- June Jones is a moron. I detailed Jones' saga a couple of days ago, having the University of Hawaii let his contract as the school's head football coach expire then offer him a new deal while he was being courting by Southern Methodist University to take over their foundering football program. SMU was offering $2 million a year, but Hawaii made a comparable counteroffer and for a brief moment, it appeared that Jones would stay at UH and would get the facilities improvements he wanted for the program there. But no, Jones had to go full-on knucklehead and reverse field, accepting SMU's offer because of "the challenge of rebuilding a tattered football program." AAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!! Wrong answer, June. Southern Methodist is a tattered football program, stumbling to a 1-11 record this season. But you had a big enough challenge at Hawaii, trying to build a perennial mid-major team into an elite national program - and oh yeah, you got to do in in Hawaii. "Where you are now excites me because the only way is up, and I am good at going up," Jones said to crowd at SMU Monday. Jones' decision to leave Hawaii came after an extraordinary bidding war that even involved the governor of Hawaii. "In 30 years representing athletes, I've never seen the emotional reaction from a state like Hawaii," Leigh Steinberg, Jones' agent, said. "There was a flood of e-mails and calls exhorting him to stay." And if he were smart, he would have stayed, Leigh. Hawaii was offering $1.6 million a year, whereas SMU gave Jones $2 million per year. Not a big difference, and not nearly enough to convince most people to leave a tropical paradise. Most 55-year-old dudes are looking to spend more time in a tropical climate, not to leave one. Plus, as I said last week, Hawaii is ten times the job SMU is right now and even if Jones is able to build a winner at SMU, it's still no better of a job than the one he left. Best wishes for success at SMU, June, but I really think you're going to come to regret this one.
- So One Tree Hill is back after a seven-month hiatus, returning tonight in a drastically different form than when we last left it at the end of last season. The show's midseason return might not be as welcome a development as it is with the ongoing writers' strike that has resulted in a total disruption of this TV season and reruns for most of my favorite shows, but we are in that situation and so OTH is a welcome sight right about now.It's always tough when a show returns for a new season because usually things have "happened" between the end of last season and where the show picks up for the new season and those things have to be explained and a lot of the groundwork for the new season needs to be laid out. Thus, it usually takes a few episodes for the season to settle in and get on track. With OTH, that's true on a bigger scale because since the end of last season, the show had leapt ahead in time four years, taking the main characters right past their college years and straight into post-college life. As you might expect, it wasn't the most dynamic, kick-ass episode, but it did do a great job of filling in some of the blanks from the four-year gap in an interesting way. Some of the new stuff you could have learned in advance by watching short spoiler clips on the CW's website, but in case you didn't...most of the gang started this season back in Tree Hill, although life is very different for them. Lucas Scott is now a published author, having written one novel and starting work on a second one. He's also the new head basketball coach at Tree Hill High School, taking over a program that has crumbled in the four years since legendary coach Whitey Durham retired. Assisting him is pal Skills Taylor, who shares an apartment in Tree Hill with Mouth McFadden and Fergie, both old friends from their River Court days. Mouth is trying to find his way in the world of sports broadcasting and starts out as a lackey at a local TV station with a boss who hates him and tries her best to get him to quit. Mouth wants to be a sports anchor more than anything, but clearly he's starting at the bottom and has a long way to go. His boss even goes as far as telling him he doesn't have the looks to be an on-air talent. Also having trouble with looks is Nathan Scott, who we find out became a college basketball star the past four years and was poised to be a top pick in the NBA Draft, headed to Seattle, before a bar fight he couldn't walk away from resulted in him being thrown through a plate-glass window and suffering spinal damage that has left him temporarily paralyzed and ended his basketball career. That's led him to grow a Unabomber-style beard and shaggy 'do, coupled with heavy drinking and a dereliction of his fatherly duties of son Jamie, who is four years old. Wife Hayley is struggling with her alkie, depressed husband and also trying to settle into her new job as, shock, the English teacher at Tree Hill HS. Yes, a teaching job miraculously opened up at her old school, the same on where lifelong friend Lucas is the basketball coach. Her first day goes poorly when a rowdy class led by the school's star basketball player harasses her so much that she runs from the room in tears. Lucas returns the favor to the ass-hat of a player who started the trouble by cutting him from the team, but this is a storyline that will be ongoing this season. Now to the two who made it out....Brooke Davis and Peyton Sawyer, both of whom are out in L.A., chasing their dreams - albeit in much different ways. Brooke has hit the big time, taking her Clothes Over Bros fashion line and turning it into a conglomerate, with a fashion magazine, world-renowned clothing line and appearances on red carpets with star actors. She's jetting around the world, rich and famous.....but not happy. Imagine that, being rich and famous isn't everything she expected it to be. Also dissatisfied with life and with how her dream has turned out is Peyton, whose job at a record label has come to suck royally because she's continually pushed to embrace music as a business and sign and promote acts who suck musically but will sell to the mainstream instead of holding onto her idealism and searching for bands she believes are truly great and have the potential to change kids' lives like music changed hers. She finally snaps and, brace yourself because there's no way you'll see this coming, returns to Tree Hill, where she meets up with Brooke, who is also returning home for a visit. However, the two of them decide that they need to move back home permanently and Brooke amazingly finds a way to run her clothing line from Tree Hill while also using her wealth to help Peyton start her own record label in a perfect empty space Lucas has next door to the Tric club owned by his mom, the same club Peyton helped to start back in high school. Yeah, there are a few too many convenient coincidences here and it does have a hokey, too-good-to-be-true, only-in-TV-land feel, but it could be worse. The next big drama on the horizon is Lucas' romance with his editor Lindsey, which is a major source of trouble for Peyton, who somehow had a falling out with Lucas between graduation and now that led to them breaking up. She claims she knew they weren't meant to be and that's why it ended, but she appears to want Lucas back now, so catfights may ensue. Overall, it was a good night of TV and just something the show had to go through to set up its new landscape and setting. It could be a really good season if it's done well, so here's hoping. The show's new night and time are Tuesday, 8 p.m., so tune in and see for yourself what the new Tree Hill looks like.
- Do Joe Gibbs a favor and don't lump him in with all of the other coaches, both college and pro, who have stepped into new jobs with much fanfare and ended up walking away before they accomplished anything close to what they were expected to do. He's no Nick Saban, who lied to the Miami Dolphins, stole their money by failing badly as a coach and then lied to everyone with the team about his intentions to leave before bailing for the exact job he said he wasn't taking as head coach at the University of Alabama. Nor is he Bobby Petrino, whom the Atlanta Falcons wooed him away from the University of Louisville and paid him massive jack to coach them to three wins before bailing on the team before his first season even ended to go coach at the University of Arkansas. Gibbs came back to the Washington Redskins, a team he helped mold into a Super Bowl champion in the '80s, in the hopes of reviving a franchise that had fallen on hard times. Instead, he posted a 31-36 record, including 1-2 in the playoffs, after emerging from NFL retirement and his NASCAR career to sign a five-year, $27.5 million contract in 2004. I feel confident in saying that those results aren't what he or the Redskins expected, but don't mistake Gibbs' retirement for him quitting because he couldn't get the job done. Gibbs has endured a personal crisis for the past year, with one of his grandsons, Taylor, diagnosed with leukemia last January at age 2. Gibbs frequently talks lovingly about his "grandbabies," and he made an overnight trip to North Carolina on Sunday to be with his family, interrupting the postseason routine of meetings that usually follow the final game of the season. He also led his team through a heartbreaking season in which starting safety Sean Taylor was shot and killed in his Miami home, yet the 'Skins still made the playoffs at 9-7. All that has to take a huge toll on a 67-year-old, so you can't fault Gibbs for walking away. At this stage of his life, he clearly has higher priorities than coaching a football team and he did stay and battle for four years on a five-year contract. Happy trails, Joe, all the best to you and your family.
- I may have to revise my opinion of French President Nicolas Sarkozy, and it has nothing to do with any political decisions or actions he's made or taken of late. Well, I suppose you could call it a policy decision, as long as you consider swapping out your middle-aged wife for a younger, former French supermodel as "policy." It's a damn good policy from where I sit, assuming you can pull that kind of girl and pull off that kind of switch. Sarkozy made the move back in October, when he finalized his divorce from wife Cecilia and was immediately spotted out and about with former supermodel Carla Bruni. The pair dated for a while and Sarkozy proposed recently, presenting Bruni with a heart-shaped diamond engagement ring and setting a February date for the wedding. The president has drawn criticism for flaunting his relationship with Bruni on holiday vacations to Egypt and Jordan, but I always say that if you can pull that kind of talent and want to show it off, fine by me. I'm not so much concerned with Sarkozy's political stances, which have included trying to trim down the country's bureaucracy and reviving a stalled economy as I am curious as to how a guy like him landed a girl like Bruni. I guess it's true, some women do have a thing for men in power. Props on the engagement, Nic, hope you two are happy together.
- Could it be that the writers' strike is finally beginning to crack the united front of studios and networks and that a settlement could be coming? Well, yes on that first part and a big maybe on the second part, because on the heels of late night shows like those hosted by David Letterman and Craig Ferguson striking their own deals with striking writers to come back to work while the strike rages on, United Artists, the studio now run by certified whack-a-doo Tom Cruise and producing partner Paula Wagner, has reached its own deal with writers to allow UA to employ union writers even as the strike rages on. The deal is independent of any agreement the AMPTP (Association of Movie and TV Producers) has with the writers, and it's another sign that there are people (besides fans) who are not happy with the strike and are taking steps to end it. The more side deals like this struck, the more pressure it put on the situation and also the less unified of a front the AMPTP has. It might not be enough to save this TV season, but I'm holding out hope until that becomes official. Normally I'm not a Cruise fan, as severely insane people frighten me, but on this occasion I salute him for his efforts and hope that others will follow his lead.
1 comment:
Carla Bruni Tedeschi is forty.
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