Stealing free hotel breakfasts ... New Orleans gearing up for big-time sports

Couple interesting items in USA Today this morning caught my eye, the first being a story about how desperate folks are sneaking into hotels and grabbing a share of the free breakfast's that many places offer.

Not to condone such a thing, but it makes sense that if you're hungry and you see folks milling about in a hotel lobby and making waffles and gulping down scrambled eggs, that you just might think to yourself, "Hey, there's a free meal."

Hotels, of course, are aware. It's hard to spot a clever intruder the first time. But if folks show up a second or third time, well, most hotel managers are going to cotton on pretty quickly.

I guess the secret is to blend in a little. In Orlando, we suggest wearing identical Mickey Mouse sweatshirts or those Thing 1, Thing 2, Thing 3 Dr. Suess shirts I saw families wearing (ugh) at Universal Studios last spring.

Looking for a free meal in Wisconsin? A Green Bay Packers cheese head ought to get you past the front door. No one in Wisconsin would talk smack to a Packers' fan, even if they thought they were Milwaukee residents trying to scarf free food. Toronto? An Argonaut's jersey ought to do it. Why? Because NOBODY in Toronto wears an Argos jersey, therefore anyone with a jersey has to be a tourist. Or someone on the team, who, come to think of it, probably could use a free meal as much as the hobo in downtown Miami.

Speaking of sports, USA Today also noted that The Big Easy is coming up huge in coming months on the sporting scene. The NCAA football match, conveniently between Louisiana State and Alabama, will be held in New Orleans (see photo) on Jan. 9. Also, they'll host the NCAA men's basketball Final Four tourney in April, plus the 2012 women's Final Four and, last but not least, the 2013 Super Bowl.

Gee, ya think there'll be a whole lot of sports journalists suddenly clamouring for a chance to cover the Super Bowl come 2013? They might even surpass the credential requests for the recent Super Bowl in Detroit and the 2012 edition, which is in Indianapolis. Minus the winless Colts, of course.

Next month's college football game and the Final Four in April are expected to bring in $1.8 million in tax revenue for New Orleans.

Also speaking of sports, I see Tiger Woods sent a few bottles of champagne to the press tent after winning the Chevron tourney in Thousand Oaks, California on Sunday. I was excited to see Tiger win, as it's good for the sport. Also a bit of redemption, perhaps, for Oakville's Sean Foley, the controversial swing coach that Woods hired a while back to help get him back on top of the podium. It took a while, but Tiger seems to have his swing back and you have to give Foley some of the credit, for sure.

Anyway, it's interesting that Tiger made nice with the media by sending in the bubbly. A classy act, I think. I just wish he'd done that a few times when I covered golf for the Star...