Jeff Kaley
Waurika News-Democrat
WAURIKA —
Having recently returned from a road trip, as you would expect there are sticky notes that serve as my memory wallpapering the inside of the Taurus. So, it’s time to clean out the car and get a look at what was passing through my gray matter while cruising through the Midwest:
If you’re trying to keep score in the conference realignment game in major college sports, here are the early results: The Big 10(12) and the Pac 10(11) got enough teams to hold a conference football championship game, and the Big 12(10) will probably toss its grid title game on the slag heap. However, since Nebraska and Colorado vamoosed, remaining Big 12(10) schools will split a bigger share of the revenue pie.
Although the rush to realign has slowed, don’t throw away those proposed lineups for mega-conferences that media prognosticators have been creating. Prediction here is that reformation is a long way from over. In four or five years, mega-conferences will be in place.
And if I hear one more college president or NCAA mucky muck trying to convince us academics figure somewhere in this conference expansion scenario, I’m gonna hurl. This is all about money and setting the stage for every Div. I-A team to be in a conference that has an automatic BCS berth.
The money issue speaks for itself — college sports is now pro sports, except the performers get their cash in the form of scholarships or under the table.
Plus, by realigning into five or six mega-conferences, the NCAA can get the politicians out of the BCS debate, and the Utahs, BYUs and Boise States won’t be able to whine about being excluded.
- Using New Age lingo to sound cool can end up being dorky. To wit: On an OKC sports talk radio station, I heard three different references to “efforting” someone. When one of the talk show hosts or an engineer was trying to make contact with a guest, they used the phrase, “We’re efforting him.”
Efforting? What is that all about? Sounds like a made up word you’d hear from a motivational speaker at a corporate seminar.
How about: “We’re attempting to locate” or “We’re trying to find”? There is no such thing as efforting someone.
- Is it possible every casino in the nation has the “Loosest slots in the USA?” Driving through Oklahoma, Missouri and Illinois, I repeatedly saw that boast on casino billboards or message boards.
If every casino has the “loosest slots” in the country, how are any gambling houses making money?
- If you’re motoring through the St. Louis area, here’s a combination certain to slow your trip to a crawl: A Cardinals baseball game and road construction within 15 miles of Busch Stadium.
- Think it was tough riding out the blizzard and ice storm that stuck Oklahoma this past winter? Well, be happy you had shelter — you could have been a tree or a utility pole.
- I don’t want to sound overly “green” or take a shot at my adopted state, but the trash along Oklahoma’s main highway and interstate system is just flat-out embarrassing.
- Venetian blinds were invented in Japan, not Venice.
- Not gonna make too big a deal of this, but how self-indulgent is a society that turns eating into a televised sporting event?
- After reading hundreds of billboards and road-side signs during the recent jaunt, one truth resonates: There’s real apostrophe ignorance out there, gang. Does no one teach correct usage of that punctuation mark anymore?
- Regardless what color they are, bigots never think they’re bigots. And when they’re called out for their prejudice, most bigots have the audacity to think they’re being picked on.
- Highly recommended: New album We Walk This Road by Robert Randolph & The Family Band. Tasty roots music, with a focus on blues, rock and gospel, and Randolph is exceptional on the laptop guitar. Plus, Okie legend Leon Russell plays piano on a couple tracks.
- Highly recommended in the future: Upcoming album The Union that pairs Leon with Elton John. It’s being produced by T-Bone Burnett. With that combination, there’s no way the album can be a clinker.
- Says Rita Rudner: “Men like to barbecue, because men will cook if danger is involved.”
