Month: January 2014

My advice for winning Warren Buffett’s billion dollars

Posted by

0

I have to confess that I hope each and every one you who follow me accepts the billion dollar NCAA basketball tournament challenge grant opportunity from Warren Buffet’s big buck bucket. And I hope you are all winners, though, if your dream comes true, you realize you’ll have to share the billion dollars, since that’s all the poor man can afford to lose.

Picking every single winning team is all we need do, so I’m going to be studying a lot before the games begin. Forget the odds, just do your homework is the best advice I can give.

Speaking of games, the Olympic Games are soon to begin, and I want to wish all of our athletes the best in Sochi. I pray for safe trips for all who travel there. [This is a message from Puff’s husband: Some have suggested that Puff end with “I’m Putin my money on the athletes from the USA” but Puff put the Nixon that.]

College basketball, take a hint from football!

Posted by

1

Lately, I see so many bad calls by the refs on the basketball court, I have come to the conclusion that basketball should copy the practice adopted by football. They should stop the game so the refs can look at the play over and over so they can make a better guess as to who did what to who, or who smacked the ball out, or broke his mother’s spine when he stepped on the line, etc.

Everyone would benefit! More time for commercials (the networks), more time to go grab another beer (fans) or – during a very difficult one – more time for a potty break! This would go a long way toward keeping the fans in the arena and fans at home from singing the old nursery rhyme about several blind mice.

I know they do this to decide the degree of flagrancy for flagrant files, but I would like to see this done for other calls and missed calls as well. This would not be a logistical nightmare. One possibility would be for the coaches to wave, shout and/or whistle the refs when they think the replay rule should be invoked. I can help them work out the details if they can’t figure it out.

If this seems to be a bad idea, how about a simpler solution: more time in referee school.

On the Sochi Winter Olympics and the problem with figure skating

Posted by

1

With Winter Olympics around the corner, I dread the site of those triple and double quadruple axles, with legs, arms, and God knows what else flying through the air while the music plays on. The kind of athletic prowess this requires has nothing to do with music. So they should either discontinue the music, or the ridiculous mid-air somersaults. Skating should be about style and gracefully staying in time with the music.

If you get my drift, the jumps belong out in the snow with the snowboard and skiing airborne acrobatics.

When the figure skaters and their coaches decide to take out those jumps and actually skate with the music, that will a day I look forward to. The guy who recently placed second in the Sochi trials — his coach was an ice dancer and it showed.

Just doing a quadruple? It’s just athletics. What does that have to do with dancing? After all the hard work and training, watching someone fall down once after a quadruple axle and then seeing all their points come down, you think: is it worth it?

Figure skaters: Rethink all those jumps and what they have to do with dancing!

Bobby Petrino and Co.: heed this adage

Posted by

1

Memo to Universities, athletic directors, coaches, and players, and… Reporters: “Watch how you make your beds, for you will lay in it.” There is yet another appropriate adage: “The grass is no greener on the other side of the street.” U of L, Jurich (the U of L Athletic Director), Pitino, and all other coaches and ADs who are looking for changes: pay attention to the latter adage.

What is the university’s job? It’s not to make coaches and ADs rich; it’s to educate men and women.

And as for Charlie Strong, he said this after he left, in Texas: “This is the best of the best.”  Now does he know what the best is? Some upstate college in NY could be best of the best. A little college in North Dakota might be the best of the best. Who knows what the best of the best is?

Next week, we’ll see how things play out. I’ll have more to say soon.

About the Courier Journal…

Posted by

0

For those of who you who don’t have the privilege of getting the Courier Journal delivered to your home every morning, let me tell you why you shouldn’t feel too bad. Gannett has stripped the newspaper down to a middle school newsletter. Louisville is too big to have that kind of newspaper. The parent company comes in, takes all the money out of it, and passes it on to somebody else.

When the U of L and UK basketball game was played the same day that  U of L football won their bowl game, the actual victorious announcement could on found the front page… Or anywhere. They buried on page seven. That’s all.

It’s like we’re a Lexington newspaper.

Thoughts on Charlie Strong

Posted by

4

The U of L football coach has been in interviewed by the University of Texas. Right now, Charlie Strong gets paid $3 million a year. He’s not opened his mouth yet, so no one knows if he’s no going or going. Who knows? He might not even know yet. A year ago, he had all this talk going, too.

U of L gave him a chance. He was an assistant coach in Florida three years ago, and he’s taken them to a bowl game every year. He’s publicly lamented that he doesn’t get full fan support — empty seats at games (companies buy up so many seats) and all the fans leave at the third quarter (guilty as charged — sometimes the weather is horrible).

I contend he’s well paid for where he is. He SHOULD stay ten or fifteen years and really bring it up the line, consistently. At $3 million a year, you can’t tell me you can’t live on that. Saban at Alabama, the highest paid college football coach at $6 million, famously blew the Auburn game. Instead of getting someone down there to watch where that ball landed, he let Auburn run the touchdown. And that’s why he’s not worth $6 million. He is a good coach, but he’s not supreme. And, by the by, Oklahoma beat him the other night…

Which leads me back to Charlie. Louisville is a nice place to live. Texas is coming after him, and my whole theory is that there’s no reason he can’t stay, but if he thinks he needs more money or that it’s not enough money to live… I’d remind him people in Lousiville don’t just go out and hound a coach when they’re at a restaurant, or walking around. Pitino has said it: no one hounds him. If he goes to Texas, who knows what will happen with the fans there.

He’d better think twice if a couple more million is going to benefit him in the long run as to what he already has. If he goes, he’s only going for money. If he was only making $500,000 or under a million, I’d get it. But I’d remind him Pitino gets $3 million, and he’s not worth it either…

Stay where you are and really build a team. Common sense.