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John Blanchette

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Sports

Blanchette: Michael Bennett injects dose of refreshing candor into hype

PHOENIX – They have taken away the players, not to be seen again until Super Bowl Sunday. And on Friday, the National Football League trotted out the head suit who claimed, among other things, he was “available to the media almost every day” to an audience of reporters whose access requests have been turned down routinely for years. How can the man stay so cool with his pants on fire?
Sports

Blanchette: Experience what NFL Experience leaves out

PHOENIX – One of the most popular features of any Super Bowl, other than charting Marshawn Lynch’s syllable output, is the NFL Experience. Set up on three floors inside the Phoenix Convention Center, which serves as the league’s Castel del Monte this week, the Experience is … have to check the notes here … “pro football’s interactive theme park offering participatory games, displays, entertainment attractions, youth football clinics and free autograph sessions from NFL players.”
Sports

Marshawn Lynch still refuses to buckle under media pressure

PHOENIX – And on the third day, Marshawn Lynch turned into a scold. Having performed his first two required appearances at Super Bowl XLIX media sessions as theatre of the absurd – in effect, repeating the same response to virtually every question, often with delight – the Seattle Seahawks running back let his disdain bubble over in his getaway Thursday.
Sports

Seahawks notes: Richard Sherman’s baby dilemma

PHOENIX – The Most Valuable Player of Super Bowl XLIX? It could be the unborn son of Seattle Seahawks cornerback Richard Sherman – if the little guy doesn’t get antsy to make an early appearance.
Sports

Blanchette: NFL’s top defense claims to keep it simple

PHOENIX – One head coach is a world-class grump, the other has a surfeit of zen. Throw in their outsized reputations and there’s barely room enough in Super Bowl XLIX for the both of them. But since it wouldn’t be a Super Bowl without excess, this game has a third.
Sports

Super Bowl notes: Marshawn Lynch voices his media mantra

PHOENIX – He’s just about that echo, boss. Some things don’t change at Super Bowl Media Day. A corpulent kook from a local radio station asked his questions wearing nothing but a barrel. There was a Batman, and lunatics with GoPro cameras attached to football helmets and shoulder pads.
Sports

Columnist John Blanchette looks forward to end of Super Bowl silliness at Media Day

PHOENIX – Everyone has had the exam Armageddon dream. You show up for the final having not attended class all semester, not done any of the reading and, in fact, forgotten that you even enrolled. Or the variation: two minutes remaining to complete a 1,000-word essay and nothing down on paper yet. Well, I’m living it at Super Bowl XLIX.
Sports

John Blanchette: Split decision helps Booker overcome poor decision

The decision was read and Chordelle Booker dropped to his knees and folded himself in two, head bowed forward to the canvas, braced on his forearms that caught his tears. The smiles and the joy would come later, after they’d draped a gold medal around his neck and given him the prized winner’s jacket. But what was going through his head at the moment was this:
Sports

LC grad Pat Ferguson continues meteoric rise at USA Boxing National Championships

Let’s be clear: Pat Ferguson is not going to save what the Klitschkos pretty much killed – which is to say, the heavyweight division. But for the folks staging the USA Boxing National Championships here in Spokane, he’s the best thing that could have happened – even in an event that includes multiple Olympic medalists, world champions and the best amateurs in the land.
Sports

Blanchette: Shorty Acosta stands out in his boxers’ lives

Shorty Acosta is in it for the kids, but he’s quick to point out that the kids often give something back. “There’s a guy, my financial advisor?” Acosta said. “He puts my money to work. When I retire, I’m set for good. He takes care of me.
News >  Pacific NW

Seahawks return to Super Bowl after improbable finish

SEATTLE – Super Bowl Sunday will be decidedly tame in Spokane and the Inland Northwest. The “12” jerseys will be laundered and folded away for another season. Woodrow Wilson won’t have to cede the naming rights to the local elementary school to the glamour-puss quarterback. Big-screen TVs at South Hill house parties may switch over to the Puppy Bowl at halftime and never switch back.
Sports

Spokane boxer taking part in trials qualifier

The road to the 2016 Olympic Games begins in Spokane for nearly 300 hopeful boxers this week, including three former Olympians, three more world championship medalists and 11 other national champions. And an ophthalmologist’s assistant from Spokane.
Sports

John Blanchette: Wayne Tinkle, Ernie Kent mold surprises in Pac-12

At the final media timeout last Sunday, the Oregon State Beavers – a not-quite-unanimous choice a couple of months ago as the most hopeless team in the Pac-12 – trailed seventh-ranked Arizona by a point. Wayne Tinkle gathered his audience and discovered that the words coming out of his mouth were not his own. “I stole a line from Dan Fitzgerald,” Tinkle admitted.