Five For Friday

1) Hopefully NOT The Full Monty - The British golfer, Colin Montgomerie, was awarded an injunction this week against an ex mistress who's claiming she wants to publish details and "media" of her and her relationship with married golfer Colin Montgomerie. They're not allowed to discuss what those items are in public but we should all be thankful to the judge not to allow public viewing of any possible Monty sex tape...... Can we agree on that?

2) Survivor: Nicaragua - I think Survivor jumped the shark about 4 years ago but I'm really looking forward to watching this season (Premieres Wednesday, September 15th on CBS). Why? Football analyst and ex Cowboys head coach Jimmy Johnson is one of the contestants. Apparently he's tried to get on the show for years and after having some heart work done recently they green lighted him for this season. I've always liked Jimmy and think he'll make an interesting person to follow. "How Bout Them Cowboys"!

3) MLB Draft Signings - The MLB draft was back in June but Monday is when they need to sign by. This weekend should be quite hectic as 3/4's of the 1st round picks haven't signed yet (including Bryce Harper). I'm sure most will wait till right up to the midnight ET signing deadline before inking their deals. Most are expected to sign however 2 picks to keep an eye on are the number 6th pick Barret Loux (Arizona Diamondbacks) and the number 18th pick Kaleb Cowart (LA Angels). Cowart really wants to go to FSU and has been very vocal from before the draft about wanting to go to college. The Angels reportedly are offering up to $2 million in signing bonus to get him which is WAY ABOVE slot.... (by about $1.5 million). Loux is a different story all together. Loux would sign right now, however Arizona has pulled their pre draft agreed upon offer off the table. Apparently Loux has arm issues (known by everyone before the draft) and while not needing surgery now, most likely will need it sometime down the road. The Diamondbacks are saying they will forfeit signing Loux and take their compensatory pick in next years draft instead. Needless to say the Loux family is not pleased with this and the Players Union has threatened to get involved. Not sure if this is something that'll get resolved before Monday so it'll be interesting to see whether Loux enrolls in classes at Texas A&M for the fall or sits it out. Normally when it's disagreement between a player and a team I take the teams side but in this case I'm fully in Loux's corner. The Diamondbacks knew of his injury pre draft and didn't have to take him but they did. He's not asking to sign for a ridiculous number just an amount they'd already agreed upon, so the Diamondbacks knew what they were getting when they picked him. The issue comes in where the Diamondbacks have fired their old GM and have different management in place so now they're trying to change things up... I get how new management comes in and wants to do things differently but some stuff you just have to go with. Step up to the plate and be honorable with the kid!

4) Zeke - This man knows no bounds when it comes to playing by the rules does he??? After the terrible mess on and off the court he did with the Knicks, why would they want him back as a consultant? I know we always joke about someone having blackmail photo's and using it, but seriously, why would James Dolan want to hire Isiah to be a consultant? That's not even realizing that it's blatantly against the rules (what would prevent the Nets from "hiring" John Calipari to consult or the Celtics to hire Mike Krzyzewski in the same capacity?). It just made no sense. Thankfully it didn't work out, Stern put his foot down and Zeke is back where he belongs on the Golden Panther bench coaching up a storm! I'm happy, your happy and most importantly, the FIU Co-Eds are happy!

5) HBO Hard Knocks - I haven't been a big fan of this show the previous couple editions, and god knows I hate the Jets, but after watching the 1st episode last night I gotta say this is must see TV! Rex Ryan is great. Lots of characters on the Jets to play off of, new faces, team being "billed" as a Super Bowl contender (don't fool yourself though, it's not, they have lots of issues.....) and Ryan is a made for television character. I highly recommend watching this. New episodes every Wednesday at 10pm on HBO (although it reruns often during the week). Don't miss it.

And this week, a bonus.....

6) USC Baseball - My previous entry on Monday was about SC firing Chad Kreuter and mentioned names of who they might hire. Well I've been doing more research on this and I think I discarded George Horton (Oregon head coach) too quickly. He's only been at Oregon for a couple years but his contract runs out after 2011. Pat Haden is taking a year to name a head coach (and giving the interim title to Cruz for this coming year), so the time frame matches up. Horton makes almost double the amount of money at Oregon than any other Pac 10 coach ($450,000 salary from Oregon and $500,000 from a Nike endorsement) but USC, being private, has the ability to match that with their deep pocketed alumni so they could step up there. The final piece here is that Horton is a Southern California guy and his kids and grand kids still live here. And from what I heard, his wife is anxious to come back and spend time with the kids.. Apparently the daughter is living in their old home down here, so a lot of pieces are in place for this happening. A majority of his recruits in Oregon are Southern California kids, so he still has those connections and it would be even easier to get top talent to come to USC as opposed to going away to Oregon. Until I hear something else, I'm going on record as saying expect to see George Horton named new USC head baseball coach in the summer of 2011.

Bill