Is there a limit to my football gloating?

Lousy weather this weekend, so no flying, but fortunately it's football season. If anyone is wondering if there are any limits to the depths of my football gloating, well, it appears not.

Let's see, how did our mortal enemies up north do? Well, right on the heels of their humiliating loss to a 1-AA team, the Wolverines did even worse this week. At least they had a chance to recover with a vestigial shred of honor last week; they were never even in it this week. Yes, I know a true Big 10 fan would root for them over a PAC 10 team, but the brouhaha over the greedy Big Ten Network has soured any brand loyalty I may have had.

This animosity towards all things Big 10 has even carried over to my alma mater, THE Ohio State Buckeyes, for whom I had a brief case of schadenfreude as they struggled with the mediocre Akron Zips yesterday. Not that I could watch it, mind you, because of the cram-it-down-your-throat extortion demands of the BTN.

Now I find myself rooting for the Pittsburgh Steelers as they dominate the Cleveland Browns. Ok, I'm from Cincy and there has never been any love lost between Cincy and Cleveland, but truth be told, I visit (and enjoy) Cleveland a lot more than I do Cincy. I'd have no problem at all rooting for the Browns if it wasn't for the fact that they signed the overrated, I'm-worth-more-money-before-ever-taking-a-snap, I-should-have-won-the-Heismann ego-boy, Brady Quinn. I can't bring myself to root for him, and by extension, his team.

It didn't help his case that I've always thought Notre Dame was also overrated (and boy did I ever enjoy watching Penn St. beat them last night! More gloating....), and only polled as high as they did year after year because of their lucrative, exclusive TV contract with NBC. There's way too much money in college football these days, and Notre Dame, in my opinion, was one of the first to lead the way into that.

It also helps me root for the Steelers to see that OSU alum Santonio Holmes is playing for them, and I always thought he was a pretty class act. Well, relative to Maurice Clarett, anyway. I mean, he's only been arrested twice, right? Yes, that's a pretty low bar, but that's where the semi-Pro NCAA is these days. Thugs in training. It's been a long, long time since we've seen a player with the class of Eddie George, (well, Mike Nugent is a pretty class act too, but who cares about a kicker? There's no money in that.) so we take what we can get.

So, that's my weekend in a nutshell: gloating over football losses and lamenting the big-money influence on the collegiate game. Even though I couldn't fly, at least I had that. Not that it has improved my mood, which seems to track pretty closely with the nastiness of the weather.

Update: You know what else? I could really do without all of the look-at-me dancing and posturing. Dude, you made a first down, but your team is down by 32 points in the first quarter. Get over yourself.