Blogs

This is the conclusion of an interview I conducted with Houston Aeros head coach Kevin Constantine several weeks ago. You can find part one here, and part two here.

Constantine weighs in on fighting in hockey, getting the proper mindset, his biggest surprise this season, the work done by the goalies, the team’s obligation to fans, his shot at playing in the NHL, and the nomadic life of the coach.

ON FIGHTING IN HOCKEY AND THE HOW TO TELL THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A GOOD FIGHT AND A BAD FIGHT:

There are two things that can make a fight bad. One is if a player has to take an instigation penalty to get another guy to fight. So you’re going to start on a penalty kill. You want to spend a minimal amount of time in a game on the penalty kill. So if you have to get an instigator penalty to get another guy to fight you, it’s generally bad.

The other thing is that fights are potentially momentum-changing events. One team has really got nothing going emotionally. A fight can sometimes raise so much emotion that it just perks the emotions of the team that isn’t. If you had another team playing a real bad game and you had a two-nothing lead on a team that really wasn’t mentally into the game, going and fighting another guy on their team could only potentially bring emotion to their bench. And give them a reason to start competing, and get them emotionally attached to the game.

So often you’ll find a team that’s down by two goals more likely to try to get a fight going to get their teammates immersed in the game emotionally.

What a disaster. One week ago, I was living the prognosticator’s dream, with my eyes on an epic 50 games over .500 season. I wasn’t just living the good life, I was eating ambrosia with the gods. But today, I stand before you a broken man. My kingdom lies in ruins at my feet. That’s what a 3-13 week will to do to you. Yep, in the crapshoot that is the NFL, life changes that fast.

Making matters worse, this week is already off to a bad start. A plethora of tough breaks and poor play from the Packers allowed Dallas to cover the spread, meaning I’m going to have to dig out of an 0-1 hole. Any other week, and I wouldn’t even be breaking a sweat. But this isn’t any other week. Right now, my confidence is shot and I’m as skittish as David Carr in a collapsing pocket. So I guess there’s nothing else to do but get back in the huddle, call the play, and hope like heck these pretty white gloves can work their magic.

The college football regular season ends this weekend. And all I can say is it’s about time. I mean, we’re looking at a BCS Championship Game of Missouri versus West Virginia.

Yawn.

There are two really important games this weekend, and they’re both going on at the same time on Saturday night. Starting at 6:45, ESPN will be televising Pittsburgh at West Virginia. And at 7:00, ABC will have Missouri versus Oklahoma. If West Virginia and Missouri win, that sets the BCS title game. If they lose, then it’s more of the standard chaos that has so dominated this season.

Yesterday I had the chance to speak to Sam Jemielity, senior editor for Playboy.com. And I’ve got some bad news. There are definitely no plans for Erin Andrews to appear in the buff for either Playboy or Playboy.com. So, even though she’s now the sexiest broadcaster in sports, she’s not doing the nude thing.

So get over it.

Jemielity said Playboy.com has “reached out to the top three candidates” – Andrews, Lindsay Soto of Fox Sports Net West, and Krista Voda of the Speed Channel – but they have yet to respond.

It’s hard to imagine the world that existed before The Smoking Gun, but luckily we don’t have to. The Web site comes through in terrific fashion yet again today with video of the DUI arrest of St. Louis Cardinal manager and Astro nemesis Tony LaRussa.

Our favorite part might be LaRussa’s version of the alphabet, which gets pretty squirrely towards the end. Obviously he was counting on being able to call in two or three relievers to come up with the last three or four letters for him. – Richard Connelly

I hate these Thursday night game weeks. It makes me rush to get my wrong predictions made. I don’t have as much time to do the necessary homework. And sure, I had a bad week last time out, but I did go 6-10 and I did predict the Eagles would get within the point spread in the game with the Patriots. But I’m now a full 30-games under the .500 mark, being 73-103 on the season.

I think staging a miraculous comeback is really out of the question.

But enough of that. It’s time for this week’s picks.

1. The Cowboys are favored by 7 points over the visiting Packers. Okay, it seems that lots of people are pissed because this game is being played on the NFL Network, and not many people have access to the NFL Network. But you know something, when it’s the Texans playing on the NFL Network in two weeks, I don’t think people are going to be complaining about not having the NFL Network. For what it’s worth, I’m not sold on the Packers. But I’m even less sold on the Cowboys. I just don’t see the Cowboys winning this game by 7 points, so take the Packers to get within the point spread.

No use wasting time. The bounce back from the worst prediction week of my life starts now. What can I say? Everything that could go wrong, did. Whether it was wacky endings, a monsoon in Pittsburgh, or A.J. Feeley playing the game of his life, nothing went the way of my crystal ball. Hell, I couldn’t even win a game on Madden. Yep, it was that kind of week.

So no use throwing a pity party. It’s time to jump back in and recapture the magic that catapulted me to the top of the prediction pool in the first place. Today, Packers-Cowboys. Tomorrow, the rest of the week 13 picks.

Tulsa athletic director Bubba Cunningham recently let it be known that “we need to provide an environment where a student-athlete can participate and fans can enjoy college athletics in a very positive way.”

Cunningham made this statement as he was filing a complaint about the Rice marching band, The MOB, calling Tulsa coach Todd Graham a douchebag. And I suppose Cunningham does have a point. The student-athlete should be able to participate in and enjoy sports in a very positive way.

Which makes me wonder how an asshole like Bobby Knight is still coaching.

Well, the election results are in, and the winner is Erin Andrews.

That’s right, according to the good folks at Playboy, it appears Erin Andrews is the hottest sportscaster babe of them all. But kids, don’t get your hopes up. There’s nothing to indicate that Ms. Andrews will grace the inside pages of the magazine in that same level of undress as former candidate Lisa Guerrero (image not safe for work) or Shana Hiatt (image also not safe for work), who was a candidate this year. There’s also nothing to indicate that she will be inclined to display her assets in Maxim as did the previous winner of this contest, Jill Arrington.

The results shouldn’t be a surprise. Erin Andrews is an attractive woman. But I’m disappointed that, despite all of my work, Suzy Kolber didn’t win the vote. Though, according to the magazine, she did receive a sizeable number of write-in votes, and I’d like to think that was more than just me and Joe Namath casting our ballots.

Admit it. A few minutes past 10 p.m. CST, you were positively horrified. For two hours, you had watched the Rockets give a nearly flawless performance on the road against the match-up nightmare known as the Phoenix Suns. They played defense. They stroked the three. Yao dominated. And yet, come crunch time, you expected the worst. Don’t beat yourself up about it. You’re not alone.

This was the kind of game programmed to prey upon the fears of everyone wearing Rocket red. Houston’s lead had been whittled to two. The crisp ball movement of the previous three-and-a-half quarters had been replaced by a stagnant offense which too often settled for jumpers. Yao—in the midst of playing a team-high 40 minutes against the run and gun Suns—was clearly exhausted. You didn’t need Miss Cleo to tell you how this was going to end. The Ghost of Game 7—and all the crunch time questions it brings with it—was back. And then something amazing happened.

Steve Francis rode to the rescue.

Well, it's now official. Art Briles is off to Baylor. As I said, if he finds a way to win at that program, he's on the fast track to the big time. If he fails, he's on the fast track to Division II.

What's going to be interesting to me is what UH officials now do in terms of a replacement. Are they going to try and recycle some big name who's been out of the game for awhile? Are they going to try to find some young hotshot who'll be looking to use this program as a chance to make the Briles vault to the big time? Are they going to try and play it safe with some guy who's used to the UH-mid-major-type situation?

The word on the street is that University of Houston football coach Art Briles is interviewing for Baylor’s open head coaching job (various Houston-area sports radio stations are reporting that Briles has actually already signed a contract. I’m going with the Chron’s Michael Murphy on this in saying that Briles has yet to sign.)

I’m not going to wail away at Briles for signing a big extension last season then bolting the school at his first chance. This isn’t a Todd Graham thing where he’s only been at the school for one year then bolts for a mediocre school in the same conference. Believe it or not, but in the coaching world, Baylor would probably be an upgrade over the Coogs.

Okay, let me see if I have this straight: the douchebag head of a mid-major college athletic program contacts the douchebag head coach of a rival college football team about quitting that job and coming to coach at his school. The douchebag coach, knowing of his offer from the douchebag Athletic Director, starts discussions with his current employer about a contract extension. Based on these negotiations, the douchebag coach goes to the douchebag AD with his demands, which the douchebag AD meets. The douchebag coach, after saying everything was great at his job, suddenly bolts to join the douchebag AD and trashes the school he's been coaching.

Now we flash forward a year and douchebag coach and douchebag AD and their school venture to the stadium of douchebag coach's former school for a football game. The band of the douchebag coach's former school then mocks this coach in its halftime show, and closes the program by calling the coach a douchebag. The response of the douchebag's school is to file a complaint with the conference since, as douchebag AD says, mocking the coach and calling him a douchebag isn't very sportsmanlike.

So the Aggies went out and replaced Coach Fran with Mike Sherman. I’m not going to get into the coaching merits of Mike Sherman, although I do have to wonder just what it is that colleges see in Texan offensive coordinators. Do they even bother watching Texan games?

I just want to get into something that I heard on the radio Sunday morning, before the hiring was official.

The Chron’s NFL expert, John McClain, was doing his bit on the 610 radio show and he was asked about Sherman and the Aggie job. He was asked if Sherman’s GM/coaching gig at Green Bay should have any relevance on the Aggies decision.

I know I’m about a week late to this whole Turkey of the Year thing, but I didn’t get the memo. So here’s my nominee for Turkey of the Year: Chron beat writer Jose de Jesus Ortiz.

The way I see it is that it’s got to be kind of tough to be Jose de Jesus Ortiz. The guy’s a bit of a hack. He wasn’t hired because of his skills as a writer or as a reporter, but because he speaks Spanish. And the guy absolutely refuses to say anything negative about members of the Astros while they’re with the Astros – unless they’re clients of the Hendricks brothers, in which he’ll never say anything negative. No matter what.

That leads to his Thanksgiving post in which he arbitrarily writes about the 30 things for which he is grateful. I’m not going to get into the whole damn thing – if you want to make yourself ill, just click here. But I do want to address some of the things he writes.