January 2, 2011

"'We know how much this means to everybody, to everybody involved,' he said, sobbing. 'We work 365 days a year for this, and then we come out here and don't execute...'"

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel covers the aftermath of the Rose Bowl — with that quote from an interview with J.J. Watt. You can find the video of the interview in the sidebar over there. It was interesting to watch, because Watt is circumspect, thoughtful, humble... and completely not sobbing.

22 comments:

campy said...

When the Truth diverges from the Legend, print the Legend.

I'm Full of Soup said...

Did they happen to quote fan Greg Packer from Huntingdon, NY? I heard he never misses a Rose Bowl or New Years Eve at Times Square.

Anonymous said...

Wisconsin played a good game.

The call to pass on the TD conversion was a mistake.

Wisconsin had just torn up the field with its running game. No way TCU could stop them if they just handed off to Clay.

Classic mistake of overthinking. Do what you were doing that worked.

That said, TCU was/is a very good team. No disgrace in losing to them. The old days of the Big Ten overwhelming everybody with sheer brawn are over. Have been for a while.

And there are so many places for kids to play. The kids who used to be happy sitting on the bench at OSU and MU are now going somewhere else where they can get playing time.

john said...

They need to make him sob; it's all for that critical female football fan demographic.

Phil 314 said...

I was rooting for Wisconsin's demise and an Oklahoma blowout; I got my wish. Reasons? This will again demonstrate to the BCS that:
-running up the score doesn't mean you're that much better of a team; its just running up the score
-the absurdity of automatic BCS berth should be discarded. The Big East is a basketball conference
-will all of the teams shuffling can you really claim conference X is that much better than conference Y. And if you answer "yes" can you say that in 5 - 10 years.
-WE NEED A PLAYOFF SYSTEM

hawkeyedjb said...

"WE NEED A PLAYOFF SYSTEM"

I've heard many people say this. Why do we "need" it? Is it because college sports need to even more professionalized? Could someone explain the specific ways in which a football playoff would further the academic mission of the universities involved?

Automatic_Wing said...

Division III football, which plays with real students and not mercenary frauds , somehow manages to hold a playoff and complete its academic mission at the same time. Surely the multi-billion dollar industry known as the Football Bowl Subdivision can do the same.

Unknown said...

I knew a lawyer for the NFL and he said, make all the college players pro. Pay them and make them pass their courses. Right now the amateur status is a fiction. This would help the educational mission of the college by bringing in dough. Unless you want no sports at all and the feds to support higher ed completely (please, don't tell Obama!)

Robert said...

Blew right past it. People from Wisconsin are always sobbing about something. The word is almost a redundant term on this blog.

MayBee said...

I'm not in love with the current BCS rankings system, but I love the bowls. I love it that once teams are chosen for their games, there are dozens of match ups that provide teams the opportunity to finish the season on an exciting win.
Playoffs create a system where all but 1 end their otherwise exciting seasons with a loss. It's better for the fans (and students at the school).
I love it that Army had one chance to win a bowl and did. I love it that *my* team was in a bowl game, which then became the most important game *to me*. Sure, we were horrible. But I'd rather watch my team than the #3 vs #4 team in some artificial playoff. Leave that to the pros.

Trooper York said...

Lets be honest about it.

College football just sucks. It's really for you goobers who don't have a pro team in your state.

Alabama.
Oklahoma.
Nebraska.
Los Angles.

Just sayn'

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

A lying Sentinel?

MadisonMan said...

Maybe sobbing means something different unique to Milwaukee.

Known Unknown said...

Not to hijack, the thread, but I'm curious as to what the commentariat thinks of this.

It appeared in the Columbus Dispatch, but I took note the byline is from the Milwaukee JS.

Anonymous said...

TCU coasted the whole second half, waiting for Wisconsin to catch up. In fact, the 2nd half looked like Vegas odds makers were managing the game.

Richard Dolan said...

I'd guess that, in an attempt to make the prose a bit more lively, an editor changed the reporter's original text by adding "sobbing". It seemed to fit, even if (once the video was posted) it clearly didn't.

Biff said...

Re. the false sobbing - it reminds me of the immediate aftermath when Capt. Sully landed his plane in the Hudson River. I happened to be driving through the area at the time, and the radio reporter on WCBS-AM news was frantically describing the "panic" among the passengers and on the scene. However, all the passengers that the frantic reporter interviewed were very calm, and, IIRC, some passengers remarked that no one panicked and marveled at the professionalism of the crew and local boat captains. Nonetheless, the excitable reporter kept talking about the frantic passengers.

It seemed obvious that the only people who were panicking were the "journalists."

Either that, or it's another case of the truth not mattering; only the narrative.

AST said...

TCU was higher rated, but they were evenly matched.

I hate what the BCS has done to the excluded conferences. BYU and Utah have played each other in the last game of the year as long as I can remember. It's become one of the best rivalries in the country, but now they probably won't even play each other at all in most years.

The WAC used to include Arizona and Arizona State, then they jumped ship to to PAC 10. Then the WAC added a bunch of teams and had two divisions, but most of the original WAC teams left to form the Mountain West Conference. But the BCS was open by invitation only. Utah and Boise State and now TCU have shown how phony the BCS presumptions are.

Christy said...

Was sobbing the hidden meme in this year's bowl games? I heard two coaches talking about their losing team sobbing and now this one. Don't like it, no I don't, not one bit. Sobbing should be gently ignored by all but one's intimates. I expected better of the coaches. Did Tebow break some sort of floodgate last year?

X said...

Maybe not in that interview, but in the post-game press conference clip shown on ESPN, he was sobbing.

Don't sob over a Big Ten team losing The Rose Bowl son, it happens almost every year.

X said...

No one is going to apologize to Jeff Potrykus of the MJS? He got it right and everyone's snark was wrong.

Blue@9 said...

Lets be honest about it.

College football just sucks.


True. Many people say they like college ball because the game just seems faster and more fluid, but as someone once explained to me, that's only because in every college game there are a handful of superstars who will go pro and the rest are just average college athletes. In essence, college football is a game of supermen vs. wannabes, where the supermen get tremendous 6 TD games and the wannabes get walked over in service of the draft hopefuls.