When it comes to sports years, 2009 has to rank as one of the best locally….maybe not THE best…but one of the best.  The Steelers win the Super Bowl, the Penguins win the Stanley Cup, Villa wins a state title in girls hoops, Gannon wins the East Regional and goes to the Elite Eight, the Mercyhurst womens hockey teams reaches the NCAA Final and gets the bid to host 2011 Frozen Four,  the BayHawks come to Erie and so on and so forth.   Yes, a great year indeed.  Personally, the combined WSEE-WICU sports department was one of  the highlights of my year.  We are able to do so much local sports coverage, unseen before for this market.   For example, just in the last calender year  we did half hour shows before and after the AFC Championship game, half hour shows before and after the Super Bowl, three half hour shows live during March Madness, 2 half hour shows during the Penguins Stanley Cup Final Series, three live PSAC Football games, a combined 20 minute show every Friday night at 11:15 called the Friday SportsBlitz and a weekly half hour show called Sunday SportsBlitz at 11:30 am prior to the start of the NFL coverage on CBS.  Yes, we were able to do that much not to mention just the daily highlights and stories we gather for our own local sportscasts.   I think now you understand why 2009 was one of my best years of local sports in Erie.  Happy Holidays !!!!!

        I have to chuckle at the whole Tiger Woods situation right now.  He has had the national sports media wrapped around his finger but the national media and the tabloids….that’s a whole different story.   I really don’t care what Tiger Woods does in his personal life, but I do have a problem with a guy who has make hundreds of millions of dollars on his public image off the course when that public image is a farce.   Woods privacy is different that you or I…that’s the price you pay when you are a world renowed athlete and celebrity and it is also the price you pay when you feed off the public who buys tickets, clothing, video games, etc, etc, etc with your name on it.  Yes, the public deserves an explanation.  Maybe what bugged me the most was this….at the same time Woods is apologizing, he’s also lecturing the media about privacy issues.  He’s not the victim here…his wife and kids are.   He brought it on himself, not the media.   Woods will get through it, fans will forgive him and forget and perhaps he can be a better person learning through his own mistakes……  He is a dedicated golfer, dedicated athlete, dedicated to making big money, dedicating to everything…except  apparently his own family.

 
Here are my two-cents on the the decision by the Patriots to go for it on fourth and two, two minutes left, against the Colts.  I understand the logic. What few have mentioned is that the Colts still had to score a touchdown to win the game so the Patriots defense had to come up with a stop, whether it was 30 yards or 70 yards, they had to stop Peyton Manning at some point and did not.  Not making the fourth down play didn’t cost the Pats the game…..not stopping the Colts offense from scoring a touchdown did !!!!  Yes, Manning had a better chance from 29 yards out than 69 yards out, but c’mon defense, step it up and make a stop with the game on the line.  Belichick had confidence in the offense to make it….I think what was lost….is that he had confidence in the defense to stop Manning if they didn’t make it.   Bad decision ????  Not really since he had the chance to keep Manning on the sidelines for the rest of the game.  It was a big gamble….a gamble that simply did not pay off in a regular season game.  Playoff game ????  Maybe a different story.

     They started in the heat of the summer and now hope to make it payoff in the playoffs.  We are talking about high school football who enters the post-season in November.    General McLane and Wilmington appear headed for a showdown in Double-A while unbeaten Mercyhurst Prep will have to get past number one and unbeaten Farrell in the D-10 finals to have a shot at winning a state title.   I would love to see another Strong Vincent-Cathedral Prep game in triple-A too.   The Ramblers rolled the first  time but Vincent has been on a roll since that loss and it may have been the wakeup call they needed to play on a different level.   Prep has been impressive this season, back under the watch of Mike Mischler and could go a long way in the AAA playoffs if they can beat Vincent again in the D-10 playoffs.  It will be interesting to see how well McDowell does in the state playoffs.  Being the lone Quad-A team in District 10, they must first handle a play-in game and eventually have to play Gateway again from the WPIAL to have a shot at getting to Hershey and the state finals.  All of the above have had great seasons but can make the season extra-special with a few more wins in the upcoming weeks.  Good Luck !!!!

   October is certainly one of my favorite months of the year.  My wife and my middle-daughter’s birthdays are back to back and it’s a great month for sports !!!   I think the baseball playoffs are going to be great.  You’ve got all the big boys in the hunt like the Yankees, Red Sox, Dodgers, Cardinals and the defending champion Phillies.    I want to see a Yankees-Dodgers series.   When it comes to football, October is the month teams establish themselves as contenders or pretenders whether it be high school, college or the NFL.  Throw in the start of the NHL and NBA seasons and this month is a month like none other. 

   Part of our month will be two more live PSAC Games starting with Gannon at Mercyhurst on the 10th and then Edinboro at Mercyhurst on the 24th.  Both should be competitive games you can see live on WSEE starting at noon. 

   What a blast our Friday and Sunday SportsBlitz shows are !!!  We get so many games and highlights, pre-game speeches from the coaches (who have been very cooperative) plus predicting the NFL games with some guest experts every Sunday morning at 11:30 am.  I am enjoying this football season more than I have for many years working with the guys and pumping out the shows.  We do this EVERY WEEK !!!  Our Friday night show, our Sunday half hour show as well as the live games in addition to our radio reports, updating the web and, in case you did not know, we do sports reports for the Caribbean side of our TV station each day too.  That’s all in addition to the six and eleven daily sportscasts.  The busier, the better and no one….I mean no one can compete with that on a weekly basis.   Tune in and find out !!!

    Time for the start of the high school football season and with it, new shows on WSEE and WICU.  We are combining forces to bring you more and better sports coverage in the market than ever before !!! Starting on Friday night, September 4th, we’ll have Friday Night Sports Blitz, a 15-minute show dedicated to the high school football highlights, post-game, features and predictions.  Myself, along with Mike Ruzzi, KC Kantz and Jay Puskar team-up to bring it to you.  It will be seen on both WSEE and WICU.  Starting on Sunday September 13th, we’ll bring you Sunday Sports Blitz at 11:30 am on WSEE before the start of CBS coverage of NFL Football.  We’ve moved the Sportswatch Magazine show to Sunday morning so we can preview the NFL schedule that day, recap the weekend in high school and college football and make a few predictions along the way.  So, Sportswatch Magazine, now in it’s fifth year as Erie’s only weekly half hour sports show, moves to Sunday morning at 11:30 am with bigger and better coverage !!! If that;s not enough, join Mike Ruzzi and I for a special half hour live show Thursday night at 7:30 on WICU to preview the Steelers opening game against the Titans, which follows at 8pm on NBC.  We’ll also have three live PSAC Football games this fall on WSEE !!!  Edinboro at Gannon on September 26th, Gannon at Mercyhurst on October 10th and Edinboro at Mercyhurst on October 24th.  All the game live and all will begin at noon.  We are taking full advantage of our WSEE-WICU merger on the sports side.  And here’s the best part….it is only the beginning !!!!

   I got a laugh over a story that the PGA Tour was going to fine Tiger Woods for criticism of a ruling in the Firestone Invitation at Akron for playing too slow.  Now, we all hate to play behind SLOW golfers…it ruins the game.  But fine Tiger Woods, the heart and soul of pro golf as we know it.  He’s the reason the entire tour is making a lot of money and more popular now than ever before.  Don’t ruffle Tiger’s feathers, who knows, he could start is own tour !!!

   Every year about this time I start to hear of the cupcake opponents of big time college footbal programs, most notebly, Penn State.  Everyone has one or two and what may been a good program five years ago, doesn’t look so good now.   Anyway, here’s a little insight into why these teams are scheduled for non-conference games.  One, big time schools need home games to support their big time programs. So a smaller school can come in, get crushed, but go away with a huge payday which can only help their program in the future. It wasn’t so long ago that South Florida was one of those cupcakes and now they seem to be a contender in the Big East every year.  Two, recruiting…one reason why Penn State, for example, has always played teams like Temple and Rutgers is to get exposure in the Philadelphia and New York markets for the alumni who live there and possible recruits.  Three,  some of these schools now have coaches that are Penn State alumni and JoePa may be helping them out a little bit by playing at Penn State, getting exposure to a big time program that can help recruiting, and as mentioned, come away with a big payday for the program too.  Four,  unlike the NFL with pre-season games and even high school has pre-season scrimmages, college football teams have no pre-season game activity.  So a few cupcakes at the start of the season could be considered a mock pre-season before conference play begins.  Just a little insight into the thought process of college football schedules.

  Hope your summer is going well and as always, it is flying by !!  Some random thoughts to share with you on this edition of our Sportswatch Blog.   How about Tom  Watson at the British Open as the 59-year old turned back the clock and was within an 8-foot putt of winning it !!!  He is a class act and perhaps proved, even though he did not win, that is the best links player of all time.  Good story, as he was getting a standing ovation at the closing ceremony, he turned to the 16-year old top amateur from Italy and said, “someday they will be cheering for you.”  What a class act.   

 Speaking of golf, I am having a blast at Scenic Heights this summer with our Golf Challenge.  Only three winners out of 16 golfers over the first four weeks and I am just a couple of putts away from being undefeated.  I lipped out a birdie putt in week three that would have won it, and then missed about a 6-footer for par in week four that would have tied the others. That’s golf and when you play just one hole, one shot can make the difference. 

  Although I don’t do news, I was influenced by Walter Cronkite, who passed away at the age of 92 last week.  As a kid, it was Cronkite who was there to give me the big news of the day, from the war in Vietman to the first lunar landing to the Kennedy killing.  It was that sense of being on TV and giving the audience the information as a big event was happening that influenced my decision to get into TV journalism.  Sports was always my first love as I played three sports throughout high school and some college baseball too.  Walter was always there when you needed to know something and that it was attracted me to the business.

  After about a month, the transition to our new home is nearly complete and things are starting to get back to normal. Of course, we are talking about the WSEE News, Sports and Weather staffs pulling up our roots and moving to WICU12 on upper State Street.  While there have been a few bumps in the road, as you might expect from a technical standpoint, things are starting to get smoother day by day.  The technical aspect of moving an entire TV station to another building is quite overwhelming and the guys doing it have been nothing short of spectacular.  Throw in the entire switch to Digital TV which occurred in early June and they have had their work cut out for them.  We in sports have done some things together throughout the past year when the merger was taking shape from half hour shows to live TV football games so this is nothing new to us.  I’ve always said, for this to work, everyone must respect each other as fellow employees and professionals and so far that has been the case in sports.  We know each other’s work and respect it. In fact, we take a very similiar approach to local sports coverage, especially Mike and I, who’ve been in the market now for twenty years.  I expect nothing but better sports coverage, better stories, better highlights than you’ll ever see from the competition.   For now, we are up and running and with the summer here, it is a good time to go through the transition before the football season kicks off and we have some great stuff planned for you.  Special shows and more live TV games !!!  So stay tuned, it is only the start and we’re just scratching the surface of what local sports coverage is going to be in the future.

    We have had football state champs, basketball state champs both boys and girls, state champs in wrestling and track and even swimming but we have never had a state champion baseball team from Erie County.   Why ???  Some blame the inconsistent weather or a lack of talent or interest in baseball because of the weather. In fact, Villa a few seasons ago, is the only team to even REACH the state finals.  I don’t have an answer either.  I do know we’ve had state champs in softball and they play the same time of the year. Maybe the little league programs are just better in other areas of the state as well.  One of these seasons, the jinx will be broke and Erie County will have a state champ in baseball.  Maybe Mercyhurst Prep with only one loss all season has a shot.  Who will step up and be the first.  Let’s hope it happens soon.