Waitress, We Need More Tea Over Here, Please

Give me the lightly-fried tofu with mixed vegetables in brown sauce. Two crab rangoons. Steamed rice please. And lots of hot tea...It was time for another retired sportswriters' lunch at the Oriental restaurant. One guy mentioned that Iowa is a 5-point favorite in Saturday's regular-season football finale at Minnesota. He couldn't believe it, but nobody else could, either. Face ir, though, the oddsmakers like Iowa, just like the bowl scouts like Iowa and Floyd of Rosedale [pictured at the left] likes Iowa...The newspaper business always gets a lot of attention at these weekly get-togethers, and someone talked about what's happening at Indianapolis. The guy noticed that the Indianapolis Star didn't send a staff writer to Iowa City for last week's Iowa-Purdue football game. "They used an Associated Press story in the Sunday paper," the guy said in amazement. Well, let's see. The Star is a Gannett Co. paper with a lousy editor who doesn't know his ass from the red zone when it comes to sports. Gannett tells him to cut costs, so he not only has the AP cover Iowa-Purdue in football, but he uses stories from the Lafayette Journal & Courier to handle coverage of a couple of Purdue's home basketball games. The Lafayette paper -- also owned by Gannett -- furnished a story to the Star on a wrapup of Joe Tiller's football coaching at Purdue. That indicates to me that the Star doesn't bother sending a sportswriter to Tiller's weekly press conferences. Saving money and shortchanging the reader is what it's called. Don't forget, the Star, as well as the Des Moines Register and probably Lafayette and the Iowa City Press-Citizen [another Gannett paper] are expected to take hits in the next round of Gannett-ordered layoffs in December. Another sign of the times: It looks to newspaper readers that the Des Moines Register isn't sending anyone to Charleston, S.C. for tonight's Iowa basketball game against The Citadel. The game is not on TV [except for a webcast that's available to people for a $4.95 fee] -- one of only two Hawkeye games that won't be on the tube. Kind of unusual, too. So newspapers will have to resort to that old trick of having a reporter listen to the Gary Dolphin/Bobby Hansen radio broadcast and put together a story for tomorrow morning's editions. Make sure you monitor Todd Lickliter's postgame press conference, folks. That's where the quotes for the game story will have to come from...Don't be surprised at all if newspapers start using wire services and other papers for coverage of road games to which they formerly sent staff writers. It won't shock me one bit if a paper like the Register soon stops sending sportswriters to such places as State College, Pa., and Stillwater, Okla., for basketball games, and even football games involving Iowa and Iowa State. These are tough times, gang. Newspapers are really, really hurting. They keep urging people to read them online for free, and pretty soon that's what most people -- especially young people -- are going to be doing. One other thing about Iowa-The Citadel: How the hell did The Citadel wind up on Iowa's road schedule anyway? Pat Harty of the Press-Citizen explains: It's "the other half of a home-and-home series that was scheduled before Lickliter was hired. 'There were games added a couple years ago, and this was something that was available and so they did a home-and-home with them,' said Lickliter, who replaced Steve Alford before the start of last season. 'Like so much of the scheduling, I inherited it. 'And we're going to go and compete.'" Sounds to me like playing at The Citadel in a gym that seats 6,000 isn't Lickliter's favorite thing to do. But give Iowa credit for not canceling out of the series...I figured the crap would hit the fan when Cubs pitcher Ryan Dempster mentioned that his team wasn't prepared for its best-of-five playoff series with the Dodgers. Dempster had just agreed to a four-year, $52 million contrac to play for Lou Piniella's Cubs. The fact he said the team "underestimated how prepared you have to be" didn't reflect well on Piniella, whose Cubs easily won the National League Central title, then were horrible [again] in the playoffs. The last anyone knew, the manager is the guy who's supposed to get a team ready to play. "Look, the team was prepared," Piniella told radio station WMVP-AM. The Chicago Tribune said Piniella pointed to the lack of offense as the main culprit for the Cubs' collapse, and reiterated they need more left-handed hitting to balance the lineup. "It's very much alike, one through eight," he said. "It's right-handed, it's power-hitting and it's not very quick." Add a left-handed bat and athleticism, "and the whole thing changes," he said. None of this surprises me. When's the last time a Cubs season -- or offseason -- went smoothly? It never happens...A retiree who picked Drake to go 23-10 this season under new basketball coach Mark Phelps has changed his mind already...I counted the times the headline or the review mentioned the words "funk" or "funky" in the story about Jethro's restaurant in today's Datebook, and came up with four. When you've got time, explain to me what that means...Also, mention to the waitress that we need more hot tea over here at the retired sportswriters' booth.