Of all the American sports … the one that really doesn’t translate well outside the country … the one that suffers most, that I miss most in a sort of sneaky, “oh, yeah, I really like that and miss it” sort of way is …
College football.

[Read more →]

I rarely comment on items that have appeared in newspapers. I figure you may already have read it and have your own ideas.
But … I was struck, a few days ago, by how the same section (Friday) of the same newspaper (the Los Angeles Times) could have one column so spot-on valuable and fun … […]

[Read more →]

Gosh, that was ugly.
But UCLA has been ugly before, this season. These Bruins never really dominated anyone important, and they never gave a sense of being able to become that team. No one paying any attention to this team ever could have thought they would get to the Final Four for the fourth consecutive year.
And […]

[Read more →]

President Obama did an NCAA bracket for ESPN. A bad idea, really. No possible political gain can come from it. Because eventually he’s predicting 64 teams will lose, and there will be fans and players at all those schools who will wonder why the president didn’t have enough faith in them.
I imagine this is part […]

[Read more →]

The Bruins and Trojans are in, as we knew they would be. UCLA for its body of work and USC for winning the Pac-10 tournament title, which we didn’t quite see coming.
Nice. For Los Angeles-area college basketball (which also has Cal State Northridge in the tourney). But don’t expect any L.A. team to last long […]

[Read more →]

It will take a while for the surviving media pundits in downtown Los Angeles to notice … but the last serious player in Inland Empire sports journalism — and one of the final 3-4 in the entire Greater L.A. market — has given up its claim of “major league” status in the past 24 hours.
That […]

[Read more →]

CSI without William Petersen.
College basketball.
I anticipated the former.
I am a bit surprised by the latter.

[Read more →]

Most of you are not in Hong Kong. Most of you reading this are in the States, and have access to televisions, and have already seen this.
But, the other day, I made such a fuss over USC and UCLA being able to wear their home jerseys for their game this year, that I feel […]

[Read more →]

This is my first fall away from professional sports journalism since 1975. And even in 1975, I was covering sports at Long Beach State.
That is, I was doing sports for 33 consecutive fall seasons.
And the really weird thing is … I don’t much miss it.

[Read more →]

Maybe an American expat can buy some sort of cable package, here in Hong Kong, that gets you all the sports TV you might be able to see back at home.
I haven’t found it yet.
But I’m not totally disconnected from the goings on, via television. I saw two L.A. teams in action today, here at […]

[Read more →]