Daily Archives: September 20, 2005

Coach Price turns up the heat on Sports Illustrated

Posted on by
Reply

Mike Price2.JPGThis prior post related the interesting story of former University of Alabama football coach and current University of Texas at El Paso football coach Mike Price‘s $20 million libel lawsuit against Time Inc. The lawsuit involves an allegedly false and malicious story that Time’s Sports Illustrated magazine ran in May, 2003 involving a very wild night that Coach Price had in Pensacola, Florida while attending a University of Alabama football-related golf tournament. That night of festive activity led to Coach Price’s termination as the Alabama football coach before he had ever coached a game for the Crimson Tide.
Well, the Price v. Time case is getting very interesting, as this recent AL.com story relates. An appellate panel of the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals has advised Time’s attorney in this decision that the attorney-client privilege does not obviate the attorney’s parallel obligation as an officer of the trial court to advise the court of perjury that would help identify a confidential source. The attorney stuck between a rock and a hard place is Gary C. Huckaby of Huntsville, Ala., who represents Time in the Price lawsuit.

Continue reading →

The Texans’ next firing?

Posted on by
2

brain.jpgThis Wall Street Journal ($) article profiles Dr. Fran Pirozzolo, The Woodlands-based sports psychologist who has developed a successful practice by catering to a couple of dozen professional athletes who seek him out for “stress inoculation” and other “mental toughness” techniques that supposedly enhance performance. I have listened to Dr. Pirozzolo several times on local sports-talk radio shows and, for the life of me, cannot understand how he is able to persuade professional athletes to pay him money for the psycho-babble that he exudes on those shows. However, as the article notes, Dr. Pizzorolo is also the “staff psychologist” of the Houston Texans, who are not exactly the most well-adjusted and emotionally stable group at this time. If offensive coordinator Chris Palmer lost his job after these two performances (here and here), then how on earth has Dr. Fran not also been canned?

Oil and gas markets react to Rita

Posted on by
4

rig offshore2.jpgWhoa, Nellie! Oil prices surged yesterday in anticipation of Hurricane Rita plowing through the Gulf of Mexico as OPEC ministers meeting in Vienna conceded they have no real means to cool red-hot petroleum markets that have become roiled by successive hurricanes in the extensive Gulf of Mexico production region.
The price of U.S. benchmark crude-oil futures for October delivery shot up $4.39 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange and settled at $67.39. That was the highest one-day rise in nominal terms since Nymex began trading oil futures in 1983. Moreover, the storm’s approach is slowing down efforts to fix Gulf production infrastructure that was damaged by Hurricane Katrina. The U.S. Mineral Management Service reported yesterday that 44% of the daily output of oil and natural gas remained off-line from the earlier storm.
Folks, hang on to your hat because it’s going to be one wild ride this week in the oil and gas markets.