By JOHN JAMES MARSHALL/Designated Writers

Just a few college football tidbits from last weekend (due in great part to the fact that I like the word “tidbits”)

*** Have you checked the Big Ten standings lately? Michigan, Michigan State, Penn State and Nebraska are at one end and Indiana, Maryland, Purdue and Northwestern are at the other. That might seem to be normal until you consider which end we are talking about. The first group is a combined 2-9 and the other is 10-1. Did you figure on that happening in the first month of the season? Sure, Ohio State is still everyone’s pick, but the perceived lack of quality opponents — Michigan and Michigan State are the final two regular season opponents — might not help. A potential conference title game against Northwestern won’t help either.

*** The best color announcer in all of football may just be the guy who does the fewest games. Tony Dungy, who basically only does Notre Dame home games on NBC, is fantastic. He does a great job of explaining, he never tried to impress you with how smart he is (although he has won a little thing they call the Super Bowl) and just lets the game happen. In an age when people are falling all over themselves to say how good Tony Romo is, Dungy is the anti-Romo. He lets the game play out, discusses what happened, offers suggestions (not criticism) and makes his point in a few words as possible. Plus, he’s incredibly likable.

*** You think Georgia would like to have Justin Fields back at quarterback right about now? Fields might very well win the Heisman Trophy this year while two Georgia quarterbacks were a combined 9-for-29 for 112 and three interceptions last week against Florida. Meanwhile in three games, Fields has the same amount of incompletions as he does touchdown passes (11).

Ran originally in Sunday, October 18 editions of Louisiana’s Gannett newspapers.

Bad news for all you Tab drinkers out there—and yes, I’m talking to all three of you.

After a 57-year run, Tab is going 10-toes-up. Lost its fizz and flatlined—although with Tab, how could you know? A fresh one tasted like an old one.

Coca-Cola has discontinued its first-ever diet soda, an “underperforming” product that has been eliminated. Like many other companies in the dog-eat-dog food and beverage world, Coke is streamlining and figuring out ways to more efficiently push its upper-tier products.

No longer room for the Tabs of the world.

It was so-named for people “keeping tabs” on their weight. Seems like people that clever could have figured out a way to make it taste better.

The news, of course, is bad for some people. Terrible. It means the guy on the assembly line who put in the bitter taste and the guy on the assembly line who put in the metallic aftertaste are out of jobs.

And we should have a moment of silence for the legion of fans who, despite their devotion, could not keep a product they loved afloat. I’m sure Coca-Cola kept it around for a few years after its life cycle just for the customers who’d loved it for so long.

But most of us fall into the category of “If you ever drank a Tab, then you probably never drank another one.” There is a reason it’s been put out to the pasture to stroll mindlessly about with the Pepsi Blue, Orange Slice, Flintstone Push-up Pops, and Squeez-Its of this unforgiving world.

When Tab debuted in 1963—an answer to the first diet soda, Diet Rite from the Royal Crown Company—it was embraced by a soft-drink-loving, getting-thick-in-the-middle populace. Tab commercials were the norm when I was growing up.

My own personal mother knocked back her share of Tabs back in the day as a twentysomething mother of three. She wasn’t big enough to be on a diet, but when you have a diet drink option instead of the real thing, shouldn’t you drink that?

She has blocked those memories now, but I see the occasional Tab can on the kitchen counter in my little-boy mind. A six-pack would sneak into the icebox now and then. I’m sure one day she took a gulp, wondered why she was torturing herself, said something like “Who wants to lose weight THIS bad?” and said goodbye to Tab with caloric enthusiasm.

Anyway, that was a lot of refreshing gulps of other drinks ago. Momma’s a Diet Spriter now.

One old friend of mine has for years worn his love of Tab like a badge of carbonated honor. He’d buy the 2-liter bottles sometimes. He got hooked, he said, so he could be sure that no one would ever lift a soft drink from his refrigerator.

And they never have. Tab is to good soft drink lovers like garlic, sunlight, mirrors, and the threat of a stake through the heart are to vampires. Run ’em off every time.

Once Diet Coke came on the scene in 1982, Tab’s days were numbered. Even now, as the sun sets, some Tab fans are buying the last cases of their favorite drink, hoarding them like we ravaged the toilet paper aisle in March.

Can’t blame them. I haven’t had an A&W Root Beer at an actual standing A&W Root Beer stand in years. But if I heard they were discontinuing them, I’d go find one and drink until my kidneys burned, then ask how much they’d let me take home.

Hard to believe, but one man’s A&W Root Beer in a frosty mug is another man’s Tab.

To each his own.

That said, we’re sorry, Tab drinkers. We feel your pain. On the bright side, as Tab always did, its extinction will leave a bad taste in your mouth.

And so, in your honor, we lift a frosty mug as a final toast…

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