PFW:  Of mice, men & swiss-cheese secondaries

Two-out-of-four isn't bad,  I suppose - but one of the two losses is a majorly bad portend of things to come.

Arlington Heights 7, Saginaw Boswell 20
Oklahoma 31, Oregon 7
TCU 35, Texas Tech 70
Dallas 19, Cleveland 12

Saginaw Boswell is the type of 4A football team that traditionally goes 4-6.  IOW, they're not that  good.  For them to have shellacked Heights in this manner tells me that there won't be many more PFWs this year.

Oklahoma was...well, Oklahoma.  Oregon's bright spot was that at least they didn't wear those butt-ugly yellow uniforms. (snicker)

To say Dallas beat Cleveland would be a misnomer.  Dallas started well, then hung on despite Vinny Testaverde throwing interceptions on three consecutive possessions.  The Pokes' saving grace was that Jeff Garcia was equally as bad, tossing three picks of his own and having the misfortune to be in the end zone with the ball while his lineman was holding Marcellus Wiley on the rush.  The resulting safety provided the final margin of victory.

On to the TCU-Tech debacle.  Swami Spatula trusts that you all are familiar with the concept of "attaboy...aws**t".  In other words, you can accumulate 1000 "attaboys" and be the talk of the town - but one "aws**t" and you lose all the "attaboys" and have to start all over again.

It wasn't that TCU lost; if you recall, I picked the Froggies to do just that, as they were playing a very good Tech team on the road.  What I expected was for TCU to hang with the Red Raiders just a bit  better than they did.

They were up 21-0 midway through the second quarter, and it could have been 35-0 had the Frog swiss-cheese secondary held on to a couple of picks that should have been returned for touchdowns.

As it was, Tech's hi-octane offense awakened in time to tie the score at half, then it left TCU in the dust in the second half.  The Frogs giving them seven points on a fumble return didn't help things any.

This is a game in which Gary Patterson needed to at least be competitive in order to build a reputation as a halfway-decent Division I college football coach.  And he had just started to do that - at least, in my eyes, anyway.

Now he has to start all...over...again.  Aw, s**t.

We're back Friday for another go at a PFW.