"Eight Is Enough" Pilot Episode

- There's a good "Sonny Jurgensen knew when to retire" joke in the opening touch football scene. They later mention George Allen. 

- Mr. Bradford's secretary is played by a different actress than the usual Donna, but she says, "Goodbye, Mr. Bradford" in the same way. 

- David (Mark Hamill) says he dropped out of Cal. It's later mentioned various times that he dropped out of college, but I think this is the only time the particular school is mentioned.

Believe It Or Not!

The two most astounding claims in sports media -

1.  Al Michaels says he has never knowingly eaten a vegetable.

2.  Mike Tirico used to not think he was Black.

The Ol' Lefthander

As a fan of '80s ACC basketball, I note the recent passing of Davidson/Maryland/JMU/Georgia State coach Lefty Driesell.  Although to be honest, I always thought that his induction into the Basketball Hall of Fame showed that the easiest way to make a major sports hall was to be a decent Division I basketball coach for a long, long time.  I mean, are we even sure that he was a good coach?  Two things -

First, even though he coached a bunch of first-round draft picks like Tom McMillen (#9 overall pick), Len Elmore (#13), John Lucas (#1), Brad Davis (#15), Buck Williams (#3), and Len Bias (#2), he never had a team win more than two games in the NCAA tournament.  After the tournament expanded beyond 32 teams, he never had a team get beyond the Sweet 16.

Second, in ranking ACC coaches from the first half of the '80s, Coach K, Dean Smith, and Jim Valvano have to be the top 3.  But are we sure that Lefty was better than either Bobby Cremins or his former Davidson player Terry Holland?  Plausibly being the sixth best coach in an eight team league doesn't scream Hall of Famer to me.

I know people will point out that perhaps his best team in '74 didn't make the tournament because eventual champion NC State won their legendary ACC tournament final in overtime and only one team per conference could make the tourney then.  But Maryland got to go the previous year when NC State was 27-0 because some assistant coach gave David "Skywalker" Thompson a sports coat to attend an athletics banquet or played in a meaningless pickup game with him.  And Terry Holland's '84 team took Houston with Hakeem to overtime in the Final Four with freshman Olden Polynice or Othell Wilson as its best player.  

He's No Alan Cranston

I remember that Bill James' New Historical Baseball Abstract had a comment wondering if developments such as Bill Clinton's relationship with Monica Lewinsky suggested that Steve Garvey might one day be able to resume his political career despite having been a late night talk show punchline for his multiple affairs and children borne out of wedlock.  Now of course Garvey's indiscretions appear fairly quaint for a candidate of his party.  The truly amusing thing is that when I was a little kid everyone just assumed that Garvey would pretty much be a first ballot Hall of Famer.  I think in addition to his playing in LA and appearing in multiple World Series it really had to do with his starting in the All Star Game in a National League infield with Johnny Bench (and later Gary Carter), Joe Morgan, and Mike Schmidt pretty much every year.  Unfortunately for Garvey, people realized by the time that he was eligible for the hall that a line drive-hitting first baseman who didn't walk much wasn't particularly valuable even if he had appeared on the Johnny Carson show various times and had forearms like Popeye.