UW Huskies

Seven scribes a-scribbling

Posted Tue, Dec 9, 4 p.m. 2008

by Mike Henderson

The Sark Attack at Huskyville. Round 1.

Can we turn the football game off, now?

Posted Tue, Dec 2, 6 a.m. 2008

by Sue Frause

Not having gone to UW or WSU, our writer thought she could make it through fall just fine. So what was she doing at a sports bar last Saturday?

One Dawg day after another

Posted Sun, Oct 19, 4:13 p.m. 2008

by Mike Henderson

Six games remain on the University of Washington football schedule, and it's not going to get any easier for the winless Huskies.

The Seahawks ruin a perfect record

Posted Mon, Sep 22, 6:43 a.m. 2008

by Mike Henderson

Look at it this way: If Seattle had lost its National Football League game to St. Louis Sunday, Sept. 21, it would have meant that the combined late-summer losing streak of the Seahawks, the Mariners, and the University of Washington football team would have reached 17: 0-11 for the M's, 0-3 for the Huskies, and 0-3 for the Hawks.

So it's something of a civic triumph that the Seahawks didn't fail local fans, flattening the Rams 37-13, bumping the recent male-sport loss-win number to 1-16. Throw in a Seattle Storm Sunday-night 64-50 playoff win against the Los Angeles Sparks and the town is on something of a sports roll.

Sausage Links, Pac 10 edition

Posted Tue, Sep 2, 12:51 p.m. 2008

by Clark Fredricksen

It's been a busy year for University of Oregon graduates Jill Hazelbaker and Tucker Bounds. Recently named the "Dynamic Duck duo" by The Oregonian, Bounds and Hazelbaker are two of the McCain campaign's top communications officers – the Republicans' first wave of defense against Democratic attacks. As reporter Jeff Mapes points out, it's not an easy job. ...

Sausage Links, cougar-hunting edition

Posted Wed, Jul 16, 3:28 p.m. 2008

by Clark Fredricksen

Praise the Lord and release the hounds — because our good state Legislature has enacted a law which makes it legal once again to use dogs to hunt cougars. Now, I didn't even know cougar hunting was legal in Washington — minus Cougars wearing crimson — but apparently, it is. While the bill was actually passed by the Legislature in February, the Department of Fish and Wildlife will hold a public meeting on Friday to discuss whether the pilot program should continue for another three years.

Meanwhile, Micheal Reitz of the Evergreen Freedom Foundation has compiled a list of some other curious laws enacted by the Washington Legislature this year. My personal favorite: Violators may face up to $1,000 or up to a year in jail for selling raw or unprocessed huckleberries without a permit.

As the Sonics leave town, it may help the arts

Posted Sat, Jul 5, 11:17 a.m. 2008

by David Brewster

In all the reporting about the Sonics decision, we tend to overlook the intense clamoring over a taxing source, the so-called "stadium taxes," that bedevils the politics. A lot of groups want to lay claim to those taxes, which are supposed to go away after the Kingdome, Safeco Field, and Qwest Field are paid off, but are really catnip to politicians for their pet causes. The taxes have two attractions: they are not really an "increase" if you just extend their life, and they fall mostly on visitors, who don't vote locally.

One of the main supplicants is the arts. Thereby hangs an interesting story.

Not just the Sonics want those stadium taxes

Posted Tue, Mar 11, 10:06 a.m. 2008

by David Brewster

The showdown in Olympia over the Sonics is much more than a shoving match between Speaker Frank Chopp, a populist who likes to defy bailouts for sports owners, and the Seattle establishment, which wants the team to buttress Seattle Center and tourism interests and for reasons of civic pride. A bigger issue is the years-long clamoring for a taxing source that might get away. Those are the so-called "stadium taxes," a mixture of taxes on car rentals, restaurants and bars, hotel rooms, and local sales tax. The money is all generated locally in King County, but instead of going into the Olympia general fund, it gets rebated back to pay off construction of Safeco Field and Qwest Field. And they are supposed to expire as the stadiums are paid off in the next decade.

The Huskies had the three-pointer down this year, but twos and ones, not so much

Posted Tue, Feb 26, 5:41 p.m. 2008

by Mike Henderson

As the University of Washington Husky men's basketball team heads to the Bay Area this week for two of its final three league games, maybe players ought to be thinking about signs of a brighter future rather than a less-than-successful past. The most conspicuous sign being waved in the student section of Hec Edmundson Pavilion last Saturday, Feb. 23, read: "Thanks, Ryan, for three years of threes."

Featured on TV this weekend, it's the NBA in decline

Posted Sat, Feb 16, 11:41 a.m. 2008

by Mike Henderson

The ongoing paradox about the National Basketball Association's annual All-Star Game is that defense is considered offensive. That's why the final score of the Sunday, Feb. 17, spectacle (TNT, 5:30 p.m.) may resemble the Obama-Clinton delegate count.

Here and elsewhere, the predicament facing the NBA and its gradually failing franchises ought to underscore (if such a term is even appropriate for an NBA all-star game) the desperation and absurdity of staging a weekend of "nothing's-wrong-here" frivolity. This would be the case even if it weren't all happening in, of all places, New Orleans.