A mission statement

For those of you who don't know, we at the Amarillo Globe-News are in the process of re-launching our website, Amarillo.com.

It should come out in the middle of August. In the meantime, I've been asked to let everyone know what I'll be blogging about when the new site goes live, at which point my blogs will be archived and my blog will be moved off of Blogger and to Amarillo.com.

So, here's a look at what I'll be blogging about:

Volleyball: This will be the bulk of my blogging. I cover college and high school volleyball for the Globe-News, so every day I will try to bring you a new piece of news or opinion on the local volleyball scene.

High school soccer: This is my winter beat, so expect news and opinions on the local soccer scene starting in November and December.

High school softball: This is my spring beat, and a sport I've cared about since my sister, Nikki Treon, was a standout and went to state in Little League with my father, Rick Treon, as coach.

Amarillo Dillas baseball: This is my beat right now. I'll link to my weekly columns and give notes throughout the last month and playoffs.

High school football: Though I won't cover much, if any, football, I'll be doing preseason football blogs as I head out on my DQ photo tour Monday and Tuesday, and then as we begin finishing our Pigskin Preview magazine.

National news: Some non-Amarillo sports topics are too big or important not to comment on. I may be one of a million writers blogging on the subject, but everyone deserves their two cents, right?

Web stuff: I read some independent sports blogs, so when they post something interesting, I may pass that along to you.

Randomness: Who knows what else I'll post on. Sports movies. Good quotes from SportsCenter. Whatever.

Sometimes there is justice in the world

Remember the Philadelphia Phillies fan who made himself throw up on an 11-year-old girl at a game?

He got jail time and community service. To make the justice even more poetic, Matthew Clemmens will have to serve his community service cleaning out the ball park.

Nice.

It's football season ... in a month

And yet we're already knee-deep in producing our annual Amarillo Globe-News football preseason magazine -- Pigskin Preview.

Calling coaches, getting rosters and schedules, typing up random facts about teams and towns.

It's fun, though nerve-wracking at times. At the moment nobody has been able to get a hold of two new Six-man coaches, ones at Darrouzette and Lazbuddie. Our original deadline passed Tuesday to have everything written.

The point is this this: We're still a month away from Zero Week and already the focus is on football. Even as I get ready to go cover the Amarillo Dillas tonight as they try to overtake the Edinburg Roadrunners for the United Baseball League standings lead.

This is Texas, after all.

I so want to try this

For those of you who like humorously gigantic things, here's a story about an LA Dodger fan who brought one of those print-at-home tickets to the game.

It was on a piece of paper as big as the ticket window. Enjoy.

Manny Pacquiao is fighting ... it's not Floyd Mayweather, so I don't really care.

As much as I don't enjoy Brett Favre waffling over whether or not to retire (he's not), I'm getting more and more sick of Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather Jr. not fighting each other.

Mayweather made boxing relevant again to my generation with the show "24/7" on HBO. His brash personality and unabashed cockiness made us love him or hate him, and gave us a rooting interest in a sport that I personally hadn't watched since I was real young and Mike Tyson was still the heavyweight champion.

Along the way we learned that Mayweather, for all his faults outside of the ring, was perfect inside of it.

Then Manny Pacquiao started beating big names. He became the anti-Mayweather, fighting more for national pride and for the sport itself rather than money and glamor.

If ever there were two athletes more destined to clash for the right to be crowned the best pound-for-pound in the world, it's these two.

But then began the dodging. The money's not right. Then the dope testing isn't right. Now Mayweather has missed a deadline with Pacquiao's people to set up a fight on Nov. 13.

Instead, Pacquiao will face off against Antonio Margarito in three-and-a-half months, who can't fight in California because he tried to put plaster on his tape for his last scheduled fight with Shane Mosley at the Staples Center in LA.

Though that's going to be an interesting sub-plot, and hopefully another series of "24/7," there's no way I'm even going to consider ordering that fight like I did with the UFC heavyweight superfight against Brock Lesnar and Shane Carwin.

If it were Manny-Mayweather, I would. Simple as that.

Until that fight happens, boxing is going to lose the momentum it's built over the past few years.

And now that it's going to be more than three months before we can even start talking about it again, it might be too late, anyway.

MLB's drug testing is just too late

Part of me wants to applaud Major League Baseball for testing for Human Growth Hormone in its minor leagues.

But most of me is just sad at how late this is.

We all know how bad steroids ran through the game. But by the time the MLB began doing it in 2001, HGH was already becoming the drug of choice anyway.

It was hard to catch designer steroids 10 years ago. It's going to be even harder to find HGH now.

So no, I'm not going to applaud MLB for doing this. And in its minor leagues, no less.

Because a player has never gotten to The Show, realized he wasn't a stud anymore, and THEN began juicing. I have a feeling that's what happens much more often than not.

And I laugh at Bud Selig, who has now become the poster boy for enabling juicers in MLB, for trying to take credit for this.

From ESPN:

"The implementation of blood testing in the minor leagues represents a significant step in the detection of the illegal use of human growth hormone," Selig said in a statement.

Give. Me. A. Break.

Little League and lawsuits go hand in hand. Wait? What?

I don't know which I hate more about this particular story ... the fact that a Little League coach had his pitcher throw at an opposing hitter, or the fact that the father of the kid who got hit is suing said coach.

A 13-year-old attempted to bunt with the bases loaded in a little league game. The first pitch came high and inside. On the next pitch. the batter was drilled, and suffered a broken hand. The kid’s dad is suing the opposing coach, claiming the pitcher (coach’s son) purposely drilled his son.

Really kind of depresses me as a sports fan.

Best sports movies of all time

As a fan of sports and cinema, I think of this subject a lot (probably too much). But sports movies are some of the best ever made, and putting together a comprehensive list isn't easy.

But here is my top 5 as of right now, with a little fudging at No. 3 and some honorable mentions. Add your suggestions or make your own list in the comments if you want.

1. Tin Cup, 1996: I favor comedy over most movie genres. This has some of the most funny lines combined with the most epic of moments. And it's a Kevin Costner flick, with Cheech Maron. What's that? You don't think golf is a sport? Too bad. It's my list.
2. Major League, 1989: An absolute classic. It brought about some of the best characters and had no shortage of humor and great acting. Some of the best lines are still spoken by baseball fans, everywhere, especially Bob Uecker's calls from the press box.
   
3. Remember the Titans, 2000: It's Denzel at its finest, and yet another movie based on true events. Also great political commentary for the time, and Will Patton gives a great performance against Washington. The football scenes are also well done, especially the two-a-days. It's also got one of the best soundtracks of any sports movie.
4. Bull Durham, 1988: Another Costner flick, this time minor league baseball. Plus, one of the scenes is based on something attempted at the Dilla Villa (then Potter County Memorial). Also great performances by Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins.
5. The Program, 1993: A very good portrait of a '90s college football team and the recruiting, steroids and partying problems that went along with them. Plus it has quality acting in James Caan, Omar Epps and Halle Berry.

Honorable mentions: Cinderella Man; The Rookie; The Sandlot; Caddyshack (just the first one); North Dallas Forty; Necessary Roughness; Miracle; The Blind Side; The Might Ducks (all of them, but mostly the first two); Rookie of the Year; A hundred others that you will remember that I don't.

Do we really need sports in 3D?

I'll admit that I am intrigued by the technology behind watching sports events in 3D, which ESPN has done a good job self-promoting with funny commercials.

But I do wonder how much I would actually enjoy watching it.

First, I don't like the 3D glasses that you'd have to wear. I have prescription glasses, so whatever advantage I have from the 3D mus get at least partially negated by needing to take them off.

The first movie I ever watched in 3D was Avatar.

It will also be the last. By the time I was done watching the movie I had a headache and wondered how much more I might have liked the movie if I'd seen the non-3D version.

But I also wonder how fun it would be to watch, say, a routine ground-ball play during a baseball game. The players look real enough to me on my HDTV, and I don't think that seeing it in 3D would make it any more exciting.

And even if you go to a live game, you're still not seeing the players from the same perspective the cameras get. For that reason, watching something in 3D won't make you feel like you're at the game any more than HD.

I realize I may be in the minority, but I just don't see the advantages in broadcasting sports in 3D.

Rick Reilly's last column: Houston school's scoring, slaughtering of teams is deplorable

First, let me address the fact that one of the legendary sports writers of our time will no longer be publishing a weekly column in print.

I am an uncompromising, unabashed Rick Reilly fan. He is one of the reasons I became a sportswriter, and now I will no longer be able to hold onto a copy of his column (unless you count a laptop or if I buy a Kindle/iPad).

Now onto the subject of Reilly's final column. He usually doesn't hit on subjects close to what I'm covering, but this one is very close.

Houston Yates' undefeated boys basketball team, which is competing in this year's UIL Boys Basketball State Championships, has been absolutely killing opponents. Since the lone person who can call off the dogs and stop the scoring is the head coach, the blame, Reilly argues, must fall on Yates coach Greg Wise.

So far this season, he's beaten teams by 135, 115, 99 (twice), 98, 90 and 88 points. Trying to get to 100 points in a crushing of Westbury, his players intentionally fouled to stop the clock.

This sounds familiar. There was another high-profile case of what many consider bad sportsmanship last year in Texas, when Colleyville Covenant (a team I had some experience with while working for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram) beat another school 100-0 in girls basketball.

(This is another post I'll write later, but I wonder why Texas schools always seem to wind up on ESPN for running up the score?)

That coach was fired.

There was plenty of debate over whether or not that was warranted. There will surely be debate over whether Wise should be fired for his actions this year.

Personally, I've never been on either side of a win quite that bad. I will say this, though. I have been on both ends of a run-rule baseball game. By the time you're done with the losing end, it's pretty demoralizing.

I'll add that I never saw a team go up by that much that didn't work on hitting opposite field or, in the worst cases, bunting before the run-rule was reached.

So, while I don't hold the apparent hate that Reilly described in his column:

The things I would like to do to Coach Wise would curl an executioner's toes. For starters, I'd like to see him dipped in seal butter and dropped into a polar bear's cage.

I do think that there are ways to avoid this humiliation. I do see the other side of the argument, though, and am not sure what the equivalent to bunting is in basketball. I've heard of passing 10 times before shooting and such. Seems like an OK thing to me.

The other thing that is brought up in these situations: Why would a team who knows it has no chance against a team like Yates schedule them?

I know that in the high school sports I've covered, like volleyball, that is done to show just where your weakest points are so you can improve before district play.

Perhaps that's what the coaches at schools like Houston Lee were trying to do. But what Yates did to them was probably not the kind of constructive beating they were looking for.

What do you think? Seriously, I'm curious. I have a unique view because of my job, but I can never have some of your views as pure sports fans, as parents or as coaches in any capacity.

Tech women's Jordan Barncastle gets clocked by Baylor's Brittney Griner

Sign Baylor women's basketball star Brittney Griner up for SharkFights 9. After obviously getting fouled, she bloodied Texas Tech's Jordan Barncastle's nose. She was ejected from the game, and when I find out how the Big 12 and Baylor discipline her, I'll update this post.

Here's the video, courtesy of ESPN:

Michael Irvin's so untouchable, an Amarillo non-profit doesn't even want him

UPDATE: The day after we found out Irvin wasn't coming to town, the rape allegations failed to turn into criminal charges in Florida. Doesn't mean he'll be coming, nor does it mean the accusations are baseless. But it does show the power of suggestions is still strong in this country.
.................................

I'm sure it's the least of Michael Irvin's problems, what with the lawsuit against him and his counter suit stemming from years-old rape allegations, but the former Dallas Cowboy won't be speaking at an event scheduled for April.

Irvin was scheduled to be the guest speaker for an April 8 lecture called “An Evening With ...” conducted by Worth the Wait, an Amarillo organization that promotes abstinence education.

I spoke with Amy Christie, executive director for Worth the Wait, last week after the suit was filed Feb. 4, and she wasn't sure if he would be coming to speak.

I called her again today, and here's what she had to say on the matter. Well, part of what she had to say. News columnist Jon Mark Beilue is working on a piece to be published later.

But I'll let this leak early ... Christie said she stands by her initial decision to bring him to town for the event, something I don't necessarily agree with.

Today's great read: Trash talking in mixed martial arts

When two people literally risk their lives in the ring, adrenaline is the primary motivator for many of their actions. So, in mixed martial arts, trash talking is the norm during the run-up to a fight.

How far is too far? Frank Mir came close when he made some pretty threatening remarks on a radio show that included the words "breaking" and "neck" too close to each other for comfort.

This column by Yahoo! Sports' Dan Wetzel explores the issue in a well-written, well-informed piece that is a must-read for MMA fans.

You can now comment on the blog

I finally have administrative privileges on this blog. You may also notice a new icon at the bottom of the posts next to the link to the number of comments (which remains at zero, for now) that looks like an envelope. Clicking it allows you to email this post to people.

But the big news is that everyone can now comment on the blog.

With this in mind, I'd like to make this post an open thread. That is to say, you can say whatever you want, if it pertains to sports.

This also means, of course, that I can moderate and delete your comments. The only sports-related topic that I'm banning from the start: If you had an affair with Tiger Woods, I don't want to hear about it.

Other than that, help me make sure the comment section of this blog works.

And the scheduling headache continues

With the inches of snow covering the Amarillo area Monday, more soccer and softball contests will be postponed.

At this rate, we'll be having soccer matches and softball games every day of spring break -- unless, of course, it's still snowing then.

Canyon is train country

While watching the Canyon girls soccer team win and the boys lose to Palo Duro, I counted no less than half a dozen trains pass by Kimbrough Memorial Stadium.

I know this has nothing to do with sports, but the amount of train traffic that passes by the 'Bro amazed me.

As for the matches, the Canyon girls still have a firm grasp on the No. 2 spot in 5-4A as they approach Tuesday's crucial contest with the district-leading Randall Lady Raiders.

The PD boys regained their half-point district lead over Caprock, though the two teams meet in a blockbuster match that should eventually decide the district title and top playoff seed.

How much Tiger is too much Tiger (Part 2)?

Perhaps the next time I hear about Tiger Woods, he will be playing professional golf.

This is at least a possibility now after his scripted apology to the world. I found his attempts to be only slightly heartfelt, but absolutely necessary.

Of course, there will be a few days of analyzing his apology and speculation on where he goes from here.

But at least the need for the uncovering of new infidelities is needless and will hopefully go away. Now maybe he can finish rehab (which most people assume is sex rehab, but he could have gotten addicted to pain killers after his surgeries -- a more likely scenario if you ask me) and return to being the best golfer on the planet.

His reputation isn't healed now. But maybe news organizations will finally stop picking at his wounds.

Awesome soccer goal

This is from a Dutch "street" league. Pretty amazing stuff.

How much Tiger is too much Tiger?

I've been a Tiger Woods fan since he burst onto the scene, though my fandom was firmly established when he and then-No. 2 David Duval had a duel in Arizona (I believe Tiger won, but it was some years ago).

So, until now, I've never been tired of hearing about Tiger in the sports news.

But the latest allegations by a former extramarital lover, Joslyn James, is just more than I care about at this point.

According to the NY Daily News story, the pornography star James had two abortions that were Tiger's kids.

Whatever. I no longer find any of this newsworthy. He cheated on Elin (why???). Many, many, many, many times. We get it.

Just because some new girl comes out with allegations of being Tiger's 108th road bump doesn't mean it needs to be written up in a newspaper or reported on TV.

Meeting Cal Ripken Jr. was pretty awesome

I was fortunate enough to meet one of the most iconic American sports figures in history on Tuesday.

Cal Ripken Jr., the former Baltimore Oriel who broke the career record for consecutive games played, spoke at Amarillo College for its Distinguished Lecture series.

Before he spoke at AC, he allowed five minutes of interview time with the local press, which included the Globe-News and the AC Ranger.