Go, Falcons!
Reader alert: This is not a cop-out.
Fortunately, when I predicted the Vikings would win by three touchdowns, I offered the cop-out that the only way the Falcons could beat the Vikings in the NFC title game was if some big-time player seized up, big time.
It appears that offensive coordinator Brian Billick made the call for Randall Cunningham — the suddenly erratic Randall Cunningham — to kneel down and kill the last 30 seconds of regulation, meaning the Vikings bypassed the opportunity to win in order to get to overtime. And lose.
So that satisfies my theory. This weekend, at the Super Bowl, I am abandoning that theory. If my theory held up, Denver would win the Super Bowl, but the Atlanta Falcons were so tenacious, so opportunistic, so resilient, and so unwilling to fold when they had plenty of chances against the Vikings, that I have decided they — the Falcons — will win the Super Bowl.
Of course, my theory could still function if the Broncos are in position to win and John Elway or Terrell Davis seizes up the same way Cunningham/Billick did.
But Dan Reeves is on a mission, and quarterback Chris Chandler has nothing to lose. If he loses, he remains a no-name; if he wins, Chandler will be a no-name no more.
Jamal Anderson, Atlanta’s prize running back, is the antidote to Davis. The difference is that Anderson looked mediocre against the Viking defense, which would have rendered Davis mediocre as well. Now we get to see whether Denver’s defense can stop Anderson as effectively as did the Vikings.
And Chandler outperformed Cunningham in the clutch, probing with those little dart-like bullets to Terance Mathis and others, although Cunningham ended the game 1-for-6 passing, spraying the ball around as if his eyes had glazed over and he thought he was back in Philadelphia playing for last place. Now we get to see whether Denver’s defense can solve Chandler when the Vikings could not.
Then there’s Reeves. He stirred up all sorts of controversy about his disgust for the coup that caused him to lose his job at Denver. Maybe he did it to distract the Broncos and the media from describing the still-overlooked Falcons excellence, or maybe he just did it because he was expressing honest emotion, and, after heart bypass surgey, what does he have to lose?
Reeves came up with the crafty plan for the center to elicit a signal that the down linemen could read to prepare for the snap, assuring they would not be bothered by the Viking noise-making-on-cue fans. They won’t have that problem in the open-air stadium in Miami, which means Reeves has had two weeks to figure out some other little tricks with which to bedevil the Broncos.
Those are the keys: Chandler will outperform, or at least equal, Elway; Jamal Anderson will outrush, and for sure will outcatch, Davis; Mathis and the rest of the Falcons receivers will outplay the Broncos receivers; and Reeves will pull a couple of coaching rabbits out of his hat.
And if all those factors don’t decide the game, there is that special little team-of-destiny stuff that we all say we doubt, but deep down we all would like to believe. Randall Cunningham and Cris Carter went out of their way to thank God for every pass, every touchdown and every victory all season, then when the Vikings lost to Atlanta, Dan Reeves came in and, first off, thanked God. It hit me that Bob Dylan’s implication was right. We don’t have to believe that God spends his time deciding the outcome of football games, but if it were true, what happens if, as Dylan wrote, the other side had God on their side?
Face it, the outcome of the Super Bowl is a cleansing operation for Vikings fans. This was the Vikings year, from the first play of exhibition season to the last minute of the fourth quarter, this was the Vikings year. Then they handed it over to the Falcons. Go, Falcons.
Besides, by picking the Falcons, the worst-case scenario is that if the Broncos win…my ol’ theory might have been right after all.
Archer is ‘Super Bowl sleeper’ at Daytona race
Super Bowl weekend may have caused a lot of people to hurry to Florida this weekend, but no other Minnesotan is hurrying quite like Tommy Archer.
Archer, Duluth’s most prominent auto racer, won’t get near Miami, and wouldn’t be thinking football even if the Vikings had reached the Super Bowl. He’ll be zooming along the high-banked turns at Daytona, driving a Dodge Viper at 190 miles per hour in the Rolex 24 Hours of Daytona — the premier endurance race in the U.S., and this country’s answer to the fabled LeMans 24-Hour race.
The race starts at high noon, with the start on ESPN 2, as well as live coverage of the final six hours, starting at 6 a.m. Sunday. Perfect timing, as a sports-fan’s appetizer leading up to the Super Bowl.
The so-called stars of the show are the exotic, purpose-built racers of Ferrari, Lola, Riley & Scott and others. Former CART champion Jimmy Vasser and Max Papis will team up in one Ferrari, for example, and former NASCAR Daytona 500 stock car ace Ernie Irvan will co-drive in a BMW prototype.
But the best race-within-the-race will come in the GT-2 category, where a new factory-backed team of Corvettes will challenge the twin-turbo Porsches and other front-runners. And that’s where Archer and the Viper come in.
Archer’s history of racing Dodge Daytonas, Eagle Talons and some Dodge trucks made him valuable to Chrysler Corporation, even though he has been unable to put together sufficient sponsorship to race full-time the last couple of years. While his high-performance shop near the Duluth Airport continues to do some exotic transformations on cars, Archer had the chance to test some Viper endurance cars, and it led to him racing for Team Oreca’s three-Viper team at LeMans.
Last summer, Archer qualified on the pole at LeMans and co-drove a Viper to second place, behind the class-winning Viper co-driven by David Donohue, son of the late Mark Donohue. With that 1-2 victory in hand, Chrysler apparently decided to back off and wait for LeMans. But then the all-new Corvette led to Chevrolet’s muchpublicized return to racing at Daytona, and, coincidentally, somebody at Chrysler decided it might be interesting to enter one car, just for test purposes (wink-wink).
“It was a last-minute deal,” Archer said, before heading for Florida for this week’s testing and qualifying. “As of September, my understanding was that Chrysler wasn’t going to run Daytona. Officially, and politically, we’re only at Daytona to test for LeMans, but this is a pretty well-tested car, and personally, I’d like to win.”
Archer, 44, who has led races at Daytona several times in various cars, will co-drive the car with Donohue and Olivier Beretta. For two months, Archer has been working ot to prepare his shoulders, arms and legs for the severe duty required to handle the precision necessary for maintaining incredible speeds for long stretches of time.
“LeMans has long straightaways, but Daytona has the high banking for such stretches that there is a lot of passing and maneuvering on the banking,” Archer said. “Your neck gets so sore you can hardly move. So I’ve been putting 40-pound weights around my head, and exercising four difference directions, just to strengthen my neck for the G-forces.
“Maybe it’s more important to prepare now than when I was younger. This kind of racing is fun still, but it’s work, too. When you’re young, you just drive fast; now you work to prepare yourself and your car to go fast.”
In case Archer didn’t already know enough about Vipers, this project came along as he was working on a technical makeover for a Michigan businessman who will enter a Viper in the “One Lap of America” race. This is an event of extremely high-performance cars, driven by competitors who allegedly follow the rules of the road as the circle the country following an assigned course. It is the actual event upon which numerous movies have been made, such as “Cannonball Run,” the name of the original race. But there are no Burt Reynolds or Dom DeLuise wannabes in this event.
“A fellow who does some work in the auto transportation business in Detroit called and asked what I would recommend to make a Viper better for this sort of event,” Archer said. “So I made up a legal-pad sheet of suggested ideas and gave it to him. He said, ‘Do it all.’ ”
The result is this bright red Viper, with yellow flame-trim on the sides, has undergone an incredible makeover at Archer’s shop. Most of the work is on such things as $9,000 race-quality brakes, with Koni adjustable shock absorbers that cost $900 apiece. They’ve blueprinted the transmission, taken 46 pounds off the clutch system, altered the suspension and exhaust, and smoothed out the intake manifold.
“A lot of people get a high-performance car like a Viper and all they want to do is make the engine stronger,” said Archer. “It’s already got 480 horsepower stock from the V10 engine. Because I’ve raced a lot of lower-powered cars, on a tight budget, our idea always has been to make ’em handle better enough to be competitive with higher-powered cars.”
Still, without going inside the engine itself, Archer used an extrude-hone technique to improve efficiency of the intake manifold, and probably increased the horsepower from 480 to 550. By the time the car is ready, the total modifications will probably be worth more than the car’s stock $65,000 sticker price.
Last week, Archer took the red Viper to Florida to test it on a race track near West Palm Beach and complete the set-up for the owner. A little track time could only help when he switched to the Team Oreca Viper at Daytona. He figures the three drivers will each take 2-hour shifts, with lap times of about 1 minute, 55 seconds, at top speeds of 190 mph.
His determination to win is based on his competitiveness, not on the prize money. He doesn’t even know what the purse is, in fact, now that Rolex, the maker of costly and exotic wristwatches, is the sponsor.
“Maybe the winner will get a Rolex, I don’t know,” said Archer, glancing at his wrist. “I wear a $19 Timex.”
Sioux stun Bulldogs 4-3 in final minute
In a season of cruel reversals and setbacks, this was the cruelest one of all.
The UMD Bulldogs played their best game of the season, and got a superlative 47-save performance from goaltender Brant Nicklin, but the North Dakota Fighting Sioux scored two goals in the final 25 seconds to steal a 4-3 victory from the stunned ‘Dogs Friday night at the DECC.
Maybe it shouldn’t have seemed surprising. The Sioux now have won seven straight games, they are now 10-0-1 on the road and 15-1-1 atop the WCHA, with a 20-2-1 overall record that is good for the No. 1 national ranking. The Bulldogs are now 3-14-2 in last place in the WCHA and 6-19-2 overall.
But with 4,822 fans at the DECC standing, stomping and cheering them on, the Bulldogs took a 3-2 lead after two periods on a pair of goals by Ryan Homstol and one by Derek Derow. Then they entrusted it to Nicklin, who seemed eager for the task, after making 15 first-period saves that bordered on larceny, yielding only Lee Goren’s power-play deflection — itself a cruel bounce off defenseman Mark Carlson’s stick. He made 12 more stops in the second period, with Jason Blake’s power-play goal the only Sioux score against the three UMD tallies.
And Nicklin was never better than in the third period, when he came up with 20 more saves as the Sioux outshot the Bulldogs 51-22 for the game. It was the last three that hurt the worst.
With 25 seconds left, and goalie Andy Kollar pulled for a sixth attacker, Jay Panzer scored from the left side. It was an amazing confrontation, because Nicklin was down in the crease, but Panzer didn’t shoot right away.
“That’s one of the best goaltending performances against us all year,” said North Dakota coach Dean Blais. “Panzer said he had stopped him so many times when he’d shot quickly, that if he got another chance, he was going to wait.”
As he waited, Nicklin went down. “I tripped and fell,” Nicklin said. “I realized if I tried to get up, he’d shoot, so I tried to time when he was going to shoot and go for it. I got a piece of it with my stick.”
The crowd, more boistrous than it has been all season, stopped in silence. But at least they had overtime to look forward to. Then the Sioux struck again.
With two seconds left, Jason Blake tried to stuff a wraparound at the right post, and it mostly got through. “I saw it, and it wasn’t all the way in,” said Nicklin. “I went down to smother it, but Calder beat me to it.”
The clock showed 1.4 seconds left, which meant the winning goal was scored officially at 19:58. That didn’t make it any easier.
“That was pretty gut-wrenching,” said UMD coach Mike Sertich. “That was the cruelest of all. We tried a lot of new things, and our guys executed everything exactly as I asked them to. And I’ve seen Brant have a lot of great games, but not like that; he was spectacular.”
Homstol, who scored at 0:14 of the second period on the rebound after Derow set up Jeff Scissons at the crease for a 1-1 tie, and added a power-play goal at 6:16 of the second period to forge a 2-2 tie after Scissons had set up Bert Gilling for a point-blank shot, spoke for the whole team in the subdued locker room.
“We played well,” Homstol said. “Brant stood on his head, and we got nothing for it.”
Gasparini, Bulldogs tie Sioux 2-2
Goaltender Tony Gasparini was the unlikely hero of UMD’s unlikely performance Saturday night, and the only thing more difficult than the challenge Gasparini faced was to realize it was a 2-2 tie Saturday night — not the victory that it seemed to be for the Bulldogs, nor the loss it seemed to be to the North Dakota Fighting Sioux.
Gasparini was thrown into the nets at 5:39 of the first period, after ace goalie Brant Nicklin sprained his left knee twisting on his second save of the game. Nicklin had been the hero Friday night, making 47 saves to almost beat the Sioux, but UMD the tying goal with 25 seconds left, and the game-winner with 1.4 seconds showing and fell 4-3 to the first-place, and No. 1 ranked Sioux.
It seemed impossible that the Bulldogs could revive themselves for another big effort after the crushing end to Friday night’s series opener, but they actually led 1-0 and 2-1 on goals by Ryan Homstol and Curtis Bois, and Gasparini made 17 of his 28 saves against a mounting third-period barrage to hold the Sioux to their lowest goal output of the season.
“I’m proud of these guys,” said Gasparini, the little-used senior netminder from, of all places, Grand Forks, N.D. “I didn’t have to make the saves Brant made last night. I hope Brant isn’t hurt bad, and gets better by next weekend. But it was fun to play against North Dakota…it was fun to play.”
Sioux coach Dean Blais was philosophical after his team’s record went to 15-1-2 atop the WCHA and 20-2-2 overall — compared to UMD’s 3-14-3 and 6-19-3.
“If we’d have won tonight, it might have sent a false message to our guys,” Blais said. “Give UMD credit. I thought they’d be a little down after the first game, but they played hard and executed well.
“Our guys are acting like they lost. But we’ve had six very emotional games in a row, two at Colorado College, two with the Gophers last weekend, and now these two. We’d have liked to have won, but we didn’t lose.”
Coach Mike Sertich revised some lines, inserting the rarely used Jeremy Zahn, and even more rarely used Ryan Nosan as fourth-line wings, and the ‘Dogs came out howling in their new ceremonial gold jerseys, but without the controversial Gopher-like block “M,” which has been removed and replaced by the lettering “Minnesota-Duluth” arching across the top and bottom, with a small number in between. There had been some criticism when the jerseys were unveiled, about the obvious similarity to the hated Gophers, and athletic director Bob Corran ordered the revision.
Gasparini came in and immediately made a couple of big saves, on Jay Panzer and Jesse Bull, and the Bulldogs rallied in front of him to gain a 1-0 lead on a goal by Homstol at 11:54. Homstol was at the left side when Derek Derow tried to barge out from behind the net. DerHe made it, but lost the puck in traffic, and Homstol slammed it past Karl Goehring.
The Sioux got a 1-1 tie at 18:19 when David Hoogsteen had a clean breakaway, but shot just wide to the right. That was no cause for the ‘Dog defense to relax, becaue in a flash, Tom Philion was on the puck in the right corner and passed to the slot, where Jeff Ulmer scored on Gasparini with a one-timer.
Gasparini stopped everything in the second period, but everything was a mere five shots as the Sioux missed the net with several good chances, and the Bulldogs came at them hard enough to keep them on defense. At 15:43 of the middle period, Shawn Pogreba prevented the puck from leaving the Sioux zone on the right side and whipped a quick pass back in, finding Curtis Bois alone on the left. Bois closed in on Goehring, and beat the WCHA’s top netminder with a short-side wrist shot that glanced in off the crossbar.
The 2-1 lead pumped renewed life into the fans, who may also have figured Friday’s performance would be hard to match. But the 2-1 lead stood until the third period, when, at 3:46, Gasparini made two big saves but was victimized when the Bulldogs failed to clear, and Jason Ulmer finally drilled a third try through a tangle of bodies and into the upper right.
The Sioux came hard after that, outshooting the Bulldogs 18-6 through the third period, but Gasparini was solid and the Bulldogs blocked shots and dived to clear loose pucks, drawing appreciative cheers from the crowd.
North Dakota 1 0 1 0 — 2
UMD 1 1 0 0 — 2
First Period: 1. UMD–Homstol 10 (Derow, Carlson) 11:54, Power Play. 1. ND–Jeff Ulmer 9 (Philion, Hoogsteen) 18:19. Penalties–Medak, UMD (holding) 5:53; Schneekloth, ND (interference) 10:44; Homstol, UMD (hooking) 19:02.
Second Period: 2. UMD–Bois 6 (Pogreba) 15:43. Penalties–Jeff Ulmer, ND (roughing) 10:34; Williamson, ND (hooking) 18:18.
Third Period: 2. ND–Jason Ulmer 5 (DeFauw, Armbrust) 3:46. Penalties–Reierson, UMD (holding) 6:03; Fibiger, UMD (slashing) 8:20.
Overtime: No scoring. Penalties–none.
Saves: ND–Goehring 9 9 6 4–28; UMD–Nicklin 3 x x–3; Gasparini 4 5 17 2 — 28. Power plays: ND 0-4, UMD 1-3. Referee: Mike Schmitt; assistant referees: Gregg Wohlers, Bill Vollbrecht. Attendance–5,247.
Top-rated boys hockey teams stumble
Every team hopes to be playing at a peak when sectional high school hockey begins, but if there was any doubt about how close the boys sectionals and the upcoming state tournament could be, just look at last week.
Thump! Elk River, the No. 1 team in the Up North State rankings, attained the top seed in Section 7AA on Wednesday night. On Thursday, Elk River lost to Anoka, and on Saturday the Elks lost 3-2 to Blaine.
Thud! Greenway of Coleraine, riding a solid streak to co-championship of the Iron Range Conference and to the No. 3 spot in the Up North ratings, was seeded third in 7AA, and promptly lost 4-3 in overtime to Bemidji in their last game.
Whack! Eagan, roaring to the Lake Conference championship with a 20-1 overall record that was good for No. 4 in the state, was socked 7-0 by Eden Prairie Saturday night.
Boom! Roseville, at 18-3, stood seventh in state ratings but was tied 3-3 by Osseo Saturday night.
Were the setbacks part of a relaxing mode by teams once their seeding was secured for sectionals? Or were they signs of previously unexposed weaknesses that might mean they were overrated?
Roseau, which won 4-2 at Grand Rapids last Friday to complete its season at 21-1, winds up No. 1. Hastings, finishing 18-4, takes the No. 2 spot. After that, it gets wild.
We’ve got a tie for No. 3 between Greenway (17-5) and Hibbing (18-4), the IRC cochamps. No. 6 is Duluth East (17-5), which looked at the top of its game in beating Anoka 3-1 Saturday, two days after Anoka had beaten No. 7 Elk River (19-3). Consider that if all four of those teams win their first sectional games on Friday, they will convene at the DECC for the 7AA semifinals, with East facing Elk River, and Hibbing meeting Greenway.
Roseville and Hill-Murray are next, both with 18-3-1 records, followed by Eagan (20-2) and Holy Angels, which has a 21-1 record, almost entirely against Class A teams, but moves up to play AA at tournament time.
Making a separate statewide Class A rating going into sectional play finds Hermantown, the odds-on favorite in 2A, rated No. 1 at 18-3-1, followed by Eveleth-Gilbert (18-4), and then Benilde-St. Margaret’s, with the state’s leading scorer in Troy Riddle, who has a chance to hit 100 points if the Red Knights win their sectional.
Warroad, Blake, Breck and then 7A challengers Silver Bay and Marshall follow, with Red Wing and Mahtomedi rounding out the top 10.
A quick breakdown of sectional favorites:
Class AA
Section 1–Rochester Mayo (with ease); Section 2–Hastings (in a waltz); Section 3–Roseville, Hill-Murray and a strong third challenger in White Bear Lake; Section 4–Anoka, with strong opposition from Maple Grove; Section 5–Eagan, although Holy Angels and Burnsville could make trouble, and beware of Bloomington Jefferson making a playoff run; Section 6–Eden Prairie and Edina look best; Section 7–The toughest of all, from a quality in quantity standpoint — Elk River and Hibbing are seeded 1-2, but Greenway might have been playing the best hockey in the state until losing its last game, and East appears to have fallen into a groove at the right time; Section 8–Roseau, easily.
Class A
Section 1–Red Wing; Section 2–Hermantown, but beware of Proctor and Chisago Lakes; Section 3–Mahtomedi, with Farmington a threat; Section 4–Fergus Falls, in a light section; Section 5–Benilde, but St. Louis Park and Totino-Grace could surprise; Section 6–Blake and Breck appear dead-even; Section 7–Eveleth-Gilbert is the favorite, but it may have to beat Marshall and Silver Bay in the semis and finals; Section 8–Warroad, again, although East Grand Forks could surprise.
Boys hockey ratings (final)
UP NORTH STATE CLASS AA
1. Roseau, 21-1
2. Hastings, 18-4
3. (tie) Greenway of Coleraine, 17-5,
and Hibbing, 18-4
5. Duluth East, 17-5
6. Elk River, 19-3
7. Roseville, 18-3-1
8. Hill-Murray, 18-3-1
9. Eagan, 20-2
10. Holy Angels, 21-1
CLASS A
1. Hermantown, 18-3-1
2. Eveleth, 18-4
3. Benilde-St. Margaret’s, 20-2
4. Warroad, 17-4-1
5. Blake, 16-5-1
6. Breck, 16-6
7. Silver Bay, 15-5-2
8. Duluth Marshall, 14-6-2
9. Red Wing, 16-4-2
10. Mahtomedi, 17-4
About the Author
John Gilbert is a lifetime Minnesotan and career journalist, specializing in cars and sports during and since spending 30 years at the Minneapolis Tribune, now the Star Tribune. More recently, he has continued translating the high-tech world of autos and sharing his passionate insights as a freelance writer/photographer/broadcaster. A member of the prestigious North American Car and Truck of the Year jury since 1993. John can be heard Monday-Friday from 9-11am on 610 KDAL(www.kdal610.com) on the "John Gilbert Show," and writes a column in the Duluth Reader.
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