Monday Football Ramblings

-Huge win by Notre Dame this weekend. It's not that Pittsburgh is a particularly good barometer, but it speaks more to the fact that they didn't let one win over Boston College go to their heads. They have a slate of winnable games coming up on the schedule as long as they don't suddenly think one win makes them National Championship contenders (which has a tendency to happen with Notre Dame teams). If they don't start assuming wins then they have a chance to end the season with a legitimate 8-4 record and go to a fairly-important bowl game.

-I think we all knew once Randy Moss was traded that it was only a matter of time before we learned that Moss and Tom Brady were not actually as close as we were all led to believe. So it should come as no surprise that over the weekend there was a report that the two got into some kind of sideline confrontation earlier this year. What is surprising, though, is that the exchange consisted of Brady telling Moss to shave his beard and Moss responding by telling Brady to get a haircut because he looked like a girl. That's the most pathetic sideline fight I have ever even heard of. Don't you have to be good at trash-talk to be a professional athlete?

-For the first time since 1970, every NFL team has at least one loss after their fourth game of the season. And for a league that wants to be known for parity, you have to imagine that this is the Commissioner's dream come true. The league offices will spin it by saying that every team has a chance to win and every team is still in the hunt for the Super Bowl (well, not Buffalo). However, what it actually means is that there are no real great teams out there. Honestly, thanks to the Red Zone, I've gotten longer looks at more teams than ever before and I'm pretty sure that everyone just has some kind of major deficiency. It's not that everyone is playing equally well, but instead that everyone is playing equally poorly. There is a huge difference.

-The main reason that most teams are mediocre this year falls squarely on the lack of big-time quarterbacks stepping up. It's not just that guys like Carson Palmer and Tony Romo aren't playing up to expectations, but also that guys like Max Hall, Jason Campbell and Ryan Fitzpatrick are starters. If that isn't a referendum on the quality of the league this year, I don't know what is. Of course this also speaks volumes about a guy like Brady Quinn, who I root for because of his South Bend affiliation. If he can't get off the bench when undrafted, rookie, free-agent quarterbacks are getting starts on Sunday then he simply may not have what it takes to make it. If that's the case I was way off on that one.

-You'd never know that every team is sort of blah from the ratings, though, which remain huge. The guy who has to be happiest about the NFL TV dominance is Atlanta Braves infielder Brooks Conrad. Conrad had a three-error night in the Braves' divisional series against the Giants, which normally would be a huge story. Given who the Giants can pitch in Games 4 and 5, this guy could potentially have just lost this series with his play Saturday night. But, because he did it opposite college football and the night before an NFL Sunday, no one batted an eyelash. It was barely discussed. The lesson? Sometimes, even when you are on national television, it is still possible to fail in obscurity.