THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
SPORTS
THURSDAY, APRIL 26, 2007
11B
REMEMBRANCE
LSU football plans special opener for fall season
BY CASEY GISCLAIR THE DAILY REVEILLE
BATON ROUGE, La. — When the LSU football team takes the field Sept. 8 in Tiger Stadium for its home opener, nearly five months would have passed since 32 students were shot and killed at Virginia Tech University.
But the LSU Athletic Department will not turn a blind eye to the nation's largest shooting ever, as LSU plans to honor the Hokies when the Tigers host Virginia Tech.
"Now it's our turn to give something back to people who are in need of something positive."
BLAKE
THIBODAUX
LSU graduate
student
LSU Senior Associate Athletic Director Herb Vincent told The Daily Reveille early Tuesday in an e-mail that LSU is being cautious about how to handle the situation. He said LSU is trying to figure out the appropriate way to recognize the tree.
*edy in order to respect Virginia' Tech's fans.
But he also said LSU will be in communication with Virginia Tech officials in the near future to discuss the best way to handle the situation.
LSU Sports Information Director Michael Bonnette went beyond Vincent, saying there will definitely be a tribute to the Hokies.
"We don't have anything definite set yet, but there will be something done that day to honor the victims and Virginia Tech," he said.
According to the Interim Athletic Director for Student Government Dixon McMakin, plans are currently being made with the Athletic Department to make the Virginia Tech game the annual "Gold Game," in which the entire student section is urged to wear gold shirts.
McMakin said sales from next season's shirt would go to the Hokie Spirit Memorial Fund.
Two seasons ago, LSU was the recipient of other schools' generosity, as most of the Tigers' 2005-06 opponents donated money to the Hurricane Katrina relief efforts.
Graduate student Blake Thibodaux said LSU is doing the right thing. "When we were in need, we were given hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions of dollars, from the other schools," he said. "Now it's our turn to give something back to people who are in need of something positive."
Gymnastics senior Nicki Butler, football sophomore defensive back Joe Maltempi, and track and field sophomore Christina Porter are the only LSU athletes from Virginia.
Rockies crush Mets at Shea
MLB
Colorado has season-high 20 hits in game
BY HAL BOCK ASSOCIATED PRESS
NEW YORK — Willy Taveras got five of Colorado's season-high 20 hits and the Rockies snapped out of an offensive drought Wednesday with an 11-5 rout of the New York Mets.
Todd Helton had four hits and three RBIs and John Mabry added a three-run homer. The Rockies salvaged the victory after managing just one run in each of the first two games of the series against the Mets.
Jose Reyes had two doubles and two singles for New York. He would've had a fifth hit, too, but Taveras sprinted into the left-center field gap and caught Reyes' first-inning drive near the wall.
Josh Fogg (1-1) retired the first nine New York batters and contributed a pair of singles. He scored twice as the Rockies roughed up
Fogg took a shutout into the sixth inning, a turnaround from his last start when he was tagged for 11 hits and eight runs in just three innings against San Diego.
Mike Pelfrey (0-2).
The Rockies pushed across a run in the first when Troy Tulowitzki walked, stole second and scored on Helton's bloop single to center.
Colorado then tagged Pelfrey for five runs in the third, bunching four singles for two runs before Mabry broke open the game with his home run.
Fogg opened the inning with a single and Taveras beat out a bunt, setting up RBI singles by Matt Holliday and Helton. Mabry then hit his first home run — it was just the eighth all season for the Rockies, the lowest total in the major leagues.
The five runs in one inning were more than Colorado has scored in any game in the last week.
New York Met Jose Reyes is forced out at second by Colorado Rockies shortstop Troy Tuulowitzki. The Rockies won 11-5 at Shea Stadium in New York on Wednesday.
Kathy Willens/ASSOCIATED PRESS
NASCAR creates modern car with competition, safety advantages
TECHNOLOGY
BY MIKE HARRIS AP AUTO RACING WRITER
NASCAR's grand experiment, the Car of Tomorrow, took the next step last Saturday night in Phoenix, and it was not a big hit with many of the Nextel Cup drivers.
Other than an exciting late-race duel between eventual winner Jeff Gordon and Tony Stewart, the 312-lap Nextel Cup race on the 1-mile oval at Phoenix International Raceway appeared to most be a ploiding affair.
The COT is the culmination of a seven-year project by NASCAR's research and development division, an effort to make a safer car and one that also provides better competition passing and side-by-side duels.
The Phoenix race was the first COT event on a track longer than a half-mile and what the drivers considered the first real test of the aerodynamic features of the new car.
If this is what they have to
Strangely, one of the drivers who complained the most was Denny Hamlin, who overcame a speeding penalty on pit road that set him back to 31st and ended up finishing third. To do that, he had to pass more than half the cars
"I only saw what was around me, but it didn't look like a good race, really, to me," Biffle said. "I didn't see a lot of side-by-side. I didn't see the big, everybody equal. I saw everybody sliding all over the place.
"And NASCAR's claim to fame is they want them hard to drive. Well, it's not that they're hard to drive, it just that they're not like driving a race car. They're like giving us Pinewood derby cars and saying, 'OK, everybody, this is what you're going to race.'"
"I could see the leaders almost the whole race, and it was like we all were just out there running the exact same lap times."
DALE EARNHARDT JR.
Driver
in the 43-car field at least once.
they have to look forward to as the COT continues to be worked into the schedule, nobody is going to be very happy.
Greg Biffle, who finished two spots ahead of Earnhardt in 17th, wasn't too thrilled with the new car, either.
"I could see the leaders almost the whole race, and it was like we all were just out there running the exact same lap times," said Dale Earnhardt Jr. "It was a parade. I was bored."
"To be as nice as I can ... it's frustrating," Hamil said. "People will say, 'But you went from the back to the front.' But weak it
took us 300 laps to do it when it shouldn't have.
car series and been in development since 1981.
"Our car was just that much better than everyone else. ... I don't know how we're going to run these cars on bigger tracks without changes."
Robin Pemberton, NASCAR's vice president of competition and a longtime crew chief, said it isn't surprising that drivers are complaining, because the COT is very different from the cars that have been raced in the top stock
"We are satisfied with the progress that's been made by the teams," Pemberton told The Associated Press in a telephone interview. "The races were good, with fewer DNFs (did not finish) than we've seen historically, and the finishes were close.
"And, from my viewpoint, there was more racing going on around the whole racetrack. I'm really pleased about what I see behind third place, the intensity."
Pemberton noted that drivers
such as the 26-year-old Hamlin haven't been through major changes before.
"We have a lot of very, very young drivers and this is the first rule change some of these guys have ever gone through," he said. "They don't understand how you work through these changes and they don't have the same feel for it as somebody like Jeff Gordon or Mark Martin, who have lived through changes before."
The drivers who aren't happy with the new cars will need to start making those mental adjustments soon because the COT will be raced
13 more times this season and will be phased into the entire 36-race schedule by 2009 for sure, and possibly by 2008.
"I would say some of the teams, like Hendrick and Gibbs and Earnhardt, have had good cars in this race," Pemberton said. "They obviously have worked real hard to get a leg up on the other teams.
"The places where all the teams are making strides is learning how to work on these cars, how to make them better for their drivers."
And not all of the drivers are unhappy with the car now.