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**Udog** · 09-10-2016, 08:19 AM

Armadillo: Saturday's six-pack

— Louisville 62, Syracuse 28– Cardinal QB Lamar Jackson is really good.

— Marlins 4, Dodgers 3– Clayton Kershaw threw 66 pitches in 3 innings in his return off the DL.

— The Cigna commercial with the TV doctors in it is tremendous.

— Of San Diego 2B Ryan Schimpf’s first 50 major league hits, 18 were homers, only 12 were singles.

— As of 1am Friday night here in the east, the Westgate Super Contest had 1,826 entrants, which puts the prize pool over $2.5M. Costs $1,500 to get in, you pick five games a week. Last year’s winner got over $900K.

— Tampa Bay Rays fired their hitting coach this week, three weeks before the end of the season. Yup, that should fix all their problems.

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Armadillo: Saturday's List of 13: Clearing out a cluttered mind…….

13) It costs a lot of money to advertise on NFL games:

— A 30-second spot on Thursday night NFL is $560,000.
— A 30-second spot on Sunday night NFL is $700,000.
— A 30-second spot on a 4:25 FOX game is $700.000.
— A 30-second spot on a 4:25 CBS game is $650,000.
— A 30-second spot on a 1:00 game is from $300,000-500,000.

12) Denver 21, Carolina 20– Pretty good game; Broncos escape when Panthers miss a 50-yard FG wide left with 0:04 to play. Carolina better protect Cam Newton better going forward or he ain’t going to last through sixteen games.

11) This is our quote of the day today:
“I don’t think you really know your team until the middle of October.”
Bill Belichick

Think about that; if one of the greatest coaches ever doesn’t know his team until 5-6 games have been played, how is a handicapper supposed to feel secure that he knows 32 NFL teams and 128 college teams?

Picking winners is a very difficult job; the best are grinders. Anyone who guarantees you a profit is a huckster to be avoided.

10) Mets gave Tim Tebow a $100,000 signing bonus? Why? Plus they let him keep his ESPN gig, so Tebow will be gone from the instructional league two days a week. This makes very little sense.

9) Jared Goff will be a healthy scratch Monday night, which is fine. He is not ready to succeed in an NFL game yet. The last QB who was the #1 pick in the draft who was a healthy scratch in Week 1?

Carson Palmer, in 2003. He’s had a pretty good career– letting a QB develop at his own pace is smart.

8) Remember The Paper Chase, the old TV series with super serious John Houseman as a law school professor? It ran for eight years back from 1978-86– was looking thru the credits, and it turns out that the comic actor Jon Lovitz (A League of Their Own, Happiness, Big) was in two episodes.

Sometimes two people/things just don’t go together; Jon Lovitz and the Paper Chase is one of those. He is a very funny man; that was a very serious show.

7) Read on the Interweb where USC coach Clay Helton assumed the play-calling duties during the third quarter of the Trojans’ 52-6 loss in their opener against Alabama.

The play-caller had been new offensive coordinator Tee Martin, who was the QB that replaced Peyton Manning at Tennessee (Vols won the national title that year). But Martin was calling plays for the first time last week and it didn’t go well- he had been the WR coach at USC the previous four years.

We have to monitor the Trojans going forward, to see who calls plays from this point on, since Martin is also a strong recruiter.

6) Four NFL starting QBs are free agents next winter: Kirk Cousins (Wash), Ryan Fitzpatrick (Jets), Blaine Gabbert (SF), Case Keenum (LA).

5) I was talking the other day about Jameis Winston’s halftime rant at the Florida State game Monday night; the clip I saw on Twitter was longer than the one that aired on Showtime’s reality show on the Seminoles. It was good, mostly positive, but emphatic and emotional.

I highly recommend the Showtime program; college teams WANT the publicity, so you get little more pure football stuff than you do on the HBO Hard Knocks show, where the team is a reluctant participant.

4) San Francisco Giants haven’t won consecutive road games since June 30-July 1, in Oakland/Arizona. Giants are 2-11 in game following their last 13 wins.

3) Two rap singers had $3M worth of jewelry stolen out of their tour bus this week. This raises several questions for me:

— How much jewelry is $3M worth of jewelry?
— Is this jewelry insured?
— Was it in a safe and if so, was the safe secured within the bus?
— Does the bus have a security camera?
— What the bleep are you doing with $3M worth of anything on a bus?

2) Last time Jimmy Garoppolo started a football game that counted, the opponent was Towson State in a I-AA college game. Sunday night’s game is on NBC, on national TV. Eastern Illinois has some prominent alumni: Sean Payton, Tony Romo, Mike Shanahan, but Garoppolo is in the spotlight this week.

1– Boston College’s freshman class this fall represents 46 states and 41 countries; so says their website. I’m not sure if I could name 41 countries.

**Udog** · 09-10-2016, 08:22 AM

Woops! I started posting before I realized there is no WNBA today. They're back tomorrow with a full schedule.

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Saturday's WNBA Trends and Indexes - 9/10

Saturday's WNBA Trends and Indexes - 9/10

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