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Fiscal Cliff Football Trash Talk

There is really no explanation for the cowardice in Washington DC that allows the most important items of governance to be backed into corners and to edge of cliffs before some slimy compromise screwing everybody and punting the rest down the road is made. Just happened with literally the essence of Fourth Amendment law on FISA, and not the insane “fiscal showdown”. And then, once done, the Monty Python Sir Robin like legislators turn their tail and flee under the cover of some holiday diversion that will occupy the feeble minds of the public until they can be consumed by the next idiotic disaster in the making. It is just all depressing. If the people in our national government these days are our best and brightest, we are truly fucked. Blerrrgh.

So, here, instead of worrying about the DC Wile E. Coyote’s hurtling toward the fabricated cliff, we are gonna talk some football. Much more satisfying. The big story, of course, is Week 17, the final regular season slate of games, in the NFL. Before we get to the Sunday Pros though, there are some college Saturday Joes on tap.

There are five lower tier bowls Saturday. Hard to get too excited by Rice and Air Force in the Armed Services Bowl, but the other four have some watchable matchups. West Virginia and Syracuse in the Pinstripe Bowl at Yankee Stadium could be a real sleeper as they are old foes from when both were in the Big East. Both QBs are very good, even if not that well known. The Mountaineers’ Geno Smith got some early attention this year, but the team struggled and the focus went away. He is very good. However Syracuse’s Ryan Nassib got no attention despite turning in an incredible year, breaking school records in many categories. TCU and Michigan State pair off in the Buffalo Wild wings bowl right here at Sun Devil Stadium in Tempe. Both teams underachieved for the year; hard to see much excitement there.

The premier game for the day is Texas and Oregon State in the Alamo Bowl. Mack Brown and the Whorens had a pretty weak year, but still finished at 8-4 and ranked #23. The Beavers really had a consistently outstanding year, going 9-3 with a #13 ranking. Two of the three Beavs losses came against powerhouses Stanford and Oregon, and they were very much in both games. Mack Read more