Stanford Unveils a New Fight Song, Penned by Jim Harbaugh

As the final seconds ticked off the clock in the Colosseum, a new era dawned for Stanford football. Against all odds, the gutty Cardinal went toe-to-toe with one of the dynasty of our era, on their home turf, and prevailed. Nobody saw it coming, nobody expected it, and the pristine beauty of the upset is far beyond anything you could script.

That being said, I think that Stanford has gotten a little bit drunk with success after one fortuitous game. While this is an impressive start for former Michigan quarterback Jim Harbaugh's coaching career, I personally think it's a bit early to be anointing him the greatest coach of all time. In light of that, I'm even more surprised that Stanford granted him license to rewrite their fight song. Granted, their old one wasn't all that good to begin with (as a matter of fact, I have no idea what it is, and I've seen Stanford play about a half dozen times), but it's strange to completely throw out tradition after one good game.

"I wanted to come up with a song that combined the rich tradition of football and victory with the top-crust academics that are available at Stanford as opposed to that illiterate cesspool in Ann Arbor. I'm quite pleased with the results," Harbaugh said at the press release.

Anyway, here's the new, updated Stanford fight song. The music and lyrics were written and performed by the coach himself. Personally? I think it's a little... weird. You be the judge, though. Presenting, for the first time ever, the Stanford π-ght Song!

Download the Stanford π-ght Song

3,000 Words

Wait, The Irish are 3 TD Underdogs to a Finnish Ski Jumper?

I've just been informed that Notre Dame is 3 touchdown underdogs this weekend against some guy named Jussi Ellai. I haven't even heard of this guy, so I did some googling. Apparently, he won the silver medal in the 1984 Winter Olympics in Sarajevo for ski jumping. Pretty impressive, I guess, but I refuse to believe we've fallen so far that we aren't expected to stay competitive against one middle-aged Finnish guy. Woof, talk about rebuilding.

Jussi, sailing magestically over the Dalmation coastline. You can vaguely see the Notre Dame cornerback in the background with his back to the ball.

Blogpoll: Best Friend Means I Pull The Trigger Edition

Rank	Team	Delta
1	LSU	--
2	Southern Cal	--
3	California	1
4	Boston College	1
5	Wisconsin	3
6	South Florida	8
7	Ohio State	5
8	Oregon	2
9	Kentucky	4
10	Arizona State	8
11	South Carolina	4
12	Clemson	5
13	Georgia	3
14	Florida	11
15	Oklahoma	6
16	Purdue	8
17	West Virginia	7
18	Missouri	1
19	Cincinnati	1
20	Texas	9
21	Virginia	4
22	Hawaii	4
23	Florida State	3
24	Nebraska	1
25	UCLA	1
Dropped Out: Alabama (#19), Michigan State (#21), Rutgers (#22).

We celebrate bloodshed Saturday with a wholly-revamped ballot. I got a "wack balloting" mention for only dropping Clemson to #13 (they're #24 in the blogpoll). Eh. Maybe it's just residual man-crush for C.J. Spiller. Or maybe it's because I excessively punished the top five teams that lost this week and Clemson was the unwitting benefactor of this dumping (even though they had an embarassing loss of their own). Onwards!

• Uh, you know, the chainsaws. I propose we change the blogpoll from a top 25 ballot to a top 2 ballot, because that's all that matters right now. Sure, both Southern Cal and LSU showed some cracks in the armor this weekend, but the season is still theirs to lose.
  
  
• Um, a fucking grab-bag of ridiculous teams round out the top ten. Cal? Boston College? South Florida? Kentucky? Arizona State? Really? You can clearly see the steep dropoff that comes after the #2 spot. All of these teams are doing well and are undefeated, but I'm shocked and a little bit saddened that we have a glut of George Masons clogging up the top eschelon. We've got the second half of the season for the wheat to separate itself from the chaff here, and as we get deeper into conference play, it'll start to become apparent who here is for real and who is a pretender with some lucky bounces and good scheduling.
  
  
• Oregon gets a very small slap on the wrist. When you take the #3 team in the country to the wire and lose on a catastrophic stroke of bad luck, I can't be too punishing in the rankings. Especially since the teams in their area (Florida, Oklahoma, Texas) dropped their games to inferior competition.
  
  
• Sort of a grab bag at the bottom. Everything else is pretty interchangeable.

Canada... My God, Man... Canada! Imagine it!

I think all Irish fans have about the same attitude about this season that I do. We stink, but we knew we were going to stink. Things like the relative placement of worst starts in history, our NCAA ranking in offense, and bowl eligibility are really of no concern to me right now. All I'm interested in is seeing the young guys make a bit of progress throughout the season, this whale of a recruiting class to remain intact with the minimum of defections, and maybe possibly a couple wins to put in the record books.

Well, I guess that just changed about ten minutes ago. Now, I have a new, aggressive goal for the season and will be doing everything in my power to will the team to do this. We need six wins. Need them, need them, need them, need them. Not for bragging rights or for the historical legacy of the team or for arguing points about Weis' career or any of that petty bullshit. No, the reason that we need six wins is because of this link (turn your speakers to maximum volume before clicking):

http://www.internationalbowl.org

Yeah. That's the official webpage for the International Bowl, a bowl game with a glorious one year tradition that takes place in... wait for it... the fucking SkyDome!* Think about it.. an extra six weeks of practice for the young kids, and a trip to Canada! What's even better, the Maple Leafs are playing the Flyers that night at the Air Canada Centre nextdoor, which will make for a doubleheader that might very well rival the one I caught this weekend.

Please, please, please make this happen, Irish. This would, without a doubt, be the greatest bowl game road trip ever. Do it for the fans, do it for Gretzky, do it for Shatner, do it for Space Moose, just do it.

Oh, and since the game takes place on January 5, it will keep our January bowl streak alive. Hell yeah.

* You may know it as the Rogers Centre, but I refuse to acknowledge that name. It will always be the SkyDome to me.