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Bridgewater 17, Emory & Henry 14
Oct 20, 2007Check Sunday’s BHC for the official write-up. Here’s some quick notes:
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Tough loss for the Wasps on Saturday afternoon at Fullerton Field. The definition of a heartbreaker in the sports world.
Down 14-0 with 12 minutes, 19 seconds left in the fourth quarter, the Wasps looked done for.
Their defense had been run ragged by Bridgewater’s slow-rolling offensive train. E&H quarterback Daniel Booher was having his roughest game of the season. And Fullerton Field was buzzing with disappointment and frustration.
Then, suddenly, everything changed. Booher found a groove as the Wasps returnded to the spread offense that had been so successful in their win over Hampden-Sydney. And two Booher-Jonathan Hawkins touchdown connections made it 14-14 with 1:59 left in the final period.
But as soon as you could say “comeback,” it was over.
Bridgewater running back Phillip Carter (27 carries, 160 yards, one touchdown) cranked out a 56-yard sprint down the right sideline. And the Eagles walked out of Emory with a huge win when Kyle Beach’s 24-yard field goal from the middle of the field edged its way through the uprights.
The Eagles went berserk. The Wasps were stunned.
“You can’t win a game with the way we played the first three quarters,” said E&H coach Don Montgomery, red-faced and seething. “But they got nothing on us. The only thing they have on us is what we have on us. We made too many mistakes to play in a game of this magnitude.”
Extra quotes from Montgomery:
On Booher’s success in the fourth quarter:
We got spread out and Daniel got some confidence to throw the ball down the field. Daniel understood that the protection was holding up for him. As he matures and gets better as a quarterback, and gets more confidence in the people around him, we’re going to get pretty good. But until he gets that feeling, and our receivers run the right route and catch the ball when they’re supposed to catch it …
On Eagles running back Phillip Carter and Carter’s big 56-yard run in the final two minutes which set up Beach’s game-winning field goal:
Give him credit. He’s one of the top backs in the country, and he broke a big run at the end of the game to put them in a position to win it. Other than that, we’re in overtime.
On being disappointed:
Yes. What do you think? Of course I am.
Posted by Brian T. Smith Friday night on the road
Oct 19, 2007BIRMINGHAM, Ala.—Really, there’s something to be said for a six-hour drive through two big-time traffic jams, one much-needed rain storm and lots of Alabama-Tennessee talk.
Life on the road usually agrees with me, even on trips like today’s. Maybe it’s because the payoff—covering my first game in one of the SEC’s storied venues --should be worth the long journey into western Alabama.
Covering the Atlantic Coast Conference the last three seasons, I’ve seen plenty of beautiful stadiums, such as Georgia Tech’s Grant Field and Duke’s Wallace Wade Stadium.
(I kid you not. Duke’s football program may be lousy, but its stadium really is nice. As John Feinstein once said, it’s a beautiful place to watch bad football.)
Anyway, Alabama coach Nick Saban and I have one thing in common today—and it’s not the salary, trust me. It will be “our” first Alabama-Tennessee game.
Bryant-Denny Stadium holds 92,138 seats and is the seventh biggest on-campus facility in major college football. That just happened in the last decade, though, which is why Alabama used to play these games at Legion Field—a long punt from where I’m putting my head on the pillow.
I asked UT coach Phillip Fulmer Tuesday what the difference is between Birmingham and Tuscaloosa.
“We had a number of great games in Birmingham,” Fulmer said. “But Tuscaloosa is a better college environment. It will be louder.”
It will be interesting to hear just how loud. Having worked the Virginia Tech and UT beats for our paper, it’s hard to think of two louder stadiums on a consistent basis than Lane Stadium or Neyland Stadium.
Of course, the crowd noise will depend in large part on what happens below them. That will depend on how the Alabama defense can perform against one of the SEC’s best offenses.
If Tennessee runs the ball as it has lately, it will be hard for the Tide to win this game. Give Erik Ainge a play-action game off which to work and he’ll thrive—and then some.
That can quiet a crowd down in a hurry.
Quick Kicks
1. I found no less than five different prep games in a 70-mile span between Fort Payne and Birmingham. Any doubt that high school football is king here on Friday night?
2. On at least two of those broadcasts, I heard announcers refer to the teams they cover every Friday as “we.” Can anyone say objectivity? I knew you could ...
3. Is there any doubt that Arkansas’ Houston Nutt is gone at season’s end unless his team wins out, including a bowl game? And what are the chances of that happening with a schedule which still includes trips to Tennessee and LSU?
4. It’s always fun to watch games like the Louisville-Connecticut clash Friday night, which was played in a driving rain. Let me amend that: it’s always fun to watch those games on TV.
5. Non-football observation: after ESPN’s saturation coverage of Joe Torre’s decision not to manage the Yankees next year, is there any question now that you can refer to the network as YES North?
Tennessee High 41, Elizabethton 0
Oct 19, 2007Check Saturday’s paper for the official write-up. Here’s some quick notes.
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The Vikings closed down Brown Childress Stadium on Friday evening, routing the Cyclones in the process.
Tennessee High sophomore running back Keenan Shephard was a yard-chomping monster, racking up 192 yards and three touchdowns. Factor in that Shephard was taken out of the game before the fourth quarter began, and it was quite the night for the young Viking.
“I just saw holes,” Shephard said. “I saw holes and yards and the end zone. All I did was follow my line and find the holes.”
Big nod to the Vikings’ (7-1, 5-0 Mountain Lakes Conference) defense which completely shut down Elizabethton’s (3-5, 2-3) offense – especially the Cyclones’ running game. Elizabethton was held to just 52 rushing yards on 13 carries.
The lone bright spot for the Cyclones’ offense was quarterback Wes Anderson, who was 13-of-18 passing for 94 yards. But as accurate as Anderson was, he wasn’t enough. T-High used a four-man defensive front to create constant pressure, and Anderson was forced to rely on short out routes most of the game.
Vikings defensive lineman Elijah Bible had a big night, recording two sacks and forcing and recovering a fumble.
“Our pass rush sets everything up,” said Vikings defensive coordinator Mike Mays. “Bible played a great game, too. He’s fast off the ball, aggressive and he never lets up. Our whole defense really got us going.”
The Vikings’ opening drive was pure science – a 98-yard march which ate 8 minutes, 56 seconds off the clock.
Sheppard was a yard-chomping monster, racking up 52 yards on eight carries. Mixing sweeps and counters with runs up the gut, Shephard was too quick, too powerful and too smart for the Cyclones’ defense early.
“He’s got great hips, great speed and he’s going to have really good field vision as he gets older,” Stubbs said.
As soon as Elizabethton stacked the line to try and hold down Shephard, the Vikings had quarterback Mason Canty throw out routes to open the field back up.
The result: an opening statement, punctuated by a four-yard touchdown burst from Sheppard which gave Tennessee High a 6-0 lead with 3:04 left in the first quarter.
The long, impressive drive drew the ire of Cyclones’ coach Shawn Witten, who screamed “You think you can just show up?” at his team on the sideline.
Elizabethton had early chances. Three of the Cyclones’ first four drives began within 10 yards of Vikings territory. But Elizabethon’s final tally at the end of the first half was a missed field goal, zero points, and a lot of frustration.
Tennessee High 41, Elizabethton 0
Tenn. High 6 8 13 14—41
Elizabethton 0 0 0 0—0
Scoring Summary
T—Keenan Shephard 4 run (kick failed)
T—Corey Young 58 pass from Mason Canty
T—Shephard 6 run (kick failed)
T—Shephard 29 run (Ben Perrin kick)
T—Trey Hearst 1 run (Perrin kick)
T—Xavier King 8 run (Perrin kick)
Team Stats
First Downs: T 21, E 9; Rushes-Yards: T 37-288, E 13-52; Passing Yards: T 82, E 94; Comp-Att-Int: 3-5-1, E 13-18-0; Fumbles-Lost: T 1-0, E 1-1; Penalties-Yards T 3-15, E 3-15.
Prep scores - Oct. 19
Oct 19, 2007Some scores from Week 8 of the prep season:
Patrick Henry 28, Northwood 13
Lebanon 27, Lee 22
Chilhowie 39, Holston 18
Tennessee High 41, Elizabethton 0
Abingdon 35, Virginia 0
George Wythe 28, Rural Retreat 13
Bluefield, Wva. 16, Richlands 13
J.I. Burton 55, Thomas Walker 22
National outlets doing fans a disservice
Oct 18, 2007What’s big news in sports? ESPN and Fox will tell you.
Did you hear anything about Joe Torre on Thursday? Something about him not returning to the Yankees? It’s darn near impossible to get any news on the Yankees these days - or the New England Patriots, for that matter. Did you know they’re undefeated? They’re apparently in the process of going 16-0 and being declared the Greatest Team Ever in the NFL.
But we’re only six weeks into the season, you say? Don’t tell that to ESPN or Fox. In fact, don’t tell them anything. They’ll tell you what’s important.
In an age where the amount of information available to consumers is virtually limitless, the scope of content provided by national sports media outlets seemingly shrinks by the day. Long have such outlets as Fox and ESPN been accused of skewing their coverage to certain locations, sports or demographics, and assertions of East Coast bias in national providers are as old as national providers themselves. These days, however, it’s getting harder and harder to pass off those claims.
Thursday’s edition of the Joe Torre saga is a prime example. After word got out that the former Braves manager had turned down a 1-year contract offer to return as skipper of the Yankees for a 13th year, Yankee mania saturated virtually every one of ESPN’s main channels: ESPN carried a discussion by the “Baseball Tonight” crew on the drama, ESPNEWS carried a simulcast of Yankee play-by-play radio announcer Michael Kay’s radio show, and ESPN Classic showed an episode of “The Bronx is Burning,” the ESPN-produced melodrama of the 1977 Yankees.
ESPN2 offered some relief in the form of “NFL Live,” at least until you consider that ESPN owns broadcast rights to “Monday Night Football.”
The only other break in the Torre action on ESPN was a painful debate of the significance of the meaningless remarks by Red Sox enigma Manny Ramirez about the world not ending if Boston were to lose to Cleveland in Game 5 of the American League Championship series, provided by such baseball experts as John Kruk, NHL analyst Barry Melrose and former Washington Redskins offensive lineman Mark May. What about the Indians, who knocked off the Yankees and had the Red Sox on the brink of elimination as of Thursday? Nary a word, aside from their involvement in the latest episode of “Manny Being Manny.” As for the Rockies, who have won 21 of their last 22 games and have already won the National League pennant, don’t look for much coverage of them unless you can get Denver stations on your radio.
Fox did no better, at least on its Fox Sports Radio affiliates. Torre was the topic of conversation for much of the afternoon there as well, and though that can be forgiven when callers chime in with their opinions, many radio hosts make no bones about where their allegiances lie. Fox radio host J.T. The Brick often touts his Yankee fandom, as do others who are supposed to be the unbiased facilitators of debate. Granted, the only thing more nauseating than sports talk radio is political talk radio, but once the journalists on the air put impartiality aside, all credibility goes out the window.
Moreover, when fans know they can’t trust the so-called “major” outlets for objective coverage, the suspicion trickles down. Scarcely does a week go back when the Bristol Herald Courier isn’t accused of some sort of favoritism toward a certain school or sport, though you’d be hard pressed to find another newspaper of comparable size which covers more than 40 high schools, half a dozen college and auto racing to as large a degree. Even some local radio shows get muddled down by too much national discussion.
Both ESPN and Fox are equally at fault, however, for perhaps the biggest problem facing sports journalism today, that of self interest shaping what is covered and how. Fox, which has broadcast rights to the NFL as well, spends most of the week talking about pro football in the radio, even in the summer, when minor notes from training camps trump the regular season in MLB (which Fox also televises) and other sports. NASCAR gets a word in here or there, but the amount of note it’s given can be correlated to which network has broadcast rights in the ridiculously split Nextel Cup schedule.
Meanwhile, on ESPN, Monday night’s Game 4 of the NLCS, in which the Rockies clinched the pennant with their seventh straight postseason win, was given second billing on “SportsCenter” to the Monday night game between the New York Giants and the 1-5 Atlanta Falcons. Think self interest is at work there?
With the dollars networks shell out for broadcast rights, the bias can be understood, but not excused, nor is it exclusive to television or radio. The Associated Press is not immune, nor are many national-market print outlets. Only through modern blogs, it seems, can a broader spectrum been seen - if you can find it.
Certain teams getting all the publicity is nothing new. One reason the Yankees became America’s team in the mid-20th century is the fact that they were always on TV during the early days of television, especially at World Series time. The same can be said, to a degree, about the Dallas Cowboys and Pittsburgh Steelers of the 1970s.
That isn’t the case, today, when fans are supposed to have the ability to pick and choose what they watch and about whom they read over various outlets. This is where the largest national providers are dropping the ball, and where such favoritism comes dangerously close to shaping the stories rather than covering them. Not that sports journalists trying to become as famous as the topics they cover is anything new, either.
The correlation of air time to popularity isn’t exclusive to sports, of course. Ask the average voter to tell you a presidential candidate not named Obama, Clinton, Edwards or Thompson and you might get a short list, and if you remove the former Tennessee senator Fred Thompson’s role on “Law & Order” or his film career and he’d be equally unrecognizable. Ask any political scientist and they’ll tell you the about of face time in the media often relates directly to how a candidate does in the polls.
While it would be naive to say the national media doesn’t influence or skew the news headlines, the events of the day can’t be shaped the same way sports coverage can. That’s why the burden has increasingly become the consumer’s what is and isn’t important. A backlash has grown against ESPN, but their rights to the country’s most popular sport give the network the ability to overcome it. The problem, however, is that no national outlets seem to be stepping up to provide an alternative. That such platforms as blogs are the future of journalism is rarely disputed simply for technological reasons. More and more these days, the need for them is growing, if only to provide fans more options.
