Bring in the backup: The odds of St. Louis Rams quarterback Sam Bradford returning this week against the Saints are remote, the St. Louis Post Dispatch reports. Rams coach Steve Spagnuolo told reporters he couldn’t say for sure if Bradford would even test his injured ankle this week, much less play against the Saints. Bradford, who didn’t practice Wednesday, missed his first NFL game last week and watched as the Dallas Cowboys pounded his team 34-7 in Cowboy Stadium, leaving the Rams winless on the season. Backup A.J. Feeley got his first start since 2007 in the loss. Read the full story here.
A scalper’s dream: With little more than a week remaining until the big football showdown between No. 1 LSU and No. 2 Alabama, and with the hype intensifying with each passing day, ticket prices are going through the roof, The Times-Picayune reports. The cheapest ticket on ticket website Stubhub.com—at a spot in the upper bowl of Alabama’s Bryant Denny stadium—is going for $389; the ticket retails for $70. Tickets in the lower level of the north end zone are priced as high as $5,000. In comparison, tickets for the 2011 SEC Championship game in Atlanta, on Dec. 3, are available on Stubhub.com for as little as $363, with the most expensive ticket costing $1,500. Sold on the same site, tickets for tonight’s Game 6 of the World Series between the Cardinals and the Rangers start at $270 for standing-room-only spots. Read the full story here.
Geaux grads: LSU football players posted the second-highest graduation rate in the SEC, trailing only Vanderbilt, according to the NCAA’s Graduation Success Rate data. LSU football’s Graduation Success Rate is 77, compared to Vanderbilt’s mark of 86. The only other SEC football program with a GSR above 70 is Florida at 76. The average score for all Football Bowl Subdivision schools is 67. The NCAA began calculating the GSR in 2006, and the LSU football program has shown improvement with each year’s report, going from 51 in 2006 and 2007 to 54 in 2008, 60 in 2009 and 67 in 2010. Among other sports with GSR rankings, LSU women’s basketball tied for first in the SEC with seven other schools with a perfect mark of 100. Other LSU sports with scores of 80 or above are volleyball at 91; women’s golf, women’s swimming and women’s tennis at 89; gymnastics at 85; soccer at 81; and men’s tennis at 80.
