How sad. San Diego has tanked the entire season in their efforts to be rid of your future NY Jets offensive coordinator Norv Turner. Oakland will almost surely set the NFL records for penalties and yards in a season… and still beat the uninspired Chargers 20-17.

Denver will need to win to make the playoffs. As much as I would like to see Denver go 8-8 and either enter the playoffs at .500 or miss them totally, the notion of Denver going 9-7 and being allowed to host a 12-4 Steelers team is beyond crazy. I have to be happy if I am Pittsburgh right now. The crazy TT-Bible pushing fans aside, if there is one team you want to face in this year’s playoffs, it is the Broncos. Too bad Kansas City cannot muster any fight, effort or skill. All the Chiefs have is Denver’s former starting QB, but to be fair to Kyle Orton he has just as little to work with on offense in KC as he did at altitude. Denver will win 30-20 and take the division title in bizarre fashion.

Neither team will be good on tv, unless you are a fan of overhyped televised prayer. In that event, just watch the religious channel until 2 pm local time and then tune over to the ‘Touchdowns with Tim’ show. Over/under on completed passes by Tebow should be 9.

Both home teams are 3 point favorites – take the home teams, over on Denver, under on Oakland.

If you are the Colts and you actually have faith in Peyton and want to use him next year, they have inexplicably found a way to avoid the whole ‘do we draft Luck’ decision and hurt his feelings – don’t finish last.

If St. Louis finishes last, they won’t take Luck because they are invested into Bradford.
If the Vikings finish last, it is unlikely they would take Luck- they spent last year’s #1 on a QB.
The Colts don’t even need to take Luck. At this point I’d say just go with Manning and draft for any of your multiple varied needs. There will be fewer QBs to draft next year, but there will not be zero, see Barkely, Matt.

If they show loyalty to Peyton and he gets hurt again next season, no one will criticize their faith in a Hall of Fame player. It gives him a chance to take a graceful bowout (and insurance payout) to retire and then they are in the same boat as this season, but without the negativity.

If I finish first, I am doing everything I can to trade this pick for as much as I can if I have anyone on the roster who is already a decent QB.

The SNL mockery not included, here is what Tebow has done as a starter.

2 scores late to beat Miami, a team that fired their coach.
Blown out by Detroit by 5 TDs. Lions likely a playoff team.
Beat bad Raider team with a ton of rushing yards.
Beat bad Chiefs team with fewer completed passes than fingers on 1 hand – Chiefs have fired their coach.
Scored late to beat the Jets, a team actively trying not to make the playoffs.
Beat San Diego in OT, a team that will fire their coach if they don’t go 8-8 and win the division.
Lucked out with a final minute internception to beat the Vikings, a team with a rookie QB and no AP in the game.
Beat the Bears with 2 scores in final 2:08 because Marion Barber is a complete buffoon.
Blown out by Patriots who exposed Denver as a team incapable of covering any tight end checkdown.

Denver is a nice offense and a nice story – and they are very unlikely beat a playoff quality team.

Reportedly the Mountain West football teams will ask for an automatic BCS bid soon. Clearly they don’t deserve it, especially with Boise, TCU, Utah and anyone else of value vacating the premises faster than a narc in Sturgis. It could, however, be the precedent for the class action suit they might decide to file. If you force the MWC, C-USA and WAC and Sun Belt to participate in a system that by definition, even if somewhat fairly, bans then from sharing in the profits with no possible chance at the winnings, you are gonna get sued. No MWC school after this season will belong in a BCS game, but they deserve it just as much as the Big East has deserved it for the last decade. If you don’t have a playoff, you gotta let these teams at least think they have a chance to get in.

This could have been so easy.
If Oklahoma State hadn’t fallen in Iowa. If Boise had kicked that field goal. If the Cardinal didn’t fall to the Ducks, or fell 2 months ago. If Oregon didn’t fall to USC.

We are treated to a rematch. A rematch that nobody who lives more than 50 miles from an SEC college wants. If LSU wins, it is anti-climactic as they beat them already. If Bama somehow wins it’s ‘We split two games but won the second one’. This rematch doesn’t solve anything. While I don’t think a team should automatically be punished and blocked from playing a repeat opponent in a bowl game, this particular bowl game has no interest to me.

If only Georgia could cover punts or catch passes or take advantage of their chances.

It’s a sad anti-climax to what has been a fantastic bowl season. A national title game that will probably not rank among the top ten enjoyable bowl games to watch. Cotton, Fiesta, Rose, Sugar, Gator, Outback, Ticketcity, even the Champs Sports Bowl (whatever that is) all have more pull to me. Too bad. After LSU wins 37-9 the naysayers will claim Alabama didn’t belong in the building to begin with – and they have a good chance of being right.

Tim Tebow winning games for Denver is one of the worst things that could have happened to Elway, Fox and Broncos management. With the team near .500 the fans will have (shudder) hope of a possible playoff run. If Denver beats the jets this week they sit at 5-5. Of course, with games against the Patriots and Bills and Bears and a road game in San Diego there is no telling where the team goes from there.

Tebow, despite his leadership, seems to me to not be a quarterback of the future. In fact, he’s barely a quarterback of the present so all reference to Uncle Scrooge aside, the Bronco win streak put the front office in a bind.

If they started Tebow and the team went 0-6 under his command, they could have easily played Orton or Quinn to finish the season and looked for a free agent QB signing in the off-season. Instead, TT seems to be maintaining his fan support despite his arm. Let’s face it – he’s getting credit for the 60 yard bomb to clinch the game but fans are conveniently forgetting the 3 other times he had wide-open guys for touchdowns and either threw short or late. If Orton is QB on those plays Denver wins a laugher 38-10. Instead the balls hang like clay pigeons and the defensive backs yell ‘Pull!’ and close the gap.

As things stand Denver will likely finish 6-10 or 7-9 if they sneak up on someone. Not good enough to figure in the Luck stakes even if they wanted to and this isn’t the best year to draft a QB anyway. 7-9 would be just good enough to make people thing the TT experiment deserves another full season renewal. The TTE reminds me of most shows on NBC right now – not good enough to get good ratings or reviews but not bad enough to cancel immediately and nothing in the can to show from 8-9 pm in its place.

I am not rooting for Denver to lose, but I have for a long time been rooting for people to realize that no team in the NFL wins without something that vaguely resemebles a quarterback.

I can see students wanting to rally behind their coach if they think he is being treated unfairly.
I can’t see how setting fires, turning over cars and throwing rocks is a solution to anything. How mindless can someone be?
The University decided that this was an untenable situation, that it would affect them socially, financially, morally… and they made a decision to sweep everyone associated with this scandal out. Not unclear why we should be shocked by that.
And the team cheer from his front lawn? Tacky.

Is it totally offensive of me by Ok State fans to say that I still think that LSU and Alabama should be ranked #1 and 2 in the country? I would still take either of them against an unbeaten Cowboys team on a neutral field. I’m not as sure about Boise though. I’d rank them LSU, Bama, Boise, and then OkSt.

And don’t think that everyone who wants a playoff or hates the current system isn’t rooting for Georgia to win out and make the Boise win seem that much better. If Georgia wins the SEC, Boise goes to the national title game – the voters won’t have a justification not to do it.

Someone needs to tell USC head coach Lane Kiffin that the officials can’t automatically call a time out for you whenever you want one, just because you mentioned you might want one even if you think there was 1.0001 seconds on the clock. Instead, Coach Tennessee Trojans should have told his player “Hey, in case you get stuck just dive on the ground and all time out yourself.” Don’t blame the refs Laneyboy; it’s called a mirror, try looking into one.

The Raiders traded a 1st round pick and a 2nd rounder (that could turn into another #1 with .0014% probability) to get Carson Palmer from Cincinnati. Thus, Oakland has not only gone in whole hog but whole hog, bacon, flank steak and a couple of piglets for garnish.

Carson Palmer is the best Oakland QB since Rich Gannon. The only problem is that 2011 Carson isn’t the same as 2004 Gannon. The only reason to make this move is that Oakland thinks they can be a playoff team this year. Oakland sits at 4-2, still has games with Green Bay, Detroit and San Diego twice. Even if the Raiders win every other game but those four and finishes 10-6 they might not get the WC – and that is an if the size of the bay itself.

The Raiders need not send a team rep to next April’s draft as they have no picks above 200.

Oakland is a running team in a passing league. They just needed a court jester to manage the team and instead paid a king’s ransom for a gunslinger who can’t sling it like he used to and has no one worthy to catch those slings.
If taking Palmer means the Raiders throw the ball 25+ times from now on, that’s good for his stats and bad for their won-less record.
If taking Palmer means you run the ball more, why did you spend so much?

Mistake trade, gave too much, won’t get them into the playoffs. And it’ll hurt them for two more years as well.

The Bengals? They will come out of next year’s draft with a brand new first-round pick in the secondary or a brand new running back to be the symbol of the franchise’s running game. A- for Cincy, C- for the Silver and Black.

This move has Al Davis’ ghostly fingerprints all over it – which is in part why they have been a non-factor for the last decade.