The Penalty Box
February 3, 2021 at 4:05 a.m.
The Penalty Box
By Roger Grossman-
Sometimes I get several thoughts floating around in my head.
OK, it happens a lot during a normal day, but we’re talking about subjects for my weekly offering here in the paper.
They are all generally good subjects, but none of them are worthy of being a column on their own. When that happens, we meld a few of them together for one column. It can be a little bit ADHD, so hang on and try to follow along.
Super Bowl 55: I think the game Sunday will be very exciting and should be a pretty competitive matchup between the Chiefs and Bucs.
I don’t care if it’s wrong or not, but I will be cheering for the Chiefs. Honestly, I will be cheering more that every time he drops back to pass, Tom Brady gets hit, hurried, knocked down and sacked.
I am stunned that American sports fans have given this proven cheater a total pass. The sentimental vibe about this guy is disgusting.
Patrick Mahomes a breath of fresh air and I hope he is standing on the winners podium Sunday night.
Colts need a QB: I really was hoping, like a lot of Colts fans were, that the Colts could work out a deal with the Lions to get Matthew Stafford to be their new quarterback.
They couldn’t.
The Colts really thought that Phillip Rivers would stick around Indy for another year.
He didn’t.
There is virtually no chance the other high-profile quarterback reportedly on the market—Houston’s Deshaun Watson—would ever end up in a Colts jersey. No matter what the Texans got back in return, letting their best player get away to a division rival who would use him to bludgeon them twice a season.
Sooooo, now what?
I wish I knew.
This team is in the winning window right now, but they won’t get very far without a top-shelf signal caller.
What they do about it will be huge.
Officials needed: The shortage of officials is on a slow and steady march toward a red-line crisis. At a game earlier this season at Warsaw, two of the three officials working that night been celebrated before their last game in the Tiger Den before they retired.
I got my basketball license renewed this year for the first time in a few years. I first took the test and passed it in the fall of 1986. Fresh out of high school, I planned to use officiating to stay in shape, to make some extra money and to stay involved in sports.
Young people today are just not as interested in doing that as I was.
My prediction stands: In the next five years, you will see schools start to hire officials who will work both the junior varsity and varsity games.
You’re wondering: “Are you doing games and are you getting yelled at a lot?”
It’s gone well so far, but I do give credit to one fan who blurted out to me “you make a better broadcaster than you do a referee.”
I can live with that.
The new Elkhart looks good: the Warsaw boys and girls teams both played Elkhart last week.
With Central and Memorial merging as an athletics department last fall, they needed a new name and they need to figure out what their new colors would be.
They chose royal blue, Vegas gold and red.
You may not care, but that was a really interesting way to go. Central’s color was Navy blue and white, Memorial was crimson with yellow, and they took variations of both schools’ colors and made it work.
Bravo Elkhart!
Other random thoughts:
If college basketball can hold it together, the NCAA’s Final Four will be played on the exact same day as the boys’ state basketball finals, in the exact same city, just a few blocks apart.
I really hope we get good ice in February, because I want to go ice fishing very much.
I just turned 53 and have never had coffee in my entire life, and I don’t see myself waiting in line for an hour or being part of a train of cars blocking Warsaw’s main east-west artery to start.
Warsaw can have 1,200 fans at their game with Mishawaka Thursday—a game that will go a long way to deciding the NLC championship. I’d sure like to hear that we maxed it out.
That’s it for now.
E-Editions
Sometimes I get several thoughts floating around in my head.
OK, it happens a lot during a normal day, but we’re talking about subjects for my weekly offering here in the paper.
They are all generally good subjects, but none of them are worthy of being a column on their own. When that happens, we meld a few of them together for one column. It can be a little bit ADHD, so hang on and try to follow along.
Super Bowl 55: I think the game Sunday will be very exciting and should be a pretty competitive matchup between the Chiefs and Bucs.
I don’t care if it’s wrong or not, but I will be cheering for the Chiefs. Honestly, I will be cheering more that every time he drops back to pass, Tom Brady gets hit, hurried, knocked down and sacked.
I am stunned that American sports fans have given this proven cheater a total pass. The sentimental vibe about this guy is disgusting.
Patrick Mahomes a breath of fresh air and I hope he is standing on the winners podium Sunday night.
Colts need a QB: I really was hoping, like a lot of Colts fans were, that the Colts could work out a deal with the Lions to get Matthew Stafford to be their new quarterback.
They couldn’t.
The Colts really thought that Phillip Rivers would stick around Indy for another year.
He didn’t.
There is virtually no chance the other high-profile quarterback reportedly on the market—Houston’s Deshaun Watson—would ever end up in a Colts jersey. No matter what the Texans got back in return, letting their best player get away to a division rival who would use him to bludgeon them twice a season.
Sooooo, now what?
I wish I knew.
This team is in the winning window right now, but they won’t get very far without a top-shelf signal caller.
What they do about it will be huge.
Officials needed: The shortage of officials is on a slow and steady march toward a red-line crisis. At a game earlier this season at Warsaw, two of the three officials working that night been celebrated before their last game in the Tiger Den before they retired.
I got my basketball license renewed this year for the first time in a few years. I first took the test and passed it in the fall of 1986. Fresh out of high school, I planned to use officiating to stay in shape, to make some extra money and to stay involved in sports.
Young people today are just not as interested in doing that as I was.
My prediction stands: In the next five years, you will see schools start to hire officials who will work both the junior varsity and varsity games.
You’re wondering: “Are you doing games and are you getting yelled at a lot?”
It’s gone well so far, but I do give credit to one fan who blurted out to me “you make a better broadcaster than you do a referee.”
I can live with that.
The new Elkhart looks good: the Warsaw boys and girls teams both played Elkhart last week.
With Central and Memorial merging as an athletics department last fall, they needed a new name and they need to figure out what their new colors would be.
They chose royal blue, Vegas gold and red.
You may not care, but that was a really interesting way to go. Central’s color was Navy blue and white, Memorial was crimson with yellow, and they took variations of both schools’ colors and made it work.
Bravo Elkhart!
Other random thoughts:
If college basketball can hold it together, the NCAA’s Final Four will be played on the exact same day as the boys’ state basketball finals, in the exact same city, just a few blocks apart.
I really hope we get good ice in February, because I want to go ice fishing very much.
I just turned 53 and have never had coffee in my entire life, and I don’t see myself waiting in line for an hour or being part of a train of cars blocking Warsaw’s main east-west artery to start.
Warsaw can have 1,200 fans at their game with Mishawaka Thursday—a game that will go a long way to deciding the NLC championship. I’d sure like to hear that we maxed it out.
That’s it for now.
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