John Royal

It's Conference USA baseball tournament time

The college baseball season is a marathon. It's nice to sprint out to a lead at the start, but the finishing kick at the end is just as important. And with seven games left in the Conference USA baseball tournament at Rice's Reckling Park, eight teams are kicking into full sprints.

The most impressive kick so far is from the Rice Owls. The Owls went at a steady pace for the regular season, never getting too big a lead, winning the conference regular season title on the last day of the season. They've now won their first two games of the tournament with astounding ease, the team's pitching staff shutting down the opposition with ease, the offense actually showing some life. And if they can shut down the Memphis Tigers (also 2-0 in the tournament) tomorrow morning, the Owls will play for the tournament title and a NCAA regional bid on Sunday afternoon.

The Houston Cougars sprinted out to a quick start this season, but faded as the regular season hit the midpoint. But they started to get back into gear the last weeks of the regular season, and after yesterday's 9-4 win over high-seeded East Carolina, the Coogs find themselves in a strong position to battle Rice on Sunday -- if the Cougars can upset Southern Miss this afternoon and take out Tulane tomorrow.

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THUN-DAH!!!

As a general rule, unless your team is in the NBA playoffs (I'd say NHL, but most of you wouldn't even know what I was talking about), this time of year can be pretty boring for sports fans. Baseball is still early in the year. There isn't the hint of football save OTAs and college sports are nearly dead as kids prepare for a summer of slurping tequila out of the belly buttons of co-eds and sneaking smokes and free beer behind the crappy restaurant they work at to make money for more partying.

For the northern half of the country, people are just beginning to fully emerge from there cocoon-like hibernation. For them, this is a time of fun in the welcoming warmth of the sun. For people who live in the south, we're just trying to stave off dehydration, usually with a mix of water, alcohol and air conditioning. But there are still things to do in sports even if it may be a tad slim pickings. Here are the best of them for this extended Memorial Day weekend.

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Just...no.

In the era of cell phone technology, virtually nothing goes unnoticed. Such is the tale of a sno cone vendor at Minute Maid Park this week who heard the call of Mother Nature during his shift at an Astros game. A fan in the bathroom at the same time noticed the rainbow-colored sno cones sitting on the ground inside a stall next to the vendor, who was obviously in the middle of "seeing a man about a horse."

The video was passed along to Channel 2, which aired a story. It has since gone viral and been picked up by Deadspin and Yahoo! Sports, among others. Since the incident, the vendor has been fired by Aramark, the ballpark's food services provider. Ironically, the video was filmed on new team president Reid Ryan's first day on the job.

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In the 80's hit movie Stand By Me, there's a scene where the four main characters, teenage boys (including a young Corey Feldman!), are sitting around a campfire and one of them (Gordie) tells a story about a fat kid named Lard Ass participating in a blueberry pie eating contest at the county fair.

As the story goes, Lard Ass is so fed up with the teasing he gets about his weight that he decides to exact revenge on the town by chugging castor oil before the contest, and after consuming a truckload of pies, vomiting on the other participants.

Perfectly executed, the plan then results in the "watching someone vomit" effect overtaking the crowd and everyone at the event ends up puking on each other in a big nuclear explosion of purple vomit.

Completely satisfied and beyond proud, a content and puke covered Lard Ass just sits back and watches the carnage he created unfold.

Oftentimes, I wonder if anyone still alive with the Houston Rockets in 1984 watches the NBA Draft lottery the same way Lard Ass watches the county fair puke-fest.

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As noted here yesterday, the NFL awarded Super Bowl LI to Houston. The game will be played at Reliant Stadium in February 2017. There are plenty of you out there who couldn't care less about football and sports in general. Frankly, the Super Bowl is often anticlimactic as a sporting event, but it is still the single biggest sporting event on the planet and it is coming to our city.

So, before we get bored with the topic and ignore it until a month before it happens -- at which point I assume we'll all complain about the traffic more than usual -- I figured I'd remind everyone, including those of you who hate sports, why getting a Super Bowl is a good thing for the city of Houston.

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As the Rockets first round series with the Oklahoma City Thunder unfolded, as Kevin Martin flopped around like a spastic Euro, as Derek Fisher continually executed the only discernible basketball skill still in his repertoire (corner three!), as Kendrick Perkins ran up and down the floor with the grace and agility of the Great Khali, it became readily apparent that in the pantheon of "sports hatred," the Oklahoma City Thunder were rapidly assuming the mantle of the Utah Jazz, at least in my world.

For that series, I "sports hated" the Oklahoma City Thunder, at least this version of them. Hell, even the always likable Kevin Durant was starting to take on some "heel" tendencies, talking trash to the crowd at Toyota Center and making odd "angry faces" at various times during the series.

So I even "sports hated" Kevin Durant! Go figure.

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Houston will host its third Super Bowl in February 2017. NFL owners voted to award the event to Houston over Miami, who lost the bid when stadium plans fell through. The last Super Bowl in Houston was XXXVIII in 2004. The first, Super Bowl VII, was held at Rice Stadium in 1974.

The San Francisco bay area was awarded Super Bowl L today as well.

With cool cards to spare

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, like women's hoops star Skylar Diggins this past weekend, I graduated from the University of Notre Dame.

And thus ends the list of things that Skylar Diggins and I have in common.

At the time of my graduation, I was (and still am) a pasty, unathletic, sarcastic and not all that attractive man. At the time of her graduation, Skylar Diggins is a dark complected, world class athletic, stunningly attractive woman.

Additionally, my nicest graduation present was a briefcase from my parents. Skylar Diggins just got a Mercedes from Jay-Z.

Point, Diggins.

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Have you ever been traveling, and you just have this sneaky suspension that you left something in the hotel room?

The lads in Orange over at BBVA Compass Stadium might be having that same feeling right about now. Just two weeks ago, they were the proud owners of a 36 home match unbeaten streak. They even took their winning ways on the road; winning back-to-back road games at the LA Galaxy and at DC United by a combined 5 goals.

Since then, they've lost two straight at home for first time since 2010. The latest defeat... a 2-0 loss to the New England Revolution on Saturday night.

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Music is a tough business. Thousands of artists are writing and performing tens of thousands of songs every day for little to no wage, trying to strike it big and gain some degree of relevance.

However, in the Darwinian age of the internet, YouTube, iTunes, and a thousand different television channels, sometimes you don't find relevance as much as relevance finds you.

Ask Alexis Normand.

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