Cousin Dan's Christmas Special

(Note: Sip will be back in a few with some ill...)


Welcome to a Christmas Day edition of the Y2K-U. Cousin Dan reporting live from the in-laws here in beautiful Lawrence, KS. I hope every one of my three readers took advantage of my 3-0 bowl picks against the numbers in my column, because obviously yours truly found ways to parlay them with losers. Oh well. Tis still merry here.



1) Picks for this week: Off the aforementioned 3-0, here’s a few more winners to fire at you that I will not take advantage of due to my newfound gambling moratorium. The Cousin likes Florida State (UCLA, notwithstanding the USC thing, is not good); Texas A&M (Cal still remembers that a horrid loss to Arizona kept them out of the Rose Bowl, and the Bears got clobbered the last time they played in San Diego. Also, the underdog ALWAYS covers in the Holiday); and Wisconsin (Bret Bielema, who’s a good coach, will make the Razorbacks pass, which Arkansas simply can NOT DO). Best bet: Navy (does BC even have a coach? No coach equals no stopping the triple option).

2) The most wonderful bowl of the year: In this column, we’re unabashed homers for the Scarlet Knights, since we do so love Cousin Tonks, and he does so love the Banks of the Raritan. However, we’re also journalists from a former life, so if you ask us to predict the game in Morgantown, we tell you WVU probably wins. Well, such journalistic ethics don’t carry here in the Sunflower State, where an otherwise awesome sports panel show (note: not sarcasm. Like a local PTI. Great effort.) was marred by two homers – one of whom runs the K-State message board – predicting that K-State would run away with the Texas Bowl because, well, they like K-State. Tom Fitzgerald from GoPowerCat.com or whatever – you’re better than that. (Unless you’re not).

3) And he threw two more touchdowns in the parking lot: One of my losing parlays including the Hawaii-Arizona State over, which failed because Hawaii forgot to play in the first half.



But once the Rainbow Warriors got going, that was real fun. Colt Brennan had nearly four hundred yards and five TDs in the second half of a game you missed while digesting your Christmas ham. And former Sun Devil coach Dirk Koetter showed why he is a former coach, punting with 2:30 left down 10. Typical gutsy play from the Sip’s potentially future alma mater.

4) Let’s just say if he had a good year, he would have passed: It was hardly surprising to see that Reggie Ball failed some test which meant that he was suspended for the Gator Bowl. After all, you can ask any Georgia fan how Ball does on big tests. We assume Ball’s a good guy, but he’s got as much clutch as a car with an automatic transmission. [Rim shot, we’ll be here all week, enjoy the veal.]

5) Glory days, they’ll pass you by: When your own alma mater doesn’t qualify for the postseason, it’s particularly sad when there are Armed Forces and Poinsettia Bowls featuring the Troys and Middle Tennessees of the world. So, on ESPN-U on Christmas Day, we happily caught the Virginia-Georgia bowl game from 1995. The Cavs won behind a gritty rushing attack from a soph RB named Tiki Barber.



Ah, 1995. That was also the last year our beloved Wahoos won a game in March Madness. Which essentially means that in-state “rival” George Mason won four more tournament games last year than Virginia has in the last decade.

6) And we can probably make that 12 years: Two Virginia items in a row, but that should be ending soon because the men’s basketball team is proving to be as unwatchable as the football team. The fighting Leitaos laid an absolute egg in a Puerto Rico tournament, losing to Appalachian State (the very best university in all of Boone, NC!) and then Utah by 24 before eking by 0-8 Division II University of Puerto Rico by 7. FYI, after beating U.Va, Utah lost the next day by 33 to a rather, uh, pasty Northwestern

7) Avert your eyes, it’s like a Vitale compliment: Dookie V takes a lot of heat in this column, but compared to some of the local college basketball announcers, he’s positively Vin Scully. On the way to Lawrence, we listened to the Kansas-Boston College game with some relic of an announcer stating what had clearly happened ten seconds earlier. For example, “yadda yadda yadda story-from-1965 yadda [loud cheers] blah blah blah blah and Chalmers scores! Story-from-1965 continues yadda…” Note to college announcers: we can’t see what’s happening, so for the love of goodness please tell us what’s happening. That’s all we care about. We promise.

8) Avert your eyes II, it’s like a Duke compliment: Grudgingly, we will credit “No. 5” Duke for their win at MSG over Gonzaga. (This should prepare them well for their first road game, which is still just fifteen days away).



The good news for us Blue Devil haters is that Greg Paulus – who, you may recall, was the top prep point guard in the country a few years back because Coach K said so – elevated his game all the way to “not execrable” (link to: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/execrable) in the victory. Hopefully, this will allow the Ratface to maintain his loyalty to all-those-who-look-like-Wojo so Paulus can cost them a few more games.

9) It’s not a college sports item, unless you consider that he played in the best college game of the year: Not to go all Sports Guy on you, but sometimes you need to have someone in the draft room to remind you that test scores and Heisman trophies aren’t what actually matter on the football field. For example, was there anyone on the planet who watched the two play in college and was like, “yeah, Ron Dayne is a better football player than Shaun Alexander”? In any case, forget Reggie Bush for a second—how did the Texans not think Vince Young would be better than David Carr? On Sunday, Young may have done the first ever end-of-half drop-back-for-Hail-Mary-then-run-untouched-into-end-zone-for-a-long-touchdown. By the way, Young never ever loses any more.

10) Final Question: When Yanni releases his Ivy game of the year, do you dare not play it big? Keep ‘em comin’ in 2007, Big Cash!