Eight Feet Deep

Per­haps I could write about the upcom­ing talk Prez Obama will be giv­ing shortly about the sus­pected ter­ror­ist now dubbed “The Under­wear Bomber” and how things fell through cracks in our intel­li­gence and secu­rity sys­tems. But why bother? I’m sure it’s impor­tant and prob­a­bly well-intentioned and even insight­ful. How­ever, it’s only going to lead to more scream­ing and lying, yes lying, by Repub­li­cans law­mak­ers whose jobs are pre­dom­i­nantly leg­is­la­tors, but these days we find them mostly in the obstruc­tion and pre­var­i­ca­tion fields.

So I go with some­thing not impor­tant to mil­lions world­wide, but nonethe­less impor­tant here in the United States — the National Championship.

I say only the national cham­pi­onship because prob­a­bly more peo­ple know what I am talk­ing about with those two words than do not. That is, the four or five peo­ple who actu­ally read this blog. The game tonight is for­mally titled the Citi BCS National Cham­pi­onship. The first two words make me cringe when I say that: “Citi,” as in bank whose tele-support peo­ple can give me major pains in the ass, and “BCS” for Bowl Cham­pi­onship Series a.k.a. Big Crappy Sys­tem. I have a credit card for my job, a require­ment of my job actu­ally, through Citi. And, like many oth­ers, I think the BCS stinks as a way to pick cham­pi­ons. The sim­ple way to improve pick­ing cham­pi­ons involves play­offs. Thus more games. Thus more TV rev­enue, one would think. Thus per­haps not as many fans with their noses out of their col­lec­tive joints over their teams either not mak­ing the cut or los­ing the games.

One also would not have to lose any bowls in such a sys­tem although I don’t think it would hurt to cut a few here or there since there are 34 bowls. I think that’s a bit much.

Texas is the under­dog in the game, which is good in a way. I like under­dogs, mostly. But I am root­ing for the Long­horns. I know some of my more rabid Texas A & M friends and fam­ily might not like that. Some are so rabid they want to see A & M lose any game, period. That’s kind of how I used to feel about the Dal­las Cow­boys. I still am not much of a Cow­boys fan but under cer­tain sit­u­a­tions I like to see them win.

I’m not going to ana­lyze the upcom­ing game because I only know a lit­tle about each team hav­ing seen them play a few times and I speak of, mostly, Texas. All I can say is I hope it’s a good, clean con­test and per­haps with­out the insan­ity some such games, includ­ing ones Alabama played, have pro­duced. The 1954 Cot­ton Bowl comes to mind dur­ing which the Crim­son Tide’s full­back Tommy Lewis jumped from the bench as he saw Rice half­back Dick Moe­gle head­ing up the side­lines toward a score. Lewis then tack­led Moe­gle — keep in mind he had been sit­ting on the bench  — prompt­ing the zebras to give Rice a touch­down and Moe­gle a 95-yard run. Rice won, maybe for the last time or so it seems, 28–6.

There is a les­son there. Maybe more than one but prob­a­bly the biggest being don’t go on the field when your butt is sup­posed to be planted to the bench. See there, it’s pretty sim­ple. Go ‘Horns!