Try the turkey turnover
Coming off Sunday’s 24-17 loss to the Seahawks at Seattle, the hapless Miami Dolphins — 1-9 going into this weekend’s game against the 49ers at San Francisco — visited Alcatraz on Tuesday.
Greg Cote of The Miami Herald wasn’t sure what that meant, but he did see some positives in the team staying on the West Coast.
“The long trip means the Dolphins will miss Thanksgiving at home with their families,” Cote noted. “But that might not be such a bad thing. The way the season is going, there’s a good chance their turkeys would have been intercepted and returned all the way to the store.”
The holiday spirit prevails in Philadelphia, too, something Cote recognized this way: “Well-intended gesture backfires as Eagle players distribute turkeys accompanied by actress Nicollette Sheridan, wearing nothing but a Pilgrim hat.”
Sour grapes?
The intense rivalry between Ohio State and Michigan has gone to the dogs — bomb-sniffing ones.
Michigan coach Lloyd Carr is upset that Ohio State subjected the Wolverines’ players and coaches to searches by drug and bomb-sniffing dogs upon their arrival at Ohio Stadium on Saturday.
Carr vented about the search to reporters on Monday and said he wants the Big Ten commissioner to look into what he called harassment by OSU fans who watched police dogs taking a whiff of every player and their personal belongings.
“If it’s going to be the greatest rivalry in college athletics, which so many of us believe it is, then I don’t think it is too much to say, ‘Let’s have great respect for each other. Let’s treat each other like we would want to be treated,’ ” Carr said.
“I guarantee you that the athletic director at Ohio State doesn’t want his son treated the way that they treated our players.”
The Buckeyes were just preparing the Wolverines for embarrassment on the football field.
One too many questions
David Letterman fed Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger a little slice of humble pie on his late-night talk show.
Letterman was puzzled by the college background of the impressive NFL rookie. Roethlisberger went to Miami of Ohio when so many of the top pro football prospects played for perennial powers such as USC, Oklahoma and the big Miami — the one in Florida.
“Why did you go there?” Letterman asked Tuesday night.
“It was the only school that wanted me, I guess,” Roethlisberger replied.
Letterman couldn’t resist getting in a plug for his own alma mater, a Mid-America Conference rival of Miami.
“When you were at college, I’m guessing you played the feared Mighty Fighting Cardinals of Ball State?” he asked Roethlisberger, who said he had.
“What was your record against the Cardinals?” Letterman continued.
“Three-and-0,” Roethlisberger said, bringing that line of questioning to an abrupt halt.
NASCAR fans can’t brawl
NASCAR driver Morgan Shepard offers one compelling reason why a Detroit-style fracas could never happen in his sport:
“There was a time when it couldn’t happen because none of our fans would ever let go of a beer for any reason, much less throw it at somebody.”