A Sporting View: Have a ball with sports this fall

After one of the worst summers in recent memory for sports news, the final week of August proved to be one of the most enjoyable weeks in a long, long while for this sportswriter.

All summer long we had been fed daily rations of bitter pills — the Barry Bonds steroid record, NFL thuggery and the Michael Vick dog holocaust, NBA gambling scandals — but then, sometime after Vick made his public apology, it was as if the clouds parted and sports came back.

Baseball provided us with several great pennant races, and both the Mets and Yankees squared off with their regional rivals in intense and ultimately enjoyable series. The scrappy Phillies, led by Ryan Howard and kept in games by a surprisingly competitive pitching staff, swept the Mets to climb within two games of the division lead. The Yankees, buoyed by rookie phenom Joba Chamberlin and anchored by solid pitching from Andy Pettite, Roger Clemens and Chien Ming Wang, swept the Red Sox at home to take the lead in the wildcard standings and move within striking distance of the division lead. A few games later, rookie Sox pitcher Clay Buchholz tossed a no-hitter in only his second major-league start. It was as if it was 1978 all over again.

And then college football suddenly, gloriously, appeared.

Want to know the definition of a stud? How about being the all-time record holder for touchdown passes and getting a full ride to the island of Oahu? That guy is Colt Brennan, quarterback of the Rainbow Warriors. Last year, Brennan set the NCAA record for TD passes (58) and passing efficiency (186). This year, he began the season by tossing six TDs on 416 yards of passing, destroying Division I-AA Northern Colorado 63-6.

But it’s not as if Hawaii was looking for lesser competition to pad the stats — it had offered to play Michigan that week, but Michigan instead chose to play the “safe” game against Division I-AA Appalachian State. In what probably will go down as one of the biggest upsets in modern college football history, Appalachian State beat then-No. 5 Michigan 34-32 on the arm of Armanti “Money” Edwards — a quarterback who somehow missed showing up on the radar screens of Division I programs all over the country. Playing in front of 109,000 maize-and-blue-clad fans at the Big House, Edwards tossed three TDs and passed for 227 yards.

But there were more sports to be had. The U.S. Open began play in Flushing Meadow, easily one of the more exciting tennis tournaments in the world. In NASCAR, Ricky Rudd became only the second driver in history to start 900 races, second only to Richard Petty.

Dog fights and steroids? Turn off talk radio and get back to the games, folks. They’re there.