Myron Rolle update

Florida State safety Myron Rolle, whose extraordinary life story we told you about in November has been awarded a Rhodes scholarship. Rolle who is projected to go in the first two rounds of the NFL draft in April is passing up playing professional football for now. He will attend Oxford in the Fall to study medical anthropology. The Clarion Content applauds Mr. Rolle and wishes him huge success. Read more here.

A bad ass dunk

Point guard Johnny Flynn of Syracuse positively posterizes Mike Rosario of Rutgers.

First a sweet crossover out past the three point line, then a strong one-handed throwdown. Yowzer.


For the poster freeze-frame at 54 seconds...

Jim Rice should be in the Hall of Fame

Jim Rice is a bona fide Hall of Famer. His statistics in his era absolutely merit his selection. He was one of the most feared hitters of the 1970's. Over a ten year period, he was in the top ten Major Leaguers in home runs, runs batted in and batting average. He was also an above average leftfielder with a strong arm who played in Fenway Park's unique and difficult leftfield.

He should not be diminished by the juiced numbers in the decades that followed. Don't be fooled by his 1981 production, remember that was a strike year. In part his candidacy has been negatively effected by the racial prejudices of Boston in the 1970's which undervalued his achievements (and overvalued those of his fellow outfielder Fred Lynn.)

NFL playoffs week II

The Player of the Week, from the Playoffs Week 1
Mike Scifres

The Clarion Content is loathe to make any predictions for this week's games. We wouldn't want to jinx any of the teams we are rooting for or against. So then, here are a couple of quick comments on each of this weeks games, in the order they will be played.

Saturday, January 10th

Baltimore Ravens at the Tennessee Titans

Baltimore has a great defense. Ed Reed is making a case for the Hall of Fame. Ray Lewis, if character concerns are set aside, will be a first ballot Hall of Famer. The Ravens defense is darn good, but so is the Titans. The Clarion Content has long admired character guy and Syracuse alum, Keith Bulluck. Both teams have strong running games and weak quarterbacks. Baltimore's quarterback is a rookie who cost them their regular season game against Tennessee. The Titans quarterback is Kerry Collins who has been around long enough to get shellacked in the playoffs more than once. This game is going to be close. It could be decided by a field goal either way. Tennessee has a slight edge in the kicking department behind, Rob Bironas. They also have the benefit of a week to rest and lick their wounds, plus home field advantage.


Arizona Cardinals at the Carolina Panthers

The Cardinals celebrated last week's Wild Card victory by dumping Gatorade on head coach Ken Whisenhunt. Doesn't exactly give off the feel that they been here before. But why not? They haven't been here before, last week's win equaled the Cards cumulative playoff victory total of the previous sixty years. Yet remember, they played the Panthers competitively in mid-season, leading 17-3 in the second half before Steve Smith and Jake Delhomme took the game over. Delhomme has the third highest passer rating in the playoffs all-time. He trails only Joe Montana and Bart Starr, not bad company. The Panthers pass defense looked awfully vulnerable in week 17 allowing Drew Brees to throw for nearly 400 yards in a game they had to win to get home field. The Panthers are hoping for help from rainy and cold weather to slow down Kurt Warner, Larry Fitzgerald and Anquan Boldin. The Panthers have had trouble generating pressure in recent weeks. The Vegas oddsmakers have installed the Panthers as ten point favorites.


Sunday, January 11th

Philadelphia Eagles at the New York Giants

The Eagles have underrated, under-respected quarterback Donovan McNabb at the helm. Unfortunately, he has the millstone of Coach Andy Reid around his neck. McNabb also has zero even halfway decent wide receivers. Only one wideout caught even 500 yards in passes for the Eagles this season. The Eagles managed nine offensive points last week against a stumbling Vikings team that was missing two of their best defenders. Bryan Westbrook is a talented player with a knack for making the big play at the right time, but will the Eagles run enough to keep the Giants honest? Nobody in the league has more predictable play calling than Andy Reid, whereas Giants Coach Tom Coughlin seems to have come into his own in the last two years. The Giants are not the team they were last year minus Osi Umenyiora and Plaxico Burress. The Eagles also have a terrific defense. This game will come down to Eli Manning's ability to limit the Giants turnovers.


San Diego Chargers at the Pittsburgh Steelers

The Clarion Content is quite upset that the Pittsburgh Steelers, a team with a tragic history of brain injuries, is sending Ben Roethlisberger back into the fray, especially after he admitted his head was still bothering him in practice this week. We are rooting against the Steelers on the basis of this despicable, callous use of a human being. The Chargers quarterback Phillip Rivers has been a Clarion Content fave since he was at North Carolina State. The diminutive Darren Sproles showed starting running back LaDainian Tomlinson last week that it is the size of your heart that matters, not your physical size. The Steelers have a terrific defense and they gutted out an 11-10 regular season win at home against the Chargers. Can they do it again with a banged up Ben Roethlisberger, coming off of his fourth career concussion? Behind a subpar offensive line? Do they have enough offensive weapons beyond the gritty Hines Ward? San Diego has the special teams edge.

Couldn't fix this one

As the Clarion Content watched the Big 12's Oklahoma go down to defeat last night against Florida, we couldn't help but be reminded of this year's skewed Heisman trophy balloting. Florida quarterback Tim Tebow looked as good or better as Oklahoma quarterback Sam Bradford last night. The Clarion Content did not have a strong preference for one or the other of them as the Heisman winner. (We were more disappointed that Graham Harrell and Michael Crabtree weren't even invited to New York as finalists.)

However, last night's more or less equal performances from the two top vote getters in the Heisman race highlighted just how illegitimate that voting was. Florida quarterback Tim Tebow received the most first place votes, 750+. We felt it fair to vote Bradford, Tebow, Colt McCoy of Texas or Graham Harrell of Texas Tech number one. What was ridiculous was that Tebow left off of 154 ballots, almost all of the from them southwest region. What you didn't think Tebow was even in the top three best players in the country? Really? Or was it (more likely) that you were just trying to fix the outcome for your favorite son? Didn't work last night! Florida handled the Oklahoma offense, which had been lighting up the scoreboard on the Big 12's little sisters of the poor defenses. Last night Bradford & co. ran into a buzz saw. 14 points? What happened to 60 a game?

Well, at least the rest of the conference held up there end of the bargain, right? What's that you say, Texas barely got by Big 10 runner-up Ohio State with help of a very questionable final drive spot? Oklahoma State got thumped by the 3rd place PAC-10 team? And the conference finished with only the 6th best record of BCS conferences in bowl games?

Yeah, Big 12 honks, you may have fixed the Heisman voting, but you got exposed on the field. Say what's Jason White up to these days anyway? Whatever it is, we see Sam Bradford working along side of him soon.

Making Heisman voters ballots public would help solve this problem.

No respect

Caps defenseman, Mike Green

Earlier this week we alerted you, dear reader, to the fantastic season the Washington Capitals of the NHL are having. Unfortunately, the NHL's All-Star balloting did not reflect it. The Washington Capitals only got one All-Star, the all world Alexander Ovechkin. The fans selected the starters. They can, in this modern era can not only vote at the rinks and on-line, but also via text message for their favorite team as a straight ticket as it were. In a political machine worthy example of ballot box stuffing, the fans selected only Pittsburgh Penguins and Montreal Canadiens for the Eastern Conference starting line-up.

The reserves are selected by the league office and the general managers of the individual clubs. The Clarion Content is no Caps fan, but for them to only get one All-Star is an egregious oversight. Ovechkin, one of the two or three best players in the league, was undeniable. But where were the G.M.s to correct the imbalance with center Nicklas Backstrom and defenseman Mike Green? Backstrom is 5th in the East in assists and 7th in points. Green leads Eastern Conference defensemen in goals and points-per-game, and he is third in total points and fourth in plus/minus rating.

The league showed no respect for the Caps. Read more analysis of how it went down here at the DC Sports Box.

One more note, the New York Islanders have now dropped 14 straight on the road. They need one more loss to match the team record after getting spanked in Calgary last night. Go, Islanders, go! The Clarion Content believes you can shatter that record.

No box

"Sorry Mr. Mayor, but you will have to sit in the bleachers."

Here at the Clarion Content that is how we picture it going for New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. The mayor, whose team had wrung a free luxury box for the city of New York out of the Yankees at the new Yankee Stadium, agreed yesterday to let the Yankees sell the box and instead pass the revenue along to the city. Of course, the mayor and his peeps had thought, luxury box=fantastic perk. After all the city was putting hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayers bonds behind the construction of this stadium, why shouldn't they get a free luxury box? (Apparently, this is SOP for city governments using public funds to build stadiums for billionaires.) Then the investment bankers of lower Manhattan had their CDO~Ponzi schemes collapse like the houses of cards they were, and the city of New York is facing a massive revenue shortfall. Suddenly, a free luxury box at Yankee Stadium for the mayor and his cronies looks a little unseemly.

The mayor's spokesperson insists there was nothing wrong or illegal about the quid pro quo. The mayor is only relinquishing the box because the revenues it can earn the city are more important at this time. E-mail messages revealed to the New York Times show that after the Yankees made concessions over the size of the luxury suite and free food, the team received an additional 250 parking spaces, as well as the rights to three new billboards along the Major Deegan Expressway and the revenue they generate.

Read more here in the New York Times.

Hockey update

Save for the New York Rangers and the playoffs the Clarion Content does not devote a lot of editorial energy to hockey coverage. However, two notes crossed our path today that we had to pass along.

Did you realize the Alexander Ovechkin and the Washington Capitals are 17 and 1 at home? 17 and freaking 1!!! Wow. These are the "We have never won a Cup" Caps. Long mired in mediocrity, they have never sniffed being this good. The Caps are on fire, having won eleven of twelve. They are running away with the NHL's Southeast Division.

Which brings to our second note, locally the Carolina Hurricanes are second in the division, but a full ten points behind the Caps. The Canes who have found a way to take home Lord Stanley's trophy, unlike the Caps, are playing the New Jersey Devils tonight in Raleigh. This means the Canes are likely to get their asses kicked. The Devils have won eight of the last ten meetings between the two clubs. The Devils have blowing their doors off too, winning four of the last five times, by three goals or more. Ugh.

The Clarion Content is no fan of the Devils, but we have to give credit where credit is due. At sixth overall in the Eastern Conference the Devils have been playing remarkably after losing future Hall of Fame goalie Martin Brodeur to injury.

NFL Playoffs 2009

The opening weekend of the NFL playoffs is upon us. A strange opening weekend follows perfectly thematically from an unpredictable NFL season. This weekend all four road teams are favored by the odds makers, including the two teams with rookie coaches and rookie quarterbacks. Two teams who haven't hosted playoff games in eons are having trouble selling out their home stadiums and avoiding regional television blackouts. (The NFL can't sell playoff tickets?!? Yo, the economy really must be in the tank.)

The Arizona Cardinals haven't had a home playoff game since the team was in, wait for it, hang on, nope not St. Louis, since they were in Chicago in 1947. Yet they hadn't sold out this game as of yesterday afternoon, must be better things to do in Phoenix in January. The Cards host the Atlanta Falcons today. The Clarion Content has picked against the Falcons all year, since Week One when we thought they would lose to the Detroit Lions to open the season. The rookie quarterback in a road game and his first playoff game weighs on us heavily here. Yes, the Cards have a crummy defense. Nope, they can't run the ball. Yes, Atlanta has MVP worthy running back Michael Turner. Still we like playoff tested Kurt Warner and the Boldin-Fitzgerald duo at home.

The second game tonight features the only two teams from this weekend whom the Clarion Content believes have a puncher's chance of making it to Super Sunday, the Bolts and the Colts. The Chargers were pathetic most of the season stumbling out of the gate 4 up and 8 down and needing a monumental collapse from the Broncos just to make the playoffs. The Colts on the other hand were dominant, winning their final nine games in a row. Both teams have solid quarterbacks. Philip Rivers, a cerebral coach's son quarterback has gotten better ever year he has been in the league. Peyton Manning has shaken his playoff jinx and finally won the big one, though he still can get happy feet under intense pressure. The Chargers lack big time wide receivers. The Colts wideouts aren't what they once were as Marvin Harrison ages. And speaking of aging, how old and slow has LaDainian Tomlinson looked this year? As Clarion Content fave Bill Simmons is fond of saying, "Nobody ages faster than porn stars and NFL running backs." Not to mention, for his whole career, LD has come up small when the games were biggest. There has always been a nagging injury, today he has "groin issues." The San Diego defense has good interior linemen and excellent cornerbacks, but they sure miss the pressure injured linebacker Shawn Merriman put on opposing QBs. It says here that despite the Colts own awful defense, that will be the key factor, San Diego will miss Merriman just enough for Manning to beat them in a shootout. It doesn't help San Diego's case that they are coached by the petrified Norv Turner.

Game one on Sunday features two rookie coaches. In most years Baltimore's John Harbaugh would be a shoe in for NFL Coach of the Year, but in 2008 he was overshadowed by the worst to first run pulled off by Miami head coach, Tony Sparano. Last year the Dolphins were 1 up and 15 down, this year they are AFC East champions. The Clarion Content has always loved gamer and Marshall alum Chad Pennington. He did nothing to dissuade us this season. The Dolphins also have Clarion Content fave, running back Ricky Williams. Ronnie Brown, their lead running back, has had a resurgent year, too, operating out of the single wing or as they like to call it these days, the wildcat formation. Yet for all the sentiment the Clarion Content has for the Dolphins, there looms the Ravens defense, anchored by future Hall of Famers Ray Lewis and Ed Reed. Pennington has no wideouts who can go deep, and throwing deep isn't his game, thus the Ravens defense only kryptonite is unlikely to be available to Miami. Even with a rookie quarterback (former Blue Hen Joe Flacco) it says here the Ravens eek out a low scoring win.

Finally, Minnesota versus Philadelphia, the other playoff game that hasn't sold out, perhaps Vikings fans know something having watched enough Tavaris Jackson over the last two seasons to think $85 tickets might be a waste of money. Philadelphia quarterback Donovan McNabb is in the same position he has been for ages. His wide receivers could be generously referred to as subpar. He has exactly one playmaker on offense, running back Brian Westbrook. He has an awful game coach in Andy Reid who couldn't be a worse play caller or clock manager. Luckily for the Eagles, Minnesota is coached by Andy Reid protege, Brad Childress. Hopefully for the Eags fans some of Reid's moronic myopia has rubbed off on Childress. Minnesota's Adrian Peterson is a stud running back, but we think Philly will take him out of the game by building a big lead early and forcing the Vikings to play catch up. Tavaris Jackson is not leading anybody to a big comeback over a secondary powered by Brian Dawkins and Assante Samuel.

To sum up our picks: Arizona, Indianapolis, Baltimore and Philly.

A few notes on other franchises from west to east...

We think the San Francisco 49ers made a good hire in Mike Singletary.

To the Seahawks overrated coach Mike Holmgren, we say, "Good riddance, goodbye!" The guy won exactly as many Super Bowls as Barry Switzer and one fewer than Tom Flores.

Denver, don't cry for Mike Shanahan, the guy has won one playoff game in the nine years since Elway left town. Their defense has been awful the whole time that he has been in charge of player personnel.

In Kansas City, we may be the only ones left, but we think Herm Edwards can turn it around. He was handed an aging, broken roster. He played all kinds of young guys, and got consistent effort out of his team, even after the season was clearly lost. Incidentally, looks like they have found a young quarterback in Tyler Thigpen.

Houston, oy vey, if you only hadn't let Sage Rosenfels on the field, what might have been.

Green Bay, looks like they made the right call on Brett Farve, now if they had only thought to do it three years earlier.

Chicago, don't give up on Kyle Orton, he has lots of upside left.

Cleveland, bring back Marty Schottenheimer, brilliant!

Tampa Bay, sounds like everybody hates Coach John Gruden, no surprise there, eh Chucky? Yet, it was mighty classless of defensive coordinator Monte Kiffin to mail-in the last four weeks of the season for a 9 and 3 team so he could go help his son Lane get crushed in the SEC. Nice hire, Tennessee! Says here Phil Fulmer wins more games at his next job than Kiffin wins in his Tennessee career.

New England, ah, it is so satisfying when karma this pure rises from the biosphere.

New York Jets, good call bringing in Brett Farve, enjoy the off-season while he deliberates in the media whether or not to come back and wreck another year for Gang Green.

New Orleans, on the last play of the last game of the regular season, all world quarterback and former Boilermaker Drew Brees demonstrated the honor, integrity and pride with which the aforementioned Farve and his unindicted co-conspirator Michael Strahan are unfamiliar.

BCS Credibility

Good thing the BCS isn't a farcical joke. It sure would be annoying if college football fans had to sit through a season of fierce and exciting regular season battles only to watch it end in exhibition games and a beauty pageant vote. Thank goodness we get to decide on the field whether one loss USC, one loss Florida, one loss Oklahoma, one loss Texas or undefeated Utah is the better team, cause imagine how illegitimate it would be if voters just had to guess who was better without the teams actually playing. That would suck...oh wait.

Two further BCS thoughts.

One is a significant and entrenched power that supports keeping the current bowl system the way it is, gambling. The elephant in the room that the NCAA would never speak of has huge incentives to keep the current system. Where else are the books and Vegas gonna get this kind of huge action during the dull days of December, regular season basketball? Hockey? Don't kid yourselves, the fact that Vegas, and in rest of the country, the mob get millions of dollars in action bet on craptastic games like a Wake Forest-Navy rematch in the Eagle Bank Bowl is one of the big reasons business as usual hasn't changed. These folks have powerful lobbyists and are one of the constituencies that even president-elect Obama will have trouble overcoming to create a college football playoff. (If you watch these games, you know there are quite a few that don't sell out. It is not the money they're making off of ticket sales that keeps the bowls going.)

Two is how much crummier have the television options for the bowl games gotten. Used to be five, six bowls a day on New Year's Day, so if one game was awful or a blowout at least there were other places to turn for college football. Not so anymore. As greed has ruled the roost, the games have been spread out over more and more days, so when you get a stinker of a Rose Bowl, like this year, where the entire second half was garbage time watching USC, who had won the second quarter alone 24-0, trying to run out the clock, there was nowhere to turn. No other college football game was on!!! Same thing with a somnambulant Orange Bowl, while Virginia Tech and Cincinnati played a dullsville 10-7 first half, in the good old days there would have been another game to surf to, but not anymore. So guess what BCS honks? Here at the Clarion Content offices we surfed away from your boring exhibition game, and we never came back.