Longtime Boston Bruins fan set for life
OK, so the Boston Bruins didn’t win the Stanley Cup. But when it comes to doing the right thing, they’re champs.
A 77-year-old woman who was a longtime season ticketholder but got priced out of her seats was given free season tickets for life, courtesy of Bruins management.
Marge Bishop of Gloucester, Mass., has had season tickets in the first row going back to the late 1960s at the original Boston Garden.
In 2004, she and her husband gave up their tickets after the per-game price increased from $73 to $90.
But after talking to Charlie Jacobs, the son of Bruins owner Jeremy Jacobs, the Bishops decided to come back.
But when those tickets went from $90 to $150 in 2006, that was the last straw. She was no longer a season ticket-holder.
But Jacobs intervened once again. This time, he handed Bishop a plastic card that entitled her to free admission and access anywhere inside TD Banknorth Garden.
“It was the most unbelievable gesture,” Bishop told the Boston Globe. “People just don’t do things like that.”
She kept the gesture to herself for years but finally decided she wanted the world to know about Jacobs’ generosity.
“I’m just a regular person,” Bishop said. “And I’ve been given this remarkable once-ina-lifetime gift. It’s incredible. It’s the most remarkable story.”
LACK OF ‘SELF’ CONTROL? — Have we become so sensitive of a society that a coach can’t bang his fist on a table without getting in trouble? Apparently so. Kansas coach Bill Self was reprimanded by NCAA officials and fined an undisclosed amount for slamming his fist on the scorer’s table in anger during the Jayhawks’ 70-58 win over North Carolina in this year’s NCAA Tournament.
In a news release on the matter, the NCAA said misconduct constituted “any act of dishonesty, unsportsmanlike conduct, unprofessional behavior or breach of law, occurring from the time the championship field is announced through the end of the championship that discredits the event or intercollegiate athletics.”
Imagine what would have happened had Self choked a player, thrown a chair or made an obscene gesture.
PUNISHMENT FIT CRIME? — So in punishing Oregon on Wednesday for using a scouting service, NCAA officials decided to slap former coach Chip Kelly with an 18-month showcause edict for any school that is considering hiring him.
Yeah, that’ll really hurt.
Perhaps someone forgot to tell the NCAA that Kelly is a head coach in the NFL, and unless he’s the second coming of Rich Kotite, he figures to be in the league for years to come.
Several years ago, the NCAA tried to inflict the same kind of punishment on Kelvin Sampson for his misdeeds as basketball coach at Oklahoma.
Sampson, who is an assistant with the Houston Rockets, has been coaching in the NBA since 2008 and has never looked back.