Texas Law Allowing Noodling Held Up

Wall Street Journal:

But wrestling a flapping, whiskered giant as it latches onto your arm with its jaws isn't among Texas's accepted methods of capturing fish. It is, rather, a class C misdemeanor, with fines of up to $500.
So Mr. Knowlton, a 30-year-old-private citizen, oilman and outdoor enthusiast here, is pushing a bill in the state Legislature to legalize hand fishing, also known as noodling, grabbing or hogging. Noodlers go into the water, then reach into holes, hollow tree trunks and other underwater nooks to find the fish.
Nothing beats "the heebie-jeebies you get underwater, in the dark, with this little sea monster biting you," he says. He recalls that his arm looked like "the first stage of a chili recipe" after his first noodling experience about 15 years ago. Catfish are equipped with bands of small but very abrasive teeth.
The bill swam easily through the state house, but now rod-and-reel anglers are speaking up against the proposed law, currently in the state Senate.
They say noodling is unfair to the fish, since they're grabbed in their burrows without a chance to swim away.
It's more sporting, antinoodlers argue, to dangle a hook and give the critters the option of biting or not. Snatching a catfish from its underwater nest also leaves thousands of eggs exposed to predators, they add.

I doubt that the anti-noodling law currently on the books slows down many noodlers.  I'm not going to interfere with their "fun."

NCAA Men's Lacrosse Tournament

Last year's finalists, Notre Dame and Duke, could meet in the second round.  Syracuse is the #1 seed.  Notre Dame and Denver are the only teams in the tournament who aren't located in New York and west of the Appalachian Mountains.  Catch the action on ESPNU.

When Regulations Need Adjustments

The NYT on college sports compliance with Title IX, via Balloon Juice:

Ever since Congress passed the federal gender-equity law known as Title IX, universities have opened their gyms and athletic fields to millions of women who previously did not have chances to play. But as women have surged into a majority on campus in recent years, many institutions have resorted to subterfuge to make it look as if they are offering more spots to women.
At the University of South Florida, more than half of the 71 women on the cross-country roster failed to run a race in 2009. Asked about it, a few laughed and said they did not know they were on the team.
At Marshall University, the women’s tennis coach recently invited three freshmen onto the team even though he knew they were not good enough to practice against his scholarship athletes, let alone compete. They could come to practice whenever they liked, he told them, and would not have to travel with the team.
At Cornell, only when the 34 fencers on the women’s team take off their protective masks at practice does it become clear that 15 of them are men. Texas A&M and Duke are among the elite women’s basketball teams that also take advantage of a federal loophole that allows them to report male practice players as female participants.
Title IX, passed in 1972 at the height of the women’s rights movement, banned sex discrimination in any federally financed education program. It threw into sharp relief the unequal treatment of male and female athletes on college campuses.
Over the next 40 years, the law spawned a cultural transformation: the number of women competing in college sports has soared by more than 500 percent — to 186,000 a year from fewer than 30,000 in 1972.
But as women have grown to 57 percent of American colleges’ enrollment, athletic programs have increasingly struggled to field a proportional number of female athletes.  And instead of pouring money into new women’s teams or trimming the rosters of prized football teams, many colleges are turning to a sleight of hand known as roster management.

Women will eventually run the world from up front, not just through their husbands.  57% of college enrollement? Dudes are screwing up bad.

GAA sports, Not for the Faint of Heart

Anne Laurie also pointed out a Slate story on Irish Hurling.  From the article:

Such is the job of the goalkeeper in hurling, a sport famous for its speed and the bravery (or lunacy) of its participants. Known as the fastest field sport on earth, hurling predates Christianity and is native to Ireland, possibly originating with the Celts. Two teams of 15 players compete to score the most points by hitting the ball, called a sliotar, between the opposing team's goalposts. While rugby-style tackling is prohibited, hockey-style body checks and shoulder charges are common. As in soccer, a player can shoot from anywhere on the field, including directly in front of the goal, and directly at the goalkeeper. One point is earned for a ball that flies between the posts but over the crossbar, while three are awarded for a goal scored underneath the crossbar, where the goalkeeper stands, a kamikaze in shorts and a jersey.

Hurling is a thrilling and dangerous sport, and in Ireland the players are universally admired for their nerves. Within this pool, it is the goalkeepers who are most venerated. "A key requirement to be a goalkeeper in hurling is that you have to be mad," says Feargal McGill, head of games administration and player welfare for hurling's governing body, the Gaelic Athletic Association.* To wit: In 1997, goalkeeper Joe Quaid shattered one testicle, and had to have half of the second removed, when he took a ball to the crotch on a penalty shot. Upon recovery he returned to the sport, and continued playing as a goalie for three more seasons.

I enjoyed the Guinness ad featuring hurling a couple of years back, even though I've never seen the game.

Canadian Election Debate Rescheduled to Avoid Hockey Game

Leave it to the Canadians:

No surprise here: Hockey trumps politics in Canada. Canadian broadcasters are moving the French-language leaders’ debate for Canada’s current federal election up by a day to Wednesday night so it won’t clash with the National Hockey League playoffs, which get under way this week.
A broadcasting consortium representing CBC/Radio-Canada, CTV, Global Television and TVA specifically moved the Canadian leaders’ debate from Thursday night to avoid a conflict with the Montreal Canadiens’ first NHL playoff game against the Boston Bruins on the same night.
The consortium said the scheduling change was made to ensure “debates are scheduled to reach as wide an audience as possible.” 
“The broadcasting consortium believes this schedule modification is in the best interest of the general public,” the consortium added.
The fear was hockey-made fans of the Montreal Canadiens in Quebec would flee the Canadian political debate to watch their team go up against the arch-rival Bruins.

Stanley Cup Playoffs

The NHL regular season is over, only 2 more months of hockey left.  An idle question, why do the NHL and NBA regular seasons and playoffs last longer than the amount of time U.S. children spend in school? 

Anyway, I'll make my playoff predictions:

Eastern Conference-1st round-Washington over the N.Y. Rangers, Philadelphia over Buffalo, Montreal over Boston and Pittsburgh over Tampa Bay

Conference Semifinals- Washington and Philadelphia

Finals-Philadelphia

Western Conference-1st round-Vancouver over Chicago, San Jose over L.A., Detroit over Nashville and Phoenix over Anaheim.

Conference Semifinals-Vancouver and Detroit

Finals-Vancouver

Stanley Cup winner-Vancouver

Photo via A Road With So Much Dust and Sand

Minnesota-Duluth Takes Home the Prize

Congratulations to the Bulldogs.  NCAA hockey champs for 2011 with an exciting 3-2 win over Michigan in overtime.

NCAA Hockey Update

Michigan meets Minnesota-Duluth in the NCAA hockey finals in St. Paul, tonight at 8.  Yesterday Andy Miele of Miami of Ohio won the Hobey Baker Award.

photo: Jim Rosvold

The Puck Drops at the Frozen Four

Tonight in St. Paul, Notre Dame vs. Minnesota-Duluth at 5 PM EDT and North Dakota vs. Michigan at 8:30 PM.  Go Irish!

Also, the Hobey Baker Award for the player of the year will be given out Friday.  The finalists are Cam Atkinson of Boston College, Andy Miele of Miami of Ohio, and Matt Frattin of North Dakota.

Here is a Sports Illustrated article about Hobey Baker I remember reading in high school.  An excerpt:

But Hobey was much more than the sum of his achievements. He was the beau ideal of American sport, a hero in every particular. He was, by our standards, a small man, only 5'9" and 160 pounds, but not so small at a time when the heaviest of football linemen weighed barely 200 pounds. And he was so flawlessly proportioned, so impossibly graceful in body and manner, that he seemed to tower over his fellows. With wavy blond hair and soft blue-gray eyes, he was among the handsomest of men, so disarming in appearance that his contemporaries at Princeton were not embarrassed to call him beautiful. Add to all this a humble manner, a noble character and what his biographer, John Davies, calls "a foreboding, a sense that Hobey was somehow playing out a Greek tragedy," and you have the stuff of literature.
F. Scott Fitzgerald, who entered Princeton in the fall of Hobey's senior year, 1913-14, saw him as "an ideal worthy of everything in my enthusiastic admiration, yet consummated and expressed in a human being who stood within ten feet of me," according to Davies. It is no accident that the protagonist of Fitzgerald's first novel, This Side of Paradise, is named Amory Blaine or that Hobey should appear as a character named Allenby. Fitzgerald describes Amory sitting on the steps of his Princeton rooming house as "a white-clad phalanx" of singing students passes by: "There at the head of the white platoon marched Allenby, the football captain, slim and defiant, as if aware that this year the hopes of the college rested on him, that his hundred-and-sixty pounds were expected to dodge to victory through the heavy blue and crimson lines."
Fitzgerald biographer Andrew Turnbull wrote that in the Princeton of that time, "varsity football players were looked upon as demi-gods, and 'Hobey' Baker...loomed so high in the heavens that he was scarcely visible. But Baker had the common touch. Now and then he came down from Olympus to fraternize with the freshmen, and Fitzgerald actually spoke to him one day in October."
John Tunis, author of innumerable sports novels for boys, found the inspiration for his immaculate heroes in Hobey. Tunis wrote: "The whole atmosphere was electric when [Hobey] was playing. Everybody would just stand up when he got the puck or caught the punt. Never wore a headguard in football, and I remember that great shock of blond hair—Hobey standing waiting all alone. He was the only player on the field you looked at, the only player you saw.... He did everything with a kind of showmanship that wasn't showmanship because it was natural to him. He was a kind of panther. His coordination and footwork were so wonderful that he could take chances and do things that others wouldn't dare to.... He would drop-kick, tackle and run with a kind of feline intelligence, grace and charm—he would make everything look so easy. Never was anybody like Baker."

A Little Fun on the Bench

From the Chicago Tribune:

Goaltender Marty Turco hasn't played much for the Chicago Blackhawks down the stretch, but that doesn't mean the fun-loving veteran hasn't found ways to have a good time.

According to a Montreal Canadiens season ticket-holder, during the Hawks' 2-1 overtime loss to Montreal on Tuesday night, Turco and the fan engaged in a little wagering.

A fan named "Robert" called into Montreal radio station Team 990 on the "Game Points with Matthew Ross" show and said he bet Turco $5 that the Hawks wouldn't score after Michael Cammalleri had given the Canadiens a 1-0 lead in the second period. After Patrick Kane tied it a short time later, the fan gave Turco a $5 Canadian bill with the words "Habs Rule" written on it.

As the game continued, the bet apparently increased that the Canadiens would win the game. After P.K. Subban won it for Montreal in overtime, Turco allegedly handed over some bills, including the original with the word "Habs" crossed off and "Turco" added so it read "Turco Rules."

That's pretty cool, but as for having fun when not playing, nothing beats Tom Browning going over to the rooftop seats across the street from Wrigley in uniform and eating a hot dog with the fans there.

Frozen Four and Final Four

Well the Frozen Four and the Final Four are set. 

In the Frozen Four, Minnesota-Duluth, Notre Dame and Michigan made it in after the #1 seeds were defeated, while North Dakota also advanced.

In the Final Four, Butler and VCU surprised the experts and advanced, along with Kentucky and UConn.  So in VCU's case, they were one of the final at-large teams which had to play in the first four, and Butler was the only team to make the tournament from the Horizon Conference.  VCU's Colonial Athletic Association put in 3 teams (VCU, Old Dominion and George Mason) and one made it to the Final Four.  Other conferences : Big East 11 in tournament, 1 in the Final Four.  SEC 5 and 1, ACC 4 and 0, Big Ten 7 and 0, Pac 10 4 and 0.  Also, for those Big East haters out there in Big Ten country, even if UConn loses in the semifinals, the Big East will finish with the same winning percentage as the Big Ten, who failed to advance a team to the regional finals, let alone the Final Four.  Apparently the Big East isn't the only overrated conference in the country.

Dad has been saying it forever, and I have to agree, get rid of the conference tournaments and let everybody in.  I bet the big conferences would end up looking even worse, and the smaller conferences would bring in more money.  I wonder why that isn't going to happen.

NCAA Hockey Bracket

East Regional-Yale and Minnesota-Duluth
Champion-Minnesota-Duluth

Northeast Regional- Notre Dame and Miami
Champion-Notre Dame

West Regional-Boston College and Nebraska-Omaha
Champion-Boston College

Midwest Regional- Denver and North Dakota
Champion- North Dakota

Frozen Four winners Notre Dame and Boston College
Champion- Boston College