Left Coast Sports Babe

According to former McCain aide Steve Schmidt, Sarah Palin believed she was chosen as the vice-presidential candidate because it was “God’s plan.” If so, this is compelling evidence that God is a Democrat.

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In the midst of an NCAA investigation into major violations with the Trojan football program, Pete Carroll has resigned from USC. Which probably means that he has signed on as coach as the Seahawks. Either way he probably wasn’t going to end up with a bowl eligible team.

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NBC has announced that they will cancel “The Jay Leno Show” at 1000p. They intend to move it to a half hour program at 1135p. Actually the network announced this decision last week on Leno’s show, but nobody saw it.

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Hard-core Brett Favre fans watching the Packers-Cardinals game will say that the ageless quarterback would never have made that game-ending fumble. Of course not, he would have thrown a game ending interception.

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The first NFL Wild-Card game on Sunday started at 1000a Pacific Time. This meant a lot of fans on the West Coast ended up just sleeping through the first quarter of the Baltimore-New England game. Guess what? The Patriots did too.

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According to the University of Texas trainer, apparently Colt McCoy wanted to return to the BCS championship game but the injury had prevented him from “throwing with with the strength or accuracy he needed.”

This would, however, not have disqualified him from playing quarterback for the Raiders.

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For all those looking ahead to next week’s NFL playoffs (and yes, it’s true, there are no bowl games this week, finally), the Arizona Cardinals, after their 51-45 win against the Packers, will take their high-powered offense and somewhat-challenged defense on the road to New Orleans. And the Saints follow a pretty similar model. This could be the first NFL game ever with a triple digit over-under.

(note to casual or non betting fans- the over-under is a bet where you bet on how many TOTAL points will be scored by both teams a game.)
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On the Leno mess. In all seriousness. As someone who grew up looking forward to those times when I could stay up and watch the Tonight Show, mostly Fridays and school breaks, it seemed pretty obvious even then that it was the kind of show you watched before going to bed. I remember Carson talking in an interview about all the men who would come up to him and, thinking they were original, say, “Hey, Johnny, my wife undresses in front of you every night.”

And even when I watched the show, I didn’t always make it to the end. Nonetheless, it was a great way to end the day. Which leads to the problem. NBC claims the ratings for “the Jay Leno Show” weren’t bad, but the networks complained it was a terrible lead in to the news. In the words of Homer Simpson “D’oh”

Anyone who wanted a late night post news show was going to watch Conan or Letterman, because that’s the kind of show they wanted at that time. My guess is that a lot of people who watched Jay turned the set off afterwards and went to bed, and got whatever news they needed online or early am. It just doesn’t feel right to watch a relaxing and sometimes cheesy variety/talk show, and then turn on the local “Fire, weather and murder” show, aka the news.

Not that the Leno show ever really felt like it had quite jelled, but I think almost any similar show with any host would be a failure at that hour, especially in terms of being a news lead-in. IMHO.