Many thanks to Sunday Morning Quarterback of Sunday Morning Quarterback, who showed me around downtown Austin and got me drunk and let me sleep on his couch and, generally, acted as a universal solvent to the intractable problem of, “Hey, idiot. You just got arrested in Texas. What the fuck are you still doing in Texas now that you’re out?”
SMQ was much quieter than I expected. The key to that sentence, however, is the word was. SMQ got quiet vocal once alcohol was introduced into the equation. SMQ eventually got around to waxing poetic on the Falstaffian-level of comedy represented by Cincinnati and South Florida eclipsing Southern Miss, the categorical imperative that Kant really meant to talk about which is “Drink the beer before you, and do not complain”, the vagaries of ESPN’s Greatest 25 College Football Players of All Time (Ali: “Of all time!”), the bland meh-ness of Kirk Herbstreit and the awesome “Wow, he really wants to hit someone”-ness of Chris Spielman, Stewart Mandel and Dennis Dodd’s punchability, sushi and its almost diametrical opposite the Chick-fil-A sandwich (but the fried sandwiches, none of that grilled shit), blogging, journalism, beards, women, television, movies, the geopolitics of Mississippi, good, evil, and the truly awesome Spectacle of Bruins Nation and its ilk, which, though he never verbally agreed, is exactly like watching a wounded carnivore devour its own young: which is to say horrific, but entertainingly horrific, and the question afterwards still remains, “So. Now what?”
SMQ also described his blog as somewhat disappointing to himself, noting that he didn’t really do any film analysis – he described it as “essential” to any good football blog, which rules out pretty much everyone except Brian – and that his stuff was based almost entirely on stats. True. But to say that sundaymorningqb.com is just a bunch of stats is like saying War and Peace is just a bunch of names. Whoa! Whoawhoawhoa, I know. Jimmy Carter, before his 1976 miracle run to the presidency, gave a speech at Georgia’s school of law in which he talked about reading Tolstoy’s novel as a young man and its impact on him, and he said that War and Peace isn’t really about Napoleon or the generals of either army or the Tsar of Russia… it’s about the peasants and the students and the soldiers and the farmers and the women, about the grand tide of humanity whose collective will was made manifest through the actions of the individual, but, like, lots of them. And much more important than guys with medals and big fuck off hats. Except Carter said it a lot better, and without using the word fuck. So, basically: It isn’t simply big quotes about history and momentum and destiny and gap blocking… it’s the numbers, man, from one to 120, which is the number of teams SMQ foolishly set out to preview this season and will probably foolishly set out to preview next season, and, shit, when does Western Kentucky become official? Only peanut farmers and guys like SMQ would be able to tell you that, and I saw WKU play.
I’m not sure how to tie all that together now, except to say that if ever there was a guy I wanted coordinating the analysis of the aftermath of the defense of Napoleonic Russia, it’s SMQ.
So thanks again man.
82 Sluggo Win 