Marching out: Former Pro Bowl right tackle Jon Stinchcomb, who was released by the Saints during training camp, says he is happy with life away from football and is retiring from the NFL. Stinchcomb started for New Orleans from 2006 through 2010. He says he expected to retire from the day he was released but “wanted to sleep on it.” The Saints made Stinchcomb their second-round draft pick out of Georgia in 2003, and he was selected to the Pro Bowl in 2009 while helping the team win its first Super Bowl title. Last season, he often played hurt and had off-season surgery to repair a torn left quad muscle. He says he has not filed retirement papers yet, but is enjoying time with family and is considering a career in physical therapy.
Shakespeare for sports: In a recent column for Inside Higher Ed magazine titled “College Sports and Our Winter of Discontent,” LSU System President John Lombardi discusses changes he’d support when it comes to compensating student athletes. While Lombardi would not support outright payments to athletes, he does advocate a minimum four-year scholarship for every scholarship athlete regardless of whether the student remains an athlete or not. He also says injury insurance should be provided to all athletes, regardless of their scholarship status, and advocates a royalty-type payment system for athletes once they’re no longer on the team. Read the full column here.
Big game brewing: Though he doesn’t offer a prediction on who will win Saturday’s showdown between the No. 2 LSU Tigers and the No. 16 West Virginia Mountaineers, Charleston Daily Mail Sports Editor Jack Bogaczyk does have some other interesting numbers in his column this week. “Through two games, Mountaineer Field vendors have gone through 38,750 bottles of beer and 22 kegs with beer priced from $7-9,” he writes, “producing a beer sales gross of $281,453.” Bogaczyk goes on to note 12,000 fewer bottles of water have been sold through West Virginia’s first two games. West Virginia’s is one of very few college sports stadiums to allow beer sales. When asked earlier this week if he’d like to see beer served in Tiger Stadium, coach Les Miles said he would “enjoy playing in front of a Tiger Stadium that occasionally had a beer.” Note the adverb in his comment. And read Bogaczyk’s entire thoughts on Saturday’s game here.
