I remember you excoriating the umps during the MLB playoffs for precisely the very thing you are praising the CFL refs for doing: making decisive calls. Do you not think there is some tension in your position?

No, and I don't think you're remembering correctly. I'm too lazy to look it up, but I think what I excoriated the umps for was not conferring. Make the call. Then, if one of the other umps/refs saw it differently, talk it over -- quickly -- and decide whether or not to change the call. And be damn sure -- quickly, not after a U.N. summit -- if you're going to change it.

Take out the touchback rule unless it goes through the endzone, and no taking over possession at point of kick.

Oh, no. The point-of-kick rule is a good one. It discourages field goal attempts.

I'd like to see a reverse rouge rule. Instead of the kicking team getting a point for a kick into the end zone that isn't run back out, the receiving team should get that point. Now that would discourage field goals, without removing kicking from the game completely, an idea that seems to bother some people.

I'm a pretty fast writer, but even I couldn't write a book in a month, especially the month of December, while also taking care of a baby.

Alas it turns out that was bad information. Only one of those 12 is still alive, and he's in critical condition, though with no sign of brain damage, accoriding to press reports of what the doctors are saying.

Good point, Patrick. These games are ridiculously long. Paterno kept looking at his watch and talking about a five-hour game as though it were because of the three overtimes, but that's not what makes bowl games so long. And neither are the halftimes. Even the Orange Bowl halftime was "only" 27 minutes, which is only about 12 minutes longer than a normal halftime.

The Orange Bowl started at 8:19 p.m. EST. At the end of the scheduled broadcast, 11:30, there was 13:36 left in the fourth quarter.

That's another thing: Why do TV networks schedule games in time slots they know the games won't fit in. There's no way a bowl game's going to be over in 3:11. Not even close. TV netorks routinely schedule men's college basketball games in two-hour time slots. What's the point?

Anyway, at midnight there was 4:08 left. Regulation ended at 12:17. So the regulation football game took three hours and 58 minutes to play. This was a game that ended 16-16. Kelly's game winner came at 12:59, so the three overtimes, including the commercials that preceeded them, took 42 minutes. Time of game was 4:40.

The good point about how every event in a football game changes all subsequent events aside -- we're just speculating here, after all -- why is it that everyone seems to be assuming that if the officials get the call right when Young threw the lateral with his knee down, Texas ends up with a field goal? They would have had a first and 10, or maybe second and inches, at the 12-yard line. It's not like a touchdown would have been a remote possibility at that point.

Cardshark, I don't know what interception you're talking about. On USC's next possession after the lateral touchdown, the only incompletion was a clear incompletion to Jarrett on a sideline pattern. And USC didn't score a FG on that possession. They did score a FG on the next possession, after Texas had scored another TD for 16-7, but there were no near-interceptions on that either. Are you thinking about that leaping catch in the end zone that was called incomplete? That was reversed on replay and ruled an INT.

I don't think better equipment would have changed the call on that incomplete/stripped pass. It was a play that really could have been called either way. As Dan Fouts, I think, put it, if you're a Texas fan, it's an incomplete pass, if you're a USC fan it's a fumble. It was just a judgment call. I was rooting very, very mildly for USC, out of vestigal childhood loyalty -- I grew up rooting for them -- and I thought it was an incomplete pass.

I agree with those who say Reggie Bush has to be on the field for that fourth and 2. I mean, what's Pete Carroll thinking there? He really is kinda lousy at those game-management details, as others have pointed out. Bill Simmons has a funny take on Carroll on ESPN.com today. Having said all that, Bush just isn't big and strong enough to use as a workhorse, as some have suggested. Yeah, on the biggest play of the season, he needs to be in there, but 13 carries, six catches, five punt returns. What he did Wed. is probably about the max for him against as physical a team as Texas.