racingmeridian.com

With the Pittsburgh Steelers leading the San Diego Chargers 11-10, and five seconds on the clock, Troy Polamalu intercepted a lateral and sauntered into the end zone to make the score 17-10. Referees, after an interminable delay, ruled the lateral as an illegal forward pass and the score returned to 11-10. The implications were staggering for the humble punter. The Steelers were favoured by between four and six points. One moment they had covered, the next the Chargers backers were hollerin’ and whooping it up! Conspiracy theorists are going to have a field day speculating on the motives for overturning the Pittsburgh touch down…Cleveland Brown QB Brady Quinn makes his second start tonight against the Buffalo Bills. He received positive reviews in his debut, a loss to the Broncos, but I’m still not sold on him. The reeling Bills need this one and they are my choice minus the six…the St Louis Rams were wretched for the second week in a row. Last week they fell behind 40-0 by the half, yesterday they were down 35-3 at the end of two quarters. They are terrible tacklers on defence and incompetent on offence. Marc Bulger directly set up three 49er scores with hopeless play…Jacksonville led the Tennessee Titans 14-3 at the half but could not sustain their good efforts. I was appalled at the regression of David Garrard at QB. He seems to have lost his swagger and confidence…easy to forget now that the Philadelphia Eagles were the choice of many wise guys as a Superbowl contestant. Their poor effort against the Bengals yesterday is just unforgivable…the Philadelphia Inquirer, obviously disgusted with yesterdays performance, has predicted Donovan McNabb will be let go by the Eagles at the end of the season. McNabb was apparently unaware that a regular season game ends after a quarter of OT if the teams remained tied…NBA rumour has the Cleveland Cavaliers in pursuit of Vince Carter…when is the last time a Leaf was this hot? Mikhail Grabovski has seven goals in his last seven games…the Ottawa Senators have scored four goals in their last four games, all losses…the New Jersey Devils, according to S I , are offering Patrick Elias to anyone interested. After watching him play recently it was easy to conclude the former star is utterly washed up…Jimmie Johnson won his third straight NASCAR drivers championship yesterday. Only Carl Yarborough had previously accomplished the three peat. Jeff Gordon went 2008 without a win, ending a magnificent 14 year run of at least one win a year…the late Irish champion thoroughbred George Washington was returned to racing in 2007 after proving infertile at stud. Unfortunately the great runner was humanely destroyed after being injured on the greasy Monmouth surface Breeders Cup Day that year. Well, there is a twist. Apparently he was able to sire one runner and that runner is being offered for sale today at Goffs in County Kildare, Ireland. The colt will be the only progeny of Gorgeous George, an animal I once travelled three thousand miles to watch compete…interesting bit in Earnie Shavers autobiography, “Welcome To The Big League”; in the early seventies he was all set to fight George Chuvalo. A match of the hardest puncher of all time versus the “man who could not be knocked down” would have been captivating. For reasons not fully explained the fight fell through…the bald Earnie Shavers picked up his nickname, “The Acorn” , from the Muhammed Ali. Ali referred to Chuvalo as the washer woman based on the relentless motions of his body attack…Shavers mentions the charm of George Foreman. When the two met a few years back Earnie bemoaned the fact they never fought. George leaned in close and said, “Earnie, you would have killed me!” …