SPORTS MAIL.

Byline: The Register-Guard

A monster of a bust

I just finished watching the Monster Truck Jam and I am VERY disappointed! I am sure that the people involved in putting on the show worked very hard. However I feel the U of O misrepresented the entire show.

I don't know if it was the CBI basketball game Monday, pure incompetence, or that $30 a ticket isn't enough money, but they didn't even put down dirt for the monster trucks. Also the arena was way too small for any kind of decent show. If this is the kind of "entertainment value" I can expect with the Matthew Knight Arena I will make sure to spend my limited entertainment funds elsewhere in the future.

This sentiment was expressed from nearly everyone I talked to. I know the U of O needs to pay for this quarter-billion dollar arena, but putting on bush-league shows and charging premium prices is a very poor way to do it.

Brent Love

Springfield

Tennis event a treat

What a treat - the Nike-sponsored tennis exhibition at the new Matthew Knight Arena.

The crowd was fun, the athletes charming and gracious and Phil Knight's generosity to this community was never more evident, and touching, than it was that night in the spectacular arena that he built and named after his son.

Thank you Uncle Phil. Thank you tennis fans and thank you to the athletes, including the wildly funny John McEnroe. I feel blessed.

Joe Valentine

Eugene

Report rapids' danger

Being a former ACA-certified whitewater kayaking instructor, I was a bit distressed by some of the caveats missing from the "Rapid Success" piece written by Zach Urness in Tuesday's Outdoors section.

I hope most of your readers are smart enough to realize that taking an inflatable kayak onto a "Class III/IV" creek, as the author did, might not necessarily be a good idea. He was in the company of some very seasoned boaters, apparently, and they (presumably) kept him out of the sections of creek where his inexperience (and multiple "swims") could easily have cost him his life.

Swimming through Class IV rapids is, by definition, life-threatening.

An article of this kind should always take into account that at least some readers will not understand how freaking dangerous it is paddling down creeks (much less negotiating 20 foot drops) with inadequate training and gear, or inept companions.

Thanks for spreading this word of caution.

Lea Jones

Eugene

Foreign court offends

This is Oregon right? And we just imported what? A German-made portable tennis court composed of 297 plywood panels that had to be shipped by ocean freight and truck to Eugene!

And then we had to bring people in from Florida who then hired four people from a company in Bend called "Cushion Tennis Courts" to help put it together.

Sure sounds like this could easily have been handled locally. And I have to figure someone could scrape up a few plywood panels (tongue and grooved, even) around here somewhere.

Kevin Square

Eugene

Insurance is the key

College athletics is big business without doubt. And who can blame a top athlete for turning professional before their college eligibility is completed.

I believe universities should be allowed to provide an injury insurance policy for athletes if they will stay until their eligibility is complete or they obtain a degree.Who among us would turn down a multi-million dollar contract if we faced the prospect of getting hurt and then getting nothing?

It would benefit both the university athletic department and the athlete in getting his degree, as opposed to an athlete who opts for the professional draft, then not making the cut and losing out altogether without a diploma.

How many tickets will OSU not sell because Quizz Rodgers won't be there?

Jack Williams

Eugene

CBI not to be desired

Postseason basketball has become a sham. The NCAA Tournament is diluted by expanding the field to include some also-rans. The once-proud NIT is a scramble pitting some teams with winning records against those struggling to win as many games as they have lost. The CBI, which sounds like a ballistic missile, is anything but ballistic.

Neutral courts give the NCAA Tournament some credibility, which is lacking in the other two, where all contests leading up to the finals are played on a home court of one of the teams, the one most likely to draw the biggest crowd. The CBI finally gets some balance in its format when the first two of the three-game finals alternate on home courts of the competing teams.

In the third, one team gets the home-floor advantage.

That advantage is significant, considered by most basketball authorities to be worth 10 points. Check scores of Oregon's first three CBI games at home, and consider where a neutral court might have left them against foes bypassed by the two major tournaments.

Like all major college sports, postseason basketball has become a money game. The sponsors - non-collegiate for the NIT and CBI - have no interest in competitive fairness. They simply want to ensure there will be some fans in the stands for TV to show, no matter how meaningless the contests.

Self-serving tourney promoters join with money-grubbing television to bring us run-of-the-mill teams to redundantly play game-after-game long after the season ends.

By getting to the final round of the CBI, Ducks fans can rightly claim, "We're Number 97 in the nation!"

George Beres

Eugene

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Title Annotation:	Letters Sports
Publication:	The Register-Guard (Eugene, OR)
Date:	Mar 30, 2011
Words:	1000
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