Hope springs eternal. Weekend of football part 1

I have some trapped rage about certain games this weekend (Danny Amendola's fourth down catch was not a first down and etc.), but that's part 2 of this rant. For now, I choose to focus on the happier side of football.

Tulsa 38 Tulane 14

With apologies to R.D. over at cheap seats who has adopted the Green Wave, for good reason, Tulane stood between Tulsa and essentially clinching a bowl bid. So, although I'm sympathetic to their plight, my allegiances trump sympathy.
The game itself got off to a quick start. Tulane tried an onside kick to start the game which backfired drastically. The first offensive play for TU was a 48-yard TD strike from Paul Smith to Ashlan Davis. Although Tulane was able to tie the game on their opening drive with a Matt Forte 7-yard run, Tulsa scored 3 more touchdowns before halftime ( Davis 3-yard reception, Tarrion Adams 3-yard run and Uril Parrish with a 14-yard run). Scoring in the second half was sparse. Tarrion Adams scored on a 36-yard screen pass in the third and Brad Devault hit a short field goal to close the Tulsa scoring. Tulane's Lester Ricard led a quality drive for the Green Wave in the fourth culminating with a 35-yard strike to Cary Koch to close the scoring.
As expected, the Golden Hurricane outmatched the Green Wave. I was impressed by the resilience of Tulane's team. Although the defense struggled, their offense moved the football at times.
Tulsa will now wait patiently for the pending bowl bid which could be anywhere from Ft. Worth to Memphis (more on that later). Tulane will close out the year on the road in lovely Hattiesburg, Mississippi.

Hope does spring eternal for the Golden Hurricane as they are still alive in the race for the C-USA West title. Darell Hackney threw 4 touchdowns for UAB as they went into El Paso and upset #24 UTEP 35-23. While Tulsa's regular season is over, UTEP will face an improving SMU team coming off a sweep of the city of Houston's C-USA teams in Dallas Saturday. While it would be surprising to me if it happened, I have no choice but to pull for an SMU upset. Unlike other sports bloggers who try to maintain objective, I may no such claim.

Elsewhere...

Games of interest to friends and acquaintances

Congratulations also to the Commodores of Vanderbilt who, though they will be home for the holidays, did the football watching public a service by ensuring the Tennessee's offense will not appear in holiday programming.

Props to Central Florida for clinching C-USA East by continuing Rice's dismal season. This is impressive because last year UCF was the only "antiperfect" team in football last year. Now they are 8-3 and 7-1 in C-USA.

In games irrelevant to me
Congratulations to Joe Paterno and Penn State for winning the Big 11. I have to admit I was one of many who thought the game had passed Paterno by, but it was good to see Penn State prove us wrong.

Georgia Tech 14 Miami 10: There is misery at "The U" and thus there is rejoicing everywhere else. Former OU tailback Tashard Choice of Georgia Tech got a TD. Glad to see him having success.

No song quote since this is the longest blog post ever.

Thanks for reading. /rant