Cock-A-Doodle-Doo: Gamecocks UPSET #1 Alabama

Sunrise In South Carolina

After all the pain, the Gamecocks gave fate another shot and beat No. 1 Alabama.

COLUMBIA, S.C. -- After watching his South Carolina football team fumble away a big lead in a 35-27 loss at Auburn two weeks ago, Steve Spurrier asked his players to put their faith in something that has never been very kind to the Gamecocks.

"Let's give fate a chance," Spurrier told his team, during a meeting a couple of days after the Gamecocks squandered a 20-7 lead against the Tigers.

"If fate is going to smile on South Carolina, then we have to give it a chance. Who knows? If you give fate a chance, something big may happen."

In front of a sold-out crowd of 92,993 fans, the No. 19 Gamecocks stunned No. 1 Alabama 35-21 on Saturday, ending the Crimson Tide's winning streaks of 29 consecutive regular-season games and 18 straight SEC contests.

"It was nice to beat the No. 1 team, there's no question about that," Spurrier said. "It has to be one of the best days for our university ever, I would have to guess."

For more than a century, fate has often stricken the Gamecocks in the worst ways. After all, there's only one conference championship commemorated on the walls of Williams-Brice Stadium -- the 1969 ACC title.

In more than 100 years of playing football, South Carolina has won only four bowl games and it has never played in a lucrative BCS bowl game in the modern era. For much of the past two decades, the Gamecocks have been also-rans in the SEC East, chasing programs like Florida, Georgia and Tennessee.

Finally, fate shined on the Gamecocks on Saturday, just like it used to shine on Spurrier's pass-happy teams at Florida, where he led his alma mater to six SEC titles and the 1996 national championship.

It was the third time South Carolina defeated a No. 1-ranked team in a men's sport this year. The Gamecocks' basketball team upset No. 1 Kentucky, and their baseball team defeated No. 1 Arizona State in the College World Series on the way to winning the school's first national title in any men's sport.

"I think that this game was meant to be," Spurrier said. "I used a line this week that I've never used in my life. Since our basketball team had beat No. 1 and our baseball team had done it, I said, 'Fellas, if fate means for us to win this game Saturday then let's give it a chance.'"

And beating the Crimson Tide in front of a packed house and national TV audience meant so much more for South Carolina's starved fans.

"It was an unbelievable feeling," South Carolina quarterback Stephen Garcia said. "I'm not really sure how to describe the feeling right now, but it's unbelievable."

During the last six seasons, Spurrier has tried to make the Gamecocks relevant in the SEC East. He surprised nearly everyone by coming out of retirement to take over a mediocre South Carolina program in 2005 and didn't win more than eight games in each of his first five seasons.

After the loss at Auburn, the Gamecocks again seemed to be in danger of falling back into mediocrity. Garcia fumbled twice in the second half at Auburn and was benched in the fourth quarter. Freshman Connor Shaw threw two interceptions late in the game, and Spurrier was questioned for shuffling his quarterbacks once again.

"We had a big pow-wow talk and said if we were going to have a big year, we couldn't play like we did at Auburn," Spurrier said.

The Gamecocks played like they were the best team on the field against Alabama. Garcia looked like the best quarterback on the field, better than Alabama's Greg McElroy, who had never lost as a starting QB in high school or college.

South Carolina freshman Marcus Lattimore looked like the most dangerous runner on the field, even better than Alabama's two-headed monster of reigning Heisman Trophy winner Mark Ingram and Trent Richardson. Gamecocks receiver Alshon Jeffery made big play after big play, outshining Alabama All-America candidate Julio Jones.

Spurrier even looked like the best coach on the sideline again. He kept Alabama's defense guessing, and the Gamecocks were able to hold the Crimson Tide to only 36 rushing yards on 29 carries.

"I think our guys got together and said, 'Let's give it a little more effort and see what happens," Spurrier said. "That was our rallying cry."

The Gamecocks stunned Alabama early and often. After the Crimson Tide kicked a field goal to take a 3-0 lead on its first possession, South Carolina scored three consecutive touchdowns to make the score 21-3.
Garcia, who has been maligned throughout his three-year career, was a perfect 9-for-9 passing for 94 yards and three touchdowns in the first half. The Gamecocks had a 21-9 lead at the half.

"I guess it couldn't have come at a better time, playing against the No. 1 team," said Garcia, who finished with 201 passing yards, three touchdowns and one interception on 17-for-20 passing. "Coach Spurrier said, 'Let's give fate a chance,' and we did."

But in the opening minutes of the second half, it looked like fate would rear its ugly head again. On the first play from scrimmage in the third quarter, center T.J. Johnson snapped the ball over Garcia's head. Garcia picked up the fumble at South Carolina's 4-yard line. Instead of falling down or scrambling to escape, Garcia threw the football through the back of his team's end zone for a safety.

Alabama got the ball back and kicked a 39-yard field goal to cut South Carolina's lead to 21-14 with 9:37 to play.

"They said it was my first incompletion of the game," Garcia said. "Oh, well."

Instead of collapsing like they've done so many times in the past, the Gamecocks stood tall.

"We played some ball today," Spurrier said. "We didn't get a bunch of fumble returns or blocked punts. We didn't do any of that stuff. We had to play ball today, we played until the end and looked up and had beaten No. 1 by a couple of touchdowns."

With its victory, South Carolina becomes a major player in the SEC East race with key remaining games against No. 11 Arkansas on Nov. 6 and at No. 14 Florida on Nov. 13.

The Crimson Tide, who played in each of the last two SEC championship games, now find themselves in a dogfight in the SEC West. Alabama was playing its third straight difficult game, after coming from behind to win at Arkansas 24-20 on Sept. 25 and blowing out Florida 31-6 at home last week.

"It hurts a lot," McElroy said. "It's not a good feeling. There are a lot of guys on this team who have never experienced a loss."

During South Carolina's postgame celebration in its locker room, one of Spurrier's players suggested the team award a game ball to fate.

"I'll accept it for fate," Spurrier told his team.

Indeed, fate finally shined on the Gamecocks and now almost anything seems possible.



Mark Schlabach covers college sports for ESPN.com. He co-authored Bobby Bowden's memoir, "Called To Coach," which was published by Simon & Schuster. The book is available in stores and can be ordered here. You can contact him at schlabachma@yahoo.com.

Sources: New England Patriots near deal to trade WR Randy Moss to Minnesota Vikings

Sources: Vikes close in on Randy Moss

Randy Moss' improbable return to Minnesota is about to become reality.
 
The Vikings and the Patriots are planning to complete the blockbuster trade that will send the Pro Bowl wide receiver back to Minnesota on Wednesday, multiple league sources told ESPN NFL Insider Adam Schefter.


NFL sources told Schefter the deal moved closer to completion Tuesday night. Two well-placed league sources predicted the trade will be consummated Wednesday.

"I'd be shocked if it doesn't happen," said one source close to the situation.

 
FoxSports.com first reported the trade talks, but did not specify what the Patriots would get for giving up their primary deep threat.

 
"I don't know if there have been any discussions, but I can confirm that we haven't traded Randy Moss," Patriots vice president of media relations Stacey James told ESPNBoston.com's Mike Reiss.

 
The seven-time Pro Bowl receiver is in the final year of his four-year deal with New England and has voiced his displeasure at his limbo status.

 
"When you have done so much and put so much work in, it kind of feels like I am not wanted," Moss said before the season began on Sept. 6. "I am taking that in stride and playing my final year out and whatever the future holds is what it holds, but it is kind of a bad feeling -- feeling not wanted. It is not like my production has gone down."

 
A few days later he apologized for the timing of his comments and said he loves playing in New England.

 
But the Boston Herald, citing an unnamed source, reported on Tuesday that Moss wanted out of New England after a Week 1 win on Sept. 12, telling his agent to ask the Patriots to trade him.

 
Although the Patriots crushed the Dolphins on Monday night, Moss did not have a catch -- the first time that's happened for him in a New England uniform.


Moss and Patriots coach Bill Belichick did not speak or even see each other on Tuesday, a league source told Schefter.
 
Patriots quarterback Tom Brady has been an unabashed fan of Moss since the receiver arrived in New England prior to the 2007 season. The two hooked up for 23 of Brady's record 50 touchdown passes that season. Last season, Brady came to Moss' defense when a Carolina Panthers defensive back questioned Moss' effort. And after Moss said he didn't feel wanted by the Patriots a few weeks ago, Brady again came out strong in support of Moss.

 
"Randy is important, was important, will be important, especially from my standpoint as a quarterback," Brady said during an interview on Boston sports radio station WEEI. "I love Randy and I'd love to play with him for a long time."

 
Moss, 33, has only nine catches for 139 yards and three TDs through four games this season. That comes after hauling in 83 passes for 1,264 yards and 13 touchdowns last season. His career year came in his first with the Pats, when he caught 98 passes for 1,493 yards and 23 TDs, an NFL record.

 
The Vikings have been looking for help at receiver for quarterback Brett Favre, but they were unable to work out a deal for the Chargers' Vincent Jackson.

 
Pro Bowl receiver Sidney Rice will miss at least the first six weeks of the season because of a hip injury and Percy Harvin has struggled all season with migraine headaches.

 
Without the deep threat that he had in Rice, Favre's production has dropped dramatically. The Vikings have lost two of their first three games and their receiving group lacks the prototypical big-play receiver who can out-jump smaller cornerbacks for passes down the field.

 
That's Moss in a nutshell.

 
Moss immediately energized a lagging franchise when he was chosen in the first round in 1998. He averaged 19.0 yards per catch and hauled in 17 TDs as a rookie to help the team reach the NFC title game. His first season coincided with a string of sellouts at the drab Metrodome that remains going to this day.

 
The move would no doubt delight Favre, who will turn 41 later this month. He openly campaigned for the Packers to acquire Moss toward the end of his time in Green Bay. But the Patriots ultimately ended up parting with just a fourth-round pick to pry Moss away from the Raiders, and Favre privately fumed at the swing and miss by the Green Bay front office.

 
Favre was traded to the Jets a year later and signed a two-year deal with the Vikings last season.



Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.

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Charles Barkley RIPS LeBron James Over Race Comments

 Charles Barkley RIPS LeBron James Over Race Comments

 

LeBron James says that race has played a role in the massive backlash he has received since joining the Miami Heat over the summer.

Charles Barkley disagrees. The former NBA star spoke with WIP in Philadelphia and called out LeBron for his comments on race.

Barkley repeatedly referred to the James saga as a bad movie and said the criticism he has heard have nothing to do with race.

"The only criticism I've heard about LeBron and it was my biggest criticism, that decision thing was just stupid. It was stupid," Barkley said. "The second thing when they all came out there dancing around on stage, that was silly. That's the only thing I've heard LeBron get criticized about. That has nothing to do with race."

"It's like watching a movie," the Basketball Hall of Famer added. "Just when you think it couldn't get any stupider, it gets more stupid."

The TNT analyst also ripped ESPN for reporting on the Heat training camp every day and catering to James. "They have definitely crossed the line and this is unprecedented," he said. "This is unprecedented a** kissing."
The interview was transcribed by Sports Radio Interviews. You can listen to the entire segment here.

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LeBron James, race and the NBA

A close examination of the Heat's LeBron James and the role of race

By J.A. Adande
ESPN.com

"Pardon The Interruption" and "Around The Horn" look at the impact of LeBron James' comments to CNN.

Trying to avoid writing about the Miami Heat this season will be as difficult as trying to avoid writing about race and the NBA. Here we are, mere days after the teams assembled for the first time, and already the two inescapable subjects have converged into a sports topic so consuming that we managed to go an entire 24-hour cycle without talking about the New York Jets.

Race is so incendiary that the fire quickly engulfed what should have been the real news emanating from Soledad O'Brien's CNN interview, namely the first mea culpa of any kind from LeBron James' camp regarding "The Decision."

"The execution could have been a little better," Maverick Carter said. "And I take some of the blame for that."

When I threw that quote on Twitter all it did was make some people even angrier because Carter couched his confession.

"Mav took 'some' blame? SOME?!" @dgoldstein79 tweeted to me. "He's now up for 2 awards: Worst PR decision of the century AND biggest understatement. Congrats!"

No one bothered to parse the racial comments in the same way. How many people noticed that Maverick used the same "s-word" -- some -- in addressing the racial component of the summer-long backlash against LeBron?

"It definitely played a role in some of the stuff coming out of the media, things that were written for sure," Carter said.

It's important to keep in mind that he and LeBron were merely responding to questions. What O'Brien was doing asking them in the first place is another matter. For all we know she could have been trying to gather some sound bites for her next "Black in America" special. She asked and LeBron answered, and according to the transcript, it went as follows:

O'BRIEN: "Do you think there's a role that race plays in this?"

JAMES: "I think so, at times. It's always, you know, a race factor."

That's all it took. He didn't claim to be a victim of racial persecution, he didn't call for a racial revolution. He simply responded to a question and noted that race is a factor at times.

It's a simple, fundamental truth in our society and, in particular, the NBA. As long as the NBA features predominantly black athletes playing for predominantly white owners who are selling their sport to predominantly white ticket buyers, there will be a race factor. It's an ongoing quandary, usually left unsaid.

Every once in a while the league will try to address it, never more awkwardly than the "Love It Live" ad campaign that utilized dead white singers as a means to sell tickets to see living black basketball players. Apparently the league felt Elvis Presley and Frank Sinatra made better spokespeople than Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O'Neal. And for the demographic that buys the bulk of season tickets and luxury suites, they very well could have been right.

That brings us to an essential component we must understand when it comes to any discussion of race and the NBA. It's OK for people to root for people who bear the most resemblance to themselves. I had no qualms with white Boston Celtics fans who bypassed racks of Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce jerseys to buy a Brian Scalabrine jersey. If they could identify more with him -- to the extent almost anyone can identify with a 6-foot-9 man with OrangeSicle-colored hair -- that's fine. It's no different than black people who previously didn't care about the difference between a serve and a volley rushing to the TV to cheer for Venus and Serena Williams. We all do it to some degree, be it with athletes or even "Price Is Right" contestants. We tend to support those representing our racial group.
It's not racism. I prefer the term that movie producer (and soon to be Golden State Warriors owner) Peter Guber used repeatedly in his conversation with Charles Barkley in Barkley's 2005 book "Who's Afraid of a Large Black Man?": tribalism.

Tribalism is about familiarity within the known entity. It's not about hatred of others, it's about comfort within your own, with a natural reluctance to expend the energy and time to break across the barriers and understand another group.

Most of what we're quick to label racism isn't really racism. Racism is premeditated, an organized class distinction based on believed superiority and inferiority of different races. That "ism" suffix makes racism a system, just like capitalism or socialism. Racism is used to justify exclusion and persecution based on skin color, things that rarely come into play in today's NBA.

The league routinely gets A grades in Richard Lapchick's racial report cards for diversity in its racial and gender hiring. While that doesn't mean there's complete equality in front offices and coaching sidelines, there's no sense that a powerful invisible barrier bans African-Americans from those jobs like the sonic fence keeping out the smoke monster in "Lost."

The color of LeBron's skin won't prevent him from making $14.5 million to play basketball for the Miami Heat this season. It didn't prevent him from signing endorsement deals with corporate titans Coca-Cola, McDonald's and Microsoft while in his early 20s. It didn't keep people of all races from buying his jersey. Racism has yet to come into play in LeBron's professional life. That doesn't mean he can exist in a racial vacuum.

James managed to navigate the first seven years of his career without running into any racial reefs. You could say there was an African-American style to him, but he never presented any views as coming from a uniquely African-American perspective. All debates about LeBron were on his merits as a basketball player, as an individual, never linked to his ethnicity. There was a flare-up about the similarity of his Vogue magazine cover photo to a "King Kong" poster, but James didn't join the discussion.

Lately there's been a slow-moving racial weather front moving across the radar screen on the LeBron narrative, and ultimately he couldn't escape the story.

It began with Jesse Jackson's claim that Cleveland owner Dan Gilbert's late-night rant about LeBron's departure reflected a "slave master mentality" and that "He sees LeBron as a runaway slave." It was an overly exaggerated reaction to the reaction. If Gilbert really saw LeBron as a slave, he would have tracked him down with bloodhounds and lynched him. That's what slave masters did to escaped slaves. That's why I'll never equate professional or collegiate athletics to slavery.

Orlando Sentinel columnist Shannon Owens linked LeBron's appearance on a list of 10 most disliked athletes to his race. And on ESPN.com, Vincent Thomas said the growing resentment toward LeBron from white people would increasingly lead black people to embrace him, almost reflexively.

Now James has entered the fray himself, simply by acknowledging the presence of something we're never comfortable talking about. It came to his porch and he finally opened the door.

The counterargument is that James never felt compelled to address the league's racial element when everybody was an ally. No one wondered about the racial motivations of reporters and fans when they were writing praise and buying jerseys.

That's because race doesn't affect acceptance, it affects tolerance. When people behave in a manner accepted by society at large they are easy for everyone to embrace. It's who chooses to align with the outcasts that is telling.

LeBron quickly evaporated his reservoir of goodwill with the self-serving "Decision." His own actions were responsible for the ignition and the acceleration of the vitriol. Where race comes in is the continuation. The racial element won't be measured in the condemnation, which came from all corners. It will be measured in the willingness to forgive.

Self-indulgent? I always wondered why that tag didn't stick with white athletes such as Eli Manning, John Elway, Danny Ferry and Kiki Vandeweghe, who refused to play for the teams that drafted them until they could force a trade. Did they avoid permanent ostracizing for their blatant attempt to circumvent the rules that are essential for competitive balance in the league simply because they were white? They certainly don't pop up on the list when we talk about spoiled athletes.

LeBron, like the "draft dodgers," never was accused of a major crime against society. But this week LeBron made a transgression that fewer are willing to forgive. He just forced us to discuss the existence of something none of us feels comfortable doing. He caused us to examine the bias that's always lurking, that has the potential to spring from any of us.

ESPN Senior Writer J.A. Adande
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