Starting Five

1. We are leaving this spot blank in honor of college basketball, whose No. 1-ranked schools appear only too eager to vacate this position. In the past five weeks Duke, Louisville, Duke again, Michigan and now Indiana have all lost when ranked No. 1 in the nation. The Hoosiers were outscored 13-2 in the final four minutes in Champaign and lost, 74-72, last night to the Illini.

But, to quote Bill Murray in “Meatballs”, “It just doesn’t matter!” Heck, Kansas, another former No. 1 who on Wednesday lost to Big 12 bottom-dweller TCU, could lose to NIU, the Topeka YMCA and to the first team Dr. Naismith (who was not a MEDICAL doctor, but whatevs) ever put on the floor (back in Springfield) and the Jayhawks would still qualify for the NCAA Tournament’s 68-team field.

Tripper Harrison would not be flummoxed by a February loss

2. South Dakota State’s Nate Wolters scores 53 points, the most prolific outburst of the D-I season (in fact, the highest scoring output since 2009), in an 80-74 victory. The performance by the  Jackrabbit guard, who drained nine threes, is even more impressive when you consider that he did it against Indiana Purdue-Fort Wayne, which is like, what, three schools?

Imagine how many more points Wolters might have scored were he not wearing a skirt

3. To paraphrase Stefon, “This New York Post cover story has EVERYTHING: a suicidal George Washington Bridge leaper (making the jump on her 22nd birthday), a villainess with a Van in her surname (Victoria Van Thunen), a nasty Facebook post that may have incited the leap, a boy toy at the center of the love triangle with an Aryan name (Drew Heissenbuttel!), a suicide note in which the victim –Ashley Riggitano — forbids five of her friends to attend her funeral (Snap!) and, of course, a vintage NY Post hed: “Leaping Beauty.”

4. I’ve rarely –okay, I’ve never — sided with the Ku Klux Klan on anything, but I’m with them on this one. Three Memphis parks are being renamed in an effort by the city to distance itself from its Confederate past. The parks’ names are not even racist (e.g., Forrest Park is being renamed Health Sciences Park…yawn), but a nine-member city council voted 9-0 in favor of changing the names.

The Civil War, slavery, racism, etc., all of it is woven into the fabric of the South. You couldn’t have “To Kill A Mockingbird”, for example, without racism.  The names of the parks are not in themselves racist (It’s not as if any of them are named “Fighting Irish” park, after all), so I’m not sure where the pain is coming from.

 The Klan being the Klan, of course, they are planning on staging a rally to protest. Oh, and the “Exalted Cyclops” (wasn’t he in those Sinbad movies I saw as a lad? Or is that someone’s pet name for his…never mind…) is planning to attend. Guys, just make sure that the eye holes in your hoods are properly spaced.

5. So, Sports Illustrated went to Antarctica for its 2013 swimsuit issue. Let the record reflect that your “humble” author was the first SI staffer to set foot on the continent at the bottom of the earth.

My good friend Scott Dvorak, who won the 1997 edition of The Last Marathon in Antarctica.

Starting Five

1. It isn’t often ever that Honduras makes sports news, if any. If you’re like us, you know that it is located in Central America but you cannot say exactly what nations border it ( answer: Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua) and you definitely cannot pronounce the name of its capital city (Tegucigalpa). Anyway, that’s Honduras, which somehow defeated the United States, 2-1, in a World Cup qualifier yesterday afternoon in 85-degree temperatures in the city of San Pedro Sula (fyi: Honduras’ population is roughly that of New York City’s). Our favorite aspect of it is that ESPN sent Bob Ley on-site to cover the match, and Ley reported that he was reporting “from one of the most dangerous cities in the world.” ESPN could have saved a ton of money by simply sending Ley to Bridgeport.

Honduras: The Mayans lived here.

2. The top five in terms of National Signing Day hauls according to Rivals.com: Alabama, Ohio State, Notre Dame, Florida and Michigan. According to Scout.com: Ohio State, Michigan, Alabama, Notre Dame, UCLA. According to ESPN.com: Alabama, Florida, Ohio State, Notre Dame, Mississippi. What is clear. Either the Big 12 and Pac-12 are sliding or the recruiting experts fail to focus on them as well as they do the SEC and a certain Midwest triangle composed of the cities of South Bend, Columbus and Ann Arbor. Just a reminder, too, that while Alabama won the national championship, neither Notre Dame nor Ohio State lost a game last autumn. The lesson: You can talk about climate and uniforms and coaches’ personalities, but what it comes down to is this…kids want to play for a winner.

Mountainous-looking Eddie Vanderdoes, who was raised in the foothills of the Sierras, was the last 5-star to sign. The DL chose Notre Dame.

3. No. 5 Kansas, the nation’s top-ranked school a few weeks ago, loses at TCU, which entered the contest 0-8 in Big 12 play. Jayhawks coach Bill Self: “It was the worst team Kansas has ever put on the floor. Since Dr. (James) Naismith was here. I think he had some bad teams and lost to the YMCA the first couple years…For the first half, there’s not been a team play worse than that. Anywhere. Maybe Northern Illinois earlier this year.” So, if you are scoring at home, Self not only coached a team that suffered the nation’s most embarrassing defeat of the college hoops season last night, but he also dissed the YMCA, Northern Illinois and the man who invented the game of basketball.

4. Kobe tells teammate Dwight Howard, a man who missed seven games in his first seven NBA seasons (he is now in his 9th) to stop coddling that shoulder injury and play. For what it’s worth, Kobe has had fewer 82-game seasons (4) in his 17 years than Howard has (5) in his nine.

5. Congratulations to my man Tyler Bruggman, a quarterback at Phoenix Brophy Prep who signed with Washington State yesterday. Have known him since the fifth grade and he has always been perhaps the most all-around impressive young man I’ve ever met. Absolutely fantastic parents, Curt and Michelle. You may recall Arash Markazi mentioning young Tyler’s encounter with Charlie Weis before the 2006 Fiesta Bowl. Three years later, before the U.S. Army All-American Bowl, I introduced Tyler to Pat Haden (who, like Tyler, was raised in Scottsdale, Ariz., and would become a Pac-10/12 QB), who then mentioned him on-air the following day. I have no idea how successful Tyler will be as a college quarterback, but I’d pay to see him and the Pirate Captain watch film together.

Bruggman: From Brophy to Mike Leach

Also, if you did not read the link above, Bruggman was scheduled to play a high school All-Star game in Austin last Saturday, but a lady on the plane threw up on him and he in turn got sick.

Starting Five

1. It’s National Signing Day! It’s the one day of the year in college football in which just about EVERYBODY wins. Except Boise State. The Broncos never pull in a Top 10 — or even Top 20 — recruiting class, and then the following autumn Chris Petersen coaches up his team to an 11- or 12-win season. The Broncos are 84-8 (a .913 win percentage; even Knute Rockne swoons at those numbers) since Petersen arrived in 2006 and yet have never landed a top 20 class in those times. I’m not sure if ESPNU ever even mentions them on the first Wednesday of February.

Granted, the Broncos do not play in the SEC or the Big 12. But at a certain point the numbers speak for themselves. And Petersen’s record, combined with his roster’s dearth of four- and five-star talent, suggest that he is as talented a coach as exists in college football (outside of Tuscaloosa).

2. “The University of Ole Miss.” The nation’s No. 1 overall recruit, Clowney clone Robert Nkemdiche (6-5, 260), chooses “the University of Ole Miss.” Older but smaller brother Denzel Nkemdiche (5-11, 203), led the Rebels in tackles as a linebacker last season. Both Nkemdiche brothers wore white button-down shirts, red suspenders, bow ties and baseball caps at the announcement. Are they teaming up for the Rebels or for Boyz II Men?

Nkemdiche is Oxford-bound…

Boyz II Men: More likely to be sporting oxfords than playing in Oxford

3. Three-for-all in Houston, as the Rockets bury 23 three-pointers, tying the NBA record, in a 140-109 rout of the Golden State Warriors. Jeremy Lin stroked a career-high five threes while scoring 28 points, while James Harden and Chandler Parsons hit four apiece. Nine different Rockets made at least one three as Houston shot 23 of 40 from beyond the arc and scored the most points in regulation of any NBA squad this season. The most bizarre aspect of the Rockets’ deadly long range accuracy? Houston’s top three-point shooter, Carlos Delfino, sat out the contest with an elbow injury.

4. They say that there are two types of motorcyclists: those that have crashed and those who will. The same can be said for downhill ski racers. Yesterday at the World Championships in Schladming, Austria, American Lindsay Vonn tore her ACL and MCL, and suffered a “lateral tibial plateau fracture” during the Super-G event. Watch the video of her crash and we defy you not to exclaim “Ow!” at some point. You can actually hear her cry out after the initial fall. Vonn, who was airlifted from the scene, should need at least 6-8 months of recovery time, unless Tim Tebow applies a laying on of hands, in which case she will be healed instantly. She should be healthy for the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi — we don’t know how to spell it and we are still five months away, at least, from caring how to do so — but whether she will be as fearless or as fast is yet to be determined.

Not the type of air Vonn was hoping to get in Austria

“Not her face! George, tell me that her face is okay…”

5. The nation’s premier hoops conference this season? The Big Ten. Last night No. 3 Michigan slipped past No. 10 Ohio State in overtime in Ann Arbor, 76-74. It was the Wolverines’ second top-ten, Big Ten duel of the past four days (then No. 1 UM lost at No. 3 Indiana on Saturday) and its second highly enthralling contest. It was also a nice way for Wolverine coach John Beilein to celebrate his 60th birthday.

Reserves

No. 2 Florida, which as we noted two days earlier had won its past previous 10 games by an average margin of 25 points,  falls at Arkansas, 80-69. You could see this coming. Mississippi State visits Gainesville on Saturday and it’s going to be ugly.

The United States Postal Service will no longer deliver mail on Saturdays. So when should I expect my copy of The Saturday Evening Post to arrive in the mail?

Monopoly trades in the iron for a cat. Few of us will miss the iron, but why a cat? Why not a Donald Trump token?

Remember our friend Mamadou Ndiaye? The seven-foot-five high school center from Huntington Beach, Calif.? Since returning from an absence (injury? I don’t know), the UC-Irvine-bound native of Senegal has played five games. Here are his totals and, granted, he is playing a low level of competition in southern California.

Jan. 29, vs. Oxford Academy: 45 points, 15 rebounds in a 76-55 win.

Jan. 31 vs. Crean Lutheran: 40 points, 12 rebounds in an 81-65 win.

Feb. 1 vs. Servite: 34 points, 26 rebounds, 4 blocked shots in a 50-34 victory.

Feb.2 vs. Whitney: 35 points, 16 rebounds, 4 blocked shots in a 77-47 rout.

Feb. 5 vs. St. Margaret’s: 18 points, 14 rebounds in a 58-40 win.

Speaking of BoyzIIMen: Ndiaye is averaging 34.2 points and 16.6 rebounds in his last five games.

Brethren Christian’s last scheduled game before the playoffs (their record is 21-3) is tomorrow night. If I were ESPN I’d be airing it on one of my networks.

And finally, Pitt has signed a kicker named Chris Blewitt. He’s giving Dee Liner heavy competition for Most Aptly Named Player of the 2013 recruiting class.

Or would you prefer “The Power Outrage” edition? Friday Night Lights Out? Or, for you fans of ’90s Irish rock, “The Black XLVII” edition?

Starting Five

1. Jacoby Jones returns the opening kickoff of the second half of Super Bowl XLVII 109 yards (oh, 108 yards? Whatevs, NFL) to put the Baltimore Ravens up 28-6. Shortly thereafter, the Superdome is plunged into darkness, providing fans a brief reprieve from Jim Nantz and Phil Simms while Twitter experienced its own surge of one-liners. Me: “Beyonce opened for The Darkness” and “Goodell: ‘If I had a son I’d think twice about allowing him to become an electrical engineer.”

34 Minutes? Why didn’t CBS air an episode of “2 Broke Girls” in the interim?

Thirty-four minutes later play resumed and the Forty-Niners quickly put power back into the contest before ultimately succumbing, 34-31. Lots of story lines here, of course: Three consecutive and feckless pass plays from SF from the Ravens’ 6-yard line when the running game was working so well; a safety in which the Ravens held EGREGIOUSLY and no flag was thrown (granted, penalizing that play would only have resulted in the same outcome, so Baltimore had nothing to lose; maybe the NFL needs to change that rule); the shameless beatification of retiring Ray Lewis (quoth the Raven: “Nevermore will I suit up…”), an outstanding middle linebacker whose displays of evanglism run counter to his actions. Keyshawn Johnson’s comment on ESPN typifies the stupidity: “I said before the game that if the Ravens won, Ray Lewis would go down as the greatest middle linebacker of all time.” Really? Why?

You want to read a good column on Mr. Lewis? Bill Simmons asks valid questions here and presents a terrific contrarian point of view.

2. Ravens QB Joe Flacco threw three touchdown passes and no interceptions, but we are still naming Beyonce the game’s MVP for her halftime show. Even if it was more of an aerobics workout than a musical performance. Honestly, that 13-minute workout would be better for you than Zumba. Nice mini-reunion with Destiny’s Child. With pre-game performances by Alicia Keys (national anthem) and Jennifer Hudson (America the Beautiful), it was a landmark moment for African-American females, all of it taking place in the Deep South.

“I’ll take ‘Outfits the Three Tenors have Never Worn Onstage’ for $200, Alex.”

 3. Former Navy SEAL and Iraq War sniper extraordinaire-turned-best-selling author Chris Kyle and a friend are murdered at, of all places, a shooting range. Suspend your inclination for irony for the moment — one bad guy with a gun, or at least one mentally deranged guy with a gun, took down two good guys with a gun — and recognize that Kyle was actually trying to help out a fellow Iraq War vet who then turned the gun on him.

4. The “So God Made a Farmer” ad totally reinvigorates the career of Paul Harvey, which would be awesome for Paul Harvey if he had not died in 2009. It was our favorite commercial of the Super Bowl, too; except that it had existed in a slightly different form on YouTube for a couple of years already. And now you know…the rest of the story.

The Budweiser ad, in which a trainer is reunited with his Clydesdale horsey while Fleetwood Mac’s classic “Landslide” plays in the background also hit some emotional cords (althouhgh, we will admit, for the first six to seven seconds we assumed it was a Burger King commercial). A quibble and a question. The quibble: That’s not Chicago in the background. You can tell by the blue street signs in the final panoramic shot that it is likely a city in California or perhaps Arizona. The question: Was the kiss between the trainer and the colt more or less provocative than the one between Bar Refaeli and the young man who looked like an extra from “When the Whistle Blows?”  

Just close your eyes and imagine it’s Leo…or a Clydesdale

5. The Los Angeles Lakers are 2-0 without Dwight Howard. The Boston Celtics are 4-0 since Rajon Rondo was lost for the season. The Los Angeles Clippers, who earlier this season won 17 games in a row, are 5-5 without Chris Paul.

Reserves

No. 3 Indiana defeats No. 1 Michigan in a replay of the 1976 national championship game, but the team that is totally under the radar –okay, not exactly beneath the radar but certainly not garnering the national attention it should be — is Florida. The Gators raced out to a 13-point halftime lead versus No. 16 Mississippi on Saturday night before idling home to a 78-64 win.

Since losing to Kansas State on December 22, Florida has won 10 consecutive games by –are you ready for these margins? — 17, 21, 33, 22, 21, 31, 17, 35, 39 and 14. Average margin of victory? 25 points. Now just imagine if Bradley Beal had remained in Gainesville for a sophomore season.

***

The good news? We have photographic evidence of President Obama firing a shotgun. The bad news? The shotgun has now filed for unemployment.

****

Terrific job by Ed Sherman and The Sherman Report this weekend in Super Bowl media coverage. Particularly enjoyed this clip of the pregame show from Super Bowl III. Less is more, gentlemen. Less is more.

****

Why has Joe Posnanski gone from Sports Illustrated to Sports on Earth to NBC Sports all in the span of one year? Posnanski, who for years was a columnist at the Kansas City Star, where he was consistently lauded for insightful work, finally made the leap to national exposure a few years ago when he took the SI gig. The magazine and its website gave him as much of a platform as anyone there bereft of Coffee Nerdness could have, but Posnanski would leave after less than three full years.

Certainly, there was some friction over how Pos and the mag handled the Joe Paterno/Jerry Sandusky story and, for me, his November 6, 2011 column (which I can no longer find on the web) in which he recused himself from reporting on the story because he was in the midst of writing a biography on Paterno, is Posnanski’s “It depends what your definition of “is” is” moment.

Sports On Earth, which would provide Posnanski a national web platform with an exciting assemblage of talent, as well as allow him to cover his beloved baseball to his heart’s content, seemed like a wise enough move, especially since there’d been enough burned bridges at SI. But now, after less than eight months, he’s on the move again.

Some columnists are just THAT good. Posnanski, while talented, is not. Privately, some SI staffers have confided that he was a prima donna and, having worked there myself for 15 years with some of the biggest names in the business, I can tell you that almost none of them were that. Big egos? Yes. Hard to work with? Absolutely not.

There’s a certain “Aw shucks, I’m just a throwback” persona that Posnanski likes to affect in his work and writing and, as this picture attests, for his image. And I’ll be the first to admit: I hardly know him. But as tough as the media can be on a coach who leaps from job to job, there’s been very little scrutiny as to how come Posnanski has jumped from lily pad to lily pad to lily pad in the past year. And, yes, you can argue that nobody cares, but I can remind you that Richard Deitsch has more than 70,000 followers on Twitter. So, yes, people do care about what goes on in sports media.

“So God made a sports columnist…”

We are not certain what Posnanski’s role at NBC will be, but since the network has no MLB, we’re not sure what the thinking was here on either side. As for him being an on-air presence, well, you don’t have to look like Josh Elliott to appear on TV. Then again, if it was a brilliant SI senior writer that NBC was after, they should have gone harder after Jon Wertheim, who did some wonderful work for them at Wimbledon last summer.

Starting Five

1. We should all be watching, when we get the chance, Creighton’s Doug McDermott. The six-foot-eight junior from Ames, Iowa (“Ames High Aims High”….seriously, that’s the school’s motto) is averaging 23.9 points for the No. 21 Bluejays. Last night McDermott, whose father, Greg, is Creighton’s coach, had 29 points and 10 boards in a 91-77 win against No Longer Directional Missouri State. ESPN’s Jay Williams calls McDermott “the best player in the country.” Surely he is the best college basketball player to play for his pop since Pete Maravich, no?

Yes, this native Iowan-turned-Bluejay is Korveresque

2. Loss Angeles blows a 13-point, fourth quarter lead at Phoenix in Steve Nash’s return to the Valley of the Sun. Nash had just two assists as the Lakers now defer to Kobe as the point/points guard in their halfcourt offense –and, seriously, L.A. has no transition game, so that’s about it. In LA’s last four games, Kobe has 48 assists while Nash, who is No. 5 all time on the career assists list, has 14.

LA is not Nash-ville

For us, there was a telling moment late in the first quarter as the camera panned LA’s bench. There was Nash, doing what he always does when he is not in the game, sitting on the floor and staring intently at the court. Behind him, seated on a chair, center Dwight Howard was looking off to his left, away from the court, and talking to someone who was seated in the stands. Told us all we needed to know about L.A.’s dysfunction.

3. Final episode of 30 Rock, the best network sitcom of this millennium, airs tonight. This will always be our favorite scene.

4. On The Daily Show, correspondent Al Madrigal reports from Hispanic Room/His Panic Room. The moment of beauty is when Madrigal shows data that show the length of grudges (using a unit measurement of generations) by ethnicity. No. 1? Italian, followed by Irish, followed by Hispanic. “A Hispanic grudge lasts four generations,” says Madrigal. “The good news is, a Hispanic generation lasts only seven years.”

5. The New York Post reports that Dan Marino fathered a love child (why do they use that term? Isn’t “lust child” more accurate?) with a CBS staffer back in 2005. Marino will only appear on air during Super Bowl pre-game festivities for four hours on Sunday, so he probably will not have time to address this topic. By the way, the story broke on the date of Marino’s 28th wedding anniversary. Nice touch, NY Post. And, Dan? Ray Lewis thanks you.