Thanksgiving Football Weekend!

Thanksgiving is a holiday where you give thanks for all the good things in your life. Sometimes the bad things work out for the best too!

Thanksgiving is also about football!

This was "Haas Football Weekend 2009"!

On Friday, the Las Vegas Locos did battle with the Florida Tuskers for the first UFL Championship out in Sin City. Pretty good game and it went into overtime with the Locos pulling out a 20-17 win!

Later that night, I shifted gears to college football. Pitt charged down I-79 just across the West Virginia border to Morgantown for the 102nd Backyard Brawl. The strange thing about West Virginia is that they hate Pitt but love the Steelers...It was another tough, grind it out game and it came down to a field goal at the end...Unfortunately, it was a Mountaineer field goal and Pitt came up short 19-16.

Saturday saw the East Carolina Pirates host, than ambush, the Southern Mississippi Golden Knights. The Pirates jumped out to a 17-7 halftime lead and then saw their advantage evaporate in the second half. SM stormed back and scored to tie it up at 20 in the fourth period. The Knights were going to take the lead with extra point but ECU blocked it and took it to the other endzone. In the NFL that is a touchdown but in college, you only get two points. Leading 22-20, the Pirates kept it on the ground and managed to add a field goal for a 25-20 win. With th ewin, East Carolina hosts the Conference USA Championship next week against the University of Houston.

Sunday, I shifted back to the pros. In fact I went north of the border. The Canadian Football League's championship took place in clear, cold but sunny Calgary, Alberta. My Saskatchewan Roughriders played Montreal's Alouettes. The Riders were nine point underdogs but jumped out to a 10-0 lead at the end of one. Montreal fought back from a 27-11 fourth quarter deficit to close to within two. On the last play of the game, Montreal missed a 43 yard field goal and the Riders had won the Grey Cup 27-25!

No, they hadn't

The refs flagged Saskatchewan for having 13 (!) men on the field. In the CFL, you play with 12 men and somehow there was one too many green jerseys out there. Montreal got another chance from ten yards closer and all of Saskatchewan was screaming.

Learn to count!!!

The came the piece de reisatnacne, the crescendo if you will:

Pittsburgh Steelers vs. Baltimore Ravens

The Steelers had third string QB Dennis Dixon under center and a lot of people had the temerity to write my Steelers off.

How dare they?!

Typical Steeler-Raven slugfest back and forth. Dixon played great and the Steelers seized the lead 17-14 late in the fourth. Then the Steeler defense could not hold Balto when they had too but at least the damage was limited to a field goal.

Into overtime. Dennis finally made a "new guy playing in his first NFL start" mistake and the Ravens had a 20-17 overtime win.

The Football Weekend ended just like it started--with a 20-17 overtime game.

And I enjoyed every second of it.

And I managed to finish a 22 page paper on the Historiography of Russian Foreign Policy in the Twentieth Century....

I will do you a favor and NOT post that...LOL

But next week I will put up some of Aries Marching!

Michelle is working on the maps right now.

And she says you cannot rush genius....