Commentary and news about sports and sports teams — and media coverage of them.
There were no punts by either team in the Colts 38-31 win over the Chiefs. First time ever that neither team has punted in an NFL postseason game.
There were also no on-side kicks. The Chiefs kicked away late in the game — and deservedly got the ball back with just 8 seconds to play. No guts, no glory.
It also seemed to NewMexiKen as if CBS commentators Dick Enberg and Dan Dierdorf don’t have 100 IQ points between them.
Shannon Sharpe’s cell phone ringing while live on The NFL Today.
From Dan Shaughnessy in the Boston Sunday Globe
The Patriots hadn’t been this cold since the original patriots, coached by George Washington, bunked at Valley Forge in the wicked winter of 1777-78….
Patriot Nation was not deterred. Fans — remember, the word is an abbreviation for “fanatics,” toted blankets and sleeping bags into the stadium. It looked like a winter Woodstock festival with NFL garb instead of tie-dyed T-shirts. Without doing much research, it seemed safe to figure that the outdoor McDonald’s behind the south end zone wasn’t moving many McFlurries. The stouthearted fans couldn’t make much noise with their hands. The sound of 136,000 mittens clapping is actually quite muffled.
From today’s Los Angeles Times Morning Briefing
Dennis Green decided that doing a fishing show on cable television wasn’t enough stimulation, so he took the bait and accepted the Arizona Cardinal coaching job.
Said Randy Hill of foxsports.com: “Despite his fishing insights, Green seems unaware that the Cardinals have been operating on a catch-and-release coaching philosophy.”
And…
Mike Bianchi, in the Orlando Sentinel, to critics who say all the BCS hand-wringing is good for college football: “Mad cow disease creates controversy and conversation too, but that doesn’t make it good.”
Michael Wilbon has a fine piece today on Saturday’s NFL games.
Forget the official temperature, whether it was 4 degrees above zero or 2 above zero . . . It was cold. It was cold enough that the mucus in your nose froze, cold enough that the condensation in your mustache froze, cold enough that I didn’t see any fools with their shirts off with P-A-T-S painted across their bare chests. It was cold enough that if you didn’t cover your ears, they would soon turn the color gray, which from all my years growing up in the Midwest means frostbite. It was too cold for 68,000 people to have shown up here Saturday night. It was so cold local officials ordered extra ambulances to be on standby, cold enough that heated city buses were parked just outside for those seeking respite. It was cold enough that overly officious Patriots ownership relaxed the rules and allowed fans to bring blankets and sleeping bags in which they could wrap themselves. The cheerleaders, normally dressed like Britney Spears, covered their abs completely. There was no fooling around up here Saturday night.
And on the other game…
Goodness, if Mike Martz can’t take at least one shot at winning the game in his dome sweet home with a first down, a timeout and a minute on the clock, what in the world would he have done at zero degrees with a stiff wind? Would he have simply packed it in and gone home? How gutless. You’ve got the Greatest Show on Turf, you’re playing at home, your whole philosophy is pedal-to-the-metal when you have the ball, and you play for a field goal to force overtime when a touchdown sends you to the NFC Championship game?
How does a “genius” like Mike Martz play for OT? How does his massive ego let him get away with that?
His rationale after the game was that he didn’t want to have a pass tipped or something disastrous happen to sabotage the team. Then throw a safe screen pass to Marshall Faulk. Pitch it out to Faulk and let him see how close he can get. By suggesting that the quarterback might make a mistake, after the same quarterback twice led the team downfield (including a two-point conversion) under great pressure, Martz takes all the pressure off the coach, which is so unbelievably gutless.
Amen. No guts, no glory.
Panthers at Rams
Titans at Patriots
Colts at Chiefs
Packers at Eagles
Don’t forget. Get your picks on the record in Comment(s).
By the Numbers, the College Game Has Less Action
The Sugar Bowl, won by Louisiana State over Oklahoma Sunday night, contained the following: 111 replays, 163 informational graphics, 262 changes in the corner score box (down and yardage, statistics), 86 crowd or marching band shots, 120 cuts to the coaches, 28 shots of cheerleaders and 20 sideline reports.
Oh, and 16 minutes 28 seconds of live action generated by 161 plays, or 8.1 seconds per rush, pass, punt, extra point, field goal or kickoff.
Through the prism of obsessive stopwatch analysis, that means that only 7.3 percent of the 3-hour-43-minute game contained real-life movement. It’s not a lot, but any more might require on-field triage.
Throughout the game and during halftime, ABC and its local stations left the Louisiana Superdome 25 times to show 79 commercials (can we ever shake the memory of Snoop Dogg in a series of Nokia commmercials?) and took 35 other diversions to promote its or ESPN’s programming 48 times (have you heard enough about “According to Jim,” the new “Celebrity Mole” and “I’m With Her”?)….
Indianapolis’s 41-10 victory over Denver featured 133 replays, 141 graphics, 222 changes to the corner score box (95 alone in the Colts’ 17-point second quarter), 107 shots of the coaches and 80 fan shots. CBS broke away for commercials 29 times, showing 78 advertisements, and offered 34 promotions for its other programming.
The Colts’ dismantling of the Broncos produced 12 minutes 18 seconds of real-time action. The 132 plays averaged 5.6 seconds each.
Damn! NewMexiKen doesn’t like the Washington NFL franchise. Never has. But, even so, I can’t argue with the proven success and generally class act of Joe Gibbs, who — at age 63 — is apparently returning to coach the team.
died yesterday of brain cancer at age 59. Tug was a relief pitcher for the Mets and Phillies and was the closer when the Phillies won their only World Series in 1980. He is the father of country music star Tim McGraw.
McGraw will always be remembered by NewMexiKen for his answer when asked what he would do with his World Series share — “Ninety percent I’ll spend on good times, women and Irish Whiskey. The other ten percent I’ll probably waste.”
“Before you forgive Pete Rose for stealing the china, you should always count the silverware.”
Thomas Boswell is strong on Rose. The column is well worth reading.
NewMexiKen is just dumbfounded. Who would have believed it?
Over the past 58 seasons (1946-2003) 76 teams have won or shared in the “national championship” of Division I-A college football. Fourteen schools have won the championship or been co-champions more than once. Together they account for 60 of the 76 champion teams (78.9%).
Oklahoma (6 outright, 1 tie)
Notre Dame (5 outright, 3 ties)
Miami (4 outright, 1 tie)
Alabama (2 outright, 5 ties)
USC (3 outright, 3 ties)
Nebraska (3 outright, 2 ties)
Ohio State (2 outright, 4 ties)
Texas (2 outright, 1 tie)
Penn State, Florida State, Tennessee (2 outright each)
Michigan State (1 outright, 2 ties)
Michigan (1 outright, 1 tie)
LSU (2 ties)
Conference standings for all 76 champions and co-champions (teams included in the conference they played in during 2003):
Big 12 (11 outright, 5 ties)
SEC (6 outright, 10 ties)
Big 10 (6 outright, 9 ties)
Big East (6 outright, 1 tie)
Independent (5 outright, 3 ties)
Pac 10 (3 outright, 5 ties)
ACC (4 outright, 1 tie)
Mountain West (1 outright)
[See also here.]
Panthers at Rams
Titans at Patriots
Colts at Chiefs
Packers at Eagles
Put your picks on the record in Comment(s).
The New York Times on Brett Favre’s Dad. That’s Brett and his daddy in the photo.
The Kill, as folks call this town of about 2,000, has been in mourning ever since. In a place where family means the extended kind and the good times are remembered more than the bad, grieving encompasses a fair bit of marvel and laughter.
By now, everyone knows how Brett Favre played the night after his father’s death and turned in a magical performance with 399 yards passing and 4 touchdowns in a 41-7 victory over Oakland. Most suspect, too, that it had to be Big Irv’s divine intervention that allowed Arizona Cardinals quarterback Josh McCown to throw a desperate 28-yard touchdown pass as time expired to defeat the Minnesota Vikings, 18-17, last Sunday and put the Packers in the playoffs.
Affecting story in the Los Angeles Times about the Stoops brother who remained in Youngstown — The Simple Life.
Driving along gray streets at dusk, streets where he grew up, Ron Stoops Jr. says Youngstown has been down on its luck since the steel mills closed. He gives a wisp of a smile to the next question, the one people always ask.
Why does he stay? It makes no sense in a culture that prizes bigger and better, richer and glitzier.
People compare him to his younger brothers. They see Bob Stoops coaching Oklahoma, earning millions of dollars, guiding his team into the BCS national championship game against Louisiana State at the Sugar Bowl tonight. They see Mike taking over at Arizona and hiring Mark, the youngest, as his defensive coordinator.
That makes Ron Jr. the forgotten man in college football’s best-known brother act.
Not that he doesn’t love the game. Any male born into the Stoops family seems genetically coded to live and breathe football. They look like coaches, with close-cropped hair and a certain intensity around the eyes.
“When you think about it,” Ron Jr. says, “that’s what we were destined to do.”
The University of Arizona…..93
Tempe Normal School……….74
From the New York Daily News
It won’t happen for a number of reasons, some of them possibly even valid, but NewMexiKen would pay handsomely to watch USC play the winner of the Sugar Bowl.
Baton Rouge and Oklahoma City.
From T.J. Simers in the Los Angeles Times
I don’t know if you noticed the security guards in yellow jackets standing at the bottom of each aisle in the Rose Bowl. They stuck out here, because they were assigned to watch the spectators all day long, which meant their backs were turned to the action on the field.
Now I figured it’d be impossible to find anyone willing to turn their back on the Rose Bowl, but then I realized most of the guards were probably UCLA grads who had no reason to think anything interesting ever happens on the field behind them.
And as popular as the Trojans are going to be next year and with so many key performers returning, I’d imagine the security company is going to hire more guards to work USC’s games in the Coliseum. Sounds like a good UCLA fund-raiser.
From washingtonpost.com
Coach Steve Spurrier and the Washington Redskins worked out the final details of his resignation this afternoon — after a few hours of confusion in which Spurrier was unaware that he had quit his own job.
Sadly enough there were a lot of things Steve Spurrier appeared to be unaware of these past two years.
Jay Leno on Monday night: “Due to increased terror level, security has been stepped up at the Sugar Bowl. Officials will be looking to stop anyone who doesn’t belong. USC turned in Oklahoma.”
Los Angeles Times columnist T.J. Simers on journalistic fair play:
Although I’ve been a diehard Trojan fan as long as I can remember, I’d like to reassure the losers who still support the Bruins that I intend to be as objective as always in writing about their crummy team, and their dull coach.
Simers goes after Michigan too.
It’s generally accepted that most of us who love the Trojans are rich and a cut above ordinary citizens. So when I return from San Jose, it’s going to make for an interesting couple of Rose Bowl days mingling with all the factory workers from Michigan who have come to the big state hoping to catch a glimpse of Arnold.
I’ve had the grueling experience of being bored by the Midwestern likes of Bubba I, Bubba II and Bubba III, the brothers-in-law, so the shock of listening to yokels cluck about the new Piggly Wiggly in town isn’t going to hit me quite as hard.
I’ve also been to Detroit before, and if you moved all the people from Philadelphia to Detroit, you’d have a pretty good idea of what hell must be like, so I look at this week as a good reminder to once again be on my best behavior.
From the Rocky Mountain News (December 26, 2003)
There are times when the most practical thing for a quarterback to do is play it safe, but, fortunately for the Packers, Favre wasn’t a practical thinker 10 years ago and he isn’t now.
He’s a gunslinger, a born gambler who gets a buzz from knowing how far to push things, then pushing a little harder, as the Denver Broncos are apt to see Sunday at Lambeau Field in Green Bay, Wis.
“A slinger is a guy who makes throws other guys won’t even attempt,” former Broncos quarterback John Elway said several years ago. “At times, you make bad decisions. People wonder why you even made the throw. On the other hand, you make the big play the other guy can’t even try.”
An enduring part of NFL lore, gunslingers shoot holes in defenses, critics and often themselves, but they never bore fans. The job requires cool leadership, a great arm, a larger-than-life personality and inspirational improvisational skills.
It all started with “Slingin’ Sammy” Baugh of the Washington Redskins, who helped usher in the passing game in the 1930s and ’40s.
His successor was Bobby Layne, who partied as hard as he played in the ’50s for the Detroit Lions.
In the ’60s, a slew of gunners made their mark, including Johnny Unitas and Joe Namath.
Roger “The Dodger” Staubach came to the fore in the ’70s for the Dallas Cowboys, as did Oakland’s Kenny Stabler, followed in the ’80s and ’90s by San Francisco’s Joe Montana, Miami’s Dan Marino and Denver’s Elway, whose John Wayne swagger and guns-a-blazin’ bravado enriched a bold legacy.
But these are rocky times for gunslingers, although Atlanta’s Michael Vick could usher in a new era.
Layne was the last quarterback to play without a face mask; he probably would have played without a helmet.
“The secret to a happy life is to run out of cash and air at the same time.”
…Bobby Layne (who died in 1986 at age 59).
“Bobby Layne never lost a game. Time just ran out. Nobody hated to lose more than Bobby.”
…Doak Walker
“Layne, as bad as he looked throwing the ball, was a winner. You’d work him out and you wouldn’t want him, but you’d want him in your huddle. Players feel that way about a quarterback. When a leader’s in there, they’ll perform.”
…Red Hickey