Leading off today: Gov. Eliot Spitzer has awarded the 2009 Hugh L. Carey Empire State Games to Dutchess, Orange and Ulster counties, it was announced today.

   The 32nd annual event will be held July 22-26, 2009. The ESGs were last hosted by the Mid-Hudson Valley in 2005. The ESGs bring together nearly 6,000 of New York’s top athletes participating in 28 different Olympic-style sports at the scholastic, open and masters levels.

   The Empire State Games program, run by the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation, was established in 1978 by Governor Hugh L. Carey.

   The 2008 ESGs will be held in Binghamton, July 23-27.

   Turf wars: Nyack residents will vote on a $16.5 million proposal to upgrade and repair district schools and athletic fields, and the proposition is fast becoming a contentious matter.

   Part of the project would involve re-sodding the middle school athletic field and putting artificial turf on one high school field, and the latter is becoming a safety issue.

   According to The Journal News,, some activists are pointing to the rubber crumb used as a base for many artificial turf fields as being potentially toxic. They want the proposition split into two parts so that voters can decide separately on the school and athletic improvements.

   "I think parents are particularly conflicted," parent Kim Kastens told the paper. "Who wants to vote against new roofs? It makes it very hard when voters are asked to (approve) this package deal. It puts people in a tough situation."

   Estimates peg the price of the athletic upgrades anywhere from $2 million to $4 million. The district can get state reimbursement for about a third of the project.

   Primetime: A handful of New York scholastic basketball teams will be on ESPN this winter as the cable giant offers up a schedule of at least 15 games involving schools from 12 states.

   Among the games on the 2007-08 schedule:

Fall tournament brackets NYSPHSAA football NYSPHSAA boys soccer NYSPHSAA girls soccer NYSPHSAA field hockey

• Jan. 21, the Spalding Hoophall Classic tripleheader on ESPNU will include these matchups from Springfield, Mass.: San Jose, Calif., Archbishop Mitty vs. Queens Holy Cross and Bronx St. Raymond vs. Woodland Hills, Calif., Taft.
• Feb. 9, the Prime Time Shootout in Trenton, N.J., on ESPNU will include Manhattan Rice vs. Brooklyn Abraham Lincoln.

   More of the national schedule is available on the ESPN web site.

   Letters of intent — or discontent? I missed this the first time around, but Seth Davis of Sports Illustrated did an interesting piece a couple of weeks ago on the National Letter of Intent Program.

   Davis points out that NLIs are pretty much one-sided in favor of schhols rather than players because there are only minimal protections in place for the student-athlete but substantial penalties (including the loss of one year of eligibility) for not honoring a signed Letter of Intent.

   Still, I disagree with Davis' conclusion that athletes should not sign an NLI. I think that could be legitimate advice for the cream of the crop, say the top 100 men's and women's basketball players each year. Those are the folks that other schools would gladly scoop up if for some reason the player did not end up attending the original preferred school.

   But what if the prospective new suitor was out of scholarships when some 7-footer with a sweet baby hook suddenly became available. While it's not impossible to abruptly dump an athlete who has signed his NLI, doing so can be messy legally and in terms of public relations. On the other hand, there's the old expression that a "verbal agreement isn't worth the paper it's written on." Without the NLI, the No. 361 prospect in the country will definitely find himself kicked to the curb if a school needed to free up a ride for the aforementioned 7-footer.

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