Rise again

Gather 'round people. Today is about rebirth and resurrections and renewal.

Saturday was the ending of the Bill Callahan Era in Nebraska football, a black plague upon the followers of Lincoln, a pox that nearly sucked the life out of that congregation.

But this place is not the spot of absolution, or forgiveness. In fact, it is where we celebrate the cleansing of football souls across North America whose instincts tell them to yell "POWER" when someone else yells "HUSKER." They know the holiest of days — Game Day Saturday — is the time to drape themselves in red and they know their benediction is "Go Big Red."

And so it is that when Callahan got the axe after four relatively fruitless seasons — just one bowl win, no victories over the top 10 — that surging crescendo of joy you heard was coming from the Big Red Bretheren around the continent who celebrated this "loss" because of the perceived impending bigger gain. For it was Callahan who smudged so many historical items of a program that has been standing for 118 years. It was on his watch that the most embarrassing defeats ever witnessed in Lincoln came to fruition. So much of what made Husker fans proud was tarnished by a man who seemed wholly unaware of the team's importance to its followers and, worse yet, seemed uncaring of that history as well.

But there's bright lights to be seen. This story even has its saviour(s). One comes from Palos Heights, Ill., in the form of soon-to-be-senior quarterback Joe Ganz who, as a late-season replacement to the injured Sam Keller, tempted Husker fans in that what-might-have-been way by leading his offence with confidence and swagger, and even hanging a seven-TD effort on Kansas State.

And, you heard it here first (maybe): Let it ring out across the land that a man named Bo, a prodigal son, will return to Lincoln to help restore the luster to this program, and restore faith among its flock. Bo Pelini a former assistant under Tom Osborne, in my humble prediction, will be the next head coach of the Nebraska Cornhuskers.

And there will be cheers and relief and happiness in the corn-fed land of Lincoln. Men named Bo and Joe will send out their words and heal the Huskers, delivering them from their destruction. They will restore health and heal our wounds. They will cast out demons; they will speak in new tongues; ... they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover.

This, my friends, is called believing. And I am a believer.

Amen.

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Totem Poll No. 2

So last Wednesday I started my Canada West conference rankings for men's basketball with the thought that having them come out the day after the national coaches' poll would be good timing.

I'm stupid.

No need to wait for the coaches to decide who they want to put where, I'm jumping the gun and changing the release date to every Monday.

Just think of it as a chance to disagree with me earlier in the week.

Here's the Canada West Totem Poll:

1. (1) UBC Thunderbirds (7-1) — They haven’t toyed with anyone this season. Convincing road wins at Winnipeg and Manitoba and UBC just continues to dominate.
2. (3) Alberta Golden Bears (5-1) — Took advantage of a sluggish Brandon team Saturday night and held serve on home court. Showing they can put up points with the best of them.
3. (2) Brandon Bobcats (5-1) — No one is doubting their ability to score, but the hallmark of BU has been its ability to stop even the most prolific point-getters. One-hundred-and-six points at Edmonton is not a good example.
4. (4) Calgary Dinos (5-1) — Did what they had to do by trouncing Lethbridge on the road. Kept pace with Alberta and more and more seems like the team the Bears will have to beat to grab the Central.
5. (5) Victoria Vikes (6-2) — Did the same trip as UBC but looked nowhere near as good in narrowly beating U of M and then dropping the weekend finale in OT to Winnipeg.
6. (7) Saskatchewan Huskies (3-3) — Perhaps having their starting PG quit the team will be a rallying call for the Dogs who are going to have a tough road to sled the rest of the way.
7. (6) Regina Cougars (4-2) — Got their first real test of the season — a roady at Saskatoon and Edmonton — and failed. Another benchmark weekend looms at Brandon with the Cougars suddenly needing something big to happen to challenge for the top spot in the Great Plains.
8. (8) Fraser Valley Cascades (4-4) — Give this group marks for rebounding after a feeble effort on Friday with a win on Saturday. It is very early but, with third place currently theirs, getting a split with SFU could prove to be huge.
9. (10) Winnipeg Wesmen (3-3) — No coach in the conference will be sad to see Erfan Nasajpour exhaust his eligibility after this season. The most recent applicant to the “Get Him Outta Here Club”? Craig Beaucamp, who’s Vikes watched the fifth-year guard score 41 and once again prove that the Wesmen can be in any game Erf is playing.
10. (9) Simon Fraser Clan (2-4) — One-up-one-down weekend seems apt for a team that has been hard to figure out. Maybe they’re getting too much credit but if they don’t do some convincing this weekend (vs. Manitoba, vs. Winnipeg), I’m off the bandwagon.
11. (11) Trinity Western Spartans (2-6) — With 20/20 hindsight, can now look back on a blown opportunity this weekend. By splitting with the previously winless Wolfpack, flunked a chance to pull into a tie for fourth in the division.
12. (14) Thompson Rivers WolfPack (1-7) — It took beating one of the conference bottom-feeders to do it, but the WolfPack are on the board with their first W. We think these will be few and far between, however.
13. (13) Manitoba Bisons (0-6) — The U of M women’s team is averaging 69 points per game. The U of M men’s team is averaging 64 points per game. Ladies and gentleman, your 2007-08 Manitoba Bisons. And even they rise above these guys ...
14. (12) Lethbridge Pronghorns (0-6) — Oh the Horns, who are a conference worst in scoring differential (-18.2 ppg), opponent field goal percentage (51%), rebounding margin (-15.3 rpg) and free-throw shooting (59%). So, they can’t score, they can’t stop anyone, they can’t rebound and they can’t shoot standing still.

Power Hour

Time for a debut here, people.

Now is the time of year that I get knee deep into covering the Brandon Bobcats for the Brandon Sun while also providing colour commentary on WCG-TV, the cable access station of southwestern Manitoba. That being said, I'm going to introduce a Canada West conference power rankings for this site, something I've mulled over wanting to add to our web site at the Sun. But falling short of that, I am adding it into this space as a regular feature on Wednesdays, one day after the national coaches poll is released.

Now I am loath to spin again the same tired song that gets played everywhere else, but — as has been well-documented — I have very little creativity and am not overly interested in exhausting effort to come up with my own ideas. Now, we also have the venerable Howard Tsumura at the Vancouver Province who already does a conference ranking on his own time, but no one is going to argue that coverage of university sports in this country is over-saturated, so I'm putting my hat in the ring. (Alright, fine. I'll add my own twist to the tired old tradition and come up with a different name for these rankings. See below).

First things first, for the CIS basketball people who read this post — sorry for my lack of content — let me just assess a couple of things in the Canada West for those who are interested and don't get out to watch all the teams on a regular basis.

MEN:
Thus far, Brandon has hosted Simon Fraser, Trinity Western and Manitoba and has run to 4-0. So that gives us five teams to have a look at.

Simon Fraser: I originally had them pegged for the No. 2 spot in the Pacific but their lackluster start combined with the surprising play of Fraser Valley and Victoria (the Vikes have rallied in the face of losing almost everyone), has Simon Fraser (2-4) suddenly having to climb a big hill. Such is life in that division if you don't get a great start. But a couple of wins this weekend, including a nice one over Calgary, has the Clan at least back in the discussion. Still, I'm hesitant to drink the kool-aid (incidentally, I'm tired of the over-use of that term, and will put an embargo on it in my future posts) and think that the Clan's depth is going to be the major sticking point to their success.

Trinity Western: A team — on paper — built for the switch to the up-tempo FIBA rules but one not quite talented enough to make it work yet. The Spartans (1-5) have a guy in Lucas Goltz who can fill it up and Luke Robinson who can stick some shots, but in the grand scheme of things TWU is simply not that good.

Manitoba: It was never more obvious than last weekened how much Manitoba (0-4) relies on Isaac Ansah. The athletic guard sat out both games in Brandon with a deep thigh bruise and suddenly you realize how little the Bisons have in the way of offensive production. On top of that, they're very reliant on one-on-one production so without a bona fide scorer, their offensive really sputters. Darcy Coss can be keyed on and then Manitoba has to find anyone else to score the ball. And, truth be told, there isn't anyone there to do so.

Brandon: The Bobcats have played the last four games without big man Yuri Whyms and were dealt a blow when Nik Quick decided to leave the team to tend to financial matters (he's an American without a work visa in Canada). But credit the Bobcats for winning those four games despite the fact that each of them lacked any artistry whatsoever. They absolutely stunk on Saturday in a win over Manitoba in which they shot 5-for-24 from the three and the Bisons just packed into a 2-3 zone. It made for boring ball, and the Bobcats — for much of these four regular season games — have looked very beatable when teams slowed the game down. BU hasn't gotten into its transition game nearly as much as it would like.

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WOMEN:
Simon Fraser: Nothing to say here. No one beats this team this season (including UBC), and if they do manage to lose a conference game, it's merely a blip. They're good enough to roll over anyone.

Trinity Western: Much improved Spartans team that boasts some size as well as capable guards. Won't make a ton of noise this season, but considering the past struggles that squad has had, they've already achieved a considerable amount.

Manitoba: Another versatile 6-foot player (in the mould of Melanie Schlicter) would do wonders for the Bisons, who are the most up-tempo of up-tempo teams in the conference. As it is, they're a young group that should remain middle of the road in CanWest but the youngsters they do have are talented. Watch this team in a couple of seasons.

Brandon: Same ol' same ol' in the Wheat City for the women's team. They are, however, significantly improved from the past but are still wholly incapable of playing 40 good minutes, which has been their downfall. They'll get a win somewhere, however. Still missing a couple of pieces, namely a solid veteran presence with consistent scoring ability.

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Without further adieu, let's do the first-ever TPA Totem Poll (misspelling intended):

MEN:
1. UBC Thunderbirds (5-1) — Here's my thing: The defending conference champions get the benefit of the doubt. Sure they have a loss (Nov. 3 @ Calgary), but they also boast impressive road wins at Simon Fraser (92-55), vs Trinity Western (104-77) and vs Fraser Valley (84-63). While you could argue that the one stiff test they received they failed, I prefer to look at that as the exception to the rule. They're flat blowing teams out, which is more than you can say for...
2. Brandon Bobcats (4-0) — The team that lost to UBC in last year's conference final before charging all the way to the national championship game. Brandon remains one of only two undefeateds in the conference but they haven't been impressive on their way there. They man-handled Trinity but struggled for 35 minutes or so against Simon Fraser and had to eke one out. And although they were never seriously challenged by U of M, they were far from pretty there, either. This is a team that needs its swagger back and quickly.
3. Alberta Golden Bears (3-1) —The Bears already own a pre-season win over the Bobcats but split with the Saskatchewan Huskies on their home floor this weekend, a performance not becoming of the nation's No. 6-ranked team. (Note: The author is wholly unconvinced of U of S's place among the national elite.). But Alberta does boast some impressive wins, namely blowouts of Ottawa and Fraser Valley along with wins over BU and Victoria. A handful of guys who can flat-out fill it up and, once again, the Bears are worthy of being mentioned among the conference heavy-hitters.
4. Calgary Dinos (3-1) — Into this spot by the slimmest of margins, the Dinos would likely love a do-over from their loss in Burnaby on Friday but they've nonetheless posted good results to date. An athletic bunch — with the Brothers Bekkering at the top of that list — that seems destined to finish just short of U of A in the Central Division.
5. Victoria Vikes (5-1) — By virtue of a slim loss to the Dinos, the Vikes take a back seat in these rankings. But they earn points for putting up a 5-1 record to this point despite their line-up having been gutted. Their top five leading scorers from last season are all gone but Vic has perservered. That said, don't be surprised if this ranking slips in the coming weeks: UVic has had by far the weakest schedule of anyone in the conference through three weeks.
6. Regina Cougars (4-0) — OK Cougs, you have the most tenuous of holds in the rankings this week. First off, Regina has played all four games on home floor and secondly its done it against teams with a combined 7-13 record. Still, the Cougars are 4-0 and, with the addition of Bryden Wright back in the lineup from a year off, are capable of putting up a bunch of points. They won't contend for the conference title and they won't be playing in nationals but they fill the "I'm not sure I wanna play them in the playoffs" role.
7. Saskatchewan Huskies (2-2) — A record of 2-2 is probably apt for this team that, because of its star player, can beat anyone on any given day but likely isn't good enough to really be feared regularly. The Huskies have already played 18 conference and non-conference games (18!) and Andrew Spagrud is averaging 33 minutes a game. If that isn't a recipe for breaking down your bus come February, I don't know what is. Spags is certainly a game-changer but the rest of the Huskies are beatable. Shooting guard Kyle Grant can kill you if left alone. So the solution? Don't let him do what he wants. Make Grant, who has a slow first step, put the ball on the floor. Then you're immediately testing their depth, which is not very good. All that adds up to a team I can't trust betting on.
8. Fraser Valley Cascades (3-3) — No slighting Barnaby Craddock and his new team, but the Cascades have but one "good win" in six conference outings and that was an OT win over Saskatchewan. This is not to gloss over their narrow win over Thompson Rivers, which didn't instil confidence.
9. Simon Fraser Clan (2-4) — A team that can beat you up with its size and toughness, but one still not quite geared for going at a high pace with the best of them. When they feed Greg Wallis, they have their most success, but they still go away from their big man on occasion. If they get their act together, they're the typical team that will make you work for everything you get.
10. Winnipeg Wesmen (2-2) — Went on the road to Regina — admittedly a tough spot to get wins — and got worked. So that means their only two wins came against the conference weakling Bisons. They'll get a shot in the arm in two weeks when Winnipegger Cam Hornby is eligible after transferring from South Dakota State.
11. Trinity Western Spartans (1-5) — The one bright side is they have a true gunner in Goltz who can score a ton. The tools are there but they're not, shall we say, the best tools in the land. They hung in with Regina but have otherwise been thumped in every outing, save for their win over Lethbridge.
12. Lethbridge Pronghorns (0-4) — Really not much to say: They haven't won a game in the conference and the only reason they're not in the basement is because a pre-season win over Saskatchewan at least showed they have the capability of winning. That, and the two below them are that much worse.
13. Manitoba Bisons (0-4) — They need, repeat NEED, Isaac Ansah in their lineup if they have a hope in this world of winning more than two games this season. Even with that, the post-season is a distant hope for a team that hasn't tasted victory yet.
14. Thompson Rivers WolfPack (0-6) — They've been blown out a lot, but a three-point loss at Victoria gives an iota of hope.

No D, no AD

On the most basic level, it stands to reason that Steve Pederson lost his job as athletic director at the University of Nebraska because of 11 kids.

Reality says that it is much more complex than that, but at a school where football trumps everything else, the fact that the Cornhuskers' defence can't actually tackle anymore certainly looms as a final straw.

So if you're keeping score, the Nebraska athletics department has the No. 1-ranked, and defending national champion, women's volleyball team, a competitive baseball team that was close to a national title just a couple of seasons go, and a number of other teams that earn recognition across the NCAA, yet Pederson is out of a job today because, basically, a football team is mediocre and its defence is the worst the school has ever seen.

At Nebraska, a 4-3 record is unacceptable and grounds for public lynchings. Add in that the team was humiliated in back-to-back games at Missouri and home to Oklahoma State and the cries for Pederson's head became louder and louder. Nebraska fans can accept losing (although begrudgingly), but not being competitive and seemingly hopeless is a whole other matter.

But for anyone who thinks it unfair that Pederson lost a prestigious position because of a lacklustre football team, it should be remembered that it was on his watch that Frank Solich was fired, which led to Pederson's infamous speech of refusal to "gravitate towards mediocrity." Consider, too, that Solich was Tom Osborne's hand-picked successor to the legend and it's clear to see that Pederson was working with a very short rope from the get-go.

But, to be fair, he shaved off much of that rope on his own.

Now Osborne, on an interim basis, has been enlisted to fly to the rescue of the Huskers — the football team that is — as the interim AD who will, by all accounts, decide the fate of the coaching staff, including head coach Bill Callahan and his gargantuan contract extension he signed earlier this summer.

But maybe Osborne needs to pick his battles. One of the most beloved figures in the history of the state of Nebraska, Osborne's risk-reward ratio slopes more towards the risk if only because thousands of followers are utterly convinced that, because of his years of great success as a coach, he will naturally return the program to the days when he was patrolling the sideline. And in the current state of college athletics, it takes much more than a snap of the finger to put programs into positions of prominence. That's why, if Osborne doesn't succeed in his temporary role as Nebraska superhero, it will be to Nebraska fans the same as watching Superman or Batman somehow not save the day at the end of their tales.

Still, if anyone can do it, it is the man who continues to work on campus and still bleeds bright scarlet red. He also understands the importance of the football team to the followers, to the alumni, to the state itself, all of whom are desperate to see the lustre restored to their beloved team. Osborne is about as close to that superhero status as a Nebraska man can be.

And if Osborne can shake off the dirt of the Pederson Era, come through and make Nebraska football relevant again and all the while do it with his typical dignified poise — considering how far things have fallen — then that would truly be this superhero's greatest rescue act.

Seeing Red

In advance of the Nebraska-Wake Forest football game Saturday in Winston-Salem, N.C., a few Nebraska football facts, courtesy The Greensboro News-Record:

Academics: Nebraska boasts more Academic All-Americans (248) than any school. Since 2001, Wake has graduated 93 percent of its football players.

Fans: Wake sold a record 17,000 season tickets, about 1,000 to Huskers fans. The 17,000 figure represents approximately one-third of Wake's living alumni base. Over the past six years, Nebraska has averaged 61,000 fans. For its spring game.

Governor: Political office to which legendary former Nebraska coach Tom Osborne aspired in 2006. A member of the U.S. House of Representatives from 2001-07, Osborne lost in the Republican primary.

Heisman: Three Huskers have won college football's most coveted individual honor: Johnny Rodgers (1972), Mike Rozier (1983) and Eric Crouch (2001).

Itinerant: The professional lifestyle of Cornhuskers assistant coach Phil Elmassian. In 34 years in the business, Elmassian has worked at 16 schools: William & Mary, Richmond, Ferrum, East Carolina, Minnesota, Virginia Tech, Virginia, Syracuse, Washington, Boston College, Wisconsin, LSU, West Virginia, Marshall, Purdue and now Nebraska, where he has settled down for four seasons. If he returns to the Huskers in 2008, he ties a career high for longevity at a single institution.

Media: Eight Nebraska TV stations routinely travel to Huskers road games. Among the newspapers expected to staff Saturday's contest is The Star Herald in Scottsbluff, a 416-mile drive from Lincoln. How far is 416 miles? It's like driving from Greensboro to Pittsburgh.

Nicknames: Throughout their histories, both programs have employed coaches with distinctive monikers. Among those who have guided the Huskers: Walter C. "Bummy" Booth; W.C. "King" Cole; Ewald O. "Jumbo" Stiehm; Lawrence McCeney "Biff" Jones; and George "Potsy" Clark. On the Wake side, we offer Dixie Clyde "Peahead" Walker.

Offense: Bill Callahan took the job in 2004 with the reputation as a West Coast, fling-it-all-over-the-field guy. But in the opening win over Nevada, the Huskers ran for 413 yards.

Population: On the six Saturdays when it's full each year, Memorial Stadium (pop. 85,044) is the third-largest city in Nebraska. At those times, it's home to one of every 20 residents of the state.

Quarterbacks: Nebraska's Sam Keller was an Arizona State backup when the Sun Devils won at North Carolina 33-31 on Oct. 18, 2003.

Red: The Huskers' hue, and a dominant one. A year ago, 30,000 Nebraska supporters ventured to the L.A. Coliseum to see their team play USC.

Sellouts: The Huskers have sold out 283 consecutive home games since failing to fill Memorial Stadium Oct. 20, 1962. And there was an excuse that day: a distraction called the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Tokyo: That's where Nebraska Gov. Dave Heineman and 100 other Cornhuskers will watch the game. They'll be taking a break from a trade mission to head to Legends Sports Bar and Grill, which caters to American tourists. The entourage returns home Sept. 13, two days before the Huskers' game with USC.

Unprecedented: The Huskers have never played on an ACC team's home field. The Deacs lost in Lincoln, 31-3, on Sept. 10, 2005, and 36-12 on Sept. 12, 1970. (That 1970 season was pretty good for both teams; the Huskers won the national title and the Deacons claimed the ACC crown.)

Venue: Wake's stadium (official capacity 31,500) is the smallest facility to host a Nebraska game since the Huskers played Hawaii in 25,000-seat Honolulu Stadium, affectionately known as "The Termite Palace," on Dec. 4, 1971.

Winning: Nebraska's winning percentage in its football history is .704

Lessons learned

There's now reason why we should be surprised by steroid allegations anymore.

Yet, we are.

There is no sport — aside from the painful "sport" of professional wrestling — that has endured more scrutiny about its lack of cleanliness than baseball. While we all sat back and watched brutes bang bombs out of parks throughout the major leagues and unknowingly idolized brutes who couldn't hit .250 but could pound 30 jackbombs a season, we turned yet another blind eye.

How so aware we were of the transgressions of countless ball players of past, and how quick we were to condemn those currently in the game who sought an edge. Bonds is villified to the point where you wouldn't want to offer to start his car in the morning; Giambi is a flat-out admitted cheater and yet back in the game, and Canseco dimed everyone out to make a few coins of his own.

We're more than exposed to cheaters in baseball.

So why do we still continue to follow the game that has such a closed mind?

A story released Thursday alleged that the new Crown Prince of MLB, Rick Ankiel, was juicing.

But, in a sport that has so repeatedly hurt followers who made the grave error of actually believing in its competitors, it's stunning that we were all so taken by storm by yet another cheater, a guy who has only been following the unwritten illegal rule that has been the back bone of this beleaguered sport.

Yet, when the headline appears, we're stil surprised? Was it that big of a stretch that Ankiel, who failed miserably as a pitcher in the bigs, was so desperate to get back to the MLB? Here's a guy who had probably the most public meltdowns in the history of sports, He was demoted to the minors, but yet when he returned to the bigs and started hitting home runs at an alarming rate, the most consensus response was: Wow, Rick Ankiel is unreal.

But never: Can someone check to see if Rick-Anks is juicin' a bit?

Well he's alleged to have used HGH, and while many hope Anks gets his act together,the fact is that we're so utterly willing to drop our opinions on cheating when it comes to sports.

Ankiel went lights out the past few days on the mound. But we're all the ones who remain oblivious to the cheaters in the most obvious sport.

Bad memories

Perusing through ESPN.com Page 2 today and came across another installment of Paul Lukas' "Uni Watch",, which is completely frivolous yet enjoyable reading when you have enough time to click through 1000 links and look at jerseys.

Scrolling down through the column, you'll come to a point where he discusses a few of the teams in the NFL that are honouring members lost in the past year. You can find the links to those patches here, here, and here.

Which got me to thinking.

The Winnipeg Blue Bombers grieved the loss of a former player when Orlando Bobo passed away in the spring.

Bobo was an offensive lineman for the 2004 season who left the team following that campaign in the midst of contract disputes.

The Bombers have honoured Bobo by putting a ...

well, they haven't honoured him at all.

Bobo was indeed a one-year member of the Bombers, but the Blue also had the misfortunate of saying goodbye to another former teammate this off-season when Nick Benjamin died. The team now wears a '68' on their helmets in honour of Benjamin, and while the tribute is a nice touch, it could also have been done much better.

The Benjamin number most certainly should be there but on first glance, if you can see in the photo above, the number looks almost identical to the number designating the player who is actually wearing that helmet. So, in actuality, the two numbers have very little distinction from one another, making the 68 almost unnoticeable and its impact decidedly lessened.

We've seen it time and time again through sports, a white number on a black background that makes the acknowledgement stand out while also being plainly clear what is trying to be conveyed.

Secondly, there are two players to consider here. Why Bobo's not mentioned and Benjamin is can likely be chalked up to years of service with the team.

Still, if the Bombers are going to make the effort to honour their lost alumni, it would've been nice if they did it properly.

Are you smarter than a fifth grader?

A few links from a day of perusing the wire:

No one said life in the NFL was easy, especially for a guy playing in the most spotlighted position in the second biggest market in the league.

But does Chicago Bears' quarterback Rex Grossman really need to read this?

So Bears' fans are getting frustrated with their embattled pivot who, despite leading his team to the Super Bowl last season, has never really evoked confidence from the Windy City faithful.

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Michael Vick needs some help, we can all be in agreement on that, but I'm not so sure this was what he was needing.

Perhaps it's Starbury that could use a little PR tutorial.

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I get winded cheering at football games and this guy is trying out for an NCAA team?

I'm sure I'll be doing the same when I'm 59.

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Finally, would be remiss to not mention this record-breaking effort from the Texas Rangers Wednesday night.

When a game story moves on the wire it generally has a slug (file name) like "BC-AMN-Tex-Bal", indicating it's an American League game between Texas and Baltimore.

In cases where a story has a historical context and is, for lack of a better term, Must See TV, the slug is something like "BC-Bonds-Homers, URGENT."

So when the URGENT tag was attached to a game story — after all, how often is a game between two non-playoff deadbeats really of a pressing matter? — only two explanations sprung to mind: Jarrod Saltalamacchia had killed someone with a line-drive to the head or ... well, that was about it. Someone must've died.

Thankfully for the people of Baltimore, the only casualty was the slow death they experienced while watching the visiting team put up 30 unanswered on their local nine.

Perhaps the Chicago Sun Times can be enlisted to teach Paul Shuey how to throw a ball.

Sweet sounds of summer

"And folks, we've run out of July." — Vin Scully

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The spectacle that is the Barry Bonds' chase of Hank Aaron's all-time home run mark touched down in Los Angeles this week but the most riveting television came from the rare chance (for Canadians, that is) to hear the man responsible for the colourful turn of phrase posted above.

Vin Scully opened the broadcast of Tuesday's series opener with those simple words, a phrase indicative of what has made him one of the most beloved broadcasters of all time. While so many broadcasters and talking heads try so desperately to find their niche by outdoing the last guy, Scully continues to be the class of them all because of his incredible ability to paint the big pictures with a mere few strokes.

As Bonds and the Giants settled in the City of Angels for a three-game set against the Dodgers — one that indeed had more vital implications to Dodger fans who were watching a team that actually has something to play for — throngs of media followed. Scully, who now limits the number of games he does for Fox Sports, was there too. The difference is when Bonds and the carnival takes its travelling road show south (next stop, San Diego) and sets up there for a few days, Scully will still be in L.A. and produce infinitely more captivating television than Bonds and his inevitable crowning as home run king.

Through nearly 60 years of covering a game that is best served narrated by great storytellers, Scully has become the ultimate elucidator. He has attached his voice to some of the most legendary calls ever heard and as renowned as they are for the action that took place, they are highlighted even more because of the man who chronicled the scenes. Bill Buckner's infamous gaffe in the 1986 World Series; Kirk Gibson's improbable home run in 1988 and Hank Aaron's record-breaking blast in Atlanta. They are all classic productions to which Vin Scully has laid the soundtrack.

It is ironic that as modern broadcasting has become an ongoing race to one-up the competition, television networks have added more people to their play-by-play booths, flooded us with countless sideline reporters and approached their studio shows like circus clowns to an old Volkswagen. When everywhere we look on the sports dial they are trying to cram in more, Scully's solitary act shows that less is more.

And while his voice has blessed some of the most significant baseball moments ever witnessed, it's his mastery of making the mundane poetic that exemplifies how so many others in the business are so painfully far behind.

•"He (Bob Gibson) pitches as though he's double-parked."
•"He's (Tom Glavine) like a tailor: A little off here, a little off there and you're done, take a seat."
•"It's a mere moment in a man's life between the All-Star Game and an old timer's game."
•"Statistics are used much like a drunk uses a lamp post: For support, not illumination."
•"The Dodgers are such a .500 team that if there was a way to split a three-game series, they'd find it."

Scully is in the booth by himself and his narration covers nearly every minute of those nine innings. It's a unique quality to rarely let silence hit the air and yet not have viewers wishing you'd give them a moment's peace. Scully is the guy you'd wish would tell just one more story.

When Barry Bonds was lifted in the seventh inning of Thursday's game at Chavez Ravine, Fox showed a tape of the pre-game hoopla that surrounded the Giants dugout, which included 100 newspaper reporters and nearly as many cameras and reporters. Bonds wasn't going to hit his historic home run in the city of his team's biggest rival and, unless Bonds is still seeking that thus far elusive home run on the final weekend of the season (when San Fran is next in L.A.), Vin Scully won't be there to lend audio to one of the most contentious moments of baseball history. Maybe it's better that way. Bonds hardly deserves the voiceover.

Instead Thursday night, Scully closed his chapter on the story of Bonds' chase just how you'd expect. He provided a line that will likely never be remembered, was just one in a million of utterances, but yet stood up as typically reserved and utterly perfect for the setting:

And hello San Diego, the circus is coming to town.

Can Vin come too?

A Blockbuster Night

Furtherto the last post — regarding a perfect world where we could hire, fire and trade TV sports personalities — a couple of updates.

Regarding the comment that was made by another Larkins, my always contentious sister, allow my explanation:

The "Most Annoying Voice in All of TV Sports" award just happened to feature all women because, in this case, all the women mentioned are absolutely unbearable. And Bob McKenzie IS "loud." I won't argue that he's obnoxious but he doesn't have that "Sports Guy Voice" that I have long defined as "n. The unnecessary and forced fluctuating of vocal patterns.. Each of Hedger, Frolic and Dhillon have that horrendous quality.

Now, that said, I probably should have stretched the nominees into a couple of members of The Score, the network that, in its infancy, seemed to have a mandate to hire on-air talent based on them sounding more like computer-modulated sound files rather than actual human beings. So I'm looking in your direction Steve Kouleas and Tony Ambrogio.

Now, moving on. Our boy Swatter responded to my last post with a major offer. It goes like this:

We (TSN) give you: - full rights to the CFL (this does NOT include cuthbert). - every single raptors game (this DOES includes swirsky's mug). - full rights to anything/everything poker. - "off the record" with michael landsburg (the show appeals to most idiot canadian sports fans... your ratings will be huge!). - cory woron. - rod black (you'll need him for the CFL coverage). I get: - the sunday night MLB game (although you can have it for september, since we're airing sunday night football). - canadian broadcast rights to the world series. - broadcast rights to NBA all-star weekend (you've had this for years). - full rights to anything/everything fishing. - mike toth. - sean mccormick.

I reject the poker idea for two reasons. We have poker already and I'm loathe to add anymore of it. Equally unappealing to me is adding Landsberg to my team. Putting him in our lineup, when we're looking to appeal to viewers, is the equivalent of trading for Barry Bonds to boost media relations.

I reject this trade because the only thing I'm getting out of it that I wanted in the first place was Woron, and even he was a bit player. He's a Mo Peterson in a blockbuster deal.

What's more, I am giving you two of my premiere anchors in McCormick and Toth. So who fills those roles now?

So if you were to throw in Onrait, take Toth off the board, take Nick Kypreos off our hands and give us those strongman competitions, then we have some talking points.

Also, I'm willing to bring in a third party here to negotiate a three-way deal for us to land Cabbie on the Street.

Trade Shows

Got into a discussion with my pal and WCG-TV broadcast partner Jeremy Sawatzky about Canadian sports television personalities, namely from TSN and Sportsnet.

Now, there's undoubtedly no shortage of wretched "talents" on both networks, but Swatter is partial to TSN and I, not liking TSN whatsoever, sided with Sportsnet. So, we made ourselves virtual GMs, perused through our lineups and began proposing trade offers to each other.

I first boasted that I was in the position of leverage because Swatter/TSN had nothing that I wanted. So if he was looking to make a move, then he'd better pony up. Looking at the TSN lineup I felt like I was poaching from the rosters of the mid-1970s Washington Capitals. (Swatter, however, was looking at a roster, mine, that was maybe more like the Washington Generals. But I digress.)

So as in the real sports world, it's not always that a trade you get actually comes complete with players that you actually wanted. The "give something to get something" theory also streches into "you have to take this, to get this." The only person Swatter took off the table was Chris Cuthbert, a versatile and likable play-by-play guy who actually lends credibility to that sad-sack network. He's very good. (CBC, then, would have to be the Los Angeles Clippers at this point — making mind-boggling personnel moves only to have a renaissance, of sorts, recently despite their ignorance.)

I immediately went after Cory Woron. He's the Carlos Delfino of this dicussion: A guy who is buried on the bench (weekend anchoring), gets very little playing time (rarely seen) but you know he could step into a more significant role if given the chance. He won't carry your team, but he'll do some good things.

Swatter didn't flat out say he was off limits, but he made it difficult for me to get him.

In response, Swatter — trying to shed some of his deadweight — understandably offered up the bland and personality-free Holly Horton. Normally I would have shot this down from the git-go, but I see a fit for her. I said we might entertain an offer for her and then we could move her to Sportsnet's new "InBox" segment where she could stand in front of a TV and do a two-minute segment that basically just plays YouTube clips. That would enable us to shed Sportsnet newby Daru Dhillon, the woman who has wrestled the "Most Annoying Voice in All of TV Sports" away from Jennifer Hedger and The Score's Caroline Frolic.

With that in mind, here's a few of the trade proposals that are currently on the table. Luckily, no trade deadline is in place.

---

PROPOSAL #1:
TSN GETS: Jason Portuondo, Daru Dhillon and Rob Faulds
SPORTSNET GETS: Cory Woron, Holly Horton, Ryan Rishaug
LOGIC: TSN gets the benefit of actually having a minority in an anchor role (Portuondo), something for which it has never really been known. The Horton-Dhillon swap is a write-off and we dump a dead beat in Faulds in exchange for a decent field reporter who can cover our prairie region. TSN, however, would have to find a place for the ultra-untalented Faulds.
DEAL DEAD

PROPOSAL #1A:
Swatter proposes we take Woron out of the deal and TSN would offer us full Raptor coverage and Chuck Swirsky, the man who for which the term "face for radio" must have been made. Swirsky is a love-or-hate play by play guy. Luckily, I hate him. So that deal is not happening. I say: "I'll take Rishaug and I'll put him on the prairies reporting and take that David Bastl and send him back down to the minors. (i.e. Winnipeg Global where he belongs and no one watches so no one notices that he doesn't know anything about sports).

(Side note: Swatter then says, "we'll just assign Rod Black to Raptor games. ... Oh wait...." Even in jest, his comments are enough to shake your soul.)

PROPOSAL #2:
TSN GETS: Gord Stellick
SPORTSNET GETS: Bob McKenzie

Swatter offers this one up and I jump on it. McKenzie has more rep if only because he wasn't the GM of one of the worst teams in the history of the NHL (see: Stellick as GM of Leafs). McKenzie is loud but ... well he's not Stellick. To juice up the pot a bit, I offer Stellick's "Herbal Remedy" ads at no extra charge. He asks if I want Pierre McGuire, too. I bluntly reply: No.
DEAL DONE

PROPOSAL #3:
Moving to Jays baseball, Swatter suggests a one-for-one colour man deal in which we get Pat Tabler in exchange for Rance Muliniks, both former Jays. I, a fan of Rance in his playing days and never one to part with someone named Rance, turn this down. I offer that I'll make the deal if he throws in Michael Whalen because Sportsnet needs a Quebec presence.

A lifelong Montreal Canadiens fan, Swatter says no because Whalen is his mainstay.

I say it's sad that he's a fan of either.
DEAL DEAD

It was at this point, like so many GM meetings, that the talks broke down because of the offering of chicken wings. We broke for dinner ...

I'm sure this conversation will once again continue and I'll be sure to keep all you posted. I know you're all waiting to find out what I do with the rumoured deal that involves Nick Kypreos, Mike Toth and Sean McCormick.

Under a Raimbault

BU has, as the Brandon Sun reported last week, officially hired Mike Raimbault as the new head coach of the program. Here is a column that appeared in the Sun on Tuesday:

Mike Raimbault has landed his dream job and it’s a dream he could be awaken from quite abruptly.

As previously reported in the Brandon Sun, the Brandonite was officially named the head men’s basketball coach of his home university on Monday — a team for which he once briefly suited up — and he will take over a program that once again is in the nation’s elite.

However, the job is a nine-month term that will conclude with Raimbault likely in an area of more uncertainty than where he was before his recent good fortune.

The reality is that when the 2008-09 season rolls around, Mike Raimbault may very well not be in his dream job anymore. The job will be posted again making what he does this season — and this season alone — critical to his future as a CIS coach.

It is a pivotal time for this Bobcats team. Two fifth-year starters return from a squad that made the national championship final in March and the team has lost just two players from that group.

While it is undoubtedly a pretty plum gig to have handed to you as your first CIS job — hey kid, there’s gas in the car and a straight road ahead, just try not to crash it — it is also one that does not come without its inherent pressures, more so than most any other program in Canada.

The scrutiny that comes down on you in Brandon is greater than it is in Windsor; the expectations to lead the Bobcats to the promised land is always higher than it is at Memorial and the backlash you can receive from any number of sources around the community is infinitely more than, say, Winnipeg or Saskatchewan.

Raimbault’s first order of business, then, should be to develop a thick skin.

Raimbault, like it or not, has inherited an expectation to win and win now. That pressure comes from getting the primo talent handed to you and a lot of people would suggest not at least making a run at another national would be considered a failure.

(Now, before anyone goes barking about “academics count, too”, be reminded that sports reporters aren’t assigned to cover a point guard’s Practicum in Geography class or a swingman’s Intro to Psychology. So, in this case, when it comes to academics and sports reporting, never the twain shall meet.)

It would not be far off to suggest that there would be considerable disappointment if this team — which will possess arguably the most lethal starting five in the conference — doesn’t book tickets for nationals in Ottawa next March.

Raimbault might be afforded some slack because of the short notice on which he was given the reins and because he’s a likable guy, well-respected throughout the community.

Raimbault’s hire certainly raised the eyebrows of many basketball people around the country if only because his youth and inexperience made him an easy target for naysayers who believe BU copped out by doing the easy thing by hiring Craddock’s assistant.

There are people angry over whom they didn’t hire. Still, with Craddock’s late and sudden departure is it not better to maintain some level of continuity at a school that has struggled so mightily to find that elusive trait?

Raimbault’s inexperience coaching at an elite level is most certainly a red flag but so too was Craddock’s and that turned out not too badly. In the end, the only people you need to care about are the ones you’re stepping out with every single day. So is it not better to appease the 12 players whom you’re entrusted to lead through the season and say to hell with all the outsiders who are all too willing to contradict?

I suggest so.

But that doesn’t take away the reality of the situation: Dreams can take sharp turns and right around the corner from golden opportunity could loom the dark alley of disappointment.

For the time being, it’s probably best that nobody pinches him.

And then there were ... four?

Hey folks... Just working on the latest in the BU saga and trying to track down the short list of candidates who will be interviewed next week for the vacant men's basketball position. I have a lock on a few of them but, as I'm sure you can understand, can't post here until I've done it for my newspaper. Let's just say there appear to be no big-time names in the mix with respect to CIS experience.

In a follow up to the last post, the university did in fact make it a one-year term post (as I disagreed with) but the director of athletics said they received more applications than past years. That move tells me in my heart of hearts that they're going to allow assistant coach Mike Raimbault to take the reins for a year and see how it goes. That's just my gut feeling but let's be honest here, I am rarely right.

Here's the last story that appeared in the Sun:

Brandon University is wasting little time in trying to fill its vacant men’s head coaching position.

Less than a week after posting the job, the university closed the application process on Monday and began short-listing candidates on Tuesday for the position that was left open when Barnaby Craddock resigned on June 27 to take the University College of Fraser Valley head coaching position.

A handful of people with past connections to BU were among the applicants but none were short-listed, the Brandon Sun has learned.

Multiple sources requesting anonymity told the Sun that former all-Canadian Bobcats Keith Vassell and Joey Vickery were among the applicants and Vickery confirmed he applied but was not among the candidates BU officials are going to interview.

“I know what I’m capable of and I’ll take my services to Europe,” Vickery, a veteran in the Euro pro leagues, said in a telephone interview from Winnipeg. “They take people that are no doubt qualified and they don’t go through a lot of the steps that Canada goes through. ... (In Europe) they see the very good possibility of me being a good coach because they see what I do as a player.”

Reached via email, former Bobcat Gil Cheung — a five-year team member and former assistant coach at BU — also confirmed he was not short-listed and said he was disappointed by the school’s decision.

Former BU men’s and women’s assistant coach Steve Baur — now the assistant men’s coach at Acadia — applied for the job but was also not short-listed, Baur confirmed.
Mike Raimbault, who served as Craddock’s assistant the past two seasons, has been short-listed, according to sources. A message for Raimbault was not immediately returned Tuesday.

Craddock made no secret of the fact that Raimbault would be his pick to succeed him, but BU athletics director Rick Nickelchok said any recommendations are taken with a grain of salt.

“These decisions are committee decisions, so I certainly respect his opinion but a committee will decide who the best replacement is,” Nickelchok said. “I’m not taking anything away from Barnaby. That’s just the way the process is.”

Nickelchok did not divulge an exact number, but said the quantity of resumes submitted was more than in past years. When Craddock was hired two years ago, Nickelchok told the Brandon Sun at the time that there were 20 applications received.

“It was a very healthy number of applications,” Nickelchok said. “More so than past years.”

This time around, the job was posted as a one-year term position, meaning the school will have to re-post the job nationally again next year. After Craddock quit, the school was rushed into a hiring process and Nickelchok said that was the reason BU decided to be non-committal past this coming season. The school is now looking for its fourth head coach in five years.

“The one-year term is based on the timing of the process, the lateness in the year,” Nickelchok said. “A lot of the candidates that could be interested are already committed for the upcoming year. So, recognizing that, we want to make sure that we do have the opportunity to reach as many candidates as possible and that would not happen at this time of year. ...

“We’re looking for the best person to take the program. We’ve got an excellent team that’s in place for next year and my thought is we should be challenging for a championship again.

"Next year is as important as subsequent years to the program. We want to do well on the court as well as off the court, so we’re going to find the best individual that will lead the program on the interim basis and see how things fall out beyond that.”

Another source said none of the final four from the process two years ago — which were Lakeland College coach Phil Allen, former St. Francis Xavier X-Women coach Doc Ryan and Concordia University College Thunder coach Todd Warnick — were among the applicants. Warnick, for one, confirmed to the Sun that he did not apply.

More BU babble

Anyone who followed this space or — if you're in southwestern Manitoba — the actual pages of the Brandon Sun this past week knows the transition phase that Brandon University currently finds itself.

The men's basketball coach has accepted a job in British Columbia and the athletic director, according to my sources, was interviewed for the vacant AD position at Acadia University.

Here's just a couple of random points from me on both of those issues:

MEN'S BASKETBALL COACH

THE IDEA: A rumbling that I'm hearing is that perhaps the university — which will be posting the job nationally — might be interested in hiring a one-year interim coach and then open the procedure again next spring/summer when there would, conceivably, be more time to do a thorough search.

• THE ARGUMENT:
First off, the university has had oodles of collective-agreement battles over the past few years related to how it has hired its employees. Rightly or wrongly, the university has been challenged on its hiring processes in the past and, I would argue, the idea of hiring a person on a one-year basis, would creep dangerously close to raising another red flag to someone willing to challenge the move, should it happen. For that reason, I don't see BU doing this.

The thought is that, because it is so late in the off-season (although anyone who is aware of Brandon's hiring knows the university has had to deal with late interviewing before) the chance is there for the school to hire assistant coach Mike Raimbault. Barnaby Craddock, the former coach, is a big fan of Raimbault's and would certainly be pushing hard to have him as his replacement.
THE REALITY:I consider Raimbault a friend and I've found him to be a very smart Xs and Os coach in the short time I've known him. However, I don't see BU simply accepting a one-year set-up with Raimbault as a stop-gap until 2008. I think this job will be opened up and BU will go through its normal procedures for hiring.

Then, I would suspect you're going to see a number of young coaches in the running. I think BU would be more likely to hire an up-and-comer who it could get to stick around and perhaps plant roots in the city. That said, there are a number of young coaches who would love to get the chance to have their first job to be inheriting a very talented team that has a chance to make a run at a national. I won't divulge, at this time, the names that are being bantered about here early on but suffice to say there's already a few who, if I were BU, I'd be more than happy to hire.

THE ATHLETIC DIRECTOR

First off, Rick Nickelchok has every right to pursue other interests ahead of the expiration of his contract next summer. I would suggest the ball is in BU's court and if the university is interested in keeping him, it'd be best served to do whatever possible to make him know he's a wanted commodity in the Wheat City.

Carleton and Acadia are just two schools that have put the Help Wanted signs in their windows advertising for AD jobs. But Nickelchok also has a background with national amateur sports so I don't think by any means he'd be confined to a university setting.

He told the Sun that his interest was to stay in Brandon and a few sources have told me he will not be getting the Acadia job.

The men's basketball position has not yet been posted although I'd expect that to happen some time this week. As for the AD job, my gut tells me you won't have to think about that position at BU for at least 10 or 11 months.

More headlines

Another series of articles on the Brandon University basketball situation
BU Back to Square 1
BY DAVID LARKINS
Three factors combined to convince Barnaby Craddock that his time in Brandon was done.

The now former head coach of the Brandon University Bobcats men’s basketball team was officially introduced as the new head man for the Fraser Valley Cascades Wednesday, one day after a Brandon Sun story first reported the move to bring Craddock to the Abbotsford, B.C., campus was imminent. In fact, the announcement came earlier than originally planned when news leaked that Craddock had been offered the position.

But Craddock said Wednesday that the financial commitment from UCFV, a heightened workload that was being placed on him by BU and a chance to work closer to his native Vancouver all conspired to make his decision.

“Of course (the job) piqued my interested and at the time I had just been given a full teaching load at BU, which was more teaching than I done the previous two years, so that wasn’t making me any happier,” he said.

“But the chance to get back to B.C. was tempting ... eventually they upped their (offer). They made me an offer that became enough to get me out there and combined with the family and the location.”

Still, that decision wasn’t easy.

“I feel pretty strongly about all the guys on this team, so it was a bit heartbreaking. But hopefully over the long run I’ll know it was the right decision,” he said.

Craddock informed many of his players on Tuesday of his decision and — this is what Bobcat fans want to know — said he has no intention of taking any of his recruits or current players away from the BU program.

“I think there’s zero per cent chance of that,” he said. “The guys are all vocal in coming back to the program.”

Winnipeg high school all-stars Kyle Vince and Kevin Oliver committed months ago and Craddock says he still expects them to honour that commitment. Also expected in camp in September is former Manitoba Bisons point guard Tarik Tokar and Toronto product Martin Lawrence, an athletic 6-foot-7 big who played senior men’s basketball in the city last year but is more than capable of making the jump to the university game.

So with presumably a solid returning core that led the team to within three points of a national championship, the BU job should be a coveted one by out-of-work or upwardly mobile coaches in Canada. But with the Bobcats again searching for their third men’s head coach in the past four years, the BU job is suddenly appearing like a stepping stone for coaches, rather than a place to settle.

“There are challenges at Brandon than are different than many other schools,” BU director of athletics Rick Nickelchok said, citing the fact that coaches are faculty members and required to teach as well as coach and then go through a tenure process that he called “difficult.”

“It means they must go through a difficult tenure process to secure the security in their jobs and that is something that most schools don’t have to worry about.”

Speculation on who will be in line to make the move to Brandon has already started, but Craddock covets assistant coach Mike Raimbault to take over where he left off. Raimbault is among a few young coaches who have been linked to the position already.

“There is still some good news. It’s not that all of a sudden we’re lost in this process,” Nickelchok said. “There is continuity ... We still have Mike in the program and he’s going to stay in the program and Mike has come highly recommended by Barnaby in the past.”

Craddock echoed Nickelchok’s sentiments.

“Selfishly I’d like to see that be Mike Raimbault, to be honest with you,” Craddock said. “He’s a local guy that this would be his dream job. He’s from Brandon and he’d like to be here long-term, so I’d like to think that somehow this will work out for Mike and you might have a coach that’s here for a long, extended period of time.”

In an ironic twist, the Cascades will make their first-ever appearance in Brandon on Jan. 4, 2008, making Craddock’s homecoming the first game of the new year for both teams.

One of Craddock’s close friends joked with him that the reunion won’t exactly come with a ticker tape parade.

“... As for the Jan. 4 game, (women’s volleyball head coach) Lee Carter told me that he was going to jump out of the crowd and throw a tomato at me, so I’m a little scared to be honest with you on that,” he said.

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AD could be next
BY DAVID LARKINS
By the end of this week, Brandon University could be out a men’s basketball coach as well as an athletic director.

Multiple sources requesting anonymity have confirmed to the Brandon Sun that BU director of athletics Rick Nickelchok has been interviewed for the vacant AD position at Acadia University.

Nickelchok’s interest in Acadia was first published in a Brandon Sun article on Wednesday that broke the story of the University College of Fraser Valley’s hiring of BU men’s basketball coach Barnaby Craddock. Nickelchok, whose contract at BU is set to expire next summer, would not confirm that he applied for the Acadia position but seemed to intimate that he is open to pursuing other opportunities.

“I’m in the last year of my contract and I have to go through a tenure process and I think at this stage of my contract I have a responsibility to my family to explore what options are available to me,” he said. “That’s where I am right now.”

A highly-placed source in Canadian Interuniversity Sport told the Sun that Nickelchok was a person Acadia was impressed with, but that AU alumnus Brian Heaney — a basketball analyst on TSN — is a front-runner for the job based on his national clout and connection to the school.

Nickelchok also denied he was trying to leverage tenure status out of BU by going after other positions.

“I think there’s a process in the collective agreement,” he said. “I don’t see any possibility of not following that process ... The university can’t not go through that process. I have to do what I need to do to look after my own personal best interests.”

Nickelchok reiterated his desire to stay in the city where he has lived since August, 2003.

“Yes, definitely,” he said.

An announcement from Acadia is expected either late this week or early next week.

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Bobcats left high and dry

Barnaby Craddock will be back coaching in the Brandon University gymnasium after all.

You’ll just have to circle Jan. 4, 2008 on your calendar in order to see it.

That’s the day the Fraser Valley Cascades will make their first-ever trip to Brandon for a men’s basketball game that will now, ironically, feature Craddock coaching on the opposite bench he’s worked for the past two seasons.

Craddock is leaving BU in favour of heading closer to his hometown. We’ve heard this tune before, roughly two months before Craddock took the job vacated in 2005 by an off-to-greener-pastures Les Berry, who bolted back to his native Nova Scotia.

We’ll resist the desire to rehash the words from the story that ran in the May 12, 2005 edition, but the similarities are clear.

Craddock said it was a difficult decision to leave the team he led to the national championship game and one that he agonized over for a number of days. That would seem to be true given the fact UCFV reportedly had to sweeten its offer to finally convince Craddock to make the leap.

And while Berry and Craddock both headed home — or at least closer to home — for cherished opportunities, BU has been the one left to wonder “what now?”

BU director of athletics Rick Nickelchok — perhaps himself not long for the Wheat City after purportedly interviewing for a job at Acadia — acknowledged in today’s edition of the Sun that the challenges are greater for BU to have a coach stick around because of the teaching workload and difficulty of obtaining tenure.

The workload was a factor in Craddock’s departure; The tenure a factor in Berry’s exodus.

And obviously those issues are pretty prevalent considering Craddock was willing to pass up the chance to coach a potential national contender again in favour of joining a school in more disarray than Brandon.

You see, UCFV is the school that — in order to jive with Canada West conference regulations — dismissed the two men handling the coaching duties because one of them, Pat Lee, was not a full-time, on-campus coach and then, according to Lee, didn’t have the class to inform him to his face that his services were not going to be retained.

The school is also lacking a full-time athletic director and — did we mention — Craddock will take over a sophomore program in the toughest division in the conference that missed the playoffs with a 6-17 record last season.

As was written in that opinion piece way back in May of 2005, you can’t hate a man for taking a rare chance to be somewhere he always wanted to be. But as was the case in 2005, so too it is in 2007 when a number of people are left angered by once again being left in the dust by a coach who used BU as a springboard to bigger and better things.

Animosity towards Craddock, however, is misguided considering the above. He is an emotional coach who took the wins in stride and the losses to heart. And he undoubtedly struggled to leave behind a group of players he truly loved and went to the wall with.

The university wanted to keep Craddock, but its idea of enticing him was apparently to heap a larger off-court workload on him. If you love him, you’ve got a funny way of showing it.

Memo to BU’s decision-makers: Rooting down in Brandon isn’t exactly what everyone in this country has in mind for themselves. Sometimes you have to actually make the situation a little more likable. Craddock is not the coach of the Brandon men’s basketball team because a better offer came along.

Followers of this team over the years have been spoiled because they had a coach who was committed to staying, had a family and set up shop in town for the long haul.

Now that three coaches have done the job since Jerry Hemmings, perhaps it’s becoming clear that coaching basketball in Brandon isn’t the crown jewel of jobs in Canadian university sports after all: An environment ripe with politicking, less job security and more labour.

Whether we’re writing this exact same story next year, or the year after, is likely dependent on whether or not the school realizes it too has extra work to do.
-30-

Cats searching

An article that appeared in today's Brandon Sun regarding the Brandon University men's basketball coaching situation.

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Just when the Brandon University athletics department was starting to get back to a state of normalcy and consistency, rumours are swirling that there are major moves afoot in the staff.

Multiple anonymous sources have told the Brandon Sun that Bobcats men’s basketball head coach Barnaby Craddock has accepted the head coaching position at the University College of Fraser Valley, leaving a team he took to the national championship final in March once again looking to fill its top job.

Craddock, reached at his office at BU, declined comment yesterday.

However, a well-placed West Coast Canadian university source familiar with the situation confirmed that Craddock has been offered the Fraser Valley job, with an announcement expected sometime today.

Meanwhile, CIS sources have also told the Sun that BU athletic director Rick Nickelchok is in the running for the vacant AD position at Acadia University, where former Bobcat men’s and women’s basketball coach Les Berry is currently serving as the head men’s coach. Nickelchok, a source said, was shortlisted and interviewed for the position last week.

Calls to Nickelchok’s office and cell phone were not immediately returned.

If Craddock, head coach for the past two seasons, does bolt BUfor the Fraser Valley Cascades in Abbotsford, B.C., it will mean the Bobcats will be looking for a men’s basketball head coach for the fifth time in the past six years.

The Canadian Interuniversity Sport coach of the year this past season, Craddock led the Bobcats to a 20-2 Canada West conference record, a No. 1-ranking that they held for a total of five weeks and carried into the national final where they lost a 52-49 decision to the five-time defending champion Carleton Ravens.

The Cascades, meanwhile, played their first season in the CIS in 2006-07, finished in fourth place with a 6-17 record in the Pacific Division and missed the playoffs. At Fraser Valley, Craddock would inherit a Cascades team that won three national collegiate titles before making the jump to the university ranks.

The Cascades worked under a tandem coaching unit of Pat Lee and Tom Antil, but the university-college was concerned that the coaching situation didn’t adhere to CIS conditions, which state coaches are to be involved in on-campus coaching, a term which Lee — a high school counselor — was unable to fulfill completely.

According to the Abbotsford News, Lee was offered the full-time job last spring, but the two sides were unable to reach a viable agreement.

Craddock is originally from Vancouver and its believed that the location of the UCFV job — located 64 kilometres southeast of Vancouver — and recruiting potential were enticing factors.

“In the minds of a lot of coaches, the best place to coach is out west,” said one CIS source who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “The two biggest (assets) would be the recruiting pool would be a lot bigger, that would be one thing for sure, and maybe just the location. It’d be easier to do things whether to travel to the States or attract teams out there. It might be easier to build a program.”

Craddock took over the BU men’s position in 2005 from Berry, who coached one season after leading the women’s team. Prior to that, Reggie Carrick was a one-year interim coach in 2003-04 when he was coaching in place of longtime coach Jerry Hemmings, who was on sabbatical at the time.

There was no word Tuesday on the status of recruits for the Bobcats. Craddock had made it official in the winter that Winnipeg high school standouts Kyle Vince and Kevin Oliver had committed to BU, while it was rumoured that Vancouver product Bol Kong, a 6-foot-7 slasher, was coming to Brandon if he was unable to secure the necessary paperwork to play in the United States. The Bobcats were also reportedly in the running for the services of point guard Adrian Sapp, a product of Vanier College and a former teammate of current Bobcat Nathan Grant.

In addition Adam Philpott, a Neelin grad, was expected to transfer to BU after spending two seasons at Acadia.

Kobe beef

There has been a strong precedent set that Kobe Bryant really, really thrives on controversy.

Since his first few formative years in the NBA after breaking into the league from high school, Bryant has always seemed a short jump shot away from some of the most contentious issues that hit the sports world.

From his Colorado rape case, to his perceived role in Shaquille O'Neal being traded — and the inevitable break up of the dynastical Lakers — to the eternal debate of his role as a team player, Bryant naturally gravitates toward controversy. Certainly he can thank himself for some of this, the rest of it is just a product of being arguably the biggest superstar in the basketball world.

No one, however, is to blame but Kobe himself for the most recent spat of publicity that has everyone in the basketball world talking, a topic big enough that it trumped the NBA Finals. Kobe blindsided almost everyone who follows the NBA recently by requesting a trade from the only team for which he has ever played. Hours later, on ESPN's Dan Patrick Show, Kobe back-pedalled slightly and confessed that a conversation with head coach Phil Jackson helped him to step back from the bombshell he had uttered earlier on Steven A. Smith's show.

Here's what he told Patrick:

He's optimistic and determined that we'll both be back. Phil's somebody that I listen to. I listen to heavily. I lean on him a lot. He assured me, saying, you know, "Things are going to be okay. Things will be alright. Don't go full bore just yet. Just take a deep breath, kind of let us work these things out and everything will be alright." Which was very encouraging for me to hear, because I don't want to go any place else. I don't want to. I want to be a Laker. I want to be here for the rest of my career."

But when it's someone of Kobe's stature involved, the story has to remain in the media even if those reporting it have flubbed it up. The Associated Press released a story Sunday quoting Kobe's web site as such:

Kobe Bryant implied again that he wants to be traded, writing on his website that ‘‘the Lakers and me just have two different visions for the future."

Only thing being, that if anyone paid attention Kobe Bryant did not "imply again." In fact, the post that the AP ran with was the exact same post Kobe left on his web site back in May. The topic being Bryant, it naturally caught on like a wildfire and the Kobe trade story was once again front-page news.

Luckily, the Los Angeles Daily News, for one, cleared things up for everyone.

Kobe Bryant is a smart guy. He knows what he's doing and he's a fiery competitor, one of the most determined athletes playing in the NBA. I suggest if you put all those traits together, you'll see what's really happening here.

Bryant knows the Lakers can't and won't win a championship in the near future with the lineup they have and going in the direction the organization has taken the team since Shaq's departure. He also knows he's the most prized commodity in the NBA and the Lakers are mortified at any thought he wouldn't be in royal purple and gold.

So by bullying the team in the media, threatening to leave if things don't get done to make this team a winner right away, Kobe has done more to motivate a change in the ideology of the Lakers than general manager Mitch Kupchak has done in years.

So while everyone is clamouring to write the "Where will Kobe go?" stories and fans are tripping over themselves on their way to ESPN's Trade Machine to crunch the numbers and see if it's possible he could end up on their favourite team, Kobe is running an NBA front office more efficiently than some of the GMs trying so desperately to grab him.

Certainly the possibility exists that Kobe will play somewhere other than L.A. and if the Lakers drag their feet and don't rush to make their most significant player happy, that possibility will increase drastically. But combine Kobe's ability, the Lakers desperation to keep him and an idle threat and you're likely to see the L.A. front office amp up its efforts to find some talent to surround the league's best player.

However, if a few years from now the Lakers are back in a position to win an NBA championship, remember this summer as the year that Kobe Bryant did as much off the floor to return his team to the league's elite as he often does on it.

And remember that he meant it that way all along.

Common: A Dream

One the greatest things to ever happen to hip hop is Common. Here's one of many reasons why.

Lesson learned

The Brandon Sun website is a subscriber-only site, meaning much of what I write in the paper isn't accessible to you Internet folks.

On Tuesday, the Sun lost an important and loved member of its family when sports editor Mike Jones passed away suddenly at the age of 49. Around the city of Brandon and Westman region, Mike was known simply as Jonesy and rarely referred to as anything else.

Jonesy's presence in the community was rooted in more than 25 years of devoting himself to covering the people of the area and the stories they had. I often remarked at the difference between my job here in Brandon and past daily newspapers I've worked at because Jonesy — and by extension us staffers — was vigilant about keeping track of athletes in all sports no matter where they went when they left the confines of our corner of the province. That is something that simply doesn't get done in many other papers. In a tight-knit community such as Brandon and area, I always thought it significant that Jonesy truly cared about keeping people informed about their neighbours, like the entire region was a family who cared about what all the others were doing.

His committment to his craft — he was a stickler for clean copy and well-produced material — was outdone only by his committment to the people who surrounded him, whether it be his staff or the many, many contacts and friends he made over his career that spanned three decades.

So, because of the subscriber issue on the Sun web site I have posted my article on Jonesy simply because I wanted to share my thoughts. I hope you appreciate where that sentiment comes from.

Jonesy will be missed.

---

By David Larkins
At the risk of uttering something that comes off as cliché and overused: Mike Jones taught me more about sportswriting in four years than I had ever learned in nearly 10 years working in this industry prior to joining the Brandon Sun.

It is a standardized statement, for sure, when someone close to you passes on to laud their importance and impact on your own life, but with the man I only ever referred to as Jonesy, this is not some simple platitude. Even before his sudden and stunning death Tuesday, I thought about this on many occasions and told others how infinitely better I had become at this job because I had the chance to work under him.

But nothing I’ve ever learned has taught me how to write something like this.

The thing that I always loved about working here was the freedom we are granted to allow our personality and sense of humour to shine through in our work. Jonesy would never hold you back on what you wanted to do creatively and, in an industry that so often can be so stale, that is such a welcome trait.

Perhaps the reason that freedom was granted was because Jonesy’s laissez-faire attitude shone through in so many of the things he did. He cared deeply about the things he was passionate about and that should never be mistaken, but he also understood that, at the end of the day, what remained important was making sure you appreciated and enjoyed the ride along the way.

That attitude perhaps was most apparent on the golf course where Jonesy always wanted the best results, but would not sacrifice all the other things that made his love for the game what it was.

I remember distinctly Jonesy telling me a few years back that when he drove through the gates at the Clear Lake golf course that, at that point, he was in absolute heaven. It was his place to lose himself, his place to be most content. I have thought about that brief conversation a lot over the past couple of days with the annual Grey Owl tournament slated to start Friday and Jonesy anxiously anticipating once again being in his element.

For all the hundreds of people who will tee off in the tournament, it will be tinged with sorrow by the one man who won’t.

Often pointed — and never, ever wavering — in his writing, the passion that showed up in newsprint was precisely what you’d get if he was there telling it to your face. Again, in this business, it’s a quality so often sought yet not often found, and I sincerely hope the people of this region realize the fervour and affection Mike Jones had for bringing these stories to them on a daily basis.

An old back-and-white photo of Jonesy swinging a golf club remains on a bulletin board behind his desk here at the office. It’s a reminder of the man when he was no doubt at his happiest.

My memories will be of him at moments like that. They will be images of him laughing in his familiar way along with his natural and endearing love for the simple pleasures of life.

Those memories, simple as they are, will forever be with me.

The loss is stunning. It is utterly difficult and painful to deal with.

Still, I will count myself fortunate that, from here on out, any and every time I put pen to pad I’m allowed to remember one man who impacted me on so many levels.

David Larkins has been a Sun sports reporter since 2003. He can be reached at 571-7386 or dlarkins@brandonsun.com

Faded memories

It's been a long time since I've posted and certainly there's any number of things I could have ranted about. But I never really felt the inspiration and this post can't even really be considered one given what I'm about to do.

There.

As I told someone earlier, when I read something really good I want other people to read it too. ESPN.com's Bill Simmons writes about the faded memories of great NBA players, memories that are quickly replaced by the current stars. It's something I've repeatedly ranted about in the "they don't make 'em like they used to" argument but I think Simmons' version hits the nail on the head.