What can UCLA and USC expect in their bowl games?

The UCLA Bruins football team will play Baylor in the Holiday Bowl in San Diego on Dec. 27. So, who exactly are these Baylor Bears? It might be best to start with who they are not.

They are not Robert Griffin III’s Baylor Bears. The Heisman Trophy winner is the starting quarterback for the Washington Redskins these days. But even though Baylor lost a first-round quarterback to the NFL, the football team was left in two capable sets of hands.

The first pair belongs to receiver Terrance Williams. He is making a variety of All-America teams and breaking even more school records. Williams leads the nation with 1,764 receiving yards and was a finalist for the Fred Belitnekoff Award. (Marqise Lee of USC won the award).

Williams holds the school record for receiving yards and is second in school history in receiving TDs with 12 and receptions with 95. He needs 236 yards in the Holiday Bowl to become only the second player in NCAA football history with 2,000 receiving yards in a season. The  way Baylor runs its offense, 236 receiving yards is not out of the question.

Trevor Insley from Nevada is the only college receiver with more than 2,000 receiving yards in a season. He caught 134 passes for 2,060 yards in 1999. Only two receivers have more than 1,900 receiving yards in a season, Michael Crabtree at Texas Tech and Troy Edwards at Louisiana Tech.

Nick Florence, Baylor’s senior quarterback, has more than delivered after RG3 left the team. Florence is 174 yards shy of breaking Griffin’s school record for passing yards in a season. Florence is also six touchdown passes short of breaking Griffin’s school record in that category.

Florence leads the nation with an average of 387.7 yards per game of total offense. He is an academic All-American, the fourth quarterback from Baylor to earn that honor. Of course, the last quarterback to do it was Griffin in 2011.

Suffice it to say Baylor can put up some points. The team can put up points at Oregon Ducks pace. The Bears might have a more potent offense than USC. The Bruins will have their hands full, but then again, USC was supposed to give them a handful, too.

Top 10 athletes turned actors

With the passing of Alex Karras, I started thinking about some of my favorite athletes turned actors.

Karras was one of them. He might best be remembered as the dad on “Webster.” But I remember him best as Mongo from “Blazing Saddles.”

Mongo just pawn in game of life. He was more than a pawn in that movie. He arguably had the best character in “Blazing Saddles.”

Here are my top 10 athletes turned actors.

10. Bob Uecker – He was a teammate of Hank Aaron, a World Series champion with the Milwaukee Braves and he was great as Harry Doyle from “Major League.” But he was probably playing himself, which isn’t much of a stretch for an actor. His day job is as a broadcaster for the Milwaukee Brewers. That makes his inclusion in the top five just a bit outside.

9. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar – Loved him in “Airplane” as Capt. Roger Murdoch. Or was he playing himself too? “Listen kid! I’ve been hearing that crap ever since I was at UCLA. I’m out there busting my buns every night. Tell your old man to drag Walton and Lanier up and down the court for 48 minutes.”

Dodgers end season on a hot streak, but fall short of playoffs

The Dodgers finally caught fire, but it was a little too late to do any damage in the National League playoffs.
They put together a little six-game winning streak in the final week of the season and averaged nearly seven runs a game.
This is the kind of offense Dodgers fans can expect next season. Too bad it didn’t do them any good this season.
Still, Dodgers manager Don Mattingly told MLB.com there is no reason to think his players can produce like this on a regular basis.
“It’s good. It’s kind of fun playing like this,” Mattingly said. “It makes you think, ‘Why can’t you do this over the course of a season or a month?’”
Why, indeed.
It would have been nice if the Dodger bats woke up a month ago.
Adrian Gonzalez put together a 13-game hitting streak over the final two weeks of the season. It was the longest hitting streak for any Dodger this season. It started on Sept. 19 against the Washington Nationals. He hit .396 during the streak and the Dodgers were 9-4 over those 13 games.
Gonzalez had two hits, including his 47th double of the season, a career-high, against the Giants on Monday.
Matt Kemp ended the season on a hot note as well. He hit .458 with four home runs and nine RBIs in seven games from Sept. 24 to Oct. 1.
Luis Cruz was a tough out during that same time span, hitting .320 with a home run and four RBIs. He hit .313 in September and had the second-highest batting average on the team for the month.
Little-used Elian Herrera even got into the hitting act with a game-winning, RBI single against the Giants in a game the Dodgers needed to win to stay alive in the playoff picture.

UCLA football is hot, USC not, and other rivalries

The UCLA football team is 3-0 and ranked No. 19 in the nation by the Associated Press. Valencia High graduate Steven Manfro is turning out to be a big piece of Bruins puzzle.
Manfro scored the first touchdown of his career, on a 49-yard catch, in UCLA’s upset win over then No. 16 Nebraska, 36-30, at the Rose Bowl.
He scored again in UCLA’s 37-6 win over Houston. He has two touchdowns in three games and is becoming quarterback Brett Hundley’s favorite target.
Manfro is UCLA’s leader in receiving through the first three games of the season. He has 14 catches for 164 yards. He was also averaging nearly nine yards per carry in the first three games. In all fairness, he carried the ball only three times for 26 yards, but scored on a 14-yard run in garbage time against Houston. Manfro added five punt returns for 55 yards for good measure.