Friday fodder: No overtstating this game

Sports fodder for a Friday morning . . .

The Wolf Pack football season is on the line. Yes, we understand that it's still only September. There are still nine games remaining in the 2008 season starting with Saturday night's game at UNLV. And, of course, the entire Western Athletic Conference season remains on the schedule. But don't let the calendar fool you. The season is very much on the line. The Wolf Pack desperately needs to beat the Rebels for a lot of reasons. The Fremont Cannon must remain a cool shade of blue. The Pack must wipe out the memory of losses to Texas Tech and Missouri. The Pack must prove it can beat a competent team on the road. A victory at UNLV and everything is right in Pack World once again. A loss and, well, the Pack will be 1-3 for the first time since 2001 and you'll be able to get four free tickets to a Pack home game the rest of the season with the purchase of a roll of paper towels at Raley's.

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Make no mistake, a triumph over UNLV will indeed be a great accomplishment. UNLV, after victories over Arizona State and Iowa State, is much better than anyone imagined. It has a bruising running back in Frank Summers, an efficient, exciting quarterback in Omar Clayton and two productive wide receivers in Ryan Wolfe and Casey Flair. The Pack has lost seven of its last nine games away from Mackay Stadium and the offense has scored under 20 points in three of its last four games. The last time that happened to a Chris Ault-coached offense was in 1992. Yeah, this is a huge game for the Pack for a lot of reasons.

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Reason No. 123 for why this is a big game for the Wolf Pack? Now that the Wolf Pack has had two full weeks to recover from its misery in the Show Me Up State, we will see the real Pack defense this weekend. Forget the first three games. Grambling State was a glorified scrimmage and Texas Tech and Missouri are two of the top five offenses (top two?) in the nation. The defense has shown some good things and some, well, we'll forget about the other things so far in 2008. The UNLV game will give a true indication of how much the Pack defense has improved.  

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Forget the Sports Illustrated or Madden Football cover jinxes. Neither one of those two frightening jinxes has anything on the The Wolf Pack Football Media Guide Cover Jinx this year. Running back Luke Lippincott, pitcured on the cover with three of his teammates, is out for the year with an injury. Here's hoping that the cover jinx doesn't claim another unsuspecting victim this year. The Fremont Cannon is also in the photo. 

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Al Davis is a master motivator. The guy looks like he should be sitting in a dark room all by himself staring out of a window for hours but that's just his way of fooling his enemies. Davis, it turns out is a shrewd motivator of men. His latest mind game is his handling of coach Lane Kiffin. Davis has done nothing but criticize Kiffin and threaten to fire him for the past few months. The result? Well, the Raiders are playing their hearts out, the team is rallying around the coaching staff and for the first time in five years there is actual hope for the future in Oakland. Al is a genius.

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You are never going to convince me that golf is a team sport. But the Ryder Cup is the most interesting event of the year, the golfers seem to love it so, hey, we'll play along. Come to think of it, golf is just as much of a team sport as the NBA. And any event that gives Boo Weekley a national stage is fine with me.

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The New York Yankees are not in the playoffs this year and Joe Torre and the Los Angeles Dodgers are. There is a baseball God after all.

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There is a fascinating record chase going on in baseball this season and the national media is missing it completely. Mark Reynolds of the Arizona Diamondbacks, Ryan Howard of the Philadelphia Phillies and Jack Cust of the Oakland A's are battling it out on a nightly basis for the all-time single season strikeout record for a hitter. Heading into Thursday's games, Reynolds was the leader at 199 followed by Howard (196) and Cust (192). Howard set the record last year at 199 meaning that, for the first time in history, we are going to have someone (probably all three of them) whiff more than 200 times in a season. See what happens when you (allegedly) take performance enhancing drugs out of the game?

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A total of 83 players have already fanned 100 or more times this year and another 18 have 90 or more. The Wolf Pack has also contributed to the Century K Club with two former Pack players " San Diego's Kevin Kouzmanoff (132 whiffs) and Toronto's Lyle Overbay (113). Kouz's 132 strikeouts are the most ever by an ex-Pack player in one season (Overbay had 128 in 2004 with Milwaukee). Oh, by the way, Joe DiMaggio never struck out more than 39 times in a season and Nellie Fox fanned just 216 times in 2,367 games in his career. It seems that an emphasis of putting the ball in play in baseball has sadly vanished into the same abyss that also includes free throw shooting in basketball, tackling in football, putting in golf and open-ice checks in hockey.

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The 1972 Miami Dolphins can crack open their bottle of champagne already. The New England Patriots have lost a game. None of the remaining unbeaten teams will get through October without a loss. It's a good season to be an obnoxious 1972 Dolphin.

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Matt Millen's firing by the Detroit Lions was about four years too late. The Lions, after all, were 31-84 under Millen's guidance (since 2001) and even the 1976 Tampa Bay Buccaneers alumni club was starting to laugh at them. But why fire a general manager in the first month of the season? What personnel moves did Millen make since the season started? And you wonder why some franchises never win.