Remember those days when everyone complained about boring, lopsided Super Bowls, about how the commercials, halftime show, parties, anything BUT the game proved more interesting?
Well, stop thinking that way. Of the last X Roman numeral games, V of them have gone to the wire, and edition no. XLIII between Pittsburgh and Arizona was as good as any of them - and you even had Bruuuuuce at halftime!
For a long time, it looked like that 10 or 14-point swing at the end of the first half, from the Cardinal goal line to Steeler James Harrison returning an INT 100 yards for at touchdown, would be the difference...

CATEGORY: Football (American)

TAGS: Super Bowl, Steelers, Cardinals

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Should the winter weather decide to behave on Friday night, Christian Brothers Academy and Bishop Ludden will engage in yet another chapter of their “Holy War”, and once again Buddy Wleklinski and Pat Donnelly will be barking out instructions from the sidelines.
The rivalry started in 1963. Wleklinski and Donnelly played against each other in the mid-1970s, then came back to coach at their alma mater a decade later. Since 1987, every CBA-Ludden game has featured Buddy and Pat...

CATEGORY: Basketball

TAGS: Coaches, high school, long-time, AL Knapp

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A decade ago, as I was starting out at this job, the first team that really captivated my storytelling senses was the Fayetteville-Manlius girls basketball squad that would win 22 in a row before Corcoran beat them in the sectional finals.
Steve Miles coached that team, then left a few years later, tending to family and setting priorities, as we all should.
Now, in 2009, it's looking a lot like 1999 - except the venue is Cazenovia and the team isn't unbeaten. But the same championship dreams linger.
When Paul Harney couldn't return to coach last year's Section III Class B-2 champion Lakers, Miles got the job just weeks before practice started - his first stint in six years...

CATEGORY: Basketball

TAGS: Steve Miles, Cazenovia, road wins

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In the course of his new record called "Working On A Dream", Bruce Springsteen has managed to confound fans and critics alike - some of whom love it, some of whom loathe it. They even love and loathe in the same breath.
So like any genuine Bruce fan, I gave the CD a few listens before offering an opinion - and the thing didn't sound like anything masterful at first, with its stytlistic mood changes from pure bliss to sadness.
Yet it grew on me, for as with so many of Bruce's other records, the songs' lyrics rang true, the choruses were instant sing-alongs and a deep wisdom ultimately comes out of the whole project by the time it's done.
No American musician I know has taken the kind of journey Bruce has undergone in the last seven years alone...

CATEGORY: Music

TAGS: Bruce Springsteen, new album, thoughts

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One moment, we were celebrating the milestones of Al Knapp (more wins that any other Section III boys basketball coach) and Bob McKenney (400 wins), and getting ourselves ready for the deluge of the Section III post-season that hits over the next four weeks.
Then, just as our radio show on WHEN was ending, we peaked up at the TV in the studio and the story was already out - in 2003, Alex Rodriguez had a positive steroid test.
My first thought - this will get some attention...

CATEGORY: Baseball

TAGS: Alex Rodriguez, steroid test, questions

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Late in 1833, Andrew Jackson, seventh President of the United States, was in the midst of bringing down the Bank of the United States. He was convinced the money belonged in state banks and was bent on stopping the national bank’s recharter before its haughty chairman, Nicholas Biddle, bought off members of Congress.
When the national bank called in loans and restricted credit, merchants freaked...

CATEGORY: Government

TAGS: Andrew Jackson, presidency, "American Lion", Jon Meacham

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So now we reach the Section III post-season, a month full of drama and daring where champions emerge on both a team and individual basis.
Wrestling got the head start on everyone with a trio of league championship meets in the western, eastern and northern parts of the section.
It began in Solvay with the OHSL Liberty/Patriot meet, where Hannibal beat a field of 15 with 214 points as Cato-Meridian edged out Cazenovia for second place.
Though the Lakers' Alex Petroff, with his fourth league title at 125 pounds, snagged Most Outstanding Wrestler honors, the Warriors finished in front...

CATEGORY: General Sports

TAGS: Section III playoffs, wrestling, volleyball

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A day in high school sports is like a month, so what are three days like?
Well, a lot happens, even early in the week, especially when we're at the bridge between the regular season and the playoffs.
They already had the main events in indoor track, over two days, as the Section III championships took place Monday and Tuesday at Manley Field House. This is the last year at Manley because of SU's proposed changes to the facility. Where will the indoor athletes go? Hamilton College? Colgate? Cornell?
For now, they were still at Manley, and you had Cicero-North Syracuse (Class AA), Jamesville-DeWitt (Class A) and Tully (Class D) winning both the boys and girls championships...

CATEGORY: General Sports

TAGS: Section III, sports, late season, playoffs

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"The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is filled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is anew, we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country."
- Abraham Lincoln, 1862
Today we celebrate the birth, exactly 200 years ago, of the Great Emancipator, a self-made man from humble origins who rose to a place in history larger than any our nation could ever provide.
The best of our American presidents is, thankfully, a figure not tucked away in marble statues, five-dollar bills, pennies, inscribed plaques or other flowery tributes...

CATEGORY: Government

TAGS: Abraham Lincoln, 200th birthday, observations

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Quite a Friday the 13th. ESM's volleyball team comes from 0-2 down to shock top seed New Hartford in the Class A quarterfinals. Bishop Grimes's boys basketball team, beaten at Hannibal by 20 a month ago, gets revenge and beats the Warriors...by 20. Cazenovia's girls hoops Lakers holds Westhill to 34 and wins the OHSL LIberty title.
And all this a day after West Genesee (Class A) and Mexico (Class B) claim Section III swim titles. Not only that, but the Wildcats break six school records and Auburn's Patrick O'Donovan breaking a Section III record in the 100 backstroke.
But the headline you'll be reading about and talking about can be summed up this way - Christian Brothers Academy 67, Jamesville-DeWitt 66...

CATEGORY: Basketball

TAGS: CBA, J-D, upset, win streak, classic

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Exactly three decades has passed since millions of TV viewers, some of them stuck at home by a winter snowstorm, tuned to CBS and watched the first live broadcast of the Daytona 500.
When Donnie Allison and Cale Yarborough crashed on the last lap, allowing Richard Petty to win, that was exciting enough. But when Yarborough picked a fight with Bobby Allison (who had stopped to see if Donnie was okay), many fans were hooked for life.
That brand of NASCAR, and the current brand of NASCAR that gathered again at Daytona for its “Great American Race” on Sunday, could not have been more different.
Among other things, they started the 500 just past noon for much of its history...

CATEGORY: Motor Sports

TAGS: NASCAR, problems, Daytona 500, roots

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They get it started tomorrow night, an extravaganza known as the Section III boys basketball playoffs.
We have 88 boys teams heading out in pursuit of gold banners. Ultimately, the journey ends (one last time) at Manley Field House on March 6-7. There's no doubt that Manley will be missed as a championship venue.
So what does it look like? Here's a not-that-brief synopsis...
Class AA - Here's a case where the top two seeds, Henninger and CBA, are heavy favorites because of talent and consistency.
For the Black Knights, the title defense begins with West Genesee or Nottingham. Liverpool and F-M could collide in the quarterfinals, too, with Jesse Gates and Brian Zapisek set to duel...

CATEGORY: Basketball

TAGS: Section III, boys basketball, playoffs, analysis

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As we speed ahead in the post-season, we would be remiss if we didn't recap what happened in various Section III championships over the weekend.
Start with high praise for West Genesee's boys swimmers, who claimed the sectional team title Saturday at Nottingham's pool as Mexico, the OHSL champions, finished second.
All the Wildcats did was tie a state record in the 200 medley relay, this coming two days after Auburn's Patrick O'Donovan set a new sectional mark in the 100 backstroke. On top of that, you had Westhill's Dan O'Connor setting a meet record in the 500 freestyle...

CATEGORY: General Sports

TAGS: Section III playoffs, swimming, wrestling, volleyball, bowling, hockey

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No other way to look at it - a great day to be a Spartan, at least of the East Syracuse-Minoa variety.
Up in the north country, the boys basketball Spartans, a no. 15 seed (highest on the Class A board), knocks out no. 2 seed Indian River. So maybe all the bad luck from early this season turned around in one memorable trip.
Then you have volleyball. ESM began the Class A playoffs as a no. 8 seed no one noticed. Even when they beat first-round foe Oneida, it didn't raise eyebrows.
But when it came from 0-2 down, then down match point, to stun top seed New Hartford Friday, it started to turn...

CATEGORY: General Sports

TAGS: Section III playoffs, volleyball, basketball, hockey, indoor track, ESM

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For the most part, the girls basketball teams in Central New York took the week off, or just practiced a lot.
Some of them will be on the court Friday, though, providing a kick-start to the Section III playoffs. It all leads to title games March 7 at Utica Auditorium, the first time finals have been played in the eastern part of the section since 2003.
Just as we did with the boys playoffs, we will look at the girls brackets right now..
Class AA - Four teams ended up at 18-2. They all got first-round byes, but it was defending champion Corcoran that earned the top seed. With every starter back from the 2008 state final four run, the Cougars have to be favored, right?
Or maybe it's Oswego's turn at last. Beaten in the last three finals, the Buccaneers, as the no...

CATEGORY: Basketball

TAGS: Section III girls basketball playoffs, preview

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We will need a lot of entries in the next couple of days to go over all that has taken place in the Section III playoffs
One big focal point was Saturday's quintet of volleyball championship matches at Jamesville-DeWitt, which had a wide variety of outcomes.
It started with Class D, where Oppenheim-Ephratah concluded its romp through the entire bracket, dismissing Hamilton in a three-game sweep. The Emerald Knights saw its best chance get away in the second game, a 25-22 Hawks win that bridged a pair of comfortable O-E margins.
LaFayette, 22-0 going into the C-2 final against Dolgeville, nearly didn't make it out with that perfect record intact...

CATEGORY: General Sports

TAGS: Section III playoffs, volleyball, hockey

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In our continued drive through a busy weekend of Section III action, the next main topic is wrestling, as they handed out 30 individual titles over two days at Utica Memorial Auditorium.
Only the winners at these meets were guaranteed spots in next weekend's state championships in Albany, though I'm sure many "wild card" entries will find their way to the Captital District, too.
We started on Saturday with the Division II (small school) event. Among the quirks - South Jefferson placing two wrestlers in the same 103-pound final, where Lance Brown beat Jared Crast. Also, brothers Kyle and Mark Crisafulli from Phoenix won - Kyle at 112 pounds, Mark at 145 pounds...

CATEGORY: Wrestling

TAGS: Section III championships, wrestling

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So they alleviated some of the waiting part for the Section III basketball semifinals by playing a fair share of games Thursday, which is good. It spreads out what is sure to be a fascinating series of games.
Of course, we're not fully there. Eventually, it will stop snowing in the north country long enough for General Brown to escape and play top seed Mount Markham in B-2. Think these two teams are sick of sitting around?
The Mustangs would be favored in any case to make a B-2 semifinal against Adirondack, who must be just as tired of all this after eliminating Ilion. And looming above them all is Hannibal, who draws Lowville as a heavy favorite in the other B-2 semi at Sandy Creek as it seeks a sectional three-peat.
That, of course, is just one of eight puzzle pieces...

CATEGORY: Basketball

TAGS: Section III, boys basketball, semifinals, summary

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Brendan Jones comes from Australia. A pro in his early 30s, Jones has steadily worked his way up the world rankings, enough so that he grabbed the 64th and final spot for this week’s Match Play Championship – just in time to see, up close, Tiger Woods come back to golf.
Facing the great Mr. Woods under any kind of circumstances is unnerving enough, but the fact that this is the first we will see of Tiger on a golf course since his epic U.S. Open win at Torrey Pines on one good leg only makes it a bigger deal.
All the particulars are out of the way – the surgery, the rehab, the slow return to hitting full shots, and the birth of his son earlier this month...

CATEGORY: Golf

TAGS: Tiger Woods, return, injury

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Wow, still recovering from that double-OT thriller at Meachem Rink where James Cathers sent Corcoran past Cazenovia 4-3 and into the Division II ice hockey championship game.
Three different times, Corcoran rallied, including a tying goal in the last two minutes of regulation, and it also needed Jason Frier's tour de force in goal (51 saves) to fend off the Lakers' numerous charges, including a lot of game-winning attempts in the OT periods.
And for that...the Cougars get mighty New Hartford, winners of 15 in a row, tops in the state rankings, Sunday at the War Memorial...

CATEGORY: Basketball

TAGS: Section III, girls basketball semifinals, outlook

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So at Liverpool High School they’ll spend $5.8 million of state funds to put down a turf field, put up some bleachers and return a full spate of on-campus sports activities back to the campus.
Great- that only took three tries. In the process, school officials had to shelve details like new lights, new visiting bleachers and new restrooms, anything to get the darn thing passed. More importantly, they had to make sure that every cent of it was already on hand.
The saga that led to this passage – 3,684 aye, 1,474 nay, more than 71 percent approval – is a long and complicated tale, far better told by others. Yet you don’t need intimate details to know that the story reflects the broken state of the Liverpool district.
It all goes back to the turf...

CATEGORY: General Sports

TAGS: Liverpool, artificial turf, vote, passage

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If I spent this blog entry talking about all the Section III basketball semifinals that took place, well, you might get bored by the second or third paragraph.
Therefore, I shall stick to the girls games, because they start playing again on Tuesday and Wednesday. So you might last until the fifth paragraph...
It all went crazy in Class AA Friday night, with both top seeds tumbling.
Corcoran's fall was more surprising. Aiming to repeat, the Cougars led Fayetteville-Manlius by nine and had Emily Trapani on the bench with four fouls...

CATEGORY: Basketball

TAGS: Section III, girls basketball, semifinals

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