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Yes, we’re only one week into the major college football season, and this is the first week of NFL play, but for those who can’t wait, this week promises a couple of the highlight games of the whole season.
When we get to December, and we’re trying to figure out who might reach the Super Bowl, we will be most interested in the NFC championship. In that game, I project there’s a good chance the Green Bay Packers may be in position to pose the biggest challenge for defending Super Bowl champion Seattle.
Well, this week, the NFL season actually begins with a Thursday night game that finds the Green Bay Packers playing at the Seattle Seahawks. Pair it up anyway you want to -- Aaron Rodgers, now a member of the old guard of NFL quarterbacks, takes on Russell Wilson, still a member of the quick-to-prove youth movement of NFL quarterbacks.
Marshawn Lynch gives the Seahawks a huge advantage in rushing, and the elusive Wilson has a corps of impressive receivers, plus Seattle has a well-proven smack-down defense, while the Packers need to prove their defense can be up to the task their offense deserves. I hate it when quarterbacks get too much credit for winning and too much blame for losing, but in the Packers case, Aaron Rodgers makes them a contender, and without him, the Packers are pretty ordinary.
The Vikings? They open at St. Louis, and I anticipate Adrian Peterson will have a big day, and the Vikings will win big -- maybe by three touchdowns. The schedule then gets really tough for the Vikings, but I look for them to build on some early success, and bypass both Chicago and Detroit and challenge the Packers for the division title.
Meanwhile, in college football, after some rousing results last weekend, the ever-present eye on the finishing Bowl championship scramble puts extra emphasis on what otherwise be little more than interesting intersectional games. But when it comes down to the final selection this year, Michigan State is expected to carry the torch for the Big Ten, and Oregon is considered the top team in the powerful Pac-12.
So Saturday finds Week 2 of the college season, and Michigan State plays at Oregon. I favor the Ducks, behind Marcus Mariotta’s quick and clever playmaking at quarterback, and the Ducks have an incredible thing going at their stadium in Eugene, Ore. Michigan State is generally considered the best in the Big Ten, and it’s hard to quarrel with that -- especially after Wisconsin’s meltdown against Louisiana State last Saturday -- but the Spartans will have to be significantly better than I think they are to cope with the mighty Ducks.
In other games that are, on paper, nothing short of colossal, look at Southern California at Stanford, or Michigan at Notre Dame. Everybody else seems to be lining up against a sure-thing victory, but those two games stand out.
Southern Cal had a very impressive team last season, but lost several games to outstanding opponents by narrow scores. Stanford has emerged as a perennial power in the Pac-12, so this one will measure how serious Southern Cal is about returning to the top of the college football pile. Notre Dame is always promoted heavily as one of the top teams in the nation, and they play a tough enough schedule to deserve the acclaim.
Michigan, meanwhile, might have had the best manpower to ever under-achieve by as much as they did last season. They were so amazing in their ability to self-destruct last season, that a lot of experts aren’t taking them seriously this season. Going into South Bend for such a huge traditional rivalry would be the perfect place for both teams to establish themselves as truly elite this season. Trouble is, only one can do it.
Minnesota was pretty good for part of the game with Eastern Illinois last weekend, but the Golden Gophers got a curiously shaky performance from quarterback Mitch Leidner. Now they face Middle Tennessee at TCF Bank Stadium, and they are favored by 17 or so. That’s the trouble with playing patsies in the early season -- they do nothing to prepare a major team for the major part of the schedule that is to come. The Gophers have to win, and they have to win big, or else it’s a huge failure.
Wisconsin, on the other hand, lived up to my expectations last weekend, and took it to Louisiana State at Houston. But the Badgers came apart at the seams after building a 24-7 lead, and handed the game over to the LSU Tigers in the second half, for a disturbing 28-24 LSU victory. The Badgers outplayed LSU for all of the first half, and much of the third quarter. When they expanded their lead from 17-7 to 24-7, I was genuinely excited for Wisconsin’s success. Then LSU faked a punt at midfield, turning a fourth and 5 into a first down. Didn’t seem like much, but from that point on, LSU took the game over, and the Wisconsin players looked like they were ordered to fall back on their heels, quit attacking, and allow LSU to do whatever they wanted with them.

Line Puts It On Line

Pro Stock driver Jason Line of Wright, Minnesota, finished off his BIR victory in the rain-delayed semifinals and finals, held Sunday at qualifying for the U.S. Nationals in Indianapolis. Line won both heats, beating Jeg Coughlin in the final, and was the No. 1 qualifier for the Indy Nationals Monday. He lost, however, to a hole shot by Greg Stanfield in the quarterfinals.
While that loss dropped him back to a tie for second in overall season points, Line benefits from the NHRA’s plan to force a playoff style to climax the season. Line remains the No. 1 qualifier seeded for the final Pro Stock push, with 1,408 points to 1,324 for Erica Enders Stevens. Greg Anderson, Line’s teammate from Duluth, did not make it among the top 10.
That leaves us in position to pull for Jason Line to make a rush at winning his third national Pro Stock championship. It’s there for the taking. If Jason cuts a bit of a closer light to give his hot Camaro the chance to prove it’s the fastest car on the circuit.

The Missing Lynx

The Minnesota Lynx has such a good team, that women’s basketball devotees in the Twin Cities had good reason to assume they could defend their WNBA championship.
With Lindsay Whelan quarterbacking Simone Augustus and Maya Moore, the Lynx are capable of being the best, night after night. But Phoenix has a powerful team that established the best record throughout this season, and Diana Taurasi is a fantastic superstar for the Mercury.
Phoenix crushed the Lynx in Game 1, then the Lynx came back, behind Whelan, to win Game 2 at Target Center. Game 3, however, was back in Phoenix, and Taurasi led the charge to shatter a second-half deadlock and lead the Mercury to a 96-78 victory and the West’s berth in the WNBA finals.

Bulldogs Open Under Disciplinary Shroud

If the University of Minnesota-Duluth football team performs up to full capabilities and wins the Northern Sun divisional title, it will still go down as the year the Bulldogs came back from some uncharacteristic problems. Only this year, they will be problems off the field.

When running back Austin Sikorski was stabbed in an after-hours incident right near Lake Ave. and Superior St. in the center of Duluth, it was a shock, because those things just don’t seem to happen in Duluth. Sikorski is 22, so it was no crime for him to be hitting a night spot downtown, during summer break, but it was a startling occurrence.

Then the football team gathered, presumably to promote camaraderie and togetherness as the last day of August blended into the first day of September, and they held a little party at a house near campus where a number of football players live, in the 1000 block of East 9th Street. There was some booze involved and the party got rowdy (who could have guessed?), and there were some of the newer, younger players there -- underagers. Police were summoned, and before things got sorted out, Wiese had to make some tough choices.

There were, reportedly, over 75 people at the party. They compiled 127 citations, reportedly, with over 30 citations for underage drinking. More than 20 were UMD football players -- including two of the five captains. After some intense investigation, coach Curt Wiese made his decision and suspended five players -- all of whom were expected to play this weekend -- and to strip them of their scholarships. Two captains also have lost their captain duties.

“We’ve had multiple suspensions for the game, and we’ll deal with each player individually,” said Wiese, who didn’t say the players would be tossed off the team. “Of the five, one was injured and wouldn’t have played this weekend. But our scholarships are issued on an annual basis, so they’ve lost their scholarships for the year.”

With almost one-fourth of the entire football squad at the party, it was unrealistic to smack all of the participants with a suspension. So the five are token suspensions, and presumably they will alert the whole team to the importance of, as Wiese said, being held to a higher standard than the common party-seeking college student at UMD.

It seems that every year, about the time school starts at UMD, there are neighborhood complaints about loud parties, and sometimes police are called to stifle them. And yes, once in a while a UMD athlete or two is involved. But for such a large percentage of football players taking part in a huge preschool blowout, it appears the quiet and determined Wiese made his move and the team has a few days to digest it, put it behind them, and prepare for Concordia of St. Paul.

The scope of that party obscures the previous incident, which already measured too high for Wiese to have to endure.

Sikorski, a returning star running back who is projected to be player of the year in the Northern Sun this season, was involved in an after-hours fracas downtown in Duluth and wound up suffering a stab wound that, fortunately, proved to be minor. He has recovered, and has rejoined the team, although he will not play Saturday when the Bulldogs open the season against Concordia of St. Paul at 6 p.m. at Malosky Stadium.

Coach Wiese ran an impressive running game offense last season in his first try at the helm, and while Sikorski got most of the headlines, he really ran as an alternate with Logan Lauters. The two were pretty equal in performance, and they even were similar in how they looked. Sikorski, from Stevens Point High School in Wisconsin, is a 5-10 and 200-pound senior; Lauters is a 5-9, 210-pounder from Cedarburg, Wis.

“They were pretty much 1 and 1A last year,” said Wiese, who can feature Lauters against Concordia, but is obviously eager to get his dynamic duo back in form.

UMD does have the distinct advantage of having a quarterback in Drew Bauer who is both youthful and experienced. Bauer stepped in as a freshman after Chase Vogler finished his eligibility, and Bauer continues a long trend of four-year quarterbacks that make that part of coaching easy.
“Our last four quarterbacks all started as freshmen,” Wiese recounted. “They have similar attributes in leadership and in their style of play. It says a lot about our program that they could step in as freshmen and play for four years. And it says a lot about these young men.

“Drew Bauer is no different as a leader than the three before him. He is stable in the pocket, and is very poised. When Drew came in, we had 21 seniors his first year, so the team leadership was in place. But he is extremely unselfish, and he has worked hard to improve himself. All four of these quarterbacks called the majority of their plays, and we may be calling on Drew to do a little more this season. He has worked to make himself a better passer.”

Concordia of St. Paul presents a strong opening challenge for the Bulldogs. “They were 5-6 last yaer, but they handled Winona at the end,” Wiese said. “They return eight offensive starters and seven defensive starters, and we know they’ll be well-coached.”

The Bulldogs will need to be firing on all cylinders in the opener. With a lot of graduation holes to fill, Wiese knew the team would start out a little thinner than usual from a depth standpoint. And that was before the disciplinary moves that will make a thin team even thinner to start with. Nothing like a character test to start the season.

Saint Scholastica Starts

Kurt Ramler, a former quarterback at St. John’s, gets the chance to make his debut as St. Scholastica’s new coach, also on Saturday. While UMD is embarking on a solid Division II schedule at Malosky Stadium Saturday night, the Saints will embark on their anticipated run at the top of the Division III UMAC chase, against Ripon at 1 p.m. in Public Schools Stadium.

Not a bad collegiate doubleheader, on what could be a splendid fall day in Duluth -- St. Scholastica at 1 p.m. at PSS, and UMD opening the season at 6 p.m. at Malosky.

John Gilbert has been writing sports for over 30 years.
Formerly with the Star Tribune and WCCO. He currently hosts a daily radio show on KDAL AM.