WEEK 12 Results

I suppose if you didn't lose your hat this weekend, you're doing okay. And while I lost WAY more games than I'd care to admit, at 34-16 I might've fared better than some.

This was only the second time in NCAA Division 1 recent history that three of the Top Five teams have lost in the same weekend. Friday night was Oklahoma State's undoing. Saturday proved to be curtains for Oklahoma and Oregon. The Os didn't have it! This does, of course, help out The Cardinal.

I don't care for the Top Three being from the same division of the same conference--the SEC West--but for now that's the way it is. But with WEEK 13 on the horizon--Rivalry Weekend--I'm sure we can expect the pot to be jumbled up once more.

Who knows what might happen and who will rise and fall? No one. And that is just one more reason the games are such a hoot to watch. Any team can beat any other team on any given day/night. You just don't get that in the NFL because those guys, though they no doubt love the game, are going to their jobs. In NCAA ball, it's heart and soul, life and death. Simply said: It's poignant.

There have been some tragic and sad sports headlines of late and we are right to take notice of them. Wrongs need to be righted and losses must be grieved. Certain episodes demand our voices and attention. We must ask everything of those who watch over the children. Always. We must punish them when they fail to keep the children safe. No exceptions.

And when the uniformed children, the ones who toil and struggle for years on end manage to do something amazing one Saturday, we are right to cheer for them. If they err, we forgive them. We celebrate the winning touchdown, the bizarre ricocheted pass, the OT heroics. And we do not, or should not blame the kicker--a kid after all--who misses the goal posts by inches or by yards. An entire team plays the game and that game is full of four quarters of miscues as well as miracles. When "sport" is successful, it teaches its players to shake off the last play and live in the present moment. It reminds them that no one moment really sets in stone the outcome. We are gracefully forgiving because they are children.

We should always treat them as if they are someone else's most precious little piece of the world. Because though they provide us with fleeting sorrows and evaporative joy, in reality that's exactly what they are. Whether or not they ever take the field, whether or not they ever experience tremendous success, they are all just that. Precious.