Football Friday, Northwestern Jinx, Conference Megatron

(Zach)

It's hard to believe we only have one more week of regular season play in the prep football season.  Though it seems a little weird to me they truncate the playoffs a bit to beat the cold.  It's football, it's supposed to be played in the cold.  Most fun I had was winning a playoff game in a few inches of snow (granted it helped we dropped a Benjamin on the other team).

Not a whole lot of surprise this week.   Valley is Valley again, crushing a hot Waukee team 55-14 on the road.  Indianola, winless after a rules violation stripped them of a couple victories, led Dowling 7-0 at half before the Maroons rallied to win 21-7.  All but certain these two are meeting in the playoffs (shocking no?).

ADM Adel and Norwalk might be on a collision course too.  The Warriors got a big road win in Newton 35-28 while ADM hammered Saydel.

I'm not a fan of cheerleading, but kudos to the squad at Hoover High School.  The Huskies are having a rough year, 0-8 after losing 70-16 to Lincoln.  They may have the toughest job in the city, but they keep cheering and trying to lift the spirits of fans and players.  It reminds you that Friday Night Lights is about more than the scoreboard.

There's a lot of negativity toward the Hawkeyes.  I get it after last weeks debacle at Penn State and the recent Northwestern success against Iowa.  I don't buy it.  Northwestern is Charmin soft.  They're bad defensively and they get rattled easily.  It won't be easy, but the Hawks are going to bounce back. 

No clue what to expect from the Cyclones.  If this team is going bowling they need to steal games like this on the road.  I just hope it doesn't come down to a field goal or extra point.

At one point in Game 5 of the NLCS, Zach Greinke had thrown 74 pitches with only one being swung at and missed.  It's a best of two in Milwaukee now for the Cards.  Everyone, including Andy Fales, keeps pointing to the Brewers home record when saying their not confident the Cards can move on.  Thing is, even in the game one loss, St. Louis looked pretty darn comfortable there.  I think the homefield in this series is overrated.

Remember when we were talking about the 16-team superconferences?  Well Conference USA and the Mountain West have beaten everybody to the punch.  The two leagues are merging to form a 22 TEAM FOOTBALL CONFERENCE.  The goal is to get the BCS autobid away from the Big East.  Every time you think realignment can't get any crazier......

The other half is that both leagues are trying to fend off the Big East from poaching its teams.  The Big East has invited Air Force, Boise State, Houston, SMU and Central Florida.  With the Big East potentially losing more teams (UCONN, WVA, Louisville), and the merged league being more TV friendly, I'm not sure it's more appealing than Conference Megatron.  Hopefully these leagues will at least get new names.  It's hard to call conference's that have teams in every timezone the "Mountain West" or "Big East".