A Vodka and Pony Show?

 It was with great surprise on Friday afternoon that I noticed tiny little Fonner Park in Grand Island, Nebraska had made national news and cracked FOXSports main page. A veterinarian at the track has been accused of injecting horses with vodka to calm their pre-race nerves. Y'know, just a little nudge to take the edge off.

As I mentioned on this blog last May, Fonner Park was my home away from home in college, the place where I cut my teeth as a punter and fell in love with the Kentucky Derby via simulcast. But a den of cheats and sharps? Never!

Okay, I'm not really that surprised. If Churchill Downs is the mother church of thoroughbred racing then FON is a drive-thru wedding chapel. They both operate under the same basic rules, but the powers that be are a lot more invested in one over the other. I won't claim that horse racing is corrupt as a whole, but there are literally hundreds of these little "bull rings" throughout the country and it would be naive to think that-- hundreds of miles away from the big money of Kentucky, New York and California--there isn't some sort of foul play afoot some of the time.

When I used to frequent the track, the meet was dominated by two or three jockeys and as many trainers. (Jockey Ken Shino made SportsCenter in 2000 by winning 8 races on a 10-race card.) But with a large portion of the meet made up of four-furlong races for $5K claimers there were quite a few longshot stories as well. With horses that low on the thorougbred pay scale, you constantly had to wonder if everything was on the square and level. Quite simply, there was almost always more financial motivation for a trainer, jockey or owner to win a race than to maintain a horse's health and that's the sad reality of small time horse racing.

Just how cheap are these horses? Well, according to the Omaha World-Herald, the vet in question used Phillips brand vodka on his horses. In Lexington the horses eat better than I do, but in Grand Island, well, they can't even get the good stuff.

Weary Blues from Waitin'

Last night Missouri Valley Conference heavyweight Southern Illinois continued their dominance over Creighton, winning 58-57, marking the Salukis' seventh straight win over the Jays. SIU is the only visiting team to have won two games at the four-year-old Qwest Center and they simply don't lose at home so the odds of Creighton getting this one back are slim to none.

The Valley is still sort of a hot-button issue in college basketball. How good is the conference? Has it grown to the point where the selection committee will recognize its depth and reward the teams who finish in the top third like they do with the major conferences? The MVC resume is again worthy with a lofty RPI and some big non-conference wins earlier in the year, but I think the parity may actually short a few teams some bids when it's all said and done.

This spells bad news for Creighton. Coming into the season this was supposed to be the best Bluejay team of the Dana Altman era. Most of the preseason magazines had Creighton ranked in the Top 25 to start the season and they were the pick to win the Valley, but after last night's game they're one of three teams in the conference with three-losses looking up at Northern Iowa.

At this point it looks like the Jays will need to win either the regular season title or at least make the conference tourney title game to have a realistic shot at the Big Dance. Creighton is a good team, but they're not a special team like many of us thought coming in.

As a one-time student and current fan of Creighton University, this is distressing. For the third or fourth time this season, Creighton set an attendance record last night for a college basketball game in the state of Nebraska. The crowd of 17, 459 was larger than the one that watched the Nebraska women's volleyball team win the national title just a few months ago. Creighton is literally the toast of Omaha right now, but that's more alarming than reassuring.

It's been a bull market for Bluejay basketball for a while now, but the Creighton stock still seems to be trading at the same value it was four or five years ago: a 19-20 win team that will finish near the top of their conference and perennially be on the tournament bubble. Now that's progress from where CU was at in the mid-90's, but I still feel like this team should be taking the next step.

The level of recruits should be getting better, but thus far it hasn't. Dana Altman has turned down numerous offers from major conference teams over the past five years, at least implying that he believes the program hasn't topped out, but the results speak differently.

When I was a freshmen in college and foolish enough to think that I could walk on at a Division I program, Creighton practiced in a place actually called the "Old Gym," their weight room was tiny and we would jog through the streets of north Omaha to get to an abandoned high school track overgrown with weeds for preseason conditioning. After getting pink-slipped by Altman himself, my roommate and I had to beg fellow students to head to the Civic Auditorium with us for games.

Now you're lucky if you can get a ticket, but the team doesn't seem that much better than the 98-99 lineup that I tried to crack. That team went 22-9, won the MVC tourney and beat Louisville in the first round of the NCAA tournament, which is about what we expected out of this year's edition of the Jays.

At this point, if they come close to achieving one of those milestones it will feel like a success.

Baseless and Biased NFL Picks

I was six-years-old back when the Patriots and Bears met in Super Bowl XX and the only thing I remember was Jim McMahon's headband from the pregame introductions. (Literally, I can't even remember if I watched the game or not, but that image sticks for some reason.) I'm desperately seeking a rematch, not only because I've never been invested in a Super Bowl as a fan (Bears), but also because I'm not quite ready to be set adrift in the sea of NBA and NHL all-star game coverage yet. Even two-weeks of Super Bowl fluff from the local-media would be preferable to reading more about Paul Pierce's expected return date.

Despite all historical indicators pointing to the Patriots, popular sentiment seems to say that it's finally the Colts time to shine and I pretty much agree with that...but I'm still taking the Patriots. You just don't give a team like this, as overmatched as they may be physically, more chips to pile on their shoulders. Remember, nobody puts Brady in a corner.

As for why I'm taking the Bears, aside from they're my team, I've got nothing. The defense seems to be cracking, they're facing the best offense in the league, they have a wild card at quarterback and winning would mean that Chicago doesn't care about relief efforts down on the bayou. I guess I'll just hope that dome teams continue to fail out of doors in the playoffs.

And finally...thank God for Sunday morning Premiereship action on Fox Soccer Channel. All season long it's provided the perfect preamble to the NFL games to come and today we've got a match befitting of championship Sunday: Arsenal-Manchester United.