FanSpeak 11/27/05

Missouri Super Bowl

I SEE where the NFL owners gave conditional approval to have a Super Bowl at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City if they put a roof on it. I don't understand it. St. Louis has had a roof on their stadium ever since they started, and there's no Super Bowl coming to St. Louis. I'd like to see a Super Bowl.

Congrats to coaches

I'D JUST like to add one more congratulations to coaches Bill Davis of Notre Dame and Larry Cleair of Saxony Lutheran on their teams winning their state cross country state meets. What happened to the Kelly program that coach Davis had built up to the state championship level?

Bring back Shumate

I HAVE never been so disgusted in all my life as I was watching the Southeast Missouri State men's basketball team Friday as it struggled against Division II Truman State. That was a ridiculous display of Division I basketball on the part of Southeast. Truman State is not a strong basketball program, and Southeast proved that it was just as bad. How many more years must we wait before Southeast actually produces a good basketball team? Hopefully, coach Gary Garner will follow Tim Billings' example and get out before it gets any worse. Bring back Ron Shumate.

Program problems

I KNOW Tim Billings will be the last person to make excuses, but the former Southeast football coach is basically the victim and scapegoat of a failed administration. It's not just football, which never has experienced great success at the Division I-AA level, but also sports that were once upper echelon OVC sports -- softball, volleyball, men's basketball -- have tailspinned. The administration is paying off Billings to the tune of $90,000 when the department is already underfunded to bring in another coach to go 3-8. Until Southeast gets an administration with true vision, as opposed to sacrificing its high-profile programs for guaranteed revenue, this tailspin will continue. By the way, in listening to the basketball game Friday night, you would have thought we won the OVC championship; instead, we beat Truman State, an 8-19 Division II team last year, at the buzzer. When we were Division II, we always named the score with them and had more than 5,000 fans in the Show Me Center. Best of luck to coach Billings, a classy individual.