The Sports Curmudgeon

Dr. Myles Brand took his job at the NCAA with great fanfare. Athletics and athletic departments were out of control. They had strayed from the true mission of the universities they represented. And Dr. Brand would set them straight. After all, he was a former university president and he was the guy who fired Bob Knight. There was gonna be a new sheriff in town – or so he led everyone to believe.

I don’t recall if it was in his introductory remarks or if he waited a day or so to pronounce that he and his former cronies, the university presidents, would put athletic programs around the country in their proper place and their proper perspective. But we haven’t heard much from him along those lines in the last year or so. If you think Dr. Brand and his cronies are “keeping their powder dry” and working quietly to effect monumental change, let me suggest that you might be dumb enough to think the Kentucky Derby is a hat.

Dr. Brand probably would not want to review the bidding on the record of his university presidents in the past year or so. Since he won’t, I will briefly give you a landscape setting before citing the three latest gaffes by these pillars of virtue in the academic world.

In the great Fresno State debacle that ousted Jerry Tarkanian, it was the university president who approved the hiring of this man whose history of NCAA violations and whose devotion to circumventing the academic standards of a university were well known. If the president there thought that Tark had changed his ways, then the president must have had his brain amputated.

Down in Georgia, it was even worse. President Adams not only approved the hiring of Jim Harrick Sr.; he inserted Harrick Sr. into the interview process well after the search committee had begun its deliberations based on the fact that he and Harrick had worked together in the past. It was also President Adams who waived the university’s nepotism rules to allow the hiring of Jim Harrick Jr. and to allow Harrick Jr. to offer for academic credit that abomination of a course about basketball coaching. With this track record, President Adams is in the running to be named “The Fourth Stooge”.

Northward to NY we travel in our memories to recall the St. Bonaventure forfeiture of the remaining games in its season last year because the team quit after one of its players was ruled ineligible and the team would have to forfeit games already played. It was the university president himself – not the coach or the athletic director - who certified this scholar-athlete as eligible for admission to the university even though the student did not receive his diploma from whatever JC he had been attending. Instead, he had a welder’s certificate and the university president accepted that credential for admission to the university. If this guy ever got an idea in his head, that would be tantamount to sentencing that idea to life in solitary confinement.

Recall that a Missouri basketball player wound up in jail for violating his probation when he stayed out beyond his curfew while at the home of the president of the University of Missouri for a barbecue. With that kind of support, this player needs no enemies.

Recently, the president of the University of Colorado found herself in the middle of allegations of sex parties for recruits and seven charges of rape involving football players or recruits. It wasn’t until Coach Gary Barnett said that one of the alleged victims was a girl and couldn’t kick the ball through the uprights that the president thought it might be wise to suspend Barnett pending an investigation. Obviously, no one in Colorado believed that she would conduct a thorough investigation; so the governor appointed the State Attorney General as a special prosecutor in this matter. Not an investigator, a special prosecutor. Fortunately she has been silent and unseen for the recent past meaning that she might dodge the title of “Weapon of Mass Stupidity”.

The Knight Commission recommends ways to improve collegiate sports. One of the things that it is considering at the moment is a recommendation to go back to the days of freshman ineligibility for varsity sports. The idea is that student-athletes should have a year in college to acclimate themselves and get themselves on a sound footing in their academic pursuits. Guess who opposes that idea. The university presidents oppose it because it would cost them money to fund freshman teams.

Memo to Dr. Brand: There is absolutely no way that a year in school without the pressures and time commitments to athletics can be harmful to your student-athletes’ pursuit of knowledge which is the fundamental purpose of your universities. So why don’t you get your buds to get on the track here and stand up for scholarship? What’s a few hundred million dollars, after all?

The latest entrant into the university presidents’ Hall of Shame has to be Dr. Robert Gates of Texas A&M. I can’t use a “stupid metaphor” on him because, in a former life, Dr. Gates was the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Just as Mark Twain once proclaimed after he had been released from an ”asylum” that he was the only sane man in the room because he had a certificate that said so, I suspect that Dr. Gates might simply say that he ran an organization that has “Intelligence” as its middle name and so he can’t be stupid. Nonetheless, Dr. Gates wants Texas A&M athletics to be better than they are and one of the ways he proposes to do that is to create “new majors” that might be more attractive to athletes – particularly junior college athletes who might be thinking of coming to A&M. Now there is a great idea to foster academics as the mainstream goal of a university. Maybe Dr. Gates could bring much of this full circle and hire Jim Harrick Jr. to be the department head for the agglomeration of these “new majors”. It could be the Department of Psuedo-Academics.

Let me give you an idea of how out of touch with reality and his university president colleagues Dr. Brand is. If he were going to put on a tribute to the recently retired Lucciano Pavarotti, he might hire Eminem to perform some of Pavarotti’s greatest arias. Like that would work.

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports…

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This missive is intended for fans of NCAA basketball. If you are a sports fan in general and kinda like college hoops, this is for you too. If you just hate basketball because of the noise of squeaking shoes on hardwood courts, you can stop reading now because none of this will interest you – not even a little bit.

You’ve probably heard about people who make “life lists” comprised of things they want to be sure to do in their lifetime. Often, these lists contain adventurous items such as “climb Mt. Everest” or “be the first paleontologist on Mars”. [That second one actually was once a goal for #1 son.] Sometimes there are noble entries on a life list list such as “curing hunger in the Third World”. I’m sure that some of these life lists contain fantasy items such as “break Wilt Chamberlain’s putative record for sexual partners”. I have one for all NCAA basketball fans to add to their “life lists” – if you don’t have such a life list at the moment, start one – that falls into the purely hedonistic realm:

Go to Las Vegas; park your carcass in one of the top tier sports books, and watch the first two rounds of the NCAA Basketball Tournament. That’s a four-day commitment to enjoyment.

Trust me on this; if you love NCAA basketball, this is something you have to do at least once while you take up space on this planet.

Picture this. You are in a room with enough big screen TVs to make you think you are in Circuit City. There are at least several hundred people there with you. Everyone there is a basketball fan and everyone there has not only a “fan interest” in the games but also a “financial interest” in some of the games. Every game is telecast in its entirety.

On each of the first two days of the tournament, there are sixteen games you can watch in an environment where every action in a game draws a reaction in the room. Several years ago, I had ceased to pay attention to one game because the outcome was no longer in doubt and I had no wager riding on the game. I don’t even remember what game it was now. All of a sudden, the noise level in the room went berserk; there were people cheering and people booing; there were cheers of joy and woe all at the same time. It involved the game I had chosen to ignore.

What happened? One team was leading by 12 with 4 seconds to play; the team that was behind substituted all of its players so that the bench scrubeenies could all say that they had played in an NCAA tournament game; the ball went inbounds and one of these scrubeenies launched a 30 foot shot that went swish; they lost the game by 9 points. That was the loudest cheer of the day to that point because the betting line for the game was 9.5 points. People who had the favorite just lost what looked to be a sure winner and people with the underdog just got the Las Vegas version of “found money”. I had to ask someone what had happened and then watch the replay to get the flavor of what happened. The atmosphere in the room is electric and you have to pay attention all the time.

The next two days will seem tame because there will only be 8 games per day. After trying to track 16 games on Thursday and Friday, Saturday will seem like a walk in the park - - at first. But I promise that the adrenaline will kick in on Saturday and Sunday as it did on the opening days.

There is also a lot of opportunity to make some easy money there. No, beating the books is not easy on that weekend; they are in no danger of going bankrupt because of my profits. The easy money comes from other visitors who come to Vegas to party and carouse and watch their favorite school in the tournament. It is the basketball equivalent of a trip to a “bowl game”. Lots of these folks are willing to make wagers with you on the side that are guided by their hearts and their glands and not their brains. I was sitting near a guy from a school that was a 12-seed in the tournament and he was just positive they would clobber the 5-seed in the first round. Vegas had it wrong; they were giving the 12-seed 8 points but Harry Huckleberry was convinced the 12-seed would win the game outright. I asked him if he had played the money line on the game but he said there was no money line on that game but he would be willing to bet me $20 at even money that “12-seed Tech” would beat “5-seed A&M” straight up. I really wished his name had been Paine Webber because I really wanted to say, “Thank you, Paine Webber.” when he made the bet and then paid up after his team lost by 15 points.

I will be venturing to Las Vegas next week – with the usual suspects of course – to check out the first four days of the tournament once again. After forty-eight games in four days in that kind of environment and I will come home in a state of sensory overload. [Did I mention that you can bet horse races at the same time and in the same venues? And of course the NBA and NHL are still playing at that time of year too…] If I did something like that once a month, I’d be carried out of there one of those days by the men with the canvass sports jackets. You know the ones I mean. They have really long sleeves and the sleeves tie in the back.

But everyone who is a basketball fan needs to do it once – and if you are really a junkie, you need to do it once in a while.

Don’t get me wrong, I love sports…

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This is a really goofy idea. Please notice I did not start out here with something cutesy and say that it was it was an idea out of left field or off-the-wall. Assuming that you have read some of the stuff I have put forth previously, that might make you sit back and catch your breath. I know that I have a lot of ideas that are on the edge of any issue, so I feel fully qualified to warn you that this one is potentially outrageous.

There are several attorneys who are regular readers of these rants and I expect to hear from at least some of them about this idea. If they can convince me that I am completely off target, I’ll summarize their obviously more cogent points at a later time.

Here’s the problem. Baseball’s credibility/integrity is being questioned by lots of folks in the media and by at least a few fans. The issue that seems to have kicked this snowball over the cliff is the BALCO case and the revelations that some of the top names in the game – who also happen to have some recent ties to the Oakland/SF area where BALCO labs are – have had some contact/dealings with BALCO. For the record, I don’t know if any of these players have taken illegal steroids or legal steroids or designer steroids or any performance enhancing substances other than Viagra. But the cloud is gathering because of the associations here and because of the failure of drug testing by 5-7% of the players last year when they knew the testing was coming and because of the accusations of some players regarding other players and because of the intransigence of the union.

So, we need to break the logjam and most writers say that there is nothing to be done because Don Fehr and Gene Orza are the people running baseball and they are accountable to no one. They even brushed aside a call from the President to come to the White House for a “drug summit” on the basis that their drug testing policies are a matter of collective bargaining and not under the purview of the Federal Government. If instead they had just said that it was a political daylong photo op and they preferred not to cooperate, I’d have given them a lot more points.

Under that same Collective Bargaining Agreement, which they claim isolates them from meddlesome government folks, is another potentially interesting provision. It recognizes the authorities of the Commissioner of Baseball to take acts that are in the best interest of baseball. This has a long tradition back to Kennesaw Mountain Landis and even held sway during the rise of the union’s power when Bowie Kuhn voided Charlie Finley’s fire sale of players from Oakland. And so here is the goofy idea.

Commissioner Bud Selig needs to put on a decent suit and a tie that looks as if he bought it somewhere other than at a Salvation Army Thrift Store and get a haircut from someone with vision that has been measured to be better than 20/200 and hold a press conference. At that conference, here is his script:

Ladies and gentlemen, the last time the reputation of baseball was in such a dangerous position was after the World Series of 1919. I believe that something needs to be done to change the vector of the negative publicity and innuendo that surrounds the game. Others do not believe that is as important as I do but there is one difference between us; I am the Commissioner and they are not. [Nice touch would be to have Chevy Chase on stage with him for this line.]

I have the responsibility and the authority to act in the best interest of baseball and I am announcing now that I am going to do that. I want to take those activities that are outside the rules of baseball which are done with the idea of gaining an unfair advantage and remove them from the game.

And so I am announcing that I will ban from baseball people who have violated rules of the game designed to gain them an unfair advantage. These bans will take effect at 12:01 AM tomorrow morning.

Banned from baseball means no contact with teams and admission to baseball parks and games is only effected by the purchase of a ticket just like every other fan. If anyone needs specific guidance on this mater, I’ll provide you with Pete Rose’s cell phone number after this press conference. These bans are not lifetime bans; they are to last only until I have finished an investigation that will assure me that all the salient facts are in one place and then they will be revealed to the public.

The first player to be banned is Sammy Sosa for using a corked bat in a baseball game. That he did so is undeniable. That we have all the salient facts regarding the use of corked bats by Mr. Sosa and other players is not clear to me. Until it is clear to me, Mr. Sosa is banned from baseball.

The next set of bans from baseball will be each and every player who tested positive for steroids last year. Certainly all the facts are not known in that arena. I am ready to roll up my sleeves and get to work to assemble all the facts but I will need some assistance here.

The next set of bans from baseball will be each and every player who tested positive for any illegal substance last year and the ban will last until the proper legal authorities decide whether or not to prosecute the individual. At that point, I will assume that the proper people know all the salient facts.

Any pitcher caught doctoring a baseball illegally this year will be banned and any umpire who does not enforce the rules stringently and who does not retain evidence of any doctored baseballs will similarly be banned. Those bans will not be lifted quickly or easily, let me assure you.

The final bans from baseball will be lifetime bans and will go for each and every player who tests positive for any banned substance this year. That is to assure the fans that someone takes this seriously and to raise the average IQ of the players in the game by about 30 points. Anyone getting caught this year has to be dumber than a bag of hair.

I am willing to move quickly to resolve these bans but I need some cooperation from the union. I don’t want capitulation; I want cooperation. Something has to be done and the union has stonewalled everything else so this is my action as of today.

All of the players to be banned as of tomorrow morning and their agents and the union officials will be informed via fax from my office within the next two hours. Thank you for your time and attention.

Obviously, the union will scream bloody murder and the civil libertarians will scream about innocent until proven guilty and double jeopardy in the case of Sammy Sosa and I’m sure that Congress will want to hold hearings faster than a donut would disappear from a plate in front of Sally Struthers. But think for just a moment.

Shoeless Joe Jackson was exonerated in a court of law back in the 1920s of any criminal behavior associated with the Black Sox scandal; he still remains “banned from baseball”. There is at least 80 years of precedence that “legal innocence” is not equivalent to being “eligible for baseball”. If going to court for such a ruling were so simple, why would not Joe Jackson’s family and heirs go to court and get it done?

I know that hypocrisy is not something that would embarrass Fehr or Orza very much, but it would be fun to poke sticks at them in their cages as they ask for relief from a part of the government that they just said had no place in this discussion because it was part of their sacred Collective Bargaining Agreement.

Guess how quickly someone like Barry Bonds is going to start to look for ways to get that ban lifted. He is chasing history. The clock is ticking. No matter if he did use steroids or did not use steroids, he has to find a way to get back into the game quickly because he can’t do a multi-year court fight/banishment and still have a way to beat Hank Aaron’s record. And if it means that he has to put some pressure on Fehr and Orza to cooperate and not capitulate, then he just might have some conversations with them that have a different tone to them than ones he may have had in the past.

Will this work? I don’t know. But it is different from the standard ideas offered up as to how to make something happen here. Maybe it will spark some new discussion and debate?

But to get out of this topic on a lighter note, let me give you a line from comedy writer Jerry Perisho who was talking about José Canseco’s failed tryout with the Dodgers:

“Canseco was evaluated by former Dodgers’ manager, Tommy LaSorda. It was great seeing the two of them together. There was evidence that steroids can make you big and there was evidence that linguini can too.”

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports…

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