4:44 PM Cleveland Browns owner Randy Lerner is reportedly interested in hiring Mike Holmgren to run his team, a la Bill Parcells with the Dolphins. Other names mentioned include ex-Giants GM Ernie Accorsi, ex-Packers GM Ron Wolf and current Falcons president Rick McKay.
4:34 PM The creamsicle unis worked! Tampa Bay earns its first win of the season with a come-from-behind 38-28 victory over Green Bay. Raheem Morris gets his first win as Bucs coach & gets the game ball from his team. And the NFL is now free of any winless franchises this season.
4:20 PM Early games recap: Colts stay perfect with 20-17 win over Texans; Jumping out to a 31-7 halftime lead, the Cardinals hold off the Bears 41-21; Bengals beat Ravens 17-7; Patriots defeat Dolphins 27-17.
If you hadn’t been paying close attention - and we don’t blame you if you hadn’t - Terry Bowden ain’t dead yet, #*%$#@!! Terry was the first member of the vaunted Bobby Bowden family tree to be unceremoniously dismissed from D-I in 1998; brother Jeff left his post as FSU OC during the 2006 season, TommyBowden was fired from Clemson halfway through last year, and Bobby will probably be murdered if he tries to come back after this season, so you’d think the sun was setting on the Bowden legacy.
Not so, bitches, not so. Terry Bowden resurfaced this year at Northern Alabama, a Division II school, to about the amount of fanfare you’d expect: a couple wowreallywhatevers and about a week of headlines. Then it’s off to pay more attention to I-A, because come on. Bowden’s on a slower track to success, winning a modest amount of games and oh who are we kidding, he’s tearing D-II up and he’s probably going to be the last Bowden in I-A.
According to ESPN, it looks like the NCAA’s thinking about hiring a permanent “point person” for the BCS, rather than the current system where the BCS spokesman has been the commissioner of one of the conferences on a two-year, rotating basis. That doesn’t seem like much of a problem… up until that conference commissioner has to explain to people why his team just got an unpopular spot in the national title game.
(I think this’ll work.)
So, since we’re helpers as always, we’ve decided that the NCAA is absolutely right. The problem with the BCS system isn’t one of the myriad fundamental flaws that college football fans routinely point out, like the fact that no other sport uses a one-game system for the title or that teams who go undefeated at least deserve a shot at the title. No no, we’re going to need a spokesperson for this. Fortunately, we’ve got four candidates lined up for you.
Michael David Smith today @ AOL Fanhouse: “Lee Corso suffered a stroke in May, and on Saturday’s College GameDay, it was obvious from hearing him speak that he hasn’t completely recovered from it. But I admire him for staying on the air, and I admire ESPN for allowing him to stay on the air.”
(Corso picks LSU today on GameDay while Herbstreit gives Gator chomp)
I actually think there hasn’t been much dropoff in Corso’s performance to this point. And I never thought I’d say this: I miss him on afternoon and evening drop-ins. He, for me, crossed-over into a living room personality long ago - type of guy you don’t realize you miss until he’s gone. A little like Leno. Read more…
In case you haven’t watched a single sporting event on television in the last 10 years, you might not know this, but urinary health is a big issue among men over 50 and ad executives. Apparently, you probably don’t have a going problem, but a growing problem. You… well, I’ll just let you watch the commercials, don’t want to spoil the surprise.
(”And so I get an MRI, and I kid you not, dadgummit, my prostate’s the size of a cantaloupe, just bulbous, just… you’re not grossed out by this, are you son?”)
Ah, but if you haven’t watched a sporting event on television, odds are pretty good that you’re also a college football coach, that small sect of America who work 90-hour weeks and just don’t have time for the distraction of ESPN. Oh, but if you’re very old - like Bobby Bowden - we have a perfect storm of prostate disaster. Here, we’ll let Bowden explain.
The findings of a year-long investigation into alleged academic fraud at Free Shoe Florida State University are in, and they’re not pretty for Seminole fans. According to the ST. PETERSBURG TIMES, Florida State will be forced to vacate all seven wins that Bobby Bowden’s football program earned in 2007. That’s the result of the exposure and subsequent dismissal of a member of FSU’s academic support staff, who cheated to help some 61 athletes in football, men’s and women’s basketball, softball, track and field (which won an indoor national championship), men’s and women’s golf, baseball and softball stay eligible. Oh, and swimming. Basically, if you were on a sports team at Florida State in 2007, you’re about to lose every single win you earned with your team.
COLLEGE FOOTBALL TALK has a complete breakdown of the sanctions, and they are voluminous. Losing all those wins — and the national title — aren’t the only hit the Seminoles are taking. The sanctions that were released call for the school to cut back on scholarships for the football program (five in 2009-10 and six in 2010-11), men’s basketball (12 instead of 13 through 2011) and women’s basketball (13 instead of 15 through 2011). If you thought six scholarships aren’t that big a deal, consider how many borderline players actually make a big impact in college football … and how many times FSU has missed with its biggest recruits in recent years. That could be big trouble.
There are many ways for a coach to deal with a tough loss. Most involve profanity, raised voices, and a hair-trigger temper, ready to unload a fusillade of invective at that miserable fat piece of f*cksh*t who missed on that block in the third quarter and let the defensive end decapitate the star QB. That’s usually how a loss goes. But longtime Ohio State coach and opponent-puncherWoody Hayes had his own way of dealing with the stress of a loss: conducting post-game interviews naked.
That got us to wondering, though: Seeing Woody Hayes give an interview while buck naked would be repulsive. But it could probably get worse, yes? Of course it could; Hayes is hardly the worst-physiqued man in college football history. So after the break, we present the 5 worst coaches to see naked in college football today. Buckle up, bulimics; today’s your lucky day.
After a late night of partying, there’s pretty much nothing better than McDonald’s (which might explain Michael Phelps’endorsement deal with the fast food joint). It’s greasy, it’s bad for you and it’s delicious. But after a night of alleged drinking and pot smoking, perhaps Florida State receiver Preston Parker should have settled for ordering a pizza, or seeing if there were any Ho-Hos in the cupboards.
(Parker dozed off after his “no mustard” request @ McDonalds took 45 minutes)
WARCHANT.COM reports that Parker was arrested on Saturday night and charged with DUI after passing out at a McDonald’s drive-thru. Cops found him slumped over in his car with the engine running, his foot on the brake and the car in drive, where he had been for the past 20 minutes. It turned out that he was under the legal limit for alcohol, but tested positive for pot.
(This wood shack in Manitoba is where you can find Barry for the next six months)
The news came as authorities raided the house of trainer Greg Anderson’s mother-in-law in an effort to put pressure on Anderson to testify against Bonds, which he has thus far refused to do. Anderson has been in prison for more than a year for contempt of court. Much more on this to come today, I’m sure.
The Internet was abuzz when Mickey Rourke called out Chris Jericho on the red carpet at the SAG Awards the other night and said he would participate in April’s Wrestlemania, presumably as his Randy “The Ram” Robinson character from The Wrestler. Well, that excitement lasted all of three days.
The last thing anyone wants to be these days is the #1 team in college basketball. For the third straight week, the top-ranked team went down. This time, it was last week’s #1 Wake Forest taking down Duke, which rallied from a 13-point deficit in the 2nd half but forgot to play defense on the last play of the game. James Johnson’s virtually uncontested layin with 0.8 on the clock gave the Demon Deacons a 70-68 win. Here’s the end of the game. If you want to see the last play, skip to about the 3:50 mark:
• SI.COM isn’t bowing to the liberal media, as they’ve brought conservative pundit (and vaguely Palin-esque) S.E. CUPP (yeah, that’s her name) on board as a columnist. Her first subject? Bull-riding, of course. THE BIG LEAD has more.
• Everybody thinks they can run an MLB team. Now, 2K Sports is giving you the chance to prove it. Billy Beane is the pitchman for MLB Front Office Manager, which lets you run a franchise as a GM and see if you can screw up as badly as Steve Phillips. There are some other titles out there along these lines (I like Baseball Mogul), but this still looks like it could be pretty cool for all the seamheads out there. CNET’s GEEK GESTALT blog has a story on the launch.
• The OKLAHOMAN says that Oklahoma City sports anchor and former ABC sideline reporter Dean Blevinsfell and hit his head on some ice on Monday, causing him to miss the Oklahoma-Oklahoma State game. He says he actually was laid out unconscious for at least 45 minutes in broad daylight before a neighbor noticed. Yikes.
• Iowa radio broadcaster Ed Podolak, who resigned after photos of him enjoying himself a little too much in Tampa before the Outback Bowl hit the web, is seeking “professional treatment,” according to THE WIZ OF ODDS. If everyone who’d ever had pictures taken of them drunkenly hitting on a questionable girl sought treatment, half of America would be in rehab.
• PRO FOOTBALL TALK reports that Jon Grudenfinally spoke out after getting thrown under a entire fleet of buses over the last two weeks by his former players. He called himself “Chucky,” and didn’t outright deny interest in the Notre Dame job. He probably would’ve been better off just staying disappeared.
Florida State has seemingly gone out of its way to let Bobby Bowden walk away on his own terms, but Bowden and the Seminoles will have quite the interesting situation on their hands if he’s not ready to walk away after the 2010 season.
FSU hasn’t been a juggernaut as of late, and even Bowden himself has indicated that he doesn’t think the program will see a major renaissance under his watch. But he’s just two wins behind Joe Paterno on the all-time list, and JoePa is signed up for three more years at Penn State. If Bowden wants to end his career as the wins leader, he’ll have to stick around a while. But is it worth $5 million to the university?
