(Punch line is coming.) I’m very excited to have been given club seats and a parking pass to tonight’s Atlanta Hawks vs. Indiana Pacers game. As a Pacers fan, I’d wish the players would have had more restraint so I could see an undepleted Pacers squad out there instead of a team sliding downhill fast, hanging on for dear life until they get 2 of their starters back and try to salvage a playoff spot.

For those of you just here for the joke, the answer is, “So he could beat the crowd.”

A discussion with a friend over the debaucle that is Notre Dame’s search for a head football coach led me to open my own CafePress store. Now, you too can tell the world that you’re not interested in the job either, as so many already have.

Feel free to suggest your own, but I nominate trampolining.

I was amazed tonight to see that there was an event based on jumping on a trampoline. 10 hops and a variety of acrobatics later, the judges spit out a subjective score and someone wins. I couldn’t help but snicker at the thought of Adam Corrolla proclaiming, “And now time for girls jumping on trampolines” at the conclusion of “The Man Show”.

I don’t know what flavor of nutcases are in charge of the Olympics. They’re clearly quite odd, picking their pet sports and finding ways to have more of the same. It’s like hey, there’s not enough aquatic events, let’s have them swim 10 different distances, and add synchronized diving just for giggles. And there’s not enough gymnastics (yeah right), if we put them on trampolines, we can have more gymnastics, but call it a new “sport”.

What a bunch of elitist jerks. Bring back the tug-o-war as an event. Add some additional team sports such as Rugby or Football. Sure, they’re not hugely popular worldwide, but when was the last time you went to an exhibition of acrobatic trampoline jumping? In any country in the world? If the Olympic officials actually liked basketball, you’d have half-court and full-court basketball on 8, 10, and 12 foot rims. Instead, we get individual and group competitions in 5 different gymnastic events, then add-on events like the dances with props like ribbons & balls, this trampoline thing, and several dozen swimming and foot race events. It’s only a matter of time before they add synchronized underwater weightlifting.

It will be over soon, and the NFL will mean something soon, and the college football debates can begin. In the mean time, there’s always Olympic beach volleyball.

The decision has been made, the 2004 & 2005 Atlantic Coast Conference football championship games will be in Jacksonville, beating out Baltimore, Charlotte, Miami, Orlando, Tampa and Washington.

While I would have loved Atlanta as the location, the SEC title game precludes that option, so Jacksonville truly seems to be the next best option. Washington and Baltimore are too far north, too far from the middle of the conference, too cold in early December. Miami, Orlando, and Tampa are all too far south, a 10+ hour drive from anywhere but FSU, Miami, and Georgia Tech (though Tampa wouldn’t be bad because a) no ACC Bowls are played there, b) great facilities, and c) my mom and in-laws live there). Charlotte isn’t a bad option – a nice town, and nice facilities, but in the run-up to the bowls, fans and players want an atmosphere to be outside, celebrate, and maybe take a vacation. I mean, do you think of the great atmosphere surrounding the Motor City Bowl? Charlotte also would have let the Carolina schools think they’re still in charge, and would be a bad thing.

That leaves Jacksonville. Decent facilities, decent town (from what I hear). It’s already the site of a game with HUGE atmosphere (Florida/Georgia), that is wildly successful. The biggest flaw in J-ville is that the ACC’s #2 bowl is the Gator Bowl, and few fans will want to go to the same town twice in a month. So I suppose they’re betting that the #2 team will make a BCS bowl, now that they’ve added the 5th game. Not a bad bet, with the ACC jostling for the crown of the best conference in all the land, it’s a reasonable bet. If not, a swap with the Capital One or Cotton Bowl could make sense, and the Peach Bowl is one of the top tier #3 bowls around. And for the near future, chances are that either FSU or Miami will be in that game, so the location ensures a huge turnout. Not a bad decision from the new ACC… at least until they prove to Atlanta that it’s worth their while to give the SEC title game the boot.

My excitement is on the rise for this weekend’s college baseball matchup between my alma mater, Georgia Tech, and No Name University. Tickets were apparently tough to come by, selling out within the first hour of their sale to the general public (available to GT donors and season ticket holders since Monday). That the university from Athens only reserved HALF of their 600 ticket allottment in a series that will decide a berth in the College World Series is both sad and amusing – only family and friends of players received tickets through UGA. Overall, I’m guessing this will lead to a huge home field advantage for Tech.

Russ Chandler Stadium is a great venue for one of the purest major college sports, baseball. Although we won’t get the beauty of a night game in downtown Atlanta, the 2 pm Friday start will give me an opportunity to cut out of work early, and perhaps lunch at Junior’s. Saturday and (hopefully no need for) Sunday noon starts mean nice sun and brunch tailgating. It’s almost like football season.

Wait until the College World Series is over. Is that so hard? As if professional baseball isn’t so self-important already with its super-size 162 game season and its incessant whining about “tradition”. (Before inter-league play, precisely what was so interesting about playing the same 13 or 15 teams an average of 10+ times each? Why not cut that number in half so people can even think about caring about the importance of a single game?)

Now we have the baseball draft, where they begin picking the 17 year olds that they’ll send to southeastern Idaho for 4 years where they can stock groceries and hope they get moved up to AA ball eventually. The real problem is that, in case they haven’t noticed, some of the kids they’re drafting – the ones in college, haven’t finished their seasons yet. For most student-athletes, this doesn’t matter. They don’t have a chance of a career in the pros, but what of the ones that do? Just why should Vanderbilt’s Jeremy Sowers give 110% toward next weekend’s super-regional matchup with Texas when he’s already the number 6 pick in the draft? I’m not suggesting that he’ll throw in the towel, but he certainly doesn’t have the same motivation to put everything on the line. I know when I was in my final semester in college, it became much harder to care about classes once I’d locked down my post-graduation job.

These players and their teams should have an opportunity to focus on getting to and winning the College World Series, on doing and showing their best so that they can win games, and possibly improve their value in the draft. Instead, for the top prospects, the race has been run. Almost nothing they do now will affect their paycheck. Hopefully, pride is enough to motivate them, but why risk it? Drafting DURING these games harms the college game. Waiting would harm nothing. In just 3 weeks, a national champion will have been crowned. Colleges have already signed their recruits for next year, and Spring training is still be 8 months away. The NFL doesn’t draft during bowl season, the NBA doesn’t draft during March Madness. MLB’s choice to draft during the college post-season is a distraction, and a sample of the arrogance that has led to the league’s declining popularity.