July 16, 2015
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SPORTSCENTRAL
SportsCentral airs tonight! Schedule information is just below
Join co-hosts Steve Johnson and Sid Edwards and their guests. Scheduled to appear are CHS Senior Football players Ben Peazant and Telly Roper.
BATON ROUGE AREA BROADCASTING SCHEDULE:
Thursday, July 16: 5pm—6pm: SportsCentral… with Sid Edwards and Steve Johnson
WUBR, 910AM (CBS Sports Radio) Baton Rouge
PelicanSportsTV.com
App: search WUBR… from Coach’s
SportsRadio 1310 Radio, Lake Charles Programming of Interest (also heard on KEZMOnLine.com):
Saturday, July 18: 9AM—10AM: All Things Football with Scott Holtzman
Monday, July 20: 8AM—10AM: The Locker Room with John Goodman and Jim Gazzolo
WE THANK YOU FOR DOING YOUR UTMOST TO PATRONIZE SPONSORS OF OUR PROGRAMMING. THIS HELPS US TREMENDOUSLY IN SUSTAINING OUR WEEKLY LINE-UP AND WILL ASSIST US IN ADDING MORE PROGRAMS IN THE FUTURE. KINDLY MAKE AN EFFORT TO LET SPONSORS KNOW YOU HEARD THEIR BUSINESS MENTIONED ON OUR BROADCAST(S).
THE WIZARDRY OF OS
Assistant Basketball Coach and Head Swimming Coach at Central High
July, the Mailbag Month, continues.
Q: You never write about Major League Baseball. Any thoughts?
A: Great timing asking that question at the All-Star break. I cannot stand what has happened to the All-Star game. It is an EXHIBITION game that has been artificially manufactured into a “meaningful” game. The fact that it ended in a tie several years ago should not matter. One tie in 84 years is not a big deal.
I get irritated every time I hear someone say that the MLB All-Star game, "determines who hosts game seven of the World Series." That statement dos not present the full picture. The winner determines who has home field advantage in the World Series which determines the site for ALL seven games.
That concept is beyond outrageous in my mind considering two factors. One, the two leagues still play under different rules regarding the designated hitter which is determined by the home team. Therefore, the winning league in the All-Star game plays a factor is ALL seven games.
Second, a wild card team who won 84 games should not have home field advantage in the championship series over a team that wins 105 games because of the result in an exhibition game. There is less logic in this reasoning than in college baseball where the top seed in a regional is not always the home team.
Please save your argument saying “statistically the new system has not had much of an impact.” We don’t make intentionally illogical decisions with the hopes that they won’t make much difference.
With so much on the line, MLB baseball has decided the managers need to manage the games to win. So that means many position players will stay on the bench. Considering the preposterous situation the managers are in, I don’t blame them. But in actuality, it just makes the situation more ridiculous. Let me be clear again. It is an exhibition game!!!!
The managers are not going to follow the same reasoning with pitchers. An effective starter will still be pulled before the third inning. So they are not really going to manage it like a real game.
Finally, the worst part of the whole situation is that the change was made to boost ratings. The tie was in 2002 and had a rating of 9.5 and over 14.5 million viewers. In 2003, the rating held at 9.5, but lost a million viewers. Since then, the ratings have not gone above 9.3, and the last three years have been below 7.0 each year. The number of viewers has gone from over 14 million to below 11 million or less.
Before you criticize me for only having complaints and not solutions, here are some ideas.
The winning league should not matter, it is an exhibition game. Allow for one free substitution per player. That way the manager can get people in the game in the middle innings, but when the game is on the line, the best players are on the field. In addition, it will be easier to get most everyone in the game.
Q: Did you see the Northern colleges are once again making a proposal to push back the college baseball season? This time they want to wait until April to start the season and finish the College World Series in August.
A: I saw that. What a terrible idea. College baseball has gained in popularity. They finally got the bats and the baseball right. Northern schools have figured out how to be successful if they spend more money like the southern schools. If you want to help northern schools a bit by sponsoring their travel in months where their average high temperature is not above 50 degrees then so be it. But, changing the season to the brutally hot, thunderstorm, and hurricane months doesn’t exactly fix the situation. It is still a win-lose, you are just changing the side that is “winning.”
Southern schools are going to have a slight advantage in baseball, but that advantage can be and has been overcome many times. Oregon State, Indiana, Illinois and the Big Ten as a whole have recently shown how it is possible.
It is such a bad idea, I am not even going to get into my other arguments such as the laundry list of other things that would be effected by this change.
Q: No guts no glory Oz. We already had a Triple Crown winner for the first time in decades. Will we have a Grand Slam winner in tennis and golf as well?
A: Wouldn’t that be incredible? I would love to see it. In short, no. I think Serena wins the US Open, though. She has won it four times and two years in a row.
I think Spieth has shown amazing talent, maturity, and mental toughness, but golf has too many variables. There are so many great players in golf that you do not have the opportunity to defend face to face. In tennis and horse racing you can defeat an opponent directly. In golf, the first opponent is the course and you compete indirectly against other golfers. At the US Open, Spieth didn’t play great defense to make Dustin Johnson three putt on the 18th hole. Consequently, golfers just don’t have as much control over winning an event.
Another week of the mailbag, and I didn’t have to talk about SEC Media Days. That is a win for me!
HEY REF
By Dennis Dearie
Veteran Louisiana High School Referee
It looks like we finally have a college football coach with a pair of nads and my hope is Les Miles follows his lead. On Saturday Florida State Head Coach Jimbo Fisher met with Seminole players and expressed his displeasure with current happenings and has finally laid down the law. Although we don’t have his exact words Fisher let it be known that from this day (Saturday) forward any and all bars are off limits to each and every player. He wanted to make it very clear to his football players in telling them that he will no longer sit silent while these young men throw their futures away by frequenting bars.
This of course comes after two very embarrassing instances, one involving quarterback De’ Andre Johnson. He was caught on tape hitting a woman in a Tallahassee bar. I did watch the entire event and just have one thing to say, if you mess with the bull don’t get mad when you get the horn. By that I mean this woman did throw the first “punch”. The video shows Johnson at the bar and words did come between them and she took offense to what was said. It’s unclear if she was actually confronting him or another patron but he did faceoff with her.
Before things heated up it appeared someone other than Johnson might have touched her butt because she does turn quickly and yell at the person. It was after that confrontation that Johnson became involved. Again words soon became tense and she did attempt to hit Johnson. He quickly grabbed her right fist and told her not to hit him. It was at that moment when she swung an open fist and hit the Florida State player on his right cheek. It was only after getting hit that he did reciprocate and hit her back.
Most Southern men would never think of hitting a woman no matter if she hit him first, repeatedly or otherwise. But when you are in that type of environment the only thing a person can do is protect yourself. And I’m one that doesn’t believe in hitting a woman but in this case he felt he had to defend himself which he did and returned a slap that was indeed needed.
But we live in an upside down world in America where what you think is right and correct somehow is turned and twisted around. In hind sight I think he should’ve stood tall and just walked away. When you put yourself in these types of happenings your first thought has got to be a classy way out of sticky situations. America’s society seems to be focused on destroying individuals with lawsuits and those most venerable are professional athletes since the mainstream has made gods out of them.
But no matter what I think or say really doesn’t matter. What does matter to me anyway is for the first time that I can remember there is a coach at a major university that is making a bold statement by telling his players; you go to a bar, you’re off the team. Its been a long time in coming and I hand it to coach Fisher. I’ve been saying and writing for years that LSU should’ve been in the lead on this issue. The Tigers and the NCAA should begin a campaign of locking its players out of bars.
Let’s be very honest on this issue, nothing good has come out of a bar and in south Louisiana it seems to be a rite of passage. By game time on a Saturday night (or morning for that matter) so many fans are getting and being so drunk they can’t get out of the parking lot and make it inside of Tiger Stadium. Have we forgotten most of these players are youngsters between 18 and 20 years old and aren’t of age to be inside drinking. LSU’s fans should be in the lead and demand the coaches; staff and faculty write in its code of conduct for athletes that any player caught in or on a bar’s property would constitute immediate dismissal from school.
But before that happens someone has to take the lead and I’m not holding my breath waiting on Head Coach Les Miles to do the right thing.
Till next week… …
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