- Who’s going to be left in the top 10? That’s what most college football fans were thinking as the dust settled on the fourth weekend of the season. After fourth-ranked Mississippi proved how much they didn’t belong among the nation’s elite by dropping a 16-10 stink bomb at South Carolina Thursday night, three more top 10 teams made Ole Miss look not as bad by dropping even bigger turds in big games. Actually, that’s not totally fair. Fifth-ranked Penn State played a solid Iowa team at home and lost a 21-10 decision that was closer than the score indicates, so I won't lump them in with these next two teams. California and Miami…..wow. Just wow. Hope you are both very ashamed of yourselves; I know I am, and I didn’t attend either school, nor do I have any ties to either program. But No. 6 Cal and No. 9 Miami came into their games undefeated and riding high, both angling to get into the national title picture. Losing 42-3 (Cal on the road in Oregon) and 31-7 (Miami on the road at Virginia Tech) won't exactly accomplish that. While Cal played in good weather on the West Coast and Miami played in shi**y weather on the East Coast, the bottom line is that both teams were embarrassed by conference foes and didn’t really bother to show up. Cal had a matchup with USC on the horizon, but that game has lost all of its luster after the Golden Bears had their pants pulled down in Eugene by the Ducks. Miami showed that while it is much better this year, it’s not nearly back to being an elite program after several down years. Elsewhere, the Mississippi State Bulldogs had No, 7 LSU on the ropes, on the LSU 1-yard-line, second down and goal with a few mintues left in the game, trailing 30-24. The Bulldogs has three shots to score the go-ahead touchdown and failed all three times, denying first-year head coach Dan Mullen a huge, program-building win and allowing LSU to stay undefeated following a game it absolutely should have lost. The biggest beneficiary of all this chaos has to be Boise State, which went on the road and throttled Bowling Green 49-14 and should be in the top five come next week. The Broncos have quality wins under their belt and now must simply run the table in the lackluster Western Athletic Conference. Another beneficiary should be Cincinnati, which has one of the nation’s best quarterbacks in Tony Pike and an undefeated record thanks to a 28-20 home win over a solid Fresno State squad. But all of this pales in comparison (at least in the minds of University of Florida fans and Fox broadcaster Thom Brenneman) to the news out of Lexington, Kentucky. Sure, the Florida Gators throttled the host Wildcats 41-7 in a game that was never close, but all-everything quarterback Tim Tebow left the game in the third quarter after a brutal sack that ended with him falling to the ground and cracking the back of his head against the knee of one of his own offensive linemen. The injury was later diagnosed as a concussion and Tebow’s status is up in the air right now, but the horrified looks on the faces of the UF fans at the game (as Brenneman undoubtedly hyperventilated into a paper bag somewhere) made you think they were watching a city destroyed by and earthquake or something. If Tebow is out for any length of time, the Gators take a HUGE hit and could easily lose a game in the rugged Southeastern Conference. One additional note in a Florida-centric review of the football weekend, possibly the biggest stunner of the day came from Tallahassee, where unranked and unheralded South Florida (a misnomer if I’ve ever heard one, as they are located in freaking Tampa - i.e. the middle of the state) marched in and upset No. 18 Florida State. Never mind that South Florida wasn’t ranked and is a member of the ugly stepchild of the six BCS conferences, the Big East, the Bulls came into the game having lost senior quarterback Matt Groethe for the year with a knee injury. Groethe has been the absolute rock of the USF offense since his freshman year, running and passing them to a lot of wins. Losing him and replacing him with untested freshman B.J. Daniels should have spelled disaster, especially on the road against a top 20 team, but the Bulls’ defense stepped its game up and choked the life out of the Seminoles. The result? A 17-7 USF victory and a second loss in four games for Florida State. Guess major academic fraud scandals aren’t good for business, eh FSU football? Quite a weekend of football, plenty of upheaval and I will be extremely interested to see where everyone stands when all of the dust finally settles…………
- With steroid accusations flying around nearly every professional sport the past few years, fans have basically become numb to the “revelations” that their favorite players have been juicing and putting every performance-enhancing drug on the market into their bodies. David Ortiz may have used? So what. Manny Ramirez is a ‘roider? Big deal. I was right there with everyone on the numbness to these announcements…….until now. Now comes news that…..well, that I just can’t….or don’t want to believe. Anyone who has grown up in the past 15 years or so can relate to what I’m about to say: if that a-hole Screech Powers is going to allege that Zack Morris’ performances on Saved by the Bell were steroid-enhanced, he’d better have some f’ing proof. Of course, Dustin Diamond’s shocking news comes as he’s trying to sell a book. Behind the Bell comes after he’s tried his hand at celebrity boxing, bombed out of the acting business and clearly has nothing better to do than grow ugly facial hair. As he makes the round promoting his book, Diamond has been discussing his role as Saved By the Bell's adorable dork while also seeking to tear down the reputations of his former co-stars for profit. “I could smell a certain 'smoke,' wafting from the crack" from under his castmates' dressing rooms, says Diamond. He went on to imply that Mark-Paul Gosselaar, aka Bell's Zack Morris, used steroids before production of Saved by the Bell’s short-lived spin-off, Saved by the Bell: The College Years, in 1994. "He suddenly exploded with manliness, loading 25 pounds of muscle on his once-scrawny frame in, oh, about a month," Diamond observed. All right Screech, them’s fightin’ words. Zack Morris was the coolest guy on campus at Bayside and just because you were his nerdy best friend doesn’t mean you can sully his reputation with your outrageous accusations. Unless you have hard stats to back up your claims, stuff it. Did Zack’s Q-rating suddenly skyrocket or did he nail more of his lines once Saved by the Bell: The College Years started? I will not visually indict Zack Morris for his alleged steroid use and unless Diamond can produce dirty, used syringes with Gosselaar’s DNA on them that Diamond used to shoot him up and then kept in empty beer cans in his garage for years, a la Brian McNamee, I don’t believe a word of this. It’s one thing for Diamond to allege that Tiffani Thiessen, Mario Lopez, Elizabeth Berkley and Gosselaar were hooking up on set; I’m fine with that. Just don’t go throwing around unproven ‘roid accusations, because that’s where I draw the line, Screech………..
- No we didn’t……the United States did not just accuse Russia of having a "Cold War mentality" and waging a "disgusting" smear campaign on a U.S. diplomat in Moscow. Actually, that’s exactly what the American government did in coming to the defense of Kyle Hatcher, a U.S. embassy liaison with religious and human rights groups in Russia. Hatcher is at the center of a controversy created an alleged sex video recorded at a hotel room in Siberia that surfaced last month on a Russian "news" website believed to have close ties to Moscow's Federal Security Service (FSB) spy agency. “We believe ... that he has been the subject of a smear campaign using the Russian press. And of course, this kind of campaign is disgusting and deplorable,” Ian Kelly, a State Department spokesman, said. "It's an example of the continuation of a Cold War mentality ... There clearly are still people who have this Cold War mentality and don't want our relationship to improve." Good, good, invoke memories and mental imagery from the Cold War, that’s how you do it. Better yet, this comes as the U.S. and Russia have been supposedly looking to patch up diplomatic relations after being at each other’s throats for years. Sure, President Obama recently spoke of trying to "reset" the relationship with Russia and his counterpart, Russian President/Vlad Putin’s sock puppet Dmitry Medvedev, backed American calls for tougher sanctions against Iran, but so what? A good sex tape scandal can undermine all of that in no time and I for one am thrilled to see it. The U.S. is doing its part, lodging a complaint to Moscow through diplomatic channels. Another top US official seemingly acknowledged the existence of the video, calling it "really gross" and claiming that it was shot last year at a hotel in Siberia. As a quick aside…..even if Kyle Hatcher was sexing it up with some Russian lady in a Siberian hotel…..what the hell else are you going to do in Siberia? Drinking vodka and hitting it are about your only two options and both are good because they help keep you warm. It’s freaking Siberia, so anything that can take your mind off of the fact that you are stuck in Siberia is welcome. But as for the video, it shows a man, allegedly Hatcher, alone watching television and later standing near the wall close to the hidden camera. The lights are turned off and with what little light remains, a man and a woman are seen touching each other, but the darkened room prevents a positive identification of the man as Hatcher. "It's him in the room in the beginning. But then the lights come down, and that's when a woman comes in and that's when it's not him anymore," said the official, who requested anonymity. Hatcher has admitted being present at the hotel, but denies that he’s the one sexing it up on camera. This anonymous official decried the tape as an attempt to have Hatcher removed from his post. That’s something that all U.S. officials involved in this case have steadfastly declared will not happen, but it’s neither here nor there. As long as the Cold War gets started up again, Hatcher will merely be the blessed catalyst and deserving of our thanks……….
- Dear Evander Holyfield: Please quit boxing before you a) die in the ring or b) lose your remaining ability, albeit scarce, to form a coherent sentence in English - or any other language. Evander should take my advice, but as you’d expect, he’s not going to. Like any proud, former champion boxer, Holyfield is going to keep putting on the gloves, stepping through the ropes and getting his face pounded in until they have to carry him off on a stretcher. Look, I get that aspect of boxers’ psyche. They are warriors, trained to keep getting up no matter how many times they’re knocked down. However, there has to be that voice in the back of their mind that, at some point, clicks in and tells them that they’re no longer battling valiantly at something they are good at - they’re slower, more brittle, battered and in danger of dying in the ring if they don’t stop. It would be great if Holyfield could reach his goal of retiring as heavyweight champion because perhaps that would erase the sting of him being revealed as a guy who has fathered near double-digit kids by multiple women who were not his wife at the time and being found out as a steroid user who tried to conceal his identity when purchasing ‘roids online by using the pseudonym Evan Fields (verrrrry clever, E.), but it just ain’t happening. Just look at where he’s traveling for his next fight: freaking South Korea in November. What’s sad is that my man Evan Fields is getting on board with promoting environmental protection and it’s a great cause, but it’s not so great when it could very likely be tied to boxing’s next in-ring death. Great, Evan Fields is building a 40-acre solar energy farm on his suburban Atlanta estate and turning another acre into an organic garden that can be used by neighborhood youths - those are great things, but he can do those without boxing. Likewise, he can continue appearing in Taco Bell ad campaigns as he continues to dig out of the financial hole he was in when his home twice faced foreclosure notices. But look inside the ring and you’ll see that E. Fields has lost his last two bouts, both in bids to claim shares of the fractured heavyweight title. "I will be the undisputed heavyweight champion of the world," Fields said recently. "I'm sure I will be champion next year sometime." My man, no you won't. Not unless you make up your own Evan Fields Boxing Federation title and hand the belt to yourself, and even then it’s not a lock. Bro, you’re flying to South Korea for a fight on Nov. 8 and you still don’t know who your opponent is; that’s not good. Take your legacy as boxing's only four-time heavyweight champion and ride off into the sunset. Take the hint that losing seven of your last 12 fights should give you, call it quits and spare the rest of us the horror of having to see you die in the ring or become a vegetable who can’t think, walk or talk on his own…………..
No comments:
Post a Comment