Derek and the Falling Dominoes

As someone who bleeds blue pinstripes, what happens to Derek Jeter at the end of this season has been lurking at the back of my mind, threatening to hurl my soul into an abyss of despair (that may be laying it on a little bit thick, but sports does that to a guy). But beyond The Captain's contact expiring, there's the fact the he's aging. The man's 36, playing shortstop. He's not having a great season, but we can ignore that for now. But on the whole, I (like a lot of fans) have pushed the whole thing to the back of my mind, because we really don't want to deal with it--mentally living in a van down by a river in Egypt with Chris Farley.

SI.com Joe Posnanski wrote a great column today, about a conversation he had with a Red Sox fan talking about the diminishing future of Jeter. Clearly, this member of Red Sox Nation has thought about it more than most of the Yankee Universe has--and who can blame him?

If you're of a mind, give it a read--this is what baseball writing should be about--historical context and precedent, good use of stats to describe past/present/future, and rational thinking about what lies ahead--sprinkled with a little humor and respect.

A Wonderful Idea that Will Just Never Take

The good people (er, person) over at Treasured Valley today have reposted an opinion piece by a local educator, Steve Hauge, "Sports should be considered when cutting education budget. Incisive, thoughtful, practical, and all-around right. Which means the idea will go nowhere.

Now that Gov. Butch Otter has spoken, let the bleeding begin.

He proposed to amputate part of the budget on education. I suggest it be the testosterone, not the brain. Or rather, the weight room, not the classroom. Bleachers, not desks. Playbooks, not textbooks.

Surely we will hear some claim that football and basketball are financially self-supporting and underwrite other sports, save coaches salaries.

But that is misleading. Multiply the number of coaches by the number of sports by the number of schools in any district by the salary amount, and the figure climbs. Though coaches are underpaid, collectively it all adds up. And don’t think for a moment a varsity sport subsidizes feeder programs at the junior high level. No, it’s the taxpayer again.

I suspect public school sports simply eat up a lot more cash than taxpayers assume. At the very least, taxpayers ought to demand that the financial books are opened and proven otherwise.

Go read the whole thing.

Sometimes the Smurf Turf Isn't So Ugly (just sometimes)

Have to feel sorry for the poor folk over at KTVB today who had to interrupt their coverage of the Fiesta Bowl with items such as horrible road conditions, traffic fatalities and the like--but to add insult to injury, on top of that they had to acknowledge that there are other college football programs in the state besides BSU? Oh, your heart just breaks for them.

Yeah, no, it totally doesn't. Especially when the other football team they had to acknowledge was the winners of the 2009 Roady's Humanitarian Bowl: Theeeeee Idaho Vandals!

I've said everything I really have to say about this season already...today was just terrific. Best football I've watched since '98. Loved it, loved it, loved it.

Well, What Can You Say?

Really not a lot to say about the UI-BSU game today. Vandal fans had more than just habit/school pride going for us this year when we talked about our chances. Sadly, hope doesn't mean much on the football field when it runs into a ranked team really needing an impressive showing and a freshman quarterback on his second start.

Instead, I'll try to focus on the positive things about today...there were some, I just have to think about it a little...

Oh yeah, we had a pleasant time with my sister and niece...and technically with the friend my sister brought with her, just hard to count the friend as I think I heard her say 20 words in the 4 hours she spent here (she did talk more than that, but outside of those 20 words, they were all basically whispered to my sister). TLomL learned how to make a new appetizer/game day snack. My boys learned a little more about football, so in later life they'll be slightly less likely to embarrass themselves in social settings. I was able to get WonderMutt to not excitedly jump all over/terrify guests (for politeness sake, we won't go into the amount of work/time that took). We came up with a great number of creative ways to say "stupid Rotator cuff." My sister demonstrated a shocking lack of knowledge about the our alma mater (how does someone spend five years in that city, much less as a student and walk away not knowing about the "I" bench and "Hello Walk"?) and we had a good time laughing about that--I know when she visited me in high school I pointed those things out to her. We also got an important lesson in being thankful for the little things, cuz I'm sure we wouldn't remember any of those things right now if the game had been competitive for more than 30 seconds.


I'm going to show restraint and not rant about the local media acting like the game was a silly formality. Is a little respect that hard? Especially given the number of UI alums in their audience.

Nathan Enderle, may you get better soon...

Ted Williams' Head

(which would make a decent name for a college rock band, incidentally)

I was just appalled by this when I heard Colin Cowherd and Jim Rome talking about it this morning. I assume by now you've heard this horrible story, but if not:

Workers at a cryonics facility mutilated the frozen head of Hall of Fame baseball player Ted Williams, the author of a new book alleges.

In "Frozen," Larry Johnson, a former executive at the Alcor Life Extension Foundation in Scottsdale, Ariz., describes how Williams' frozen head was repeatedly abused, the New York Daily News reported.

The book due out Tuesday alleges gruesome behavior at the facility, where bodies are kept suspended in liquid nitrogen in case future generations learn how to revive them.

Johnson writes that in July 2002, shortly after the legendary slugger died at age 83, technicians with no medical certification used crude equipment to decapitate the majors' last .400 hitter. Williams' severed head was then frozen, and even used for batting practice by a technician trying to dislodge it from a tuna fish can, according to the book.

(via FoxSports)

The Boston Herald's website, naturally, gives a few more details:

Red Sox great Ted Williams’ head was treated like a "grotesque pinata" by a pair of Arizona cryonic lab workers who bashed the legendary slugger’s frozen skull with a wrench to dislodge it from its pedestal: a Bumble Bee tuna can, an explosive new book alleges.

"Little gray chunks of Ted’s head flew off, peppering the walls, skittering across the floor and sliding under the machinery,"

Pretty sure the adjective "grotesque" is just overkill there, "pinata" says it all. Taking batting practice with this legend's (or anyone's) head using a monkey wrench? Disgusting. Rome called it "appalling and despicable," he was probably a bit too restrained there.

I'm not one of those Christians who've drunk too deeply from Plato and think of our bodies as mere containers (or even prisons) for our souls--but I don't consider the physical aspect of humanity as sacred either. I do embrace the biblical teaching that we are made body and soul--and the union between them doesn't end at death (this would be one of the cool things about resurrection, the reuniting of that which belongs together). Mistreatment of a corpse (or part thereof) is as heinous as mistreatment of a living body.

Technically Not a Miracle, but Ever So Close

I'm not a football guy, really. I can watch a game and understand it/not sounds like a moron, but really I'm with George Will: it's the two worst aspects of American culture, 20 seconds of violence followed by a committee meeting.

But for some reason that I don't care to spend the time figuring out, for me (and countless others who really don't care about sports in general/football in particular), when it comes to your college's team...all bets are off.

I'm a third-generation Idaho Vandal, came of age during the Decade of Dominance, back when the team had it's act together--until it won it's first bowl game (I was in the stands!), lost the coach, and the wheels fell off.

It's been a miserable ten years since then (I haven't mentioned to Frodo that he was born just months before the team forgot what "win" meant), and the team has become a joke--especially in this media market dominated by Boise State University. It's really remarkable what can happen to a program like that overnight (and then keep happening, and happening, and happening)

And then tonight--the University of Idaho Vandals won over their conference opponent the New Mexico State Aggies. Their first win on the road since 2006, their first season opening win since 1999.

21-6. Beautiful. Yeah, it's just one game, but come on--this is great.

I. D. A. H. O. Idaho, Idaho, go, go go!

Our Government at Work

from The Idaho Statesman:

The political rhetoric surrounding college football's Bowl Championship Series intensifies Friday in Washington, D.C. - and Boise State athletic director Gene Bleymaier will be part of the show.

Bleymaier is one of four college football officials scheduled to testify in front of a House of Representatives subcommittee in a hearing designed to push the sport closer to a playoff system. The idea has the support of President Barack Obama, which has stoked the interest of Congress again. The BCS was a hot topic there in 2005, too.

Congress is attacking two central issues - the lack of a "true" national champion and the imbalanced distribution of revenue, which favors the more powerful conferences.

"We are trying to create enough public pressure to cause them to switch voluntarily to a playoff system," Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, said, according to ESPN.com. "I have not yet pushed the bill. I emphasize the word 'yet.' If our friends at the BCS sit on their hands and yawn, this legislation could end up on the president's desk for his signature."

In other words, if they don't "voluntarily" do what we want, we'll make 'em!

Aside from that bald threat, what we have here in these days of a collapsing economy, our troops engaged in wars, threats to health (overstated or not) & security, a vacancy on the High Court, a reserve bank that screams to be audited, among so many other things, we have the government sticking it's nose into college sports.

This subcommittee would make a great list of Congresspeople to be recalled/impeached. It's past time we wake up and do something about these people.

Recommended Reads

I don't know if anyone actually reads any of these posts/articles when I do one of these posts, but I like to think some one does. And it makes me feel like I'm providing a small service to my readers--particularly on days like today when I can't really come up with much, my brain's too busy mulling over the implications to that huge info-dump that the writers of Battlestar subjected us to and thinking about Whedon's destined-to-be-short-lived Dollhouse.*

Anyway, some of the more thought-provoking reads of the three-day weekend:

• from CNN, Bob Greene asks--and answers--a good question:

  But all the games, in all the seasons, in all the big-time sports leagues -- what is the real reason we keep on watching?
  
  You might think that we'd finally grow weary of caring, with headlines about Alex Rodriguez and Barry Bonds, with the sports pages often reading like the business pages (contract disputes and stadium bond-issue negotiations and salary arbitration), with police-blotter details sometimes pushing aside the box scores.
  
  Why do we watch?

• from The Outfit, Country Music: Why the music we love to hate should get more respect from storytellers, columnist Graham Verdon posits:

  Country music is clearly the ugly stepchild in the family of popular music. But the truth is, for those working to achieve mastery in the craft of storytelling, country songwriters are close cousins.

• Lastly, the good people over at Respect Jeter's Gangster, give the definitive (and chuckle-worthy) response to the burning question:Where Will Joba Find His Place?

* Yeah, that was a dare. Prove me wrong, FOX. Prove me wrong, America. Please.

A Football Score, but a Different Game

My niece is in her last year of Rec Basketball--on the verge of what will probably be a decent Junior High/High School career (hopefully she'll get good enough to grease the rails towards higher education). Anyway, Saturday was the first game of the season--and somehow, the first game I've attended, despite her doing this for 5 previous years.

Anyway, I had to keep reminding myself this was their first game--it was a disaster. They were clearly rusty (except for the very few who were playing their first game), very few seemed to understand the game at all--and most of them didn't understand much. Of the 20 or so girls out there, I'd say 1 really knew her stuff (not my niece, for the record), and 4 looked like they'd be a real threat once they got warmed up. The game was 2-2 at the half, (I wasn't sure at that point if I was watching basketball or soccer) 12-8 at the end.

The refs, I should add, were wholly professional--they acted just like NBA level officials--clearly in the bag for the home team.

I'm really looking forward to returning at the end of the season to see how much they've improved--I have moderately high hopes.

But what really struck me was the level of play--and I'm not trying to pick on these girls. Most of them are in their sixth year. Contrast what I saw to a Little League game of baseball--opening of the season or not, you're just not going to find that level of...clumsiness and cluelessness much beyond T-ball. Especially not in people with 5 years under their belt.

Is basketball so different from baseball? What is it about the two sports (I'm really only a casual observer of one) that gives these kind of results?

Yeah, this is what we need to spend federal dollars on...

The budget deficit is larger than ever, and our incoming president says it'll stay that way for years (duh). The states are facing the same problems. So obviously we need to make sure our government (at all levels) spending is for important things.

Like college football, apparently.

In November, three US Congressmen (including Idaho's 2nd District, so I can't vote against him) wrote the president-elect, calling for a Justice Dept. investigation into whether the BCS system violates the Sherman Antitrust Act. And now, Utah's Attorney General is investigating the same system for antitrust violations.

College Sports. This is where we need to spend our money? Not, oh, I don't know--bringing the troops home, finding Osama, freeing us from dependency on foreign oil, etc. etc. etc.

Puh-leeeeez.

Da Feel Good Post of da Day

Decade of Dominance II

Sequels really always are worse than the originals...

It looked fantastic for a few minutes (7-0), then looked surprisingly well for the first half (10-17)...and then it looked like the rest of the last ten years (45-10), as the Boise State (state? I thought Boise was a city) Broncos routed the Univserity of Idaho (alma mater to me, all but one of my extended family with a college degree, TLomL, Sarah Palin, etc.) Vandals.

Excuse me, I need to go burn Chris Tormey in effigy. Again.

In Honor of the Season Opener

(yeah, okay, I wouldn't have thought of doing anything to commemorate this lesser sport if the song hadn't come up on my shuffle.)

Why the animosity toward the sport? Well, for starters...look at what my (and Gov. Palin's, I should add) alma mater's team did last week.

I know, video quality isn't so hot...can't imbed it, but you can see it in it's glory at Adam Sandler's site.

One More Quick Sports Note

There are a lot of athletes out there who are good at their job, but are simply jerks (see the last post for one potential nominee). For example, A-Rod is quite possibly the best player in the world, but between the way he treated his team last year, his wife, kids, charities, you name it...it's pretty clear the guy's a prick. Manny Ramirez is another prime example, as the Yankees Chick put it recently:

Manny Being Manny - "Manny being a difficult, ungrateful jackass" is a more appropriate catchphrase

Thankfully, there are some athletes who in addition to being stellar players seem to be genuinely nice guys. Joba Chamberlin seems to be one of those guys--a dynamite pitcher, a model son, and an all-around good guy. Which makes it all the worse to see him on the Disabled List. Loved watching him come out of nowhere last year, was excited to see him move out of the 'pen this year, laughed myself silly over the controversy over his fist-pumps...and now this? Blargh. The kid deserves better. Get better soon, Joba.

Can We be Done with This Now?

I've given up political talk radio for Lent--or 'til the end of this election cycle (whichever comes last), I just can't stand to hear anymore about the squabbles between the liberal pretending to be moderately conservative and the communist pretending to be a liberal. So a co-worker has got me listening to ESPN radio, which can be quite interesting even when they're discussing sports I care nothing about. But I'm about to reach my breaking point with these guys, too...the last few weeks (seems like months) one story's dominated every show, every host's imagination. As one Jim Rome listener-submitted haiku put it yesterday:

Favre Favre Favre Favre Favre
Favre Favre Favre Favre Favre Favre Favre
Favre Favre Favre Favre Favre

I watch a maximum of 19 minutes of NFL football each year, never been inclined to care about the Packers for a second, and I have a deep, abiding, passionate position on whether this almost washed-up glory hog should retire or not. And I don't want to have a position--it's all because of the non-stop coverage.

It's August, fer cryin' out loud! Could we get a little MLB coverage? Every division race is heavily contested for a change--well, except the AL-West, that is, seems the Angels (official name: Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, USA, Western Hemisphere, Earth, Third Planet from Sol, Western Spiral Arm of the Milky Way,
the Universe) have got that one locked up.

Now that Favre has been traded, I'm hoping things'll start to die down on this story. Sure it'll take awhile, but I've got my fingers crossed--here's hoping they can find 40 minutes to talk about the World Series in October.
official name: The Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, USA, Western Hemisphere, Earth, Third Planet from Sol, Milky Way, the Universe.

Nice little story for a holiday Monday

yeah, yeah, I know...been away for a bit (fighting off a death plague of some sorts [TLoML calls it a cold, but I know better]). Got a few things in the mental hopper, tho. Hopefully can find time for them to pop.

Anyway...Jeff Gordon (not that one) has some nice things to say about this summer in sports--it's not all ugly (and yeah, I'm lookin' at you Balco Barry).

We'd watched the team he mentions winning the Little League World Series lose horribly in the early rounds--heartwarming to see they recovered...I felt so bad for them. Incidentally, the LLWS is probably the best televised baseball each year period. The pros can match it occasionally--but it takes things like Game 3 of the 2001 ALDS to do it.

Getting a good look at the pyramids

It didn't happen, it didn't happen, it didn't happen.

Sorry, I should try to find it in myself to be happy for these plucky guys from Boise, but I can't. I'm a second-generation Vandal. I came of age during the Decade of Dominance (plus a couple). Sure, that era might seem like something out of the mists of legend now. But it was real. I saw it. Been there. Done that. Got the T-Shirt (literally).

So when it comes to college football, I have two favorite teams. The Vandals, and whoever are playing the Broncos. So yesterday Oklahoma was my team. And they failed. (shudder)

What's worse than the fact that underdog BSU won such a prominent game was that it will just encourage the local media. For at least a week before the Broncos were invited to the Fiesta Bowl, all four TV stations, the newspapers, just about every radio station (dunno about the NPR stuff, and a couple of Christian holdouts), etc. went into Fiesta Bowl frenzy. Once it became official, the coverage seemed to be 24/7. It led local newscasts for weeks (never mind wars, murders, etc.); it pre-empted Nightline one night, interfered w/New Year's Eve Countdown shows, etc., etc., etc. One radio station "The Eagle" renamed itself "The Bronco." And then the Smurf Turf lunkheads won. The coverage will never end!!!

This is just too much for a Vandal to bear....