Dan the SalaMANder

Dan "Salamander" McLaughlin, a former student at Cardinal Dougherty, is checking in from college. He used to hang out in the Looney Bin and come up with funny comments. You may reach Dan at GrandWazy@aol.com.
He is world-renowned as a deep thinker, as you can undoubtedly tell from the picture to the left.

OCT. 22
Howdy friends, its time for everyone's favorite columnist on Silary.com
to weigh in on this weekend's events. As I said in my Picks for the week,
I was damn close to perfect. My one mistake was daring to hope and
taking Dougherty over Neumann, I must have been delirious and driven
insane by massive amounts of homework.
Dougherty 0, Neumann 40. A Sloberknocker of Biblical proportions.
To steal a quote from Huck, "Goliath not only killed David, but then he
went over to David's house. He then kicked David's dog, impregnated
his sister and burnt the house down." The fact of the matter is,
Neumann is a bad team. This should have been a closer game. One stat
that proves how bad Dougherty was, 7 yards passing. I gain more yardage
in the morning going to the bathroom. Neumann's huge O-Line bullied
Dougherty's D all night and produced 308 rushing yards. That's only 65
below what the Cards have gotten all season.
Seriously, this was such a bad beating I felt it. Apparently the
disappointment not only was limited to the field. A record LOW crowd
was reported for a Dougherty Homecoming Game. Of the people that did
show up, it must have been like watching a train wreck in the middle of
a forrest fire, getting hit with a tornado. As much as I love my Alma
Mater, this is both disappointing on and off the field. Though you have
to give props to their Pass Defense, its the 3rd best in the Blue. Too
bad they are giving up over 275 a game on the ground. I haven't the
time to do the research, but I'd like to see what Ted has to say about
their point output. I'm just wondering if they're close to some kind of
record for only averaging a little over 3 points a game.
Next up for Dougherty, they get to face West at home. I'm going to
go out on a limb here and predict a swift and brutal West victory.
Brinkley has a Larry Johnson (PSU RB) kind of day and goes for about 260
and 3 scores. West 72 Dougherty-2.5. Hopefully they get it together
and have a good Thanksgiving Day game against Olney this year, that's all
they got to look forward to.
Sal

SEPT. 24
Welcome to Sal's Corner. For those of you who don't know me, I played football for Dougherty from 1998-2002 and was the vocal leader ofthe Looney Bin at Basketball games for my last 2 years. Now I am attending Penn St. (Main Campus) and have thought of majoring in Sports Journalism. Someday... I hope to grow up and be just like my hero, the man, the myth Ted (smile).
Well, the first week of the season is done, and there is a lot we can talk about. First off, there's the Red Division. All I can really say right now is if your lining up against the Prep and you're thinking they aren't as good this year, prepare to get spanked. Ryan seemed to be having a good year in preseason, but they got knocked back down to Earth. I know it's still early in the year, but this weeks La Salle vs. Prep game probably will go a long way to deciding who wins the Red.
As for my old stomping grounds, the Blue division, Carroll rolled to another 70-0 victory over ... wait. No, that didn't happen at all. Instead of watching Maurice Stovall outscore teams by himself, the Patriots spent the day chasing West's RB Curtis Brinkley all over the field to the tune of 221 yards. After years of running up the score and embarrassing other teams, Carroll finally got shut up and shot down. Coming to the rest of the division, I'm not taking away anything from the kid, but I'd like to see Steve Slaton play against the crop of the Red division. Since his debut in the league last year, he's run for 1,651 yards, pretty impressive. But wait, if one were to look back at last season he did near nothing against anyone but Dougherty and K-K. Until he runs up 200 some yards against a good team, he'll be the second best RB in the Blue next to Brinkley.
Finally, I come to Dougherty again. I know they've got a new coach, and they're putting in a new system, and they graduated every skill player from last year's team, so you wouldn't expect much from them right? Well, there's no Carolina Panthers story here folks. After watching them play and looking over the stats, IT IS going to be a long year for the Cards. Through 3 games, they're averaging 87 yards of TOTAL offense. Hell, that's about a 1/3 of what Slaton alone is getting for Egan. A quarterback by committee situation doesn't seem to be helping the offense get any coordination to it. The defense will also be out on the field a long time when the offense is only out there 38 plays per game, averaging only 2.2 yards per play. Last point on Dougherty: so far this year they've completed 8 passes for 88 yards. At this pace, they're going to pile up just over 290 yards through the air this year, just 1,227 yards shy of last year's total. Keep you posted with my picks for this weekend's game sometime soon.
Dan "Salamander" McLaughlin
P.S. Penn St. 40 Nebraska 7, I think I saw it, I was only 6 rows from the field.

Welcome to Sal's Corner. For those of you who don't know me, I played football for Dougherty from 1998-2002 and was the vocal leader of the Looney Bin at Basketball games for my last 2 years. Now I am attending Penn St. (Main Campus) and have thought of majoring in Sports Journalism. Someday... I hope to grow up and be just like my hero, the man, the myth Ted (smile).
     Well, the first week of the season is done, and there is a lot we can talk about. First off, there's the Red Division. All I can really say right now is if your lining up against the Prep and your thinking they aren't as good this year, prepare to get spanked. Ryan seemed to be having a good year in preseason, but they got knocked back down to Earth. I know its still early in the year, but this weeks Lasalle vs. Prep game probably will go a long way to deciding who wins the Red.
     As for my old stomping grounds, the Blue division, Carroll rolled to another 70-0 victory over ... wait. No, that didn't happen at all. Instead of watching Stovall outscore teams by himself, the Patriots spent the day chasing West's RB Curtis Brinkley all over the field to the tune of 221 yards. After years of running up the score and embarrassing other teams, Carroll finally got shut up and shot down.
     Coming to the rest of the division, I'm not taking away anything from the kid, but I'd like to see Steve Slanton play against the crop of the Red division. Since his debut in the league last year, he's run for 1651 yards, pretty impressive. But wait, if one were to look back at last season he did near nothing against anyone but Dougherty and Kendrick. Until he runs up 200 some yards against a good team, he'll be the second best RB in the Blue next to Brinkley.
     Finally, I come to Dougherty again. I know they've got a new coach, and they're putting in a new system, and they graduated every skill player from last years team, so you wouldn't expect much from them right? Well, there's no Carolina Panthers story here folks. After watching them play and looking over the stats, IT IS going to be a long year for the Cards. Through 3 games, they're averaging 87 yards of TOTAL offense. Hell, that's about a 1/3 of what Slanton alone is getting for Egan. A quarterback by committee situation doesn't seem to be helping the offense get any coordination to it. The defense will also be out on the field a long time when the offense is only out there 38 plays per game, averaging only 2.2 yards per play. Last point on Dougherty, so far this year they've completed 8 passes for 88 yards. At this pace, they're going to pile up just over 290 yards through the air this year, just 1227 yards shy of last year's total.
     Keep you posted with my picks for this weekend's game sometime soon.

Dan "Salamander" McLaughlin
P.S. Penn St. 40 Nebraska 7, I think I saw it, I was only 6 rows from the field.