Do you root for your alma mater?

My high school just closed this summer, so no.

And I get more into the alma mater when I'm with the local alumni association chapter and we have 200 people piled into a bar to catch the game. That's the way to watch it.

 

No, you don't. I have a recurring dream where Mike Jarvis is tied to a post, spread-eagle, and he his repeatedly kicked in the manjunk by the ghost of Joe Lapchick.

 

I like to see my alma mater do well, but I;m not a fan boy... OK, unless it means I can hold it over someone on this board -- but I dont get to do that often, unless it's Hank Scorpio...

 

No it won't - although as an Iowa fan I won't miss having to worry about losing the game.....

 

Huggy, I wonder how those Dal guys are reacting to Fabian Joseph's departure and Brad Crossley as interim head coach. Joseph is now an assistant to Danny Flynn in Moncton with the Wildcats. Sources said that if Joseph was still around and Dal did not get into the playoffs this year, he would have been fired. So I wonder how much that factored into the decision to jump ship.

 

Put it this way - I told the good folks in the institutional advancement office that if the school's basketball team went to the NCAA Tournament, then I would gladly donate money.

As for high school, well, I still have my high school letter jacket. But that's about the length of my allegiance.

 

rico, I think that's a problem with a lot of sportswriters, especially ones who cover mostly pro and college. They think that it's a families-and-friends crowd.

In some places, yes. In other places, it's still 1958, and the entire town actually cares about their HS team. I'm always surprised, where I am, that it isn't common knowledge.

 

Some sportswriters don't realize how much those high schools mean to the readership. We've seen enough of that on this board.

A neat - and very underrated - aspect of the job is at shops with all sorts of different high schools. That is, the ones with mostly family-and-friends crowd - along with some students - and the ones where the HS game is still THE event in town. I've seen the places where it is overkill ... and I've seen a couple where the atmosphere is simply outstanding. The places where they care about the kids and what they're doing long after they left school, but aren't threatening to lynch the coach after every loss.

 

I graduated with the guy who is now the AD at my high school. He was the football coach at our alma mater for a good part of the last 15 years, off and on and was the QB of our team our junior and most of our senior years.

About five years ago, he coached one of the counties in the bi-county summer all-star game. I was doing a story on one of the players from our area and talked to him about the game. It was kind of weird and kind of cool at the same time.

Whenever I see him -- and I don't see him nearly as much as I did when I was a sportswriter -- I joke with him that I'm going to withhold my alumni donations if they don't make the playoffs.

 

Hey, my alma mater won today, unlike yours.

Of course, even a blind squirrel finds an acorn once in awhile too.


I'm not a fanboy or anything, don't send money to the alumni association, but I will attend a few football games, depending on the work schedule. I'll attend more football games than basketball games.

 

Fair enough - I had that one coming today with my previously expressed hubris.