NFL Quiz: Who are the five running backs to rush for 2,000 yards in a single season? Answer below.
A few items…in no particular order…as I suffer from jet lag and my quick trip to Ireland for golf and pints.
–I saw in the Irish newspapers that Tom Jones was giving concerts in Dublin and Belfast on consecutive nights at the two biggest theaters there. He’s still got it…and he’ll pack them in at both. Wish I was there.
–I came back from Ireland on Wednesday to learn that the Mets and K-Rod got swept by Washington as K-Rod gave up a ninth inning grand slam. This team can not suck enough, nor can this season end soon enough. At least Washington fans have some hope that brighter days are ahead with the squad they are assembling, including the first overall draft pick, Steven Strasburg. [But my man Adam Dunn is still two homers shy of 40. C’mon, Adam!]
*And as if the above isn\’t bad enough, now the Mets say Jose Reyes has a new hamstring tear which he got running on Tuesday. This is unbelievably bad for the franchise. Some of us wanted to trade him after last year, and now his career is actually in jeopardy. Unreal. As Johnny Mac told me, we should just, err, you know, put him down. This racehorse might not have anything left.
—Major League Baseball attendance is going to finish the year down about 6.5%, “the biggest single-season loss since Harry Truman was president, excluding years involving a work stoppage,” as reported by USA TODAY’s Bob Nightengale. Washington had the biggest decline, down 22.8%.
–It’s been an interesting start to the NFL season. As USA TODAY’s Mike Lopresti points out, three division champs from 2008 – Carolina, Tennessee and Miami – are a combined 0-9. Cleveland has been outscored 95-29 and St. Louis has 24 points in three games.
And then you have the Pittsburgh Steelers and Detroit Lions with identical 1-2 records.
–The NHL season is starting…not that I care one bit. Sorry, hockey fans. I haven’t given a damn about the NHL in years, mainly because my Rangers have generally sucked. Danny Sheridan has the Pittsburgh Penguins taking it all this time at 4-1. Colorado and Atlanta are 300-1.
Sports Illustrated has Chicago defeating Boston for the Stanley Cup.
–So when I was in Ireland, there was a lot of talk over Guinness’ 250th birthday and the parties attached to same. Evidently there were quite a few blowouts across the country, and I just missed one in the Lahinch area.
Recently, though, a descendant of the Guinness family, Clare Irby, was accused of being so drunk she was “on the verge of being dangerous” in denying she let a stranger fondle her breasts on board a flight from India. Ms. Irby claimed she had not been drinking even though she stripped on the plane. “No one touched my bloody breasts, this is something I would remember,” she told police…as reported by the Irish Independent.
But then she confessed to having “four or five” glasses of red wine, but was only “tipsy.” Later she admitted she may not have behaved “like a young lady.”
–But wait…there’s more! Colm Toibin had a piece on Guinness about two weeks ago in the Wall Street Journal.
“If you think of what Ireland actually produced and exported in the 19th century, it is hard to think of anything much except Guinness and people. In a city with huge employment problems, a job with the Guinness Brewery in Dublin was well-paid, secure; it made you an aristocrat among the city’s workers and hordes of unemployed. The drink became associated with Ireland in the same way as certain red wines became associated with regions of France. And because the taste was bitter, almost as if something had been burned in it, it became associated with manliness, maturity, even a sort of toughness. There were many who believed fervently in drinking a pint of Guinness entirely, or almost entirely, for medicinal purposes, assuring everyone around them that they had come to the pub for the good of their health.”
Personally, I never touched the stuff in my 17 trips to Ireland the past 20 years. Well, maybe I had “four or five.” And, err….
Actually, in one of our early trips, we were in the town of Waterville, where there is a terrific golf course, and the starter, Paddy, later happened to be the bartender at the restaurant we went to that evening. So we asked him where to go after dinner and he recommended his friend’s pub and said he’d join us after closing up. So Paddy taught us that night how to properly drink a pint of Guinness.
Then Paddy went sip…sip…gone! Now you younger kids should probably go to bed while I tell your parents that the first and second times we witnessed Paddy doing this, it was amazing. By the third….well, let’s just say we realized Paddy might have had a wee bit of a problem. Especially seeing as all of about six minutes had transpired between pints 1 and 3.
One last Guinness tidbit…10 million pints are downed every day in 150 countries.
–The Daily News highlighted a poll that asked women from 20 countries to rate nations on their ability in bed and give reasons for their answers.
1. Germany (too smelly)
2. England (too lazy)
3. Sweden (too quick)
4. Holland (too dominating)
5. America (too rough…we can do better, guys!)
6. Greece (too lovey-dovey)
7. Wales (too selfish)
8. Scotland (too loud)
9. Turkey (too sweaty…I might have put them No. 1 worst)
10. Russia (too hairy)
–How about all this crap going on with the Binghamton University basketball team. Just last year, I passed along the stories of how the school had been cutting corners in recruiting players and taking in transfers that just weren’t college eligible except for the fact they could dribble, rebound and shoot, as renegade Coach Kevin Broadus took them to the NCAA tournament for the first time.
But since he took over in 2007, there have now been three significant arrests of his players (with the program earning the moniker UNLV East), the latest being star guard Emanuel Mayben, arrested about a week ago for sale and possession of crack cocaine in Troy, New York.
Last Friday, the university released five more players…so with Mayben, six in 48 hours…including the three leading scorers. Binghamton will have only seven scholarship players this season, and only one of them is under 6’5”. Ergo, no point guard.
Binghamton is part of SUNY (the New York State university system…SUNY-Albany, SUNY-Binghamton, etc.) and the new chancellor, Nancy Zimpher, is having none of this. When she was president at Cincinnati, she pushed Bob Huggins out the door.
Coach Broadus, meanwhile, had been given a contract extension through 2014 this past June. The other members of the America East conference are embarrassed to be associated with this school.
[And this just in…Binghamton\’s athletic director, Joel Thirer, resigned, but it appears Broadus will survive.]
–Florida quarterback Tim Tebow suffered his first concussion last Saturday at Kentucky, but luckily for the top-ranked Gators they have a week off before their toughest test of the season, LSU on Oct. 10. It would seem the school is doing all the right things in weighing when he’ll be ready to return.
–Speaking of concussions, as reported by the New York Times’ Alan Schwarz:
“A study commissioned by the National Football League reports that Alzheimer’s disease or similar memory-related diseases appear to have been diagnosed in the league’s former players vastly more often than in the national population – including a rate of 19 times the normal rate for men ages 30 through 49.”
It is the league’s first public affirmation that it has a problem. It’s also about all the concussions that happen at lower levels, such as in high school, that are never diagnosed.
–How awful was that accident in the weight room with USC tailback Stafon Johnson? Thankfully he’s OK, but imagine you’re bench-pressing and the bar slips from your hand and falls directly on your throat, as was the case with Johnson. He went through seven hours of surgery to repair a crushed neck and larynx but is listed in stable condition and is able to communicate via writing and hand signals. Doctors say because he was a football player and had such a muscular neck, that’s what saved him. He is expected to make a full recovery, though he’s out for this year and he won’t even be asked to speak for six weeks while they monitor swelling in his throat.
–Lastly, we note the passing of Lucy Vodden, 46, who died after a bout with lupus. It was over 40 years ago that John Lennon’s son, Julian, then 4, came home from school one day with a drawing, showed it to his father, and said it was “Lucy in the sky with diamonds.” The Boys were working on “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” and Lennon took the image and developed it into a masterpiece. Ms. Vodden, though, said she was never very fond of the song.
Top 3 songs for the week 10/3/64: #1 “Oh, Pretty Woman” (Roy Orbison) #2 “Do Wah Diddy Diddy” (Manfred Mann) #3 “Bread And Butter” (The Newbeats)…and…#4 “Dancing In The Street” (Martha & The Vandellas) #5 “Remember (Walkin’ In The Sand)” (The Shangri-Las…loved the tune…and their nice sweaters) #6 “G.T.O.” (Ronny & The Daytonas) #7 “It Hurts To Be In Love” (Gene Pitney…another great one) #8 “The House Of The Rising Sun” (The Animals) #9 “We’ll Sing In The Sunshine” (Gale Garnett…no relation to hoopster Kevin) #10 “Save It For Me” (The 4 Seasons)
NFL Quiz Answer: Five backs to rush for 2,000 yards in a season.
*14-game schedule. Adrian Peterson, with 357 yards in the first three, is on his way to becoming No. 6.
