TERRY MOSHER
Arizona’s Kyler Murray had a rough introduction to the NFL. Oakland disguised its coverage and I’m pretty sure that confused the talented rookie quarterback who finished 3-for-8 for 12 yards. He had one run for 4 yards.
I thought it was a dirty trick by Oakland coach Jon Gruden to make up a defense that was not just effective, but confusing. But, hey, this is the cutthroat NFL where if you want to be treated like a gentleman join a chess club.
What Gruden did was to show a 7-defensive front and then pull two linebackers out at the snap to get back in coverage. So where it looked like the Raiders were going to go full bore pressure on the young man, it was only an appearance of full racehorse pressure.
Murray will learn, though. He better or he will be driving a bus somewhere.
On the flip side of rookie quarterbacks, former Washington State QB Gardner Minshew had a good night for Jacksonville. He was 19-for-29 for 202 yards and had a touchdown pass called back on a block in the back penalty.
Redskins rookie Dwayne Haskins from Ohio State showed off his big arm with a 55-yard TD pass. Now he has to learn that he’s not now playing against Oregon State, Tulane and Rutgers (Ohio State won those three games last year by a combined score of 178-40).
Talks broke down between U.S. Soccer and the women who are arguing for pay equal to the men. I don’t know why we are such a discrimination nation, whether it comes to gender or nationality or skin color, but it’s wrong, wrong, wrong.
The “Pay The Man” mantra should now also say “Pay The Woman.”
Just because men are physically superior based almost solely on the amount of testosterone doesn’t mean the women’s game isn’t as interesting to watch and doesn’t deserve to be treated equality at the box office.
I go back 30 years to when I used to cover women’s basketball at the University of Washington at a time when some of my male colleagues would not. Their reasoning was it was not basketball.
Yeah, the women could not dunk and they missed a lot of layups, but it was still a competitive game pitting women against women on the same sized court as the men with the same hoops and backboard as the men.
So, yes, they could not beat the men in a straight-up game, but it was still a game and worthily of being viewed and wrote about. My male colleagues were wrong and very sexist.
I watch an inning of the Minnesota-Kentucky Little League baseball game, which was enough to see Minnesota’s second baseman make two slick fielding plays. That would not be unusual in itself if not for that second baseman to be a girl, Maddy Freking, only the 18th girl to play in the LL World Series and the first since Mo’ne Davis made news in 2014.
Freking plays for Minnesota’s Coon Rapids-Andover team, which won its opener Friday (August 16 2-1 over Bowling Green of Kentucky.