ESPN’s Mark Schlabach: “Notre Dame shows it doesn’t belong in BCS bowls“

Against LSU, Notre Dame once again proved it doesn’t deserve to play in BCS bowl games, which have become its birthright because of the school’s national stature and ability to draw high TV ratings.

And by shutting out the Fighting Irish in the second half and erupting for 577 yards of offense in the game, the Tigers again proved Notre Dame is no longer capable of beating teams like LSU. Or Ohio State, Michigan and Southern California, which also handed the Fighting Irish lopsided losses in the past 12 months.

From Our Attorney:

FCC fines NBC a record $250,000 for on-air fellatio of Notre Dame

You thought we were done being pissed off now that the Democrats control Congress and we’ve got football? Think again.

John Gilmore has been pursuing a case against the Feds over the right to fly domestically without identification; it’s been amply demonstrated by folks like Bruce Schneier that the ID requirement has no security implications (and in fact exists to solve an airline business problem, not a security issue; n.b. that it’s now impossible to sell airline tickets to another person) — every one of the 9/11 hijackers, for example, had valid ID. Part of Gilmore’s case is a desire to force the government to disclose the law in question, something they won’t do because they claim the law is classified.

Think on that for a minute. We now have classified, secret laws that are not available for our review, nor are they available when they’re legally challenged, as in this case.

That’s all kinds of fucked up. And yet, the Supremes have decided not to hear the case, rejecting the appeal without comment and letting stand the lower court’s opinion that Gilmore’s right’s aren’t abridged by being forced to show ID. The question of secret law has been effectively shoveled under the rug until the next challenge, but that doesn’t help us today.

More at Slashdot and BoingBoing.

In this fantastic bit, they discuss airport security with expert Bruce Schneier:

Inherent in the obsession on liquids and gels, Mr. Schneier said, “is the notion that we can stop the bad guys by focusing on tactics, which is moronic. I pick a defense, you see my defense, and then you, the bad guy, decide what to do. That’s a game we can’t win.”

He added, “Screeners are so busy looking for liquids that they’ve missed decoy bombs in tests. We’ve defined success so weirdly. When T.S.A. takes away some frozen tomato sauce from grandmom because it might become a liquid, they think of it as a success. But that’s a failure. It’s a false alarm.”

(Local copy, since NYT rots links.)

Now the football is almost over, he’re something to piss you off:

Via signing statements, Bush has now asserted that he can read your mail without a warrant.

As predicted, LSU just handed perennially-overrated Notre Dame their 9th consecutive bowl loss[1] in the Sugar Bowl. Final score: LSU 41, Notre Dame 14. LSU quarterback Jamarcus Russell outproduced the much ballyhooed ND golden boy Brady Quinn by better than 2 to 1 — and he’s a junior who could come back and lead the Tigers next year.

Revised bowl rundown, now with final AP/USAT/BCS rankings:

• Alabama (UR) — Independence, vs. Oklahoma St (UR) — LOST
• Arkansas (12/13/12)– Capitol One, vs. Wisc (6/5/7) — LOST
• Auburn (10/10/9)– Cotton, vs. Nebraska (22/22/23) — WON
• Florida (2)– BCS Championship, vs. Ohio State (1) — 1/8, 8pm
• Georgia (UR)– Chik-Fil-A, vs. VaTech (14/14/13) — WON
• Kentucky (UR) — Gaylord Hotels Music City, vs. Clemson (UR) — WON
• LSU (4) — Sugar, vs. ND (11) — WON
• SC (UR) — AutoZone Liberty, vs. Houston (UR) — WON
• Tenn (17) — Outback, vs. Penn State (UR) — LOST

The SEC has played 8 of its 9 bowls, and taken 5 of them. Cross your fingers for the big show next week.

[1. The last time Notre Dame won a bowl, Heathen lived in Tuscaloosa, and most of you people had never heard of the Internet. It was the January 1994 Cotton Bowl, against A&M.]

Nick Saban has accepted the Alabama offer. We figure he’ll be looking for a job again by either November 2007 or November 2008, as the alumni and Mal Moore will no doubt expect miracles and wonders immediately, and will either fire him or run him off before any real progress can be made.

We are alerted to the following by Heathen Agent code-named Light Bulb:

So after running in for the [game-winning] 2 point conversion, Ian Johnson ran over to his girlfriend (one of those little Boise State cheerleaders) and asked her to marry him. I’m telling you, this had to be a script.

Seriously.

Someone’s posted the last few plays of the Fiesta Bowl on YouTube. What’s not here: the fact that OU’s tying two-point-conversion play required three iterations, two of them successful. (The first failed, but included a Boise penalty; the second worked, but included an OU foul.)

If you’re keeping count, that’s 22 combined points in the final 86 seconds of regulation football.

We’ll own our SEC predictions, good and bad, but you Sooners are on your own. Zabransky played a damn near perfect game, and it was a hell of a lot more fun to watch than any of the other contests we saw today. Come on: how often do you see a Statue of Liberty work that well, in OT even — especially when smart money would’ve had them kick the PAT and move on to a second OT?

Also, Division I-A Playoff NOW.

We’d have taken Michigan, too.

We we learned today: Never count on Arkansas or Tennessee. At least Auburn came through. Updates in red.

• Alabama — Independence, vs. Oklahoma St — LOST
• Arkansas — Capitol One, vs. Wisc — LOST
• Auburn — Cotton, vs. Nebraska — WON
• Florida — BCS Championship, vs. Ohio State — 1/8, 8pm
• Georgia — Chik-Fil-A, vs. VaTech — WON
• Kentucky — Gaylord Hotels Music City, vs. Clemson — WON
• LSU — Sugar, vs. ND — 1/3, 8pm
• SC — AutoZone Liberty, vs. Houston, WON
• Tenn — Outback, vs. Penn State — LOST

This leaves the Southeastern Conference at 4-3 with two games to go — our strongest pick (LSU) and our weakest (Florida).

(This is why we don’t make our living calling football games, but we’ll note that many actual sports pros agreed with our expectation that Arkansas and Tennessee would win their respective bowls. We have, at least, the consolation of knowing the Fulmer lost.)

So, it’s Bowl Season, and of the dozen teams in the SEC, 9 got bids.

Let’s pause for a moment and see if any other conferences did as well, shall we?

Ok, that’s out of the way. (No, I don’t think so, but we could be wrong — we can’t be bothered to check.)

Here’s the bowl picture for the SEC:

• Alabama — Independence, vs. Oklahoma St — LOST
• Arkansas — Capitol One, vs. Wisc — 1/1, 1:00
• Auburn — Cotton, vs. Nebraska — 1/1, 11:30
• Florida — BCS Championship, vs. Ohio State — 1/8, 8pm
• Georgia — Chik-Fil-A, vs. VaTech — WON
• Kentucky — Gaylord Hotels Music City, vs. Clemson — WON
• LSU — Sugar, vs. ND — 1/3, 8pm
• Ole Miss — no bowl
• MSU — no bowl
• SC — AutoZone Liberty, vs. Houston, WON
• Tenn — Outback, vs. Penn State — 1/1, 11:00
• Vandy — no bowl

No big surprises here — the schools in the Heathen Home State have lagged for years (modulo Eli’s tenure at Ole Miss), and Vandy is hampered by actual admissions requirements, but the balance is solid.

Only 4 of the 9 have been played; of those, only one team disappointed (and it was ours, dammit). Coming up, though, we have very good expectations about the final five games:

Wisconsin lost to its only ranked opponent in the regular season, while Arkansas emerged as a surprisingly powerful presence in the SEC this year. We give the edge to the Razorbacks.

Auburn’s still very strong, so we’ll pick them to beat Nebraska — playing in a stronger conference, they still have a better record than the Cornhuskers, who beat only one ranked team in four shots during the season (#24, A&M, back in November).

LSU should be a shoe-in over perennially-overrated ND. They played four top-ten teams on the road, as we previously noted, while ND hasn’t beaten anyone of note all year. The Tigers can disappoint, the ND does have a good guy behind the center, but we’re still wearing purple and gold in our hearts on this one (as much as it pains us).

Penn State’s in a bowl? Why? Expect Fulmer (9-3 in the SEC) to whip Joe Pa (8-4, heavy on the creampuffs — is Youngstown State even Div I-A?), leg or no leg. We can’t bring ourselves to root for Rocky Top, so we’ll have to content ourselves with pulling against Penn State.

That leave the Big Show on January 8. Right now, we still pick Urban Meyer’s Gators over Ohio State, but that’s a closer call. Both had 4 ranked opponents in the regular season, but one of Ohio’s was an on-the-way-out Penn State back in September. Florida dropped one of its ranked games, losing to Auburn in a hell of a game back in October. All we’re really sure about here is that it’s likely to be quite a football game.

We figure we may be wrong about one of these picks, so we estimate the final SEC bowl record at 7-2.

(Oh, one more, designed to bait certain readers: in the Orange Bowl — featuring a shatteringly irrelevant pairing of Wake Forest vs. Louisville — we pick “whatever else is on”.)

Can anyone enlighten us on the snowglobe menace?

We note again that there is not a damn thing that makes sense about any of the TSA regs that have gone into effect since 9/11, and that they probably make us LESS safe. Binary explosives of the sort thought to be planned for the London non-attack-attack won’t work; nail files aren’t dangerous; the ID requirement is for the airlines, not security. It’s all bullshit, and nobody in a position to change anything cares. Hell, most citizens don’t care; they’re fat and happy and complacent, and naively assume this theater makes us safer.

And people wonder why we’re misanthropic.

From the LA Times:

Today, Hacienda Napoles is in ruins, taken over by jungle foliage and bats. The sprawling Spanish-style mansion has been gutted, scavenged by treasure hunters looking for stashes of gold and cash buried under the floors. Escobar is long gone, cut down in a hail of police gunfire.

But the hippos are still here.

The military locked up a whistleblower for 97 days in a maximum security facility in Iraq.

One night in mid-April, the steel door clanked shut on detainee No. 200343 at Camp Cropper, the United States military’s maximum-security detention site in Baghdad.

American guards arrived at the man’s cell periodically over the next several days, shackled his hands and feet, blindfolded him and took him to a padded room for interrogation, the detainee said. After an hour or two, he was returned to his cell, fatigued but unable to sleep.

The fluorescent lights in his cell were never turned off, he said. At most hours, heavy metal or country music blared in the corridor. He said he was rousted at random times without explanation and made to stand in his cell. Even lying down, he said, he was kept from covering his face to block out the light, noise and cold. And when he was released after 97 days he was exhausted, depressed and scared.

Detainee 200343 was among thousands of people who have been held and released by the American military in Iraq, and his account of his ordeal has provided one of the few detailed views of the Pentagon’s detention operations since the abuse scandals at Abu Ghraib. Yet in many respects his case is unusual.

The detainee was Donald Vance, a 29-year-old Navy veteran from Chicago who went to Iraq as a security contractor. He wound up as a whistle-blower, passing information to the F.B.I. about suspicious activities at the Iraqi security firm where he worked, including what he said was possible illegal weapons trading.

But when American soldiers raided the company at his urging, Mr. Vance and another American who worked there were detained as suspects by the military, which was unaware that Mr. Vance was an informer, according to officials and military documents.

They did this to an American citizen who could not have been more emphatically a good guy. And he had virtually no recourse. Trusting people in power is never a good idea; they need oversight, which is why we have a system of checks and balances in our government. This administration has sought from the very first to dismantle these failsafes and create an imperial presidency; stories like Vance’s are the inevitable result.

(Local PDF because the NYT links rot.)

Over the weekend, a couple NFL records were broken. Most famously, Brett Favre broke Dan Marino’s career passing completion record (4,974 and counting), which is pretty cool. However, a sexier-sounding record fell this weekend, too: Most Career Points.

You’d sort of think this would be a running back or a receiver, but no, not really: it’s a kicker. Morten Andersen (perhaps the only Dane in the game) of the Atlanta Falcons took the title on Saturday night with two extra points against the Cowboys. Andersen, who is forty fucking six years old, now has 2,435 points in his 24-year career, edging past the former record-holder, Gary Anderson.

Andersen had previously broken another of the prior Anderson’s records last week, when he kicked his 538th career field goal. He’s 538 for 679 on field goals, and 821 of 831 on PATs. Also, he’s old enough to have fathered the last few seasons’ rookies, which is just cool.