The Daily Dose/October 14, 2019
By Gaylon Kent
America’s Funniest Guy
Leading Off
Notes from around the human experience…
HUT, HUT, HIKE: It took a while but college football is finally providing us its first playoff arguments following previously #2 Georgia’s overtime loss to South Carolina Saturday, the first time a Top 10 team had lost to an unranked team in 2019. Previous to this week it had been steady as she goes all season.
Dry, Technical Matter: The NCAA does not conduct a major division playoff, though it conducts them in three lower divisions. It lets the schools determine how they select a national champion and currently there is a four-team invitational playoff, which we sometimes refer to as the Nick Saban Invitational because Alabama always seems to be in it. It’s real name is the College Football Playoff (CFP).
Back On Message: The problem really isn’t the effect it will have on the SEC race: they’ll beat themselves into submission over the next few weeks and it was probably a stretch to expect two SEC teams to make the CFP anyway.
Fly In The Ointment: The big deal is Notre Dame, who lost to Georgia earlier this season and is having a pretty good season, currently ranked #8 in the AP Poll, two spots ahead of Georgia. Who beat them. And if Notre Dame ends up getting invited to the CFP and Georgia doesn’t Georgia fans will left saying “hey, we’re better than Notre Dame, we beat them”. Idiots like us will say this, too: Georgia is better than Notre Dame; they beat them.
Yeah, Yeah, Whatever: But there are arguments of this nature every year because there are always a couple of really good teams that get left out of the CFP simply because there are only four spots.
Stop Us If You’ve Heard This Before: We’ve been saying this every hour on the hour for years: it’s silly the NCAA doesn’t conduct a major division championship and it gets sillier every year because don’t kid yourself, a major division college football playoff would become an American classic quicker than you could say “strength of schedule”.
Make Your Ticket Plans Now: There would be details to be worked out of course, and we’ll offer suggestions in our next column, but a 32-team NCAA Division I Football Playoff could begin Thanksgiving weekend this year and end on New Year’s Day, the last day, lets be honest, that anyone really cares about college football. But instead, we are going to get .500 teams playing in frozen, empty baseball stadiums this December.
Today At The Site:
The Diary of a Nobody: Sparrow puts oatmeal cookies in the center row normally reserved for chocolate chip cookies. Today’s Diary.
In deference to the slow season, I’m putting fewer cookies on the tray for afternoon cookie service and today the oatmeal cookies were center stage, occupying the middle row usually reserved for chocolate chip…That’s because the package that had both the oatmeal and sugar leftovers from the previous day was on top and ol’ Sparrow was too lazy to set this package down and retrieve the chocolate chip package and it could have just as easily been sugar in the middle as oatmeal…I looked at it and shrugged and while I didn’t mention it to Brandon when he relieved me, I privately wondered if anyone would notice.
It’s Sparrow, an average man passing an average life.
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On This Date
1962 – The Cuban Missile Crisis begins when an American U-2 spy plane takes almost 1,000 photographs of a missile base being built in western Cuba. The missiles were identified as medium-range ballistic missiles, identified, in part, with help from Soviet double-agent Olep Penkovsky, who was rewarded for his efforts by being executed by the Soviets the following year. President John F Kennedy would be informed of the missiles the following day.
In 1951 – Jack Christiansen of the Detroit Lions becomes the first NFL player to return two punts for touchdowns in one game in a 27-21 loss to the Los Angeles Rams. Christiansen, a rookie safety from Colorado State, scored on returns of 69 and 47 yards and he would duplicate this feat in a Nov. 22 game against the Green Bay Packers. The record still stands, though it has been tied many times. Christiansen would retire after the 1957 season with an NFL-record eight punts returned for touchdowns, a record now held by Devin Hester (14).
In 1978 – One Nation Under a Groove by Funkadelic is at #1 on Billboard’s soul chart – then known as the Hot Soul Singles chart – for the first of six consecutive weeks. The song was the first of two #1 songs on the soul chart for Funkadelic and One Nation Under a Groove also peaked at #28 on the Billboard Hot 100, their only Top 40 pop hit. With six weeks at the top, it was the biggest soul song of 1978.
Quotebook
…the wine trade of Bordeaux was too precious a boon to England to be lamely lost merely to defer by a few years the death of 10,000 Englishmen.
Will Durant
The Story of Civilization, Vol VI: The Reformation
Answer To The Last Trivia Question
The World Series was also best-of-nine from 1919-21. None of the four such series went the full nine games.
Today’s Stumper
Who is the only other player in NFL history to return two punts for touchdowns in one game twice in a career? – Answer next time!
