10:09 PM ESPN BCS guru Brad Edwards reports today on ESPN Radio that Penn State will be selected over Iowa for Fiesta Bowl. Iowa is likely to land in the Capital One Bowl, in a game against Ole Miss. Edwards cited TV ratings, fueled by Joe Paterno's presence, as reason PSU gets BCS over Iowa.
10:08 PMDrew Sharp of the Detroit Free Press reports on ESPN News Saturday night that UM AD Bill Martin has confirmed Rich Rodriguez will be back next season as Michigan Coach.
8:37 PMGeorge Smith reports on ESPN News that when UConn scored the game-winning touchdown at Notre Dame Stadium, someone inside the press box yelled "goodbye Charlie (Weis)."
Look, it’s pretty obvious that the Northwestern Wildcats will probably end up doing bad, bad things to the woeful Eastern Michigan Eagles today. It’s a matchup borne out of money and a desire for an easy win. You know it, I know it, both teams probably know it. No, Northwestern isn’t exactly national championship material, but they’re a respectable Big Ten team (oxymoron?) and Eastern Michigan is, well, Eastern Michigan.
But that doesn’t mean EMU deserves to be spotted 3 points at the beginning of the game, does it? Apparently, the Big Ten Network has taken pity on the Eagles and rewarded them with a phantom field goal to start the game. How kind of them. Is that even legal? Why the hell am I watching the Big Ten Network, anyway? These are the questions we’re pondering so far as Week Two of college football kicks off. What’s on your mind?
One of the knocks on the Big Ten recently has been their performance in bowl games. Nowhere was it more starkly evident than just last season, when the conference went 1-6 in bowl games. Iowa was the only team to notch a win, prevailing over utterly hopeless South Carolina.
(”What’s with this football here, eh? Who are these guys in the pads? I want my Jeter!”)
But the gripe from the BXI has always been that aside from the Motor City Bowl in Detroit, the bowl games are essentially road games. The Rose Bowl date with the Pac-10 is in Pasadena, a scant couple miles from the USC campus. Up until this year, three of the conference’s bowl slots were in Florida - SEC country, basically - and the others were in Texas and Arizona. As a matter of fact, in none of the 7 games was the Big Ten team closer to the bowl site than their opponent. It usually wasn’t even close.
The Big Ten is looking to level that playing field just a little bit, though, and reports are that they’re looking hard at a site in New York. One tiny problem, though - there’s going to be lots of those guys in that picture above.
So look, I’m sorry for the bait-and-switch. But the real reason I wanted to post this has less to do with the national champion Northwestern women’s lacrosse team and their raucous partying below (although that’s pretty awesome) than it has to do with the story of Jaclyn Murphy, a high school lacrosse player from New York and cancer survivor.
Murphy was 10 when she was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor, and soon thereafter came to the attention of Northwestern squad, who decided to adopt her as an honorary teammate. They were there every step of the way during her radiation and chemotherapy treatments and during her recovery, and now, at age 14, Murphy is cancer free. And she must be more than a bit of good luck, because since they met, the Wildcats have won five consecutive national titles. Read more…
I was a student at Northwestern when, on January 9th, 1999, the Wildcat men’s basketball team rolled into Champaign, Illinois and dominated the Fighting Illini 59-46 to go to 9-3 on the season. That particular NU squad was led by All-America center Evan Eschmeyer, who was a terrific college player but a poor man’s Marcin Gortat in the NBA (which didn’t prevent Mark Cuban from throwing $20 million at him to suffer a career-ending injury and become a lawyer).
It had all the makings of a magical year in Evanston. At one point the ‘Cats were 14-6 and receiving votes in the major polls, which was a huge development for a school that had never played in the NCAA Tournament. Yet still, outside of Eschmeyer, anyone connected to the hoops program could walk through town without causing much of a stir. That was especially true of coach Kevin O’Neill, who is back in the news after being hired this past weekend to clean up whatever mess USC is eventually going to find itself in. O’Neill was quite fond of the local drinking establishments — perhaps a bit too fond. And it may have derailed Northwestern’s shot at history.
I’m not going to suggest that the Boston Celtics weren’t completely focused last night, but…for God’s sake, they lost to the freakin’ Los Angeles Clippers! I know that they were without Kevin Garnett, and then Paul Piercedislocated his thumb in the third quarter. And I know that the axiom that there are no easy road games in the NBA.
Except when you are playing the Los Angeles Clippers - I don’t care where you play them or what the circumstances are, that should be an “easy game” for any team. If they can’t beat the Clippers, then I guess we can eliminate the Celtics as legitimate NBA Finals contenders. We might as well go ahead and crown the Lakers…
…who lost to Sacramento earlier this year, who actually somehow have managed to be worse this season than the Clippers. OK then, how about the Cavaliers? What, they lost to Washington earlier this season? We’re going to wind up with the Spurs as champions again, aren’t we. The point is: it was a really, really bad loss, but no worse than any other team has during the course of a season. Let’s not freak out to much about it yet.
Nothing against Nolan Smith, but doesn’t anyone who isn’t a Duke fan feel good about seeing a Blue Devil get laid out by a vicious screen? Maryland’s Dave Neal was the one delivering the shot, flooring Smith and causing Mike Krzyzewski to fume. Smith had to be helped off the court but didn’t appear to be seriously injured, allowing us to enjoy our little moment of schadenfreude:
Of course, as the CHARLOTTE OBSERVER points out, that screen might have been the worst thing that could have happened to the Terrapins, as Duke’s Gerald Henderson came out of the ensuing time out as a man on a mission, scoring 11 of his 19 points in the game’s final 15 minutes and change afterward. Or, it could just be that Duke is a much better team than possibly NIT-bound Maryland; either way, Duke won 78-67.
Meanwhile, this is how bad it’s gotten for Indiana: they were swept by Northwestern. The Wildcats did what would have seemed improbable going into this season, breaking a 35-game losing streak at Indiana on Wednesday with a 75-53 victory. Then again, even with a young, inexperienced team, thinking that Indiana would be 6-21 overall or 1-14 in the Big Ten would have been pretty loopy before the season started.
More sports news as you fire up your NES and decide whether to play “Wrestle Jam” as Randy “The Ram” Robinson or The Ayatollah:
Remember those Powerade commercials that had LeBron Jamessinking one full-court shot after another to the amazement of a local reporter. After watching this pre-game video found by BALL DON’T LIE of King James swishing a more than half-court shot - underhanded- I’m starting to wonder how much editing trickery was used:
Further proof that Alex Rodriguez just doesn’t get it: FOX SPORTS says that after hitting a home run in his first Spring Training game, he left the stadium in an SUV … with his cousin Yuri Sucart, the same cousin who was allegedly his steroid supplier.
REUTERS says Australian swimmer Nick D’Arcy - pulled from the Olympic team after allegedly caving in another athlete’s face during a barroom brawl while celebrating making the team - will have to wait another month to learn his fate.
I know it’s from the Celebrity Game during All-Star Weekend, so it’s a little bit old, but seeing ESPN’s Jon Barry bite this hard on the old Harlem Globetrotters “Confetti in the Bucket” trick is worth it. Didn’t he ever watch the Globetrotters on “Wide World of Sports” as a kid?:
Another day, another investment scam impacting sports. This time NEWSDAY reports that two former New York Islanders executives have been arrested and charged with “with misappropriating more than $500 million in client investments, including tens of millions allegedly taken for things like expensive stallions and pricey Teddy bears.”
More news in the slow, inevitable slog towards Manny Ramirez finally signing with the Los Angeles Dodgers: the LA TIMES reports that the team has made him a two-year, $45 million offer that he could respond to as early as today.
CANES COUNTRY has another sign that either newspapers are dying or economy is falling through a well (or both): the News & Observer has decided to not send reporters to Carolina Hurricanes away games, likely for the rest of the season and possibly beyond.
The PALM BEACH POST reports that Michael Jordan and his 30-year-old paramour, Cuban model Yvette Prieto, are moving in together in a house in suburban Miami. Michael: if you find Charlie Sheen coming out of your house at odd hours of the night, you have bigger things to worry about than your underwear.
When it comes to sports, Northwestern University has had a mixed bag of success & failure. The Wildcats have had well-known struggles in ‘revenue sports’, i.e. a football team that once had a 34-game losing streak & a men’s basketball team that has never been to the NCAA tournament. But NU has also excelled through other athletic avenues, such as a women’s lacrosse squad that has won four national championships in a row (and counting), and a softball team that were national runners-up in 2006.
However, before any of these activities came to Evanston, there was one squad on campus that not only kept its members in shape, but also rescued many shipwrecked souls - the Northwestern Life-Saving team.
One of the arguments I’ve heard over and over about keeping the current BCS system in college football is that a playoff would make the regular season irrelevant. Why get fired up about USC losing to Oregon State if they are still going to make it into the playoffs? The traditionalists, conference heads and Beano Cook all agree that college football already has a playoff called the regular season, and a postseason playoff would only tarnish it and make it unimportant.
Allow me to offer a counter argument based on last night’s college basketball results. Go tell the Northwestern basketball fans (and yes, they do exist) that the regular season doesn’t matter because it’s all about March Madness. In what might be the greatest day in Northwestern basketball history (and possibly the only great day in Northwestern basketball history), the Wildcats beat No. 7 Michigan State 70-63, their first win at East Lansing since 1984.
Or, go ask Virginia Tech fans if they are excited about knocking off No. 1 Wake Forest 78-71, handing the Demon Deacons their first loss of the season (that is if you can get them off the court.) Or Clemson fans how they feel about their team extending their record at North Carolina to 0-54 after getting shellacked 94-70 by the Tar Heels in a match-up of Top Ten teams.
But clearly, nobody cares about college basketball until March, which is why ESPN has about 500 games on a night across their vast network of channels. Seriously, this logic is as flawed as the BCS system itself - college basketball is thriving because of March Madness, not in spite of it, and nights like last night serve as a pretty stark reminder why.
The NBA also has a playoff at the end of the regular season, and people seem to be watching that as well (at least the final three minutes or so of games). And it was a pretty fun night there, too, if not as upset-filled. For example, the Lakers beating the Clippers 108-97? Not a surprise.
But Andrew Bynumgoing off for 42 points and 15 rebounds? Big surprise. The Lakers are already among the league’s elite teams. If they get anything resembling that kind of production from Bynum on a regular basis, it’s a scary proposition for the rest of the NBA.
Here’s the other sports news you missed last night as you were still stuck in traffic trying to get back from the Presidential Inauguration:
With all the great basketball finishes last night, the best one was certainly in the SMU vs. Marshall game, where Markel Humphrey made a 75-foot shot as time expired to give the Thundering Herd a 53-50 victory. WSAZ-TV has the story and video.
Rod Marinelli isn’t bitter at the Detroit media. No, not at all. MLIVE.COM says the new defensive line coach for the Bears greeted some male Detroit writers who approached him at the Senior Bowl with a curt “Hello, Ladies” before ignoring them. Needless to say, a women’s sports group has already squeezed an apology out of him. Hey, he might not like the Detroit media, but at least he didn’t steal their luggage.
Ever see the scores of one of those ridiculous high school basketball blowouts and wonder what it feels like to be unceremoniously thrashed? The DALLAS MORNING NEWS talks to the players on the Dallas Academy’s girls basketball team after their 100-0 loss on Tuesday to find out.
OK, I understand that Stanford might be having budget woes, as INSIDE BAY AREA reports. But they have a squash team? What’s next, racquetball? Kickball?
I imagine being a ball boy is a rough job - physically demanding, pressure-filled, and having to deal with your friends’ jokes about your job title. So what you probably don’t need is to take a forehand to the head, like STUFF NEW ZEALAND says this poor kid did at the Australian Open:
After getting ripped by Troy Aikman, who said that he didn’t “fully grasp what being the Cowboys quarterback is all about,” Tony Romo tells the DALLAS MORNING NEWS that he has vowed to change his leadership style in 2009. The first step: personally delivering a Singapore-style caning to anyone who speaks to Ed Werder.
With Charles Barkley having exited the broadcast booth (temporarily or permanently), it’s fallen on Chris Webber and Gary Payton to pick up the slack of slightly insane basketball analysts, and they are doing a fair job of it. NESW SPORTS has video of them slamming Nene for getting married over the All-Star break, which devolves into suggesting that Dwight Howard dunk over him and his bride. Good stuff.
In yet another example of the failing economy intruding into the protective bubble we call sports, the CLEVELAND PLAIN DEALER reports that the Browns have laid off 18 employees, including their Director of Media Relations. Perhaps Rod Marinelli could handle a second job?
A high school basketball coach in Philadelphia tells the PHILADELPHIA DAILY NEWS that he doesn’t blame his player who sucker punched him in the back of the head following a close loss, but feels for him. If only my old boss was so forgiving after I kneed him in the groin after he cost us the Putnam Electronics deal.
