Monday, February 2, 2015

Give The Ball To Marshawn? Nah.

Maybe, just maybe, Pete Carroll was thinking that if Marshawn Lynch runs the ball in from inside the 1 with 30 seconds left in the Super Bowl that then he'd have to go answer questions from reporters and he wouldn't want to and why would he need to deal with that when he could score any number of other ways?

Is that possible?

Nothing else makes sense.

If you had to get less than a yard to win the Super Bowl and could choose any running back of the last, oh, 25 years to do it, who else would you want besides Lynch? Maybe there'd be someone else, but Lynch would be as good a choice as any.

So what did Carroll do? Well, he did more than just give away a Super Bowl.

For starters, he took all of the heat off of Bill Belichick, who for some inexplicable reason did not call timeout prior to the play where Seattle threw the interception. Had Lynch actually carried the ball in like he should have, Belichick's decision not to call timeout there would have cost New England about 25-30 crucial seconds, and he would have been crucified for it.

What other Super thoughts does TigerBlog have this morning?

* the commercials were for the most part tame. The best ones were the one in the beginning when it looked like the TV had gone out (it was a car commercial) and the very best one, the one where the Fiat accidentally gets a Viagra pill in its gas tank. And, shockingly, the Kim Kardashian one was not bad.

* the worst commercial, perhaps ever, was the Nationwide one about the little boy who couldn't do anything in his life because he died in his bathtub. Who in the world thought this was a good way to get the message across? And what exactly was the message? TigerBlog read a story that said Nationwide was flooded with complaints from parents who said their children were sobbing uncontrollably after seeing it. The one funny part was a tweet TB saw later on that had a picture of the boy in the commercial with text that said "I would have told Pete Carroll to give it to Marshawn Lynch but I died."

* TigerBlog usually is glad to see an Ivy Leaguer get a Super Bowl ring. In this case, the Ivy Leaguer is Brown's Jimmy Develin, whom TB met when he was a middle school kid and the best friend of his nephew Keith (who went on to be a football captain at Lehigh). TB is happy for Jimmy, who played a lot in the Super Bowl and who was in the right place at the right time to hug Tom Brady as soon as the game ended.

* this isn't the first time and won't be the last time that cheaters didn't have to face the music.

* TigerBlog Jr. can eat a lot of chicken wings.

* Julian Edelman picked the wrong Super Bowl to make the game-winning catch with a minute left, as nobody is talking about him today. And Seattle's Jermaine Kearse? His catch was incredible, and he will forever be remembered like David Tyree, with the catch that set up the game-winning Super Bowl touchdown. Oh wait. Scratch that.

* Eli Manning wouldn't have thrown an interception in the final 30 seconds to lose the Super Bowl.

* About halfway through the fourth quarter, TigerBlog's pregame prediction of Seattle 24, New England 14 was looking pretty good. Then the Seattle defense melted down. The call at the end took a lot of heat off the Seahawks' defense, just like it did Belichick. Oh, and Seattle seemed to lose its composure a tad after the interception.

TigerBlog was more appalled by how the Super Bowl ended than any game he can ever remember. Not disappointed. Appalled.

Anyway, with the Super Bowl behind him, TigerBlog can now talk about what was probably the best win of the weekend by a Princeton team.

It came Saturday night, when Princeton knocked off Harvard 1-0 in women's hockey.

First of all, the women's hockey team seems like it has a lot of fun. At least that's how it comes across in its videos, such as the most recent one, entitled "who is the most stylish."

Beyond that, the Tigers are having a pretty good season, the highlight of which was Saturday. Harvard came into Baker Rink ranked fourth in the country and after an OT win over Quinnipiac Friday night.

Ice hockey around these parts is an interesting animal in a world of its own, in that the teams compete for both the ECAC and Ivy League championships, with 95% of the focus on the ECAC. The games double count in the standings, so it's not like there are separate games for the ECAC and Ivy League.

Princeton has next to no chance of winning the ECAC title. The Tigers are in sixth place, seven points back of first-place Quinnipiac. Given who has to play whom the rest of the way, it's possible that Princeton mathematically can't jump over all the teams in its way.

In ECAC women's hockey, the point is to be in the top eight to make the playoffs and, even better, top four to get a quarterfinal home series. With six games to go (beginning this weekend against Colgate and Cornell in the final home weekend of the regular season), Princeton is five points ahead nine-place Colgate but three points behind the three teams - St. Lawrence, Clarkson and Cornell - who are tied for third.

In other words, Princeton has a way better chance of getting into the top four than it does of not getting into the playoffs. Princeton still has its trip to Clarkson and St. Lawrence, and should the Tigers not get to the top four, its likely there'd be another trip to either one of those or Cornell for the quarterfinals.

And the Ivy race, as it were?

Its win over Harvard puts the Tigers in first place. Princeton has 11 points (5-1-1 in the league), while Cornell and Harvard are both 5-2-0 for 10 points.

Princeton still has games with Cornell and then Yale and Brown, who are both below .500. Harvard and Cornell still meet.

The ECAC race is more important than the Ivy race, but the Ivy situation could provide a nice consolation prize. The Cornell game Friday at Baker is huge for both.

For now, TigerBlog is left to wonder what goes through some people's minds. Like Nationwide and Pete Carroll.

Sometimes, you overthink things and miss the obvious.



1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Belichick didn't call time out trying to outwit Carroll. Carroll passed the ball trying to outwit Belichick. The Kearse catch was the stuff fairytales are made of and just as much unbelievable. In the end, yes, the cheaters won.