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The Daily Digest for Monday, November 26, 2007 |
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November 26, 2007 |
≡ Interim Report ≡
 Beckham: taking the shirt off his back for Armani! |
= Program Note =
We expected that TheGoodSportsNetwork.tv would be up and running on September 24, but the site is still not live. We have been told that TheGoodSportsNetwork.tv site will be up in November, but November is almost over.
While we wait, we’ll continue posting a weekday note and sending out the Tip Sheet to keep you informed. Stay tuned, and hope for the best.
= Tonight’s Menu =
>> Tonight’s Monday night NFL game has 0-10 Miami visiting Heinz Field and the 7-3 Pittsburgh Steelers. The weather report calls for 48-degree temperatures and heavy rain, so Ricky Williams will be dragged through the mud in his first game back for the Dolphins. The Steelers have won seven out of the last nine against better Dolphin teams and the Steelers are favored by 16 with an over-under of 38. That makes the projected final, 27-11 for the Steelers.
>> Tonight at Staples Center, the 6-6 Clippers face the 7-7 Rockets with Corey Maggette and Brevin Knight available again for Los Angeles. The Rockets snapped a six-game losing streak by beating Denver on Saturday and have won seven of ten from the Clips. The Clippers are 2-6 in their last eight and Houston is a six-point favorite. The over-under is 188, so the Rockets are picked to win by a 97-91 final.
>> Early odds on this week’s Saturday games of note: Oklahoma opened a 3 1/2-point favorite over Missouri in the Big 12 Championship match and Arizona State is a 6 1/2-point choice over Arizona in Tempe.
= L.A. Stories =
>> What’s Bruin: See our daily blog on UCLA sports at LATimes.com!
>> Talk of Troy: USC opened an 18 1/2-point favorite over UCLA this week but the line moved to 20 right away as strong money came in on the Trojans. USC was a 13 1/2-point favorite over the Bruins last season. More interesting will be the over-under line: can the Bruins score on USC’s defense? UCLA has scored at least 13 points in each game against USC since the 2001 shutout, 27-0, at the Coliseum.
>> Around the Galaxy: David Beckham is practicing in Australia today for Tuesday’s friendly between the Galaxy and Sydney FC. Before he left, he began shooting a new ad campaign for Giorgio Armani for the company’s underwear line as part of a three-year deal reported to be worth as much as $43 million.
= Panorama =
>> College Gridiron: Even before his Razorbacks defeated LSU in triple overtime, level-headed observers of the Arkansas football situation were asking whether the school can actually do better than keep current football coach Houston Nutt.
Wrote Jay Lupo of the Pine Bluff Commercial: “Arkansas is a hard job. It’s not LSU. It’s in a brutal conference, the in-state recruiting isn’t comparable to nor is the athletic budget as big as most of the aforementioned six schools [LSU, Auburn, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Tennessee]. In my opinion, realistic expectations for the football program should be seven or eight wins every year, a double-digit-win season every four years and an SEC Championship once every 8-10 years.
“Nutt hasn’t quite done that, but he’s been pretty close. During his 10 seasons, the Razorbacks have won or shared five SEC Western Division titles made it to the conference championship game twice and at the completion of this season, will have played in eight bowl games. Nutt is 5-5 against Auburn, 5-5 against Albama, 7-3 against South Carolina, 9-1 against Mississippi State, 7-3 against Ole Miss and [now 4-6] against LSU.”
The question for Arkansas is can they do better? Maybe not, and if not, Nutt should stay.
>> Turn Left: Jimmie Johnson won his second straight season-long NASCAR Nextel Cup championship with Jeff Gordon finishing second. For a “southern sport,” note that the top two drivers on the circuit are from California: Johnson from San Diego and Gordon from Vallejo in Northern California.
>> NBA Hoopla: Worth noting in a story last week in the New York Daily News about the mess known as the 3-9 New York Knicks:
Supposedly Charles Dolan, the old man, tells the NBA commissioner, David Stern, that he has bigger things to worry about than the job his son is doing running the Garden. But here’s an interesting question for the old man: What is more important to you than your good name?
Mocking both James Dolan and Knicks coach and president Isiah Thomas, the story also notes that “Thomas is the only guy in sports who thinks he can talk his way out of his own record, as if the won-loss record is an essay question, and not true-false.”
>> Le NBA en Francais: From Elliott Harris of the Chicago Sun-Times about French-speaking Bulls rookie Joakim Noah: “Perhaps he could get away with showing any displeasure with officials by using French profanity.
“‘That’s actually a good idea,’ he said. ‘I should think in French.’
“If nothing else, he could teach teammates proper French profanity.
‘’Yep.’”
>> Wrestling with Cash: Wrestlemania 23 held in Detroit drew with than 80,000 fans and the WWE claims that the event contributed $29.7 million in direct and induced economic impact for the area. Most of that spending was on the production of the event itself and the tourism impact of visitors who came to Detroit to see the event.
That’s good, but not great. A Super Bowl – also a one-day event – is worth more than $200 million in direct and induced impact.
The WWE also said that governments – national, state and local – took in an additional $4.7 million because of the event. The next Wrestlemania will take place on March 30, 2008 at the Citrus Bowl in Orlando, Florida.
>> Rings & Things: The recruitment of awards presenters for the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing has begun and women who are “young and pretty” should apply, according to Zhao Dongming, director of cultural affairs for the Beijing Olympic Organizing Committee.
In an interview with Maureen Fan of the Washington Post, Zhao said looks won’t be enough, however. “They need to have a strong comprehensive quality. Since medal presenting is hard work, they not only need beautiful faces, but also they need to be strong.”
About 380 awards presenters will be needed according to Zhao and they will most likely be university students between 18 and 25. The organizing committee also has “requirements for their height and the figure, because we have to make clothes for them, and we have technical guidance for that.” In other words, thin is in.
>> London Calling: British legislators who aren’t thrilled by the enormous governmental expenditures associated with the 2012 Olympic Games hit the figurative roof last week when an updated estimate of 9.3 billion British pounds (about $19.2 billion U.S.) was projected, including all of the 2.7 billion pound ($5.6 billion) contingency fund. That’s double what was listed in London’s bid book and suggestions that the London financial plan – at least as to the government’s contribution – was more fiction than fact have more than a whiff of truth. Member of Parliament Edward Leigh remarked at a hearing that the bid showed a “low bid to get these Games and fool the people, knowing that the bid you put in at the time was totally unrealistic,” adding that the financial planners “either acted in bad faith or were incompetent.”
Don Touhig, a Labour MP described the latest governmental report as “the most catastrophic piece of financial mismanagement in the history of the world.”
That makes the runaway costs of the Games almost as important as England’s failure to quality for the 2008 European Championships!
One more comment, a fairly prescient if rather blunt remark by MP Austin Mitchell, warning that the spending total will rise higher, telling the government’s finance ministers: “The construction industry has you by the short Olympic rings.”
~ Rich Perelman
>> Have an opinion? You can send it using the “Comment” button below!
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