Sunday, November 4, 2007

Some sporting thoughts for the first Sunday in November

1) Now, there is no doubt as to which is the best football team in the NFL. The New England Patriots have definitively stamped themselves as "the team to beat" by walking into Indianapolis and handing the Colts as 24-20 loss, Indy's first defeat since Week 12 of last season. New England is now 9-0, and has history in the form of the first 16-0 season in NFL history in its sights. There are some major obstacles in its path, in the form of games against Pittsburgh and Baltimore, but barring injuries, I think that the Patriots can do it.

2) When I first became interested in college football, around 1980 or so, the Nebraska Cornhuskers were one of the teams that were considered the gold standard of the sport. While I am no fan of Nebraska football, I do believe that it is better for the sport when the big name programs live up to their billing--we all need teams against which we want to root. Coming into this season, the Cornhuskers had won 37 out of their last 38 games against the Kansas Jayhawks, with many (if not most) of those games being incredibly humiliating blowouts. Yesterday was payback time for the long-suffering Jayhawks. Kansas is a pretty good team this year, and came into the game with an 8-0 record. Nebraska, on the other hand, was 4-5 and boasted a defense that, to put it charitably, is sieve-like. The ingredients were there for a blowout the other way, and that's what we got. By the time the carnage was done, the Cornhuskers were on the very short end of a 76-39, history-making defeat. The only word I can come up with is "unbelievable"...............

3) I don't know it is about the Toronto Maple Leafs that brings out the worst in my Montreal Canadiens, but Toronto is now 2-0 against Montreal this season after yesterday's disheartening 3-2 Leafs victory. There is no greater pain for a Montreal fan than losing a game to the Toronto Maple Leafs, whose fans are like Yankees fans, only without the track record of success. Toronto styles itself as the city which invented Hockey, a "fact" which certainly hasn't been true since the city's last Stanley Cup title in 1967. By way of reference, Montreal has 10 titles since that date. Still, it is agonizing to watch the Leafs, a slower, less-skilled team than the Canadiens, consistently win games against their rival.

4) The last sports column I did was before Game Four of the World Series, which my Boston Red Sox then led three games to nothing. That night, the Sox completed their four game sweep of the overmatched Colorado Rockies Though I am big fan of the team, I doubted them all season, particularly in August and September as they almost completely frittered away a 14 1/2 game lead over its archnemesis, the New York Yankees. Still, Boston hung on to win the division, swept Anaheim in the first round of the playoffs before stumbling briefly against the Cleveland Indians in the American League Championship Series, falling behind three game to one. The Sox came back to win Game Five and didn't lose another game in the post-season. That makes it two World Series titles in four seasons for Boston, and when you combine that with the turmoil surrounding the New York Yankees (no more Joe Torre, and possibly no more A-Rod, Jorge Posada and Mariano Rivera), it's a good time to be a Red Sox fan!

5) Back to college football. In addition to the Nebraska-Kansas game, a lot of attention was focused on the Notre Dame-Navy game. Why would there be so much attention on a game between another storied program having a horrific season (the Fighting Irish are 1-8) and a middling team from on the Service Academies? Well, Notre Dame hadn't lost to Navy since 1963, when Roger the Dodger Staubach was lining up under center for the Midshipmen. There had been 44 consecutive losses for Navy in that time, the longest winning streak by one Division 1A team against another in history. That streak is now over, after the Midshipmen's 46-44, triple overtime win. Old habits die hard for me, and I despise the Fighting Irish almost as much as I love the Miami Hurricanes. Since Miami is struggling this season, I have to take my "victories" where I can get them. Watching Notre Dame lose yesterday qualifies!

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