The Louisiana State University Board of Supervisors Wednesday approved newly hired LSU offensive coordinator Cam Cameron’s three-year contract but not without faculty members voicing concerns. According to the terms, Cameron will receive $600,000 for the 2013 season, followed by $1.3 million and $1.5 million in the last two years of his contract. — NOLA.com LSU has faculty?! Donald McKinney, director of wind ensembles and conducting and associate professor in the school of music, said he was “disheartened” in LSU’s handling of the future. He said the morale has been low and hopes LSU would change to retain faculty. McKinney, who’s a newer faculty member, said he’s heading to another university at the end of the semester. . . . Nathan Crick, an associate professor in communication studies, echoed similar sentiments. Crick said he was sold false goods and now “it’s time to return them.” The professor said he’s leaving LSU… Read more →
EppsNet Archive: Sports
HW’s Movie Reviews: 42
Look at this — before Jackie Robinson, they didn’t let black guys play major league baseball! Right . . . that was 70 years ago, in the 1940s. Let’s move on already. You know what else they did in the 1940s? They rounded up Japanese Americans, just took them right out of their homes and their jobs, and stuck them into “relocation camps.” When’s the last time you heard a Japanese person talk about relocation camps? They don’t talk about relocation camps because they’re too busy being engineers and doctors and businessmen and raising their families and sending their kids to top universities. You can focus your mind on what other people did a long time ago or you can focus your mind on what you’re doing right now. Let’s move on already. Rating: Footnote: We’ve come full circle on blacks in baseball. The defending World Series champion San Francisco… Read more →
Home Runs
My wife asks how my job is going . . . “I’m hittin’ home runs like Willie Mays!” I reply. “You know Willie Mays?” “No.” “I’m hittin’ home runs like Mark McGwire!” “I know Jackie Robinson.” “Jackie Robinson didn’t hit a lot of home runs.” Read more →
Jerry Buss, 1933-2013
I’m sad. As a lifelong Laker fan, I kind of feel like I knew the guy. He bought the Lakers in 1979, which means he was younger than I am today, and now he’s dead at the age of 80. I feel old. Dr. Buss was a USC alum. Fight on. R.I.P. Jerry Buss Read more →
USC 75, UCLA 71 (OT)
Sorry to spoil Reggie Miller Jersey Retirement Night at the new Pauley Pavilion, but you should know better than to schedule these things against the Men of Troy. FIGHT ON! Read more →
Kobe Bryant, 1978-2013
One never knows when the blow may fall, Mamba Mentality notwithstanding. He wakes up this morning and a few hours later he dies at the age of 41. It sounds like they may have been flying through fog and hit a hillside rather than hitting the ground. Is there enough time to grab your daughter’s hand and say “I love you” or is it all over too fast? Which would be better or worse? RIP Kobe Bryant, Gianna and all the other passengers Read more →
Why Kyrie Irving is a Better Basketball Player Than Anyone in My Family
My son (age 19) and I are driving to Staples Center to see the Lakers take on the Cleveland Cavaliers, listening to the pre-game show on the radio. Because the Cavs are basically a one-man roster, and that one man is Kyrie Irving, there’s a lot of talk about Irving on the pre-game. One of the analysts offers up his opinion that Irving is as good as he is at such a young age (he’s 20) because Irving’s dad was hard on him as a kid and pushed him and didn’t let him take breaks. As always, when the topic of someone’s dad bullying him to greatness comes up, the boy gives me a melancholy look to say that my lack of abusiveness as a parent is the reason he’s not a professional athlete. “You let me take breaks,” he says. “You know,” I say, “I think for every guy… Read more →
I Have Kids Older Than NBA Players
My boy, a college sophomore, and I are watching the Lakers play the Charlotte Bobcats on the TV . . . “Did you know,” he says, “that I’m a full two months older than [Bobcats forward] Michael Kidd-Gilchrist?” “Hmmm . . . really?” “He grew more than me.” Kidd-Gilchrist is 6’7″, 232 lbs. He turned 19 in September. Read more →
Dee-FENSE
107-2 — Bloomington South girls basketball team beats Arlington — ESPN They gave up two points?! Who’s coaching the defense, Mike D’Antoni? Read more →
Tedford Relieved of Duties, i.e., Fired
BERKELEY – Jeff Tedford, who has overseen the Golden Bear football program for the past 11 seasons, has been relieved of his duties as head football coach at the University of California, Director of Athletics Sandy Barbour announced Tuesday. — The University of California Official Athletic Site Tedford must have seen this coming back in August when he put his house on the market for a cool $5.35 million. He was saddled with a doofus quarterback as a throw-in on the Keenan Allen deal and the team’s 3-9 record speaks for itself. Tedford did a lot of good things at Cal. He took over a 1-10 team in 2002 and won seven games his first season. In 2004, Cal went 10-2, finished ninth in the final AP poll, and in 2006, the Golden Bears went 10-3. Tedford was getting NFL offers during that time and turning them down. He was… Read more →
Jerry Kill, (Minnesota) Gopher
We’re watching SportsCenter when a picture of Jerry Kill, coach of the Minnesota Golden Gophers football team, comes on the screen, accompanied by the unfortunate news that Kill suffered a seizure following the team’s 21-13 loss to Northwestern. “He’s still alive?” my son asks. “He didn’t die?” “He had a seizure,” I say. “So he’s still alive, right?” “Yeah.” “In that case, I’m going to go ahead and say that he looks like a gopher.” Read more →
Card Stunts
We’re in Berkeley for Parents Weekend, watching Cal and UCLA battle it out on the gridiron. One of the halftime highlights at Cal football games is card stunts. I know, welcome to the 1920s, right? Everyone held up their cards, which were either blue or gold. The cards on the opposite side of the stadium from us spelled out “Memorial Stadium” but we couldn’t see what our own cards spelled. “I hope they say ‘UCLA Sucks,’” I said to my wife standing next to me, but unfortunately loud enough for a nearby husband-and-wife team of Bruin fans to hear me. “Did you really just say that?” the woman asked. “We’re helping.” Meaning that they were holding up their cards to support the card stunt and didn’t deserve to be insulted. When you venture into enemy territory, you have to expect some derision. Read more →
Cal 43, UCLA 17
We’re up here in Berkeley for Parents Weekend. I was saying since we arrived that this looks like a winnable game for Cal and couldn’t find one person — student or parent — to agree with me. Cal was 1-4, UCLA was 4-1. Cal fans are conditioned for disappointment. I’m a USC guy and USC fans were the same way in the pre-Pete Carroll era. Fans showed up for games not to cheer on the team but to bemoan another disappointing performance. This is a nice wakeup call for the Bruins. Despite their record and ranking coming into the game, they’re not very good. Read more →
Replacement Refs Are Just What the Sport Needs
I hope the NFL keeps replacement refs around forever. I hope they bring in a new batch of them every season. I hope they bring in replacement refs for the replacement refs. Why do people think the “real” refs are actually good? Was last night’s Seattle-Green Bay game really worse than the “Tuck Rule”? Was it worse than 2006 when the “real” refs cost the Seahawks the Super Bowl? Sports fans are the biggest cretins on the planet. When their team wins, they gloat, usually in the first person: We won! We beat those guys! There are no bigger mental and emotional retards than people who refer to sports teams in the first person. It’s an inability to separate fantasy from reality. (Imagine a Roger Federer fan screaming, “I just won Wimbledon!” When ther team loses, they blame it on one of two things: 1) Bad coaching; 2) Bad officiating.… Read more →
Aside
The U! – Kansas St 52, Miami 13
What is Rick Neuheisel Doing on the Pac-12 Network?
What is this simpleton Rick Neuheisel doing as a studio analyst on the Pac-12 Network? How many Pac-12 football programs has Rick Neuheisel destroyed? Let’s review . . . You wouldn’t know it from watching them lose at home today to Colorado State, but the University of Colorado was an elite program, a national championship winner, when Neuheisel inherited the program from Bill McCartney. Colorado football has never recovered from Rick Neuheisel. Washington Husky football, thanks to Steve Sarkisian, is just starting to recover from Rick Neuheisel. I can’t say that Neuheisel wrecked the UCLA football program because there wasn’t much to wreck, but he was at least as bad and probably worse than his abysmal predecessor, Karl Dorrell. Neuheisel’s last game at the helm was a 50-0 dismantling by USC, the worst loss in the rivalry in 70 years. Neuheisel is a stupido. He looks stupid. He sounds stupid.… Read more →
Nevada 31, Cal 24
How does Jeff Tedford have a $5 million house?! Cal opened their new stadium with a 31-24 loss to Nevada. The Bears looked sloppy, more like a high school team. FIRE TEDFORD! That said, time to switch over to Fox and watch some REAL football at the L.A. Memorial Coliseum as the top-ranked Men of Troy take care of some Unfinished Business! FIGHT ON! Read more →
The Name on the Back
Penn State announced that its uniforms will feature player names on the back of its jerseys for the first time in school history. Once the Nittany Lions run out on the field this weekend, USC football will be the only FBS school never to have had surnames on the back of its jerseys. By being traditional, USC football has become unique… — The RipsIt Blog We don’t play for the name on the back of the jersey because there is no name on the back of the jersey. We only have numbers so our moms can recognize us from the stands. Read more →
Mac Wilkins: What The Discus Can Teach You About Life
Deadspin has an excellent “as told to” story on former Olympic discus thrower Mac Wilkins (What The Discus Can Teach You About Life: Lessons From One Of America’s Greatest Throwers) Wilkins made four straight U.S. Olympic teams, winning a gold medal in 1976, a silver in 1984, and finishing fifth in 1988. He was also the first man to throw the discus more than 70 meters, and he held the world record for over two years, bettering his own mark three times between April 1976 and August 1978. Some excerpts: So one day I go out to train and I say, Oh, what the heck. Let’s just give it a little extra effort today. And I did, and I got better and it went farther. And I thought that was kind of fun. What if I could that again tomorrow? And so pretty soon, I’m hooked on, Can I do… Read more →
Bill “Spaceman” Lee Pitches a Complete Game. He’s 65 Years Old.
USC baseball alum Bill “Spaceman” Lee, age 65, pitched a complete-game 9-4 victory for the San Rafael Pacifics of the independent North American League Thursday night, to become the oldest pitcher to win a professional game. Lee already held that record anyway, having won a Can-Am League game in 2010 at age 63. The notable thing here is that for some reason, professional pitchers in their prime can no longer do what a 65-year-old man can do, and that is to pitch a complete game. Knucklehead of week: Bill ‘Spaceman’ Lee – SFGate If you’re too young to remember Bill Lee, he was a major league pitcher from 1969 to 1982, primarily with the Boston Red Sox. He is regarded as one of the game’s all-time colorful characters. (If you’re wondering whether that reputation is deserved, Baseball Almanac has compiled some Lee quotes for your perusal. Read more →