Mark Bradley

Joe Frazier after knocking down Muhammad Ali in Madison Square Garden in 1971. (AP photo)

Joe Frazier was the wrong man at the wrong time. He was a great fighter eclipsed by The Greatest. He ascended to the heavyweight time at a time when Muhammad Ali was in exile, and even after Frazier beat Ali in the Fight of the Century in March 1971 he came away somehow lessened.

Through force of personality, Ali became the People’s Champ. (And after he beat George Foreman, who’d beaten Frazier the year before, Ali was again the real champ.) But Ali was singularly unkind to the man who would be his greatest rival, calling him names that hurt Frazier almost until the day he died.

Smokin’ Joe wasn’t an intergalactic presence. He was simply a tough heavyweight from Philly who’d take five punches to swing the big left hook. His nemesis would, on a whim, uncork the Ali Shuffle or the Rope-a-Dope; Smokin’ Joe would duck his head and throw leather. He tried to be a singer, but the experiment …

Continue reading Joe Frazier: A great fighter overshadowed by The Greatest »

Will we see on-field celebrations bustin' out all over? (AJC photo by Johnny Crawford)

Sometimes we get so upset by the the failings of our local teams that we wring our hands. Other times we gnash our teeth. This week arrives as the possible antidote. In the span of 68 hours, we’ll have three football games of significance into which we can sink, as opposed to gnash, our teeth.

On Thursday night, Georgia Tech plays Virginia Tech at Bobby Dodd Stadium with first place in the ACC Coastal Division on the line. On Saturday in Athens, Georgia will face Auburn with a chance to all but clinch the SEC East. And then, on Sunday at the Dome, the Falcons will collide with the Saints in a game for first place in the NFC South.

In sum, this is one week where needn’t moan about the Braves, who choked, or the Thrashers, who moved, or the Hawks, who are locked out. We’ve got big-time football at every turn and, when last I checked, we around here are rather partial to the sport.

And the best …

Continue reading It’s a football feast! Tech-Tech, UGA-Auburn, Falcons-Saints »

It's not a catch. No, wait! It's an "unbelievable" catch! (AP photo)

This ran in the morning paper as — insider journalist term — a sidebar. I present it to you as a bonus. For no charge!

Indianapolis – The second touchdown of Julio Jones’ NFL career was pretty. The first was pretty incredible. Or words to that effect.

“Unbelievable” was the adjective of choice for both quarterback Matt Ryan and center Todd McClure. Tight end Tony Gonzalez settled, a bit more simply, for “great.” And with that, the parlor game of who could gush more over the Falcons’ rookie receiver was in full swing.

Said Thomas Dimitroff, the general manager who traded up 21 spots to draft Jones: “Julio does in fact make us a better football team.”

Said Mike Smith, the head coach: “We know the skill-set he has … He’s going to be and is an integral part of our offense.”

About here, someone thought to ask Julio Jones if he was amazed by Julio Jones’ performance here Sunday. “I don’t amaze myself,” he said. “I …

Continue reading The Falcons’ new parlor game: Gushing over Julio Jones »

Coach Smith wasn't thrilled about this first-half celebration, you should know. (AP photo)

Indianapolis — They’re getting there. The Falcons we see aren’t the Falcons we saw in September; these are the Falcons we expected to see all along, maybe even a team we’ll see back here in February for Super Bowl XLVI.

On Sunday we saw a swift and unyielding defense coupled with a quick-striking offense fueled by the rookie the Falcons traded up 21 spots to draft. You wanted “explosive”? Boom went this dynamite. Julio Jones: Two first-half catches for 130 yards and two touchdowns.

And now you’re saying — some of you, anyway — that this came against the winless Indianapolis Colts, a one-man team missing its one man. That’s true. It did. But this was also a game that terrified Mike Smith, the coach who kept seeing a road test coming off a bye week after two consecutive victories with the New Orleans Saints up next. Then the game began, and Smitty fretted no more.

Because he saw what he …

Continue reading We’re starting to see the Falcons we thought we’d be seeing »

Jamaal Anderson: He's now a Colt. I say no more. (AJC photo by Curtis Compton)

Indianapolis — You’ll recall that Peter King of Sports Illustrated picked the Falcons to reach Super Bowl XLVI. Well, they’ve made it to the site of the SB, and it’s barely November! Talk about being ahead of the game!

Something, however, tells me that Indy in February won’t be half so lovely as Indy to
day — sunny and crisp. For the Super Bowl, I’m guessing ice and snow. The roof at Lucas Oil Stadium is open for today’s not-exactly-titanic tilt. On Feb. 5, I’m guessing it won’t be.

But enough about that. The Falcons are 4-3 and getting better. The Colts are 0-8, and you can’t get much worse than 0-8. There aren’t many one-man teams in pro football, but without Peyton Manning the Colts have looked the part of a one-man team without that man.

Some Falcons folks are worried about this game. I wouldn’t be. I know this is the any-given-Sunday NFL, but I can’t see the Falcons losing this given Sunday. If …

Continue reading Live from Indy: Is this a Super Bowl preview for the Falcons? »

All of a sudden, there's a bounce in the Bulldogs' step. (AJC photo by Brant Sanderlin)

It took a while, but Georgia has its opening. If the Bulldogs beat Auburn in Athens next week and Kentucky the week after, they’ll grace the SEC championship game for the first time since 2005.

And for all those who say, “Georgia wouldn’t be in position to do anything if Marcus Lattimore hadn’t gotten hurt” … well, that’s not necessarily so. After losing to South Carolina on Sept. 10, Georgia needed the Gamecocks to lose twice to pull ahead of them in the SEC standings. The first Carolina loss came on Oct. 2 against Auburn, and Lattimore played the entire game. The second loss came tonight at Arkansas, and the Razorbacks might well have beaten Carolina anytime anywhere with all hands on deck.

Yes, the schedule has favored Georgia. It’s impossible to imagine a softer SEC road than one that doesn’t include games against LSU, Alabama or Arkansas. But them’s the breaks. You can only play the …

Continue reading South Carolina loses, and the East is now UGA’s to take »

Here's what one guy wrote back then. Note tonsorial changes.

The Atlanta Falcons have lost 396 regular-season games in their existence. The worst of those 396 came Dec. 7, 1986 — against the winless Indianapolis Colts. We mention this because the Falcons are about to play another winless Colts’ team, but also to offer a bit of solace: No matter what happens in Indy on Sunday, it cannot be as bad as the misdoings at Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium 25 years ago.

Those Falcons entered the game 6-6-1. They’d opened their season 4-0, Victories No. 3 and 4 having come in rally mode at Dallas and Tampa Bay. (The overtime victory over the Bucs prompted this headline in this newspaper: “The Team That Wouldn’t Die.”) Then matters began to deteriorate, as matters tended to do with the Falcons of yore.

From 5-1-1, the Falcons lost five in a row. Three of the defeats were excruciating: David Archer had an interception returned for a touchdown in a 14-7 loss against the Rams in Anaheim; the …

Continue reading Falcons’ worst regular-season loss? Against the winless Colts »

"So long, JJ. It was nice knowing you." (AJC photo by Hyosub Shin)

Frank Wren just paid one starting pitcher — a starting pitcher Wren overpaid in 2009 — $10 million to go work for Cleveland. Now comes word, via Mark Bowman of MLB.com, that the Braves might be willing to trade Jair Jurrjens, who was an All-Star starting pitcher in 2011. And look, it’s still 2011!

This has become the Wren Method. If you’ve got affordable starting pitcher (meaning: young guys), hoard it. If you’ve got seasoned starting pitching (meaning: guys you might have to pay above the minimum), dump it. Even if this has become the Braves’ way of doing business, I’m not sure this is a viable way of doing business.

Because I can’t really see a method in the Wren Method. He’s apparently worried that Jurrjens — and also Martin Prado, who’s not a pitcher — will receive around $5 million in arbitration. (For the record, neither Jurrjens nor Prado can become a free agent until after the 2013 season.) But $5 …

Continue reading Trade Jurrjens? Trade Prado? Say it ain’t so, Frantic Frank »

Much has changed for these programs, and others, in 12 months. (AJC photo by Curtis Compton)

Mark Fox took the Georgia job on April 2, 2009, which makes him the dean of local men’s college basketball coaches, which tells us much about the fluid state of local college basketball. “We’re still unpacking boxes,” Fox said Wednesday, bemused by his status, at age 42, of Elder Statesman.

Then he said: “This is a tough business right here.”

Fox spoke before the Atlanta Tipoff Club’s annual luncheon at the Marriott Marquis. Around the room, three other coaches, none of whom has yet coached an actual game at their particular school, were doing interviews. All were trying to be optimistic, but occasionally a note of reality intruded.

Said Ron Hunter of Georgia State: “We’re going to be better than expected — I’ll say that.”

And beating expectations, to be frank, wouldn’t take much. The four schools represented at the luncheon were a combined 53-72 last season, and that was with …

Continue reading For local college hoops teams, it figures to be a chilly winter »

Georgia AD Greg McGarity. (AJC photo by Curtis Compton)

Yes, it looks awfully convenient. Three Georgia tailbacks are suspended for a game, but not the game that stood to make or break the Bulldogs’ season, due to a failed drug test that was administered last week — meaning, before the Florida game.

And here we turn to a fairly basic concept — trust. Georgia insists it did not cherry-pick which game the backs would miss. Greg McGarity, the athletic director, said: “When certain things are found, we act right then.” Claude Felton, the Hall of Fame publicist, said: “At the point a violation is discovered, if a suspension is required the penalty will be enforced for the next contest.”

Not everyone is buying this. Some folks can’t get past the notion that Isaiah Crowell and Carlton Thomas were able to play in the game that meant so much to both Georgia and its head coach. And journalists, I should note, are trained to be skeptics. But I must also note that journalists are trained …

Continue reading Hot topic: What did Georgia know, and when did it know it? »