Shreveport shrivel

One indication that college football may have more bowl games than it needs is when a team that loses one finishes the season with a losing record. That's the situation the Aggies seem to be facing, trailing Georgia 24-14 as the 4th quarter begins. I'm thinking 6-7 is more than a possibility.

When I completed my walk, the game was tied 0-0 in the second quarter. Hmmm, I thought, looks like I haven't missed much. I sat down and watched some more head-butting, then the Aggies put together a neat 75-yard drive to soar into a 7-0 lead. I went to the bathroom, stopped to check my e-mail, and by the time I got back to the game Georgia was ahead 14-7. Apparently, they returned the Aggie kickoff for a TD, then blocked a punt to set up another TD from pointblank range. Aggies have the proverbial buzzard luck --- can't kill nothin', can't find nothin' dead.

Well, there are still fifteen minutes to go and sometimes miracles happen, so we'll see how things turn out. My gut feeling coming into this game was that any 7-5 team from the SEC would be substantially better than any 6-6 team from the Big 12, simply because the SEC is tougher overall. I hope I'm wrong, but Georgia looks like they can name the score in Shreveport.

Added 9:16 pm: Georgia 44, TAMU 20. The Bulldogs outscored the Aggies 20-6 in the fourth quarter. Considering the way A&M has been kicked around by better teams for most of the last three seasons, it was foolish to expect anything other than more bowl game disappointment. It's been a long time since I watched an A&M football win on television, but maybe before I die, I'll get to see another one.

Gridiron (Bowl Games)

A week from today, the Aggies play Georgia in the Independence Bowl. The last time TAMU went to Shreveport to play an SEC team, the weather was a mess. As I recall, the entire game was played in a snowstorm and Jackie Sherrill, then coaching Mississippi State, got payback with a 43-41 overtime win. That was in December 2000 and was a sign of things to come for the Aggies in the 21st century.

TAMU has had mixed results against SEC teams since 1980, when Georgia gave the Aggies a 42-0 stomping. Sherrill had a memorable win against Auburn in the Cotton Bowl, but his final game at TAMU was a 30-10 loss to Alabama. Slocum got his tenure off to a good start with a 28-16 win against LSU, and had a productive run against them while they were rebuilding (1989-1995).

Since A&M has been a Big 12 member, its games against SEC teams have been rare and not pretty to watch. After the 2000 Independence Bowl, there was the Cotton Bowl game against Tennessee following the 2004 season (a 38-7 blowout), and this year's debacle against Arkansas.

Georgia (7-5) had a disappointing season by their standards. From what I've seen on TV this year, the SEC is tougher top-to-bottom than the Big 12, so Georgia at 7-5 may be significantly stronger than TAMU at 6-6. The oddsmakers have the Bulldogs as a TD favorite, so they seem to think that's the case.

By the time the game is played, the Christmas dog-and-pony show will be finished and I'll be ready to watch football. Although recent history argues against it, maybe this game will be worth seeing.

Eastwood, Freeman and Damon

Clint Eastwood has been directing movies since the early 1970s, and since about 1990, he's turned out some really good ones. I've seen more than a dozen of the movies he directed, and I've lost count of the ones he starred in. I can't put him in the same class as Steven Spielberg, but I've decided any movie Eastwood directs is worth seeing.

I've written about Morgan Freeman before. He's one of those actors, like Gene Hackman, who can make any character interesting, and most of them likeable. If he's been in a movie that wasn't improved by his performance, I haven't seen it. His portrayal of God in Bruce Almighty  is one of my favorites, and is an example of him making a so-so movie much better than that. Like Robert Duvall, Freeman often plays the same character with subtle variations; I've started to lose interest in Duvall, but Morgan Freeman still keeps me glued to the screen.

I first saw Matt Damon in Good Will Hunting. My wife loved that movie, but it lost me after ten minutes. I wasn't impressed with Damon initially, but he kept popping up in movies like Saving Private Ryan and gradually began to grow on me. Just as Clint Eastwood isn't quite in Spielberg's class, Matt Damon isn't quite in Morgan Freeman's class --- but he's getting there.

Today we saw Invictus, directed by Clint Eastwood, starring Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon. Freeman plays Nelson Mandela, and the movie dramatizes actual events involving Mandela's efforts to unify post-apartheid South Africa behind its national rugby team. Movies using sports as a backdrop are often from the heartwarming, feel-good genre. Clint's last movie with a sports background was Million Dollar Baby, which nobody would call a feel-good flick. Invictus resemblesThe Natural as far as being uplifting and capable of producing a lump in the throat. If I knew anything about rugby, I'd have liked Invictus even more, but it was worth the admission price at it was. Rated 8 and recommended.

Hubris

Colt McCoy, who spent much of the season compiling stats and wins against a fairly weak slate of opponents, came in third in the Heisman Trophy running tonight. He won some other prizes so it's not like he was told to eat shit and die, but if the comments posted on this board are an indication, orangebloods are in a bad mood over what they consider an injustice. The unmitigated arrogance of most Texas U. fans is why I hate them. The current thinking among orangebloods seems to be that since Vince Young lost the Heisman to Reggie Bush, then played USC in the Rose Bowl and won, Texas U. is now destined to defeat Alabama in the Rose Bowl. Good luck with that. Longhorn fans should be hoping the whole Albama team and its coaches have their worst game ever.

Keeping time with Townes

When I'm out walking, a majority of the young people I pass are listening to portable music through earbuds. Anyway, I assume it's music they're listening to since they always seem to exist in a different dimension from the one I'm in.

I don't own the equipment to play music while I walk, and probably wouldn't even if I did, since I want to hear cars that may be bearing down on me from behind. Still, I discovered that walking a long time can be monotonous and that musical rhythm, like counting cadence, helps me establish and maintain the proper steady pace. My alternative to earbuds is to memorize the lyrics to certain songs I love, then sing them to myself mentally while I walk. The songs I choose must have the correct tempo, and must be ones I love enough that I won't get bored singing (thinking) them repeatedly.

For the past week or so, the songs dominating my mental playlist have been "Can't Be Really Gone" and "Pancho and Lefty." The latter song was written by the late, great Townes Van Zandt, but the best-known version was performed by Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard years ago. Both songs are excellent examples of gifted writers telling stories and painting word pictures with a few short verses. I'd give almost anything to possess the same skill with words and melody.

Gridiron (Championships)

Today is the Saturday when the ACC, the SEC and the Big 12 play their championship games. Of the three, the game that interests me most is the one I've been watching the past two hours: the SEC championship game with Number 1 Florida facing Number 2 Alabama. This is a game I've been looking foward to seeing for several weeks. I've watched both teams this season, I've been impressed by both, and I've been curious to know how they'd fare against each other. Both have solid offenses, defenses, and special teams, and each has an outstanding coach. At the half, the Tide leads Florida 19-13 and the game has lived up to my expectations in every way.

The Big 12 championship, tonight at 7:00, is a different situation. Undefeated Texas plays a mediocre 9-3 Nebraska team that won the North division more or less by default, since none of the other division teams were interested in contending. The outcome of the game is a foregone conclusion: Texas will win by at least 20 points, probably more. My guess would be something along the lines of 41-20, assuming the huskers can muster up as many as twenty points.

Added 6:42 pm: Wow. A game that looked fairly evenly matched at the half ended with superstar Tim Tebow choking back tears on the sideline, and Crimson Tide players doing the eagle rock. Alabama 32-13 over Florida. I've been watching Florida under Tebow for two years, and if anyone told me Alabama would shut him out in the 2nd half, I would've said he was nuts. But that's what happened. Alabama looks like the real deal, and Texas will have their hands full trying to get past them in Pasadena.

Added 12:28 am, Sunday: Texas 13, Nebraska 12. I didn't see the game since I expected blowout city. Instead we watched the classic romance Random Harvest  on TCM, and I saw a pretty good Kevin Costner movie called Thirteen Days. It was a dramatization of the October 1962 Cuban missile crisis. After the movie, I checked the internet to see how close I came to predicting the final score, and learned that Texas caught a lucky break at the very end of the game which allowed them the extra second they needed to kick a winning FG. Somehow, Texas always seems to get the one or two lucky breaks they need in conference games. Some conspiracy theorists believe Big 12 officials rig the outcomes of the games, but personally I think it only looks that way on TV.

So Texas and Alabama meet in the BCS championship game for all the marbles. I've seen more Alabama games than Texas games this fall, and I'm almost sure that 'bama is markedly better than Nebraska in every dimension. That doesn't guarantee they'll beat the longhorns, but if they do, it'll be sweet. I've had all the Texas hype I can stand for one season, and I'm ready to see them suffer for a change.

Picture Shows

About a month ago, I took Mrs. bee to see Amelia, the biopic about Amelia Earhart. While we were there, we saw the trailer for Everybody's Fine, with Robert DeNiro and Drew Barrymore. It looked like a family comedy set around Christmas, the kind of movie my wife loves, and we agreed on the spot that it would be one of the holiday releases we'd see this year.

My own expectations for Everybody's Fine were fairly low. Based on the trailer, it seemed to be the kind of movie I usually prefer to watch on cable TV. But I've been a big fan of Robert DeNiro for about thirty years, and I've had a serious crush on Drew Barrymore since she reached adulthood, so I figured I could get through 100 minutes or so of this one.

We saw Everybody's Fine this afternoon and I was in for a surprise, because the movie was much more serious than the teasers led me to expect. It deals with the relationships among DeNiro, a retired widower, and his adult children. At one point, DeNiro says he didn't have many dreams about what he wanted to be during his life --- he just wanted to work hard and be a good father. I personally identified with that position, making it easy for me to see the events in the movie through the eyes of DeNiro's character. He learns that he doesn't know as much about his sons and daughters as he thought he did, and that their lives went in directions other than what he'd hoped for and expected. As a father with adult children of my own, there were things going on in Everybody's Fine that I could relate to on a personal level, and it affected me emotionally more than anticipated. For that reason, I recommend this movie, although the professional critics may not be inclined to do so.

Carousel

In an e-mail last night, my bro in Houston discussed the game of musical chairs that occurs in the football coaching profession every year around this time. His particular reference was to Nolan Cromwell, who's getting results as the offensive coordinator at TAMU and is rumored in Aggie circles to be a possible replacement for Mangino at Kansas. Then, while I was driving to Walmart to restock my popsicle supply, the morning show guys on ESPN radio were talking about the firing of Charlie Weis at Notre Dame, and the expected retirement of Florida State's Bobby Bowden later today.

According to the ESPN guys, one of the coaches Notre Dame will go after to fill their job is Bob Stoops. I don't know if that's accurate or if Stoops would be available to them, but if he left Oklahoma it would shake things up in the Big 12 South. It would be an opportunity to start anew for Stoops, whose star has dimmed since he soared to the top of the college football coaching world in his second season at OU. Florida State apparently has Bowden's replacement already lined up, with the expected promotion of top assistant Jimbo Fisher.

The Aggies have history with Notre Dame and Florida State, both of whom were national powerhouses in the days when I lived and breathed college football. Back then, you couldn't mention Top Ten teams without Notre Dame, Florida State, or both being included in the conversation. Bobby Bowden had a kind of legendary status as one of the best college coaches ever. Maybe the changes they're making now will get ND and FSU back to the summit. The longer teams muddle around in the middle of the pack, the harder it becomes to regain lead dog positions, as Aggies are learning these days.