SU stumbled across the Peyton Manning story from the late 1990s while he was at the University of Tennessee over the holiday weekend.  I must admit that I have been a Peyton fan throughout his NFL career – he comes across as a good guy, has his head on straight, gracious when he wins and in defeat.  As the story goes, as a sophomore, he allegedly placed his genitals on a woman trainer’s head who was checking his foot for a stress fracture.  He claims he was mooning a teammate.  The teammate denied it and even wrote Manning a letter to ask him to man up and admit the truth.  This guy ultimately lost his scholarship.  The woman pressed charges and the case was settled.  OK, guys are young and do stupid things.

But then the Mannings (Archie and Peyton) wrote a book together in 2003 and went after this woman again in the book. She was no longer at Tennessee and pressed charges again.  Seems odd that he found the need to bad-mouth her several years later.  Apparently, there is now some new law suit and the legal records have been unsealed.  That’s why this has come up after 17 years.  I have never been one to place any player on a pedestal – you only get disappointed.  Hey, I like A-Rod – what can I say, and I always liked Tiger Woods.  The HGH story was never fully put to bed re Manning and now this.  Some are saying that he might now come back for another couple of years to take the attention off of this story and ensure he has the media focus to defend himself.  Anyway, I think it will be interesting to see how this plays out.  We go after guys like Cam Newton for less offensive things.  Does Manning deserve a pass?  Just a young guy making a mistake?

Don’t know if you saw it last night but ESPN decided to broadcast the Michigan – Ohio State game only using cameras at courtside.  The idea was to give the viewer a sense of the athleticism of the players.  SU says that anyone who has watched their share of kids’ games over the year sitting along the court knows that as they get taller, it becomes harder to see over them.  It’s not a great view.  I watched for about 12 minutes of the game.  Awful.  The ref blocks your view about half the time and you can’t see any of the flow of the offense and lose depth perception.  I mean, didn’t anyone at ESPN test this?  Someone on Twitter joked that they should have switched to the camera angle behind the tall guy sitting in front of you.  For basketball, the traditional view is just fine.  Back to the drawing board.

Finally, too bad Carmelo shot down the latest trade rumors.  It’s only been a year and a half and everyone now sees that the re-signing of Melo by the Knicks was a disaster.  Readers of SU knew this right away.  I think he becomes more and more untradeable as his health deteriorates with his knees.  He will fulfill the length of his deal and it will take that much longer for the Knicks to find a way to become contenders.  It’s their own fault.