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11/12/2009 1:05 AM 

• Maybe the officials in the SEC have been instructed to make sure Alabama and Florida are undefeated when they play in Atlanta. Great Teams get calls, and no one can dispute this, however one could question some of the calls both schools have been the beneficiaries of this season.
• Why were the most interesting games all seemingly played at 3:30? LSU at Alabama, Ohio State at Penn State, Wake Forest at Georgia Tech, and Duke at North Carolina were all 3:30 kickoffs. A lot of people dislike 12:00 kickoffs, but why not space things out a little better. TV has a 6 day hold clause they invoke for some ACC games, so why not ensure the best games do not overlap each other?
• 404 yards. Navy gained 404 yards AT NOTRE DAME.  Navy threw for 56 yards on 2 of three passing and one touchdown AT NOTRE DAME. Navy won for the second straight time AT NOTRE DAME 23-21.
• Well, the hot seat in the office of Charlie Weis just went to scolding. One of the rumors on some message boards was Urban Meyer leaving Florida at the same time as Tim Tebow and heading to South Bend. At one point, it was considered his dream job, but now? Meyer is now the biggest fish in the largest pond (SEC) and what does he gain by going to Notre Dame? Maybe he will be able to get Notre Dame back to the level of beating Navy on a yearly basis. Notre Dame doesn’t have the same cache it did 15 years ago. Florida and Southern Cal are the schools of this generation. Notre Dame is the school of the 50+ crowd.
•   UNC, as in basketball, beat Duke….enough said.
• The Giants lost their 4^th in a row, this past weekend to the Chargers. One of the things that seem to be a universal concern for the franchise is Eli’s toe. Quarterback’s need healthy feet. This injury essentially forced Deion Sanders to retire from the NFL. Hopefully during the bye week, it will heal. The bigger concern may be with the Giants themselves. Since Strahan left to join Fox’s Pre-game show, word out of there is the team is lacking that vocal leader. This was an issue in Dallas the last couple of years and led to some late season collapses. Has that collapse already begun with the Giants?? Only time will tell.
• A lot of people are jumping back on my Cowboys’ bandwagon. All that win did Sunday night was get the home loss to the Giants back. Home losses, especially within the division, should be valued at 1.5 losses and a road win within the division should be valued at +1.5. That equals everything out now. Not a lot has been coming out of Dallas this week, which is a great thing. November has never been the issue with the Cowboys, December and January are. Hopefully, that will change this year.
• Wade Phillips is 28-12 in his first 40 games at Cowboys’ head coach. Not too bad. Now, he needs a deep playoff run to prove to everyone he belongs.
• New Orleans and Minnesota should be feeling very secure in winning their respective divisions. Maybe they need to do a little scoreboard watching and begin to think about home field advantage in the playoffs.
• Enough has been said about the Panthers performance in New Orleans Sunday. That game swung when the Panthers had a shot to answer a New Orleans touchdown and only came out with a field goal. 24-13 would have been a lot more impressive than the 20-13 reality. The Panthers just never seemed to get it going again after that. The potential to be really good is there and was evident for part of Sunday. Now, they must build off of that to prove to everyone they can do it for 60 minutes.
• How much will the loss of Thomas Davis hurt this team? Watch Gonzalez Sunday and the answer should be pretty obvious. Davis was playing to his potential this season and this is an awful way for his season to end. Hopefully, in 2011, he will come back as the player he was in 2009. Knee injuries seem to take a full year to fully recover from, so hopefully he does not rush back and hurt himself worse in the long run. Wanting to be out on the field and healthy is one thing, but when 80% is the best you have, coaches have to determine if you 80 % is better than someone else at 95%.
• The AFC is a beast. Denver seems to be coming back to the pack, the Colts just seem to find ways to win and New England comes to Indy Sunday night. The Steelers are showing not to count them out and the Bengals travel to Pittsburg for a first place battle Sunday.
• Live in Charlotte and don’t have DIRECTV Sunday Ticket? You will not be seeing Bengals-Steelers at 1, but Chiefs-Raiders at 4:05. I know that is the only CBS game at that time, but that is almost cruel and unusual punishment. There are NFL contracts in play here which prevent showing the earlier game, so maybe it is a week to watch the race in Phoenix.

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