Cheap Seats
Door Mats
The question seemed innocuous enough. Mats Wilander didn’t think so. After Wilander lost to Todd Martin on Friday at the U.S. Open, a reporter asked him to assess the men’s field, saying something like, “Did you ever think that you could have beaten some of these players in your prime?”
Wilander flew into a rage. “Do you ever think about that you are going to die?” Wilander said, offering what must have been his most potent return of the day. “You can’t ask me a question like that. Did you ever think about the girls that you get when you are 18 compared to 45? It is not going to happen, OK? … Why think about those kinds of things? It doesn’t make any difference anymore.”
More and more, neither does Mats.
He’s Krafty
For New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft, winning is only part of the plan. He wants to overhaul the experience of attending a Patriots game, which once meant enduring obscenities, beer baths and brawls.
The first step was to make Foxboro Stadium smoke-free. The second was to enforce proper conduct with high-tech surveillance equipment, installed for last summer’s World Cup. As a result, Kraft can film every seat in the stadium.
“I had a guy write me recently complaining about the warning we issued him,” Kraft told the Boston Globe. “He said he was a season ticket-holder and had been with us through the tough times. But he was smoking pot in the stands. We don’t have to put up with it. We’re fortunate enough to have a waiting list of 1,000 people.”
Kraft said he’s pulled 300 season tickets since the surveillance program began.
Too bad the Seahawks don’t visit this season. Dennis Erickson could use those cameras to keep his players from holding another unauthorized company picnic.
Family values?
San Francisco defensive end Rickey Jackson spent 13 seasons with New Orleans before joining the 49ers in time to win a Super Bowl last season.
Jackson, who still maintains a residence in New Orleans, spent a few hours Saturday with his three children. But he made it clear his first priority is to beat the Saints.
“The football game is the only thing that has meaning to it,” he said. “You can catch the family and friends in the off-season.”
Glad to see Jackson has those priorities straight.
Money man
Former Duke star Grant Hill appeared at Blue Devils assistant Tommy Amaker’s basketball camp. Hill asked the campers if they knew the value of an education. Hill listened as one youngster nervously explained how an education could help make you a better person and help you support your family. That done, Hill handed the kid a crisp $100 bill.
It probably helped pay for the camp.
College football’s real heavyweights
Forget the media poll. Toss aside the coaches’ poll. We’ve got two college football polls in which the winners are selected objectively: The Page Poll and The Poundage Poll. Notre Dame won the former, its 416-page football media guide the nation’s longest. And Oklahoma won the latter, its guide weighing in at 3 pounds, 8 ounces. But, as Oklahoma State sports information director Steve Buzzard says, a media guide never landed a top recruit.
“What was behind your choice of schools, Bubba Ray?” Buzzard mocked, answering his own question with, “Well, that media guide was so AWE-some. It was bigger’n all the others and it’s my favorite because it’s the first book I’ve ever finished.”
The last word …
“All the recent reports about Peter McNeeley’s purse failed to mention whether it had a shoulder strap or if it was simply hand-held.”
- Michael Ventre, Los Angeles Daily News
, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Photo