It’s pretty common knowledge that Alabama’s defense has kept them undefeated this year, and it’s even more obvious in the low scoring games they’ve played against semi-inferior competition without stud receiver Tyrone Prothro. Then today there’s this gem from CBS play-by-play guy Verne Lundquist:

“The absence of Tyrone Prothro has been evident.”

REALLY? YA THINK?? Funny, but when he’s been out for the last four weeks, I thought they were winning with “heart, soul and great defense”??? Now they’re TIED with an SEC power and it’s suddenly the lack of Prothro? Duh.

Almost as ignorant was Jimmy Roberts during the post-Notre Dame game postgame show. (You know, the five minutes of highlights they drop in after the “Kitten Windsurfing Championships” or whatever they fill with from 5:15-6pm.)

“So Michigan is still mathematically alive in the race for the Big Ten title, but their pulse is very faint.”

Faint? Anytime you need help, it’s not exactly comfortable, and when that help needs to come in the form of Michigan State, it’s horribly not-so-reassuring, but to say that needing to beat your rival at home and have ONE other team win a game (I could have sworn Minnesota needed to lose, too, but I’ve heard a couple other sources say otherwise), I don’t think it’s all that “faint”.

I’m no college football coach, and I haven’t made much of a point of paying more attention to Tennessee than they deserve, but does it take THAT much intelligence to realize that when the game stories of two of your wins include the phrase “Rick Clausen came off the bench…”, that maybe Rick Clausen should be spending less time on the bench? Someone please tell me I’m missing something, but everytime I’ve seen Eric Ainge play, he’s had stretches (60-minutes long or otherwise) where he’s looked like a special ed kid being chased by a bee, and that’s not good.

Off the football tip for a second, BG won a big one today to even their record for the year. Of course, having the opponent tip the winning bucket into his own net is a big help, but a young team that’s looking for a whole lot to build on can take a “W” any way they can find it. In mid-season form, BG coach Dan Dakich has three technical fouls in two games. It used to be that coach getting riled up would provide a spark, now it’s a sideshow. He gets one so easily, I wonder if he’ll be around to see the end of more than 2/3 of the games this year…