Is the U back?

Miami won again today. They played an interesting season opener against Florida State on Labor day and won the game at the end just like the good old days. And today they beat the 14-Th ranked team in Georgia Tech. I like their QB Jacory Harris. Both Harris and their coach Randy Shannon seem to have a decent and classy demeanor thats so rare at the U. More power to them. They are now ranked and should be moving up next week. I am already getting a little tired of USC and Matt Barkley. ESPN is constantly talking about him after just one good game. I said the hype machine will be all over this kid, but I didn't know it would be this bad this quick. The other story of the week in college is Tennessee @ Florida. Lane Kiffin's trash talking earlier in the year is the story here, but unfortunately, the game should be no-contest and a non story.

In the NFL, Monday night gave us two great games. We were reminded once again why NFL is the king in this country. These games are close, they are played at a high level and they matter. Every game - 1 through 16, matter. The offensive execution in game 1 is sometimes bad, but teams still play hard and give it their all for a W. Thats the beauty of a 16 game season as opposed to a 82 or a 162 game season. We were also reminded last Monday of the luckiest guy on the planet - Tom Brady. In addition to bagging supermodel Gisele Bundchen, he won his season opener at home last Monday when he had no business winning. Buffalo had that game locked up when they fumbled a kickoff return with a couple of minutes to go in the game. It's a cliche to say "you do not want to give that guy another chance", but you just do not want to give Tom Brady another chance like that. He went to Ben Watson again and won the game with a sweet TD. The Bills lost the game in the last 3 minutes after dominating the game all through. I am sure the Bills fans were thrilled about this loss.

In game 2, the Raiders were surprisingly competitive and even dominant in the trenches. They bottled up the Chargers for most of the night and ran all over them in the first half. But Philip Rivers took the Chargers down the field for a game winner. This has been an interesting sidebar of the early season football this year. A lot of offenses did nothing all game, but went down the field for a victory at the end. From USC to the Packers to the Chargers, it was the same story. Disappointing loss for the Raiders, but they have something to cheer about. They look much improved, but they still have a long way to go. JaMarcus Russell needs to develop a lot. He is quite raw and can't carry them to victories yet. They have to win despite him and not because of him and thats going to be tough. But to be fair to him, he did his job in this game and put the Raiders ahead in the 4-Th quarter but the defense let the Chargers score and win.

There seem to be many interesting off the field stories in sports the last few days. First there was the "Serena-gate" where she went ballistic on a line judge and got penalized a point on a match point. It sounds tough, but she earned it. She went nuts and deserved to be docked a point. Then Federer misbehaved during his finals on Monday. He used an expletive and got fined later and coming from Federer, it was a little surprising and became big news. He seemed frustrated to the point that he looked out of sorts after that argument and lost the Finals. It happens to the best I guess.

Michael Jordan is getting some grief too for his act in the Hall Of fame ceremony. People are saying his speech was bitter and angry. He went on and on about all the perceived or real insults he had to endure throughout his basketball life and thanked those guys for motivating him! That sure is an odd hall of fame speech. I thought the only interesting point was about Byron Russell. Mike told us how Russell met him during Mike's first retirement and claimed that he could have guarded him if he was still in the NBA. I didn't know about this and how ironic is it that Russell had to guard Mike in the NBA finals, not once but twice. Overall, the feeling is that Mike didn't give a classy speech. Stockton and Robinson on the the other hand gave us the usual humble speech. I especially remember Stockton saying that he was never the best player in his team his entire life. Thats humility and thats what we need more of in the Hall of Fame speeches.