By C. Eric Lincoln
My first impression of Red Auerbach will be my lasting impression of Red Auerbach. Red Auerbach was a New York guy who grew up on tough New York streets, a guy who might well have been a character created by Damon Runyon. Red would have been a Runyon race track guy with a racing form rolled up in his pocket and a dead cigar in hand, always looking for angles — always looking for a winning edge. And for the better part of his 89 years Red Auerbach always found a winning edge.
We’re about a dozen games in the NHL season and it’s time for the first Power Rankings. The team with the ugliest uniforms in the east is getting the most attention, but out west, Anaheim, Dallas and Minnesota have something to say about who is the best team in the NHL. Of course, there’s no question who the worst team in the NHL is — they’ve already fired their coach and GM. Check back every Monday for updated NHL Power Rankings.
Game of the Week – Indianapolis Colts at Denver Broncos – Denver is rolling on defense allowing just over a touchdown per game (7.3ppg) but will face a strong threat in Peyton Manning and the Colts. Indy has the league’s second ranked passing attack (261.8ypg) and is fourth in the league in scoring (28.5ppg).
I’ll go with the Colts in a game that should make for some great television.
Game Not Worth Watching – Arizona Cardinals at Green Bay Packers – The Cards are 0-3 on the road and the Pack are 0-3 at home. Something’s got to give! Too bad that only the states of Arizona and Wisconsin will be in front of their televisions to witness it.
None the less, I’ll take Favre and the Pack to win their second in a row after beating my Dolphins last weekend.
More Storylines to Watch For
Before the 2006-07 season began, I wrote two articles giving the casual football fan reasons to watch the NFL this year. And since the first two had so much success, I thought I would keep the ball rolling and come out with 32 more reasons to watch the NFL this season.
Week 7 might have been this year’s craziest for the NFL. A 62 yard field goal on the final play of the game? A 31-13 home loss for a team that went 10-0 on their turf in 2005? A win for the Raiders? What’s going on with the NFL? There are some questions that can be answered though. Here they are:
The New York Jets are surpassing everyone’s expectations. In many ways they are probably surpassing their own. They have had more than a forgiving schedule and at 4-3 after seven games it only gets better. Right now not only is this season looking promising but their future is as well.
After the Jets basically traded Edwards to Kansas City, Jets fans felt that they were going to be the bottom feeders in the NFL. But Eric Mangini is not willing to accept being a bottom feeder
Talk about a tough week. In week 7, all of us batted sub-.500. But we weren’t alone. ESPN experts got 41% right and around the web, the average number of picks correct straight up was 5 with the high being 8 picks correct. If you want to see how we stack up against all the experts, check out a very nifty expert picks compilation spreadsheet by our buddy Tokar. Last week’s Pickem winner was Jackie Blue and his picks are below.
The featured games this week are Atlanta @ Cincinnati, Indianapolis @ Denver, Dallas @ Carolina, and New England @ Minnesota. You can download the podcast directly (running time 37 mins) or subscribe to the feed.
If you use iTunes, just click here and then click subscribe and iTunes will take care of the rest.
**Finally, don’t forget to check out the mid-season survival pool that starts this week.
By C. Eric Lincoln
Two months ago I sat down to write much of the following column about Bill Buckner after a conversation with Tim Teufel, an old Met and an old friend. We had talked about anything and everything, and then our chat turned to Game Six— that Game Six— 20 years ago on October 25, Mets versus Red Sox. I asked Tim Teufel about Bill Buckner and Tim said he felt “terrible” for the guy “since it wasn’t his fault anyway.”
Bill Buckner is a good and decent man who was caught standing in the way of history which threw him under its oncoming, intractable path. History has somehow blamed Bill Buckner for the Red Sox loss of that World Series, and for one of the biggest blunders in Series history. So 20 years later, crawl back in time with me once more, and examine the images of that moment. The truth is out there. There may be goats and villains. But Bill Buckner isn’t one of them.
The NFL, and football in general, still gets away with anything in the public’s forgiving eyes; but other sports, namely baseball, are held to far more scrupulous standards, especially by the media.
Was he burnt out or was he forced out? That is still the question just two days after Flyers general manager Bobby Clarke abruptly resigned after the team’s worst start in over fifteen years. Clarke has seen everything there is to see with the Flyers, the cup years when he was a player, the Lindros mess, and now this disaster.