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A cool Brees in New Orleans' passing lane! |
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November 28, 2006 |
 Sapp trap? |
 Wallace |
 Bull riding |
Los Angeles, November 28, 2006 – Quarterback Drew Brees has been everything the New Orleans Saints hoped for and is on the verge of a record-tying streak of big passing games. Brees has passed for 300 yards in five straight games against Baltimore, Tampa Bay, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati and Atlanta and goes for no. 6 at the Superdome against San Francisco on Sunday. The Niners are one of the worst pass-defense teams in the league, standing 25th and giving up 221.5 yards per game, with opposing quarterbacks completing 64.9% of their passes against them! If Brees gets 300 yards or more, he’ll be the fourth to do so, after Steve Young of the 49ers, Kurt Warner of the Rams and Rich Gannon of the Raiders. Breaking the record will be tougher, as the Saints play a week from Sunday at Dallas, which is giving up only 191 pass yards a game.
>> More NFL: Oakland Raiders defensive tackle Warren Sapp, who stands 6-2 and weighs 310 pounds told the Associated Press last week that he doesn’t eat out any more during road trips because restaurants are trying to poison him! The most shocking part of the story is not the potential for poison, but that Sapp might have missed a meal!
>> NFL MVP: Curacao-based PinnacleSports.com is tapping San Diego’s LaDainian Tomlinson as odds-on to win the NFL’s Most Valuable Player award. Tomlinson is booked at 2-3 to win, with Indianapolis quarterback Peyton Manning second choice at 9-4 and Drew Brees at 20-1 and moving up.
>> Last add, L.T.: Bruce (the Moose) Tenen noticed that the reigning MVPs in professional baseball (Justin Morneau), basketball (Steve Nash) and hockey (Joe Thornton) are all from Canada. But he doubts that there will be a fourth, unless San Diego’s Tomlinson – playing a lot closer to Mexico than Canada – gets an endorsement deal from Taco Bell and makes a “run for the border!”
>> Tonight’s menu: the newly-minted no. 1 UCLA basketball Bruins are 18 over Long Beach State tonight at the Edwin W. – Pauley Pavilion to you old-timers – with the over-and-under at 148, so the sharks are swimming around a final of UCLA 83, 49ers 65.
At Staples Center, the Lakers are eight over Milwaukee, with the over-and-under at 202, so the Lakers are tipped to win, 105-97.
>> Odds check: California is favored by 28 over Stanford with the over-under at 46, so the Bears are supposed to “brain” the Cardinal, 37-9. Pinnacle Sports.com has already posted Ohio State as a prospective 5 1/2-point favorite over USC, if the Troys beat UCLA on Saturday, with the over-under at 54. Translation, the “brains” of the Caribbean have it Ohio State 30, USC 24.
>> College bowl bulletin: the 6-5 UCLA football Bruins have accepted an invitation to the Emerald Bowl in San Francisco to be played on Wednesday night, December 27. The Bruins will play their first-ever game against Bobby Bowden and 6-6 Florida State of the ACC. Call now for reservations: operators are standing by to take your call!
>> Campus warning signs: Oregonian columnist John Canzano is adding up the body count at the University of Oregon and is asking how long will University President Dave Frohnmayer be staying? In the last few months, two associate athletic directors and now Athletic Director Bill Moos have all left and bonuses and salary increases for department support staff have been eliminated. With a new basketball arena costing about $160 million being built but plenty of financial trouble across the university, Canzano wonders whether Frohnmayer will leave, too and just leave the school – as former Nixon advisor John Ehrlichman once said – “twisting slowly slowly in the wind.”
>> NBA circus report: as usual, the Chicago Bulls went into their November circus swoon with a 1-6 record on their seven-game road trip, leaving them 4-9 for the season as they return to the United Center to host the Knicks tonight. New York is the only team Chicago beat on the circus trip, winning on Saturday by 11 at Madison Square Garden. Now the Bulls can stop whining, with10 of their next 11 games at home over the next four weeks, with only a short trip to Oklahoma City in the middle. Hopefully, they’ll start winning so the home fans won’t boo them!
>> Big Ben report: Ben Wallace has been less than messianic for the Bulls, who are paying the 32-year-old center $16 million this season to carry them toward a championship. Wallace violated a long-standing rule of Coach Scott Skiles by wearing a headband and ended up on the bench against Philadelphia last Friday, prompting respected NBA columnist Sam Smith of the Chicago Tribune to write:
“The Bulls at least need to fine Wallace, if not suspend him, for an egregious act that is way beyond a simple stunt of dissent or petulance.
“And I’m not overdramatizing here.
“Wallace, the second-highest-paid Bull after Michael Jordan in franchise history, essentially challenged the organization that did so much for him while he does so little for them and, in effect, organized an insurrection against its coach.”
Later, Smith added: “Sure, you run the risk of further alienating Wallace. What then? Is he going to retire? I wondered two weeks ago watching his play whether he had.”
>> More NBA, giving credit where credit is due: while the Lakers are off to a hot start thanks to better team play, especially at center from Andrew Bynum and Kwame Brown, at least some of the credit should go to nearly-invisible big-man coach Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. It’s hard to be invisible when you’re 7-4 with a shaved head, but Abdul-Jabbar has gotten painfully little credit for helping to mature both Brown and especially Bynum, who is quickly becoming a keep-at-all-costs player who the Lakers have locked up for the next three seasons.
>> Baseball obscenity watch: Boston Herald columnist Gerry Callahan took off on the Red Sox’s lust after ex-Dodger outfielder J.D. Drew:
“Now the Sox are talking about giving Drew $14 million per year. For the next four or five years. What do they say about obscenity? You know it when you see it? Well, $14 million a year for J.D. Drew is obscene.”
And later, Callahan quipped: “It would be one thing if the guy were resting on his laurels, but he has never had any laurels.” Callahan got in a shot all right., ending the column by calling the deal a “big, big mistake.”
>> Hockey brawl: another all-out fight – in the stands – during a bantam-level game between the Whitestown Wolfpack and the Rome Grizzlies broke out in Rome, New York last Saturday. About a dozen people were involved, two women were charged with second-degree rioting and one man was taken to the hospital with head wounds. All this during a game for 13 and 14-year-olds!
>> More hockey: when Anschutz Entertainment Group President Tim Leiweke builds an arena, he expects to fill it. So he’s already sold the naming rights to the new arena AEG helped build in Kansas City to hometown sponsor Sprint, found a potential owner for the NHL franchise he doesn’t have yet and has hired former L.A. Kings star Luc Robitaille to drum up interest and find a team willing to move! Sprint Center General Manager Brenda Tinnen says the arena will be in the black the first year and has lot of booking interest from a variety of events.
>> The next big thing: could be the PBR . . . the Professional Bull Riders Association! You can laugh, but the tour now has 31 events and an annual budget of more than $50 million. Ad space on the PBR weekend broadcasts on Versus are sold out and Fox Sports is showing bull riding after some of its NFL games.
>> The Executive Board of the International Olympic Committee approved the addition of Skicross to the program of the 2010 Olympic Winter Games in Vancouver, but rejected women’s ski jumping, individual curling and team luge. How could they reject individual curling?
>> Olympic record: American Sheila Taormina may be the first athlete ever and would certainly be the first American to compete in the Olympic Games in three (!) different sports! She won a relay gold in Atlanta in 1996 in swimming, competed in the 2000 and 2004 Games in the Triathlon and just finished as the second American in the women’s World Modern Pentathlon Championships in Guatemala after just a year in the sport. That would be an Olympic record to be proud of!
~ Rich Perelman
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