TOO MANY KEY INJURIES, COLTS-PHISH CLASSIC & USC CAN'T WIN THE "LITTLE ONES"
The NFL injury news was not good on Tuesday. Five key starters are going to be sidelined, 3 of them for the season. Cowboy running back Marion Barber sustained a quad injury on a long 4th quarter run Sunday night. He is expected to be out 1-2 weeks. Felix Jones & Tashard Choice will step in for Barber. Atlanta rookie defensive tackle Peria Jerry will be lost for the season after injuring his knee in Sunday's game against Carolina. Oakland right guard Robert Gallery broke his leg in Sunday's come from behind win in Kansas City. Luckily for Gallery, the hairline fracture was to the tibia not the femur. He's expected back in 4-6 weeks. Bills right tackle Brad Butler blew out his right knee Sunday & will go on I.R. today, out for the season. Washington Redskin guard Randy Thomas tore a triceps muscle in the St. Louis game & will be lost for the season.
Boise State starting tailback, D.J. Harper suffered a torn ACL in Friday's wild Fresno State game. Harper, who splits time with Jeremy Avery, was the Broncos' leading rusher with 285 yards & 3 touchdowns. He will be lost for the season.
The Chargers, their defensive line crippled with injuries, signed former Chiefs defensive lineman, Alphonso Boone. Look for San Diego to sign another D-lineman very soon.
The Indy-Miami Monday Night Football game last night was really amazing. How a team has less than 15 minutes of possession time & still wins, is nothing short of unbelieverable. For you Peyton Manning haters, if you watched this game, you have to tip your hat to Manning for his precise passing, unmatched ball handling & his performance under pressure. The Dolphins wore out the Colts defense with their Wildcat offense, holding the ball for over 45-minutes. To say Colt defenders were sucking wind in the 4th quarter is an understatement, if this game had gone to overtime & the Phish had won the coin toss, the Colts were going to lose. Manning & company scored a touchdown in less than a minute to take the lead 27-23. Then, in what can only be compared to a Kansas City 2-minute offense, the Dolphins mis-managed 3:11 of clock time & lost. This had to be a very difficult loss to swallow for Miami.
The Cowboys set the all-time attendance record for a regular season game Sunday night with 105,121 in-house for their loss to the Giants. Dallas sold 29,000 "Party Pass" tickets to boost this total. The "Party Pass" tickets are essentially standing room priced at $29. The ticket entitles the holder to be on several large concourses, some with a field view, some with a bigscreen view. I read the review of many "Party Pass" customers on Deadspin.com. I didn't read but one favorable comment. The Cowboys got so many complaints about these tickets & the people who had them, they have reduced the number of "Party Pass" tickets for the remainder of the season to 10,000. Think about it, that's a ticket revenue reduction of $551,000 per game, plus parking & concessions, to a franchise swimming in red ink due to the cost overruns in stadium construction & higher costs of borrowing money during the banking crisis.
As if the Iowa State football program wasn't bad enough on it's own, this morning at 5:30 AM, three Cyclone players turned themselves into Iowa State campus police after finding out they were named in warrants by the Central Iowa Drug Task Force. Starting cornerback Kennard Banks, defensive end Cleyon Laing & linebacker Kevin Hamlin were all charged with possession of a controlled substance. All three were suspended indefinitely from the football team. Tough being a Cyclone fan these days.
In the last 4 seasons, counting '09, the USC Trojans have lost to an unranked PAC-10 opponent 5 times. The last 3 seasons, they've lost the week after whipping a Top-10 team. Pete Carroll has lead his team to 6 consecutive bowl wins & a national Championship in 2004, but it's becoming apparent his guys can't win the "little ones". As a 20-point favorite they were upset by the Washington Huskies last Saturday 13-10. In this game the Trojans were 0-10 on 3rd down, you can't get any worse. Last year as a 25-point favorite, they lost to Oregon State. In 2007, who could forget their loss to Stanford as a 41-point favorite, the greatest point spread upset in football history. It happened twice in 2006, as a 10-point favorite to Oregon State & as an 11-point favorite to UCLA. So when I see the Mike Lupica's & William C. Rhoden's of the sports writing world say "USC is the best team playing right now" & they will. Unless they fall apart & lose again, one or both of these guys will say this in the newspapers, they always do. This is the fallacy of the Poll/BCS/Bowl system. Teams that consistently lose to unranked teams have their loss(s) overlooked because they're a traditional football powerhouse. Is Florida the best team in the country right now? I sincerely doubt it. Is Ohio State, Oklahoma & USC worthy of their top-12 rankings? No they're not, but the Rhoden's & Lupica's of the world cast votes for the same 8 or 10 schools every week, year after year. I'm considering a top-25 ranking of my own. I guarantee I watch more college football than most of the people who have a vote in a poll. South Carolina head coach Steve Spurrier already admitted an administrative assistant casts his vote in The USA Today coaches poll. There's not a doubt in my mind, many coaches do something similar, they're just too damn busy. I wonder just how many college football games William C. Rhoden & Mike Lupica really watch. I'm not singling them out for that reason, many, many writers would fall into that category, I just used them for their perennial dumb quotes. Do you really care about polls? Let me know @ rich@richsfootballreport.com in a quick email.
Today's real name of the day: Da'Rick Rogers, wide receiver, Calhoun High School, Calhoun, Georgia.
Remember you can read everything I've ever written on this blog by going to the archives & selecting anything you want to check, reference or reread.
Boise State starting tailback, D.J. Harper suffered a torn ACL in Friday's wild Fresno State game. Harper, who splits time with Jeremy Avery, was the Broncos' leading rusher with 285 yards & 3 touchdowns. He will be lost for the season.
The Chargers, their defensive line crippled with injuries, signed former Chiefs defensive lineman, Alphonso Boone. Look for San Diego to sign another D-lineman very soon.
The Indy-Miami Monday Night Football game last night was really amazing. How a team has less than 15 minutes of possession time & still wins, is nothing short of unbelieverable. For you Peyton Manning haters, if you watched this game, you have to tip your hat to Manning for his precise passing, unmatched ball handling & his performance under pressure. The Dolphins wore out the Colts defense with their Wildcat offense, holding the ball for over 45-minutes. To say Colt defenders were sucking wind in the 4th quarter is an understatement, if this game had gone to overtime & the Phish had won the coin toss, the Colts were going to lose. Manning & company scored a touchdown in less than a minute to take the lead 27-23. Then, in what can only be compared to a Kansas City 2-minute offense, the Dolphins mis-managed 3:11 of clock time & lost. This had to be a very difficult loss to swallow for Miami.
The Cowboys set the all-time attendance record for a regular season game Sunday night with 105,121 in-house for their loss to the Giants. Dallas sold 29,000 "Party Pass" tickets to boost this total. The "Party Pass" tickets are essentially standing room priced at $29. The ticket entitles the holder to be on several large concourses, some with a field view, some with a bigscreen view. I read the review of many "Party Pass" customers on Deadspin.com. I didn't read but one favorable comment. The Cowboys got so many complaints about these tickets & the people who had them, they have reduced the number of "Party Pass" tickets for the remainder of the season to 10,000. Think about it, that's a ticket revenue reduction of $551,000 per game, plus parking & concessions, to a franchise swimming in red ink due to the cost overruns in stadium construction & higher costs of borrowing money during the banking crisis.
As if the Iowa State football program wasn't bad enough on it's own, this morning at 5:30 AM, three Cyclone players turned themselves into Iowa State campus police after finding out they were named in warrants by the Central Iowa Drug Task Force. Starting cornerback Kennard Banks, defensive end Cleyon Laing & linebacker Kevin Hamlin were all charged with possession of a controlled substance. All three were suspended indefinitely from the football team. Tough being a Cyclone fan these days.
In the last 4 seasons, counting '09, the USC Trojans have lost to an unranked PAC-10 opponent 5 times. The last 3 seasons, they've lost the week after whipping a Top-10 team. Pete Carroll has lead his team to 6 consecutive bowl wins & a national Championship in 2004, but it's becoming apparent his guys can't win the "little ones". As a 20-point favorite they were upset by the Washington Huskies last Saturday 13-10. In this game the Trojans were 0-10 on 3rd down, you can't get any worse. Last year as a 25-point favorite, they lost to Oregon State. In 2007, who could forget their loss to Stanford as a 41-point favorite, the greatest point spread upset in football history. It happened twice in 2006, as a 10-point favorite to Oregon State & as an 11-point favorite to UCLA. So when I see the Mike Lupica's & William C. Rhoden's of the sports writing world say "USC is the best team playing right now" & they will. Unless they fall apart & lose again, one or both of these guys will say this in the newspapers, they always do. This is the fallacy of the Poll/BCS/Bowl system. Teams that consistently lose to unranked teams have their loss(s) overlooked because they're a traditional football powerhouse. Is Florida the best team in the country right now? I sincerely doubt it. Is Ohio State, Oklahoma & USC worthy of their top-12 rankings? No they're not, but the Rhoden's & Lupica's of the world cast votes for the same 8 or 10 schools every week, year after year. I'm considering a top-25 ranking of my own. I guarantee I watch more college football than most of the people who have a vote in a poll. South Carolina head coach Steve Spurrier already admitted an administrative assistant casts his vote in The USA Today coaches poll. There's not a doubt in my mind, many coaches do something similar, they're just too damn busy. I wonder just how many college football games William C. Rhoden & Mike Lupica really watch. I'm not singling them out for that reason, many, many writers would fall into that category, I just used them for their perennial dumb quotes. Do you really care about polls? Let me know @ rich@richsfootballreport.com in a quick email.
Today's real name of the day: Da'Rick Rogers, wide receiver, Calhoun High School, Calhoun, Georgia.
Remember you can read everything I've ever written on this blog by going to the archives & selecting anything you want to check, reference or reread.
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