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January 09, 2007 |
 Brutus Buckeye |
 Touchdown Jesus |
 Babashoff |
Los Angeles, January 9, 2007 – All of Ohio is in mourning today after Ohio State got thrashed, 41-14 by the Florida Gators in the BCS Championship Game last night. Among the fallout:
>> The headline in today’s Akron Beacon Journal: O-H-N-O or “Oh no”!
>> Three Macy’s stores near Columbus had Ohio State championship T-shirts and other gear, ready and in stock for sale as soon as the game was over with a plan to stay open until 1 a.m. and then re-open at 6 a.m. this morning. Since no championship gear can be sold until a team is declared champion, what’s Macy’s going to do with those shirts?
>> Ohio State became the sixth favorite in BCS title games in the last seven years to lose. Beginning in 2001, Florida State, Miami, Oklahoma twice, USC and now Ohio State have lost the final game as favorites. Only Miami, which beat up Nebraska at the Rose Bowl, 37-14, in 2002, has won as a favorite in the last seven BCS title games.
>> Even the normally uproarious Michiganzone.blogspot.com site was depressed that Ohio State was shut down so badly that it embarrassed the Big Ten. Best quote on the site today:
“51 days is too long. Even Noah was only on the ark for 40.”
>> And though you’ve probably heard it plenty of places already, it bears repeating: Ohio State had 84 net offensive yards in the game. That’s nine yards less than Ted Ginn Jr. had on his opening kickoff return for a touchdown!
>> Last add, Buckeyes, insult to injury: even though the Ohio State band is nationally renowned for its “Script Ohio” formation and it performed during halftime of last night’s game, Script Ohio was nowhere to be seen on national television as Fox ran a heartwarming Habitat for Humanity story of a fan who got a free house courtesy of the hard work of Florida and Ohio State fans.
= Tonight’s menu =
>> The 23-11 Lakers head to Memphis for a showdown with the Grizzlies, a team which has had their number. Although the Grizz has only an 8-27 record, they’re 5-2 in their last seven games against the Lakers. Even so, Los Angeles is a three-point favorite with an over-under of 227, so the oddsmakers have it Lakers 115, Grizzlies, 112.
>> The Anaheim Ducks are in Nashville for a match-up with the 28-11-2 Predators, leaders of the Central Division. Nashville has won four straight, is 13-3-2 at home and the Ducks have lost four out of five, mostly due to a streak of injuries. Nashville is a big choice on the money line: you have to wager $140 to win $100 on the Predators, but only $105 to win $100 on the Ducks.
= College football =
>> Tony Barnhart, writing in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution has already compiled his top 40 teams for next season! He has USC at no. 1 with West Virginia, Oklahoma, Ohio State and Florida in his top five and LSU, Texas, Michigan, Arkansas and Virginia Tech in his next five. Notre Dame is picked at 21, UCLA at no. 30, Arizona State at 31, California at 34 and Oregon State at no. 40.
>> Bowl follow-up: of the 11 conferences which sent teams to bowl games, four had losing records, three were even and four had winning records. The Big East was 5-0, the Mountain West and Western Athletic Conferences were 3-1 and the SEC finished 6-3. The Pac-10 was 3-3, the ACC finished 4-4 and the Big Ten had a 2-5 record, bettered only slightly by the Big 12 at 3-5.
>> More colleges, dollars and sense: the UCLA football site “DumpDorrell.com” has been busy with petitions against Bruin coach Karl Dorrell already this month, but more interesting is the economics of winning in football. For the 2004-05 academic year, extensive filings have been made which show the chasms between the haves and have-nots is as wide as in any professional sport. UCLA, as an example, collected $19.9 million for football in the 2002 season, the last under Bob Toledo. The football total went down in Dorrell’s first year to $17.3 million and then up to $18.5 million in his second and with a 10-2 record in 2005, went up again. But USC had $29.3 million in football revenues in the 2004 season and cleared more than $12.5 million on football alone. That kind of money not only allows universities to spend big money on coaches, but powers the rest of the athletic department and all those non-revenue sports. In the 2004-05 academic year, when UCLA spent more than $44.5 million to field teams with a total of 585 athletes, revenues from sports other than football and basketball were just $1.7 million or about 4%. At USC, which had a budget of $60.7 million for 2004-05 to support 607 athletes, non-football and basketball revenues were only $1.3 million or a minuscule 2.1%. You get the picture?
>> Last add, colleges, from Bud Geracie of the San Jose Mercury News: “Notre Dame’s Touchdown Jesus isn’t signaling a score. He’s throwing up his hands in frustration after nine consecutive bowl defeats.”
= NFL/pro football =
>> Former USC quarterback Matt Leinart is pumping up the candidacy of his USC offensive coordinator Norm Chow for the Arizona Cardinals coaching job.
>> Cowboys defensive coordinator Mike Zimmer may be on his way to Atlanta to take that spot on Bobby Petrino’s new staff.
>> Stop the presses: Terrell Owens fired his very-high-profile publicist, Kim Etheridge, the one who made the 911 call on September 26 about Owens’ “accidental overdose.” But without a publicist, how did Owens get the word out about the firing?
>> NFL cash register: League figures show the NFLShop.com sales were up to $58 million last season and sales for this season increased more than 10%. The NFL is mounting a big marketing campaign during the playoffs and has a database with more than 21 million addressable names! The big sellers this season have been the jerseys of rookies Vince Young and Reggie Bush and Dallas Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo.
>> Cold shot: The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel was quite interested to read ex-49er great Jerry Rice’s autobiography about where players want to play.
“To NFL players, there are some teams and cities you would love to play for and there are others you try and avoid.
“For the most part, those decisions are based on the lifestyle a city offers. For example, when the Raiders played in Los Angeles, everyone wanted to play for them because who wouldn’t want the beaches and beautiful people of Hollywood? Oakland was not exactly Hollywood. The New York Giants were popular because of the Big Apple and in the 1990s Miami became a hot destination because of South Beach and the sexy atmosphere. Then there were places you wanted to avoid, like Buffalo and Green Bay, where there wasn’t much going on.”
>> Dateline Seattle, playoff greeting: Seattle Post-Intelligencer reporter Clare Farnsworth asked Seahawks quarterback Matt Hasselbeck – who was a ballboy for the New England Patriots when now-Cowboys coach Bill Parcells was the coach there – whether Parcells greeted him on the field before the game. Said Hasselbeck, “He gave me ‘The Pez’ before the game,” meaning, wrote Farnsworth, the coach raised and lowered his head “to mimic the iconic candy dispenser.” This from The Tuna?
= NBA/pro basketball =
>> Attention ESPN commentator and former UCLA coach Steve Lavin: You probably saw where the Atlanta Hawks cut your former point guard Cedric Bozeman. But at least they replaced him with another Bruin you recruited: Dijon Thompson!
>> How much better is the Western Conference than the East? In head to head meetings, Western teams have a 116-84 record against the East and if you combined the record of the top eight teams in each conference and went to the playoffs right now, Western teams would be a collective 86 games over .500. Eastern teams would be just 30 over .500!
= Olympic world =
>> Making up for lost time: with the not-very-startling public admissions over the past two years that East German swimmers, especially women, were pumped with steroids when they won Olympic medals, American swim star Shirley Babashoff called on the U.S. Olympic Committee to honor her and others who were cheated out of their moment of victory in 1976 and other Games. Said Babashoff, who will turn 49 on January 31, in an interview with Swimming World magazine:
“We were amateurs. We worked so hard. We earned it and it was stolen right in front of everyone’s face and no one did anything about it.”
She is right and Babashoff was the one cheated most. She was the world’s best female swimmer in 1976 and won one gold medal on a relay and finished second to the East Germans four other times. She should have five gold medals, and since the still-surviving Germans received damages for the attack on their health by the old DDR training system, the least the U.S. Olympic Committee can do (and will do) is honor her and the other champions that should have been.
~ Rich Perelman
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