The Cougar Lounge - The Happy Carrot

"It seems obvious that the best game they could get would be 10-1 Penn State against 10-1 Oregon."

- Pac-10 commissioner Tom Hansen, pointing out the obvious match-up for the Fiesta Bowl officials.

"I own the police."

- According to a witness at the scene of a Halloween party, the response attributed to USC linebacker Rey Maualuga, after he punched a man and the witness said she would call the police. The Lounge has just received word that Maualuga will be donating his ego to the Harvard Medical School.

"There's a big difference between saying I went to school for nine years and saying I went for a decade."

- University of Wisconsin-Whitewater professional student Johnny Lechner. Yeah, Johnny – one year.

The Lounge has formally disembarked from the L-tryptophan express. Two turkey dinners and lotsa nog later, it was time to push back from the stuffing and say enough is enough. Besides, the clientele has to save their strength for fending off the impending bombardment of holiday fruitcakes. Nothing – and the Lounge means this with all earnestness – is more serious than the seemingly never-ending battle to keep the Lounge a fruitcake-free zone.

Football season is winding down in the Lounge, the Cougars won another Apple Cup so the feistiness level has been reduced somewhat, allowing the clientele to focus on other targets of ridicule like Notre Dame, the BCS Taliban and collegiate football hierarchy in general. The Laughing Leprechauns will be laughing all the way to the bank yet again if the BCS Taliban selects them to go to the Fiesta Bowl with a 9-2 record over 10-1 Oregon and gives the greedy green goblins another $14.5 mil for their own pot o'gold – because, you know, Notre Dame is always hurting for money. The Lounge would normally beg and plead with people to come to their senses about Notre Dame but since we are dealing with the BCS Taliban here, it seems highly unlikely any sensible behavior will be located in the near vicinity. That leaves us to move on to another reason the clientele finds bowl season has that dingy aftertaste – bowl game sponsors. Was it not bad enough when – back in the day – we had the Poulan Weed Eater Bowl? Is there any bigger conk on the head than that to indicate that a bowl game has lost whatever luster it once had? Advertise massively around the bowl game site – yes; inundate the airwaves with your product – yes; manufacture and distribute cheap "Made in China" trinkets – yes. All that is the American way – but for cryin' in the mud – leave the name of the bowl game alone if you have any shred of human decency left. Really now, did it need to be the AT&T Cotton Bowl? For that matter, did it even need to be the SBC Cotton Bowl in the first place? Gotta pay the bills? What? You mean nobody is interested in coming to Dallas in January? Hmmmm…good point there. Okay – jack up the prices – after all, that is the American way. Don't want to do that because of the fear of screwing the little people [not that that was a concern before, but hey…going with the flow here]? Invite Notre Dame to a BCS bowl game and then take it from their cut. But hey – here's an even better idea – a playoff system! No "playoff system sponsored by [insert name of bloated corporation here]." The integrity of the game is saved and everybody gets to drink nog and enjoy football. No more worries, mate.

Stanford failed to get Notre Dame out of the loop – not for lack of effort though. The Trees flailed their branches in the faces of the Leprechauns as much as they could but, in the end, it was to no avail. That means the university does not go a bowl game and will have to be happy with winning the Jeopardy national championship, courtesy of Nico Martinez. That seems like a fitting end for this chapter of the college football season.

"Is Jerome Harrison the NCAA rushing king?," asks Roger Wilco in that strident tone he takes whenever he is on edge.

Yes, yes he is – and it is good to be the king. Harrison broke several school and conference records in rushing for 1900 yards this season at a 172.7- yard per game clip. That gives him the regular season rushing title over Memphis running back DeAngelo Williams by 174 yards total and .13 in the average yards per game category. If those gaps were to hold, it would make Harrison the first Cougar ever to win the NCAA rushing title. However – and that is a big however – the Lounge sent a statistician search party out and they got distracted by a bar along the way, stopped and had too much nog and we did not hear from them until the next day when they asked why the Pope was so mad at them. So we had to send out another search party and they found a notation in the NCAA statistician manual [shortly before they fell fast asleep from attempting to read past page 11 in the thing] that bowl game statistics are counted in the compilation of NCAA statistics. If our search party is correct, that means Harrison will have to wait until after Memphis' bowl game is over to determine if he is the one true king. But the Lounge cares not a whit for that kind of picayune nit-picking [after all, Father Lotto has his suspicions that Williams was intentionally held out of the game against Tennessee because it would have driven down his average and therefore, given him no chance to catch Harrison]. The bowl game will be Williams' 11th game and that will even them up in that category but as far as the Lounge is concerned, the consensus is that Harrison racked up his yardage against a much tougher array of opponents. Specifically – putting 550 yards [183 yards per game average] on the Pac-10's three ranked teams [USC, UCLA and Oregon]. Oregon State was the conference's top rushing defense – allowing whole teams only 108 yards per game [19th-ranked in the nation] – Harrison put 124 on them by himself, while being scarcely used in the second half. In fact, for every Pac-10 foe he faced this year, Harrison surpassed every single one of their team rushing defense averages allowed. Put that in the NCAA statistician manual.

"What's that orange thing in the sky? It looks familiar," says Mr. Sequitur while Mrs. Non-Sequitur is busy getting a post-L-trytophan buzz from making turkey sandwich leftovers.

That, Mr. S, is called a basketball. You might be surprised that most women already knew that because women's hoop is the most popular sport in high school [just barely over soccer]. The guys are distracted by football until hoop season arrives – but it all works out in the end. So far, it is all working out in the beginning for both men's and women's Wazzu hoop squads. The women are off to a 3-1 start [as of Lounge "press" time] and the men are not far behind at 2-1. For the women, that is important because there is a chance that they can get above .500 this year for the first time since water was invented. For the men, it is important because sophomores will essentially be running the ship this year and with sophomores running a ship, there is the expectation that it will be run aground at some inopportune points this year – in fact, it was already run aground once in their only loss to BYU.

The Lounge has always liked college life but could never figure out a way to beat "The Man" and make it work past that ninth year. That is because we are no Johnny Lechner. Lechner, it seems, has discovered the magic bean that has enabled him to become a 12th-year senior at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. Here we find nuggets of magic bean wisdom about selecting classes ["hopefully none of them are before noon"] and partying ["it's not all toga parties and keg stand but don't get me wrong – those things are happening"] as Johnny approaches his graduation party for the eighth time.

Finally, the Lounge Scientists were all worked up in a frothy tizzy because of last month's invention of a beer coaster that alerts bar staff when a glass is getting empty and needs a refill. Beerologists at the University of Munich and Saarland University in Germany were responsible for the invention and have even developed a keen sense of business for expanded usages.

"One important direction which needs further investigation is the large body of drinking games which has developed in certain cultures and how they can be supported using our beer mat," says Lounge Scientist #80 Andreas Butz, from Munich and who is no relation to Seymour.

Now why didn't Johnny think of that? Must be because most pubs are not alive before noon.

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