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Bar Chat

01/26/2012

Rematch...but questions remain

NFL / Super Bowl Quiz: 1) Who were the first two MVPs that were on the defensive side of play? 2) Who was the first running back to be selected MVP? 3) Only once have there been co-MVPs in a Super Bowl. Who were they? Answers below.

Super Bowl…and a look back to last Sunday

--The last betting line I saw on the Super Bowl is Patriots by three. Four years ago, the Pats were favored by 12 points before the Giants took them out. Overall, the oddsmakers’ favorite has won the Super Bowl 73% of the time, according to RJ Bell, a Vegas-based handicapper.

At the beginning of the season, the Patriots were 9-2 favorites to win it all, while the Giants were at 25-1.

But as I noted the other day, imagine those fans who bet on the Giants just 5-7 weeks ago and got 50-1 (when they were 7-7) or 100-1 (after Week 13, 6-6).

“Sunday arguably was the greatest day of playoff football ever. The combined point differential of six points is easily the smallest ever in the conference championship round, surpassing the previous mark of 12 points, which was most recently achieved last season. Most conference-championship games aren’t nail-bitingly close: In the 84 title games since the 1970 season, only 28 have been decided by seven points or fewer.”

You know, we’re getting spoiled as sports fans. It wasn’t too long ago we enjoyed one of the great World Series of all time.

--Have 49ers fans gotten over the Ahmad Bradshaw non-fumble fumble call? Is Kyle Williams in a witness protection program?

[The Giants’ Devin Thomas, who recovered the key Williams fumble in overtime, said afterwards, “(Williams) had a lot of concussions. We were just like, ‘We gotta put a hit on that guy,’ (Tyler) Sash did a great job hitting him early and he looked kind of dazed when he got up. I feel like that made a difference and he coughed it up.” Interesting.]

--Ravens kicker Billy Cundiff said he normally doesn’t watch the action and instead follows the scoreboard monitor. He insists the Gillette Stadium scoreboard read third down when it was really fourth.

“The scoreboard read first and second downs on second and third downs, a discrepancy which Ravens P.R. director Kevin Byrne confirmed… after team officials watched video of the game.

“So Cundiff had to sprint onto the field to avoid a delay of game, and shanked it wide left to send the Patriots to Super Bowl XLVI.” The Ravens had a time out and coach John Harbaugh didn’t use it.

--On the issue of Ravens receiver Lee Evans and whether he had possession in the end zone at the end of the game, Sunday night when I posted my column I was incredulous there was no review or discussion among the announcers.

“Harbaugh said he thought Evans’ near-catch merited at least a stoppage of play for an instant replay review to determine whether Evans had possession of the ball long enough to be awarded a touchdown. The Ravens could not challenge the play because it occurred in the final two minutes.

“ ‘I was surprised they didn’t look at it,’ Harbaugh said.

“An NFL spokesman said in a written statement on the league’s Web site that the replay assistant in the booth had confirmed the incomplete call without play needing to be stopped.

“But Harbaugh said the game wasn’t taken from the Ravens unfairly.

“ ‘That’s the way football goes…’ he said. ‘If we had played a little better, made another play or two, we’d have won the football game.’”

But as to the NFL’s statement, that is a boldfaced lie. There is no way the replay official had time to review all the angles. There was no stoppage in play whatsoever and he couldn’t have spent more than five seconds on it.

“Many of Evans’ teammates on the field and the sideline believed he had possession long enough in the end zone for the play to be considered a touchdown.

“ ‘I thought it was a a touchdown,’ right tackle Michael Oher said. ‘It looked like a touchdown. I thought you had to get two feet down or something like that. I don’t know what else you’ve got to do to score. But it looked like a touchdown to me.’

“Because the play occurred in the final two minutes of regulation, only the officials can call for a video review. ‘Obviously, they didn’t feel like it was close enough to being reviewed,’ Evans said matter-of-factly.”

Evans showed some class, as did Harbaugh. I’ll just always remember that there was no questioning whatsoever by Phil Simms or Jim Nantz, let alone was there a full review in the booth. Unreal…it’s the freakin’ AFC championship, for crying out loud!

[As great as the games were, as a Jets fan, boy do I sympathize with Ravens and Niners fans this week.]

--The Patriots’ defense gave up 411 yards a game in the regular season, but has yielded only 325 per game in its two playoff contests. And did you know that Pats lineman Vince Wilfork was on the field for 67 of the 70 defensive snaps on Sunday? Goodness gracious.

--It’s the Pats fifth Super Bowl appearance in 11 seasons. As Ronald Reagan would have said, “Not bad…not bad at all.”

--The Giants’ overtime win on Sunday drew the highest television rating for any NFL conference championship game since 1995. The Pats game was the highest rated afternoon AFC championship since 1994. Yeah, I’d say the NFL is on a roll. It was so important they not lose any regular season games following the lockout.

The 2008 Super Bowl between the Giants and Pats drew 97 million viewers – at the time a record, while last year’s Packers-Steelers affair drew 111 million.

--As the Star-Ledger reports, when it comes to getting tickets for the big game, seats originally priced at $900 and $1,200 are selling for $2,500 to $15,000 on StubHub, owing to the fact it’s the Giants-Pats and a rematch of four years ago. StubHub said they had 1.5 million visitors to the site on Sunday. But if you really want to go, take my advice from last Bar Chat…wait a few days, assuming you’ve lined up your flight arrangements and hotel.

The Giants and Pats each get about 12,250 tickets, or 17.5 percent of the total, while the hosting Indianapolis Colts receive 3,500. Each NFL club gets 1.2 percent of total tickets, and the league gets the final 25 percent. [Lucas Oil Stadium seats 70,000.]

--Johnny Mac muses that as successful as he was at San Francisco in his first year, if Jim Harbaugh had stayed at Stanford, he could have been in line to coach his favorite quarterback, Andrew Luck, at Indianapolis, where Harbaugh himself had his best season statistically as a quarterback.

--Shu passed along the story out of Arizona that the Cardinals are very interested in Peyton Manning. But I want Peyton Manning! cried the Jets fan who has zero confidence in Mark Sanchez.

--The Oakland Raiders hired Denver defensive coordinator Dennis Allen to be their new head coach after the team fired Hue Jackson, who had gone 8-8 in his only season at the helm.

More on Joe Paterno

“College basketball wouldn’t have cornered the market on respect and reverence. College football would have had an entry of its own.

“The principles they held were similar. They said they were teachers first, stewards of athletic success a distant second, even though they each had lots of the latter. Wooden won 10 national titles and Paterno two, as well as winning the most games in the history of major-college football, 409.

“Wooden constructed his perfectly, although certainly not consciously. He quit coaching at 64, when his health started to slip a bit and when it was obvious that the only way he could build on his coaching success was to continually top himself. He knew you can climb Everest only so many times before the bad weather comes.”

Wooden slipped into private life and stayed out of the public eye. But when he got into his 80s, “public life started to heat up again for him. Retrospective newspaper articles spawned the idea of books about his life philosophies….He made hundreds of public appearances and, at each, the audience was mesmerized.

“He could have been overwhelmed, but he somehow managed to handle all the new attention with a smile and a tinge of gratitude that so many people still cared….

“Paterno never had a chance to do what Wooden did, to clear his mind and ponder his navel and see whether the aftermath of football brought life into better focus for him. It was his choice to coach until he was 85.

“There still might have been time for Paterno, even in the aftermath of the horrible Jerry Sandusky mess. Remember, Wooden made it until he was only four months shy of his 100th birthday.

“We are a country that wants to forgive, even forget. Wooden had a skeleton in his closet, at least in the perception of many fans. They rationalized that his incredible success was partly driven and financed by former UCLA booster Sam Gilbert.

“Wooden always denied knowledge of what Gilbert was doing. He was always direct when asked about it, never defensive. Eventually, time and the very essence of Wooden led most people to forget Gilbert altogether, or simply not believe that Wooden’s life ethics would have allowed his involvement.

“Paterno’s problems were a world apart from giving athletes extra benefits. His failure to make his way to the steering wheel of the bus that was driving Sandusky out of town remains unconscionable and inconceivable. Unless there is a dramatic reversal of information forthcoming in the Sandusky case, Paterno’s inaction is a legacy-killer….

“The story of John Wooden did not end with his days as a coach. Very possibly, his work after basketball touched more people than his work during it.

“The story of Joe Paterno, which will always be mitigated somewhat by his numerical success as a football coach, ended in controversy and confusion.

“We will remember Wooden with blue skies, gentle breezes and a symphony orchestra playing in the background. We will remember Paterno with an asterisk.”

“Maybe now Joe Paterno can be at peace, something that had to be impossible in the last 11 weeks of his life.

“Maybe now, in death, his legacy can be viewed in the manner it should; with a broad sweep that includes what was so uniquely special, and not just the dark shadows ad anguished voices of the past three months.

“If not today, maybe a distant tomorrow, when time has healed the cataclysm he leaves behind, or at least cooled it. Paterno belongs to the ages now. I hope the ages treat him kindly. The ages are often more logical and thoughtful than blogs and talk shows and newspapers.

“He was the Brooklyn kid who became the Brown quarterback, the Brown quarterback who became the Penn State coach, the Penn State coach who became a giant, and accomplished feats no man had ever done before nor will ever do again.

“He was rightly considered a marvel and legend. But he also became a symbol of misfortune and mistake, of recrimination and regret. His record of endurance at one school was unfathomable. But in the end, that is not the unfathomable thing that drew the world to his name.

“A pity about that. A tragedy. There is, as we have been reminded again, plenty of tragedy to go around in the Penn State story.

“His career was an icon of reliability and longevity and purpose, but also a warning. Something about how giants can fall and legends can be blemished, and the straightest of roads can take sudden, astonishing turns….

“Joe Paterno was born four days before Christmas in 1926. He died on the 22nd day of January in 2012, not far from the stadium where he served for so long. So much admirable happened in between, it can’t all be swallowed whole by a scandal. It just can’t. Give him the accountability of what happened, but also grant him the honor of a life remarkably well lived.

“Joe Paterno loved the classics. He quoted Shakespeare to his team, devoured the poems of Virgil and donated his money to help save Penn State’s classics department, even endowing a scholarship in the name of his high school Latin teacher, the Rev. Thomas Bermingham.

“With Paterno’s death, the final thread of his narrative is one fit for the literary tragedies he adored.

“Paterno arrived at Penn State in 1950, and did more than any one person to help the university transform athletically and academically over the ensuing decades, but this final legacy will be indelibly stained by not doing enough.

“ ‘With the benefit of hindsight, I wish I had done more,’ Paterno said in regard to fulfilling his legal obligation, but not his moral one, when informed that the former defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky was suspected of sexually assaulting a boy in the shower of the Penn State football facility – one of a number of allegations of abuse levied against Sandusky in a grand jury report.

“Classic literature is filled with stories that focus on the tragic hero, cautionary tales of fatal flaws and mistakes. And Paterno’s failure to alert police of Sandusky’s suspected actions in 2002 ultimately ended his coaching career and added a shocking controversy to a legacy that had been stunningly uncomplicated.

“ ‘I think this last tragic series of incidents probably took his will to live,’ said Larry Foster, a friend of Paterno and his family for 60 years. ‘It probably bore down on him because it was so opposite to what he was used to. When he made the decision of handling it the way that he did, I think he felt like he was doing the right thing. And it turned out to be the wrong thing. His words, ‘I should have done more,’ I think I’ll keep in my memory.’”

I highlighted some of the stats last time on Paterno’s career but just want to consolidate it all.

Career record: 409-136-3 (.749)
Two national titles: 1982, 86
Five undefeated seasons: 1968, 69, 73, 86, 94
Bowl record: 24-12-1

College Basketball

AP Top Ten

1. Kentucky
2. Missouri
3. Syracuse
4. Ohio State
5. Kansas
6. Baylor
7. North Carolina
8. Duke
9. Georgetown
10. Michigan State
11. Murray State…No. 9 in ESPN/USA TODAY coaches poll
13. San Diego State

Jay Bilas has Murray State No. 23. C’mon, Jay. Murray State’s three signature wins against Memphis, Dayton and Southern Miss look better and better.

Recall last chat that basketball player Boatright was suspended for six games at the start of his freshman season, after the NCAA ruled that his mother’s acceptance of plane tickets a year earlier represented an “improper benefit,” so Boatright was penalized.

But in the NCAA’s investigation of the mother, Tanesha, she cooperated, not wanting to hurt her son further, and “turned over her bank statements, as the NCAA demanded,” writes Nocera. “Four NCAA investigators pored through her financial records and conducted interrogations in Aurora (Illinois), seeking ‘evidence’ that she was getting money from ‘improper’ sources.

“When the investigators saw a series of cash deposits in her bank account, they demanded to know the source of the money. She told them: Friends had given her money so that she and her children could have a joyful Christmas. The investigators said they didn’t believe her; they felt sure that she must have gotten the money from an unscrupulous sports agent or some other party outlawed by the NCAA.

“Meanwhile, her son remains in limbo, unable to play the game he loves, his reputation unfairly besmirched, while he awaits the NCAA’s latest ruling. I keep hearing it might happen soon, but, so far, nothing. People associated with Connecticut basketball, including (coach Jim) Calhoun, are said to be furious at the NCAA’s treatment of Ryan Boatright. But the university is as fearful of the NCAA as Tanesha. It has yet to say a single word publicly on his behalf….

“Over the past three weeks, as I’ve written a series of columns about the abuses of the NCAA, one question keeps reverberating in my head: How can this be happening in America?

“How can children be punished for the deeds of their parents – deeds that aren’t even wrong in any basic legal sense?”

Nocera is now getting a ton of e-mails, mostly from parents of college athletes.

“ ‘The NCAA is like the Gestapo,’ wrote on parent… ‘It’s out there, we all fear it, and it is all-powerful and follows its own rules and makes things up as they go along. Who are they protecting? The same thing the Gestapo protected: themselves.’”

College Football

--Oregon dodged a bullet as coach Chip Kelly turned down an offer from the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, concluding “I have some unfinished business to complete at the University of Oregon.”

Kelly is 34-6 in three seasons with three conferences titles and three BCS bowls, including the recent Rose Bowl win over Wisconsin. The Ducks have as good a shot as any in winning the national title next season, assuming they can beat USC. Kelly is said to be making $2.8 million per year.

--Navy officially accepted an invitation to join the Big East for football only but not until the 2015 season. Navy insisted it be able to continue to play Army, Air Force and Notre Dame, with Army-Navy continuing to be the second Saturday in December.

As of now, Pittsburgh, Syracuse and West Virginia are expected to remain in the conference through the 2013 season, the same season Boise State and San Diego State join for football only and SMU, Houston and Central Florida are added as all-sports members.

--In a shocker, because they weren’t on the radar, the Detroit Tigers signed free agent slugging first baseman Prince Fielder to a nine-year, $214 million contract.

So the Tigers, after losing Victor Martinez and his .330, 103 RBI production to a torn ACL that will keep him out the entire season, go out and replace the production with Fielder, who drove in 120, is just 27, and is durable, despite his massive girth.

But where do the Tigers play Fielder and superstar slugger Miguel Cabrera, Cabrera having already settled in at first base? Word is they’ll split time at first and DH, at least this season, but if a healthy Martinez returns in 2013, the team has the option of returning Cabrera to third, where he hasn’t played regularly since 2007. [Or Cabrera could start 2012 at third, for all we know at this time.]

Cabrera, Fielder and Justin Verlander…three great reasons for Tigers fans to show up at the park, and they will. As for giving Fielder nine years, at least he’s five (maybe seven) years younger than Albert Pujols. Now if he’d just eat a salad now and then…

--I love what the San Francisco Giants did with two-time Cy Young Award winner Tim Lincecum. Evidently he will sign for two years and $41 million. Lincecum can be a free agent after the 2013 season and had been offered $100 million over five seasons but turned that down. I just think the Giants have made a great move in not jerking him around in the short run, while still having an opportunity to be in the mix after 2013, or sign him to an extension during that season.

I really like that they don’t commit right now to the guy for more than two years because as good as he’s been, there were ever so slight signs last season (13-14, but a sterling 2.74 ERA), that his most dominating days are already over at age 27. Should this prove to be the case, the Giants won’t have committed to a Johan Santanaesque contract that destroys the salary structure of the entire team.

[On the other hand they are trying to lock up fellow hurler Matt Cain for five years, but I don’t see him being the same kind of risk that Lincecum and his pitching motion is.]

--Legendary New York Mets catcher Choo Choo Coleman has reemerged after being in hiding since the 1960s as part of the Mets’ 50th–anniversary celebration this year. I’ll tell some Choo Choo stories as I cover the Mets this spring and summer, but for now, the New York Times’ George Vecsey interviewed Coleman over the weekend and asked him about the story in 1962 when Ralph Kiner was interviewing Choo Choo, asking, “What’s your wife’s name, and what’s she like?” Coleman replied, “Her name is Mrs. Coleman – she likes me, bub.”

[This is going to be a strange season coming up for the Mets. They really have the potential to have an absolutely dreadful year, especially if the starting pitching is bad and Ike Davis doesn’t stay healthy. At the same time you’ll have constant reminders of 1962, the team with the historically bad 40-120 mark. That edition was a bunch of lovable losers. This year’s 40-120 edition won’t be.]

--Australian Open Semis:

1. Novak Djokovic
4. Andy Murray

2. Rafael Nadal
3. Roger Federer

11. Kim Clijsters
3. Victoria Azarenka

4. Maria Sharapova
2. Petra Kvitova

--The pathetic Washington Wizards, 2-15, fired coach Flip Saunders, who was 51-130 in his tenure with the team. Saunders was in the third year of a four-year, $18 million contract. Assistant Randy Wittman takes over for now.

--I didn’t have time to comment further on golfer Mark Wilson and his win at the Humana Challenge, formerly the Bob Hope tourney. It was his fifth PGA Tour title, which would surprise many casual fans because he is still far from a household name. It doesn’t help Wilson that all of his five career victories have come before mid-March! That’s remarkable. The guy has a tendency to disappear the rest of the year.

--Actor James Farentino died after a long illness. He was 73. Farentino was a staple of television, particularly in the 1970s and 80s, with recurring roles in series such as “The Bold Ones: The Lawyers,” “Dynasty,” “Blue Thunder,” and “Police Story.” His career took a turn for the worse in 1994 when he pleaded no contest to stalking Tina Sinatra, with whom he had had an on-and-off relationship with for five years. Studios then ignored him.

--Talk about time flying…Petula Clark is 79 and in the midst of a two-week cabaret engagement at Feinstein’s in New York. Unfortunately I won’t get to see her.

Top 3 songs for the week 1/27/68: #1 “Judy In Disguise” (John Fred & His Playboy Band) #2 “Chain Of Fools” (Aretha Franklin) #3 “Green Tambourine” (The Lemon Pipers…great tune)…and…#4 “Woman, Woman” (The Union Gap featuring Gary Puckett…had big hair before it was popular) #5 “Bend Me, Shape Me” (The American Breed) #6 “Hello Goodbye” (The Beatles) #7 “Spooky” (Classics IV) #8 “Daydream Believer” (The Monkees) #9 “I Heard It Through The Grapevine” (Gladys Knight & The Pips…Pips ain’t no Four Tops, Temps, or Imperials) #10 “If I Could Build My Whole World Around You” (Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell)

NFL / Super Bowl Quiz Answers: 1) Chuck Howley, LB, Dallas, Super Bowl V, and Jake Scott, S, Miami, SB VII, were the first two defensive players to be selected MVPs; Howley in a losing effort, Dallas’ 16-13 loss to Baltimore, which was just a hideous game despite the closeness of the score. 2) Larry Csonka, Miami, SB VIII, was the first running back to get the MVP award. 3) In SB XII, defensive linemen Harvey Martin and Randy White were co-MVPs for Dallas.

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