Yahoo College Bowl Pick-em

[SlowwHand]

Both Ohio and Penn have excellent defenses... Texas looked average at best against Ohio... USC chewed up Penn's Defense. USC looked like the better team to me.

Who won Texas vs. Ohio State? Penn State has the most vanilla offense out there.

[Imran Siddiqui]

So margin of victory doesn't matter to you? A 20-19 game is the same as a 40-19 game? Please. I think the Penn State vs. Ohio State game (and the entirety of the season) showed that Penn State and Ohio State were very closely matched. Both Ohio State and Penn State got pasted by Southern California. Texas escaped by the skin of its teeth over Ohio State.

And as for Penn State's offense being vanilla, . I'm guessing Sloww didn't watch a single Penn State aside from the Rose Bowl, if that. Ohio State is a more vanilla offense (it's just a basic pro-set offense, really), though Pryor has the speed to break out when a pass isn't there.

[SlowwHand]

Playing against the same team. or a totally different game?

And you would be wrong. I have a transplanted Pennsylvania friend who bleeds Penn State.If they played on the tube here, it was watched.

[SlowwHand]

1 The Guild of Calamitous Intent Guynemer 400 21 of 34
2 Deity Dude * Robert M 394 20 of 34
3 ACC #1 in 2008! nakedgentsrut 387 19 of 34
4 Siddiqui Selection Committee isid80 378 19 of 34
5 Dallas Dwarf Tossers SlowwHand 353 19 of 34
6 Mingapulcos civming 353 16 of 34
7 Supr49ers SWAGS supr49er 348 18 of 34
8 Kitty Litter Confidential Tuberski 337 17 of 34
9 Vicious Rabbits golfflog04 335 15 of 34
10 berz diplomaticrat 324 15 of 34

[Ming]

Both Penn and Ohio State have excellent defenses... And Texas was LUCKY to win the game, while USC showed it could still score pretty much at will. USC proved on the field that it was a better team than Texas

Again... The Big 12 showed it's weakness against good defenses... right down the line. It's easy to score points in your conference games when nobody believes in defense... but as shown in the Bowl games, good defense could shut down the "vaulted" offenses of the Big 12. The stats are there for everybody to see

[Berzerker]

congrats guy

[SlowwHand]

Yeah, you can look at the final standings and see that the Big 12 was over-rated.

[Supr49er]

All hail Guynemerand The Guild of Calamitous Intent.

[Deity Dude]

Congrats Guy - looks like another 2nd place for me.

[Imran Siddiqui]

And its just about official: Crabtree is jumping to the pros.

[SlowwHand]

High school story.

http://sports.espn.go.com/espnmag/story?section=magazine&id=3789373

Life of Reilly
There are some games in which cheering for the other side feels better than winning.
by Rick Reilly


Gainesville State players douse head coach Mark Williams in celebration.



They played the oddest game in high school football history last month down in Grapevine, Texas.

It was Grapevine Faith vs. Gainesville State School and everything about it was upside down. For instance, when Gainesville came out to take the field, the Faith fans made a 40-yard spirit line for them to run through.

Did you hear that? The other team's fans?

They even made a banner for players to crash through at the end. It said, "Go Tornadoes!" Which is also weird, because Faith is the Lions.

It was rivers running uphill and cats petting dogs. More than 200 Faith fans sat on the Gainesville side and kept cheering the Gainesville players on—by name.

"I never in my life thought I'd hear people cheering for us to hit their kids," recalls Gainesville's QB and middle linebacker, Isaiah. "I wouldn't expect another parent to tell somebody to hit their kids. But they wanted us to!"

And even though Faith walloped them 33-14, the Gainesville kids were so happy that after the game they gave head coach Mark Williams a sideline squirt-bottle shower like he'd just won state. Gotta be the first Gatorade bath in history for an 0-9 coach.

But then you saw the 12 uniformed officers escorting the 14 Gainesville players off the field and two and two started to make four. They lined the players up in groups of five—handcuffs ready in their back pockets—and marched them to the team bus. That's because Gainesville is a maximum-security correctional facility 75 miles north of Dallas. Every game it plays is on the road.

This all started when Faith's head coach, Kris Hogan, wanted to do something kind for the Gainesville team. Faith had never played Gainesville, but he already knew the score. After all, Faith was 7-2 going into the game, Gainesville 0-8 with 2 TDs all year. Faith has 70 kids, 11 coaches, the latest equipment and involved parents. Gainesville has a lot of kids with convictions for drugs, assault and robbery—many of whose families had disowned them—wearing seven-year-old shoulder pads and ancient helmets.

So Hogan had this idea. What if half of our fans—for one night only—cheered for the other team? He sent out an email asking the Faithful to do just that. "Here's the message I want you to send:" Hogan wrote. "You are just as valuable as any other person on planet Earth."

Some people were naturally confused. One Faith player walked into Hogan's office and asked, "Coach, why are we doing this?"

And Hogan said, "Imagine if you didn't have a home life. Imagine if everybody had pretty much given up on you. Now imagine what it would mean for hundreds of people to suddenly believe in you."

Next thing you know, the Gainesville Tornadoes were turning around on their bench to see something they never had before. Hundreds of fans. And actual cheerleaders!

"I thought maybe they were confused," said Alex, a Gainesville lineman (only first names are released by the prison). "They started yelling 'DEE-fense!' when their team had the ball. I said, 'What? Why they cheerin' for us?'"

It was a strange experience for boys who most people cross the street to avoid. "We can tell people are a little afraid of us when we come to the games," says Gerald, a lineman who will wind up doing more than three years. "You can see it in their eyes. They're lookin' at us like we're criminals. But these people, they were yellin' for us! By our names!"

Maybe it figures that Gainesville played better than it had all season, scoring the game's last two touchdowns. Of course, this might be because Hogan put his third-string nose guard at safety and his third-string cornerback at defensive end. Still.

After the game, both teams gathered in the middle of the field to pray and that's when Isaiah surprised everybody by asking to lead. "We had no idea what the kid was going to say," remembers Coach Hogan. But Isaiah said this: "Lord, I don't know how this happened, so I don't know how to say thank You, but I never would've known there was so many people in the world that cared about us."

And it was a good thing everybody's heads were bowed because they might've seen Hogan wiping away tears.

As the Tornadoes walked back to their bus under guard, they each were handed a bag for the ride home—a burger, some fries, a soda, some candy, a Bible and an encouraging letter from a Faith player.

The Gainesville coach saw Hogan, grabbed him hard by the shoulders and said, "You'll never know what your people did for these kids tonight. You'll never, ever know."

And as the bus pulled away, all the Gainesville players crammed to one side and pressed their hands to the window, staring at these people they'd never met before, watching their waves and smiles disappearing into the night.

Anyway, with the economy six feet under and Christmas running on about three and a half reindeer, it's nice to know that one of the best presents you can give is still absolutely free.

Hope.

[SlowwHand]

dp

[reismark]

Breaking news: Tebow to return for senior season

I knew the kid was smart. Let's see if Harvin & Spikes match him in the intelligence department.

[Imran Siddiqui]

I'm sure they told Tebow that he'd be a 3rd round pick or something. Makes it a bit easier to make the decision to stay .

[Tuberski]

High school story.
http://sports.espn.go.com/espnmag/st...ine&id=3789373

Very nice story, it should have it's own thread in Off Topic.

ACK!