Today's Top Stories

Marc Crawford not informed Slap Shot was fictional, put a bounty out on Scott Moore.
Marc Crawford, current LA Kings coach, former Canucks coach is being implicated in one of the dirtiest hits in NHL history, and it was all done from the bench. Multiple reports came out in the last 24 hours citing recent court documents that stated Crawford was behind Bertuzzi’s career-ending attack on Scott Moore a few years ago. Reports state that the attack was pre-meditated and was called for while in the locker room as retaliation from an earlier shot delivered by Moore to Markus Naslund, the Canuck captain earlier that season in February. After ordering the hit Bertuzzi attacked Moore from behind breaking 3 vertebrae in his spine and ending his career. The recent reports are part of sworn testimony by Bertuzzi while being investigated in the $38 Million dollar lawsuit being put together by Moore’s attorney.

The NBA playoffs get off to a great start in 2007-2008 campaign.
NBA officials must have realized that 82 games is a long time and decided to showcase some quality match-ups much earlier in the season than usual. This coupled with increased quality and intensity of play might just bring the NBA back into the limelight much earlier than it’s usual April/May debut. Recent match-ups have included:
11/26: Washington @ Dallas, Phoenix @ Golden State
11/28: WAS @ San Antonio, Houston @ PHX
11/29: Denver @ Lakers, HOU @ G. S.
11/30: LAK @ Utah, Orlando @ PHX
12/1: Toronto @ WAS
12/2: ORL @ LAK
12/3: ORL @ G. S.
12/5: PHX @ TOR, DAL @ S. A. , LAK @ DEN
12/6: DEN @ DAL
12/7: PHX @ WAS, TOR @ Boston, UT @ S. A.
12/8: UT @ DAL
12/9: HOU @ TOR, G. S. @ LAK
That’s 21 games between two .500+ teams in a 2 week span. This is a good thing for the NBA, and for the sports fan.

What else are you supposed to do on Monday night?
ESPN released its numbers from Monday Nights Ravens vs. Patriots game and they were not only the highest the network had ever seen (12,529,000 homes average) but with over 17.5 million viewers it passed Cable’s all time highest rated program. Take that High School Musical 2. Thus further proving a few theories I have always maintained. ESPN has better programming than the Disney Channel, Football provides more viewing pleasure than Musicals, the 17.2 million people who watched High School Musical 2 need to get off the couch, 17.2 million (estimated) people watched a made for Disney Musical.

Florida Doomed to Lose
Sorry to the folks in Florida. It really must be kinda tough to be a fan of pretty much any team in the US’ Wang. Every time the Marlins win they trade away most of their roster. And this time, they weren’t even winning they just decided screw it and got rid of the last two people on their roster with WS rings from only 4 years ago. Do the Marlins think it will be easy to replace the All Stars Stats? Cabrera finished off last season with 34/119 and batting .320/.419/.542. And Willis’ numbers, though slightly down from past years included a 10-15 record in 35 games started with a 5.17 ERA but a career ERA of 3.78 and Florida is losing one of their better bats in Willis. A real shock is that he heads to the AL. How can you even support the Marlins at this point when the players there don’t last longer than 5 years. Is it even worth buying any Marlins gear. In Miami, Wade has only played in 10 games leading former All-Star and Shaq’s first little buddy to stack up over 20 minutes/game this season. When Anfernee “Penny” Hardaway is in your starting line-up and it’s not 1994, that’s a bad thing. And Shaq’s been limited to under 30 minutes/game due to the fact that he’s 35 and 325 lbs. The state only has 2 football teams in the final top 25 and one of them is South Florida who had one of the craziest years in College Football History. Furthermore typical Bowl powerhouses (until recent years) Miami (5-7) and Florida State (7-5) finished out of the BCS picture for the 2nd straight year. Florida State is playing Kentucky in the Music City Bowl and Miami didn’t even qualify for a bowl game. And Florida is getting a gift playing after New Years in the Capital One Bowl. Oh and they are the home to the Miami Dolphins.

Don’t get upset at the numbers
To cap off a column I wrote a few months ago about the wacky College Football season here are some final numbers going into Bowl Season:
Tim Tebow: well deserving of the Heisman with 29 Passing TDs and 22 Rushing TDs and only 6 Total Turnovers, but might not receive it because he’s a Sophomore.
Colt Brennan: well deserving of the Heisman with 38 Passing TDs and 8 Rushing TDs and almost 4200 yards passing (in limited minutes due to blowout and injury), but probably won’t receive it because he played at Hawai’i.
Final Tally: 61 total times a Top-25 Team lost, 28 of those were top-10 teams, 7 times (in 14 weeks) the #2 team lost, 4 times the #1 team lost (3 of those the #1 and #2 lost in the same week) twice the #4 team lost, 3 times the #5 team lost but after all of that the #3 team only lost once all season. Of course when said #3 team moved the #2 they didn’t fare so well. Yet these same voters who ranked Cal (6-6), Oregon (8-4), BC (10-3) and South Florida (9-3) as a #2 during the season are the one’s deciding that deserving teams can’t play in the National Championship game, wonderful system. Fun Stat: LSU was 6-0 this season as a #2 Ohio State 3-1 as a #1.
There was a 15 lateral victory by Trinity College and Jonathon Weiner actually called it, perfectly, pretty much ensuring a good shot at a successful future in broadcasting. But the best quote of that game, and of the entire college football season, by far was by a little known 6 foot even 250 lb offensive lineman Josh Hooten, who not only once but twice held the ball, if only for a nano-second, during the 15 toss drive, including the blind over his head toss. “On these lateral plays, a lot of times there’s some fat guy trying to score and he gets tackled at the 10-yard line. I didn’t want to be that guy. I just hot-potatoed it and looked for someone to block”.

See Ya Tomorrow Sports Fans.