Friday, January 3rd, 1997

Hokies Land the Next Bryan Jennings

Thursday, the Tech football team received a committment from Brookville's James Lomax, a 6-5, 245-lb tight end. Lomax is ranked 14th in the state by The Roanoke Times, and in the film clips that they showed on the evening news, I could have sworn that I was watching Bryan Jennings. This is a big recruit for the Hokies, and I think we'll see great things from him. He picked the Hokies over Virginia and Wake Forest.

Lomax's committment follows that of 6-6, 235-lb DE Chad Beasley of Gate City, who is ranked 10th in the state by The Roanoke Times and committed to the Hokies a few days ago. Beasley has received raves from those who have seen him play. His successful recruitment comes as no big surprise, because he is the son of former Hokie and Pittsburgh Steeler DL Tom Beasley. Chad was also recruited by Tennessee.


ESPN and ABC Should Just "Get a Room!"

One of the more disgusting things that has happened recently is the incestuous relationship between ESPN and ABC. I'm not sure what the connection is - either ABC owns ESPN now, or Disney already owned ABC and bought ESPN. Whatever, this occurred in the offseason last year, and the event has turned ESPN from a nice, reliable, neutral sports channel into an obnoxious marketing arm for ABC Sports.

I mean, how many promos and previews of the Rose Bowl and Sugar Bowl did we really need? I expect it from ABC, because they're showing the games, but when I tune into ESPN, as I did often the last week, and get absolutely bombarded with Rose Bowl and Sugar Bowl crap, while the Orange and Fiesta Bowls are completely ignored, naturally it ticks me off.

This has been a problem all year long, as ESPN has virtually ignored the Big East, because, you guessed it, the Big East is a CBS conference. It stretched to the point where even the Tech games that were on ESPN or ESPN2 (BC, ECU, and WVU) were ignored by Fowler and company. And the Miami, Syracuse, and UVa games, which were all shown on CBS? Forget it!

I know you've heard me harp about this all year long, but it's not just a Hokie thing. I always liked ESPN. They started out small and built themselves up, always showing a sense of humor (Chris Berman and Keith Olbermann are the best), but now that they promote ABC sporting events 24 hours a day, they're just starting to sicken me.

          

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