Three Thoughts For Thursday

By JOHN P. WISE
One Great Season

ATLANTA -- I've got some non-football items to address today. I was born here in Atlanta, but only lived here until I was 2 years old.

So mom wants me to visit our old church and maybe even the hospital where I was born. I think I'll also visit our old neighbors, the Pompilios. 

And I need to hit Best Buy because, and let me know what you think of this: The 1TB external hard drive I bought right before I left on this tour doesn't work. I saved some things to it each of the first two or three weeks, and then it just sat unused but well traveled for a month. It must have gotten kicked or something by the baggage handlers.

Anyway, the Best Buy people said they'd do a free exchange, in which case I'd get a new drive but would lose the content on the old one that I'd return to them. Or they'd ship it out for the data to be retrieved for several hundred dollars. It's really a no-win situation. Isn't the point of guaranteeing the products you sell to protect consumers from having to dig deep into their pockets to pay for fixes that shouldn't have to be made in the first place?

But before I set out for the day, here are three quick football takes:

+ Cincinnati can run the table in the Big East and still won't play for the national championship. Boise State's unimpressive win last night at Tulsa was the Broncos' last chance to lose; they're home free the rest of the way. And if Boise's rank in the BCS standings at the end of the season isn't higher than Cincinnati's, a one-loss SEC team's will be.

+ I won't wait until after the USC game to say this, but Jimmy Clausen (pictured, above) is not a Heisman Trophy candidate. I know I wrote this season that a good Notre Dame team is good for the sport, but we don't need to try so hard to make it seem that that squad actually is good. The Irish lost to a decent Michigan team and struggled to beat bad Purdue and Michigan State teams. Let's take it easy with Clausen, who's a nice talent and will certainly play on Sundays, but after USC's defense shuts him down, the calligrapher can take his name off the invite list for a December trip to New York.

+ I don't get sports radio. I understand that Atlanta is more of a pro town, but when the local screamers talk about college football, they lose me. I hate that our culture is so obsessed with perfection, that if Mark Richt (pictured, above) leads struggling Georgia to only seven or eight wins this year, he and/or his assistants need to be fired. The 'Dawgs are 2-3, but fans knew it would be hard to replace both Matthew Stafford and Knowshon Moreno on offense. Sometimes bad experiences can lead to good growth; fans just need to be patient to let it happen naturally. Would replacing Richt really make for a much better season in 2010?

NCAA's Handshake Move Rattles Gundy

By JOHN P. WISE
One Great Season

STILLWATER, Okla. -- There's going to be some feel-good college football this weekend, particularly in Columbus when Ohio State fans are expected to stand and applaud when visiting Navy takes the field before it gets slaughtered by the Buckeyes.

YOUR THOUGHTS: Should teams shake hands before the game?

And in other games that don't have BCS implications, student-athletes will shake hands with their opponents before going to battle.

The NCAA has encouraged its schools to ask their players to meet their opponents at midfield for pregame handshakes this weekend. But some teams are thinking about things far more important than the practice of good sportsmanship.

Heck, here in Stillwater, Oklahoma State coach Mike Gundy has a national championship to chase this year, beginning with a huge tilt at home Saturday against national power Georgia.

Monday was my first face-to-face exposure with the man whose "I'm-a-man-I'm-40" meltdown was a YouTube sensation in 2007, and he told a room full of reporters familiar with the program that he didn't want to get riled up about the handshake sitch. Gundy light-heartedly asked a reporter not to inquire about the NCAA's suggestion, but the reporter of course pressed anyway.

"You have 110 or 115 (Oklahoma State players) that could potentially be in uniform and (Georgia's) bringing approximately 70," Gundy reasoned. "It just takes one guy to pop off, and I don't know that we could get it broken up before the game. That's one thing that concerns us."

Should a pregame donnybrook ensue, you can bet you'll see pictures of it right here on One Great Season.

"I have a lot of respect for (Georgia) Coach (Mark) Richt and their team and I'm sure he probably does for us, but how do you control something like that?"

Though the game is just a few days away, Gundy said he's still uncertain what to do.

"We haven't made that decision," he said. "It's a difficult decision."