Sports Fact and Book Rec of the Day 1/01/2008

1/1/1966:
Fourth-ranked Alabama outscores third-ranked Nebraska, 39-28, to win the Orange Bowl. Coupled with earlier losses today by top-ranked Michigan State in the Rose Bowl and second-ranked Arkansas in the Cotton Bowl, the Crimson Tide leapfrog all three higher-rated teams to claim the mythical national championship in the final AP poll. This is the first year the final vote will be conducted after the bowls. Alabama quarterback Steve Sloan (20-29, 296) sets a new Orange Bowl record for passing yards, and receiver Ray Perkins (10-159) sets a new mark for receptions.

Birthdays:
Hank Greenberg b. 1911
Rocky Graziano b. 1922
Doak Walker b. 1927
Marlin McKeever b. 1940
Derrick Thomas b. 1967


1/1/1995:
The Nebraska Cornhuskers defeated the Miami Hurricanes, 24-17, in the Orange Bowl, and Nebraska coach Tom Osborne won his first national championship.

After the game Osborne walked around the stadium, thanking his players. He had a clipboard under his arm and a bag lunch dangling from his hand. The biggest of his 219 wins was just over, and he looked like a guy who had stopped at the deli on his way to the train.


Every page is a masterpiece, with gorgeous album-size art of the jazz greats by artist Paul Rogers. Marsalis’s poems are written in meters and styles, and sometimes even typography, to suit each subject—a wisp of a haiku for Thelonius Monk, a poem in the shape of an A for Louis Armstrong. With discography and musician biographies by Phil Schaap, as well as notes on the various poetic forms, this is a book that every jazz lover and book lover will covet.

JAZZ ABZ : AN A TO Z COLLECTION OF JAZZ PORTRAITS, by Wynton Marsalis, illustrated by Paul Rogers (Candlewick Press, 2005)