Monday, 7-Jan-2002
Spurious
thoughts and idle musings from the sports week just past ...
How To
Achieve NBA GM Greatness In Six Easy Lessons ... First, you trash your double
three-peat dynasty. Then you tell the
greatest player in league history to take a powder. Then you hire a painfully naive college coach. And then you suck so bad that top shelf free
agents won't even return your phone calls.
Then you trade your young double-double stud for two high
schoolers. And finally, you sit back
and watch the poor coach go 49-190 before he begs you to shoot him. Okay, so maybe there are some more lessons.
NFL Pro
Bowl selection peeves ... Just because Tampa Bay's Mike Alstott looks like a
fullback, talks like a fullback and runs like a fullback does not make Mike
Alstott a fullback because ... deep breath... Mike Alstott does not actually
play the position of fullback. A minor
detail which apparently is not covered in the Pro Bowl voting guidelines but is
included in the gallery of Chris Berman Annoying Sound Effects. And there's no way a 1-15 team, even my
beloved Panthers, should get three players selected. Well, I guess maybe the punter makes some sense seeing as how his
leg didn't fall off this year.
Tough
weekend for the remaining unbeatens in college hoops ... On Saturday, Okie
State lost a brawlfest to Texas, my beloved Wahoos coughed at home to the NC
State Wolfies and the Canes blew one to UConn.
But it was the Noles dropping the big daisy cutter on the top-ranked
Dookies that shook everybody up. And if
you look at each one of these upsets, you'll see the same pattern repeated ...
Conference play, baby. Seat belts
fastened, tray tables locked, seats in their full upright position. Game On.
Admit it,
the Hurricanes were a helluva lot more fun in those old Miami Vice days when
they were driving fast cars, skipping class, snorting lines, packing heat and
wearing shades and jungle fatigues to press gigs, weren't they ??? Now, the mythical champeen Canes are just a
bunch of milk-drinking choirboy scholars ... With an absolutely devastating
blend of speed and talent. Just ask the
Nebraska Creamed Cornhuskers who were in the Rose Bowl all the way until the
coin flip. Ouch.
Also
doing their part to uphold Big 12 pride, the talk talking but non-walk walking
CU Ralphies got thoroughly quacked by the Oregon Ducks behind Times Square
poster boy Joey Harrington who's now gonna fiesta his way into a massive
signing bonus come spring time. And in other meaningless bowls, the Gators
gorged on Terrapin stew in the first All-Reptile Bowl, Diddy Bowden's Noles got
him his Bear-tying 323rd win while Lou Holtz outcocked the Poisonous Nuts one
more time.
The Rudys
finally ended their coaching search as Tyrone Willingham agreed to look for a
new home in South Bend. Much ink was
spilled extolling his success at Stanford despite academic standards there even
tougher than at Wake Up The Echoes U.
And even more fuss was made cause TWill is the very first minority coach
hired in any sport at the famed school.
And yet no mention that he's also gonna be the very first minority coach
fired if he goes 44-36-1 like he did at The Tree. Welcome to the big time, Tyrone.
Final
score ... Randy Moss 1, Dennis Green 0.
Of
course, besides the utter failure of the BCS to find a capable No. 2 team, college
football's other big news last week was Steve Spurrier's shocking buh-bye to
Gator Nation. Saying he had nothing
left to gain other than ruining Miami's day-after party, Spurrier sent waves of
joy across the rest of the SEC and instantly hopped a ride in the front seat on
the NFL coaching carousel. And now that
George Seifert is resuming his fishing career, my brutal Panthers are drooling
all over him ... Not to mention begging Tags to admit Central Florida,
Vanderbilt and Louisiana Tech into the new NFC South division.
Uh oh, Be
Like's pissed ... After the Pacers held him to a career-low six points, MJ went
out and torched the Hornets for 51, the Nets for 45 and then hammered his old
Bull pals with 29 more ... One of which was his 30,000th career point to join
Kareem, Wilt and the Mail Fraud in that most select company. Seems hard to believe that the best way to
keep Mike under control is to let him score just enough points each night to
keep him happy.
NFL Week
17 piglets ... The Belichicks grabbed the AFC East title with a snowjob over my
Panthers while the One-Eyes took the AFC West with their pride and poise
beep-beeping in reverse. Faulks and
Stillers have home field throughout the offs while the Fish are praying they
don't hafta see the J-E-T-S again.
Also, Jint DE Michael Strahan bested Mark Gastineau's sack record when
Brett Favre flopped for him, Keith Traylor is still sucking wind after his pick
runback and Priest Holmes won the NFL's rushing title given annually to the
running back who actually does the best job of not getting himself broken into
little pieces.
You know,
there is one thing we do hafta give the Bogus Champeenship Series credit for
... They have indeed created The Super Bowl Of College Football ... All four
BCS title games have each sipped as bad as any of the worst Supes. If you don't believe me, then good luck
finding somebody who kept their tapes of 1999 Tennessee over Florida State,
2000 Florida State over Virginia Tech, 2001 Oklahoma over Florida State and
this year's Miami win over Nebraska.
Betcha they've all been taped over with Seinfelds by now.
That was
a most bizarre NFL game played Sunday night ... The Iggles nipped the Bucs with
two late touches in a game that meant absolutely nothing for either team since
they're both firmly locked and loaded into their first-round playoff game next
Saturday against each other all over again.
Win or lose, neither team could do a thing to help themselves which
apparently has never happened before in NFL history. And thankfully, this game featured two teams that know all about
playing for nothing at the end of the season.
Happy
trails, Harvey Martin.
See ya
nexted week ...
Robert E Hunt Jr
Copyright ã 2002 by Robert E Hunt Jr. All rights reserved.