What goes around

Horrible sports weekend. The Cardinals won Game One of the Series - handily! - and that was at most the third-worst thing that happened. #2: Man City getting buried at Wigan (number of goals scored by Man City the last two games: zero; number of own goals scored by Man City the last two games: one). #1: Northwestern blowing the biggest lead in DI-A history, leading Michigan State by no fewer than five touchdowns with about 24 minutes left in the game and allowing a touchdown every four minutes for the next 20, before finally losing 41-38 on a field goal in the last seconds. The biggest choke in major college history, and yet, if you ask me, it barely slips ahead of last year's Sun Bowl as the worst loss in program history (and you could certainly argue that, on a scale of relative importance, there have been worse - the loss to Iowa in 2000 was pretty tough to take). I'm not sure what that says about NU's overall crappiness, but probably nothing good.

One thing that Tyler pointed out: could NU's loss be karmic payback for the Bears pulling off one of the craziest comebacks in NFL history on Monday night? It's certainly true that you don't usually see the same group of fans get rewarded twice in succession by different teams. If the reward is a Bears Super Bowl victory, I suppose I would take pretty much any negative this year (except for anything related to the Cubs), and especially if the Bears put together an undefeated season. I had been avoiding mentioning the Bears in this space, but since they, by all rights, should have lost on Monday, I don't really feel like it matters (obviously it's impossible to really argue that it ever did, but you know how that works).

All the talk leapt to 16-0 after the Seahawks game, despite the fact that it was the first time the Bears had shown anything against a good team, the game was at home, and said good team did not have their leading rusher. As potent as the offense looked, and as good as the defense had been, I think the media trend for years now has been a desperate search to anoint whoever is currently going as the best there was. The constant comparisons to the '85 Bears got so thick that even some of the local drive-time hosts, who tend to thrive on that stuff, had to point out that it's pretty ridiculous to compare a 6-0 team to a team that went 18-1. Sure, the Bears' schedule looks pretty thin besides that East Coast road trip, but there are a couple things about that: first, that the Bears have not looked good on the road so far, squeaking out two of their three victories (and those games were hardly against the Giants and Patriots), and second, that facing a mediocre schedule in the regular season may not bode all that well for the playoffs. It doesn't do the Bears any good if they go 16-0 and then lose to Carolina, Atlanta, New Orleans, or Philadelphia, or whoever else might line up for a crack in January.

So: guarded optimism for right now. But I'll say this: if Grossman has another game even approaching Monday's at any point this season, the Bears will lose that game. And maybe if it happens again, Smith will consider bringing in Griese. I can understand the desire to show confidence in your first-stringer, but when you don't have it, you don't have it, and on Monday Grossman definitely did not have it. This was definitely the best possible time for a bye week.