Bumming around town with Bill Bumerton

Bumerton is a retired Navy fighter pilot who had been missing in action for several years while he traversed the globe looking for greener grass. He discovered the grass is only greener here (it’s blue in Kentucky), so he returned to again take charge of his 1954 green Hudson Hornet that had been in storage, refilled his pipe, and is continuing his smokin’ ways. Here is what he recently told us at the Sports Paper.

I have not read anywhere, Big Dawg, my concerns over Steve Sarkisian leaving Washington for those Trojans in southern California. I just don’t get how a coach – any coach – can say as he did that he was not talking to a school about leaving one day and the next day leave for that same school. And I don’t understand how a coach can appear to be so loyal and so bought in to a football program one minute and the next disappear as if by magic.

Steve Sarkisian, bye bye

I’m a very loyal person – as you are too, Big Dawg – and I just can’t turn my emotions on and off with such seemingly little disregard for other people’s feelings. But the biggest thing for me is how coaches can make so much money and move about with almost impunity (Sark does have to pay the UW a $1.5 million bailout fee, although that will likely be paid by the Trojans) while the kids he coaches cannot move without sitting out a year in a transfer to another NCAA school, and they don’t get paid the millions their coaches do. Something is wrong with this picture. Thing of it this way: Your father shows up one day after a successful day at work and announces he has found a better paying job and is leaving and not taking you with him. He doesn’t say he’s sorry or anything; just walks out the door and is gone. So how would you feel if that happened to you? Exactly, Big Dawg, you would not only be ticked, but angry and frustrated all rolled into one big emotional hangover. You wouldn’t trust any soul that walked through your door with a bag of candy as an offering. And you certainly wouldn’t trust anybody who said you are the best son or daughter in the world and this is the place where I was meant to be. Until, of course, the next best offer comes along. Don’t bother getting me a tall latte, I think I’ll go back to bed and pull the covers over my head.