Bloglander

Good morning Internet users! Welcome to a new weekly or at least semi-weekly addition to Bloglander. Monday Morning Place Kicker will get you caught up with all the sports and sports-related happenings from the weekend so you can at least fake your way through a conversation with your sports-obsessed co-workers.

This is probably one of the best Mondays to launch this column because there's a lot of insanity to discuss in the sports world. And for once all of it happened during actual games! Let us start close to home...

COUG-ING IT
It doesn't bring me joy to use this term, but it's become the only way to explain some of the impossibly awful losses Washington State football has brought upon themselves in recent years. Urban dictionary has a couple of entries:

1. The uncanny ability of the Washington State University football to team to, despite all odds, lose football games at the last possible moment in a spectacular display of giving the football to the other team.
Couging it - the 2013 New Mexico Bowl

2. Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Blowing a lead. Losing a game when you have already defined the win.

The Washington State Cougars were kicking ass until the fourth quarter when they fumbled three times instead of running out the clock. They sucked so bad they were Couging it.

The Cougs really, really Coug-ed it on Saturday night, though. They're going to have to update that definition.

If you didn't see it, or hear about it, WSU quarterback Connor Halliday broke the NCAA single-game passing record by chucking a dizzying 734 yards. If you put all those passes together, they'd go half-way to the moon several blocks from your house.

The dude was on fire, but so was Cal's Jared Goff, who tossed 527 yards and five touchdowns on his own. For this reason, the game took more than four hours to come to a head, when, down 60-59 (yes, that's a football score), the Cougars easily took the ball to the Cal goal line and, instead of using all their downs to try to punch it in for a touchdown, went for a field goal. A 19-yard-field goal. A chip shot. A lay up.

And the kicker missed, wide right.

Sitting in the near-midnight glow of my television, I actually said "Coug-ed it" aloud to the empty room, like so many others likely did across the region. The look on Halliday's face when that kick went wide was so brutal, no Mike Leach monologue on the future of technology could possibly fix it.

WSU heads to face the burliest band of smart kids ever assembled when they roll down to Stanford on Friday night.

SCORING MORE POINTS THAN YOU
That's the motto of Eastern Washington's football team, which has managed to give up more than 50 points twice this season — and still win those games.

The Eagles beat Idaho State 56-53 on the lipstick-red turf out in Cheney on Saturday afternoon. It appears that turf prevents EWU from playing defense, because the lowly Bengals from Pocatello (see a map) were running wild in the second half.

Thankfully, EWU has Vernon Adams, the slippery, gun-slinging quarterback that makes Eagles games required viewing for people who like exciting football. He tossed four touchdowns, only to reveal after the game that he had broken two bones in his foot. He's going to miss at least six weeks, which is a big, huge problem for the Eagles as they get closer to FCS playoff time.

THE DAY COLLEGE FOOTBALL BROKE
It was really the weekend that college broke, seeing as how Thursday brought Arizona's stunning defeat of #2 Oregon and Friday saw #18 BYU lose to Utah State.

But come Saturday, all hell broke loose. #3 Alabama lost to Ole Miss, #4 Oklahoma lost to TCU, #6 Texas A&M lost to Mississippi St., #8 UCLA lost to Utah, and there were even more upsets.

#16 USC lost to Arizona State on this play:



HAPPY BLUE MONDAY
The Seahawks are finally playing football again tonight for Monday Night Football. That is why Dave in accounting is wearing his Richard Sherman jersey again. 

After two Sundays of NFL football without the Seahawks, we'll get to see the state's beloved squad face off a team from Washington, D.C. tonight at 5:30 pm. Ya know these guys, they had a really popular quarterback who's not that popular anymore on account of being hurt/sucking. Oh, and this is the team with a name that would make you a racist if you said it to a member of a certain race of people. This is the team whose fans and ownership think keeping this name is not at all offensive. This is the team whose leaders were recently lampooned on both South Park and The Daily Show.

The Seahawks are favored by a touchdown going into their game against the Washington Racial Slurs. Catch the action on ESPN.