Posted on November 30th, 2011
By DERON SNYDER
A patron behind me said aloud what most folks in the place surely were thinking — self included — as Rex Grossman leaned back and went long: “Why is he doing that?”
Yes, it was third-and-19 from midfield, but still. An underneath route with a little yardage after the catch was safer than going deep. We feared that “Rex Havoc” had another pick in him Sunday, which would’ve been his third, and we couldn’t escape visions of a defensive back cradling that bomb whenever it came down.
Surprise, surprise. For the second consecutive week Grossman was on target during a gotta-have-it drive in the fourth quarter.
The 50-yard touchdown to Anthony Armstrong with 6:18 left against Seattle wasn’t as dramatic as the 4-yard fade to Donte Stallworth with 14 seconds left against Dallas. But the latter merely forced overtime in what became the sixth consecutive loss; Armstrong’s emergence from witness protection produced the go-ahead score in the streak-snapping victory.
With it came shouts of joy and sighs of relief. Both had been scarce since Oct. 2, when the Redskins beat St. Louis and improved to 3-1, lamenting a late-game collapse at Dallas that kept them from a perfect record.
Going 1-6 in your past seven games is nothing to brag about. But the Seattle game was one of two left — Minnesota is the other — that looked fairly winnable. The Redskins easily could have flown across the country and fallen flat coming off the emotional overtime defeat a week earlier against the Cowboys.
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Posted on November 29th, 2011
By DERON SNYDER
Syracuse University fired assistant basketball coach Bernie Fine on Sunday, ending his 35-year run at the school.
But that’s the least of his problems.
Fine was placed on administrative leave two weeks ago after ESPN reported allegations that he sexually abused a pair of former ball boys. Coach Jim Boheim and former Syracuse players such as Rony Seikaly rushed to Fine’s defense, suggesting that accusers Bobby Davis and Mark Long — now adults — were lying in hopes of a financial reward.
Fine issued a statement, claiming that the charges are “patently false in every aspect.”
Apparently not. Boheim, Seikaly and everyone else who denigrated the accusers need to apologize. Because Fine’s wife, Laurie Fine, essentially confessed her husband’s acts in a secretly taped phone call nine years ago.
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Posted on November 25th, 2011
By DERON SNYDER
It appears that Ndamukong Suh’s meeting last month with NFL commissioner Roger Goodell didn’t do any good.
Suh – whose full name is pronounced “En-dom-ah-ken Soo”– initiated the sitdown in response to his growing reputation as a dirty player. The second-year defensive tackle for the Detroit Lions wanted league officials to give him a better idea of what he’s doing wrong, having been fined three times for rough hits on quarterbacks since last season.
At the time, he had drawn three personal foul penalties in eight games this year. Now, after the Lions’ annual Thanksgiving Day game, the tally is four personal fouls through 11 games.
Perhaps “stomping on an opponent” was never mentioned in discussions. They can bring it up next time (likely very soon), because that’s what Suh did in Detroit’s 27-14 loss against Green Bay.
Suh was penalized and ejected after the altercation, in which replays show him repeatedly pushing Green Bay lineman Evan Dietrich-Smith’s head to the ground and then kicking him.
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Posted on November 25th, 2011
By DERON SNYDER
After the USA won a gold medal last month in women’s team fencing at the Pan American games, there was little chance of mistaking which one on the podium was Ibtihaj Muhammad.
She was the one on the left, next to the two blondes.
Muhammad is accustomed to sticking out in a sport that’s dominated largely in the United States by Caucasian athletes. From her brown skin to her traditional Muslim headscarf to her uniform with “Muhammad” across the back, the 25-year-old New Jersey native is impossible to miss.
And if she’s good enough, she’ll be even more noticeable next year in London at the Olympics. The U.S. Olympic Committee doesn’t track athletes according to religion, but fencing officials believe Muhammad would be the first practicing Muslim woman to represent the U.S.
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Posted on November 24th, 2011
By DERON SNYDER
The NBA lockout is hurting a lot of “little people” right now, from ushers and vendors to bartenders and waiters to bellhops and drivers.
But if the labor dispute continues much longer, some tall people might be hurting, too.
It could happen next week when the “Homecoming Tour” tips off in Akron, Ohio. Or during the “Obama Classic” on Dec. 12. Or another of the myriad charity/exhibition/pickup games NBA players have staged since summer.
I’m concerned about some participants in the fundraiser for President Obama’s re-election campaign. Among the confirmed players are Magic Johnson, Doc Rivers, Patrick Ewing and Dikembe Mutombo.
Maybe they’ve forgotten, but the NBA used to stage an old-timers game during All-Star weekend. It’s no longer part of the festivities (replaced by the Rookie Challenge) and for good reason: Retired All-Stars David Thompson and Norm Nixon suffered major injuries during the 1992 Legends Classic, a ruptured patella tendon and a ruptured quadricep tendon, respectively.
Thompson at 37 and Nixon at 36 were the youngest players in the game.
The aforementioned geriatrics will be the oldest players in Obama’s fundraiser.
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Posted on November 24th, 2011
By DERON SNYDER
Tom Williams must be a pretty smart guy, having climbed the ranks to become Yale’s first black football coach and the Ivy League’s second. According to the school’s website, he graduated from Stanford with honors and later earned a master’s degree there.
But the bio also says he was a “Rhodes Scholar candidate,” and that line is now under review.
The claim, from Williams’ résumé, isn’t new. But it became newsworthy last week when Yale quarterback Patrick Witt chose to play in “the Game” — Harvard versus Yale — instead of flying to Atlanta for his Rhodes finalist’s interview. Numerous news stories referred to Williams as a former Rhodes finalist who skipped his interview to attend a minicamp with the San Francisco 49ers.
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Posted on November 22nd, 2011
By DERON SNYDER
A fixture on Syracuse’s bench for 36 years, Bernie Fine will be absent again Wednesday night when the men’s basketball team plays its second game since he was placed on administrative leave for sexual abuse allegations.
Following so quickly on the heels of Penn State’s scandal, the Syracuse case has upped the levels of indignation everywhere.
Penn State fans are resentful because Syracuse escaped the broad-brush tarnish that’s been applied to their school. Syracuse fans are angry that the two schools have been lumped together at all on such a despicable topic.
Child advocates are furious with Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim for declaring that Fine’s accusers are lying and merely looking for a financial reward. Journalists are upset with ESPN for airing such a damaging story without more corroborating evidence.
And, I suppose, Jerry Sandusky has supporters who are mad that he’s already been convicted in the court of public opinion, while commentators are warning against a rush to judgment on Fine.
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Posted on November 22nd, 2011
By DERON SNYDER
Too much praise and too much blame is a fact of life for quarterbacks, exemplified by none more than the pair that dueled Sunday at FedEx Field.
Both have been probed and poked, dissected and inspected. Both have enjoying varying levels of success in their career, with Washington’s Rex Grossman having started for a Super Bowl team and Dallas’ Tony Romo being considered (by some) among the game’s best at his position.
No one would dare put Grossman in that conversation. Yet he was nearly Romo’s equal for 70 minutes in the Cowboys’ 27-24 overtime victory. He was nearly everything you’d want in a quarterback. He was nearly victorious.
That’s a whole lot of “nearly,” which is what you get with Grossman. But he avoided the catastrophic turnovers that plague him and drilled passes that his backup would never attempt, let alone complete.
We might always experience the cringe factor when Grossman drops back to pass, the involuntary reflex that causes us to hunch our shoulders and tense up as he scans the field. Sunday marked his 10th start with the Redskins, and he had thrown at least one interception in nine of them.
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Posted on November 18th, 2011
By DERON SNYDER
If only it was that simple, shaking hands to erase a centuries-old superiority complex and wipe out perceptions passed from generation to generation.
Maybe that possibility truly exists in the pollyanna mind of FIFA president Sepp Blatter, but it’s hard to believe he could be so naïve. Yet, that’s what he said recently, responding to a racial abuse claim that arose in a match between Manchester United and Liverpool.
Manchester United defender Patrice Evra, a black Frenchman, accused Liverpool’s Uruguayan forward Luis Suarez of saying “a certain word to me at least 10 times. No place for that in 2011. The referee is aware of what was said.”
Suarez responded by saying the term he used isn’t a slur in South America and he shouldn’t be punished.
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Posted on November 17th, 2011
By DERON SNYDER
If you have a young son or daughter, or a young niece or nephew, or another young person you care about regardless of relation, the past week led to some reflection.
Is there anybody who might be abusing them? Would they tell someone if it’s happening? What can be done to prevent the former and ensure the latter?
There’s been a lot of disturbing news lately regarding coaches and other authoritative figures accused of heinous acts with children. I had forgotten about the need to be vigilant in sports before the Penn State scandal. A ton of stories about abuse in the Catholic Church and the Boy Scouts lulled me into viewing sports in a different light.
But sports are the perfect hunting ground for perverts, pedophiles and other assorted monsters. They gain positions of influence and use them against insecure, impressionable youngsters, who love the access and ignore the agony that follows.
Three revolting cases have caught my attention since Jerry Sandusky’s alleged offenses shook the nation. Each one illustrates the need for accountable adults, whose abhorrence of children being compromised outweighs the threat of bad publicity and damaged brands.
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