Saturday, Sept. 16, 2006
I don't think we'll see the "CBA effect" here, but Keio does figure to at least remain competitive in downstate soccer now that it has been moved from Class C to Class A.    Syracuse Christian Brothers Academy, you'll recall, ticked off the fine administrators of Section 3 by having the audacity to keep winning sectional football titles despite getting moved up to higher classes seemingly every year. Critics love to complain the CBA recruits, but Section 3 actually pushed some players onto the CBA campus by offering them the appeal of big-time local football in a small-school setting.    Keio has four state Class C championships since 1995 and has the firepower to stay in games against larger schools on a regular basis. Soccer success, though, still depends quite often on who manages to get the three (Brazilian, German, Japanese . . . choose one) exchange students to live in their district for a year.    Their margin for error has certainly been diminished, but they can still		win more than they lose in the regular season and make some noise in the playoffs. I didn't see the finally tally so I only have a partial score, but Newsday ran the following online poll question the other day: Should Long Island football teams compete for the state championship in the same way that most every other sport does?    Last time I looked, there were 633 votes cast in the unscientific survey, and 86.7 percent were saying, "Yes." LongIslandBasketball.com is reporting that Kellenberg point guard Rich Harkins has transferred to Long Island Lutheran High School for the start of his junior year. He'll be playing alongside Matt Rooney, who transferred from Stony Brook. Section 3 awaits its first big football game of the season next weekend. Rome Free Academy and Utica Proctor are both 3-0 and have at least a little of that "We can't get any love because we're not from Syracuse" chip on their shoulders. The winner will have to be taken very seriously the rest of the way.

Friday, Sept. 15, 2006
Depending on your perspective, yesterday's column on InsiderHigh-erEd.com was either an eye-opener or a waste of throughput.    University of Florida professor Gordon Marino correctly points out that many colleges regard football as more than just a device to build campus spirit. It's a marketing tool and a way to pry money from the wallets of alums.    But the former Yale and St. Olaf football assistant may have given too much weight to a recent New York Times story that dealt with how some schools are using football to remedy a gender imbalance resulting from record numbers of females enrolling.    Utica College is portrayed in a somewhat unflattering fashion because the school lured 78 players in 2001 for its inaugural season but only six were still playing as seniors.    What went unreported, however, was the number of students who remained in school and earned degrees. The story says the number was "less than half" of the original 78.    That could still amount to 25 or 30 young people who got the most out of college even if they didn't make the cut on the field. And there's nothing wrong with that.		Some people who've probably forgotten more about distance running than most of us will ever learn are saying this is a very, very deep year for cross country in the Empire State.    Dyestat's first regional roundup of the season has the Collegiate, Liverpool and Shenendehowa boys rated 2-3-4, with Fayetteville-Manlius and Warwick also in the top 10. Liverpool and F-M could go head-to-head four times this fall, beginning Sept. 30 at the McQuaid Invitational.    On the distaff side, Hilton is poised to defend its Nike Team Nationals championship. The Cadets appear slightly deeper than last year, which is a good thing because Saratoga and Colonie are ready to contend out of Section 2 and Bronxville returns its lineup virtually intact. Good move by Tony Jackson's family. Bishop Kearney's ace senior running back will serve a one-game suspension rather than file an appeal that would potentially drag things out and create distractions.    The people I've talked to think Jackson may have been the victim of a marginal call as a shove quite possibly was mistaken as a punch. I do have to wonder, however, why Jackson was still on the game so late in a rout. Everyone knows he's for real; there's no need to pad his stats.

Monday, September 11, 2006
A quick whip-around while waiting for NYSSWA editor Neil Kerr to generate our first weekly football rankings: Tony Jackson's string of 300-yard rushing games this fall will end at two. The Bishop Kearney senior was ejected from Saturday's 42-16 win over Waterloo for a personal foul and will apparently have to sit out Friday's game against Midlakes.    Jackson had 301 yards and two TDs on just 13 carries in the game. He had opened his season with 22 carries for 337 yards and three TDs in a win over Marcus Whitman. It was certainly a not-so-memorable weekend for Buffalo's large-school Catholics. Long Island powerhouse St. Anthony's rolled up 546 yards in a 49-29 win over St. Joe's, Ohio's St. Ignatius inflicted a 52-7 beating on Canisius, Rochester Aquinas tripped up Bishop Timon by a 30-0 margin and Long Island's Holy Trinity edged St. Francis by 13-7. Life changed in a hurry for Nikki Jo Rotolo a week ago. The June graduate of Rome Free Academy had already moved into her room in Rochester and was going to play basketball for JuCo powerhouse Monroe Community College.    In fact, she was in a basketball meeting when a St. John's coach text-messaged her to report that a scholarship had opened up at the		Big East school. Two days later, she was in New York City to enroll in classes.    Rotolo, who is 5-foot-10, averaged 24.8 points and 5.4 assists as an RFA senior. She had 2,029 career points. Basketball coaches looking to schedule an out-of-state victory would be advised to stay away from Notre Dame Prep in Fitchburg, Mass., this winter.    Nyika Williams, a 6-foot-8 forward who averaged 14.5 points last season at Monsignor McClancy, will do a year of post-graduate there. Williams played only the second half of the 2005-06 season, complementing second-team all-stater Stephen Wood.    Don't be stunned to see the two of them reunited at Duquesne at some point in the not-too-distant future.    Among Williams' teammates at prep school will be Syracuse University basketball recruit Sean Williams, who recently left his California school in order to enroll. Williams, a 6-10 senior, averaged only 6.3 points as a junior on a star-studded team.    Syracuse recruit Paul Harris out of Niagara Falls prepped at Notre Dame last year and led the team to a 28-2 record and No. 1 ranking in several national publications.

Sunday, Sept. 10, 2006
Western New York's biggest manhunt since Walt Patulski disappeared from organized football shortly after being drafted by the Buffalo Bills in 1972 came to a conclusion Friday night when Ralph "Bucky" Phillips was apprehended.    The former fugitive is suspected of killing one state trooper and wounding two others as part of a crime spree that began April 2 with his escape from the Erie County Correctional Center.    Phillips will get his day in court, but won't have to pay the ultimate price if convicted because New York's death penalty statute has been ruled unconstitutional -- a decision based entirely on merit because of the sloppy fashion in which it was written.    Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, currently a heavy favorite to take the governor's mansion in November, is on record that he wants to revive the death penalty for cop killers. Here's hoping the state Senate and Assembly get onboard with him and write new legislation that can be signed into law almost immediately, but don't hold your breath waiting.    You see, New York's lawmakers are not exactly deep-thinkers for the most part. There certainly are some capable minds and responsible leaders in the chambers in Albany, but there are also more than a few men and women who aren't using their time in office wisely.    Take, for example, Joseph D. Morelle of the 132nd Assembly District in the Rochester area. He's spending way too much time -- which I would define as three nano-seconds or more -- championing the "Fairness in High School Athletic Competition Act."    I won't bore you with the details now -- I'll save that for another blog entry on a slow day -- but Morelle has been enlisted to carry the New York State Wrestling Coaches Association's spit bucket, proposing legistation that would force the NYSPHSAA to change the qualifying format for the state wrestling championships.    Again, I'll get into the specifics at a later date, but the NYSWCA wants state berths allocated strictly based upon the number of teams each section has. They don't like the fact that each section of the state has equal say in votes of the NYSPHSAA Executive Committee, again preferring the "one man, one vote" concept.    The NYSPHSAA, which has never been my favorite entity, has already made reasonable adjustments in the last few years, going to a two-class tournament that just about doubled the number of participants overnight.		As far as I know, they still intend to add wildcards at next season's state meet, upping the total field to 435 athletes.    There's no reason for the state government to get involved with an issue that the NYSPHSAA has already been addressing.    If Morelle wants to discuss equal participation, perhaps he can get other regions of the state to contribute equally when it comes to the distribution of state funding. Studies have shown beyond dispute that Rochester gets less money each year from the state government than either Buffalo or Syracuse on a per capita basis.    And if Morelle wants to discuss equal representation, perhaps he can get the United State Constitution changed so that we first do away with the Electoral College before moving on to really complicated issues like the state wrestling tourney.    Want to talk more about the concept of "one man, one vote," assemblyman? Then how about we discuss the insanely gerrymandered Assembly and Senate district maps that all but assure re-election for any lawmaker who can avoid arrest and/or indictment (which admittedly seems to be an increasingly difficult hurdle).    Don't even get me started on state's government's role in drawing U.S. Congressional districts after the 2000 census. Rep. Louise Slaughter represents Buffalo and Rochester; the rest of her district consists primarily of a thin strip of land on the south shore of Lake Ontario connecting those cities. I don't think it's even a legal district at high tide. Nice bit of work Friday night by Aquinas senior Kevin Pauly, who hammered a 50-yard field goal during the Little Irish's 30-0 victory at Bishop Timon.    Fifty-yarders are fairly rare to begin with -- we've tracked only around 50 of them over the years -- but coaches almost never trust a kicker from that distance in the first few weeks of the season. By our count, only four others have come this early in September. I'm not sure if it will go anywhere, but a Basketball Coaches Association of New York advisory committee is said to be studying the merits of playing games consisting of two 18-minute halves.    Such a change would probably first be trotted out as an experiment in AAU and summer-league contests at least two or three seasons before it might make its way to high school basketball.

Saturday, Sept. 9, 2006
The Internet era has finally arrived at newspapers across New York as a number of dailies have taken significant leaps forward in their coverage of high school sports.    The most recent to step up is Newsday, which rolled out improvements to its high school coverage yesterday. The centerpiece of the effort is the N-Zone, a weekly "vodcast" (video podcast) chock full of news and features.    The site also now includes sport-by-sport chat boards and will allow users to submit their photos for inclusion in galleries.    To the north, LoHud.com, the online home of The Journal News, has also taken strong steps forward.    LoHud had a full set of football scores by 10:30 p.m. last night, and they've added the staples of modern Internet newspapering -- podcasts moderated by assistant sports editor Michael Rose, blogs and photos.    For a special touch, check out the video interviews with their Super 11 players.		LoHud's work is similar to what a number of other Gannett papers across the state and country have done in 2006 as part of the chain's emphasis on local news.    In Rochester, the Democrat and Chronicle had full sets of football and soccer scores available well before the 11 o'clock news last night. The site also has photo galleries from several varsity games each week and numerous Flash-driven photo galleries with audio clips.    (Full disclosure: I am employed by the Democrat and Chronicle and was one of the founding members of the web site in 1995. I now work in the advertising department handling web-related projects that do not include news coverage).    It all adds up to a victory for the print guys over television and radio, which have lost exclusivity of the devices that had previously set them apart -- audio and video. Even as newspaper newsrooms continue to shrink, it's a rare day when the print brigade gets beat in substance or in style by the dish heads.