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Bar Chat

12/04/2014

TCU Vaults Over FSU

Heisman Trophy Quiz: Name the last three running backs to win the award. Answer below.

CFB...one more poll after this for the Final Four...

1. Alabama 11-1 (25 first-place votes) 1426 points
2. Florida State 12-0 (29) 1423
3. Oregon 11-1 (5)
4. TCU 10-1
5. Baylor 10-1
6. Ohio State 11-1
7. Michigan State 10-2
8. Arizona 10-2
9. Kansas State 9-2
10. Mississippi 10-2
11. Wisconsin 10-2
12. Georgia Tech 10-2
13. Ole Miss 9-3
14. Missouri 10-2
22. Boise State 10-2...

Now...College Football Playoff Selection Committee Rankings (Dec. 2)

1. Alabama...plays Mizzou
2. Oregon...plays Arizona (Friday)
3. TCU! ...plays Iowa State
4. Florida State...plays Georgia Tech
5. Ohio State...plays Wisconsin
6. Baylor...plays Kansas State
7. Arizona
8. Michigan State
9. Kansas State
10. Mississippi State
11. Georgia Tech
13. Wisconsin
16. Missouri
22. Boise State...get major bowl game with win over Fresno State

1. Mississippi State
2. Florida State
3. Auburn
4. Ole Miss
5. Oregon
6. Alabama
7. TCU
8. Michigan State
9. Kansas State
10. Notre Dame...Ha!!! [Cue Snoopy laughing at Charlie Brown.]

Yes, back then it was all about the SEC and SEC West...and five weeks later the lowly ACC was 4-0 against its SEC opponents.

Here’s my take. If Baylor beats K-State handily, the committee will have no problem vaulting the Bears over TCU (and Ohio State). 

Ohio State is not beating Wisconsin, so they won’t be part of the conversation.

In the end, it’s Alabama, Oregon, Florida State and TCU or Baylor.

Now if Georgia Tech defeats FSU (highly feasible), out of nowhere you could have both Baylor and TCU in the final four.

--So the Big 12 announced that even though Baylor beat TCU on Oct. 11, 61-58, should both win on Saturday and each finish 11-1, the league will recognize them as co-champions for purposes of the selection committee.

“Only if TCU and Baylor are both left out of the top four would the league acknowledge Baylor’s head-to-head win over TCU. By contrast, displaced conference champions are guaranteed spots in the Goodyear Cotton Bowl Classic, Vizio Fiesta Bowl and Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl. (Big 12 Commissioner Bob) Bowlsby said the league would then use Baylor’s win over TCU to determine which team would play in a New Year’s Six bowl.”

--Chris Dufresne / Los Angeles Times...on the scenario if Arizona defeats Oregon a second time.

“It seems reasonable to think Arizona, with a second win, would climb into the top four. The Wildcats would have defeated Oregon twice, both times with the Ducks ranked in the top three.

“Arizona’s chances of bounding over three playoff obstacles – Texas Christian, Baylor and Ohio State – improved as an unfortunate result of Buckeyes quarterback J.T. Barrett’s season-ending injury....

“The College Football Playoff protocol handbook states the committee, for the purposes of distinguishing otherwise comparable teams, will consider ‘key injuries that may have affected a team’s performance during the season, or likely will affect its postseason performance.’....

“Let’s assume every team ranked ahead of Arizona, except Oregon, wins next week.

“That would likely leave a top three of Alabama, Florida State and Baylor, which would have clinched the Big 12 title with a win over Kansas State.

“Baylor would also have the tiebreak advantage of handing Texas Christian its only loss.

“Don’t be distracted by TCU being ranked ahead of Baylor now. [Ed. Dufresne wrote this prior to the latest CFP ranking.] The committee has the advantage of waiting to see whether Baylor defeats a very good, top-10 Kansas State team, while TCU plays hapless Iowa State.

“Arizona, as a Pac-12 champion with two wins over Oregon, seemingly would have the edge over non-champion TCU and Barrett-less Ohio State.”

--The hearing regarding Jameis Winston and the alleged sexual assault is continuing a second day, Wednesday, and the accused and accuser are set to face each other today. Winston’s attorney, David Cornwell, said on Tuesday after day one, “We think this nightmare will be over very soon.” It isn’t clear when former Florida Supreme Court justice Major Harding, retained by FSU to conduct the proceedings, will render a decision on whether Winston violated the student conduct code.

--Notre Dame alum Mark R. told me the other day that the Fighting Irish should stay home rather than go to a bowl game and crack the books instead; Mark always being a tough disciplinarian (I’ve known him 32 years).

“Two schools with a history of greatness in college football have a real chance to make a statement this year about the current bowls system.

“If you were watching closely last weekend, neither team had anything left, especially Notre Dame. Both schools were playing games of significance and neither could find any motivation. When it ended, all they had left was embarrassment.

“For whatever reason, these teams are done, cooked. All their Elvises have left the building. For UCLA, star quarterback Brett Hundley may wear Bruin Blue one more time, but he’s already living the NFL shield.

“What UCLA and Notre Dame did earlier in the season got them bowl-eligible. All it takes is six victories, and there are currently 80 teams that have achieved that. [Ed. Wake Forest and SMU are not two of them.] Not exactly special company.

“What the Bruins and the Irish did last weekend was give us convincing body language that they want, and need, no more....

“There is history and legacy in a march toward a national title. There is neither in throwing body and soul around in the TaxSlayer Bowl. And yes, that’s a real bowl...

“Some projections have UCLA in the Valero Alamo Bowl and Notre Dame in the Belk Bowl. Each bowl and its sponsor would benefit greatly from the participation of these high-profile schools.

“These schools would make ESPN’s ratings decent, especially for games nobody cares about, other than the doctors who will have to treat the new concussions and knee injuries.

“Just saying no would be one small step for sports in general, one giant step for college football. Also mankind.”

--As expected, Michigan fired coach Brady Hoke. After starting out 11-2 with a Sugar Bowl win over Virginia Tech in his first season, Michigan has been in decline...8-5 in 2012, 7-6 in 2013 and 5-7 this year. 

What makes this story even worse is the same day that Hoke was fired, Tuesday, his predecessor, Rich Rodriguez, was named coach of the year in the Pac-12 for his super job at Arizona.

“We already know the new College Football Playoff to crown a national champion is rigged. (I said as much last month – I believe my exact words were, ‘The new system IS RIGGED.’) But no one much cares about that because watching, say, Alabama-Oregon for all the marbles is more entertaining on a cold January night than watching, say, ‘Law & Order: SVU.’

“But what’s more disturbing is this: We also know big-time intercollegiate athletics – particularly the so-called ‘Power Five’ conferences in Football Bowl Subdivision – remain a cesspool of indiscretion, malfeasance, excess, corruption, impropriety and academic squalor, with no one much caring about that, either.

“To that end, let me state what will be abundantly obvious to some of you and abundantly preposterous to others:

“Florida State is such a contradiction to the precepts of institutions of higher learning, it should be shuttered TODAY.

“And North Carolina is such a contradiction to the precepts of institutions of higher learning, it should be shuttered, like, YESTERDAY.

“I hate to single out FSU and UNC...but both schools are an embarrassment to themselves and to higher education.

“Today it is Florida State and North Carolina. Tomorrow it will be Miami or Southern Cal or Auburn or Syracuse or Kentucky.

“They all make a deal with the devil...and the devil provides national exposure, TV revenue, marketing platforms and a cozy relationship with local law enforcement....

“There are two types of student-athletes: Those who are students, and those who are not. The latter is critical to the continued operation of big-time intercollegiate athletics, so universities climb out of their ivory towers to maintain the illusion these academic ne’er-do-wells are academically active....

“Over at North Carolina, many Tar Heels have dismissed two decades of academic impurities, as detailed in the recent Kenneth Wainstein report, which came after whistleblower Mary Willingham – who was treated like Marie Antoinette – shined a light on academic fraud there.

“Typical is the reaction of North Carolina men’s basketball Coach Roy Williams. At the outset of a ‘SportsCenter’ interview last month, Williams said, ‘You want to talk basketball, we’ll talk basketball. But I’m not going to rehash all that other crap.’

“That between 1993 and 2011, more than 3,100 UNC students, 48 percent of them athletes, took ‘phantom classes’ in the Afro-American studies department? That 169 athletes, including 123 football players and 15 men’s basketball players, got a grade in a nonexistent class to keep their GPA above 2.0 for the semester? That Williams’ 2004-05 national title team included Rashad McCants, who says he didn’t write papers submitted in his name?

“I guess I can’t blame Williams for wanting to flush it all down the toilet in the closest restroom to those phantom classes.”

Q: In your column on Columbia University football, why was there nothing said about the famous beat novelist and poet Jack Kerouac, who attended Columbia in the early 1940s on a football scholarship? (Gus G., Martinsville, Ind.)

A: Uh, because I did not know Jack Kerouac attended Columbia on a football scholarship. Note to my Ivy League-educated readers: I am not as smart as I look; I barely graduated from Maryland.

Q: You celebrated Columbia football’s winless regular season and ignored MIT’s undefeated regular season. Do you simply prefer to revel in the failure of those smarter than you? (Glen K., Albany, N.Y.)

A: No. I just didn’t know about MIT because, well, I went to Maryland and research isn’t my strength.

--As rumored, UAB administrators have decided to shut down the football program; UAB becoming the first FBS school to eliminate the sport since Pacific in 1995. This potentially impacts UAB’s membership in Conference USA for other sports and it isn’t just the football players who immediately protested, and cried, over the move. It also impacts the marching band and cheerleaders.

UAB is largely a victim of being in Alabama and Auburn’s neighborhood and the school was not only not willing to continue to subsidize the football program, but it wasn’t willing to build the facilities needed for UAB to compete with the big boys.

So the question is how will the schools in the Group of Five conferences, including the Mid-American and Mountain West, survive over time? Student fees, for example, have been skyrocketing and it’s not feasible to keep raising them. One study of MAC students found that fees amounted to $2,500 over four years.

The University of Hawaii’s football program is probably the next one to bite the dust; Hawaii being increasingly vocal about its plight, though the athletic director insists football will survive at the school.

--Paul P. passed along a story from the Dallas Morning News on new football coach Chad Morris, who comes to SMU from Clemson, where he had been offensive coordinator for four years.

Morris was once a successful high school football coach in the state of Texas and the school is counting on him doing a better job of recruiting in state, as well as the Dallas-Fort Worth area. SMU only has 68 Texans on its roster, the fewest of any FBS school in the state.

Kosta Karageorge

Commentary is limited thus far following the apparent suicide of the Ohio State defensive lineman who had been complaining of concussion symptoms, supposedly having had four or five in his career, according to his mother and sister. It’s tough to say much until we learn the facts but as I noted last time as the story was breaking, this is potentially huge. [I also believe many followers of football are in severe denial.]

A neuropathologist will look for signs of traumatic brain injury, according to the county coroner, which is not part of the normal autopsy process but will be in this case given Kostageorge’s history.

Coach Urban Meyer has yet to comment (and he shouldn’t), but the school issued a statement, saying: “We know that many of you are concerned, as we are, about the tragic news that we received yesterday about the death of one of our student-athletes, Kosta Karageorge.

“It is very early in the process of determining the cause of death, and the Columbus division of police is still investigating. We are unable to discuss this situation in detail at this time. The investigation continues.”

And to be fair to the football program, Karageorge may have suffered some of the concussions from his wrestling days at Ohio State, as well as high school sports. The Buckeyes’ wrestling coach, however, said Karageorge did not have documented concussions as a wrestler.

Karageorge disappeared after sending his parents a text message: “I am sorry if I am an embarrassment but these concussions have my head all f----- up.”

“A new study has linked high school football to changes within the brain, even in players who have never had a concussion.

“Repetitive hits showed changes that appear to be abnormal, according to Christopher Whitlow, the study’s author and an associate professor at the Radiology Translational Science Institute at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center. ‘It’s not the harder the hit,’ Whitlow said (via Newsday), ‘it’s the cumulative exposure to impact.’....

“The apparent suicide of Ohio State player Kosta Karageorge over the weekend, brought the dangers of multiple concussions back into the conversation. ‘He had a pretty bad concussion last fall and he told me about differences in his behavior,’ his sister, Sophia Karageorge, told the New York Times. ‘Just, like, confusion, disorientation, being unable to focus, mood swings – not feeling like himself, basically, not feeling quite right.’....

“ ‘We know little about head injury risks for...youth football players,’ Whitlow said. ‘If we can identify risks, then we can intervene, decrease the risks, and make this sport as safe as possible for all the children who are playing it.’”

The study is highly technical and I won’t get into the details, though it’s important to note more long-term studies are needed.

“The nexus of high school football and death trespasses too often on the mythic ethos of Friday night lights....

“The statistics are damning: (Damon) Janes (of Jamestown, N.Y.) is one of eight players last year whose deaths were directly related to high school football, according to the National Center for Catastrophic Sport Injury Research at the University of North Carolina. This season, five players have died of causes directly related to football, such as head and spine injuries.

“Nine high school football players died last season of indirect causes, such as heatstroke. There have been nine more such deaths this season, seven from high school.

“And yet for those same seasons, there have been no fatalities directly related to pro, semipro, college and youth football. Which raises the question: Why are high school football players dying at a time when players from other levels are not?...

“High school football players suffer three times as many catastrophic injuries as college players – meaning deaths, permanent disability injuries, neck fractures and serious head injuries, among other conditions, according to a 2007 study in the American Journal of Sports Medicine.”

So with each story like those above, more and more parents will keep their kids from playing high school football, which I’ve been saying for years now will only redound to the benefit of baseball over time, with obviously basketball picking up some athletes it may not have otherwise as well.

--What will the Cleveland Browns do? They are a surprising 7-5 under quarterback Brian Hoyer, but he was replaced by Johnny Manziel in the fourth quarter in the team’s 26-10 loss to Buffalo on Sunday.

Hoyer’s rating has dropped from the low 90s to 79.9, which is 27th in the league. He also has five picks and no TD passes the last two games. [No word as I go to post.]

--Take pity on New York football fans. It’s the worst season ever...Giants 3-9, Jets 2-10. Both coaches should be gone shortly. Both GMs (though I’m guessing the Giants keep theirs). The Jets QB should be gone, and the Giants’ could as well (slight chance).

“The Jets, having already been eliminated from playoff contention, decided to treat a crowd accustomed to the bizarre to a novel offensive approach: They played with 10 players.

“To try to win, the Jets neutered their quarterback, Geno Smith. They asked him to hand off the ball. They did not ask him to throw. The plan worked for three quarters. It collapsed in the fourth, when the Dolphins completed their comeback in a 16-13 victory.”

The Jets ran for 210 yards in the first half alone, most in the NFL in five years, and 277 for the game, but they blew a 13-6 lead with less than 11 minutes left.

Afterwards, Rex Ryan said, “I can’t believe we’re 2-10. A joke.”

He didn’t mean the laugh out loud, ha-ha funny kind of joke for Jets fans.

Smith was just 7 of 13 for a whopping 65 yards, no TDs, a critical late interception, a 35.7 rating. This season his rating of 65.8 is the worst of 40 QBs in the league with at least 750 yards passing.

And the Jets best player the last two seasons, kicker Nick Folk, missed two field goals for the first time this season. [Just saw he hurt his hip.]

As for the crowd, Shpigel described it as having “the energy of a downed power line.”

“The Jets ran the ball on 22 of 23 plays during one remarkable first-half stretch...all but slipping on leather helmets and switching to the Wing T in the process. Then, on that fateful 24th play, they reminded you why: Smith had a wide-open Percy Harvin for what should have been a 30-yard touchdown pass...and overthrew him by three yards.”

By the way...you could have purchased a ticket to Monday night’s game at MetLife Stadium for as little as $15. 

--As for the fate of Giants coach Tom Coughlin, yes, no doubt the inexcusable loss to the Jaguars, 25-24, spells the end for him.

No one really wants to see the guy go...I’m a Jets fan but I watch every Giants game and I’m like, I imagine, 80% of general sports fans in the area. I like Coughlin.

Ralph Vacchiano of the New York Daily News, though, sums up the situation.

“(The) most damning part for Coughlin was this: The young Jaguars with the questionable talent and nothing to play for were the ones playing better and harder at the end of the game. The Giants were the ones making the stupid mistakes. The Giants were the ones dropping the football, unable to make a game-saving play.

“And once again, the 68-year-old Coughlin was left scratching his head for answers – just as he has been for most of the season. His team, at 3-9 and careening in the wrong direction, is now the one that looks like the worst team in the league....

“And as safety Antrel Rolle said multiple times during his post-game interview, ‘it’s starting to get repetitive.’ That’s seven straight losses now, one season after they lost their first six games, in the midst of a stretch where they’ve missed the playoffs five times in six seasons. Only a coach with two Super Bowl rings would even have a prayer of surviving back-to-back misery like that.

“Those rings have long been Coughlin’s salvation, because the best argument for keeping him has always been the long odds against finding someone better. The Giants know finding another coach like Coughlin won’t be easy. The next big thing on the market or the next hot assistant has a better chance of being Jim Schwartz or Marc Trestman than Bill Belichick or Bill Parcells.

“But sometimes change is necessary, and the signs of that are becoming obvious for the Giants.”

--I forgot to note last time that when Texans quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick had six touchdown passes in Houston’s 45-21 win over Tennessee, the final scoring strike was to Houston defensive end J.J. Watt, who became the first defensive lineman since 1944 to have at least five touchdowns in a season, according to Elias Sports Bureau. 

“According to ESPN Stats & Info, this is Watt’s second game in the past three weeks with a forced fumble, fumble recovery and receiving TD. No other player in the past five seasons has one such game.

“Watt had three tackles, two sacks, one tackle for loss, six quarterback hits, a forced fumble, fumble recovery and a receiving touchdown against the Titans.

“He now has 11.5 sacks this season and five fumble recoveries.”

--Since I’ve been talking about the rise and fall of Robert Griffin III, I need to include the comments of the Washington Post’s Thomas Boswell following Sunday’s ‘Skins contest.

“Washington found a plausible quarterback for the rest of its season here on Sunday, in what was otherwise an embarrassing 49-27 loss to Indianapolis. Colt McCoy passed for 392 yards, threw three touchdown passes and, after a bad start, looked more comfortable reading defenses and going through progressions in Coach Jay Gruden’s offense than Robert Griffin III did in any of his five starts this year....

“After McCoy’s third straight strong performance – in the other two, he was a key to victory – every Washington blunder or penalty won’t have to be seen through the distorting prism of ‘what did Griffin know and when did he know it?’”

As Boswell adds, McCoy’s nice stats “should be taken with many grains of salt....(but) there’s reassurance in McCoy’s general competence.

--I’m not going to use this space to comment on Ferguson, Missouri, and will instead use that other column I do for any thoughts I may have. But I do have to say that with the Rams’ controversial on-field pre-game protest, the five players showing support for Michael Brown by entering the field in a “hands up, don’t shoot” pose, what cracks me up is one of those leading the way was St. Louis receiver Kenny Britt, who apparently came up with the idea just before the game.

This is the same Kenny Britt who is just lucky to be in the league because he’s had numerous brushes with the law, some of the major variety. He’s not a good person.

Then you have former Wake Forest receiver Chris Givens, another of the five. Talk about an underperformer. I just wish he would focus on his game.

Back to Britt, he said afterward that the gesture didn’t indicate the players were taking sides.

“No, not at all,” he told reporters. “We just wanted to let the (Ferguson) community know that we support them. I don’t want the people in the community to feel like we turned a blind eye to it. What would I like to see happen? Change in America.”

College Basketball

AP Poll [Dec. 1]

1. Kentucky (62 first-place votes)
2. Wisconsin (3)
3. Arizona
4. Duke
5. Louisville
6. Texas
7. Virginia
8. Wichita State
9. Gonzaga
10. Villanova
13. San Diego State 5-1...as I said, loss to AZ didn’t hurt, actually moved ‘em up two slots
15. Miami 7-0...major early season surprise

Tuesday, Miami defeated No. 24 Illinois 70-61, while No. 5 Louisville beat No. 14 Ohio State 64-55.

--As for Wake Forest, I watched their 84-69 loss to Minnesota on Tuesday and the less said the better.

--Just a last word, for now, on my Providence comment last time. I am all in with SDSU to win the national title this season (what fun is it to pick Kentucky?). I just have a feeling Providence can surprise some folks and if they make it to the Big Dance, they’ll get into the Sweet Sixteen. That’s all. Otherwise couldn’t care less. [Providence is No. 29, AP, if you carry out the votes.] It’s all Aztecs for moi. Aztecwear will assume No. 1 position in the sports drawer after my Oregon Ducks win the national title on Jan. 12.

--Philadelphia is one loss away from tying the all-time record for futility at the start of a season, with Philly losing number 17 in a row on Monday against the Spurs, 109-103, at home, though San Antonio was playing without Tim Duncan and Tony Parker. The Sixers are at Minnesota on Wednesday, then home to host Oklahoma City on Friday. [Kevin Durant returned Tuesday, to join Russell Westbrook.]

Mark R., who first told us Philadelphia would go 6-76, is confident they will win Friday and at some point have a two-game winning streak, so he’s sticking to his preseason call.

--The New York Knicks fell to 4-15 in losing to the 7-9 Brooklyn Nets on Tuesday night, 98-93. Brooklyn thus improves to 7-1 against losing teams, but is 0-8 against winning ones.

--Boy, I don’t know about this one. Seattle signed slugger Nelson Cruz to a four-year, $57 million deal. Yes, he hit 40 homers and drove in 100 for Baltimore last season, but he’s 34 (so they say) and has that Biogenesis history.

I wish the Mets had him last season for basically the money they gave Chris Young instead, but don’t you think Seattle could have gotten Cruz for two years, not four? I guess not. But that’s all I’d give the guy.

Meanwhile, the Orioles had offered him a one-year, $15.3 million qualifying offer and the way these things work is Baltimore now gets a draft pick from Seattle.

--Torii Hunter is returning to the Twins, his first organization, the 39-year-old outfielder signing a one-year, $10.5 million deal. He can still be productive. Last season he hit .286 with 17 homers and 83 RBI for the Tigers. He’ll probably play right field, Hunter’s defensive skills not what they once were when he was as good as any.

NCAA Division I Men’s Soccer Championship

I knew UMBC, my admittedly late ‘pick to click’ in this tournament, had won its Sweet Sixteen game against Louisville when I went to post last time, but just wanted to wait until some late Sunday west coast games ended before saying anything.

So...your Elite Eight...

16-seed Virginia vs. 8 Creighton
12 Creighton vs. Unseeded UMBC

3 Michigan State vs. 11 Providence
Unseeded North Carolina vs. 2 UCLA

So what you see is the absence of some top seeds, No. 1 Notre Dame and No. 4 Maryland, for starters, the Terps having been taken down by UMBC.

World Cup Skiing / 2014-2015

Time for your first update on the initial weeks of the tour.

The main hope for the U.S. team this campaign is Mikaela Shiffrin, last year’s gold medalist in the slalom at Sochi and a 2013 world champion in the same event. Shiffrin, as many of you know, has vowed to become the overall World Cup champion this season and she won the first giant slalom a few weeks ago, but, she has finished a disappointing 11th and 5th in the two slalom races.

There have been four World Cup races thus far in the 2014-15 season and Shiffrin’s GS win is the only podium finish for both the U.S. men and women thus far. Uh oh. The team needs our support.

Time to pull out my cow bell and start drinking premium!!! DING DING DING!!!!

You understand that regardless of whether a World Cup ski event is in the U.S. or overseas, you can only drink premium...so take that into account when you are doing your budgeting for the new year.

* I should have noted that Kjetil Jansrud of Norway won both the downhill and super-G at Lake Louise last weekend. [Norway has the most expensive beer in the world...gotta find a Coin-Star.]

--When I was first getting into hockey in the late 1960s, Montreal’s Jean Beliveau’s Hall of Fame career was winding down but at least I got to see him a few years. Beliveau died on Tuesday at the age of 83.

When you say the name Beliveau, the first word that comes to mind is class. Beliveau played with the Canadiens from 1950-71, amassing 507 goals and 712 assists. He was captain for 10 seasons and then became an executive with the club. He is one of four Canadiens honored with statutes outside the Bell Centre, along with Maurice Richard, Howie Morenz and Guy Lafleur.

--After playing 21 years with the New Jersey Devils, goalie Martin Brodeur became a free agent last July but at age 42 he had no takers. Tuesday, the St. Louis Blues announced they had signed him to a one-year contract.

--Ripped from the pages of USA TODAY [via Anita Wadhwani / The Tennessean]

“Red-tailed hawk attacks, kills family’s dog”

“Neighbors in the Vanderbilt University area had admired the red-tailed hawk circling overhead for weeks.

“But on Friday morning [11/28], Barbara Sanders heard her 22-year-old daughter scream. The bird had swooped into the family’s yard and snatched her 7-pound Shih Tzu-Maltese mix, Bean.”

Of course, Dog remains No. 1, even though Bean should have known to take cover when the Nazgul (aka red-tailed hawks) are in the area.    Nazgul are No. 48.

--We note the passing of longtime Rolling Stones saxophonist Bobby Keys, 70. He is best known for his work on hits like “Brown Sugar” and, for John Lennon, “Whatever Gets You thru the Night.”

Top 3 songs for the week 12/2/72: #1 “Papa Was A Rollin’ Stone” (The Temptations) #2 “I Am Woman” (Helen Reddy) #3 “I Can See Clearly Now” (Johnny Nash)...and... #4 “I’d Love You To Want Me” (Sheriff Lobo) #5 “If You Don’t Know Me By Now” (Harold Melvin & The Bluenotes ...a classic...) #6 “Summer Breeze” (Seals & Crofts...Isley Brothers’ rendition better...) #7 “You Ought To Be With Me” (Al Green...one of his best...) #8 “It Never Rains In Southern California” (Albert Hammond...except this week...) #9 “I’ll Be Around” (The Spinners...underrated body of work...) #10 “Ventura Highway” (America...not bad...)

Heisman Trophy Quiz Answer: Last three running backs to win...

2009 – Mark Ingram, Jr. / Alabama
2005 – Reggie Bush / USC
1999 – Ron Dayne / Wisconsin

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