I believe it was the only time Brad Nessler was the lead television announcer on a national title game.
It was the last time Oklahoma claimed the title back after the 2000 season in a BCS title tilt vs Florida State.
As I write this, Oklahoma is playing in a semi-final/Orange Bowl game vs Clemson.
Brad Nessler is the lead announcer.
He is not very good but great compared to some of the others.
Already today Florida State lost as Houston completed a fine season with a (38-24) win vs the Noles (Florida State).
One wonders how much the Cincinnati Bengals will try in Sunday’s game at home vs the Baltimore Ravens.
Thanks in part, to the Ravens’ upset win vs the Pittsburgh Steelers lst week, the Bengals clinched the AFC North and likely will be the AFC “3” seed and host a wild card round game next week.
The Denver Broncos field goal win as three plus point favorites last Monday night, means “Cincy” can only be the AFC “2” seed and get the first round bye that goes with it, if Denver loses this Sunday at home vs the (4-11) San Diego Chargers.
The only meaning to a Cincinnati win is if they win and Denver loses, they will not need the Kansas Chiefs playing at home vs the Oakland Raiders to win.
It is complicated and will be explained in further detail before Sunday’s tilts, but for now Cincy as a 9 point favorite SEEMS too high a spread. The operative word is SEEMS!
I am not happy with the playoff system in place in college football.
On top of that, the monolith that is ESPN has deemed New Year’s Eve the day and night for the two semi-final games today but apparently for 7 of the 10 years ahead.
They think that they control us. I will venture to a concert with Jimmy Buffett and Huey Lewis and not watch. You can do the same.
In those two games, three predictions.
Oklahoma, 4th in the rankings but 4 point favorite, to win.
Say Oklahoma 29 top ranked and the lone unbeaten, Clemson 19
Alabama is second and 10 point favorites vs Michigan State.
50 years ago, in separate bowl games, Alabama won and climbed ahead of Michigan State which lost, and vaulted to number one.
Tonight they clash.
Alabama 20 Michigan State 14
Third prediction, though their ratings will be down from last year when these games if they had to be played, were properly played on New Year’s Day not Eve, ESPN will still, unfortunately get good ratings.
Steve Sloan, who was the Alabama quarterback between Joe Namath and Ken Stabler, the latter whom we lost this year, led ‘Bama (already with 3 titles in the Obama administration) to an Associated Press 1965 national title clinching win in the Orange Bowl on January 1, 1966.
Alabama received help that New Year’s Day when not only as mentioned above, their semi-final opponent tonight, one day shy of 50 years later, Michigan State lost (to UCLA in the Rose Bowl) but also when unbeaten Arkansas lost in the Cotton Bowl to LSU.
Sloan then led the Crimson Tide to a (39-28) win over previously unbeaten Nebraska in the second night Orange Bowl.
Maybe the great entertainer Sid Caesar envisioned one like ESPN announcer Tom Hart, when he denounced the use of the television remote control.
I was enjoying the powerful performances of Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor, George Segal and Sandy Dennis in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf” on TCM.
Next Frank Sinatra singing as part of a 1969 special.
However, the darn remote to ESPN and twice on one Texas A&M failed possession in the second quarter, Hart screamed an A&M receiver had made a reception. Then he took his time telling us what we knew, it was not a reception.
Oh that remote! Really oh that all powerful ESPN and its penchant for hiring those like Tom Hart, who simply put, has a long way to go to even resemble an announcer.
Yet those paychecks he deposits are real.
George Segal pictured above.
Sandy and Andy B, oh, just a few years ago
What can I say, the upcoming baseball season will be the 50th since the great pitcher and modest beyond words, man Sandy Koufax was forced to retire at the peak of his career due to an arthritic elbow.
Sandy turns 80 years old today.
Where has the time gone?
The memories are clear and so are the statistics.
One memory is Sandy throwing nothing but fastballs for most of the 7th game of the 1965 World Series an eventual (2-0) triumph for Sandy and the Dodgers.
Three seasons with 25 or more wins and three seasons with 300 or more strikeouts, the latter having never been accomplished at that point in time. In 1965 his 382 strikeouts, later eclipsed by Nolan Ryan’s 383 in 1973, broke records held by either Rube Waddell in 1904 or Bob Feller in 1948.
Happy birthday, Sandy.
Sandy Koufax pictured above after hurling his 4th no hit game, one in each season (1962-1965). The 4th no hitter was a perfect game by Sandy and a brilliantly pitched one hit loss by mound opponent, Bob Hendley of the Chicago Cubs. The lone run of the game was scored in an inning which the Dodgers did not get a hit.
It was not a bad day as far as minor bowl game predictions yesterday.
Two underdogs picked here scored outright victories.
One underdog prediction for tonight’s game matching 4 point underdog Texas A&M and Louisville.
Another high scoring game and the underdog, Texas A&M to win.
Texas A&M 38 Louisville 33
All three (5-7) teams that made bowl games won their game.
That does not make up for the disgrace that is 41 bowl games, three with teams that even with their bowl victories, finished under .500
Last night I endured Mike Tirico and Jon Gruden on the final regular season ESPN Monday night package game. Unfortunately the two, mistake filled Tirico and never silent Gruden will be on one of the two NFL wild card round games on Saturday January 9, 2016.
A receiver failed to get out of bounds, seconds later Tirico, without apology had to say he he did. A ball was caught said Tirico. No it was not. Offsides vs the defense, no vs the offense. Those are the facts and just from bits of the game.
His style is so offensive to me. Once I sat with Beano Cook and him before a Heisman Trophy presentation. The talk was about Brent Musburger and not too favorable.
Beano was the best at what he did and never stepped beyond that. Tirico, as annoying as Musburger was, is far worse.
I once watched and listened, now I rarely watch Monday night football and will listen even less than the quarter or so, next season. Once there was Ray Scott, now Mike Tirico, the standards are poor!
A Rod Stewart song is appropriate I feel regarding Mr. Tirico, pictured above with his wife Debbie, and me. I will let you figure out each of our parts.
“Some guys get all the breaks, some guys do nothing but complain” God/force bless Tirico and his wife but when it comes to broadcasting and I have a pretty good concept of what is good, Tirico is nowhere near as good as his lofty status.
What follows are a couple of predictions on today’s later bowl games.
Before the bigger bowl games and the two that are playoff semi-final games, I will offer predictions as well.
Today both to be “high scoring” tilts.
Baylor a field goal underdog, 47 North Carolina 37
Later in the day.
4 point underdog, Nevada 38 Colorado State 34.
No predictions on these two bowl games but each is a redux of what amounted to a game for the national title back in the days before playoffs and even BCS title games.
In the 1962 season Rose Bowl, played on January 1, 1963, U.S.C. prevailed (42-37) vs Wisconsin in the game. They claimed coach John Mc Kay’s first national title. The two schools clash tomorrow night.
On Saturday January 2nd, 33 years after a game on Saturday January 1, 1983 it is again Penn State vs Georgia. In that tilt on January 1, 1983 Penn State defeated Georgia (24-20), giving their coach Joe Paterno, the first of two national title wins.
U.S.C. led (42-7) before holding on in that famed Rose Bowl which concluded under darkening skies in beautiful Pasadena, California. Quarterbacks Pete Beathard of U.S.C. and Ron Vander Kelen of Wisconsin will be long remembered for their fine performances in that game.
My heart is heavy with the news that Dave Henderson, a fine major league outfielder, best known for his incredible post-season heroics that helped the Red Sox win the pennant and nearly end a 68 year title drought in 1986, has passed away at the age of 58.
Dave played on the 1989 World champion Oakland A’s and two other pennant winners with that club.
An unbelievable, emotional, multi dimensional bolt registered in me, as news came on Sunday past, that Dave Henderson had passed.
Back in time, I so intensely recall another Sunday, when Henderson’s exploits led the Red Sox to an unbelievable come from behind win in game 5 of the 1986 ALCS, vs the then California Angels, 3,000 or so miles away in Anaheim.
I happened to be in the Shea Stadium parking lot, getting ready to work in the ABC booth for game 4 of the NLCS, contested between the New York Mets and Houston Astros.
“Rooting” for the Angels, I watched in “horror” on a “stranger someone’s” very small portable television, as Henderson, with the Red Sox down to their last strike, and facing post-season elimination, hit a home run to put Boston ahead.
So much else happened in that game, the melodramatic post-season of baseball 1986, and of course since.
Some of what did, follows.
Sadly, Donnie Moore the Angels’ pitcher, who surrendered the home run to Henderson, killed himself, with that home run pitch a factor, but of course, not the only one in his heartbreaking decision.
Henderson, this time with both he and I in Shea Stadium, hit a home run in the top of the 10th inning of game 6 of the World Series, (vs the Mets), 13 days after his home run in Anaheim, that put the Red Sox one inning away from their first World Series win in 68 years.
As with what manifested concerning the Angels vs them, the Red Sox, though one strike away from winning it all, were denied, as was Henderson, from being an all-time post-season hero.
Ah, but alas he was!
The confluence of time and dramatic memories which are all part of life, which in turn, inexorably heads to our end, is very powerful.
I think of this and Dave Henderson. Both he and 29 plus years of life since those dramatic memories are gone.
I hope this is playing out in a better place.
Even and perhaps especially God has assistants (personal and God in any vein, including whether one believes, is redundant).
One (an assistant to God/a force) is summoned and says. Mr. Henderson you have no problem getting in here. In fact the “big guy/girl/it” wants to say this.
Baseball even as late as 1986, was still a great human achievement and you involved in so much drama, uniquely emotional, heart stopping, HUMAN drama (only after writing it I realized the tag line for ABC’s Wide World of Sports ie “the human drama of athletic competition, I suppose) moved the “big entity” with great pride.
So run the reel forever, hope “Donnies,” Moore and Hathaway, each of whom chose to end their lives, can help us evoke Mr. Hathaway’s song and say we FOUND, not “Where is the Love?”
One thing, I bring into focus with a rare smile. Though I did not have its importance in perspective, Dave Henderson and the 1986 baseball post-season, will always be a great memory for me.
Dave–Though I cringed then, thank you for those great moments provided by your exploits, glad your A’s and you “titled” in 1989, and with some perspective, more with your sad passing, I go on living!
Dave Henderson, pictured above, played in 4 World Series in 5 seasons, first with the Boston Red Sox in 1986 and then with the Oakland A’s (1988-1990). Click below to see video of “Hendu’s” two home runs, in the clinching game of the only winning World Series for his team in 1989, vs the San Francisco Giants.
Dave Henderson’s two 1989 World Series homers with A’s
I highly recommend the current movie, “Carol” as it is quite entertaining and tells a heartfelt love story with beautiful images of the New York area set in the 1950’s.
Once again Cate Blanchett who won the best lead actress Academy Award for her performance in Woody Allen’s Blue Jasmine, is brilliant.
Rooney Mara, yes she is a product of the union between the football families Rooney and Mara, gives a nice performance as I saw her for the first time since “The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.” This movie is much better as in Mara’s performance.
Oh the places, (The Oak Room), the then current film (Sunset Boulevard) and other tidbits add to another great effort by Ms. Blanchett and nice work by Ms. Mara, playing Ms. Blanchett’s character’s lover.
The amazing, two time Academy Award winning actress, Cate Blanchett pictured above, stars in a superb film, “Carol.”
Andy B Sports 