The Sports Monitor

Best wishes for a great 2013. Happy New Year, everyone.

Adrian Peterson just capped one of the greatest seasons in NFL history. The Minnesota Vikings running back rushed for 2,097 yards, just a few feet short of Eric Dickerson's record of 2,105 set in 1984. Oh, he did it less than a year after a gruesome knee injury. Yet it's not a lock for him to win the league's MVP award. Some guy named Peyton Manning is getting a lot of the love. Manning finished the season with 4,659 yards and 37 touchdown passes with the Denver Broncos after missing the 2011 season with a career-threatening neck injury. Pretty impressive numbers, but A.P. is my pick, and it's not even close. Manning took over for a Broncos' team that made the playoffs in 2011. He has two high-end wide receivers in Demaryius Thomas and Eric Decker. They have a solid running game with Knowshon Moreno and, before him, Willis McGahee. Peterson? He was the Vikings' offense. The Vikes lost their top receiver, Percy Harvin, and had no one else. The...

It's been a long college football bowl season, with games starting Dec. 15, but things really get interesting with a trifecta today: the Independence Bowl, the Russell Athletic Bowl and the Meineke Car Care Bowl. The Independence Bowl features Ohio against Louisiana-Monroe, with ULM favored by 6, according to Sportsbetting.ag . Don't let the names fool you, ULM beat then-No. 8 Arkansas and earned a bowl trip. Ohio has a 1,500-yard rusher in Beau Blankenship. Saturday, my favorite game out of the five scheduled is the Pinstripe Bowl, featuring high-powered West Virginia. We get an off day for NFL on Sunday, but the bowl games get better on Monday. New Year's Eve has four prime games, including LSU vs. Clemson in the Chick-fil-A Bowl. On New Year's Day, there are six games to watch, the perfect way to nurse a hangover from partying your way into 2013. I'm looking forward to the Orange Bowl to see if Northern Illinois can hang with Florida State. I also w...

We hope you have a wonderful holiday season.

Just when you thought it was safe to celebrate another Pitt football bowl berth in the BBVA bowl, signs are pointing in the direction of a coaching change. Wisconsin coach Bret Bielema resigned as coach of Wisconsin to take the job at Arkansas. So there were immediate links of Pitt coach Paul Chryst leaving for Wisconsin before you could even finish the thought, why would Bielema leave Wisconsin for Arkansas? (Probably money and the allure of the SEC.) Chryst was the offensive coordinator at Wisconsin and he played for the Badgers, so, naturally, everyone began connecting the dots. I think Pitt and Chryst tried to sever some connections with this statement, but I'm not so sure: I understand the speculation surrounding my name given today’s developments. I am committed to the Pitt football program and the University of Pittsburgh. I am focusing all my time and energy on our team’s bowl game preparation and recruiting a great group of young men to join our program and this ou...