Alan Pittman's blog

Sports reporters have long been blasted for pursuing homerism that roots for the home team rather than journalism. So it's interesting to look at the alternative realities of a Register-Guard v. Milwaukee, Wisconsin Journal Sentinel Rose Bowl match up.

Here's the game-ending spike that the "reporters" largely covered by watching on TV like everyone else:

Here's the R-G coverage by Rob Moseley:

"the Badgers were unable to spike the ball in time to stop the clock, after using their timeouts much earlier in the half than they would have liked....The Badgers tried in vain to stop the clock but couldn't, as the replay review confirmed."

Here's coverage in the Pulitzer Prize winning Journal Sentinel by Jeff Potrykus:

"UW hurried to the line of scrimmage and Wilson spiked the ball with a second left but the referee ruled time expired. A video review upheld the call and the game was over....

'I knew there was two seconds left on the clock,' Wilson said. 'As soon as the referee blew the whistle, I snapped it and spiked it. I didn't think there was any way that two full seconds ran off the clock there.'

"Bielema vexed by a few of officials' calls," Potrykus reports in a second story quoting the Wisconsin coach.

The Wisconsin paper reports that in the first half:

"UW lost 13 seconds on its final possession of the first half and thus lost an opportunity to try for a go-ahead score."

In the second half, the paper quotes the Wisconsin coach:

"Basically what happened was, I know his foot touched the line," Bielema said. "It gets down to an issue of where the ball is. I was trying to get a read from my sideline official if we could review forward momentum. He didn't understand the question where I was at, and that's why they charged me a timeout."

But the Wisconsin paper's columnist Michael Hunt blames the coach for the loss:

"But for Wisconsin to blow a second consecutive Rose Bowl in basically the same freakish way it dropped two games in a 2011 season that now seems completely wasted in the aftermath of the 45-38 loss to Oregon, that is hard to forgive or forget.

Bad things don't happen to talented teams like UW on sheer randomness. They happen because of a lack of preparation and poor coaching decisions."

Meanwhile, RG columnist George Schroeder ignores all this and revels in victory with the man who paid for it all:

"It's very, very special," said the biggest fan and benefactor, Nike founder Phil Knight.

The Eugene Police Department and ODOT plan to unveil signs on Saturday renaming I-105 the "Officer Chris Kilcullen Memorial Highway," according to a press release. But "due to safety concerns, ODOT will not accommodate media coverage of the Memorial Highway sign placement."

That may be a good idea. Here's what happened at another such media photo opp last year:

State police tried to spin the accident caused by their roadside distraction as a "coincidence."

Roadside memorials for citizens slain in crashes could prove more effective than speed limit signs in encouraging safe driving and could spur citizen pressure on ODOT to build safer roads. But ODOT defends a state law prohibiting such memorials, arguing that pointing out where people die on their roads is too distracting. The Legislature exempted police memorials from the law.

Last year crashes killed 317 people in Oregon and injured 30,493, according to ODOT data. ODOT has a $2.6 billion annual budget but doesn't bother to publish a map of the deaths on its roads. But The Guardian newspaper in London has:

Never mind that the lavish UO jock-in-the box for student athletes is sucking away academic money, boosting tuition for regular students who are excluded from the facility, it's a death trap for baby ducks:

GO DUCKS!

The U.S. finally got Osama bin Laden. Whoop de doo, George Bush taught us years ago to just forget about him:

Good thing we finally got a Democrat in office to get the job done:

Maybe EmX advocates here need to get out their Legos:

Construction begins this month on some of the greenest housing digs ever built in Eugene-LCC's downtown apartment building for 250 students.

"Sustainability is one of the college's core values," said Lane Community College spokesman Brett Rowlett. The LCC housing is part of its $53-million downtown campus project in the Sears pit across from the library.

Instead of sticking spades into some green farm field on the sprawling edge of town served by an expensive freeway, officials plan to "break ground" tomorrow at 10:30 am by slinging dirt into the pit. The LCC project will recycle the enduring eyesore into model green density offering car-free, low carbon, low-cost living and a much-needed redevelopment spark to the heart of the city.

The five-story, 87,000 square-feet apartment building will include serve students with a mix of single, double and quadruple apartments and studios. The building's ground floor will have a campus store and meeting rooms.

The building's carbon footprint per resident will likely be far less than even the greenest low energy homes built in Eugene. Apartments, with their shared walls and floors, share heating and cooling. They also share infrastructure, greatly reducing the embodied energy carbon impact of building materials. In addition, LCC plans a LEED Gold certified building with some of the latest insulation, appliance and lighting techniques for reducing power.

But, since most Eugene electricity to run buildings is from hydropower, the building's greatest carbon reduction benefit may be simply it's downtown location.

Students going to classes downtown or to LCC's business services office will have to walk just steps to the adjacent 90,000 square-foot LEED Platinum academic center. To get to LCC's main campus, students can cross the street to LTD's main transit hub, for frequent buses running to the campus in just 17 minutes. The LTD bus station also offers express EmX routes to the UO, downtown Springfield, RiverBend hospital and Gateway Mall, a future EmX route planned for West Eugene and other direct bus connections to destinations all over town.

Just a few more steps away is downtown Eugene-offering one of the nation's best city libraries, restaurants, bars, music clubs, Kiva groceries, the Hult Center, coffee shops and bakeries and the largest concentration of jobs in the region.

The student housing will also include significant bike parking. City code for bike parking requires one bike parking space for each two residents in a dormitory.

In perhaps its greenest element, the apartment building will not include a parking garage for cars. Not including car parking in a building can save up to $50,000 per space in construction costs, substantially reducing rents.

More parking isn't needed in the area. The city's six downtown parking garages with more than 2,500 total spaces stand half empty, according to past city parking studies. The LCC housing is across the street from two city garages at Broadway Place (almost 800 spaces 80 percent empty) and under the Library. The city's massive Overpark and Parcade city garages are just a two block walk.

Counting private lots, downtown has more than 15,000 parking spaces-four times more parking than Gateway Mall. Downtown parking is so underused, that the city recently removed hundreds of meters to provide free on-street parking.

LCC's Rowlett doesn't expect LCC will have trouble filling the green housing. He said a housing market study found high demand for student apartments downtown. "There was a definite need," he said.
Rowlett said the housing will go first to LCC students and then to UO students if space is available. Rowlett said he expects residents will reflect LCC's diverse group of students, including many older, returning students and some international students.

The community college creatively cobbled together financing for the building from a variety of sources including $9 million in voter approved LCC bonds, $8 million in urban renewal funding from the city and $5 million in tax credits with the remainder coming from a combination of other federal tax credits, energy tax credits, bond sales and grants.

LCC plans to fast-track construction on the green downtown housing with completion by fall 2012 and doors opening January 2013.

Here's a look at LCC's two minute promotional video for the downtown campus project:

The Eugene City Council voted 8-0 tonight to continue discussion of a May ballot measure on an income tax for schools.

The council plans to discuss details of the measure on Feb. 14 and take a final vote. The 4J school board may vote on whether to support the additional city funding and how much on Feb. 9.

Several councilors appeared to indicate they may ultimately oppose referring a school funding measure to a May ballot vote, but a majority of four councilors and the Mayor spoke in favor of a May ballot measure.

Details remain undecided, but school supporters have discussed a graduated income tax that would raise at least $10 million for 4J and $4 million for Bethel schools per year. The income tax discussed would exempt lower income people and sunset in six years.