Wednesday, Nov. 16, 2005

   Would someone please drive down to Morgantown, W.Va., and read Jason Gwaltney the riot act before he fouls up what could still be a great career? The talented freshman running back out of North Babylon, sidelined with a knee injury Oct. 8, won't play again until he improves his off-the-field obligations, coach Rich Rodriguez said.

   Rodriguez wouldn't elaborate, but word out of the Big East is that Gwaltney has been having trouble finding the classroom and the trainer's room in the last month. He ran for 186 yards and scored three TDs in six games before hurting his knee.

   The Post-Standard kind of overplayed the Page One story in Wednesday's edition on SU's alleged million-dollar buyout of Paul Pasqualoni's contract. The IRS report on which the story was based covered July 1, 2004 to June 30, 2005.

   Pasqualoni was still coaching during the 2004 season and did (technically) earn a share of the Big East championship, which almost certainly triggered a bonus. Back out those bucks, and the real buyout was probably $550,000 or so.

   Considering the number of 2005 tickets bought by fans grateful that Coach P was his-to-reee, that was probably a pretty good investment by the Orange administration.

   Tons of rumors of high school football coaches on the move in Section 5. Sadly, it looks like speculation that a couple of them are not leaving voluntarily appears true. Great. When did we get annexed by Texas, where the state tree is a set of uprights?

Monday, Nov. 14, 2005

   East Aurora's Class B triumph in girls cross country over the weekend put an end to the seven-year run of state championships by Honeoye Falls-Lima (Section 5), the longest title streak in state history according to Section 2 stats ace Steve Grandin. The longest active streak in any sport now belongs to Saratoga Springs (Section 2) girls cross country at six -- and counting.

   Congratulations to Lynne Layne, New Rochelle's super sprinter (:11.81 and :24.05 at '04 states), who signed a letter of intent last week with the University of Tennessee and has a real future in track. By the way, distance ace Nicole Blood of Saratoga Springs, taking the year off from high school running but still training and competing, selected the University of Oregon.

Sunday, Nov. 13, 2005

   Just got done looking over the list of scores from state football quarterfinals played Friday and Saturday. I can't remember this many blowouts on the field since the Buffalo Bills were annual participants in the Super Bowl. The average margin of victory for 16 games was 25.6 points. Ouch.

   Props to the New York State Coaches Association and its Rochester chapter, which remembered the media last week during awards presentations at its annual banquet. WHAM-TV sports director Mike Catalana and Democrat and Chronicle sports reporters Jeff DiVeronica and James Johnson all received recognition.

   So I was all set to playfully chide TullyRunners.com for projecting a 47-47 tie in the girls Class AA cross country showdown between Saratoga (Section 2) and Hilton (Section 5) and then not explicitly saying 'toga would win on the tiebreaker. But then an amazing thing happened: Saratoga scored a dramatic 46-47 victory.

   Though TullyRunners.com was able to pick only six of the 10 team champions (at least two of the misses were forecasts that **everyone** had wrong) from the weekend meet in Queensbury, the gang did an uncanny job projecting scores. Way to go, TullyRunners.com.

Friday, Nov. 11, 2005

   Kudos to The Buffalo News, which does a nice job every Tuesday publishing a package of high school features, notebooks, polls and statistics across two full pages. With so much pressure on newspapers to accelerate the transition to the Web, it's nice to see the News take good care of those who choose the analog method of being informed.

   Of course, the News always has plenty of good material with which to work. In a 12-day period beginning Oct. 26, new Buffalo schools Superintendent James A. Williams announced an ambitious plan to seek millions of corporate dollars to revitalize the city's schoalstic sports programs, then ventured dangerously close to the realm of racial divide by suggesting mandatory classes to teach public assistance recipients how to get their children to succeed in school and allegedly suggesting that white principals working for him were doing a better job than their black counterparts.

   There seems to be disagreement over precisely what Williams said about principals. But this much is true: No one can possibly be spending much time right now thinking about his funding plan for sports programs.

Thursday, Nov. 10, 2005

   Can the state of big-time college football in New York get any worse? No. The trouble is, I'm not sure when it's going to get better.

   Syracuse is 1-7 to start the Greg Robinson era. No offense to the Orange, but they have no offense at this point as Robinson's staff tries to overcome five years of spectacularly poor recruiting at the end of the Paul Pasqualoni era.

   Next season's schedule, during which the majority of Robinson's first recruiting class (most of last springs signees were the result of commitments lined up by the previous staff) will be red-shirting, includes two opponents from a real conference (Iowa and Illinois from the Big Ten). In 2007, the non-conference schedule includes Iowa, Illinois AND Ohio State.

   A pair of 5-6 seasons, bottom-feeding off mediocre Big East programs (yes, that would be most of the conference), would feel like major progress.

   Thankfully, for the Orange faithful, the University at Buffalo is also on the '07 schedule. The Bulls will line up that day minus Coach Jim Hofher, who was informed this week that he'll be unemployed at season's end.

   UB is 0-9 this fall and the source of SU's only victory. Hofher's record is 7-48 in not quite five full seasons.

   The Mid-American Conference is one of the better mid-major conferences in Division I, but it'll never be confused with the Big Ten or, for that matter, the Big East. It's fairly well understood that UB aspires to be part of a major conference some day, but the Bulls have to be competitive on the field first. Hate to be cruel, but how does 2017 sound?

   By the way, Ray Rice sure would have looked nice in a Syracuse uniform this fall. A true freshman at Rutgers, the former New Rochelle star has 536 rushing yards in his last four games. He'd given a verbal to SU, but changed his mind after Pasqualoni's departure. Robinson didn't get the SU job in time to woo the young sensation back.