If not a charm, then certainly a right-place, right-time guy

Jevon Kearse, good-luck charm?

That’s how Jacksonville Jaguars running back Fred Taylor sees it, reciting earlier in the week a list of Kearse achievements during his first season with a football team:

1996: Kearse, a freshman, and Taylor win the national college championship with the Florida Gators.

1999: Kearse wins the NFL’s defensive rookie-of-the-year award with the Tennessee Titans, who reach the Super Bowl.

2004: In Kearse’s first season with Philadelphia, the Eagles advanced to the Super Bowl.

2008: In his first season back with the Titans, Kearse is playing for the league’s last unbeaten team.

That statistic doesn’t help us out, Taylor said last week, but it sure works in their favor. And he was right. Sunday, Kearse and the Titans improved to 10-0 with a 24-14 victory over Taylor and the Jaguars.

Trivia time

Which school did Florida defeat in the 1997 Sugar Bowl to clinch the 1996 national championship?

Weis guys

Will Notre Dame fire Charlie Weis? That’s the question asked by the satirical website SportsPickle.com, which offered the following responses:

“No, they almost beat USC three years ago and they are good enough to almost beat them again. . . . Yes, do you have any idea the massive ongoing costs of heating a hot seat large enough to fit that man?. . . . No, they are losing on the field, but they are winning where it matters: in the classroom . . . man, I almost got that out with a straight face. . . . Yes, he is taking way too long to set up a massive cheating system like he had in New England. . . . No, but they will get him to resign with a severance package of savory pies.”

Play to pay

The St. Louis Blues are responding to the tough economic times with a fan bailout plan. At every remaining Saturday home game beginning Nov. 29, the organization will call the seat number of a fan and pay that person’s mortgage or rent for four months, up to $4,000 total.

The team, however, has yet to announce any St. Louis Blues bailout plan.

What’s in a name?

Apparently everything when it came time to name this season’s Great Northwest Athletic Conference soccer player of the year.

The award went to Western Washington University midfielder Matt Pele.

Trivia answer

The Gators defeated Florida State, 52-20.

And finally

Jerry Greene of the Orlando Sentinel, on the just-concluded World Series of Poker: “There’s something wrong when the poker season is longer than the NBA season.”