The Sports Curmudgeon

Folks:

My long-suffering wife and I will be traveling a bit for the next month and our house is being refurbished and prepped to be put on the market sometime in the next 6-7 weeks. So, even when we are at home, things will hardly be “normal”. My access to the Internet will be sporadic and brief over the next several weeks.

My best guess is that I’ll be back writing in my regular pattern sometime around 10 May.

Please mark your calendars and come back to visit about then.

Until then, be well. Stay well.

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Don Imus found himself in the middle of the sports news late last week. On his radio program, Imus made some incredibly stupid and insensitive remarks about the women on the Rutgers basketball team that I won’t repeat here. Subsequent to the remarks, he apologized for them and characterized them as “stupid” among other things. At least he actually apologized for what he said/did; he did not issue the weasel-worded apology that is all too familiar today along the lines of he is sorry if anyone took offense at his stupid and utterly offensive remarks.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I have been a long time fan of Imus In the Morning. For a period of more than 5 years, I listened to the program for about two hours every morning; in recent years, I listen to about a segment or two every couple of weeks. The humor that I found attractive on that program in the past has diminished significantly and so I changed my listening patterns. Despite my “fandom”, I must say that his comments about the women on the Rutgers basketball team are indefensible; they were not said in any humorous/satirical context; they were not taken out of context; they were just plain outrageous.

More than a few commentators are calling for his head over this matter; some – like Michael Wilbon whom I respect a great deal – say that they do not think his apology is sincere and that he’ll do something like this again in the future. I don’t read minds so I have no idea if his apology is sincere or not; I assert that Michael Wilbon and others who have taken positions that are similar to his have no idea either. Nevertheless, what Don Imus said was off base and hurtful. I don’t know if there is anything in his remarks that might be actionable by the FCC in terms of fines for the companies that put him on the air; if there is such an avenue for action, the FCC should get moving down that path. But the cause of constructive dialog regarding this hateful situation does not move forward on the basis of assertions that can only be correct if those making the assertions have mind reading capabilities.

The interesting irony of this is that Don Imus has said that his goal in interviewing people is to get them to say something that will ruin their lives. I don’t know that this will ruin his life, but it just might…

The MLS season is underway. Depending on whom you listen to or what datum you happen to focus on at any given moment, this is either the dawning of a new era for MLS or it may be the season that sounds the death knell for the league. There are more than a few reports floating around that the NY Red Bulls – even with the sale of their naming rights – lost between $13M and $16M last year. On the other hand, more than half of the teams in MLS will be playing in new “soccer-only stadiums” this year; in addition, three more teams in the league are scheduled to move into their own new stadiums in the next two years. Philip Anschutz – through his corporate entity AEG – used to own/operate six of the franchises in the league; now, they only run three of them and there are independent owners with significant financial resources throughout the league. David Beckham will arrive this year; that’s the good news; But his contract cannot help but drive up the cost of doing business for every franchise in the league; that’s the bad news.

So what is the status and stability of MLS? I’m not sure there is sufficient clarity around all the numbers to make a call here. But the MLS Players Union is already making noises that could indicate that they will be very adversarial the next time collective bargaining negotiations happen. The Union sees the contractual structure of the league as an evil thing; all players’ contracts are with the league and all revenues come into the league such that any financial pain or pleasure is shared amongst the team owners. That structure makes it difficult for the Union to get access to sufficient data to decide if the individual teams and/or the league is making money hand-over-fist or is teetering on the brink of economic disaster. And if the Union decides the league is fat when it is really in financial danger and acts stridently on that erroneous belief, it could spell disaster for the league when negotiations open in 2010. The Union leadership has already said:

“The league … has gotten used to exercising complete control over everything. That’s a big problem for players and something that is going to have to change in the next deal.”

Why am I having flashbacks to the statements made by the NHL Players Association in the two years prior to their work stoppage that canceled a season? Soccer is similar to hockey in one significant way; there is not a broad national fan base for either sport; if there is a “strike/lockout/work stoppage”, the nation will emit a collective yawn and move on to the next item in the news.

Based on a story at ESPN.com, Samson Sor Siriporn enhanced her chances to get a parole from a Thai prison because she won the WBC light flyweight championship from a Japanese woman. Siriporn is in jail in Thailand – at a prison known as the “Bangkok Hilton” – as a convicted drug dealer but the report said that her victory and her status as a world champion “kick-started parole proceedings for her early release.” Here is another sentence from the ESPN.com report that caused me to shake my head and read it twice to be sure I got it right:

“Siriporn’s sparring partners also watched the fight, while transvestites in high heels and skimpy outfits were allowed out of their cells to parade around the ring with placards at the beginning of each round.”

I must confess that I’ve never had the privilege of serving on a parole board anywhere. But can anyone tell me why the fact that Siriporn won this fight “kick-starts her parole proceedings?” Why is she now more worthy of release and the freedom to move about in society than she was the day before her victory in a boxing match?

And what about the transvestites who served as “ring girls”? Shouldn’t they get some kind of reward for their participation in this winning event too? Uh, I guess not.

Speaking about things I do not understand, let me mention Stevie Francis of the NY Knicks. If you recall, the Vancouver Grizzlies took Francis originally but he refused to play in Vancouver and manipulated a trade for himself to Houston. He didn’t exactly lead the Rockets to glory and they traded Francis to the Orlando Magic who subsequently tired of his presence and found a way to unload him - and his outrageous contract - on the New York Knickerbockers. Along the way, he acquired the nickname, “Stevie Franchise.” But given his accomplishments and his teams’ accomplishments throughout his college and professional career, shouldn’t he start to be known as Stevie Franchise-Killer? Just how much more harm would he need to inflict in order to earn that sobriquet?

Finally, David Letterman had this to say on his nightly program recently:

“You know what happened yesterday? Elton John [turned] 60 years old. He celebrated by having his 60th concert at Madison Square Garden. And then he beat the Knicks 102-94.”

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

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People who like sports and think that they are important ingredients in the social fabric ascribe to sports certain benefits that society derives from the existence of sports. Two of the more common of these societal benefits are that sports and the competition aspects of the various games teaches the participants to play within a certain set of rules and to strive to succeed. And the minute you begin to think about the importance of teaching good sportsmanship at the same time, you’ll start to hear folks singing Cumbayah in your head for the next several days. We teach sports to young folks because the logic is that they will grow up having learned to follow rules, to work hard, and to play fair; on the surface, that sounds great. But when I look at what is going on in sports at the moment, I’m not sure that we are teaching such noble concepts.

The problem is that the headlines in sports sections all over the world on at least half of the days call out very different messages to me - - and therefore to all the kids who are paying attention to sports mainly because adults have them participating in order for the kids to learn valuable life lessons. Where to start…

In NASCAR, the concept of cheating is so ingrained that people will say with a completely straight face that if you ain’t cheatin’, you ain’t competin’. That’s not the noble message of sports; that’s not the essence of what it is supposedly all about.

The use of steroids or “performance enhancing substances” is a recurring theme related to baseball, track and field and cycling at the very least. Most parents – even most of the ones who would never get a mention in the “Parent of the Year Nominations” – don’t look upon youth sports as a way to convince their kids that illegal drug usage is a path to success. But that’s the message that screams out at kids who follow what’s going on in more than a couple of sports.

Every once in a while hockey referees will measure stick curvatures and the size of goalie pads; and when they do, they often find equipment that is illegal. Unless these officials always manage to catch the malefactors on the very night that they decided to trot out the “illegal gear”, that means this stuff has been used in hockey games for a while totally undetected. If you don’t call that cheating, what do you call it? Oh, maybe it’s just like Sammy Sosa’s corked bat; it was only used for warming up and never had been used in a real game situation before that time that it shattered. Sure it hadn’t …

Boxers have used “loaded gloves” ever since the Marquis of Queensbury decided it was more humane to put gloves on boxers in the first place. There is more than a little evidence that Jack Dempsey had loaded gloves on the day he almost killed Jess Willard and took the heavyweight title. Today we have a famous boxer who has bitten off part of the ear of a rival. And the constructive societal lesson here might be what?

Even golfers – those most noble of sportsmen who supposedly will turn themselves in for a rules violation because that is the culture of the game and the honorable thing to do – use club heads and balls that are “juiced” beyond the prescribed limits of the game. And if they don’t get caught for a while…

Players get caught taking bribes to fix games or manipulate the spread. Why shouldn’t they? After all, judges at the Olympics pre-determined the outcome of a skating competition rendering all the performances moot. Maybe all of this is just a big carnival scam.

So what exactly are we demonstrating to children in sports by these kinds of actions? In a sense, sports are teaching them that cheating is perfectly OK as long as you don’t get caught. And if you happen to get caught, the best thing to do is to feign total ignorance and to make up a plausible – if not totally credible – excuse as to how all of this happened. And whatever you do, stick to the story until the whole thing blows over. But, by the way, if it’s OK to cheat in a game in order to gain an advantage to win, just how is a child supposed to understand that it might not be equally acceptable to cheat and lie in other areas of his life in order to succeed or to get what he/she wants?

If you can cheat and get away with it even when you’re caught simply by making up some story, doesn’t that indicate to the young athlete that rules don’t apply to him? And if rules don’t apply, then how big a leap of logic is it for him to decide that laws don’t apply to him either nor do commonly accepted social norms of behavior apply to him? There’s a whole lot of “domestic violence” perpetrated by athletes these days; that violates the law and the basic American concept of acceptable social behavior. But why should the young athlete worry about any of that; all he needs to do is make up a story and stick to it until it all blows over…

When Little League exposes a kid to a coach who reinforces the longstanding baseball tradition of throwing at an opposing player in retaliation for something that opposing player did previously, how does that coach augment the collaborative problem solving skills of the kids on his team? Don’t tell me it never happens; it even happens when a coach tells one of his players to throw at the head of another of his players because the “target player” is autistic and isn’t a very good player. If that kid were injured, he wouldn’t be required to play his minimum number of innings and the squad would “add by subtracting”. Wonderful!

Oh, since I just mentioned Little League, let me pause for a moment and acknowledge the technological advances that Little League has made in the area of falsified birth certificates. There’s no violation of “sportsmanship” involved in any of that…

When we have brawls at youth sporting events involving parents, coaches and/or umpires and the police have to intervene, what is the important lesson that we teach to the kids? That they too can learn to recite the Miranda Warning?

We like to tell kids “winners never cheat and cheaters never win.” Yeah, right; tell that to a kid who’s a NASCAR follower; tell that to Roger Maris’ grandchildren; tell it to every fan of every team that ever lost a baseball game to Gaylord Perry…

If these kids watch ESPN, they can witness – over and over again – hockey players using their sticks as potentially lethal weapons on the heads of opponents. Or if they go to ESPN Classic, they can watch what happens when some NBA players decide to take out their frustrations on a bunch of fans in Detroit. Or they can see the effects of the latest soccer riots in Italy that led to police refusing to provide security at most Italian soccer venues or they can read about the coach of the Pakistani Cricket team who was found dead under suspicious circumstances after Pakistan was upset in the Cricket World Cup. Recently, in Greece the government shut down all sporting events – all of them everywhere in the country – after rioting killed a fan and injured a score of others at a volleyball match. These happenings are emblematic of the lessons we seek to teach children?

In high school geometry class, you learned that certain statements were postulates; they were taken as absolute truth and need not be proven. Regarding sports, it has long been a postulate that they teach sportsmanship and camaraderie and working together. It worked for me when I was growing up. Was that because I grew up in a kinder and gentler time? Possibly. Did it work for me because I was a naïf and didn’t realize that the seamy side of sports was there all the time? Possibly. Or did it work for me because the adults in my life who provided the parenting and coaching lessons – and the ones who provided role model behaviors as premiere athletes – didn’t behave so badly that their anti-social tendencies were constantly in my face? Possibly – and more likely too.

Thirty years ago, feminists began a tradition of a women-only vigil to “take back the night” as a way to call attention to crimes of violence against women. I don’t know if those vigils still happen; perhaps they have become sufficiently commonplace by now that they are less “newsworthy” today. But maybe we need to take a page from the book of the feminists of that era; maybe we need to “take back the sports”.

What we need to do is to punish severely those professional athletes who get caught cheating or who get caught engaged in some kind of horrid anti-social behavior. What we need to do is to expunge from the rolls of “coaches” and “advisors” in youth sports those chronological adults who foster anti-social behaviors by instruction or by example.

Since NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell seems to be on a path to impose league sanctions on players outside the legal system, perhaps we need to codify and establish such a system for all of sports. In order to do that, we need to establish that legal penalties exist for situations when legal thresholds of proof and evidence are presented; and that simultaneously, there are also societal penalties, which may be enforced at a lower level of evidence. There are more than a few examples in Western Civilization where societies ostracize/shun certain members of a social group for things other than violations of the “law of the land”. Ostracizing some of these ne’er-do-wells from sports would be a good first step to “take back the sports.”

Here’s a cautionary note. We will have to keep the bleeding hearts from taking the position that participating in sports or being a coach in a youth sports league is an inalienable right. Yes, it does constitute part of the pursuit of happiness for some people. But we need to reestablish the concept that an individual’s pursuit of happiness may not involve destroying the joy of others. And when it does, that person’s pursuit has to be curtailed and restrained instead of encouraged.

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

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Back in the days when Hootie Johnson and Martha Burke were “at odds” over The Masters and the lack of women members at Augusta National, I suggested to a friend that Martha Burke should expend here energies more wisely and seek to set up a major women’s tournament opposite The Masters. It would likely die an agonizing death, but at least it would be a positive action in lieu of the moaning and complaining that Martha Burke’s protest contained to the exclusion of almost everything else. My friend said in a completely matter of fact tone that if Martha Burke did that, he would dare her to name that new tournament “The Mistresses”. It was at that moment that I understood why my idea was another one of my bad ideas.

Every once in a while, I get a note from someone who asks why I don’t particularly like golf and why I don’t see the beauty of the game and the tension felt by the players. I always respond to such commentary by saying that I am a terrible golfer; I only came within sniffing distance of breaking 100 one time in my life; and so, I recognize that there is a skill level attached to golf that takes a lot of work to master. However, there is no defense in the game. Every error that you see on a golf course is “an unforced error” in tennis parlance. No professional golfer makes a mistake on a shot because his opponent beat whatever block his caddie threw on the edge such that the opponent “came free” and threatened to block the golf shot. I’m sure that the psychologists who read these rants will contact me to say that my feelings here represent an atavistic tendency on my part; I admit that I long for a primitive and simple competition where defense is a primary part of any real sporting event. So be it. What one sees on any golf telecast of every tournament in the world is a total lack of “forced errors” and an addiction to a rationalization for all the botched golf shots that became “unforced errors”.

In case you haven’t kept up on news in the world of soccer, Diego Maradona is in the hospital; the latest report was that his condition was “improving”. I put that in quotes because his immediate problem is “acute hepatitis” which is far less than a trivial problem. Once again, Greg Cote of the Miami Herald summarized the whole situation in a brief comment to fill you in on the whole back-story here:

“Argentine soccer legend Diego Maradona, grossly overweight again, is being treated for alcoholism, excessive eating and excessive smoking. Otherwise, he’s said to be in good health.”

Bay Meadows is the premier horseracing facility in Northern California. When it concludes its fall meet this year, it will close. I wrote about this about a year ago because Bay Meadows was one example of the serious decline of horseracing as a sport in the US. The reason it will close now – and not several years from now – is governmental oversight. Actually, it’s shortsightedness masquerading as oversight, but that’s hardly news. Let me explain.

The track was sold to the Bay Meadows Land Company in 2005 for the stated purpose of closing the track sometime around 2010 – 2012 and to demolish all the structures there to develop the land. The tract is 83 acres and developers see more than 1000 residences and millions of square feet of commercial real estate fitting into the site. Meanwhile, the racetrack was going to continue to operate – and by the way employ a few folks – for the next three to five years. Meanwhile, the California Horse Racing Board passed a rule saying that all tracks in the state had to install synthetic surface tracks by 2007. That’s probably a good rule for every track that would plan to continue to operate for more than a couple of years after 2007, but it makes no sense for Bay Meadows, which is going to close. Oh, Bay Meadows opened for business in the mid-1930s, so they didn’t really have an option to put in a synthetic surface in the first place; they race on a natural surface called “dirt”.

Naturally, the track asked for a waiver of the rule for two years. There weren’t any shenanigans here; the track operators told the Racing Board that it was too expensive for them to put in a synthetic surface and probably only use it for the 2008 and 2009 racing seasons. The Racing Board denied the waiver. So Bay Meadows will not have any racing past this year; they won’t even ask for racing dates to keep open the possibility.

The ominous part of this for the racing industry is not the shortsightedness of the overseers; the folks in the racing industry have dealt with that for decades. The ominous part is the huge value that exists in the development of the land on which a racetrack sits. When the Bay Meadows Land Company reaps a huge profit from this deal, other developers and politicians elsewhere will begin to look at racetrack facilities as things that could generate a tsunami of cash - - if only those pesky racing folks weren’t standing in the way. And did I mention that the Bay Meadows Land Company already owns Hollywood Park, which sits on a piece of real estate proximal to Los Angeles International Airport? This is not good news for the horseracing racing industry.

Ray Ratto writes for the San Francisco Chronicle and for cbs.sportsline.com. Like me, he is tired of players and coaches using their families as PR props to justify a decision by a coach to take a new job somewhere – or in the case of Dana Altman to take a job at Arkansas and then change his mind to go back to Creighton 24 hours later. I don’t care where Dana Altman coaches next year; I don’t care if Dana Altman coaches anywhere next year; I don’t care why he thought moving from Omaha to Fayetteville was a good idea in the first place. Most of all, I don’t want to hear that he changed his mind because of his family. And Ray Ratto doesn’t want to hear any more of that nonsense either. His column today is definitely worth reading.

Finally, Steve Rosenbloom of the Chicago Tribune puts into perspective the White Sox thinking regarding Jermaine Dye:

“Ozzie Guillen on Jermaine Dye’s upcoming free agency: ‘If he has another year like that, he has a chance to make pretty good cake. I wish we could have him back, but whoever signs him is going to have a good ballplayer.’ So, let me get this right: If Dye is an MVP candidate, he’s gone, but if he’s awful, the Sox could afford him next year. Fun. Get that season-ticket money in.”

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

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Roger Goodell met with Chris Henry and Pacman Jones yesterday at NFL HQS in NYC. I have to admit that in one of the dark recesses of my being I was rooting for one or both of these guys to miss the meeting because they had been arrested on their way to the meeting. Too bad… I don’t think that any regular reader of these rants would put me in the category of a “softie” or a “bleeding heart” when it comes to anti-social behaviors by athletes. Nevertheless, I think Roger Goodell needs to be cautious when handing out severe punishments to players outside the legal processes of the courts. Yes, there need be sanctions for miscreant behaviors; and just as surely, there need be confidence in the commissioner’s knowledge of the facts when he levies the sanctions.

My word of caution for Commissioner Goodell comes from the travesty of the Duke Lacrosse Fiasco. I don’t think any parent would want to send their kid off to college to prepare for law school just so they can become “the next Michael Nifong”. The faculty Senate at Duke University condemned the entire lacrosse team early on in the feeding frenzy that happened in Durham; I haven’t yet heard any of those folks issue a similarly public and solemn apology. How about the actions and inactions of the Athletic Director and the Administration at Duke? Those folks better hope no one in the History Department at Duke sets out to a time-lime of all their actions/inactions as the matter unfolded. All I’m saying is that Roger Goodell needs to wield his newfound powers carefully and with a solid foundation of facts.

I offer this cautionary note because there is a report that Bucs’ running back Lionel Gates was arrested and charged with criminal mischief, burglary of an occupied dwelling and – hold on to your hat here – assault on a pregnant woman. Allegedly, Gates and the woman previously dated and there was some dispute about the parentage of the child she was carrying. Assault on a pregnant woman is pretty low on the scale of civilized behavior – as were the allegations in the Duke Lacrosse Fiasco. But before the commish hands down any significant penalties here, he needs to know that the bases of the charges have a bit more solidarity than bases of the charges originally filed in Durham had. After the commish does some “due diligence” here to understand what went down that evening, then he should drop the hammer on this miscreant if there is enough reason to believe he should be punished in the workplace even if not by the judiciary.

By the way, if I’ve read Gates’ stats correctly he has been with two teams in the NFL (Bills and Bucs) for two seasons and has yet to carry the ball or catch a pass or even appear in a game. Not being an attorney, I’m not sure about this but it would appear he now has two felony counts and a misdemeanor count going against him. For the record, it is not a good thing to have more felony charges against you than you have “games played in” on your stat sheet.

In another bit of off-the-field news relative to the NFL, Joe Buck will no longer host the FOX pregame show; he and Troy Aikman will be the lead announcing team for FOX broadcasts next year. According to reports, FOX gave Buck his choice of assignments and Buck chose the booth over the studio. That was the right choice for two reasons:

1. Buck and Aikman are a superb announcing team. They are both young and have an opportunity to be the best in the business for a LONG time.

2. FOX obviously wouldn’t give him a whip and chair to give him a fighting chance to control the menagerie that comprises the “studio show team”.

Curt Menafee will assume the studio host duties next year and all the shows will originate in LA. Come to think of it, that’s another positive outcome from Buck’s decision; they won’t have to drag the pregame show around the country week after week and suffer the nonsense of having goofball fans screaming and waving in the background.

Memo to TV Execs Everywhere: Having fans in varying states of inebriation waving, screaming and holding up signs in the background while you are trying to put “entertainment” on the air doesn’t work. It’s annoying at its very best.

I admit that I’m not a Wall Street Whiz or business maven; one quick look at my personal balance sheet will convince anyone of that fact. But there is something about the supposed sale of the Chicago Cubs that I do not understand. According to the way I read the reports, the guy who plans to buy The Tribune Company plans to sell the Cubs and hopes to get something north of $600M for the team. But, Wrigley Field is not part of the sale price so the new Cubs owner will have to pay lease costs for a place to play. And the Tribune Company stake in the local joint venture with Comcast for cable rights to Cubs’ games will be sold separately – and there is an existing deal for the Cable rights in place. And it’s not yet clear that he wants to sell WGN radio and TV stations that cover Cubs games “over the air” – and there are existing deals for the “over the air” broadcast rights in place. So, cans someone explain to me why is the team is worth anything near $600M without a place to play and control over their broadcast/telecast rights? I must be missing something here…

I mentioned yesterday that the Washington Nationals have the opportunity to be epically awful this year. During spring training, their GM, Jim Bowden, described their pitching staff as “a work in progress”. Dan Daly of the Washington Times said that this particular work in progress reminded him of the Venus de Milo - - no arms. In the first two games of this year, the Nats’ pitchers have given up 9 runs in each game. I know there’s a long way to go from here, but that is a somber omen indeed.

The Big South Conference consists of schools in the Virginia/Carolina area such as Liberty, Winthrop, Radford, UNC-Asheville and Coastal Carolina. I’m sure I’ve left out some schools but you get the idea. For the 2008 season, they will add a new school to the mix for football. That team will be SUNY – Stony Brook. In case you don’t know what “SUNY” stands for, it stands for State University of New York. In case you slept through geography classes in school, New York is not adjacent to Virginia and the Carolinas. Obviously, the attraction here is the myriad natural rivalries that exist among all these schools, right?

Finally, Greg Cote of the Miami Herald cleared up some stats for me recently and I thought I’d share his clarification with you in case you too were confused:

“NFL statisticians say new Dolphin Joey Porter is one of only a handful of players with at least five sacks in the past seven seasons. Our own research indicates Porter is the only active player who has taken a bullet to the buttocks in a drive-by shooting; been two hours late for his own wedding related to being detained by police; and had two of his dogs kill a miniature horse.”

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

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This website has been nominated as a finalist as one of the best sports blogs on the web. If I were to win, I would get to go to something called “Blog World” which among lots of other things involves a weekend in Las Vegas during football season. If I actually had to do to that, it would be like throwing poor old Br’er Rabbit into the briar patch.

Winning involves garnering votes. If you feel like helping me along toward a goal of a weekend in Las Vegas, you may vote ONCE A DAY between now and 13 April. It’s like old time Chicago politics; you are encouraged to vote early and vote often.

Here’s how:

Go to the website conducting this “election”, http://www.thebestofblogs.com/

Scroll down to the category “Best Sports Blog”

Vote for The Sports Curmudgeon

Thanks in advance…

AND WHILE YOU ARE THERE, in the category of “Best Food, Wine and Cooking Blog”, vote for “Deglazed”.

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The last time Ohio State won the national basketball championship, they had a young man coming off the bench for them named Bob Knight. That’s how long it has been. And it will be at least another year for Ohio State because they were clowned last night by Florida in the final game of the tournament. There were no excuses; Greg Oden played the whole game – save for a brief breather in the first half; Mike Conley played the whole game – save for a brief breather in the first half; they didn’t have a bevy of players in foul trouble all game long. Their problem – plain and simple – boiled down to two really basic things:

1. Florida hit their three point shots and Ohio State missed their three point shots.

2. While Mike Conley is the quickest player on either team, Florida is faster and quicker than Ohio State at every other match up.

So, it’s time to look forward to next season in college basketball and I have this queasy feeling that the dawning of the OJ Mayo Era is upon us and it might not be all that wonderful. I sure hope that OJ Mayo is more palatable/loveable as a sports celebrity than the “other OJ”, but that’s not a given at the moment. So far we know that OJ Mayo has bumped a referee during a game, been arrested for marijuana possession, decided to go to USC but refused to give the coach his cell phone number and has been associated with a USC booster who has been tied to at least one other USC player who had been suspended. I hope none of this is a prelude to a bad scene next year…

Baseball season has begun. The NL led off with a re-match of last year’s championship series; the Mets and Cardinals squared off in the first game/series of the year. The AL obviously doesn’t think that is anything important because the Tigers and the A’s won’t cross paths until 30 July. It’s not a given that both – or even either – team will see that series as an important one by that time of the season.

Baseball season began here in DC yesterday. This town that had been aching for baseball for 35 years must be on the verge of having its fill of the Nationals. For opening day with the temperature in the low 70s and a bright sun in the sky, the Nats were unable to sell out the stadium. In fact, if the announced attendance is actually the turnstile count for the day, 10% of the seats were empty. Remember, this will be the last time the Nats have an opening day in RFK Stadium; it should have been a sell-out. The Nationals have a chance to stink in epic proportion this year; and if they do, the crowds will melt away like Frosty the Snowman. Those players on the squad who were on the Expos in those final years in Montreal may experience flashbacks.

In Chicago, the Cubs will start the season with Kerry Wood on the DL. This is Wood’s 10th year in the NL and he’s averaging more than one DL appearance per season; it’s now his 11th residency there. There have been stories that Wood’s natural pitching mechanics put a strain on his arm and that there have been repeated attempts to alter those mechanics, but he either cannot or will not implement those changes on a continuing basis. Add that strain to the fact that in high school he once started both games in a double header and the fact that he threw 120 pitches or more in eight of his first 18 starts with the Cubbies. I think the medical term for his arm troubles would be “chronic”, but I’ll leave that to the medics for a final determination.

And speaking of pitchers with “troubled pasts”, the Minnesota Twins found a place in their rotation for Sir Sidney Ponson. I’m still trying to come up with a way that is a good thing for the Twins…

Anyway, this is the time of year when baseball fans just about everywhere can look at the season ahead with great optimism - - unless of course those fans are in KC, Tampa, Pittsburgh, Washington or Miami.

If you check out www.JoseCanseco.com, you will learn that you may be lucky enough to win a day with José Canseco and you may get to win one of his baseball memorabilia treasures and – be still my fluttering heart – the whole day will be captured on videotape as part of a new “reality show” starring José. The idea is to come up with something “imaginative and outrageous” as a way to spend that day.

As you might expect, I shan’t be entering that sweepstakes because the only outrageous thing I could suggest to do for the day is to spend some quality time with José and his various syringes in a lavatory stall. That won’t make for compelling TV nor is it my idea of a fun way to kill time. But if you’re interested, the website will let you know how to enter the contest. I’d wish you good luck; but in this case, good luck means you’ll not get that call from José.

The story of the ESPN changes in the MNF booth just won’t go away. As Gregg Drinnan pointed out in the Kamloops Daily News, Joe Theismann has five more years on his deal at $2M a year so he’s not about to do something hasty and quit the gig. He might take a buy-out and go looking elsewhere, but he’s not about to just quit. Supposedly, Theismann was offered a job as a college football analyst at ESPN but turned down that assignment. Man, if ever there were a good reason to make college football games shorter, the thought of that motor-mouth in the booth on a weekly basis has to be one of the best. By the way, if ESPN is willing to make changes in the people who cover college football, is there any way that Mark May might be reassigned sometime this summer?

The biggest uncertainty for MNF viewers next year will be:

Who is going to point out all the obvious things to the viewing audience all night long?

Greg Cote summed up most of the sentiment with regard to the MNF changes in the Miami Herald over the weekend:

“ESPN bounced Joe Theismann from its Monday Night Football booth. Theismann said he was ‘stunned and confused.’ Let me clear up some of that confusion, Joe. YOU ANNOY PEOPLE!”

In Alberta Junior Hockey, the Fort Saskatchewan Traders have a woman as their goalie. Her name is Shannon Szabados; she’s 21 years old; her record is 39-8-4 this year and her goals against average is just over 2 goals per game. This isn’t some peewee league; this is one of the Canadian junior hockey leagues that provide talent to the NHL; more than a dozen alums of the Traders have played in the NHL since the team was formed in 1975. I wonder if any NHL team might give Szabados a chance?

Finally, Steve Rosenbloom of the Chicago Tribune had this slant on the Washington Nationals:

“The Nationals are looking at naming rights for their new stadium. I’ve seen that roster, and I’m thinking, ’62 Mets Field.”

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

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The NCAA Tournament games on Saturday night weren’t as nail biting as I had hoped they would be, but no one can think that a pair of unworthy teams has advanced to the final game tonight. The season began with 336 teams playing Division I college basketball; there are two still playing; both are very good.

I do have to ask, however, if anyone who has followed college basketball for any period of time has ever seen a more irrelevant 17 point performance than the one posted by Aaron Afflalo on Saturday night? Garbage time started in that game when he finally scored. Afflalo – and to a lesser extent Jeff Green of Georgetown – used the game on Saturday as a very good reason to go back to school next year and forego the NBA draft one more time. Both wilted in that important game; that could not send their NBA stock soaring.

For the record, I don’t think Greg Oden or Roy Hibbert will make a huge impact in the NBA next season should either enter the NBA draft. They’ll both do fine over the long haul, but each will flounder next season if they turn pro. However, going back to school for another season does not always help a player in terms of his basketball future. Last year, Glenn “Big Baby” Davis was one of the tournament darlings but he went back to LSU and may or may not be a lottery pick.

I want to spend the rest of this rant on the Women’s NCAA Tournament today. I flipped back and forth to the semi-final games last night. The Rutgers/LSU game combined all the elements of a dreadful game. The talent level was mediocre; the game was a blowout; there was only marginal “electricity” from the crowd. In fact, there were empty seats at the national semi-final games – and I don’t mean one or two empty seats. I haven’t found the announced attendance for those games last night appended to any of the box scores or game recaps; I wonder if that is “accidental”.

The Women’s NCAA tournament is in trouble. This is the college sporting event that is the crown jewel of Title IX; this is the event that should demonstrate the economic viability and the baseline interest in women’s collegiate athletics. It has a network TV contract on ESPN but that is about the end of the line for the women’s tournament in terms of anything related to “big time”. In the first round of the tournament, they played a set of games in Los Angeles. That city has been known to take an interest in basketball and it is a city that loyal fans from the teams involved can get to relatively easily and have things to do other than go to the game. It’s not as if they played round one in Buttsniff, Idaho. The attendance reportedly was 878. Excuse me, but that’s a respectable attendance for a first round playoff game in a state high school basketball tournament not the crown jewel of women’s collegiate athletics.

A while back, the geniuses that run the women’s tournament decided that they were indeed ready for prime time and went to “pre-determined sites” for all the games. After all, that’s what the men did. It took away the fairly obvious favoritism of playing early round games on the home courts of the top teams and it drew crowds; but it also reeked of manipulated match-ups for the early round games. The problem is that most of the women’s teams don’t have fans at the school who are willing to travel to see them play; and if both teams are “away teams”, no one shows up. ESPN can hype the games and feign excitement for the games and put on studio shows about the tournament till the cows come home; but it doesn’t change things. Nobody goes to the arena; nobody watches on TV.

Maybe they need to go back to playing on the campuses of the top seeds and just throw those low-seeded teams to the wolves. I guess ESPN would not like to see a lot of 75-29 games, but maybe that’s what they have to risk to put some fannies in the seats to make it look as if they are televising something that someone somewhere ought to give a damn about. If you think I’m the only one who believes that this tournament is on the brink of implosion, Pat Summitt also thinks it is in trouble. She says things have to change:

“I would hate to see us go into another postseason and experience what we have this year. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. But right now, it appears that it may be broken.”

So, let me offer a suggestion to the geniuses who run the women’s tournament. Before anyone screeches, let me say that I fully recognize that it is a step backwards and that it is not fully congruent with the underlying social philosophy of Title IX’s equality provisions. Nevertheless, maybe what these folks need to do is:

1. Stop televising all 63 games. If you have to put that many teams into the field to demonstrate equality/congruence with the men’s tournament, at least you shouldn’t advertise that no one cares about those early round games.

2. When you televise the regional tournaments and the final four games – and ignore all the rest –, be certain that the arenas are full. Give tickets away; if that doesn’t work, Shanghai people and strap them into the seats. Make it a certainty that the house is at least 95% full; you can even augment the crowd noise if you want. Give the people watching a sense that the people in the audience care about the outcome. If they don’t care, why shouldn’t I hit my remote and go watch something else like pro ‘rassling, spring training baseball, re-runs of Law and Order, or an infomercial about the latest innovation in kitchen knife technology?

Since all of today’s commentary was about college basketball, let me close with two comments from Scott Ostler yesterday in the San Francisco Chronicle:

“Memo to TV director for the NCAA championship game: Whenever a guy scores a big basket, keep giving us that 10-second close-up of his face as he runs back downcourt, because who really cares about the game that’s still happening? We can’t get enough of those pimple-cam shots.

“Memo to TV announcers for that game: Make sure you continue to salute a coach for calling ‘a great timeout’ after his team has been stunned by a 10-0 blitz. That’s like saluting me for a great column just because I’ve decided to end it.”

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

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