Oregon running back LeGarrette Blount straight lost his mind Thursday night, sucker punching a Boise State player and requiring physical restraint to leave the stadium after the Ducks’ embarrassing 19-8 loss. Boise State’s Byron Hout appeared to tap Blount on the shoulder during postgame interactions, before turning away, only to take a Blount sucker punch to his jaw that floored him. Broncos coach Chris Petersen rushed in to separate him from further incident.
Blount then hopped away, only to get into another altercation with several Boise State fans seated near the field. At that point several people had to restrain him and forcibly drag him down the tunnel into an unknown but probably dark future. Its not unreasonable to speculate that his college career is over. Blount was particularly atrocious in Thursday’s game, netting negative five yards on eight carries including being on the wrong end of a safety.
Video after the jump.
Hout is not immune from criticism in his role in the affair, but Blount crossed a line in punching a player who had turned away from him. His inexplicable escalation after arguing with some Boise State fans while leaving the stadium only further condemns him to a severe fate.
Boise State coach Chris Petersen, who was witness to the sucker punch, was more diplomatic, telling ESPN’s Heather Cox that emotions had gotten the better of some players while turning attention to his team.
Its too bad, because, despite his bad game, Blount is a marvelous talent who would have done great things for Oregon this year. At this point he’s just as likely to face a lengthy suspension or outright booting from the Oregon football program as he is to play again this year.
Of no small irony — the American Football Coaches’ Association had recommended full-team pregame handshakes to build sportsmanship in the game during opening weekend.
It’s getting awfully close to the start of the season and there is apparently still not a whole lot going on in talks between the tenth overall pick in this year’s draft, Michael Crabtree(notes), and the San Francisco 49ers.
Any way you slice it, Crabtree is still not signed. And his agent is blaming Crabtree for the holdout, according to ProFootballTalk, since the agent doesn’t want his chances hurt to sign future players.
Even if Crabtree gets signed right now, he’s not likely to be as good a player for San Francisco this season as he would have been if he had just signed his contract straightway. Of course, there is still a chance that a deal just won’t happend and he’ll end up in the 2010 draft pool.
Two things, I believe, helped make the decision easy for Rex Ryan. One, Kellen Clemens, entering his fourth year in the league, never really distinguished himself, which, as a player entering his fourth year in the league, he totally should have.
Also, the NFL is a league full of great big copycatters, and the success of Matt Ryan(notes) and Joe Flacco(notes) as rookies last year probably helped pave the way for future rookies to start. Flacco and Ryan both went 11-5 and each made the playoffs.
It might be worth noting, though, that neither Flacco or Ryan faced expectations like this. Ryan’s Falcons were expected to be one of the worst teams in football, before Mike Smith(notes) and Ryan showed up and shocked the nation. Flacco wasn’t expected to be a stud, either. He wasn’t a top 10 pick, he came out of a small school, and only had to replace the immortal Kyle Boller(notes). The Ravens went into that season thinking, “We’re not going to get much from our quarterback anyway, so it might as well be a young guy.”
So while Ryan and Flacco might have helped clear the path for Sanchez, they also helped toss him in the pressure cooker. The Jets expect to make the playoffs, and given the depth in the AFC, particularly in the AFC East, 11-5 might be what it takes to get there. Is it unreasonable to expect Sanchez to go 11-5 as a rookie? Yes. It’s unreasonable to expect that of any daisy-fresh rookie, despite the success of Flacco and Ryan.
But that’s where the Jets are. Rex Ryan has talked big since taking the job, saying at his introductory press conference, “We’re going to the White House.” He’s set the bar high, and he’s got the people of New York expecting big things. That’s his style, and that’s fine. There’s nothing wrong with being that cocky, if you think it’s best for your football team.
A side effect, though, is that he’s taken his rookie quarterback and amped up the spotlight and pressure on him. For a young guy already dealing with the intense media scrutiny of New York, that’s a lot to put on his shoulders.
Blogger Derek Felska’s annual ranking of the NHL’s 30 fan bases rates somewhere between reasonably fair to utter garbage. But he’s just so darn earnest about the whole experiment, applying his formula (arena capacity plus online presence plus editorial bias) to achieve some sort of empirical measure of fan activity and passion.
We bashed the list last season for its myopic approach, elementary understanding of a given market’s challenges and nebulous use of “online presence,” which could very well take Geocities sites that haven’t been updated since Pavel Bure retired into account; yet the overall rankings have their moments of evenhandedness.
But you don’t really care about the top of the list; you care about the basement, right? So which teams are bottom-feeding on the 2009 Best and Worst Fans of the NHL list? Our Denver-based readers may want to avoid the rest of this post …
According to The State of Hockey News, the worst fans in the NHL are:
No. 30 Atlanta Thrashers: “The Thrashers online presence is very small and that does little to help a team that many in Atlanta seem to struggle to remember they are even there. That sound you just heard was Ilya Kovalchuk(notes) screaming over the fact he has at least one more season with the team.”
No. 29 Tampa Bay Lightning: “It is strange to think how far this team has slid considering the fact that its only 4 seasons removed from winning a Stanley Cup proving definitively that simply being exciting is not enough to fill the rather large (by NHL standards) St. Pete Times Forum but winning is what gets butts in the seats.”
No. 28 Florida Panthers: “Perhaps its a symptom of not having made the playoffs in eight seasons but the Panthers are growing more and more irrelevant each year.”
No. 27 Phoenix Coyotes: “While there would definitely be people that would debate the announced attendance as you can see a lot of empty seats most games, the Phoenix area has been one of the hardest hit areas by the economic downturn.”
And No. 26, the Colorado Avalanche. Seeing as how this is patently absurd, we present the full justification:
Perhaps its fitting an Avalanche is a downward slide of snow and ice because it has been downward spiral for the team since 2007-08. Injuries submarined the team’s dim playoff hopes early in the season as Colorado plummeted towards the bottom of the standings. Up until the 2005-06 season the team was riding a 10-year sellout streak, but since the team first missed the playoffs in 2006-07 (since it arrived in Colorado) the sellouts have ended and attendance has been dwindling. The retirement of the franchise’s best skater of all time, Joe Sakic(notes), likely will not help get fans to show up either. A sagging economy has not helped either, but when the team stopped winning, Denver stopped caring as much. It will still be a while before Colorado can turn it around, but how much farther will this avalanche travel down the mountain before that begins, or could this team go the way of the Colorado Rockies (the hockey team not the MLB team)?
And the New York Islanders are No. 25. Yes, in this man’s world, the New York Islanders have a more dedicated and rabid fan base than the Colorado Avalanche.
(Naturally, no mention of the Avalanche’s online presence here, which may not be massive but damn sure has quality.)
Look, it’s all conjecture spiced up with an attempt at scholarship. Maybe you agree with it, maybe you disagree with it, maybe you just want to read a list that believes the Columbus Blue Jackets have a healthier fan base than the New Jersey Devils, Colorado Avalanche and Carolina Hurricanes.
Again, for the most part, the academic justification for these rankings makes Lepore’s fan base glossary look like a graduate-level dissertation by comparison. But the minute you want to toss this list into the Internet dumpster, you see the San Jose Sharks (14th) ranked ahead of the Boston Bruins (16th) and you think, “Huh, you know, he might be on to something …”
LONDON – David Murray is stepping down as Rangers chairman, the Scottish Premier League champions announced in a statement on Wednesday.
Murray, 57, who joined the club in 1988, will also resign as a board director and will be succeeded as chairman by 61-year-old Alastair Johnston, a director of the club since 2004.
“For the last 20 years I have been actively involved in the club on an almost daily basis and I think that now is the right time to take a step back,” said Murray.
“I have said many times that being the chairman of Rangers is not something anyone should do forever and I have personal and business interests outside the club I would like to pursue.”
Under Murray Rangers enjoyed a sustained period of success, including 14 league championships, and made their mark in Europe by reaching the 2008 UEFA Cup final, losing 2-0 to Russian side Zenit St Petersburg.
“As things stand, I remain the majority shareholder at the club and will always have the best interests of Rangers at heart but it is time to pass on the chairman’s baton,” said Murray.
“…it is particularly gratifying to step down when the club are reigning SPL champions, Scottish Cup holders and about to embark on another exciting journey in the Champions League.
Johnston, a lifelong Rangers fan, is a member of the board of directors at sports and entertainment management group IMG where he has worked for 37 years.
“David richly deserves his place in Rangers history as one of the club’s greatest chairmen and his passion has burned brightly for 20 years,” Johnston said in a statement.
And just like those salad days in April and May, Greinke made it look effortless, telling reporters after the game that he wasn’t even aiming for a strikeout total that would break Mark Gubicza’s team record of 14 punchouts in 1988. Greinke entered the game with a plan to throw strikes and allow Cleveland to put the ball into play.
“They were taking a lot early and letting me get the two strikes,” Greinke said. “With two strikes, I usually try to strike guys out.”
Luckily, the Royals offense also successfully tried to get some runs. Though Kansas City has scored two or fewer runs in eight of Greinke’s 25 starts this season, they were able to produce enough output to give their ace only his second victory since June 28.
And for that, I say break out the Boulevard. After all their recent bad headlines, I’m guessing that Greinke, the Royals and the fans needed this one in the worst way.
