Thursday, November 09, 2006

Thursday 11/09 A.M. Quickie:
Rutgers, 49ers, Bryan Pata, More.

The biggest story of the day is another college football battle of Big East unbeatens tonight on national TV... at Rutgers! More on that coming shortly in its own post.

Also on today's radar:

The 49ers are leaving San Francisco?! How do you like the ring of "Santa Clara 49ers?" Or "California 49ers?" Or, as always, we can dream: "Las Vegas 49ers."

(Ironically, their Bay Area peer the A's got a new stadium deal and finally have a little clarity beyond the genius front office.)

Should Miami be playing this weekend at Maryland in the wake of the murder of Bryan Pata? I understand the argument for its unseemliness, but perhaps the best tribute to his memory is to take the field. (But given Miami's troubled season to date, I have a feeling this is no-win for administrators at The U.)

Larry Brown gets $18.5M: David Stern didn't exactly go out on a limb, splitting the baby in half between what the Knicks presumably wanted to pay him (Zilch) and what Brown presumably felt he was owed ($40M). Interestingly, Stern seemed to award Brown nearly $1 million for each of his sorry-ass 23 wins from last season.

Padres hire Bud Black: Let's see: Instead of hiring Dusty Baker, who always has the potential to ruin good pitchers, they hired the Angels pitching coach, who has the potential to make the Padres' solid staff even better. Good call, Kevin Towers.

JoePa might think he's ready to coach Penn State this weekend, but his docs won't let him be on the sidelines. I'll put the over/under of the number of TV camera shots of JoePa working from the upstairs booth at 30.

OK, Bob Huggins can recruit: He has what many consider the No. 1-rated recruiting class of 2007 on the first day players can commit to teams, led by the No. 1 player in the '07 class, Michael Beasley. Given that it only takes a few star players to turn a mediocre program into a Sweet 16 team, Huggins seems to be on his way, at least for the '07 season. Other teams that scored: Duke, Syracuse, Florida, Ohio St.

Raiders DL Tyler Brayton was fined $25K for his caught-on-tape knee-to-groin from Monday night. (So in "MasterCard Ad" terms: Kneeing an opponent in the groin: $25,000. Catching it on video: Priceless.)

Trouble in JAX: OK, we get it. Former starting QB Byron Leftwich and Jags coach Jack Del Rio REALLY don't like each other right now.

T'ed Off: Union honcho Billy Hunter wants David Stern to tell the refs to back off on all the T's, being assessed at double the rate from last year.

Morning-After NBA Notes:

(1) The defending West champ Dallas Mavs are 0-4 for the first time in team history after losing to the Clips last night. Finals jinx much?

(2) Gilbert Arenas was "Agent 4-Zero": He had 40 points in only 32 minutes (his second 40-point game in a row at home) and the Wiz thumped the Pacers by 26 in D.C.

(3) Oh boy, Oberto! Spurs forward Fabricio Oberto was 11/11 FG in helping the Spurs beat the Suns (1-4) in last night's big matchup.

(4) Zach Randolph continued his nasty start for the Blazers: 36 and 10.

(5) 2 wins down, 22 to go: The Knicks pulled out a hugely gritty win on the road at Denver.

-- D.S.

21 comments:

T-Mill said...

Miami needs to play this weekend. The country needs to see that this team is more than its perceived image. They need to see a teamt hat coems together and rises above everything to finish the year strong.

What you should do is check out the Miami football message boards and comment on some of the horrible things some Boston College fans have posted about Pata being involved in drug deals and how its actually a good thing he is dead. Just some terrible, terrible stuff on the Miami Grassy board.

jhawkjjm said...

I don't understand why Miami wouldn't play. They can't flat out cancel the game. Moving the game won't do very much (unless both teams have a bye week coming up...i don't know). Forcing Miami to forfeit the game can't happen. What else can you do? I understand that this is awful and no team should have to go through this, but its not much different than what NW went through when they're player collapsed during practice and died. I don't understand why this question is even being asked.

As for Huggins at K-State, he could always recruit, though most of his kids at Cincy were thrugs. I think this is really dangerous however. Huggins recruited a lot of kids while he didn't have a job! Thus he was not bound by NCAA regulations when it comes to recruiting. I don't think the NCAA has ground to look into anything, but its something that may need to be thought about. I wonder if these recruits even visited Manhatten before committing. If not they are in for a rather "cultural" shock. And no matter what, K-State is now a football school, and will always be behind KU in the state of Kansas in basketball. Right now K-State is 3rd, behind KU and Wichita State.

Brian in Oxford said...

Aren't the NBA refs in a union, too? If so, their chief should tell Billy Hunter, also, to STFU.

The Celtics actually WON a game? Sheesh....I can't wait to see how the lottery shakes down between Boston (the league's most accomplished franchise) and New York (the franchise Stern wants to see rise back up the fastest), for Oden.

Any chance the 49ers move to LA? That would probably make Raiders fans hysterical.

And we don't know if the 18.5 is the final total Brown will get, only what was paid during the 3Q of 2006 according to Cablevision's SEC filing. He might get more. Of course, any sum resembling the 40 mil would have to be discounted for interest, since he'd be getting it all now instead of over 4 years. (like lottery lump-sums)

rukrusher said...

Are we seeing the Zach Randolph we will see all season or should we expect the disinterested Zach showing up in January when the Blazers are out fo the playoffs again?

Go RU

Trey (formerly TF) said...

As someone who grew up watching the Canes destroy his Gators, as someone who grew up in Florida, as someone who HATES the Canes and their football program. I am actually rooting for them this weekend. Yes that is very sappy of me, and it's probably the last time I'll be supporting a Cane victory (unless it helps the Gators).

I will say this how ironic is it that the team most of us were ripping a month ago for a fight, is the team that many will be supporting this weekend.

PS - Go Rutgers...You have the Gator Nation in your corner.

Joe (Dayton)

Gary said...

Apparently Longhorn fans are rooting for rutgers as are WVU fans...look at ESPNs poll on the main page and then look at the map.

Sheldiz said...

deadspin has a link to Bryan Pata's myspace page... people are still posting comments to it (RIP and such). equal parts creepy and touching.

yeah, they gotta play this weekend. There isn't another option.

john (east lansing, mi) said...

I love ESPN's SportsNation polls - they're almost always perfectly obvious, but it never gets old to see how perfectly your assumptions and everyone's biases come together, and see how shameless the underdog's home state is, and how sheeplike the rest of the country is. I brought up a couple of these polls the day before the end of the World Series... fascinating stuff, even though it's so rarely surprising.

My two complaints would be -
a) The polls are hard to locate and probably impossible to pin down. One poll will be on the front page for a few hours, and then you can never find it again, and I don't think there's even a way to get a URL for them.
and
2) There's no discussion forum attached to each poll. Sometimes I really want this, like when 70% of the country was second-guessing Jim Leyland for not pitching Kenny Rogers in St. Louis (as though we have the right to second-guess that man), or the other day, when apparently everybody thought Michigan's "close game" against Ball State was the most dangerous of the weekend (idiots). I tried to bring them up here for discussion, but you can't link somebody directly to the poll, and then they can't find it when you tell them how you reached it... it's frustrating.

Brian in Oxford said...

There is a way to find old ESPN sportsnation polls, but it's not easy. If you open up the source code to the page with the poll on it, you can find the URL for displaying the results.

The polls are generally sequential, so if you're reading poll number 37132 or something, then other recent polls will be 37131, 37133, etc. Sometimes the URLs lead to polls that haven't been launched anywhere obvious, or have no responses to them, or are even in Spanish about Mexican soccer teams. But you can have fun for about 15 minutes typing in random numbers looking for poll results.

Brian in Oxford said...

http://sports.espn.go.com/
espn/fp/flashPollResultsState?
sportIndex=frontpage&pollId=40569

okay, so it's not 37134, but I was pretty close. play around with the number on the end and see what you come up with.

john (east lansing, mi) said...

richard -

"much more legit" in your post is a fallacy. The basis for valid comparison between OSU's and UM's accomplishments, and UL's, WVU's, and RU's accomplishments, is nonexistent. Also, Florida, Cal, etc.

Some may trot out the same stupid "This team beat a team by this much, which this other team beat them by only this much" line that we have seen for the last month, but it's just not valid.

If Louisville had played Ball State, and beaten them by 50, I'm sure a bunch of nutsacks would be harping about how much better Louisville is than Michigan.

But the fact is, Michigan rested their whole team against Ball State, and was never in danger of losing to them (I was there, I will not accept any differing opinions on that point). The fact that, in that case, Ball State would actually be a game for Louisville, if anything, would just make it clear that the schedule Louisville is plowing through is nothing at all like Michigan's (dare I say, "nothing compared to"?).

john (east lansing, mi) said...

brian, you're my hero. thanks!

john (east lansing, mi) said...

Although it couldn't hurt to do a little more work on pasting URLs into comments. I had to put that in notepad and Frankenstein it up to put it in my URL bar.

Although maybe you just assumed I don't know how to right click on a link and copy the URL to clipboard... which may be true, because I guess I failed 3 weeks ago when trying to do just that. Maybe Firefox was busy crashing as I attempted it.

Steve said...

URL's don't scroll around here so it cuts off the end, that's my presumption of why he segmented it.

john (east lansing, mi) said...

Dan - define "shortly." It's been nigh on an hour, I have to go to class.

Oh well. I was excited this morning, here's what I wrote at 3:46 AM (before work) about UL-Rutgers.



steve - if you copy and paste the cut-off version, it gets the whole thing anyway, right? Anyway, I decided that was his plan, which was a good plan, since he was trying to demonstrate the numbers at the end of the URL. I gave him the benefit of the doubt; I was even self-deprecating.
But fine, all criticism retracted, brian - message well-communicated.

Brian in Oxford said...

wow, you're both right!

i did cut it off so you could see it, and it's true, even cut off, it still copies and pastes the whole thing.

I much prefer the 4-or-5 answer polls rather than the simple choose-between-two.

Is 2/3 or 70% the cutoff point for when the red goes DARK red or the blue goes DARK blue...it's subtle, but you can see it.

And I always wonder if they know for sure I'm in Connecticut.

Tim said...

What a surprise, the two people that have mentioned Huggins so far both have 'Hawk' in their name! Shocking I say, just shocking!

ToddTheJackass said...

Dan, how come no mention of the Matsuzaka posting deadline? We should hear today where he goes.

Also, updating a previous entry of mine. Gears of War for Xbox 360 is the best looking game I've ever seen by far. It's the best shooter since Halo. Actually, on first impression, it's almost better than Halo. It will own the Holiday gift giving season.

-Todd (Boston)

john (east lansing, mi) said...

richard -

Oh. You mean, like, the teams that are fighting for that spot.

I probably wouldn't have responded the way I did, if I had realized the sense of your statement. Thanks.

jhawkjjm said...

Oh don't worry tim, my hatred of Huggins goes beyond him now being at K State. I didn't like the guy at Cinncy and his teams were nothing but a bunch of thugs. I'm not too worried the KU is in any danger of being second best in Kansas. I've never seen Huggins win a big game when it mattered.

Tim said...

I don't expect you to be worried about KU being second in Kansas. I know the majority of you are happy we should, at the very least, be competitive again. I just find it interesting that the only two people that commented on it were KU fans.