I remember the first time I saw Phil Mickelson play golf in person.

After dominating college golf for four years at Arizona State (including earning a degree in Psychology in 1992), the tall (6’3”) young left handed golfer had just come onto the PGA Tour wearing a confident smile and a sincere “This is fun!” look on his face.

I had taken my wife and two sons out to see him play golf and, hopefully, give the boys a little encouragement to take up the game, too.  (It worked!)

We saw young Phil striding confidently down the fairway as he was taking in all the sights.  Like Arnold Palmer in the 1950’s-1970’s, Mickelson would quickly become one the most approachable and fan-friendly golfers on the professional circuit.  Though most pro golfers are quite serious about their game, Phil’s incredible golf talent along with his positive rapport with golf fans quickly established him as one of the PGA Tour’s most popular players.

Phil Mickelson’s personality has helped him to become one of the most sought-after sports celebrities by the advertising community, too.  While he was winning 45 PGA events and several major championships, Mickelson’s personal marketability banked significantly more dollars than he has won playing professional golf.

During his era in professional golf, Phil Mickelson is the second most successful golfer on the PGA Tour.   Had Tiger Woods opted to play professional tennis instead of golf, it’s quite possible that Phil Mickelson may have been the one to make a run at Jack Nicklaus’ record of 18 professional major championship titles.

Last year, the talented 50-year old Mickelson became the oldest PGA golfer to win a major at the PGA Championship at Kiawah Island, Georgia.  It was Lefty’s sixth professional major championship.  He now trails only Nicklaus (18), Tiger Woods (15), Walter Hagen (11), Ben Hogan and Gary Player (9 apiece), Tom Watson (8), along with Bobby Jones, Arnold Palmer, Sam Snead, Harry Vardon, and Gene Sarazen (7 each).

Meanwhile, corporate Phil Mickelson has remained an advertising force.  In recent years, he still raked in upwards of $40 million per year in corporate sponsorships.   Though Tiger Woods may have won more tournaments and has a worldwide following, Phil Mickelson’s likeability has helped make him into a household name, too.  Golfers of all ages identify with Phil’s “Go for broke” mentality while maintaining a pleasant demeanor on the course.  He has been today’s version of Arnold Palmer.

With his win at last year’s PGA Championship, Phil Mickelson has been expected to defend his title two weeks from now at Southern Hills Country Club in Tulsa.   Maybe.

Several weeks ago, I wrote about the predicament which Phil Mickelson put himself into a few months ago.  He wants the PGA Tour to give an OK to his participation in a new Greg Norman-led golf league sponsored by some very wealthy Saudi Arabian backers.  The first of eight summer tournaments for this fledgling league will be played in London a month from now.  The new league’s schedule pauses to allow golfers a chance to participate in June’s US Open and The Open (British Open) in July.

However, this assumes that the PGA Tour and R&A (Europe) are willing to let them play.

The PGA Tour has firmly announced that its members can either play on the PGA Tour or the new tour, but golfers cannot compete in both.

Phil Mickelson and a few other established PGA stars such as Lee Westwood have asked the PGA Tour to grant an exemption and allow them to play in one or more of the Saudi League events.

For Phil Mickelson, the upstart new golf tour has offered him upwards of $...

After Week #3 of the USFL’s ten game regular season, the play on the football field remains quite solid, but the interest of the home television viewers may be slowly waning.

The television ratings for Week #3 of the United States Football League’s newest incarnation were released today.  It shows a continued gradual erosion of the league’s week-to-week interest by home television viewers.

Last weekend’s marquis match-up Saturday night between the undefeated hometown Birmingham Stallions and 2-0 New Orleans Breakers was carried by Fox television and drew just 1.1 million television viewers.  For the record, Saturday night’s game did not go up against the final rounds of the NFL draft (which ended an hour prior to the USFL kickoff).

As we’ve covered here every week, all USFL football regular season games are being played in a brand new football stadium in Birmingham, Alabama.  The league is wisely minimizing its first-year expenses (travel, stadium costs, administrative overhead, etc.).  However, the trade-off is that three of the four weekly games played in Birmingham continue to draw a tiny smattering of fans in the stands.

This is NOT a knock on the Birmingham football fans.

Would you pay $10 per ticket (a dirt-cheap price) to go watch a football game between Michigan and Pittsburgh in your home town on an 85-degree Sunday afternoon?  The lack of energy in the football stadium for games like that can really make for a boring television product.

In contrast, Saturday night’s Birmingham vs. New Orleans USFL football game was another exciting game for television.  The hometown Stallions prevailed 22-13 as Birmingham rallied to score the game’s final 12 points in the fourth quarter to win the game in front of about 15,000 local fans.  Casual television viewers on a Saturday night apparently had better things to do than watch the USFL’s spotlight springtime pro football game.

The USFL’s goal of 1.4 million television viewers was clearly not achieved in Week #3.

The other three games played this weekend had weak television ratings, too.  The Sunday afternoon televised match-up between the Michigan Panthers and Pittsburgh Maulers grabbed only 292,000 sets of eyeballs on the USA Network.

When I attempted to tune-in to watch the Sunday evening finale between the New Jersey Generals and Philadelphia Stars, I learned that the game was being covered by NBC’s online Peacock service.  Though I had a free version of Peacock, the game wasn’t shown unless you had agreed to pay Peacock’s “Premium” service fee of $4.99 per month.

Something tells me that the television viewership for the USFL’s first game played on Peacock (which has not been announced as of this story) will set an all-time low for viewership of a nationally televised pro football game.

Fox Sports (which owns 100% of the USFL) previously stated that it wants the new spring football league to average 1.4 million television viewers (every game) to be viable for a second season.   Week #1 for the league (as expected) exceeded that number.  Week 2’s games fell below the 1.4 million television viewer goal, and Week 3’s television ratings withered even further.

Let’s be blunt.

The USFL’s on-field product is generally “OK” and can be quite entertaining at times.  The games are certainly just as good as the most recent iterations of spring football by the Alliance of American Football (2019) and the XFL (2020).  Both of those leagues folded prior to the end of their first season.  I can’t see Fox pulling the plug on the USFL early as the network has plenty of cash to absorb the losses.

The real question is whether the USFL will be able to turn it around and add new fans for the remaining weeks of the regular season.  Many of us are rooting for the USFL to succeed,

Every once in a while, I’ll tune in to a Pandora music channel which I have labeled as “Beach Boys Radio”.  In addition to playing those great summer surfing songs of the 1960’s and beyond to lift my mood, the station provides non-stop music from some of my favorite artists’ songs first heard during my growing-up years.

This weekend about forty miles north of Houston at TPC of The Woodlands, the Insperity Invitational was able to mix golf’s favorite oldies together into a fantastic weekend of entertainment.  The entire golf field was age 50 and older as part of this popular PGA Champions Tour event.

These guys are still exceptional golfers as attested by Sunday’s winning score of 18-under par (in just three days) by one of the least known players in the field – Steven Alker of New Zealand.  He is a young 50-year young lad who spent most of his career playing golf in Australia, Europe, and in the PGA Tour’s developmental league.   Alker’s took home his third win in six months since joining the PGA Champions tour.  He’s on fire!

Taking nothing away from the PGA Tour’s weekend stop in Mexico, the line-up of legendary golfers who played in this weekend’s senior event near Houston was much more appealing to most golf fans.  Let’s compare the top finishers in both tournaments this weekend.

Other former PGA stars in the Champions Tour field this weekend included Fred Couples, Padraig Harrington, Ernie Els, Mike Weir, Vijay Singh, Colin Montgomery, David Duval, John Daly, and Jim Furyk.   It’s literally “golf heaven” at this senior tour event!

A friend of mine and I spent Friday’s first round walking the entire 18 hole layout (which  remains in magnificent condition) alongside the threesome of Tom Byrum, Chris DeMarco, and Joey Sindelar.  Though these golfers are still quite capable of shooting an under par round on a given day, they also realize that this encore golf league has become a very special place.

The senior golf stars demonstrate a lot of camaraderie as you observe them warming-up on the practice tee and the putting green.   Since golf is a sport where your weekly paycheck depends on beating your other opponents, the younger PGA players tend to be a little “stiff” on the primary golf tour as the golfers must score well enough week-to-week to retain their playing card for the next season.

Though it’s nice to see that these more mature competitors on the PGA Champions Tour have become a little friendlier over the years, it quickly becomes evident that the golfers still have a very competitive fire burning, too.  Just like in the PGA Tour events, the senior professional golfer’s weekly paycheck depends entirely on his tournament total score on Sunday afternoon.

The quality of golf is every bit as good as the younger bucks on the PGA Tour – just without those 300-yard “Ouch -my back hurts just watching that hard golf swing” tee shots.  Watching these senior golfers hit a precise iron shot from the fairway to the proper level of the green and then have nerves of steel on fast greens is quite impressive.

My friend and I spent a few holes pondering the thought, “Why do some of these guys still do this at age 60 and older?”  In some cases, playing in golf tournaments has become a weekly habit since they were in high school and college.  Though an easy going professional such as David Toms (who lives in Shreveport, LA and played collegiately at LSU) could easily be offered a job of head professional at any number of exclusive country clubs, he would also have to deal with the politics of the job on a daily basis.

Teaching golf to the likes of Thurston Howell III and his wife Lovie might be more challenging than facing 70 other golfers on tour.

Yes, I know that you’re a multi-billion dollar enterprise and certainly don’t need any advice from an old washed-up high school basketball player who has been a lifelong NBA fan.

That’s why the internet is so wonderful.

One person like me has the opportunity to put forward some ideas for change.  Though it’s highly unlikely that anyone with the NBA will care what I have to say, my email is always available ([email protected]) if you care to reply.

After the football season ends in early February with the NFL’s Super Bowl game, basketball traditionally takes center stage to keep many sports fans interested during cold winter days.

By March, college basketball has its annual March Madness tournament.  The 64 teams (OK, 68 these days) can play up to six increasingly suspenseful games (two per week) leading up to the championship finale.   For one month, the college basketball post-season (men and women’s tournaments) has a positioned itself with a firm grasp on the nation’s television viewers.

Once March ends, it makes logical sense that the professional basketball league should begin a suspenseful playoff season, too.  Though April does, indeed, bring the NBA’s regular season to a merciful close for nearly half of the teams, the NBA playoffs (as currently structured) then stretches over three calendar months (from mid-April, all of May, and into mid-June) in order to determine pro basketball’s champion.

If the NBA plays an 82-game regular season (more than double the number of games than played by the college basketball champion), why do the NBA playoffs need to take so long to determine the top team?  Does it really take up to 100 games in a season (which is incredibly hard on your joints, by the way) for professional basketball to determine its winner?

The real answer is that it’s all about MONEY!

The 30 NBA teams really do need enough current revenues to cover their annual costs.  With NBA teams paying a league minimum of $122 million (yes, that’s you San Antonio) to over $200 million (I see you, Golden State!) to its roster of players in team salaries this year, the NBA franchises need to generate a lot of revenue from national television, home arena tickets sales, local radio/television, merchandise, and assorted other revenue sources to pay the players and the team’s bills every season.  The NBA’s largest television viewing audiences generally occur during its lengthy playoff season.

The desire for most NBA (or other professional sports franchise, for that matter) teams is to simply turn a profit every season and, effectively, tread water in hopes that the valuation of the team will continue to increase.  You wish to avoid spending any cash out of your own savings account in any particular season while patiently watching the value of your asset/sports franchise grow and grow over time.

Did you know that the average NBA franchise is now worth over $2 billion?  The real money comes when (or if, in the case of a long-time loser franchise such as the New York Knicks) the owner finally decides to sell the team and cash in.

The phrase “Buy low – Sell high” is quite literally the financial goal of every professional sports franchise owner.

Here’s a real life example.  If our friend (Wile E. Investor) was smart enough to have purchased 1,000 shares of Amazon (symbol: AMZN) stock back in May, 1997 at $1.50 per share (actual price), today (25 years later) he would be able to sell the stock for $2,763 per share!  Those 1,000 shares of stock (initial cost of $1,500) are now valued at $2,763,000.

The second weekend in the latest iteration of spring professional football is now in the books.  The 2022 version of the USFL shows that some teams are beginning to find a little offense while others look like they are definitely in need of some help.

We’re here to help, too!  I think this spring football league might just have the potential to survive.

First, here’s a wrap-up of the scores from the second weekend of play.  Reminder, all USFL regular season games are being played in Birmingham, Alabama (more on that later):

Friday night – New Jersey Generals 10, Michigan Panthers 6

If you were to say, “First one to ten points wins!”, then this was the football game for you.  For the rest of us, it was as boring as the final score indicated.  The only drama came during the final series as Michigan quarterback Shea Patterson finally connected with some receivers as he scrambled for his life to buy enough time to throw.  The Panthers finally made it inside the New Jersey 20 yard line but failed to get into the end zone as the clock expired.   New Jersey moves to 1-1, while Michigan is a much deserved 0-2 after two games.

Saturday afternoon – Philadelphia Stars 30, Pittsburgh Maulers 23

The battle for Pennsylvania occurred several hundred miles south of the Keystone State on Saturday afternoon in Birmingham.  The Stars jumped to an early 14-3 lead, but Pittsburgh’s tough defense snagged a fumble and returned it 79 yards for a touchdown to help this game come alive.   This was the first USFL game of the year in which both quarterbacks passed for more than 200 yards as Philly’s Byron Scott (Occidental College) went for 272 with three touchdowns and the Maulers’ Josh Love (San Jose State) passed for 236 and two scores.  Philadelphia squared its record at 1-1 while the Pittsburgh Maulers dropped to 0-2.

Saturday night – Birmingham Stallions 33, Houston Gamblers 28

The fans in Birmingham finally showed up to support their hometown Stallions (well, at least compared to the other three games where you are able to, quite literally, count the faces in the crowd).  Birmingham’s Louisiana Tech connection of former Bulldogs coach Skip Holtz and his former QB J’Mar Smith dialed-up yet another winner for the Stallions.  Smith went 20/30 for 229 yards and passed for a couple of scores to lead Birmingham.  The Houston Gamblers quarterback Clayton Thorson (who played Big Ten college ball at Northwestern University) was picked-off three times during this game, but Houston’s defense kept it relatively close.  These are definitely two of the better teams through week 2.  Birmingham remains unbeaten at 2-0 while Houston fell to 1-1.

Sunday afternoon – New Orleans Breakers 34, Tampa Bay Bandits 3

With an NBC national audience watching this game (played in a nearly empty stadium), the New Orleans Breakers made a statement in clobbering the favored Tampa Bay Bandits.   Quarterback Kyle Sloter (Northern Colorado) completed 25 of 39 passes for 266 yards, two touchdowns, and no interceptions for New Orleans.   The Breakers defense grabbed four fumbles and two interceptions as they shut-down Tampa’s offense the entire afternoon.  Tampa Bay’s two quarterbacks combined for a pitiful 11 completions in 28 attempts for a meager 96 yards.  New Orleans is now 2-0 while Tampa Bay’s first loss drops the Bandits to 1-1.

Week 2 Analysis:

Though most of the eight USFL teams passed the football with a little bit more success in week #2, this isn’t exactly a pass-happy league just yet.  The team defenses remain ahead of the offenses at this early point in the season.

League standings after Week #2:

USFL North:

New Jersey Generals       1-1

Philadelphia Stars            1-1

Pittsburgh Maulers           0-2

Michigan Panthers           0-2

USFL South:

New Orleans Breakers   2-0

Today, the expected retirement of Villanova’s long-time men’s basketball coach Jay Wright took place in Philadelphia.

The 60-year old Wright led the Wildcats for 21 seasons, won 70% of the games he coached, and added two national championships (2016 and 2018) as his teams made four different Final Four appearances during his tenure at Villanova.  He was already inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall-of-Fame (a rare feat for an active coach).  Jay Wright earned a reported $6 million per year at Villanova.

So, why would a successful college basketball coach of Jay Wright’s caliber leave today?

Is the NBA luring him away?  Does he have a personal or family medical issue which is concerning him?   Can this really be the same Coach Jay Wright who just led Villanova into the NCAA’s Final Four last month in New Orleans?

During today’s retirement announcement at the school, Jay Wright said that his greatest honor was “just to be the coach at Villanova.  Accolades or winning games are not as big as just being the coach at Villanova!”

The Villanova basketball coach told reporters that he just didn’t have the same “edge” anymore to continue on.  Wright felt like this year was the first time when he wasn’t the most fired-up person on his own basketball team.  Even though his Villanova Wildcats reached the Final Four in New Orleans a month ago, the long-time coach felt like his personal fire had begun to extinguish.

“Before, I would never have to think about anything.  I started to think like,‘I have to get myself fired up here. Let’s go.’”

According to Villanova’s athletic website, Jay Wright isn’t leaving the school entirely.  He will now move into a new position with the university in fundraising, advising, and education.  Wright’s long-time assistant coach, Kyle Neptune, will now take the coaching reins.  The new head basketball coach was formally announced at Villanova today.

Why did Coach Jay Wright decide to quit the job he obviously loved so much?

Burnout is real and a likely culprit in his decision.  Before Jay Wright took the job at Villanova in 2001, the Wildcats’ men’s basketball program had become nationally prominent under the school’s affable former head coach, Rollie Massimino.  Coach Wright realized that there was going to be pressure to win as accepted the Villanova job.

Jay Wright raced ahead and immediately re-established Villanova as one of the premier basketball programs on the East Coast.   The new coach was able to recruit top talent to come play basketball at this academically-tough private Catholic school in Philadelphia with an enrollment of 10,000 students.   Villanova’s average incoming freshman class scores an average of 32 out of possible 36 on the national ACT exam!

Recruiting the right type of student-athletes to come to Villanova to play college basketball was never an easy task.  Like at Duke University, Villanova’s tough academic requirements eliminated a large number of high school basketball players.

By coming to play college basketball at Villanova, a talented high school athlete had the opportunity to improve his game by learning from one of the nation’s most talented teachers in Jay Wright.  The Wildcats’ basketball coach was known for his teams being fundamentally sound and having nearly flawless execution on both offense and defense.  Villanova basketball teams under Coach Wright would simply w...

If you happened to watch Saturday night’s initial USFL football game (televised by both Fox and NBC), you saw a large crowd in Birmingham, Alabama cheering their hometown Stallions to a 28-24 victory over the New Jersey Generals.  After the game, the Birmingham crowd was treated to a fireworks show.  A tight game with an exciting finish and a post-game fireworks display!  What a great start for national television, right?

Then the United States Football League played the other three football games to complete the league’s opening weekend.  The optics were less than stellar.   Though the teams and their new uniforms looked rather spiffy, there was a glaring absence at the other three USFL games.

A crowd.

The 2022 version of the USFL is running a very tight financial ship.  The league (which is owned by Fox Sports) has decided to play all of its regular season contests in Birmingham, Alabama.  Every single regular season game will be played there.

Your faithful SwampSwami wrote about this over a month ago.  Check it out to learn more about this new incarnation of the USFL.

Though the new USFL was breaking in a brand new $200 million football stadium in Birmingham (which will become the home for the UAB Blazers this fall), the Alabama’s largest city and the state’s fanatical football fans are being counted-on to support the USFL’s other seven teams not named Birmingham, too.

Though 35,000 people attended the Birmingham Stallions home opener on Saturday night, there were (perhaps) 200 fans in the stands for each of the other three USFL games played on Easter Sunday and Monday in Alabama’s Steel City.  With a 45,000 seat football stadium, it was fairly easy to count the crowd – one by one.

Without any fan excitement in the house, the other three USFL games looked like glorified scrimmage games being played for television.

I watched a portion of each of the four USFL games played in Birmingham this weekend.  The quality of play is much like that of other recent attempts at spring professional football.  It’s probably the equivalent of seeing Double AA baseball games compared to Major League Baseball.  The players are still very good, but most of them are not in the NFL for a reason.

Lest we forget, the Alliance of American Football (AAF – RIP 2019 after just eight weeks) and the XFL (Version 2 -RIP 2020 after just five weeks of play) are recent reminders that a few entrepreneurial minds continue to believe that there may be a proverbial pot of gold at the end of the spring football rainbow.  Though the quality of the football played on the field was, at times, very interesting and entertaining, the buying public (whether at-home television audiences or paying customers at the football stadium) tends to quickly lose  interest after the first week or two of spring pro football games.

In last weekend’s debut, the USFL scored acceptable television ratings for the opening week of play.

In addition to the Saturday night prime time game on Fox and NBC (which grabbed three million television viewers), the three other games played on Easter Sunday and Monday were watched by about half of the Saturday night audience.

Fox Sports previously indicated that they are hoping to average 1.4 million viewers per game for the new USFL this season.  Based on Week #1, they succeeded.

However, with nine more weekends of games to be played in the regular season, the probability is high that the weekly television ratings may slide.  That’s why every other spring football league during my lifetime (and there have been plenty!) has failed to survive.

Let’s take a closer look at the USFL’s first weekend of play and make some observations:

Last weekend, the hottest golfer on the planet won The Masters in Augusta, Georgia.  It was his fourth win his last six PGA starts.  Before 2022, Scottie Scheffler had never won a golf tournament on the PGA Tour.  Now, he is on fire.

What changed?  His caddie!

Lafayette, Louisiana native Ted Scott previously handled PGA Tour professional Bubba Watson’s bag for 15 seasons.  The team won two Masters’ titles together in the previous ten seasons.

Unfortunately, Bubba Watson has admitted to struggling with some anxiety-related issues in addition to a lingering wrist problem last season.  The family-oriented Watson began to seriously consider retiring from professional golf at the young age of 43.  He suggested that his long-time caddie, Ted Scott, should look for another professional golfer to assist on the bag.

In what has turned out to be an incredibly fortunate series of events for all parties, the up and coming (but winless) PGA professional named Scottie Scheffler was seeking a new caddie and decided to link-up with Ted Scott on his golf bag to start 2022.   Scott’s unique personality immediately meshed with the buttoned-up Scheffler, and it has been pure magic out on the golf course in 2022.

Ted Scott said recently, “I was going to retire last November to teach more golf.  Then I got the call from Scottie and talked with my family and prayed about it for a week. They said to go work for Scottie, and here we are.”

Last Sunday, Scottie Scheffler (with Ted Scott alongside as his caddie) won the 2022 Masters by posting a 10-under par score to grab his fourth PGA Tour win in the past six starts.   In less than two months, Scheffler has zoomed up the board to become the #1 ranked golfer in the world.   For caddie Ted Scott, Sunday’s win at The Masters marks his third win in the past eleven years at Augusta National Golf Club.

During the first few months of 2022, Scottie Scheffler has now earned about $9 million.

Based on the traditional caddie pay of about 10% of the pro golfer’s winnings, Ted Scott has banked nearly $1 million for his family this spring!

Bubba Watson, who also participated in this year’s Masters field but finished at 7-over par for the tournament, was very happy for his former caddie’s success.  He said, “Very thankful and awesome for a friend of mine to have a great bag like that, right? Ted can now teach another young kid leadership like he taught me for, what, 15 years.”

Scottie Scheffler knows that his new caddie, Ted Scott, is something special.  Check out the reverence which the hottest golfer on the men’s tour speaks about his new caddie.

“Teddy is a really peaceful guy.  He doesn’t really react too much. We talk about pretty much every shot. So I can’t remember a shot in which he didn’t help me unless I was tapping in. We talk about everything out there, and that helps me prepare to hit a good shot and just be committed to what I’m doing.”

The relationship between a professional golfer and the caddie isn’t simply about toting a 50-pound golf bag over six miles per day several times per week.  A professional golfer’s caddie must be in sync with the golfer’s style of play and mental attitude.

In much the same way you can open-up and relate to your best friend or spouse, the best golfing tag-teams usually feature a caddie who knows the golfer’s strengths and weaknesses and recognizes the best ways to help the golfer make small physical and mental adjustments at any particular moment on the golf course.

When successful,

Yes, that’s correct!  Last week, the brand new women’s volleyball coach at Grambling State University in north Louisiana advised all 19 women on the team that they had been dismissed.  All scholarships will be honored through the end of this spring’s semester.

When hearing about this situation, my first thought was, “How bad was the Grambling volleyball team last season?”  They must have gone 0-20 or nearly that bad, right?

Nope.  The team went 11-17 last year.  Sure, that’s not exactly championship material, but the Grambling volleyball team went 8-8 in the Southwestern Athletic Conference during the 2021 fall season.

 

The long-time volleyball coach at Grambling, Demetria Keys-Johnson, stepped down from the job back on December 1 to “pursue other opportunities within the University” according to a press release.  According to her bio which is still displayed on the university’s website, Ms. Keys-Johnson ( a Grambling alum) is also a mental health professional.

On February 14, 2022, Grambling announced the hiring of Chelsey Lucas (a 2007 Grambling graduate) as the school’s new volleyball coach.  Ms. Lucas comes to Grambling after coaching the past three seasons at the University of Arkansas – Pine Bluff.   Her 2021 team put together a very impressive 13-3 record last season.

Early last week, a Shreveport television station (KSLA) reported that Coach Lucas had sent a text message to each of the 19 current Grambling volleyball players that she was rescinding every volleyball scholarship from last season’s players at the end of this spring’s semester.

Even non-scholarship walk-on volleyball players who weren’t even receiving any athletics money will not be part of next season’s team.

Grambling’s Athletic Director Dr. Trayveon Scott also issued a statement on this matter last week.  He said, “Just as the transfer portal empowers student-athletes, our coaches are also empowered to make the decisions they deem necessary to advance their programs.”

Wow!  This action at Grambling may have just set the entire college sports world on fire!

Think about it.  Grambling’s Athletics Director is saying that his coaches may do whatever they deem necessary (within the rules, of course) in order to find better players and become winners.

This story isn’t so much about Grambling and its volleyball team as much as it is that big large red flag which is called the NCAA’s transfer portal process.

You cannot read the sports headlines most days without finding another story about one or more college football or basketball players putting their names into the NCAA’s new big “Wheel of Fortune” called the transfer portal in hopes that the player can transfer to another college next year to receive more playing time and/or a better financial “package” of NIL (Name, Image, and Licensing) money from the school’s wealthy supporters.

After #15 seed St. Peter’s College of Jersey City, NJ shocked the college basketball world by reaching the Elite Eight in the NCAA March Madness men’s tournament just a couple of weeks ago, the head basketball coach left the school to become the new head coach at his alma mater, Seton Hall.

So much for the commitment the coach made to those players recruited to come to St. Peter’s!

As a result of their coach abruptly leaving, three starters from this year’s St. Peter’s Peacocks’ basketball team and two key bench...

After two rounds of The Masters in Augusta, Georgia, the golf course is handling the onslaught of the world’s best golfers just fine.  Thanks to the Au-Gusty north winds which swept across the famed golf course on Friday, there are only a handful of golfers in the clubhouse with an under-par score after 36 holes.

In fact, any player making the cut after Friday’s second round at Augusta National Golf Club is easily within striking distance of the clubhouse leader after the second round of play.  The field is really bunched-up heading into the weekend’s final two rounds.

The hottest golfer on the PGA Tour, Scottie Scheffler, is the only golfer to put two straight rounds in the 60’s in the books for Rounds 1 and 2.  He finished Friday at 8-under par to take a imposing five shot lead into the third round Saturday.  Defending champion Hideki Matsuyama is in a logjam tied for second place at 3-under par.

Heading into the weekend, there are only 15 golfers under par at the midway point of The Masters and the weekend cut came at four over par.

I am watching the coverage via the internet at Masters.com.  They give you several options to follow the action.  I particularly like the “Amen Corner” coverage of holes #11, 12, and 13.  They also have hole-by-hole coverage of feature groups where you get a chance to see each of the 18 holes at this lovely golf course.

The golf course looks absolutely terrific, as always.  The azaleas which my Mom used to watch are plentiful and in bloom – just like always.  The greens are as fast as your kitchen floor (seriously).  The patrons are, thus far, behaving well, too.

But the television and media coverage is pushing one particular golfer more than the other 89 on the golf course.

Tiger Woods is now 46 years old.  He is coming back from a series of surgeries after his one-car auto crash in southern California a little over a year ago.  He is now walking on a bionic right leg and is trying to play golf against a fabulous field but also a very hilly golf course in north Georgia.

Tiger is now the same age as the legendary Nicklaus when Jack won his own sixth Green Jacket back in 1986 with a spectacular final nine hole rally.  With Woods lurking at +1 coming into the final two rounds, there is a chance that Tiger Woods may be in the mix on Sunday afternoon at The Masters, too.

The golf patrons on the course roar when Tiger Woods walks to the tee box.  They roar when he approaches every green.  They roar when he makes a birdie putt.  They go bananas when he does just about anything this year.

The other 89 golfers in the field have a lot of talent, but, to be brutally honest, generally play without much emotion and a reason for the golf crowd to outwardly pull for them.

One of the other fan favorites in the field let down his legion of supporters again on Friday.

Jordan Spieth, bless his heart, lost a chance to win his second Masters tournament a few years ago by dumping two shots in a row into Rae’s Creek in front of the 155 yard par-3 12th hole.

During Friday’s second round, Jordan did exactly the same thing!  His triple bogey 6 on the hole led to a second-round 76 and sent one of the few other fan favorites to an early exit Friday evening.

Former British Open champion Stewart Cink fashioned a nifty hole-in-one Friday at the par-3 16th hole.  Though the roars were heard around the golf course, Cink’s ace wasn’t as loud as when the noise heard when Woods rolled in short three foot putt for birdie at #10 on Friday.

Never mind that Tiger Woods bogeyed four of the first five holes to start his second round on Friday.  His legions of supporters could care less.