Starting Five

1. We Are Marshall…Mathers

Motor City native Eminem, hip-hop’s great white hope, visits Brent Musburger and Kirk Herbstreit in the ESPN booth during halftime of Michigan’s 41-30 defeat of Notre Dame. Brent, 74, appeared much more into it than Herbie, 44, at one point even asking Mr. Mathers about the 4.5-point spread in the following day’s Vikings-Lions game. As our friend at Sports Illustrated, Stewart Mandel, tweeted, “BRENT MUSBURGER TALKING BETTING LINES WITH EMINEM MY LIFE IS COMPLETE.”

My quibble –and yes, I always seem to have one — is that if Brent asked Eminem how long it takes to shoot a music video, then obviously his longtime man in the booth, George Hill, failed to adequately prep Brent for this exchange. Questions Brent could’ve/should’ve asked:

–– Who shot Biggie?

—So this Devin Gardner…isn’t he f’shizzle?

—If you could trade moms with LeBron James, would you?

Anyway, here’s Richard Deitsch on how the interview came about (it’s called cross-promotion) and note well that Slim Shady was simply messing with everyone during the interview, taking on the persona of his character.

And to think Jack White didn’t even go to college

Honestly, though, I feel that ESPN missed an opportunity. The real Detroit-raised musician who should appear either at halftime of a game in Ann Arbor or on the set of College Game Day is Jack White, front man for the dearly defunct White Stripes. His band’s signature tune, “Seven Nation Army”, has in the past decade become the de facto fight song of nearly every student section in America, including Michigan’s.

2. Cougar Town

Cox almost got the score of the BYU-Texas game correct.

The Cougars of BYU embarrassed Mack Brown and the No. 15 Longhorns, 41-20, in Provo.

The Cougars of Washington State humiliated Lane Kiffin and No. 25 USC, 10-7, in Los Angeles.

Both Brown, who led Texas to the 2005 national championship by beating USC in the BCS NCG –a game that was deservedly hyped and more than lived up to it…I’m glad I was there as Vince Young sprinted past me and into the arms of colleague Austin Murphy moments after crossing the goal line — and Kiffin are gone. Not officially. But Saturday night featured atrocities that neither coach will overcome.

Texas, with its array of four- and five-star recruits, surrendered a school-record 550 yards rushing, most of them to a pair of dudes named Taysom Hill (the pride of Pocatello, a QB, rushed for 259) and Jamaal Williams (182). Asked immediately after the game if defensive coordinator Manny Diaz would be coaching next week, Brown actually replied, “I’ll have to look at the tape.”

South by Southworst is the direction Texas is heading under Mack…

There it is, folks: A vote of diffidence.

Not surprisingly, the following day Brown canned Diaz, an erstwhile production assistant at ESPN, who was always an outlier as a hire.

Brown fired Diaz because he cannot fire himself. Well, he can but he won’t. Mack Brown is simply too fond of Mack Brown to do that.

Meanwhile in Los Angeles, the Trojans threw for an anemic total of 54 yards and one touchdown (alas, that touchdown was a pick-six for Washington State) in a feckless 10-7 defeat to the unranked Cougars. Granted, USC is without two of its top tailbacks, Silas Redd and DJ Morgan, but the quarterback combo of Max Wittek and Cody Kessler was horrible. Five-star true freshman Max Browne is waiting in the wings, but he never saw the field. Is he THAT unprepared or is Kiffin saving him?

We know that Matt Barkley is tough to replace. However, you’re Lane Kiffin, supposed quarterback guru. You coach in the midst of arguably the most fertile soil for prep quarterbacks in the country. You’ve had eight months to groom a successor. Oh, and if all else fails, quarterback guru George Whitfield is apparently doing your job better than you are one county south. So, figure it out.

“We obviously weren’t well prepared on offense,” said Kiffin after the loss.

No. And that’s your job (curiously, USC actually leads the nation in rushing defense [Texas is 123rd out of 125] and is No. 7 overall; so I sense some coming friction between the two units).

And you can just imagine when Lane arrived home in Manhattan Beach early Sunday morning. There’s Layla with a map of the USA spread out on the kitchen table, saying, “I am NEVER moving to Starkville! Daddy was right; I should have married one of the Stoops brothers.”

Dig it: There are about eight schools that traditionally are heads and shoulders above the rest and should never come close to being mediocre. In no particular order they are Texas, USC, Michigan, Alabama, Notre Dame, Oklahoma, Nebraska and Ohio State.

That’s it. That’s college football’s Bel Air. Other schools approach this summit (Florida, Georgia, Penn State), but that’s the elite eight. Two of them are currently residing outside the Top 25 and have been average for more than a year. I know that USC is dealing with sanctions (its own fault, by the way), but that’s no excuse for Saturday night’s performance. For all the perfromances since mid-October of last season, in fact.

Mack and Lane are gone. Now it’s just a matter of when.

3. Actually, the Bucs Stopped There

Pittsburgh is sliding alright…

Maybe we should call them the Pittsburgh Pyrites, as in “fool’s gold?” Last Thursday Sports Illustrated placed the Bucs on their cover in tribute to a once-proud small-market franchise finally, after a two-decade dormancy, returning to relevance. Pittsburgh was 81-57. As Yinzers know, Pittsburgh’s last non-losing season was in 1992 (96-66).

So what happens? The Pirates have lost four straight since that cover appeared. The SI Cover Jinx lives. Long live the jinx.

4. Breaking Bald: Walter White Cries “Uncle!”

So am I to make of this that “The Newsroom” stole Vince Gilligan’s wasteland pose idea?

This final half-season of “Breaking Bald” has played out like the final table at The World Series of Poker. The pretenders have been eliminated and now it’s just the dudes with the deepest chip stacks seeing who will be the first to call a bluff or go all-in.

Kudos to Hank for going all-in with a pair of threes last night. He’s got shinola on his brother-in-law, but concocts a scheme to A) get Ewell to talk and then, using what he’s learned B) flush Walt out. Brilliant, and I never knew that Hank had it in him. Better yet that he beat Walt at his own game, since Walt had just attempted to flush out Jesse “He’s like family to me” Pinkman.

SPOILER ALERT: So not only does Walt lead Hank and Jesse to the buried treasure on an Indian reservation (actually, out there we refer to them as “pueblos”, Vince Gilligan; I spent one of the best years of my life living right in that ‘hood), but as he speeds there he unintentionally confesses to the murders that he has committed.

It’s time for Walt to fold, and so he does.

Except that Hank may have slow-played this hand just a littttttttle bit too long –did you really need to call the wife? — and here comes Todd’s uncle over the top with a pair of fours. Which in this hand, is just enough.

Fascinating final half hour last night, and as anyone who watched knows, it’s not over. Why did Walt’s uncle and his Neo-Nazi pals instigate a shootout when their prized meth-cook lies helpless in a car between them and their intended targets? I dunno, I’ve never stared down the barrel of a gun. But we’re in Custer’s Last Stand range now. Not all of them are getting back to the Duke City.

Anyway,  last night it all came down to a perverse interpretation of the wisdom of “All The President’s Men”: follow the money.

5. The Annotated Newsroom: Election Night, Part 1

Would this make Jim or Neil the Jesse Pinkman character? Or is it Mac?

In which we enumerate and expound upon the manifold pop culture and other references in the previous night’s episode of Aaron Sorkin’s HBO dramedy. I must say that my favorite scene involved Mac and Slumdog, particularly when she asks if he was being sarcastic with that “geopolitical reference to colonialism” and he replies that he wasn’t. Watch the camera catch his eyes look away. That’s subtle, but intended for our benefit. Of course he was being sarcastic. More below.

1. “There is no bright side, Father Flanagan!”

Charlie Salinger is making a reference to “Boys Town”, the 1938 film classic that starred Spencer Tracy as real-life eternal optimist priest Fr. Edward Flanagan. Our protagonist headed up a real-life Omaha-based orphanage for underprivileged lads before the advent of Molly and meth.

2. “Did you want to look like Joey Heatherton with that haircut?”

Word is that Joey was a singer, though I can’t recall any of the tunes.

Maggie Jordan is now the world’s largest transmitter of passive-aggressive behavior and at this moment she takes a jab from her ex-boyfriend, Don, who compares her spiked ‘do to that of the Sixties sex goddess. I think I’ve mentioned Joey Heatherton on this blog before. If you were alive in the Sixties and early Seventies, she was unforgettable. I’m sorry, Marcia Gay Harden, but Joey Heatherton, now THERE was “liquid sex.”

3. “King George forgave America in less time…”

Mac notes to Will that a long-dead monarch from her homeland, King George III, got over the colonies sleeping with France faster than Will has with her sleeping with her ex-boyfriend. But did the U.S. lie to him?

4. “It’s like an orgy with college football on TV and a sale of Christian Louboutin…”

Well, the college football is all about Will (I like him even more now), while Christian Louboutin is a reference to a French shoe and handbag designer. I had to look that one up.

5. “John Milton, Charles Darwin, Jane Goodall, Stephen Hawking, E.M. Forster…”

Cambridge. This institution and its centuries-old rival, Oxford, are proof that Harvard and Yale are just posers.

Mac, upset that Wikipedia has erroneously identified her as the former president of the Oxford Union when she was in fact the president of Cambridge Union, begins name-dropping Cambridge alums (Oh yeah, Mac? Knute Rockne, George Wendt, Nicholas Sparks and a character from “Lost”, so there…). Anyway, you’ve got the dude who wrote “Paradise Lost” (Milton) and the dude who begat the Theory of Evolution (Darwin), for beginners. My favorite moment is when Will sounds annoyed at the name-dropping and asks, “They teach you that at Oxford?”

The University of Cambridge, by the way, was founded in 1209. The University of Oxford was founded earlier. No one can agree on an exact date, but it appears that the ink on the Magna Charta was still drying when they  did so.

5. “47%”

A reference to Mitt Romney’s infamous quote: “There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That’s an entitlement.”

6. The Mac-Slumdog Exchange.

Slumdog, a.k.a. Neal, a.k.a. Dev Patel, is my favorite character on the show. I love his mannerism of scratching the back of his head when he is flummoxed as he sits there and thinks, I left Mumbai to be the smartest person in a newsroom of people who have no clue how to live their personal lives much less handle pressure? Now I know how Apu felt when dealing with Homer Simpson.

Anyway, last night Mac, who is English, loses sight of the ball during election night as she becomes obsessed with correcting the error on her Wikipedia page, and she enlists Slumdog, who is of Indian heritage, to fix it for her. The following exchange ensues:

Dev Patel kills it weekly in Aaron Sorkin’s universe.

Slumdog: “I know how you feel.”

Mac: “I don’t think you do. Because no one’s out there saying you were president of the Oxford Union when you were president of the Cambridge Union, the greatest debating society in the history of the (Not Safe For Phyllis word) kingdom, and that kingdom’s been around a long time.”

Slumdog: “Don’t I know it.”

Mac: “I don’t even know if that was a sarcastic geopolitical reference to colonialism or not.”

Slumdog: “It wasn’t.” (but it was)

(a few more lines, then…)

Mac: “Ruling India was wrong.”

Slumdog: “Well, it’s a little la–”

Mac: “I know!”

Remote Patrol

Iggles at Redskins; Texans at Chargers

ESPN 6:55 p.m.

Shouldn’t a guy named Watt be playing for the team named Chargers?

Of course the WWL must hype RG3 versus Chip Kelly’s Hyperloop offense, but I’m looking forward to seeing Houston’s J.J. Watt, the NFL’s Defensive Player of the Year, in the nightcap from San Diego.

Starting Five

1. Peyton, Denver: Hot, Hot, Hot.

John Elway wore 7; Peyton Manning threw 7…TD passes.

The Mile High City tied a114 year-old  mercury record for the month of September, hitting 97 degrees earlier in the afternoon. Then Bronco quarterback Peyton Manning went out and became the first player since the AFL-NFL merger in 1970 to toss seven touchdown passes in a game, which ties the NFL record. The last player to do so? Joe Kapp of the Minnesota Vikings in 1969.

The others?

Y.A. Tittle, New York Giants, 1962.

George Blanda, Houston Oilers, 1961.

Adrian Burk, Philadelphia Eagles, 1954.

Sid Luckman, Chicago Bears, 1943.

You may recognize the names Kapp, Tittle, Blanda and Luckman. Three are members of the Pro Football Hall of Fame, as Manning one day will be, while Kapp is an eccentric figure whom Sports Illustrated once labeled in a cover story “The Toughest Chicano” (take that, Aaron Hernandez).

Burk is not in the Hall of Fame, but he’s worth learning about. Upon retirement he became an attorney and an NFL referee. Burk actually worked the game in which Kapp threw seven TD passes. More memorably, he was the back judge for the Oakland Raiders-Pittsburgh Steelers 1972 playoff game, the unforgettable Immaculate Reception game. Burk was the first referee to signal Touchdown as Harris crossed the goal line.

Burk (63) trailing Franco, as is Phil Villapiano of the Raiders.

And now you know…the rest of the story. I’m Paul Harvey, good day.

2. Hello Kitties

Scarier than Godzilla? A Japanese island overrun by furry, helplessly cute kitties! Cat-astrophic.

Interesting piece in The Daily Beast about Tashirojima, an island off the coast of Japan ( itself an island) where kitty cats outnumber people by a four to one ratio. This is also the case in many apartments in Manhattan, but hey, who wants to write that piece? My favorite part of the story is that only one of the island’s 100 humans is below the age of 45, so let the old cat lady stereotypes commence.

Look at it from the kitties’ perspective, though. Tashirojima is a fishing village (yum!) where dogs reportedly are banned. This is cat heaven.

3. Not Feeling Minnesota

Marge Gunderson of “Fargo”, which DOES take place in Minnesota, even though the titular city is in North Dakota.

So Katie Heaney of Buzzfeed.com authors a piece titled “The 29 Most Minnesotan Things That Ever Happened” but there’s brushback after a savvy Minneapolis weekly reveals that many of the items in her piece did not actually take place in Minnesota. We reached out to Miss Heaney –yes, actual first-hand reportage here on MH, which may be a first– and to her credit she replied promptly and politely (now THAT is Minnesotan).  “We did add a correction!” Heaney tweeted. ” I implied images were representative but should have made that clearer in subtitle originally.”

The heck do ya mean?

4. A Second Cat Item? Seriously?!? WTF (Way Toomany Felines)!

Comin’ for a caiman.

When the more popular blogs find this, I know they’ll run it immediately, so I thought I’d take it now. A spectacular photo journal of a jaguar attacking a caiman in Brazil. I took this from The Huffington Post, which took it from visionarywild.com, which is a very cool site. You have to wonder if the photographer, Justin Black, who founded visionarywild.com, ever stopped to think, How safe am I if that jaguar was able to sneak up on a caiman?

5. Why SI Was Wrong

Notre Dame-Michigan, the beginning.

Two days ago Sports Illustrated senior writer Michael Rosenberg posted a story, in advance of tomorrow night’s prime-time Notre Dame-Michigan contest, titled “Michigan-Notre Dame Rivalry Was Always About the Money.” In the piece, which is factually accurate, Rosenberg attests that the rivalry was born, circa 1978, because both schools were looking to increase revenue. Twice in the piece Rosenberg, a Detroit-based writer, notes as an aside that Notre Dame and Michigan had pre-1978 history. He points out that they hadn’t played for years due to a feud dating back to the time of Fielding Yost, Fritz Crisler (both Michigan men) and Knute Rockne, and that they’d played nine times between 1887 and 1909.

Of course, this is like me writing a summary of Michael Jackson’s career and noting that “he’d done some decent things musically before the release of ‘Thriller’.” It’s like discussing the fact that Sylvester Stallone has written a movie that will be released this fall (he has, actually) and noting as an aside that Stallone has “dabbled in screen-writing before.” Um, that would be Rocky. In short, Are you F’ing kidding me, Mr. Rosenberg and Sports Illustrated?

Worse, yesterday Rosenberg’s colleague at SI, Pete Thamel, one of the nation’s most respected college sports reporters and writers (at least until last fall’s Manti Te’o debacle), tweeted, “The great @Rosenberg_Mike gives us the real story behind ND-Michigan. Great history weaved in here.”

I don’t mind if Joe Tailgate gets it wrong, or fails to understand a story in context. I do mind, though, when a pair of SI senior writers do, because the net effect is that a myth is promulgated.

Michigan-Notre Dame was not always about the money. It was always about the hegemony.

Was Rosenberg’s story factually incorrect? No.

But to understand the Notre Dame-Michigan rivalry from 1978 is to purely not understand it or why it so shaped not just both school’s futures, but the entirety of college football.

To begin: To live well is to eat well, and to eat well is to eat Italian. Similarly, to understand America is to know college football, and to know college football is to know Notre Dame (KNOW, not “love”). If you cannot get on board with that, stop reading: I can’t help you.

Notre Dame’s first football game –in fact its first three– were all against Michigan, all defeats. The inaugural contest, played on Thanksgiving morning, 1887, was an 8-0 loss. The two played twice in 1888 before the Irish finally broke through and beat Harvard Prep School (Ill.) for the first win in program history.

Notre Dame and Michigan would meet eight times between 1887 and 1908, with Michigan winning all eight times by a combined score of 121-16. To be fair to the South Bend-based school (not yet known as the Fighting Irish), they did a number on Northwestern Law School (20-0), Illinois Cycling Club (18-2), Highland Views (82-0), St. Viator (60-0), Kirksville Osteopath (28-0) and Physicians and Surgeons (88-0) during this same period.

Then, in 1909, Notre Dame beat Michigan, 11-2, and Wolverine coach Fielding Yost said, “Waaaaaaait a minute.”

Fielding Yost

Now, understand, Yost was not used to losing. Between 1901-1905 Michigan went 55-1-1, including a 49-0 demolition of Stanford in the inaugural Rose Bowl in 1902.

The two schools would not play again until the midst of World War II, meeting twice, in 1942 and 1943 (each side won once). Then, except for some highly secretive games that were only televised in upstate New York, apparently, the two schools would not meet until 1978. Which is where Mr. Rosenberg’s narrative begins.

The story of how they did NOT meet and how that altered the entire landscape of college football, THAT is the essence of the rivalry.

As briefly as possible: Yost did not appreciate an upstart program from a private, Catholic institution in his own backyard. Further, he felt that (you’re going to laugh) there might be some recruiting improprieties taking place under the noses of the Holy Cross fathers in South Bend. Not only did Michigan refuse to play the Irish but the Wolverines, the most powerful school in the Western Conference, issued a fatwah of sorts against Notre Dame, urging all member schools not to play them.

And nobody did. In 1915, an era of train travel, Notre Dame’s road games took place in Lincoln and Omaha, Nebraska (Nebraska and Creighton), West Point, NY (Army), and Austin and Houston, Texas (Texas and Rice). Omaha was the closet road trip. Note well: no games versus current Big Ten schools.

When Yost issued his fatwah, Notre Dame had to make a choice: downsize and become, basically, Marquette (a school the Irish played almost annually at the time) or dream big. Most of the priests wanted to do the former, but coach Jesse Harper –in my mind THE single most influential name in the school’s gridiron history, bigger even than Rockne, who played for him– implored them to do the latter. As a result, Notre Dame took to barnstorming.

(By the way, if you’re noticing a parallel between Notre Dame in the 1910s and Miami in the 1980s, bully for you. Highly similar, which is what made the whole “Catholics vs. Convicts” rivalry so ironic.)

Jesse Harper, during his playing days at the University of Chicago

That the Irish adopted the Pat Hill model (or is it vice-versa) of playing anyone, anywhere, any time is only part of the tale. The other two parts? One, they won. And two, they did it largely with Italian and Irish immigrants at a time when A) those people only dreamt of sending their own sons to college and B) the greatest wave of immigration in U.S. history was taking place.

Thus, a phenomenon was born, and Knute Rockne was the ultimate P.T. Barnum-like character to be the face of it. It didn’t hurt that Grantland Rice –after whom a website would later be named — mythologized the school and its gridders a la Beano Cook.

And thus, in the Golden Age of American Sports, the 1920s, the only thing as big as Babe Ruth and boxing was Notre Dame football. Whereas most of college football was regionally based, and biased –as remains the case today –Notre Dame transcended geography or regional distinction –as remains the case today.

None of that happens if Yost takes his beating like a big boy and maintains the series with Notre Dame post-1909.

THAT, and most importantly that, is the essence of the Notre Dame-Michigan rivalry. It irreversibly shaped Notre Dame, which in turn irreversibly shaped college football.

Among major football powers, Michigan and Notre Dame are Nos. 1 and 2 all-time in winning percentage (.734 and .733) and Nos. 1 and 3 all-time in overall victories (903 and 865; the Irish trail Texas by two). That alone should make Notre Dame and Michigan a sight to behold when they meet in the Big House tomorrow night –a stadium, by the way, whose design Knute Rockne chose to shamelessly copy as his model for the construction of the current Notre Dame Stadium.

1986, Lou Holtz’s first game at Notre Dame, and one of the classics in this series. The winning QB? Jim Harbaugh.

But to base a story on the Notre Dame-Michigan rivalry from 1978 on is to blatantly misinform your readership.

I won’t hold my breath waiting for Pete Thamel to tweet a link of this out to his followers.

Note well: This information is not due to my diligence. This is largely the work of Murray Sperber, whose “Shake Down The Thunder” is a thorough and unvarnished look at the rise of Notre Dame football. And, by the way, it is not a homer’s guide. Sperber’s portrait of Rockne, et al, is sober and often unflattering.

 Remote Patrol

Soccer: USA at Costa Rica

beIN Sport, 8 p.m.

I don’t understand either why ESPN or Fox Sports or even NBC Sports Network doesn’t have this World Cup qualifier from San Jose, Costa Rica, an authentic grudge match. The U.S. has never won in Costa Rica, while Los Ticos is still furious over last March’s Mile High mayhem in which the game was played in the midst of a blizzard. My, have we come a long way in six months, haven’t we, Denver? How big is this game? Keith Olbermann made it his lead story last night, noting that Costa Rica failed to supply the Yankees with balls with which to practice. Tune in — if you can find it.

Starting Five

1. The Tillman Tunnel

The last incorruptible man…

If you click on this link, you will see what Arizona State’s football players will see when they gather in the tunnel beneath the south end zone seats at Sun Devil Stadium before each home game this season (including tonight’s opponent, FCS school Sacramento State, which has actually beaten two Pac-12 foes in the past two seasons).

That’s Pat Tillman, of course, and it’s always difficult to navigate the tightrope between honoring the former Sun Devil/Arizona Cardinal and exploiting his memory. This is tastefully and respectfully done, obviously. That said, there is no athlete in the modern era who was more immune to celebrity and its trappings than Tillman, a pro who rode his mountain bike to practice (not just at training camp) and who, when once asked why fans should come out and support a middling Cardinal team during a TV interview, replied, “They shouldn’t. Until we start winning.”

Pat Tillman: America’s best.

The post-mortem accolades and tributes that have come Tillman’s way since his tragic death by friendly fire on April 22, 2004 (his uniform numbers were 42 and 40 and he died on a date that is 4/22/2004, FWIW) are almost all well-intentioned. But do yourself a favor and watch the fierce, haunting and heartbreaking documentary, The Tillman Story. Just to gain a better understanding of how Tillman’s family is a little raw concerning the hagiography of their son. Of how even the circumstances of his death became a source of propaganda designed to glorify the institution he served (the U.S. Army) when instead it should have been issuing an apology.

The best tribute anyone can give Pat Tillman? Strive to model your character after his. It was never about the uniforms Tillman wore (ASU, NFL, US Army). It was always about the traits he possessed.

2. Do You Believe in Mile High Miracles? YESSS!

Run through the ball, Rahim. Don’t turn your back. Aw, sheesh. Next time, then.

There is not –although perhaps there should be? — a chalk outline of Denver Bronco Rahim Moore sprawled on the 20-yard line at Sports Authority Field, the spot where he feel while feebly attempting to defend the last-minute, 70-yard touchdown pass from Baltimore Raven QB Joe Flacco to Jacoby Jones (and don’t think we forgot about you either, Tony Carter). That’s where the Broncos’ Super Bowl-destined season met an untimely death.

Jones’  TD tied the AFC divisional playoff contest and then the Broncos lost in the second overtime. What ever became of Baltimore? Oh yeah, they won the Super Bowl.

Baltimore and Denver return to the scene of the crime in tonight’s NFL season kickoff.

Al’s mug shot

Speaking of true crime, tune in to see if NBC play-by-play man Al Michaels mentions that not one but two Broncos front-office staffers, director of player personnel Matt Russell and director of pro personnel Tom Heckert (neither do we…know what the difference in jobs is) were suspended over the summer after receiving DUIs. See, that would be…kinda….awkward….since Michaels was arrested for the same offense last April.

3. “I Never Worked On The School Newspaper”

Two Post staffers listen to Bezos’ “I am reality” speech. Seriously, they all still dress this way.

Okay, who said that? Rob Parker or Jeff Bezos (Answer, C: All of the Above).

The Amazon.com founder, who recently purchased The Washington Post, met his minions yesterday and informed them that while he still believes in them and their publication, they may want to put those autographed first-edition copies of “All The President’s Men” away. ““What has been happening over the last few years can’t continue to happen. All businesses need to be young forever. If your customer base ages with you, you’re Woolworth’s (Please, Jeff, we prefer “Five and Dime”). The number one rule has to be: Don’t be boring.”

Bezos (the bald guy…no, not that one…the one standing) gazes at WaPo’s 2012 balance sheet, stifles a chuckle.

Hey, Jeff, that’s our Number 3 rule, after “Gravity Always Wins” and “Vegas Always Knows.” But we agree. You should be reading us!

4. Carlos in Danger?

“Are you talkin’ to me? Are you TALKIN’ to me!?!” Oops. Wrong NYC racial stereotype.

New York City mayoral candidate Carlos Danger (“Danger!”), a.k.a., Anthony Wiener, goes nose to nose with a yarmulke-wearing heckler inside a Brooklyn bakery. The heckler, Stan Kessler, chided Wiener for being “married to an arab” and called the Democratic candidate “a real scumbag.” Wiener stopped texting long enough to retort, “It takes one to know one, jackass.”

This was not, I repeat NOT, a scene from the next Woody Allen film.

Oh, yeah. Happy Rosh Hashana, everybody.

5. Johnny Manziel Is Not…Grounded

Honestly, I couldn’t find a photo image of Manziel cover, so I just went with last Heisman winner to make cover of Time.

JFF appears on his second magazine cover in the past month in which his feet are not touching the ground, and why should they be? He’s walking on sunshine at this stage. Time magazine puts Johnny Football on its cover with the line “IT’S TIME TO PAY COLLEGE ATHLETES” while not paying Johnny Football for the use of his likeness. Heyyyy! That’s exploitation!

Granted, NCAA rules prohibit them from doing so, but Time and other mags rarely pay people to be on their covers.

Reserves

Taylor Lewan will take on both Tuitt and perhaps Irish Chocolate (Louis Nix) on Sat nite.

Andy Staples at SI.com, a college football voice worth listening to, gives his post-Week 1 Power Rankings. He has Notre Dame at No. 6 and FSU at No. 7. Talk about a quarterback disparity. I should mention that JFF and Jadeveon Clowney play in the same conference but will not meet this season unless A$M and South Carolina make it to the SEC championship game, which is possible. However, Michigan OT Taylor Lewan and Notre Dame DE Stephon Tuitt, who are on SI’s and Phil Steele’s preaseason first-team All-American squads, will meet this Saturday.

Also, the next time someone asks Brian Kelly if Notre Dame-Michigan is an historic rivalry, he should play them this clip.

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Howard Bryant speaks about pitch counts with Keith Olbermann, who in less than a fortnight has staked his claim to being the smartest sports voice to appear nightly on television. Somewhere Bob Costas is howling for NBCSports Net to give him a nightly show.

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Grierson & Leitch –who are not, it should be noted, licensed and fully vetted film reviewers — give us 16 fall films about which to be excited. Let’s see, at about $13 per film here in Manhattan, that’s a cool $208. Anyway, there’s a film starring Matthew McConaughey in which he plays a bizarre character who lives outside the normal constructs of society and has a Texas twang. Everybody, now: Strettttttttch.

The film garnering the most buzz is “Gravity”, starring George Clooney and Sandra Bullock. If you’re scoring at home, science geeks, Bullock now has a forces of nature trilogy (not including her film, “Forces of Nature”, by the way), of “Speed”, “Heat” and “Gravity.”  (thanks to loyal MH reader Greg Auman for the assist).

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 The Medium Happy Man-and Non-Man Crush List

(If I’ve Missed Anyone, Please Remind Me)

1. Gareth Bale

2. Matt Harvey

3. Deborah Hersman

And to think that haters claim that she is rather “plane-looking”.

4. John Oliver

5. Yasiel Puig

Remote Patrol

Ravens at Broncos

NBC 8 p.m.

Your phone ain’t for callin’, your phone’s for footballin’…

Baltimore must replace Ray Lewis and NBC must replace Faith Hill. Denver QB Peyton Manning probably prefers you to watch Football On Your Phone. DVR advice: Also at 8 p.m. it’s the 1979 cult classic, “The Warriors.” “Warriors, come out to play-ay!” If you’ve never seen it, it’s a MUST. Stick around for the classic closing credits with the perfect Joe Walsh song to accompany it.

Starting Five

1. Burning Man Overboard

“We should make s’mores!”

Firefighters in the Black Rock Desert, 100 miles north of Reno, report that they have this year’s Burning Man Festival 100% contained. The week-long arts festival concluded on Labor Day with the incineration, in effigy, of a spaceship. If you are still jonesing to get your pyre on, the Zozobra Festival takes place tomorrow night in Santa Fe, New Mexico. And if you cannot make it there, find the original version of “The Wicker Man” on Netflix and fast forward to the film’s final five minutes.

Zozobra: There’s a reason Santa Fe is known as “The City Different.”

2. Really, AP and USA Today Voters, Really?!?

It’s only Week 2, after all, and the voters will improve –I hope — but somehow Ohio State earned No. 1 votes (four overall) in both polls following their desultory defeat of Buffalo. The Buckeyes are ranked No. 3 in the AP poll and No. 2 in the USA Today, ahead of Clemson, which defeated a talented Georgia team in the opening weekend’s best game.

Items and Thoughts:

–Clemson (4/5) should be No. 1 or No. 2 after scoring the weekend’s lone victory by a team over a Top 10 opponent, with no other data available to voters outside their preconceived prejudices of how good or bad teams should be this season. Likewise, Louisville (8/8) is a deserving Top 5 squad and Washington (20/23), again, after destroying a Top 25 Boise State squad in Week 1, deserves a top 10 berth.

–Oregon destroys a nobody FSC team by 63 points and is rewarded with 2/3 rankings. No. 5 Georgia travels to a hostile atmosphere, witnesses “the most exciting 25 seconds in college football” (click on that; so cool; and consider how many cameras it took ABC to pull that off), and comes up just short, and drops to 11/12. And you wonder why we cannot get coaches and ADs to agree to more of these types of games. Voters who dropped the Dawgs but bark about FCS matchups are the people who piss upstream and then whine about the quality of the potable water.

—Andy Staples of SI and Charles Davis of Fox, two college football minds that I respect as much as anyone’s, placed Notre Dame higher than anyone else, No. 6 and 8, respectively. I didn’t see a Top 10 team last Saturday, but they did. What do they know that I don’t (do me a favor and don’t answer that; why kill your entire day?)?

–Scott Wolf does not have USC in his Top 25. Someone check his vitals.

Teddy Bridgewater and the Cardinals are focused. Just check his eyes.

–My Top 10, and again, I go on one week of performances and nothing else:

1. Clemson

2. Alabama

3. Oregon

4. Stanford (You have to put the 0-0 Cardinal somewhere)

5. Louisville

6. Florida State

7. Texas A&M

8. LSU

9. Georgia

10. Washington

U-Dub returned to its renovated stadium and blew out the boys from Boise, 38-6.

— Favorite AP voter of Week 2? Doug Lesmerises. I’m not in complete accord with the Cleveland Plain Dealer writer’s vote, but I do like that he put Clemson No. 1, LSU No. 2, Louisville No. 4 and Washington No. 6. Lesmerises voted based on performance, not preconception.

–Chris Fowler put Louisville at No. 14.

—Bob Asmussen of the Champaign News-Gazette has Ohio State at No. 1 (you lost me right there), South Carolina at No. 3, Florida four spots above Florida State, and Arizona State (which has yet to play) at No. 17.

To reiterate, I’m more than happy to shuffle the deck after Week 2. Maybe Ohio State looks more impressive and leaps past U-Dub, Louisville, FSU, etc. But if I’m a voter, I don’t know how you base your vote on anything besides what you witnessed (or DVR’ed off “College Football Final”) and with just a one-game sample for most everyone, I’m confoozed by some of the ballots.

3. It Sucks To Be Chris Sale

The South side southpaw is foiled again.

There are four hurlers in the American League who have an ERA under 3.00 and a WHIP that is below 1.10. Max Scherzer, who lost last night because the Tigers did not support him with the standard six runs, is 19-2. Hisashi Iwakuma and Yu Darvish, of the Mariners and Rangers, respectively, are both 12-6. And then there’s the White Sox’ lanky southpaw, Chris Sale, who is having a career year (2.97, 1.06) except for his 10-12 record. Last night Sale departed Yankee Stadium with a 4-1 lead in the bottom of the 8th, the lone run being unearned. There were Yankee runners on second and third. Not long after the Yankees led 6-4 and Sale earned a No Decision.

Meanwhile, New York’s win puts them 10 games above .500 for the first time since June and now has them just two games back in the wild card race. The Bronx is awake.

4. The Boss is Back

Oliver now becomes John Doe.

Jon Stewart returned to The Daily Show last night after a three-month hiatus absence sabbatical boondoggle and of course the writers had to conjure some memorable means to commemorate the return of the scepter to the ruler. After doing the Carlos Danger chair dance with interim host Jon Oliver, Stewart tackled the Syrian crisis. “Oh, right, we have to bomb Syria because we’re in the seventh grade…Why does holding back look like weakness?” Feel free to disagree, but it is refreshing to hear a contrarian voice.

(In related news, Jason Jones and Samantha Bee dined at the cookoutateria last night. As is our habit with celebrities, we did not poke at them.)

5. Nontroversy Alert

This vintage pic of Yasmine Bleeth instead of one of fiftysomething coaches Brian Kelly or Rex Ryan. You’re welcome.

—Jameis Winston said that he’d have gone to Texas if only they’d winked in his direction, sending a slew of reporters to talk to his high school coaches and Longhorn magister Mack Brown.

—Brian Kelly opens his Tuesday noon press conference with “This (Notre Dame-Michigan) is a great and historic rivalry…so let’s dispense with the nonsense”, thus extinguishing a budding nontroversy that began on Sunday when he referred to it as a great “regional matchup.”

—Joe Girardi wants to be sure that Mariano Rivera, he of the 40 saves and 2.12 ERA, is sure he wants to retire. This story won’t die until Mo is spotted laying in a hammock in Panama next March.

—Rex Ryan sojourns to Clemson to watch his son, who is on the Tiger roster, suit up for the season-opener, as opposed to staying back in Florham Park, N.J., on the final day of cuts. Yo, that’s the turk’s job, anyway. It’s the lead story on “Olbermann”, though. T-Rex has been the lead topic twice thus far on the program, which puts him in the lead.

My one minor quibble with “Olbermann”, which I like very much: It’s Duane Reade-ing its audience. Duane Reade is a monopolistic pharmacy in NYC that almost compels its customers, who have few other choices, to purchase Duane Reade-supplied generic products as opposed to brands we prefer. Olbermann’s first guests thus far have been Jason Whitlock, Tony Kornheiser, Jeremy Schaap and Michael Smith (I must have missed one or two, but you get the point). All are bright, but all are also ESPN employees. KO has such a lively mind, I’d love to see him converse, engage, even spar against, minds who have not pledged fealty to the Worldwide Leader.

Reserves

He’s Gone-ja

Beasley appears to have a chronic problem.

The Phoenix Suns put former No. 2 overall first pick Michael Beasley on the first Pineapple Express out of town. Which is a bummer, because I was looking forward to “Michael Beasley Bobble-Eyed Doll” night at US Airways Arena next season. The one franchise that should NOT seek to acquire The Beaz? Denver (“legal weed!”), where he’d redefine the meaning of “Rocky Mountain High.”

Here is what Beasley’s former boss with the Minnesota Timberwolves, David Kahn, once said about him: “”He’s a very young and immature kid who smoked too much marijuana and has told me that he’s not smoking anymore, and I told him that I would trust him as long as that was the case.” Kahn was fined $50,000 for those comments, even though they were accurate. y,

Ariel Goes Aerial, With Fatal Effect

Death by hanging. See Rule No. 1 (“Gravity always wins.”)

Convicted Cleveland kidnapper, rapist and all-around monster Ariel Castro hanged himself in his jail cell last night. Castro had spent 119 days in captivity, which by my calculations (checking the math, carrying the zero) is a lot less than 10 years.

***

Passan The Buck

Yahoo! baseball columnist Jeff Passan tweets, “The Indians are 3 1/2 games back of a playoff spot and can’t even draw 10,000 vs. one of the teams they’re chasing. Straight embarrassing.”

And San Francisco-based pundit Ray Ratto retorts, “And who should be embarrassed specifically?”

Exactly.

Passan has hit upon one of my great pet peeves about sports writers: the writer who chides fans for not attending games in person.

Points:

1) Sports writers attend the games for free so, right there, shut up.

2) Sports writers should be aware, more than most, that PRO sports is a business. The charade that the Indians are OUR team just because we live in the Cleveland area is something that the owner and his minions sell us. And I expect them to. But why is a sports writer doing so?

3) It’s discretionary income, Jeff, the money we would use to purchase tickets. Do you chide people for not attending the ballet? Or for not seeing a film that was recently released?

4) As Steve Rushin once noted, the most underrated seat for any sporting event is my couch. The beer is colder and cheaper, there’s no parking fees, and I can hear the broadcasters. Besides, the odds of my being beaten into a coma as I make my way to my vehicle after the game decrease exponentially (while not entirely disappearing).

5) Passan’s father, Rich, has worked in the sports department of the Cleveland Plain Dealer for more than 40 years. So you can make the argument that he didn’t pay to see games, either, and hence blithely passed on that ignorance to his son. Or that he should’ve –and might’ve — passed on the accurate idea that scribes don’t harass fans for not spending their incomes to watch baseball games in person because, after all, how anyone chooses to spend the money they earn is their business..

“Bob’s Your Uncle”

If you’ve heard people use that slang phrase, which essentially translates to “It’s all good”, you may wonder whence its origin. If you in fact employ the word “whence.” Anyway, I’m reading a book about a dude who assisted the mujahideen in Afghanistan in the 1980s (back when we were on their side), and the etymology is revealed. Back in the 19th century when the British invaded Afghanistan, the Brit commander, Lord Frederick Roberts, was both well-respected and greatly loved by his men. It was avuncular. And so they shortened it from Lord Frederick Roberts to the cheerier “Bob” and men kne w that if they were under his command (“Bob’s your uncle”), they were in good hands. And so there you go (although Wikipedia provides a second possible origin).

***

David Frost died on Monday at the age of 74.  I never wanted to see a film based on a TV presenter interviewing a disgraced former U.S. president, but “Frost/Nixon” was compelling. And few films made in the past two decades have done a better job of capturing the spirit of the 1970s.

Remote Patrol

Good Will Hunting

CMT 8 p.m.

“How do you like them apples?” Matt Damon disses my former high school football teammate, Scott Winters.

Too many classic ’90s films to list here, but two of the very best are on this evening. This one and “Pulp Fiction” (AMC, 8 p.m.), whose script is simply genius. A cinephile friend once noted that “Pulp Fiction” takes every classic film noir set-up and then provides exactly what you don’t expect to happen. As for GWH, repeated viewings reward you with the standout performance, in a minor role, by Casey Affleck –and shouldn’t he play Robin in his big bro’s Batman movie?

May I recommend that you do a “Last Channel” special of “Good Will Hunting” complemented by the Tigers-Red Sox game from Fenway Pahk, on ESPN?

“Actually, it IS a gun…though I am happy to see you.”

Lastly, in case you’ve never seen it, I highly recommend you DVR “From Russia With Love” (Encore, 8 p.m.), the second (1963) and easily one of the two or three best James Bond films.

Starting Five

Written entirely, as always, without a shark cage, but we don’t go around puffing out our chests about it.

1. Debutiful!

Be the first broker on your block to collect 1,000 Jameis Winston autographs.

Yesterday we mentioned Florida State quarterback Jameis Winston, asking the rhetorical question, When has a dual-threat red-shirt freshman quarterback ever, I mean EVER, captured the country’s imagination? Last night the Seminole QB went full-blown Manziel, completing 25 of 27 passes (arguably 26) which, when you factor I that Winston was probably giving 110%, means that he completed more than 100% of his passes.

Anyway, the Noles pummeled Pitt (feel free to used “drubbed”), 41-13 as Winston threw for 356 yards and four touchdowns and looked just so smooooooove doing so. Could he be this decade’s FSU QB with a W-surname to win the Heisman Trophy (Charlie Ward, Chris Weinke). What might have been, Peter Tom Willis (QB for Wide Right I).

I do like that Winston told Sam-No-Longer-Steele afterward that “this was just easy money to me.” I hope Johnny Reb heard that one live. Also, gotta love that during the game it was revealed that the one school Winston wanted to garner an offer from, but never did, was Texas: “If I’d gotten offered, I’d be going to Texas right now.”

So, if you’re scoring at home, Mack Brown wanted Johnny Manziel to play DB and had no interest in Winston, while he did offer Connor Brewer (who played at the same Arizona high school as Taylor Lewan and Davonte Neal), who has already left the program and enrolled at Arizona (Neal will also play in Tucson next season).

For the sake of “embrace debate”:

Johnny Manziel’s debut: 23-30, 178 yards, 0 TDs, 60 yards rushing, in a loss to No. 24 Florida

Jameis Winston’s debut: 25-27, 356 yards, 4 TDs, 25 yards rushing in a win against unranked Pitt.

Obviously, Manziel faced much stiffer competition.

2. The Old Woman and The Sea

Sally O’Malley was on hand to give Nyad, 64, a punch-and kick-and PUNCH! ovation.

“She always thought of the sea as ‘la mar’ which is what people call her in Spanish when they love her. Sometimes those who love her say bad things of her but they are always said as though she were a woman. Some of the younger fishermen, those who used buoys as floats for their lines and had motorboats, bought when the shark livers had brought much money, spoke of her as ‘el mar’ which is masculine.They spoke of her as a contestant or a place or even an enemy. But the old woman always thought of her as feminine and as something that gave or withheld great favours, and if she did wild or wicked things it was because she could not help them. The moon affects her as it does a woman, he thought.”  

Note: Ernest Hemingway wrote all of his stories without the use of spell-check or a shark cage.

My favorite Nyad nugget: She was expelled from Emory University after leaping from a fourth-floor dorm window with a parachute. I’m not sure I believe that one, Wikipedia.

3. The James Gang

Rogen and Ross, who sported Franco’s “Spring Breakers” look.

Let’s not tarry. Jonah Hill, Andy Samberg and Bill Hader, as an old Jew in a red track suit representing “Hollywood”, killed. Best lines from last night’s Comedy Central Roast of James Franco:

Nick Kroll: “A lot of people don’t know that Seth Rogen has a writing partner, Evan Goldberg. My question to you, Seth, is, What must HE look like if you’re the face of his operation?”

Jonah Hill: “Bill Hader was brilliant on SNL and when he left the show every single person was like, What are you doing? You’re never ever going to work again. And what does my man Bill do? Boom, he books a T-Mobile commercial. Who’s laughing now, Lorne Michaels? My man Bill is. If that thing goes national, we could be talking like 10, 15 grand. This guy’s cashing checks from the fourth largest mobile provider in the nation. I respect Bill because Sprint was coming after him hard, but he held out for that F-you T Mobile money.”

Jeffery Ross: “When Jonah’s agent told him that Quentin Tarantino wanted him to be in a spaghetti western, Jonah was like, ‘You had me at spaghetti.'”

Hader, as “Hollywood”, to Ross: “I’m like Enterprise rental car on Christmas, which is to say I don’t have a vehicle for you.”

Ross, on Franco hosting the Oscars: “You were a worse host than the AIDS monkey.”

Hill, on Sarah Silverman: “She’s fulfilled every little girl’s dream of growing up to become a 58 year-old stand-up comic with no romantic prospects. I salute you, Sarah. People say Sarah is hot for a comic. I disagree. I think she’s hot for someone her age. People say she can’t become a movie star at her age, but I disagree. It’s not impossible. It’s not like someone is asking her to give birth.”

The Roastee and the Lady

Ross, on Franco’s 91 year-old grandmother: “127 Hours is the amount of time she has left.”

Silverman, on Aziz Ansari: “I’ve been a huge supporter of Aziz’s for years now, and for only the price of a cup of coffee.”

Samberg: “James Franco, you’re so handsome. You remind me of the man who broke up my parents’ marriage.”

“Hollywood”, on Samberg’s new cop show, Brooklyn 9-9: “If I wanted to watch two Jews drive around and try to be funny, I’d watch Seinfeld’s webcast series.”

Natasha Leggero, to Samberg: “I’m looking forward to the sad, acoustic version of ‘Dick in a Box’, which will be played at Lorne Michaels’ open-casket funeral.” (Wow, that is cold).

Some others that did not make it to my keyboard.

4. Blonde Melon(s)

Who would you have put on the cover instead?

The periodical Vanity Fair, which is the only magazine on your newsstand named in honor of a 19th century British novel by William Makepeace Thackeray that even your high school English teacher did not require you to read unless you wanted to do so for extra credit, turns 100. And to celebrate it has glammed up another magazine’s cover girl to look like another era’s pin-up girl. Who’s going to be the first Detroit Tiger to place one of these in Justin Verlander’s locker?

5. Roger, Over and Out

Labored Day: Federer, a five-time U.S. Open champ, exits Queens.

Roger Federer, of whom for years there was no one bederer, falls in the Round of 16 at the U.S. Open. The Swiss master fails to make a Grand Slam final in 2013, the first time that has happened since 2002. Federer, owner of 17 Grand Slam titles, made 43 unforced errors in a straight set loss and there is talk that, at age 32, time has passed him by. On the other hand, he’s half the age of Diana Nyad.

Reserves

The OTHER Bridge Spanning San Francisco Bay

If you’ve never been to America’s most beautiful city, San Francisco, here’s the lowdown (and what is WRONG with you, by the way? Get there!). The Golden Gate Bridge connects the city to Marin County, the nation’s most prosperous county. The other bridge that never made the post cards likely receives more traffic, as it spans the bay between San Francisco and Oakland (there are other bridges farther south in the bay, but no one cares about them), is the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge (couldn’t they just have named it after a dead president or military hero?), which connects the two cities as well as a sparsely inhabited spit of land known as Treasure Island.

Anyway, yesterday the gleaming new $6.4 billion eastern span of the bridge opened to traffic, after a decade of construction delays. It’s still the second-prettiest bridge spanning San Francisco Bay, but it’s an improvement.

Remote Patrol

Hoping Stewart’s first guest is Jerry Dantana.

The Daily Show

Comedy Central 11 p.m.

After a three-month hiatus, Derek Jeter returns for the Yankees. Wait a minute, that’s the wrong press release. Yes, here it is. After a three-month hiatus, Jon Stewart returns to the anchor desk at The Daily Show. Stewart’s biggest problem is that John Oliver was a far superior substitute than Eduardo Nunez. Simply for the curiosity factor as to how Stewart pays homage to Oliver, it’s worth tuning in.