In case you were out living a life of leisure, here's what you missed in sports on Thursday.
Despite recent trade rumors, Celtics coach Doc Rivers said he is confident that Rajon Rondo will remain with the team until the season's end. "He can't leave," said Rivers, with a disturbing grin. "I've got his whole family held captive in my basement." He then held a single finger to his lips, smiled broadly, and made a long "shhhh" sound.
1. Kentucky is second-best in the country at defending shots from inside the arc, holding opponents to a 38.5 percent shooting rate.
2. Georgia can't shoot 3s; the Dawgs hoist them up at 31.6 percent, 267th in Division I.
Uh-oh.
Long story short, Georgia scored 44 points as the no. 1 Wildcats extended their record to 20-1. The lead was never under 10 in the second half, and Kentucky took another step toward erasing its reputation as road kill.
And yet ...
Let's examine that reputation in-depth and see if it truly deserves to be abolished.
In case you were out living a life of leisure, here's what you missed in sports on Tuesday.
A source reported that the Detroit Tigers have agreed to a nine-year, $214 million deal with former Brewers slugger Prince Fielder. The hefty contract was a bitter pill to swallow for Tigers third baseman Brandon Inge, who is currently being paid in worthless foreclosed Detroit homes.
It's the last week before bowl season, and though much has been decided, there's at least a modicum of drama left. Let's get all judgmental and count down the eight best games.
8. No. 9 Oregon vs. "UCLA," "Pac-12" "Championship"
Once in a while, as a kid, I would invite my neighbor up to play basketball. He wasn't very good, but there was no one else around. I'd regret it almost immediately; he'd feel bad for not playing well, I'd feel bad for beating him, and then I'd try to let him win a game to make it less horrible, but it ended up making it more horrible because he knew what I was doing. Still, we'd have to keep going to maintain the whole facade, to make sure no feelings were hurt. But why were we playing? What was the point? What I'm trying to say is, that neighbor's name was Rick Neuheisel (gasp!).
After the frenetic highs of Week 12, Rivalry Week was a slow coming-down party. In 16 games involving ranked teams, there wasn't a single upset -- at least by the rankings. Most of the games weren't even close. The rich got richer, the poor got poorer, and several avenues of escape were cut off.
Rivalry Week is here, and there's a lot more at stake than just pride. Which is great because, really, who cares about pride? Most of us threw that out the window when we went on welfare just so we could afford HBO. It's the American story, folks. Don't blame the messenger. Anyway, there are more games with BCS implications this week than I can ever remember. The rundown is enough to make you store canned peaches and rifles in an underground shelter and pray for Thursday. So, here it be. (Note: I realize that not all of these games are true rivalries, so quit it with your semantics. There are bigger problems in this world, dude, such as your reflexive anger at trivialities.)
By my count, there are 2.5 HUGE games left on the college football schedule between now and bowl season. The .5 is LSU-Arkansas on Nov. 25. It falls short of a full point only because I don't believe Arkansas has a legitimate chance to win. We've been over this before — the Razorbacks have one loss, but it was an unvarnished throttling against Alabama, and a handful of their eight wins (Ole Miss and Vanderbilt especially) have not been impressive. Nevertheless, LSU is number one, and Arkansas could be as high as fifth by then. It's worth a mention.
The second HUGE game is Oklahoma-Oklahoma State on Dec. 3. If I had to pick right now, I would guess that the winner (Oklahoma, I suspect) will play in the BCS national title game against LSU. For the Cowboys, it's a no-brainer; they're already ranked second, and they control their own destiny. For Oklahoma, ranked sixth, help is needed. As of now, there are four teams for the Sooners to leapfrog if they want to land in the coveted second position. The first is Oklahoma State, who they'd pass with a win. The second is Alabama, and I believe the nation's desire to avoid a rematch national championship would take care of that. Then there's Boise State, who will almost certainly end the year undefeated if they beat TCU this weekend. Still, we know how that story goes. The BCS never smiles on the Broncos, and I can't imagine this year will be any different, even if they're one of just two undefeated teams in the country.
That leaves Stanford, and brings us to the present for …
For the past two Saturday nights, football fans have lived a charmed life. Last week, we got the Hail Mary Game. This week, there was a slice of triple-overtime insanity when undefeated Stanford survived a scare from USC. Those were the best games of the year, and the Musburger-Herbstreit duo were on the scene for both. There's a lot of season left, but it's hard to imagine a better back-to-back stretch. Somewhere in the world, a prime time TV programmer is dancing a jig. And so am I, because this was the most surprising week of the season.
Stanford – An article with the headline “For once, Stanford RBs grab spotlight from Luck” shows that even in grabbing the spotlight from Andrew Luck by rushing for 446 yards, none of Stanford’s running backs could get their name in the headline, or get Luck’s out of it.
Kansas State – Despite a victory over the Jayhawks, the K-State Wildcats were unable to get Kansas coach Turner Gill fired. This came two weeks after Gill said: “We have some work to do on that side of the ball … or on all sides of the ball, for that matter.”
Texas A&M – It is now the highest-ranked team in Texas, and in God’s eyes.
Michigan – Despite being one of the most electrifying players in the country, Denard Robinson refuses to expand his horizons.
Penn State – Despite being one of the least electrifying players in the country, Matt McGloin has “Irish bravado.”
Texas Tech – With a shocking upset win over Oklahoma, that Texas Tech finally won the hearts and minds of Lubbock sports fans who had spent the last three years mourning the end of the Lubbock Renegades.
Arizona State – The Sun Devils must’ve done something impressive in their bye week in order to jump into the BCS, despite being unranked the week before and passing two teams that also had byes. At this rate, Arizona State will be in position to play in the national title, so long as they don’t play any other games until then.
Georgia – Controversy filled the campus as a satirical cartoon implied that Georgia students are more enthused about drinking and watching football than they are about their academics.
West Virginia – The Mountaineers lost to Syracuse by the same 26-point margin they lost to LSU by, proving once and for all that Syracuse is at least as good as the best team in the country.
Jordan Carr runs the blog Better than Voodoo while trying to make it as a screenwriter in Los Angeles. Follow him on Twitter at @btvoodoo.
The week of the almost-upset has mercifully ended. In some ways, this is the worst week of all. Your hopes are elevated, you're primed for some fantastic endings, and then it all crashes on your head like a wet straw roof. We've all been there, right? Let's take a quick tour through the various kinds of non-upsets provided by a fiendish Week 6.
Have you followed the Jordan Jefferson saga? If you haven't, it's not measurably different from any of the other black marks on college football's name. The gist is that the LSU quarterback and some teammates were at a Baton Rouge bar in August when a fight broke out. Four people were badly beaten — one suffered three fractured vertebrae — and witnesses reported that Jefferson kicked another in the face. He was charged with felony second-degree battery, and that charge was reduced to a misdemeanor last week. Nobody seems to be denying that the alleged brawl happened, but a grand jury decided it didn't warrant a felony. As his lawyer argued, the injury wasn't serious enough. Jefferson was reinstated, and scored a touchdown in the first quarter of last week's win against Kentucky.
Fair enough. If you can't live with that storyline, you shouldn't be watching college football at all.
Grind your teeth and set your jaws. It's college football, Week 3.
Remember Keith Jackson's trademark call? "Whoaaaaaa Nellie!" I was sitting around my apartment the other day thinking about that. Whoaaaaa Nellie. Who are you, Nellie? Where did you come from? And for God's sake, why are we trying to hold you back? What do you have in store?
A quick Google search later, and it turns out Jackson doesn't quite know. That makes total sense to me. Whenever I get excited about college football, I speak in gibberish. There's not a good way to articulate how psyched I am, so I just make up something that feels appropriate. Something like the first sentence of this blog post. Or a passionate string of words inspired by, but not belonging to, the Italian language. This is also how a crazy person operates, but I'm not afraid of the comparison. Not during college football season.
