2011 October at LinesMaker

No. 13 Nebraska Tops No. 9 Spartans 24–3

LINCOLN, Neb. — Rex Burk­head scored three touch­downs and ran for 130 yards on 35 car­ries, and No. 13 Nebraska defeated ninth-ranked Michi­gan State 24–3 Sat­ur­day to take con­trol of the Big Ten Leg­ends Division. Burk­head, who went over 100 yards for the fifth time in six games, scored at the end of 80– and 89-yard dri­ves in the third quar­ter to put Nebraska up 24–3. Tay­lor Mar­tinez com­pleted 6 of 7 passes for 80 yards in the third quar­ter after going 1 for 6 in the first half. Michi­gan State (6–2, 3–1), com­ing off the incred­i­ble fin­ish to its... 

Game 7 of World Series Was Most Watched Baseball Game Since 2004

Jon Weis­man of Vari­ety and the excel­lent Dodger Thoughts brings word that Game 7 of the World Series between the Rangers and Car­di­nals drew 23.2 mil­lion view­ers last night accord­ing to pre­lim­i­nary Nielsen esti­mates, mak­ing it the most watched base­ball game in seven years. Weis­man notes that the audi­ence could go up by more than a mil­lion when a more pre­cise read­ing is released later this after­noon, but it will almost cer­tainly fall short of Game 4 of the 2004 World Series, which drew 28.8 mil­lion view­ers when the Red Sox swept the Car­di­nals to... 

Robert Hight Leads Top Fuel Field

LAS VEGAS - Robert Hight raced to the pro­vi­sional No. 1 qual­i­fy­ing posi­tion in Funny Car on Fri­day in the Big O Tires NHRA Nation­als at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. Bran­don Bern­stein, Jason Line and Hec­tor Arana also topped their cat­e­gories in the second-to-last event of the NHRA Full Throt­tle Drag Rac­ing season. FORT WORTH, TX — RIL 07: NH… - Apr 7, 10:47 pm EDT Hight, who entered the event fifth in the sea­son stand­ings, took the pro­vi­sional top spot on the first pass of the sec­ond ses­sion of qual­i­fy­ing, pow­er­ing... 

FIA Friday Press Conference — India

Repro­duced with kind per­mis­sion of the FIA Team rep­re­sen­ta­tives — Jean Fran­cois Caubet (Renault F1 Sport), Mon­isha Kaltenborn (Sauber), Vijay Mallya (Force India), Adam Parr (Williams), Franz Tost (Toro Rosso) Q: A ques­tion to you all about your ini­tial thoughts about India and the cir­cuit. Franz, first of all?Franz Tost: India, so far, I don’t know very well, as I just arrived yes­ter­day and my first impres­sion is quite pos­i­tive regard­ing here, the race track. I must say that the team around Sameer Gaur has done a fan­tas­tic job as the track itself is... 

Rapid Redux Ties Record With 19th Straight Win

LAUREL, Md. — Rapid Redux has tied a North Amer­i­can thor­ough­bred record with his 19th con­sec­u­tive victory. Rapid Redux beat four horses on a muddy track at Lau­rel Park on Thurs­day to tie the mark held by reign­ing Horse of the Year Zeny­atta and Pep­pers Pride in 2008. By win­ning the $ 7,500 starter allowance race under jockey J.D. Acosta, 5-year-old Rapid Redux improved to 17 for 17 in 2011. Rapid Redux led from start to fin­ish and won by 2 3–4 lengths over second-place fin­isher Rich Hero. Owner Robert L. Cole Jr. says, “I was wor­ried. It wasn’t a des­per­ate... 

Cowher Only Willing to Talk With Teams That Have Vacancies

Dol­phins owner Stephen Ross has been in con­tact with Bill Cowher’s agent about mak­ing the for­mer Pitts­burgh Steel­ers coach the next head coach in Miami, accord­ing to a league source. Cowher, how­ever, told his agent and oth­ers con­cerned that he absolutely will not speak with any team that does not have a head coach­ing vacancy. One thing that could alter this sce­nario is if Ross fires Dol­phins coach Tony Sparano in-season, which could well open the door for pre­lim­i­nary talks. Cowher doesn’t plan to take any job until after the season’s over. Sparano has been... 

No. 9 Spartans Visit No. 13 Nebraska

LINCOLN, Neb. — Three down, one to go. Ninth-ranked Michi­gan State has made it through a bru­tal Octo­ber sched­ule unscathed so far, and a win over No. 13 Nebraska on Sat­ur­day would remove another major obsta­cle on its path to the first Big Ten cham­pi­onship game. The Spar­tans (6–1, 3–0) have defeated Ohio State, Michi­gan and Wis­con­sin this month. If they knock off the Corn­huskers (6–1, 2–1), it would mark the first time Michi­gan State has taken down a ranked oppo­nent in three straight games. The ques­tion is how the Spar­tans will play after last week’s... 

Oilers Snap Caps’ Streak

EDMONTON — The Edmon­ton Oil­ers did what seven other teams before them couldn’t, beat the Wash­ing­ton Capitals. Thursday’s 2–1 vic­tory ended the Caps streak while extend­ing Edmonton’s to three wins in a row head­ing into Fri­day nights game in Colorado. It came with an assist, though. On a night when the Edmon­ton Oil­ers wanted to earn their stripes against the best in the NHL, they got a major help from the zebras. The power plays were 8–1 Edmon­ton after 40 min­utes as Dan O’Halloran and Stephane Auger gave Wash­ing­ton five straight in the sec­ond period. Nev­er­the­less,... 

Ryan Franklin Is Getting a World Series Ring

The Car­di­nals used 46 play­ers on their way to a World Series vic­tory, and given recent prece­dent, every sin­gle one of them will be get­ting some bling. Of course, some will deserve it more than oth­ers. Here’s a glimpse at a few of the lesser lights on the 2011 Cardinals… Ryan Franklin: An effec­tive, if under­pow­ered, closer the pre­vi­ous cou­ple of years, Franklin was the main cul­prit in an astound­ingly awful bullpen early on, rack­ing up an 8.46 ERA in 21 appear­ances. He was even­tu­ally released hav­ing con­verted just one of his five save chances. Corey... 

Beanie Wells Will Be a Game-Time Decision

The good news for the Car­di­nals is that run­ning back Beanie Wells was able to do more work in prac­tice on Friday. The bad news is that he wasn’t able to do enough to guar­an­tee him a spot int he lineup for Sunday’s game against the Ravens. Coach Ken Whisen­hunt said that Wells will be a game-time deci­sion because of the knee injury that forced him out of last week’s loss to the Steel­ers. Wells is offi­cially listed as ques­tion­able on the injury reports after lim­ited par­tic­i­pa­tion in prac­tice all week. Alfonso Smith and LaRod Stephens-Howling each scored...