And I missed it? Sigh. Well, at least I caught up to it, here in Abu Dhabi. Three weeks later. I grew up in Long Beach. I went to Long Beach State. I edited the student newspaper there. And I have been following Long Beach State basketball since I was a sophomore in high school […]

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Mostly, I just wanted to see how many “categories” I could have at the top of this item. Now let’s see if I actually mention something about all of them. Some interesting topics playing out in U.S. sports right now and, really, I’m aware of them. Not everyone back home seems to remember we do, […]

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A few entries ago, I noted that the start of the National Football League season doesn’t really interest me. And I believe a big chunk of the Los Angeles market feels the same way. Saturday, we saw Reasons A and B why L.A. doesn’t need the NFL. USC and UCLA football.

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I’ve been in Paris for almost five weeks now. And not for a single day was I without an Internet hookup. Actually, I spent several hours most of the past 30-some days looking at this computer. Yes, while in Paris. I know that’s ill but it’s the truth. OK, here’s my excuse: I do two […]

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Of all the American sports … the one that really doesn’t translate well outside the country … the one that suffers most, that I miss most in a sort of sneaky, “oh, yeah, I really like that and miss it” sort of way is … College football.

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I rarely comment on items that have appeared in newspapers. I figure you may already have read it and have your own ideas. But … I was struck, a few days ago, by how the same section (Friday) of the same newspaper (the Los Angeles Times) could have one column so spot-on valuable and fun […]

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Gosh, that was ugly. But UCLA has been ugly before, this season. These Bruins never really dominated anyone important, and they never gave a sense of being able to become that team. No one paying any attention to this team ever could have thought they would get to the Final Four for the fourth consecutive […]

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President Obama did an NCAA bracket for ESPN. A bad idea, really. No possible political gain can come from it. Because eventually he’s predicting 64 teams will lose, and there will be fans and players at all those schools who will wonder why the president didn’t have enough faith in them. I imagine this is […]

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The Bruins and Trojans are in, as we knew they would be. UCLA for its body of work and USC for winning the Pac-10 tournament title, which we didn’t quite see coming. Nice. For Los Angeles-area college basketball (which also has Cal State Northridge in the tourney). But don’t expect any L.A. team to last […]

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It will take a while for the surviving media pundits in downtown Los Angeles to notice … but the last serious player in Inland Empire sports journalism — and one of the final 3-4 in the entire Greater L.A. market — has given up its claim of “major league” status in the past 24 hours. […]

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