the olympics of football

So i haven't really been able to blog for a while, as I decided to make some website improvements.  These "improvements", by the way, are absolutely invisible to the end user (except for some possible speeding up in page loading times).

In spite of this, I went ahead - and ended up with about 9 days where the website looked something like this...

Well, I guess it could have been worse (and it often was)!  But anyway, during this "downtime" I had the chance to catch as many bowl games as possible.  (Incidentally, my bowl predictions this year ended with a 19 - l6 record -- not bad after an 0 - 4 start).

And after the final game tonight, it occurs to me that the College Football Bowl season is the closet thing football has to the Olympics.  Sure, there are some differences, but I think it comes closest to the spirit of those games...

For one thing, whereas in the Olympics it's countries that compete, in the bowls it's usually between states or cities. This works here, because the U.S. is the only country that really cares about "American Football", as far as i can tell (except for maybe Canada). Therefore, the best of these American teams can legitimately be considered the best in the world.

Another way they're similar is that it's the final proving ground for making the sport an athlete's career.  Using Olympic skating as an example, if you did well enough you may become a professional skater and be paid to keep skating (and perhaps even become a modern-day Sonja Henie). And the same thing basically applies to college football with the pros.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that Division 1 college football, and the bowls in particular, yield some of the best football around!  Especially in terms of effort, agility, team spirit, daring, and overall excitement.  For example, tonight Auburn got a clutch safety from Oregon, giving them a crucial 2-point edge for much of the game.

And with 3 minutes to go, Auburn got the ball back with a tie game.  After a couple plays, the running back Dyer (having a great night, btw) got a huge rush because while being tackled his knees never touched the ground! Check it out ...

And when was the last time you saw either of those things in the pros??