September Shockers

The Pacific Ten Conference's shocking number of setbacks headlined mid-September action with UCLA, conqueror of Tennessee, coming out on the short end of its worst loss ever perhaps at the hands of Brigham Young University.
ArizonaState, Arizona, Washington State, California, Stanford, and the University of Washington also came tumbling down. Southern Cal's imposing win over Ohio State was extraordinary. Pete Carroll's Men of Troy loom large as the best college team in 2008.
I saw Ole Miss' comeback from the heart-breaking last second loss to Wake Forest trimming Pat Sullivan's Stanford University at Vaught Hemingway Stadium. Jevan Snead is the real McCoy. He gives the Rebs a fighting chance against a vastly improved Vanderbilt University football team this weekend.
Auburn did not look like a world beater in its 3-2 win over Mississippi State. Southern Mississippi prevailed on its trip to Jonesboro to face Arkansas State which might be the best team this year in Arkansas.
Harper Davis, the longtime Millsaps coach, who should be elected to the Nationakl Football Foundation's College Football Hall of Fame with his Mississippi State All-America halfback brother Art Davis, thinks this year's Millsaps team might go unbeaten and win a national championship.
Greg Byrne, Mississippi State's new Athletic Director, has enrolled State in the All-American Football Foundation as a collegiate member. Collegiate members of the AAFF vote and help select the Foundation's All-America teams, coaches of the year, national champions and Colonel Red Blaik Leadership Scholarship awardees AFTER the bowl games, after all of the returns are in. The AAFF will select its 15th honorees in January.
Brett Favre's new boss, Woody Johnson, great grandson of Johnson and Johnson Founder, owns the New York Jets, which just moved its headquarters to New Jersey, leaving Hempstead, New York. He is delighted to have Favre, Southern Mississippi's great quarterback, on board. Woody owns a 1000 acre piece of land near the new training site and has told Brett that anytime he wanted to go hunting by all means do so.
Leaving Green Bay at this stage of his career opens the door for Brett to get more endorsements than ever before.Having two great Mississippi collegians, Favre and Eli Manning, in New York is terrific for ole Magnolia.
Brett is renting a house in North Jersey. Cost? $15,000 a month. At that price he could have gotten a mansion in the Princeton area and be next door to those great Italian restaurants in Trenton which I enjoyed for 30 years.
Governor Tom Dewey went to the Men's room at one of the restaurants and was sitting on the throne when an old regular, not knowing the room was occupied, opened the door, recognized the future Presidential candidate, left the door open as he called to his pals, "Look, who is sitting on the can."
The closing of Yankee Stadium brings back many memories of the Fifties and Sixties when I covered the Bronx Bombers as Executive Sports Editor-Columnist of the Trenton Times when Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris composed the best one-two punch in Baseball. I was also covering the New York Mets and Philadelphia Phillies as well as the New York Giants, Philadelphia Eagles and Penn State, Army-Navy, and the Ivy Leaguers, Princeton, Yale, and Harvard.
Every Saturday night Dizzy Dean and Pee Wee Reese were in town for Baseball's game of the week we would go to Toots Shor's great restaurant and talk long into the night 46 years ago.
I had covered the World Series earlier as a Mississippi Sports Editor and has gotten to know the New York writers. When I came East on Opening Day for the Times before the game the great New York Sports Editor Dan Parker came over to say hello and he said: "Jimmie, welcome to New York. "
New York and New Jersey became my home away from home for 30 years. I always look forward to returning to Gotham for the Heisman Trophy and Hall of Fame Dinners in December.
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