Friday Hub Wants Some Order Around Here!

• Underdogs Attack! Regular readers know the heart beats hard around here for the Saints, and so Thursday night was spent mostly in intense emotional pain and mourning, for the pass rush, for the lost Bush and Brees of the past winter, especially for the aura of a championship contender, which can take months to get back. I would mourn the secondary, the progenitor of so much of Thursday's anguish, if it had ever showed signs of life in the first place.

But all that means here is that I didn't see any of Thursday's amateur action after Cincinnati's opening pick cum field goal, the prelude to a straight beatdown of Oregon State, 34-3, in a game dominated start to fin...come again? The Bearcats were outgained by 81 yards, averaged less than a yard per carry on offense and converted two of eleven third downs? And won by 31 points? You don't have to watch the game to figure that out:

Oregon State Miscues vs. Cincinnati

	OSU Mistake	UC Field Position	UC Points Off
1st Qtr.	Interception	OSU 21	3
2nd Qtr.	Missed FG	-	-
2nd Qtr.	Interception	OSU 31	7
3rd Qtr.	Fumbled Punt	OSU 2	7
3rd Qtr.	Blocked Punt	Touchdown	7
3rd Qtr.	Interception	UC 47	7

Who needs an offense? Even the Bearcats' one self-generated offensive drive, the 53-yarder following the last interception in the third quarter, was a two-play strike whose main virtue was exploiting an inexcusable assignment bust down the left sideline - from the look of it, maybe a series of assignment busts simultaneously, though if that were the case, someone in a white jersey would probably wander within ten yards of the receiver at some point.

So Oregon State hangs its head, and deserves to, for giving away an easy win like that. It's not as easy to gauge the evening for Louisville, which gained an amazing 729 yards (401 passing and 328 rushing), picked up 35 first downs, scored 58 points, won by two touchdowns and never trailed, then woke up to this by the Courier-Journal's Eric Crawford:

"Disturbing" is right, but Kragthorpe must have done something in particular to address the defense, because it had allowed 35 points in the first two quarters and subsequently gave up seven in the last two - four of MTSU's third quarter drives were three and out, or worse, a sign the Cardinals were able to muster up enough interest on defense to let the offense run out ahead, which it did, easily.

But then UL went back to sleep defensively and gave up a 79-yard touchdown run, which turned out to be too little, too late, but came with enough time to make a difference, and more than enough to furrow the brow over the Cardinals' inability to shut the door. A bad start is one thing, even an atrocious start like Louisville had last night. But an atrocious finish, too? That is significant for long-term anguish. No team can sustain dominance with a defense that allows nine 20-plus-yard runs to Middle Tennessee.

At the same time: Brian Brohm. To paraphrase Tommy Carcetti, what the fuck are you supposed to do about that?

The big underdog victory of the day, or the week, maybe of the year and maybe beyond, pending what actually happens with this, courtesy of those upset-struck fools at the AP:

Oh, woe: first cupcake-devouring Boise State earning first place votes in January, now Appalachian? Which is playing a middling Division II team no one has ever heard of Saturday and will not play another I-A team all season?

That is the thing: Appalachian is not competing against the teams it might ostensibly replace in the poll, and not competing against them to a much, much greater degree than Boise didn't compete against them last year, or that Utah didn't compete against them in 2004. Playing a I-AA opponent heaps all kinds of shame on any ranked or potentially ranked team, to the extent that those games were recently considered so worthless that they didn't count towards bowl eligibility and still have to be restricted to one per school.

Appalachian State plays ten of those games, up to fourteen if it's lucky. And one slim, probably flukey upset against a sleepwalking powerhouse can't overcome that, no matter how lopsided the scores for the rest of the year. After a single week, I would have ranked Appalachian number one for taking home the single biggest pelt of the weekend. But never did it cross my mind a team that doesn't have to play another I-A team - not Louisiana Tech or Temple or UNLV or anybody - might deserve to be allowed to stay among those that live in that world every week. What's the basis for comparison? The teams exist on different levels of play, and one game, no matter how seemingly earth-shaking, doesn't negate the chasms that still exist in those planes - again, one I-AA team has beaten a ranked I-A opponent. Once in history. This is not the basis for policy upheaval. Emotional, reactionary move by the AP.

Anyway, speaking of underdogs...

• Cross Yourself, Ohio State: In journalism, three makes a trend, and as far as "curse" games go, Thom Brennaman and Charles Davis only have two: the duo teamed up to call Boise's stunning victory over Oklahoma in the Fiesta Bowl - which remains more important for the way Boise won than the fact that it actually did win as a mere touchdown underdog - and was also in the Big Ten Network's booth for Appalachian's win over Michigan last Saturday.

This week: the Brennaman-Davis curse goes to Columbus to call Akron at Ohio State. Publicly, Jim Tressel is typically stoic. Privately, he's hired a Quimbanda to sprinkle tainted goat's blood around the visitors' locker room. Just in case.

• Meanwhile, Back in Arbor Arbor... Jim Carty wonders if maybe, just maybe, it's never been much fun to be a Michigan fan:

Say what you will about Michigan fans, Carty, you know them better than I do. But I don't think they actually enjoy this. That's too perverse.