Football weekend!

The UConn men's basketball team was slaughtered by Memphis on Friday night. This was expected and I did not watch it. I just wanted to have something in here that was not about football.

Saturday the UConn football team ran all up and down on Syracuse in their home finale. This sets up a titanic clash between the Huskies and the Mountaineers of West Virginia next Saturday in Morgantown for the Big East championship. The winner of that game will represent the Big East in the BCS in January. This is a potentially huge thing for the Huskies. Traditionally, basketball powers do not excel in football and vice versa. The exception seems to be the University of Florida, but Connecticut is only a few years removed from being a I-AA school. A nationally televised bowl game on the biggest stage with a $15 million payout will be a coup for recruiting. Head coach Randy Edsel's name will be bandied about for the most sought after jobs in the country. Now in all likelihood West Virginia will run the Huskies off the field, but still, UConn should get a major bowl birth and some wonderful TV recognition. Also, their starting quarterback is the younger brother of the Giants Jared Lorenzen, or as I like to call him the Fat Kid.

There were three key NFL games this weekend, and by key I mean I watched three games. First up were the Giants on FOX winning a huge game on the road against a good Lions team. Pending the status of Brandon Jacobs hamstring, the Giants look poised to be a team that will lose a divisional playoff game to either Green Bay or Dallas in the second round of the playoffs. Burress had himself a game worthy of last season, mixing the spectacular catch with the inexplicable drop. The defensive backfield once again chose to let their opponents top receiver run uncovered downfield, but the defensive line had another huge game and Manning continues to look like a real NFL quarterback. The emergence of Jacobs as a receiver out of the backfield and a capable blocker picking up the blitz is adding a new dimension to the offense to complement his bruising running attack.

Second the Steelers got caught in a classic trap game against the woeful Jets. Coming off a dramatic comeback win against a feisty Browns team, Pittsburgh kicked off the easiest part of their schedule by failing to show up to New Jersey. To be fair, no one ever really wants to go to Jersey, but the NFL scheduled the game and there is no excuse to not win. The Jets boasted one of the NFL's worst rushing defenses, figuring to get pushed all over the field by the physical Steelers. Fast Willie Parker was more Wee Willie than Fast Willie this week and often found himself slipping to the ground before the first tackler had a chance to drop him for a loss. The defense failed time and again to stop the Jets offense who lost their top receiver to injury early in the game. I have no thoughts about this game except that if they blow off next week's Monday nighter to the Dolphins and ruin Miami's perfect season they should be forced to forfeit all their previous wins to the Bengals and Browns. That was just not good enough boys.

Sunday night saw New England continue their march to perfection with an absolute drubbing of the Bills. The interesting thing to me is that we were discussing how big a spread would have to be on the game for you to take Buffalo. At one point I observed that if you were allowed to bet extra that the Patriots would double the spread, you would have been safe laying up to 23 points. It turns out that late last week the spread was 16. Really? Vegas was having people take the Bills +16 points? Have bettors completely ignored the entire Patriots season up to this point? Needless to say that if I were a betting man, I'd take the Patriots and give the points for next week's Eagles game. For all the people complaining that the Patriots are being poor sports and running up the score? You are darned right they are, and it is fantastic!