Byron Hout

Byron Hout

Oregon football player LeGarrette Blount punched Boise State football player Byron Hout after Thursday night's game, and Blount is, rightly, getting a lot of criticism in the sports media this morning. But Hout deserves a share of criticism, too: He's the one who provoked the incident. Watch the video closely, and you'll see that Blount, dejected after his team just lost, was walking off the field with his head down. Hout then grabbed Blount and shouted something. We don't know what Hout said, but whatever it was, it prompted Boise State coach Chris Petersen to run up to Hout, restrain him, and yell at him. Suffice to say, if Hout had just said, "good game," Petersen wouldn't have reacted that way.

Only after all that did Blount level Hout with a vicious straight right to the chin. Blount's punch was worse than Hout grabbing him, and it was worse than just about anything Hout could have said. But if Hout hadn't provoked Blount, the punch wouldn't have happened. Petersen, to his credit, not only restrained Hout but said afterward, "It was just emotions getting the best of players" -- suggesting that he knew it was players on both teams, not just Blount, who overreacted in the heat of the moment. And it's also to Petersen's credit that after Blount punched Hout, none of the other Boise State players retaliated by punching Blount, which would have made an ugly scene even uglier.

At the end of last night’s Boise State-Oregon game, a frustrated LeGarrette Blount KO’ed Boise State defensive end Byron Hout. I’m posting this for a couple reasons: 1) I’m guessing most didn’t stay up to watch the end of this game, which started after 10 pm; 2) It was pretty much the only thing worth remembering on an otherwise very boring opening night. South Carolina beat North Carolina State 7-3 and Boise State defended their blue home turf, beating Oregon 19-8, a final score I don’t think I’ve ever seen in a football game.

What Is Labor Day

What Is Labor Day

The Labor Day holiday is almost upon us and the networks are likely to spend it talking about vacation, barbequing and holiday sales instead of examining the 2009 victories of the labor unions. In fact, all year they avoided talking about the many recent blessings organized labor has enjoyed. The United Auto Workers (UAW), which donated more than 99 percent of its $25.4 million to Democratic federal candidates in the past 20 years, had a particularly good year, at least compared to other stakeholders as General Motors and Chrysler struggled and were forced into a government-managed bankruptcy by the White House.

Those auto company bailouts and bankruptcies were major stories this year, yet the network news media rarely discussed union causes of the car companies' inability to compete, and the high cost of union labor compared to non-union labor. In fact, in some cases the UAW was portrayed to evoke sympathy from viewers.

NBC's Lester Holt said that the UAW had "made major concessions," on May 29 which would save GM $1.3 billion a year. CBS described it as "swallowing a bitter pill." That's a surprising choice of words since, when all was said and done, the UAW's health fund ended up with 17.5 percent of GM shares and 55 percent of Chrysler shares. What were those "major concessions?" Hans Bader at the Competitive Enterprise Institute cited the Washington Post, which described them as "‘painful' only by the peculiar standards of Big Three labor:"

Michael Jackson Funeral

Michael Jackson Funeral

It was a much smaller gathering, but those who turned up for the Michael Jackson "private" funeral and burial Thursday at Forest Lawn Cemetery - burial place for the stars! - in Glendale, Calif. - were quite as star-studded a group as the big memorial at the Staples Center. Elizabeth Taylor, Macaulay Culkin, Barry Bonds, Corey Feldman, Mila Kunis, Lisa Presley and Chris Tucker all showed up, as we could see from the expensive and well-lit television feed provided by the Jackson family. And eventually, so did members of the Jackson family.

The rest of the Jackson 5 are somehow bound to dress alike in dark suits and armbands. They sit together as if they have no families of their own. Janet Jackson played the role of widow and sat with them. The Jackson children, now out of the shadow, were minus their scarves and masks, and just fanned themselves with the program awaiting its start. On the ground, Gladys Knight reportedly sang "His Eye is on the Sparrow" and Clifton Davis sang "Never Can Say Goodbye," which was true enough to explain the delay in the service.

What was supposed to be a sunset service started an hour late. It had been 70 days since the death, it would wait another 60 minutes. The Jackson family pulled the feed (with a card that said THE END) as the body was removed from the hearse to keep some semblance of privacy for the actual service. The news organizations hung around anyway, with an overhead shot taken by some apparently stationary helicopter.