I apologize for devoting so much ink to this, I just can't help myself.* I watched 25' of highlights on the Miami-MTSU game this morning. The Tyler Van Dyke that I saw this morning was not the Tyler Van Duke of last year, the one I promptly named the next great Miami QB, who did in fact win conference rookie of the year. Van Dyke looked awful. I thought he had a strong arm, maybe he did and it has atrophied or something; I thought he was an accurate passer...I thought he was going to be a great QB, okay. Hell, he wasn't even second best in that game to Chase Cunningham, he was the worst of the three QB's who played, Mario Cristobal subbing TVD out and Jake Garcia in in the 3rd quarter. Garcia had clearly the quicker release of the two UM QB's, clearly was more mobile--Garcia was fast--, Garcia was just the superior UM QB. I wrote last night that I hadn't even looked up Chase Cunningham's career stats and I still haven't. I was aware that MTSU was not unbeaten but didn't look up their season until today. They are now 3-1. You know who they lost to? This month too, just three weeks ago? James Madison. Know what the score was? 44-7. That team. With that QB. That team that gave UM "a butt-kicking from the very beginning" to the very end was DESTROYED by James Madison, the "Dukes", on Sept. 3.

I spent so much time last night writing about what the "universe of plausibilities" were for UM's disgrace that I was done for the night, beat. I narrowed the universe to a couple of plausibles that were more plausible than others to me but then I saw MTSU's loss, and the margin, to JMU and nothing is plausible now.

*I feel a sense of fidelity to responsibility though that I did not post what I wrote previous to this post, wrote it and then, disgusted with myself, saved it as a draft, went back to that draft just before starting this one and had the Iron Discipline to say to myself "No." It was on the subject of...oxygen.