Rotoworld: Oregon RB LaMichael James and Oklahoma State WR Justin Blackmon among top 10 players who are being overhyped for the 2012 draft.
SportsTalk: Albert Pujols signs with the Angels and Prince Fielder joins the Tigers. Which team is better now?
The Detroit Red Wings equaled an NHL record with their 20th straight win at home, beating the Philadelphia Flyers 4-3 Sunday night on the strength of Johan Franzen's tiebreaking goal early in the third period.
PBT: Boston's Rajon Rondo continues to be named in trade talks, which is madness. The Celtics guard creates offense and makes everyone around him better, which was evident in Sunday's win over the Bulls.
Arc: Syracuse is among a solid group of No. 1 seeds in our latest tournament projections, but the middle of the pack is much more murky.
Miami coach Al Golden says the worst is behind him, but his headaches figure to continue now that former booster Nevin Shapiro, now in jail, says his involvement with the Hurricanes program will result in stiff penalties.
Phil Mickelson and Tiger Woods greeted their Sunday pairing at Pebble Beach with optimism. But the day would end happily only for one.
The United States completed a 5-0 rout of Switzerland in the Davis Cup on Sunday, with 19-year-old Ryan Harrison and John Isner winning closing singles matches.
Zambia has won the African Cup of Nations, beating pre-tournament favorite Ivory Coast 8-7 on penalties in a dramatic final at Stade de l'Amitie.
Tessa Worley of France fought off gusting winds to win a second consecutive World Cup giant slalom Sunday in the Andorran Pyrenees. Overall leader Lindsey Vonn was more than a second behind and finished eighth.
Robins: It’s the Year of the Dragon on the Lunar calendar, and this Chinese influence could extend to it also being the year of the Pekingese on the green carpet at the 136th Westminster Dog Show on Tuesday.
AP
Editor's note: This column was published on Dec. 2, nine days before Brian Kelly was introduced as the football coach at Notre Dame.
Brian Kelly's friends, boss, former bosses, opponents, players, former players and a guy who carried his headphone line choose a variety of descriptions for the Cincinnati coach, who's the hottest name in the business. They say he's . . .
. . . confident . . . cocky . . . a winner.
Before Brian Kelly turned around Cincinnati, he turned around Central Michigan. Before he turned around Central Michigan, he turned around Grand Valley State University — and won two Division II national championships. Before he did that — long before he did that — he, um, turned around a junior high girls basketball team in Massachusetts.
Well, almost.
"It was my first humbling experience in coaching," he says. "It was awful. I got the girls to really play with passion. We were diving for loose balls and shooting from all over the place. Regularly, we would be up at halftime. But we would never finish. I think we won one or two. I really couldn't figure it out as a coach. What was I missing? Was it conditioning? So I'd condition them. Was it free throws? I did all those things.
"Then, at the end of the year, I had one of the kids come to me. 'Coach, I just wanted to let you know, that was the best experience. I really enjoyed playing for you. But all that stuff you did in terms of helping us, it really didn't matter because once the seventh-grade boys team came in at halftime, we were never going to fall on the ground. We were never going to get sweaty.'"
Kelly, now 48 and the hottest college football coach in America, stands on the brink of becoming one of the sport's most famous faces — obscure to renowned in a few short years.
And he can thank those girls for teaching him one of his first coaching lessons.
"How do you get your football team to play well every day? Sometimes you better be tuned in to what's going on outside," he says. "It's not all about what kind of practice it is. Maybe they've got a problem with their girlfriend. Maybe they're not having a good day at home. I'm not saying you have to be Dr. Phil. But you better have your eye on some of the other factors that sometimes play a bigger role than making more free throws."
. . . intelligent . . . an all-around coach . . . a wizard of the spread offense.
Kelly's philosophy: "I want to score points, first and foremost."
He accomplishes that with his "warp-speed offense," which is the spread on permanent fast forward — a bold, take-no-prisoners scheme that is a reflection of Kelly's personality. The Bearcats won the Big East championship last season and, at 10-0 and No. 5 in the AP poll, appear in line to defend that title — unprecedented accomplishments for a school whose greatest football success came courtesy of Sid Gillman's squads that dominated the Mid-American Conference in the early 1950s.
Kelly first ran a no-huddle offense at Grand Valley State, a Division II school near Grand Rapids, Mich., where he was the head coach from 1991-2003. GVSU averaged a D-2 record 58.4 points per game in 2001 and won back-to-back national titles in 2002 and '03. The latest version of Kelly's no-huddle attack borrows heavily from Jeff Genyk, a former head coach at Eastern Michigan now serving as an unofficial consultant to Kelly.
And that offense succeeds because it catches defenders unprepared.
Mardy Gilyard, Cincinnati's star wideout, says, "Their eyes get huge, huge, huge. The first three first downs we get are key in that first drive. Everybody knows we have this fast offense. If we go bam, bam, bam, first down, first down, first down, oh my God — it's crazy to watch the defense crumble apart like a stale piece of bread."
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Snap ball, throw ball, catch ball, hurry up and do it again — the offense is that simple.
The defense, not so much . Step inside the dark defensive meeting room , lit mostly by seven laptop computers for the five coaches present .
"Everybody's comfortable with baseball the slot in eight?" someone asks.
Whatever the question means, the answer is yes. A few seconds later, maybe on a different topic, maybe not , there is this exchange:
"Cobra?"
"Or is it python?"
"I don't dislike python."
Kelly's offense gets all the love. But his defense -- he was a defensive coordinator before becoming a head coach -- has been equally, if not more, impressive. Before this season, the Bearcats lost 10 defensive starters, changed coordinators and switched from the 4-3 to the 3-4. Though the defense is on the field more than just about any in the country – the quick-strike offense ranks sixth nationally in scoring but 117th in time of possession -- it has held opponents to 21 or fewer points in nine of 10 games. The new defense is designed to stop the spread offense. Its secret: Send deadly snakes after the quarterback. Wait, no.
Its secret: "Don't give up the big plays," Kelly says.
. . . a riverboat gambler . . . daring . . . aggressive.
It took a while for the light bulb to go on, but when it did, Jonas Gray finally showed the talent many had expected from the blue-chip prospect from Detroit. In a recent interview, Gray, who is rehabbing an ACL injury to get ready for the NFL Scouting Combine, expressed the confidence and support he has for head coach Brian Kelly.
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Zambia has won the African Cup of Nations, beating pre-tournament favorite Ivory Coast 8-7 on penalties in a dramatic final at Stade de l'Amitie.
Wesseling: Each NFL team enters the offseason with a series of pressing needs. Sometimes a team can address them all, sometimes they ignore them all. But if a team's smart, they'll listen to us. These are the most crucial aspects for AFC teams.
The Red Wings have finally started to embrace a record they've been chasing.
