Archive for Thursday, January 8, 2009

Year’s biggest sports gems come courtesy of Jayhawks

By Jim Finley

January 8, 2009

The two biggest sports gems in my book come courtesy of the Kansas Jayhawks.

The biggest gem came in the form of the KU basketball team’s national championship trophy. I also was thrilled with the KU football team which actually won two bowl games in 2008 — the Orange Bowl back in January and the Insight Bowl on Dec. 31. So all in all, 2008 wasn’t too bad of a year for the Jayhawks and their fans.

I never thought I would see the day that I would say I’ve listened to too much football with all of the bowl games. There are more than 30 bowl games, and that’s way too many. I love college football, but this is just excess. I tried to listen to all the college bowl games involving the Big 12, and so far the Big 12 teams are faring pretty good. Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska and Texas all won their games, and Texas Tech and Oklahoma State lost.

The National Championship between Oklahoma and Florida is coming up. The Sooners should win this game, however, Florida has a lot to prove representing the Southeast Conference that is considered by many the top conference in the country. Many Big 12 fans will dispute that thinking because the Big 12 appeared to be clearly the top power conference in the country this season with five or six teams ranked at a time almost the entire year.

It would be nice to see Oklahoma win the championship and cap what was a banner year for the Big 12. A Sooner victory would give the conference a 5-2 record in bowl games and sufficiently support the hype that the conference received throughout the season.

One conference that didn’t live up to the hype was the Big 10. It was no surprise to me that the University of Southern California pounded Big 10 champion Penn State soundly. Ohio State played one of its better games this season but still blew a lead to Texas in the final minute and lost. Kansas and Missouri also beat Big 10 teams. In my opinion, the Big 10 as it now stands is not the dominant conference it was for so long. Most of the Big 10 teams aren’t competitive against the other power conferences.

Another sports gem as of late comes from the NFL. No, not the Kansas City Chiefs who went 2-14 and didn’t come close to earning a playoff berth. I’m talking about San Diego Chargers player Darren Sproles — a Kansas City native who played in high school at Olathe North and in college at Kansas State. Sproles filled in as the starting running back after Ladanian Tomlinson was sidelined with an injury. All Sproles did was deliver one of the top total-yardage efforts in playoff history and score the game-winning touchdown in overtime as the Chargers knocked Peyton Manning and the Indianapolis Colts out of the playoffs.

Sproles’ critics said he was too small to excel in the pros. Now he’s proving them wrong, and he’s making Kansas City proud in the process.

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