THE FRONT ROW WITH MARK NELKE: Last-minute gift ideas for local sports teams

Watching the Zags have their way -- so far -- with a barely ranked, shorthanded and shooting-challenged Texas Tech team ...

And thinking about a few last-minute Christmas gifts for the local sporting community.

FOR THE FIELDS AT REAL LIFE: A pair of goal posts.

The Fields in Post Falls, with its artificial turf, is a wonderful soccer complex, a useful site for high school games, state tournaments and even little kids' sports.

But, as you may have noticed, it snows around here. And when it rains, especially late in the high school football season, local fields can get a bit mucky.

Remember when it snowed here during the state soccer tournament in 2020? Games scheduled for the grass fields were either canceled or moved.

The games at The Fields went on -- thanks to snow-removal equipment.

So in an emergency, late in the fall, if we needed a local football field to play on, The Fields might be an alternative to, say, packing up and heading 85 miles south to the Kibbie Dome in Moscow.

(Heck, while we're at it, how about two pair of goal posts for The Fields? They have two soccer fields there, so there's room. We'll figure out the portable bleachers part of the equation later.)

FOR THE IDAHO VANDALS FOOTBALL PROGRAM: A return to the winning ways of the 1980s and early 1990s.

Rumor had it the Vandals were threatening to announce a new coach on Saturday (Sunday would have been better -- slower news day, especially with no Seahawks).

Anyway, the fact Idaho was able to sign two football players on Wednesday without having a head football coach in place means either ...

It's true what coaches say -- if they can just get a kid on campus in Moscow, they have a good shot at landing him;

Or ...

The two kids knew who the new coach was going to be, even if the school had yet to make an announcement.

After struggling for most of their 22 seasons in FBS, the Vandals continued to struggle after returning to FCS and the Big Sky Conference in 2018.

Just because Idaho won before doesn't mean they can just flip a switch and start winning again -- it doesn't work that way.

But the Vandals have shown signs of being able to play with the bullies of the Big Sky -- sometimes, anyway.

So it's possible -- and it's up to the new coach and his staff to figure out how to get the Vandals to that next level.

FOR THE LOVABLE ZAGS: The toughness to win a national title.

The Zags have the talent -- they're now landing the top recruits in the country, and they have kids willing to come off the bench at GU, rather than be stars with other teams.

But sometimes they lose to teams that out-tough them -- which happens when you play good teams. And it's smart they play these teams in November and December, because they won't see it as much in January and February.

But don't complain when they lose to more physical teams.

Baylor was tough last year, but certainly not a super-team like UNLV (or even Duke) in the early 1990s, or Georgetown in the 1980s.

I'm guessing Baylor gave Gonzaga the respect it deserved as a really good team -- but the Bears had played plenty of good teams during conference play, and this was just another really good team on their schedule.

(BTW, Anton Watson is exactly what Gonzaga needs to win a national title, with his energy, defense, rebounding and passing. And if he starts nailing 3-pointers on a regular basis ... )

Then again, if the lovable Zags shoot it like they did on Saturday, that other stuff might not matter.

BONUS WISH, FOR NATIONAL ANNOUNCERS OF ZAGS GAMES: OK, pretty much everybody has figured out the last part of the name is ZAG-uh, not ZOG-uh.

Now let's work on the first part.

It's GONE-zaga, not GUN-Zaga.

Merry Christmas.