The Nevada men's basketball team learned some valuable lessons Wednesday in its overtime loss to Utah State. It learned that it isn't unbeatable at home and that it isn't good enough to stop playing against a good team. Even with a 10-point lead and under seven minutes remaining in a game. The loss could prove to be the best thing to happen to the Pack this year. You won't see Nevada get lazy in the final minutes ever again. A little humility is never a bad thing for a young college team.
It is easy to feel sorry for Mark McGwire. Not because he cried on national TV for admitting he shamed himself, his family and MLB. That was his choice and he should feel shame. I feel sorry for McGwire because I truly believe when he said, “I wished I never played in the steroid era.” The steroid era swallowed up hundreds of careers. When he was a young boy, I'm sure all he ever dreamed about was playing in the bigs. Well, he achieved that with a ton of God-given talent and years of work. But that wasn't enough. He started to think he was above the game, that he could cheat the game. Well, now McGwire is filled with shame. Very sad.
The baseball writers who vote for the Hall of Fame had better start to differentiate between one steroid user and the next. It is silly to simply not vote for every player who gets caught using performance enhancing drugs (PEDs). Pretty soon there won't be anyone elected for about 10 years. As long as MLB stands by the records set by the cheaters, the writers had better start to ask themselves one question when it comes to voting for a steroid user: Would the player have been a Hall of Famer without the use of PEDs? Alex Rodriguez, Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds didn't need to cheat to become worthy. McGwire did. That's why he should never get into Cooperstown.
It is laughable when people say that Los Angeles does not have a pro football franchise. USC is more professional than half the teams in the NFL. Lane Kiffin and the Trojans deserve each other. What type of character does it take for a guy to leave a program after just one year? Well, it takes a guy with absolutely no character at all.
There are now three distinct seasons to college football. The first is the regular season. The second is bowl season and the third is the coach's job search season. The fans care about the regular season, the players care about the bowl season and the coaches and their wives care about the job search season.
Expect all of the home teams to win this weekend in the NFL, giving us a NFC title game between New Orleans and Minnesota and an AFC championship game between San Diego and Indianapolis. Four great quarterbacks, four great teams. The best game this weekend could be Dallas and Tony Romo against Minnesota and Brett Favre. Adrian Peterson will be the difference in that game.
Aubrey Huff isn't going to solve all of the San Francisco Giants' problems. However, he is a definite upgrade over what Giants had a year ago. If Huff receives 550 at-bats he'll hit 20 homers and drive in 90-plus runs. Supposedly he'll play first base, pushing Pablo Sandoval to third and Mark DeRosa to left field. It's not exactly J.T. Snow, Pedro Feliz and Barry Bonds but I'll take it.
It shouldn't surprise anyone that Chris Ault hired a former Nevada player to be his defensive coordinator and a former Nevada coach to coach his secondary. This coming season is going to be very pivotal for Ault and the football program. Boise has to come to Mackay. If there was ever a time Nevada was going to finally put a dent in the Boise machine, this would be it. There was no way Ault was going to go into the year with unknowns on his staff.
- Josh Newman - RotoKingdom Staff Writer