Turkey Awards

As we settle in and digest our Thanksgiving meal this holiday weekend, it's time to hand out The Sports Blitz Annual Turkey Awards.

The SBATs are given to those who prove themselves to be the year's biggest turkeys.

We start with Notre Dame head coach Charlie Weiss. Never have the Golden Domers fallen so low, reaching their nadir this year with losses to both Navy and Air Force.

Weiss has a 10-year contract with Notre Dame, but you have to wonder how long the Irish will allow this to go on. If there is not significant improvement next year, Weiss could be turkey soup.

We award our next turkey to University of Miami football—another once proud program which has totally bitten the dust. This Hurricanes team managed to lose to North Carolina, Georgia Tech, and get shut out by Virginia in their last home game in the storied Orange Bowl.

Randy Shannon has a long way to go to get this program back on track. But the word is that recruiting has already improved over the last few years that Larry Coker was in charge. In all likelihood, the Hurricanes will be back at the top before Notre Dame is.

Let us not forget to give a turkey to Don Imus for his comments about the Rutgers women's basketball team. Remember the uproar over that? The media, black community leaders and radio, sponsors all ran wild.

What did all of this political correctness run amuck do? It cost Imus his job on the radio and laid the ground for a major mess of a lawsuit.

And despite all the commotion, Imus is set to return to the radio on December 3rd.

Nick Saban gets a turkey award. Why, you may ask? Because he deserves one every year.

He left the Miami Dolphins in shambles to run to Alabama for over four million dollars. He then lost to both Mississippi State and Louisiana-Monroe. Following the loss to LM, Saban compared the game to 9-11:

"It may be 9-11, which sort of changed the spirit of America relative to catastrophic events. Pearl Harbor kind of got us ready for World War II, or whatever, and that was a catastrophic event."

Of course the writers and radio heads went nuts.

Barry Bonds gets a turkey just for being Barry Bonds. Despite the fact that he broke the all-time homerun record earlier this year, he was also finally indicted for lying to the grand jury during the whole Balco scandal.

Marion Jones gets two turkeys, after finally admitting that she was on steroids when she won her gold medals.

We can't forget to give NBA referee Tim Donaghy a nice big turkey. He has been disgraced, lost his job, and is now facing jail time for illegal gambling on NBA games.

O.J. Simpson is once again a turkey award winner. O.J. is back in court, facing more than 20 years in jail for trying to rob a sports-memorabilia vendor of what O.J. claim was his own stuff.

We will have to see if the stuff fits this time—but you can almost bet that O.J. will end up in jail.

Michael Vick gets a turkey award for his fall from grace. Vick pled guilty to federal dog-fighting charges earlier this year, and has turned himself in to start serving his sentence.

You have to wonder how much that Vick has lost because of this scandal. We know he has lost millions in cash, but will he ever be able to return to football?

If you thought Michael Vick would win the biggest turkey, you were wrong. No, this year that award goes to the entire New York Knicks organization. From losing sexual harassment lawsuits to putting together an over-priced, losing group of players, this once-proud team has been become the laughingstock of the league.

Thanks to owner James Dolan, coach/GM Isaiah Thomas, and a cast of some of the worst players in the league; the Knicks have recently been voted as the worst franchise in professional sports.

With that kind of notoriety, you can't help but award the New York Knicks as The Sports Blitz Turkey of the Year.

Happy Thanksgiving.

You can send your comments to Joel Panetta by email at joel@thesportsblitz.com