College Football Saturday: Week 11

A special Saturday good morning Fackers. Gameday kicks off in an hour, coming from Fort Worth this week where Utah takes on TCU later tonight. The winner of that game almost assuredly takes the Mountain West, and it's a game that pits the #16 team in the BCS against the currently undefeated #4 team. Yet no one will get to see it because it's on CBS College Sports, and no one gets that channel. Damn you non-BCS Conferences and your lack of a decent television contract!

Anyway, we're hitting the home stretch of the season here and there are a lot of big match ups this week. Here's a look at some of the games most of the civilized world will have the opportunity to watch:

Tennessee at Ole Miss, 12:00 CBS: Here's what you need to know about this game. Early Thursday morning, three Volunteer freshman were arrested for a failed armed robbery attempt, performed on campus, while wearing team issued attire. Meanwhile on Tuesday, administration at Mississippi announced that the band will no longer be playing long time anthem "To Dixie With Love" due to the students and fans continued insistence of yelling hot button phrase "The South will rise again" at the song's conclusion. Well then, so much for dispelling SEC stereotypes.

Michigan State at Purdue, 12:00 ESPN: Another week, another God-awful boring Big Ten game to kick off the day. With any luck Bob Griese will say something ethnically insensitive again and make this interesting. At the very least he'll be back at his alma mater this week; perhaps he'll find a more receptive audience.

#7 Georgia Tech at Duke, 12:00 ESPN2: So much for Duke wreaking havoc on the ACC standings last week. Still this is their best season in years, probably since future NY Giants QB washout Dave Brown was still there. Meanwhile, GT is looking completely legit right now, and coach Paul Johnson's decision to go for it on fourth and less than a yard while trailing by three in OT last week took some major cojones. Ugh and Pam fucking Ward is announcing this game. Why does she still have a job?

Florida State at Wake Forest, 12:00 ESPNU: Last week I made a crack about someone waking Bobby Bowden up so that FSU could pull off an upset and help BC in the process. Turns out there was more truth to that than I thought, as Bowden repeatedly asked reporters for clarification on details of the game during his post-game press conference. I'm all for respecting the legends and letting them go out on their own terms, but this is getting downright sad. Also, Christian Ponder is out for the season. The Seminoles are fucked.

Northwestern at Illinois, 12:00 ESPN Classic: I love it when the occasional game gets relegated to ESPN Classic and then for the duration of the game they have to plaster "LIVE" in the upper corner of the screen so people don't think it's a classic game. As if anyone could possibly confuse a match up between Northwestern and Illinois as a classic. I'd rather they just forgo this one and keep showing 20 year old AWA wrestling matches. Also, a big middle finger to Northwestern for upsetting Iowa last week and ruining my dreams of a season ending menage a trois atop the Big Ten standings.

Louisville at Syracuse, 12:00 SNY: I have absolutely nothing of substance or remotely funny to say about this game. But I don't want Big Willie Style to get mad at me for leaving it out. Is it poignant that Syracuse football and Mets baseball share a network for an afternoon? You decide.

Yale at Princeton, 1:oo YES: Hey Fans! Do you like 1-AA match ups between academic powerhouses that haven't been relevant in football for forty years, have no scholarship athletes, and whose own conference prevents them from taking part in post-season play? Well do we have a game for you! Coin Toss! Kickoff! Football! Next, only on YES!

#1 Florida at South Carolina, 3:30 CBS: Oooh, CBS gets a double header this week. Can Spencer Tillman's jheri curl handle the double shift? Word is Tim Brando is under orders to only allow him a single Soul Glo oil change over the course of the afternoon. Meanwhile, I'm surprised Verne Lundquist didn't angle for the noon game so he could catch an early bird special. Also, did you know that South Carolina Head Ball Coach Steve Spurrier won the Heisman Trophy at Florida and later went on to coach there? I bet you won't hear a word about that during this game.

#10 Iowa at #11 Ohio State, 3:30 ABC: Barring any late season upsets, this is essentially the Big Ten Championship Game. If history repeats itself, the Buckeyes will take this one assuring another blood letting at the hands of whomever in a BCS game. At least it will most likely be the Rose Bowl this year rather than the BCS Championship Game. Also, I can't think of a broadcast crew I dislike more than Sean McDonough, Matt Millen, and Holly Rowe. That's three special kinds of annoying, incompetent, and ugly, respectively.

Delaware at Navy, 3:30 CBS College Sports: I know I said no one gets this channel; I just wanted to use this as an opportunity to point out that Navy defeated Notre Dame in South Bend last weekend for the second time in as many trips. What would it say about ND if Delaware could pull off the upset of Navy today? Of course, ND beat BC, so what would that say about BC? Nevermind; forget I even brought this up.

Boston College at Virginia, 3:30 ESPN360: Speaking of BC, I've had about enough of this. This is BC's tenth game this year and all but three of them haven't been on TV. I didn't mind so much when there was still baseball going on, but now this really sticks in my craw. To make matters worse, my ISP doesn't have an agreement with ESPN360 (F-U Cablevision!). In happier news, I had to work on a Saturday last month and there I found out that not only does my work ISP offer ESPN360, but I can now access it remotely from anywhere by using my ESPN.com account. Take that assholes; I just wish I had known earlier in the season. So once again, I'll be watching this one with a laptop frying my balls for three hours. This is likely the end of days for Al Groh in Charlottesville after the Cavs faithful have been clamoring for his ouster for years. Aren't you glad you only had him for a year Jets fans?

Idaho at #6 Boise State, 3:30 PM ESPNU: Did you know that Idaho didn't get the nickname "Vandals" until they pranked Boise St by breaking into their stadium and spray painted their astroturf blue? Before that they were the Potato Farmers. Or maybe I just made all of that up.

#2 Alabama at Mississippi St, 7:00 ESPN: No matter what happens from here on in, the SEC Championship Game is already set with Alabama and Florida. Chances are both teams enter undefeated, but even if it's a one loss team winning that game, they're a dead lock to head to the BCS Championship Game. What I'm wondering is given the strength of the SEC and how much love they get in the polls, just how many losses would one of those teams have to have to be excluded from the BCS Championship Game? Two? Three? I doubt we'll even find out. By the way, this is your Erin Andrews game for the night - just in case you were wondering.

#17 Arizona at California, 7:00 Versus: Compared to 2007 and 2008, this college football season is downright boring without the weekly upsets and constant shuffling atop the rankings. The Pac-10 is apparently the last bastion of the chaos of the last two years. With Oregon's loss last week, 'Zona is in the driver's seat out west heading into next week's match up with the Ducks. They have to get by a good Cal team first. With three losses the Golden Bears are pretty much out of the picture. They'll be without star running back Jahvid Best who last Saturday suffered his second concussion in as many weeks on quite possibly the scariest hit I've ever seen.

Louisiana Tech at #8 LSU, 7:00 EPSNU: LSU is one of five FBS teams that go by "Tigers", but to my knowledge, they're the only school that keeps a live bengal fucking tiger on their campus. Think about that for a second. A bunch of drunken cajun college students sharing a campus with a carnivorous beast. I have no clue how this has yet to result in Sigfried and Roy type catastrophe.

Auburn at Georgia, 7:30 ESPN2: Auburn also goes by the Tigers, but they do not keep a live oversized feline mascot. Georgia, on the other hand, does have a live bulldog mascot and he has a past history with Auburn. I can't imagine how that would play out if it were to happen in Baton Rouge, but it wouldn't be pretty. I like tuning into these night games on ESPN2 for the studio coverage. I'm always intrigued to see if Wendi Nix is wearing her "sexy librarian" get up that night and markedly less intrigued to find out if former Giant back-up QB / Bachelor Jesse Palmer has gotten any dumber since last week.

Notre Dame at #12 Pittsburgh, 8:00 ABC: I know how much people love to bag on Bill Belichik, particularly in metro-NYC, but I've always been a fan of the guy thanks to the dominant Giant defenses that he led in my childhood. Love him or hate him, you gotta admit the guy's good. Since leaving Belichick, Romeo Crennel has done his best work in Coors Light commericals, Eric Mangini is about to get fired for the second time in less than a year, Josh McDaniels was a P.R. disaster at the outset and is now crashing back to earth, and Charlie Weis has one fat foot in a double wide grave. I think the loss to Navy last week was the final straw for him. Hey, Ty Willingham's available; why doesn't ND rehire him and foist all the blame on him again? Meanwhile, could Pitt overlook the Irish? This is a non-conference game while a de facto Big East Championship Game against Cincinnati on December 5th looms.

Texas Tech at #19 Oklahoma St, 8:oo ESPN360: This one's relegated to internet only in most of the country, but features an interesting match up of two crazier-than-usual coaches. Mike Gundy is still a man; Mike Leach is still a pirate.

Arizona St at #13 Oregon, 10:20 ESPN: Like Arizona, Oregon needs to keep winning in order to win the Pac-10. They may be able to afford one more loss so long as they can beat the Wildcats next week, giving them the head-to-head tiebreaker. Meanwhile, earlier this week Oregon prematurely rescinded their season long suspension of LeGarrette Blount, issued after he punched a helmetless Boise St. Bronco in the face following the season's opening game. I'm sure it's just coincidental that the decision was reversed after a critical loss.

Enjoy the games Fackers.

The Anxiety Of Influence

The Anxiety of Influence is a theory first put forth by literary critic Harold Bloom. He contended that all poets are inspired to write by existing poets and therefore their work is weaker because it's derivative of what came before. In order to free themselves from the shadow of older works, the strongest younger poets must form their own distinct style using one of six "Revisionary Ratios". Coaching an NFL team, like writing poetry, demands uniqueness in exchange for success. To succeed, a coach, much like a poet, must expand on the styles of those he worked under, not just imitate them.

In the book, Bloom proposes a sort of "poet tree" starting with Shakespeare who begat Milton who begat Keats and so on. In the NFL the coaching tree is even more direct, with the apprentice having actually studied under the master. In this case, Shakespeare would be Bill Parcells (It would be nice to trace it all the way back to Vince Lombardi, but Parcells only coached under Ray Perkins). His coaching tree is wide, with former assistants Bill Belichick, Tom Coughlin, Sean Payton, Ray Hanley, and Tony Sparano advancing to be head coaches in the NFL.

Belichick, being the strongest coach to descend from Parcells' tree, has become so strong that including college coaches, his tree is already wider than Parcells'. Eric Mangini, Romeo Crennel, Kirk Ferentz, Nick Saban, Pat Hill, Al Groh and Charlie Weiss have all leveraged their success under Belichick into head coaching jobs.

The two pupils that landed NFL jobs certainly have not enjoyed the success expected of them after leaving the Patriots. In four years with the Browns, Romeo Crennel had a 24-40 record while Eric Mangini (23-25) was just fired by the Jets with a year left on his contract. Coincidentally, the Jets, who went from 4-12 last year to 9-7 this year fired Mangini, who has now replaced Crennel with the Browns, who went from 10-6 to 4-12, at a job that Belichick was once fired from.

Not to say that Crennel is a stronger coach, but I think Mangini is still most plagued by the Anxiety of Influence, having an almost father-son like dynamic with Belichick. There were the icy, standoffish handshakes, the SpyGate tattling, and now son is following in father's footsteps to the one job he couldn't conquer.

This concept obviously applies to writing as well. I'm not the first person to use this concept in reference to sports. I believe that would be Max Kellerman, who occasionally casts Jordan as Shakespeare on his radio show on 1050ESPN, New York. He purports that Kobe suffers from the Anxiety of Influence while LeBron has been more successful in cutting his own path by distributing the ball and involving his teammates more than Jordan ever did. Kobe wears #24, as if to signify that he is the next Jordan, while LeBron wears #23 as a tribute, but has a much different playing style than him.

The stuff I write for this blog is undoubtedly influenced by the sports bloggers, writers and analysts I read and listen to. My pieces on collusion were inspired to some extent by Shysterball. I've explicitly paid homage to FJM. The post I wrote yesterday about the Eagles (and the name of this blog, for fuck's sake) have Big Daddy Drew's fingerprints all over them. I would not have come up with the idea for this post if I didn't listen to Kellerman at work basically every day.

Part of this phenomenon that Bloom fails to mention is that by virtue of being early to the medium, those guys had more room for original thought. They were frontiersman, staking their claims and finding their niches. Unlike the finite amount of land on the frontier though, the news cycle always churns up more material. It's the specific angles (like Awful Announcing or Shysterball) and conventions (like FJM, Leitch's "royal we" or the character sketches on KSK) that get taken up, sort of like styles of poetry. The problem with both is that, the later you are to the party, the more you have to tip toe around styles and voices that have already been established.

Will Mangini be successful with the Browns? That depends if he can step out of Belichick's shadow and establish his own coaching style that takes some of the core components of his sensei, and add some unique wrinkles of his own. Being fired by the Jets and the resulting fresh start with the Browns should give him the chance to start anew.

NFL Coaching Carousel Turns

As I write this, it looks like 3 NFL coaches have been ousted following abysmal seasons in which much was expected of them. Wade Phillips, Puppet Extraordinaire, appears to be safe. With the success of rookie head coaches Mike Smith, Tony Sparano and John Harbaugh, I would expect a lot of new coordinators/position coaches to be hired instead of head coach retreads.

Eric Mangini, New York Jets: After beating the hated AFC East rival Patriots and the previously undefeated Tennessee Titans, the Jets lost 4 out of their 5 to Denver, Miami, San Francisco, and Seattle to finish at 9-7. Mangini in his three seasons with the Jets was 23-26 and 0-1 in the playoffs. Chalk this firing up to Jets GM Mike Tannenbaum trying to cover his rear and deflect any criticism from him for signing #1 NFL Girly Man Brett Favre. As for the future, the “Mangenius” should have no trouble latching on as a defensive coordinator with a solid franchise or as a head coach at a destination like Detroit. It’s too bad the Sopranos is over so he can no longer make guest appearences. However, maybe James Gandolfini can teach him a few ways to off Favre for killing his season and coaching career.

Rod Marinelli, Detroit Lions: Coach Marinelli’s Lions finished 0-16 in 2008, the only team in NFL history to do such and 10-38 in 3 seasons. Don’t blame Marinelli for all of this, folks. This is Matt Millen’s work. Marinelli should latch on somewhere as a position coach, without his son-in-law in tow. No decent coach in his right mind should take this job.

Romeo Crennel, Cleveland Browns: After finishing 10-6 last season, the Browns were expected to be a playoff team. Instead, three starting quarterbacks and 16 dropped Braylon Edwards passes later, Crennel’s team finished 4-12, good for last in the AFC North. Despite the Browns having had 10-12 players who were either selected to the Pro Bowl or who were Pro Bowl alternates during the past two years, along with Romeo, GM Phil Savage is also expected to be canned. Like Mangini, Crennel should latch on with a team as a defensive coordinator. The Browns are expected to make runs at former Steelers coach Bill Cowher (I doubt he has any interest coaching in the same division as the Steelers) and Patriots vice president of personnel Scott Pioli.