Colts win! Peyton Manning gets his Super Bowl! Good ol' Rocky Top… :)

Methinks Rex Grossman is going to need to go somewhere very far away from Chicago. Maybe he can move in with Steve Bartman. :) Colts lead, 29-17.

It’s Colts 16, Bears 14, in a game with about 847 turnovers — and, more shockingly, a missed field goal by Adam Vinatieri as time expired.

No overwhelmingly awesome Super Bowl ads yet, which means there probably won’t be any this year, since the good ones are usually in the first half. I predict the Budweiser dalmatian spot wins USA Today’s Ad Meter. The people who do the Ad Meter tend to like sappy ads involving animals.

There are just over three hours until Super Bowl XLI kicks off. I’ll be spending at least part of the game at a Super Bowl Party with a no-blogging policy (heh), so updates will probably be sparse.

As I mentioned earlier, I’m rooting for the Colts. But I don’t feel too passionately about it. There are, of course, many in this region who feel passionately about one team or the other — but, according to the South Bend Tribune, it’s about a 50-50 split between the two teams. Nug is experiencing a personal 50-50 spot: she’s rooting for the “Col-Bears.”

P.S. At iFilm, you can already preview some of tonight’s Super Bowl ads. Later, AOL Sports will have video of all the “best commercials” and will give you chance to vote among them. YouTube will do the same.

Here’s USA Today’s coverage of the ads. Tomorrow, of course, the annual “Ad Meter” results will come out. Will someone finally break Anheuser-Busch’s eight-year winning streak?

More immediately, SuperAdFreak is planning an elaborate liveblog of the Super Bowl ads. Badger Blogger, SpringsTV Talk, Gclectic and shedwa are also promising to liveblog the ads. Derek Walden, Big & Sharp and all things alceste liveblogged the ads last year; I have no idea if they will again.

As for the game, Deadspin and AOL Fanhouse will both presumably be liveblogging. And it appears that Red Renee will be liveblogging everything — game, ads, stray nipples, whatever.

UPDATE: BfloBlog asks, “Why Do Men Torture Themselves On Super Bowl Sunday?”:

Years ago I used to somehow believe it was normal to travel to other couples’ homes and watch a football game with a room full of strangers. I have yet to understand why this seemed acceptable to me. Inevitably, I would end up seated far from the television, my view obstructed by a female who didn’t care about anything but the commercials, for the biggest football game of the year. The sport that I used to spend every Sunday focused on; watching three or four games a week, going to Bills games, and generally spending far too much of my time obsessing over was suddenly, for the biggest game of the year, treated like a cocktail party but with Bud Lite and casseroles.

On top of that you have men you don’t really know, or who are social acquantances, reveal exactly how f***ing stupid they are when it comes to football or to sports in general. If you want to hear the following line: “You know, JP Losman could be just as good a quarterback as Manning with another year�, then go to a traditional Super Bowl party.

Heh. Read the whole thing.

Hmm…

Scientists have alerted British Columbia’s emergency-planning department to the possibility of a catastrophic earthquake striking the province’s southwest coast next week.

While the probability of a quake is still low, rapid strides in earthquake detection have given federal scientists with the Pacific Geoscience Centre on Vancouver Island greater confidence in their ability to predict when and where one will occur. Garry Rogers, a seismologist at the centre, compared the current earthquake odds to the dangers of driving a car.

“Everyone drives their car every day, and the probability of getting in a car accident is small,� Dr. Rogers said. But during rush hour, the probability of getting into an accident is much higher. “Well, Vancouver Island is now driving in rush hour.�

What prompted the alert was a series of imperceptible tremors emanating from deep beneath the ocean, which scientists now recognize as ominous warnings that the earth is on the move again off Vancouver Island. …

[Scientists believe] the ongoing strain between the solid earth on the West Coast and the offshore Juan de Fuca Plate…will one day rupture into a major earthquake the size of the one off the coast of Indonesia on Dec. 26, 2004, which killed thousands.

Dr. Rogers said the chances of a major earthquake striking southwestern B.C. spike during the tremor events. The current tremor session is expected to last for another week. …

One day, one of these tremor events will cause the fault line to rupture, he said, resulting in an earthquake magnitude measuring as high as 9.

It would not be the first great megathrust quake to devastate the West Coast of North America. The geological record on the West Coast has shown that giant earthquakes occur once every 500 years.

The last one struck on Jan. 26, 1700, causing widespread destruction, flooding and a giant tsunami. Indian villages along the coast were wiped out and the tsunami reverberated as far as Japan.

UPDATE: It’s enough to make one wonder whether Casey’s recent dream was prophetic:

One [dream] of mine featured me leading an escape from Seattle. The entire city was migrating inland on foot to flee a coming tsunami when - BOOM - Mt. Rainier blows up without any warning. Panicky folks look on with alarm as an incredibly distant pyroclastic flow suddenly demonstrates that it is powerful enough to blast right down through the city. After getting carjacked by a maniac with a gun, who promptly takes a stupid wrong turn and drives right into the flow, I hop in to an SUV with a bunch of other people. I tell them to head south, as this will take us away from the flow and the wind driven ashfall (such knowledge is the upside of watching apocalyptic documentaries). Unfortunately, the flow is so massive that it catches up with us just as we are driving through a mountain pass. It is clear that the road will be covered by the flow, so I grab the wheel and plunge the SUV off the edge of a high cliff. We fly thousands of feet through the air and into the treetops of a giant forest, which slow us enough to survive the ground impact. We’re safe, though all of Seattle is destroyed.

Yes, I’ve seen too many action movies. And the tsunami + volcano setting was a bit overblown. But come on — that’s an awesome dream.

My recent dreams have been comparatively quite mundane. For instance, one night last week, I dreamed that I left a hunk of cheese out all night, and it went bad. The next day, when I went to the fridge to get some cheese, I briefly wondered: “Wait… I didn’t put this cheese back in the fridge after leaving it out all night, did I? I have a vague recollection of doing that. No, no, that was a dream. Wow, my dreams are boring.”

While I didn’t care much for the second movie that Becky and I watched today, I quite enjoyed the first: Iraq in Fragments, which we saw in the Browning Cinema at Notre Dame’s DeBartolo Center. It was visually stunning and very compelling. I particularly liked the third “fragment,” about the Kurds, who are sort of the forgotten group in most discussions of the situation over there. Wonderful, wonderful cinematography, and some great interviews. That’s true across the board, really.

I agree with the New York Times review, which says this “is not the kind of documentary that presents an analysis or argues, even implicitly, for a particular point of view. … [T]he film is not easily summarized as a text of hope or a brief for despair.” I don’t think it would have been as interesting if it had been either of those things. It’s much better as it is: “a collage of images, sounds and characters, an intimate, partial portrait of an unraveling nation — a portrait that gains power partly by virtue of its incompleteness.”

Anyway, it’s very much worth watching if you have a chance. Alas, it’s only playing in a very few places; see list here. (Apparently, the only three cities where it’s showing daily are Irvine, CA, Tucson, AZ and Rochester, NY.) More reviews can be found here.

You think Chicago is a little bit excited about the Super Bowl? Here is Page 1 -- not the sports page, the front page -- of tomorrow’s paper. Heh. … That said: Go Colts! :)

I realize I’m inviting ridicule by saying this, as it’s never popular to insult a classic movie, especially given that my taste in movies is questionable to begin with, but:

Can someone please explain to me what’s the big deal about Taxi Driver?

Becky and I just watched it (she got it via her Netflix queue), and found it kind of boring and pointless, despite the obviously awesome cast and notwithstanding all the accolades (it’s #37 on IMDB’s Top 250 films of all-time).

P.S. I just read Ebert’s review, and I still don’t get it. All those deep themes and messages are great, but I just didn’t find it very entertaining. May the movie gods have mercy on my soul, I guess.

It still ain’t human-to-human yet, but the trend is worrisome as Britain deals with its first outbreak of H5N1.

Just when you thought the Fighting Irish had finally solved their road woes with that 103-91 spanking of Syracuse, they go and lose to one of the worst teams in the Big East. South Florida 69, Notre Dame 63, final. Yikes. That’s the second time this season ND has lost a road game to one of the teams in the bottom quarter of the Big East (teams that, if the season ended today, wouldn’t even quality for the conference tournament), the other being St. John’s. A commenter on Rakes of Mallow says, “This could be Brey’s wors[t] loss of his career.”

Not good. Notre Dame is now 2-5 away from the Joyce Center and 1-4 in true road games. You think Jay Bilas is rethinking his prediction that the Irish are a “dark-horse candidate” to reach the Final Four? I would agree, if the first four rounds of the tournament were being played at the JACC!

The news was better today for Gonzaga, which beat Pepperdine 82-57 despite “committing 28 very ridiculous turnovers,” and for USC, which, as I mentioned earlier, beat #9 Oregon for the second time this season, 71-68.

Ducks, you may consider yourselves plucked.

In other college-basketball news, N.C. State stunned #3 North Carolina, 83-79; Iowa brought Indiana back down to earth after its big win over #2 Wisconsin, beating the Hoosiers 81-75; Air Force destroyed a depleted Wyoming team, 88-43, the largest margin in Mountain West conference history; Missouri Valley co-leaders Southern Illinois and Creighton kept pace with one another by winning road games over Wichita State, 54-46, and Drake, 67-62, respectively; UCLA crushed Oregon State, 82-35; Arizona destroyed Washington, 84-54, possibly putting the final nail in the Huskies’ NCAA coffin; Arizona State almost got its first Pac-10 win of the season, losing 48-47 to Wazzu; and Iona got its first win of the season, period, 69-57 over Rider, to improve to 1-22.

UPDATE: BlackAndGreen notes that Notre Dame was one of 10 ranked teams to lose on Saturday, but finds little consolation in that fact. A commenter calls this “a typical Mike Brey loss. Just when I get excited about the potential of this team, they [lose] a game they’re supposed to win.”

So… Fire Mike Brey? I’m not going there at this point. But this loss does validate what I said when an anonymous commenter called me out for criticizing Brey last year: the jury is still out, both on this season and on Brey. It’s premature to declare this season a success, let alone Mike Brey a good coach on the basis of this season.

This team has a lot of potential, but in terms of results on the court, they’ve built a gaudy record (16-5) mostly on the basis of an unbalanced schedule (16 home games, 7 road/neutral games) and a weaker-than-usual Big East slate. Their two non-conference “statement” wins were over once-ranked teams, Alabama and Maryland, that are now struggling just to qualify for the NCAA Tournament. (Both are among the top four teams left out in Joe Lunardi’s latest Bracketology projections.) The win over Syracuse, a #9 seed according to Lunardi, is clearly Notre Dame’s biggest of the season; the only other tournament teams (according to Lunardi) that the Irish have beaten are #12 seeds West Virginia and Villanova, and both of those games were at the Joyce. And those are now balanced by two very bad road losses.

As for Brey, I stand by what I wrote on that previous thread:

The reason I was anti-Brey coming into this season (and don’t act like I was the only one, or that every single person who disliked him is “ignorant of the game”) is because I saw the team consistently looking stagnant and clueless on offense and consistently falling behind early only to rally late and then run out of steam (which most people attributed exclusively to “luck,” but while luck clearly played a role, the heinous first-half performances also played a huge role). Both of those observations were completely true, and I stand by them. The primary reason they are doing better this season is because those two things have stopped happening. The team has stopped playing like they’re dead in the first half, and they’re being more aggressive and creative on offense, and actually running plays instead of standing around the perimeter for 20 seconds and then having the point guard shoot a 3 without ever trying to penetrate, which happened far too often in the last two years (sometimes after a timeout!!).

Look, it is possible that I was completely wrong about Brey. It is clearly too early to make a final judgment on this team — most of their 18 wins are at home, many of them over teams like Elon and Winston-Salem State; the true test will be in the postseason, and in future years — but if the success continues, if the quality of play continues to stay at the current level or improve, then I’ll happily concede that I was wrong and Brey is a good coach who had a rough couple of years.

But it’s not time for a concession speech just yet. Especially given that, according to Charles Rich at AOL Fanhouse, one of the Irish’s mistakes Saturday was repeating one of the very problems that was — as I mentioned — endemic the previous two years: “The big surprise was that Notre Dame settled for a lot more jump shots and not driving to the basket or just trying to go inside to Rob Kurz and Luke Harangody on offense as much.”

When the Central Connecticut State basketball team played Sacred Heart a week ago, it was a battle for first place in the Northeast Conference — an important distinction, because the regular-season champion gets the #1 seed and thus home-court advantage throughout the conference tournament. CCSU won in overtime, but it seemed likely they’d need to beat Sacred Heart a second time — at Sacred Heart — in order to secure the top spot once and for all.

Now, however, Central has some breathing room. Sacred Heart lost again on Tuesday, 91-88 to Fairly Ridiculous Fairleigh Dickinson, to fall to 7-3. Central, meanwhile, improved to 10-1 with two more wins last week. That means, even if they lose to Sacred Heart in the Feb. 12 rematch, the Blue Devils would still get the #1 seed if they win the rest of their games. Alternatively, with everybody except Sacred Heart having four losses or more, the Blue Devils can afford suffer two losses to teams other than Sacred Heart, assuming they beat the Pioneers again in the rematch. Likewise, if Sacred Heart slips up against anyone else, the Blue Devils can lose any two games and still be guaranteed the top spot.

With USC, Notre Dame and Gonzaga all looking pretty good for at-large NCAA berths (knock on wood), this March Madness is already promising to be one of the most eagerly anticipated ever for me personally. Throw in the possibility of Central Connecticut State, which is located in the next town over from Newington, qualifying for the Big Dance — possibly the play-in game, as currently predicted by Joe Lunardi — and it just gets better and better.

Well, as we’ve already got people on the blog riled today, let’s add another dimension to it. The latest news from the culture wars isn’t a good one for either equality or freedom, really. Yesterday, the Michigan State Court of Appeals ruled 3-0 that public universities and governmental agencies may not provide domestic partnership benefits to their employees, in response to the 2004 MI state constitutional amendment that defines marriage as a union between one man and one woman and outlaws recognition of any “similar union for any purpose”.

(more…)

Oregon has four losses this season. Two of them are to USC. Trojans 71, Ducks 68, final. Woohoo! Fight on! Does this make 'SC a lock?

USC is getting rightly dinged for its stingy attitude toward free speech on campus. (Hat tip: L.A. Voice.)

Apparently students use laptops in class to play games and surf the web. I’m shocked, SHOCKED! (Hat tip: Sean.)