The Hobey Baker Award is given annually to the top player in U.S. college hockey; the John R. Wooden Award goes to the top U.S. college basketball player. I don’t know what this means but there are two Canadians among the 10 nominees for the Hobey Baker Award this season, while three of the 15 Wooden Award finalists are Canadians. . . . There apparently is new research out there that tells us loss of sleep may cause brain damage. As Janice Hough (aka The Left Coast Sports Babe) puts it: “Great, another thing to lay awake at night worrying about.” . . .
“British Parliament has nixed a mouse-catching feline over fears it’ll get obese on MPs’ leftovers,” writes RJ Currie of SportsDeke.com. “Really? If they're like Canadian MPs, who’s going to notice another fat cat?” . . . One more from Currie: “Two Oscar voters anonymously admitted to picking 12 Years a Slave for best picture despite never seeing the film. They were busy judging Olympic figure skating.” . . .
The Washington Nationals were using a drone to film spring training workouts in Florida until the Federal Aviation Administration put a stop to it. An anonymous team official told The Associated Press: “No, we didn’t get it cleared, but we don’t get our pop flies cleared either and those go higher than this thing did.” . . . Mike Iaconelli is a pro fisherman who has told SI.com that he rarely eats his catch. “The thing about eating bass is this: You don’t eat your competition . . .,” Iaconelli said. “It’s been said before, but a cowboy doesn’t eat his horse.” . . .
So there was this poker game the other night and after it was over, the big loser, a guy from New Zealand, changed his name to Full Metal Havok More Sexy N Intelligent Than Spock And All The Superheroes Combined With Frostnova. . . . They say there may have been some booze involved in that poker game. Gee, you think? . . . Someone on Twitter asked running back Arian Foster of the Houston Texans to pick a winner in the NCAA men’s basketball tournament. His response: “Ncaa will win. They’ll get billions, players get a trophy.” . . .
Word on the street is that Vancouver Canucks’ single-game tickets can be had for as little as $40. As Richmond, B.C., blogger TC Chong notes: “If you’re really lucky, when the guy gives you the ticket and the 40 bucks, he’ll throw in a parking pass as well.” . . . Alex Rodriguez of the New York Yankees reportedly owes his attorneys $4 million. According to Chong, “Collection agencies are considering sending him baseballs with their phone numbers on them.” . . .
Mike Lupica spent at least some of last weekend watching TV, after which he wrote: “You watch some of these conference tournaments right now in college basketball, if you actually even know what conferences you’re watching, and you know what you see? You see empty seats, from coast to coast, and thus see for yourself what greed can do to a great sport.” . . . As for cornerback Darrelle Revis leaving the New York Jets for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and now the New England Patriots, after saying he never wanted to leave the Big Apple, well, here’s Lupica again: “He will be working on his third team in three years, to the point where you think the guy plans to tour the country like he’s Holiday on Ice.” . . .
Cam Hutchinson of the Saskatoon Express isn’t a fan of the changes being implemented at the next Brier. He explains: “The Brier should remain a national event with all 10 provinces and a representative from our territories participating. If there is to be a Team Canada, then remove Northern Ontario from the mix. Or, depending on the election, dump Quebec.” . . . Former NBA coach Stan Van Gundy is doing TV work these days (don’t all unemployed coaches head for TV?) and was working a college basketball the other day when the officials huddled around a TV set with 1:16 left in regulation time in a search for video evidence to support an in-bounds call. Here’s Van Gundy’s take: “You want all the calls to be right. Why does the call in the last two minutes have to be right, if you’re going to make mistakes in the first 38 minutes? That’s what I don’t get. I don’t like any rule that only applies to certain points in the game.” . . . The man has a point. . . .
If you happen to attend an Arizona Diamondbacks home game this season, you may want to consider having a D-bat Dog. What is it? An 18-inch corn dog that includes bacon, cheese and jalapenos, along with chipotle ketchup and spicy mustard. It also comes on a bed of french fries. Oh yes, it’ll set you back $25, antacid not included. . . . When a writer for the New York Daily News inquired about a calorie count, the response he got was: “We’re still counting. Stand by. . . .” He’s still waiting. . . . “Now that Courtney Love has claimed she has found Malaysian flight 370,” scribbles comedy writer Alex Kaseberg, “shouldn’t we put her to work finding Jimmy Hoffa, Amelia Earhart and the Los Angeles Lakers’ offence?”
(Gregg Drinnan is a former sports editor of the Regina Leader-Post and the late Kamloops Daily News. He is at gdrinnan.blogspot.ca and twitter.com/gdrinnan. Keeping Score appears here on weekends, except when it doesn’t.)
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