College Football Quiz: About a month ago, Phil W. alerted me to the Football Writers Association of America’s 75th Anniversary All-America Team, celebrating the association’s All-America teams since its founding in 1941. Roger Staubach, Navy, was the first team QB, with running backs Archie Griffin, Ohio State, and Herschel Walker, Georgia. Larry Fitzgerald, Pitt, and Jerry Rice, Mississippi Valley State, were the two receivers; Keith Jackson, Oklahoma, the tight end.
So I’ll give you the initials of the first team offensive line, including the center, and see how many you can get. J.H., O.P., W.S., R.Y., D.R. Answer below.
Eli and the Giant Debacle
So I went to post Sunday night before the Giants-Cowboys game reached what is now an infamous conclusion for Giants fans, a killer loss with absolutely incredibly stupid judgment on the part of a quarterback who days earlier New York had given a $31 million signing bonus to, part of a contract extension with $65 million guaranteed.
And then Eli Manning acts like he never played the game before as the Giants displayed atrocious clock management, for starters, and left Tony Romo and the Cowboys with too much time as they then drove 72 yards in the final 1:30 to win the game, 27-26.
Running back Rashad Jennings rushed twice for three yards to put the Giants at the 1-yard line before Manning threw a pass out of the back of the end zone, but Jennings had been told not to score on the first- and second-down plays. Eli admitted this on Monday, which means he got the word from coach Tom Coughlin or offensive coordinator Ben McAdoo to do so, or maybe not. Coughlin said he wanted the Giants to try to score and make it a 10-point game.
So the Giants kicked a field goal to make it 26-20 and then we had Romo’s drive.
Manning said after, “[We were] trying to get it to two scores, and I had bad clock management those final three plays.”
“On the Giants’ last meaningful offensive drive of Sunday night’s heartbreaker in Dallas, quarterback Eli Manning and his coaches seemed to suffer a series of brain freezes that culminated in the Giants failing – or, as running back Rashad Jennings said Monday, refusing – to score on first and second down, and then throwing an incomplete pass on third down at the Cowboys’ 4-yard line. The decision to pass rather than run the ball gave Dallas quarterback Tony Romo an extra 40 seconds to engineer the last-minute, 72-yard touchdown drive that lifted the Cowboys to an astonishing 27-26 win….
“ ‘The responsibility for the play-calling and the time management are mine and therefore the responsibilities go to me,’ Coughlin said.
“Manning said he thought the Cowboys had one fewer timeout than they did, so he told Jennings not to score on first and second down, to milk more clock. Manning also conceded that he should have taken the sack rather than thrown the ball on third down, with the Giants in easy field-goal range.”
“So that had to be an imposter wearing blue No. 10 Sunday night at AT&T Stadium. That could not possibly have been Eli Manning, among the best and brightest we have had in our midst, our football Jeter, as flummoxed and confused and disoriented at the end as cool and calm and poised as he was at the end of Super Bowls XLII and XLVI.
“It was Eli Manning who mistakenly thought the Cowboys had just one timeout instead of two once he got to the Dallas 4-yad line.*
“It was Manning who instructed Rashad Jennings not to score on first and second down at a time inside the two-minute warning when a touchdown would have given the Giants a 10-point lead.
“It was Eli Manning who chose to throw the ball out of the end zone on third-and-goal at the 1 instead of eating clock with a running play. It was Eli Manning who absentmindedly failed to take the sack that would have kept the clock running down on Tony Romo. It was Eli Manning who could have left Romo with 49 seconds to win it but left him with 1:29 instead.
“ ‘My intent was to be up 10,’ coach Tom Coughlin said.
“It would have been nice if he had expressed that intent to his quarterback and/or offensive coordinator at a crucial time where the brain trust appeared to have a Moe, Larry and Curly brain lock….
“Such is Coughlin’s trust in Manning, and McAdoo’s trust, that no one chose to remind him before the third-down play-action play call to take the sack if necessary….
“ ‘Our players feel very badly today,’ Coughlin said, ‘but we’ll bounce back.’
“For his sake, the imposter who showed up wearing No. 10 had better not show up again.”
*Manning: “I thought they had one timeout left and they might let us score to get the ball back,” he said on Monday. “So I told Rashad, ‘Go down at the 1-inch line and don’t score.’
“This did not come from the sideline. It was me, and I was wrong. I cannot be the one in that situation to inform a back. That’s not my decision, in that scenario. I made a mistake.”
Thank god I’m a Jets fan and not a Giants one. For you fans outside the New York area, you just can’t imagine the anger and frustration over this one, even if it is just the first game.
[For his part, Tuesday, Jennings apologized for throwing Eli under the bus in saying he was asked not to score on first and second down.]
–I can’t believe I didn’t comment on the opener for Marcus Mariota and Jameis Winston as they squared off against each other, the first time in NFL history that a pair of quarterbacks who went 1-2 in the draft made their debuts against each other as starters.
Mariota got the ball first and after his first pass was incomplete, his second went for 22 yards on a third-and-10 play, and his third was a strike to receiver Kendall Wright for a 52-yard touchdown.
Then Winston completed his first pass, only it was to the other team and it was returned for a touchdown, Winston becoming the 1st player to throw a “pick-6” on his first NFL pass since Brett Favre for the Falcons in 1991.
Tennessee defeated Tampa Bay 42-14, as Mariota was 13/16, 209, 4-0, and a perfect QB rating of 158.3, while Winston was 16/33, 210, 2-2, 64.0. Mariota was the first quarterback with a perfect rating in his first start since RG3 did so. In throwing four touchdown passes, he became the first since Fran Tarkenton in 1961 to do so in their first NFL game.
–Monday night, the Falcons defeated the Eagles 26-24 in Atlanta, as Falcons receiver Julio Jones had 141 yards on 9 receptions, his QB, Matt Ryan, going 22/34, 298, 2-2, 90.1.
For Philly, DeMarco Murray only had 9 yards on 8 carries in his Eagles debut.
In San Francisco Monday, the 49ers whipped the Vikings 20-3, as Carlos Hyde (second season out of Ohio State) rushed for 168 yards on 26 carries, while Minnesota’s Adrian Peterson had just 31 on 10 carries in his return.
–Dallas Cowboys All-Pro receiver Dez Bryant will be out four to six weeks after breaking a bone in his foot Sunday night.
–The Ravens lost rush linebacker Terrell Suggs to a season-ending left Achilles’ tendon tear in their loss to the Broncos.
–The Jets caught a big break when it was learned cornerback Antonio Cromartie did not tear up his knee on Sunday, but instead it was a sprain and he should be back soon. Linebacker Lorenzo Mauldin, who was carted off on a stretcher and hospitalized, escaped with ‘just’ a concussion when we were initially told it was a severe ‘head and neck’ injury.
—Jay Cutler dropped to 1-12 in career starts against Green Bay, including the playoffs, when the Packers defeated the Bears 31-23.
–I can’t stand these 33-yard extra-point attempts. Absurd. There was nothing wrong with having an ‘automatic’ XP.
–It’s been confirmed…Jason Pierre-Paul not only lost his index finger in the fireworks accident, but also part of his thumb. No way he plays this season, if ever.
College Football
1. Ohio State (59 first-place votes)
2. Alabama
3. TCU
4. Michigan State (2)
5. Baylor
6. USC
7. Georgia
8. Notre Dame
9. Florida State
10. UCLA
12. Oregon*
14. Georgia Tech
Among games of interest this weekend, Florida State is at Boston College on Friday night; 18 Auburn at 13 LSU; 14 Georgia Tech at 8 Notre Dame; 15 Ole Miss at 2 Alabama; 19 BYU at 10 UCLA.
–I have some friends in the area who are Rutgers grads and we were together the other day and I said, boy, you gotta get rid of your coach (Kyle Flood), and they quickly came to his defense, saying stuff like, well, this happens with all programs.
Not exactly. Star receiver Leonte Carroo was arrested by Rutgers University policy on Saturday and charged with simple assault in a domestic violence incident shortly after Rutgers had lost to Washington State on Saturday night. Flood then suspended the receiver.
Carroo was thus the seventh Rutgers player arrested since Sept. 3! Six others have been kicked off the team since then as the result of arrests, with two having been charged in home invasions.
Flood himself is under investigation by the school for contact with a professor regarding the academic standing of one of his players, who then ended up being one of those arrested the other week.
Steve Politi / NJ.com (Star-Ledger…it’s very confusing what they are doing with this once great paper, aka NJ Advance Media)
“Just 44 days ago, Leonte Carroo was sitting behind a microphone in a Chicago hotel ballroom, a tiny rose pinned proudly to his lapel, talking about how he planned to lead Rutgers straight to Pasadena.
“Forty-four days. That’s how quickly things have fallen apart for Rutgers. Carroo, who was suspended indefinitely on Sunday…was the smiling face of the program who said ‘no thanks’ to the NFL for another year with Kyle Flood….
“Now the talented receiver is another casualty of the season from hell, and you wonder how soon before his head coach joins him on the list.”
[We learned Tuesday, according to a complaint filed in Piscataway municipal court, that Carroo allegedly slammed a woman into the concrete outside of the team’s headquarters, someone he was romantically involved with.]
–In reading a piece by Tom Fornelli of CBSSports.com, I missed earlier that Arkansas coach Bret Bielema was complaining about how easy Ohio State’s schedule is this season. So then as we saw, Bielema’s boys lost to Toledo at home. As you can imagine, he is not being treated very well on social media.
–The Mountain West conference lost all 10 non-conference games last weekend! Goodness gracious. After just two weeks, the only undefeated team left out of 12 is Air Force, which is at Michigan State this week…so bye bye.
–Last time I noted Boston College’s shellacking of Howard, 76-0, and Tom Fornelli pointed out that Howard’s 11 net yards was the fewest allowed by any FBS team in the last 20 years.
“All Steve Patterson had to do was not be a jerk.
“Shake hands, smile, raise money. It’s written somewhere in the athletic director handbook. Those are the main duties of an AD. Well, that and having great business, personal and financial skills.
“Patterson, Texas’ now-ex-athletic director, couldn’t come close. By several accounts, he was that jerk who alienated the very folks who were going to sustain him and his department. Yeah, a lot of Tuesday’s upheaval – first reported by the Austin-American Statesman and confirmed by the Associated Press – was on him
“Patterson probably deserved to get fired. But the question still persists: How did he get to one of college athletics’ most powerful positions in the first place?
“How did the best and brightest at Texas – regents, politicos, search committee – not know Patterson was an unlit M80?….
“If Mack Brown shows an interest, then by all means listen. Brown, the former and longtime Longhorns coach, is happy at ESPN and still wants to coach again if the right job comes around.
“Mack, however unlikely that move could be, may just be the type of unifying force that Texas needs at the moment….
“The truth is that Texas football has been lapped in its own state by Texas A&M, TCU and Baylor. The last time that happened was never….
“(Coach) Charlie Strong’s job security is another matter. Hopefully, the new athletic director will calm the waters and give Strong the three or four years he needs to turn over the roster.”
A.L. East
Toronto 82-62
Yankees 79-65…3
A.L. West
Texas 77-67
Houston 77-68…0.5
Los Angeles 73-71…4
A.L. Wildcard…for second slot
Houston 77-68
Minnesota 75-69…1.5
Los Angeles 73-71…3.5
N.L. Central
St. Louis 90-54
Pittsburgh 87-57…3
Chicago 83-61…7
Yes, Pittsburgh and Chicago don’t want to have to face each other in a one-game playoff, but that’s what we’re likely to get, unless the Pirates can somehow catch the Cards.
–Mets fans are concerned with the performance of Jacob deGrom, who was shelled for six earned runs on Tuesday in a 9-3 loss to the Marlins (that snapped an 8-game winning streak), the second time in five starts deGrom has given up six as his ERA has risen from 1.98 on Aug. 16 to 2.64. He needs to skip a start heading into the playoffs to regain his energy, whether he wants to or not.
But the Mets, 83-62 and 8 ½ ahead of Washington, are still battling Los Angeles, 83-61, for home-field advantage in the NLDS, which as I explained last time is critical. New York doesn’t want to give any games away down the stretch as long as it can finish ahead of the Dodgers.
–The Dodgers’ duo of Zack Greinke and Clayton Kershaw is having the best season any two teammates have had in perhaps forever. I mean consider this.
Greinke 200.2 IP, 17-3, 1.61 ERA, 0.85 WHIP [34 walks 182 strikeouts]
Kershaw 208.0, 14-6, 2.12, 0.89 [38-264]
As catcher Yasmani Grandal said, “One leads the world in strikeouts, and the other leads the world in ERA,” so the debate “comes down to who’s been the most dominating pitcher in baseball.”
“You can’t really choose,” Grandal said. “They’ve both been dominating.”
–The surprising Rangers have the fourth best record in baseball since the break, 35-21, and at 77-67 have a confounding -24 run differential. Meanwhile, Houston is just 4-9 its last 13.
–Kansas City hurler Johnny Cueto is 0-5 with a 9.57 ERA, 48 hits in 26.1 innings, eight home runs allowed and a .390 opponents’ batting average over his past five starts. Does he make K.C.’s playoff rotation? He was very good his first four starts for the Royals since coming over from Cincinnati, but he better right the ship immediately.
–The Yankees’ Jacoby Ellsbury is in the second year of a seven-year, $153 million deal, but here in crunch time, he is hitless in 25 at bats as his average has plummeted to .251. Since returning from the disabled list July 9, he’s batting .206 with six homers and just three steals.
–Dayn Perry of CBSSports.com listed the best performers in the second half and as of this writing, Tuesday, he had some of the following:
1. Joey Votto, Reds. His OBP in the second half is .561! And he’s got a slugging percentage of .682 over the same stretch. Overall, thru Monday’s play, Votto was up to 27 HR 73 RBI 129 BB! .460 OBP .313 BA.
2. Josh Donaldson, Blue Jays. In 52 games, Donaldson has batted .325, .680 SLG with 17 homers. He’s up to 38 HR and 119 RBI…and he’s your A.L. MVP.
3. Francisco Lindor, Indians. I haven’t followed this guy a single minute all season. He’s only played 80 games, but the slick-fielding shortstop is batting .309, though .351 in the second half.
4. Chris Davis, Orioles. 23 home runs in 54 games. ‘Nuf said.
5. Yoenis Cespedes, Mets: 17 home runs in 42 games with the Mets. As Ronald Reagan would have said…not bad, not bad at all.
6. Clayton Kershaw, Dodgers: In 85 post-break innings, Kershaw has allowed 11 runs while striking out 103 and walking 11.
–Tuesday, the Nats’ Stephen Strasburg threw his second straight gem, 8 innings of one-hit, 14 strikeout ball in a 4-0 win over the Phillies. [Bryce Harper homered twice and drove in all four, upping his power numbers to 39 HR and 90 RBI.] Strasburg had fanned 13 Mets in 7.1 innings last outing against the Mets, but he ended up with the loss when the bullpen imploded. Nonetheless, we’ve seen with these last two starts that he still has the potential to be the best pitcher in the game, or right up there with Greinke, Kershaw, and Arrieta.
Golf Balls
—Rory McIlroy is back at No. 1 in the world rankings. If you are confused, you have every right to be as it is the first time since 1997 that the No. 1 ranking has traded hands in four consecutive weeks (in this case between Jordan Spieth and Rory). The rest of the top ten:
3. Jason Day
4. Bubba Watson
5. Rickie Fowler
6. Henrik Stenson
7. Jim Furyk
8. Justin Rose
9. Dustin Johnson
10. Sergio Garcia
Tiger Woods is now No. 283.
This week we have the BMW Championship (Conway Farms Golf Club), which will see the FedEx Cup Playoffs field cut from 70 to a final 30 for next week’s Tour Championship.
–As expected, David Feherty has gone to NBC, where he can work with both Golf Channel and the network. He will work a majority of NBC’s 24 live events in 2016, including the Olympic Games and the Ryder Cup. [You know, I totally forgot about the Olympics’ opportunity. That’s big.] Feherty will also continue to do his “Feherty” talk show on Golf Channel, and he’ll appear on other Golf Channel programs, including possible new programs featuring him.
For NBC, Roger Maltbie and Gary Koch signed new deals with reduced schedules, which allows Feherty to work in a tower or as a walking reporter.
Feherty said: “I’m looking forward to going to Rio for some other reason than trying to escape U.S. authorities.”
He also said he has three operations planned the rest of 2015. Two on his arthritic hands and also shoulder surgery.
Assuming he hangs in there, at 57, left unsaid, at least in the Golfweek piece by Martin Kaufmann I was reading, is Feherty becomes the obvious heir apparent to Johnny Miller, who is 68; though I’m not sure how Feherty ‘plays’ in that role.
Don’t drink the water in Rio, David! And don’t go near that lake where they are holding some yachting and other such events. It’s a giant pool of raw sewage.
–Uh oh…my closet college basketball team, San Diego State, is under investigation for providing improper benefits to prospects, sources told CBS Sports, though they did not say if Coach Steve Fisher, who was fired from his job at Michigan in 1997 under similar circumstances, is part of the probe.
The results of such an investigation could be serious. Unfortunately, I expect the worst, especially since it doesn’t appear SDSU self-reported anything.
–I literally posted last Sunday at the end of the U.S. Open men’s final, so didn’t have the chance to note that of 23 chances Roger Federer had to break Novak Djokovic’s serve, he failed to convert on 19 of them. Federer also made 54 unforced errors, accounting for more than a third of Djokovic’s 147 points. [David Waldstein / New York Times]
–According to Forbes and their annual list of the world’s most valuable sports teams, the Dallas Cowboys are numero uno.
1. Cowboys ($4 billion)
2. Real Madrid ($3.26bn)
3. New England Patriots ($3.2bn)
4. New York Yankees ($3.2bn)
5. FC Barcelona ($3.16bn)
–In the first day of Champions League play, Juventus defeated Manchester City 2-1, while PSV Eindhoven beat Man U by the same score. Not a great start for the Premier League. Chelsea and Arsenal have matches tonight, Wednesday. [Great time to be in the pubs catching these contests.]
–Another note on the passing of NBA Hall of Famer, Moses Malone. I didn’t have time Sunday to add a note or two but for us older hoops fans, to me there are three obvious high school alma maters in NBA history… Overbrook in Philadelphia (Wilt Chamberlain), Power Memorial in New York City (Lew Alcindor) and Petersburg HS in Petersburg, Va. (Moses Malone). Most fans can’t remember where Oscar Robertson (Crispus Attucks in Indianapolis) or Jerry West (East Bank in East Bank, West Virginia) went to high school, for example. Heck, we all know Larry Bird hails from French Lick, Indiana, but was it French Lick High School? No, Springs Valley in French Lick.
[In hindsight, you could say the Big O’s high school is familiar but to me not in the class of Overbrook, Power Memorial and Petersburg.]
So I bring this up because reader Shu passed on a memory of his, “one of the best lines of all-time smack for the NBA, as Malone once said something to the effect that he could take four guys off the streets of Petersburg, VA and beat the Celtics…Classic!” Shu also reminded me that Malone roomed with John Lucas for one night at Maryland when Lefty Driesell was recruiting him. Imagine if Malone had actually played there?
–Scientists with the National Oceanographic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) captured and tagged 2,835 sharks in waters from Florida to North Carolina in 2015, up from 1,831 in 2012 – the last year the survey was completed; which NOAA has been conducting for 29 years.
Lisa Natanson, a scientist affiliated with a NOAA science center and leader of the coastal shark survey, told Fox News that the rise in the shark population is tied to federal regulations limiting commercial shark fishing, which were enacted in 1993.
“They took off a lot of fishing pressure of these species and it gives them a chance to come back,” Natanson said.
Eight people were victims of shark attacks in North Carolina in June and July – the most in a year since the Florida Museum of Natural History began tracking shark incidents 80 years ago; the previous high being five bites in 2010, according to The Virginia Pilot.
Among the sharks tagged was a 12.5-foot-long tiger shark off North Carolina, and a bull shark was captured for the first time since 2001.
—Miss Georgia, Betty Cantrell, won the Miss America pageant in Atlantic City, while Vanessa Williams, the first African American Miss America, received an apology from the pageant CEO after she was forced to resign 32 years ago when Penthouse magazine published explicit photos of her.
—REO Speedwagon guitarist Gary Richrath died. He was 65. Band frontman Kevin Cronin said, “Gary was both a unique guitarist and songwriter, and the embodiment of the tough guy with a heart of gold.
Richrath joined Speewagon in 1970, three years after the band was formed in Peoria, Illinois. He was known as a songwriter as well as a guitarist, and helped grow the band’s popularity beyond its original Midwestern stronghold.
REO Speedwagon had two #1s in “Keep On Loving You” (1980) and “Can’t Fight This Feeling” (1985), as well as the #5 “Take It On The Run” (1981) and #7 “Keep The Fire Burnin’” (1982).
Top 3 songs for the week 9/12/81: #1 “Endless Love” (Diana Ross & Lionel Richie…just godawful…) #2 “Slow Hand” (Pointer Sisters…about to puke…) #3 “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around” (Stevie Nicks w/ Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers…simply the worst top three of all time…)…and…#4 “Urgent” (Foreigner…thought they singing “Virgin”…my bad…) #5 “(There’s) No Getting’ Over Me” (Ronnie Milsap…whatever…) #6 “Queen Of Hearts” (Juice Newton… “I’ll have the cheeseburger…and please bring me six domestics”…) #7 “Who’s Crying Now” (Journey…ok …not bad…then again, I will forever love Journey for ‘Don’t Stop…’ and the ending of ‘The Sopranos’ finale…) #8 “Lady (You Bring Me Up)” (Commodores…song hasn’t aged well…and whatever you do don’t watch their video, hideous…) #9 “Arthur’s Theme” (Christopher Cross) #10 “Step By Step” (Eddie Rabbitt…well isn’t this funny…here I said last time he was underrated, and I still say that, though this one kind of blows…But in the interim I received a note from Dr. W., who relayed he has a friend in town who just spent the past year renovating the old Eddie Rabbitt house that is beach front on Kiawah. “Eddie was apparently so infatuated with his name, that he had rabbits painted all over the walls and ceilings of the house as well as incorporating them into some of the molding…and they were big rabbits, too!” The house went into disrepair after Rabbitt died in 1998, and it was picked up in an estate auction by a guy who also let it go to pot, so he sold it to Dr. W.’s friend who after fixing it up is going to turn a very nice profit.)
College Football Quiz Answer: Football Writers Association of America’s 75th Anniversary All-America Team…offensive line….John Hannah, Alabama; Orlando Pace, Ohio State; Will Shields, Nebraska; Ron Yary, USC; Dave Rimington, Nebraska (center).
Next Bar Chat, Monday. Some thoughts on fantasy sports betting.
