In recent seasons, the Iowa-Iowa State basketball game has been played on Friday nights.
This year's game isn't on Friday night, and I'm happy.
I'm glad it's being played tonight at Hilton Coliseum in Ames.
It starts at 6:30 and it'll be televised by ESPN2.
Leave Friday night to high school basketball.
Many high schools have a difficult enough time attracting fans, including students, to their games without an Iowa-Iowa State game getting in the way.
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A few days ago, I wrote that I was getting sick of reading the word takeaways in the paper.
Evidently, one or two people at the paper have suddenly decided it's cool term.
Unfortunately, takeaways showed up again in the paper's coverage of the Iowa-Michigan State football game that decided the Big Ten football championship.
Beneath the takeaways headline, was something just as curious.
The paper had a story about the game written by Andy Hamilton that had no Indianapolis dateline.
Which indicated to me that Hamilton wrote the story in Des Moines while watching the game on TV and listening to it on the radio.
Indeed, he included a quote from Ed Podolak, the former standout Hawkeye player who has been a longtime commentator on radio broadcasts of Iowa games.
I doubt people covering the game in the press box at Indianapolis were listening to Podolak's commentary on the Iowa radio network.
I don't know where the quote from Michigan State coach Mark Dantonio came from.
I guess Hamilton will be the successor to Rick Brown [who has taken a buyout] on the Hawkeye sports beat.
Hamilton is no stranger to writing about Iowa athletics.
He covered the Hawkeyes when he worked at the Iowa City Press Citizen, and did it so well that George Wine [now deceased] told me a number of years ago that, at the time, he thought Andy wrote sports stories as well as anyone.
Wine, who was Iowa's sports information director for a quarter-century, was like a lot of us.
He didn't think much of 21st century sportswriting. After he retired, compliments to sportswriters by ol' George were few and far between.
But in his eyes, Hamilton's writing was better than most at the time.
Another curious thing was that Hamilton later left the Press Citizen and moved to the paper here. Both newspapers are owned by the Gannett--a company that has worked hard to earn its horrible reputation.
The fact that Hamilton came to Des Moines cost the hard-working Dan Johnson [also now deceased] his job at the Register.
That's the cut-throat type of business Gannett did, and still does.
Anyway, I am now wondering if bosses at the paper are frothing at the mouth after finding out that Hamilton was able to write a decent story on the Iowa-Michigan State football game by watching it on TV and listening to it on the radio.
For all I know, they may decide to cover all Iowa [and Iowa State] games by watching 'em on TV.
Look at all the money they'd be saving.
No need to fill the gas tank in the company car, no expensive airplane tickets, no meal money, no Motel 6 costs.
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Still on the subject of the paper, there was this headline in the business section:
Clive store to become Cash Saver outlet
The first two paragraphs of the story said:
"For the second time in less than a year, the Price Chopper grocery store in Clive will be re-branded.
"Starting Dec. 17, the store will become a Cash Saver Food Outlet discount supermarket."
My question is this:
Where the hell in Clive, a city of 16,590 residents, is the Price Chopper store that is turning into a Cash Saver store?
There was no address of the store included in the entire story, which was spread out over two pages.
By the way, I think Price Chopper and Cash Saver are both dumb names for grocery stores.
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That's it from me. I hope it's a good game tonight.
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