We haven't really talked about hockey lately, mainly because we're in the midst of a very important college football season, but this little nugget just needs to see the light of day.

We have a week off here, before we massacre the Tar Heels next Thursday, so we figured it was a good time to take a look around the ACC and find the most pathetic game going on this weekend.  Didn't take long to find it in the Maryland Duke game.

Duke is not a good team.  They aren't terrible, they do have a 3-3 record overall, but they don't really compete for bowl games every year.  Maryland usually isn't bad, but lately, they have been going down a very steep hill in terms of play these last few seasons.

No one expects this to be a good game.  I've heard it may look more like two monkeys fucking a football than actual football.  But no one, and I mean no one, expected Maryland to be so bad that they were actually predicted to lose against the Dookies. From the Washington Times:

The latest sign Maryland's football season isn't what it hoped it would be: The Terrapins are early eight-point underdogs at Duke.

So let's clear this up a bit.  Maryland is 8 point underdogs AT Duke.  Generally in oddsmaking, the hometeam gets 3 points as a homefield advantage.  This means, played at a neutral field, Duke would be 5 point favorites.  Anyone see where this is going?

If the game was played at Maryland, the Terps would get the three points from Duke, which would still mean that Duke would be favored to win AT Maryland nevertheless.  By 2 points.  Basically a shootout.  With a watergun.

Not long ago Maryland was one of the biggest competitors for the ACC and Duke was the team that everyone wrote as a W in stone on their schedule.  Is Duke getting better or is Maryland really shitting the bed?  I'll go with a little from Column A and a little from Column B.  But for Maryland to be more than a touchdown dogs to Duke, and even dogs at home to Duke makes me REALLY excited to play them November 14.  A lot of times when teams get beat by another team they shouldn't have gotten beaten by, they wake up, turn it around, and make some noise.  Not against Duke.  If you lose to Duke, you stop thinking you can win games.  This could have the 2004 game being considered a shootout.  I might actually make a trip down there for the game just to say I was there.

We are going to try a new experiment. Since Wednesdays kind of suck, what with no football and all, we are going to try a mailbag type thing. This is, of course, against our better judgement.

So feel free to send us questions, comments, complaints, philosophical musings, etc. You can submit them here. Points for being funny.

Avid reader/former commenter/CMU Football analyst A. Young writes:

"I recently broke my leg, and people have been helping me out a lot at work and such. (1) How do you repay people for doing things for you, and (2) how long can you milk the injury?"

(1) There is only one way to repay anyone for doing anything for you: buy them alcohol.

You can't just give them straight up cash, that would be shady. So the next best thing is to allow them to get drunk on your dime. Whether it's picking up the tab at the bar, providing the case of beer for Sunday/Monday/Wednesday night, or finding that elusive bottle of Vladamir vodka, people will know just how much you appreciate them.

Sure, you spend $20 while your buddy gives up all of his Saturday to move your sleeper sofa. But do you think he'd do it for a $20 bill? Hell no. He'd tell you to go round up some hobos and keep a close watch on your stuff. But by allowing him to bypass the actual spending of money and the drive to get the beer, you give off a bigger sense of gratitude. This is mainly due to the fact that if beer cost $100 a case, we'd still by it.

(2) This really depends on the gender of the person, as well as the relationship. Let's take a look:

• Jackass male friends: If you don't have crutches, don't expect anything. Oh you have a neat little boot? Guess that means you can walk. Grab me a beer, Pegleg.

• Non-jackass male friends: N/A

• Cute female friends: You probably have one favor to use for each. They are probably busy having slumber parties and pillow fights with other cute female friends, so bringing you Taco Bell three times a week will become annoying.

• Non-cute female friends: They'll probably bring you Taco Bell once a day, even after the cast comes off.

• Male coworkers: You've got about a week, but the same rules apply as with your guy friends. Without crutches, you're just a dude that comes to work with one shoe on.

• Female coworkers: This isn't about how long you can milk the injury. This is about opportunity. You can FINALLY strike up a conversation with that cute girl from Accounting. And on top of that, you can get her to do things for you. It's win-freaking-win!

• Parents: See Jackass male friends.

Well, I hope that helps. We're all about making people's lives better here at the NEZ.

Hold on, I need to throw up again.  We as Tech fans have come to a shocking and unthinkable conclusion.  I never thought, in a million years, that I would be saying this.  Get a trashcan ready, because you might need it.

Last night, Eddie Royal returned a punt and a kickoff for touchdowns.

We here at the North End Zone love times like these. We can think back fondly and remember how effectively we used such a great weapon in our offense...

Oh... right.

I know it might sound crazy, but crazy is what we do here at The North End Zone.

So despite the fact that I am still furious over that pathetic excuse for a game on Saturday, we all have to move at some point, right?  Well first I'm going to reel out one more diatribe before I call it quits.

Well that was fucking awful.

Here's your recap:

1. We played like shit.
2. Georgia Tech was obviously more jacked about this game than we were.
3. Bud Foster dropped the ball with defending the option.  We could not figure it out. 
   
4. Stinespring is back to his normal self.  Run the ball when you can't get yardage and abandon the pass altogether.  Even when your passing has been pretty good. 
   
5. We continued our trend of having one week on, the next week off.  Prepare for us to play well next week.
6. The thing that pisses me off the most is that we went in to this game knowing that they had a good run defense and a terrible pass defense.  What do we do?  Wait until two minutes left in the game to pass the fucking ball.
7. Bye bye National Championship chances.  Now we're fighting to get into the ACC Championship, and if we keep this on/off week to week trend, we might be out of that, too. 
   
8. Now we have to win out, which shouldn't be tough, key word is shouldn't; and we need to hope that Vandy, UVA, Wake, Duke, or Georgia beat GT and we can win the Coastal.
9. Let this be a lesson to us all, and review the age-old adage of don't count your chickens until they're hatched.  We should never mention National Championship chances until we are winning by 15 with a minute left in the 4th quarter of our final game of the season.  No sooner.
10. And just to show you how off we are with our "signs", Independence Day was playing on TBS during our game.

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