Dear dimwit on the phone

That's the way it is here, but some of the schools don't bother to follow that rule.

 

Dear online dimwit: If cheerleading and marching band aren't sports, your chess tournament sure as shit ain't going in the sports section.

 

A commenter on one of our stories actually compared the violence in football to... the violence in chess.

Anatoly Yevgenyevich Karpov just wasn't the same player after he suffered a comminuted compound leg fracture after Bobby Fischer's blind side tackle.

 

There is a sport called Chess Boxing. You box a round, then play four minutes of chess. First one to score a knockout or checkmate wins. IIRC, the Klitschkos are big fans.

 

Dear parent who won't stop emailing complaints about our coverage,
We don't have a problem with your kid. We have a problem with his father!

 

Sigworthy!

 

Caller unhappy with Monday's paper wondered why we had big photo of Peyton Manning on the cover, with no photo of Cam Nawton.

The main reason - beyond the fact he's a Manning and this is Mississippi - is that I'd intended all along to give the early game (AFC, as it happens) the prime real estate and then make the NFC secondary with big photo(s) inside. And, indeed, there's a Cam Newton photo on that inside page.

I explained that, but they hd an alternative explanation: "You're a racist."

I regret, in that moment, not replying, "Excuse me, let me take off my pointy white hood, I'm having trouble hearing you."

 

No, sir, nowhere in our paper does it say the Super Bowl is playing today (Jan. 31). No, Pro Bowl is not another name for the Super Bowl.

 

He wasn't on the phone, but I strung a boys-girls high school doubleheader last week that was delayed about 45 minutes because of a roof leak from the heavy snow. The school had its senior night that night even though they have several home games left - they wanted to do it against their big rival. No big deal there - they had a ceremony between games, but whatever floats your boat. What was much more annoying was that the home girls coach, up by 30, decided to foul and call several timeouts in the last minute to get his seniors out one by one. You do realize they'll be playing at home again, right, buddy?

 

Dear Podunk High,

It's cool that your runningback is moving on to college, but do we really need a signing ceremony for a kid who is a "preferred walk-on" at an FCS school? What exactly is he signing?

 

We have had kids in pictures going to non-scholarship D3 schools signing a blank piece of paper, just for the photo effect. Or small schools excitedly wanting us to cover a "signing" ceremony for an athlete going D3.

 

I really don't have a problem doing these ceremonies for kids going to college, be it DI or NAIA. I'm in a small enough market that even a kid going juco is a minor deal. That said, even I take pause over a ceremony for a kid who plans to walk on at a school.