2011 October at LinesMaker

Simms Says Colts Aren’t Drafting Luck With a Healthy Manning

Indi­anapo­lis owner Jim Irsay can spec­u­late all he wants about Stan­ford quar­ter­back Andrew Luck as a mem­ber of the Colts. As far as ex-Giants quar­ter­back Phil Simms is con­cerned, how­ever, there’s no way the orga­ni­za­tion will draft Pey­ton Manning’s heir appar­ent as long as the Hall of Fame-bound quar­ter­back has a say in his team’s personnel. “There is no way if Pey­ton Man­ning is given a clean bill of health — I’m going to go on that assump­tion — that he is going to let them draft Andrew Luck,” Simms said Wednes­day on Showtime’s “Inside... 

‘Tebowing’ Sensation Picks Up Steam After Humble Beginnings

And now the ori­gin story — of a trend less than a week old. In the min­utes fol­low­ing Denver’s aston­ish­ing come-from-behind vic­tory over the Miami Dol­phins, Bron­cos fan Jared Kle­in­stein and his pals bar­reled out of a New York City saloon and took this photo, in honor of quar­ter­back Tim Tebow’s prayer­ful stance after the win. The Den­ver Post reported that within 24 hours, Kle­in­stein went viral with the photo. You know the drill: Face­book, blog, domain name pur­chase, etc. BANG. Inter­net phenomenon.Tebowing.com was up and run­ning, and it’s now net­ting... 

SEC: Missouri Announcement Inadvertent

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — The South­east­ern Con­fer­ence says an announce­ment that Mis­souri was join­ing the league was inad­ver­tently posted on the league’s Web site and that no agree­ment has been reached. The announce­ment dated Oct. 22 was on the site Thurs­day night, and was reported by outkickthecoverage.com. The SEC’s Web site attrib­uted the announce­ment to SEC Com­mis­sioner Mike Slive and said he made it on Mon­day– pre­sum­ably of this week given the listed date from two days earlier. The SEC site also had a side­bar on Missouri-SEC con­nec­tions and detailed... 

NASCAR Betting Tips for Beginners

The pop­u­lar­ity of NASCAR has seen con­sis­tent growth after the FOX and NBC grabbed the tele­vi­sion broad­cast­ing rights of this fast paced game four years ago. Owing to this recent surge of inter­est in NASCAR bet­ting, more and more gam­blers are try­ing their hands at this rac­ing giant. Before indulging into the NASCAR gam­bling spree, it is impor­tant to know the basics of this game. Basi­cally NASCAR bet­ting lines is laid for two types of bets, one wherein the bet­tor have to pick the out­right win­ner and the other wherein the bet­tor picks the champ of head-to-head... 

Progress on Brees Deal Not Expected This Weekend

A very sim­ple obser­va­tion from Mike Triplett of the New Orleans Times-Picayune regard­ing the sta­tus of the con­tract talks between the Saints and quar­ter­back Drew Brees has been inter­preted by some news aggre­ga­tors far more broadly to mean that a deal could be coming. It’s not, bar­ring some dra­matic and unfore­seen developments. Triplett pointed out that the Saints are play­ing the Rams in St. Louis this week­end, and that it’s “likely” the two sides will touch base, since Brees’ agent, Tom Con­don, oper­ates out of St. Louis. But this pre­sumes that there’s... 

Raiders’ Jackson Disagrees With Russell’s Story on His Release

While agree­ing with for­mer quar­ter­back JaMar­cus Rus­sell on some of the issues he expe­ri­enced dur­ing his ill-fated, three-year tenure with the team, Raiders coach Hue Jack­son emphat­i­cally told The Oak­land Tri­bune on Thurs­day that they weren’t the rea­son Rus­sell was even­tu­ally released. “That’s not the rea­son he’s not here,” said Jack­son, who became the Raiders’ offen­sive coor­di­na­tor in Jan­u­ary 2010 before Rus­sell was released that May. “I think there were sev­eral other fac­tors, things that we don’t need to get into.” Raiders... 

Keenum Sets FBS Mark, Has 9 TDs in Win

HOUSTON — Houston’s Case Keenum had just thrown his fifth touch­down pass against Rice to set the Foot­ball Bowl Sub­di­vi­sion record for career TD tosses and coach Kevin Sum­lin was scream­ing at the offi­cials to give him the ball. They didn’t hear him and the record-setting ball sailed into the stands as Hous­ton kicked the extra point. Sum­lin was relieved as he watched the fan who caught it throw it back onto the field so he could present it to his quar­ter­back after the game. Keenum didn’t slow down after that, fin­ish­ing with a career-high nine TD passes as the... 

NHL Roundup: Pens Win in Shootout

Pitts­burgh 3, NY Islanders 2 (SO) Evgeni Malkin scored the lone goal in the shootout to give the Pitts­burgh Pen­guins a 3–2 vic­tory and a home-and-home sweep over the New York Islanders at CONSOL Energy Cen­ter. The Pen­guins defeated the Islanders, 3–0, in New York on Tues­day. Malkin man­aged to slide the puck under the toes of a sprawled out Rick DiP­i­etro after the goal­tender went down on a fake shot, and New York’s two remain­ing shoot­ers, P.A. Par­enteau and John Tavares, each shot wide of the net to seal the win. Chris Kunitz and James Neal scored third-period... 

Na Beats Sharapova at WTA Championships

Updated Oct 26, 2011 9:21 PM ET ISTANBUL Maria Shara­pova pulled out of the WTA Cham­pi­onships with a sore ankle Wednes­day after los­ing her sec­ond straight match at the season-ending tournament. The second-ranked Russian’s with­drawal ensures that Car­o­line Woz­ni­acki will fin­ish the year with the No. 1 rank­ing, despite los­ing her group-stage match against Russia’s Vera Zvonareva. Shara­pova entered the tour­na­ment after sit­ting out since with­draw­ing in the quar­ter­fi­nals in Tokyo last month because of an ankle injury. After los­ing 7–6 (4), 6–4... 

Nelson Cruz Suffers Groin Strain Late in Game 6

Car­di­nals out­fielder Matt Hol­l­i­day wasn’t the only big-name slug­ger to make an early exit from Thursday’s wild World Series Game 6. Accord­ing to beat writer Jeff Wil­son of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Rangers right fielder Nel­son Cruz has been diag­nosed with a groin strain, suf­fered in his final at-bat of the night. Este­ban Ger­man took his spot in the out­field in the bot­tom of the 11th inning and Cruz was shown on the FOX broad­cast limp­ing down the dugout steps. The Car­di­nals haven’t said whether Hol­l­i­day, who was diag­nosed with a severely...