Does it get any better than the Clo Bowl? Wait, you don’t have
to answer that. Keep the smirks to yourself.
Does it get any better than the Clo Bowl? Wait, you don’t have to answer that. Keep the smirks to yourself. Sure, the Clo Bowl isn’t the Rose Bowl, but you know what? So what. It’s not like anyone we care about is going to Pasadena, anyway.
When I mentioned to people last week I would be covering the Clo Bowl in Santa Rosa, pitting Gavilan College against Santa Rosa Junior College, I got a variety of responses. These ranged from my buddy Kurt, who said, “Hey, can I go?” to a person who will remain unnamed who made a face like I’d just waved a dead fish in front of her nose, and who said, “Is there anybody who cares about ‘juco’ football?”
Well, excuse us JC supporters for living, Miss More-Collegiate-than-Thou. See, I thought all the elitism over picking up units or getting some playing time at an affordable community college had gone the way of debt-free education. It seems I was wrong.
Apparently, for some people, a junior college education is something to be ashamed of, like coming from the wrong side of the tracks or being related to Tim Rattay. Never mind that in financially insecure times, the smartest thing a student could do is get half their education on the cheap from a JC before moving on to a four-year school.
Take Notre Dame. You have to love the school’s commitment to academic excellence. Notre Dame refuses to lower its standards for athletes. That’s honorable. But Notre Dame also refuses to accept “juco” transfers. That’s just baffling. Such attitudes are a relic of the 1950’s. (By the way, can you get any more pejorative without spitting than using the term “juco”?)
My uncle was a junior college coach. He fashioned Skyline College into a basketball powerhouse in the 1970’s. His players respected him and more importantly, they worked hard for him. Before he died in 1978, those players rewarded my uncle, Cale Newcomer, with a state basketball championship. He was never anything but proud as hell of his “juco” kids.
It’s true that in many ways, junior colleges are “in between” places. They’re places we go to get the credits to get to where we really want to go. They’re places where you find athletes who are too good to call it quits after high school but not coveted enough to get four-year scholarships.
But you know something? There’s nothing wrong with that. For the student-athletes who played in last Saturday’s game, and for the Gavilan and Santa Rosa fans who packed the stands, it didn’t matter that the Clo Bowl isn’t the Rose Bowl.
What mattered was that the players got one last chance this year to accomplish something special on the field, and the fans got to see them try.
So I hope that’s settled. Now if we can only forget about that final score …
Six degrees of Oak Grove
Well, TCAL threw pretty much everything it had at CCS Large School title-winner Oak Grove. In succession, the Eagles got through Live Oak, Gilroy and finally, San Benito to win the title.
But before we get too intimidated by Oak Grove, let’s knock them down a peg. See, Oak Grove lost to St. Francis. St. Francis lost to Bellarmine. Bellarmine lost to San Benito. San Benito lost to Palma. Palma lost to Gilroy. And Gilroy lost to Live Oak. There you have it – Live Oak is the real champion of CCS. Or else Salinas is, but let’s not go there.
The great training robbery
You want to know what really bothers me about this latest steroid controversy? It’s the arrogance of people who think they’re above the rules that the rest of us have to follow. It’s the cheaters who have the nerve to break the law without any consideration of the consequences to their fellow citizens. Like revealing secret grand jury testimony – a felony. Or secretly taping phone conversations – another felony.
Perhaps you thought I was talking about something else?
Hitting bottom
This past week was the perfect storm – Cal gets hosed out of the Rose Bowl. The Niners and Raiders both lose. Gavilan is crushed in the Clo Bowl. San Benito comes up short against Oak Grove. Bonds takes his most precarious tumble yet into asterisk-land. The Sharks … well, you know about the Sharks. So basically, everything that could have gone wrong in sports did go wrong. Except for the Warriors, who won two of three and thus spoiled the quadruple-plus trifecta of misery.
Which begs the question, can’t the Warriors even get doing the wrong thing right?
Gilroy Dispatch Sports Editor Damon Poeter can be e-mailed at dp*****@sv**********.com
