I've Been Warned

"She woke in the morning
She knew that her life had passed her by
She called out a warning
Don't ever let life pass you by"
--Warning, Incubus

Sorry Side, I didn't want to eclipse the one-month mark, so here I am, most of the way through a dark week and sitting with time to write. It's a rarity these days, so enjoy...
It's not just the literally stuff that these people have trouble with; it's a giant assortment of mis-used words, including this morning's entry from the Pac-10 football notebook: "A mid-November trip to Oregon State also is hardly a shoe-in." The correct term is "shoo-in," because an easy victory is in no way associated with
footwear, sorry. I just wish I had some youth football stories or something to make fun of...
Said Pac-10 Notebook (a weekly feature on espn.com) also brings up this little Heisman-related nugget: "UCLA tailback Maurice Drew is rightfully receiving Heisman Trophy hype, but quarterback Drew Olson deserves some sort of kudos." I'm not making any claims about the Bruins being SC's equal (mostly because doing so would no doubt jinx us and cause us to lose to inferior Stanford or Arizona), but one of my editors (a fellow Bruin) and I were comparing Drew's numbers with those of current Heisman favorite Reggie Bush. Reggie seems to have wrapped up the award with his amazing performance against the Domers, but Mo is right there with him in the all-around numbers (I won't bore you with the details, but Drew has more touchdowns, more receiving yards and more return yards). And Olson actually has slightly better numbers than Leinart (though the concussed Trojan QB wasn't quite himself for about three weeks there), which gives me a little more confidence than usual in the month-long build-up to the big game. Let's just hope we both take care of business, because that would make for the biggest game in the rivalry since '88 (we were No. 6, they were No. 2, Troy vs. Rodney and all that). It actually might end up bigger than that, since it's the regular season finale (that year, SC went on to lose to No. 1 Notre Dame the following week; no such follow-up game exists for either team this time around) and the winner should be playing in the Rose Bowl for the national title (as long as Va Tech slips up somewhere, and they should). One more note about our amazing offense, also courtesy of the notebook: "They've scored on 32 of 34 trips to the red zone, and an astounding 27 of those scores were touchdowns. They [also] have no red zone turnovers..." Nicely done, boys...
Awful awful awful world series came to an end last night, thank goodness--I think they could have played a hundred games and Houston still wouldn't have been able to come up with a clutch hit. I love Morgan Ensberg (no Suss, not literally; I like girls) and hated to see him struggle so much, but they kept walking Berkman to get to him and he never made them pay. Houston's pitching wasn't terrible (Backe was great last night), but the hitters never pulled their weight, and it's definitely hard to win when you don't score runs...
Full weekend ahead, including two football games (LC JV, coached by Big Wave Dave--I won't try to spell his last name, and SC), two Mike Langford-related functions, a Fox NFL doubleheader on Sunday and sleep and NCAA 06 mixed in there somewhere (coming to the end of season number two with Penn State, led by the dynamic sophomore duo of Justin King and Derrick Williams, and it looks like a second straight title game showdown with USC--Booty and Reed-led USC, this time--is in the cards)...
One more quick observation before I head home for the day (leaving before 3; I love the dark week): NBA pre-season basketball is about the worst sporting event to watch on television. There's no energy from the crowd, the stars don't care, the guys who get all the playing time are the ones fighting for the last spots, so you've never heard of any of them--it's just bad. Had the Cavs-Celtics replay on this morning when I arrived, and after watching LeBron and Paul Pierce trade careless jumpers (LBJ was 3-of-11 from the floor), the newly whitened Celtics trotted out their scrubs and came back to win the game. Raef LaFrentz, Brian Scalabrine (yeah, he's definitely worth $15 mill over the next five years), Dan Dickau and Curtis Borchardt, allowing all those old-school Celtics fans to start liking the team again--there's finally enough white guys out there. Anyways, the point is that I paid attention to that game for less than a minute in the hour-plus that I sat and had it on. Anything was more interesting than watching Mike Wilks run pick-and-rolls with Jahidi White (they both play for the Cavs, by the way). The regular season is tough enough, as little as veterans care about games until May, but the pre-season just takes it to a whole new (abysmal) level...
Out.