Super Bowl Sunday is over up, and I’ve been asking local pubs here on the South Island of New Zealand if they caught the world’s biggest game on television. But the national sport of New Zealand is rugby, and the Super Bowl is not an event that many locals make bowls of guacamole and invite [...]
by Ken Hurst
Last week the AVA and the Press Democrat published the small school football awards for the 2011 season. They are as follows: All league offensive players, quarterback: Anderson Valley Panther Senior Garrett Mezzanatto, running back: Anderson Valley Senior Panther Omar Benavidas, tight end: Anderson Valley Panther Senior Salvador Gutierrez. All league defensive players: Linebacker: Anderson [...]
by Ken Hurst
Since the NFC Championship football game a couple of weekends ago when the New York Giants defeated the San Francisco 49ers, I have read several sports articles in which the 49er loss was pinned on Giant’s quarterback Eli Manning being superior to 49er quarterback Alex Smith. That is an incorrect reason for the 49er loss. [...]
by Ken Hurst
The New York Giants defeated the San Francisco 49ers 20-17 after ten minutes of overtime in the NFC championship game in the rain at Candlestick Park Sunday afternoon. Earlier that same day the New England Patients defeated the Baltimore Ravens 23-20 in the AFC championship game. So both the NFL Harbaugh brothers (Ravens Coach John [...]
It was one of those epic high school football games that local fans won’t soon forget, and the boys who played it will never forget. In a driving rain on a muddy field at the edge of the Pacific, a tenacious Point Arena football team defeated an equally tenacious Boonville football team with 20 seconds [...]
Boonville made history simply by showing up at Kezar Stadium last Saturday night. Stuart Hall made half that history but they may have wished they hadn’t shown up. The history? The first 8-man football game ever played at Kezar pitted Anderson Valley’s country boys versus Stuart Hall’s city sophisticates, with the city boys coming out [...]
by Ken Hurst
It is clear now that Jim Harbaugh is an enthusiastic and excellent coach. Perhaps, though, that is an understatement. He is an exuberant coach who is smart and crafty as a gridiron tactician and generous with his affection for his players. But he can be very tough with a player when he feels it is [...]
For an American musical expatriate with ample means and the right connections that money brings, a musical tour of Europe might include Wagner in Bayreuth and Verdi at La Scala. Tickets for these two houses are impossible to get unless you inherit them or know the right people, and/or can buy your way in. A [...]
by Ken Hurst
The SF 49er’s spirited and exciting football victory over the Detroit Lions last Sunday afternoon at Detroit by a 25 to 19 score was a very important win. The 49ers overcame 11 penalties against themselves in the first half alone. They were playing like the Oakland Raiders who are usually the most penalized team in [...]
by Ken Hurst
Even though I wrote in this column that the SF 49ers made a mistake seven years ago when they chose Alex Smith #1 in the entire NFL draft over Cal’s Aaron Rodgers, I didn’t believe that Alex Smith was a complete bust. I believed that the first two head coaches that Smith played for — [...]
