Ramblings

So Bo has apparently seen the light and is considering starting Helu on Saturday against the Tigers, which is both exciting (because we may actually gain more than 3 yards when we run it) and sad, because if it does indeed happen, the Marlon Lucky era will essentially be over. Sure, he'll still get plenty of touches, he may even have another couple of 100-yard games in him, and he'll still be a threat out of the backfield. But ever since he was brought in, he was THE guy, the signature recruit of Callahan's tenure, and one that Cally always looked to establish despite his penchant for running into the back of his linemen. Let me make it clear: I'm not ripping on Marlon. He's a decent back, and he's spectacular coming out of the backfield in the passing game.

But his inability to live up to the hype may be what he is remembered for than anything else. And it's not fair, because any guy who rushes for over 1000 yards and has over 75 catches as a running back doesn't have to prove himself to anyone. Of course, this whole paragraph may be pointless, because he could still be the starter come Saturday. But the odds are that Helu will start to get more and more touches, with Marlon relegated to the 8 carries/3 catches a game role that we expected Helu to be in this season.

Some other thoughts:

- Hope everyone enjoyed the Big 12's rise to power in the non-conference season. Now that we are getting into the real part of the schedule, it'll turn into an SEC-type bloodbath where we just beat up on each other, only to have maybe one team still in contention for a national title. Remember last year, where all Mizzou had to do was win the title game to secure a NC game appearance, only to lose to OU? It's going to happen again folks.

- I'm torn on all the "We want to shut them out" talk coming from NU this week. Don't get me wrong, I believe confidence, bordering on cockiness, is healthy for a defensive unit, maybe even necessary. You want them to have that swagger. My problem is, we haven't earned that confidence yet, and must I remind everyone of Andre Jones promising to restore the order, only to have it restored all over his face against USC a couple years back? Be confident. Have that swagger. But wait till Saturday to unleash it, because it's going to look real dumb when Maclin puts up 300 all-purpose yards on us.

- This isn't about football, but how unbelievably dumb is the commercial where a bunch of guy are sitting in a recording studio and all of a sudden they spontaneously start playing "Viva Viagra" and laughing together? Really, guy with E.D. find it funny that they can't get it up? And how embarrassing would it be if the producer was recording at the time and put it on their next album?

- The "insert-color-here-out" has officially passed the point where it's cool. It passed the novelty point long ago, but now that they are bringing it to baseball (White Sox did it against the Twins last night), can we move on past this and have fans start wearing whatever they want again? I mean, if teams really wanted to be original, they would have a "30's Day" where everyone would wear suits and fedora hats like it was back in the day. Is it just me, or was that one of the cooler times in sports? I always see that old footage and think it's pretty bad ass that every guy in the stadium was dressed like Frank Sinatra.