The Sports Curmudgeon®

I will be traveling to the home of one of the Autumnal Pilgrims to Las Vegas to watch the Super Bowl Game on Sunday. Presumably some of the other pilgrims will also be there. Since that venue requires a drive of several hours for us to get home, I will likely not be here to write anything on Monday unless it is very late in the day.

My best guess is that I will be back on the air on Tuesday, 3 Feb.

Stay well.

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Please keep yourselves under control. This will be the final Mythical Picks of the football season. Despite the amazing lack of success in these picks, there is no reason for you to be so obvious in your glee that these have come to an end. Not to worry, there is a heaping dose of schadenfreude coming soon to these parts. I have not gone back to look at my pre-season NFL analysis since I wrote it back in August but I remember enough of my selections to know that the grades I give myself on the “post-mortem analysis” will not be good ones. I will probably do that sometime next week.

Two weeks ago, the Over/Under picks went 1-1. That brought the playoff record for Over/Under picks to 4-6 and it brought the season total to 51-65-2. If that record were a person, that person would have been voted in high school as the classmate most likely to be studied at the Paleontological Institute of Ugly Creatures.

Two weeks ago, the Against the Spread picks also went 1-1. That brought the playoff record for ATS picks to 5-5 and it brought the season total to 86-85-7. Of course, that would not be a profitable record accounting for “the vig”; but if you are looking for a “glass half full” interpretation, there is no way I can finish under .500 for the season here.

Time for the mandatory disclaimer. Do not use any information here as part of whatever decision process you use should you decide to make a real wager on the Super Bowl game. Look at the numbers above; why would you believe any of my analyses based on those numbers? Anyone who is stupid enough to think that I have some inside info on this game probably also thinks that the Super Bowl is a self-cleaning toilet.

General Comments:

Last Monday, I wrote about the NFL and said I was going to try to make it through the week without mentioning the NFL or the Super Bowl one time until these Mythical Picks. I was not sure I could do that given that the sports news of the week has been so dominated by Super Bowl “stuff”. Well, I actually made it through the week on that pledge and so now, I will focus on NFL “stuff” exclusively.

Even though the Dallas Cowboys folded up like a pair of pantyhose in December and missed the playoffs completely, news about the Cowboys continues to flood the media. In the past week, we learned that Michael Irvin will produce and star in a Survivor-like TV show next summer where NFL aspirants will compete for a spot on the Cowboys’ training camp roster. Jerry Jones will be one of the judges on the program. I’ll bet the Cowboys’ coaching staff cannot wait to inherit some guy from a made-for-TV special show who arrives with the endorsement of Jerry Jones in his team role as “owner” and “general manager” and “overall buttinsky”.

Memo to Michael Irvin: Get Vince Papale to be one of your judges. He might actually know something about your premise here. Google is your friend, Michael.

Not to be outdone by the silliness of this announcement, Terrell Owens will also be involved in a reality TV program over the summer on VH-1. As I understand it, the focus of this program will be for people to get to know Terrell Owens in his personal life; as you might guess, I will certainly not be a regular viewer. Nevertheless, I do have a philosophical question to pose here:

How can someone whose behaviors so often suggest that he is woefully out of touch with the real world be the focus of something that pretends to be “reality” television?

Sunday will be the tenth Super Bowl since the turn of the millennium. [All of you geeks who continue to insist that the millennium didn’t really begin until 2001 need to take your slide rules and do something very unpleasant with them.] In those ten Super Bowls, there will have been six teams that have played in the Super Bowl for the first time:

Tennessee (2000)
Baltimore (2001)
Tampa Bay (2003)
Carolina (2004)
Seattle (2006)
Arizona (2009).

Please note that two of these first-time participants were Super Bowl winners (Baltimore and Tampa Bay) so the idea that a team needs to “learn how to handle the pressure of the Super Bowl” in order to win it might be a bit overblown.

The Cardinals’ franchise is the one with the longest drought between championships – ignoring of course teams like Houston that have never won a championship. The Cards last won in 1947. If – I said IF – the Cardinals were to win on Sunday, then the team with the longest drought would be [drum roll please]:

The Detroit Lions who have not won a championship since 1957.

The Cardinals are not the first team to arrive in the Super Bowl with 7 losses on their record for the season. The Rams also did that in 1979 when the Rams put together a string of playoff upsets to arrive in the “Big Game”. Interestingly, the Rams’ opponents in that game were the Pittsburgh Steelers. If you see this as a sign of fundamental symmetry in the universe, you will also recognize that the Steelers won that game.

As did the Rams in 1979, the Cardinals won the NFC West with this mediocre record because the other three teams in that division were either brutally awful or hugely underachieving - - or both. The Cardinals have been in Arizona since 1988 and this is only their second winning season in that venue; they were also 9-7 in the 1998 season.

Interestingly, the Cardinals did not want to be “realigned” into the NFC West when the NFL did its reshuffling in 2002. Since moving to Arizona, the biggest crowds that the Cardinals ever had were when the Dallas Cowboys came to town; and, truth be told, the number of people in blue garb usually outnumbered the ones in red garb. The Cardinals wanted to be in the same division with the Cowboys to preserve these big days at the gate.

Paul Tagliabue took all of that under advisement and then sent the Cardinals to the NFC West and kept the Cowboys in the NFC East and time marched forward. Here we are in 2009 and since that realignment event, here are some immutable facts:

1. The Cowboys have not won a single playoff game. In fact, the last time the Cowboys won a playoff game was in 1996.

2. The Cardinals have won 3 playoff games this year and a conference championship and are in the Super Bowl. In fact, the Cardinals have won 4 playoff games since the Cowboys last won one and the Cardinals might add a fifth victory this weekend.

3. The Cardinals 3 playoff victories in January 2009 are more than the total number of playoff victories for the franchise prior to this season. They won one game in 1947 and another in 1998. That’s it; that’s the list.

The Cardinals would not be the first team to win a championship having only won 9 games in the regular season either. The Green Bay Packers were 9-4-1 in 1967 and they won the Super Bowl that year.

Quick Quiz: (Answers provided a few paragraphs below)

1. Name the only two coaches in NFL history to win at least one game in five consecutive post-seasons. [Hint: Vince Lombardi is NOT one of them.]

2. What was the #1 NFL player jersey in terms of sales last year on NFLShop.com? [Hint: I am not surprised it was in the Top Ten but I would never have identified it as #1.]

When you hear announcers/analysts heaping praise on the two coaching staffs on Sunday, please keep in mind this note from Bob Connolly of the Bronx Times Reporter:

“One thing that has always impressed me is that some teams are able to make adjustments to their game plans during half-time intermission to counteract their opponent’s offensive and defensive strategies and usually wind up doing pretty well. The fact that their own game plan wasn’t carved in stone shows that those coaches weren’t too stubborn to see that something wasn’t working and could be improved.”

Professor Connolly is absolutely correct. Success comes from superior strategic planning mixed with superior tactical adjustments to meet the situation at hand. If you do not understand the fundamental difference between strategy and tactics, consider that an officer who had never seen the terrain over and into which the brigade would charge ordered the Charge of the Light Brigade. The result was not pretty…

Answers to Quick Quiz above:

1. John Madden won post-season games from 1973 through 1977 and Mike Holmgren won post-season games from 1993 through 1997.

2. The largest selling NFL jersey was Brett Favre’s NY Jets jersey.

Since this is the Super Bowl, there a bazillion proposition bets out there - - most of which are outrageously silly such as:

Over/Under 1 minute 54 seconds for the singing of the National Anthem.

Over/Under 42.5 for the United States TV rating according to Neilson.

Color of the liquid dumped on the winning coach at the end of the game.

Number of planes in the pregame flyover.

Over/Under 7.5 for number of times announcers refer to “Big Ben”.

Actually, the prop bet that might be interesting – and would surely have long odds – would be this one:

Will John Madden vote to make Brett Favre the Super Bowl MVP on Sunday?

The Game:

Pittsburgh – 7 vs. Arizona (47):

When you think of Super Bowl champions of the past, many folks recall the dominant teams of the past such as the Steelers of the 70s and the 49ers of the 80s and the Cowboys of the early 90s. Those were teams that were very good on offense and on defense. So people have tended to dismiss the Cardinals from consideration here because their defense was anything but “super” for the entirety of the NFL season. Remember that the Cardinals finished 28th in the NFL in scoring defense this year. However, please also recall the Indy Colts’ championship season. The Colts were an offensive team with a horrible defense - - until the playoffs when the defense played significantly better than it had for the whole season. That is sort of what is happening with Arizona now.

The Cardinals finished 2nd in the NFL in passing and they had their QB and both of their WRs named to the Pro Bowl. They won their games by outscoring opponents.

The Pittsburgh Steelers are almost a mirror image to the Cardinals. The Steelers’ defense allowed the fewest yards and the fewest points for the season. Oh, by the way, they Steelers defense also led the NFL in pass defense too. The Steelers also have three members of their defensive unit prominently on display as Pro Bowl players, James Harrison (merely the Defensive Player of the Year), James Farrior and Troy Polamalu. The Steelers won their games by preventing the opponent from scoring much at all.

I think this line is fat. Therefore, I will take the Cardinals with the points.

I think the Steelers’ defense is too good to let this game get into the 50s and I think the Cardinals’ defense is good enough to keep the game from getting into the 50s. I will also take the game UNDER.

Then again, look at my season record and ask yourself,

“What the Hell does he know?”

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

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Even though I love watching college basketball, I have said more than once that the game is hugely overexposed on TV. Even without any “special packages” on my cable system, I can, on any given night, see way too many games involving teams that aspire to be interesting. Nevertheless, every once in a while the large number of games on a specific night seems to exist only to prepare me for tournament time when I need to try to focus on multiple games at one time.

Last night Duke/Wake Forest was on one channel while Villanova/Pitt was on another channel. Four good teams; two major conferences; two very competitive games; both happening at the same time. The “Recall” button on my remote definitely got a workout last evening.

At the moment, Marquette leads the Big East Conference with a 7-0 league record (18-2 overall). I have seen Marquette twice and they are a good team to be sure. However, before fans in Milwaukee focus on a #1 seed in the NCAA tournament in March, they need to focus on the Marquette schedule at the end of the season. The last five conference games for Marquette - - this is prior to the Big East Tournament where more tough games await - - are:

At Georgetown
UConn
At Louisville
At Pitt
Syracuse.

Those five games in tandem are more than a mere speed bump.

You may recall that the NCAA once got its knickers in a knot when two teams agreed to play a game at an arena associated with a gambling casino in Connecticut. The game was not going to be in the casino but it would be on the same property as the casino and the NCAA thought that was getting these players far too close to “gamblers” and “gambling”. Well, maybe the NCAA has begun to accept the existence of gambling or maybe the NCAA has found out that there is money to be made by staging games at casinos because - - the West Coast Conference will hold their conference basketball tournament this year in Las Vegas at the Orleans Arena. This is the first casino venue to host a collegiate championship tournament. In the past, the Orleans Arena has been the site of the Las Vegas Invitational.

Here is the giant step that the NCAA has taken in acceding to this scheduling. Not only is this a casino where – are you sitting down? – people are playing slot machines and blackjack and poker and roulette but this is also a casino where there is a – gasp! – sportsbook. These young, impressionable, and vulnerable scholar-athletes will possibly be in the same room with folks who will be “getting down” on the game. Catholic colleges dominate the West Coast Conference; I certainly hope that the faculty and administrators there have been praying the rosary as intercessory prayer for these scholar-athletes in light of the dangers these young men will face.

Serena Williams evidently beat Andy Roddick in a one-set tennis match once upon a time; and obviously, she likes to remind him and others about that fact. Based on Roddick’s explanation of the circumstances of the match to reporters at the Australian Open, you can probably figure out that these two have a camaraderie more than a rivalry:

“She forgets to mention that I was 10 years old, and she was 11, back when we were training together in Florida. When I was 10, I literally had to run around in the shower to get wet. She was already bench-pressing dump trucks at that time.”

Back in the Fall, a judge in Kentucky upheld the seizure of the domain names of more than 100 gambling sites by the Commonwealth of Kentucky. The governor ordered this seizure on the theory that the domain names of these online gambling sites were “gaming devices” making them illegal in Kentucky and subject to seizure. I wrote at the time that this seemed stupid and hypocritical at the same time. It was stupid because Kentucky also has a state lottery and somehow the lottery tickets were not deemed to be “gaming devices” by the governor. It was hypocritical because the domain names of the horseracing enterprises in Kentucky - - which engage in online gambling - - were not seized. It was hypocritical-squared because this governor of Kentucky is on record in favor of establishing casinos in Kentucky and how a casino might operate without “gaming devices” would be a mystery yet to be explained.

Recently, an appeals court in Kentucky reversed that judge’s ruling. In a 2-1 vote (a split decision notice) , the appeals court found that a domain name is not a gaming device (seemed obvious to me from the start) and that if domain names are to be considered gaming devices the state legislature will have to pass an addendum to the law specifically defining domain names as such. Here is a rather clear statement from the court’s opinion on the matter:

“…it stretches credulity to conclude that a series of numbers, or Internet address, can be said to constitute a ‘machine or any mechanical or other device…designed and manufactured primarily for use in connection with gambling.’ We are thus convinced that the trial court clearly erred in concluding that the domain names can be construed to be gambling devices.”

Since I have mentioned gambling a couple of times today, here is a comment from Greg Cote in the Miami Herald related to horseracing in south Florida:

“Gulfstream Park has opened its 66th season of racing. Reportedly there are more parking spaces and entrances to accommodate the 328 really old people who still go to the track.”

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

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A month ago, when the Oklahoma City Thunder had a record of 2-22, you had to wonder if they just might challenge the Sixers’ record for futility in a season. They will not; they have already won 10 games for the year and the Sixers only won 9 games for the entirety of the 1972/73 season. However, very quietly, the Thunder no longer has the worst record in the NBA; if you go and look at the standings this morning you will see that the Washington Wizards are now 9-35 while the Thunder’s record stands at 10-35.

Some of you may be wondering, how can the Wizards be so bad? After all, they have two All-Stars on the team even though Gilbert Arenas is injured yet again this year. The answer to that is very simple; the Wizards play next to no defense; they live and die with jump shooting and they are just not fast enough to play NBA basketball at breakneck speed. Ergo…

I do not know if the Wizards still have this ticket plan, but there was a time when for about $300-350 a game, you could actually sit on the Wizards’ bench for a game. If they still do that, I am not sure that some of the fans who might buy those tickets would not be similarly ineffective if the team had to throw them into the game for some emergency duty.

By the way, attendance for the Wizards is cratering. On those nights when the Wizards play at the Verizon Center, you can go downtown and get tables at restaurants near the arena and even parking without a lot of problems. However, when the Capitals play hockey in the same arena, the place is full and the businesses around the Verizon Center are crowded.

I wonder how much longer it will take before Wizards attendance drops down into “WNBA territory”. Given the economic situation, shelling out $65-95 for a decent seat and $13 for a hot dog and a beer to see a bad team play lackadaisical basketball may become a true luxury item for individuals. Moreover, if you are talking about taking a family of four out to a game, the tab can easily head north of $500.

Now that the Dallas Mavericks are no longer at the top of the NBA West – indeed, they are in eighth place in the NBA West – have you noticed how few and far between are the reports of words of wisdom dropping from the lips of Mark Cuban? I have; and to tell the truth, I don’t miss Cuban’s pontifications much more than I miss David Stern doing his Sultan of Smug act at press conferences.

All of a sudden, Shaq has rediscovered how to shoot free throws; he made 12 in a row over a couple of games a week or so ago and recently shot 9-10 in a single game. That somehow has found its way onto SportsCenter as a news item worthy of close scrutiny. Whatever.

I wondered who the worst free throw shooter in the league was at the moment – not counting some guy who is 1-4 for the season so far. I think it is Kwame Brown of the Detroit Pistons; I could not find anyone who had actually tried more than a handful of free throws who was worse than 22-54 (40.7%).

I have written about the economic problems facing various sports; but when you look at the NBA, things have the potential for a significant decline. The NBA has until December 2010 to decide whether it will extend the current collective bargaining agreement through the 2011/12 season. If it does not exercise that option, that CBA will expire in June 2011. Absent a huge turnaround in the economy, that will generate a near toxic environment for the negotiations because owners will be looking to cut salaries significantly.

Recall that the NBA went through a lockout back in the late 1990s and had to scramble to cobble together a “half-season” that was sufficiently credible that playoffs could go on without people smirking. That could happen again and in bad economic times, the NBA does not need to be one of the “out-of-sight/out-of-mind” sports entities.

I remember the lockout of the late 90s and I remember when teams came back that the arenas were usually about half-empty and people bore a lot of resentment toward players who made mega millions of dollars to play a game that most fans played as kids on the playground. Of course, it was the owners themselves who agreed to pay those exorbitant contracts that generated the resentment toward the players but all that came during times when the economy was strong and the dot-com bubble was still inflating. In bad economic times, that could be an ugly scene while the strike/lockout is ongoing and when the teams eventually come back to play.

Just to keep you current on scientific news, a NASA probe to the planet Mars recently detected a massive current eruption of methane gas on the planet. Scientists see this as evidence of geologic activity and it provides proof that methane – the most basic organic chemical of them all – is there on the planet along with traces of water leading to speculation about possible life forms on Mars.

On the other hand, it could be that John Daly’s rehab venue is on Mars and that might explain the probe’s observation…

Finally, here is an observation from Greg Cote in the Miami Herald:

“A Russian sumo wrestler banned for life from competing in Japan after a marijuana charge is suing for reinstatement. Hmmm. A pot smoking sumo wrestler? Great. Just what a guy that size needs. The munchies.”

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

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One week from today is the 50th anniversary of “The Day The Music Died”. Prepare yourselves to recall the names Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, The Big Bopper (the decedents) and Don McLean (the chronicler). Remember the song That’ll Be The Day?

By now, you must have heard about the Texas girls’ high school basketball game about two weeks ago that ended with a score of 100-0. The headmaster of the winning school apologized for the score; the coach of the winning school took exception to the apology by the headmaster and said that his girls played the game the way it was supposed to be played. The coach of that team has since been fired by the school over his comments about the apology offered by the school administration. I have no interest in trying to assess whether or not the school took a correct course of action in firing its coach; that is a decision that the school can – and properly should – make on its own.

The losing school in this game, Dallas Academy, engages in educating children with “learning differences”. That is their terminology; I intend no snarkiness here. The school’s girls’ basketball team has not won a game in the last four years. None of the losses has come close to the 100-0 debacle of a couple of weeks ago, but they are reportedly winless for four years.

I am a strong proponent of athletics in schools; team sports in particular teach valuable life lessons to participants about achievement in group settings. Nonetheless, the folks who run Dallas Academy really do need to think about what might be the “learning experiences” that their students with “learning differences” might take from four seasons of winless endeavors. It would seem to me as if “futility” is not one of the things that Dallas Academy wants to instill in its students as an experience that necessarily comes with life.

Last week, New Jersey Institute of Technology broke a 51-game losing streak. The Mercy College Mavericks – in NYC – are looking for a way to win a game this year. As of this morning, the Mavericks are 0-17 on the season and some of their losses have been truly ugly. They have lost by 62 points and by 59 points and by 44 points this season. Their closest game was a 6-point loss a week ago. They have scored more than 60 points six times all season long and only once have they scored 70 in a game; on the other hand, they have given up more than 80 points nine times and more than 100 points 3 times. Mercy College appears poised to set a futility standard for the 2008/09 basketball season.

In case you missed this news, Mark McGwire’s brother, Jay McGwire, is seeking a publisher for a “tell-all book”. Reports are that Jay McGwire – a former bodybuilder – will refute José Canseco’s allegations that Canseco was injecting Mark McGwire with steroids as early as the late-1980s. According to reports, Jay McGwire says this is not correct because it was he, Jay, who introduced Mark McGwire to steroids in the early-1990s and that Mark McGwire was a steroid user in that time frame based on Jay McGwire’s opening that vista for him. The working title for this book is: The McGwire Family Secret: The Truth About Steroids, a Slugger and Ultimate Redemption.

Forget the pretentiousness of the title. Ask yourself this question:

Would you be able to cut the atmosphere at the McGwire Family Reunion Picnic next summer with a knife? Or, would you need a fire axe?

It looks as if the Tribune Company has found a buyer for the Chicago Cubs and Wrigley Field. The price tag is reported to be $900M. It was less than two years ago when one of the financial mags estimated the value of the Cubs and Wrigley Field at $1.3 - 1.4B. So with all the delays and falderal, it seems as if the Tribune Company in its bankruptcy status found a way to get about $400M less for one of its assets than it could have had a year ago. You know when you lose out on a hundred million dollars here and another hundred million dollars there, pretty soon, that adds up to real money…

Frankly, I do not understand the financial merit of the deal as it exists now. I have asked several people to help me out with it but no one has explained it to me in terms simple enough for me to understand. Let us review the bidding:

Cost of Cubs + Wrigley Field = $900M

Renovations to Wrigley = $250M (estimate by current CEO of Cubbies)

Total cost of acquisition = $1.15B

Cubs’ Payroll = $140M

Cost to operate team = $160M (estimate)

If the new owners want to realize a profit of 5% on their investment, that means they need to make a profit of $57.5M over and above the cost to operate the Cubs annually. That means revenues have to be $217.5M and I just do not see where they are coming from. Remember, the TV rights have already been sold to one of the local broadcasters for the next several years. Oh, and I have not considered any tax that the new owners might have to pay on their profits from running the team either.

If the Cubs sold out every game at home – they should come close to doing that – they would draw 3.25M fans. As someone pointed out to me, if the average ticket cost $50, that would bring $162M through the turnstiles. While that is a nice chunk of change, it does not tell me where the other $55M or so is going to come from. Oh, by the way, for the majority of games next year, the average price of a seat is not $50; so Cubs’ fans should be ready for a significant rise in ticket prices in the 2009/10 season.

Finally, here is a comment from Greg Cote in the Miami Herald about a small market baseball team and its expenditures:

“The penny-pinching Marlins have been active in free agency as well, signing [note to self: look up name of that journeyman middle reliever] and securing future rights to a bucket of sunflower seeds.”

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

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This week will take Super Bowl commentary and coverage to astronomical heights. I want to make a few meager comments and then my plan is to ignore the Super Bowl and NFL “stuff” for the rest of the week until I make my Mythical Picks for the game on Friday. [That is my plan; I don’t know if I can achieve that goal.] And do not try to talk me out of making those Mythical Picks; I am doing them no matter what you say…

Dwight Perry of the Seattle Times foreshadowed this year’s Super Bowl coverage:

“Don’t think the Cardinals will dominate the two-week Super Bowl hype? The Steelers have just been installed as 13 ½-word underdogs.”

In case you are concerned about those poor folks on TV who have all that time to fill with blather – think of the stress and strain on the larynxes, oh, the horror of it all – rest assured that NBC has called in reinforcements. For the playoffs, they brought us Matt Millen as an added voice; for the Super Bowl they have signed Tony Dungy and Mike Holmgren to hand out vowels and consonants as others take a break. For those viewers hoping for a little comic relief, I have bad news. Richie Kotite has not been signed to an on-air speaking role…

Every once in a while you hear about the journalistic axiom that the reporter should never be part of the story; he/she needs to report the story. Please keep this in mind on Media Day later this week. Remember last year when one of the reporters of the female persuasion showed up in a wedding gown and asked Tom Brady if he would marry her? So what will someone do this year to draw attention to him/herself? I have a sure-fire way for some reporter to become the center of attention on Media Day simply by the clothing he or she wears to the event:

Wear a Detroit Lions uniform!

Greg Cote of the Miami Herald attended last year’s Super Bowl Media Party. In the haze that followed that event, he arrived at an interesting realization that he expressed in mathematical form:

“Overweight sportswriters + Unlimited free booze + Mechanical Bull = Bad Idea”

NBC asked for $3M per 30-second ad slot for this game. As early as May 2008, NBC claimed to have sold “more than 75% of the inventory”. In early September, NBC said that more than 85% of the time slots were gone and the network hinted that they were going to raise prices as the game drew closer not reduce them. Then the stock market crashed and so forth…

According to a recent report, NBC has sold all but about five of the time slots for next Sunday and that there is increased interest from fast food vendors this year. The expectation is that all of the time-slots will be sold and none will need to be given over to public service spots.

Some data presented in a column by Barry Horn of the Dallas Morning News explains why Super Bowl ads are still a hot commodity even in a slumping economy. The average NFL playoff game this year – there have been ten of them – drew 29.9 million viewers. For perspective, telecasts of the Olympics drew 29.7 million viewers (in the US), the NBA Finals last year drew 9.3 million viewers and the World Series drew 8.4 million viewers. Ad rates and the willingness of ad execs to pay huge fees for time slots correlates with the number of people out there who may be paying attention to the ads’ messages. The NFL in general and the Super Bowl in particular deliver the eyeballs here.

Nonetheless, companies are cutting back and even bowing out of ads for the game. General Motors will not run any ads during the game; many of the “dot-coms” that had survived the dot-com ad blitzes of 5 years ago will also be cutting back. There has been no word of a Danica Patrick ad for this year that had to be edited to become acceptable for TV but which could be viewed in its original/uncut form on the company’s website. That had become a staple of the ramp-up to a Super Bowl. Do you remember last year’s ad when Ms. Patrick made an ad with a beaver? It did little to advance Western Civilization.

Supposedly, Troy Polamalu has done an ad for Coca Cola that reprises the ultra-famous Coke ad from the 1970s where a kid offered Mean Joe Greene a Coke and Mean Joe tossed his jersey to the kid as a souvenir. Coke has done many good ads over the years but that one was probably its best one.

A negative economic note comes from ticket prices for the Super Bowl game itself. According to Reuters, the secondary market for tickets – those being resold to anyone who wants them – is down 38%. No, they did not explain how they measured that drop so I have no idea as to the validity of the number; however, if they say it is down 38%, I think it is safe to assume that resold tix are available at lower prices than in previous years.

I did my own hugely unscientific check on this matter. I went to Stub Hub as a representative site for reselling tickets and browsed through what they had for sale. I saw more than a few “single tickets” there where the asking price was the face value of the ticket. Just that fact tells me that the number of people who “have to be there for the game no matter the cost” is down from previous years.

Actually, this “softness” in the resale market for tickets fits in with the NFL’s desires. When the league announced months ago that it would lower ticket prices for the game due to economic constraints, Roger Goodell stressed that he hoped this did not turn into a bonanza for the ticket resellers. He said that the league would try its best to sell tickets to people in the general public who really wanted to go to the game and not to “cash in” on their good fortune in having tickets.

Finally, Steve Rosenbloom of the Chicago Tribune writes the Rosenblog on the Trib’s website. Here is his disaster scenario for the outcome of the Super Bowl from a Chicago fan’s perspective:

“We just saw an African-American man become president of the United States, and now the dogbreath Cardinals could win the Super Bowl before the Cubs win a World Series. Dante will have to add another circle of Hell.”

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

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The men’s basketball team of the New Jersey Institute of Technology broke its 51 game losing streak this week. The Highlanders defeated the Bulldogs of Bryant University 61-51. [Was it karma that set the score for the Bryant team at 51 points when that broke a 51 game losing streak? Only The Shadow knows…] Prior to this win, the last time NJIT won a basketball game was in February 2007 when they defeated the Lancers of Longwood College. Congratulations to NJIT.

Ole Miss Basketball coach, Andy Kennedy, has been embroiled in a controversy with a Cincinnati cabdriver for about a month now. The cabbie claims that Kennedy assaulted him and the cabbie has sued; Kennedy claims defamation of character based on a false accusation and Kennedy has counter-sued. Obviously, I have no insight into what did or did not happen in or around that cab in Cincinnati, but I think it is clear that there will be a need for some sort of mediation/arbitration in this matter.

However, based on a recent report, this case has taken on a tinge that is uncommon in such “he said/he said situations”. Reports say that Andy Kennedy’s wife, Kimber Kennedy, has also filed a suit against the cabbie and a witness in the matter who must support the cabbie’s version of the events claiming that as a result of their accusations and lawsuit, she has suffered “lack of consortium” with Andy Kennedy. Translation: I’m not going there. Regardless of the merits of her case and stipulating that a cornucopia of consortium beats the bejeepers out of lack of consortium, her allegations fall squarely into the category of Too — Much — Information.

Mike Krzyzewski got into a verbal spat with one of the local papers saying that the Blue Devils were not getting sufficient local coverage once they climbed to #2 in the country in the polls over other local teams such as NC State and UNC. Try to put aside the cognitive dissonance that comes with the juxtaposition of the words “Duke basketball” and “insufficient coverage” and focus on a larger issue. Who really cares who is #1 or #2 in the polls in mid-January?

What really matters is who is #1 at the end of the NCAA basketball tournament on the first Monday of April. Since that is what really matters, one might then conclude that poll rankings are important because they correlate to the ultimate winner of the tournament. One might conclude that and one would be wrong. Only once in this millennium has the team ranked #1 entering the tournament in March been the ultimate winner. [That was Duke in ’01.] Other than that, teams ranked #1 late in the year have managed to lose out as national champions. So, who is #1 and who is #2 in the polls in mid-January is sufficiently unimportant as to extend into the realm of the uninteresting.

I have a question regarding baseball’s Hot Stove League transactions:

If Derek Lowe was the third-best free agent pitcher available this winter (behind Sabathia and Burnett), why did his most recent team, the Dodgers, evince no interest in signing him?

As a follow-up question, why did it take until January for a team to sign him?

Did you happen to tune in to watch all or part of the NHL Winter Classic on New Year’s Day? The results are in and that game – played in Wrigley Field – drew the largest TV audience for an NHL hockey game since 1974. I can picture the euphoria in the NHL executive suites when this news arrived and the flurry of activity there to figure out how to play more games outdoors to attract a wider audience to hockey. And then I can picture the execs realizing that outdoor NHL games in Phoenix and Tampa and Miami and LA just aren’t going to work…

The following item is from the column Morning Bytes by Frank Fitzpatrick of the Philadelphia Inquirer. I believe the item stands on its own requiring no commentary:

“NASCAR note of the week: If the idea of a NASCAR dating site weren’t frightening enough, consider some of the posters. Here’s one enticing come-on I found on NASCARMatch.com from a 29-year-old woman in Denver named Belinda:

“ ‘Hello peopel I will like to meet poepel and share ideas for a relationship.’

“I will like to share this, Belinda: Poepel who need peopel are the luckiest popele in the world.”

ESPN decided to drop MLS from ESPN2 as a regular Thursday night scheduled event. ESPN2 will continue to carry a game of the week but that coverage will move around on the weekly schedule. ESPN and MLS say this will allow for more interesting games to be on the air; they say this is a form of “flex-scheduling” which has worked well for the NFL. [Aside: ESPN has no recent experience with flex scheduling of NFL games since MNF games are involved in any potential “flexing”.] ESPN said it had hoped to see a “ratings climb” for MLS games on Thursday night but it had not happened. In fact, ratings started out in the anemic range and then dropped to just above infomercial range.

The good news for MLS is that they continue to receive the $8M a year that ESPN pays them for broadcast rights. More good news is that by having time flexibility, MLS and ESPN can focus on a few of the teams in an attempt to try to make those teams generate a larger following. The bad news for MLS is that this is yet another concrete example of the failure of the “David Beckham Grand Experiment”.

Finally, since I mentioned the NCAA basketball tournament above, here is an item from Dwight Perry in the Seattle Times:

“The karaoke machine was declared history’s most annoying invention in a government survey of 2,500, the London Telegraph reported.

“If the Brits ever had to listen to Billy Packer, you have to assume, it would’ve been the microphone.”

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

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Devil’s Island was an infamous penal colony back in the early part of the 20th century; it was an island of exile off the coast of French Guiana; it was a place of horrible torture and forced labor for political exiles for more than 50 years. Today, in 2008, policy wonks in Washington are considering options for closing down Guantanamo as a holding place for suspected terrorists and I have an idea what they can do with Guantanamo once they get the suspected terrorists out of there and on to some other venue.

Guantanamo can become an isolation station for sporting figures that we need not hear from or about ever again. For many of them, their form of “torture” will be that they will forever be “non-persons”; they will have no media attention; no one will care what they think, say or do. Contemplate the peace and quiet – and the public safety may I add – that might ensue from such an idyllic state of affairs…

First, we need a name for this isolation station. Let me suggest Paradise – For The Rest Of Us (P-FTROU) - - “the rest of us” being humankind who do not need any continuation of the assault on our sensibilities by the miscreants and attention whores in the sporting world. And who might be primary candidates for a one-way trip to Paradise For The Rest Of Us?

Let me start with any and all of the people who have votes for the baseball Hall of Fame who refuse to vote for any player in his first year of eligibility solely to preserve the useless continuation of a tradition that no one is a unanimous inductee. We have heard from these folks for about 70 years now; it’s time to banish them.

While we are thinking about voters who use their voting privilege to further a narrow end instead of the common good, we can round up all of the Heisman voters who refused to vote for Tim Tebow in the top three slots on their ballot this year in order that a candidate from a conference closer to them geographically would win the award. Merely disenfranchising these folks is insufficient; get them out of here.

Another class of people who can begin boarding the plane to Guantanamo is franchise owner who continuously signs anti-social miscreants to new contracts so that these miscreants can continue to afford to be threats to society or huge annoyances to the rest of us. Jerry Jones would be the first of this class or people to find himself in P-FTROU; any owner who signs Michael Vick would wind up there 8 hours after the ink was dry on the new contract.

Isiah Thomas should go too. Since he ended his playing career, he has failed as an executive in Toronto, driven the CBA into bankruptcy, horribly mismanaged the NY Knicks, coached the Knicks poorly, enabled anti-social behaviors on the part of Knicks’ players and was found guilty of sexual harassment. Does anyone really need to hear more from or about him? I do not.

Stephon Marbury belongs there too. Can anyone suggest to me what decrement might accrue to civilization if Stephon Marbury lived out his days in isolation? I didn’t think so.

Pacman Jones - - no further words needed here…

John Daly could go there to dry out – or not as he might prefer. Once he is in P-FTROU, he can eat and/or drink himself to death - - or not - - because none of that will matter to any of us anymore.

Tonya Harding would likely require sedation to go there because there will be no limelight there for her to find her way into. And once she is there proximal to John Daly, the guards will need to be particularly vigilant lest the two of them produce a spawn. Even chlorine might not be sufficient to cleanse that portion of the gene pool.

Fay Vincent belongs in P-FTROU. Imagine never having to hear his predictably sanctimonious criticism of MLB on any issue at all. If Bud Selig and his boys found a cure for cancer, Fay Vincent would surely have done it a different way. We have heard his “act”; he is a one-trick pony; he can talk to himself and the other banished folks all he wants at P-FTROU and they will not mind because they will not listen to him.

Brett Favre would be a conditional exile. He should be ordered to make a decision on whether or not he will retire from the NFL sometime in the next two weeks. He should then announce that decision and stick to it – no matter which avenue he chooses to walk down. Additionally, he must stick to that decision in silence because the first time he leaks a story that he might change his mind, he will be sent to P-FTROU faster than the “beam-me-up-Scotty-machine” would get him there. Oh, and if his agent floats that story about “Brett changing his mind”, then the agent gets banished too…

David Beckham needs to head on down to P-FTROU. He came to the US to save US soccer. That didn’t work; and once he found that every time he blew his nose it was not tabloid headline news here, he had to find a way to go somewhere else. Frankly, I don’t care if his wife goes with him or not but she seems awfully “attention-needy” to me…

Lance Armstrong would spend the rest of his days in P-FTROU were it my decision. I don’t read minds so I don’t know for sure, but his comeback to competitive cycling seems far more the work of an attention whore than the drive of a born competitor who cannot live outside “the arena”. From my perspective, he has worn out his welcome in the real world and needs to go into isolation.

Let me posit a world where you might never have to hear another word about Mike Tyson, Don King, David Stern, Gary Bettman, the commissioner of the WNBA [If you can name this person, you are definitely in the minority.], Terrell Owens, Plaxico Burress, Roger Clemens, Kelvin Sampson, Latrell Spreewell, Yammering Hank Steinbrenner, Jaques Rogge or – hold onto your hats here – Michael Phelps. Now wouldn’t that be a kinder and gentler world for you?

I can hear you saying that it will never happen. Well, I doubt that it would ever occur to those policy wonks in Washington who are trying to figure out what to do about closing down the detention facility in Guantanamo; but here is the kicker for our new President as he thinks on this matter.

He can also use Guantanamo – reincarnated as P-FTROU – as a place to put all of the people who use the BCS as a means to obstruct the creation of a college football playoff. This is how he can “throw his weight around”; get those people out of the picture and ensconced at Guantanamo until the forces of logic and good will have instituted a college football tournament/playoff. Then the President can use his pardon powers to give them the chance to repent and to return to the world as supporters of “change we can live with” or to continue to reside in P-FTROU. The rest of us can live with that…

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

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Late January is the time of year for Super Bowl hype, college basketball news, the anticipation of pitchers and catchers reporting to Spring Training and … Oscar nominations. I am not a big movie guy so I won’t pretend to be into any of that kind of stuff. But before all the nominations are in and all the candidates are analyzed and lionized, may I offer one very simple suggestion…

The Best Performance by a Supporting Actress award really need not be pondered this year. That award was sewed up last summer in Denver, Colorado when Hillary Clinton stood up in front of the Democratic National Convention and gave a speech in which she said that Barack Obama was the best person to lead America forward. She didn’t laugh; she didn’t spit; she didn’t sneer. Not even one time during the whole speech. That’s why it was the Best Performance by a Supporting Actress in 2008.

As I watched the Ravens/Steelers game draw to an end on Sunday night, I flashed back to my youth and imagined Johnnie Addie striding out onto the field and reaching for a microphone hanging from a chord over his head and intoning:

“The winner - - by a technical knockout - - at 2 minutes and 37 seconds of the ninth round - - the Pittsburgh Steelers - - - Steelers.”

There are some folks who have suggested that the reason Jerry Jones did not fire Wade Phillips at the end of the season is because Jones is in a cash flow bind and it would be difficult for him to pay off Phillips and pay his successor too. These folks make the same argument with regard to Jason Garrett, the offensive coordinator in Dallas. I surely do not prepare Jerry Jones’ tax returns so I have exactly no way to know if any of that is correct; but in case it is, I have a suggestion as to how Jerry might resolve the Jason Garrett part of the problem:

1. Keep Garrett on board as a film analyzer/game plan developer/whatever. No change in cash outflow here.

2. On game day, have Terrell Owens call the plays in the huddle to assure that Owens gets the ball enough and that the Cowboys’ offensive resources are used to maximum efficiency. Clearly, Owens knows more about those things than anyone else does. No change in cash outflow here either.

I won’t even charge the Cowboys my consulting services rate for that analysis. No change in cash outflow here either.

Barring another “late firing” of a head coach, there have been ten head coaching openings in the NFL this year. Nine of the ten teams with open positions have filled them already; the Raiders are still looking for a head coach. In you mind, which of the following possibilities most likely explains the Raiders delay here?

1. Al Davis recently studied the Gospel of St. Matthew and believes that “the last shall be first”.

2. Al Davis is actually conducting the most thorough and professional search for a new coach of all the NFL teams.

3. Al Davis has not yet figured out exactly what he is doing/wants to do in this situation.

4. Al Davis has only found men who want to be “head-coach” and not merely “head-coach-in-name-only”.

With all of those vacancies out there and all the shuffling of coaching candidates going on, there are eight coaches with Super Bowl rings who might actually coach again out there in an unemployed status. In alphabetical order, they are Brian Billick, Bill Cowher, Tony Dungy, Joe Gibbs, Jon Gruden, Mike Holmgren, Bill Parcells and Mike Shanahan.

Yes, I know George Siefert and Dick Vermeil are out there too but I doubt that either of those men will coach again in the NFL.

Mike Martz is also out of work. As the architect of the Rams’ “Greatest Show on Turf”, he became an assistant coach labeled as a sure-fire-head-coaching candidate. In his stint with the Rams after Vermeil left, his teams were OK but never really threatened to win the Super Bowl again. However, in retrospect, his reputation was damaged more this season than by the miserable performances of the Lions under his tutelage after leaving the Rams. Recall that it was Mike Martz who declared that Kurt Warner was washed up/finished/yesterday’s news in St. Louis about 5 years ago and that Marc Bulger was the QB to return the Rams to glory. How’s that working out in St. Louis? I haven’t heard much about the Rams in connection with the playoffs much lately…

I have heard a lot of analysis regarding the resurgence of Donovan McNabb and the Eagles subsequent to McNabb’s benching at halftime of the Ravens game in November. Some have said that it refocused Donovan McNabb; others say it refocused Andy Reid. I have a different slant on that.

The Eagles are an “old team” at several key positions – two offensive tackles, safety, running back and quarterback. I don’t mean “old” in the sense that these folks can no longer play; just the opposite, these are key elements to any success the Eagles have enjoyed. Not all of them will be back with the Eagles next year due to expiring contracts. I believe that these “old” players took stock after the Ravens’ game and realized that if they were going to make the playoffs this year – probably their last year together and perhaps their last shot at the playoffs in the event they leave for some other team that does not put the pieces together very well – then they had to do two things:

1. They had to force themselves to be more productive at their positions.

2. They had to communicate the urgency of the moment to the other players on the team who might not have felt the same urgency because the others are younger and might not have expiring contracts.

If you couple those two things with the refocusing of Donovan McNabb and Andy Reid, you may explain how the Eagles turned their season around from a dismal 5-5-1 record and the inability to beat the Cincinnati Bengals into a playoff berth.

Finally, here is an item from Rock On, a weekly column written by Brad Rock in the Deseret Morning News:

“A hot item for the holidays this year was the 2009 ‘Women of Curling’ calendar.

“Although that may be out of stock, Rock On sources say there are still plenty of ‘Women of Ice Fishing,’ ‘Women of Lumberjacking’ and ‘Women of Greco-Roman Wrestling’ calendars available at a bookstore near you.”

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

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Back in the 1960s, one of the great animated TV shows was Rocky and Bullwinkle; if you are too young to have seen those shows, you missed a lot. One of the features on that show was Mr. Peabody (a dog) and his sidekick Sherman (a boy) who used a time-travel device called The Wayback Machine to go back in history and to observe what “really happened” surrounding historical events.

Today, I want to take a trip in The Wayback Machine – not to look at the trappings of history but to try to show how a wonderful work of fiction in the past can portend reality in the present. I am going to set our version of The Wayback Machine to 1972 when Dan Jenkins first published his novel, Semi-Tough. If you are a sports fan and you have not read this book, you really need to do so. [Warning: The language in Semi-Tough is incredibly politically incorrect by today’s standards; it was improper in polite company in the 1960s; I suspect it reflected the language of the locker-room in the 1960s rather well.] Dan Jenkins has been and continues to be an elite writer.

The premise of Semi-Tough is that one of the players on the NY Giants, Billy Clyde Puckett, is keeping a diary of the lead-up to a Super Bowl Game some time in the future that the Giants will play against the “dog-ass New York Jets”. Part of that “diary” describes what the Giants’ coach, Shoat Cooper, told his team to expect as part of the ceremonial pageantry accompanying the game. This was in 1972; this was fiction. Now look at Dan Jenkins’ words, which I will liberally quote here, and ask yourself just how far from reality he was with his images:

“In the serious part of the squad meeting, Shoat Cooper explained to us what the drill would be for Sunday. In terms of what time everything would occur.

“Shoat said we would start getting our ankles taped at eight o’clock tomorrow morning. Those that needed special braces and pads taped on, he said, ought to get to the taping room thirty minutes early…

“He said we would leave for the Los Angeles Coliseum at about ten-thirty. It would be about eleven-fifteen when we got there, he said, and that would give us plenty of time. ‘Time to get frisky for them piss ants,’ he said.

“The kickoff wasn’t until one-fifteen he pointed out. It had been set back fifteen minutes by CBS, he said, in order for the network to finish up a news special it was doing on some kind of earthquake that wiped out several hundred thousand chinks somewhere yesterday…

“Shoat said that both the offense and the defense would be introduced, on both teams, for television before the game. He said we should line up under the goal post that would be appointed to us and carry our hats under our arms when we trotted out to our own forty-five yardline and faced the dog-ass Jets and stood there for the ‘Star Spangled Banner.’

“That would be the last thing we would do before kickoff, Shoat said…

“Shoat said we might have a long time to lay around the dressing room after we warmed up because the National Football League had a fairly lavish pregame show planned.

“Shoat said he understood that both the pregame show and the halftime show would have a patriotic flavor…

“According to Shoat, here’s what was going to happen before the game:

“Several hundred trained birds – all painted red white and blue – would be released from cages somewhere and they would fly over the coliseum in the formation of an American flag.

“As the red, white and blue birds flew over, Boke Kellum, the Western TV star, would recite the Declaration of Independence.

“Next would be somebody dressed up like Mickey Mouse and somebody else dressed up like Donald Duck joining the actress Camille Virl in singing ‘God Bless America.’

“And right in the middle of the singing, here would come this Air Force cargo plane to let loose fifty sky divers who would come dropping into the coliseum.

“Each sky diver would be dressed up in the regional costume of a state, and he would land in the coliseum in the order in which his state became a United State.

“When all this got cleaned up, Shoat said United States Senator Pete Rozelle, the ex-commissioner of the NFL who invented the Super Bowl, would be driven around the stadium in the car that won last year’s Indianapolis 500. At the wheel would be Lt. Commander Flip Slammer, the fifteenth astronaut to walk on the moon.

“Riding along behind the Indy car, Shoat said, would be two men on horses. One would be Commissioner Bob Cameron on Lurking Funk, the thoroughbred which won last year’s Kentucky Derby. And on the other horse, Podna (the horse Boke Kellum pretends to ride in his TV series), would be the current president of CBS, a guy named Woody Snyder.

“Finally, Shoat said, the teams would be introduced and two thousand crippled and maimed soldiers on crutches and in wheel chairs and on stretchers would render the ‘Star Spangled Banner.’

“Shoat told us the halftime was likely to run forty-five minutes. It would be a long one at any rate, ‘which might be a good thing if we got some scabs to heal up,’ he said.

“The length of the halftime, Shoat said, would depend on whether CBS would decide to interrupt the Super Bowl telecast with a special news report on the earthquake, which might still be killing chinks with its fires and floods and tidal waves…

“Shoat said it was too bad we would have to miss it but the Super Bowl halftime show was going to be even more spectacular than the pregame show.

“He said there would be a water ballet in the world’s largest inflatable swimming pool, a Spanish fiesta, a Hawaiian luau, a parade stressing the history of the armored tank, a sing-off between the glee clubs of all the military academies and an actual World War I dogfight in the sky with the Red Baron’s plane getting blown to pieces.

“The final event of halftime, he said, an induction into the pro football hall of fame of about twenty stud hosses out of the past including our own Tucker Fredrickson, the vice president of DDD and F. United States Senator Pete Rozelle would preside, Shoat said, along with Camille Virl, the actress, and Jack Whitaker the CBS announcer. When the induction ceremony was over, Shoat said, then Rozelle, Whitaker and Camille Virl would lead the inductees in singing a parody on the ‘Battle Hymn of the Republic’ which was written by someone in the league office. The title of it, he said, was ‘The Game Goes Marching On’ and he understood it might make some people cry.

“Shoat said CBS hoped the whole stadium would join in the singing since all 92,000 people would have been given a printed copy of the lyrics.

“The last thing in the halftime would be some more birds. While the stadium was singing this song, Shoat said several thousand more painted up birds would be released and they would fly in such a way overhead that the likeness of Vince Lombardi, the great old coach, would appear.”

In 1972, Dan Jenkins saw that the pomp and circumstance that was building over, under, around and through the Super Bowl would become a caricature of itself. When you view the pregame nonsense this year, think about those sky divers landing in the order that their state became a United State. Is that so outrageous given what you are seeing right there on your TV screen?

When the halftime silliness unfolds and you have about five thousand mouth-breathers clustered around a makeshift stage to listen to someone try to create music in a venue with atrocious acoustics, think about a parade stressing the history of the armored tank. Maybe the Super Bowl organizers might take a lesson from that idea for a stupid parade for next year’s game instead of yet another irrelevant attempt to try to attach music to a football game.

In this case, it seems as if life is in the process of imitating art. It will not take too many more steps down the path of symbolic silliness for Super Bowl festivities to match this satirical picture. I do not know if Dan Jenkins had a sense of his prescience when he wrote those words in the early 1970s. But it sure is working out that way…

Once again, if you have not read Semi-Tough – or if you read it 25 years ago and have not thought of it since – I strongly urge you to get hold of a copy and read it again. It is definitely worth more than a few chuckles.

My copy of Semi-Tough is a reprint from 2006 by Thunder’s Mouth Press. It is available from online booksellers.

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

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