Petrino to exit the sinking ship that is the Atlanta Falcons?

Just when you thought that it couldn't get any worse...ESPN is reporting that Falcons first-year head coach Bobby Petrino is going to leave the team to become the next head coach at the University of Arkansas. This comes one day after the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported that Petrino had told university officials that he was not interested in leaving the Falcons for the Razorbacks.

Of course, question No. 1 is: how much stock should we put into ESPN's "multiple sources" - are these the same sources that Kirk Herbstreit uses? Secondly, this tells you just how bad the Falcons are - Arkansas really isn't much of a step up from the Louisville job Petrino originally left. The last time this happened was when Nick Saban bailed on the Dolphins after last season, and look where Miami is today - starting down the barrel of 0-16.

This is a good hire for Arkansas if they pull it off - Petrino's a proven winner at the college level, although recruiting in Conference USA or the Big East is a far cry from recruiting in the SEC. Still, anything is better than the circus sideshow that the last few seasons under Houston Nutt had become.

Now, someone keep Darren McFadden away from the pit bulls and convince him to come back next season, and you might be on to something!

Posted by The Duke of Everything at 3:20 PM 0 comments  

YouTubeness: The Glory Days of NASCAR on ESPN (1981-1991)

I grew up loving NASCAR. I would watch every race I could as a kid, usually on ESPN. And this might surprise you if you've watched the current coverage of NASCAR on ESPN/ABC...but it was incredible coverage. You had Bob Jenkins with the play-by-play, and some combination of Benny Parsons, Ned Jarrett and Larry Nuber on color commentary.

What made it so special? The broadcast was actually about the racing, and not the 80,000 other things that make up a NASCAR telecast these days. I promise you that ESPN didn't miss a restart or the leader taking the checkered flag back in my time.

Plus, the racing was just better. The drivers weren't media polished and fresh-scrubbed: they were racers, and even the most gentile ones weren't afraid to drive someone off the road if they needed to. Earnhardt, Waltrip, Allison, Yarborough, Petty...you could smell the tobacco and gas fumes on these guys.

If you want to know what I'm talking about, and see what NASCAR really used to be about, join me on a YouTube trip down memory lane, as we watch a special that ESPN created for its 10th anniversary of covering NASCAR races back in 1991. It's in several pieces, so I've added the videos below.

(Note: Because Blogger is ridiculous and makes it impossible to make a jump/cut without screwing up your whole blog, I've just added the videos below rather than a nice, tidy jump cut like I would have wanted...)


Part 1 (Includes: Bobby Allison's Talladega crash in 1987 that lead to restrictor plates; Bill Elliot's Winston Million in 1985)



Part 2 (Includes first career wins of Dale Jarrett, Davey Allison, Rusty Wallace, Ernie Irvan, Mark Martin and Alan Kulwicki)




Part 3 (Includes: A look at Super Speedways, Short Tracks and Road Courses; Winston Cup clinching moments of Earnhardt, Elliot and Wallace; a boring interview with Brett Bodine)



Part 4 (Includes: a look at ESPN's technical innovations in covering NASCAR; the "stolen pace car" incident from the Talladega 500 in 1986; Rusty Wallace's practice crash at Bristol in 1988; Buffet Benny)



Part 5 (A look at big crashes, including: Michael Watrip (Bristol, 1990); Darrell Waltrip (Pepsi 400, 1991); 1990 Daytona 400 (1st lap melee); Mark Martin (Sears Point 1989 and Daytona 1989)



Part 6 (Fantastic Finishes including: Talladega 1986 (B. Allison/Earnhardt); North Wilkesboro 1989 (Rudd/Earnhardt/G. Bodine); Bristol 1990 (D. Allison/Martin) and Victory Lane interviews with Lake Speed and Darrell Waltrip)

Posted by The Duke of Everything at 11:46 AM 0 comments  

Bowl Game Projections: A Brief Bit of Bragging

As you may have noticed, I've pretty much bit the bag this season with my handicapping (as has my partner in crime), to the point that I've finally waived the white flag on the whole thing. So please indulge me as I brag about some predictions that I made earlier that have now come true. Thanks for the patience in advance.

Ahem.

You might remember a few weeks ago, with a couple of weeks to go in the college football season, that I gave a prediction on who was going to be playing where for every bowl game this season. Now the the regular season is complete and the match-ups are set, I went back to look and see how I did. Much to my amazement, I was pretty frickin' good:

Total Bowl Games: 32
Correctly Picked Both Teams: 15
Correctly Picked One Team: 15
Correctly Picked No Teams: 2

So, I had an almost 50 percent success rate at predict the exact match-up that was going to be taking place in the bowls. Keep in mind, this was on Nov. 26, before the chaos and confusion of the final week of games.

How good was that? I decided to go back and look at the bowl projections of the "experts" that had been made around the same time. The experts I found were: CFN.com, ESPN.com (Ivan Maisel and Mark Schlabach), CNNSI.com (Stewart Mandel) and MSNBC.com (Mike Woods). CBS Sportsline hasn't made their Week-by-Week projections available as far as I can see.

How did I stack up? I'll let you be the judge:

YOUR FACE IS A SPORTS BLOG

Both: 15
One: 15
None: 2
Pct. of Teams Correctly Placed: 70.3%

CNN/SI (Stewart Mandel)

Both: 15
One: 14
None: 3
Pct. of Teams Correctly Placed: 68.8%

ESPN (Mark Schlabach)

Both: 9
One: 21
None: 2
Pct. of Teams Correctly Placed: 60.9%

ESPN (Ivan Masiel)

Both: 10
One: 15
None: 7
Pct. of Teams Correctly Placed: 54.7%


MSNBC (Mark Woods)

Both: 8
One: 18
None: 6
Pct. of Teams Correctly Placed: 53.1%

CFN*

Both: 5
One: 15
None: 12
Pct. of Teams Correctly Placed: 39.1%

(*CFN stopped doing a projection the week before everyone else, forcing me to use one that was a week earlier. That's what you get for not working over the Thanksgiving holiday, I guess.)

Again, let's review:

ME: No. 1. EXPERTS: Nos. 2-6

Stewart Mandel and I were very close, and Mark Schlabach was the only other person to completely miss on only two bowl games. As for the rest...even with the one-week handicap, the CFN projections are a mess. Part of this is because they insisted on placing Boise St. into a BCS game, when they basically had no shot even if they had beaten Hawaii. I'll give Ivan Maisel some credit for being the only person to predict that Kansas would go to a BCS bowl instead of Missouri, which was either a bold prediction, or a careless one that turned out to be right.

What were the two I missed out on?

The Humanitarian Bowl: The big issue here is that I assumed that the bowl would select Boise St. as a natural fit to play a bowl game in Boise in order to assure a sell-out. I didn't count on the Hawaii Bowl swooping in to steal Boise St. away, leaving Fresno St. with a consolation trip to Idaho in December instead (albeit against a higher-profile opponent).

The Emerald Bowl: Again, same concept - I assumed that the bowl game based in San Francisco would wind up with Cal. However, I didn't count on Cal losing to Stanford, and basically making it real tough for the bowl to select them at 6-6 ahead of 8-4 Oregon St.

Much like a South Florida beating an Auburn, this is the type of win that builds credibility. I figure that I can make horrible predictions for the rest of the season now and I can point back to this as proof that sometimes, I get lucky.

Posted by The Duke of Everything at 10:35 AM 2 comments