The Hall Pass: This Week's Sign....

Let me just get it out right now: I lost picking football games to my wife, the Hall Monitor, and to the coin once again. Apparently, I can only pick football games when I don’t write about my picks prior to the games. Either way, last weekend was about as bad a weekend of college football that I, as a fan, could have had.

Saturday started off innocently enough, with Vanderbilt covering against Ole Miss (although a blocked extra point almost cost me the cover). So, at 2:30pm CDT, I was beginning to puff out my chest a little – I was 1-0 against the Hall Monitor, and Oklahoma had jumped out to an early lead against UCLA.

Given that my wife and I both picked Notre Dame, I knew that an OU win would assure me of, at worst, a tie. Of course, I wasn't aiming for a tie, but losing would not only cost me my pride, but also the cost of a new pair of shoes for the Hall Monitor.

Then things started happening. Bad things.

Oklahoma began blowing the game. Referees began taking big plays away from the teams on whom I had wagered. Kickers started missing kicks. Lee Corso started agreeing with some of my picks. I could feel the storm clouds gathering.

Yet, with all the mounting evidence that I was going to be faced with total humiliation this week, I remained positive, as OU began mounting a mini-comeback. I felt that way, until late in the fourth quarter, when a phantom holding penalty wiped out a UCLA turnover that had put OU in scoring position to beat the spread. And so began my slide into “Black Saturday.”

With the OU collapse (which, wager aside, pleased me to no end), I realized the Hall Monitor and I were neck and neck as we neared the finale of the Michigan State - Notre Dame game, which was heading into overtime.

Now, I have doled out and, been on the receiving end, of a fair amount of trash talk in my day, and, without a doubt, the barbs that hurt the worst are the ones that legitimately, whether intentionally or unintentionally, mock your level of effort at something. It’s like in the Princess Bride when Inigo is dueling with Wesley and Wesley tells him that he, too, is not left-handed.

So, near the end of the fourth quarter, the Hall Monitor actually sits down to watch football with me. This is a rare occurrence and usually only lasts about five minutes or until she asks me for cash – whichever comes first. However, on Saturday, with my pride on the line, she decided to see what this “football thing” was all about. I have to say that I enjoyed her company, and even was patient, fielding questions like:

“Why did that quarterback throw the ball to the other team?”
“Do they kick the field goal now (following a ND touchdown?"
“Notre Dame should really try to stop them, shouldn’t they?”

I answered earnestly, as I was enjoying our fleeting bonding time:

He made a mistake;
No, it’s called an extra point – it just looks like a field goal; and
Yes, they should.

Of course, all I could think was, “I am going to lose to her. I am going to lose to her. I am going to lose to her.”

As Notre Dame kicked a field goal to take the lead in overtime, my wife exclaimed, “Sweet – I am winning!” I explained to her that she was still, in fact, losing, as the point spread was Notre Dame -6.

And then, as Bugs Bunny would say, the coup de gracie.

The hit below the belt.

The “knock him out” button on Punch Out.

“Oh, I didn’t know we were picking games with point spreads,” she said.

And there you have it – I turned off the TV, told my wife that I was heading over to a friend’s house to watch the rest of the games and congratulated her on the win.

“I don’t understand,” she said, “we still have two games to go.”

“It’s over,” I explained. “You just cinched it.”

You see, I had already realized that my slim hopes for escaping emasculation this week rested in the hands of two underdogs – both playing night games on the road. One team was hoping to make the leap to the big time; the other was still trying to hold onto its spot near the top, in spite of rotating quarterbacks more often than Paris Hilton rotates bedmates.

And on top of all that, I knew that the Hall Monitor’s comment was the final nail in the coffin.

As we all know by now, I was right.

Final Hall Pass score: Me: 1-4; Hall Monitor: 4-1; and the Coin: 2-3.

Ouch.

However, even with Boston College blowing a second-half lead and Tennessee handing Florida nine points from special teams gaffes, I still had not reached the nadir of my descent on Saturday.

No, the absolute low point of my college football career as a fan came around 11pm, when I heard Barry Thompkins, the announcer calling the USC vs. Arkansas game, utter the following:

“Folks, you won’t believe this, but UC Davis, a Division I-AA team that is currently making the multi-year transition to Division I, has gone into Palo Alto and beaten the Cardinal.”

With my tivo remote, I furiously began rewinding to make sure I wasn’t asleep and having a nightmare. I pinched myself to double-check. And sure enough, Thompkins kept saying the same thing: my beloved Cardinal had lost to a Division I-AA team.

Now, I know most of you (except those who went to Division I-AA schools) will probably never know what this feels like. I can tell you, from experience, that a few thoughts immediately enter your mind when you hear that your team just lost to a J.V. squad:

$(^%*&$)#&)$*@_)(*$!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Do I know anyone who went to UC Davis? No, my phone would’ve already rung.
Man, I hope none of my friends see the score.

It’s being called the worst loss in school history, and rightly so. You can find excuses when your team loses to USC or UCLA (we don’t pay our players, our players graduate, etc.), but you have absolutely no comeback when someone calls to make fun of your team for losing to a non-Division I team. Trust me - I know, as the calls started coming in on Monday.

So, I will now look to put the past behind me and move on from “Black Saturday.” It won’t be easy, though. I lost a lot this past weekend: my school pride, my confidence in wagering on college football, and, most importantly, $300 for shoes – the only thing, of the three, that I won’t be able to get back.

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Posted by: Yaehoo | April 30, 2009 at 04:25 PM

Man, Joe Pa can be bitter. Yes, they won the game, but for those of you who might not know (apparently, Joe Pa included), the Nittany Lions failed to cover against Northwestern. Six turnovers will do that to a team.

Posted by: Todd | September 26, 2005 at 02:13 PM