BZ's News and Views - Mo(u)rning in America Edition

In the grand tradition of such terrible writers as Larry King and the terrible newspaper for which he wrote, USA Today, I'm proud to present BZ's News and Views -- random, disjointed thoughts from around the college football world and beyond.

• I've been avoiding BON like the plague the past few days for a variety of reasons, but the main one is certainly that I did not take this loss well.  I don't become a raving lunatic when we lose, and I'm not in a state of mind to put out the epic effort Peter did without sleep Saturday night into Sunday morning.  Instead, I stay uncannily calm and just withdraw.  And on Saturday night I withdrew.  I half-heartedly read most of the main column posts since then, but I haven't been reading the comments or the fanposts.  It's too painful.  I've been in mourning.  But now, I closed a deal at work, the election is finally over, and today is my damn birthday so I've emerged from the melancholic abyss with a renewed sense of energy and hope.  It's morning in Texas and America.  Let's do this.
  
• While I will admit that after the clock ran down to zero, I uttered the phrase "Blake Gideon cost us a national championship," he's not 2008's Craig Curry.  There were simply too many games remaining for any of us to project like that.
• And while it's true that Texas would have won that game had Blake made that easy catch, it's probably also true that Texas wouldn't have been in position for that game to mean anything more than a normal Tech game without Blake's contributions this year.
• Even after "the drop" I still thought Tech was going to miss the field goal just like they did in 2003 after Chance Mock's improbable late touchdown to BJ Johnson.
• Here is a list of Texas games since 2002 (prior to this weekend) that came down to the end:  OSU 2002, KSU 2002, NU 2002, Tech 2002, KSU 2003, Tech 2003, Arkansas 2004, KU 2004, Michigan 2004, tOSU 2005, USC 2005, NU 2006, Tech 2006, KSU 2006, A&M 2006, Iowa 2006, Arkie St 2007, UCF 2007, OU 2007, NU 2007, OSU 2007, OSU 2008.  In those games, Texas went 17-5.  Mack Brown's teams have a knack for closing.  I'm not used to losing these games.  And frankly, I don't like it one bit.
•   This is hard to admit, but on Monday, I felt like a nut.

• You saw on Saturday how good a Mike Leach team can be with elite players.  Does any other receiver in Tech history make that catch and get into the endzone on that play?  Nope.  But Michael Crabtree does.
  
• And speaking of, while neither Greg Davis nor Will Muschamp had his greatest day as a coordinator, the major story of this game was how Tech dominated the ines of scrimmage.  The athletes keep getting better.
• The Tech offense is built on the assumption that the offensive line will be overpowered so you can't run much and the QB has to get rid of the ball quickly.  When the O-line dominates, the offense can still do all the things it has always been able to do, but so much more as well.
• Florida is a pretty damn good football team.  Too bad they totally crapped the bed against Ole Miss.
• Do you like stats?  Sure, we all do!  Well, this is late, but you HAVE to check out Nate Silver's election blog at FiveThirtyEight in which he developed a regression model which inputs logically weighted polling data as a predictor of electoral results.  He was pretty much spot-on.  Silver spent years toiling for Baseball Prospectus, coming up with their ridiculously sophisticated stats that for years were dismissed as stupid geeky things, but have now been adopted by many MLB teams.  The guy invented PECOTA, for pete's sake!  PECOTA!  Swoon!
• Speaking of the election, my friend sent me this apt e-card today:

 

• I can't talk about that game anymore, so it's all Larry King-esque non-sequitirs from here on out.  Thanks for indulging me.
• You know who used to be hot?  Old people.*
• My shoes are too tight, damnit.
• I just figured out that Olympia Dukakis is related to Michael Dukakis.  For those keeping track at home, that's three degrees of separation from Willie Horton to Cher.  Moonstruck!
  
• Consider the Lobster.
• I will maintain until my death (or, more likely, until November 5, 2009) that 27 is not "late 20s."
  
• Everything is Illuminated.
  
• Sometimes, in life and in football, you're damned if you do and damned if you don't.
• Catch-22.

[*Not Larry King]