Sports highlights: college football upset, CFL playoff and wrecks at Phoenix

The memories of SF Giant's world series victory and celebrations still linger with me (so was that of Sydney Sixers winning the Twenty20 wicket champions league) but the fast-paced world of sports have completely left them behind. The young NBA season has already provided big headlines like the firing of Laker's coach only 5 games into the season. I watched part of the "Upset of the season" in college football: Texas A&M beating the then No.1 Alabama. 'Bama looked so strong all season that current headcoach of fellow SEC conference-mate South Carolina, Steve Spurrier, even claimed that 'Bama could beat the worst NFL teams, which most people including experts like current and former NFL/College coaches and laymen like myself disagreed (unless he referred to the poorly coached 2002 Washington Redskin by him :P.) Still, I thought if they were to be beaten, it would be a traditional power house in SEC, instead, it's the SEC newcomer Texas A&M. As a loyal fan of Texas, of course I dislike both A&M (long time conference rival) and 'Bama (with whom we fought for the college football supremacy decades ago and most recently in 2009) Earlier in the season A&M played a good game against Florida and almost beat them. I was in a big dilemma: on one hand, I don't want to see A&M to be that successful right after leaving the Big 12 conference and proved they made the right decision. On the other hand, A&M needs to be competitive enough to prove that the level of playing at Big 12 is not way below SEC. Oh well, since I dislike both of them, I might as well root for an upset and it happened. I was so glad that A&M's star QB Johnny Manziel didn't emerge last season or he might have ruined the perfect ending to the long time UT vs A&M rivalry.

And I was able to watch more football on Sunday, thanks to ESPN and Firehouse Brewery. ESPN streamed both CFL first-round playoff games (or Conference Semi if you will) My favorite team Saskatchewan Roughriders was an underdog and almost pulled off an upset by scoring a TD in the last 2 minutes and took the lead over Calgary but fell short. The Sunday night NFL game between the Texans and da Bears was a snooze-fest but Firehouse had good beer. 

The great sports weekend ended with the replay of the penultimate race of the NASCAR season (9th of the chase) with 3 drivers still in contention and it certainly didn't disappoint: championship leader (and 5-time former champ) Jimmie Johnson wrecked, on his own, which was a rare mistake made by him and young Brad Keselowski became the new leader again. Clint Bowyer wrecked Jeff Gordon and the latter retaliated and turned into fights between pit crews. Danica Patrick crashed, stalled on the track and turned into a big wreck during the final lap. Auto racing fans shouldn't root for wrecks. However, we certainly won't mind a few fights :P This immediately brought back memories of another Jeff Gordon related fight. I thought it was last season but it turned out to be Nov 2010 when I looked it up (against Jeff Burton) Seems like NASCAR wants Gordon to fight to pump up the TV ratings every now and then but with tight races like this I don't think that's necessary! I did feel bad for Kevin Harvick who won the race but all people could remember and talk about were the ones I mentioned above.

Sports highlights: UFC, NASCAR at Daytona, CFL Kickoff, World cup

When Fedor lost the week before, naturally the attention turned to: who will be the next Fedor? Well, I am pretty sure both UFC heavyweights that fighted this weekend: Lesnar and Carwin, did not want to suffer the fate of Fedor, losing to a lesser opponent or be submitted. Lesnar almost did the former in the first round but Carwin was the one submitted in the second round. It was exciting to watch.

I am not a fan of Dale Earnhardt Jr (or his dad) but I was happy to see him winning the Nationwide race at Daytona running the number (3) that belonged to his dad. It was emotional. And the Sprint Cup race at Daytona was equally good. Hate to say this but the big wrecks were something to watch.

And of course, there were world cup quarter finals that featured quite a few instant-classic moments. The top one gotta be Suarez's handball save of the goal that would have sent his team out of the tournament and the subsequent missed PK by Gyan.

With all these events going on, I didn't realize it's CFL's kick off weekend! Thanks to CFL's official site, I caught the highlight of an exciting (high scoring) comeback win by Saskatchewan Rough Riders over the team that beat them in last Grey Cup, Montreal Alouettes.