Sports fodder for a Friday morning ... It took nearly 20 years but Nevada Wolf Pack football fans finally have gotten their revenge for arguably the most frustrating and toughest loss in the program's history. Well, sort of. Jim Tressel's Youngstown State Penguins came to Mackay Stadium on Dec. 7, 1991 and upset the unbeaten (12-0) Wolf Pack 30-28 in the Division I-AA playoffs. Tressel's Penguins went on to win the national championship that season that would have likely gone to the Wolf Pack had kicker Rick Schwendinger made a chip-shot field goal as time expired for a 31-30 Pack victory. It was the Pack's last game in I-AA and, most likely, their last legitimate chance to ever win a national championship. Tressell used his success at Youngstown to get the Ohio State job and, well, his years of breaking NCAA rules and regulations finally caught up with him this week. Take that, Penguins. The NCAA needs to looks at Tressel's entire career now. He must have broken some rules at Youngstown, right? The 1991 Pack is still unbeaten as far as I'm concerned.
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Gary Powers, like Chris Ault, has earned the right to decide if and when he wishes to no longer coach at the University of Nevada. That decision should not be up to an athletic director, university president, an un-informed media or an angry booster with ulterior motives. Powers, a Douglas High graduate, is the greatest baseball coach in Pack history. Ault is the greatest football coach in Pack history. Those claims are not even up for debate. Both Powers and Ault, both Nevada graduates, have run clean, competitive, successful and honorable programs for close to three decades. If you don't think that is an accomplishment, go ask Ohio State right now. The university owes them the ultimate respect. And the ultimate respect any university can give a coach is to settle their contract issues before they even become issues. That has yet to happen for some reason with Powers and Ault.
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Umpire Jim Joyce and pitcher Armando Galarraga have written a silly book about how Joyce's horrible call robbed Galarraga of a perfect game and no-hitter last year. The book (surprise, surprise) came out on Thursday on the one-year anniversary of Joyce's dumb call. Do we really need to read a book about how sorry Joyce is for blowing the call? We get it. He messed up. He's sorry. Galarraga, who now pitches for the Reno Aces, forgave him. How touching. That's chapter one. Is there a Chapter Two?
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There might not be an athlete in professional sports that was robbed as blatantly as Galarraga. This is not your typical story of an athlete coming close to greatness only to let it slip away. We've had a lot of those. J.R. Hildebrand, for example, needed only to turn left one final time to win the Indianapolis 500 last weekend. Hildebrand, though, hit the wall and his bag of bolts still coasted over the finish line for the second place prize. Galarraga, though, didn't hit the wall. He retired Jason Donald for the final out of his perfect game. He didn't do anything wrong. Major League Baseball should do the honorable thing and declare Donald out and give Galarraga his place in history. It's not too late.
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The Reno Aces should recreate the Galarraga-Joyce incident at Aces Ballpark this year. Put Galarraga on the mound, get a first baseman, catcher, a hitter and let Archie, the Aces mascot, stand in for Joyce as the umpire. Let the hitter bounce a ground ball wide of the bag at first. Galarraga can take the throw, getting the runner by a step and let Archie call him safe. Only this time, Galarraga goes crazy and beats the living you-know-what out of Archie.
Hey, it might be therapeutic for the Aces pitcher and might be just what he needs to get back to the big leagues. And it sure would beat another dizzy bat race for the fans.
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The Vancouver Canucks and Boston Bruins put on one of the greatest shows ever seen in a championship finals series game in any sport on Wednesday night. Vancouver won the game, 1-0, on a beautiful goal by Raffi Torres on even more beautiful passes from Jannick Hansen and Ryan Kesler with 18.5 seconds left. Goalies Roberto Luongo and Tim Thomas were fantastic. And they get to do it all over again at least three more times. NBC reported that the overnight television ratings were the highest for a Game 1 since 1999. And why not? Watching the game, it was just nice knowing that there was no chance of seeing LeBron James and the Miami Cheat.
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