hungarian Mushroom soup from scratch for those suffering from drafts in front of the flat-screen.

Rose Bowl Prediction: Ducks by three.

"CEO-type quarterbacks"

WTF, over? Mike Tirico is trying for the extra zing on the pregame for the Monday Night Football game between the New England Patriots and the New Orleans Saints (ESPN-TV). He’s comparing quarterbacks Tom Brady and Drew Brees. "They’re both CEO-type quarterbacks", he pontificates.

I hate to tell you this, Mike, but your job is NOT to invent new lingo for the game. The term you want is "field general".

CEO quarterback, eh? Now would they be Donald Trump or Walt Disney type CEOs?

The mind boggles.

Time for the game. Buh-bye.

L'Affaire de Woods

There's a lot of speculation about Tiger Woods' recent difficulties. In my local circle, mostly retired cops, those speculations tend to get a bit seamy.

This article seems to explain at least some of the possible answers to the questions in l'affaire Woods.

For Tiger, here's a little homebrew advice from the ol' Rivrdog: You're not going to put this behind you in the short order that your publicist and legal advisor seem to think. This is going to follow you to your next two or three tournaments, maybe longer. You'd be best to give some concrete answers, not the trip down De Nial in a papyrus canoe you offered the world this morning.

Oh, BTW Tiger, hire a chauffeur. With your money, you won't even notice the drop in your bank account.

BTW2, Tiger, if you need a divorce, get one and get it behind you. You have a lot of good golf yet to play.

Civil War

The football game, not the coming internal strife.

The Oregon Ducks played a heart-stopping two-overtime football game in Tucson, AZ last night, winning it and setting up a deciding game with the Oregon State Beavers to decide the PAC-10 championship.

The annual in-state rivalry game is ALWAYS the most-hyped annual contest in the PAC-10, and now that it’s for all the marbles, the hype will be extreme.

To all that, add the fact that it’s the featured Thursday Night game on ESPN a week after Thanksgiving, and they’re going to hype the game as well.

Oregon is a young team, with a sophomore quarterback and a freshman running back. Let’s hope the hype doesn’t get to them.

Now for the capper.

The game’s at Autzen! This will be the hottest ticket in the country for the regular season. I don’t have the ducats, but I think my daughter does...hmmmm.

I am embarrassed to be a Duck Fan

This guy said it better than I can, in probably fewer words, and with no  expletives.

The same Duck blog has a poll about what to do with the gangster, LeGarrette Blount. There are three options. I chose the "nuclear" option. By doing that, I have just written off the entire Duck PAC-10 Football season. Blount is THAT capable as a running back and there is no one to take his place.

The season may be toast anyway, since the new Head Coach, Chip Kelly, doesn't seem to have a handle on what it takes to get a team ready to play Division 1A football. This was clearly the most unprepared Duck team I have EVER seen take the field on it's first game. The 8-19 score would have been 0-38 if Boise State had been better prepared themselves.

The O-line couldn't have pushed it's way through a nursing home.

The running backs, Blount included, couldn't find holes to run through, and almost never got past the first BSU tackler.

Play selection (Coach Chip Kelly) sucked. Boise State's head coach mixed up his selections well, and kept his team moving (their Red Zone execution will be a nightmare source for them, to be fair). Oregon couldn't get a first down until well into the THIRD QUARTER.

On defense, there were more missed tackles than blue threads in the Smurf Turf (BSU plays on royal-blue turf). Unless the Ducks gang-tackled, they never stopped a BSU runner or receiver until the third man hit him. BSU ran between the tackles a LOT (why not, when it works!), and the Duck secondary failed to adjust to that 20-foot-wide football field by tightening up the secondary, so BSU just kept getting 5-9 yards up the middle, every time they tried it.

There were about 3 pass-interference calls on the Ducks in the first half, not bad, since the refs were calling it extra-close, and BSU threw 6 to 8 sideline patterns in the half. They didn't need to pass much though, with their interior running backs' performances and the total domination of their O-line over Oregon's D-line.

Even ESPN sucked. By now, I'm used to the Ducks getting no respect, but there were two Boise State announcers in the booth, no lie. Also, ESPN has had almost a year for their engineers to figure out how to adjust the color transmission to deal with the effects of royal-blue uniforms on royal-blue turf. They didn't, and even on my 42" plasma with it's rich color discrimination, the game was largely unwatchable, mainly because there were few close-up shots taken, mostly overhead shots. Normally, when a wide-lens overhead shot of a play is taken, it is immediately followed by a close-up in slo-mo. This was rarely done, and all we got was those damn overhead shots on 2/3 of the plays. It was like watching game film. The "experts in the booth" never bothered to analyze Oregon's failures, which they should obviously have done since they were both Boise State fans.

What suckage. Now we're waiting for the PAC-10 commish (FNG also) and the NCAA to drop the hammer on Blount. Athletic Director Mike Bellotti ought to beat them all to it, terminate his scholarship and give him the boot. There are enough gangsters in professional sports, let Blount volunteer for the next NFL draft and see if some softie coach like Andy Reid of the Eagles will let him try out for water boy. He might have been excused for letting the taunt of the BSU defensive tackle Hout get to him after the game, but he has ZERO excuses for then going after two Duck fans in the stands, who did nothing more than tell him he sucked (the truth).

I don't remember when a Head Coach was fired after just the first game of the season, but I surmise that there are a few Duck fans researching that right now...

Was there ANYTHING good that a fan might hang on to? Yep, the Ducks have a world-class punter (their most-needed player right now). The kid is just a frosh, too. Jeremiah Masoli HAS matured as a QB, has a VERY quick release on the short stuff into the flat and the screen zones, and was only intercepted once. He has studied well and practiced hard. He WILL play on Sunday in the NFL someday. Unless the rest of the team, from the Head Coach on down, climbs on the excellence bandwagon with him, the entire Duck season will be a lost cause.

Where does Oregon start? The O-line. The runners MUST have better holes to get into the secondary with. Masoli NEEDS more time if he's ever going to throw a pass over 4 yards. Get those big boyz back into the weight room and put another 100# on their weight bars. Feed them better. Hell, find them hotter wimmen. Whatever it takes so they don't get shoved all over the field AGAIN, this time by the Purdue Boilermakers at Autzen Stadium next Saturday.

I'm trying to "get it"

So far this weekend, I have watched about 3 hours of the "X-Games".

It's supposed to be "Sport". I'm really trying hard to understand the games in terms of Sport. I've done everything but turn my hat around backwards.

There are heats and medal rounds in skateboard, motocross, freestyle bicycle-in-the-half-pipe (excuse me, I don't know what that's called as a unitary sport) and Rally Car, among others.

The rally car races are supposedly based on the wildly-popular (in Europe) bad-road rallies. We used to have just a few of those here, including the Michigan Upper Peninsula's notorious "POR" (Press On Regardless), which regularly killed a driver or navigator or spectator or two. It used to run within a few miles of my house when I lived up there, but I never went to it, since ice-fishing was a MUCH better excuse to freeze my ass and get drunk on Peppermint Schnapps.

In the X-Games, most of the Rally Car racing is done in the main stadium, with some parking-lot work (which used to be called Gymkhana) and some brief speed runs over short roads with a layer of dirt laid down on them. The Subaru WRX seems to dominate (and may be the required car for the race). I attended a few Gymkhana races in my youth, and I seem to remember that faster runs could be made WITHOUT drifting the car around corners with all tires spinning (well, there weren't any 4WD sports cars then). Maybe tire smoke is scored.

I dunno about these X-Games. They have a serious lack - no tradition, and when they DO try to be traditional to some degree (motocross has been around for quite a while), they succumb to the temptation to add un-necessary complications to the events. In this version of motocross, there is a huge jump required. Same in Rally Car. Why? The objective in both courses is to get around the track faster than anyone else, not to see how much "air" a dirt bike or a Subaru can get. "Catching air" slows you down, and of course, you have zero control while catching air.

Then again, all you have to do is gaze at the main sponsors. Almost ALL of them have something to do with caffeine addiction. The "energy drinks" seem to be sponsoring almost all the events.

Maybe it's entertainment for the youth of today, who have probably grown tired of traditional sport with it's rules that never change. It is these rules that give us some standard by which to measure those who participate in those traditional sports down through the ages, though. I can feel fairly sure that Babe Ruth, the Sultan of Swat, would still be the home-run king if he were playing today, because the rules of baseball haven't changed much.

Seventy years from now, will anyone be able to say that about a skateboarder?

"Thank you for giving me back my life"

...Helio Castroneves to car owner Roger Penske (and maybe to God as a prayer of thanks) after winning the Indianapolis 500 IRL race.

Background: Last year, the IRS accused Castroneves of hiding US$5M of his income in Panama (that income in question was earned in Mexico, I believe, at races there), and Castroneves refused to plea bargain and a trial ensued. He was just found Not Guilty and the Government dropped the last charge last week.

This week, he gets into his beautifully-prepared car and runs a smart race, easily leading the last 30 laps or so and winning by over two seconds.

That's MY idea of a perfect week. Yessir, kick the IRS to the curb one day and two days later win the Indy 500. Good week, yes.

"Wrong Ball" trick football play

Every baseball fan has probably heard of the "hidden ball" trick, where the infield tosses the ball around, the pitcher pretends to have it and prepares to throw a pitch, the runner on first takes a lead, and is immediately tagged out by the first baseman, who has the ball hidden in his glove. It actually works, but rarely.

How about a similar type of play, but in football?

Impossible, you say?

Here's a video.

Probably wouldn't see that in the NFL, but I wonder what the highest level is football is where it has worked (or even been tried).

Holiday Bowl

Three and a half hours until kickoff.

Do not call.

Do not email.

Do not even text message or Tweet (04283) me until the game is over.

I'll be glued to my Vizio 42" Plasma watching the Oregon Ducks take apart the Oklahoma State Cowboys.

Oregon's average football day includes 500 yards of offense, and their slashing defense keeps most games one-sided. If QB Masoli could throw a downfield pass, the Ducks would be waiting a few more days and be playing for the national title this year.

Masoli's getting better, and hopefully, next year he will have a stronger arm and better eye, but in the meantime, Belotti's gang will beat up on OKy State.

Guaranteed.

Go Ducks!

*****************************************************************************

UPDATE: 123008 2202 PST: Tough game, but the toughest men on the field were Ducks, so they won. It was a classic Cowboy ass-kicking contest, but the Cowboys lost this one. The Duck defense knocked their #1 receiver/back out of the game, then put THREE bell-ringing hits on their QB which took his edge away, and QB Masoli DID throw exactly three downfield passes, connected them, but RUSHED for three TDs in the third quarter alone.

After watching the Ducks prevail 42-31 in that nail-biter, I turned on the Trailblazers game. Wasn't expecting much, since the World Champion Boston Celtics were in town and Blazer star Brandon Roy was sidelined, but with the game tied at 64 at turn of the fourth quarter, I pulled up a chair and got out the Teacher's. By the time I had put two good hits on the Teacher's, the Blazers had traded the Celtics blow for blow, and stymied THEIR stars (hell, the Celtics are ALL stars), and the hometown crew sent the Celtics packing back to Parquet-land with a five point loss, only their 5th of the year.

Decent night of sports for Oregon.