P62013: Week 14 Had Some Pretty Darn Good Games

Games watched: many of them. See below.

Hi everybody. Thanks for your patience in getting this week's update out to you. TMMPF left the HQ and headed to the desert of Arizona for Thanksgiving. The flight home was a frustrating disaster (supposed to land at 5pm, finally got home at quarter to midnight).

So let's talk about the games. On Tuesday we might have watched Northern Illinois. I think we did.

On Thursday, Texas beat Texas Tech. I miss watching Texas vs. Texas A&M Thanksgiving weekend. It was starting to feel like turkey and stuffing. Texas vs. Texas Tech is like Chinese food for Thanksgiving dinner. It's still tasty, it's just not the tradition you expected. I think I watched the Egg Bowl (Ole Miss vs. Mississippi State). I remember an exciting finish, which probably means I fell asleep on the couch.

Friday meant Iowa-Nebraska. One nice thing about Arizona is the games all start an hour early, so I only had to wait til 10am for the 11 o'clock kickoff. Iowa looked like the team we've been waiting to see since Ricky Stanzi's junior year. The offense is finally starting to gel and the defense was stout. It didn't hurt that Nebraska (and their coach) were in meltdown mode.

By the way: Duke and Michigan played in the Big Ten-ACC basketball challenge last night. That matchup made me realize: Duke football is better than Michigan football. Think about that for a minute.

Now to Alabama-Auburn. The ending was so great it's easy to overlook that the consensus No. 1 team in the country lost for the first time in over a year. The loss all but guaranteed two non-SEC teams will play for the national championship for the first time in almost a decade.

But of course, it was the ending that mattered. With the game tied 28-28, Alabama chose to try a 57-yard field goal instead of a Hail Mary or just kneeling and going to overtime. Auburn wisely put a receiver in the back of the end zone in case the kick came up short.

And it did.



In case you are more of a graphic mapping sort:

I heard/read many fans and commentators say they'd never seen anything like it. Except Bears fans have seen something exactly like it. In 2005, the Bears hosted the 49'ers in one of the windiest games I've ever seen. (Watch this video for great footage, but mute it because Chris Berman narrates.) At the end of the first half San Francisco tried a long field goal, and the Bears put Nathan Vasher in the back of the end zone just in case.



Devin Hester thought that was pretty cool, so the next year, he did it too.



Anyway, it was a cool play, it screwed 27 of you out of a first place team, and it opened the door for a Florida State-Ohio State championship game. (Of course, I still remember that West Virginia-Missouri championship game of 2007. Weird things happen in college football.) I didn't even get to all the great rivalry games like OSU-Meech and Oregon-Oregon State. It's damn late so I'll just say: they were good.

The poll: ND and USC lost and are out. Bluebloods Texas and Georgia replace them.

Best week: "SuperPups" up 11, with five winners/climbers.

Enough jibber jabber, despite the busy exciting week of football, who's winning?

Hello again, WTF panda. "No F'n Clue" takes sole possession of the lead. She has five (ed: I meant four, you can tell I did this late) of the six of the perfect pickset. Top kitty: Tigger, in 3rd. Top kid: "Lightning McQueen" in 9th. Top dog: Anna in 24th.

The links:

P62013 Scoreboard
Points for each team
AP Top 25 Poll

This weekend, we've got conference championships in the Big Ten, SEC, Pacific Twelve, Mid-American and ACC. Plus a handful of Big XII that will determine that champion, and a bunch of games in the American that probably mean something but I just don't care and probably neither do you. It's your last real Saturday of football until fall 2014, so enjoy it.