This article about TCU mentions that there are 27 teams with 3-0 records in Division I-A college football. That got me thinking, it would be fun to make a list of all those teams — plus the 2-0 teams, of which there are two: USC and UCLA — and who they’re playing this weekend, then see how much the list gets whittled down by Sunday morning. (We know at least three unbeatens will suffer their first loss on Saturday, thanks to the Michigan-Wisconsin, Louisville-Kansas State and Houston-Oklahoma State games.)

Of course, for fans of Notre Dame, Texas, LSU and other highly regarded one-loss teams, this is more than an academic exercise; these teams (well, the ones from major conferences, anyway) are the ones we need to be rooting against! (Er, except USC, in the case of this particular Notre Dame fan. But that’s another story.) Obviously, this will get more interesting/important as the season goes on, but why not start now?

Anyway, the list of 29 undefeateds follows after the jump, listed in order of ranking in the AP poll, including the “others receiving votes,” to which I have assigned numerical rankings based on the number of votes. Teams which received no votes (i.e., those below #37) are ranked based on the Athlon 119.

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“Southern men ridicule Southern male cheerleaders to no end. Pick any section of any SEC football stadium on a Saturday and I guarantee you a male cheerleader is getting made fun of by someone. Yet we do this while standing in the crowd shaking pompons in time to band music. This is despite the fact that I’ve never seen a Southern male cheerleader ever hold a pompon. In fact, Southern male cheerleaders are generally looking up hot women’s skirts while men with pompons are making fun of them from the crowd. This is the rough equivalent of ridiculing Brad Pitt while he’s making out with Angelina Jolie and you are in the process of rubbing lotion into Star Jones’ stretch marks. It makes no sense.” –Clay Travis

Heh. (Hat tip: EDSBS.)

The National Hurricane Center has issued its final advisory on Tropical Storm Gordon, which has become extratropical as it gets sucked up into a cold front approaching the British Isles and Europe.

Says the 5pm discussion:

AFTER NEARLY 10 DAYS TRAVELING ACROSS THE ATLANTIC…TENACIOUS GORDON IS FINALLY BECOMING EXTRATROPICAL AS A STRONG COLD FRONT INTERACTS WITH THE CYCLONE’S CIRCULATION. THE EXTRATROPICAL STORM WILL CONTINUE RACING ON A GENERAL EAST TO EAST-NORTHEAST TRACK UNTIL IT BECOME ABSORBED BY THE COLD FRONT. THIS WILL BE THE LAST ADVISORY ISSUED BY THE NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER ON GORDON. ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON THIS SYSTEM CAN BE FOUND IN HIGH SEAS FORECASTS ISSUED BY METEOFRANCE UNDER WMO HEADER FQNT50 LFPW.

Meanwhile, huge Hurricane Helene continues to dominate the central Atlantic.

Maximum sustained winds are 105 mph, and — perhaps more impressively — tropical-storm force winds extend out 175 miles from the center. That’s a diameter of 350 miles. Margie Kieper discussed this yesterday, noting “just how impressive Helene’s circulation is. Helene is still huge. I don’t know why this hasn’t received more mention. Remember how large Katrina was last year in the [Gulf of Mexico]…how it seemed that Katrina almost filled the eastern 2/3 of the [Gulf]? Well, Helene is larger.” And the best part is, Helene isn’t going to hit anybody, so we weather nerds can admire it without guilt!

“When you print from a piano that doesn’t have a printer attached, the piano crashes.”

Looking ahead to this Saturday’s game in East Lansing, Michigan, blogger “domer.mq” at Her Loyal Sons intones: “Remember, Remember the 17th of September.” That, of course, would be the date when the Michigan State Spartans defeated Notre Dame in the home opener of the Charlie Weis era — and put a controversial exclamation point on the victory by planting their flag on Notre Dame’s field.

In a later post, under a modified version of the V for Vendetta logo, domer.mq writes:

Time to stop licking wounds. Time to stop wondering why or what if. Time to stop seeking answers to difficult questions. Because it’s time to start remembering September 17th, 2005 and a little incident where some wannabe program that plays second fiddle to the suckiest sucks that ever sucked decided it’d be real cool to plant their flag on the turf of Notre Dame Stadium.

It’s time to take out some frustrations on a victim. … It’s time for anger. Time for rage. Time for unmitigated violence with lazer-like focus upon an opponent. Time to beat the life out of someone who asked for it. Michigan State, on September 17th, 2005 asked for that beating. It’s time to respond inappropriately. Time to make their ears bleed and their hearts stop. Time to make their mothers beg for an end to the pain and suffering of their sons. Time to make their sisters cry. Time to make sports reporters write self-serving pieces in the Sunday edition about whether or not this game is just too violent, just too risky. Time to be the bad guy.

This is the game where the Notre Dame football team must damage Michigan State, leave the stadium a smoldering wreck, and leave the opponent choking on their own blood while they lay upon the ground, begging for help where none can be found. To win this game is not enough. Anything less than a beating on a scale that makes the rest of the world quake is an utter failure.

It’s time for vengeance.

Charlie Weis, however, is having none of it:

Weis also said he would not use last year’s flag-planting incident as a motivational tool this week. After Michigan State’s 44-41 overtime victory at Notre Dame Stadium a year ago, Spartan players stuck their school flag in the turf at Notre Dame’s 50-yard line.

“I think we have to put the flag incident … behind us,” Weis said. “When you use something like the flag incident, try to use that as your motivation for the game, that lasts for about five minutes once the game starts. Once you start hitting each other in the mouth a few times in the game, that stuff is over with.”

Weis said he will once again focus solely on the opponent Notre Dame is about to face and little of the media attention surrounding the game - much like his game plan before the Michigan contest.

Um, because the Michigan game plan worked so well? Look, I’m no expert on college football coaching, but I tend to agree with what domer.mq wrote about the Michigan meltdown:

[I]t seems that maybe Charlie, while still clearly a great coach, has a few things to learn about the psyche of college kids. This wasn’t just any other game. This was the game that Michigan kids stared at while completing the last reps of squats in the offseason.

Why not use the flag-planting incident as motivation? Yeah, it was kinda overblown and silly, but it’s still a great motivational gimmick. Even if we accept Weis’s argument that such gimmickery “lasts for about five minutes,” well hey, the first five minutes of the game are important! They can set the tone for the whole rest of the game!

Look, I’m not saying that Weis and his players should match domer.mq’s bloodlust. ;) But why not get a little angry? I think the Irish players should be watching this video at least once a day for the rest of the week…

…just to remind themselves why this game matters. It’s not just about staying alive for the BCS. It’s not just about redeeming ourselves after a humiliating loss. It’s not just about my law school beating Mike’s new graduate school. :) It’s about those things, yes (well, maybe not so much that last one), but it’s also about taking back what’s ours, righting a wrong… and getting “nasty,” as someone once said. It’s about anger. It’s about vengeance. It’s about beating the hell out of Sparty.

Seriously… Sparty sucks.

GOOOOO IRISH, BEEEEEAT SPARTANS!!!

I can’t wait.

About a half-dozen people have sent me this article, so I guess I’d better blog it:

Southern California formally complained that ABC-TV’s Brent Musburger revealed privileged information in play-by-play commentary during Saturday’s game against Nebraska.

The university sent a letter to ESPN, which oversees sports programming on ABC, saying Musburger, with less than 10 minutes to play and the Trojans leading 21-10, began describing how USC quarterback John David Booty lets receivers know he has spotted a certain kind of coverage.

“John David told us that his signal when he finds one-on-one and they’re coming, it’s that ‘hang loose,’ that familiar sign you’ve seen surfers use,” said Musburger, referring to the sign where the thumb and little finger are raised.

USC says it was “unconscionable” for Musberger to reveal Booty’s hand signal. ABC calls it “an unfortunate misunderstanding.”

The House That Rock Built, a Notre Dame blog, has a guide to other USC hand signals. Heh.

I, for one, welcome our new trash bag overlords.

Gordon Riese, the replay official who has been suspended by the Pac-10 for his role in the controversial Oregon-Oklahoma game last Saturday — and who has been receiving death threats and is thinking about retiring — was on the field (along with the Stanford Band) during “The Play” that decided the legendary 1982 Cal-Stanford game. (Hat tip: The Wizard of Odds.) That play, of course, was controversial too:

Riese was out of position for the famous fifth lateral — Mariet Ford’s toss to Kevin Moen that should have been called a forward lateral.

“I turn and run into the Stanford band,” Riese told the Mercury News four years ago. “I was encased in red jackets. I got clobbered. I couldn’t get to the spot where Kevin Moen takes the lateral.”

Yes, well, when you run into the Stanford Band, you at least have a valid excuse for missing a call. I don’t think the Stanford Band was in the replay booth in Autzen Stadium on Saturday. (Although, considering they weren’t at Stanford Stadium, I suppose it’s possible. They have to make trouble somewhere, right?)

Anyway, this bit of trivia about Riese’s history has no particular significance to the Ducks or Sooners, but it does give me an excuse to post a YouTube video of The Play:

In a related story, Oklahoma is threatening to cancel its 2008 game with Washington if the Pac-10 doesn’t alter its policy of using its own officials for interconference home games.

Beer v. United States, 425 U.S. 130 (1976)

I love my country, but I am totally rooting for beer in this one. :)

Now, here’s something you don’t see every day:

A good omen for the Michigan State game? We snap, you decide.

More photos to come shortly.

UPDATE: Here’s a full gallery of rainbow photos. If you click on a thumbnail, it takes you to a page containing a) an 800×600 version of that photo, and b) a link to the full size (2592×1944) version. So if you Domers would like a wallpaper image of a rainbow over the Dome, you’re welcome to use one of these. I know I plan to. :)

UPDATE 2: Catholic Packer Fan saw the rainbow too (albeit not over the Dome), and it inspired him to quote scripture.

ESPN’s Page 2 says Charlie Weis’s sanctity died on Saturday.

Meanwhile, SportsPickle says Weis will go on a 20-minute hunger strike if the Irish lose again.

Hurricane Gordon appears to have spared the Azores any serious damage.

Authorities in Portugal’s Azores Islands said they received no reports of major damage or injury as weakened Hurricane Gordon passed the mid-Atlantic group of islands Tuesday night.

Gordon lost strength and veered slightly south as it approached the sparsely populated islands, bringing only light rain and a moderate wind, Ricardo Barros, vice president of the Azores Civil Protection Service, said.

“There’s been nothing unusual so far,” Barros said.

The “moderate wind” did reach 56 mph sustained with a gust to 82 mph at Santa Maria Airport, according to the 5am NHC discussion.

Well, actually, I didn’t see it… but the Dodgers-Padres game Saturday night had a wildly ridiculous ending:

[The Dodgers hit] four homers in a span of seven pitches in the ninth inning to turn a 9-5 deficit into a 9-9 tie. Three of those homers came in a span of three pitches — two of them in two pitches thrown by San Diego closer Trevor Hoffman.

As it turns out, the long balls by [Jeff] Kent, [J.D.] Drew, Russell Martin and Marlon Anderson were just the appetizer for the main course. In the bottom of the 10th inning, [Nomar] Garciaparra hit a two-run homer off Rudy Seanez, and the Dodgers beat the Padres 11-10 to move back into first place in the NL West.

It’s just the fourth time in Major League Baseball history (and the first time in 42 years) that a team has hit back-to-back-to-back-to-back home runs — and the Dodgers did it in the botton of the ninth, with the division title on the line!

Link comes with video highlight goodness. (Hat tip: Andrew.)