I find myself watching the clip of the end of the game between Appalachian State and Michigan, which through one particular measurement is the biggest upset in College football history.  The only problem is that I cannot find a Vegas line off the bat, but these are the type of match-ups in college football where the trade-off is that the favored team gets what is usually a glorified walk-through practice session and stats inflation as they run up a 50 point victory.  The other team gets a check for their troubles, which they plow back into the football program.  The phrase “Any Given Sunday” does not proceed to College football and match-ups like this one, a Top 25 program versus a Division 2 school.  At least not until this game.
I have a theory that major upsets such as this one tend to fall into one pattern.  Somewhere nearing the end of the third quarter a certain “gut check” arrives for the underdog, as the clock proceeds to the end of the game, the pressure builds on them — where before, they had nothing to lose because they weren’t expected to be where they are in the first place, now they do — and it shows.  The favored team tends to pull ahead at this point — and that is the gut check: the underdog is either going to counter and come back, or they will just fade away.  So you can just plug in the sports commentary from a preprogrammed set, without much imagination.
Perhaps there is a political corollary.  The political story I find myself amused with is the news that Larry Craig may not be resigning after all.  The wacky Arlen Specter talked him out of it.  I like this move by Larry Craig, if he follows through on it I almost, but not quite, would offer him support in his endeavors.  I imagine the Republicans shoving him to something like George Constanza on that Seinfeld episode where George couldn’t be fired, but was shoved out of his office space, and took it up as a challenge of perseverance.  But it is a rhaspberry to the way these these thing, and maybe that is the college football comparison I can make here.

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