Sometimes it's easy to predict the future. If you touch O.J. Simpson's sports collectibles, he's probably going to freak out.
If Michael Vick tells you he has to take care of his dogs,"" he probably doesn't mean he's making sure Snuggles and Scrappy get their Kibbles n' Bits.
If you go out to the bars looking for a good time on a Friday night, you'll probably be walking home, hand-in-hand with a beautiful Qdoba burrito.
(Of course the next morning you'll tell the unfinished burrito that you really enjoyed hanging out with it last night, but you had a lot to drink and things got kind of crazy when you brought it home and you kind of have this on-again, off-again thing going on with Ian's pizza, but if you want to hang out some time that's cool ...)
And just like life, sports can be easy to predict, too.
Whoever the Bears start at quarterback will look like a deer in headlights.
After 162 games, the Yankees and Red Sox will find a way to buy, I mean, earn a playoff spot.
And after those same 162 games, the Milwaukee Brewers will be sitting at home in October for the 25th consecutive year.
Sure, there are those moments when the Davids beat the Goliaths, or the NCAA Cinderellas dance at the Final Four. But for the most part, the world of sports seems to follow trends.
The Patriots win, the Devil Rays lose, Brett Favre throws touchdown passes and somewhere, for no apparent reason at all, Bobby Knight is angry. That's just how it goes.
Yet during the month of September 2007, every rule was broken and every impossibility became a reality.
It all started on Sept. 1 when a team from the town of Boone, N.C., defeated the winningest football program in NCAA history. Appalachian State's 34-32 victory over not-so-mighty No. 5 Michigan shocked the nation and set the stage for a wild 30 days.
Other upsets soon followed.
South Florida, a school that did not have a football program until 1997 and didn't play Division I-A football until 2001, knocked off No. 17 Auburn Sept. 8 and then beat No. 5 West Virginia Friday.
The college football insanity hit its peak last weekend when five of the top 10 and seven of the top 13 teams in college football lost. No. 4 Florida, No. 7 Texas and No. 10 Rutgers fell at home to unranked opponents.
Teams like South Florida and upstart Kentucky now reside among the ranks of Oklahoma, USC and Ohio State.
While the young USF Bulls continue to surprise, a team which began playing football games 110 years earlier in South Bend, Ind., has yet to win a game.
Off to their worst start in school history, the 0-5 Notre Dame Fighting Irish look more like a pee-wee squad than one of college football's most-storied programs.
To make matters worse, head coach Charlie Weis' press conferences grow increasingly difficult to watch with each loss. Awkwardness levels now stand somewhere between watching that clingy couple make out in front of you during the Badger game and watching Athletic Director Barry Alvarez pose for pictures with those giant checks.
Although craziness often abounds in college sports, professional sports usually stay more true to form, but not in September 2007.
In the NFL, we've seen a Green Bay Packer team, which many, myself included, thought would be lucky to win five or six games, run off four consecutive victories to start the year.
Perhaps more impressively, the Pack has done so without any semblance of a running game.
Meanwhile, the perennial NFC doormat Detroit Lions stand at 3-1 while the high-powered Chargers and stingy Chicago Bears are both 1-3.
Earlier in the month, the Cleveland Browns tallied 552 total yards in a 51-45 victory over the Cincinnati Bengals.
The Arizona Cardinals beat the Pittsburgh Steelers Sunday, the Rams are 0-4 - what is this sports world coming to?
I'm sure that's what New York Mets fans would like to know.
They just watched their team take one of the biggest nose-dives in baseball history. Losing 12 out of your last 17 games is bad enough, but losing a seven-game division lead to the Phillies when you're playing teams like the Nationals and the Marlins? That's '78 Buccaneers bad. That's Vancouver Grizzlies bad.
That's ... seriously Mets fans, tell yourselves that it's just a game and that in the grand scheme of things it doesn't really matter. Please, for your own sakes, put it in the proper perspective.
Because I haven't seen a wreck like that since a buck got ""all up in the grill"" of my great-uncle's F-150.
The antithesis to the Mets is, of course, the Colorado Rockies, who somehow managed to win 12 out of their last 13 games and force a wild card tiebreaker with the San Diego Padres.
The planets must have aligned just right.
How else could you explain the Florida Gators losing in the Swamp? How else could one comprehend Favre breaking Dan Marino's career touchdown pass record at the Metrodome, No. 4's personal house of horrors? How else could a team give up 564 yards of total offense and still pull out a 37-34 victory over Michigan State?
With all these improbable headlines coming in the past 30 days, I'd say there's no way October could provide more shocking sports stories than September.
But then again, who am I to predict the future?
Have a wild September? E-mail Ryan at reszel@dailycardinal.com.
