OK is acting nuts, which makes sense, because it's OK. They're so fucking football nuts that this is an error they will never forgive.

'05 Superbowl game Seahawks v. Steelers

that officiating beyond sucked. I don't recall this level of outrage by any of the classy Seahawks. Do you think OK just has an entitlement syndrome?

In the journalism racket, that's called a serial comma. Salon, like most daily newspapers and, of course, the AP, uses something called AP Style, which omits the serial comma. Chicago Style, which is used by most magazines and in book publishing and academic writing, uses the serial comma.

When Salon was in its infancy, there were many long and exciting debates about style. Even after it was decided -- at my suggestion as Salon's first copy chief, I might add -- to use AP style, there was a faction

(coughGaryKamiyacough)

vainly trying to argue for retention of the "elegant" serial comma. That faction was defeated.

Only this level of self-righteousness, displayed outrage, self-inflicted victimhood and desire for retribution could come from a bonafide Republican.

I hope the Pac-10 doesn't cave to OK. They are big babies.

Nice op/ed piece.

Why is football so appealing when there is clearly so much wrong with the game? In no other game are officials this griped about, and in no other game do they have this much power. Except maybe in World Cup soccer when a single ref can simply expel half a soccer team for commiting only two fouls each.

Other stupid points on football: If the ball had gone to OU they would have run out the clock and won, and we all know how exciting running out the clock is on a game. What other sport can be won simply by NOT PLAYING IT? Which is why I think basketball should get rid of the shot clock. We need more sports that can be won by not playing the game at hand.

If OU could kick a freaking feild goal, or have their defense show up more than every 4th time out on the field, maybe they wouldn't have failed so miserably. Of course, we know how King feels about kicking in football (it shouldn't be there)...which is a good point that only furhter shows how stupid a game football is.

I'm consistently disgusted by football, its irregularities, and its extended periods of absolutely nothing happening. Or how about college football's lack of a playoff, which, as has already been mentioned, only exacerbates the problems in the game by giving them that much more import.

Ugh, count me out. Cyclists may use drugs, but at least you know who won at the end of the day. Baseball has its moments in bad umping, but there are so many other opportunities to win the game, who cares. Basketball is at least consistently exciting and offers the chance to come back from a significant deficit, and the ref can't change how well you shoot a ball. Only football, week in and week out, is consistently boring to watch EXCEPT when refs make mistakes, I guess. And in the 5% of games each week that are competitive. What a great sport.

And seriously, I'm not just some guy who had a bad football coach experience or who got beat up by football players in high school or who wants to make silly comments about how silly those outfits are or whatever. I really feel that football lacks merit as a competitive sporting event.

Everyone can agree there were some blown calls. But really, it's a football game between Oregon and Oklahoma that was decided by sloppy defense rather than a blown call.

The comma after the second to last item in a list and before the conjunction is called, among other things, a "Times comma" (IIRC from the book "Eats, Shoots and Leaves") because it is required by the copy editors at the New York Times. Or was it the London Times? Anyway, it is optional in general usage, although it should be used or not used consistently within any writing. You are just as correct to write, "I like eggs, ham and orange juice," as you are to write, "I like eggs, ham, and orange juice."

I am an attorney, almost always leave that comma out and find that most other attorneys I deal with do the same (like in this sentence). If you have found that King regularly uses it, maybe his recent spell at jury duty changed him.

Until I became an attorney, I always used it. Now the law has changed me, apparently. Two exceptions that I still make for it are (i) if the list is composed of very long phrases, making it difficult to make sense of otherwise (although I am just as likely to use semi-colons to separate the items in that case), and (ii) where leaving it out would lead to confusion (this is rare; an example is "My wife, my daughter and I ate pancakes, eggs, and ham and cheese, respectively."--without the comma, it's hard to tell whether my daughter had eggs and ham and I had cheese, or my daughter had eggs and I had ham and cheese).

Now back to the regularly scheduled sports programming.

And please pardon any typos I might have made in this post!

is the fact that Oregon almost lost the game due to a squib kick.

Oh, and why aren't Oklahoma fans complaining on the non-call on the push-off on the TD pass?

How is that again? Eagles got more screwed with the visible holding all game. The "non" play that wasn't a down or a penalty, and others. Giants didn't get screwed, just a fluky game.

As a resident of Seattle, WA (Pac-10 country) let me just say I stand firmly with my brethren in Oklahoma. Some months back our beloved NFL Seattle Seahawks got screwed out of the Superbowl (NFL equivalent of BCS championship) by a number of bad calls. When that happened people in Seattle were outraged, as was everyone in Oklahoma. You could read in all the OK newspapers how the game should be nullified.

Well friends in OK, I now stand with you as you stood with us. ... except you didn't.