Wide receiver Miles Austin helped lead the Dallas Cowboys to a 37-21 victory over the Atlanta Falcons Sunday at Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, Texas.
Austin, 25, an undrafted free-agent from Monmouth University in New Jersey, had eight receptions for 171 yards and two touchdowns as the Cowboys improved their record to 4-2.
The previous week, Miles established the Cowboys franchise record for receiving yards in game with 250 in a 26-20 overtime win versus the Chiefs in Kansas City and he now has caught 21 passes for 502 yards and five touchdowns to date in this 2009 season.
Austin was a standout athlete at Garfield High School in the "Garden State" where he lettered in football, basketball and track and field.
Despite being honored as a high school senior on the gridiron with All-Bergen County and All-State honors, Austin did not garner much interest from major college football programs.
So, Austin decided to stay close to his hometown and play for the Hawks in nearby West Long Branch. Monmouth University is a relatively small school that has impressively sent four squads to the NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Tournament since 1996.
Beyond their prowess on the hardwood, Monmouth is also known because an academic building located in the center of their pristine campus, Woodrow Wilson Hall, was utilized as "Daddy Warbucks'" mansion in the famed film Annie.
Austin and Miami Dolphins tight end John Nalbone are the only two players who attended Monmouth and eventually ascended to the NFL.
“He’s definitely a big part of this offense,” Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo said of Austin. “I’m glad to see all of his hard work and effort are paying off.”
Austin has clearly supplanted the expensive Roy Williams as Romo’s primary receiving threat.
The unheralded Jersey superstar is currently projected to conclude this season with 56 receptions for a staggering 1,339 yards and 13 touchdowns.
During a scene in the 1982 musical film, Annie says to Daddy Warbucks, “You’re the greatest thing since sliced bread.”
Warbucks responded to Annie by asking, “I beg your pardon?”
Annie reiterated her comment and said, “I know it’s none of my business, but you never notice anything.”
Romo and Cowboys Owner Jerry Jones have noticed Austin and his stellar abilities on the field.
If Austin is able to continue performing at this elite level, soon the entire “Lone Star State” will think the New Jersey native actually is “the greatest thing since sliced bread.”
The New York Jets destroyed the putrid Oakland Raiders 38-0 Sunday afternoon at the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum.
Unfortunately for New York (4-3), their dominating triumph came at a great expense.
One week after the Jets lost defensive standout Kris Jenkins for the season with a torn anterior cruciate ligament, offensive sparkplug Leon Washington fractured his right fibula on his first carry of the game.
Washington, 27, a 2008 Pro Bowl and All-Pro selection, had his lower leg snapped when he was tackled by Raiders defenders and the broken bone grotesquely pierced his skin.
“I could see blood spurting out,” said one player of Washington’s compound fracture. “I’ve never seen anything like that before.”
Running back Thomas Jones, who had shared carries with Washington in the backfield to date, said the Jets as a team are demoralized by the loss.
“The team is devastated; I know I’m devastated,” said Jones, 31, who rushed for 121 yards and a touchdown in the victory. “Honestly, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it.”
Jets Head Coach Rex Ryan stated that he believes Washington will fully recover from the injury and be ready to play by the start of the 2010 season.
“It’s a pretty severe injury,” Ryan conceded. “We expect a good outcome. Hopefully, he’ll rejoin us sooner than later.”
The Jets will likely be a different and far less explosive team without their best playmaker on the offensive side of the ball.
On the positive side of an otherwise glum trip out west, Jets rookie running backs Shonn Greene and Danny Woodhead showed flashes of pleasant brilliance on the gridiron.
Greene, 24, the winner of both the Doak Walker Award and Jim Brown Trophy in 2008 when he played for the University of Iowa, ran for 144 yards and two touchdowns against the Raiders anemic defense.
“Shonn Greene’s an outstanding player,” Ryan said of the back the Jets traded up twelve spots to select in the third round of the 2009 NFL Draft. “That’s what we’ve been trying to say since we drafted him in the third round and traded up to get him. There is a reason we had him rated as a first-round talent.”
Greene has a chance to be a very forceful and productive player in the NFL. However, he is not considered a viable option to catch passes out of the backfield.
“He’s more of a bulldozer type…great vision, great feet,” said Ryan of Greene. “Where Leon is kind of a homerun hitter…catch the ball…you name it.”
In an effort to compensate for the loss of Washington and boost the short-yardage passing game, Ryan said that he intends to utilize Woodhead, 24, in the role of a flanker.
Woodhead, who was awarded the Harlon Trophy Award for the best player in NCAA Division II football at Chadron State College in Nebraska in 2006 and 2007, was signed by the Jets as an undrafted free agent running back in 2008.
Woodhead, who ran the 40-yard dash in 4.33 seconds at his pro day workout, was the all-time NCAA leading rusher until his mark was broken last winter.
Sunday, Woodhead exhibited his quickness and he rushed the ball three times for 24 yards.
Greene and Woodhead could very well develop into a formidable trio in the backfield with Jones.
However, Ryan quickly squashed any talk that Washington’s injury could be a blessing in disguise for the Jets.
“Maybe three or four guys have to replace him,” Ryan said of the former Florida State University star.
“He’s so versatile. He’s a Pro Bowl returner. Then you’ve got a back than can run the ball inside and outside. He’s not just a change-of-pace type back, he can do it all. He’s great out of the backfield, he can protect the quarterback. He can run the Seminole package and you can flex him out as a receiver. Really, he is a great versatile player and there is no way one person can replace him.”
Jets Pro-Bowl center Nick Mangold claimed that Greene says “about five words” every day.
Still, Greene did make it clear that he’s “not going to fill Leon’s shoes.”
Nevertheless, Greene is confident that the Jets ground game will continue to fly despite the loss of Washington.
“I think we’re running on all cylinders now,” said Greene. “It’s going to be scary.”
If Jones, Greene and Woodhead prove to be an effective trio, the Jets are “going to be scary” for all of their opponents henceforth.
In a battle between famed Polish fighters, Tomasz “Granite Chin” Adamek defeated Andrew Golota by TKO in the fifth round to capture the IBF International Heavyweight Title Saturday night at the Arena Lodz in Poland.
Adamek (39-1, 27 KOs) utilized his vastly superior speed to absolutely dominate Golota (41-8-1, 33 KOs) until American referee Bill Clancy rescued the beaten pugilist from absorbing any further punishment.
Golota, 41, had a celebrated amateur career that saw him emerge victorious 111 times and he earned the bronze medal in the heavyweight division at the 1988 Seoul Olympics.
At his focused best, Golota displayed tremendous power in the ring and he was a legitimate heavyweight prospect in the mid-1990’s.
Unfortunately for Golota, the owner of a lengthy criminal rap sheet, he is an incredibly unintelligent man and he is a worthless coward who has squandered all of his ample talents.
Adamek, 32, who weighed a measly 214 pounds in comparison to Golota who tipped the scales at 256 pounds, is the complete antithesis of his Polish counterpart.
Adamek is essentially a ballooned cruiserweight and he fights with true passion and determination.
Some boxing analysts have speculated that Adamek may be interested in fighting either Wladimir (53-3, 47 KOs) or Vitali Klitschko (38-2, 37 KOs) for one of the heavyweight belts that they respectively hold.
A matchup pitting Adamek against either Klitschko brother would be a huge attraction in Europe or in a culturally diverse city like New York.
Adamek would ultimately lack the physicality to seriously damage or compete with Wladimir or Vitali Klitschko.
Still, there is no question that Adamek would indeed compete with every morsel in his body.
On the flipside, if Golota was even remotely bright and if he ever fought with genuine grit, he could have beaten any fighter in the world during the prime of his career.
Instead of becoming a respected champion, Golota is known as a cheap-shot artist and a carnival act that incited violent riots and who is viewed with almost universal scorn outside of his native country.
It has long been said that, “the saddest thing in life is wasted talent.”
Tomasz Adamek has gotten the most out of his abilities as a prizefighter. Andrew Golota is a bum and a sorry “wasted talent.”
Lefthander Andy Pettitte and the New York Yankees defeated the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim 5-2 Sunday night in the Bronx to capture their 40th American League Pennant.
Pettitte, 37, a two-time All-Star selection who has accumulated the most victories of any MLB pitcher since 1995, allowed only seven hits and one earned run in 6 1/3 innings.
“He did what he has done his whole career,” said Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter of the 2001 ALCS MVP.
The native of Texas is set to make his eighth appearance in the World Series when the Yankees host the Philadelphia Phillies on Wednesday evening.
Many onlookers have long considered Pettitte to be a serviceable pitcher who is not among baseball’s elite hurlers.
Those skeptics are simply incorrect.
Andy Pettitte, who has a career record of 228-133 and owns a .629 winning percentage, is a spectacular talent and he should garner serious Hall of Fame consideration when he eventually retires.
With his victory Sunday, Pettitte passed John Smoltz for the most postseason wins in history and he also established the record for the most series-clinching victories with five.
Additionally, Pettitte, a four-time World Series champion, has twice been a 20-game winner and he has never endured a losing season in his entire professional career.
Last September, Pettitte started the last game for the Yankees at the old Yankee Stadium.
Don’t be surprised if Pettitte is the pitcher that leads New York to their first World Series championship at the New Yankee Stadium.
Pettitte was once quoted as saying, “Whatever I do, I love to win. I don’t care if it’s tennis or ping pong. I’ll kill myself to win it.”
Thankfully for Pettitte, he wins much more than he loses.
The much-hyped Super Six World Boxing Classic tournament began last Saturday night in two separate European states with “King” Arthur Abraham and Carl Froch winning their respective bouts to commence the unique event.
The tournament was primarily established to anoint a new champion in the super middleweight division after its longtime titlist, Joe Calzaghe, relinquished his crowns in 2007 and ultimately retired in February 2009.
The finals of the World Boxing Classic tournament are expected to occur sometime in May or June 2011.
Many fans of the Sweet Science are already clamoring for a matchup that would pit the former champion Calzaghe against the winner of this unprecedented tournament.
Unfortunately, Calzaghe (46-0, 32 KOs) has made it emphatically clear that he would rather become infected with herpes than return to the ring to face the winner of the Super Six World Boxing Classic.
“I’m enjoying retirement,” said Calzaghe, 37, a Welshmen who is only the third European boxer ever to retire as an undefeated world champion. “I don’t want to fight.
My kids don’t want me to fight. Not too many fighters retire at the right time. That means more to me than money. Honestly, there is no desire in me. Nothing in me at all wants to fight again.”
Many boxing observers and analysts predict that either Abraham (31-0, 25 KOs) or Froch (26-0, 20 KOs) will emerge victorious next year.
Calzaghe is readily aware that boxing promoters and network executives will attempt to entice him out of retirement with lucrative deals to scrap the Classic’s eventual winner.
Still, Calzaghe maintains that he will rebuff any offer that is proposed to him no matter how exorbitant the purse may become.
“I’ll tell them what I told you,” said Calzaghe, a southpaw who Ring magazine once rated as pound-for-pound one of the top 10 boxers in the world. “No.”
“The Pride of Wales” claims that he wishes a Super Six tourney had existed when he was still an active fighter.
“Of course I wish they had this when I was boxing,” said Calzaghe. “This (168-pound) division is close to my heart. My time was a frustrating time. I couldn’t get the great fights. It was not a very illustrious division. This is a great tournament that is great for boxing. There are too many champions out there. This should settle that.”
Calzaghe’s must notable victories came at the expenses of Super Six competitor Mikkel Kessler (42-1, 32 KOs), former IBF super middleweight champion Jeff Lacy (25-3, 17 KOs), and geriatric pugilists Bernard Hopkins (49-5-1, 32 KOs) and Roy Jones, Jr. (54-5, 40 KOs).
If Calzaghe had battled either Hopkins, 44, or Jones, 40, in the primes of their careers, he would have been utterly massacred by either of those two legendary boxers.
Calzaghe possessed great pugilistic skills and he is an enormously accomplished fighter.
But, “The Pride of Wales” was never able to secure a signature victory that would have definitively cemented his legacy as an all-time great.
Calzaghe stated that he still occasionally spars and he has maintained his conditioning.
Additionally, Calzaghe said he hasn’t “let himself get fat” and he is very confident that he would still prevail today over any fighter in his weight class.
“I’d be a fool to come back,” said Calzaghe. “I have too much good going on in my life.”
As noted previously, Calzaghe was quoted as saying, “Not too many fighters retire at the right time.”
If Calzaghe upholds his stance and he does not fight again, he will be a boxing novelty in the sense that he escaped from the sport with his health entirely intact and his finances secure.
In this particular instance, fans should believe Calzaghe and allow him to prepare for the next stage in his life.
However, if Calzaghe relents and returns to the ring like most boxers do, he will not retire an undefeated champion.
Calzaghe will turn 38 in March and age has never been kind to prizefighters.
As Calzaghe himself said, he would simply “be a fool to come back.”
Ukrainian WBC heavyweight champion Vitali “Dr. Iron Fist” Klitschko is scheduled to defend his crown against undefeated challenger Kevin “Kingpin” Johnson on December 12 at the PostFinance-Arena in Bern, Switzerland.
Klitschko (38-2, 37 KOs), the owner of the highest knockout percentage (92.5%) of any heavyweight boxing champion ever, badly bludgeoned Cris Arreola (27-1, 24 KOs) last month in Los Angeles before the product of Riverside’s corner stopped the fight after the conclusion of the 10th round.
When the active Klitschko, 38, scraps Johnson (22-0-1, 9 KOs) in a couple of months, it will be the third time he has fought in this calendar year alone.
“I feel top fit, had super preparations in Los Angeles and really enjoyed the fight against Arreola,” said Klitschko, the first professional boxing world champion to hold a PH. D. “I can barely wait to climb into the ring again. Kevin Johnson is very dangerous. He has already had 23 professional fights, is undefeated and has significantly better technique than my last opponent.”
Johnson, 30, who was raised in the gritty streets of Asbury Park, N.J., is a tactician in the ring who is known to employ a dominant jab that famed trainer Emmanuel Steward once said is “the fastest since Larry Holmes.”
Unfortunately for Johnson, his jab is somewhat neutralized because he badly lacks knockout power in either of his fists.
“I’ve worked long and hard for this chance and I’m going to take it,” said Johnson, who went 14-2 as an amateur pugilist and captured the New Jersey Golden Gloves title. “I’m sorry for Klitschko that I have to spoil his Christmas.”
Johnson’s legitimate jab should allow him to stay competitive with Klitschko in the matchup’s initial rounds.
However, it is extremely unlikely that any of Johnson’s feathery punches will seriously hurt Klitschko.
As the fight progresses, Klitschko’s brutish power and thunderous blows will inevitably fatigue Johnson and the “Kingpin’s” offensive tactics will ultimately be rendered useless after the middle rounds.
“I will not underestimate Johnson and as always will prepare myself meticulously for my opponent,” Klitschko said.
Expect “Dr. Steel Hammer” to provide Johnson with a Ukrainian version of “Greetings from Asbury Park.”
But, in this instance, the “Kingpin” won’t appreciate Klitschko’s violent welcoming.
Keywords: Boxing, Dallas Cowboys, Monmouth University, New York Jets, New York Yankees
