Wednesday, August 09, 2006
LIKE SANDS TROUGH THE HOURGLASS, THESE ARE THE GAMES OF OUR LIVES
Capital One Bowl Zen
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All fans and even sporadically enthusiastic social hangers-on of the game can all recall a great game, a fun game, a drunken game, an intense finish that uplifted them for an afternoon, or an entire weekend. In honor of the impending kickoff to the 2006 season, SMQ resolves over the next three weeks to share a few of the personal moments that have fueled and reinforced his irreversible affection and obsession for the apparent foolishness known as college football.
TODAY: January 1, 2005: Iowa 30, LSU 25
Ah, these were simpler times: gas was ludicrous at $1.59.9, Hurricane Katrina was months away. Young SMQ, having eluded the unsettling and persistent New Year's Eve advances of a lonely, anonymous, middle-aged aunt-type at the wedding party of a high school friend's father, was laboring to conceal his only January 1 hangover to date when father of SMQ asked, "Did you wear a tie last night? It's in the driveway."
Consequently, the morning's games were a haze. Vince Young (and, we forget, the also-spectacular Braylon Edwards) would be opening eyes everywhere hours later, but early on, the Gator, Cotton and Outback bowls were less enthralling than the largest possible cup of water.
Anyone inclined to recall such trivialities at all will remember the 2005 Capital One Citrus Bowl  almost exclusively for Drew Tate's desperation heave ho to win, improbably hauled in by fifth-year senior Warren Holloway for his first career touchdown at the gun, and Tate's spontaneous, sprinting, helmet-pumping reaction. Which was itself suitably memorable.
For SMQ, though, the fog briefly lifted sometime late in the third quarter, just prior to LSU's insertion of hyped, untested redshirt freshman JaMarcus Russell for senior Marcus Randall and struggling Matt Flynn, around the time Iowa launched consecutive drives of 12, 8 and 12 plays to build a 12-point lead early in the final quarter, when ennui morphed into a barely describable state of something like nirvana: Michael Jordan once described "The Zone" in basketball as looking at the basket and seeing a big ol' empty bucket, and similarly, very gradually, SMQ began to view the game in what he felt was its truth, stripped of adornment. Not the game of football, generally, but of college football specifically, of its messiness, inconsistency, of this huge, impossibly wide field that looks so confined when the professionals step on, of the substitutions, the depth and the mass quantity of athletes directly involved, and fleeting successes immediately forgotten but also quietly carried around with them forever, of the often subtle and sometimes convulsive ebbs and flows, momentum and strategy born of trial and error and the effortless focus that comes with experience and immersion in a game that takes its time, breathes, evolves and develops its own specific rhythm – the unpredictable but palpable and inherent rhythm, precisely, in danger of succumbing to the commercialized creep of conformity. An acute awareness of the haphazard process of micro-evolution, whether or not its exact nature could be understood by the lay observer.
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Mahayanan conception of the paramitas and the ideal of the bodhisattva's universal salvific power: Drew Tate hands off
And of its ultimate indifference: after Russell had come off the bench to lead LSU to two late touchdowns for a late one-point lead – and SMQ had returned to a more normal state of basic nausea - the un-thinking desperation of the Tate-Hollingsworth heave mocked in a way the effort and sweat that had preceded it, and exhilaratingly justified it all at once. On other levels, Tate’s reaction, in the unlikely event the game allowed him to be in the position to react to anything at all, would have been a penalty.
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11:14 AM
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WELCOME...
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And don't let the name fool ya - second guessing the phenomenal athletic feats and split-second decisions of college kids under extreme physical duress is for every day of the week.
AWWW!! The totally nicest people, like, ever!...
How much football does he watch? Dude's got insights on -everybody-, and by everybody, I mean everybody. Throw in some of the best writing in the blogosphere, and we're talking about a daily must-read.
- Burnt Orange Nation
SMQ starts to sound more and more like the Gregg Easterbrook of our ideal memories every day - whip-smart, systematic, omnivorous in his intellectual tastes and yet unafraid of the cheap joke.
- Every Day Should Be Saturday
Sunday Morning Quarterback is one of our favorite football blogs on the internet.
- State Fans Nation
Sunday Morning Quarterback is a killer football blog if you are a college football junkie. It is run by one of the most thoughtful, intelligent, and analytical writers in the college football blogosphere...The guy is thorough and detailed and provides a level of analysis you are not going to find anywhere else .
- Bruins Nation
Just another hack writer who hasn't done one lick of research...
- SOT2
...the pride of Southern Mississippi ever since Brett Favre turned into an ESPN soap opera, has the sort of prose knack that can keep you riveted to a preview about any one of D-IA's scrubbier members ... should be given gifts.
- MGoBlog
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e-mail Sunday Morning Quarterback at sundaymorningqb@yahoo.com
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PREVIOUSLY FROM SMQ:
2006 Preview
Anatomy of an Underdog
BlogPoll: 1-10/11-25/Roundtable
The ACC
The Big Ten
The Big XII
The Sun Belt
Running Departments
The Rap Sheet
July 29/Aug. 1/Aug. 9/Aug. 16/Aug.19/Aug. 25/Sept. 28/Oct. 4/Oct. 5/Oct. 18/Oct. 26/Nov. 2/Nov. 7/Nov. 8/Nov. 28/Dec. 2/Dec. 8/ Dec. 11/Dec. 18/Dec. 21/Feb. 6/Feb. 10/April 7/April 14/April 21/April 29/May 6/May 12/May 19/May 26/June 2/June 10/June 16/June 24/June 30/July 8/Aug. 4
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SMQ-APPROVED
COLLEGE FOOTBALL PAGES
News from the Big Guys
ESPN/ College Football News Wire
Sports Illustrated
FOX
CBS Sportsline
USA Today
Opinion: Columnists and bloggers
Around the Oval (Ohio State)
Badger Sports (Wisconsin)
The Blue-Gray Sky (Notre Dame)
Block U (Utah)
BoiFromTroy (Southern Cal)
Bruins Nation (UCLA)
Burnt Orange Nation (Texas)
The Corporate Headquarters of the San Antonio Gunslingers
Dave Sez (Virginia)
Dawg Sports (Georgia)
ESPN: Ivan Maisel/Pat Forde
Every Day Should Be Saturday (Florida)
FOX: Pete Fiutak
Golden Tornado (Georgia Tech)
Heisman Pundit
I'm a Realist (Georgia)
Journalism is for Rock Stars (Alabama)
Mark May Be Wrong
MDG CFB (Fresno State)
Mountain Lair (West Virginia)
MGOBlog (Michigan)
Orange::44 (Syracuse)
Paradigm Blog (Michigan)
Paul Westerdawg (Georgia)
Pitch Right (Navy)
Rammer Jammer Yellow Hammer (Alabammer)
Section Six
Sexy Results (Virginia)
SI: Stewart Mandel/John Walters
Sporting Fools (Florida State)
Straight Bangin' (Michigan)
Texas A&M and Baseball, In No Particular Order (Texas A&M)
The 614 (Ohio State)
The House That Rock Built (Notre Dame)
The Sporting Gnomes (Clemson)
Tiger Pundit (Clemson)
We Must Ignite This Couch (West Virginia)
The Wizard of Odds
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The Blog Poll
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WANNA DO SOME RESEARCH? NERD! HERE'S SOME QUICK REFERENCES:
College Football Data Warehouse
College Football Research Center
College Football News
cfbstats.com
Football Commentary
THE STANDINGS
THE POLLS
INDIVIDUAL STATISTICS
Rushing
Passing
Receiving
All-Purpose
Scoring
Tackles
Sacks
Interceptions
Tackles For Loss
Field Goals
Punting
Kickoff Returns
Punt Returns
TEAM STATISTICS
Rushing Offense
Passing Offense
Total Offense
Scoring Offense
Rushing Defense
Passing Defense
Total Defense
Scoring Defense
Turnover Margin
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Past Seasons
2005
Thursday Morning Quarterback
Sept. 29/Oct. 6/Oct. 20/Oct. 27/Nov. 3/Nov. 10/Nov. 17/Nov. 24/Dec. 1
Sunday Morning Quarterback
Oct. 2/Oct. 23/Oct. 30/Nov. 6/Nov. 13/Nov. 27
Stat Relevance Watch
Part One/Part Two/Part Three
SMQ Bowl Blitz
New Orleans/GMAC/Las Vegas/Poinsettia/Motor City
SMQ's [Hurricane-Abbreviated] 2005 Preview
Top 25 Countdown/Methodology
All-America Team
ACC
BIG EAST
BIG TEN
BIG XII
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