News and Notes

The Cowboys won a preseason game at home on Friday, against the Houston Texans. The first string played the entire first half, building a 20-10 lead that should have been more but Romo threw a pick to a linebacker in the endzone with the team about to punch it in from the one yard line. Still, Romo and the gang looked sharp before sitting out the second half. And the second and third stringers held on for the 23-22 win. Except for his one gaffe, Romo looked great, completing 15-19 for 166 and a TD to Patrick Crayton. T.O. caught four passes for 43 yards, and Marion Barber had 75 yards on 13 carries and a TD. The first unit rolled up 270 yards in that first half so they look like they could be ready in two weeks for the season opener. The "defending" Super Bowl Champion Giants(still hard to believe they actually did what they did last year but I need to get over it) suffered a HUGE loss yesterday, when Defensive End Osi Umenyiora, the only Pro Bowler on the Giants last year, was lost for this year when he suffered a broken leg in a 10-7 preseason loss to the crosstown rival Jets. Brett Favre in that game was 9-12 for 96 yards in his limited action. So, as much as I, as a Cowboys fan, despise the Giants, I still hate to see them lose their best defensive player(now that Strahan retired) for the year in the preseason. Just like I touched on in a previous blog about Preseason, that's why preseason sucks. There's another example of a key player on a team, that's out for the ENTIRE year now from an exhibition game. Senseless.







The Olympics have drawn to a close and ofcourse our women's Basketball team was never challenged in winning another gold medal, this time over Austrailia, 92-65. Let's hear it for Lisa Leslie! Four Olympic Golds. She is now 36 and certainly won't be playing for our team in London four years from now when she'll be 40 by then. And on the men's side, our redeem team did what they set out to do. But Spain, who we thrashed just a week earlier by 37, 119-82, made it to the Gold medal game for a rematch and played above their heads, making our team earn it. The game was much closer this time around, where we still prevailed 118-107. There were chances to put the Spaniards away and we couldn't really do it. Everytime, it looked like the dam was about to break loose and we were about to blow it open, we'd turn it over or miss some foul shots or take a silly three attempt with plenty to go on the shot clock ,or give up some ridiculous looking three ball that allowed them to hang around. With just over two minutes to play, we were only up 108-104 when Dwayne Wade more or less killed Spain's hopes of an upset with a three to put us back up by seven and settling the issue that really was in doubt up until then. I guess you can say that we're not 37 points better than Spain but more than 11 points, so it probably falls right in the middle. But it was a relief for us to win that game and restore our dominance of the SPort, on the Men's side. Our overall average margin of victory in the eight games was just under 28 points, with the last two, 101-81 over Argentina in the semifinals on Friday and the 118-107 win over Spain in the Gold Medal game some twelve hours ago, being the closest games. Overall, the United States finished with 110 total medals, with host China coming in second with 100, yet they outdid us in the Gold department, 51-36. The highlights for me were the Redeem team and Michael Phelps winning EIGHT gold medals. I was a little dissappointed in Track and Field although we won the most medals in that overall, but we got outshined by the Jamaicans in some events that we normally rule in. Can't deny how extraordinary Usaine Bolt is however. I would have loved to see what would have happened in a race against Michael Johnson in the 200 meters. Bolt bested Johnson's 12 year old 200 WR mark of 19.32 set back in 1996 by running 19.30. But ofcourse, that wouldn't happen now, with Johnson being 42 now and retired. But put Johnson of his day up against Bolt, and I would still bet on Michael Johnson.