For the last few days there's been scads of internet r-mongering regarding DeMatha football coaching legend Bill McGregor allegedly talking with various Catholic schools about making a coaching comeback at a rival school.

The noise started on the message board over at the fab DCSportsfan.com, where the most knowledgable and wackiest prep sports obsessives in the market gather. The site has a real high batting average when it comes to local high school scuttlebutt, so some buffoons took the McGregor rumor and ran with it.

The chatter got loud enough, and football in the Catholic conference is taken seriously enough, that the leader of one of the rival schools came out and addressed the issue very publicly.

St. John's College High School President Jeffrey W. Mancabelli issued the following two-sentence statement today:

"I feel compelled to dispel some web rumors and report that St. John's College High School's Varsity Football Head Coach Joe Patterson is returning next season. Joe and his staff are already working diligently on our goal of the 2012 WCAC Championship."

Mancabelli, unlike most folks spreading the McGregor talk, used his real name while saying the status quoin the football program's not going to be messed with for at least a year.

Will that be enough to quiet the mongerers? Or will they just point out that Mancabelli didn't mention 2013????

Posters there, for example, were predicting Bill McGregor's odd departure last season from DeMatha, where he'd built up one of the premier prep football programs in the entire country, long before it actually happened.

But, again, wild as those "rumors" sounded when they first surfaced, it actually happened.

Last night, the site began teeming with another McGregor bombshell: Rumor Has It now that McGregor is being wooed by St. John's to take over that school's football team.

St. John's was the king of area football a half century ago, but hasn't been competitive in seemingly forever as McGregor's DeMatha and, more recently, Good Counsel developed nationally ranked teams year after year and dominated WCAC, the local Catholic schools conference. McGregor is asssociated with DeMatha football the way Morgan Wootten is with DeMatha basketball.

For McGregor to take over a rival program would be amazing.

But here's why this crazy move could actually take place: It would doubtless take a lot of funds to get McGregor to St. John's...and St. John's has Under Armour's Kevin Plank and former AOL exec Jim Kimsey backing the school and getting involved with athletics. Plank is the guy who rightly or wrongly gets credit for getting Ralph Friedgen bounced and new nameless uniforms for his college alma mater, the University of Maryland.

And last week DC Sports Fan showed Plank giving a pep talk to the St. John's football team before St. John's OT loss to Gonzaga.

McGregor told me after he left the Hyattsville school that he was leaving because he just wanted to take a break from the grind of running an elite program in a super competitive conference. He spent the season in the background as a "consultant" to Baltimore powerhouse Gilman.

Was that one year enough to recharge McGregor's batteries? Would he really take a job that would have him lining up against DeMatha, the school where he became a legend, year after year?

In any case, for anybody who has been following high school sports around here for any length, this is fab stuff!

The adults who run athletics for DC's high schools do the poorest job of running a league that I've ever seen. Nobody comes close.

Forfeits come in bunches in the city's public schools league, DCIAA, and it often sounds like the grownups in charge go out of their way to find reasons NOT to let the kids play ball.

One example: Coolidge administrators backed out of a game with Bishop McNamara a few weeks ago claiming they couldn't find security guards to work the game. They made this declaration at 11 a.m., meaning they all gave up trying to get the game in at least eight hours before kickoff.

A week earlier the same Coolidge officials said they couldn't play against Carroll because of an earthquake that took place three and a half days before the kickoff.

Nobody else in the region used the earthquake as an excuse for not showing up.

How messed up is that? I  grew up in Falls Church, about six miles from the D.C. border. I'm certain that out there any grownups who showed just once the level of incompetence and disregard for the kids that DCIAA officials show week after week, year after year, would be publicly humiliated and unemployed.

Why o why do D.C. residents let this city's kids get treated like crap?

More DCIAA buffoonery will be on display tonight, when Dunbar plays DeMatha. League administrators have set up a forfeit-friendly situation by reinstating a rule that allows fifth-year seniors to play sports in DCIAA. That rule was carelessly inserted by Michelle Rhee early in her tenure as DCPS chancellor.

I know of no other public school league in the country that allows fifth-year seniors, so-called "redshirts," to play high school ball.

Every athletic league in this area, including the WCAC, DeMatha's league, prohibits its member schools from scheduling games with teams that allow fifth-year players. Rhee said she would remove the rule after finding out it made DCIAA schools persona non-grata with outside confederations. She never followed through.

One DeMatha official I spoke with said WCAC leaders were unaware that DCIAA allowed redshirts until it was too late to do anything about the Dunbar game.

"We thought we were playing a team that was adhering to a four-year policy," a DeMatha official tells me. "We thought the rule allowing five-year guys was gone. But I think [WCAC officials] understand the people at DCIAA are having a hard enough time walking and chewing gum these days, or just chewing gum. So, yes, even though when we agreed to play we thought it was a team that played only four-year guys, we did agree to play, and we know the teams want to play, so we're not going to not play. We'll play the game."

Unless Dunbar can' t get security guards, that is.

Word out of Hyattsville is that Bill McGregor will announce he's quitting as DeMatha's head football coach today.

Such a move has been rumored for more than a week, but McGregor's exodus, if that indeed happens, will come as huge news in the local and even national high school football realm.

McGregor has posted a 280-39-3 record in his 29 years as DeMatha's head coach, and, according to his own web site, "over 350" of his players have gotten full football scholarships just since 1991.

Last season, McGregor had more of his ex-players active in the NFL (7) than any prep coach in the entire country.

But the job has gotten tougher in recent years, as the gridiron rivalry between DeMatha and Good Counsel took off and took on as many soap-opera-ish story lines as Friday Night Lights. (A coach character on the NBC series was, in fact, named "Coach McGregor.")

The rivalry's ridiculousness peaked with accusations leveled on local football message boards (but, much like this blog post, backed by no hard evidence) that a WCAC championship game between DeMatha and Good Counsel was fixed.

McGregor also had to live through a nauseating NCAA Signing Day recently, as the Stags' top prospect, Cyrus Kouandjio, committed to Auburn as the national television cameras rolled, then withdrew that committment and signed with Alabama.

No word yet on a McGregor replacement. If, that is, a replacement is necessary.

McGregor has not yet responded to a message left at his DeMatha office.

DeMatha

That doesn't happen in the real world. DeMatha's been the king of local prep basketball for half a century. So some local hoopheads couldn't get their, well, hoopheads around the Stags' 75-25 loss to St. Anthony's of Jersey City, N.J., in a nationally televised game called the HoopHall Classic, held each year in Springfield, Mass., site of the Basketball Hall of Fame.

Sure, St. Anthony's was ranked #4 in the country going into the game. But still.

The loss inspired rage and disbelief among members of the area's basketball community at the time, some of which was chronicled in this very space. On the message board at dcsportsfan.com, where the defeat was dubbed "The HoopHall Massacre," a poster going by the name BigDrop,who says he's been watching DeMatha since 1962, was among those left looking up waiting for the sky to fall:

After a FIFTY POINT LOSS-the worst loss I have ever seen a DeMatha team associated with (Almost DOUBLE the worst loss since '62)-I believe this game has done more to embarass the school, more to impact the program...than any game I have seen in almost a half century.

Careers are ended with losses like this.  New field houses have empty seats.  Hyattsville, the WCAC and DC ball are going to be different tomorrow morning.

And, it was on national television.

After losing by fifty a victory over Gonzaga won't mean the same tomorrow.

And:

I am not suggesting that [DeMatha Coach] Mike Jones should leave.  I am not. I AM suggesting that this was a seminal game that marks a turning point in the DM program.

Just as the Power Memorial game was a turning point so is this.  It will be more difficult to recruit athletes, more difficult to hold onto them.

Well, hindsight never needs Lasik Surgery. And now that the basketball season ended with DeMatha winning the Alhambra Catholic Invitational Tournament over the weekend (Gonzaga finished 3rd) to go with the Stags' recent win over Gonzaga in the WCAC final and last week's win over Roosevelt in the City Title game, it looks like Big Drop was a little off: Coach Jones' career won't end, good ballers will still sign with DeMatha, and fans will still show up at the DeMatha field house.

Today, WCAC and DC ball look pretty much the same as they did before the HoopHall Massacre.

DeMatha finishes on top. Again.

The game was held in Springfield, Mass., site of the Basketball Hall of Fame. St. Anthony's scored the first 18 points and ran off to a 75-25 win.

St. Anthony's ain't chopped liver: The team is coached by prep legend Bob Hurley, and was ranked #4 in the country going into the game. But DeMatha is, well, something different.

The Hyattsville school has long been the best D.C. basketball has to offer, and D.C. basketball has long held itself as the best basketball that basketball has to offer. DeMatha doesn't lose by 50. Can't happen.

But, now it has.

So suffering such a whopping defeat on such a big stage — the game was part of a basketball festival, the HoopHall Classic, held in Springfield, Mass., and sponsored by the Basketball Hall of Fame, and was televised nationally by ESPN — has caused the area's hoops obsessives to look for larger meaning.

Over at dcsportsfan.com, a favored gathering spot for those types, the melodrama flows.

Take the summaries offered by a poster on the site's forum going by the name BigDrop, who says he's been watching DeMatha since 1962.

BigDrop still cherishes memories such as the momentous Stags victory over Power Memorial and Lew Alcindor in 1965, and Adrian Dantley's "40-plus game" winning streak in the early 1970s.

But for all the decades of joy DeMatha basketball's given him, Big Drop's crushed by Saturday's performance, already dubbed "The HoopHall Massacre." To wit, his post-loss post:

After a FIFTY POINT LOSS-the worst loss I have ever seen a DeMatha team associated with (Almost DOUBLE the worst loss since '62)-I believe this game has done more to embarass the school, more to impact the program...than any game I have seen in almost a half century.

Careers are ended with losses like this.  New field houses have empty seats.  Hyattsville, the WCAC and DC ball are going to be different tomorrow morning.

And, it was on national television.

After losing by fifty a victory over Gonzaga won't mean the same tomorrow.

And later:

I am not suggesting that [DeMatha Coach] Mike Jones should leave.  I am not. I AM suggesting that this was a seminal game that marks a turning point in the DM program.

Just as the Power Memorial game was a turning point so is this.  It will be more difficult to recruit athletes, more difficult to hold onto them.

Wowie. Call me naive, but I still gotta figure that despite the creep of national television and the onslaught of national tournaments, high school basketball remains a local endeavor.

So if DeMatha wins yet another City Title — and no matter what happened this weekend, the Stags remain the favorite — by March the Massacre will be a distant memory around here.

To everybody but BigDrop and his pals, that is.

Here at Cheap Seats, both the weekly and daily incarnations, we've done what we can to start a fire chronicle what's going on between the area's top two football programs, including even mentioning the rumors that a matchup between the teams last year was fixed.

A high school football game, fixed? Awesome!

Then last week, the Washington Post ran a story by high school sports guru Josh Barr about how the feud picked up ever since the 2009 WCAC championship game. That contest was won by Good Counsel, giving the Olney school the first conference title in its history, and ending a five-year losing streak to perennial Hyattsville powerhouse Dematha in the championship game.

Some DeMatha supporters didn't like learning after the game that a DeMatha coach had for years also served as a personal trainer to the Good Counsel quarterback. And they're not keeping their feelings to themselves.

Barr's article prompted somebody to run to the Post's comments section and accuse an unnamed party on the DeMatha side of being on the take during last year's WCAC championship game. Here's the feisty comment (for reasons of queasiness, I edited out the name of the Good Counsel quarterback and the Post commenter):

This story makes it sound like the issue is that one of our coaches helped improve the skills of an opposing player. I coach the defensive line at DeMatha and I can safely say that the anger and outrage on the coaching staff is not because we begrudge [the Good Counsel QB] his improved play or Good Counsel its championship. That would show a lack of character and even more than all of our championships, our coaches value our integrity as men of character. What breaks my heart and the hearts of our seniors and their parents is not losing. It is the knowledge that with one exception, we are certain that everyone associated with DeMatha gave 100% that day and the nagging question as to whether one of us gave something less than that.

I believe the commenter's point was: He thinks a high school football game was fixed. Awesome!

That comment is still visible on the Post's web site. Not all the discussions about Good Counsel/DeMatha, however, have been allowed to linger.

Over at dcsportsfan.com, the clearinghouse for bitching about area prep school sports, the discussion got so personal and so ugly, not to mention legally dubious, that the site manager has yanked the Good Counsel/DeMatha threads from its message boards. This site's fabulousness comes in its hyping of schoolboy rivalries. Yet editor-in-chief Todd Bradley tells me via email that he pulled the plug on these particular discussions after getting "lots of complaints from both sides" about the direction of the discourse.

Last words: Friday, October 8, 2010. DeMatha at Good Counsel.

I've been intrigued by Dancel's gridiron giving penchant ever since Good Counsel changed the name of its home stadium to Dancel Field. I told Bernie Dancel he reminded me of Joe McCoy, a character in "Friday Night Lights" who's spent tons of his own money on the Dillon Panthers. And Dancel, like McCoy, happens to be the father of a star quarterback: Zach Dancel of Good Counsel is ranked as the top rated QB in the state of Maryland for the class of 2011, while J.D. McCoy (pictured here) is the blue-chip prospect for the Panthers.

I didn't have room in the column to go over all the local references that have shown up on "Friday Night Lights" since the show debuted on NBC. The Panthers' wild and crazy fullback in the early days of the program was named "Riggins," and clearly modeled after John Riggins of the Redskins. And when Riggins puts together a highlight reel to send to college scouts, it includes a clip of him bowling over an opposing safety downfield, and he and his buddies and his buddies agree it looked like "Brandon Jacobs running over Laron Landry." And then there's Coach McGregor, a character billed as a high school coaching legend while he served as Coach Taylor's brief replacement at Dillon a couple season ago; around here, we've got DeMatha's Bill McGregor, who has long been ranked among the best prep coaches in the game. One sign of the real McGregor's standing: Nine of his former players at DeMatha were on NFL rosters last season, something no other high school coach or team in the country could claim. The Riggins, Landry and McGregor similarities aren't an accident: "Friday Night Lights" executive producer Peter Berg is pals with Dan Snyder, and sits in the Redskins owner's box at FedExField on game days for years.

Any relations between the Dancels and McCoys, however, are coincidental. The McCoy story line already appeared onscreen before Zach Dancel threw a pass for Good Counsel.

I also didn't have enough column inches to get too much into how heated the Good Counsel/DeMatha rivalry has gotten since Zach Dancel led the Olney school to its first WCAC football title last season, capped by Good Counsel's 14-7 win over DeMatha in the conference championship. What a drama!

DeMatha backers, who are only used to finishing seasons with titles, were crushed to find out after the game that Zach Dancel had been getting personal quarterback training from Chris Baucia, DeMatha’s longtime offensive coordinator, who runs a side business with football camps and one-on-one tutelage of QBs. 'Course, Baucia had also been teaching kids from schools all over the area. But the rancor was such that Baucia, as I reported in the column, was banned by the school from helping Dancel or any QB from another WCAC school. Applications to the recent summer camps run by Baucia's training school, called the QB Factory, included the following disclaimer: “No Player may be accepted or attend this program if they attend a WCAC Private School. DeMatha Catholic HS has deemed this a conflict of Interest and will not allow Coach Baucia to train a player that attends a WCAC high school.” Among the things I didn't get into, however, is that since the loss to Good Counsel, DeMatha's followers have come up with all kinds of theories on why they didn't come out on top this time. Everything is on the table. My favorite rumor is that the WCAC title game was fixed. Yup, some Stags fans are actually convinced that money exchanged hands and caused their team to not have a fair chance at beating Good Counsel on that November day in Annapolis.

Wowie! I've been a big high school football fan for a long time, and I've never heard anything quite like that before; "Friday Night Lights" writers have never concocted a story line so wacky as a fixed high school football game. Then again, Good Counsel and DeMatha now play high school football at a level that I know very little about. Who needs NBC's fictional football show when we've got this kind of theater being played out on fields in our own backyard?

The next episode of the Good Counsel/DeMatha football rivalry/soap opera comes on Friday, October 8, under the lights at...Dancel Field.

"An overcast Sunday morning brought surprises to the Southwest Fish Market which was flooded by high water on the Washington Channel today. The roadway on East Potomac Park/Hains Point was also partially flooded. Workers at the market did their best to install temporary wooded paths to the market stalls, which were still open and filled with seafood. By early afternoon, the water had retreated, and it was business as usual at the market."

The AP reports "soggy" conditions elsewhere in the northeast.

After the jump: hoops news, etc.

Big local hoops news. The Hoyas earned the 3rd seed in the midwest region and will face Ohio in the first round. The team got a raw deal having to play in the midwest as they face the most stacked region in the tournament with Kansas, the number one overall seed, in that region along with the Terps (the fourth seed), Michigan State, Tennessee and Ohio State. The Hoyas should have gotten a two seed in the east region!!!

Someone please explain to me how Duke ended up a No. 1 seed in the tournament.

In other hoops news, DeMatha beat Ballou in the "Abe Pollin City Title Game."

And finally, Howard Kurtz made an ass of himself on CNN.

Adam Dantus, general manager of the Premier Basketball League squad, says Hailey had a chronic kidney condition and received regular dialysis treatments. He had a dialysis session scheduled for Friday, but put it off for a day to be with the team as it traveled home from a loss Thursday in Rochester. He never made the rescheduled appointment.

"He ran practice here from 9 to 11 on Friday night," Dantus says. "He thought he was coming down with a cold, but went back to the hotel. I started getting calls at 9 in the morning. I only knew him a week, but, man, he was a great guy. Devoted."

So, after just seven games in their first season, the GreenHawks will now be hiring their fourth head coach. Ryan Krueger, who was the first coach hired by the expansion franchise, left during the preseason for a college job. Rob Spon, a minor league basketball veteran, replaced Kreuger but was dumped after going 1-4 to start the year. Enter Hailey, another well-traveled minor leaguer with short stints — every minor league coaching stint is short — all over the place. Among the teams you never heard of formerly coached by Hailey: the Montreal Dragons, Saskatchewan Hawks,Vancouver Nighthawks, Niagara DareDevils, Tijuana Diablos, Calgary Drillers and Los Angeles Push.

Hailey, who as a teenager set the national prep high jump record at 7' 1" in 1968, went 1-1 in his last coaching gig.

Hours after Hailey's death, the GreenHawks were scheduled to host the Vermont FrostHeaves, a squad made famous by founder/author Alexander Wolff. But that game was postponed, officially because of snow.

The next new coach of the now 2-5 team has not yet been announced. "I'm talking to three people today," says Dantus. "I'll make a decision by three o'clock."

***

I was so wowed by a UDC men's room that I went back with a camera so I could share its majesty with the world.

Shortly after I posted my wows, I learned that I'm hardly the first person to walk away dazed after hitting the head at the Harvard of the West Side of the Middle of the 4200 Block of Connecticut Avenue NW.

(AFTER THE JUMP: Who first blew the lid off the UDC bathroom story? More Potomac swimming? Isn't that where you find intersexual smallmouth bass? DeMatha plays the wrong St. Anthony's? How much would you pay for the Pontiac Silverdome? Wasn't that where King Kong Bundy broke Little Beaver's back? How much would you not pay for a Dan Snyder autograph?)

Turns out that nearly three years ago, before going on to greater greatness at Huffington Post, City Paper's own Arthur Delaney felt a similar sense of wonderment in a UDC restroom, which he described in this very forum as "fit for the Queen."

You get the collar, Art.

***

Another day to swim in the Potomac River! Registration opens today for the inaugural Washington, D.C. Triathlon, scheduled for June 20. The new race is put on by the same folks who produce the Nation's Triathlon. Chuck Brodsky, founder of both, put in a big plug for the city's most powerful triathlete in announcing the event.

“We are incredibly pleased to bring a second triathlon to our city," Brodsky said, "which not only boasts the nation’s top triathlete Mayor but also features two unparalleled courses that offer swimming, biking and running tours of DC’s most spectacular monuments and national treasures.  No where else in the world can competitors trace the footsteps of America’s history while competing alongside the nation’s best.”

Absent triathlons, it's still illegal to swim in the Potomac, which has been famously polluted since the 19th century — first with pig parts, later with industrial waste. Brodsky pushed for years before getting a one-day exemption on the swimming ban so he could hold the Nation's Triathlon.

After swimmers returned to the river for the 2008 triathlon, I called Rita Colwell, a former director of the National Science Foundation and a person who had been studying the Potomac for decades, to ask her feelings on whether it should be reopened for recreational purposes. Colwell was appalled that anybody would jump in a body of water whose name so often appeared alongside references to "fecal matter" and "intersexual smallmouth bass."

“When I heard that they were swimming down by the Memorial Bridge, my first reaction was: You wouldn’t get me in there!” Colwell told me.

But, for folks with stronger constitutions, register for the new race at www.DCTri.com.

***

DeMatha was the top ranked team in town at the end of last week. A lot has changed. A night after losing to Gonzaga in OT at AU, DeMatha lost by two points to a basketball factory school from up north: St. Anthony's, the New Jersey squad usually described as being "coached by Bobby Hurley's dad."

'Course, this wasn't the DeMatha/St. Anthony's matchup that local prep hoops crazies coveted four decades ago, back when Stags' coach Morgan Wootten and Tonies' boss John Thompson had the best programs in the area and flat-out hated each other. For years, both coaches claimed the other coach was ducking his team. The closest the matter ever came to getting settled was when a matchup was scheduled in June 1970 for an outdoor court in the Jelleff Summer League. Somewhere between 500 and 5,000 people showed up, depending on who you believe, but Thompson Punk'd 'em all by leaving his real players off the court and sending in a bunch of non-playing students to face DeMatha's powerhouse squad. Final score: DeMatha 108, St. Anthony’s 26.

Because of Thompson's antics, that night at Jelleff is referred to as the The Greatest Game Never Played. And folks associated with both programs haven't been allowed to forget it. The joke around DeMatha circles last week, one even Morgan Wootten was heard telling people, was: "We're finally playing St. Anthony's, but we had to go to New Jersey to do it."

***

Saturday's Washington Post had two stories that paint Maryland as open-minded about drugs. Marcus Curry, a Navy football star, remains on the squad even after getting caught with pot in his system. Curry says whatever made his pee pee dirty came from a cigar he smoked. Smoking a pot-free cigar seems dumber than a joint in 2010, doesn't it? The second story was from Andrew Beyer, about trainer Kirk Ziadie, who was banished from Florida tracks this winter amid scads of drug accusations, only to be welcomed to Laurel Park with his large stable of horses. I bet Beyer's been betting 'em.

***

Amazing story in today's Washington Post about the Pontiac Silverdome. The city of Pontiac just sold the building and 127 surrounding acres for $583,000 at auction. For most sports fans, the building is best remembered for hosting Wrestlemania III in 1987. About 93,173 folks, the biggest crowd ever to see an indoor sporting event, showed up to witness 400-pounder-or-so King Kong Bundy break midget legend Little Beaver's back with a body slam.   (Here's Jesse the Body Ventura's call: "Smash him, Bundy!", plus Bob Uecker telling the audience, "Little Beaver just gave Bundy a shot in the boiler!")

But $583,000 for the 80,300-seater? Remind me not to hire a real estate agent or auctioneer from Pontiac.

***

Speaking of auctions for items the public doesn't want: eBay has an autographed photo of Dan Snyder for just $79.99. An auction of what looks like the exact same photo and signature just got zero bids on the site, even with an opening of just $3.95.

***

Story tips? Wanna Play the Feud? Tube amps for sale? Send to: cheapseats@washingtoncitypaper.com

That's a pair of slippery plastic pieces you strap to the bottom of your shoes like skates and slide around the house in. The spots for these carpet skates run every few minutes on the over-the-air Channel 66.2, a QUBO network affiliate out of Manassas (but get-able to cable-free households in downtown DC with mere rabbit ears).

The tag line: "More fun than socks on a polished wood floor!"

I mean, childhood obesity has to be dealt with, but this is ridiculous. How Fun Slides haven't been parented or lawyered out of existence amazes me.

You can get little Johnny a pair of Fun Slides for just $19.95 plus shipping. But wait! With each purchase you'll get a second order free, plus an instructional DVD with "bonus footage of pro and semi-pro fun sliders getting extreme!"

According to the ad copy, unsafe as they surely are, Fun Slides won the "National Parenting Center's seal of approval" and were named to Dr. Toy's 10 Best Active Products list. (I'm guessing this Dr. Toy would give his blessing to a box of rusty nails so long as the check clears, and that Dr Toy's malpractice insurance premiums are through the roof. And before you let your offspring strap on some Fun Sliders, you might want to inquire where Dr. Toy went to med school.)

I'm not saying I've seen these commercials too many times. But for weeks now I've had this incredible urge to get extreme with a semi-pro Fun Slider. But not a pro.

(AFTER THE JUMP: No Army, but the EagleBank Bowl can still get Bill Cosby? And there's a party? But is it a Gary Clark party? DC RollerGirls lose their voice? DC Divas will sell you a season ticket for $40? Are you listening, Santa? Tiger Woods finally gets caught up in steroids scandal, and brings in that overage, overbuilt swimmer lady with him? Open Letter Tracker™ turns its sights on City Desk?)

***

So the EagleBank Bowl didn't get their men. Army, the squad organizers were hoping to land, lost again to Navy over the weekend to finish 5-7, or one win fewer than the six required for bowl eligibility. So in steps UCLA (6-6) to face Temple (9-3). Temple should be a big draw, having not made a bowl appearance in 30 years.

Call me Nostradoofus: I predict that the day before the bowl, Bill Cosby will be in town doing interviews about the game from Ben's Chili Bowl while wearing a maroon Temple sweatshirt.

On Dec. 29, the day of the game, there'll be a big tailgate party on the RFK Stadium/DC Armory grounds, with buffets and beer and video game contests. So, now that I think about it, things are playing out exactly like Gary Clark said they would. Sort of.

Maybe he's Nostradoofus.

***

Skaters, Cont.: The DC Rollergirls have announced that Derby Diamond Dave, the only P.A. announcer the squad has ever had, will call it quits after this Saturday's Roller Derby Doubleheader at the D.C. Armory.

I've got emails into the team to find out why DDD or anybody would let go of that gig. (Reminds me of the circus joke with the "What? And give up show biz?" punchline.)

The Rollergirls don't get the media coverage of, say, the Redskins, but they have had an influence around town: The other day I saw a gang of kids skating down the street in Petworth wearing old-school side-by-side wheels instead of in-line skates. I hadn't seen that in decades. "Gotta be roller derby!" I said. I believe that!

***

Sticking with girls who don't get enough attention: The DC Divas have announced their 2010 schedule and put tickets on sale just in time for Santa.

The season opens at home April 10 vs. Baltimore. For folks looking for ways to spend the money they will no longer be spending on Redskins season tickets (and who didn't find all the answers in my first charticle), a general admission season pass to all Divas home games will cost you $40, or about as much as you'd pay to park once at Dan Snyder's adjacent stadium on a fall Sunday.

***

The Redskins want Charley Weis?

Well, an unsourced Tweet's good enough to get the ball rolling on a story these days. We've already been through the Skins Want Jon Gruden! chapter, which sounded like hokum from the start but probably helped Gruden get his ESPN extension and more money. And Mike Shanahan's name keeps coming up.

But here at Cheap Seats Daily, we still say Marty Schottenheimers' the only guy who can save Dan Snyder this time around.

Unless Jim Zorn wins out. Boy, would that make things interesting.

***

He who wins last ranks highest. Good Counsel and DeMatha had the same records overall (13-1) and against each other (1-1) this season. DeMatha won the regular season matchup. But GC won the game that counted most, the WCAC Championship, and so takes the top ranking in the Washington Post's final Top 20 football poll.

Interesting tidbit in the story: Good Counsel has lost only three of its last 32 games, all to DeMatha.

Sad tidbit: Another year goes by and not a single D.C. school finishes in the Top 20.

***

It was only a matter of time before the Tiger Woods tale brought out the steroid rumors. From the New York Times:

A Canadian doctor who has treated many N.F.L. players as well as Olympic medalists like Donovan Bailey and the world’s top golfer, Tiger Woods, is under criminal investigation in the United States. He is suspected of providing athletes with performance-enhancing drugs, according to several people who have been briefed on the investigation.

The F.B.I. investigation of Dr. Anthony Galea, a sports medicine specialist who has treated hundreds of professional athletes across many sports, follows his arrest on Oct. 15 in Toronto by the Canadian police. Human growth hormone and Actovegin, a drug extracted from calf’s blood, were found in his medical bag at the United States-Canada border in late September. Using, selling or importing Actovegin is illegal in the United States...

Dr. Galea said Mr. Woods was referred to him by the golfer’s agents at Cleveland-based International Management Group, who were alarmed at the slow pace of Mr. Woods’s rehabilitation after knee surgery in June 2008. The doctor said he flew to Orlando, Fla., at least four times to give Mr. Woods the platelet therapy at his home in Windemere, Fla., in February and March of this year.

When asked for comment about Mr. Woods’s involvement with Dr. Galea, Mark Steinberg, of I.M.G., responded in an e-mail message: “I would really ask that you guys don’t write this? If Tiger is NOT implicated, and won’t be, let’s please give the kid a break.”

Guess the kid's not getting any breaks. I can't believe it took so long for that geezer swimmer lady built like Madonis to be outted.

***

More fallout from Tiger's saga: The outbreak of open letters, a scourge followed obsessively by Cheap Seats Daily since the Woods saga broke, has officially gotten outta control.

Why is it now official? Well, unless I'm mistaken, an "Open Letter to Joe Lieberman" appeared in this very forum earlier this morning.

(BTW: According to Cheap Seats Daily's newfangled and highest-tech feature, Open Letter Tracker™, "Open Letter to Joe Lieberman" gets 88,100 Google hits. That's about 81,000 more hits than "Open Letter to Jesus.")

***

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The Washington Times headline writer assumes everybody knows who the Pudge in question is. The Nats' new Pudge, AKA Ivan Rodriguez, no longer wears the nickname real well.

First of all, he's 38 years old, and "Pudge" is one of those handles that doesn't age with grace, unlike, say, "The Splendid Splinter."

Also, Pudge Rodriguez is much skinnier than he used to be back when he hit a lot of homers and there were all sorts of steroid rumors about him.

One of the most lovable things about the loser Nats teams of recent years is how many fat guys they've had on the roster, among them Ronnie Belliard, Cristian Guzman, and, of course, Dimitri "Big Waist of Talent" Young. I hope Rodriguez fattens up again when he gets here.

By any means necessary.

(AFTER THE JUMP: Caron Butler brings huge local hoops rivals to same gym? You're still trying to promote DeMatha/Montrose Christian like it's DeMatha/St. Anthony's? 9-7 used to win you an NCAA Championship? Open Letter Tracking Service™ debuts?)

***

Big and interesting doubleheader tomorrow night at Coolidge, and one that should stoke the hottest rivalry on the DC boys hoops scene. The 3rd Annual Caron Butler High School Basketball Classic will have Montrose Christian vs. Roosevelt, followed by DeMatha vs. Coolidge.

The games should show how big the talent gap is this season between the DC public school teams and those from the private schools. Expect some blowouts: Currently, DeMatha of Hyattsville is ranked 8th in the country by MaxPreps; Montrose Christian, in Rockville, is ranked 9th by the same service.

Neither Coolidge nor Montrose Roosevelt even show up in the DC Metro polls.

The drama off the court will be as intense as that on the hardwood. Local prep basketball fans have been itching for Montrose and DeMatha to face each other for years.

But, as the Washington Post wrote up last week, the teams won't play, with Montrose coach Stu Vetter and DeMatha's Mike Jones both blaming the other program for preventing the matchup from taking place.

For now, they'll have to settle for them simply sharing the same gym on the same night. Look for both coaches to be pressed about the rivalry. Proceeds from the night will be divided among participating schools. Imagine how big the kitty would be if DeMatha and Montrose were going at it.

Pacquiao and Mayweather are finally going to get in the ring. So let's get it on, DeMatha and Montrose!

If the games themselves ain't enough of a draw, the Butler connection should bring in a crowd. According to promotional materials, Butler will make sure that fans who bring canned goods to the event get a certificate good for tickets to a Wizards game.

Probably a game against the Memphis Grizzlies, but still...

***

Speaking of another Butler: Butler, the university, is in town NYC tonight to play the Hoyas, so the Washington Post gives us a big feature on the Indiana school.

At least, I think Butler's an Indiana school. I can't find where the school's located anywhere in the story.

Anyway, the coolest part of the package comes in the photo on the front page of the Sports section. Three Butler players are shown sitting beneath the banners that hang in the school's antique field house. One says "National Champions Men's Basketball 1924." The team's record, also on the banner: 9-7. People talk about today's NFL having parity? Nah. Back in 1924, the NCAA had PARITY!

***

I now have an outta-control fetish with "Open Letters" written to big names. It was inspired by all the "Open Letters to Tiger Woods." If my fetish gets any more outta control, I'll probably run into Tiger in rehab! (With every passing minutes, I'm more convinced of my prediction that he's going to sit out the Masters to pay penance!) So, today Cheap Seats Daily publishes the first installment of the new Open Letter Tracking Service™, in which we reveal how many Google hits open letters to random celebrities get. Play this at home!

"Open Letter to...": (Number of hits)

"...Joe Gibbs": 3,210 hits.

"...Michael Vick": 17,000

"...Terrell Owens": 20,500

"...Joe Biden": 121,000

"...President Obama": 1.5 million

"...Rush Limbaugh": 281,000"

"...the Jonas Brothers": 254,000

"... Joe Jonas" (my least favorite Jonas Brother): Four hits.

"...Nick Jonas" (everybody's fave): Eight

"...Jesus": 8930

I know, Jesus ain't really a celebrity. Which explains why he's so far behind the Jonas Brothers in Cheap Seats Daily's Open Letter Tracking Service™. (To Be Continued....)

***

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1)Henry Allen really is a cocksucker. Charticles are hard as balls.

2)Charticles don't work real well in the pro-visionary online format. See for yourself! But charticles are grand in print. So pick up an analog copy of City Paper now. Patronize the advertisers therein! You'll not only be helping save this newspaper, you'll be giving the charticle a future!

This particular charticle deals with how Redskins fans can spend all that money they save by giving up season tickets. Sure, season tickets used to be harder to get around here than a legitimate invitation to a state dinner. But from everything I've heard and read and felt and tasted lately, I'd bet there's going to be a waiting list to get rid of Skins tickets after this season.

I'm still suffering from sticker shock after reporting this charticle — and, yes, I'm going to use "charticle" as often as possible henceforth, because it's the greatest word I've learned since "jism." Thousands of families in this area have given Dan Snyder tens of thousands of dollars a year for years just to attend Redskins games. I mean, I guess I always knew that. But seeing these figures in print left me stunned: Using essentially the same template as Team Marketing Report, the godfather of fan-expenditure surveys, I calculated that a family of four spends about $24,190 per season to sit in the Loge section of FedExField.

Depression? What depression?

The biggest rush I got out of reporting the charticle(!) was the chance to talk to Gerry Bessell.

Redskins fans might not know Bessell's name, but they sure know his work. He's the guy who kickstarted Joe Jacoby's acting career by hiring the biggest Hog to be the spokesmodel for TheaterVision, the Rockville-based big-screen TV retailer that Bessell owned.

(AFTER THE JUMP: How come we don't have TheaterVision commercials anymore? DeMatha and Montrose Christian just plain don't like each other? Mike Jones and Stu Vetter are the latter day Morgan Wootten and John Thompson? Who's going to punk who?)

"And yes, and you can have this set here, 50 inch, four-foot screen, for as little as $895," Jacoby told viewers while wearing a tight t-shirt and those polyester coach's shorts that were huge in the 1980s but later banned by the United Nations. That scene, from the first of many TheaterVision commercials that starred Redskins, was burned into the brains of a generation of Skins fans.

Bessell, like Alfred Hitchcock, did cameos in most of the TheaterVision commercials. He says the first Jacoby spot, filmed in 1984, was the most popular ad he ever produced, mostly because of how awful the Redskins star's line delivery was.

"Those were the world's worst and best commercials," says Bessell. "Joe Jacoby wasn't married when we did that first one. But his wife made him come back and do another commercial after they got married, and she was in it. She looked good, standing next to him, and he sounded a little better in that ad, but not much."

Bessell no longer owns TheaterVision, but he still works there. He misses the old days, when an independent businessman such as himself could produce godawful commercials with amateur production values, and still put throw them out to the masses.

"It's too expensive to get any time on TV now," he says. "You gotta be a big chain."

Oh, well. We still have BathFitters.

***

Past is prologue: Great piece in today's Washington Post, titled "Deprived of a Dream Matchup." Josh Barr writes about a feud brewing between the top two prep basketball programs in the area. The schools are avoiding playing each other as the head coaches snipe at one another.

Nowadays, it's DeMatha and Montrose Christian doing the avoiding, and Stags coach Mike Jones and MC's Stu Vetter doing the sniping.

From Barr's story:

Jones does not want to play Montrose so late in the season because the Stags play in the competitive Washington Catholic Athletic Conference and get plenty of tough games at that time of the year. Plus, Jones noted, what if Montrose or DeMatha was having an off year, would that hurt the game's billing?

Vetter, whose team competes as an independent, sees the game as a natural for late in the season, with the ability to hype the matchup for a few months.

"He wants to play us after he has a chance to mesh his new talent with his old talent," Jones said. "I'd be a fool to play Montrose so close to our playoffs. It just would make no sense. Bottom line, they don't have a league championship to worry about. We do. If we beat Montrose and don't win our league championship, it won't make a difference. Nobody is going to pat us on the back if we beat Montrose."

Countered Vetter: "We would love to play anybody in the area. Obviously, DeMatha has an outstanding program. We would love the opportunity to play DeMatha, and I think they should love the opportunity to play us. I think it would be great for the area, and I think it's something that should happen."

But dang if the whole episode doesn't harken back to the old brouhahas between DeMatha and St. Anthony's circa 1970, when Hall of Famers Morgan Wootten and John Thompson went at it.

DeMatha's Wootten and St. Anthony's Thompson, as Keith Jackson used to say, just plain didn't like each other. After a couple seasons of both saying the other was ducking 'em in regular season scheduling and postseason tournaments, the schools found themselves in the same summer league at Jelleff Boy's Club. And so they were scheduled to settle it all one night in June 1970 at an outside court at Jelleff, off Wisconsin Avenue NW just north of Georgetown.

The hype was ridiculous for any sort of high school sporting event, let alone a summer-league matchup.

“It took a summer-league basketball schedule to accomplish it, but DeMatha and St. Anthony’s high schools will finally meet,” said a preview piece in the Washington Post that appeared the morning of the big game. A crowd of anywhere from 400, as the Post reported, to 5,000 fans, as former DeMatha star Kenny Roy and several attendees now estimate, showed up to watch.

But Thompson pulled one of the biggest stunts of his legendary coaching career that night. He sat all his regular players and suited up St. Anthony's students who weren't even on the school team.

DeMatha's regular lineup, which included future NBA superstar and Hall of Famer Adrian Dantley, brutalized Thompson's scrubs.

Final score: DeMatha 108, St. Anthony’s 26. Legend holds DeMatha full court pressed from start to finish.

Days after the game, Thompson confessed to the Washington Post's Ken Denlinger that he'd set up the prank to get back at DeMatha coach Morgan Wootten for blackballing his team from a tournament a year earlier.He said he'd included the non-players' names on the roster he submitted to league officials at the beginning of the summer season knowing he was going to use them to mock Wootten and DeMatha when the schools met at Jelleff.

Many DeMatha backers have never forgiven Thompson for what Roy calls “the greatest game never played.”

"Finally, it was going to happen," Roy told me a few months ago. "This was the game everybody wanted to see. And then John Thompson pulls what he pulls. What a disappointment.”

But Merlin Wilson, a high school all-American and future Georgetown star who played center on Thompson's loaded St. Anthony's team, still has no problem with his coach showing Wootten up.

“[T]his was on the two coaches, just going at each other, this was their deal,” Wilson told me recently. “But we knew [Wootten] wouldn’t play us [in a regular season] and pulled out of tournaments, kept us out. If his team was all that, why wouldn’t they play us when it mattered?”

Though times have changed too much for there ever to be a high school rivalry as renowned as the vintage DeMatha/St. Anthony's feud, Barr's article in the Post makes it sound like DeMatha/Montrose Christian is certainly worth paying attention to.

And with the money at stake to both programs, you just know they're gonna play each other.

***

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Wait just a second... The AMA's...Hmmmm...Isn't that a Dick Clark Productions production?

Why, yes, it is!

And ain't Dick Clark Productions owned by Dan Snyder?

Why, yes, it is!

Well, alrighty then. The world makes sense again...

(AFTER THE JUMP: Jason Campbell's nemesis NEVER started a single playoff game? You can buy a high school football field, but you can't buy a win over DeMatha? Why is everybody talking about concussions now? Mike Sellers is right? Why is the Wall Street Journal talking about the Redskins now? The movement to oust Dan Snyder has not succeeded? So now trucks bashing Dan Snyder will be driving past Dan Snyder's home?)

***

Sonny Jurgensen's still tough on poor Jason Campbell. Earlier this season, during a Redskins radio game broadcast, Jurgensen repeatedly called for Campbell to be benched.

After four games, Jurgensen said the team would be undefeated if the Redskins backup, Todd Collins were in the lineup instead of Campbell.

And the Hall of Famer piled on some more hate in the 3rd quarter of Sunday's game in Dallas when Sam Huff, Jurgensen's former teammate and current partner in the Redskins radio booth, said something nice about Campbell.

"This is the best game I've seen him play!" Huff yelled.

"That's not sayin' a lot," mumbled Sonny.

Awesome Trivia about Jurgensen and Campbell: In his career as a Redskins starting QB, Jurgensen won the EXACT SAME number of playoff games as Campbell has so far.

That would be: Zero.

Awesomer trivia: Jurgensen never even started a playoff game. He made one playoff appearance in his career, as a reliever for starter Billy Kilmer in a 1974 19-10 loss to the Rams. Jurgensen threw three interceptions, including a pick-six on a fourth quarter drive and the Skins down by just a field goal.

That's sayin' a lot.

***

There were rumblings among the local prep football scene that the Good Counsel quarterback's dad bought his son the starting quarterback job. A few weeks ago, in fact, the field at Good Counsel was named Dancel Field after Bernie Dancel, who paid for it.

Along with being a financier and philanthropist, Dancel is the father of Good Counsel QB Zach Dancel.

But now it's tough to say dad's wallet got the son anything that wasn't deserved. Zach Dancel was 10-16 for 186 yards and threw the winning touchdown pass in the fourth quarter as Good Counsel ended DeMatha's long run of WCAC titles with a 14-10 win over the weekend in Annapolis.

It's a huge win for the Good Counsel program. So huge that years from now folks will think Dancel Field was named after Zach, not his dad.

***

Speaking of tough times for DeMatha footballers: DeMatha alum Brian Westbrook sat out his Eagles' game in Chicago last night after getting his second concussion in three weeks. "He's symptom free right now," Chris Collingsworth told the NBC audience last night.

Everybody's talking about concussions lately. I think that's less because everybody's getting concussions than it is that every news organization stole a story idea from the New Yorker's Malcolm Gladwell, who did his concussion story last month.

The Washington Post sports page did its big concussion story on Sunday. (Has Kids Post done the concussion story yet? If not, what's up with that?)

But all the talk about concussions got NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell to say that players should alert doctors if a teammate looks brain damaged. That gave Mike Sellers, for whom image is everything, the chance to act tough:

"We ain't no snitches over here," Sellers told AP.

Sellers should work more on holding onto a football than foisting that tough-guy act on everybody, but his point is pretty hard to argue with: With all the conflicts of interest at work, a system that depends on players policing players has no chance of working. 'Course, the NFL knows that.

Like Sellers, Goodell's just worried about his image.

***

Another story everybody's done: The Wall Street Journal has just now gotten around to its Redskins-Are-In-Trouble-With-Fans story. This one's gets some small things wrong: The WSJ writer says that under Joe Gibbs the Redskins won "two Super Bowls," while it was really three, and that at RFK during the glory days "the upper decks at RFK Stadium inside the District literally swayed from side-to-side," when the famous movement inside the structure was the lower decks that hopped up and down.

But, as usual, the Journal nails the big picture: "[W]hat this season has exposed, more than anything," the story goes, "is that the team held a special place in the hearts of fans here—one that was once intense and affectionate—and that this bond is badly fractured."

And now I see everybody's already written about the Wall Street Journal story. Get back to typing up Kornheiser/Wise quotes, Steinberg!)

***

Somebody should probably buzz the Wall Street's Journal news desk and let them know how much momentum the once profound anti-Dan Snyder movement has lost lately. It's either the win against Denver,  or a lot of protesters decided, say, reducing global warming was a better cause than needling a lousy football owner.

In any case, the effort to raise enough money to buy Metro ads urging Dan Snyder to unload the Redskins flopped. Despite scads of local media coverage, that effort, spelled out on the web site sellourteamdannyboy.com, netted just $1,421, or a little more than 17 percent of the amount required to actually get on the buses.

Organizer Charles Tomasch isn't giving up the fight just yet. He says he has offered everybody who donated to the cause the chance to get their money back, or to put the funds into another project.

Now, Tomasch is trying to rally the troops to pay for mobile signs.

From his web site:

James Goulden of DC Mobile Ads happens to be a lifelong Redskins fan who is onboard with the cause. He has given us a special price of five 8 hour sessions plus sign production for $1200. This would allow us to still give $160 to MDA.

What’s even better is that he will drive the sign wherever we like. This can include:

1. Danny Boy Snyder’s house
2. Vinny Cerrato’s house
3. Around Fedex Field during a Redskins game.
4. Verizon Center during Caps and Wizards games.

It would be fun to see what happens if the sign truck starts cruising around Snyder's Potomac neighborhood or his stadium on game days.

***

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