2014 Football cover
   
PRESENTS
Sports
Today!
A handy list of games involving San Francisco Bay Area teams and
their dates and times and a Memorable Sports Moment or SportsPulse
Monday, Feb. 2 through Sunday, Feb. 8
Issue No. 53

Sponsored by

     Budweiser logo

Monday, Feb. 2 

San Jose Sharks v. Edmonton Oilers, 7:30 p.m.

Cal (W) BB v. Washington State, 5 p.m.

 Kings @ New York Knicks, 4:30 p.m.

Tuesday, Feb. 3 

Golden Sate Warriors @ Sacramento Kings,

     7:00 p.m.

Stanford (W) BB v. Washington, 7 p.m.

Wednesday, Feb. 4 
Golden State Warriors v. Dallas Mavericks,
     7:30 p.m.

San Jose Sharks @ Calgary Flames, 7 p.m.

San Jose Earthquakes v. Houston Dynamo,

     9 a.m. (Tucson, preseason)

San Jose State (M) BB @ Fresno State, 7 p.m.

San Jose State (W) BB v. Fresno State, 7 p.m.

Thursday, Feb 5 

Sacramento Kings v. Dallas Mavericks, 7 p.m.

San Jose Sharks @ Vancouver Canucks, 7 p.m.

Cal (M) BB v. USC, 8 p.m.

Stanford (M) BB v. UCLA, 6 p.m.

Santa Clara (M) BB v. Gonzaga, 8 p.m.

USF (M) BB v. Portland, 7 p.m.

UC Davis (M) BB @ UC Irvine, 7 p.m.

Santa Clara (W) BB @ Gonzaga, 6 p.m.

USF (W) BB @ Portland, 7 p.m.

UC Davis (W) BB v. CSUN, 7 p.m.

Friday, Feb. 6 
Golden State Warriors @ Atlanta Hawks,
     4:30 p.m.

CSUEB (M) BB v. Sonoma State, 7:30 p.m.

Cal (W) BB @ Arizona, 5 p.m.

Stanford (W) BB @ Arizona State, 7 p.m.

CSUEB (W) BB v. Sonoma State, 5:30 p.m.

Saturday, Feb. 7 
Golden State Warriors @ New York Knicks,
     4:30 p.m.

Sacramento Kings @ Utah Jazz, 6 p.m.

San Jose Sharks v. Carolina Hurricanes, 7:30 p.m.

San Jose Earthquakes v. Vancouver Whitecaps

     FC, 4 p.m. (Tucson, preseason)

Cal (M) BB v. UCLA, 5 p.m.

Santa Clara (M) BB v. University of Portland,

     5 p.m.

USF (M) BB v. Gonzaga, 8:30 p.m.

Saint Mary's (M) BB v. Pacific, 7 p.m.

San Jose State (M) BB v. Nevada, 3 p.m.

UC Davis (M) BB @ CSUN, 7 p.m.

Sacramento State (M) BB v. Portland State,

     7:05 p.m.

CSUEB (M) BB v. San Francisco State, 7:30 p.m.

Sonoma State (M) BB @ Cal State Monterey Bay,

     7:30 p.m.

Santa Clara (W) BB @ University of Portland,

     2 p.m.

Saint Mary's (W) BB @ Pacific, 2 p.m.

USF (W) BB @ Gonzaga, 2 p.m.

San Jose State (W) BB @ Nevada, 4 p.m.

CSUEB (W) BB v. San Francisco State, 5:30 p.m.

Sonoma State (W) BB @ Cal State Monterey Bay,

     5:30 p.m.

UC Davis (W) BB v. UC Irvine, 2 p.m.

Sacramento State (W) BB @ Portland State,

     7 p.m..

Sunday, Feb. 8 

Sacramento Kings v. Phoenix Suns, 6 p.m.

Stanford (M) BB v. USC, 5:30 p.m.

Cal (W) BB @ Arizona State, 1 p.m.

Stanford (W) BB @ Arizona, 2 p.m

 

Legend

(BB): Basketball
(M): Men
(W): Women

 

Media
Cal BB (M): KGO 810 AM
Cal BB (W): Pac-12 Network
Cal football: KGO 810 AM
Fresno Grizzlies: KYNO 1430  AM
Fresno State football: 940 AM ESPN Radio
Golden State Warriors: KNBR 680 AM
Oakland A's: 95.7 FM The Game
Oakland Raiders: 95.7 FM The Game
Sacramento Kings: KHTK 1140 AM
Sacramento River Cats: Talk 650 AM KSTE 
San Francisco 49ers: KNBR 680/1050 AM, KGO
     810 AM, KSAN 107.7 FM
San Francisco Giants: KNBR 680 AM
San Jose Earthquakes: 1590 KLIV  AM,
      1370 KZSF AM (Spanish)
San Jose Giants: MiLB Gameday Audio
San Jose SaberCats: KNBR 1050 AM
San Jose Sharks, KFOX 98.5 FM San Jose,
       102.1 FM San Francisco
San Jose State football: KLIV 1590 AM
Stanford BB (M): KNBR 1050 AM, TBS (TV)
Stanford BB (W): KZSU 90.1 FM
Stanford football: KNBR 1050 AM
Stockton Ports: KWSX 1280 AM
UC Davis football: KTHK 1140 AM

 

 
  
 

 


"Losing the Super Bowl is worse than death.

You have to get up the next morning."

~George Allen

NFL coach

Pro Football Hall of Fame (2002)

(1918-1990)




For your viewing pleasure


San Jose Sharks - Chicago - 1-31-15

Sharks winger John Scott (No. 20) races ahead of Chicago defenseman Michal Rozsival to chase down a loose puck during San Jose's 2-0 win over the visiting Blackhawks at SAP Center on Saturday night. Scott was a physical force against his former teammates, doling out a team-high six hits during 7:30 of ice time. To view a photo album of the game, visit our Facebook Page and be sure to LIKE us.

Photo by Rich Yee Photography.

 


Kenny Karst - Buster Posey - 2014
San Francisco Giants catcher Buster Posey faces Dodgers  pitcher Zack Greinke last July at AT&T Park. Pitchers and catchers report to Scottsdale, Ariz., on Feb. 18, with the first spring training game scheduled for Mar. 3 versus the Oakland A's.

 


A's Spring Training - 2014
With pitchers and catchers scheduled to report, the feel of baseball is in the air. For spring training the Oakland A's will find themselves in the newly renovated Hohokam Stadium in Mesa, Ariz. The A's open against the San Francisco Giants on Mar. 3 in Mesa.

 


Cal Women's gymnastic team - 1-2015
The No. 17 California Golden Bears  women's gymnastics team is off to its best start in program history with a 195.900 victory in its home opener at a quad meet in Haas Pavilion on Sunday afternoon. Cal is now 10-0 overall and 2-0 in Pac-12 action. To view a photo album of the competition, visit our Facebook Page and be sure
to LIKE us. Photo by Rich Yee Photography.

 


Stanford women swimmers - 1-31-15
The Stanford womens swimming and diving team sent off its seniors with a 182-110 victory over USC on Saturday in the final home meet of the season, winning 13 of the 16 events. "We had some really good performances from our seniors," said head coach Greg Meehan. Above, swimmers catch their breath after the meet before completing several training laps. To view a photo album of the game, visit our Facebook Page and be sure to LIKE us.
Photo by Rich Yee Photography.

 


Tim Brown - Ed Jay
Oakland Raiders wide receiver Tim Brown won election to the Pro Football Hall of Fame and will make plans to visit Canton, Ohio in August. A former Heisman Trophy winner, Brown was a nine-time Pro Bowler, had 100 receiving touchdowns, 1,094 receptions and 14,934 receiving yards. Photo by Ed Jay.

 

Ann Cooke - 2015

 

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"The greatest gap in sports is between the winner and the loser of the Super Bowl. The winner has confetti, parades, rings,

the whole thing. The loser puts his head down and

goes to his house."

~John Madden

NBC Sports press conference, Super Bowl XLIII (2009)

 

SportsPulse
X's and O's billboard
Dave Newhouse - USE

 

 Berkeley Repertory Theatre delivers a hit 

 

Dave Newhouse 

 

The football season ended Sunday with the Super Bowl, but the theater of football, and its most troubling drama, pushes on into the offseason.

 

Deflategate, domestic abuse, and a most denigrating franchise mascot in our nation's capital are topical issues in the National Football League, but they don't compare in importance to brain damage on the gridiron, which sometimes leads to fatal consequences.

 

Berkeley Repertory Theatre deemed this dire subject so worthy that its artistic director, Tony Taccone, commissioned the play X's and O's (A Football Love story) to focus on concussions and the degenerative disease of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, which are tied together.

 

KJ Sanchez and Jenny Mercein wrote the brilliant 80-minute play now appearing at Berkeley Rep through March 1. That both these playwrights are women shouldn't come as a surprise, as they are passionate football fans - Mercein is the daughter of Chuck Mercein, a Green Bay Packers fullback under legendary coach Vince Lombardi.

 

The two women interviewed me and other people, including former players and their families, to get our take on concussions and how the NFL views this increasing problem. But the playwrights ran into a wall in seeking the NFL's response. Phone calls were not returned. Well, the embattled commissioner, Roger Goodell, has a lot on his plate, including the disturbing franchise name Washington Redskins, an epithet he heartily approves of.

 

Sanchez and Mercein did their homework, regardless. The end result is a historic depiction of football, from the first game played in 1869 between Rutgers and Princeton to the present day, with its crisis of brain injuries that have led former players to commit suicide (most recently, 2015 Pro Football Hall of Fame linebacker Junior Seau).

 

Mercein also is an X's and O's cast member, along with five others. The cast also includes former San Francisco 49ers free safety Dwight Hicks, 58, who played on two Super Bowl championship teams during the 1981 and 1984 seasons. The leader of a 49ers secondary known as Dwight Hicks and the Hot Licks, he turned to acting some 20 years ago, and has matured into a worthy thespian.

 

The theme of X's and O's is the conflict between loving football and hating its warts. The dialogue speeds this gripping play along at the the brisk pace of a no-huddle offense. Sanchez and Mercein have done a masterful job of grabbing and holding the audience's attention, which took some doing at Berkeley Rep, a raw rookie when it comes to sports-based productions.

 

This play is hard-hitting throughout, though current NFL players' names aren't mentioned, because as the audience is informed by the Berkeley Rep before the play, "We don't want to be sued." Names of players whose premature deaths are attributed to CTE -- Seau, Terry Long, Mike Webster, et al. -- are spoken in the play without fear of, fingers crossed, legal action.  

 

Non-sports-loving Berkeley Rep season subscribers learn a lot about football, and the dilemma of brain damage. Actress Marilee Talkington, who is legally blind, plays the role of a team physician, lecturing the audience on brain damage by using the metaphor of a yolk inside an egg that repeatedly gets bashed against the shell.

 

X's and O's cast - Newhouse - 1-2015
Left to right, Marilee Talkington, Anthony Holiday, Eddie Ray Jackson, Dwight Hicks, Bill Geisslinger and Jenny Mercein.

 

To further that point, two actors dressed in football gear knock helmets together -- the bane of football's existence these days. Helmets are manufactured so steel-like that when players who weigh anywhere from 200 to 330 pounds meet head-to-head at full speed, concussions are the likely result. Repeat that process often enough, and CTE could be the outcome.  

 

This issue isn't just endemic in the NFL. In pee-wee football, coaches allow their players to collide, helmet to helmet. By the time some of these players may get to the NFL, they've been inviting the risk of CTE all their young lives. The entire sport of football, not just the NFL, is at fault.

 

But it's the NFL we focus on, and even the lady playwrights have been affected adversely. Sanchez: "I can't watch the game in the same way, and I can't see big hits without worrying about who that person's going to be in 20 years." Mercein: "It's definitely changed for me. I do still watch and enjoy the game very much, but once you're invested in the human side of these stories, it's hard to shut that part of your brain off when you watch. It's complicated."

 

That complication is highlighted in a bar scene where Mercein, Eddie Ray Jackson and Anthony Holiday engage in a lively, sometimes hostile, debate about their pro football involvement. Yes, the NFL is a $9 billion industry, but fewer kids are playing football. So what's its future?

 

The players portrayed on a generic-looking stage are compilations of NFL players whom Sanchez and Mercein interviewed. But when actor Bill Geisslinger presents himself as a combative NFL player with an amputated leg, it could only be former Oakland Raiders ironman Jim Otto.

 

The play's highlight for this reviewer was the disturbing yet revealing scene where Mercein, Talkington and Jackson discuss a parent or loved one who developed CTE and transformed from a loving individual into a tormented soul who eventually took his life.

 

Hicks is fortunate to have avoided CTE. "As far as physical other than my brain," he said in a recent interview with the San Francisco Chronicle, "I never got hurt playing professional football - been banged up, been in pain. I never had to miss a game because of injury. [But] I wish people would teach better tackling, get better technology."

 

See X's and O's and you'll feel the same way. If you love football -- or if you don't -- do not miss this play. It's riveting in its message, and it's well-acted, worthy of Broadway. In terms of relevance, it's more important than a Super Bowl. For it's about life and death. 

 

Retired Oakland Tribune columnist Dave Newhouse will have two books published this year: Founding 49ers: The Dark Days before the Dynasty, coming out in late-August, and an as yet untitled Hoosiers-like basketball book,

due out mid-fall.

 

Send us your Memorable Sports Moment or SportsPulse and we will share them with our readers. Write: [email protected].
 
Memorable Sports Moment
Bill Bradley - 2

A consensus first team All-American (1964-1965), Bill Bradley was awarded the James E. Sullivan Award in 1965, presented annually to the United States' top amateur athlete and was the first basketball player to win the honor.

  

Ken Shank at Dillon Gym,

Princeton University

Teammate Rob Brown

 

February 1965. Year after year our coach exhausted himself by needlessly railing against our overconfidence.

  

It was the fourth quarter and we were comfortably ahead before a capacity crowd of 3,000-mostly undergraduates and their dates and an occasional faculty member or chaplain, sitting in the rollout bleachers in Dillon Gymnasium at Princeton University. Coach Butch Van Breda Kolff faced the dilemma of humiliating Dartmouth further by pulling his starters and having the second string run up the score even more.

  

As the situation worsened, our coach looked down the bench, dark hair askew, with his usual wild look no matter if a game was a cliffhanger or a blowout. Forwards Alan Adler and Bill Koch had already been substituted in, and the coach's eyes came to rest on Ken Shank, sitting as if from time immemorial, totally accepting and perhaps a bit melancholy or even bored. (Shank's greatest contribution to the team was playing defense every day against Bradley, because he was one of the tallest and quickest players on the team.)

 
Only one starter was left on the court, and it was our megastar, none other that the best collegiate player of his era, Bill Bradley. Coach motioned to Shank and Shank popped up like a jack-in-the-box, limbered up and, when the buzzer sounded, went on the court and sheepishly tagged Bradley.

  

Bradley came out to a standing ovation. No big deal. We were going to win the Ivies and had a chance in the NCAA tournament. (Princeton would finish in third place, behind UCLA and Michigan.) Ken pranced and hunched over, getting the feel of being on a court during a game.

  

Shank finally got a chance to shoot but missed. We kept getting the ball back, but it didn't take much. There were maybe six minutes left and our team seemed hyper, energetically passing the ball around the perimeter. Shank couldn't help getting it.

  

Boom, Shank was up with a shot as flat as Texas. It caromed around the rim and went through. With about five minutes left, another ball was passed around and ended up with Shank, about 12 feet out. He threw it at the basket. Two more points.  

 

The coach had a way of raising his eyebrows at the unexpected. He turned to assistant coach Artie Hyland, and I caught a glimpse. The look got wilder. Ken Shank was on, although you wouldn't call them clean "net" shots.

  

With three minutes left and Ken at eight points, the stands began to notice. They looked up Ken's number on the program, an exercise largely neglected for three years. It listed Ken as 6 foot 6, and while the defenders around him that day might have been 6 foot 2 or 6 foot 10, it didn't matter, as Shank followed up with two more points and two foul shots. The crowd had caught on and began chanting, "Shank, Shank." Ken's countenance was transformed by a mad smile.

  

And on it went as the clock wound down, and even the coach relaxed. Shank was up to 12 points, all scored in just four and a half minutes. There was a minute left, and finally a switch went on in the coach's mind. He looked frantically down the bench and made eye contact with our star and motioned him in.

  

Bradley got up and crouched in front of the scorer's table for a change of possession, since no one was bothering to foul. Poor Dartmouth would like another way to remember this day. The buzzer sounded and play stopped only because Shank drilled points 13 and 14. Bill came back onto the court, but the chant was only louder: "Shank, Shank, Shank!"  

 

Ken tiptoed along the bench in his distinctive gait, grinning. Someone threw a towel over his shoulders, and he sat down in Bradley's place. There was pandemonium. The crowd, in its mad happiness, had forgotten our star. Even the deans and chaplains were cheering now: 'Shank, Shank, Shank!"

  

Divine justice, a miracle and mischief wrapped up together and tipped over on its ear! Collegiate basketball's best player had to substitute in for his backup. For cause!

  

"Shank, Shank, Shank!" was the chant when the final buzzer sounded, and we departed to the lockers. Ken's grin was enough for both teams.

  

Next Monday afternoon Ken would be out again on the maple floor, a mad whirl-a-gig. But now it would be star Bill Bradley playing close attention to keep the ball from Shank.

  

Rob Brown was a teammate of Ken Shank and Bill Bradley in 1965. He is currently a retired developer living in the Bay Area.

  

Send us your Memorable Sports Moment or SportsPulse and we will share them with our readers. Write: [email protected].
 

There are 370 days left until the Golden Super Bowl at Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara,

on Feb. 7, 2016.   

 

 

 "I have no statistics to prove it, but I'm sure the American workplace will be adversely affected on Monday, the day after Super Bowl XXIV [1990]. The game will be the focus of conversation, and distractions happy and sad will be the order of the day, not to mention millions of hangovers. I wouldn't buy a toaster or a parachute manufactured the day after Super Bowl XXIV. You cannot engender such torrid anticipation for an event so great that it requires Roman numerals as a suffix, then expect there to be no social repercussions at its end."

~Robert Klein

Comedian, singer, actor

 

Arif logo
Multi-Ethnic Sports Hall of Fame 15th annual Bay Area induction ceremony
set  for Feb. 6
 

At its 15th annual Bay Area induction ceremony, the Multi-Ethnic Sports Hall of Fame (MESHOF) will induct Chris Speier, baseball; Tommy Hart, football; Jim Otto, football; coach Darren Arbet, football; Carney Lansford, baseball; coach John Beam, football; and Warren Edmondson, track and field. The event will be held at the Waterfront Hotel, Jack London Square, in Oakland on Feb. 6 from 6 to 10 p.m.

 

MESHOF will also honor the following outstanding community leaders with special awards at the event: Dr. J. Alfred Smith Sr. Humanitarian Award; California Waste Solutions, Sense of Community Award; Oakland Pride, Community Advocate Award; coach Jethro McIntyre, Outstanding Coaching Award; Ron McClain, Community Support Award; and Harper for Kids, Youth Advocate Award.

 

The no-host cocktail hour begins at 6 p.m., followed by dinner at 7p.m. and the ceremony at 8 p.m. Tickets are $100 for dinner and ceremony. Tables of 10 are also available, as are community partner sponsorship opportunities. For tickets and more information, visit afrosportshall.com.

 

2014 NFL cover

 

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