Culture
College Football Playoff 2024 projections: Hello Deion! Colorado is in as the No. 4 seed
Alabama’s 42-13 blitzkrieg at LSU coupled with Ole Miss’ 28-10 rout of Georgia has created quite the muddled mess in the SEC. At least eight different teams could still reach the SEC Championship Game.
For the purposes of this exercise, I’m projecting the Dawgs to beat Tennessee next week and Texas to win at Texas A&M. Based on my colleague Seth Emerson’s calculations, this would likely produce a Texas-Alabama matchup in Atlanta, and I like the Tide in that one.
Meanwhile, at this rate, at least one SEC team is going to finish 10-2 and miss the Playoff. My guess is Tennessee, which would have just one Top 25 win (against Alabama) and possibly only three wins over teams that finish .500 or better. Unless of course the Vols edge out an 11-1 Indiana team with no Top 25 wins.
Elsewhere, Oregon has done absolutely nothing wrong, but I’m back to riding Ohio State if they meet in a Big Ten Championship Game rematch. Penn State has an underwhelming resume, but given the committee had them No. 6 last week, an 11-1 Nittany Lions team would likely be seeded above 11-2 Texas and 10-2 Georgia.
Finally, Colorado is my new projected Big 12 champ. The Buffs are rolling. It pains me to leave 9-0 BYU out of the field entirely, but the Cougars’ luck is going to run out at some point, possibly at Arizona State in a couple of weeks. A 10-2 Ole Miss team with lopsided wins over Georgia and a possible 9-3 South Carolina team gets my last at-large spot.
(Photo: Patrick Mulligan / Getty Images)
Welcome to Literary Quotable Quotes, a quiz that tests your recognition of classic lines. This week’s installment highlights observations from future or alternate worlds depicted in popular science fiction. In the five multiple-choice questions below, tap or click on the answer you think is correct. After the last question, you’ll find links to the books if you’re intrigued and inspired to read more.
Welcome to Lit Trivia, the Book Review’s regular quiz about books, authors and literary culture. This week’s challenge tests your memory of books that made huge impacts on society after they were published — some of them even spurring changes to American laws. In the five multiple-choice questions below, tap or click on the answer you think is correct. After the last question, you’ll find links to the books if you’d like to do further reading.
Where do you turn when you need advice? A chatbot? A life coach? A wise and trusted friend?
How about a poet? Poets may not be famous for making the best life choices, but because they subject the mess of human existence to the discipline of language, they can be as helpful as any therapist or mentor.
Good poets know the rules and when to break them, which is something they can teach the rest of us.
To wit:
Giving advice is a peculiar literary undertaking. It flourishes in certain popular genres — graduation speeches, newspaper columns, country and western songs and poems like this one — but what, in these contexts, is it really for?
I’m thinking of situations when you don’t urgently need help but nonetheless enjoy reading answers to questions you may not have thought to ask. What interests you isn’t the content of the advice — you could get all the life hacks you want from A.I. — so much as the voice of the person dispensing it.
Wendy Cope is an English poet, born in 1945, who has been a fixture of her country’s literary scene since the 1980s. More recently, her short, buoyant poem “The Orange” has been widely memed online, bringing her to the attention of new readers beyond Britain.
Cope favors rhyme, meter, brisk jokes and tart aperçus. She addresses romance, friendship and the petty absurdities of modern life with disarming good humor. The last line of “The Orange” is “I love you. I’m glad I exist.” Somehow she makes it the opposite of cringe.
This isn’t the kind of poetry you would describe as “confessional.” And yet …
Question 1/7
Stop, if the car is going “clunk”
Or if the sun has made you blind.
Don’t answer e–mails when you’re drunk.
Tap a word above to fill in the highlighted blank.Want to learn this poem by heart? We’ll help.
Fill in the missing words below. You can always refer to the reading by A.O. Scott and full
text above.Let’s start with the first stanza.
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