Sports fodder for a Friday morning . . .
Jim Zorn has more job security than Mike Sanford right now. Jeff Fisher could go out on Halloween dressed as Ben Roethlisberger and still be under less heat than Sanford is feeling. Sanford, the UNLV Rebels' head coach (for now), simply has to win at New Mexico on Saturday. Why? Sanford is 13-42 as the Rebels head coach. He has never -- I repeat, NEVER -- won a Mountain West Conference road game (0-17). On second thought, there is one coach in the country who might be sitting on a hotter seat. That's New Mexico's Mike Locksley who is suspended for Saturday's game for reasons too numerous to mention here. If Sanford is ever going to win a MWC road game, this is it. If he loses to an 0-6 team that doesn't even have a head coach, well, the Rebels should replace him with Vegas mayor Oscar Goodman on the flight home.
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Fisher, the coach of the 0-6 Tennessee Titans, was criticized this week for wearing a Peyton Manning Indianapolis Colts' jersey at a fundraiser. Fisher apologized but said he'd do it again. He also said anybody who had a problem with his attempt at humor should "rethink things." Fisher doesn't get it. Wearing the jersey wasn't the entire problem. Fisher, who needs a better joke writer, said he wore the jersey because he wanted to feel like a winner. That's the same as telling his players that they are losers. This is a coach that just got beat 59-0. His entire team quit on him. How hard do you think they'll play for him now? Titans fans should wear a Bill Belichick hoody to the next home game.
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Ohio State quarterback Terrelle Pryor needs to tell his high school coach to shut up. Pryor's high school coach criticized Ohio State coach Jim Tressel for not using the raw quarterback wisely. First of all, what does a high school coach know about winning big-time college football games? And, second, what was the most complicated play Pryor ran in high school? Run to the left? Or was it run to the right? High school coaches who want their players recruited by big-time college football programs need to stop criticizing those big-time college football programs.
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It's nice that Luke Babbitt was named the Pre-season Western Athletic Conference Player of the Year in men's basketball by both the league's coaches and media. And it's nice that the WAC coaches and media picked the Pack to finish second this year. Pre-season college media and coaches polls, you must know, fall somewhere between college football bowl games and Ralph Nader campaign speeches on the Things You Need To Take Seriously scale. Just ask the Pack's Armon Johnson how important it is to be the Pre-Season Player of the Year. And do you think the Idaho Vandals football team -- the 6-1 and 3-0 in the WAC Idaho Vandals football team, by the way -- care that they were picked to finish last in the WAC this year by the coaches and eighth by the media?
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Is anybody really surprised by all of the ridiculous calls by the umpires in this year's baseball playoffs? It happens every year folks. That's just baseball. I'm sure that there were plenty of blown calls in the first World Series in 1903 between the Boston Americans and the Pittsburgh Pirates. It's just that they didn't have 75 different camera angles back then to make it a national issue. All baseball has to do is put a guy up in the press box who watches all of the instant replays. When he sees something blatantly wrong all he has to do is call down to the field and correct it. It would take about 30 seconds. End of problem.
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Get ready for a bunch of four-hour World Series games between the Philadelphia Phillies and New York Yankees. Couple all of that offense with all of those endless commercials and, well, you're going to get six or seven epics that will make all three Lord of the Rings movies look like a Saturday Night Live skit. Can you imagine Ryan Howard, Chase Utley, Jason Werth, Jimmy Rollins, Mark Teixeira, Hideki Matsui, Alex Rodriguez, Derek Jeter, Shane Victorino, Robinson Cano, Johnny Damon and Raul Ibanez in those homer-happy ballparks? The Bad News Bears and San Francisco Giants would score a ton of runs in those hitters' paradises.
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The San Francisco 49ers are sending the wrong message by starting Michael Crabtree this week. What has Crabtree done to earn a starting job already? He missed all of training camp and most of the first half of the season. 49ers' coach Mike Singletary is supposed to be about character, work ethic, team unity and responsibility. Crabtree has done absolutely no work and has only thought of himself. And now he gets to start?
