Monday, February 11, 2008

ALLITERATION AND OTHER EXERCISES FOR SPRING TRAINING

Loving alliteration as this column does, today we report on SAD and ADD. The SAD explains some of those long faces around town this week, S-A-D being an acronym for Seasonal Affected Disorders which is another way of explaining that football season is now finished, done, completed, finito. Get over it.

Having said that, Long Beach State hasn’t lost a gridiron game since, well, since CSU budget blues cut the sport altogether in the early nineties. If only we could say the same about the sneaker set, the expected cash cows for Niner Athletics. Both the gentlemen (4-16) and the ladies (4-15) raise the second acronym flag, A-D-D, as in “it is Always Darkest before the Dawn”. Translated, plenty of good seats available but not very good products on the court. Help is on the way but for now, a legitimate cash crisis.

Part of that dollar dilemma is that losing chills the box office (attendance) but an even more ominous cloud is the current state budget which will squeeze every corner of the 320 acres of LBSU including athletics. The general fund is smaller and expect an increase in tuition and fees which makes life hard when you have to fund-raise for a couple hundred scholarships,

However, in this hoop hysteria, there is one bright spot, iron horse Donavan Morris who averages just under 38 minutes and 20 points per game. Worth the price of admission.

The ladies finally got all their walking wounded on the court but alas, the lassies, are virtually on the bottom of the Big West. The women, who play at home today (Thursday) and Saturday will make the conference tournament because the ninth team, Northridge, is winless on the season (0-18). Now stay tuned for the men’s post-season report because that matter is cloudier than that leftover pitcher of Super Bowl daiquiris.

We can’t predict what Dan Monson and company will be doing March 12-15 but, going into their road trip to Davis and Pacific this weekend, LBSU is in that dreaded ninth spot for an eight team tourney. The good news is that one can hope that the NCAA penalties will come soon, that they will be effective this season, and the school can take the proposed one year post season ban this season when the club doesn’t have a snowball’s chance anyhow.

BUFFET DUST—The banquet season has been in full bi-carb for sometime and it occasionally makes for strange table talk. Ex Dirtbag and current Rockies shortstop Troy Tulowitzki was the guest of honor, as major league player of the year, at the Santa Clara County Hot Stove Awards banquet. But now, from the San Jose Mercury an awkward moment.

On the dais with Tulo (who just signed a six year, $31 mill contract) was Ed Montague, the dean of major league umpires entering his 32nd season. “As the night wore on, they realized that Tulowitzki has been ejected from exactly one of his 180 major league games. By the crusty Mr. Montague. “It wasn’t my first and it won’t be his last,” Montague told the crowd.”

Last add Tulo, he will be one of the honored ones February 12 at the Century Club Hall of Fame Banquet along with fellow Niners Alexis Crimes, Misty May and coaches Jenny Hilt-Costello and Mike Weathers.

Last add money train, golf alums Mark O’ Meara, Paul Goydos and the kid John Mallinger are still cashing PGA checks. O’Meara has his millions locked away behind the gates of his Orlando enclave. Mallinger is single and has made the weekend in all three tourneys this year but Goydos is a single dad who told the OC Register that although the girls miss him when he is on tour the $1,229,355 pop brought in last year “takes care of a lot to trips to the mall.”

Finally, our closing quote fits for a lot of angry folks these days, political and sporting, "We don’t argue - we just have intense moments of fellowship.”—DR. DAN

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