Ken Kendrick Deserves Praise, Kyle Allen, Donnie Yantis Futures…

Three Dots…
It was good to see Ken Kendrick surrounded by reporters following the Zack Greinke press conference on Friday. The Managing General Partner of the team deserves some attention for giving the OK to Tony La Russa and Dave Stewart to put down over $200 million dollars to land Greinke. For years we have heard the term “small market” when talking about Phoenix sports. I asked Kendrick about that label now that the Diamondbacks have the new $1.5 billion dollar television with FOX, are the days of being a “small market” city over?
“In terms of our(Phoenix) population, we would be a middle-sized market, city, and community. Our revenue streams, middle to lower half, they have improved substantially by the television arrangement that we were fortunate to get”.
The key point here is that Kendrick and company are committed to putting a product on the field that can compete for the top spot in the National League West for quite sometime. The TV contract is a game changer. It allows them to fight for the best players against the Dodgers and Giants regardless of the market size. Kendrick deserves more credit than I think he’s been getting…

As the Diamondbacks and Greinke were putting together the deal to bring him to Arizona, the pitcher informed the team that he wanted to make a sizable yearly donation to charities in Arizona. Team President Derrick Hall told me that the dollar figure will be in the “high six figure range, each year”…

I am not surprised to hear that former Desert Mtn. star quarterback Kyle Allen is transferring out of Texas A&M. It was an odd fit from the beginning. New Memphis head coach Mike Norvell saw Allen up close in high school and even at the start of this season when the Sun Devils got crushed by A&M.
Todd Graham has a plethora of quarterbacks, but you can never have too many at that position. Oklahoma makes a ton of sense too…

Arizona Christian head football coach Donnie Yantis was named American Football Coaches Association regional coach of the year in Region 5. The Firestorm went 6-3 this season. Yantis has done a remarkable job in two short seasons. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a Division One program make a run at him in the coming weeks. Yantis can recruit. He’s relentless…