Blue Screen Bowl

The Miami Hurricanes have accepted a bid to play in the MPC Computers Bowl on Dec 31. Miami posted a stellar 6-6 record this year, capped by a season-ending victory in which they snuck by the hapless Boston College Eagles 17-14. At least they didn't kick or stomp anyone in that game, however, after the game they did give their coach the axe.

The Canes will face the Nevada Wolfpack, one of my least favorite teams since they beat the Wildcats earlier this year. Nevada is on a roll, coming off a 38-7 drubbing by Boise State.

My recommendation to the readership is to skip this stinker of a bank-it-off-the-side-of-the-bowl game.

Send me a fifth

I bet my buddy Roberto a fifth of booze that the Wildcats could beat UNC in that other football, aka soccer. And the Cats came thru, beating the UNC-Greensboro Spartans (yea I never heard of these guys either) in a rout 2-1.

So Roberto can kiss his hopes for a Grey Goose goodbye, and I will be welcoming home a fifth of 18-year old Glenlivet!

Its still there

I had to check this morning to make sure it was still there after the disastrous outcome of last nite's mass.

Saturday Evening Mass

Today's action

Tune into WSCR at 10 AM to hear the NIU Huskies face the Eastern Michigan Eagles. Why do I care? Because in addition to being one of the fine local universities here in Illinois, NIU shares some key attributes with Northwestern (not academics of course):

• We both got thrashed by OSU.
• We both beat Miami of Ohio.
• We both played Iowa.

And today NIU faces the fearsome Eagles of Eastern Michigan, whom the Wildcats snuck by 14-6 on September 16. How have the Eagles fared since losing to the Wildcats? Pretty poorly, I'd say, having lost every game before and since except for a stunning win over the Toledo Rockets.

The Huskies will be playing for a possible bowl bid (the Poinsettia Bowl looms large) as well as pride.

Turkey Day

Click here for the silly T-day cartoon, and then here to start your Xmas shopping.

Bowl selections - Part 1

The Big Ten conference announced bowl selections for 5 of its teams yesterday:

• Wisconsin goes to the Capital One Bowl in Orlando, to be played Jan 1 against an SEC opponent. Ranked #10, Wiscy's creampuff schedule will work against the Badgers in a tough game. Look for the Cheeseheads to take a beating.
• OSU will travel to beautiful Glendale Arizona for the Tostitos BCS title game against a team to be determined. The Fish Head knows where Glendale is, but does not know the opponent. But he's rooting for the Golden Domers to trash the Trojans and get the nod.
• Penn State and their gimpy Magoo will travel to the Outback Bowl in Tampa Florida on Jan 1, to play an SEC team to be determined.
• Purdue will play in the Champs Sports Bowl in Orlanda on December 29, against an ACC foe to be named later. Hopefully the Boilermakers will not leave any poopy on the field to trip up Wiscy.
• Minnesota will travel to Tempe Arizona on December 29 to play in the Insight Bowl, against a Big 12 team. The Golden Gophers finished on a high note with three consecutive wins.
  
• Iowa will play December 30 in the Alamo Bowl against a Big 12 opponent. Iowa stumbled to the finish line, losing 4 of its last 5 games, the lone win being over MAC creampuff NIU. Since NU beat them, perhaps the Wildcats should get the Alamo nod and return to the scene of their pasting by Nebraska.
  

Key games leading to final bowl selections are the Big 12 championship , the SEC Championship , and the ACC championship , all on December 2.

Other football news

Once again, OSU fans went berserker after the Buckeyes snuck by Michigan 42-39 in the Big Game.

"Believe it or not, this was pretty mild so far, for as big as this game was," said Lt. Ranney of the Columbus fire department, referring to the 40 arrests for arson and other mayhem, as fans burned cars and furniture in the streets of the city.

Rutgers improbable national title chase came to an abrupt halt as they lost 30-11 to the Cincinnati Bearcats, a school better known for its basketball.

Florida State, perhaps the worst flop in major football programs this year, embarrassed itself by sneaking past Western Michigan 28-20 at home. Only a moron would have bothered to attend this game. If FSU had any class, it would elect to stay home during bowl season this year. The Fish Head can't wait to see them get routed by Florida.

Wildcats triumph in Basement Bowl

The Wildcats beat the spread and won the game, 27-16 over the Fighting Illini, thus consigning Illinois to last place in the Big Ten. Where they feel quite at home, given this is their fourth straight year finishing last. And, few things in college football could feel worse than being tied with MSU for last, as the inept Illini were unable to even secure sole possession of last place.

Not much to say about the game. Warren was reasonably accurate, as it was somewhat of a mistake-filled mess, but NU capitalized on the Illini gaffes (how often does one see the AP use the word "comical" in a sports story!). Bacher and Sutton powered the offense to almost 400 net yards, and the defense dominated the Illini other than on a few long gainers (including Rashard Mendenhall's near-record run). Most telling statistic? Time of possession was 39 minutes for the Cats, 20 minutes for the Illini.

The Cats finished 4-8 overall, 2-6 in the Big Ten. Hard to see the bright spots there, other than the big win over stumbling-to-the-finish-line Iowa. Both NU and the Illini need to claim this was a re-building year.

So as my friend logic101 pointed out, it was Senior Day, so-named not because the Fish Head is old, but because its the last home game for the seniors on the team. How does next season look for the Wildcats based on the graduating class?

Place kicker Joel Howells. While his kicking skills seemed poor, it was especially hard to like this poor guy after the Sun Bowl onside kicking fiasco on national TV. No clue who the replacement is (I think we saw him on one or two kicks early in the season), but this is no loss for the Cats.

Safety Marquice Cole. Marquice was a key hitter and special teams player. He will be sorely missed from a defensive backfield that has been porous for years. A smaller ditto for Bryan Heinz.

Wide receiver Shaun Herbert. Leading receiver and all-around important cog on offense. He will be sorely missed.

RB Terrell Jordan. This guy had a tough college career marred by bad injuries and difficult rehabs.

Punter Slade Larscheid. Affectionately nicknamed Shank, he will be missed only by the manufacturers of Tums, as we no longer need to chew them down to suppress the stomach acid generated by his spectacular, game-altering shanks.

LB Nick Roach. This is a tough one. Nick was the defensive leader and a great LB.

The Fish Head's interpretation? NU does not lose too much to graduation (17 of 22 starters return), and should be a much improved team next year. With a more-experienced offensive backfield, older and stronger lines on both sides of the ball, 2007 should be a good year.

Listen up!

Listen up!

Web rage

This article explains why super-popular bloggers like the Fish Head need to be very circumspect.

Tomahawk them!

Saturday's game will be the 100th meeting between the schools, and despite the current focus on political correctness and respect for Native American culture, the Sweet Sioux Tomahawk trophy will be staying in Evanston for the fourth year in a row.

Early line....

For the Illini game is Wildcats getting 3 points. My face is turning red with shame...

What the other guys are saying

Here is what the other guys are saying about the Wildcats-Illini game.

Warren expects a mistake-filled mess.

Chuck Strawn gives us a one-liner, referring to the game as the "Irony Bowl", apparently referring to how pathetic we are. Or is that the name of the pathetic weezer of a trophy exchanged at this ancient rivalry? Iron Bowl? Oaken Bucket? Bag O' Crap? Its something like that.

Blueollie describes how Illinois self-destructed against Purdue. Or is he describing how Northwestern imploded against OSU? It sounds exactly alike except the Illini collapsed in the third quarter and NU collapsed in the first quarter. Does that make the Illini 3 times as good as the Wildcats?

Basement Bowl

Next up for the Wildcats is the Fighting Illini, whom they will battle for control of last place in the Big Ten. Well wait, they might be battling to see who ties for last place, as it appears likely that MSU will end up bottom-feeding as well.

While Illinois has had a very tough year, they've played several good games in recent weeks, including close losses to Ohio State and Purdue, while the Wildcats have been very uneven with an upset win over Iowa and a blow-out loss to OSU. The Cats have the home field advantage, and will need to pressure young Illini quarterback Juice Williams to keep the Illini offense off-balance and force the Illini to run the ball.

Help me with my bookie

The Fish Head paid attention to his own bloated self-importance and lame-o predictions, and is now far in debt to his bookie after taking the 23 points. It would be greatly appreciated if the readership each spends several hours today on this page, hitting refresh and generating some Adsense revenue for the Fish Head's bank account. Broken legs oops I mean fins may be in the Fish Head's future if you don't help.

The Wildcats self-destructed in the OSU game. Their first four drives ended as Fumble-Fumble-Punt-Interception. Which resulted in TD-TD-Punt-TD for the Buckeyes. 21-zip and the Cats were in a deep dark hole from which they never emerged. There's really not much point in writing more than that, since that was the story of the whole game. Plus there is someone pounding on the Fish Head's door and he needs to go hide.

The Apocalypse must be next

Hordes of locusts, plagues of frogs...and Rutgers in the national title hunt?

Early line....

For the OSU game is Wildcats + 23. The Cats have covered the last two outsized spreads with ease, and paint me insane (cover over the purple) but the Fish Head says they will cover this one too....and paint me double insane but I think the Cats have a reasonable chance to pull off a huge upset.

Getting on TV

At one of the home games this year, the people from Johnsonville were rushing around filming anyone who was cooking Johnsonville brats. And, if you watch a lot of TV, you can watch the Johnsonville commercials which show the tailgaters cooking their brats.

So we are gonna use this bad boy this weekend in the hopes of getting our 15 seconds of fame...

Does this sound familiar?

Read the news today about a major power grid failure in Europe. Its eerily reminiscent, on a smaller scale, to the major outage that occurred in the late summer of 2003 in the USA. Makes one wonder if any of the major improvements that were talked about 3 years ago have been started (much less completed).

I may blog reluctantly, but as long as I'm here...

I really only started blogging to dispel the constant Demofascist naggery from my friend logic101, who considers me something of a baby boom'd luddite, still clinging to my stone-age MSMish ways like reading the newspaper. But now that I am making thousands of dollars every day from Adsense, I am all for it and I have seen the light, and now spend nearly every waking hour traversing the blogosphere.

Today's adventure was searching my host, blogger.com, to see what Iowa Hawkeye fans had to say about their recent beating at the hands of my fav, the Northwestern Wildcats. What did I discover?

The Gazette Online, an Iowa media outlet, trashed their home team in spectacular fashion. Referring to the partisan crowd at Kinnick Stadium, the Gazette wrote, "The 70,585 gritted their teeth for four quarters and then squeezed out a few boos as the Hawkeyes shunned their traditional "swarm" exit for a sprint to the locker room for delousing and counseling.". Delousing? Apparently the media in Iowa takes no prisoners. But wait. The Iowa coaching staff was even more brutal. What did head coach Kirk Ferentz have to say? "We played like fat cats," Iowa Coach Kirk Ferentz said. "We looked like fat cats and they looked like a hungry team.". Now I am guessing that the average fat cat does not play good football. Didn't you coach these guys Kirk? Can you spell personal accountability? I won't pass on the cheap shots the Gazette took at the Cats, since they sound like sour grapes and I'm sure the editor just had a bad day.

TalkHawkeyes.com, a blog, whined and moaned about being crushed by the "team you should be able to beat". Hey buddy, maybe you forgot we beat you last year, too. So maybe....we think of the Hawkeyes as the "team you should be able to beat", and hey, guess what, we do! Every year! The author really cracks me up when he talks about the activities on the Iowa bench, when the long snapper tells some groupies to shut up, "We’re losing 14-0 to **** Northwestern"! Hey there's a way to win the game, wasting your time yelling at your corn-bloated sausage-eating groupies. Maybe next year your players can pay attention to the game - especially maybe you can tell your QB which color jerseys to throw the ball at.

Get him a Taser

I watched Meet The Press this morning. The only way Tim Russert was going to keep that crew under control was if he Taser'd Rahm Emanuel and Liddy Dole.

Next up...

For our Northwestern Wildcats is the #1 ranked Ohio State Buckeyes. Ohio State University is located in Columbus Ohio, the easternmost cowtown city in the USA. The university is primarily known for the violent rampages which occur after home football games. Since this game will be at Dyche Stadium in Evanston, the Columbus police force can relax. The Fish Head will be at the game and will provide a calming influence to keep the OSU fans from destroying Evanston.

In case you are wondering what a Buckeye is exactly, be thankful you are here because the Fish Head knows this sort of useful information. Now one might ask why oh why anyone would name their football team after a tree...but there you are.

Cheap shots aside, OSU has a good team this year, 6-0 in the Big Ten and 10-0 overall. This includes wins over 3 ranked teams including Texas, and a few cream puffs like Cincinatti and Bowling Green. QB Troy Smith leads the Big Ten in passer rating, and the Buckeye offense is overall #1 in the Big Ten in scoring; and the defense is stifling, yielding an average of 7 points per game.

However, the Wildcats have a good oportunity despite OSU's excellence. As this weekend showed, OSU can be caught flat in the run-up to its big season-closing game against Michigan on 11/18. In sneaking by Illinois 17-10, OSU demonstrated its ability to play poorly on both sides of the ball. If OSU shows up flat again, the improving Cats offense and defense could spring a surprise on the Buckeyes. Let's hope for a breakout game especially from the improving passing game with Bacher and the receiving crew taking it to the Buckeyes.

Shakes in the blender

I watched my daughter make a protein shake from eggs, bananas, and milk today. Watch what this guy makes in his blender!

Trendsetter

I blogged quite some time ago about the Nabaztag, a wacky wifi bunny. Little did I know that I was several months ahead of the mainstream media. Click here to read PC Magazine's current review of this nifty product.

A stunner

The Wildcats stunned the Hawkeyes (or so says ESPN) 21-7 at Iowa. The Fish Head is pleased both by the win and the fact that the Cats fulfilled his prediction. Feel free to link over to hailtopurple.com and see if they apologize for their lame-o prediction.

The Cats looked great on offense, matching 225 rushing yards with 218 passing yards. CJ Bacher continued to look good, going 19 of 29 for 219 yards and a TD. His 2 picks were painful but not atrocious. Tyrell Sutton had 28 rushes for 168 yards and a TD, and Terrel Jordan added 57 yards and a TD. Fitz experimented with second-string QB Brewer as a "slash" option, but the results were mixed with one long completion and not much else. Lastly, the O line played impressively, giving Bacher great protection and opening holes for Sutton.

On defense, the Cats made the Hawkeyes look inept as QB Tate was 18 of 27 for 147 yards and 2 picks. Perhaps it was really the thumb on his throwing hand that was injured?

Kicking was the only glaring inadequacy for the Wildcats. Shank Larscheid busted one so bad that even Wayne Larrivee, the TV play-by-play guy, coughed up the word shank; and Joel Howells blew a chip shot in the first half that wasted a great scoring opportunity.

Bring on the Buckeyes - we'll roast their walnuts next week!

Firefox 2.0

Mozilla recently finished work on Firefox 2.0 and made it available for download. I love the tabbed browsing and the giant pile of clever add-ons.

Big Water

Some day I want to visit the Iguazu Falls, one of the most spectacular natural vistas in the Americas. Consisting of 270 falls spread over almost 2 miles of the Igauzu River, the falls were featured in the Bond movie Moonraker.

Battle of the....

Have you ever visited this site? For whatever crazy reason, I was thinking of the two most annoying cartoon creatures in the world, Babar and the Saggy Baggy Elephant. If you could pick one from the other - then there's something wrong with you.

Who's Nostradamus here

Scroll down and you see the Fish Head's pick - Take the Cats and the 20 points. Link over here to see the countervailing opinion. Then come back Sunday morning to see who owes who an apology.

What the other guys say

Normally I spend some time each week studying up on the game for the weekend, but I tend to do it from the Northwestern perspective - using the NU site, or the NU entries on the various sports sites. But this week I've been paying attention to the Iowa Hawkeyes sites to get a different view of the game. One thing I learned, is these weirdos in Iowa apparently like to drink coffee during the football game. All I can think is that being surrounded by corn has warped their brains, and it makes the +20 sound even better. Maybe its the ethanol fumes getting to them....

I never liked this guy anyway

I never liked this guy, but after the Spartans beat us this year, I liked him even less. Good bye and good riddance, John L Smith.

Kerry Joke

As my friend logic101 pointed out, John Kerry imploded in spectacular fashion by apparently garbling his lame attempt at a stupid political potshot. Personally, I lack interest in the political races that he hosed up, and I don't give a damn about the Democratic whining about the misguided Republican perspective. However, I did have a great time the next day, watching Aasif Mandvi satirize the situation on the Daily Show. He's the funniest guy I've seen on TV in a long time!

Hawkeye Line

The early line for the Northwestern-Iowa game is Wildcats get 20 points. The Fish Head says take the Cats and the points.