Football

The football weekend began on a good note for us as the South Pasadena Tigers played the inaugural game on their new field by beating La Canada, 12-6. A great game, on a great new field.

However, things went downhill from there, as the Cal Bears lost to ASU 31-20 after leading 13-0 in the first quarter. The Bears were ranked as high as #2 nationally, but evidently began believing their own press reports, or weren't all that good to begin with. Sigh. Same old Bears. Just when they get good, they break your heart with bad playing. Well, at least USC lost. That's gotta count for something, right?

Since teh boy is at UCLA, I have had to root for the faded blue and gold a little, but there is nothing there to inspire me, either, as the Baby Bears lost to Wazoo this weekend as well.

Still, Sunday's coming, and the Niners will have their starting QB back, so there is hope, right?

Nope. The 49ers today looked worse than either variety of the Bears. After spending a gazillion dollars on free agents this past off-season, the Niners lost to a pretty good Saints team, 31-10, and it wasn't that close. It was 24-0 at half, and no one on the Niners looks like they can play offense, and they seem to have no clue as to what's going on. They were expected to be much better than this. Bill Walsh must be spinning in his grave, this team is a travesty on offense, and the defense doesn't seem much better. Except for Patrick Willis, the number one draft pick of the Niners, who looks tremendous even in defeat.

However, in a video that has been circulating on the internet, a play that makes Cal's "The Play" in 1982 look, well, planned.

From the Chronicle:

The weekly intrigue provided by the BCS standings each Sunday takes a backseat this week to a non-televised Division III game witnessed by fewer than 4,000 people.

It took place in Jackson, Miss., on Saturday and makes the historic five-lateral kickoff return for a touchdown run on the final play of the 1982 Big Game look like conservative play-calling. So we begin our two Rs with the Remarkable 15-lateral play that gave Trinity University of San Antonio a 28-24 victory over Millsaps College of Jackson.

Trinity trailed by two points with two seconds left and had the ball at its 40-yard line when the play began innocently enough with Blake Barmore's 20-yard pass to Shawn Thompson. At that point, fireworks were launched to celebrate the apparent victory by the home team as the clock read :00. Thompson, though, had told his teammates in the huddle to keep lateraling the ball, and that's what they did.

Seeing a clip of the play is the only way to understand what happened, but it's worth noting that the play lasted 62 seconds.

To see the play, go to espn.com and enter "lateral" in the site's search field.

"I think their kids just wore out," Trinity coach Steve Mohr said.

Seldom can a team wear down an opponent on one play, but take a look at the endless play-by-play on that play: Barmore to Thompson to Riley Curry to Josh Hooten (an offensive lineman) to Michael Tomlin to Stephen Arnold (another offensive lineman) to Thompson to Brandon Maddux to Curry to Maddux to Barmore to Thompson to Curry to Tomlin to Hooten to Maddux to Curry, who scored.

"I was looking around for flags," Mohr said.

Amazingly, every lateral had gone backward and there were no blocks in the back.

In the course of the play, Trinity initially advanced to Millsaps' 42-yard line, then retreated to its 45, advanced to Millsaps' 41, went back to its 42, moved ahead to Millsaps' 29 before moving back to the 44 and then scoring from there.

Curry handled the ball four times and was tackled twice, barely getting rid of the ball before falling both times. He was not tackled on his final 44-yard burst to the end zone, with a number of exhausted Millsaps players strewn on the field.

When asked whether his team practices that play, Mohr laughed.

"Are you kidding?" he said. "We couldn't do that against air."

By the way, the game was for first place in the Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference.

And now, for your delight and enjoyment.

Eco-Tragedy

Interesting article in Salon on the rise of eco-religion. By writers Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger, the article exposes some of the philosophical and theological underpinnings of the ecological movement. Their critique is worth reading with the rise of eco-disaster tomes being published like Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth."

Usually, these sorts of things are criticized in the religious media, but very few critiques seem to find their way into the MSM. This is one of them, and well worth a read.

Of course, with the wisdom of a few miles behind me, I can see some of these alarmist trends in hindsight. I well remember Paul Erlich's "The Population Bomb" from 1968, breathlessly telling us that the world had too many people to sustain life. The population has doubled since then, which may in itself be alarming, but the world has not collapsed into chaos.

On the religious side, there was Hal Lindsay's "The Late, Great Planet Earth" which earnestly predicted the end of the world and the return of Jesus. Many young Christians quit their jobs and eagerly awaited "The End."

I am concerned about the health of the planet, and do my best to live a greener life, from recycling to driving less and using energy efficient bulbs. But I am also concerned with any philosophy that seems to give far too much credit to human beings for momentary blips in the planet's condition.

It was 33 years ago that Time magazine declared that a new Ice Age was beginning, due to planetary cooling. And the trends seemed at least as convincing as today's global warming evangelists.

While concern and vigilance is a must, alarmist panic has never helped anyone.