Against college football’s excesses, some relief
Sunday, we drove in a rented RV past Pac-12 Conference headquarters. Well, not really headquarters. It was the Whitman County courthouse in Colfax, Wash., a west-facing brick edifice that a day later would host the nightcap of the county’s oh-so-odd weekend doubleheader. In the opener, Washington State,...
Looking back at the Pac-12: Good, bad, magical and mirthful
The forerunner to the Pacific-12 Conference was formed in 1915, and contrary to some belief, I wasn’t outside that meeting room, yelling “Gimme rewrite!” into a phone. A little later, though, I did cover 45 years’ worth of Pac-8/10/12 goings-on. I saw inspiring and awful football (does a scoreless...
To the dustbin of history, the Pac-12
In 1978, the Pacific-8 Conference welcomed in the Arizona schools, and members of the league’s “Skywriters” – a roving band of reprobates who visited the campuses and wrote preseason football, when they weren’t pouring another drink – all were given blue windbreakers. The inscription on the breast was...
Why is the Pac-12 teetering? Hubris
Up and down the West Coast today, I can only imagine how the oldsters are grieving: For the conference that gave us Hugh McElhenny and John Elway and Troy Polamalu, for the conference that annually had a spot in the most hallowed bowl game; for the conference that...
Clarence Thomas: He fails to clear even the sportswriting bar
Over coffee recently, a bunch of us old sportswriting cronies discussed the obvious things – Kraken, Mariners, Huskies, Cougars. And of course, Clarence Thomas. I brought up the subject of America’s freeloading magistrate in the context of our own modest little profession. Yes, believe it or...
Come on Dana, it’s the NIT
My father-in-law was a hell of a guy, and like all of us, had his quirks. He grew up in the Depression era, and maybe that explained why he was especially frugal in some purchases, particularly food. Most memorably, he would ignore the fresh crab in the supermarket...
Amid WSU’s confetti, a message for sports
As confetti floated down onto a basketball court the other day in Las Vegas, the news was startling: Washington State had just become the first women’s program in the history of the school to claim a conference championship in the NCAA era of women’s governance – about 40...
Utah’s idling pass offense, and a precedent
Sometime in the third quarter of Monday’s Rose Bowl, it began to be apparent: Utah’s quest to take its football season a step farther than it did a year ago was going to go unfulfilled. Penn State had the huge, gashing big plays and it had the defense...
Mike Leach: We zigged and he zagged
Shocking as it is to know that Mike Leach has died, it’s completely in keeping with Mike Leach. Naturally, he would check out in contrarian fashion, at 61 and with ostensible decades left to live, leaving us to sort out the life and times of a complicated man. ...
The survivor who turned the Oregon-UW rivalry
You probably won’t understand. In fact, I know you won’t. Washington travels to Oregon Saturday for another renewal of their acerbic rivalry, and as we all know by now, it’s different these days. It’s not Washington’s game to lose as it was for so many years. It’s Oregon...