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Hacksaw’s Thursday Podcast…1:30pm
You Tube-Lee Hacksaw Hamilton
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“THE OLD BALL COACH”
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I can hear that West Virginia drawl from heaven at this hour.

Lou Holtz, ‘Good Ole Boy’, has taken his twang, his stories and his coaching expertise to see St. Peter at the Gate.

The die hard Catholic coach-joining the great Catholic team in the sky.

What a unique man.

Born in the backwoods of West Virginia, who became a national championship coach, then a media personna at ESPN, leaves us at age 89.

What a legacy too.

Smooth as a shot glass of Southern Bourbon.
Sharp tongued as a red-neck hillbilly when needed.
A preacher when the sales pitch was needed.
Red-faced when a call went against him.

Known for his enormous success in South Bend, where he took Notre Dame to a 1998-National Championship, and where he went (100-32-2), after he’d go to Mass each morning.

What he did at places like Arkansas, Minnesota, William & Mary, South Carolina and North Carolina State are legendary.  Six schools-six different bowl games.

What he became as a TV college football analyst was spectacular, considering sometimes the nouns-verbs-adjectives did not always fit together.  Imagine Holtz and Lee Corso on the same set talking college football.

He could charm the daylights out of a recruit’s mother, and scorch the stripes off the shirt of a college football referee.  He could be folksy and fierce, all in the same conversation.

The media?  Sometimes he liked us.  Sometimes he glared-stared at us.

I crossed paths with him at a press conference, when he was asked about telling his unbeaten team at Notre Dame,how dangerous (0-9) Navy was heading into a late season game.  He looked at me with a burning glare, and my response was, ‘really-that was the sales pitch?’

He was beloved when he gave all his football memorabilia to build a sports museum in the town he grew up in dirt-poor East Liverpool, Ohio.  His speech at the Alumni Association fund raiser was something to behold, a cross between the Grand Ole Opry and a College football recruiting pitch.

He talked about being West Virginia proud and when he found out my wife grew up on the Mountain State border panhandle, it was like we were some long lost cousins.  He even forgave me for being a sports talk show host.

He dabbled in everything, including a short-failed tenure with the New York Jets.

He lived life to the fullest-thru good times and bad, great decisions and bad ones too.
Think of his road travelled, from Williamsburg, Virginia to Times Square to Touchdown Jesus and that stadium in South Bend.

Old Country…Old Ball Coach.  What a fun experience.  Wonder if St Peter and Jesus Christ are prepared for who-what is arriving at the Gates of Heaven

What a special man.

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“AZTECS–CAN YOU BELIEVE THIS”
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So this is what ‘rock bottom’ looks like.
This is what it feels like when the roof caves in.
This is the ache you feel when a very good program doesn’t have a good season.

No one could have predicted any of this, considering what we have experienced.
That’s why this tastes so bitter right now in the mouth of the ‘Show-the loyalists’.

Hard to watch what he had to see on TV, this blowout loss at Boise State.

Bad shots…bad passes…bad rebounding…bunch of bad fouls.

A (22-5) deficit at the start.  Eventually a 21-point hole in the ground.
Boise beat their brains out (37-15) on the boards.
The Broncos had 12-3’s.  They sank 26-of-33 free throws.

SDSU went 10-possessions-covering 6-minutes without a basket.
Went (2-for-12) shooting in one segment.
Had 1-offensive rebound 35-minutes into the night.

So bad that Brian Dutcher emptied the bench and played everyone within the first 15-minutes of the game.  The only guys who did not play were the non scholarship end of the bench guys, the trainer or the SID.

Magoon Gwath’s game has gone MIA.
Miles Byrd’s offensive skills have become hit and miss.
The team is devoid of big-body bulk players.
Add in a critical need for trustworthy 3-point shooters who can be part of gameplans

Let’s get to the Mountain West Tourney, get that over with, watch the NCAA tourney on TV, and let Brian Dutcher hit the reset-button with his roster.

The season feels like the team has fallen down an elevator shaft.

Decades ago we saw lots of bad basketball, Fred Trinkle-Tony Perry and more.
We’ve seen so much great basketball including March Madness.

And now the Aztecs are getting pay-back, getting beat with the way they used to beat people.  Getting out-toughed; out-defensed, outshot.  And getting booed by fans in every arena, loving to heap abuse on SDSU for all the years their teams would get burned-buried-scorched by SDSU teams of the past.  The Aztecs have become everyone’s enemy on the court.

We’re been spoiled haven’t we?

That’s why this feels ‘rock bottom’.  Hard to believe what we are seeing.

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“NBA-VS-WNBA”
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It is now officially a War of Words.
The WNBA owners vs its Union.
Actually NBA owners, who run most of the teams, against the stars of the league.

A March 10th deadline is looming.
The WNBA says they must have a new CBA by then because they have alot of off season business to conclude.

The Union maintains ‘Pay Us What We are Worth’.
In essence the Caitlin Clark star status made this league, not the owners of the Phoenix Mercury or Las Vegas Aces or Connecticut Sun.

At stake-who gets what share of the revenue streams these starts have created in the league.  What about max salaries in free agency.  Same thing with housing allowances.  Charter flights and more.

It’s ugly and now we are facing a potential shutdown with the league having gone thru two years of explosive growth.

A close up look at the storyline from Front Office Sports:

 

 

 

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The WNBPA held a virtual meeting with its members on Tuesday evening to discuss the state of labor negotiations. The tone quickly became tense as players discussed the best path forward, according to multiple sources with direct knowledge of the meeting.

One of the causes of disagreement between players, according to multiple sources, is the approach to a potential strike. Players authorized a potential strike in a near-unanimous vote in mid-December, but some players have changed their mind since.

One source said more than half of player leadership reaffirmed their commitment to striking if necessary. The strike vote authorized the union’s executive committee—made up of seven players and led by president Nneka Ogwumike—to call a strike whenever it felt it was necessary.

A letter sent from WNBPA executive director Terri Carmichael Jackson to union members and obtained by Front Office Sports verified the tone of Tuesday’s meeting. In it, she wrote, “last night’s conversation was spirited, passionate, and at times tough.”

Jackson went on to say this signaled the health of their union.

“Honest debate is not division,” Jackson wrote. “It is engagement.”

“Everyone has different experiences in the league and in their life,” veteran guard Lexie Brown told FOS. “So I did not expect all of us to come into these meetings, week by week, and just kumbaya and everybody agree on everything. That’s not reality.”

The WNBA and WNBPA had a virtual bargaining session on Monday, during which the league told players both sides needed to prioritize reaching an agreement by March 10 or be at risk of delays to the season. Additionally, league officials had calls with general managers to lay out a timeline for league business if a deal was reached by the second week of March.

The league told GMs that if a deal is verbally agreed to on March 10, it would not be signed until March 31, according to multiple sources. In this timeline, the expansion draft would be held between April 1 and 6. Qualifying offers, including core designations, could be sent out on April 7 and 8, followed immediately by a negotiating period from April 9-11. The signing period would begin on the April 12 and extend through the 18th, a day before training camp begins. The college draft would be held on April 13.

The pressure being placed on negotiations by the league has been met with confusion, as the union waited roughly six weeks for a counterproposal to one it submitted in late December.

Additionally, Jackson made it clear that a CBA would not become final without the vote of members. As was the case for the previous CBA, the union would need the majority of players who vote to be in agreement in order to reach a deal.

In Jackson’s letter, she told players a survey would be sent in the coming days to gather feedback on the league’s current proposal. The union has used surveys at various points in the negotiations to gauge how players are feeling, one source told FOS.

“We all want to play,” Brown said. “We all want a fair CBA, but fair looks different to different people. So how do we get to a place where fair looks good to everybody: to the majority, to the minority, to the max players, to the role players, the rookies. How do we get to a place where fair looks the same?”

The WNBA is waiting on a response from the union to its proposal sent on Feb. 20. In it, they made no movement on its proposed salary cap of $5.65 million per team or revenue-sharing percentage. The only significant change was to team housing, which the league put back on the table for all players, but only in 2026. The league has provided housing to all of its players since 1999.

Earlier this month, union president Nneka Ogwumike and vice president Alysha Clark told FOS that there were no fractures among the players.

Instead, they both asserted that tough conversations were happening behind the scenes.

“There are so many things that are on the table in this proposal, and us having discussions doesn’t equate to fracturing,” Clark said at the time.

After Tuesday’s meeting, a group of more than 10 agents representing players of varying standing sent their own letter to union leadership, offering to help in whatever way might be necessary to get a deal done.
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Hacksaw’s Monday-Bonus Podcast..1:30pm
You Tube-Lee Hacksaw Hamilton
Hot Topics-Stay for Fan’s Forum
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“AZTECS BASKETBALL–A DISAPPOINTMENT”
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Enough with all the talks about Quad 1-wins
Let’s stop discussing bad refs calls..or playing at altitude..or travel delays
No conversations about NIL money or the transfer portal.
Stop the talk about NBA potential players.
End the talk about preseason accolades to the players.

For San Diego State fans, friends, alums, this is your team.
And this team has underachieved, never come together, has not stood the test of time.

Hard to think you’d speak badly of a team that is (19-9) with all these players who came into the season with experience, wearing the colors of Scarlet & Black and its traditions.

But this is an SDSU team that has gone (3-9) against top teams on the schedule.  A team that has lost games to Grand Canyon and Troy, and then gotten battered at New Mexico, Utah State, Colorado State.

Thank goodness Wyoming-Fresno and the list of non-conference have nots have also been on the schedule.

I’m not big on pinning a ‘Blame Game’ pin on any one player.

Injuries (Magoon Gwath), inconsistency (Miles Byrd-BJ Davis-Reese Waters) and youthfulness (Compton-Harrington-DeGoureville-Simmons) are all part of this equation.

Brian Dutcher never found a true rotation.  Luckily there is so much talent on this roster, that guys with off nights were bailed out by a bench bunch that scored lots of points.

But there were too many key players MIA in games that meant alot.  Consistency has been missing.  Fans spoiled by this teams’ brilliant defenses, saw lots of nights where teams piled up points including a couple of 100-point nights (Troy-Boise).  The 3-point shooting became not-trustworthy.  They got torched by the other guys 3s all year long.  And in stunning fashion, they’ve been beaten on the boards alot, much of it because Gwath is not what Gwath used to be.

So SDSU staggers into the final week of the season with no hope in the league race; sitting on the bubble; and knowing full well they have to find a way to run the table in next week’s MWC tourney to have any real hope of postseason play.

Just a tough year for Brian Dutcher to find the right mix.  Just a disappointing year for a program that has carried the school flag to nationwide recognition and respect.

Just an isolated strange winter of basketball.  But like in all things in sports, once you’ve won for a long time (Fisher-Dutcher), you are expected to win yearly.

And that has not happened this season at San Diego State.  A disappointment beyond belief.

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Hacksaw’s Monday Bonus Podcast returns…Monday 1:30pm
You Tube-Lee Hacksaw Hamilton
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“NFL REPORT CARDS-GRADING ON A CURVE”
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Oh how bizarre, the outcome of the NFL Union’s Player report card vote by over (1700) NFL players for the 2025-season.
Everyone has an opinion, even if it is the wrong one.

Follow me on some of the tallies:

BEST RUN ORGANIZATION…
1) Miami…dysfunctional as owner Steven Ross has made the team..you know the team that fired its coach, is dumping players right and left and trying to get rid of its QB after getting rid of their top WR.  What kind of team will they be without Tua or Tyreek….2) Washington..not a bad call considering the growth in just a couple of short years under Josh Harris-of course anything is better than the toxic workplace environment that existed in the Dan Snyder regime…3)..Minnesota…Bit of a surprise considering the firing of the GM and the up and down years they have had….32)..Steelers..So much for tradition and the icon status of the Rooney family-though this is all about infrastructure-facilities and the draft.

OWNERS..
A) Raiders-Mark Davis-yes that guy, who has composite record of (131-242) since the 2002 season-guess he bought those votes with his signings…A-) Chargers-Dean Spanos-18 winning seasons in 38-years of ownership-bet he doesn’t know many of his player’s names…A) Jets-Woody Johnson…You have to be kidding me…B+) Rams-Stan Kroenke..Not sure I understand this-his money built that stadium-his expertise hired that front office..his leadership is the reason they are so good..a recluse-maybe just not around at all….D) Steelers-Art Rooney…Old school no longer works-see if they change.

GM..
A) Rams-Les Sneed..Scoreboard does not lie does it…B+) Chargers Joe Hortiz..Lots of in-season wins…but 0-for-postseason…D) Bengals-Duke Tobin-on the job since 1999-gifted Joe Burrow-not much accomplished aside from that.

COACHES..
A+) Rams-Sean McVay-look at all the accomplishments over an 8-year run since arriving in LA… Washington-Dan Quinn-not a bad call despite a messy season a year ago with injury after injury…A)..Niners-Kyle Shanahan-some accomplishment of a season with all those injuries…There were some odd high rankings ..Bengals-Zac Taylor..not held in blame for bad drafts-contract disputes and bad seasons. Saints-Kellen Moore..Quite an honor-bumpy road and all in his first year A-) Bills-Sean McDermott…Guess ownership did not ask the players how they felt before they fired him…Down the list C+) Chargers-Jim Harbaugh-second year in a row a shadow from his players…Raiders-Pete Carroll…One-and-done-did not get much love from players

COORDINATORS…
A) Chargers for Def Coord-Jesse Minter-since departed…D) for Off Coor Greg Roman-since fired.
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The rankings covered lots of areas of questions.
Here’s how Chargers players voted about their own organization

Read it and weep…Read it and take it for what it is worth.
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