Well, football season is over again, goddammit, so now it's back to wimp sports like basketball and water polo to tide me over until the real sports to start again. Sorry ladies, I find golf to be amazingly boring and I think Tiger Woods is a little snot that needs a good asskicking. Sure, he's a good golfer...so what? I'm pretty good at picking my nose but you don't see me on the cover of any magazines. But I digress...my beef this month is with, arguably, the biggest idiots in the entire known universe (not including politicians or Hollywood Studio executives)... Sportswriters.
When the job of SPORTSWRITER is mentioned the mind wanders to glorious sportswriters of days past...to Grantland Rice...and Oscar Madison (hehe). But there are no Grantland Rices writing for the sports sections these days. These days we have the likes of BILL PLASCHKE (LA TIMES) and TJ SIMERS (LA TIMES).
Plaschke, a self-anointed "expert" on football in all it's forms has actually written some well received books in his day, which makes the drivel he vomits up on a daily basis for the LA Times all the more stupifying. This "expert" routinely makes predictions and is proven time and time again to be wrong. I still remember his "lock" of the season a few years back when he picked the Cleveland Browns as the frontrunner to win the Superbowl. They finished 4-12. Of such things sportswriters are NOT made. But Plaschke is a veritable GENIUS when compared to his comrade in arms TJ Simers. While Plaschke is dumb, at least he's smart enough not to alienate vast numbers of his readership by attacking teams just because he doesn't like them. Simers HATES the Cowboys with a passion and predicts almost every week that they will get stomped in that week's game. He lucked out THIS year because, well, the Cowboys DID suck this year. But even back when the Cowboys won 3 Superbowls in a 4 year period he would routinely pick teams like Arizona...Cincinnati...Tampa Bay...the DREGS of the NFL to beat the Boys.
Well, enough about that. How about those Sooners? What is funny to me is that although Oklahoma had played a tough schedule and beaten the #10,#2,#1,#19 and #8 teams (all of the wins in convincing fashion on the road except for the game vs NU)they were still massive underdogs to Florida St. What did FSU do to merit such respect? They lost to the only top 5 team they played before OU (Miami) and the biggest feathers in their bonnet were beating vastly overrated Clemson and Florida teams. Plus, the only team which had a tough defense (other than Miami) on their weak schedule, Georgia Tech, SHOULD have beaten FSU. I simply don't understand why FSU was the favorite at all, let alone 13 pt favorites. And after the bookies installed FSU as 13 pt favorites the media/sportwriters jumped on the bandwagon and said the game would be a mismatch, and that Miami/FSU were "clearly" in a class of their own (nevermind that Miami had lost to a clearly superior Washington team themselves).
In the end the truth was shown for all to see. OU was the TEAM clearly in another class and the sportswriters and bookies were revealed for the horses asses that they well and truly are. Bobby Bowden, always gracious in defeat, was especially cutting with his comment about FSU not being in the same league with OU. Oh well...enough bitching for now.