“It’s too bad Hillary Rodham Clinton’s name isn’t Hillary Rodman Clinton,” my son says. “Maybe she could rebound from her current situation.”

In memory of Heath Ledger, here’s a list of 79 more stars killed by drugs . . .

UCLA has hired Rick Neuheisel as its new football coach, replacing Karl Dorrell.

UCLA people love this guy. They’ve been blowing Neuheisel’s meat whistle ever since the announcement.

As a USC man, I say this: Great hire!

Neuheisel will fail for all of the reasons listed here. Excerpt: “Neuheisel’s one great genius turns out to be his ability to make people think he’s a genius.”

FIGHT ON!

The conventional wisdom in recent years has been that USC has trouble defending spread offenses and mobile quarterbacks, like Illinois’ Juice Williams.

I’m not sure that’s true. They’ve had trouble defending some mobile quarterbacks — Vince Young, Dennis Dixon — but so has every other team in the country.

We took it to a real personal nature because we wanted to figure the spread-thing out, defend it really well and take the mystery out of it. We practiced so beautifully that it had to work out well. That’s a big deal. A really big deal.

— Pete Carroll

A total systematic beatdown.

FIGHT ON!

My son’s explanation to his mom on why he can’t turn off Madden 2008 like she asked him to:

I can’t stop in the middle of a game. Roger Goodell has not sent me a notice that we can do that. Unless there’s a weather delay or fans throwing things on the field, which there isn’t, so that can’t happen.

According to the Los Angeles Times:

• Red Sanders decided to stay on as football coach at UCLA instead of pursuing the football coach/athletic director job at Texas A&M, a job recently vacated by Paul (Bear) Bryant. (Sanders would have a heart attack and die before the start of the 1958 football season anyway.)
• A father of three killed himself in front of his wife after losing his job on Christmas Eve.
• Silent-screen star Norma Talmadge died in Las Vegas. The Times gave her age as 60; according to IMDB, she was actually 62.

My son and I stopped by the USC Store at South Coast Plaza today. As you might expect, it was packed with people buying Christmas gifts, Rose Bowl gear and other branded merchandise.

I wonder what a UCLA Store would look like, if there were a UCLA Store. A handful of angry, miserable people milling about, checking out the Las Vegas Bowl runner-up merchandise.

FIGHT ON!

The USC women’s soccer team capped off its history-making season with one last huge feat — the NCAA Championship. The second-seeded Women of Troy tacked up their fifth shutout of the NCAA Tournament — an accomplishment never before achieved — with a 2-0 decision over third-seeded Florida State in the NCAA title match on Sunday afternoon at Aggie Soccer Complex in College Station, Texas.

— USCTrojans.com

FIGHT ON!

Regarding the negotiations to keep USC football in the Coliseum, Scott Wolf writes:

USC’s Coliseum negotiations website implores fans to attend today’s commission meeting. It’s part of USC’s public-relations strategy to get the public to express outrage. So far, that ploy’s resulted in death threats against commission member Bill Chadwick and general manager Pat Lynch.

A USC official just shrugged his shoulders at that little byproduct of the negotiations.

Let’s see if I understand the cause and effect here. Encouraging people to attend a committee meeting resulted in death threats?

OK, that’s understandable . . . I hate meetings myself.

My son’s playing a game of Madden ‘08 . . .

“I’m playing linebacker,” he says. “I’m a physical FREAK!”

“What other kind of freak is there?” I ask.

“I don’t know,” he says.

USC coach Pete Carroll and UCLA assistant Eric Scott were both at Thursday’s Crenshaw game.

— Scott Wolf inside USC

Interesting . . . I would have thought Eric Scott would be out robbing the houses of people attending the Crenshaw game . . .

FIGHT ON!

Another gem from the freshman football mailing list . . .

Of the four high schools here in Irvine, only one — Irvine High — has a stadium on campus. There’s a movement afoot, led by local attorney and parent Emmett Raitt, to build a second stadium.

Here’s an excerpt from Emmett’s email suggesting that parents write to the school board about this matter:

The reasons a second stadium are needed include the elimination of Thursday night games, which lowers student attendance at games; it will ease the overcrowding of the Irvine Stadium facility (and particularly the snack bar, a personal favorite of mine); and it will allow all schools to use District facilities for their graduations, which they do not now do.

Hmmm . . . I can’t see how increasing student attendance is going to ease overcrowding, nor do I think the fact that some local fatso thinks there are too many people ahead of him in the snack bar line justifies spending $10 million on a new stadium.

Now here’s the follow-up email that came out from Rick Curtis, the varsity football coach at my son’s school, Northwood High:

I just read where the Huntington Beach district is putting in 2 new stadiums at Huntington Beach HS (8.5 million) and at Westminster (7.5 million). All Capo Valley Unified high schools have stadiums and each have field turf and all weather tracks at their schools.

All Saddleback Valley high schools have stadiums, except El Toro High School. Each high school also has field turf and all weather tracks at their schools (including El Toro High School).

We need to get to the school board meetings and we need to get organized. . . . These are the people that we are competing against and we are way behind in providing state of the art facilities for our student athletes.

All the districts that he mentions in the email are good academically, but they’re not in the same class as the Irvine district, which is the crème de la crème.

So here’s a no-cost solution:

• If you want your kid to get a top-notch education, live in Irvine.
• If you want a quick hot dog while your kid runs around on field turf, move to Saddleback Valley.
• If you want a quick hot dog in a brand new stadium, move to Huntington Beach.
• If you want a quick hot dog and corrupt administrators (allegedly), move to Capo Valley.

Problem solved!

My son’s playing freshman football, pursuant to which I received the following email (names changed):

Fellow Freshman parents,

Zelda and I are disappointed with the poor quality of the duffle bags the boys purchased at the start of the season. Rocko’s bag is already ripping and the zippers are becoming non-functional. As a result, we intend to buy him a much higher quality, replacement bag made out of extra heavy duty material from a Montana vendor. My firm has purchased customized travel bags from this vendor before, and our clients/employees love them. We also intend to have the bag (which will be slightly larger to accommodate a football helmet) embroidered with the T-Wolf logo and his name. This is what the bag looks like, sans logo:

If ten or more families decide to buy such replacement bags, the cost will be $285 each plus tax and the cost of name embroidery (I don’t think the latter will amount to much, but I’m looking into it). If the order is for less than ten units, then there will be a modest charge for logo. Two families in addition to our has already asked to be included them in this order. You can visit the vendor’s website at http://www.redoxx.com/.

Please let me know as soon as conveniently possible (i.e., by the game this Saturday) if you would like to be included in the order. If so, kindly also respond back with the spelling of your son’s name to be embroidered on his bag.

Thanks.

Go Wolves, Beat University!

Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald

In short, if you are experiencing similar problems, this would be a high quality replacement that should last for some time.

Yeah sure, I’m definitely up for spending $300 for a bag my son can stuff his football uniform into, particularly if your “firm” has a track record with the company.

I sent the following response:

I’ve never seen a decent bag for only $285. I’ve been looking at this one from On the Fly:

It’s a little pricey (around $12,000) but it’s made of black alligator leather and if you’re concerned about durability, it will withstand a charging rhino.

Don’t ask me how I know that.

Best regards,

Captain Jeffrey T. Spaulding

I didn’t hear back from the original emailer, but I did get a response from a philanthropic but somewhat dim individual:

I hope that was a joke. If not I think you are getting carried away about a bag that the boys are going to drag around through the mud. If you have that much money to throw away maybe you should donate it to children who can’t afford equipment to even play sports.

Just a thought…

Oh dear, I guess I was a little too subtle . . .

Death of Esperanza coach brings team together

— Orange County Register

This couldn’t have been accomplished with a barbeque or a pizza party?

Pitch counts and closers.

Johan Santana had a 2-hit shutout going through 8 innings yesterday — with 17 strikeouts. The record for most strikeouts in a 9-inning game is 20.

Santana threw 112 pitches, so instead of coming back out in the 9th inning with a chance to tie the record, he was replaced by closer Joe Nathan.

Was he tired? Well, he struck out six of the last seven batters he faced, so it sounds like he was just warming up.

In other sports news — “other” meaning something besides steroids, blood doping, dog fighting and point shaving — Dara Torres has won her 14th and 15th national swimming titles at the U.S. Nationals currently going on in Indianapolis.

Why is that worth mentioning?

Well, swimming is a young person’s sport and Torres is 40 years old. She won her first national title 25 years ago in 1982. She won Olympic medals in 1984 in Los Angeles, 1988 in Seoul and 1992 in Barcelona, then retired from competitive swimming at age 25.

After a 7-year layoff, she started training again and qualified for the 2000 Olympic team. She was 33 years old, the oldest swimmer on the team. She won 5 more medals at the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, then retired again.

Four days ago, at age 40, and just 15 months after giving birth to her first child, she won gold in the 100m freestyle at the U.S. Nationals in Indianapolis, her 14th national title.

“I just got in shape swimming with my daughter and I started swimming a couple of meets and I swam real fast,” she said. “A lot of master swimmers were encouraging me to swim, so I just decided to get back into it.”

Last night, she won her 15th title, swimming the 50m freestyle in 24.53 seconds, breaking her own American record of 24.63 set in the 2000 Sydney Olympics. Lara Jackson placed second at 25.27, close to a full second behind, which is an absolute blowout in a 50m race.

Her goal is to qualify for the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, where she would be the oldest female Olympic swimmer ever at age 41.

I love this story, although it’s getting little to no play in any of the sports media I follow.

The Orange County Register has an update on last week’s arrest of UCLA assistant football coach Eric Scott on suspicion of felony burglary:

UCLA officials said Monday that the background check on receivers coach Eric Scott was conducted by the university and not an outside agency, as previously stated.

But, again, Athletic Director Dan Guerrero and Coach Karl Dorrell were unaware that Scott had been arrested four times between 1996 and 2005.

The Bruins coach, who was arrested for a fifth time last week on a charge of residential burglary, previously had pleaded guilty or was convicted of misdemeanor carrying a concealed weapon in 2005 and misdemeanor disturbing the peace in 2002.

OOPSIE!

UCLA: University of Coaches Looting Apartments.

Coach Scott is on administrative leave at this time. I don’t want to jump to any conclusions regarding his guilt or innocence based strictly on his extensive list of priors.

My son’s hockey team didn’t do so well at NARCh this time around. They got knocked out in the round-robin portion of the tournament.

That left us with some extra time on our hands, some of which we used to drive up to Tampa to watch the Angels get worked by the ordinarily hapless Devil Rays, 7-2.

We got good seats though! — right behind home plate about 10 rows up.

Completing the hat trick of futility, I arrived back in California to find that the mortgage bank I worked for had laid off 400 people, including me.

The good news is that I did get a severance package, unlike the last time I got laid off (from a dot-com company), when all I got was a handshake and an escort to the parking lot.

Oh, and I’ve got more time to read the last Harry Potter book. I’m really sick of Harry Potter but I do want to find out how the whole thing wraps up . . .

My son’s roller hockey team won the Pacific Cup final last weekend. For teams in California, Arizona and Nevada, Pacific Cup is the biggest tournament of the year, not counting national championships.

The team will be playing at NARCh in a couple of weeks. His 12-and-under team won the NARCh tournament two years ago, but I’m not as optimistic with this year’s bunch.

The problems include:

Continue reading Pacific Cup 2007

I thought the corniest thing I’d ever heard when I got here was when they kept talking about this family that we had and I’d been at several other universities and I said, look they’re all the same. But they really believe it, they mean it and they live it and I’ve gotten caught up in that and the traditions and the band and I really don’t want to coach anyplace else. This is where I’d like to finish my career.

— USC basketball coach Tim Floyd

Fight On!