WASHINGTON, D.C. Federal Reserve Chairman Benjamin Bernanke sent the stock market soaring today as he announced an immediate reduction in the number of post-season college football games, saying that "bowl inflation" was undermining the sport.
Bernanke: "Senator, did you even know there was a Poinsettia Bowl?"
Addressing Congress later in the day, Bernanke decried what he termed a "bowl bubble" that had been blown up by the demand for male-oriented holiday television content. The time would soon come, he warned, when teams with sub-.500 records would get bowl bids.
"If there's a bowl game on today, the office can't be open."
"Demand for televised sports events has increased exponentially over the past five decades as idle male workers, seeking to avoid gainful employment during the last payroll period of the year, cite network 'bowl' designations as a basis for deferring or avoiding altogether the manual labor that must be performed in order for worker productivity to return to normal yadda-yadda-yadda," Bernanke said in the dry, academic style favored by central bankers.
"Uh, yeh, I've got like a fever and an upset stomach, so I won't be in today."
Equity traders took the bowl reduction as a sign that the productivity would increase, and placed heavy bets in the manufacturing and service sectors. "With fewer bowls," said Craig Fiske of J.T. Edmunds Securities, "there's less absenteeism in Q4 and less water-cooler ####-chat in Q1."
Gator Bowl: The beginning of the end.
After the hearing Bernanke relaxed a bit, visibly exhausted by the volatility he has presided over in his first year as Fed chairman. "When I was a boy there were four major bowls--Rose, Orange, Cotton and Sugar," he told reporters. "Each had a basic commodity in it and that meant you didn't have runaway bowl growth. New fruits and vegetables don't pop up every day, you know."
The beginning of the end came with the Gator Bowl, he said. "Nobody eats alligators, nobody grows alligators--alligators contribute nothing to the economy. Now you've got bowl games named after towns like Fort Worth that don't have a friggin' Starbucks, fer chrissake!"
MOBILE, Alabama. It's half-time of the final game of the season for the Winn-Dixie Pee-Wee Falcons, and the long faces on the eight year-old players reflect the fact that they're down 12-0 to their opponents, the Continental Motors GMC-Pontiac Jets. As parents bring plastic bottles of sports drinks to their children, Rob McGurt, an Assistant Professor of History at the University of South Alabama, tries to put together an inspirational talk to motivate his team.
Go Falcons!
"I'm kinda new at this," he confesses to a reporter. "One of the coaches has an out-of-state Thanksgiving dinner to go to, and the other went into the hospital for an emergency appendectomy this morning."
McGurt has a son--Robbie--who loves football, but the bespectacled academic has no interest in contact sports himself and so has limited his previous volunteer activities on behalf of the team to minivan driver. About to make what is probably the most important speech in young Robbie's life, he finds himself ill-prepared for the role of extemporaneous Knute Rockne.
"Win one for the Gipper, or at least your hamster."
All McGurt has to go on is a newspaper clipping he tore out of the Mobile Press-Register in which Alabama head coach Nick Saban is quoted as saying that his team's loss to small-time Louisiana-Monroe was a "catastrophe" comparable to the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, or the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
Nick Saban: Master of Football Metaphors.
"He's the top coach in the state, so I guess he would know how to get his players fired up," McGurt says, as he takes several 3 by 5 inch cards out of his back pocket, clears his throat, and begins to speak.
"Fellas," he begins. "We're down twelve to nothing right now. I hope you realize what that means."
"We have to score twice and make an extra point," says Derrick MacClary, a speedy half-back who returns punts and kick-offs for the Falcons.
"It's a little bit bigger than that," McGurt says with a bit of an edge in his voice.
The kids are quiet except for Rodney Taylor, Jr., the "monster man" in the Falcons' defense, who burps loudly as a result of guzzling his sports drink.
"You guys have probably heard of the Crusades, where the Christians tried to take Jerusalem away from the . . . uh . . . Turks--or somebody. Well, it's like that."
"We learned about Jerusalem at Vacation Bible School," says Joe Markey, an undersized boy who has been pressed into service at guard and defensive tackle because he's not fast enough to be a back. "And we made stuff out of gimp."
Gimp
Joe shows off his cool bracelet to the other kids, distracting them from the stirring lecture McGurt has begun.
"Kids, I need to you to focus," the coach-for-a-day continues. "We're down twelve points, so it's a two-score game," he says, holding up his index and middle fingers. "Anybody ever heard of World War II?
The Gap Band, of "You Dropped a Bomb on Me" fame.
"Is that the one where we dropped the bomb on the Japs?" Robbie asks his dad.
Tyrone Beasley begins to sing The Gap Band hit "You Dropped a Bomb on Me", and the other kids laugh at his disco-era dance moves.
"Tyrone, cut it out," McGurt snaps, and the boys become silent again. "What those guys"--McGurt points across the field at the Jets--"did to you in the first half was a tragedy of the sort we haven't seen since--the Spanish Inquisition."
Spanish Inquisition: "Let me know if this hurts."
Hector Ramirez, a pudgy boy of Mexican heritage, raises his hand.
"Yes, Hector?"
"If you have a question in Spanish I can answer it, Coach McGurt."
"Thanks, Hector, but I'm pretty good at slinging the como estas's around myself."
McGurt flips to his final note card, and resumes. "Anyway--you kids have got to put this game in perspective. You've got to understand that it's on a scale with the D-Day Invasion, the polio epidemic, and the explosion of the Challenger Space Shuttle."
The kids soak in McGurt's inspiring historical precendents as the referee approaches and directs the Falcons to line up for the second-half kick-off.
"Okay--you guys ready?" McGurt fairly screams, the veins visible on his forehead.
"I'm not," says Joe Markey.
"Why not?" McGurt asks, his voice as stern as a Marine drill sergeant's.
INDIANAPOLIS. Indiana State Police say they have arrested two computers assigned to Bowl Championship Series details following a "sting" operation in which undercover agents offered to trade sex and additional memory for improved BCS rankings.
"Oh yes, that's it, under there . . ."
"This is a direct assault on the integrity of the Bowl Championship Series and the NCAA brand," said NCAA President Myles Brand, "and since I'm the NCAA Brand, I take that personally."
Brand: "That's a stupid question! Next--"
According to investigators, BCS computers were approached by "cheerleaders" from slumping Division I schools who offered to "service their hardware" and "give them some memory". A transaction was arranged in which the computer's four kilobyte random access memory would be expanded to 48 kilobytes by an "Expansion Interface" in exchange for the creation of loopholes comparable to the "Notre Dame Exception" for big college teams on the bubble.
Radio Shack TRS-80: That's what I'm talkin' 'bout!
A complicated set of rules is used to determine which teams compete in the BCS bowl games. Certain teams are given automatic berths depending on their "bad" cholesterol, average miles per gallon (highway), and SAT Biology test scores. After the automatic berths have been granted, the remaining "at-large" berths are filled from a pool of teams whose alumni reserve the most hotel rooms in BCS bowl cities.
"Can't you do something about Penn State? My mother-in-law went there."
Computer-generated rankings are supplemented by human polls, which are viewed as immune to the sort of sexual favor-swapping that was the downfall of the BCS computers. "I####uy's really into college football," said Sergeant Dan Hampe of the Indiana State Police, "he won't be interested in sex until after the National Championship Game."
PARK RIDGE, Illinois. Bowing to pressure from the Association of Secondary School Math Instructors, the Big 10 Conference today admitted that it in fact has eleven member schools, and agreed to change its name to the "Big 11" beginning with the 2009 football season.
Or maybe it's twelve.
"We have historically counted our members using our fingers, but apparently that doesn't cut it anymore," said Commissioner James E. Delany in a bitter concession speech to reporters here. "We hired a guy with a solar-powered calculator a few years back to check our numbers, but he worked indoors all the time so his thingamabob was on the fritz."
"The Buckeyes have used the run successfully on first and 11."
The eleven member schools of the "Big 10" Conference are Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Michigan State, Minnesota, Northwestern, Ohio State, Penn State, Purdue and Wisconsin. Penn State was added in 1990, "but somebody forgot to carry the one" according to Dwight Huggins, an algebra teacher in Danville, Illinois, who has led the charge to persuade the league to have its name accurately reflect the rules of arithmetic. "Our students will need to compete in a global economy," Huggins explained. "I can just imagine the snickers they're gonna get someday when they apply for a job at an accounting firm."
"He hits the hole and improves his GPA to 3.98 yards per semester!"
Insiders suggested that Northwestern, the "smart" school in the conference, had tipped off federal Department of Education officials who threatened the league with the loss of a Bowl Championship Series spot if it did not correct its error. "They've only won the conference football championship eight times in a hundred and ten years," said Lyle Koster, who covers the Big 10 for College Football Today. "That's like what--once every twenty years?"
KALISPELL, Montana. Joe Ray Diggs, head coach of the Western Montana State University Mountain Goats, is regularly mentioned when a school with aspirations on cracking college football's top rankings is looking for someone to turn its team around. For his part, he makes no secret of his aspirations. "I love Mountain Goat football," he says, "but I'd love to get a chance to coach a BCS team on New Year's Day."
"You guys are tackling like a bunch of English majors today!"
Last year Diggs led the Goats to 7-5 record and a come-from-behind win over Middle Kentucky State in the Craftsman Weed Wacker Bowl, a victory that he thought would result in a raise and an upgrade in the facilities he needs to attract top recruits. "Two of our fans who had a little too much to drink sprained their ankles on the same play," he recalls, "and the Weed Wacker people sent out a separate motorized cart for each of them."
Ridin' in style.
Diggs contrasts that type of top-quality service with the primitive vehicle he must make do with for home games. "They gave one of the ag students a scholarship on the condition that he bring his vegetable cart to school with him," Diggs says, shaking his head. "Sometimes there's no room for a middle linebacker if he's got a load of potatoes on there."
What he has to work with.
Like a number of other up-and-coming college football coaches, Diggs is taking a hard look at the budgets of other departments at his school, trying to find areas where they can cut back in order to cover his $400,000 salary, plus the other items he considers "essential" if Mountain Goat football is to succeed. "I tell our alumni, the problem is simple--we don't pay our players enough."
"If we could pay our players more, you'd see more scoring on Saturdays."
Diggs' game plan? To attack the weakest spot in the arts and sciences line. "That would be the English Department," he says with a mischievous smile.
"Somebody cover that adjunct professor in the slot!"
Western Montana has a ten-member English department, with salaries ranging from $34,000 for an assistant professor to $70,000 for the chairman of the department. "There's a lot of duplication there," Diggs says. "I went to the book store and somebody named Shakespeare is assigned reading in six courses," he notes with a laugh. "I mean, hello? Use man-on-man to cover the guy."
"Try not to use the passive voice, and I'd double-team the temperamental wide receiver in the subplot."
English department members are understandably upset by the attention Diggs' scrutiny has brought them, saying they are only following standards set by the Modern Language Association, the leading professional organization for English instructors. "Just like Coach Diggs, we need to have qualified personnel at every position from Beowulf to the present," says professor Ewell Lee, a specialist in Victorian novelists. Checking the department roster, Diggs disagrees. "They've got one guy who specializes in Middle English," he says, growing angry. "Do I get a separate coach for middle linebackers?"
"Unless you can diagram a sideline-and-up pattern, I'm afraid we're going to have to let you go."
Diggs says he holds no grudge against the language of Milton and Hemingway, and is only trying to make Western Montana a stronger institution. "I want to have an English department," he says with a serious expression, "that our football team can be proud of."
NEW YORK. Mel Sewanicki, Columbia class of '47, still can't buy a drink in this town even though it's been nearly six decades since he made "The Catch", a diving grab of a fourth-quarter pass that enabled the Lions to defeat Army, 21-20, ending the Cadets' 32-game unbeaten streak. It put him in the College Football Hall of Fame, along with the pigskin that he clutched to his chest as he hit the cold October turf. The victory is still counted as one of the greatest upsets in college football history.
"Everywhere I go, that's all people want to talk about," he says with a smile and a shake of his head. He's moved on, to a successful career as a banker, four kids and now thirteen grandchildren. "I've got a lot to be thankful for," he says, and it's clear from the expression on his face that he means it.
As he strides powerfully into Dominic's Steak House in Manhattan, it is par for the course that other men signal their waiters or the bartender that they want to buy Mel a drink, and by the time he reaches his regular table and sits down, there are six vodka martinis, two beers and a glass of merlot waiting for him.
"Hello, Adolf," he says to the waiter who regularly patrols Sewanicki's corner of the room. "Take care of these in the usual manner, please." "Yes, Mr. Sewanicki," the club employee says as he places them on a tray and takes them back to the kitchen, where he will pour them into empty milk cartons and return them to Sewanicki's table when he finishes lunch.
Sewanicki has a passion for New York's homeless, but he refuses to indulge in euphemisms. "They're winos, plain and simple," he says bluntly. "My old man had the same problem—he could never get enough to drink--so I know what they're going through."
More drinks arrive as Sewanicki makes his way through a Cobb salad with smoked scallops on top, and with each delivery Adolf appears as if by telepathic command to take the libations back to the kitchen. "I like a glass of wine with lunch," the ex-football great says, "and a scotch when I get home at night, but that's it."
Sewanicki dabs at the corners of his mouth with a cloth napkin as he finishes his meal, and Adolf reappears bearing four gallon jugs filled with a dark brown mixture composed of beer, red wine and hard liquor. "If you served this at one of my grandkids' parties they'd call it 'Long Island Iced Tea', drink too much of it and puke their guts up," he says with a wistful tone in his voice. "But for the guys out on the street who know how to handle it, this can be a life-saver."
We leave the restaurant and Sewanicki hails a cab. His long arms extended over his 6'4" frame make him an easy figure to spot, and in half a minute we are sitting in the back seat of a taxi. "Take us down to the Bowery," Sewanicki barks, the New York neighborhood that has traditionally been the home of the transient, the vagrant, the down-on-their-luck. "We used to call 'em bums," Sewanicki says. "Now they're 'homeless'," he says with evident distaste for a feel-good sociological term that he says carries the implication that all a man needs is a roof over his head. "A man is more than flesh and blood," Sewanicki says with almost religious fervor. "He's got a soul, too."
We stop at a red light and one of the neighborhood's "squeegee" men comes up to the car to wipe the windshield, hoping to cadge some change out of us. Sewanicki rolls down his window. "Here you go, buddy—try some of this!"
The ex-football great takes a plastic cup from a bag he has instructed this reporter to bring along and pours out a slug of the brownish liquor mix that resembles the water in the East River.
"What is it?" the hobo says. "Diet Coke?"
"Name your poison and it's in there," Sewanicki says with a sympathetic smile. "Whatever they want you to remember, it'll help you forget."
The man takes a sniff and, after the alcohol fumes hit his olfactory cells, begins to drink.
"Ah," he says after taking a long pull. "God bless you, sir."
"Don't mention it," Sewanicki says. "Let me pour you another—I've got to make my rounds."
He refills the man's cup, and the grizzled denizen of the streets accepts it with gratitude. "Take it easy, partner," Sewanicki says as we drive off.
"I'll be here tomorrow, too!" the man yells after us.
Sewanicki instructs the driver to slow down as we roll through the dark streets where hope returns only rarely, like a prodigal son with a maxed-out credit card. "You see those guys sitting over against that building? They'll probably spend the rest of their lives within a block or two of here. Think of that."
I do as instructed while Sewanicki tells the driver to stop and he opens his door. I follow him, party cups in hand.
"How we doin' today, guys?" the aging athlete calls out as he approaches three men sleeping under an arch. One looks up warily and starts to scramble away before Sewanicki reassures him. "No need to get up," he says, "my partner here's got the cups."
"Oh—good. I thought you was the cops."
"No—just a humble little mission of mercy." I again hold out cups as Sewanicki fills them up. The men each shiver a bit as their first sip goes down; one polishes off the remainder in a single gulp. "That's the spirit," Sewanicki says, then reaches into his pocket. "Here, I forgot," he says. "I've got some beer nuts."
"Thanks, man. I haven't eaten for days," one of the men says.
"Then you better take it easy—go slow at first," Sewanicki says. "You want to lay down a good foundation of liquor. Otherwise, it'll come right back up."
"Okay—thanks for the tip," the man says. We leave them with one of our four jugs—"They need it", Sewanicki declares—and climb back in the cab.
How exactly did you come to adopt this particular mission as your life's work, I ask Sewanicki as he scans the streets for more mouths to fill.
"Well, I got so tired of people buying me drinks, knowing it was just going to be poured down the drain. I'd say to myself—there's people going to bed sober all over this city tonight, and you can't finish half the booze that people put in front of you." The lessons of his hardscrabble youth have stuck with him. "'Waste not, want not', mom used to say," he says with a audible lump in his throat. "I had to eat what was put in front of me, even if it meant I missed The Lone Ranger" in the early days of television.
That thought—the waste of precious alcohol and the potentially harmful effect it was having on oysters and other shellfish in the Hudson River watershed—persuaded Sewanicki to take the unpopular step of seeing to it that no man goes without a nightly drink in lower Manhattan. "Not on my watch," he says with unmistakable seriousness.
We turn a corner and Sewanicki sees something that causes him to lean forward in his seat. What is it, I ask him.
"The enemy," he says. Two women and one man dressed in practical clothes make their way deliberately down the street, looking for "homeless" men they can persuade to give up their lives of freedom on the street in exchange for food and shelter. "Do-gooders," he says with undisguised contempt.
He rolls down his window and, as we pull even with the three, lets go with a shout.
"Hey—why don't you leave them in peace," he yells.
The three—not social workers, as it turns out, but N.Y.U. students doing field research for an advanced sociology lab—turn with looks of surprise on their faces.
"Yeah, you," Sewanicki continues. "Do you think those guys want to go back to living with people like you watching them all the time?"
"Well—yeah," the male says hesitantly, his world-view suddenly called into question.
"Gimme a break," Sewanicki continues. "They've spent their whole lives running away from milquetoasts and school marms. They haven't got much longer to live—let them drink themselves into oblivion if they want."
The three are quiet for a moment, as they consider the public policy and philosophical aspects of what they are being asked to do.
"You mean—do nothing?"
"Right—just go away."
The three look at each other, then the young man looks at his watch. "There's a 2-for-1 Bud Light promotion at McSweeney's in the Village tonight," he says says to the women. "You guys up for it?"
"I've got a mid-term in Stochastic Variables in Quantitative Research," the woman begins, but Sewanicki cuts her off.
"Listen sweetheart," he says. "Once you get a job you'll never touch another stochastic variable in your life. Believe me—I worked for four decades, and the only thing I needed to remember from college was one lousy pass play."
"Is that so?" the male student asks.
"Yep."
"In that case," he says to the women, "let's party!"
BOULDER, Colorado. The buffalo is considered one of the dumbest animals on the face of the earth, and the Colorado Buffaloes, a member of the Big 12 Conference, aren't far behind. The football and basketball programs here face a bleak future under new NCAA rules that can cut up to 10% of a school's athletic scholarships for poor overall academic performance.
So Colorado head football coach Dan Hawkins, a pigskin intellectual who quotes philosophers to his players at half time, came up with a novel suggestion to avoid penalties that would deplete his depth chart. Beginning in the fall of 2006, Colorado has offered to accept weighted scoring that will allow opposing teams to get bonus points, and penalize the Buffaloes, based on the grade point average of players who score.
"There's no way we were going to compete against Stanford and Northwestern in terms of academic rigor," Hawkins said, "So we figure we'd spot them a few points if some Rhodes Scholar wannabe scores on an end-around."
Under Hawkins' proposal, currently under consideration by the NCAA Rules Committee, the base score for a rushing or passing touchdown before the extra point would be six points for a C student. A touchdown by a halfback with a B average would be worth seven points, and eight points if the player has an A average.
Conversely, teams like Colorado would be penalized for lower GPAs of its players. A touchdown by a D student would be worth only five points and, in the equivalent of a "death penalty', four points when scored by an F student. "When you get down to that level," said Hawkins, "you might as well kick a field goal."
NCAA President Myles Brand applauded Hawkins for innovative thinking, but reserved judgment. "How do we know this isn't a Jim Harrick situation, where the kids are taking courses in 'Introduction to Special Teams' and 'Pass Rushing 101'?"
Hawkins' proposal was prompted by the NCAA's release of the names of 23 football teams and 17 basketball teams at Division 1 schools that will be sanctioned under the new rules. A list of exemplary schools that regularly exceed the NCAA's requirements was also made public; that list includes Brown, Harvard, Yale and William & Mary.
While recognizing such schools' academic achievements, Hawkins was scornful of the quality of their programs. "What the hell is that supposed to be," he asked sarcastically, "the Metrosexual Conference?"
LOS ANGELES, California. USC head football coach Pete Carroll today demanded a recount of the Trojans' 41-38 loss to Texas in the Rose Bowl following the disclosure that Longhorns' quarterback Vince Young answered just six of 50 questions correctly on the Wonderlic test, the intelligence exam used by NFL teams to rate college players.
"That was a high scoring game, and Young had 467 total yards. You're telling me he did all that in his head, without a calculator?" Carroll said, his voice dripping with sarcasm.
Facing a fourth-and-five with 19 seconds left on the clock, Young scored the game-winning touchdown on an eight-yard scramble. Southern California, whose double-Heisman duo of Matt Leinart and Reggie Bush produced 939 total yards, failed to advance into field goal range as time expired. Had the two teams' offenses continued in opposite directions averaging 4.2 yards per play, how long would it have taken for them to meet in NFL Europe? Show your calculations.
Carroll said he and his assistants would spend some time over the next few days proofreading the Texas roster to bolster their case. "We already found a kid--Ramonce Taylor--who apparently doesn't know how to spell 'Romance'. My guess is their score will go way down by the time we're through."
Young, who lost out to USC's Reggie Bush in this year's Heisman Trophy voting, defended his mental credentials in the face of Carroll's sore-loser crusade. "Tell him to close his eyes, say the words 'bonehead lateral' and see who comes to mind."
CHICAGO, Illinois. Top college prospect Adam Welkin ended months of speculation today as he signed a national letter of intent to attend the University of Chicago, a school with a storied football past but virtually no present or future.
"This one's for my momma," Welkin said as he pulled a maroon hat bearing the letter "C" from behind his back and put it on. "I'm gonna bring the Heisman back to Chi-town!" Jay Berwanger, a 1935 graduate of the school, was the first winner of the Heisman Trophy.
Welkin was rated a "five star" prospect by Scout.com based on his AP scores in Latin, physics, calculus, chorus and home room. He received offers from Stanford, Miami, Harvard, Texas and Middlebury, among others.
Chicago was an original member of the Big 10 but dropped out in 1946 when the school began to emphasize academics over undergraduate student life. It is regularly one of the top five colleges nationwide under the WPS Power Rankings. "WPS" stands for "worst party schools" and the measure rates colleges based on a combination of factors including lowest consumption of beer and highest percentage of National Honor Society presidents among female students.
Welkin was ecstatic about the treatment he received from the U of C as a highly sought-after recruit. "They had me and all the other top prospects in for a lecture at the Oriental Institute and they fixed me up with a girl who was a real eye-opener." Asked to explain, Welkin said the young woman knew more about 19th century French novelists than many professors at other colleges he visited.
Football was banned at the U of C in the 1950's by its then-president, Robert Maynard Hutchins, famous for saying "Whenever I get the urge to exercise I lie down until it goes away." The game was restored to campus in the late '60's, but Hutchins did not get up from his couch as he had fallen asleep. He died in 1977.
The school's motto is "Quatenus delectatio defungo," Latin for "Where Fun Comes to Die."
As the Next Great Sportswriter Competition draws to a close, Gerbil Sports Network wishes to correct and amplify the following postings in order to avoid massive libel judgments.
In a December 25th posting titled "Billy Martin--R.I.P." that the Gerbil thought would have the NGS judges bawling like a bunch of Miss America contestants, George Steinbrenner was referred to as "the principal owner of the New York Yankees." Mr. Steinbrenner is in fact the corpulent, blowhard owner of the Yankees. The Gerbil regrets its error.
In a posting regarding Albert Belle, the former Cleveland Indians slugger, it was reported that Mr. Belle once chased a group of trick-or-treaters away from his house on Halloween. Mr. Belle's publicist has pointed out that the children had egged Mr. Belle's house, and thus provoked his actions. In addition, the children taunted Mr. Belle with the following chant:
"Trick-or-treat, smell my feet, give me something good to eat.
If you don't, it's a shame, you'll never make the Hall of Fame!"
In a post regarding NASCAR, the Daytona 500 was referred to as a "series of left turns whose unremitting tedium was punctuated only by fatal crashes." NASCAR fans have pointed out that their boredom is also alleviated by fights in the pits. The Gerbil stands corrected.
A commentary on German figure skater Katerina Witt referred to her as a "former East German apparatchik who sucked up to Communist party officials in order to secure her place on national and Olympic teams, which she has parlayed into a lucrative career as a television skating commentator." Ms. Witt's attorney has provided the Gerbil with copies of her tax returns which demonstrate that being a skating commentator is not, in fact, highly remunerative in light of the hazardous nature of the work, which requires prolonged exposure to #### Button.
A posting on former Ohio State football coach Woody Hayes and Texas Tech basketball coach Bobby Knight--"When Coaches Attack!"--described the incidents in which Mr. Hayes hit an opposing team's defensive back with a clipboard and Mr. Knight threw a folding chair at a basketball referee. The Ohio State public relations department claims that Mr. Hayes was actually showing the defensive back a pro-style cover two setup in an effort to increase the young man's knowledge of football. Mr. Knight's publicist alleges that he threw a folding chair "to" rather than "at" a referee who had been on his feet all day so that the official could avoid shin splints.
Former Boston Bruin Marty McSorley was described as a "goon" for his two-fisted attack on Vancouver Canucks' forward Donald Brashear that resulted in an assault conviction in 2000. The Gerbil meant to say "thug."
A posting on Dennis Rodman referred to the former NBA great as of "dubious gender." Mr. Rodman informed the NGS judges that there is no doubt as to his/her gender as he/she expresses himself in all of them. He admitted to being of dubious sanity.
Con Chapman is a Boston-area writer. He is the author of "The Year of the Gerbil: How the Yankees Won (and the Red Sox Lost) the Greatest Pennant Race Ever," a history of the 1978 AL East pennant race, and a number of plays, including "Number One Hockey Mom," "Please, Pope," and "What Mickey Belle Isle Told You," a trilogy about hockey (JAC Publishing). His work is available on Amazon Shorts (at 49 cents a dowload), and he writes on sports for Flak Magazine.
