The Sports Curmudgeon®

Several weeks ago, I wrote that John Daly and Michele Wie were no longer competitive golfers but they were celebrities and that’s why anyone bothered to pay any attention to either one of them. Neither has been seriously competitive in a pro golf tournament for quite a while now; neither has a recent athletic résumé that commands any attention from sober sports fans; nevertheless they are in the headlines. As you might imagine, I got a lot of e-mail telling me that I was negative about Michele Wie because I was jealous that she was a better golfer than I could ever be. So let me address that point before proceeding here.

I do not play golf regularly; in fact, it has been about ten years since I actually played an entire round of golf. The best round I ever shot was more than 30 years ago when I shot 102; normally I would shoot somewhere in the 125-130 neighborhood. So, if I were prone to be jealous of people who were better golfers than I would ever be, I’d have to be jealous of about 50% of the people on the planet at the moment. And I’m not.

It just seems to me that these two golfers are now far more into the celebrity ambit than they are in the realm of competitive athletes. It’s sort of like Paris Hilton and the world of film actresses. Paris Hilton may be more famous and garner much more attention than most if not all film actresses in the world, but that doesn’t mean she can act. But recall that she did star in that one film that was widely viewed and acclaimed…

This situation got me to thinking about other people in the sports world whose fame is now based as much on celebrity status as it is on sporting achievement. And that thinking created this listing – one that will surely cause someone to tell me I’m jealous of so-and-so’s accomplishments because they dwarf anything I might ever do in the same competition. So before those folks hit the send button, let me say this:

I’m not jealous of anyone on this list.

I do not pretend that I could do as well as they have done or might continue to do in their sport.

Nevertheless, their sporting accomplishments pale in comparison to their “image” or their “celebrity status” and we need to recognize these folks for what they are now.

In no particular order, please consider:

Anna Kournikova: She has never won an open professional tennis tournament anywhere. Now she doesn’t even pretend to try to play tennis. I’m sure she could beat Bobby Riggs in a three-set match because Bobby Riggs is dead. Other than that…

Danica Patrick: Like Anna, she needs to actually win something in the sport she has chosen as her profession to be taken seriously as an athlete. At the moment, she is an attractive young woman competing in a sport where attractive young women are rare indeed. Other than that…

David Beckham: If he were really still at the peak of his game, would Real Madrid have let him go? And if he were really still at the peak of his game, would he have sought out MLS as his next milieu to showcase his skills? Recall that a British publication described the talent level of MLS prior to Beckham’s arrival here as that of a bunch of pub league teams. Someone – and I forget who so I can’t give proper credit here – described Beckham as the best player on crutches since Grant Hill.

Takeru Kobayashi/Joey Chestnut/Any Other “Competitive Eater”: Gluttony is not a sport; it’s one of the seven deadly sins. These people derive fame in a manner similar to the way sideshow freaks at the circus derived fame a hundred years ago. Their achievements are meaningless outside the hype and freak-show atmosphere of their competitions. When was the last time anyone you knew or anyone you invited over for dinner decided to eat 2 lbs of butter? Normal folks just don’t do things like that.

Roger Clemens: He is a sure-fire first ballot Hall of Fame inductee. He has had only one losing season in a career that began in 1984. Nevertheless, he is now most famous for dragging out his annual decision making as to whether or not he will choose to play one more season and then cherry-picking the team that will give him what he wants – which is not to have to pitch for an entire season. In the past two years, he is a combined 13-11, which is pretty mediocre; he threw only 113 innings last year and projects not to throw significantly more this year. Since the 2000 season, he has had exactly 2 complete games. At the moment, he is more famous for his deliberative moments in the off-season than he is for his pitching. He is the modern day baseball version of Hamlet.

Mike Shananan: He has been the strategist and the tactician in charge of the Denver Broncos for a long time now but ever since some guy named Elway retired, the Broncos haven’t exactly torn things up in the playoffs. And that was about a decade ago. Currently, he is in a division where his rival coaches are Lane Kiffen, Norv Turner and Herman Edwards. If he can’t out-duel those folks on the sidelines, maybe it really is time to pay attention to the man behind the curtain…

Billy Beane: He’s supposed to be smarter than everyone else in baseball and he’s supposed to be light years ahead of everyone in terms of putting together teams that can win. Except, they don’t. The glory years of the Oakland A’s are not those where he has been at the helm. But he did accomplish something that other GMs haven’t; he had a book written about him and his “system”.

So, whom might you nominate to be on this list? Does Brett Favre belong in the list for the same reason Roger Clemens is here? I left him off because he doesn’t seem to be angling for a way to play only half a season while doing his annual retirement/non-retirement dance. Is Michael Strahan auditioning for the role once Clemens and Favre actually choose to leave the scene? Does Joe Gibbs belong in this list for the same reason Mike Shanahan is here? How about Andy Roddick? Mike Tyson?

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

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As the NCAA Football season is about to begin, it’s time to engage in a bit of overview of the college football scene so that we can look for happenings that might just fall below the radar in the big time world of sports journalism. So please consider:

Linfield College (Oregon) has 52 consecutive winning seasons in football. No other school can make that claim; in fact, this represents the longest streak of winning seasons in sports in the US. Can they make it 53 straight winning seasons?

Duke was winless last year. Actually, they start this season with a 20 game losing streak, which is the worst in the nation, and the Blue Devils are 9-72 in their past 81 games. If this does not convince you that Duke is a “basketball school”, then I think you may be beyond hope.

Stanford has a new coach this year; Jim Harbaugh takes the helm and hopes to rebuild the Stanford program. There’s good news and bad news awaiting the new coach and his staff. The good news is that they have 17 starters back from last year’s team. The bad news is that those 17 starters return from a team that went 1-11 last season.

Texas A&M has a tailback – Jorvorskie Lane – who weighs 282 lbs. On third and short, you can count on Lane getting the ball or you can count on a fake to Lane and a bomb to a wide receiver on the fly pattern. Quarterback sneaks should be rare in College Station this year.

Gregg Drinnan had this note in the Kamloops Daily News recently:

“Alter High in Ohio has a 315-pound offensive lineman who can bench press 260 pounds and squat 525. Holley Mangold is a 17-year-old senior and her — yes, her — brother Nick is on the New York Jets’ offensive line.”

Penn State plays a bad out of conference schedule this year with nail-biters against FIU, Buffalo and Temple on the dance card. Someone in State College, PA ought to be ashamed.

Auburn’s homecoming opponent in November is Tennessee Tech from the Ohio Valley Conference. Someone in Auburn/Opelika, AL ought to be ashamed.

College Football Gameday has been a staple on ESPN for a while now; college football has been one of the important parts ESPN’s programming since they went on the air more than 25 years ago. Finally, they instituted a daily program – College Football Today – devoted exclusively to college football and one has to wonder what took them so long. After all, this is the network that created NASCAR Now and NHL 2Night; notwithstanding the intrinsic significance of those programming efforts, far more people watch college football games than watch NASCAR or NHL games. The afternoon time slot for the program is less than perfect, but it does represent a step in the right direction for college football fans.

Every once in a while, someone makes a comment that sums up all you really need to know about a story that has been around for a while and about which you may have missed some of the nuances. Here’s Greg Cote of the Miami Herald to fill you in on all you need to know about the University of Miami moving their games out of the Orange Bowl starting next season:

“City of Miami officials are reeling over losing UM, and stinging from criticism that years of neglecting the OB [Orange Bowl] all but forced the Canes to leave. Apparently the city erred in trusting that confidential internal study that suggested fans’ stadium experience is actually enhanced by leaky plumbing causing torrents of cascading urine.”

Games of Interest:

There are a lot of colossal mismatches in this first week of college football. I hope that the USC fans are entertained with that game against Idaho where USC is a 46.5-point favorite. Oklahoma and Texas are both 40-point favorites at home against teams they should not be playing in the first place. Penn State is a 37 point favorite against Florida International in State College where more than 100,000 fans should cease to pay attention somewhere in the middle of the second quarter. Meanwhile, poor Rutgers doesn’t get any respect this year either; it is only a 32-point favorite over Buffalo in a glorified scrimmage for the Scarlet Knights.

Those 100,000+ fans in State College will witness NCAA football history when Penn State takes the field on Saturday; no, it has nothing whatsoever to do with the visiting Florida International University team. Joe Paterno will start his 42nd consecutive season coaching the same college team and that has never happened before. At the moment, the record belongs to Amos Alonzo Stagg who coached at the University of Chicago for 41 consecutive seasons.

Early season college football has games that count; any team in the ridiculous “pre-season top 25” had better not lose its opening game if it aspires to BCS glory in January 2008. Nevertheless, these are usually not great betting opportunities because the make-up of college teams tends to change dramatically from year to year and until you actually see them on the field in games that mean something more than intrasquad scrimmages, you really don’t know what you are betting on or against. Therefore, my picks this week will be only a few.

Cal began the 2006 season as a trendy pick for the surprise team of the year who might just challenge for the national title. And then they opened on the road at Tennessee and got clobbered by a score of 35-18 - - and it wasn’t nearly that close. Starting at 0-1, their season never really recovered and the team was a big disappointment. This week, people who believe in revenge will be taking Cal at home to beat Tennessee. In college football, revenge is overrated since both Cal and Tennessee will be fielding different teams this weekend than the ones that played last year. It may be the best game of the week between two pretty good teams – Cal is ranked 12th in those pre-season polls and Tennessee is ranked 15th. But I shan’t be wagering on the game. If I were to wager, I’d probably take the home team just because they didn’t have to cross three time zones to get to the stadium. Oh, and USA Today says that Tennessee’s QB has a broken finger but plans to play anyway; just a bit more uncertainty to make the game even more inscrutable.

Another big time traveling game is Washington at Syracuse. Neither team looks to be very good this year; each would be a surprise to show up in one of the minor bowl games at the end of the year. I shan’t be making a pick on that game either, but once again there is that “crossing-the-time-zones” factor.

Hawaii QB, Colt Brennan set a record last year for most TDs thrown in a season. He’s back in school this year and if he’s going to break his own record, then opponents like Northern Colorado are ones the Rainbows need to schedule. I can’t find an over/under line on this game but just for fun I’ll “guestimate” the total score here at 73 points – Hawaii 63, Northern Colorado 10.

If Duke is going to break that 20 game losing streak, this might be their best shot at doing it. Duke is a mere 4-point underdog to Connecticut this week. If they don’t win here, they head out for road games in the next four weeks. The only other two games that seem winnable are Northwestern (on the road) and UNC (over Thanksgiving weekend).

Georgia Tech at Notre Dame – 2 (46): If Cal/Tennessee isn’t the best game on opening weekend, then this one is. Home field at South Bend has to be worth three points and probably a tad more than that; so, this line says that Notre Dame should be a slight underdog on a neutral field. That sounds about right to me. Georgia Tech lost the opening game last year to Notre Dame for a couple of reasons – one of which is their QB could not throw the ball such that it would hit the ground reliably. He’s no longer there. I’ll take Tech with the points here. By the way, Notre Dame has Michigan and Penn State coming up on the schedule soon; if they lose here they could dig themselves a huge hole in terms of making themselves bowl-eligible.

Navy – 21 at Temple (52): This is a Temple home game meaning a throng of about 5,000 Temple fans will show up for the game. Hey, it’s the season opener so it should be a bigger than usual crowd. In any event, they will be outnumbered by the Navy partisans. Navy will run the ball, run the ball, and then run the ball some more. I see the clock running inexorably in this game so I’ll take the UNDER here.

UNLV – 6 at Utah State (47): Utah State was awful last year; they couldn’t score and they couldn’t keep the other guys from scoring. For the sake of clarity, let me be certain to point out that’s not good. I don’t think UNLV has any pretensions to greatness, but I’ll take them here and lay the points just because they have such a bad opponent staring at them across the line of scrimmage.

Washington State at Wisconsin – 13 (no line): Wisconsin might just win the Big Ten this year and be really good. Washington State has a talented QB and a couple of guys who can catch the ball but not much else. Oh yeah, and they have multiple time zones to cross to reach the stadium. I’ll take Wisconsin at home and lay the points.

Good luck.

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Yesterday I said that the PGA Tour was riding on the wave of popularity of Tiger Woods and that their concocted FedEx Cup Tournament didn’t mean a damned thing without his participation. Despite the widespread popularity of golf as a participatory sport by adults all over the US, the TV ratings for golf depend on two things – and two things only:

1. Large numbers of people watch the four major golf tournaments no matter who is playing or who is not playing.

2. Large numbers of people watch golf tournaments when Tiger Woods is in the field.

Other than those two conditions, not a whole lot of people care enough to turn on the TV and plop themselves down on the couch to watch.

Here’s some data. Last weekend, the first tournament of the FedEx Cup Championship Round drew a TV rating of 2.1. Just to put a perspective on that, the XFL drew that kind of rating when it was at its nadir and the XFL dried up and blew away. Last weekend – and in the same time slot as the first round of the FedEx Cup Championship – the Little League World Series Championship game between Georgia and Japan got a rating of 3.5. On a percentage basis, 66% more TV sets tuned in to see 12-year-old kids play baseball than tuned in to see PGA golfers strive to achieve this new and grand honor – the FedEx Cup. Explain that away any way you might want to, but the data is there; lots more people care enough about kids’ baseball to tune in their TV sets than care about pro golfers playing for some yearlong prize. And the reason is simple:

Tiger Woods was too “exhausted” to play that weekend.

In case you think I’m cherry picking the numbers, look back at the weekend before this last one where the PGA put on the Wyndham Championship without Tiger Woods. Ratings for that nail-biter of an event were 1.0 on Saturday and 1.2 on Sunday. You guessed it; Tiger Woods was too tired to play in that one either.

Pardon me for being snarky here, but if Tiger Woods had managed to suck it up and play in either of the past two week’s tournaments, his caddy would also have been there to carry his bag. Now tell me why the golfer is too “exhausted” to play more than three weeks in a row when the caddy – the one who actually carries the bag around the course instead of strolling along with only a water bottle in hand – would have been able make it around the course four times? Just asking…

The idea that a sport will be a fan-favorite because lots of people play it just doesn’t wash. Of course, lots of adults play golf and love to play golf. The same is true of kids who play soccer and parents who are involved in the game of soccer through their kids’ participation. Those participatory situations do not necessarily yield huge and loyal fan bases. MLS TV ratings are measurable if David Beckham is playing; otherwise, they are minuscule. Golf ratings are measurable if Tiger Woods is playing – or it is one of the four “majors” –; otherwise, they are in the range of NHL playoff games.

No one would try to explain the huge popularity of NFL football or NCAA football by citing the millions of adults who actually play football on a regular basis – because far more adults play golf than football. But when it comes to fan interest and fan loyalty, football is king and golf is bupkes…

The PGA Tour will wither and die on the vine if Tiger Woods is hors de combat for a year. Commentators can try to make you care about other golfers, but when it comes right down to what matters – who tunes in to watch the matches and the commercials that go with it – the audience isn’t there. Absent Tiger Woods, the PGA Tour is a yearlong set of regular season NBA games. Yawn!!!

On another subject, ESPN has produced a show called, Unsettled Scores: Who Killed Bison Dele? It will air for the first time on ESPN2 on 31 August at 1930 EDT – and probably will be rerun at least a dozen times if ESPN is true to its history. In case you forgot, Dele was an NBA player whose catamaran floated into a harbor in Tahiti in 2002 with no trace of Dele or his girlfriend or the captain of the boat. Dele was one of those “free spirit” athletes whose life was unusual enough that anything is possible with regard to his disappearance. He’s one of the folks about whom abduction by space aliens might not be all that far-fetched. Watch this program if you want, but take heed of a comment from an ESPN spokesperson who said that if this show is “successful”, then ESPN will consider producing additional shows about mysterious circumstances involving sports figures. And if they do, here is the potential “camel’s nose in the tent”:

Will ESPN consider doing a program wherein dedicated and focused detective, OJ Simpson, is hard at work tracking down the real killers?

Speaking of athletes who were “free spirits” and who did not come from the same mold as many other athletes of their time, the Orange County Register reported that Todd Marinovich was arrested and charged with felony drug possession and resisting arrest after he was chased and captured skateboarding around 1:00AM on Newport Pier in California. Believe it or not, Marinovich is now 38 years old so one might be inclined to wonder what the hell he is doing on a skateboard at 1:00AM; the fact that he had drugs and drug paraphernalia on his person at the time of his arrest is no longer shocking. To reset the scene here, Todd Marinovich was raised to be a top-shelf quarterback by his father back in the 1980s; his father gave him all the nutritional supplements and the time in the film room and the workout regimes needed in order for him to be successful in that endeavor. His father also forbade him to eat things like cheeseburgers and never taught his son to deal with the challenges of life as an independent adult. So when Todd Marinovich got even a whiff of “independence” he went headlong into things like drugs.

Todd Marinovich’s NFL career was with the Raiders – can that be a shock to anyone? In 1992, he led the Raiders to three victories and then threw 3 INTs in a game against the Eagles and was never heard from again in terms of NFL football. Today, he is arrested and charged with felony drug possession; that’s not good. Even sadder is that he was skateboarding in an area dominated by 7-Eleven type stores at 1:00AM at age 38. How the mighty have fallen…

Pacman Jones first thought that he would spend his yearlong suspension from the NFL as a pro wrestler. Somehow, the Titans were able to convince him – more likely the team convinced his agent and attorneys – that such an undertaking would be a violation of Pacman’s NFL contract and would result in the forfeiture of “whatever” from that contract that is in abeyance at the moment. So now, Pacman Jones is contemplating an interlude as a “hip-hop artist”. Let me be clear here; I have exactly no idea what a “hip-hop artist” is. But just in case this short-term career endeavor doesn’t work out for Pacman, I have an idea that might keep him busy in a very constructive manner – and might actually make him appear to be socially constructive the next time he and Commissioner Goodell meet to discuss his future within the NFL:

1. Seek out agricultural areas in the US – or in the world at large – where drought conditions are bringing difficult times and stress to the people who live there. Think Darfur in the extreme case.

2. Go there and “make it rain”.

Last weekend the Syracuse Chiefs – the AAA farm team of the Toronto Blue Jays – played a game against the Ottawa Lynx. In that game, the Chiefs committed ten errors in a nine-inning game. I’ve been to lots and lots of baseball games in my lifetime from high school games through the major leagues. I’m certain I’ve never seen one with ten errors by a single team; I doubt that I’ve ever seen a game of any length where both teams combined to commit 10 errors. Did they put butter in the Chiefs’ gloves that night instead of Neets Foot Oil?

Finally, here’s an item from Dwight Perry in the Seattle Times regarding Pacman Jones:

“To hear Pacman Jones’ spin doctors tell it, his NFL ordered hiatus isn’t a one-year suspension, it’s a make-it-rain delay.”

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

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Ever since I started doing these essays on the Internet in 2002, I have spent the football season making “Mythical Picks” every weekend. I have foolishly tried to pick every NFL game and a few college games every weekend. Usually, I wind up in the red in these endeavors but I continue to do it because it’s fun and it gives me a way to make fun of some of the really bad teams and outrageously bad performances by good or bad teams.

I cannot commit to doing that this year. I am in a situation where I will be moving into a new home in late September. I will need to be away from a reliable and constant access to the Internet for about a week prior to moving in and then will be dodging painters and movers and decorators for at least a week – and probably more than that – after moving in.

Oh, and I’m about to become a grandfather for the first time which will engender visits by me to my grandson and his parents and by my grandson and his parents to me over the next several months. Let me be clear; those visits take priority over any writings that I might want to post here.

The upshot is that I will not be able to do my Mythical Picks every weekend and so I cannot meaningfully keep a season-long tally of successes and failures. Here is what I will commit to do:

I will do NFL and NCAA Mythical Picks on those weeks where I have the access to the Internet to do the “research” to make the picks and to distribute the picks that I ultimately make.

Beyond that, I can’t make any promises because I can’t be reasonably sure that I can keep those promises.

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

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Just in case any of you forgot that the WNBA season was underway, let me catch you up. Their playoffs are underway and they are now about to begin the semi-finals. No Googling, can you name the four WNBA teams still alive in the playoffs…?

Back when I was studying vocabulary lists in preparation for the SATs – no, I did not have to chisel my answers onto a marble slab then – I learned a word that would clearly have little place in ordinary conversation. But it was unusual enough that it stuck in my head and now I actually have a chance to use it. I will assert that for the average US sports fan, the WNBA playoffs have all of the gravitas of borborygmus.

A couple of weeks ago, I said that the alleged betting scandal in men’s tennis might be good for the sport since it got people talking about men’s tennis in the first place. Naturally, I got e-mails from tennis fans telling me that I had my head in such a place that I suffered from rectal blindness. So to make amends, I decided to offer an idea for a pool on the US Open that’s getting underway. Here’s the deal:

You have to pick which Williams sister will be the first to withdraw due to an injury and when. I’ll take Serena with a left hamstring injury after her first win.

I was tempted to take Colonel Mustard in the library with the candlestick but that’s a different game.

Over to you…

The PGA Tour has gotten to the FedEx Cup competition as if that is meaningful in any real way. I defy anyone other than someone so focused on golf that (s)he is studying to be a rules interpreter to recite the scoring system for this competition. Various players on the tour have said it is irrelevant; Tiger Woods skipped the first of the four tournaments in the final competition because he was “exhausted” from playing three weeks in a row; fan interest has been imaginary so far. Other than that, FedEx is getting its money’s worth from this sponsorship deal.

The PGA Tour had tried to build up this concocted nonsense as the beginning of a new era in golf only to have Tiger Woods blow off the first tournament of the new era. There is no new era in golf; the PGA Tour as of 2007 is Tiger Woods and the four major tournaments. People care about the majors; people care about – and watch – Tiger Woods play. Other than that, the PGA Tour is teetering on moribund. If Tiger Woods is in a car accident such that he cannot play golf for an entire year, the TV ratings for the PGA Tour events will be right down there with NHL playoff games, the MLS games and Throwdown With Bobby Flay on the Food Network.

If the FedEx Cup is truly the dawn of a new era in golf, then the goofs who run the game can’t set up the rules such that a player can miss one or more of the tournament events and still win the championship. That’s how it works now. Imagine if an NFL team went 16-0 for a season and decided to sit out the first two rounds of the playoffs and just show up for the Super Bowl. Wouldn’t work very well, would it? Well, that’s what the golf goofs have set up for the FedEx Cup.

The Houston Astros fired Phil Garner over the weekend. In 2005, Garner had the Astros in the World Series. A year and a half later, his team was under .500 and 9 games out of first place in their division. Interestingly, the Astros opponent in the 2005 World Series – the Chicago White Sox – are also doing poorly a year and a half later. The White Sox on the same day were also under .500 and were 16.5 games out of first place in their division. I wonder if Ozzie Guillen is looking over his shoulder…

Speaking of baseball, you may recall that I was skeptical of the Red Sox signing of JD Drew to a $70M deal. According to CBS sportsline.com, Drew will make $14M this year; and as of this morning, he is hitting .259 with 7 home runs and 46 RBIs. Let’s just say the Sox didn’t get a lot of value for their money here.

Latrell Spreewell is back in the news. It seems as if his yacht had to be repossessed by the bank because Spreewell failed to make monthly payments and failed to maintain adequate insurance on the boat. Monthly payments were reported to be $10,322 - - not counting insurance. Recall that Spreewell angrily turned down a three-year offer to play in the NBA because it was only for $7M a year saying that he had to turn it down because it wasn’t adequate to feed his family. Maybe so, I don’t know their grocery bills/budget; but that $21M might have gone a long way towards paying those monthly charges to keep the yacht…

Let’s review the bidding on the Lance Briggs situation. When the Bears slapped the franchise tag on him, Briggs was adamant he would never again play a single down for the Bears and that he had set aside all the money he needed to sit out a year. Once the trade deadline passed and no trade was forthcoming, he signed with the Bears in about 72 hours. His agent, Drew Rosenhaus, crowed that they got a concession from the Bears of a $1M advance on salary for Briggs as an inducement for Briggs to sign. After withholding Federal income tax and state tax and FICA, that $1M probably put somewhere in the range of $550K in Briggs’ bank account. Last weekend, he crashed and abandoned a $350K Lamborghini. Let’s just say that Briggs had better be handling the rest of his monies a lot more carefully than he has handled that advance of salary or he’ll be one of those ex-players living in a refrigerator box under a bridge one of these days…

The Raiders and overall #1 draft pick, JaMarcus Russell, are still haggling over a contract. The last time an NFL team could not sign an overall #1 pick was in 1986; the Bucs had the pick that year and took Bo Jackson who decided to play baseball for the KC Royals. As far as I know, JaMarcus Russell does not have such an option open to him. But he has managed to miss training camp and is looking at the potential of wasting an entire year of development as an NFL QB. Several weeks ago, I suggested that the NFL and the NFLPA work to amend the Collective Bargaining Agreement to create a rookie salary scale that would get draft picks into camp more readily. JaMarcus Russell is unsigned because his agent reportedly wants in excess of $60M for this rookie contract with at least $30M guaranteed. If the Bears had offered that deal to Lance Briggs – a Pro Bowl linebacker – last year, there would never have been a question about his refusal to sign with the Bears or play another down for that team.

Finally, here’s a note from David Thomas in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram regarding the recent Rangers’ 30-3 win over the Baltimore Orioles regarding how you know you are a long-time Rangers’ fan:

“You heard the Rangers scored 30 runs in a game, then asked, ‘Did they win?’ “

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

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I’m sure you’ve heard more than enough legal analysis about Michael Vick’s guilty plea yesterday than you need to - - unless you are in law school and are writing a law review article on this whole matter. I can’t provide any more depth of understanding in that realm, but I do want to comment on the statement/apology that Michael Vick executed about an hour after his hearing in the courtroom.

Once again, I need to establish the fact that I do not read minds and cannot be sure what was going on in his head before, during or after that statement of apology. But this is what I took from that event:

1. It was not a prepared statement from a publicist or from his lawyers. I’m confident his lawyers made clear to him that there were certain topics he ought not to mention, but I don’t think they wrote his statement for him to deliver.

2. Apologizing was obviously a difficult thing for him to have to do. As a gifted athlete, he has lived a life of privilege when it comes to excusing his errant behaviors; apologies are not things with which he has a wealth of experience. This comes as an add-on to the natural discomfort that you or I might feel if we had to make an apology to friends or family members for some anti-social act that was merely silly/stupid and not criminal in nature. He was clearly uncomfortable and that made sense to me.

3. He apologized for what he did. That does not excuse what he did in any way; but, at least, he did not “apologize” to anyone who might have taken offense at his actions. That kind of “non-apology apology” is all the rage these days; Michael Vick avoided that and said he was sorry.

4. Was he sorry for what he did or was he sorry that he lied about what he did or was he sorry that he got caught doing what he did and lying about it? Sorry, that takes a mind reader and I’m not qualified there…

In terms of what the apology might or might not buy him, I suspect that it will not sway the judgment of the Federal judge in this case even a whit. I do think that the apology is part of a grander strategy on the part of Michael Vick’s “handlers” regarding some possible future return to the NFL. The apology alone won’t get him back in the league as soon as his sentence is served, but without an apology that seemed contrite, he isn’t ever going to get back in the league. I suspect that we will see more of these contrition/humanizing appearances from Michael Vick in the next several months and as his sentence is about to end. His handlers will surely want to position him in the best possible light when Commissioner Goodell needs to make a reinstatement decision.

With regard to his regaining any kind of stature as a product endorser/spokesman, I think any apology would have been insufficient. It may be wrong in some kind of cosmic or philosophical sense that he will never gain redemption for his actions in the world of endorsements, but I doubt he will. Recall that a jury found OJ Simpson innocent of any criminal act; and just how many companies pay him a retainer to endorse their products these days?

When teams report to training camp in July, there are always stories about how Joe Flabeetz lost 20 lbs in the off-season in order to “get quicker” or how Sam Glotz gained 30 lbs to add strength and stamina to his game. Those stories are usually nothing but fluff. However, I wonder what the motivation was for Ravens’ defensive coordinator, Rex Ryan, to lose 60 lbs in the off-season? He showed up this year at a svelte 290 lbs instead of the 350 he was hefting around last year. Was he the back up nose tackle too last year?

Raiders’ QB, Duante Culpepper, has obviously progressed in his attempt to become the starter in Oakland. Coaches say he is now moving fluidly and his appearances in the exhibition games have been impressive compared to the other QBs in camp. The final hurdle for Culpepper to cross in order to show the coaches that he is indeed recovered from his horrible injury two years ago and that he’s ready to put in a 16 game season will be when he outruns Al Davis in a 40-yard dash. Don’t count Davis out if someone tells him before the race that there’s an offer from Beaglebreath Montana waiting for him at the end offering him a brand new stadium with loads of luxury suites and a rental cost of $1 a year for the next 25 years…

Since I mentioned exhibition games, let me remind you once again that you should take everything you see there with a grain of salt – or maybe a half-pound of salt. The game plan for every coaching staff for every NFL team in the exhibition season is the same and it is very simple: Keep players from getting injured. And most teams will not show most of the intracasies of their offenses or defenses in August so that their opening day opponents can study them in detail for a month.

Last year, the Raiders were 4-1 in the exhibition season. Extrapolated to the regular season, fans might have expected a 12-4 season or a 13-3 season from the team. The Raiders emerged from the exhibition games with whatever momentum means in that context and proceeded to lose their first five games on the way to a league-worst 2-14 season. Exhibition games don’t mean a thing.

The Vikings are another team looking for a signal as to who should be the starting QB for the team. Tarvaris Jackson is the anointed “quarterback of the future” but one has to wonder if “the future is now” in Minnesota. Coach Childress said that one of the key elements of a successful NFL QB in the modern game is the ability of that QB to create plays when nothing is available. Assuming that is correct, I wonder how comfortable he can be with Jackson when what Jackson seems to create most often is “fourth and long…”

Romeo Crennel said that Brady Quinn’s late arrival in training camp has put him in a position where he has to come from behind to become the starting QB. Maybe that’s a good thing for Quinn. After all, the Browns are usually behind in their games and he’ll need to have some expertise in coming from behind if he has a prayer of being successful there.

Finally, a note from Jay Leno:

“I finally saw Sicko. But enough about Michael Vick.”

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

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The rumor is out there that Tim Donaghy will name up to 20 current NBA referees who are involved in gambling. I said previously that if even one other referee was “ratted out”, this could be horrendous for the league. And I’ll stand by that statement with a minor proviso.

Since the time the Donaghy case broke and David Stern referred to him as a “rogue isolated criminal”, we have learned that NBA officials have to give up their right to gamble [other than on horse races at racetracks in the off-season] or even enter casinos where gambling happens as a part of their employment contract with the NBA. While I think that’s a bit silly and difficult to enforce, the stipulation is there and we now see just how effective that stipulation can be in preventing a referee from betting on “stuff”.

So, now it sort of depends on what kind of gambling activities Tim Donaghy identifies and associates with these putative 20 “other referees.” Some kinds of activities can obviously be disastrous for the integrity of the NBA; others might be violations of the referees’ contracts and not amount to a dram of doggy dooty. Consider:

If an officiating crew plays gin rummy for an hour in the locker room before or after a game and it is only the three of them and a total of $25 changes hands at the end of the day, this might be sufficient to get the officials reprimanded or even fired. But this is unimportant to the integrity of the NBA.

If an official – or even a group of officials – get together and have their own fantasy football league or even an NCAA Tournament Bracket Pool, that is not damaging to the integrity of the league.

Frankly, having referees play blackjack in a casino isn’t that big a deal either. Think about this; if casinos are such dens of iniquity where only horrible things can happen, then maybe David Stern should explain why the NBA allows the owners of the Sacramento Kings also to own a casino/hotel in Las Vegas.

David Stern has to worry about what comes of all this. Suppose Donaghy names 20 referees whose actions do not impugn the integrity of the NBA but whose actions clearly and definitively violate the employment contract with the NBA. What does David Stern do then? Does he fire all 20 referees? If he fires only half of them, how will the Sultan of Smug parse their actions to make such a fine distinction? Frankly, how many quality officials can he find to officiate NBA games next season on short notice? Remember, there will have to be extensive background checks on any new hires the league makes and you just can’t do an extensive background investigation over a weekend. And just how long can David Stern continue to maintain that Donaghy was a rogue isolated criminal if he has to take the axe to 20 of Donaghy’s colleagues?

Think about what Donaghy has admitted that he did. He gave info to gamblers about what officials would be refereeing various future games. Why was that worth thousands of dollars to the gamblers? Here’s why:

The NBA thinks that kind of information has to be kept secret. Shake your head to get the cobwebs out and try to come up with a scenario where that information has to be protected in ways similar to the way the government protects information about military readiness.

The truth is that if the officials for a game were published in the newspapers along with the date, time and location of the game, that information would have zero value to gamblers because it would no longer be “inside information”. The NBA itself has been a great enabler of this whole mess. David Stern won’t tell you that, but it’s a fact. The fact that the NBA was an enabler does not exonerate Donaghy in any way; but we should never lose sight of the fact that the NBA has more than a tad of complicity in this sordid mess.

I read somewhere that the NBA’s advertising slogan for next season will be “Where Amazing Happens”. If 20 referees are actually involved in something bad for the league, that slogan could come back to haunt the league. Imagine what Jay Leno and David Letterman can do with that one…

During my hiatus, Phil Rizzuto passed on. I remember him from the days when I would go over box scores with my father as we followed baseball from April to September. In memory of Rizzuto, many writers came up with humorous comments about him and his career(s) in baseball. Here are two:

“I don’t know if it’s good for baseball, but it sure beats the hell out of rooming with Phil Rizzuto.” [Yogi Berra upon learning that Joe DiMaggio was going to marry Marilyn Monroe.]

“Before he came up with his signature call of ‘Holy Cow,’ Rizzuto must have tried out many other calls. ‘Enlightened yak!’ ‘Sacred wombat!’ ‘Venerated musk-ox!’ [Scott Ostler in the SF Chronicle]

Speaking of baseball, the makings of a future biopic are happening in St. Louis. Rick Ankiel has made it back from a position where as a pitcher he could not find home plate with a radar or a GPS device to a right-fielder who has hit with power and has demonstrated a strong and accurate throwing arm. The plot for every biopic is the same: Subject has a dream and a passion for doing something; obstacles that would stop anyone else are in his/her way; subject overcomes them to become a happy and contented individual adored by the masses. If Rick Ankiel makes the All-Star team as a right fielder some day, this is a biopic waiting to be made sometime around 2025.

Finally, since I quoted Scott Ostler above, let me conclude today with another of his observations in the San Francisco Chronicle:

Before you praise Bobby Cox as baseball’s all-time blow-top for having broken John McGraw’s record for career ejections, it’s important to recognize the difference in eras. It’s easier to get thrown out of games today. In McGraw’s time, umps were more tolerant. You could do a Three Stooges nose-tweak and eye-gouge of an umpire without getting run.

Cox said the ejections are embarrassing, but they’ve been worth it because of all the times his childish tirades have caused umpires to see their mistakes and reverse their calls. When he retires, Cox plans to volunteer as a crossing guard for buffalo stampedes.

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

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I am a person who understands and accepts the concept of deferred gratification. I am a long-term investor in the stock market. I do not suffer from Adult Attention Deficit Disorder. I am capable of focusing on a single task at any given time; I am not compulsively drawn to “multi-tasking.” I do not need to have my every whim catered to in an instant. Nonetheless, there are sports happenings and things surrounding sporting events that just take too damned long and need to be eliminated in their entirety of shortened very significantly. Let me mention just a few…

The Super Bowl Halftime Show lasts so long that it changes the amount of time that the teams are in the clubhouse between halves of that game as compared to every other NFL football game. That alone says that the Super Bowl Halftime Show is too long. Then, when you add the fact that most of the programs are less than entertaining and the throngs of mouth-breathers, who are crowding around the stage in either a real or feigned frenzy, distract one’s attention from the marginal entertainment value of the production, this activity needs to be eliminated in its entirety.

But the Super Bowl Halftime Show is only the second-worst time waster on that fateful day on the calendar. That’s because the Super Bowl Pre-Game Show has grown in duration to exceed the Presidential Election Coverage that we get every four years. The game starts just after 6:00 PM in the Eastern Time Zone; therefore, there is no need to begin the pre-game coverage at 11:00 AM – particularly since there have been two weeks leading up to the game where there has been massive coverage for every aspect of the game itself. Thus, the Pre-Game Show is a repetition – for the umpteenth time – of the sports aspect of the game diluted to a huge extent by up close and personal feature items about game participants and/or their parents and/or their maternal grand aunt’s college roommate’s middle daughter’s medical problems. It would not be even marginally difficult to cut this program from seven hours to two hours without losing even a soupçon of the sports content.

Just in case anyone might think I’ve gone off the deep end here, FOX says that Ryan Seacrest will be working as the host of the “entertainment portions” of the programming on Super Bowl Sunday. Ignoring the fact that American Idol will launch its new assault on the sensibilities of America a couple of weeks after the Super Bowl, the fact that anyone would think that Ryan Seacrest could possibly add anything of interest to a purely sporting presentation is frightening. But if you cut the whole Pre-Game Show to two hours - - or even better to one hour - - we would not have to endure Ryan Seacrest and/or any of his cohorts as part of the nonsensical build up to what ought to be a big football game.

And while I’m mentioning things related to NFL activities, dare I remind you of the hours and hours of TV coverage devoted to the NFL Draft? I’m just talking about the coverage of the draft itself on the weekend of the event. I’m not adding in the fact that we already are being told about Mel Kiper’s top ten talents for next April’s NFL Draft. This can all be made a lot shorter by cutting back the time allotted to the teams for making their selections. If in fact they have been doing all the studying and evaluating that they assure their fans that they do, then it cannot possibly take them 15 more minutes to decide to take the guy that they ought to be prepared to take when their turn comes up. The entire first round of the draft should be compressed into 3 hours; the second round should take no more than 2 hours; rounds three through seven should take no longer than 75 minutes each. Maybe one way to make that happen is to forbid the teams to have chairs in the arena holding the draft or in their “war rooms”. That would get people motivated to get things done quickly. If that doesn’t work, forbid potty stops for everyone involved and ban the use of “adult diapers”…

Commissioner Goodell has already taken steps to shorten the period between draft picks in the first round. He can go further in assuring that the teams pick up the pace by having teams lose their pick entirely if the selection is not in his hand by the time the clock runs out. There is still time to be cut from this happening.

In previous years, the coverage devoted to the protracted decision making related to whether or not Brett Favre might or might not retire was more than excessive. But the NFL is off the hook at the moment on this count because MLB has taken center stage on this front. We never again need to have Roger Clemens hijack our sports coverage with his protracted negotiations for being a part-time pitcher. Absent any change, when he’s 55 he might wait until mid-August to sign a contract with a team in first place just so he has the best chance to be in the playoffs and to be officially on the post-season roster that has to be “solidified” on 1 September. It has taken too damned long to resolve this less-than-important issue over the past couple of years; so maybe MLB needs to change the rule for free agents. If a free agent has not signed with some major league team – or a minor league team – by Opening Day, then he won’t be eligible for post-season play. I’m 200% sure that would get Roger Clemens to make up his mind a whole lot sooner regarding how much he’d rather watch his kids play baseball as compared to signing a contract that will pay him almost a million dollars every time he starts a game…

And since I’m talking about baseball for a moment, one of the things that is just too damned long is Ken Burns’ “Ode To Baseball” which re-runs on PBS every once in a while. The reason PBS doesn’t dare run it more often is that it would overlap with itself if they did so. Maybe the FCC should decree that the full version may only be sold to individuals who want to watch it in the privacy of their homes and that televised versions have to be ones edited back to two hours at the most? That would not offend me.

With the new scheduling for the playoffs and the World Series, it is entirely possible that the MLB playoffs will last until the early days of November. I hope I don’t have to work too hard to try to convince you that means the playoffs take too damned long. Spring training begins in February in warm weather cities because it is too cold to play meaningful baseball outdoors in most of the cities with MLB teams. The same is true of the weather in early November in those cities; nevertheless, MLB will play the most important games of the season under conditions that would cause a postponement for early season games. This makes no sense; the playoffs need to be shortened.

And speaking of playoffs that last too long, the NBA needs to take a long and hard look at the time it takes them to crown a champion. Their season begins in November and after 82 games, they eliminate less than half of the teams from playoff spots. Then they begin a playoff odyssey that can take as much as 10 weeks because they drag out the opening rounds to ridiculous lengths. The playoff games in the NBA are really the only ones that exhibit sufficient intensity from the players to make them worth careful watching; but if it takes almost two weeks for one team to eliminate another one in a sweep in the early rounds, I’ve already lost interest.

Anything and everything associated with the PGA Tour takes too long. There are way too many events; 90% of the top players don’t even consider the possibility of playing in more than half of the events. There is a “buzz” associated with only five or six tournaments a year and the folks involved in promoting the game continue to have to concoct ways to try to keep fans’ attention. Why else would there be Skins Games pairing men and women teams? Why do you think there is a FedEx Cup in the first place? Cut the season in half so that the best players play just about every time there’s a tournament and there will be plenty of interest and coverage.

The baseball season, the NBA season, and the PGA Tour all take more than half of a year. The Parade of Nations in the Opening Ceremonies for the Olympic Games only seems as if it takes more than half a year. There is video evidence that it does not take six months from start to finish – unless you count the idiotic worldwide torch relay to get the Olympic torch into the stadium for the grand crescendo of the Opening Ceremonies. But the Parade of Nations takes hours upon hours upon hours. Why? These are premiere athletes from everywhere in the world. Can’t they move along a little faster?

Every one of the things that I’ve talked about here takes too long but they are all but brief interludes compared to the final event I want to point out. That seven hour Super Bowl Pre-Game show is but a brief moment in time compared to this next one. The two days of the NFL Draft fly by in comparison. Consider the time spent and the snail’s pace associated with any study commissioned by the NCAA wherein Dr. Myles Brand is sitting and waiting for the results and recommendations so that he can ponder the depths of the analysis and the impact of the recommendations. It took less time for the Roman Empire to fall than it takes for the NCAA to figure out what to do about anything more complicated than where to go for lunch tomorrow. If there are any problems related to collegiate athletics - - and there are - -, I can only hope that my soon to be born first grandson will be around to witness the NCAA’s implemented actions to resolve those problems. I sure won’t be around then.

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

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Yesterday came the confirmation that Michael Vick will indeed plead guilty to at least one of the charges in the Federal indictment against him. Rumors to that effect had been circulating for several days and those rumors turned out to be correct. On the assumption that he does indeed plead guilty to something in the near future, I think there are two important lessons one can derive from this matter:

1. It is never appropriate to take the statements in an indictment as absolutely and unalterably true; to do so negates the concept of “innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.” At the same time, it is rarely appropriate to take the statements of defense attorneys on behalf of their clients as absolutely and unalterably true. Compare the statement of Vick’s legal team when he was indicted [We look forward to a trial where we can clear Michael Vick’s name and show these charges are baseless. The indictment contains mere allegations.] to the statements from the legal team now, [We’re proud that Michael has taken responsibility for his actions and he’s ready to move on with the rest of his life.] Lesson: Everyone involved in situations such as these has a motive for shading the truth; when you hear any of them speak, try to recognize what those motivations are and put the remarks in the context of those motivations.

2. Comparisons between the Michael Vick matter and the Duke Lacrosse fiasco are irrelevant. The charges in the Duke Lacrosse matter started out as a “he said/she said case” and the physical evidence never advanced the matter beyond that point. The charges in this case rested on physical evidence of dog carcasses that had been buried. Any hypothesis that the charges in this case were baseless would have to explain how those dog carcasses buried themselves. Lesson: Testimony of witnesses and charges by victims are important when corroborated by other evidence. Physical evidence stands for what it is and must be accounted for as it exists in any theory of what actually happened in a case.

All of the reporting that I heard on this matter has said that Michael Vick will probably spend some time in jail as a result of his pleading implies to me that whatever additional charges/evidence might have been in the supplemental indictment that prosecutors said they would file in the case have to be pretty awful. Note, I didn’t say they were true; I said they were awful. The idea that a pro athlete would agree to a course of action that would put him in jail during what ought to be a prime part of his career – and his earning power – is staggering unless the other likely options are even worse for him. And I’ll leave this question to the attorneys who read these essays:

Might the admission(s) in this Federal matter be used as evidence against Michael Vick in state court since dogfighting is indeed a crime in the Commonwealth of Virginia? Or might the Federal plea agreement contain some kind of immunity from state prosecution?

In any event, I believe that it is fair to say about Michael Vick at the moment that:

The former Hokie is going to the pokey.

So what are the Falcons to do with regard to their quarterback situation? They have Joey Harrington on board and they have Chris Redmond on the squad. I know that teams have made it to the Super Bowl with QBs who merely “manage the game”, but this doesn’t seem to be a team poised to succeed in that fashion. I think part of the problem the Falcons will encounter is that they do not have a strong corps of wide receivers who can make life a bit easier for whoever is their QB. One could make the argument that with Michael Vick playing QB, there wasn’t much of an incentive for a top-shelf free agent wide receiver to consider playing in Atlanta. Vick was never an accurate passer and ran the ball more than he threw it to wide receivers. Last year, the Falcons’ leading WR was Michael Jenkins with 39 catches; all of the WRs on the team caught a total of 93 passes; Vick ran the ball 123 times. So, without an incentive for WRs to sign with Atlanta, they find themselves now in a situation where they have a pedestrian crew of players at that position and a QB who does not like to run. This could be a big time problem…

However, even if Joey Harrington has a stupendously horrible season at QB for the Falcons, it would be totally out of line for anyone to imply that he was “dogging it”.

Joey Harrington was the third overall pick in the draft in the year he came out of college. A few years before that, Akili Smith was also the third overall pick in the draft. Let’s just say that if Harrington doesn’t work out for Atlanta, the team should not spend a lot of time looking for Akili Smith. At the moment, Akili Smith is the backup QB for the Calgary Stampeders; he’s thrown 25 passes this year and completed 12 of them. That’s not very good. What’s worse is that he has thrown zero touchdown passes and four interceptions. His QB rating – however the CFL calculates such a thing – is “minus 2.6” as of this morning.

Because I had missed what happened in the Steve McNair DUI case, I went looking to see if it had been resolved and what I found caused me to call a friend for some explanation. Steve McNair was arrested on DUI charges even though he was not driving the car because it was his car and the driver was drunk and McNair had given him the keys. That amounts to something called “DUI by consent” and that is a very confusing concept to me. Obviously, if McNair’s driving buddy were so drunk that he could not lie on the floor without holding on, then McNair would be wrong to allow the driving buddy to pilot the vehicle. But if McNair felt that he was impaired and sought the driving services of another person, this charge assumes that he was in some kind of position to determine if the driving buddy was legally sober or not. Excuse me? Even police officers who make traffic stops all the time and who have been trained in these kinds of observations/determinations cannot make those judgments infallibly. So, how is an untrained individual who is self-admittedly impaired supposed to make that determination? But that’s the law where Steve McNair was arrested and indeed he pled guilty to “DUI by consent”.

I watched MNF last night even though it was an Exhibition Game. I doubt that I need to remind anyone here of the level of disdain I have for NFL Exhibition Games but I watched last night to see how the new announcing crew might work together. This year’s crew is better than last year’s crew already. I’m not ready to compare this group with the top announcing teams of all time; Tony Kornheiser and Ron Jaworski still have a long way to go to become Howard Cosell and Dandy Don Meredith. But I do believe that MNF will be easier to watch this year – actually easier to listen to – because Joe Theismann is out of the booth. Now, if ESPN can only stifle its innate need to promote anything and everything in the “World of Disney” and keep the C-List celebrities out of the booth for most of the second quarter of the games …

Finally, a note from Greg Cote in the Miami Herald:

“An 81-year old woman pleaded guilty of trying to extort $2 million from former Packers quarterback Bart Starr by threatening to reveal their mid-1950s affair. The woman could have saved herself the possible jail time by understanding that nobody on Earth cares what Bart Starr did 50 years ago.”

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

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My long-suffering wife and I are off to Ann Arbor, Michigan early tomorrow morning. There we will assist #1 son - - and his very pregnant wife - - move into their new abode in Ann Arbor.

I’ll be back and on the air again on the 20th or 21st of August. Please check back then…

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