Weekly Sporties

-Before last Sunday's Bills/Cowboys game there were a couple cute little stories about Bills wide receiver David Nelson and his girlfriend, who happens to be a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader. In one of the stories Nelson mentioned that if he scored in the game he had something special in mind as a celebration. Well, Nelson caught a touchdown late in the second quarter and proceeded to sprint the length of the sidelines to present his girlfriend with the football and give her a hug. Now, a lot of Buffalo fans are unhappy with Nelson because at the time the Bills were losing 21-7 and his celebration looked pretty self-serving considering the score. I also take exception to it, but for other reasons. First off, there was nothing very special about it. Secondly, it didn't seem like the girlfriend was all that thrilled about it. Sometimes (and this is coming from a guy who has a habit of doing things just to make girlfriends blush) when a girl tells you not to make a showy gesture, you should listen. But, mostly this felt as though Nelson was trying to show off to the world that he's dating a Cowboys cheerleader. Dude, you're a professional football player - you're supposed to have a hot girlfriend. Jees, act like you've been there before.

-Early in the week Duke basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski broke the record for most victories by a men's coach in the history of college basketball. Sitting at the game was Bobby Knight, whose record Coach K was about to break. I have always wondered exactly what was the point in making people come out to watch someone else break their records. (Now, at least in this case there was a connection, because Bobby Knight coached Krzyzweski when both were at West Point.) Still, I don't see the need to drag someone across the country just to make them watch their name be kicked off the top of the heap. You know damn well people, especially the super-competitive people who inhabit the world of sports, don't want their names erased from the history books and if they could find a new job to add a few more games to their totals they would. This is a not a good day for them - don't add to their misery by sticking a camera in their faces and demanding they look happy about it because if they don't everyone at home will think they are a jerk. Let them stay at home and wish the person loses every game for the rest of their lives, like a normal person.

-A few days ago former Red Sox manager Terry Francona, who had interviewed for the vacant Chicago Cubs manager position, took his name out of consideration for the job saying he wanted to stay at home for a year. In other words, Terry was never getting the Cubs job. I love it when people do stuff like this - basically try to get ahead of the story by saying they didn't want a job they weren't going to get anyway, as if it was their call. It's the old, "You can't fire me, because I quit" move. And you knew this statement from Terry was just the Cubs allowing Francona to save face because new Cubs GM Theo Epstein is close with him from their time in Boston. If the Cubs really had Francona as the top choice to be their manager they would have been back at the drawing board, going back over the list of candidates and it would have delayed the hiring process. Instead, they named a new manager on Thursday. But, no - not taking the job was totally Terry's idea.

-While we're talking baseball, the league announced a bunch of changes the other day. First off, as a condition of their sale, the new owners of the Houston Astros agreed to switch to the American League, finally balancing both baseball leagues out at 15 teams each. With this balance there is going to be inter-league play throughout the year instead of a couple week-long spurts of it. Most importantly, it was announced that there would be an additional wild-card team for both leagues added for the playoffs: the two wildcard teams will face off in a one-game playoff with the winner going to the divisional series and the loser going home. Commissioner Bud Selig said he hopes that all this can be put into place by next year - 2013 at the latest. Wait, so this stuff we can just rocket through, but any measures meant to speed up the game have to be put into committees and talked about for decades? And not a single mention of expanding the use of instant replays to include stuff like close tags and whether or not an outfielder trapped the ball? Well, thank God we're going to have more 5-hour playoff games instead.

-In the wake of the Penn State scandal, several college football bowl officials have come out and said that should the Nittany Lions lose a couple of the games remaining on their schedule and fall out of major bowl contention they could have a tough time getting an invite to play anywhere after the regular season. The officials said that when people schedule these games they want uplifting stories and to see all the positive sides of college athletics, not to be reminded of stuff like the on-going sexual abuse scandal. I have to be honest, in the wake of all the mess that is coming from College Park, I find this to be a shocking story. I mean, everyone already knows that the bowls are mostly irrelevant and that some schools get invited to bowls because of who they are, not because of how well they played that year. But, it's just shocking to actually hear a bowl official say it. When you stop and think about all the scandal and inter-conference hopping that has been around college athletics, it's a little sad that this might be the most honest thing anyone associated with college football has said in years.

-I'll tell you one team that doesn't have to worry about planning for a bowl game: Columbia. The Lions are 0-9 and it's so bad that their own band has started making fun of them. Last week the band introduced some new lyrics to the school fight song during their game about how bad the team is and how the fans need to get drunk to deal with it. Originally the school said this behavior was unacceptable and the band was going to be barred from this week's game, but reversed that decision after getting pressure from the press and various alumni. Normally, I'm for anything that takes a marching band down a notch, because there is nothing worse than going to a college game and dealing with a band that thinks the 80,000 people are there to see them. (You have your own competitions and no one goes to them for a reason, bandies.) However, in this case I can understand why people were upset with kicking the band out. I mean, it's Columbia. No one is expecting great football but 0-9 is bad, even for them. At some point you just have to laugh about it. And now seems like that point, because when Dartmouth is beating you by 37 points, I think laughing about it will be a hell of a lot easier than fixing the football team.

-Staying in the Ivy League, Yale senior Patrick Witt faced a tough decision. Saturday he was scheduled to interview for a Rhodes Scholarship. But, Witt is also the quarterback of the Yale football team and Saturday they play Harvard in what is known simply as "The Game". Witt decided to play the game and withdrew his scholarship application. This, of course, led to all sorts of talking heads to jump on television and tell this kid he was making a huge mistake. Ok, three things:

1) The kid is allowed to make his own decisions. It is his life, he can do with it what he pleases.
2) If the kid is in line for a Rhodes Scholarship, my guess is he's pretty smart and doesn't need outside council from guys like Mark May.
3) Witt will still graduate from Yale. I doubt many doors are about to be slammed in his face whether he studies at Oxford or not.

Frankly, I think it shows great leadership to put the needs of your team ahead of individual success - that sounds like just the kind of person who should be getting a Rhodes Scholarship. But, this is not the first time this has happened. One of the members of the committee has said people miss games all the time to have their interviews. Well, here's a thought: move the interviews. Why are they on a Saturday anyway? You know, if this committee is too stupid to see such an easy conclusion, maybe they shouldn't be the people handing out scholarships to begin with.