Wednesday Night Beer: Clarence Thomas Making Friends

I normally don't pay any attention to incoming recruits, but the story about Jason Ankruh meeting Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas on a flight back from a recruiting trip caught my eye, but not for the usual reasons. It's a great story, but considering how finicky the NCAA can be at times, could the NCAA rule that this is a "extra benefits" violation? After all, how many high school graduations does Thomas, an admitted Husker fan, speak at? Remember, this is the same organization that declared Eric Crouch ineligible over a ham sandwich.

I happened to catch the Journal-Star's tweet about Eric Piatkowski, and asking about the interest level in the NBA Finals. With all due respect to Pike and former Husker Tyronne Lue, the NBA Finals are of no interest to me. The NBA (Not Basketball Anymore) jumped the shark in the early 90's. I was watching the NBA Finals (probably the Bulls) and had to leave the room for a few minutes, and came back a few seconds before NBC cut away to a commercial. NBC cuts to a 15-20 second (maybe longer) montage of still photographs of players set to the John Tesh do-do-do-dodo theme music ... without any clue as to what the score was. They come back from commercial, and since it was the days before Fox made the on-screen scoreboard a standard feature of sports broadcasts, I had to wait even longer before NBC finally flashed the score on the screen. In the meantime, I was subjected to features, interviews, and self-promotion...and the game had become secondary. In other words, it had become entertainment, not sport.

So tomorow night, I'll be watching the Final...the Stanley Cup Final game four between the Red Wings and Penguins. Good series so far, with the Wings leading the series 2-1. I wondered if the freak goal by former Michigan State forward Justin Abdelkader on Sunday night in Detroit might have demoralized the Penguins, but they bounced back on Tuesday night to win at home. I just wish former Maverick Bill Thomas was still up with the Pens; his season apparently ended last month in Scranton/Wilkes-Barre. Thomas played 11 games with the Pens earlier this season, scoring one goal.