The Victors
(No. 17) Michigan State 34-17 Michigan (No. 18)
5-1, Big Ten 1-1

Live by the Shoelace, die by the Shoelace. I've never seen Shoelace make such poor decisions, nor so many of them in a single game. My sincere hope is that he decided to get all of his bad play for the season out of the way in one game, because if not then what we saw today was a tremendous regression. (More in the days ahead.)

Go Blue!

This Week in Motorsport
To Dan Rydell's dismay, it's raining at Indian Wells. Or rather, & about this Dan might not give a tinker's damn, it's been raining cats & dogs at mighty Suzuka. So heavy & persistent was the downpour the today's/yesterday's qualifying session, a vital component of the grand prix weekend in that it determines the starting grid positions, was washed out & postponed to the morning of the grand prix, tomorrow/today. The time confusion is all due to the nature of the Japanese Grand Prix. The Singapore Grand Prix, run two weekends hence, is the only night race on the Formula One calendar; a night race in Singapore is run in the European afternoon/the North American morning, meaning that it can be broadcast live on television at the same time as all the other grands prix even though the motorcars race at an entirely different local time. The Japanese Grand Prix, by contrast, is a normal afternoon race; the Japanese afternoon just happens to be very early in the European morning & the middle of the North American night. The second practice session (Friday afternoon wherever the grand prix is taking place), usually broadcast live on Friday mornings in Michigan, was instead broadcast live in the wee small hours of Friday morning (for all intents & purposes, still Thursday night). Qualifying is held on the local Saturday afternoon, or very, very early on Saturday here (Friday night); last night, instead of videotaping qualifying, I videotaped lots of rain falling at Suzuka, as the Speed broadcast team filled the air as best they could while waiting for F.I.A. Race Control, the chaps overseeing the sporting aspects of the grand prix, to acknowledge the reality that too much rain had fallen & was continuing for the Suzuka Circuit to dry out enough for the three rounds of qualifying to be run before night fell. Qualifying will instead be held live tonight at midnight—that's Sunday morning in the Land o' the Rising Sun.

My plan, then, is to watch qualifying live (I'd intended to watch it on videotape this morning before the football action began in earnest) at midnight & then call it a night when the Acura Pre-Race Show begins at 1:30 A.M. (the race follows at 2:00). I'll then watch the Japanese Grand Prix after the eleven o'clock Mass, & after that mow the lawn. Mighty Suzuka is one of the most challenging tracks on the F1 schedule & I shall be sorely tempted to push through the night & stay up until 4:00 A.M. watching the grand prix.

Adding drama to the proceedings is that the top five contenders for the World Drivers' Championship—Mark Webber of Red Bull (Renault), Fernando Alonso of Ferrari, Lewis Hamilton of McLaren (Mercedes), Sebastian Vettel of Red Bull, & reigning champion Jenson Button of McLaren—are within twenty-five points of each other atop the standings. A grand prix win awards the victor twenty-five points. Last year, Button stormed out to a commanding lead, winning six of the first seven grands prix (piloting his Mercedes-powered Brawn, since bought-out to be the Mercedes-Benz factory team). Only Vettel had even a prayer of catching up to Button, but a pair of decent finishes toward the end of the season allowed Button to stagger over the finish line & claim the World Championship. I'm in only my second (and first full) F1 season, but even the experienced commentators at Speed say they cannot a recall a campaign in which so many men have been so close together so late in the season. Both the '07 & '08 Championships were decided by a single point, but with the competition between two or three men, not five ('07: Kimi Räikkönen of Ferrari over Hamilton & Alonso, both of McLaren; '08: Hamilton over Felipe Massa of Ferrari). The first man to blink will be toast. Sweet fancy Moses, the 2010 Formula One World Championships are even better than I thought they would be based on the splendor of '09!

The Japanese Grand Prix will almost certainly be over before you read these lines, but there will still be three rounds of the 2010 season left: the inaugural (South) Korean Grand Prix, Brazil, & Abu Dhabi. To paraphrase Futurama: F1 fever, contract it!

Formula fun!

The Rebel Black Dot Song of the Day
Sam & Dave, "Soothe Me" (live) from the Rhino Hi-Five: Sam & Dave E.P. (T.L.A.M.)