amazing. I saw them there and started thinking about how empty Bemus must have been with everyone there."
Reporter in critical condiition: Buffalo News sportswriter Tom Borrelli remained in critical condition in Erie County Medical Center yesterday after taking a fall while covering a high school football game Saturday at Buffalo’s All High Stadium, the paper reported.
Borrelli, 51, is responsive but is breathing with a respirator and is unable to move his arms and legs, family members said.
"He can understand, he’s in there," said his wife, Karen, also a member of paper's sports staff.
Borrelli fell down a steep set of iron stairs leading to the press box at All High Stadium. The facility underwent a $9 million renovation in 2007, but the planned reconstruction of the press box and installation of an elevator were cut because of cost overruns, said a spokesman for the contractor.
Others have called the press box stairs dangerous, and the paper said some reporters refused to use the press box because of them.
“That was an accident waiting to happen,” said longtime Grover Cleveland High School coach Art Serotte, who is a close friend of Borrelli.
'Friday Night Lights' memories: I haven't made it all the way through the exhaustive series, but The Dallas Morning News hit the proverbial home run this week with its three-day report on the scandal-plagued Dallas Carter football team.
In his 1990 best-seller that was later adapted into a movie that inspired a TV series, Friday Night Lights, author H.G. Bissinger chronicled Odessa Permian's 1988 season, which ended with a 14-9 state semifinal loss to Carter.
Twenty years later, the paper looks back on all aspects of the amazingly talented Carter team, including the string of robberies that led the state association to strip the '88 team of its championship. It's amazing stuff if you have an hour or so to take a look.
The 'haves' vs. the 'have-nots': Speaking of series, the Portland, Ore., newspaper did a three-parter recently largely on the issue of private vs. public schools, particularly with respect to funding.
Measure 5, the state property-tax cap that voters passed in 1990, slashed extracurricular spending dramatically in public schools. While some of them have since fared OK on the playing field, others have fallen considerably behind. And few of them have the resources of some of the state's better private schools.
Again, I haven't had time to get through very much of the package, but what I have seen is informative reading.