BRH

Some guys just sounded like they were named to be football players. Dick Butkus. Ray Nitschke. And one of my favorites, Notre Dame's Mike Stonebreaker.

Just so people are aware: The minimum standard for athletic recruits at Stanford is a 3.0 high school GPA and a 1000 SAT. This hamstrings Stanford somewhat, but it's not a terribly high hurdle. It's certainly well below the average GPA/SAT of Stanford's incoming freshmen, and nobody who isn't an athlete could get into Stanford with those numbers unless he or she had some very compelling personal story. My understanding about Notre Dame is that they flat out refuse to give any special dispensation to athletes in the admission office. In other words, athletic recruits have to have numbers in line with the general student population. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but that's my understanding. ND's minimum standards for the general population are no doubt below Stanford's, but I'm sure they're higher than 3.0/1000. Even the Ivy League cuts athletes a break. They use something called the Academic Index (AI) for each school, which is a combination of GPA, SAT, and SAT II scores. And maybe something else, though I'm not sure. Each school may admit athletes who fall no lower than one standard deviation below the school's mean AI. (Since Princeton's mean AI is higher than Penn's, this means, for example, that Penn can admit some athletes -- coughcoughbasketballplayerscoughcough -- that Princeton can't.) I believe that for a time Columbia was allowed to admit football players with even lower AIs in an effort to return the program to some semblance of competitiveness (hence Marcellus Wiley), but that's no longer the case.

Cosmo Iacavazzi, out of Princeton; played for the Jets in the 1960s. Along those lines, I always thought Gino Cappelletti was a great name.

Kirby Kirby Dar Dar. And, also from Syracuse, Sir Mawn Wilson, who I believe had a cup of joe in the NFL.

I prefer "Merde! Merde! Merde! Merde! Merde!" from Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, or "Golly!" from Airplane!

Preston Ridlehuber was pretty good. And Tshimanga Biakabutuka. Baseball had some pretty good ones. Shooty Babbit comes to mind. And Jack Fimple.

Acid is cheaper and lasts longer too.

That is an even harder habit to break than smoking.

And that goes right up there in the list of trivia questions that includes "Name the three Buffalo Bills to rush for at least four touchdowns in a single game." Everyone knows the answer right now, but I bet dollars to doughnuts that last week most people would have listed Thurman Thomas and/or O.J. Simpson.

I prefer to think of it as Jax beating 4 of our guys and Travis tripping en route to the goal line in Oakland. If Travis doesn't trip over some imaginary shoelaces, we wouldn't even be talking about the need for a review.

How about Jim Lee Howell, the head coach of the 1958 New York Giants? His offensive coordinator was Vince Lombardi and his defensive coordinator was Tom Landry.

I did notice that on Mularkey's radio show this week, he sort of deflected a question about how much influence Cowher had on him. In fact, he said that Chuck Noll, for whom Mularkey played for three seasons, had much more influence on him than any other coach.

Absolutely. Especially since they gave us the 23rd pick this year. As a one-for-one, it's just about a wash. When you consider that there won't be any quarterbacks close to Losman's caliber available at that point in next year's draft, it justifies the extra pick we threw in. You know, now that the Cowboys cut Quincy Carter and the jury is still out on Drew Henson, I wonder if Parcells wouldn't rather have the Losman pick back.

Not to mention Hines Ward's. There were times you could have four college quarterbacks on the field at the same time, and it really opened things up especially in short-yardage, goal-line, and two-point situations. By now Mularkey has figured out who can do what for this offense, regardless of what position the player normally plays, and I think we're going to see more trickery down the road. Amazing how we all love trick plays when they work. We've come a long way from Josh Reed's dropped flea-flicker bomb and Travis Henry's halfback option.

That's John Lennon's "Happy Christmas (War is Over)," isn't it? I still remember being at one of Jamie Notarthomas's shows in Rochester over Christmastime during the Gulf War and hearing him do that.

Just FYI, the Dolphins already signed Jason Garrett as their #3. He's probably better than the two guys ahead of him.

Looks like Steve's been working Scott over privately. What a load of stevestojan.

With apologies to Mojo Nixon... I saw the subheading of this topic and I immediately thought of "Elvis Is Everywhere."

I don't know that joke, but I do know those seminary dudes have a sense of humor. One year while attending my college reunion, there weren't enough beds on campus so I was put up at the nearby seminary. I walked into the bathroom and the stalls were labeled in magic marker: I JOHN, II JOHN, III JOHN.

Right here, right now? Without caring about next year? One guy to get us into the playoffs this year, or at least to run the table? My first reaction is it's got to be a quarterback. And I'm not a Bledsoe hater. My team, right or wrong, and all that. But that's the position that can stand the most improvement right now. BUT. Continuing in the right here, right now vein, any quarterback who comes in will have to learn the offense and get in sync with the other ten guys and the offensive coaches. That takes time and we don't have it. So my considered reaction is that it has to be a big-play defensive guy, either a sack-happy end or a punishing safety. That's why I think Astrobot has it right on with Julius Peppers or Ed Reed. Either one of those guys would take a damn good defense and make it great. And that's what we need in these last six weeks.

My pet peeve is when trolls come on the board and say "Your gonna loose" and things of that nature.

Still holds the record for longest TD reception by a Bill if I recall right. 95 yards. From Todd Friggin' Collins. His man fell down at midfield as Early caught the ball and he ambled down the field for six. As I recall, Early also fell, but the refs ruled that he was never touched by the defender.

I'll do one as soon as I can think of a name for it. Judging from the innovativeness of my screen name, it could be awhile. I thought of calling it "A Nice Shiny Blog."

See, e.g., the Dolphins the year they had 19 first-round draft picks (or some such ridiculous number) on their roster.