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The Daily Digest for Monday, December 17, 2007 |
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December 17, 2007 |
≡ Interim Report ≡
 Dolan: Limbo rocker! |
= 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 it is now December.
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 game showcases Minnesota rookie running back Adrian Peterson as the 7-6 Vikings try to get closer to a Wild Card playoff berth against the visiting Chicago Bears (5-8). Minnesota has won four of its last five against the Bears at home and while Chicago has lost two in a row, the Vikes are on a four-game win streak, averaging almost 35 points a game to their opponent’s 14 during that stretch. That helped to make Minnesota an 11-point favorite tonight, with an over-under of 43, so the final is projected as Vikings 27, Bears 16.
>> On the ice at Staples Center, the Kings (12-19-2) host the Colorado Avalanche (18-13-1). Colorado has won only five of 16 road games and the Kings have a 6-3 mark in their nine last against the Avalanche, but oddsmakers like the visitors. On the money line, it takes $120 to try to win $100 on Colorado, but the Kings are even money.
= L.A. Stories =
>> What’s Bruin: See our daily blog on UCLA sports at LATimes.com!
>> Laker Lines: How’s this for a worst-case, best-case scenario: Kobe Bryant decides to opt out of his contract after the 2008-09 season and become a free agent. The Lakers suffer through a dismal 2009-10 campaign and not only luck into one of the top picks in the 2010 draft, but also sign free agent Dwyane Wade, already unhappy in Miami with a Heat team that’s old, getting older and getting worse. Just a thought.
= Panorama =
>> The National Pastime: The new team in the Triple-A International League for 2008 will be the Lehigh Valley (Pa.) Iron Pigs. The team unveiled its mascot, not surprisingly named Pork Chop, but protests started when it was discovered that that term is a slur used in some steel mills against Puerto Rican steelworkers.
So the mascot’s name is now Ferrous.
>> More Pastime: Jose Canseco is more upset about the Mitchell Report that you can imagine, but not because his name was listed as a drug user. It’s because of whose names weren’t in it.
“It’s a slap of the hand,” he said of the report in comments published in the New York Daily News. The report proved nothing. It just proved what we already knew.” Canseco was especially irritated that Yankee slugger Alex Rodriguez’s name was not cited. “All I can say is the Mitchell Report is incomplete,” he told Fox Business Channel. “I could not believe that [Rodriguez’s] name was not in the report.”
>> Dollars and Sense: Rodriguez appeared on the CBS program “60 Minutes” yesterday and spoke of his split with agent Scott Boras. Asked by Katie Couric about the current state of his relationship with Boras, he said “The whole situation saddens me a little bit. There hasn’t been much back-and-forth talking.” Rodriguez said he wasn’t speaking to Boras at present and had no contact with him during the negotiations with the Yankees on his new 10-year, $275 million contract.
But the question being asked by lawyers and accountants across the country is: will Boras get a commission on Rodriguez’s new deal?
>> College Coaching Carousel I: Rich Rodriguez was introduced this morning as the new coach at Michigan. Asked about being the third choice in Ann Arbor after failed attempts to get Les Miles from LSU and Greg Schiano from Rutgers, Rodriguez quipped, “I’m not even sure I was my wife’s third choice.”
More important for Michigan fans, Rodriguez will bring a flexible spread offense to Ann Arbor that emphasizes speed and athleticism. That’s the kind of offense he ran at West Virginia and the same style run by Rose Bowl-bound Illinois, which gave Ohio State its only defeat of the season. Already, the nation’s no. 1-ranked recruit (by Rivals.com), quarterback Terrelle Pryor, who ran a spread-style offense at Jeannette (Pa.) High School, said yesterday he’s already been in contact with Rodriguez (who was recruiting him for West Virginia) and “he’s keeping the same offense that he had at West Virginia because it’s all he knows. I love that offense. I told him I was very interested.”
Michigan, of course, is now using West Virginia as its farm team for coaches, having brought John Beilein from Morgantown to Ann Arbor after firing Tommy Amaker at the end of last season.
>> College Coaching Carousel II: So if you’re West Virginia, what do you do? You just lost a first-class coach who was also an alum.
How about hiring a well-known coach who’s also a WVU alum, has been in the broadcast business for a while, but grew up in the area while his father coached at West Virginia? Sure! It’s Terry Bowden, who at 51 says he wants to get back in coaching. He would inherit a team that only 12 scholarship seniors and with a recruiting class that had 20 verbal commitments, although how many will stay now is undetermined.
>> College Coaching Carousel III: Tennessee offensive coordinator David Cutcliffe will take over as the new head coach at Duke, replacing the fired Ted Roof, who was 6-45 in his five seasons.
Cutcliffe is credited with improving the workrate of Tennessee quarterback Erik Ainge, but should never have been fired at Mississippi. Cutcliffe had a very good record of 44-29 in six seasons, but was fired when the Rebels suffered through a 4-7 season in the year following the graduation of first-round NFL draft pick Eli Manning. He was replaced by the just-fired Ed Orgeron, who was 10-25 in three years at Ole Miss.
Cutcliffe will join the Blue Devils after finishing up with Tennessee’s Outback Bowl date with Wisconsin on January 1.
>> NBA Hoopla: From Peter Vecsey of the New York Post:
If this were a limbo contest, we’d already have a winner. How low can the Knicks go before [owner James] Dolan must admit he was a dope last season for bequeathing [coach Isiah] Thomas a reported 4-year, $24 million extension?
Vecsey wrote that there seems to be no floor for the Knicks, whose loss last Wednesday to Seattle was characterized as “the most recent repulsion, a 117-110 Garden-variety gag against the 5-17 StuporSonics, who, unlike the Knicks, played the previous night, are 29th of 30 teams in defense allowed (109 points), and are devoid of a true center.” The Knicks are last in the Atlantic Division and are 7-16 on the season, which projects to a seasonal mark of 25-57.
>> Tennis anyone? One of the highlights of the recent Davis Cup win by the United States over Russia was a pre-tournament comment from Russia’s Dmitri Tursunov. Asked about the similarities between the countries, he noted “We both owned Alaska at one point.”
>> Rings & Things: A Chinese District Court sentenced Liao Peigui to six months in prison on Friday for operating a Web site that was cloned from the official Beijing site and offering a pair of Opening Ceremonies tickets. The two “winners” paid in the equivalent of $406 and that landed Liao in jail.
~ Rich Perelman
>> Have an opinion? You can send it using the “Comment” button below!
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