BCS Title Game preview

By Rick Morris

EDITED TO ADD POST-GAME THOUGHT: Two years in a row, Ohio State has jumped out to an early lead in the National Title game only to end up getting smoked. If the Buckeyes make it to the championship game again next year, could we spot them another 14-21 points off the bat just to make it competitive?


The final game of college football's screwiest season ever matches two teams who arrived under fairly controversial circumstances. This has been the most difficult season ever to narrow a title game selection to two teams -- and when you look back over the last few decades, that's saying a mouthful.

Nevertheless, the BCS title will be decided tonight, and with Georgia and USC both rolling in their respective bowl games, LSU won't worry about having to share a disputed crown again as they did four years ago if they win tonight. Here are the major factors in the game:

^ Two quarterbacks who can make the plays they need to, but who are erratic -- and both could end up splitting time with backups tonight.

^ Like Florida a year ago, LSU does have superior speed, but injuries to some of their top players negate their advantage in athleticism to a certain extent.

^ Wanting to avoid the fate of Michigan, LSU will jam the box and try to take Beanie Wells out of the game. If Todd Boeckman can avoid mistakes (a big if!), the Two Brians could thrive in single coverage.

^ The wars in the trenches on both sides of the ball will be awesome, with the talent on both offensive and defensive lines.

^ Intangibles are fairly even: LSU has been getting rightfully disrespected for being underachievers this year and will have that motivation -- plus what remains of the Hurricane Katrina storyline -- at home no less. Ohio State came in doing the "Hollywood" routine a year ago and got humiliated in front of the world. Think they'll be amped up?

^ Ohio State has the edge in special teams, although a punt or kickoff return for a TD won't be followed by a group pile-on this year!

Ultimately, Ohio State has a ginormous edge in coaching. Les Miles has yet to prove that he is a big-game coach, and last year aside, Jim Tressel has a sizable resume in that regard. In the BCS era, a team with a significantly inferior coach has never won one of these games. Look for a game played mostly between the 20 yard lines, with a few intermittent big plays. Ohio State wins on a late field goal, 23-20.

I Hope It Is Not Too Soon

by Jason Jones

WARNING: If you are easily offended by religious discussions or generalizing about the effects of the recently deceased, you might want to reconsider reading the following article.

I want to preface this by saying; it is never good when someone dies. I can empathize with what a person goes through when a close friend is lost. Now to imagine that emotion multiplied by 60 or 70 people. Then say the person that is lost is employed by a company that has millions of fans. That is a lot of people claiming to feel loss. I get that, to some degree, but when does it end. If you have not figured it out yet, I’m speaking of Sean Taylor and the Washington Redskins. Most people don’t know what goes through a person’s mind when you lose a friend who is also a teammate. I do. As much as it is difficult to deal with, you pay respects and maybe even dedicate the game or season to him, but it never lasts this long. I can guarantee you of one thing. The Redskins players may have known Sean longer than I knew Jay. However, they were not within 25 feet and 15 minutes prior to their teammate’s murder. I was. So when I say what I say on this issue I can empathize with what they must be feeling and in some ways feel worse. They were some number of states away; thousands of miles. I was within feet and minutes. I get the desire to dedicate the entire season to his memory. The decals on the helmet are more than understandable. And to some degree I can even understand the media’s propensity to want to revisit this great story. Washington loses their starting safety via murder. The very next game on an emotional short week, they lose their starting quarterback to injury. After a record of 5-7 the team had to do something and do it quick to salvage their season-which they consequently dedicated to Sean Taylor. Insert Todd Collins. The quarterback change had to have something to do with the turnaround. Let’s not chalk this one up to God and Sean Taylor just yet. Todd Collins has been waiting to start an NFL football game for 10 years. Chris Cooley had been leading the team in receptions and yards. Clinton Portis was running better. The defense was playing solid for what would become four games. Sure you can give the emotional state of the team some credit for their play, but not all of it. Most of this blame should be placed on the national media as a whole. This is a teammate, not a sibling. We dedicated the season and the home opener to Jay. We won the home opener in cinematic fashion. The season turned out better than we initially thought it would. And yes, often we felt Jay was looking down on us. Even as I have lost track of most of those teammates, I am sure we all remember Jay often. Here’s the rub, we never went into a game insinuating that Jay was responsible for us winning a close or un-winnable game. Behind closed doors the lost teammate can be a personal motivation, but if you were going to listen to the media…They would have you believe that Sean Taylor is in heaven orchestrating each of the events of the following games as if he is some divine puppeteer. The world doesn’t work that way. It’s just like when a football player makes an amazing play and says, “If it wasn’t for God, I wouldn’t have been able to do it”. No S@#t ! If one is to believe in some divine ruling body (to cover all religions), then you could not possibly believe that you would physically be alive without your God. To believe that your God sits up there and pinpoints and manifests each and every aspect of your performance is ridiculous. Sure maybe your God gave you the talent that allowed you to make the high school team, then get seen by that college scout, and so on and so on. I am absolutely exhausted with all of this Sean Taylor propaganda. As if I should watch this Redskins vs. Seahawks game because the story of the Redskins be lifted up on high at the hands of Sean Taylor. There is no supreme being who spends each and every second a team spends on the field doing what it needs to to ensure that your team ends up victorious. The whole concept is absurd. The Redskins are a middle of the road football team who went on a run in the last quarter of the regular season; it’s a small factor if not coincidental that it’s the same team who had a player who was murdered. Now that the Wild Card game is over…Are we to believe that Sean Taylor went on a coffee break in heaven when the Skins missed that FG and it was all down hill after that? No. It’s never as good as you think and it’s never as bad as you think. It is what it is. A team on a nice playoff run fell to a better team. There was no divine intervention involved. I’m sorry, but this whole Sean Taylor issue is shades of, “The Saints will win the Super Bowl because they are playing for the victims of Hurricane Katrina”. Give me a break. It still comes down to throwing, catching, running, and stopping the other guy. There is not much more to it.

Ohio GOP a stupid microcosm of national party

By Rick Morris

Ohio, considered the quintessential bellweather state in recent presidential elections, is often referred to as a microcosm of the nation. With its blend of urban and rural and representation from most of the country's major ethnic groups, the designation seems to fit.

Unfortunately for any folks with a rightist orientation such as myself, the complete incompetence and utter small-minded failure of imagination of Republican leaders in Ohio is mirrored by the national picture. Political observers everywhere are familiar with the lengthy bill of indictment against the national Republican party during the Bush years, from the arrogant pork-barrel spending in the "heady" days of one-party rule to the inability to carry out working governance in post-Katrina Louisiana or effective policies (prior to 2007) in Iraq to the overall tin-eared, ham-handed political machinations that have done nothing but empower Democrats and lead to a Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Reid.

But in Ohio, a sad similar inability to stop shooting itself in the foot afflicts the GOP.

Today's Cleveland Plain Dealer informs us of a plan, openly admitted to by the Einsteins at the Ohio Republican Party, to attempt to call the bluff of newly elected Democratic state officeholders with a mountain of public records requests and threaten lawsuits if the issues are not settled expeditiously. Also, in an editorial, the PD writes about the pathetic attempts by the barely-alive Cuyahoga County Republican Party to target Dennis Kucinich not in his next election -- but in a freaking recall!

As for the public records plot: if the too-clever-by-half dime-store Machiavellis who have been running this operation into the ground for over a decade can't figure out that they're only making martyrs of the Democrat officeholders with this stunt, then they're too stupid to live. And spare me the whining about how the "lib-rul media" is just trying to make the Republicans look bad on this. Yes, they most certainly are, but idiot Republicans don't have to keep handing them the ammunition to do so.

The party needs to realize that after years of governance by stiffs like Bob Taft, Betty Montgomery and George Voinovich, who all cared about nothing but polls and the politics of expediency, the public has no tolerance for the shenanigans of the GOP. Whether it be on a national or local level, the Republicans will NEVER NEVER NEVER beat the Democrats at their own game of shameless opportunism. The Columbus insiders who have aided and abetted the assassination of the Republican brand over the last decade need to realize that further alienating voters with political gamesmanship will not elevate the party back to power in the statewide offices and prevent what appears to be an inevitable loss of the House of Representatives next year. Winning with the superiority of public policy ideas will do that.

While I'm not a big fan of Newt Gingrich due to the fact that he talked a big game about government reform but accomplished little as Speaker back in the day, he is right that Nicolas Sarkozy had to overcome the enormous hurdle caused by Vichy French President Jacques Chirac's tarnishing of the UMP party label in his successful candidacy for President of France. Finally freed from the reign of the spineless and pathetic Governor Bob Taft, the Ohio Republican Party in 2007 needed to chart a new course, one built on demonstrating how conservative ideals of limited governance were the best means to carry the state forward. At every opportunity, however, the fools in charge never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. By not having the patience to wait out the honeymoon periods of Ohio's statewide officeholders, the party has played into their hands by making them sympathetic figures and has cast itself as a propagator of government waste as statewide employees scurry to carry out their tasks at the expense of actual duties. Well played!

And as for the recall of Kucinich, the Plain Dealer makes a good point (I can't believe I'm saying that, as Cleveland's Morning Mediocrity is not known for brilliant and pungent analysis) about how targeting the worst congressman in America with AN ACTUAL CANDIDATE AT THE BALLOT BOX is the way to demonstrate displeasure with his asinine antics. But why do that when you can grandstand with a recall campaign in the interim, then shirk into the default mode of dredging up an anonymous victim willing to play cannon fodder and collect 20% of the vote and no campaign contributions whatsoever against Kucinich next November?

For people like myself who don't like being governed by liberal ideas, these are the people who stand between us and that reality. God help us.

Tom Tancredo has big brass stones

By Rick Morris

Many people, myself most certainly included, routinely decry the poll-obsessed, stand-for-nothing wimpiness that characterizes most politicians of both parties. Republican Congressman and presidential candidate Tom Tancredo of Colorado has always been an exception to this rule, as he has been the leading opponent of illegal immigration in this country and has stated that we should bomb Mecca if Islamic terrorists detonate a nuclear weapon in our country. He's at it again, stating that the people of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast are the recipients of overly generous federal "gravy train" spending. Agree or not, and I only do to an extent, you have to admire the big brass ones of this guy. He's somebody who will get up in front of a microphone and tell you exactly what he thinks on any issue. In this day and age, that's enough to get you labeled an extremist by the power brokers of both parties. But that's a sad commentary on them, not Tancredo, voice of the common man.

Famous pundits weigh in on Karl Rove

By Rick Morris

Rush Limbaugh interviewed Karl Rove today, "interviewed" actually being a kind euphemism for the most shameless sucking up since the last time he had an Establishment Republican on his show. The next time Limbaugh starts with his "conservative grass roots" charade, remember this display when he whiffed on his chance to confront George Bush's main man about:

* the attempted Dubai ports sellout
* the attempted travesty of Harriet Miers on the Supreme Court
* the attempted immigration amnesty monstrosity
* aiding and abetting the drunken-sailor spending and pathetic pork-barreling of the Congress when it was under unified Republican control
* aiding and abetting the Congress in running from any shred of the Contract with America reforms when it was under unified Republican control
* this administration's passive tolerance of Iraq's slide into chaos and the complete collapse of our capacity for military deterrence before this year's troop surge
* the No Child Left Behind boondoggle and the double-cross of poor families who voted for Dubya believing his rhetoric about fighting for school vouchers
* a fight for Social Security reform waged with such ineptness and such a political tin ear that the resulting rout has poisoned the waters for needed reforms for at least the next decade
* the Medicare prescription drug boondoggle that didn't even succeed in its only cynical goal: bribing a decent number of old people to switch to the Republican party
* a federal response to Katrina that somehow managed to match, if not trump, the incompetent local and state efforts and which the Bush crew decided to whitewash by pushing reckless and loosely regulated federal spending

In other words, Limbaugh, who shilled for Bush during the 2000 primaries and made fun of Pat Buchanan for leaving a Republican party which was stacking the deck in W's favor, did exactly what you would expect.

Next, we come to some amusing wishful thinking from the Ragin' Cajun, James Carville. Here, he opines that Bush and Rove's many blunders have led to a Republican "lost generation." Now, I have long been a skeptic that a figure as politically polarizing as Carville's girl Hillary Clinton could be elected. But with the "Reagan precedent" of 1980 looming increasingly large -- a scenario in which a woefully unpopular incumbent can cause the nation to turn to a candidate of the opposite party previously dismissed as unelectable -- Hillary stands a good chance of becoming the next president, if for no other reason than the fact that the Republican nominee will have to work a John Kerry-esque straddle between denouncing Bush's above-noted failures and praising his successes (the tax cut-fueled economic expansion, two Supreme Court justices who interpret and don't legislate, the success of the Global War on Terror in most areas except Iraq). But nothing will bring back Republicans and independents chased away by Bush and Rove like the presidency of Madame Hillary, a figure already reviled in much of Middle America. Carville is greatly exaggerating the shelf life of the Republicans' toxic unpopularity in a nation with such a short attention span. Will he overreact with similar vigor to a second President Clinton presiding over the Democrats' second loss of the Congress in the 2010 midterm elections? Somehow, I doubt it.

Finally, we come to the analysis of one of my all-time favorites, Pat Buchanan. Unsurprisingly, I find his thoughts closest to the mark. I should note also that I am glad that his many years of well-received exposure on MSNBC since his presidential campaigns have exposed the lie about his brand of politics being hateful and destructive to the public interest. He is a true patriot, and is entitled to the "I told you so's" that he does not stoop to taking in this fine assessment of Bush and Rove's unpleasant legacy. As noted above, Rush Limbaugh and the rest of the Republican Establishment were in the tank for Bush in the 2000 primaries and were working feverishly against Pat in 1996 when he appeared for one brief shining moment to be on the verge of sparing the party from the specter of horror known simply as "Republican Presidential Nominee Bob Dole." Were Rush and the rest of the backroom Republican elite capable of learning from their mistakes, one might well ask if they're happy they got what they wished for, but that would of course be an exercise in futility.

But for all of Buchanan's many cogent points, he hints at but does not actually state the heart of the matter about the Bush and Rove mistakes. He denounces the Wilsonian neoconservatives who co-opted the Bush presidency after 9/11 and led our country to increase our over-commitment around the globe and he also excoriates their insane immigration policies, but he does not mention the solution. It's called paleoconservatism, a school of thought to which he and I both subscribe and the Bushes and Roves of the world have tried in vain to exterminate. It places the needs of the Old American Republic over those of the New World Order, whether it be by resisting the efforts to erase our borders and submerge our people into an amorphous North American Union or by fighting only the battles vital to our national security. It is a coherent and brilliant theory of who we are as a people and a celebration of how we got to this point. It is intellectually consistent and honest, unlike the Bush crowd, which sees nothing contradictory in decrying the bigotry of low expectations for schoolkids in the underclass and toadying to Hispanic voters by assuming that those who got here legally will vote Republican if they abandon control of our borders. And it is the true reflection of where the American people are, post-Rove. While the alienation this country feels from the Republican party and what has come to be defined as conservatism is deep and true, it is most assuredly not a repudiation of what conservatism has historically been and could be again. The assumption that Bush and Rove have inadvertently driven this country to the left could not be more false, as voters continue to express disillusionment with Washington from the right on a fairly regular basis. While the Republican elite has quashed Buchanan and any other adherents of paleoconservatism in the past, in part because they tolerate no dissent on an absolutist free trade agenda that does not take into any account the predatory trade policies of other countries, they may not always be in position to do so. What we need is for a prominent presidential contender to find the guts to pick up Populist Paleocon Pat's megaphone and rally the people with his memorable cry from the '96 primaries: "Mount up, everybody, and ride to the sound of the guns!"