Super Bowl MVP Quiz: Where did the following MVPs go to school? Len Dawson (SB IV), Chuck Howley (SB V), Fred Biletnikoff (SB XI), Richard Dent (SB XX). Answer below.
Tiger…PGA Tour Titles
Sam Snead 82
Tiger Woods 75
Jack Nicklaus 73
Woods has also now won his season debut on Tour a seventh time and in the other six years he averaged over six wins a campaign when he did so.
Tiger won this event a seventh time, and when you include the 2008 U.S. Open played on the course, that’s eight. [He has also won seven times at Bay Hill and Firestone.]
So, with the eight wins at Torrey Pines, of all active golfers only Zach Johnson, Stuart Appleby, Steve Stricker, Justin Leonard, David Toms, David Duval, Jim Furyk, Ernie Els, Davis Love III, Vijay Singh and Phil Mickelson have more career wins than Tiger does on this course.
And he’s back on track with his record after having a third-round lead…now 50 of 54.
A-Roid, Part XLVIII
The New York Daily News’ I-Team…Teri Thompson, Bill Madden and Michael O’keefe
“Just four years after he swore to the world that steroids were long in his past, detailed patient files, payment records and handwritten notes emerged in a published report Tuesday linking Alex Rodriguez to a self-described Miami ‘biochemist’ under investigation by the Drug Enforcement Administration and Major League Baseball.
“The names of several other stars, including former Yankee Melky Cabrera, Gio Gonzalez, Nelson Cruz, Bartolo Colon and more than a dozen other athletes, were also found on records from Anthony Bosch’s now-shuttered anti-aging clinic, Biogenesis. A former investor in the clinic leaked the documents to a South Florida weekly newspaper.
“As the Daily News first reported Saturday, federal investigators from the DEA and Florida, as well as MLB’s Department of Investigations, have been probing the link between Bosch and the Yankee third baseman and as many as 20 other active players for several months. According to sources, federal agents have already interviewed Bosch.
“ ‘It’s the tip of the iceberg,’ said one law enforcement source of the names found in Bosch’s records.
“Rodriguez appears numerous times, under his own name as well as nicknames such as ‘Alex Rod’ and ‘Cacique’ in Bosch’s papers, according to the Miami New Times. The papers indicate A-Rod received testosterone cream, human growth hormone and other drugs banned by Major League Baseball.
“According to the records the newspaper cited, Rodriguez’s account with Bosch was ‘paid through April 30th of 2012, and dates to 2009.”
The News has been investigating A-Rod’s ties to Bosch since last summer. South Florida
“is rife with anti-aging clinics and rejuvenation centers.”
A spokesman for A-Rod said in a statement to The News: “The news reports about a purported relationship between Alex Rodriguez and Anthony Bosch are not true.
“Alex Rodriguez was not Mr. Bosch’s patient, he was never treated by him and he was never advised by him. The purported references in the story – at least as they relate to Alex Rodriguez – are not legitimate.”
The News says “The South Florida investigation has sparked renewed interest in Seth and Sam Levinson, the Brooklyn agents who represent Cabrera, Gonzalez and other players linked to Bosch.”
MLB has turned over its information to the DEA and will question the players.
“This time when Alex Rodriguez’s name is linked to performance enhancing drugs, he immediately issues a statement through a PR firm saying that it is all a lie and then lawyers up with Roy Black, a Miami guy who is a lot like Alex in the sense that he used to be a lot bigger than he is now.
“Oh, you hear it good from A-Rod, through his mouthpieces. You hear how it is all a lie about Rodriguez’s relationship with a guy named Bosch running an ‘anti-aging’ clinic in South Florida, a clinic that the feds and Major League Baseball clearly seem to think is the new BALCO…
“Once, when first caught as a juicer, Rodriguez expected the world to believe this preposterous, nuanced account of what he said was his limited drug use as a Texas Ranger.
“That it was the pressure of his $252 million contract that made him do it, that he was just this dumb crazy kid…that even though he didn’t know exactly what he was taking from some friend or cousin, or what it was doing for him, he continued to do it month after month for three years.
“It is a version of things for suckers. We were also expected to believe he was squeaky clean after that, expected to believe that in 2007, when he had 54 home runs and knocked in 156 for the Yankees – juicy Texas numbers – he was more drug-free than the Betty Ford Clinic….
“If baseball is going to continue to clean up its sport, something it has done mightily over the last decade, the government has to continue to go after Bosch and his clinic and his ‘patients.’ The government has subpoena power. Major League Baseball certainly does not.
“You may be one of those who didn’t care what (Lance) Armstrong was taking, doesn’t care if Bonds or Clemens were juiced to the gills. You may be one of those, like Armstrong’s enablers, who fall back now on the defense that Everybody Was Doing It. But if you believe these guys are cheats, if you are one who believes that what the juicers have done is a form of athletic fraud, then you should want the government to get to the bottom of this with Rodriguez and everybody else….
“Maybe in the end the truth about Rodriguez is that he was juicing from the time he was a kid. It would mean that the real lie isn’t the stories coming out about him now. The real lie would be Alex Rodriguez himself.”
Rodriguez can be suspended by MLB even in the absence of a positive drug test as long as it uncovers sufficient evidence, but A-Rod could be out all year after his hip surgery anyway.
“Privately, the Yankees are thrilled with this latest mess. For if the allegations first made yesterday in the Miami New Times that detail Rodriguez purchasing banned performance-enhancers from 2009-2012 turn out to be accurate – or worse – then a portal has been opened for the Yankees to accomplish a goal as large as winning the 2013 World Series because of what it means to their present and near future: Severing ties with Rodriguez and saving as much of the $114 million they owe him over the next five years as possible.
“Now let’s not mislead anyone. The Yankees will need a Hail Mary to succeed. After all, we thought baseball had Ryan Braun with no wiggle room, and Braun escaped. We thought the feds had Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens, and how did that turn out? The union may not love A-Rod, but its history is to fight like heck for its members and when the Players Association fights it generally wins….
“By the Collective Bargaining Agreement only the commissioner can punish a player for a violation of the sport’s drug provisions. So the Yankees will have to wait until the investigation concludes (months from now) and then see if there were a way to, for example, sue A-Rod for fraud claiming something like they entered into this contract without him telling the truth about his drug history or they sent him into an operating room with him providing false medical information.”
“Rodriguez will always have his apologists, mostly people who have never had to deal with him and have never been part of his web of deceit. To some who know him well, including the Yankees and Major League Baseball, he is a source of irritation at best, slippery and duplicitous at worst.
“Remember that Rodriguez continued to lie to the Yankees even after admitting his past steroid use. After his first hip surgery, in 2009, he maintained to the team that he had not seen Anthony Galea, the Canada-based physician who pleaded guilty two years later to federal charges stemming from his distribution of human growth hormone to professional athletes.
“Rodriguez had, in fact, seen Galea, and baseball officials and the Yankees remain unsure that they know the extent of his links to performance-enhancing drugs. The Yankees might be inclined to overlook that if Rodriguez were still an elite player. But his production slips every year.
“That fact, of course, cannot be forgotten. If Rodriguez were a healthy superstar, the Yankees would still want him around. They might have even supported him in their terse statement on Tuesday, which pledged support for baseball’s drug program and noted that the matter was now under the jurisdiction of the commissioner’s office.
“Rodriguez has won a championship and two Most Valuable Player awards in New York. He is a historically significant Yankee, emblematic of a complicated era for the game and the team. But the sideshows never end, and it is hard to argue he belongs here anymore.”
Super Bowl
–Norman Chad / Washington Post: “Ray Lewis is a Hall of Fame linebacker, but I just can’t stomach how he’s become the NFL’s poster-boy role model. I’ll always remember, after his 2000 street-fighting incident in Atlanta, HBO or CBS interviewed Lewis in his living room, with a Bible in plain sight. Maybe it’s my nature, but I’m usually skeptical of someone who puts the holy book on a coffee table when the TV cameras are rolling.”
–And so Sports Illustrated ran a story on Tuesday that Lewis took deer-antler extract to help recover from a torn triceps injury he suffered in October. The spray contain IGF-1, a substance on the NFL’s banned list as a performance-enhancer.
“According to the report, Mitch Ross, a former stripper and owner of S.W.A.T.S. (Sports With Alternatives to Steroids), videotaped a phone conversation with Lewis shortly after he suffered the injury nearly four months ago. Ross reportedly told Lewis to apply the spray under his tongue every two hours.” [Manish Mehta / New York Daily News]
Lewis, at Super Bowl Media Day, denied he ever took deer-antler extract. “No. Never.”
“I’ve been in the business 17 years and nobody has ever got up with me every morning and trained with me. Every test I’ve ever took in the NFL? There’s never been a question if I’ve ever even thought about using anything. So to even entertain stupidity like that, tell him to try to get his story off somebody else.”
Lewis also told reporters none of them were qualified to question him on that January 2000 day.
“I just truly feel that this is God’s time, and whatever his time is, you know, let it be his will.”
“The cameras on Sunday’s Super Bowl between the Baltimore Ravens and San Francisco 49ers will spend much time focusing on the Ravens’ Lewis, whose 17-year career will end with him dancing, praying, kissing the turf and hugging everyone in sight, football’s great role model completing an astonishing image rehabilitation 13 years after being charged with a double murder.”
“Four months after the NFL began its season with replacement officials…another referee controversy is looming as the Super Bowl approaches….
“The league is expected to announce this week that Jerome Boger, an NFL referee for seven years, will lead the crew of officials here Sunday. Historically, that means Boger scored the highest among referees during the standard postgame evaluations – a notion that some observers and, privately, several other on-field officials find hard to comprehend.
“ ‘What’s happening right now is that the best officials are not working the best games,’ said Jim Daopoulos, who worked 11 years as an on-field official and 12 years as a supervisor of officials before becoming an officiating analyst for NBC. Daopoulos added that he believed that the grading of some officials, including Boger, was altered because the league had a predetermined assignment in mind.
“ ‘I’m looking at the seven guys who are working in the Super Bowl, and to be quite honest, several of them should not be on the field,’ Daopoulos said.”
A spokesman for the NFL begged to differ. But those analyzing calls over the season said if Boger earned the best grades this season, that means there were “significant after-the-fact revisions from those doing the grading.” [Borden]
“If he had a son, the leader of the free world says he is uncertain he would let him play football. If one of the most ferocious hitters in the game is right, someone will die on the field and the NFL will become extinct in 30 years or less.
“From President Obama to Ravens safeties Bernard Pollard and Ed Reed, who agrees with the president, to the litany of physicians directly linking concussions to an acute brain disease showing up in dead NFL players (some of whom committed suicide), the emotion and the logic all tell us the same thing:
“The most popular sport in America causes irreparable harm to many of its participants, some of whom will stammer through sentences after they retire, lose their memories and have their dinners served to them through intravenous needles….
“Welcome to the Mardi Gras of sanctioned violence, where the two most spine-rattling teams in the NFL collide this weekend on the field that spawned Bountygate, in a city still itching to deck Roger Goodell the way that arrogant judge-and-jury of an NFL commissioner decked their Saints….
“After Obama’s statement to the New Republic, the NFL released its own, maintaining its commitment to the safety and health of its players in an environment that has spawned multimillion-dollar litigation claims against the NFL by dozens of its former concussed players….
“Goodell’s commitment to safety is apparently genuine, but the mixed messages just keep coming. While the rest of the country is figuring out whether they should let their sons play, he’s extremely approving of your daughter suiting up and bumping helmets in the trenches.
“The commissioner invited 9-year-old Sam Gordon, the Salt Lake City youth football star whose YouTube video of her running over and around the boys resulted in her smiling visage on a Wheaties box, and her family to the big game this weekend. Sam had 223 carries and 65 tackles last year – in a sport Goodell’s own senior adviser on his head, neck and spine committee says she shouldn’t be playing until she’s at least 14 years old….
“A week before the big game, on the quandary goes – and certainly not in the White House and the Ravens’ locker room alone.
“In point of fact, as the 49ers and Ravens brace for media day and prepare for their expected physical meeting Sunday, sometimes it feels like the Lombardi Trophy is less up for grabs this week than the very soul of the game.”
–Ravens quarterback Joe Flacco commented on next year’s Super Bowl being played at the Meadowlands.
“I think it’s stupid. If you want a Super Bowl, put a retractable dome on your stadium. Then you can get one. Other than that, I don’t really like the idea. I don’t think people would react very well to it, or be glad to play anybody in that kind of weather.” [Flacco also said the move to hold the game in the Meadowlands was “retarded,” for which he apologized.]
I have been refining my weather forecast for the New York metropolitan area on Feb. 2, 2014, and it’s not good. Heavy snow, turning to sleet and freezing rain, shutting down the highways around the Meadowlands about six hours before game time. In a nutshell, only 578-583 fans will make it to the stadium. Not a great visual for television. As we get closer to the date, I’ll refine the forecast and tell you exactly what will be happening hour-by-hour in case you want to try camping out in the parking lot a week before to ensure you make it to your seat.
College Basketball Review…AP Poll
1. Michigan 19-1
2. Kansas 18-1
3. Indiana 18-2
4. Florida 16-2
5. Duke 17-2
6. Syracuse 18-2
7. Gonzaga 19-2
8. Arizona 17-2
9. Butler 17-3
10. Oregon 18-2…wow…big move…quack quack
14. Miami 15-3…ditto
22. San Diego State…16-4…pollsters want to believe as does moi
Amazingly, it has been 20 years since Michigan was last No. 1, going back to the Fab Five days.
The team with the longest stint between appearances at No. 1 in the AP poll is Ohio State, 44 years, 11 months, 14 days…1962-2007.
On Tuesday, Indiana State upset No. 15 Wichita State, in Wichita, 68-55.
No. 19 North Carolina State lost to Virginia in Charlottesville, 58-55.
–Pete M. was the first to tell me that with the Rajon Rondo injury (ACL), Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce could go. Garnett has a no-trade clause, but he’s not getting younger and the Celtics are obviously out of it with Rondo going down (after Rajon had back-to-back triple-doubles). Pierce is a Celtic lifer but who knows.
Pete also wants me to know his alma mater, Colgate, has moved up to No. 22 in the Men’s Division-I hockey poll (USCHO).
—Lionel Messi scored four goals on Sunday in a Spanish League game and set a La Liga record with goals in 11 consecutive contests with Barcelona’s 5-1 rout of Osasuna. Messi now has 202 goals in 235 La Liga games. Barcelona, by the way, is an astounding 19-1-1 (W-D-L) on the season. [In the Premier League, Manchester United is 18-2-3.]
–This is bizarre, and kind of scary. Actress January Jones (“Mad Men”) said she was paying the price after constantly changing her hair color during her career. She just disclosed that her locks had fallen out in clumps because she dyed it too often.
“The star, a natural blonde, admitted the situation had created so many bald patches that she planned to shave her head.”
She’ll just wear wigs from now on. Lord knows the impact on her brain with that kind of chemical reaction taking place…know what I’m sayin’? [Irish Independent]
–Brad K. passed along the distressing news that performance-enhancing drugs have invaded Paralympic curling. Yes, Jim Armstrong, a member of the Canadian Curling Hall of Fame and captain of Canada’s 2010 Paralympic gold medal team, is being suspended for 18 months after failing a drug test in December.
Brad suggests Man should drop another few spots on the All-Species List and so Man falls to No. 325 from No. 323, with the stink bug at No. 324.
Top 3 songs for the week 1/28/67: #1 “I’m A Believer” (The Monkees) #2 “Tell It Like It Is” (Aaron Neville) #3 “Snoopy Vs. The Red Baron” (The Royal Guardsmen)… and…#4 “Georgy Girl” (The Seekers) #5 “Words Of Love” (The Mamas & The Papas) #6 “Standing In The Shadows Of Love” (Four Tops) #7 “Good Thing” (Paul Revere & The Raiders) #8 “Nashville Cats” (The Lovin’ Spoonful) #9 “Kind Of A Drag” (The Buckinghams) #10 “(We Ain’t Got) Nothin’ Yet” (Blues Magoo…talk about an outstanding week…)
*We note the passing of Leroy Bonner, frontman of the Ohio Players. He was 69. The group had seven Billboard Top 40 tunes in the mid-1970s, including the No. 1 hits “Fire” and “Love Rollercoaster.”
Super Bowl MVP Quiz Answer: Len Dawson – Purdue, Chuck Howley – West Virginia, Fred Biletnikoff – Florida State, Richard Dent – Tennessee State
