PRONOUNCED "CAESAR":  This blog, as you've probably noticed by now, doesn't actually care about Division I-AA football (or that it's been renamed), even when it comes to the hometown titans of Villanova.  Nor would we be writing about today's upset playoff win of Appalachian State merely to highlight that senior wide receiver Matt Szczur scored touchdowns via rushing, receiving and passing all within that same game (and in one half).

But add to that this story:  Szczur is also a baseball prospect.  Last season, years after having been encouraged by his football coach to be tested, he found out he was a 1-in-60,000 stem cell match for a toddler suffering from leukemia and sacrificed ten baseball games last season to donate the necessary bone marrow.  After the season, he became a fifth round draft pick of the Chicago Cubs, and had a 960 OPS in low-A ball this summer. "Anybody can go out there and play football or baseball," Szczur said, "but there's not too many people who get a chance to save a life."

I understand someone else won the Heisman.

HERE'S TO 30 MORE:  With the final film of its first run airing tonight, Dan Fienberg ranks all of the ESPN 30 for 30 documentaries from bottom to top.  (We did some interim ranking in August.)  Where I'd disagree with him most is that he has the USFL and Loyola Marymount films too low (though that may be because of my affection for the subject matter) and the rotisserie baseball one far too high (stylistically, I couldn't deal with the goofiness).  As noted before, my top three is Reggie/Escobars/6-17-1994, and I'm not sure that the order matters.

Overall, what a nicely ambitious series, and a real demonstration that sports documentaries could move beyond Ken Burns/talking heads format into something with more authorial voice.  Yes, there were some stinkers towards the end, but given how generic so much of ESPN feels these days this was, overall, an unexpected pleasure.

DEAR UNCLE RANDY: So I was riding on the train to NYC yesterday for a business function, and the gentleman who was sitting next to me got off at Newark and, I discovered, left his expensive-looking silver business card case in the seat. I opened the case and ascertained its owner, then emailed him offering to return the case to the address listed on the card.  Within hours he wrote back:

Thank you. Never even missed it ... you are very kind. Maybe I can return the favor someday.

So here's the question: do I just hope that he pays it forward some day, or can I make an explicit suggestion that he do something in return, like make a charitable contribution of whatever amount he deems appropriate to some worthy apolitical cause of my naming?  Does the fact that it's The Holiday Season increase or decrease my ability to make such an ask?

HEAVEN IS OVERRATED: iTunes announced today that America hates music, though technically the phrase it used was "'Hey, Soul Sister' was the most downloaded song of 2010." Is this the most anachronistic new song ever to get this popular? A band whose previous peak was over a decade ago (on the foaming crest of fake-alternative rock radio) name-checking Mister Mister and making a big deal about radio/stereo? I predict that in 2030, the number-one song transmitted directly into consumer brains via neural embedding will mention downloading a Train song via iTunes.

In the nearer term, I see two major related consequences. First, Steven Tyler, Jennifer Lopez, and Randy Jackson almost certainly have heard the first verse of this song a million times in AI auditions. Second, the biggest loser here is the band that owns the rights to the song previously used by every male AI contestant with a preference for inoffensive mainstream rock -- "Drops of Jupiter."

MUST-SEE: I just wanted to give brief props to the four really cool NBC half-hour comedies last night.

Community did something I usually don't like -- an animated episode -- but by acknowledging its animatedness mined both emotional stakes (part of the point of this episode was how tenuous Abed's grip on reality really is, and how his friends want to protect him from that) and comedy (Professor Duncan: "You're grabbing me in real life!"). And [SPOILER ALERT] the reflection of the live-action characters in the claymation TV screen at the end was really cool.

30 Rock -- that was just damn funny. I don't think this show has done this many jokes per minute since its glorious second season. The Tracy story didn't really pay off for me, but virtually every word and glance among Liz, Jack (angrily: "or other things"), Colleen, Milton, and Avery was golden, and I even liked how the show used Jenna and Paul's mostly straight (pun intended) but so weird "O Holy Night," where he was in drag singing the high harmony and she was in blackface as Lynn Swann.

The Office was the other slice of bread in this happy meat-on-sad sandwich, but the part that really got me was the effective and overt Dwight-Jim psychological thriller subplot. You expect things like that from Community, but I don't remember this show ever doing it. Enjoyable.

And commercials reminding us that last season's best comedy, Parks and Recreation, is back in January? It's a Christmas miracle.

READY THE HARD HATS: Yes, we know it looks funny--in response to the virus queries we've gotten from several folks, we've tweaked the template in an effort to resolve some things. (Hopefully, the change we've already made should have resolved at least some of the virus issues.) We're going to continue tweaking the template as needed, and if you can be as specific as possible with the errors/warnings you're seeing, it'd be helpful.

PHONE RINGS, DOOR SLAMS, IN COMES MY TICKET ORDER: In the great Venn Diagram of things that hit the ALOTT5MA sweet spot, Neil Patrick Harris in a New York Philharmonic production of Company this Spring would seem to basically hit the bullseye. Yes, parts of the book are dated, and yes, Bobby is a rather inert character for much of the show, but this could be very very interesting. (Other casting suggestions are encouraged.)