Quintessential Autumn Saturday

A beautiful Saturday, but I missed a lot of it recovering from Fridany night insomnia.  In a lucid period early in the day, I spent a couple of hours on the lawn mower while listening to the Illini on the radio.  I have not listened to a radio broadcast of an Illini football game maybe ever.  It is an unusual entertainment experience, perfectly suited to what I was doing. The first hint is that the Illini are broadcast on AM-560, WIND.  I thought that it was still a Mexican station, and found out it is now a big conservative talk station, featuring one of my unfavorite repugnant "celebrities", Dennis Miller, ugh, among others.  The Illini broadcast team is Brian Barnhart, Steve Kelly and Kurt Kittner.  Color man Kittner, the former Illinois QB,  is ok, play-by-play announcer Barnhart is the master of dramatic intonation (even when there's nothing remotely dramatic occurring, absolutely hilarious) and Steve Kelly is a hoot.  Kelly sounds like a farm town reporter (maybe that's what he is), so combining Barnhart's War of the Worlds drama and Kelly's Mayberry palaver with commercials for farmer chemicals and stuff like that, well, I might as well have been driving the John Deere on the back 40 instead of buzzing around the back yard on the Toro. 

That brings us to the best Mayhem commercial yet. Pay attention to the audio, it's why Dads everywhere cut their own grass. Oh, yeah, net-net, we sucked again, -2 for the week.

Mississippi @ Alabama -20 1/2
The tv football guys referred to this as the bounceback game, where Alabama was supposed to bounce back from their detour last week.  They won, didn't come close to covering, Saban looks annoyed all the time, we certainly were.  Another 4 star loser, geez...
Utah -20 1/2 @ Wyoming
Credit to the Cowboys, Utah didn't excatly roll offensively, but they didn't seem to be concerned.  They took a 23-0 lead into halftime, and then turned the heat down to simmer.  Wyoming scored with about 7 1/2 to go after an interception and I began to fret the backdoor cover, wondering if the perception on the Utah side is that beating Wyoming is the same in the polls as beating them up, so Utah chose to preserve the assets and just take the win.  Utah goes to 6-0 with a 30-6 victory.  That was a welcome +3 for our portfolio.

BC @ Florida State -22
I feel like I got on a bus one stop before it drove off a cliff.  Florida State has been coming on strong for weeks and the sputtering BC Eagles were next on their victim list.  BC didn't get the message that they were supposed to be cupcakes, and we crashed.  FSU 24, BC 19, FSF -2.

Buffalo @ Northern -14
It's gold, Jerry, it's gold.  Northern Illinois' version of running with the Bulls was more like running over the Bulls.  45-14 for Coach Jerry Kill's NIU Huskies and +1 for the good guys.

Other notables when I awoke from a torpid Saturday afternoon: Auburn, 3 instant scores from turnovers in Q4 as they ran away from Arkansas late, 65-43, blowing the underdog cover in a game where the O/U was just 60...Iowa was -3 1/2 and won by 10...Wanny and Pitt were on the up side of their roller coaster and covered easily...Big Mike liked #5 Nebraska, and so did the Horns, as they feasted on the children of the corn...My favorite-named coach, Joker Phillips and Kentucky took down Steve Spurrier and #10 South Carolina...#1 Ohio State's stay in the penthouse ended as the Wisconsin Badgers beat 'em up.

Finally, I learned that singer Alicia Keys is married to a man whose name is Swizz Beatz.  Just in case you thought everybody had named their kid Ralph or Joker.