Wow... one day before the NFL season gets underway an action packed Saturday of sports took place. Mainly the stories resulted from college football games, but one major story came from the US Open.
Defending champion Serena Williams played her semifinal match against Kim Clijsters. Both former champions, the match was widely regarded as the unofficial championship match. The match itself didn't disappoint, as Clijsters really pushed Serena to her limit. She won the first set 6-4, and was leading the second set 6-5, 30-15 with Serena serving.
Here is where the match takes a crazy, crazy, crazy turn. Serena was called for a foot fault, on her second serve, which resulted in a double fault. (The call appeared to be the wrong) Serena is not pleased and gives the line judge a piece of her mind. Serena gets ready to serve and then decides to continue her rant. At this point, the chair judge calls the line judge over and asks her what was said to her. We still don't know the specifics of what was said, (I watched it live, and still couldn't tell) but at the end of it, Serena was penalized, on match point nevertheless, and lost the match.
I am not condoning what Serena did, but come on? To lose a match, any match, but the semifinals of the US Open in this way is ridiculous!!! Especially when there are several far worse offenders of smashing rackets, and some of these are celebrated.
Just earlier this week, Novak Djokovic performed imitations of various tennis players. One of the imitations he performed was of John McEnroe, and it included a rant imitation. Or if you wanted a current high strung player, then look no further than Marat Safin, who is notorious for throwing and breaking rackets.
My point is that Serena had an outburst, but this should not be viewed at some large event. I hear some saying that this taints her image. I ask how? She showed emotion that she wanted to win. The whole situation has me irritated.
Onto college football. USC-Ohio State delivered a classic game. OSU was leading 15-10 with just about 6 minutes left. USC was struggling to move the ball, either by air or on the ground. However, one 21-yard pass to Joe McKnight and USC was back in business, moving the ball downfield to score. Super sophomore T. Pryor had one last chance to score, but he was unable to run the 2-min drill efficiently.
Oklahoma State showed that they aren't fully ready for the upper echleon of college football, losing to unranked Houston the week after rising to #5 in the polls.
ND-Michigan also played a great game. Notre Dame came in felling good about themselves, as their offense looked really good against Nevada. Michigan felt good after scoring close to 30 points. J. Clausen looked good against Michigan's secondary, but in the end it was Michigan's freshman quarterback Tate Forcier who made all the plays. Forcier led the Wolverines down the field and despite having one of his receivers drop a touchdown pass, he kept his compsure and found Greg Mathews for the game-winner with 11 seconds left. Charlie Weis took some heat for not running the ball on tehir finall possession, allowing Michigan to keep two timeouts which came in handy for Michigan. Weis' seat will now get a little bit hotter as this was a game that Notre Dame should have won. Entering his fifth season, Weis now has no reason for the Irish to be in a BCS bowl. Will it happen? We shall see, but watching this and all of the other college football stories will provide lots of Saturday excitement.
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