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“My Thoughts On a Monday”

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CHARGERS……They are playing much better right now….Philips Rivers to Keenan Allen has been unstoppable….Allen now has 33-receptions-436Y in the last 3-weeks….The Bolts still cannot run the ball….The Joey Bosa-Melvin Ingram pass rush continues to cause havoc on quarterbacks…..The return of LB-Denzel Perryman has added toughness at every level to the defense….The field goal kicking has now missed a combine 11-kicks-field goals and PATs this season….Yes they are tied for first place in the AFC-West…but do you know they have beaten only two teams with winning records….and Buffalo and Dallas were in free fall at the time they played them.

AZTECS…No respect, absolutely none….Another very good season…and they get snubbed again from a name recognition bowl….Rocky Long wanted to play in a big bowl against another big name team…They wind up in the Armed Forces Bowl against Army in Ft Worth….Not a big time bowl…not against a big time team…not against the hoped for San Francisco Foster Farms Bowl…not against a Pac 10-team they could beat for more recruiting panache like Arizona or Washington or Washington State…Not in the Holiday Bowl against either a Pac 12 or Big 10-teams…..All this on top of the nation wide snub of running back Rashaad Penny….It just never ends up at SDSU does it? They just don’t seem to have anyone to help them fight for recognition.

USD….The season is over for the Torerors….another great playoff win in 1AA football , last week over Northern Arizona, but then the trip to North Dakota State and another lopsided loss to the 65-scholarship Bisons program in the post season…..Good team, overwhelmed again….You wish there was a way that USD could be true Division III….They dont give out scholarships…wouldn’t it be something to see them line up and play true Division III power Mt Union in a battle of non-scholarship schools?…But that means NCAA waivers or rule changes…Guess not.

PADRES…GM AJ Preller will now get to see thru the entire rebuilding process, with a contract extension that goes thru 2022….Ownership believes in all he has done….the spending spree….the stocking of the farm system…and will try to show more patience as they all wait to see the young players arrive from the minor league farm system…But there are some truths…the franchise has lost 320,000-fans in attendance over the last two years….and what will the temperature of the fan turnout be if next year is like this year, another 90-plus loss season and a 10th year out of the playoffs.

SAN DIEGO STATE…Basketball is off to an impressive (7-2) start considering they are banged up…not getting much play from center Cam Rooks….but their is progress on offense pushing the tempo…still a strong defense….and some off the bench scoring from Matt Mitchell…But still ahead, a Mountain West schedule with what appears to be at least 6-quality teams in the league.

U-SAN DIEGO….The Torerors look so much better talent wise now than they have in five years…Now the challenge…get more quality minutes from young players…stay free of injury…and hope all the young big men, grow up on the job quicker.

GULLS…..I keep waiting for this thing to explode….They now have veteran players…they have some size…they have some skill…and it appears they have good goaltending …but not a hot streak yet….They’re in last place in the AHL-Pacific Division…I still think if they keep- this roster together (Few callus from Ducks)…this team will start clicking.

SOCKERS….A once legendary franchise, with all those indoor championships, they operate in the shadows these days. They get virtually no media coverage, play their games before 2500 fans…in a league no one recognizes any more…Unbeaten and unloved….Too bad with all its tradition. Maybe the arrival of an MLS or an USL team will give them more exposure.

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“SDSU-Grand Plan-Needs Grand Amount of Money”

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Think big. Be bold. Shoot for the Moon. Leave no stone unturned.

All those catch phrases could be applied to the Thursday press conference at the crumbling Qualcomm Stadium sight, where San Diego State unveiled plans for its new football stadium.

It was flashy. A blend of all things new in what could be a football-soccer stadium to take San Diego State and the city of San Diego to new levels.

The open air 35,000-seat facility…that could be expanded to 55,000 if the NFL ever looked this way again.

A stadium home for Aztecs football, MLS soccer, tournaments, friendly matches, and concerts.

A double decked Taj Majal, designed much like the new Colorado State facility, the one at Baylor and at Minnesota, all put together by Populous, the legendary architectural firm.

And linking hands with SDSU is John Moores construction firm, JMI, brought in, not as a developer, but as a consultant. They know college stadiums too, having built some, renovated others. More importantly, they know developers and where the revenues should come from for investments.

The new 250M- Aztecs Stadium is the front piece of the entire West Campus Master Plan. SDSU wants to buy all 166-acres of the Q-sight, tear down the old NFL-stadium, and then develop a wide variety of parcels for retail, housing, office buildings, underground parking and more.

It’s bold, it’s different, it’s a progressive step forward, as San Diego’s explosive population and building growth continues.

A salute to SDSU on-campus and athletic leadership for making this come together. It’s important to the campus, equally as important to the community.

Oh, one other phrase worth using now. They want to fund-finance and build in time to open for 2021…if approved by the voters in the head to head ballot measures, opposing the Soccer City plan. The entire West Campus plan is a 15Y-3-Billion project. The stadium is step one towards greatness on the sight.

Waiting next to see who develops what, what they pay for those rights, and what the city charges SDSU when it comes time to sell the land to get th project moving forward.

Think big…be bold…shoot for the moon…leave no stone unturned. And a list of questions. Will the city pitch in like they did in the Chargers proposal? Can the County be a player? Will there be use of Hotel Tax money to help make this happen? Will there be fund raising among alumni? Will it be developer driven ala-Doug Manchester? Will all the other big money players in this market jump on board?

And now,one more catch important catch-phrase now…maybe the most important.

“Show Me the Money”.

A great start…all these Aztec ideas…now the great challenge…come up with the funding.

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“Heroes Coming & Going”

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1-great one will be back in the spotlight today.
1-great one will be put into the ground and laid to rest today.

Tiger Woods, the one you know.
Bud Moore, the one you should know.

Tiger is back on the Pro Golf landscape, teeing off today in the Bahamas Open, hoping he will be able to recapture some of his past glory, after all his problems.

Bud Moore will be buried with full honors today in North Carolina, a name the US might not know, but a man everyone who follows NASCAR auto racing reveres.

Woods life has been on a downhill ski slope for years. He has 79-career wins but none since 2014. His last Grand Slam event was here at Torrey Pines, when he won the US Open playing with a fractured leg.

His career has been derailed like much of his personal life. 4-back surgeries, the DUI arrest and the admittance to abuse of painkillers. His ugly divorce after his run of adulteress relationships.

Woods lost his wife, kids, credibility and sponsors. He career successes in his rear view mirror. His flaws, addictions, lies, coverups, out there for everyone to see.

And now he sees if he can recapture any of his golf magic, healthy, and clean of all the painkiller addictions that haunted him.

Moore was one of the original ‘good old boys’ from the deep south. But he was so much more than just a NASCAR engine builder and then successful owner.

Moore left Dixie to join up in World War II. He was in the Batle of the Bulge, won 2-Bronze Stars for heroism, and 5-Purple Hearts.

He came home to do what his heart told him to do. Build race car engines, get into ownership, become a superstar at the tracks in the Deep South.

In his era, he hired and won with a litany of Hall of Fame drivers. The Honor Roll includes Dale Earnhardt, Darrell Waltrip, Bobby Allison, David Pearson, Buck Baker, Cale Yarborough, and two who lost their lives racing for him Fireball Roberts and Joe Weatherly.

Tiger Woods and Bud Moore. Their signatures forever touching the sports they loved. One hopes to live on. The other leaves us forever.

An interesting day ahead of us.

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“Tennessee-Terrible Times-Guilt by Association”

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Pick an adjective-adverb, and it likely fits the storyline-datelined Knoxville.

Anger…Bitterness…Unfairness….Classless.

The University of Tennessee is reeling, on the football field, and now off the football field.

The Volunteers, who gave us Robert Neyland, Johnny Majors and Phil Fulmer as great head coaches, has done an injustice to another coach.

Greg Schiano, a protege of Bill Belicheck, who rebuilt the woeful Rutgers Scarlet Knights, and is now at Ohio State, has now lost an opportunity to return to big time coaching.

UT has backed out on a deal to hire him to fix all the things wrong in the Vols program.

The SEC school caved under a mountain of criticism on social media over the hiring of Schiano, instigated by twitter followers, who believe Schiano knew, or should have known, about the Jerry Sandusky sex scandal in the 1980s, when he was part of the Joe Paterno coaching staff at Penn State.

The program that brought down the legendary Paterno, led to a 30-to-60 year prison sentence to Sandusky for years of abue of teenage boys on campus and in football camps.

Assistant coach Mike McQueary has been paid 12.6M as a settlement in a whistleblower lawsuit.

The schools President, Gerry Spanier, the AD, and VP of security are all serving 3-to-6 month prison terms for not acting quicker on the information they received when McQueary first pointed at Sandusky for wrong doing.

The entire assistant coaching staff was stained, though many have found other coaching jobs.

The year long probe by a law firm, cleared virtually all the other assistants of any knowledge of what was happening on that campus and in those football camps Sandusky worked.

It cleared Schiano, who cooperated fully, though his name was being mentioned in the report, that he did talk to the beach committee.

And now years later, as Schiano tries to get another job, he gets stained, not by the scandal, but the angry spillage of venom on social media.

It has brought rage from those closest to Schiano, who was also a head coach of the Tampa Bay Bucs.

Belicheck says a ‘mob mentality-undermine the character of a good coach-saying he as 100% respect and zero reservations about the man”

Urban Meyer, Ohio State’s head coach, called him an ‘elite father-coach-man’ and told the same thing to UT as a reference.

Penn State’s head of the Board of Trustees echoed the same comments in a letter after the scandal broke.

It is indeed a different time we live in. An age of Donald Trump tweets, scandals here there and everywhere, and doubt about everyone on anything.

It’s an Angry America that tweets 240-characters of condemnation without the true information.

The next tweet should be about the ‘lack of spine’ of the leadership at Tennessee, which said it vetted all the data possible before hiring Schiano. Now they back off based on rumor-innuendo-smears.

If he was good enough to coach for Bill Belicheck and Urban Meyer, he should have been allowed to coach the Volunteers.

Instead he has to live thru a personal hell because Twitter America thinks ‘guilt by association is connectable charge.

Maybe he has a right to sue for interference of a contract to take the job. Maybe he should sue. But maybe it would remind us all of the horrible hurt from the era at infected Penn state.

But maybe Greg Schiano does not want to get down in the gutter, to fight thru all the slime of this story.

The gutter, where everyone wearing Volunteer Orange and White, resides these days.

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“Division 1-Basketball-Not What It Seems to Be”

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I guess we should say “congrats” for all the hard work long time UCSD Athletic Director Earl Edwards did, in laying the ground work to take his 23-sports athletic program into Division 1-status.

Congrats to the students for passing the bill to help co-fund scholarships for its athletic teams.

Congrats also to all the Olympic sports programs at UCSD for the success on the field, and the opportunities given its student-athletes.

But where does this exciting news, the Tritons heading to the Big West Conference, actually lead?

Basketball will now carry the banner for the academic institution with the beautiful campus overlooking the Pacific Ocean.

But how will UCSD compete in the 10-team Big West basketball arena?.

It’s nice to say you are lining up to play known programs like Long Beach State, Fullerton, Cal-Irvine, who in their past decades, have gotten invites to the NCAA tourney.

It’s great to say you will match talents and academics with respected schools like UCSB.

It’s nice to have road trips for athletes to Hawaii too.

And of course there will be some regional ties with Riverside-Bakersfield and the likes.

For the Big West Conference, this has meaning too, for they will now be at 11-schools going forward., with Cal State Bakersfield joining the Tritons as conference expansion members.

But please tell me how UCSD will compete for athletes when you consider the academic requirements to get on campus in LaJolla.

The Beach…Fullerton…UCI all take Division 1-bouncebacks. They also take JUCO transfers. Many of them would never meet the qualifications to get into an Ivy League atmosphere that UCSD has.

The opening night rosters of the key basketball powers in the conference showed Fullerton with players from Toronto, China, Slovenia, Czechoslovakia, and 5-transfers on the roster.

Long Beach State has 6-transfers, including 3-JUCOs and 3-Division 1-bouncebacks.

Cal Irvine has 1-major college transfer.

The Tritons should have pursued a conference with similar academic standing, the West Coast Conference, a consortium of strong academic schools, with classy athletic histories and priorities..

At least they’d be on even ground with the standards at USD…Gonzaga …Pepperdine and Loyola….and other WCC schools..

It sounds great to say “Big West Conference”….but will it be great to say, Tritons (3-28) in Division 1-basketball?

I wish I could say “‘be careful what you wish for”…and I don’t want to throw cold water on all the great work UCSD’s leaders have done.

This will be very hard, and they will have to work very hard to convince me they can compete with all these other schools…in the real sport that counts in the conference-basketball.

Big West basketball schools want guys who can score 21-points a game. UCSD want’s guys with 3.8-GPAs. I just don’t know how they will mesh together.

You think Division 1-you think March Madness, and Duke-North Carolina and tradition. You know what San Diego State has become, and how hard it was to flip the Aztecs into something special.

Division 1-basketball is not what you think….especially when you don’t win….especially when you are UCSD and your mailing address will be Big West Conference.

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