Philadelphia — I know you are eager to know what Tuesday's Mummers Parade and the New Year's bowl games had in common.
Ready? Both traditional hangover cures featured hundreds of amateurs who play just well enough to get on TV.
The best of 18 string bands that strutted east on Market Street with a keening wind at their backs was Quaker City, the Miami Hurricanes of Mummery. Quaker City also was rated No. 1 by the BCS String Band computers. No controversy there.
The best of the 12 football teams that lurched from the aching eyeballs of the way-before-noon Cotton Bowl kickoff to the nodding off 'Round Midnight conclusion of the Sugar Bowl was the Oregon Ducks.
Most of the hundreds of banjo players and saxophonists who golden-slippered around City Hall in feathered and sequined drag never will play on the concert stage.
Most of the hundreds of padded warriors who hurled themselves recklessly at one another for the grandeur of a 5 rating and the glory of an 11 share never will play on the NFL stage.
That's how it goes for willing amateurs who perform for neighborhood bragging rights and millions of bowl-game TV dollars they will never see.
It should be noted the Oregon Ducks who smoked a Colorado juggernaut that piled 62 points on Nebraska's suspect resume are even more emasculating than the ducks that sent Tony Soprano to a psychiatrist. And these Ducks even featured a hard-hitting defensive back named Wesly Mallard.
Now, they are lame-Duck national champion, so to speak, uncrowned king of the college football pond for at least another day.
A bunch of computer nerds crammed a lot of numbers into their Pentium IVs and reached the conclusion that despite the fearsome humiliation by Colorado, Nebraska is No. 2 behind consensus No. 1 Miami and ahead of No. 3 Colorado and No. 4 Oregon.
So, the table is set for the greatest Humans-vs.-Computers showdown since Stanley Kubrick filmed "2001," in which a computer named Hal developed a mind of its own with predictable consequences.
Although many would argue, the humans in this case are the sports writers who vote in the weekly Associated Press poll. They are just like you and me and would prefer arguing to performing Google searches on their laptops. They do much of their "Who's No. 1?" arguing at the Friday night press parties on scores of campuses, in press boxes and after they have filed their stories. Most are beat writers who cover one team and mostly see only the games involving that team.
During the two decades I covered Penn State, well before "SportsCenter" highlights and wall-to-wall replays of every touchdown scored by every Top 20 team, I didn't have the foggiest idea of how good Texas, Oklahoma or Ohio State really were.
All I knew was what I read in the papers, or could learn from one of the national writers who traveled to a different big game each week.
It was unscientific.
Now we have a half-dozen geeks who read the latest virus alerts from Norton and McAfee the way we read Ourlads' Scouting Services Guide to the NFL Draft.
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