“Pregaming” was a big part of watching college football for me when I was in school, as I’m sure it was (or is, or will be) for you. If a nice, happy buzz for a noon kickoff is your thing, you’ve got to get your drink on by 8 or 9 in the morning. West Virginia University thinks that’s too much drinking for one morning, and instead would like you to pound your brews at the stadium itself, according to a proposal submitted to the school.

“We rely on our public safety folks to advise us, and they believe that there are two periods of binge drinking at our tailgates — one is pregame, when people quote-unquote get their buzz on, and then at halftime,” says [WVU athletic director Oliver] Luck, who admits his beer sales proposal may seem counterintuitive. “We can take care of halftime; we can’t really take care of pregame. And so we think that controlled sales will lead to folks feeling as though they don’t have to consume as much alcohol as possible” before entering the stadium.

The plan does permit students of age to drink, provided that they are not sitting in designated student sections. This actually makes some degree of sense if the beer sales are affordable and closely monitored, and it sounds like the Mountaineers are planning to satisfy both of those. Selling alcohol at the stadium itself also ensures that employees are trained to identify and deal with drunken behavior, as required by law pretty much everywhere. Naturally, not everyone is terribly impressed with this plan:

West Virginia’s alcohol sales fate could be sealed June 3, when the Board of Governors is likely to decide whether to rewrite established policy prohibiting alcohol sales in any WVU athletic venues. The logic of Luck’s proposal has been questioned in countless small-town newspaper editorials, yet it is supported by WVU’s president…

AthleticBusiness.com

If you’re a 21-year-old and you have the chance to buy beer legally at the stadium, would you do that instead of trying to cram all of your drinking in beforehand, or trying to smuggle a flask in your back pocket? I think you would.

I don’t consider myself a baseball purist by any stretch, even though I hate the DH more than my brother’s fat pig-faced wife. Don’t even get me started. Aside from being a horrible human being, she’s quite nice. Anyway, Major League Baseball wants to realign how their 30 teams are organized in leagues and divisions. It’s a challenge unique to other sports, since the two primary “conferences,” the National League and American League, don’t play each other for most of the season. Oh, and that whole DH thing doesn’t help either.

Realignment stories are always fun: it’s a great way to act like you care about a sport without knowing any of the players or even the teams. Anyone can just look a map and say, “Yeah, Arizona should play in the AL West.” The owners surely can’t help themselves either, even if the interleague matchups that ensue alter the playoff races

But there’s discussion that realigning teams might make baseball more “fair,” which seems kinda silly, especially when two or three clubs’ massive payrolls dwarf the rest of the league. Plus, how does one reconcile two 15-team leagues, where that 15th team on any given day will be playing The only truly fair way to realign would be to leave the Yankees and Red Sox in the AL and moving the rest of those teams to the NL (and you bet your ass the pitchers are gonna bat). That moan you just heard was the ESPN brass climaxing in unison at the thought.

Img.

Even though we’re still in early June with this NFL lockout and we haven’t missed any actual football yet, people are still FLIPPING THE HELL OUT about the possibility of the 2011 season being cancelled. Who’s flipping out about No Football In June? Even the biggest fantasy football nerds haven’t started their preseason prep yet. I mean, it’s not like the NFL is considering slashing half of their entire season.

The National Football League is considering season lengths for 2011 as short as eight regular-season games, half its normal number, as it plans for the possibility of an abbreviated season because of the nearly three-month-long lockout, sources said.

An eight-game season could start in late November. Allowing for five weeks up front for free agency, training camps and perhaps one preseason game, the contingency suggests the league and players could reach a deal on a new labor agreement as late as mid to late October and still salvage a season.[..]

Wow, an eight-game season? What kind of contingency planning is that?

Asked at the owners’ spring meeting last month about the league’s contingency planning, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said, “We have contingency planning for our contingency planning.”

Great. Why not just flip coins to see who gets into the playoffs. An eight-game season could totally screw up the postseason, but then the Super Bowl is scheduled to be in Indianapolis, so how much of a chance did it have to begin with?

[via Business Courier]

Jim Tressel was not a great football coach, but a good football coach with great resources. Your dad could roll out of bed on game day and get seven wins a year coaching the Buckeyes. The resources of the crown jewel of Ohio State’s athletic program are that rich and that vast, and Tressel did as much with those resources as anyone. During his ten years in Columbus, Tressel won a national title, seven Big Ten titles, and beat Michigan every year, save one. That alone will keep the memories of the sweater vest parading the sidelines in a positive hue for generations to come, despite his ominous resignation yesterday. But don’t expect to see The Senator take up another term elsewhere; he won’t be coming back. Ever.

Read the rest of this entry »

The NFL players are seeking punitive damages as a result of zzzzzzzzzzz man are we playing football yet? No? I guess we should throw some dollar signs out there and call it sports reporting.

The NFL and players spent nearly two hours Thursday arguing before U.S. District Judge David Doty on what the court should do with $4.078 billion in television rights fees. Doty ruled two months ago the the money was secured illegally by the league to build a “lockout fund.”[..]

The players cited $400 million in revenue from DirecTV, as well as $40 million from ESPN and $17 million from Verizon, as money that didn’t needed to be repaid. They also went over the 2011 totals from each of the league’s partners — $610 million from CBS, $713 million from FOX, $775 million from NBC, $976 million from ESPN and $555 million from DirecTV. In regards to those funds, Kessler said the league “ignored their obligations and conceded their breaches.”

“A message needs to be sent,” said Kessler. “You must comply with the law of this land.”

So if you’re keeping score at home, there was a lockout, an injunction on the lockout, a stay on the injunction on the lockout, and now the stay is under deliberation. Whew. The offseason was so much easier when we were just bitching about Brett Favre.

Gus Johnson will no longer be climbing the mountain at CBS. The eccentric play-by-play man is expected to finalize a deal that will take his talents to Fox. CBS reportedly had an opportunity to match the offer, but declined to do so.

While Johnson will continue to call NFL games, in addition to college football, it seems clear that Gus’s days of calling March Madness–unquestionably his signature event–are over.

A CBS source who wanted Johnson – a former Knick radio voice – back said that not only money, but politics was an issue. The source said some of CBS Sports’ college hoops voices were not thrilled with Johnson’s rise to March Madness’ most popular voice.

–NY Daily News.

Johnson’s emphatic, Sam Kinision School Of Broadcasting style has won over a lot of fans, and one could have made a case that Gus should have been calling the Final Four last month. Surely that ruffled the feathers of a certain lily-white announcer who might consider calling championship games his birthright.

Even sadder than the March Madness situation is that now Gus will never have a chance to call the Masters. Really, Gus Johnson and Augusta National just seem like a natural fit to me.