TWO-LOSS LSU HAS TWO SHOTS TO GO ALL THE WAY, OR NOT

OK, here are two ways, both of which sound implausible, that might get LSU (6-2) to the BCS title game despite its disaster at Mississippi on Saturday:

No. 1--At No. 13 in the first BCS poll, the Tigers would need to win out, which means beating Alabama and Texas A&M in November, and have all 12 higher-ranked teams finish with at least two losses. LSU also probably needs some of the teams chasing the Tigers to go flat.

Turns out that Sept. 21 LSU triumph over Auburn, 35-21, looks more significant. But LSU needs not only to beat Alabama but also to hope Arkansas can find a way to beat Auburn (6-1) on Nov. 2 and then have Auburn figure something out to defeat Alabama on Nov. 30. Then LSU would have SEC divisional tiebreaker leverage, but still would need to prevail at the SEC Championship.

No. 2—Stephen Rivers, the 6-7 QB-in-waiting. Why wait? Give him a whirl on Saturday against Furman. It’s not often that Furman comes to town.

Winner Wonderland For U.s.

February 10, 2006

 

http://articles.dailypress.com/2006-02-10/sports/0602100009_1_medal-count-turin-olympics-halfpipe

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By CATHY HARASTA, The Dallas Morning News

DALLAS — The addition of extreme sports has helped transform the United States into a Winter Games power.
A new Ice Age, edgy and madcap, has helped shift the balance of power in Team USA's favor, setting the stage for perhaps a record-setting Winter Games in the Italian Alps this month.

The U.S. has capitalized on the Olympic program's new twists and more extreme sports. Considering returning medalists from the 2002 Games and greater depth in consistently successful sports, the U.S. might even -- gasp! -- win the Turin Olympics.
How over the top would that be?
Much of the nation's improvement reflects success in events that are new to the Olympics since 1992. Team USA's medal production has increased almost six times since the 1988 Calgary Winter Games.
In the last four Winter Games, 44 percent of U.S. medals were won in sports not on the program until 1992 or later and in skeleton, which returned to the Games in 2002 after a 54-year absence. Almost half of the nation's record 34 medals at the 2002 Winter Games also came in the recently added sports.
Traditionalists might sneer at freestyle skiing's theatrics, short-track speedskating's bump-and-grind mayhem and snowboarding's off-the-wall antics. But the "hot dog" sports have been gold mines for Team USA.
"There's sort of a rebelliousness and youth culture making the Games fresher and hipper," said Mark Dyreson, an author on Olympic history and a faculty member in Penn State's departments of history and kinesiology. "Part of this perhaps is the Americanization of global culture. The International Olympic Committee was very shrewd. They definitely took a look at the winter program. You've got to have the United States watching."
Moguls and short track speedskating led the new-look Games with their 1992 Olympic debuts. At the previous Winter Games, in 1988, the U.S. won just six medals to finish in the middle of the pack. That mediocrity changed beginning in 1992.
The addition of women's events in ice hockey and bobsled also helped the U.S. medal count, which hit a record 34 at the Salt Lake City Winter Games in 2002. The U.S. finished second to Germany (36 medals), altering the general perception of Team USA as not ready for prime time. Its previous top medal count was 13.
Of the 71 medals the U.S. won in the last four Winter Games, 31 came in events that were not in the Olympics before 1992 and in skeleton. Team USA's 2002 Olympic medals included 16 won in events that never had been Olympic sports until 1992 or later and in skeleton.
Five of the record 10 gold medals in 2002 came in skeleton and in events that were not in the Winter Olympic before 1998 (snowboarding's halfpipe and women's bobsled).
But if the U.S. ends up topping the medal table in Turin, some purists will scoff at the achievement, said Derick Hulme, an international relations professor at Alma (Mich.) College who has written in depth about the politics of the Games.

"The sense would be that it happened because of these fake sports," Hulme said. "It's perceived by the purists as being a bastardizing of the Winter Games.
"I don't think it would translate into a better image of the U.S. being perceived more powerfully."
Breaking with tradition, U.S. Olympic Committee leaders declined to set a numerical target for medals in Turin. USOC chief Jim Scherr said the committee's goal in Turin medals was "not to decline."
"If we create expectations, we can put additional pressure on athletes that may be detrimental," said Jim McCarthy, the USOC's 2006 chef de mission, or delegation leader, in Turin.
The U.S.'s strong results in recent World Cup seasons and championships, however, bode well for Turin.
"The U.S. could win eight or even nine medals in snowboarding alone," said Tracy Anderson, senior editor of San Diego-based Future Snowboarding magazine. "It's hip. It's youthful. There are a lot of activities in the Winter Olympics that don't appeal to the younger demographic."
Anderson said snowboarders wanted no part of the Olympics in the early 1990s but have helped the sport join the mainstream since it first appeared in the Games in 1998.
"The Olympics was considered too uncool," he said. "Snowboarding was considered a fringe, subcultural activity. It was sort of a punk thing."
U.S. moguls medal contender Jeremy Bloom said the Olympics needed the new events, which help define a new style and dimension of athleticism.
"It's important to have freestyle skiing and halfpipe (snowboarding)," Bloom said. "I love to jump and I love to catch big air."
Anderson underscored Bloom's point by noting NBC's report of a 23 percent ratings increase among 18- to 34-year-olds for the 2002 Winter Games over the previous edition.
"The challenge has been to try to make the Winter Games as relevant as possible," Hulme said. "The pragmatists are saying, 'Listen, we're fighting for our lives here. We have to make these Games relevant to people who are going to be watching for the next 50 years.' "

Dave South

I remember writing about Texas A&M sports announcer Dave South decades ago, when
I wrote the sports TV-Radio column for The Dallas Morning News. I just tuned to
the radio pre-game coverage of the Auburn-A&M game and caught South's set-up for
the SEC matchup. I must say, South's thorough, neutral remarks and comprehensive
statistical rundown struck me as excellent. I was impressed, though I'd wager
that he might grow more emotional and verge on homerish in his play call after
kickoff! Anyway, it was nice to hear a local team sportscaster preview a game in
an informative, non-ridiculously biased fashion.
Saluting South, here (and I'm an LSU fan-mom).

RADIO MADE BASEBALL FANS FOR LIFE

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Presence of Herschel Walker can only help the Cowboys

Monday, July 15, 1996
Presence of Herschel Walker can only help the Cowboys

By Cathy Harasta
The Dallas Morning News
(July 15, 1996)

http://www.texnews.com/cowboys/walker071596.html
DALLAS - Quit snickering about the no-cut clause in Herschel Walker's new contract.

"No-cut" is Walker's middle name. The clause seems redundant, considering that a city bus has a better chance of a cunning, on-the-dime directional shift than the old/new Dallas Cowboy.

But then, Walker's running back resume never played him up as a cut artist. As a ball-carrier, he led with his head. In the uniforms of four NFL teams, one thing never changed: He ran with his head down as though an arrow emblazoned on the field kept him hypnotically on course.

Now that No. 34 is 34, he came cheap to a team whose image has suffered a cheapening in this very stinky, very "off" off-season. A prominent receiver now is reduced to representation by a lawyer on a smear campaign to discredit a topless dancer. But enough about Michael Irvin and what he has done for the perception of the pro athlete. Just look at the terrible things Walker has done.

Uh ... that'll just be a minute.

I'm still looking.

Bear with me.

In 10 NFL seasons, Walker had to have amassed a series of conduct-related incidents and prickly symptoms requiring critical attention.


There MUST be something.

Well ... Walker wasn't a very good bobsledder back in his Albertville Olympic run. You could savage him for that, except that few of Team USA's men immortalized themselves at those Games.

And didn't he fall asleep in his garage a few years back? Something about dozing off with music playing in his car.

And then there was the time he took ballet lessons. The nerve!

Plus, here's a guy who recently was released by a team with DAVE BROWN at quarterback. That tells you something.

But the reason a posse must be assembled is that Walker was a constant source of irritation; you hated to see a guy who did four-figures in daily sit-ups when he wasn't giving thanks to his Provider.

Where did the Cowboys come up with him, anyway? Herschel might spoil their image.

By now you know where I'm going with this. Walker will help the Cowboys.

They gave him a chance to ride off into that sunset that comes too soon for most running backs.

Dallas sounds like the sunset of Walker's choice. He will have a chance at a Super Bowl ring. Name me somebody more deserving of that shot than a veteran who only once has played for the winning team in a playoff game. Few entities, other than the Texas Rangers, have a shorter post-season history.

Walker seemed lately to get lost in various shuffles, having done next to nothing with New York last year. But when the Giants released him earlier this summer, an era seemed to end. The cut was not particularly big news. It made sense for the Giants.

Herschel, however, constituted a pro football time-line and a bargain for the Cowboys. As far as anybody can tell me, he avoided off-the-field trouble in travels that included stays in plenty of legendary trouble spots.

Walker gave the USFL enough credibility for the league to get a temporary leg up. He rode out the Tom Landry tenure with Dallas' first coach and made the turn into the Jimmy-Jerry experience.

Walker figured as the linchpin in what arguably was the NFL's most notorious trade. He became an NFC nomad, sometimes finding himself a bad fit, sometimes finding himself accused of being afraid of taking severe physical punishment, sometimes just about vanishing.

From Dallas, he went to Minnesota, Philadelphia and New York before completing the circle.

Naturally, he will not complete it with any form of upstaging Emmitt Smith. Walker, whose one-year contract worth $275,000 has a no-cut clause, mostly can help on third down. He'll toil on special teams. He'll be a backup and, maybe, a booster.

If somebody gets hurt, he'll be there.

And by what appear to be Cowboys' standards, he'll be square.

That will be a nice twist.

Welcome home, Herschel.

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All content copyright 1996, KRT, The Abilene Reporter-News and Reporter OnLine

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Madness marches its way into Bowl Alliance

Madness marches its way into Bowl Alliance

By CATHY HARASTA / The Dallas Morning News
http://www.texnews.com/sports/alliance120996.html


Someone forgot to tell college football that it is not supposed to deliver late hits.
But somebody must have reminded the Big 12 that it is supposed to flex some muscle in the football department.
Surprise, surprise. The Bowl Alliance had to eat its script on Saturday, when conference championships acted part spoiler, part savior.
If anyone had said beforehand that almost 12 hours of college football would wrap March Madness-style tentacles around a December day, especially a critical shopping day, I would have said, "Dream on."
Texas did, turning its dream into about $8.3 million and assuring the Big 12 of a second team in the Bowl Alliance. Enter renewed faith in the conference's identity as a football heavyweight. With Texas in the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl and Nebraska in the FedEx Orange Bowl, the Big 12 equals one-third of the Bowl Alliance, after the league opened its first football season without the expected punch.
A rogue elephant, wearing burnt orange, upended the post-season pairings and charged the atmosphere with unseasonable excitement.
March is when the Cinderella season is supposed to strike, not December. The NCAA Basketball Tournament is the brainchild that includes daylight for teams to play their way in. But the bowl system traditionally had more Scrooge than sizzle. At least it did until Saturday, when the set-up got a workover.
Talk about changing the face of the bowl season; Texas, in upsetting Nebraska in the inaugural Big 12 championship, altered just about every bone in the post-season's body. The plot thickened through Sunday, when Bowl Alliance announced its matchups in a TV selection show similar to the pairings program that comes on the heels of college basketball conference tournaments and sets up the Big Dance.
The past weekend revolutionized college football, not to mention the Longhorns' reputation and the Big 12's football credibility.
The Western Athletic Conference and the Southeastern Conference championships later Saturday acquired new meaning after Texas ruined Nebraska's day. In the end, the three Alliance bowls had to settle for the truth: Three will not do the job of delivering justice.
Three's not a crowd. Three's not enough.
The process, fortunately, is open to evolution.
The Alliance knew going in that its most glaring flaw was the absence of the Rose Bowl, which matches the Big Ten and Pac-10 champions. With the Alliance's intent of providing a national championship settled on the field, the capacity for trouble lurked in the Rose Bowl's detachment. Undefeated Arizona State could steal the Alliance's thunder this time by emerging with the national title.
But that problem exits with the 1998 season, when the Rose Bowl joins forces with the Alliance to make a foursome. The most serious injustice this season, however, concerned the WAC.
Any cooperative that excludes the WAC is unconscionable. WAC champion BYU, at 13-1, fell out of Alliance at-large consideration because even at 10-2, Nebraska was more desirable to the Orange Bowl and Penn State (9-2) appealed to the Fiesta Bowl as a strong generator of TV ratings.
Texas did BYU no favor by bouncing the Cougars from the Alliance payday. But the Longhorns did tremendous favors for the Southwestern Bell Cotton Bowl and for the longterm bowl outlook.
By introducing Cinderella to college football's post-season, Texas demonstrated that the Alliance can't assume anything too soon when it comes to pairings. If you are a fan, any time spontaneity asserts itself in sports, you can't complain.
The Cotton Bowl, with a 13-1 team in No. 5 BYU and a Big 12 team in No. 14 Kansas State, certainly can't complain.
"We have two teams that have never been in a New Year's Day bowl," Cotton Bowl chairman W. Mike Baggett said.
Though the Cotton Bowl failed in its bid a few years ago for one of the three coveted spots in the Alliance, the fact that a 13-1 team was shut out of that trifecta proved that the Alliance has room for improvement.
In 1998, talks among conferences and networks will begin, while existing contracts still are operating. Non-Alliance bowls will have an opportunity to assert their presence. Baggett said the Cotton Bowl wants to get into the Alliance-level act. "We are going to do everything we can," he said.
The excitement has only just begun.

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All content copyright 1996, AP, KRT, The Abilene Reporter-News and Reporter OnLine