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Mooch may once again be a Michigan (State) man! |
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November 01, 2006 |
 Mariucci |
 Fulmer's Belly |
 Cooper |
Los Angeles, November 1, 2006 – The wolves finally got to Michigan State football coach John L. Smith, who resigned today effective at the end of the season and it was not a surprise. Smith is in his fourth year at Michigan State and has a 22-23 record, including a series of annual collapses after pulling defeat from the jaws of victory in several big games, including this year at home against Notre Dame, where Michigan State led 37-21 entering the fourth quarter, but managed to lose, 40-37. Michigan State was 3-0 going into that game and is now 4-5 on the season. Michigan State will reportedly pay about $1.5 million to buy out his contract and the conventional wisdom is that Steve Mariucci, a success at Cal and with the NFL San Francisco 49ers, but not with the Detroit Lions, will be the next MSU coach. He’s very close friends with Michigan State’s very successful basketball coach Tom Izzo.
>> Is it true that while the Miami football Hurricanes play out the remainder of the season on the way to excusing head coach Larry Coker, the key to Miami’s future is sitting pretty in Madison, Wisconsin? Does Miami President Donna Shalala already has her eye on the man she hired back in 1990, when she was the Chancellor of the University of Wisconsin to come rescue that school’s sorry program: current University of Wisconsin athletic director Barry Alvarez.
>> More coaches: Ole Miss head coach – and former USC defensive line coach – Ed Orgeron is not very popular after a 2-7 start. Writes Kevin Scarbinsky in the Birmingham (Al.) News: “Ole Miss, living in the John Vaught past thought it had fallen under former coach David Cutliffe and wanted to go in a different direction. Mission accomplished. By hiring the unproven and unpolished Orgeron, Ole Miss did an about face – right back to the Stone Age.”
>> Web check: have you seen the newest site that follows college football and especially the Vols? It’s named in honor of the rotund Tennessee coach: www.fulmersbelly.com!
>> More coaches: a Mr. Vincent Shenocca of Morristown is in the midst of an angry divorce with his wife Sharon, who Mr. Shenocca claims has been supported on the side by New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick. The judge has asked for Belichick to be deposed in the case and to provide financial records, including credit card receipts, showing any support for the Mrs. Belichick, who is himself divorced, met the lady in question when she was a receptionist for the New York Giants in the 1980s when Belichick was the Giants’ defensive coordinator.
>> Attention, UCLA coaching change honks: one of the biggest problems always cited by coaches in considering a job at UCLA or USC is the cost of housing. The annual Coldwell Banker College Home Price Comparison Index just came out and out of 119 Division I-A school markets, Los Angeles tied for 117th place. For a 2,200 square-foot home with a two-car garage, the average home price in the Los Angeles area was $1.56 million dollars! Only Palo Alto, California – home to Stanford – was higher at $1.65 million and four of the five most expensive locations were for Stanford, UCLA, USC and Cal. The most affordable market with a I-A team was Tulsa, Oklahoma, where the same house cost just $148,575.
>> No. 1 vs. No. 2: Ohio State has had only one obvious weakness this season . . . the field at Ohio Stadium! At a cost of about $100,000, they’re tearing out the turf after six games and replacing it with new grass that has only a couple of weeks to settle in before the Michigan game on November 18. No worries, though, the Ohio State field crew knows a lot about the turf game.
>> More Buckeyes: former Ohio State quarterback and ESPN college football commentator Kirk Herbstreit is already woofing at the Wolverines on his radio talk show on WBNS in Columbus. Asked what would happen if the teams played this weekend, Herbstreit said, quote “Just the way they’re playing, I don’t even think it would be close. Ohio State not only wins the game but maybe by a few scores.” He also had a few choice words for Michigan fans who left early during the bad weather bowl last Saturday in Ann Arbor as Michigan defeated Northwestern, 17-3: “If you are a Michigan fan, help me understand this: you have a team ranked second in the country, you only get to see them play at home six or seven times a year and bail in the second quarter?”
>> Last add, colleges: did you see that former NFL tight end Brian Kinchen was “excused” from his announcing duties for ESPNU this week for a comment he made during the Northern Iowa-Iowa game last Saturday? Would you like to know what he said? Kinchen was explaining the importance of catching the football with your hands instead of cradling it against the chest, saying, quote: “They [the hands] are tender and can caress the ball. That’s kind of gay, but hey . . . “ Exactly who was he accusing?
>> NASCAR update: television ratings for NASCAR’s Nextel Cup races are down this season in 29 of 33 races so far with only three to go. National Nielsen ratings have fallen 12.3% as a whole and this is the last year of the circuit’s television contract with NBC. But NASCAR chairman Brian France told reporters that he believes he knows the reason: “obviously our current TV partners have . . . other priorities.” He noted that NASCAR did not renew with NBC, so that network has not promoted its races as strongly as in the past and, “That’s kind of par for the course when you change TV partners and you have a final year in the situation that we’re in. So we’re not too concerned about it, and frankly, expected it.”
>> More NASCAR, Bass Pro Shops 500 follow up: the 100,000 or so fans who did come to see the race at the Atlanta Motor Speedway went away with a full stomach. Figures for the 120 concession stands used at the race indicated sales of 10,000 hamburgers, 19,000 hot dogs and 30,000 soft drinks, plus 295,000 pounds of ice and this does not, of course, include the tailgaters.
>> New baseball stats: someone with too much time on his hands got out his trusty computer and calculated that according to the government’s Body Mass Index ratings, 37 of the 50 players in this year’s World Series were overweight or obese. Sad but true, the revised Body Mass Index ratings, which were introduced in 1998 and are widely viewed as flawed, say that Albert Pujols, Scott Rolen, Jeff Suppan, Kenny Rogers, Craig Monroe and Pudge Rodriguez are all too fat. Wonder what Tommy Lasorda’s opinion of that is?
>> More baseball: Ben Smith of the Ft. Wayne Journal-Gazette thinks baseball is getting its arms around the steroids issue, saying “Pile on the sport all you want for belatedly coming to Jesus on steroids, but it least it’s not cycling, which is so dirty half its stars had to sit out the Tour de France, and even the Tour winner was tagged for cheating. At least it’s not track and field, which seems to get a world record invalidated every week. At least it’s not the NFL, whose own ‘model’ policy seems more and more like a successful PR coup than reality.”
>> NBA circus: Quoting Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban: “The owners who speak out the most against me have been the first organizations to ask me to support their marketing or sales efforts. The league execs who chastise me or fine me have never hesitated to leverage me when it was to their advantage.” So Cuban is opting out of a planned satellite radio show on the SIRIUS network before it ever airs. He told the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram he’s sick and tired of dealing with what he calls the league’s “hypocrisy,” including a new “owner’s code of conduct.” Comment: that code of conduct is in for a beating!
>> Hot swingers: Golf Digest came out with its list of the top 100 golfers in music in its December issue, on newsstands on November 7. Jazz artist Kenny G had the best score with a handicap of +0.6, with country stars Vince Gill and Rudy, Larry and Steve Gatlin all in the top eight. Rocker Alice Cooper tied for 11th with a 5 handicap, Justin Timberlake has a 6 and Dweezil Zappa was 20th at 6.3. These guys obviously have a lot of time to work on their game!
~ Rich Perelman
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