USC got another taste of defeat last night. It was not the BIG GAME that Vince Young won and Keith Jackson called for the last time. Still, I was counting on Tommy to be there in the middle of the 4 team mix they call a College Football Playoff. Warning to college football teams: My rooting for you may be dangerous to your health.
Still, here we are. Today’s conference championship games are soon to kick off. On a personal note, I am still gaining ground after a nasty bout of the the flu and bronchitis on top of that. This was not fun. I missed four days of school. Two on each side of Thanksgiving break. Consecutive Mondays and Tuesdays. That was mighty strange.
Alas, here we are. The picks are in!
BIG XII: Kansas State beats TCU…Is there a team with more pressure than TCU against a team with less to lose? I mean, really. If what happened to USC last night is going to happen again today, and it will, then it is going to fall on TCU. And I don’t like it. I don’t want to see Ohio State anywhere near the CFP or The Rose Bowl for that matter. There, I said it.
MAC: Ohio beats Toledo…The Bobcats will finish off the Rocket Boys.
SUNBELT: Coastal Carolina beats Troy…The faux chickens are pretty good. I saw them play at Marshall this year. The Coastal QB, Grayson McCall, is a snapper-head for sure. He is also dinged up and is a game time decision. He’ll play.
AAC: Tulane beats Central Florida…Watching the Green Wave win ten games has been a season highlight. Plumlee at QB for UCF is a treat to watch. The Green Wave D will find a way.
Mountain West: Fresno State beats Boise State…Don’t have a lick of interest in this one.
SEC: Georgia beats LSU… The Bulldogs have to win this. If Brian Kelly gets this one, they will be working on a likeness of him in bronze for a statue outside Death Valley (Baton Rouge).
ACC: North Carolina beats Clemson…I have to pick my second home Tar Heels. I picked South Carolina to beat Clemson last week. Let’s make it a Carolina sweep.
Big Ten: Michigan beats Purdue…Look for Coach Jeff Brohm to throw the kitchen sink out on the field along with most of the other plumbing he can extract from the Boilers locker room. Purdue’s bound to have a couple freshman with more pimples than sense who can take the pipes apart. Michigan without Blake Corum loses a great deal. Where’s the beef? Where it has been since Dan Dierdorf was in a stance and that is on the Michigan offensive line.
Poor Georgia. Bless their hearts. No, we’re not speaking the rights about football now. Gulp. Politics. Mississippi, take pride for all the beatings you have taken over the years with a similar refrain when you can look a couple states to the east and say, “At least we’re not Georgia.”
Wow. The Peach State is a political dumpster fire.
On Tuesday we will find out if Herschel Walker, yes, the former running back of the Georgia Bulldogs who led them to a National Championship in 1980 will be elected to the US Senate. 1980 was Herschel’s freshman year and he stayed for three years in Athens. He left Georgia early for the trappings of Donald Trump.
Look, on these back pages, that are running out of time, I spoke long ago about how disappointed I have been by the disintegration of a National Republican Party that has brought nothing but heartache and division to a country. When we want our leaders to fail, we are not supporting our country. We are destroying it, along with the capacity to lead with dignity and pride. An old Georgia Bulldog, Lewis Grizzard, once made the joke that he was glad his father died before he could see him getting his hair cut in a beauty parlor. Lewis, you would be dumbfounded with what has transpired in this land since you passed in 1994.
When I hear news snippets about Herschel Walker running for the US Senate, I can’t separate him from Donald Trump and that is certainly problematic for many of us old-school traditional rusted Republicans. You may not know this. Let me fill you in.
In 1983 Donald Trump was the owner of the United States Football League’s New Jersey Generals. The league lasted three seasons. It was a Spring League. They played from March to June. It was a competitive league. Many NFL players jumped to it and were paid well for a while.
Trump saw Herschel Walker as his Joe Namath. If you know your NFL history, you know that Joe Namath did not sign with a National Football League team when he came out of Alabama. There were two fall leagues competing at the time. The NFL and the AFL (American Football League). Both had TV network contracts. Both played in the fall. The signing of Joe Namath in 1965 to the lesser valued AFL and specifically The New York Jets for 400,000 dollars was unheard of. Money always talks. By 1970 there was a merger of the two leagues. Since then we have had two National Football League conferences. They are the AFC (made of many old AFL teams) and the NFC (made of many old NFL teams).
Put two and two together a mere thirteen years later. Donald Trump owns the New Jersey Generals of the USFL which was waging player signing wars with the NFL. When Donald Trump signed Herschel Walker in 1983, a year early out of Georgia, eyes were wide open.
Understand, Donald Trump wanted to get into the NFL Club more than he wanted to help the USFL survive. It was the AFL vs. the NFL all over again for him. He signed Herschel Walker to a “personal services” contract that meant Donald Trump would make sure Herschel would still make his money (millions) if the USFL went out of business.
The USFL lasted three years. Yes, it was broken because Donald Trump was the driving force to move it to the fall and his pockets were deeper (at least we thought) than most of the other owners. The league did not survive. Donald Trump saw to that and who knows how many people lost jobs in a football league they loved for three years.
Herschel was no Joe. The NFL had the good sense to tell Donald Trump to “bugger off”.
Ah, the good old days.
So now you know why Herschel Walker is running for a Georgia US Senate Seat. Watching him try to put six intelligible consecutive sentences together has been a painful look. That’s why his news clips are so short.
Lewis Grizzard is dead and I don’t feel too good myself.
Speaking the rights.
Danny Johnson