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Cal's Lynch bears down with a best seller |
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November 06, 2006 |
 The Cat in the Hat |
 Harrick |
 Wagner |
Los Angeles, November 6, 2006 – Did you see the ABC television broadcast of California’s 38-24 win over UCLA last Saturday? Then you may have noticed the quick first-quarter profile of Cal’s Heisman Trophy candidate Marshawn Lynch, a marvelous running back and by all accounts a very nice young man. Lynch is a junior at the nation’s leading public university and was asked about his favorite book. Perhaps Ralph Ellison’s brilliant reflection on African-American life in America, “Invisible Man”? Or a classic like Herman Melville’s “Moby Dick”? Maybe the Bible? Nope on all counts. According to the ABC graphic, Lynch’s favorite is a 1954 best seller of just 220 words: Dr. Seuss’s “The Cat in the Hat”!
If the Bears don’t make it to the Rose Bowl, maybe he can rewrite another Seuss classic and call it “How the BCS stole Christmas!”
>> Monday Night Football: the 2-5 Oakland Raiders travel to Seattle to face an injury-plagued, 4-3 Seahawks team without quarterback Matt Hasselbeck and running back Shaun Alexander in a 55-degree, wind-swept monsoon. Oddsmakers still have Seattle as a seven-point favorite with the overs and unders at 35; translation: Seattle 21, Oakland 14.
>> More NFL: is it true that with grumpy Dallas coach Bill Pa rcells leaning toward retirement in the next year or so, Cowboys owner Jerry Jones is already casting an eye toward Tennessee Titans headmaster Jeff Fisher. Fisher’s done a good job without a big bankroll behind him and has come a long way since his days as a USC cornerback.
>> Dolphins watch: after the Colts’ victory last night in Foxboro, members of the only undefeated team in NFL history, the 1972 Miami Dolphins, are starting to sweat. The Colts don’t have a lot of tough tests left: Buffalo at home, at Dallas, home to Philadelphia, at Tennessee, at Jacksonville, home to the fading Cincinnati, on the road at Houston and they finish the regular season on New Year’s Eve at home against . . . Miami, possibly with an undefeated season on the line. Of Indy’s remaining eight opponents, one – count ‘em, one – has a winning record.
>> More Dolphins: Miami players got a real treat after their 31-13 shellacking of previously-undefeated Chicago at Soldier Field. Vice President of Operations Bill Galante, who used to be with the Cubs, arranged for 120 individual, deep-dish pizzas from Lou Malnati’s Pizzeria to be served in the winning locker room on Sunday. Imagine what they’d get if they knocked off a 15-0 Colts team on December 31!
>> Last add, Dolphins: ex-coach Jimmy Johnson called the Dolphins “pathetic” on the Fox NFL Sunday show and noted that current coach Nick Saban’s problems with “mess-up” players might be traced to the coach himself. Said Johnson, “Didn’t you bring in 37 of these so-called mess-ups?”
>> Pac-10 basketball preview: pre-season predictions are in and Ben Howland’s UCLA Bruins are a top-ten pick among the pre-season magazines and polls: Blue Ribbon Sports has the Bruins at no. 4, CBS Sportsline.com, no. 5; ESPN/USA Today, no. 5; The Associated Press, no. 6; and The Sporting News, no. 7. Arizona is picked second and has five polls also putting it in the top ten.
Which conference team has the most former players on NBA rosters? Arizona and UCLA tied for the most NBA players at 10 each, but the Wildcats have nine active players and one on the injured list while the Bruins have seven actives and three on IL.
>> Did you remember that yesterday was a major anniversary day in UCLA basketball history? Flashback: Tuesday, November 5, 1996, just 19 months after winning the national championship, UCLA basketball coach Jim Harrick was dismissed by then-Athletic Director Peter Dalis. Harrick was revealed to have been less than truthful about the reporting of an expensive dinner with some recruits in Westwood and asked one of his assistant coaches to back up his version of the truth. The dismissal of Harrick led to the start of the Steve Lavin Era at UCLA, which lasted for an excruciating seven seasons.
>> Lakers chatter: the Chicago Tribune’s sharp NBA columnist Sam Smith thinks the missing piece could be Kevin Garnett. Chris Mihm’s contract is up after this season and Garnett’s contract lets him go elsewhere after next season. He’ll be 32 years old then and could be a nice front-court complement to an older and stronger Andrew Bynum . . . and Garnett already owns a home in Malibu!
>> Barry Bonds update: Scott Ostler, in the San Francisco Chronicle, considering which team will sign Bonds asks “So which teams are often irrational and desperate to move up after years of stupid spending and heartache? Rangers and Orioles?” Ostler adds: “The Rangers have a colorful history of bad free-agent signings. They’re still paying off Honus Wagner’s contract.”
>> Bay Area boys behaving badly: listener The Dome comments: “has there ever been a city more graced by more !@#$%^&* athletes than San Francisco? Barry Bonds, Terrell Owens, Chris Webber, Latrell Sprewell . . . seems the only guy behaving himself is the Oakland A’s Milton Bradley!”
>> Attention, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell: fans are posting video clips of English Premiere League soccer matches on the video-sharing site YouTube.com, much to the discomfort of League officials who get an average of 600 million British pounds per year (more than $1.1 billion!) in television rights! The League hired an Internet firm that specializes in protecting rights-holders to check up on YouTube.
More YouTube: a quick check of the site today showed more than four dozen clips from NFL games on the site. The majority appeared to be in-stadium videos from fans using pocket camcorders, but there are some clips off of television. Fans are excited about the NFL, but not about the rights of the television networks!
>> More soccer headaches: MasterCard International’s suit against FIFA over sponsorship rights to the World Cup is continuing. MasterCard has been the credit card sponsor of the tournament for 16 years and said it returned a signed contract to extend its deal, but FIFA said it signed a deal in the meantime with Visa worth as much as $200 million for the next eight years.
>> Olympic accounting: the British Chancellery of the Exchequer (that’s the Treasury Department over there) says that value-added taxes of more than a billion pounds (about $1.9 billion) were not included in London’s bid for the Games because – according to a report on the GamesBids.com website – “we were negotiating against major competition worldwide,” i.e., they were lying! It brings to mind the famous comment attributed to Illinois senator Everett Dirksen in the 1960s: “A billion here and a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking real money." He knew a lot more about the finance game than the London Olympic organizers seem to know.
~ Rich Perelman
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