By Tim Marcin
Elm Staff Writer
The Good
The Los Angeles Lakers are out to show everyone who the real champions are. With all the free-agent frenzy and talk about Miami, the Lakers have come and shown that they are still the kings of the basketball world—daring anyone to try and dethrone them. At the time of this writing they have a 7-0 record, and are the only undefeated team left in the league. Their dominance has been a sight to watch. Even with hobbled star Kobe Byrant playing very limited time (as little as 12 minutes in a game), they are easily churning out victories. Half the time they seem to let a team hang with them until the fourth quarter, and then decide it’s winning time. Imagine what will happen when Kobe is fully healthy and back into assassin-mode. Imagine when their dominant young center Andrew Bynum comes back from his knee-injury. Perhaps all the talk about a Heat championship was a bit hasty. It is going to take quite a bit to take down the Lakers.
The Bad
TCU is legit. All you have to do is look at four numbers and see why that is the case—47-7 and 3 vs. 5. Those number are the score of TCU’s win over Utah and their respective national rankings before the game. Honestly, how ridiculous is that? Not only did TCU beat the fifth-ranked team in the country, they demolished them. By halftime TCU had compiled a 23-0 lead, on the way outgaining Utah 328-72 in total yards. It seems this non-traditional conference school showed what it is really made of.
Wrong. Here comes the proverbial “but” that seems to accompany the TCU’s and Boise State’s of the college football world. TCU is still not put into the national championship talk because they beat up another non-major conference team. Now, people can make the argument that Utah was just really bad, rather than TCU being really good. By defeating Utah so easily, they actually made their situation worse, because they beat a fellow pretender, instead of a legitimate #5 team. It seems there is no winning for the small schools of the world.
The Ugly
Say it ain’t so Cam. Well, actually he is doing just that. In the midst of numerous negative allegations star Auburn quarterback Cam Newton has denied them all. “Superman”, as he has come to be known, has had stories brought up about him that are less than flattering. There are rumors he was facing expulsion at Florida for cheating before he transferred to Blinn College, a JUCO in Texas. There are rumors that an associate of his was seeking out cash bribes from schools to land his services as quarterback during his intense recruitment out of junior college.
I hope Newton is telling the truth. I really do. It is getting old, seeing the stories about disgraced college players, universities, and coaches. I’ve grown tired of seeing the Reggie Bush’s, Bruce Pearl’s, and John Calipari’s of college athletics. I hope Cam did none of these things. I hope it is just people trying to bring him down from all of his success. Whether the allegations are true or not, it is very shady that these things only came out after all of Newton’s success. It seems like it could be a ploy to push away Heisman votes from the person who was all but a lock to win it. These rumors could all be fabrications. Will it turn out that way? Who knows, but if recent trends continue, it seems highly unlikely that “Superman” doesn’t at least have a few blemishes on his record.