The approach of national football letter of intent signing day on Feb. 3 jogs the memory about an interesting project the ever-busy Marcus George has going.

George, the wildly successful; coach at Ansbach whose knowledge of the way things work on the college level is second to none over here, is compiling a list of the best college prospects from DODDS-Europe. It’s an attempt to clear out the clutter for stateside college coaches who might be interested in finding the next Malcolm Lane, Isaiah Fluellen, Ron George (no relation to Marcus) or Eric Zeier to emerge from the European football scene. George has solicited recommendations from his fellow European coaches for players to put on the list, along with capsule descriptions of each.

The first post of the new year seems a fitting place to update the status of some former Belgium-based wrestling stars, provided by Ronald Battersby, their former coach who’s now stationed at Maxwell AFB, Ala.

Here’s what Battersby had to say:

“Matt Lyon (of St. John’s International School), two-time European champ, undefeated in two years, most pins and most outstanding wrestler in DODDS, has walked on to the nationally ranked NCAA Division I wrestling team at the University of Michigan and MADE THE TEAM!

I’m sure I’m displaying my age and cultural bias, but I couldn’t help wondering last weekend what part of the concept of “sportsmanship” apparently doesn’t translate well into Italian.

In case you missed it, American Overseas School of Rome scoring star Lorenzo Mannozzi and the AOSR bench became so agitated with the decisions of the referees at the end of Friday night’s game at Vicenza that head official Robert Johnson declared the situation uncontrollable and forfeited the game to Vicenza. There were 5 seconds left on the clock and Vicenza was leading 81-80 at the time.

A story in Street and Smith’s Sports Business Journal says the NCAA is surveying broadcasters about the “media value” of expanding its men’s Division I basketball tournament from the present 65 teams to 96.

Since the story goes on to say that the NCAA is deciding “whether to exercise an escape clause in its 11-year, $6 billion deal with CBS,” one can only conclude that the idea of 96 teams equates in the NCAA’s mind with generating even more broadcast dollars from an expanded field.

However, since no team ranked 60th through 65th in the 65-team field has ever won an NCAA tournament game, does adding even more also-rans to what used to be an elite field make any sense to anyone in terms of competition?

What’s next?

It was just opening weekend, but based on their performances Friday and Saturday, look for the winter sports teams from Patch High School to be around at the end. All four Panther squads opened their winter sports seasons with impressive victories.

Most notable were the boys’ and girls’ basketball teams, each 2-0 in road openers against two of the Division I foes they’ll have to tame come tourney time in February. The boys stunned defending champion Ramstein 58-47 on Friday night, then stopped by Kaiserslautern on the way home on Saturday and prevailed 60-40.

Patch’s girls made the same stops, winning 41-36 at Ramstein and 42-35 at K-town.

Send an ex-Lancer to the World Championships

Former Lakenheath All-European Morgan Parkerson is looking for fan help to get her British national softball team to the 2010 World Championships.

Parkerson, a first baseman on the British team, is asking the general public to visit the Web-site http://greatbritons.ba.com/users/23333 and rate her profile as “five-star.”

According to Parkerson, if she gets enough “five-star” votes, British Airways will give the team 16 free tickets to the site of the 2010 Worlds, which is yet to be determined. Great Britain qualified for the World event by finishing second in Europe last year.