Cooper scuttles schedule

Well, leave it to former Gamblers Head Coach Jon Cooper to put a crimp in my schedule on Monday. It wasn't intentional of course. After taking a few days off at the end of the previous week and putting the Dinosaurs to bed, I was getting psyched to dive head first into what needs to be done for the Baylake Bank Tall Ship Festival coming up this weekend. PMI Entertainment Group is producing the festival. I got a hint something was up late last week while on vacation and it turned out that a good portion of Monday was dealing with the announcement that Cooper was leaving the Gamblers and heading to Norfolk to head up the Tampa Bay Lightning's top minor league team.

The beauty of my job is to never plan on anything, but plan for everything. Media interviews and PR stuff was begging to be dealt with Monday morning and instead the day became a juggling act. Juggling interview scheduling for the Cooper announcement and for the tall ship festival. In fact, at one point I had two FOX 11 crews here, one for sports to talk Gamblers and another for news to talk about the festival. Cooper's leaving is bit of a surprise this late in the game. He basically said the timing wasn't right to leave Green Bay after the end of last season, but this huge job came out of nowhere. So now we move on and as Gamblers President Brendan Bruss says..."we keep the train moving." We already have a LOT of interest from prospective candidates.

Meanwhile, the ships will be moving/sailing into downtown Green Bay this weekend. Watch for live news coverage early Friday morning on FOX 11 and then Sunday morning on CBS 5. It'll be my pleasure to get up early with those folks. There's something cool about being next to tall ships and the river at sunrise. I just hope it is cooler because this hot and humid weather stinks - at least for me. Check it out this weekend, it's a very unique event!