Sports

Manning finds his groove as season hits midpoint

INDIANAPOLIS – Peyton Manning watches the last three games and sees progress. Not perfection, but at least he and the Colts are beginning to play like their old selves. Manning is throwing more touchdowns, fewer interceptions, avoiding sacks and winning games with his masterful play-calling. He’s spreading the ball around, opening up running lanes with passes and, yes, he’s finally in sync with the receivers. Memo to the NFL: Manning is back. “The way they’ve played the last three weeks, it looks like Indianapolis to me,” San Diego coach Norv Turner said Wednesday. “To do what they did against Pittsburgh, I was awfully impressed with that.” The Colts’ recent turnabout has forced critics, who not long ago were immersed in finding faults, to reassess their viewpoints. Suddenly, Manning is playing like a two-time league MVP and his team has taken the cue.

Bowl slate might be tapped

NEW YORK – After years of relentless expansion, college football’s nearly monthlong holiday party – the bowl season – finally seems to have maxed out. Those involved in the bowl business say that, with the national economy flailing, events which are as much about tourism and corporate sponsorship as football now are staring at a set of challenges that will level off the number of second-tier bowls, if not reduce them. There are a lot of second-tier bowls to choose from. “We’re talking about disposable income, and that’s drying up as fast as water in the desert,” said Paul Hoolahan, chairman of the Football Bowl Association and CEO of the Sugar Bowl. The bowl roster now stands at 34, giving 68 teams the opportunity to play a nationally televised game and be pampered by the host community. That’s more than half of the 119 schools playing college football at its highest level. The NCAA has been liberally licensing new bowls in recent years. Since 2002, 11 new bowl games have been established, while only three have closed up shop. Two games will debut this season, the EagleBank Bowl in Washington, D.C., and the St. Petersburg Bowl in central Florida.

NFL drops the ball

The NFL has dropped the ball this season more times than Colts receivers did in their first quarter last week. This NFL season has been in shambles and none of it has to do with the players. Fines have turned the game soft, officials have made wrong calls and Vegas is suffering because of it all. This past Sunday, the second big officiating botch of the season (the first being Ed Hochuli’s forward pass mistake in Week 2) caused hundreds of thousands of dollars to change hands.

Jimmie Johnson stakes claim among NASCAR’s best

Love him or hate him, Jimmie Johnson officially added his name to the list of the best NASCAR drivers of all time Sunday night. Despite a mediocre 20th-place finish thanks to a conservative pit strategy, Johnson won his third-consecutive Sprint Cup Series championship at Homestead-Miami Speedway after besting Carl Edwards by a comfortable 69 points. Edwards did all he could, however, to take away Johnson’s three-peat in the season’s final race by winning the Ford 400 on an impressive fuel mileage gamble – the second race he’s won in that fashion in the past three events.

IU wrestling squashes D-3 opponents, sweeps 20 individual matches

Sophomore Paul Young said Monday his goal was to wrestle a perfect match. While he might not have met his goal of perfection, the team did, winning all 20 matches they participated in and winning by a total score of 107-0 in a tri-meet against Manchester and Wabash Colleges, two Division-III schools, on Tuesday. “It went good,” IU coach Duane Goldman said. “For the first time with a one-hour weigh-in, we wrestled pretty well.” The team pinned 13 of its 20 opponents, 12 falling in the first period alone, and gathered up two tech falls and a major decision during the tri-meet.

Another day, another learning experience

Each game and scrimmage for the young IU men’s basketball team brings new lessons.BLOG: Basketblog

JUST BARELY

Without taking a shot from the floor the entire game, Daniel Moore led the Hoosiers to their second win of the season Tuesday, beating IU-Purdue University Indianapolis, 60-57.Down one with 27.1 seconds to play, IUPUI coach Ron Hunter called for a time-out. After dribbling out most of the clock, Jaguar freshman forward Alex Young launched a 3-pointer from the top of the key.The ball ricocheted off the rim, and a scrum for the ball ensued under the basket.Moore, the 5-foot-11 walk-on guard, came up with the rebound.“I don’t even know if I boxed out,” Moore said. “I just kind of felt my way and got lucky.”

Men’s rowing club continues rebuilding

Water polo breaks club stereotypes

IU and Ferris State split weekend pair

A win is a win. ... I guess.

Road set for soccer’s NCAA quest

SEC charges IU alumnus with insider trading

WASHINGTON – Federal regulators on Monday charged Dallas Mavericks owner and IU alumnus Mark Cuban with insider trading for allegedly using confidential information on a stock sale to avoid more than $750,000 in losses.

IU soccer team receives No. 6 seed in NCAAs

Sitting at Yogi’s Grill and Bar, the IU men’s soccer team waited for more than its meal. The Hoosiers waited for ESPN News to reveal the field of 48 for the NCAA Tournament. The Hoosiers were seeded sixth and will play Nov. 25 at home.

Crean, Hoosiers hope to improve against IUPUI

One game into the season, Tom Crean and his players have found plenty of flaws in their own play. “(We’re) up against a lot of challenges, but I don’t think any of our teammates aren’t up for it and our coaches as well,” junior guard Devan Dumes said after IU’s 83-65 victory in its season-opener against Northwestern State.

‘College GameDay’ makes history by visiting HBCU

Kudos to ESPN’s “College GameDay.” The first appearance “GameDay” made for a game between two historically black colleges and universities was on Nov. 26, 2005, when they set up in Houston for the Bayou Classic game between Southern University and Grambling State University. The game was moved to the Houston location that year due to Hurricane Katrina. While that was a history-making event, history was made again this past Saturday as Chris Fowler, Lee Corso, Kirk Herbstreit and Desmond Howard broadcast from Florida A&M University in Tallahassee, Fla., their first broadcast on an HBCU campus. On their Senior Day, the FAMU Rattlers prevailed against the struggling Hampton University Pirates 45-24. The win improves the Rattlers’ record to 8-3 overall and 4-3 in the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference.

Robinson’s 4th-place finish gets NCAA cross country bid

IU’s cross country season came to a premature end this weekend for both the men’s and women’s teams, as they failed to attain at-large bids to advance to Nationals. “I guess we were one of the first teams out,” IU coach Ron Helmer said. “The good thing is that the women are knockin’ on the door, but the bad is the guys have enough talent for a national team. I’m a little disappointed for the seniors, but as a group, we didn’t do what we needed to do.”

IU wrestling matches up against 2 opponents

Domination is the name of the game as the IU wrestling team goes against Wabash College and Manchester College in its first tri-meet of the season. “I just don’t want to beat guys,” said Paul Young, the 165-pound starter. “I want to destroy them. I want to be able to wrestle a perfect match.” The meet was originally supposed to be a dual between Wabash and IU, but Wabash scheduled Manchester for the same day. But having a second opponent isn’t changing the approach of the wrestlers.

IU men's basketball team hosts cousins to the North

Even though the schools are only about 50 miles apart, IU-Purdue University Indianapolis will make its first visit to Assembly Hall tonight to take on the Hoosiers. It’s a game of seconds – the second time in history IU will face IUPUI and the second game of the season for IU coach Tom Crean and his inexperienced team. IU (1-0) is hoping to build off of its opening night, 18-point victory against Northwestern State. It’s IUPUI’s (1-1) third game of the season. The Jaguars notched their first victory a week ago against Michigan Tech, but lost the day before to Northeastern. Proximity isn’t the only similarity the two schools have. Like IU, the Jaguars’ roster is overall vertically challenged. There isn’t one player on IUPUI’s projected starting lineup taller than 6-foot-8. And through the first two games of the season, two of the eight players on the team who’ve recorded playing time are less than 6-foot. The matchup figures to be one of the last of the season IU will have the luxury of being the taller team, but as was the case against Northwestern State on Saturday, the Hoosiers might struggle crashing the boards.

Hitting the boards key to victory

This one’s not quite so exciting, is it? Really, the second game of every season is kind of a letdown: the crash after the euphoric high that accompanies the start of basketball season. Think of this game as Sunday morning, coming down too early (Yes, I finally did it – I dropped a Johnny Cash reference. Championship.). Tuesday’s 6:30 p.m. game against IU-Purdue University Indianapolis surely won’t garner the fan excitement IU’s season opener did Saturday. Too bad, because the Jaguars look far more dangerous than any opponent IU has faced this year.