Those words mean what I think they mean

shal·low adj. shal·low·er, shal·low·est

1. Measuring little from bottom to top or surface; lacking physical depth.
2. Lacking depth of intellect, emotion, or knowledge: "“This is a shallow parody of America."” (Lloyd Rose).
3. Marked by insufficient inhalation of air; weak: shallow respirations.
4. In the part of a playing area that is closer to home plate: shallow left field.

fac·ile adj.

1. Done or achieved with little effort or difficulty; easy. See Synonyms at easy.
2. Working, acting, or speaking with effortless ease and fluency.
3. Arrived at without due care, effort, or examination; superficial: proposed a facile solution to a complex problem.
4. Readily manifested, together with an aura of insincerity and lack of depth: a facile slogan devised by politicians.
5. Archaic. Pleasingly mild, as in disposition or manner.

This is what we are talking about, is it not? The mindless pregame blather about wanting it more? How sports commentators are, more often than not, just saying something to say it?

If you want to read HP's response, it's here. But I'll save you the time. HP's response to my duel-inducing slap consists of: cheap shots at Lloyd Carr and Dr. Z, links to his posts which I declared to be characterized by the above nasty words with a reasoning-free declaration that they are not those things, and mischaracterization of my post via omission, and... Christ... a lot of words full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Yes, mainstream dumb drives me crazy. Yes, I'd like it if that was no longer the case. But HP is no Kwisatz Haderach. Look. I don't want his to get "fisky," as EDSBS has accurately accused me of being in the past. I don't want to pull something out of context and hold it up and beat it to shreds. So what I'm going to do is pull something that I believe sums up the whole thing. HP says:

...I did explain what the offenses had in common (comparing their balance and yardage and scoring output) and why they are so hard to defend and how it affected the teams (I noted they went 55-2 against the rest of college football last season)....

He references this post, which is all the explanation we get. Read it. If it's something you find convincing and thorough, well, I guess I've lost. To me it consists of "these six teams have good records and rack up a lot of yards and are balanced so they're real good but Oklahoma doesn't count because Oklahoma isn't sophisticated." This is nothing you wouldn't read from, say, Matt Hayes. Same with useless top ten lists of fastest players or best Heisman winners. Superficial, all of it, and when the Superficial One calls out everyone else for being superficial, well, them's sissy-boy slapfight words.

Respect from the MSM (and anybody, really) will come from actually doing good work with research behind it--and I don't mean checking the top ten offenses last year to see which of them had really good seasons. Others are capable of doing this and have done so. I think it's under a year before BGS starts getting a lot of mainstream attention, not because they're calling people out for accountability, but because they're covering Notre Dame better than anyone else. So. I suggest everyone put up or shut up.

I promise that I'm shutting up on this now. And then I will put up sweet things later that will make Trev Alberts collapse to the ground, repentant, crying, begging for penance.

(And why do I blog? For the hot blog groupies.)