GET READY FOR COLLEGE FOOTBALL July 2008 By John Landsberg Sure, this is only July. But in Kansas City it is already time to start getting ready for another exciting college football season. Forget the Chiefs. They are into their 20th year of Carl Peterson’s five-year plan and will be lucky to win six games this year. You know the team is desperate when they are not only running ads daily and doing direct mail pieces, but using Kevin Costner to trick us into believing this team is anything but awful is a stretch. The Royals? Fans are still bragging about winning the World Series in 1985 because the team has pretty much sucked since that time. To now say we should have jumped to the National League years ago is just silly. It’s simply 20-20 hindsight. We hoped that Manager Trey Hillman would bring some Japanese discipline to the team, but most of the time it looks like he is trying to herd cats. The team looks like it is already in the famous “Screw the team, what’s my average” player mode. The Brigade? Holy crap, when you finish with a 3-13 record and were still hoping to make the playoffs until the bitter end, something is pretty screwed up in the Arena Football League. The Wizards soccer team? Last place. No, the only real sports hope fans have in the future involves the Missouri and Kansas football teams. Both are coming off fantastic seasons and should be strong again this year. On the other end, KSU Coach Ron Prince has shown that you can take a winning program with a great tradition and pretty much run it into the ground. Once again, it proves my theory to never hire someone based on how well they say they will do on an interview. Talk is cheap. In my estimation K-State hit rock bottom when Prince paid a couple hundred grand (students will barely see the tuition increase) to get out of playing Fresno State because he was afraid they would kick his team’s butt again. Instead, Prince made the bold move to play Montana State. That took courage. Was the college of the Little Sisters of the Poor already booked?
*** Tiger Woods’ victory in the U.S. Open was truly a remarkable sports accomplishment. I cannot ever remember in my lifetime anything quite as dramatic as the way he played with pain and still won. However, some folks are now saying that Tiger might be the greatest athlete who ever lived. No way. He is a great golfer, maybe the greatest ever. However, the greatest athlete who ever lived was Jim Brown. Case closed.
*** Sorry, but I am sick and tired of race car driver Danica Patrick. If she were ugly no one would care about her. She always has one of the fastest cars supported by one of the top racing teams. Despite that she has one major victory, and that was because the leaders misjudged their pit stops. Nearly every story prior to the Indianapolis 500 was “Is this Danica’s year for victory?” It was almost like no other drivers were even involved in the race. Even when Scott Dixon won the race all the attention was on Patrick. Although she had no chance of winning, she “went after” Ryan Briscoe for accidentally knocking her out of the race in a pit stop mishap. Unfortunately, race officials stopped her before she attacked Briscoe. There should be a rule that says if she is going to attack other drivers then she assumes full responsibility for being pummeled by them. Fair is fair.
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