Category: Sports

Commentary and news about sports and sports teams — and media coverage of them.

Change of heart

From the Los Angeles Times:

In what could best be described as a terrible case of buyer’s remorse, Rick Majerus apparently plans to resign as USC men’s basketball coach, only days after calling it his “dream job.”

Majerus, 56, who said last week he had bought himself out of his reported five-year, $500,000 contract as an ESPN analyst, will return to the cable network, ESPN officials said Saturday night.
…

Days Name Team Outcome
1 Eddie Stanky Rangers Quit after managing one game in 1977.
2 Britney Spears Celebrity Annulled ’04 marriage to Jason Alexander.
4 Wally Backman Diamondbacks Fired in ’04 when legal trouble discovered.
5 George O’Leary Notre Dame Resigned in ’01; lied about background.
9 Cher Celebrity Divorced Gregg Allman in ’75
21 Dan Marino Dolphins Quit as team executive in 04.
31 William Henry Harrison Presidency 9th president died of pneumonia in 1841.
34 Magic Johnson Lakers Finished ’94 season as coach; didn’t return.

Lets see all the award winners

NewMexiKen thinks college football (at all levels) should come together for an annual awards ceremony to present the Heisman, Bednarik, Biletnikoff, Butkus, Walter Camp, Groza, Ray Guy, Hendricks, Lombardi, Mackey, Maxwell, Nagurski, O’Brien, Outland, Thorpe, Unitas, Doak Walker, Walter Payton and other awards.

As it is, because it’s presented by the New York Athletic Club, the Heisman gets a disproportionate amount of publicity while some of these other actually more important awards are presented in relative anonymity. A televised awards show (throw in coach of the year, best cheerleaders, what-have-you) could be a popular post season event I’d think.

And another thing. How come these awards are given before the bowl games? When first established, many of the bowl games were just post season fun. Now, with the BCS especially, the outcome of these games is critical for a team. Why determine awards before the most important game of the season?

Sweetness

From The Sports Network:

William & Mary quarterback Lang Campbell was named the 18th winner of the Walter Payton Award [Friday night] at the Division I-AA College Football Awards held in Chattanooga, TN on the eve of the I-AA national championship game.

Campbell completed a remarkable 66 percent of his passes (215-of-326) for 3,037 yards. He tossed 21 touchdowns while throwing just one interception in the regular season.

Champions

Without the benefit of polls or computers, the James Madison University Dukes defeated the University of Montana Grizzlies 31-21 Friday night to become the football champions of NCAA Division I-AA.

James Madison is a state university in Harrisonburg, Virginia (in the Shenandoah Valley).

A couple more …

from Sideline Chatter:

Now Kobe Bryant is feuding again, this time with Karl Malone, claiming his former teammate made a pass at Mrs. Bryant during a recent Lakers game.

Veteran NBA watchers professed shock at the allegation. No, not that Karl might have done it — but rather that Kobe knew any definition of the word “pass.”

******

Jim Sweeney, Dennis Erickson’s old college coach and mentor, says Erickson won’t quit as coach of the 2-11 San Francisco 49ers. OK, fine.

But when Sweeney told the San Jose Mercury News that “Dennis doesn’t have a quitting bone in his body; I don’t think he’s quit anything in his life,” well, that struck a nerve with Chris Cluff, The Times copy desk’s resident Cougar.

Reminded Cluff: “But Jim, what about when Dennis quit Wyoming to go to Washington State? And then quit WSU to go to Miami? And then quit Miami to go to the Seahawks? And then quit Oregon State to go to the 49ers?”

Bonding

As reported by Sideline Chatter:

“It turns out Pete Rose has been betting on whether or not Barry Bonds used steroids.”

Jay Leno

Comedian Argus Hamilton, citing legal precedent for possible penalties Bonds could face for using steroids in his state: “He could get four to eight years as governor of California.”

Big game

James Madison vs. William & Mary

ESPN2 5PM MT Today

Winner advances to Division I-AA Championship next Friday against the winner of the Sam Houston State @ Montana game (tomorrow at noon MT on ESPN2).

Championship? Playoffs? Unlike the Division I-A presidents, the presidents of these schools must want to be football factories. All four teams have already played 13 games (all four are 11-2).

Cheap seats

Morning Briefing:

So what Christmas gift do you give someone who has everything? How about two courtside seats to the Lakers’ Christmas Day game against the Miami Heat?

They’re available through StubHub.com. And the asking price? Only $17,648 each. But the asking price for a courtside seat has been as high as $29,413.

That’s the Shaq-Kobe meeting, but …

Talking the talk

From Sideline Chatter:

Broadcaster Dick Enberg, in his new autobiography, recalling his first television assignment in L.A. in 1963 — a USC-UCLA water-polo match: “I didn’t know one thing about the sport. I used to wonder how they got the horses in the pool.” [Oh, my!]

NBC’s Jay Leno, on the Lakers’ loss to the Chicago Bulls: “That’s like losing to Jessica Simpson in ‘Jeopardy!'”

Headline at borowitzreport.com: “Fearing attacks by athletes, fans take steroids.”

Cheaters never prosper

From report in The New York Times:

Cal (10-1) is ranked fourth in the Associated Press news media poll and in the coaches poll, but according to USA Today, Cal was ranked seventh by four coaches and eighth by two others after its 26-16 victory at Southern Mississippi last Saturday. The previous week, none of the 61 coaches who vote ranked Cal lower than sixth.

And one coach voted Texas number 2. USA Today has the complete breakout.

Let’s see. The Rose Bowl pay out is $4.5 million (Big 12). The Holiday Bowl take is $2 million (Pac 10).

Ivan’s fault

The Irish Trojan’s Blog reminds us that this isn’t the first time Mother Nature has messed with the Pac 10.

Six years ago, a University of California school from the Pac-10 was one win away from a trip to college football’s national-championship game, but was tripped up at the last possible moment by a non-conference game that had been rescheduled from September due to a hurricane. The threat of Hurricane Georges postponed the UCLA-Miami game from Sept. 26 to Dec. 5, and the then-#2-ranked Bruins missed out on a trip to the Fiesta Bowl because they lost 49-45 on the last day of the regular season.

This year, another September hurricane helped keep another highly ranked University of California school from the Pac-10 out of a big-time bowl game. Mighty Ivan delayed the non-conference showdown between Cal and Southern Miss from Sept. 16 to Dec. 4, and although the #4-ranked Berkeley Bears didn’t wind up losing on the last day of the season, like the Bruins did in 1998, they did “struggle” — if a 26-16 win (which should have been 33-16) on the road against a bowl-bound team can really be described as “struggling” — and it cost them a Rose Bowl berth, as poll voters rebelled and gave the BCS edge to Texas.

Dynasty

NewMexiKen’s neighborhood high school, La Cueva, defeated Clovis 40-0 yesterday to win the New Mexico Class 5A Football Championship.

For the second year in a row.

Undefeated (13-0) both years.

By the way, NewMexiKen has not seen the film Friday Night Lights, but the book by H. G. Bissinger, first published in 1990, is simply outstanding.

Choosing Florida over Notre Dame

The SportsProf has an exceptionally thoughtful take on Urban Meyer’s choice, despite this self-described “harsh … throwaway line” —

So, Notre Dame is struggling to find a football team that the school can once again be proud of, while the average SEC school is struggling to find a school that the football team can be proud of.

William & Mary 44 Delaware 38 (2 OT)

Thanks primarily to the in-person cheering of Mack, official oldest grandchild of NewMexiKen, the College of William and Mary scored 21 fourth quarter points to tie Delaware, then defeated the Blue Hens in two overtimes. The Tribe advances to the semi-finals of the NCAA I-AA football championship.

Mack’s mother and aunt, William and Mary alumnae, were probably instrumental in the cheering as well.

And all I can say is that it is crazy hard to “watch” a football game strictly by monitoring the ESPN internets scoreboard.

Might have wanted to take that call

As reported by Morning Briefing:

Pete Carroll spent a year out of football before accepting the USC coaching job. When Jeff Fellenzer had Carroll as a guest on his “One-on-One” Charter cable show, he asked Carroll if during that time there were any college coaching opportunities that interested him.

Carroll said he’d called North Carolina to inquire about the opening at that school, but no one called back.

Wonder if the person who was supposed to call back now realizes that he or she might have made a mistake?

The first person to live to 1,000 might be 60 already

Dr. Aubrey de Grey, University of Cambridge, writing for BBC News:

Ageing is a physical phenomenon happening to our bodies, so at some point in the future, as medicine becomes more and more powerful, we will inevitably be able to address ageing just as effectively as we address many diseases today.

I claim that we are close to that point because of the SENS (Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence) project to prevent and cure ageing.

It is not just an idea: it’s a very detailed plan to repair all the types of molecular and cellular damage that happen to us over time.

And each method to do this is either already working in a preliminary form (in clinical trials) or is based on technologies that already exist and just need to be combined.
…

So, will this happen in time for some people alive today? Probably. Since these therapies repair accumulated damage, they are applicable to people in middle age or older who have a fair amount of that damage.

I think the first person to live to 1,000 might be 60 already.

Link via kottke.org.

Ice chips

From Sideline Chatter:

The end of the NHL lockout just might be in the cards.

“ESPN2 has been airing poker tournaments in place of the missing hockey broadcasts,” wrote Roger Brown of Cleveland’s Plain Dealer. “For the most part, the poker games have been drawing better ratings than the hockey contests did last year.”

Coach Willingham

Byron sent me some thoughts on Notre Dame firing its football coach.

I was upset that Willingham was fired until I really thought about it.

Here are the facts:

ND lost to BYU to open the season. A BYU team that went 5-6 and lost to UNLV one of the worst teams in the country. Inexcusable for a much more talented team (ND) to not be ready to play BYU. Answer: they were outprepared and outcoached.

ND lost two games on last second field goals. Once is a fluke, twice is poor preparation and execution (poor coaching).

ND was outscored in the second half of the games they lost by 35 points (82-47). This was never more egregious than in the USC game where they were outscored 24-0 in the second half. They allowed USC to score the last 38 points of that game. They were outcoached. Consistently all year long, they were outcoached.

Willingham is a helluva guy. I respect him, I love the way he carries himself and I think he represented Notre Dame very well in every aspect save one: in between the lines on Saturday.

NewMexiKen agrees with this and is offended by commentary to the effect of, “See, Notre Dame is a football factory like the rest.”

Hello! Notre Dame is the football factory. My god, they call the mural on the library “Touchdown Jesus” for heaven’s sake.