CougZone.com - The Cougar Lounge - A Truck Full Of Dream

May 10, 2009

The Lounge

"The most disappointing thing about it is that Elson Floyd and Jim Sterk didn't do anything to try to contain that little group of Cougars that were out there doing that. It was a shame that they didn't show leadership or courage to curtail something like that."

- Washington athletic director Scott Woodward, publicly admonishing Wazzu administrators for failing to stifle an organized campaign by Cougar fans and well-wishers to defeat state senate legislation that would have provided funding for Husky Stadium renovation and apparently, stuck in a 1943 time warp, after mistaking the words "courage" and "leadership" for censorship and oppression.

"It's highly unusual for both of those schools to abandon their recruitment of a player of that caliber and potential. They must know something the rest of us don't know."

- Former Wazzu ? and USC ? head men's hoop coach George Raveling talking about the Trojans and UCLA Bruins both dropping their recruitment of top hoop prospect Renardo Sidney after his stepfather allegedly hinted at his son being compensated for playing for USC.

"Football and basketball are sports that require a lot of movement and jumping."

- Saudi Arabian official Shaikh Abdullah Al Maneea defending a governmental decision to clamp down on female-only gyms because, among other reasons, all that movement and jumping may harm girls who are still virgins, causing them to lose their virginity.

"We would not buy a newspaper at any price."

- Mega-investor Warren Buffett, giving advice at last week's 35,000-strong shareholder's meeting for his highly profitable Berkshire Hathaway company.

First things first, good wishes must be extended to Wazzu football athlete Cory Mackay who fell asleep at the wheel and rolled his truck near Washtucna on his way home from school last week. Initial medical reports have indicated that Mackay suffered a fractured spine. The Lounge clientele has a dream and it is that Mackay will be able to resume a normal life ? football or no football ? in the very near future.

The Lounge took a brief hiatus last week so that we could proceed to engage in our annual self-inflicted torture called Bloomsday, Spokane's 12K road race held on the first Sunday every May. This year was the Lounge's 24th year of torture and the only thing we can say is that race founder Don Kardong is a masochist. There are four hills on the Bloomsday course and three of the four come in the first four miles. By the time one gets to Doomsday Hill ? the race's massive, fourth and final hill just before Mile Five ? he or she has already had their spirits crushed into a fine pulp. So even if one makes it to the Mile Five marker at the top of Doomsday Hill, it is only so they can crawl to the finish over the mostly flat final 2.46 miles to the finish line and a new t-shirt. This year's shirt had a nice design but was light blue ? more of a girlie color ? so we are not predicting a premium spot for it in the apparel rotation over the next year. But at least it has already done better than 2006's burnt orange debacle that was immediately flung into the street in hopes of being run over by a passing circus troupe.

Budget cuts were rampant last week and two particular cuts caught the Lounge's eyeballs ? the University of Washington's decision to cut both their men's and women's swimming program and Wazzu's decision to cut their theatre program. On a college campus where the frequent complaint is that there is nothing to do for entertainment but drink, cutting the theatre department is bound to have some negative repercussions. There is now one less source of non-tequila-related entertainment to choose from and while we understand it was a tough decision, perhaps the program's demise will be short-lived and possibly reinstated in the near future. A good theatre program can help the university in many areas. As for the UW's cuts, they are not surprising but it continues to be surprising that universities continue to use the blunt force trauma of program elimination rather than considering other options ? specifically, reducing football scholarships. Football, because it is most schools' major revenue-producing sport, deservedly receives the most scholarships of any sport in the NCAA. But the ratio is way out of proportion. Football receives 85 annual scholarships ? enough to cover nearly every member of the team down to the fourth string at each position. To give an idea of what that would be like for other sports, if, for instance, basketball were given a four-deep annual scholarship gift, they would have a near 20-person roster. Baseball could put 36 on scholarship. Soccer could put 40 on schollies, volleyball could put 24 or so, tennis could have 32 and track and field could have a whopping 64! Needless to say, football has it exceptionally good with 85 annual scholarships but why they need to be scholarshipped four-deep, particularly in the midst of a financial crisis, is highly suspect. Football is a highly physical sport and, therefore, deserves, to have at least two-deep scholarshipped and probably three-deep would be a safer number to shoot for ? and that would mean somewhere closer to 65 scholarships. If a scholarship costs approximately $20,000 for the basic essentials [room+board+books] then that would be $400,000 saving off the top not counting the ancillary expenses/costs incurred for every athlete on an athletic scholarship. The savings would obviously add up to much more and would almost certainly be better than axing an entire program as football would not only stay intact but would also still have a three-deep scholarshipped roster. The Lounge has been hard on the Huskies for many a moon but if a Husky were representing the USA at the Olympics ? everybody roots for that person. Sadly, now there will never be any future Olympic swimmers coming from the UW programs.

In other cheerful news, the NCAA's APR report was released and it included absolutely no surprises. The majority of the schools receiving APR sanctions came from schools with less financial wherewithal for academic support services and they resided in small conferences. The Pac-10 had a fairly decent report card for the larger sports with the USC men's hoop program recording the lowest score ? 906 ? of the football and hoops' programs. Among Wazzu's sports, the women's sports programs were particularly impressive with women's cross country pulling in a near-perfect 995 [out of a possible 1000] score and followed closely by women's golf and swimming, both with 993, and women's outdoor and indoor track and field coming in at 990 and 989, respectively. The top men's team was the Cougar golf squad with a 972.

The Lounge is all for a college football playoff rather than the travesty being foisted upon the populace known as the BCS Taliban. However, we are suspicious of anything whenever Congress gets involved as they did last week in attempting to get the NCAA to shelve the BCS Taliban and have a playoff like they do for the rest of their sports. Of course, the first thing the NCAA did was to say they do not run the college football post-season, the BCS Taliban does ? and that just makes the point crystal clear ? the NCAA does not control the post-season for their largest sport. Need we say anything more? No, but Congress might.

The Lounge grieves this week for the passing of actor/comedian Dom DeLuise. DeLuise had many notable roles over the years, but most notably in The History of the World, Part I and Cannonball Run - though we do give him a shout-out for his role as Pizza The Hutt in Spaceballs.

"That was not too bad," says Bootney Farnesworth The Third of Wazzu's recent APR scores.

Yes, not too bad overall. Football was the only sport below the 925 cutline but they won their appeal and will avoid any sanctions. Meanwhile, every other sport was 13 points or more above the cutline and in no danger of any sanctions. That is good news for the beleaguered athletic department and particularly for the women's sports programs, which averaged a 973 for their 10 sports programs.

"It is getting too close for my comfort," says Mrs B.H. Smegma of Wazzu's baseball team after they reclaimed second place in the Pac-10.

Well, Mrs. Smegma, it stacks up this way for Wazzu and their NCAA hopes. They have 11 games remaining on their schedule and they will likely have to win nine of them to put them in any serious NCAA discussions. The reason for this is that Wazzu's RPI is in the 50s and it will need to be in the 30s for serious NCAA consideration. Winning nine of 11 games should do that and have the extra added benefit of probably securing second place in the Pac-10 conference for the Cougars. But that day is still two weeks and many wins away.

For most college students, May means finals. For some, those finals are over, but for others, they are still ongoing or have yet to come. For those who still have finals to deal with, the Lounge presents Free Coffee 4Students wherein an ad agency and a coffeehouse combine to try and coerce college professors to give them good grades.

Meanwhile, the Lounge Scientists, fresh off Easter and Cinco de Mayo, have decided to focus on the natural wedding between the two events ? inhalable chocolate. The device ? called Le Whif ? is designed to shoot a chocolate mist into one's mouth and give the recipient the taste of chocolate without the unpleasant side effects such as weight gain and cavities.

"The whole process is very art-science. You have a culinary art and aerosol science meeting," says Lounge Scientist #2, David Edwards, a biomedical engineer at Harvard University, who invented the choco-inhaler after he reputedly ran out of choco-Easter bunnies.

This is something that we will definitely be looking into for next Bloomsday.

+++++++sponsored by Clark's Restaurant+++++++++

Attention COUGAR fans and well-wishers! Spring is here and you have the hunger. How can you afford to go one day further without some tasty morsels from Clark's Restaurant in Grays Harbor ? home of the Best Hamburger in Twin Harbors for nine consecutive years? Come in for the burger, fresh homemade fries and milkshakes concocted from homemade ice cream. Go ahead, we dare you to try and pass up more than 12 varieties of hamburgers to choose from, full dinners, lunch and full breakfast served daily. Clark's Restaurant 360.538.1487. Seven miles south of Aberdeen, Washington on Highway 101. Proud supporter of CougZone. Mention this ad for a free small hot chocolate.

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