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REGGIE BALL NOT REGGIE BUSH

Are you watching the ACC Championship Game or did you give up and switch over to Army-Navy? Do you realize the TV is littered with the detritus of vanquished Notre Dame foes this afternoon? Georgia Tech...Army...Navy...UCLA. Stanford plays Cal, too, but it won't be on average-guy TV back here in New York.

So, listen, Reggie Ball is everyone's favorite punching bag, and I don't mean to pile on, but last week as you know he only had 42 yards passing (despite having the East Coast version of Dwayne Jarrett in Calvin Johnson...whose SATs, I bet you, ND recruiters never had a worry about). In the first half against Wake Forest I think Ball is 3 for 11 with one interception. He also badly missed Calvin Johnson on a 3rd-and-goal pass in the first quarter. He's a four-year starter who still does not complete 50% of his passes and who seems not to have won his way into the hearts of even the College GameDay crew, who always have something positive to say about everybody. If you caught them this morning, you saw that even Chris, Kirk and Lee were unable to muster any positive vibes. My questions are these:

1. If Reggie Ball spent three, four, or even five more years at Georgia Tech, would there be any improvement? For me, he's exactly the same quarterback (perhaps even less mobile) that I watched on TV in the fall of 2003 against Georgia.
2. If Ball is the first-string QB at Tech (and has been for four years), who's second-string? They don't have a backup who can complete 50% of his passes to the nation's best wide receiver???
3. Is Reggie just immature? After his first carry of the afternoon, a nice shotgun keeper in which he ran around left end for a first down, Ball was jawing with a Demon Deacon defensive back (the dreaded DDdb). On the first play. Maybe I'm just being too white here, but you're a four-year starter. Act like it.

We Are Marshall

Let me get this straight: It stars Matthew McConaughey and Matthew Fox? Why stop there? Also starring Matthew Modine, Matthew Perry, Matt LeBlanc, Matt Lattanzi, and Kate Winslet (just cuz she's in everything, and she's good).

NOTRE DAME-BASHING ALERT

So, I've had to hand in my FOND (Friend Of Notre Dame) card after my two columns this week. They're letting me keep my class ring and Dillon Zoo T-shirt (circa 1984), so that's nice. However, you FONDs should know that at halftime of the Wake-Tech game on ABC right now Craig James and Doug Flutie (WHAT is going on with his 'do today?) are ripping the Irish's worthiness of making a BCS bowl (where have I heard that before?).

James said, "A lot of people think we don't like Notre Dame" but then insisted that that is not it. He did assess the other BCS-worthy schools and asked bluntly (as have I), "Why is Notre Dame there?"

Quickly: If Rutgers beats West Virginia tonight, then 1-loss Louisville will not make a BCS game. Wisconsin, due to the rule that you cannot have three schools from one conference all earn BCS bids, also will lose out (despite having one loss). Either Florida or Arkansas will miss out on a BCS bowl, and if Arkansas wins, that means a 2-loss Gator team won't go BCS bowling. Other 2-loss teams that the Irish will beat out are Virginia Tech, BYU and Hawaii.

Two things:

1.) Yes, a lot of those aforementioned schools should be mic-whipped by Erin Andrews for the non-conference games that they schedule. And the Irish deserve credit for never scheduling a I-AA school. But, at least this year, you can take ND's four easiest opponents as its non-conference schedule and that gives you Army, Stanford, Air Force and North Carolina. Not exactly daunting.
2.) Do you think that Notre Dame could beat any of those teams mentioned above? Yes, you do, and so do I. But you're lying to yourself if you don't believe any of those schools could also beat an Irish team that needed amazing comebacks to take down Michigan State and UCLA?

Should Notre Dame refuse a BCS bowl bid? Probably not. It IS silly, as most readers pointed out to me. But if Notre Dame fans were thinking about what is fair as opposed what best suits the Irish, they'd agree that all of those schools have the same right to be in a BCS bowl as do the Irish, and most of those players have never had the chance to play in one. The Irish did last year.

Which leads me to my final point. Are we all--and I'm talking to you, Irish fans-- more concerned with what best suits us over what's the right thing to do? Domers like to think that they're made of more integrity. Yes, the rest of the country may be obsessed with self-gratification. That's right. The U.S. has become a--wait for it--masturnation. But Domers? I expect more from you.

Naked

David Sedaris wrote a hilarious memoir in 1997 entitled "Naked". One of the stories revolves around he and his sister Lisa, both adolescents at the time, finding a pornographic book in the woods. "I came away shocked," wrote Sedaris, "not by the characters' behavior, but by the innumerable typos." Sedaris mentions "tots", "nopples" and an activity called "fecking".

Why does this matter? Well, all week long I've been receiving hate mail (some love mail, but mostly hate) and not all from people who once dated me. I just would like to point out to these commenters that

1) I appreciate hearing from you, no matter what you write.
2) "There" is about place, "their" is possessive, and "they're" is a contraction.

Just something to remember. I mean, there is a reason we don't call it "Upon Farther Review", for example.