Leading off today: The on-again, off-again conclusion to the football game between East Rochester/Gananda and Bath is on again, but perhaps not for long.

   The game, suspended Friday with 2:39 to play due to a power failure that knocked out the lights at Bath's field, was ruled a "no contest" over the weekend, but the Democrat and Chronicle reported this morning that the rules require either that the game be completed or that ER/Gananda be declared the winner. The Bombers were leading 21-14 at the time of the disruption, but Bath was driving inside the ER/Gananda 30-yard line.

   The game is now scheduled to resume today at 5:30 p.m. on Bath's field, but ER/Gananda coach Dennis Greco said his team will not make the trip — approximately an hour and 45 minutes each way — and will forfeit the contest. ER/Gananda is on the road again Friday night for a game against Waterloo.

   "It's not taking the best interest in the kids at heart," Greco said. "If they want the win that bad, the (sectional) points that bad, take 'em. This whole thing is ridiculous. You're expecting kids to do something that's unhealthy."

   Regardless of how the situation plays out, it's likely that both teams will advance to the Section 5 Class B playoffs, possibly setting up a rematch in sectionals.

   Sunday's rapid recap: Senior Ryan Whitley threw TDs of 63 yards to Nick Padilla and 56 yards to Kevin Malivert, scored on a 13-yard run and led Ramapo to a 31-19 triumph against North Rockland. Junior Jamal Marshall scored on runs of 16 and 53 yards.

   Junior Dorian Feggins ran for 179 yards and two TDs in relief of the injured Johnson City transfer Jamar Smith (172 yards, three TDs) at the Carrier Dome as Binghamton rolled up 499 yards on the ground and 596 overall to beat Fayetteville-Manlius, 47-23. Smith scored on runs of 14 and 38 yards to get Binghamton out to a 13-12 lead, then scampered 72 yards to make it 19-15 in the second quarter.

   Justin Forte ran for 144 yards and junior Jake Meek threw for 231 as Bishop Kearney scored a 35-17 win over Westhill at the Carrier Dome. Kearney junior Blair Roberts scored on a 65-yard punt return in the third quarter and a 68-yard pass from Meek in the fourth quarter.

   Weekend follow-up: A revision to the stats boosted Hoosick Falls QB Kevin Woods's numbers to 19-for-28 for 402 yards and five TDs in Friday’s 34-19 win vs. Cambridge. . . . Granville, which went 0-9 with just 32 points scored in 2007, opened its football season with a 28-22 win over Stillwater. . . . The Observer-Dispatch reports that New Hartford senior QB Mike Doyle (bruised knee) will likely miss Friday's game against defending champion Carthage in a rematch of last year’s Section 3 Class A final.

   Tom Giglio’s spectacular start to his junior football season was also his finale. Utica Notre Dame's two-way starter returned Saturday’s opening kickoff 77 yards for a touchdown, ran for another score and caught two TD passes but broke his left tibia on a helmet hit in the third quarter of the Jugglers’ 59-6 rout of New York Mills.

Also available online Section-by-section weekly football schedule (PDF) Enrollments and classes for NYSPHSAA football (PDF)

   Grover Cleveland's 26-12 win over Buffalo McKinley, the three-time defending Harvard Cup champion, ended the Macks' win streaks of 21 games overall and 30 games against league opponents.

   Misery in Syracuse: Chrissie Hynde penned the song "My City Was Gone" as the B-side for The Pretenders' 1982 tune "Back on the Chain Gang," a tribute to deceased bandmate James Honeyman-Scott. The song lamented the changes Hynde noticed in her hometown of Akron, Ohio, after returning from a long stay in England to launch her career.

   In light of Saturday's disaster in the Carrier Dome against the Akron Zips, I believe the song that sums up the state of the Syracuse University football team is "Taps."

   Needless to say, the Greg Robinson era will be coming to an end this fall, perhaps even before the season ends. Syracuse ceased being a "destination" school for coaches roughly four years into the Paul Pasqualoni era because of the insane number of quality assistants that he chased away. It's now a place for a head coach fresh from a minor conference and his staff to spend three or four years while (hopefully) winning enough games to attract the attention of ADs at better programs.

   That's all Orange fans can hope for — a Turner Gill kind of guy who might string together records of 3-9, 5-7 and then 7-5 before moving on to an ACC or Big 12 job. But good luck to anyone who accepts the job, because there might not be a bigger mess in D-I right now.

   The perils of technology: Feel free to skip this item if you don't work in the media industry, because it's "inside baseball" stuff.

   Gannett Blog, a gossipy Web site maintained by a former employee of the newspaper chain, reported over the weekend that the HighSchoolSports.net software used by a number of the company's papers, including several in New York, is driving editors batty.

   Gannett acquired a controlling interest in Schedule Star LLC, HighSchoolSports.net's parent, a little less than a year ago with the hope that it would help solve the issue of integrating print and online high school sports coverage for its newspapers.

   One of the major issues is the ability to extract game information and statistics from the Web site and properly encode it for use in the daily newspaper — "reverse publishing." Stunningly, one of the issues reportedly is that editors can't properly process game reports if the coach who submitted the info is still logged into the data-entry tool on the Web site.

   That's one of the perils newspapers face when they expect coaches or ADs to do the work that reporters and newsroom clerks used to handle. Gannett is not alone in trying to save money by shifting the work to non-employees, but there's obviously a lot of risk involved there.

HOME | BLOG | RANKINGS | BRACKETS | REFERENCE | KERR CUP | ABOUT US

©2007-19 Abbott Trento Online Media. All rights reserved. Contact us via e-mail.