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March 31, 2005

World Cup Fever, Anyone?

So I'm sitting here watching the Telemundo the live broadcast of Mexico at Panama in a World Cup qualifier with one eye and looking at my computer monitor with the other. I don't speak Spanish, but I know that any shouts of GOOOOL will cue me to take my eyes off of the computer screen and on to the TV screen.

Since football season is over, college basketball season is nearly over, and I won't watch the NBA because of the showboats or MLB because of the steroids (just kidding — I pride myself on not being one of those grandstanding, self-righteous blowhards — but the NBA and MLB do bore me more than they used to for some reason), I'm finding soccer is filling the void quite nicely. Particularly, I'm enjoying the high-stakes game of world cup qualifying.

So, just as with any sport, when I get interested, I pull out all the stops; I've watched four or five Cup qualifiers (thoughts below), have four or five more TiVo'd, and will watch or TiVo four or five more still before the weekend is out.

Most notably, I unleashed my patriotism watching the United States play Mexico in Mexico City. A factoid appearing in Sports Illustrated piqued my interest: when ever the United States plays Mexico in a soccer match of import, the Mexicans invariably schedule the game in Mexico City. Why not? The altitude is high (thin air) and the heat is scorching; think of the worst of Denver combined with the worst of Tucson. Not surprisingly, the U.S. has not won in Mexico City in 25 years.

The U.S. Soccer Federation (USSF) has attempted to seek respite from Mexico City and appeal to the Mexican soccer authority's humanity. There's a standing offer from the United States that states if Mexico agrees to play their home games against the U.S. in the climate-friendly city of Monterrey, then the U.S. will schedule their home matches against Mexico in Los Angeles, where the Mexican fans outnumber the U.S. fans 10-to-1. What a travesty! If those ungrateful nogoodniks don't start showing some gratitude and root for the country that saved them from poverty and despair ... just kidding again.

Anyway, the Mexicans will not take the USSF up on the offer, so the USSF responds by scheduling their home games against Mexico in the coldest places logistically possible, and the U.S.' recent home record against Mexico is just as impressive as the other way around. That's a rivalry.

And the beat goes on. The United States was game, but lost 2-1 in a match not really as close as the score indicated. The Mexicans played much more aggressively (at one point, Mexico had nine offside calls against them while the U.S. had none), and simply attacked. Every time a U.S. player touched the ball, he seemed to have the weight of the 25-year, winless-in-Mexico City streak on his shoulders. When the U.S. did score, my fist-pump reaction surprised me. Of course, I wanted the United States to win, but usually when my team gives me reason to cheer, I am demonstrative in a cheerful way. My reaction to the U.S. scoring was more steely and cold, like serious diplomatic concessions were on the line.

Eagle-eyed viewers may notice and wonder why I am not watching the U.S. take on Guatemala at present, which is playing out at the same time as Mexico vs. Panama. Again, I'm pulling out all the stops. I have another opportunity to catch the U.S. against Guatemala, at midnight on Telemundo. Not so for Mexico and Panama, so I only need to avoid the U.S./Guatemala score. I was successful in doing so during the first half, quickly looking away whenever a footer (or "crawl") started to take shape on the bottom of the screen. Then again, I am spending most of my time looking at the monitor, so that helps.

I may not be so lucky in the second half, but I like playing with fire. Not speaking Spanish helps. I heard the announcer say "Zero-Zero" at one point while scores were crawling across the bottom, but I didn't hear him say "Estados Unidos" or Guatemala. Maybe that's because I covered my ears for two minutes starting at the "Zero Zero" mark.

Guatemala, incidentally, should be at stern test to the U.S. They crushed a decent Trinidad & Tobago team 5-1 over the weekend, but the Yanks are playing at home this time.

The way World Cup qualifying is set up appeals to me. You've already figured out I'm not purist, but college sports teams joining a conference that is nowhere near them geographically always irritated me. That would never happen in World Cup soccer qualifying, where you might say the United States plays in the North American Conference (which the world soccer governing body, FIFA, calls CONCACAF ... you figure it out, or e-mail me if you really can't), and only a massive, apocalyptic, continental shift will change that. The United States is bound to Mexico and the rest by geography forevermore, and I like that. The conference has its strong foes (Mexico, Costa Rica) and its weak sisters (St. Kitts and Nevis, Belize, Canada), just like the rest of the world.

The other games I've watched have been compelling even if they were one-sided. I remember Scotland qualifying for the World Cup a couple of rotations ago, but now they dwell in the bottom of their pool in Europe and got handled by Italy, 2-0. Plenty of hooliganism (fires, riot police going at it full force with fans) to go around, but the band played on.

England, who somehow ended up in the same draw with two-thirds of the rest of the United Kingdom, took it to Northern Ireland 4-0, and they seem to have the next Pele in Wayne Rooney. Seriously. He's only 19, breaking all sort of "youngest ever" records for the English National team, and he made the sweetest move getting buy a defender - no point in trying to it - that I saw all week.

As for this Panama - Mexico game (in Panama City), every time I look up, it seems the Panamanians have the ball in Mexico's end, but the Mexican defenders seem noticeably faster than the Panamanian forwards, which probably isn't a good sign for Panama, and they trail 1-0.

Have I won you over to soccer yet? Don't answer that.

Thongchai Jaidee Update

If he would've won the Indonesian Open last week, which finished on the deadline for climbing into the top 50 in the world and an receiving an invite to the Masters, he probably would've gotten through. He did get within two of the lead halfway through the first round, but fell off the pace and tied for 11th.

He is currently ranked 65th in the world, which if he can hold or improve on over the next 11 months, that ranking will get him into the lucrative World Match Play Championship of 2006 (it's for the top 64 players, who duke it out March Madness-style, but there's always someone who can't or won't play, so those ranked around 65-68 always have a shot at getting in).

Congratulations are in order for his countryman, Thaworn Wiratchant, who did win (by five strokes, no less) and gives Thongchai a Thai partner on the European Tour trails. Speaking of trails, as Panama ties up the match on an incredible bicycle kick, happy ones to you until next time.

Posted by Kevin Beane at 4:30 PM | Comments (19) | TrackBack

March 30, 2005

March 29, 2005

What Can Brown Do For You?

I don't know about you, but I'm exhausted.

This was by far the wildest weekend of tournament basketball I have ever seen and it's all because of two of the best point guards in the country.

As a Michigan State and Big 10 Fan, there were lots of scenarios I was envisioning as the Elite Eight was being played, such as the possibility of having three Big 10 teams in the Final Four and Wisconsin did not disappoint as they played North Carolina as well as could be expected.

Naturally, the scenario I really wanted was for Kentucky to fall to Michigan State and it was almost a dream come true, in regulation, if Kentucky's Patrick Sparks wore a slightly larger tennis shoe, the Spartans wouldn't have needed two overtimes (not to mention a near cardiac arrest from me) to defeat the Wildcats.

The only reason I can see that propelled the Spartans to the Arch was the torrid shooting of Shannon Brown, the 6-2 point guard from Maywood, Illinois.

Brown willed the Spartans to a victory, with 24 points on 8-of-10 shooting with five three-pointers is looking forward to a reunion with another gentleman named Brown, who happens to be fond of bright orange mouthpieces.

Brown attended Proviso East High School and is very close friends with Illinois Illini guard Dee Brown, the Big 10 Player of the Year.

"A lot of people think we're brothers or cousins,'' Shannon Brown said. "We're not, but we really are family. I met him when I was in eighth grade. We were both working out then, and we've become best friends. As time went on, we started clicking. We talk about three days a week, and we've talked every day this week.''

Brown, though nowhere near as heralded as his former high school teammate, Illinois' Dee Brown, who has graced the cover of Sports Illustrated, is exactly the type of player the Spartans need to defeat the very talented North Carolina Tar Heels this weekend.

Especially, if he's on fire like he was against Kentucky, along with solid play from Maurice Ager, Paul Davis, and Alan Anderson, the Spartans may find themselves back to the title game.

The Spartans aren't the only ones looking to give the Big 10 another championship title.

Guard Dee Brown is on a mission and has his Illini exactly where everyone predicted they would be. At least most of us can say at least that part of our bracket looks like it is supposed to.

His given name is Daniel, if you were curious.

With an improbable comeback win versus Arizona last weekend, you could tell the magic belongs to the Illini and as much as he would hate for me to say this, it's all because of Dee Brown.

Sure, I would take Luther Head and Deron Williams in a New York minute, but Brown is the cornerstone of this amazing Illini team.

Why does he wear that bright orange monstrosity in his mouth?

"I think my teeth are the most important part of my body," Dee Brown said. "I get elbowed a lot, get busted in the mouth and got my two front teeth knocked straight back, so I just wear a mouthpiece. If I was a regular player or something. it wouldn't be looked at, but I guess I'm on a good team and the way I play people look at it more."

Dee is by no means a regular player, more like an outstanding one and he's a father to boot.

Brown's son, Darrian, is 2-years-old and never far from Dad's mind. Brown writes LIL' DEE on his shoes to let his son know that even while he's beating every school that dares step in the Illini's path, that it's for him.

Whatever happens in the Final Four, the Browns are the reasons that both teams are there and if they have their way, the Big 10 will have a winner.

Whether Illinois or Michigan State wins the title, you can bet that these two classy guards will genuinely be happy for their friend, whoever comes out victorious.

Posted by Damian Greene at 4:22 PM | Comments (0)

Proposed Changes Only Weaken NFL

While most NFL pundits are either focusing on the impending 2005 draft or debating the best free agency signings for the umpteenth time, there are a couple of stories that have come and gone without getting the attention they deserve.

No, I am not talking about China's furtive and intrepid path to bombing Taiwan or the addition of two more bird flu fatalities. I am focusing on two recently debated rule changes designed to further marginalize what kind of contact a defensive player can have, and to take even more control of the game out of the on-the-field official's hands.

Recently, the NFL owners debated the down-by-contact rule and whether to allow instant replay to judge fumbles after the whistle blows, but before a player is down. Is the NFL worried about renegade refs trying to impose their will on the game? Soon, the only thing referees are going to be needed for is counting to make sure there are 11 players on each side of the ball. Hell, 10-year-olds can do that. Maybe the NFL can team up with local school districts and have honor students count the players from a remote site.

Really, what is the point of having an official, who is supposed to have the final say, constantly being challenged either by coaches or a man in a booth? Technology is a great thing, but if my wife wants to get it on, I am not going to refer her to a mechanical copulating device that can automatically adjust to her specific wants and needs. Sometimes a man's best shot is good enough.

This proposed rule change is not about fairness, it is all about gambling. But remember that gambling is all about judgment. Whether judgment is riddled with error or infinite is what gambling is all about. It is about taking a chance and hoping (not replaying over and over to get it right) fate is on your side.

For now, the rule change failed to get passed by four votes, but most insiders feel confident that sometime in the near future the change will become law. The end result will be an increase in personal fouls when players stop adhering to the law of the whistle because they know they still have a chance to loosen the ball. More injuries will occur when the ball carrier gets whacked after the whistle. There will be more official huddles, red flags, and even more replays lasting longer than the loosely allotted two minutes, further slowing down the tempo of the game.

Further, the NFL reviewed whether to penalize the horse-collar tackling technique which has become infamously associated with Cowboys safety Roy Williams. The tackle is made by grabbing the player behind the neck and pulling back on the shoulder pads. If passed, the move would draw a 15-yard personal foul. Coupled with last year's more stringent defensive contact rule interpretation, the barring of this tackle will only further dilute a defense's chance of being successful. This is another clear case of professional football wishing to turn their sport into an offensive juggernaut. A vote on the rule change is expected in May.

Every year, more rules are tweaked for the sake of giving defenses less options. As in baseball, soon enough the sport will become just a spectacle of offensive records being shattered. Last year, Peyton Manning broke the record for most touchdown passes in a season. In total, four quarterbacks hit for 30 or more TDs compared to only one (Brett Favre) in 2003 and none in 2002.

Right now, the NFL has the best sports product around. If it continues to water down defenses, however, all we will be left with is 45-40 shootouts with no drama, just up and down the field offenses and bewildered defenses trying to figure out how they are supposed to stop anyone when they can't get anywhere near the ball carrier.

Posted by Gary Geffen at 4:16 PM | Comments (1)

Why Are Athletes Getting Off Easy?

As St. Louis prepares to host the epic March Madness finale known as the Final Four, the city's sports scene is understandably dominated with college basketball talk. Which works out well for the city's other big sports story, Leonard Little's court case for another DWI, which has been able to fly under the radar of the national scene. The problem is, I don't think the abundance of college basketball is the reason Little's story hasn't had much run. I think people just don't care.

For those of you who don't know, Leonard Little was back in court Monday on drunk driving charges from last April. Naturally, this wasn't Little's first battle with the bottle, as he was driving drunk in 1998 when he ran a red light and killed an area woman. Little got off lightly from his first charge, spending three months in jail and doing community service, but thanks to a persistent offender law in Missouri, Little is facing four years in prison for his latest DWI.

I think an argument can be made that everyone makes mistakes, and if Little had been profoundly affected by his first DWI, maybe some good could have come from it. He could've become an advocate against drunk driving and spoke to kids about it, trying to prevent something similar from happening again. The death of the woman would always be something Little would have to live with, but maybe she wouldn't have to die in vain. Instead of trying to make a difference, Little said little after his first incident outside of the classic, "the bitch ran a yellow light and ruined my $45,000 car."

I just can't comprehend the lack of outrage at this whole incident. Last season, fans were still rooting for him and were wearing his jersey to games. No one seemingly had a problem with him playing in 16 games when he should've been playing in a prison yard. The guy killed a woman and robbed a family of a wife and mother simply with carelessness. For people with a soul, that would be enough to get them to drastically change their lifestyle. Then again, people with a soul would've said something to the family and the mere fact that he continued to drive drunk is sickening.

It would be one thing if the indifference was confined to Little, but drunk driving just doesn't seem to be an issue for people anymore. Last summer, it was University of Cincinnati men's basketball coach Bob Huggins getting arrested with a DUI after the local law enforcement agencies had let him off the hook several times before. UC, obviously concerned about the lack of integrity in their basketball program, dropped the hammer on Huggins after that incident, hitting him with a paid vacation and a "suspension" that lasted until the start of basketball season.

What I don't understand is how anyone can have the nerve to call for Temple coach John Chaney's head and be fine having Huggins on the sideline. What Chaney did was reprehensible, but his actions didn't put lives in jeopardy. How can so many people be outraged at what Chaney did, but give Huggins a free pass to booze up and get behind the wheel?

Recently, one of Huggins' assistants was charged with a DUI. Nothing screams integrity for a program like averaging more DUIs than graduations. Yet, for the most part, there has not been an outcry against Huggins or the program. As recent news might suggest, the apathy DUI cases are met with isn't confined to the sports world.

Over the weekend it was announced that Donald Trump and the organizers of the Miss USA pageant decided that Miss Delaware would be allowed to stay in next month's competition, despite her 2004 guilty plea for drunken driving. Their reasoning?

"She was 22 when this happened. What 22-year-old hasn't done that?" said Mary Hilliard McMillan, Miss USA spokeswoman.

Brilliant. Simply brilliant. Of course, Miss Delaware didn't need someone speaking in her defense.

"I've learned my lesson," she said. "I think I'm more of a role model now after going through these hardships."

Right. Nothing says role model like not being held accountable for your actions. Then again, it's not like she's much of a role model to begin with, let's face it, she's in a beauty pageant, it's not like she's there because of her intellect. If anything, her actions may have helped her, as ironically enough one of the judges in this contest is none other than Olympian-turned-drunk driver Michael Phelps.

Again, I can understand that people make mistakes and can change, so I guess can't be too hard on Phelps and Miss Delaware. After all, it was Leonard Little who once said, "You can't judge a person by one situation." In that case, the free passes should be gone for people like Huggins and Little.

Unfortunately, that just isn't the case. Huggins will be coaching UC next season and, more than likely, Little will be back on the field, which is a complete joke. I guess I'm crazy for speaking out against people like Little and Huggins, though, because according to Miss Delaware's logic, they must be two of the biggest role models in sports today.

Mark Chalifoux is also a weekly columnist for SportsFan Magazine. His columns appear every Tuesday on Sports Central. You can e-mail Mark at [email protected].

Posted by Mark Chalifoux at 4:13 PM | Comments (3)

March 28, 2005

The Writing Was on the Wall in L.A.

On the surface, it would appear that the Los Angeles Lakers got the bad end of the offseason deal that sent Shaquille O'Neal to the Miami Heat. The Heat sit comfortably atop the Eastern Conference while the Lakers dropped to 32-37 on Sunday night.

While Kobe Bryant struggles, his former running mate could live life every night as if he were in a Will Smith music video. If he so desired. The two have seen completely opposite levels of success since parting ways. Shaq comes off looking great in the break-up. Since he is no longer in Los Angeles, Kobe Bryant is taking the heat for having pushed O'Neal away. Then the whole contrast of success between the two teams comes into play.

Kobe needs Shaq is a popular sentiment these days.

But, that is easy to say and ignores some outside factors. It's unfair to think of Kobe Bryant as less of a player because the Lakers are struggling this season while the Heat are tearing through the competition. Bryant is in a situation where he is the star and only has role players around him. O'Neal has moved to a situation where he is a star, but also has a budding star at his disposal.

Did O'Neal go to Miami because he believes that Dwayne Wade is the future of the game while Bryant should only be spoken about in the past tense? Doubtful.

Look at some of the teams that the Shaq and Kobe Lakers took down in their championship runs.

The Philadelphia 76ers, for starters. Mainly because they most mirror Bryant's current situation. The Sixers had one gunner in Allen Iverson and a bunch of players playing their roles to perfection when they made a championship run. It was a special season for Philadelphia because they got there on the back of one player. Bryant's Lakers might someday make a run with the team completely on his back. He can make it happen with himself as the lone superstar, but it is far from easy and everything needs to fall into place.

Then look at some of the Western Conference teams that have not done what the Lakers have done. First, the Portland Blazers and then the Sacramento Kings and Dallas Mavericks, two teams that have had a ton of talent, but no one on that top plateau.

The point is simple. O'Neal is not blind to this. O'Neal realizes a specific mold that can win championships. You take a player on the top plateau and you couple that player with someone on the next level below. That is what O'Neal has in Miami. That is what Bryant does not have in Los Angeles.

O'Neal has mentioned several times since his arrival in Miami that he saw something in Wade's play during Miami's postseason travels last season. What did O'Neal see? Obviously, he saw someone that he felt he could work with, that he felt he could succeed with.

Shaq is the superstar, Wade is the second-tier player. That's a formula for success in this league.

Bryant has a whole slew of third-tier, or lower, players by his side. Guys like Lamar Odom, Chris Mihm, Caron Butler, Devean George. Players that occasionally show a spark, but just aren't consistent enough. That is a formula for struggling in this league.

Wade, in one season, has shown the level of consistent play that a team that wants to win ball games needs. It was not hard to predict that Shaq and Wade would find success while Bryant found struggles. Everyone saw this coming, but yet the attacks on Bryant increase. Suddenly, he is viewed as less of a talent.

People say that the Lakers got taken on this trade. Sure, they aren't enjoying this season, but the Lakers still made a good trade.

The Lakers were going to lose one of their amazing duo. If they had lost Bryant, they would likely struggle as they are struggling now.

Why? Because when you take one piece away and don't replace it with a single part on that level that remaining part is going to receive an increased and sometimes unexpected level of attention.

When Bryant received one-on-one defensive coverage, he now faces a double-team. When Bryant once received a double-team, he now might face a triple-team. This is how teams can defend Bryant these days. It is first of all tougher and second of all new.

Now we get to find out what Bryant is made of. The writing was on the wall for the season to play out like this. Shaq is going to be in Miami for three seasons. After that? Probably not. Bryant is still going to be in Los Angeles when O'Neal is done. Because of that, O'Neal was the right superstar to get rid of. The only one you can get rid of.

The Lakers now need to find the right part to go with Bryant, as the Heat have the right part to go with O'Neal. Did they think Butler or Odom would have been that part? Probably not. But Butler and Odom are above-average pieces that will look better when the Lakers do find the right person to play alongside Bryant.

For Bryant and the Lakers, it's not about this season. It's about how you bounce back and move forward. This season is likely torture for fans of the storied franchise, but they aren't exactly dead in the water.

Posted by Doug Graham at 4:07 PM | Comments (8)

I Hate Mondays: Female Trepidation

When you think of a stereotypical male, what are the first notions that come to mind? Confident, strong, a leader or problem solver, tough, successful, athletic, and possibly angry.

Now do the same for a female. The adjectives nurturing, sensitive, emotional, elegant, enjoy discussing inner feelings, and self-conscious should come to mind.

After watching Barry Bonds' and Mark McGwire's latest media appearances, it's clear to understand which of the above categories they stand, or should I say sit, closer to.

In a recent interview, Bonds was at the brink of tears when a reporter asked mundane questions. The man who takes 90-mile-an-hour fastballs near his chin without flinching reacted like Randy Johnson landed a heater off his thigh. There, there, Barry, let me give you a hug. Did somebody hurt your feelings?

Whatever happened to the rugged slugger who would rebelliously wear a big shiny cross in one ear while tossing cut-eye to any unordinary inquiries?

Now, all of the sudden, he begs for sympathy by tag-teaming with his sullen son in camera shots and displays a depressed facial expression to gain pity. The one-time tough guy has now morphed into a sensitive family man. To be honest, as he leisurely crutched away with his head drooping, I thought of a stereotypical female.

Mark McGwire was before Congress merely days ago and he too couldn't restrain his emotions. Saline spilled down his face every time he voiced the word "children" as he whimpered through his opening statement. In hand was a bottle of water the size of four chicken nuggets. In '98, Big Mac would have chugged those four ounces, then probably crushed the bottle in between his middle and ring finger. Now, macho Mac and his mother goose reading glasses need four swigs to polish it off. Real masculine.

These two chumps used to be male icons, but now chauvinists are itching to yell, "quit acting like a girl!"

They have become subject to feminization.

Much is made of the "positive" effects that steroids can have on a user such as improved power and accelerated muscle recuperation but as we search for evidence to incriminate guilty perpetrators, the side effects of the illegal drug may give us a few clues.

One of the main side effects in males who use anabolic steroids is feminization. After using steroids over a long period of time and flooding the body with excess amounts of testosterone, the body gets use to the surplus and stops producing the natural hormone on its own. Testosterone is the most important male sex hormone which makes men men.

What are most people saying about Mark McGwire right now?

"Why did he skirt the questions? If he did steroids, he should have confessed and addressed the issue like a man."

And Bonds?

"He used to be so rigid with reporters, why has he become so sensitive?"

It's true, we all grow soft as our age increments, but if we are to be candid, it is hard not to associate Bonds' and McGwire's recent behavior with the stereotypical female.

My explanation may be a bit of a stretch, but it is a fact that steroid users are known to lose their manliness after discontinuing intake.

Maybe that's just the case.

Steroid side effects and stereotypes mix like Mondays and me.

"A woman is like a tea bag. You never know how strong she is until she gets in hot water." — Nancy Reagan

Posted by Dave Golokhov at 3:56 PM | Comments (0)

March 26, 2005

Sports Media's Steroid Hypocrisy

"I can't quite remember anything like this in sports, and — because baseball at its best is the long novel of American sports — you can't miss a day. You know, football plays once a week, basketball is sort of scattered. Baseball is there every day for you.

And somehow — and in a wonderful way, the conversation of the country, at least temporarily ... has gone from Bill and Monica to Sammy and Mark. And I must say, I much prefer the latter. Because you go to bed at night, and if you haven't watched the game or if you've been out, you rush to the paper, like we did as kids in 1961 with [Roger] Maris and [Mickey] Mantle, until Maris finally pulled away. And this afternoon, they will combine elements of two sports. We got the national pastime in a great baseball city, but we got an old-fashioned one-on-one game."

That was Mike Lupica, New York Daily News sports columnist and ESPN panelist, in a "Good Morning America" transcript dated Sept. 7, 1998. That was the day a series between the Chicago Cubs and St. Louis Cardinals was scheduled to begin at Busch Stadium; a game in which McGwire hit his 61st homer of the season. Just over 24 hours later, Mark McGwire would hit his 62nd, breaking Roger Maris's 37-year-old single-season record.

Anyone who's read a story about McGwire in the last week may find something missing from Lupica's passage, and from the entire interview for that matter: any discussion about performance-enhancing drugs, let alone steroids. Perhaps Lupica didn't have enough time to broach the subject, more concerned with wiping baseball's appreciation off his chin after fellating the sport for two televised segments.

That wasn't the case when Lupica appeared on that same ABC show back on August 24, 1998. This was right after McGwire had admitted to taking Androstenedione — with a Creatine chaser — that was over-the-counter and legal in Major League Baseball. Lupica offered these thoughts on McGwire:

"Look, Mark McGwire hit 49 home runs 11 years ago, before he even heard of this stuff. He's a good hitter ... and we cannot draw any connection between what he's taking and the fact that he has had this surpassing summer. But it is treated as an anabolic steroid by the NFL, by the Olympics, and by the NCAA. Randy Barnes, a shot putter, was banned from track and field for using this stuff. And I think that baseball, which, you know, has a drug policy that you can — you wear as a party hat ... the same as the National Basketball Association, has to look into this thing."

Two weeks later, McGwire's admitted use of performance-enhancing drugs was nowhere on Lupica's radar. Perhaps it didn't fit the narrative of that magical season of baseball Lupica would later profit from with a best-selling book ("The Summer of '98").

Or, perhaps, Lupica was doing what the rest of the hypocrites in the sports media did back in baseball's post-strike renaissance: he was willing to ignore the ills of a game he had adored since childhood just to see it return to prominence through apocryphal, if artificial, means.

And he wasn't alone. Witness a now-hilarious ABC News special titled "Chasing History," hosted by Charles Gibson from baseball's Mecca, the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY. Check the transcript: not a single mention of steroids, Andro, Creatine, drug testing, cheating, juiced players, or Jose Canseco. Instead, we get these regrettable platitudes from grown men vicariously re-living their childhoods through the Sosa/McGwire home run race. Look at this exchange, between host Charles Gibson and Boston Globe columnist and ESPN baseball guru Peter Gammons:

CHARLES GIBSON: And Peter, it's interesting that these races come along at such opportune times for baseball. Babe Ruth after the Black Sox scandal in 1919, Maris and Mantle when everybody was saying baseball was getting boring, and now after the strike, we have McGwire and Sosa.

PETER GAMMONS: Well, it's always been that way. It just seems as if — first of all, the home run is a unique act in sports. It's the most Herculean act, it's the one one-on-one shot that, for some reason, has always captured people.

You mentioned Ruth. And then, of course, you had Maris and Mantle. Bobby Thompson sort of wiped out the postwar dreariness attached to sports. And then in the '70s, when people were saying baseball was dead, you had the Fisk and the Reggie Jackson home runs in the World Series. It has always been that one thing that captured the public's imagination and saved baseball. It's always proven that the game has always been able to regenerate itself.

CHARLES GIBSON: Peter, can you say safely — and I'll ask George the same thing — that baseball is back? Because a lot of people said in 1994, they were fed up with baseball after the strike, they wouldn't go to games. They were done, finished?

PETER GAMMONS: Well, I think it is back. I mean, there are still a lot of problems. They still have to somehow deal with the widening gulf between the big markets and the small markets.

Boy, that is a big problem! Forget the fact that one of the principals in this historic, game-saving home run derby had admitted to using a performance enhancing drug to boost his muscle mass ... how are the Kansas City Royals going to re-sign their back-up catcher?

Let's not forget about columnist George Will, who appeared just long enough on the ABC special to unleash this sloppy wet kiss on baseball:

"We're having a happy moment that the country can rally around. Usually people gather around their television sets for scandals, for deaths, assassinations, a space ship blows up. Suddenly, the whole country is warming itself by the television over two people of good character, and there isn't a whiner in the house."

Years later, in an April 4, 2004 column, Will opined:

"Steroids subvert what baseball is selling — fair competition. And they strike at the pleasure of engagement with America's team sport with the longest history. That pleasure is the comparison of players across many generations. Until now, comparisons have been complicated by only one substantial discontinuity in the game's nature — that between the dead and lively ball eras. Steroids threaten to define a second discontinuity."

I guess five years and a surly malcontent chasing Hank Aaron's record changes everything, doesn't it?

Today, Will, Lupica ("The single most valuable currency that we have in sports are the baseball records. And those have been corrupted because the public doesn't trust them now..." — CBS's "Face the Nation"), and Gammons ("McGwire, Jason Giambi, and Barry Bonds are not victims; they are very, very, very rich. But they were hardly the only players suspected of using enhancing-performing drugs, part of the subculture that the leaders never discouraged." — ESPN column, March 18, 2005) are focused on steroids like Sosa on a hanging curveball. They, like most of the sports media, are attacking baseball's leadership for not doing enough to police the sport and purge the game of performance-enhancing drugs.

Yet these pundits have more in common with Bug Selig, Donald Fehr, and the rest of MLB's braintrust than they'd like to admit; namely, that they all placed their heads in the sand just deep enough to play blind to the sport's steroid subculture while still being able to hear the cash register ring.

Now, the obvious counterpoint to this view is that we all didn't "know" the steroid scuttlebutt was valid until the BALCO grand jury leaks and admissions from players like Jose Canseco and Ken Caminiti. Prefacing stories about McGwire, Sosa, and Bonds with accusations and rumor would have been towing a libelous line.

I'm not saying baseball writers back in 1998 needed to add a journalist "*" to every article about home run records. I'm just saying that the kind of cynical, wounded tone that permeates today's sports journalism when it comes to baseball is the complete antithesis of the way the game was covered seven years ago.

Can you imagine the scrutiny today's rejuvenated media would have given Caminiti back when he won the NL MVP award with the Padres in 1996? Here's a guy who didn't hit more than 20 home runs in the first seven years of his career, and then hit 26 in 1995, along with 94 RBI in 143 games. Then, in 1996, he hits 40 home runs and had 130 RBI in 146 games.

Jeez ... 14 more home runs and 36 RBI. Where did he play those extra three games? The surface of the moon?

The BALCO stuff and the Canseco finger-pointing confirmed what we had suspected, but in no way did it reveal anything we didn't already fathom. When you first heard Jason Giambi was on the juice, how did you react? "Wow ... that's incredible!" or "I saw that one coming the first time I saw his forearms..."

The Lupicas and Wills of the world were aware that Major League Baseball's steroid testing policies, in comparison with those in other sports, were as toothless as the bathroom mirror in a nursing home. So why didn't they bang the drum a little harder when two players were making a beeline to 61 seven years ago?

Steroids had affected baseball in its post-strike era, and we all were aware of that. How keenly it played on our minds may depend on what generation you're from.

Guys like Lupica, Gammons, Will, and SportsFan Magazine publisher James J. Patterson, who recently wrote a terrific column on the Congressional steroid hearings, are all from a generation that revered baseball as something more than a form of sports entertainment — let's call them the "Baseball As America" crowd.

I turned 28 on Sunday. I'm from a generation of fans that treat baseball in an entirely different manner, because when we were growing up it didn't have the gargantuan stature that it had in the mid-20th century. At no time in my life as a sports fanatic was baseball bigger than football for a substantial period of time; and the NBA, for several years of Michael Jordan's reign, was at least on par with or beyond baseball's popularity.

For myself, and for many fans, baseball is what you watched between football seasons.

Tell that to Lupica back in 1961, and you might see his head explode.

I don't see the steroid debate as a microcosm of the ongoing debates over societal evils and moral indignation. I see it as a bunch of people who hold baseball to some sort of pious standard treating "the integrity of the game" as if it actually still means something. Maybe it's different for a 28-year-old who's grown up seeing about a dozen hitters' ballparks open, the juiced ball of the 1990s, the ever-changing strike zone, over-expansion, and enough medical advancements to keep players active into their 50's. I look at the record book and wonder how anyone could compare a single statistic from the 1960s with those of the 21st century; there really isn't a basis. (Just another reason why a 56-game hitting streak remains one of the only truly worthy records in professional sports.)

The same voices that cheered baseball's resurgence during that magical summer of 1998 are now calling for draconian rules to "clean up the game."

Spare me the urine samples, Congressional hearings, and sanctimonious finger-wagging.

If it wasn't a problem then, why should it be a problem now?

Greg Wyshynski is also a weekly columnist for SportsFan Magazine. His columns appear every Saturday on Sports Central. You can e-mail Greg at [email protected].

Posted by Greg Wyshynski at 10:00 PM | Comments (0)

A Mountainous Accomplishment

After winning a second-round game in the NCAA tournament, the best coach in college basketball immediately switched focus from the past into the future. There was, after all, still a tournament to play, another national championship to chase.

There was no time last week to bask in the glory of another milestone passed. Not right then.

In a couple of weeks, possibly after that goal is accomplished again, Pat Summitt will be able to celebrate her status as the winningest coach, male or female, in college hoops history after having passed Dean Smith with her 880th victory.

What? You thought I was talking about Mike Krzyzewski?

If calling Summitt the best college basketball coach sounds a little PC, remember that Larry Brown is in the NBA, and John Wooden and Dean Smith are basking in their hard-earned glory as the sport's elder statesmen.

Bobby Knight's train long ago zoomed right by the reality station without even slowing down. Only a man either gripped by rank hypocrisy or completely out of touch throws chairs and punches cops, yet still believes himself to a moral authority.

That pretty much leaves Summitt and the aforementioned Coach K, and the Tennessee women's coach is something that Krzyzewski can never be.

Summitt is the giant upon whose shoulders every other successful women's college basketball coach — and probably every other coach in college women's sports — stands. All of the coaches of the elite men's teams walked into something that had already, to one degree or another, been established.

When she took over as Tennessee's basketball coach in 1974, Summitt was 22-years-old and still an active member of the U.S. national team that would win a silver medal at the 1976 Olympics. More importantly, Title IX had been passed by Congress only one year earlier.

And, in a way, the rise of Summitt's program mirrors the rise of women's athletics because of Title IX. Because of that law, U.S. women were the most dominant force in all of sports during the 1990s.

On the international level during the previous decade, the best female athletes represented the United States, and the margin wasn't close.

American women dominated individual sports like gymnastics, track and field, and swimming, and won team world titles and Olympic gold in soccer and softball. The U.S. won the inaugural Women's Rugby World Cup in 1990, while fielding a team comprised mostly of players who weren't good enough to play college basketball.

And in basketball, where Summitt led the way and still continues to dominate on the collegiate level.

Title IX might have provided the tools that enabled Summitt to excel, but she used those tools to build what might be the greatest athletic program in college sports, men's or women's.

The federal law that mandated equal educational and athletic opportunities at any institution that accepts funding from the government jump-started women's sports. Dozens of universities that had no women's sports at all were forced to institute programs literally from scratch.

That's almost how it happened at Tennessee, which headed into the 1974 season with no scholarships or nickname and a 22-year-old coach who had to wash the team's uniforms and drive its van.

Today, 880 victories and counting later, Summitt is in charge of a program that serves as the yardstick by which all other women's collegiate sports programs — not just women's collegiate basketball — are measured.

When measured by national championships — of which Summitt has six, along with 15 trips to the Final Four — few of the men's programs can keep up either. It could be argued that she fattened her numbers early on against a lot of schools that were much slower in developing, but that minimizes her status as a pioneer.

In 1974, when a 22-year-old could get a women's basketball head coaching job at a major university, the competition might have been weak. But in the 30 seasons since, there have been other great coaches, like Geno Auriemma at UConn and Rene Portland at Penn State, and Title IX has made the talent pool wider and deeper.

At this point, Summitt's success can be attributed to her ability to outwork, outrecruit and out-coach her opposition.

She's only 52, so her victory total is likely to grow to spectacular levels. Summitt's victory percentage, .840, might be even more impressive than her 880 victories.

If she maintains her 29-win-per-season pace until she's 60, which is nowhere near ancient for the college coaching game, she would shatter the 1,100-victory barrier before she walks away.

There's even been semi-serious talk about the possibility that she might coach the men's team. That's a disservice to Summitt, who spent so much time battling for parity in terms of scholarships and coaches' compensation on behalf of women's programs.

Summitt's team's home court is about to be named for her, another honor that had previously been reserved exclusively for men.

Asking whether Summitt could coach the men's team is just another way of calling women's sports a minor league; that she would somehow need the validation of being "promoted" to the men's team and matching her accomplishments there before she can be seen as being equal to her counterparts in men's programs.

And that question has already been asked and answered. Calling her equal to any men's coach would be an underestimation.

Posted by Eric Poole at 8:25 PM | Comments (1)

March 25, 2005

See You in Cooperstown, Roberto

"I played a lot of games and I said I would never embarrass myself on the field," said Roberto Alomar Saturday. He proved that in 1988, playing his first Major League Baseball contest. The San Diego Padres rookie whacked the first of his 2,724 major league hits off Nolan Ryan, who was so impressed that he sent Alomar on his can the next time up. Fat lot of good that did pitchers over most of the 17 seasons that went on from there.

"I had a long career, but I can't play at the level I want to play, so it's time to retire." Alomar is a man who once said with no false or rhetorical pride, "Whenever I am done with this game, I am going to say, 'I played all those years and did not miss a chance to play' ... The smell of the ballpark–hot dogs, grass. This is what God chose me to do. He sent me here to play baseball."

Alomar's March 19 announcement was provoked in good portion by Alomar's day at the office Friday, a sad climax to a three-season downturn that surprised an awful lot of people for its rapidity. Struggling to stay aboard with the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, two errors in one inning of a spring training game, to climax a spring in which he had been plagued by back and vision trouble. That would provoke serious thought in a 37-year-old man whose lifetime range factor through last season's finish had been 33 points above his league's average.

"I just can't go anymore," he said, as if having stood at a crossroads he hoped could be wiped off the map. "My back, legs, and eyes aren't the same. I don't want to embarrass myself or my teammates."

There go 10 Gold Gloves (Alomar owned the award in the 1990s and the first two years of the new century, except for one rude burglary by Chuck Knoblauch in 1997), 210 home runs, 12 all-star selections, 1,134 runs batted in, 180 runs produced per 162 games, and a lifetime .300 batting average. None too gently does he go into that good green day where memory remains sweet and hitting, hustling second basemen turn the sweetest double plays or drive the sweetest base knocks. In five years, Joe Morgan and Ryne Sandberg are going to have company in Cooperstown as the greatest all-around second basemen the game has ever seen.

They will, that is, on the assumption that Hall of Fame voters decline to judge the entire man and his entire game on the basis of one disgraceful incident in which Alomar was not the provocateur, but the provoked. To this day there are those, and they are wrong, who believe Alomar should be refused the keys to Cooperstown he has earned robustly enough, because of that single incident.

We take you back to September 27, 1996, Baltimore Orioles versus Toronto Blue Jays, the Orioles needing to beat the Jays to move to the postseason, then-Oriole Roberto Alomar hitting in the first inning. He watched home plate umpire John Hirschbeck call strike three on a pitch wide enough to pass a train unobstructed and objected. Then, he walked back toward his dugout, Hirschbeck trailing him with the glare of a private investigator trailing a suspected philanderer, before Alomar turned and uttered two words which got him an early night off.

The two obscene words, as related by a teammate standing within earshot: "Just play!"

The Orioles probably thought to themselves that their man should have been grateful not to have said a certain two-word euphemism for fornication. Alomar might have been bound for drawing and quartering then.

He charged Hirschbeck, properly enough outraged that a non-obscene comment, proffered en route his dugout, got him sent to bed without his supper. And then it happened. Alomar's manager, Davey Johnson, could not move him away fast enough to avoid Hirschbeck calling him a four-syllable euphemism for maternal fornicator. That–no sooner, no later–is when Alomar gobbed the ump. "I would advise everybody," Alomar said in due course, "not to say that to the Latin guys."

He was not merely spitting in the wind. There are neighborhoods enough in which "that" has provoked many a Latin guy to replies among which assault with a deadly weapon is deemed merciful. Excusing Alomar not one degree, for the most infamous spit since Ted Williams (who is called a "cantankerous character" for it) sprayed upwards toward his beloved Knights of the Keyboard, there is something to be said for guys to whom motherfucker is no less obscene for having graduated from alley vernacular to mainstream moboisie rhetoric.

Alomar had only one deadly weapon following that game. "I used to respect (Hirschbeck) a lot," he said. "He had problems with his family when his son died. I know that's something real tough in life. But after that he just changed, personality-wise. He just got real bitter."

Hirschbeck had lost his younger son, at age eight, to a rare brain illness known as adrenoleukodystrophy. The ump got real mad the following day, requiring a colleague to prevent him from disemboweling Alomar in the Baltimore clubhouse.

With that reprieve and the one brought by his appeal of his suspension, Alomar turned his fury toward far more beneficial destruction the following night. He merely sent the Orioles into the postseason with a three-run walk-off bomb in the 10th inning. The umpires threatened to boycott the postseason rounds when Alomar's suspension was itself suspended to the following season's birth. A federal judge, mindful of the no-strike clause in the umpires' collective bargaining agreement, told the judicial tyrants don't even think about it.

"No baseball person condones what Alomar did," wrote George F. Will, the following April. "But many baseball people believe that baseball's biggest on-field problem is not the impulsive misbehavior of players in the heat of competition, but the incompetence, confrontational surliness, and premeditated misbehavior of some umpires ... Part of the problem may be .... the declining professionalism of some players–arrogance, disrespect for the game, and an inclination to blame their failures on umpires ... Still, umpires are baseball's designated grown-ups and, like air traffic controllers, are paid to handle pressure."

Having survived Hirschbeck's kind of pressure drop, Alomar told his Orioles in effect to think about nothing except meeting the New York Yankees in the coming League Championship Series. He tied the deciding division series game, against the Cleveland Indians, with a ninth-inning single, and he won the game with a solo bomb in the 12th. Then, the Orioles met the Yankees, where another blown call–with an over-the-rail assist from Jeffrey Maier — the most notorious fan in baseball until the advent of poor Steve Bartman — enabled the Yankees to send the Orioles on an early flight south for the winter.

Alomar had apologized to Hirschbeck repeatedly, when first they met following the gob heard 'round the world. And a funny thing happened on the way to the Hall of Infamy: Roberto Alomar became a Cleveland Indian in 1999 ... and John Hirschbeck became his friend.

Thank Jack Efta. He administered the Jacobs Field umpires' room and had become a Hirschbeck friend himself. And Hirschbeck, who had avoided Alomar like a process server since Alomar's on-field apology and handshake, could not contain himself. What, he asked Efta, was Roberto Alomar really like?

"(H)e's one of the two nicest people I've ever met," Efta answered emphatically. "And you're the other one."

Apparently, Hirschbeck was so flattened by that pronouncement that he approached Alomar himself. The two men talked the whole thing out. And each found a friend. "If that's the worst thing Robbie ever does in his life," said Hirschbeck to a reporter about the great expectoration, "he'll lead a real good life. People make mistakes. You forgive, you forget, you move on."

Among the best things Alomar has done in his life: becoming a significant bench player for the foundation Hirschbeck helped establish to cure the disease which killed one Hirschbeck son and afflicted another.

A Sports Illustrated writer, Tom Verducci, thought last year that those Hall of Fame voters who will not forgive, forget, or move on, will be a small minority. Baseball's version of judicial tyranny provoked an ugly aberration between two customarily civil and diligent men. But baseball justice should demand the volume of that minority equals zero.

"I wish it never happened," Alomar has said, "and I hope that's not how people remember me."

An awful lot of us would prefer to remember a gazelle of a second baseman and a hell of a hitter. An awful lot of Toronto Blue Jays fans would prefer to remember those eleven hits, four runs scored, two home runs, and four runs batted in, that helped the Blue Jays beat the Oakland Athletics for the pennant. An awful lot of them would prefer to remember, even better, the 1993 World Series, where Alomar's 12 hits and six runs batted in did an awful lot to help Toronto Blue Jays overtake the Philthy Phillies for the ring.

Let us not judge Alomar, either, on the grounds of three seasons (with the New York Mets, the Chicago White Sox, and the Arizona Diamondbacks) worth of a too-fast downslide during which frustration was often enough mistaken for misanthropy.

"I learned a lot from him and I have all the respect in the world for him," said Jorge Cantu, the likeliest candidate to man second base for the Devil Rays now. "I watched him when I was a kid and looked up to him all through the minor leagues. You have to respect what he's done."

Maldiga el derecho. Véale en el Vestíbulo de la Fama.

Posted by Jeff Kallman at 3:41 PM | Comments (0)

March 24, 2005

NASCAR Top 10 Power Rankings: Week 4

Note: The quotes in this article are fictional.

1. Jimmie Johnson — Johnson's second-place finish in Atlanta, coupled with Kurt Busch's tire-troubled 32nd place result, allows Johnson to reclaim the top shelf in this week's power rankings.

"Yes, but it's a tenuous position to be in," explains Johnson. "Last week, I was on top of the Nextel Cup standing for all of two days before NASCAR pulled out their magic ruler, claimed my roof height was too low, and stole 25 points. Now, I'm a little worried that I was using an unapproved air freshener last Sunday in Atlanta. I've never sat down and read all 2,456 pages of the NASCAR rulebook, so I'm not sure if that 'Ocean Breeze' scent is legal."

Double J has more of a cushion to work with this week, 82 points to be exact, so, if NASCAR wishes to find an infraction to cost Johnson his points lead, it better be a big one. In the meantime, Johnson has chosen Judas Priest's "Breaking the Law" as his song of choice with which to endlessly taunt NASCAR.

Johnson has four top-10 finishes in six races the last three years at the banked .533-mile oval in Bristol, Tennessee, site of the next race, the Food City 500 on April 3. So Johnson is sure to maintain his points lead, unless he retires early, or is caught cheating. Look for Johnson battling for the lead at the end of the race.

2. Greg Biffle — Biffle led 151 of 325 laps, and was on his way to victory until a late caution evaporated his lead. After a subsequent pit stop, Biffle exited third and couldn't quite get back into the Johnson/Carl Edwards duel to the finish.

"Yeah, that's like going from the penthouse to the outhouse," explains Biffle. "And the feeling is like getting caught by your mother enjoying a Penthouse in the outhouse; pretty embarrassing."

Hey, don't feel bad, Greg. I know you may be worried that hair on your palms could hinder your driving, but that's just a myth. Besides, you're up one spot to second in the Nextel Cup standings.

Biffle may drive a car sponsored by the National Guard, but, right now, he leads a team called the "Roush Army," as slots two through five are occupied by Roush drivers.

"That's right," agrees Biffle. "It's a two team race right now; Roush versus Hendrick. In any other year, you would have to include Dale Earnhardt Incorporated cars in the mix. However, I think DEI now stands for 'Damn Engine's Inferior.'"

The Food City 500 will be a battle between Roush and Hendricks cars. Expect Biffle to be in the mix.

3. Carl Edwards — Edwards accomplished an improbable double last Sunday, winning the Busch Series' Aaron's 312 on Saturday and the Nextel Series' Golden Corral 500 on Sunday. Edwards successfully fought off two of auto racing's superstars, Tony Stewart on Saturday and Johnson on Sunday, to record his first career victories in both series.

"That's 812 miles of butt-kicking right there," says Edwards. "I'd like to thank my teammates, my crew, and the big man upstairs who's given me strength and spiritual guidance, Jack Roush. I don't know who he is, but I'd also like to thank this guy Aaron who sponsored the Busch race. And, to the good people at Golden Corral, I'll be redeeming my 'Win Busch and Nextel Race On Same Weekend, Win Free Dinner Buffet' coupon shortly. Props to my sponsor, Scott's, who offer a fine line of yard care products. Who would have imagined that seeing my car cross the finish line would encourage thousands of fans to immediately go outside and fertilize their lawns."

Actually, Carl, I think the most influential aspect of your success has to be your trademark victory celebration, the back flip. Just the other day, I parallel parked and only had to pull up once. I was so thrilled, I did a back flip off my hood. Of course, unlike you, I landed on my head. So, expect a call from my personal injury lawyers, since you're responsible for my misfortune.

Edwards won't be flipping at Bristol. It's a tough track to master, and the tight quarters results in lots of spins. But Edwards does have the expertise of teammate Kurt Busch, winner of the 2004 Food City 500, to guide him. A top-15 finish would suit the young Edwards just fine.

4. Kurt Busch — Busch was sucked in to the first lap accident in Atlanta, but escaped with only minor damage. He worked his way back to second place before a flat tire set him back, relegating the 2004 points champ to an eventual 32nd place finish.

"That's all in the past," says Busch. "The future is Bristol. I've got fond memories of that place. I've won four times there, including 2002 when I nudged Jimmy Spencer out of the way for the victory. I own that track."

You sure do, Kurt. And you've made a habit of running people off the track at Bristol. I'm sure you haven't forgotten that "Mr. Excitement" Spencer slugged you in the mouth at Michigan partly as a result of the hostilities that developed because of the Bristol incident.

"I feel no shame getting beat up by a man who outweighs me by 80 pounds," explains Busch. "I'm pretty much a pansy, in or out of a 3,400-pound car."

We aren't likely to see Busch/Spencer II in Bristol. Spencer may not even make the field, and if he does, and Busch passes him, the result is more likely to be Mr. Excitement going a lap down than losing the lead. What would be cool is a Busch versus Spencer Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots battle for charity. Busch may possibly get a punch in.

Bristol is Busch's favorite circuit, and following a less than satisfactory finish in Atlanta, he's gunning for no less than a top five. An outright win would not be a surprise.

5. Mark Martin — Martin's fourth place in Atlanta moved him up four spots to number five in the Cup standings, right behind Johnson and teammates Biffle, Edwards, and Busch.

"Man, I'm not even the number one guy on my team," laments Martin. "However, I am number one in the true test of a driver's skill: the International Race of Champions series, presented by Crown Royal. I've won the series four times, and I just won the 2005 opener in Daytona. I just want to say to all the drivers of Indy cars, Champ cars, Grand Am cars, World of Outlaw cars, and NASCAR, especially Kenseth and Busch: you can't touch this."

Martin's right. You put him in a supped-up Camaro, and he becomes the man. The same applied 27 years ago in Batesville, Arkansas when Martin was a teenager. Just ask any lady lucky enough to go cruising with Martin.

Whatever he's driving, Martin is always a factor. Sure, maybe he's never won a Nextel points race, but he's always had a say in who did.

6. Tony Stewart — Tony "Depot Man" Stewart fought a uncooperative car all day in Atlanta, culminating with a 17th place finish in which he was the last car on the lead lap.

"I think we made more adjustments to the car than Anna Nicole Smith's dressmaker has made to her wardrobe in the last year," notes crew chief Greg Zipadelli.

It's enough to make a driver frustrated. And, when Stewart gets frustrated, he either wins a race or runs somebody off the track.

"And at Bristol," adds Stewart, "you can easily do both. The bottom line is: if we don't nail the set — up early in the race, we're toast. Bristol is no place to be making more pit stops than you need. We want to get the No. 20 Joe Gibbs Racing Home Depot Chevrolet Monte Carlo to the front and keep it there."

Stewart won the August Bristol race back in 2001, but lately, has seen only moderate success there, with a best of 15th in 2002.

7. Ryan Newman — For the second straight week, Newman was on the pole, and, for the second straight week, failed to cash in with a victory. It all supports my theory that being on pole is the worst place to be for a NASCAR driver looking to win a race.

"Hey, it beats taking a provisional," replies Newman. "Some guys never see the front. At least I get a clear view of what's ahead of me and some clean air to drive through. Can Kyle Petty say he's done that?"

Good point, Mr. Poler Express. I guess it is nice to start at the front, which usually keeps you clear of any major accidents in the back of the pack.

"That's a good thing," Newman says. "Just ask anyone who was taken out in that first lap accident last week in Atlanta."

Newman has been on pole for the last two Food City 500's. This year should be no exception. Newman will start from the pole, but won't win this race, unless it's changed to the Food City 1. Then he's got a good chance of leading the only lap and winning the race.

8. Jeff Gordon — Gordon drops eight spots in the Cup standings, thanks to Casey Mears, who lost control of his Dodge on lap one in Atlanta and collected Gordon, along with several other cars, in a pileup that resulted in a red flag. Gordon ended the day in 39th place and now trails Johnson by 216 points.

"Yeah, thanks a lot, Casey Mears," Gordon complains. "I won't forget this. I will have my revenge. Luckily for me, your car has that big, red bulls-eye logo on it, so I will always know what my "Target" is. You'd think the nephew of four-time Indy 500 champ Rick Mears would have a better handle on the wheel. I should have known something was up when I saw that 'Driver's Education' topper on Mear's roof."

Gordon can expect an outcome much brighter in Bristol. He has qualified on the front row at the last two Bristol races. And, historically, Gordon has responded to 30th or worse finishes with top fives in the following races. Last year, he did it four times. My money's on Gordon to jump back into the top five in the Nextel points chase with a win in Bristol.

9. Elliott Sadler — Sadler put together his most consistent qualifying/racing performance of the year, starting 11th and finishing 10th in Atlanta. It was enough to allow Sadler to leapfrog five slots up in the Cup standings to eight, 198 behind Johnson.

"That's just what this team needed after Las Vegas," adds Sadler. "There, we started second, but only managed a 29th at the end. In Atlanta, we had the set — up right from the get go. We need that positive momentum heading into Bristol."

Sadler won the Food City 500 in 2001, but has seen the top ten only once at Bristol since then.

"Remember, I've got two things going for me that no one else has," explains the Emporia, Virginia native. "M&Ms on my hood, and a brother named 'Hermie.'"

10. Jamie McMurray — After a slow start to the season at Daytona, McMurray has reeled off three straight top-15 drives to propel himself into the power rankings for the first time this season. McMurray has risen with hard work, perseverance, and youthful desire.

"But the major reason for my success is this huge chip on my shoulder," explains McMurray. "He's called Chip Ganassi, my car owner. He's always breathing down my neck."

It's a wonder McMurray has time for racing, seeing that he's often busy rubbing shoulders with the Hollywood set, and appearing on television and in movies. McMurray soon will be featured on MTV: Cribs, and will appear in the Disney movie Herbie: Fully Loaded this summer. You can also catch McMurray on the new Bravo offshoot of Queer Eye For the Straight Guy called Queer Eye For the Straight Drive, in which famous racers are given a fashion makeover. If you wonder what Richard Petty looks like with a fanny pack, sandals, and a blonde mustache, this is the show for you.

McMurray has three top 10s in four career Nextel Cup races in Bristol. Obviously, the track appeals to him.

Posted by Jeffrey Boswell at 4:47 PM | Comments (0)

Tennis Angels, Yes; Steroids, No

I sat riveted to my television this past week, watching C-Span over and over. I've never done that before, but I just couldn't get enough of Congress this week. It was clear to me, after watching the congressional hearings on steroid use in Major League Baseball that the sport I loved in my youth has become contaminated, and its current top level players might all be cheating. It actually disgusted me to see how in denial the players, owners, and governing body of baseball really were. Thank God for tennis.

You won't find widespread use of any performance enhancing drugs in tennis. First, professional tennis has Olympic-level testing programs and standards. Second, after a certain point, muscle mass is actually detrimental to your competitiveness. Third, tennis puts women athletes at the same competitive level as men. And we all remember what women on 'roids looks like. Well, any of us who are old enough to remember the days of the old Soviet Union.

They are young. They are very, very attractive. They are athletic and professional. They are four of the top 200 players in the world. They are Anna Kournikova hot. Oh, and they don't do steroids. Welcome to the Tennis Angels. Tennis Angels, you say? The Angels are Emmanuelle Gagliardi, Alina Jidkova, Jennifer Hopkins, and Henrieta Nagyova. All veteran WTA Tour players, all successful. All have had some great runs in tournaments, and they all have singles titles under their belt.

Jenny, Henrieta, Alina, and Emmanuelle are the "grunts" of the WTA Tour, the players who make the tour function, the vital cogs in the wheel. These are the girls who are playing every week, in places on this globe both awesome and awful. For every Lindsay Davenport there are four to six Jennies, Henrietas, Alinas, and Emmanuelles. What is more interesting is that these everyday players, these key pieces of the puzzle, are often ignored or pushed to the back pages. The talent of these players in the 50-200 rank is just incredible, and they are all tough competitors. I often wonder out loud when the press would take a closer look. Good thing they aren't waiting.

TennisAngels.com is their website, and I must say, it is surprisingly good. Along with bios and pictures of the Angels and their friends (Anastasia Myskina appears in a couple of pictures just to make my heart race), there are tennis tips, some pretty good articles written by the Angels themselves, and a feature of the December tennis camp they host and appear at. I was skeptical at first, but then I noticed that Vic Braden himself was one of the clinicians and coaches at the camp. Looking at the agenda, it's a pretty busy camp with drills, coaching, and teaching, a tournament and plenty of opportunity to hit with the Angels themselves. Oh, and it's in Hawaii, and yes, the Angels do wear their bikinis.

I'm highlighting this now because the tennis season is just getting in full swing, with the Pacific Life Open just finished and the NASDAQ 100 in Miami just starting. These are large tournaments, so you will most likely see the unsung WTA Tour girls, the Angels included. As of press time, Jennifer, Alina, and Emmanuelle were in the main draw. I wish there were more ways to highlight these players, and the others in this workman's level. They are what tennis is all about. People playing more for the love of the sport then the money they aren't making, players who love to bring the professional game to each and every one of us.

Anyone who knows me can tell you stories upon stories about my escapades in looking for love. My mother used to say to me that I shouldn't ignore "the low-hanging fruit," and I never really could understand what she really meant ... until now, and while not love, I understand it well about tennis. So if you want to see great tennis, just keep an eye on these "Angels." You wont be disappointed.

Before I go, I just wanted to say hello to Madeline Hauptman, founder and President of PowerAngle tennis racquets. Madeline is a long-time tennis industry member, having invented the revolutionary MadRaq tennis racquet in the 1980s. She was absent from the industry for several years, but has returned with the diagonally strung PowerAngle tennis racquet line. The diagonal stringing pattern provides more spin and control and the patented racquets have a more uniform string bed response due to the equal lengths of the diagonal strings. Like the Tennis Angels, the PowerAngle tennis racquets are also "low-hanging fruit." You can learn more about them at PowerAngle.net.

Thanks for reading, stay tuned, and just say no to steroids...

Posted by Tom Kosinski at 3:58 PM | Comments (2)

March 23, 2005

Rules Don't Apply In Bracketville

I stared at my bracket, crumpled and practically torn from all the erasing. It was Selection Sunday. I had time to make the picks. But I was panicking. Too much pressure. Too many competing voices in my head, all of them yelling louder than Stephen A. Smith. I needed help.

I needed inspiration. I needed a gust of wind to sneak into my room, pick me up, and carry me high into the heavens, to the Oracle of College Basketball.

Which is exactly what happened. Either that or I fell asleep. I don't remember. But this is more fun anyway. For me at least.

So I got to the Oracle. Nice little place. Looked a lot like the Wizard's abode in the Wizard of Oz. In fact, I had a sinking suspicion that if I looked behind the curtains, Digger Phelps would be there. But the Oracle spoke up before I could check.

"Who the heck are you?" the voice said.

"Just a college basketball fan," I said. "Need some help with my brackets."

"For the love of elevation, we all do."

"What are you talking about?"

"Sorry," the Oracle said. "Linda Cohn was in here earlier. She speaks only in dumb catchphrases. So what do you need?"

"I don't know," I said. "Maybe just some infallible rules for picking NCAA tournament games."

"Can do. I know everything."

"Sweet. Give 'em to me," I said.

"Rule number one," the Oracle said. "Always pick teams with a lot of seniors. Veterans are invaluable in the Big Dance."

I jotted it down.

"Rule number two. Teams with great point guards always win."

"Always?" I asked.

"Don't question me, chief."

"Sorry."

"And rule number three. Teams that have been there before have a distinct advantage."

"Anything else?"

"No, three should be enough. You'll win your pool, guaranteed."

"You better be right, Oracle. You better be right."

And that was that. I felt wise. I felt enlightened. I felt invincible. I picked Kansas to go far based on their senior leadership. I jumped on the Wake Forest bandwagon because of point guard Chris Paul. I fell in love with UConn because the Huskies won it all last year.

And now my bracket looks less than spectacular. Stupid oracle.

So much for the seniors. Kansas looked terrible in a first-round loss to Bucknell. Some point guards have done well. Not Paul. He imploded in double-overtime against West Virginia and so did his team. UConn might have been there before, but I guess they didn't see Julius Hodge last time.

In this struggle, I've learned a lesson that I learn every year, but always seem to forget. There are no infallible rules.

Talking heads will tell you everything the Oracle "told" me. Seniors matter. Great guard play matters. Tourney experience matters.

But the flip side is often just as strong. Young players feeling no pressure can do a lot. A dominant big man can mask deficiencies in the backcourt. Teams that have never been there before might fight even harder because they know they might not be back.

Basically, you can throw all the rules out the window when it comes to making NCAA tournament picks. Sometimes it's more about luck than skill. More about heart than experience. More about matchups between role players than superstars.

It's frustrating, especially when the people with no basketball knowledge win the pools because they think a Wildcat would eat a Cowboy.

But it's fun, too. March Madness would be pretty boring if everything that was supposed to happen happened.

So forget about your picks. Throw your brackets in the trash. The Oracle would tell you to sit back and enjoy the ride.

Posted by William Geoghegan at 10:05 AM | Comments (1)

March 22, 2005

Sweet! A Six(teen)-Pack

"I just felt like there was no way I was going to be denied."

Those are the words of Julius Hodge, who, with 4.3 seconds left on the clock and the game tied at 62, slashed past UConn's Rudy Gay, scored his bucket and drew the foul for a chance to make the free throw.

If you don't know the result by now, you mush have been accidentally keeping track of the National Invite Tournament.

Wolfpack wins, 65-62.

"I told you so," Hodge told the fans.

I was hardly shocked at this upset.

I'm sure you can all agree with me that when we saw Vermont downed Syracuse, your ears are probably still ringing with the groans of people realizing that their brackets have just taken a beating.

Perhaps you can agree with me that when we saw Bucknell send Kansas home, your ears are probably still ringing with the sounds of brackets printed on paper being torn to shreds as NCAA fans, collectively, said, "Screw it!"

Pittsburgh, Gonzaga, and Wake Forest are all bye-bye now and I don't believe we're done just yet.

So, instead of crying over my useless picks, I tried to brighten my mood by thinking of the underdog, who I would really like to see win it all.

As fun as it was to see Vermont and Bucknell pull off their respective stunners, it was quite unreasonable to think they would do anything else.

Michigan State and Wisconsin saw to that.

However, it is quite reasonable to believe that the least popular team in North Carolina, who are still alive and kicking, can shock the nation, just like they did in 1983, under coach Jim Valvano.

How can you not want this team to win it all?

I do admire N.C. State Coach Herb Sendek, who has to recruit against the likes of North Carolina, Duke and, to some degree, Wake Forest, but Sendek has his team in the regionals, while the Demon Deacons are the first of the North Carolina power houses to watch the rest of the NCAA tourney on the couch.

I won't bore you again with another recap of the 1983 NCAA Championship game, where N.C. State topped Houston with a last second dunk at the buzzer. I'm sure we've all seen it countless times on ESPN Classic.

I will, however, stress that the Wolfpack of today has fire. They are facing a very beatable Wisconsin team and will (likely) advance to the Elite Eight to (likely) play against the mighty North Carolina Tar Heels.

What impresses me most is that they want to play the Tar Heels.

Let's for a moment, pretend as if they beat North Carolina.

Who's next?

Do you think they'll care about having to play Duke, Michigan State, or Kentucky to get into the Finals?

I think not.

There is no backing down with this team.

So, now I will make a not-so-bold prediction that N.C. State will face Illinois in the championship game, wearing both of their Cinderella jumpers.

Please feel free to make comments, but before you do, just remember this.

The fact that I am predicting N.C State as a finalist isn't anywhere near as insane as having actually submitted a bracket with Bucknell ousting Kansas.

I'm sure the five people in the nation who actually did make that pick, are telling all their detractors, "I told you so."

Hmm ... sounds just like Julius Hodge.

Posted by Damian Greene at 9:07 PM | Comments (0)

McGwire Loses in Court of Public Opinion

He choked. He blew it. He cracked under the pressure. The chance of a lifetime ruined.

Whatever you want to say about Mark McGwire happened — or didn't happen at last week's congressional hearing on steroids. The former major league slugger testified, along with several other current and former players about the use of steroids and its impact on the game of baseball.

Heading into the hearing, many observers viewed it as a chance for current and former players to clear their names in one of the most talked about issues in the last decade. But while sluggers Rafael Palmeiro, Sammy Sosa, and Frank Thomas were outspoken in their denials of steroid use, McGwire repeatedly refused to answer questions regarding his alleged use of the illegal drugs.

His legitimacy came into question after Jose Canseco published his tell-all book, "Juiced: Wild Times, Rampant 'roids, Smash Hits, and How Baseball Got Big," and more recently in a published report in the New York Daily News, which cited documents linking him to steroids in the early 1990s.

Repeatedly telling members of Congress, "I'm not hear to talk about the past," McGwire looked visibly nervous in front of the panel. His refusal to talk about the subject only made matters worse. And some see it as an admission of guilt.

McGwire and Sammy Sosa are credited with resurrecting baseball in 1998 with their historic pursuit of Roger Maris' single-season home run record. McGwire hit 70 home runs that year and came under fire for his use of Android, a performance-enhancing drug that is now banned by Major League Baseball. And after years of denying he used steroids, McGwire folded in front of a national audience, bringing his legacy and great accomplishments into question.

He clearly had the most to gain from the hearing and wound up being the biggest loser of all the players. McGwire told the panel he will do whatever he can to help get steroids out of high school and college locker rooms, a place where steroids have become more and more common. But he refused to talk about his past role in alleged steroid use. Now it seems as if Canseco, who is not the most credible person in the world, was actually telling the truth.

Why didn't McGwire say anything about it? It wasn't as if he was one of the players under investigation in the BALCO trial. McGwire chose to go mum at the wrong time. And for that, he is perceived as guilty. Even his former manager, Tony LaRussa, has doubts about his former player, who he's defended on several occasions in the past. LaRussa told reporters in Florida at the Cardinals' spring training facility that he was disappointed his former player didn't set the record straight regarding steroids. He felt McGwire relied on his lawyers too much in the statements he said and that hurt him.

LaRussa wasn't the only one speaking out against Big Mac's lackluster performance at the hearings. A Missouri representative called for McGwire's name to be removed from a stretch of highway in St. Louis, which was dedicated to McGwire after his 70 home run season in 1998.

For a person who seemed larger-than-life while he was on the baseball diamond, McGwire's poor performance at the hearing will have a lasting effect on his legacy. McGwire, who hit 583 home runs over a 16-year career with the Oakland Athletics and St. Louis Cardinals, will be eligible for the Hall of Fame in 2007 and the Veterans Committee shouldn't look kindly on a cheater — if that is what McGwire turns out to be.

Posted by Andre Watson at 8:00 PM | Comments (0)

March 21, 2005

The NBA's Elite Eight

It's nearly impossible to write about basketball in March without somehow mentioning or relating it to the NCAA tournament, and alas, I am the latest to succumb to this trend. We're going to be focusing on the second round of the NBA playoffs, which will involve the NBA's answer to the Elite Eight. For each team, I'll explain who they will beat in the first round, and how much further they can go.

We'll start with the West. So, as the Black Eyed Peas would say, let's get it started.

San Antonio Spurs

Who'll they beat? — It's hard to imagine the Spurs relinquishing their No. 1 seed, and I envisage the Denver Nuggets grabbing the No. 8 spot over the flailing Minnesota Timberwolves and L.A. Lakers. Make no mistake, George Karl's Nuggets will not lie down for the Spurs easily, and I can see this series going to six, possibly even seven games. In the end, though, I see San Antonio coming out on top.

How much further? — Fans of the Spurs and indeed many experts across the country have them going all the way, and it's a tough argument to counter-attack. The health and play of both Tim Duncan and Manu Ginobili will be big factors. It also depends on how tough a time the Nuggets can give them. If that series goes six or seven games, then the other teams in the West have a chance. If it only goes four or five, I see them going all the way.

Phoenix Suns

Who'll they beat? — The Memphis Grizzlies. Coach Mike Fratello has done a great job with the Grizz, but in the end the injury to star forward Pau Gasol will be his downfall. Phoenix's run-and-gun style will prove too much for Memphis, and I'd be surprised to see this match up go past five games.

How much further? — If my predictions hold true, Phoenix would be faced with the Seattle Supersonics in the second round. Toss a coin on this one. Both teams like to run the floor the majority of the time, and both teams like to shoot the three an awful lot. It'll just depend on who's hot and who's not. Steve Nash will be clearly the biggest factor for the Suns, as well as the rebounding of Shawn Marion. I think they'll squeeze past Seattle, but eventually fall in the conference finals.

Seattle Supersonics

Who'll they beat? — They'll beat the sixth seed, and I see Sacramento falling from five to six. The Kings simply don't have enough talent on the court, what with Chris Webber leaving and now Brad Miller out injured for at least a month. This one could well be a sweep, but I see the Kings grabbing one at home, and the Sonics winning it, 4-1.

How much further? — I've already explained the potential showdown with the Suns. In terms of key players, the Sonics are jump shooters, so they have the luxury where if, say Ray Allen is cold one night, Rashard Lewis or Vladimir Radmanovic can pick up the slack. The rebounding of Reggie Evans will also be key, but as previously mentioned, I see the Suns narrowly escaping with the win.

Dallas Mavericks

Who'll they beat? — The Houston Rockets. Houston are ready to leapfrog Sacramento for the fifth seed, providing a tough opening round matchup for the Mavs, who seem destined for the fourth seed. This will be a fun series to watch, as indicated by the December thriller these two teams had, with Dirk Nowitzki scoring 53 points and Tracy McGrady scoring 48. I definitely see this one going seven games, with Dallas winning the seventh game on their home court.

How much further? — If Dallas get the Spurs in the second round, it's hard to see them progressing, especially if after a grueling Houston series. If they are to pull off the upset and beat San Antonio, the Mavs need to be healthy. Center Erick Dampier and sixth man Jerry Stackhouse are both currently on the injured list, with Dampier being the more significant loss of the two. Dallas has seen their opposing points per game and field goal percentage stats rise with the absence of the big man in the middle. Even if healthy, I can't see them beating the Spurs.

Halfway home and as you can see, I've got San Antonio coming out of the West. Looking at the bashing my NCAA bracket is taking right now; I've probably jinxed them. Either way, let's head east.

Miami Heat

Who'll they beat? — Whoever is brave enough to stand in their way. Currently, the eight-seed belongs to the Philadelphia 76ers, as the Orlando Magic are seemingly hitting the self-destruct button. It doesn't really matter though, the Heat are the most impressive team in the East by far right now, and a sweep here in the first round is most definitely on the cards.

How much further? — At least the finals for my money, no question. If my bracket holds true they'll meet the Cleveland Cavaliers in the second round, and while LeBron James may prove to be a pain, Miami should dispose of them easily, too. That would lead them to the conference finals, barely breaking a sweat. I'll save my finals matchup prediction against the Spurs for a later article, but these two definitely have a date in June.

Detroit Pistons

Who'll they beat? — Detroit will come away with the second seed, but it's hard to predict who they'll face. I'm going with the Chicago Bulls. If they do face Chicago, it shouldn't prove to be too difficult. The baby Bulls have no business running with the champions in the playoffs.

How much further? — This may surprise some, but I think the champs will bow out to the rising Boston Celtics. Detroit, for one reason or another, have never really gotten into full flow this season. Whether it was the November brawl, or coach Larry Brown's hip surgery, the continuity hasn't been there. I see the wear and tear eventually taking its toll against Boston.

Boston Celtics

Who'll they beat? — Boston are a near lock for the third-seed, but where the sixth-seed will land is anyone's guess. I'll play safe and say the Indiana Pacers will hold onto it, causing a repeat of last year's playoff matchup. The Pacers swept the Celtics last year, but without Jermaine O'Neal and Ron Artest, I think we'll be seeing an exact reversal of last year's 4-0 sweep. Boston, next to Miami, are the hottest team in the east thanks to the Antoine Walker trade, and they should get out of the first round, since the east, from the sixth-seed down, is becoming a joke.

How much further? — As previously mentioned, I predict they'll dethrone the champion Detroit Pistons and face the Heat in the conference finals. Unfortunately for Boston, a certain brick wall resides in Miami, and once they hit it, they won't get back up.

Cleveland Cavaliers

Who'll they beat? — The Washington Wizards in the battle between fourth- and fifth-seed. I think the Cavs will snag the fourth-seed and home court advantage from Washington. This could eventually prove to be the deciding factor. Well, that and a little-known guard by the name of LeBron James.

How much further? — They'll be meeting the Heat in the second round, and it will burn them pretty bad. LeBron drives a pretty fast corvette, but Shaquille O'Neal plays the part of a brick wall pretty well, and it has yet to crumble. Cleveland's road ends with Miami.

So there you have it, a Spurs/Heat Finals if it all holds true, but it's going to be an interesting ride to get there.

Should be fun.

Posted by Joseph Sammour at 5:14 PM | Comments (1)

I Hate Mondays: RB Saturation

In the NFL, how many teams are really in the market for a workhorse running back?

Go ahead, take a guess:

10? 5? 3?

How about zero?

Edgerrin James and Shaun Alexander, who are all allegedly on the trade block, are not garnering much interest. These two backs combined for over 3,000 yards and 25 touchdowns last year, and even though the Colts are asking no more than a second-round pick for James (allegedly), there are still no takers.

Here's why:

Last year alone, 18 of the 32 teams in football had a running back topple the 1,000-yard rushing mark which means they have a qualified employee at running back (for the most part).

Here are the 14 that didn't:

Arizona
Carolina
Chicago
Cleveland
Dallas
Kansas City
Miami
Minnesota
Oakland
Philadelphia
Pittsburgh
Tampa Bay
San Francisco
St. Louis

From this crew, Kansas City, Carolina, and Pittsburgh all have several options to carry the ball, but were plagued by injuries last season. The Chiefs have The Priest and Larry Johnson, the Panthers depth chart was tested all the way down to Nick Goings but Stephen Davis and DeShaun Foster are still skilled, and the Steelers have Duce Staley (when healthy) and Jerome Bettis.

San Francisco, St. Louis, and Cleveland have young running backs that have shown promise, complemented by a more experienced back. The 49ers have Maurice Hicks and Kevan Barlow, the Browns have Lee Suggs and Chester Taylor, and the Rams have Steven Jackson and Marshall Faulk.

Dallas is confident in their young buck Julius Jones while Philadelphia is content with Brian Westbrook. Minnesota has a committee with Michael Bennett, Onterrio Smith, and Mewelde Moore all sharing time — but they refuse to trade any of them.

Oakland can be crossed off the list with the recent addition of LaMont Jordan. He will be expected to carry a full-time load. Chicago's Thomas Jones revived his career last season compiling nearly 1,500 yards (rushing and receiving combined) in only 14 games, so he could be their go-to guy, but given the franchise's recent history of one-year wonders at this very position, they may search for a contingency plan.

That leaves Arizona, Miami, and Tampa Bay. Conveniently, all three teams have a top-10 draft pick in the first round. Conveniently, there are three top-notch running backs, Ronnie Brown, Cedric Benson, and Cadillac Williams, all of which are assigned to one of these teams by 90% of current mock drafts.

Keep in mind that at the beginning of last season, off the list of 14 teams who didn't have a 1,000-yard rusher last season, 11 of those teams had a back on the roster that attained that feat at some point earlier in his career.

Twelve, if you count the Ricky Williams.

Although the 1,000-yard mark has become a watered-down benchmark for ball-carriers, it's still one of the main barometers. Judging by the number of teams that have a halfback who's achieved this goal, there's a lot of above average runners.

At no other position in the National Football League is there this much depth. With the league's emphasis on offense, franchises are constantly looking for defensive upgrades. Dominant linemen are scarce and the strength at wide receiver or quarterback simply doesn't compare to the running back pool.

After the NFL draft, barring injuries, virtually every team in the league will be equipped with a worthy starting running back.

No wonder there is minimal interest in Shaun Alexander and Edgerrin James.

Over-saturation and positional overpopulations mix like Mondays and me.

"How is it that we never have time to do a job right, but we always have time to do it over?" — Anonymous

Posted by Dave Golokhov at 2:47 PM | Comments (0)

Hearings Expose Inept Congress and MLB

The House of Representatives and its House Government Reform Committee held hearings on March 17, 2005 supposedly to bring light to the subject on the prevention of steroid use in Major League Baseball. It was far from a lesson in ways to further prevent abusing anabolic steroids and growth hormones in an effort to eventually discourage minors from using such illicit drugs.

Instead, we got a bird's eye view into how our lawmakers, as well as the institution of Major League Baseball continue to grandstand and illustrate their obvious disconnect they both share with the American people.

And there is plenty of blame to go around with respect to the denials and obfuscations of Major League Baseball, the Major League Players Association, and present day and retired players of MVP quality and the lack of their ethical standards, to say the very least.

Somewhere along the way, coming to light over the past 10 years, MLB decided to cast a blind eye about drug enhancement problems among its players. When it came to illegal recreational drugs, many players got chance after chance to return to baseball, and when it game to amphetamines, anabolic steroids, and growth hormones, it was not even on their radar according to Commissioner Bud Selig.

Many in the press and broadcast media have aired views that either criticized the Congress for having such hearings in the first place or pontificated on how disappointed they were in their on-the-field heroes. But they are perhaps missing the mark in their assertions.

Major League Baseball is a yearly multi-billion dollar business which does not have the privilege of operating in a vacuum. The majority of its funding comes from television contracts, ticket sales, and merchandising, while most of the MLB stadiums are still subsidized by the American taxpayers. MLB is neither a private country club nor a "private" entity, although it solely enjoys exemption from anti-trust laws, which other professional sports leagues can only envy.

Therefore the arrogance of Major League Baseball in its attempts to avoid testifying on March 17th was beyond the pale. It necessitated subpoenas for representatives from the commissioner's office, the president of the MLBPA, Donald Fehr, as well as the existing amendment to the collective bargaining agreement, decided on March 2nd, which readdressed the substance abuse policy. This did not sit well with members of the HGRF and only made the air more hostile in the hearing chambers when the administrative management panel, the fourth to appear, took their seats.

Prior to the management hearing, several retired as well as current players appeared, and there is still speculation as to why particular players were called. But again, what is significant is that all six players who eventually were present for the hearings resisted testifying and were subject to subpoenas and/or asked for prosecutorial immunity, with the threat of citing the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution.

What we witnessed was not theater as some have characterized it, but the inorganization of the committee members as to what their goal of the hearings were, with the exception of a few, interspersed with members of Congress gushing over home run heroes who now have made it hard for the average fan to fathom how much they indeed care about their communities or the preservation of our national pastime.

Furthermore, the appearance of Dr. Elliot Pellman, M.D., Medical Advisor to Major League Baseball, on the second panel of medical and scientific advisors, sounded more like a corporate litigator than an M.D. in his contentiousness when questioned by the committee on specifics of how and where drugs are presently tested, and why specific drugs were absent from the agreement. He took the high road by repeatedly stating that he was not an attorney, nor could he comment upon why MLB insists on independently contracting the labs, which test for illegal substances. MLB contracts with labs not necessarily under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) or the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), which the U.S. Olympic Committee, the NCAA, the World Tennis Association, and most professional sports entities utilize.

Sadly, Pellman was upstaged when Panel Four took their seats and the Congressional members had the unwieldy task of getting information from Rob Manfred, MLB VP of Labor Relations, who took credit for not actually "drafting the agreement" only the negotiation of it with attorney, Michael Weiner, of the MLBPA. In contention was whether a player could be either fined $10,000.00 or suspended 10 days for a first offense. Manfred stated the "suspension or fine" was a typographical error. And none of the players testifying nor Mr. Manfred claimed they were aware of this language in the agreement.

But Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (R-GA), as well as Rep. Christopher Shays (R-CT) held Manfred's feet to the fire. The point being that lack of appropriate punishment for criminal use of illegal substances was the essence of the agreement, and the confusion as to what the punishment is did not endear MLB to the Congress.

"There was nobody that was bringing up the steroid issue to me in 1994," according to Commissioner Selig. I guess that takes him off the hook. "Major League Baseball has made tremendous progress in this matter." But he did not admit to a "major problem" ever having been in Major League Baseball further stating that since there was no evidence of such and there was no evidence due to a lack of a previous testing program it was beyond his control. He only became concerned in 1998 after "learning" about the androstenedione problem, publicized since Mark McGwire was openly using it in a legally sold powder drink version of it, during the season in which he broke Roger Maris' home run record.

The pretension of MLB was only underscored by the ostentatiousness of former big-league hero, Mark McGwire, who avoided taking the 5th with his own version of it by stating, "I am not here to talk about the past." He also avoided answers when asked for his opinions on the present drug policy by saying that "I don't know, I'm retired." Even had McGwire not wished to comment, he would not have so brazenly let down fans across the country had he not been so prickly and unwilling to contribute some insight on improving the good of the game. Instead he left us cold, and perhaps showed us his true colors for the first time.

As long as McGwire was receiving accolades and worldwide praise when he was on the field, he seemed cooperative, although even in 1998 during his challenge to break Maris' record he many times avoided the press. For McGwire to not want to talk about the past when it comes to our national pastime, given his place in its history, he has at the very least made a mockery of his own career. Regarding the other players testimony, amazingly the much-reviled Jose Canseco looked more cooperative than his peers, and provided more thoughtful answers.

Finally, the Congress does not get a passing grade for the amount of time dedicated to this issue which totaled nearly 12 hours on the taxpayers' dole. The tap dance by Major League Baseball, its Players Association and players, is but reminiscent of and mirrors many prior Congressional hearings, as well as our lawmakers' constant elusiveness in an effort to avoid directly answering questions on matters of far more importance such as Homeland Security, the War on Terror, Social Security, Medicare, illegal immigration, and the economy.

It would be foolish of us to expect better decorum and forthrightness concerning the matters of Major League Baseball. And Major League Baseball has all but gotten its cues from our lawmakers and those who oversee our governmental organizations, and is still in its infancy in the art of doublespeak.

We can only hope that our Congress and the matters it pursues or investigates in the future will be far more organized and with more purpose than that which was witnessed on March 17, 2005. If that is not the case, then we can conclude that we are not only being denied the full integrity of Major League Baseball, but more importantly, it will fuel speculation that our elected officials lack the honor, dedication, and candor necessary to adequately serve the American people. Let's hope it ain't so.

Posted by Diane M. Grassi at 2:15 PM | Comments (0)

March 19, 2005

Sneaking a Peak at March Madness

Romantic relationships and sports fanaticism are not alien to one another. Both involve love (you know, that nonsensical emotion that separates us from the robots), although the intensity of that love can vary from relationship to relationship. (I love the Devils more than the Nets, and the Jets more than the Mets. Does that mean I love the Jets more than the Nets, or the Nets more than the Mets? Place your bets...)

Both involve commitment, although unlike romance, there's usually no backing out of a sports relationship ... no matter how abusive or one-sided it is. In that sense, it's more familial than romantic; but overall, the flood of emotions that crest over a sports fan — the agony, the ecstasy, the insanity — are much more akin to physical or emotional bonds with the opposite (or same, for our Blue State readers) sex.

I've been in relationships with women who followed sports, watched sports, or tolerated sports. My first "real" girlfriend (i.e. non-inflatable) in high school was a huge hockey fan. She liked the Rangers; I liked the Devils. A Palestinian would have had a brighter future with an Israeli, but at least she dug sports.

My ex-wife, in contrast, was not a sports fan. She "tolerated" baseball and hockey, especially watching a game in the stadium. But she hated football. Notice I said "ex-"...

The girl I'm with these days is a hardcore NBA fan who watched the Super Bowl for the football and the commercials, hates baseball, and has yet to let the light of hockey into her heart. (It's just a matter of times, sweetheart.) Not only does she watch sports, she follows them. I don't have to change my sports viewing habits — if we go to the bar, we're both watching the game. She's already told me that when I move in this fall, I can purchase the NHL Center Ice pay-per-view package (you know, for scab hockey) so long as I buy her NBA Full-Court. Done and done.

Other guys and girls aren't so lucky. Their better halves are like parents who will allow their children just enough candy to keep them quiet but never enough to satisfy their sweet tooth. Sports viewing is rationed; a privilege, not a right. Many relationships work on some sort of barter system, wherein one person can watch sports if — and only if — the other person has something else to watch, such as "American Idol." Or if one person is doing something functional while watching sports. My father, for example, has ironed more shirts than a Korean dry cleaner in order to get in front of the television on a weekday evening.

So with March Madness upon us, obviously this is a stressful time for sports nuts, alumni, and amateur bracketologists. Some of us might be able to catch a full slate of games on a Saturday or Sunday. Others are going to have to be a hell of lot craftier, as they're dragged around town by their significant others for errands or mall-ratting or visiting Great Aunt Petunia.

Just in case you need it, here is:

THE SNEAKY BASTARDS' GUIDE TO WATCHING/LISTENING TO SPORTS WHILE OUT WITH YOUR NON-FAN BOYFRIEND/GIRLFRIEND

1. Eating Out

Don't pick a sports bar for lunch or dinner, because your ass is going to get shot down. They're not stupid, no matter how many times they don't smell it on your breath. So meet them halfway, and head to a TGI Fridays or a Ruby Tuesdays. Ask the nice young lady with the crayon and the seating chart for a table near, but not at, the bar. The closer you get to that bank of TVs near the taps, the better. Before you sit down, quickly scope out the sight lines and choose the seat that maximizes your TV intake. PLEASE NOTE: Do not pick a seat that has a TV directly behind your date. They can tell you're not looking at them; like, for example, if you're supposed to be staring into their eyes, but are about two feet off the mark.

2. Head to Best Buy

What a great weekend to scope out that entertainment center you've been angling to buy for the house! Just stroll in, find a sales person, and begin asking questions about every facet of the equipment, from voltage to PC compatibility. With any luck, you'll be able to watch at least the second half of one of the early games ... and in HD, no less.

3. Stroll Around Town For a Little Window Shopping

Towns have bars. Bars have televisions. More importantly, they also have giant windows and, if need be, public restrooms you can slowly walk to.

4. Visit a Friend

Say you have to swing by and pick up some tools/work materials/drugs. Make sure it's a friend with a roommate ... an incredibly chatty roommate. Arrive at their place, and immediately engage the chatty roommate in some sort of conversation that your significant other can be ensnared into. ("Ohmygod, you watch "Lost," too?") Sit back, grab a brew, and watch some hoops while they speculate over the fate of Claire's baby...

5. The Car Radio

Turn on the local jock talk station while you two are driving to the supermarket or Target or Super Target, and pretend that you're waiting for "traffic and weather together on the fives." After about 25 minutes, tell him/her that you made an honest mistake, and that you were also wondering why the sports report was taking so long.

6. Phone a Friend

Have a buddy call you while you are stuck inside the mall for the afternoon. Pretend it's one of your parents calling you, as your friend lays the phone down next to the television. It's like carrying around a transistor radio, only without the geek guilt. (This plan especially comes in handy if you have unlimited weekend minutes.)

7. Buy a One-Way Ticket to Hell

This is like the nuclear bomb for the desperate sports fan. Think of it like a double reverse in football: pull it off and you're home free; get caught, and it's a drive-killer.

What am I talking about? The lie. The BIG LIE. Worse than "I have the runs," worse than "my dog ate it," worse than "tending to my sick grandmother."

I'm talking: "I'm volunteering in the burn ward at the Children's Hospital this afternoon," and then ducking over to the local watering hole for some doubleheader action.

You've been warned...

Greg Wyshynski is also a weekly columnist for SportsFan Magazine. His columns appear every Saturday on Sports Central. You can e-mail Greg at [email protected].

Posted by Greg Wyshynski at 12:24 PM | Comments (0)

The Not Important Tournament

For college basketball, this is the time when legends are made, hearts are snapped in half, and champions are crowned. For three weeks, the nation becomes enamored with office pools, wall-to-wall coverage, and reminiscing about fraternity keggers gone by.

However, in the supposed spirit of competition, the NCAA gives the squads who couldn't crack the top 65 teams in the nation the chance to skip more class and continue to compete.

For you faithful readers out there, can anyone name the last five winners of the NIT? How about the last three? Hell, how about last year's "champion"? Of course you can't. Wake Forest, Tulsa, Memphis, St. John's, and Michigan (the last five champions for those of you keeping score at home) all realize what the NIT truly stands for: the Not Important Tournament.

Granted, this tournament gives teams who had their bubble burst by the NCAA selection committee a chance to shine and prove why they should have been included in the dance. However, who watches and who cares?

Of this year's field of 40 rejects, the team holding the most legitimate beef with the selection committee was arguably Notre Dame. The Irish accepted a bid to play in the little dance, but seemingly neglected to inform its players. With the stand more than half-empty in South Bend, Notre Dame performed gutlessly to be ousted by Holy Cross.

This was the team that had the most compelling case to be invited to the big field? Notre Dame proved to be a shining example of why the tournament is useless. Sure, schools like Denver, San Francisco, and Wichita State can adorn the halls of their broken-down, high school-esque gyms with NIT propaganda.

However, for schools like the aforementioned Notre Dame, Maryland, and Georgetown, what is the benefit of playing against inferior competition in a meaningless tournament? Especially a tournament that nothing short of a championship will be seen as a complete embarrassment.

An argument could be made that teams that go deep or win the NIT could use that as a springboard to catapult them to bigger and better things next year. Well, that argument would be weaker than George Bush's new plan for Social Security. Last year's champion, Michigan, finished the year 13-18, including an impressive 4-13 conference record.

In fact, the last time a team got to the Final Four of the NIT one season and the following season reached the Final Four of the NCAAs was the 1985 and 1986 Louisville Cardinals. In '85, the Cardinals finished fourth in the NIT and won the whole thing in '86.

If you want to argue the point that the NIT gives semi-star players the opportunity to acquire postseason experience while seasoning their own stellar game, that case is more viable, but not much. The last MVP of the NIT to play in the NBA is Robert "Tractor" Traylor, who won the award in 1997 while starring for Michigan Wolverines.

As for this year's NIT, the most intriguing storyline has already vanished. John Chaney's Temple Owls were bounced out in the first-round by Virginia Tech. While Chaney's future with team hangs in the balance, why Temple would even accept a bid to compete in this tournament made no sense.

They had the opportunity to deal with the top-rated coach in America who most resembles his team's mascot, without the media glare that would no doubt follow him like his shadow. For Chaney and Temple University, it seems like an early exit in the NIT was far more counterproductive than a no show would have been.

It would make far more sense to allow the players of these respective schools to return back to class, without the distraction of participating in a glorified pick-up tournament. Of course, however, the college basketball suits will take any opportunity to further pierce the granite of a rock is search of plasma, rather then allow these kids to pick up and further their education.

After all, these are athlete-students, not student-athletes. Don't fret either, the NCAA will never allow us to confuse the two.

Posted by Daniel Collins at 12:19 PM | Comments (0)

March 18, 2005

Sports Q&A: Heels All the Way?

Chuck from Carrboro, N.C. asks, "As a North Carolina fan, I want to pick them to win the NCAA tournament. Should I?"

If you are one of "those" Carolina fans, then you already have picked them to win it all. And you filled in your bracket back in October. When I refer to one of "those" Carolina fans, I'm referring to the diehard, "Carolina can do no wrong" fans, who, when watching the Heels on television, turn down the volume and listen to the game called by the radio voice of the Tarheels, Woody Durham.

Don't get me wrong. Carolina is the most talented team in the field. But how many times in the past has that been the case, and the Heels came away without the national title? Shouldn't a team featuring Michael Jordan, Sam Perkins, and Kenny Smith have won the title? They couldn't do it in 1984. Nor could a team of Jerry Stackhouse and Rasheed Wallace in 1995.

This year's squad boasts at least four potential NBA'ers in Raymond Felton, Sean May, Rashad McCants, and freshman Marvin Williams. Shouldn't that be enough to win a national title? It should be, but it wasn't even enough to put Carolina in the finals of the ACC tournament. The Heels couldn't string together three wins to win their conference tournament. Expecting six in a row is probably asking too much. I know some of you Carolina fans will put a positive spin on UNC's early exit from the tournament.

I can hear you now: "This is a good thing. This will give [Rashad] McCants a chance to rest and get back into playing shape." Bull. You get into playing shape by playing, and winning doesn't hurt. And yes, I know that back in 1993, when UNC won it all, they lost to Georgia Tech in the ACC tourney after winning the regular season crown. What does that mean? Nothing, it's just a statistic.

Now, in the Heels' favor, their half of the Syracuse bracket is advantageous. If the seeds hold, Carolina's looking at No. 4 seed Florida in the regional semifinal. Sure, the Gators have made a lot of noise lately by winning the SEC tournament and downing Kentucky twice, but they are ready-made to be demolished by the Heels. Lately, Carolina has been unable to get their running game on track. Florida likes the up-tempo style, and if anyone dares play that style against the Heels, Carolina will drop 90 on them and win easily.

Many analysts cite Carolina's size up front as a determining factor in their success. Yes, they are big with May, Marvin Williams, and Jawad Williams in the game. But if you've watched a Carolina game, you know they get their shots blocked more than anyone in the country. May has posted some impressive rebounding numbers, but a lot of that is the result of grabbing the rebound of a shot that just got rejected. Connecticut, the region's No. 2 seed, is the nation's leaders in blocked shots.

Assuming UNC advances, they would likely face either Kansas or Connecticut in the regional final. Should they win that, either Duke, Oklahoma, or Syracuse awaits in the Final Four matchup. If Carolina achieves the finals, likely opponents would be Illinois, Oklahoma State, Wake Forest, Georgia Tech, Washington, or Arizona. I just don't think Carolina can run that gauntlet against that level of competition. I like the Heels to get to the Final Four, but Carolina has a habit of losing in the national semifinals (see 1991, 1995, 1997, and 1998).

So, Chuck, the answer is this: pick the Tarheels to reach the regional final. Anything after that, proceed with caution.

William from Chesapeake, VA asks "What athletes are not doing steroids?"

Well, we know steroids in baseball are rampant, and, recently, several Major League Baseball players took the stand and perjured themselves before Congress by lying that they don't use steroids. And, as long as Bill Romanowski is carrying a briefcase, then a majority of the NFL has access to steroids.

Track and field? Do we even need to ask? Ironically, the sport's greatest icon, Carl Lewis, was the most outspoken proponent against steroid use. You would think other athletes would realize that Lewis remained on top of his sport for 15 years, drug free, and try to emulate him. But maybe they heard Carl sing. Steroids in track and field were the precursor to the steroid fiasco of today. I guess we should have known something was up when we couldn't tell the East German women from the men.

Are NFL football players using steroids? You bet your 600-pound bench press they are. Heck, there are high school football players doing steroids. In their defense (not that I'm condoning any use of steroids), I think NFL players would likely use steroids for its powers of recovery than they would to enhance brute strength. Will the NFL face the wrath of a bitter whistleblower as Major League Baseball has? Possibly, although the NFL brotherhood seems to frown upon ratting out fellow players.

Are professional bowlers steroid users? Oh yeah, those guys are on the juice. Have you seen the spin they put on those 15-pound balls? That's not natural.

Are their steroids in the NBA? No, the NBA is clean of steroids. Apparently, marijuana does more for the NBA player than any steroids could.

Golfers? I'm sure some idiot tried some steroids and added five yards to his drive, but those same steroids couldn't help him make the two-foot putt. Golf is more a game of power from flexibility than it is of power from pure strength. That's why the 160-pound golfer can generate as much club head speed as the 250-pound drive-happy freak.

The same goes for tennis. Why do tennis players need steroids when they can make up for their lack of strength with a technologically advanced racket? If you're under 30 years of age, chances are you've never even seen a wooden racket. Are tennis players juicin'? No, but their rackets are.

And while we're on the subject of equipment, we can naturally dive into auto racing. Crews are constantly searching for a competitive edge, whether it is an illegal part, illegal size of equipment, or an illegal fuel mixture. No, it's not steroids, but it is cheating, and the car has no say in what they're doing to it. Pity the poor car. And if you pity the car, your heart has to ache for hoses and greyhound dogs. Trainers have been pumping them full of chemicals for years.

It all boils down to this: we live in a society of cheaters, whether they be accountants who doctor the books, politicians who make illegal deals, of the piece of trash looking to sue someone for the most ridiculous of reasons. Of course, not everyone is a cheater, and the same goes for the world of athletics. There are cheaters in every sport, there are drug abusers in every sport, there is that person searching for the short cut to glory. Athletics, as well as society, will never be totally "cheater-free."

As we speak now, there is some chemist with no scruples frantically experimenting to find a performance-enhancing drug that cannot be detected medically. Steroids are a matter of choice; today, it seems that too many athletes are making the wrong choice.

Get Your Questions Answered!

Do you have a question or comment? Need a babysitter? Do you need a good defense lawyer recommended? Need those nude photos of your lady friend authenticated? Then send the pictures along with your question, your name, and hometown to [email protected]. You may get the answer you're looking for in the next column on Friday, April 1st.

Posted by Jeffrey Boswell at 5:01 PM | Comments (0)

The Big East: The Bigger Domination

Big East basketball doesn't get nearly the credit, prestige, or overall recognition for being a dominant basketball, if not the most dominant college basketball conference the league has seen recently.

Everyone points to the ACC, the media praises them high and low. That's history, that's tradition. But if you are a "what have you done for me lately?" type of person, you wouldn't be praising any other conference more than the Big East.

Connecticut and Syracuse will give the Big East, the best conference in America this season, half of the Final Four bracket. You heard it here, you might be watching it this month. I also expect Boston College and even West Virginia to surprise us all and get further than imagined.

The Huskies, the No. 2 seed in the Syracuse Region, open defense of their national championship Friday at 2:45 PM against No. 15 Central Florida at the DCU Center in Worcester, Mass.

Antonio Kellogg, a freshman on the University of Connecticut men's basketball team, is out for the rest of the season because he has broken team curfew rules several times.

UConn's backcourt could be in trouble without Kellogg, who is also an all-around defender. His suspension leaves Williams, who hasn't fouled out of a game in his career, as Connecticut's only true ball-handler. Williams has logged 30.6 minutes per game in 29 starts this season.

"I'm out here on my own," Kellogg said during an earlier interview. "There's a lot of easy stuff to get into. You know, college is nothing but room to get in trouble. You've got to stay focused on that right path and know what you can do and what you can't do."

Kellogg has had enough chances already in his first year with the Huskies. He had academic problems during his first semester and, in addition to his curfew troubles, has had some off-the-court problems, including an incident in a dormitory on the Uconn.

Recently, Kellogg has exchanged verbal blows with UConn assistant coach George Blaney after being pulled during the first half of Friday's loss to Syracuse in the Big East tournament semifinals.

The problem for the Huskies now is that there is no backup at point guard for Marcus Williams in the NCAA tournament.

Even with that said, the Huskies will win their third title overall and become the first team since Duke in 1991 and '92 to win consecutive titles.

If UConn fails to achieve back-to-back titles, look at another team in the Big East to potentially do the trick. Syracuse, which is No. 4 in the Austin regional, has a short bench but can frustrate teams with its 2-3 zone defense and has two stars in Hakim Warrick and Gerry McNamara. Hmm, have they won a title recently, too? I am starting to see a trend...

Additionally, what about West Virginia? They are playing with the best of them right now, and right now is all that matters. West Virginia has already been the Cinderella of one tournament, why not another? They made the Big East tournament memorable by advancing all the way to the title game before losing to Syracuse, 68-59, on Saturday at Madison Square Garden.

Save the applause for the dominant league until the end of March, when they bring home another title. Or better yet, save until next season, because this conference will never be the same. Big East basketball, as strong as it is now, will be bigger than Jose Canseco during his "prime" next season. The conference will bulge from 12 to 16 teams, as Boston College tucks its tail and greed between its legs and heads to the ACC while Louisville, Marquette, DePaul, Cincinnati, and South Florida climb aboard.

Posted by Kevin Ferra at 5:00 PM | Comments (4)

March 17, 2005

Remember the Expos

The game of baseball has sort of waned among my sports of interest the last few years, but, as with the start of any sports season, it's tough not to feel a shade of giddiness.

This year brings that giddiness to a new city — Washington, DC — and the righteousness of that appointment almost makes one forget that we did indeed take away the giddiness from another city.

Of course, the Quebecois have no one to blame but themselves for that, no arguments there. But though there may have been far fewer Expos fans than there were for other teams, the pain of losing them is just as hard for the devoted.

The Expos were actually my favorite National League team, and I wrote for a time for an Expos-devoted website. I sometimes felt like I loved them because no one else did. People had such contempt for the Expos, guilty of nothing themselves (teams like the Yankees and Lakers, on the other hand, are deserving of our contempt). I remember seeing them when they would play the Braves on TBS as a kid, and asking my mom what the "Jb" on their cap stood for, not recognizing it as an M.

Seems hard to believe now, but there was a time that the Expos did quite well. Gary Carter, Tim Wallach, Rusty Staub, and Andre Dawson are names not unfamiliar to the Baseball pantheon-keepers, and they even had Pete Rose for a couple of years. They actually were among National League attendance leaders for a large part of their existence, and although it seems unfathomable now, on one glorious day they were tied for the NL wildcard lead in early September in — are you ready for this? — 2003!

Montreal is never going to have a Major League team again, one must assume, so it is appropriate to say goodbye.

The Expos were born in 1969 and only had to wait two weeks for their first no-hitter, courtesy of Bill Stoneman. He struck again in 1972 with no-no No. 2. His record overall? 54-85.

Rose got hit No. 4,000 wearing a Expos uniform, and the team boasted, in my opinion, the greatest mascot in all of sports, Youppi. You can see him here, seemingly opening a pack of cigarettes.

A little over a month ago, the minions that occupy what is left, administratively speaking, of the Expos offices in Olympic Stadium, put the right of Youppi up for sale. ESPN reports the Montreal Canadiens are interested. At least he will live on.

But the rest of the team will live on only in spirit. A third no-hitter was achieved in 1981 by Charlie Lea, who started and won the All-Star Game for the National League that year. The Expos made the playoffs and bowed out in the fifth and deciding (the series were best-of-five back then) game to the Dodgers, 2-1, thanks to a ninth-inning homer given up by Steve Rogers to Rick Monday. The Expos fans refer to the date the game was played on as Blue Monday.

They wouldn't make many waves again until 1994, when they broke out of the gate 74-40, sported the best record in baseball and were six games clear of the Atlanta Braves when the players' strike washed out the balance of the season. If they could've parlayed that season into a World Series appearance, they still might be playing in Montreal today.

When the strike began, they were in the midst of a 20-3 streak, and they were doing it with the second-lowest payroll in baseball. Larry Walker and Pedro Martinez were among the stars on that team. Three years earlier, they brought up a young prospect named Randy Johnson, the year Dennis Martinez would throw no-hitter No. 4 for the organization, this one a perfect game. Two days earlier, Mark Gardner had thrown nine hitless innings, but given up a hit in the 10th. Pedro Martinez would do the same a couple years later. That's six nine-inning no-hitters in 35 years of baseball.

Olympic stadium, their home for the majority of their existence, had a reputation from day one as being one of the worst in baseball. Unlike Fenway, it apparently wasn't built for the long haul. Anybody remember a cement beam collapsing there in 1991, forcing them to play the rest of the season on the road?

Perhaps it was the baseball Gods heralding the arrival of Claude Broach, who had just bought the team and would run it into the ground. He in turn, sold the team to Jeff Loria, who accelerated the process of selling off most Expos with any talent and keeping the payroll ridiculously low.

Back to more positive remembrances, can you write an obituary on the Expos without mentioning their greatest player ever? The best position player in the game, in my view? I'm speaking, of course, about the last great Expo, Vladimir Guerrero.

The arm. The superhuman outfield assists. The bat speed. The homers. He had five 30-homer seasons for the Expos, something no one else in team history did more than once.

Baseball and Montreal was always an odd pairing, so it's fitting that their franchise player would be a Dominican with a Russian name. And a brother named Wilton.

There's still baseball to be played in Montreal, but it'll be done by the Stingers of Concordia University, and their municipal opponents. Au Renoir, Les Expos, and where have you gone, Floyd You mans?

Posted by Kevin Beane at 3:21 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

The Most Underrated Player in Baseball

Johnny Damon, the Boston Red Sox centerfielder and part-time Jesus impersonator, verbalized the popular view of the San Diego Padres last year when he said, "Does anyone know who plays for San Diego?" He asked this before the Red Sox played the Padres, when the Padres had David Wells as the ace of their staff.

While such ignorance could be attributed to the distance between San Diego and Boston, there's a lack of knowledge closer to home, as well. Tune in to FOX's "Southern California Sports Report," and you'll hear about the Los Angeles Dodgers, the L.A. Angels of Anaheim, USC football, and UCLA basketball. Even local high schools get a share of the stories. Yet, rarely do their broadcasts mention San Diego. Why is it that the national media and baseball fans in general seem to forget that a team plays south of Los Angeles?

One reason could arise from the Padres' games ending very late on the East Coast, but then the same should be true of the San Francisco Giants and the Dodgers. Most people, however, can name at least a couple players on both the Giants and Dodgers. And that's not including Barry Bonds. Perhaps the Padres lack of a championship, or their fluctuation from worst to first and back makes them harder to follow. Many fans know of the Padres fire sale in the early 1990s, but that's probably because their favorite team got one of the Padres' quality players at bargain prices (remember Gary Sheffield, Roberto Alomar, and Fred McGriff?).

Maybe it's the nice weather that reminds fans more of a walk in the park on a summer day than a baseball game. Whatever the reason, the Padres players lack any sort of national recognition. Jake Peavy, just 23-years-old, won the National League ERA title, posting a 2.27, a full 0.33 points lower than runner-up Randy Johnson, and 0.71 points below Cy Young winner Roger Clemens. Despite his performance, he didn't receive one vote for the Cy Young award. And Peavy isn't even the best player on the Padres. That honor belongs to Mark Loretta, the most underrated player in baseball.

No second baseman last year came close to the year Mark Loretta had. His .335 batting average was nearly 30 points higher than Tony Womack of the New York Yankees. His .391 on-base percentage was highest, almost 20 points higher than Mark Bellhorn of the Red Sox. While he hit just 16 home runs compared to Alfonso Soriano's 28, he still finished third in slugging percentage for all second basemen at .495. He had the most hits and the most runs, with 208 and 108, respectively. He finished third in doubles, and had the second fewest strikeouts.

When compared against players at all positions, Loretta's numbers still ranked well. He finished fourth in hits, sixth in average, sixth in doubles, and tied for 19th for both runs and on-base percentage. Despite this well-rounded offensive year, Loretta was not selected by the fans for the All-Star Game. When the players voted, however, he was chosen to make his first All-Star Game appearance. While he lacked the nationwide recognition, the Padres and the fans in San Diego have been acknowledging his abilities. He has been the Padres' MVP for the past two years, and comparisons to Tony Gwynn are popping up with increasing frequency.

His improvement between 2003 and 2004 was not isolated to one particular area, but came across the board. Loretta increased his runs by 34, hits by 23, doubles by 19, and average by 0.21. But that doesn't mean his prior year wasn't impressive either. In 2003, he finished with a .314 average, which placed him third among all second basemen, and 18th overall. And his on-base percentage ranked fourth at .372.

While this could be attributed to a short-lived offensive explosion, along the lines of a Jay Bell, Loretta has had the foundation in place since his days with the Milwaukee Brewers. He consistently held a .290 average or better, but was often plagued by injuries that cut his seasons short. From 1995 to last year, he managed only five years with 130 games or more.

While his offense has been consistently increasing over the past few years, Mark Loretta is not a one-tool player. Teamed with rookie phenom Khalil Greene, he made the Padres one of the strongest defensive combinations up the middle. For most of last year, San Diego led the league in double plays turned.

Loretta's best ability, however, does come at the plate. He is regarded as the top hit-and-run player in baseball. He is contact hitter, who can inside-out the ball to the 3.5 hole between first and second. And his low tendency to strike out means manager Bruce Bochy can put the hit-and-run on with little fear of a double play.

The hit-and-run might be the best example of Loretta's leadership style, and the reason why so few people appreciate his skills. The hit-and-run is not glamorous. It usually doesn't end up with a home run, which is the only offense that impresses the fans. It simply puts the team in a better position to win. By getting runners on base or advancing them before the power guys come up, a good hit-and run player can increase a team runs significantly, although he might not always get the credit.

And that's the type of player Loretta is. He's not going to complain about his relative obscurity or about it being harder to hit home runs at San Diego's Petco Park. He's simply going to play the game, and do what it takes to help his team win.

Chances are Mark Loretta is not going to hit the game-winning home run, but if you look closely, he'll be the guy on base who made it possible.

Posted by Chris Lindshield at 3:01 PM | Comments (0)

There is a God, and He Watches Basketball

There was a time in the early part of this century when as a basketball fan, I began to lose faith in the NBA and for what it stood for. I couldn't help but to snooze right through the Lakers' dominance from 2000-2002, and ESPN's marketing of games through individuals: "Kobe vs. LeBron" or "A.I. vs. K.G."

As a basketball purist, I love the essence of the game from Steve Nash assists right down to the revamping of the throwback jerseys worn by today's players.

I also believe that the way things should be eventually become so.

That is why I am here to tell you that God does exist and he watches basketball.

It all began in 2003, when the San Antonio Spurs wiped out the three-time champion Lakers. I was a true believer that nobody could defeat the Lakers in a seven-game series with Phil Jackson as the coach, Shaq as the center, and Kobe Bryant as the gunner. I was wrong ... thank God.

I stopped watching the NBA playoffs during the last two championships the Lakers won because there was no serious competition for the team that was loaded with talent, experience, and a guru coach couldn't lose a playoff series with all of his minions. But they were beaten by Tim Duncan and the Spurs, which was quite holy. San Antonio used team ball and dominated the triangle offense of the Lakers. The Spurs went on to beat the Nets handily for the title.

And then it happened again.

No, the Spurs didn't repeat. After the Lakers went down surprisingly to the poised Spurs, they came back the next year and downed San Antonio in six games. It seemed as though Los Angeles would not be stopped and were vengeful to be derailed from their championship streak the year prior. Only the Detroit Pistons could stop them, and as we all knew in the past few years, the East was inferior to the West. Right?

Larry Brown and the Pistons pounded the Lakers into embarrassment, and God was smiling from above as Kobe lofted unbalanced shots from afar and Shaq became disgruntled. The Lakers didn't expect this, and neither did the basketball world. As often mentioned by NBA analysts throughout the Lakers/Pistons finals, "the Pistons played the game of basketball the way it was meant to be played: with all five players." Amen.

The Pistons got better as the series progressed and made believers of the doubtful, including me. The NBA was exciting again.

The Lakers disbanded. Phil Jackson got the hell out of dodge, which was the wise thing to do, and Shaq bolted for greener pasture where young athletes waited for their missing link in Miami. The Lakers decision to build a new team around Kobe was strictly marketing, and not a serious attempt to bring back more titles to Hollywood. However, Kobe gets to shoot the ball 40 times a game, and that's enough to keep his ego happy. Meanwhile, Shaq and the Heat are one of the best teams in the East, and a serious contender for the NBA title. You draw your own conclusion.

Next, the summer Olympics in Greece. Although the USA didn't not send its best of the best players to represent the basketball nation, we still sent top professionals to win another gold medal, which the U.S. has won convincingly since our first Dream Team, starring Magic Johnson and Larry Bird. It was obvious that the rest of the world would have to play catch-up, and by 2004, they sure did. Although the Americans, including Tim Duncan and Allen Iverson, gave it their all, they limped away with the bronze.

Although I am an American citizen, I must admit that I was hoping they would get beaten, and they did. This proves that the NBA-style game is for the fans and is not the best quality of basketball in the world. Hadn't we learned this a couple months prior when the team-oriented Pistons walloped the star-studded Lakers? Larry Brown did the best he could to mold superstars in a couple of months, but the nations who practiced harder and longer prevailed in the end. Amen.

The next bit of basketball under God was less premiered. It was a simple case of the Clippers beating the Lakers during the regular season. Although both teams share the Staples Center, it was technically a home game for the Lakers, and they were upended by their cross-town rivals, who are used to playing second fiddle to the Lake Show. If God could send us one more bit of divine intervention, it would be that the Lakers miss the playoffs this year.

The last chapter of basketball under God features the trading of Chris Webber to Philadelphia. This makes we want to hold my hands in the air and yell out: "Hallelujah!" Is it me, or is Webber the most overrated pro athlete today? For a guy who considers himself championship-caliber, I only ask, "Where are your rings, C-Webb?"

Here is a guy who has been content at being second- or third-best his whole career. Sure, he was a part of the Fab Five that appeared at the University of Michigan as freshmen and competed for the NCAA title in the finals two years straight. But did they ever win it all? I don't think so.

Now, Mr. Webber is in Philadelphia, trying to act as the missing link to a team that cannot make it over .500, yet is still in contention to win the Atlantic Division.

Since Webber has been transplanted into the lineup, the Sixers have only plummeted. Finally, he may be having thoughts for the first time of his career, "Am I as good as I think I am?" I don't think so. Tim Duncan is a champion. Chris Webber is a chump.

In efforts to save money and raise a family, I have committed to canceling cable before the playoffs begin. This is also my last article for Sports Central. But if I could write a letter to God, thanking him for paying close attention to the NBA in the last couple of years, it would go like this:

Dear God,
Thank you so much for ending the Lakers' reign; therefore, bringing excitement and parody back to the NBA. Also, thanks for all the cool throwback uniforms worn by the players today, especially the Golden State Warriors throwbacks with "The City" on the front. Could you also inject the Warriors into the playoffs one of these years?

My main request is that the Olympic basketball committee for the USA selects 12 guys from high school and college and have them become the American Olympic team. Except this time, let them practice for three or four years together out of high school or college, almost like an military recruitment and make it their duty to stay away from the agents and the NBA until they have competed in Olympics.

This will give our Americans a better shot a winning the gold again, and will be a true display of amateurism at a professional level in the Olympics. They can tour the U.S. and play our college or pro teams and be interestingly heroic (like the U.S. hockey team in 1980) and marketable, and learn the team concept as the game is meant to be played.

After the Olympics, the U.S. representatives become free to play pro ball. Shouldn't the U.S. be the best representation of the sport we created? And not only in talent, but in the ability to play the game the way it should be played: with all five players passing, cutting, utilizing the triple-threat, and taking smarter shots? Oh, and as I basketball fan, I must admit that I am pleased to announce that the Lakers haven't won a title in two years, and it doesn't appear to be in grasp this season. Thank you, God. Amen.

As for the readers, writers, and editor for Sports Central, I thank you for allowing me to be a sports writer for a short while. And to all the Wake Forest and North Carolina fans who ridiculed my selection for Mike Krzyzewski as one of the classiest sports figures of all-time, you can kiss my ass. Take care, and remember ... it's only a game.

Jon Gonzales

Posted by Jon Gonzales at 2:45 PM | Comments (9)

March 16, 2005

The NBA's Race For Last

This is the point in a marathon where some runners hit the wall and must fight on, despite pain and tiredness (unless you're Rosie Ruiz, that is). Three-quarters of the NBA season is over and playoff positioning is now the focus for some of the Association's 30 squads.

Usually, the most interesting stories to any late-season push come out of the race for a final one or two spots in the extra season. It's no different this time 'round. Compared to this time last year, the Western Conference is stacking up pretty similar.

San Antonio's near the top. The middle-tier includes Dallas, Houston, Memphis, and Sacramento. But there are a couple things out of place (three, to be exact).

The Lakers, minus Shaq and Phil Jackson, have struggled to stay above sea level throughout the campaign. Last year's Rocky Mountain surprise, Denver, has played the most rousing round of hot potato when talking head coaches. And where's the '03-'04 conference champ? With a slow start, Minnesota hasn't been a factor since mid-December. That is, until now.

These three teams that made statements in the last postseason are now fighting each other for the final spot in the upcoming postseason. So, in the 20-or-so games left in the regular stanza, who's got the upper hand? In my mind, the edge has to go to the Denver Nuggets.

1) Schedule

When looking at the remaining schedule of all three teams, two have an improving outlook heading toward the playoffs. Entering Tuesday, Denver is left with 20 contests. 12 of those (including the next six) are in the high altitude of the Pepsi Center, and nine feature opponents that are under .500.

Minnesota's path over the next few weeks is a little worse ... but not bad. The Wolves will play 18 times, with 10 of those games on the road. They also get to face eight sub-.500 teams. The Lakers, on the other hand, won't like their run. L.A. is slated to play 12 road games in their last 20, and only six of those contests give them an opponent with a higher loss than win total.

2) Momentum

Coming out of the weekend, the Nuggets were still one of the league's hottest teams, despite a 106-101 loss to Phoenix. The Powder Blue have come up winners in eight of nine games following the All-Star Recess. Just as impressive is their 13-5 record from the first of February.

Meanwhile, the Lakers and T-Wolves seem to be fighting to see who can be the most mediocre. Both squads are even since the break (L.A. is 6-6 with Monday's loss to the Wizards and Minnesota's 5-5). The records get even worse over time, with these two teams dropping below .500 as you expand back to the beginning of last month.

3) Coaching

There's new air on the face of the Rockies, and most of it swept in with the arrival of head coach George Karl. The veteran leader seems to have the team focused in a direction that might end up being higher than the surrounding elevation. The team won game one of the Karl era on January 29th and have kept the blinders on. The resulting 15-5 sprint to this point has experts putting the Nuggets in the playoffs as a dangerous lower seed.

Karl's wealth of experience pushed Seattle and Milwaukee to be consistent playoff fixtures in 11 out of 12 straight seasons. Who do the Lakers and Timberwolves have stalking their sidelines?

With such illustrious names as Pat Riley and Phil Jackson being on the bench in recent history, L.A. has dipped into the obscure. Frank Hamblen's only pro head coaching job before this stint was during most of the '91-'92 Bucks season. That didn't go very well, either (23-42 in 65 games).

To the Lakers' credit, they were forced into the situation with the resignation of Rudy T. But if they weren't playing that well under a two-time champion coach, what can you expect from the current situation?

In Minneapolis, a big name is currently filling the coach's seat. Unfortunately, he really doesn't want to be there. At this point, Kevin McHale would serve the franchise better if he brought out his old 32 jersey and did some wind sprints. Even a percentage of his career stats (17.9 ppg, 7.3 rpg) could help Kevin Garnett in the paint.

It hasn't all been bad. The team is 7-5 since firing long-time coach Flip Saunders, but would I want the X's and O's coming from someone who's played in five Finals or someone who's coached one (as Karl has)?

Putting the factors together, there's not much to suggest that fans from Hollywood or St. Paul will enjoy a playoff push at the end of April. Attention Western Conference juggernauts, bring your oxygen tanks. I've heard the mountain air is pretty thin.

Posted by Jonathan Lowe at 3:43 PM | Comments (0)

A Primer For Round One

This past Sunday was about hope and hurt in the world of the NCAA. Selection Sunday could be considered one of the most anticipated, and nervous, days in an annual calendar. But now that the crying of elation and disappointment have had a couple of days to run their course, it's time for fan and pool junkie alike to make their eyes hurt.

The first two days of the tournament are the best, plain and simple. There are so many games, so many matchups, and so many chances for "magic" to happen. And how do we get there? Through a selection committee that sifts through papers and game tape to find and place the field of 65.

The brackets are out, and now the selection committee gets to sit back and watch the fruits of their labor. By the way, if you consider labor being locked in a boardroom and watching college basketball, I must say, "bravo!" For days, the expert and complete novice are giving their best guesses at who will eventually take home the trophy.

"Who's your sleeper?"

"Which bracket is the toughest one?"

"What you got for the Final Four?"

"So, what's the answer? Who's your champ?"

Everybody and their momma is trying to figure out the upsets, dark horses, and the big boys that just can't lose. But I'm a near-sighted kind of guy. Actually, I do wear glasses, but that's beside the point. I'm here just to focus on two aspects of the tourney, how the committee did and what to watch for in the first-round.

One of the opening thoughts observers have after looking at the brackets involve those teams that shouldn't have been invited to the party. Overall, I thought the guys in Indy did a good job of picking this year's participants. Looking at the list of snubs (Miami [OH], Notre Dame, Maryland, etc.), I didn't see any team that should have been put in over another squad.

I guess a case could be made for Notre Dame, but when you choke against Rutgers in the conference tourney, the taste of a bad impression might not get cleared so easily.

The closest thing to a snub in this bracket was the treatment of Louisville. A 29-4 team that wins both conference titles and they get a four-seed? Sure, Conference USA isn't the Big East or the ACC, but to survive encounters with Charlotte, Cincinnati, DePaul, TCU, and more deserves better.

There were a couple of surprises on my list, Washington getting a one-seed and Northern Iowa just getting in. The Huskies have had a great season to follow up on a Madness bid last year. But with a weak Pac-10 in '04-'05, I wasn't sure that the best team, U-Dub or Arizona, would be a top seed. Shows what I know.

The Panthers finished strong in the Missouri Valley regular season, but after a loss to SMS in their conference playoff, I didn't think they had enough to get in. Again, the committee proves me wrong.

Okay, the griping is out of the way. Let's get to the games. In the pit of my stomach, there are a couple of games that just seem to be set up for an upset.

UAB vs. LSU

The Blazers, as many remember from last year, play a run-and-gun style with lots of defensive pressure. That can cause trouble for the Tigers, who might have issues with depth, especially in the scoring column. Can UAB prove to the naysayers that they belong ... again?

Northern Iowa vs. Wisconsin

Another 6-11 game, it's a classic clash between a rapid-fire offense and a stalwart defense. UNI hits around 39% from outside the arc and 48% of their shots, while the Badgers only score two players in double digits. For Wisconsin, can they avoid the scoring droughts of the Big 10 final? Or will the Panthers be able to control the flow of the game?

I'll also be keeping an eye on the Alabama vs. Wisconsin-Milwaukee game. There's got to be one 12-seed winner.

Then there are those games that should be broadcast everywhere. They're the ones that are intriguing not just for the teams, but for their star players. I think these three contests will provide that more than any of the Thursday/Friday games.

Syracuse vs. Vermont

A chance for Northeastern braggin' rights for the Catamounts and their two-man wrecking crew of T.J. Sorrentine and Taylor Coppenrath. However, they'll have to solve the 2-3 zone of Jim Boeheim's Orange. That means a third scoring threat will probably have to come through. Will Vermont limit the damage of the 'Cuse long bodies (Hakim Warrick, Louie McCroskey, Terrance Roberts, and Craig Forth)?

Southern Illinois vs. St. Mary's

One mid-major team that reaching household name status meets another one that hopes to start on the same path. The Salukis continue to win the Missouri Valley, this year with the performance of the guard. Although the Gaels have eight losses, this team is no joke. They play 7-8 deep and have good balance on the interior (Daniel Kickert) and outside (E.J. Rowland and Paul Marigney). Just because the teams aren't terribly familiar, don't give up on this one.

Villanova vs. New Mexico

New Mexico is hot and loaded with scoring (five players in double figures). 'Nova is riding a lot of hype into the tourney, but it's well-deserved after slugging their way through the Big East. Allen Ray, Randy Foye, and Curtis Sumpter have emerged to lead a small and athletic Wildcat team. The talented Villanova trio takes on Danny Granger and his pack of Lobos. This one will be fun!

With that, I leave you to watch as the events unfold over the weekend. Enjoy the crazy, insane, nutty Madness of the season.

Posted by Jonathan Lowe at 3:20 PM | Comments (0)

NASCAR Top 10 Power Rankings: Week 3

Note: The quotes in this article are fictional.

1. Kurt Busch — Busch still lacks a win this season, but has two third-place results and a second to give him the title of "Mr. Consistency." Busch's three-straight top fives maintain his firm grasp of the top spot in the power rankings. But is he even the fastest "Busch" in NASCAR? Younger brother and rookie Kyle finished one spot ahead of Kurt in Vegas.

"Big deal," says Kurt. "He beat me by a second or two. So what? I was born seven years before him. Sure, Kyle may someday be the fastest 'Busch,' but I'll always be the oldest."

Busch was second in the point standings until Tuesday, when NASCAR brought the hammer down on Jimmie Johnson's team for rules violations in Las Vegas.

"I'd like to comment on that in the voice of my favorite Saturday Night Live character, Mr. Subliminal," says Busch. "It looks as though, again, my major competition for the Cup crown is Jimmie Johnson (cheater). The No. 48 Lowe's Chevrolet team (cheaters) is a force to be reckoned with (pay your fines). I just hope we can fight this battle on even terms (check their rear spoiler height)."

Busch will be up front all day, and, at the end of the day, will still be your points leader, barring an accident.

"The important thing, though," adds Busch, "is that I beat my punk younger brother, who also happens to be a cheater."

2. Jimmie Johnson — As he did on the track in Las Vegas, Johnson passed Kurt Busch to momentarily claim the No. 1 spot in this week's rankings. Johnson captured his first win of the season by leading the Busch brothers, Kyle and Kurt, across the finish line.

"Two Busch's in the rear view mirror are better than one in front of you," Johnson says, removing his driver suit to reveal a t-shirt that reads "Big Johnson Engines: Hung Like Horsepower."

But what's this? NASCAR fined Johnson 25 points for failing a post-race inspection. Johnson's crew chief, Chad Knaus, was suspended for two races and fined $35,000. Car owner Jeff Gordon was docked 25 owner points.

"But the win still stands, baby!" yells Johnson. "Who says cheaters never win? So what if my car's on steroids? It's just some silly little rule about the roof height of my car being too low. Who cares about that? Those NASCAR officials are so damn picky. Psst! Here's a little secret, just between you and me. If they had looked in the trunk under the spare tire, they would have found a dime bag and a hash pipe. But they didn't."

All eyes will be on Johnson, and the rule book, in Atlanta.

3. Jeff Gordon — Gordon quickly moved himself back near the front of the Nextel Cup standings, moving up six spots with a fourth place finish in Vegas. And, with the usual troublemakers (Kevin Harvick, Robby Gordon, Tony Stewart) having uneventful days, Gordon took it upon himself to start a feud of his own with Penske driver Ryan Newman.

Gordon and Newman bumped and grinded late in the race, as both were battling for position. Gordon subsequently tapped Newman, and the feud was on, as both bad-mouthed the other in typical NASCAR fashion: while speaking to reporters after the race. Despite their newfound differences, Gordon and Newman have one thing in common: an affinity for quarter midgets.

"Hey, bud," cries Gordon, "you leave our sexual preferences out of this. This is strictly about racing."

Easy, Boy Wonder. I'm talking about the little race cars, not smaller-than-small midget strippers. But what you do behind closed garage doors is your business.

As usual, Gordon is a threat to win any race, so anything beyond a top-five will be a disappointment for the Dupont Monte Carlo.

4. Greg Biffle — Biffle and his goofy grin move up four spots to No. 4 with a strong sixth-place finish in Vegas, and that, coupled with a No. 3 qualifying effort on Friday, solidified Biffle's status as a true contender in the Chase for the Cup.

"That's right," says Biffle. "Me and my goofy grin are here to stay. My goal is to win the Nextel Cup and claim my rightful place in history as the only driver to win the Craftsman Truck, Busch Series, and Nextel Cup crowns. It's the auto racing Triple Crown. Sure, plenty of horses have won the Triple Crown, but they weren't driving anything, were they?"

Hey, at least they were running under their own power. I bet you couldn't win anything with a 105-pound horse jockey on your back, could you?

Biffle finished eighth last year in Atlanta, so, chances are he'll be in the top 10 again.

5. Tony Stewart — Stewart managed a 10th-place finish despite a series of unfortunate events, including a spin, a pit road accident, and a few racing incidents that left his No. 20 Home Depot Chevrolet Monte Carlo beaten and battered.

"Yeah, I felt like I was driving amongst the blind out there," bemoans Stewart. "Just a note to all you other drivers. My car is orange for a reason: so y'all can see it. Dang, I'm lucky my airbag didn't deploy during that race."

In last year's Atlanta race, Stewart led the most laps on the way to a seventh place finish, so I'm sure Turbo Tony is anxious for nothing less than a win this year.

6. Ryan Newman — Newman was unable to translate his pole win in Vegas into victory in the race. But then again, does anyone ever in NASCAR? Rarely.

"But it sure is nice lead a pack of 43 cars on a leisurely cruise around the track two or three times," says Newman. "It's like a funeral procession, and, as you know, nothing beats being in the lead car in a funeral procession."

Uh, Ryan. Doesn't being in the lead car in a funeral procession usually mean you're dead?

In any case, Newman's Vegas pole should be the first of many this year for NASCAR's best qualifier. And his current feud with Jeff Gordon should be the first of several run-ins Newman will have with various other drivers. Hell, he already hates his teammate, Rusty Wallace.

"Hold it right there, pal," cautions Newman. "I'm calling a truce to all my feuds. If 50 Cent and The Game can make peace, so can Ryan Newman and all my enemies. All I am saying is give peace a chance."

Great, Ryan. But do me a favor. Go mention 50 Cent and The Game to your car owner, Roger Penske. My guess is he'll take that as a challenge in a game of pinball. That man is a Pinball Wizard.

This week, chances are Newman will make it two straight poles. He's been on pole for the last two 500s in Atlanta, including the track record in 2003. Expect Newman to start first and finish somewhere in the 6-10 range.

7. Kevin Harvick — Harvick darts into the power rankings as a result of his masterful drive in Vegas. After starting in the 42nd starting position, Harvick picked his way through the field, eventually crossing the line in fifth place, which improved his Nextel Cup standing from 13th to eighth.

"And the most amazing thing is," adds Harvick, "I didn't piss anyone off or wreck anyone in the process. It feels awfully strange not to be called into the NASCAR penalty box after the race. I was growing quite fond of that place."

Not so fast, K-Ha. On Tuesday, Harvick fell victim to the fine-happy NASCAR officials, who swiped 25 points for fuel cell violations in Vegas qualifying. That drops him back to tenth in the Cup standings.

If "Happy" Harvick can keep his emotions in check and bottle his rage and use it as motivation, then he can be dangerous. Not dangerous as in he's going to run someone into a wall, but dangerous meaning a threat to win. Who gave Harvick the nickname "Happy" anyway? Isn't that like calling a 6-6, 300-pound man "Tiny?"

8. Rusty Wallace — Wallace fought an ill-handling car all day, and dropped as far back as 29th before numerous pit stops and adjustments finally remedied the No. 2 Dodge Charger's looseness. Rusty was then able to work his way to 12th in the race's final seventy laps, moving him up a notch to seventh in the Cup standings.

"I'm very proud of that drive," says Wallace, "but I'm even prouder to announce the 'Rusty Wallace Cruise' on the 110,000-ton Carnival cruise ship Valor in December. I don't know how they're gonna fit that giant boat in the Mississippi River, but for all you rednecks who are a sucker for anything with my name on it, this is the boat ride for you. Take out a second mortgage and get your tickets now."

Rusty, I believe the ship sets sail to the Caribbean, which is a sea. But I bet you could sell more tickets to a cruise on the Mississippi.

Wallace has qualified well in Atlanta, with an 11th in 2004 and a seventh in 2003, but has only managed a best finish of 15th. If the No. 2 Miller Lite team can get the set-up dialed in early in the race, Wallace could produce. However, if it takes them two-thirds of the race to find that balance, it could be a long Sunday.

9. Mark Martin — Martin started the race 19th, but lost a cylinder about a third into the race. After a trip to the garage, Martin returned to the race, only to finish 30th, 24 laps down to the leaders.

"In the interest of plugging, no pun intended, for my car's sponsor, Viagra," Martin explains, "let me describe my day for you. I'd certainly call it a flaccid performance. We lost a cylinder early on, and, after that, we just couldn't find our stroke. You'd think seven cylinders would be enough, but apparently, quantity, as well as size, matters. The car just didn't have the stamina today. Everybody went home frustrated."

Martin's engine trouble is likely an isolated incident, as the other Roush Racing cars finished in the top 17, and all completed the race.

"This time, I'm going all out for the win," Martin says. "If someone is in my way. I'm going to move them. The No. 6 Viagra Ford Taurus was made for hard racing. I need victories, not top-10s. "

10. Carl Edwards — Edwards rounds out the top 10 as the fourth Roush driver in the rankings. Edwards drove the No. 99 World Financial Group Ford to a 14th place finish in Sin City.

"Honestly," says Edwards, "I think the other drivers still assume that Jeff Burton is driving this car. For years, No. 99 has been associated with Burton. Apparently, they just have a lot of respect for him, because it seems that many of the guys are letting me pass pretty easily. Also, it doesn't hurt that I'm signing autographs for the fans as 'Jeff Burton.'"

Edwards should have a good working relationship with the track in Atlanta. Last year, in the Craftsman Truck Series, Edwards qualified third and finished seventh in the race. Solid driving and reliable Roush power should continue to keep Edwards flying under the radar.

Posted by Jeffrey Boswell at 2:56 PM | Comments (0)

March 15, 2005

Madness Predictions, From Start to Finish

There are moments, when men become Men, when the country collectively learns a player's name for the first time, when a team from Southwestern Indiana State University of Los Angeles/Anaheim authors its own Disney fairy tale and dances in the middle of the court while the likes of a Duke hang their heads in astonishment.

These moments happen in March and April, and it all starts again on Thursday ... Saint Patrick's Day.

Inevitably, whether I am in a bar, at work, or on my couch, these games are going to make me act in ways that are generally not considered appropriate for public behavior.

Pillow cushions will be hurled at the television, bar stools will be turned over, fists will be pounded, and vicious taunts will be directed that those foolish enough not to root for the same team as me.

My emotions will be vocalized in yells, screams, cheers, and boos, because sometimes the simple words and phrases of the English language are not enough.

On more than one occasion, I will run around wide-eyed and with mouth agape after seeing a score or a miraculous shot, and I will shake those around me, convinced that somehow they should care as much as I do.

Gunther from accounting, my dog, the girl at the coffee shop, and the cranky old man at the gas station are just a few of the people that will have to deal with my incessant talk of the NCAA tournament. And I will not be discouraged, even when they respond to my monologues with nothing more than blank stares.

Yes, March makes me do crazy things, like a full moon for a young Michael J. Fox.

Suddenly, I'll be leaping off my couch and rushing toward the television, jumping up and down uncontrollably, screaming at inanimate objects, and silently cursing my co-workers.

Because it will be the secretary, choosing teams based on their colors, or Uncle Joe, substituting a spin of an empty Jack Daniel's bottle for bracketology, or your boss's 10-year-old son, who somehow knows more about college basketball than U.S. history, that will win your pool.

You know I'm right.

Regardless, these are the things that make March exciting. Uncle Joe and the empty spirits of a liquor bottle guessing every final four team correct is an upset not unlike a team from Southwestern Indiana State University of Los Angeles/Anaheim putting down North Carolina by double digits.

You not only have to allow for such possible Cinderellas, you have to celebrate them, even if it cost you $100.

As I've said before, I do not extensively follow college basketball through the year. The conference tournaments are generally the time when I start to get pumped up, and this year was no exception.

Over the last week, I've watched a lot of games, and I've come away with a few lessons learned that will guide my tourney picks this year.

1. The success of Duke depends on the success of J.J. Reddick. Personally, I doubt he can carry them through six tough games.

2. North Carolina looked very fallible, flat, and unmotivated. The potential is certainly there for them to turn it on and run circles around whatever opponent happens to be on the floor that day, but it's just a question of whether or not that will happen.

3. Illinois running the table is not only significantly possible, but perhaps the feel-good story of the tournament.

4. The Big 10 could surprise some people. Wisconsin and Iowa are the best candidates besides Illinois to win a couple of games.

5. I don't trust Wake, Boston College, Kentucky, Kansas, or Duke.

6. Florida, West Virginia, Louisville, and Texas Tech are riding hot streaks into the tournament. Winning breeds confidence.

7. Georgia Tech is possibly the most dangerous team in the field of 65. In the last week, they've regained their competitive swagger. They've got that "we've been here before" look in their eyes again.

8. There are legitimately 10-12 teams that have a shot at taking home the title this year.

9. I will not correctly pick the winner.

10. I will not even come close.

For anyone that read my NFL playoff prediction article, you know that my record on these things is not good. However, I will try again, for your amusement, for my embarrassment, and because I have nothing better to do.

Why should I care if my bracket has more red marks on it than my Art History 304 midterm from sophomore year?

Chicago

Round of 32

(1) Illinois
(8) Texas
(5) Alabama
(4) Boston College
(11) UAB
(3) Arizona
(10) St. Mary's (CA)
(2) Oklahoma State

Sweet 16

(1) Illinois
(5) Alabama
(3) Arizona
(2) Oklahoma State

Elite Eight

(1) Illinois
(3) Arizona

Albuquerque

Round of 32

(1) Washington
(8) Pacific
(5) Georgia Tech
(4) Louisville
(6) Texas Tech
(3) Gonzaga
(10) Creighton
(2) Wake

Sweet 16

(1) Washington
(5) Georgia Tech
(3) Gonzaga
(2) Wake

Elite Eight

(5) Georgia Tech
(3) Gonzaga

Syracuse

Round of 32

(1) UNC
(8) Minnesota
(5) Villanova
(4) Florida
(6) Wisconsin
(3) Kansas
(10) NC State
(2) UConn

Sweet 16

(1)UNC
(5) Villanova
(6) Wisconsin
(2) UConn

Elite Eight

(1) UNC
(2) UConn

Austin

Round of 32

(1) Duke
(9) Mississippi St.
(12) Old Dominion
(4) Syracuse
(6) Utah
(3) Oklahoma
(10) Iowa
(2) Kentucky

Sweet 16

(1) Duke
(4) Syracuse
(3) Oklahoma
(10) Iowa

Elite Eight

(4) Syracuse
(3) Oklahoma

Final Four

(1) Illinois
(3) Gonzaga
(2) UConn
(4) Syracuse

Final Game

(1) Illinois vs. (4) Syracuse

National Champion

(1) Illinois

They haven't moved from the top of the polls since they got there, and unlike the other dozen contenders in the nation, Illinois hasn't shown a lack of talent or resolve with the one exception of the Ohio State hiccup.

Inevitably, I'll be wrong, though. And I will subsequently scream at the television and silently curse the person that took Wake all the way.

I love March!

Posted by Vince Grzegorek at 1:23 PM | Comments (3)

The Definition of Dynasty

Five Quick Hits

* The Lions now have two starting quarterbacks. The Browns have three backups.

* Rough offseason for Green Bay. Another year of Brett Favre isn't much consolation when you lose Darren Sharper, Marco Rivera, and Mike Wahle. And insult to injury, Sharper signed with the Vikings.

* Minnesota may actually field a defense next season. Adding Sharper, Napoleon Harris, Pat Williams, and Fred Smoot qualifies as a major upgrade. Suddenly, this is one of the best defenses in the NFC.

* Red McCombs pulled one over on Reggie Fowler with that Randy Moss deal.

* One move that hasn't gotten much press, but I think is significant, is Miami releasing FB Rob Konrad. He struggled with injuries in 2004, but Konrad is a good fullback, and the Dolphins will miss him.

Sports Illustrated's Paul Zimmerman (Dr. Z) recently wrote an article about the eight dynasties in pro football history. It's interesting timing, because I just finished an extensive study of dynasties sparked by Zimmerman himself. Fooling around on my computer a few weeks back, I found an old text file called "dynasty." It was a paragraph from Dr. Z's February 2003 Mailbag:

"Marcus of Montreal wonders where all this talk about the Bucs becoming a dynasty comes from. Probably from Tampa. You want to know what is meant by "a dynasty?" Try this statistic, which I think I must have mentioned triple-figure times: during the period of the Steelers' playoff run of the '70s, 1972 through '79, their record against teams that eventually finished the season below .500 was — get ready — 50-1. They simply did not lose to the bad teams. They were bullies, tough guys. A dynasty."

That is impressive. How, I wondered, do other great teams compare? I looked up 32 potential "dynasties" and came up with their records against sub-.500 teams. And non-losing teams. And overall regular-season record, playoff record, number of winning seasons, number of postseason appearances, number of championship appearances, and championship wins.

To determine which teams I looked at, I figured a dynasty has to last at least half a decade, be consistently great, and play on the biggest stage. So a dynasty covers a minimum of five seasons, has no more than one non-winning year, no more than six seasons without a championship appearance, and never went five consecutive seasons without a championship appearance. Lax standards, but I'm trying to be inclusive. We can narrow things down later. Teams prior to the establishment of an official championship game are excluded.

Some teams that technically met the criteria didn't make my list. The 1965-69 Raiders had an awesome .779 winning percentage (that's like going 12-4, 13-3, 12-4, 13-3, 12-3-1), but they played in only one Super Bowl and got annihilated by the NFL's Packers. The Air Coryell Chargers and today's Colts have been nice in the regular season, but never made the big game. Bill Cowher's mid-'90s Pittsburgh teams were consistently good, but not a dynasty in any meaningful sense of the word.

One noteworthy point is that I deliberately included several "losing dynasties", such as the '70s Vikings and '90s Bills. Those teams were dynasties within their own conferences, but I included them mostly because it's interesting for comparisons. They were also among the most dominant regular-season teams in history.

I'll present the teams I examined soon, but first, there's a problem with Dr. Z's 50-1 stat. Not its accuracy — its effectiveness as a tool in evaluating dynasties. The 1972-79 Steelers went .980 against teams that finished the season under .500. That's better than any other group I evaluated.

Second on the list, the 1936-44 Packers went 45-0-2. That was considered 1.000 at the time, but for all teams, I used the modern rating in which ties count as ½-win, ½-loss. That puts Green Bay at .979. Zimmerman cited the 36-39 Packers as one of his eight dynasties, but since I had to tack on a fifth year, I also included GB's impressive 33-7-2 run from 1940-44, which included another championship. Either way, this is clearly one of the great teams in history. So far, so good.

The problem is numbers three and four on the chart: the 1973-77 Vikings (40-1, .976) and the 1973-77 Raiders (34-1, .971). That's not a typo: same five-year span for both teams, and it overlaps entirely with Pittsburgh's '72-'79 dynasty. Throw in another top-10 team from the list, the 1969-78 Cowboys (67-6-1, .912), and it appears that the worst teams of the 1970s were simply incapable of defeating the best teams. In that context, three of the top four teams in this category are less impressive than they initially appear.

Even worse, the 1973-77 Vikings and Raiders combined for only one Super Bowl victory. Minnesota went 0-3 in the big game, and the Raiders only won their own conference once. Both teams were exceptional in the regular season, but it's tough to really consider them dynasties.

Another problem is that the quintessential dynasty, the Vince Lombardi Packers, comes in 31st out of 32 teams in this category, with an ordinary .798 winning percentage against teams that finished under .500. The only team below them? Another true dynasty, the 1981-89 49ers, with a measly .764.

Zimmerman's point about Pittsburgh's 50-1 mark has value. A team that always wins the games it should is dominant. But conversely, isn't a team with a good record against winning teams even more impressive than one with a great mark against losing teams? What about dynasties that usually win whether they're supposed to or not? On that list, the Lombardi Packers and Montana 49ers are in the top five.

What probably makes the most sense is to scrap the level of competition and just look at regular season winning percentages as a whole. And don't worry, I am getting to the postseason.

Regular Season Winning Percentage

Didn't remember that Ditka's Bears (.785) were that good, did you? Of course, they benefited from a five-year term here, as opposed to the Montana 49ers (.724), who put in nine seasons, and Joe Gibbs Washington (.704), which kept things up for ten years. And while Montana and Gibbs combined for seven Super Bowl wins and eight appearances, the Bears only got to the Super Bowl once. It's time to look at championships.

I divided all the potential dynasties into five categories. The most elite requires that the team won the Super Bowl (or equivalent league championship) in at least half the seasons listed, had a .750 regular-season winning percentage, and a .700 postseason record. It's important to note that before the AFL merger in 1970, teams posted lower postseason winning percentages, since the postseason usually consisted of a single title game. Today, a team that loses the championship finishes with a 2-1 or 3-1 record; in the old days, second-best usually meant 0-1.

GROUP ONE: 50% Championship wins, 50% Championship appearances, .750 regular season, .700 postseason — 1939-43 Bears, 1946-55 Browns, 1972-79 Steelers, 1991-95 Cowboys

GROUP TWO: 30% Championship wins, 40% Championship appearances, .700 regular season, .667 postseason — 1944-49 Eagles, 1959-67 Packers, 1970-75 Dolphins, 1981-89 49ers, 1982-91 Redskins, 1996-00 Broncos

GROUP THREE: 0% Championship wins, 40% Championship appearances, .667 regular season, .500 postseason — 1936-44 Packers, 1952-57 Lions, 1969-78 Cowboys, 1973-77 Vikings, 1981-85 Dolphins, 1984-89 Broncos, 1988-93 Bills, 1994-98 Packers, 1999-03 Rams

GROUP FOUR: 10% Championship wins, 20% Championship appearances, .667 regular season, .400 postseason — 1936-45 Redskins, 1949-53 Rams, 1964-71 Colts, 1973-77 Raiders, 1980-85 Raiders, 1984-88 Bears, 1985-90 Giants, 1990-94 49ers

GROUP FIVE: 0% Championship wins, 10% Championship appearances, .650 regular season, .200 postseason — 1933-41 Giants, 1956-63 Giants, 1960-65 Chargers, 2000-04 Patriots, 2000-04 Eagles

As you look at the fifth group, I'd like to reinforce the point I made earlier about postseason percentages. The Andy Reid/Donovan McNabb Eagles are notorious postseason underachievers, yet their postseason record is .583. Frank Gifford's Giants, who played for the NFL title six times in eight years, are less than half that, below .300. The two earliest teams on this list, the Giants, are dragged down by poor postseason percentages and should probably be one or two categories higher. And the Belichick Patriots, weighed down by a 5-11 2000 season, but boasting three titles and a perfect record in the playoffs and Super Bowl, clearly are better than their .663 winning percentage, the lowest of any team I evaluated.

It's time to get serious, so we wave goodbye to: Sid Gillman's Chargers (.667 winning percentage, 1-4 in AFL title games), Reid's Eagles (with only one Super Bowl appearance and no victories, probably the least-dynastic team on the list), Sammy Baugh's Redskins (.415 against teams without losing records), the Waterfield/Van Brocklin Rams (a short five-year run and only one title), the Shula/McCafferty Colts (barely even eligible for my list, with five seasons between championship appearances), Jim Plunkett's Raiders (a blah .685 winning percentage), and the Bill Parcells Giants (not even one of the top three teams of its own era).

We're also dropping the 1973-77 Raiders, 1984-88 Bears, and 1990-94 Niners. They are among the most dominant regular-season teams in history, with the 3rd-, 5th-, and 11th-best regular season winning percentages, all above .750. But they meet only the minimum five-year standard, and none appeared in more than one championship game. They have excuses — the Steel Curtain, Bill Walsh and Joe Gibbs, Jimmy Johnson's Cowboys — but one and done is no way to build a true dynasty.

We've cut 10 teams now, so there are 22 left. Let's make it an even 20 by dropping the David Woodley/Dan Marino Dolphins, who had little postseason success, and the Broncos under Dan Reeves, who reached three Super Bowls in a pathetically weak AFC only to lose by an average of 32 points.

Now even the weakest of the remaining teams has some claim of being a dynasty. The 1973-77 Vikings and 1989-93 Bills are the only teams without any Super Bowl wins (or equivalent), but they dominated their conferences and went to the big game almost every year. Both were over .500 in the postseason and won well over 70% percent of their games.

Minnesota's .779 regular-season mark is the fourth-best of any team remaining on the list, and its .976 record against sub-.500 teams (remember the inspiration for this whole project, from Dr. Z?) trails only the Steel Curtain and Don Hutson's Packers. Buffalo couldn't get past Dallas in the Super Bowl, but it was an impressive .644 against teams at or above .500 — good for seventh-best on the list. For all that, dynasties are about winning championships, and while those teams were certainly dominant, only the most liberal of judges would deem them dynastic.

For similar reasons, we can probably eliminate Gifford's Giants, with a .286 postseason percentage and only one NFL title. We'll cut the list to 15 by dropping Mike Holmgren's Packers, whose brief five-year run produced only one Super Bowl victory, and the Marshall Faulk Rams, who were really dominant for only two of their five years.

That leaves us with 15 potential dynasties.

Fifteen Potential Dynasties

All eight of Zimmerman's dynasties — Hutson's Packers, Luckman's Bears, Graham's Browns, Parker's Lions, Lombardi's Packers, the Steel Curtain, Montana's Niners, and Johnson's Cowboys — are still around, but it's time to cut one of them.

Buddy Parker's Lions won three NFL titles in six seasons, losing another to Graham's Browns, which is nothing to be ashamed of. But Detroit wasn't really a dominant team. Its .674 regular-season record is unimpressive in the context of this list, and its .853 mark against sub-.500 teams doesn't denote true dominance. Furthermore, being the best in a 12-team league isn't nearly as tough as winning consistently in a league with more than 20 teams, as all but a few of the remaining groups did. And the Lions fell apart after their six-year reign, stumbling to 4-7-1 and then 3-8-1. The "dynasty" had no staying power. I think Zimmerman was just looking for a connector between Graham and Lombardi; the Lions aren't of the same caliber as the other dynasties he named.

For similar reasons, the 1930s Giants seem out of their league at this point. Their sub-.700 record indicates that they weren't nearly the best team of the late 30s, trailing the Bears (.843), GB (.765), and already-dismissed Boston/Washington (.708). Three championships seems like a reasonable cutoff for determining dynasties, and the Giants fail to meet that standard, as well. The team's consistency is countered by its lack of real dominance.

The Mile-High Salute Broncos are still pretty clear in our memories, and it seems easy to drop them from the list now, as well. Few really considered Denver a dynasty at the time, and a five-year, two-title, barely-.700 legacy isn't enough to change our minds.

With 12 teams remaining, it's long past time for me to address Belichick's Patriots. They don't belong on this list. Not as it stands. My five-year minimum is arbitrary, but that's what I've been using, and with that standard, New England should have been eliminated long ago. It's easy to project another winning season for the Pats in 2005-2006, but as this list stands, Bill Belichick's crew is more than 50 percentage points down from the next team with fewer than nine seasons. Make it a four-year dynasty, and the Pats are .750 with three championships in four years, but I can't wrap my brain around such a short reign being called a dynasty. Maybe it is, but I wouldn't put it, at this point, ahead of San Francisco or Washington in the 80s, or Dallas in the 70s. It's probably ahead of Steve Van Buren's Eagles. That would leave the Pats 11th on the list. Just my opinion.

Van Buren's Eagles are my favorite neglected team, but they feel like Parker's Lions: a connector between dynasties rather than one that stands on its own. Philadelphia was the NFL's best team during the four years between the birth of the AAFC and its partial merger with the NFL. The 1950 season-opener between the defending-champion Eagles and the AAFC's Browns was probably the most highly-anticipated pro football game until the first Super Bowl. Cleveland stunned the Eagles 35-10, and when the two rematched later in the season, the Browns won without throwing a pass. Cleveland went on to win the NFL Championship, and that was the end of Philadelphia's reign. Although they won NFL titles in 1948 and '49, the Eagles might never have been the best team in professional football.

The remaining ten teams, in chronological order:

Fifteen Potential Dynasties

The astute will notice some overlap: the Packers and Bears from '39-'43; Dallas, Miami and Pittsburgh from '72-'75; San Francisco and Washington from '82-'89. Dynasties don't overlap. A dynasty cannot be born until its predecessor has fallen.

Cut 1972-73 off the Steelers if you like, but their dynasty clearly supercedes the Paul Warfield Dolphins, and with a 2-0 Super Bowl record against Staubach's Cowboys, the Steel Curtain obviously ruled the 1970s.

The 1980s, on paper, are harder to divide — Washington had a better postseason record and was an upset away from a fourth Super Bowl — but we all know who comes first in that era, and it was San Francisco. I'm going to justify keeping both the Packers and Bears by expanding Chicago's run to 1950; this breaks my "six years without a championship appearance rule," but I don't care.

The Top NFL Dynasties

Of these remaining seven, the only questionable one appears to be Jimmy Johnson's Dallas teams of the early '90s, whose five-year run is by far the shortest in this group. We could expand things to include the team's 10-6 campaign in 1996, but there are losing records on either side, so it's tough to make the case for anything longer than a six-year reign. I'm willing to consider that a dynasty, I guess, but not in the same league as Lombardi or Graham or the Steel Curtain.

The greatest dynasty in NFL history, in my opinion, must be the Browns from 1946-55, the Packers from 1959-67, or the Steelers 1972-79. Cleveland has huge statistical edges in every category, but four of its ten seasons were in the AAFC. In the NFL from 1950-55, the Browns were 58-13-1 (.813), made the NFL Championship Game every season, and won it three times. They were 34-2 (.944) against sub-.500 competition and 24-11-1 (.681) against teams without losing records. Even excluding the AAFC years, that kind of dominance is unparalleled in the modern era. Throw in four-for-four in the AAFC from 1946-49, and I'm inclined to regard Otto Graham's Browns as the greatest dynasty in the history of professional football.

Finally, some other things that deserve mention:

Tom Landry's Cowboys had 20 winning seasons in a row, including five Super Bowl appearances, two Super Bowl wins, and a last-minute loss in the Ice Bowl. That's a dynasty.

The Raiders had 16 winning seasons in a row. Over 22 years, they won three Super Bowls and had only one losing season. That's a dynasty.

In the 1990s, Dallas owned the burgeoning Holmgren mini-dynasty. From 1993-97, the Cowboys were 7-0 against the Packers, all by double-digits and including three playoff wins. Crushing your rivals consistently is pretty dynastic. Belichick's consistent success against Peyton Manning's Colts has certainly added to the Patriots legend.

If New England somehow wins its third consecutive Super Bowl next season — something that has never been done — I'll rewrite this article a year from now with the top eight.

Posted by Brad Oremland at 1:13 PM | Comments (1)

Sports Gospel's March Madness Report

Today, I give my vote for All-Americans (remember, the votes were due before conference tournaments) and give you my picks on first-round upset specials. Tomorrow, I will look more in depth at players who can change the course of the tournament and have my list of must-see games. Thursday, I look at the each region and give my picks for big games and Final Four and then find the key to winning in March from some who have actually been there.

Before I get into the regular part of this column, I just wanted to express my utter disdain for Digger Phelps. I think he's only watched two or three basketball games outside of games he's done for TV, and those games were all replays of Notre Dame's win over Boston College. I can't really understand the picks he makes, like his prediction that Pittsburgh and Georgia Tech will meet in the round of 16.

Honestly, has he ever seen a basketball game that didn't involve someone from the Big East or ACC? I have to admit; I do think Digger is right on with his final four picks of UNC, Notre Dame, Boston College, and someone who played Notre Dame.

All-Americans

Dee Brown, Illinois — This vote was obvious, as I think he's the best player for the best team in the country (at least he's had the best year). I loved his style of play the very first time I saw the Illini live and that was at the ACC/Big 10 Challenge against Wake Forest. He is a playmaker (see Michigan, where his three steals secured their great comeback win. I know it's been said before, but that was the best minute and a half of college ball this year) and a great scorer. He's a team player and doesn't try to be bigger than the team. If I'm starting a basketball team, he's one of the first guys I take.

Chris Paul, Wake Forest — It's hard to ignore a player who's going to get a lot of consideration for POY. The reason he makes my list is because he has matured a great deal since last year and is going to have a fantastic tournament. There was talk that he wasn't the best player on that team (many "experts" thought Gray was better), but that just isn't the case. Paul has bulked up some and is starting to play great defense, which are great attributes to go with his innate ability to score and get the ball to people at the right time. Just a great leader.

Andrew Bogut — A complete player and probably will win POY. There isn't much that needs to be said of his game, other than he plays his best basketball under pressure and is the best big man in college basketball.

Chuck Hayes — Chuck is one of my favorite players in college basketball. He's undersized at 6-6, but what he lacks in size he more than makes up in heart (see another one of my favorite players, Washington's Nate Robinson). He does everything he needs to do for his team to win and is the ultimate competitor. I think Kentucky's play-by-play broadcaster, Tom Leach, said it best when he said the greatest part of Hayes' game is simply his will to win.

Wayne Simien — Many see this is a questionable pick, but Simien is one of the strongest players in the country. I think he's the best post player in the country and that there are very few players who can really contain him. He is the backbone of that great Kansas team; a team I think is going to the championship game.

Upset Specials

Every year, there are upsets that most people don't pick and it ruins their brackets. This year, I'm going to help you out and give you my picks for first round upset specials, free of charge.

Ohio over Florida — I'm not going to lie, this may be a stretch. My biggest problem with Florida is that they have somehow deceived everyone into thinking they are a great team. They aren't. They found the key to beating Kentucky and basically parlayed that into a four-seed. Ohio will give them trouble down low with MAC freshman of the year Leon Williams. Florida usually chokes, and if they do, this will be one of those games that makes you look like a genius, while risking very little.

Even if Florida wins this one, they are out the next round to Villanova. Allan Ray and Curtis Sumpter are too much for the Gators and first-round picks are usually more for flare over substance, what's really important is getting the Sweet 16 and deeper rounds right.

NC State over Charlotte — Most people don't consider a No. 10 over a No. 7 a huge upset, I'm just putting this in here because I think NC State is primed for a run. Julius Hodge was a legit POY contender early in the year, but ran into a few mental problems. Now that he has himself together and his team is playing strong, look for Hodge to go off and for NC State to upset an overrated UConn team in round two. More on this Thursday.

Note — Ztay away from taking Old Dominion over Michigan State, Tom Izzo will have his team ready. Also stay away from Vermont over Syracuse. It's intriguing on paper, but Boheim's team has too much experience and will get past the first-round.

George Washington over Georgia Tech — This is a big-time shocker, as it seems everyone is all over Georgia Tech right now. I understand they played a strong tournament in the ACC, but I think that GW matches up well with the yellow jackets. The Colonials will run and they know what it takes to beat quality teams (Maryland and Michigan State). I like their depth and I think that Pops Mensah-Bonsu will be the key to the game. I understand the love affair with Georgia Tech, but something just screams GW in this game. Maybe it's the fact that everyone and their brother have Georgia Tech in the Elite Eight or beyond.

Wisconsin-Milwaukee over Alabama — The thing that concerns me is that Alabama's biggest win is against Charlotte. I've seen tape of Wisconsin-Milwaukee's Ed McCants (cousin of Carolina's Rashad) and he will be the key to this upset. There is seemingly nothing he can't do, and I think that Alabama just won't be together mentally in this one. I like 'Bama's team, I really do, I just think that McCants will shock them and they won't respond well to going down early by 10 or more.

Mark Chalifoux is also a weekly columnist for SportsFan Magazine. His columns appear every Tuesday on Sports Central. You can e-mail Mark at [email protected].

Posted by Mark Chalifoux at 1:02 PM | Comments (0)

March 14, 2005

I Hate Mondays: Steroid Gambling

Using steroids, aside from the rare instance where a doctor's prescription is rendered, is illegal.

Betting on sports, outside of Las Vegas, Atlantic City, or any government lotteries, is also illegal.

Who could ever imagine the cataclysmic ramifications of using steroids or betting on sports while actually being a professional athlete in the sport itself?

While we can only speculate about the first scenario (since steroid rumors have only recently begun circulating), we do have evidence of the latter situation.

Remember Pete Rose?

It was 16 years ago to the month when we started to hear through the grapevine that a soon-to-be Hall-of-Famer was linked to betting on sports.

First there was scoffing, followed by denial, and then most people passed it off as a one-time incident. We know how that ended.

Fast-forward to March 2005, and we could be facing a similar predicament.

It seems like baseball probes are constant nowadays. First Victor Conte and Jose Canseco drip a few drops of blood into the water and now the sharks are circling to uncover chronic steroid users.

Take your pick: Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, or Sammy Sosa, they are all current hot-spots for steroid allegations. Let's use someone like Jason Giambi as an example. After all, he's all but admitted to prolonged use of an illegal drug — literally.

What sort of punishment should result?

Well, Pete Rose bet on baseball games that he managed, possibly fixed some, lied about it until he was caught and was banned for life.

Jason Giambi has knowingly injected steroids, an identified prohibited drug, and by doing so has cheated his sport, his teammates, and his fans. First, he lied about it, then after he was put under oath and forced to admit it, he did, and then apologized.

Both stories have a similar undertone, don't they?

Looking back in hindsight may be tricky, but even though baseball's testing policies have been lenient in previous years, the drug was still barred. More importantly, steroids without a prescription has always been barred by the law.

Since it's unlikely that BALCO requires a doctor's note, Giambi and Co. have been consciously breaking the law for years.

And what is the penalty? Well, next time they do it and get caught, they will serve a 10-game suspension.

That's unacceptable. If the dirt is uncovered, and there is evidence to prove that any single or several baseball players have consistently been using steroids, they should be banned for life.

Betting on sports is one thing, particularly since Rose bet on the Reds every time (allegedly). At the very least it leaves the door open a smidgen for optimists to believe that Rose was just hoping his team would win every outing.

Injecting a needle, rubbing cream all over your body, or trickling drops under your tongue are unconventional ways of surreptitiously enhancing your performance. The door isn't open for optimism at all. Very few people poke sharp-pointed instruments into their body naïve of the consequences. Players that engage in these actions are directly cheating, and when it comes to sports, there is nothing more debasing than fraud.

Just think what happens to Olympic athletes who try to bend the rules. They are ousted and excommunicated. Baseball players who have steadily used steroids in the past should go the same way.

Con artists and America's favorite pastime mix like Mondays and me.

"It's not illegal if you don't get caugh." — Anonymous

Posted by Dave Golokhov at 11:21 AM | Comments (0)

March 13, 2005

The Jester Quart's Current Events Quiz

All right, everybody ... No. 2 pencils only, and please don't color outside the circles on your ScanTron sheet.

Here's your latest "The Jester's Quart" Current Events Quiz:

1. The best thing about watching an entire day of opening round NCAA tournament games is:

A. Seeing the stunned faces of a No. 3-seeded team when they piss away their title hopes in a first-round loss to Boll Weevil State College of Architecture and Horticulture.

B. At the end of the night, calculating your buffalo wing-to-free-throw-attempt ratio for each of the games.

C. Feeling your retinas start to snap as you strain your eyes watching CBS's four-way split-screen coverage on your 13-inch television.

D. Telling your boss you have to stay home with "explosive diarrhea."

2. A Congressional House committee declined to subpoena Barry Bonds to its March 17 hearing on steroids because:

A. It was concerned Barry's attendance would bring unwanted publicity to a small, unassuming gathering between superstar baseball players and the most famous politicians in the United States of America.

B. It was concerned the surly Bonds would be even surlier if he had to give up green beer at O'Grady's for some dumb Congressional hearing.

C. It didn't want to face the embarrassment of having more black men on baseball's witness list they the Congress has in the Senate.

D. It was worried the Capitol dome wouldn't be large enough to encompass Barry's steroid-inflated melon.

3. Which of the following was an actual threat made by Washington Redskins owner Daniel Snyder to wide receiver Laveranues Coles when Coles sabotaged the team's initial trade with the New York Jets?

A. That if Coles didn't allow the trade to go through, Snyder would climb down off his telephone book, take off his platform shoes, run over to Coles and start punching his ankles.

B. Coles would be forced to work the pit crew for coach Joe Gibbs's NASCAR team.

C. Synder threatened to buy Coles a big-screen TV so Coles could watch all the games he wouldn't be playing in for the Redskins. (Ed. note: This is actually the real answer. Can you believe the gall of that Napoleonic twit? Where does a guy who's turned a once proud, Super Bowl-winning franchise into a team most opponents refer to as "our other bye-week" get off making threats to anybody?)

D. That if Coles wouldn't allow the trade to go through, Snyder would find a way to send him to the New York Knicks.

4. The person or persons most in peril as St. Louis Cardinals wild-pitcher Rick Ankiel converts to the outfield is/are:

A. The catcher.

B. The cut-off man.

C. The fans in Section 128.

D. The guy running the imported beer stand in the concourse above Section 128.

5. CBS News executives celebrated anchorman Dan Rather's last night behind the desk of the "Evening News" by:

A. Attempting to authenticate the signatures on his going-away card.

B. Listening to Andy Rooney drone on about how annoying it is to always get stuck with the shopping cart with the wiggly wheel at the supermarket because surely they have enough employees to check on such things ... but that, then again, the employees aren't the hottest irons in the fire to begin with, all of which begs the question: why does a sleeve of Chips Ahoy! cookies seem to not have the same number of chocolate chip cookies as it had back in 1989?

C. Accompanying Jon Stewart for his CBS Evening News anchorman suit-fitting.

D. Doing what everybody else usually does during the "CBS Evening News": Watching either "The Simpson's," "Friends," or "Seinfeld."

6. The NFL is investigating Minnesota Vikings coach Mike Tice for scalping Super Bowl tickets. This is significant because:

A. Tice was not a member of the Local 742 Ticket-Scalpers Union, and hence could be considered a scab scalper.

B. Tice wasn't including the TicketMaster surcharge of $10,000 per ticket.

C. The scandal could threaten the integrity of the Super Bowl ticking process, which has successfully kept real NFL fans out of the game for at least the last 25 years.

D. It marks the first time since the retirement of Fran Tarkenton the words "Super Bowl" and "Minnesota Vikings" have been this closely associated.

7. The other seven people in my Yahoo! Fantasy Baseball League should know that I:

A. Am still going through fantasy hockey withdrawal, and could potentially be tricked into trading Miguel Tejada for Nikolai Khabibulin.

B. Typically only draft the players I've heard of, meaning plenty of veteran American League designated hitters with knees so bad they are one hard slide into second base away from getting stretchered off the field.

C. Traditionally are more likely to trade with someone who begins the proposal with, "Say ... have you lost weight?"

D. Tend to lose interest by the second week in May, leaving my team as a rudderless ship that starts the same pitchers every day whether they're actually on the mound or not.

8. Gladiator star Russell Crowe recently said he was being targeted for kidnapping by Al Qaeda operatives because they wanted to:

A. Fulfill a promise to Allah that there will never, ever, ever be a sequel to"Virtuosity."

B. Impress Meg Ryan.

C. Book 30-Odd Foot of Grunt for Osama's niece's Super Sweet 16.

D. Ensure Colin Farrell would continue to have a career playing Russell's sloppy-seconds.

9. The most common reaction by the NHL's owners to a proposed $3.5 billion takeover bid from a consortium of business interests was:

A. Joy ... the kind that the owner of a broken-down 1978 Plymouth Duster with three wheels and a bumper missing feels when someone offers him $10 to take it off those cinder blocks on his front lawn.

B. Confusion, as they debated whether the bid was in American or Canadian dollars.

C. Relief, as the $3.5 billion would — according to the owners' books — leave the NHL only $3 billion short of breaking even after last season.

D. Bewilderment, as the only other times a group of Americans showed this kind of interest in hockey, either Mike Eruzione was on the ice or Paul Newman was on the movie poster.

10. The horse that starred in the movie "Seabiscuit" died this week. Its cause of death was:

A. Its face was ripped off by a rampaging gaggle of chimpanzees.

B. Utter shock that the horse who played the boxer in "Million Dollar Baby" won for Best Actress at the Oscars this year.

C. The result from its raging post-"Seabiscuit" cocaine addiction.

D. Suicide, after his inter-species relationship with the dog from "Because of Winn-Dixie" was exposed by the National Inquirer.

Greg Wyshynski is also a weekly columnist for SportsFan Magazine. His columns appear every Saturday on Sports Central. You can e-mail Greg at [email protected].

Posted by Greg Wyshynski at 2:30 PM | Comments (0)

Baseball's Coming to Washington

It's been alleged that steroids have been a mainstay in baseball for at least the last two decades. Superstars are now facing suspicion after being outed in books, grand jury testimonies, and the media.

It's also become increasingly apparent that the problem of steroids in sports isn't relegated just to the professional ranks. Families all over America are concerned about the drug's impact on their children. It turns out high schoolers are just as interested in juicing as they are in homecoming and prom.

There is a great drive to find out the who's, when's, where's, and why's. The public is clamoring for the truth, for someone to set things right and tell us what we want to know.

Who you gonna call?

Rest easy, folks, the U.S. House of Representatives is on the case.

I feel better already.

(In the interest of full disclosure, I should mention I have a bastardized version of the Ghostbusters song running through my head right now.)

Jose Canseco, Mark McGwire, Jason Giambi, Curt Schilling, Sammy Sosa, Frank Thomas, and Rafael Palmeiro were all asked to appear at the hearings on March 17th, as were Bud Selig, Donald Fehr, and San Diego GM Kevin Towers.

Jose Canseco, Curt Schilling, and Frank Thomas have already agreed to testify, but others have decided to fight the subpoenas. As of yet, it is unclear who exactly will make the trek to Washington D.C., or exactly what they will say.

Surely, Canseco will have no problems telling the House Committee for Government Reform anything they want to know. If his 60 Minutes interview is any indication, we can look forward to some hum dingers.

MIKE WALLACE: Where do you inject it?

JOSE CANSECO: Into your gluteus maximus, which is your butt muscle.

Who knew Canseco could be so well-spoken while being so informative?

Perhaps the only question is whether Tom Davis or Dennis Kucinich will be the first to ask a player about their butt or testicles. (I'll put Kucinich at 4-1 odds, only because he's crazy. He's also at 50-1 odds to be the first to make a joke about Viagra and Palmeiro.)

It's also apparent that Canseco has been slyly preparing for a possible appearance in front of Congress, as his interview with Mike Wallace shows him practicing the cadence and backtracking speech necessary to appear in this honest and justice-driven arena.

JOSE CANSECO: Well, I think it was more inject ourselves. I think I injected him — I mean this is a long time ago. Once or twice for sure. I didn't keep track, but...

And the definition of "is" is?

Beyond Jose, it'll be hard to predict what witnesses will tell the committee. There are no real dangers for criminal prosecution at the moment, but the verdict in the court of public opinion could be just as severe for some of the players. Will they open up and answer all questions faithfully, or will they take the fifth?

It will partly depend on whether the questions are more like a Randy Johnson fastball or the flat, straight, 85 mph lobs from middle relievers that became donations to Sosa and McGwire during their historic season.

Personally, if Mark McGwire would prefer not to answer questions about his alleged George Michael-esque behavior with Canseco, I'd like to see him try to distract the committee with a "fat man in a little suit" routine.

Perhaps Sammy Sosa can, instead of taking the fifth, engage the members of Congress in an hour-long tutorial on his home run hand celebration? They could use it to celebrate passing clutch legislation.

Who's going to blame them? In a court of law, you need more than uncorroborated testimony from an accomplice. Unfortunately, the only "evidence" during this preposterous exercise will be Canseco's allegations. Fact or not, no one can prove anything.

What's said on March 17th in the hearings is going to dominate the news cycle for at least a couple of days. It's enough that they are Congressional hearings, but this one is celebrities, athletes, and drugs, so it's sexy. It's a dream for the media.

My only request is that Darrell Hammond cover the hearings as Geraldo.

"Yes, this is Geraldo and I'm just back from the Congressional hearings on steroids and baseball. I can report that Jose Canseco said, and I quote, 'Geraldo, that sexy man, could have been the best baseball player of all time. Yes, I injected Geraldo, that sexy man.' This is in fact true, as I was in the stall next to Canseco and McGwire in Oakland looking for Osama bin Laden when curiosity got the best of me and I ended up with a needle in my ass."

Why not? It would just add to the three-ring, 17-muscle forehead, 75-inch bicep circus that is sure to surround the arrival of some of the biggest names in baseball history.

The question still remains — what, if anything, is going to get done?

Is it good that the headlines in the next day's paper will be about what Sammy, Mark, Jason, Jose, and Frank said? Is there a small chance that the issues at hand, steroid use by children and the serious health problems that come with it, might be obscured?

How many column inches do you think the testimony by the doctors or families of youth steroids users will get? I can tell you right now, it won't be on page A1.

It seems that spot is reserved for New York Times bestsellers.

One could say that bringing some of the most recognizable faces in baseball to the hearings will bring public attention to the situation, and give Congress more political capital to bring about a solution. Unfortunately, I'm convinced they are more concerned with scoring a couple of autographs than doing anything constructive, and their insistence on making March 17th a circus is evidence of that.

Steroids have been the biggest issue in the offseason, and not just for baseball fans. We've seen the media frenzy, we've heard the apologies and the rants, and we've had enough.

They are grown men, they did what they did, and baseball is making at least a half-hearted effort to make sure it doesn't happen again.

Yes, there should be a discussion about the 1990's era of baseball and the records that were set by players now under suspicion of taking steroids. But, it's just not a conversation that should take place at Congressional hearings.

Let that time be an opportunity to genuinely focus on the health and well being of the children now playing the game. If they are trying to emulate their professional, chemically-enhanced heroes, perhaps putting these athletes front and center in Washington isn't the best way to stop them.

Posted by Vince Grzegorek at 2:26 PM | Comments (1)

March 11, 2005

Stay Bassy: "The Jump" Chronicles Telfair Tale

That the business of basketball is getting younger and younger is no secret — the attendant sneaker wars, however, are the stuff of Cosa Nostra novels. In the last NBA draft, Lincoln High School's 5-11 Sebastian Telfair became the smallest schoolboy player to ever go pro. Ian O'Connor's "The Jump" (Rodale, 2005) drags readers through the muddy courtship of Coney Island's latest point guard.

We meet the extended Telfair family, which includes supportive adopted brother Jamel Thomas and emotionally distant star cousin Stephon Marbury. Thomas, an All-Big East forward at Providence who went unselected in the 1999 NBA draft, was an albatross to the Telfair brood, their anticipated "ticket out" who became a professional player in Greece.

Starbury is the looming presence, the bling-laden Coney Island baller they feel didn't reach back to assist them as did Thomas. Proud dad Otis Telfair, a Vietnam vet who has served on a murder rap, and uber-mom Erica, never saw the diminutive Sebastian as an instrument of wealth, and still stung from the Thomas disappointment. The extra something Bassy possessed was boyish appeal.

O'Connor illustrates how summer league coaches were early suitors — Thomas "Ziggy" Sicignano being the Christopher Columbus of the gold mine that was Bassy. Ziggy gained powerful hoops connections steering strippers to pro playaz at Atlanta's infamous Gold Club. Telfair's high school coach Dwayne "Tiny" Morton developed enmities with both Ziggy and sneaker kingmaker Sonny Vaccaro in the war to obtain Telfair's summer team services and eventual shoe contract signature.

The author offers detalied profiles of school principals, sneaker execs, agents, NBA scouts, and an enigmatic Providence College priest named Father Lacombe. LeBron James, Jay-Z, Spike Lee, and Rick Pitino are more than cameo participants, as prospective agent Andy Miller, and the hopeful Telfair's live out The Great Small Hope's senior year of high school. The narrative is as rollercoaster as Coney Island's Cyclone, the ups and downs provided by the kid's game performances and draft projection.

The ride is as much horror castle as twister, with revelations about cash gifts, phony SAT scores, and flashy sports cars at every turn. O'Connor provides fly-on-the-wall access to high school all-star affairs, pre-draft workouts, and draft day cell phone calls. Telfair is equal parts player and played.

To his credit, O'Connor observes without inserting an instructive or moral tone. Judgments are left to the reader; "The Jump" explores the cast without preaching the state of the game. One comes away with insight as to NBA commish David Stern's mixed feelings concerning high schoolers that forgo college, and a grasp of the many characters that shape such decisions.

Posted by Bijan C. Bayne at 3:32 PM | Comments (0)

Baseball's Great Secret

There was a time when baseball was a game of constants, a game you could rely on. The rules of the game were simple and universal: the Red Sox were cursed, Babe Ruth was without equal, and good pitching was superior to good hitting.

Recently, two of these pillars have shown signs of crumbling, if not collapsing. "The Idiots" miraculously overcame a 3-0 divisional lead by their nemesis Yankees in the ALCS, and then swept the favored Cardinals to win the World Series. Barry Bonds continued his unfathomable production to the point that if he's proven steroid-free (stranger things have happened; see Red Sox example above), he will have a reasonable argument at being Babe Ruth's superior and the best player in baseball history. I still like Ruth for the fact that he was a phenomenal pitcher as well as batter, but the argument that Ruth never had to compete against the black athlete is relevant as well ... too complex a discussion to investigate here.

What will be investigated here, however, is baseball's third truth, that good pitching out-values good hitting. It's still a widely-held belief, but is it accurate? With the recent revelations of the Red Sox competence and the Bambino's endangered status as baseball's best, it's time to find out if the importance of good pitching is a myth or a must.

The most obvious way to compare the importance of hitting and pitching is to see which teams win more — those allowing fewer runs than a traveling Pepto-Bismol salesman, and those scoring more often than Charlie Sheen in the early days. The results might surprise you; the teams more prone to score win just as often as those who are pitching-strong. Last year, the top-10 teams in runs scored (the Red Sox, Yankees, White Sox, Rangers, Indians, Cardinals, Giants, Orioles, Phillies, and Angels) averaged 90.3 wins. The top-10 teams in runs allowed (the Cardinals, Cubs, Braves, Dodgers, Astros, Marlins, Padres, Twins, Mets, and Angels) averaged an almost identical 90.0 wins.

You might say that these numbers are irrelevant, that statistics including only runs scored and runs allowed don't take into account solely the pitcher-batter match up, but also how competent a team's defense is, which isn't at the heart of the question being posed. You'd be right. So to minimize the effect of a good or bad defense, and more accurately extract a conclusion, I compared last year's top-10 teams in OPS (on-base percentage plus slugging average; a reliable method for gauging offensive proficiency) versus last year's top-10 teams in ERA. The results didn't change much. The teams with the bats averaged 89 wins, while the teams with the arms averaged 89.9; an indication that neither prime pitching nor blessed batting is more valuable than the other.

However, it may be possible that the sport's brightest stage, the World Series, may elicit a winner in the eternal competition between pitchers and batters, even if a clear-cut choice cannot be determined during the regular season. To see if perhaps during the Fall Classic one side was routinely supreme (after all, the adage claims good pitching beats good hitting, not regular season pitching beats regular season hitting), I combed over the most modern evidence, the last five Series, and where the key to the winners' success lay. In reverse chronological order, here are the findings...

* The most memorable image from the 2004 Red Sox postseason scramble was of Curt Schilling's bloodied sock. Schilling, along with fellow pitchers Pedro Martinez, Derek Lowe, and Keith Foulke deserved their press clippings, as they were largely responsible for a 2.50 team ERA and a sweep of the powerful St. Louis Cardinals. However, even more paramount to the Sox success was their offense, which averaged six runs a game in the Series, and led the majors in runs scored (regular season) by over 50. The pitching staff was just 14th best in the majors in runs allowed. ADVANTAGE: Bats.

* The 2003 Florida Marlins are a curious case. They had Series' marks of just 2.8 runs a game, a paltry .232 batting average, and an anemic .601 OPS. They did have a fine 3.21 ERA, but the tough-luck Yanks had an even better 2.13 ERA, along with a superior .773 OPS. Florida's pitchers certainly out-performed their own position players, but it would be ludicrous to say that pitching was the key to the series, since the Yanks and their superior ERA won only two games. The difference was the Fish's ability to win in the clutch, as they won four games by a combined six runs. ADVANTAGE: Wash.

* In the 2002 Series, the Anaheim Angels churned out more hits than the Beatles and Beach Boys combined. They batted .310, with a .404 on base percentage, and an eyebrow-raising .869 OPS. The Angels' ERA was a less-than-stellar 5.75, including a 7.56 ERA from their starters, but for all intensive purposes, they could have lobbed a whiffle ball to the plate and the Giants wouldn't have out-hit them. ADVANTAGE: Bats.

* 2001 was the year of the Diamondbacks. With Series co-MVPs Schilling and Randy Johnson, it doesn't take a crystal ball to see where the advantage is going here. The pitching staff had a 1.94 team ERA, and struck out 63 pinstripes in 65 innings. Perhaps even more impressive was their .892 WHIP average (Walks + Hits per Inning Pitched). Or their .183 batting average against. Or the fact that the mighty Yankees squeaked out just 12 extra base hits in a seven game series. You get the picture. ADVANTAGE: Arms.

* Our final case study, the 2000 Yankees, weren't all that dissimilar from the '01 Diamondbacks. Aces Roger Clemens and Andy Pettitte had a combined 1.25 ERA in the series, which anchored the Yanks team ERA at 2.68. The Yanks struck out 48 star-struck Mets in just 47 innings, and held their cross-town rivals to a meager .229 batting average against. The offense helped just enough to win, but not enough to be the primary reason for it. ADVANTAGE: Arms.

Our conclusion is every bit as decidedly indecisive as our first attempt to find a pattern. Two Series won by bats, two Series won by arms, and one outlier Series won by neither indicate results similar to our comparison of winning teams; both hitting and pitching seem to be equally important. True, this was a study of only five World Series, but it is the most modern evidence available, and is not grossly misrepresentative of the World Series' history. The value of pitching, it seems thus far, is not superior to hitting.

Value, however, is not solely defined in wins. Baseball is a business as well as a sport, and it would be relevant to find out if GMs are paying more for the big boppers or the 20-game winners. This winter, nine of the top 10 richest free-agent contracts went to position players. The next tier of contracts, the 11th richest through the 20th richest, was saturated by pitchers, as only one belonged to a position player. Clearly, owners today are paying more for offense than they are for pitching, despite our findings that both are equally important to helping a club win.

It's not as if there were an unusual abundance of outstanding free agent batters, either. The top hitters had easily as many questions surrounding them as the top pitchers. Want evidence? Magglio Ordonez (second richest contract) received a five-year, $75 million dollar deal. That's the same Magglio Ordonez who hit single digit homeruns last year while playing just 52 games, and who is no longer a threat on the base pads (he's averaged just five stolen bases the last three years).

Adrian Beltre (third richest) signed for $64 million over five years, but many people rightly wonder whether he wasn't a one-year superstar. J.D. Drew, fourth on the list with a five-year, $55 million deal, is a great player when healthy. Problem is, he rarely meets that prerequisite. The point is, this year's market wasn't exactly set by players like Bonds, Vlad Guerrero, or A-Rod.

One reasonable view of why pitchers generally received less money, however, is GM's reluctance to give them long term deals. Only three pitchers (Pedro Martinez, Carl Pavano, and Russ Ortiz) received more than three-year deals, and some people even muttered about four years being too much for those guys. There's a general feeling, whether deserved or not, that pitchers break down more easily than position guys, and it's a very reasonable view if one subscribes to the idea that throwing a baseball is an unnatural motion for the human arm.

Still, even if pitchers don't receive as many years in their contracts, their yearly average salary compared to position players should reflect who baseball's GMs truly value most. Of the top-20 (10 batters, 10 pitchers) richest contracts signed this offseason, position players received a combined $572 million over 46 years, which averages out to $12.43 million per season.

(This number may seem high because deferred money is figured into a player's length of contract for a truer per capita comparison. So although Carlos Beltran will be receiving payments from the Mets for 14 years, because his contract only lasts seven, his total contract is divided among seven years.)

Using the same formula, pitchers received $287 million over 33 years, for an average of $8.70 million per season. This means that position players will be receiving an astronomical 43% more than pitchers per season, despite the fact that the best hitting teams win no more often than the best pitching ones.

What might explain this staggering disparity? Logically speaking, the fans. There will always be the diehard fans who go to every game sleet or shine, team brilliant or beastly, ballpark sparkling or shabby. But a lot of fans want to be entertained at a ballgame, and that means an increased emphasis on offense. While a 2-1 pitcher's duel can be exhilarating for a dedicated fan, the casual fan would probably rather see a 10-8 who-can-reach-the-upper-decks slugfest. That's why offense is overpaid for in free agency; that money comes right back to the ballclubs in the form of higher attendance.

Bud Selig is fond of saying baseball is experiencing a Renaissance, with higher attendance almost across the board last year. So if owners and managers are normally willing to do anything to get more butts in the seats, imagine how much they're willing to overspend in this new found era of baseball rejuvenation.

To backup my point on homerun hitters putting more seats in a ballpark than all-star relief men, consider that the top-10 teams in ERA last year filled ballparks to the tune of 70.1% capacity on average. The top-10 OPS teams averaged 73.4%. Is a 3.3% difference really anything to write home about? Absolutely, if you consider the huge number of games and national popularity of our pastime. Average attendance over the season for MLB's 30 teams last year was around 2,417,000. A 3.3% increase for that average team, the difference it would likely benefit from being good and/or exciting on offense, translates to 70,840 extra tickets sold in a year for one ballclub.

On the very modest estimation that the average ticket price will be $25, that 3.3% increase suddenly becomes an additional $1.77 million pocketed! If that 3.3% increase is carried over to revenue harvesters such as TV rights and jersey sales, that $1.77 million may be just scratching the surface. When one considers the fact that good hitting is perceived to breed good hitting (lineup protection), and definitely breeds good ticket receipts, it's no wonder that many normally-shrewd general managers offer so many inflated contracts to position players.

As 300 game-winner Tom Seaver once said, "If you dwell on statistics, you get shortsighted. If you aim for consistency, the numbers will be there at the end." The big picture is what we're after, so let's take a step out of the batter's box and review.

First, neither pitching-strong clubs nor offense-oriented teams have an advantage over each other in the win column. This is true, in modern day, throughout the regular season and in the World Series, where the pressure is greatest and the biggest stars tend to step up.

Second, teams spend far more on hitters, upon average, than on pitchers, both in total money and cash per year. And third, this disproportionate spending may be justified due to the increased revenue of offensive-oriented ball clubs, but obviously there will be individual contracts that are still just plain stupid (seriously, Beltre had a great season, but one year makes him worth $64 million in a new league?).

So the answer to the original question, whether good pitching is still superior to good hitting, is simply and surprisingly, no. While there's no question it's still important, in no instance of baseball as a sport, an industry, or as entertainment does pitching exceed the value of batting. That, my friends, is baseball's great secret.

Posted by Tyson Wirth at 3:01 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

How to Improve the Golf Season

Phil Mickelson was defeated by Tiger Woods this past Sunday at the Ford Championship at Doral. The duel was arguably one of the best, and emotionally-charged, in years in the sport.

Tiger had the opportunity to become world number one again. Phil Mickelson had a chance to cap off three straight stroke play wins by defeating the greatest golfer of our generation ... and perhaps ever. Even outside of the spotlight, Accenture Match Play champ David Toms lurked and now-prior number one Vijay Singh made his presence felt.

The crowds at Doral were raucous and literally felt every shot. The television audience responded by giving the tournament its highest overnight rating in 15 years. It was already known that the formula to great golf ratings is having great players and great competition. Doral, this past week, made it painfully obvious, though, that this type of event has the potential to happen a whole lot more than it currently does on the PGA Tour.

With the pending television contract for the Tour in the process of development, there is an opportunity to make golf superstars more of a regular part of the Tour. Currently, among the top-five players in the world, only one has played more than 23 events in the past three seasons (Vijay Singh, duh). While that figure alone is not damaging to the Tour, it is when considering that the 11-month season spans nearly 48 events.

In essence, the best players in the world are in the field less than half the time. If you were to analyze the playing habits of most Tour elites closely, you would notice that they almost all cease playing after early September at the American Express. Labor Day marks the end of the competitive golf season. The remaining two months of the season are littered with meaningless events and then culminates with the Tour Championship. If the season for the world's best is only nine months long, why are we still playing golf into late fall?

The Tour season has to be shorter. It would promote better fields as a percentage of all tournaments played. Attendance could receive a significant increase as a result. Television ratings will surely increase and give the game better mainstream exposure. This happened when Tiger Woods first displayed dominance in the late-'90s. When he played, people watched. That is still true today. Ratings for Woods' tournament appearances are double-digits percentages higher than other events.

The difference is now that with the establishment of a host of formidable, and unique, opponents, Woods has real foes. Every great champion needs a nemesis and Tiger has four at present. The game is in a renaissance. The Tour should move quickly to capitalize on its great position and give the fans an opportunity to see Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson, Vijay Singh, and others more often.

Certainly, it could be noted that reducing the number of events in a season would restrict many struggling players from retaining their Tour cards. Believe it or not, this could be a blessing in disguise. The Nationwide Tour has developed into a strong talent pool for future PGA Tour stars.

By relegating a number of mediocre PGA Tour players, the Nationwide Tour instantly becomes more engaging and watchable. Nationwide ratings could increase and give the Tour network exposure. Again, purses would increase and more golfers could make a living playing the sport they love. All the while, as the PGA Tour likes to remind everyone, more charities receive more money and the philanthropic tradition of the game grows stronger.

With all of that evidence, how can anyone oppose a little snip-snip?

Posted by Ryan Ballengee at 3:00 PM | Comments (2)

Channeling a Champ: "...I Talk to Liston"

Inspiration takes many forms. Some athletes had jock parents, other earned letters in hopes of attracting the opposite sex. Legend has it that the former Cassius Clay took up boxing to wreak revenge on an unknown bicycle thief.

Brian DeVido's debut novel "Every Time I Talk to Liston" (Bloomsbury, 2004, $22.95 hardcover) studies the mind/body of journeyman heavyweight Amos "Scrap Iron" Fletcher.

Written by a former Virginia Golden Gloves champ, the story concerns Fletcher's transition from undercard fighter to snakebitten trainer. Whenever "Scrap" needs an emotional lift, he visits the Vegas gravesite of heavyweight menace Sonny Liston and bares his soul.

This tale is more than metaphor, though symbolic homages to former pugs are interspersed. Fletcher views the misunderstood Liston as a father-confessor, the living Liston was led into the fight game by a prison priest. There's a CNN sportscaster named (with different spelling) for a Liston advisor. Despite such inside references, one need not be a fight fan to enjoy this examination of the heart.

Through unfortunate circumstances, the pensive Fletcher, 37, evolves from sparring partner for a new heavyweight champ, to manager-trainer for slugger TNT Timmons. With the aptly-named loose cannon TNT, Fletcher has the opportunity to avenge some personal demons. DeVido's pugilistic universe is one of noble trainers, blowdried broadcasters, and hot babes with gold hearts.

Scrap is a lonely soul whose quest is to settle a score via TNT's mighty fists. With the suspense surrounding the corner "marriage" of Scrap and TNT, DeVido takes us into the swank suites of Vegas and the sweaty gyms of Trenton. The most entertaining passages explore the Liston psyche, those who know little of Sonny other than his two defeats at the hands (and feet) of The Greatest will be enlightened. Fighters are complex people engaed in solitary pursuits.

"Every Time I Talk to Liston" puts a brain behind the face of a brain-bashing sport. A prizefighter, formally educated or not, is nothing if not a thinker. This is why scribes the likes of London, Hemingway, Mailer, Plimpton, and Joyce Carol Oates have been drawn to the game. Not many boxers have taken up the pen (Jose Torres being the exception), so it's noteworthy that Brian DeVido scores a literary KO in his first bout.

Posted by Bijan C. Bayne at 2:34 PM | Comments (0)

March 10, 2005

Champaign Still Good 'TIl Last Drop

About a month ago, some friends and I were sitting around discussing sports over some beers. The subject of the then undefeated Fighting Illini came up — what are their chances? Who could beat them? Is there a point at which you can wear too much orange?

We debated over these questions over a couple of hours, and over a couple of more beers, and then my friend made one of the most bizarre statements uttered in recent memory:

"Illinois isn't going to lose until the last game of the year. They're at Ohio State, and OSU will be geeked up because their season is already shot, and they've got nothing to play for except pride."

This statement had a little bit of truth in it. Yes, Ohio State had a miserable season, trying to rebuild a program that hasn't been good since ... wow, it's been awhile.

Yes, the school's self-imposed one year ban on tournament play meant that the wily bunch would have even less pressure on them to compete against the No. 1 team in the land.

But, come on! The undefeated Illinois Fighting Illini were not going to let months of talk and pressure and history-making play be ruined by losing to the Buckeyes.

I was sure my friend either made this outrageous claim because of his affinity for Ohio State, or because of his apparent affinity for Guinness.

Either way, this sentence disappeared from my memory until Sunday, when I saw the score: Ohio State 65, Illinois 64.

In fact, it wasn't just Illinois that suffered a surprising loss that day. Four of the top-10 ranked teams went down, including Duke, Kentucky, and Kansas. (Although Duke did lose to North Carolina, a team just a few levels above the likes of Ohio State.)

But calling the Illinois loss a month in advance? That'd be like telling me in 2000 that Martha Stewart would be spending her time behind bars, not a television camera, in 2004-05.

Now, I don't follow college basketball that diligently, and I must admit that the NCAA tournament is about the only thing that keeps my interest from falling off the scale completely (although, gambling may have something to do with that). However, my family grew up not far from Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, and besides being proud of the ability to recite the hometown of the Fighting Illini (and spell it correctly), this has also been one of my only reasons for following college basketball this season.

For the record, Hakim Warrick is another.

Matt Sylvester is not (although now I know his name.)

So Illinois lost its last regular season game. So what? They will still go into the NCAA tournament as a number one seed, and they're still going to have to live up to expectations and beat some very good teams if they hope to come out on top. The loss, despite its effect on their drive for perfection, doesn't mean much.

All year long, people have debated whether it would be better if Illinois lost a game before entering the tournament, and although I'm a firm believer that that is a stupid question, we no longer have to guess. They lost. They lost a game they shouldn't have. And now we get to see how they respond.

Coach Bruce Weber is telling his team to remember the bitter taste of losing and use that as motivation as they enter March Madness. It's about the only thing a coach can tell a team that put up a performance against Ohio State that was more Gigli than Good Will Hunting. But, I'm sure Coach Weber would rather not be having that conversation right now.

Even this late season loss, however, is not enough to move Illinois from the No. 1 spot, or derail them from being the favorite to win the championship. They won 29 games in a row, went undefeated in non-conference play, and have two fewer losses than the next best team.

Why then, when the polls were released this Monday, did North Carolina have more than a few votes for the No. 1 spot? In the ESPN/Coaches poll, Illinois only got 21 of the 31 available votes, with the other 10 going to UNC. In the AP poll, Illinois got 48 nods, while UNC pulled in a surprising 22.

What gives?

Even though they retained the top spot, it seems that the Illini are fighting for a little amount of respect heading into the postseason.

Illinois has had just as many games against top-25 ranked teams as North Carolina this season.

(Number before team is rank at the time of the game, number after indicates ranking as of week 17.)

Illinois:

(25) Gonzaga (13)
(1) Wake (4)
(17) Cincy (21)
(24) Iowa (NR)
(19) Wisconsin (23)
(10 Michigan St. (12)
(21) Wisconsin (23)

North Carolina:

(8) Kentucky (4)
(21) Maryland (NR)
(8) Georgia Tech (NR)
(3) Wake (3) LOSS
(8) Duke (5) LOSS
(14) UConn (14)
(6) Duke (5)

At first glance, and last glance, it doesn't seem that North Carolina played an extensively harder bunch of top ranked teams. If anything, one would have to give Illinois the edge for beating a then ranked No. 1 Wake team that in turn defeated the Tarheels.

Perhaps those casting votes for North Carolina to move into the top spot felt that the ACC was a tougher conference to play in than the Big10. But it's hard to make the case that there was a sizeable chasm between the two. Both conferences ended the year with only three teams a piece in the top 25; however, besides UNC, the other two for the ACC were Duke and Wake, whereas the Big 10 had Wisconsin and Michigan State.

Despite the fact that the numbers seem to indicate that the ACC was stronger and more competitive than the Big 10 this year, it should be noted that Illinois did beat Wake, and Duke did lose to a couple of unranked teams, even if they played UNC tough twice. The disparity between the two conferences isn't what one might expect it to be — we're not talking about the difference in quality between the Sports Guy and his intern finalists, or PTI and I, Max.

Not including Illinois, the Big 10 amassed a non-conference record of 83-41. With the Illini that record bumps up to 97-41, for a decent .702 winning percentage.

The ACC was notably (but not exceedingly) better, going 95-25 in non-conference play, not including UNC's record, and 107-26 taking the Tarheels into account an .804 winning percentage.

These are things to take into consideration when trying to differentiate between two teams with identical records; they are, however, not so important when simple wins and losses can put distance between the No. 1 and No. 2.

Illinois only lost one game, the last game of the season, after marching through 29 games of dominance, including tough games against Michigan State, Iowa, Wisconsin, Cincy, and Wake (a team that UNC couldn't beat.)

North Carolina, on the other hand, had three losses: Duke, Wake, and Santa Clara in their first game of the year.

Sure, Illinois is the prohibitive favorite going into March, and they'll have the opportunity to put it out on the court and prove that they are the best team in the land, but they'll also be fighting for a little bit of lost respect: specifically 10 and 22 votes worth.

After the Ohio State game, my friend, the same one that had predicted the upset, asked, "If UNC beats Duke, are they the number one team?"

In my opinion, this question ranks right up there with, "Would it be better if Illinois lost one game before the tournament?"

Although the general feeling may be that North Carolina is the better team, and that they had a tougher schedule, and their wins came against higher quality opponents, there is still a number three in the "L" column.

You can't take away what Illinois did this year. Even after the perfection-ending trey by Matt Sylvester, at the moment, they are still clearly the best team in the land.

Posted by Vince Grzegorek at 11:59 AM | Comments (1)

March 9, 2005

March Madness: The Winds of Change

Although I was able to conquer both urges, putting off sleep long enough to finish my article and pick Kansas to win it all, after nearly four months of basketball, I find myself in a very similar, yet strangely different position. I'm again fighting the urge to sleep instead of writing an article, but now, instead of nodding off in New York, I'm losing sleep in Los Angeles.

Along with the change of scenery, however, comes a change in thinking. Kansas is no longer my favorite to win the title. In fact, I doubt Kansas will even make it to St. Louis this year. I have a new favorite to win the title now, as well as a darkhorse candidate to be my favorite's opponent in the national title game.

When the season began, I, like most prognosticators, was trying to choose between North Carolina, Wake Forest, and Kansas as my pick to cut down the nets in St. Louis. North Carolina, with the junior troika of Sean May, Rashad McCants, and Raymond Felton, the addition of über-freshman Marvin Williams, and the added benefit of having another season under the tutelage of coach Roy Williams made them a very popular choice to win the national championship.

Wake Forest, on the other hand, had the superb guard tandem of Chris Paul and Justin Gray, fresh off a gold medal-winning performance as members of the U.S. Junior National Team, as well as an emerging big man in Eric Williams. They returned every member of a team that was only a possession or two away from defeating St. Joe's and advancing to the Elite Eight last season. And all Kansas had was a group of returning seniors, in Keith Langford, Aaron Miles, and Wayne Simien, who have already been to two Final Fours and came an overtime period away from getting there last year.

After much deliberation, I decided to go with Kansas. Looking out over the college basketball landscape, I realized that there were many teams who were very close in overall talent, but only a few that relied on a commodity not many college teams possess these days: seniors. Kansas was the rare team that wouldn't rely as much on freshmen to contribute immediately, but on seniors who had been to the Final Four on two separate occasions. "Experience counts," I finally told myself.

As the season unfolded, Kansas did not disappoint. They started the season on a 14-game winning streak, even withstanding the loss of Simien early, during their pre-conference schedule. However, after having their undefeated season derailed with a stunning defeat at Villanova, the Jayhawks hit a bit of a snag during the middle of February, losing three straight conference games at one point. Although the Jayhawks were able to right the ship with a scintillating victory over Oklahoma State a few weeks ago, the Jayhawks don't seem to be as good a team as they did at the beginning of the season.

What's made me jump of the Kansas bandwagon as the season has progressed? Their lack of a consistent outside shooting threat. Wayne Simien is an absolute beast down low and should touch the ball every time down the court for the Jayhawks. When Simien is heavily involved in the offense, the Jayhawks are a dangerous team. There aren't many teams in the country that can handle Simien in the paint without doubling him or running some other junk defense designed to stop him.

But Kansas has shown an inability to hit shots from the outside consistently and their opponents have taken notice, playing zones and daring the rest of the Jayhawks to beat them from the outside. Although Kansas has been able to get away with it for most of the season, a lack of an outside threat will hurt them come tournament time.

So, who needs to step up and make teams pay for all the zones Kansas will probably see in their upcoming games? Paging J.R. Giddens. Mr. Giddens, please pick up the white courtesy phone. Your game is calling.

Giddens was supposed to be the "lightning" to Simien's "thunder" this season for Kansas this season. This was supposed to be Giddens' "breakout" season. This was the year Giddens showed the NBA scouts that he was a bona fide prospect and future lottery choice.

But, something happened on his way to Madison Square Garden, the shiny new suit and the cheesy handshake with David Stern. Giddens disappeared and so did his game. Perhaps he was too enamored with all the preseason press accolades he received at the onset of the season. To be fair, somebody who looks and sounds an awful lot like me wrote earlier this season that Giddens was on the verge of becoming a star and that this was the year he finally emerged. Well, whatever it was, Giddens regressed to the point where he now gets my vote for the "MDP" award: Most Disappointing Player.

In fact, while watching Kansas lose to Iowa State in the midst of their three game conference slide, I jotted down a few notes: "Giddens is the most disappointing player in the country." "Played too passively this season." "Relying too much on outside jumper."

Now, I realize I just wrote that Giddens needs to hit outside jumpers to relieve some of the pressure on Simien. However, there needs to be some balance to his game. He can't just stand outside the arc, waiting for the ball to be kicked out to him, which is what I've seen him do too often this season.

Giddens is at his best when he uses his explosive leaping ability to attack the basket but often times this year that part of his game has been absent. He seems content with floating around the arc, launching off-balance, contested threes, instead of using his athletic ability to draw contact in the lane and get to the free throw line. I've watched about 10 Kansas games this season (thank you, "ESPN Full Court") and I could probably count on both hands the number of times Giddens made an authoritative move to the basket out of a half-court set.

Kansas needs Giddens to be a major offensive weapon during the postseason. Instead of wandering aimlessly around the three-point line, he has to take the ball to the basket more often, which will cause his defender to back off a little, which in turn will give him the space he needs to shoot his jumper. It sounds simple, but you'd be amazed how much bigger the basket looks from outside once you get a few easy dunks and lay-ups to start you off. Kansas needs Giddens to live up to all the preseason press clippings if this group of seniors is to return to the Final Four for the third time in four years. Too bad my gut is telling me that it won't happen and the Jayhawks will be on the outside looking in for the second consecutive season.

If, however, you're looking for a "sleeper" team to make it to St. Louis when filling out those brackets, stay in the Big 12 and look no further than the Oklahoma State Cowboys. I know what you're thinking. 'Oklahoma State isn't a sleeper. They're 21-6 and have been ranked in the top 25 all season.' However, the Cowboys have many of the same ingredients I thought would propel Kansas to the championship this year, namely tournament experience and senior leadership. Couple that with the fact the Cowboys play aggressive, sometimes suffocating defense, along with the three-guard lineup of freshman Jameson Curry and seniors Daniel Bobik and John Lucas III, and the Cowboys will be a dangerous team in the next few weeks.

Teams that play defense always do well in March and the Cowboys are one of the best defensive teams in the country. As long as the Graham Twins continue to do the dirty work inside, the guards, much like Illinois' talented trio, will carry them. Oklahoma State's main problem will be depth, or their relative lack thereof. If their interior players can stay out of foul trouble, Lucas III and Curry, who is a potential star-in-the-making, can score enough to lead the Cowboys back to the Final Four.

But, after carefully poring over team RPIs, schedule strengths, "good" and "bad" losses, injury reports and the like, one team keeps popping out at me. And that team is North Carolina. (Surprise, surprise!) Carolina has been one of the two most consistent and dominant teams all season, right along with Illinois. After a blip on the radar in their season-opening loss to Santa Clara, the Tar Heels have won 25 of 27 games, including wins against Kentucky and everyone's Flavor of the Month "spoiler" team, UConn.

The Tar Heels are the most explosive team in the country and as long as they play with a sustained effort on the defensive end, they have too much firepower for most teams in America ... with one caveat: Rashad McCants must be available to play and he must play like he did before he became stricken with the illness that's been affecting him for the better part of the last month. McCants is a near unstoppable offensive player and Carolina needs him to take some of the pressure off the broad shoulders of Sean May, who's been the best player in the country the last month or so. If Roy Williams has his full complement of players once the NCAAs begin, then I see no reason why he shouldn't be celebrating his first national championship come sometime around 8:30 PM, West Coast time.

When I decided to move to California, after spending most of my entire life in New York City, some of my friends thought I was crazy and I have to admit, there have been times during the last few weeks where I thought I was, too. But, as soon as the calendar flipped to March, I finally began feeling a lot more at ease and a little less crazy. Maybe it's true what an Illinois sports official once wrote way back in 1939: "A little March Madness may contribute to sanity." In my case, March Madness definitely contributes to my sanity and I hope it does in your case, as well. Welcome to March, my friends. And welcome to March Madness.

Posted by Eric Williams at 1:30 PM | Comments (2)

The Fictional Randy Moss Interview

So Randy, how do you feel about becoming a Raider and playing in the "Black Hole"?

Randy Moss: "I'm stoked, dog. Those Raider fans are crazy. Who wouldn't want to play in a stadium where some of the fans wear shoulder pads? I can definitely see finishing my career here. You know the old saying: 'Once you go Black Hole, you never go back.'"

Could you explain your relationship with Mike Tice?

RM: "Oh, that's easy. He was my coach."

I mean, how did you two get along?

RM: "I thought we got along well. I guess you could say we had a father-son relationship; Mike being the father and me being the son who really didn't listen to a word he said."

What ultimately led to the end of Randy Moss in Minnesota?

RM: "I guess, ultimately, it was a combination of the leaving the field incident in Washington and the mooning incident in Green Bay. That's nitpicking in my book. The bottom line is Randy Moss can't operate on a short leash. I need at least two miles of slack. In Minnesota, they tried to keep me on a one-mile leash. Not enough."

Randy, you say being criticized for leaving the field and mooning fans is "nitpicking." If I were to do the same at my job, I would be fired immediately. What's your response?

RM: "I'd have to say get a real job, sucker. Look, if you had Packer fans sitting near your desk and heckling you all day, you'd probably do a lot worse than mooning them. Me just mooning them? That's called self-restraint, Randy Moss style. Anyway, I paid $10,000 for that mooning, so it's not like I wasn't punished. That's like you being fined $1.50; will it break you? No. Does it hurt your wallet? Yes."

What kind of relationship do you expect with Norv Turner?

RM: "Who?"

Norv Turner, your new coach.

RM: "Oh, him. Well, when I came to Oakland, they told me I was supposed to answer to that old guy with the slicked-back hair who wears black."

Elvis Presley?

RM: "No, I think his name is Al. Al Davis. I expect to see his name on my paycheck."

Were you surprised to be traded?

RM: "No, I wasn't surprised to be traded. I was, however, surprised at how little the Vikings wanted in return for the greatest receiver of all time. I mean, the No. 7 pick and some linebacker named Napoleon Harris? Damn, I just made that boy famous. The Raiders get me, plus an ass-load of Randy-baggage, and that's all the Vikes want in return? What team wouldn't kill to be in Oakland's place?"

Well, Randy, I think more teams would have been interested if they could have just got you without the Randy-baggage. Your reputation precedes you.

RM: "That don't sound like no question, dog."

Let me put it this way: if you could put up Randy Moss numbers with Marvin Harrison personality, then you would be even more desirable trade bait.

RM: "That still ain't no question, but I'll answer any way. First of all, Marvin Harrison ain't no Randy Moss on the field. Second of all, Randy Moss ain't no Marvin Harrison off the field. If Marvin wants to live the life of Bill Cosby off the field, more power to him. But I'm still young and immature; I'm still living the life of early Richard Pryor and Eddie Murphy, just without the freebasing accident and the incident with the transvestite. Apparently, Oakland was the only team willing to benefit with me on the field and not worry about me off the field."

Why did you choose #18 as your jersey number?

RM: "As you know, Jerry Porter wears #84 for the Raiders. I told Jerry to just keep #84, because I don't want the Raiders' fans who already have Jerry Porter jerseys, all 17 of them, to feel the need to take the 'Porter' off the back of the jersey and add 'Moss.' That would be disrespectful to Jerry. Besides, 'R' is the 18th letter of the alphabet; 'R' as in 'Randy.' Eight minus one is seven. 'G' is the seventh letter of the alphabet, and Gene is my middle name. And 18 is the number of touchdowns I plan on scoring with the Raiders in 2005."

That's quite a lofty goal, and, I must say, I don't know any black dudes named "Gene."

RM: "See, it don't matter how you look at it. Randy Moss is one of a kind."

What's the first thing you did when you arrived in Oakland?

RM: "I went clubbing with Charles Woodson and passed my Raider brotherhood initiation rites."

What would that be? Getting drunk and committing a Class 3 felony?

RM: "Man, are you crazy? You got the getting drunk right, but all I had to do was sucker-punch an autograph seeker. I've done that plenty of times before."

Your relationship with fans could be categorized as love-hate. They either love you or they hate you. How do you respond to that?

RM: "They're entitled to their opinion, and so am I. As far as the way I feel about fans, it's a hate-hate relationship. Those fans that love me, I hate them. Those fans that hate me, I hate them more."

What will you miss most about Minnesota?

RM: "I think I'll miss being public enemy No. 1. In Oakland, I've got a lot a competition for that title. And I'll miss the Mall of America. Certainly not the football."

Can we expect Randy Moss to be on his best behavior in Oakland?

RM: "The way I see it, Oakland is a place to come where you can put your troubles behind you, or at least into the hands of a good lawyer. You know, if I have to go to court, there's a good chance it might be televised out here. It's all about face time with me."

Do you look forward to playing with Kerry Collins?

RM: "Not as much as he looks forward to playing with me. He's no Daunte Culpepper, but I can make him one."

How good do you expect the Raiders to be in 2005?

RM: "As good as I can make them. I'm going to try something different this year. It's called effort. In Minnesota, I gave about 75%. It's a new day for me in Oakland; a fresh start, if you will. Which means I'll give more than 75%. I'm talking effort in the 80% range; I can even see topping off in the low 90s. It all spells Super Bowl for the Raiders."

What excites you most about playing in the AFC West?

RM: " I would have to say burning Champ Bailey. I also hear the Raiders and the Chiefs are a huge rivalry, so I look forward to hating the Chiefs."

Do you have any regrets about your time in Minnesota?

RM: "You know, all this time I've been in Minnesota, I never took the time to go ice fishing."

Are you being facetious?

RM: "I don't know who she is, but I like her name."

No, I mean are you kidding about the ice fishing?

RM: "What do you think, fool? I'm a black man living in Minnesota. I play football indoors. The only time I go outside during the season in to go from my car to our practice facility. Randy Moss don't mess with the cold weather, unless I'm in Chicago scoring on the Bears. So, yes, I am kidding about ice fishing. The only ice I care about is the chunk in my left earlobe."

Very well. You do know they have earthquakes in Oakland?

RM: "Yeah, but only during the World Series. So if the A's don't make it to the Series, I have nothing to worry about. An earthquake's a once in a lifetime thing; it's cold every damn day in Minnesota."

Okay, Randy. Let's play word association. Parking attendant?

RM: "Hood ornament."

Joe Buck?

RM: "Punk."

Red McCombs?

RM: "Geezer."

Mrs. Red McCombs?

RM: "Skeezer."

Favorite heavenly body?

RM: "Halle Berry."

Favorite fans?

RM: "Cheeseheads."

Favorite snack food?

RM: "Moon pie."

Favorite child of Frank Zappa?

RM: "Moon Unit."

Favorite former NFL quarterback?

RM: "Warren Moon."

Favorite Neill Young song?

RM: "Harvest Moon."

Who's your daddy?

RM: "Bob Marley."

Why did the chicken cross the road?

RM: "To beat the double-team, fool."

Give me your stat line for 2005.

RM: "84 receptions. 1,300 yards. As I said before, 18 TDs. $18,500 in NFL fines. Two charges. One plea bargain. Zero convictions. No jail time. 125 hours community service."

What's in the immediate future for Randy Moss?

RM: "Me walking out of this interview. See ya'!"

Posted by Jeffrey Boswell at 1:27 PM | Comments (5)

Heroism, Failure, Redemption in Davis Cup

Dramatic!
Sensational!
Stunning!

Call it what you will...
There is nothing like it!

Over the weekend, the Davis Cup once again provided the tennis fans with a different kind of excitement. This is not your everyday tennis tournament type of excitement. In Davis Cup, one look at the players' face proves that this is not about that player or about his battle. What one sees on the player's face is so much more than tension about how to win the next point.

The Davis Cup is the moment where the eyes of the player are fixated on the ball and the court, but his mind is slowly, but steadily crushed under the responsibility of representing the vast population that live in his country, and that country's flag. What you see on the player's face is the stress of the whirlwind of thoughts circulating in his mind, including what his teammates are thinking of him, what the millions of viewers are thinking about him when he commits that double fault on that crucial point, or how he will celebrate the win and what a hero he will become to his country's fans if he could just ... oh just ... win the next two games.

Take it from a guy who has played the deciding fifth match of a Davis Cup tie, a match that lasted five sets. The picture slowly forming in front of you is composed of a large, very large, group of people (millions in most cases), with a group of boxing gloves enough for all of them laying on one side, and a huge layer gifts and flowers laying on the other. If you win, you are showered with one. If you lose you are punished with the other. Get it?

One guy experienced the punishment side three years ago at the pinnacle of Davis Cup. In the 2002 Davis Cup finals in Paris, then 20-year-old Paul Henri Mathieu played Mikhail Youzhny for the deciding fifth match. Mathieu, much to the delight of the home crowd, won the first and second sets. Then the nightmare began and two hours later Youzhny was the hero and Mathieu was the guy who choked the Davis Cup away in five sets. If one did not think Mathieu was haunted by that memory for three years, one probably did not see last weekend's tie between Sweden and France. Mathieu was once again put in the same position against Thomas Johansson, one of the more composed players on the tour.

This time around, the location was Strasbourg, France. Mathieu again won the first two sets. And then the nightmare began again. After leading most of the third set, Mathieu squandered away the set in a tiebreaker failing to capitalize on three match points, and went down a break in the fourth. That third set lasted 77 minutes, longest minutes of Mathieu's career, maybe his life. Yet Mathieu clamped down, and won the fourth set by winning the last four games in a row. Immediately, tears came pouring down on his face. Those tears also took away from his body three years of heavyweights that were hanging in his mind since the nightmare in Paris. This time around, he was the hero.

Meanwhile in California, the U.S. Team composed of Andre Agassi, Andy Roddick, and the best doubles team in the world, the Bryan Brothers, could not possibly lose to Croatia, right? Wrong!

When Agassi went down to the young but bolding Ivan Ljubicic of Croatia, the alarm bells appeared for Patrick McEnroe. Then the bells started ringing loud and clear when the Bryan brothers, who had yet to lose a set in Davis Cup prior to last weekend, went down in four sets to Ljubicic and Mario Ancic. Surely, Roddick and Agassi could still bring the victory to Croatia the next day, couldn't they? Well, that next day was a day of absolute heroism for Ljubicic and a colossal failure for Roddick. Ljubicic, battling injuries and cramps in the fifth set, defeated Roddick to move his country to the quarterfinals.

More than Roddick, this defeat leaves question marks regarding the coaching ability of Patrick McEnroe. All through the fifth set, Roddick rushed the points, tried to hurry his shots, and made silly mistakes against a guy who had very little left in the tank. It was almost like Roddick helped Ljubicic's cause by keeping the points short and giving several away on easy unforced errors. You would think that McEnroe on the sidelines would have a few words of wisdom for Roddick during that set. After all, that is one advantage of Davis Cup. The coach can intervene during play. But neither McEnroe showed the ability to guide his player in the right direction, nor Roddick showed his court wit to take a player mentally down that was already physically down.

In other ties, a Roger Federer-less Switzerland, without his automatic two wins, lost to Netherlands. Romania defeated Belarus in a thriller, mainly thanks to the home court advantage. On paper, Mirnyi and Voltchkov should have taken care of business against Pavel and Hanescu. But the home crowd helped the Romanians win five tiebreakers in singles matches vs. only one for Belarus. Russia took out Chile and Argentina and Australia blanked their opponents advancing to the quarterfinals.

The biggest surprise on paper after Croatia's win was the debacle of the defending champions Spain in Slovakia. However, after considering a couple of factors, it pales in "surprise" element to the U.S.' failure. First of all, Spain did not have the services of Davis Cup veterans Carlos Moya and Juan Carlos Ferrero. Second, the tie was played in Slovakia, indoors on carpet. Probably the last time Fernando Verdasco and Feliciano Lopez played on carpet was when they were little kids in their bedrooms.

There is heroism, choking, failure, and revenge on the ATP Tour. The Davis Cup offers the kind that is not available in ATP tournaments. In the Davis Cup, heroes and victims do not have the luxury of being selfish. Therefore, successes and failures are truly heartfelt. To steal from TNT's commercial line: "Drama is Davis Cup."

Posted by Mert Ertunga at 1:10 PM | Comments (1)

March 8, 2005

Selig's "I Didn't Know" Act Wearing Thin, Dull

There we are ... all of us, back in 1998. Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa continue to hit home run after home run, day after day. Could any of us ever have imagined what baseball would come to here in 2005? A colossal black cloud that continues to spread day after day. While a Barry Bonds may say that the media must move past the talk of steroids, it seems that each week something new happens that prevents us from doing so.

With BALCO and grand jury testimony leaks, to Jose Conseco's new book and now the federal government aggressively stepping in, the topic of steroids continues to get more juiced up.

The more that the authorities and public find out, the more it becomes self-evident that MLB owners and managers have been quite aware that the use of steroids has been a problem for quite a while. Having said that, I am quite comfortable in believing that the responsibility of this falls right on the lap of MLB Commission Bud Selig.

Why is this becoming such a big deal?

A hearing has been established for Thursday, March 17 on the steroids issue in baseball. Several prominent names have been invited, including Canseco, McGwire, Sosa, Jason Giambi, Selig, and union head Donald Fehr. Canseco has already committed to attending. Why not? He can sell more books.

According to an Associated Press story, the House Government Reform Committee is willing to subpoena any individual who is unwilling to attend the hearing on the 17th. "We'll use the subpoena to get them there if that's what we have to do," says Tom Davis, the committee chairman.

Meanwhile, baseball's new steroid testing policy went into effect this past Thursday. With how serious the issue of steroids has become, it's a no-brainer that this past Thursday is far too late. While a "better late than never" would be partially accepted, you almost get the feeling that MLB is doing everything right, if you listen to Selig. "I'm comfortable in telling you that we've not only dealt with our problem, but we will finish what we started," Selig said. "There always will be some exceptions, but I'm very comfortable with what we've done."

Glad to see you padding yourself on the back, Bud-dy. While it seems apparent that club owners and managers were turning their heads the other way while aware that players were using steroids, you as commissioner had no idea what was going on, right?

"The people who suggest that everybody should have known about [steroids usage] in the '90s, it's just wrong,'' said Selig. "I've heard from a number of baseball people who are offended, and they're right.'' Give me a break.

It's easy to fight against the use of steroids, now. Baseball has already received the full benefits of them. If owners and mangers easily can turn the other way on players using them, why not the commissioner? A player using them may help his team win. Why would a coach stop that? Ball players using them gives more potential to hit home runs, and make business better. Why would a commissioner stop that?

Allow me to propose this idea, though. If the media and now government would have never gotten all over steroids, do you believe in your right mind that Selig would be all inclined to rid the game of them today?

You most certainly know my answer.

Below is the debut of a new addition I plan to add to my articles for now on. I generally have takes to other topics going on in sports that I would like to react to. I will do in in a quick sort of fashion, which is why I properly name this section, Run & Shoot. Credit for the name idea goes to ESPN 1000's (WMVP-AM) midday show, which has a segment by that name. Enjoy.

Run & Shoot

* I remain appalled that baseball's veteran committee once again failed to elect someone to the Hall of Fame this past Thursday. This is the second time in a row that this has happened. This system obviously is not working. What is the point of having a committee such as this, if no one is being elected? The committee members once again prove to be a bunch of snobs, who wish not to add anyone else to "their" exclusive club. It's time that these old farts get over themselves and get real.

* Sammy Sosa got ejected from an exhibition game on Saturday after arguing with the umpires over balls and strikes. This is great. The Cubs ought to be thrilled that Sosa is not their problem any longer. While I believe that Sosa's best days are behind him, I don't doubt that he can still be a productive player as long as he stays healthy. I think a new setting is good for him, yet having said that, the Cubs are better without him. Sosa can all he wants on how no one can replace him, but the fact that he is gone says it all. While Sosa produced a lot of good for the organization, the negatives he imprinted cannot be ignored.

* Illinois is still ranked number one, despite losing to Ohio State on Sunday. Illinois is a fun team to watch and have real potential to win it all. Despite that, Illinois still falls victim to bias, mainly from the East Coast guys who don't always have a clue. That's not a problem for me, though. The best way to win the respect of the people is to win, win, win. It's up to them.

* Anyone disappointed that FOX Sports Net cancelled I, Max? Despite that, I feel bad for Max Kellerman, who apparently is still not over the death of his brother, who was tragically murdered last fall. I wish Kellerman the best, and hope he lands on his feet. You know he will.

* Speaking of FSN, I have also heard that if ratings for The Best Damn Sports Show Period fail to increase, then it will be cancelled, as well. Borrowing the line from Jay-Z's song "Encore," what the hell have they been waiting for? The show was good in its first year, but quickly went down hill after it went to two hours and John Kruk left.

* FSN really has fallen into the toilet. Despite how big ESPN is, I don't see any reason why FSN shouldn't make another attempt to compete against them. Sure, FSN failed back in 1998 through 2001, but that's because they attempted to compete while being cheap. Hire some big names, put on some decent games that people want to watch, improve the picture quality, and showcase programs that people want to watch. I think people are getting sick of ESPN's act and now is the perfect time for another attempt to compete. If not FSN, then I have the feeling that the emerging Comcast SportsNet may not be too far away.

* Anyone ever listen to Dan Patrick on ESPN Radio? What do you think of his show since he let Rob Dibble go? Surely ... enough said.

Feedback may be e-mailed to [email protected]. For more about Martin, visit his personal blog.

Posted by Martin Hawrysko at 5:07 PM | Comments (2)

The Sports Gosepl Mailbag: Part Two

I was in Chicago this past week, so I was inundated with Illini talk. On my flight to Columbus to call a pair of hockey games for a major sports talk station, I was reading an SI article on the Illini while filling out my All-American ballot (which seemed to have an orange tint). Naturally, when I landed in Ohio State territory, I thought the Buckeyes had little chance of knocking off Illinois.

I was impressed by Thad Matta's win, but I can't help but scoff at those who think that this loss "exposed" the Illini. As we get closer to the tournament, I'll be doing a lot of college basketball, but one thing I can guarantee right now is that Illinois will be in St. Louis, and I am almost certain they will leave as the best team in college basketball. They are that good.

Like I said, in the next couple weeks, I will be churning out a ton of basketball pieces, including my now finished All-American ballot. But before we get into the Madness that is March and now that my Illini rant is over, here is part two of the mailbag (a-ll emails received in the last four weeks).

Mark
As a Staten Islander I have followed the progress of NASCAR's efforts to build a track on Staten Island. I don't know if I'm for it or against it. Would you please give me your take on this move?

Alan on the Island

This is a sports column, but seeing as how I've received several other non-sports e-mails, I will tackle this topic, as well. I think it would be a terrible idea. The last thing Staten Island needs is SARS. The second to last thing they need is a NASCAR track. In my mind, an NHL franchise is worth more than a NASCAR track. The NHL won't bring anything in, but the NASCAR track will bring a lot of what you don't want.

Hey Mark,

London is awesome....during the playoffs, we went to an American Bar we found so we could watch the steelers game. The bar had mostly americans there but there were a lot of british people there too. They seemed to love American Football. The place was rockin, it was really fun. I was pretty surprised at the global love for the sport. I didnt expect to see much of any american influence here much at all. But there were tons of terrible towels in there and it was cool to see. People were chanting J-E-T-S JETS JETS JETS...it was cool.. I talked to a British guy and he said he loves american football and says theres nothing like it. I just thought it was cool how global our sports are and how much ppl love to watch, and how neat it is that i can be 3500 miles away, and still catch my neighborhood team play.

Willie, currently in London, originally from Ohio

Plainly, what you are trying to say, is that America rules. I'm glad to see some people overseas know what real football is. Next time you are there, do me a favor and bust out the USA chant, so people know where you stand. I don't know what it is, you just don't see too many Americans gushing about soccer and cricket.

(Due to space constraints, I've edited everything except the important parts of this next e-mail.)

"Once each year, in the far northern reaches of Alaska, sled dog teams trot for over 1000 miles through the frozen heart of the Alaskan Wilderness...

John was the butt of many jokes concerning his team of sled poodles. But with imagination and much fortitude, John shaped a team of curly canine misfits into a well-disciplined team of determined poodles. Four times they raced in the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog race, and three times they finished. They never won the race, but each time they gave many of the husky teams a run for the money.

John and his poodles are setting their sights now on new adventures, including the silver screen. Once again, John and the poodles are aiming for what seems to be an impossible task-to make a movie of their many adventures together. But if they, as a team, can negotiate the rugged Iditarod Trail, it would be no great surprise to see John and his merry band of Spirit Poodles sprinting across movie screens in yet another brighter, bolder adventure."

Thank you!

Larry Williams

This is simply fantastic. I don't know how it isn't a movie already. Who wouldn't want to see a movie about John and his 101 Dalmatians? I was actually sitting around with a few friends the other day, discussing movie ideas. Now, my plot wasn't as solid as this, but we found there are two things in movies that always sell: scantily-clad women, and poodles, but never together. Seeing how this idea has one of the two, you should start spending your money now.

SUBJECT: Opening this email will infect your computer with a virus!

Mark,

Did you really just open this e-mail…you are such a moron.

Brian in Anderson

Well played.

Mark,

Thanks for supporting the soldiers and thanks for spreading the word -

Sue
TreatAnySoldier

This is the e-mail in the pack that is a little dated, but I just wanted to pimp them again because it is such an important thing. No matter what your stance is on the war you should support our troops, they are there doing their job, not necessarily because they believe in the war. Visit AnySoldier.com.

SUBJECT: AS FOR COMPARING JACKIE ROBINSON WITH A HOMOSEXUAL

HOMOSEXUALITY IS NOT A RACE OR CREED. IT IS SEXUAL PREFERENCE SO I AND ALL AFRICAN AMERICANS WOULD APPRECIATE IF YOU WOULD NOT INCLUDE OUR HUNDREDS OF YEARS OF BONDAGE FOR COMPARISON IN YOUR STRUGGLES

THANK YOU

EX POP WARNER FOOTBALL PLAYER

Dear Homophobe,

First off, thank you for responding to an 11-month old column, and congratulations on finishing it. In fact, that alone should be an accomplishment for you. No longer must you cling to your youth football glory, feel free to sign your next e-mail, "The guy who read something that wasn't on a Bazooka Joe wrapper." Second, you took that line out of context, so I'm afraid you won't get those extra points for reading comprehension. Third, I know the computer at the library can be hard to work, but on most keyboards, there is a caps lock button on the left, and that will take care of your typing problems.

The only struggle I have with this issue is dealing with ignorant people like you (well, outside of the relationship problems I have to repair with my girlfriend now that you have outed me). I have several homosexual friends, and the reason they have to deal with so much garbage is because of worthless people like you. I anxiously await your response, I'll check for it around March '07.

SUBJECT: Increase your chance at finding a date by 2700%

Mark,
We can't reveal who wants to meet you, but if you click here now, you can find out for yourself

Letter signed only with the pics of four ladies

I was tempted not to include this e-mail because:

1. They didn't include a name, only a picture of people I did not really recognize.

2. The subject of the e-mail. I hate when people try to sell me calendars online. I am very proficient at finding a date, as I usually check on my computer or on my cell phone, but even if I couldn't, I'm not going to buy a calendar from someone I don't know. In theory, I will be able to find the date faster if I have more calendars, but that isn't yet a top concern for me.

Actually, I don't know why I included this at all.

Mark

while deep in though the other day, i realized, what is the parking situation at the special olympics, do they all pile into those two front spaces, any thoughts?

Mike in Jersey

You make a fantastic point. I have yet to cover a Special Olympics, but it is something I would like to do at some point. As far as your question goes, I have two guesses. One, they run some sort of shuttle service just in the parking lot, like a big bus just doing laps around the lot. My second guess would be that not too many of the athletes are driving themselves to the games, as they may be able to carpool or goad the person who sponsored them to drive them.

Mark Chalifoux is also a weekly columnist for SportsFan Magazine. His columns appear every Tuesday on Sports Central. You can e-mail Mark at [email protected].

Posted by Mark Chalifoux at 4:45 PM | Comments (0)

March 7, 2005

I Hate Mondays: First is the Worst

Somehow, someway, propaganda has spread through elementary school playgrounds brainwashing young children with the maxim "first is the worst." In all my years since grade five, I have yet to find where this axiom fully applies except with the recent amplification of steroid testing in baseball, I think I've found an instance.

The baseball offseason has been filled with steroid conversation, speculation, and litigation, all climaxing to the starting point of testing.

So ... who's going to be worst?

Who will be the first Major League Baseball player to test positive? You know that's what we are all waiting for.

Some baseball athletes will be deterred by the new laws, others will merely use a state-of-the-art masking drug to cover the performance enhancer. What else is new?

But someone will slip up...

Will it be a superstar? Unlikely. The first juvenile will probably be some scrub who needed the illegal help just to make a roster. Look for Jose Canseco and Victor Conte to be on "60 Minutes" that night, together, claiming that they both injected so-and-so simultaneously, on several occasions.

If it's a no-name player, he'll likely become the poster boy of this new stringent regime, and his career could very well be ruined.

What if it is a superstar? No worries, you have three solid solutions if you get caught:

1. Call Kobe Bryant.
2. Hold a press conference to apologize to the fans, but do not state a reason.
3. Deny the accusations and come up with a solid excuse.

The third scenario is the most effective. As long as you never acknowledge the evidence, it will always remain an allegation.

How soon before we hear:

"I only use steroids for batting practice. It's something that I take the blame for. It's a mistake, I know that. I feel sorry. I just apologize to everybody that are embarrassed."

Or:

"The doctor prescribed this for my back; I wasn't aware of all the ingredients."

But in all honesty, what are we to expect?

"I would like to apolo— actually, no. I'm not sorry. You're right, I used steroids and I'm proud of it! I cheated the system. I made millions of dollars pretending to be someone who I'm not, I sullied your records books, and what you gon' do 'bout it?"

The current athletes will not admit to anything, they will not pay back money that they have not rightfully earned, but at least baseball is working towards a better future.

Baseball with steroid testing and baseball without steroid testing mix like Mondays and me.

"Be the change that you want to see in the world." — Mohandas Gandhi

Posted by Dave Golokhov at 10:36 AM | Comments (0)

Why it's Time to Fire John Chaney

Is Temple waiting for the other shoe to drop? Is there more to this story? Is it not enough that John Chaney enlisted one of his players in an enforcer type role that ended John Bryant's career prematurely? Does he have to do something else to get fired?

John Chaney is currently sitting out the remainder of the season as the school ponders his eventual fate. Chaney's latest escapade into the unexplainable involved sending Nehemiah Ingram late into vs. St. Joseph's to "send a message."

Ingram did his best to appease his coach. Ingram matched his season average of four minutes a game, but well surpassed his fouls per game average by reaching the maximum allotment in the 240 seconds he graced the court. And one of Ingram's fouls sent Bryant to the deck so hard that he separated his shoulder, giving the St. Joe's senior a lasting memory of his final game. Message received.

Chaney's would later say he felt St. Joe's was setting too many illegal screens, and that is what led to his ultimatum for Ingram. Chaney sent in his self-described "goon" to let St. Joe's know that his days of over-the-top antics, harking back to his memorable tirade of threatening John Calipari's life, are not that far behind him.

I'm not real sure what the difference is between Chaney and Bob Knight, other than Knight chokes his own players while Chaney outsources. That and Knight attempts to be funny at press conferences, while Chaney provides more of the unintended hilarious moments.

Mitch Albom recently attacked Chaney not just for his recent actions, but also his offensive language. On a related note, Representative Joe Barton from Texas wishes to see broadcast decency rules apply to cable television as well as satellite radio, ensuring offensive language can't simply escape the FCC's domain by moving to a pay environment.

Have I been living in a cave, or is there some plague in our society that has to do with foul language? Should everyone curse all the time? Probably not, but I can't believe that it leads to irreparable harm. What I do know is that Chaney's potty mouth has as little to do with coaching as the government should have to do with legislating what people pay to watch and listen to.

Chaney got angry, but instead of using the available forum to protest, he decided to take actions into his own hands, sort of. Instead of using his own hands, he did the next best thing, and used one of his players.

Many columns have come out in defense of Chaney, asking us to evaluate his whole career and not this one uncharacteristic act. Unfortunately, his lifetime of good work cannot make up for his unbelievably poor decision-making. Unlike the Senate, as Ted Kennedy, AKA the original Mayor Quimby has proved (thank you Jon Stewart), there are some crimes in college basketball so reprehensible that keeping your job is not an option.

The idea of a coach, a leader, is to remain calm in tense moments, not act like a petulant child who will take his ball home with him if he doesn't get to play. Sending a kid out with the secondary intent to play basketball, ranking behind the express intent of "sending a message," is exactly the opposite.

The coach has to be the facilitator, not the instigator. Temple needs to let everyone know that this type of thug behavior, instilled from the coach, is not acceptable and will not be tolerated. And if John Chaney were the man his supporters claim him to be, he wouldn't put his university in this position. He would have already tendered his resignation.

Posted by Piet Van Leer at 10:35 AM | Comments (1)

The Blizzard of Oz

What a week in Soxdom, huh?

Magglio Ordonez couldn't wait to bash Sox management after he was safe and secure in Motown. Let's not forget that hefty contract, either. Ordonez was quick to praise the philosophies of Detroit Tigers owner Mike Illitch.

"The man wants to win. If you want to win, you've got to spend the money to win," Ordonez says.

"He has won with his hockey team [the Detroit Red Wings], and he told me he wants to win championships in baseball. He told Pudge [Ivan Rodriguez] that he would add a big piece. And now that I'm here, he told me they'll be adding big pieces. It's so different than what I'm used to."

So, Mags, what do you mean by "different" than what I'm used to'?

"I'm trying to figure out Jerry [Reinsdorf]. I don't understand. I don't know if I want to understand."

Not to break up this quote, but I agree with him. Let's go on...

"He doesn't want to pay the money to keep players who have been on his team. He will go out and get other players from other teams, but he won't pay those guys he already has and knows about. This was not all about money. I just didn't feel comfortable and wanted a change. I wasn't happy with some things going on. I never said anything. But then you see them trade Carlos Lee, and they let me go. I know Detroit wants to win. I can't wait to be a part of it."

Ordonez knows what it means to hit at the Cell. It is a power hitter's park and the White Sox, for whatever reason, decided to let all their power go elsewhere.

The team is now centered on speed, defense, and manufacturing runs, instead of blasting the ball into oblivion, as they did last season when they led the American League in home runs hit by a team.

The problem is that opposing teams, playing at U.S Cellular field, will still hit for power.

"I don't understand that. You build a park for power hitters, and you don't have as many power hitters now. I don't know about that. I believe we have the best team in the division."

Ordonez may be right. Detroit has built an extremely solid club this offseason, with the acquisition of himself and closer Troy Percival.

Ozzie Guillen isn't trying to hear any of that.

"This is bulls***. This is girl s***. Every time there are a couple of [reporters] over there with a piece of paper and a pencil in his hand, is he going to talk about the White Sox? Come on, just move on. Just play your game and forget about the White Sox," Guillen said.

The tirade surprised me a bit, considering I don't recall Ordonez having a problem with Guillen and never made mention of the Sox manager.

Still, the blizzard continued...

"I'd rather see the player say, 'Listen, I wanted out of there because I wanted more money. I respect that. When Alex Rodriguez said he wanted out of there because 'I want to win,' Seattle won 100 games with him and they won 116 without him. If you want to win, that's a winning team. You left because of the money, and Magglio left because of the money. You're going to tell me all the cities he could go to ... there is a better city than Chicago? He was a legend here with the White Sox. A lot of people wanted him to finish his career here with the White Sox, and count Ozzie Guillen in that group."

Guillen had much more to say, but I'd like to point out that when he was released by the White Sox, back in 1997, the year that the White Sox became the White Flags, he had similar things to say about Sox management.

The Sox were only 3½ games out of first place and Reinsdorf traded away his veteran players.

In 1998, Guillen was in the Baltimore Orioles training camp, sounding off on Sox management.

"I thought we had a great chance to win and [management] took it away. That's something they have to live with."

Hmm ... sounds exactly like what Ordonez was trying to say, Ozzie.

In any case, there must not have been too much damage done, if Guillen returned to the White Sox, to become the manager, but the hypocrisy must stop.

The one man who should have been quiet throughout this whole sordid mess was Guillen, who chose to defend his miserly boss, instead of letting Mags' words sink in and contemplate the truth within.

I would have thought Guillen, who is actually shaping up to be an excellent manager, would have the guts to tell Reinsdorf, that having a power team was not the problem, but we need to go out and spend some money on pitchers and key (expensive) free agent position players.

That will never happen, because that would cost the Blizzard his job.

Still, why are we kidding ourselves and buying into this petty bickering? Let's get down to the root cause.

None of this drama is the fault of Mags, Oz or even Kenny Williams, the Sox general manager.

Blame the architect: Jerry Reinsdorf.

I am still at a loss why Reinsdorf surrendered the season back in 1997, but that's over and done with. What bothers me now is the fact that he would allow Carlos Lee and Magglio Ordonez to get away without so much as a thank you for the brilliant years they had in Chicago.

I would be pretty pissed off, too.

Still, none of this would have happened if Jerry would open up his purse strings. I can't imagine owning a sports franchise in the third-biggest market in the United States and refuse to spend the money to bring the players in to win a championship. Well, at least compete for one.

George Steinbrenner can attest to that from last season.

It's because of all this back and forth that I decided to ask myself a few questions and, surprisingly enough, actually came up with my own answers.

Should Oz and Mags shut up?

Yes.

Will Detroit climb out of the perennial cellar and become contenders in the American League Central division?

Yes.

Will the White Sox ever win a championship with Reinsdorf calling the shots?

Should I bother to answer that?

Posted by Damian Greene at 10:33 AM | Comments (0)

March 6, 2005

Championship Week Begins the Madness

To most of the sports population, March Madness begins with the NCAA tournament. But before the brackets can be announced and pool sheets filled out, the conference tournaments must commence. Known as Championship Week, it is a nine-day feast of basketball for the diehard fan.

From Honolulu to Orono, Maine and Seattle to Miami, college basketball fans will be watching conference tournaments to gauge their teams' run to a tournament title to secure an NCAA bid or how their team's at-large status checks up.

The 2005 conference tournaments will have many interesting plots and sub-plots to follow. Some teams will be jockeying for a place into the NCAA Tournament, while others want to solidify their seed. Championship Week will have a lot to watch and when you go to work on March 14th with a bracket in hand, you will be able to discuss every team with confidence after watching them during Championship Week.

Teams on the bubble will be watching closely to make sure teams from the mid-majors with high RPIs capture their conference tournaments. A slip-up by a team like Vermont, Holy Cross, or Old Dominion might cost an ACC, Big 10, or Pac-10 team an NCAA bid.

Here is a look ahead into what to watch during Championship Week:

Pacific

The Tigers have toiled in relative obscurity in the Big West. They haven't lost since December 18th to San Francisco and their only other loss was at Kansas. Pacific carries a 20-game winning streak into their final regular season game. The Tigers use a balanced offense and shoot a high percentage. They have earned a ranking for the first time since 1967 and presently sit at number 17.

Tiger boss Bob Thomason earned the Big West Coach of the Year and guard David Doubley was the Conference Player of the Year. Christian Menaker is the Tigers' leading scorer and Guillaume Yango leads them in rebounds. Utah State should be Pacific's main competition in the Big West tournament.

West Coast Conference

The WCC has been dominated by Gonzaga for the better part of a decade. The 'Zags did capture the conference title this year, but not without a stiff challenge by St. Mary's. Unless a major upset occurs, those two should meet in the championship game in late night on March 7th. The Gales won the first meeting in Moraga, CA and only a 43-25 Gonzaga advantage in the second half prevented a St. Mary's sweep.

Gonzaga has been considered among the nation's elite teams all year. Their trio of Derek Raivio, Adam Morrison, and Ronny Turiaf are as good as any in college basketball. Morrison and Turiaf should get some All-American consideration, while coach Mark Few has Raivio the Bulldogs' MVP. St. Mary's is led by the terrific inside-outside duo of Daniel Kickert and Paul Marigney.

Illinois

The Illini have been the story of the year in college basketball. The possibility of playing a March schedule no more than three hours away from home is pretty inviting to a team looking to make a run at history. The United Center should be a sea of orange as Illinois tried to complete an undefeated regular season. Bruce Weber should receive the Big 10 Coach of the Year and the Player of the Year is likely to go to one of the Illini's big three of Luther Head, Dee Brown, and Deron Williams. Those three have all taken turns leading the Illini this season.

In Chicago, the Illini appear to have the path of Northwestern or Michigan followed by Minnesota or Indiana and then likely Wisconsin or Michigan State in the championship game. Last season, after a relatively easy semifinal win over Michigan, the Illini fell flat in the championship game against the Badgers.

Missouri Valley

The MVC will have a few storylines worth watching as Arch Madness 2005 commences in St. Louis. Southern Illinois captured their fourth consecutive MVC Championship this season. Despite the impressive run, the Salukis have still yet to bring home postseason hardware in St. Louis. With an RPI of 12, SIU should be safe even if they fair to win the tournament title again. The other story in St. Louis will be which teams other than the Salukis are in good enough shape for an at-large birth into the NCAA.

SIU's recipe for success has been a balanced offense and a tough defense. Darren Brooks (14.7) and Jamaal Tate (11.9) are the only double-figure scorers for the Salukis. Brooks has won two straight MVC Player of the year awards.

Creighton, Wichita State, and Northern Iowa are the other clubs to watch in the MVC tourney. They will all be favored to join SIU in the MVC tournament semis. Those three will also be fighting it out to see if they can get a bid to the NCAA tournament, as well. Northern Iowa defeated Wichita State at the end of the regular season.

All three are on the bubble. It's possible all three could make the tournament, but the likelihood is that one or two of them will. Northern Iowa currently has an RPI of 43, Wichita State sits at 34, and Creighton, with an RPI of 78, is a long shot. How they close out the season and play in the Valley Tournament will go a long way towards determining their fate of an NCAA bid or a trip the NIT.

Conference USA

Conference USA will cease to exist as we know it after this season. When the Conference tournament concludes in Memphis, half the members will have competed in their last game as a member. Only Houston, Memphis, Southern Mississippi, Tulane, UAB, and Houston will remain as charter members. Louisville, South Florida, Cincinnati, DePaul, and Marquette will leave for the Big East, TCU for the Mountain West, and Charlotte and St. Louis for the Atlantic 10. Louisville, Charlotte, Cincinnati, and DePaul are the top four teams in standings going into the last regular season game.

Louisville enters the C-USA tournament as the conference regular season champion and the favorite to win the tournament title. Larry O'Bannon has been on fire to close the regular season. The senior scored a career-high 33 points on Senior Night against Charlotte then followed it up with 24 points in a season-ending victory at DePaul. Francisco Garcia has struggled as of late, but has the potential to take a game over.

DePaul lost four of six to finish the regular season, but with Quemont Greer, Sammy Mejia, and Drake Diener, has the firepower to make a run.

Charlotte gave Louisville a run for the conference title and their duo of Eddie Basden and Brendan Plavich is as good as any in C-USA.

Furthermore, Cincinnati is always a threat and playing on their homecourt and Memphis has the potential to make a run. Travis Diener's season-ending injury has put Marquette into a nose dive and will make it difficult for the Golden Eagles to achieve any postseason success. It should be an interesting tournament. The teams that are staying in C-USA will likely want to make a statement that the league will still be strong to the teams that are leaving.

Posted by Alan Rubenstein at 4:55 PM | Comments (0)

March 5, 2005

The Pennant Race

There was an article in The Washington Post recently that examined the commercialization of Black History Month, asking a legitimate question: is a month-long celebration of pride, family, and legacy diminished if certain retailers simply view it as an excuse to offer deep discounts on items such as corn bread and skin care products geared towards black consumers?

In my eyes, no more so than Christmas has been diminished by the sale of robotic Santa Clauses that dance to reggae versions of "Jolly 'Ole St. Nicholas." Or than St. Patrick's Day is diminished by every pub in the country offering $1-off shots of Bushmills on March 17. (I'm sure while converting his pagan countrymen to Christianity in the 450's, Patrick often wondered how much dye it would take to turn a pint of Murphy's Red into green party beer.)

While you can paint these gimmicks with a broad brush of cultural insensitivity, let's be frank here: there's also a certain amount of pandering involved. There's no question that a department store actually feels it's connecting with its African-American clientele if it puts relaxer on sale for a month.

It's the kind of pandering we saw at the Academy Awards this year. Chris Rock was selected as the master of ceremonies to attract both young adults and a sizable black viewing audience that otherwise might not be inclined to tune in to see if Martin Scorsese would finally be redeemed for Raging Bull's loss in 1981.

Rock's biggest flaw as Oscar's host — besides the shackles of good taste and broadcasting standards that restrained him — was that he didn't pander enough to the audience he was chosen to attract. When he did, he scored big, like with that hilarious riff about how black movies are always named after locations, like Barbershop and Car Wash. (Rock himself appeared in New Jack City.)

And in one of most inspired comedy set pieces in the show's recent history, Rock went to a Magic Johnson Theater and asked black patrons what they felt the best of picture of year was. (Resulting in the first, and last, utterance of the title Alien vs. Predator on an Oscar telecast until the Academy posthumously honors master thespian Lance Henrikson.)

When Rock strayed from his target audience, the wheels came off. Like, for example, when the producer and co-star of Pootie Tang called Jude Law a second-rate Tom Cruise. Swung on and missed, Chris.

You've got to know your audience. Look at the NBA All-Star Game. Destiny's Child singing before the player intros was a demographic dream -- eye candy whose look and material appealed to the Association's main constituency. And if you doubt who encompasses that constituency ... pardon the interruption, but I believe it was Michael Wilbon who once called All-Star Weekend "Black Thanksgiving."

As shrewd as showcasing Beyonce and the girls was, the NBA made the same mistake Rock made at the Oscars: forgetting whom it was supposed to be entertaining. Trying to bring too many spectators under the tent. Overreaching to the point of mind-numbing parody.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you...

Big and Rich

"Big and Rich."

Dumb and Dumber must have had a prior engagement.

Seriously, what was the NBA thinking? Isn't thrusting a country rock act in the middle of the All-Star Game's halftime show akin to mandating a white guy quota in the slam dunk competition?

Oh, I forgot. Big and Rich isn't your Pappy's country act. No sir ... they have a black "rapper" named Cowboy Troy featured on some tracks. I'm guessing Troy has the street cred of Vanilla Ice after his appearance the second Ninja Turtles movie.

And they're all a part of some rebel sect of the genre called the MusikMafia, along with people called Mista D and Two-Foot Fred. Because, you know, if you're already going to insult your core audience with a country act at halftime, you might as well invite one that's indoctrinated in some sort of Southern-Fried pseudo-hip-hop posse. (The Wu-Twang Clan, anyone?)

I don't want to say having a country music act during halftime was a bad decision for the NBA, but the only way Charles Barkley could have looked more disinterested is if he was forced to discuss the intricacies of the NHL lockout on "Inside the Actors' Studio."

And would it have killed the NBA to have added a little color to the group of "fans" it allowed to swarm the stage during halftime? I haven't seen anything that white since the '49 Celtics.

Even with the influx of country music acts and European players with last names that resemble eye charts, the NBA isn't in danger of alienating its constituency of African-American fans.

Major League Baseball should be so lucky.

When Jackie Robinson received a posthumous Congressional Gold Medal this week, it served as a reminder of how far baseball has come ... and how far it still has to go.

Last season, in an April 18 article in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, writer La Velle E. Neal III pontificated on baseball's progress with African-American players and fans during the League's annual tribute to Robinson:

"Rachel Robinson, Jackie's widow, appeared with Commissioner Bud Selig at Shea Stadium in New York. Robinson pointed out that a lot still has to be done "in baseball and life." Selig was right there, nodding in agreement. Funny, that same thing occurred in the same place in 1997, when baseball celebrated the 50th anniversary of Robinson's debut. I stood within five feet of Selig as he told reporters how things needed to change in baseball, how more African-Americans needed to be involved in the game, and how the league was going to reach out to black fans.
What has happened since 1997?

The Dodgers, the team Robinson played for, have two black players, both developed by other organizations.

There's one black starting pitcher in the American League, Cleveland's C.C. Sabathia.

I still see few African-American fans in the stands, at the Metrodome and across the country.

Should MLB be trusted to fix this problem? I have little faith."

Ouch.

There aren't many reasons for African-American fans to spend their time and money following Major League Baseball these days. The majority of the biggest stars in the game are either white or Hispanic. The most prominent black star in baseball has been labeled a liar, a cheater, and a fraud with a ferocity and scrutiny a certain Paul Bunyan-esque slugger in St. Louis never experienced.

Then there's baseball's ugliest little secret (that doesn't come in the "clear" or the "cream") — the fact that there are just four African-American managers in the Major Leagues this season. You have Washington's Frank Robinson, the Mets' Willie Randolph, the Cubs' Dusty Baker, and Pittsburgh's Lloyd McClendon. When the NFL cowed to Johnnie Cochran and his army of pressure groups in 2002 to create the "Rooney Rule," the league had two African-American head coaches.

So where's the outrage for baseball's minority hiring practices?

When I'm not making off-color jokes on the Internet, I cover community sports in Northern Virginia. I've seen plenty of youth baseball over the last few years, enough to make an informed — though regionally biased — observation: that there simply aren't a whole lot of African-American youngsters growing up on a baseball diamond.

Is it a trend? A skipped generation? I societal norm I just never picked up on until now?

Or is it a hell of a lot easier for young black fan to pick up a basketball when he or she sees 19 players on an all-star court than to pick up a bat and glove when there are 26 teams with managers who don't look like they do?

Of course, it's not just on baseball's administration to affect change. It's up to the African-American stars of today to enchant the African-American fans of tomorrow.

As President Bush said in Robinson's medal ceremony this week: "One person can make a big difference in setting the tone of this country."

Imagine if that one person in baseball was more concerned with being a cultural role model than with beating drug tests, grand jury testimony, and media conspiracies?

Greg Wyshynski is also a weekly columnist for SportsFan Magazine. His columns appear every Saturday on Sports Central. You can e-mail Greg at [email protected].

Posted by Greg Wyshynski at 6:14 PM | Comments (2)

Usher's Cavaliers? Yeah!

The press conference gave a glimpse of a different kind of environment.

Dan Gilbert and Usher promised that their acquisition of the Cleveland Cavaliers was no light matter. Promising to bring the organization back to their glory days, transform the city landscape and put in on the national map as an entertainment destination, and make the experience of attending a game a memorable event, the new owners showed a fresh energy and attitude.

Yes, they said, there are plans in the works for a new scoreboard, in-game entertainment, and other amenities that could make Cleveland a favorable option for free-agents (as if having a guy named LeBron on the court wasn't enough).

But, as Usher reminded us that he will be actively involved in the team's affairs, there are certain things every Cleveland fan can look forward to in the coming years:

Consultant Lil' John substituting Crunk Juice for Gatorade, which will be consumed from specially-made pimp cups.

Cleveland can finally lay claim to some trophies, even if they are from the Grammy's.

Listening to "Yeah!" approximately once every five seconds for the next five years.

Crushed velvet jerseys every time an Usher CD goes platinum.

Usher's good mood and smile balancing out the seemingly permanent scowl on Paul Silas's face.

A cameo appearance by Zydrunas Ilgauskas in Usher's next video, singing a verse in Lithuanian while doing the robot under green strobe lights.

In an effort to get the fans more involve, Usher allows one fan each night to be part of his posse. VH1 quickly agrees to produce a reality show based on the concept, and Usher trounces P. Diddy's "Borrow My Crew" in the ratings.

"Confessions: Part III" video featuring a bare-chested Drew Carey standing in the rain.

Because everyone loves a spin-off, Zydrunas Ilgauskas gets his own "Borrow my Crew"-themed show. Unfortunately, it's canceled after network executives realize viewers don't want to watch seven old Lithuanian men sitting around a table drinking vodka.

See you at the game!

Posted by Vince Grzegorek at 5:30 PM | Comments (8)

March 4, 2005

Sports Q&A: Big 10, Smoltz, and Chaney

Phil asks, "Other than Illinois, what chances do you give the Big 10 of not only receiving NCAA tournament bids, but having some level of success?

Phil, what makes you so sure Illinois is a lock to get in? You must be from Illinois, or a big Luther Head fan. I'm just kidding. But I'll guarantee you this: the Big 10 will receive at least one bid, and if that bid is extended to Illinois, they will be a number one seed. And here's where I go out on a limb: the Illini will wear orange.

Okay, enough with the B.S. Illinois has a great chance to make history and become the first team since Indiana in 1976 to win a national championship while going undefeated. Should the Illini do so, it would be a more impressive feat than Indiana's. Why, you may ask? Well, it's got nothing to do with "parity" or "balance of power" or some other overworked college basketball catchphrase. It's because the Illini have run the table so far on the Big "10" that features 11 teams, including the 7-20 Penn State Nittany Lions. Indiana ran the table when the Big 10 inexplicably had ten teams. "Big" deal.

Okay, I'm done with the nonsense. Illinois will win their first-round NCAA game by 40. As much as the NCAA likes to say they reward No. 1 seeds, they will punish Illinois with the toughest No. 8/No. 9 opponent, something the NCAA likes to call an "intriguing" matchup. Illinois will demolish that team by 20, and waltz into the Sweet 16.

As far as the rest of the Big 10, Michigan State and Wisconsin are certain to join the Illini in the Big Dance. MSU will advance to the Sweet 16 with a fairly easy first-round win and a tight second-round victory. Wisconsin will win a tight first-rounder and then bow out in the second-round because they just don't score enough points. Illinois will advance, but MSU will likely fall to a team from one of the stronger conferences, namely the ACC, Big 12, or Pac-10.

Minnesota and Indiana will battle to represent the Big 10 as the fourth team. Give Minnesota a huge edge; they face three of the four bottom teams in their remaining games. The Gophers will probably be a 10-, 11-, or 12-seed, so expect them to fall in the first round to a 5-, 6-, or 7-seed. The Hoosiers, after Tuesday's loss at Wisconsin, probably would have to beat MSU, then win at least two games in the Big 10 Conference tournament to secure an at-large bid. An unlikely scenario. Were he still coaching Indiana, it would be enough to make Bobby Knight toss a chair across the court, head butt a player, assault a Puerto Rican policeman, and utter a stream of 150 straight profanities.

Bottom line: four Big 10 squads in the tournament. Two in the Sweet 16.

Nikki from Clayton, NC asks, "How do you think John Smoltz will perform as a starter again with the Atlanta Braves?"

Good question, Nikki. I'm no expert, but I'm willing to bet a case of Big League Chew and a 1974 Rick Monday 3-D baseball card from a box of Kellogg's Raisin Bran that Smoltz will win 15 games. If the Braves can find a reliable setup man for new ace closer Dan Kolb, formerly of the Brewers, then Smoltz could flirt with 20 wins. All signs indicate that the Braves think Smoltz will be their most consistent starter. It looks like Smoltz will be the Braves' opening day starter on April 1st against Cleveland. Most big league analysts have the Braves contending with the Phillies for the NL East title, so apparently good things are expected of Smoltz.

On the other hand, Smoltz is 37, entering his 17th major league season, and throws with an arm that has been under the knife for four elbow surgeries. So, if Atlanta is not careful with Smoltz's early innings, he could suffer later in the season, and the results could be more disastrous than a John Rocker New York subway ride. The last things Braves' fans want to see is pitching coach Leo Mazone rocking back and forth while manager Bobby Cox limps to the mound to pull Smoltz. It's the worst-case scenario, but there's a handbook for that, so no worries for Atlanta. Smoltz has served the last three seasons as the Braves' closer, so his innings were limited during that time. That in itself gives Smoltz the stamina to have a productive season.

Justin from Memphis asks, "Should John Chaney be fired as head coach of Temple for his actions against St. Joseph's on February 22nd?"

Derek, although Chaney's actions were reprehensible, he should not be fired, if for no other reason than he's the only head coach in college brave enough to wear a sweater vest while coaching. College basketball would not be the same without Chaney's sense of style and decorum. But seriously, let's get one thing straight: Chaney was not the first coach to send in a "goon" to get a few hacks in on a team he felt was roughing up his guys without being called for fouls; he's the first one dumb enough to admit he did it.

To his credit, Chaney quickly admitted his mistake and suspended himself for one game. One game! Keep in mind that North Carolina's Raymond Felton was suspended for one game for playing in an unauthorized summer league game last year. So Chaney could have at least suspended himself for an amount of games that would fit the crime. But he didn't, and the Temple administration was left to suspend Chaney for the rest of the regular season, which amounted to three games. Chaney has further chosen not to coach in the Atlantic 10 tournament.

It all boils down to this: Chaney made a horrible mistake, his second such grievous error of his career (back in 1994, Chaney stormed a post-game press conference and threatened to "kill" and "kick" the "ass" of then-UMass coach John Calipari. Chaney's sitting on two big strikes; if he suffers a third, he should certainly be fired and disgraced. But should Chaney be fired now? No. Let's not ruin Chaney's history and legacy as a talented coach and academic advocate for one slimy decision made in the heat of an already heated game, as well as rivalry. At the very least, Chaney should be given the option of resigning. At the very worst, he should be forced to engage in a contest of full-contact HORSE with Bill Laimbeer, Wes Unseld, and Ron Artest.

Take a good look at Chaney — time and the pressures of coaching have taken their toll. He's weathered. It may be time to get out of the sport, anyway. He's beginning to look like a hangdog, basketball version of the Rolling Stones' guitarist Keith Richards; I think the skin on Chaney's face may slide off at any minute.

And really, this whole controversy didn't start to gather negative momentum until it was discovered that St. Joseph's John Bryant, the player injured one of the hard fouls, had a broken arm. Just think, if Bryant had not have been injured, this probably would not be an issue. That is, until Temple and St. Joe's met in the A-10 Tournament and something worse, like a full-scale brawl, went down. Or even worse, Chaney and St. Joe's coach Phil Martelli exchanging punches. That would have been a classic.

In short, despite his actions on that fateful day, Chaney still has some integrity. Allow him to use that to make his own decision about his future. I think he will realize that making next year his last will be his chance to redeem his stature. Let the John Chaney farewell tour begin next year, not now.

Get Your Questions Answered!

Do you have a question or a comment? Want to verbally assulat me? Incarcerated? Need a pen pal? Then send me your questions/comments/innermost desires with your name and hometown to [email protected]. You may get the answer you're looking for in the next column on Friday, March 18th.

Posted by Jeffrey Boswell at 4:00 PM | Comments (0)

Putting a Lid on the Cap

The final gun at the Super Bowl ends the NFL playing season, but begins the second season — free agency.

There is no rest in the NFL, even in the offseason. The Super Bowl may have been played on February 6, 2005, but all teams must be under the 2005 salary cap by March 1, just three weeks later.

Since the beginning of the salary cap era in the NFL, the end of the season has meant the next news item would be the release of several high-profile players that have become too expensive for teams to keep and stay under the cap.

Over the years, several high-priced but proven players have been shown the door and begun their search for millions more with other teams. Over the years, some teams have come to realize that signing the big-name, big-price tag payers is an all-or-nothing approach to cap management.

The Washington Redskins have spent millions and millions and haven't seen the playoffs in years. The San Francisco 49ers just matched a franchise-worse season record for wins and show no signs of recovery yet. This kind of "salary cap jail" has haunted some teams over a number of years as they continue to have players count towards the cap yet they play in another city or are out of football entirely.

Often, the number of big-name players that are released by a team is an indication of how well the team manages the salary cap. Looking at the names of the players who have been released, it looks as if almost every NFL team has adapted to the salary cap-style NFL.

The players are also coming to realize that teams will cut instead of paying a big salary or take too big of a salary cap hit.

Marshall Faulk, Super Bowl champion and previous NFL MVP, has been relegated to second string as the Rams' RB. Faulk was also scheduled for a $5.2 million salary. That is not good value for a second string RB and the Rams and Faulk knew it.

Instead of trying to hold the Rams to his salary and test the free agent market for a past-his-prime RB, Faulk did what is fast becoming the norm in the NFL. Faulk re-structured his deal. The result is a $2 million salary for him and a reduced cap number for the Rams.

Only a few years ago, Faulk may very well have demanded the Rams pay him or cut him. The Rams would most certainly have cut him and a big name would have been on the open market. A few years ago, some other team (Redskins) would have paid big money to acquire him. But not this year.

Faulk knows that the NFL now is value conscious. Big money means big cap problems and few teams are willing to experience what the 49ers are going through.

While some players won't take the salary reduction with their team, the next strategy is for the team to give permission for the player to seek a trade. The message from the team here is: "We are not going to pay your big salary. If you don't want to be cut or agree to a salary reduction, go find a team that will take you with a deal you are happy with."

What often happens in this case is that the player tests the market for his services. More often than not, the player will find out that it is not only his team that is not interested in paying his big money. No one else is, either.

The player then has a choice. He can stay with his team and try to keep the salary reduction as small as his agent can, or he can try to strike a better deal with another team. And have his agent get the right compensation for the team his player is leaving.

In this case, the player and agent do all the work. They get the best deal they can and arrange for compensation for the other team. This scenario is more common because more and more teams are not willing to go shopping in the high-end stores.

Cleveland Brown DT Gerard Warren is finding this out the hard way. His salary number is the highest in the league at his position. The Browns have told Warren he can seek a trade. How big a name is Gerard Warren? Not a $6.1 million dollar name, that is for sure.

There is no way Warren makes anywhere near that money next year even if he signs with another team. Good thing Warren's nickname is "Big Money" because that is the only way he is going to see it.

Some players, though, stick to their guns. They will not re-structure, take a pay cut, or have their agent seek a trade. These players get cut.

Ty Law, New England Patriots starting CB, tied for team lead in all-time interceptions, team leader in interceptions three times, four-time Pro Bowler, and the player who returned an interception for a touchdown in the Patriots' first Super Bowl win, has been cut.

Law had the second highest cap number of all CB with a salary of $8.7 million. The Patriots of course won the Super Bowl this season without Ty Law. Law, only 31, still could command a deal that would see him get paid some significant dollars. A three-year deal could have done that but that would have meant some salary cap structures to manage the cap hit.

However, Law had no other cap money with the Patriots except his $8.7 million this year. So, if the Patriots can win without Law, why put together a deal that will have future salary cap implications and Law may not be playing in a year's time if he gets injured or released or retires? The answer is that there is no reason to do so. So Law is released.

How smart is this way of thinking? The Patriots' record speaks for itself. Three Super Bowl championships over the last four seasons. How well are the Patriots managing the cap? Here is the list of players released other than Law: Earthwind Moreland, Buck Rasmussen, Wilbert Brown, and Zeron Flemister.

Not exactly household names. And that is the point. The Patriots don't need to release their core players because of salary alone. They are managing the cap quite nicely.

Need more proof? Look at the Philadelphia Eagles.

Although the Patriots are continually given a great deal of credit for the success they have had, the Philadelphia Eagles manage their cap just as well at the Patriots.

The Eagles have been criticized for not spending enough over that last few years and yet they have reached the NFC Championship Game four years in a row, getting to the Super Bowl just this year.

The Eagles released DT Hugh Douglas in a controversial move. And yet, after one season, Douglas returned to Philadelphia from Jacksonville (where he was considered a huge bust even before the injuries) for a much smaller amount of money. The Eagles had Douglas, value rated properly.

The Eagles also took a great deal of heat for releasing half of their starting secondary prior to this season. Yet the Eagles actually advanced farther in the playoffs than they did with Bobby Taylor and Troy Vincent.

The Eagles, with their current players being paid good value, then can sign big impact players like Jevon Kearse and Terrell Owens.

While many teams have already learned the lessons of salary cap futures, one team that is starting to pay for the sins of past is the Tennessee Titans.

The Titans are the NFL's third winningest team since 1997. While this is exciting for fans during that window of time, eventually, there is a price to pay.

Just this week, the Titans released: WR Derrick Mason, CB Samari Rolle, DL Kevin Carter, FB Robert Holcolmbe, RT Fred Miller, and K Joe Nedney. Don't forget that last year, the Titans also released Jevon Kearse.

With the exception of Nedney, who has been injured and perhaps Holcombe, whose job may already be in the hands of younger Troy Fleming, the released players are contributing starters.

Mason, who led all NFL receivers in receptions last season with 96, in particular is a player no team wants to try to replace. Rolle is also considered be one of the top CBs in the NFL.

These players were cut because the Titans are $27 million over the salary cap and even with these significant cuts, still have another $5 million to go.

The Titans have been successful, but made the mistake of trying to win by keeping pricey yet proven veterans. This method of madness in the salary cap NFL will eventually lead to the type of purge that Titans fans are witnessing.

Over in Indianapolis, many thought that the Colts would have several problems keeping their trio together. Yet, Peyton Manning and Marvin Harrison are both under contract. That allowed the Colts to place a franchise tag on Edgerrin James. For the Colts, they have almost assured that they keep their version of the triplets together at least one more year.

Next year, who knows? Maybe another RB becomes available. The Colts can then let James go and they only have to manage the cap numbers of Manning and Harrison.

In fact, many more teams are using the franchise or transition tags on players and with much more success.

Many teams are hesitant to sign another team's franchise tagged player, as then they must compensate the other team with two first-round draft picks. For many teams, giving up those two draft choices and paying the player at least the average of the top five salaries at the position means that a franchised player isn't worth the steep price.

It may have taken several years, but NFL teams are learning how to manage the cap and stay competitive. Players will still change teams and teams will not be able to keep all the players they wish, as the cap will not allow it.

However, the players are still getting paid well and fans can hold out hope that a quick turnaround in the NFL is very possible with the playing field being fairly leveled.

There is also a place for some teams to be perennially successful and this is possible whether the team is located in Dallas, Texas or the small state of Massachusetts.

Anyone in the NHL listening?

Posted by Jeff Moore at 3:01 PM | Comments (0)

The Red Sox, From A-to-Z

At the outset, it appears as if the Red Sox aren't affected by the tag of the world champions. They still remain a fun-loving, free-spirited, tight-knit unit. It seems nothing has changed for this bunch of disheveled dudes. They used to take shots of Jack Daniels during their stretch run that took them on an eight-game tear that culminated in debunking the 86-year-old myth. And now they have trooped into spring training and have begun to take shots again. Potshots, that is.

It seems A-Rod has become the official sparring partner for the Boston Red Sox Boxing Squad. Right from Trot Nixon to Kevin Millar, Bronson Arroyo to Jason Varitek, everybody has had his turn in framing A-Rod into A-Dub. And the barbs keep flying faster than United Airlines.

But we are not going to get into that. Instead, we are going to turn back the clock a year and focus on the journey that had its crescendos and diminuendos.

And 2004 was without doubt a surreal season for the nation with the halo being sighted at Fenway Park after 86 years, which makes the Haley's Comet a common occurrence.

We are going to encapsulate the 2004 season in an A-to-Z format. Sit back and enjoy.

A - Abracadabra (To break an urban legend, a little magic must have come in handy.)

B - Bronson "Brandon" Arroyo (We leave that to Arroyo and A-Rod to settle, but the kid was credited to have given the much-vaunted spark.)

C - Curse (At last, the Bambino can rest in peace.)

D - Dave Roberts (The man with the slippery boots.)

E - ERA (Earned Run Average or era? Take your pick.)

F - Fenway Park (Home of the 2004 world champions of baseball, how does that sound?)

G - Green Monster (Hey! Did you spot Tom Hanks there?)

H - Hirsute Hombres (From Johnny Damon's flowing locks to beaded Manny Ramirez to cornrow Arroyo, we had everything.)

I - Idiots (The numbskulls who played smart.)

J - Johnny Damon (The heart and soul of the club.)

K - Karate kid (A-Rod's tryst with infamy.)

L - Lord of the Rings (J.R.R. Tolkien's Magnum Opus gets a special mention because of the Sox's dream run.)

M - Mitt Sandwich (Varitek's special for A-Rod.)

N - Nomad wigs (Also known as Damon's hair-do.)

O - Outrageous (Yes, that might've been the reaction from Gucci or Armani to the Sox's unkempt and untidy outfit.)

P - Pesky Pole (The pole became part of the folklore thanks to Mark Bellhorn's go-ahead HR in Game 1 of the World Series against the Cardinals.)

Q - Quincy Market (Can't get anything else, hence a little Bostonian landmark.)

R - Relief (Boston got loads from Alan Embree and Mike Timlin.)

S - Curt Schilling's shelling (Wasn't it quite a sight to see Schilling nail the opposition with his fastball?)

T - Tito (Need we say more?)

U - Underhand pass (Keith Foulke-connects-Doug Mientkiewicz that ends the agony for Boston.)

V - Varitek (Captain America.)

W - Who's your Papi? (The nation's response to Gotham's "Who's your daddy?" chants.)

X - Xmas (Isn't the World Series ring a nice Christmas present?)

Y - Yastrzemski (Yaz and other long-time sufferers can now heave a sigh of relief. The chip is off their shoulders — well, sort of.)

Z - Zombies (The entire nation looked like one. After those five-hour marathoners in the ALCS going into the wee hours there were some my-dog-ate-my-work moments the next day at the workplace.)

Also see: The Yankees, From A-to-Z.

Posted by Venkat Ganesan at 3:00 PM | Comments (0)

March 3, 2005

Yankees Hopeful Winter Deals Pay Off

According to Yankees management, their offseason work is done with their roster pretty much set as they look forward to Opening Day. Given their decimated pitching corps that they finished with in the 2004 postseason, the Yankees appear substantially better off for the 2005 season, given their pitching acquisitions, but doubts still remain for the long haul in center field and at first base.

Many new faces are showing up at Legends Field in Tampa this spring season, so much so that combining this offseason with last year's offseason, even an avid Yankee fan may have to think twice to name the entire place setting at this point.

While the deal the Yankees made with pitcher Randy Johnson received the most notoriety — as it had been waning since this past July when the deal could not be accomplished and again this past December when the Los Angeles Dodgers begged out of a three-way deal — it will only be a part of the impact of the total player moves made this winter by the Yankees.

And as any well-schooled baseball fan knows, games are not won on paper, with so many intangibles playing a factor in coming out a winner. Given three new starting pitchers in the rotation with several new faces in the bullpen, in a way the Yankees will be starting anew. Randy Johnson will join veteran Mike Mussina along with new acquisitions, Carl Pavano, and Jaret Wright, as well as the returning Kevin Brown.

Not returning to the Yankees rotation will be Jon Lieber, a formidable pitcher for them in the 2004 postseason, Javier Vasquez, sent packing to the Arizona Diamondbacks in the Randy Johnson trade, and Yankees favorite, Orlando "El Duque" Hernandez, picked up by the Chicago White Sox.

Now no one can say Randy Johnson is replaceable if he pitches when healthy, but the rest of the rotation remains questionable, given the many past health problems of a 39-year-old Kevin Brown who spent a good portion of 2004 on the DL, as well as the past arm and knee troubles of Jaret Wright. Wright only rehabilitated his career this past season in Atlanta due to the efforts of pitching coach, Leo Mazzone, and is untested in the NY market.

While Carl Pavano has similar stats to Vasquez' prior to Vasquez' trade to NY, he is also untested in a big market town, let alone Yankee Stadium, also having played in Montreal and later in Florida. And given the arm problems of Mike Mussina from last season which had him on the DL for a couple of months, he is not the same pitcher he was a couple of years ago.

But not enough can be said of El Duque who came on for the Yanks at the end of the 2004 season after reconstructive arm surgery in 2003. He won his first eight games after returning to the Yankees just prior to the postseason, but because of his great effort, did not leave enough in the tank for the playoffs. Always a big-game pitcher when healthy, his presence will be sorely missed from that rotation.

Then we come to the infield and the big question about first baseman Jason Giambi. The first priority is for the Yankees to assess his health and his ability to produce this spring. Whether he will be used at first base at all or will be the DH-designate remains to be decided.

As insurance over the winter, the Yankees were able to resume a relationship with first baseman and fan favorite Tino Martinez in a trade with the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, whom Giambi ironically replaced after the 2001 season. Tino was signed to a one-year deal with the Yankees, understanding that he would be used in spot roles at first base or as a bench player. Now it could very well be, depending on how Tino looks, that he could be the used full-time at first.

In the long-run, the Yankees can only hope that Giambi returns to the player he once was without benefit of using illegal substances and that his health does not fail again. They plan on remaining mum about his alleged admitted testimony of using steroids, before a grand jury in 2003, and will be especially tight-lipped as the BALCO trial proceeds in March. The best thing Giambi can do for himself and the Yankees right now is to prove he is still an MVP-type caliber player.

The rest of the infield sees changes at second base after the Yankees chose to deal Miguel Cairo to the New York Mets. Cairo did all the Yankees asked of him and more in 2004. He started out as a utility infielder and then platooned with Enrique Wilson at second. Before the All-Star Break, Cairo won out as the starter at second, leaving Wilson as the backup for the rest of the season. He overachieved in fielding, committing only six errors on the season at second, and finished with a .292 batting average with a .346 on base percentage. He proved to be a clutch batter mostly in the two hole in the lineup, and all that for a bargain $900,000.00.

But instead of the Yankees sticking with the affordable and reliable Cairo, they have brought on 35-year old Tony Womack from the National League's champion St. Louis Cardinals. There were questions about Womack's physical problems when he was with the Arizona Diamondbacks several years ago, thus precipitating his being dealt to St. Louis.

After an unexpectedly impressive year with St. Louis in 2004 when he batted .307, Womack will be placed at the top of the Yankees' lineup, shifting shortstop Derek Jeter back to his more familiar second spot in the lineup. Womack committed 15 errors in the field in 2004 and whether his wheels will hold up at the top of the order given his tendency for leg injuries remains to be seen.

Fortunately, Derek Jeter who had a slow and awful start in 2004, but more than made up for it by the end of the season, will play shortstop alongside Alex Rodriguez at third, who made a terrific adjustment as a third baseman in 2004 from shortstop, and should only get better.

Both Jeter and Rodriguez are anxious to get back to the postseason and rid their psyches of the way in which the Yankees lost the American League pennant, in their venomous rivalry with the Boston Red Sox. The only chance they have for redemption will be making sure they get back to the postseason.

The outfield remains the same as it was in 2004 with Hideki Matsui solid in left field and Gary Sheffield returning in right after successful offseason shoulder surgery. The big question mark remains in center field given Bernie Williams' career winding down over the past three years with his physical problems now deemed chronic. It is not a knock against Williams, but the Yankees did not use him enough as a DH over the past year as promised, given the luxury of having Kenny Lofton as a backup. It actually had initially been thought there would be a problem giving Williams enough opportunities at DH since they fully expected to use Giambi in that role.

But as Giambi went down due to illness, replacements Tony Clark and later John Olerud were used just as much for their fielding capabilities at first and required a hitting spot, which cleared the way to use Willliams as a DH after all. However, Lofton saw more and more of a limited role as well as being on the DL himself, necessitating Williams to play in the field on an almost daily basis with outfielder Rubin Sierra used as DH much of the time.

We shall see what Williams has left this season. But given the circumstances, it looms large how much the Yankees could have used the services of Carlos Beltran, and that they did not aggressively become a part of the equation in a contract bid for him.

The Yankees' bullpen has been fortified, and desperately so since the 2004 bullpen had the most collective appearances in all of MLB due to the failed efforts of its rotation. Mike Stanton, a part of all four Yankees' World Championships in the '90s, comes back after a retreat to the Mets the past couple of seasons. He was the long man in relief back then, but this time around will probably be used more discriminately given the choice of the returning Tom Gordon, Tanyon Sturtze, and Steve Karsay, who hopes to be able to contribute as he did prior to surgery in 2003. The Yankees also picked up the services of Felix Rodriguez from the Philadelphia Phillies in a trade for Kenny Lofton.

Most recently, the Yankees worked out deal with the Red Sox in reacquiring the services of Ramiro Mendoza hoping to redeem himself after an injury-plagued 2004. He was the quintessential setup man for Mariano Rivera during the Yankees' last four World Series Championships.

Yet Yankees fans can count on a few more things to still occur prior to Opening Day against the Boston Red Sox on April 3, 2005. They will be welcomed back to sticker shock given the rise in prices at concession stands as well as at the ticket box office.

And as Yankee management will continue to tweak the roster not only this spring, in the early season, and throughout 2005, manager Joe Torre will have his hands full once again in creating a new and working dynamic, with arguably more a roster of all-stars than a proven winning team thus far.

But for now, all will have to settle for what appears on the current roster, without too closely analyzing what is expected to happen by season's end. There are never any guarantees in baseball, only that you can never say never, and especially when it comes to New York's Yankees.

Posted by Diane M. Grassi at 6:40 PM | Comments (1)

The Triumphant Return of Jaidee

Regular readers of this space may remember that I used to run a department called "Thongchai Jaidee Watch" every column. Jaidee was the first Thai to win on the European Tour by capturing the 2004 Malaysian Open. I liked him and adopted him as the official golfer of Slant Pattern.

But the bi-weekly updates were a bit much, and they were often depressing. He would miss cuts badly when he would get invited to U.S. PGA events, and although he continued to make cuts on the European Tour, he never contended for a title on the European continent proper.

Well, this is a new year, and I'm happy to report same result for Jaidee in the 2005 Malaysian Open. The difference between last time and this was the level of his domination. This time around, he won wire-to-wire (leading alone after all four rounds) and his lead varied anywhere from two to seven on Saturday and Sunday, but never any less than that. The victory spoiled Padraig Harrington's 2005 debut, and a handful of other Ryder Cuppers were in the field, as well.

So it will be another two-year exemption on the European Tour and, we can hope, more invites to the U.S. He says his main goal is to get a automatic bid into the Masters by being in the Official World Golf Ranking's top 50 by March 28th. He's currently 57th, and will have two or three more tournaments to climb into the top-50 before the deadline. It's a shame this victory didn't come a few weeks before, or Jaidee would've qualified for the World Match Play event dominated by David Toms.

But as I watched the Malaysian Open unfold, another golfer caught my eye, Jaidee's countryman Prom Meesawat. Even by golf standards, Meesawat doesn't look like much of an athlete. He's 20, pudgy and bespectacled, and looks like the kind of kid that's always picked last in gym class for everything. He's also one of the few hatless golfers I've seen recently, since anybody playing for the smallest of purses can usually find a hat sponsor. In order for him to crack the top 50, even after the Malaysian Open, he's going to need to advance 496 spots.

Anyway, he may not look like a golfer, but he is, and he stayed in contention all week before finishing with a tie for sixth and pulling in a paycheck that amounts to $40,150 American dollars.

He only got the opportunity to shine, as did Jaidee and runner-up Jyoti Randhawa, because the European Tour, during these cold winter months, co-sanctions events (nine of them) with the Asian PGA Tour. The way it works is thusly: the European Tour and Asian Tour both get to bring their guys, and should an Asian Tour regular (like Jaidee, Meesawat, or Randhawa) pull off the victory, he gets the free pass to the bigger, more lucrative stage of the European PGA tour.

The European Tour also co-sanctions three events with the Australasian Tour and two events with the Sunshine Tour (South Africa). Pretty much anywhere you play golf in the world outside North America, you'll get a shot or two at the second-best tour in the world, one that guys with names like Els and Harrington spend half their time on.

It's basically a goodwill gesture on the part of the European Tour to co-sanction so many events with lesser tours, and it's a move the U.S. PGA tour would never dream of emulating (the Nationwide Tour, which serves as the U.S. PGA's high-minor-league circuit, co-sanctions two events with the Australasian Tour, but that's it).

So mark down yet another reason for my disillusionment with the U.S. PGA Tour when I note how the European Tour runs in comparison, and on much less money. The U.S. PGA Tour will not step outside North America, will probably never in my lifetime co-sanction an event with another tour, and is not much interested in the health of world golf outside of North America (witness them attempting to strong-arm Ernie Els into playing more in the States and less overseas last year. Els wouldn't budge, good for him).

Perhaps not surprisingly, the isolation and hubris of the U.S. PGA tour seems to be visited upon its members. A great many U.S. PGA tour regulars seem to all be cut from the same upwardly-mobile-white-male-Republican mold. Not many stand out. Not many give me a unique reason to cheer for them. I have very little in common with them.

In his book, "A Good Walk Spoiled," John Feinstein reports how most members of the 1993 U.S. Ryder Cup team wanted to decline Bill Clinton's invitation to the White House because, well, they hated his politics and/or person that much. Feinstein mused that the U.S. PGA would likely elect Rush Limbaugh President of the United States if they could. During the past election cycle, Golf Magazine conducted an informal George W. Bush vs. John Kerry poll of U.S. PGA Tour members, and Bush didn't win it in a landslide, he won in a shutout (6-0). Fred Funk said in the piece that he hates Democrats.

I know, I know, to each is own. Someone's politics shouldn't affect my opinion of him. I wouldn't be so distressed by this if I didn't feel like this didn't describe virtually all of the U.S. PGA tour regulars. Based on everything I've heard and read, out of the 200 or so card-carrying members of the U.S. PGA Tour, perhaps 180-190 are conservative enough that they would not, under normal circumstances, have much to do with a guy like me. Kind of puts that U.S. PGA Tour daydream that I (and every other hacker) will never fulfill into perspective: if you join, they will hate you.

It's when I watch the European PGA Tour that I'm reminded that there is some golf to follow, watch, and love outside of the country club, privileged, hate-the-Democrats world of the U.S. PGA Tour. Watching the European PGA Tour reminds me why I love golf — because there is constantly a new contender in almost every tournament that one instantly likes — and likes enough to track week-to-week.

Thongchai Jaidee will always be the official golfer of the Slant Pattern. Of these golf human-interest stories that appeal to me so, he came first. But there's so many others I've become a huge fan of besides Jaidee and Meesawat.

I will undoubtedly add to this list over the course of the year, and although a couple of these guys play stateside, for the most part I have the European Tour to thank for introducing me to these players and The Golf Channel for bringing them to my house.

* Scott Gardiner of Australia, just because I think he looks like me (at least if I shaved the beard and dropped some pounds).

* Amandeep Johl of India, one of the few bearded golfers I've seen. He lists "discussing current events" as one of his hobbies. His wife caddies for him, and they argue about club selection.

* Sung-Man Lee of Korea, 25-year-old golfer who, like defending Big 10 champion Kevin Hall, is deaf.

* Tim O'Neil of the USA, who, if Tiger Woods is Cablinasian, is a Nationwide Tour pro gunning to be the first black player on the U.S. PGA Tour since the days of Calvin Peete and Jim Thorpe.

(Surreal if you think about it. Discounting Woods, there are NO BLACK PLAYERS ON THE U.S. PGA TOUR AND THERE HASN'T BEEN ANY FOR YEARS.)

* Bryan Saltus of the U.S., who plays on the Asian Tour. Like Meesawat, his salt-and-pepper hair is unencumbered by a hat sponsor.

* John E. Morgan of England, who dares wears his Nike hat backwards and plays with such enthusiasm and beyond-the-status-quo charisma that a lot of the bluenoses hate him, not the least of which because his hair has been known to be dyed blue. Probably the most famous golfer on this list, he lost a playoff on the U.S. PGA tour last year to Mark Hensby in the John Deere Classic. He said that if he would've won, he would've jumped into the pond overlooking the 18th, swim out to the John Deere tractor on display in that pond, and jumped on to it and into the seat in celebration. Quite a shame we didn't get to see that. As far as I can tell, he's the U.S. PGA Tour's only real rebel (so what if Ian Poulter has spiky hair and wears Union Jack pants?).

... or "was" the U.S. PGA tour's only rebel. An epileptic, Morgan has to keep his heart rate below a certain level. Late last year, he ran to catch a plane he was about to miss. The running got his heart rate above the x-level, and a seizure on the plane followed. He broke a couple of ribs, was forced to sit out the last few tour events, and as a result finished below the magic top-125 mark to keep his full-exemption tour card. He still finished high enough to retain conditional tour status and full Nationwide tour status.

* Jarrod Lyle of Australia, who, in just his fifth tournament as a pro, was tied for the lead in the final group on the 18th in the final round of last month's Heineken Classic with Craig Parry and Nick O'Hern, one shot clear of Ernie Els. (Alas, he bogeyed the 18th and fell out of a playoff.) 23-years-old and of a Daly-esque rotund build, he spent the latter part of his teenage years undergoing chemotherapy and recovering from cancer. "Even though I didn't make the playoff, I kind of feel like I already won anyway," he said. Then tears started rolling down his cheeks.

So step well, European Tour, and don't make the arrogant, uncaring, exclusive mistakes of your more muscular brother. You have right on your side.

Posted by Kevin Beane at 6:30 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

NASCAR Top 10 Power Rankings: Week 2

Note: The quotes in this article are fictional.

1. Kurt Busch — The phrase of the weekend at Fontana was "We've got Busch!" And not because a film crew was documenting the shower scene in Porky's LXIX. Instead, it was quite a weekend for the Busch brothers, Kurt and Kyle. 19-year-old Kyle became the youngest pole-sitter in NASCAR history when he set a track record in Saturday's qualifying session.

"Excuse me," says Kyle Busch. "Please don't describe me as a "pole-sitter" right after mentioning the Porky's line of movies."

Oh, sorry Kyle. Anyway, bigger brother Kurt followed up his second-place finish at Daytona with a third in California, giving him the Nextel Cup points race lead. Busch has served notice that he has all intentions of defending his crown.

2. Jimmie Johnson — Johnson trails Busch by only five points, and 2005 is shaping up similarly to 2004, when Johnson and Busch battled down the stretch for the Nextel title. This year, Johnson hopes the two can reverse positions.

"Here's hoping," says Johnson. "Last year, Busch was on top, with Johnson on bottom. I think it's time Johnson got on top, with Busch at the bottom."

Dang, Jimmie, are we talking racing here, or is there something else on your mind? In any case, Johnson hopes to improve on last year's car setup at Vegas, where he qualified 12th and finished 16th. Johnson's Lowe's Monte Carlo avoided the engine gremlins that haunted other Hendrick Motorsports cars driven by Jeff Gordon, Joe Nemechek, Scott Riggs, and Terry Labonte at Fontana, so engine problems are on the minds of the Johnson crew. Expect a top-10 for Johnson in Vegas.

3. Mark Martin — Martin's consecutive top-10 finishes prove that the old man's still got it, and, powered by the No. 6 Viagra Ford Taurus, his rise should continue (in the power rankings), as he moves up five spots from number eight. The dominance seen by Roush Racing in '03 and '04 continues, as the team headed by the man in the straw hat holds four of the top five positions in the Cup standings.

"I figure, at best, I can win that elusive points title," says Martin. "I figure with my status and ability, I can command some team orders around here. That means Busch, [Matt] Kenseth, [Carl] Edwards, [Greg] Biffle: let me get to the front, and then you guys block for me. But I'm not Michael Schumacher, so I know it's not going to happen."

Martin has been fine on his own so far, as the No. 3 man in the points.

4. Jeff Gordon — After a difficult qualifying session, Gordon worked his way up from 30th to third before the Hendrick engine problems led to his retirement four laps from the finish.

"I knew it was a bad idea to let Wiley E. Coyote order those parts from the Acme Company," explains Gordon. "Have you seen Looney Tunes? If that doggone coyote can handle a pair of rocket-powered roller skates, how on earth can he deal with high-tech auto parts? That's the last time I let his pal Bugs Bunny appear on the hood of my car. Suffering succotash! I hates varmints."

Historically, Gordon has had only moderate success at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, with a best finish of 15th in the last three years.

"Luckily," says Gordon, "what happens in Vegas, stays in the Vegas. As soon as the race is over, I'm gonna drop five G's on myself to win the next race in Atlanta.

5. Tony Stewart — In his 17th-place finish in California last Sunday, Stewart found himself sandwiched between Scott Wimmer and Kyle Petty.

"Not that I'm complaining," notes Stewart, "but usually, a finish sandwiched between Scott Wimmer and Kyle Petty means a result somewhere in the mid-to-high 30's. We struggled with adjustments all day, so I'm just glad I was able to bring the Home Depot Joe Gibbs Racing Chevrolet Monte Carlo home for a top-20 finish. If you folks are wondering why every time drivers say something, they always mention their major sponsor, race team, and car make and model, well, it's in our contract. If you haven't noticed, there's a NASCAR official off to the side ready to tag us with a cattle prod if we fail to say it right."

Stewart must like the track in Vegas, as he has two fifth-place finishes and a third in the last three years there. Expect nothing less than a top-10 for the No. 20 Home Depot Joe Gibbs Racing Chevrolet Monte Carlo. See, Tony — I said it for you. Now send me a check.

6. Dale Earnhardt, Jr. — A miserable weekend for DEI culminated with a 32nd-place finish for Junior, while teammate Michael Waltrip blew an engine and finished 40th.

"I felt like I was on an episode of American Idle," explains Earnhardt. "You know, just driving around the track and feeling like I was going nowhere."

Actually, Junior, you were going somewhere: down in the Nextel Cup point standings, to 14th to be exact, the first time you've been out of the top 10 in 71 races. So don't feel too bad, that's a pretty impressive streak. This Bud's for you.

"Of course this Bud's for me," adds Junior. "I pretty much sell half of the Bud in this country anyway. They could put some maker of prune juice on my car and my fans would start drinking that stuff."

If Earnhardt can forget the flat tire problems that struck three times in California, he should get the No. 8 Chevy back on track. Either way, Junior will be a factor in the Chase when all is said and done.

7. Greg Biffle — Hey, Greg Biffle! You're the 2000 Craftsman Truck Series champion, and the 2002 Busch Series champion. You also just won the 2005 Auto Club 500. What are you going to do?

"Well, I can tell you what I'm not going to do," replies Biffle. "I'm not going to Disney World. I am, however, going to break into song: Fontana bo bontana, Fontana fana fo fana, fe fi mo mana, Fontana. The name game!"

Awesome, Greg. Not only are you a master driver, but you're a lyrical genius, as well. You should sing with The Wiggles, so you can be hated by the parents of every two-to-five year old in the country.

All silliness aside, Biffle may be this year's breakout star. He certainly has the driving capability, and with a Roush engine under the hood, he could go places. All he needs now is the sponsorship of a company that rhymes with his last name; that would be none other than the Wiffle Ball and Bat Company. Then, he could promote yourself with the slogan "Biffle and Wiffle ... Fo' Shizzle," and maybe get Snoop Dogg to co-sponsor your car.

"Awww. You know if we do that, he'll want to put spinners on the tires."

Good point, Greg. You just stick to racing. Keep up the good work, and you'll be one of the Big Dogs.

"Yeah! Who wants to be a Gillette Young Gun anyway?"

8. Elliott Sadler — Sadler has won the USG Improving The Finish Award for the first two races of the season. At Daytona, Sadler qualified 39th and finished 11th. In California, he turned his 41st qualifying effort into an eighth-place result. What does it all mean?

"It means I suck at qualifying," laments Sadler.

Yes, that's right. But, as you have proven, Elliott, qualifying doesn't mean crap in NASCAR. With so many pit stops and cautions in a race, you can start last and move to the front without doing anything incredible. Now, if you want to see racing in which qualifying means everything, watch Formula One. With only one to three pit stops per race and virtually no cautions, there is very little opportunity to move up if you start near the rear. Of course, one of the biggest problems with F1 is that you see hardly any lead changes, and when you do, it's the result of a pit stop.

So, Elliott, lay off the M&M's and maybe your qualifying will improve. Or, keep feeding your chocolate habit and continue with your sorry qualifying, and you will be in the Chase.

9. Tie: Rusty Wallace, Sterling Marlin — When you hear the names "Rusty Wallace" and "Sterling Marlin," you're left with a decision to make. Do you feel like drinking Coors Lite, or are you in the mood for Miller Lite? More importantly, as a NASCAR fan, do you feel like casually knocking back a 12-pack, or do you want to get ripped with a case?

"Hey, I don't advocate the excessive consumption of alcohol," says Marlin, "but I love being associated with Coors Lite. I love promoting the brand. I love wearing the Coors Lite suit and driving the Coors Lite Chip Ganassi Dodge. And I LOVE TWINS!"

That Sterling. Always a joker. But you have to admit, he's got the coolest name ever in NASCAR, except for Dick Trickle. With a name like "Sterling Marlin," one would expect him to talk with an English accent. But he's straight Tennessee hillbilly.

Wallace is not only known for his beer; he's also know for selling cars and trucks to consumers all across the state of Tennessee at one of his many auto dealerships.

Collectively, along with Martin, Marlin, and Wallace give the Chase an old school flavor, as the over-40 set occupies three of the top 10 points positions. Experience and patience go a long way in the sport, especially when the young bucks don't think twice about running somebody over to get to the front. Expect these old-timers to hang back and be around when it counts.

10. Carl Edwards — Previously, Carl Edwards was known as that guy who did a back flip after a Craftsman Truck Victory at Daytona last year. Now, Edwards is still known as that guy who did a back flip after a Craftsman Truck victory at Daytona last year. Seriously though, Edwards has to be the biggest surprise thus far in the 2005 season. Currently fourth in the points, Edwards followed up his 12th place finish at Daytona by crossing the line fifth at Fontana. But what do you expect for a driver working for the Roush Racing juggernaut?

"Hey, pal," snaps Edwards, "what are you saying? I'm not a good driver? And what does a big-chested astronaut have to do with anything?"

What? I'm sorry, Carl. A juggernaut is defined as an "unstoppable force that crushes everything in its path." Nice try, though. That would make a great magazine. I can see it now, in its plastic cover: the first edition of Juggernaut, featuring the ladies of the International Space Station.

"I'd do back flips for that issue," says Edwards.

If Edwards ever makes it to Victory Lane, expect a back flip and a stuck landing. For now, though, Edwards is content with his number four slot in the Cup standings.

Posted by Jeffrey Boswell at 6:14 PM | Comments (0)

March 2, 2005

The NBA's Titanic Division

When NBA analysts started referring to the NBAs Atlantic Division as the "Titanic" division around the All-Star Break, Allen Iverson might have taken notice. After the trade deadline, however, the only Titanic references around the Atlantic might come because of the Leo DiCaprio "I'm the King of World" smile on face.

From the moment the Philadelphia 76ers acquired Chris Webber from the Sacramento Kings, Iverson's smile cannot be contained. He has also spoken highly of his desire to show up for practice. Yeah — not just the games, he's talking about practice. While Iverson's sudden change of heart may be surprising to many who found amusement in Iverson's practice tirade, it is conceivable given the type of player that Iverson now has around him.

Webber is not Jerry Stackhouse, he is not Toni Kukoc or Tim Thomas or Larry Hughes or Keith Van Horn. He is, most definitely, not Glenn Robinson. None of these players meshed well with Iverson, and really, the writing was on the wall in every instance. For the first time in his time with the Sixers, other than when Dikembe Mutombo was in the frontcourt, Iverson has a player that is not going to take away from what Iverson brings to the table.

Webber is not young anymore. That's for sure. There was a moment in the game against Sacramento Saturday where Webber made an outlet pass, softly flicked his hand in the general direction of the game's flow, then stood there for eight seconds and watched the Sixers play four on five. The knees just didn't want to get up the floor. That's going to happen and the Sixers will have to accept that.

It might have hit them like a ton of bricks on Saturday night, as everyone on that Sixer team was energized by Webber's insertion into the lineup, but they'll get used to it.

Through practice. Through games.

Webber and Iverson are both intelligent players that also know that their careers are fragile and winding down. They both know that if they want to find a way to win a championship, they are going to have to come together as a tandem. They know this.

Maybe the biggest thing out of the Webber trade isn't what Webber provides scoring wise. In the past, all of the second mates to Iverson's number one haven't commanded a double team. Webber will get that from teams. The court will open up for Iverson as well as the secondary players that have already shown that they are capable of contributing. Kyle Korver will get more open looks from the perimeter, Andre Igoudala will get to slash to the basket more, and Samuel Dalembert will be allowed to roam a little bit more.

All that said, another team in the Atlantic might have something to say about the Sixers and what they plan to do in the Atlantic.

Obviously, the team in question doesn't play in New York. The Knicks' deadline deals are just a hair above the New Orleans Hornets in terms of making that playoff push. At least they unloaded Vin Baker, though.

The Boston Celtics, however, got better with the trade deadline. Putting aside whether or not the Atlanta Hawks cut Gary Payton and he comes back to the Celtics, Boston did get better with this deal. They get better rebounding the basketball and get a guy back who knows how to play with Paul Pierce in Antoine Walker. Alleviating some of the pressure put on Pierce's shoulders this season is huge for Boston.

The move also allows for Boston to find better minutes for Tony Allen, Delonte West, and Marcus Banks. West has received significant minutes the past two Celtics games and has had solid games in both. With Allen and West both impressing in Boston and with Ricky Davis providing good scoring, something had to give in the Celtics' backcourt.

Walker certainly wasn't Danny Ainge's first choice at the trade deadline. Sure, they brush off the bitter words from the past, but they still linger in the air. However, this is a business. It was better for the Celtics to add a player like Walker and to help out their frontcourt. It is also good for Walker to get out of Atlanta, because seriously, who wants to play there right now?

Boston and Philadelphia had one thing in common at the trade deadline, and that was to get better right away and also keep the young players around. This allows both teams to stay competitive and keep their fan bases happy, while also rebuilding for the future.

The Sixers got through the deadline without parting ways with Dalembert and Willie Green. This is something that was important to Sixers General Manager Billy King. It was also important to Iverson.

When rumors of Iverson wanting out of Philadelphia to a contender began to swirl before the trade deadline, Iverson made it clear that he wanted to stay in Philly and that he liked the young talent around him. He needed support and King found him that support.

Neither the Walker deal for Boston or the Webber deal for Philadelphia makes either team better than the Detroit Pistons or the Miami Heat right away. Those two teams are still the class of the East that will likely be playing for the right to go the NBA Finals. The deals were designed to make both teams better. To put them in a position where they have a shot to face those teams.

Before the deadline, this division was dead. The chances of Boston or Philadelphia winning a playoff series were slim at best. Iverson probably could have led the Sixers to a series win over the Baby Bulls or the Magic, but other than that, there wasn't much opportunity for them in postseason play.

To top all of this off, the New Jersey Nets will likely try and grab a piece of the Atlantic action with Vince Carter playing well. It is unlikely that three teams from the Atlantic will make the playoffs, but all three teams have shown that they care and will not quietly slip away.

It's more than what can be said about most NBA franchises.

Posted by Doug Graham at 11:06 AM | Comments (0)

Addressing the QB-U Controversy

Well, well. I guess I opened up quite the can of worms with my list of the top quarterback colleges of the past 45 years. But, as with any container filled with slimy earth-bound creatures, a ton of dirt came with it. On one hand, I'm thrilled that the article generated so much feedback and opinion from the readers — that means that people are reading and paying attention to my stuff. However, many of them didn't pay as close attention as they probably could have.

As a result, there appears to be a necessity for clearing the air on how I arrived at my list of schools, who was mentioned among them and debunking some of the myths some readers have concluded about me personally.

The first issue at hand is explaining how I could have left BYU off my list of great quarterback schools. It's quite simple, actually.

When I was in college, I took a course entitled "Media Criticism." No, it didn't teach us how to be critical of the media, but rather how to analyze the content of various programs, whether it be newscasts, sit-coms, or horror movies.

Among the various types of criticism we learned about was a method called "content analysis." For those unfamiliar with this technique, it probably is the purest form of analyzing pretty much anything. Content analysis looks strictly at statistics and then formulates a conclusion based on those statistics. The paper I wrote in college using content analysis supported the myth of the "Sports Illustrated Jinx" because the numbers supported it. This method can be used to confirm or refute just about any topic imaginable.

For example, one could ask the question, "are there more beer commercials aired during sports events than during other programs?" Coming up with the answer is quite simple, although fairly time consuming. All that needs to be done is watch about 24 hours of TV and write down the programs and how many beer commercials there are.

That's how I approached the list I generated. I pored over pages and pages of football encyclopedias and web pages, writing down every quarterback ever drafted by or that played for an NFL or AFL team since 1960. I ended up with about 20 legal-sized pages filled with teams, names, and schools. Then I had to go about the process of copying each player to a separate page for their respective colleges. It was a project I actually started about 10 months ago in hopes to write an article about the NFL draft; it obviously took a lot longer to compile the data that just a few weeks.

After getting all the names and schools sorted out, I had the totals for the list. And, as the totals came out, BYU, Florida, Louisville, Georgia, Tennessee, Baylor, and San Diego State all ended up with 10 quarterbacks. I had to draw the line somewhere, so I drew it at more than 10 because that gave me an even 25 schools. It would have looked really strange to announce my "Top 32 quarterback schools." Top 25 sounds much better.

Contrary to the belief of some, I am in no way biased against BYU. That's the beauty of content analysis: it eliminates any bias because the results are based solely on statistics. There was no matter of opinion in the final list. BYU, Florida, Louisville, etc., were not "intentionally" left off, as some suggest, but rather "missed the cut." Simply said. If you don't agree with the numbers I came up with, try doing the research yourself and see if you come up with a different total.

Another issue to address is the names I mentioned throughout the article. A few readers implied that I had formed some sort of conspiracy against Eric Crouch, the great Nebraska quarterback whom I failed to name. No, there's no conspiracy. Somehow, he and Tommie Frazier were both overlooked, which can happen when one is looking at the number of documents required to undertake such a project. So, for all you Big Red fans, take solace that I didn't purposely omit them, and that with their names added to the list, they actually move into the number four spot ahead of LSU. Congratulations!

As far as not mentioning names of other players at other schools (including the Huskers' beloved Jerry Tagge), I have somewhat of a limit as to how much I can write. In fact, I was worried that the editor would kick the article back to me and tell me to pare it down a bit because it was too long. So, in the interest of space, I only mentioned a few names for each school. If you do the math, you would realize that there aren't 19 quarterbacks mentioned for Stanford, or all 11 for Alabama. I didn't "forget" to mention anyone — the list was not intended to name every quarterback that ever played for each school.

Finally, I have to take a moment to defend my personal character as many responders to the article had some fairly disparaging remarks about my ability and knowledge. Some may take this as whining, others as fighting back, but I view it as explaining. Many of the terms used to describe my article were quite amusing, actually: "amateur," "complete ignorance," "weak." Since these are my favorite comments from readers, I'll briefly touch on each of them.

"Amateur." Technically, yes. I do not get paid to write the columns I do for Sports Central, so I am an amateur in that regard. However, I am not an amateur writer. I hold a B.A. in Communications from one of the foremost broadcasting/journalism schools in the country, I have been writing for several years and actually did get paid to write a bi-monthly column on local high school sports until I quit last year. Also in the job I currently hold, I get paid good money to write; not about sports, but it's still writing.

"Complete ignorance." I don't think that is quite true. I've been a college football fan and have followed the game since the early 1970s. I could probably accuse some of the readers of the same thing if I asked them who they thought the top American generals of all-time would be. Sure, they could come up with Patton and Washington and Sherman, but just because my list is different than theirs doesn't necessarily mean they're "completely ignorant" about U.S. military history.

"Weak." Okay, so maybe the list is weak because it's either too broadly or too narrowly focused, depending on your point of view. If someone wants to come up with a "stronger" list and make it as completely objective as possible, I'd love to see it. Yes, BYU produced some of the greatest quarterbacks in college football history, but for a brief window of time. The same holds true with Florida and Tennessee. Heck, I could even argue that Idaho should be on the list with such great 1-AA quarterbacks such as Ken Hobart, John Frieze, and Doug Nussmeier. But that's for a different list.

I hope I have been able to explain the method and reasoning behind the list, and those who have taken the time to contemplate and respond to what I wrote have a little better understanding of me personally. I can take criticism; I hear it all the time. But to make an "uninformed" blanket statement about my knowledge or opinion of college football is simply wrong and unfair. But life isn't fair, and according to some BYU fans, neither is my list. Sorry. "That's my story, and I'm stickin' to it!"

Posted by Adam Russell at 10:32 AM | Comments (10)

Don't Miss the Previews: March

The grand finale is upon us. In just a couple short weeks, 65 NCAA teams will get the chance to become the best college basketball squad across the land. The objective is simple ... win six games (or seven) and you've achieved the unreachable heights.

Huh, but the main attraction is still days away. Guess we'll need to buy the jumbo, block party, economy-sized tub of popcorn. And man, don't even talk about the bladder you'd need to hold all that soda. There is one good thing, though. The previews for the feature production are usually pretty good. They provide dramatic moments and shock value, all without giving the plot away.

Of course, the blockbuster tournaments always get the longest trailers. It seems like every other movie stars Wayne Simien, Francisco Garcia, J.J. Redick, or Hakim Warrick. Even those artistic projects from the MAC, Missouri Valley, and Atlantic 10 are pumped up more as green appears on trees everywhere south of the balmy Yukon.

Wait a minute. This is an interesting preview. It seems like a nice story, and I don't really know the cast, but they're moving me. Of course, this picture probably won't earn any Oscars, but there's always a place for a few underground gems. Here are four scripts that might only get one invite to this red carpet event, but should provide an eventful ride from start to finish.

Rated: R For a Team on the Rebound

Life was going great for Old Dominion. But sometimes, the best-laid plans can abandon you. Now, the Lions want to get back up off the canvas. Then again, that could be easier said than done. It will take one will, one strength, and one run through a tournament of shooters, defensive stalwarts, and reigning kings.

Old Dominion, UNC-Wilmington, Virginia Commonwealth, Hofstra, and Drexel star in "Fight of the Colonials."

Rated: G For a Gaggle of Average-at-Best Squads

In the SWAC, losses and mediocrity were a way of life. From scoring on the court, (every team at less than 70 ppg), to keeping with their opponents (only two teams have a positive scoring margin, 1.0 and 0.7 ppg), the league was just a step behind. But a tournament in Birmingham will pit teams against each other, while pulling them together to show a nation what they can do.

Alabama A&M, Southern University, Alabama State, and Mississippi Valley State ... which squad will get to display "The Swagger of SWAC"?

Rated: PG For Probably Getting Through the First Round

Middle Continent is offering its annual prize of a ticket to the biggest party in town, and three of its most vaunted workers are looking to take the cake. But they didn't count on a new youngster throwing a wrench in their plans. Now to get the coveted ticket, a Crusader, a Jaguar, and a Golden Eagle will have to outwit, out-muscle, and out-maneuver ... a Kangaroo.

Valparaiso, Oral Roberts, I.U.P.U.I., and introducing Missouri-Kansas City in a game of maddening proportions. "The Mid-Con Artists," coming soon to theathers.

Rated: X For an eXcessive Amount of Conference Wins

Trouble is stirring up in Music City. Eight offenders with double-digit conference victories are converging for an all-out point spree where anyone can leave town with the goods. But one-by-one, the suspects are dropping out of sight. From Troy, AL to Orlando, the question is the same. Which one will last through all the turmoil?

Gardner-Webb, Central Florida, and Belmont lead an all-star cast in the season's most thrilling drama. "Staring into the Atlantic Sun."

Okay, that last rating was a stretch, but eight teams within three games of each other (and a ninth if you count Florida Atlantic) seems a bit much.

Over the next handful of days, we'll get to see which actors have the mettle to impress the bigwigs at the NCAA. Hopefully, the next stop for some of these basketball thespians will be a scene in the annual remake, "The Glory of Madness". And, who knows, maybe one of these bit players can steal the show.

Posted by Jonathan Lowe at 10:13 AM | Comments (0)

March 1, 2005

Chaney is Bigger Than One Game

People are not going to remember John Chaney as a great man and a great basketball coach. They are not going to remember him for the great things he has done for the players who have been a part of his program, or for the fact that he did things the right way. Sadly, they are going to remember Chaney as, to use his own words, a mean, ornery, son of a bitch.

It seems as if everyone in the sports world is calling for Chaney's head, and why not? It is the easy way out to blindly agree with everything else that has been said. It's much simpler for sportswriters to find someone's take and then repeat it loudly than to actually think on their own. Heck, I was prepared to roll out a column about how Chaney should start recruiting WWE superstar The Big Show, aka Paul Wight, before I actually gave the situation some thought.

One of John Chaney's biggest problems is that he is honest to a fault. The day prior to the St. Joseph's game, he said that if the Hawks continued what Chaney believed to be illegal screens that he would send a player in the game to send a message. It happened and Chaney sent in senior forward Nehemiah Ingram, who fouled out in four minutes and in the process broke St. Joes forward John Bryant's arm with a hard foul on a dunk. Chaney admitted Ingram was out there to be physical and now everyone is calling it a premeditated attack. It wasn't.

He didn't send Ingram in to break Bryant's arm and Chaney isn't the first coach to send in a player to be physical, he's just the first to admit it. Chaney isn't politically correct and never has been. His honesty is part of what makes him who he is. If Chaney doesn't say anything about this incident, it isn't an issue. Still, that doesn't excuse Chaney for what he did.

Those who really know Chaney know that what he did was out of character for him. Those who don't know him don't want to. They don't look at what he has done overall for the game; they just look at this one incident. Sadly, this one moment of insanity will forever taint his career, but he shouldn't be fired for it.

If Temple president David Adamany takes the advice of the mindless drones in the sports media world and axes Chaney, the biggest loser would be college basketball.

Most people don't see the John Chaney that dedicates his life to teaching inner-city kids the importance of values and discipline, turning them into men in the process. They don't see the John Chaney who has been a great African-American leader in Philadelphia and who has always strived to do things the right way in his life. They don't see the love, albeit tough, that Chaney has for his players, many of whom consider Chaney to be a father figure. They don't want to.

They don't see the Chaney who, minutes after barely losing a hard fought game 75-71 at Alabama, spent some time with members of a wheelchair basketball team, talking to the players on the team and posing for pictures. He took the time to go above and beyond what was necessary, especially following a big game, to brighten the day of those who weren't as fortunate in life. Not many people know about it because he didn't do it for his image, he did it because that's the kind of person he is.

They don't see the Chaney who is sitting the stands a little more than an hour before a game, signing autographs and talking with fans. It's much easier for most people to just ignore the overwhelming amount of good he has done for the game and demand his resignation.

Without question, what John Chaney did was wrong. The worst part about this situation is that Bryant's collegiate career is over, and no one feels worse about that than Chaney. It will always be something that haunts him and no suspension of any length will compare to the punishment he puts himself through. He has apologized profusely, accepted his suspension, and he took the step to stay out of the Atlantic 10 tournament. It should end there, but it won't.

Many try to pass the argument that Chaney should resign because he won't be able to regain the respect of his players. That isn't a worry, as the Temple players chose to wear their road black shoes at home in their first game without Chaney to show their support of their coach and father figure. They know what he did was wrong, but they also know what kind of a person he is and that he will be back to be their teacher and coach again.

Chaney's actions, to use his own words, were wrong, wrong, wrong. In time, the frenzy will die, but Chaney will continue to agonize over what happened on that day. He will go on to do more great things for college basketball, but in the minds of many, he will be remembered only for this incident. They will remember him as the mean, ornery, son of a bitch who ordered an attack on John Bryant. And it's a damn shame.

Mark Chalifoux is also a weekly columnist for SportsFan Magazine. His columns appear every Tuesday on Sports Central. You can e-mail Mark at [email protected].

Posted by Mark Chalifoux at 1:10 PM | Comments (0)

The Two Sides of Barry Bonds

Victimhood means never having to say you're sorry.

After being dogged by steroid rumors most of the winter, Barry Bonds arrived Feb. 22 at the San Francisco Giants' spring training camp and faced the media.

To absolutely no one's surprise, Bonds offered no apologies in his interview, which was every bit as incomprehensible as last week's statement by the Yankees' Jason Giambi, but nowhere near as contrite.

With Bonds, there's never any shortage of people who done him wrong. At various times in his career, he has cast himself as being under attack by fans, management, the unfair tactics of opposing managers who refuse to pitch to him, even teammates, like Jeff Kent in San Francisco and Jeff King in Pittsburgh.

But Bonds can't simply be dismissed as a whiner. The truth is more nuanced than that, if only because he's not always wrong.

When Bonds said Babe Ruth got an undeserved free ride from the sports media, the Giants' star was on the mark.

Evidence for that is in the 1973 book No Cheering in the Press Box, a collection of interviews with sportswriters who worked in the 1920s and 1930s, billed itself as an inside look at "the golden age of sportswriting."

Instead, the book makes it clear that the era should have been called "the sycophantic, jock-sniffing age of sportswriting." It seemed as if half of the writers interviewed had stories about the times they were playing — and drinking — gin on a cross-country train trip with the Babe when a half-dozen prostitutes came strolling in.

The story invariably ended with a variant on the phrase, "And the Babe politely excused himself." By that standard, Bonds could have left a questionable substance in his locker, in plain view of the sports writers, secure in the knowledge that they would have kept his secret for him.

You know, like Mark McGwire.

It's a near-certainty that Bonds sees that double standard, not as a historical shift in the relationship between professional athletes and the sports media, but as a continuing example of personal hostility toward him.

Throughout his career, Bonds has seen the media as his archenemy, and he probably regarded his outbursts during that press conference as self-defense.

He even directed Jesus Christ's "He who is without sin cast the first stone," standard at reporters, although Bonds didn't use those exact words, according to the Associated Press.

"All of you guys have lied," Bonds said to a crowd of more than 100 reporters after being asked how the steroid controversy would affect his legacy. "Should you have an asterisk next to your name?"

Bonds, like a lot of professional athletes, is living under the misconception that he makes an obscene amount of money because he is good at what he does. In truth, Bonds' income is based on the fact that people are interested in what he does.

There are lots of people out there who are as good at what they do as, say Yankees' third baseman Alex Rodriguez, but don't earn $25 million a year.

Vaea Anitoni, for one. For those who don't know who he is — which would be, oh, all of you — Anitoni was the all-time leading try scorer in the history of United States international rugby. I'm not even certain if his annual income is $25,000 a year, much less $25 million.

And then there's Gary Gait, the Wayne Gretzky of lacrosse.

But Anitoni and Gait have excelled at sports that don't put butts into 50,000-seat stadiums or on couches in front of millions of television sets.

If the public wasn’t interested in what Bonds and Rodriguez do for a living, the media wouldn't report it. And it goes without saying that they wouldn't be cashing the fat paychecks, driving expensive cars, or living in huge homes.

Bonds is being a little disingenuous — not to mention a little hypocritical — by happily accepting the perks of fame while whining about the attention and scrutiny that goes with it.

Even though he didn't pull a Giambi and apologize for an unspoken breach of trust, Bonds began to defend his legacy in anticipation of the day when his denials would be even less plausible than they are now.

"I don't believe steroids help your hand-eye coordination," he said, according to the AP.

That's true, but they do help provide more power. Canseco, the self-proclaimed godfather of steroids, said the drug enabled him to use a heavier bat. Also, steroids and the muscle mass they help create allows the hitter to move that bigger bat with greater speed and power.

From there, we're just talking basic Einsteinian physics — energy equals mass times the acceleration squared. A heavier object, swung with more power, unleashes a greater amount of energy at the point of impact.

As a result, Bonds' fly ball out to left field becomes an opposite-field home run. That lazy line drive to right-center field turns into a frozen rope into the gap. Do that 30 times a season, or five times a month, and it's the difference between hitting 25 home runs with a .281 batting average, and 45 home runs at a .362 clip.

Of course, steroids never turned anyone, not even Canseco, into the kind of elemental force at the plate that Bonds has become. And maybe that's his legacy — to be the best player of his time.

We can call it the Monsanto era, named for an adaptation of its slogan the company used in its advertisements back in the 1970s:

"Better baseball through chemistry."

Posted by Eric Poole at 12:44 PM | Comments (2)

Sports Central | Articles and Columns

March 31, 2005

World Cup Fever, Anyone?

Thongchai Jaidee Update

March 30, 2005

Top 10 Questions For Opening Day

March 29, 2005

What Can Brown Do For You?

Proposed Changes Only Weaken NFL

Why Are Athletes Getting Off Easy?

March 28, 2005

The Writing Was on the Wall in L.A.

I Hate Mondays: Female Trepidation

March 26, 2005

Sports Media's Steroid Hypocrisy

A Mountainous Accomplishment

March 25, 2005

See You in Cooperstown, Roberto

March 24, 2005

NASCAR Top 10 Power Rankings: Week 4

Tennis Angels, Yes; Steroids, No

March 23, 2005

Rules Don't Apply In Bracketville

March 22, 2005

Sweet! A Six(teen)-Pack

McGwire Loses in Court of Public Opinion

March 21, 2005

The NBA's Elite Eight

San Antonio Spurs

Phoenix Suns

Seattle Supersonics

Dallas Mavericks

Miami Heat

I Hate Mondays: RB Saturation

Hearings Expose Inept Congress and MLB

March 19, 2005

Sneaking a Peak at March Madness

1. Eating Out

2. Head to Best Buy

3. Stroll Around Town For a Little Window Shopping

4. Visit a Friend

5. The Car Radio

6. Phone a Friend

7. Buy a One-Way Ticket to Hell

The Not Important Tournament

March 18, 2005

Sports Q&A: Heels All the Way?

Get Your Questions Answered!

The Big East: The Bigger Domination

March 17, 2005

Remember the Expos

The Most Underrated Player in Baseball

There is a God, and He Watches Basketball

March 16, 2005

The NBA's Race For Last

1) Schedule

2) Momentum

3) Coaching

A Primer For Round One

UAB vs. LSU

Northern Iowa vs. Wisconsin

Syracuse vs. Vermont

Southern Illinois vs. St. Mary's

Villanova vs. New Mexico

NASCAR Top 10 Power Rankings: Week 3

March 15, 2005

Madness Predictions, From Start to Finish

Chicago

Albuquerque

Syracuse

Austin

Final Four

Final Game

National Champion

The Definition of Dynasty

Five Quick Hits

Regular Season Winning Percentage

Sports Gospel's March Madness Report

All-Americans

Upset Specials