After the Vikings recovered a fumble, made an interception, returned a punt for a touchdown and scored three other touchdowns to take a 28-0 lead against Arizona yesterday, former Viking Mike Morris said on KFAN radio that the Purple had played the best half of football in Brad Childress’ three seasons as coach.
Marcus McCauley had an active rookie season last year after being drafted in the third round by the Vikings. He started nine games at nickel back and was a regular for four of the final six games at left cornerback, replacing the injured Antoine Winfield. This season he’s started one game, participated in eight of 14 and didn’t even have a tackle until yesterday when he came up with three solo and one asssisted.
Ryan Longwell, the Vikings’ 34-year-old place-kicker, is also the team’s backup punter. He hasn’t punted in an NFL game since 2006 when he kicked once for 27 yards. Longwell, who was all-Pac-10 as a punter and place-kicker at California, practices punting in training camp but not during the regular season. Although he averaged 41.9 yards per punt in college, he said the hang time on his punts wasn’t NFL caliber.
Mike Sherels told Sports Headliners that his brother Marcus had a disappointing season because of the right shoulder injury he incurred in the Indiana game on October 4. Marcus missed one game and when he did play his effectiveness was limited as a tackler from his cornerback position. Mike said post-season surgery on his brother’s shoulder is a possibility. He also said Marcus had been named to a mid-season all-Big Ten team and that despite the injury didn’t give up a touchdown reception this season. Marcus, a senior next season, could be one of the Big Ten’s best cornerbacks in 2009.
Gophers athletic director Joel Maturi was able to switch the start of the Minnesota-Michigan State basketball game on December 31 from a 5 p.m. start to 11 a.m. to avoid conflict with the Insight Bowl (Gophers and Kansas kickoff at 5 p.m.) but the move sparked both criticism and praise from Williams Arena ticket holders. The new start time will be an inconvenience to some fans and an enhancement for others but regardless of your position Maturi is encouraging the Big Ten to adopt a future policy that will initially have to-be-determined start times for basketball games that are scheduled on the same day as conference bowl games.
The Insight Bowl is televised by the NFL Network which the majority of cable subscribers in this market don’t have as part of their programming package. Although the NFL Network has allowed local market TV stations to televise the game in previous years, nothing has been announced for Minneapolis-St. Paul by the University or bowl officials.
Insight Bowl representative Matt Winter told Sports Headliners on Friday that this is the fourth year of an eight year deal between the network and the bowl. The Insight Bowl used to be televised by ESPN but when bowl officials wanted the game played on New Year’s Eve the network couldn’t do so because of prior commitments, Winter said.
University president Bob Bruininks said he expects an event in the Phoenix area during the time of the bowl game to thank major donors to the new TCF Bank Stadium. He also said eight of the school’s 12 Board of Regents will travel to the Insight Bowl.