College FB '13 Dread News - Week 1

Two of the very best players with dreads in college football were on the national stage last Saturday night as Georgia and Clemson - schools just 75 miles apart - met for the first time in 10 years. Not only two of the best players with dreads, Georgia sophomore RB Todd Gurley and Clemson junior WR Sammy Watkins are two of the best players period, and they did not disappoint in a game ESPN saved to be telecast in primetime on ABC. There were 4 ties and 2 lead changes, and in the end Clemson held on for a 38-35 home victory in a battle of two teams that coming into the game had realistic dreams of going undefeated this season. But only Clemson's dream remains alive after the Tigers beat the Bulldogs for the first time in 23 years. The game lived up to its billing as a matchup of two high-powered offenses against two mediocre defenses. More than 1,000 total yards were amassed by the two offenses, with Georgia finishing with a 545-467 advantage. And to the surprise of nobody Gurley and Watkins accounted for more than one fourth of those yards.

Oh Brother, Here we go again

Yes, it's that time of the year again - the first week in September. Time for the beginning of another NFL season. And in the house of dread, that also means it's time to take a look at what my crystal ball (which I simply call "CB") is predicting will happen during the season. At this time a year ago, in a stroke of genius (or maybe it was just dumb luck) CB predicted the Harbaugh brothers (John and Jim) would be shaking hands after their teams (Ravens and 49ers) met in the Super Bowl. And now what? CB says it's going to happen again? Well, as Lee Corso says, not so fast! Although CB thinks the 49ers and Ravens will both make the playoffs this season, neither one will make a return trip to the Super Bowl. Instead, if CB is correct, there will be a different pair of brothers shaking hands on the field following the NFL's first ever cold weather Super Bowl.

If you've ever taken a boring tour or two in your life, then that hilarious commercial - the one where the Manning brothers, Peyton and Eli, and their father, Archie, are part of a group taking a tour of ESPN - really hits home. Although that commercial makes fun of the sibling rivalry between Peyton and Eli, I'm sure there's at least one competition that still exists between the two in real life. And in that competition, the scoreboard currently reads: Peyton - one Super Bowl victory, Eli - two Super Bowl victories. Now as fierce a competitor as Peyton is, and as great a player he still is at age 37, do you honestly believe he's going to retire from the NFL having won fewer Super Bowls than his little brother?

Well, CB thinks Peyton is fixin' to change the score this year. Not only will he lead the Denver Broncos to victory in the Super Bowl, he'll do it with Eli's team - the New York Giants - on the opposing sideline.

DG149

The NFL 2012 season in review is the focus of dread gallery #149. I was hoping to do more than one DG on the NFL (you may remember I somehow did six in one week last year); but I'm out of time; so I'm going to try to stuff all the best photos I saved from last season plus some other extras into one giant post. Same as with college football, I wasn't able to visit anywhere near as many websites as I wanted to; so no doubt I missed out on a whole bunch of great shots. But I saved a lot of great shots too; hopefully you will enjoy them. Only about 50 or so of the NFL's players with dreads will be featured; so you might be seeing some of the players I like over and over. I'm not going to check the game situation for each photo as thoroughly as I normally do, because I just didn't have enough time to. So here we go with NFL '12 in the house of dread.
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1. After playing three seasons in college at Alabama (where Coach Saban stifles dreads), rookie RB Trent Richardson finally gets a chance to unleash his dreads as he takes the field for his 1st NFL game on Sept. 9 at Cleveland. Richardson had a tough opener, rushing for only 39 yards on 19 carries in the Browns' 17-16 loss to the Eagles. 

DG148

As a result of spending so much time searching for basketball photos this summer, I didn't do anything on college football. I'd estimate that of all the games from last season for which I wanted to save pictures, only about one fourth of them was I able to search all the websites I wanted to. So I can only imagine how many pictures of great dreads that I missed. From the games I did save pictures I've already posted all of the best photos I could find. But there are a few more that I didn't post that you might find interesting. Let's take a look at them in dread gallery #148, as we take a (quick) look back at last season and look ahead to 2013.
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1. The season got off to a bang on Aug. 30. As South Carolina senior TE Justice Cunningham makes the catch on 2nd and 7 on the 3rd play of 4th quarter, he is hit so hard by Vanderbilt CB Andre Hal that his helmet comes off .....

Dreaded Dozen 2012

For the best players with dreads in college football I do an all-America with dreads team each year. For the best with dreads in the NFL I call it the dreaded dozen. It's a ranking of who I thought were the 12 best players with dreads for one season only, not their whole careers. And there's no secret formula or point system involved. It's entirely my opinion, complete with my own personal biases (although I try to be as fair as possible). Mostly I just go by a player's stats and whether or not he was selected for the Pro Bowl. If you disagree with the selections, it's not a problem. Please, we'd love to hear how you would rank them.

The list for 2012 is a bit different than usual - in that more defensive players than offensive made the top 10. In fact, half of the first half dozen in the rankings play D. In previous years no more than one defensive player per year has been able to crack the top 6. Seven players are repeat selections from 2011 (where a player ranked in 2011 will be noted by the number in parenthesis following a player's name), but oddly the player who ranked #1 was not one of them. And unlike the list for 2011, no rookies made the list this time. So without any further delay, here are the dreaded dozen for the 2012 NFL season.

Stark Raven

When LB Josh Bynes (photo, with the Vince Lombardi Trophy) tackled WR Ted Ginn well short of the end zone on a last-ditch, all-or-nothing kickoff return on the final play, Super Bowl 47 was over, and the Baltimore Ravens were on top of the football world. Congratulations, Ravens, on a job well done. And there was no doubt about it, right? I mean, throughout the season whenever you thought you had the Ravens on the ropes, actually it was the Ravens who had you right where they wanted. Let's see, there was that missed FG by the Dallas kicker at the end of the game in Week 6 (one of only two FG attempts he missed all season); there was that ridiculous 30-yard gain by Ray Rice on 4th and 29 in Week 12; then there was that outrageous 70-yard TD by Jacoby Jones with 31 seconds remaining at Denver in the playoffs; and finally there was the Ravens' D, after being scored upon four possessions in a row, getting the job done when they absolutely had to on the 49ers' final drive of the Super Bowl. There's a fine line between winning and losing in the NFL, and in 2012 more often than not when the Ravens needed a play made, they gone one; and whenever their opponents needed one, they didn't get it.

The Ravens' championship makes it twice in the last four seasons that my crystal ball (CB) has correctly picked the Super Bowl winner before the season began. And not only that, this time CB picked the correct Super Bowl loser too.

DG147 - Part 1

Not willing to put in the extra effort, I kept telling myself I was going to do a nice, quick dread gallery on pro basketball. And then I went through all the pictures I saved ....... Well, so much for nice and quick. Instead, dread gallery #147 will be a nice, not very quick look in two parts at basketball players with dreads who play for pay. We'll look at all 10 of the NBA's players with dreads in action from the 2012-13 season (which I will still refer to as this season even though it's already finished) along with a few (and only a few) of the many playing in minor leagues around the world. No doubt there will be several players with dreads not featured here. I don't have the time to check every single league worldwide. So if I don't include some of your favorite players, I'm sorry; it will be up to you to please let us know about them.

We'll lead off part 1 of DG147 with Gerald Wallace.

Prior to this season Wallace on many occasions had his hair in braids hanging loosely from his head, making them look like they were dreads. And on many other occasions he had braids that looked like braids, such as in the photo above from March 2011. But this season was different.

DG147 - Part 2

Let's continue now with our look at pro basketball players with dreads during the 2012-13 season in part 2 of dread gallery #147.
And we begin with a question: To reduce (your dreads) or not to reduce? For most players the answer is a quick and simple no. After all, what's the point of letting your dreads grow long if you're not going to show them off when you're on the court. Unfortunately not everyone shares my opinion. In fact, for three of the 10 players with dreads in the NBA this season you never knew from game-to-game if they were going to let their dreads flow or keep them stifled. We already saw Cartier Martin in Part 1. Now let's look at the other two.
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1. For Jordan Hill there is no middle ground. When he reduces his dreads, the 6-10, 235-pound reserve center for the L.A. Lakers clumps them together so tightly that it's difficult to tell that he even has dreads. If your seats are in the upper deck, he looks like any other player with clean cut hair. And when he has them flowing freely, he barely holds them back at all, never bunching them, and wearing a band so close to his head that they get nearly full extension when he's on the court - like here on Nov. 11 as he battles for a rebound against Kings F James Johnson during 1st half at Staples Center. Hill had 8 points, 7 rebounds, and a season high 4 turnovers in 19 minutes in this game as Lakers improved to 3-2 with a 103-90 victory over Kings.

DG146 - Part 1

With the first pick in the 2013 NFL draft the Arizona Cardinals select Matt Barkley.

That was the forecast by my crystal ball a couple of days before the start of the 2012 NFL season. But as we know now, Barkley played himself out of the top spot in the draft (and out of the 1st round altogether) with a good but not great senior season as the QB at USC. And the Cardinals? They played themselves out of the top spot too, finishing the season with a better record than 5 other teams.

But that's OK, because it allowed them, with the 7th pick of the 1st round, to have the honor of selecting the first player with dreads in this year's draft. Just as desperate for help on the offensive line as they were at quarterback, the Cardinals picked former North Carolina G Jonathan Cooper. NFL teams usually show very little love for interior offensive linemen in the draft; but apparently Cooper, a 6-foot-2, 312-pounder, is so highly rated as a prospect that not only is he expected to start on opening day, there's already talk of him having Hall-of-Fame potential. Have fun living up to that kind of hype, Coop.

The 2013 draft didn't have as much dread star power as 2012, when 5 of the top 15 players picked (and a total of 7 in the 1st round) had dreads. This year Cooper was the only player with dreads selected in the top 15 and the first of 5 selected in round 1. But the grand total of 36 players with dreads for the entire draft not only easily surpassed last year's total of 30, I think it also is an all-time high for any draft.

DG146 - Part 2

Part 2 of dread gallery #146 features the rookies for teams in the AFC North, NFC North, and AFC South. We'll begin with the Pittsburgh Steelers.

I doubt that the Steelers' front office saw my Week 21 dread news report back in February; but with the players they drafted, you might think they did. I gave the Steelers a C- grade for their dreads in 2012, the only team in the division worse than an A-. But that grade is sure to be a lot better in 2013 because of the 9 players they drafted, five (!) have dreads.
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1. Jarvis Jones' dreads made a great showing at Georgia's pro day on Mar. 21, but apparently Jarvis Jones the player did not. Expected to be the first player with dreads drafted, Jones' stock plunged after he didn't run as fast as the scouts wanted him to, and he ended up not being selected until the Steelers took him with the 17th pick in the 1st round.

DG145

Dread gallery #145, our final look at the 2012-13 season in College Basketball, covers the final two weeks of March - featuring players on teams good enough to be invited to one of the four postseason tournaments. And there will be a few special extras as well.
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After a disastrous 3-game losing streak at just the wrong time ruined their chance to make it to the NCAA Tournament, Louisiana Tech took their 26-6 record to the NIT, where they were seeded #5 in one of the four regions.

1. Sophomore G and St. Petersburg, FL, native Kenneth Smith defends against G Michael Snaer as Louisiana Tech takes on #4 seed Florida State in an NIT 1st-round game on Mar. 19 at Tallahassee.

DG144

There are two more dread galleries to go in our look at College Basketball 2012-13, and both feature the month of March. Dread gallery #144 covers the first half of March, including action from the end of the regular season and the conference tournaments. For those players whose seasons ended with losses in their conference tournament, I'll include their stats for this season (unless I already did so in my dread news report).
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1. Sick sophomore David Rivers and C Andre Almeida of Nebraska pressure 7-0 C A.J. Hammons of Purdue during the 1st round of the Big 10 tournament at Chicago on Mar. 14. Rivers had 4 points and 6 rebounds before fouling out in 24 minutes as the Cornhuskers, seeded 10th after a 5-13 finish in the regular season, defeated 9th seeded Purdue, hanging on after nearly blowing a 48-39 lead to win 57-55.