Flu-addled football or Does anyone even want this "championship"?

On Monday Sports Illustrated's Stewart Mandel wrote a lengthy college football analysis which began

Is it just me, or is this season beginning to feel a whole lot like 2007?

You remember 2007, a.k.a. the "Year of the Upset." The year Appalachian State beat Michigan, Stanford beat USC (though this one doesn't seem so shocking anymore), 10 teams ranked No. 1 or 2 lost over the course of the year and a two-loss team (LSU) won the national title.

In 2009, Nos. 1 and 2 (Florida and Texas) remain unscathed thus far -- but they're the exception. Nine different top 10 teams have lost in the season's first four weeks, including four (Ole Miss, Penn State, Cal and Miami) this past weekend. That's a lot of upheaval.

And that's fine. We could go for another year with a 2-loss "national champion" if that really is the direction we're headed in. The only thing wrong with that scenario last time around was that the coach whose team was awarded that ceremonial designation (Les Miles) was not also fired the same year. It's one of history's greatest missed opportunities for quality farce. (Better than Trashanova reality TV I would say) Sadly this was not to be. Two years later Les Miles is still the head football coach at LSU. Meanwhile, the national sports media still fixates annually on the ridiculous and thoroughly unnecessary concept of a college football "national champion".

There's a rich cottage industry among professional sports commentators in beating up on the BCS system of anointing a so-called national champion and advocating for its replacement with some sort of tournament. We don't want to get bogged down in the details of this cottage industry except to say that it strikes us as an industry primarily for people who don't really like college football.

Unlike the commercially contrived, celebrity-driven environment of professional sports, the things that matter to college football fans, their annually renewed passions, rituals, and animosities (especially the animosities) are derived from notions of local or regional identity. College football fans want to win regular season games as a means of satisfying ancient and perpetual blood feuds. They want to win bowl games in order to demonstrate that the vendettas they've endured that season made them tougher and meaner than whatever their extra-regional bowl opponent thinks they've been through that compares. Football is the American popular sport most often compared to a romanticized idea of warfare. Matt Taibbi recently compared good football to "watching slow, painful death". Football fandom is primarily about emotional anguish. College football fandom is emotional anguish with a spike of violent parochialism. Professional sports yackers tend to be people without the emotional depth or personal ties to place which would allow them to identify with college football fans. And so the whole business bores them. And because of this we get a lot of tedious nerdy discussion about how the system could be tweaked in order to please the nerdy analysts who have missed the point. Should the 2009 season end with as much BCS-related confusion as did 2007, we're sure to be in for another round of this.

But we've seen this movie before and, frankly, nobody who cares about college football wants to see their school dragged through the next embarrassing round of interminable BCS vs. playoff discussions sure to come about this winter. And that, we think, is why we've seen so many early season upsets of top-ranked teams. Like high-profile candidates for Mayor of New Orleans who know what's good for them, these teams are gracefully bowing out of the race before they get dragged through the mud. Nobody wants the thankless job of "national champion" during the coming troubled environment just like nobody wants to be Mayor of New Orleans during the coming troubled environment. The upshot of this is that while New Orleans voters will have to choose from among a grab-bag of left over candidates none of these options could possibly be as much of a joke as mayor as Les Miles is as a "championship coach". (Caveat: okay almost none)

Saints vs. Bills

• Okay wait, no I'm not done yet. Les Miles is going to ruin LSU football. The 2009 Tigers are undefeated solely on the strength of their superior talent. And, yes, this is a talented LSU football team. Both lines have depth, the secondary features NFL quality players at safety and corner, the receivers are beasts, and the quarterback is cool-headed and athletic. This team should be able to compete with anyone in the country. Instead, it seems anyone in the country can compete with them. Miles can bring the talent in but doesn't know how to make it function. The SEC schedule this year is brutal for LSU. They play at Georgia, at Alabama, at Ole Miss and they have to play Florida. We're betting that Miles can't continue his recruiting success after stringing together consecutive four or five loss seasons.



• Palate cleanser: Alright time to move on to more pleasant matters. This week's Saints win was by far their most impressive of the season. We took a few notes but before we smell of the greatness here's a little something to take the stench of Les Miles away. About an hour before kickoff this past Sunday, I managed to catch a few minutes of the Young Men Olympian march through Uptown where I shot this video.
  
  
  
  One is tempted to follow along all day but not when there's a kickoff to catch.



• Speaking of kickoffs, we're outsourcing our first observation about this game to Jim Henderson who writes,

  (Bills fans have) had it with conservative head coach Dick Jauron who's been labeled as a guy who always plays with a short stick when he comes up against a good football team. That reputation was hardly dispelled by his first decision Sunday.
  
  "OK guys. If we win the toss we're going to defer. We're gonna put that Saints offense on the field first and see how their second-best passing attack in the league does against our second-worst in the league pass defense. We're gonna see if that offense that has marched the length of the field for touchdowns on their first possession of the game against the Lions and the Eagles can do that against the bills."
  
  Bills win the toss. Choose to defer. Kick the ball to the Saints, who drive 82 yards in 10 plays for a touchdown.

  The object of the game is to take the ball and score with it. If you can choose to take the ball at the beginning of the game, take the ball. I never understand why any coach gets this wrong.



• At the same time, it's a little off to call Jauron's approach to the kicking game "conservative" this week. After all, the Bills did score on a fake field goal attempt which they immediately followed with a surprise attempt at an onside kick.
  
  
  For some reason, the box score says that Brian Dennehy scored the Bills' only touchdown Sunday. Oh wait that's Ryan Denney. Sorry for the mix-up. Who is Ryan Denney?
  



• Staying with the kicking game, is it too early to start the Thomas Morstead for MVP campaign? The guy is killing it. In three games this season, Morstead has sent 5 kickoffs into the endzone for touchbacks. Saints kickers combined for 14 touchbacks all of last season. Morstead's 46.5 yards per punt ranks him 10th in the NFL. His net would be much better if the Saints hadn't blown a few of their coverage opportunities in the first two games. Kicking through windy conditions, Morstead kept the Bills at bay Sunday while the Saints offense struggled for much of the game. His 49 yard punt to set up Malcolm Jenkins' strip of Roscoe Parrish was the biggest play of the first half.
  
  
  Morstead PLUS Jenkins = WIN



• Asshole play of the game: Reggie Bush (64 yards rushing, 17 receiving) actually made a few nice plays this week. But he also made the asshole play of the week. We've often criticized Bush for his tendency to make bad things happen while attempting to improvise. This week could have been the worst example of this ever when he cut a sweep play back across the field. We shrieked with the horror of a thousand attention-starved Kardashians when we saw that Bush's reversal had pressed Drew Brees into blocking duty. Here we see Drew putting his surgically repaired throwing shoulder at risk for the sake of Bush's antics.
  
  
  Luckily Brees was spared by the gods here. We await the karmic payback for this, however.



• Swine Flu is making us all superhuman somehow. We're beginning to wonder if there isn't some sort of performance-enhancing drug being passed off as Thera-flu among football players. On Saturday we watched the beginning of the Florida-Kentucky game where the network chose to televise two flu-ridden Gator offensive linemen puking during warm-ups. Apparently, something like half the Florida roster had been battling the virus all week. Certainly this would be a factor in the game, we were told. We then watched the Gators score 31 points in the first quarter and began to wonder just what kind "flu" they've contracted and how we might acquire some for ourselves.
  
  On Sunday this suspicious "flu" business popped up once more when we watched a supposedly weakened Frenchy Thomas rush for 126 yards and 2 touchdowns in the second half. It's been a long time since we've watched the Saints win a game in the fourth quarter by wearing an opponent down with a running attack. For this reason, this was the most satisfying win in over a year. Here's to the continued poor health of everyone who helped make it happen.
  
  
  Expecting the NFL to announce Tylenol-related suspensions any day now.



• Also might be a good idea to check Will Smith and Charles Grant's temperature. 3 sacks and one interception combined sounds suspiciously symptomatic.
  
  
  Little-known home remedy for flu: Star Caps



• We have a Bushrod problem While Jammal Brown missed time during the pre-season with various ailments, the Saints kind of wishfully thought Jermond Bushrod into the starting lineup ahead of dependable backup Zach Strief. From here, that move looks like it was based more on building a case for getting rid of Brown after this season than it was on purely football judgment. Bushrod has been noticeably deficient in protecting Brees so far this season and we're relieved to see him replaced due to injury this week. When we began working on this post Monday night we planned to call this item, "Who would have thought we'd be so looking forward to the return of Jammal Brown?" but that point has been made moot. The Bushrod problem seems destined to stay with us this season.





• This week's media complaints: This is going to sound weird coming from a guy who can't get the game re-cap posted until Thursday, but some of our local media really need to get it together. On Monday morning, we drove to work listening to ESPN 1350 continue to run recorded news reports on the Saints' "upcoming" game against the Buffalo Bills. The report also suggested that fans participate in the station's poll question of the day which was "Will the Saints win in Buffalo?" Unfortunately, we are unaware of any cash prizes awarded to anyone who happens to answer this question correctly.
  
  Also on Monday morning, we opened our Times-Picayune "Viewpoint" edition to find the following pointless infographic.
  
  
  
  The graphic tells us that Mike Bell, who did not participate in this game, rushed for zero (0) yards vs. Buffalo. Each Monday the T-P provides us with a little cartoon representation of selected Saints and their offensive statistics as of the most recent game. This week, the selected Saints were Drew Brees, Poochie Shockey, Marques Colston, Devery Henderson, Reggie Bush and, inexplicably, Mike Bell. Bell did not play. But Pierre Thomas ran for 126 yards and 2 touchdowns. Was the Frenchy graphic unavailable at press time? Did it have the flu?
  
  Finally, Fox saw fit to once again shoehorn a gratuitous Katrina reference into its football coverage. If you're going to do this, you might as well commit to it. Fox announcers should be required to include a flood reference in every comment from now on. "Welcome to the Louisiana Superdome where the roof is fully intact for today's game" or "Wow! Bell ran right through that line like it was a newspaper-stuffed levee!" or "The Saints' offense is more potent than a Cat 5 storm surge today" and... um.. so forth.



• State of the wager Last week, I bet Dambala one case of Abita that the Saints would lose at least 2 out of three during the Empire State Trifecta. After the win in Buffalo, this means the Saints will have to drop their next two games (leaving them a quite respectable 3-2, BTW) in order for me to come out ahead. I still think this is how it's gonna go down, unless there's another unexpected flu outbreak we can't account for.