Part 3 of the series in The National about the best sports venues in the world. Broken out by continent.
In Monday’s editions: North America!
Interesting, how the voting went.
I will tell you who won: Augusta National. Even the Brits in the room know about “the course like no other” or whatever it is network TV gets […]

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We again interrupt this travelogue to muse about sports events back home, this time the Day of Reckoning at the University of Southern California.
Anyone who has been around the American college sports scene for any length of time could see this coming. To spend any time around Heritage Hall at USC was to pick up […]

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After traveling all day down the mountain-spackled length of Italy — and no, you can’t find a dozen places flat enough to plow 40 acres anywhere south of Rome — finally some time to do my tiny bit on UCLA basketball coach John Wooden, the most important sports figure in Southern California over the last […]

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Well, good for him.
I always liked Steve Lavin, and my opinion is, of course, the acid test for coaching hires.
No. Really. He was a relentlessly pleasant guy, upbeat and optimistic, all that. He recruited like crazy. His UCLA teams had a habit of winning big games.
He just had a habit of losing games in the […]

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Well, yes. Looks like I’ll be filling one out. Even though I have paid less attention to this college basketball season than any since … well, maybe when I was10 years old — just before UCLA started winning NCAA championships.
But newsrooms like to organize tournament pools, and one of the sporting guys on the news […]

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A reality of blogging: It’s bloody difficult to do one item a day, every day, for two blogs. And hold a full-time job. Try it sometime, and a year later let me know how it’s going.
The second blog is my quixotic World Cup Countdown blog. And part of that deal is a promise to write […]

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And I missed it?
Sigh. Well, at least I caught up to it, here in Abu Dhabi. Three weeks later.
I grew up in Long Beach. I went to Long Beach State. I edited the student newspaper there. And I have been following Long Beach State basketball since I was a sophomore in high school — from […]

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Mostly, I just wanted to see how many “categories” I could have at the top of this item. Now let’s see if I actually mention something about all of them.
Some interesting topics playing out in U.S. sports right now and, really, I’m aware of them. Not everyone back home seems to remember we do, in […]

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A few entries ago, I noted that the start of the National Football League season doesn’t really interest me. And I believe a big chunk of the Los Angeles market feels the same way.
Saturday, we saw Reasons A and B why L.A. doesn’t need the NFL.
USC and UCLA football.

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I’ve been in Paris for almost five weeks now. And not for a single day was I without an Internet hookup. Actually, I spent several hours most of the past 30-some days looking at this computer. Yes, while in Paris. I know that’s ill but it’s the truth. OK, here’s my excuse: I do two […]

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