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...
Kenny Wheaton: What was Washington thinking, and assorted other Duck-Husky lore . . .
This is the week, of course, that “Kenny Wheaton’s gonna score!” reverberates again throughout the Northwest, even though the color images of the mind are increasingly taking on half-tones. It’s been 28 years, after all, since Wheaton jumped an out route and took an interception 97 yards to...
The growing power of college football coaches
So I’m going to the Washington-Oregon State football game Friday night with a few other guys. Looking forward to seeing the Husky quarterback, Michael Penix. And a host of UW receivers. And Oregon State’s Jack Colletto, the handiest football player in America. But wait a minute....
Expand the hoops tournaments? Ugh
You may have heard there’s a movement afoot among some college administrators to expand the 68-team NCAA basketball tournaments. “The time is now,” said Jim Phillips, ACC commissioner and a member of the NCAA’s transformation committee. “ . . . I really would like us to expand.”...
21 years later, 18 innings for nothing
Emerging from the horrors of the era of bad Mariner baseball, of Carlos Silva and Bill Bavasi and Chone Figgins, we trooped hopefully into T-Mobile Park Saturday, delivered from the notion that this playoff thing is for everybody but us. I’d watched the Mariners as a writer...
College football, in search of itself
Wisconsin’s dumbfounding firing of Paul Chryst the other day took me back to a day in Madison 44 years ago. I stood on the sideline at Camp Randall Stadium and in the last five minutes, watched an Oregon team in the second season of Rich Brooks’ stewardship burp...