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Obit watch: December 23, 2021.

Thursday, December 23rd, 2021

Nicholas Georgiade.

He was “Enrico Rossi” in 113 episodes of “The Untouchables”. Other credits include two episodes of “Get Smart”, the good “Hawaii 5-0”, “Mission: Impossible”, “The Rockford Files”, four episodes of “Quincy M.E.”, the Andy Sidaris film “Picasso Trigger”…

…and “Mannix”. (“Deadfall”, season 1, episodes 17 and 18. We have not seen this yet, as we are saving season 1 until after we’ve watched seasons 2 through 8. But this is kind of a legendary episode: Joe Mannix gets into a bloody fight with his boss at Intertect.)

Robbie Roper. He was a high school quarterback in Georgia and one of the top recruits in this year’s class.

He was only 18 years old, and passed away after a routine surgery.

Posted in 1970s, Mannix, Movies, Obits, Sports, TV | Comments Closed

Bowl watch.

Wednesday, December 22nd, 2021

Doesn’t count as a firing, but still kind of interesting. Lawrence tipped me off to this earlier today, but it was just a rumor at the time: now it seems to be confirmed.

Texas A&M is out of the Gator Bowl.

Is it the Wuhan Flu? Sort of.

News broke on Tuesday that A&M’s football team had not practiced since last Saturday as a number of athletes had tested positive prior to the Aggies hitting the practice field on Sunday and then again during the next two days.

But they’ve also got “as many as ten upperclassmen” who are eligible for the draft and have said they don’t want to play. They’ve got two more players in the transfer portal, and “as many as 12 players” who are out because of injuries.

Those items push the Aggies down towards approximately 60 scholarship players being available for the game including just one quarterback in Haynes King (who missed most of the season himself due to a broken ankle and has just returned to workouts).

ESPN:

Texas A&M athletic director Ross Bjork told ESPN that the program was down to 38 scholarship position players, of which 20 were offensive and defensive linemen.
In addition to the outbreak and the injuries, Texas A&M also had tight end Jalen Wydermyer and running back Isaiah Spiller declare for the NFL draft. Quarterback Zach Calzada, who started 10 games this season, entered the transfer portal.
“So if you take running backs, receivers, quarterbacks and defensive backs, we had 13 of those guys and only 13 scholarship players on defense,” Bjork told ESPN. “We had over 40 guys out between COVID, season-ending injuries, transfers and opt-outs.

The Gator Bowl people, the NCAA, Wake Forest (the other team) and the ACC are all supposedly working to find another team to play. At this date, though, it seems to me like a long shot: the game is scheduled for December 31st. I imagine many teams have already released their players to go home (Texas A&M was supposed to release theirs Tuesday, and have them come back after Christmas) and I doubt a lot of teams that aren’t already scheduled for bowls are going to want to scramble and take risks just to compete in a lower tier bowl game.

On a completely related note:

A new College Football Playoff policy written this week in response to the surging omicron variant allows for a team to advance to the national championship — and ultimately win it — by its opponents having to forfeit, according to an updated set of COVID-19 policies the CFP released on Wednesday.

The national championship game could be pushed to January 14th (it is scheduled for January 10th) but:

If one team is able to play in the title game and the other can’t because of COVID-19 — and the game can’t be rescheduled — the team that can’t play will forfeit and its opponent will be declared the national champion. If both teams can’t play on either the original or rescheduled date, the game will be declared a “no contest” and the CFP National Championship will be vacated for this season.

…

If both teams are unavailable to play in a semifinal game, it would be declared a no contest and the winner of the other semifinal game would be declared the CFP national champion.

Not that I am hoping for anyone to come down with the Chinese Rabies, but man, a national championship by forfeit would be a sight to see.

Posted in Sports | Comments Closed

Shad don’t like it…

Thursday, December 16th, 2021

Urban Meyer out as Jacksonville Jaguars coach after 13 regular season games.

His record was 2-11.

The final straw seems to have been yesterday’s report that Meyer kicked Josh Lambo, a former kicker with the Jaguars. I’m just gonna go out on a limb here and say physically assaulting your employees is not a good idea.

Meyer couldn’t deliver as speculation persisted that he treated players like kids instead of grown men. He appeared to be too caught up in having control and power instead of having the right answers to win football games.
This past weekend NFL Network’s Tom Pelissero reported, citing sources, that Meyer had multiple run-ins with players and coaches that had developed into an ongoing tension at the Jaguars facility for months.

…

The Jaguars suffered their first shutout defeat since 2009 this past Sunday against the Titans, 20-0, after finishing with a franchise-low 8 yards rushing. It was the team’s fifth consecutive loss, and the Jaguars’ have dropped 15 straight road games.

And Shad Khan is looking for tax money to upgrade the stadium and improve “the fan experience”.

To quote a comment at Field of Schemes:

You know what would “fundamentally change the fan experience” for Jags fans?
Not losing 10+ games each and every year.

Posted in Firings, NFL, Sports | Comments Closed

Obit watch: December 10, 2021.

Friday, December 10th, 2021

Al Unser Sr., one of the greatest racing drivers ever.

Unser’s four Indianapolis 500 wins came in 1970, 1971, 1978 and 1987. The final victory made him the oldest driver, at 47, to win the United States’ premier auto race.

…

Al Unser first competed in the Indianapolis 500 in 1965, running the race 27 times, the third-most in history. He led for 644 laps over his career, which remains a record.
“His quiet and humble approach outside of the car, combined with his fierce competitive spirit and fearless talent behind the wheel, made Al a fan favorite,” J. Douglas Boles, president of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, said in a statement.
Unser’s four wins at the Indianapolis 500 is a record shared by A.J. Foyt, Rick Mears and Helio Castroneves, who won this year’s race.

Demaryius Thomas, former wide receiver with the Denver Broncos. He retired earlier this year, though he did not play in 2020.

Noted here because he was only 33. I don’t want to speculate, but other reports I’ve seen quote his family as stating he was having medical issues.

Posted in NFL, Obits, Sports | 1 Comment »

Quick firings watch.

Monday, December 6th, 2021

Manny Diaz out as head coach of the Miami Hurricanes.

21-15 in “nearly three seasons”, 7-5 this season.

Diaz faced intense pressure from disgruntled fans, former players and some inside the administration who lamented the direction in which the Hurricanes were heading. Before he was fired, James told the Miami Herald on Oct. 22 in a phone interview that Diaz, like every other coach, was being evaluated with each passing game. James at that point declined to ensure that Diaz’s job was secure through the end of the season.

Alain Vigneault out as head coach of the Philadelphia Flyers. That’s a hockey team, in case you were wondering.

Posted in Firings, Sports | Comments Closed

“I feel blessed to live in such times.”

Monday, December 6th, 2021

That was a comment from a friend of mine when I sent this story around last month.

I didn’t blog it at the time because it was all rumors and I had no reliable or semi-reliable sourcing on it. But ESPN published an article over the weekend, so now it can be blogged.

Jeff Banks, who is an assistant coach at UT, and his girlfriend are being sued.

Why?

Their monkey allegedly bit a child.

According to the lawsuit, the child, identified as C.C., was trick-or-treating with two friends on Halloween and was invited to attend a haunted house. The lawsuit says that, after completing the haunted house, the child and his friends were taken to a monkey that Thomas kept in the backyard. According to the complaint, the child was told the monkey was trained to give high-fives.
“Instead of giving a high five, Danielle Thomas’s monkey aggressively bit down on C.C.’s hand and refused to let go,” says the lawsuit, a copy of which was obtained by ESPN on Saturday. “C.C. was forced to manually pry the monkey’s jaw open. There was so much blood that C.C. was unable to see the full extent of the injury.”

…

According to the lawsuit, “Instead of showing any semblance of care for an injured child, Danielle Thomas was instead worried about the risk of her monkey being taken away. … Danielle Thomas stated to the physician that the monkey had bitten her before and that she was fine, implying that the monkey therefore did not have rabies.”

The family claims that Ms. Thomas has not yet provided vaccination records for the monkey. It isn’t clear from the article if C.C. had to go through the whole series of rabies shots.

Interesting side note:

Thomas is also identified as “Pole Assassin” in the lawsuit, her stage name as a dancer. She once appeared on “The Jerry Springer Show” with the monkey.

Posted in Law, Mammals, Monkeys, Primates, Sports | Comments Closed

Your loser update: week 13, 2021.

Sunday, December 5th, 2021

So I had checked on the Detroit game earlier in the day while running some errands, saw that the Vikings were down (I think 20-6 at the time), sighed, and went on with my life…

…came home a bit after 3 PM, checked again to see if Detroit had actually won, saw that there were about eight seconds left and Minnesota was up 27-22, clicked over to the play-by-play…

…and watched in horror as Detroit scored a desperate last second touchdown to make it 29-27.

NFL teams that still have a chance to go without a win this year:

None.

Thus ends this feature for the NFL season this year. If we’re still here, we plan to return in 2022.

Posted in Loser, NFL, Sports | 1 Comment »

En fuego.

Friday, December 3rd, 2021

Neil Olshey out as general manager and “president of basketball operations” for the Portland Trail Blazers.

According to the Blazers’ statement, the decision came after an “independent review of concerns and complaints around our workplace environment at the practice facility.” That led to the Blazers to terminate Olshey effective immediately for violating the franchise’s code of conduct.

Posted in Firings, Sports | Comments Closed

Obit watch: December 3, 2021.

Friday, December 3rd, 2021

Alvin Lucier, “experimental composer”.

In “I Am Sitting in a Room,” Mr. Lucier began by quietly reading a short statement describing what he is doing. “I am sitting in a room different from the one you are in now,” the text begins. “I am recording the sound of my speaking voice and I am going to play it back into the room again and again until the resonant frequencies of the room reinforce themselves so that any semblance of my speech, with perhaps the exception of rhythm, is destroyed.”
The room’s acoustics, as well as audio distortions that occur when a tape is rerecorded over and over, yields a gradually changing sound in which, after 10 minutes, the spoken text is buried in reverberation and overtones, and unintelligible. During the final section, high-pitched overtones coalesce into eerie, slow-moving melodies.

I used to have a CD of “I Am Sitting in a Room”, back when I was in my “difficult listening” phase. It was not something I spent a lot of time listening to, though I was happy to have it.

(See also.)

NYT obit for Curley Culp.

Eddie Mekka. Most famous as Carmine Ragusa on “Laverne & Shirley”. Other credits include guest shots on “The Love Boat”, “Fantasy Island”, and one of the “Rockford Files” TV movies.

Posted in 1970s, Music, NFL, Obits, Sports, TV | Comments Closed

Firing watch.

Thursday, December 2nd, 2021

Steve Addazio done at Colorado State.

4-12 in two seasons: 1-3 in 2020, 3-9 in 2021. They lost the final six games this season, including getting beat 52-10 by Nevada last week. And Addazio was ejected from that game in the second quarter.

Posted in Firings, Sports | Comments Closed

Obit watch: December 1, 2021.

Wednesday, December 1st, 2021

This is a couple of days old, but I was waiting for an obit from a reliable source: Jim Warren, one of the early figures in personal computing.

In the 1970s, Mr. Warren was a leading figure in the community that sprung up in the San Francisco Bay Area around the emerging personal computer industry.
He was a regular at monthly meetings of the Homebrew Computer Club, a group of hobbyist who gathered to share ideas, design tips and gossip. He was the editor of Dr. Dobb’s Journal of Computer Calisthenics and Orthodontia, an irreverent yet influential publication in that nascent field.

…

Computer conferences, where these fledgling companies showed off their wares, were just beginning to emerge when, in 1977, Mr. Warren staged the West Coast Computer Faire (the spelling a playful nod to the medieval spectacles of Elizabethan England). He calculated that the event, a two-day affair at the San Francisco Civic Auditorium, might break even if it could attract 60 exhibitors and perhaps 7,000 people.
But to his surprise nearly 13,000 people showed up, and the lines of people waiting to get in circled the building.

…

His interest in the social and political impact of computer technology continued later in his life. In 1991, Mr. Warren founded and chaired the first Computers, Freedom and Privacy Conference, an annual academic gathering.
In 1993, he worked on a California law — a model for other states — that required most computerized public records to be freely available. He conferred with legislators, rallied public support and even drafted some of the law’s language.

Mark Roth, pro bowler. Noted here because:

Roth’s most famous spare — knocking down the remaining pins with the second bowl thrown in a frame — was during a tournament in 1980 in Alameda, Calif. He became the first bowler to convert the notoriously difficult 7-10 split — knocking down the two pins in the opposite corners of the back row — on national television.

Adolfo, Nancy Reagan’s designer.

Posted in Geek, History, Obits, Sports | Comments Closed

Obit watch: November 29, 2021.

Monday, November 29th, 2021

Curley Culp.

He was a Hall of Fame player, first with the Kansas City Chiefs (in both the AFL and NFL) then with the Houston Oilers (1974-1980) and finally with Detroit.

Culp made six Pro Bowls, and in 1975, after he’d moved on to the Houston Oilers, he was named the NFL defensive player of the year. He played 14 seasons during stops with the Chiefs, Oilers and Lions, recording 68 1/2 career sacks. He had 37 of those in Kansas City, a integral figure in a dominant defense that included several Hall of Famers — Buck Buchanan, Bobby Bell, Willie Lanier, Johnny Robinson and Emmitt Thomas.

Posted in NFL, Obits, Sports | Comments Closed

Your loser update: week 12, 2021.

Friday, November 26th, 2021

With all due respect to my friends and readers who are Lions fans, as I always say, “It’s just not Thanksgiving until Detroit loses.”

(Just kidding. I’m fond of all of you.)

(According to the Entertainment and Sports Programming Network, Detroit’s Thanksgiving day record is 37-42-2, though that does not include yesterday’s game. That’s better than I would have thunk. For the record, Dallas is 31-21-1, again not including yesterday’s game.)

Anyway, NFL teams that still have a chance to go without a win this year:

Detroit

Next week: Minnesota in Detroit on Sunday, December 5th. The Vikings are currently 5-5.

(Dallas and New Orleans, both of whom played yesterday, play on Thursday, December 2nd next week. Nothing wrong with that, I just find the scheduling interesting.)

Posted in Loser, NFL, Sports | Comments Closed

Obit watch: November 23, 2021.

Tuesday, November 23rd, 2021

Lou Cutell, actor. Other than “Seinfeld” and “Gray’s Anatomy”, he did a few cop shows, including “Hardcastle and McCormick”, “T.J. Hooker”, “Barney Miller”, and the really obscure 1989 “Dragnet”. He also appeared on “Alice” and “The Bob Newhart Show”.

Malikah Shabazz, Malcolm X’s daughter. She was only 56.

Bill Virdon, noted player and manager.

He remained with the Pirates through 1965, managed for the Mets in the minors, then returned to Pittsburgh as a player-coach in 1968, his last playing season. He became the Pirates’ manager in 1972, taking them to the National League East title, but was fired late the following season.

He also managed the Yankees for a time, until he was fired by Steinbrenner (“…though he was not supposed to be involved with running the team”, being under suspension at the time) in favor of…Billy Martin.

Posted in 1970s, History, Obits, Sports, TV | 1 Comment »

The Giants Have Fallen.

Tuesday, November 23rd, 2021

Well, okay, just one Giant.

Jason Garrett, who you may remember for his time coaching the Dallas Cowboys, out as offensive coordinator of the New York Football Giants.

The Giants offense averaged just 18 points per game with Garrett at the helm and was ranked No. 30 in the NFL ahead of just the Jets and Jaguars during that time.

Posted in Firings, NFL, Sports | Comments Closed

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