Published November 29, 2008 07:15 pm –
Bob West column for Sunday, Nov 30
The Port Arthur News
It wouldn’t surprise me at all if Matt Burnett’s successor at Port Neches-Groves comes from among Jim Bob Helduser, Mike Long or Alvin Credeur. All three have PN-G ties and all three have solid credentials. Helduser, who was a teammate of Burnett on PN-G’s 1974 state semifinalists, has been a head coach in college at Southwest Texas State, was on Dennis Franchione’s staff at TCU, Alabama and Texas A&M and is currently an assistant at Bryan High School. Long, of course, was the offensive coordinator at PN-G when the team played for the 4A state title in 1999, and has done a terrific job as head coach at Kelly. Credeur, a former PN-G assistant, has grabbed back-to-back shares of the 20-4A title at Lumberton and has the Raiders program on the rise. Of the three, I’d peg him as least likely, simply because of Lumberton’s growing enrollment . . . Another area football situation that bears watching is at Memorial. Ronnie Thompson has one year left on his contract and is being tight lipped about his plans to return, retire or take another position. Thompson’s done a much better job at Memorial than most people on the outside realize from looking at the Titans’ record, but you have to wonder if this is a situation where a younger, more energetic coach could best meet the challenge. If Thompson does choose to step aside, Memorial has the perfect replacement on its staff in Kenny Harrison. A former TJ receiving great who played at Texas, Kenny’s an excellent coach and as good a person as you’ll ever meet. I can’t imagine a more popular or better choice.
Lamar basketball coach Steve Roccaforte has been given permission by the University of Florida to talk to John Lucas’ son Jai, who is transferring out of the Gators program when the fall semester ends. The 5-8 Jai was in the stands for Lamar’s game at Rice Tuesday night, along with his dad, his brother John III and former NBA guard Damon Stoudamire. Roccaforte, however, could not speak with the younger Lucas because he was on the campus of another school. With Jai Lucas having said he wants to play close to home, the Cardinals’ main competition on him may come from Rice and the University of Houston . . . Another familiar face in the stands at Rice Tuesday night was former LU coach Pat Foster. Foster, who lives in the Houston area, keeps close tabs on Cardinal basketball. He also showed up in March when Lamar played Texas-Arlington in the Southland Conference tournament in Katy. Before the Rice game, he chatted at courtside with Cardinal AD Billy Tubbs. Foster, of course, succeeded Tubbs at Lamar and built on what he’d accomplished . . . LU’s Jay Brown was close to a major statistical milestone when he scored 22 points and grabbed 18 rebounds against Rice. Only six players in school history — Adrian Caldwell, James Gulley, Clarence Kea, Luke Adams, Don Bryson and Odis Booker — have authored a 20/20 game. Bryson did it three times. Caldwell was the last to do it in 1989.
Texas Longhorn fans have more to sweat out than the BCS poll which will determine whether the Longhorns get to play in the Big 12 championship game. After UT’s Thanksgiving night pounding of Texas A&M, QB Colt McCoy said he was going to explore his options with the NFL for next season. McCoy also said he intends to return for his senior season, but that’s what Vince Young and Jamaal Charles said. More and more college kids are wising up to the fact they are part of big business and a smart businessman needs to cash in when he can. If McCoy is told he’ll be a first or second rounder, expect him to move on . . . Until his decision to kick a field goal on 4th-and-1, with his team down 14-0 and less than two-minutes left in the first half of the Texas game, I’d been defending Texas A&M’s Mike Sherman as a guy who inherited a bad situation and would eventually make Aggie football relevant again. No more. A&M needed touchdowns, not field goals, to have the slightest chance against Texas, and any coach unable to see that pretty much comes off as a short-sighted loser. The ESPN crew doing the game came down hard with the second guessing, as they should have. The decision looked even worse when Texas followed the field goal by scoring again before the half . . . In case you were wondering about all the slipping and sliding taking place on the turf Royal Memorial Stadium Thursday night, it was apparently the result of a recent taping of the TV show Friday Night Lights. Wanna bet that never happens again in close proximity to a UT game. What if Colt McCoy had pulled a muscle on one of the numberous times he lost footing?
Thumbs up to Troy Aikman for his remarks about Pacman Jones during the telecast of the Cowboys thumping of Seattle Thanksgiving Day. Aikman pointed out that no matter what players are quoted as saying about Jerry Jones giving Pacman another chance, that isn’t necessarily how they really feel. As a former NFL star QB, Aikman knows players and coaches are rarely candid when it comes to sensitive subjects. Especially when public second guessing would make the owner look foolish . . . So who’s a bigger boob among current NFL quarterbacks — Philadelphia’s Donovan McNabb or Pittsburgh’s Ben Roethlisberger? First, McNabb gets ridiculed after the Eagles 13-13 tie against the Bengals two weeks ago for saying he didn’t know an NFL game would be declared a tie if there was no score in overtime. Then along comes Roethlisberger defending McNabb and saying probably 50 percent of the players in the league didn’t know regular season games could finish in a tie . . . Has anybody in the sports world made a worse decision than Notre Dame did when it offered arrogant Charlie Weis a lucrative and lengthy contract extension — some say 10 years — after a 10-2 record in 2006? Among the lowlights since then, the Irish extended their NCAA record bowl losing streak to nine with a 41-14 blowout against LSU, went 3-9 with a first loss to Navy in 43 years in 2007, fell to an eight-loss Syracuse team that had already fired its head coach last week in South Bend and took a 6-5 record into Saturday night’s regular-season finale at Southern Cal, a game in which they were a 29-point underdog.
Here’s another reason to be disgusted at corporate welfare. Citigroup, one of the struggling banks being bailed out by the federal government, has told the New York Mets it plans to honor its pledge to pay $20 million a year for the next 20 years — that’s $400 million total — for naming rights to the Mets new ballpark. In other words, taxpayers are going to underwrite the $400 million, then be seriously overcharged for tickets to Mets games. In the meantime, Citigroup gets 20 years of free advertising . . . Speaking of a waste of money, the Houston Texans are licking their wounds over more than $11 million shelled out to injury-prone Ahman Green the past two years. When they put Green on injured reserve last week, the Texans closed the books on a player who contributed 260 rushing yards and two touchdowns in 2007 and 294 yards and three TDs this year . . . With the Texans playing on Monday Night Football for the first time in franchise history this week, it’s appropriate that a symbol of Houston’s sweetest Monday night memories will be on hand for the matchup with Jacksonville. Bum Phillips, whose Luv Ya Blue Oilers authored some of the most entertaining MNF games in the Howard Cosell-Dan Don Meredith era, will be signing autographs outside Gate 130 prior to the game. I would expect the lines to be long, because Bum remains one of the Bayou Cities most beloved sports icons.
Sports editor Bob West can be e-mailed at rdwest@usa.net. His Sportsrap radio show airs Wednesdays at 8:05 p.m. on KLVI (560-AM).
