Ugly but beautiful: Jets rally to beat Redskins, and some more NFL thoughts. Boeheim finally gets it on sex abuse charges. And similes that are awesome.

It seems that ugly will have to be beautiful for Jets fans this year. Once again Sunday, my boys in green and white played pretty miserable offensive football for 3 1/2 quarters against the godawful Washington Redskins, and it looked like the men of Sanchez would go down to defeat. A loss that would pretty much end any playoff hopes.

Watching at my friend David’s apartment, I was resigned to their fate. But then they had to screw with me again, playing a great last six minutes, and winning going away, 34-19.
Mark Sanchez made some big throws at the end when he had to. The defense stepped up big-time (Aaron Maybin, where you been all my life?). And hey, they even managed to not fumble the last couple of punts! That in itself was thrilling.

Washington is terrible. Rex Grossman is a crime against quarterbacking; he makes Tim Tebow look like Dan Marino. And I’m still not sure my Jets are any good. But they are what they are; 7-5 with an easy schedule the rest of the way that may allow them to make the playoffs.

And how could I argue with that? I can’t, that’s how. Today is a good day.

Some other quick-hitting NFL thoughts…

— That Giants-Packers game was phenomenally entertaining. Aaron Rodgers and the Pack won 38-35 on a last-second field goal, but man the Giants showed a lot of moxie and explosiveness in keeping it close. I just don’t know if you can play QB any better than Rodgers is right now. I had zero doubt, with the game tied at 35 and a minute left, that he would lead the Pack down for the winning points at the end. Dude is frighteningly good right now.

— Ah, Detroit Lions, nice to see you’re still the bad boys of the NFL. I so want to root for them since Lions fans have been down for so long, but more thuggish behavior was on display Sunday night against the Saints.

— Been a long time since a Colts-Patriots game was that meaningless.
— I have no explanation for Tim Tebow and his continued end of game magic.
— One day Terry Bradshaw’s forehead will swallow the entire FOX studio.

**Next up today, a hilarious Washington Post project, asking readers to come up with the most tortured similes they could. They crowned 56 winners. A few of my favorites:

32. The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work.
32. He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up.

and my personal favorite…
22. He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant and she was the East River.

Check out the rest of them here for a good Monday laugh.

**Finally today, a few words about Syracuse men’s basketball coach Jim Boeheim. There are few coaches I have disliked more over my lifetime. I find Boeheim to be a smug, whiny, arrogant jerk who constantly complains he’s put upon, and generally acts like a jackass in interviews and during games.

And so I was a little bit pleased to see, after Boeheim jumped all over the accusers in this Bernie Fine case (if you don’t know what I’m talking about, Boeheim’s longtime assistant has been accused of sexual molestation by three men who worked for the team when they were teenagers), to see him have to back off once more accusers started coming forward.

But I have to admit, after admitting he was wrong to so quickly call the accusers liars, he’s been really, really smart in his comments. Check out this story from the Syracuse Post-Standard over the weekend, and hear the contrition and concern in Boeheim’s voice. I think this case has really shaken him, and he seems committed to finding the truth now. Sure, this could all just be phony PR from him, but I don’t think it is. Judge for yourself.

Why today is a Sports Holiday, ESPN idiot geography, and confirming how good your profs were

There are certain days on the calendar that I feel are Sports Holidays:

Opening day in baseball. The Super Bowl, of course. The final day of the Masters golf tournament, and Super Saturday at the U.S. Open in Queens.

Today, my friends, is another Sports Holiday for many of us. It’s the first day of college basketball season, as practices tip off at hundreds of schools across the nation.

Can you hear the squeaking of the sneakers against the hardwood floor? Can you see the bench guys waving towels? And can you lean in and hear the whistles stopping the rebounding drill?

I can.

I LOVE college basketball. Love, love, love it. I love the early-season tournaments, when good teams play good teams. I love seeing kids like J.J. Redick or Tim Duncan or Danny Manning rise to the occasion and become legends in their own corners of the universe.

I love seeing the coaching gurus like Mike Krzyzewski and Jim Boeheim and John Beilein squeeze every last drop of potential out of kids, and breathing fire on the sidelines. I love the 3-pointers that bring a team back, the insane crowd noise at gyms like Cameron Indoor in Durham and Mac Court in Oregon and Assembly Hall in Indiana.

And of course, don’t even get me started on how much I love March Madness. We could be here all weekend talking about that.

If you don’t know by now, I’m a huge Duke fan. Yeah, I know, call me a frontrunner or an idiot and say that Duke fans are cocky and obnoxious and spoiled, I don’t care what you say. I’ve been a fan since, as a 10-year-old, I fell in love with a scrappy team led by Johnny Dawkins and Mark Alarie that made it to the Final Four (Coach K’s first team that made it that far). Lately the ride has been bumpy for the boys, but I’ve got a feeling this year could be a special one.

And isn’t that how fans of every program feel today? That somehow, someway, their team can find a way into The Big Dance, and from there, anything can happen.

The season’s right around the corner.  Lace up the Chuck Taylors, it’s time to play.

(By the way, I realize that “One Shining Moment’ clip above is from 2008, not 2009. But North Carolina won the title last year, and well, I just couldn’t.

***So I may be one of the last people in America to discover this site, but I went on to ratemyprofessors.com the other day and wasted a good 45 minutes, enjoying myself the whole way.

If you don’t know what it is, basically it’s a site where college students can basically grade the professors they’ve had at school, on a variety of factors, (clarity, easiness, and helpfulness) as well as leave comments that tend to be, um, negative.

“He is the worst thing that can happen to anyone’s life,” wrote one student about a prof.

“I can’t believe that haggard old bastard is STILL there,” wrote another.

So yeah, it’s one big lovefest. There were lots of positive comments, too, about teachers who inspired, amused, and enlightened, but the negative ones are more fun to read, too.

I shudder to think any college presidents actually uses these “reviews” as a measuring stick, but I sure do wish we had this site when I was in school. Instead, all we got was those “evaluation forms” at the end of the semester that we got to fill out. I don’t think anyone at Delaware ever read those.

Happily, as I traversed the site searching for my old profs, I found that the ones I really liked got high ratings, and the ones who were truly horrendous were given crap marks.

If nothing else, the site answered my eternal question of my best friend Clay that fall day of 1993: “Is it me, or is this guy a complete a-hole?”

***Finally, maybe this only bothered me because I live in Florida now, but sports announcers are often remarkably ignorant about geography. I’m watching the Cincy-South Florida football game (in Tampa) on ESPN Thursday night, and Chris Fowler is talking about two players, one from each team, Chris Robinson of USF and Mardy Gilyard of Cincinnati, who grew up together near where I live now, in Bunnell, Fla.

Fowler talks about them for a minute, then says “they grew up in Bunnell, not far from Tampa.”

Now, because I live in Central Florida, I can tell you that Bunnell is THREE HOURS from Tampa. So yeah, it’s not far, if you consider Daytona Beach a suburb of Miami.

I mean really, I know announcers have four hours to fill but don’t insult us viewers, please!

**And oh yeah: Yankees over Angels in 7. But I don’t feel confident about that pick at all. And of course, Dodgers in 6, so we can see a Yankees-Dodgers World Series with Joe Torre managing against the Bronx Bombers. That would be beyond surreal for Yanks fans.