Sports: September 2008 Archives

Or not. Just a couple of random thoughts for this weekend. It’s been a crazy weekend of college football so far, with at least 4 Top 10 teams losing, a couple of huge underdogs (Navy, Maryland) winning, and my alma mater Rice scoring 77 points in a game (they won this time). Even Duke won an ACC game (yes, the one that earlier argued it was the worst football team in America). Yup, this is why I like rooting for the underdog (at least, most of the time — I’ll still root for Rice if they are favored).

But I also wanted to leave you with this note. I’m working on a very large program (over 9-figure total expenditure) at my current place of employment. The program manager (a good guy) has posted one of those demotivator posters near his cubicle, hopefully as a joke. The poster is shown below. The punchline is that our program is actually nicknamed Pyramid.

Looks like Ike is trying to line up Houston for a strike. Good luck to everyone down there.

Flashing back to a posting I had a while back about Duke University’s lawyers successfully arguing that Duke’s football team is as bad as you can get. Now, we have footage from the arguments where Duke’s lawyer says, “Duke is probably the worst football team in Division I football. Everybody knows that. That’s no secret.” Wow. I guess that’s how you win a lawsuit, but it sure doesn’t make the football players feel any better.

Sorry if you get tired of the Rice football entries, but it’s an easy way to post my thoughts.

For the second straight weekend, the Rice Owls football team was on TV. And they were not looking as good as last week. They were down 28-13 at the start of the 4th quarter (and outgained on offense 2 to 1), and even under 7 minutes, they were still down by 35-20. But then they scored a touchdown, made a defensive stop, then went 93 yards for another touchdown. Then the tying 2-point conversion.

But there was over a minute left, and Memphis got the ball back and was driving for at least a field goal when this happened:

So yes, Rice is now 2-0, heading to a showdown at Vanderbilt (also 2-0) this weekend. One of these “traditional” doormats is going to be 3-0 after this weekend. Hard to believe, to be honest. The highlight reel of touchdowns (and a couple other key plays) can be found on this highlight reel from CBS College Sports.

Watch CBS Videos Online

Actually, the interception made ESPN’s Game Changing Performance vote. Vote before Thursday for the Week 2 entries (Rice is the third video). Here’s the summary videos, for longevity sake.

I previously noted Rice’s win from this past weekend, but wanted to call attention to some publicity the team got today on ESPN. Chase Clement and Jarrett Dillard, the likely record-setting QB/WR duo for Rice, were interviewed today on ESPN College Football Live. Very well-spoken examples of the scholar-athletes at Rice.

(I’m not going to defend the moustaches. However, I think some of us have equally bad examples from our past.)

They also noted that Jarrett has a weekly blog posting at the NY Times this year. Here’s his first entry. (Unfortnately, he doesn’t get his own feed, but it’s blended in with the rest of their college sports blog.) Pretty cool stuff. Good luck guys as you chase that NCAA record.