One Undefeated Left

Last night Dallas went to New Orleans and with all the talk about can't win in December laid the leather on the Saints through three quarters. Cowboys hold on and win 24-17 in front of an NFL Network audience and those of us who watched it on Internet.

It just goes to show you that in the NFL you as only as good as the game today. My feelings are the Cowboys are one of those teams that when they play well are good but don't live up to their hype. New Orleans probably got caught up in the undefeated season talk.

If you missed it last night you may have missed one of the most competitive sporting events this year. The National Championship Volley ball match between Texas and Penn State. Penn State was riding a 101 match winning streak and trying to win their third National championship in a row.

All five sets were nip and tuck and Penn State won the fifth set 15-13. This was a very entertaining evening.

Speaking of Texas, Carolina loses in the Jerry Jones Dome 103-90 to Texas. All those six feet ten inch guys for Carolina were killed on the boards by the Longhorns.

Duke has something that Carolina doesn't have, guard play. Duke made a laugher of their game with Gonzaga in New York. I wonder with the weather if Duke is stuck in the Big Apple?

I do this all the time. I will go and read the opposing teams paper of their version of a game. Since I really like the San Diego Chargers I have been reading the Cincinnati Enquirer this week to get a read on what the Bengals are thinking. Of course the Chris Henry death has been in the news a lot and talk about haunted.

The Cincinnati Bengals have been in existence for 42 years. During that time they have had 33 players or former players to die. Three have been in their twenties, seven in their thirties, twelve in their forties, eight in their fifties and only three that made it to sixty or more.

The Enquirers story was about the hard luck Bengals and all the ways the players are dieing. Cancer was the main culprit but the Bengals have not had one player to die that is considered by natural causes.

Finally today on a brighter note. Rocky Mount's Tom Suiter and Channel Five were in Tarboro on Thursday to give the Vikings the Fabulous Fifteen award for 2009 in football. When you win the awards just come your way.

The annual Shrine bowl game was played yesterday and North Carolina defeated the Sandlappers of South Carolina 24-14.

Walter Peyton Award (Almost)

Former Rocky Mount High school athlete Terrell Hudgins finished second in the voting for the Walter Peyton award which is the award as the top Offensive player in Division One FCS division. Hudgins finished second to Armani Edwards of Appalachian State who wins the award for the second year in a row.

Hudgins finishes his career holding 10 NCAA records,(Four of those NCAA records were held by Jerry Rice) six Southern Conference records and three Elon records.

Hudgins places in the top fifteen in the voting for the third year in a row as he finished 11th in 2007 and 15th in 08.

Terrell's NCAA Records
1. 4 years in a row with 1,000 yards receiving the only player in any division
ever to do that.
2. 34 games in which he had at least one receiving touchdown
3. 1.2 touchdown catches per game for career tied.
4. 28 career 100 yard receiving games most ever in any division.
5. 116.7 yards per game most ever in FCS
6. 5,520 yards career receiving most ever in NCAA history
7. 8.8 career receptions per game FCS record
8. 123 catches this season most ever in one year in FCS
9. 395 career catches most ever in NCAA History.
10 Shared with teammate Michael Mayer in 2007. 207 catches by teammates in a
season

Southern Conference Records
1. ten games in a season with at least 100 in a game
2. Five games in a row with at least 100 yards receiving (once in 2006,Twice in
2009)
3. 52 career receiving touchdowns
4. 1,633 yards in on season (2009)
5. 3 career 200 yards games (Tied)
6. 2,538 combines yards with teammate Michael Mayer in 2007

ELON Records

1. 16 reception in one game (twice in 2007) (once 2009)
2. four touchdowns receptions in a game (2007)
3. 18 touchdown reception in a season (2007)

Finishing second in the Walter Camp award is the highest a Rocky Mount High Athlete has obtained since Phil Ford and Buck Williams were named Rookie of the year in the NBA in 1979 and 1982.

Gryphon Basketball Basketball was postponed Friday night against Rose.

Fall was a great athletic season for Rocky Mount sports. The Wachovia Cup fall standing are out and the Gryphons lead the Big East with 57 points followed by Fike at 48.5 and Hunt at 48 points.

Winning The Lottery Hardly Ever Pays

Athletes are just like people who win the lottery. Most of the time average Joe's who when they hit the big money have no idea how to handle it.

That ten million dollar life style is on the other side of town compared to the 25,000 a year life of most who win the lottery.

Yesterday another life was lost to the fast lane. Chris Henry of the Cincinnati Bengals looks like now may have jumped from the bed of a pickup truck in which his girl friend was driving. I wonder if we will ever hear the truth on this one.

N C State made an 11 point comeback last night against basketball power Elon and won their eighth game of the season with only one loss. State travels to Wake Sunday night to open ACC play on Sunday night ACC basketball.

Was off by one day, the Gryphons play basketball in Greenville tonight against Rose weather permitting.

The Indy Colts continue to stay undefeated as they beat the Jaguars in Jacksonville. The score was 35-31 as Peyton Manning the better of the two Manning brothers threw for four touchdowns. I just don't see the Colts in the Super Bowl just getting by the way they do.

There is one thought from this historic twenty three game regular season win streak that the Colts are on. As long as Manning is on the field they have a chance at winning.

Some loose business to take care of. I was on a sports panel for WHIG-TV along with my sidekick Wes Bradshaw and as part of the WHIG-TV game of the week they were telling everyone that they were going to give a coach of the year award to the top coach. The winner Raymond Cobb of Southwest Edgecombe. SouthWest got $1,000 donated to the school athletic fund. Raymond got four votes, Danny Ward of North Edgecombe received one and Tarboro's Jeff Craddock got one vote from me.

I found this out last night when I attended the WHIG-TV Christmas party. Everyone who you see on Whig-TV anytime during a week was there. Herb and Sandra really put on a nice show last night.

Say Good Bye To Old Dowdy-Ficklin

Yesterday cranes started taking down the score board at the ECU Football stadium. Next year ECU fans will return to a horseshoed stadium with 7,000 more seats. This will up the capacity to more than 50,000.

So far for the Liberty Bowl game against Arkansas in Memphis the Pirates have sold 4,500 tickets. When the football stadium is fully renovated the Pirates will seat 60,000 putting them on par with Tar Heels and Wolfpack.

I'm just throwing this out there for thought. Just maybe the Pirates one day might replace Boston college in the ACC. Would make sense to me. BC joined the ACC because they felt jilted in the bowl selections. Where are they going again this year? California another low pay heavy on expenses bowl game for the Eagles.
I don't think the ACC has turned out for BC like it was intended.

Look at their travel cost compared to everyone else in the league. They are stuck up in the Northeast at least 300 miles from their closes conference foe Maryland. Maryland have six conference foes within 300 miles. Virginia Tech and even Miami have natural rivals in the ACC but not BC.

Back in the old days when ECU was in the Southern conference with William and Mary, Richmond,Marshall,Appalachian State, Western Carolina and Furman that was a good league.

Look at what the others have done when Pat Dye convinced ECU that division one was the only way. App State has three national titles, I think Marshall has had at least two and Richmond has one. If ECU had of stayed in that league they may very well already have a 75,000 seat stadium and every conference would have been begging them in the 1990's to join their conference.

When all the expansion is finished in Greenville there will be no reason that ECU cannot be part of a home and home series with anybody.

I know this is not about sports but looking at the community as a whole was there ever a better decision for Eastern North Carolina than to put a medical school at ECU?

Today all of the small community hospitals all over Eastern North Carolina are tied in to the medical school. I know they have a cancer center named after him But Leo Jenkins ought to have a monument some where in Greenville.

I was on the UNC systems web site recently and ECU is third as far as largest institution in the UNC system just a few hundred behind Carolina and a couple of thousand behind State.

The 1960's ECU was still East carolina teachers College. They have come a long way since then.

Gryphons At Rose Tonight

You may be wondering why over the last week or so I have not said much about basketball and their progress this year. There are a couple of reasons.

My main source of schedule information is View My Schedule, for the past three weeks or so I have not be able to access Rocky Mount on the site. Yesterday it pops up but last year my number one source was daughter Morgan. She was a manager for Bernie Capps and help tape players before games.

During the fall she was one of the managers for Volleyball and many of you may not know over the past three years Morgan has had a problem with bruising. bruises pop up any and everywhere including her face. As of yesterday we have now been to 15 doctors from Nash,Pitt,Duke and UNC hospitals. I can tell what it is not but we don't know yet what is the culprit. We decided that she needed to take the winter off and help be the manager of softball in the spring.

Morgan not there my source of away games scores is not in place this year. So far this year the boys are off to a 4-1 start. They lost last week at Beddingfield but beat Rose at home. They are still trying to get everyone familiar with each other with all the transfers playing and I think by mid January this is going to be a very good team.

The girls are 3-2 with losses to Beddingfield and 4-A Wake-Forest Rolesville. One of their victories was over Rose's girl 64-16. Regardless of what the girls do this year they had a preseason injury to the possible starting point guard and will not play at what could have been full strength any this year. You can bet that Pam Gainey's full court pressure will pay off as the season goes on.

Tonight the Gryphons travel to Rose. Hertford County will match up with the Gryphons on Monday.

Has the world fell in on top of Tiger Woods or what? 16 women have come forward with stories to sell concerning their escapades with Tiger. Now word a doctor in which Tiger uses is a human growth Hormone doctor.

Looks like Randy Moss is close to wearing out his welcome in New England. Minnesota, Oakland and now New England Moss starts out like a house on fire and as time goes on he seems to get bored. That's too bad, Randy Moss may be the most dominating player of this decade or could have been.

What is up with old Roy Williams. Roy saw to it a non Carolina fan was tossed out of the last home game because he said "miss it Deion". The guy was on the 23rd row. Sounds to me like Roy wasn't concentrating too much on the game himself to hear someone on the 23rd row yell at one of his players.

Williams explaination was he was protecting the parents of his players not having to listen to negative talk about their children. If old Roy is all that concerned about what they hear maybe the next time he breaks out in a barrage of cursing he will remove himself from the game.

Can't wait to see what the Duke students may have for him when Carolina plays in Durham.

Cowboy Problems Start At Very Top

The Dallas Cowboys are going through once again this year with their losing record in December. They have not won a playoff game since 1997. What has happened to America's team?

I think the answer is right in front of your eyes, the owner Jerry Jones.

Let's look back to when Jones bought the Cowboys. The very first year he cleaned house. He got rid of one of the greatest coaches in NFL history in Tom Landry. His coach Jimmy Johnson cleaned house on the players. It didn't take long to win two Super Bowls. Jimmy Johnson quit because he didn't like Jerry Jones meddling in player decisions. Barry Switzer won a Super Bowl basically off the same players that Johnson had.

All the early success that the Cowboys had Jerry Jones is thinking boy I am the greatest owner. I am such a good owner I can decide on the players we will keep.

What owner has a press conference after every game? What owner comes down to the field in the fourth quarter every game that they look like they are going to win? Jerry Jones loves to be in front of the camera.

Jones thinks that the show is more important than the substance. This past Sunday he passed out 90,000 3-D glasses in the third quarter so the fans could watch the game in 3-D on the big screen TV. Jerry Jones is the P T Barnum of the NFL. They had to take the glasses up before the end of the quarter because people were getting sick watching the screen in 3-D.

Jones is a showman not a football decision maker. He won three Super Bowls rather early in his tenure and in doing so Jones lost the idea that football people made sound decisions. Since the mid 90's Jones has had puppets in the football decision jobs. He makes the decisions. Jerry Jones is a showman not a football decision maker.

Jones hasn't won anything with out the Jimmy Johnson influence.

Jerry Jones is the next Al Davis in waiting. When he is close to 90 he will be there in front of the cameras wondering why he is 4-12. Jerry Jones don't know diddlly about football, but he thinks he does. He's got enough money that we will have to watch the slow death of a great team until he dies.

13-0

Never in the history of the NFL has two teams gone and won their first 13 games of any season. There was a time when the regular season was just 12 games.

History being what it is I think most fans would like to see New Orleans go undefeated. Their history has been they were the Ain'ts more than the Saints. Here lately their defense has started to show cracks.

Indianapolis is the team of the decade with the number of wins. They have one title during this ten year span. If there has been a down fall for the Colts it seems when they get to the point they are at now they can't figure whether to rest or go all out. I think sometimes winning your playoff spot too early hurts more than having to play every week like a playoff game.

The Carolina Panthers lost for the 8th time this season which guarantees that they have never had back to back winning seasons. I think they have their quarterback for the future in Matt Moore. Their dilemma is they just gave 17 a big contract extention during the off season.

Dallas played right into the news media's hands yesterday. Dallas had every chance to win and stop all this 0 for December funk they are in. All the glitz in Dallas they are too soft.

San Diego has now beaten the Giants, Eagles and Cowboys. The Giants and Cowboys on the road. If I was Indianapolis I would be shaking in my boots because San Diego has beaten the Colts the last two playoff trips they have made to Indy.

If the Super Bowl was today I'm picking the Vikings and Chargers. I think the Vikes have the best defense in the NFC. The Chargers are finally playing like their hype over the past three or four years. They were probably the best in 07 but they were beat up when they got to New England for the AFC Championship game. This year they have been able to put a new body in the injures place and have kept right on ticking.