YFIASB's HotPulse America! 11/29 Edition

What is HotPulse America!, exactly? It's where, with the help of a random number generator and a list of the nation's top 100 media markets, I randomly check in on a few of our nation's cities to see what is pushing the buttons of their sports fans.

Champaign/Urbana/Springfield, IL (DMA #84):

East Central Illinois? We're talking Illini Country! And despite the football's improbable success, the news today was pretty grim, based on the early season struggles of the men's basketball team - highlighted by a listless 69-61 loss to Maryland last night. For a 4-2 team, people seem very glum about this season. When the message coming out of the game is "I don't want to be mediocre", and those words aren't coming from an ASU football fan (sorry McLane) but from your team's head coach, you are officially in trouble.

This is what happens when a non-traditional power in one sport gets really good at one thing while they start slipping at the thing they are usually good at - no one knows what to do. Palms get sweaty, fans get confused - it's like a bad Twilight Zone episode (like the new one, hosyed by Forrest Whitaker). I personally saw this when the USC basketball team made an Elite Eight run a few years ago right when Paul Hackett was killing the football team.

In other local news: the Eli Manning/Rex Grossman QB match-up in this week's Giants/Bears game might be harmful or fatal if viewed. Just like the arc from Indiana Jones, DON'T LOOK DIRECTLY AT IT!

Houston, TX (DMA #10):

It was going to take something pretty huge for Houston sports fans to realize that they had a college team in their city, one that even is going to bowl games on a regular basis. Apparently, that something would be the head coach leaving to take the same job at Baylor, because that is actually the lead story in the Houston Chronicle, ahead of the Rockets, Texans, or a preview of some upcoming Class 4-D high school title game.

Baylor is a bad, bad athletic program right now, still tainted with the stink of the scandal involving the men's basketball team. (You might remember them. Dirty coaches. Players murdering other players. Just ugly,) And the football team? Well, they've just plain stunk for years. They haven't finished above .500 since 1995, and they are 11-85 in the Big XII since joining the conference.

I know this is an "under-the-radar" hire with all of the other college football coaching carousel news, but I think it's a great hire. Art Briles knows Texas, which is a big plus when it comes to recruiting. Butas much as anything else, he knows how to turn around bad programs. Before coming to Houston in 2003, the Cougars had been languishing. Under previous head coach Dana "Dismal" Dimal, they had been 8-26.

Since Briles has gotten to Houston, he's compiled a 34-28 record, including bowl games three of those four years. And Houston has lousy facilities and really bad support - their season-ending home victory against Texas Southern drew 12,139. I know that it was against a lower-division patsy, but still - this is an 8-4 team, and this is Texas: high school games regularly draw much more than that.

If anyone can turn things around at Baylor, it's Art Briles. If he can't, maybe they should just pull a Long Beach State and shudder the program for good. Except without the dumping Gatorade on their old head coach during a cold day, causing him to catch pneumonia and die.

Posted by The Duke of Everything at 2:29 PM 0 comments  

USC to the Rose Bowl...permanently?

On Tuesday, USC made the startling announcement that it had begun negotiations with the Rose Bowl to move from the Coliseum and begin playing home football games there starting next season. You can read the story for the full details, but the gist of the situation is this: USC wants control over running the Coliseum (and scheduling), and wants renovations to be made. They are willing to kick in $100 million over the next 10 years towards the renovations. However, the Coliseum Commission has been putting this issue on the back burner and hoping it goes away, mainly because they are still committed to the pipe dream that the NFL is going to be back in the Coliseum someday.

Bill Plaschke's column in the LA Times on Wednesday does a fairly good job of summarizing how I feel about this. This is clearly a lot of political posturing and muscle-flexing being done by USC to let the Coliseum Commission know that "it means business". It's almost inconceivable that USC would anger so many of its alumni by destroying 80+ years of tradition by forcing them to move from their home just off-campus to a new site 20 miles away with lousy parking and freeway access (and would be second tenant to their arch rivals).

However, this is the Coliseum Commission we're talking about, and if anyone can screw something up royally, it's them. Plaschke's column gets into it in a little more detail, but the Commission has directly or indirectly lead to the Rams and Raiders leaving Los Angeles and the O'Malley family selling the Dodgers.

The indirect good news in all of this is that the brouhaha has forced LA mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to stop sucking face with news anchors long enough to finally, publicly state that he's given up on the NFL ever returning to the Coliseum and that the Commission should too. And the general outrage this has caused has pretty much put the Coliseum Commission into such a bad spot than even they seem to be forced to admit defeat at this point. (Well, except for exceptionally stubborn Commission members like current City Councilman and former really lousy LA Police Chief Bernard Parks, who "must keep the door open for a professional team."

And just who is the Coliseum Commission? As you can guess, a bunch of bureaucrats! More specifically, a nine-person panel made up of: four politicians (the afore-mentioned Parks and three LA County Supervisors) and five "private citizens", including the widow of Aaron Spelling and the wife of City Councilman Herb Wesson. (Apparently, being married to old, white guys is excellent training for deciding the fate of one of LA's major landmarks.)

And just how effective is the Coliseum Commission? I'll let a current City Council member tell you:

"There is nothing that that commission has [accomplished] in the 30 or 40 years that I know of," said L.A. City Councilman Greig Smith, who offered a list of teams that have left the Coliseum and neighboring Sports Arena. "One government agency can screw up. Three government agencies can screw up a lot."

I'll leave with an interesting article from the LA Times' architecture critic about the situation. I think it's a good overview of the challenges faced in maintaining the Coliseum, and LA's older stadium structures in general. I'm going to let my USC alum bias show here for a second in response. I've been to both the Rose Bowl and the Coliseum, and frankly, in terms of "watching the game" aesthetics, I prefer the Coliseum. The site lines are better and the seats are wider. I always have a sense of being more "on top" of things at the Coliseum from the upper deck, versus being lower and further away at the Rose Bowl. And I can still find free street parking at the Coliseum (and never had any issues with break-ins, etc.) on game days, even on sell-outs. At the Rose Bowl? Not so much.

But the Rose Bowl does have a pretty view of the mountains...I guess that counts for something.

Posted by The Duke of Everything at 10:26 AM 0 comments