Rotten Bolts: One whale of a stinker
MIAMI, Oct. 6 (UNION-TRIBUNE)
To the thousands of fans who chose AC, to leave their chairs empty and not take their Sunday afternoon sauna in Dolphins Stadium, we salute your cool judgment. For the Chargers players and coaches who also declined to attend en masse, we only can ask: What the hell is wrong with you?
Don't look at me. In this one, I'm the choir and you're Martin Luther King. It's the Chargers who need preaching to. Either that, or a pyromaniac should be hired to run through their locker room to light fires beneath their behinds.
More Nick Canepa Columns
Oct. 3 (UNION-TRIBUNE)
Rising MWC belongs in snooty BCS: There really isn't any reason now to call the Bowl Championship Series elitist. Why repeat ourselves? As a toddler, the BCS slurped lucre pabulum with a silver spoon and still haughtily swaggers around with one lodged in its throat.
Oct. 1 (UNION-TRIBUNE)
Plenty of blame to go around: The Padres have pushed their $70 million lemon through the car wash and come clean. They've admitted their jalopy was the product of everyone on their assembly line – with the possible exception of salesmen Henry Paulson and George W. Bush – and that's still to be determined.
Sept. 30 (UNION-TRIBUNE)
GM Smith likes the view quarter-way up mountain: A.J. Smith makes a lot of money doing what he does, but he likes to speak in quarters, and it has nothing to do with coin of the realm. Caesar may have divided Gaul into three parts, but the Chargers' general manager splits an NFL season into four quarters.
OAKLAND, Sept. 29 (UNION-TRIBUNE)
Bolts too good to let motley Raiders hang with them: It's not the same. This graveyard of lost pride and poise no longer could frighten a wide-eyed child. Once, Al Davis, who tempted Adam and Eve with the apple, forced angels to tread here as if the field were mined and covered with rotten eggs.
Sept. 27 (UNION-TRIBUNE)
True craftsman steps down after leaving indelible mark: Tuesday will mark Jerry Magee's final day of work after more than 52 years on our newspaper. We are losing The Magee Touch, and it's one that cannot be replaced, surpassed or even duplicated. There has been but one. There can be only one. Don't even bother trying. His thoughts are unlike our thoughts.
Sept. 25 (UNION-TRIBUNE)
The greatmess of the Raiders: It always seemed as though the inmates in the Oakland Raiders' asylum were running amok. But it was a controlled amok. Now, these guys are bouncing around in silver and black straitjackets. The Greatness of the Raiders has become theater of the absurd.
Sept. 23 (UNION-TRIBUNE)
Something's still amiss with club: Hey, bartender, a little help. Do you see my Chargers glass? It's half-empty. Cut the gabbing and do something about it.
Sept. 22 (UNION-TRIBUNE)
Perhaps a refresher course in sacks education is needed: The NFL is all about quarterbacks. It's about the quarterback getting you and you getting him. He's the focal point, the planet around which the other 21 moons revolve. Left to his own devices, he's going to beat you, and he doesn't have to be Elway, Unitas or Montana. All he needs is a clue.
Sept. 16 (UNION-TRIBUNE)
It's time to leave fine whine behind: This was not Katrina or Ike. Nobody was forced into foreclosure. We weren't running from Chernobyl or Three Mile Island. Japanese planes weren't spotted over Hawaii. The band on the Titanic may have been playing “Nearer, My God to Thee,” but we missed that cruise.
LOS ANGELES, Sept. 14 (UNION-TRIBUNE)
With no miracles, OSU has no shot: As they might say in Dixie, it was just a little ol' football game, except this one was played out by collegiate giants. But USC-Ohio State was not the Second Coming, as billed. The 93,607 faithful that crowded into the Coliseum did not come to be fed by a few loaves and fishes, although maybe the spoiled expected sick to be healed and dead raised.
Sept. 13 (UNION-TRIBUNE)
Don't bet on big changes in '09 Padres: Sandy Alderson isn't Cal Worthington. The Padres' CEO's business may be baseball business, but he doesn't walk fans around Petco Park kicking tires. You buy Alderson's car without a test drive and, after a while, you know if you've got a lemon.
Sept. 10 (UNION-TRIBUNE)
Pro Bowl LB done for year; so deal with it: In this day of Internet groping, which often only leads to more brain flatulence among American sports fans, it's going to happen. Sirens are blaring. The Chargers season has ended.
Sept. 8 (UNION-TRIBUNE)
Everybody's eyes ought to be wide open by now: This was one of those September NFL eye-openers, a mimosa with a gallon of Red Bull for legs, a Bloody Mary with not enough caffeine in its blood. When you get up the following morning after one of these losses, the room still hasn't stopped spinning.
Sept. 6 (UNION-TRIBUNE)
There's a reason it's 'center' stage: What do we know from football centers? If they did one of those old “Do you know me?” American Express Card commercials, they'd have to bend over and look through their legs to be recognized. You just have to wait until they walk by a ways and then turn and stare before you can say, “Oh, yeah, that's who it is.”
Sept. 5 (UNION-TRIBUNE)
Schemmel willing to cut Long more slack: Coaches have the shelf life of Labor Day potato salad left out in a Phoenix backyard. If their pink slips aren't showing, they always seem this far from the hem. Even good coaches know the Turk is going to pay them a visit. It's just a matter of when.
Sept. 3 (UNION-TRIBUNE)
Aztecs may need ears checked after shaking down the thunder: This could be uglier than a blind date in prison. No matter. Waken the echoes, Aztecs football fans. Send the volley cheer on high. Shake down the thunder from the sky.
Sept. 1 (UNION-TRIBUNE)
Cottrell's defense took sweet time to find identity: The Chargers didn't have to begin their 2007 season staggering out 1-3 for the buzzards to swarm. They'd been circling for many months prior to the false start. The naysayers were having a rowdy convention, dropping vitriolic water balloons from hotel windows on team management.
Aug. 31 (UNION-TRIBUNE)
'Cake' tasting quite bitter for beaten Aztecs: Everyone – well, maybe not, if you're a Mitt Romney follower or a Chuck Long disciple – enjoys a good laugh. So, there's nothing wrong with San Diego State getting a good yuk and playing Cal Poly in a football game. If it was OK in 1968, it's all right now.
Aug. 29 (UNION-TRIBUNE)
Nowhere to go but up for bottom-ranked Long: A preseason college football article in Sporting News has gone so far as to rank the top 52 coaches from non-BCS schools. SMU's June Jones is No. 1. San Diego State's Chuck Long? 52. There's a joke in there someplace, maybe that Long ranks 52nd because there isn't a 53.
Aug. 28 (UNION-TRIBUNE)
It's his knee, so it's also his decision: This isn't “Fantastic Voyage,” so I can't shrink and get into Shawne Merriman's body. Nor can he get into mine, which I'm sure would make for a terribly upsetting visit.
Aug. 26 (UNION-TRIBUNE)
For Merriman, lights out now is a bright idea: Shawne Merriman's motor is one of those freak things you find in Popular Mechanics. It never stops. But, if what the Pro Bowl outside linebacker and his disciples say is true – and I'm without X-ray vision and far more Mr. Hyde than Dr. Jekyll – the Chargers' most decorated defender should turn it off and coast into his garage.
DEL MAR, Aug. 25 (UNION-TRIBUNE)
Desperate for stars, racing sabotages itself: OK, so maybe water polo doesn't need a Secretariat. But horse racing could use a Usain Bolt, or at the very least an equine facsimile, maybe with Jamaican breeding.
Aug. 23 (UNION-TRIBUNE)
Bolts on Bolt: Speed's nice, but can he catch?: The 2008 Olympic Games weren't necessary for me to become skeptical of Jamaicans. It's hard not to be, when you and your wife disembark a cruise ship in Ocho Rios and they're trying to peddle you dope on the dock. Happened to us, all right.
Aug. 20 (UNION-TRIBUNE)
Stable team lets Chambers thrive: Unlike baseball teams, some of which harbor no misgivings over unconscionably, inexcusably trading players during the season – even to dreaded, hated intradivision rivals (see Padres, Maddux, Dodgers) – the NFL doesn't work that way. At least not very often.
