The Agony of a Steelers Defeat in Pictures

[Former Pittsburgh Steeler Edmund Nelson on a post game show]



[Pittsburgh's "Boy Mayor", Luke Ravensthal]

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Fun With Math, or Why Cris Collinsworth Was The Greatest College QB of All Time for a Few Minutes

If you weren't incessantly checking the box score for the Insight Bowl between the Oklahoma Sooners and Iowa Hawkeyes, you might've missed an interesting statistical anomaly. Late in the 4th quarter, with the game out of reach, backup Hawkeyes quarterback John Wienke (without looking, I'll assume he's related to Chris Wienke) came in for 1 play and threw an interception. In the oddball college system, this gave him a QB Rating of -200.

While the NFL QB rating system has a lower bound of 0 and an upper bound of 158.3, the NCAA QB rating system's range is far greater. You may assume that throwing every pass for an interception is the worst possible result for a QB, but that would limit him to a -200 rating lower bound, as was the case with Wienke. The actual lower bound for college quarterbacks is -731.6, which is the result of every pass being completed for a loss of 99 yards. Much like the possibility of scoring 1 point in a game, this result can only happen in theory.

The upper bound for a college QB rating is 1261.6, which is the result of every pass attempt being completed for a 99 yard touchdown. Is this possible? Maybe not for a starting QB who throws multiple passes in a game, but if we disregard minimum pass attempt rules, there may have been a case where a player has come in for 1 play and thrown the longest possible TD pass.

Former Tennessee Wide Receiver Lucas Taylor had a career passing rating of 866.6, including 1 game with a passer rating of 900.4, a result of throwing 2 passes in his career, both for TDs of 48 and 56 yards. Now that's efficiency! As far as documented passer ratings, this is likely the highest of any college player.

But some further research shows the possibility that a player might have had a 1261.6 passer rating at one point in his career. This was none other than current color commentator Cris Collinsworth (crikey!). In 1977, Cris was a backup freshman QB at Florida. During a blow out against Rice, he came in to throw a 99 yard TD pass for his first career completion.

Since no box score seems to exist of this game, I can't confirm if this was his first pass attempt, or if he threw any more passes during the game (though this is a safe assumption). If that was in fact his first pass attempt, then he at one point during the game had a QB rating of 1261.6!

If that happened in the NFL, his QB rating would be a small fraction of that. And you wonder why they call it the No Fun League.



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What breakfast cereal is your favorite BBVA Compass Bowl(tm) team?

On to Birmingham!

In all seriousness, expect a big return in the near future of negativedunkalectics.com, the foremost basketball blog of an era as well as some other negativedunkalectics-writers related announcements.

In the mean time, feel free to e-mail us an auto-generated Tim Tebow essay. Love him or hate him, the best semi-advanced chatbot Tebow entry may [or may not - ed.] be published here.

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Clash of the Titans

WHAT IF...each NFL franchise had to play a football game against the physical representation of their own name? A Thusspiked.com special:

AFC East

Buffalo Bills vs. "Buffalo Bill" Cody leading a team of 22 bill collectors.

Miami Dolphins vs. the mammalian sea creatures (coached by Ace Ventura, Pet Detective/zone blitz specialist.)

New England Patriots vs. the Tea Party Patriots.

New York Jets vs. a squadron of large advanced aircraft.

AFC North

Baltimore Ravens vs. the black flying creatures.

Cincinnati Bengals vs. Panthera tigris tigris.

Cleveland Browns vs. zombie Paul Brown.

Pittsburgh Steelers vs. The United Steelworkers union.

• Strength in numbers? The USW, a Pittsburgh-headquartered union of workers from steel mills as well as aluminum, brick, glass, and paper manufacturing, brings a roster of over 700,000 proud men and women from across North America. However, they are limited to only 11 players at a time on the field as any team normally is. They are able to create some match-up problems for the football-Steelers, including putting up 11 Slovak-American mill workers from Youngstown who weigh an average 350 pounds each for a special "jumbo" formation in short yardage situations, but ultimately just don't have the athletes it takes to stop a professional football team from spreading the field. In a show of solidarity, Union steward Charlie Batch meets with the Steelworkers executive board after the game to trade notes on negotiation tactics (sadly for the cause of organized labor, no NBA players attended.) Final score, Steelers - 770, Steel Workers - 6.

AFC South

Houston Texans vs. people from the state of Texas.

Indianapolis Colts vs. young male horses typically used to breed.

• In what should have presumably been a lopsided contest (the Indianapolis team was favored by 700.5 points), Indianapolis management actually was internally divided over their desire to win the Andrew Luck bowl and their desire to win a damn game -- and show some young horses that humans still are masters of the gridiron. They finally sincerely decide to try to win the game, Luck be damned, and do an excellent job containing the Horse-Team's quarterback, "Heartbreaker". After numerous penalties on the horses for illegal formations, offsides, and delay of game, the Indiana team recovers a horse-fumble and Curtis Painter has his chance to shine. Most quarterbacks would use this opportunity to make a run at a perfect QB rating, but Painter's first pass to a wide open Dallas Clark instead flies harmlessly into the stands as the horses start to try to chew on the artificial turf. The coach of the horse team then runs onto the field and refuses to leave while defecating on the 50 yard line, forcing a 1-0 forfeit and a victory for the inevitably 1-15 Colts of Indianapolis. Painter ends the day with a QB rating of 39.58 on 0 for 1 passing. Andrew Luck declares he intends to finish his senior year at Stanford to do graduate level work on theoretical computer science, and the Colts then consider putting Peyton Manning out to stud.

Jacksonville Jaguars vs. the deadly felines of Latin America.

Tennessee Titans vs. the race of descendants of Gaia and Uranus overthrown by the Olympians.

AFC West

Denver Broncos vs. unsaddled wild horses.

• Replace "Painter" with "Tebow" and you have some idea of how this one turned out.

Kansas City Chefs vs. iron chef contestants.

Oakland Raiders vs. a marauding crew of Somali pirates.

San Diego Chargers vs. a industrial battery factory.

NFC East

Dallas Cowboys vs. professional cattle ranchers.

New York Giants vs. humans of historically significant size.

Philadelphia Eagles vs. our national bird and symbol.

Washington Redskins vs...oh give me a break, I'm not even going to touch this.

NFC North

Chicago Bears vs. hairy gay men of size.

Detroit Lions vs. the fearsome large African cats.

Green Bay Packers vs. a crew of meat packing workers.

Minnesota Vikings vs. 10th century Norse explorers.

NFC South

Atlanta Falcons vs. oh my god stop with the bird-names.

Carolina Panthers vs. oh my god stop with the large cat names.

New Orleans Saints vs. 22 of the top Catholic Saints throughout Christendom.

• In this highly awaited contest, Pope Benedict uses papal magic to summon 22 of the top saints from the birth of Christ to the present. In a move that surely irked many Protestants around the globe, Benedict picked St. Thomas More to be defensive captain. St. Francis of Assisi uses plenty of forest creatures to harass the New Orleans offense for much of the afternoon but Drew Brees is able to pick on St. Paulina, the Patroness of Diabetes (due to her blood sugar problems in the fourth quarter), to make it a contest. Still, the Catholic Saints pull away when St. Maria Gemma Umberta Pia Galgani (who had earlier freaked out the television audience with her stigmata-related injuries) literally flies over the field to score an 80 yard touchdown "run" with only seconds remaining on the clock for a 35-34 victory. The Catholic Saints then kneel in the end zone for the next 40 days and 40 nights, making the field unavailable for remaining home games.

Tampa Bay Buccaneers vs. historical swashbucklers.

NFC West

Arizona Cardinals vs. oh for Pete's sake I said stop with the birds!

St. Louis Rams vs. the horned animals.

• Being that the game is held during mating season, the animal-rams commit endless helmet-to-helmet contact penalties to impress females of their species in attendance. Roger Goodell promptly hands out several hundred thousand dollars in fines. It is unclear if the animal-rams will ask the human players' association to appeal the fines or not.

San Francisco 49ers vs. gold rush pioneers of the American Northwest.

Seattle Seahawks vs....STOP WITH THE FRICKIN BIRDS!

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