USC managed to somehow win the game against Nebraska. Yes, the score was 28-10 but at least early on, it was much closer than the score suggests. Chauncey’s miracle pickup of the big fumble by JDB was one good example of how fortunate USC was that day.
Of course, the defense was solid, but my concern was with the offense. We lost Powdrell right off the bat, and without a good FB, it could get a bit difficult for power running. JDB’s passes were not as accurate as I thought they could/should be, but I would give him this game as it was his first home game as a starter and the nerves could get to him.
DJ bounced back big time after a lackluster game against Arkansas and after being pulled up by his offensive coordinators.
In general a ‘W’ is good, but this was the game to make a statement, but I guess it is even more important to hold the serve and wait for the big ones that will be coming up soon.
Meanwhile, what a surprise Michigan threw against ND! Wow!
If you went to Yahoo Sports yesterday, you could not have avoided seeing the story about the Yahoo Sports Exclusive investigation on Reggie Bush and his family receiving payments while he was at USC.
It is important to note that pretty much every other sports news outlet had a ‘brief mention’ of it only. Does that tell you something? I don’t know - you decide yourself.
What interest does Yahoo Sports have in doing this investigation when Pac-10 and USC are also doing it? Is there an investigation team bake-off? And how can Yahoo come up with their findings before the rest, and be bold enough to create a stir?
I don’t know what is true and what is not. But stripping the Heisman and the National Title is certainly childish. So what, is ESPN going to start saying ‘USC, the winner of the national title which was taken away 2 years later, won its game against so-and-so’? Will you refer to Reggie Bush as the Heisman winner who gave up his trophy the following year after he was chosen #2 in the draft? Its pointless.
What a way to come back to international cricket after a surgery-related break! I saw a bit of his innings (before the first rains started) and it looked like he came out with a very positive frame of mind and was willing to take the aerial route from quite early on.
Unfortunately the rains made the match get under the Duckworth-Lewis umbrella and India ended up losing the match.
Another man of the match, another good effort in a loss. But it will be a great confidence-booster before the match against Australia. And of course, in general, mentally it is good to know that you can stay at the wicket till the end.
Just take a look at what all Reggie Bush has donated so far! Combine that with the fan following that he has already generated, it must be such pressure to be Reggie Bush in New Orleans!
Good luck, Reggie. On to more special games. Only now, on Sundays and Mondays!
Roger Federer completely dominated the entire tournament and won it all convincingly at the end. The finals against Roddick was close, but (I think) only in terms of the score.
Earlier, it was a surprise to see two Russian men in the semis. It was only expected to happen in the women’s draw since there are so many more Russian women than men.
Of course, in the end, it only needed one Russian to last all the way. Sharapova beat Justine Henin is one of the most boring matches I have seen in a long time. Both the women’s semis were also quite pathetic and I am going to count myself out of watching women’s tennis for a while now.
After the pathetic 5-spot penalty to Alonso, it was always going to be an interesting start. Alonso made up solid ground and was in line to almost lock away the title when his engine blew up and he gifted away the race to Schumy.
And to top it off, Schumy won it and gained 10 points on Alonso, making it a 2-point championship now.
And it was a nice time for him to announce his retirement. Good luck in your life after racing, Schumy!
Wow, looks like 2006 is the year for ends of long careers. After Agassi, it was Michael Schumacher who announced that this year would be his last and that he is going to retire.
What a career he has had. What a character he has been. What a fan base he has. He is going to be sorely missed after he is gone.
Good luck to Kimi who takes his spot next to Massa from him, for the next year.
It was a good weekend for me to watch the other games while USC was on a bye week.
Notre Dame had a great game against Penn State. It was more a show of their defense than their offense, though their offense had to show up after a sad game last week against Georgia Tech.
Cal redeemed a bit of their lost pride from last week. They started off a pathetic showing in the first quarter and then came back big. I think their running backs are quite immature what with all the personal fouls they committed in the beginning.
The best and the most hyped game was of course in the evening - Ohio State with a rematch of last year’s game with Texas. This time it was at Texas, but most importantly, it was with Texas minus Vince Young. And I think that was the biggest difference maker. Texas had huge problems converting at critical moments, but frankly, it was not the QB’s fault. It was mistakes from the receivers which caused most of the problems. But Vince Young could have made a lot of those playing running himself in for 6-7 yards at 3rd down, which the new QB could not. And of course, Troy Smith seems to be a stud QB, making critical passing plays at critical points in the game.
Overall, a decent and pressure-free weekend for me! :-)
I saw a little bit of the Women’s Finals on TV yesterday and I must say it was one of the most boring matches I have seen in a long time. My interest in women’s tennis is going down by the day.
In any case, I guess Sharapova caused a bit of upset by defeating Henin and that too in straight sets. I am not sure if Maria won or Justine lost. Looks like it was more of the latter.
What a shame … it does smell of a Ferrari string-pulling in their backyard … Alonso was called for “blocking” Massa in the qualifying … what was a shame because Massa was not even close to Alonso and Alonso was on a qualifying lap anyway!
Formula 1 is getting hairier and dirtier with Alonso being so strong and Ferrari being so close to Renault in the driver and championship points.
I am about 2 days from switching to DSL from cable internet. Despite all the advertisements about how much faster cable internet is compared to DSL, I have not had much success lately. Comcast sucks, over all its products, but more importantly, if I do a traceroute to my cable modem’s IP address from one of the many sites available on the internet, I see a consistent and heavy packet loss two hops before my IP. That is ridiculous.
I had Vonage do a conference call with Comcast and me, and we were able to create a case with comcast network team. 3 days later, I did not hear from anyone, so I called comcast and they said it was fixed! What? No call to let me know it was fixed? It was, after all, an ‘escalated ticket’!
In any case, I tried the same traceroute again and saw similar packet losses and no improvement in my Vonage problems. I was tired of the nonsense service I was getting from cable and I signed up for DSL.
I am also in the process of getting rid of all non-needed services from my cable tv (until we move, when the FIRST condition will be availability/possibility of satellite dish)!
I am so sick of this monopoly/duopoly in such services …!!
My upset special for this week was Arizona over LSU! What was I thinking??? Final score - LSU 45, Arizona 3. Pathetic performance. I was also hoping (though I did not pick) that Washington can upset Oklahoma.
Combine those two with Stanford’s loss to SJSU and the Pac-10 certainly does not seem to have a good preseason run this year.
But before the SEC fans and the Big XII fans (and goodness, WAC fans?) start saying they are the better conference, let me remind everyone that Stanford, Washington and Arizona may well be truly the bottom of the Pac 10, so beating those teams proves NOTHING!
Though the qualifying was ordinary, it is going to be an interesting start to the race tomorrow. Kimi leading Michael Schumy would be very competitive, especially the first chicane.
Alonso got left out of the equation because of the strange timing of his tire change … wonder what Renault was thinking.
What’s up with the Finns and racing? Another highly touted driver is now Briatore’s protege - Heikki Kovalainen joins Renault for the next year alongside Fisichella.
Does that mean there is some truth to Schumacher retiring at the end of this season and Kimi taking his spot at Ferrari?
Or is Kimi going to take it easy next year? Because open spots on the good teams are gone! All that speculation will be put to rest after Monza, when Ferrari is supposedly going to announce their 2007 lineup.
After the 70-17 thumping from last year at the Coliseum, the return match at Fayetteville was not going to be easy. 76,000 crazy fans out in support of their team for the big revenge. USC losing a solid chunk of its great offense to the NFL. Inexperience at the crucial running back position. And of course a greatly improved Arkansas team.
All meant that it was not going to be over quickly like the last year. USC would have to really have a mistake-free game to overcome all the shortcomings.
And USC did play a great, error-free game. John David Booty seems ok, and I think he can only get better. The biggest revelation was how quickly the freshmen got into the game. I liked the idea of rotating all the new running backs and giving them almost equal time.
I still believe we are going to miss Lendale White. Let’s hope one or more of the current crop steps into that much-needed short yardage play game.
So it finally came to an end. It had to. Agassi’s body was giving way slowly and after a long (very long for him) match against Baghdatis I was sure he was not going to last any longer.
What an irony that his last match was against “B. Becker” from Germany!
Andre’s burst of emotion at the end of the match and the ovation from the crowd was quite moving. He really erupted.
Andre Agassi has been phenomenal in his career and I feel fortunate to have seen a lot of his classic matches from his early, flamboyant days to his calm, cool collected mature self recently.
Wonderful performance by Shakira tonight on MTV VMA’s. Its awesome to see cultures blend and integrate at least in arts. Forget politics, this is the way to go!!
Welcome back, Carson Palmer. Some other folks from USC are taking the spotlight nowadays, but I do believe he is a stud and if his knee holds up, this Bengals team can go deep into the playoffs.
It was great to see him playing well and tossing TD’s at will. Very very heartening to see him get up in a blink after getting thrown down on the field.
I am so tired of my pathetic cable service. And frustrated because of the restrictions imposed by the community in putting up satellite dishes. I can only use the balcony and not the roof. I do not have a good line of sight from my balcony and so I am limited to only using comcast cable service.
And this month, our discount (for switching from dish) runs out so the charges per month get bumped up! I have dropped some premium channel package in order to neutralize that jump, but if I had satellite service, I would not have to!
I am going to keep trying to convince the community to allow me to go to the roof, but again, I am not sure if it is feasible because there is no flat portion of the roof. It means the installer most likely will need a long enough ladder to reach almost 4th floor. I don’t think it is feasible anyway.
So we are stuck with sub-standard service at a higher price for now. :-(
Matt Leinart had a good game this past weekend for Arizona. Once again he did well against the first defense in a hurry up offense in the latter stages of the first half and then came into his USC self at the start of the second half.
Good outing for him and I hope that he continues to improve as time goes by.
I recently received my bill from Cingular wireless and I saw a ridiculously high amount due. It was soridiculously high that I did not even consider it to be real, so without looking into the details of the bill, I just called Cingular customer support to ask them to reverse the unnecessary charges.
And to my surprise, I found out that the minutes were in fact correctly billed! It is such a bloody eye-opener that I have now disciplined myself to not even check voice mail because looking at the bill I did not see many HUGE charges … there were one or two conference calls I took from the phone, which were enough to chew up my bonus minutes and then after using my plan minutes everything is at $0.45/minute!!
I have learnt my lesson. First thing I need to do now is to bump up my plan because now that I am working from home, I end up talking a lot on my cell phone. Partly because I don’t want to give my home number out to work people, and partly because I have Vonage which SUCKS big time. I cannot change from Vonage because I want to keep my phone number and SBC (ATT) does not want to let me keep it because my current residence is too far from the central office which gave me the original number :-(
It is quite irritating to see in this day and age, the frustrations caused by technology limitations!
Matt Leinart was finally able to play for Arizona Cardinals… because of the way New England offense dominated the Cardinals, Leinart did not get a chance to play till under 2 minutes were remaining in the first half.
He did very well in that situation, making quick decisions and scrambling twice to make the first downs. His first pass in the NFL was a completion for a first down!
Of course, I did not watch the rest of the game (after half time) because I do not have the NFL Network (STUPID COMCAST!) but I read about it later and it seemed like people were saying he disappointed.
Now, I have a couple of contradictory facts to state here and then let everyone decide how he did:
1. He played in a pressure situation with no points on the board and with the threat of getting shut out in the first half 2. He had less than 2 minutes to play in 3. He played against the Pats' first-team defense before the half Whereas: 4. He did so-so after the first half, where the Pats had their second-team defense
So, is it better that a QB leads a drive in the 2-minute offense and gets the team 3 points against one of the better defenses in the NFL, or try to score big against a second-team defense?
I think Leinart had a good debut, especially considering that he had only a few days of practice time with the team.
Hope he gets better and better … for now, getting set for Monday Night Football with Reggie and perhaps TO?
I have been away from cricket for some time now because India’s series was cancelled, and I knew England and Pakistan were playing but I did not care much at all.
Until yesterday when I saw the news that the match was forfeited by Pakistan! What? Forfeit? Never heard of such a thing.
So I started reading the story and it turns out to be a pathetic racially-motivated ball change done by the umpires which resulted in Pakistan only standing up for themselves. They refused to play with the changed ball and as a result, the match ended up being forfeited.
Now it seems the Pakistan captain Haq may get an eight match ban and stuff.
Considerting that the idiots who called themselves umpires have had a bad past, I don’t doubt at all that it was motivated by non-cricketing reasons.
These umpires are the ones who should be made to pay for the losses of the ticket sales, and also if Haq gets a ban, he should sue them both and get his losses funded by them. It is absolutely unacceptable that they would create such a nonsense issue out of nothing…
This does not help the game of cricket at all … and should be fixed quickly!
