Heads and tales: Good sports

handshake Detente, y’all: It’s about time. Birmingham Mayor Bernard Kincaid and Alabama Governor Bob Riley met in private for the first time ever last week. Among the topics were BJCC expansion and mass transit. And it took only three years. As we’ve said, cooperation is the watchword.
• Mayor gets governor’s ear [Birmingham News]

Fire up a bowl?: Our pal Ray Melick reports that Birmingham may get a third-tier bowl game by year’s end, thanks to ESPN Regional TV. The proposed matchup would pit Conference USA vs. either the Big East or the Mid-America conferences. Ray mentions in his column that ESPN has put up a $2 million line of credit, making it nearly a nothing-to-lose proposition for the city. Anyone up for the Fighting Mules of Central Missouri State against the Golden Hurricanes of Tulsa? Rah.
• Birmingham may get new bowl game [Birmingham News]

Won’t you come home, Brown Bomber?: Joe Louis is a boxing legend everywhere, except his birthplace, Lafayette. Hometown residents would like to put up a statue in his honor, but have raised less than one-fifth of the $50,000 cost. Among previous tributes is Joe Louis Arena in Detroit (where he lived starting at age 10) and a wreath-laying ceremony at his grave site in Arlington last week (marking the 25th anniversary of his death).
• Joe Louis’ Alabama hometown trying to reconnect [Associated Press]

Victory is life: Congratulations to the Birmingham News, a finalist in editorial writing for this year’s Pulitzer Prizes for its “series of incisive editorials reversing the paper’s long-held support of the death penalty.” The editorial board won the Pulitzer in 1991 for its series on inequities in the state tax system.
• Pulitzer Prizes for Journalism

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