by John Walters

Starting Five

Katie Lou Samuelson (33) and Kia Nurse (11) know they’re about to win their 83rd in a row

How ’bout Them Dogs!

No. 1 UConn heads into South Bend to play No. 2 Notre Dame and exits with a 72-61 win and an 83rd consecutive victory. Friend of the Blog Jacob Anstey did a little research and found that since the 2000-01 season, the Huskies are now 24-11 versus the Irish (68.6%) and 546-28 versus everyone else (95.1%).

Moreover, during the 83-game win streak, just one opponent (Florida State, which lost 78-76 in this year’s opener), has come within 10 points of the Huskies. Geno Auriemma and Chris Dailey set goals for their team, and you can bet that one way they’ve decided to keep their young women interested in and out of the blowouts this year is to point toward the magic number: 100, or par as investing maven Geno would also think of it.

Auriemma has now won 6 straight over Muffet McGraw and the Irish after having lost four in a row.

So when would that happen? Well, UConn must get past 9-0 Kansas State this weekend in Manhattan, Kanas, and then two Top 10 opponents before New Year’s Day (Ohio State and Maryland, the former at home and the latter on the road), but No. 100 would be South Carolina, currently ranked 6th, on Monday, February 13 in Storrs. And if you don’t think Geno and his staff were pointing to this landmark, the Gamecocks play in the SEC, while the Huskies play in the AAC: it’s their only non-conference game between Dec. 29 (Maryland) and March Madness.

2. The Reich Stuff

Former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich on CNN last night: “Let me just say, Mr. Trump, you are president-elect of the United States. You are looking and acting as if you are mean and petty, thin-skinned and vindictive. Stop this.”

What he said.

3.  And the Red Grange Award Winner Is (dot dot dot)

Congrats, Lamar. You can come over to the Dublin House and pick up your hardware on Saturday night….

LAMAR JACKSON, Quarterback, Louisville

The judges love Baker Mayfield’s moxie, admire Deshaun Watson’s consistency, are wowed by the moves of Dede Westbrook and Adoree Jackson, love watching Jonathan Allen’s mad dashes to QBs, and even briefly considered Florida State’s Dalvin Cook and Stanford’s Christian McCaffrey, the latter of whom quietly finished fourth in the nation in rushing. All we can promise you is that Brad Kaaya never even made it past the “LOL” stage.

But Jackson, the Louisville QB, is the only player in the nation who threw at least 30 touchdown passes (30 exactly) and also finished in the Top 10  in rushing (ninth, at 128 yards per game). He also is just the third player to pass for 30 TDs and rush for at least 20 (21), and the other two guys who did that were Tim Tebow and Cam Newton (former teammates at UF, by the way), and they both have Heisman Trophies.

Working backward, in McCaffrey’s last four games he rushed for 204, 284, 135 and 199 yards. That should have tendered him an invite to NYC.

So, yeah, we may be overweighting this award on that Florida State performance. But, hey, it was spectacular. And Jackson this year is what McCaffrey—our 2015 winner—was last season: the most dynamic player in college football.

Oh, by the way, here’s SI.com’s Preseason List of the 100 Top Players in College Football. You won’t find Lamar Jackson on the list (nearly as egregious, Mackey Award winner Jake Butt is at No. 63)

4. Hope and Glory

ESPN’s college football awards show is tonight, and it’s okay (I’m sure we’ll be Rinaldi’ed at some point), but we old-timers miss the AP All-American team intros from the annual Bob Hope Christmas specials. I love that they arrived for the taping (which was done in NYC) in full uniform. Including neck rolls! I love that they brought along the neck rolls.

In the above clip, stick around and you’ll see current Raider coach Jack Del Rio along with tight end Mark Bavaro, Heisman Trophy winner Doug Flutie and Keith Byars not saying, “THE” before “Ohio State University.” As I said, the world was a better place.

Here’s the 1971 version, with Cornell running back (and future Hill Street Blues cast member) Ed Marinaro and Heisman Trophy winner Pat Sullivan...

(You can go down this rabbit hole for an hour on YouTube; I only wish I were able to find every year in full).

5. Crazy Days In Knoxville

No. 73 in your program, No. 1 on ESPN’s recruiting list

On Tuesday, high school senior Trey Smith, a 6’5″ offensive tackle out of Jackson, Tennessee whom ESPN ranks as the No. 1 overall recruit in the nation, verbally committed to the University of Tennessee. This was a HUGE coup for the Vols and their Champion of Life, head coach Butch Jones. Smith, who lost his mother to a heart illness a couple years ago, seems like a tremendous young man, as this story illustrates.

Then, yesterday, Travis Haney of 247Sports.com (and formerly of ESPN, I believe) had this piece about the toxic atmosphere in the Vol football program under Jones. “The culture is a disaster,” was the pull-quote, from an anonymous source, that will be remembered.

One thing that I don’t believe has been reported, but it may be worth filing away. Trey Smith has one sibling, an older sister, and her name is Ashley Smith. She is an employee at the University of Tennessee. And what is Ashley Smith’s job? She is listed on the Tennessee Athletics website as the “Executive Assistant to the Head [Football] Coach.” But, you know, she’s had that job since….um….well…July.

Music 101

Nobody Told Me

Strange days indeed. Most peculiar, mama. Thirty-six years ago tonight, on a cold Monday  evening, John Lennon was murdered outside his apartment building, The Dakota, located on West 72nd Street, just off Central Park West. If you walk into Central Park today, all day and late into the night, troubadours both gifted and marginal will be singing his songs. It’s one of New York City’s better unofficial traditions.

Remote Patrol

Oakland Raiders at Kansas City Chiefs

NBC 8:20 p.m.

Khalil Mack

How long has it been since a Raiders-Chiefs game had some real postseason juice to it? Twenty years? Oakland is 10-2 and the Chiefs are 9-3 and few stadiums get more woke than Arrowhead Stadium (yes, I did feel a little silly typing “woke”). Should be fun.

by John Walters

Starting Five

Sunday, bloody Sunday

A Day That Will Live In Infamy

Today is the 75th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor on the island of Oahu, which was then a U.S. territory. Some 2,403 Americans were killed and 188 U.S. aircraft were destroyed. The Japanese lost just 64 servicemen and one, Kazuo Sakamaki, was captured. He begged to be allowed to commit suicide, but that request was denied. He served out the war as a P.O.W. (our first, I’d imagine) and lived to the ripe old age of 81.

Something else to remember: the attack commenced at 7:48 a.m. local time, or just before 1 p.m. on the East Coast, as NFL games were kicking off.

Larry Bird pre-existed cross-training

Also, 60 years ago today, the birth of Larry Legend, the last American-born Caucasian NBA player to win the league Most Valuable Player award.

2. There’s Gold In Them Thar’ Tweets!

Boeing is building a brand new 747 Air Force One for future presidents, but costs are out of control, more than $4 billion. Cancel order!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 6, 2016

President-elect Donald Trump sent this tweet out at 8:52 a.m. yesterday, 38 minutes before the stock market opened. Soon after they rang the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange (note to self: Used legging outlet called “New York Sock Exchange.” Could make millions!!!), Boeing stock (BA) plunged more than 1%.

The right call for a bizarre year

Now, we don’t know if Donald’s math is accurate, or if he informed Boeing first before making this announcement. Taking him at face value, good for him and us if Boeing was trying to fleece Uncle Sam (like I said, I don’t know and for the purposes of this item, I don’t care). What does matter is that Boeing, a company in the Top 25 of the Fortune 500 ($96 billion market cap; look at their OOC schedule!), had its stock plunge 1% simply due to a Trump tweet. If I’m a hedge fund or investment bank, I have a team dedicated to monitoring Trump tweets going forward and cashing in on the resulting panic.

By end of day, Boeing’s stock had recovered. But if you have $10 million to invest liberally, you just made $100K on that little blip. Not a bad day’s work.

3. Live Sox, Dead Sox, White Sox, Red Sox

Sale gets far more upset when asked to change his jersey than when asked to change his Sox….

Boston went out and acquired southpaw Chris Sale, who has the lowest ERA and WHIP of ANYONE currently pitching with more than 500 innings of experience. Because they know David Price and Rick Porcello, Cy Young Awards notwithstanding, scare no one in the postseason.

And, as Frank Isola noted yesterday on ATH, the Sox don’t wear throwback jerseys, so that shouldn’t be a problem.

4. So Long, Salaam

Well, this is a tad uncomfortable heading into Heisman Trophy weekend. Rashaan Salaam, the former University of Colorado running back who won the award in 1994, was found dead in a Boulder, Colo., park on Monday night. A suicide note was found nearby.

Salaam rushed for 2,055 yards and 24 touchdowns with the Buffs in ’94 (that team had an incredible corral of talent, future NFL players such as Ted Johnson, Michael Westbrook, Christian Fauria and Kordell Stewart. Rick Neuheisel was an assistant coach. I attended a game in which they steamrolled Barry Alvarez and Wisconsin 55-17.

Anyway, this quote from former teammate Charles Johnson should be read during ESPN’s televising of Saturday night’s ceremony in New York: “[Rashaan] was so defined, I think too often by winning the Heisman Trophy and not by other things that made him a whole person, things that he loved and cared about and I think he, in fact I know he had challenges at times making that transition.”

5. 50 Reasons To Love The World

Is this the BBC’s way of tricking us into recognizing that reality trumps virtual reality. That our galaxy is superior to your Samsung Galaxy? Enjoy the gallery.

Music 101

You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch

Just listen to the lyrics of this tune, which were written by Theodore “Dr. Seuss” Geisel himself. This is Jordan Smith, an alumnus of The Voice (Katie says, “Boo!”) covering the classic. The original vocalist on the Christmas special was Thurl Ravenscroft, who was also the original voice of Tony the Tiger (“They’re Grrrrreat!”).

Remote Patrol

No. 1 UConn at No. 2 Notre Dame

ESPN2 7 p.m.

UConn’s Kia Nurse is adept at the art of basketball. She’s a Nurse practitioner.

This is supposedly a rebuilding year for the Huskies, but they’re deservedly the nation’s top-ranked team and they’ve won 82 in a row. So, not bad. Notre Dame sophomore I-Can’t-Spell-Her-Name-Without-Looking (a.k.a, Arike Ogunbowale) averages 17.2 points per game. Husky frosh point guard Crystal Dangerfield is gonna be a stud and has probably caused Geno to loosen his tie and discuss “respect” a time or two already.

For you troglodytes/chauvinists, Golden State visits the L.A. Clippers (their first meeting of the season) at 10:30 p.m. on the ESPN.

For you fans of musicals, NBC does Hairspray live at8 p.m. with Kristen Chenoweth and Billy Eichner.

by John Walters

Starting Five

Form

60 Points in 29 Minutes

Imagine what Klay Thompson might have done last night had Steve Kerr played him in the fourth quarter. The sixth-year Warrior became, by my count, the 24th different NBA player to put up 60 points in one game, but the first to ever do so playing fewer than 30 minutes. That’s nuts. The last Golden State Warrior to post 60 in a contest? Rick Barry in 1974, who was also an unconscious shooter.

You can call Thompson the third- (or even fourth-) best Warrior if you want. Two of his teammates own the last three NBA MVP awards, after all. But in Thompson’s five-plus years since leaving Wazzu, the son of a former No. 1 overall draft pick (Mychal Thompson) has put together an NBA-record 37-point quarter and, last night, a 40-point first half.

And I love Thompson’s reply last summer when he was asked how he’d have to change his game to accommodate the addition of new teammate Kevin Durant: “I ain’t changing sh*t.”

The other thing I love about him? His first name could be the call letters for an easy-listening FM station in Los Angeles.

2. Just Endure The Suffering

For the Jets (or Notre Dame) fan on your Christmas list

Colts 41, Jets 10 on Monday Night Football. If only New York had drafted Christian Hackenberg.

And is it me, or has Jon Gruden emotionally checked out? If I’m Jack Swarbrick, maybe I kick the tires there.

3. Called On the Matt

Derek Almena

So NBC’s Today Show landed the first morning show interview with Derek Almena, the 47 year-old father of three who managed the Ghost Ship warehouse space where at least 36 people perished on Friday night.

Lauer went directly for the kill shot, opening with: “Are you the man who should be held accountable?”  Watch the video in the link here.

4. The $400 Million Man?

Bryce Capades

*The judges will also accept “Harper’s Bizarre Salary Demand”

Bryce Harper wants the Washington Nationals to sign him for one-tenth the cost of the order that Donald Trump just canceled with Boeing. Is he worth it? Hey, it’s not your money (unless you have ESPN or Fox on cable, which you do, in which case it kinda is).

Harper wants $400 million over ten years. In his defense, he was woefully underpaid last season at $5 million per. In five full Major League seasons Harper has earned less than $13 million despite winning Rookie of the Year AND one NL MVP award.  At least NINETY players earned more in 2016 than Harper, one of the two or three best position players in the game, has earned in his career. And he just turned 24 years old.

So I’m going Teddy KGB on this: “Pay the man. Pay that man his money.”

5. Eight Is Enough

Yes, maybe we’d get a Bama-USC rematch in the 1 vs. 8 game, and it would likely be closer.

Whether we here at the Medium Happy Department of Caring Obsessively About College Football like it or not, there’s just so much momentum building in the broadcast media (which is very good at coercing the populace into making poor decisions, if you hadn’t noticed) for an eight-team playoff, that it seems inexorable.

Our main complaint is we don’t see a correlation between desiring the four (or even eight) best teams in the nation to be in a national playoff and giving conference champs an automatic bye, particularly when that conference championship game invite is based solely on your intra-conference record. Do we need an 8-5 team in the national playoff? Because that’s conceivable.

If it were to happen, though, here are my ground rules/suggestions:

1) You cannot play a I-AA school and be eligible for the playoff.

2) You cannot play in excess of seven home games and be eligible for the playoff (Mr. Harbaugh). A neutral site game counts as half a road game. And half a home game.

3) A team that follows the above two rules AND finishes undefeated is automatically in (the Group of 5 Rule).

4). Any Group of 5 team that finishes in the Top 16 is automatically in.

5) Scrap all conference championship games. You win your conference based on intra-conference record, then head to head, then strength of out-of-conference schedule. In place of those conference games, that weekend, come the quarterfinals. At the favored school’s home site.

Any questions? Suggestions?

Music 101

In The Year 2525

We’ve been doing this section for nearly two years, and have yet to cover this song??? What’s wrong with us?!? This is a 1969 tune by one-hit wonders Zager and Evans. In 1969, which boasted all-time classic No. 1 hits such as “Come Together” (The Beatles), “Suspicious Minds” (Elvis), “Wedding Bell Blues” (The Fifth Dimension), “Age of Aquarias/Let the Sun Shine” (also The Fifth Dimension) and “Good Morning Starshine” (Oliver), THIS bleak futuristic song (“In the year 2525/If man is still alive…”) by the Nebraska duo stayed at No. 1 the longest. Six weeks. That opening question no longer seems rhetorical, does it?

Remote Patrol

The Crown 
Netflix

Uneasy lies the head…

We finally finished Season 1. It’s excellent. This is a history lesson of the British monarchy just before and after World War II, with outstanding work by Claire Foy as Queen Elizabeth, Jon Lithgow as Winston Churchill and others. It’s basically Dynasty or Dallas with better accents, but it all (mostly) really happened. The production values and attention to detail are outstanding. Stick around for Episode 4 (Act of God) and Episode 9 (Assassins). I promise, you’ll love it.

by Katie McCollow

By now you know who Katie is. You just wish, like me, that you saw her byline here more often. We’re glad to have her when she has time.–j.w.

16. The End of Brangelina

Boy, they look so happy

15. Blackish

What took you so long, McCollows?

14. Bruce Springsteen

Hell no, I’m not done! It’s only been six hours, you baby.

13. Alan Rickman Died

Mr. Rickman in his most well-known role. We Love, Actually you

12. An American in Paris

I don’t know. The kids love it. At least they did last winter.

11. Olexa Bulivitsky

I went home and cried myself to sleep

10. American Idol’s Last Season

How I feel about The Voice

9. Jeremy Jordan

 

 

8. Smash

What the hell was I doing in 2012? 

7. For the Love of Mary, by Christopher Meades

This is a picture of a book

6. Gilmore Girls on Netflix

5. Sing Street

John Carney does it more than Once

4. The Last Five Years Soundtrack

3. The Hamilton Soundtrack

2. Prince Died

Me, thinking about Prince

Don’t look at me like that, this is my G**D*** list!

1. Hamilton

Well, that image isn’t cool at all. It doesn’t even give me chills.

Me, when John admiitted he hadn’t memorized the soundtrack 13 seconds after I forced it on him

Back atchoo, Prince, safe travels wherever you are….

Oh, fer Chrissakes, cheer up. It’s literally the only thing you didn’t win this year…. 

by John Walters

Starting Five

Blacknall’s 70-yard TD catch early in the 3rd quarter cut the deficit to 7 points

Full of Sound And Fury, Signifying Nothing

The SEC Championship Game begin in 1992, long before the BCS or the 4-team playoff.

The Big 12 Championship Game began in 1996, then stopped in 2010, then will start up again next year.

The ACC Championship Game? 2005-present.

The Big Ten and Pac-12 Championship Games? 2011-present.

All of these were set up by the individual conferences with the main intent to earn more money, both by selling tickets and creating a product to sell to ESPN and Fox, both of whom are only too happy to promote these products during an otherwise slow sports weekend on the first big weekend of holiday shopping. You can’t expect the voices on these networks to give you the real dope on why these games should and do play a minor role in picking the playoff, because they’d be undercutting their own product.

Friday night, Brady Quinn, Fox: “Penn State’s gotta be in if it wins, otherwise what are these championship games for?” I just told you.

If this year’s records used next year’s Big 12 set-up, Bedlam would have to be repeated the following week in Arlington, Texas, for the ultimate anti-climactic game.

Props to ESPN’s Chris Fowler, who after announcing Saturday night’s ACC championship game, made an excellent point about why the four teams who were in a week earlier still belonged: “No one’s non-conference schedule got any weaker between this week and last week.” Basically, he was saying, “This bed’s already been made.”

Conferences are akin to political parties, each acting in its own best self-interest. The 4-team playoff, which aspires to pick, in the words of selection committee chairman Kirby Hocutt, “the four very best teams” in the country, should not and is not held hostage to this balkanization. May the four best teams go forward. May the conference championships be recognized for what they are: a way to reward the teams  that finished with the best intra-conference records within that conference. Nothing more, nothing less.

And so when a Philadelphia media person, @NickKayal , tweeted that Penn State being omitted from the four-team playoff was “the biggest sports tragedy of all time” (yes, someone stumping for Penn State used those words to discuss a football game), I wondered when everyone went down that rabbit hole. Nick has since deleted that tweet.

Ghost Ship

The blaze in the makeshift artists’ colony claimed 33 lives

The death toll now is at 36, three dozen, in the Ghost Ship Warehouse fire in Oakland. If you’ve seen photos of the interior of the venue from before the fire, it looked like the East Bay’s coolest hangout for those who knew about it. You could totally picture Green Day playing a show there. You could also envision it being a total tinder box, with wood and dirty laundry and hoarder material strewn about. It was a monument to clutter.

I heard one survivor say she barely had time to grab her coat and shoes. She’s lucky. When you’re inside a burning building, you don’t stop to grab anything. You run.

3. Mutually Assured Distraction

Did China ask us if it was OK to devalue their currency (making it hard for our companies to compete), heavily tax our products going into..

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 4, 2016

Maybe president-elect Donald Trump isn’t crazy. Maybe he’s just crazy like a fox. Or crazy like a guy with a fox sitting on top of his head. What if Trump watched an old black comedy, or a political satire (Wag The Dog?) and realized the best way to hide your flaws as a president is to get into a war. Who needs domestic policy when you’re fighting to save the republic?

This is the president of the most populous nation on earth. And you don’t even know his name, do you? (Either did I)

Think about it: absent the loss of life (we can always get more people; we’re very good at making them), a war between China and the United States would greatly benefit both countries. Unemployment would go down, domestic manufacturing would go up. We’d stop importing good from China. They’re living in a land mass smaller than the continental U.S. and they have FOUR TIMES the amount of people we do. I imagine China would love to shed a little dead weight.

You’d have to agree not to use nukes. Fine, done. Then, China and the U.S. could be like Nick Saban and say, “We’ll play you, sure, but at a neutral site.” So we’d have to get someone to host the land war phase. I recommend Vietnam (they did such a wonderful job the last time). Think about it: Trump gets to save the U.S.A., even if it’s his tweets that incited the whole conflagration. It’s genius.

4. Very Berry

Berry scored the game-winning points on a pick-two

Maybe I don’t pay enough attention to the NFL. Maybe I’m just following the wrong people on Twitter. Or maybe no one cares all that much because the NFL season really doesn’t begin until Week 15 (of 17).

All I know is that if this had happened in college football, my timeline would have been buzzing about it. The second-place AFC West Kansas City Chiefs (8-3) were visiting the first-place NFC South Atlanta Falcons. With 4:32 to play, the Falcons scored to go up 28-27. At home. But why kick a PAT that’ll only put you up two?

So the Falcons go for a two-point try, a slant-in pass by Matt Ryan that Chief super safety Eric Berry not only picks off but returns the other way. That’s two poinst. Now the Chiefs are up again, 29-28. And that, rightfully, was the score when the game ended. K.C. is now 9-3 and still breathing down 10-2 Oakland’s neck.

Oh, Berry had a pick-six earlier in the game. He’s a safety who accounted for four safeties worth of scoring.

5. Greenville, Not Grinnell

It’s usually this time of year, or a few weeks earlier, when Division III Grinnell College of Iowa puts up 150 or points on some opponent without hap and then the purists look for their soap boxes and wag a finger or two (“Harrumph! Harrumph! Harrumph!”) at coach David Arsenault or his son, Dave Jr.

And while Grinnell did put up 167 versus Silver Lake on November 19, we are happy to report that another Midwest D-3 program has already outdone them this young season. Three nights later, on November 22, Greenville College, located in downstate Illinois, took down Lincoln Christian, 178-125. As the score suggests, overtime was not necessary.The Panthers had four players score at least 23 points led by Shane Smith’s 36. They scored 103 in the second half.

Curious trivia note: Despite putting up 178, Greenville only made seven free throws and shot less than 50% (7-15) from the line. They shot better (51%) from beyond the arc and attempted nearly five times as many shots (37-72) from there.

We need to set up a Greenville vs. Grinnell matchup next season.

Music 101

So Far Away

Just because her songs don’t measure up to Taylor Doose’s standards doesn’t mean they’re not good enough for MH. This is one of SEVEN monster hits off Carole King‘s 1971 classic Tapestry, which everyone’s big sister owned in the Seventies (the album stayed on the charts for six straight years). It’s odd that she never even approached having commercial success with any subsequent albums or singles—the Brooklyn-raised alum of the Brill Building songwriters packed them all on this one. And yes, that’s James Taylor on the acoustic guitar. He probably thinks this song is about him (wait; wrong early Seventies monster-hit female artist).

Remote Patrol

Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show

CBS 10 p.m.

And nobody has to answer any questions about world peace

Why is this televised? Who cares! It’s next-level lingerie talent strutting in Paris as Bruno Mars, Lady Gaga and The Weekend perform. It’s a thing, babe. Don’t fight it.