Big 10 gets no credit for Sparty's success.

With Michigan State and North Carolina facing each other for the NCAA Championship tonight it would seem that the joke is on the mighty Big East. All of the experts spent the last two months of the season lauding the Big East and convincing the rest of us that the Big 10 and the ACC weren’t all that good. OK. Never mind the fact that the Big10 and the ACC faced the Big East head-to-head and won convincingly, and lets not carp over the fact that the Big East is home to half the teams in college basketball and logic would dictate that a few of them would be pretty good; the fact remains that the Big East did send two teams to the Final Four. That’s impressive. Seriously, it really is.

And while the Big 10 isn’t exactly playing tether ball, it’s tough to watch conference play. Michigan State is a tough team because they won a conference that seems to view basketball the way Jim Naismith did when he invented it: as a way to keep footballers in shape. Players routinely get mauled in the Big 10 and it results in ugly slugfest games with really low scores. It also creates the illusion that the Big 10 isn’t talented enough to face quality opposition deep in the NCAA Tournament. Michigan State, regardless of the outcome tonight, has proven that theory invalid.

Of course that doesn’t mean that the Big Ten should pat itself on the back for a job well done. I’m a Big 10 fan. That is to say that I was pulling for Michigan State the whole way. I wanted that rest of the Big 10 to do well too, but I really like Tom Izzo and I felt that a deep run in this tournament would finally get him the national recognition he deserves. The guy is a great coach and deserves to be mentioned in the same sentence as Jim Calhoun, Rick Pitino and Coach K. By advancing to the championship game, Izzo accomplishes that. I hope he wins it all, but that’s just icing on the cake. Michigan State’s got a lot to be proud of.

The Big 10, doesn’t deserve Tom Izzo. Fans don’t deserve the Big 10. Tough play is one thing, but that doesn’t mean the games should be tough to watch. The Big 10 needs to revamp its officiating crew and do something to open the games up. Against UConn Michigan State ran. Nobody knew that Izzo’s team could run the floor that way but the Spartans used the fast break to gain an edge over UConn. The Huskies seemed confused by it, the announcers were impressed and the analysts were dumbfounded. Where did Sparty get his jets?

It’s not that Michigan State couldn’t run, for some reason it doesn’t happen in the Big 10. Not enough. Officiating crews seem to give defenses the benefit of the doubt so teams get away with the physical plays (fouls) that other conferences frown on. Moreover, the offense doesn’t get the benefit of the doubt on traveling, screens and pick and roll plays. There seems to be a conspiracy afoot to keep scoring minimal and the pace of the game slow. So the Big 10 regular season is like an 18 game boot camp. It’s the reverse of everywhere else in sports where rules are tweaked to increase offensive production.

I enjoy college basketball but I don’t watch much regular season play and I rarely bother with the Big 10. I keep track of the box scores and read the game recaps, but I have trouble watching. It’s just so boring. I’ve heard people say that it’s real basketball because teams play tough zone defense and there’s a lot of half court action, but that’s just something people say. It’s inferior basketball and people shouldn’t feel obligated to watch it.

It’s not just the officials. Schools like Penn State, Northwestern and Wisconsin aren’t talented enough to play more the more up-tempo games. They just don’t recruit the kind of players who can run up and down the court night after night and average 80 points per game. So those teams have to resort to brute force. Tom Izzo joked that he blames Woody and Bo for the “Three yards and a cloud of dust” mentality that permeates the entire conference. It was funny, but had a ring of truth.

Perhaps the answer isn’t in tweaking the officiating, but maybe some thought should be given to eliminating more of the conference games. Why should Michigan State have to play Iowa and Penn State twice? Drop a few of those games off the schedule and let the more competitive teams in the conference schedule more non-conference games.

That’s not to say that all of the Big 10 players are inferior, they’re just forced to play that way most of the year. Now that they’re out from under the suffocating blanket of Big 10 officiating, Michigan State is flying high and has a chance to win a title. North Carolina will be a tough test, but it’s going to be fun to watch, mostly because you can’t be sure what to expect out of Michigan State. That’s how they beat UConn and Louisville, neither one of those teams was ready for the incarnation of Michigan State that took the floor against them.

There are Big 10 apologists who would turn that logic back on me and ask why the Big 10 would want to change if their tactics helped Michigan State fool the field. It’s a fair point, but too often it doesn’t work that way. Sometimes the Big 10 is caught flat-footed and unable to keep up with running teams. Let’s not forget that while Michigan State is enjoying a great run, a number of other Big 10 entries failed miserably. Notably, Ohio State looked lethargic in their first round game against a smallish Siena team and even if you could point to consistent tournament success you’re still stuck with the snooze factory that is the regular season. Is it really worth the empty seats and dwindling television audiences?

Perhaps it would be if the Big 10 made more Final Four appearances or tucked a few more titles under its belt, but most of the time the Big 10 falls short of achieving the benchmarks that would mitigate that way its regular season games are played.

It’s something to think about tonight. If Michigan State wins I’m going to be mad at the Big 10 for stifling them all year, if they lose I’ll wonder if they would have fared better had they been able to run a little more during the regular season. The Big 10 can’t win. I only hope that Michigan State can.

This isn't your father's NCAA

When Billy Gillispie eschewed a happy home at UTEP for the allegedly prestigious trappings of Kentucky I thought he was making a big mistake. After just two seasons, Kentucky pulled the plug on Gillispie and they seem poised to lure John Calipari away from Memphis. This is a big mistake for Kentucky. Calipari is too in love with himself to pass up the job. He’ll go to Kentucky, act like he’s god and in about four years he’s going to realize that Kentucky’s trustees and boosters aren’t willing to change their ways.

Gillispie was in the middle of rebuilding the Kentucky program to succeed in the modern era of college basketball. That’s where teams embrace the so-called one-and-done players who only play in college because the NBA insists that they wait a year before joining the league. Old school coaches want to establish continuity and recruit upstanding citizens who believe in the school and want to play for four years. That’s a formula that just isn’t working. Just ask Duke about it.

Granted North Carolina and UConn are in the Final Four and they feature allegedly old school coaches as well as players who seem committed to the names on the front of the jerseys, and Michigan State managed to bully its way into the picture with a bunch of guys that probably don’t pique the interest of most NBA scouts. While it’s true that experience goes a long way in the tournament, athleticism matters too. Experience doesn’t mean anything if you don’t have the athletes to get you there. So balance is the key. Coaches can’t focus entirely on NBA ready talent, but they shouldn’t limit themselves to players who have to spend four years in college either.

By all accounts, Billy Gillispie was doing a good job as far as recruiting, but because Tubby Smith tried to recruit four year players who wanted the honor of playing for a storied program, Gillispiie faced the challenge of opening doors that Kentucky simply hadn’t knocked on before. Players are committing to programs earlier and earlier. For some reason the NCAA doesn’t see a problem with coaches cultivating relationships AAU clubs and tendering scholarship offers to players before they even play a varsity game. That forces a guy in Gillispie’s situation to either focus on a four year plan or betray a lot of trust by coaxing kids to renege on early commitments.

Gillispie made his own bed. He had a pretty sweet deal with UTEP. Fans and trustees don’t expect a sweet 16 finish every season but they still value a good coach who keeps their team competitive. Gillispie thought the grass was greener at Kentucky because he was caught up in the mystique of that program. But that mystique was in his own mind.

Calipari, like most coaches, craves the spotlight and at Memphis it’s not on him all the time. Memphis plays in a smaller conference so Calipari’s not a celebrity until his team makes the Tournament. At Kentucky, Calipari have all eyes on him throughout the season. Especially in his first season or two, where people would be curious to see how his game holds up in a tougher conference. Calipari, however, had better hope success comes sooner rather than later.

Players today don’t care about history. It’s likely that they never really did. I can only speak for myself, but when I was of the age that these players are committing to colleges I thought four years ago was ancient history. Because when you’re 16 it is. When I was 12 I was a lot more interested in watching Thundar the Barbarian than I was in the Final Four. That changed quickly but when I did start taking an interest in watching sports I couldn’t be bothered with educating myself as to who won the title three years earlier.

My perceptions were shaped by the adults I knew and what my friends were thinking. I didn’t know anything about Adolph Rupp at the time. I was trying to find a team I could identify with and being a Cleveland-area boy I took an interest in Cleveland State because around the time I started enjoying sports as a spectator Cleveland State was in the process of upsetting Indiana in the NCAA Tournament. Even so, I was much more enamored with the NBA because the players were better and the games were more fun to watch.

I know, there are college basketball “purists” who argue the point and insist that the fundamentals of the college game are better. That’s a load of crap. 99% of the players playing college basketball right now couldn’t mop the locker room floor in the NBA. LeBron James, Steve Nash and Dwight Howard would cruise through the NCAA tournament 3 on 5 and not one game would be close.

So it’s not surprising that great players want to get to the big stage as quickly as possible. Especially before some egomaniacal college coach ruins them by putting his own interests ahead of the interests of his players. That’s a huge problem in college hoops. Coaches are driven by ego. It was the reason for Bobby Knight’s demise at Indiana, and it is undoing Coach K at Duke. If Calipari leaves Memphis for Kentucky his ego will ultimately do him in as well.

Kentucky’s run in the sun could be over. Besides all of the shady deals—the hiring of parents and AAU coaches, the offers of scholarships to friends and family—players are lured to luxurious facilities and national exposure. Nobody cares about the history of Cameron Indoor, kids aren’t going to fall in love with Rupp Arena. They want to know how many games you play on national television and how often you get into the NCAA tournament. Forget about the “college experience”; where’s the bling?

Right or wrong, that’s how it is. Most people go to college to get something in return. They hope that they can parlay the time they invest at school into a bigger salary when they get out. Ambiance and history are secondary to that. Why should athletes be any different? College is a means to an end and the programs that will be successful in the future will be the programs that get players where they want to be faster.

So Kentucky can save the history lesson for the fans and get down to the business that is basketball. The tables have turned, the four year plan is gone. The best players in the country are calling the shots, the prolonged exploitation of the athlete pretending to be a student is over. One-and-done is the norm. Until places like Kentucky and Duke learn to accept that and embrace it, success will continue to elude them.

Pondering the World of Sports

Can somebody get Jay Cutler a binky? I’m sure that it’s a little unnerving to discover that your new coach would rather have somebody else as his starting QB, but when you really get down to it that’s pretty much how every QB not named Peyton Manning feels. Seriously, Jay, put on the big boy pants and play ball. Every player in the NFL is available if the right offer is made and sometimes teams feign interest in a deal just to make sure that a rival isn’t pulling off a steal.

Speaking of babies, Curt Schilling, announced his retirement and the discussion is raging: is he a hall of famer? A lot of baseball people think he his; even though he falls short of several statistical milestones people revere. What sets Curt apart is his post season success but the Hall of Fame isn’t a post season award, it’s an honor bestowed upon the best players in the game. Should Curt get a pass for all those mediocre seasons? There’s speculation that Curt’s surly disposition could cost him a vote or two and a few baseball writers think that’s wrong. The Hall of Fame is about what you do on the field, they claim. Of course when somebody happens to be a great guy on and off the field they give him credit for being an “ambassador of the game”. So if being a swell guy can help somebody get in, why can’t being a jerk hold somebody back? It seems to me that there should be consequences for being a jackass.


Speaking of jackass, why would the Celtics want to add Stephon Marbury to their team? There’s no question that the dude has talent, but can the Celtics really afford a tantrum in the middle of a tough series against Orlando or Cleveland? You’d think Marbury would have the sense to keep his mouth shut and go along for the ride but one thing Marbury has proven throughout his career is that he doesn’t have any sense. If the Celtics win, Marbury will probably be a model prisoner but the danger is how he might act if the team gets stuck in an 0-3 hole. There’s no question that Boston’s got the talent to win four games in a row, but Marbury could easily derail the effort if he decides to pout. As a lifelong Cavaliers fan, I’m hoping for a classic Starbury implosion.

Implosion pretty much describes the Cleveland Browns. Eric Mangini is remaking the entire team in his own image which is to say that he’s alienating existing players and poaching a roster full of mediocrity from the New York Jets. Rumor has it that Mangini is strutting around Browns HQ with oodles of ego, but that the act isn’t impressing anybody. Mangini squandered his credibility with the New York Jets. He was the hot young protégé of Bill Belichick a few years ago when he was hired by the Jets but aside from stirring up trouble when he blew the whistle on Spygate, his career stalled. The Jets finally cut him loose after he presided over the Jets meltdown last year. Four years from now the Browns will be starting from scratch again with a new coach and a paucity of talent. Perhaps the NFL should put an end to Ohio’s misery by combining the Brown and the Bengals into one semi-respectable team and relegate it to the CFL where they might actually make the playoffs.

Playoffs? Don’t talk about playoffs. Not if you’re the Cleveland Indians. Cliff Lee will follow his Cy Young performance with a humbling season of frustration. It was a fluke. Lee is a mediocre pitcher who had everything go his way last year. The Indians will probably be a more productive team this time around but Lee will be lucky to crack the .500 mark. Fausto Carmona will be healthy this year but expect him to look mortal as well. It’s just the reality of the game. A lot of guys have great seasons but great pitchers are few and far between. Mark Shapiro is nuts if he thinks that he’s managed to slip a couple of aces in his deck when nobody was looking.

The Yankees are probably going to be surprised the return they get on their off season investment plan. CC Sabathia is a streaky pitcher who isn’t known for sticking to a conditioning plan. He’s due for a down year and considering the signing bonus he just cashed, I’d bet that he’s going to get off to a slow start. Yankee fan won’t like that and CC isn’t going to like the fishbowl that is New York City. I’m sure there are tabloid editors itching to dazzle readers with clever “CC” nicknames. Calorie Consumer, Check Casher, Chilli Cheese…

I didn’t mention the NCAA Tournament because my brackets--yes there were several (hundred)--are busted. I wanted to pick Cleveland State over Wake but I didn’t. I really thought Ohio State’s size was going to give Siena trouble. Now we’re already staring at the Sweet 16 and there aren’t any surprises. It’s all chalk. Some people like it that way, others don’t. I’ll reserve my opinion until after I see next weekend’s games. The bottom line is that the best teams are supposed to advance. When you have a lot of upsets it only proves that nobody knows what they’re talking about. Most of the time that’s true, but after watching thousands of games played over the course of six months you’d think that identifying the top 15 teams in the country wouldn’t be hard to do. So all the ones, twos and threes are still alive. There won’t be a Cinderella story this year, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t some good games left to watch. Especially if you want Gonzaga to win it all.

Jose Canseco is my hero

Jose Canseco is my favorite baseball player of all time. I don’t believe that he belongs in the Hall of Fame because he didn’t bring anything to the table defensively but some of my favorite athletes in other sports will never get into their respective halls of fame either.

I first became aware of Jose Canseco back in the late 80s. He was built like a defensive end long before you saw baseball players hitting the weights to build muscle. Before Jose turned in that 40/40 performance in 1988 it was widely believed that weightlifting would diminish flexibility and bat speed. Jose Canseco was a key factor in the Oakland A’s success and a lot of people forget that Mark McGwire was really the Robin to Canseco’s Batman. Over the years McGwire emerged as the hero, at least before he scurried away from the truth like a cockroach suddenly bathed in light.

I knew Canseco was on Steroids back in 1988. I was 17 and had no background in physiology nor did I ever dabble in steroids myself, but I knew he was juicing. Whenever anybody is built like that you have to be suspicious, but when somebody weighs 250 pounds and runs fast enough to steal 40 bases over 158 games you can take the suspicions to the bank.

I also recall reading an article on Jose Canseco and saw pictures of him in the minor leagues; pictures of a comparatively scrawny Canseco standing next to his equally scrawny brother. At the age of 17 I knew that it wasn’t natural for a guy to pack on that much muscle in such a short period of time. He had to be on steroids.

Of course there were plenty of media types who refused to speculate on that. I still remember listening to Jim Rome lash out at people who questioned the authenticity of Mark McGwire’s physique. Rome seemed to think that McGwire just spent more time in the gym than anybody else and he readily admonished people for being jealous of his work ethic when they speculated that those muscles came from a bottle.

That’s why to this day I think Jim Rome is the biggest moron in all of sports. Here’s a guy who gets paid to spew his opinion all day. He’s got no reason to hedge. You can’t get sued for slander and libel for expressing an opinion, where as real sports journalists can’t speculate without proof. Of course most sports journalists balk at having to cover anything resembling real news. They’d rather wax philosophically about the meaning of the game and focus and stats. Some guys like Jim Rome, who served as apologists for the better part of a decade, can share some of the blame for ruining baseball. I’d say guys like Rome are more to blame than Bud Selig because guys like Rome played an active role in dodging the issue. Selig just pretended not to see a problem which is a reasonable position considering most people weren’t making an issue out of it.

When Jose Canseco’s book, Juiced, was published people were furious. He was accused of being dishonest and throwing former teammates under the bus for the sake of getting paid. Everybody Canseco named called him a liar but nobody took legal action. The steroid apologists argued that it’s hard to prove a negative, but the reality is that none of those guys wanted to have private investigators poking around. As the issue of steroids become a priority and major league baseball implemented testing the truth slowly came into light. Raphael Palmeiro famously tested positive for Stanzinol, a powerful steroid, less than six months after testifying before Congress that he had never used steroids.

People started to give Canseco some credit but there were still suspicions that he got lucky when Palmeiro came up dirty. One of the reasons people questioned Canseco was because he dropped Alex Rodriguez’s name into the mix. A lot of people felt like Jose did that to sell books and possibly to impugn the integrity of baseball in general since A Rod was the golden child. Everybody loved him and believed that he would re-legitimize the game by setting all the records the right way. That all came unraveled over the past several weeks. A Rod, like McGwire, Palmeiro, Roger Clemens and numerous others, cheated and lied. His integrity is gone and his accomplishments are tainted. Baseball now has two black eyes.

Jose Canseco won’t go down in history as the guy who cleaned up baseball. I wouldn’t even go so far as to credit him with being a whistle blower. He simply came clean about a subject with which he was familiar. He confirmed what a lot of people had suspected for years.

Going forward it’s irresponsible to think that steroids will go way. The NFL has had a testing policy for years and steroids are still a rampant problem. Testing procedures are a joke but the goal isn’t to eradicate steroids so much as it is to create an illusion of propriety. Most NFL fans will agree that the majority of players in the NFL would fail the tests used in the Olympics and it’s understood that the 4 game suspension imposed by the NFL is a punishment for stupidity more than it is a sanction for cheating. Baseball is taking the same approach. Players are still taking steroids; they’re just smarter about hiding that fact.

So I’m going to go ahead and appreciate Jose Canseco because as far as I can tell the only difference between his career and that of everybody else is that he’s willing to admit that steroids helped him out. He’s never made any bones about that. Which is more than you can say for A Rod, who is now claiming that he’s not sure if steroids provided him with a physical advantage or if it was just psychological.

A Rod’s act of contrition is making me sick. I understand that he has to see himself as a brand and take steps to protect his image but he’s laying the BS on really thick. He’s tried to blend a heartfelt apology with a litany of excuses. He was young and naïve. He felt a lot of pressure to live up to his massive contract. He never went to college. His nameless cousin injected him with an over-the-counter substance purchased in the Dominican Republic.

When asked what steroids did for his game he answered that he felt that steroids “like anything else” are 50% mental. Then he said that if you drink water believing it will make you better you will perform at a higher level. Perhaps he didn’t compare steroids to water, but why did he even go there? It’s like he’s trying to make sure his confirmed steroid period doesn’t get subtracted from his legacy when it comes time to tally up the final numbers.

Jose Canseco never hemmed or hawed about what he did. If you ask him he will tell you exactly what he took, provide the dosage and outline his regimen. Canseco has never tried to dismiss the impact steroids had on his performance. He’s said all along that they made everything come easier. Steroids cut his workout time in half, helped him recover from injuries faster and allowed him to play longer.

Moreover, Jose Canseco doesn’t claim that he was misled by anybody or blame his youth for his mistakes. I’m not sure I’ve ever heard Canseco call taking steroids a mistake. It seems as though he went into the world of steroids with eyes wide open. He doesn’t blame his steroid use on ambitious trainers, mysterious cousins or teammates with vials of tainted B-12. Jose Canseco is far from being a role model, but what athlete really is. These guys are human beings who get paid a lot of money to be really good at playing a game—not to be team players—not to be role models, but to perform at a high level as individual athletes. It’s important to keep your expectations reasonable.

These guys know that steroids are illegal and regardless of whether or not their league specifically outlined a policy prohibiting the use of steroids they know that steroids are tantamount to cheating. I knew that when I was 17. Professional athletes take steroids because they want to have an edge. That’s the one thing that all great athletes have in common. Steroids provide a significant advantage and when you minimize the risk of getting caught it’s a temptation few are going to pass up.

Do you think it’s magic when a QB manages to cut his recovery time in half coming off of major surgery? Were you really under the impression a 40 year-old pitcher could still bring 100 mph heat in September? Had you been holding out hope that Alex Rodriguez was actually from the planet Krypton?

Maybe A Rod thinks he can get away with his sob story because the fans and the media have proven themselves willing to accept this nonsense for so long. College football fans will marvel at a linebacker’s work ethic when he packs on 50 pounds of solid muscle over three years and not for one second consider the possibility that it wasn’t real. When you ask reporters and columnists why they don’t pose the steroid question more often they’ll tell you that it’s not fair to assume that everybody is on steroids.

But everybody isn’t falling under suspicion, only people who do freakish things. It’s a logical question and anybody who has hit the weights or the track in hopes of being a better athlete can tell you that some of these guys make it look too easy. The reason the average jock doesn’t spend 9 hours a day in the gym is because the human body isn’t built to endure that kind of regimen unless you’re providing it with unnatural levels of testosterone and growth hormone.

People don’t want to accept that. During Mark McGwire’s magical pursuit of the single season home run record there were people who pondered the physical transformation of Big Mac. He was a bulging beast of a man who, at an age when a lot of players see their skills diminish, was performing at the highest level of his career. Nobody wanted to talk about it. They wanted to enjoy history.

Well that history is ruined. Everything that has happened in baseball since the middle of the 80s is under suspicion…including Cal Ripken’s streak. Yeah, I said it. Cal was part of a tainted era and it’s not hard to believe that a guy obsessed with playing more than 2000 consecutive games wouldn’t be tempted to improve his recovery time between starts. It’s not like Cal was a young man when he broke Gehrig’s record and as far as we know Cal never passed a steroid test. More importantly, Cal played with guys who took steroids. Even if he didn’t take them he failed to take stand against them. That makes him, at the very least, an accessory.

Canseco’s hands aren’t clean. He was more than happy to pass his knowledge along to other players. They’d go to him for advice on what to take, where to get it and how to take it. Of course blaming Canseco for the problem is unfair; it’s all the players, coaches, general managers, owners, league officials, commissioners, fans, and reporters who looked the other way who made steroids the rule rather than the exception. Steroids were accepted by the people who mattered. Everybody’s guilty.

What sets Jose Canseco apart is his candor. You can say that he’s doing it for attention or money or to elevate his legacy by degrading the rest of baseball’s. I won’t argue that. But regardless of his motives it would appear that he’s being honest. That’s more than I can say for anybody else. So, Jose Canseco, you’re my hero.

Stealers win....we all lose.

Nice Timing

I thought we might have reached the “nobody cares” threshold regarding Michael Phelps but recently the Olympic….err, umm, athlete who won something at the recent games in…uhh…that one country issued an apology for getting caught on film taking a bong hit.

Man, with his lung capacity you’d better hope he brought his own.

Look folks, Phelps is 23 and he’s spent a significant portion of his childhood competing at an Olympic level which means he hasn’t had a childhood. If you think Lindsay Lohan has had it rough, check out the schedule of a world class amateur athlete sometime. He’s allegedly a world record holder and he can get across open water faster than Jesus Christ so let’s cut him a little slack and let him chill. He deserves a break and a family-sized bag of Goldfish snack crackers. Unless this was all a publicity stunt on his part to get a little ink right before the Super Bowl…you know, kind of like Santonio Holmes telling the whole world he used to sell drugs. Sorry, but if Santonio wanted to be a humanitarian he would have made that revelation upon starting up an outreach program.

Super Sunday


I watched the Super Bowl in spite of a full two weeks of idle threats not to. Yes, it's because I'm bitter and jealous because the Cleveland Browns are a joke, but let's be honest Steeler Nation: most of you weren't old enough to remember when the Steelers won two thirds of their titles. I know this because of been to Pittsburgh and can attest to the fact that the average life expectancy there is 40. Seriously, if you see somebody who looks 60 it means that they're getting ready to graduate from trade school. Ok, enough Pittsbugh bashing. They've got a great organization because they have owners who aren't stupid. DO YOU HEAR ME RANDY LERNER????

I did manage to avoid too much of the hype by watching a reruns of House but I forgot that the FCC requires at least 40 full minutes of verbal masturbation before every deciding championship game and I caught part of Faith Twain singing the official national anthem of WalMart shoppers and conservative Christians who burn books during the work week. God Bless America? Please, has anybody noticed how our “anthems” are simply reworded versions of English songs? I guess it was good in the sense that it reminded me why I hate country music. You know it’s bad if it can make the beauty pageant rejects they sign to Nashville record contracts seem unattractive. I used the remaining 3 minutes to round up some snacks.

Unfortunately I returned in time to be subjected to a really lousy arrangement of the Star Spangled Banner which was screamed at me by a chunky Jennifer Hudson. It opened like a Disney movie and turned into a Tim Burton joint. J-Hud, as the homies like to call her, seems to be on the Aretha Franklin diet program. Yeah, go ahead and call her curvy but when they have to reserve two seats for her at next year’s American Music Awards I’ll be sure to tell you I told you so. The girl can sing, but she didn’t do it on Super Bowl Sunday. I think she ate some of my guacamole instead. Right through the TV. That’s how bad she sucked.

The game proved to be pretty good although the officials seemed to have it in for the Cardinals all night long. They avoided ringing Pittsburgh up with penalties until the Steelers started snatching purses from women in the stands late in the game. The Cardinals managed to make a game of it in spite of tallying up more yards in penalties than the Cincinnati Bengals amassed all year. Still, you wonder if Deshea Townshend gets nailed for holding when he grabbed and dragged Kurt Warner out of bounds on Harrison’s 100 yard interception return for a TD, would the game have been the same?

Probably, especially considering that the Cardinals didn’t seem interested in playing unless they were behind. Once the Cardinals picked up the lead they quit and that’s why the Steelers marched right down the field and scored the winning TD with half a minute to play. I didn’t like a few of the calls that went Pittsburgh’s way but after everything was said and done the Cardinals laid an egg. Witty, no?

Then Ken Whiz-in-hut, the first Native American coach to advance to the Super Bowl, topped the whole thing off with the dumbest quote ever: we scored too quickly.

This is a popular thing for coaches to say when they battle back to take the lead only to have their opponent march right back and win in the final seconds. It’s like an excuse but it’s stupid because THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS SCORING TOO QUICKLY!!! That’s true during the regular season, it’s true on prom night and it’s definitely true in the Super Bowl. You score when you can. Too quickly, indeed.

Yeah, stupid Larry Fitzgerald had to go and ruin the whole game by scoring from 64 yards out because as we all know the NFL doesn’t allow a team to play defense if they are ahead with less then five minutes left. Shut up Ken. You play to win the game and you win the game by scoring more points than your opponent. If you try to get cute and burn up the clock you just might burn up your chances to win…especially against a defense like Pittsburgh’s. Tell it like it is: you thought the game was in the bag and you stopped playing to win. That's what happened. Idiot. That's why the Cardinals were 9-7...the coach doesn't know how to put things away.

You lost because whatever you were doing on defense to shut the Steelers down all game long either stopped working and you failed to adjust, or you stopped doing it and let the Steelers win. Either way that loss is 100% on the coaching staff and the handful of defensive players who decided that Santonio Holmes had cooties. The guy’s a good athlete but the Cardinals made him look like Barry Sanders out there. It’s too bad because right up until that final drive the Cardinals’ defense was outstanding. But the game is 60 minutes long...unless you're at home, where it lasts forever. I guess in the span of the four hours and change from opening kick to final gun it's easy to lose track of two or three minutes of game time. I managed to lose at least a third of a bag of corn chips in the cushion of my couch...unless Hudson got them.

In spite of it all the game was the most entertaining part of the whole affair…unless you count the one hour episode of The Office that followed. The commercials were dull, probably because all of the companies with a sense of humor are out of business right now, and the halftime show was tired and old, much like that wrinkled old guy who was screaming into the microphone the whole time.

(As an aside, why is Danica Patrick still doing Go Daddy commercials? She's not nearly as attractive as we once thought and she's a mediocre race car driver. At least Anna Kournikova made up for her lack of skill be being legitimately hot and Maria Sharipova is both hot and talented. Mostly hot, which is the most important thing if you're doing commercials. The only attraction to Danica Patrick is that she's surly, but so far it's all bark and no bite. Until she throws down I really don't need to see her. )

Of course the worst performance on the microphone had to be Al Michaels. There was a time when he was one of the best broadcasters in the business but for some reason he was tough to take last night. He seemed too excitable and kept repeating the same 2 big words he memorized before the game. I don't think that word means what you think it means. Maybe John Madden ate his thesaurus before the game.

I’m not saying Michaels is stupid, but everything seemed forced last night. Ben Roethlisberger, on the other hand, seems stupid. Every time I hear that guy talk he sounds a little dumber. He might be a heck of a football player but when he talks I think my brain starts to smooth over. Maybe it’s Pittsburgh. It seems to me just about everybody who has ever played the QB position in Pittsburgh ends up sounding like a rube.

The good news is that he’ll have a future after he retires because the “analysts” the networks to hire don’t seem to exude much in the way of brain power. Fox has already turned the pre and post game shows into frat parties for old guys who hawk Levitra in their spare time and CBS isn’t upping the ante with their lineup.

Super Bleh

So the Super Bowl is set. The Arizona Cardinals managed to overcome their own inability to close out a game and the Steelers rolled over a divisional rival they had already beaten twice during the regular season.

The next few weeks fuel my cynicism toward the NFL. I think football is easily the most entertaining sport to watch and it is-- at the risk of sounding cliché— the ultimate team sport. That expression gets used far too often but it’s true. The fact that the Arizona Cardinals were able to string together an impressive run in the middle of the season, upset what appeared to be better teams in the playoffs and arrive at this point is a testament to that what can be accomplished when a team comes together.

Over the next week or so I will voice my displeasure with the hoopla and even threaten to not watch the game. I’ll bitch about the half-time show, the pregame festivities and even whine about the location. I’ll also mock the alleged fans in attendance because I think the Super Bowl is where the NFL turns its back on the everyday fans and embraces the self-absorbed celebrities who come out of the woodwork because of all the attention.

We’ll be subjected to sappy human interest stories, bad sketch comedy acts and pedantic analysis of the basic principals behind each team’s playbook. I’ll try to ignore it but the hype will be everywhere and I’ll be fed up.

This time, it’s really going to get laid on thick and that’s because of the Arizona Cardinals. They will be the underdog. The team nobody loves. This is the first Super Bowl the Cardinals have ever been to and they will be facing the big bad Pittsburgh Steelers, one of the most successful teams in NFL History. The Steelers have five Super Bowl championships to their name and this marks their seventh trip to the NFL’s greatest game. They are the big bad bully on the block.

Worse is the fact that the Cardinals are led by quarterback Kurt Warner who rose to fame in the late 90s with the Rams. His story will be rehashed. We’ll hear about his days bagging groceries and how he married a trailer park harpy. The story of his struggle to rise through the ranks of professional football will be driven home again and you can bet they’ll hammer us with tales of his deep-rooted faith. Warner is a bible thumper of the highest order and you can bet he has a throng of Jesus freaks in the Arizona locker room. They’ll tell us their faith is what has carried them this far.

I want to puke already.

Then we’ll have interesting stories about the Steelers and we’ll hear about what a great town Pittsburgh is and how devoted those fans are. The truth is that Pittsburgh is not a great town. It’s dirty, white-trashy and Steelers fans are spoiled and carry a sickening sense of entitlement. It’s great that their team has been successful for so long but that success has cultivated some of the vilest people on the face of the earth. Steelers fans are frightening. Between the inbreeding, unemployment and chemically-induced mutations the people most likely to root for the Steelers are either a step up or a step down from CHUDs…depending on who you ask.

Granted there are Terrible Towel waiving idiots to be found all around the country but those who do not originate from Western Pennsylvania are simply wieners who hopped on the bandwagon because the Steelers manage to win games.

Jokes aside, Pittsburgh is a dandy sports town and that is driven by the success of the Steelers, a team that owes its success to the Rooney family. Make no mistake, the Rooney family is not hurting for money but when it comes to running an NFL franchise these people put the fans first and it’s an attitude that flows through the entire franchise. The Steelers appear to love Pittsburgh because the Rooney clan loves Pittsburgh.

Arizona is another one of those places where everybody seems to come from somewhere else so loyalty to the Cardinals is dictated by the team’s position in the standings. Now that the Cardinals are in the Super Bowl, they have plenty of fans but the love affair is fleeting. The Cardinals are lucky to be where they are. They played in the weakest division in all of football and stumbled into the post season with only 9 wins. The Chargers did represent the AFC West with 8 wins but at least they could blame their mediocre record on the quality of their competition. And because the AFC is a better conference than the NFC, the Chargers were eliminated before things got too ugly.

It’s difficult to imagine a scenario where the Cardinals come out on top after this game. The Steelers are bringing one of the greatest defenses in NFL history to this party and they have enough firepower on offense to offset any big plays that the Cardinals might sneak in. People will tell you that the Cardinals coaching staff is intimately familiar with Pittsburgh but that’s only helpful if Pittsburgh's coaching staff forgot about the tendencies of their former colleagues. Moreover, the NFL is an incestuous organization. Everybody seems comfortably familiar with everybody else. The Steelers are in a better position to surprise the Cardinals because the Steelers didn’t have to pull out every stop to get to this point. I hope that the Cardinals can score early and keep things somewhat interesting but I fear that this could be one of those 80s Super Bowls where the game ends shortly after it begins.

Aside from all the glitz and glitter, the game could be interesting. The Cardinals have an assortment of weapons and the luxury of being the underdog. They can turn doubt into chips that they can wear on their shoulders and play the game as though they have nothing to lose. Pittsburgh, on the other hand, is the favorite. They do have something to lose and if they don’t keep their heads together they stand to lose it big time. Even though all the logic tells us that the Steelers will win, the Cardinals have, by beating Atlanta, Carolina and Philly,proven that there is a reason they play these games out and that’s enough for me. I’ll do my best to avoid the hype but when you scrape away all of that awful, sugary icing there’s still some substance to the Super Bowl.

Dungy Deserves Highest Honor

Tony Dungy has decided to retire from coaching and the question being asked is whether or not he belongs in the Professional Football Hall of Fame. I say that he should be inducted without reservation. First ballot. Unanimous.

There are some stat geeks who argue that his numbers aren’t as impressive as other coaches. There are other state geeks who will tell you that his numbers are better. There are people who believe that one Super Bowl win isn’t quite the feather in Dungy’s cap people make it out to be, while a number of people insist that Dungy deserves credit for the Super Bowl Tampa won the year after he was replaced by Jon Gruden. In fact, one of those people is Jon Gruden who, upon winning the Super Bowl in 2003, made a point to thank Tony Dungy for his contributions to that championship team.

Forget about the numbers. Dungy won more games than he lost; he turned two teams around and has a championship ring. The numbers tell us that Tony Dungy was a great head coach. You can split hairs over percentages or you can stop, take a deep breath and review the big picture that is Tony Dungy’s career. Too often we forget that football is not a numbers game. If it was, we could just around the championship to the teams with the most impressive stats year after year. The game is played on the field. Stats never lie, but too often they fail to tell the whole story.

The Professional Football Hall of Fame recognizes career achievements that can’t always be measured by numbers. Dungy was a player before he was a coach and while he isn’t regarded as one of the greatest players to ever play, he did play for a team that won a Super Bowl. After his playing days Dungy went on to become an assistant coach and commanded tremendous respect. He won’t take credit for developing what is often called the Tampa Two defense, but his fingerprints are all over it. On the surface it doesn’t seem much different than the defense he learned as a player under Chuck Noll but Dungy tweaked it to meet the demands of the modern era.

Dungy’s defensive schemes proved to be invaluable with the Indianapolis Colts who spend the vast majority of their salary allotment on the offense. He took a team that finished 6-10 under Jim Mora and posted a 10 wins season in his first year finished with 12 wins or more in each season after. With a limited budget Dungy was able to find the right people to fit into his defense and put their skills to use. The Colts were never considered to be a defensive powerhouse but when you consider what Dungy had to work with and contrast it with what he was able to accomplish the man pulled off a miracle.

Another important thing to remember is that Dungy didn’t advance to the position of head coach as quickly as he should have. So one could argue that he was deprived of four or five years in which he could have won another title or at least compiled more wins. He advanced to the position of defensive coordinator back in 1984 but didn’t become a head coach until 1996. Part of the problem is that Dungy is a pretty mellow guy. He doesn’t yell and scream, he refuses to make idle threats and he doesn’t get too high or too low. He was passed over for several opportunities because a lot of people thought his personality wasn’t dynamic enough to command a franchise.

Of course you can bet race was an issue. Dungy’s success has played no small part in creating opportunities for more black coaches. Art Shell and Dennis Green might have opened the door in the modern era but Tony Dungy took it off its hinges. Not only did he prove that he could win, he proved he could win consistently.

It would be foolhardy to believe that the NFL is colorblind. Black coaches don’t get nearly the same margin of error as their white counterparts nor do black coaches get recycled as readily but the playing field is closer to being level and that’s something Dungy’s success has played a part in. Dungy shouldn’t get special treatment because he’s the first black coach to win a Super Bowl but his contributions to racial equality aren’t without merit.

Even if you remove race from the discussion, Dungy’s influence around the league is as important as any other coach in NFL history with the exception of Paul Brown. Dungy’s defensive philosophies are as creative as Bill Walsh’s approach to offense. Like Walsh, Dungy took something that had been done for years and looked at it differently. Today people are implementing Dungy’s ideas in their own defensive schemes but more importantly, Dungy’s approach to dealing with players has opened a lot of eyes. You can still find authoritarian blowhards around the league but more and more teams are turning to guys with cool heads and inner strength.

That being said, I’m not in love with the guy. In fact, there are a lot of things I really don’t like about Tony Dungy but they have nothing to do with football. People say that he’s a good guy and that we shouldn’t let that affect how we view him when it comes to the Hall of Fame, but I don’t like him. He rubs me the wrong way and I really think the good guy routine is an act. I could be wrong, but that’s how I feel. I respect him purely from a football perspective. When I think about what the man has done throughout his career I don’t know how anybody could make an argument against his eventual induction into the Hall of Fame.

NFL Wrap Up

It sure was nice to have so much hanging in the balance in week 17. If teams weren't fighting for their lives they were fighting for their dignity or not fighting, depending on how you look at it. The great thing about the final week is that the hatchets start swinging early. We've seen several coaches and general managers get their pink slips and Bill Cowher has already turned down an offer to coach the Browns.


Nice isn't in the Job Description

Romeo Crennel and Phil Savage are officially finished in Cleveland. Phil Savage was a bold GM who was able to broker deals to bring in impact players, unfortunately Romeo didn’t coax enough consistent effort from the role players to make it matter. Phil’s problem was that even though he was a solid GM, he was not nearly as valuable as he thought he was. His ego got in the way and he wore out his welcome. Good riddance. Humility is a virtue, Phil. Live and learn.

By all accounts Romeo Crennel was a great guy. In fact, we heard announcers say as much all season long. Well, we all know what happens to nice guys. A few of the players said they wanted to fight for Romeo to keep his job, but if they would have applied that fight to the execution of their plays Romeo’s job would have been safe. Romeo never exuded a sense of control over the team or a firm grasp of the situation they were in. He didn’t manage games exceptionally well and didn’t even attempt to kick start the Browns until the season was all but in the crapper.

Now the Browns have an interesting problem. They have plenty of talent on both sides of the ball. Can they find the right combination of GM and coach to whip the team into shape, or will Lerner make the mistake of hiring more high profile egomaniacs bent on making their mark by dismantling the team and starting from scratch?

Let the Drama Begin

Brett Favre proved once again that he is a throwback player, except when he has to throw back. He’s a gunslinger, even when he happens to be across the line of scrimmage and on the receiving end of a reverse lateral. For some reason the officials opted not to run off the last seven seconds of the game after Favre hurled the ball forward on a hook and lateral gambit. They decided that he wasn’t intentionally trying to stop the clock, so apparently they believe that Brett Favre is just stupid. That makes sense. Stupid, selfish and childish.

The Jets canned Eric Mangenious in the wake of missing the playoffs but the Jets fans can hang the mediocre way the Jets finished the season of Brett Favre and his old school ways. It’s not his fault the NFL expanded the season to 16 games. He gets tired, and crabby and throws three interceptions when his team is on the brink of being eliminated from the playoffs.

Ironically Chad Pennington enjoyed on of his best seasons in leading the Dolphins to the playoffs. Unlike Favre, Pennington played smart and stayed focused which allowed the Dolphins to wrap up a division title and complete a historic turnaround from last year’s 1-15 performance.

Favre doesn’t know whether or not he’ll be back. His shoulder hurts and he wants to see what the MRI has to say before he makes any decision. No word on whether or not he’ll have his head examined this Spring when he makes his indecision public. Here's hoping that the Jets exercise his binky option and put this baby to bed.

Loser thy name is Marinelli

Rod Marinelli got the heave-ho after his Lions put the finishing touches on an 0-16 season. How in the hell does that happen? With all the parity in the NFL and a salary cap that makes it impossible for teams to hoard great players you simply can’t lose 16 games. The Lions managed to lose to a Green Bay team that had nothing to play for. That’s special.

I heard somebody say that it wasn’t like the Lions were trying to lose. I beg to differ. They had to be trying. No word on whether or not Rod Marinelli’s daughter is looking for a better defensive coordinator just yet, but we’ll keep our eyes open in the Casual Encounters section on Craigslist.

Marinelli is believed to be considering a move to the business world where he'll parlay his inspirational leadership skills into a career as a auto executive.

Hanging up the Hat

Speaking of heavy drama, how about them Cowboys? They got worked by the Eagles and then blamed Jason Garrett for not being creative enough. Apparently all those turnovers were designed plays intended to catch the Eagles off guard. I don’t know if Jason Garrett’s any better at coaching than he was at toting a clipboard all those years but the Jr. High School antics of TO, Romo and Romo’s butt-buddy Jason Whitten certainly didn’t help the Cowboy’s stay focused down the stretch.

As a football fan I couldn’t be happier. I grew up hating the Cowboys. I still think Roger Staubach is putz and Jerry Jones gives me the creeps. Tony Romo doesn’t impress me and anybody who respects TO doesn’t respect the game of football. I hope that whole wagon full of ass clowns rolls into next season intact and lays another egg right on top of Big D. America’s team my ass. Dallas sucks and it's only fitting that they have a team that does as well.

Predictions

And that brings us to the post season. The Patriots and Cowboys were the odds on favorites to make it to the Super Bowl and both teams failed to even make the playoffs. HA HA. At least the Patriots can point to the loss of Tom Brady as a problem. To their credit they almost made it. And that's with all of Belichick's brilliant asistants lending their winning ways to other venutres...oh, right.

The Giants really ruled the roost in the NFC and seem to have to best chance at advancing thanks to their bruising running game and a vicious defense. Carolina looks tough but when they are forced to pass they really put their trust into one man and that is not their QB. You can’t be too high on a team that has built its offense around a wide receiver. Steve Smith is a fantastic player, but he can only make a difference if he gets the ball. I don’t know if that’s a Super Bowl winning formula.

After that the NFC gets really thing. Atlanta enjoyed a nice turnaround but they don’t have the depth to advance and it’s hard to picture the Eagles or the Vikings plugging their leaks long enough to float through the playoffs. The Cardinals made the post season by managing to be mediocre enough to stay on top of a lousy division but they aren’t fooling anybody. The Giants will return to the Super Bowl.

In the AFC the picture isn’t so clear. The Colts are dangerous because Peyton Manning is simply the best quarterback to ever play the position. Period. He makes the offense better and if the Colts can score that frees up their defense. Pittsburgh was strong all year and they seem to have their horses healthy. They have a great defense that can keep the game close and that means they won’t have to count on a lot of production from Big Ben, who remains one of the more overrated QBs in the game.

Baltimore also has a liability at the helm but not nearly as glaring in seasons past. Flacco is just a rookie but he’s delivered when he had to. The Ravens also sport a great defense that can keep the game tight enough the minimize Flacco’s deficiencies.

San Diego is a non factor. Phillip Rivers is a clown he won’t rise to the challenge of outsmarting the AFC’s better defenses. He picked apart the Broncos but it’s unlikely he’ll out duel Manning in the first round. Even if the Chargers manage to contain the Colts and advance, Rivers will come unglued against the Ravens, Steelers or the Titans.

For some reason, I don’t buy the Titans. They have a great defense and dominated the AFC all year but I wonder about Kerry Collins in the playoffs. Surely the time will come when he’s called upon to win a big game and I don’t know if he can answer that call. The Only QB in the AFC that you can count on in such a situation is Peyton Manning but it’s going to be hard for him to deliver three weeks in a row. The Colts will probably get past the Charges handily and they might surprise a rusty second round opponent but unless Miami upsets Baltimore and Pittsburgh to advance to the AFC title game I think the Colts will get stopped there. So who will it be?

Baltimore will beat the Dolphins. It’s a great story for Miami but that 10 game turnaround has as much to do with a softer schedule as it does with an improved game plan. That wildcat offense isn’t going to fool the Ravens, not unless Ronnie Brown comes out throwing like Joe Montana…and that isn’t going to happen. The Ravens will wear the Dolphins out and win easily. That would pair the Colts with the Steelers and the Ravens would face the Titans. That’s not good for the Titans. The Ravens will be pumped up after the wildcard game and it will take the Titans a while to get going but it will be too little too late. The score might be close but the game won’t ever be in doubt.

The Colts will face a tall order in getting by the Steelers in Pittsburgh on the terrible turf. If the conditions aren’t absolutely atrocious the Colts might be able to find ways to frustrate the Pittsburgh’s defense and get some points on the board. The Colts will have to come up with big plays on defense because they simply can’t grind it out up front for 60 minutes. They need to force turnovers and coax the ball in to Roethlisberger’s hands. It won’t be easy, but I like their chances if they don’t get banged up in the first round. Those bye weeks can be counter productive and the Colts might be able to stun the Steelers in Pittsburgh.

That would put the Colts at home verses the Ravens or on the road against the Titans. I don’t know if they’ll have enough gas left for either contest. The Colts aren’t built to take a beating. For some reason I can picture an Manning a Manning Super Bowl but I don’t think it will happen this year. The Giants will get Eli to the big dance but the Colts just don’t have the muscle to run the AFC gauntlet. You can never count a player like Peyton Manning out, but that doesn’t mean you should bet on him either.

So after all of that I guess I talked myself into the Ravens and the Giants in the Super Bowl and if the Giants are healthy you have to like their chances. They put on a rushing clinic when the faced the Ravens earlier in the season but that could have been a fluke. It’s also hard to say what the Giants will get out of Eli Manning, especially with Plaxico Burress being weighed down by all that baggage.

Rematches are always tough to call and a lot can happen in the next three weeks. If both teams are healthy and happy going in I think the Ravens will have an advantage simply because they’ll have something to prove, but the Giants seem to have more weapons on offense even if Plaxico Burress is out.

Of course, predictions are only fun because they’re often wrong. They play the games for a reason and if the Super Bowl ends up being a contest between the 9-7 Cardinals and the 8-8 Chargers it wouldn’t surprise me at all. It might bore me, but it wouldn’t surprise me.

You're out of order...

A lot of people are talking about Rob Parker, the columnist for the Detroit News who asked Rod Marinelli if he wished his daughter had married a better defensive coordinator. Marinelli blew off the question during the press conference that followed Detroit’s 42-7 loss to the Saints but later he expressed his anger and now that people have taken his side he’s expressing it more. Anything to distract people from the fact that his team is 0-15 on the year thanks in large part to a defense that gives up a lot of points. A defense that happens to be coached by his son-in-law.

Now Marinelli gets to play the role of concerned father. He’s putting his foot down and won’t allow his daughter to be attacked by the likes of Parker which is what you expect a family man to do…except for the fact that Parker didn’t say or imply anything about Marinelli’s daughter.

The object in question is Marinelli’s judgment. His daughter might be a great girl and her husband, Joe Barry, is probably a swell guy who’s only guilty of not being able to coach a defense. Rob Parker isn’t casting aspersions on either of them. The issue is whether Marinelli is letting his love for his daughter interfere with the business of football. The Lions are on the verge of becoming the first 0-16 team in the history of the NFL. If Marinelli is compromising his staff because of nepotism it’s a valid topic for discussion.

Terry Bradshaw threw a bit of a tizzy over the question and a lot of other people are chiming in. They think Parker should be fired because he made it personal.

Bullshit.

Marinelli made it personal. This issue is why most successful companies have very strict policies about the employment of family members. It’s hard to fire your son-in-law. Parker’s question is just a snarky way of asking why if Marinelli is letting his personal relationship with his staff affect his managerial decisions. It’s a valid question that deserves an honest answer. Rod Marinelli gets paid a lot of money and he has to answer for his team’s performance.

Instead, Marinelli saw an opportunity to throw his daughter in front of the question and pretend it was an attack on her. The reality is that nobody cares about the little tramp. We want to know if Marinelli is more willing to face the consequences of an 0-16 season than he is to face his daughter when her husband is staring down a 30% cut in pay.

I think Rob Parker’s question was funny but I’m not surprised Rod Marinelli didn’t see the humor in it. When you’re 0-15 you shouldn’t find the humor in anything, but you also don’t get to throw a pity party for yourself because your daughter’s marital status was the subject of a question.

There’s been some speculation that Marinelli might retain his job after this season is over. A lot of people believe that the Lions were hamstrung by Matt Millen’s ineptitude as a general manager and there’s no question that Rod Marinelli had his work cut out for him but 0-15 is simply inexcusable. Since he’s clearly not doing his job as far as winning football games, the least Marinelli can do is explain why he is not.

I can’t get behind Marinelli on this. He gets paid a lot of money and part of the job is answering tough questions. Rob Parker’s job is to ask them. Parker might have been snide in the way he asked the question and it’s possible that the question was actually rhetorical but it wasn’t out of line. The people who are upset with Parker are out of line. That goes double for Terry Bradshaw…stick with being the comic relief on the frat party Fox passes off as NFL analysis. Leave the real work to people more qualified.

Bowling for Dollars

One of the arguments against a playoff system at the FBS level of college football is that it would deprive schools of the privilege of playing in a bowl. It’s true that a lot of teams will never aspire to the level of play necessary to qualify them for a shot at a national title but they still get to play one last game on the national stage if they win enough during the regular season. Six is the magic number, which is why 6-6 Notre Dame managed to secure a trip to Hawaii on Christmas Eve.

Not every six win team gets to play in a bowl because 6-6 does not a winning record make, but when you have the kind of history Notre Dame has and the harbor porpoise you call a coach has been out of the water too long, you get to pack your bags for paradise. Never mind the fact that Notre Dame didn’t beat anybody respectable. Forget about the reality of the modern era where Notre Dame is a second tier program that refuses to join a conference for fear of not being able to negotiate its own television contracts.

Implementing a playoff system doesn’t mean you have to eliminate bowls. You can still have obscure bowls played in the middle of the week to appease the mediocre teams who win 7 games or take home a conference title nobody really cares about. Playoffs would only require modifying the BCS bowls to accommodate a post season tournament.

There are people who complain that playoffs would diminish the importance of the other bowl games, but as I look over the schedule I find it hard to believe that these games could be any less significant.

There are two games that I’m going to sit down and watch. I’m interested in seeing if Penn State was tested enough during the regular season to keep USC under wraps. I don’t think they were, but I have to see it for myself. Personally I think that the Big 10 was weak this year and Penn State didn’t play anybody worthy of national respect. Ohio State was an important win for Penn State but I’m not so sure it proves anything. USC wasn’t as dominant as people thought they were after the beating they handed the Buckeyes but they still have some firepower and they have a good defense. Penn State’s in trouble.

I’m also interested in the Oklahoma/Florida pairing. I hate the BCS and I won’t give either team credit for winning a national title when this one is over, but I think that off all the games you could have scheduled for this bowl season, this is the best pairing. I suspect Oklahoma’s defense is a lot better than people think and Florida won’t be able to keep up with the Sooners, but Bob Stoops has suffered a couple of humiliating BCS losses in recent years. This game is a toss up. It could go either way. I don’t like either program but Tim Tebow seems like a big, fat, overrated jerk to me and I like Sam Bradford so I’m rooting for Oklahoma.

I won’t waste my time watching Utah get throttled by Alabama. I hope Utah does well but I don’t think they stand a chance in this one. I maintain that the BCS scheduled this match up to punish Utah for crashing the BCS party. Alabama and Texas was an intriguing concept but I suspect that game would have impugned the credibility of the BCS title game. So the BCS people ruined it for everybody. Thanks, old white guys in suits, you really know how to screw things up.

Even though I consider myself a waning Buckeye fan I won’t waste my time watching the Fiesta Bowl. Jim Tressel manages to throw a soggy sweater vest on everything, including Terrelle Pryor. The Buckeyes are predictable and boring. The defense doesn’t make big plays, and the offense has become one dimensional. Don’t let the spread formation fool you, Tressel’s offense is easy to read and tough to watch. Texas will dismantle the Buckeyes in short order, holding out hope that a big win will help them make a case for being the people’s champion. Sadly, Ohio State has become a BCS doormat and beating the Buckeyes won’t impress anybody.

Outside of that, I really couldn’t care less about the rest of the bowls. Not only will I not bother watching, I think that I might even forget to check the box scores to see who won. No offense to the fans and players of all of those teams who will be playing, I just don’t care. It’s not my fault that college football has the audacity to lump 119 programs in one subdivision as if they’re all equal. Fans know better. There are 20 teams that matter and the rest are just fodder for the schedule. Most of the bowls are like those cheap hats they stuff into cases of beer. But hey, it looks good on you though.

Racism is still a factor

It's interesting that the United States recently elected its first African American president. On the surface it leads one to believe that this country has come a long way with regard to racism and prejudice. When you look closely at Barack Obama you realize that not only did he overcome the obstacle of race, but he also hurdled xenophobia and a significant generation gap.

In the world of sports the accomplishments of athletes and their significance are often overstated in the name of nostalgia. Sports writers are held to a much more relaxed standard and they tend to publish articles that wax philosophically about the importance of trivial events. Otherwise reprehensible people are often sanctified in print because they played through an injury or put familial obligations on the back burner in order to play an pivotal game. In many cases athletes are given credit for acting selflessly when their actions were entirely selfish.

There are some things that do matter. Jesse Owens shattering Hitler's notion of a superior Aryan race in the 1936 Olympics matters. It's ironic that Owens was an American hero at those games but when he came home he was often required to enter hotels and banquet halls through the service entrance, but his accomplishments at the games and the manner in which her carried himself broke down barriers.

It was the strides Owens made that opened doors for Jackie Robinson years later, although it's unfair to forget that black soldiers who served heroically in combat during World War II opened many doors as well. Robinson, however, was a catalyst and it was his ability to grasp the full scope of his responsibilities that opened the door for other black players.

The integration of sports was a major step in the right direction. People identify with athletes and as black players achieved excellence in athletic competition, a wary, white public began to accept them. It was a qualified acceptance but the integration of sports helped ease the integration of society.

Even though the NFL, or at least what later became the NFL, accepted black players and even had a black coach, Fritz Pollard, in the early 1920s, it was difficult for black players to make the transition into coaching and even more difficult for the few black assistant coaches in the league to advance into the head coaching position. Even into the 1980s there was a belief that black athletes lacked the intellectual capacity to be successful as starting quarterbacks and head coaches. Doug Williams became the first African American quarterback to lead his team to a Super Bowl victory in 1987. Art Shell became the first African American head coach in the NFL since the NFL started using face masks.

Even though the NFL loves to claim that it was a bastion of racial harmony from its inception, the reality is that it left a lot to be desired. There was a difference in how black players were treated and compensated. Racial prejudice and bias influenced personnel decisions for years. People questioned why a league that relied so heavily on the performance of black athletes seemed to deny opportunities to African Americans behind the scenes. It was in the 1990s the NFL began addressing that issue and it's been only in the past 10 years we've seen something resembling equality. There's still work to be done, but the NFL has kicked a lot of doors open.

The same is not true in college football. Recently Auburn infuriated people around the league by offering its head coaching position to a former coordinator who had achieved nothing but failure as a head coach at Iowa State. Gene Chizik was successful as a defensive coordinator at Texas and Auburn but his 2 year stint at Iowa State resulted in a total of five wins. Moreover, he left Iowa State with four years remaining on his contract. So not only did Chizik fail to demonstrate success as a head coach, he also failed to demonstrate integrity.

Turner Gill is an African American head coach from Buffalo. In his three years at the helm Buffalo has steadily improved, winning the MAC Championship over unbeaten Ball State and earning a bowl bid this year. Not only has Gill proven his abilities to develop a program, Gill's background includes NFL experience. He was the Director of Player Development with the Green Bay Packers before he was offered the top job with the Buffalo Bulls.

There are plenty of reasons Auburn passed on Gill. His lack of familiarity with the SEC likely played a significant role. Similarly Chizik had demonstrated success at Auburn as the defensive coodinator for an unbeaten team a few years ago. So not only was Chizik familiar with the SEC, he also knew a lot about Auburn. It's hard to believe that race was the deciding factor in Chizik's hiring but you can bet it was an influencing factor.

Out of 119 Football Bowl Subdivision (Division 1-a) programs only four have African American head coaches. Of those four programs only one (Miami) is a respected football power and it is in the middle of a rebuilding process after a number of problems forced out the previous coaching staff. Randy Shanon will probably be given plenty of time to repair the once storied Miami program but even if he is successful at restoring Miami to greatness the odds of other significant schools hiring black coaches are slim . When you look around the NCAA you just don't see any prominent assistant coaches who happen to be black. Several teams with older coaches are grooming heirs apparent and all of them are white.

The problem with the NCAA is that there really isn't a singular authority. The National Collegiate Athletics Association is a voluntary affiliation. The rules are established by the university presidents. In the NFL the teams are franchises that must conform to the mandates from the league office. So it's a lot easier for the NFL to identify and address perceived problems.
The NFL is also a money driven league. Coaches don't have to recruit players, nor do the players have to meet certain academic criteria. In college coaches have to play political games. They have to raise money, sell tickets and convince the best players to play for them. Yes, there are times when money changes hands. Some coaches work the secret booster circuit to acquire financial inducements for top players. Those who don't have to be really good at selling their program's ability to help players make it to the NFL. So it's a lot harder to hire the right guy. Often, bigger schools like Auburn prefer to hire a coach who knows how to schmooze the boosters over a guy who can coach. After all, a lot of Athletic Directors will tell you, the head coach is the CEO and the assistant coaches handle the Xs and Os.

Money talks. It always has. In the NFL the money is right there on the table. It's all about tickets and advertising. Winning solves all the problems. In college football it's not always so simple. Winning consistently doesn't solve problems so much as it keeps them on hold. Winning generates some revenue but the real money comes from checks signed by rich boosters. University presidents have to make sure that they keep the benefactors happy. Too often the decision to hire a coach isn't made by the athletic director or even the university president. Gene Chizik might have landed the Auburn job over Turner Gill because somebody with deep pockets wanted him bad enough to sign a six figure check. There aren't any rules that prohibit these things and until there are, the NCAA can't get a handle on why black coaches are passed over.

The problem with racism is that it isn't a singular entity. Racism is like a cockroach infestation. You can't eliminate it in one fell swoop, you have to go cupboard to cupboard. Even then, you can't be sure you've solved the problem. Everybody knows that if your house is dirty, the roaches are only going to come back. Nobody keeps a dirtier house than college football and until something is done to clean it up, racism isn't going away.

The Dirty Business of the BCS

I have a love/hate relationship with college football. Growing up in Northeastern Ohio I was essentially raised on the game and I have a deep appreciation for the nuances and the history of the sport. I have watched the game evolve and players get better as the seasons go by. It’s a remarkable game that provides endless entertainment.

Growing up in Ohio, it’s hard to not have strong feelings about the Buckeyes. Most people love them. Ohio State has a long, illustrious history and some of the greatest figures in the game have spent time in Columbus. Still, there are those who can’t stand Ohio State. They get tired of having all things scarlet and gray crammed down their throats 365 days a year. I can certainly appreciate how they feel.

My problem with college football isn’t specific to Ohio State, but since Ohio State is one of traditional powers in college football the things I hate about the game are very much a part of the Ohio State legacy. The greed, the corruption, the politics, the cheating…Ohio State isn’t above breaking the rules, but anybody who thinks they’re alone is living a lie.

The NCAA enables the sort of plausibly deniable malfeasance that Ohio State engages in to go on at the bigger programs. It’s good for business and in the end that is exactly what college football is. The difference between college football and the NFL is that the NFL is honest about its agenda. The NCAA still tries to pretend that it serves a noble purpose.

In college football everybody is on the take but only the players suffer consequences when their greed gets the better of them. This January the NCAA will parlay it’s approval of a non-sanctioned postseason into hundreds of millions of dollars of which the players who risk life and limb in these games will see nothing in the way of compensation. Sure, the bowl sponsors do arrange for the players to receive gifts but when you think about the money changing hands at the administrative level these gifts are insulting.

Players accept it because the NCAA has managed to convince everybody that it’s in the best interest of the “student athlete” to forego compensation. If players were paid for their performance, the NCAA argues, then they wouldn’t focus on their academic development.

Of course the NCAA doesn’t seem to care about the quality of the education being offered. Many college football players attend college for five or six years without obtaining a degree. Many of the players who do receive diplomas accomplish this feat in convoluted courses of study that have no value in the real world and even less value to the so-called “student athlete” who might want to pursue a career in football.

Apologists will tell you that the money that changes hands gets put back into the schools. They’ll tell you that college football generates revenue that supports gymnastics, swimming, field hockey and tennis. This is true, but not until a lot of old men in suits get paid. Most of the college coaches you’ll see on the sidelines in January make base salaries that exceed one million dollars per year and most of those coaches are under contracts that guarantee that money for a number of years beyond this one. A few coaches even have provisions in their contracts that allow them to renegotiate for a raise if they achieve certain performance benchmarks, few of which pertain to the academic achievements of their teams.

Beyond base salaries coaches are able to broker marketing deals on behalf of the team that secure even more money and most coaches have agents that seek out endorsement contracts that are completely independent of their collegiate responsibilities. So the average compensation package of your typical coach roaming the sidelines in a BCS bowl is quantified in terms of millions of dollars. A few coaches will actually receive bonuses measured in millions if they win their BCS bowls. Meanwhile the players are walking away with a few hundred dollars worth of corporate swag. That’s fair.

Still, I could get past this. Players go into this situation with eyes wide open. They know they’re going to get used for four or five years and some of them manage to negotiate illicit deals on the side that may or may not be facilitated by their coaches. Athletic directors and coaches look the other way and the NCAA ignores these issues until they are so blatantly obvious and embarrassing that somebody has to be sacrificed upon the alter of deniability. At a big revenue-generating program like Ohio State or USC it’s the wayward player, at a less important school you’ll see scholarships stripped and bowl privileges revoked. There’s no oversight committee checking up on the NCAA to ensure that it is enforcing its rules and applying its penalties evenly and none of the college presidents are going to rock the boat because they know that their own programs wouldn’t survive a thorough investigation. So mum’s the word.

But so is money and that brings us to this year’s BCS selections. Obviously the BCS title game pits the number one ranked team in the final BCS standings against the number two ranked team. This year both teams finished the season with one loss. Interestingly enough the top ranked team, Oklahoma, lost to another team that finished the season with one loss: Texas. Even though the usual suspects are telling fans to let it rest, this is cause for concern. Texas seems to have a very legitimate argument that they should be playing for a national title.

The BCS managed to solve that problem by pairing Texas up with a very overrated Ohio State team in the Fiesta Bowl. Logic would dictate that Texas, as the third ranked team in the final BCS poll should play the next best team which, in this case, seems to be Alabama. Alabama spent most of the year ranked number one before losing to Florida in the SEC title game. Of course, if Texas happened to beat Alabama convincingly then Texas would have even more of an argument for being the best team in the country. By relegating Texas to a less appealing battle with an Ohio Sate team that has a recent history of BCS failure, Texas won’t have as compelling a case. Everybody, you see, beats Ohio Sate in January.

The BCS BS doesn’t stop there. BCS officials weren’t happy to see Utah and Boise State finish in the top 10. Granted, both schools come from weak conferences but they are the only unbeaten teams remaining and a lot of fans would like to see how they fare against traditional powers. Boise State famously upset Oklahoma in a BCS game two years ago but it was on the strength of a gimmicky play so most people think it was a fluke.

The BCS doesn’t care about flukes. The BCS cares about two things: money and credibility. And credibility only matters because it influences future revenue. Credibility is why Texas is being insulted with a game against an Ohio State team that beat 10 creampuffs and it’s why the BCS doesn’t want teams that are in non-BCS conferences winning BCS games. If that happens a couple more times the BCS will have to re-evaluate which conferences deserve the BCS honor. The ACC and the Big East won’t like that.

Another problem with schools like Boise State and Utah is that they don’t travel many fans. It was bad enough when West Virginia failed to sell its ticket allotment last year and bowl officials had to fill seats with random people from the streets and it hurt West Virginia to be on the hook for that money. The reality is that most schools don’t have a national fan base that can buy tickets to bowl games on the west coast. Most schools aren’t in the middle of a metropolitan area that has enough people with the money to make the trip to watch a BCS bowl. So the BCS likes to keep the club exclusive.

Which is fair, but don’t run around claiming that the BCS Championship game is the national championship fans have been looking for. The problem is that a lot of people will lose interest if the BCS admits that what they’re really doing is arbitrarily nominating a champion from a number of select schools that generate a lot of money.

That’s why the BCS opted to punish by sending them to the Sugar Bowl to face Texas. Rather than invite unbeaten Utah to Arizona to face Ohio State in the Fiesta Bowl, a game many Utah fans could rive to, BCS officials begrudgingly sent Utah to be sacrificed for being insolent enough to shake up the final poll. Alabama was two scores shy of playing for the national title. They won 12 games over the course of the regular season and only lost to a favored Florida team in the SEC title game. Utah’s unbeaten and it’s players relish a shot at playing on the national stage but reality tells us that Utah won’t last a quarter. Stranger things have happened but the smart money says Utah won’t even be competitive against Alabama. But Utah might put up a fight with Ohio State, and could beat Virginia Tech and/or Cincinnati which is why the BCS didn’t make those games a reality.

It’s interesting that the two weakest teams in the BCS picture are playing each other. That will give the casual observer the illusion that the game is interesting. Cincinnati won a disappointing Big East conference this year and Virginia Tech staggered to a win in the beleaguered ACC. Nobody things either of these teams worthy of a BCS honor but they won titles in conferences that are guaranteed a BCS berth. So the BCS swept these two embarrassing dust bunnies under the rug by having them play each other.

If Utah were to throttle either of those schools the BCS would have a lot of explaining to do. How could the BCS continue to deny entire conferences access to the BCS party when it’s been proven that those conferences can beat BCS teams in big games? The same is true if Utah holds its own against Ohio State. The BCS can’t accommodate everybody which is why fans want playoffs. If the Utahs and Boise States of the world compete toe to toe with BCS schools in BCS games the push for playoffs will continue to strengthen.

So the BCS manipulates the matches to minimize scrutiny. We might carp about some of the selections, but after the games are played fans will accept the results. As long as those results don’t impugn the integrity of the BCS the BCS officials are happy. Alabama will clobber Utah, Virginia Tech and Cincy will wallow in mediocrity and Texas won’t have much to brag about if they humiliate Ohio State. In the end, the BCS will have successfully determined who the best team in the country is and nobody will have room to complain. Most importantly, the money will end up in the right hands once again.

And that’s what college football is all about.

Duh

Donovan McNabb is under fire for admitting that he didn't know that a regular season NFL game ends in a tie if neither team scores in the sudden death overtime period. Donovan went on to say that he'd hate to see what happens in the playoffs or the Super Bowl which further demonstrates his ignorance as the NFL has addressed that issue as well by utilizing additional overtime periods.

Now I like Donovan McNabb. I think he's an outstanding quarterback who has been shortchanged by a lousy coach and weak front office management for most of his career. He's played behind an inferior offensive line and his receivers have always left something to be desired. You wonder how much more McNabb would have accomplished throughout his career if he played for a better organization.

That being said, I was disappointed to learn that Mcnabb wasn't up to speed on the NFL's overtime rule. It's only been in existence since 1974 and the last tie occurred during McNabb's playing career back in 2002 so it's not as if a tie is something new. True, they don't happen very often but that's because teams play much differently during the overtime period. They play differently because the first team to score in the extra period wins the game.

Donovan and his coach, Andy Reid, insist that this lack of knowledge did not influence the outcome of the game. I find that hard to believe. Had Donovan realized that there was not going to be an extra overtime period he probably would have managed the clock more aggressively. He also might have executed his plays with more tenacity. It's not uncommon for teams to let the waning seconds of the fourth quarter slip away in favor of regrouping during over time so why not protect the ball during overtime and wait for the extra extra period to start?

McNabb wasn't alone in his ignorance. Other players confessed that they were at a loss when time expired. You could see the confusion on their faces as the Bengals came out to shake hands, but McNabb is the quarterback and he's got to understand every situation. In some circles people are making too much of this, but at the same time McNabb and Andy Reid seem to be dismissing it as a minor issue. It's kind of a big deal.

Andy Reid is taking the blame for not making sure his players were aware of the circumstances and if we're being fair Andy Reid should take the blame for a lot of things. He's overrated as a coach and his team would be more successful if he wasn't there. That being said, Reid shouldn't have to teach his players about a rule 80% of the fans knew going in. The fact that the Eagles didn't know this might explain why they let a team as lowly as the Bengals play them to a 13-13 tie.

Of course the NFL should do away with the sudden death overtime provision. Generally teams play rather conservatively when it comes to big plays. Kicks and punts are short so as to minimize the potential for long returns and teams avoid taking risks on either side of the ball because all it takes is a field goal. Nobody wants to take chances and give up their own 30 yard line. More over, teams often send the kicking unit out on second or third down once they are in field goal range. It's ironic because overtime games, which are often so dramatic during regulation time, get decidedly boring in overtime. It's like topping an ice cream sundae with an olive.

Rather than subject people to sudden death, which sounds more exciting than it really is, the NFL should consider adopting a shortened overtime period. Put six minutes on the clock and play it like a regular period. You could argue that a team can easily burn up 6 minutes on a 70 yard drive that ends in a field goal but that's what time outs are for. It would be no different than the final six minutes of a half.

Another solution is the shootout method employed at the collegiate level. College games used to end in ties rather frequently since the NCAA did not see fit to utilize any tie-breaking procedure. the problem with the shoot out is that they tend to go on for a while. Perhaps putting the teams on the 25 yard line makes scoring too easy or maybe the rules should be altered to make two-point conversion mandatory from the very start. Regardless, the NFL is unlikely to take a page out of the NCAA's rule book.

Something should be done to improve the wet blanket that is sudden death overtime. The Eagles and the Bengals proved that not all close fought games are exciting. I don't know if McNabb's failure to learn the rules contributed to the tedious exercise in futility that was the overtime period but whatever the case it was a waste of time. The NFL can and should do better.

Looking Good

Like lipstick on a pig...

Brady Quinn looked pretty good in his debut with the Browns. He was limited to throwing short passes and did miss his mark a few times but, considering who he was replacing, it was a big improvement. The big problem is that the Browns didn’t seal the deal on defense. Again. So the Browns have already matched their loss total from last season which virtually guarantees that the Browns will miss the post season. Romeo Crennel, you’re fired. It hasn’t been officially announced but you’ve been out of a job since the opener, Phil Savage is just biding his time.

Do you want a binky?

Jim Tressel looked pretty good storming out of his weekly press conference when questions centered on Ray Small. Senator Jim wanted the reporters to focus on the upcoming game against Northwestern but since that’s rarely a game they were more interested in getting the scoop on the star-crossed receiver Tressel refused to release from his scholarship last year. Thanks to his big game meltdowns Tressel isn’t being given the free pass he used to get from local sports writers and criticism abounds. Rumor has it that the heat will be on Tressel to make some serious changes to his coaching staff this off season. Ohio State should get ahead of the impending disaster and send Tressel and his phony Mr. Rogers act packing. The guy is a creep and overrated as a coach.


Little Big Man

Penn State looks pretty good sitting in at number 3 in the BCS polls. Sure, people in the Keystone State are put off over Texas Tech leapfrogging the Lions in the polls but Texas Tech deserves it. They’ve put up impressive numbers and upset a very good Texas team but Penn State fans can take solace in the fact that when the dust clears their team will be ranked number 1. That’s because Penn State, who hasn’t played anybody really good all year, doesn’t have to play anybody good to finish the season. Texas Tech has to run a gauntlet playing Oklahoma State, Oklahoma and Baylor before defending its claim to BCS glory with a Big 12 championship game against, possibly, Missouri. I wouldn’t count on the Red Raiders staying perfect over four tough games in a row and Alabama isn’t going to run the table in the SEC either. So Penn State will make it to the BCS Championship game and you know what? They still won’t deserve it. They played a weak schedule and dominated a weak conference. Their biggest win was a 13-6 slugfest over the bloated Ohio State Buckeyes...not impressive.


To the question nobody asked...

Allen Iverson looks pretty good leaving Denver. The Detroit Pistons traded Chauncey Billups, the back bone of their recent success, along with a valuable reserve in Antonio McDyess for The Answer. Look, I’ll admit that AI has matured a bit in his twilight years but he still struggles with bouts of selfish play on the court. Iverson is a phenomenal basketball player but there’s a reason he isn’t sporting any Championship rings. I know that Iverson says he’s willing to make sacrifices and support his teammates but that’s all talk. We heard the same BS plop out of Karl Malone’s mouth when he went to play for the Lakers but as the season went on the prima donna who couldn’t bear to share the paint with his teammates at Utah proved to be a liability for the Lakers. The wiley veteran couldn’t even command enough respect from Shaq and Kobe to put an end to their schoolyard squabbling. So don’t expect AI to change just because his uniform did.

Cha-ching!

Manny Ramirez’s financial outlook looks pretty good. That’s because he’s a free agent who made a good case for being the NL MVP in spite of only playing a half a season in the NL. Manny is Manny. A lot of people don’t like him because he projects a selfish and lazy attitude, but the dude can hit the stitches off of a baseball. When it comes to what he does with a bat it’s hard to find somebody better. Yeah, the guy is a little goofy. He leaves a lot to be desired in the field and he’s not exactly somebody you want on base if you have to manufacture runs but there’s nobody else you’d rather have at the plate when you need to drive in a run. Manny Ramirez is a menace who actually does better in pressure situations. That’s because the same qualities that make Manny such a doofus away from the plate turn him into a machine when he’s at it. Manny doesn’t think about the circumstances, Manny doesn’t get caught up in the moment. Manny sees ball. Manny hits ball. Hard. That’s why he’s going to get paid a lot of money before the off season is over. Right or wrong, Manny’s value is measurable and his deficiencies are predictable. When the hemming and hawing comes to an end, Manny Ramirez is going to get a ton of money.