Ask any gym rat and he'll tell you that the key to a good basketball shot is the arc on the ball, and he'll also tell you that achieving a good arc is often easier said than done. Well, as with many other things these days, there's an app for that.
Sedgefield Country Club has been sold by its members to McConnell Golf of Raleigh. From the Biz Journal article (subscription required):
Sources did not disclose the amount offered, but it is believed that McConnell will assume Sedgefield’s $2 million debt and invest at least that much in course and clubhouse upgrades.
Sale talk has been extremely heated at Sedgefield, known for its Tudor-style clubhouse, Donald Ross-designed course, rich golf history and being the founding location of the Atlantic Coast Conference in 1953. Older members believed the current debt was manageable and were not eager to cede control of their home away from home. Many such opponents aren’t fans of the Wyndham, either, disliking how it disrupts their access to the club for two weeks a year.
But advocates, including the board leadership and local Wyndham officials, have maintained for months that selling to McConnell could be the last best chance to keep the club not only vital but solvent.
Read more: Sedgefield approves sale of country club | The Business Journal
I'm hoping someone does a case study on the process the Club's board went through over the last year, because I suspect it would be a lesson in how to lead an organization through the process of making a drastic shift in strategic direction due to a changing business/economic environment.
I'm a huge tennis fan so you can imagine my excitement when I read this morning that the ATP is moving a tournament from New Haven, CT to Winston-Salem. I'd heard rumors that it might happen, but now that it's a reality I'm absolutely stoked. I haven't heard any details yet, but I'm willing to bet a serious chunk of change that Don Flow was involved with this and if that's the case all I can say is "Thanks Mr. Flow!'
Update: Just did a little research to confirm what I thought I remembered, which is that the New Haven tournament has traditionally been a warm up for the US Open, played the week before the Open starts. We won't likely see the Federers or Nadals of the tour, but usually it attracts its fair share of top-50 players like Baghdatis, Gonzalez, Robredo, etc. Even better, it has a doubles draw. Did I mention that I'm really stoked?
Update: Not sure why the embed didn't work, but here's a link to the audio file just to be safe.
Below is an embedded audio link of Chad Dukes' epic rant about the Redskins after their crapfest of a game against the Eagles on Monday. Bonus point for me: in the middle of his rant he mentions that he grew up in Springfield on the road where we bought our first townhouse, and went to my alma mater GMU. For what it's worth I think he's pretty much right in his assessment of the millionaires lying on the grass at FedEx field.
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I'm going to keep this simple: I hate big-tim college football's BCS. There are many reasons for my hatred, not the least of which is that because of the BCS the national "champion" in football is determined in the same fashion that figure skaters and diving champions are crowned in the Olympics. If you need more reasons than that to hate the BCS then all you need to do is read this Sports Illustrated article. Here's a highlight for you academics out there:
Of the 120 athletic departments that play I-A football, 106 lost money in 2009, according to an NCAA report. Budget shortfalls forced the University of California in September to cut five sports. Virginia hit up students for $11.9 million in fees for the 2008–09 school year to offset athletic department operating expenses. Cincinnati reached two consecutive BCS bowls and still found itself $24 million in debt. All over the country, schools are turning to student fees, academic funds and taxpayer support to balance the athletic department's books, which helps explain the uptick in so-called pay games (Hey, LSU, good luck this Saturday against Louisiana-Monroe!), conference realignments and expansion of the men's basketball tournament.
Really, you need to read the article to see how bad this really is.
Personal aside: when I was at George Mason U back in the 80s the school was considering adding an intercollegiate football program, but eventually decided on building a Fine Arts Center. Many students were aghast because we wanted a football team. I mean, seriously, homecoming basketball games just don't do the trick. If memory serves the school's president argued that the expense just wasn't worth it, though we students suspected that he'd used some inflated numbers since everyone knew he preferred the Fine Arts Center. In retrospect I think he may have been right if they were looking at adding a D-1 program, but I'm still not convinced that a 1-AA program wouldn't have worked. Well, I'm proud to say that students at my alma mater didn't wait for the school's administration to put a team together. In 1993 they started a club football team and it seems to be going pretty strong in the Seaboard Conference. I have a lot of admiration for students who will go to that level of effort to play a game they truly love; to me they're true student-athletes.
I stumbled on this article about one of my favorite Wake Forest alums, Ish Smith, who wound up his college career last spring. He went undrafted, was picked up as a free agent by the Rockets, was third on the depth chart at his position, and now thanks to injuries to the guys in front of him is playing some real significant minutes and handling himself well so far. That's great news for a guy who proved himself to be a class act during his time at Wake.
I've played basketball my whole life, and like anyone else over the age of 30 I've lost a step. To be honest now that I'm midway through my 40s I've lost more than one step, but that doesn't stop me from dragging my old carcass out of bed a couple of times a week to play pre-dawn hoops – something I swore I'd never do before I aged into bladder-induced early morning awakenings. Of course my mother is aware of this, and like my wife she finds my love of a young man's game rather foolish, which is why she emailed me this poem from Stephen Dunn:
Losing Steps
It's probably a Sunday morning
in a pickup game, and it's clear
you've begun to leave
fewer people behind.
Your fakes are as good as ever,
but when you move
you're like the Southern Pacific
the first time a car kept up with it,
your opponent at your hip,
with you all the way
to the rim. Five years earlier
he'd have been part of the air
that stayed behind you
in your ascendance.
On the sidelines they're saying,
He's lost a step.
You can read the rest here. Truth be told I didn't have much of a step to begin with; one of the advantages of being naturally slow of foot and without the ability to jump over a phone book is that my game has always been predicated on overcoming my lack of athleticism. Still, getting even slower is no fun.
Wake's recent two-year-special point guard Jeff Teague ranks #40 on this list of Top 50 NCAA dunks:
Although I live in NASCAR country I didn't grow up here, so a lot of it is kind of new to me. Take the money involved; I've always realized that there's major money in racing, but until I read Mike Mullhern's post about a recent owner's meeting I didn't really realize exactly how much money is involved. Check this out:
"And the owners really need to get together and agree to stop paying these drivers $10 million. We've got a good deal with our drivers….but we've had drivers come to use asking for $12 million to drive the car…
"These special pit crews are so costly – ours are earning more than the rest of the guys on the team who are working seven days a week. I understand pit stops are cool, but my gosh these special crews are prohibitively expensive. They make half-again as much as the regular crew guys.
"On top of that, the tire bill each weekend for each car is $30,000. They've got to get that down to $20,000.
"And the motor bill is $100,000 per car…and you've got to get that down to $60,000 or $70,000. And the only way to do that is to run fewer miles.
"Those $12,000 to $15,000 special high-pressure radiators – most teams tried them but got away from them. We use the standard $2,000 radiator…
"The money in these cars is in motors and tires. On each of our teams, there's $4.5 million a year in engines and tires that's just 'gone.' That's the problem."
Well, you can forget me complaining about my $95/tire special at Discount Tire. Sheesh.
Yarddawg offers a great review of the downtown BB&T Ballpark.
The ballpark is as nice –albeit on a smaller scale- as any Major League ballpark I have ever been in. One Chicago White Sox executive stated the players would not play in a better facility until they made the Big Leagues and I completely agree. And remember this is Class A ball, the lowest of the three classes (A, AA, & AAA) in Minor League Baseball.
Befuddled 