KANSAN.COM / THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN / MONDAY, OCTOBER 4, 2010 / SPORTS / 7P
NASCAR
Biffle wins at Kansas, but Johnson leads Sprint Cup
ASSOCIATED PRESS
KANSAS CITY, Kan. — NASCAR's championship race tightened considerably Sunday at Kansas Speedway, where Greg Biffle won to keep his title hopes alive and Jimmie Johnson returned to the top of the Sprint Cup leaderboard.
Johnson, the four-time defending series champion, took a mediocre car and drove it to a secondplace finish behind Biffle. It pushed him past Denny Hamlin in the standings, and he's got an eight-point cushion after the third of 10 Chase for the Sprint Cup championship races.
Only once since the Chase began in 2004 has the eventual champion left Kansas ranked lower than second in the standings. But this
is suddenly the closest battle in Chase history, as the top seven finishers Sunday were title contenders.
The field heads next week to California with the top nine drivers separated by 101
to worry about defending," Johnson said. "You have Chase guys running so good each and every week. Until that checkered falls in Homestead,
"it's a great position to be in, but
it's way too easy to think about it.
"It's a great position to be in,but it's way too early to think about it,to worry about defending."
it's anybody's championship."
JIMMIE JOHNSON
NASCAR driver
Biffle suddenly finds himself in that mix. He opened the day ranked ninth in the standings, 140 points behind the leader. His second win of
on cut the mark nearly
he moved up one spot to
it is just 85 points behind
"Everybody asked me if we were out of it, and I said we're going to do the best we can," the Roush-Fenway Racing driver said. "If we win them all, we win them all."
the leader.
Kyle Busch had the worst race of all Chase drivers because of a long-running feud with non-title contender David Reutimann.
Contact between the two early in the race caused Reutimann to spin, and he came back and appeared to intentionally wreck Busch with 112 laps remaining. Busch was running seventh at the time of the accident, and he dropped back to 22nd before finishing 21st.
Busch was furious over his radio,
demanding NASCAR take action against Reutimann. Crew chief Dave Rogers heightened the drama by telling Busch that Reutimann's team demanded he retaliate against Busch.
Busch took time after the race to change out of his firesuit before speaking to reporters, and he was much calmer about the incident.
"Whatever. It's just really unfortunate," Busch said. "The guy was loose, said it on the radio, he slid up off the bottom and I got into him unintentionally and just spun him out. My fault, 100 percent. But then the retaliation? For a guy that's in the Chase, that's racing for something ... he'll be here next year."
He could have wrecked me in any of the first 26 races next year. That would have been fine.
"It's just hard to swallow something, a day like today, where we had a top-five car going."
Busch dropped from third to seventh in the standings and is 80 points behind Johnson.
Reutimann didn't admit that he intentionally wrecked Busch, but had no guilt for tangling with a championship contender.
"You guys can sugarcoat it all the time, but he wrecked me," he said. "You can tell me how bad he wants it, how hard he drives, how much he wants it above everybody else. That's all fine."
NFL
T.O. flexes muscle, but Cleveland wins
Hillis picks up 102 yards and a touchdown
ASSOCIATED PRESS
CLEVELAND — The Cleveland
Browns finally finished.
Peyton Hillis rumbled for 102 yards and a touchdown. Phil Dawson kicked three field goals and the Browns held on to a fourth-quarter lead, surviving a big day by Terrell Owens for their first win, 23-20 over the Cincinnati Bengals on Sunday.
The Browns (1-3) had lost their first three games by a total of 12 points, failing to finish down the stretch and frustrating coach Eric Mangini with silly, self-inflicted mistakes.
But this time, they overcame a costly penalty on rookie safety T.J. Ward, made a crucial sack of Carson Palmer in the closing minutes and withstood a 10-catch, 222-yard performance by Owens, who also moved into second place on the NFL career list in receiving vards.
The Bengals (2-2) had their eight-game winning streak in the AFC North snapped.
After taking a 23-10 lead in the third quarter on Dawson's 22-yarder, which moved him within one field goal of tying Hall of Famer Lou Groza's franchise record of 234, the Browns nearly let another lead slip away before regaining their
footing in the closing minutes.
With Cincinnati driving for a possible go-ahead touchdown, Browns linebacker Matt Roth sacked Palmer and forced Bengals coach Marvin Lewis to call for a punt with roughly five minutes left.
Cleveland took over at its 11 with 4:41 remaining and ran out the clock by giving the ball to Hillis, a human battering ram who picked up 24 yards on a second-and-7 play before the two-minute warning. Quarterback Seneca Wallace, who made his third straight start in place of the injured Jake Delhomme, then took a knee three times to run out the clock.
Palmer finished 25 of 36 for 371 yards and two touchdowns, including a career-best 78-yarder in the second quarter to Owens, who was almost unstoppable as the Browns chose to double-team Chad Ochocinco.
Wallace went 18 of 30 for 184 yards and threw a 24-yard TD pass to Evan Moore.
Cincinnati's offense finally lived up to its preseason hype, but it failed to come up with the necessary conversions with the game on the line.
A personal foul against Ward helped the Bengals pull within 23-20 on Palmer's 4-yard shovel
pass to Brian Leonard with 10:44 left.
On third-and-goal, Palmer's pass over the middle intended for rookie wide receiver Jordan Shipley was incomplete, but Ward delivered a forearm to Shipley's head and was nailed with a penalty, giving the Bengals an automatic first down. Shipley laid dazed with a concussion and was helped off the field. He did not return.
On the next play, Palmer pitched the ball with his left handtoLeonard, who went in untouched.
The Browns went three-and- out the next time they got the ball, and
with a TD run, the first Cleveland back to do that since Greg Prutt did it five games in a row in 1975.
Owens scored his first TD for Cincinnati on his 17th catch for the Bengals, tying it 10-10 in the second.
Cincinnati's offense finally lived up to its preseason hype,but it failed to come up with the neccesary conversions with the game on the line.
On second-and-13 at Cleveland's 22, Palmer lofted a deep pass for Owens, who had a step on cornerback Sheldon Brown. When Brown tripped and fell at about the 35,
Palmer marched the Bengals down the field on passes to Owens and Ochocinco, who huddled with their quarterback on the sideline several times in the second half. Cincinnati got as far as Cleveland's 37 on its last drive, but Ochocinco was called for interference on third down and Roth pulled down a scrambling Palmer from behind on the game's biggest defensive play.
Hillis, who ran for a career-high 144 yards last week at Baltimore, plowed over from the 1 to give the Browns a 20-10 lead in the third. It was Hillis' fourth straight game
all Owens had to do waul Palmer's pass and waltz into the end zone.
Owen didn't mark the occasion with any elaborate dance. He simply placed the ball on the
ground, just beyond the goal line,
and did his trademark "T.O." flex in
front of a bedsheet hanging in the
corner that read: "T.O. and C.O.
have B.O.
Owens moved past Isaac Bruce into second place on the league's career yardage list. Owens has 15,323 yards, second only to Jerry Rice's 22,895.
The Bengals got the ball right back when Leon Hall intercepted Wallace, but Mike Nugent's 44-yard field goal try was blocked by Browns linebacker Scott Fujita.
NCAA FOOTBALL
Despite investigation UNC regaining swag
ASSOCIATED PRESS
CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — That famous football philosopher Barry Switzer was fond of saying "winning fixes everything."
In fact, the former Oklahoma coach made that very observation just two days before his embattled 1980 Sooners smacked a 7-0 North Carolina team, 41-7, one week after the Tar Heels had plastered East Carolina.
Thirty years later, Butch Davis on Saturday was in command of a UNC club that now is treading the uneasy ledge that Switzer and the Sooners used to routinely call home.
Key players are under mandate to sit out games, NCAA investigators breeze in and out of town, Davis is earning a virtual Ph.D in plausible deniability, and the Tar Heels very much needed the sort of comfort food that yet another win over ECU could provide.
Some fixing got done, you might say.
After some trouble early, the 2-2 Tar Heels even began to resemble the team many thought would be 4-0 and ranked high in the national polls.
Behind a husky, confident
offensive line and relentless runners Johnny White and Shaun Draughn, UNC sailed to a 42-17 rout on a sunny afternoon in front of a packed house.
It all ended with Davis being roundly cheered as he waved to students and jogged off the field a minute or so before his players locked arms and sang along as the band played the school fight song in what amounted to a rousing postgame pep rally.
Quarterback T.J. Yates called the experience a "remedy"
"It's the way for us to get away from the off-field distractions," the senior said. "The games keep us going. It's what we look forward to."
Slowly, the Heels are beginning to get players back from the inactive list, and the nature of the ACC is such that many of the team's preseason goals might still be accomplished.
"We're gaining a little more confidence with each game as we go along," star linebacker Bruce Carter said. "Everybody on the team is digging a little deeper."
Up next is another game in Kenan Stadium — Clemson on Saturday.
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