5-at-10: Kaepernick to start, MLB playoffs, UTC 2017


              FILE - In this Sept. 1, 2016, file photo, San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick passes against the San Diego Chargers during the first half of an NFL preseason football game, in San Diego. Kaepernick will start at quarterback for the 49ers this week against the Buffalo Bills. Coach Chip Kelly announced the decision Tuesday, Oct. 11, 2016,  to bench Blaine Gabbert and give back the job Kaepernick lost midway through last season.  (AP Photo/Denis Poroy, File)
FILE - In this Sept. 1, 2016, file photo, San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick passes against the San Diego Chargers during the first half of an NFL preseason football game, in San Diego. Kaepernick will start at quarterback for the 49ers this week against the Buffalo Bills. Coach Chip Kelly announced the decision Tuesday, Oct. 11, 2016, to bench Blaine Gabbert and give back the job Kaepernick lost midway through last season. (AP Photo/Denis Poroy, File)

Kaepernick making news on the field

Losers of four in a row, the San Francisco 49ers have officially turned the quarterback reins to Colin Kaepernick.

Maybe you've heard of Mr. Kaepernick, the nation's most famous back-up quarterback. He has earned that moniker not because of his starter's-like salary or even because of less than a few years ago, analysts such as ESPN's Ron Jaworski said Kaepernick was going to be the best quarterback in the NATIONAL Football League.

Nope, by now everyone knows Kaepernick for his presume decision way more than his in-game successes and failures.

Kaepernick was a few plays away from winning a Super Bowl in 2013 and getting back there in 2014. At that time the 49ers gave him a salary that matched his status as a budding quarterback with a promising future on a team on the rise. He got a six-year, $119-million deal heading into the 2015 season with $61 million of that guaranteed. He lost the starting job last year to Blaine Gabbert, which is alarming on so many levels.

(Side point about the benching: The albatross of a contract the 49ers gave Kaepernick would have become a player's option for 2017 depending on playing time and performance during the 2016 season. There's no way a struggling team with no chance of winning unless John Elway in his prime was taking snaps would have a player sit to create contract advantages is there? Not in this league? No way. Right?!?!)

Now, he will get another crack at it this week.

Of course, Kaepernick has become a polarizing figure - fan favorite to the point that his jersey has become the most sold in the game and national antagonist to the point that he also was voted the most hated person in the NFL according to a USA Today poll - because of his protests during the National Anthem.

So his protests have created an avalanche of publicity and notoriety, and that was with Kaepernick not playing. He has even said that he believes he has made a huge impact on countless lives by kneeling during the anthem. (We believe the $1 million he donated to charity to put some finical punch to the protest has had a much bigger affect.)

But is all of that impact a good thing?

It's a fair question considering the unintended splashes those ripples have had. Kaepernick has been steadfast that his protest is about the way police officers treat blacks and not against the military. We have said this in the past, that he can state his intentions about his actions all he wants and his Freedom of Speech certainly allows him to say and do what he believes, but that freedom doesn't mean freedom of the consequences - both intended and unintended.

In fact, if the NFL at some point says players can't protest - a talking point that has to have been bandied about in private meeting rooms among the league's bigwigs - then will he be willing to lose his job for his protest, especially now that he's actually playing. Yes, he has more than $60 million guaranteed, but the question of that would be dicey if you violate league demands, right? (And the league has pegged it's double-digit dips in all of its prime-time TV platforms and drops across the board on all time slots primarily on the presidential election. And that may be the case, but if the election is laying heavy blows to pro football, why are the ratings of college football going up across almost all platforms? Seems the election would be hitting the college game too, right? To think the Kaepernick controversy is not part of the NFL decline is par for the Goodell, head-in-the-sand leadership style, but it seems pretty nonsensical.)

In some ways the bottoming-out of several promising young QBs over the last several years, including Kaepernick, could be part of the decreased TV numbers. The game can be hard to watch at times because half of the league is struggling to find consistent and quality QB play.

So Kaep now gets the chance to protest as a starter and potentially reclaim some of the star-power he had a few seasons ago. Let Kaepernick find something similar to the success he had in 2012 and 2013 seasons, and the waves of protest will only re-energize but it could be another star option at QB.

Ripple effects indeed.

photo FILE - In this Oct. 7, 2016, file photo, Los Angeles Dodgers starting pitcher Clayton Kershaw delivers during the first inning in Game 1 of baseball's National League Division Series against the Washington Nationals at Nationals Park, in Washington. The Dodgers will bring back Game 1 winner Clayton Kershaw on short rest Tuesday to face the Washington Nationals in a critical Game 4 of the National League Division Series. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais, File)

Baseball

Ah, the 'er' months.

Yes, baseball is too slow at times. Yes, the season is too long. Yes, the names and numbers and the new-fangled stats can seem like a cross between alphabet soup and an MIT science experiment. But, when the postseason gets here and the pressure peaks and the drama drips from every pitch, postseason baseball can remind you how gripping the game can be and how heart-quickening the slow-paced game can get.

Last night, the Dodgers built a lead, lost it and won late on a two-out, eighth-inning base hit from Chase Utley, who may 126 years old. (Utley may or may not have said in the postgame interview that he used a tip Yogi Berra taught him when they were rookies together in Florida. If he did, no one would have doubted him.)

The nightcap was even better, as the Cubs ended the magical ride the Giants have in even-number years with a Game 4 win at AT&T Park. Chicago, which certainly did not want to go to a must-have, win-or-face-the-weight-of-a-desperate-fan-base Game 5, scored four runs in the top of the ninth for a 6-5 win.

After being handcuffed for eight innings by Matt Moore, who allowed all of one earned run and two hits while fanning 10, the Cubs blitzed the beleaguer Giants bullpen and punched their ticket with a memorable ninth-inning rally for Saturday's Game 1 of the ALCS.

Who they will face depends on the outcome of Thursday's Game 5 in the Dodgers-Nationals series.

And like most other baseball postseason games, we can expect the unexpected.

photo UTC wide receiver C.J. Board stiff-arms Mercer linebacker LeMarkus Bailey during the Mocs' home football game against the Mercer Bears at Finley Stadium on Saturday, Oct. 8, 2016, in Chattanooga, Tenn.

UTC lands plumb location

Mean Gene Henley had this breaking story in today's TFP that the UTC Mocs will open the 2017 football season.

Yes, that the Mocs will have a 2017 football season is not exactly breaking news. But the phrasing above states simply that the Mocs will open the entire season for almost everyone, playing the weekend before almost all of college football starts.

It has become a tradition for two of the top programs in the Football Championship Subdivision face off a full week before Labor Day weekend, when the FBS non-conference match-ups fill our TV with a long-awaited smorgasbord of college football nirvana.

In years past, North Dakota State, the FCS version of Alabama - actually, that's not an accurate description, since NDSU has been even more dominant, so let's reverse that and say Alabama is trying to be the FBS version of NDSU - has been the prominent piece in the early showdown. Now it appears there will be another game, as UTC and Jacksonville State will play Aug. 27 in the Montgomery Kickoff Classic.

There are two pretty large takeaways from this development.

First, the game will be on ESPN, which even beyond whatever financial rewards that come with that, obviously gives the Mocs a national platform and a reach that is impossible to for schools in the FCS to ever turn down.

Secondly, it is just the latest exclamation point to the statement of where UTC football has come in the relative short time under Russ Huesman. A decade ago, the only way UTC would have been in a game like this is if some hotshot TV exec wanted to put two of the worst programs in America on the field under the heading, "Someone has to win, right?" and sold that as the opposite of what everyone else tries to do. (Think of it as the season-opening version of the RayCom Media Camellia Bowl.)

Congrats Mocs, this is cool.

This and that

- Tiger Woods will not play this week at the Safeway Open. We discussed this yesterday. Here's some video of Woods swinging at a fan clinic Tuesday, and the images of those swings certainly lend credence to the thoughts that it may be the mental hurdles more than the physical ones still standing in front of Woods.

- Because high school sports claims simply aren't the same before the interwebs, here's a video today of Jack Rogers, a punter at an Indiana high school, kicking the ball the length of the field on Friday night. He was a few years deep in his end zone, boomed it 70-plus yards from the original line of scrimmage, and a friendly bounced led to a touchback. End zone to end zone. Bet Nick Saban has already been versed about Rogers.

- Leave it to the stats monsters at Elias Sports to offer up this dandy: Wrigley Field, which opened in 1916, has hosted fewer playoff games than AT&T Park, which opened in 2000. The Giants have played 37 postseason games at AT&T the Cubs have played 33 postseason games at Wrigley.

- Crazy stat, part II (this one from ESPN's Paul Kuharsky, who covers the AFC South): Marcus Mariota at home 11 TDs and 12 interceptions with a 76.7 passer rating; Mariota on the road has 15 TDs and three picks with a 100.6 rating. No place like home our tucks.

- Jim Harbaugh may have made roughly $9 million from Michigan last year, but dude still knows a good deal when he sees one. He and the Mrs. went to Ruth Chris' Steakhouse in Ann Arbor to cash in on the half off the restaurant offered because the Wolverines beat Rutgers 78-0. Here's betting the place has a length waiting list this week, huh? And yes, that's Coach Khakis with a nice tall glass of milk with his steak.

Today's question

Let's start a new game: One word-Wednesday. In one word, describe the topics above.

Postseason baseball is ________. UTC getting a shot on ESPN is ___________. Colin Kaepernick's Sunday will be _____________.

And gang, feel free to pitch some one-word Wednesday options back this way.

If you need a Rushmore, today is National Gumbo Day, so we will ask for nominations of the Rushmore of Soups.

Go, and enjoy the day.

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