Sports
 

We should commend Noble, Curl

Commentary

Christian Schmidt

Anyone who has interviewed Rayner Noble knows two things: he's extremely intense and he's one heck of a coach.

But recently UH fans have been treated to another part of Noble -- the part that changes his baseball team's game times to less desirable ones so that the UH women's basketball team can have the spotlight.

After all, the ladies deserve it. The Lady Cougars are 23-3 and ranked No. 17 and can secure a Conference USA championship with a defeat of Texas Christian tonight.

So when Noble moves the baseball starting time to 4 p.m. from 7 p.m. so that it won't overlap with the women's 7 p.m. start time, as he did last Friday and today, he should be thanked.

Joe Curl certainly thinks so. The women's basketball coach took time more than once in the past week to thank Noble and the baseball team for moving their game in order to help the Lady Cougars.

Curl understands that Noble sacrificed attendance -- Friday's 1,203 fans were the smallest crowd for the three-game weekend series. And Curl knows the 1,665 fans who attended the Lady Cougar game against DePaul on Friday would have been substantially less -- the UH women have averaged 1,237 fans at home games this year.

This is the sort of thing athletics departments and universities as a whole should be doing all the time. Instead of interfering with each other, as programs all too often do, they should work together to avoid overlaps in game times, thus increasing attendance at all events.

Want an example? 

On a fine February day in 2002, the women's basketball team played its game at Hofheinz Pavilion, the baseball team played at Cougar field and the track team hosted a competition in the Bill Yeoman field house.

Certainly some overlap in scheduling will happen. There are only so many weekends and midweek games are problematic because of athletes' school schedules. And of course, much of the scheduling is done by Conference USA, not the UH Athletics Department. But things can be done better.

So do Noble and Curl a favor. Make it a Cougar doubleheader tonight: baseball against Long Beach State at 4 p.m. and women's basketball against Texas Christian at 7 p.m. Trust me, they would really appreciate it. 

And you will, too. 

Schmidt is a sports columnist for The Daily Cougar. 
He can be reached via dcsports@mail.edu.