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 favors
offense.
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.
