I.....have....the power!!!!!!
Feb. 10th, 2011 10:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
captainsblogWhen confronted with my semiregular bouts of insomnia, either late in the night or after slopping the hogs at 0600, my usual getter-backer trick is to make lists, or recall groups of peeps or places or numbers, or otherwise bore myself back to sleep with facts and figures. During the most recent bout earlier today, I tried remembering some of the names of basketball players from the 70s who formed the primordial fantasy league I invented and participated in, mostly with my friend Dennis, which we called the USBL. We divvied up players from real teams onto eight "franchises" that we owned four apiece, and set out five-man rosters for four quarters a game using dice and Strat-o-Matic style index cards with point and foul values.
In trying to remember some of my almost-40-year-ago rosters, I remembered some famous names (Kareem, Clyde Frazier), some truly obscure ones (Swen Nater, an obscure ABA center who we morphed into a scoring machine because we didn't understand college-level rules of dice distribution when we were making this shit up in eighth grade), but one or two in-betweeners. One of those was a onetime Chicago Bulls guard by the name of Jerry Sloan. For the past 22 years since his NBA retirement, he's been a coach with the Utah Jazz.
Until today, that is- the morning after I thought of him for probably the first time this century. The team announced his resignation today, ending what was by far the longest reign of any coach/manager in any of the four major North American sports.
Now taking his place as the NBA representative to the Pantheon of Old is San Antonio coach Greg Popovich, who's been on the job for 15 seasons. Baseball's Tony LaRussa and the NFL's Andy Reid are similarly tenured. All of those grumpy old men are pushing 60, if not well past it.
Hockey's longest-tenured coach? Our own Lindy Ruff, now in his 13th straight season behind the Buffalo bench, outlasting three owners, one Chapter 11 and a blown call in the Stanley Cup finals. And the mileage on this particular Canadian Tire?
Dude's younger than I am.
Shoot me now. And scoorrrrrrrrrrrrrre!
In trying to remember some of my almost-40-year-ago rosters, I remembered some famous names (Kareem, Clyde Frazier), some truly obscure ones (Swen Nater, an obscure ABA center who we morphed into a scoring machine because we didn't understand college-level rules of dice distribution when we were making this shit up in eighth grade), but one or two in-betweeners. One of those was a onetime Chicago Bulls guard by the name of Jerry Sloan. For the past 22 years since his NBA retirement, he's been a coach with the Utah Jazz.
Until today, that is- the morning after I thought of him for probably the first time this century. The team announced his resignation today, ending what was by far the longest reign of any coach/manager in any of the four major North American sports.
Now taking his place as the NBA representative to the Pantheon of Old is San Antonio coach Greg Popovich, who's been on the job for 15 seasons. Baseball's Tony LaRussa and the NFL's Andy Reid are similarly tenured. All of those grumpy old men are pushing 60, if not well past it.
Hockey's longest-tenured coach? Our own Lindy Ruff, now in his 13th straight season behind the Buffalo bench, outlasting three owners, one Chapter 11 and a blown call in the Stanley Cup finals. And the mileage on this particular Canadian Tire?
Dude's younger than I am.
Shoot me now. And scoorrrrrrrrrrrrrre!
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Date: 2011-02-11 05:01 pm (UTC)