3:13 PM Oh god, looks like English Premier League soccer player Darren Bent of Sunderland just gave Chad Ochocincoan idea.
3:01 PM Idaho Coach Robb Key has no qualms about blowing up a huge BCS payday for the WAC conference by beating Boise State on Saturday and knocking the Broncos out of a BCS bowl game. Has the BCS distorted college football culture or what?
2:47 PM Iowa QB Ricky Stanzi is gone for the regular season with ankle surgery. He may return for the Hawkeyes' bowl game, but Kirk Ferentz notes that prognosis might be "optimistic."
2:30 PMJosh Childress, who left the Atlanta Hawks to play in Greece, has come down with swine flu. He's the third player on the Olympiakos squad to become infected by the H1N1 virus, although the other two players have since fully recovered.
The wait is finally over. Our favorite Indian pitching hopefuls, Rinku Singh and Dinesh Patel — who we have followed throughout their journey to America — have been signed to a minor league contract by the Pittsburgh Pirates. Makes sense. Nothing else works for the Bucs, so why not trot out a couple of guys who didn’t know what Denny’s was until two weeks ago?
(The guy in the middle is probably getting signed by the Mariners)
But not so fast. The news of the signings came from YAHOO! JAPAN, and was written in, you know, Japanese. So it’s not entirely clear if they have actually signed on the dotted lines. The Pirates have not announced anything official, and Pirates GM Neal Huntington is being a bit elusive about what exactly is going on. Either the deal isn’t done, or the Bucs are wary of becoming a punchline for signing the dynamic duo.
Thank God we finally have Brady Quinn’s first start out of the way so we don’t have to listen to the speculation every week about when he’s going to get a shot and see that stupid NFL draft footage anymore. Why do so many people care? I mean, great, he played pretty well for Notre Dame against Navy and Stanford but got killed in every big game. Way to go, bud, I guess doing all that and playing absolutely no NFL football is good enough to get yourself a Fathead.
Brady did, however, have the Browns in good position to win last night, leading the Broncos 23-13 after three quarters. But Jay Cutler finally lived up to his own hype and got it done in the fourth quarter, like a certain other Bronco quarterback did a couple of times in Cleveland. (See, aren’t these Cutler-Elway comparisons just ridiculous?) Denver scored three touchdowns in the fourth quarter and won the game 34-30. Cutler threw for 447 yards in the game, and Quinn put up a respectable 239 yards with two touchdowns. The game was viewed by approximately 39 fans on the NFL Network, and 17 people on a choppy SopCast feed from Denmark.
Speaking of football games nobody could watch, #10 Utah rallied from an early 10-0 deficit and beat #11 TCU 13-10 last night in a game that was on some channel called CBS College Sports. Never did I think I’d actually be complaining that a game wasn’t on Versus. Since this channel isn’t part of my DirecTV package, I assume that it ended in exciting fashion. Actually, there’s proof that it ended in exciting fashion (and a Dan Fouts sighting!).
(”I used to be on Monday Night Football and now I’m calling Mountain West games on some station that 4% of the country gets.”)
Over on ESPN, Virginia Tech took care of Maryland 23-13, plunging the ACC into even more mediocrity. Freshman Darren Evans set a school record with 253 rushing yards. One of the odd BCS rules out there is that a non-BCS team can actually automatically qualify for a BCS game if they finish in the top 16 AND finish ahead of the winner of one of the BCS conferences. And never has this been more possible with the top ACC being currently ranked 19th (North Carolina) and all 12 teams in the league sitting with at least two conference losses. So just because Utah or Boise State loses a game or you think Ball State is too far down to make it, it’s still very likely that we’ll be seeing one of these teams on Fox in January.
There was a spectacular ending in the NBA last night in Portland that most of you on the East Coast probably missed. With the Rockets trailing the Blazers 98-96 with 1.9 seconds left in overtime, Yao Ming hit an 18-foot baseline jumper while he was being hacked to tie the game. He then made the free throw to give the Rockets a 99-98 lead. But Brandon Roy swished a rainbow 30-footer as time expired to give the Blazers a crazy 101-99 win. Check out the video:
• Our favorite Indian pitchers, Rinku Singh and Dinesh Patel, finally had their tryout yesterday. The ARIZONA REPUBLIC’s Jim Walsh has the details. In short, a lot of scouts think they deserve a shot, but nobody thinks it should be their team that gives it to them.
• The SAN DIEGO UNION TRIBUNE quotes Padres GM Kevin Towers as saying that Jake Peavy’s “train has left the station,” which means the ‘07 Cy Young winner is going to be traded soon. He also has a full no-trade clause.
• The University of Oregon is debuting a baseball team this season. And you know what that means — ridiculous Nike uniforms!
The lines in the gray pinstripe uniforms are not actually solid lines — they’re the complete text of the university fight song.
• The Joe Calzaghe-Roy Jones Jr. fight this Saturday isn’t really captivating boxing fans. BOXING NEWS says it’s because the fight is such a mismatch in Calzaghe’s favor.
A few weeks ago we introduced you to Dinesh Patel and Rinku Singh, who won a television reality contest in India that brought them America to try and become the first professional baseball players from their country. And while the whole thing seemed silly at the time, it now appears that the guys are going to actually get a legitimate shot.
(The guy on the left didn’t even know it was Halloween)
At least 20 Major League teams are expected to send representatives to a workout on Thursday featuring the two aspiring pitchers. One scout gives them an 85% chance of making it in baseball, which is a victory for all of us – because the longer they’re here, the longer we get to read the comedy gold that is their blog. (Bad Boys isn’t their favorite movie anymore!)
Barry Bonds might not be playing baseball these days, but he hasn’t given up on the game altogether. Seems that between attemps to drop off the face of the Earth, he’s giving baseball lessons to a couple of Indian pitchers — and I don’t mean Cliff Lee and Fausto Carmona. He even had them over to the house.
(Their best pitch is the “wicked googly”)
The Million Dollar Arm is like American Idol, except it’s in India and instead of a pop star they wade through thousands of cricket bowlers with good arms to find two who get the opportunity to try and be the first Indian to play pro baseball in the U.S. The winners then travel to America, play some games for a small Christian school in So Cal, and write an unintentionally hilarious blog.
Excerpts, and details of the Bonds meeting, after the jump
