The Sports Curmudgeon

Here is some more information on the new college football bowl games that have received blessing by the NCAA. The Congressional Bowl will be played in Washington DC in December and Navy will be one of the teams - - no matter how mediocre Navy may be in any given year so long as it is bowl eligible. That is not a given. Navy has been good for the last several years but before that you could pencil in Navy for less than four wins every season and be “on the money”.

When Navy plays in the game, there will be some kind of draw despite the Middies being on Holiday Break because there are a large number of “Navy people” in the DC area. But if Navy isn’t eligible and the game has to go bottom fishing for a team, this game will be played to a stadium full of no one. The opponent will be an ACC team that does not qualify for any other ACC contractual bowl game. Translation: This team is not on life support at the moment but is being closely monitored in its hospital setting.

The St. Petersburg Bowl – guess where it will be played – is an indoor bowl game in Florida in the winter. If that makes sense to you, then the game should be on your “must watch list”. The game will feature a team that had no chance to win the Big East playing a team that was inconsequential at best in C-USA. If my count is correct, this will be the sixth C-USA team committed to a bowl game; so the good folks in Tampa St. Pete can look forward to a raucous crowd arriving from a C-USA school that has already probably lost a minimum of 5 games in the season. You’ll forgive me if I yawn here…

Meanwhile, the good folks in Salt Lake City who also petitioned the NCAA for a bowl game were denied this grand opportunity. The NCAA pooh-bahs thought that adding a 35th bowl game would require 70 bowl eligible teams and that might be cutting it too closely since only 71 teams were bowl eligible last season. Maybe the Salt Lake City folks should take the lead in a “plus-one format”. Maybe they should petition to have a bowl game in January pitting the winner of the Congressional Bowl against the winner of the St. Petersburg Bowl. Why not? It can’t be any less interesting than some of the match-ups out there already.

Speaking of college football, I see that Lou Holtz was elected to the College Football Hall of Fame. Excuse me, but didn’t he leave more than one school just in time to dodge NCAA sanctions? Translation: the new coach was left holding the bag. I think I can conclude from this selection that the College Football Hall of Fame is one where “on the field” exploits are the only thing that counts and “character issues” are less than irrelevant. Pete Rose should have played college football…

Kevin Kennedy is an OK baseball analyst for FOX Sports; there are better and there are worse. However, in a recent effervescence about the start of the Arizona Diamondbacks, Kennedy noted that they were 20-8 in April and said:

“You multiply that by a six-month season, you do that every month, you got 100 wins.”

That has to make me wonder what Kevin Kennedy scored on his SAT math test…

José Canseco has lost/abandoned his home to foreclosure. His attorney told the SF Chronicle, “He [Canseco] made a mathematical decision and just let it go.” There was already an IRS lien on the house and there was a judgment against Canseco – and his brother – dealing with a fracas at a Miami nightspot in 2001. The lien and the judgment added up to just under $1.5M and so the house became a liability and not an asset. But it does make one wonder:

Aren’t the royalties on his two books enough to pay down the liens and make the house worth something?

Weren’t people paying money just to spend the day with Canseco in his home - - when he was under house arrest - - just to be able to have “the Canseco experience”? I guess there weren’t a lot of those lambs to be fleeced out there…

Isn’t Canseco in the midst of a huge movie deal – the one he wanted Maglio Ordonez to back financially – which will bring in money hand over fist?

Barry Zito has taken a huge measure of grief for his huge guaranteed contract and his horrendous pitching performance this year. Overshadowed by this is the situation involving the Braves’ Mike Hampton. He too got a huge contract – not as big as Zito’s, but still huge – from the Braves and he has been out of action for almost three years now. In his latest minor league rehab assignment, Hampton had to leave a minor-league game with pain in his pectoral muscle. His last appearance in a major league game was in August 2005.

Here’s another Olympics note that seems to be a bit off key. Canwest Publishing owns a bunch of newspapers in Western Canada; the 2010 Winter Games are in Vancouver, which is in Western Canada; Canwest has “signed on” with the Vancouver Olympics Organizing Committee to be the “Official Regional Newspaper for the 2010 Games”. In exchange for advertising/promotional space in Canwest’s many papers, the Vancouver Organizing folks will give Canwest “exclusive rights in the regional newspaper publisher/product service category”.

If this does not present a self-evident case of an “appearance of conflict of interest” for Canwest, then I guess I just don’t understand what an appearance of conflict of interest might be. Forget whether or not the sportswriters of Canwest will get preferential access to stories and officials; they will. Suppose there is an emerging story that might involve “corruption” or “wrongdoing” involving some of the Vancouver Organizing folks; might the Canwest coverage of that kind of story be suspect? It would be to me…

Finally, Scott Ostler in the SF Chronicle offered this insight into the entirety of the college football bowl picture:

“Bowl Championship Series officials rejected a proposal to decide the national champion with a four-team playoff. However, the BCS big-wigs did agree to a significant change in their system. From now on, after all the usual procedures are followed, the top two teams will be selected by superdelegates.”

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports…