Starting Five

1. A Tale of Two Mannings

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, yada yad yada…

The Denver Broncos are 5-0 after quarterback Peyton Manning led them to yesterday’s football-on-your-phone friendly 51-48 defeat of Dallas Cowboys.

The New York Giants are 0-5 after quarterback Eli Manning was once again Samsung Galaxy un-Watch-able in yesterday’s 36-21 loss to the Philadelphia Eagles.

Peyton threw four touchdown passes (yes, Dallas’ Tony Romo threw five, as well as for 506 yards), which puts him at  twenty for the season, which is a record-breaking pace. The record, set by Tom Brady in 2007, is 50. Peyton, who finally threw an interception in the third quarter, also set an NFL mark for most TD passes without a pick to begin a season, with 19.

Eli threw three interceptions –and had three intentional grounding penalties, the most in one contest since 2001. That gives the two-time Super Bowl MVP 12 picks through five games. The NFL record, set by then rookie Vinny Testaverde of  the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 1988, is 35 (if you consider that Vinny tossed five picks in the 1988 Fiesta Bowl/national championship game, he threw 40 INTs in that calendar year). Eli is on a pace to throw 38.4.

Ashley Judd Nearly Became a Widow

Two years ago this October Indy Car driver Dan Wheldon died in a horrific crash at the Las Vegas International Speedway. Yesterday on the final lap of the Houston Grand Prix Dario Franchitti, who drove in that Las Vegas race, nearly met the same fate. Franchitti, the husband of Ashley Judd and a four-time IndyCar Series champion, clipped the tire of the car driven by Takuma Sato went airborne into the debris fence. Franchitti suffered two fractured vertebrae and a broken ankle.

Thirteen spectators were injured by flying debris.

There is just one remaining race in this year’s IndyCar Series season, on October 19 in Fontana, Calif.

AP-palling

Yesterday, as they do each Sunday morning during college football season, five dozen members of the fourth estate filed their Associated Press poll (AP poll) ballots. Of those 60 voters –all of whom I believe are male– 57 placed Louisville ahead of Baylor on their ballots. I’ve singled out these two programs because neither are perennial BCS  bowl programs, though the Cardinals did defeat Florida in last January’s Sugar Bowl.

Louisville is ranked 8th in this week’s poll. Baylor is ranked 15th.

The Cardinals are 5-0. The Bears are 4-0.

The Cardinals have yet to face a ranked team. The Bears have yet to face a ranked team.

The Cardinals have played one school that lost to a currently ranked team (Kentucky, which has lost to two). The Bears have played one school that defeated a ranked team (West Virginia)

The Cardinals have met one FCS team. The Bears have met one FCS team.

The Cardinals average 44.4 points per game, tied for 11th-best in the land. The Bears average 70.5 points per game, which is by far the best in the land.

The Cardinals allow 6.8 points per game, which is best in the land. The Bears allow 16.3 points per game, which is 14th-best.

The average halftime score of a Louisville game  is an astounding 25.4 to 0.6. The average halftime score of a Baylor game is 55 to 9.

Louisville: the most impressive scoring defense in the country. Baylor: the most impressive scoring offense in the country.

It isn’t wacko to rank Louisville ahead of Baylor. It’s wacko that 95% of AP voters –the exceptions being Seth Emerson of The Macon Telegraph, Josh Kendall of The State (a South Carolina newspaper, not a former MTV comedy sketch show), and Andy Staples of Sports Illustrated — did, since at the very least an equally compelling argument can be made for Art Briles’ Big 12 squad.

One possible explanation? Poll inertia. Louisville, which beat Florida in the Sugar Bowl, was ranked No. 9 in the AP’s preseason poll. Baylor? Unranked.

The nation’s top scoring defense (statistically) versus the nation’s top scoring offense (statistically). It would be wonderful to match them up against each other, no?

Colt Bolts

Oregon may be the best team in the land–or at least the best team west of Tuscaloosa— and it may have the nation’s most explosive offense. So how come its starting tight end, a former five-star prep standout from Portland who has NFL-ready talent, just dropped out of school?

Duck tight end Colt Lyerla, formerly of Hillsboro High School in suburban Portland, will not be in uniform on Saturday in Seattle when No. 2 Oregon visits No. 16 Washington in prime time. ESPN’s “College GameDay” will visit, while the game will air on Fox Sports 1. America’s bartenders, consider yourselves forewarned.

Lyerla had missed two games this season –one due to illness and last Saturday for a “violation of team rules.” In 2012 he missed nine days of fall camp for “personal reasons” and this summer was publicly rebuked by the Duck athletic department after sending a tweet related to the Sandy Hook massacre, about it all being a conspiracy.

A six-foot-five, 250-pound stud rock, Lyerla is a junior and has said that he has no plans to enroll at another school, but rather to simply prepare for the NFL draft. A magnificent beast of a tight end with off-field issues and what appears to be authority problems. Do you think, in light of what happened last June, that a lot of NFL teams will pass on this prospect? Sure, but someone will select him.

5. Legend of the Fall

(Yes, kids, the all caps SPOILER ALERT!!!! I’m going to discuss “Gravity” below, so if you don’t want to know anything before seeing the film, do not read further. If you loathe my writing, or even loathe me, do not read further. If you are late for work or a date or accounting class, do not read further. You’ve been warned.)

 

 

….. I’m warning you…

 

 

…You’re still here? Seriously? Okay….

Distance lends perspective.

That is one of many thoughts that crosses your mind as Sandra Bullock does her best Dorothy-in-Outer-Space impersonation in “Gravity”, a film that will stay with you for awhile. Bullock and George Clooney, the only two people in the film whose faces we ever see (I could say more, but I won’t), are nominally the stars of the show, but good old Mother Earth literally upstages them (and I believe I’m using “literally” in the proper sense here).

In numerous scenes throughout earth dominates the background –hey, there’s the Sinai peninsula! — silent and awe-inspiring. Our planet is a miracle, really, and “Gravity”, I like to think, is director Alfonso Cuaron’s mission (and he has “some serious concerns about this mission”) is to remind us that just because we are able to  understand and explain a phenomenon does not make it any less miraculous. It’s as if he’s trying to shake every last audience member and scream, “Don’t take this place for granted. And, don’t take life for granted.”

“Enjoy the ride,” as Clooney’s Matt Kowalski advises…which is funny since Bullock experiences about as harrowing a ride as anyone can imagine. And in the process, while dealing with grief and danger and fear and sometimes, just plain taxing mental work –Would you have the perseverance to read an instruction manual written in Russian if your life depended on it? — she has to make a conscious decision as to whether continuing on this ride is worth it.

You can compare this film, in which the cataclysmic moment occurs very early, to a number of other films: “127 Hours” comes closest to mind, though I’ve heard reviewers mention “Cast Away” and “Deliverance” as well. It’s about the will to live and about wanting to get home –so, in a sense, “E.T.” also works, but it’s also about taking a look outside yourself and just noticing the beauty of creation. Of earth. As you watch the lower half of Italy float past in evening, or the sun rise over the Ganges, things such as improving your Klout score suddenly gain their true insignificance.

Notes:

1) That’s Ed Harris in an off-camera role as the voice from mission control in Houston. Inspired casting, as Harris played astronaut John Glenn in “The Right Stuff” and a mission control commander in “Apollo 13.”

2) Tell me you didn’t watch Clooney float away and think of his final scene from “The Perfect Storm.” It was so eerily similar that I wondered if Cuaron was doing it intentionally.

3) You could just as easily titled this film “Hope Floats” or “Forces of Nature”, but then Sandra Bullock has already done those films.

3) The final 90 seconds of this film, in my opinion, stakes its place among the great movie scenes of all time, mostly for its symbolism. There is the metaphor for birth, as Bullock must press her way out of a tight womb –her reentry capsule — and float in amniotic fluid –the inlet where she has landed –before coming to the surface for her first breath. And then she must crawl, which as an astronaut reentering earth’s gravitational pull would be entirely realistic here, before she can walk.

But, of course, there is more going on here. In an instant Bullock is transitioning from man’s greatest achievement –intergalactic travel — to that primordial, prehistoric moment when man first crawled out of the sea and found his true home. She crawls out of the water, clutches the mud as if it’s a long-lost blanket, then takes pains to stand. At this point Bullock is shot from the ground up, to illustrate the majesty of human evolution. It is every bit as iconic a moment as the opening of “2001: A Space Odyssey.”

The circle of evolution is complete: a spaceman returns to earth and mimics man’s first steps. Of course, it also represents the first steps that Dr. Ryan Stone is taking in her new life. Magnificent. Satisfying.

The movie plays out a lot like a theme park ride. There are those brief , early moments of dread and anxiety as you feel the chain pull you to the peak of the roller coaster, and then the rest of it is just a wild ride of twists, turns, huge dips and white knuckles.

Except that “Gravity” is more than just a wild-ride blockbuster. It has pathos. We are all Ryan Stone. We are all along for the ride. And it’s up to every one of us, no matter what the circumstances, to keep pushing toward that next module. And, every once in awhile, to look around at our home and gape at the wonder of it all, baby.