[Posted early Wed. a.m., so before the announcement on the Baseball Hall of Fame vote. I have some personal business to take care of, sports fans, that throws the old schedule off; i.e., like renewing my driver’s license, which New Jerseyites know can be a nightmare time-wise.]
NFL Quiz: 1) No QB has ever thrown for 500 yards in a playoff game. [Tom Brady has never thrown for 400.] Who holds the playoff record at 489? [Hint: Game was in the 1980s, not a Super Bowl, and it involved the Jets…but the opposing QB.] 2) Len Dawson opened the Chiefs’ 1969 season as the starting quarterback, but in the second game suffered a serious knee injury, who then started six games in his place…Dawson returning later in the season to lead the Chiefs to victory in Super Bowl IV over the Vikings? Answers below.
NFL Bits
–There’s been a dustup over Steelers coach Mike Tomlin’s post-game comments on Sunday, which were revealed through Antonio Brown’s Facebook Live feed. The players on Monday said they don’t consider it a distraction for the game against New England this weekend, but Tomlin’s message should have remained private.
Brown, being a real jerk, broke NFL rules, as reported by ESPN’s Adam Schefter, as the league’s social media policy prohibits players and coaches from posting messages on any social media platform 90 minutes before kickoff through the completion of postgame locker room interviews.
Brown was leading reporters through the postgame festivities while broadcasting things live and his 17-minute clip caught Tomlin saying the Steelers “spotted these assholes a day and a half” of preparation, referring to the Patriots, who beat the Houston Texans in their game Saturday night.
Tomlin also told the team to get ready quickly because “we’re going to touch down at 4 o’clock in the f—ing morning” with their game having been moved to Sunday night.
“We’ll be ready for their ass. But you ain’t got to tell them we’re coming,” Tomlin said. “Keep a low profile, and let’s get ready to ball like this up again here in a few days and be right back at it. That’s our story.”
One unidentified voice can be heard, “Keep cool on social media. This is about us, nobody else, man.”
“It’s a lion’s den we’re going into this week,” another player said about Patriots’ Gillette Stadium. “Keep your mouth shut, and let’s play Steelers football.”
Tomlin’s comments weren’t anything unusual, it’s just that it should have been kept in-house.
Patriots coach Bill Belichick said the same thing he always does when confronted with something involving social media.
“As you know I’m not on Snapface and all that, so I don’t really get those,” he said. “I’m really just worried about getting our team ready to go. I’m not really too worried about what they put on Instantchat, or whatever it is.”
Tom Brady said Monday on WEEI radio that what Brown did is “against our team policy, so I don’t think that would go over well with our coach. “…Every coach has a different style. Our coach, he’s been in the league for 42 years and he’s pretty old school.” [ESPN.com; Cindy Boren / Washington Post]
By Monday morning, Brown’s video had been viewed more than 1 million times. As Cindy Boren wrote, “Among the more than 100,000 likes was most decidedly not one from Mike Tomlin.”
Tuesday, Tomlin weighed in, apologizing to New England for calling them names while expressing disappointment his star receiver chose to broadcast the profanity-laced speech live.
“The language on the video is regrettable, by me and by others,” Tomlin told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. “That’s why we go to great lengths to preserve certain moments and interactions between us.”
Tomlin then said Brown’s move was “foolish,” “selfish” and “inconsiderate” and that he would face consequences by the team. “We will punish him,” said Tomlin. “We won’t punish us. And we will do that swiftly… He’s got to grow from this….He’s a great player, respected largely in the locker room. But incidents such as this don’t help him in that regard.”
The respect internally is dwindling. Ben Roethlisberger, during his weekly interview on a local radio show, called Brown’s move an “unfortunate situation that we’ve got to deal with right now.”
“That’s a sacred place where things are said and hugs and tears, and it’s kind of a special place. So a little disappointed with AB for that.” [Washington Post]
For his part, Brown apologized late Tuesday night via Twitter, saying, “I let my emotions and genuine excitement get the best of me… It was wrong of me to do…and I have apologized to Coach Tomlin and my teammates for my actions.”
Needless to say, Brown’s name is now in the December file for “Jerk of the Year” consideration. And isn’t it appropriate that he is said to be best buddies with Odell Beckham Jr.
–So just a week ago I wrote how Las Vegas’ bookies got creamed on Clemson-Alabama and now it turns out they got slaughtered on Dallas-Green Bay, as well as Pittsburgh-Kansas City.
As reported by David Purdum of ESPN.com:
“William Hill, which operates sportsbooks at 108 locations through the state, reported suffering the worst day in the company’s five-year history in Nevada….
“After Saturday’s action, favorites were 6-0 straight up and against the spread. But on Sunday, bettors backed the underdogs, taking the Packers and Steelers plus the points and on the money line.”
MGM took twice as much money on Pittsburgh plus the points as it took on Kansas City.
Bettors had sided with all four wild-card favorites, then bet Clemson, then sided with the two favorites on Saturday.
And on Sunday they went with the underdogs and bingo! [The House salvaged the ‘under’ in the late game.]
[The Westgate Las Vegas Superbook opened the Patriots as a 4.5-point favorite over the Steelers and the Falcons a 4-point favorite over the Packers.]
–Four pretty good quarterbacks this Sunday, I’d think you agree…Ryan, Rodgers, Roethlisberger and Brady.
—Tony Romo’s preference is reportedly to play for Denver next season, but the Broncos want to get Romo without giving anything up and the Cowboys certainly aren’t going to do that.
As noted by NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport, it seems Dallas may try to play the game the Eagles did with quarterback Sam Bradford, who was traded to the Vikings right before the regular season started when the Vikes suddenly needed to look for a replacement for injured Teddy Bridgewater; Philadelphia getting a 2017 first-round pick and a fourth-rounder in 2018 in return.
But in the case of Dallas and Romo, that would mean going the entire offseason and training camp fielding constant questions.
Romo and owner Jerry Jones do, however, get along well and Jones may simply release him and let Romo choose his own team.
—Packers-Cowboys on Sunday had an average audience of 48.5 million viewers, the most-watched NFL playoff game of all time, with 62.4 million checking in when the game was briefly tied with less than two minutes on the clock – at 7:45 p.m. ET.
Steelers-Chiefs proved to be the best primetime showing on record for a NFL Wild Card or Divisional Playoff Game, with an average 37.1 million viewers and a peak of 39.1 million viewers.
So I guess talk of the death of the NFL early in the season (including by yours truly) was indeed all about the election and things like the presidential debates and, frankly, a lousy slate of primetime games.
—Super Bowl ticket prices fell about 25% with the losses of both the Texans and Cowboys, the Super Bowl being in Houston. With the possibility of two relatively local teams playing in the game, that was boosting prices to all-time highs, but now that both are out, most experts in this area expect prices to end up being below last year’s record.
The cheapest SB LI seats were at about $3,700 on Monday morning, while the average on SeatGeeks was $4,600, down from $6,100 on Friday.
Meanwhile, the average ticket price in Atlanta for Falcons-Packers is around $500, which would be the most expensive home game in Falcons history.
Steelers-Patriots has a listing price of $636 on SeatGeek as of Monday.
College Basketball
AP Poll (Jan. 16)
1. Villanova 17-1 (28)
2. Kansas 16-1 (32)
3. UCLA 18-1 (3)
4. Gonzaga 17-0 (2)
5. Kentucky 15-2
6. Baylor 16-1
T-7. Creighton 17-1
T-7. West Virginia 15-2
9. North Carolina 16-3
10. Florida State 16-2
15. Notre Dame 16-2
18. Duke 14-4
25. Maryland 16-2
So Monday night, post-the poll being released, Villanova destroyed Seton Hall (12-6, 2-4) 76-46.
Creighton had a nice 72-67 road win over 22 Xavier (13-5, 3-3).
Kansas won on the road at Iowa State (11-6, 3-3) 76-72, the Jayhawks 6-0 in Big 12 play.
And Roy Williams picked up his 800th career victory in an 85-68 win over Syracuse in Chapel Hill. Williams is just the ninth Division I coach to hit that mark. The Orange fell to 11-8, 3-3, while the Tar Heels are 5-1 in the conference.
NBA
–Monday night, the Golden State Warriors sent a message, or at least tried to, in destroying the Cleveland Cavaliers 126-91 in Oakland. The Warriors were aggressive from the start and Kevin Durant played great ‘D’ on LeBron James, holding the King to an inconsequential 20 points.
The triumvirate of Kevin Love, LeBron and Kyrie Irving was 13 of 43 from the field, while Durant, Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson were 13 of 30 just from three, with Draymond Green chipping in with 11 points, 13 rebounds, and 11 assists.
So the Warriors exorcised some demons, including from Christmas Day’s 109-108 loss at Cleveland.
Golden State is now 35-6, while the Cavs fell to 29-11. [San Antonio is 31-9.]
–The Knicks always play the afternoon of MLK Day at the Garden and with absolutely zero on otherwise at that time (and the markets being closed), I’ve probably watched at least some of every contest for decades regardless of the state of the team.
This time the Knicks were hosting Atlanta and it was an entertaining affair, close all the way, with the Knicks suffering yet another devastating defeat, 108-107; with the Hawks’ Dennis Schroeder hitting the game-winning three and then the Knicks failing in the final seconds (Derrick Rose was fouled in the lane but it wasn’t called).
The Knicks are thus 4-14 since their 14-10 start and they’ve had three real heart-breakers in just the last 10 days.
But at least us fans who catch a little of the team from time to time (these days it’s penance for past sins) get to listen to Walt “Clyde” Frazier and Mike Breen. Clyde is a piece of work and he’s getting better as he ages gracefully. He’s a wise man and Breen always gets him to open up.
So the two are talking about Martin Luther King Day and its meaning to Clyde, who was in college in the 60s, and he was talking about the value of education and how confidence and character can overcome a lot of things, when Breen asked him what he would have done had he not played basketball, knowing he was a good all-around athlete, football, baseball….
“I couldn’t hit the curve ball, Mike….baseball is the hardest sport…harder than football, basketball…”
The conversation was cut short by the action on the court but the point was made. [I love when a player commits a stupid foul and Clyde goes, “That was asinine!”]
But I forgot to note a little story Clyde and Breen shared as they were discussing the particular date the other day, being the end of the 1971-72 Lakers’ record 33-game winning streak. Bill Sharman was the coach and it was Sharman who instituted the light morning, game day practice sessions that became known as a “shootaround.”
Clyde recalled asking one of the Lakers what they would do after the shootaround. “We’d go back and wake up Wilt.” [Wilt having an interesting reputation, if you catch my drift.]
Back to the Knicks, team president Phil Jackson is one of the most despised people in Gotham these days. He compounds his problems by refusing to talk, but lets his lackeys do it for them, one of whom is Charley Rosen, a long-time writer and former assistant coach under Jackson.
The other day Rosen, writing an online piece for FanRag, said: “The only sure thing is that Carmelo Anthony has outlived his usefulness in New York.”
Well we all knew this was coming directly from the classless Jackson, who didn’t have the guts to say this to Carmelo’s face, and Anthony knew where the comment emanated.
“Listen,” he said in response, “if that’s what they feel…if that’s what’s coming from that side…I hear all the rhetoric and I still come to work every day and play and bust my ass and try not to worry about it.”
But while the Knicks would love Anthony to go (ditto, moi), he’s under contract another few years and he has a no-trade clause.
Jackson hasn’t said a word since his statement via Twitter on Dec. 27, when he announced he was breaking up with long-time girlfriend Jeanie Buss. Now we’re waiting for Phil and Melo to break up.
[Can’t believe Jeanie stayed with this jerk so long.]
But late word has Melo and Jackson talking things out…to be continued…
Men’s Division I College Hockey Poll (Jan. 16)
1. Penn State
2. Denver
3. Boston University
4. Minn.-Duluth
5. Mass.-Lowell
6. Harvard
7. Minnesota
8. North Dakota
9. Union
10. Boston College
16. St. Lawrence
So until Pete M. reminded me, I forgot to check on the status of the college game and if you’re thinking, “Penn State?” you’re not alone. The Nittany Lions had just a club program until moving up to D-I for the 2012-13 season. Their first year in the Big Ten was 2013-14 and they went 8-26-2. This year they are 16-2-1!
The team has been helped in a huge way by billionaire Terry Pegula, a Penn State alum and current owner of the Buffalo Sabres and Bills. He donated $mega-millions to the school to finance construction of a new arena and such.
College Football
–Yahoo Sports and The Oregonian reported that at least three Oregon football players have been hospitalized as a result of intense strength and conditioning workouts, after the hiring of Willie Taggert as head coach last Dec. 7. Three Ducks players are listed in fair condition at a hospital outside Eugene with the mother of one player (no need for me to mention the names) telling the paper her son has been diagnosed with rhabdomyolysis.
The player’s mother said her son had complained of very sore arms after the workouts, with the condition being when soft muscle tissue is broken down with “leakage into the blood stream of muscle contents,” according to the NCAA medical handbook. The syndrome can lead to damaged kidneys if it is severe.
Taggert brought over his strength coach from the University of South Florida, Irele Oderinde, and the two have been putting players through what has been described as military basic training, with one workout including up to an hour of continuous push-ups and up-downs. Sources told The Oregonian “that some players ‘passed out’ and others later complained of discolored urine, which is a common symptom of rhabdomyolysis.”
Back in 2011, 13 Iowa players were hospitalized with the same syndrome after intense winter workouts.
This story bears watching, to say the least. I don’t think Taggert survives.
FIS World Cup Skiing 2016-17
I saw where American Ted Ligety is undergoing back surgery that could put his participation in the 2018 Olympics in jeopardy, so I glanced at the World Cup standings, with the season about half over, and Austrian Marcel Hirscher and American Mikaela Shiffrin are well out in front in the overall standings. Shiffrin won another slalom on Jan. 8 at Maribor (Slovenia), and then tied for third two days later in the event in Flachau (Austria).
Shiffrin has won five of seven slalom races and also has two wins in the giant slalom. As Ronald Reagan would have said of the 21-year-old superstar, “Not bad, not bad at all.”
Shiffrin is up to 27 World Cup titles overall, 24 SL, 3 GS.
But in looking at recent results, what did my eyes espy but another U.S. woman actually had a podium finish…23-year-old Jacqueline Wiles of Portland, Oregon, who took third in the downhill on Sunday at Altenmarkt-Zauchensee (Austria…you get geography lessons here at Bar Chat).
For Wiles it is her first career World Cup podium finish. You go, Girl!
As for Ligety, a two-time Olympic gold medalist in the giant slalom and combined, he’s had back issues for a while and wasn’t having a good season before he had to shut it down. He has 25 career World Cup titles (all but one in the GS).
Futbol
China’s Super League clubs are being limited to three non-Chinese players per game in their next season, which begins in March. This will slow down the number of big-money signings from Europe, such as the rumored one I noted the other day, Chelsea’s Diego Costa moving to China.
As reported by BBC Sports, previously the rule was “4+1” – four foreigners of any nationality plus one Asian in a matchday squad.
Teams will now have to name two under-23 Chinese players in their matchday squads, with at least one in the starting XI, as the Chinese Football Association looks into “signature fees and other illegal activities” in recent transfers.
Chelsea midfielders Oscar and John Mikel Obi have already moved to China, while former Man City and Man U player Carols Tevez is reportedly the highest-paid player after joining Shanghai Shenhua last month.
Shenhua has six non-Chinese players currently, so I don’t know how this is handled, assuming some of them have multi-year contracts.
The changes are to foster more local talent.
Recall, President Xi Jinping has made it very clear he wants his country to develop into a football powerhouse in double-quick time, though then the national team was taken out of the prelims of the 2018 World Cup qualifying, which was pathetic. [China is 82nd in the world rankings, below Uzbekistan and Benin.] But no doubt the new rules were mandated by Xi, or at least he had a hand in them.
Additionally, as I’ve noted before, the money flowing the other way, into Premier League and other European clubs is apparently going to be controlled more by Beijing. As reported by Niall Fraser of the South China Morning Post, since the start of 2015, “Chinese buyers have spent US$4 billion on soccer assets large and small across Europe,” including a state-backed group that spent $400 million for a 13% stake in the firm that owns Manchester City. Liverpool is currently being targeted.
Stuff
—Rory McIlroy was diagnosed with a stress fracture in his ribs, forcing him to pull out of the Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship this week, which is one of his favorites with four runner-up finishes in what is one of the European Tour’s bigger events.
But Rory knows he has to be careful with a bigger event looming three weeks from now…The Masters…a tradition unlike any other…on CBS.
–One more on Justin Thomas…he is just the third player since 1970 to win three times in his first five tournaments to start a PGA Tour season (including the CIMB Classic Malaysia last fall). The others are Tiger Woods (three times) and Johnny Miller (twice). [Us older folks vividly remember Miller’s mastery those two years.]
–We note the passing of the last person to walk on the moon, Gene Cernan, 82. In a statement released by NASA, his family said: “Even at the age of 82, Gene was passionate about sharing his desire to see the continued human exploration of space and encouraged our nation’s leaders and young people to not let him remain the last man to walk on the Moon.”
Cernan commanded Apollo 17 and set foot on the lunar surface in December 1972, the last of a dozen men to walk on the moon – tracing his only child’s initials in the dust before climbing the ladder of the lunar module the last time.
Cernan recalled in an oral history, “Those steps up that ladder, they were tough to make. I didn’t want to go up. I wanted to stay a while.”
I’ll have more in that other column I do at week’s end.
—Jimmy Snuka, the former WWE star, died at the age of 73. He was involved in a late-in-life murder charge that was thrown out after he was declared mentally unfit.
Snuka was born James Wiley Smith in the Fiji islands in 1943 and after moving to the United States, he became one of the biggest stars of professional wrestling, “Superfly,” known for leaping onto his competitors from atop the turnbuckle.
The WWE, formerly known as the World Wrestling Federation during Snuka’s heyday, said in a statement:
“His dive off the top of the steel cage onto Don Muraco at Madison Square Garden as hundreds of flash bulbs went off will forever live as one of the most memorable moments in W.W.E. history.”
–On the All-Species List front, have we been shortchanging ‘Chicken’? As a recent piece in the Washington Post by Karin Bruilliard posits, perhaps we have.
Today, there are about 20 billion chickens at any one time, living on farms around the world; their meat and eggs providing sustenance. Yet while we use idioms like “ruling the roost,” how much do we really know? Some of us aren’t really sure they are birds, but they are.
As neuroscientist Lori Marino, who has long researched animal intelligence, told the Post, “When you see chickens up in a tree branch, people think it’s funny or Photoshopped, but they’re birds and they do go in trees. Chickens are on the bottom of the scale in terms of people recognizing who they are.”
Marino, an expert on dolphins and other species more commonly thought of as smart, recently did a paper on peer-reviewed scientific literature on chicken cognition, emotion and sociality. “Her conclusion is that they’re far from birdbrained, but we’ve given them little chance to prove it.”
Like “Five-day-old chicks display basic addition and subtraction abilities.” Heck, most adults in America can’t add or subtract. And “Hens have demonstrated transitive inference, or the ability to deduce that if A is bigger than B and B is bigger than C, then A is bigger than C. That’s considered a milestone for 7-year-old children. Hens do it via their pecking order: Subordinates know that if a dominant hen is successfully challenged by a strange hen, they’d best not approach the stranger.”
And chickens’ food calls are among about two dozen vocalizations that convey distinct meanings.
“When we found it in monkeys many years ago, it was a big thing,” said Marino. “Now we’re seeing a lot of parallels between chickens and a lot of the mammals that we think of as very intelligent.”
Through a major grant, archaeologists, biologists, anthropologists, historians and others have been examining the history of chickens’ domestication, which happened about 5,000 years ago, and it appears it wasn’t driven by demand for their meat – but rather cockfighting.
But the human-chicken relationship changed with the rise of industrial farming over the past century, which has made chicken far cheaper and more available, and that has been good for people.
As for the impact of the intense breeding on their cognitive abilities, Ms. Marino says there is no evidence this has changed anything.
The chicken “is so immersed in our culture and so distinct as a domesticated animal,” (Greger) Larson (a University of Oxford evolutionary biologist) said. “And yet we don’t really give it its due, despite the fact that it’s permeated our lives for thousands of years.”
So the executive board of the All-Species List, after an intense happy hour, has decided that, yes, it is time to treat Mr. Chicken with more respect as he vaults from No. 184 to No. 22! We are also taking this opportunity to move ‘Beaver’ up to 38 from 42, as it begins its inexorable climb back into the top ten, where it resided prior to it being placed on the suspended list.
—Lady Gaga wants to do something outrageous during her halftime show at the Super Bowl, namely sing from the top of the NRG Stadium’s dome in Houston. As the New York Post’s Page Six reported, the lawyers and technicians are working on it. You can imagine insurance for something like this would be through the roof, so to speak.
The roof is see-through and can open in seven minutes so I guess the thinking is she starts up there and then….oh, I don’t know what the hell she’s thinking.
Just bring The Stones back and play “Paint It Black” and “Sympathy for the Devil,” mused the old-timer.
Top 3 songs for the week 1/20/73: “You’re So Vain” (Carly Simon) #2 “Superstition” (Stevie Wonder) #3 “Me and Mrs. Jones” (Billy Paul)…and…#4 “Crocodile Rock” (Elton John) #5 “Your Mama Don’t Dance” (Kenny Loggins & Jim Messina) #6 “Rockin’ Pneumonia-Boogie Woogie Flu” (Johnny Rivers…he was too good for this crapola…) #7 “Clair” (Gilbert O’Sullivan…incredibly depressing group…) #8 “Superfly” (Curtis Mayfield…one of the most underrated artists of all time…) #9 “Why Can’t We Live Together” (Timmy Thomas) #10 “Oh, Babe, What Would You Say?” (Hurricane Smith…awesome tune…)
NFL Quiz Answers: 1) Cleveland’s Bernie Kosar holds the playoff passing yardage record at 489, set on Jan. 3, 1987, in a 23-20 win over the Jets. Some of the receivers on that team were Ozzie Newsome, Webster Slaughter and Reggie Langhorne, plus running backs Kevin Mack and Herman Fontenot (who was more active as a receiver than a running back in his day). Drew Brees holds the next two playoff yardage slots at 466 and 462. 2) When Len Dawson hurt his knee early in the ’69 season, Mike Livingstone started in his place six games, and Jacky Lee one game.
Next Bar Chat, Monday.
