Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson celebrated his 70th birthday at Old Trafford on Saturday. A choir of young ladies dressed in United garb serenaded him before kickoff, and the calendar had served up what looked to be the ultimate cream puff for the Red Devils to devour: Blackburn Rovers, dead last in the Premier League, a club that had not won on the road since last season. The script called for a thumping to welcome in a New Year in which United would have ended 2011 in first place.

Talk about spoiling the party.

Blackburn won, 3-2, thanks to two goals from Yakubu””a chunky, globe-trotting Nigerian forward who made a name for himself in the Israeli league and spent most of last year on loan in the second flight””and one from Grant Hanley, one of six players on the pitch younger than 20.

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After Drew Brees broke an NFL passing record that stood for nearly three decades, his teammates called on him to make a speech in the Saints’ locker room.

“This record isn’t about one person. There might be just one name that goes in ledger under the record, but it’s really about the team,” Brees told his teammates. “I want everyone to feel a huge part of this, that this record would not have been possible without them.”

It was quite a night for Brees and the Saints – a record and a rout.

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This is just wonderful–Watch and read it all.

Excuse the capital letters, but sometimes major emphasis is required. This is one such moment. Some football coaches pay recruits. Georgia’s football coach dips into his personal finances to reward the guys who’ve worked for him. He committed a violation, all right. He showed the rest of us what it means to put (literal) money where your mouth is.

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The Green Bay Packers’ perfect season came to a crashing halt against the struggling Kansas City Chiefs, who had just fired their coach and were starting a new quarterback.

Proof again that nothing can be taken for granted in the NFL.

Kyle Orton threw for 299 yards to outduel Aaron Rodgers, and the Chiefs rallied behind interim coach Romeo Crennel for a shocking 19-14 victory on Sunday that ended the Packers’ 19-game winning streak. It was their first loss since Dec. 19, 2010, at New England.

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Hall of Famer Deion Sanders, [Devin] Hester’s mentor, is perplexed by the debate regarding Tebow’s ongoing testimony.

“Tebow is taking a lot of criticism not just because of his faith. He’s taking criticism because he’s abnormal,” said Sanders, now an analyst for the NFL Network. “The things he’s doing and the success he’s having is not normal, and people have a hard time buying into what they haven’t seen. Then to top it all off, he exercises his faith.

“To me, a young, successful guy or woman, regardless of their ethnicity, who exercises what they believe in and what they truly stand for, no matter what it is, it shouldn’t be a problem.”

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It says a great deal about the depths to which America’s values have fallen that Tim Tebow–who, once upon a time, would have been the wholesome, women-and-mom-respecting, clean-playing, fresh-faced and faithful Hollywood ideal of a football hero””is the target of such deep derision from so many sources, and in an era of such vaunted “tolerance.”

Although it may seem too easy to some, I blame the baby-boomers””a generation so in love with deconstructing old standards (and so completely neurotic about being perceived as anti-establishment, smart, and most of all, cool) that it only can express full-on admiration for the anti-heroes. Were Tim Tebow using his on-camera time to swagger and preen and lecture the nation on green energy, greedy millionaires, and gun control, his Christ-fixation would not only be permitted, it would be held up as a gaudy rebuke to uncool Christians everywhere, and his pronouncements””as long as he kept his mouth shut on abortion and gay marriage””would never be challenged.

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As members of The Gathering began to hear of the gnashing of teeth and rending of garments after Cardinals first baseman Albert Pujols had signed a $254 million contract with the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, they decided to act.

“We heard people were burning their Pujols jerseys, and someone said, ‘Why don’t we ask them to donate the jerseys, and we’ll give them away?'” said the Rev. Matt Miofsky, the pastor of the United Methodist church.

The 5-year-old church christened the effort, the “Recycle the Five Drive,” a play on Pujols’ jersey number. It began Facebook and Twitter campaigns to let disappointed Cardinals fans turn their anger into a positive.

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The intertwining of religion and sports is nothing new in American culture. Both basketball and volleyball were invented by men involved with chapters of the Young Men’s Christian Association in Massachusetts. Or consider the pioneering college coach Amos Alonzo Stagg (1862-1965), who created the batting cage in baseball, five-man teams for basketball and several of the standard aspects of football, from the man in motion, lateral pass and Statue of Liberty play to helmets, tackling dummies and names on uniforms.

The historian Clifford Putney has written that Stagg and his contemporaries combined faith with sports and competition because they believed that God wanted people to live healthy, vigorous lives. They believed that sports could help to make people good and thereby bring them closer to what God intended for them.

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There were moments in the first half when it seemed it was going to be a closer game than it was.

Watch it all–caught it by accident early this morning and it made me cry–KSH.

There are 19 in all–check them out.

When it was all over, Mike Krzyzewski pushed through the crowd of photographers surrounding him to find Bob Knight, his former coach and the man whose record he had just broken. The two embraced courtside, laughing, before Krzyzewski disappeared back into the throng.

“I just told him”¦ ”˜Coach, I’m not sure people tell you this, but I love you, and I love what you’ve done for me, and thank you,’” Krzyzewski said. “And he says, ”˜Boy, you’ve done pretty good for a kid who couldn’t shoot.’ I think that meant he loves me too.”

Wonderful picture–read it all.

Joe Paterno, who has the most victories of any coach in major college football history, was fired by Penn State on Wednesday night in the wake of a sexual abuse scandal involving a prominent former assistant coach and the university’s failure to act to halt further harm.

Graham B. Spanier, one of the longest-serving and highest-paid university presidents in the nation, who has helped raise the academic profile of Penn State during his tenure, was also removed by the Board of Trustees. When the announcement was made at a news conference that the 84-year-old Mr. Paterno would not coach another game, a gasp went up from the crowd of several hundred reporters, students and camera people who were present.

“We thought that because of the difficulties that engulfed our university, and they are grave, that it is necessary to make a change in the leadership to set a course for a new direction,” said John Surma Jr., the vice chairman of the board.

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Update: “After Joe Paterno is fired, Penn State and State College still coming to grips with his dismissal” in the Washington Post is of interest as well.

A major child sex abuse cover-up case ”“ that does not involve the Catholic Church.

When the case unfolding at Penn State blew up last week, I have to admit the first people I thought I would hear from those in the Catholic Church who believe their faith gets unfairly tarred on this subject. As so many high-level cases around the world have unfolded in the past decade, these Catholics often ask, rightly: What is the rate of sex abuse in other institutions?

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Mr. Sandusky, a former defensive coordinator under Mr. Paterno, has been charged with sexually abusing eight boys across a 15-year period, and Mr. Paterno has been widely criticized for failing to involve the police when he learned of the allegation of the assault of the young boy in 2002.

Additionally, two top university officials ”” Gary Schultz, the senior vice president for finance and business, and Tim Curley, the athletic director ”” were charged with perjury and failure to report to authorities what they knew of the allegations, as required by state law.

Since Mr. Sandusky’s arrest Saturday, officials at Penn State ”” notably its president, Graham B. Spanier, and Mr. Paterno ”” have come under withering criticism for a failure to act adequately after learning, at different points over the years, that Mr. Sandusky might have been abusing children. Newspapers have called for their resignations; prosecutors have suggested their inaction led to more children being harmed by Mr. Sandusky; and students and faculty at the university have expressed a mix of disgust and confusion, and a hope that much of what prosecutors have charged is not true.

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What? You thought the Game of the Century would feature 100 points?

Admittedly, most of us assumed there would at least be a few touchdowns. Just one would have been nice. But for anyone who found No. 1 LSU’s 9-6 overtime victory over No. 2 Alabama on Saturday to be ugly, unsatisfying or somehow unimpressive, Tigers defensive end Sam Montgomery has a message for you.

“This is the way football is supposed to be played,” said the man whose third-down sack of Alabama quarterback AJ McCarron in the first overtime possession typified a night of defensive dominance. “It’s not about running up the score. This is how two great teams in a great atmosphere are supposed to play.”

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Watch it all–tremendous stuff.

The St. Louis Cardinals have won the World Series with Stan Musial, Bob Gibson, Lou Brock, Ozzie Smith. They’ve won it with speed. They’ve won with power. They’ve won it with pitching, defense and mastermind managers.

Until now, the Cardinals had never won a World Series with a team like this. A team that was lost, left behind and stranded in the standings. A team too stubborn and proud to accept the hopelessness of the situation. A team that fought back like no other has in franchise history.

A team that on Friday night completed one of the truly spectacular comebacks in major-league baseball history….

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Update: For Texas, the Moment Slipped Away, Twice.

The only good thing about the end of summer is that it’s the beginning of the college foot­ball season. Once more college football is delivering thrills and surprises, with the rankings changing dramatically on a weekly basis, teams appearing out of nowhere to vie for the no. 1 ranking, and under­dogs ceremoniously (college football is nothing if not ceremonious) knocking off highly favored teams. I love just about everything about the game, from the on-field heroics to the off-field pageantry.

But I make the qualification: just about everything about the game. I don’t love everything. There’s plenty to be cynical about when ostensibly amateur players get recruited as if they were professionals. Even a straight arrow like Ohio State coach Jim Tressel turns out to have run a fairly smarmy program. Yet it’s not primarily the financially shady elements that make me ambivalent about my favorite sport. It’s the sometimes dangerous levels of violence….

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The interplay of sports and Christianity in modern society took the form of the “muscular Christianity” movement in Victorian England. The creed, drawing from verses in Paul’s letters, taught that physical competition offers a way of using God’s gifts and spreading God’s word. Such theology also challenged the stereotype that Christian faith was meek, almost feminine ”” which is also why muscular Christianity has provoked criticism throughout its history.

In America, the movement led to the creation of the Y.M.C.A. and sports evangelism groups like the Fellowship of Christian Athletes and Athletes in Action. In his midcentury revivals, the Rev. Billy Graham gave prominence to Christian athletes like Bill Glass, an All-Pro player in the National Football League.

While growing up in Gainesville, Nathan Whitaker, now 42, was influenced by one of Mr. Glass’s books, “Expect to Win.” He went on to play varsity baseball, wearing a small pin of a cross on his cap, and to gain a comfort level among African-Americans by attending a largely black high school and sometimes worshiping in a black church. All those traits would inform his bond with Mr. Dungy, who was the first black coach to win a Super Bowl.

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I had the privilege of coaching in the NFL for 28 years. At the end of my career, one of the most frequent questions I would get asked was, “How have the players changed over the years?” My answer was that so many more of them were coming to us without the benefit of growing up with their dads….

Kids today need dads. They don’t need a perfect dad, but they need an involved dad. When a father can’t be involved, a mentor can be a wonderful surrogate. This is where so many athletes have benefited from that relationship with their coach.

But there’s no substitute for a full-time dad. Dads who are fully engaged with their kids overwhelmingly tend to produce children who believe in themselves and live full lives. And when dads are involved, we see direct correlations to decreases in gang activity, substance abuse and incarcerations.

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The Rays come back from being down 7-0. One of the best base runners in the National League comes off the bag at third after successfully making it there, Jason Bourn, and is correctly called out. The Orioles have a rain delay and improbably win at the end of the ninth inning against the Red Sox. The Cardinals win and wait until the 13th inning to watch the Phillies incredibly beat the Braves.

So many things come to mind to say, but the biggest is it is not over until it is over, and you always play until the last out–KSH.

An AP story is here–read it all.

A big-time college career was a given, and thoughts of the N.F.L. percolated. During the summer before his senior year, [Mark] Herzlich committed to Virginia but reconsidered after a coaching change and chose Boston College. He was a starter by the end of his first season, led the team in tackles for loss in his second and was the Atlantic Coast Conference’s defensive player of the year in his third. Many draft experts predicted he would be a first-round choice if he left college, but he stayed. He wanted to earn his degree. The N.F.L. could wait.
But then, toward the end of that 2008 season and on through the spring, there was increasing pain in his left leg, screaming phone calls home in the middle of the night, the diagnosis and the invasive realities of treatment. Herzlich had a port, used to administer medicine intravenously, embedded in the right side of his chest. He gave up peanut butter and jelly sandwiches because he did not want his favorite food spoiled by taste buds tainted during chemotherapy.

Herzlich’s battle with Ewing’s sarcoma caused him to miss the 2009 season, but he returned for his fifth year at B.C., playing just 10 months after surgery to remove the tumor in his leg. He led the Eagles on to the field for the season-opening game against Weber State, recording five tackles to resounding cheers. He started all 13 games. He won an ESPY award for Best Comeback.

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Afternoon quiz–Princeton and Yale played their first football game in 1873, but the game was delayed for 1 1/2 hours before it could start. Why the delay?

No fair researching or googling, take a guess.

Arsene Wenger watched Arsenal crash to defeat against the team at the bottom of the Premier League and admitted his side had been just ‘terrible’.

Blackburn’s 4-3 victory – their first of the Premier League campaign – enabled them to leapfrog Arsenal in the table and condemned Wenger’s club to their worst start to a season for 58 years.

I happened to catch this match this morning, and it really was a fun one to watch. Read it all–KSH.

Wow.

Update: Novak Djokovic prevailed, but only after saving 2 match points on Roger Federer’s serve.

The new facilities include a four-changing room clubhouse with meeting and training areas, as well as official’s changing rooms and catering facilities. The project will benefit in excess of 300 players and more than 20 teams who play at the site.

The new building will be the masthead for a club that already has excellent ground amenities, with more than 11 acres of playing fields and a large car park. The site consists of three, full-size 11-a-side pitches, and six Mini Soccer pitches.

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Wow–watch it all.

Nick Pratto connected for a two-out, bases-loaded single in the bottom of the sixth inning to lead Huntington Beach’s Ocean View team to the Little League World Series championship.

Ocean View beat Hamamtsu City, Japan, 2-1, and became the seventh team from California to win the title.

Both teams had scored in the bottom of the third inning, and the game stayed tied until Pratto’s decisive single into right-center field.

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