Another Exciting Victory for the Ducks

[If you haven't weighed in on non-fiction books yet, go thisaway.]

The football season got off to a terrific start this week as Nike co-founder Phil Knight donated $100,000,000 to the University of Oregon athletic department, presumably in big Scrooge McDuck bags of lucre with little dollar signs stenciled on the sides. Rumor has it that the University will also continue to function as an academic institution in some capacity.

But you know, all kidding aside, all of that money will not buy success on the gridiron next month. No siree, that's not how the game works. In fact it will take at least a year, maybe even two or three, for all of that money to buy success on the gridiron. In the meantime we will have to, if I may paraphrase the always loveable Donald Rumsfeld, go to war with the football team we have.

The big question that I know all good L&TM5K readers are asking themselves is, what kind of football team do we have? Interestingly, no one seems to have a clue. I recently examined three different magazines with titles like College Football Preview and Exploited Young Athlete Forecaster 2007 -- well, actually more like the former than the later -- and found that they variously predicted that the Ducks would finish second, sixth, and seventh in the Pac-10. [note for the footballphobic: the Pac-10 has 10 teams. Hence the name.] That's a huge range of possibilities. I bought the first one.

It all starts next week, and I am sure that you are as excited as I am. What fun we'll have.

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Hmmm, we haven't had a Song of the Day for a while. "Concrete" by Jim's Big Ego hit me with a totally, like, transcendent moment on my evening run last night, all pure pop exhuberance on a beautiful August day. Nice. Give it a listen, maybe you'll like it too.