Almost time

The hot dogs are on the fire.
The suntan lotion is at the ready.
Now if we could clear the snow off Coors Field, we might be able to play some baseball in Denver by the end of next week.
Today's question is how will the Rockies do this year?
Jump in.
You too, Kevin.

No NCAA magic for sports dude

What happened to Louisville?
To Duke?
The same thing happened to them as happened to many a bracket for the NCAA basketball tournament.
They were left in shreds. My bracket is so bad, it makes me want to cry.
The Villanova-Pittsburgh game Saturday night was quite something ... the best of the tournament so far. The others over the weekend were not quite up to that standard, and listening to Gus Johnson of CBS scream and yelp at everything from a good shot to a timeout was a little hard on the ear drums Sunday.
The occasional nail-biter isn't enough to get my investment into the boss' kids' education fund back. But as they said on many a game show, it's the tournament's way of saying, "We have some nice consolation prizes for you."
Take the poll in the upper right-hand corner of the blog. You can't do much worse than your trusty scribe.

Carpenter new FLHS football coach

What do you think of Justin Carpenter's promotion to head coach of the Fort Lupton football team?
The floor is open for comments ...

Drowning in the NCAA pool

In a couple of days or so, the NCAA men's basketball tournament resumes. Your trusty blogger picked 13 of the last 16 teams in the field.
And finds himself in the lower fourth of one pool (96th of 128 participants) and second from the bottom in the all-important office pool.
Which begs the question ... if the alleged sports dude can't do any better than that, why is he a sports dude?
A pastry chef? Be better qualified. A dancing bear? In terms of physique, yes. In terms of dancing skill .... uhhhhhh, no.
The story is well-known to others. The only time sports dude ever won an NCAA pool, he was sailing trough Central America on a 10-day cruise. The economy obviously won't allow for that every year.
One former colleague said, "Be happy." I am. The leader in the office pool happens to be my boss' wife. So I know the winnings will go to something useful, say, their two small children.
But any sort of pride in being the papers' sports dude takes a severe beating every spring.
Getting 13 hits in 16 times to the plate may get a tryout with the Colorado Rockies. But something indicates loud and clear that becoming a dancing bear is the best option each March.
Cue the music, Yogi.

Signed,
Boob-oooh

Memories

There was a time when one could actually turn on Denver radio stations and listen to some news -- five minutes at a time and twice an hour at that.
One of the people who made that happen was murdered over the weekend in New York. His name was George Weber, and he worked for KOA Radio about 25 years ago.
We crawled around a few late-night crime scenes and fire scenes in those days. We were far from best friends. But he was always polite and eager to help the rookies.
Weber loved Philadelphia, his hometown. He was aggressive in what he was doing, far more than most.
His wry sense of humor was something to behold. Once, he said, he stuck his microphone down a gopher hole to see if he could get some reaction to a decision by a city leader.
I'm not sure something like that would have made it on air. But what it did show was creativity in a medium that has long since lost its ability to be creative. A future colleague tried the same thing. He took an otherwise boring council meeting that was full of price tags and costs and finished it with "the most important numbers of the evening" ... the score of a World Series game.
Weber loved news, and he was good at reporting it. Inquisitive. Smart. Politely aggressive.
That's worth remembering.

Bracket collapse

29-11 through the first round and a half of the NCAAs ... the good thing (well, sort of) is 13 of the top 16 are still alive.
But with a record of 29-11, it makes one wonder whether the sports person at the newspaper ought to take up teaching.
Or basket weaving.

Dying on the vine

12-4 wasn't a bad start to the NCAAs last night. It's 6-2 so far today. So all in all, I'm pleased.
Unfortunately, that puts me four games behind the leader in the office pool with the night session to come. Colleague Kevin Denke is in the same boat.
"They call it March Madness. But the only one who's getting mad is me," Kevin said as he sauntered off to look for a women's bracket.

Memphis got mad

Good thing. Many of the participants in the office pool (otherwise called the 401(k) augmentation plan) put Memphis through to at least the round of eight, if not beyond.
I do feel for one of the office mates who picked BYU to go all the way to the championship in 2 1/2 weeks. BYU is out of the tournament already.
On we go ...

Bracket time

Enough of the experts on TV.
And Digger Phelps, too.
It's time to fill out the NCAA brackets.
Good luck ... make mine Louisville and Duke in the finals.

Out of kilter

Noticed this one over the weekend ...
Seems a parent started fighting with a youth football coach at George Washington High School the other day. The incident got so out of hand, the police brought out the Mace and used it on the parent.
Instead of railing about how moronic the behavior was, I'll defer to a comment from one of the people who serves on the state 5A girls basketball selection committee. He said no one will ever remember a score of a youth sporting event 20 years from now but that people would remember individual behavior.

Kellogg a welcome addition

Now that the pairings have been announced for March Madness – and before we have a chance to digest them and start filling out office pools – a word of praise for CBS Sports.
Clark Kellogg's commentary is the best thing to happen to TV coverage of college basketball since NBC teamed up Dick Billy Packer and the late Al McGuire almost 30 years ago.
Kellogg's thoughts are fresh and insightful. They aren't full of clichés. And he doesn't sound bored, as Packer did for the last several years on CBS.
March Madness is a lot of fun. Kellogg will enrich that enthusiasm.

Sandoval thoughts

Pat Sandoval is the new football coach at Brighton High School ... what are your thoughts?
Weigh in ...

E-e-e-e-e-e-e nuff -- part 3

Sources tell me that the press has paid enough attention paid to Jay Cutler's temper tantrum.
It's not the main story on the news. It doesn't even compare to some of the area's more meaty problems. It isn't even a story that he talked to anyone about anything.
Most of the world doesn't care.

Taking responsibility

Colleague – and my boss – Kevin Denke mentioned yesterday morning that the CU athletic director wants to take a certain amount of ownership for the problems the CU basketball program is having. And Mike Bohn did so publicly.
Wow.
However, Bohn is facing the same problem as other basketball-playing schools along the Front Range – a lack of interest in the sport. CU is the longest-suffering example of what happens when the product doesn't draw many fans to the seats. DU, which entered NCAA Division I play a few years ago, plays in a conference (the Sun Belt) where the Pioneers are the western-most team in the league. That leaves few potential rivalries.
New facilities at CU will help. So will a product that gets people excited, a product that has to include some in-state recruits.
The last time anyone was excited about CU hoops was in the days of Chauncey Billups. Before that, it was Bill Blair. It would be great to have some local interest in the NCAAs come the middle of March. But it won't be for a few years yet.

Free fall

How about them Nuggets?
One week, they are the second-best team in the NBA's Western Conference. Now, they are seventh (you won't hear that on Altitude). Only eight go to the playoffs.
What happened? Every team slumps. In Denver's case these days, they play a considerable amount of individual basketball, and they don't play a lot of defense.
There's time to turn it around. But this trend will leave Denver on the sideline in another five weeks.
You won't hear that on Altitude either.

A sucker born every minute

Buffalo signed wide receiver Terrell Owens over the weekend.
Hope the front office has lots of aspirin for the headaches that are to come.

Deaf ears

It's not that the Mountain West Conference doesn't deserve a seat at the BCS table each year. It doesn't make a lot of sense for an undefeated team in a minor conference, such as the Mountain West, to be excluded.
It's just that the NCAA Division I presidents won't go for an eight-team playoff – or a four-team playoff or any sort of Division I playoff – any time soon.
The presidents are worried about the amount of class time that football players would miss by participating in another round of postseason games. It's baloney, of course. Look at the amount of time kids miss for the NCAA basketball tournaments each spring.
The bigger problem is how to tell the 35-odd towns that host college bowl games – big and small – that their games may go by the way side. Those small towns pull out everything they have to welcome the two teams to town, and it's a big pay day for the local merchants.
Besides, as far as the NCAA is concerned, the mere fact that everyone whines about a flawed system is good enough.
It's not right. But the NCAA won't repair it for a while (certainly not while the BCS games are on ESPN for the next four-year cycle), if ever.

This is play-by-play?

We've had a lot of interesting discussions in the office about the Altitude radio and TV networks – the ones in which nothing disparaging is ever heard about the teams they supposedly cover.
So I guess it's fair game for the Nuggets radio voice (not Jerry Schemmel) to openly root for a player to foul out of the game against the Lakers the other night. And it's equally as fair for those folks to conveniently forget the fact that the Lakers played the night before and traveled to Denver early that morning.
Funny. Denver came off a long road trip and had one of those quick, turnaround games against Boston four days earlier. Boston waxed them, and all we heard was how the travel did in the home team. Baloney.
Tell us what happened. Criticize when it's appropriate. But stop being delusional in your praise of teams you are paid to cover. Most people can figure out when you're feeding us the company line.

Poor Jay Cutler

Must be tough to be 25 years old, have a certain amount of talent and have skin as thin as an envelope.
Note to the Broncos quarterback: Just like anyone else in any form of business, you are a commodity, not a vestal virgin.
Deal with it.