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Read this story in the Los Angles Times about the Dodgers playing the Red Sox March 29 in Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum and tell me . . . could you take Brad Penny 200-feet deep?

Know anybody with tickets? Know where you can get one or two?

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I wouldn't shed too many tears for Stockdale High product David Carr, cut by the Carolina Panthers on Wednesday. When it comes to NFL quarterbacks, it's a seller's market  out there and Carr should be able to find employment, albeit probably as a No. 3, maybe a No. 2 at a place like Atlanta or Chicago, but certainly not at another $6 million for two years.

It''s not that much of a seller's market.

At least seven teams, including Chicago, Atlanta, Miami, Kansas City, Baltimore and the Jets, have serious issues at starting quarterback, which means their current No. 2s and 3s are really suspect. Carr might even have a chance at No. 1 in those markets.

No one in the cast of free agents would strike fear in an opposing defense — Daunte Culpepper, Billy Volek and Cleo Lemon probably the best in the bunch. Carr has to rise to the top of that list, despite his awful season in Carolina and six seasons in Houston no one seems to be able to say with any certainty were good, bad or just OK.

It's mind-boggling why the Bears would resign Rex Grossman for a year, knowing that Carr might soon become available, but I wouldn't be surprised if that's where he winds up.
 

Now cast aside by two teams, Carr might now be in survival mode, which can  mean he'll put in extra work to rise his game up to where everyone knows it can and should go. So my guess is that Carr will be playing on Sunday's somewhere next season.

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There is reason to believe that the Condors will emerge victorious Wednesday night in Idaho, as the team  — not this one but the franchise in general — is 1-0 in the state of Idaho after coaching meltdowns the previous game. (see video on Condors Talk blog). You can look it up.

Diehards might  recall that on Oct. 29, 2003, then Condors coach Paul Kelly went all Lou Piniella on an ECHL referee in Boise, chucking just about everything that crossed his path on the bench and a few things that didn't, including a folding chair and a goalie mask, onto the ice after  about the sixth straight bad call against his team. Kelly drew a one-game suspension and the Condors lost the game to Idaho 4-3 in a shootout, but came back a few nights later to beat Idaho in Boise, 4-2.

The coach behind the bench that night was none other than Marty Raymond, Kelly's assistant who took over later in the year after Kelly was fired and who went ballistic Sunday afternoon, and may have one-upped his predecessor.

Both Kelly and Raymond have failed, however, to overtake Mike Butters as the all-time meltdown king in Bakersfield hockey history. Butters, as some of you might recall, while playing for the Bakersfield Oilers in 1994 decided it was good idea to vent his frustration over something er other by climbing over the boards, reaching into a bucket of pucks and one by one hurling them at whatever opposing player happened to be within range.

That's a tough act to follow.

The sports information department at the Air Force Academy informed me this morning that most sports teams , including football, at the Academy follow "standard protocol" during playing of national anthem, which is to have athletes stand with hands at their side and not over their heart.

Baseball players, however, do salute during playing of anthem.

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Last night I attended the Bakersfield Jam game and during the national anthem I stood there hands behind my back, just like Cal State Bakersfield basketball player Nikki West and CSUB assistant coach Greg McCall did in the picture that appeared on A-1 last Monday, and again in today’s paper on the op-ed page (B6).
 

That’s what I do, stand there. Hands behind my back. Maybe sometimes in front, just how Greg McCall was standing.  Just how 80 percent of the crowd was standing — that way or hands behind the back. I just hope Bob Williams and Judith Mosier or any of their like-minded friends didn’t see me. Because if they did, they now know what an  Obama-lovin’, Cuban-food-eatin’, draft-dodgin’, commie-sympathizin’, un-American turncoat I am, just like Nikki and Greg, right Bob? Judith?
 

Bob Williams and Judith Mosier are this morning’s featured opinion letter writers, and evidently keepers of way too much spare time, who somehow were able to gauge from one picture the state of mind of two people about to take part in an intense athletic contest — that state of mind being either ignorance or deliberate disrespect for our flag and country because their hands were not placed over their hearts. West and McCall, ought to be ashamed of themselves, the letter writers noted. Judith said she was “appalled.”
 

There are two behaviors in this scenario that are shameful, alright — Bob and Judith’s. To throw two good people under the bus based on an uneducated assumption is irresponsible and dangerous. It does nothing good for the reputation of our city or country. Moreover it subjects falsely accused people to heckling and ridicule, such as what was aimed at Nikki this morning on the CSUB campus by several idiot students. It brought her to tears and sent her off seeking sanctuary in her coach's office.

The criticisms are particularly distasteful in light of reminders from her father Charles that Nikki's grandfather was an Army Major who served in Vietnam and earned the Silver Star for gallantry in combat. He was a war hero who instilled in Nikki love of family, country and community, Charles West said. "And people want to do this to his granddaughter?" he wonders.

"Her father and mother could have lived anywhere in the country or the world and we chose to live here in Bakersfield and we're proud to live here," Charles said. "I married a young lady from Bakersfield and we made sacrifices so she could go to Stockdale Christian and for her to be hammered by folks who don't know my child? No one is more patriotic than Nikki because that's how she was raised."

You have to wonder if Bob or Judith have ever been to an event during which the national anthem was played and looked around?  If they believe what they’re saying about Nikki and Greg, then they must have the same opinion about everyone else — in some cases 80,000 or more people at any one time at any one sporting event — standing at attention but not with hands over hearts, during the playing of the national anthem. 
 

The picture, by the way, was in the paper in the first place to illustrate a particular routine Nikki engages in before every game. Rituals and routines of athletes was the focus of the story. Nikki makes sure she stands behind her coach Tim La Kose (pictured with his hand over his heart) during the playing of the national anthem.
 

If they love their country so much, Bob and Judith ought to know that freedom to express yourself — short of shouting fire in a crowded theater — is at the very core of what makes this country great. I doubt that by placing their hands in front or in back and not on their heart Nikki and Greg were making any form of expression at all — it’s just what they’ve always done, probably because they were never taught at a young age, like I was never taught, to put their hands over their heart, except for during the Pledge of Allegiance. Was Nikki focused entirely on the good old US of A? Not entirely.

"Anyone who knows Nikki and knows about her basketball knows that she has a heart condition," Charles said. "She prays while she's standing there, thanking God for allowing her to do what she loves  to do in the country she loves."

But it still holds that because Americans are free to express themselves that Bob and Judith’s opinions, as heaped in paranoia as they are, were granted a place in the newspaper in the first place.
 

That’s love of country. So is standing at attention during the playing of the anthem, regardless of whether your hands are in front, back or over your heart.
 

I don't really believe this, but without a conference, the next best thing the 8-17 Roadrunners can do is judge themselves against the other eight Division I independents , and at least in one category, CSUB is No. 1 -  but hardly with a bullet.

Albeit bolstered by empty luxury suit seats that count and a get in free, pack-the-stands night crowd of 4,790, CSUB is averaging 2,188 fans per game, far and away the most among independents. Take away the pack-the-stands turnout and CSUB still leads with a 1,951 ave., although there are some nights out there when not many more than 700 are actually there. While it may lead the independent league, the 2,188 trails the average attendance recorded in 2006-07 and 2005-06, at least.

Attendance this season has  to be a huge disappointment to the university, which partially based its decision to go Division I on a very promising economic impact projection, authored in 2005 by two of its professors, of about $6 million a year. The thinking was that if CSUB wins 40 percent of its game during the first year, attendance would increase 12.5 percent to around 2,700 a game, and that in turn, would not only increase revenues to the school and spawn all kinds of spending in the community not only from locals but people coming in from out of town, but it would also create incentive for people to donate to the effort of transitioning to Division I.

People warned against such pie in the sky projections, and at least for now, it seems like they were Right.

At 8-17 (which ain't bad) or a .320 winning percentage, all bets may be off, but it's hard for me to believe that with two more wins and two fewer losses, which would have put CSUB at .400, the attendance average would have been any different and the increased economic impact from when it was a Division II school minimal if any.

Bakos simply aren't responding to the Division I movement, and I can't say that I'm surprised. Annoyed, disappointed, perplexed - all those things, because Division I is our major leagues, we'll never get there any other way. 8-17 is a commendable record, 10-19 when it's all over would be bordering on phenomenal, but 2,188 (and we all know actual attendance may be 70 percent of that) is far from commendable, and 2,500 per would be only slightly better.

I got three words for CSUB, who is not excused from responsibility in this manner - - GET A BAND.

INDEPENDENTS STANDINGS

WON-LOSS

TEXAS PAN AMERICAN 16-13

UTAH VALLEY STATE 12-14

SAVANNAH STATE 12-17

CHICAGO STATE 10-16

CSUB 8-17

LONGWOOD 8-22

PRESBYTERIAN 5-23

NORTH CAROLINA CENTRAL 3-23

NEW JERSEY TECH 0-28

 - - - - - - - - -

RPI RANKINGS

216   CHICAGO STATE

247   UTAH VALLEY ST

272   SAVANNAH ST.

282   NC CENTRAL

295  TEXAS PAN-AM

313  CSUB

326  LONGWOOD

327  PRESBYTERIAN

341  NJIT

 - - - - - - -

ATTENDANCE

2,188   CSUB 

1,835   UTAH VALLEY ST.

1,562    PRESBYTERIAN

1,197    NC CENTRAL

750 (EST)  LONGWOOD

639     SAVANNAH ST.

596     NJIT

556    CHICAGO STATE

I may be misremembering, but wasn't it Roger Clemens who chucked that jagged
broken bat at Mike Piazza a few seasons back during the height of the roid
rage?

I'll bet he and Andy Pettitte had a good conversation over that one, and
then, of course, Andy with his wife to whom, apparently, he tells everything but
then misremembers that he told it to her.

Clemens is so defiant, so dismissive of all the evidence against him, so diligent in his denials that you almost have to believe him . . . and I would if it weren’t for the testimony of Andy Pettitte or for the other players who have come forward and confirmed allegations in the Mitchell report. Yesterday’s hearings reduced Brian McNamee to practically a bit player now that a best friend of the accused, a guy who wouldn’t in a million years (no one would) testify before the Congress of the United States that something was true about their best friend if he wasn’t absolutely certain about what he was saying. Although you can’t dismiss McNamee all together. If he’s caught lying, he gets put away for a long time.
 
So, without Pettitte there to remember all the misremembering that supposedly went on in his conversations with Clemens, the hearings pretty much evolved into a waste of time and tax payers money, accept the new verb Clemens created that has now armed millions of men with language that can be used to a to get away with pretty much anything or get out of pretty much anything.

• Sorry, honey, you're misremembering the night you say I lost the rent money
playing poker.

• Sorry honey, you’re misremembering some conversation we supposedly had about me taking you out to a fancy dinner and a show tonight.

• No boss, you’re misremembering the afternoon I supposedly disappeared from work to get in 18 holes of golf.

• Coach, you're misremembering that seventh goal I supposedly let in for no apparent reason in front of 6,000 fans booing and screaming for me to be replaced by an emergency backup from the local beer league.

Here are the top 10 things I’ve supposedly done that people have misremembered. (Feel free to set the record straight about things people have misremembered about you)

• left toe nail clippings on the floor
• Poured brake fluid in the power steering fluid reservoir
• Bought a car without consulting my wife
• Stole some of my daughter’s leftover mac & cheese
• Passed gas in a crowded room and blamed it on the dog
• double-dipped
• Streaked after dark down our old street
• Left cap off the toothpaste
• Gone 83 in a 65
• Toasted my rec league hockey team’s victory by pouring beer into my . . . . . . . well, I might have done that.

 

Searching out the silver lining coating the Condors recent woes, as those who know me know I always do — and if you say I don't you are simply misremembering, sir — the Condors over the last four games, during which they've yielded goals (27) at a record pace, are a phenomenal 9 for 18 with the man advantage. The 50 percent power play production has catapulted them up about 8 places in the ECHL rankings to 13th.

The bad news is that with a man down, they have yielded nine goals in 17 penalty kill situations over the last four games to fall to within one-tenth of a percentage point of last place Alaska.

The Condors can't get another goal tender in here soon enough. No I mean they can't, not with three games in three days starting Friday night in Utah, and another in Vegas on Tuesday.

It's not how many goals Michel Robinson is giving up, it's how he's giving them up that's so disturbing - impossible angles down low below the circle, with his vision unimpeded, etc. It leads you to think something's going on with the young man other than he's just  cold between the pipes. 

I'm not sure who I'd rather not be more right now,  Michel Robinson or Roger Clemens.

Were it not for habitual liars like Pete Rose, Rafael Palmeiro, Marion Jones and a few others, numbing us to any and all stories about athletes breaking rules and lying about it, there'd probably be a keener interest in the saga of Roger Clemens and his alleged steroid use. But there's one element to this story I find unique.

There's not just a suspicion of lying in this case, somebody most definitely is lying. It's a blatant he said - he said argument at this point and we haven't really seen that to this degree before. It's pretty black and white, this one — either Clemens is lying or his former trainer Brian McNamee, who says he has proof of Clemens using steroids and HGH, is lying. DNA testing should tell us which it is.

What's left of our trust in baseball players and the game in general hinges on just who it is that's lying. If it's Clemens, it's all over. No one has so steadfastly denied allegations like he has - not even Palmeiro. If it's McNamee, perhaps our faith is restored some. Perhaps we even start believing in Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa, believing the Barry Bonds really didn't know during his Michelin Man days that what he was taking were steriods

Nah!

The Condors are in need of a pick-me-up, something that will ignite them, trigger  a 10-game winning streak that would solidify a playoff spot, and then who knows what would happen from there.

And I think I have just the thing, er...I don't have it, but I'm wondering if anybody knows how to get it — KETCHUP POTATO CHIPS, all the rage in Canada, apparently, but hard to find in the States, particularly around here, the players say.

Maybe I misunderstood them. Maybe it's catch-up potato chips they're on the lookout for. Now that they could use.

But if it is ketchup potato chips, anybody know where you can get them locally? I'll pass it along to the boys.

Demonstrating once again, and maybe proving it without a shadow of a doubt, that tough guys  will always have a job in pro hockey regardless of skill level, former  Condor Eric Neilson  has been called up to the Peoria Rivermen of the American Hockey League, one step below the NHL.

Neilson, a third-year pro mostly known as the protector for Sidney Crosby during their time together in Juniors, had 4 points, 12 fighting majors and 119 penalty minutes through 34 games with the Alaska Aces of the ECHL before the call-up on Thursday. With Bakersfield during the 2005-06 season Neilson had 4 points in 4 games and all-tolled the last three season, Neilson has posted 14 points and 414 penalty minutes in 145 pro games.

No doubt, Neilson will be returned to the Aces once key Rivermen players become healthy again,  but such a promotion can't sit too well with productive players in the league, particularly with Condor players who have limited exposure to the AHL because the Condors have no AHL or NHL affiliate.

If you went to the Condors game Tuesday night on a mission to finally figure this team out and see signs of a playoff contender,  you probably left thoroughly entertained but as confused as before you went in.  If ever there was a game that rolled all the pluses and minuses about this team into one neat package, that game was it, right down to the final score - a 7-6 shootout loss.

What you saw was a Condors team that skated with determination and purpose in the first period - outbattling very good Victoria Salmon King players for loose pucks, controlling the flow of the game, crashing the net, finishing checks  and taking a 3-1 lead. That kind of play we've seen before, but not frequently enough, which makes you wonder.

Then you saw the lead quickly evaporate in the second period, during which time the first place Salmon Kings, who had finally woken up,  demonstrated the basic overall talent difference between the two teams. It wasn't as if the Condors were not putting forth the effort . Nor were they constantly killing off penalties. The Condors, the second most penalized team in the ECHL, had only six PIMs all night.

And you saw a demonstration of shotty goal tending, which we all thought the Condors had rid themselves of with the acquisition of Michel Robinson. It simply wasn't a good night for Robinson, who has been otherwise terrific. What's troubling is that he was beat on shots he had clear views of, and on shots coming at him through screens.

Then came the third period resurgence,  which we've seen before, twice coming back from two-goal deficits only to fall short in the shootout, which we've seen before. But with six pucks already in net, maybe Tuesday night 's shootout would be different. Actually, there's nothing confusing about the shootout phase of the Condors game. It's practically non existent.  Failing to light the lamp in four tries Tuesday night, the Condors are now 0 for 7 in shootouts, converting on only 6 of 35 attempts (17.3 percent) while opponents are 17 for 33 (51.5 percent).

The Condors all season have lacked a sniper, but then along comes rookie Mark Derlago who puts four into the net, which no Condor player has ever done at home — Lindsay Vallis did it for the Fog at the Convention Center in 1997 — and so now what? Do we have a sniper, or is Derlago just in a zone? Can we expect him to keep up this frenetic pace he's on of 14 goals in the last ten games?

Friday and Saturday brings two more chances to figure these boys out, but then again that's not our job. It's coach Marty Raymond's, who is frantically pushing all kinds of buttons in an effort to find some consistency in the forward direction. A button he can't push is the one connecting him to an NHL affiliate, and maybe what we're seeing this season more than ever before is the price the Condors are paying for having to go it alone.

Any body who knows me will not be surprised to know that the title of my blog Zero Point Zero is in large part inspired by a memorable line from "Animal House," — Dean Vernon Wormer alerting Flounder that his grade point average for the semester was "zero point zero." "Drunk fat and stupid is no way to go through life, son."

Who among us haven't heard that lecture a thousand times, huh?

Zero Point Zero also works, I thought, in a sports context, too, so there you go.

Speaking of Animal House, I was delighted to hear the guy who played Neidermeyer on Animal House (comic Mark Metcalf) on the Bob and Tom Show  this morning on 98.5 The Fox, sharing some Animal House Trivia. I thought I knew everything about the movie, but he blew me away with this one . . . .

The chrome helmet Neidermeyer wore in the scene where he's training the ROTC cadets, giving Flounder a particularly hard time, and then again later in the horse barn pushing Flounder around, was the same helmet worn by George C. Scott in "Patton," which just proves again how much "Animal House" is woven into the fabric of American life.

Just as predicted in my series last fall on Title IX by people on both sides of the 35-year old issue, high schools are being cast into the discrimination fray. The William Hart Union School District,  just down the road, is being targeted by a parent unhappy over the inequality of facilities at the district's schools — so unhappy that a complaint has been filed with the Office of Civil Rights, claiming violations of Title IX.

According to a story in the Los Angeles Times this morning, the parent is claiming that the district has failed to provide benefits, opportunities and services to female athletes that are equivalent to those proved to male athletes. The complaint centers around the softball facilities and locker rooms at Saugus, Hart and Canyon Country high schools being far inferior to baseball facilities for boys. Moreover, the complaint alleges that more money is being spent on improvements to boys facilities. The Office For Civil Rights has begun an investigation.

Rob Gapper, CEO of the district responded "We don't believe there is a problem."

Local administrators seemed pretty confident a few months ago that Title IX was not an issue in Bakersfield area high schools either, but now that it has hit close to home, I wonder how they feel now?

•  Bob Knight resigned from Texas Tech yesterday and it looks like his coaching career is history. I'm not ready for him to leave the game of college basketball, but I'm betting that he'd be just fine with me getting out of the sports writing business, not that we ever crossed paths. How he loathed scribes, or maybe it was just the ones asking tough questions he didn't want to answer

• Bob Knight was the Teflon Man when it came to avoiding severe punishment for inappropriate, NPC behavior, so he was pretty fortunate to get this far with his career.

But he got this far because he genuinely had his players' best interests at heart and had little trouble convincing administrators of that, except for Miles Brand and any kid whose throat he's had his hand wrapped around.

• Bob Knight would rather his players be lucky and smart than good.

• Folding chairs once thought hopelessly lost, are suddenly emerging in closet lockups everywhere.

• Quite an act for his son Pat to follow, but will son Pat want to follow dad's act?

• If Scott Roth doesn't work out for the Jam or he moves on to bigger and better things, do you think . . . . . . .?

This particular Super Bowl as it turned out didn't need the commercials to bail it out, but I thought advertisers rebounded pretty well from a lousy showing the last few years.

Here are my top-10 faves:

Warm and Fuzzy — The Coke ad featuring cartoon parade balloons chasing a bottle of Coke, only to lose out to a giant lovable Charlie Brown.

Best use of amphibians — Life Water Thrillicious with Naomi Campbell and the dancing lizards .

Just nutty — Planters, the cashew -scented irresistibly ugly girl

Just Wrong — Amp Energy Drink, dancing fat mechanic starts lady's car with  a sip of Amp energy drink and cables attached to his nipples

Just not fair — Victoria Secret, suggesting that now that the game's over . . . . .

Best use of shrunken heads — Cars.com, customer threatens to go to Plan B, calling in the witch doctor to get a better deal.

Yo Adriane award — Anheuser Busch, the concerned dalmatian trains Hank the Clydesdale in true "Rocky" style so that he won't be passed up again for next year's Hitch Team.

Best use of desperate performers — Bridgestone Tires, Alice Cooper and Richard Simmons narrowly escape being killed thanks to the gripping power of Bridgstone tires. Tire ads, some concept, with the screaming forest animals was good too.

Reason not to buy — Mobile Fave 5 feature, Charles Barkley annoys the talent right out of Dwyane Wade (or did Pat Riley beat him to it?)

Dirtiest ad — Tide, and the annoying talking stain-on-the-shirt that completely shifts the attention away from the interviewing job applicant.

Honorable mention: Head bobbing (What is Love) Diet Pepsi Max drinkers,  E-Trade talking-barfing baby.

Best line: "You make sandwich, I am meat," — Bud Light ad featuring foreigners picking up chicks, although I generally regard the Bud Light ads as only mildly amusing.

Failed the dinner test: Careerbuilders.com, beating heart busting out of blouse, dances up to boss to tell him his owner quits.

Agree? Disagree?  What were your favorites, most unfavorite?

I started out Super Bowl XLII not caring much who won, I just wanted a good game. But that changed long before the Giants embarked on their memorable game-winning touchdown drive. It changed in the third quarter the moment Patriots coach Bill Belichick dropped his red challenge hankie on the field, gutlessly seeking a ticky-tack penalty against New York for having 12 players on the field.

He had noticed that a Giant linebacker was frantically trying to get off the field as the Patriots lined up for a play, and that he had failed by a half step to reach the sideline. The replays proved him right and the Patriots got a critical first down out of the deal. That's not a penalty in hockey by the way, not when you're that close to the bench, and the NFL should rewrite its rules so that players making an effort to get off the field and are within a few feet of doing so are not penalized.

During his announcement to the crowd and zillions of  TV viewers I almost  got the sense that the referee felt embarrassed for Belichick. Coach was well within his rights and he was seeking every edge he could get, needing, unexpectedly, every edge he could get, but from that point on, like Strahan on Brady, I was all over being a BIG Giants fan.

Then came Belichick's exit from the field with still one second left and the stiff, typically uninsightful remarks during the post game interview. The Patriots are a phenomenal  football team that probably deserved better fate, but because of their coach, I'm shedding no tears for them this morning.