Joe Santoro: Mets gives Giants fans some coal for Christmas

Forget the Los Angeles Dodgers. The San Francisco Giants’ newest most-hated rival, at least through this holiday season, is the New York Mets. The Mets this week added to their long history of stealing from the Giants by grabbing shortstop Carlos Correa in the middle of the night. The Mets have a long history of pilfering treasured Giant property, starting with the orange N.Y. on their hats and continuing through the years with Willie Mays, Dave Kingman, Shawn Estes and others. Yes, the Giants grabbed former Mets Kevin Mitchell and Jeff Kent, but both those guys (Mitchell from San Diego and Kent from Cleveland) first washed the Mets stink off their uniforms before coming to the Bay Area.

The Mets, though, outdid themselves Tuesday night with Correa even before Correa was officially a Giant. (Think Benjamin stealing Elaine from a Bay Area altar in “The Graduate,” without the wedding dress, of course). Time will tell if the Mets actually did the Giants a favor by wiping a ridiculous $350 million deal for 13 years for Correa off the Giants’ books before it started. But Giants fans on Monday thought they’d have a shiny new All-Star shortstop under their Christmas tree this weekend and now they will wake up on Christmas morning and see a broken down Brandon Crawford smiling back up at them.

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The Giants with Correa likely wouldn’t have been good enough to finish ahead of the Los Angeles Dodgers or San Diego Padres, anyway. The Padres have added Xander Bogaerts and the Dodgers are so good they let Cody Bellinger, Justin Turner and Trea Turner and others leave town this winter and, apparently, couldn’t care less. Correa, after all, would have been under tremendous pressure to justify his $350 million contract and carry a Giants lineup filled with try-hard, talent-limited guys that wouldn’t win a Triple-A title. But without Correa, well, the Giants will be fortunate to repeat last year’s disappointing 81-81, third-place finish. The goal all year will be to simply hold off the Arizona Diamondbacks and Colorado Rockies. The only consolation for Giants fans this year will be if Crawford plays more games, hits more homers and drives in more runs than Correa, who just might have to spend considerable time off the field suffering from the malady that scared the Giants away from him this week. The Giants’ front office, which also went after and lost Aaron Judge this off-season to another New York team, better hope that happens.

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Head coach Ken Wilson and Wolf Pack football fans can’t complain anymore about former coach Jay Norvell stealing Wolf Pack players for his Colorado State roster. Wilson, it turns out, is doing basically the same thing from the Oregon Ducks, his former employer. Wilson added a half dozen or so former Ducks last off-season after he got the Pack job in December and this year, he has already gone to the transfer portal to nab ex-Duck Jackson LaDuke (a former Spanish Springs linebacker). Wilson is also in pursuit of former Oregon players Sean Dollars (running back) and Adrian Jackson (linebacker-edge rusher), although neither signed on Wednesday, the first day of the early signing period.

Yes, we understand what Wilson has done is not the exact same thing Norvell did. The Wolf Pack, after all, is still recovering from the loss of Norvell and the offensive coaches and players he packed away in his moving van when he left for Colorado State a year ago. Oregon, we also understand, hasn’t skipped a beat after losing Wilson and the handful of assistants he brought from Oregon and won’t likely miss at all the 10 or so backup players Wilson has coaxed to Reno off their roster over the past year. But stealing is, in fact, stealing. And if it walks like a duck, talks like a duck and smells like a duck, it is probably a duck. Or a desperate wolf.

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Former Wolf Pack wide receiver Melquan Stovall, who has had more trips to the NCAA transfer portal (two) than the end zone (one) in his four-year career, is now an Arizona State Sun Devil. Stovall caught 108 passes for 1,064 yards and one touchdown for the Pack from 2019-21 in 29 games. He then went into the Nevada-to-Colorado State portal after the 2021 season and, well, stayed about as long in Colorado as a Kansas tourist at Pikes Peak. Stovall played just three games for Norvell with the Rams this past fall and caught 13 passes for 106 yards. He left Norvell in September and now he is at Arizona State along with former Wolf Pack offensive lineman Aaron Frost and basketball players Desmond Cambridge and Warren Washington. Stovall has two years of eligibility left (players that played in the COVID-19 2020 season can, apparently, play until they collect a Social Security check). But if the Sun Devils don’t throw him the ball this fall as often as he would like don’t be surprised if the 5-foot-9 Stovall looks for another transfer portal loophole so he can move elsewhere. This is what players and coaches do now. Instead of working harder to improve their game, they just jump into the transfer portal. Keep that in mind as you peruse the recruiting list detailing the players the Wolf Pack signed on Wednesday. Don’t get too attached to any of them.

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Is anyone really all that upset that the Wolf Pack is not involved in this year’s bowl game schedule? Of course not. The only ones who might be upset are the coaches who will lose out on a bonus and the players who won’t get a swag bag of gifts. Not having to fake interest in yet another meaningless Wolf Pack bowl game is, after all, quite a nice break for the fans. How many postseason matchups against a Mid-American Conference team can one fan base suffer through, anyway? The Pack has played five current MAC teams in bowls, three from the American Athletic Conference, two from the Sun Belt, one from Conference USA and, yes, even two from the current Mountain West. A year off from all that is a true reward.

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The Pack is 7-12 in its 19 bowl games. There is no better way, after all, to cap off a disappointing six or seven-win season than with another loss to yet another mediocre team. Some of the Pack bowl games over the last 75 or so years have ranged from frustrating and embarrassing to truly awful and disturbing. Most (wins and losses) have been simply boring. The three times Chris Ault quit as Pack coach were all after bowl game losses (by a combined five points). So keep in mind one thing when you settle in front of your favorite device this winter with your stockings hung by the chimney with care in the hopes that an interesting bowl game will appear on your screen. Just take a moment to give thanks there won’t be any chance you will run across the Wolf Pack getting destroyed by a MAC team like last year.

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There have been a few times, to be sure, where a bowl game truly was a Wolf Pack reward. It was a reward not only to the head coach who was getting a nice Christmas bonus and the players who were getting gifts from bowl game sponsors. It was a reward to the fans, too. Imagine that. The 18-15 win over Ball State in Las Vegas in 1996 was a landmark Pack win. The 20-13 win over Boston College in the Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl in San Francisco in January 2011 capped off the greatest Pack season in history. The narrow losses to Bowling Green (Las Vegas, 1992), Toledo (Las Vegas, 1995), Miami (Boise, 2006) and Arizona (New Mexico, 2012) were frustrating, aggravating and a nightmare. But they will live in Pack fans’ memories forever. They left Pack fans exhausted. Not bored. Hey, nobody knows how to lose a close, frustrating, devastating bowl game better than Chris Ault.

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Ault, it seems, simply did not know how to coach in a boring postseason game, be it the Division I-AA playoffs or a Division I-A bowl game. Few coaches in college football history have ever packed as much flair and dramatics so frequently in the postseason as the Pack’s Little General. He was a true showman. And he did it in victories and losses. The unforgettable wins came against North Texas (1983), Arkansas State (1985), Furman and Boise State (both 1990), Central Florida (2005) and Boston College (2010 season). The list of heartbreaking losses is too long and too painful to mention here and many of them involved a guilty kicker or punter (such as Eastern Kentucky in 1979, Youngstown State in 1991 and Bowling Green in 1992).

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The list of Ault’s postseason thrillers all started innocently enough on Dec. 8, 1979, at Richmond, Ky., against Eastern Kentucky. It was Eastern Kentucky’s first-ever appearance in the Division I-AA playoffs and the Pack’s second (they lost to Massachusetts, 44-21, the year before at Mackay). The 1979 game was shown live back in Reno on ABC (KOLO-TV). The Pack was grateful just to be included in the four-team I-AA playoff, having finished third in the Big Sky that season. But Big Sky champion Boise State was on probation and runner-up Montana State had four overall losses, facts that disqualified them from playoff consideration, so the Pack (8-3 overall) was picked to represent the West. The Wolf Pack brought the I-AA leading rusher (Frank Hawkins, 1,683 yards) and the No. 2 quarterback (Larry Worman, 1,493 yards) to Eastern Kentucky and promptly trailed 23-3 in the fourth quarter. Nevada’s John Vicari, though, returned a kickoff 88 yards for a touchdown, Worman connected with Charles Edwards on a 13-yard score with four minutes left and Hawkins scored from a yard out, capping a clutch 69-yard drive by Worman with 39 seconds left to tie the game at 23-23. The Pack might have won the game in regulation but Fernando Serrano’s extra point after Hawkins’ touchdown was blocked. The blocked extra point made the Pack and Colonels the first teams in Division I history (A or AA) to ever play an overtime game. Worman found Edwards for a 1-yard scoring pass in the first overtime and Serrano lined up in the second overtime for a 39-yard field goal with the game tied 30-30. Serrano, though, missed and Eastern Kentucky’s David Flores kicked a 27-yard field goal in the Colonels’ second overtime to send the Pack home a 33-30 loser. The Colonels would go on to win the Division I-AA title the following week, 30-7 over Lehigh. It wouldn’t be the last time an Ault-coached team (or a kicker) ripped the hearts out of Pack fans.