Hi, the New York Jets here.
Look: It’s kind of nasty out. And we’ve won a couple of big games in a row and have the division lead.
And Denver won’t be able to run on us; and they have a pretty bad defense.
And we read in the paper where we’re headed to the Super Bowl against the Giants.
So we don’t actually have to show up, right?
This little gem appeared in the midst of the Jets-Broncos game:
Big Bill, to Mangini, no Little Bill?
In case you can’t see it, the pic shows the Bill Parcells coaching tree. Directly under Parcells are Eric Mangini and Bill Belichick. Without any lines connecting them.
For those of you who have not been sentient and a consumer of sports news over the last five years, Mangini used to coach under Belichick too. Some even called Belichick Mangini’s mentor. But apparently that isn’t of interest to the CBS art department.
Driving somewhere on Thanksgiving Day, I turned on the Sports Talk 980 hoping to catch the NFL football game.
Instead I got, well, sports talk. Recorded sports talk. From the previous day.
Is it too much to ask that the local sports radio station actually carries the major sporting event of the day?
There’s the “SI Jinx.” And the “Madden Curse.”
But what about the $100 million curse?
Let’s look at the roster of $100 million pitchers: Mike Hampton, Kevin Brown, Barry Zito and Johan Santana.
That translates to bust, bust, bust, too-soon-to-tell.
As Anthony McCarron writes in today’s Daily News:
None of the four previous $100 million pitchers - Brown, Santana, Barry Zito and Mike Hampton - has pitched in the playoffs for the team he signed with. In fact, none of the teams that have signed a pitcher to a nine-figure deal has made the playoffs while that pitcher has been on their roster.
Oh yeah, six years at $140 million is smart for Sabathia.
What’s worse than signing C.C. Sabathia to a seven year deal? Signing A.J. Burnett to a five year deal. Or even a four year contract.
Yet with the Angels suddenly weighing in on Sabathia, Yankees sources tell Newsday’s Ken Davidoff that they are reluctant to go higher than the absurd contract offer they’ve already made. Signing any pitcher to a seven year deal is nuts. But I’d rather have Sabathia (a Cy Young-winning lefty in his prime) for seven over Burnett (an injury-ridden, only pitches well in the final year of his contract and even then he’s not great, thirty-something) for three, four or five years.
If the Yankees sign Burnett, and if they win a world championship with him on the team, it will be in spite of him, not because of him.
The knock on Syracuse the last couple of years was their weak out of conference schedule. There’s no denying the Orange this year though - after dropping Billy Donovan’s #19 Florida Gators on Monday 89-83, The Sons of Jim Boeheim stormed back from 10 pts down tonight to upend the #23 Kansas Jayhawks 87-81 in overtime. And while the game was technically a neutral site game because it was located in Kansas City, you wouldn’t have known it for the 95% Jayhawk partisan crowd. That’s two wins in November over top-25 teams.
The loss for Kansas is their first in Kansas City since Jan 2nd, 1983 and is the second straight loss to Syracuse for the Jayhawks. You may recall the last time the two met prior to tonight - that game ended with Boeheim cutting down the nets in New Orleans.
Syracuse is still learning how to play together. Eric “Eight Mile” Devendorf, returning from injury, still alternates between being amazingly uncoscious and maddeningly inconsistent. It’s great to see Andy Rautins and his sweet three point stroke back. And Paul Harris and Arinze Onuakau provided great inside play, especially the latter. But the best play of the night belonged to Big East co-rookie of the year Jonny Flynn, declared by Dick Vitale in-game as perhaps the best point guard in the country. And he showed it tonight, scoring 25 points (including the game-tying 3 pointer that sent the game into overtime) and dishing out 5 assists and at least 3 steals (from what I saw).
It’s still early in the season, but this looks more like one of the better Jim Boeheim squads we’re used to seeing. A very athletic group that is as comfortable playing the patented Syracuse 2-3 zone as they are in man-to-man defense. As with most Boeheim teams, it will be how disciplined they are on offense that determines how good they’ll be.
So the Red Sox are reportedly set to sign an amateur Japanese pitcher.
Here’s the catch: That sort of thing just isn’t done, for reasons the excellent Pete Abraham discusses at his blog.
This feels like deja vu all over again from the Providence Head Coaching search, but here is a preliminary short list to replace Charlie Weis at Notre Dame.
Let me caveat that I absolutely do NOT belive Weis will step down or be fired this offseason, although he should. Here is the early list with a few thoughts:
1. Urban Meyer - recently released autobiography called ND his dream job, sources in Gainesville say he wants to go to ND, and the man is named after a Pope for God’s sake.
2. Butch Davis
3. Bob Stoops
4. Mark Richt
5. Mike Riley - I really like this choice
6. Jeff Tedford - I really hate this choice
7. Tom Coughlin
8. Jim Grobe
9. Bobby Petrino - ugh, please God no.
10. Brian Kelley - way too little of a record
Well, once again we’ve had some fun with one of our traditional topics here, the Catholic Program That Once Was. Leather helmets, Studebakers, and Notre Dame football, those were the days. Now, I think highly of my (very realistic) ND alumni friends and admire the Irish program’s commitment to academics, but it is so much fun to torment their unrealistic non-alumni fans. For the deluded among you who want to continue the trip down memory late, I recommend Return to Glory: Inside Tyrone Willingham’s Amazing First Season at Notre Dame, remarkably still available at Amazon. Tyrone was 8-0 before the glory was ended by um, Boston College.
But let’s move on for a moment to my favorite conference where student-athletes win games and beat Notre Dame and of course that would be Hockey East. No just kidding, I mean the ACC. Get the whole story