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. Read more →
EppsNet Archive: Sports
50 Years Ago Today
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. Read more →
Why There’s No UCLA Store
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! Read more →
National Champions
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! Read more →
Death to Meetings
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. Read more →
A Taxonomy of Freaks
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. Read more →
A Missed Opportunity
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! Read more →
School Choice
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… Read more →
This Week in Sports Parents Must Die
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… Read more →
We Get Letters
This is the best email I’ve had all week. Let me preface it by saying that I don’t know the sender, so I changed her name to protect the “innocent.” From: anne sexton [mailto:annie-s@hotmail.com] Subject: Teacher? Only in Southern California could someone so woefully ignorant be a teacher. Your childish clinging to some 1950’s idea of masculinity in order to bolster your own ego is pathetic, and the sad thing is, you’re teaching your son to be equally disrespectful. Wow. Nice parenting. In short, I’m sorry you have a small dick. It doesn’t give you the right to disrespect women. Oh, And GO BEARS, mother fucker. Love, Anne Sexton PhD candidate in English, UC Berkeley (ranked #1 in the world for their English program. Where’s USC ranked?) Sweet! Here’s my reply: Hi Anne – You sound very angry about something but I’m not sure what. I don’t know where the… Read more →
The Hard Way
Death of Esperanza coach brings team together — Orange County Register This couldn’t have been accomplished with a barbeque or a pizza party? Read more →
Another Thing I Hate About Sports
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. Read more →
Dara Torres: The Best Sports Story You Never Heard
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… Read more →
UCLA Coach Makes a Home Visit
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. Read more →
Hat Trick
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… Read more →
Pacific Cup 2007
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: Read more →
T.J. Simers Must Die
I thought sports columnists were appointed for life, like Supreme Court justices, no matter how irrelevant they become, and yet I see that the Los Angeles Times has just dumped J.A. Adande. Well, by golly, that’s a good start! I can’t think of a single print columnist, at the Times or elsewhere, who’s remotely relevant anymore. There are dozens of sports websites (not that one — start at Deadspin and follow the links) with at least an order of magnitude more energy, insight and wit than you’ll find in your local print rag, which is why newspapers are going the way of the 8-track tape, the buggy whip and whale oil. The next in line to go at the Times should be fatuous blowhard T.J. Simers. Simers positions himself as a pot-stirring wiseass, and the line on him seems to be that if people don’t like him, he must be… Read more →
The Family and the Traditions and the Band
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! Read more →
Money Changes Everything
When I went to Boston, I knew they won championships but didn’t really know the history. But the players always came around, you’d ask questions, they’d talk basketball. You didn’t want to let the guys down. They set the bar high. It’s not like that here [in Indiana], or around the league. We stay at the nicest hotels. In Minnesota we’re right across the street from the arena, maybe a 45-second walk. They’ve got a bus for them. You’ve got to be kidding me. Charter planes. That’s not flying. I always say guys deserve the money, but it changes some people. — Larry Bird Read more →
Not as Unstoppable as Advertised
For a guy who’s supposed to be the most dominant, unstoppable player of his generation, Shaq has certainly been on the wrong side of some lopsided playoff losses: 1994: Indiana def. Orlando, 3-0 1995: Houston def. Orlando, 4-0 1996: Chicago def. Orlando, 4-0 1997: Utah def. Los Angeles, 4-1 1998: Utah def. Los Angeles, 4-0 1999: San Antonio def. Los Angeles, 4-0 2004: Detroit def. Los Angeles, 4-1 2007: Chicago def. Miami, 4-0 To be fair about it, he did win NBA championships in 2000, 2001 and 2002 with the Lakers, and in 2006 with Miami. Read more →