It’s Tuesday, October 22, the 44th anniversary of Carlton Fisk’s 12:33 a.m. iconic home run that won Game 6 of the 1975 World Series. We’re halfway through the football season, the 2019 World Series between Washington and Houston is about to begin, the NBA tips off tonight and I’m wondering why certain things are the way they are.
The Patriots are 7-0 after dominating the Jets on the road Monday night, but radio and cable talk jocks, not to mention callers and viewers, have worried. I wonder why.
Oh, they think quarterback Tom Brady is unhappy because his contract expires at the end of the season; Gronk is still retired; talented and controversial wide receiver Antonio Brown has come and gone; tight end and great locker room presence Ben Watson has come and gone and come back again; the offensive line is suspect; the receiving corps is thin; kicker Steven Gostkowski is injured and out for the season; TB12 may not be getting along with Bill Belichick, dour as always; Brady was criticized for his Netflix comedy cameo that some viewers believe mocked owner Robert Kraft’s day spa foray last winter; defensive end Michael Bennett complained about his playing time and was suspended for a game.
But is Brady really unhappy? Is he really leaving New England after this season?
Who knows? All we do know is that the Patriots are undefeated.
Shifting gears slightly, local college football, most college sports for that matter, has all but disappeared from the local newspaper, The Providence Journal. All four Rhode Island teams played on Saturday, and not one word of a preview was in the Friday or Saturday edition. I wonder why.
Oh, the University of Rhode Island, Brown, Bryant and Salve Regina are a combined 5-21 this season, possibly the worst first-half ever. Ever! And all four lost on the same day, something I can’t recall happening. Ever!
URI (1-6) dominated the stat sheet but turned the ball over four times in the third quarter and fell at Albany, 35-28. We’ve seen this show before in Kingston. Rams play hard and play well in spurts but still lose. It looks like their 6-5 record in 2018, the first winning season in 17 years, was an aberration.
Princeton blew out Brown (1-4), 65-22, at Brown Stadium. Nobody had scored 65 on Brown, ever, and that covers 142 seasons of playing football. The previous record was 62 by Dartmouth in 1903, 116 years ago!
Central Connecticut crushed Bryant (2-6), 52-14, in New Britain. Coach James Perry, the offensive whiz who left Bryant for Brown, obviously does not place as high a priority on defense.
And Western New England defeated Salve Regina (1-5), 38-31, at Springfield, Mass. The Seahawks amassed 532 yards of total offense but gave up 485.
Chances are good that all four teams will end the season with losing records.
Local college football coverage in the Projo has declined steadily for a decade or more. Forget about regional coverage. If you rely on The Journal, you would never know that Boston College still fields a football team or that some of the oldest college football rivalries in the nation belong to Division III schools in New England. Think Williams and Amherst or Colby and Bowdoin. Instead, the Projo offers an interesting Saturday column written by freelancer Ken Schrieber. The only problem is he writes exclusively on national big-time college football. Stories and scores of small-college games disappeared from the Sunday Journal years ago. I wonder why.
Oh, sports editor Bill Corey has only a handful of writers left on his staff: Kevin McNamara for columns and Providence College basketball; Mark Daniels for the Patriots; Bill Koch for the Red Sox and URI basketball, and Eric Rueb for high-school sports. And their focus is mostly on stories that readers click on-line: Patriots, Red Sox, Celtics, Bruins, PC basketball, URI basketball. While Princeton was humiliating Brown at Brown Stadium on Saturday, McNamara was covering a PC exhibition basketball game against Stonehill at the Dunkin’ Donuts Center in Providence.
It’s mid-October. I think I know why certain things are the way they are. Yes, the Patriots are winning, but the drama in Foxboro is riveting. Yes, the local newspaper is understaffed and committed to Boston’s Big Four, but the local college teams are losing, and attendance is up and down, mostly down.