The next college football bowl season might feature four more games. Seriously! The cities of Austin, Texas; Little Rock, Ark.; Tucson, Ariz.; and Orlando, Fla., all have applied to play host to games. Should all four be accepted there would be 43 games on the schedule. . . . With that many on tap, the team that misses the CFL playoffs might end up in a bowl game. . . . Outfielder Tyson Gillies of Kamloops was in training camp with the San Diego Padres and now is with the San Antonio Missions of the Double-A Texas League. Gillies, 26, got into two spring-training games with the Padres, going 1-for-1 with a walk. . . .
“Chicago prospect Kris Bryant says he’s ready for the majors,” writes Janice Hough, aka The Left Coast Sports Babe, “but Theo Epstein and the Cubs say he needs more time in the minors. And how can you argue against a franchise with such a tradition of winning?” . . . “Off the coast of North Carolina,” Hough notes, “a man was rescued from atop his overturned sailboat after being lost at sea for 66 days. Presumably, they’ve already optioned Tom Hanks for the movie.” . . .
“Tiger Woods’ private jet reportedly landed in Augusta,” reports RJ Currie of SportsDeke.com. “Word is its approach was decent, but it took four tries to get it in the hangar.” . . . One more from Currie: “Maryland researchers successfully gave a female rat’s brain the characteristics of a male rat. Now she wanders lost in a maze for hours instead of asking for directions.” . . . Headline at SportsPickle.com: Pre-med student gets NHL team-physician job after accurately identifying upper body, lower body. . . .
“There is a report of a ringside seat for Mayweather-Pacquiao selling for $87,000,” notes Cam Hutchinson of the Saskatoon Express. “If I have to pay to watch old guys fight, I’d take Kapp-Mosca over this sham.” . . . If John Garrett’s Vancouver Canucks are going to get through the first round of the playoffs, they are going to have to find a solution for the woes of Henrik Sedin and Linden Vey in the faceoff circles. When you are playing the same team game after game, losing faceoffs the way those two do will wear you out. . . .
Scott Ostler of the San Francisco Chronicle is having a tough time as MLB training camps wind down. “I hate the dead-arm period of spring training,” he writes. “I can hardly lift my beer.” . . . “The Sacramento Kings new 7-foot-5, 360-pound center, Sim Bhullar, of Indian descent?” Ostler tweeted. “They're calling him Mahatma Grande.” . . . Ostler followed that with: “Sim Bhullar, in first game of 10-day contract with the Kings, did not play. So it was Bhullar's day off.” . . .
Four items from Bill Littlejohn, our South Lake Tahoe., Calif., correspondent: “Wrigley Field now has a JumboTron. What's next? The Taj Mahal hosting Keeping Up With The Kardashians?” . . . “Joni Mitchell's reaction to Wrigley Field renovations: 'They paved paradise, And put up a JumboTron.’ ” . . . “The Florida Marlins plan a year-long Back to the Future promotion. Ironic, considering every time they've gotten good, they fire sale their future.” . . . “Saturday morning's lunar eclipse was the briefest total lunar eclipse of this century. They’re calling it the Tebow Eclipse.” . . .
The referee stepped in to stop a recent light heavyweight bout between Marvin Jones and Ramon Luis Nicolas, when a cell phone fell out of Jones’ trunks. “Also falling out of his trunks,” wrote Rick Chandler of SportsGrid.com, “in succession and making a loud clatter: Car keys, horseshoe, nunchucks, loose change, flashlight, several DVDs, framed family photo.” . . . Three rounds later, Jones was on the canvas and out like this phone. . . . “In Quebec,” reports Brad Dickson of the Omaha World-Herald, “thieves broke into a sporting goods store and stole about 100 hockey sticks. Because it’s Canada, police dropped their investigation into a string of armored car robberies to find the hockey stick thieves.” . . . Dickson, again: “Two visiting Americans were arrested for carving their names into the Roman Colosseum. Is it perhaps time to require an IQ test in order to get a passport?” . . .
Arnold Schwarzenegger was riding a bicycle in Australia when police stopped him because he was helmetless. “If he got a concussion,” wondered NBC-TV’s Seth Meyers, “how would you know?” . . . The Canucks recalled F Sven Baertschi from the AHL’s Utica Comets on Friday and the way social media reacted you might have thought it was the second coming of The Great One. . . . Such is life in Vancouver where the wind blows nicely when the Canucks win. . . .
Conan O’Brien of TBS wasn’t at all impressed by the Notre Dame basketball team’s run to the Sweet 16 in March Madness. As he put it: “I’m sorry, but if I want to watch the Fighting Irish I’ll visit my parents.” . . . “To celebrate a victory in a Russian junior game the other day, players on MHC Loko impersonated a line of tumbling dominoes,” reports Ian Hamilton of the Regina Leader-Post. “The performance resembled NHL teams falling all over themselves to get Connor McDavid.”
(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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