>The local angle here is that Notre Dame and Northwestern, the closest BCS teams to Chicago, are both going to bowls despite having 7-5 records. Both their opponents went 7-5 as well. Those games are on my must-miss list <g>.
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>I hate everthing about Notre Dame. When I hear that jerk Lou Holtz on ESPN, I'd love to send him a concentrated tube of PolyGrip for his dentures. He makes me cringe.

We agree! LOL

My last girlfriend before my wife was a Notre Dame grad. I must have been smitten because during the time we were together I kept my hatred of ND sports to myself and even sort of cheered for them. As it happened, fate intervened. We had both been transferred to Cincinnati on business at the same time and were then transferred out again a year and a half later, her to Santa Barbara and me to England. She was a sales rep for 3M. We were still in our 20s so it fell apart fairly quickly with the distance. The good news was I could go back to my evil ways of cheering against the F-ing Irish. And BTW, consider yourself lucky geographically. There is no place on God's green earth other than South Bend itself with a greater rapture for ND sports than Chicago. Even when they suck, which luckily they do these days, the Tribune sports section is full of ND coverage.

While on the subject of sports, and without starting a separate thread about it, there were two rough losses over the weekend -- Ron Santo and Don Meredith. Santo was beloved here as one of the greatest Cubs and a long term color announcer of their games on the radio. His perpetual cheerfulness despite severe health problems (he had both legs amputated due to diabetes) and his enthusiasm for the Cubs made you like him and enjoy listening to him, even though a case could be made that he was not all that great an announcer. He was as big a fan as any listener and never tried to hide it. That was tolerable. He sometimes seemed to forget that as radio listeners we weren't seeing what he was, and in fact it was his job to paint that picture for us. "Oh, no," he would often say after the crack of the bat. You knew something bad for the Cubs had happened, you just didn't know what. His most famous call was probably after Cubs outfielder Brant Brown dropped a routine fly ball that would have closed a win over the Brewers. Three runners scored and that won the game for the Brewers. Santo: "Ohhhhhhhhh, no!" Sometimes I would think, Come on, Ron, but I always smiled as I thought it. His ongoing dislike of the Mets from his playing days was also charming. I have never heard anyone say a bad word about him, and isn't that how we are remembered? Same with Dandy Don. Two sad losses.