Friday, July 17, 2009

Friday 07/17 Quickie: Manny,
Watson, Holtz, Beckham, Millsap, More

First of all, it's a relief to get these past 72 hours over. Beyond launching a new blog, this past Wednesday and Thursday (leading into Friday morning) were the slowest 48 hours of the sports year.

So it's a great time to take yesterday's Manny LA homecoming and put it in perspective in the lead of today's SN column: Let's end this "Fans don't care about PEDs" once and for all. They don't. MSM, please stop bringing it up.

(Although it gave me an excuse to trot out my favorite poll response of all time -- back on ESPN.com about 7 or 8 years ago, fans were asked what the worst offense in baseball is. "Cheating with steroids" finished behind the No. 1 answer: Lollygagging. Best. Response. Ever.)

But it's a testament to sports that even during this ridiculously slow stretch, there's still a lot to talk about:

*How can you NOT love Tom Watson? It's like your grandpa at the top of the leaderboard.

*Jazz keep Millsap: OK, they HAVE to trade Boozer now, right? Get him to Miami, with Odom -- Wade re-signs, and Miami is suddenly an elite contender for a half-decade.

*Ricky Rubio wearing down? Sounds like he's resigned to the idea that Minnesota won't let him go. That still doesn't explain how/why the T'wolves will play Jonny Flynn, too. (Flynn has been very good in Summer League.)

*Speaking of summer league, two words: Anthony. Morrow.

*Congratulations to Pat Fitzgerald on being enshrined in the College Football Hall of Fame. I don't know where to rank him precisely, but he is one of the best defensive players in college football history, and his run between 95 and 96 -- two-time National Defensive Player of the Year -- remains elite.

*Go to the column, scroll down and click on the link for the new Patton Oswalt sports movie. It looks really good -- particularly for a sports movie.

*David Beckham's MLS return? Zzz. But Grant Wahl's new book ABOUT Beckham -- "The Beckham Experiment" -- is a must-read by one of the best sportswriters in the country (how many others are versatile enough to write passionately and expertly about both college hoops and soccer?) I'm halfway through and really enjoying it.

*I really am going to try to limit my cross-promotion between DS.com and TimTeblog.com -- but when there's a decent national Tebow story, it would be intellectually dishonest for me not to bring it up (and many of you will likely appreciate the decrease in pure Tebow posts here, too!)

Anyway: The SEC Coaches came out with their preseason all-conference team... and one coach didn't put Tebow on the 1st team. Now, it wasn't Urban Meyer -- coaches can't vote for their own players. And it wasn't Houston Nutt -- he couldn't vote for Jevan Snead anyway. But someone presumably felt like Snead was better than Tebow -- I think Snead is very good (and he will likely be a higher NFL Draft pick than Tebow, too), but it is ludicrous to pick him ahead of Tebow.

The odds-on choice for the snub is, of course, Lane Kiffin, but I wouldn't be surprised if someone else did it. (Saban? Petrino? Spurrier?) This would all be resolved, of course, if coaches had to make their ballots public. This secret-ballot thing is ludicrous.

Complete SN column here
. For those not checking the blog(s) this weekend, have an enjoyable one. For those staying in touch, more later -- across the entire "Shanoff network" of blogs.

-- D.S.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

"Maybe some great college quarterbacks are just that."

Someone might have to come to grips with this in about 4 years...