Le Mars, Iowa · Friday, March 19, 2010
[Masthead] Overcast ~ 43°F  
You may have heard the ongoing discussion surrounding the expansion of the NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament. (03/15/10)
I've heard one proposal that expands the field to 68 - four play-in games instead of one - but the prevailing notion is that any expansion would be to 96 teams. Coaches and conference commissioners have all weighed in with mixed opinions. On one had, the current 65-team field is not a broken system, so many wonder if fixing it is necessary (if only the BCS had the same philosophy)...
Check out this column in prime time (03/05/10)
I'm just going to go ahead and write what most of you who watched the Olympics are thinking: NBC gets a giant, epic FAIL for its coverage. Round one of USA-Canada hockey? On MSNBC. A retrospective on the 1980 "Miracle on Ice?" On NBC. Who in the twenty-something demographic wouldn't rather watch a nostalgic tribute to a game that took place before they were born than a live North America grudge match?...
Going the distance: Football teams extend travel in 2010 (02/26/10)
Bruce Held doesn't claim to be the brightest graduate of Orange City's Northwestern College or the smartest teacher in the employ of Hinton Community School. But the longtime co-head football coach can do enough basic math to know that the Blackhawks will be taking district road trips that are longer than any others he's had in his three decades as a coach...
This is not a rant (02/19/10)
I told myself I wouldn't go on a rant this week. Those who know me best know how I only like to deal with things once and move on. I never like to dwell on how I could have made a better argument, or how my hit would have driven in the go-ahead runs instead of just the tying run if Beano could get that bunt down, or why Josh had to throw that wild pitch with the go-ahead run on third, or how much money I could have saved if I had gone straight to Washington State after high school instead of spending a year at George Fox, or if I was 6-foot-3 instead of 5-foot-9.. ...
Why the complaints? Tebow just wants to share his story (01/29/10)
Tim Tebow just can't keep his proselytizing out of the news. This time Tim is scheduled to appear with his mom in a Super Bowl advertisement financed by Focus on the Family that according to news reports, supposedly recounts her choice to carry the future Heisman trophy winner to term against the advice of her doctors...
Tebow gives us pause in a sports world out of context (12/09/09)
Few words will stoke the ire of both proponents and detractors of the Bible than its quotation in the public context. Or maybe out of context. And few like to share their favorite Scripture verses as brazenly and out-of-context as our athletes. One of the better/worse ones came from Bryce Harper. ...
K-P community keeps football tradition alive (11/18/09)
With Kingsley-Pierson missing out on the Class A football playoffs, head football coach Adam Rapp decided to attend the Class 1A substate matchup between Emmetsburg and Aplington-Parkersburg on October 28. What amazed Rapp wasn't so much that the most famous high school in Iowa took the defending state champions to overtime before falling 13-7. It was the 80 players he counted in uniform on the sideline for Falcons...
Recollections from a year of life in the Hawkeye State (11/12/09)
The fourth element of journalism, according to surveyed journalists who decide such things, states that its practitioners must maintain an independence from those they cover. Crucial to their credibility is their ability to view everything and everyone in an objective manner with their pledge to inform being their sole allegiance...
Will the real Chad Johnson please shut up? (10/23/09)
It used to be so simple. It was a poster or a trading card. There were bobble-heads and t-shirts. These were the best ways we went about deifying our athletes. But now, for $4.99, we can download the Chad Ochocinco app for our iPhones, which Ochocinco claims is "All Ochocinco, All the Time."...
It's just torture year after year for fans of land grant institutions (09/17/09)
During my year-long post-college malaise period I spent once again living with my parents, I met a couple of University of Oklahoma transplants through a mutual friend. My biggest question for them: What is like to attend a school that is always in the mix to win a football national title, year in and year out?...
Tales from the ultimate Midwest baseball road trip (08/21/09)
Jim Caple, an espn.com columnist, has his bucket list for the baseball fan. It includes 50 items, but the one that greatly intrigued me was No. 9: Enjoy a beer in the bleachers at Wrigley Field on a sunny summer day. And after last week, I can cross that one off the list. It was one of the many highlights of a road trip that is sure to rank among the greatest ever for this baseball fan...
MLB Draft the ultimate crapshoot (06/22/09)
Call the NFL and NBA drafts a crapshoot if you wish, but in reality, nothing trumps the Major League Baseball draft - in either unpredictability or overused gambling clichés. Mariners draftee and No. 2 overall pick Dustin Ackley of North Carolina set the College World Series career hits record last week in Omaha. He's supposedly a five-tool, can't-miss talent - who, incidentally, is represented by Scott Boras...
Manny being Manny? How about baseball being baseball? (05/21/09)
If there is one guy from whom I might buy the "They told me it was flax seed oil" defense, it would be Manny Ramirez. But a female fertility drug? I guess it is an apt choice, given Manny's quirks, bugaboos and general eccentricities. Good for you, Manny. You live in America - you have the right to bear as many children as you can afford. And with those millions in the Cayman Islands, fertility drugs might become necessary to reach that quota...
Rubbing elbows with Junior and the M's at the 'Dome (05/14/09)
736 days. That's how long it took me to reach the Major Leagues. Yes sir, two years to the weekend that I walked out of Beasley Performing Arts Coliseum as a graduate of Washington State University, I found myself in the press box at the one and only Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome - in its final season as a baseball facility, thank the Lord...
IHSAA gives Gabella death penalty for simple misdemeanor (04/30/09)
Perhaps more than any other team sport, you only get better at baseball by playing it competitively - a lot. A basketball player can get better by dribbling in his driveway and playing pickup games at the Y. A football player can practice timing and running his routes with his quarterback - or simply lift weights...
NCAA frowns upon cyberspace recruiting (04/17/09)
The NCAA is at it again. Remember in January when Kansas basketball coach Bill Self was investigated for a potential NCAA rules violation at a tournament in Missouri? No? Well let me refresh your memory. In mid-January, the Jayhawks coach was in Springfield, Mo., to watch a high school basketball tournament during a "no-contact" period for coaches...
March Madness: The NCAA public relations machine at its best (04/10/09)
You have to love public relations. It's journalism's golden-boy cousin. As Two-Face - err, Nick Naylor shows the audience in "Thank You for Smoking," the right spin on any situation can turn it to your advantage. It allows Philip Morris to pretend they want to keep cigarettes away from kids with the "We Card" program. It allows the makers of Nicorette to pretend they actually want people to stop smoking...
Dear Mr. President: We have a sports-related crisis (04/01/09)
Life isn't fair. It's an axiom we're taught just like we're taught to raise our hands, talk with a "six-inch voice" indoors and not to hit girls (I do great at the last one, but generally fail miserably at the first two). That being said, how Hinton's Josh Vander Plaats could garner only third team All-State honors from the Des Moines Register while being ignored by the Iowa Newspaper Association is beyond reproach...
Fighting for freedom from First Bracket follies (03/20/09)
It's a shame that your basic cable package doesn't come with ESPN Classic. How else will we get to watch the 1979 Hawaii high school state basketball tournament when ESPN finally locates the Betamax tape? That game, of course, featured our president, "Barry O'Bomber" himself, who came off the bench for state champion Punahou Academy, Honolulu's version of Bishop Heelan High School...
A look back at some great performances during my first Iowa winter (03/13/09)
We have had a couple of slow weeks around the office lately. It has given us time to work on our All-Sentinel winter sports teams, which has given me a chance to reflect on some of the more remarkable performances of the season. I'm not exactly what you would call a veteran reporter. At this point I still have more years playing high school sports (four) than I do covering them (one-and-a-half)...
Does UNI's elimination of baseball signal a shift in our national pastime? (03/05/09)
Everyone has heard the adage that sport mirrors society. In a September 2006 publication, Paul Marriott-Lloyd of the Unit for Physical Education and Sport in UNESCO said we should view sport as "a microcosm of life." Further, it has been said society is mirrored most by its dominant sport...
Seattle's Prodigal Son returns home (02/20/09)
For a nation supposedly bereft of an official religion, where lawyers fight for 'liberty' by denying people the right to display Nativity scenes, it is remarkable how often Judeo-Christian religious imagery is invoked. We have seen the Second Coming of Jordan in LeBron and read about Good Samaritan Tony Romo changing a tire for an elderly couple on the side of a Dallas freeway...
Don't be fooled: A-Rod really doesn't give a rip (02/13/09)
A-Fraud, Pay-Rod, Stray-Rod, A-Roid - call him what you will, there's one guy who doesn't give a gosh-darn what you think. That would Alex Rodriguez himself, the Marshall Mathers of Major League Baseball. Seriously, was anyone as polarizing early this decade as Eminem? Didn't he bask in your contempt while showing you his paycheck and making it rain from L.A. to Eight Mile and everywhere in-between?...
Clearly, God is a Steelers Fan (02/03/09)
Larry Fitzgerald Jr. glanced up to watch himself on the Raymond James Stadium Jumbotron as he galloped toward the end zone. With Senior gazing from the press box, Junior sprinted away from the vaunted Pittsburgh secondary like a gazelle on the Masai Mara sprints away from a lion to give Arizona its first lead of the game late in the fourth quarter...
Iowa's Tucker forgets first obligation of a 'student-athlete' (01/29/09)
It's not like the warning signs weren't there. Anthony Tucker isn't from Iowa, the state everyone knows has the best public school system in the country. He was named to the Minnetonka (Minn.) High School Student Leadership Honor Society. What does that mean? Was he a student, a leader, a scholar or just part of an exclusive society like John Kerry and George W? How can you trust the validity of an organization with more superlatives than a New York Times analysis of the Obama administration?...
A Christmas letter from Iowa: What I've learned (01/22/09)
I've been in Iowa two months now which it means it's time for the obligatory "what I've learned" portion of the program. I know most of you are probably as excited to read this as you are your in-laws' Christmas letters, but I pray you'll indulge once again...
Nice guys sometimes finish first (01/15/09)
Everyone knows that nice guys finish last. Green Day even wrote a song about it. When we can't look to our musicians for sage advice, all is lost. Look at the dating world: In my not long-past fraternity days, the brothers who succeeded most with the ladies were the ones who treated them like, well, whatever that smell in Sioux Center is...
Favre's got nothing left to prove (01/09/09)
You know my favorite part of clicking on an article on espn.com? That little popup from freeiqtests.com that tells me that Brett Favre's IQ is 138. I don't know if Brett's that smart or not. I certainly have my own preconceptions about Mississippi folk, but I've never visited the state and Favre and John Grisham are the only two natives I can name...
No bailout required: Lions in class all their own (01/02/09)
The Lions finally did it. They are the first team to go 0-16. Their ineptitude surpasses the 0-14 expansion 1976 Tampa Bay Buccaneers. "It's just kind of numb," said kicker Jason Hanson (a Washington State alum) after the Lions' 31-21 loss in their season finale at Green Bay. "It's here. It's been coming, though, a train rolling down the tracks for a while. We tried to stop it. We couldn't."...
Iowa high school wrestling more than a sport; a way of life (12/26/08)
I must begin with an appreciative nod to the Seattle Times' Craig Smith, who accepted a buyout earlier this week as the Times follows the nation-wide trend of downsizing its staff. I met 'Sideline Smitty,' a 30-plus year veteran of prep sports coverage, for the first and only time the same week I accepted this job...
Auburn athletic department has own definition of integrity (12/18/08)
Head coach leaves D-I program before contract is up to pursue 'dream job.' Where have I heard this before? Oh, right. At most D-I universities. But Gene Chizik's abrupt resignation from Iowa State and subsequent hire at Auburn has me perplexed (and I know I'm not alone)...
Can $161 million buy CC love in the Big Apple? (12/11/08)
CC Sabathia is going to be a Yankee. Surprise, surprise. Was there really any doubt? When the Bronx Bastards come up with a seven-year, $161 million offer that no one else comes close to matching, where would you sign? Sabathia's signing (pending a physical) was the second big contract announced at the MLB winter meetings which are being held this week in Las Vegas...
BCS - Let's just take out the 'C' (12/05/08)
Thank you Mr. President-elect. Even though our nation is mired in a financial crisis the likes of which we haven't seen since my grandparents were my age and fighting a dual-front war on terror (yeah, the two-front thing didn't work for Napoleon either - or Hitler) it's nice to know that you care enough about the cluster that is the Bowl Championship Series to "throw your weight around" because "it's the right thing to do."...
Dog days for University of Washington football; bright ones for Remsen-Union girls basketball (11/28/08)
By Jesse Geleynse
In the Shadow of the Water Tower