Eli Manning Among NFL Hall of Fame Nominees

And now for your sports news, we're joined by entities Dave Martin. Dave, a lot going on today, but let's turn in the NFL, where former New York Giants quarterback Eli Manning was announced as one of the more than 100 nominees for the 2025 Hall of Fame class. Now, you've said he'll be an interesting candidate for the voters. What makes his resume unique? You know, a couple of things. One, he never led the NFL in a meaningful statistical category that you'd want to lead in. He did lead the league in interceptions three times, but of course, that's a negative. Now, he is 10th all-time, though, in touchdown passes, passing yards, and passes completed. But he played his entire career in a much different era. Now, they changed the passing rules in 2004 to make it much more difficult for defenses to cover receivers. That was just as he entered the league. So it's not only fair to point out that he leads, you know, John Elway and Joe Montana in some of those statistics. Now, some of his Hall of Fame candidacy is on his incredible durability. I mean, from 2005 to 2018, he missed just one game. I mean, for an NFL player, that's remarkable. He also has four Pro Bowl selections, which is good, but it's not necessarily Hall of Fame great. His biggest claim to fame, two Super Bowl MVPs. I mean, the quarterback is the most important player in football. And for those two postseason runs, he beat, I'm sorry, New England Patriots and Tom Brady for the Super Bowl both times there. Personally, I think that's going to be enough for him, but we'll have to see. Well, staying in the NFL, the topic of Bryce Young's benching has brought up the comparisons between him and C.J. Stroud, since they were both first two picks in the draft last year. Has Stroud's success impacted expectations for Young? You know, maybe so. I don't think that necessarily led to him getting benched. If anything, though, you would think it would lead to internal questions with the Carolina Panthers as to how they actually scout players. Now, not only did they choose Young over Stroud, who was a rookie last year, the Panthers also traded two first-round picks and two second-round picks just to move up to have that first pick. Now, that's a lot of draft capital to get a player that a year later you're benching. So at this point, it's not looking like a good move all around. But there's plenty of hope. We've seen this season Baker Mayfield and Sam Darnold get off to good starts. Those two were the first and third picks of the 2018 draft, but both eventually fell out of favor with their own teams. But now this year, Darnold is doing very well with Minnesota, while Baker Mayfield is starring for Tampa Bay. So sometimes it just takes a few years. You know, quarterback is not an easy position, obviously. Moving now to college football. Wake Forest said they finalized a two-game series with Oregon State, which will replace next year's game against Ole Miss. Now, this move seemed to upset Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin, who said For one thing, non-conference college football games are planned years in advance. Ole Miss was apparently just told on Saturday by Wake Forest that they were canceling next year's game. I'm sure they had to pay some fee to get out of it. But for Ole Miss, it's going to be tough to find a favorable opponent situation to replace them with on one year's notice. Now, take for example, Michigan and Notre Dame. Those two powerhouse programs announced in 2019, that's five years ago, that they had scheduled a two-game series to be played in 2033 and 2034. That's how far down the road they had to go to find some common open dates. And already the two coaches that agreed to that series, that's Jim Harbaugh and Brian Kelly, are no longer with the respective schools. So it's not always easy to find an opponent in the first place, let alone a situation that's going to work for your team. Shifting gears to the WNBA, while Indiana's Caitlin Clark has gotten much of the attention this year, Las Vegas center Asia Wilson is quietly having another MVP season. Yeah, she's already got the record for most points in a season, just over 1,000. First player to hit the 1,000 mark and counting, you know, on Sunday, she then broke the record for most rebounds. She's now at 451. Now, it should be noted that she broke Angel Reese's mark, though she said just a few weeks earlier. Reese, though, is out for the season with a broken bone in her wrist. But Reese still averages more per game, 13 as compared to the 12 that Wilson gets. Still, she's had a great season. She's going to be MVP this year again. Her team, the Las Vegas Aces, they are the two-time defending champions. They play their final regular season game tomorrow night against the Dallas Wings. Meanwhile, Caitlin Clark, of course, we can't forget her. Now, her Indiana favor will play their final regular season game tomorrow night as well against the Washington Mystics. And then the playoffs will start on Sunday. Davis Almas, thanks for joining us. Well, thank you, too.