Cheap Seats

Northwestern fallout

Rick Telander, a former Northwestern football player now working for the Chicago Sun-Times, writing on the Northwestern basketball point-shaving scandal:

“This is not a sweet moment for NU alums, a largely highbrow group who, for the most part, approve of the school’s recent and serious attempts at becoming a sports power. Maybe they will do some rethinking of that approval now that the Wildcats might be better known as the Wild-Cash.”

Painful memories

Running back Curtis Martin, who left the New England Patriots the other day to join the New York Jets as a restricted free agent, has a vivid memory of the Jets, which, under the circumstances, is a little surprising.

“I took my hardest hit against the Jets (last season),” he said at a news conference.

“Marvin Jones broke my entire helmet. He hit and I just heard a ‘boom!’ I was so dizzy that I couldn’t figure it out. I thought something was wrong with the entire stadium. My helmet was spinning around on my head because all the air was gone from it.”

So, Curtis, are you looking forward to scrimmages? He should have gone to Supercuts

Grant Van Dyke had his girlfriend carve a Diamondbacks’ A into his head, then use Magic Markers and mascara to fill in the team colors.

“It’s only hair,” Van Dyke said. “It’ll grow back.”

Comment from Bob Petrie of the Arizona Republic:

Yeah, but not by tomorrow.

Destined to lose

After the Rhode Island Rams squandered a late lead and lost to Stanford in the NCAA Midwest Regional men’s basketball final at Kiel Center, Jeff Gordon of the St. Louis Dispatch wondered:

“Will Ram fans ever go home happy on a Sunday in St. Louis?”

A final visit to the Final Four

Stanford coach Mike Montgomery’s career record is 389-209, but he’s never won a conference championship in his 19-year coaching career. Before leaving for the Final Four, Montgomery was asked if he’d ever cut down a net.

“My son’s net got old and I cut that down,” he said.

Montgomery later remembered cutting down the nets after leading Montana to an NIT title in 1983.

Bytes ‘n’ pieces

Phil Rosenthal of the Chicago Sun-Times writes that during the second half of the men’s NCAA basketball title game, Kentucky guard Jeff Sheppard crashed into press row, taking out the Sun-Times’ Herb Gould and Gould’s laptop computer.

“Gould emerged from the incident shaken but unhurt. But the same, sadly, cannot be said of his computer’s hard drive, which has no memory of this or anything else and has been forced to retire.”

The last word …

“So, as I understand it, Santa Anna attacked the Alamo from the cover of a yogurt store?”’ - C.W. Nevius of the San Francisco Chronicle, noting how squarely in the center of San Antonio the Alamo is located.