Get There Early - The NFL has adopted a new league-wide security measure for fans entering stadiums this season. All fans will be scanned with metal-detector wands and they will have to hold their phones, keys and other metal objects in their hands.
The new procedure is supposed to speed up the process of entering stadiums, which in the past involved pat-downs. The new wanding method is supposed to be fast, but at some stadiums the fans are being encouraged to arrive two hours before the kickoff.
What about die-hard Oakland Raiders fans dressed like members of Kiss or Darth Vader with plenty of metal in their get-ups. They might have to arrive four hours early because the scanner will constantly be going off.
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Seventh Heaven - When Jamestown started playing its home football games on Friday nights at Strider Field, the starting time was set at 7 p.m. instead of the usual 7:30 p.m. time used by area teams.
It's only 30 minutes earlier, but to members of the media who have a deadline it's like two hours earlier. Quite a few schools in the Buffalo area were starting night games at 7 p.m. and Jamestown was just following the trend.
This season, other area schools have joined in and all we can say is a huge thank you. Night games at Randolph, Frewsburg, Chautauqua Lake, Cattaraugus-Little Valley, Silver Creek and Maple Grove will be starting at 7 p.m.
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Some Look Good, Some Look Bad - The Post-Journal's annual high school football magazine, Gridiron, will be published next week and there will be plenty of photos of area players.
Again, some will be seen in full uniform and look like they are in a copy of an old Street and Smith's football magazine. That's because some teams, such as Jamestown, Southwestern and Salamanca, schedule a day for photos to be taken by the media and the yearbook staff. And they announce it long before practice begins.
Most of the teams will be seen in their practice gear. However, they will at least be wearing game jerseys. That's because when we contact the coach to schedule a time to take the photos, we ask that they have at least game jerseys available for the players to wear. A majority of the coaches cooperate and their players look good in the photos.
And if they don't have game jerseys, they at least have matching practice gear.
However, to some other coaches it doesn't matter so their teams appear in all kinds of practice apparel. Last year we even had a team with it's players mostly shirtless.
I recall one year asking a coach if he could have game jerseys available for the photos and his reply was, ''It's not happening.''
I don't even ask him any more.
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Sorry, Sergio - He hadn't won a tournament since 2008, so I was rooting for Sergio Garcia to take the title at last weekend's Wyndham Championship. I was really concerned when he was in front by two and then had to hold onto the lead when the event was postponed on Sunday because of rain and was finished on Monday morning. But Garcia did hold on for the win and in the process earned a berth on the European Ryder Cup team.
On Monday morning I caught only bits and pieces of the telecast that ended around noon. Then I went to work in the late afternoon and totally forgot to put the story in Tuesday's paper!
I thought for sure that the next day I would have some messages on my voice mail. At least four times this year a man and/or a woman have left me voice mails on a Monday morning complaining that there was no story about one of the Sunday golf tournaments in that day's edition. However, each time they were wrong because the story was in the paper.
Only once did one of them leave a call-back number. It was a man, who on the voice mail went on and on about what a disgrace it was the golf story wasn't in the paper. When I called back and told him what page the story was on, I got an Emily Litella-type response of ''Never mind.''
On Tuesday when I had actually forgotten to put the golf story in the paper, I was prepared to take the medicine when I checked my voice mail. However, neither one called.
I dodged a couple of bullets there.