Good Wednesday everyone. Today is truly a bittersweet day. While it is Wednesday and you guys get to read the amazing WAQ, it is the last WAQ of the season. That’s right folks, we’re closing up shop until April when we will be back for the draft. The end of football is bittersweet as well. I love having a break from watching NFL Live 8 times a day, and having 96% of SportsCenter time being taken up by NFL highlights. But I definitely will miss watching a great college football game on a Saturday and watching the Vikings lace them up every Sunday or Monday. I’m already counting down to April to find out who the Vikings draft (Hakeem Nicks, Rey Maulaluga or Bran Cushing in the 1st round, Graham Harrell anytime, please.) But rather than looking to 2009, let’s look back to the Super Bowl.
Norm Chad said it best when he remarked “I didn’t know they brought their own officials.” There were several calls in that game that were blatantly terrible. Personally I have never heard of roughing the holder. There were a couple holding penalties that were just quite simply not penalties. And don’t even get me started on the last play of the game. First of all, that’s a forward pass. The end. Secondly, there is no way on this Earth that you can review that play before Pittsburgh snapped the ball. Tack on the 15 yard penalty, or even if you dont, and Arizona has a hail mary to win the game.
I guess the NFL wants the Steelers to have asterisks next to both of their Super Bowl wins, rather than taking two minutes to review a play and make the proper call. In an era in which we’ve had Tim Donaghy, the Heat winning an NBA title because of the refs, the Ed Hochuli fiasco from earlier this season, etc., not to mention downright incompetent officiating this year, you’d think the NFL would want to get calls right. Roger Goodell should pull his head out of his ass and stop worrying about whether or not Matt Leinart is giving out beer bongs and worry more about hiring officials who can call a game correctly
But on to the football. I need to fess up. Ben Roethlisberger played well. For their first Super Bowl win and for much of this season, the Steelers defense dragged him along. But in this game, behind a porous offensive line, he scrambled out of trouble repeatedly, refused to get tackled, and made a couple drive saving throws. Not to mention he threw a fantastic ball late in the game to Santonio Holmes for a fantastic catch. However, I have to say that if Pittsburgh had played a team with a legitimate front seven, there’s no way they win that game.
Looking back on last week’s WAQ, I mentioned that Arizona’s running game should be a series of short passes. While I got the running back wrong (it appears Edgerrin James has hit the HGH lately) Arizona used this strategy quite well. With Pittburgh concentrated on Larry Fitzgerald and Anquan Boldin, the underneath routes were open all game, and led to a couple big plays from Fitzgerald. And, as predicted, Kurt Warner was fantastic. He now has the three highest passing totals in Super Bowl history. Whether you think he is a Hall of Famer or not is irrelevant in this argument. Warner has played extremely impressively on the biggest stage in football, and what he has done, going from Northern Iowa to NFL Europe to the Arena League to being one of the best quarterbacks to ever lace up the cleats, is impressive and commendable. In fact, Kurt Warner has earned the title of being the first ever WAQ Player of the Year. I’m sure he’ll hold that as near and dear as he does the MVP.
National signing day is today, and I am damn excited. I don’t get too caught up in recruiting rankings, because so much is dependent on what system a player plays in, what he’s like as a person, etc., but it’s nice to imagine the potential dream teams that some schools have lined up. Kansas has lined up the best recruiting class in Mark Mangino’s tenure. Seeing the coaching job he has done with subpar talent, at least coming out of high school, I’m excited to see what he does with some studs. They recruited two late bloomers: one at linebacker who suffered through some injury problems, but has been called a borderline 5 star guy, and Christian Matthews, who some people think could be the long-term replacement for Todd Reesing. I can’t wait to somehow find a way to watch ESPNU tomorrow.
College Three Pointer Update:
Three point%: 34.1 (2009), 35.1 (2008)
Three pointers attempted/FG attempted: 33% (2009) 34.4% (2008)
I’ll finish this week’s WAQ off with a discussion on the best conference in college sports. While many SEC football zealots think their conference is the best, it is not. Better than them is SEC baseball. But better than both of them, and better than any other conference, is the Western Collegiate Hockey Association (WCHA). Of the top 10 teams with the most national championships, 5 of them (North Dakota, Denver, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan Tech) are in the WCHA. So far this decade, six years have ended with a WCHA team winning the national championship, including a five year stretch from 2002-2006. WCHA teams have also been the national runners up an astounding 24 times. Add that to their 30 national championships, and that’s 54 times out of a possible 120 in which a WCHA team has been in the national championship game. And perhaps the most astounding feat of all was in 2005, when the Frozen Four was made up of all WCHA teams. It marks the first time in which the last four teams in a season in any sport were made up of teams from the same conference. Feel free to disagree with me, or call college hockey gay, in the comments, but the truth is the WCHA is the gold standard for all conferences.
Actually I’d really like to end the WAQ by telling all the readers out there thanks for the kind comments on the WAQ throughout the year and thanks for reading. Also, I hope you all like the MLJ site re-design, and if you have any suggestions, comments, complaints, etc. don’t hesitate to leave them in the comments or e-mail one of us.
Links:
Not a new link, but scary stuff. (CNN)
Maybe this is more of a girl thing, but I love reading these every Sunday. (PostSecret)
A ranking of all relevant NHL Draft prospects. (INCH)
I found Sportsgal’s new cell phone number (AOL)
This guy is an absolute moron. But not from Philly, so Gonzo can’t yell at me. (Philly.com)
CRM should try this when he gets pregnant. (I’m Not Obsessed)
And finally, your babes. It is Friday Night Lights week here at the WAQ. Kind have to with this being the last one, right? I like how I just linked to random words. She is my favorite, by the way.
Roethlisberger steps up in big games. he stumbles through the season, but plays his ass off when it matters. it’s wild. he’s like the opposite of Tony Romo.
is Big 10 wrestling. at last check, they had 9 of 11 teams in the top 20.
Pac 10 water polo rules all.
Big 10 is the best at everything. If you don’t believe me, ask spence or stigs. Or ask me again.
Ivy League Equestrian kicks balls and ass
MAC judo rules
You’re actually bringing up Michigan Tech? When was the last time the boys from Houghton were relevent?
if you are doing this alphabetically, you messed up.
Sparty- HA!
Fetch- Why did you stop doing the 50 states I dont think youre going to make it in 50 days.
Hawkeye: They made the Frozen in 83 (I think)haven’t been back to the NCAA Tournament since.
But relevancy is pretty skewed in college hockey. Everyone says BU is relevant, but St. Lawrence has been to a Frozen more recently.
Well Fetch, glad to see you grudgingly gave Rothelisberger a compliment. The refs sucked both ways. I thought there were many calls that did not need to be made or that should have been made and were not. Either way, I don’t think the refs gave the game to the Steelers, yes some calls were questionable, but really only questionable call was the one roughing the passer, the rest seemed pretty legit.
Thought the game was great and though everyone here hates the outcome, we in Western Pa don’t really care what everyone thinks. Love the Steelers and cannot wait to hear everyone bitch next year when they win it again.
I don’t want to give the impression that I think the refs are the only reason why the Steelers won, but they did help.
And I still think Roethlisberger gets carried around by the defense, but he did have a good game.