Fun with football

Heading into Sunday, this was by far the best week of football I?ve watched all season long, and not just because the alma mater took care of business against Southwestern.

The Texas-Texas Tech game might eventually rival the White Album in terms of pure-but-imperfect rock-and-roll greatness: if the Mccoy-to-Williams touchdowns are Ob-la-di, Ob-la-da, then the Harrell-to-Crabtree game winner has to be Blackbird, right?

I mean, if people are still talking about that Mccoy-to-Williams connection fifty years from now, it will only be because that hookup was the annoying-but-catchy prelude to the near-perfect Harrell-to-Crabtree connection later in the game.

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But then, on Sunday, the quality of play took a turn for the worse. Maybe the entire AFC West would be better off trading in their shoulder pads for fungoes, mitts and a buckets of used baseballs. If the AFC West were Star Trek: Voyager episodes:

The Broncos would be ?The 37s,? the Chargers would be ?Tsunkatse,? and the Raiders would be ?Blink of an Eye.?

The Chiefs would be ?Prototype.? One of the most underrated Voyager episodes, in my view, ?Prototype? is a work-in-progress story about the dangers of letting a rebuilding phase go on longer than it should. The Chiefs are only a cybernetic defensive end (Brian Orakpo?) away from rocketing to the top of the West.

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That reminds me: my colleague Jerry Engler may not be right about everything, but he hits the nail squarely on the head every time he says ?If I ever meet an honest-to-goodness robot, I?m going to kill it.?

I may not ever vote for Jerry, but if I could elect him to any office, it would be Commissioner of Dismantling the BCS.

Even though college football is great as-is, it would be much better if somebody had aimed Lee Corso at whatever psychotic computer decided that Utah is better than Oklahoma State.

(In case you missed it, Google some combination of ?Game Day,? ?Bob Knight,? and ?Lee Corso blindly firing shotguns into the air??was almost as entertaining as the last ten minutes of the game.)

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The Marion-Hillsboro game was the Single Best Game Of The Season So Far. I can?t remember the last time I saw a rivalry game played with as much passion and with as much discipline as that one.

There may not be any better way to measure the respect one team has for another than penalties. Did you notice that on Thursday the Warriors and Trojans committed just four penalties for 20 yards combined!?

Not only was it well-played and chock full of exemplary sportsmanship on both sides, Thursday?s game was the second-closest I?ve seen all year.

So, while the season-ending loss always stings a little more than the others, and there might be days ahead when one reflects and thinks ?What if…? try to remember, Warriors, there?s a lot about the season you just put together that you can and should be proud of.

By the way, the closest game I?ve seen was Marion?s win over Hoisington?the high school football equivalent of Sandy Koufax?s perfect game.

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Congratulations are in order for Mike Gottsch and the Bluejays. Two quotes I find encouraging whenever hard work finally pays off:

Former President Teddy Roosevelt once said ?Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty… I have never won anything without hard labor and the exercise of my good judgment and careful planning and working long in advance.?

And current NHLer Mike Glumac once said ?They say the first one is the hardest… I’m just glad to have that one behind me.?

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