6:27 PMUConn defeats Notre Dame 33-30 in overtime, most like spelling the end of Charlie Weis' tenure at Notre Dame. Since 1975 at Notre Dame Stadium, Weis is 19-14, the worst losing percentage of any Irish coach, including Gerry Faust.
5:29 PMSt. Petersburg Times columnist Robyn E. Blumner is alarmed that state-funded college football coaches inject religion into their programs. She's a little late to the party, but does have a point. Wonder if ACLU will take notice.
5:07 PM Not really sure why the Sacramento Bee is reportingChris Webber calling Sacto "Cowtown" as news. That's what everyone in the state calls the city. Same thing with my hometown, Kansas City - and no one cares there.
4:42 PM Surprise from early games: Texas Tech smokes Oklahoma. Another big win for Mike Leach, who could be headed to Louisville after the season to take over Cards football program.
It’s not often that injury news takes us completely aback, but that’s absolutely the case over in Pullman tonight. One slightly mentioned aspect of last weekend’s game pitting Washington State against Southern Methodist was WSU’s tailback, James Montgomery, suffering an apparent knee injury. Not that those aren’t serious, but, y’know… they happen.
But one thing that doesn’t usually happen is a potentially fatal injury that nobody recognizes immediately. That’s what apparently befell Montgomery during the game; after the game, he reported increasing discomfort with the knee, and went in for surgery on Sunday morning. It probably saved his life.
If you’re an athlete, going on Twitter & posting anything more controversial than where you went to dinner last night is akin to handing Lenny Dykstra your investment portfolio and telling him to “figure something out”: it’s pretty much a recipe for disaster. Not only are you running the risk of some pesky blog picking up a juicy post or picture of you with a big bag of weed in the background, but apparently now you might be giving information to your next opponent.
Ahead of his team’s game against Michigan State, Wisconsin head football coach Bret Bielema said that he uses Twitter to find out what opposing players are up to before the game. Which seems kind of pointless, unless a cornerback posts that he’s “OMG so hungover LOL” the morning before the game.
It shouldn’t be that hard to find a misuse of university funds in a high-profile college athletics program. The rules are so arcane that entire compliance departments must be maintained to check about the number of text messages sent by the third assistant coach to a 16-year-old in Butte, MT, since Tuesday (and how the university can get around that limit).
Of course, maybe no one would have noticed if one of the mopeds hadn’t been used in the commission of a DUI. It’s truly reprehensible enough to drive a motor vehicle while inebriated, but a putt-putt motorcycle? And here we were trying to compliment you kids!
The meltdown of the American newspaper industry is in full effect. The past six weeks have seen the closures of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and the Rocky Mountain News, marking two of the largest newspaper closures in recent memory. And yesterday came news that might be a sign of disaster for one of the nation’s leading newspapers: the SAN FRANCISCO BUSINESS TIMES reports that roughly 120 employees of the San Francisco Chronicle have accepted voluntary buyouts as the paper struggles to avoid sale or shutdown.
According to a list from the SAN FRANCISCO PENINSULA PRESS CLUB, those leaving the paper include NFL writer Nancy Gay, college sports writer Jake Curtis, deputy sports editor Larry Yant and a host of other writers, editors and photographers. This should be taken as a giant red flag if these people are getting out now, especially someone as respected as Gay; trust me, people just don’t leave NFL reporting positions at major newspapers unless something is going terribly, horribly wrong.
But even the voluntary exits might not be enough - parent company Hearst Corporation (which also owns the now-online only Post-Intelligencer) has said that it needed to cut “at least” 150 jobs to avoid a shutdown or sale, with the paper currently bleeding money at a rate of $1 million a week. And with the chances of a corporation wanting to buy a failing newspaper next to zero in this climate, it seems as though the only two options are to slash the staff to ribbons or close shop.
As bad as the first option sounds, the alternative is even more daunting. Especially when you consider that the San Jose Mercury News recently announced that it was essentially abandoning the San Francisco market by stopping all weekday deliveries to the city. Which leaves a very real possibility that the nation’s 12th-largest metropolitan area could be without a major daily newspaper (the San Francisco Examiner, currently having been reduced to a free handout resembling The Pennysaver, doesn’t count).
It seems like Mark Cuban might be prescient when he blogged about the slow death of the newspaper sports section; let’s hope that his idea of teams and leagues banding together to provide beat reporters to cover the same teams and leagues doesn’t pan out, but if the San Francisco Chronicle can fold, is any idea that outlandish?
And don’t think that it will just stop with the Chronicle: the paper was only sixth in TIME’s recent list of “The 10 Most Endangered Newspapers in America”. Ahead of it on the list are papers such as the Boston Globe, Minneapolis Star-Tribune and the Miami Herald. That’s a lot of major sports teams that are suddenly going to be underserviced by local media, if at all.
Also possibly endangered: the continued success of the USC men’s basketball program. After making the NCAA Tournament for the third straight season for the first time in school history, the Trojans might be going back to square one as ESPN has word that an Arizona radio station is reporting that Tim Floydhas agreed to become the Arizona Wildcats’ new head coach, with an announcement as early as today.
Which is all very interesting, since Floyd rejected an overture by LSU last year, saying that USC was “his last job.” Then there’s the matter of the “impassioned speech” he gave at the team banquet Wednesday night, imploring players such as Taj Gibson and DeMar DeRozan to not jump to the NBA and come back next season to help the Trojans make a run at a national title. And then he got on a plane the next morning to interview for the Arizona job. That’s venturing into Bobby Petrino level of sleaziness.
Finally, a busy night of World Cup soccer qualifying has also brought us two people to add to the endangered list. The first is Argentine legend Diego Maradona, whose own near-death experiences with drugs and weight made him frequently endangered in the past. But this time, it’s not his life that’s in danger but his managing career, after his Argentina squad was demolished 6-1 by lowly Bolivia.
How embarrassing is this? It’s the first time they’ve given up six goals in a game since the World Cup…in 1958. Bolivia is 50 places behind Argentina in the FIFA world rankings, and their hat trick hero was Joaquin Botero, who plays for a second-division team in Mexico. This is Chaminade beating Virginia type stuff, where you glance at the box score over and over to make sure you didn’t read it wrong, before convincing yourself it’s just a typo.
And speaking of Mexico…if I were embattled manager Sven-Goren Eriksson, I wouldn’t even bother making the team flight back from Honduras, where his team suffered a humiliating 3-1 defeat, unless he wants his severed head to be placed on a pike outside of Atzeca Stadium as a warning to future managers.
The win allowed Honduras to leapfrog Mexico into the third and final guaranteed CONCACAF berth in the 2010 World Cup. Although there’s a lot of games left in both North & Central American and South American qualifying, there’s a chance that Argentina and Mexico could wind up facing each other in a two-game playoff, with the winner getting a World Cup spot and the loser staying home.
Other sports stories you might have missed last night as you were going to the hospital ER in Texas again…and again…and again…
It’s not just American athletes who get into trouble at strip bars late at night: THE MIRROR has word that Sunderland and French international striker Djibril Cissé has been arrested after allegedly grabbing a woman by the throat at a late-night strip club. You might remember him for having the distinction of suffering horrific, Theisman-like leg breaks not once but twice in his career, which you can watch here and here. (Warning: not for the faint of heart.)
Give Sen. John McCain credit for doing something right: the DALLAS MORNING-NEWS says that the former Presidential candidate is lobbying for a posthumous pardon of old-timey boxing champ Jack Johnson for trumped up, racially-biased charges. It still won’t make me forget that McCain voted against Martin Luther King Day, but it’s a start.
A word of warning: don’t take a quick paycheck to record canned introductions to videos for a company you know nothing about. Greg Gumbel failed to heed this advice, and he wound up as the spokesperson for a time-share, which ONLINE SPORTS GUYS says has lead to a lawsuit. Here’s one video in question:
SI.COM says that the Hockey Hall of Fame has changed its rules, opening the door for the first female player to be voted in. Someone in Canada, Don Cherry is burning his plaid Depends adult diapers in protest.
Hey look, another lacrosse team has been forced to suspend their season because of alleged misconduct. But the story of the Curry College team is far different than Duke, according to the BOSTON HERALD. Team members allegedly hazed new players at a party, although even the freshmen “victims” seem to think it was no big deal. Remind me to bring a lawyer if I ever go to a college lacrosse party.
WSLS-TV says that Virginia Tech coach Frank Beamer prepared for the upcoming season by doing some NASCAR racing. He didn’t do so hot, but his goiter was signed to a developmental deal with Joe Gibbs Racing.
Somehow former Cleveland Browns QB Bernie Kosar is being dragged into the Rod Blagojevich mess. RUMORS AND RANTS reports that Kosar was on some sort of fundraising “hit list” put together by the then-Illinois Governor with the Steve Garvey haircut just before he was arrested.
Every year, there’s one player who manages to screw himself over just before the NFL Draft by getting arrested for some stupid reason. If you had Wisconsin running back P.J. Hill in your pool, guess what: you’re a winner! The WISCONSIN STATE JOURNAL says the former Badgers star was arrested last Saturday after allegedly leading police on a brief, drunken car chase.
Here’s a mostly sad story: Former University of Wisconsin defensive back Leonard Taylor has been taken into custody for making “specific death threats” to two popular sports personalities, two who couldn’t be any more different. The first at least makes some kind of weird sense - UW Athletic Director Barry Alvarez - but the second takes quite a few leaps of logic to get there: tennis babe Maria Sharapova.
(Beauty and the Beast, both threatened)
Of course, we’ll probably not get much in the way of “logic” when it comes to getting a reason for that second death threat. Taylor is a “paranoid schizophrenic, has been off his medications for three months and was not seeing his therapist”. Not a good mix.
And what, pray tell, exactly constitutes a “death threat”?
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