The ECFGs. Where do I begin?
Life can be unpredictable but it's often explainable. Fall and bust you're butt and you might turn around to see you slipped on ice or water or maybe you just weren't paying attention. Life is filled with correlations between cause and effect.
Even basketball, baseball and the NFL make sense. The best players and best coaching generally prevail.
But that doesn't always ring true in college football. In college football the damnedest things can happen. Here's one example:
October 10, 2009 Texas Tech 66, Kansas State 14
October 17, 2009 Kansas State 62, Texas A&M 14
October 24, 2009 Texas A&M 52, Texas Tech 30
You can't make that kind of stuff up. And yet it happens all the time. Some (cough Mr Tulip) might write it off as 18 to 22 year-olds playing with a funny shaped ball. I think it's something more sinister. I think it is the Evil Capricious Football Gods.
Now I know most Americans are monotheist and the thought of ECFGs may sound aberrant but many who embrace God, the Great Creator, accept the existence of angels as well. Theologians have argued that more angels can stand on the head of a pin than you can shake a stick at. And we know that 1/3 of them are very, very naughty.
Look at the Seven Deadly Sins. Who's #1? Pride.
More times than not when a team suffers an unexpected loss of apocalyptic holocaust proportions you can point back to some uncharitably arrogant word or deed somebody affiliated with their program said or did in the weeks leading up to the comeuppance.
Oklahoma 2004. Fourteen players had NFL careers. They rolled through 12 games with nary a scare. In the days leading up to their Orange Bowl match up with USC, somebody like Cody Perkins makes some smart remark they would've been better off keeping to themselves. Next thing you know USC wins 55-19.
Was USC 55-19 better than OU?
Doubtful.
It was the doings of the ECFGs. They're out there like gremlins on the wings of a plane. You'll see their handiwork a hundred times every season. It's insidious.
