Bellbrook graduation 2012
Fairfield Senior 2012 graduation
Kroger Aquatic Center opens
Award-winning columnist Tom Archdeacon — an old-school storyteller in a brand-new venue — writes about sports, the city, southwest Ohio and anything else that catches his fancy… or yours.Home > Blogs > Through the Arch > Archives > 2009 > October
October 2009
For OSU — Aggies were like shooting fish in a barrel
COLUMBUS — Ohio State’s annual Scarlet and Gray spring game is more riveting than was the Buckeyes 45-0 rout of New Mexico State, Saturday, at Ohio Stadium.
The athletes are better on both sides of the ball in the practice game, you’re bound to get a surprise or two and anything a player does, you know likely was hard-earned.
Saturday’s game was like shooting fish in a barrel.
New Mexico State took this game strictly for the money. The Aggies — now 3-6 — are the equivalent of a fight game palooka, a boxing opponent. They got $850,000 to let OSU hammer on them.
At least the Aggies are used to it. They haven’t had a winning season since 2002, haven’t been to a bowl game in 49 years and came into Saturday’s game — where they were 44-point underdogs — with the worst offense (statistically) of the 120 teams playing major college football this season. Their defense was No. 75.
Saturday, the over-matched Aggies had just 62 total offensive yards for the day. OSU had 559 and played back-ups a substantial part of the second half..
That said, here are a few observations:
— Receiver DeVier Posey’s tight-spiralled 39-yard touchdown pass to Dane Sanzenbacher in the second quarter was more impressive than any pass OSU quarterback Terrelle Pryor threw in his one half of action Saturday.
Pryor over threw several receivers and two of his passes hit New Mexico State defenders in the hands and could have been intercepted.
He didn’t play in the second half, finishing the game with 11 for 23 passing with 135 yards and a 19 yard TD pass to Sanzenbacher. He was more impressive on the ground, running nine times for 89 yards and another score, an eight-yard run.
— Back-up quarterback Joe Bauserman, played the entire second half and was even less impressive throwing the ball, completing 2 of 9 passes for 75 yards.
— If you’re looking for an OSU star from the Miami Valley in this one, how about the special teams play of Donnie Evege, the sophomore from Wayne High, who is a one-man wrecking ball on the kick team. He put jarring hits on three Aggie kick returners Saturday.
— Brandon Saine’s 3-yard touchdown run later in the second quarter was the Piqua High product’s first rushing score of the season. That’s a telling stat about your team’s rushing attack when your starting tailback doesn’t get his first TD until the ninth game of the season
— When OSU kicker Aaron Pettrey suffered a sprained knee in the second quarter — an injury that could prove to be quite troublesome going into next Saturday’s game at Penn State — he was replaced by Devin Barclay, who is not your typical college player.
He’s 26 years old and was a pro soccer player — playing for four teams including the Columbus Crew — before joining the Buckeyes as a walk-on.
Barclay had his own struggles, missing two field goal attempts — from 47 and 36 yards — while making one from 29 yards.
— This was likely a deja vu moment for New Mexico State coach DeWayne Walker. He had been to Ohio State once before. He was a junior defensive back for the 1980 Minnesota team that lost to the Bucks, 47-0, at the Shoe.
“We got killed,” was the way he recollected that game a few days ago.
It was the same Saturday.
Tweet“Buxom Blonde” strikes out at World Series
One game into the World Series, they are the two most talked about pitchers linked to the Philadelphia Phillies:
Susan Finkelstein and Cliff Lee.
One you can hit on — one you can’t.
Lee put on a one-man show Wednesday night, handcuffing the New York Yankees in a 6-1 Phillies win. The left hander threw a complete game, striking out 10, walking none, the run he gave up was unearned and, for good measure, he even caught a ball behind his back.
Finkelstein’s cuffs came Tuesday night after her pitch — an ad for World Series tickets — came out on Craigslist.
“DESPERATE BLONDE NEEDS WS TIX — Diehard Phillies fan—gorgeous tall buxom blonde — in desperate need of two World Series Tickets. Price negotiable— I’m the creative type! Maybe we can help each other!”
An undercover cop met with the 43-year-old married University of Pennsylvania grad student in a suburban Philadelphia bar, allegedly, stating that he and his brother had World Series tickets for sale.
According to the cop, Finkelstein offered to perform sex acts on both of them, saying “Well, I’d rather have two tickets and I could take care of both of you.”
That got her busted on a prostitution charge.
Finkelstein claimed Wednesday she was just flirting with the undercover cop.
“I was hoping maybe I could get a cheaper price flirting with him,” she said on the satellite “Opie and Anthony” radio show. “You know, batting my eyes. It’s not unheard of….It was him who brought the whole thing up anyway.”
As she told Inside Edition: “If I can flirt with someone and maybe get cheap tickets, more power to me.”
Finkelstein claims she was a bit smitten by the cop, who was “kind of cute,” she said: “They sent out the good-looking, blonde, kind of Marine guy.”
Finkelstein may be in luck after all. A Philadelphia radio station and a car dealership have both offered her free tickets to Sunday’s game.
As for the charge — which sounds a little like looking-for-some-pub police work here — her lawyer hopes to get the charges reduced, if not dropped altogether.
Throwing a bit of a curve ball himself, lawyer William J. Brennan said Finkelstein is just “a nice lady overcome with Phillies fever.”
TweetMichael Jordan’s son steps into a dispute
They recruited Marcus Jordan because they hoped he would be following in his famous dad’s footsteps . Now he is and the University of Central Florida wishes he was not.
UCF has a problem stuck to the bottom of it’s basketball sole — maybe its soul, too — and right now the school can’t figure out a way to scrape it off.
As the son of NBA legend Michael Jordan, Marcus is the Golden Knights most famous basketball player.
But as one Chicago sports columnist puts it, the 18-year-old Heir Jordan is about to become Err Jordan.
I like the line — I’m not so sure of the logic.
The problem is over the brand of shoes the kid will wear when UCF tips off its hoops season with an exhibition game next Wednesday, Nov. 4
For decades Michael Jordan’s name has been synonymous with Nike — sometimes to a fault.
UCF has an exclusive $1.9 million contract with Nike rival Adidas that requires all its athletes and coaches to wear adidas footwear and apparel.
When he was being recruited, Marcus brought up the issue — saying he only wanted to wear his dad’s Air Jordan brand Nikes on the court — and he, and some UCF officials, have said he was told that wouldn’t be a problem.
Adidas though — which is in the midst of negotiating a new six-year, $ 3 million contract with UCF — has said no to that proposal. It wants EVERYBODY in Adidas gear.
Marcus though has balked. He said he’ll wear the Adidas apparel, but he plans to wear Nike Air Jordans, just as he was assured he could.
“When I was being recruited, we talked about it,” Marcus told the Orlando Sentinel. “They said they had talked to the Adidas people, and it wasn’t going to be a problem. I think everybody understands how big of a deal it is for my family.
“I have a high level of respect for Adidas, but I’m going to be wearing Jordan shoes. I’m wearing the Adidas uniform, and all my other UCF gear is Adidas, but the shoes are going to be Jordan brand.”
Now supposedly UCF’s new deal with Adidas is in some jeopardy because of the flap. And for the cash-strapped Golden Knights’ athletic department, $3 million is significant. It’s at least 5 percent of the entire athletics budget.
The school is the one that screwed this thing up. It never should have made the arrangement with Marcus. While some have tried to dismiss it as just another over-inflated ploy used on the recruiting trail, the bottom line is that a promise is a promise.
So what are the choices here?
Besides Adidas relenting or Nike — which already has the the state’s three most prominent programs under contract, Miami Florida and Florida State — stepping in and offering a more lucrative deal or UCF releasing Jordan’s son from his scholarship, there is one other possibility.
Marcus could show himself to be a true team player and agree to wear Adidas and end up standing taller than anyone in this mess.
Although I’d like to see that, I’m not sure that will happen — especially not if Marcus truly is following in Dad’s footsteps.
I remember this same kind of flap at the Barcelona Olympics. The gold medal-winning US basketball team was outfitted by Reebok, but Jordan and a few other players were adamant about their Nike contracts.
And so on the medal stand, Jordan draped an American flags over his warm-up jacket. Not a display of patriotism, this was all about profiteering. He wanted to make sure he hid the Reebok logo.
TweetChad: ‘We’re a lot more talented’ than 2005 playoff team
CINCINNATI — Before he’d let the post-game TV cameras roll, he said he wanted to put on a shirt.
“My momma’s out there,” Chad Ochocinco said in reference to a TV audience that may well include the grandmother who raised him.
He turned to his locker, grabbed a tight-fitted black pull-over, looped it over his head, but then got stuck when he tried to push one of his hands — hands that had just caught 10 passes for 118 yards and two touchdowns, one which he celebrated with a tightly-calibrated end zone samba dance — through an arm hole.
“It doesn’t fit,” Ochocinco said starring at his shoulder and biceps. “Look how big I done got. When I came in it was dangling.”
Nothing the Bengals receiver would say in the next 15 minutes — in the kind of oft-comedic monologue that would make him a late-night TV star, as well — was more true.
He and the rest of the Cincinnati Bengals had come out of their stunning 45-10 thrashing of the Chicago Bears Sunday night at Paul Brown Stadium sporting more muscles than anyone had ever dreamed they had:
— Quarterback Carson Palmer completed 20 of 24 passes for 233 yards and five touchdowns.
— Running back Cedric Benson — cut and, he says, disparaged by the Bears a year earlier — made his old team pay, running for a career-high 189 yards and a touchdown on 37 carries. His herculean day now makes him the the NFL’s leading rusher with 720 yards.
— The defense — depleted by injury and flu — sent the Bears to sick bay, picking off three Jay Cutler passes and recovering a fumble.
“This was a statement game for us,” Ochocinco said.
Part of that statement, he said, was that this team is better than the 2005 Bengals, who went 11-5 and made the playoffs:
“We are a lot more talented — talented defensively. Offensively we’re about the same, except that we (now) have a back who can go the distance at any point in time. No disrespect to Rudi (Johnson), but Ced is different and BScott ( back-up tailback Bernard Scott) is different. It’s kinda scary with these two backs.”
Palmer didn’t go quite that far, but he did say his team — which scored on its first seven possessions Sunday — “proved to ourselves that when we have the right mind set and get off early, we’re a tough team to contend with and slow down.”
And on this day, no one was tougher to contend with than Benson and Ochocinco.
When Benson scored his touchdown on a one-yard run in the fourth quarter, Ochocinco quickly embraced him.
“He said, ‘See ya’ in Miami,’” a smiling Benson said of the reference to this year’s Pro Bowl, which will be played in South Florida.
Ochocinco — a five-time Pro Bowler — looks as if he’s about to make it a half-dozen. Injured and disenchanted at times in 2008, he finished the season with an uncharacteristic 53 catches for 540 yards and and four touchdowns.
Now, as the 5-2 Bengals head to their bye week, he already has 573 receiving yards on 39 catches and five touchdowns.
“Before the season, you guys heard me say that by the time we got to the bye week I would have surpassed last year,” he grinned. “Man, I’m good. …I’m not Ali, but I’m good.”
From the dressing stall next to him — where rookie Quan Cosby was eavesdropping with delight — came a giggle.
Ochocinco heard it and with a grin called out, “Hey, I’m serious over here.”
Cosby laughed some more and down a couple dressing stalls further, second year receiver Andre Caldwell stood on his chair so he could watch and listen, as well.
More than teammates, these guys become part of Ochocinco’s post-game audience and sometimes they end up playing the Ed McMahon straight man to his Johnny Carson.
As Ochocinco was wrapping up his locker room chatfest, you heard wave after wave of loud cheers coming from the communal shower room where Benson was being toasted by his teammates.
“We knew what this meant for him today,” center Kyle Cook said. “We all have a chip on our shoulder. We’ve all been cut by some some other team and told we’re not good enough.”
With Ochocinco you didn’t notice the shoulder chip, just the diamond chips.
“I gotta accessorize,” he said as he reached in his locker and pulled out a fancy necklace.
He called out to a passing teammate: “I gotta a table for 20…see you there.”
As headed to the dressing room door, Ochocinco let you know before he’d eat, he’d tweet:
“Gotta go. Got to get to my Twitter.”
TweetBenson struts his stuff as Bengals embarrass the Bears
CINCINNATI — Get me rewrite!”
That’s what the Chicago Tribune columnist should be shouting tonight after the Cincinnati Bengals — fueled in a big way by the determined, almost possessed running of Cedric Benson — stomped all over the Chicago Bears, 45-10, Sunday evening at Paul Brown Stadium.
The premise of the piece in Sunday’s Tribune was that the only running the former Bear was good at was running his mouth. The columnist said Benson’s problem in Chicago — along with being a constant whiner — was that he was “too slow, too soft and too much of a distraction.”
While there may be plenty of truth in that during Benson’s three troubled years with the Bears, it’s not been that way since he joined the Bengals 13 months ago and it certainly wasn’t the case Sunday when he battered the Bears for a career-high 189 yards and a touchdown on 37 carries.
“There were a few times were I may have gotten a little too hyped up, a little too antsy,” Benson said. “A couple of drives, I found myself having to calm myself down and gather my emotions to stay poised. Once I got past that, we were good to go and I kept it rolling.”
Seven weeks into the season, he’s the NFL’s leading rusher with 720 yards.
When the Bears cut Benson last year — after disappointments on the field and two scrapes with the law off it — he said he thought they spread “negative” information about him around the league and because of it he was “black-balled” and couldn’t find a job until the Bengals finally threw him a lifeline.
Although he downplayed those claims with the local media this past week, Benson brought it up in a conference call with Chicago sportswriters. Bears coach Lovie Smith denied that claim the other day and said sometimes a change of scenery is better for a player.
That’s been the case for Benson in Cincinnati and Sunday all his teammates seemed inspired to help him rub the Bears’ noses in the dirt.
“i’ll tell you the truth, almost every guy in this room has a little chip on his shoulder about something,” said Bengals center Kyle Cook as he stood in the middle of his team’s jubilant dressing room afterward. “Guys here were cut by another team, let go and then nobody else wanted them.
“And today we all rose up together. It’s almost like we lived up to the hype with the Ced story and the Tank story (Bengals defensive tackle Tank Johnson is another former Bear) that everybody made a big deal about in the paper and on the streets, even though that wasn’t about (the rest of) us.”
This was as good as the Bengals have looked in years.
Carson Palmer and Chad Ochocinco reconnected like they haven’t for at least a couple of years. Or, as Ochocinco said afterward about he and his quarterback as he held court at his locker: “We’re back, baby. We’re back …and better than ever.”
Palmer was exceptional completing 20 of 24 passes for 233 yards and five touchdowns. His prime target was Ochocinco who caught 10 passes for 118 yards and two touchdowns.
The Bengals defense — even with a front line decimated by injury and the flu — was just as dominant as was the offense. It picked off Jay Cutler three times and recovered a Bears’ fumble.
“Everybody knew it was going to be an emotional day — everybody knew,” Benson said. “What a wonderful day and a wonderful thing, to go out there and strut your stuff.”
TweetDomicone’s “game-changer” helps reinvigorated Buckeyes dump Minnesota, 38-7
COLUMBUS — With a reinvigorated offense led by much-scrutinized quarterback Terrelle Pryor and another stifling defensive performance — keyed by big plays from three Miami Valley products — Ohio State dumped the mistake-prone Minnesota Gophers, 38-7, Saturday at Ohio Stadium.
Ohio State’s defensive effort included interceptions by linebacker Austin Spilter of Bellbrook High and safety Kurt Coleman of Northmont, but “the biggest play of the day, the momentum changer of the game,” — as Spitler put it — came from Zack Domicone, the redshirt freshman from Beavercreek High.
His recovery of a fumble by Minnesota’s Troy Stoudemire on the opening kick-off of the second half electrified the Bucks, who quickly broke open the close game.
Although Domicone returned the fumble 31 yards for a touchdown, the score was nullified because rules say the ball could not be advanced. Three plays later Pryor rushed 15 yards for a touchdown to put the Bucks up 14-0 and the rout was on.
“When we come out of locker room, Coach Tress always talks about how Recon — our kick-off team — has to set the tone, so it was good to set that tone and get our team started in the second half,” said Domicone, who missed the first four games this season with a torn groin muscle and was sidelined at the end of Saturday game’s with a slightly sprained ankle.
“With the wind in our face, we had a pooch right call on. We were trying to get height on it and have a little shorter kick and they weren’t ready for it. They didn’t have a guy in that area to catch the ball and that put the returner in bind. He dove for it, it hit him in his chest and bounced up.
“For me, it was all reaction. I was so close to it and a lot of people would try to dive on it because it’s kind of dangerous to try to scoop it. But my first instinct was just to scoop it up and run it into the end zone.”
“I heard a whistle when I first grabbed it, but it didn’t register in my mind. I guess you can’t advanced a muffed kick off…. Still, it changed things around for us.
“It’s kind of crazy. It’s something I’ve been thinking about all week — just how cool it would be if that happened — and with pooch, I knew I had opportunity to do that.”
If Domicone turned in the defensive play of the game, the high point of OSU’s 510-yard offensive day was Pryor’s mostly mistake-free performance. Except for an interception just before the half, Pryor bounced back nicely after a disastrous, four-turnover performance in a loss to Purdue last Saturday.
Against the Gophers, Pryor threw for two touchdowns to DeVier Posey and ran for another, finishing the day with 239 passing yards (on 13 for 25 passing) and 104 rushing yards.
One downer on the day was the possible concussion suffered by Brandon Saine, the starting tailback from Piqua High. He had rushed for 45 yards on 11 carries before being injured in the second quarter. He spent the second half sitting on the bench, bundled up in a hooded sweatsuit.
The Bucks are now 6-2. Minnesota is 4-4.
TweetHoying Gives Buckeyes A Pep Talk
COLUMBUS — The Ohio State football team got an inspirational pep talk before Saturday’s game with Minnesota from former Bucks quarterback Bobby Hoying, who may have been standing in front of the entire group, but seemed to be speaking specifically to current QB Terrelle Pryor.
Hoying — now a real estate agent in Columbus following his OSU and NFL days — was the Buckeyes honorary captain Saturday.
“I told ‘em playing quarterback at Ohio State comes with its share of criticisms when you don’t win,” said Hoying, the St. Henry product who was chosen to the Buckeyes All Century team and still remains the all-time career leader in completions (498) and touchdown passes (57) and is second to Art Schlicter in career passing yards.
“I just talked to the guys about my junior year here and how we got beat early and then came back and had a good year.”
Asked if he feels for Pryor — who received considerable criticism after turning the ball over four times in last Saturday’s loss to lowly Purdue — Hoying said the scrutiny is something all Bucks quarterbacks have experienced:
“It comes with the territory. Anybody who’s played quarterback here knows what it’s like. It was no different for any of us.
“Terrelle Pryor has all the tools and eventually it will start clicking for him.”
Until the final minute of the first half Saturday, it was clicking pretty well for Pryor, who earlier in the week had drawn the verbal support of Cleveland Cav stars LeBron James and Shaquille O’Neal.
Against the Gophers in the first two quarters, Pryor had completed 10 of his first 20 passes for 174 yards and a 62-yard touchdown pass to DeVier Posey that gave the Bucks their 7-0 halftime advantage.
Pryor also has run 12 times for 59 yards in the first half. He likely will remain the Bucks top running threat in this game since starting tailback Brandon Saine — the Piqua High product who started the game with 11 carries for 45 yards — left the game after a blow to the head and likely will not return.
Pryor’s one negative came near the end of the first half when he tried to force the ball to receiver Dane Sanzenbacher at the goal line and was picked off by safety Kyle Theret.
TweetOSU and Pryor — “Careful what you wish for”
So how’s Todd Boeckman looking now?
A lot of the Ohio State faithful were quick to trash the senior quarterback last season after he threw two interceptions against Southern Cal — and a Trojan defense that sent seven players to the NFL just seven months later — and some of the OSU coaches were right on board with them.
Benched during the USC game in favor of Terrelle Pryor, Boeckman — a true “team-first” leader, a respected team captain, a guy who led the Bucks to the national title game the year before — ended up in the Buckeyes’ version of Siberia. He rarely saw the field again. To me that was pretty shoddy treatment, but that’s water under the bridge.
Pryor’s ascension to the throne during the USC game lit up the blogosphere and talk radio lines. There was giddy speculation of coming Heisman Trophies and national championships and each and every Saturday watching Superman in his scarlet and gray cape.
To quote that tatted-up troubadour Eminem:
“So be careful what you wish for
‘Cause you just might get it
And if you get it then you just might not know
What to do wit’ it, ‘cause it might just
Come back on you ten-fold.”
Pryor has fallen back to earth this season. Landed with a thud. Done in not by Kryptonite, but a Purdue defense of all things. Two interceptions, four fumbles, two of them lost, five sacks.
A little time in Siberia for him after that loss to lowly Purdue, the Bucks second setback of the season? No way says Tressel. Is it that he thinks back-up Joe Bauserman is that ill-equipped for the job? Or is Pryor held to a different standard, as have been a couple of Tressel’s other heralded “stars” over the years?
The top-rated recruit in the nation two years ago — a mantle he flaunted with more than one press conference to announce which college he’d prep with on the way to the NFL — Pryor now ranks ninth in the league in passing efficiency and doesn’t look anything like the Big Ten’s Preseason Offensive Player of the Year.
People are saying he’s regressed as a quarterback, I disagree. I think he had barely grasped the basic rudiments of his position when he took over, though he thought he knew more than he did.
I remember two players telling me last year how — on more than one occasion — he pushed Boeckman away from him on the sidelines, saying he didn’t need the senior quarterback’s suggestions. This was “his” team now.
That said, I feel for the kid. He’s never really known failure and I’m sure he feels pressure now. After one of his interceptions last Saturday against the Boilermakers, he slammed his helmet on the ground and laced into his intended target, receiver Duron Carter, who he thought should have broken up the pick.
Sure the offensive line is doing a poor job of protecting him, but it’s also obvious Pryor has trouble reading defenses, which is why he so often runs plays right into their teeth and why he’s also not comfortable calling an audible.
So what is OSU to do?
Bucks fans often rail at Tressel for his conservative play-calling, but I can’t see opening up the offense now. He has to make things even simpler, hope that Pryor grasps that and then build from there.
And if that doesn’t work?
Well, back to Eminem again.
I remember a few years back he travelled the country — including a stop in Columbus — with Ice Cube,. Snoop Dogg, Dr. Dre and a bunch of other hip hoppers.
They called it the “Up In Smoke Tour.”
The Bucks can only hope that doesn’t become their tag, as well.
TweetThree Questions for NASCAR
When the first five inductees into NASCAR’s Hall of Fame were announced last week — and that quintet includes Bill France and Bill France, Jr., Richard Petty, Junior Johnson and Dale Earnhardt — three questions came to my mind:
Who should have been in that first class?
Who should be the next five enshrinees?
Who of today’s current drivers and owners deserves to land in the Hall one day?
NASCAR’s Hall of Fame opens in Charlotte in May of 2010 — that’s when the five will be officially enshrined — and it will be one of the history houses in sports I’d like to visit one day soon.
I covered a lot of stock car racing in the late 1970s and the 1980s and have done so sporadically since. I’m partial to the era of Richard Petty, David Pearson, the Allison brothers and Cale Yarborough, so I’m sure that will color some of my thinking here, but those were great times for the sport, too.
Anyway, here are the three questions:
Who should have been in that first class?
I agree with Petty, the sports most iconic figure, Johnson, the moonshine legend who was a successful driver and owner and Earnhardt, the seven-time Cup champion. But I think just one the Frances — Bill Sr., the founder and first president of NASCAR — should have been included.
Although his son, Bill Jr., developed his father’s dream ten fold, he should have been put into the next class and The Silver Fox, David Pearson, should have made the first five.
Pearson, quite arguably, is the best driver NASCAR has ever had. He ran partial schedules most of his career and still won 105 races, second most all time to Petty’s 200. To get an idea how he did that, consider he entered just 18 races in 1973 and won 11 of them. He only ran three full seasons and won the championship in each of them.
When Major League Baseball began its Hall of Fame with five enshrinees in 1936, it settled on Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, Walter Johnson, Christy Mathewson and Honus Wagner. All the business suits — great as they may have been, guys likes Comiskey and Spalding — had to wait.
Who should be the next five enshrinees?
There are a lot of folks from which to choose. NASCAR initially put out a list of 25 possible candidates, though that collection had a couple of glaring omissions, including Wendell Scott, the first black man ever to win a big-time stock car race. The odds — the racial barriers, the outright prejudice — he overcame were almost insurmountable and he deserves to be included in one of the first few classes enshrined.
With Pearson snubbed this year, he heads my list for the next class. I’d also include Bobby Allison, Cale Yarborough, Darrell Waltrip and either Ned Jarrett or Fireball Roberts. Probably Jarrett, because along with his two driving championships, he was the honey-coated broadcasting voice who introduced much of America to the sport.
To take it just a little father, my third class then would be Fireball Roberts, Lee Petty, Curtis Turner, Joe Weatherly and Wendell Scott.
One woman who belongs in the Hall — and yet is unknown by the casual race fan and not included on that NASCAR list of 25 — is Louise Smith, the hell-raising gal who travelled and raced with Turner, Tiny Lund. the Flock brothers and the rest of the first band of drivers and once hocked her diamonds to bail the whole bunch out of jail so they could go race in the next town.
Finally, question three:
Who of today’s current drivers and owners deserves to land in the Hall one day?
My group would include Jeff Gordon, Jimmie Johnson, Tony Stewart, Richard Childress and Rick Hendrick.
Gordon’s a four-time champ, whose popularity and marketing skills especially in the late 1990s made him an equal of the superstars of other sports, a recognition stock car drivers always had trouble obtaining
Johnson has won three straight titles — and is well on his way to No. 4.
Stewart — who joins the ranks of A. J. Foyt and Mario Andretti — as the best all-around drivers ever, went from open wheel success — he won the Indy 500 pole — to stock cars and became even greater. He has two Cup Series driving titles and deserves recognition as a team owner and now the driving force of Eldora Speedway, too.
Childress, himself a longtime driver, made an even bigger mark as a team owner, especially in giving Dale Earnhardt the opportunities he did. And Hendrick has been the most successful owner of this era, giving the wheel to everybody from Gordon and Johnson to Kyle Busch.
One final thought: I’ve heard some folks say they think NASCAR might not have enough appropriate candidates to keep filling induction classes for years to come. They think the pool will run dry.
At five slots a year, I think there are more than enough worthy choices to go on for 30 or 40 years — maybe more — without missing a beat. And by then, there’ll be more stars. Besides, in four decades, who knows what kind of cars folks will be driving.
One thing for certain, no one will ever drive them better than guys like Richard Petty, David Pearson or Dale Earnhardt.
TweetBengals’ Odom Lost for Season
CINCINNATI — Antwan Odom has been lost for the season.
A few hours after the game, Cincinnati Bengals head coach Marvin Lewis finally confirmed what two of us who talked to the the team’s star defensive end right after the game had suspected: Odom had ruptured his right Achilles tendon in the first quarter of the Bengals’ 28-17 upset loss to Houston, Sunday at Paul Brown Stadium.
You sensed the severity of the situation as soon as you stepped into the Cincinnati dressing room just minutes after the game.
Odom — who came into the game leading the NFL, along with Denver’s Elvis Dumervil, with eight sacks — was in front of his locker, leaning heavily on a set of silver crutches. He had a padded blue walking boot on his right foot.
His right Achilles tendon was shredded, his spirit crushed.
Jay Hayes was huddled with him and then — after patting the 280-pound lineman on the cheek and saying softly “Hang in there,” — the Bengals defensive line coach turned and left.
When we approached him — the rest of the media corps was just leaving coach Marvin Lewis’ post-game comments and never got to him — Odom whispered:
“I really don’t feel like it — I hope you understand.”
He was struggling to control his emotions — and his crutches — and once he got himself turned around, he maneuvered slowly across the dressing room to the training room.
Several of the Bengals players watched him depart. From the far corner of the room — where several linebackers dress — someone blurted out an expletive of frustration,
“He’s our best player on the line,” said Bengals defensive tackle Tank Johnson, who plays right next to him.
And that’s why the biggest loss of the day may not be the one to the Texans. It could be losing Odom — the heart and soul of the Bengals resurgent defense — for the year.
Odom had started the game as a defensive terror once again.
On the Texans fifth offensive play, he overwhelmed the young guy blocking him — tackle Duane Brown — and then chased Texans quarterback Matt Schaub out of the pocket on a third-down play and forced him to throw an incompletion. On the very next play, he blocked Kris Brown’s 28-yard field goal attempt.
But on the Texans’ next possession, Odom was hurt when he was flattened by a delayed — and likely unseen — block on what ended up being a 12-yard touchdown pass from Schaub to Owen Daniels.
As Odom lay on the field, players began to congregate around him — not just Bengals, but some Texans, too. Finally, a motorized cart appeared and he was helped onto it and driven slowly off the field.
The sixth-year lineman was hampered much of last season with injuries. He missed the entire preseason with foot problems and then missed four game’s at year’s end with a shoulder injury.
“Any time you see a cart come out, you know it isn’t good,” said Tank Johnson. “We all know injuries are part of the game, but it doesn’t make them any easier to see happen in front of you.”
Odom’s loss — along with the temporary loss to another starter in the defensive front, tackle Domata Peko, who wrenched his knee — were felt immediately by the Bengals.
Cincinnati was unable to pressure Schaub for most of the rest of the game and he picked the Bengals apart, completing 28 of 40 passes for 392 yards and four touchdowns.
“When you lose Antwan — having him out of the game — that was huge for them because he’s a big-time pass rusher coming off the edge,” said Bengals quarterback Carson Palmer.
The loss ended the Bengals’ four-game winning streak and drops them to 4-2 and tied with Pittsburgh for the lead in the AFC North.
TweetLike Oprah, I’m talking Holyfield and Tyson
Today, Oprah goes from Talk Queen to Fight King — something like promoter Don King, but with a better hairdresser — when she puts on Holyfield-Tyson III. She’ll do so during her afternoon show by reflecting on Holyfield-Tyson II.
It will be the first time Evander Holyfield and Mike Tyson will talk face to face since their infamous bout a dozen years ago
I wish I could have shared some things with Oprah before her pugfest.
I’ve covered thousands of boxing matches over the years and seen all kinds of unexpected and sometimes heart-wrenching things:
— There was the summer night on Miami Beach in 1984 where world bantamweight champ Alberto Davila was defending his title against Enrique Sanchez in an outdoor ring set up on the sand close to the water’s edge. Midway through the fight a violent thunderstorm came in quickly off the ocean and collapsed the canopy over the ring, then toppled a light pole near the bleachers. Soon the fighters, cornermen, judges, ref, a photographer and myself all were huddled together beneath the elevated ring until the wind and blinding rain subsided and the bout could resume.
— There was the night a sore loser grabbed the winner’s trophy from his conqueror in the middle of a Fort Lauderdale ring and promptly slammed it over the heads of the victorious boxer and the ref. Eventually, the winner and the ref were helped from the ring by medics and the loser — and his mom, who jumped into the ring — were led out in cuffs by the cops
— And there was the sad night in 1985 at a Golden Gloves tournament in North Miami when Howard Brooks — a Pennsylvania heavyweight who I knew well and in whose corner I’d sat and given him advice between rounds — suffered a fatal blow to the head.
Yet, when it comes to out-of-the-blue bizarre, complete insanity and total anarchy all wrapped into one — not to mention the threat to my wife and our friends — no fight scene that I’ve been a part of matches that Las Vegas night in June of 1997.
I’m talking not only about the heavyweight title rematch between then-champ Holyfield and dethroned bully Tyson, but also the riots that followed in the MGM Grand casino and on the Las Vegas Strip afterward.
That night Tyson — who had lost his crown to Holyfield in an 11th round TKO seven months earlier in Vegas — found himself unable to intimidate Holyfield.
Midway through the third round — caught in a swirl of his own frustration, desperation and unhinged rage — a bleeding Tyson (who had taken his mouthpiece out between rounds) got Holyfield in a clinch and then chomped down like a ravenous pit pull on the top of his right ear.
As Holyfield hopped up and down, yelping in pain, Tyson stepped back and spit the piece cartilage to the canvas. Those of us at ringside couldn’t believe what we were seeing.
After being threatened with disqualification by referee Mills Lane and getting two points deducted, Tyson then bit Holyfield’s’ other ear just 20 seconds later.
The fight was stopped. Chaos reigned in the ring. Tyson was disqualified and later would be fined $3 million and lose his license for a year. His fistic reputation — his personal rep was shot long before — was now forever stained.
I covered that fight and here are some of the things I won’t forget:
— I remember an incredulous Holyfield yelling to Tyson: “Why are you biting me? You have a chance.”
— After the bout, I remember Tyson getting into a confrontation with a Las Vegas policeman in the ring, while his backers acted just as asinine: “You’re screaming like a (expletive),” John Horne, Tyson’s co- manager, yelled at Holyfield. And Tyson bodyguard Anthony Pitts bellowed: “Holyfield, you’re nothing but a coward. You quit.”
— As Tyson was led from the ring by security men, the sold-out Grand Garden crowd — some of whom paid up to $5,000 for a $1,500 ringside ticket — jeered and booed and began hurling beers, programs and insults at Tyson. Some fans leaned over the rail and spit on him.
— I remember standing outside Holyfield’s dressing room, when Mitch Libonati, an MGM employee in charge of setting up the ring, hustled up, saying “I have something Mr. Holyfield needs.” He handed over a rubber cornermen’s glove in which he had dropped the piece of ear Tyson had bit off. “I saw Tyson spit the piece out,” Libonati said. “I put it in the glove, packed it in ice and got it over here.”
And then there was the riot afterward.
Here’s an excerpt of my story from then:
“I was near the MGM Grand gift shop late Saturday — 90 minutes after Mike Tyson had lit the fuse on a night of anarchy by twice biting Evander Holyfield before being disqualified in their heavyweight title match — when I heard the second “POP … POP … POP.”
It came from the bar around the corner and I heard a woman scream, ‘He’s got a gun!’
Instantly, people began to stampede through the crowded casino. A group of young women in the lobby was knocked to the floor. Fist fights broke out between young men who had been swilling magnums of Dom Perignon straight from the bottle.
As cops with guns drawn rushed through the casino in the direction of the bar, I came around the corner and smelled what seemed like cordite. While police and MGM officials would later claim there was no gunfire — the noise, one MGM representative said, was champagne corks — at least three MGM employees, including a sobbing cocktail hostess working the area, said shots had been fired.
As I tried to make my way to my wife and friends who were further back in the casino, I saw the most bizarre scenario I’ve ever seen in two decades of coming to Las Vegas.
Everyone in the casino was huddled on the floor behind crap tables, slot machines, pillars, anything they thought would provide cover. A black-jack table had been tipped over and some of the young thugs causing trouble had scooped up thousands of dollars in chips. People eating in some of the restaurants simply fled their meals in mid bite, leaving tables of unattended food. A woman near the elevators collapsed with chest pains and soon was being treated by medics.
I found my wife and our friends from New Zealand huddled behind a bank of slot machines. Two of the women from Christchurch were so frightened they were trembling. One had been crying.
This was the second alleged shooting incident of the night, the second stampede, and within minutes, the massive casino and its numerous bars, shops and restaurants were shut down. More than 40 people were reported injured. Police closed down part of the famed Las Vegas Strip as a precautionary measure and soon the 5,000-room MGM Grand Hotel was surrounded by the flashing lights of police cars.
Saturday night in Las Vegas I saw the worst in humanity.”
I don’t know if Oprah could have used any of this. I’m sure she’ll do a fine job today regardless, but a few first-hand insights may have helped shape a question or two.
I would have liked to have had her ear for a few minutes — though not in the Tyson fashion.
TweetThe Wildest Football Ending of the Season
As you’ll see in the video below, here’s a play even wilder than that last-seconds tipped pass that Denver turned into an 87-yard interception return for a touchdown to beat the Cincinnati Bengals, 12-7, in the season opener this year.
It happened at a high school game in suburban Detroit Oct. 2 and holds some lessons for athletes everywhere.
Plymouth High thought it had defeated Westland John Glenn, 28-27, when it blocked kicker Ryan Lopez’ 35-yard field goal attempt on the game’s final play
As Lopez and his Glenn teammates hung their heads in dejection, the Plymouth players began jumping up and down in joy, then ran of the field in victory — or so they, many Glenn players and and about everyone else initially thought.
Meanwhile, the deflected ball had rolled to the feet of Glenn’s holder Tony Wilton, who picked it up and just stood there. As he’d tell The Observer & Eccentric newspaper after the game, he heard an assistant coach from the sidelines yell “Run…run!!!”
Turns out the ball had not crossed the line of scrimmage so it was still in play. No official had blown the ball dead.
With no one on the field but his teammates — the Plymouth players already were over by their bench celebrating their first-ever victory over Glenn — Wilton ran 33 yards for the touchdown that gave his team the 33-28 victory.
Plymouth coach Mike Sawchuk was livid about the officiating.
“They (the officials) blew the whistle and the clocked stopped — everybody stopped,” he told the Observer’s Brad Emons. “They wouldn’t give me an explanation.”
With both his team and Glenn in a battle for a play-off spot, he’s now protesting the outcome: “We won the game. We played our tails off and they (Glenn) should not be happy with the win.”
But the Glenn players — especiallty Wilton who is now a YouTube hit — have no problem with it:
“I didn’t hear any whistle,” Wilton told the newspaper, “and I thought nothing of it.”
TweetOSU’s Coleman: “I Got the Party Rockin’”
COLUMBUS — Kurt Coleman summed it up perfectly:
“I got the party rockin’.”
While you may think the Ohio State senior safety and team captain was talking about his spectacular, first-quarter, 89-yard interception return for a touchdown against Wisconsin, Saturday, Oct. 10 — the play that lit the fuse on the Buckeyes’ 31-13 romp over the Badgers at Ohio Stadium — he actually was talking about the Saturday before that.
Instead of suiting up with the Bucks for their game at Indiana, the Northmont High grad was back in Dayton, enduring a one-game suspension by the Big 10 for his helmet-to-helmet hit on Illinois’ back up quarterback in the final minute of OSU’s blowout victory over the Illini in late September.
Not allowed to accompany the team, he came home to watch his alma mater defeat Wayne High on Friday night, then stayed over so he and his brother Kyle could surprise their little sister, Cassie, at her 13th birthday party.
“A bunch of 12 and 13 year old girls and us — yeah, I got the party rockin’,” he laughed. “Actually the party was supposed to have been in Bloomington if I’d travelled with the team.”
The hit on the Illini’s Eddie McGee grounded him, though he said it was “just a split-second thing” and “not intentional.
“I didn’t really know I’d hit him in the head, but people kept talking to me about it afterward and I started to get more aware of what happened. When Coach Tress (head coach Jim Tressel) finally called and told me I was being suspended, my stomach kind of dropped.
“I didn’t get mad, I just planned to learn from it — learn you can’t hit the quarterback helmet to helmet Then I decided to turn it into a positive.”
He did in three steps:
— He did his best to prep his back-up, freshman Orhian Johnson, for IU: “I wanted him to see what I saw, know what I knew.”
— He got his sister a special present: “She’s into retro, so my brother and I got her two pairs of Chuck Taylors — one high top, one low.”
— He made his return to the Bucks line-up quite emphatic. He had 14 tackles Saturday and his interception return was the fifth longest in OSU history.
Under pressure from the Bucks defensive front, Badger quarterback Scott Tolzien threw the ball high as he avoided a sack.
“The ball came right to me and as soon I got it, I saw a sea of red and just got behind my teammates and they led me all the way down the field. I did the easy part, they did all the work.”
His score put OSU up 7-0 and — like last week — got the party rockin’ on a day filled with big plays by the Bucks.
Asked if scoring his first college TD — as a crowd of 105,301 gave him roaring support — was a lot better than that birthday party the week before, he surprised you and shook his head:
“Both memories are something I’ll cherish. To see my sister’s face on her birthday — that will always be a special moment for her. You’ve got to remember, football only goes so far…but family is forever.”
TweetBob Logan: “Stivers saved my little rear end”
MEDWAY — Before Stivers High decided to enshrine him as one of its most storied athletes ever — more than just an All City football player, he’s become a hard-nosed legend of Tiger reclamation — the school helped save him.
That’s why, as Bob Logan has looked forward to his induction into the Stivers Athletic Hall of Fame today, October 11, he’s also found himself looking back to a time when teenage trouble — and the incredulous penalty it drew — was giving any hope of glorious accomplishment by him a solid stiff-arm to the snoot.
Growing up poor in the 1940s and early ’50s, he lived in the hard-scrabble Fifth St. neighborhood near Stivers on the East End.
He can tell you about pulling a little red wagon up and down the railroad tracks picking up coal that fell from the passing trains and bringing it home.
He put cardboard in his shoes to cover the holes in his soles and he remembers toting a kettle into the Rendezvous, an old Italian place at La Belle and Fifth, and getting 50 cents worth of spaghetti so his family could eat.
He said his dad was rough man — “his discipline was bad news,” — and died when Bob was 12. To support her son and daughter, Logan’s mom worked long hours as a waitress in the bars and eateries along E. Fifth.
For a while, Logan spent all his free time at the Bomberger Center and the Boys and Girls Club. But when he turned 15, he began hanging out with a bunch of guys, most of whom cared little for sports, school or anything else constructive
“We were standing around one day wondering what we were gonna do and one kid says, ‘I got a brother in Newark, New Jersey, let’s go see him,” Logan said.
Without a cent in his pocket and just the clothes on his back — “I’d never been nowhere in my life.” — Logan joined three other guys and hitch-hiked to New Jersey.
“We spent a couple of days there, went over to Coney Island then thumbed back,” he said. “It was an adventure and it went pretty well — so then one of the guys said, ‘Let’s go to California.’
“I said, ‘Let’s go. We hitching?’”
The kid told him no, he’d get a car.
The four piled into a ‘42 Chevy — Logan anchored in the back because he didn’t know how to drive — and they headed west. But near Martinsville, Indiana, they ran out of gas.
“We went over to an abandoned farmhouse, smoked some cigarettes and then we left the car along the road and walked into town,” he said.
Soon the local cops had them corralled.
That car the kid had produced — it was stolen.
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“I ALMOST FLIPPED A GASKET”
“Times were different then,” the 73-year-old Logan said as he sat at the kitchen table of his home outside Medway the other day. “There was no phone call, no lawyers, no trial, no nothing. Nobody back home even knew where we were. The judge just sentenced us to six months in the county jail.”
After four weeks of confinement, a jailer let one of the kids go to a nearby store to buy a soda pop. Instead, he boy called his mom back in Dayton.
“Next thing you know here comes the lawyers and after six weeks of us being locked up, all charges were suspended,” Logan said. “We were feeling pretty good until the G-people showed up and said, ‘You boys took a car across state lines.’ They handcuffed us and took us to the federal prison in Danville, Illinois.”
After another six weeks, they finally appeared before a judge who told the kids he was sending them to a correctional institution in Washington, D.C. until they were 21 years old.
“I almost flipped my gasket and passed out,” Logan said. “Then the judge said he was suspending the sentence and giving me two years probation.”
Once back at Bomberger, Logan wondered what he was going to do. The three other kids never did go back to school and a couple would get into serious trouble later.
“I looked across the street at Stivers and decided to walk over,” he said. “Mr. (Floyd) Carpenter — he was the principal — happened to be there that day and I told him I wanted to go to school. He made me a freshman and, well, that moment changed me forever.
“Stivers High — and the sports I played there — pretty much saved my little rear end. It gave me new direction.”
That direction often led him straight to the end zone. Though just 5-foot-6 and 150 pounds, he became a tough-as-nails, two-way star for the Tigers, winning All City honors a junior defensive back and senior running back.
His games fueled newspaper headlines. He had touchdown runs of 75 and 70 yards — an 85-yard score was called back — against Wilbur Wright.
He led the Tigers to a stunning upset of Chaminade, which had won 49 straight games and, as Logan remembers it, “hadn’t lost to a City team in like 12 years.”
And then there was the game against Roosevelt. He was a little sophomore defender and ended up running face first — there were no face masks back then — into the helmet of a Teddy lineman.
“When I saw him after the game, he goes, ‘My mouth got messed up,’” laughed Betty Jean — she goes by Jean — who back then was his new girlfriend and now is his wife of 53 years. “He was all bloody and his two front teeth were gone so all you saw were the nerves dangling. He’d played the whole game like that.”
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“THAT’S A HOOD IF I EVER SAW ONE”
Jean met him when he was a freshman and she was a Wilbur Wright eighth grader. The first time she brought him to her McReynolds Street home, she said her mom had a less-than-flattering assessment, saying:
“That’s a hood if I ever saw one.”
Her mom, like so many others, soon learned what Bobby Logan really was about and, as Jean put it, “he ended up her favorite.
“That first Christmas he got more presents from her than I did. She bought him a winter coat and a scarf because he didn’t have one and he wore them everywhere.”
When he graduated from high school in 1956, Logan paid no attention to the small college football interest he had drawn and that August borrowed $20 from a friend and ran off with Jean to get married in Liberty, Indiana.
Jean and Bob — he’d work 19 years at NCR and then at other factory jobs — had three daughters, who in turn have brought them seven grandchildren and one great grandson — several of whom play prep sports in the area.
Bob was an avid softball player until 1973 when histoplasmosis cost him all but a little peripheral vision in one eye. In 1994, the fungal disease got into the other eye and left him legally blind and unable to drive, work and, for a brief while, even fathom a future.
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“I’M GOLFIN’ AGAIN”
Once again, sports saved him.
“I remember one morning he was kind of sitting here feeling sorry for himself, but when I got home from work something had changed,” Jean said.
“A neighbor told me from early that morning, he had been out in the field next to us here, determined to learn how to hit a golf ball again. He finally came in the house at dark, just covered with mud — he was a mess — and said, ‘I’m golfin’ again.’”
Though he has to cock his head a bit sideways to see the ball — and then it’s only a white blur — he has figured out a swing and plays at least three times a week at Kittyhawk, where he once had won two club championships and has a lake named after him.
Now walking each round, he plays to a 12 or 13 handicap and four years ago had hole in one.
He and Jean regularly walk their neighborhood with their beloved dog, Patty, and they spent a lot of time at their grandkids sporting events at Fairmont and Milton Union High, where one grandson is the Bulldogs starting safety.
“The only way I can see anything is if I train my binoculars right on him,” Logan said.
Today, the entire family will be at the Presidential Banquet Center as Logan and 15 other Stivers sports stalwarts are inducted with a social hour, dinner and ceremony that begins at noon.
“He’s really honored, but he was a little taken aback too.” Jean said.” He says, ‘I didn’t go off to college like some of the guys. I didn’t do this or that. I didn’t really do anything that great.’”
Maybe it’s the vision thing — maybe he’s still wary of an unexpected ride to a fabled place — but everybody else who knows him can see this one clearly.
There is no one more deserving of the Stivers’ embrace than Bob Logan.
The two are forever intertwined.
He brought the the school plenty of football field glory and it — as he put it so perfectly — saved his little rear end.
TweetColeman and Homan lead Ohio State to 31-13 win over Wisconsin
COLUMBUS — Led by another stand-out defensive effort — a jarring performance highlighted by the play of two Miami Valley products, safety Kurt Coleman from Northmont High and linebacker Ross Homan from Coldwater — Ohio State defeated Wisconsin 31-13 Saturday at Ohio Stadium.
With just under four minutes let in the first quarter, Coleman — who missed last week’s game at Indiana because of a Big Ten suspension for a late hit against Illinois — intercepted Badgers’ quarterback Scott Tolzien and returned the ball 89 yards for the Bucks first touchdown of the day.
It was the fifth longest interception return for a score in OSU history.
In the third quarter Bucks junior safety Jemale Hines intercepted Tolzien and returned the ball 32 yards for a score.
It was the first time since September 23, 2006 — against Penn State — that the Bucks returned two interceptions for touchdowns.
Although his day wasn’t quite as dramatic, Homan — who two weeks ago left the Illinois game early with a slight concussion — had his most prolific peformance as a Buckeye tackler. Along with 15 tackles, he had two sacks.
Coleman had 14 tackles.
A week ago, as his OSU teammates were thumping the Hoosiers in Bloomington, Coleman — not allowed to travel with the Bucks because of his much-debated suspension — was back in Dayton helping his little sister Cassie celebrate her 13th birthday.
Saturday, after gathering the ball in on his pick, Coleman cut to the right side of the field, picked up some blockers, briefly tight-roped the sideline and then outsprinted the Badgers to the end zone.
As soon as he crossed the goal line, he pointed to the heavens, then was mobbed by his teammates.
Although Wisconsin amassed twice as many total yards as the Bucks — 368 to 184 — and had a whopping advantage in time of possession ( 42:47 to 17:13), Ohio State dismantled the Badgers with big plays. Ray Small returned a kick-off 96 yards for a score in the third quarter to go with the two interception returns for TDs.
OSU quarterback Terrelle Pryor added a 32-yard touchdown pass to DeVier Posey in the third quarter and Bucks kicker Aaron Pettrey had a 32 yard field goal in the fourth quarter.
The Buckeyes — ranked No. 9 — are now 5-1 and may go up in the rankings with the convincing victory over Wisconsin, which came into the game 5-0.
TweetKurt Coleman scores for the Buckeyes
COLUMBUS — A week ago, as his Ohio State teammates were knocking heads with the Indiana Hoosiers in Bloomington, Kurt Coleman — suspended for a a game by the Big Ten for a late hit against Illinois and not allowed to travel with the Bucks — was back in Dayton helping his little sister Cassie celebrate her 13th birthday.
But this Saturday , the senior safety from Northmont High was back in his Buckeye uniform and blowing out the candles out on Wisconsin quarterback Scott Tolzein at Ohio Stadium.
With just under four minutes let in the first quarter, Coleman intercepted Tolzein — who was under pressure and threw ball high — and returned the ball 89 yards for a touchdown.
It was the fifth longest interception return for a score in OSU history.
After gathering the ball in, Coleman cut to the right side of the field, picked up some blockers, briefly tight-roped the sideline and then outsprinted the Badgers to the end zone.
As soon as he crossed the goal line, he pointed to the heavens, then was mobbed by his teammates.
Officially, the score came at 3:42 of the first quarter and gave the Bucks the 7-0 lead.
It was Coleman’s sixth interception of his career and his second this season.
TweetKurt Coleman and Family — looking for normalcy
One the way to the Wisconsin game the past two years, Kurt Coleman and his family have been involved in some pretty unfortunate hits.
Just about everybody knows about Kurt’s end-of-the-game — inadvertent, his coaches say — late hit on Illinois back-up quarterback Eddie McGee two Saturday’s past. It drew a 15-yard penalty from the game officials and then a much-debated, one-game suspension by the Big Ten.
The senior safety and Buckeyes captain from Northmont High will be back in action today against visiting Wisconsin after not being allowed to travel with the team last weekend to Indiana.
Yet, that detour was nothing compared to the one his mom, stepdad and little sister encountered last year on their way to the Bucks game at Wisconsin.
Heidi Williams, her husband Jim and their daughter Cassie were making the drive to Madison the day before the game in their Chevy Cavalier. They planned to celebrate Cassie’s 12th birthday with more family members that evening at their hotel, then go to the game on Saturday.
“We were in that stop-and-go traffic through the construction mess just outside Chicago and Jim looked down a second to check directions,” Heidi said. ” Next thing, I look up and start screaming. The traffic had suddenly stopped and we slammed into the back of a big car in front is us.
“The air bags deployed. the windshield cracked and our car ended up totalled. Through it all, Cassie was sitting in the back seat holding her big birthday cake and nothing happened to it.”
When they got out of their car — the other auto received minor damage — Cassie saw the reddish transmission fluid all over the pavement and became hysterical. She thought it was someone’s blood.
Needless to say, it was a hectic scene along the side of a busy highway. And because of their license plate, the family drew even more attention.
“My husband has a side business — Crash Computers — he fixes computers when they crash,” Heidi said. “Our license plate just read: CRASH.”
People stopped to take photos of it. Even the bemused tow truck driver took some pictures.
The family — Cassie still clutching her cake — piled into the cab of the tow truck and got a ride to a rental car place. Although they got into Madison late that night, they still threw Cassie her party.
Heidi also called Kurt so he wouldn’t hear the news from someone else. And after the next day’s game — a 20-17 Buckeye victory — she said her son did something out of character:
“He came over and looked for us in the stands, then motioned for us to come down to the railing. That’s when he climbed up and gave us all a great big hug.”
This year, Cassie’s birthday, October 3, was the day of the Indiana game. Temporarily in exile, Kurt was able to do more this time than just hug his siister.
He came back home last Saturday for her birthday party.
Today — when the Bucks face the Badgers at 3:30 p.m. at Ohio Stadium — the family hopes everything will be back to normal.
Well, except for one thing.
“That CRASH license plate,” Heidi said with a laugh, “we got rid of it.”
TweetCOLUMN: OSU’s Tom Ingham — “A kid you can root for.”
COLUMBUS — His family was driving down to Cincinnati from their Centerville home almost four years ago when Tom Ingham shared his against-all-odds plan with his parents.
He was a University of Dayton football player then — a redshirt freshman who was sure to get plenty of playing time in the coming years — but he told his folks he wanted more. He said he going to try to transfer to Ohio State and walk onto the football team.
Never mind that no Division I college had recruited him out of Centerville High, that OSU likely didn’t even know he existed or that at 6-feet and 225 pounds, he was woefully under-sized to play in the Buckeyes offensive line.
Joyce Ingham remembers her husband John, then a U.S. Air Force colonel — giving their son support:
“He told Tommy, ‘You don’t ever want to end up some 40-year-old guy looking back with regret.’”
And while Tom Ingham has ended up with a lot of things — bruises, disappointing set backs, some recent football seasons spent in the shadows — one thing he won’t have is regret.
“I’ve always want to do something that’s really hard so afterward you can be proud that you accomplished it,” he said.
So what tops his hard-to-do list?
— Is it, after just one previous season of organized football, becoming the starting center at Centerville High as a sophomore and ending up, as Elks’ coach Ron Ullery puts it, being “the best center we’ve ever had in my 33 years at the school?”
Nope.
— How about showing up for walk-on tryouts at OSU three years ago and becoming one of just three guys from a pool of 100 that the Bucks kept? Or enduring a serious foot injury that required surgery, then facing another try-out, switching from offense to defensive line — a position he knew nothing about — and going against Alex Boone and Kirk Barton, who outweighed him by 80 and 70 pounds respectively, every day in practice?
Aaah, nope
— Maybe it’s handling the rigors of big-time football while maintaining a 3.0 grade point average in mechanical engineering.
Once again, no.
His most ambitious plan is a little less than a year off.
Immediately after graduation this spring — and the shedding of some 50 pounds from the 250 pounds at which he now plays — the fifth-year senior defensive end hopes to grind his way through a year of intensive physical and mental training so he can become a Navy SEAL and be proficient in everything from hand-to-hand combat to high-altitude parachuting and underwater demolition.
“I feel like I owe it to do something like that for my family, my friends and my teammates,” he said as he sat in the Woody Hayes Athletic Complex after the Buckeyes football practice.
“For everybody to enjoy the kind of life we have here in this country, somebody has to be willing to do some of these jobs. You can’t always just look to somebody else to do it for you.”
These aren’t just over-hyped but hollow thoughts coming from her son, Joyce said:
“One thing about Tommy, he doesn’t just talk it, he lives it.”
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“A GREAT KID”
That’s why Ullery — once Ingham told him he was planning to leave UD after a season — sent game films, made phone calls and hammered home one thought with OSU coaches:
“I remember telling (defensive coordinator) Jim Heacock, ‘Whether (Ingham) makes the team or not, you’re going to be dealing with a great kid. He’s smart, he’s got character and integrity and I think he’s got a tremendous future.
“He’s one kid you can really root for.”
All that said, it hasn’t been easy for Ingham since he got to OSU in the fall of 2006. He contacted the coaches only to be told the team’s roster was set for the season and he’d have to wait for the next walk-on tryouts — in January.
He spent that fall as a regular student and since he had no tickets to the games — and no connections — he watched the Bucks home games on television.
Then a few weeks after surviving the January tryouts, he suffered a Compartment Syndrome injury on his foot — a medical problem from excessive muscle use that cut off the blood supply and required emergency surgery.
At the time, his dad was in the middle of a two-year stint at the U.S. embassy in Romania. “He told me he was going to the doctor to have his foot checked, but he didn’t say anything about surgery and didn’t call me until it was over,” Joyce said. “He told me he knew I was home alone and he didn’t want me to worry.”
That incident tells you plenty about Ingham, who doesn’t seek the limelight, doesn’t like talking about himself and basically just goes about his job without high drama.
After missing spring drills to heal and surviving another tryout, he finally made the team in 2007 as a non-scholarship walk-on.
That season — as a scout team player — he dressed for home games though he never got on the field and didn’t make the travelling squad.
Undaunted — and still paying his own way to school — he returned last season and finally got into four games. After another injury knocked him out of drills this past spring, he’s become a back-up special teams player and third-string defensive end and has played in two games, Illinois and Toledo.
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FINALLY, A SCHOLARSHIP
In a vote by the entire Buckeye team earlier this season — Ingham — along with junior quarterback Joe Bauseman, junior snapper Jake McQuade and junior receiver Ryan Schuck — was named as one of the hardest working, but most under-appreciated (by the outside world) players on the team.
Unrecognized by many Bucks fans, Ingham — No. 57 — is a favorite among his teammates.
“I remember Coach Tressel telling me how the offensive line came to him two years ago and lobbied for Tom to be named the scout player of the week because of how hard he went against them in practice every day,” Ullery said. “(Tressel) said that had never happened before….And I think he’s won the award three times now.”
Ingham’s efforts were acknowledged early this season when he was told he’d finally won a scholarship for the winter and spring quarters.
“It felt good when they announced it, but for me it really wasn’t about the financial help finally coming,” he said quietly. “It was about the respect you’ve earned.”
Then again, those who truly know Tom Ingham, know he didn’t need a scholarship for that.
TweetMichael Vick reality show a doggone bad idea
The Animal Planet has the show starring Victoria Stillwell called “It’s Me or the Dog.”
Now BET is about to launch a reality show starring Michael Vick.
While it could be tagged “It’s Me — The Dog’s Dead,” folks at the cable network have tentatively named the show “The Michael Vick Project.”
The LA Times reports that the eight-part docu-series will focus on the life and times of the newly-reinstated Philadelphia Eagles quarterback, who spent 21 months in prison for his role bankrolling and supporting a dog fighting operation on his Virginia property that lasted some six years and tortured, maimed and killed numerous dogs.
Vick told the Times he wants to be seen as a human being:
“I just want people to really get to know me as an individual. What I want to do is change the perception of me. I am a human being. I’ve made some mistakes in the past, and I wish it had never happened. But it’s not about how you fall, but about how you pick yourself up.”
Maybe something good could come out of this, but I doubt it. I think it’s a bad idea.
While the Humane Society has recruited him to help in their campaign to end inner-city abuse of dogs, I think this is nothing but a six-figure money grab and a public relations snow job by a guy who, to me, often seems disingenuous when he talks about his dog involvement.
In a rambling speech soon after his reinstatement, Vick continually described his fascination with fighting dogs to the death— and torturing and killing others who under-performed — as ‘pointless.”
Pointless?
There was a point to it. A bad point. How about focusing on what you did to the dogs, not just dismissing your own vile actions as “pointless.”
I think it’s okay that he’s back in football, but I believe he should be working at reestablishing himself as a pro player and talking to churches, schools and kids’ groups about right choices, not giving us an eight-part series that celebrates him as a misunderstood person.
TweetOhio’s sold on Brett Favre
His jersey already sells better than any other NFL player in the state of Ohio, so how do you think sales will be today?
Except for the Cheesehead Nation, Brett Favre’s popularity went up another notch or two after he led the Minnesota Vikings to 30-23 victory over the team with whom he was so long synonymous — the Green Bay Packers — in a Monday Night Football game in Minneapolis.
In so doing, he became the first quarterback ever to beat all 32 NFL teams.
Favre completed 24 of 31 passes for 271 yards and three touchdowns against the team he played for for 16 seasons and led to two Super Bowls, winning SB XXXI.
This isn’t the first time the grizzled quarterback — just a few days shy of 40 — has caught everyone’s attention while on the Monday Night stage.
For all his heroics against the Packers, it didn’t match that night six years ago when — immediately after the death of his father — he threw for 399 yards and four touchdown’s to beat Oakland before going home to bury his dad.
It’s performances like that one — and the one Monday night — that have made Favre so popular.
According to data from Reebok — published recently by the Wall Street Journal — Favre had the best selling jersey of any player in the NFL from April of 2009 until the preseason ended just one month ago.
Favre’s jersey was the single best seller in 19 states — including Ohio, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Kentucky, Florida, Minnesota, Wisconsin and his native Mississippi.
TweetCOLUMN: UC Bearcats best college team in Ohio
OXFORD — The Cincinnati Bearcats had just beaten Miami for the fourth straight year and as UC players Mardy Gilyard, Alex Daniels and Marcus Barnett carried the Victory Bell along the sideline to the dressing room, you sensed you were watching the delivery of a totem whose most glorious time was in the past.
After UC’s 37-13 victory Saturday, Oct. 3, at Yager Stadium, some Bearcats players already had departed the field before their teammates arrived with the spoils.
The bell once was the biggest bauble in Cincinnati’s football season — since 1888, the two schools have the oldest nonconference rivalry in the U.S. — but UC now has bigger fish to fry. It played in a BCS bowl game last season and is 5-0 and ranked No. 10 in the nation.
The Bearcats are the biggest surprise in college football, have the hottest coach in Division I and, I think, they probably have the best team in the state.
Ohio State is ranked No. 9 and has a better defense, but I’d give Bearcat quarterback Tony Pike — who’s beginning to draw some Heisman consideration — and his offensive mates the nod over their OSU counterparts.
Both teams have a good head coach, but when it comes to moxie, imagination and making something out of nothing, UC’s Brian Kelly is unrivaled.
Nippert Stadium barely seats 35,000 and the Bearcats have no practice field, yet in the 2? seasons Kelly’s been at UC, his teams are 26-6.
UC lost 10 defensive starters from last year, but rather than be plagued by inexperience, Kelly moved several seasoned offensive players to defense, including former Notre Dame quarterback Demetrius Jones, now a starting linebacker.
Although Miami — 0-5 this season and riding a 10-game losing streak — isn’t the best barometer, UC’s defense held the RedHawks to just 30 rushing yards and sacked talented redshirt freshman quarterback Zac Dysert 10 times.
Kelly’s most imaginative move Saturday — facilitated by an injury — was making Barnett, a stalwart at cornerback last weekend, the starting wide receiver. The junior ended with six catches for 57 yards.
Keeping Kelly will be a problem for UC. There’s a provision in his contract that makes opting out early a lot easier if facility upgrades are not made quickly.
That could mean he might not be there when UC and OSU meet in three years. The game was supposed to be at Paul Brown Stadium — where the Bucks nearly lost to UC in 2002 — but last year Ohio State gave UC $1 million to move that 2012 game to OSU.
OSU will do what it has to do to try to ensure its dominance in the state. Miami once used to muscle Cincinnati as well — in fact, the RedHawks still hold the advantage in the series at 58-48-7 — but that’s not the case these days.
And that may better explain that message Barnett wrote on the black patches beneath his eyes: “Ding … Ding.”
Some may say that’s a tribute to the Victory Bell, but it well could be the sound of the UC train leaving the station on this quaint rivalry.
TweetNicole Baptiste: Green Leprechauns, Hoop Dreams and Motherhood
BELLBROOK — As a 6-foot-1 basketball player — at Beavercreek High School, Cleveland State and Urbana University — Nicole Baptiste could always block a shot.
Until a certain offering came her way at a Cincinnati restaurant.
“This guy walks up and says, ‘I’m gonna marry you one day,’” she said. “I laughed, but I could feel my face turning red. I didn’t know what to say.”
Turns out she knew just what to say — she eventually said “yes.”
She and P.K. Sam — then a Cincinnati Bengal, before that a New England Patriot with a Super Bowl ring, now a Toronto Argonauts receiver — married two years after they met and now have Trey, a 9-month-old son, to go with Nicole’s 7-year-old daughter, Brooklynn, whose father is former UD basketball star Brooks Hall.
Now 28 and working at Lexis Nexis, Nicole still holds her own on the court: “Every summer P.K. and I play H-O-R-S-E and I think he’s only beaten me once. Even when I was pregnant. … I beat him.”
In her words:
“P.K. calls every morning to tell Brooklynn to have a good day in school. Every night he calls her before bed. He even flew in just to see her play soccer. He’s taught her to tie her shoes and ride a bike without training wheels. He’s a great dad to her.
“I help coach my daughter’s (Bellbrook) soccer team. With little girls, you might have some out there picking flowers, some complaining they want to take their undershirts off because they’re hot and others just singing and dancing and doing cartwheels.
“We let the girls pick their own name. They decided on Green Leprechauns because their jerseys are green. We were like, ‘Are you kidding me?’ I wanted Gators so they could do that Gator Chomp, but the girls thought that was lame.
“I coached at Urbana two seasons (and one with the IBL’s Dayton Jets). … I was hoping to work with the UD women’s team and I talked with Jim Jabir — he’s an awesome guy — but the NCAA has restrictions on volunteers, so I’ll just watch them some and then spend more time with my kids — which I love doing.
“Brooklynn and I played this game called Jenga the other day. Each time you remove a block you have to answer a question. One of hers was ‘Who’s your favorite athlete?’ I thought she’d name someone from TV, but she said me. I was like ‘awww.’ It was the cutest thing.
“Trey’s just interested in playing with his toes.
“P.K. and I thought of starting a reality show that would show the other side of pro athletes — not the guys with big contracts and Bentleys and three homes. … People similar to us who have to struggle to make it just like everybody else.
“At first P.K. wanted nothing to do with Ohio. He’s from Georgia and thinks they have the best football, everything. But two weeks ago, I took him to see Beavercreek play Fairborn and he actually was pretty impressed. … I think Ohio is growing on him.”
TweetRio deserves Games; Obama doesn’t deserve the rips
If you look at the bigger world picture, Rio de Janeiro is the right choice for the 2016 Olympic Games.
In the past, those five interlocking Olympic rings served more like coils of barbed wire fencing that kept both South America and Africa from hosting the world’s premier sporting event.
Granted most of the nations on those two continents still aren’t capable of hosting the Games, but a place like Brazil — whose rising economy and political clout have made it a world player — certainly is.
Prior to the IOC vote to award the games — to either Rio, Chicago, Madrid or Tokyo — one of the most persuasive arguments came from Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who simply held up a world map peppered with markers designating all the previous Olympic host cities.
The biggest clusters were in Europe and North America.
South America was bare.
This was a chance to truly make the games world wide and open them to an entire — and deserving — continent.
Prior to Friday’s vote, many thought Chicago was the slight front-runner, but instead the “Second City” came in fourth. It was bumped in the first round of voting. Tokyo went in round two and then Rio easily KOd Madrid.
Chicago had several factors going against it.
— There’s still a true dislike of America in many pockets of the world and I think that played into some votes.
— The United States Olympic Committee alienated much of the IOC earlier this year when it announced plans to launch its own cable network even though the IOC hadn’t embraced it. Weeks later — realizing the universal ill will it had created — the USOC shelved the plan, but by then the damage was done
— There are some in the IOC still smarting from the way they were exposed for the kick backs they required from Salt Lake officials to give the 2002 Winter Games to Utah. They were blasted in the U.S. Senate and in the media.
As for those yakking heads ripping President Barack Obama for going to Denmark to lobby for the U.S. and Chicago — his adopted home town — how about torching that talk with the Olympic flame. They batter him no matter what he does.
Although the bid had the odds stacked against it, Obama’s trip was worth the try.
The heads of state of the other three nations in the bidding for the game were there and in the past that sometimes has worked. Britain’s prime minister Tony Blair was in Singapore when London got the nod for the 2012 games.
And in 2007 when the 2014 Winter Olympics were going to be awarded, then Russian president Vladimir Putin was in Paris to provide political muscle that helped get his nation the Games.
Reports from Denmark had some IOC members saying the denial of Chicago was not a rejection of Obama. Richard Pound, one of the IOC heavyweights from Canada, told the New York Times that other cities did all they could to knock Chicago out early.
“I’m sure that a lot of the political maneuvering was based on the fact that Obama was probably hoping to come, and was coming ,so ‘We’ve got to keep Chicago out of play or we’re all dead.
“I think (Obama) made a lot of friends here, gained a lot of respect.”
TweetCOLUMN: African Gold - The Legend of Ramadhan Ndayisaba
John Derr has been around a long time — he’s coached prep football for a quarter century at eight different schools across the Miami Valley and in Florida — and yet he’s never experienced anything like this.
“You ever see that movie, ‘The Natural’?” asked the Belmont coach as he sat in the school’s cramped football office. “You know, where somebody just walks in off the street? Well, that’s kind of what Rahm’s story is. Like something straight out of the movies.”
Just as The Natural’s Roy Hobbs shattered the scoreboard lights with a mammoth home run, Ramadhan Ndayisaba showed he has a knack for the spectacular, as well.
“I took a football to track practice because they said this kid could kick,” said Jackie Fails, Belmont’s track coach and an assistant football coach. “I’d seen him just dance with a soccer ball, but I didn’t know about kicking. I tossed him the ball and said, ‘Let me see you kick, Man.’”
The recollection made Fails grin: “BOOM, he kicked it over that (three-story) school building over there. So I go, ‘Can you do that again?’ He just nodded and BOOM, this time he kicked the ball real high and it landed on the school roof.
“I was shocked and I remember saying, “Man, you done lost the ball.’ Right then I knew we’d found ourselves a kicker.”
Derr remembers Fails hustling into the locker room, saying: “Coach, you got to come look at the African kid. He can kick the crap out of the ball.’
“When I got there, I saw he not only could kick, but he could do it with either leg. He’s ambidextrous. And he can kick on the run. He’s an athlete. Instantly he made out kicking game 10 times more versatile than it ever was.”
In the past three years, Belmont has gone 2-8, 2-8 and then last year, with Derr sidelined first by hip replacement surgery, then a broken leg, the under-manned Bison went 0-9
“Don’t you think I deserve a little luck,” Derr chuckled. “I’ve never had anything like this happen to me, but God can’t constantly keep kicking me in the head . I think he finally said, ‘Here John, you deserve a break.’”
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COMING TO AMERICA
It’s almost as if Ramadhan finally got the same message, as well.
In 1993 — the year after he was born in Burundi — his nation erupted in civil war after Melchior Ndadaye, the leader of the Hutu party, won the country’s first-ever democratic election and promptly was assassinated by Tutsi soldiers.
Parliament elected another Hutu to the presidency and immediately he and the Rwanda president were killed when their plane was shot down.
The ethnic violence that lasted for more than a decade cost at least 300,000 lives in Burundi and displaced two million people.
Ramadhan’s family fled briefly to Congo and then Tanzania, where he lived in a refugee camp most of the first 15 of his 17 years. He said his grandparents stayed behind in Burundi and “were killed by the soldiers.”
Life in the camp, he said was “real bad. It was crowded. There was fighting,. People worried about the war (back home.)”
When he, his parents, two older brothers and younger sister — with the help of an aid group — finally were brought to the United States, he said they came to Dayton.
None of the family spoke English — though Ramadhan spoke six other languages — and they knew little about everyday life in the United States.
“I knew about 50 Cent, Eminem, Beyonce …and Arnold,” he said
Arnold?
He nodded: “In California, the governor. He’s got a lot of movies.”
The family flew into Dayton on a wintery January day and Ramadhan remembers being instantly perplexed:
“It was cold and the ground was all white. It looked like sugar. I said, ‘What’s going on here? Where is this from?’ And they said, ‘The sky.’ It was snow time.”
Once he got in front of a TV, he said he was puzzled again when he saw an NFL play-off game:
“I said, ‘What kind of game is this?’ I had never seen it before. There’s nothing like it in Africa. They told me it is called football. and I asked if I could try playing this football.”
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BECOMING A LEGEND
With the help of Fails — who picked him up and brought him back to his North Main Street home each day — Ramadhan worked on his kicking over the summer.
At the same time, he learned English — through Belmont’s English as a Second Language classes and banter with his teammates — and thanks to both the lingo and his strong legs, he’s begun to carve out his niche in his new country.
“He was a little sketchy with rules at first,” smiled teammate Nathan Henderson, who likely was referring to the Greenon game when Ramadhan decided to run the ball out of the end zone rather than punt. He was promptly tackled on the two yard line and Greenon quickly scored.
But as he’s grasped some of the complexities of the game — while kicking a field goal and five extra points for his under-manned 1-4 team — he’s also become a bit of a legend.
“We have him listed as a running back and a kicker, but he’s not going to run much,” said assistant coach Kipp Grubaugh. “We don’t want to get him hurt at running back. Not with that foot of his. It’s the real deal. It’s real gold. African gold.”
Although the Bison lost 35-0 to Cincinnati Schroeder last week, Ramadhan was honored.
“Being able to run and kick rugby style — one he kicked with the left leg, another with the right — he personally saved about three of those kicks from getting blocked,” Derr said. ” We made him one of our (two) players of the week”
Ramadhan was proud enough of that that he convinced the coaches to let him bring the game film home so he could show it to his mom and dad, who, he said, work all day sewing clothing items.
Tonight, October 2, they’ll be at Welcome Stadium when Belmont plays Ponitz Tech.
“It’s the first game they’ve ever seen,” Ramadhan said with a smile. “I hope they know what they’re seeing.”
They will. They know they’re seeing a kid who deserved a break and when he got it, he turned it into gold.
African gold.
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