Mississippi defensive back Senquez Golson (21) intercepts a pass in the end zone intended for Alabama tight end O.J. Howard (88) during the fourth quarter of an NCAA college football game in Oxford, Miss., Saturday, Oct. 4, 2014. No. 11 Mississippi beat No. 3 Alabama 23-17. (AP Photo/AL.com, Vasha Hunt)For proof that not all sports weekends are created equal, allow me to nominate the four days just past - Thursday night, Friday, Saturday and Sunday - as the best in a long, long time.
In fact, let's just go ahead and extend this excellence through tonight due to the baseball playoffs. We'll even hope that Seattle at Washington is a worthwhile Monday Night Football show, though it would seem somewhat less than that at first glance.
Then again, who could have imagined the Cleveland Browns' historic 29-28 win over our terrible Tennessee Titans -- the largest comeback win by a road team (the Browns trailed 28-3 late in the second quarter) in NFL history -- before Sunday's implosion at LP Field?
So with apologies to all those who landed on the wrong side of the scoreboard the past 85 hours or so -- everyone from the Oregon Ducks, to Baylor School's football team, to the Tennessee Vols, to Alabama, to Oklahoma, to the Ol' Ball Coach, to Clayton Kershaw, to the Washington Nationals, to the Atlanta Falcons and Titans -- the winning efforts were remarkable. And uplifting. And educational going forward.
We'll start with last Thursday night in Eugene, Ore., home to some of the worst uniforms in the history of college sports and a foreshadower of the weekend to come. Having stunned the Oregon Ducks a year ago, no one expected visiting Arizona to repeat that upset. The undefeated Cactus Cats not only duplicated last year's shocker but also served notice that they intend to remain in the College Football Playoff talk for awhile longer this autumn.
Mark Wiedmer started work at the Chattanooga News-Free Press on Valentine's Day of 1983. At the time, he had to get an advance from his boss to buy a Valentine gift for his wife. Mark was hired as a graphic artist but quickly moved to sports, where he oversaw prep football for a time, won the "Pick' em" box in 1985 and took over the UTC basketball beat the following year. By 1990, he was the newspaper's lead sports columnist, a title he still holds today after a couple of Tennessee Sports Writer of the Year awards and a box full of other honors. He joined the staff of the Chattanooga Times Free Press when the Free Press and Times merged in 1999.
Mark hails from Hopkinsville, Ky., and graduated from Centre College.
Contact Mark at 423-757-6273. or mwiedmer@timesfreepress.com.Yet fun as that was, it was little more than a deviled quail egg appetizer at the start of one of those nine-course, massive medieval meals.
Whether it was the St. Louis Cardinals' 10-9 win against the LA Dodgers' Kershaw in the opening game of the NLDS -- a victory sparked by Kershaw killer Matt Carpenter after the probable Cy Young winner took a 6-1 lead into the seventh -- or the Kansas City Royals' third straight extra-inning postseason triumph later that night, or the overwhelming high school football brilliance displayed locally by McCallie over Baylor and Notre Dame over Signal Mountain, Friday was pretty heady stuff.
Yet great as those were, they had nothing on both the gridiron and diamond come Saturday. Five of the top eight teams in college football fell harshly to earth, led by Ole Miss over No. 3 Alabama and TCU over No. 4 Oklahoma. That Left Coast cross-town rivals Southern Cal and UCLA also both lost only added to the mayhem.
Throw in San Francisco's 18-inning win over Washington -- the longest game (time-wise) in major league postseason history -- and the Dodgers' sublime 3-2 win over St. Looie and you could have skipped Sunday altogether and still had an unforgettable sports weekend.
And that's without digesting the Vols' 10-9 fourth-quarter collapse against Florida or South Carolina's last-period meltdown at Kentucky, where the Lamecocks watched UK run off the game's final 21 points in a 45-38 comeback that dropped the Ol' Ball Coach Steve Spurrier's lifetime record against UK to 20-2.
One moment from each of those games is worthy of replay. In the case of the Florida-UT contest, Gators coach Will Muschamp's postgame shot supposedly aimed at UT fans -- "It's great to see all these people out here getting disappointed. I love it." -- could have arguably been a double-barreled blast at the Florida faithful, given how much most seem to want Muschamp gone.
But later reports that Muschamp delivered the remark because of a classless chant by UT students aimed at the Gators -- "(Expletive) you, Florida" -- might deserve an investigation by the UT administration, since college students should A) abstain from profanity in a very public setting and B) come up with something far more creative.
As for Spurrier, it's tough to criticize a coach whose guided the Gamecocks to three straight 11-win seasons, but for the love of Vince Lombardi, when you've got two minutes on the clock, three timeouts in your pocket, you've already piled up 280 yards on the ground against a run-challenged defense and you just lost the lead due to an interception returned for a touchdown, why are you passing the ball from the 50-yard-line?
It makes you wonder if the ol' ball coach may not be about to head off into the ol' sunset on a golf cart named "My Way."
Then there's the future fates of the Titans and Falcons to consider. Could any two teams in the NFL combine for worse defenses than these guys? Yes, Atlanta may ultimately qualify for the playoffs because it's fortunate enough to reside in the NFL South, but almost certainly forced to play on the road, but it's next to impossible to see the Falcs winning a postseason contest. In the case of the Titans, coach Ken Whisenhunt is lucky he's in his first year because this franchise has rarely looked more hopeless.
Nevertheless, on a weekend when Peyton Manning threw his 500th, 501st, 502nd and 503rd NFL touchdowns to pull within five of Brett Favre's record 508, on a weekend Auburn again proved it's the nation's best football team, regardless of its No. 2 ranking and Ole Miss and Mississippi State rose to a tied No. 3, on a weekend major league baseball proved to be anything but past its prime, anyone voting on the greatest invention in history would have been hard-pressed not to choose the television remote.
And why a lot of us will spend the next five days working toward another weekend and another round of potentially memorable ballgames.
Contact Mark Wiedmer at mwiedmer@timesfreepress.com.