FRIDAY FOOTBALL FEAST: SHOCKTOBER 2nd, 2009

Scoops McCracken: What would be a better job to take this off season: Colorado or Illinois?
Peoria Pliers: Illinois...you don't have to compete with the sharks already in the tank in the Big 12. You've got a renovated stadium, a few good recruiting classes to build on, and Chicago in your back yard. Absolutely Illinois. Plus, the person you are replacing is arguably the worst game-day coach since Art Shell, so the standards are set painfully low
Scoops McCracken: To play devil's advocate though, Colorado is in the Big XII north, which means that you can compete with Nebraska, Kansas & Missouri rather well. And they hammer the California recruiting scene. I think they'd both be good jobs though
Peoria Pliers: I just think that recruiting in California is going to be VERY tough, as if it isn't already. Sarkisian at Washington, Pete C at USC, Tedford at Cal...tough sleddin' in that part of the world Let me ask you this...What would be a bigger disaster for the state of Florida? Charlie Christ being assasinated by an pro-choice nutjob or Tim Tebow suffering a career-ending injury this season before the national championship game?
Scoops McCracken: Easily Tebow....did you see the people scared & near in tears last week that were at Kentucky? Those people think he's a cross between Jesus & Chuck Norris.
Peoria Pliers: That would be a devastating combination. If Jesus and Chuck Norris were to merge, whose beard wins? Is it Jesus with a thicker knapp beard or does Jesus' beard win out?
Scoops McCracken: I think it depends if there's another fist in Chuck Norris' beard. Not many super exciting games this weekend.
Peoria Pliers: I'm looking forward to Michigan/Michigan State and Auburn/Tennessee, other than that it is a pretty big snoozefest. USC/Cal? Not quite the matchup it once was now that Oregon took it to the Bears last week. That QB is a huge liability for Cal, and I still don't think Tedford knows that he has the best RB in the business.
Scoops McCracken: Yeah, not as big now, but I don't think USC's is at a USC level right now either. I think Cal at home will be a huge lift. Enough of a lift for a win shall be seen.
Peoria Pliers: How many more years does Dr. Lou have left in his tank before he is nothing more than a caucasion raisin, dried up in the sun, babbling about Tony Rice and Joe Montana?
Scoops McCracken: He is losing it for sure. I don't know about ESPN anymore....I don't like Desmond Howard, I don't like their #1 11AM team of Pasch & Griese (who I think has slipped BIG TIME) and don't get me started on freaking Pam Ward & Ray Bentley as the ESPN2 11AM game team.
Peoria Pliers: I can see that, although I like Desmond since he's a little edgy compared to most of the clowns doing pre-game football shows these days. I would wholeheartedly agree that the state of college football announcing on ESPN is poor at best
Scoops McCracken: I like Mark Jones, and their primetime game with Franklin still brings the fastball in the mid 90s, but they're going downhill. Edgy? I don't want edgy. I don't want hip. You sound like you liked it when Poochie came on the Itchy & Scratchy show on the Simpsons.
Peoria Pliers: What can I say, I can only take the general consensus that "Case Keenum is a real football player" and "Rich Rodriguez has something going in Michigan" and that "Miami has its swagger back" and that "Mark Richt is a heckuva football coach" and that "Oregon's win against Cal is huge for their program" or that "Boise State has a real shot at the title game as long as they can win out" I've just summed up 84% of the NCAA football pre-game shows
Scoops McCracken: Well played, sir.
Peoria Pliers: I'm just sick of it. Sure, Poochie sucked, but maybe we need everything to get blown apart and remade. It is the small things that aggravate me the most these days when watching football. Not a single NFL broadcast includes the number of timeouts under the score at the top of the screen, a revolution that made it's way to EVERY NCAA football game three or four years ago. What gives? I'm sick of the old standards of Ray Bentley, Mike Patrick, Mark May, Trev Alberts, Dan Dierdorf, and Al McGuire spewing the same cliches 52 times every weekend
Scoops McCracken: Hey, preaching to the choir. My dad & I have been saying for years that we still measure a first down with 2 sticks & a chain, which probably gets moved 4 times that could affect the inch that it makes it by or misses by per series. Lasers & GPS, my friend.
Peoria Pliers: What does it take to get some fresh blood in the booth? Herbstreit is a good change of pace, and Jesse Palmer would be OK if he wasnt trying to out-analyze Craig James every time he talked
Scoops McCracken: I actually like Jesse Palmer....and I think Herbstreit works well when with Musberger.
Freaking Musberger....I can't get sick of him at all. That guy still is chucking 99mph in my book
Peoria Pliers: I'm just saying its always the same crap. He is a machine, no doubt. Too bad he's about to die of colorectal cancer or contract some flesh eating virus. He looks like a skeleton with skin-colored drapes hanging off the bones
Scoops McCracken: He was the guest on PTI at the start of the season and he was in a racing suit doing the interview from pit row in Atlanta two days before the Bama-VA Tech game. Crazy. Everybody wants to be hip. ESPN just bugs the hell out of me, but I won't go there. At least they haven't hired Thom Brennamen yet.
Peoria Pliers: One NASCAR related note - have you seen that they do a Christian convocation before each race? Not that I'm expecting a huge Jewis/Muslim crowd at a Nascar event, but doesn't that just seem a bit odd? Also, what is the over/under on how long it takes some of the private southern schools to start doing the same thing before football games?
Scoops McCracken: What do they all do? A lot more than just a prayer?
Peoria Pliers: It is a prayer, but it's decidingly denominational, which is a departure from most of the unitarian types of things that other events do http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7286393/
Scoops McCracken: I'd say Nascar knows their fanbase and that's why they knock the popularity game out of the park against everyone other than the NFL
Peoria Pliers: I'm not saying I have anything against it - they can do whatever they want - but if I wasn't turned off of Nascar before, this seals the deal. I'm just more surprised that their approach hasn't bled into other sports. I could see BYU doing it, or even Notre Dame, but they don't.
Scoops McCracken: I'm actually surprised they don't already
Peoria Pliers: I kind of agree with you now that I think about it...maybe Sister Moriarity can help us out with this one. Time will tell. So its 2020, Obama is out of office and a distant memory, Jeb Bush is presiding over the oval office, NASCAR is the most popular sport after the NFL lockout of 2011-2015 kills it off as the worlds most popular sport, and Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt have died in a horrible car crash, which has sent the nation reeling and looking for answers. Here's the question - Is June Jones still at SMU? If so, what is their record for the 2019 season, and whats their outlook for the 2020 season?
Scoops McCracken: HA! I actually thought he was still at Hawaii until you just told me. They'll either be what they always are, and that's mediocre, or some SMU good ole' boys will take things into their own hands, start getting Mustang football going the old fashioned way, and be 11-1 and two years away from a monster probation scandal.
Peoria Pliers: What conference are they in, C-USA?
Scoops McCracken: I would have said WAC, but not sure. You see that Notre Dame's sellout streak dating back to 1973 is in jeopardy. Tickets still remaining for tomorrow. Of course someone like Joliet Catholic or St. Mary's the Virgin Church in Chicago will probably buy them up just to make sure it stays in tact.
Peoria Pliers: Wow! Maybe I'll start driving to South Bend right now and try to pick some tickets up. I guess there is quite a bit of other things to do in South Bend...they have a Taco Bell, a Goodwill, and even an Hardees! No kidding...pass the football-shaped collection plate around
Scoops McCracken: I was thinking about making Washington my first "lock of the week"....+13.5? Don't forget a Bob Evans. South Bend is quite similar to that Lake Michigan port Days Inn you & I stayed at in 2002.
Peoria Pliers: Ohhhh yeah. Bob Evans. That place makes Perkins look like Kincaids mixed with The Mesa Grill. What a pile. That Washington line is too juicy for me, it was so good that I figured it was a myth. And I think I'm like 1-54 in the past two years picking Washington games, so I figured I'd take a step back this week
Scoops McCracken: Good point....beware of the line that seems too good to be true.
Peoria Pliers: Those lines are like a hotdog from a gas station. They look so good, turning over and over in their own grease. Then you taste it and you are more dissapointed than a mortician at a daycare. You've just got to stay away. Stay very, very far away.
Scoops McCracken: True.....I need to go off football for one sec and ask you your opinion on the olympics. Is there a more arrogant bunch than an IOC official? Nobody thinks they're a big shot that really isn't than an IOC official. Check these quotes out: Former IOC member Kai Holm said that the brevity of his appearance may have counted against Chicago. The short stopover was "too business-like," Holm said. "It can be that some IOC members see it as a lack of respect." Get over yourselves. And Madrid's surprising success in reaching the final round came after former IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch made an unusual appeal for the Spanish capital, reminding the IOC's members as he asked for their vote that, at age 89, "I am very near the end of my time."
Peoria Pliers: I think that is a GREAT point. When they announce the final decision, do the do the Mussolini hand gesture? The good ol' boy nature of that process really puts the SEC into perspective
Scoops McCracken: I like watching the olympics and go USA USA with teh best of them, but honestly. Get freaking over yourselves.
Peoria Pliers: I've never really cared about where they were held before, but this time I was pretty fired up about the possibility of having some of the soccer matches at The Bank. Alas, the IOC chose "The Calcutta of the West" for their games. Brazil is a HELLHOLE , at least parts of it are. But I guess if China can shield the world from it's squalor, so can the Brazillians. O/U on how many Brazillian players or coaches get shot if they don't win the gold medal in soccer?
Scoops McCracken: I guess I didn't even know that olympic soccer was that big of a deal.
Peoria Pliers: and then compare that number to the same question for Candian hockey players for the games this winter in Vancouver. It really isn't, but most of the big names play, and it would be a sweet thing to see, especially if there was a huge delegation from some goofball country
Scoops McCracken: Best part about olympic hockey.....they're playing on NHL rink size....talk about taking away the biggest advantage any of the European teams would have against Canada. Canada not winning the gold would be comparable to Eden Prairie not winning the Lake conference in football. You better freaking win!
Peoria Pliers: Except that the Candian head coach isn't as much of a total, complete, 100% dirtbag as in Eden Prairie. I heard that he was pissed off about the conference realignment so when Rosemount came to play E.P. a few weeks ago he wouldn't let them into any locker rooms. they had to change outside. All class, that one. My favorite part? YOUR tax dollars pay part of his salary AND build his football facility! Huzzah Huzzah!
Scoops McCracken: Rosemont was given a shed which is where all visiting teams go before the game & halftime. whether rosemount got there early and was supposed to be given a lockerroom, I don't know. Do visiting teams actually change at the school on the road now? We always had to ride shoulder pad to shoulder pad on a school bus.
Peoria Pliers: Fair enough...I am basing this all off of the Strib, so who knows what the reality is
Scoops McCracken: I read that too....I think it only got one side of it.
Peoria Pliers: So did we, BUT THIS IS LAKE CONFERENCE FOOTBALL! It still sounds like something he'd do
Scoops McCracken: I don't deny that he probably does a bunch of things to make teams not welcome when they play at EP, but I think there are two sides to it. I remember our locker room being a tackling dummy shed at Tonka. Actually, the nicest visitor place was Richfield. At least they gave you something. I remember an elementary school room at Hopkins, never played Armstrong or Cooper on the road since they were building new stadiums at the time, and Wayzata was at their old high school and it was a dirty gym room
Peoria Pliers: Ohhhh yeah baby, its a proud Richfield tradition. Coddle you before the game, take our loss like men, and then kiss you goodbye on your fancy school bus. Wayzata was building their pantheon when I was there, so I don't really remember much of that whole thing other than getting run over by Jeremy Leuer about 155 times