Our Turkey of the Year.

Turkey Awards
J. Panetta
November 22, 2007

  As we settle in and digest our Thanksgiving meal this holiday weekend, it is that time. The time when we hand out The Sports Blitz Annual Turkey Awards. The SBATs are given to those who show themselves to be the years biggest turkeys.

We will start out with Notre Dame head coach Charlie Weiss. Never have the Golden Domers been so low, reaching that point with loses to both Navy and Air Force. Notre Dame may never recover from this fall from football grace. Weiss has a 10 year contract but you have to wonder how long will Notre Dame allow this to go on? If there is not significant improvement next year, Weiss could be turkey soup.

We award a turkey to the University Of Miami football. Another once proud program that has totally bitten the dust. This team managed to loose to North Carolina, Georgia Tech and get shut out in their last home game in the storied Orange Bowl against Virginia.

Randy Shannon has a lot of work on his hands to get this program back on track. But the word is that the recruiting has already improve over the last few years that Larry Coker was in charge. I do think that the Hurricanes will be back at the top before Notre Dame is.

Let us not forget to give a turkey to Don Imus for his comments on the Rutgers women's basketball team. Remember all of the uproar over that? Craziness in the media, black community leaders and radio sponsors ran wild. What did all of this political correctness run amuck do? It cost Imus his job on the radio and a major mess with a lawsuit. Imus is set to return to the radio on December 3rd.

Nick Saban gets a turkey award. Why you may ask? Just because he deserves one every year. He left the Miami Dolphins in shambles to run to Alabama for over 4 million dollars. He then lost to both Mississippi State and Louisiana Monroe. Following the loss to LM Saban compared the game to 9/11 with the following quote. “It may be 9-11, which sort of changed the spirit of America relative to catastrophic events. Pearl Harbor kind of got us ready for World War II, or whatever, and that was a catastrophic event.”

Of course the radio heads and writers went nuts.

Barry Bonds gets a turkey for being Barry Bonds. While he broke the all-time homerun record earlier this year, he was also finally indicted for lying to the Grand Jury during the whole Balco scandal.

Marion Jones gets two turkeys after finally admitting that she was on steroids when she won her gold medals.

We can't forget to give NBA referee Tim Donaghy a nice big turkey. Of course you remember that Donaghy was involved with infamous betting scandal during last season. He has since been disgraced, lost his job and career and is also facing jail time for illegal gambling on NBA games.

O.J. Simpson is once again a turkey award winner. Once again O.J. is back in court facing more than 20 years in jail for trying to rob a sports memorabilia person of what O.J. says was his own stuff. We will have to see if the stuff fits this time. You can almost bet that O.J. will end up in jail.

Michael Vick gets a turkey award for his fall from grace. Vick who plead guilty to federal dog fighting charges earlier this year, has already turned himself in to start and serve his sentence. You have to wonder how much that Vick has lost over this. We know that he lost millions but will he ever be able to return to football.

I bet that you thought that we would award Michael Vick with the biggest turkey but you are wrong. No, that award this year goes to the entire New York Knick organization. This once proud team has been become a laughing stock from owner to coach to players. From sexual harassment lawsuits to an over priced loosing group of players this team has done more than fall from grace. They have managed to become the laughing joke of all of sports.

The Knicks, thanks to owner James Dolan, coach/GM Isaiah Thomas and a cast of the worst players in the league; have recently been voted the worst franchise in sports. With that kind of notoriety you can't help but award the New York Knicks as The Sports Blitz Turkey of the Year.

Happy Thanksgiving
 

You can send your comments to Joel Panetta by email at joel@thesportsblitz.com