Locust Fork Invitational Kayak and Canoe Race 2011

Glynn Wilson

The water ran high, cold and fast this weekend for the Locust Fork Invitational Kayak and Canoe Race of 2011

Glynn Wilson

Bennett Smith in the Locust Fork River at King’s Bend

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Protest CBS Decision to Ban Player’s Ad

Did you know this year’s Super Bowl game might be the last professional football game we see for a year or more? Owners of the National Football League pulled out of the collective bargaining agreement with the NFL Players Association two years before it was due to expire, according to an announcement from the AFL-CIO.

“Now the incredibly profitable NFL is saying it will lock out players — refusing to let them play at all — unless they agree to outrageous givebacks,” says Manny Herrmann, the online mobilization coordinator for the union.

If there’s a lockout, it won’t just impact football players and fans, Herrmann says. Stadium employees will be jobless. Staff in sports bars, restaurants and hotels, police officers and others who work supporting the game also will be hurt. In fact, 150,000 workers will feel the impact, and $4.5 billion dollars in revenue will disappear from 32 cities around the nation.

In this TV ad, the NFL Players Association tried to get a clear message from the players across: Don’t lock us out. Let us play. But CBS is refusing to air the “Let Us Play” ad.

When CBS rejected the ad, executives said they didn’t want to get involved in the labor negotiations between the players and the NFL owners. But CBS is big-dollars involved already. Recently, CBS, as well as Fox, NBC, ESPN and DIRECTV, delivered what amounts to multibillion-dollar lockout insurance to the NFL.

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Time Out
by Dan Rutledge

Just call the state of Alabama the “Football Capital of the Nation.”

That’s what everyone will be calling it after Auburn defeats whoever the Tigers’ BCS opponent in the national title game turns out to be. It is only deserving. No other state can claim back-to-back national titles plus back-to-back Heisman Trophies. Last year it was the Alabama Crimson Tide and Mark Ingram; this year it will be the Auburn Tigers and Cam Newton.

But first things first. That national championship column will be in January. This is still December, the end of the regular season for Southeastern Conference football.

For the record, it’s Week 14, the SEC Championship Game Week — this year dubbed “The Rematch.” The SEC title game in the Georgia Dome on Saturday should be a great one and storylines abound. It would be easier for everyone all around — except South Carolina folks — if Auburn would just go ahead and handily win, thus putting them into the national title game automatically. There would be no arguments from any corner.

The game is at 3 p.m. on your local CBS station.

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Cam Newton Controversy Still Hangs Over the Game

Time Out
by Dan Rutledge

Week 13 is going to be an unlucky one for one of the two Iron Bowl teams. The question is, which one? Nine and 2 Alabama or undefeated Auburn (11-0)?

It’s “Rivalry Week” in the SEC, with most (everybody but Vanderbilt) league teams finishing their seasons against long-time rivals — you know, the kind of games of which it is often said “anybody can win” or “throw out the record books.”

Of course, the Iron Bowl is the mother of all rivalries. In Alabama, everyone is either a Tide or War Eagle — you’ve got to pick, no exceptions. The phrase “it’s only a football game” is pure nonsense during Iron Bowl week. In Alabama, the game is taken more than seriously. There have been plenty of friendships, even marriages, ended over the outcome of a particular Iron Bowl. Fights between fans of the teams are common and it’s not uncommon for the cops to break up AU-UA confrontations.

This will be the 75th edition of the Iron Bowl and it has shaped up to be one of the most-anticipated in some time — for several reasons.

TV Schedule and Lines Below
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Time Out
by Dan Rutledge

Week 12 SEC football feels as if it is almost an aside, an afterthought.

Sure there are games to be played — only five, three of them conference games — but with neither defending BCS champ Alabama nor this year’s BCS favorite Auburn in action this weekend (Alabama played early, Thursday … more on that later) and the Eastern and Western champions already decided, it’s easy to understand why a feeling of “who cares” seems to prevail.

Teams are now playing for pride, or to improve its resume in order to land a bigger bowl. For most SEC fans, especially those in Alabama, we are already in pre-Iron Bowl mode. The countdown has begun.

TV Schedule and Lines Below
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Time Out
by Dan Rutledge

Yes they Cam!

Talking about the Auburn Tigers, who can ride star quarterback Cam Newton all the way to a SEC title and perhaps a national title as well! If Newton can shake off all the commotion going on around him and isn’t declared ineligible, the Tigers are in great shape to be the second straight team from the state of Alabama to play in the national championship game.

Auburn is No. 2 in the BCS standings this week and the second-ranked team in the fourth week of the BCS standings has reached the title game over half the times is has been played — seven of 12 times -– and has won the national title four of those seven times.

Much, perhaps most, of the controversy surrounding Newton is, as Shakespeare put it so well, much ado about nothing.

TV Schedule and Lines Below…
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Time Out
by Dan Rutledge

If Alabama wins out, the Crimson Tide has a good shot at defending its BCS national title. That’s true because Bama’s remaining schedule is deemed the toughest in the nation with its three FBS foes — LSU, Mississippi State and Auburn — having a combined record of 21-3.

All of the opposing trio are also ranked in the Top 25 — Auburn at No. 2, LSU 12 and Miss. St. 21. Of course, running the table for Alabama would mean meeting and defeating an almost certainly still undefeated Auburn team in what will have to be one of the biggest Iron Bowls in a long, long time.

But before that epic battle, Alabama has to win the Battle of Baton Rouge this Saturday.

With both teams coming in tied for the runner-up spot in the SEC West with matching 4-1 league, 7-1 overall records, the No. 5-ranked Tide at No. 12 LSU (Line: Alabama by 6) is the biggest of three league games on tap for Week 10 of the 2010 SEC grid season. It is the main attraction of the week — something that Alabama can thank its lucky stars is the case.

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Time Out
by Dan Rutledge

I can see it now, the proclamation in big letters for all who came to Legion Field in Birmingham to see: “Football Capital of the South.” I used to think it referred to Birmingham. Now I understand it means the state of Alabama.

The Alabama Crimson Tide finished last year as No. 1 in all the college football world and on the way, running back Mark Ingram won the Heisman Trophy. This week, atop the BCS standings in the No. 1 spot is none other than the Auburn Tigers.

And judging from the comments from the talking heads on ESPN, radio sports shows and in print, the front runner — and not by just a head — for this year’s Heisman award is AU quarterback Cam Newton. In fact, if the voting were held today, Newton would win by a landslide!

It’s a well-known fact that in Alabama, football is the bomb, the most important thing in the state that lags behind in almost every other category (although not at the bottom of the numerous lists — thank God for Mississippi). If the two top college football programs in the state of Alabama win the national championship in successive years … and the top player from those No. 1 teams are back-to-back Heisman winners, no one can argue with the Legion Field proclamation. It will be obvious that Alabama is the “Football Capital of the South.”

And while we are talking about Alabama and Auburn, let’s talk Iron Bowl.

TV Schedule and Lines Below…
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Time Out
by Dan Rutledge

It’s a strange “Third Saturday in October.” That is, or more correctly was, traditionally the weekend that Alabama plays Tennessee. For decades, Tide and Volunteer fans waited impatiently for that third weekend and the latest edition of the heated gridiron rivalry.

But divisional play and schedule makeovers changed all that. This year, the “third Saturday” game will be played on the “fourth Saturday” — that would be this Saturday. And what makes it even more strange is the fact that the Bama-Tennessee battle is not the marquee game on the eighth-week lineup.

This week’s Southeastern Conference football schedule is low on quantity — with only six games on tap — but high on quality, with five of the six being league contests.

The top game this week has to be on The Plains of Auburn, where the only two remaining undefeated teams in the SEC will meet (Line: Auburn by 6). Auburn and visiting LSU come into the big game with matching records — 7-0 overall, 4-0 in the SEC.

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