[Posted Wednesday a.m.]
Men’s College Hockey Quiz: Hey, I paid for this site! So your quiz is; 3 of the following schools have won seven or more NCAA titles. All of them have won at least 5. Name the three with seven. [Boston University, Boston College, North Dakota, Minnesota, Michigan, Denver, Wisconsin] The NCAA started holding a tournament in 1948, now the “Frozen Four.” Answer below.
College Basketball
New AP Poll (Feb. 15…records a/o 2/14)
1. Villanova 22-3 (44)
2. Kansas 21-4 (21)
3. Oklahoma 20-4
4. Iowa 20-5
5. North Carolina 21-4
6. Maryland 22-4
7. Virginia 20-5
8. Xavier 22-3
9. Michigan State 21-5
10. West Virginia 20-5
11. Miami (FL) 20-4
12. Arizona 21-5…they kind of snuck up on me
15. Dayton 21-3
16. Oregon 20-6…Ducks don’t deserve to be this high…reputation of cheerleaders helps
19. Notre Dame 18-7
20. Duke 19-6
24. Texas 16-9…when was the last time you saw a team with a record like this ranked 24? Shaka…Shaka Smart…Shaka Smart….
So on Tuesday….
Texas beat West Virginia 85-78, while 25 Baylor defeated 13 Iowa State 100-91 in Waco.
Then there is my Wake Forest Demon Deacons. I was following online last night and turned on the tube with about eight minutes to play. Another loss, this one to Pitt, 101-96 in double overtime, our 11th straight, all in the ACC, and our school-record 22nd straight ACC road loss, making it 52 of 54! That’s right. 2-52 on the road. Our last road win was Jan. 22, 2014 at Virginia Tech.
But as has been the case so often, Wake should have won but through the first OT, we were 12 of 28 from the free throw line! 12 of 28! And for the game, the Deacs were outrebounded on the offensive glass 26-9! Wake shot 50.7% from the field to Pitt’s 39.8%, but it was one put-back after another for the Panthers (18-7, 7-6) who kept their NCAA tournament hopes alive.
Wake is now 10-16, 1-13. Next up on Sunday the big one, Boston College in Winston-Salem. The Ferraro’s Lunch Challenge between Steve D. and myself. I don’t know what to expect. B.C. , which plays at Clemson tonight, is 0-12 in league play.
Our program is at rock-bottom. Incredibly depressing.
–In his musings for Sports Illustrated, Seth Davis talks of the three top candidates for the Wooden Award all being seniors: Oklahoma’s Buddy Hield, Michigan State’s Denzel Valentine and Iowa forward Jarrod Uthoff. Only one on the top 20 list from last week is a freshman, LSU’s Ben Simmons, which is quite a shift from previous years. Though Davis is probably correct when he says he sees this as a one-year aberration.
Mr. Davis also notes on a separate issue that it looks like Duke senior forward Amile Jefferson will take a medical redshirt this season. Jefferson is only doing light workout stuff and still keeps his foot in a boot much of the time and has not been cleared to practice. So it’s not like the guy, even if he was cleared next week, is anywhere near being ready to contribute. [Duke alum Ken P. disagrees with this assessment and is guessing Jefferson returns, even if at tourney time.]
Peyton Manning, cont’d….
Howard Bryant / ESPN.com
“Two cannons of confetti rained on American sports when the final gun concluded Super Bowl 50 last Sunday. The first was literal, the meaningless strips of colored paper celebrating Von Miller, Peyton Manning and the Denver Broncos. The second, which came later in the form of the weeklong narratives surrounding Cam Newton’s postgame news conference, Peyton Manning’s last-stand triumph and allegations of sexual assault, was metaphorical, resembling pieces of a jigsaw puzzle tossed high, disparate but interconnected, and this confetti is not harmless.
“The pieces are scattered on the floor. In between each is noise – angry, perplexed, frustrating, resigned, aggrieved noise. For a week, Newton’s sour news conference has received the treatment of the major news event of the day, bigger than Miller, bigger than the Broncos, even though Newton never once raised his voice and did not verbally attack the assembled press – in a time when Bill Belichick and Gregg Popovich unprofessionally make daily sport out of belittling professional journalists and it’s laughed off as curmudgeonly genius.
“In a time of Ray Rice and Adrian Peterson, Greg Hardy, Johnny Manziel and Baylor University, Newton being upset that he lost a football game has received far more attention than Manning’s involvement in being named in a lawsuit against the University of Tennessee alleging the university fostered a hostile work environment for women. The lawsuit alleges that Manning – already hounded by HGH allegations this summer – placed his naked genitals on the face of a female athletic trainer in 1996 while she was examining him for an injury. Manning has denied that he assaulted the trainer, saying instead that he was ‘mooning’ a teammate. And in spite of his inclusion in the lawsuit, the mainstream power machine – the networks, the NFL itself, the media – is reluctant or outright unwilling to add Manning to a list that in the past it has been so unworried about naming.
“The world is filled with false equivalents, but without discussion of all of the pieces, without journalism actually doing its job and connecting them, the public is left to its own devices to explain the noise between the pieces. Right now it concludes conspiracy: It concludes the football machine has created Manning as the untouchable, corporate golden child whose legacy as a role model will be destroyed by covering the allegations. Then, in an era of concussion concerns, the corporate dollars and public goodwill he generates as the humble face of ability and class (something the anti-Dabbers believe Newton lacked and for which he deserves eternal punishment), well, that will disappear, too. Thus, the recourse is more conspiracy: to bury the story, to let Manning walk.
“In the black community, the public has concluded the conspiracy is, yes, that the price of protecting Manning is sacrificing Newton: Because the airwaves won’t cover one, it must be filled by castigating the other.”
Excellent points by Mr. Bryant. But I’m on the record as not liking either player and I certainly stand by this…if for different reasons.
Bryant concludes: “Every day, whether it is too much Newton or too little Manning, the pieces of confetti fall from the sky. They land on the street, each separated by noise but waiting to be connected. The question is whether the public, the leagues, the fans and the media have the courage to confront and fit the pieces together, and whether we can handle what the finished puzzle says about all of us.”
Cindy Boren / Washington Post
“SI.com writer Michael McCann, a lawyer, writes that there may never be a resolution about what happened. The statutes of limitation have expired and reaching a settlement is not an admission of guilt. Nor is the NFL likely to look into an alleged incident that happened before Manning’s pro career began.
“ ‘The accusations and denials were made under oath and thus under penalty of perjury,’ McCann wrote. ‘It would seem that someone is lying, but we likely won’t ever find out who that might be. …[No] records have surfaced indicating that he was ever investigated by law enforcement for either incident. While star college athletes have been known to receive favorable treatment by law enforcement, that alone does not prove Manning’s guilt.’”
–We learned this week that NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell was paid $34.1 million in 2014, after receiving $35 million in 2013 and $44 million in 2012.
The figures are made public annually when the league submits its filing to the Internal Revenue Service.
But with the NFL abandoning its non-profit status, this is the final year Goodell’s salary will be available to the public, so we’re unlikely to learn what he was paid in 2015.
For 2014 the NFL reported record revenues of $13 billion. [The figures were first reported by Darren Rovell of ESPN.]
Men’s College Hockey
1. Quinnipiac
2. Boston College
3. St. Cloud State
4. North Dakota
5. Providence
6. Michigan
7. Notre Dame
8. Yale
9. Boston University
10. Denver
11. Massachusetts-Lowell
13. Harvard
18. St. Lawrence!!! …Go Trader George, Cindy and all the other alum. The Saints defeated Quinnipiac 4-3 on Friday.
Regarding the current No. 1, I wrote this bit on their coach back on 4/11/13:
“(Quinnipiac’s story) is amazing. Their coach is Rand Pecknold, who got the job in 1994 and was paid a salary of $6,700. The team had to practice at a rink in Hamden, Conn. at midnight. Pecknold had a full-time job teaching history at Griswold High, 71 miles from Hamden. Needless to say his schedule was insane. [Naps from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. and 3 a.m. to 6 a.m.]
“Quinnipiac was Division II at the time and lost 12 of its first 14 under Pecknold, including back-to-back losses to Alabama-Huntsville by a combined 18-1 score.
“Pecknold vowed not to quit and eventually got an office….a converted janitor’s closet….and Quinnipiac went Division I in 1998. A new arena with separate facilities for hockey and basketball was opened in 2007.
“And now they’re in the Frozen Four. [Ed. they lost the 2013 final to Yale.]
“Oh, and Pecknold’s salary is also big time…a reported $300,000. As Ronald Reagan would have said…not bad, not bad at all.”
Golf Balls
–Golf World’s Tim Rosaforte caught up with Greg Norman following his dismissal from Fox Sports after just one season as a TV analyst.
Norman told Rosaforte he was “totally blindsided” by the decision and that it was “totally contradictory to what I was told by the USGA, and many others within Fox headquarters and a previous Fox guy that was head of sports.”
Norman said he thought he was “handcuffed… There was a lot of stuff I wanted to say, but the final comment they told me [was that] I was too unpredictable. I thought that’s what they want you to do in that role.”
Well, I’m on the record as saying I was surprised Norman didn’t get another year, but I love the selection of Paul Azinger.
American Pharoah…stud
Monte Reel / BloombergBusinessweek
“The verb to use in polite company is ‘cover.’ The stud covers the mare. Or: About 11 months after she was covered, the mare gave birth to a healthy foal….
“(Soon there will be American Pharoah’s) first coupling with a mare….In November, about two weeks after American Pharoah retired, his 2016 stud fee was set at $200,000, the highest ever for an unproven, first-year stallion. Only one other active stud – a tested, 15-year-old veteran named Tapit – commands that much per successful cover. Tapit’s first-year fee was $15,000; his rate rose to its current $300,000 only after a decade of producing stakes-winning foals….
“Cigar was the highest-earning thoroughbred in racing history. Early in 1997, when he was led to the breeding shed for the first time, he seemed a natural-born stud, successfully mounting 34 mares in short order. But weeks passed, and none of those mares got pregnant. Cigar was sterile. ‘There are no guarantees,’ said Richard Barry, the stallion manager at Ashford Stud, in Versailes, Ky., where Pharoah is. ‘It’s in the lap of the gods.’
“Successful stallions are routinely matched with more than 100 mares in a five-month breeding season. Particularly energetic ones might cover as many as 200 a year. If American Pharoah produces several seasons of healthy and fast foals, standard pricing norms suggest that his stud fee will multiply exponentially. Very quickly, the $8.6 million he earned during his racing career would begin to look like small change.”
Pharoah could jump to the head of the rope lines at all the hot clubs in New York, no doubt, were this to come to pass. “Good to see you again, Pharoah. Come right in.” “Neigh!!!”
Stuff
–Ah yes, pitchers and catchers…and full squads. Let the fun begin.
–The NBA resumes play on Thursday after the break for the All-Star Game and we’re all waiting to see if there are any blockbuster trades before the deadline tomorrow. Los Angeles Clippers president and coach Doc Rivers said there are no plans to trade Blake Griffin despite the rumors.
–I wondered last time if they would hold the slalom event at Crans-Montana, Switzerland, after heavy snow cancelled the Saturday and Sunday races, but the weather cleared enough and on Monday, American Mikaela Shiffrin won it in her first race since suffering her knee injury back in December.
Folks, it just isn’t supposed to be that easy. It’s amazing, but we’ve seen Lindsey Vonn do the same thing after her numerous injuries. Just incredible athletes.
Shiffrin had opened the season with two slalom wins in Aspen before a training mishap in Sweden. Stretching back to last season, she has won her last six slaloms.
Shiffrin now has 18 World Cup wins and she will turn just 21 next month.
–I always watch the Daytona 500 and without Jeff Gordon and Tony Stewart, NASCAR is starved for star power. Aside from Dale Earnhardt Jr., you know that very few average Americans could name more than a handful of drivers, including Danica Patrick, who’s been a bust. Despite all his Sprint Cup titles, I don’t picture Jimmie Johnson as being that well known across the land.
So it’s at least refreshing to see that 20-year-old Chase Elliott, who inherited Gordon’s car, won the pole; the youngest to land the top spot in NASCAR’s biggest race.
Elliott’s father is Bill, the two-time Daytona 500 winner and one of the most popular drivers ever in the sport. Hopefully Chase has a solid run.
Me? I’ll remain a Junior fan. I saw Dale win it in 2004, the only time I went to Daytona, though I absolutely froze my ass off and can’t say it was that enjoyable. [There was a record cold wave that year, which won’t be the case this weekend. 76 and sunny, at last word.]
For those of you who do follow the sport, Joe Gibbs Racing, despite all its success, including Kyle Busch’s Sprint Cup title last year, won its only Daytona 500 way back in 1993 with Dale Jarrett.
One more for NASCAR followers. The legendary Wood Brothers no longer have an automatic spot in each Sprint Cup race due to new rules, but they did qualify for Sunday with Ryan Blaney, so while I want Junior to win, all race fans should want Blaney to do well.
–In reading a piece in BloombergBusinessweek on the NHL and the huge issue with the weakness of the Canadian dollar, now at a 13-year low, it struck me. None of the seven Canadian teams is currently on track to make the playoffs.
But back to the Canadian dollar, the loonie, the reason a weak one is so big is the NHL does all its business in U.S. dollars, and all players are paid in greenbacks. So the revenue for the seven Canadian teams is converted into U.S. dollars, or roughly a third of the league’s $4 billion in expected revenue, including sponsorships and ticket sales, plus the league’s television deal with Rogers Communications, based in Toronto, which pays in loonies. The Canadian dollar is down about 10 percent since the league’s fiscal year began on July 1.
As reporters Eben Novy-Williams and Gerrit De Vynck point out: “While everyone in hockey is used to currency fluctuations, severe ones have had real consequences. In the mid- to late-1990s, when the loonie never went above 75 cents, the Winnipeg Jets and the Quebec Nordiques moved to Phoenix and Denver, respectively.”
–So I missed last time that Bernhard Langer won the Champions Tour event last weekend in Naples, Fla. (the Chubb Classic), the 26th victory of his senior career. What was significant is that he is one of the players on both tours who was most impacted by the new rule prohibiting anchoring the putter against the body. So it was his first win “unanchored,” as he put it.
Langer decided he would still use a long putter for last week’s event, he just didn’t anchor it and in his first round he shot a 62.
So this amazing golfer now has the third most wins on the senior tour, behind only Hale Irwin’s 45 and Lee Trevino’s 29.
–With our wicked, and thankfully brief, cold spell last weekend, I was thinking how traditionally the Presidents’ Day three-day weekend is the biggest one of the year in terms of skiing and how the last thing you’d then want is the kind of cold and wind-chills we then had on Saturday and Sunday.
So I saw on New York’s Whiteface Mountain, near Lake Placid, late Saturday into Sunday the wind chill hit minus 114!
Think about that. I mean we’ve had Olympics at Whiteface before and this is the month it would have been. Something tells me this kind of weather would have wreaked havoc with the schedule, or thousands of spectators would have died.
[I also saw the wind gusts at the top of Mt. Washington in New Hampshire on Saturday hit 140.]
–From the Associated Press:
“A Dutch tourist who survived a tiger attack in the jungles of southwestern Nepal over the weekend by climbing a tree said Monday that he’s lucky to be alive and will now have a story to tell when he returns home.
“Gerard Van Laar said he was attacked by the tiger when he and his Nepalese guide were hiking in Bardia National Park on Saturday.
“ ‘I was super lucky to be alive. I would have been dead if it had not been for Krishna (the guide),’ Laar said by phone from Bardia….
“ ‘All of a sudden, I heard a roar and a growl, and the tiger was heading toward us at full speed,’ Laar….
“He was able to escape by climbing a tree, but his guide was attacked and slightly injured as he ran away to draw the attention of the tiger.
“The tiger returned and circled the tree while Laar tried to stay as quiet as possible about 20 feet above the ground. [Ed. no doubt Laar’s heart was stuck in his throat] About two hours later, the guide arrived back with help and they shouted and used sticks to drive away the tiger.”
The guide was hospitalized but OK.
Remind me not to get out of the car if I ever go to Bardia.
–I watched the debut of “Vinyl” on HBO Sunday night, the story of the sordid music scene in New York City during the 1970s. It was good, but I’m not sure I’m hooked on it so I’ll give it another shot this Sunday. Bobby Cannavale is the lead and he’s terrific. Ray Romano is effective, too. Andrew Dice Clay plays the owner of a radio network. You can imagine what his character is like. Even Bo Dietl takes a star turn.
–So the Grammys is one awards show I actually kind of look forward to, since I have no idea what is ‘hot’ these days (outside of country music) and it’s my way of keeping up. And every now and then you get a really great performance.
But, boy, I thought most of this year’s show was pretty abysmal. Yes, “Hamilton” was good and makes you want to see the show. I was surprised how good the Lionel Richie tribute was. I did know that Taylor Swift was dissing Kanye West (but just saw he had a meltdown on SNL). I like Little Big Town. And, on the fly, Stevie Wonder did a great job with his little tribute to Maurice White.
Actually, Justin Bieber showed some good energy. [I know for a fact this is the first time I have said anything nice about the guy.]
But Lady Gaga was awful (and I like her) and for the life of me, someone explain why LL Cool J is still hosting, let alone the fact he is only on like two minutes. It’s a stupid gig.
As for Adele, I thought it was my hearing….not being able to understand her. I feel better now that I saw she wasn’t mic’d up properly.
For the archives…
Best Country Album – “Traveller” Chris Stapleton
Album of the Year – “1989” Taylor Swift
Song of the Year – “Thinking Out Loud” Ed Sheeran & Amy Wadge
Record of the Year – “Uptown Funk” Mark Ronson featuring Bruno Mars
Best pop duo/group – “Uptown Funk”
So I always forget the difference between Song of the Year and Record of the Year. Just looked it up…Song of the Year is for the songwriter, Record of the Year is about the performance and includes the producer.
–My man, Kid Rock, has an interview in the current issue of Rolling Stone.
Who are your heroes? “Jesus. George Washington. And anybody that’s had the balls to go and fight for this country. And hardworking people that come from not having a lot, that keep a strong family and pull themselves up from their bootstraps and make something of themselves in life, you know? Those are heroes to me.”
What are the most important rules you live by? “Don’t be a d—. I try to be cool with everybody. Even if it’s somebody where you don’t really appreciate what they do, like if it’s a band whose music you don’t like. I think I got all of that out of my system when I was young anyway. I walked around flipping everyone off, telling them to go [blank] themselves. Also, don’t hang out with assholes. If you surround yourself with good people, everything else is going to work itself out.”
–Finally, we note the passing of Vanity, a Prince protégé. She was 57.
The singer and actress, born Denise Matthews, had been suffering from kidney disease for years.
Matthews rocketed to stardom through her association with Prince and the 1980s girl group Vanity 6. Vanity released four albums and she also appeared in several films, including “The Last Dragon” and “52 Pick-Up.”
Renouncing her Hollywood lifestyle she later became a Christian minister.
Prince, touring in Australia, said they “used to love each other deeply.”
Top 3 songs for the week 2/17/79: #1 “Da Ya Think I’m Sexy?” (Rod Stewart…this tune has aged miserably…) #2 “Y.M.C.A.” (Village People…never understood popularity of this one…especially today…it’s a reason to turn down wedding invitations…) #3 “A Little More Love” (Olivia Newton-John)… and…#4 “Fire” (Pointer Sisters) #5 “I Will Survive” (Gloria Gaynor) #6 “Every 1’s A Winner” (Hot Chocolate) #7 “Le Freak” (Chic….ughh….I need my sword…) #8 “Lotta Love” (Nicolette Larson…this one was not awful…) #9 “Somewhere In The Night” (Barry Manilow) #10 “I Was Made For Dancin’” (Leif Garrett…whatever…)
Men’s College Hockey Quiz Answer: Three with seven or more titles….
Michigan 9 (last one in 1998)
Denver 7 (2005)
North Dakota 7 (2000)
Wisconsin 6 (2006)
Boston College 5 (2012)
Boston University 5 (2009)
Minnesota 5 (2003)
No one has won 4.
Providence defeated Boston University last year for the title.
St. Lawrence lost in the finals in 1961 and 1988. So we are pulling for them this spring (along with Quinnipiac).
Next Bar Chat, Monday.
