Yeah, That Did Look Familiar...

...now that you mention it. No doubt others have/will touch on the general unpossibility of Vince Young, but it bears repeating: um, dude. Seriously. Bullets, baby!

• Our long national nightmare is over. No offense to the USC players, who seem as blameless as college kids with inexhaustible sources of hotties willing to do anything and access to vast quantities of alcohol can be, but no one without a direct tie to the school was rooting for them thanks to ESPN's general insufferability in regards to the Trojans. Now it can be told: there is no doubt that the 2005 Trojans are the greatest one loss team in the history of college football. And proud we are of all of them.
• Can we shut up about Mack Brown now? Blah blah blah never win big game blah blah blah never beat OU blah blah blah never does anything with all his talent... totally bleeding ridiculous given the state the program had fallen to under Mackovic and the powerhouse Sooner teams that kept Texas down for so long. That's what they said about Tom Osborne. Look: winning national championships is hard. No matter how much goddamn talent you have. Football is a game where it's near impossible to get through a season without having at least a few games balance on a razor's edge. Look at USC, undoubtedly the best team ever: a desperate sneak against ND, a squeaker against Fresno, a late rally against Arizona State, and a loss to Texas. A few plays here and there and they could have ended up 8-4.
  
  Can't people just accept that not everything is ordained from on high by talent and skill?
• Also can we learn our lesson? All talk about "greatest ever" anything should be banned after that ESPN fiasco. Who knows? No one. Who can prove anything about anything? No one. So can we stop the inane assertions of the finest performance, best quarterback, best game ever? I don't care. It was a great game. Vince Young is a great player. That's enough.
• A blessing and a curse. The game reasserted the case for replay in no uncertain terms, even though it did not work flawlessly. A couple of plays--the Vince Young pitch and a linebacker's near interception--were not reviewed, but several critical ones were and there were a couple overturned calls that were critical to the game. The infamous Jim Augustine--the man who blew the Chad Henne "fumble" in the MSU game--was the review official, so you knew there would be screwups but on balance the game was improved by its presence. Any Penn State fans want to check in with elaborate conspiracy theories about how the Witvoet crew was conspiring against Penn State tonight?
  
• Speaking of insufferable. By the way, Fouts, the refs were checking with each other to see whether Bush had stepped out of bounds on his leaping touchdown in order to get the call right, not because they "don't see anyone like Reggie Bush in the Big Ten," you smarmy ridiculous-bearded hippie.
• Thanks, Keith. Fading, sure. But, like Johnny Cash a few years back, anyone focusing on his momentary confusion from time to time and harping on his declining form is missing out on the last days of an inimitable voice that the world will soon be poorer without. Much poorer.
  

So... is it September yet?