Sports Then and Now

In the era of the Bowl Championship Series, there have several occasions where an unranked team has pulled off an upset of a team that has been in the top-10 of the BCS standings or a serious contender to get the national championship game.

Such was the case on October 20, 2001 when an unranked Stanford Cardinal traveled to Eugene, Oregon and upset the heavily-favored Oregon Ducks.

Entering the 2001 season, expectations were high for Oregon as they were coming off a 10-win season and a Holiday Bowl win from the previous season and earned a top-ten ranking in both the AP and Coaches’ preseason polls.

The Ducks were led by head coach Mike Bellotti, who in his seventh season as the Oregon head coach and had complied a record of 49-22 in his first six seasons, and featured a Heisman Trophy candidate in quarterback Joey Harrington.

Oregon entered the game with Stanford having won their opening six games of the season and had moved up to #5 in both polls, still very much alive in the race for the national championship.

While Oregon had aspirations for a national championship, Stanford was just hoping to have a winning season and get to a bowl game.

Stanford head coach Tyrone Willingham was also in his seventh season as a head coach in the Pac-10 and while he had taken Stanford to the Rose Bowl in 1999, his time in Palo Alto had been average as his record during that span was 35-33-1, including a 5-6 season in 2000. Read the rest of this entry →

LSU topped Alabama in week 10, as No. 1 faced No. 2

Who knew such an exciting football game could be so boring? When Alabama hosted LSU last Saturday, not one touchdown was scored.  You call that a football game?

It was like watching soccer for the Big Zzzzzz…oops, dozed off again.  Just remembering how Zultan tried to stay awake until the last of five “field goals” spiraled through the uprights —whew, a real defensive struggle.

If only Alabama had won the coin toss—now that would have been exciting!

Still Zultan missed the final score and went down to defeat, along with many of you.  And now I hear pundits demanding to see the game again at the end of the season—as in Alabama vs. LSU, Part 2, the BCS Championship Game…

Pah-leeze!  Once is quite enough, thank you very much.

The big shocker of the day was one nobody saw coming—the Northwestern Wildcats defeating the Nebraska Cornhuskers in Lincoln. Who knew?  Certainly no one on this planet.

The only Big Red stampede came at the end of the game when Cornhusker fans stormed the exits. They were not humming “Whatever Bo-Pa Wants,” either as they fumed out with little puffs of smoke coming out of their ears.

When the dust settled over Lincoln Land, there were nine who guessed better than Zultan in week ten. Zultan posted an 8-2 record, missing on LSU and Northwestern. This week, however, looks like a supreme test despite the fact that Zultan has received his new crystal ball via the OverLook Brothers.

Click here to make your picks and see if this is finally the week you reign supreme over the the all-seeing seer by outguessing him on the selected games listed below.  Not much time is left in the regular 2011 season, so join in the fun today.  Zultan will feature you in his next column if you surpass him in picks.

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Pat Tillman would have turned 35 on November 6th.

As we prepare for Veterans Day later this week, we remember an American hero and former NFL star who would have turned 35-years-old today, Pat Tillman.

Too often in the world of sports we want to label someone as a hero or glowingly talk about the personal sacrifices they have made for their team or sport.

There are not enough glowing words to accurately describe the personal and professional sacrifice that Pat Tillman made for his country and for all of us who enjoy the wonderful freedoms associated with living in this great land.

Though only 5-foot-11 and slightly over 200 pounds, Tillman earned a college football scholarship to play at Arizona State University. As a junior, he was part of a Sun Devils squad that went undefeated in the regular season before losing 20-17 to Ohio State in the Rose Bowl. The next season, Tillman was the Pac-10 Defensive Player of the Year as Arizona State went 9-3 and won the Sun Bowl.

Despite his college credentials, Tillman wasn’t chosen in the 1998 NFL draft until the final round (seventh round) when the Arizona Cardinals made him the 226th pick in the draft.

After playing linebacker in college, Tillman was moved to defensive back in the NFL and started 10 games as a rookie while helping the Cardinals reach the second round of the NFC Playoffs.

Over the next three seasons, Tillman established himself as a defensive standout for the Cardinals, including ranking second on the team in tackles with 145 during the 2000 season. Read the rest of this entry →

The decade of the 1970s were not kind to the Buffalo Bills and the New York Jets as the two teams combined for just one playoff appearance between them.

When the 1980s came around, things began to look up for Buffalo as they went 11-5 and won the AFC East division title during the 1980 season.

Though they lost to the San Diego Chargers in the AFC Divisional Playoffs, the Buffalo Bills headed into the 1981 season with renewed confidence under head coach Chuck Knox.

Led by veteran quarterback Joe Ferguson and 1,000 yard rusher Joe Cribbs, the Bills returned to the playoffs with a 10-6 record.

While the Bills were turning the page on a lost decade, the Jets seemed to continue their woes from the 70s as they entered the 1980s.

The Jets went 4-12 in the 1980 season, which included a loss to the 1-15 Saints, and started the 1981 season by dropping their first three games.

New York fans and media members were calling for head coach Walt Michaels, who had been the head coach since 1977, to be replaced.

But under Michaels’ leadership, the Jets won 10 of their last 13 games to finish with a 10-5-1 record and clinch the team’s first playoff berth since 1969.

The Jets’ turnaround was keyed by the defensive line of Mark Gastineau, Joe Klecko, Marty Lyons, and Abdul Salaam, which unofficially accounted for 66 sacks during the 1981 season and came to be known as the “New York Sack Exchange”.

On a cold, rainy afternoon, New York fans traveled to Shea Stadium to see their beloved Jets host their first playoff game in 12 years as the Jets faced off with the Buffalo Bills in the 1981 AFC Wild Card Game.

The Jets won the coin toss and elected to receive the opening kickoff, with Bruce Harper taking the kick and returning it to the New York 25, where he was met by Bills linebacker Ervin Palmer

Palmer stripped the ball from Harper and was caught on a bounce by Palmer’s teammate, Charles Romes who ran in untouched for a 26-yard touchdown in the second quickest score in NFL playoff history to give Buffalo a 7-0 lead just 16 seconds into the game.

The Jets seemed to shake off the shocking fumble on the opening kick on their second offensive series as they drove from their own 30-yard-line to the Buffalo 30, where they had a 1st-and-10.

That is when quarterback Richard Todd dropped back and fired a pass for Wesley Walker, who was wide open at the goal line, only to have Walker drop the pass and sure touchdown. Read the rest of this entry →

When Mom and her Harley-biker buddies returned from their road trip to Minneapolis last Saturday, she drop kicked Zultan’s crystal ball into the Iowa River, cursing his “so-called psychic abilities.”

Mom takes these Hawkeye defeats very hard. She has refused to fix lunch for the all-seeing one for the two past days.

The truth is that an enormous cosmic upheaval wreaked havoc in the Big Ten where it became impossible to win on the road unless you wore the imprint of a wildcat on your helmet.

Most of Zultan’s Big Ten predictions went haywire caused by churning cosmic forces ruling gridirons last Saturday.

That is my story. I am sticking to it. You cannot prove otherwise.

In the meantime hordes of you (24) took this opportunity to pile on the Zultan while he was down. It was that Nebraska game that did Zultan in. Zultan has decided that the Cornhuskers will be his biggest trial in 2011 just like Auburn was in 2010.

Zultan has ordered a new crystal ball from Forecasters Anonymous, Inc. but it will not arrive in time for him to make this week’s prognostications. It is conceivable, therefore, that you may have your best opportunity to outguess the all-seeing seer. He is just like you this week—a mere mortal with limited mental capacity.

So click here to make your picks and we will see mano a mano who is the best at predicting winners in upcoming week No. 10 in college football.

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This Saturday, #1 LSU travels to Tuscaloosa to face off with #2 Alabama in the latest “Game of the Century”.

This showdown between the Tigers and the Crimson Tide is the latest chapter in a SEC rivalry where the intensity has risen since Nick Saban became the head coach at Alabama.

From 2000-2004, Saban was the head coach at LSU where he compiled a 48-16 record, won two SEC Championships, and the 2003 BCS National Championship in his five seasons at Baton Rouge.

Saban left LSU following the 2004 season to become the head coach of the NFL’s Miami Dolphins while Les Miles moved from Oklahoma State to become the LSU head coach.

During the next two years, Miles would lead LSU to back-to-back 11-win seasons while Saban would struggle in Miami as he compiled a 15-17 record during that same time.

Almost immediately after the 2006 NFL season ended, Saban left Miami to become the Tide’s head coach, which in the minds of LSU fans was seen as an act of betrayal since ‘Bama played in the same division as LSU, the SEC West.

So when ‘Bama hosted LSU on the first Saturday in November 2007, it was an emotionally-charged game for the Tigers as the fan base demanded a victory over Saban and the Tide.

Alabama entered the game as the #17 team with a 6-2 record, and were 4-1 in the SEC, tying them with #3 LSU who were 7-1 but also had a 4-1 SEC record. Read the rest of this entry →