Dan McGowan's Independent Sports Column: MLB, NBA, NFL, NCAA News & Opinion

Why Shouldn't Kobe be Called the Best Ever?

2012-01-08T20:27:00.002-05:00

A group for my old little league recently popped up on Facebook and it’s only a matter of time before the “my generation was better than your generation” argument starts and the entire city begins to weigh in. That’s just how my hometown is. Bar fights break out over things like this. West Haven children memorize City Champions first, and then if there’s time, they get to the Presidents of the United States. In all seriousness, I’m pretty sure the City Council has devoted an entire meeting to discussing the fastest pitchers in history.

(Note: My name wouldn’t appear on that list, but I did have a nice curveball.)

It’s important to note that the debate is never over the best team. If you won a championship, then you won a championship and no one can ever take that away from you. It’s always about the players who were in your league at the time you played. So take the best five players from my time versus the best five players from your time and then we get into it. That’s why fights happen. Because I’m not just defending my honor, I’m defending the honor of guys I haven’t seen in 20 years.

These arguments exist, of course, because no one wants to slight their own generation. It’s not just little league teams, although in small towns that might be the most pressing issue. It’s television shows and music and movies and life in general. I find these debates laughable. It’s not that I hate history, but I’m sorry, I’ll take the advancements in my time over any other era in history. Card catalogs sucked. Newspaper ads sucked. Encyclopedias sucked, and they were heavy. Amazon, Craig’s List and Google win. Every time. Not to mention, online sports betting, which you can click here to find.

And I haven’t even mentioned DVR and On the Go products yet.

The reason I bring all of this up is because Kobe Bryant just became the all time leading scorer in Los Angeles Lakers history, which has led the sports media to debate whether or not he is the greatest player in franchise history.

Across the board, the answer has been no.

Depending on who you talk to, the top three seems to be some combination of Magic Johnson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Wilt Chamberlain. The old white guys usually put Jerry West in there and Elgin Baylor typically gets thrown in the conversation as well. Only then does Kobe join the party. No matter where he ranks, it’s pretty impressive to be included with those guys at all. But why can’t he be considered the best ever? Why is it so hard to put a guy playing in a far more competitive NBA atop the list?

He’s the best player on the planet at a time when basketball players are the best athletes on the planet. That wasn’t the case 20 years ago, let alone 40. He’s bigger, stronger and faster than his predecessors and he’s playing in a league that is significantly bigger, stronger and faster than it has ever been. The old guard likes to complain about expansion diluting the NBA. I choose to believe $100 million dollar contracts made it more competitive. The money made basketball more desirable to young people over the past two decades, which has made the talent pool that much larger.

Sports, and this goes back to whole little league topic, is one the few places where you can’t even have a civil conversation comparing past to present. It gets too emotional. For example, you might say Happy Days is the greatest show in history, but you have to concede that it would have been nicer to watch in high definition. There is no concession in sports. People will always argue that their favorite player growing up was a lot better than anyone playing today.

Which is why in a column praising Kobe for becoming the all time leading scorer in team history, Los Angeles Times columnist Bill Plaschke still chose to criticize him for being too much of a ball hog. Whatever it takes to put the stars of today down, right?

But guess what?

Kobe is HD. He is the iPod. He is the internet.

Evolution wins.

Why I Coach...

2011-08-20T13:00:00.000-04:00

Little League season starts soon and I always like to post this right around this time...

Anybody who thinks the Chicago Cubs are the most loveable losers in the world never met my little leaguers. Then again, no one has ever witnessed anyone, anywhere, lose quite like us. We were the Bad News Bears without a happy ending. We made the Washington Generals look first-class. I felt bad watching the runs pile up on my helpless little guys, but the other teams felt worse – you know things aren’t going well when the other coaches are rooting for you.

Winning just wasn’t our thing. Not that any of my little guys knew – once, after an especially bad whooping, one of my nine year olds tugged on my t-shirt and asked if we had won. Won? I gave him a perplexed look, “buddy, we didn’t even make it out of the batter’s box today.”

Such was life for my team during our 0-16 campaign. We struck out, we dodged groundballs, and for a bunch of fourth graders, we had an uncanny ability to remain clean (dirt also wasn’t our thing). But the truth is, I’ll probably remember the losing only slightly more than my team, and that’s only because I actually kept score for every game. It’s everything else, the hilarious stories and the head-scratching ones, the heartwarming and occasionally heartbreaking tales that made this season memorable for me.

Teaching baseball to children is a lot like teaching someone to speak English. Every time they think they’re getting the hang of it, another crazy rule pops up and throws everything off. The “infield fly” rule is just a preposterous as “I” before “E” except after “C.” And why, as my first basemen once asked, can’t you just throw the ball at the runner to get him out? Monkey ball works in kickball.

The key is learning all the positions, but that also means knowing right from left, which can be tricky. Sometimes it can also be hard to pronounce the names of each spot on the field. For example, one kid spent the entire year asking to go to the mountain and I would always say no. I thought he was talking about the big pile of dirt behind out dugout. Turns out he meant the pitcher’s mound, and he took the hill in our final game. Jose hit four batters in a row.

My actual pitcher (we only had one) was a 3’2 seven year old who played right field and batted dead last on opening day and was the starting pitcher and leading off by game three. He was so tiny that our catcher (his brother) would often knock him over when throwing the ball back to him. But Joey knew that pitching was all about intimidation, so he’d wear eye-black to look older and make his “mean face” to strike fear in the hitters. That’s heart.

Of course, every team has an overachiever. Ours was our shortstop. Chris knew how to catch and could throw all the way across the diamond. He liked to dive and slide and even though he had an awful habit of throwing his bat after swinging, he made contact enough to be considered our best hitter. In one already out of reach game, a ball was hit to shallow left field and he made the greatest catch any of my kids had ever seen, so they did what the pros do: They jumped on top of him and celebrated as though it were the game-winning catch. One problem: It was only the second out of the inning and a runner tagged up and scored.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t laugh or smile at everything that happened this season. Sometimes reality hits hard. They old motto is “kids say the darndest things,” but in actuality, they’re brutally honest. Mom drinks too much. Dad’s never around and he doesn’t pay child support. Or we’re going to be homeless. Real life problems that winning in baseball won’t solve. My friends often tease me by comparing me to Keanu Reeves in “Hardball,” but the truth is, real life tends to be a lot less entertaining and a lot more eye-opening.

It’s the tear-jerking stories that make me want to come back and should make you want to get involved. Sometimes we don't realize that kids these days are lonelier than ever. Not every child has a reliable parent to turn to or someone willing to pay attention to them. Too many grow up with John Madden as their male role model and Grand Theft Auto has taught them far more about stolen cars than they will ever know about stolen bases.

It's really sad, especially when you hear from people who have already given up on a generation. Children need coaches and role models in their lives now more than ever. It's so easy too. Spend a couple hours a week with a youth. Mentor them. Coach them. Teach them. Do something.

It's not hard to have an impact on a child's life.

So make it happen.

MLB needs to promote its black players

2011-08-06T15:26:00.000-04:00

At our first Little League practice last week, I asked my players to introduce themselves by stating their name, favorite team and favorite major leaguer. Being from southern New England, the majority of them were either Red Sox or Yankees fans who loved David Ortiz, Dustin Pedroia, Derek Jeter or Alex Rodriguez. No surprise there. What was shocking was when one of my little guys raised his hand and told me Ken Griffey Jr. was his favorite player.

Yes that Ken Griffey Jr. The one whose batting stance I imitated when I was 12 years old. My favorite player. The one whose last 40 homerun season came a full year before any of my current players were born.

Do you realize it’s about time for “The Kid” to legally change his nickname to “The Grandpa?” Griffey is older than all of my players’ parents – by at least ten years.

It just goes to show you how far baseball still has to go in virtually every inner city in this country. And if you want to know just how sparse African-American participation is in baseball, start with Little League. The odds of seeing more than a couple black kids on any roster are slim-to-none, which is why when Connecticut baseball coach Jim Penders calls baseball a “white-collar” sport in this country, he might as well being saying it’s a white-faced game.

Penders isn’t the only one who has expressed concern in recent years. Not even close. In fact, at the beginning of every Major League season, the race issue becomes a major talking point. This season, Torii Hunter said that people don’t realize how bad it is because they see dark-skinned Latin players and assume they’re black. He referred to those players as “imposters.”

Many believe the reason less African-Americans are playing baseball is strictly a financial issue. In 2008, Penders told the New Haven Register that he recruits the best players who can afford to come to school, as opposed to just the best players. But that points to an across-the-board problem, one that affects Americans of all backgrounds and isn’t just happening in sports.

It still doesn’t explain why baseball continues to thrive even in poor white communities while it has become an afterthought in almost every urban area. The sport is becoming as segregated as hockey, golf or tennis in most parts of this country, which basically means an entire generation is missing out on our national pastime.

Like most of Major League Baseball’s problems, it has only itself to blame. The two most well-known black ball players right now are Griffey and Barry Bonds, the same as it was 15 years ago. But Griffey is at the tail end of his career and Bonds has essentially been banished from the game. Bud Selig and company have done an awful job in recent years at marketing any of the current African-American stars, all but passing up Jimmy Rollins, C.C. Sabathia, Prince Fielder and Ryan Howard in favor of guys like Joe Mauer and Tim Lincecum.

It’s not that Mauer and Lincecum don’t deserve to be stars, but when you have a serious lack of interest from the black community on your hands, why wouldn’t you make the effort to reach out using your most valuable assets? Fielder and Howard in particular have the ability to resonate with young fans the way Griffey and Bonds did in the nineties. Last year, Fielder took home the Home Run Derby -an event that is still quite popular with the Little League crowd- and Howard became the quickest ever to reach 200 homeruns, getting there in just 658 games.

It’s not just chicks who dig the long ball; it’s everyone, especially kids.

And Fielder and Howard and now Jason Heyward’s homeruns can reach the inner cities. These guys are young enough to be fan favorites for another decade and baseball needs to take advantage of that.

Happy Father's Day

2011-06-19T09:01:00.000-04:00

I'm never sure how many kids I have. Some days there will be nine and on others, 12. There are upsetting days, like the one recently when I had just four. And then there are days like our first game, when I had 15, which finally convinced me that elementary school teachers should be paid like doctors.

No, I'm not a Travis Henry-type who can't keep up with all his children; I'm just a 21 year old Little League coach of a group of mostly seven and eight year olds, who are fascinated with the dirt in our grassless infield, but want no part of the ball rolling in it. More than once, I've asked my little guys, "what are you doing, picking daisies?" and more than once, they've replied, "No coach, I'm picking worms!" Sometimes coach just doesn't get it.

But what I do know is that I've watched most of them collect their first hit without a tee and all of them learn that it's called "first base" because you run there first. Some fathers have joined me at every single game, rooting for their sons and laughing when they do something ridiculous.

Most have not been there at all.

Considering the wonderful group of parents and guardians who do show up for these children, I'm sure most if not all have okay home-lives. But I can't help but think about what my life would be like without my dad. I never had to wonder why he wasn't at any of my games because he made it to almost all of them – too many if you'd have asked me six years ago.

Today, on his 26th Father's Day, I thank him for never being a question mark.

My dad was there the day I was born and still there this morning to answer my phone call letting him know that I love him. He was there to hug me before my first day of school and around to do the same when I graduated high school. He packed his car with all of my stuff to move me in to college the same way he used to pack my teammates into the car for a long distance trip to our fall ball games.

He saw my first hit, first homerun, first basket, and first soccer goal (he was my coach for that one). He was also present the first and only time I was brought home by the police and he was definitely there to yell when I got an F in Biology one marking period in high school. As easy going as he is, he still has expectations.

He and I will probably remember all of the classic moments forever, but what I think I appreciate about him the most is how he listens to me. Sometimes, my Little Leaguers will come to our games and tell me about their school projects or how their neighbor hits bombs in wiffle ball. I find myself pretending to be so interested that I actually end up asking questions. I picked up that skill directly from my father, who has listened to me relate everything to sports for the past 15 years.

Thanks dad, for always listening, pretending and ultimately caring.

Recently, he has been a little more pessimistic than normal. You could say that life has dealt him a couple consecutive bad hands, but he doesn’t really like gambling. What he does have is a pair of children he loves to talk about, to brag about really, to anyone willing to listen. There are probably hundreds of people in West Haven, CT that know more about me and my sister than some of our friends thanks to him.

He doesn’t know this, but we do the same with him. There are people he has never met all over Boston and Providence and New Jersey and Seattle that think the world of him, just like us.

This post might come because of Father’s Day, but we make sure to tell him we love him every time we speak to him. He wrote a letter my senior year of high school telling me how happy that makes him.

The same letter told me how proud he was of the man I had become.

I can only hope he knows how proud I am to be his son.

Happy Father’s Day.

Expansion would leave Big Dance overcrowded

2011-04-25T05:06:00.000-04:00

If you want to know why the NCAA Tournament should never expand beyond 65 teams, look no further than the 2010 Connecticut Huskies.

We forget now, after watching the team win its third national title in 12 years just how poorly it played a year ago. We knew the season was a lost cause long before a late season three game skid sealed the deal. In fact, it was clear long before Jim Calhoun left the team for health reasons. As soon as Stanley Robinson became the focal point of the offense and people started calling the ultra-athletic swingman a potential lottery pick, things fell apart.

Look, it’s not that I have anything against Robinson. Every Husky fan knows how far he’s come. But anyone who has watched him play over the past four seasons knows he is the last guy you want taking a big shot. You know how most teams rally around their star player when he nails a long three or catches an alley-oop? Well the Huskies go in the tank. And it’s because as soon as Robinson makes a jumper, he suddenly thinks he’s Ray Allen and as soon as he slashes to the basket, he thinks he’s LeBron James. He’s not close to either.

He’s just the best player on a flawed, young team that seems destined for the NIT.

But it now appears that in the not-too-distant future, possibly as soon as next year, weak teams with rich basketball histories will never have to worry about settling for the Not Invited Tournament again. That’s the message the NCAA is sending if, as Sports By Brooks first reported, it increases the number of teams playing in March to 96.

It’s not a done deal yet, but NCAA senior vice president Greg Shaheen told Fox Sports’ college basketball writer Jeff Goodman that the organization is considering expansion.

“It’s part of our due diligence,” Shaheen said. “We have to look at what our membership wants. We have to assess everything. Have we talked to people in our membership about expanding? Absolutely.”

Expanding the tournament would just mean adding second and third-rate teams from the major conferences while doing very little for anyone else. Does anyone really think the MAAC sends an extra team dancing if the tournament grows? It would just reward mediocrity and make the regular season even less relevant than it is now.

The only one who stands to benefit from this is the NCAA itself. An extra weekend of March Madness means millions of dollars in additional television revenue and ticket sales.

But at what cost?

College basketball is already considered a diluted product. The NBA’s one year requirement is partially to blame for this. With the exception of the very best teams, most people can’t name more than one or two starters on any team in America. And because there are very few upper classmen, the players tend to be a lot rougher around the edges, meaning the average game can be summed up like this: Dribble, dribble, dribble, three pointer. Dribble, dribble, dribble, three pointer.

Going to 96 teams would just expose the sport even more. Yes the additional games will provide us with more upsets and buzzer beaters. But they’ll also give us more air balls from the Stanley Robinson’s of the world as well as the poor, undisciplined play of teams similar to this year’s Connecticut team.

The NCAA tournament is supposed to feature the very best college basketball has to offer.

Expansion would just leave the dance floor overcrowded.

Tiger might be impossible to root for

2011-04-12T18:07:00.000-04:00

The next act of Tiger Woods’ career will be just as dramatic as the first one, but it will have little to do with the number of majors he wins or the amount of money he earns. What the Masters proved over the weekend was that no matter how much success Woods has on the golf course, he’ll never again have the chance to be the heroic sports figure. There will be no more tears shed for him. He can’t have what Phil Mickelson has. He spent the first act nailing everything in sight and now wherever he goes, the media and the public will take great joy trying to nail him.

It’s not just that Woods will never be able to stand near a woman again without the entire world speculating that he’s relapsed; it’s also that he can never swear, never even raise his voice, without everyone calling him a fraud. Just before the tournament began last week, he promised that he was going to try to control his attitude o, the golf course. By Friday, he was back to being the old Tiger, chastising himself after a couple of misguided shots. He’s always been like this. The difference now is that even though his vulgar language has nothing to do with the number of women he slept with, the two will always go hand-in-hand. Every time something negative happens to him, he’ll be treated as though he fell off the wagon and back into bed with another blonde waitress.

That’s how it will be for Tiger in 2010 and beyond. That’s the next act. He might still be the best golfer in the world, but what makes him so captivating is the idea that he could blow up at any minute and chances are a camera will be there to catch it.

There was this false notion on Thursday afternoon that when Tiger approached the first tee, the crowd was cheering for him. They weren’t. They were cheering for themselves. They were cheering because they were a part of a moment that will always be remembered in sports. It had everything to do with Tiger, but it was not a sign of all the fans suddenly forgiving him for his mistakes. Of course it was sold that way. There was even a story on ESPN about a guy who asked another fan to move over so his teenage daughters could watch Woods tee-off. How touching. For some reason, the World Wide Leader decided to follow Nike’s plan and attempted to make Tiger the sympathetic figure.

That all changed as soon as the real sympathetic figure started to charge up the leader board. Right when it became clear that Mickelson might be able to win the whole thing, the focus on Tiger shifted. No longer were we hearing about Woods signing autographs (something he never does) for fans or how relaxed he looked. Now the questions about the pressure being too much took over. And the swearing led to the most important question of all:

Has Tiger Woods really changed?

Obviously, it’s too early to tell. But Woods has no one to blame for this but himself. He was obligated to promise that his behavior off the course would be different. He didn’t have to address anything about his actions off the course. Now, whether he likes it or not, the two will go hand-in-hand.

Which just makes it all the more difficult for anyone to actually root for him.

If Calhoun retires, Geno should step in

2011-04-03T05:12:00.000-04:00

Win or lose in tomorrow's national championship, there is a growing feeling that legendary head coach Jim Calhoun could call it quits following the game. He's a guy who has had nothing left to prove for years and now, with the Nate Miles situation not going away, who could blame him for stepping away?

To be clear, I’m not pushing him out the door. The man deserves to have carte blanche when it comes to his decision to call it quits and I’d be completely content with him pulling a Joe Paterno on us and staying as long as he’s breathing and swearing. But I also recognize that he’s a three-time cancer survivor who turns 68 in May and has nothing left to prove in college basketball. If he does decide to retire, all we can do is throw a parade and thank him for what he did in Storrs.

So how do you replace a legend?

There are two schools of thought when it comes to picking a new coach: 1) Make a splash. Do a national search and throw a lot of money at the hottest young coach out there. 2) Hire from within. Or at least someone with direct ties to the program. Provide continuity.

I say do both.

Hire Geno Auriemma.

There isn’t another coach in the country with the perfect combination of fame, credentials and a built-in knowledge of Connecticut basketball than Auriemma. He’s the John Wooden of women’s basketball, architect of arguably the single most dominant team in the history of American sports. That’s not a stretch either. His team is about to win another national championship and virtually none of their wins have come by less than ten points over the last three years.

Why would he bother risking his legacy, you ask? Ego. Auriemma is like the best athlete from your hometown who never made it to the pros. Everyone has respect for him, but at the end of the day he’s still looked at as the best from a very small sample size. It’s not so much about coaching women as it is coaching in a sport that only has a handful of great programs. Either Connecticut or Tennessee (or both) appeared in all but one Final Four over the last decade.

Auriemma would never admit it, but for someone as competitive as he is, it has to bother him to know that historians will always place “women’s” in between “best” and “coach ever” when they refer to him. We could say that doesn’t necessarily imply that he couldn’t get it done on the men’s side, but if we’re being honest, it kind of does.

The thing is I think Auriemma could make a seamless transition to coaching men’s basketball. Above all else, recruiting is about selling yourself to players. That’s why we compare coaches today to used car salesmen and not generals. What works for him when he’s recruiting 18 year old girls will work when he’s recruiting 18 year old guys. He’s charming, good-looking and he’s got that same slick New Yorker attitude that made his has friend John Calipari so successful.

Some might say that he wouldn’t be able to coach men the way he coach women. But that’s assuming that he would want run the same offense he has Maya Moore running now. Of course he’d have to adapt, but how could anyone question his ability as a talent evaluator? I’m pretty sure he would know that he can’t go after 6’4 forwards who can’t grab the rim.

Ironically, the person most opposed to this idea might be Calhoun himself. For years, we’ve heard rumors about the intense rivalry between the two. But is there anyone more capable of matching his famous intensity than Auriemma?

The truth is there’s only one way to replace Calhoun whenever he decides to go.

By hiring another legend.

Media deserves blame for Ireland's despicable question

2010-05-08T17:28:00.002-04:00

Before castigating Miami Dolphins’ general manager Jeff Ireland for the question he asked former Oklahoma State wide receiver Dez Bryant during a pre-draft interview, think about all that rides on a team making the right choice. It’s not just the millions of dollars in guaranteed money; it’s the jobs of all the scouts and anyone else who had a hand in making the decision. The first round pick, as our Vice President would say, is a BFD.

So if teams want to dig deep and ask questions normally reserved for government or police psych tests, so be it. Given the endless amount of public scrutiny today’s athletes receive, teams need to be sure none of their players are going to throw a fan through a glass window for teasing them, as NBA Hall of Famer Charles Barkley once did. The NFL might not be the CIA, but then again, no one in the CIA is making $10-15 million before they even begin their job.

On Tuesday, Yahoo.com NFL writer Mike Silver tore into the Dolphins’ general manager for asking Bryant if his mother, who was once arrested for drug trafficking, was a prostitute during a pre-draft evaluation. By this morning, Silver’s piece had gone viral and every sports talk show in the country was debating whether or not Ireland should be punished for asking such an insensitive question.

And just like that, Bryant, who was eventually taken in the first round by the Dallas Cowboys, has gone from a villain to a sympathetic figure. The same people who held on to their wallets a little tighter every time he was in sight are now rooting for Bryant to stick it to Ireland, the Dolphins and anyone else who had questions about his character.

But here’s the problem: It was the media –with their labels and their gossip—who started this. Ireland was just asking a question they were scared to ask.

A week ago, the decision to take Bryant in the first round (or at all) was considered questionable, if not downright ludicrous. Bryant, we were led to believe, was a thug. Of course, that word was never used. When a largely white media utters the “T” word, the largely black player base interprets it the way they interpret a much more offensive label. Hint: It begins with an “N”.

Instead, we heard phrases like “character issues” or “personal problems” and the consensus from the majority of the so-called draft experts was that teams should avoid Bryant like he was Pac Man Jones. He was unstable, a liar, a kid who came late to games and sometimes, he even skipped English class. By god, I bet he even chugged Natty Ice from a keg once or twice. If this were sports betting or Apuestas deportivas, I'd bet the online sports odds say he's total thug.

One can only assume that Ireland was testing his extremely vulnerable interviewee, deliberately trying to make him as uncomfortable as possible to see if Bryant would snap under pressure. Why would he do this? Because the media had a label for Bryant before he turned 21. National talk show panels were criticizing a kid most of who had never even seen play.

This is what happens when you have so much air to fill and not enough substance to fill it with. This year’s NFL Draft was longer than a Ken Burns’ documentary and the coverage lasted longer than an entire football season, including the Super Bowl. The analysts needed to talk about something other than Tim Tebow’s likeability, so they often focused on the rumors surrounding Bryant.

Ireland was simply asking about one of those rumors.

Character means very little in the NFL

2010-04-13T14:50:00.001-04:00

Twenty-four states in our country use some form of the Three Strikes Law to prosecute criminals. In the NFL, it usually takes that many incidents for a guy to pop up on anyone’s radar. Until then, players are just labeled as having “character issues” while owners turn their heads and pray no one gets killed.

The greatest farce in sports is that moral makeup matters. It doesn’t. At least not initially. A team won’t give up on a player capable of producing on the field until he’s exhausted the use of his get-out-of-jail-free card, the pass every athlete with any kind of ability receives the minute he goes pro (and usually, long before that).

Even when one franchise decides to sever ties with a player, another one will bite the bullet. They don’t see felons; they see finds. Bargains. That’s why the New York Jets were right there to offer a fifth round pick to Pittsburgh in exchange for Santonio Holmes this week. Holmes, who has admitted to selling drugs as a teenager, has been arrested three times since entering the league in 2006 and was only dealt following accusations that he threw a glass at a woman in an Orlando nightclub in March. Following the trade, the NFL suspended him four games for violating the league’s substance abuse policy.

Holmes isn’t the first player with off-field issues the Jets have acquired this off-season. Last month, the team sent a third round pick in 2011 to San Diego for Antonio Cromartie. Cromartie, who would be even money to get the Virgin Mary pregnant if he were alone in a room with her, has seven children by six women in five different states.

It should be noted that the Jets will be featured on HBO’s “Hard Knocks” series during training camp this year. Maybe the goal is to produce a reality show with more drama than “Jersey Shore.”

Or maybe they just don’t care.

Character flaws aside, the Jets recent additions will almost certainly make the team a trendy pick to represent the AFC in the Super Bowl this season. Holmes will return from suspension to join Braylon Edwards (currently facing assault charges) and Jerricho Cotchery to make up one of the top receiving corps’ in the league. Comartie will be a major contributor in what might already have been the best defense in the league.

Why should it matter if the team is on track to become New York’s sixth crime family by the time the season opens? Winning trumps all.

Of course, the Jets aren’t the only team following that motto. The Steelers may have had enough of Holmes, but it’s clear that quarterback Ben Roethlisberger still has a few swipes left on his get-out-of-jail free card.

Because they have a crush on the Steelers’ do it right persona, some media members decided that the Holmes trade was supposed to serve as some kind of message to Roethlisberger. False. A message to Roethlisberger would be to suspend him even before Commissioner Roger Goodell got involved. Make it clear that if his name so much as appears in the news for anything other than football, his career in Pittsburgh would be over.

That didn’t happen because Big Ben is still worth big bucks in the eyes of the Rooney family.

Now he’ll get yet another chance to correct his behavior.
And that, as we head into the NFL draft, will be the lasting message to everyone entering the league. As long as you can get it done on the field, you can do what you want off it.

It takes an awful lot to strike out in the NFL.

At Seton Hall and St. John's, a tough task ahead

2010-03-30T05:38:00.002-04:00

I never hated anyone until my freshman year of college. That’s not to say I never told anyone I hated them; for Christmas one year my sister bought me the wrong miniature wrestling ring and I’m pretty sure I called her some awful names. But Louis Orr was, for sure, the first person I had ever despised. He was the basketball coach at Seton Hall (now at Bowling Green) and what makes this story sad is that Orr didn’t have an ounce of hate in his entire 6’8, 180 pound body. He was the type of guy who quoted the bible the way his players quoted 50 cent.

None of that mattered to me. I was a punk 18 year old who had but three expectations in life: 1) That my embarrassingly fake id would work at Bunny’s in South Orange. 2) That the Nathan’s on campus wouldn’t serve hot dogs that tasted like Newark. 3) That Seton Hall basketball would be the national powerhouse I expected it to be.

And you wonder why I finished school in Providence.

By the time I got to the Hall, the rumors were already flying around campus. Despite winning a game in the NCAA Tournament in 2004, Orr’s days were numbered. He couldn’t recruit New York and north Jersey effectively and alumni and school officials felt the program wasn’t in a position to compete with the upper tier of the Big East. They were right, of course, and we all bought into it. I remember the very first game of the 2004/05 season (a loss to Richmond) and the crowd was already tearing into Orr (and trust me, it wasn’t just the students who smuggled cheap vodka in Gatorade bottles to the Meadowlands that were chanting “Fire Louie”. Orr was let go a year later.

Everyone in the Seton Hall community felt the program deserved better. They still feel that way today. The same goes for most of the other tiny catholic universities that helped to start the Big East. It seems as though anyone involved with the Hall, Providence College or St. John’s wants to jump in their Hot Tub Time Machine and flash back to the days when their school mattered in the nation’s top basketball conference. That’s why every time the head coaching job opens up in South Orange, people want to make P.J. Carlesimo (who led the Pirates to the Final Four when I was 2) the top candidate. In Providence, it’s Rick Pitino. At St. John’s, it’s whoever has the biggest name and the slickest hair cut.

Recently, both Seton Hall and St. John’s were in the news for firing their respective head coaches. At the Hall, Bobby Gonzalez was let go not because he wasn’t the model catholic, but because he wasn’t successful enough to not be the model catholic. The Johnnies got rid of Norm Roberts mainly because he didn’t want to make nice with the sleaze balls that dominate youth basketball in New York City.

Neither school managed to hire their first, second or even third choices.

Seton Hall fans wanted Carlesimo; they got Kevin Willard, a 35 year old who never led his Iona team past the quarterfinals of the MAAC tournament. St. John’s wanted everyone from Billy Donovan to John Calipari (I think they even offered Phil Jackson the job); they settled on Steve Lavin, whose hearing has to be damaged after spending the last seven years working with Dick Vitale at ESPN.

Almost all of the experts seem to agree that even if they weren’t the ideal candidates, Willard and Lavin were both good choices. But what lies ahead might be too difficult for even the craftiest coaches to navigate. They don’t have to change the fans’ perception of each program. They have to change the recruits’.

High school basketball players in the New York City area don’t view Seton Hall or St. John’s as elite programs because, well, they weren’t alive when these schools were relevant in college basketball. Seton Hall simply doesn’t have the facilities to impress recruits and as far as the Johnnies go, is Madison Square Garden honestly a selling point? The New York Liberty has been the winningest team in that building over the last decade.

Look, I’m rooting for both Willard and Lavin. I wouldn’t know but I’m told there’s nothing like successful New York City-area basketball. But I can’t help but remain skeptical.

The times have changed. At Seton Hall and St. John’s, only the coaches have.

With little pro talent, Final Four might bore us

2010-03-29T04:34:00.001-04:00

Here is the one guarantee I can make about the Final Four: Sportswriters will have no trouble meeting deadlines with this group. The storylines are endless. We’ve got the traditional powers in Duke and Michigan State. Three of the best coaches in the history of college basketball will be there – including Bob Huggins looking for his first National Championship. And of course, there’s always Butler’s Cinderella story as it tries to become the first team from a mid-major conference to win it all since UNLV did so two decades ago.

Only one thing will be missing in Indianapolis.

Talent.

For the first time since the inception of the NBA draft lottery, it’s likely that no one playing in the Final Four will be selected in the first 14 picks of June’s draft. In fact, NBAdraft.net projects West Virginia’s Devin Ebanks and Da’Sean Butler to be the only two guys playing in Indianapolis that will be drafted at all. When you combine the lack of NBA prospects and the amount of upsets that took place earlier in the tournament, this might be the most diluted Final Four in the history of college basketball.

So is it worth watching? Well, if you went to Duke, West Virginia, Michigan State or Butler, then sure. But be prepared for what could be the lowest scoring Final Four since the shot clock was implemented 24 years ago. You’ll see three defensive-minded, fundamentally sound games that should all remain close if for no other reason than none of the four teams have a guy who could take over a game and win it by himself. It will be the type of basketball you’ll want your 8 year-old son to pay attention to; but chances are he’ll want to change the channel to watch something with a little faster pace, like that P90X infomercial.

Me? I’ll keep track of the score, but without Kentucky involved, it’s going to be hard to keep me glued to the television. Any John Calipari-led program has replaced Duke as the most polarizing team in college athletics and something is just missing without him. He’s just so easy to root against. And Thursday night’s matchup with Cornell was the closest thing we’ll ever see to the 1980 USSR/USA hockey game. It was pro versus Joes. Future lottery picks and the guys who will represent them in court someday. Only the bad guys, led by Calipari, won.

It’s too bad those NBA-ordered mandatory minimum essentially become contract years for players, because as good as Kentucky was this season, they would have probably advanced further if they could have dropped that “I gotta get mine” mentality. And no matter how you feel about Calipari, the Final Four would be much more exciting with him in it.

Even without Calipari, this week will still be all about the coaches. Krzyzewski, Izzo, Huggins and the new kid on the block, Brad Stevens. College basketball has always been more about the guys who build programs than the kids who play in them. And this year, with the Final Four so big on heart and little on talent, will be no different.

For the record: My NCAA Picks

2010-03-18T03:34:00.002-04:00

My NCAA tournament bracket checklist: 1) Have I left emotion out of it? Yep, Connecticut wasn’t invited to the Big Dance so I’ve got no allegiances. (The same can’t be said for my NIT bracket) 2) Have I been real with myself? Check. I’ve never seen half of these teams play and chances are, even the loudest experts on ESPN have only watched Siena play twice all season. I won’t get sucked into the trendy upset picks. 3) Did I pick the team with most talent to win it all? Absolutely.

Look, I realize you care about my tournament picks about as much as I care about your bad beat stories, but I think I got it this time. Really I do. So sit back and let mine be the 187th tournament preview you read this week.

Big East Beware
Last week, I wrote that I was concerned how difficult the Big East was this season and nothing has changed. Just look at the NIT, where three of the four teams from the conference were eliminated in the opening round against inferior teams. The other, UConn, was down with a minute to go against Northeastern.

The biggest question professional scouts have about college players is how they’ll respond to playing 82 games in a season. A lot of young guys break down because they just can’t handle the beating they take night in and night out. The closest comparison to the NBA in college is the Big East, where an off night against any team in the league will result in a loss. Villanova looked exhausted at the end of the season. Notre Dame was gassed by the end of the conference tournament. And Syracuse is banged up and has lost two straight. West Virginia is the only team I have making it to the regional final, but that’s as far as they’ll go.

The upset that won’t happen
You know why almost every Major League Baseball players spends a few years riding busses in the minor leagues? Because they need to first prove themselves against guys their own age. Then they need to do it against guys just as good as them. And then they need to hold their own against the best of the best. That’s when they make it the show.

Cornell might have the best three-point shooting team in the tournament, but they’re still from the Ivy League and Temple is pissed off about getting no respect. Don’t be surprised if this one is never close and the Owls cruise into the second round.

The 13-16 seed with the best shot to win a game
Sam Houston State, because they can score a ton of points and Baylor is already thinking about a regional final matchup with Duke.

The biggest sleeper
Washington. The Pac 10 champions had one bad month, losing five times in January. After losing at USC on Jan. 23, the Huskies went 12-2 down the stretch and started to look like the team that was considered a Final Four contender at the beginning of the season. This is a team that has a great chance of making a run to the regional finals, especially if I’m right about Big East teams having fatigue problems.

Defense wins championships, but you still need a scorer
Which is why the only teams with a legitimate chance to win a national championship are Kentucky, Kansas, Ohio State and Syracuse. For the record, I do have the Orange going out in the Sweet 16, but that’s because I think they’ll struggle against Vanderbilt, a team that plays a completely different style than anyone in the Big East.

My Final Four
Ohio State over Kansas State
Kentucky over Duke

National Championship
Kentucky 75 -67

Feel free to list your picks in the comments section.

Goodell should suspend Roethlisberger immediately

2010-03-11T23:24:00.000-05:00

This is where I get to write about Ben Roethlisberger, the Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback who displays incredible poise in the pocket every Sunday yet allegedly can’t keep his hands in his pockets anytime a young woman comes around.

It’s time to stop tiptoeing around what we don’t know and focus on all that we do know. Of course Big Ben is innocent until proven guilty. But that doesn’t change that he now has more sexual assault accusations than playoff appearances in the last two years and it doesn’t mean NFL commissioner Roger Goodell should take a wait-and-see approach when it comes to taking disciplinary action.

When Goodell chose to suspend Pacman Jones for the entire season three years ago, he talked a lot about how it is a privilege to play in the NFL and said “players, and all members of our league, have to make the right choices and decisions in their conduct on a consistent basis."

In a letter to Jones, he wrote, “Your conduct has brought embarrassment and ridicule upon yourself, your club, and the NFL, and has damaged the reputation of players throughout the league. You have put in jeopardy an otherwise promising NFL career, and have risked both your own safety and the safety of others through your off-field actions. In each of these respects, you have engaged in conduct detrimental to the NFL and failed to live up to the standards expected of NFL players. Taken as a whole, this conduct warrants significant sanction."

Now it’s time for Goodell to be consistent. I’m not someone who necessarily believes the same punishment should apply to everyone every time. If this were Peyton Manning, a guy with an immaculate record off the field, facing similar accusations, then it would be completely okay for the commissioner to wait for more facts to come out before making a decision on whether to take action. But because of Roethlisberger’s previous poor decisions, he has lost the benefit of the doubt.

And don’t think for a second there won’t be plenty of people waiting to pounce on Goodell for suspending a black guy named Pacman even though he had never been convicted of a crime and not taking similar action against Roethlisberger.

Let’s see. Has Roethlisberger put in jeopardy an otherwise promising NFL career? Has he risked his safety and the safety of others? Has he engaged in conduct detrimental to his team and the league? Two sexual assault accusations along with a motorcycle accident that nearly cost him his life and a budding reputation as a guy who likes to party too much suggests the answer is yes.

The trouble with sexual assault allegations is that in the wake of the Duke Lacrosse scandal, no one wants to drag the accused’s name through the mud for fear of a lawsuit and the chance of being disbarred. In Goodell’s case, it’s that he doesn’t want to get it wrong and give the Player’s Association another reason to despise him heading into labor negotiations.

But what we all conveniently tend to forget about the Duke Lacrosse situation is that while those players may have not committed a crime, they also weren’t acting like model citizens that night. At the very least, they verbally abused the stripper who accused them of raping her. And if down the line, if one of them happens to be running a Fortune 500 company and gets accused of sexual misconduct or discrimination, get what’s going to be brought up in court?

Same goes for Roethlisberger, who is at least guilty of putting himself in a bad situation for the second time in less than a year. Goodell gave him a pass the first time he went through this, but there’s no way he can let him go clean this time around.

The commissioner will do whatever he can to protect quarterbacks on the field.

The same shouldn’t apply off of it

Is the Big East too difficult for its own good?

2010-03-08T16:00:00.000-05:00

When the final buzzer sounded at the Dunkin Donuts Center in Providence Saturday night, another wild regular season in the Big East came to an end. The last game of the season didn’t feature two of the league’s elite teams, but there might not be anyone better than Providence College and Seton Hall to give you an idea of just how difficult the conference was this year.

If not for DePaul, the Friars would have finished at the bottom of the Big East. They ended the season having allowed more points-per-game than any team in league history. But they were also the sixth highest scoring team in America, which meant that even for a team that went 4-14 in conference play, they weren’t exactly a pushover. A poor shooting night against Providence and it would feel like you were playing Syracuse or Villanova.

Seton Hall is what Providence wishes it could be. The Pirates finished just outside the top ten nationally in scoring, played a little bit better defense, were slightly deeper and probably caught a few more breaks than the Friars this season. Bobby Gonzalez’s team finished .500 in league play and put itself on the NCAA Tournament bubble by beating all the teams worse than them and very few of the ones better than them. They were the most average team in the most exceptional league in the country.

So if a team who finished in 15th place in the conference could beat you on any given night and a 9-9 team featured the league’s third leading scorer (Jeremy Hazell) and top rebounder (Herb Pope), the teams at the top of the conference must be tailor-made for deep runs in next week’s NCAA Tournament, right?

Right?

The answer might not be as clear as it seems. Yes, Syracuse, the regular season champion, Pittsburgh, West Virginia and Villanova all have the talent to reach the Final Four. But after playing 18 games plus a conference tournament in a league where you rarely ever get a night off, the question is, will anyone have anything left in the tank?

Hours before Seton Hall defeated Providence, the top ranked Orange lost to Louisville for the second time this season. The loss wasn’t all that surprising considering it was senior day for the Cardinals and the last game ever at Freedom Hall. Syracuse also had very little left to play for. They were already guaranteed the top seed in the Big East Tournament and most pundits have penciled them in as a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament.

None of that stopped Wesley Johnson from playing 38 minutes in the game. The Orange’s best player was among the league’s leaders in minutes played this season despite concerns about a leg injury he suffered against Providence in earl y February. After his minutes were limited in that game and the one that followed, Johnson played at least 36 minutes in each of his team’s final seven games.

The reason for his overuse was simple: Five of those games were against teams likely heading to the NCAA Tournament; another was against UConn, one of Syracuse’s biggest rivals; and the other one was probably the final home game of his career assuming he declares for the NBA Draft after the season.

Johnson isn’t the only player in the Big East who could see the wear and tear of such a treacherous regular season take its toll at the worst possible time. The league saw more players average at least 34 minutes per game than any other conference in the country this season.

The concern will only get worse at the Big East Tournament in Madison Square Garden this week. Barring a major upset, it is conceivable that any team who survives until Thursday’s quarterfinals will be safe on Selection Sunday. That means winning the Big East Championship will take beating three tournament-bound teams in three days. It has the chance to be one of the most exciting and competitive tournaments in league history, but at what cost?

Making it to Saturday could leave teams running on empty come the NCAA tournament.

What did Tiger accomplish by speaking?

2010-02-22T07:23:00.001-05:00

The following is just a small collection of events that took the place between the night Tiger Woods’ life changed forever and last Friday morning when he spoke to the world and said nothing.

President Obama announced the United States would be sending 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan and in the next breath, accepted the Nobel Peace Prize. Washington Wizards star Gilbert Arenas brought three guns into the locker room, which led to a season-long suspension and possibly jail time down the road. One of the worst natural disasters in history decimated Haiti. We met Scott Brown. The New Orleans Saints won the Super Bowl.

Plenty of major news stories. None of which had a lifespan much longer than your average Paris Hilton relationship.

Woods outlasted everything. The New York Post featured him on its front page for a record 20 consecutive days. 9/11 didn’t even get that type of coverage. He was all anyone wanted to talk about from Thanksgiving weekend on through Christmas and New Year’s and into February. But things were starting to settle down. The story was dying.

And then he decided to speak.

He handled his speech (it was a speech, not a press conference) with the same obsessive-compulsive attention to detail that made him the world’s greatest golfer and also what allowed him to cheat for that long with that many women and not get caught. No part of the day could go unscripted, so if you thought the State of Tiger Address sounded like it had been prepared by the guys from The West Wing, you’re probably right.

Everything was planned. The people in the room. The hug for mom. The two camera angles. Even the part of his speech where he tore into the media for following around his wife and daughter was probably written in all caps so he could remember to sound angry.

The problem is, Tiger really had nothing to say. He basically read a statement similar to the one that appeared on his website in December and he didn’t answer the one question we all had: When will you be back?

“I do plan to return to golf one day,” he said. “I just don't know when that day will be. I don't rule out that it will be this year. “

And the world stopped for that?

He offered nothing new. That may very well have been the goal. If he truly believes he can repair his marriage, his return to golf might not matter to him all that much. Some have speculated that this was one of his 12 steps – making amends. Maybe he just wanted to show the world that his wife didn’t decapitate him on Thanksgiving night. Or maybe he was doing it for his sponsors.

All we do know is that Woods was back at the center of the news cycle without actually delivering any news. He talked about trying to reconcile his marriage and wanting a little privacy, but it’s difficult to believe Friday’s production helped accomplish any of that. How could it? It just puts more pressure on him and keeps all of us wondering when or if we will see him again.

We all knew questions were off limits on Friday.

But we still could have used some answers.

A classic Super Bowl as NFL braces for the worst

2010-02-08T07:47:00.001-05:00

“Just as the Saints had carried the people through their terrible, difficult times, the fans now turned out to carry the Saints. For forty years, through good times and bad, New Orleans had always stuck by its team. Tonight would be no exception. They came together and rallied around these all-too-human beings, their beloved Saints, just when they needed it most.”

Those words were written by Alan Donnes at the end of his 2007 book, Patron Saints. They describe the sentiments of New Orleans Saints’ fans following the team’s heartbreaking loss in the 2007 NFC Championship Game, just a year and a half after Hurricane Katrina destroyed the city.

The final chapter has now been written.

Let’s hope NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell reads the book or gets the picture or whatever it takes to realize just how good he has it and just how much stands to change if the 2011 season is lost due to a lockout.

Goodell got everything he could ask for last night on the world’s largest stage. For once, sports turned out to be everything they’re supposed to be. Even though the 14 point difference was the widest of any Super Bowl since 2003, the game appeared headed for overtime –and a huge controversy— deep into the fourth quarter. In the end, Drew Brees and the Saints proved to be the best Super Bowl story since Joe Namath led another underdog to a championship 43 years ago.

Isn’t it strange to think that such an exciting game had very little buzz over the past two weeks? For awhile, it looked as though this might be the Super Bowl remembered more for a commercial featuring a college quarterback who might never get a chance to play in the big game or for Michael Irvin and Warren Sapp, the two former stars who allegedly can’t keep their hands off women.

But what everyone failed to take into account was just how popular football is. Focus on the Family can’t ruin the Super Bowl. A couple of clowns who still want to live the athlete’s life can’t either.

The only thing that can ruin the Super Bowl is if the game doesn’t get played at all.

And that’s what we’re looking at as we head into an uncapped year. Next season will be fine. But if we’re to believe NFL Player’s Association Executive Director DeMaurice Smith, the following season is seriously in doubt. Asked what the likelihood of a lockout last week, Smith didn’t hesitate to express his concern.

“On a scale of 1 to 10, it's a 14," he said. "I keep coming back to an economic model in America that is unparalleled -- and that makes it incredibly difficult to then come to players and say, on average, each of you needs to take a $340,000 pay cut to save the National Football League. Tough sell. Tough sell."

Indeed it is.

And guess what? Unlike what happened in baseball in 1994, the fans are going to side with the players.

This won’t be a case of greedy athletes just trying to grab every penny they can. Not when you have a leader like Smith, who is willing to tell the world about the demands from both sides. Smith said the league’s owners want players to take an 18 percent pay cut and they want players to accept only 41 percent of applied revenues, down from the current 59 percent.

At a time when everyone is finally starting to open their eyes and realize how dangerous the game of football is, the owners think the player’s deserve less. And they know that even if there is a lockout, they will still make $5 billion from the league’s television contracts.

Goodell can’t allow this to get any uglier. On almost all other fronts, he has been the model commissioner. But if 2011 winds up a year filled with replacement players or –dare I say—no football at all, everything will change.

All he has to do is keep this thing running.

Or he risks becoming Bud Selig.

Why shouldn't Kobe be considered the best ever?

2010-02-04T06:53:00.004-05:00

A group for my old little league recently popped up on Facebook and it’s only a matter of time before the “my generation was better than your generation” argument starts and the entire city begins to weigh in. That’s just how my hometown is. Bar fights break out over things like this. West Haven children memorize City Champions first, and then if there’s time, they get to the Presidents of the United States. In all seriousness, I’m pretty sure the City Council has devoted an entire meeting to discussing the fastest pitchers in history.

(Note: My name wouldn’t appear on that list, but I did have a nice curveball.)

It’s important to note that the debate is never over the best team. If you won a championship, then you won a championship and no one can ever take that away from you. It’s always about the players who were in your league at the time you played. So take the best five players from my time versus the best five players from your time and then we get into it. That’s why fights happen. Because I’m not just defending my honor, I’m defending the honor of guys I haven’t seen in 20 years.

These arguments exist, of course, because no one wants to slight their own generation. It’s not just little league teams, although in small towns that might be the most pressing issue. It’s television shows and music and movies and life in general. I find these debates laughable. It’s not that I hate history, but I’m sorry, I’ll take the advancements in my time over any other era in history. Card catalogs sucked. Newspapers ads sucked. Encyclopedias sucked, and they were heavy. Amazon, Craig’s List and Google win. Every time.

And I haven’t even mentioned DVR and On the Go products yet.

The reason I bring all of this up is because Kobe Bryant just became the all time leading scorer in Los Angeles Lakers history, which has led the sports media to debate whether or not he is the greatest player in franchise history.

Across the board, the answer has been no.

Depending on who you talk to, the top three seems to be some combination of Magic Johnson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Wilt Chamberlain. The old white guys usually put Jerry West in there and Elgin Baylor typically gets thrown in the conversation as well. Only then does Kobe join the party. No matter where he ranks, it’s pretty impressive to be included with those guys at all. But why can’t he be considered the best ever? Why is it so hard to put a guy playing in a far more competitive NBA atop the list?

He’s the best player on the planet at a time when basketball players are the best athletes on the planet. That wasn’t the case 20 years ago, let alone 40. He’s bigger, stronger and faster than his predecessors and he’s playing in a league that is significantly bigger, stronger and faster than it has ever been. The old guard likes to complain about expansion diluting the NBA. I choose to believe $100 million dollar contracts made it more competitive. The money made basketball more desirable to young people over the past two decades, which has made the talent pool that much larger.

Sports, and this goes back to whole little league topic, is one the few places where you can’t even have a civil conversation comparing past to present. It gets too emotional. For example, you might say Happy Days is the greatest show in history, but you have to concede that it would have been nicer to watch in high definition. There is no concession in sports. People will always argue that their favorite player growing up was a lot better than anyone playing today.

Which is why in a column praising Kobe for becoming the all time leading scorer in team history, Los Angeles Times columnist Bill Plaschke still chose to criticize him for being too much of a ball hog. Whatever it takes to put the stars of today down, right?

But guess what?

Kobe is HD. He is the iPod. He is the internet.

Evolution wins.

Questions surround Tebow's Super Bowl ad

2010-02-01T08:18:00.002-05:00

Here’s hoping Tim Tebow turns out to be just another dumb jock who will do anything to market himself and profit from his fame. That he’s just another member of the fraternity of athletes living in an alternate reality where it’s completely acceptable to lie, cheat and screw anyone you want because rules just don’t apply to you. Call it the Manny Being Manny world where athletes are deemed to foolish to even comprehend the consequences of their actions.

That’s the only way he could possibly get a pass for being in a Super Bowl commercial paid for by Focus on the Family, the controversial anti-abortion, anti-gay organization founded by James Dobson. If he were mindless enough to believe that this group just wanted to give his family the opportunity tell their beautiful story to the world or if he were careless enough not to understand exactly what the organization stands for, then he might deserve to be cut a little slack.

But that’s not how Tebow has ever been portrayed. Not by the media, not by Dan Shanoff, the obsessed editor of timteblog.com and certainly not by himself. Tebow is supposed to be everything that’s right in college sports, an eloquent, good-looking kid who puts his faith above all else. He’s the kid who considers the platform he’s been given as a football player far more important than his Heisman Trophy or two national championships.

But his alliance with Focus on the Family changes that perception. Now Tebow comes off as calculating, if not manipulative.

Now he’s the kid who doesn’t just want to spread his faith to everyone, but wants to do it by partnering with an organization that is very clear about what they stand for and what they think everyone else should believe in. That doesn’t just mean being pro-life. It means treating gays as though they have a disease that needs to be cured.

The truth is this has little to do with the commercial that will run on Sunday. CBS wouldn’t air it if they thought it was going to be too controversial. Most people assume it will be much more family oriented than anti-abortion.

This actually has very little to do with the pro-life issue either. It’s about an influential figure using his status to promote a group who, in denouncing a bill in Uganda that would sentence homosexuals to life in prison or the death penalty, recently said, “we respect the desire of the Ugandan people to shield their nation from the promotion of homosexuality as a lifestyle morally equivalent to one-man, one-woman marriage.”

Right. We aren’t saying you should kill ‘em off, but we wouldn’t be opposed if they were cleansed from the earth either. That’s the group Tebow is supporting.

And you know what message he’s agreeing with?

"You know, I hate gay people, so I let it be known. I don't like gay people and I don't like to be around gay people. I am homophobic. I don't like it. It shouldn't be in the world or in the United States."

Tim Hardaway, a former NBA All Star, said that almost three years ago when he was asked how he would deal with having a gay teammate. That’s what this is about. The difference is Hardaway was already retired so it was easy for the NBA and any endorsements he might have had to sever ties with him.

Tebow is probably at the apex of his stardom. If those who cover the NFL are right about how little he’ll do as a player in the league, his value as a spokesperson will never be higher than it is right now. That’s why Focus on the Family focused in on him. Bang for their $2.5 million bucks.

The only question is, does Tebow really buy into this toxic group?

For once, let’s hope he just sold out.

The ball will always be in Favre's court

2010-01-26T03:26:00.000-05:00

For the past few years, the very mention of Brett Favre and retirement has forced us through a gamut of emotions normally reserved for 12 year old girls. He’s the reason we love sports and the reason we hate it wrapped into one. In one breath we praise his childlike approach to football. In the next, we excoriate him for being indecisive. He’s creative. No, he’s manipulative. Carefree. No, careless. The man has single-handedly caused a generation of sports fans to become bipolar.

Even right now, I can’t decide whether Favre is the athlete I’d most like to have a beer with or the one I’d most like to crack over the head with a beer bottle. Sure I could do without the dog-and-pony show for the next six months, but do any of us really have a right to criticize a guy for WANTING to work? It’s easy to sit at the water cooler and blast him for being an attention-craving baby, but that’s because our nine-to-fives don’t require us to take hits from 350-pound linemen. Screw job security. We’ve got life security.

So I don’t blame Favre for playing these games. You know who I blame?

Quarterbacks.

If you haven’t realized this yet, there are only two great quarterbacks in the NFL. Drew Brees is right on the cusp. But right now, Peyton Manning and Tom Brady are the only two guys who could change the fortunes of any team in the league. If Brady was traded to Kansas City instead of Matt Cassel, the Chiefs probably would have made the playoffs. If Manning was running the show in Minnesota, the Vikings would be undefeated and entering the Super Bowl averaging 40 points per game.

Manning and Brady are game changers. The rest find themselves varying from very good to decent to downright awful. To give you an idea, Brees is very good. Jamarcus Russell is downright awful.

Favre is decent. He’ll make a bad team better and he’ll keep a good team from sinking. Basically, he’s not a game changer, but he’s not making anyone worse. He helped the Jets improve last season, but a rookie managed to win one more game and got them to the playoffs this year. This season, he put up the best numbers of his career, but he still only led the Vikings to one more win in the playoffs than the combination of Gus Frerotte and Tavaris Jackson did last year.

The problem is most of the quarterbacks in the league are a lot closer to Jamarcus Russell than they are to Brees. Or Favre for that matter. The position has evolved slower than every other position in professional sports over the past 30 years. Coaches can churn out linemen or running backs like they’re on an assembly line, but Vinny Testaverde still waits by his phone every time a guy goes down because the ever-present demand for quarterbacks is rarely met.

That’s why Favre is allowed to take as much time and play all the mind games he wants. He has all the leverage in the world. Think about that. A 40 year old who will undoubtedly sit out the majority of training camp is a better option than half the teams in the league currently have.

It’s a sad state of affairs but it’s also reality. You don’t know what you’re getting from the majority of quarterbacks in the NFL from week to week.

In some strange way, Favre might be the most predictable one of all.

A great matchup, but expect a slow two weeks

2010-01-25T05:59:00.002-05:00

If you’re going on vacation to some remote island where all you’ll be doing is sipping frozen drinks and relaxing on the beach while staying completely out of touch with the real world for the next two weeks, you should be thrilled with the Super Bowl XLIV matchup awaiting you upon your return.

The rest of us, unfortunately, can only moan about what could have been.

Rather than getting 14 days of Rex Ryan-isms, TMZ following the boy wonder Mark Sanchez’s every move and of course, endless Brett Favre talk, we’ll have the Indianapolis Colts with Silent Jim Caldwell and Peyton Manning talking to us about hard work and discipline on one side and the New Orleans Saints with their standoffish coach Sean Payton and his not-quite-ready-to-be-a-media-darling quarterback Drew Brees on the other. The best chance we have of avoiding an incredibly boring two weeks is if Manning becomes the new Tiger Woods. Of if he slept with Tiger too.

The Jets could have made the buildup to Super Bowl XLIV infinitely more interesting. Last week, I kept comparing the AFC Championship Game to the Massachusetts Senate race. The Jets were the team that came from nowhere, the team that only qualified for the playoffs because the rest of the conference choked over the final month of the season. But they got a little lucky, started to gain some steam and before you knew it, people were actually picking Gang Green to pull off the upset in Indianapolis. The Jets were Scott Brown. Which made the Colts Martha Coakley, although not even Coach Caldwell is as bland as her. They were the traditional powerhouse that paid no mind to the much less established Jets, so much so that they sat their starters in week 14, inadvertently helping them qualify for the playoffs.

Somehow the defense-first Jets became more appealing than Manning and his Colts. I even found myself cheering for them yesterday. I don’t know what it was about the idea of Rex Ryan having to answer questions like, “Tyrannosaurus Rex or Pterodactyl?”at Media Day that made me smile so much. Not to mention, two weeks of Ryan could very well have provided us with twenty years of great beer commercials. Two weeks of Caldwell will only force us to drink beer to excess.

On the other end, we could have had the Bizarro World situation of Favre in a Vikings uniform with the chance to win another Super Bowl ring. Because of all the focus on his many retirements in recent years, I don’t think people really remember just how much Favre meant to Green Bay and what a dagger it must be to see him wearing purple and gold. I mean, how many parents in Wisconsin used to scare their children with threats like, “if you don’t clean your room, Brett Favre will sign with the Vikings” and how many children believed them?

That alone would have made the Vikings a more interesting story than the Saints. Of course, it’s not as though an entire city rallying around a football team following a devastating hurricane isn’t compelling; it’s just that Favre is simply the most polarizing athlete in the world today – maybe ever. Willingly going to Minnesota might make him the biggest traitor in sports since Babe Ruth.

That’s not to say we won’t enjoy the game we have. We will. What’s not to like? For the first time since 1993, the No. 1 seed from each conference we’ll meet in the season’s final game. We get to watch the top two quarterbacks in the league squaring off in a shootout capable of challenging the 49ers/Chargers for the highest scoring Super Bowl of all time. All signs point to this being a classic.

It’s just the next two weeks that concern me.

All Star Game is Iverson's lifetime achievement award

2010-01-20T04:33:00.000-05:00

When Tony Soprano reminded us all that “remember when” is the lowest form of conversation, he clearly wasn’t referring to sports. In sports, nostalgia’s what gets us through our days. It’s why we could go years without accidentally turning on Monday Night Raw, but when Bret Hart makes his return, we become ten years old all over again. It’s why radio hosts can spend hours debating a guy’s Hall of Fame credentials without the conversation ever getting stale. It’s why we always have cared about records and streaks and champions and why we always will.

And it’s why Allen Iverson absolutely deserves to be an All Star this season.

There are people -- albeit ignorant, shortsighted people – who disagree with that statement. They’re outraged because fans have too much say, because the majority of people who vote for the All Star teams won’t watch an entire basketball game all season. They’re whining about how unfair it is that a washed up Iverson is going to make it over any number of guards putting up better numbers than him this season.

Do they have a point? Of course. But no one is voting Iverson to the All Star team this year because they still consider him to be one of the best players in the league. They’re voting for him because he’s earned it. He’s earned it the way veterans in the league earn calls from officials. The way Tony Gwynn earned the benefit of the doubt from umpires when he took a close pitch.

This is Iverson’s lifetime achievement award.

It’s not like this is the first time a guy had made an All Star team based on what he did for his entire career. This is why these games are exhibitions (except in baseball, which is completely foolish). So why doesn’t Iverson get the same respect Magic got when he came back? Why didn’t anyone complain about Gwynn and Cal Ripken Jr. getting picked for All Star Games at the end of their respective careers? If we’re being honest, Iverson was probably a better basketball player than either of those guys were baseball players.

Part of me wants to believe it’s because Tracy McGrady happens to be a leading vote getter as well and so Iverson gets lumped in with him. Let me be clear: McGrady has no business being anywhere near an All Star Game. But the two are completely different cases. When we talk about McGrady, we talk about all what could have been. When we talk about Iverson, we talk about what he actually accomplished.

With the exception of Michael Jordan, no one has a highlight reel longer than The Answer’s. He was the NBA during the late nineties and the early part of the 2000’s. I’ve written this about him before, but it’s worth mentioning again: If you became a sports fan in the mid-late ‘90s, you’ve watched Iverson closer than any other athlete. ESPN’s Rick Reilly once wrote that if there was one player he’d pay twice the ticket price to watch, it would be Iverson, who really makes you think twice about cheering for someone like Manny Ramirez.

This might be the final glimpse we get of Iverson’s brilliant career. He plays on a team going nowhere and there’s a good chance he’ll call it quits when the season comes to an end. Rather than criticizing him or the fans who voted him in, let’s use this All Star Game to send him off in fashion.

Because when you’re as good as Iverson was, you always deserve the benefit of the doubt.

Inequality still present in sports

2010-01-19T04:42:00.001-05:00

The Seattle Seahawks didn’t officially name Pete Carroll their head coach until last Monday, but anyone with even a passing interest in the NFL knew the deal had been in place for at least three days. Both sides just needed to hammer out some last minute contractual details and the Seahawks needed to fulfill one pesky little obligation: The Rooney Rule.

Named after Pittsburgh Steelers owner and U.S. Ambassador to Ireland Dan Rooney, the Rooney Rule requires all NFL teams to interview at least one minority candidate for any head coaching or front office position before making a hire. At its best, the rule gives otherwise overlooked minorities an opportunity to get a foot in the door and has led to a 12 percent increase in African American head coaches since 2003. But most of the time, the rule is nothing more than a façade so teams don’t have Al Sharpton knocking at their doors every time they hire another white head coach.

Most of the time, there are no actual minority candidates. There are just pawns used to let the game play out.

The Seahawks had no intention of hiring Minnesota Vikings Defensive Coordinator Leslie Frazier just as Washington Redskins owner Daniel Snyder had no intention of bringing in anyone other than Mike Shanahan at the beginning of the month. But both teams still made sure to cover themselves by interviewing a minority candidate before moving forward with their first choices.

That’s the way the Rooney Rule typically plays out. For every success story, like Mike Tomlin of the defending Super Bowl champion Steelers, there are ten Leslie Frazier’s, who go into the interview knowing everything is a sham and they have zero chance of getting a head coaching gig. Their best hope is to be impressive enough so teams can tell the media how intelligent and eloquent they were. Then they might have a shot at a job down the line.

Sports aren’t supposed to work this way, of course. The sports leagues like to brag about how progressive they are, how if the civil rights movement is complete anywhere, it’s in football or basketball, where minorities are the overwhelming majority. They love to celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. and all he accomplished, but they do it in a way that says, “Hey look at us. We’ve done the best of all.”

They do have good reason to show off. After all, of the 50 highest paid athletes in the country, 33 are black or Hispanic. To young children in most urban neighborhoods, it still appears that the best way to get rich is through sports.

But what isn’t focused on nearly enough is the number of athletes who make it all the way to the pros and still end up broke. Last year, Sports Illustrated reported that 78% of former NFL players have gone bankrupt or are under financial stress and that 60% of NBA players are broke within five years of being out of the league. You do the math. If the majority of professional athletes are minorities, then how are they doing financially when their playing days are over?

At least part of the reason so money former athletes have money problems is that they don’t have anything to do when their careers are over. Very few will ever get into coaching and even less will have a legitimate chance at a head coaching job. In football, there are just 17 African-American head coaches in the NFL and the Football Bowl Subdivision. In the NBA, there are six African-American head coaches and of the current top 25 teams in Division I men’s college basketball, only three have black coaches.

Here’s what needs to happen: There needs to be a mandatory rule that at least a certain number of minorities must be placed on all coaching staffs in every sport. The Rooney Rule only exists in the NFL and it’s treated more as a formality than anything else. The rest of the professional sports leagues and the NCAA do nothing to promote minority coaching candidates. But putting at least one minority coach on every staff would ensure that they at least get their foot in the door. Maybe then we’ll start to see changes.

Because right now, best of all just ain’t good enough.

On my mouse problem & NFL picks

2010-01-16T14:41:00.001-05:00

One of my best friends is ready to move out of his parents’ house and it’s all my fault. For the past three years, I’ve taken every opportunity to glamorize living on your own. You can drink as much beer as you want. You can cook whatever you want (or order out, in my case). And most importantly, you can bring a nice girl home without having to warn her that your father sleeps naked on the couch. To borrow a phrase used all too often in sports, moving out has a ton of upside.

Except when you have a mouse.

I can proudly say that I’ve met most of the challenges of living on my own head on. One might even call me a grownup. The bills get paid on time (thank you advertisers). I now understand that layering as opposed to blasting the heat up to 85 degrees is a savvy move. I’ve never turned any of my shirts pink while doing laundry. And I’ve figured out how to go grocery shopping and not just come home with bags of chips and fruit snacks. So the basics are covered.

But when I see a mouse, I become more useless than Snooki at a spelling bee. One night in September, I was watching a Red Sox game when I happened to look over and see one of those furry devils hanging out on my brand new rug. My first thought was to e-mail my landlord and tell him to get his ass over here and take care of the problem, but I decided to handle the situation like a man. So I called my dad. His advice: “Remember, if it comes down to fighting, you’ve got the reach on the little bugger.”

The strangest part of the whole ordeal was that the mouse never moved from my rug in the fifteen minutes it took for me to consider attacking my landlord and to call my father. I realized that this thing was on its last legs. I considered this a victory. It must have been so hungry that it came into my place expecting that the kid living in a basement studio must have left a few crumbs on the floor.

Well guess what, sucker? It just so happens that I had gone out to both lunch and dinner that day and I hadn’t been to Stop & Shop in two weeks. There wasn’t a bite in the house for me to eat, let alone some silly rodent. I considered this a moral victory. My place was so clean that a mouse starved to death on my floor. The Red Sox lost that night, but Dan McGowan won.

I remained on my high horse until about 4:00 A.M. this morning. That’s when I woke up to this awful scratching sound against my wall. A mouse was stuck too one of my glue traps. I had won again. But when I got up to get a broom and sweep away the little bastard, it disappeared. Somehow it managed to get away and now it was on the loose in my apartment. I went back to bed, vowing that I would take care of this when I woke up.

I’ve now woken up and I’m blogging instead of mouse hunting. Here’s why: When I got up, I noticed that another on my glue traps had been turned over while I was sleeping. This thing is antagonizing me now. It’s almost like the mouse is saying, “I know what you did last September.” And now I’m kind of freaked out.

If you never hear from me again, you’ll know why.

I’ll have moved back to my parents’ house and I’ll be too busy doing chores to blog.

Playoff Picks for the weekend
New Orleans 41-27
Indy 24-17
Dallas 30-27
San Diego 17-6

Blood testing would open up a whole new can of worms

2010-01-14T04:41:00.002-05:00

Like every family, mine has its issues. I’m pretty sure that I’ve been predisposed to about six different forms of addiction, a few kinds of cancer, a heart condition here or there, diabetes and just for good measure, most people who know him would agree that my father could replace Danny DeVito on It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia and the transition would be seamless. And while I’ve been fortunate to lead a relatively normal life for my first 23 years, it’s safe to say that god only knows how I will eventually turn out.

And it should stay that way.

I promise I’m not going to get all religious on you. That’s definitely not my style. I’m the guy who brings a flask to Midnight Mass. My point here is that I don’t want anyone on this earth, especially any future employers, to have access to information about health problems that could pop up for me down the line. My family’s public record already ended any dreams of running for public office. I don’t want my DNA to prevent me from earning a paycheck.

So what does this have to do with sports, you ask? More than you think. Recently it appeared as though two of the world’s greatest boxers, Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao, were finally going square off in what Yahoo Sports’ Kevin Iole called “the most anticipated boxing match in at least 25 years.” For the record, Iole is one of the only people in the world who could actually name 25 fighters from the past quarter century, but you get the picture. This was going to be big, big enough for me to actively seek out a feed of the fight on the internet.

But it won’t happen. Some have speculated that the unbeaten Mayweather is running scared. Others have blamed the sport itself, citing that boxing as it is today it too flawed to ever get such a break. Of course, that’s all conjecture. All we do know is that the Mayweather camp’s request for blood testing before and after the fight infuriated Pacquiao, so much so that he filed a defamation lawsuit stating that Mayweather falsely accused him of taking performance-enhancing drugs.

Now obviously there is a much easier way for Pacquiao to prove he’s clean. He could just submit to a blood test and everything would be solved right there. But he won’t and he shouldn’t. Blood testing in sports is the next step to blood testing in the real world, and while the cynic in me doubts that Pacquiao’s refusal is his way of standing up to Big Brother, I appreciate that he is holding firm.

It’s easy to say we want sports to be drug free at all costs, but that’s because we aren’t paying attention to what it might cost us. In 2005, the Chicago Bulls asked their then-22 year old center Eddy Curry to take a DNA test to see if a heart condition he was suffering from could be fatal. Curry refused over concern that the team might find other pre-existing conditions and not want to re-sign him.

What if a similar situation occurred in your workplace? What if blood testing revealed you had a weak heart and a healthier person got a promotion over you? Recent legislation actually prohibits companies from using genetic information to hire, fire or promote, but have far more serious threats from the government stopped businesses from discriminating based on race or gender yet? When it comes down to investing a lot of money in an employee, the maximum $300,000 penalty will probably seem well worth it to some companies.

Blood testing would open a whole new can of worms that we do not want to deal with. On Wednesday, New York Mets’ star third basemen David Wright told WFAN’s Mike Francesa he would support a stricter drug testing policy in baseball, including blood testing for HGH.

"Obviously it would be tough to test with the blood samples,” Wright said. “But anything to clean this game up, I'm all for it. I would love to say that 100 percent of the guys in this game are 100 percent clean."

We all would.

But not if it means having to give up 100 percent of a person’s personal information.

Before criticizing Kiffin, you have to question yourself

2010-01-13T18:00:00.002-05:00

There are two sides to every story and we should look at both when it comes to analyzing Lane Kiffin’s decision to leave Tennessee for USC after only one season as head coach.

On one hand, Kiffin is turning his back on a program that brought him in despite claims of insubordination at the NFL level, that gave him free reign to do whatever it took to get back to contending for national titles and that embraced him even as he caused firestorm after firestorm throughout his 14 month tenure in Knoxville. Volunteer Nation has every right to be furious today.

And don’t forget about the recruits. Poor things. Kiffin, the young, fiery head coach, charmed them over with stories about what he accomplished as an assistant at USC and if that didn’t work, he always had his secret weapon --the beautiful undergraduate hostesses known as Orange Pride -- to help with the process. Everyone knows how impressionable high school seniors can be; I picked Seton Hall because it had a Nathan’s on campus. Most of these kids committed to play for Kiffin, not Tennessee. So of course you feel bad for them.

But what about Kiffin’s perspective? For a guy who went to school at Fresno State, USC is probably his dream job. It’s the only place he’s ever shown any allegiance toward. His six years as an assistant there is the only prolonged job he’s ever had. It’s a program he knows inside and out which means he’ll have very little trouble adjusting and he’ll provide continuity for the current roster.

That and it’s a better job. It’s being the face of the elite team in the PAC 10 every single year versus the third or fourth best team in the SEC. Recruiting is easier at USC than it is at Tennessee which makes Kiffin far more likely to win a national championship in his new job. You also can’t dismiss the star factor either. Pete Carroll was probably the most recognized sports figure in Los Angeles not named Kobe Bryant. If Kiffin can win, he’ll be a major celebrity even for Hollywood.

Whenever a controversy in sports pops up, we tend to philosophize over it and compare it to our own lives. If you could take an illegal pill or injection and it would make me infinitely better at your job, would you do it? If I were blogging’s version of Tiger Woods, would I be able to remain faithful or would I be a walking tabloid?

Those are much more difficult questions than the one we have to ask ourselves in regards to Lane Kiffin’s situation.

If a significantly better job in a bigger city for more money was offered to you, would you take it?

Or perhaps more appropriate, why wouldn’t you take it?

Yes, part of me wants to believe Kiffin is just as much of a con man as Carroll, John Calipari, Nick Saban, Bobby Petrino and every other scummy coach who goes into a recruit’s house and makes a vow that he’ll be around for the entire four years and then runs off at the first sign of trouble or a better job. But at the same time, my ambitious side says you should never be content with your current position and always be striving for something bigger and better.

USC is Kiffin’s bigger and better.

So maybe the real question is, how can we fault him?