Not so fighting Irish

I have to be honest. I love see Notre Dame suffer. It’s got nothing to do with Charlie Weis, although his ego is only rivaled in size by his belly. It’s also got nothing to do with the classless way Notre Dame pulled the rug out from under Ty Willingham. While I think that the color of his skin made it easier for the trustees to send him packing before he crossed that fifth year threshold every other Irish coach had been afforded to that point, I don’t think race was the reason he was fired. A factor? Sure, but not the reason.

My hatred of Notre Dame goes way back and has cultural implications. I grew up in the Cleveland area. Catholic high schools dominate the football landscape throughout Ohio but in Cleveland they seem untouchable. Somehow the Catholic schools always had the best athletes in every sport. Cleveland St. Ignatius high school was among the top five ranked high schools in the country for five years straight.

To those from outside the area the run seems impressive but people living in Cleveland understand the corruption involved. Football is a big deal in that part of the country and every year there’s a scandal involving some outstanding player changing schools. Public schools have to follow pretty strict rules regarding sports recruiting but Catholic schools are private entities who do not answer to public administration. It’s no secret that these schools offer scholarships to standout players but it goes deepe: parents are offered administrative jobs, siblings get scholarships and other financial considerations are presented.

Although he didn’t play football, Lebron James was implicated in a high profile example of this sort of tomfoolery. James didn’t come from a family that could afford parochial tuition but somehow he managed to attend Akron St. Vincent St. Mary’s for four years. Before he signed an NBA contract, James drove to school in a brand new Hummer. The car was in his mother’s name but his team…his high school team…was traveling around the country playing in NBA venues to sold out crowds. His school got a huge portion of the gate. Even with such a remarkable player most public schools would not be able to absorb the expense of marketing their basketball program and if they did it would draw the attention of public officials. A Catholic school, however is part of a much larger organization that doesn’t have to answer to the same people. In the end the diocese invested in marketing Lebron James and reaped massive financial rewards. Make no mistake, they paid him. They had to. Good luck proving it.

High school football players are rarely so publicized but the top recruits heading to big time college ball seem to come from large catholic schools. In Cleveland you’ll see kids transfer from a rough inner city high school to a posh Catholic campus just weeks after completing a break out season. Sometimes the transfer will entail a move of 40 or 50 miles. Where does a family scraping by on food stamps come up with the money to make that happen? Other private schools join the fray as well but in the Midwest the Catholic schools have a stranglehold on athletics.

This is a big part of the reason Notre Dame was so successful. NCAA recruiting rules are designed to level the playing field and give each program a fair chance to make a pitch to a promising high school athlete but for decades Notre Dame had its hooks into the very best players long before any other college could consider them. By using the Catholic diocese to funnel top athletes to Catholic high schools, Notre Dame was able to exploit the hierarchy of the Catholic Church to contact players about playing for Notre Dame.

Notre Dame saw its fortunes turn for the worse when the NCAA imposed scholarship limits on the major programs. That leveled the playing field. Before those scholarship limits were imposed players prestigious programs could hide great players on the bench strangling other schools. Well endowed schools could offer countless scholarships while less known programs scraped by. Now those lesser programs are starting to shake things up. That’s why Boise State and Rutgers are suddenly contenders while Notre Dame struggles to establish some consistency.

Another factor in Notre Dame’s demise is that the NCAA is allowing for much earlier contact between high school players and college coaches. Players are verbally committing as juniors and contact can start as early as junior high school thanks to skills camps and other events coaches are allowed to participate in. Notre Dame has lost its advantage. The Catholic high schools are no longer a safe haven for Notre Dame recruiters.

Notre Dame’s biggest problem is that its trustees refuse to change with the times. They still approach recruiting as though Notre Dame is doing the athlete a favor. While it’s true that Notre Dame does have more stringent academic requirements, the problem is that Notre Dame is arrogant enough to believe that its legacy sells itself. That is no longer the case. Today’s players don’t care about Knute Rockne, Bear Bryant or Woody Hayes. And they shouldn’t because it ancient history. They care about playing time and media exposure. Nobody wants to sit on the bench for three years…not even if its at Notre Dame.

The final problem Notre Dame faces is the expanded media coverage. Notre Dame enjoyed a national television contract and gleefully crammed its product down the throats of a sports-watching public that simply didn’t have a choice. Now there’s plenty of choice. Credit the Big East and the MAC for leaping at the opportunity to play weeknight games on ESPN. Now they have an advantage in recruiting players because they get prime time exposure. Notre Dame and other traditional powers balk at the idea but a high school player dreaming of playing on Sunday would be wise to eschew regional coverage on Saturday for prime time coverage on Thursday. It won’t be long before USC loses a top recruit to West Virginia and then you’ll see the mad dash for weeknight games.

Notre Dame used to be the only show in town, now Saturday is a blitz of intense coverage. Games are analyzed 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Fans aren’t easily fooled and everybody knows Notre Dame isn’t the best show in town. Fans are smart and they are getting smarter. Failing to recognize the changing market place has put Notre Dame at a severe disadvantage. People are no longer enamored with the Irish.

And I’m loving every minute of it.

Polls or Playoffs?

As you look up and down the two college football polls one has to wonder what people are thinking. Ohio State certainly hasn't performed like a top 10 team, nor has Texas but yet they remain fixed in their places because they won. USC looked flat in its opener but held on to its top ranking in spite of taking a week off while LSU spanked Virginia Tech. West Virginia is entrenched in the top 5 even though the Mountaineers feature a defense that couldn't stop a Pop Warner team from scoring. Never mind that five or six teams ranked outside of the to 10 look much better than half the teams in it,.the preseason poll determined the national champs before a game was played.

BCS advocates will tell us that the BCS rankings take much more into account but the polls carry quite a bit of weight in the final tally. The polls wouldn't be so bad if the people casting their ballots watched every game or at least analyzed the stats to appreciate how teams win. If I'm being objective I can't justify Ohio State being ranked ahead of Oregon at this point in the season and I certainly couldn't leave USC ranked ahead of LSU simply because USC didn't lose. But even if the polls did a better job of analyzing each team, there are still fatal flaws in the system.

Champions should be determined on the field. BCS proponents warn that there would still be controversies over who got into the playoffs and some erroneously argue that playoffs would diminish the importance of the regular season. The enormous success of the NFL proves that theory wrong and while there would be a handful of people crying foul over one or two of the playoff selections, the fact that pretenders and contenders would run a gauntlet to win it all would dry those tears in a hurry. You can't say the same for the BCS.

Arbitrary champions winning paper titles? That's not football.

Michigan seals fate of NCAA Football.

Michigan put together a nice run last year that was capped by a heartbreaking defeat at the hands of a talent laden Ohio State squad that could only be stopped by its own complacency. Coincidentally, that is precisely why Florida won a so called national title. Even after the loss Michigan was very close to getting another shot at Ohio State and a chance to be crowned BCS champs. Ultimately the Wolverines fell short of enough points to qualify for that title shot.

Ironically Michigan chose to play a team that won a legitimate national title last year. Appalachian State is a division 1 AA college which means it is considerably smaller than Michigan but somehow the NCAA has no problem with organizing a playoff system for the smaller programs. Appalachian State didn't have to worry about computer points and polls because in division 1 AA champions are determined on the field.

Appalachian State had little hope of beating #5 Michigan. Michigan was loaded on offense and only needed to tune its defense to march through the season unscathed. Nobody gave Appalachian State much of a shot and starting the season off with a beating at the hands of a division 1 A powerhouse was not going to hurt Appalachian State's chances of repeating it's championship run. Michigan, however couldn't afford to lose a single game this year. Under the BCS system perfection is the only sure way of getting a title shot which means its better to be lucky than good.

Appalachian State is not better than Michigan and if they played 100 times Michigan would win 99. Appalachian State simply caught Michigan asleep at the wheel. Everybody knows this but that won't stop Michigan from free falling in the polls. Now Michigan, a team capable of beating anybody in college football will have to hope that other top-ranked teams lose later this season if they have a shot at playing in the BCS Championship game. Appalachian State, on the other hand, gets nothing but a pat on the back for pulling of the massive upset. Later this year Appalachian State will have to run a gauntlet of top caliber teams on the road to a real championship game while Michigan waits for reporters, coaches and computers to award it with enough points to play for something meaningful.

Lost in this story is the fact that Michigan did what every other top-ranked team in D1A did this year. Everybody scheduled a D1AA opponent in order to pad the schedule with an easy win while still collecting ticket revenue. The NCAA realized that there was more money to be made with a 12th game but nobody wanted to give up a home game so they opened the door to the newly dubbed Championship subdivision. It sounds better than D1AA.

While everybody is snickering at Michigan's misfortune the policy makers in the NCAA office are thrilled. This upset legitimizes the scheduling of D1AA foes and increases the marketability of these games. Who will be the next to fall?

The problem is it won't be anybody of Michigan's caliber anytime soon. Michigan was looking past this game and down the road at key match ups such as its November grudge match against Ohio State. Appalachian State went out hoping to catch Michigan by surprise. In the end it was all about motivation. What happened to Michigan will serve as a wake up call to the rest of college football. Coaches will have a tangible example of what can happen on any given Saturday and getting players motivated to play their best against a weaker opponent will no longer be a struggle.


Sadly that game will keep the critics at bay for a few years too. The NCAA can point to this upset anytime somebody questions a soft schedule. People will claim that parity has equalized the balance of power but when you ask why the Western Athletic Conference doesn't get an automatic BCS bid they'll change the subject. In the end it's all about the money and though Michigan will pay the price for this loss in the polls all year, this game has secured the financial future of the NCAA for the next decade.

Best Damn Fans In The Land?

I was born and raised a Buckeye fan but living in Columbus, Ohio is starting to drive me away from the scarlet and gray. People around here think they’re great fans and they pat themselves on the back regularly. The fact is, they are pretty avid and the revenue generated by the Ohio State football program is pretty phenomenal but they leave much to be desired.

First, it’s all football all the time. In case you missed it, Ohio State plunged deep into the NCAA Tournament last year. That’s basketball for the reader in Columbus. The round orange sphere tall guys shoot through a hoop. Ring a bell? The men’s hoops team made it all the way to the championship game before getting clipped by a loaded Florida squad. They put up a fight but in the end Florida’s depth was too much to overcome. Buckeye fans didn’t take much of an interest until about halfway through the Georgetown game. What did they do during the regular season? Obsess over football.

Buckeye fans also have a reputation for inhospitable behavior. It’s often dismissed as a few “bad apples” giving the rest a bad name but I’ve been on Lane Avenue before a game and there are a lot of people behaving badly. The problem is exacerbated by the self-proclaimed good fans that stand idly by while their reckless counterparts run amuck. And the abuse isn’t limited to opposing players, coaches and fans. Ohio State football players who put in a lackluster performance are subjected to intense ridicule, personal insults and even death threats if the stakes are high enough. Most don’t condone personal attacks but the rest of the abuse is regarded as the price a player pays for playing big time college ball. Never mind the fact that these are kids who are trying to juggle big time college ball with full time college course work.

It goes deeper than that. Fans around Columbus are so obsessed they lash out at anything not scarlet and gray… literally in some cases. One of the area high schools, the one that produced All American wide receiver Terry Glenn, no less, happens to sport colors similar to those worn by Michigan. Wouldn’t you know those kids get harasses around town if they do something crazy like wear their letter jackets? And heaven forbid somebody taking an objective point of view and paying a compliment to a Michigan player. In fact, the Columbus Dispatch received bags full of angry letters expressing sheer outrage that Michigan Wolverine Braylon Edwards was depicted on the front page of the sports section after the Cleveland Browns made him their top pick a few years ago.

Former Buckeye hero Kirk Herbstreit routinely gets lambasted by local fanatics who can’t accept the fact that he has to be objective when breaking down games nationally. When he drops by to contribute to his local radio show he plays to the home crowd just a little bit but if he does something crazy such as rank a loaded Michigan team over Ohio State in a preseason poll the pitchforks come out. Keep in mind that this guy was the face of Buckeye football when he played in the early 1990s.

With the Buckeyes getting ready to kick off their 2007 campaign with a leisurely romp against Youngstown State, analysts aren’t lining up to praise Ohio State’s strength of schedule. Buckeye Nation is starting to get defensive. Fans are pouring over schedules looking for punch lines as comical as YAWN but the reality is that Ohio State won’t face a test until well into October.

The Big Ten looks weak, Ohio State doesn’t have to play one of the conference rivals that might be respectable which leaves two formidable opponents out of the 12. Now there’s a chance that Michigan State or Penn State will surprise some people and prove to be a challenge but as of right now the Big 10 looks more like the Big Easy and Ohio State looks like Homer Simpson hoarding all the cream puffs.

I hope the Buckeyes do well and believe that they’ll be a lot tougher than people think. Even though they lost all of their firepower from last year the people stepping up to fill those holes are capable. The Buckeyes will have a solid line and Chris Wells will be a more dynamic running back than Antonio Pittman. Pittman left Ohio State early because he was going to lose his starting job to Wells. Troy Smith leaves behind a Heisman-sized crater at quarterback but Todd Boekman has been a diligent understudy since 2003. He should be just fine and if he’s not, Tressel needs to take the heat for not developing his prized recruit over such a long period of time.

In spite of my high hopes and fervent belief that the Buckeyes will be serious contenders I can’t take offense to those who doubt Ohio State. This is a team coming off an embarrassing performance in the BCS championship and I have serious questions about the coaching staff. Jim Tressel might be a god in Columbus but I see a stodgy old man who doesn’t adapt very well and his loyalty to idiotic assistant coaches, like Jim Bollman, worries me.

Until I see this team prove to me that it can win creatively I’m dubious and I can’t argue with those who predict a 9-3 season. Tressel has had a great start to his career but he has a long way to go and this year’s team is where he’ll have to prove something. Anybody could win with the talent he had last year and 2002 had fluke written all over it. I loved it, but looking back with objectivity I can’t say that it could happen again. That offense was pitiful!

My doubts don’t make me less of a fan but in Columbus it’s dangerous to say these things. People have been punched out for less. That’s why I think Ohio State fans leave a lot to be desired. Overall I they go too far. There’s nothing wrong with taking your football seriously but you have to have perspective. That’s a foreign concept in Columbus and that’s why I’ve retired my Buckeye regalia. I don’t want to be counted among the nuts.

It's just business, baby.

It looks like Michael Vick won’t be making things easy for the NFL. Reports indicate that Vick will plead guilty to interstate commerce charges but when it comes to killing dogs and gambling he maintains his innocence. That means there’s a possibility that Michael Vick will be available to play next season.

Michael Vick was essentially put on administrative leave by NFL commissioner Roger Goodell. It wasn’t a formal punitive action. Simply put: the league couldn’t afford to keep Michael Vick active while criminal proceedings were under way. Technically the NFL had no grounds to do this and Vick could have challenged this decision but he couldn’t afford the additional publicity. A judge and jury would not take kindly to somebody who didn’t have the good sense to step aside when asked. Of course that was when the NFL expected a lengthy trial.

The NFL had it easy. The trial would last well past the point at which Vick could return to his team and the final outcome would absolve the NFL of the responsibility tied to rendering a decision on Vick’s playing status. If found guilty Vick would do a couple of years in prison rendering a return to football a moot point but if he was exonerated in a court of law the NFL could welcome him back with open arms. But the reality of our legal system came back to bite the NFL.

The NFL has no formal policy on interstate commerce or dog fighting. Goodell might be able to impose a short suspension under the conduct provision but it’s important to note that the recent suspensions imposed by Goodell have no legal standing as there is no policy outlining conduct provisions. Chris Henry, Pacman Jones, and Tank Johnson are serving their suspensions because Goodell and other league officials have convinced them that it’s the right thing to do but nobody has challenged them. Yet. That could become an issue if Vick is a free man come next August.

Goodell’s easy out was illegal gambling. If the feds forced Vick to plead guilty to illegal gambling then the league had precedent to suspend Vick for life but Vick isn’t copping to placing bets on the dogs. That means Goodell has to make something up. He’s been pretty good at that to this point but suspending relatively unknown players with a history of poor judgment is not the same as putting the screws to a guy who was once an officially licensed icon. Vick was one of the few players tapped to be the face of the NFL and he probably won’t go down with out a fight.

For Goodell it’s not personal. It’s not even a question of right and wrong. The stiffened disciplinary procedures have little to do with morality. Everything the NFL does is about money. It’s dollars and cents. The league doesn’t care about athletes run amuck unless those athletes create an image problem that hurts the bottom line. Rules aren’t imposed to improve safety or reduce injury, they are drafted to keep revenue flowing. That’s why all of the rules seem to protect quarterbacks. Quarterbacks are marketable because every play runs through them and the casual fan identifies more readily with quarterbacks. That’s why Peyton Manning is the most recognizable player in the NFL. He’s the best player at the most popular position. And that’s exactly why Michael Vick is drawing so much attention now.

It’s ironic that Fred McCrary, Algee Crumpler and Stephon Marbury have come out and voiced support for Vick. They wouldn’t attract this much attention if they were facing the same charges. Vick is the victim of his own popularity. He was not only a quarterback in the NFL but he was one of the more marketable quarterbacks.

At one point he was more popular than Peyton Manning but his inconsistent play and reported clashes with coaches made him a little less appealing. Some might point to race but the reality is that Vick was a mediocre quarterback with remarkable athletic ability. Based solely on his quarterbacking, Vick probably would have been cut years ago but his ability to run made him a star. A highly paid star at that.

It’s often stated that quarterbacks get all of the credit when their team does well but that they also take an undue amount of blame when their teams fair poorly. That’s a reality every quarterback accepts. They know that all eyes are on them and that everything they do, on an off the field, will be scrutinized and discussed. Tom Brady stirred up a mild controversy when he was photographed wearing a Yankees cap while shopping with his fiancée. Peyton Manning was lambasted a few years ago for criticizing his linemen after a Colts loss and Dante Culpepper was cut by the Vikings for being linked to the infamous “party boat” scandal. Mind you, Culpepper wasn’t found guilty of anything but the fact that he was there was enough to wear out his welcome in Minnesota.

So it’s not surprising that Vick is drawing all of this attention and that’s what makes this hard for the NFL. It doesn’t matter if the public outrage is fair. The NFL is a business and it has to make a business decision. If allowing Michael Vick back on the field will cost the league millions of dollars they have to try to keep him out. The league has to keep Michael Vick at arm’s length until the public is ready to accept him.

Michael Vick is entitled to due process. He’s entitled to his day in court and after he pays his debt to society he is entitled to a second chance. However, the second chance doesn’t necessarily mean he’s entitled to playing in the NFL again. Playing in the NFL is a privilege, not a right. The NFL has already lost money because it bet on Michael Vick. The Atlanta Falcons traded a pretty solid back-up quarterback to the Texans to demonstrate their commitment to Vick and he betrayed that trust. He associated with criminals and engaged in illegal activity. While he’s the only one facing a prison sentence, the NFL and the Falcons paid a price, why should they be compelled to pay it again?

The NFL is a business. Michael Vick knew that when he became on of the highest paid players in league history. Every player in the league realizes this. The NFL is not interested in justice or morality. Michael Vick is bad for business. Companies all over the country deny opportunities to convicted criminals, often on a case by case basis. They analyze the risks and consider the rewards. Second chances don’t come easy. Why should the NFL be any different?

Ohio State demonstrates need for playoffs with a YAWN.

Youngstown; Akron; Washington; Northwestern

How fitting that Ohio State opens it’s season with a Y.A.W.N. Yes it’s become an old joke already but the fact that the initials of the Buckeyes’ first four foes spells out what football fans will be doing when they watch these games should have driven whoever drafted this schedule to reconsider. Expect the national pundits to beat that dead horse late in the season and watch it send Ohio State’s stock into a tailspin.

The Big 10 takes a lot of heat from commentators around the country thanks to a rotating schedule that often results in conference powers avoiding a meaningful confrontation. Last year Ohio State and Michigan closed out their schedules with a head to head showdown that had national championship implications but Wisconsin squeaked into the BCS picture by avoiding a difficult game against Ohio State and because of this quirk the Big 10 title is often shared. In 2005 Penn State shared the conference title with Ohio State even though the Lions beat the Buckeyes during the regular season. The 2002 Ohio State Buckeyes won the national title but shared the conference championship with Iowa and back in 1998 the conference title was split three ways. It’s ridiculous, but the Big 10 sells it as tradition. It was also tradition that a Big 10 program couldn’t represent the conference in back to back bowls. What happened to that one?

So all eyes are on the Big 10 and this year Ohio State, fresh off a perfect regular season capped by a disgraceful performance n the BCS Championship game, has responded to the challenge by booking a non-conference schedule that opens with Youngstown State. That’s the Division I double-A Youngstown State Jim Tressel coached at prior to starting his stint with the Buckeyes.

Ohio State chases its opening patsy with Akron, takes the road to face a Washington team that is still in the early stages of a major rebuilding plan and then it’s back to Columbus for a contest with Northwestern. Somehow Ohio State managed to maintain the integrity of its bye week by scheduling Kent State on October 13th.

It’s a schedule that Indiana would be sheepish about and it’s made worse by the fact that this is a down year for the conference. It’s not uncommon for Big 10 programs to schedule two creampuffs each year, generally one being an instate rival (that’s a loose interpretation of the term) and another being an at large whipping boy. This practice is normally quite acceptable as the conference has a history of being pretty tough. Not this year; Michigan and Wisconsin are expected to be solid but the rest of the Big 10 would struggle in the M.A.C.

This isn’t exactly Ohio State’s fault. The structure of the BCS rewards perfection over the course of a mediocre schedule. Thanks to the way teams are rated in the system it’s far better to be unbeaten than it is to be good. That’s not true in the case of a program like Boise State which plays in a non-BCS conference but if Boise State wants to have a shot at a national championship they can always move out of the W.A.C. The BCS is inherently flawed but would not be enhanced if the winners of the garbage conferences got a bite at the apple by default.

Why should Ohio State beat itself up with a tough non conference schedule when the road to the national championship is paved with patsies? Why would Ohio State trade the revenue generated by those extra home games when there’s nothing to gain in the BCS by playing on the road? The system rewards cowardice.

Ohio State’s uncharacteristically bad schedule is why the NCAA needs to step in and insist on a meaningful playoff system. Adopting a playoff format for determining a national champion would not eliminate bowls, it would just alter the bowl schedule to accommodate playoffs and those teams failing to qualify for the playoffs would still be able to play in the already meaningless bowls available to them. People would still watch Bowling Green play Utah State in the Crane Plumbing Products Toilet Bowl on December 21. We could still have the Motor City Bowl sponsored by Tampax.

A version of the BCS system would still be necessary for selecting the playoff teams but instead of giving conference champions automatic selections the criteria would be simplified to include the top 12 teams. The idea is that if a team couldn’t play well enough to merit a top 12 ranking it wouldn’t deserve a post season bid.

The top four teams would get a bye while the remaining eight teams played for the right to advance to the first round of eight. The play in round would take place in early December after the final BCS poll was released. The second round could then be played as an extra home game at the respective field of the top four teams and then the subsequent rounds would be scheduled as BCS bowl games on a rotating basis. The championship game could then be played on or around the ninth of January as is under the current system.

Because the additional games would take place over the winter break, the playoffs wouldn’t interfere with academics. No that the academics argument holds water anyway. The NCAA has managed to feature playoffs in the other divisions for years. The sticking point at the Division 1a level is money. University president are afraid that altering the current system will change the way money changes hands. A lot of people get rich off of the current system and they don’t want that to change.

But it will have to change. The integrity of the game is at stake and that will drive fans away in droves. Why would anybody pay money to watch a juggernaut like Ohio State lay the wood to Youngstown State? The fact is they won’t. Sure they’ll put up with it for a little while but as the practice of padding the schedule with soft opposition becomes more widely accepted by university officials, fans will lose interest and the money will stop flowing.

People are already growing weary of the annual ritual of crowning a paper champion. When the BCS system was first introduced fans were excited because traditional post season barriers were torn down. Now that college football is stuck in another arbitrary rut the chants for a better format are getting louder. The next step will be the dreaded “plus one” game but after that something will have to give. As much as the university officials hate to admit it, the fans call the shots.

Hopefully people realize this before it’s too late.

Can Jim Tressel Evolve

Let me tell you a secret nobody in central Ohio would dare utter: Jim Tressel is vastly overrated.

Shhh. Don’t tell the people Columbus. They’re still in love with him. In spite of a coaching disaster in the BCS Championship last year, Tressel is still a God. They won’t lose faith in him because of one game.

But it’s not one game. Aside from 2002 the Ohio State Buckeyes have underachieved. Granted, Tressel has an impressive overall record and he has dominated arch rival Michigan but there are still some pretty big chinks in his armor. These flaws aren’t quirky or easily fixed. They are fundamental problems that have the potential to destroy the entire program.

Jim Tressel was hired because Ohio State needed to clean up its image. John Cooper let his recruits run a little wild and the result was embarrassing for the Buckeyes. Players were getting arrested, struggling in school and displaying personality traits that rubbed fans the wrong way. Jim Tressel was supposed to change all of that when he was hired in 2000. People were concerned as to whether or not Jim Tressel could make the jump from Youngstown State to Big 10 football but Ohio State needed to tighten up its image. Jim Tressel was supposed to do that.

He didn’t. Sure, the players all sing Carmen Ohio after every game but there’s still concern over academic performance and several players have been arrested. As bad as John Cooper appeared to be he never invoked the wrath of the NCAA, but Jim Tressel’s program was worthy of an extensive investigation. Tressel managed to avoid official sanctions but it was under his watch that Ohio State saw its reputation take a hit in the national media. When you compare police blotters, Jim Tressel represents no improvement over John Cooper. Ohio State’s has had more than its share of trouble.

Much of that revolved around the petulant tailback Maurice Clarett. As a freshman Clarett attracted national attention as the only offensive weapon Ohio State had. While the defense stifled opponents it was Clarett’s ability to gain yards at will that made it possible for Ohio State to overcome formidable opponents. He clashed with coaches and struggled with personal decisions but he rushed for over 1000 yards on one of the worst offenses in college football. One could argue that he was the offense.

Clarett was eventually suspended for receiving illegal compensation. Clarett accused Tressel of providing that compensation but it was not substantiated and Clarett recanted. Still, Tressel had to know that Clarett was struggling with the pressures and temptations associated with stardom and Tressel should have been suspicious of how Clarett was acquiring access to clothing, jewelry and automobiles. For some reason everybody seemed to look the other way when the flamboyant Clarett drew attention to himself and it almost cost Ohio State dearly. To be fair Clarett is not the only player to get into trouble at OSU but he was the marquee player on that 2002 championship team. A lot of people around Columbus try to downplay that fact but they don’t downplay the title, even though others do.

Because Ohio State’s 106th ranked offense was so ineffective a lot of people dismiss Ohio States 2002 National Championship as a fluke. Miami fans dismiss the Fiesta Bowl as a whitewash by officials who called the game in Ohio State’s favor. It is true Ohio State did get some calls and some bounces but 14-0 is 14-0. You can’t take anything from Tressel in 2002. The Buckeyes enjoyed plenty of good luck but they didn’t make critical mistakes. That became the hallmark of Tressel ball.

However 2003 was a different story. Ohio State should have been able to repeat. The offense had another year to improve and an entire summer to recover from the loss of the suspended Clarett. Tressel’s team cruised through a weak opening schedule with an offensive attack that was even less impressive than the previous year and the team went 11-2, beating Kansas State in the Fiesta Bowl. A low point of that season was when senior linebacker Robert Reynolds was caught on camera trying to crush Wisconsin quarterback, Jim Sorgi’s throat after a play. The violent act drew plenty of media attention but only a one game suspension. Jim Tressel dismissed it as a mistake by a player who is normally classy. A few years later Reynolds was dismissed from the Tennessee Titans after his wife filed domestic assault charges. Clearly Tressel is not a good judge of character.

11-2 is hardly a disappointment but this was a team that managed to return a lot of good players and the two loses were directly attributable to Tressel’s tentative offensive schemes. The blocking was weak, the plays were unimaginative and in 2003 the defense simply couldn’t hold on. The offense wasn’t holding the ball as long as it had in 2002 and the running game was not wearing opponents down at all.

2004 was ugly. The line was even worse and highly touted quarterback prospect Justin Zwick was getting brutalized. The running game was inconsistent again and the Buckeyes fell to 8-4. The season improved when Tressel replaced the battered Zwick with a nimble Troy Smith and the offense suddenly opened up a little. Play calling seemed to improve either because Smith could buy time with his legs or because 3 straight conference losses made the coaching staff a little desperate. Whatever the case it worked. Fans might have been upset if it had no been for a modest upset of Michigan and a sound beating of Oklahoma State in the Alamo bowl.

2005 was marred by yet another disciplinary issue. Troy Smith got caught taking money from a booster and was suspended for the opener which forced Tressel to capitulate on his starter for an early winner take all showdown with Texas. Tressel rightfully started Zwick who struggled with the more restrained play calling. Ohio State’s defense did a fine job containing the explosive Longhorn offense but Tressel squandered scoring opportunities by changing quarterbacks. The offense simply couldn’t find any rhythm and Ohio State lost a nail biter. Later in the 2005 season the stagnant offense came back to haunt the Buckeyes again and they fell 17-10.

After that Tressel seemed to open things up and Ohio State went on to dominate its opponents. This trend carried into the 2006 season where Ohio State marched through the entire schedule with a perfect record. After beating Michigan in a classic that will be replayed for decades to come Ohio State secured its spot in the BCS Championship game and waited for the BCS to select an opponent. The rest is history. Ohio State simply laid an egg. Nobody was prepared and they never made adjustments. Tressel failed to properly motivate his team and they suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of an inferior team.

On paper it’s hard to criticize Jim Tressel. He’s won five national championships and he owns a career record of 197-71-2 (61-14 at Ohio State). He is 4-2 in bowl games and he has practically claimed ownership of his arch rival Michigan with a 5-1 record. It’s no wonder Ohio State fans love him. He’s a fantastic coach but there’s plenty of room for improvement.

2007 is going to be telling. Did Jim Tressel learn an important lesson last year? He’s not an emotional guy so it’s hard to tell if he’s got any fire. His record indicates that he does but his response to the BCS Championship debacle was a little too reserved. It’s OK to take a loss in stride…sometimes you aren’t the better team...but throwing a game away? That’s not supposed to sit well with coaches.

Tressel will be taking the field with a lot of new faces on offense. He’ll have to trust a new quarterback and try to find reliable receivers. He lost an experienced tailback and while Chris Wells has shown moments of sheer brilliance, there is a question as to whether or not he can hold on to the ball. Will Tressel give these new kids a chance to play or will he take the ball out of their hands and count on his defense to win games?

In Columbus fans are drawing comparisons to 2002. The return of Tressel ball. Unfortunately this is a defense that had some glaring weaknesses exposed when they faced formidable opponents late last season. Michigan and Florida put up a lot of points and gained yards at will. This unit might not be up to the challenge of achieving perfection week after week and Tressel might not get some of the breaks he got in 2002. He didn’t get them in 2003, 2004 or 2005. Sometimes you have to move the ball and score. Punts don’t win football games, points do. Just because it worked in 2002 doesn’t mean it will again. The question is whether or not Tressel has learned that lesson.

So?

756 doesn't mean anything to me because I know that there is more to baseball than hitting home runs. Even if you take away the ugly pall of steroids you're still left with Barry Bonds, a player who has chosen to define his career as a testament to himself. It's fitting that his greatest feats are individual achievements. Not only has he failed to win a World Series, Bonds has been a big part of the reason none of his teams could win it all, alienating players and coaches who could have helped him. He's never played the game the right way...steroids or not.

To be fair, I also don't hold Babe Ruth's numbers in high esteem. Some of the best baseball players of his era were forbidden from playing major league baseball. Ruth set himself apart because he chose to swing for the fences when his contemporaries kept the ball in the park but in the Negro Leagues players were already exploiting the long ball. Would Babe Ruth's record mean anything if he'd faced a pitcher like Satchel Paige or if Josh Gibson had been allowed to compete in the Majors? We'll never know but the very question puts 714 in doubt. It's not Babe's fault but understanding the context of that record makes it hard to honor.

It's subjective but 755 means the most to me. Hank Aaron was a class act who proved himself to be a model of consistency. He was also a true champion batting .393 in the 1957 World Series and leading the way to an important Braves victory. He managed to stay on track in spite of dealing with racial hostility the likes of which Barry Bonds can't begin to comprehend. Aaron actually endured being segregated from his team when he went on the road and maintained his focus in spite of receiving death threats in an era where it seemed much more likely they would be carried out.

Numbers are meaningless without context. No matter how many home runs Barry Bonds finishes his career with, he'll never surpass what Aaron accomplished.

Browns can't win

Brady Quinn doesn’t think his contract demands are unreasonable but he admits that his agent, Tom Condon, is handling everything. We can only speculate as to what is really going on. Quinn claims that the sticking point is the incentive clause he wants included should he become an effective starting quarterback.

Pundits and Browns’ fans seem to think Brady Quinn is asking for too much. Suddenly he is overrated and fortunate that the Browns saw fit to end his draft day free fall. While there were some scouts and insiders expressing concern that Brady Quinn wasn’t perfect, everybody seemed genuinely surprised that he fell to the 22nd spot. The Browns weren’t alone in their quest to secure a second first round pick to acquire Quinn as several teams were actively trying to negotiate a trade after Miami passed on Quinn for Ted Ginn Jr.

The Browns forfeited their leverage in this negotiation process when they made such a fuss over Brady Quinn before the draft. Before Jamarcus Russell wowed everybody with his arm, Brady Quinn was the top-ranked quarterback. People questioned his ability to win big games but when they considered the fact that he wasn’t surrounded by the same talent his chief rivals enjoyed that point became less important. Besides, that was the big knock on Peyton Manning until this past Super Bowl. Quinn would be just fine.

Initially the Browns looked poised to take Quinn. Russell was the top pick and a lot of people thought that Detroit would take Joe Thomas over Calvin Johnson because Detroit had plenty of talented receivers and no means of getting them the ball. The Browns would then be forced to choose between Adrian Peterson and Brady Quinn since they weren’t in the market for a receiver either. The Browns were enamored with Quinn.

Even when it became clear that Joe Thomas would be available the Browns, in spite of dire needs on the line, were still smitten by Quinn. They finally decided that Joe Thomas was the best choice but went out of their way to smooth it over with Quinn by contacting him the night before and explaining the decision to him. It was a classy move on the team’s part.

Then teams passed on Quinn and the circus began. When the Browns finally acquired the pick that brought Brady to Cleveland the front office gushed. They bragged about how highly they had Quinn rated and paraded him around like some kind of trophy. The future was now and Brady was an integral part of it.

So why are the Browns surprised that Brady Quinn is holding out for a better deal than your average 22nd pick would dare to ask for? Could it be because Brady Quinn knows he isn’t the average 22nd pick? Everybody seemed stunned that the Dolphins passed on him with the ninth pick so Quinn’s got to believe he’s worth top 10 money and then the Browns made it clear that they viewed him as valuable a selection as Joe Thomas. This made it easy for Tom Condon.

Teams will often take a quarterback with a third or fourth round pick to shake things up and challenge a veteran who might be getting complacent. The Patriots did that with Tom Brady a few years back and look how it turned out. But Quinn wasn’t some diamond in the rough. He was viewed by everybody as a ready made franchise quarterback and the Browns made no effort to disguise their excitement in landing him.

They showed Quinn their cards at the start of the game and now they want to bluff. Romeo Crennel is pretending that he’ll pick his starter after the first preseason game but word out of camp indicates that neither Charlie Frye nor Derek Anderson seem ready to lead this team. The quarterback position in Cleveland is as wide open as it ever was and Brady Quinn isn’t losing any ground by working out in Arizona with other big name players who are holding out for better contracts. How can the Browns win when Quinn knows what he is worth and has veteran NFL players encouraging him to stay firm in his demands?

The Browns have nothing to bargain with. They need Brady Quinn more than he needs them. In fact, Quinn would be better served to sit out the entire year and end up with a good team that needs to replace an old quarterback. Cleveland has already ruined one highly rated QB prospect. If he can’t get the contract he wants in Cleveland he’s better off taking less money to play elsewhere.

Everybody knows that the Browns are going to blink. They want Quinn in camp. They banked their future on him. Next year Dallas is going to have Cleveland’s first round pick and there’s a good chance it’s going to be in the top five. So give Quinn top five money and get him into camp. Phil Savage made this bed and might as well lay in it.

Big deals nobody buys

Beckham and Bonds. These two venerable athletes share the distinction of being part of huge sports stories that people simply don’t care about. Beckham is going to play Major League Soccer which, by global standards, is a misnomer given the fact that the version of professional soccer here in the United States compares to its European counterpart much in the way Arena football compares to the NFL.

Beckham is attracting attention because people are curious as to whether he’ll dominate American soccer the way Michael Jordan would own the court at the local YMCA but the attention will be fleeting. One of two things will happen: he will dominate or he will disappoint. Regardless, people will grow weary of the novelty. It’s unlikely that soccer will ever command more than a niche market here in the states and bringing in global legends won’t change that.

The fact of the matter is that soccer is not a very good spectator sport when compared with the other sports Americans enjoy. It can be monotonous and low scores are the result of many anticlimactic possessions. There’s no question that Americans are conditioned to enjoy more familiar sports. Baseball can be quite boring but it’s much more complex than soccer and every pitch can be exciting when the game is tight. In soccer a margin of victory of just one goal can be the result of a boring, lopsided game. And ties are all too common.

Soccer is a great sport and it is challenging. Players are fantastic athletes who must developed a sense of dexterity most of us can’t even fathom. Soccer can also be a lot of fun to play. But so is bowling. That doesn’t mean anybody wants to watch it on TV. Soccer can produce some outstanding highlights at times but exciting moments are few and far between. The pitch is bigger than a standard American football field, intentional contact is discouraged and the rules certainly favor defense. While soccer is king around the rest of the world it is losing ground to other sports. Basketball has gained international appeal, sports fans in soccer countries are warming up to football and baseball is still huge in Central and South America even though it is no longer the American pastime. Once people become familiar with the intricacies of American sports it seems the American sports become more popular. The more familiar Americans become with soccer the more interested they become in the world series of poker.

So Beckham’s foray into the MLS is big news but it’s falling on deaf ears. Fans will take notice but not nearly as much as the people who forked over all that money expect. As much as everybody would love to see Americans fall in love with soccer, people simply won’t make room in their hearts.

Barry Bonds shook off the rust, found his stroke and has made Hank Aaron’s fall from the record books inevitable. Not only will Bonds hit 755 to tie the record and 756 to break it, by the time the season is over he will be a dozen dingers away from cracking the 800 barrier. A season or two muddling around the AL as a DH for rent will make it possible for the bloated wonder to put the home run title out of A-Rod’s reach for a long time.

The problem is that nobody who has a clue likes Barry. He’s got a healthy throng of idiot fans who simply don’t get it and the handful of people in his camp who seem smart enough to get it simply choose to ignore it. Barry Bonds took steroids. Lots of them. He went from being a wiry free-swinging center fielder to the bubble-headed behemoth he is today over the course of winter. Apologists complain that every time an athlete gets big and strong he gets accused of doping but in Barry’s case he admits that he did take steroids but absolves himself of responsibility by claiming that he didn’t know that he was taking them. Liar.

But even taking the steroids that added a decade of remarkable play to his career out of the equation, Barry Bonds’ assault on 755 would still strike a sour note because of the kind of man he is. We’re talking about a guy who cheated on his wife, cheated on his taxes and hid behind his family when the spotlight glared. Barry Bonds went to a press conference with his son for the sole purpose of using the boy as a prop when people pressed him for answers. If Barry was half the man he claims to be he would have told his kid to stay home so daddy could face the music. Instead he hid behind his kid. Classy.

Bonds has spent a career of alienating his own teammates and rubbing everybody the wrong way. He has struggled to deliver in the post season and his obsession with personal statistical achievements has compromised his ability to make his team better. Barry would rather take a walk than move a runner over with a sacrifice fly. Barry would rather swing for the fences than hit behind the runner to drive him in. Baseball fans can be obsessed with stats but the stats never tell the whole story. The book on Barry is that he is a loser. Always has been, always will be.

People talk about how Barry should be handled. He hasn’t tested positive for steroids in the recently implemented drug test era but it’s clear that the bulk of his numbers came from a bottle. Can he be stricken from the record book? Should he be kept out of the Hall?

Probably not. The record book is about stats so Barry will have his place in it regardless of the allegations. But the Hall of Fame should be different. The balloting is subjective. Some would argue too much so, but that’s where the big picture of a player's career should be taken into account. Instead of looking at stats voters should consider the sum of the player’s career. That includes tangibles such as statistics as well as intangibles such as leadership and disposition. Character has to count for something but unless that player has several titles to his name it never seems to matter to the voters.

Sadly baseball writers don’t like to explain themselves so they hide behind stats. Most will even explain their methodology for analyzing stats to determine a player’s worthiness. Nobody seems willing to take responsibility for making a judgment call. Great players are denied recognition because they fell short of arbitrary milestones such as 3000 hits, 500 home runs or 300 wins. By voters standards a player who lugged a .248 average through a 16 year career to hit 508 home runs is better than a guy who managed to hit .297 with 434 home runs over 14 years.

Defense almost always gets the short shrift in this process because the only stat for defense is fielding percentage and it’s often distorted by a player’s ability. Rangy fielders like Omar Vizquel and Roberto Alomar get charged for errors because they almost get to balls guys like Cal Ripken Jr. could only dream of touching. So Omar deflects a ball in shallow center and his fielding percentage goes down, but Cal’s stats look good because he stood there and watched it land.

So Barry will get in. After five years nobody will care to debate his association with illegal substances and if it is broached the writers will all play dumb and claim that you can’t quantify the impact those substances had on Bonds’ career. The stats will make for an easy argument and nobody will bring up character issues or those intangibles that Bonds refused to bring to the table. They’ll defend Bonds’ lack of championships by blaming the rest of the team even though Barry was the primary reason the rest of the team wasn’t very good. Then they’ll reverse position and give Derek Jeter a pass because he has rings to overcome his lousy power numbers, suspect defense and low batting average. That’s the only subjective aspect of the voting: which seemingly objective method will be employed by the gutless writers.

Until then we have the inevitable breaking of the record. It’s coming but fans seem numb. That wasn’t the case back when Hank was closing in on 715. Babe Ruth’s record was sacred and the entire nation was on pins and needles wondering when it would fall. Some people hated him but most cheered Hammering Hank on. In spite of our national sense of racism Hank was a guy you had to love. He was consistent, hard working and enduring. He was just a good guy. When he rounded the bases after his historic blast it was two white dopes who ran out on the field to be the first to congratulate him. It was a big deal.

Nobody seems to care about Bonds. Hank won’t make an effort to be present when his record falls. He’s been careful to avoid stirring the pot but you can tell he doesn’t respect the way Bonds has played the game. Bud Selig is begging off as well. The commissioner of Major League Baseball doesn’t want to be around when a record that stood for nearly 40 years falls. They aren’t alone. That says a lot about the kind of guy Bonds is. Steroids or not, he’s a jerk and nobody likes to see jerks do well.

Dynasty?

ESPN has a channel that features replays of legendary athletic performances and highlight footage of some of the greatest players in sports. The channel is simply called ESPN Classic. Of course, 24 hours of programming gobbles up quite a bit of archived footage so ESPN producers sometimes have to reach.

One feature they have is a program called “Instant Classic”. Typically this forum is used to replay a recent game of some notoriety. A great example of one of these so-called “instant classics” is the recent Fiesta Bowl where Boise State upset Oklahoma. It was a great game and it more or less proved that the term “instant classic” isn’t quite as oxymoronic as some people perceive it to be.

We’ve all seen sports history in the making. Tom Brady coming off the bench and out of obscurity to lead the New England Patriots through the playoffs and on to a Super Bowl win was one of those moments in time where one can feel the legend being written. You just knew when Tom Brady flashed that million watt smile and hoisted the Vince Lombardi Trophy something special was happening. That wasn’t the case when Kurt Warner led the Rams to a title, his was a feel good story but it wasn’t one of those timeless moments.

We like those moments. Tom Brady took us back to Joe Montana and made everything seem OK. Football would always be football. The more things change the more they stay the same. We want great teams, great players and great moments but sometimes our desire to replicate history overcomes good sense. Such is the case with LeBron James and the San Antonio Spurs.

We want LeBron to be Michael Jordan and can’t figure out why he hasn’t won six titles yet. Part of it might be because LeBron just finished his third season and hasn’t had enough opportunities to win and part of it might be that at the age of 22 LeBron still has some work to do before he becomes the best player he can be. It’s also reasonable to place some of the blame on the rest of his team. Jordan seemed destined to share space in championship purgatory with Charles Barkley, Karl Malone and Dominique Wilkins until Scottie Pippen showed up. In the King’s defense Jordan had a lot of work to do at the age of 22 as well. One might say that LeBron is better than Jordan was at this early stage in his career. One would have a hard time arguing otherwise. One thing's for sure: LeBron is a better teammate.

We are also pondering whether or not the Spurs are a dynasty. Which begs the question: what is a dynasty in sports? It’s not an official term but subjective opinion seems to maintain that a dynasty demonstrates a consistent level of success over a long period of time. If that’s the case the Spurs might have something going but many feel that their championships are too spread out to qualify them as a true dynasty. The Spurs haven’t won back to back and in the middle of this supposed dynasty the Lakers pulled off three titles in a row. Who has the dynasty?

In my not-so-humble opinion the test of time is what makes or breaks a sports dynasty. The Spurs are a great team right now but what will we think 15 years from now? Will they be held in the same esteem as the Celtics and the Lakers? It doesn’t matter what we think now; that’s a question for the ages but I think the fact that the Spurs allowed a conference rival to pull off a three-peat in the midst of their run will haunt the legacy.

Does a dynasty have to win multiple titles? Some would say so but the word implies some level of consistent dominance. You can't win a title, sleep walk through a season or two and win again. You have to win or be in the position to win year after year. To that end the Spurs aren’t the most dominant team in their conference or division. Since they broke through in 1999 they are 4-0 in the finals but the Lakers are 3-1 and Shaquille O’Neal has been a member of four championship teams with five appearances in the finals. Perhaps the Spurs dynasty will be overshadowed by Shaq’s. It’s hard to argue with his credentials.

Switching back to football one of the most impressive accomplishments is the four straight Super Bowl appearances by the Buffalo Bills in the 1990’s. Talk about consistency! This is a team that won four consecutive conference championships and from 1988 through 1993 made six consecutive post season appearances. And the NFL doesn’t have a playoff field like the NBA It’s hard to make the playoffs; you have to win to get in. The Bills continued to be highly competitive over a period of 12 years. From 1988 through 1999 they made the playoffs 10 times and compiled a regular season record of 124-74. Impressive? I dare you to say no. Dynasty? Well….

You’ve got to finish. Winning titles is certainly part of the dynasty equation but not the only one. A dynasty must demonstrate consistent success over a period of time. Dynasties are generally associated with dominance and that means the success must be significantly greater than a team’s rivals over that period. You can’t just be one of the best teams every year, you have to be the best more often than not. Michael Jordan demonstrated exactly what a dynasty is when he won three titles in a row, took a couple of seasons off and came back to win three more. Six titles in eight years and the Bulls were in the hunt during his two season hiatus. That's one efficient dynasty. You have to dust off the Bill Russell Celtics before you can find that sort of success. Granted that was a much different NBA. The compeition wasn't that impressive.

Go back to the Lakers. Not the Sha-Kobe Lakers that threw a three-peat monkey wrench in the midst of a Spurs dynasty but the Showtime Lakers of the 1980’s; for that matter look at the Celtics of the same era. From the 1979-1980 season through 1990-1991 the Lakers made it to nine finals and won five of them. They made consecutive appearances and won back to back titles in the span but what’s important is that for more than 10 years the Lakers defined the playoffs and the NBA finals. During that stretch the Celtics won three titles in five appearances. If not for the Lakers the Celtics would have ruled the 1980’s.

That’s a dynasty. The Lakers dominated everybody. The Celtics, though often linked to the Lakers as their chief rival and regular foil simply don’t even compare when the results are examined years later. The Celtics were a great team but history proves that the Lakers were better…by far. Dominance.

The Spurs might be like the Celtics. The Lakers could make some moves, win two more titles over the next three years. Then we’ll look back at this era and call it Showtime II. The Cavaliers could get aggressive in the off season and embark on a period of dominance that overshadows everything the Spurs have done to this point. Or perhaps the Spurs will finally pull off that magical repeat next year and put history in a stranglehold. We don’t know how this book ends because there are still chapters waiting to be written.

Perhaps we should stop worrying about how to define the present and simply enjoy what we have. The Spurs are a great team and the Cavaliers clearly have a bright future. It’s hard to put what we’ve seen into historical perspective because we simply don’t have the vantage point of time. Let’s take a breath and wait.

Cavs can't get any love

Everybody loves LeBron James now. At the start of the Eastern Conference Finals James was roundly criticized by everybody for kicking the ball out to his best three point shooter. Ironically one of those critics was Magic Johnson who made a name for himself executing that very sort of play. Apparently the difference between James and Johnson is that Johnson had the telepathic ability to will the ensuing shot into the basket. More criticism followed after the second game where LeBron seemed unable to get his team inspired in the third quarter although he got a little backhanded credit for taking the ball to the rim late in the game. The analysts seemed more intent on patting themselves on the back for being right than they were with giving James credit for taking ownership of the game.

The love affair started in game five. The Cavaliers played well at home and took two games from what appeared to be an uninspired Pistons club but nobody expected the Pistons to fall in game five. The Pistons are dangerous when the pressure’s on. That was where LeBron James stepped up late and didn’t quit until the Cavs won the game. He scored all 25 of the Cavaliers final points and displayed the sort of clutch performance associated with the best players in the history of the game.

Game six was interesting. The Pistons went back to the defense that had stifled James in the first two games and it worked. LeBron couldn’t get his offense on track but the difference was that his teammates were finally hitting shots. Larry Hughes drilled key threes early and punished the Pistons for collapsing on James. Then young Daniel Gibson took over and nailed shot after shot to finish the game. James made key plays but it was the same generosity that he displayed in game one that made it possible to beat the Pistons big in the sixth and final game. It wasn’t even competitive. The Pistons quit with five minutes left to play.

Nobody gave the Cavaliers a chance to beat the Pistons. Most experts speculated that the Cavaliers were fortunate to have drawn such an easy playoff bid. Washington and Miami limped into the playoffs with injuries to key players and the Bulls, by virtue of one ill-times loss ended up drawing a semifinal match with the Pistons. Cleveland, they insisted, was the third best team in the playoffs with Detroit being the runaway favorite to win it all.

Cleveland took it to Detroit in the conference finals. Charles Barkley, who picked the Pistons to win, declared Cleveland the winner by virtue of a 6 game sweep. He elaborates that Cleveland basically outplayed Detroit in the first two games in spite of coming up short on the scoreboard and that LeBron demoralized the Pistons in game five. Cleveland simply rose to the challenge.

Still Barkley and other pundits don’t give the Cavs much of a chance against the Spurs. Everybody sees the Spurs as an unbeatable force even though they lost to the Cavaliers in both of their regular season meetings. Granted that was then and this is the Finals where the Spurs have won before but the Spurs did get a gift from David Stern when the NBA saddled Phoenix with a suspension and that was after receiving the gift of favorable calls all through the playoffs.

The Western Conference was thrown for quite a loop when the heavily favored Dallas Mavericks choked against the Warriors. That gave the Spurs what amounted to a week of practice as they toyed with Utah in the Western Conference finals.

When you compare these teams the Spurs don’t have that big of an edge. The Spurs have no answer for LeBron James. Unless Bruce Bowen manages to get a foot under James when he goes to the rim and send the NBA’s best player to the injured list, James will have a brilliant series. The only players big enough to stop James aren’t fast enough to guard him.

The Spurs also don’t have an answer for Zydrunas Ilgauskas unless they opt to put that burden on Duncan’s shoulders. Duncan can shut Z down but Z’s slippery enough to make him work for it which will undoubtedly detract from Duncan’s contributions on offense. Defensively the Cavs will employ a platoon of the energetic Anderson Varejao, who frustrated Rasheed Wallace to the point of ejection, Drew Gooden and Donyell Marshall to wear The Big Fundamental down.

The Spurs have a big advantage with Tony Parker who could force a double team if Larry Hughes’ injury tightens up and Daniel Gibson gets overwhelmed. A double team will shut down Parker, leaving Manu Ginobli open to do damage but the Cavs managed to handle the depth and versatility of Detroit’s backcourt with consistency. It’s clear that Mike Brown really does know what he’s doing.

And that brings us to coaching. Brown is still pretty new at his job and Popovich is his mentor. The Spurs appear to have the edge in coaching but don’t overlook Mike Brown. Who had the bigger challenge? Brown, who brought his team back from an 0-2 start or Popovich who faced his biggest challenge of the post season with a league-induced advantage? One thing the experts seem to agree on is that the Spurs were on the verge of being eliminated before David Stern sat the Suns’ most explosive player out for a pivotal game six and the Suns almost pulled off the upset. Who’s the better coach?

The real advantage the Spurs have is with the officiating. The Spurs got past the Suns by playing dirty. Roll the tape and you see a team getting away with nasty little cheap shots throughout the entire series. Bruce Bowen hasn’t been reprimanded for maliciously trying to injure players by rolling their ankles and buckling their knees and it’s unlikely they’ll put the screws to him now. Maybe LeBron’s star has risen enough to warrant a little protection from such pedestrian tactics and the plan will backfire. That’s the real issue. Will the Spurs carry their magic blanket of NBA-sanctioned protection into this series or will the Cavs be given a fair shot at taking them down?

Faulty Logic

Sports writers and pundits were furious with Dirk Nowitzki. The towering power forward followed his impressive regular season run with a dismal showing in the playoffs. As the centerpiece of his team and the toast of the NBA in 2007 he was expected to be a force in the playoffs. It wasn’t so much that Dallas lost, Nowitzki was a virtual no show. Now the knock on Dirk is that he lacks the character to step up and deliver in big games like Tim Duncan. How dare he accept his MVP trophy?

It’s not fair. Sure, it would have been nice if Dirk had lived up to his billing but the blame for the Mavericks getting an early dismissal from the post season rests on the shoulders of the entire team. No matter how brilliant a player is he is going to have an off night. That player will recover from a slump faster if the rest of the team can pick up the slack. What if Dirk had been injured? Other people have to step up.

Dallas was out-coached as much as they were out played. The Warriors were just hungrier. Maybe Dallas thought they’d coast through, win the series in five games and rested up for a second round showdown with Utah. Maybe Dallas peaked too early. The fact remains that the entire team lost. Dirk isn’t the only player suiting up for the Mavs. As dominant as Dallas proved to be over the course of the regular season, one would have expected them to beat Golden State with their reserves on the floor for the entire series.

We’re inconsistent in sports. We laud a knucklehead like Kobe Bryant for being a dominant scoring machine but fail to take him to task for effectively dismantling a juggernaut with his ego. Kobe could have 8 championships by now and would have transitioned past Shaq as the undisputed leader of the team but he was impatient and wanted the Lakers all to himself. He forced Shaq out and even alienated Phil Jackson before the siren call of fame and fortune brought Jackson back to LA. That makes Phil a whore.

In baseball A-Rod is cast as a villain to Derek Jeter’s hero. It doesn’t matter that A-Rod is the kind of player who can single handedly make a team good enough to get to the playoffs, A-Rod has struggled in the post season. Jeter has made a few big plays but. statistically Jeter is the most overrated player in the game. He’s a weak defensive shortstop and a mediocre hitter. His post season stats aren’t even that spectacular but since he has been on a winning team and earned a championship ring he gets the benefit of the doubt.

Until recently Peyton Manning was regarded as a stat monkey who couldn’t win big games. This reputation cost him a Heisman trophy in college and almost cost him in the draft. Fortunately the Indianapolis Colts never bought into the hysteria. Now that Peyton has a ring nobody doubts his greatness but his performance in the Super Bowl was far from his best and it can be argued that the Bears did more to give the game away than the Colts did to win it.

Lebron James is regarded as a guy who can’t deliver in the clutch. When its mentioned that he can and does he is accused of failing to come through in big games. Of course statistics prove that theory wrong. Just this year Lebron has come up big….in the playoffs…in the fourth quarter. Lebron buried the Wizards with a big fourth quarter effort in the first round and put the screws to the Nets in game two of the second round. All it takes is one missed free throw or an errant jumper late in a game for analysts to start questioning his heart. Even Reggie Miller, who should know better, insinuated that the player to foul in the fourth quarter is James. That’s funny because Lebron’s stats improve in the fourth quarter. Reggie Miller is and always has been an idiot.

Michael Jordan had plenty of lousy last second performances. So did Larry Bird and Magic Johnson. Joe Montana and John Elway lost plenty of games and failed to rally their teams more often than they led spectacular comebacks. The reason we don’t obsess about their failures is because they managed to be part of great teams that won championships. What we forget is that all of those players had brilliant supporting casts around them.

Does Lebron James have a Scottie Pippen picking up the slack? Does he have a sniper draining threes from the perimeter ala Paxson or Kerr? Does he get a consistent performance from his front court? NO. Jordan did. Even though Zydrunas Ilgauskas is more talented than any center Jordan ever played with, Z sometimes goes into hiding. Jordan’s centers always played hard. They were consistent. Z is not. You never know when Z is going to explode for a 20/20 night or implode and score 3 points.

Montana threw passes to the greatest receiver of all time and John Elway, who was a habitual loser until the very end of his career, suddenly became great when he had a 2000 yard rusher on his team. San Francisco not only continued to win after Montana left, Steve Young was a more efficient quarterback. Denver fell off after Elway retired but his retirement coincided with the departure of several other important players.

Championships are won by great teams but we try to credit one performer. We like to put a face with the title and that causes us to give too much credit to individual players. Plenty of great players came up short. Patrick Ewing couldn’t win a title because he was surrounded by lackluster players. Charles Barkley came up short because he didn’t have enough help. Even the great duo of John Stockton and Karl Malone fell short because they simply didn’t have the rest of the pieces in place. In the case of the Jazz the deficiency might have been in coaching.

We talk in terms of intangibles and trick ourselves into believing that Joe Montana is better than Dan Marino because of some immeasurable quality that compelled him to win. The reality is that Bill Walsh was a better coach than Don Shula and that the Dolphins, aside from Marino, were a mediocre team.

Lebron has intangibles. The fact that he happily dishes to his teammates when everybody knows he could throw down 60 a night makes the Cavaliers a better team. Everybody on that roster adores Lebron because he is true leader who respects everybody on the floor. Kobe doesn’t carry the same weight with his teammates because he shows them disrespect in the way he plays. It’s all Kobe all the time. With Lebron it’s all about the rest of the team. He makes them better and they all know it.

Dirk Nowitzki is similar. He’s a dominant player because he has the skills of a guard in a center’s body. He can stretch a team’s front court out by playing from the perimeter and once he draws the defense to him he can pass the ball in or use his skills to drive the lane. Dirk could score 40 points a game but he happily shares the ball with his teammates. That’s why the Mavericks win. Unfortunately for Dirk, Avery Johnson outsmarted himself in the playoffs and the Mavs went home.

Everybody knows this stuff. Fans talk about it all the time. What separates the Spurs from the Mavs? Nowitzki and Duncan are similar players who put up similar numbers with Duncan being more of a force inside while Dirk brings more to the perimeter. The difference is that Duncan gets help from Tony Parker and Manu Ginobli. Duncan also plays for a better coach. The Mavs let one of the grittiest players in the game slip away when Steve Nash signed with the Suns. One has to believe that the Mavericks would be unstoppable if they had Nash playing the point. Before the playoffs started everybody gave the Spurs the edge in the west. Dallas won more games but the Spurs were just better equipped to win the head to head series.

So why the outrage? Dirk Nowitzki played a phenomenal regular season and led his team to the best record in the NBA but nobody really expected the Mavs to get to the finals. Nobody expected it because we know that the best teams don’t always have the best records and that the best players don’t always have the most impressive stats. Dirk deserves the MVP award because the same people complaining about his early exit voted to give him the award. It’s not his fault they suspended reason.

Browns Score Big in 2007 Draft

Since 1999 the Cleveland Browns have been plagued with the sort of inefficiency that can only be attributed to a lousy offensive line. That was an issue Phil Savage hoped to address last year when the Browns acquired LeCharles Bentley through free agency but the nasty center went down with an injury that might end the former Buckeye’s career.

Romeo Crennel improved the defense last year but the offense took a big step back thanks in large part to poor blocking but Charlie Frye’s erratic play also hurt the team. With so many weapons available it was clear that the Browns needed better play from the QB position.

The Browns couldn’t accept the terms the Raiders offered for the top spot and a crack at the gigantic JaMarcus Russell and when they looked at the possibilities from that third spot it was hard to pass on a lineman as dominant as Joe Thomas. Surely the Browns were planning to settle for a second round quarterback and hoped that he would thrive behind a solid line.

But nobody expected Brady Quinn to fall past the Dolphins. If one team needed to address its QB situation in the draft it was Miami but the Dolphins saw homerun potential in Ted Ginn Jr. and opted to pass on the highly touted Quinn to take him. Quinn watched a lot of teams skip over him to address other needs.

As soon as Miami passed on Quinn, the Browns went into a frenzy trying to coax teams out of their pick so they could snag Quinn. Finally Dallas gave up the 22nd pick which was a shock given the fact that the verdict is not in on Tony Romo. Cleveland managed to head off Baltimore and pick the player most scouts thought was the best QB in the draft. Russell might have more upside but Quinn seems ready to play and with Romeo Crennel stealing pages out of New England’s play book, Quinn might be more ready to play for the Browns than anybody knows.

Cleveland gave up a lot to get him but it’s hard to second guess the decision. Quinn is often compared to Tom Brady because of the Charlie Weis connection but Quinn is more athletic. In his first two seasons at Notre Dame, Brady Quinn was a mobile playmaker who demonstrated a lot of toughness. Under Weis he became a smooth passer with great awareness and patience. Quinn wasn’t exactly surrounded by great talent. JaMarcus Russell saw two of his receivers get drafted early, Quinn’s mates from South Bend weren’t exactly first day material. Quinn might be better than everybody thinks.

Regardless of what might happen, Cleveland demonstrated a serious commitment to winning. By being so aggressive in this years draft the Browns are not only planning on contending next year, they are building a youthful core of talented players that will help this team win in the future. A lot can happen in the coming months. Players could fold under pressure and studs could go down with injuries. The point is that the Browns are in it to win it.

For months the hype has been building and now the speculation about who will go where has become a shrill crescendo with Mel Kiper Jr. and his disturbing hair leading the masses. Before the draft everybody seems to have all the answers. Mock drafts have been completed and supposed picks have been scrutinized. If history is any indication of what to expect the pundits will be wrong. All it takes is one unexpected pick and the entire house of cards comes crashing down.

Last year the Houston Texans eschewed hometown hero Vince Young and collegiate superhero Reggie Bush in favor of defensive end Mario Williams. It wasn't exactly a bad idea given the volatile nature of so-called skill players who try to jump from college to the pros but the Texans could have traded down a few picks and landed Williams. They would have secured an extra pick or two late in the draft and saved a few million in bonus money.

This year everybody is certain that the Raiders will take rocket launcher JaMarcus Russell with the first pick in the draft. The Raiders do indeed need help at the QB position but a sterling young athlete like Russell is going to need lots of help if he's going to shine. The Raiders also need a receiver who is willing to actually play in real games and they need help on the line too. They spent their top pick last year on burly Robert Gallery but the highly touted lineman out of Iowa struggled at the left tackle spot all season long.

Al Davis is squirrelly. He loves to play psychological games even when they aren't necessary. He could draft himself with the top pick just to make headlines. That's probably not going to happen but Davis might pass on Russell just because everybody thinks they know what the Raiders will do. Some think that Davis might trade down but unless somebody pulls a Mike Ditka and gives the Raiders every pick they have, it's highly unlikely Davis will step out of the limelight. The Raiders will probably wait until their time is ready to expire before announcing their pick just to milk every minute of camera time.

The top four team in the draft are so bad drafting the high is not going to help. The Raiders could use new blood at every position. If they trade down and pick up an few extra selections in the middle rounds they could build a strong core of players who will support a winning team for years to come. The Detroit Lions are bad but they should be prohibited from making any first round selections until Matt Millen has been bound, gagged and dropped into the murky waters of the Detroit River.

The Browns and Buccaneers tied for the third pick but the Gruden lost the coin toss and ended up with the fourth selection. It doesn't really matter since the two teams think they have opposing needs. Of course both of those teams are further away from being competitive than they think. Unfortunately the value of their selections won't be evident until Detroit reveals its pick. Then the rest of the league can calculate the value of the remaining players and make an offer. Trading down might not be as attractive for these two because the offers might not be worthwhile.

The Browns are in an interesting spot. Should receiver Calvin Johnson remain available at the number three spot, the Browns will be getting calls from other teams. The Buccaneers might be forced to swap picks with the Browns just to ensure they have a chance at acquiring a big time play maker. Based on all the current evaluations, Calvin Johnson is the one player who will be able to step into the NFL and have an immediate impact. He's big, strong, fast and has the sheer athleticism to beat the best corners in the league. If he improves his game in training camp he could be the best receiver in the NFL as a rookie.

Adrian Peterson is the only other impact player available in the draft but there's no guarantee he'll be great. Unlike Johnson, he doesn't possess an obvious physical advantage. Peterson could be the next Larry Jonson or even a LaDainian Tomlinson but he could also be another Curtis Enis, KiJana Carter or William Green. So many teams have been burned by outstanding collegiate backs that it's hard to blame a team for passing on Peterson. Besides, the key to a great running game is in the front five. If a team has a great line they'll move the ball regardless of who is back there.

Like most drafts, once you get out of the top five it's a guessing game. Carolina's Steve Smith is one of the most dynamic players in the NFL but he was drafted in the third round. At 5'9" and 180 pounds, he's too small to be an elite receiver but somehow he defies conventional wisdom. Tom Brady was a sixth round draft pick who wasn't athletic enough to succeed in the modern era. Three Super Bowl victories and a pretty nifty efficiency rating has him bound for the Hall of Fame in a few years.

Joe Montana was too small; Jerry Rice was too slow; Dan Marino was too dumb; Warren Moon was too black…many great players were overlooked in the draft. It makes you wonder why so much effort is put into analyzing these players. It's hard too tell who's going to rise to the challenge of excelling at the next level. Scouts and analysts make a science out of the process but in the end everything seems to come down to hard work and good coaching. Tom Brady is successful because he works hard and he's in the right system, Tim Couch was a failure because the opposite was true.

Teams always hunt for the "sleeper" a player who isn't on anybody's radar duribng the draft but eventually goes on to break records. Too often those "sleepers" are the product of a superior environment. Experts give Mike Shanahan credit for finding great running backs in the middle of the draft but the reality is that the Broncos have a great offensive line. Notice how the running backs suddenly become less productive when the line isn't healthy?

Bad teams never seem to find the mythical sleeper. In fact bad teams are a graveyard for draft picks. Tim Couch was a "can't miss" selection. Now he's out of the NFL. His confidence was rattled in his stint in Cleveland and now he's nowhere to be found. The Bengals destroyed their fair share of QB's but Marvin Lewis resisted the temptation of throwing Carson Palmer to the Sharks. He held the top pick back until the rest of the team was playing better and put Palmer in the middle of a decent offense.

That's why the best tonic for a bad team isn't the top selection, but a number of picks later in the draft. A team with two third round picks will likely find a stout lineman to shore up that front line. Until the weaknesses are properly addressed one or two star players won't change the won/lost ratio.

Stern needs to put an end to tanking

David Stern takes a lot of abuse. Black sports columnists have accused him of trying to "whiten" the NBA in order to cater to the Caucasian audience while their white counterparts have lambasted him for allowing the negative aspects of the so-called Hip Hop culture to shape the image of the NBA. He just can't win.

Lost in the discussion is the fact that Stern has managed to save the NBA from imploding. Even though television ratings are down, David Stern has managed to keep the NBA's collective head above water. The NHL is barely breathing people aren't watching the Stanley Cup finals, let alone regular season games. Nobody wants to offer the NHL a respectable television contract and many games, including the playoffs, have been forced into the realm of basic cable.
Imagine the state of the NBA if somebody like Bud Selig was at the helm. Selig inherited a sport with tremendous global appeal and vast untapped markets. Instead of tweaking the organizational structure in baseball to foster a little good natured parity, Selig has allowed money to rule and the result is dwindling fan interest. Baseball apologists will point to the recent success of small market teams but soon the Yankees, Dodgers and Mets will pick apart the likes of the Tigers, Cardinals and even the White Sox leaving recent contenders struggling to rebuild while the big market powerhouses dominate the post season.

Stern took the NBA's helm in 1984…smack dab in the middle of the Larry Bird/Magic Johnson era. The NBA was a star driven enterprise that had struggled to find an audience until Bird and Johnson entered the league. After that, Michael Jordan elevated his game and the Bulls to lofty championship status thus solidifying the trend of building the league around players.

Stern never cared for that. First, it gave the players too much power and the demand for dominant players soon fueled a crippling salary increase that decimated small market teams. Players like Shawn Kemp and Vince Carter inked huge deals and proceeded to underachieve. Nobody noticed how bad it was until Michael Jordan left. The face of the NBA went from being that of a determined champion to that of the demanding prim Donna who talked better than he played.

It took some time, but slowly, Stern guided the NBA toward the team-oriented concepts embodied by the San Antonio Spurs and the Detroit Pistons. Stern tried to take the focus off of petulant athletes like Allen Iverson and draw attention to unselfish warriors like Jason Kidd. The push was some what successful and is the reason the NBA is still active.

Now Stern's got to face another problem. The current lottery system the league uses to prevent teams from dropping games on purpose is failing. Several team clearly tanked their seasons in hopes of securing one of the top two picks in the draft. With Greg Oden and Kevin Durant looking like future superstars and several other players promising to be more than serviceable, sacrificing the season for a low lottery pick makes sense.

Part of the problem is that the lottery has been weighted to all but guarantee the worst team in the league one of the top two picks but the serious issue is the NBA's insistence that all potential draft picks have at least a one year buffer between their high school graduation and their professional careers. This has forced players to play a season at the college level which has given NBA scouts a better look at their prospects. Now there's less risk. The Cleveland Cavaliers and the NBA held its breath while waiting to see if Lebron James was up to the challenge because the jump from high school to the NBA is huge. How would Lebron fare in a world where he wasn't a physical freak of nature?

Kevin Durant and Greg Oden would have been top picks regardless of college but their success at the collegiate level has erased any doubts about their abilities. More over, the extra year of college revealed that Mike Conley, Jr. is ready to play the point at the NBA level. Out of high school he might have drifted to the late first or early second round but after a fantastic run in big time college ball, Conley might prove to have a bigger immediate impact than his massive teammate. Oden's great but needs to hone his game. NBA scouts don't think Conley has too many weaknesses, a conclusion made possible by a year of college hoops.

Before, a lottery pick could be a bust…and an expensive one at that. Drafting players out of high school was tricky. Nobody knew what to expect and, with the exception of Lebron James, even the players who attained NBA stardom after making that leap took several years to do it. Kobe Bryant struggled early in his NBA career and Kevin Garnett needed some time to muscle up. The year of college is so significant, some experts believe that the Cleveland Cavaliers might have passed on Lebron in favor of Carmelo Anthony if Lebron had not been from the Cleveland Area. The hometown hero factor sealed that deal.

Stern can't let teams tank in order to gain an advantage through the draft. The NBA can't endure the scandal of intentional losses. It's so pervasive that columnists and fans are torn between being disgusted in the practice or applauding their team's desire to improve. Teams should never be rewarded for something so unethical.

The answer is twofold. Stern must work with the Players' Association to draft provisions that allow teams to cut over paid under-achievers. Teams should be careful about who they throw money at, but to often players get complacent when they're in the middle of a big contract and that hurts not only the team, but the league as well. It fosters the belief that NBA players are greedy, selfish and lazy. Simply giving teams such an option would discourage the behavior. The argument against it would be that teams could dump players for reasons other than effort but if a reverse arbitration system was established every cut would have to pass muster.

That allows teams to solve problems through the open market which diminishes the need for intentional losses. However a team at the bottom of the standings might still see the benefit in passing the "L" column to ensure that top pick. That's where the NBA needs to address the availability of fresh talent. Generally there are only three or four real impact players available in the draft in any given year. That's why teams want to as many lottery balls as they can. Which is why the NBA should dump the lottery: just give the worst team the first pick….After the second provision is implemented.

Lebron's popularity in Cleveland drives home the importance of home town heroes. Fans fell in love with Lebron instantly and that love would have been there regardless of Lebron's early performance. His success makes everybody else love him, but Cleveland's adoration is unconditional. So give those highly rated players the option of signing with their home town team. The player could choose between where he was born, where he played high school ball or, if he played at the college level for a minimum three years, his college town.

That would give Greg Oden, for example the right to sign with the Pacers before the draft. The benefiting team would have to sign that player to the maximum contract and sacrifice their own first round pick. They would also be limited to one hometown exemption every three years. That would coincide with the typical rookie contract and prevent players from manipulating the system to opt out of the draft. How excited would Indy be if Greg Oden came back home to play for the Pacers? Would the Wizards see their attendance numbers increase if Kevin Durant wanted to play in his hometown?

More importantly it would make teams think twice about tanking. The Boston Celtics probably wouldn't have seen much benefit in losing games down the stretch if there was a distinct possibility that Greg Oden and Kevin Durant might sign with their home town teams three days before the draft.

Baseball's records trumped by scandals

Barry Bonds has passed Babe Ruth and set his sites on Hammering Hank. He might not make it this year but, barring legal issues, Bonds will pass that record. If he has to limp out to the plate for five more seasons, Bonds will keep playing until he hits 756. It's a given. Fans don't seem particularly fascinated with this inevitability.

It's fitting because Aaron's record has long been overshadowed by Ruth's even though Ruth hit 41 fewer home runs. The fans who hold Ruth in higher esteem insist that the slight is not a racial issue but rather a testament to the fact that Ruth set the record in fewer at bats. Some fans will even go so far as to argue that the talent in baseball has become increasingly diluted since the days Ruth played and that Aaron's accomplishments would have been impossible if he had played in Ruth's era.

They're correct because Aaron would have been forbidden to play. That fact alone invalidates everything Ruth did. Though it was not his fault, Ruth never faced black pitchers nor was his assault on the record books challenged by black sluggers. When you look at the influence black players have had in baseball, how can one reasonable argue that what happened before Jackie Robinson actually matters? It seems that the talent pool got deeper once black players entered the league.

Think of the best players in the game today. Think about the best players in the game over the last 50 years. Where would baseball be without black and Hispanic players? Granted Hispanic players weren't specifically excluded from baseball but teams limited the number of Latino or Chicano players they carried. Now we have Japanese and Korean players entering the league and doing quite well. Baseball is pulling the best players from all around the world, but back in the 1920's it didn't even feature the best players in the country. Some remarkable white athletes even eschewed professional sports for real jobs because professional athletics was not an admirable profession. Now the minimum annual salary is deep into six figures and multimillion dollar contracts are the norm. Back in the 1920's it was foolish to pursue a career in sports, now it is foolish not to.

Ruth changed the game by bucking tradition and going for the long ball. Before he played the game was still rooted in the conservative style of play that was introduced back in the 1860's. Players were trained to hit the ball low and advance along the bases as subsequent hitters followed suit. The game was methodical. Ruth came along and hit the ball in the air. As other players took his cue the records he set became more attainable. With Hack Wilson and Jimmie Foxx coming quite close to hitting 60 home runs in the 30's. Ruth was an impressive hitter but the disparity between Ruth and the rest of the league had more to do with the nature of the game than it did talent.

Aaron was a better all around player than Ruth. He was an effective base runner and a solid fielder. His record breaking performance suffers criticism because he played more games than Ruth and finished his career as a designated hitter but he broke Ruth's record with a National League team and did so amidst death threats, hate mail and facing the pressure of being a role model for an entire race.

Still, it's unfair to compare the two. Aaron broke Ruth's record almost 40 years after Ruth played his last game. Aaron was born one year before Ruth finished his career after playing just 28 games in the 1935 season and 13 years before Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in major league baseball. They played in different eras and might as well have played on different planets.

Now we have Barry Bonds ready to inch past Aaron in the record books and again it's a different ball game. We are more than 30 years removed from Aaron's final at bat and the game has changed tremendously. Now baseball players are encouraged to lift weights. The muscles everybody once thought would slow down swings and limit flexibility are now an asset and that revelation has made the use of steroids beneficial to many players.

Bonds has resisted the designated hitter as a means to prolong his career but he has found other things. Human Growth Hormone stimulates tissue growth and increases lean muscle mass. Barry Bonds looks like a bloated cartoon image of a brawny baseball player. He claims he's legal but his name has been implicated in several scandals involving the sales, distribution and application of illegal performance enhancing substances. Back in the 1970's Aaron might have been popping pills to find a little extra energy but Bonds has gone beyond the use of uppers and found a veritable fountain of youth. You can make the argument that his career and productivity have been artificially lengthened by modern medical science. Those are advantages Aaron and Ruth didn't have.

There is the argument that Bonds doesn't have an advantage over his fellow players. Roger Clemens is well past the age a pitcher should be hurling 95 mph fastballs but he's still pushing smoke past hitters half his age. He's remarkably fit and seems even more formidable at an age where his predecessors learned more breaking pitches and took a seat in the bullpen. It wouldn't be a surprise to anybody if Clemens tested positive for steroids. Randy Johnson still throws remarkably hard and Curt Schilling is still eating up innings as a starting pitcher in spite of sustaining some pretty serious injuries late in his career.

Other hitters have been implicated in steroid scandals. Gary Matthews Jr. emerged as a great player in 2006 after floundering in mediocrity for six years at the major league level. Then in 2007 his name surfaced in a steroid scandal. Matthews insists that he's clean but it's quite a coincidence that after 11 years in professional baseball Matthews had his best season when he was connected with steroid investigation. Maybe there isn't enough evidence to support criminal charges but it certainly looks suspicious.

Does that mean that the game was pure back in the old days? Not really. The steroid scandals are the result of the modern player's commitment to performance excellence. Old school heroes like Babe Ruth were selfish booze hounds who could have been better athletes. Mickey Mantle's career was shortened by his substance abuse problems. You simply didn't see people put in the effort that today's players put in. The science of exercise physiology has taught us that everybody can become bigger, stronger and faster which will ultimately make them better. Unfortunately steroids can make those gains easier to attain and even increase the athletes potential to realize those gains.

That argument often makes people wonder what Ruth and Mantle would have been capable of if they would have had access to today's exercise technology and the steroids that go with it. It's easy: They would have been superheroes. Ruth might have stolen 60 bases to go with his 60 home runs and probably would have crested 70 home runs at least once in his career. But that's assuming he would have been the only guy putting in that kind of effort. If the pitchers in his day would have had access to the training and conditioning techniques today's pitchers enjoy, Ruth might have struggled to make contact. Of course, we can only wonder how Ruth would have fared if black players had been allowed to play against him.

And so you have it. Bonds' accomplishments won't resonate as much as Aaron's because Bonds is on steroids. Aaron's record doesn't matter as much as Ruth's because Aaron played more games. Ruth's feat should be second guessed because he didn't have to face black players.

What does this teach us? Baseball places too much emphasis on numbers. We're led to believe that the game might change but that the numbers will never lie. That's simply not true. Babe Ruth was a great player in his day but his numbers don't prove that he is better or worse than Barry Bonds. They both have their demons and we can make a valid case for either of them to be stricken from the record books but what would that accomplish? Then we'd just have a new set of numbers to question. Baseball's records simply don't matter. They don't tell the whole story. So we should look beyond the numbers and think about the context in which they were attained. In my book, that makes Aaron's record more compelling. He faced the best players in the game but did so before those players were inclinded to take steroids.