In case you were busy settling up with Alamo Rent A Car after just driving, man, went horribly awry, here's what you missed in sports on Wednesday.
The Los Angeles Lakers' troubled season continued, as forward Pau Gasol has been ruled out for at least six weeks after tearing his plantar fascia. Back in the Lakers' locker room, a frustrated Mike D'Antoni was confused by the diagnosis. "Oh, first Dwight is in and out of the lineup with undiagnosable shoulder pain, and now Pau tears a damn ribbon, and he won't play?" said D'Antoni, whose native tongue is Italian. "No, coach," interjected Lakers point guard Steve Nash, "I'm pretty sure fascia in English refers to the frieze of a building. Or like, the space around a column? His home must have suffered some cosmetic exterior damage, and that can be a real pain to deal with." D'Antoni countered, "Well, that's no reason to miss six weeks; with the amount he's paid, that's one week out tops." Metta World Peace then chimed in: "I don't mean to be a bother, but fascia can also mean 'bandage' in Latin. Perhaps we should give the Spaniard the benefit of the doubt and assume that he ripped a bandage, and then got one of those antibiotic-resistant infections." A dark hooded figure then emerged from the corner of the room, and bellowed, "Stai zitto!" A hush fell over the room until World Peace asked, "What's that mean, Kobe?" Bryant, deflated, responded, "It means 'shut up,' Ron. In Italian. Man, why'd you have to ruin my badass entrance. Whatever. All that matters is that Pau is feeling pain. Do we know whether or not he's feeling pain?" At this point Gasol himself got up from the trainer's table and said, "Uh, guys, I'm right here, and it's just a foot injury. I should be back in March." But his rational explanation came too late, as Kobe had already decided he was owed pain.
In case you were out living a life of leisure, here's what you missed in sports over the weekend.
A last-minute drive came up short when no. 3 Georgia opted not to spike the football inside the 10 and instead mistakenly completed a pass to the 5-yard line, allowing the clock to run out and giving no. 2 Alabama a 32-28 win in the SEC championship game and a spot in the BCS title game opposite Notre Dame. Georgia coach Mark Richt insisted that he kept trying to yell at his team to spike the ball, but that his vocal cords felt painfully constricted, while video footage of the Alabama sideline shows Nick Saban reaching across the field with one hand at that exact moment.
In case you were out living a life of leisure, here's what you missed in sports over the weekend.
Eli Manning threw for 249 yards and three touchdowns as the Giants routed the Packers 38-10 to take a two-game lead in the NFC East. The Giants defense sacked Aaron Rodgers five times, and rubbed salt in the wound as he lay crumpled on the field by repeatedly noting that he "looked smaller in person."
It can’t be overstated just how impressive Stanford's 17-15 overtime victory over Oregon was. Stanford almost entirely shut down Oregon and its record-setting offense, the same offense that shredded the Cardinal 53-30 last season. Last year, Oregon's victory kept Stanford out of the national championship conversation. This year, the Cardinal might have returned the favor.
Last week, I described how Oregon's flashy offensive attack is, at its core, truly about old-school, fundamental football. Stanford's defense — Stanford’s entire program — is unequivocally about the same. On offense, the Cardinal are a power football team, with most of their passing game based on play-action. On defense, they use a "one-gapping," attacking 3-4 system — the same system brought to Stanford by current San Francisco defensive coordinator Vic Fangio just a few years ago.
In case you were out living a life of leisure, here's what you missed in sports over the weekend.
No. 13 Stanford stymied no. 2 Oregon's vaunted offense and all but ended the Ducks' national title hopes with a 17-14 overtime upset. In what can only be called a copycat crime, an enraged Oregon fan used pesticide in an attempt to poison the famous Stanford tree, and was undeterred when the tree kept yelling "I'm a person! I'm a mascot!"
In case you were out living a life of leisure, here's what you missed in sports over the weekend.
The Detroit Tigers took a 2-0 lead on the Yankees in the ALCS with a 3-0 win on Sunday after Derek Jeter suffered a season-ending ankle fracture during Saturday's loss. "As horrible as the pain was, I noticed it made Nick Swisher stop grinning for a second," said Jeter. "So, you know, it's a wash. The whole thing is a wash, because as much as I hate — as we all hate — Nick Swisher, he's so much more despicable when he grins like a buffoon, which is always. Seriously, I'll pay anyone $500 if they can find a photo of him where he's not smiling in a way that makes you want to slap him. So for, like, three seconds after I went down, he was just this annoying idiot with stupid sideburns who can't hit or field but who, for once in his obnoxious life, wasn't grinning. If I had to fracture my ankle to make that possible, then I guess I'm some kind of martyr. I'm Saint Derek, and all my apostles are guys who can't hit a curve."
I'm not sure the world is ready to handle too much serious discussion about Duke football, so I'll make this quick. All I ask is that you look at these rankings. OK, not at the rankings themselves; look a little lower, the "also receiving votes" section. Where the real teams hang. See that team with three votes in the AP poll, and 10 votes in the USA Today poll? Ranked 36th and 34th, respectively? That, my friends, is the pride of Durham, going places where they're not known or expected or wanted. Or invited.
How can I communicate the strangeness of seeing them on that list? How incredibly weird this feels for Duke football fans? Imagine if Paul Ryan showed up at tonight's debate wearing a Phish bandanna and a Grateful Dead poncho, and insisted on coming out to the sunshine part from that "Age of Aquarius" song. (I'm not even sure they make Grateful Dead ponchos anymore, and the ESPN research people get mad when you make that kind of request, so you'll just have to picture it.) That's how unlikely this feels. Everything is clicking with a backup quarterback named Anthony Boone, and if they beat Virginia Tech in Blacksburg this weekend, there's even a chance they could be ranked for the first time since 1994. At that point, I would start buying canned goods and digging some kind of apocalypse tunnel that would almost certainly collapse on itself within an hour or two.
In case you were out living a life of leisure, here's what you missed in sports over the weekend.
A referee was pulled from the Panthers-Saints game when his Facebook profile revealed that he was a Saints fan, and Cam Newton's 324 yards of total offense led the Panthers to a 35-27 win. The referee in question was assigned instead to Monday night's Broncos-Falcons game, though NFL lawyers are checking whether that would violate a restraining order issued three years ago when he bit Matt Ryan's leg at a charity event.
Manassas Junction, Virginia, 1861 — It's July 21, and the Civil War is about to begin for real. Union soldiers march south from Washington, D.C., to meet the Confederates, and the feeling throughout the north is that the rebels will hightail it back south after they get massacred on day one. The high muckety-mucks from D.C. — congressmen, business owners, and various other rich people — come down to picnic and watch the rout. Instead, after a long day of fighting, Stonewall Jackson and the Confederates send their enemies into a headlong retreat for Washington. As they flee north, the soldiers find the roads blocked by the panicked civilians who had come to watch the end of the pesky rebellion. And that's how the Battle of Bull Run ended.
I was a Civil War nerd as a kid, so it probably figures that while watching the Pac-12 shock the world last Saturday, I thought of Bull Run. It was the conference's best day in years, and it completely transformed their image around the country. The three ranked teams did their job, and that was expected — USC beat Syracuse, Oregon beat Fresno State, Stanford beat Duke. But the little guys did their part, too. Arizona dominated no. 18 Oklahoma State at home, Oregon State stunned no. 13 Wisconsin, UCLA outgunned no. 16. Nebraska in one of the best games of the weekend, and Arizona State destroyed Illinois. (Only Washington disappointed in the high-profile games, failing to make a dent against the Baton Rouge Tigers of the NFL's Second Division.)
There are now five Pac-12 teams in the AP top 25, and two more within sniffing distance. It's a revolution! The games were mostly at home, sure, but even under those circumstances the odds were long. Yet the mighty programs of the Big 10 and Big 12 left with their tails between their legs, fans in tow, realizing they'd underestimated the enemy. Week 2 was the Pac-12's Bull Run, and now everyone has to take them seriously.
So I'm calling it: This is the year of the Pac-12. Here are three more semi-ignorant reasons to love the rejuvenated conference.
Earlier this week, I laid out the Rules of College Football Fandom. I had two goals. My first goal was to salute everyone who is exercising a legitimate claim to a college football team. My second was to tell the rest of you that you are despicable.
A bunch of readers wrote in with their own fan dilemmas. You wanted to know if you were legitimate or despicable. I’m happy to help. See which one of these quotes describes you (I’ve put them in my own words):
In case you were out living a life of leisure, here's what you missed in sports over the weekend.
The NCAA men's basketball championship will be contested Monday between Kentucky and Kansas. The Wildcats defeated in-state rival Louisville 69-62 in the first game of Saturday's Final Four, and the Jayhawks used a second half comeback to beat Ohio State 64-62 in the nightcap. Also, the NIT championship was played on Thursday night. Florida Panhandle Tech beat Rocky Mountain East 53-47, and I defy anyone to care enough to prove me wrong.
Kentucky's Anthony Davis became the first Kentucky player to win the Naismith Player of the Year Award, while Kansas' Bill Self won Coach of the Year. Meanwhile, Harrison Barnes won Entrepreneur of the Year, an award he invented and strong-armed the Better Business Bureau into presenting at an Embassy Suites conference center in Atlanta.
Despite being outgained by Stanford by almost 180 yards in total offense, and outrushed 243 yards to 13, Oklahoma State won the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl on Monday by doing what it has done all year: Winning the turnover battle and getting big plays when the Cowboys needed them.
Stanford quarterback Andrew Luck, playing in his final college game and aided by a bruising power run game, was 27-of-31 for 347 yards, two touchdowns, and a pick, not to mention several Herculean bail-out-my-team third-and-very-long conversions. But the best player on the field was Oklahoma State’s Justin Blackmon, who almost single-handedly revived a Cowboys offense that looked sluggish early. This season, Blackmon — who after the game announced he’d enter the NFL draft — had become something more of a possession type receiver in the up-tempo air raid/Mike Leach-influenced offense that Dana Holgorsen installed last season and Oklahoma State offensive coordinator Todd Monken led this year, as his yards per catch dropped by more than three with increased defensive attention. On Monday night, though, Blackmon was all big, clutch plays, catching eight important passes for 186 yards and three touchdowns, a ridiculous rate of 23.3 yards per catch. (This, despite battling what the broadcast reports referred to as an "inner-thigh infection.")
Yes, it must be noted that if Stanford's kicker doesn't miss one field goal in regulation and another in overtime, Oklahoma State probably doesn't come out with the victory. But it did, so let's look at a play that shows how Blackmon and the Cowboys rallied to win.
In case you were out living a life of leisure, here's what you missed in sports over the weekend.
In a fast-paced, entertaining game, De'Anthony Thomas rushed for 155 yards on just two carries as Oregon won its first Rose Bowl in 95 years with a 45-38 win over Wisconsin. Photographs from the last victory, in 1917, show that rather than their trademark green-and-yellow, the Ducks used to wear black-and-white uniforms.
I believe the premise has been sufficiently introduced by the title, so I shall tarry no further.
1.There Will Be a Rematch
This is depressing enough to me that I can barely muster the energy to dispute it. Like most reasonable people, I do believe that Alabama and LSU are the two best teams in the country. But I don't care. They played, the Crimson Tide lost. That was their national title shot. Everyone knew the winner of that game would likely make the BCS title game; it's not like the stakes were a secret. And as long as there's a legitimate one-loss team somewhere out there, preferably one who finished the season on a high note (sorry, Houston), that team should get a crack. Obviously, that team exists in Oklahoma State. With a 44-10 win over Oklahoma, the Cowboys stated their case emphatically.
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.
