Charlie Weis & a Guy Named Brady...



No, not Tom Brady - Brady Quinn. The kid who just led the Irish to a 17-10 victory over #3 Michigan at the big house in a game that wasn't as close as the final score indicated.

While the Irish offense was impressive (the opening drive was once again reminiscent of the Patriot offenses that Weis managed in New England) - it was the defense that was surprising and probably the most important component of the victory (apart from the always important turnovers, of course).

The Irish defense controlled the line of scrimmage and took away the Michigan running game from the get-go (while they had a few big break-away runs, for the most part Michigan was generally frustrated when they tried the run), which forced them to rely almost completely on the pass attack throughout the game (and Henne couldn't get anything going on this front either).

On the other side of the ball, the Irish had a balanced offensive attack (140 yards passing/107 rushing), and were as comfortable on the run as they were in the pass. Darius Walker is a creative runner (although one wishes that at times he would quit trying to be too creative and just run for forward progress) who is a significant improvement over Ryan Grant from last year.

If these first 2 games are any indication, this balanced Irish offensive attack will give opposing defenses fits this year.

One final note on the game: Even though the Big Ten refs were trying their best to gift wrap the game for Michigan with 2 terrible calls toward the end of the game (the first - a Michigan fumble at the goal line that wasn't called by the refs on the field, and the second - a called fumble against ND), the replays reversed both calls and kept the playing field even on 2 critical turnover calls in Notre Dame territory.

While the season is far from over, one wonders whether this season will be just as much of an indictment of Ty Willingham as it will serve as a validation of Charlie Weis.

Regardless of the final verdict pronounced on Willingham though, it appears that Weis is one hell of a coach.

I have been a ND fan since I was a kid, and I've been going to home games since the 1^st grade since my dad gets tickets to all of the home games every year and he graciously gives me at least 2 tickets every year (as of this writing I have 2 tickets to the Tennessee and BYU games this year).

Even so, I'm a realist and I fully expected Notre Dame to lose this game - especially after Pitt got beat by Ohio yesterday (which called into question the quality of the Irish victory against Pitt last week) and especially because Michigan is notoriously difficult to beat at home.

Nevertheless, this was one quality win that should catapult Notre Dame into the top ten.

We'll just have to wait to see how the polls turn out Sunday evening.

I love football season.

Does anyone take this MorAn seriously?

This is, without a doubt, one of the funniest pictures and stories I have seen this year:

Movie star and political activist Penn, 45, was in the collapsing city to aid stranded victims of flooding sparked by Hurricane Katrina, but the small boat he was piloting to launch a rescue attempt sprang a leak.

The outspoken actor had planned to rescue children waylaid by the deadly waters, but apparently forgot to plug a hole in the bottom of the vessel, which began taking water within seconds of its launch.

When the boat's motor failed to start, those aboard were forced to use paddles to propel themselves down the flooded New Orleans street.

Asked what he had hoped to achieve in the waterlogged city, the actor replied: "Whatever I can do to help."

with the boat loaded with members of the Oscar-winner's entourage, including his personal photographer, one bystander taunted: "How are you going to get any people in that thing?" [emphasis added]

This idiot should have been forever typecast after he played the role of the half-wit in We're No Angels since he plays the part so naturally (and this is apparently exactly what the Producers of I am Sam were thinking as well).

In any event - how funny is this: Penn's boat was so loaded with his entourage (including his personal photographer - wouldn't want to miss Penn retrieving "snowball" and returning it to that heartbroken kid) that someone wondered how he'd actually be able to rescue anyone with his boat.

With liberals it's all about appearance over substance anyway - but I am thankful for them because they certainly provide many of us with considerable fodder for amusement.

And no this isn't about the Cubs, but what do you expect from me?! with the Cubs in the dumper and the season series with the Cardinals clinched with the victory last night (big whoop!) there's nothing else for me to blog about.

If you want baseball insights from this blog, you'll have to wait for Randy to post his next installment.

I couldn't have said it better myself...

Op-Ed from the UK's Daily Telegraph:

The Big Easy rocked, but didn't roll
By Mark Steyn
(Filed: 06/09/2005)

Readers may recall my words from a week ago on the approaching Katrina: "We relish the opportunity to rise to the occasion. And on the whole we do. Oh, to be sure, there are always folks who panic or loot. But most people don't, and many are capable of extraordinary acts of hastily improvised heroism."

What the hell was I thinking? I should be fired for that. Well, someone should be fired. I say that in the spirit of the Mayor of New Orleans, Ray Nagin, the Anti-Giuliani, a Mayor Culpa who always knows where to point the finger.

For some reason, I failed to consider the possibility that the panickers would include Hizzoner the Mayor and the looters would include significant numbers of the police department, though in fairness I wasn't the only one. As General Blum said at Saturday's Defence Department briefing: "No one anticipated the disintegration or the erosion of the civilian police force in New Orleans."

Indeed, they eroded faster than the levees. Several hundred cops are reported to have walked off the job. To give the city credit, it has a lovely "Comprehensive Emergency Management Plan" for hurricanes. The only flaw in the plan is that the person charged with putting it into effect is the mayor. And he didn't.

But I don't want to blame any single figure: the anti-Bush crowd have that act pretty much sewn up. I'd say New Orleans's political failure is symptomatic of a broader failure.

I got an e-mail over the weekend from a US Army surgeon just back in Afghanistan after his wedding. Changing planes in Kuwait for the final leg to Bagram and confronted by yet another charity box for Katrina relief, he decided that this time he'd pass. "I'd had it up to here," he wrote, "with the passivity, the whining, and the when-are-they-going-to-do-something blame game."

Let it be said that no one should die in a 100F windowless attic because he fled upstairs when the flood waters rose and now can't get out. But, in his general characterisation of "the Big Easy", my correspondent is not wrong. The point is, what are you like when it's not so easy?

Congressman Billy Tauzin once said of his state: "One half of Louisiana is under water and the other half is under indictment." Last week, four fifths of New Orleans was under water and the other four fifths should be under indictment - which is the kind of arithmetic the state's deeply entrenched kleptocrat political culture will have no trouble making add up.

Consider the signature image of the flood: an aerial shot of 255 school buses neatly parked at one city lot, their fuel tanks leaking gasoline into the urban lake. An enterprising blogger, Bryan Preston, worked out that each bus had 66 seats, which meant that the vehicles at just that one lot could have ferried out 16,830 people. Instead of entrusting its most vulnerable citizens to the gang-infested faecal hell of the Superdome, New Orleans had more than enough municipal transport on hand to have got almost everyone out in a couple of runs last Sunday.

Why didn't they? Well, the mayor didn't give the order. OK, but how about school board officials, or the fellows with the public schools transportation department, or the guy who runs that motor pool, or the individual bus drivers? If it ever occurred to any of them that these were potentially useful evacuation assets, they kept it to themselves.

So the first school bus to escape New Orleans and make it to safety in Texas was one that had been abandoned on a city street. A party of sodden citizens, ranging from the elderly to an eight-day-old baby, were desperate to get out, hopped aboard and got teenager Jabbor Gibson to drive them 13 hours non-stop to Houston. He'd never driven a bus before, and the authorities back in New Orleans may yet prosecute him. For rescuing people without a permit?

My mistake was to think that the citizenry of the Big Easy would rise to the great rallying cry of Todd Beamer: "Are you ready, guys? Let's roll!" Instead, the spirit of the week was summed up by a gentleman called Mike Franklin, taking time out of his hectic schedule of looting to speak to the Associated Press: "People who are oppressed all their lives, man, it's an opportunity to get back at society."

Unlike 9/11, when the cult of victimhood was temporarily suspended in honour of the many real, actual victims under the rubble, in New Orleans everyone claimed the mantle of victim, from the incompetent mayor to the "oppressed" guys wading through the water with new DVD players under each arm.

Welfare culture is bad not just because, as in Europe, it's bankrupting the state, but because it enfeebles the citizenry, it erodes self-reliance and resourcefulness.

New Orleans is a party town in the middle of a welfare swamp and, like many parties, it doesn't look so good when someone puts the lights up. I'll always be grateful to a burg that gave us Louis Armstrong and Louis Prima, and I'll always love Satch's great record of Do You Know What it Means to Miss New Orleans? But, after this last week, I'm not sure I would.