Sports Columns
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — Consider this: You are a star junior college football recruit about to make one of the most important decisions of your life, one that will shape your future and potentially determine whether you enjoy a professional career defined by fame and fortune.
Jim Fassel thinks back on it now and remembers all the eerie feelings after the world changed forever. The United Airlines plane waiting to depart as one he was traveling on landed in Newark early that September day. United Flight 93. Sitting at the next terminal. Loading passengers, all of whom would be dead within a few hours. Just waiting to depart.
I am trying to determine how UNLV will inform the two finalists who won’t be offered the school’s athletic director job, given the ridiculous manner (e-mail from a search committee chairman) in which others were told Tuesday.
Effort should be the one guaranteed trait a football player owns. Speed. Strength. Skill. Smarts. You can lack in all of these and still play hard.
It doesn’t matter which voter from The Associated Press Top 25 college football poll said it. The message is far more important, because it again cuts to a reality of how many continue to buy into that cartel known as Bowl Championship Series.
There is the profound way of looking at it: The Ultimate Fighting Championship holds its 100th show Saturday night and perhaps the most symbolic matchup of such a historic moment will not be either of two title bouts, but rather when veteran Dan Henderson stares across at a younger and promising Michael Bisping.
What nobody wants to hear: The problem isn’t Scott Boras. The problem is baseball, at seemingly every turn, can’t wield a strong enough hammer.
His father won an AFC Championship with the New England Patriots and yet he has seen the commemorative ring twice. It might be just once. No one thinks about it all that much.