Observations: Put Duke in NBA and be done with it

By HAL McCOY

UNSOLICITED OBSERVATIONS from The Man Cave knowing that those three super freshmen at Duke will be in the NBA next year, so why not just replace the Cleveland Cavaliers with Duke right now and be done with it.

—Ever wonder why the Mid-American Conference plays a lot of football games on week days with mostly empty seats?

It is called c-a-s-h. ESPN pays each MAC school $1 million a year to play during the week so it can fill air time.

—Speaking of the MAC, Miami University plays Wright State and Northern Kentucky on the basketball floor every year, but doesn’t play Dayton as it once did twice a year, home-and-home.

Why not? Just like the Flyers won’t play Wright State, they won’t play Miami. One of the excuses is that UD doesn’t want to play in the dark, dreary and mostly empty Millett Hall on the Miami campus.

Says Miami athletic director David Sayler, “We’ll play whomever wants to play us.” Xavier wants to play the RedHawks, but only at X’s Cintas Center and won’t go to Millett.

To show the difficulty in scheduling, Miami played somebody called Midway University Monday night. Midway is an NAIA school located on a horse farm 15 miles from Lexington, Ky. Well, if Midway is a horse farm, then the team should have the horses.

For the uninitiated, Midway plays in the NAIA Division II River States Conference. Other members? Glad you asked. Alice Lloyd College, Asbury University, Brescia University, Carlow University, Indiana-East, Indiana-Kokomo, Indiana-Southeast, Ohio Christian, Point Park (remember Cardinals pitcher John Stuper?), Rio Grande (remember Bevo Francis?), West Virginia Tech (remember Sedale Threatt?).

Quote of the week came from the mouth of Cleveland Browns quarterback Baker Mayfield after the 28-16 victory over Atlanta: “I woke up this morning feeling real dangerous.”

Armed and dangerous? He completed his first 12 pass attempts.

Wonder how Nick Chubb woke up feeling before his record-setting 92-yard touchdown run, longest in NFL history by a rookie?

If the Browns keep this up, does interim coach Gregg Williams have a chance to be named head coach? Don’t ask Jim Riggleman.

—Tampa Bay placekicker Chandler Catanzaro kicked a 59-yard field goal in overtime earlier this season to beat the Browns, 26-23. Make that ex-Tampa Bay placekicker.

After he missed two short field goals Sunday in a 16-3 loss to Washington, the Buccaneers released him. For the season he was 11 of 15 in field goal tries, 73.3 per cent and 31st in the NFL. And he missed four extra point kicks.

This is clearly a case of, “What have you done for us lately?”

—The Cincinnati Reds saved a few bucks when outfielder Scott Schebler missed arbitration-eligible status by a few days. The cutoff this year was two years and 134 days of major league service and Schebler missed the cut by the fewest days of anybody in the majors. That hits him hard in he wallet.

Fans hope the Reds invest that money into their pot to acquire starting pitchers instead of more bobbleheads and tributes to The Big Red Machine.

—Did you hear about the wonder horse, Foiled Again, a 14-year-old harness superstar? He is on his farewell tour because by rule he has to retire at 14. The all-time leader in trotting purses at $17.5 million won at Hollywood Casino’s Dayton Raceway Saturday night.

Mull this one over. At 14, Foiled Again is 59-years-old in human age. And you thought Satchel Paige and Minnie Minoso were old athletes?

After Foiled Again won for the 105th time in 322 starts, driver Chris Page said, “He’s a war horse and the greatest horse to ever wear a harness. He loves his job.”

—Some interesting nuggets from the Bovado sports book in Las Vegas and if you have money you want to burn, let Vegas burn it for you.

The Cleveland Cavaliers are 1,000-to-1 odds to win the NBA championship. Next highest odds are the Phoenix Suns at 500-to-1. The Cavaliers are 1-and-11 and you have to wonder what the odds are that they win 10 games this season. They are on pace to win seven.

And apparently Ohio State’s 26-6 win over Michigan State didn’t impress the odds gurus. The Buckeyes fell from 22-to-1 to 28-to-1 to win the CFB championship. They were even less impressed with OSU quarterback Dwayne Haskins. His odds to win the Heisman Trophy fell from 14-to-1 to 100-to-1.

—I arrived in Dayton in 1962 and these are some of the good restaurants that I frequented that are now no more, now with The Great Chef in the sky:

Annarino’s, Anticoli’s, Barnsider, Bissett’s Grubsteak, Dominic’s, King Cole, Neil’s Heritage House, Old Hickory BBQ, Peerless Mill Inn, Pepito’s, Stockyards, Suttmiller’s, Tropics. I miss them one and all.