STARTING FIVE

1. Craft Services

I call it the Bobby Hurley Award. It is an elusive encomium, one handed out (figuratively) to that senior whom announcers fall hopelessly in love with because he’s a coach on the court, and usually also happens to be white and not about to posterize anyone any time soon.

On Saturday evening Ohio State’s Aaron Craft secured the award for this season by leading the No. Buckeyes back on an improbable 14-3 run in the game’s final minute, from a 58-50 deficit with 0:58 remaining, to avoid an upset to unranked Notre Dame.

It would have been the Irish’s best win of the season –last year they knocked off eventual national champ Louisville in five overtimes in South Bend. Instead, it’s a soul-grinding choke, the type that makes Garrick Sherman feisty.

Also, old-timers can remember a day when the Irish were able to do this to opponents. You may not recall that when Notre Dame defeated UCLA in 1974, thus ending the Bruins’ record 88-game win streak, that the Irish went on a 12-0 run in the final 3:30 to win 71-70. And this was before 1) the shot-clock era and 2) the three-point arc.

Still, Saturday evening in Madison Square Garden was a colossal choke by the Irish. And an Aaron Crafty-finish for the Buckeyes, who remain undefeated, one of nine such schools in Division I.

2. Mouthing Awful

What will you remember from Saturday’s Gilden New Mexico Bowl?

Will it be Washington State quarterback Connor Halliday’s six touchdown passes (to six different receivers), which tied an NCAA bowl record?

Will it be Colorado State’s epic comeback, from 15 points down with under three minutes remaining, to a game-winning field goal as time expired (the Rams scored 21 points total in the last minute of each half)?

Will it be the fact that two days later you still recall the Gilden New Mexico Bowl?
Or will it be this moment of holiday cheer, in which Ram defensive line coach Greg Lupfer appeared to call Halliday a “mucking maggot” directly to his face after Halliday’s first touchdown toss? Did Halliday say something to incite Lupfer? Even if he did, isn’t it Lupfer’s job, as the one person in this exchange earning a six-figure salary for college football activities, to be the adult here? Will this cost Lupfer his job? I doubt it–CSU won, after all. Who wants to harsh that buzz* with a Christmas week firing?

*Per state law, all items involving Colorado must now include a not-too-subtle reference to weed.

3. True Bromance

Former SNL cast member Jimmy Fallon and superstar Justin Timberlake, who’d be the most talented member of the cast if he actually wanted the gig full-time, invaded 30 Rock last weekend and pretty much told the current cast members, “We got this. Step aside.”

Worth noting: SNL has more first-year players than John Calipari this season. Also, I love JT. R’ally, I do. And Fallon, minus his wonder twin, can be terrific. And especially here.

As a duo, though, they remind of those two boys you knew in junior high, one of whom was truly funny and charismatic and the other who was his best friend and rode his coat tails. Not that I attended a junior high where too many kids wore coats, much less coat tails.

Am I alone on this one? Did you get a sense that the rest of the cast was just like, Well, I guess the dudes who wrote “Deck in a Box” are just going to hijack the show and we’ll be over here if you need us? By the way, the best sketch of the night was “Twin Bed”, a musical tribute to returning home for the holidays with a significant other, where the distaff cast members got their chance to shine.

4. American Anchorman

New York City is the place to be this Christmas season. That is, if you are a movie. Both “American Hustle” and “Anchorman 2” are set in Manhattan in the dying days of the 1970s –they’re “Argo” without Iran.

Neither of these is to be confused with “Inside Llewyn Davis”, which is set in New York City in the early 1960s, or “The Wolf of Wall Street”, which is set in New York City in the 1990s, or “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty”, which is set mostly in Manhattan in the digital age. Five New York-based movies and yet Woody Allen’s film contribution this year was set in San Francisco. What evs.

5. Peyton’s Place… in NFL History

Peyton Manning threw four touchdown passes in yesterday’s win at Houston to bring his 2013 season total to 51 — both an NFL record and nearly, but not quite, double the number of brother Eli’s interceptions (26) thrown this season.

Manning, at age 37, breaks the record of 50 set by New England’s Tom Brady in 2007 when Brady was 30.

Something to think about: three of the top five Single Season Passing Touchdown marks in league history were achieved by men over the age of 30. None of the top 12 Single Season Rushing Yards marks in league history were achieved by men over 30. Which is to say, for everyone down on Mark Sanchez or Matt Stafford or RG3, give ’em time.

Reserves

Direct from the ‘Medium Happy Biblio Files”, a mention of the tome to your left, which Esquire puts on its “80 Books Every Man Should Read” list.

Quickly, the set-up is a group of eight Iraq War heroes are back stateside on a victory tour of sorts, and nearly the entire book takes place as they are feted as guests of the Dallas Cowboys on Thanksgiving Day.

My favorite moment: Inside the Cowboys pre-game locker room, and the members of Bravo company are each given a football so that they may circulate and collect autographs. Our hero meets a few Cowboy defensive backs, who seem a little too curious about the types of ammo soldiers are given and what it’s like to kill somebody with a gun.

Finally, the Cowboy DBs offer, as Specialist Lynn is departing, that “we ride wit yall a couple weeks, nobody even gonna know we there. We offerin’ to help, yalls sayin’ you doan need the help?”

Lynn tells them that they could use the help: just join the Army and they’ll be happy to send them to Iraq.

The players snort, mutter, cast pitying glances his way. F___ that. Shee-uh. Hell to the naw naw naw….”We got jobs,” Octavian Bishop impresses on him, “this here our job, how you think we gonna quit our job go join some nigga’s army? Fah like, wha, three years? Break our contract an’ all?” Hilarious. They’re laughing. Little squeals and snuffling yips escape their mouths. “Go on,” Octavian says, waving Billy away. “Go on now. Yo’ boy over there callin’ you.”

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Horny

Do I dare disagree with Adrian Wojnarowski on any NBA-related opinion? I so dare. On Sunday morning Wojnaroski, the wizard (but not Washington version) of NBA reporting, tweeted, “Steve Clifford…is NBA Coach of the Year…and it isn’t even close.”

If Woj had just stopped before those last five words, well, his opinion might have been at least debatable. Clifford has done a wonderful job with the Charlotte Bob-Hornets, who are 13-15 and have the league’s second-stingiest defense behind Indiana, which has the league’s second-best record. However, Charlotte plays in the feckless Eastern Conference, against whom it has played 20 of its 28 games. They’re 2-6 out of conference and have ONE WIN against a team with a winning record.

The Phoenix Suns, however, under first-year coach Jeff Hornacek, are 16-10. Playing in the West. The Suns have seven wins against opponents with winning records, including two versus Portland, which has the league’s best record. Unlike Charlotte, the Suns actually finished last in their conference last season. And NOBODY, back in late October, had the Suns pegged for anything better than the Andrw Wiggins/Jabari Parker/Julian Randle lottery.

I was hardly the only person to tweet such an opinion to Woj, who then replied to all of us, “Jeff Hornacek has been great. Terry Stotts. Some tremendous work. Yet to win with Charlotte’s roster and losing culture is without peer.”

And this is where I might casually point out that Clifford is not in fact “winning” with Charlotte’s roster. The Hornet-Cats are 13-15. That’s a losing record. And while it is an improvement, it is not winning.

***

Portland Oregonian columnist John Canzano sends one final volley out at incoming Texas athletic director Steve Patterson.

***

Sacco and Vendetta

A publicist –and of all jobs, shouldn’t someone with this gig know better?– releases out an all-kinds-of-wrong tweet on a flight to South Africa and learns, upon landing, that she has been terminated. We’ll just wait to see Justine Sacco’s fabulous vacation photos from Robben Island.

This, by the way, is why you should own stock in Twitter. How many other tools have this type of global power? Oh, and if you had purchased TWTR on the day of its IPO, with its over-inflated stock price ($45), you’d still be up 33% this morning ($61), less than two months later.

REMOTE PATROL

Atlanta Falcons at San Francisco 49ers

ESPN 8:30 p.m.

Because Seattle will most likely not lose consecutive home games –having won 14 straight before yesterday’s defeat to Arizona–this is likely the 49ers’ final game at Candlestick Park. So if you see Dwight Clark today, buy him a beer to go with the 5,000 that have already been purchased for him. Clark, 56, will be on hand tonight and plans to revisit the very spot on which he made “The Catch.” Oh, and count on ESPN to provide self-aggrandizing footage of Chris Berman’s post-game report from that game from 1982.