Starting Five

1. First, the good news: Through 12 games the Charlotte Bobcats had already registered as many wins (7) as they did all of last year’s 66-game season. Last night in Oklahoma City, however, they was ambushed. The Thunder were so hot (Tropic Thunder?) that at halftime the score was 64-24. The 40-point halftime advantage was the largest such lead after 24 minutes since 1991, when the Golden State Warriors led the Sacramento Kings 88-41 at the half. Our thoughts: Was a sideline reporter on hand and did he/she inquire about halftime adjustments with Bobcat coach Mike Dunlap?

Thunderstruck: OKC leads by 40 at the half en route to a 114-69 rout.

2. The attorney most responsible for the free agency era in baseball, Marvin Miller, dies at the age of 95. In 1968 Miller negotiated the first collective bargaining agreement in MLB history, raising the minimum salary from $6,000 to $10,ooo. That’s per year, not per game.

3. Bruce Springsteen begins one of his top five all-time tunes with the lyrics, “Lights out tonight/Trouble in the heartland”, but apparently, according to the USA Today, “these Badlands start treating us good.” Personal income is up in middle America since 2007, while it is down markedly on the coasts in that same period. Why? Booming gas prices and farm goods prices, while Wall Street tanked. Personally, I don’t know how you leave “Spiderman: Turn Off The Dark” out of this equation, but that’s just me.

4. The University of Chris Fowler Colorado fires football coach Jon Embree after two seasons and a 4-21 record. The Buffs were last in the nation in Scoring Defense and Passing Efficiency Defense this season and were next-to-last in Sacks Allowed and Turnover Margin. At his press conference upon being terminated Embree, who is African-American, noted that is hard for black coaches “to get second chances.” Ten years ago it was hard for black coaches to get first chances. Embree, a CU alum, has a point that white coaches have a better chance of failing and being hired somewhere else (Hello, Charlie Weis!), but a coach of any color would have been sacked after this two-year sample.

5. Reviewer compares “Liz and Dick” to a natural disaster: “As the Red Cross hands out coffee to survivors of this Lifetime flick…” As Jimmy Kimmel said, “It’s nice to see someone other than a parole board reviewing Lindsay Lohan.”

Reserves

The BrooklyNets beat the New York Knicks in overtime in their inaugural meeting as dual, dueling denizens of New York City (the game had been scheduled for November 1, but Sandy changed all that). The larger issue here is whether Brooklyn native and resolute New York Knick fan Spike Lee will cross over from the 212 (or 917) to the 718. Our opinion: New York has already lost Fireman Ed this week. We need something to hold onto. Lee did make the best film about Brooklyn — if not all of New York City — of all time with “Do The Right Thing.”

How long until they make a movie about Maria Santos Gorrostieta?

Tomorrow night’s Powerball jackpot is currently at $425 million and growing. Psst, Congress: Don’t raise taxes, just raise the price of a Powerball ticket.

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Thomas Ricks appears on Fox News, accuses it of “operating as a wing of the Republican Party” (that’s crazytalk!), and his Benghazi interview abruptly ends.

Notre Dame’s ticket office fields 2,500 phone calls on Monday. Scalpers rejoice.

The “Ten Wildest Led Zeppelin Legends, Fact-Checked.” Why, yes, I do have time for that (and may we recommend the book “Hammer of the Gods” to anyone who loves reading about rock and roll?).

“One in ten Mexican citizens lives in the United States…” Really?

The Heisman Pundit, alias Chris Huston, has Johnny Football leading the H race over Manti Te’o with one week remaining. Let’s have them debate!

“Now get your thimble off my schnauzer!” Your daily dose of The Daily Show…

Twenty-four years ago Steve Belles was a special special (redundancy intended) teams player for Lou Holtz on the 1988 Notre Dame national championship team who had the honor of playing for the national championship in his hometown. Last weekend Belles led Hamilton High School to its fifth Division I Arizona state high school football championship in the past seven years.

Starting Five

1. Let’s begin Cyber Monday with the latest development in the Casey Anthony story. If you have forgotten, Casey Anthony is the O.J. Simpson of  filicide. A few days ago Orlando, Fla., TV station WKMG reported that detectives only searched Anthony’s Safari search engine and not her Mozilla Firefox search engine before her trial for the murder of her two year-old daughter, Caylee. Had they searched the latter, they would have seen that someone did a Google search for “fool-proof suffication” on June 16, 2008. Which happens to be the same day that Caylee Anthony died. So, yeah, that’s kind of a big cyber FAIL.

This smile says, “I do understand the term ‘double jeopardy.'”

2. The New York Giants are up 38-10 in the waning moments of their Faith Hill Night in America contest versus the Green Bay Packers. Tight end Martellus Bennett runs a short slant-in route over the middle, but Eli Manning overthrows him. The ball has already sailed past Bennett when rookie Packer safety Jerron McMillian buries the crown of his helmet into a defenseless Bennett’s facemask. Penalty, but who cares? McMillian’s coaches are probably happy that they have an “enforcer” in the deep middle and they know that upcoming teams –and their receivers — will see that tape. If the NFL is truly serious about making the game safer — and let’s face it, the most dangerous collisions occur between the hash marks on passing routes — then both players AND their coaches must be fined for such hits. Yellow flags will not suffice. Bennett said afterward, “It just knocked the wind out of me. I got pissed off. I wanted to kick his ass.”

3. Fortunately, Martellus Bennett was not injured too badly. If he had been, he may not have been able to save a fan’s life immediately after the game.

4. Johnny Manziel or Manti Te’o? Let’s first agree that both are deserving. In Johnny Football’s favor: in his first season, and in Texas A&M’s first season in the SEC, he broke Cam Newton’s record for total offense yardage with exactly 4,600 yards. And that’s without the benefit of playing in the SEC Championship Game, which Newton (who was also in his first season as a full-time FBS QB, it should be noted) had. If you want to quibble, you can point out that Manziel faced two FCS schools (Te’o, zero) but he did not play all that many plays versus either. As for Te’o, Irish coach Brian Kelly said after Saturday night’s 22-13 win at USC, “If a guy like Manti Te’o is not going to win the Heisman, they should just make it an offensive award.” He’s the best player on the nation’s No. 2 scoring defense, which is the number one indicator of national champions. Since the award was first given to Jay Berwanger in 1935, only one exclusively non-offensive player (Charles Woodson, CB, Michigan) has won it. And even Woodson returned punts.

5. This is rich. The 1/2 man in “Two And a Half Mennnnnnn”, Jake (Angus T. Jones), appears in a video imploring viewers to stop watching the No. 1 rated sitcom on television. “‘Please stop watching ‘Two and a Half Men.’ I’m on ‘Two and a Half Men’ and I don’t wanna be on it. Please stop watching it. Please stop filling your head with filth.” Not quite a “tiger blood” quip, but we bet it got Chuck Lorre’s attention. Jones earns $300,000 per episode. That surely got George Costanza’s attention.

“Filth, filth, filth, filth/ Filthy, filth, filth, filth…”

Reserves

Let’s face it: Cyborg Monday would be better.

Spencer Hall of “Every Day Should Be Saturday” tweeted aloud who Fireman Ed is this morning. Surely you j-e-s-t, jest! Jest! Jest!

Mika Brzezinski, after U.S. congressman Eric Cantor (Rep.) appeared on “Morning Joe” and dodged every fiscal cliff question tossed at him as if he were Neo in “The Matrix”: “Thank you for answering our questions 45 different ways.”

More on Casey Anthony/Caylee Anthony. This is one of the more educational scenes to have aired on “The Newsroom” and it’s the first scene in which we actually thought, “Okay, maybe Don Keefer (Thomas Sadoski)  is a bad boyfriend, but he’s not necessarily a bad guy.”

Did you read that WKMG piece on Anthony’s defense team? They knew the entire trial about the “fool-proof suffication” search and were just waiting for the prosecution to pounce on them with it. “We thought they were going to sandbag us,” one attorney said. Imagine being a prosecutor on that case, all the man-hours you put into it, and only learning last week that the investigators failed to do something as simple as pore over multiple search engines. That said, this is a terrific ad for Safari.

Air New Zealand unveils a Hobbit-themed plane. Making twice-daily non-stops between Middle Earth and Sauron. 

Plenty of leg room

Seriously, who’s the producer at NBC Sports with the leg fetish? Have you seen the opening for Football Night in America?

Does Florida have an argument? Well, the 11-1 Gators have impressive victories over Texas A&M, South Carolina, LSU and Florida State, all of whom are ranked in the top 13 in the BCS standings. Georgia, also 11-1 and like the Gators, in the SEC East, has one impressive win. Over Florida. The Gators have the more worthy overall resume, while the Dawgs have the head-to-head victory on their side. Our friend Stewart Mandel at SI.com argues that this illustrates the value of a four-team playoff, but we only see more chaos. If Notre Dame, Alabama, Georgia and Florida were involved, whither Oregon? And Kansas State? After all, both are/probably will be 11-1 as well.

Do you know who this is?

????

Hints: He rushed for a total of 744 yards, or 248 yards per game, in his final three outings. He finished the season as the nation’s leading rusher. It says something about how much college football has transformed in the past decade or two that very few people outside of the Pac-12 recognize the name Ka’Deem Carey. He’s a sophomore, a local kid from Tucson Canyon Del Oro High School, who finished the season with a 146 yard rushing average. Carey destroyed Colorado, the most putrid AQ school in the nation this season, for 366 yards rushing and five touchdowns earlier this month. Honestly, we don’t even remember hearing about that (East Coast bias!). The Buffs, by the way, finished last in the nation in two defensive categories, although rushing defense was not one of them.

Notre Dame nose tackle Louis Nix, all 340 pounds of him, after the Irish stopped USC on four plays from the one-yard line (USC joined Stanford and Washington as having first-and-goals from the 1 versus the Irish since ’09 and not scoring): “They got to earn that shit!” That belongs on a chocolate-colored T-shirt.

Starting Five

1. On the 49th anniversary of this awful day in Dallas, the Cowboys fell at home to the Washington Redskins, 38-31, and the Longhorns lost in Austin, 20-13, to TCU. At least it was a Lone Star State native, RG3, who beat the Cowboys. Redskin coach referred to his rookie QB, a Copperas Cove native, as “Cool Hand Luke”. Griffin admitted that he had no idea who Cool Hand Luke was — the film came out in 1967, or 23 years before RG3 did — but when asked what he thought of the CHL comparison, RG3 smiled and said, “He must be pretty cool.”

Cool Hand Luke = RG3 >>>>>>> Other Side of the Pillow

2. The New York Post, as it so often does, put it best: “BUTT UGLY.”  The New York Jets fell behind 35-3 at Met Life Stadium to the New England Patriots before losing 49-19. This was both the nadir and the defining game of the Mark Sanchez era in New York, with the quintessential moment being Sanchez rotating the wrong way on a dive play, then heading upfield, being tackled by the derriere of offensive lineman Brandon Moore, fumbling the ball, and having Patriot DB Steve Gregory scoop it up for a score. It was the Jets’ Joe Pisarcik moment, and you will be seeing it replayed for years, accompanied by “Yakety Sax.” Gregory, by the way, is a Staten Island native who had an interception and two fumble recoveries last night. Talk about a first responder.

No caption necessary

3. NFL, which stands for “Now Fully Legislated.” The Houston Texans steal a touchdown, and a victory, from the Detroit Lions via an arcane and asinine rule which penalizes a coach for tossing a challenge flag on a touchdown play. All touchdowns are reviewed, so the red flag is superfluous. We get it. And we can even understand penalizing said coach — in this case, Jim Schwartz — a certain distance of yardage because it can be seen, if you squint, as unsportsmanlike conduct. However, to incorporate, as part of the penalty, the decision that the play will not be reviewed, has no basis in logic or reason. It’s like Jerry Seinfeld returning the jacket to the department store. Reason you are returning the jacket? “Spite.”

4. Mexico would like to change its name to… “Mexico.” We think it should change its name to “America’s 51st state.” Just think of the coastline property you could buy. Of course, the problem lies with the fact that it would be much easier for Shawshank penitentiary officials to track down Andy Dufresne, and who wants that?

5. The Five M’s of the 2012 Heisman Trophy: Manti, Manziel, Marqise, Miller, manana. Right now it’s Johnny Manziel’s to win, but if either Manti Te’o or Marqise Lee has a headline-worthy effort in tomorrow’s prime-time Notre Dame-USC game, one of them could wrestle it from Johnny Football. Braxton Miller has been spectacular all season for bowl-ineligible (but they didn’t need to be this sesason…dopes!) and undefeated Ohio State, who should roll Michigan in Columbus. Miller’s candidacy is compromised by the game’s noon start — fair or not, it’s true — and the Buckeyes’ BCS pariah status this season.

Reserves

We could be looking at the largest Powerball jackpot ever tomorrow night, with an annuity of $320 million. MediumHappy has a $5 stake in the game.

On Thanksgiving morning, 1887 (Nov. 23), a group of Notre Dame students met a group of Michigan students who were happy to introduce them to the game of football. The Michigan students had been on the way to play Northwestern when the Wildcats canceled. Michigan got off the train in South Bend and the rest is history. They played on the campus of Notre Dame and Michigan won, 8-0. Afterward they all sat down together for a meal and then the Michigan students took a train back home. It’s all very Pilgrims and Indians in retrospect, isn’t it? Happy 125th birthday, Notre Dame football.

It’s a long way from here to Manti Te’o

Jesse Palmer apologizing for flashing “Horns Down” is far more offensive than Jesse Palmer flashing hands down. He is handsome, though.

Twitter pans Matt Lauer’s co-hosting of the Macy’s Parade, particularly his mispronunciation of Broadway standard “‘S Wonderful”. Then again, Mr. Lauer was likely well-compensated for his hosting duties. Nice work if you can get it (Did you see what we did there?).

Yet another hour of Lauer

Let’s move from Savannah Guthrie to Arlo Guthrie. After all, he is the one Guthrie who we have always associated with Thanksgiving day. If you’ve never heard this “Alice’s Restaurant”, which clocks in at 18:34, now is as good a time as any to meet it. This was a staple for us on Thanksgiving morning back when we used to listen to terrestrial radio.

New York City had a serial killer. Salvatore Perrone, 64, killed three shopkeepers in Brooklyn whose common thread is that their business addresses included the number “8.” Our Russian barber had this to say about Perrone, who was apprehended on Wednesday: “You know what they’d do to this guy in Russia? They’d split his torso open with a knife, pour salt inside, wait a few minutes, and then set him on fire.” Somewhere in Minsk there is an American barber saying, “They’d find him a defense attorney, who’d immediately ask for an extension, and even after the trial — if he were found guilty… or not guilty by reason of insanity– they’d lay down so many appeals that it would cost the taxpayer hundreds of thousands of dollars.” ” America, F___ Yeah!” (don’t open this link, mom)

Headline on espn.com: “Wizards Lose to Bobcats, 92-76, Wizards Nation Reacts.” There’s a Wizards nation? Really? Perennially poor Wizards are 0-10. Their consistency is astounding.

Film we are excited to see this weekend? “Life of Pie Traynor.” What happens when a young (Cleveland?) Indian boy finds himself marooned on a boat in the middle of the ocean with a Hall of Fame third baseman for the Pittsburgh Pirates? Or is all of it just a hallucination?

And yet he looks like a Detroit Tiger

So it has been nearly two weeks and there is still no name for the USC football manager at the heart of Deflate-gate? What’s happening here? Where is Shelley Smith? Where is The Daily Trojan? Where, pray tell, is Tim Tessalone? “Markinson’s gone. There is no Markinson.” By the way, nice touch with the “Supreme Court” hoops top. That’s the kind of touch that makes a good movie a great movie. And we don’t know if this makes us Daniel Kaffee or Joann Galloway, but we strongly suspect that it’s the latter. Because we surely would do dumbass things such as telling the judge that we “strenuosly” object.

“Did Kiffin order the Code Red?”

Starting Five

1. Jack Taylor, who was arguably the hottest member of Duran Duran (Whaaaaaat?), scores an NCAA-record 138 points as Grinnell (3-0) beats Faith Baptist Bible College (0-5), 179-104. We were able to hang with head coach Dave Arsenault (and assistant coach David Arseneault) last March because our editor at The Daily, Chris D’Amico, was cool enough to know a good story when he saw one. The story here is not about Taylor, but about Arsenault’s hoops philosophy. Against this same team last season Grinnell had an NCAA-record 19 different players make at least one three-pointer. It had been a pre-game goal of team.

Taylor will make his feature film debut in “Hoosiers 2: Three-Point Boogaloo”

2. Boxer Hector “Macho” Camacho, 50, is on life support after being shot in the face in Puerto Rico. Camacho, 79-6-3, won world titles in three classes in the 1980s. He was seated in the passenger seat when a gunman approached the vehicle and opened fire. The driver, Mojica Moreno, was mortally wounded. Police told espn.com that Moreno had nine bags of cocaine in his possession — and a tenth one open– at the time of the shooting. UPDATE: Camacho has been taken off life support and is brain dead, per ESPN.

3. YouTube sensation Sam Gordon gets her (first?) moment of fame, with a Wheaties cover and an appearance on both “Good Morning, America” (where host Josh “Misdemeanor” Elliott unabashedly flirted with the nine year-old girl gridiron sensation) and ESPN “SportsCenter.” For those keeping score, Harvard baseball team mash-up of “Call Me Maybe” has 16.8 million views, while this video of Gordon running to daylight has 951,000 views.

Sam Gordon: Gary Barnett has already said she cannot play for him.

4. “And it’s one, two, three/What are they fightin’ for/Don’t ask us, we don’t give a damn/Next stop is the Holy Land…” Okay, so we tweaked the lyrics of “I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixing-To-Die-Rag”, the Vietnam era protest tune by Country Joe and the Fish, but we still have to ask: Isn’t everyone in the Middle East tired of fighting? We know: it’s a naive question. Still… And another thing: Country Joe was pretty badass.

5. Today’s non-story of the day: USC quarterback Max Wittek saying, “We’re going to win this ballgame.” Of course ESPN turns this into Joe Namath’s Super Bowl III guarantee because breathless, young, ambitious ESPN producers who kneel before a statue of Jamie Horowitz each night before they hit the pillow (or is that “the other side of the pillow?”) have no time for nuance or perspective or insight — that won’t reel in viewers!  Wittek spoke those words on ESPNRadio Los Angeles and bully for him, before making his first start, for expressing confidence and letting his teammates know that he believes in them. That’s exactly what he should say, isn’t it? Our thoughts on pre-game guarantees go thusly: As soon as you’re willing to put $1,000 down on that statement, we’ll take you seriously ($100,000 if you’re a pro athlete).

The Max Factor: USC’s quarterback says, “Fight on, Irish.”

Reserves

Our 2 1/2 cents (“ceennnnnts”) on the Irish-Trojan tussle to take place on Saturday night. Some unbeatens enter a game like this feeling as if they have something to protect (witness No. 1 Notre Dame, then 11-0, defending national champions and owners of the nation’s longest win streak, 23 games, heading to Miami to face the No. 7 Hurricanes). Others, such as the ’88 Irish, have yet to taste such success and are hungry to do so. That squad also traveled on Thanksgiving weekend, then to face No. 2 USC, and obliterated the Trojans. The game was not as close as the 27-10 final score. ESPN sent Tom “Teardrop” Rinaldi to South Bend this week and the angle by Rinaldi, a former South Bend-based broadcaster, was the pressure on the Irish now that they’re No. 1.

As Col. Potter used to say, “Horse hockey!”

Sherm often has this reaction to Rinaldi’s pieces

There’s no pressure on the Irish. This entire season is gravy, having gone from unranked to No. 1 in a dozen weeks. The older players on this squad (Te’o, Theo, etc.) experienced too much humiliation earlier in their careers to shrink from this moment now. The younger players (Golston, Nix) are having too much fun to care. Did you ever head into a final exam after really studying diligently for it and saying to yourself, “I got this?” It might’ve been a tough exam, but you knew you’d prepared adequately enough (“I can do stoichiometry in my frickin’ sleep!”)

USC will be this easy for the Irish

Anyway, that’s how we think Notre Dame feels about USC. They’ve studied hard and they simply cannot wait to take the exam, then head back to the dorm and crack open a few Keystone Lights. After all, they’ll have about 46 days until their next final.

This only LOOKS like Jake Golic. Trust us, it’s Keith Stone.

Will Notre Dame win? I’m not going to go Wittek on you, but what I do know is that they won’t feel any pressure. They’ll be chomping at the bit to play this game. May the better team win.

“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”

So began Abraham Lincoln’s “Gettysburg Address” on the afternoon of November 19, 1863 at the dedication of the Soldier’s National Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Lincoln spoke for just over two minutes, but it’s regarded as one of the greatest speeches in the history of the country as Lincoln perfectly summarized what it meant to be a free and equal country. It clearly didn’t resonate with U.S. citizens, as “Lincoln” finished a distant third at the box office this past weekend, behind “The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2,” and “Skyfall.”

 “Well, as near as I can figure out, it’s ’cause I, uh, fight and fuck too much.” Well, it wasn’t the Gettysburg Address, but Jack Nicholson’s portrayal of Randall McMurphy in, “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” was nearly as arresting. The movie, which hit screens today in 1975, was just the second to win the five main Academy Awards: Best Movie, Best Actor, (tell me you don’t see Tom Cruise at the 1:28 mark) Best Actress, Best Director and Best Screenplay.

Today in Pullman, Washington, in 1973, Steve Prefontaine won his third NCAA Cross Country title. Prefontaine had won it as a freshman and as a sophomore, but didn’t compete in 1972 because he’d trained for the Olympics instead.

U2 was at, for my money, their creative peak when they released, “Achtung Baby” today in 1991. The album was universally acclaimed by critics who praised the step forward for the band while also congratulating them on dropping some of their pretension. The album landed at #63 on Rolling Stones 2012 list of the 500 best albums of all-time. The album is full of single hits: “Mysterious Ways,” “Even Better Than the Real Thing,” “One,” “Tryin’ To Throw Your Arms Around the World,” “The Fly,” and “Who’s Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses?”

The Barenaked Ladies finally broke through in the United States with one of the best albums to ever come across the border, their live disc, “Rock Spectacle” hit shelves today in 1996. “Brian Wilson,” “Jane,” “What a Good Boy,” “The Old Apartment,” and “If I Had $1,000,000 were all hits.

Today in 1978 the Giants tried a hand off when they really shouldn’t have. The “Miracle at the Meadowlands” saw Herm Edwards scoop up a fumble and take it all the way on the game’s last play. You play to win the game, indeed.

Today in 1980 CBS banned the new Calvin Klein jeans ad starring Brooke Shields. On Klein’s 38th birthday nonetheless.

The Indiana Pacers and Detroit Pistons brawled tonight in 2004. It just so happened to be on my first month on the NBA beat at ESPN. It was a long night.

Birthday wishes to Meg Ryan (51) and Jodie Foster (50) and their five best:

Ryan:

1. When Harry Met Sally

2. Sleepless in Seattle

3. You’ve Got Mail

4. Top Gun

5. When a Man Loves a Woman

Foster:

1. Silence of the Lambs

2. Taxi Driver

3. The Accused

4. Nell

5. Foxes

— Bill Hubbell