Letters

On last week's program, "Only A Game" producer Karen Given speculated on the future endeavors of Watson, the computer that competed so successfully at Jeopardy! The conclusion to her musings featured Watson on a ski slope.

It did not go well.

That message on our listener line may or may not have been representative. There were no robo-calls on the line, so Watson and his ilk are apparently taking the high road on this issue.

Peter Davies was among the listeners responding to the story that "Only A Game" producer Doug Tribou provided of Kendra Stern, the Division III swimmer whose times challenge those of D-I athletes. "It was refreshing to hear about Ms. Stern's success," he wrote. "Let's have more on intelligent athletes in sports that don't bring in the big bucks."

Josh Humphrey, who hears the program on WUNC in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, wrote in response to our story about the monitoring of athletes at the University of Kansas. "Why is it necessary for schools to spend student funds to hire senior citizens to make sure the most privileged students on campus are going to class?" he asked. "Why not tell them 'if you skip class, your scholarship gets yanked and given to someone who has the drive and determination to succeed in the classroom?'"

Diane Sidwell had a different response to that story. With regard to athlete-monitoring, she left this message on our facebook page: "It would be the ideal retirement job for me. Now if I can only get Michigan to adopt the same policy and persuade my husband to move to Ann Arbor."

I spoke last week with soccer writer Grant Wahl, who announced his intention to unseat Sepp Blatter as President of FIFA. That conversation provoked a response from Bart Rankin. He hears the program - and works for - WFCR in Amherst, Massachusetts, and he wrote, "Good show today, especially the FIFA story. Bladder - B-l-a-d-d-e-r has been an embarrassment for a long time." Moments later Mr. Rankin left another message: "Sorry. Blatter," it read. "I blame spellcheck."

And finally, Dave Pierson contributed a final Super Bowl haiku to the mountain of same. It reads:

It's only a game:
Each year the super madness
Is only a game.

You can leave a message on the listener line by calling 617-353-1860. You can find us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter at @onlyagameradio.