random facts, tidbits, articles and most importantly my thoughts about things that i find while aimlessly surfing the web...
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
Architecture, College Football, Baseball, Hockey, March Madness, The Economy, Corporate Corruption, Incomptent Leadership, Tulane, Atlanta, Florida, etc.
|
|
|
|
travacado's thoughts
or at least "others'" thoughts that I find interesting...
|
|
| |
Monday, December 30, 2002
Absurd collapse ends season
FOXBORO, Mass. - Choke, collapse, calamity. Embarrassment, disgust, humiliation. Ridiculousness, absurdity and a partridge in a pear tree. I mentioned ''choke,'' right?
There are stronger words to describe what the Dolphins did to themselves Sunday with their 27-24 season-ending overtime loss to New England, and to their savaged fans back home, but those words would turn your family newspaper into an Osbourne family newspaper.
Inexcusable, this was, stunning, unfathomable and, in a football sense, nearly criminal, the Dolphins finding it impossible to hold an 11-point lead with five minutes to play against the Patriots at snow-banked Gillette Stadium.
Who but the Dolphins could make a guillotine of a place named after a razor blade?
' `Hang in! They'll fold!' That's what I heard the Patriots yelling on the field about us,'' tackle Mark Dixon said afterward, in a dressing room full of beaten silence. ``And we did. We do. In December we wait for bad things to happen. We expect them. We never pull through. It is just terrible. It is an embarrassment.''
This loss to end Miami's season will stand, or rather slither, as one of the worst in the football franchise's 36 years.
The Dolphins blew their season in a bizarre late sequence of ineptitude and bad decision-making that would lead any pending autopsy to clearly conclude the year died by suicide. (By Greg Cote, The Miami Herald) View the entire article
By any definition, Miami just blew it
PHOENIX - They can offer no arguments now. Soft? Chokers? Mentally frail? Losers? You can stick all the labels on the Dolphins now. They have nothing in the way of rebuttal. They must answer to the scoreboard and the standings, both of which today say this team was a monumental fraud. Miami shrunk when the pressure enlarged Sunday, and there is no more damning indictment you can make of a football team.
Miami's season is as done as Cincinnati's and Detroit's, the most talented Dolphins team in more than a decade underachieving with a historic collapse as punctuation. And now the 2002 Dolphins are, forevermore, failures. They went from talking Super Bowl to finishing a game out of last place, ahead of only a Bills team that beat them twice.
''How did this happen?'' running back Ricky Williams said on the cell phone as the team bus headed to the airport. ``I don't think it's possible to have the leading rusher in the NFL and the leading defense in the AFC and not make the playoffs. Run the ball and play defense, that's how you win. Ask any coach, and he'll take those two things above anything else.''
Williams was asked what was happening around him on the bus.
''Everyone is crushed,'' he said. ``To say the least.''
Anyone crying?
''We're just numb,'' he said. ``Our mouths are still open. Our jaws are on the floor.''
This is what happens when you blow an 11-point lead in the last three minutes of a game you need to make the playoffs.
And you knew it was going to happen, didn't you? You could actually feel it, South Florida's pessimism about this team having been earned. Worse, you could feel that the Dolphins felt it, too. They played, at the end of the season, like a team that was scared. (By Dan Le Batard, The Miami Herald) View the entire article
A most dissatisfying playoff berth
Cleveland -- Even by old Falcons standards, this was absolutely brutal.
No, worse than that.
While Dan Reeves once beamed as his Denver Broncos scooted 99 yards near Lake Erie for The Drive, he spent Sunday boiling as his Falcons responded down the stretch with The Fumble.
They couldn't score after three tries from the Cleveland 1-inch line. They couldn't score, period, except for a few measly field goals and a solo touchdown against a mediocre defense.
They made rookie tailback William Green resemble one of those legendary guys in nearby Canton. They watched Browns backup quarterback Kelly Holcomb go from the other side of obscurity to throwing the game-winning touchdown pass.
Mostly, they backed into the playoffs by squeezing through the smallest of holes.
First, they needed the New York Giants to lose on Saturday, but that didn't happen. So, the Falcons needed to do the noble thing by stuffing some of those dawg masks worn by the Browns' obnoxious fans down the throats of the home team.
That didn't happen, either.
Still, the Falcons were invited to the NFL's January party because New Orleans choked Sunday at home against Carolina.
Nobody was celebrating in the visitors' locker room at Cleveland Browns Stadium.
Good. (By Terence Moore, The Atlanta Journal-Consitution) View the entire article
TIDAL 5:56 AM
Sunday, December 29, 2002
CHEERLEADER OF THE WEEK
Elizabeth Barry, Raiderettes
TIDAL 12:53 PM
Thursday, December 26, 2002
ALOHA, WAVE
HONOLULU -- When Tulane was in trouble Wednesday, it knew it could count on its defense and its special teams.
The two came to life to spark the Green Wave to a 36-28 win over Hawaii at the ConAgra Foods Hawaii Bowl at Aloha Stadium.
The Green Wave defense forced three turnovers, got a safety on the Warriors' do-or-lose possession and punt returner Lynaris Elpheage returned four punts for 143 yards. He sparked the Wave's comeback by scoring the team's first touchdown on a 60-yard return in the third quarter.
Elpheage was named Tulane's most valuable player.
Tulane, a 12-point underdog, overcame a 14-0 deficit by scoring 26 straight points during the second and third quarters. Quarterback J.P. Losman scored two rushing touchdowns and scored a two-point conversion.
The bowl victory was Tulane's second straight. It ended the season 8-5. It was announced before the game that Coach Chris Scelfo got a two-year contract extension. (By Fred Robinson, The (New Orleans) Times-Picayune) View the entire article
Bah, humbug! Warriors lose
For Christmas, the University of Hawai'i football team received a heartbreak that was gift-wrapped in eight sacks.
The Warriors, who entered as 12-point favorites, could not escape Tulane's quarterback-hungry pass rush nor catch punt returner Lynaris Elpheage in losing to Tulane, 36-28, in yesterday's nationally televised ConAgra Foods Hawai'i Bowl at Aloha Stadium.
The Warriors greeted the Green Wave with an animated Tongan dance during pre-game introductions. But 4 hours and 10 minutes later, the last dance was saved for the Green Wave.
"It's like Mardi Gras," defensive tackle Marlon Tickles said of the Green Wave's on-field celebration. "We knew we had a long flight back (to New Orleans), and we didn't want to be all somber on the plane, talking about 'woulda, shoulda, coulda.' We wanted to come out here to prove a point. ... Hey, we're not Grinches. We're not trying to steal anybody's Christmas. If we stole Christmas, man, I'm very sorry for the land of Hawai'i. We just wanted to have a happy Christmas for ourselves." (By Stephen Tsai, The Honolulu Advertiser) View the entire article
TIDAL 8:55 AM
Sunday, December 22, 2002
The Beer Necessities
When I was 16, my father, with Wite-Out, rolled forward the odometer on my birth certificate so that I could sell beer at Minnesota Twins games, where the official brand was Schmidt, whose brewery, in St. Paul, bore enormous, electrified letters that lit up at night. On those unfortunate evenings when every second letter failed to illuminate, you could drive by and see, like a beacon on the side of the brewery, a brazenly honest bit of beer advertising: ScHmIdT.
From my boyhood bedroom in Bloomington, Minn., I could see the Hotel Sofitel, in whose bar a tanked-up New York Yankees manager, Billy Martin, punched out a marshmallow salesman.
In Bloomington, 27 years ago this week, Minnesota Vikings safety Nate Wright was pushed to the ground by Dallas Cowboys receiver Drew Pearson, who caught a touchdown pass from Roger Staubach that the quarterback afterward called a Hail Mary. The game brought that phrase into the sports lexicon, killed the father of Vikings quarterback Fran Tarkenton (whose name was Dallas and who died of a heart attack in front of his TV in Savannah) and sent the Cowboys on their way to the Super Bowl. But we remember it today primarily because referee Armen Terzian -- as he stood in the end zone, oblivious to Pearson's pass interference -- was brained by a whiskey bottle. (That toss is still regarded, in the Twin Cities, as the game's true Hail Mary.)
I attended college in Milwaukee, where the baseball team is the Brewers, who were additionally nicknamed, at the time, after a cocktail: Harvey's Wallbangers. Whenever a Wallbanger hit a home run, a lederhosened Bernie Brewer slid out of a giant beer keg in centerfield and splashed down into a beer mug. Between innings the public address system would play that polka paean to binge drinking, Roll Out the Barrel.
Until I was 21, I thought that Colt .45 was a malt liquor named for a baseball team, and I'd never heard of the handgun, though that is, when you think about it, a quintessentially American trifecta: baseball, firearms and malted beverages.
So last week, when Harvard researchers released a study (of 14,000 college students) concluding that sports fans are more apt to be binge drinkers than are nonfans, I thought to myself, No Schmidt! Of course we are. Indeed, who can say any longer if drinking exists to serve sports or if sports exist to serve drinking?
Have there ever been two words more symbiotic than sports bar? As a kid collecting beer cans -- the Cincinnati Reds were on cans of Hudepohl, the Pittsburgh Steelers on cans of Iron City -- I assumed that beer coursed through the very veins of athletes. And, in so many cases, it did.
Beer is the alpha and the omega of the Babe Ruth story, which is in turn the archetypal story of American sport. So I knew, from a young age, that Yankees owner Jacob Ruppert bought Babe Ruth from the Boston Red Sox with $100,000 he'd tapped from his Ruppert Beer & Ale empire, and that Ruth was said to have drunk beer between innings at McCuddy's bar across from Comiskey Park in Chicago, and that his funeral was on a sweltering day in August 1948 at St. Patrick's Cathedral, where -- in the pallbearers' pew -- his old teammate Joe Dugan whispered, "I'd give a hundred dollars for a cold beer." To which Waite Hoyt replied, "So would the Babe."
The voice of baseball, Mel Allen, called every Yankees home run a Ballantine Blast, after the beer that sponsored the broadcasts, and in the decades since, beer vendors themselves have achieved a minor celebrity. You may have received a sodden single as change from Wally the Beerman in Minneapolis (who has his own bobblehead doll and Coors Light commercials), Bob the Beerman in Denver (who has published his professional memoirs) or Scooter the Beerguy, who has slung suds conspicuously at several ballparks. Each of these vendors is beermarked for the Baseball Hall of Fame.
As a sportswriter, in countless locker rooms I have been sprayed with champagne in the manner of a firehosed civil disobedient. And I have interviewed tailgaters for whom beer was almost literally like oxygen, conveyed into the body by twin plastic tubes attached to cans attached to a construction hard hat.
We build ballparks named Coors and Miller and Busch. At the same time, as in the disapproving Harvard report, we express all manner of beer and loathing toward sport fans, who are taken for drunken, goalpost-pillaging louts. City officials in Tempe, Ariz., last week complained that the Fiesta Bowl will, for the first time, allow beer sales, presumably necessitating increased security. Iona basketball coach Jeff Ruland last week issued a public apology for offering to provide students of legal drinking age a couple of kegs to fire them up before home games. "To alcohol," as Homer Simpson put it. "The cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems."
As in life, so in sports. And so the question remains: Do we drink because we're at the game, are we at the game to drink, or are drink and spectator sports now so codependent that we're simply emulating W.C. Fields, who advised, "Always carry a flagon of whiskey in case of snakebite. And, furthermore, always carry a small snake"? (By Steve Rushin, Sports Illustrated)
CHEERLEADER OF THE WEEK
Linda, Philadelphia Eagles Cheerleaders
TIDAL 10:46 AM
Saturday, December 21, 2002
How the AFC could wind up in an 11-way tie at top
Think the NFL's postseason possibilities computer is working overtime? You bet.
With just two weeks left in the regular season, it's possible that 11 teams could all finish at 9-7 and tie for the best record in the AFC. There needs to be a little divine intervention -- what is the likelihood that Tennessee will lose to both Jacksonville and Houston, or that the Jets will beat both New England and Green Bay -- but it's still possible.
And we don't even want to get into the Pittsburgh probabilities, thanks to that tie. But if the Steelers lose twice (they play Tampa Bay and Baltimore), they could go 8-7-1 and be on the outside looking in.
With that in mind, ESPN.com looked at the possibilities and renders some thoughts on what it might all mean.
Now that the Dolphins (unfortunately) did their part, view the possible scnearios at ESPN.com.
TIDAL 4:32 PM
Sunday, December 15, 2002
Walker scores twice to lead Preds by Wild
Scott Walker stole the spotlight from Cliff Ronning and Rem Murray last night.
Ronning, the Predators' all-time leading scorer, returned to the Gaylord Entertainment Center with Minnesota for the first time since being traded last March.
Murray made his debut with Nashville after arriving in a three-player deal with the New York Rangers for goalie Mike Dunham on Thursday.
But it was Walker who got the loudest cheers from the crowd of 14,224 after he scored twice to lead Nashville to a 3-1 victory over Minnesota on Greg Johnson bobblehead night. (By Chip Cirillo, The (Nashville) Tennessean) View the entire article
Braves might be closer to re-signing Maddux
Nashville -- As the Montreal Expos crept closer to making some of their widely anticipated personnel moves Saturday night, indications around the annual winter meetings were the Braves had made slow progress toward retaining pitcher Greg Maddux.
Faced with a soft free agent market in which his client has been slow to spark a $60 million five-year deal he first envisioned, agent Scott Boras may find no better alternative than to accept the Braves' arbitration offer.
One National League executive said the two sides were close to an agreement, though no formal word may come until Thursday's deadline for accepting arbitration.
While Atlanta manager Bobby Cox said the club continues to explore acquiring a starting pitcher via trade, he also said, "The No. 1 priority right now is getting Greg Maddux back on the team." (By Thomas Stinson, The Atlanta Journal-Consitution) View the entire article
CHERLEADER OF THE WEEK
Kelly Cochran (NO, not the babe from American Idol...), Denver Broncos Cheerleaders
TIDAL 10:42 AM
Friday, December 13, 2002
Preds bid farewell to Dunham
The Predators said goodbye to one of the franchise cornerstones last night, sending goaltender Mike Dunham to the New York Rangers in exchange for forward Rem Murray, along with defensive prospects Tomas Kloucek and Marek Zidlicky.
Dunham had been one of four players remaining from Nashville's 1998 expansion draft, along with Greg Johnson, Scott Walker and Tomas Vokoun. It was Dunham, in fact, who modeled the Predators' jersey on the June afternoon in Buffalo when the team came into existence.
He carried the Predators in plenty of games during his stay here, especially during the 2000-01 season, when Dunham finished with a .923 save percentage, the best figure of any NHL starter.
But Dunham didn't maintain that consistency last season, when he saw his goals against average jump from 2.28 to 2.61 and his save percentage slide to .906. The inconsistency remained this season, as Dunham wound up splitting games with Vokoun.
He was still one of the team's biggest trade assets, however, which played a key role behind the deal with the Rangers. (By John Glennon, The (Nashville) Tennessean) View the entire article
New starter Vokoun guides Predators to tie
The Tomas Vokoun Era began with a tie last night.
Vokoun made 22 saves as the Predators tied the Blues 2-2 before 11,168 in Gaylord Entertainment Center. Nashville is 0-6-2 in its last eight games vs. St. Louis, the fifth-ranked team in the Western Conference.
The longtime backup goaltender was promoted to starter just before the game when Mike Dunham was traded to the New York Rangers for three players.
''It was shocking, especially when it happens an hour and a half before the game,'' Predators defenseman Cale Hulse said. ''That's always the tough part of the business side of hockey, losing a friend and a teammate, but we're professionals and we still have a job to do.'' (By Chip Cirillio, The (Nashville) Tennessean) View the entire article
Rangers Trade Nets Dunham
This was a desperate time that led to a desperate measure. This was the dramatic conclusion to one of the most stunning and heartbreaking days in the history of the Rangers' franchise. Hours after learning that Mike Richter, the greatest goaltender in Rangers history, had been ordered not to play again this season by brain-injury specialists Dr. Karen Johnston and Dr. James Kelley because of lingering symptoms from his Nov. 5 concussion, the Blueshirts acquired veteran goaltender Mike Dunham from Nashville for young defenseman Tomas Kloucek, defense prospect Marek Zidlicky and forward Rem Murray. (The team also acquired forward Josh Green from Edmonton for a conditional draft pick.)
Asked if the Dunham trade had been made in direct response to the news on Richter, a subdued Glen Sather whispered, "Yes," into the speaker during his conference call.
"I've thought over the last two weeks that something like this might happen and we might have to get a goaltender, so I've been talking to teams for a while," Sather said.
"Did we pay a price? We had no choice. I think we're very fortunate to get Mike Dunham; they're not going to just mail someone like that to you."
Dunham, a teammate of Richter's on last year's silver medal-winning USA Olympic squad, will earn $2.8 million this year, $3.3M next, then $3.6M for lockout 2004-05. He is a credible No. 1 who is likely to step into that role here, though Dan Blackburn will remain in the mix. (By Larry Brooks, New York Post) View the entire article
Richter done for season
Bad news forces deal for Dunham
Mike Richter's season is over. And the career of the finest goaltender in Rangers history just might be as well. Richter has been out since suffering a concussion Nov. 5, and it was determined yesterday that he would not play again this season. GM Glen Sather acted swiftly, trading for Nashville goalie Mike Dunham. (By John Dellapina, (New York) Daily News) View the entire article
Rangers End Richter's Season, Sparking Trade
On the advice of a concussion specialist, the Rangers announced yesterday that Mike Richter, their 36-year-old goaltender, would be sidelined for the rest of the season, raising the possibility that his career could be over.
"It's a difficult thing to accept, but you have to go on, and I will," Richter said last night in a conference call. Richter has not played since Nov. 5, when he sustained his second concussion in less than eight months.
Richter, the Rangers' career leader in victories with 301, said the specialist, Dr. Karen Johnston, would not discuss his prospects for playing next season. "She said, `What you have to do is really focus on getting better,' " he said.
The decision to end Richter's season resulted in Glen Sather, the team president and general manager, trading left wing Rem Murray and defensemen Tomas Kloucek and Marek Zidlicky to the Nashville Predators for the 30-year-old goaltender Mike Dunham.
Dunham, who is 2-9-2 with a 3.15 goals against average and an .892 save percentage, has two guaranteed years on his contract after this season. He had lost his starting job to Tomas Vokoun. Dunham was Martin Brodeur's backup with the Devils from 1996 to 1998 and Richter's teammate on the 2002 United States Olympic team that won a silver medal at the Salt Lake Games. (By Jason Diamos, The New York Times) View the entire article
TIDAL 6:44 AM
Tuesday, December 10, 2002
Carter: Path to peace is through United Nations
Ex-president also pays tribute to Martin Luther King, Jr.
Oslo, Norway -- In a moving ceremony Tuesday at Oslo City Hall, former President Jimmy Carter, who has made a post-presidential career of mediating conflict and alleviating suffering, was accorded what may be the highest humanitarian honor the world can bestow: the Nobel Peace Prize.
In his 23-minute Nobel lecture, Carter said that the end of the Cold War, for which Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev received the prize 12 years ago, had as yet failed to make the world more safe.
"Instead of entering a millennium of peace, the world is now, in many ways, a more dangerous place," Carter said. "The greater ease of travel and communication has not been matched by equal understanding and mutual respect. There is a plethora of civil wars, unrestrained by rules of the Geneva Convention. ... And recent appalling acts of terrorism have reminded us that no nations, even superpowers, are invulnerable."
"It is clear," Carter continued, "that global challenges must be met with an emphasis on peace ... and international consensus."
The path to peace, he said, lies through the United Nations.
Some of his remarks appeared to be indirect criticisms of the Bush administration's policy toward Iraq. Carter quoted Ralph Bunche, the American mediator who won the peace prize in 1950, as saying: "To suggest that war can prevent war is a base play on words and a despicable form of warmongering."
To that warning, Carter added his own words: "For powerful countries to adopt a principle of preventative war may well set an example that can have catastrophic consequences." (By Don Melvin and Moni Basu, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution) View the entire article
Arledge's world flowed with ideas
What is Roone Arledge's greatest gift to the American viewing public?
Let's work up to it. In the first place, if not for Roone Arledge, we would not be assembled here right now. This website would not exist. ESPN probably wouldn't exist. I would not be writing this. You would not be reading it.
But here we are. And it's Arledge's party. Still.
We all have our Roone Arledge moments, in the sporting life, especially.
"The thrill of victory and the agony of defeat." His. "Up close and personal." His. "Wide World of Sports." His. Epic Olympic coverage. His. Breaking spot news on terrorism. His, really. "Monday Night Football." His. Howard Cosell. His. Dandy Don Meredith (TV version). His. Frank Gifford. His. "American Sportsman." His. "Nightline." His. "20/20." His. Isolated camera. His. Instant replay. His. All totally his. Sports as storytelling. His, in a big way.
There were less successful vehicles for his vision, like Fred "The Hammer" Williamson, or the Juice, or Jim Brown, all in the context of "Monday Night Football"; or "Monday Night Baseball"; or "The Superstars"; or Cosell's train wreck of a variety show; or Harry Reasoner and Barbara Walters sharing an anchor desk.
Those don't matter a damn. What matters is Arledge was a visionary. He tried stuff. Every story you write won't be as memorable as every other story you write. Every vision you have is not going to be as encompassing and complete as every other vision you have. But that doesn't mean you can't write a helluva story, and aren't a visionary.
When you push the envelope, sometimes you expand human horizons, and sometimes the plane breaks up around you. But it takes a brave human being to even light the fires. That's what Roone Arledge did, and who he was. (By Ralph Wiley, ESPN.com) View the entire article
Bandwagon resembles roller coaster
The bandwagon is a terribly unreliable vehicle. It can wheeze and cough, careening without traction in the Buffalo snow. It tends to screech to a stop without notice on certain Sundays. And, even in rollicking good times, the smooth ride and engine's roar can be an outright lie -- like, for example, after fraud victories such as Monday night's over the NFL equivalent of road kill.
You want back on this thing?
Or are you tired of being stranded for most of the past three decades?
Because 8-5 Miami is again in first place in its division in a conference so ridiculously tight that the Dolphins, with just three weeks remaining, are just as likely to be AFC champions as they are to miss the playoffs altogether.
Every AFC team, including the defunct Baltimore Colts and Houston Oilers of Earl Campbell, are somehow still eligible for the upcoming playoffs. So the Dolphins could just as easily beat Oakland next week and get that evasive first-round bye as they could finish 9-7 or 8-8 and in third place in their division.
But Monday's victory proved nothing except that the Bears are unfathomably bad, and the NFL is awfully cruel. The Bears, remember, were 13-3 just one year ago. What they produced in Monday's first half, though, was -- how do we put this gently? -- as awful and inept as anything you've ever seen produced around a football. (By Dan LeBatard, The Miami Herald) View the entire article
Retiring Csonka's number was worth the way-too-long wait
Way late, but no less sweetly for that, the Dolphins retired Larry Csonka's glorious number 39 on Monday night.
Good thing because except for a bit of a Zonk lookalike in Ricky Williams, the Dolphins' 27-9 victory over the Bears was as unlovely as, well, the Bears.
Tough night for on-spot fans until Csonka and Williams came through practically simultaneously. Locked into the mother of all pregame traffic jams at Pro Player Stadium, then pelted by early rain in a noncontest pockmarked by penalties and fumbles, these paying customers were entitled to something special.
Williams gave it to them with scoring runs of 15 and 63 yards and another dynamite evening altogether after his open-field fumble was forced by Brian Urlacher, who is sort of a Bears linebacking version of Csonka.
Dolphins management gave it to them in a 1972 Perfect Team reunion and Csonka commemorative coins.
Then ol' Zonk, now 55, brought the soaked crowd up howling with his halftime remarks.
''You still have to love these guys,'' he said of his '72 teammates gathered at halftime, and spread his arms apart, ``with hearts this big and asses this wide.''
He tossed in another popular reference by saluting Dan Marino and the '85 Dolphins, who upset the then-unbeaten Bears 38-24 and preserved that Perfect Season as unique in big-time pro sports.
''We were 17-0, Dan,'' Csonka told Marino, ``but when you beat those '85 Bears, you sort of gave us our 18th victory. You saved our record, and we love you for it.'' (By Edwin Pope, The Miami Herald) View the entire article
Cursed bowls create blight
To rip the bowl system is to shoot fish in a barrel, but these fish deserve it. They're piranhas. They exist only to gorge themselves.
This year's killer fish is the Orange Bowl. Somehow it managed to get two first picks in the always hilarious BCS draft, thereby depriving the Sugar of a worthy opponent for Georgia and the Rose of a Big Ten entrant. At the expense of its brethren, the Orange eats hearty. The bowls are all in this together, except when it comes time to invite somebody attractive. Then it's every ugly-blazered committee for itself.
The second-best bowl pairing -- and likely the best pure game -- would have been Georgia vs. Southern Cal. Among non-Fiesta teams, they're the hottest. (It's hard to call Iowa hot; the Hawkeyes haven't played since Nov. 16.) But the Orange took Iowa because its fans figure to travel in droves, and then the Orange trumped the Sugar for Southern Cal by means of the only bowl commodity that matters -- money.
So now the Orange looks pretty good, while the Rose and the Sugar suffer in comparison. The Rose pairs two-loss teams. The Sugar gets the BCS booby prize in four-loss Florida State. About all the Sugar will produce will be a new record for Mentor-Pupil stories, eclipsing the mark established before the first Final Four meeting between Dean Smith and Roy Williams.
Georgia deserved to be in a good game. Instead it's part of a bleeding-heart story line. The wonder isn't that someone was shortchanged; the wonder is that, at this late date, we're still surprised when it happens. (By Mark Bradley, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution) View the entire article
Georgia fans have nothing to complain about. They get their due reward of winning the SEC for the first time 20 years by making the journey to Bourbon Street. And, I hope they enjoy the Quarter and maybe even win some $$$ at Harrah's because their journey back to the ATL will be painful after the most successful postseason college football program over the last 20 years sends them packing with a "humbling" defeat. Csonka and the 1972 Dolphins are what football is about. They embody the word "team". Even though I wasn't even born in 1972, there are pictures of me as a child wearing an aqua Dolphins 39 jersey. I even have an autographed Csonka USFL football from when he was the GM of the Jacksonville Bulls. Thank goodness that this NFL season has been a "roller coaster" so far because it makes each week so enjoyable. Now, if we all had access to DirecTV and the Sunday Ticket... Watch Monday Night Mayhem or ESPN Classic's Sports Century on Roone Arledge... Peace above war, need I say more...
TIDAL 9:47 PM
Sunday, December 08, 2002
Predators get first win streak of season
SAN JOSE, Calif. — Ten months, 10 attempts and 50 games after their last win streak, the Predators finally have another one.
When the Predators downed the San Jose Sharks 4-2 in front of a capacity crowd in the HP Pavilion last night, it marked Nashville's first back-to-back wins since defeating Columbus and Florida this past February.
While that's a frighteningly long time to go without two victories in a row, the win against the Sharks may be another sign the Predators are starting to rebound from an awful first quarter of the season. (By John Glennon, The (Nashville) Tennessean) View the entire article
Making tracks to transit
Commuter trains, light rail and buses gaining momentum
We're hardly a nation of swaying strap-hangers yet, but Americans are beginning to get on board public transportation.
After decades of declines in ridership, new and existing transit systems are luring even Sun Belt suburbanites into trains, subways and buses. From 1993 to 2000, passenger miles jumped 21 percent.
With an infusion of cash provided by recent federal transportation acts, dozens of new systems have come on line since the 1980s, and work on many more is under way.
Older rail systems, clustered in the Northeast, are showing growth too. But the new systems are bringing new riders to transit, many of them in the fast-growing South and West -- places such as Tampa, Dallas, Denver, Salt Lake City and Los Angeles.
The upward trend suggests that some traffic-weary or frugal drivers will get out of their cars, given an attractive alternative. (By Dana Tofig, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution) View the entire report
Wave welcomes TV opportunity
Hawaii Bowl offers national exposure, more practice time
Tulane athletic director Rick Dickson didn't even need to check for the final score Friday night. His cell phone wouldn't stop ringing. People were calling to say "aloha."
Cincinnati had just beaten East Carolina, securing Tulane's bid in the ConAgra Hawaii Bowl, played at 7 p.m. Christmas Day on ESPN.
"It's a stand-alone national event without any conflict or competition against any other event," Dickson said. "It will be a prime-time event. Generally by then the festivities of Christmas are winding down to allow families to relax. We'll get a lot of national exposure that we typically haven't received."
"Our players and staff are very happy to be in a postseason bowl," said Coach Chris Scelfo, whose team practiced Saturday and is off until Tuesday. "They deserve to play in a first-class bowl . . . Now our focus has to be the University of Hawaii."
While the trip to the Aloha State will have a heftier price tag than the other bowl option -- a trip to Poydras Street for the New Orleans Bowl -- there are plenty of benefits besides Christmas on the beach. The bowl will be on national TV, and the later date gives Tulane more time to prepare for Hawaii, which has been ranked as high as No. 24.
The tentative plan is for Tulane to leave for Hawaii on Dec. 20 and return home Dec. 26, the morning after the game. The Hawaii Bowl's minimum payoff is $750,000 per team. Jim Donovan, the bowl's executive director, said he is happy to have the Wave coming to town.
"I've been pretty impressed with a couple of their wins," Donovan said. "They beat Cincinnati and Southern Mississippi pretty good, both two really good football teams. I was a little disappointed when they lost to Army, but that was probably really their only true setback, unless you look back to the Memphis game. You sort of scratch your head on that one because Memphis only won three games. It looks like they had a pretty good year, and they had solid wins." (By Benjamin Hochman, The (New Orleans) Times-Picayune)
IT'S LANDRIEU
Incumbent senator overcomes GOP challenger in bitter runoff
Overcoming a rising Republican tide and the pull of a popular president, Democrat Mary Landrieu held on to her U.S. Senate seat Saturday, defeating state Elections Commissioner Suzanne Haik Terrell in a bitterly contested runoff stoked by negative ads, national politics and personal animosity.
The victory means a second term for Landrieu, but in a Senate that will be controlled by Republicans. The Louisiana outcome leaves the GOP with a one-seat majority when Congress convenes next month: 51 Republicans, 48 Democrats and one independent who votes with the Democrats.
Landrieu's victory puts a damper on President Bush's surprising mid-term election run in which his campaigning is credited with helping Republicans hold on to the majority in the House and regain the Senate.
State and national Democrats will certainly draw some solace from the fact that they were able to stop his roll in Louisiana.
Landrieu said her victory was the result of "an incredible grass-roots" effort and suggested that predictions of a Bush-driven GOP wave swamping Louisiana were premature, especially with Democrat Rodney Alexander winning a razor-thin majority in the heavily GOP 5th Congressional District in northeast Louisiana, which has been held by Republican John Cooksey for the past six years.
"People can see the dangers of partisan, poison politics," Landrieu said in declaring victory at the Fairmont Hotel. "Tonight a great light has gone on in the world, a great light has gone on in the United States, because we turned the lights on. The light has shown that the Democratic Party is alive and well and united." (By Bruce Alpert and Bill Walsh, The (New Orleans) Times-Picayune) View the entire article
CHEERLEADER OF THE WEEK
Cole Martin, Raiderettes
TIDAL 10:00 AM
Thursday, December 05, 2002
Glavine going to the Mets
We have a winner in the Tom Glavine sweepstakes, and the reaction among some Braves fans may be something like the cowboy in the television commercial when told where his picante sauce was manufactured.
New York City?! (By David O. Brien, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution) View the entire article
For one night, everything clicks for FSU
Florida State's immediate future didn't seem in question when the Seminoles clinched a BCS bowl two weeks ago. Next year and beyond was a totally different matter. (By Steve Ellis, Tallahassee Democrat) View the entire article
Franchione reportedly will receive five-year deal
Dennis Franchione has signed a deal to become the new coach at Texas A&M, ESPN.com's Ivan Maisel has learned from a member of Franchione's staff. There will be an 9:30 a.m. ET press conference at Texas A&M to introduce Franchione. (from ESPN.com) View the entire article
Roone Arledge, created Monday Night Football
Roone Arledge, the TV sports visionary who made "Monday Night Football" a national viewing habit, and turned the earnest but ancient Olympic Games into a worldwide television spectacular, died Thursday. He was 71.
Arledge died Thursday at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, said Jeffrey Schneider, an ABC News spokesman. The cause of death was complications from cancer, ABC News reported.
In 38 years as the American Broadcasting Company's most prominent and successful executive, first as guiding light of the sports division and then as mastermind of ABC's rise to the top of network news, Arledge was credited with popularizing such original programs as "Monday Night Football," "Wide World of Sports," "The American Sportsman" and "Nightline", and coining expressions like "Up Close and Personal" and "The Thrill of Victory and the Agony of Defeat." He made household names of the well-traveled Jim McKay and the ill-tempered Howard Cosell, and later did the same for such news anchors as Peter Jennings, Barbara Walters and Ted Koppel. He spent millions raiding other networks for major talent and hundreds of millions to keep those networks from taking major events from him.
Life magazine listed Arledge among its "100 Most Important Americans of the 20th Century" in 1990, the same year he was elected to the Television Academy Hall of Fame. Four years later, Sports Illustrated ranked him third, behind Muhammad Ali and Michael Jordan, in its 40th anniversary issue, honoring the 40 most significant individuals in U.S. sports since SI was first published. (By Mike Meserole, ESPN.com) View the entire obit
TIDAL 8:02 PM
Sunday, December 01, 2002
Uplifting: FSU rips Florida
All the signs led to a disastrous ending for a bad week, and an even worse season. Adrian McPherson, the quarterback who had brought chemistry to a team seemingly on the brink of turmoil, had been dismissed from the team and arrested. A ground game already missing Greg Jones, would be without tailback Nick Maddox and center Antoine Mirambeau. (By Steve Ellis, Tallahassee Democrat) View the entire article
Seminoles get welcome glimpse of brighter days
There have been flashes of this Florida State football team all season. The first quarter against Iowa State. The first half against Maryland. The second half against Clemson. The first three quarters against Miami. (By Randy Beard, Tallahassee Democrat) View the entire article
Gators once again can't break Doak Campbell's spell
TALLAHASSEE -- So much for distractions.
So much for dissension.
So much for turmoil and tumult.
Leave it to a forged check to forge the Florida State Seminoles into the steely and determined team they should have been all season long.
“We finally looked like Florida State,” Seminoles Coach Bobby Bowden said.
FSU 31, Florida 14.
Media Access 1, Zook 0.
Ron Zook silenced his players before the game, but it was the Seminoles who silenced the Gators during and after the game. I guess we should have expected this. It doesn’t matter who’s coaching or what the circumstances are; the football gods have commanded it:
The Seminoles Shalt Beat the Gators at Doak Campbell. Then. Now. Always. (By Mike Bianchi, Orlando Sentinel) View the entire article
UF stands for Utter Failure
TALLAHASSEE -- In honor of Ron Zook, please observe a moment of silence for a once-great football game.
For a series to excel, it needs two superstar programs. From what we saw Saturday night, the future may have only one.
Florida State, which prevailed 31-14, may get back its shine. As for Florida, it may not be time to abandon all hope, but you can hear the fat lady singing.
Well, you couldn't if she played for the Gators.
Zook said his gag order might “blow up in my face,” and it's awfully tempting to make fun of the soot marks on his cheeks this morning. But just as it would have been bogus to say the silencing helped the Gators win, it's wrong to say it caused them to lose.
Florida lost for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is that the Gators no longer play to win. They play not to lose. (By David Whitley, Orlando Sentinel) View the entire article
Rix extends hex
TALLAHASSEE - New coach, new year, same result.
Florida coach Ron Zook hoped to do something Steve Spurrier couldn't, but the result Saturday was all to familiar for Gator fans.
FSU used two Chris Rix ... (By Pat Dooley, The Gainesville Sun) View the entire article
FSU wins a game both teams needed
TALLAHASSEE -- They say misery loves company. That's not really true. Not in the case of this series, where each fall Florida and Florida State fans gather and hope to revel in the others' pain and suffering.
Gators and Seminoles love to see each other stumble. On the field. Off the field. In a dream season, both. Sometimes, it seems, they take nearly as much pleasure in their foe's woes as they do in their own success, which is why, in its own twisted way, the latest meeting was a classic.
Going into it, you knew that the team that lost would be having a REALLY bad year. Well, really bad by the two schools' lofty expectations.
And the loser is ...
Florida. (By Mark Woods, The (Jacksonville) Florida Times-Union) View the entire article
CHEERLEADER OF THE WEEK
Brianne, Philadelphia Eagles Cheerleaders
TIDAL 11:33 AM
|
|
| |
|
|
|
