Month: January 2009

2008 Golden Bowl Tournament: Fiesta Bowl and Thoughts on the BCS

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If you are going to put value on the idea of a national championship (and honestly, I’ve actually been wondering if we were better off under the old system when we ideally didn’t care about the national championship), wouldn’t you rather have the Golden Bowl over the BCS?

We have four teams with legit claims for the National Championship. So much for the BCS ending national championship uncertainty.

In the Golden Bowl Tournament? In the very first round Utah and USC faced off – in Salt Lake, in snowy, blizzardy conditions – and the Trojans still prevailed. USC then proceeded to shockingly dominate Oklahoma in another road game in the second round.

As for Florida and Texas? They settled their differences ON THE FIELD, in the Sugar Bowl. Now, next week, the two remaining teams – Florida and USC – will settle this once and for all in the Golden Bowl. And this week, I’ll post the final college football rankings. Florida’s , and holds one of what’s now two lineal titles, so next week we’ll see if they can claim the Grand Slam. (BCS title, in my rankings, holding any lineal title but preferably Princeton-Yale, and Golden Bowl title.)

But first, we have a Fiesta Bowl to take care of… (I’m wondering if it’s worth it to have this game. The Golden Bowl Tournament already lengthens the regular season, and while I had told myself that as long as I was adding four games for the Golden Bowl participants, there was little reason not to add two more teams in that group, the fact is that it IS one more game and it’s a little masturbatory. On the other hand, if the point of keeping the bowls is because we have 34 winners, not 1, I should give the semifinal losers one more chance to win. I may make a Da Blog Poll on this in the future.)

Fiesta Bowl: #5 Penn State v. #3 Texas
Personally, I don’t think, if you looked at it logically as opposed to looking at the body of work or playing it out on the field, you can even make a case that USC should deserve the national championship ahead of Utah. USC played in too crappy a conference, and even though both games were close home games for the winners, they did lose to a team that lost to Utah the next week.

But USC beat a good team in the Rose Bowl, one good enough to earn a VERY good seed in my tournament, and though it was too little too late, Penn State’s defense – which couldn’t stop Glen Coffee for the first half of the Alabama game, and had even less luck against Joe McKnight – finally found their defense again in the last game. What didn’t work against Mark Sanchez and McKnight, did work against Colt McCoy – and made people reconsider their snap picks for Florida in the Golden Bowl.

For three quarters it was at least plausible that the Longhorns could compete in this game, if practically unlikely. The Nittany Lions bent but didn’t break on defense, and on their first drive, Mickey Shuler caught a screen pass from Daryll Clark and took it 58 yards to the house. Texas managed to get downfield enough for a chipshot field goal on their next drive, but Stephfon Green gets a 73-yard touchdown off a draw on the Lions’ first play from scrimmage.

After that, the Longhorns start buckling down on defense, forcing a punt, but the offense can’t even make it into Lion territory, unlike on all their first-quarter drives. In fact, Texas’ defense outplays Penn State’s in the second quarter, forcing three-and-outs while Texas tacks on another field goal and has another blocked. The Longhorns enter the locker room with confidence.

But Penn State starts getting first downs again, and Texas doesn’t return to Lion territory until a drive that ends the third quarter. The Lions don’t score, but they put the game away in the fourth quarter, starting with a field goal, and preventing Texas from even getting a first down until their last drive of the game. With five minutes left Mack Brown and McCoy are already going for it on fourth down (down only two scores and on their own 23!), giving the Lions good field position to tack on a touchdown. Another fourth-down try leads to a quick touchdown pass to Green, the player of the game for his combined 133 yards running and catching with a touchdown for each, and by the time Texas finally gets a couple of first downs it’s pointless.
Final score: Penn State 31, Texas 6

Quick but semi-important message for Sandsday’s fan

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In about a week I’ll be starting the Sandsday mail call, to honor the strip’s first anniversary, where the characters will respond to your questions – assuming I get any. You can submit questions by leaving a comment on any “webcomic news” post or sending me an e-mail at mwmailsea at yahoo dot com.

I have a LOT of stuff to wrap up over the next week or so…

I abandoned webcomics posts in the leadup to the election, and now it and RID may be the only two remaining regular features. Go figure.

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(From The Order of the Stick. Click for full-sized negotiations.)

I think I’m scraping the bottom of the barrel for these OOTS posts, and I’m going to have to stop making them every month at some point. I’m thinking when I hit the one-year anniversary of when I started making them.

I have basically two left. One I sort of missed the window on because of Tangents, and which I’m not particularly interested in anymore because it was a little convoluted and weak and stupid. The second is the one I’m giving you today, and it too is a little crazy and stupid.

Part of the reason the current book has kind of been pissing a lot of fans off may be, paradoxically, that it is too OOTS-centric.

Honestly, “Team Evil” may be more popular than any single member of the Order. Xykon is downright snarky for an Evil Overlord, Redcloak is something of a tragic figure, the Monster in the Darkness is entertaining, and the demon roaches are always good for a side laugh. Checking in on their happenings used to be a regular feature in the lead-up to the Battle for Azure City. But we’ve only gotten one relatively brief check-in on them since, and O-Chul was the real star of the show there.

That may indicate that Team Evil may be in the process of being de-emphasized as villains, but if so, it’s not at all clear who’ll replace them. The Linear Guild, the only other major villain group (and entertaining in their own right – honestly, the three or four least interesting recurring characters might be members of the Order), have been completely unseen since their escape during the battle, the only real clue as to their remaining plans being Nale’s mention of “sneak[ing] off and capturing another [gate]”. Were it not for that, and the fact that an entire strip like this was dedicated to the Guild’s escape (and a few lingering questions, like just how Sabine is Haley’s opposite), one might think Rich had just written the Guild out of the strip entirely.

Nonetheless, I kind of wonder if the Guild’s influence is in fact being felt in everything going on now, or if we will in fact see them by the time the gang gets back together, and the reason for that is a result of my wild theory:

The Linear Guild is secretly helping the OOTS.

Nale heard of his brother’s existence and decided loyalty to his brother (he is admittedly Lawful) meant assisting the Order’s cause under the guise of opposing them. With Sabine’s help, he tends to know more than any of the Order do at any given time, almost to the point of being omniscient. In fact, maybe Sabine is the real player here trying to help Haley.

Now, there’s actually very little to back up this theory, and at least a little to oppose it, and it’s kind of masturbatory for me to devote an entire post to this. The point of the Linear Guild is that they are a set of Bumbling Villains(tm) whose schemes (unlike, and as opposed to, Team Evil) are never any true, real threat, and always fail spectacularly in an entertaining, comedic fashion. Nonetheless, it’s interesting to note that when Vaarsuvius noted the serendipity of the timing of the Linear Guild’s kidnap-Roy’s-sister plot in making sure the OOTS was in the right place at the right time for the Battle of Azure City, s/he was more right than s/he knew.

(My Latin teacher, incidentially, recently let it known that he absolutely hates constructions like “they” or “him or her” or especially “s/he” in sentences that could describe anyone of either gender, and wishes people would at least pick a gender for each specific instance, if not be consistent with which one. Personally, I pronounce “s/he” as s-he. In any case, I wonder how he’d react to Vaarsuvius…)

Every single thing the Linear Guild has done has ended up helping the OOTS in some way. It’s uncanny. Consider:

  • When the OOTS first “accidentially” met the Linear Guild, in that pivotal 43rd strip, and the Guild roped the Order into their scheme to crack open the Talisman of Dorukan, it nearly resulted in the death of the Order – but instead it introduced them to Celia, who in turn, accelerated their path to Xykon and indirectly may have helped make that “final” confrontation come a lot sooner in other ways. (Remind me to add a discussion of Celia’s present behavior to the OOTS post docket.)
  • As I mentioned in a very, very early OOTS post, when Sabine disguised herself as a blacksmith and sent the OOTS on a quest to find the starmetal, she arguably saved the OOTS from dissolution. And is it possible that she secretly knew the starmetal was real and that the OOTS had the means to succeed where others had failed?
  • As Vaarsuvius mentioned, Nale’s contacting Roy the instant they left the Oracle kept them busy for long enough not to go running halfway around the world while Xykon wiped out the Sapphire Guard and won the game. With a little assist from a drunk wizard, of course. If Shojo still has an able teleporter after the incident the OOTS ends up not having to spend another few days in the City.
  • Haley brought up another example during half the OOTS’ second trip to the Oracle: It’s because of Nale that Haley got her voice back, and that Haley finally got with Elan. Oh, and if Nale doesn’t leave Elan in jail Elan never becomes a Dashing Swordsman.

I could easily see a scenario where whichever gate the Linear Guild captures, between the other two groups Team Evil gets there first in plenty of time, but gets delayed enough trying to dislodge the Guild that the OOTS can show up and foil both their evil plans. If the almost-canon belief of the fans that Elan’s father is holding Haley’s father is true, I could see the meeting of the bunch, engineered by Nale, end up helping Elan, Haley, and the OOTS at the (apparent) expense of Nale and the Guild. I could even see a scenario – and this ties in to the prediction at the start of the discussion – where the eventual reunion of the OOTS happens because of the Linear Guild in some way. And even if my overall prediction is untrue, I wouldn’t be surprised to see the Linear Guild and OOTS come together to stop Xykon’s plan at the final battle.

Maybe Elan wasn’t unintentionally ironic when he said, “Meeting the Linear Guild is the best thing that ever happened!!“

Okay, so for the delay this was a ridiculously short post. But no worries. The post I have planned for this Tuesday has been in the works for several weeks.

Apologies for the late strip…

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Until no later than Friday, the strip will post around 9 or 10 AM PT. The reasons have to do with a complex process I call “staying up so late watching TV it’s 3 AM by the time I even have the strip written and it’s raining outside”.

(VH1 Classic is doing a one-week marathon of actual music videos from the era people actually watched them that they’re branding as “2009 for 2009” and ever since I finally figured out they’re alphabetized by title I’ve been addicted, looking for certain songs or videos I anticipate coming up. I’m so pathetic I actually rickrolled myself Sunday night. So of course this whole marathon has to coincide with school starting up again…)

Oh, and Buzzcomix got suspended by its web host over the weekend and lost all its votes, and so if you’re reading the strip and like it, go vote for it RIGHT DAMN NOW! Let’s see how high it can go!

Because I just wasted my free time on my first day back at school…

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…this is the only post you get from me today.

Because of all my college football stuff, I’ve sort of been growing distant from the NFL Lineal Title (the Colts’ long reign hasn’t helped). During the before-the-bowls interregnum, I’ve been neglecting to update it at all. That changes now. However, the college lineal titles aren’t updated until after the National Championship.

Forget being a webcomic review that’s not about OOTS, CAD, or a DMM production, it’s a UF review that doesn’t use the phrase “nag strip”! D’oh!

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(From User Friendly. Click for full-sized principled treatment.)
I told you we would break out of the rut of only three or four different comics being reviewed! I told you!

In a sense, User Friendly was my first webcomic. Well before I had an inkling of what any webcomics were beyond maybe Penny Arcade, before I even had Da Blog, back in 2006 I started going through the User Friendly archives. At the time, I didn’t even see UF as a webcomic, but as a newspaper comic, even if only in “alternative” papers. (Perhaps that was because I had seen UF strips on the walls of my mom’s old job. Or because I had seen UF book collections and would have been taken aback at the very idea of webcomics – comics released only online in their first run – at the time I saw them.) The project quickly monopolized a large amount of my time, but I never had even the slightest bit of intention of going through the entire archive. I just wanted to see the strip take shape and read through the archives just to the point where User Friendly had found its status quo, where User Friendly became User Friendly.

I never found it.

Now again, UF was not only my first webcomic, it was the first comic I attempted to catch up on through the online archive, whether print-based or online, and I never attempted to start reading it on a daily basis for any length of time. So it’s possible my perspective was skewed by reading everything all at once (not to mention UF‘s reliance on ongoing storylines), and helped by how briskly I sped through the archives – even though the UF archive project started monopolizing my time, I was scared at how close I was getting to the present at the speed I was going at. (UF has been going for a while and has been running daily for ten years, but the archive’s a bit less daunting than that sounds because each strip is brisk and quick.) Still, no matter how far into the strip’s run I got, UF never felt like it had found its status quo. Miranda and AJ finally settled their “will-they-or-won’t-they” in 2003 or 2004, and it still felt like way too early in the strip’s run to resolve that plotline, even though AJ’s crush had been a background plot point for years.

Why was that?

User Friendly is a strip for which the most accurate way to describe it is as a kitbashing of several existing works, including some that postdate it, but even that doesn’t really do it justice by making it sound like a ripoff. It’s so much like Dilbert that it’s not so much the Internet‘s Dilbert as it is the Canadian Dilbert. Except the cast is large and consistent enough to also take on aspects of being more of a webcomic version of The Office (before Jim and Pam, there was AJ and Miranda!). On the other hand, the crew at Columbia Internet get into so much wacky hijinks that it’s also kind of like PVP, if PVP had never left the magazine offices and was about an actual technology company rather than a gaming magazine.

Indeed, perhaps the most fitting comparison for User Friendly is to PVP, right down to the mascot. Where PVP has Skull, User Friendly has Dust Puppy, complete with his own side cast bringing their own wacky hijinks, only Erwin and Crud Puppy are a bit more integrated into the daily life of the office (especially Erwin) than Shecky and Scratch. The diverging directions the two strips have taken are telling: while PVP let Skull become emblematic of the strip, Dust Puppy’s screen time has been significantly reduced over the years. For being the strip’s mascot, he probably appears much less often than any other “regular”. He tends to pop most often in standalones, watching TV with AJ, or when UF goes on one of its long (and infamous) “trip” storylines. Crud Puppy has become more of a general emblem of Ultimate Evil; Erwin has essentially become the office’s computer, providing an excuse for Illiad to set off a dialogue involving anything on the Internet without needing to find a full two characters to play off each other.

But if there’s one truly profound difference between User Friendly and PVP, it is in the art style. PVP regularly changes perspectives from panel to panel, and UF… doesn’t. Illiad isn’t up there with the worst abusers of copy-and-paste, but he’s at about Ctrl+Alt+Del level. The problem, when you compare him to CAD, is that, except in the Sunday strips, there are no color backgrounds or characters, making the monotony more apparent (say what you will about Tim Buckley’s use of Google Image Search for backgrounds, it’s better than the alternative), and more to the point, Illiad’s characters barely open their mouths – seriously, they never open more than a pixel or three when people talk (with occasional exceptions, such as Stef in profile).

(And please don’t make me once again fall back on the “this strip uses B^U too” argument, okay? UF‘s hated enough for it not to help. Thanks.)

Where User Friendly‘s use of copy-and-paste is most apparent is in an area that merits another comparison to another comic, because in quite a few ways, User Friendly is the Doonesbury of geek culture. This becomes most apparent in Illiad’s exterior shots of places like Microsoft and SCO and EA, which are very reminiscent of early Doonesbury‘s effectively copy-pasted shots of places like the White House. The artistic portrayal of the actual characters and how they talk is not unlike that of early Doonesbury as well, but Garry Trudeau has learned how to mix up his perspectives – even on those exterior shots of the White House – and Illiad still maintains that single-perspective look, occasionally broken up by extreme close-ups so he can claim “see, I shake up my perspectives!” (but mostly to squeeze in more dialogue).

(Then again, Doonesbury was maybe twenty years old by the time Trudeau finally figured perspectives out.)

Comparing UF to Doonesbury (or I suppose at this point, Dilbert meets Doonesbury with a dash of PVP added) provides a neat way to segue to the actual content of the strip itself, because – especially in its single-panel Sunday strips – UF is very much an editorial cartoon. Now, I’ve previously described xkcd as an editorial cartoon for the Internet, but no one would mistake it for User Friendly. xkcd tends to talk about memes rolling through the Internet, or the happenings of online forums. In short, xkcd tends to limit its satire to the Internet itself, or when it’s not doing that, on everyday things people do. UF is a lot more savage, taking on things Big Corporations do that tick a certain class of geek off.

Actually, that “certain class of geek” may hint at one reason why User Friendly, like Ctrl+Alt+Del, has attracted a hatedom that might be out of proportion to its lack of quality. Only unlike CAD, it’s not so much a result of people misunderstanding what the strip is about, except in not understanding it before they encounter it. Most of the geek strips that litter the web – Penny Arcade and its ripoffs – tend to center on gaming culture and its related realms. (You could argue there are quite a few that delve into D&D and its ilk, but most of them aim to be more like Order of the Stick, telling stories based on the D&D milieu and keeping their appeal relatively broad.)

UF does have AJ as a gamer representative and most of the cast has some gamer cred, but UF is fundamentally a strip about and for the IT industry. (Tech support industry, when Greg is the focus.) Its humor is geared towards IT professionals who like seeing Microsoft get skewered, like going “yay Linux!”, and want to see the annoying marketing guy down the hall get his comeuppance, not the gamers living in their mothers’ basements that read Penny Arcade and the like. As PA itself once said, it’s not for you. (I should make it clear: UF isn’t what xkcd is cracked up to be, either. It’s certainly worth a laugh from time to time, even from me, and most of the jokes are at least marginally acessible to any geek.)

Earlier… I guess it was last year, now, wasn’t it? – Eric “Websnark” Burns(-White), back when he was still doing his “State of the Web(cartoonist)” series, went into talking about UF expecting to utterly savage it and write a “you had me and you lost me” on it, and instead wrote at length about how UF wasn’t bad, it just hadn’t changed from when it started and the schtick was growing old. Actually, now that I re-read it, that was what Burns wrote when he first snarked UF at the very beginning, when he still out-and-out hated it, or at least didn’t like it, and it’s pretty much common knowledge among UF haters. What he actually said last year was basically what I said in the last paragraph. But anyway, there’s nothing wrong with remaining exactly the same over the years, with next to no character development. Peanuts essentially played that to perfection. So have most of the gag-a-day strips in the newspapers, to the point of never even letting their characters age.

User Friendly‘s problem… see, when Burns(-White) did his “State of the (Web)cartoonist” on Illiad, he remarked on the contrast between PVP being criticized for drifting away from simple gag-a-day strips, and UF being criticized for not doing so. I think the difference, and the reason why I never felt that UF ever really became UF (oddly, considering I mentioned earlier that it never found its status quo), was that UF became set in its ways too early. UF never really grew out of adolescence; it essentially froze in time at a point where it had yet to reach maturity, and so when I had my archive binge in 2006, I kept waiting for it to finish rounding into shape, waiting for it to take those last few steps in its evolution. And it never came. Maybe that’s because there are a few dangling threads Illiad leaves maddeningly untouched, but it’s like there’s a germ of a greater webcomic lurking inside User Friendly and that if Illiad hadn’t decided “okay, this is the comic I like” so quickly, UF could be a far greater comic strip for the experience. Couple that with its general timelessness (both in its characters and its subject matter) and the reliance on story arcs (the real reason I never got a sense it found its status quo), and UF is really a lot younger comic strip than its years.

User Friendly isn’t bad. I’m sure in certain subcultures, its humor is rip-roaringly hilarious. It’s just that… it just isn’t good. Certainly not good enough to make my RSS reader, if it were even modern enough to have an RSS feed. It’s decent enough that I can chuckle at some of the jokes, and find myself hooked enough to go through the archive for longer than I intended, but it’s not good enough to draw me to it. It’s just cripplingly mediocre, and that might be one of the most dreaded things you can say about a webcomic.

Da Blog’s Predictions for 2009

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Because a lot of sites I visit are putting up predictions for the new year, so am I, and I’ll check back in at year’s end to see how I did:

  • The year in sports is a massive disappointment. The Super Bowl pits the Dolphins against the Vikings. North Carolina, after an undefeated regular season, loses in the Final Four and the national championship pits UCLA against UConn. The game is a laugher. Cleveland beats San Antonio in the NBA Finals; the Knicks just barely miss the playoffs and LeBron James signs a contract extention to stay in Cleveland after winning his first championship. Mike D’Antoni agrees to a buyout soon thereafter to coach LeBron in Cleveland, condemning the Knicks to a decade of mediocrity. The Stanley Cup Playoffs pit the Calgary Flames against the Montreal Canadiens, and America tunes out. So does Canada when it turns into a four-game sweep that’s not that close. Neither the Red Sox nor Yankees make the ALCS, and one of them misses the playoffs as Tampa Bay and Philadelphia square off again in the World Series.
  • Tiger Woods comes back too soon, finishing second in the Masters, and misses most of 2009, raising concerns he may retire. Jimmie Johnson wins yet another Sprint Cup in a laugher, and by the end of the season he’s winning races basically by showing up, with all the teams quitting. Rafael Nadal is the only player to win at least two majors of either gender, and Roger Federer never makes a major final. USC, Cincinnati, and Alabama are the only three undefeated teams by week 4; they stay that way through the end, and USC routs Alabama in the national championship. There are no BCS buster mid-majors. At least one minor league cancels either the 2009 or 2010 season, and at least one MLS team folds. The IRL cuts back drastically on the 2010 season, and doesn’t so much pass NASCAR as NASCAR passes it backwards. By 2012, though, the IRL is back to 2008 levels, and returns to ESPN in 2018. UFC effectively becomes NASCAR’s replacement as one of the four major sports, and shows it wasn’t moving to pay-per-view that killed boxing.
  • The Olympics moves to ESPN and ABC after landing in Chicago. NBC immediately pulls out of the NHL following the 2009-2010 season. ESPN becomes the exclusive cable home of the NHL (beyond NHL Network) after 2011.
  • The Saints challenge for the NFC South, and the Lions are at least respectable. Brett Favre retires and the Jets become the new Lions. Matt Cassel bolts from New England to join the Jaguars, who instantly become a Super Bowl contender. Tom Brady comes back a clearly different player, and the Pats begin a slow slide into mediocrity. The Cowboys self-destruct and don’t even challenge for the playoffs. The Titans trade Vince Young to Houston in the offseason.
  • Barack Obama finds himself frazzled by the vexing economic crisis and various foreign crises. Troops are out of Iraq by June, but by August Iraq is effectively ruled by several cabals of warlords. Obama uses the money freed up by exiting Iraq to institute his own version of the New Deal, but it doesn’t work very well. Meanwhile little actual “change” happens, even from the politics of the last eight years, and when Obama calls in the military to break up a food riot in November, many in his own party compare him to Bush, and the “netroots” begin forming their own nascent political movement for 2012.
  • By 2012, that movement has gained enough steam to attract attention (and support) from both major parties. However, the economic crisis has only gotten worse and the US has effectively become a vassal state of China… and the Republicans, as a result, prove far more resilient than expected after adopting a bizarre fascist-anarchist policy, a strange kitbashing of the politics of Ron Paul and George W. Bush. Before 2020, World War III has erupted, and America is Nazi Germany after the GOP win the 2012 elections, the last to be held under the Constitution of 1776. The 2016 Olympics become America’s 1936 Munich Games, and come complete with a past-his-prime Michael Phelps being dragged back to the pool. The world comes out of the war with the economy back on track, but set back to the Middle Ages if not before. China, India, and Japan become the new “modern” world powers with Depression-era technology, set back from reaching 1950s-era technology by the ravages to the environment. The Amazon becomes a desert; Canada and Russia become the world’s new breadbasket.
  • The Internet undergoes its latest metamorphosis. By the end of the year, it is as good at watching video as the average television. In the short term, it only benefits from the deepening economic crisis. When the Obama administration passes a universal broadband bill, it sparks an Internet revolution, and blogs become the new MySpace, since you can at least theoretically make money off them. Internet advertising finally becomes viable, if only because nothing else is.
  • Webcomics undergo an explosion during this time. A Penny Arcade TV series is commissioned for Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim block by year’s end. By 2010, a Girl Genius movie is in development, and rumors of an Order of the Stick movie persist as well. Sandsday becomes the biggest new thing in webcomics, and by year’s end I’m fighting off TV series offers of my own.
  • Da Blog attracts two huge followings in particular: people looking for webcomics criticism, who singlehandedly make it ten times more popular than Websnark ever was, rendering my getting a real job unnecessary, and people looking for straight-dope political analysis. Da Blog plays a significant role in attracting new audiences to politics, healing the rifts of our political landscape, and shaping the aforementioned nascent political movement.

And that just left me incredibly drained and depressed. I think it’s better if I don’t try to predict what happens, and just try and enjoy the ride. You should try it some time.

2008 Golden Bowl Tournament: Sugar Bowl Semifinal

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Sugar Bowl: #3 Texas v. #2 Florida
The biggest test of which conference, the Big 12 or SEC, was truly better over the course of the season provided vindication for a number of different groups, and left people wondering what might have been had the quarterfinals gone just a bit differently.

Truth be told, the Sugar Bowl was not much of a fight. That was the case pretty much from the opening bell. Two Chris Rainey runs put the Gators in Texas territory, and a Tebow throw to Riley Cooper (one of only two completed passes all day) made up for a holding penalty and set up a Rainey draw for the first down, setting up a quick field goal. After an encroachment penalty against the Gators, Cody Johnson broke open a long run to get the Longhorns in Gator territory, but they went three-and-out from there and Jeffery Demps left the defense in his wake on a 74-yard touchdown run. The next Florida drive, following a three-and-out, started with good field position right behind midfield and ended with the second Tebow completion, to Tate Casey for a 37-yard touchdown, but the extra point was shanked. Tebow couldn’t complete a pass the rest of the day, and the former Heisman winner was neutered on the ground, rushing 11 times but for a net loss of 3 yards (though that was probably a result of taking knees at the end of the game). This game would be won with the key ingredients of any football championship: running and defense. In particular, Rainey would be named the game’s MVP after running 14 times for 150 yards, and Percy Harvin and Demps also ran for over 100 yards each.

Texas would tack on a field goal before the end of the quarter, but Rainey started the second with a 53-yard touchdown run – another reason he would be named MVP, coupled with his second later in the game. Colt McCoy led his team methodically down the field again, relying mostly on himself, both throwing (5 for 6) and running (27 yards on 3 carries), ending with his one touchdown completion, to Jordan Shipley. But it would be the last time Texas scored. Florida tacked on another field goal, and not only did Texas go three-and-out twice before the half, they got the ball a third time before the half, pinned on their own 6, and proceeded to get McCoy sacked in the end zone, bringing the score to an even 28 to Texas’ 10. Florida managed to get the ball back so close they went for a field goal before the half, but the 51-yard attempt was just too long for Jonathan Phillips to make.

Not that it really mattered, because the Gators blew the game open in the second half. Texas still didn’t pick up a first down until their second drive of the half, by which point Florida had already scored again, thanks to a 58-yard run by Harvin on their first play from scrimmage that set the Gators up on the 22. The Longhorns would get just close enough to be in “no-man’s-land”, too close to punt but too far out to kick a field goal, and wound up unsuccessfully going for it on fourth and 2. Texas in fact seemed to have the momentum for a chunk of the third quarter, forcing a three-and-out before Vondrell McGee put them in field goal territory, but the 42 yard attempt sailed left. A McCoy fumble to start the fourth quarter, followed by three quick runs by Rainey, Harvin, and Kestahn Moore into the end zone, snuffed out that flame of hope and gave Florida a commanding 42-10 lead. Rainey’s second touchdown would come with 2:40 left in the game, just to drive one more nail in the Longhorns’ coffin, and bringing vindication to those who felt Oklahoma should have been in the Big 12 title game.
Final score: Texas 10, Florida 49

Final Round matchups:
Fiesta Bowl: Penn State v. Texas
Penn State’s rock-hard defense (that has proven to be a little less than rock-hard in this tournament) against Colt McCoy and the astounding Texas offense. The Nittany Lions will need to play like Linebacker U. if they want to capture the third-place title.

Golden Bowl II: USC v. Florida
The National Championship game pits two teams that know the key to winning a championship is a fantastic defense. Both also sport amazing playmakers on offense, with USC keyed by Mark Sanchez and Joe McKnight and Florida led by Tim Tebow and Percy Harvin. Florida has long been considered better tested by their schedule, but beyond Alabama, Georgia, and Ole Miss they didn’t play much of anybody (at least if you believe some Big 12 partisans), while USC had to face a real team in the first round and had to dispatch the seed in the tournament on the road in the second. And the way Tebow has been mostly neutered, it’s not out of the question to think USC could do it again, and shut down the rest of the Florida offense in the process… then again, Florida’s defense has actually been as good as advertised, unlike Penn State’s…

Fiesta Bowl coming next weekend. The Golden Bowl will be played over Martin Luther King weekend.

2008 Golden Bowl Tournament: Non-Semifinal BCS Bowls

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Orange Bowl: Texas Tech v. Cincinnati
A close, hard-fought contest proved once and for all that Cincinnati deserved every bit of the seeding they got in the Golden Bowl Tournament – and left the rest of the actual tournament with a high bar to follow.

The tone was set early when Graham Harrell’s third pass attempt was intercepted, and returned to the 18, setting up an easy touchdown pass to Dominick Goodman. Unfazed, Harrell led the Red Raiders right down the field, with some help from a couple of throws to Michael Crabtree, including one that Crabtree managed to take into the endzone. After a three-and-out and a Red Raider first down that went nowhere, the Bearcats – pinned inside their own 20 by a holding penalty – marched down the field to the 6 heading into the second quarter before the Raider defense stuffed everything they tried and held them to a field goal. The Red Raiders struck back with their own drive, but faced with fourth-and-1 on the 30, decided to kick a field goal of their own – and watched it sail wide right.

The Bearcats started another good drive before a second-down sack of Tony Pike put them at third-and-17 from the 36. The next play was an incompletion, and the Bearcats were forced to punt – and proceeded to force a three-and-out, after which they picked up where they left off, culminating with Pike-to-Goodman for another touchdown, putting the Bearcats up by ten. Harrell led the Red Raiders on another valiant drive, but on second-and-goal from the five, no timeouts, and twenty-one seconds left, Harrell drops back to pass instead of handing the ball off – and overthrows Shannon Woods, making it third-and-goal with fifteen seconds left. Enough time not to be an ideal circumstance to bring out the field goal unit on any but fourth down, but not enough to comfortably run another play and still get a field goal off (at least if the Raiders had run the ball on second down Harrell could have worked the clock down to three-to-five seconds before spiking the ball). Still, it’s somewhat bewildering Mike Leach doesn’t at least call for another pass and instead brings out the field goal unit anyway, and perhaps more bewildering when the resulting chip shot bangs off the upright. Cincinnati enters the half with all the momentum and a full ten-point lead, and the analysts wonder if the Red Raiders can get more than a fluke stop.

Baron Batch runs off a 63-yard run before finally getting stopped on the 7 on the second play from scrimmage in the second half, setting up a quick Red Raider touchdown, but the Raider defense still can’t stop the Bearcat offense as Pike goes 4-for-5 on the ensuing drive. The incompletion, an overthrown touchdown attempt, helps hold Cincinnati to a 39-yard field goal, keeping the game within a score, and the Raider offense catches a little bit of fire of its own. While the Bearcats are operating slowly and methodically, the Red Raiders score their points with big plays like a 32-yard completion from Harrell to Eric Morris, and a throw to Tramain Swindall that makes Swindall look like a Heisman candidate before he finally dives into the endzone.

After another Cincinnati touchdown, though, the Bearcat defense forces a three-and-out and the Bearcats prove just as unstoppable with yet another touchdown drive that spans the quarter break. Harrell keeps the Raiders in the game with a touchdown drive of his own, but Jacob Ramsey breaks off a 46-yard run that sets up a field goal. The Red Raiders get the ball back with 6:32 left, but burn a lot of clock en route to the end zone and can’t complete the two-point conversion, so Cincinnati still has a 36-34 lead. Astoundingly (even though there’s still 2:43 remaining), considering how little the Raider defense has been able to stop the Bearcats all day, Leach does not call for an onside kick on the ensuing kickoff – but the Raider defense vindicates his confidence by finally forcing a three-and-out. But Harrell’s comeback attempt is a disaster: sacked on first down, an 11-yard completion with 17 to go on second, and two incompletions. Cincinnati sneaks out of Miami with the victory, but Graham Harrell is named the game’s MVP for keeping the Red Raiders in the game when Cincinnati ran all up and down on the Raider defense.
Final score: Texas Tech 34, Cincinnati 36

Cotton Bowl: Oklahoma v. Alabama
Stewing from two weeks of pundits suggesting they might be soft or not mentally prepared, the Sooners – once having visions of championships dancing in their heads – vow to make the most of their consolation prize and show people why they had been the seed. After a three-and-out and an Alabama missed field goal, Sam Bradford methodically leads the Sooners down the field and into the end zone. Glen Coffee does most of the work on the ensuing Alabama drive, but it gets stopped on the 6 and forces another field goal, made this time. On Alabama’s next drive early in the second, Coffee takes it into the end zone himself and gives the Tide what would be their only lead of the game. Oklahoma’s next drive is a three-and-out, but the defense stops Alabama in their own territory and a 65-yard touchdown run gives the Sooners the lead for good.

That long touchdown is arguably the turning point of the game. Alabama doesn’t get a first down for the rest of the half and Oklahoma’s next drive, already starting in Alabama territory, starts with two Chris Brown runs before Jermaine Gresham catches a Bradford pass and outruns the defense for a 36-yard touchdown. Oklahoma enters the half with a 21-10 lead, but Alabama methodically makes its way down the field to cut that lead to four to start the second half, this time with John Parker Wilson taking a more central role. Oklahoma brushes it off, though, when Brown breaks open another touchdown run of more than 60 yards. Alabama makes another effort on their next drive, but get stopped near midfield. Oklahoma, though, doesn’t do much better on their next drive and Alabama manages to take the punt almost to where it was punted from to start the fourth quarter.

Wilson hits Nick Walker for a 36-yard gain to set up a throw to Coffee for the touchdown (a risky touchdown throw on fourth-and-1 from the 8), picking up the two-point conversion to get within a field goal. But once again, Oklahoma brushes it off with another big play, this time a long run on the second play from scrimmage that just barely gets tackled a yard short of the end zone. After the eventual TD, Alabama has Coffee and Mark Ingram (and occasionally Roy Upchurch) trade carries until they get inside the Sooner 40 with six minutes left, after which they rely more on Wilson’s arm. Although he gets an 18-yard first down completion on his first try, the next three plays are a short completion, an incompletion, and a sack, holding the Tide to a field goal with a little less than five minutes to play. Alabama opts to kick it away and Oklahoma makes them pay, taking the kickoff to their own 31, having Bradford make a 20-yard completion to the Tide 33, and breaking open yet another touchdown run from there. The demoralized Tide get nowhere on the ensuing drive, but the defense do manage to get enough of a stop to force the Sooners to kick a field goal on fourth down. There’s nowhere near enough time to make up a 17-point deficit, though.
Final score: Oklahoma 45, Alabama 28

USC is in the Golden Bowl. Who will join them, Texas or Florida? Tune in tomorrow and find out!