MITCH ALBOMU-M If I believed Michigan was the second-best team in the nation in November, they still should be so in January. And the second-best team in the nation should be able to do whatever UCLA and Oregon State did.Who's your Wolverine? Mike Hart. You run, you control. You control, you limit Southern Cal's offense and tire its defense. You do that, you win. Who's your Trojan? John David Booty. The quarterback will be looking to make people forget Matt Leinart, and if he wins this game, he might. MVP: Mike Hart.Final score: U-M, 23-13.
On the tape, it looks like any other high school gymnasium. The stands are packed, a crowd of students, parents, cheerleaders. The beefy young football player addresses the assembly, a shirt and tie chosen for the momentous occasion. Into a microphone, he thanks his family and his school. He makes his big announcement."It was Oregon and Cal," says Kevin Hart, looking at the two caps on a table in front of him, "and I decided I'll be playing football at the University of California."
It is wrong and harmful and we should all be ashamed of ourselves and I guess I'm going to keep writing it until I'm the last person in this business saying it. This glorifying of high school recruits has got to stop.Last week was Signing Day for college football, which used to be a date known only to coaches. Today, it is cause for endless TV coverage, mountains of newsprint and an Internet gone wild. What's changed? Nothing and everything.The nothing part is that a high school kid picks a college.The everything is everything else.
2002: NEW ENGLAND 20, ST. LOUIS 17 - 2004: NEW ENGLAND 32, CAROLINA 29 - 2005: NEW ENGLAND 24, PHILADELPHIA 21 JACKSONVILLE, Fla. - Donovan McNabb tried. He threw everything he had. Terrell Owens tried. He caught all that he could. Andy Reid tried. He steered some fine drives and called some fine defenses.
Some things in life are not meant to be shared by men and women. Hair curlers. The Three Stooges. Picking a prom dress.The Super Bowl.Oh, I know it's fashionable to make the Super Bowl a coed experience. It is also wrong. The annual over-hyped NFL championship game, which is played tonight, should be one of those times when a woman looks lovingly into her man's eyes, lets her voice drop to a sexy whisper, and says, "Go downstairs."
GLENDALE, Ariz. - No more predictions.If the Giants stunning the perfect Patriots in Super Bowl XLII didn't prove, once and for all, the folly of predicting sporting events, nothing will. All the TV panels, all the radio call-ins, all the "picks" columns in newspaper sports sections - what's the point? All we do is give fodder to the winning team to declare "nobody believed in us."
MITCH ALBOM COLTS 31, BEARS 17 The AFC was better this season. The Colts were the best of the AFC. The Bears have been wobbly in the two areas you can't be wobbly if you want to win a Super Bowl: quarterback and defense. If both of those are magnificent tonight, the Bears could pull the upset. But the Colts can control the game as long as they don't turn the ball over. Bet on Indy's win over New England to be the hump it needed to clear: The Super Bowl may actually be less pressure.
Joe Biden thought he was giving a compliment.He says it was a compliment.He promises it wasn't an insult.And it proves: We hear what we want to hear.Let's examine exactly what Biden told the New York Observer when asked about Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., as a presidential candidate. This is how it was widely quoted in the press: "I mean, you got the first mainstream African American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that's a storybook, man."
Today, a tradition dies. Since I have been with this newspaper, Super Bowl weekend meant the annual debate between Curt Sylvester, our esteemed, long-time football writer, and me, our esteemed, long-time person he sat next to.Oh, the fun we had! Me telling Curt his pick was as thin as his hair. Curt calling me "Shorty." Me telling Curt I saw him in the hotel fish tank. Curt calling me "Shorty."
TAMPA - Got it. Held it. Count it. This Super Bowl was always going to come down to a pass and catch. You sensed that going in. But until the final minute, that story was being inked as Kurt Warner to Larry Fitzgerald, the amazing duo from the desert who had electrified the NFL playoffs and turned the two of them into household names. Their tandem had been quiet most of the night, but they exploded in the fourth quarter with a fade touchdown to pull within six points, and an over the middle 64-yard dagger that put the Cardinals up for the first time with less than three minutes to go.
TAMPA - Got it. Held it. Count it. This Super Bowl was always going to come down to a pass and catch. You sensed that going in. But until the final minute, that story was being inked as Kurt Warner to Larry Fitzgerald, the amazing duo from the desert that had electrified the NFL playoffs and turned the two of them into household names. Their tandem had been quiet most of the night, but it exploded in the fourth quarter with a fade touchdown to pull within six points, and an over the middle 64-yard dagger that put the Cardinals up for the first time with less than three minutes to go.
I remember my first time.I was nervous. I was embarrassed. I was already in my 20s and had never done it before. But I did it.And I liked it.I came to Detroit.Perhaps you are doing the same thing today for Super Bowl XL, arriving at our airport, checking into our hotels, looking at our river that leads to a Great Lake. Maybe you've never seen a Great Lake. Don't worry. It's like an ocean, but usually without the waves.
