Collin Kottke: All-Around Swell Guy

The Ballad of Sid Hartman: Sadness In The Punching Bag Taking Another Punch

Picture via: http://images.publicradio.org/content/2008/02/11/20080211_sidhartman_33.jpg

Usually when I shake my head at Sid Hartman it’s on Sunday nights during The Sports Show, but we all received a special Sid bit on Thursday. Hartman reported in his Thursday column for the Star Tribune that the University of Minnesota would be building a $70 million practice facility for the Golden Gopher football team. Which would be a pretty big story, except it’s not true.

Minnesota hockey godfather Lou Nanne said during his weekly interview on 1500ESPN that it wasn’t true and Chris Werle, senior associate athletic director at the U, confirmed Nanne’s statement.

I wonder who’s angrier: Sid or the poor guy that has to ghostwrite all of Sid’s columns. Does Sid get the information for his columns and has someone write them? Did Sid totally dream this up? There are a lot of questions.

Getting a report on a building wrong is not the end of the world and reading the comments congratulating Sid on the great scoop and then seeing those people realizing that it had been reported as false later in the day is pretty fun, but it’s sad to see. It’s another punchline to the punching bag that has become Sid Hartman.

Sid Hartman had to be pretty good at this journalism thing at one time, he has a statue outside Target Center for crying out loud, but he hasn’t been for a while now. As a 20-year-old Minnesota sports fan, Sid has always been in my life. Since I’ve been conscious of who Sid Hartman is, so about 10 years, he’s been a laughingstock.

I don’t know if Sid actually wrote the column or even if it is his own information, but it’s just sad to see this happen to the 94-year-old man. It appears Sid is probably on the retirement tour with the estate sale and Sid Hartman Day at Target Field and I wish he’d go out on top, at least the best way he could.

The man was the General Manager of the Minneapolis Lakers when he was 27 in 1947, think about how cool that is. I really wish I wasn’t shaking my head.

I Called Philip Nelson’s Transfer Four Months In Advance

I don’t want to claim that I can see into the future, but I might just be able to see into the future. My future sensing might only apply to Minnesota Golden Gopher football, which is not the best thing to be able to see the future of, but I guess that I’ll take it.

On September 21, 2013 I tweeted the following:

The question on all of our minds now: Where is Phillip Nelson going to transfer to? #Gophers

— Collin Kottke (@CollinKottke) September 21, 2013

I looked up the box score and game story on what game and why I tweeted this. ESPN’s lede paragraph is the exact reason:

Quarterback Mitch Leidner rushed for 151 yards and four touchdowns to lift Minnesota to a 43-24 victory over San Jose State on Saturday.

If Philip Nelson had his phone on the sidelines, I think he probably would have tweeted the same thing.

Nelson announced he would transfer in late January.

Fred Hoiberg Needs to Stay at Iowa State

A hug can mean a million things. The list expanded to a million and one on Sunday when North Carolina coach Roy Williams embraced Iowa State coach Fred Hoiberg signaling the end of the game with the Cyclones of Iowa State advancing to the Sweet 16. The hug told the whole arena and the viewers at home the game was over, not the time running out because the NCAA apparently can’t hire anyone who has ever run a clock before. The clock ran out on North Carolina Sunday, but the advancement of the Cyclones might have again started the clock on their own coach.

A year ago, Fred Hoiberg’s name was quite popular around the state of Minnesota with rumors and hopes of him being Tubby Smith’s replacement at the University of Minnesota. I’m sure that The Mayor’s name will be highlighted once Iowa State’s tournament run ends, but with a different basketball squad in Minneapolis.

It’s more than likely that Rick Adelman will not be coming back as the Minnesota Timberwolves head coach next season. Adelman will be 68 when training camp opens which will follow a third failed attempt at making the playoffs despite having a remarkable Kevin Love healthy for the duration of the season. This leaves a vacant coaching spot on an NBA team that should be in the playoffs given the right circumstances.

Hoiberg will be offered the job. It simply makes no sense not to offer him the job and the Timberwolves would be doing themselves an injustice by not asking the former Wolves player and exec, but Hoiberg needs to stay in Ames. He’s The Mayor for crying out loud.

For those of you that aren’t familiar with Hoiberg, here’s a quick rundown: really good quarterback at Ames High School and turned down the University of Nebraska’s offer of a football scholarship, won the Iowa state high school basketball championship as a senior and was named Iowa’s Mr. Basketball, played basketball at Iowa State and was beloved, played ten years in the NBA but forced to retire due to a heart condition, worked in the front office of the Timberwolves and now is sitting in the Sweet 16 as head coach in his return to Iowa State amidst their third straight NCAA Tournament appearance.

The Mayor is loved in Ames and there’s just no denying that, but he’s also very loved in Minnesota where he was a big part of the last Timberwolves teams that were actually worth a damn. Minnesotans love him so much we really wanted him to be the Gophers coach, but nothing makes the Gopher job better to him than his hometown/alma mater Iowa State. The same should apply for the Timberwolves.

I beg Fred Hoiberg to stay in Ames and coach the Iowa State Cyclones until he can’t coach anymore. There’s something special in being loyal to one team and I believe Fred Hoiberg can be that guy. He’ll never be fired by Iowa State, he’ll have the job as long as he wants and I hope that is a long time.

Loyalty to one team rarely happens anymore, but rarely does one’s town reflect such loyalty back on someone the way it appears that Ames, Iowa does onto its unofficial Mayor in Hoiberg. The Mayor is going to get a lot of calls trying to move him into a bigger pond, but sometimes greatness comes in small packages, kind of like a hug.

The 20th Birthday Poem

I like poetry. Okay, that’s a lie. I like writing poetry, reading it is not my cup of tea. I wrote the following for my friend on her 20th birthday and now you can share it with your loved ones for their special birthday before the one that really matters.

A Very Special 20th Birthday Poem

With every morning a new day it brings

But this day is special, a new year it springs

You’re another year older, another year wiser

Sadly, a year away from a legal Budweiser

Take in the day, give it all that you got

All of your friends will say they love you a lot

Your birthday it is grand and splendor

364 days until there’s booze in a blender

Sit back, relax and the be the star of show

Close your eyes tight and remember the candles’ glow

Congrats on two decades here on Earth

Now save up your money, you know how much alcohol is worth

HAPPY 20th BIRTHDAY!

Love, Collin, PhD (PhD in Poetry)

A Tuesday From Hell: From Phone to Fork

Tuesdays are from Hell or at least one of Hell’s suburbs. I’m not one to cry over spilled milk, frankly, I’m very blessed and have nothing really to complain about, but a very smart woman once told me that we all need to vent sometimes.

It all started with busting my phone. I wake up and I hit snooze about four times, so I’m running a little behind. I typically bring my phone with me in the shower room to use it as a clock to see how much time I have until I have to leave for class. It works, until you drop the phone and it takes a seven foot fall from your outstretched arm to the hard tile floor below.

This kind of thing happens. Charge up the iPad and make it a sub-phone for a couple of days, bite your lip and move on.

After class, I come back to my room and I attempt to print something and my printer suddenly stops mid-job. It’s not out of ink, it’s plugged in on both sides of the equation and it appears that that machine is now dead as well. No power light, just a half-printed underwriting for the radio station sitting in its teeth.

Looking like the day is a little cursed, but whatever, I’m not going to read into it. I’m going to go get my omelet and have a good radio show. Supper is when I knew that is was officially a bad day.

With the omelet, I get a pancake, because when you are given the opportunity to get a pancake, you get a pancake, plus it was National Pancake Day. The omelet was amazing and the pancake was nice and fluffy until three-fourths of the way through and I snapped. Okay, I didn’t snap, but my plastic fork sure did.

It snapped right in half, the head of the fork totally separate from the stem. (I assume there are probably real names for the parts of the fork, but they’re not really that important.) I just sat there for a couple seconds and glared at my decapitated fork and the mostly eaten pancake it was still penetrating.

I look around to see if anyone, preferring an angel or a guy with a fridge full of Mike’s Hard Lemonade, is there to hear my pain, but there’s no one. Like the maple tree my pancake’s syrup is from, I stand alone. But after Tuesday, it felt like I was a maple after a tornado had knocked me down and broken all of my limbs.

You can take my phone and you can take my printer, but take my fork mid-pancake… Well, that’s when I also break.

Here’s to Wednesday and my prayer to just not die.