Wednesday November 01, 2006

Let's play... "The Blame Game!!"

Let’s play the blame game!! (cheesy music plays)

Let’s meet our contestants…

Will Proctor, 6’2” 205 lbs Quarterback of the Clemson Offense who’s got the looks and the charm to sweep every lady off her feet this side of Miami but can he throw a pass?

Rob Spence, Clemson’s offensive coordinator. This second year coach from Toledo is commonly referred to as the Rush Limbaugh of play calling!

Poor Tackling, this herpes of a nuisance reared its ugly head again and seems to be making a come back bigger than JayZ!

And finally…

Shoeless, this supposed “die-hard fan” didn’t attend the game on Thursday thus dooming the entire existence of man permanently!

So, here’s how the game works… everyone gets a chance to explain why they were to blame for the loss Thursday night, and the winner takes the blame.

Proctor, we’ll let you go first…

“Thanks John! Well let me be the first to explain that I can throw the ball, I just don’t feel like it! Also, I like to put zip on the ball but the coaches told me that I lose accuracy and so I just lob them now. Also, my WRs told me that it’s more fun to catch less accurate passes than ones right on the money so I do this also...”

Thanks Will! How about your take Coach Spence!

“Well, first off I’d like to give credit to Jesus for being our lord and savior through him all things are possible!”

(silence)

and what about your take on the game?

“I think we just needed more plays to establish the run, I bet if we have 10 or 20 more possessions we could have worn them down and got something going.”

Thanks coach! Glad to see you were willing to go out on a limb and try something different! Now let’s check in with Poor tackling…

“I think I dropped my mic, it can’t seem to hold on to it. Where’d my nametag go? It was just here?”

and finally let’s check in with Shoeless…

“Well, I’m sorry for our loss on Thurs, everyone can blame it on me! I missed the game on Thurs and it was my first game I’ve missed in 2 years and only the 3rd game I’ve missed in 5 years. If I had been at the game something different would have happened.”

Thanks Shoeless, now let’s go to the judges to see who are winner is…

(cheesy suspenseful music plays)…

And our winner is…

Shoeless!

Shoeless took the blame and the rest of the team can breathe easy for another week!

Your prize Shoeless? You will be fired as a fan and all hope is lost for your soul! You clearly are a terrible human being for missing the game and any ill fate coming your way is deserved.

That’s pretty much what it felt like to me on Thursday. I felt like everything went wrong. I felt as though Will Proctor didn’t have a clue what he was doing throwing the ball and Coach Spence needed to grow a set… I mean what’s the point of having a 50,000 page play book if you can’t turn past page 4. The Defense did as poor of a job of tackling as I’ve ever seen and really all I could think about was not being there and how I let them down.

I don’t really know how some of you people do it but I promise you that I won’t miss another game this year…

But to my prediction this week... Maryland is a decent team. They are bowl eligible and they’ve got nothing to lose and this scares me. Not b/c I think they’ll win but b/c I think Maryland is playing better than most are giving them credit for. They’ve won. Period! They might have been ugly doing it but they’ve done it. They’re giving up a lot of yards but so did BC when we played them… do I think they are the better team? No, but they won.

If I were a coach, this wouldn’t have been a fun week for Clemson. They would have gotten an extra day off considering the long week but I would have made the rest of the week hell! I hope the players learned from Saturday and the rest of the season is played differently… but we deserved to have our asses handed to us after the way we played on Thursday and I frankly hope we never see it again.

We are a better team than Maryland and we’d better come out ready to play on Saturday. I don’t want to see another let down. I want to see problems fixed (or at least improved) and I want to see this team play again like we’d seen for 8 weeks. If we don’t do it, I’ll be as shocked as anyone.

Write it down, take a picture, call your momma, eat at Joe’s… The Shoeless Fearless Prediction for this week is:

Clemson 45 Maryland 10

Now let’s recap last weeks games predictions:

I went 19-7 this past week making my overall record 201-54. This was only my 2nd week below 20 wins this season and I’m hoping to bounce back this weekend.

Weekly Records:
Week 1: 28-4
Week 2: 24-4
Week 3: 20-8
Week 4: 25-3
Week 5: 23-5
Week 6: 18-9
Week 7: 22-9
Week 8: 22-5
Week 9: 19-7

Overall: 201-54 Clemson: 5-3

Let’s take a look at this weekend’s games:

West Virginia 34 Louisville 35
Army 14 Air Force 10
Virginia 20 Florida St. 21
Ball St 0 Michigan 20
Penn St 10 Wisconsin 23
Missouri 10 Nebraska 30
Mississippi St 10 Alabama 34
Florida 25 Vandy 3
Kansas 32 Iowa St 10
Navy 6 Duke 3
Georgia 35 Kentucky 10
Arkansas St 10 Auburn 34
Northwestern St 10 Mississippi 33
North Carolina 0 Notre Dame 32
Washington 20 Oregon 21
LSU 10 Tennessee 12
Ohio St 40 Illinois 9
Arizona 0 Washington St 10
Georgia Tech 34 NCSU 13
Boston College 30 Wake Forest 29
Oklahoma St 10 Texas 40
So Cal 54 Stanford 10
Arkansas 10 South Carolina 24
UCLA 10 California 36
Oklahoma 17 Texas A&M 21
Virginia Tech 40 Miami 10