Categories
Dallas Cowboys

Life is good when you’re Tony Romo, both on and off the field


If you think that Scott Van Pelt is the only person in America with a giant-sized man crush on Tony Romo then you’re outta your mind! After wowing the world with the longest four yard gain in the history of football and then overcoming a five interception performance to lead the Cowboys to victory, there are so many people on the bandwagon that Dallas is legitimately America’s Team again.

So, does he really deserve all the hype? Well, it’s hard to argue with the numbers. When you compare his first 16 games to the starts of some other notable quarterbacks, Romo looks like he could be on his way to becoming a football god.

TONY ROMO
Record: 11-4
Stats: 305 of 481 (63.4 pct); 4,149 yards (276.6 ypg); 29 TDs; 18 INTs
Noteworthy: Seven 300-yard games; only Troy Aikman (13) and Danny White (10) have more in club history.

ROGER STAUBACH
Record: 15-1
Stats: 158 of 277 (57.0); 2,274 yards (142.1); 19 TDs; 9 INTs
Noteworthy: Led Cowboys to Super Bowl title the season he took over.

TROY AIKMAN
Record: 2-14
Stats: 239 of 433 (55.2); 2,664 yards (166.5); 12 TDs; 25 INTs
Noteworthy: With nowhere to go but up, Aikman went on to win three Super Bowls in a 4-year span.

BEN ROETHLISBERGER
Record: 15-1
Stats: 219 of 335 (65.4); 3,133 yards (195.8); 21 TDs; 9 INTs
Noteworthy: First loss was in his 16th career start, vs. Patriots, the team Romo is facing Sunday in his 16th career start. He led Steelers to Super Bowl title his second season in charge.

TOM BRADY
Record: 13-3
Stats: 313 of 481 (65.1); 3,360 yards (210); 23 TDs; 13 INTs
Noteworthy: Like Romo, got his big chance by replacing Drew Bledsoe. Like Aikman, won three Super Bowls in four years.

BRETT FAVRE
Record: 9-7
Stats: 323 of 502 (64.3); 3,390 yards (211.9); 20 TDs; 17 INTs
Noteworthy: Favre’s rise to becoming the owner of most prestigious QB records got going in Green Bay in 1992, and 12-year-old Romo was watching closely in Burlington, Wisc.

PEYTON MANNING
Record: 3-13
Stats: 326 of 575 (56.7); 3,739 yards (233.7); 26 TDs; 28 INTs
Noteworthy: At 9-0 last season, and headed to a Super Bowl title, Manning’s first loss was to the Romo-led Cowboys.

Now, we’re not quite ready to crown Romo the next John Elway just yet. We’re not even ready to crown him the next Jim Kelly. Until his Crisco hands get the Boys a postseason victory he’s still just plain ol’ Tony Romo to us. Once he gets four Super Bowl defeats under his belt then maybe we’ll elevate him to Kellyesque status.

Links:

[KCBD.com]: How Tony Romo compares to other great QBs through their first 16 games

Categories
Colorado Rockies

Denver TV station’s idea of news is painting plaster purple


Finding quality human interest stories can be tough and when you try prefabricating them around a specific subject then it becomes even more difficult. However, this Denver news station obviously scraped the bottom of the barrel clean long ago if this is the best Rockies related tidbit they could come up with.

Breaking your arm is never fun. But for 7-year-old Daniel Brockman, it couldn’t have come at a better time.

Daniel was playing basketball Monday night when he fell and broke his arm in several places. After surgery at Presbyterian/St. Luke’s Medical Center, Dr. Laurel Benson asked him what kind of cast he wanted.

She offered him casts featuring superheroes like Batman and Spiderman, but Daniel didn’t seem interested. Then his dad said she said the magic words. She offered him a Rockies cast.

“His eyes lit up,” dad Mark Brockman told 7NEWS. “He was like ‘Yeah, I want a Rockies cast.'”

Benson hopes the cast gives him something to show his friends.

“He’s going to be in that cast for four weeks,” she said. “So hopefully it makes him feel special and he gets to show off his love for the Rockies.”

The Brockman family doesn’t have tickets to any of the Rockies upcoming playoff games, so they’ll be watching from their home in Castle Rock.

A stupid Rockies cast!! That’s all you got? Seriously, a Rockies cast? What, Denver doesn’t have any fanatical nuns to feature?

Look, we do feel kinda bad for the kid; after all, four weeks to a 7-year-old is basically a life sentence. But we’re not going to go overboard or anything because thanks to the last sentence in that story, we can guarantee the Brockmans are sitting in a luxury box when Colorado brings their series with Arizona to Denver on Sunday. Meanwhile, we’re going to be trying to keep the foil properly positioned on our rabbit ears just to get semi decent reception.

You know, that’s actually not a half bad idea. This kid might be on to something.

We’ll snap our legs right now and get red, white and blue casts if some desperate news outlet gives us a plug that results in Patriots/Cowboys tickets.

Links:

[TheDenverChannel.com]: Kid `Casts’ His Love Of Rockies

Categories
General Sports

Mike Gundy strikes again

There have been a lot of Mike Gundy imitation videos popping up on the web since he threw his little temper tantrum on Jenni Carlson a few weeks back. We thought we’d seen all of `em and we had. Well, we’d seen all the copycats on the small screens of YouTube, but we totally forgot to pay attention to the slighter larger screen that’s sitting in our living room.

That has got to be the best impression of Mike Gundy’s tirade since, well, Mike Gundy’s tirade. The only thing that guy forgot to say was “Hello! You play to win the game!” Oh, wait, we’re getting our diatribes confused. What he forgot to say was “Playoffs? Playoffs?”

And while we’re still semi on the subject of commercials, have you seen the new SportsCenter ad? Grab the tissues, it’s a real tearjerker.

Oh, Scott Van Pelt; will you ever find true love?

Links:

[Can’t Stop The Bleeding]: Where’s Mike Gundy Now? Pt. 2

Categories
College Football

Texas A&M and Texas Tech are already in game day form


Tuesday was a big day for a Big 12 rivalry. Texas A&M hasn’t defeated Texas Tech in Lubbock since 1993, but that doesn’t mean squat to Aggies running back big, bad Jorvorskie Lane.

We’re going to win in 2007,” Lane said. “That’s a guarantee. I promise you.”

Asked what coach Dennis Franchione – who had already spoken at the weekly press conference – might think of such a bold prediction, Lane shrugged.

“I’m a man,” he said. ” I can say what I want to say.

Obviously somebody has been watching too many Mike Gundy replays, but he has good reason to be jacked up for this game. Not only is head coach Mike Leach wounded, but the guy is talking dual Heisman candidates on the week A&M makes the trip. Oh, yeah, and there are students selling T-shirts with pictures of Michael Vick hanging A&M’s mascot.

The red and black shirts, with text that says “VICK ‘EM” in an apparent reference to the Aggies slogan “Gig ’em,” was created by a Tech student.

Officials say the student was trying to sell them before Saturday’s game in Lubbock.

The back of the shirt shows a football player wearing the number seven Vick jersey holding a rope with an image of the mascot “Reveille” at the end of a noose.

Wow, and we thought LSU’s fans were insensitive.

Links:

[MySA.com]: A&M’s Lane guarantees victory against Tech
[WISTV.com]: Tech bans T-shirts featuring Vick, A&M’s dog mascot

Categories
College Football

Hey, Tim Tebow, is your refrigerator running?

Remember when Tim Tebow made that “I’ll call you” gesture after a touchdown during the first quarter of the Florida/LSU game on Saturday? Well, turns out he wasn’t trying to pick up a Louisianan cutie; he was actually trying to needle the Tiger fans who prank called him hundreds of times leading up to the game.

Tebow said many of the messages contained physical threats and most included foul language.

“I really don’t use that type of language too much, so I can’t tell you,” Tebow said, declining to reveal any of the messages. “Some people did take it way too far, farther than you should take it with sports. But I think for the most part people were just having fun. Unfortunately, there’s people like that everywhere.”

Tebow said the messages started coming early last week and increased in number as the game got closer. He eventually turned the phone off, but had to listen to each voice message and read each text message before deleting them.

But Tim got himself a new number and now Kentucky fans have almost two full weeks to go Colombo and decipher those digits. While we can see how a billion giggly phone pranks could become a slight nuisance, we gotta admit, there really is nothing better than a finely crafted prank call. Isn’t that right, Juice?

Links:

[CBSSports.com]: Florida’s Tebow changes phone number after threatening calls

Categories
All Other Sports

Ric Flair doesn’t think imitation is the greatest form of flattery


If you’re a fan of professional wrestling, then you’ve probably been wondering what happened to Ric Flair. No, he’s still not retired yet and he’s not in the hospital after receiving a STD from a lucky lady who took a ride on Space Mountain. No, apparently Flair is too busy suing car dealerships to deliver low blows or get tossed from the top turnbuckle.

Professional wrestler Ric Flair is suing a Columbia car dealership for imitating the “Nature Boy” and his well-known slogans to sell cars.

Flair says Freedom Suzuki used his persona without permission in radio and TV ads featuring a blond Captain Freedom shouting “Whoeee” and “To be the man, you got to beat the man!” Attorney Eric Bland says the “Whoeee” sounds exactly like the “Wooo!” his client Flair has shouted into microphones for decades.

Bland is claiming that the slogans are basically the property of Flair and that his client needs to protect his image before he really does hang it up for good.

We can’t blame `Naitch’ for trying to get paid while he can, but we never figured we’d see the ultimate wrestling playboy battling it out with some scummy car salesman over the technical differences between “Whoee” and “Wooo.” And as far as “To be the man, you got to beat the man” goes, even if that jerk rips off your catch phrase, you’ll always be a “limousine ridin’, jet flyin’, kiss stealin’, wheelin’ dealing, son of a gun” in our book.

Links:

[WISTV.com]: Wrestler Ric Flair sues Columbia car dealership over ads

Categories
MLB General

The Full Count: Bye Bye Yanks; LCS Picks


1. Another Disappointment: Once again, the New York Yankees had a great regular season that ended in disappointment in the playoffs. For the third straight year, they won at least 94 games but lost in the first round of the playoffs. Their last playoff victory was back in the 2004 division playoffs. As usual, their hitters were great in the regular season but failed in the playoffs. They only hit .228 in their series against the Indians, compared with a .290 mark in the regular season. Their pitching wasn’t much better, as Chien-Ming Wang gave two awful starts that both resulted in losses. In the decisive Game 4, Wang allowed four runs in just one inning before being pulled. Mike Mussina, who was competent in relief of Wang, did not earn a start in the series despite an excellent performance in September. The Indians won Game 4 6-4, getting a lead early and then holding the Yankees off late in the game.

The loss could mark the end of an era for New York, as the entire franchise could be overhauled this offseason. The biggest question is whether Joe Torre will be fired. It is obvious at least to us that he shouldn’t, considering he has given the Yankees their best era of success since Casey Stengel in the 1950’s. Despite the fact that this move is obviously not wanted by the Yankee players, and that this season was perhaps Torre’s best in bringing the team out of a 21-29 hole to the playoffs, it still shouldn’t be surprising to anyone if he is canned. Also, it is likely Alex Rodriguez will leave the team via free agency and Roger Clemens will retire. If those players both don’t return for next season, it will give New York a lot of money they can spend on rebuilding their pitching staff.

2. It’s Showtime: Now is perhaps the best time of the year for baseball, as only the four best teams are left in contention. In the NLCS, the Rockies and Diamondbacks will be the matchup. This surprising meeting of division foes includes two teams fueled by youth. The Rockies have the obviously superior lineup, with breakout stars such as Matt Holliday, Brad Hawpe, and Troy Tulowitzki. The Diamondbacks lineup, which is carried by youth as well, has struggled throughout much of the season. However, they do improve in clutch situations. They rely on Brandon Webb and the bullpen, with the others starters average at best. The Rockies’ pitching staff is nothing to brag about, but if they can at least be effective, the Rockies should win this series. Prediction: Rockies in 6.

The other series matches up the best two teams in baseball during the regular season, the Indians and Red Sox. Both just beat very good teams very easily in the first round. Both are loaded at the top of the rotation, with Carmona and Sabathia for the Indians and Beckett, Schilling, and Matsuzaka for the Red Sox. If the series goes seven games, Boston’s big three will likely have six starts, giving them a reliable pitcher for every game. Both teams also have good bullpens and solid offenses, making this series very hard to predict. In the end, I think the Red Sox’s prior postseason experience will play a major role against the youthful Indians. They should be able to win close games, with experienced, clutch hitters in David Ortiz and Manny Ramirez as well as a superior closer. Prediction: Red Sox in 7.

Categories
General Sports

You ready to get rainforest sweaty? Swamp sweaty?

Will Ferrell convinced us long ago that he was the best thing to ever happen to sport spoof movies. First he gave us Talladega Nights, then there was Blades of Glory and now we’re finally getting a glimpse at his latest production: Semi-Pro.

Needless to say, we’ve already canceled all our February appointments in anticipation.

Links:

[TrojanWire]: Will Ferrell’s `Semi-Pro’ Trailer

Categories
College Football

Mike Leach break his arm while bicycling…wait, bicycling??



We always took Leach as a scooter
guy for some reason.

Oddly enough our oddball injury of the day goes to one of college football’s biggest oddities, Texas Tech coach Mike Leach. We’d like to say that it involves a pirate ship, a parrot and a plank, but that would just be wishful thinking.

Leach said today (Monday) he broke a bone in his right arm. He hit the pavement after falling from his bicycle Friday.

Leach says he got a flat tire and tried to fill it with enough air to make it to his destination, but “it proceeded to run out of air. I took a routine turn, then went into a slide, so then it broke the arm.

While Leach takes the cake for stupidest boo-boo, Limas Sweed gets the nod for most demoralizing Big 12 injury.

Just days after losing to rival Oklahoma, the Longhorns wide receiver found out that his college career is over. Sweed needs surgery to repair ligament damage in his wrist stemming from a preseason incident.

I knew it was an injury I would be dealing with going into the season and I did everything I could to play through the pain and help the team,” Sweed said.

“I’ve aggravated it a couple of times and again last week and have probably been in more pain than I let anybody know,” he added.

If you thought Mack Brown was throwing a fit after Colt McCoy took a late hit in the game against Oklahoma, you know that the furniture is flying in his office today. After all, considering Texas’ running game is virtually nonexistent, without Sweed in the lineup, Brown chances of Leachin’ it up and getting 500+ yards per game through the air just lost all sorts of steam.

Links:

[KCBD.com]: Texas Tech coach Leach breaks arm in bicycle crash
[SportingNews.com]: Horns lose Sweed to wrist injury

Categories
MLB General

The Full Count: Yankees only team not swept


1. That was easy: The Red Sox dismantled the Angels, one of the league’s best teams during the regular season, completing a 3-0 sweep on Sunday. They became the third team to win by a sweep in the first round of these playoffs. Boston outscored Los Angeles 19-4 in the series, with three great pitching performances. Curt Schilling, who has a career 1.93 ERA in the postseason including the 2001 co-World Series MVP, pitched seven shutout innings in game 3. He followed up solid efforts from Dice-K and Josh Beckett, who when combined form the best pitching trio left in the playoffs. Their dominance of the Angels was surprising, especially considering the Angels had three great starters of their own. However, their bullpen was disappointing, and their offense couldn’t continue their success from the regular season. The Red Sox, who have been widely considered the best team since the start of the season, proved once again that they are with this overwhelming effort against a good team. David Ortiz and Manny Ramirez, who both weren’t their usual selves for most of the regular season, had a dominant series. Ramirez hit the game-winning home run in game 2, while Ortiz had two long balls and hit .714 for the series. As things stand right now, if the World Series results in anything but a Red Sox victory it will be a surprise.

2. You’re (Almost) Fired: There were reports that George Steinbrenner might fire manager Joe Torre if the Yankees don’t win their series against the Indians. After losing the first two games, the Yankees might have saved their manager’s job with an 8-4 win in Game 3 at Yankee Stadium. The fact that Torre’s job may be in jeopardy is absolutely ridiculous. He has taken the Yankees to the playoffs every year since joining the team, brought four World Series titles to New York, and did an excellent job this season in turning a losing team through the first half of the season into a force. Regardless of whether this would have happened, the Yankees did pull of a much-needed win over the Tribe. Roger Clemens was pulled in the third after allowing three runs, the Yankees scored seven combined runs in the fifth and sixth innings and never looked back. Johnny Damon had four RBIs including a three-run homerun. Phil Hughes and the bullpen were great in relief of Clemens. Even A-Rod cranked out two hits, his first of the series. Now the Yankees need to win game 4 on Monday to force a decisive game 5 in Cleveland.