Purple Haze

Another brilliant weekend for me. 2 wins, thanks to the Mormons having a week off, Pacman's Playas gettin' all hated on by the Cigar Store Indians, and me picking a supposedly promising but until now crappy team with Purple as its main color. Why anyone would pick the Norsemen, er, Vikings is beyond me. But I did it.

Incidentally, when I picked the teams, I considered going with an all-Purple theme, just to be random. Also, ECU was kicking ass from out of nowhere. God knows I might have benefited from having the Ravens on my side, but who would have been the third NFL team? Thankfully, purple is not a very common color in professional sports; probably because it's hard to sell bright purple t-shirts to tailgating rednecks. Honestly, I think purple is about the ugliest uniform color this side of brown, which in Cleveland's case actually works on a it's-so-bad-it's-iconically-bad level. I'm backed up in my anti-Purple views by Paul Lukas, the preeminent authority on the subject of sports uniform aesthetics. From his FAQ:

Why do you hate purple so much?
I actually think purple in nature is quite nice — eggplants, violets, plums, etc. But purple in man-made design applications has always struck me as really tacky. Like, seriously, have you ever seen a purple car? A total nightmare. Same goes for purple clothing, especially uniforms.

Don’t you realize purple is the color of royalty?
Sure, but so what? I live in America, a country whose very conception was predicated on anti-royalty sentiment. Maybe that’s why, as I like to point out, not a single U.S. state uses purple as one of its official state colors. If that doesn’t fill your heart with patriotic pride, nothing will.

Let me just note for the record that in Coos Bay sports, there's simply no getting away from bad, bad color combos.

Also, Al Davis made The Onion.

Trojans Go Soft on Beaver Turf

(Photo from here. No idea if it's copyrighted.)

HA! Get it? It's sexual innuendo!

I never even considered watching that game, figuring the Beavs would be completely screwed, but instead of the hard-pumping Trojans we've come to expect, the pride of the Dwyers petered out in a pathetically impotent display.

The littlest running back in the Pac-10 boat showed just which side was on fire, seeming almost to squirt through the flaccid USC line for a total of 186 yards. The Trojan D never seemed to be able to figure out the pandora's box that was the Beavers' game--OSU used their wiles brilliantly to outfox their opponents, who seemed to be lost in some sort of Bermuda Triangle.

USC came into the damp Corvalllis night as the cocks-of-the-walk, the Alpha Males, aiming their cannons at an opponent who just wasn't ready for the pounding they were going to receive. But in the end, the end pounded was USC's.

Perhaps next week, when they're given the choice, they should pick the blue pill.

OK, that was a bit much.

UPDATE:

OK, just to milk this for one more easy, immature and inappropriate joke, it occurs to me that we may have just seen the definitive refutation of one particular foreign policy theory:

And the CF Domination Begins...

Let me just take this moment to draw your attention to the fact that my opponents on Saturday lost by a combined total of 88-7, and it was the team with 5 losses in the last 9 years that gave up the touchdown.

Oh, and just so you guys know: the playoff series in Division III is five games long. That means that if Mt. Union goes undefeated and wins the championship game, as they very well might, that will be 15 wins for me. The Best USC can do is 13 wins.

If this goes well for me, I don't see how this game stays open to non-D1 teams next year, or how nobody else picks a D2 or D3 team next year.

The Thrill of Defeat

It's a pretty exciting Sunday so far, with Sage's Raiders blowing out Sage's Chiefs, thus handing Sage both a win and a loss. Congratulations and condolences!

As for me, my Vikings lost to Dustin and Brandon's Colts and my Jets lost to no one's Patriots. Hoping to get a win with Dallas over Kirk's Eagles tomorrow to salvage the weekend on the pro side.

In college ball yesterday, the Purple Raiders of Mount Union kicked the crap out of... what's that? They didn't play this weekend? Crap.

At least BYU destroyed UCLA this weekend. Go Mormons!

Not a good weekend so far.

An Explanation

So here's the deal: six cousins, separated by geography, time and football knowledge, have challenged each other* to a contest of less-than-epic proportions. Each has picked** five teams, three professional and two college, whose performance during the year will determine the winner.

The stakes couldn't be lower. At this point, there's been no announced prize to the victor. But pride is a mighty important thing in the Coleman clan. It just remains to be seen whether winning this particular contest will be a source of pride or not.

Let the games begin, and somebody pass me a beer.

* One of our number (hint: the one named after something in your kitchen) did not choose any teams, so teams were picked for him, without his consent.

** See above.