Starting Sunday afternoon, Mike Jones’ Old Dominion basketball team — 0-5 away from home — hopes to get off the schneid with back-to-back-to-back games at William and Mary, Richmond and George Mason. Followed by a home date against James Madison. It’s an opportunity for the Monarchs to pick up a few in-state bragging points before Sun Belt play begins.
Saturday night live: Virginia is a better team than Virginia Tech and is playing at home. But for a series in which Tech has won 23 of the last 25, odds favoring the Cavaliers by 9 ½ or more points seem a bit generous.
Future watch: Virginia is striving to reach the ACC championship game while these appendages to the regular season still exist. With a 12-team — soon to be 16 — national playoff, conference title games are falling out of favor in the power leagues.
In passing: The Cowboys becoming sort of relevant lately doesn’t make Jerry Jones any less annoying.
On the shelf: The worst trade in basketball history looks even worse every game that brittle Anthony Davis misses for Dallas. It’s been 14 in a row. Meanwhile, Luka Doncic just put up 43 points in a Lakers win.
Under the radar: It likely wasn’t until the Detroit Pistons’ 13-game winning streak was broken in Boston Wednesday night that casual fans were alerted to the fact that the surprising Pistons are atop the Eastern Conference at 15-3.
Scrums: Every week in college and pro football, you might see offensive linemen pushing and pulling ball-carriers downfield or across the goal line. For years, this was against the rules. It should be again. But then, almost every change in the sport favorsoffense.
Doing their job: Winners of nine in a row, led by young MVP candidate Drake Maye, the Patriots are benefiting from a last-place schedule. Then again, they’re 6-0 on the road.
Seattle sensation: The Seahawks’ Jaxon Smith-Njigba, a third-year wide receiver out of Ohio State and the league’s most dangerous long-ball threat, is on pace to become the first NFL player to rack up 2,000 or more receiving yards in a season. I have to say, though, that news of his exploits travels slowly from the Great Northwest.
Idle musing: Now that the NFL owns 10% of ESPN, it’s not too cynical to wonder how this impacts the network’s league coverage that sets the agenda for other media.
Quick hit: This time of year, college basketball’s Top 25 rankings should be written on an Etch A Sketch.
Legging it out: He won’t win the Heisman — not since 2015 has anyone but a quarterback carried away the 25-pound bronze mantel piece — but Notre Dame running back Jeremiyah Love put himself in the discussion last week against hapless Syracuse. Rushing for 171 yards and three scores on only eight carries in a nationally televised game tends to raise a player’s profile.
Hot stove: To keep up with the Joneses (i.e., Yankees, Dodgers), the Blue Jays’ front office is overpaying free-agent pitcher Dylan Cease, a middle-of-the-rotation innings-eater with erratic production. He signed a seven-year, $210 million deal, the largest pitching contract in franchise history. Mediocrity never paid so well in today’s MLB.
Over the pond: This week in the English Premier League, an Everton player was thrown out of a game for slapping another player across the face. The assaulted player was his teammate.
Bob Molinaro is a former Virginian-Pilot sports columnist. His Weekly Briefing runs Fridays in The Pilot and Daily Press. He can be reached at bob5molinaro@gmail.com and via Twitter@BobMolinaro.
