Not a big surprise, considering the news about Lame's violations. Ironically, the incident that triggered this involved one of our recent transfers, Brandon Willis, who arrived via UT and UNC.

It seems like a regular part of any recruiting season for us is sweating out whether a kid will be academically qualified enough to get into the school. Found this story in the Dallas Observer about SMU actually reneging on two scholarships due to academics, one of which would have gone to Darryl Jackson, a player the Bruins were supposedly recruiting and who, according to the story, is now planning to enroll at UCLA.

In the SMU system, if your GPA is below 2.5 or your SAT is below 900, you go before a board that can deny admission if they think your chances of graduating are under 50%. They twice rejected an OL recruit who'd been accepted into Ivy League school Penn, which makes me wonder what goes into the 50% determination.

Anyway, just thought this would provide some perspective on our admissions - and how Trogan standards might as well be using a Limbo pole. Comments?

WARNING: Includes shots of Moo Vaughn and the infamous Disney periwinkle jerseys. :D

Was watching a show on MLB Network and they brought up this moment from Angels history, when hitting coach Rod Carew suggested the team break its post-ASG slump by having the entire lineup use the same bat - Jim Edmonds' bat, it turned out. Not only did they go through with it, our old buddy Orlando Palmeiro nearly got ejected for leaving the bat at the plate after he struck out to lead off the game! Plus they won the game 4-3!

Does anyone actually remember this happening? It certainly caught me by surprise.

"...after two years of quiet mediocrity at UCLA, it's the crosstown Trojans who find themselves welcoming the new gold standard among NCAA scofflaws even as they're under the NCAA's thumb for possible sanctions accrued by the old regime, and next to Kiffin's unearned bravado, Neuheisel's trash talk comes across as positively meek..."

One less problem for CRN and Bullough to gameplan for next year...

If you take a look at the Angels' entry on this BR page, you'll notice that we're only 34 games under .500 all-time (3,887-3,921). If Soth manages a record better than 98-64 in 2010 he'll truly have made this a "winning" club.

Rejoice! We're not that bad after all.

Money quote (not sure if this is damning with faint praise):
"One funny part of this, though, is that I don’t think the Angels have a lot of buyer’s remorse here. They are a weird team, the Angels. They just chug along, year after year. They pretty wildly overpay for a player now and again. They give players odd roles. They do odd things that make you wonder what the heck is going on over there. But they make the playoffs almost every year, and they seem to deal pretty well with whatever mistakes they make. Matthews plays quite a lot for the Angels, and he has a 69 OPS+, but the Angels continue to score runs like crazy. It’s just weird over there."

Fun story about how the NBA Draft used to be incredibly long, which once led Larry Brown to select his equipment manager at UCLA for the New Jersey Nets (four picks ahead of future baseball HOFer Tony Gwynn!).