Post Turkey 12/1/04

Once again spanning the globe to bring you a constant variety sports!


Hope everyone is enjoying all that left over turkey………… Here are some thoughts from the past week.



Notre Dame Football- I was all set to rip into them this week then they go and fire Willingham……… Hard to believe that such a storied program has become so meaningless. Did you know that the last time they won a bowl game was 1994, beating Texas A&M in the Cotton Bowl? How about this….. Name the last skill position player drafted in the first round by the NFL from Notre Dame??? Waiting…… Waiting…………. Ok, It was Rick Mirer drafted by the Seahawks second overall in the 1993 draft (The Patriots selected Drew Bledsoe #1 overall that year). The big time high school players now have no reference of what Notre Dame football used to be. Do you think they know (or care) about Knute Rockne, The 4 Horseman, Paul Hornung, Joe Montana (ok, I’ll give them this one….) or Tim Brown (didn’t he play for the Raiders???)? The 18yr old athlete (born in the mid 80’s) now looks at programs like Miami, Southern Cal, Florida State, Oklahoma, Florida, etc…….. Those 5 schools represent most of the marquee (not to mention recent Heisman Trophy winners) players in the NFL today. For what ever reason Notre Dame cannot get the marquee players anymore. Hence, they are a mediocre program……….. Early word is current Utah head coach Urban Meyer (and former Notre Dame assistant) is the front runner to be offered the head coaching position.


Pro Football- I was asked this past week about Ricky Williams and why no mention of him…… What I said was basically he bores me….. No one is pointing a gun to his head to play football. Believe it or not Ricky, the NFL will go on without you. Go travel the world, smoke pot and enjoy your life…………… Oh by way, you owe the Dolphins back 8.6 million you took in bonus money! Hey, I have no problem with him coming back if he wants to play, as long as he serves his 4 game suspension, have at it. The one thing I do know, is that I wouldn’t want to be his teammate…. After quitting the way he did, and saying the things he said, I’m sure he’ll have to mend a few fences (ie, put up a couple 200yd rushing days….), before teammates will start coming around to him. Speaking of mending fences, Maurice Clarett isn’t doing himself any favors either. Even if Ohio State did some things for him, he gladly excepted them…… You can’t have it both ways….. His stock in the draft is dropping, and he’s costing himself more and more money. I’m sure some future teammates won’t be too thrilled with him.



College Basketball- Whats happened here?????? Man, growing up in the late 70’s and 80’s I was consumed by college basketball. I knew all the players, teams, coaches and the 2 greatest days on earth for me were the Thursday and Friday starting off March Madness every year. Now, who cares???? Seriously, does anyone out there really follow college basketball anymore? With all the top high school players going right into the NBA, college basketball has no star power. You used to follow a highly touted freshmen for 4 years, and get to know everything about them. Now it’s a bunch of decent players running around on the court. If I wanted to watch that, I’d go down to my local YMCA and watch them run around, it’s about the same talent… Growing up you had Georgetown’s “Hoya Paranoia” with players like Eric “sleepy” Floyd, Patrick Ewing, Reggie Williams and David Wingate, going up against North Carolina with Mike Jordan (as he was known as a freshmen), James Worthy, Sam Perkins, Kenny Smith….. Or Houston’s phi slamma jamma of Clyde “the glide” Drexler, Hakeem “Jelly Bean” Olajuwon (cause he ate so many jelly beans when he moved here from Nigeria….), Michael Young and Benny Anders going against Jimmy V’s NC State Wolfpack of Derek Whittenberg, Sidney Lowe, Thurl Bailey and Cozell McQueen. Who can forget the great teams of St. Johns with Chris Mullin, Mark Jackson and Walter Berry (for those of you that don’t remember Berry, he was unstoppable in college, a monster….), or Syracuse with Dwayne “the pearl” Washington, Rony Seikely or Sherman “The Little General” Douglas……. Obviously I could go on and on….. and that’s only in the early 80’s….. Think about all the great coaches and personalities back then. You had Dean Smith at North Carolina, John Thompson at Georgetown, Lou Carnisecca and his sweaters at St. Johns, Bobby Knight and his red sweater at Indiana, Rollie Massimino at Villanova, Jim Valvano at NC State, Jerry Tarkanian chewing on his towel at UNLV, Larry Brown getting UCLA back into the finals (Kiki Vandeweghe, Rod “The Rocket” Foster), a young Coach K at Duke, a young Rick Pitino at Providence, Joe B. Hall at Kentucky, Dale Brown at LSU and Denny Crum and his great players at Louisville (Darrell “Dr. Dunkenstein” Griffith, Pervis “Never Nervous” Ellison, Rodney and Scooter McCray, Milt Wagner and Billy Thompson). Today you still have a few of those guys left and some other talented coaches, but who really jumps out at you now???? One of my best basketball memories was going to a Georgetown, Syracuse game in 86 at the Carrier Dome. The attendance was over 33,000 and I sat in row XX. I literally could touch the roof of the dome when I stood up…… When Georgetown came out to warm up, they were wearing their road dark Grey jerseys and they looked like a bunch of ants running around……… Probably the most worthless thing I’ve ever done is do the wave in row XX! Today you couldn’t pay me to go to a college basketball game……….. I wish we could go back to the day when kids played college ball for 4 years before moving on to the pros. Man, I’m getting old……..



Baseball Hall of Fame- Well the ballot came out this week and some of the players on it are Wade Boggs, Darryl Strawberry, Chili Davies, Jack “Black Jack” McDowell, Mark Langston, Tom Candiotti and Willie McGee. Boggs is deserving, and will make it on the first ballot. Strawberry and McGee, well I think they were good players, I don’t feel they did enough to warrant HOF (and certainly not on first ballot), but will get numerous votes. The others I don’t feel have any chance of getting in. As for existing players on the ballot, I’d vote for Ryne Sandburg (just missed last year) and Jim Rice (won’t get in, but dominated in his era). Results will be announced on January 4th. As we all know the all time hits leader isn’t on the list, because he bet on baseball after he stopped playing the game…………. We have murderers in the Hall of Fame and convicted drug dealers, but god forbid “you ruin the integrity of the game by gambling”. Needless to say you know where I stand on this. Agreed he shouldn’t be allowed on the field, but to not put him in the HOF for his accomplishments is just idiotic. It brings the credibility down…….



Love Em/Hate Em – Peyton Manning. He’s going to shatter the all time single season touchdown record this year, and continue to put up amazing numbers. HOWEVER, until he can lead his team to victory in a big game, I have doubts about him……. He seems like a nice guy, hard working, honest, good teammate, but I have to say HATE HIM. Something about him just rubs me the wrong way……….. I certainly don’t love him, so’s I got to hate him!


Link of The Week- A buddy of mine forwarded this to me. I suppose there is nothing funny with someone getting arrested 96 times, but this was pretty good. Number 46 is my favorite. Think he pissed someone off?????


www.tinyurl.com/6fl3p




Some items of note – According to Brendan Collins, a big A’s fan, and loyal reader of “The Fifth”, watch for the A’s to turn around and trade newly acquired catcher Jason Kendall to the Dodgers. I haven’t read or heard about this anywhere except from Brendan, so if it does happen, credit him with the scoop. I do know that Kendall owns a home in Manhatten Beach(For those of you not living in California, it’s a suburb of LA), so I’m sure he’d be agreeable to the trade……. Also Butch Davies of the Browns quit/got fired this week, coming on the heels of me stating last week “look for him to finish out the year and then quit”…. Way to make me look bad Butch, you could have waited 5 weeks!

Oh well, until next week……..


Bill