THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
THURSDAY, JANUARY, 31 2008
SPORTS
SUPERBOWL
7B
Giants player predicts victory
New York Giants wide receiver Plaxico Burress answers questions for the media availability session Wednesday in Chandler, Ariz. The Giants play the New England Patriots in Super Bowl XLII on Feb. 3 in Glendale, Ariz.
BY BARRY WILNER ASSOCIATED PRESS
ASSOCIATED PRESS
PHOENIX — Tom Brady scoffed.
Plaxico Burress wondered what all the attention was about.
Brady was puzzled by Burress' prediction that the New York Giants would beat the New England Patriots 23-17 in Sunday's Super Bowl. The fact Burress picked the Giants hardly surprised the league's MVP. The score certainly did.
"We only going to score 17 points?" Brady said Wednesday morning before chuckling. "OK. Is Plax playing defense? I wish he had said 45-42 and gave us a little credit for more points."
Considering the Patriots set an NFL record by scoring 589 points, Brady's 50 touchdown passes were the most ever for one season, and Randy Moss broke Jerry Rice's mark with 23 TD catches, Burrell might have been a bit chintzy.
"I know they have confidence. They should have confidence," Brady said. "They are the NFC champions. I learned a lesson early in my career: No matter what you say during the
week — and God knows we say a lot this week — we're going to be focused on going out and winning this game. We're confident, but I don't think we share our thoughts with everybody"
Burress did. And when he showed up 33 minutes late for the Giants' media session Wednesday morning, there was speculation the wide receiver was trying to avoid the spotlight.
Turns out Burress was spending time with his 1-year-old son and family at breakfast, claiming he was unaware so many people wanted to interrogate him about his prediction.
Nor was he aware, he said, that a hefty fine comes with missing a Super Bowl week media session.
They had two receivers with over 100 catches. The numbers don't lie about what they have done."
"I don't understand what the fuss is about." Burress said, surrounded by at least as many TV cameras, microphones and notepads as Brady was two hours earlier. "Nobody wants to lose. All this is entertainment, it's sports, and sports are entertainment. So 23-17 is the prediction I made, but the game still has to be played."
Told about Brady's reaction to that score, Burress said he wasn't dissing anyone.
"I'm not taking anything away from what those guys accomplished," he said. "They set all the records you could possibly imagine. They have a great quarterback, the MVP, who threw for a record (50) touchdowns. Randy set a TD record for catches.
Nor do the numbers 23-17 lie about what Burress thinks.
"Hey, look how much fun everybody is having with it," he said. "It makes national, international headlines. But the game still has to be played."
SUPERBOWL
Sunny Phoenix is the place to be for sports
BY ANDREW BAGNATO ASSOCIATED PRESS
PHOENIX — What was once the sleepy home of the NBA's Phoenix Suns, the Fiesta Bowl and baseball's spring training has blossomed into a national sports capital.
This year's Super Bowl between the New England Patriots and New York Giants is the latest in a growing list of national sports events that have landed in the desert. And more are on the way as Phoenix contends with Los Angeles to become
the West's top destination for major events.
"I think Phoenix is just growing into itself," said Jerry Colangelo, the former Phoenix Suns owner and Arizona Diamondbacks chairman. "On balance I think we have done an incredible job of coming from a small Western town into a major league market with an incredible array of events."
This represents a dramatic change from the last time Phoenix hosted the Super Bowl, at Tempe's Sun Devil Stadium in January 1996. Back then,
some people wondered whether it was big enough to accommodate the event.
"In 1996, our question was, can we handle it?" said Mike Kennedy, a local lawyer and chairman of the Arizona's host committee. "Back then, we were selling one product — the warmth."
They made the sale, and then some.
Since that time, the Phoenix area's population has exploded to 3.8 million, and Phoenix has become the nation's fifth-largest city, with 1.5
million residents. The growth has attracted an events boom as promoters cash in on Phoenix's mild winter weather, resorts and golf courses.
When it comes to sports, Phoenix is not just another pretty place.
"This is the destination," Diamondbacks President Derrick Hall said. "This is the place to be."
The Phoenix area now has four major professional sports franchises, two PGA Tour events, two NASCAR races, two major-college bowl games, an LPGA tour event and a marathon.
FOOD
Beijing brings Olympics, kosher
BY STEPHEN WADE ASSOCIATED PRESS
BEIJING Beijing and the Olympics are going kosher.
The capital's only kosher restaurant opened 10 months ago, drawing the small Jewish expatriate community, tourists, curious Chinese and even a few Muslims. Business has been so good at Dintf's Kosher Restaurant, that part-owner Lewis Sperber is talking about setting up a second branch closer to the Olympic venues in northern Beijing.
Like many restaurateurs and bar owners, Sperber is hoping to benefit with as many as 550,000 foreigners expected to descend on Beijing for the Aug. 8-24 Games.
Eating kosher — food that meets Jewish dietary laws — is hardly a raging fad. However, there is a real boom because of the number of Chinese factories being certified to export kosher products. This is driven partially by recent food safety scares in China involving contaminated seafood, pet food and toothpaste.
"What we've thought about is preparing sandwiches and other items at a venue closer than we are now to the Olympic sites," Sperer said. "If people leave the Olympics and want a kosher meal, we could have a place for them."
Kosher certifications in China conducted by the Orthodox Union — the best-known certification body — have doubled to 307 in the last two years. The total number of kosher certifications is about 2,000, exporters working to reach the world kosher market.
"I think business will be very overwhelming during the Olympics," said Minette Ramia, who manages Dini's, a modern, pastel-colored eatery located on
Super Bar Street, an aptly named alleyway lined with restaurants and bars just down the street from the Israeli embassy.
"From the hygiene side, whether someone is kosher or not, Jewish or not, people will want food from here because it is considered cleaner and more hygienic being that we're in China," Ramia said. "A Muslim woman came in recently because she can't eat meat anywhere else."
The staff and cooks at Dini's are nearly all Chinese. Waiters bring new Chinese customers a hand-out to explain kosher, which is called "Jie Shi" in Chinese — "clean food."
"When Chinese come, I don't think they know what to order," said Zhao Haixia, the assistant manager. "Normally they just rely on us to tell them what's good."
The menu features both northern European (Ashkenazi) and Mediterranean (Sephardic) food traditions. Mainstays like matzo ball soup, chopped liver and Gefilte fish are seldom chosen by Chinese, who more often go for kosher beef dumplings (Jiaozi) or sizzling beef stew.
Gefilte fish is a hard sell.
"In China eating cold fish doesn't sound so good." Zhao said.
Like Beijing's noxious air, China's food safety is one the most sensitive issues surrounding the Olympics, carrying the potential to ruin China's $40 billion preparations to use the Games to show off a modern nation removed from its agrarian roots.
One food poisoning case, like one positive doping test — particularly by a Chinese athlete — could grab headlines for weeks and ruin the public relations effort by the communist government.
Supply Chain Industry Night
Wednesday, Feb. 6 6:00 - 8:00 pm Relays Room - Burge Union (3rd floor)
Representatives from local companies will be present to meet with students to talk about their careers in Supply Management.
Regional corporations are very interested in graduates of KU's NEW Supply Chain Management major! Demand for professionals in this area is growing rapidly! SCM professionals are found in virtually EVERY industry! Similar programs have reported a 90% placement rate of undergraduates with an average salary of about $44,000.