I've been ready for lots of football

I've been in a little of a football overload this past week or two, I suppose it's because new years fell on a Monday. Think of it this way, from Saturday, December 30 to Monday, January 8th, we'll have only two days without a BCS or NFL game. And yes, I have been watching it all. The highlights:
1. the Fiesta Bowl: Oh yes, courtesy of a national day of mourning on tuesday, I was able to stay up and watch it to the bitter end. Man, this thing played out like a game of Madden. Every play was another trick play, heck, I think the last 3 scores for boise state came on a hook and lateral, direct snap to the running back after the quarterback went in motion, and a statue of liberty. I think it was the mid-nineties maddens where the fleaflicker was unstoppable. Also, for awhile they didn't have the quick dump to the reciever pass, so if my defense was always field goal block they couldn't do nothing.
2. the Texas Bowl: So I went with my parents to the texas bowl in houston. I reckon most of you have never been to a bowl game, it's an odd atmosphere. Before the game all the fans mill around in front of the stadium, like every other tailgate experience I suppose, but this time it's everyone. I mean, everyone's in for 2 days or so, so there's nowhere else to be in houston except in front of stadiums. And the fanbase was pretty evenly divided. These were nice kansas state fans with us, so there wasn't much, ah, jawing. But if this was say, michigan and ohio state coming in a bowl game, that place is gonna be torn apart. Rutgers dismantled the team, the score doesn't quite show it, but they could have easily won the game by 40. The kansas state fans were cute about the whole thing, down by 20 some points in the fourth quarter, and they still try their hardest at creating noise for the defense. Rutgers was winning by only 4 and the only noise was sarcasm.
3. There's a rumor floating around Pete Caroll's thinking of the coaching job for the Arizona Cardinals. yes, I need this to happen.
4. The Jets, in the playoffs. I didn't believe in them the whole way, we're number 5 baby! Let's hope bellicheck is keeping a huge injury on tom brady under wraps. Things could get unpredictable if testeverde takes the field.
5. I read a semi-interesting book called the blind side, one part discussion on the rise of importance for left tackles, and one part the story of a poor kid from western memphis rising into the white world and getting into college. The final thrust of the book is that college football is blind to a large untapped talent pool that doesn't possess the necessary learning ability or just plan knowledge on how the college system works to play beyond high school. The thing that really got me was what he hinted at, just this, well, scummy world of college football. Now I'm hungry for the great muckraking book on college football, all the payoffs, all the scandals. And there's another thing, the book tries to make the point that the college opportunity is good for the kids. Well, it's partially true. But the fact remains that graduation rates hover below 50% for these big-name football programs meaning most of these kids who get scholarshipped in don't actually receive any kind of college education, they're just isolated to special majors and classes that keep them academically elligable for their 4 years, then drops them out the winter of their senior year. The small fraction of kids that do make it into the pros only have about 3-4 years of earning potential in them. I mean, if we're looking for sports as a solution for poverty, well, that's ridiculous.