Broncos make their final two picks of the day (we think) taking safety Josh Barrett out of Arizona State and fullback Peyton Hillis from Arkansas. No question the Broncos addressed some needs in the final round, getting younger at safety and adding a lead blocker that had plenty of success in the SEC…
Barrett is the second ASU Sun Devil taken by the Broncos in this draft along with running back Ryan Torain. Overall the Broncos take two players from Virginia Tech, two from the MAC, and three that played their college ball in the state of Arizona (two Sun Devils and a Wildcat). Might want to spread out those scouts next year…
Best measurable for Barrett? That would be his 4.37 40-yard dash time. Worst situation for Barrett? That would be John Lynch, Hamza Abdullah, Marquand Manuel, and Marlon McCree all being currently ahead of him on the depth chart. Again, more special teams help for 2008…
Further proof that things are just different in the south… peytonhillis.com does indeed exist. That’s right, the Razorbacks’ fullback has his own site that includes the disclaimer “This site is a fan website. This site is in no way associated with Peyton Hillis or the University of Arkansas.”
Seriously though, the Broncos have used converted running backs at fullback for far too long. Cecil Sapp and Mike Bell simply didn’t get the job done last year, while Peyton Hillis was the lead blocker for Darren McFadden and Felix Jones in college. At 6-1 and 243 he’s a real big boy that bench presses 355 pounds. How much better does Selvin Young’s speed look with a hole in front of him?
That will do it for my 2008 draft day blog… thanks for reading… if you use any of my one-liners please send royalties to Nate Kreckman at Mile High Sports, 1424 Larimer St. Suite 100, Denver, 80202.
Onto the sixth round. Broncos take middle linebacker Spencer Larson out of Arizona, the Broncos second Pac-10 choice in this year’s draft.
Larsen was the only Mormon player on the Wildcats’ roster, surprising many by choosing Arizona over Brigham Young. He went on his LDS mission for two years during his collegiate career, but was back for the Wildcats in the ‘05 season. He’s the oldest Broncos’ draft choice (thus far) this weekend at 24 years of age.
Larsen will certainly have his opportunities. Niko Koutouvides’ career pedigree says he is far from a definite at middle linebacker, so Larsen could get his shot in training camp.
Further evidence that these draft investigators are putting way too much information on these guys. This from NFL.com… “Larsen also found his future wife while away on his church mission. bAnn, who attended nursing school at Central Arizona during Spencer’s junior year with the Wildcats, attended Gilbert Highland High School with Spencer, although they did not date one another. When he moved to Tucson, she enrolled at Brigham Young. She wrote to Spencer while he was in Chile, but both were involved in somewhat serious relationships with other people.” I really hope the Broncos held out to find the nature of these letters before committing to drafting this kid. Unbelievable…
Two picks to go in the seventh, I’ll talk to you then…
Ryan Clady and Eddie Royal meet the Denver media, plus the Broncos make two picks in the fifth round…
Apparently it’s not enough to just ask first round picks about what they’ll bring to the football field. Ryan Clady told the media, ”I can dunk. I like playing basketball. It’s fun.” At 6-6 and 317 pounds, he might just have the toughness the Nuggets are looking for in the middle. Pau Gasol might think twice going to the rack with a load like that in the middle…
Again the Devin Hester conversation springs up regarding the Broncos second round pick Eddie Royal, who said he tries to model his game after Hester’s and he’s “been studying film on him ever since he was at Miami.” The Broncos will be thrilled if Royal becomes half the player Hester is, which is still at least 3 return touchdowns a year…
Broncos take running back Ryan Torain out of Arizona State with their first of two fifth round picks. The “Torain-Train” sprained his ankle against CU and missed some time last season but still finished his senior year averaging 5.0 yards a carry. Unfortunately his rookie year in Denver will most likely consist of being a “special teams contributor.”
Torain will have a better career as long as he doesn’t like to “make it Torain” too much. Fortunately he wasn’t drafted by Dallas.
Broncos return to Virginia Polytechnic Intitute with the 148th overall pick in the fifth round, picking up defensive tackle Carlton Powell. He’s a wide load at 6-2 and 301 pounds that did a great job of absorbing blockers in college. Now he’ll fight it out with Dewayne Robertson and Marcus Thomas for a starting spot with the Broncos…
More to come… thank God for MLB TV and a wireless connection…
A beautiful Sunday morning at the Valley of the Dove. The donuts are fresh, the hangovers are fading, and the Broncos are enamored with the MAC…
Broncos start the day grabbing another O-Lineman, this time Kory Lichtensteiger out of Bowling Green. The draft gurus call Lichtensteiger “one of the most fundamentally sound trap blockers in college football.” He actually falls at number three on my list. Don’t ask me to name anyone else on that list though…
The Denver media contingent got a hearty laugh when Lichtensteiger admitted on a conference call that he had no idea who Tom Nalen is. Besides just being more evidence of how detached from reality most sports writers are, we’re talking about a college kid. He’s probably way more into Playstation 3, text messaging, and cheap beer than breaking down NFL rosters. It would actually surprise me, and frankly concern me more if this kid actually knew who the starting center for the Denver Broncos is…
Eleven picks later the Broncos grab a former Golden Flash, cornerback Jack Williams out of Kent State. With Champ Bailey, Dre Bly, and Dominique Foxworth currently sitting on the roster, this pick screams future help as well as “best available player on the board.” Somehow I have a hard time believing he’ll actually turn out to be that.
Williams earned “Elite Flash” status in college for his prowess in weightlifting, speed, and agility. Good to know that title was not earned by whipping open a trenchcoat in front of sorority houses…
Ryan Clady and Eddie Royal will address the media soon. More to come from Dove Valley after we meet the newest Broncos…
With the 42nd overall pick… the Broncos address their need for a difference maker on special teams taking Eddie Royal out of Virginia Tech.
If ever there was a headline writer’s dream, it’s a guy with the last name Royal. If he muffs a punt leading to a Broncos’ loss, he will indeed be a “Royal Failure.” If he wins a game with his 4.39 forty speed, he will be “Royal-ty.” And if he goes the way of contract squabbles and off-field problems, he will be Mike Shanahan’s “Royal Pain in the Ass.”
Shanahan said Royal, “Is a guy that I think can help us immediately as a punt returner and a kickoff returner.” Let’s put it this way… if Royal is not the Broncos’ first-string return man in week one 1 against the Raiders, then he will have “Royal-ly blown it” in training camp.
It’s a good bet that the Broncos’ second round pick comes as a direct result of many sleepless nights at the Shanahan compound thinking back to the Broncos’ 37-34 OT loss to the Bears November 25th in Chicago. Shanahan explained the reason in drafting Royal as, “any time you got a guy that any time they touch the ball they can go the distance, it helps you a lot on special teams. The mindset is completely different. Chicago is a great example of that.” No doubt Shanny is hoping Royal can single-handedly win a game for the Broncos next season just like Devin Hester single-handedly beat them last year in the Windy City.
And a final thought on day one… congrats to Buffs’ linebacker Jordon Dizon who is now headed to the Detroit Lions. He certainly won’t have any playoff success in Motown, but Matt Millen’s checks clear all the same.
With the 12th overall pick…. Broncos take a Bronco, selecting Ryan Clady out of Boise State…
There was some question over whether or not it’s pronounced Claddy or Clay-dee… I think it’s actually pronounced George Foster…
Clady scored a whopping 13 on the Wonderlic. That’s 13 out of 50. The average score for Offensive Tackles this year was 26 (the highest of any position). He may turn out to be a real nice player, but I don’t think this kid is exactly future front office material…
He may have real good feet (as we heard from Mike Shanahan, Dan Hawkins, and Clady himself), but media savvy isn’t exactly his thing yet. When asked about his sorry Wonderlic score, Clady said he had torn his pectoral in the bench press before taking the test and as such “a lot of s*** was… lot of stuff was running through my head.” To his credit he did make a fast catch on the curse word. If he can recover as quickly on missed blocks this kid will have a nice future.
Broncos do pick up a nice piece of history by drafting Clady. He was the lead blocker on the Statue of Liberty play against Oklahoma, still one of the greatest moments in the history of college football…
More to come with the Broncos picking 42nd overall in the second round…
The Western Conference playoff picture could not be any tighter with teams switching positions in the standings on a nightly basis and three teams toward the bottom slugging it out for the last two playoff spots. The Nuggets gained a game on one of them Thursday night, but in the end what mattered most was 1:17 of playing time for one very embattled young player.
The Nuggets took down the suddenly mediocre Dallas Mavericks 118-105 Thursday night at Pepsi Center thanks to a magnificent defensive effort in the second half that led to plenty of easy transition buckets. Basically it was Nuggets basketball at its best which is a marvelous sight to behold (as opposed to when they’re at their worst when it basically resembles the And 1 Mixtape tour with less creative names). But anyone in that building knows the story of the night was Nene’s return to the court with 77 seconds to play. To see a guy that had chemotherapy a month ago step onto a basketball court was inspiring to say the least, and the moment gave chills to even the most jaded media knobs. Kudos to the Pepsi Center crowd (who I bash regularly in this blog) for giving the big Brazilian such a rousing ovation, and shame on anyone who left the building early.
George Karl had wanted to get Nene into the game earlier but the Nuggets trailed by 15 at one point in the first half. “It was just an impossible game for me to put him in where we were down so much in the first half,” said Karl, “I just thought it was unfair to try to throw him into the game.” There was a buzz of anticipation in the crowd late in the 4th quarter as Dallas kept it from turning into extended garbage time, but fortunately the Nuggets took a double digit lead into the final minutes allowing Nene to make it onto the court. Allen Iverson said the team wasn’t discussing running it up to get Nene onto the court and added, “Honestly I thought he would have played before he got in.”
A job well done by Karl to manage a very emotional situation, especially considering how much he wanted to see Nene get that moment of celebration after all his struggles. All that being said, Karl is a guy that knows how to get through these things having survived his own bout with cancer while watching his son Koby beat it as well. Thursday night was a great evening for the Nuggets’ basketball family with a crucial win but more importantly a time to rejoice in beating a disease with consequences far greater than any basketball game.
Now back to basketball- what does it all mean for wins and losses? Nene is a ways away from being a regular contributor for this team, and as he said after the game Thursday he probably won’t be ready for his regular minutes until the playoffs. One problem is that the Nuggets need to get there first, but after seeing Dallas with Jason Kidd and without Dirk Nowitzki for the first time in person, I’m thoroughly convinced this Nuggets team will leap the Mavs before it’s all said and done. Dallas is now 0-9 against teams with winning records since acquring Kidd, and play 7 of their last 10 against teams with better than .500 records. The Nuggets on the other hand are suddenly unbeatable at home having won 7 straight at the Pepsi Center. They’ll play 5 of their last 10 at home and will win all 5, plus get road wins at Seattle and the Clippers. A 7-3 finish should put the Nuggets into the postseason over Dallas.
So get excited Nuggets fans! The Kreck-blog is here to inform you your team is going to the playoffs. Doing anything once they get there? Sorry folks, look for the Nuggets to lose in 5 to whoever they play.
I’m feeling real good after day 1 of the NCAA tournament- I picked the winner in 15 of 16 games and didn’t lose a single Sweet 16 team yet (although Duke tried to screw me). Things are sure to get worse from here but at least I get to feel smart for one day. All that being said, my thoughts from day 1 in Denver…
Four games played today at the Pepsi Center and all four were pretty lousy. The top seeds handled their business, and the closest game was Michigan State winning by 11 over Temple which was a misleading final because the Spartans led by 19 in the 2nd half. Basically we saw four blowouts but the good news is there are two good games on deck for Saturday, starting with Washington State-Notre Dame and followed up by Michigan State-Pitt. Four teams left and they’re all from power conferences. Both games should be close, and personally, I can’t wait to watch Washington State center Aron Baynes (6-10, 270) and Notre Dame big man Luke Harangody (6-8, 251) battle it out inside. As for Pitt-MSU, the best match-up is at guard between Levance Fields who scored 23 today for the Panthers and Drew Neitzel who was off his game but will bounce back for the Spartans in the round of 32. Today was four duds, but rest assured we won’t get the same lineup of garbage time affairs on Saturday.
Speaking of Saturday’s better games, here’s hoping the atmosphere inside the Pepsi Center picks up a little bit. It’s quite understandable that today’s crowds were a bit subdued. On a neutral court the undeclared fans are basically looking for an underdog to get behind, and Temple, Oral Roberts, Winthrop, and George Mason all failed to oblige. But Saturday will almost certainly bring tighter games, and I hope that many of the fans coming out can pick a temporary allegiance and make a little noise. Outside of small fan sections for each particular team today, I’ve seen louder crowds at funerals. It’s the NCAA tournament folks. The odds of your team coming to Denver are slim (only 1 in 8 if they even make it into the field of 64). In the meantime, my advice to add to your enjoyment and the noise in the building is to pick a team for the weekend and get behind them. You probably won’t just choose Notre Dame on a whim because you probably hate the Irish, so you’ve got 3 choices. I’m an Illinois guy who doesn’t do that whole “root for my conference thing,” so my hatred of Michigan State makes me a Pitt Panthers fan on Saturday. It’s that simple- use whatever unconventional logic you need, pick a team, and get loud and rowdy.
I mentioned Luke Harangody earlier. The Big East Player of the Year was great tonight in the rout of George Mason finishing with 18 points and 14 rebounds with several “get out of my way or this is going to hurt” dunks. This kid’s got a bright future ahead of him, but my favorite thing about ’Gody is that if you turn the sound down on your TV for a minute you could swear you’re watching Bryant “Big Country” Reeves.
And finally… I’ve been covering college hoops non-stop for the past two weeks between the Mountain West Conference Tournament in Las Vegas and now the NCAA’s here in Denver. There is no question in my mind that basketball at the college level played at this time of year is the best basketball there is and unquestionably has the best atmosphere and tradition. There’s no children’s or senior citizen’s dance teams, there’s no unending rain of balled-up t-shirts falling on the crowd, and there’s no courtside announcer who has to act like he’s comatose if he has to say anything about the visiting team. There’s a band, there’s real cheerleaders and there’s players giving it all for a shot at immortality without a paycheck. NBA games at the Pepsi Center give me migraines, and I wish the people that ran things on the pro side could just learn a thing from the college ranks and figure out how easy it is to let the basketball be the main attraction.
It’s conference tournament time in college basketball - one of the great times of the year on the sports calendar. This week serves as the warm-up act to the NCAA Tournament, but it’s not the kind of warm-up act where you catch two songs of the set because you had to go to the bathroom and grab a beer. It’s the one where they come to the stage with little fanfare but before you know it, you’re tapping your foot and looking to pick up their CD at the merchandise table. Okay, all bad concert analogies aside, this week is great. Bubbles are bursting, upsets abound and teams you haven’t heard anything about all season long suddenly grab a spot in the headlines (see Jen Warden’s CSU women’s team).The beauty of college basketball’s postseason is that everyone has a shot, and fans all over the country can be given hope despite lackluster regular seasons.
All that being said, I’d like to direct the following public service announcement toward college basketball fans everywhere. We hear at Mile High Sports follow the mantra of “Be a better fan.” We have made it our responsibility to help you the people be better sports fans, and we take that duty very seriously. Therefore, I offer this piece of information that may be startling to many of you - you are not referees. So for everyone’s sake, please stop officiating games from the stands. I promise you will enjoy yourself more at the game if you just take it in as a spectator and fan rather than a self-appointed deputy referee. Because guess what folks, you would be much worse than the actual officials that don the black-and-white stripes. You would be awful. Your general knowledge of the rules of basketball is so miniscule in comparison to Division-I referees that it would just be embarrassing. So stop trying to do their job. You may not like a call against your team, but I guarantee the ref had a better vantage point from six feet away than you did from the 20th row in the corner. And the ref actually does this every night, with countless hours spent in seminars, meetings and film sessions to be prepared. They will miss the occasional call, but they’re human and that’s part of the beauty. The technology does not yet exist for mistake-free officiating robots to enforce the rules, so until that happens you’ll just have to accept the current system with the human beings in place, the same human beings who happen to be most qualified for the job. As much as you think watching a few basketball games a week makes you an expert on how to properly call a game, I’m here to fill you in on a tiny little nugget of reality - it doesn’t.
I write this blog for you as I sit courtside at the Thomas and Mack Center in Las Vegas at the Mountain West Conference Tournament. Utah and New Mexico are going down to the wire in a thrilling game. The stands are packed with loyal Utes and Lobos fans who have made the trek to Sin City. Fans of both teams are going nuts, but there’s only one problem. Instead of directing all that energy towards their respective teams in order to bring a positive energy to the game, much of the crowd noise comes in the form of vitriol and derision directed at the officials. Sure, some of it’s funny, but for the most part it’s just stupid and ridiculous. And 99.9 percent of the time, it’s dead wrong.
I don’t mean to just call out Utah and New Mexico fans because every group of fans at this tournament is guilty, and using that criteria I think it’s safe to say that every school’s fans across the country officiates inaccurately from the stands. Prime example: Earlier today during the BYU-Colorado State game, a fan seated behind me loudly suggested that the referee change the stripes on his shirt to green and gold for calling “nothing” against the Rams. Never mind that CSU was whistled for 21 fouls in the contest against just 14 for the Cougars. And oh yeah, one more thing, BYU was up by 26 with four minutes to play at that point. As much as you’re convinced that you’re smarter than the refs (which you’re not), you should at least know when to call off the dogs and just savor the victory.
Last night, I spoke to a Wyoming fan with a great half-walrus, half-handlebar mustache in the Las Vegas Hilton Superbook after the Cowgirls’ heartbreaking upset loss to San Diego State. He was a friendly enough guy, as most folks from Laramie are, but outside of lamenting his team’s shooting woes, the one factor he chose to declare as the deciding reason the Cowgirls lost was that “the refs were terrible.” I had just finished calling that exact same game for the Mountain West Conference Radio Network, and I honestly couldn’t remember a single questionable call. From my position of objectivity I thought the officials did a great job, and as the play-by-play man, I’m pretty sure that I watched the game as closely as anyone in the building . I mentioned a few times during the course of the broadcast that the Wyoming fans didn’t agree with particular calls, but I didn’t agree with the Wyoming fans in any of those cases. This guy and many other fans need to learn to give their opponents credit and stop blaming losses on the refs. Face it, they’re not out to get your team. D-I referees are watched like hawks by NCAA conference officials and are given an extremely short leash. These guys either call it fair or lose their jobs.
So the next time you attend a college hoops game, or any sporting event for that matter, lay off the refs. They know better than you and saw the action from a much better vantage point than you. Cheer on your team and accept the fact that you would have gotten it wrong in much worse fashion.
The Baseball Hall of Fame announced today that Barry Bonds’ 756th home run ball will be displayed in the museum and it could happen as soon as Opening Day. Of course, as with all things involving Bonds, there’s a little more to it than that. Fashion mogul Mark Ecko, the owner of the ball, has decided with the help of an online vote that he will have the ball branded with an asterisk. This option was chosen over blowing it up or blasting it into space. I’m not sure what either of the other two choices would have proven or what they would have said about the intelligence of the constituency participating in this vote, so I’m real glad the asterisk option won.
Complicating the matter even further was Bonds’ declaration last September in which he stated that he would boycott the Hall if it displays the marked ball. There are few more divisive issues for baseball fans and the media covering the sport than the issue of whether the stars of the steroid era belong in the Hall of Fame alongside the greats of earlier generations who put up their numbers sans the juice. I am of the opinion that the best players of each generation belong in the Hall, and even though some players’ home run numbers were inflated, they hit a fair amount of those dingers off pitchers who were taking the same stuff and as such were still the best of their day. Even though their legacies sit under a dark cloud of suspicion, it’s only right that Bonds, Sammy Sosa, Rafael Palmeiro, Mark McGwire, Jason Giambi, Gary Sheffield, and Roger Clemens get a fair shake at enshrinement. Whether or not those players belong or not is debatable which is one of the best things about the Baseball Hall of Fame. What is not at all debatable in my mind though is that the Bonds 756th Home Run Ball absolutely does belong in Cooperstown, whether Bonds will boycott or not.
Not only is the Baseball Hall of Fame an institution to honor the all-time greats of the game, it is also a museum. I’ve been lucky enough to visit the Hall twice in my life, both times being when I was a kid. One of the lasting memories of a great piece of memorabilia that I saw was Shoeless Joe Jackson’s shoes that he removed due to painful blisters that ultimately gave him his nickname. The story was detailed in the accompanying display. Along with those ill-fitting cleats was an explanation of Jackson’s involvement in the Black Sox Scandal, one of the worst black eyes in the history of the game. But negative or not it did happen, and as such future generations have been given the opportunity to learn about it and understand how that one ugly incident shaped the future of the game of baseball. This is the exact same reason the Bonds ball needs to be on display.
The asterisk-branded ball is not an indictment of Bonds, but rather a reflection of the circumstances surrounding that historic home run. As such, anyone today or fifty years from now who sees that ball on display will understand how the 756th home run was accepted by the general public. That mark on the ball provides historical context, that even though what Bonds did was a tremendous athletic achievement, it occurred under a cloud of suspicion. Just that little mark tells the whole story. Of course, the museum will surround the ball with a display that explains why the ball has that mark. If it is done correctly and I would assume it will be, it will not say that Barry Bonds broke the record because of steroid use but rather that Bonds broke the record under the suspicion of steroid use. That’s the truth, that’s the plain picture, that’s historically accurate, and that’s what has to be on display.
As for Bonds threatening to boycott the Hall of Fame, go ahead and let him. The folks in Cooperstown should not let Bonds bully them, and good for them that they are not going to let that happen. But besides that, when Bonds gets elected, whenever that will be, you can be darn sure he will show up regardless of how the ball is displayed. You think Barry Bonds would miss an opportunity to figuratively give a middle finger to all his critics? His induction speech would be the perfect chance for him to do it.
The Steroid Era happened (or is probably still happening). It cannot be ignored. The annals of baseball history should commemorate it as it happened, and the Hall of Fame is doing the right thing by telling the whole story and displaying the marked ball. Bonds broke the most hallowed record in sports in front of a skeptical nation, and that’s how it should be remembered.
