Frank Deford on BSC

Sports Illustrated's resident Lion-in-Winter Frank Deford applauded Birmingham-Southern's move to D-III in his column this week.

Make no mistake: this is a terribly-written column. Deford is a sportswriting legend, but his strength has always been reporting and George Will-esque essays. His weakness--as anyone who's been paying attention to his increasingly painful-to-read Si.com pieces over the past couple of years--would seem to be, you guessed it, column-writing. Am I being greedy to wish that Pat Forde or even Kyle Whelliston had taken a shot at this instead? I mean, really, is it that tough to figure out that BSC spells "Birmingham-Southern" with a hyphen?

Yeah, I am being greedy. It's a positive portrayal of BSC from a respected writer on the front page of a national website. Even if I'm a lot more ambivalent about the move than Deford (and seriously question his assertion that the "vast majority" of alumni thougth this was a good idea), after the year BSC had in 2006, I'll take it.

Even if Deford's closing line is so cheesy it ought to be sponsored by the Wisconsin Dairy Farmer's Association.

p.s.--Nice move by Pollick to oh-so-casually mention that BSC was able to book the Dave Matthews Band. Subtle, subtle, subtle.