The Cougar Lounge - Whos Milking This Cow

"This is not the symphony."

- ESPN GameDay co-host Chris Fowler, describing what they do – or rather what they don't do. No wind instruments on set – maybe some percussion.

"My grandmother was so religious, she'd talk about hell and Satan all the time. When I saw The Exorcist, I thought it was a documentary.

- Actor John Leguizamo.

There was no road trip to Corvallis for the Lounge clientele this week. We won't mince words – the prospect of running into a surly band of renegade homosexual sheep in a dark alley put us off – and we don't cast aspersions lightly. A rendezvous with a mob of bovine Baa-barellas successfully nullified, we are free to concentrate on what went wrong this week. Obviously, the omen was set when Maxwell Smart aka Don Smart officially kicked the KAOS kan at the beginning of the week. Father Lotto was suitably devastated. He immediately constructed a shoe phone memorial ice cream sculpture in the Film Room [it was, of course, set to self-destruct in five seconds…four...three…] and began calling everybody "Chief" [for the men] and "Agent 99" [for the ladies] during the entire week. Then, while we were sitting there minding our own business, Britney Spears' baby stole the unreleased lyrics to our hit pop single. Well, it was either that kid or some kind of lobster-like alien – but we really don't see the difference. Then we went out for a night on the town and the town held it against us. Then we forgot all the words [well, most of them] to "You Be Illin'" at the International Karaoke Festival in Salt Lake City. Then dinner, our dog ate it and there is none left, wait a minute… that sounds familiar. Then the Cougs lost. Then the martini delivery was late. Then UTEP lost. Then all was lost and we were forced to watch a "Roseanne" marathon on Oxygen – and that was the last straw! That's when we threatened to cut off Donald Trump's hair if we didn't start seeing an improvement in our fortunes. Then we saw Stanford on the schedule and all the clientele stood up and gave a standing ovation to the schedule, as they figured the threats were answered – but not before the fears, naturally.

"What the flying fallopian tubes was up with that second half!?!" screamed Otto T. Ott, in vain, trying not to strain a giblet and keep all his veins from popping.

Otto is, of course, referring to the Cougar football team's second half collapse when they successfully snatched defeat from the jaws of victory after rolling to a 14-point halftime lead. In the second half they required the Heimlich maneuver as they were shredded like wheat, 28-3, by the Bad News Beavers. In case you thought that was a typo – it wasn't - 28-3 is correct. It was the classic Jekyll-and-Hyde performance. Nearly everything was good in the first half, nearly everything was bad in the second half. Offense, defense, special teams, you name it. Special teams had a missed extra point coupled with punting and kickoff issues. On offense, it was distressing to the consensus of the clientele that, once Jason Hill was taken away, seemingly Wazzu was not balanced enough to score another touchdown. Defensively, the Cougars allowed OSU – a team that had lost their last two games by an average of 27 points - to shut them out of the end zone after the Cougars had found the promised land - and had the MapQuest directions in hand – four times in the first half. How can this be? The Lounge suspects, in typically, crafty rodent behavior, the Beavers must have moved the end zone to a different location at halftime while the Cougars were in their locker room. It is the only explanation for the fact that OSU suddenly found it four times themselves in the second half [Although one of those times was with 56 seconds left in the game. That won't come back to bite the Beavers because next time there will be no next time for the Cougars – they play OSU in Corvallis again next year – for the third year in a row]. How they accomplished that trickeration, the world may never know.

What we do know is that Wazzu's road to a potential bowl game just got much tougher. Much, much tougher. With the Cougars' inability to defeat the Beavers, the list of projected reasonably winnable games just got much shorter. As in – Stanford. After Stanford this week – and the Trees are by no means a guaranteed win – and with no Arizona on the schedule, there is no game left on the Cougars' schedule that can even remotely be considered a likely win. In order to reach the magical six-win mark for bowl eligibility, Wazzu will now have to upset some unsuspecting Pac-10 team. The likely suspect is UCLA – but nearly any logical scenario would require defeating Washington in Seattle in the Apple Cup and that game is looking tougher and tougher by the second. Perhaps the men's hoop coaching staff really did get their eBay crystal ball to work properly when they scheduled that hoop game against Utah on December 22 in Seattle – if the rest of the season goes like this for the Cougars, there certainly won't be any bowl game conflict. The time to begin pricing artificial stimulants may be close at hand.

"Well, at least the 'other football' team looks like they have a good shot at post-season play," says Lounge newcomer Senor Last Week, with just a hint of resignation.

Don't be so sad, Senor. Just think of all the money you will save by not going to a bowl game. You can save it for hoop games – or maybe, and the Lounge knows this sounds crazy, but what have you come to expect from us? - even going to an NCAA soccer match involving the Cougars! Of course that will depend on Wazzu. The Cougars got unexpectedly drilled by Nevada last week before commandeering the drill bit and taking out their frustrations on San Francisco this week. But that loss to the Wolf Pack was potentially harmful. The Cougars currently sit at 6-3-1 with a must-win match against Montana pending [no result at Lounge press time], if they are able to win against the Lady Griz, that will put them at 7-3-1 going into conference play. With the schedule they have played so far, no Pac-10 match is out of the winnable range for the Cougars, but history dictates they will need to win more conference games than last year if they want to go to the tournament. Last year, Wazzu played a tough schedule, finished with a winning record, but only went 3-4-2 in conference play and that may have been the slim difference in why they were not selected as an at-large team despite going 4-1-2 against nationally ranked teams. Selection committees usually like it when a team has a winning conference record or, at worst, a .500 record. So, if they defeat Montana, a four-win conference minimum must be set to secure an NCAA bid – anything less will be subjecting the team to the whim of the NCAA selection committee and those committees have rarely been kind to Cougars in the past.

Speaking of not being kind, those 41 Stanford rejects may have united and formed some kind of subversive, underground unit and may, at this moment, be plotting some sort of world domination scheme worthy of a decent James Bond movie [ones involving Sean Connery, not Timothy Dalton]. But the school's other rejects can band together and bide their time virtually trashing the school at a leisurely George Lazenby pace at Vandalize!. Select your weapon depending on your feelings toward Stanford, but be warned that, if you select the axe, your virtual shoulder may become separated from swinging it repeatedly while doing only paper cuts of damage to the adobe.

Finally, the male Lounge Scientists saw that their gifts of science were not being adequately acknowledged by the members of the female community and were stumped by the reason until they stumbled across the answer – deep, meaningful gifts don't get the hot, science babes – worthless gifts do. Well, that's what it says right here in the study conducted by London mathematicians based on mathematical modeling. In the study, males that gave valuable gifts too often would eventually find themselves being manipulated [females would take the "gift" and run] while those that gave essentially worthless gifts with no long-term value [defined as an expensive dinner or theatre tickets] more frequently would discover the incentive of the female – only seriously interested females would accept the "worthless" gifts and be less likely to manipulate. But one female scientist chose to object.

"I do not necessarily agree that theatre tickets are 'worthless,'" says Lounge Scientist #3 Alison Lenton, reputed to be a theatre-going social psychologist at the University of Edinburgh, who also allegedly prefers the Sean Connery Bonds to any of the others, even Pierce Brosnan.

Two…One…Bang!

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