Note: Posted early Wednesday a.m. Your editor needs to find gas today, especially with another storm bearing down on us. Thus, BC is a bit abbreviated.
Dallas Cowboys Quiz: 1) Name the five Cowboy QBs to throw 100 TD passes. 2) Emmitt Smith (17,162) and Tony Dorsett (12,036) are Dallas’ leading rushers, career. Who are numbers 3 and 4 on the list? Answers below.
College Football
Not a great lineup of CFB games this week. Actually, there’s one on Wednesday of interest if you are a MAC fan.
Bowling Green (6-3, 4-1 MAC) vs. Ohio (8-1, 4-1)
No. 15 (BCS ranking) Texas A&M at No. 1 Alabama
No. 2 Kansas State at TCU (6-3, 3-3)…it would appear Collin Klein is going to play and that his “undisclosed injury” was a concussion.
No. 11 Oregon State at No. 14 Stanford…best game on paper, to me. Might be donning Beaverwear around 3:00 ET
Kind of intriguing game on at noon perhaps worth a look-in at some point, assuming your power is back…No. 9 Louisville at Syracuse…the Orange have been improving. Go ahead, ‘Cuse…ruin Louisville’s season. Give Rutgers a shot at the Orange Bowl.
Can you believe No. 4 Notre Dame at Boston College is the 8:00 ABC game of the week?! Then again, little to choose from, plus it’s ND. But this is a BC team that is as bad as they come. Could be dreadful viewing.
Actually, the game of the week is Colgate vs. Lehigh for the probable Patriot League crown. Pete M., Red Raiders’ alum (oops, only “Raiders” these days, as Pete reminds me…what a wimpy administration….no Orangemen, either….whatever happened to the St. John’s Redmen, too?) told me the Colgate QB had 512 yards total offense last week.
Finally, not for nothing but Louisiana Tech senior quarterback Colby Cameron is having one helluva season. 255/358 (71.2%), 2,946 yards, 24 touchdowns and zero interceptions! Alabama QB AJ McCarron also hasn’t thrown a pick but he’s thrown it only 204 times vs. Cameron’s 358.
NFL Stuff
–Didn’t have a chance to mention Tampa Bay rookie running back Doug Martin’s performance the other day, 251 yards on 25 carries against the Raiders, including four second-half touchdown runs of 45, 67, 70 and 1 yards. Incredibly, he became the first NFL player to have at least three rushing TDs of over 45 yards in a game. He also joined former Bronco back Mike Anderson as the only NFL player to rush for at least 250 yards and four touchdowns in a game. Plus, Martin set a franchise record with the 251.
Thus far Martin is averaging 5.2 per carry with 794 yards rushing in his first 8 games.
So the Wall Street Journal’s Jared Diamond asks, is this the NFL’s greatest rookie class, when you consider Andrew Luck just bested Cam Newton’s rookie record for passing yards, while Robert Griffin III has obviously had his moments.
Plus you have rookie backs Alfred Morris (Washington) and Trent Richardson (Cleveland) who are both performing well.
–According to a midseason poll of 103 players from 27 teams conducted by the Sporting News, Jets coach Rex Ryan is the most overrated in the NFL. Ryan was named on 35 ballots. Second was Bill Belichick with 16 votes and Andy Reid of Philly with nine.
Reid, of course, is headed out the door shortly. Or certainly at the end of the year assuming the Eagles don’t go on a big roll soon. On Monday night, the Eagles fell to 3-5 in losing to the Saints (also 3-5 but headed in the right direction after a rough start) and Drew Brees, 28-13. Brees extended his record streak to 51 games with a touchdown pass, while Michael Vick had another very mediocre performance, 22/41, 272, 1-1, 72.4 rating. The Eagles had first-and-goal four times and managed only two field goals, the story of their season.
–Indianapolis head coach Chuck Pagano’s doctors say his leukemia is in remission. While he requires more chemo, the signs are positive.
–I forgot to mention the specifics of Eli Manning’s dreadful performance against the Steelers on Sunday, 10/24, 125, 41.1. The first six games of the season, Manning didn’t have a rating below 86.3 as he threw 11 touchdown passes and 5 interceptions. The last three his rating are 78.9, 58.4 and 41.1 with but one TD pass and four picks.
College Basketball Bits
—San Diego State’s Aztecs were to open their hoops season against Syracuse on Friday at the Battle on The Midway (USS Midway, San Diego), but it has been moved to Sunday due to weather concerns.
–Doh! The other day, in talking about the upcoming college basketball season, I mentioned the Murray State Racers, with the return of senior guard Isaiah Canaan, had as good a backcourt tandem as any in the country when Canaan is coupled with sophomore Zay Jackson.
Little did I know Jackson had been suspended a few days before my statement for hitting two pedestrians with his car in a Wal-Mart parking lot in September, an offense that landed him in jail for 30 days. The school then decided to suspend him the whole season rather than letting him back later…a smart move. Look for Jackson to re-emerge somewhere else next year, I imagine, unless he is truly committed to Murray State.
—Wake Forest opens on Friday against mighty Radford. I’ll take a one-point win. ESPN The Magazine ranked all 350 or so teams playing Div. I-A b-ball and the Deacs are No. 167. Among the teams ahead of us are Mercer (119), St. Francis (N.Y.) (135), Quinnipiac (147), Texas Arlington (153), San Diego (160…not to be confused with San Diego St.), and Portland (165)
Men’s Soccer – Division I Poll…Nov. 6
1. Akron
2. Maryland
3. UNC
4. Georgetown
5. UCLA
6. UConn
7. Notre Dame
8. Coastal Carolina
9. New Mexico
10. Marquette
13. Wake Forest…yippee!!! Deaconwear struggling to get out of losers’ drawer
23. Elon
–The NHL and Players Association met for seven-plus hours on Tuesday and will continue on Wednesday. Mildly encouraging, I guess.
–Two races to go in the Chase for the Sprint Cup, with Jimmie Johnson just seven points ahead of Brad Keselowski with races remaining at Phoenix and Homestead-Miami. To prevent Johnson from becoming a six-time champion, Keselowski probably has to win one of the two.
–We note the passing of Milt Campbell, the first African-American to win the Olympic decathlon in 1956 who later went on to play pro football and become a motivational speaker. He was 78. Campbell was a native of Plainfield, N.J. (where I was born) and was a rising senior in high school when he won the silver medal in the decathlon at the 1952 Olympics in Helsinki, finishing second to Bob Mathias. Four years later he won gold in Melbourne.
Campbell attended Indiana University and in 1957 was drafted by the Cleveland Browns, where he played one year before moving to the Canadian Football League.
In 2000, the New Jersey Sportswriters Association named Campbell its New Jersey Athlete of the Century. [Should have been Willie Wilson…but I digress.]
—Let’s Go Mets! Let’s Go Mets!
Outfielder Lucas Duda broke his right wrist moving furniture. You can’t make this stuff up.
–A massive study of over 5,800 people by researchers from Indiana University found 85% of men said their female partners reached orgasm the last time they had sex – while only 64% of women said the same.
“We certainly know some women do fake it,” said Debra Lynne Herbenick, a research scientist… “This shows this is one area that the sexes can do a better job of – communicating.”
The study was done as a follow-up to gauge how attitudes have changed since the groundbreaking Kinsey study of more than 60 years ago.
The biggest single change in American sexuality over that time? Err, the rise of oral sex, sports fans. The survey showed 91% of men said they had received oral sex from a woman, compared with 30% in Kinsey’s study. [David K. Li / New York Post]
—Lolo Jones made the USA bobsled team as a pusher for USA-3.
–From the AP…BOZEMAN, Mont. “A 24-year-old man was mauled to death Sunday morning while cleaning a grizzly bear enclosure at a wildlife casting agency in southwestern Montana, Gallatin County officials said.
“The man was mauled by one or both of the captive-bred grizzly bears at the Animals of Montana facility…
“Chuck Watson, attorney for Animals of Montana’s owner, Troy Hyde, told the Bozeman Daily Chronicle the grizzly bear had to be put down in order to recover the victim….
“Animals of Montana provides captive-bred animals for photography shoots and motion pictures, ranging from African lions and minks to badgers and bobcats.”
Our sympathies to Mr. Grizzly, No. 6 on the All-Species List, who was just yearning to do what his forefathers have always done…kill efficiently.
–As for the two-year-old boy killed at the Pittsburgh Zoo by a pack of African painted dogs, some stories are better left untold. What is unfathomable is how his mother put him on top of a railing to view the animals. The zoo had just passed its five-year review for accreditation, meaning it exceeded all safety standards.
Top 3 songs for the week of 11/7/70: #1 “I’ll Be There” (The Jackson 5…one of their best) #2 “We’ve Only Just Begun” (Carpenters…their best) #3 “Fire And Rain” (James Taylor…one of his best)…and…#4 “Green-Eyed Lady” (Sugarloaf…not bad…not bad at all) #5 “Indiana Wants Me” (R. Dean Taylor…pre-season No. 1 in b-ball) #6 “All Right Now” (Free…nothing is free, just sayin’…) #7 “I Think I Love You” (The Partridge Family…Susan Dey, ohhh baby…) #8 “Cracklin’ Rosie” (Neil Diamond) #9 “Candida” (Dawn) #10 “Lola” (The Kinks)
Dallas Cowboys Quiz Answers: 1) Five with 100 TD passes: Troy Aikman (165), Tony Romo (159), Danny White (155), Roger Staubach (153), Don Meredith (135). [Craig Morton had 80] 2) After Emmitt Smith and Tony Dorsett, next two on Cowboys’ career rushing list are Don Perkins (6,217…1961-68) and Calvin Hill (5,009…1969-74)
