S-Dot = Citizen of the United Kingdom?

No.

But as far as my musical taste goes, I'm closer than I thought. Last night I picked up Q Magazine's Top 100 Album's of All Time issue, and I've got seven of the top ten. Now it does help that three of them (including the top two) were Radiohead albums, and two were from Oasis, but it's amusing to see that the U.S. seems to "sweat" The Beatles more than their own homeland. Rolling Stone's Top 500 albums list included four Beatles albums, two albums that I own (Pet Sounds and London Calling), and none that I listen to. I've been trying to come up with a reason for this and I think it comes down to the fact that the British list was less resistant to change. I'm sure that the British would have made a very similar list to that from the American Rolling Stone in 1980, the year the last album on the list (London Calling) was released. But I'd like to thank that great music has been released since I've been born, and thankfully, the British seem to agree. While I wouldn't list OK Computer as the greatest album of all time as Q did, I have to believe that we've evolved enough musically to create music even greater than the best works of the 1960's. I'm not arguing that The Beatles weren't more influential in their time than Radiohead is now, but that seems to be another argument altogether. People love Chuck Berry's music because it's great, but don't give special preference to it because it influenced The Beatles. Why not? Because that's what a timeline is for. I'm not going to say The Beatles were better than Radiohead because they came first. Not that The Beatles weren't great; I still enjoy listening to "Let It Be" and "Eleanor Rigby." But I'm going to choose "Idioteque" and "True Love Waits" over them ten times out of ten.

But just because I think they have more intelligent tastes (and because the previous discussion centered around two British bands) does not mean I think they're superior to us musically. More on that later... (USA...USA)

Wake me in September.

This past Saturday, the final three undefeated college basketball teams all lost their first games of the season. While any fan of the other three hundred plus D-1 programs should be thrilled, you have to remember that this is college basketball. The sport where you don't even have to be considered at top-25 team to be crowned National Champion at the end of the season (see:Villanova '85). Much has been said about the way college football handles crowning its National Champion, and the overriding theme this season seemed to be: every other sport has a tournament, so why can't college football? Here's a secret from us: we think we're better than you. You trade a thrilling regular season for three weeks (which I'll be the first to admit make even a football fan like myself make sure I save some vacation days at work for the first round). But you can have your tournament as long as I get to remember Herschel Walker run over Tennessee's Bill Bates in the first game of the 1980 season to score us a come from behind victory. No way a play that occurred before I was even born is etched into my psyche like this if we could have simply played "good-enough" throughout the rest of the regular season and put together a string of victories in the post-season tournament. Villanova won it all in '85 as an eight seed, which would put them in the 29-32 range in ranking before the tournament. Just for fun, let's look at the teams this year which finished 29-32 in the final regular season college football rankings this year: Fresno State, Nevada, California, and Northwestern. Fresno lost an early game to Oregon, received a ton of hype for playing USC close, then lost every game after the USC loss. Nevada was blown out by (read: scored at most half the points of) Washington St., Colorado St., and Boise St. Cal lost to every ranked team they played as well as the second-best team from Oregon, and seemed to be the only team that couldn't score against USC. Finally, Northwestern, who lost four games including three beatings, plus a one point win against Northern Illinois. I don't want to have to go through a season where these teams get to have these seasons and be National Champions. Villanova winning the National Championship was exciting, but not at all accurate. And what fun are bragging rights and memories when you know it's all a lie? Any argument between 'Nova and Georgetown fans would have to go something like this:

(Georgetown fan): "We still beat you two out of three times." (which they did)
(Villanova fan): "But we beat you when it mattered." (which they did)

What strikes me and most college football fans as odd is that these fans readily acknowledge that they played each other three times and only one really mattered. People complain about all of the college bowl games between teams with no hope of winning the championship, but no one complains about the fact that a team can lose twice to an obviously superior team, beat them once, and call itself the best at the end of the season. The teams that play in the Motor City Bowl have played well enough to deserve an end of season exhibition, but not nearly well enough to claim superiority over Texas or USC.

I guess what I'm getting at is this: congratulations Duke, Florida, and Pittsburgh; you're playing in a sport where Saturday barely mattered.


P.S. This is my first one of these, so I guess this is my introduction. Welcome. I'll let you know if I start updating this regularly.

P.P.S. If I do start updating this regularly, you can almost guarantee an annual list of the number 29-32 teams, at least until a 16-seed beats a 1-seed.