You Can Bet On It

Tonight is the last game Brent Musburger will ever call.
Musburger is leaving ESPN on very short notice in the middle of the college basketball season.
If you are a fan of a certain age you remember Musburger for hosting the CBS NFL pregame show along with Irv Cross and Jimmy the Greek.
When he famously said "you are looking live..." as they ran through the slate of games.



In 1990, he joined ESPN and through the years did play-by-play for college football and basketball. I was never a huge fan of his, but never had much of a problem with him either. When people freaked out over him pointing out that AJ McCarron's beauty queen girlfriend is pretty, I stood with Brent.

I even sided with him in his latest controversy over his comments about Joe Mixon.



The one thing I can't figure is why would he leave ESPN so suddenly. I can only imagine that because Musburger stated he was going to move to Las Vegas to help his family with a sports handicapping business, ESPN became uncomfortable with the possibility of a real or perceived conflict of interest and asked him to leave almost immediately.

If You Don't Stand For Something, You'll Fall for Anything

The University of Minnesota football team was willing to forfeit the Holiday Bowl in a protest designed to protect 10 of their teammates who were suspended following a sexual assault.
Thankfully new athletic director Mark Coyle (who left Syracuse after only 11 months to take this job) talked sense into them.
The other 75 players were going to give up something they'd worked long and hard for, in order to protect rapists?

According to the police report, the victim was very drunk before she left her apartment to attend a party. There were parties in several apartments and she ended up in one with Carlton Djam and a player who turned out to be a high school recruit. They began having sex with her simultaneously. And throughout what she describes as an hour to 90 minute ordeal, several players had oral and vaginal sex with her.

She said she tried to get them to stop, tried to push, tried to wrap herself in the blanket, but felt unable to move.

Here's the part of the police report that includes her recollection of the incident:

Now the players all deny this, saying that it was consensual and she was "down with it," it being fucked by 15% of the football team.

The police couldn't press charges in part because she was an unwilling (seemed very nervous and concerned about reporting) and unreliable (she was wasted) witness. And also because there were videos of her get Eiffel Towered by the first two guys and the police report says she looks willing and not incapacitated, she was on her knees and elbows engaging, not lying on her back, prone.

Most likely this girl was wasted beyond belief, started flirting with one guy, got talked into a 3some and felt unable to leave when Carlton Djam called his friends and told them about the slut they had who was ripe for a gang bang.

Maybe the players thought they could get away with it because she didn't actively protest, and maybe for those 10 guys it was hard to resist when the little head told the big head what to do.

But thank God the other 75 got talked out of their horrible idea to go down with the ship and their 10 rapist teammates.

Marching Bands and Solemn Holidays Don't Mix

Syracuse has had to move its normal pregame festivities for tonight's game against Louisville so as not to interfere with students observing Yom Kippur in Hendricks Chapel.

For those of you unfamiliar with the Syracuse campus consult the above picture.
Normally, pregame festivities including tailgate parties take place on the quad and in surrounding parking lots. And the marching band marches through the quad to the game, right past Hendricks Chapel.

A marching band and a bunch of loud drunks are certainly not fitting with the solemn attitude needed on Yom Kippur.

In respect to the Jewish students the University changed the plans to keep the quad and the area in front of Hendricks Chapel (the steps of which are a very common meeting/sitting spot on campus) clear.

"The pregame festivities will be held in the north area of the Carrier Dome between Gate D and the Heroy Geology Building and the marching band will play on the east side of the Dome by Irving Ave. Fans walking to the game will be directed around the quad and Hendricks Chapel."

Jameis Winston, Finally Punished

Jameis Winston is a good quarterback. Jameis Winston never gets punished for the bad things he does. These things are not unrelated.
Jameis Winston sexually assaulted a girl, stole soda from Burger King (drinking out of ketchup cup), stole food from a grocery store, and fired BB guns on campus breaking windows of the complex where he lived.
Winston avoided any real punishment for any of these incidents.
But now he has gotten his comeuppance. For what?
Let me first start with a video (NSFW language, ok with headphones):



That is a fake video, purportedly of a reporter working a missing person story saying when they find the woman that he will "fuck her right in the pussy."
Harmful, mildly funny, if juvenile, internet video.
As those things tend to do, it went somewhat viral and became a meme.
A meme Jameis Winston must have found funny.
He stood on a table in the middle of the Florida State student union and shouted "fuck her right in the pussy."
Florida State has reached its breaking point. They could take no more of Winston's behavior. He had to be punished and punished severely and swiftly. Florida has suspended him for one half, that's 30 minutes of football time, of Saturday's game against Clemson.

Now I suppose it's possible that FSU could get down big to Clemson early and lose the game, costing them a national title and him a second Heisman.
But more likely FSU will make the new playoff, even with a loss, and if he plays well enough in the other games he has a good chance to become only the second player to win 2 Heismans.
And he will do it while knowing that nothing he does wrong ever has serious repercussions.

Haven't we recently seen the downside of this entitle attitude from athletes manifest itself in the despicable actions of Ray Rice, Adrian Peterson and to a lesser degree Dwight Howard (27 traffic violations).

For his part, Winston seemed contrite in his apology, and didn't try to lie his way out of it. Maybe he is growing up.

Great Teammates

In the great tradition of Dingle-Berry and Short-White-Cox two new teammates have come together, sat together (in the right order) to provide a striking image for fans.

In this case it's Arkansas State football players Jemar Clark and Derion Griswold -- Clark Griswold.

The Orange Will Be Well-Represented at the Texas Bowl

I have often criticized Sean Keeley, author of Troy Nunes is an Absolute Magician (the blog of record for Syracuse University sports) as having gotten too big for his britches. And I still may be correct on that one, but I have to give him credit for an awesome idea of his that really took off.
Keeley posted that since many SU fans would not be able to get to the Texas Bowl in Houston to see the Orange play Minnesota, they should donate some money, and if he could raise $10,000, the money could send roughly 200 kids from local youth organizations to the game to cheer in our stead.
Like I said, the idea really took off, donations are close to $20,000 and Texas Bowl organizers lowered the ticket price to $20 from $50, meaning sending 1,000 kids, giving them SU shirts, and hot dogs and drinks, is now a reasonable goal.
The only problem is finding enough kids.

The Best Game of Our Time

Alabama vs. Auburn, the Iron Bowl of 2013 is the best college football game I have ever seen. And it certainly has its place among the greatest games of all time, and maybe the best ending. Sure, The Play ("the band is on the field, the band is on the field!") was more unusual and novel and crazy, but the game was meaningless.
This was #1, defending national champ Alabama vs. #4 Auburn, in one of the most heated rivalries, with huge stakes, a chance at the title game, perhaps for both teams.
And what ensued was one of the craziest, most dramatic, exciting, unpredictable and downright amazing games any of us will ever see.
By now you've all heard or seen what happened (and if you didn't you don't care), the 99-yard touchdown, the late-game comeback TD by Auburn and of course the field goal return.
But I want to talk about Nick Saban, the arrogant jerk whose pride cost his team the game. Saban thinks he walks on water (and he has the results to back it up) and that anything he does is right. And if you buy into this way of doing things you will win. He thinks the success he's had is because of him, and not his players. Which is why he failed in the NFL (and hated it), because he couldn't relate to players who had their own proven track records. It's also why he threw his kickers under the bus after the game.
My big problem with Saban comes when he went for on 4th and 1 with about 5 minutes left, instead of trying a 30-yard field goal. I know his kicker had already missed 2, but a 30-yarder is probably a pretty good bet, for even a bad kicker, and it would have given the Tide a 2-score lead. But in Saban's world he can't envision how his team won't get 1 yard on 4th down, and if they do, it is the players' fault.
That of course set up the blown coverage on the Auburn touchdown pass which set up Saban's fatal mistake. Many people are saying "if his kicker is so bad, why attempt a 57-yarder?" I'm going to give him a pass on this one. Even a bad kicker should make 57-yarders way more often than a player should return a miss 108 yards. The problem with Saban here is he didn't seem to have the right personnel on the field to defend a potential return, and he didn't seem to have them prepared for it. Though in his classy post-game press conference he said he warned the players and told them to fan out, but damn kids didn't listen.

It's a good thing a game like this happened now, because next year, it won't be as exciting. With a 4-team playoff, Alabama would likely make it anyway, so even if they didn't rest players, which top teams probably will, the urgency will be gone and the stakes greatly reduced. And this has been my main objection to a playoff for as long as the debate has raged on: college football has the most special regular season of all sports, and a playoff system, of 16 or 8 or even 4 teams would take a lot of that away.

Can't Win Em All

I think that should be my motto for 2013: you can't win em all, but if you're lucky, you get to go to a lot of them.
My latest game experience was Syracuse vs. Penn State at the Meadowlands.
Originally I wasn't going to go to this game because neither Billie nor Michael was available and I didn't want to sit with obnoxious Penn State fans like Nails and Jleary. And the cheapest tickets were $75, and they weren't even good seats.
But in the few days before the game a friend of mine who is a Jets season ticket holder got a special offer, seats that were previously $95 and $75 were cut to $20 and $10 (including the fees).
So I got myself a ticket in section 225, second deck, end zone (not corner), 8 rows back. It was actually a pretty good seat.

Nails, who has been planning this tailgate since the day the game was announced, and preparing for such an event his entire life, really went all out. He arrived 5 hours before game time, only because the gates didn't open any earlier. He had two grills, four coolers (3 for drinks, 1 for food), a table full of snacks, a smaller table for drink and a tent to keep out the sun.
He did three separate shopping trips, including one to a German sausage store, and he came back with 6 different kinds of sausage.

A Penn State fan with this much phallic sausage would have been a great target for jokes had I not agreed to a ban on Sandusky jokes as a condition of my invitation.
I ate two different kinds of sausage (and got yelled at by the Concierge by not referring to them by their proper German names), a hamburger, two chicken legs and so much steak (and that was just the first hour) that combined with the heat, I was sweating so much that I actually felt a little light-headed for a few minutes.
Nails brought so much stuff to the tailgate that even after we ate and drank for hours, the car was still packed to the gills after we cleaned up and put everything away for the game.

And that's when the trouble started, the game. I was in a section of mostly Penn State people, though most of them weren't that bad. Unfortunately the one drunk lout in the section was seated right next to me, and his two sons, between ages 7 and 10. Evidently the younger one is better at sports than the older one, because the drunk father spent the entire first half hugging the older one and telling him he can help him be better at sports.
And then he spent the entire second half trying to start a responsive "We Are" "Penn State" chant, to no avail.

And if that wasn't bad enough, Syracuse quarterback Drew Allen is clearly not ready for prime time. And I feel like the coaching staff made the mistake teams make with young, inexperienced QBs often make. They try to make things easy for them and simple, and low-risk, so they run on first and second downs, call basic pass plays to take the pressure off. But then the defense knows what's coming. Penn State did a great job of stopping our running game, which should be really good with Jerome Smith and Prince Tyson Gulley. And when Syracuse did pass, Allen looked at one receiver, and threw to him, whether he was open or not.

Syracuse's defense played great, forcing 4 turnovers, returning the last one to the 1-yard line setting up a score to cut the lead to 23-17 and giving them at least a puncher's chance on too late drives. But the play-calling was awful and Allen wasn't able to make a play.

It's unfortunate that Ross Krautman missed an early field goal, the game could have been entirely different had he made it. And it was even more unfortunate that Penn State's kicker who was almost run off campus last season made all three of his kicks, for which I had a great view.

Bottom line is this: Syracuse is rebuilding, without its head coach and much of its staff from last year, and without the starting QB or a viable replacement. It's bad timing that a new phase of rebuilding before the old rebuilding was completed, but now in a better stronger conference hopefully the blip will be temporary.

And even though we lost to some of the worst most annoying fans in college football, it was a fun day nonetheless.

The Best Promotion for "Catfish" There Could Ever Be

Notre Dame linebacker Manti Te’o, and all of us, were the victims of a hoax. Te’o evidently believed some hot chick from Stanford he met online was his girlfriend. And we believed the story that she had gotten into a horrible car accident, the doctors discovered she had leukemia, which eventually killed her. And that death happened around the same time Te’o’s grandmother died. Which happened around the same time Te’o lead Notre Dame to a big win over Michigan State using the two deaths as inspiration.

Now we know there is no such person as Lennay Kekua. Someone else was operating a Twitter account in her name. Pictures of her were actually pictures of someone else. The voice he heard on the phone was someone else.
Te’o says he was duped and didn’t find out she never existed until December 6th and didn't tell the University until December 26th. There’s almost no way this could possibly be true, but it seems like Te’o was very careful not to say he ever met her in person, though his father certainly implied it. Deadspin, which did a great job uncovering the story, very neatly lays out all the evidence.
Maybe the biggest villain/dupe in all of this is Pete Thamel who really made this a national story when his piece on Te’o for Sports Illustrated centered on this tragic loss. He never asked for a picture of them together. He thought it odd that he couldn’t find an obituary for her online, but didn’t ask enough questions.
The story is too long and sordid for me to examine every single detail but I will say that my suspicion is that initially Te’o got duped. Eventually he figured it out but was too embarrassed about his phony girlfriend to come clean. So he conspired with the liar to kill off the fake girlfriend and hope it would go away.
Maybe he was duped the entire time, but told lies and omissions to make it seem less creepy that he had an online friend whom he had never met. I doubt that, but it is possible. It’s also possible Te’o was in on this the entire time, maybe to get publicity, maybe just because he’s young and dumb. But I doubt that too. Here's why: I read where a former Stanford player said Te'o asked the Stanford players if they knew his girl. So that's why I'm going with my suspicion that he was duped at first but got in too deep.
But I may get burned because you can't trust a liar.

The Best Part of the BCS Title Game

If you watched the BCS National Championship between Alabama and Notre Dame you probably turned it off at some point as Alabama kicked Notre Dame's ass. But I hope you stuck around long enough to see this:

The ESPN crew shows AJ McCarron's incredibly hot beauty queen, model girlfriend, Katherine Webb in the stands. No problem there. The problem came when Brent Musburger who is legit 50 years older than Webb started fawning all over her.

"When you're the quarterback at Alabama, you see that lovely lady there. She does go to Auburn, don't admit that but she's also Miss Alabama and that's AJ McCarron's girlfriend. "You quarterbacks, you get all the good looking women. What a beautiful woman."
"Wow!" Herbstreit said.
"Whoa!" Musburger chimed in.
"AJ's doing some things right down in Tuscaloosa," Herbstreit said.
"If you're a youngster in Alabama, start getting the football out and throw it around the backyard with pop," Musburger said.

My Week With New York's College Team

Syracuse's efforts to brand itself as New York's College Team are going to take a big hit next year when it joins the Atlantic Coast Conference. One showcase it will lose is access to the Pinstripe Bowl in Yankee Stadium, which has obligations to take teams from the Big East and Big XII.

This is the third season of the Pinstripe Bowl and SU's second appearance. I missed the debut game against Kansas State in 2010, which SU won thrillingly. But I wasn't going to miss their second and perhaps last appearance, so as soon as it was officially announced I ordered the tickets for Poppy and me through the Dome Box office. $60 each and only $7 total for shipping and handling, no other fees. Seats were in section 226, the third baseline, second deck 6th. Pretty good seats, along the goal line in the end zone reading Syracuse.

The game was great, SU dominated on the ground, rushing for almost 400 yards, 208 for Prince-Tyson Gulley and 157 for Jerome Smith. SU pulled away in the second half, for a 38-14 win.
The weather really stymied both teams, but I will readily admit that Syracuse is much better equipped to deal with a day such as this when it's hard to throw or catch a pass. The Orange got two safeties, and neither QB threw for 200 yards. At a certain point Syracuse stopped even trying to throw the ball.

The weather actually wasn't that bad from a fan's perspective. The first quarter it rained, which really sucked, but it makes your clothes cold and heavy. But into the second quarter it started to snow lightly which was actually cool. And by the end of the game you could look up and see the perfectly white snow trickling down, set against the pitch black sky.

The worst part of the game were the hooligans seated in front of us. A group of about 10 recent alumni, totally wasted. At first they refused to sit down. At some point they moved to an adjacent section, and remained standing, but out of our line of vision. One of them got so drunk he passed out in the bathroom and security came down to notify his next of kin. Eventually they carried that drunk dumbass back to his seat, literally carried him. But he last only about 5 more minutes before either going underneath or going home. One of his idiotic cohorts almost got into a fistfight with a West Virginia fan, but eventually they calmed down and Poppy and I were able to enjoy the game.

Which is more than I can say about the SU game I went to the previous week, basketball, at Madison Sqaure Garden in something called the Gotham Classic. Seems like a trumped up reason to get a home away from Dome game at MSG.

Billy, who is a baller now, got us some awesome tickets. We were on the sidecourt, opposite the SU bench, looking down the baseline, about 6 rows up in the first section of permanent seats (they have some risers they use for basketball games). Incidentally Scoop Jardine sat in those seats in front of us in the second half and his pants were sagging so low I saw his drawers.

The game was a total disappointment as SU went into an offensive funk early in the second half allowing Temple to take a big lead. SU closed it several times, and actually had the chance to take the lead late when on a fast break Brandon Triche pulled up for 3, inexplicably and missed, giving Temple control of the ball and the game.

The usual suspects hurt SU, shooting 56% from the line and allowing Temple to get 16 offensive rebounds on 36 missed shots.

3 things about Hall of Fame Coach, 900 game winner, Jim Boeheim. He has never figured out how to teach his guys to shoot free throws. And unlike times when he had big men missing free throws and skewing the average, in this game his point guards, Michael Carter Williams and Brandon Triche, shot 9 of 19. I have no idea why he played DaJuan Coleman so sparingly when SU needed rebounding, and boxing out. And I still don't know why he insists on playing such incredibly weak non-conference schedules.

But you win some you lose some and as a fan of SU in New York I will try to keep being there for all of it.

Poppy Didn't React Like This for His Pinstripe Bowl Ticket

A very touching video is making the rounds on the internet since Christmas. An Alabama fan gets a ticket to the BCS National Title Game, Alabama vs. Notre Dame.



Strange that Poppy didn't react that way when he got a ticket to the Pinstripe Bowl for Christmas.
I love the way the guy tried to seem happy about the hat, and they had to say "what size is it?" in order for him to notice the ticket.

There Will Be No Beano

ESPN college football analyst Beano Cook passed away. His former partner Chris Fowler did a touching tribute to him, but unfortunately it only included a small snippet of Beano's most famous moment: "I can hear him!" (at about 2:05 of this video)

The Riches of the Father

UCLA will be suiting up a new freshman cornerback this season, a kid named Justin Combs. If the last name sounds familiar it is because Justin is the son of Sean Combs aka Puff Daddy aka P-Diddy aka Diddy aka Diddy Dirty Money. Combs will be attending UCLA on a football scholarship and this has some people upset. They don’t think the son of a guy with a net worth of half-a-billion dollars should be getting a free ride to attend school. Not when the state’s education system is broke. Not when so many underprivileged students can’t afford to attend UCLA.
The school says athletic scholarships are handed out based on merit, not need. If Combs is a good athlete and an adequate student (and he’s reportedly better than that) he earned this scholarship and he deserves it.
This is a big problem in this country right now, attacking the rich based on some misguided notion of what is fair.
Basically the argument goes like this: either it is unfair that one kid has a ridiculously rich father AND a football scholarship, or it’s unfair that a kid who earned a football scholarship should have to pay for college just because he can afford to.
It will be a real shame if this attitude pervades America so deeply that rich and successful people and their children are begrudged their wealth and success, even when they’ve clearly worked hard to earn what they have.
Justin Combs should go to UCLA, play hard, study hard and grow into a fine young man.
Sean Combs should count his money. And if he wants to give some of it to the school as a donation or to a needy kid for an education, that would be great. And if he doesn’t, then that’s fine too.

Ain't No Piece of Ass Worth 4300 Text Messages

Arkansas Bobby Petrino brought down in an embarrassing text and sex scandal. Petrino got into a horrible motorcycle accident and told everyone that he was riding alone. He wasn't. The 51-year-old Petrino had his 25-year-old mistress on the back. She was unhurt. But when the truth finally came out not only was it revealed that Petrino was having an affair with Jessica Dorell, we found out he hired her for a job with the football team, just a week earlier, choosing her over 158 other candidates. And she was engaged to some other dude who worked in the athletic department. Their wedding webpage was immediately defiled.






Sure Petrino is a jerk. For cheating on his wife. For using his power to get his girlfriend a job. For lying to his boss about it. For leaving the Falcons in the middle of the season. But the most embarrassing is that he and Dorrell exchanged 4300 text messages of the length of their affair. Is he a fuckin teenage girl? I thought the best part about these affairs is that you don't actually have to talk to the mistress because you might get caught. And Dorrell wasn't the only hot young slut Petrino was texting.

This is Alison Medler:





She's a bikini model/bikini contest winner, I can see why. Petrino also sent her 200 text messages, and it was mutual because she sent him 7 pictures (wish we could see those) over this two month period.

In summary Bobby Petrino is a piece of shit and it's a shame these hot young girls fall for him, especially Dorrell who basically ruined her whole life for this scumbag.

Marching Bands Get Funky

The Syracuse University Marching Band aka the Sour Sitrus Society unveiled a new song (or at least I had never heard them play it before), "Hate Me Now" by Nas.
Though I enjoyed the song and thought it was an inspired choice, it was nothing compared to the version of LMFAO's "Party Rock Anthem" by the Ohio University Marching Band:

Bowl Mania Time

ESPN has its Bowl Mania game up for this year. It's simple. Pick every bowl game and rank them by confidence. This year you even get to pick against Syracuse. Group name is The Poop.

Important Story Update

The Pinstripe Bowl actually kicks off at 3:30 PM so I will be going. Only problem is tickets are $60 for the cheapest seats, not including the rip off fees, (figure $70).
Anyone wishing to join me should contact me by Monday.

I Would Love To Go To This

The Syracuse Orange are headed for the Pinstripe Bowl at Yankee Stadium.
Director of athletics Daryl Gross accepted the invitation this morning. An opponent has not yet been decided for the Dec. 30 game.
It will be the first NCAA football bowl game in the Bronx since the Gotham Bowl on Dec. 15, 1962, when Nebraska edged Miami 36-34 at the original Yankee Stadium.

I'd like to go to the new Yankee Stadium so this would be a great opportunity to do it without actually seeing the Yankees.
And it might be my only chance to go to a bowl game, without having to travel to a warm weather state.
But December 31 is a normal workday for me so I don't think I can stay out til midnight in the freezing cold.

Colt McCoy Blames God for Injury

As we often see in postgame interviews, winners credit God for their performance. But very rarely do we hear losers blame the loss on God. Except for Texas quarterback Colt McCoy who was injured on the fifth play of the Citi BCS National Championship game:

"I've given college football the best I've had for the last four years," McCoy said. "Every player's dream is to play on a stage like that and have an opportunity like that. I could have never imagined this would happen. I'll never question God. I'm a man of faith. I've never questioned why. But, yes, I'm truly disappointed because I would have made a huge difference."

It seems to me he is clearly saying that God caused his shoulder injury but as a man of faith he is not going to ask why God ruined his college career and his life.