Sometimes things work out better than you planned. Sometimes they end up much worse. Sometimes you’re pretty well spot on. I hit all three of those on football this weekend. Wabash turned out just about like I expected, pulling out a 27-24 win in Springfield. That means Wabash is now 8-8 all time against Wittenberg,* and I can tell you for a fact it should 9-7 if not for a badly timed Matt Hudson injury. For whatever it’s worth, we’re 7-6 since it became a conference game. In any case, yeah, this game went more or less how I expected. Plus, it’s another spot to climb in the polls, now up to fifteen. *Who, just as a reminder, is the winningest team in Division III. Purdue did not go as planned. Thanks to dinner with my dad, I didn’t get to see very much of that beatdown, but I’m not complaining. I’m not shocked Michigan won, but my goodness, you couldn’t even hang with them at home? I don’t really know what went so wrong, and somehow, I think I’m better off that way. Now Purdue will turn its attention to Wisconsin for homecoming. It’s an awfully big game, essentially being the division championship. Purdue might as well pack it in if they lose. Wisconsin could still get there after losing on Saturday, but it’ll make things more difficult without the tie-breaker. Wisconsin might be a little perturbed to be a homecoming opponent, though. For reference, Wabash was Wittenberg’s homecoming opponent on Saturday. It made me bristle a little bit as a fan, and Coach Erik Raeburn flat out said “You don’t schedule Bash for homecoming.” So, yeah, it was on the players mind, just as I’m sure it will be on the Badgers mind on Saturday. I don’t think that’s a good thing. In happier news, the Colts probably just pulled out the upset of the NFL season. With Coach Chuck Pagano in the hospital with leukemia, the Colts played on a level we haven’t seen in a few years. Andrew Luck showed why he is a bona fide star in this league and why the Colts had to bite now instead of waiting a few more years when Peyton decided he was done. Luck is almost exactly the same size at Peyton, but boy, he moves better than Peyton ever has in his dreams. He takes a bit better, too. One of my biggest, maybe my only, gripe about Peyton was he had a bit of a glass jaw. You hit him a couple times, and he would get jittery. Luck seems to invite the contact. Even after taking an extremely hard hit,* he was undeterred and not at all afraid to take the contact instead of sliding when he decided to run. *And what I thought was a clean hit on the replay, though I admittedly probably would have flagged it watching it full speed like the officials, too. And, you know, the more I thought about it, the more I’m about to decide Luck is a better athelte than RG3. Griffin probably is a little faster, but he can’t throw as well as Luck,* I don’t know if he makes decisions as well as Luck, and I’m for damned sure he doesn’t take a hit like Luck. It’s not his fault. Look at Griffin and look at Luck. It’s pretty easy to tell who’s more solidly built. And, you know, Griffin went out with a concussion yesterday after taking a hard hit. Luck just came back and played even better. I think the Colts really picked the right guy, if there was any doubt left.** *Not saying he’s a bad passer, because that’s uncategorically false. Just not as well as Luck. **At least we can all be happy that we missed out on the Cam Newton sweepstakes. Well, everybody but Carolina, that is. I would also be out of my head if I didn’t mention Reggie Wayne. There’s just something about Reggies playing in Indianapolis, isn’t there? We got to hear about how washed up he was all last year, and all off-season. With apologies to Curtis Painter, it seems like that had a lot more to do with the team around him than anything with Reggie. Because he was absolutely brilliant yesterday, and really, he’s been doing this all year. The dude is just a hall-of-fame receiver, no doubt about it. If one bad year was enough to scare everybody away from the Colts’ fire sale, then it was worth it. If we can’t keep Peyton in a Colts uniform his entire career, we should at least be able to keep Reggie around. If I were buying a Colts jersey in the near future, I could tell you right now it would be number 87. There were baseball playoffs all weekend, too, including some iffy umpiring. I don’t have time to write much more, though, and this is getting long enough already. Let’s pick up the hardball tomorrow, shall we? Comments are closed.
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