BRH

I was at 7/16/90. Wish they would have done that one instead!

Just to nitpick -- that team didn't have the Gaits. Paul and Gary played at SU from 1987 through 1990. In fact, Syracuse didn't win a national title from 1984 through 1987, although, of course, they did make the final four all four of those years. And that was a great 'bart team, too. I still think they made a mistake moving up to D-I though. Dave Urick built that program and then they made the move up after Urick went to Georgetown (where he built another excellent program). As far as I can see, they haven't done a damn thing to upgrade the facilities there; the field and grandstands are pretty much high school caliber. If you want to recruit in central and western New York against Syracuse and the Dome, you're going to have to offer more than "we won 12 straight D-III titles back in the day."

Far be it from me to take pleasure in another's gruesome injury, but does it make me a bad person that I didn't exactly break down in tears when it happened?

Very true, but a club lax team at the University of Maryland composed of people who basically grew up on the sport? Still a pretty damn good team if you ask me. I don't know the answer to your question, but I think that making the final four from a group of 20 that includes Syracuse, Hopkins, Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, Navy, Loyola, Delaware (John Grant's alma mater), UMass, Rutgers, Penn State, Ohio State, Notre Dame, Georgetown, and the six Ivy schools that have lacrosse (Princeton, Cornell, Dartmouth, Yale, Brown and Penn) -- all of which were around in 1985 -- is still pretty impressive. Put it this way: most of those schools had competitive, if not excellent, programs, well stocked with talent from the usual hotbeds of the sport. There might be 300 Division I basketball programs, but 150 of them pretty much suck and another 100 generally don't have a chance in hell of making the final four. Making the final four in lacrosse, even in 1985, WAS a big deal, especially if you weren't SU, Hopkins or Carolina.

Anyway, I'd love to see Andre get in, but you know, even though he held the record for most SB receptions, I can't remember a single long one, or a single really important one. Maybe someone else can enlighten me. For me the overriding SB image of Andre is of him throwing his helmet and taking that penalty near the beginning of the second SB. Yes, pass interference should have been called (on Brad Edwards, was it?) but that play cost us badly as I recall. And the book on Reed in SBs was to hit him early and often and he'd disappear. I'm not saying that's fair, just saying that's how it was. Nobody can erase the image of the money performance he had against the Oilers in The Comeback, though. And he had that big game against the Oilers in 1988 (I think it was) when he caught the winning TD pass in a 47-41 OT win.

What summed up Andre's career for me was the day he caught 15 passes against Green Bay in a rout of the Packers at Rich (I was there). I go home and think I'm going to see Dre's big day plastered all over SportsCenter. Turned out that that night Jerry Rice caught 16 balls. Guess who the announcers blathered on about? That summed it up, and speaks to one of the reasons he probably won't get in. Rice has set his own bar so ridiculously high that it's hard to determine where the HOF bar stands now for receivers.

Boy, isn't that the truth (your whole post). I remember quite fondly that first national title (I was a senior who had taken a year off, and Andy Moe, who scored the winning goal in OT, and I were freshman classmates and took Spanish together.). At the time I was also an intern in the Sports Information Office, and I spent a lot of time that winter putting together an expanded media guide for the team. Prior to that year the "media guide" was a four-page program; I went through sixty years of stats, box scores and game reports and compiled a complete record book for the guide. Anyway, Andy was on the 1987-88 squad that went 2-13, when Tierney, who was in his first year, weeded out a lot of deadweight -- including a fellow club member of mine from Yorktown Heights who quit the team because "the coach was a d#ck." Hey, that's true, he is. But he's a winning d#ck. Anyway, that final four in 1992 consisted of Syracuse, Hopkins, Carolina, and Princeton. The first three had won the previous 14 consecutive national titles and Princeton wasn't taken seriously at ALL. In fact, Maryland coach Dick Edell made a complete ass of himself at the start of the tournament when he bitched about having to play Princeton in New Jersey in the first round. I recall he said something like how the state of Maryland had a half dozen teams better than Princeton and it was a disgrace that the mighty Turtle had to leave the state to play a game against this upstart whippersnapper of a team. The Tigers won that game in overtime and it was glorious. (Even better was how Princeton kicked the absolute stojan out of the Terps in two consecutive finals later in the '90s, scoring 19 goals both times. The backstory there is that after Hopkins ran up the score against Princeton in 1988 with something like 23 goals, Tierney vowed that if he was ever on the other side of that situation, he'd never humiliate an opponent by scoring 20 in a rout. As a result, the Tigers over the years would reach 19 in the third quarter many times and play keepaway for the rest of the game -- that happened both years in the title games against Maryland, even though Edell had given Tierney every reason to hold a grudge.) Then the Tigers shocked Carolina in the semifinal and still nobody gave them a chance to beat Syracuse. But Scott Bacigalupo had a great game in goal and they won the game 10-9 in OT at Franklin Field. All of a sudden Tierney became a hot property and within the next few years was offered the head job at both Virginia and his dream school, Hopkins. It must have been a terrible shock to the Jays, especially, when Tierney turned them down. And now he's in the college lacrosse Hall of Fame.

It wasn't Sharper, was it? I thought it was the punt returner. Had to be -- the returner was the only guy back there, and the one guy friggin' Lonnie forgot about.

I agree and I think that those of us of a certain age were quite lucky to have come of musical age, as it were, during the early days of MTV. MTV played a lot of stuff that I never would have listened to otherwise, and they didn't group their videos into hour-long category shows, either. It was basically a 24-hour shuffle format. Yes you got "Sunday Bloody Sunday" and "Jump" a dozen times a day, but you also got a lot of variety otherwise, particularly later at night. It opened my eyes to a lot of different kinds of music -- whereas today I listen to just my own CDs.

One prayer coming right up. Go kick its ass, Campy.

My mother's life was saved by the doctor whom Rickman played in that movie; he performed the surgery on her at Hopkins in 1950 or so. So I wouldn't be here, nor would my kids, without good Dr. Blalock. I agree, fantastic movie, and both Rickman and Mos Def were outstanding. And Rickman was hilarious as the Metreon in Dogma.

I think his point, while hyperbolic, is still well-taken. Of those 35,000, how many do you think didn't live in Maryland, Long Island or upstate New York? Maybe 128. There's a reason they play the FF in Baltimore or College Park every year except a few (Franklin Field one year, Rutgers another). Actually, though, the game has grown a LOT in the last 10 years. There are pockets of lacrosse enthusiasm in Denver, the Bay Area, Indiana and Ohio, and other places where no one knew what the hell a lacrosse stick was before.

Gonna be an odd lax postseason. No Princeton in the tourney, no SU in the Final Four. Maybe it just means everyone else is getting better and the talent is no longer as concentrated as it was for so long. Over 27 years beginning in 1978, Division I had only five schools win the national title (Syracuse 9, Princeton and Hopkins 6 each, Carolina 4 and Virginia 2). Hopkins could extend that streak this year but the field is much more wide open now. For my money an even better accomplishment than SU's 22 straight final fours was Princeton's string of dominance from 1992 to 2001 -- six national championships in ten years -- without giving out a single athletic scholarship and while abiding by admissions standards that were *ahem* slightly more restrictive than Syracuse's. Bill Tierney took an absolute doormat of a program, recruited from strong bases he'd built on Long Island (played at Manhasset), upstate (played at Cortland, coached at RIT) and in Maryland (was an assistant at Hopkins), and made it a national power within four years.

I'm sitting here watching VH1 Classic because of this thread. One more for the list: "You Got Lucky" by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. The video barely seems to fit the lyrics at all, but it's absolutely perfect for the music. And another: "Bad To The Bone" by George Thorogood and the Destroyers. The pool hall is just an inspired setting. And when the ball hangs on the lip of the pocket and drops -- "Whoo! Bad to the bone."

Yep and because they lived in the town of Penfield, they had to play Little League in Penfield. Every year, we always had one or two guys on our team that nobody knew because they went to Webster schools.

Only insofar as you are rooting for a particular team to win because it would help the Bills. That's how I do it.

Obviously you haven't spent much time in New Jersey, Connecticut or Rhode Island!

I assume you mean 14606. Two that haven't been mentioned are 14610 and 14618. 14610 is most of Brighton, while 14618 includes some of east Brighton and some parts of Pittsford, including the part near St. John Fisher and Oak Hill (where I live). Also 14625 encompasses the Panorama/Indian Landing area of western Penfield. All of the "146" zip codes have a Rochester mailing address. Which makes for some confusion in our case: though we live in the town and school district of Pittsford, our mailing address is Rochester, and our post office is in Brighton (at Loehmann's Plaza on Clinton by Westfall). And I can count at least five post offices (East Rochester, Pittsford, Penfield 14625, Brighton 14610, and Fairport) that are closer to us than the one which actually delivers our mail. And a friend of mine lives on Smith Road in the town of Mendon with a 14534 (Pittsford) mailing address ... in the Honeoye Falls-Lima school district.

Man, who peed in your cheerios this morning? The worst thing about this city is the people who complain about it all the time but never do anything to help improve it.

Indeed. But why would I when half the pleasure is in the experience of being served great burgers and fries on REAL plates? In sight, it must be right. Famous for Steakburgers.

I hate 31 NFL teams. And don't tell me I shouldn't hate.

Steak 'n' Shake. Triple steakburger, fries, and a vanilla malt. If they had them here I could automatically subtract ten years from my life expectancy. As far as Rochester, nothing beats Tom Wahl's. Although Schaller's and Bill Gray's come close. Fuddruckers' burgers are just too thick.

Good lord I just saw that a salary of 60K in Rochester is equivalent to 349K in San Francisco and 193K in NYC.

No, the Trojans. Some of them probably take pay cuts when they go to the NFL.

Why does LA want another professional football team when they already have one playing in the Coliseum?