-I'm a little surprised at the quality of names that are popping up for the open Maryland Head Basketball Coach job after Gary Williams suddenly retirement this week. I mean, I know Maryland basketball is a good job, I just didn't think it was this good. Anyway, one of the names to come up is that of Mike Brey, currently the head coach of Notre Dame. Now, I wouldn't fault Mike if he wanted to leave; he's from the D.C. area and cut his teeth as an assistant in the ACC at Duke. But, I would just offer him this one piece of advice first: it's not always the worst thing in the world to be the basketball coach at a football school. Think about it like this: if you have a great season that's awesome. But if you don't people are concentrating on spring football anyway. Basically people only notice you when you are succeeding while simultaneously allowing you to fail in the shadows. I'm not sure 10 years with no trips to the Final Four would fly in Maryland, whereas no one is all that upset about it in South Bend.
-Boise State, everyone's favorite underdogs of the college football world due to their lack of an automatic BCS Bowl bid, got into trouble this week when it was revealed that some assistant coaches arraigned for players to get discounts on merchandise at local stores. This is an NCAA violation and the school penalised itself 3 scholarships for the next couple of years. This is a blatant attempt by Boise State to cut off the NCAA and hope that they don't get hit with any more restrictions. It probably won't work because in the grand scheme of things, because it isn't much of a penalty. But, still, just to see them try it... it looks like our little program is all grown up.
-Flipping passed ESNU this week, I paused just long enough to see they were televising women's college softball (clearly a slow sports week for the all-college station). However, that's not what caught my eye - the girl in the batter's box was wearing one of those wristbands often seen by quarterbacks which hold all the possible plays for them to run. In football it makes a lot more sense to simply call in a number for the quarterback to reference on his wrist rather than the entire play, because some of those can have lengthy names. But, what could possibly be on this girls playbook wristband? The way I see it batter's only have three choices: take, bunt, swing away. If you need a wristband to remind you of that you have some much bigger issues.
-It was announced this week that a group of professional poker players were getting together to form their own league. The group of about 30 players would be invited to join based on total earning for the year, so as to exclude people who just got lucky at one tournament. This pleases me greatly, because it should signal the beginning of the end of professional poker. At a time when poker should be looking to increase participation, it is instead looking to kick the bandwagon players out, which is stupid. But, it is what the pros want so I say let them go back to playing in dark room for 1/50 of the prize money. Hope they're happy with this decision. Look, it was fun for a while, but I would say we're just about done and the steady rating decline that poker has been on says the rest of the country agrees with me. This is just another nail in the coffin.
-There were rumblings this week that Rory Sabbatini will be suspended from golf for a couple of weeks, due to "repeated incidents of misconduct on the golf course." But, here's what is annoying: because golf doesn't announce fines or suspensions no one knows if he's actually suspended, was just advised to take a couple weeks off or if he was planning not to play anyway. Also, no one knows what these 'incidents' were really about. Has golf learned nothing from the Tiger Woods scandal? They should just come out and tell us what the deal is, because when left to our own devices the Internet will come up with something way worse than the truth. Even though it was most likely nothing more than yelling at a fellow player, by the end of this weekend Sabbatini will have assaulted a group of orphans who volunteered at a tournament to raise money for a dying nun.
-The Kentucky Derby is going to be run later this afternoon and tonight there is a big boxing match between Shane Mosley and Manny Pacquiao. A major horse race and fight happening on the same day? It's like every sportswriter from the 1940s dream!
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