Poolsville Picks, Week of Bitter Ends

The ashes were cold. Some blackened pots stood about. He squatted on his heels and picked one up and smelled it and put it back. He stood and looked out the window. Gray trampled grass. Gray snow. He held the boy's hand and they went down a narrow black hallway into the kitchen. Trash piled up everywhere. A ruststained sink. Smell of mold and excrement.

1.  The Iron Bowl - Alabama - Auburn (11 point undereagle worth two bonus points)
     NCAAFConverter : It's the trees. They're falling down.

The snow fell nor did it cease to fall. He woke all night and got up and coaxed the fire to light again. He looked at the boy's face sleeping in the orange light. The sunken cheeks streaked with black. He fought back the rage. Useless. The snow whispered down in the stillness and the sparks rose and dimmed and died in the eternal blackness.  Bama for the win. You can keep your shiny bonus points O Mayor of Poolsville.

2.  Clean, Old-Fashioned Hate Georgia - Georgia Tech (UGA by three)
     NCAAFConverther : The motor sounded ropey. Missing and puttering. Then it quit.

They moved on east through the standing dead trees. They passed am old frame house and crossed a dirt road. A cleared plot of ground perhaps once a truckgarden. Stopping from time to time to listen. The unseen sun cast no shadow. They came upon the road unexpectedy and he stopped the boy with one hand and they crouched in the roadside ditch like lepers and listened. No wind. Dead silence. After a while he rose and walked out into the road. Come on, he said.The boy came out and the man pointed out the tracks in the ash where the truck had gone.UGA for the win. Richt will save the final disappointing loss for Georgia's bowl game.

3.  The Palmetto Bowl - Clemson - South Carolina (5 point undertiger worth a bonus point)
     NCAAFConverter : He could see the disappointment in his face.

He could see open country to the east and the air was different.Then they came upon it from a turn in the road and they stopped and stood with the salt wind blowing in their hair where they'd lowered the hoods of their coats to listen. Out there was the gray beach with the skow combers rolling dull and leaden and the distant sound of it. Like the desolation of some alien sea breaking on the shores of a world unheard of. Out on the tidal flats lay a tanker half careened. Beyond that the ocean vast and cold and shifting heavily like a slowly heaving vat of slag and then the gray squall line of ash. What began with such promise against Georgia ends dully with an in-state loss; Carolina for the win.

4.  Texas A&M - Missouri (Tigers by four)
     NCAAFConverter : Is the night going to catch us? I don't know.

He got up and walked out to the road. The black shape of it running from dark to dark. Then a distant low rumble. Not thunder. You could feel it under your feet. A sound without cognate and so without description. The earth itself contracting with the cold. It did not come again. Mizzou for the win.

5.  Battle for Los Angeles - UCLA - USC (USC by three).
NCAAFConverter : I think I want to say goodbye to him.

And I won't forget. No matter what.

Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains. On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its beginning. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again. USC for the win.