More Smiles, Less Smiles

The Buckeyes have black eyes because they turned a blind eye to the warning signs.
And, when that happens, the subsequent whoopin' is usually fierce and painful.

It all began a few hours before tonight's tussle in the Superdome when one of those recently-aired "This Is SportsCenter" promos hit the airwaves.
In this one, Richard Simmons was leading the inner-office aerobics and Brutus Buckeye collapsed from exhaustion during the workout.

Then, only minutes before kickoff, Tom Rinaldi (we think it was) offered a pointless anecdote about Ohio State opting to wear the crimson jerseys tonight.
Somebody else echoed the "crimson" sentiment -- but, by then, it was too late.

Brutus Buckeye was still lying on the office floor ... unable to get to a text message to America that Ohio State's official version of red is actually SCARLET, not crimson.
Ballgame!

Once the school colors get mixed up, the dominoes will fall -- just like Brutus.

So, under the same roof whereupon the LSU Tigers won a national championship four years ago when they throttled the crimson-clad Oklahoma Sooners, they outclassed their scarlet-shirted opponent and Coach Sweatervest.

This was a semi-watchable ballgame (except for the part wherein Ali Highsmith frickin' decapitated Todd Boeckman in much the same manner in which, six days earlier, the Georgia Bulldogs -- in the same building, no less -- continually body-slammed Hawaii QB Colt Brennan amid our chuckles of watching Colt's skull gettin' righteously bounced on the Superdome turf >>>> "Hey, right tackle ... stop practicing your Haka Dance and try using yer dance-step moves to put yer 380-lb. frame in the way of that dude with the 'G' on his red helmet who is sprinting past you! ... Never mind! ... Too late!").

There's not much to talk about from that game which ended approx. 45 minutes ago -- that is, unless somebody wants to make mention Warning Sign #3 which Ohio State ignored.
That one states: In the past 20 years, only two QBs who wore #17 have won a national championship -- and both of them were black QBs (Charlie Ward, Florida State, 1993 ... Tee Martin, Tennessee, 1997).

Boeckman is not black -- he's a white boy QB wearin' #17 -- and, so far, the college football gods haven't allowed white-boy #17s into the Kingdom to join the bounty of the harvest.

So, yeah ... just as we wrote last year when Heisman Trophy-winner Troy Smith (wearin' Art Schilchter's #10) wasn't nearly good enough to beat Florida, Sgt. Sweatervest needs to find either A) The next molecular-genetics-major QB (a la Craig Krenzel) or B) Somebody like that cardboard-cutout Keanu Reeves, who was ex-Ohio State QB Johnny Utah in "Point Break" and who was ex-Ohio State QB Shane Falco in "The Replacements" (Cornelius Greene and Joe Germaine -- a coupla clutch Buckeye QBs who wore #7 -- scoff at Hollywoodland for portraying Reeves as a throws-like-a-girl ... a left-handed girl ... Buckeye QB >>>>> although Herb Kirkstreit and Steve Bellisari ask, "What's the big deal?" since neither of them had the arm-strength of either Utah or Falco ... )

Back on the white-boy scene, here's a big "hats off" to LSU TE Richard Dickson catching two TD passes ... thus, becoming the first white-boy TE to catch two TDs in a national championship game IN THE HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSE.

Funny thing is, on that first TD, America likely received a 45-minute diatribe from FOX analyst Charles Davis before the GameDay dorks took their 30-minute whack at breaking down the play, but, here's the juice America:
That's called "a pop pass" ... teams were runnin' that in the '70s and '80s, particularly San Jose State QB Steve Clarkson to TE Tracy Franz back in the day (and it is simply adorable how TV-talkin' doofuses spend a lot of time analyzing and re-analyzing formations and tendencies and formation-related tendencies and blah blah blah ... it's a TD borne out of street ball ... four guys split to the right, OSU can't figure out who's guardin' who ... Flynn told Dickson he'd hit him at the fire hydrant or by the Davidson's Country Squier station wagon ... bingo! ... NOT a big mystery ... )

Since Fowler, Corso and Herb Kirkstreit only know three facets of college football -- A) Team speed B) The life story of every college head coach and C) Team speed -- America never learned what happened to LSU safety Craig Steltz after he suffered that stinger in the second quarter and had to leave the ballgame.
It's not as though the kid was named to most All-America teams.

In the ESPN warp, it's "hey, let's talk about the brilliant head coach and how that genius will utilize his team's speed to offset his opponent's team speed."

Again ... ESPN needs a Post-It note stuck on the GameDay fridge:
"College football is played by college football players."

The Winter X Games Network gives us more insight into the 4 DAYS of athletes in the Winter X Games than it does for 4 MONTHS of college football.

(By the way, in case anyone sez, "Lou Holtz has forgotten more about college football than you'll ever know" the most-sufficient comeback is, "His forgetfulness definitely shows.")

Gotta love that lisping, mushmouthed waste of space, waste of time ...

Well, now that LSU coach Less Smiles is fashioning a big, wide grin -- while Sgt. Sweatervest re-imagines what to do with those 50-day layoffs before the biggest game of the season -- America can now return to what really matters.

Such as non-stop Roger Clemens updates for the next 48 weeks.