For the first time in its over 90 year history, the UIL Boys and Girls State Basketball Championships will be played outside of the University of Texas campus.  The event had been held at old Gregory Gym or the Frank Erwin Center since 1921.  The 2015 championships will be held at the Alamodome in San Antonio which can accommodate a huge crowd.  The basketball tournament is being displaced from Austin because of the success of the over-lapping South by Southwest music festival.  Hotel rooms in Austin have become very expensive during the festival forcing some teams to stay at hotels as much as an hour away from Austin.

An anecdote for those who remember the old Gregory Gym days.

In 1977, Red and his brother wanted to attend the Thursday session at Gregory Gym.  The venerable field house seated about 5500 fans and would be packed for the 4A semifinal games that morning.  All seating was general admission.  When we got to the gym, there were already at least two or three thousand people waiting on the broad steps and all the way out to Speedway.  The steps to the gym had large 3 foot wide stone bannisters running up each side.  We parked ourselves at the bottom of one of the bannisters waiting for the doors to open.  At the precise moment the crowd started to rumble with the opening of the doors, we charged up the bannisters around the crowd on the steps and plunged into the throng in front of the doors.  Red caught a jet stream that carried him to door with the first entrants. Smashing my ticket into the hands of the attendant, I joined the mad rush across the court to grab a front row seat at the top of the key.  My brother found me within seconds.

We watched Fort Worth Dunbar beat Houston Westchester and Dallas South Oak Cliff defeat San Antonio Burbank.  Cletus Hubbard from Dunbar had a sweet fade-away jumper that simply refused to miss that day.  But SO-C took them down in the finals on Saturday.

Baylor University announced that walk-on player Silas Nacita would no longer be a member of Baylor’s football team.  Why is this a story?  Nacita was a 4th string running back who scored 3 touchdowns in 2014, and a special teams stand out credited with several tackles on kick coverage teams, and a first team Academic All Big 12 member. But Nacita did all that while being homeless student and sleeping wherever he could. When his story became known last season, he became a fan favorite.  But now, someone has provided Nacita with a place to live and Baylor has kicked him off the team.  When the story first broke it appeared that the NCAA had made the decision because of the possible rules violation in providing a player with housing.  But it was later revealed that Baylor had taken the action out of fear of a possible rules violation.  Coach Art Briles claims the “matter is out of his hands.”  Really?  Briles could fix this situation immediately by giving Nacita a scholarship which would provide him with campus housing and board.  But that might get in the way of winning.  Do the right thing Art.

Prairie View A&M Quarterback Jerry Lovelocke has all the physical attributes of an NFL quarterback.  Right now he is projected to be a possible 7th round pick Lovelocke is a 6-foot-5, 200-pound four-year starter who passed for 39 touchdowns and 18 interceptions over the past two seasons. He also rushed for 19 touchdowns during that span. Some team needs to take a flyer on this guy.  He played in a pro-style offense and is a smart kid with a good arm.   A project – but perhaps a very worthwhile project. Can he be worse than Johnny Football?

CBS Sports has completed its bests and worsts list for all 30 MLB clubs.  The Texas Rangers list is a particularly good read.  Die-hard Texas Rangers’ fans should avert their eyes when viewing the all-time worst moment in club history.  That of course would be when the Rangers were one strike away from winning the World Series in 2011.  David Freese’s two-out triple in the bottom of the ninth on a 1-2 count against Rangers’ closer Neftali Feliz tied Game 6 at 7-7.  Nelson Cruz’s flailing attempt at making the play is an especially painful reminder of what could have been.

Long time and defending NBA Champion San Antonio Spurs coach Greg Popovich won his 1000th NBA game last night.  The low-key coach took it in stride.  ESPN reports that the wine connoisseur would likely celebrate with a glass or two.

“I’ve been here a long time and I’ve had good players. That’s the formula,” Popovich said. “Getting the players is difficult, but I’ve been fortunate to have good ones. The time, that’s the most important element. You have to be around for a while I guess.” Popovich celebrated in his typical low-key way. He walked to midcourt, put an arm around Pacers coach Frank Vogel, hugged one of his former players and stoically strolled into the Spurs’ locker room though he later acknowledged he might drink some wine

Red remembers reading a story many years ago about an inveterate gambler and all of his numerous bets on the Superb Owl.  The punch line of the story was that he was so addicted to gambling that he had bet $500 on the coin toss.  Little did we know that such a bet would become commonplace.  Today you can make bets on such ridiculous matters as the following:

What color will Bill Belichick’s hoodie be?

Gray +150, Blue +175, Red +700

What color Gatorade will be dumped on the winning coach?

Orange +150, Yellow +350, Clear +400, Blue +750, Red +750, Purple +800, Green +1000

How long will the National Anthem (sung by Idina Menzel) take?

Over/Under 2 minutes and 2.5 seconds

How many times will Gisele Bundchen be shown on TV?

Over/Under 1.5 times.

These are of course in addition to the many ridiculous prop bets that you can make based on the actual play of the game.  These include, among many others, such important matters as:

Whether a ball hits a goal post on any kicking play.

Whether there will be a fake punt for a first down.

Whether the jersey number of the first player to score a touchdown will be odd or even.

What strikes Red as odd is how many of these bets can be manipulated.  For example, what is to prevent Belichick from wearing a red hoodie and having a stalking horse put down several large on that prop bet?

If you wanted to decide who will win Sunday’s Big Game by the number of former Texas high school footballers on each side of the ball, the Seahawk win by a considerable margin.

Patriots

Danny Amendola – The Woodlands HS, The Woodlands

Josh Boyce – Copperas Cove HS, Copperas Cove

Marcus Cannon – Odessa HS, Odessa

Garrett Gilbert – Lake Travis HS, Austin

Cameron Fleming – Cypress Creek HS, Cypress

Brandon LaFell – Lamar HS, Houston

Daxton Swanson – LaVega HS, Waco

Seahawks

Michael Bennet – Alief Taylor HS, Houston

Clint Gresham –  Ray HS, Corpus Christi

David King – Strake Jesuit HS, Houston

Jeremy Lane – John Tyler HS, Tyler

Christine Micheal – West Brook HS, Beaumont

Kevon Milton – Canton HS, Canton

Mike Morgan – Skyline HS, Dallas

Russell Okung –  Bush, Fort Bend Co.

Steve Terrell – Allen HS, Allen

Earl Thomas – West-Orange Stark, Orange

The Texas Rangers have acquired Yovani Gallardo who is projected to be the No. 3 starter in their pitching rotation.  The Rangers gave up three minor leaguers to Milwaukee for Gallardo who is regarded as a durable slightly above-average pitcher.   Gallardo is 28 years old and a native of Fort Worth.  He went 8-11 with a 3.51 ERA for the Brewers last season. He has made at least 30 starts the past six seasons and pitched more than 180 innings in six of his eight big league seasons.

The Rangers are desperate to shore up a starting rotation behind Yu Darvish and Derek Holland.  Durability is a desirable trait in Arlington as the Rangers used 15 different starting pitchers last season due to a variety of injuries while losing 95 games.  At $13 million in 2015, Gallardo will cost the Rangers $1,625,000 per start if he wins 8 games again.  To be fair since the Brewers are picking up $4 million of the final year of Gallardo’s contract, the Rangers will be only out $1,125,000 per win if Gallardo pitches to expectations.

“Football players, like prostitutes, are in the business of ruining their bodies for the pleasure of strangers.”  Merle Kessler

Last week Red was 1-3 for the so-called Divisional Weekend.  Thank God for the Packers and bad refereeing.

Your “Streetwalker” Pick of the Week.

Patriots over Colts.  Even though Red has picked against him the entire way, he doesn’t think Brady is going to let this perhaps last chance for SuperBowl greatness slip through his well-manicured hands.  Notice how the Patriots always get the unexpectedly great performance in the playoffs. Look no further than last week when Danny Amendola scored two touchdowns after being an afterthought for much of the year.  But for his contributions as a kick returner after week 7, he was largely forgotten until he came up big in a big game (albeit with some trickery involved).  Last year it was LaGarrett Blount (aka The Fat Pig) who bullied opponents into submission in another playoff run.  Who will it be this week? It doesn’t matter because it will be someone – maybe even the Defense.  Meanwhile, the Colts who stumbled down the stretch of the regular season into the playoffs have surpassed all expectations and now rightfully deserve to be in this game – especially after having dealt with the Bengals and Broncos as if they were no more than mosquitos to be summarily dispatched from residency on the collective Colts scrotum.  But this is the really big time and the only question is are the Colts really ready for that?  Two weeks ago I would have said “No”, but the Colts defense has stiffened.  But this whole game is on Luck.  He will or lose it for the Colts.  Not so on the Patriots side.  Brady must guide the ship but he doesn’t have to man all of the oars.  That makes it a distinct lean in favor of the Patriots.  But I would not go against the spread on this one.  New England 28 Indianapolis 25.

You’re “High Class Hookers” Pick of the Week.

Packers over Seahawks.   By hook or by crook the Packers have landed in the NFC Championship game.  And the Seahawks have surprised me by getting this far.  Red has exactly no feel for this one – which is probably a good thing since this season has been fairly disastrous at the Sports book in Reno.  What Red needs hear is a sign from God.  Nope.  What we do know is that the Seahawks manhandled the Packers in the opening game of the season.  Does that mean anything now?  Probably not.  So off we go to the old Psychic Golf Ball for the first and only time this season.  Since I would prefer that the Packers win this game the question will be, “Will the Packers win this game?”  And the answer is –  “Maybe.”  Good enough for Red.  Green Bay 20 Seattle 17.

The Wall Street Journal reports that the Athletics Program at the  University of Texas at Austin is the third most valuable program with a value of just under $1 billion.  The valuation by Ryan Brewer, an assistant professor of finance at Indiana University-Purdue University Columbus takes into account such factors as a program’s revenues and expenses and makes cash-flow adjustments, risk assessments and growth projections for each school to come up with an approximation of what price the teams might fetch if they could be bought and sold like professional teams.

Curiously, at the same time, the Associated Press reports that the UT program was $2.6 million in the red last year largely because of fewer concerts at the Erwin Center and because UT had to buy-out Head Football Coach Charlie Strong’s contract with Louisville.