Let me tell you how non-competitive last night’s MNF game between Seattle and SF was. I actually appreciated it when ESPN dragged Drew Carey into the booth for an extended chat about The Price Is Right in the third quarter and when they had Steve Young drop in and chew the fat with the announcing crew for a time in the fourth quarter. There was nothing compelling happening on the screen and there was nothing the announcing crew might have done to make it compelling. I don’t know if it was the worst game of the weekend, but it was surely not one of the best.
Interestingly, last weekend, the visiting teams did extraordinarily well. In the 14 NFL games, the visitor won 9 of them. Home field advantage is not what it used to be; in fact, the Carolina Panthers are winless at home – as are the Rams and the Dolphins for the season.
I had some less than fully kind things to say about Don Shula last week regarding his nattering about how a Pats’ unbeaten season might deserve an asterisk in the record books and then his retraction of that remark. However, I wasn’t nearly as unkind as was Dan Daly in the Washington Times:
“You can understand his [Shula’s] protectiveness toward the one-and-only ‘72 Dolphins. Take them away — their 17-0 singularity — and he might be remembered as The Coach Who Couldn’t Win an NFL Championship With Johnny Unitas or Dan Marino.”
Things are very wrong in Baltimore. The Ravens managed to score only 7 points on the Bengals’ defense last weekend and the Bengals’ defense is most politely described as “porous”. Only one other team scored as few as 20 points on the Bengals’ defense this year – and that would have been the Ravens in the first game of the year. At the moment, the Ravens’ offense is about as effective and efficient as a herd of turtles.
The Ravens are now 4-5 and have a difficult schedule for the rest of the season – including three consecutive games against the Chargers, Patriots and Colts. A final record of 5-11 is not out of the question and that is a huge drop from last year’s record of 13-3. Steve McNair is now all heart but with next to no physical skill; Kyle Boller is not significantly better now than he was three years ago. The Ravens are a team that needs an extreme makeover.
In college football, Boston College lost to Maryland last weekend. Johnny, what parting gifts do we have for the BC Eagles as they leave the ranks of teams people actually care about?
Please note that with Ohio State losing last weekend, I am getting really close to my wish that every champion of every BCS Conference end the season with 1 loss so that the Selection Committee will necessarily cheese off the maximum number of people as they decide who will play in the Championship Game.
Kansas still needs to lose a Big-12 game to make this wish come true and they certainly can do that. Kansas is undefeated but they may just be figments of a freakishly benign schedule. I know they did not set up their Big 12 schedule for this year; the conference honchos did that. But Kansas has not had to play Texas or Oklahoma this year in conference, which is always a blessing. And their out of conference schedule – over which they have 100% control – has been pillow soft to say the least. The quartet of Central Michigan, Southeastern Louisiana, Toledo and Florida International opened up the Jayhawks’ season. The cumulative score against those 4 patsies was 214-23. Toledo stayed within 5 TDs of Kansas in their game, so maybe next year the Jayhawks will drop Toledo and add the American Asthmatics Institute to their schedule.
I am perfectly willing to give Kansas coach Mark Mangino kudos for keeping the team focused and efficient for the season to date. They have won 10 games in a row; that is not a trivial accomplishment. While handing out kudos, I also want to mention three other coaches:
Dennis Erickson turned the Arizona State program around very quickly.
Lloyd Carr survived the vilification that came with his opening two-game losing streak at home and fielded a competitive team.
Al Golden is the coach at Temple – a school with a football tradition so morbid that you would not think that Beowulf could set it on a positive course. Temple has three wins over MAC teams this year.
Outside the Lines did a story on Sunday about why Delaware does not play Delaware State in football. Since Delaware State is a historically black university and Delaware is predominantly white, ESPN allowed several people to proclaim that this was a racially based decision. And maybe it is; I don’t read minds, so I don’t know for sure. But at one point, one of the guys who was so certain that this was a racially motivated thing asked why these two state schools wouldn’t play each other when they are so close to each other – implying that race would be the overriding reason. Well, let me observe that Penn does not play Penn State; Georgia does not play Georgia State; South Carolina does not play South Carolina State and etc.
It’s not axiomatic that such rivalries are natural ones that need to be played out on the football field. Maybe – I said maybe – the reason Delaware does not schedule Delaware State has to do with money; maybe they can earn more money scheduling the folks they do (such as Navy) than they could earn by playing Delaware State. Don’t know that for sure either, but maybe that’s the reason.
The list of the nation’s worst football teams has to include Notre Dame this year. Yes, the Irish have lost to some pretty good teams but they have also lost to some mediocre teams and they have looked positively putrid at times on the field. They are down there in the company of Utah State and FIU (both winless this year) along with Marshall and Minnesota. The Gophers are down there because of their defense which is allowing almost 550 yards per game and is the worst in Division 1-A football.
And of course, there is perennial football bottom feeder, Duke. And this weekend in a game that would likely give indigestion to a buzzard, Duke travels to Notre Dame. At the moment, Duke is a 5.5 point underdog. The reason not to bet on this game is simple; without a wager there, it will be ever so simple to ignore the fact that this game exists – - and that is really what you want to do in your heart of hearts…
As the college basketball season starts up, the NCAA wants the referees to crack down on coaches swearing on the sidelines – and acting like spoiled brats. The referees are supposed to use technical fouls and ejections to maintain this level of decorum. We’ll see if any of that works. John Thompson – the former coach at Georgetown and father of the current Georgetown coach – said on his radio program here in the DC area that this decree from the NCAA assures he could never return to college coaching because he’d be out of the building in the first two or three minutes of every game. I suspect that is only the slightest of exaggerations…
Finally, an observation from syndicated columnist Norman Chad:
“Nielsen no longer releases ratings for NHL games on Versus; it simply lists the names of all viewers on its Web site.”
But don’t get me wrong, I love sports…