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| Photo: Richland Source |
As I've been writing during the pandemic in the various inboxes, The Athletic has been filling time and space with the type of stories that during the average sports year aren't always being written because of the live-action on the fields of play.
We start with three stories from The Athletic and the first will cover the man behind the donut shop as Tim Horton's hockey career funded what is the Canadian standard for coffee and donuts.
Tim Horton's is moving into America more every year it seems as it moves franchises south and although I'm not a passionate donut fan, I do like one a few times a year and Tim Horton's does have a good one.
Tim Horton, the player, played for 24 years in the NHL, retiring more than once and returning to roll more money into the donut shop business.
Horton played until he was 44, made the hall of fame, and was named one of the NHL's top 100 players of all-time in 2017.
Horton was still playing for the Buffalo Sabres in 1974 when he died in a car accident driving back to his home in Toronto (The Sabres had lost to the Maple Leafs) and what I found interesting after his death dealt with the business as his partner bought Horton's wife's half-ownership in the chain (40 stores at the time) for one million dollars.
Tim Horton's was sold to Burger King in 11.5 BILLION in 2017.
The next story deals with Phil Steele, the maven of college football.
Steele's annual preview issue release is anticipated by me as one of my favorite days of the year and the article talks to Steele about how the magazine is assembled, the work that it takes to do so, and just how close Steele came to not making a magazine this season.
You can order a copy of Phil Steele's college football magazine here with a release date scheduled for July 15th, which I have been told is another special day...
BTW- While I'm still firmly in Mr.Steele's camp, on the word of John McAdam, I purchased Brett Ciancia's Pick Six Previews that covers the Power Five leagues.
Like Phil Steele's, Brett takes a deep and comprehensive dive into each of the teams that he previews and it's a sharp read.
Phil gets an edge for including every division one team and my beloved space to write in the results, but otherwise, I found the two very comparable.
I really enjoyed it and I'll be a customer next season.
I think I've converted very well to the digital age with books, magazines, etc, but the two items that I want physical copies of are college football previews and NFL draft previews (and reviews), so I'd be happier with a Pick Six physical copy (Phil Steele's goes straight into the backpack on day one and travels everywhere I go until the end of the season).
Brett's PDF file is said to be printer-friendly, but I'd wager that the printing and binding bill might cost what the file cost (18.00) and well over thirty dollars isn't viable.
The final article from The Athletic recalls the most recent trip by the Purdue Boilermakers to the Final Four when Purdue arrived via bus in Indianapolis in 1980.
The Big Ten placed two teams in the Final Four, as Purdue and Iowa won regionals before losing to UCLA and Louisville respectively.
Purdue would win the now-defunct consolation game over Iowa for the official third place designation.
Purdue was coached by Lee Rose, who took UNC-Charlotte to the Final Four in 1977 and then Purdue in 1980 in the second of his two seasons in West Lafayette.
Rose left for South Florida after this season and after six seasons with the Bulls and zero trips to the NCAA's (South Florida did make three NIT's), Rose resigned, never coached college again, and would spend several years as an NBA assistant.
Purdue's star was Joe Barry Carroll, who has been given a bad rap for his career following his top overall pick in the 1980 NBA Draft.
Now the trade that saw the Warriors trade for the top pick to draft Carroll wasn't a good one (Golden State traded the 3rd overall pick, used to select Kevin McHale and veteran Robert Parish to Boston), but Carroll was a productive player for Golden State and averaged over twenty points a game on four occasions in his seven seasons in Oakland with eight rebounds a game five times.
Carroll's numbers were better than Parish's four years there and Parish didn't become a hall of famer until after the trade.
Boston clearly won the trade, but Carroll certainly wasn't a bust on the level of 1972 top pick Larue Martin and shouldn't be remembered as such.
This is an older article from 2016 and the Omaha World-Herald as columnist Tom Shatel remembers the days when Omaha shared the Kansas City-Omaha Kings from 1972-78 and for ten to fifteen games a year- Omaha Nebraska had NBA basketball in their town.
I can't imagine Omaha as an NBA city today as their demographics have them twenty spots behind the NBA's smallest market (Memphis) in television market size and two hundred thousand fewer than the same smallest city in population, but one never knows if Omaha's favorite son (Warren Buffet) would decide to give his hometown one final gift.
ESPN writes about the business side of the XFL's collapse from people that worked for the league.
It's an in-depth piece that writes of the chances taken both and off the field, the dealings with Vince McMahon, the suit that commissioner Oliver Luck has filed against McMahon, and yes the chances of the league surviving for 2021.
There will be a bankruptcy process for bidders on August 3rd and over thirty interested bidders have perused the books and signed non-disclosure agreements to do so.
Vince McMahon had planned on potentially bidding on the league, but demurred after league creditors claimed McMahon was rigging the process to encourage a low bid to pay those creditors.
Imagine someone thinking such things about a wrestling promoter...
The Bulwark may be known mostly for their political writings, but many of their writers are sports fans as well and Ed Condon writes of MLB using the pandemic to force-feed the designated hitter into National League baseball.
Baseball says the DH is only installed for two seasons and then will be evaluated, but how often are rules in sports installed when the league in question wants them badly, eventually overturned?
Condon adds some of the other changes through the years that he disagrees with and he asks this question to fans that have children- how far would it go with you, should your child utter this comment when playing sports- "I don't do defense"?
We wrap up with Fred Landucci sending this from Definition.org asking how many of these defunct restaurant chains do you remember?
Of the thirty chains, I had heard of fifteen (Fewer than I figured before I started), had eaten at ten with one as a former employer.
Battlin' Bob defeats me as he can checkmark two of these chains off as a former employer!
Check it out and see how high you score.
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