The Anti-Fan

Follow the money?

2011-12-05T14:48:00.005-07:00

Recommended reading: Sarah Ryley's story in The Daily about business ties involving former Penn State coach Joe Paterno and board members of The Second Mile that may have played a role in the decision to not call the police about the alleged sexual crimes of Second Mile founder Jerry Sandusky, Paterno's former defensive coordinator.

http://www.thedaily.com/page/2011/12/05/120511-news-paterno-business-1-5/

Let the parade of excuses begin

2011-11-15T09:08:00.002-07:00

So.

It was all a misunderstanding.

It was just horseplay.

Jerry Sandusky is innocent of those 40 charges of child sex abuse.

He just shouldn’t have showered with those kids, he said. Gave the wrong impression.

Right.

Meanwhile, of course, eight people have come forward to charge Sandusky with the sexual abuse, and another 10 suspected victims reportedly have gone to police.

Whatever little sympathy I had for Sandusky — and it was damned little — just vanished.

Bye-bye, Hank

2011-10-06T23:57:00.001-06:00

Am I OK with Hank Williams Jr. losing his Monday Night Football gig for using an analogy between President Obama and Hitler?

Sure.

In fact, I propose a general rule:

Anytime anyone compares anything or anyone to Hitler and/or the Nazis, he or she loses their job immediately.

Not for lack of taste — though that could be sufficient grounds, too — but for lack of brains and for laziness.

The Hitler/Nazi analogy — whether coming from Hank Williams Jr., or Congressman Steve Cohen or anybody else — is meant as an argument clincher. All it indicates is that the person is incapable of making an intelligent case for his/her position.

It’s meant to be a show-stopper; instead, it’s a think-stopper.

Of course, it’s nothing new: Academic ethicist Leo Strauss coined the term Reduction ad Hitlerum, a play on reductio ad absurdum, when?

1953.

Bye-bye, Brett (I wish)

2011-10-06T23:55:00.001-06:00

Brett. Brett. Brett.

He can’t help himself. I know. Still, it’s unseemly for Brett Favre to be damning his Green Bay successor with faint praise.

In case you missed it, Favre said he wasn't surprised Aaron Rodgers won this year’s Super Bowl, adding “the biggest surprise to me would be that he didn't do it sooner” and that Rodgers “just kind of fell into a good situation.”

Of course, Brett, one of the reasons Rodgers didn’t “do it sooner” was that you wouldn’t leave the stage.

On the other hand, now that I consider it, Rodgers won a Super Bowl in his third year as a starter. You, Brett, won a Super Bowl in your fifth year as a starter.

Rodgers being Rodgers, he deftly deflected Favre’s implied criticism.

“I'm just going to say that I was really proud of our team," Rodgers said. "It takes 53 guys to win a championship and we had the right recipe last year and we're trying to do the same thing this season.”

Ultimately, Rodgers may have more success than Favre. Or me may not. But the question of who has more class is already decided.

Friday column: Tragedy doesn’t always have the last word

2011-10-06T10:23:00.015-06:00

In the last few days I’ve been thinking about healing.

The thoughts began with seeing photos of 6-year-old Cooper Stone visiting Rangers Ballpark in Arlington, Texas, where his father fell to his death July 7.

You remember: Cooper had watched as his father, Shannon, reached for a ball thrown into the stands by Cooper’s favorite player, Josh Hamilton, only to lose his balance and fall to concrete 20 feet below.

Shannon kept consciousness long enough to ask people to look out for his son; then he died.

Less than three months later, Cooper returned to the park to throw out the ceremonial first pitch before Texas’ playoff opener with Tampa Bay. He threw it, of course, to Hamilton.

Hamilton grappled with what to say to Cooper and his mother, Jenny, but the right words came — providentially.

“I’m not good with speeches,” Hamilton said. “Not good with knowing what I’m going to say before. Because I rehearse it too much and it don’t sound genuine.

“So I just kind of let it happen. It worked out good. … You could tell she was really emotional about coming back to the park,” Hamilton said about Jenny.

“The little one, he’s young enough where he understands but at the same time it’s not as emotional for him as it is mom.”

One has the feeling that Jenny went through the experience of visiting the place her husband died for Cooper’s sake.

“They have turned a difficult return to The Ballpark into a once-in-a-lifetime experience for Cooper,” she said in a statement. “Nothing could be more exciting for a boy than throwing out the first pitch to his favourite player.”

Healing is a process, a journey — often a long one — but from the look on Cooper’s face in The Associated Press photos of the day, it appears that at least that journey has begun.

To see the photos, go over to Newser.com, find the sports category (under “more”) and scroll down to the story. It’s worth your time.

And it’s worth your time to find a recent Religion News Service story about Terri Roberts.

If the name doesn’t ring a bell, try that of Charlie Roberts, her son.

If that doesn’t do it, try 10 Amish schoolgirls shot in Nickel Mines, Pa., in 2006.

Charlie was the shooter.

Three girls died at the scene, two more died the next day. Five were seriously injured. After shooting the girls, Charlie killed himself.

In a suicide note, the 32-year-old said he was angry at God for the miscarriage of his first child.

I bet you remember this: The response of the Amish community was exemplary, amazing, gracious — pick your adjective.

A grandfather of a murdered girl told his pastor, “We must not think evil of this man.”

Within hours of the tragedy, an Amish neighbor went to the home of Charlie’s parents to comfort Terri and her husband, Chuck. Dozens of Amish neighbors attended Charlie’s funeral.

The Religion News Service story tells of the Robertses’ response to that kindness.

Three months after the shooting, Charlie’s parents began visiting the victims and their families, and Terri started inviting the surviving girls and their mothers to picnics and tea parties at her home.

Think of that.

And they came. Think of that.

Then Terri found the nerve, the heart, the — pick your adjective — to begin visiting Rosanna King, the most damaged of the survivors of her son’s rampage.

Terri, the story says, bathes and talks to the paralyzed girl weekly, brushes her hair and sings hymns.

The story continues: “After the first few visits, Terri cried all the way home. ‘Lord, I can’t do this,’ she said. But she went back the next week, and the next.”

Pain — off-the-chart pain — all the way around.

I’m not naïve enough to think that emotional healing, let alone the beginning of emotional healing, takes away all pain. But with so many things, people, situations today appearing beyond healing, I find it healing to simply see it in progress.

Contact Jim Gordon at gjames43@msn.com.

Friday column: New York’s Reyes loses by the way he won

2011-10-06T10:23:00.010-06:00

Ted Williams was a difficult character. Prideful and touchy.

Prickly, you could say.

This attitude — some of which probably stemmed from a childhood that was less than nurturing — resulted in a fractious relationship with reporters and columnists, whom he sneeringly referred to as “knights of the keyboard.”

That, in turn, cost him some major awards voted on by said “knights,” who questioned Williams’ commitment to the defensive side of the game and his commitment to team.

But no one — not even his press box prosecutors — questioned Williams’ courage, not after his service as a naval aviator in World War II and Korea.

Williams showed his guts on the baseball field, too, most notably on Sept. 28, 1941.

Williams entered the day with a batting average of .3996. As that would be rounded out to .400 and make Williams the first hitter to achieve that lofty mark since 1924, manager Joe Cronin suggested his left fielder sit out the season’s final day, a doubleheader against the Philadelphia Athletics.

“Teddy Ballgame” back into a .400 average? Not bloody likely.

“If I can’t hit .400 all the way,” Williams said, “I don’t deserve it.”

Williams played — both games — going 6-for-8 to finish at .406.
Fast forward precisely 70 years.

Going into the last day of the regular season, Mets shortstop Jose Reyes isn’t flirting with .400, but he does have a very slight lead over Ryan Braun in the National League batting race.

So he conceives a stratagem: Get a hit in his first at-bat, then leave the game for a pinch runner. That way, Braun will have to go 3-for-3 or 3-for-4 to beat him for the Silver Bat.

Reyes gets manager Terry Collins’ approval and executes his plan perfectly, dumping a bunt single down the third-base line in the first inning, then heading for the dugout — and infamy.

The first indication of the response Reyes would get came in the form of boos from his own fans, many of whom came to the game — meaningless in terms of the standings — to see the star shortstop play.

Reyes’ reaction to the hubbub was predictable for a professional athlete who’s just used very poor judgment: The fans have to understand the situation, he said, and, in any case, he “doesn’t care what anyone says.”

Which is good to know. That being the case, let me say the following: Reyes’ move was nothing short of gutless, and one that he will come to regret.

Furthermore, the move by necessity involved his manager’s cooperation, and now Collins, too, is tainted.

Yes, Collins could have told his 28-year-old star to man up, could even have told the story of Williams and .406, but it is a rare skipper who would question the cojones of a soon-to-be free agent whom he hopes will re-sign with his team.

It is said that comparisons are invidious; perhaps, but they certainly are inevitable. Reyes and Williams’ names are now inextricably linked.

Reyes will get his Silver Bat, but it will come with an asterisk. In baseball’s record book, the keystroke will be invisible — but perfectly readable all the same.

Contact Jim Gordon at gjames43@msn.com. The Anti-Fan will be moving to Sundays in November.

Shrug this

2011-09-22T21:58:00.008-06:00

So.

Manny Ramirez wants to play winter ball in the Dominican Republic. And why?

The president of the Cibao Eagles said the steroid cheat wants to “play before the Dominican fans and to perhaps motivate other Major League stars to also play in the country.”

Yes, always thinking of others — that’s our Manny.

Unfortunately, being a steroid cheat, Manny still owes Major League Baseball a 50-game suspension. And now Manny’s ready to serve it, if only some big-league team will sign him.

“It would be really sad if I'm not allowed to play.” Manny said Wednesday.

Sad? It would be tragic.

Especially since Manny apparently needs to get out of town — thanks to a domestic-violence beef he’s facing.

His wife told police he slapped her. Manny says he just “shrugged her” and she hit her head on a headboard.

I have a feeling every team in Major League Baseball is going to “shrug” him.

Friday column: Conferences and money, money and conferences

2011-09-22T21:58:00.007-06:00

So.

An audit shows the Department of Justice overspent just a smidge on food at conferences.

Like $16 per muffin overspend. Like $5 per meatball overspend.

Well, lawyers gotta eat, right?

The department’s inspector general reviewed 10 conferences held between October 2007 and September 2009. The conclusion:

“Some conferences featured costly meals, refreshments, and themed breaks that we believe were indicative of wasteful or extravagant spending.”

Like beef Wellington appetizers at $7.32 a pop. Speaking of pop, a “themed break” of popcorn, Cracker Jack and candy bars cost — you’re sitting down, yes? — 32 bucks a shot.

Surprised? Of course not. That’s what happens when people (in this case, bureaucrats) spend money that’s not theirs (in this case, ours).

But I don’t want to talk about money. I want to talk about college football.

No, about money.

No, about college football.

Wait? What am I thinking? Talking about college football is talking about money.

The 68 teams that comprise the six largest conferences made $1.1 billion in 2010, and many schools are looking to make more, mainly by establishing so-called mega-conferences.

Conferences are breaking up and re-forming, not unlike amoebas.

As you’ll recall from your high-school biology days, “the amoeba moves by continually changing its body shape, forming extensions called pseudopods [false feet] into which its body then flows. The pseudopods also are used to surround and capture food — mainly bacteria, algae, and other protozoa.” (Thank you, encyclopedia.com.)

But whereas amoebas move to capture food, football schools move to capture money, television money. Thus:

Nebraska to the Big 10, Colorado and Utah to the Pac-10, Boise State, Fresno State and Nevada to the Mountain West, Texas A&M to the SEC, Pittsburgh and Syracuse to the ACC, etc., etc. Texas and Oklahoma also may leave the Big 12 and, despite recent pronouncements to the contrary, perhaps to the Pac-whatever-integer-it-is-now.

That would be something: Texas in the same conference with Oregon, which is over 2,000 miles away. On the other hand, if Texas Christian can play in the Big East — which it will beginning next season — why not?

The losers in all this are the smaller football schools — the Kansas States and Iowas of the world, say — and fans who care about traditional rivalries, many of which date back to the early part of last century. (The rivalries, I mean … though some of the fans do, too.)

But while rivalries and tradition and, of course, concern over increased travel time for the student-athletes, surely count for something, that something can’t begin to compete with the lure of increased dollars.

Syracuse basketball coach Jim Boeheim put it this way:

“If conference commissioners were the founding fathers of this country, we would have Guatemala, Uruguay and Argentina in the United States,” he said during a speech to the Monday Morning Quarterback Club in Birmingham, Ala. “This audience knows why we are doing this. There’s two reasons: money and football.”

He’s right, of course, but also wrong. College football and money are the same thing.

Contact Jim Gordon at gjames43@msn.com.

The Anti-Fan will be moving to Sundays in November.

Instant perspective

2011-09-21T12:32:00.009-06:00

Recommended reading (highly): Paul Daugherty's piece on a high school golfer named Ryan Korengel.

Here's the lead:

"In a persistent and healing rain, the 15-year-old golfer summons sunshine. He limps a little; he is legally blind. He plays one-handed, because the tree limb that fell three years ago crushed his skull and paralyzed his left side. It hasn’t affected his game much, though, or his spirit at all."

Later in the story, asked why he isn't depressed, Ryan answers,
“I can still go to school,” says Ryan. “I’m alive. I can play golf.”

The story's worth a read:

http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20110912/COL03/309120122/Doc-one-arm-nearly-blind-golfer-succeeds

Friday column: Money has nothing to do with it

2011-09-21T12:28:00.002-06:00

Plaxico Burress doesn’t like New York Giants coach Tom Coughlin, which he made clear in a recent interview for Men’s Journal.

Burress discussed Coughlin’s reaction to the wide receiver accidentally shooting himself in a nightclub — a gun-law violation for which he would spend 20 months in prison.
“After my situation happened,” Burress said, “I turned on the TV and the first words out [Coughlin’s] mouth was ‘sad and disappointing.’

“I’m like, forget support — how about some concern? I did just have a bullet in my leg. And then I sat in his office, and he pushed back his chair and goes, “I’m glad you didn’t kill anybody!’ Man, we’re paid too much to be treated like kids. He doesn’t realize that we’re grown men and actually have kids of our own.”

As a Pittsburgh Steeler, this grown man was fined for not bothering to show up for practice. As a New York Giant, he sulked and reportedly feigned injury when unhappy with his contract and was suspended and fined for violating team rules.

This grown man twice has had temporary restraining orders issued against him after domestic disturbances. This grown man has been sued nine times since joining the NFL in 2000, including by a woman who claims Burress’ $140,000 Mercedes Benz hit the back of her car, causing her permanent injury. The accident occurred three days after the millionaire athlete’s insurance had been canceled for nonpayment of premium.

Burress is 34.

* * *

Kurt Busch doesn’t like the truth, an attitude he displayed in a couple of ways Saturday after a NASCAR race in which he tangled with Jimmie Johnson — again.

Joe Menzer’s mild questioning of Busch about his contentious relationship with Johnson resulted in the driver yelling expletives at Menzer and calling him names. Reportedly, Busch had to be physically restrained from going after the NASCAR.com reporter.

Later, Jenna Fryer of The Associated Press asked Busch a question about the driver claiming to be “in Johnson’s head” only to be cut off with “I didn’t say that.”

Shown the transcript, Busch grabbed it from Fryer and tore it up and threw it down.

Busch has a history of run-ins with other drivers and is no stranger to poor decisions — witness his 2005 arrest on charges of drunken driving and reckless driving.

Busch is 33.

* * *

The Williamses — Serena in particular — do not like facing up to facts.

Type in Serena’s name followed by the word “blame” and you’ll find “Williams blamed a headache,” “Williams blamed the tennis balls,” “Williams blames not tying her shoelaces right” and so on.

On Sunday, her mother, Oracene, took up Serena’s cause after her loss to Samantha Stosur in the finals of the U.S. Open, a loss low-lighted by Williams’ invective against the chair umpire that included the following:

“Aren’t you the one who screwed me over last time here? Do you have it out for me?

“You’re out of control.”

“You’re a hater, and you’re just unattractive inside.”

In 10 days Serena will be 30.

Serena, of course, also blew up in a 2009 U.S. Open semifinal when called for a foot fault against Kim Clijsters, her profanity-laced tirade at a line judge leading to a $10,000 fine from the U.S. Tennis Association and a record $82,500 fine from Grand Slam committee director Bill Babcock.

Oracene seemed to encapsulate the family attitude Sunday when she told reporters, “It’s just always something. And it seems to happen to us.”

Seems to happen to us.

It doesn’t happen to the Williams sisters; they create it. The same way they created their rise from the municipal courts of Compton, Calif., to centre court at Wimbledon.

That was their doing. Serena has won eight Grand Slam singles titles and is arguably the greatest female player in history. That’s her doing.

She’s also arguably the most boorish female player in history; that’s also her doing.

“Man,” Plaxico Burress complained, “we’re paid too much to be treated like kids.”

Really?

Friday column: The girl’s all right; the toddler, too

2011-09-08T22:41:00.004-06:00

I think Michelle Wie had too much too soon.

Too much ability; too much publicity; certainly too much parental involvement in her golf career.

Now, according to Annika Sorenstam, she doesn’t have enough — enough interest in her sport.

“I think her focus, in my opinion, should be more on golf,” the retired champion said. “She’s very distracted with school, doesn’t really play as much full time as I thought she would. I think she needs to come out here and compete more regularly.”

Wie’s reply was spot-on.

“I think everyone’s entitled to their own opinion,” Wie said. “I’m making my own decisions, though, and going to Stanford was something I needed to do for myself. It was not a decision made for my golf career, it was really solely a decision I made. It’s been one of the first things in my life I did for myself.”

In other words, it wasn’t a golf career decision, Annika; it was a life decision.

“Growing up in the spotlight, playing tournaments when I was 12, I grew up a lot faster than maybe I had to,” Wie said. “Going to college helped me be a normal 18-year-old and that was something I needed. I could keep training, but I needed something more to help me be well-rounded.

“I dreamed all my life about going to Stanford. My grandpa was a visiting professor; both my aunt and uncle went to Stanford. My dad, he didn’t get into Stanford so that was kind of a competitive thing for me. I’ve been obsessing about going there since I was 4. It was never an option for me to not go to school.”

There were times I wondered about Wie; now I rather have the feeling that she’ll be OK — and she’ll probably win a few golf tournaments, too.

* * *

As a rule, I don’t root for teams, but I’ll make an exception for Western Missouri this season after two of its football players saved a toddler from death.

Following their Aug. 23 practice, on a day when temperatures hit 95 in St. Joseph, Mo., defensive backs Jack Long and Shane Simpson were driving away when they saw a woman desperately beating on the window of a car.

They could have kept driving — someone else’s problem, you know?

They didn’t.

“We thought she maybe had locked her keys in the car, but then thought that was kind of an extreme thing to do for keys,” said Long.

Well, Teresa Gall had locked her keys in the car — along with her 17-month-old grandson, Liam. The child, after crying and vomiting, now was beginning to lose consciousness.

“I was panicked and horrified,” Gall said. “He was crying and getting sick, and I couldn’t get to him.”

Gall couldn’t break the car window. No such problem for Simpson — one swing.

“I couldn’t believe it. We were hitting the glass as hard as we could and nothing,” Gall said. “All I could think was ‘God, please send somebody.’ ”

Prayer answered. Child saved.

The players refused any money for the rescue, appropriately enough (how much is your grandchild worth?)

In any case, Go Griffons.

Contact Jim Gordon at gjames43@msn.com.

Friday column: Not sure I’d cash these assertions

2011-09-08T22:38:00.004-06:00

Former NBA player Javaris Crittenton, best known for playing quick-draw (with real weapons) with then-teammate Gilbert Arenas in a gambling dispute, has a new claim to fame — murder suspect.

Police say Crittenton, who was robbed of some bling in April, thought he saw the perp walking down an Atlanta street. So, allegedly, he did what any of us would do — whip out a gun and fire from his SUV in the perp’s general direction.

Unfortunately, the specific direction turned out to be the leg of Jullian Jones, a 22-year mother of four standing outside her house. She died in surgery.

On the lam for a few days, Crittenton has now turned himself in, professing innocence. I’m sure you can take his avowal to the bank.

Of course, if you took his denial of the 2009 locker-room showdown with Arenas to the bank, you found his veracity lacked sufficient funds.

Both of Crittenton’s gun incidents (one proven, one alleged) seem beyond stupid. Yet Crittenton is not a stupid man, evidenced by his a 3.5 high school GPA. The explanation for his latest screw-up, if true, may lie not in his head, but in his heart.

Asked about his former teammate after Crittenton was put on probation and suspended for a year for the locker-room gun incident, Arenas said he had heard Crittenton had become “more hard.” More hard as in “more gansta.”

“You know, like some people turn over a new leaf when something bad like that changes their life,” Arenas said. “I heard Javaris went the other way — he became more ’hood, more hardened in that way. I don’t know if that’s the case, but that’s what I heard.”

If Crittenton is convicted and imprisoned, he’ll get all the gansta he can handle.

* * *

A fondness not for gangsta life but for John Barleycorn seems behind another incident, less damaging but still repugnant, in which a number of LSU football players were involved in a bar fight that sent four people to the hospital.

One of the victims has a facial fracture, a concussion, fractured teeth and facial and body bruises. The fractured teeth might have come courtesy of LSU starting quarterback Jordan Jefferson, whom a witness recalls seeing kicking the man in the head.

After being hit with felony charges of second-degree battery, Jefferson (along with linebacker Josh Johns) was suspended indefinitely, a miscarriage of justice that his attorney seeks to repair by asking LSU head coach Les Miles to reverse his decision.

“It is more than unjust to destroy this young man’s career if it’s all about a bunch of nothing, which is what I think,” defense attorney Lewis Unglesby said Monday.

Actually a true translation of Unglesby’s last phrase from lawyer into English would read, “which is what I am paid to think, or at least am paid to say I think.”

Not that I for a minute would question the attorney’s sincerity or his opinion of the young man in question.

I’m quite sure you can take them both to the bank.

Friday column: Changes likely? Not with cash on the table

2011-08-25T23:59:00.001-06:00

There are real divisions in our society and in the world, and then there are made-up divisions that sometimes can match the real divisions in terms of passion.

Team sports are made-up divisions.

My team vs. your team; my city vs. your city; my school vs. your school; my colors vs. your colors.

Made-up. Silly. Infantile.

So why do made-up divisions exist? Two reasons:
1) In the form of athletic competition, such divisions often prove entertaining.

2) From such divisions there is money is to be made.
One of the ways it is made is the selling of alcohol at sporting events.

Big business.

And big trouble.

A 1999 study by the Harvard School of Public Health College concluded that 53 percent of sports fans usually binge when they drink.

Fueled by booze, fan behavior is often coarse and can turn criminal — witness Saturday’s shooting at Candlestick Park, reportedly sparked by a combination of alcohol and someone’s decision to wear a shirt that said “[Bleep] the 49ers.” Yes, the reported shooter was wearing a Raiders jersey.

Another man also was shot, and in an unrelated incident, a third man was savagely beaten in a bathroom.

Ironically, the victims were taken to the same hospital where Giants fan Bryan Stow tries to recover from a beating on opening day at Dodger Stadium, another incident apparently fueled by booze and someone’s dislike of the logo on someone else’s shirt.

Hey, take me out to the ball game!

On second thought, don’t.

I’ve played sports most of my life, and have had many wonderful moments watching sports. I am not against competition.

I am against the loss of perspective that leads to the poisoning of 130-year-old trees at Auburn, that leads to a beating in L.A., shootings in San Francisco and more fan thuggary than pro sports would like to admit.

I am against the loss of perspective that leads to universities selling their integrity for TV money and booster donations (hello, Miami and Nevin Shapiro).

Yes, I know, schools peddle their virtue for more than dollars — they do it also for the reflected glory of “their” team scoring more points than someone else’s team on a given day.

Pathetic, really.

But as in so many things, the bottom line is the bottom line.

While fans find made-up divisions entertaining, pro teams find them profitable — and more profitable with alcohol sales and alcohol sponsorship. Universities — many of which, incidentally, also sell booze in their stadiums and arenas — find that a winning football team can do more for student recruiting and for attracting alumni dollars than a lineup of top professors.

All of which means …

Despite all the hand-wringing about the corruption in Miami and the violence in L.A. and San Francisco, expect college corruption and fan violence both to continue.

Why?

Too much money to be made. And that’s not made up.

Contact Jim Gordon at gjames43@msn.com.

Somebody tell poor Al (OK, I will)

2011-08-18T10:17:00.005-06:00

You have to feel for Al Golden.

He's the man took the Miami football coaching job without knowing about the bubbling NCAA investigation into truly mind-boggling allegations of corruption.

Before he took the reins of a program that might be line for the NCAA "death penalty," Golden sort of wishes he'd been told about the probe.

"Only if they knew," Golden said, being much more charitable than I think he'll be down the road. "If they knew this was percolating, I believe they did have a responsibility to tell me."

Trying to make lemonade out of lemons, he added, "But look, I'm happy here. My wife is happy here. We've got great kids on this team. We have commitments from 24 young men and their families that appreciate and share our core values moving forward."

Hate to break it to you, Al: You HAD commitments from 24 young men and their families. With the U looking to be on probation till, quite possibly, Kingdom Come, you can kiss those commitments goodbye.

A nugget from Andrew

2011-08-18T10:11:00.008-06:00

After a while, you get a nose for these things.

So, as soon as I saw the deck head on the Los Angeles Times interview with Andrew Bynum, I sensed there would be gold in them thar words.

The 7-footer Lakers center last made news on the court when he viciously slammed his forearm into Lilliputian Mavericks guard J.J. Barea in Game 4 of Dallas’ sweep.

He last made news off the court by parking his BMW in two — count them, two — handicapped parking spaces at a Bristol Farms Market in Playa del Rey, then fleeing from a TV reporter wanting to ask him about it.

So when I saw a story with the headline “Andrew Bynum says Lakers 'need to come back ... ready to win' ” and with a deck that included, “He won't discuss disabled-parking reports,” it was time to go prospecting.

Didn’t take me long to find what I was looking for.

There, in the answer to a reporter’s first question, are the words, “It's about being accountable. Me included.”

Three questions later Bynum is asked, “What happened in that parking incident at the grocery store?”

And his answer: “I'm not talking about that.”

Beautiful.

Friday column: College corruption has a new face

2011-08-18T10:09:00.005-06:00

So.

Nevin Shapiro, in prison for a 20-year stretch for devising a $930 million Ponzi scheme, tells Yahoo! Sports he provided “impermissible benefits” to 72 of the university’s football players and other “student-athletes” between 2002 and 2010.

Impermissible benefits? How would you define those, Nevin?

Well, according to The Associated Press’ account, Shapiro told Yahoo that he gave players “money, cars, yacht trips, jewelry, televisions and other gifts … Shapiro also claimed he paid for nightclub outings, sex parties, restaurant meals and in one case, an abortion for a woman impregnated by a player.”

Cash, sex parties, an abortion. Yes, I guess those qualify as impermissible. Talk about your full-service booster. Shapiro puts all previous D-I sugar daddies to shame.

Shapiro, all 5-foot-5 of him, apparently liked basking in the reflected glory of strapping 19-year-old athletes while they, feigning friendship, liked basking in the bling and the babes. But when Shapiro was sent to the big house, Hurricanes past and present suddenly developed memory issues.

Nevin who?

This rather specific form of amnesia led to the well-researched and well-documented Yahoo story, with Shapiro starring as The Informer.

Hell hath no fury like a jock sniffer scorned.

“I can tell you what I think is going to happen,” Shapiro told Miami television station WFOR from federal prison in Atlanta. “Death penalty.”

“Death penalty” is slang for the NCAA banning a school from competing in a sport for at least a year. The death penalty has been given only five times in the history of college sports; programs do not recover from it easily or quickly.

And Shapiro might be right.

The NCAA on Wednesday said it has been probing Shapiro’s reputed malefactions for five months and that, if true, the allegations demonstrate the need for “serious and fundamental change” in college sports.

You think?

The Yahoo story is worth going to not only for the blow-by-blow account of Miami’s utter corruption but for the photos than help illustrate it.

There’s Shapiro in a 2003 shot, one arm around Hurricane star tight end Kellen Winslow Jr., the other holding a large bottle of … well, it doesn’t look like lemonade, in Shapiro’s VIP section of Opium Garden nightclub.

There’s Shapiro on his yacht playing best friends forever with linebacker Jonathan Vilma and lineman William Joseph.

There’s Shapiro leaning into the frame of a 2008 photo with then-basketball head coach Frank Haith, one of seven Miami coaches Shapiro says were well acquainted with his illicit activities.

But the best photo of all is a snap taken during a 2008 basketball fundraiser.

Shapiro, fairly glowing with self-esteem, is speaking into a hand-held mic. On his right, a smiling Haith rests his hand on Shapiro’s shoulder. On Shapiro’s left is university President Donna Shalala, looking like a kid at Christmas who’s just been given a shiny, red bicycle.

She’s gleefully staring at a $50,000 check from Shapiro as though it can’t be real.
Guess what, Donna? In a way — since it reportedly came from Ponzi scheme funds — it wasn’t.

But the NCAA investigation, Donna, and the possibility of the death penalty — along with the likelihood of your suddenly developing a pressing need to spend more time with your family — are very real, indeed.

College corruption has a new face, one that will be hard to top.

Go, Canes.

Contact Jim Gordon at gjames43@msn.com.

For old times' sake

2011-08-11T08:58:00.006-06:00

Ah, teamwork

It’s nice, isn’t it, when football opponents can put away their differences and work together on a common cause.

Robbery, say.

Colorado’s Bryce Givens and Syracuse’s Jonathan Miller, former high school teammates, got together in Boulder to reminisce, catch up on old times, and reportedly commit a crime.

The victim told police he was confronted by two men at 3:30 a.m. in Boulder. Miller allegedly hit the victim in the face before the pair grabbed the man’s cellphone and cash. Givens and Miller were later arrested.

Givens, smart child that he is, already was on thin ice in Boulder because of a vandalism arrest. Now he’s on no ice — having been booted from the Buffaloes’ program.

No word yet from Syracuse on what will happen to Miller.

NCAA for you on Line 2

2011-08-11T08:39:00.003-06:00

Uh-oh.

Just when you thought it was safe to bring out your scarlet and gray pom-poms …

When the NCAA said Ohio State wouldn’t be charged with lack of institutional control, the Buckeyes thought they were past the worst of Tressel-gate.

Now comes word that THE Ohio State has been informed that the NCAA is not through with OSU, and in fact is investigating other issues involving the football program.

Ohio State is yet to publicly disclose that fact, surprising considering how forthcoming the school was throughout the Tressel debacle …

Extenuating circumstances

2011-08-11T08:34:00.009-06:00

Sure, it looked bad when Texas safety Christian Scott was arrested and charged with misdemeanor assault with bodily injury.

And sure, the news that the alleged victim was a woman doesn't help his cause.

But it’s not nearly as bad as it looks.

Yes, as it turns out, the charges involve Scott pulling a woman out of a car and flinging her to the ground. But hey, it was a repo-woman, coming to take away his Caddy.

I mean, what’s a college senior suppose to do when someone comes to take away his ride?

So what if he was behind on payments? He’s a college football player — he shouldn’t have to make payments at all …

Friday column: High road not always that elevated

2011-08-11T08:34:00.007-06:00

It’s OK to stomp out of camp because you’re unhappy with your contract.

It’s not OK to dissemble about why you left and then throw a reporter under the bus because you haven’t got the stones to handle whatever criticism may come your way.

Cortland Finnegan, a top-tier cornerback, may have a beef over what he’s being paid — I don’t know. Pro football being the brutal spectacle it is, I don’t have a problem with players doing whatever they need to do to get top dollar.

But after walking out of Tennessee’s training camp last week, Finnegan, instead of manning up about the reason, took to Twitter to say:

“My absence had nothing to do with a holdout [but was a] personal matter that Titan officials were aware of.”

He then took after Tennessean beat writer Jim Wyatt, who had indicated Finnegan’s absence was caused, indeed, by cash considerations.

“Who and where did this all stem from,” Finnegan tweeted. “Let me guess a tweet and then Wyatt jumped to conclusions with no real story.”

What’s that old line? “Whenever someone says it’s not about the money, it’s about the money.”

To his credit, this week Finnegan admitted the obvious and apologized not only to his teammates and the organization but also to Wyatt.

That showed a little class.

Speaking of a little class — very little — we have Tiger Woods’ ex.

No, no, not ex-wife — ex-caddie, though Steve Williams, in fact, reacted to his recent firing like the proverbial woman scorned.

Williams not only publicly ripped Woods for the move, he brought up Woods’ embarrassing sex scandal, stressing how the caddie had stayed the course with the suddenly disgraced golfer.

“I’m not disappointed in the fact that I got fired,” Williams keened, “but I’m just disappointed in the timing of it, given the fact about how loyal I have been to him. And that loyalty obviously didn’t mean much to him.”

Williams, who in his days with Woods often resembled a braying donkey, was in rare form Sunday when his new employer, Adam Scott, won the World Golf Championships-Bridgestone Invitational.

In the post-tournament interview, Williams called Scott’s victory “the most satisfying win of my career,” used the word “I” more than two dozen times and rarely referred to Scott, the man who’d actually swung the clubs.

The next day, Williams allowed that he was “bit over the top.”

Right, and Monday’s Dow Jones average was a tad off.

Woods, in a Wednesday interview, was restrained, acknowledging that Williams had been intemperate, but saying, “Adam has been a friend of mine, and same with Stevie. I sent Stevie a nice text after completion … congratulating him on his win.”

Good for Woods for taking the high road, but then taking a higher road than Steve Williams is really not all that difficult to do.

Contact Jim Gordon at gjames43@msn.com.

Maybe there's a cream ...

2011-08-05T08:56:00.005-06:00

Recommended reading: Tracee Hamilton's Washington Post column on the latest trouble Alex Rodriguez has managed to get himself into — no, not steroids again, but high-stakes gambling, against which he'd been warned. Writes Hamilton: All baseball can do is suspend Rodriguez, "because let’s face it: They can’t make him smarter. If only someone could come up with an injection for that."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/redskins/alex-rodriguez-usually-bluffing-rarely-a-safe-bet/2011/08/04/gIQA2V0MuI_story.html

Oh, and a Red Ryder BB gun ...

2011-08-04T11:21:00.004-06:00

From the Washington Post:

Roger Clemens wants charges dropped, no new trial

"Attorneys for former All-Star pitcher Roger Clemens asked a federal judge in Washington to dismiss charges that the Major League baseball legend lied to Congress about using steroids and asked the court to prevent prosecutors from trying him again after his first trial ended in a mistrial this month."

I'm guessing Clemens would also like a personal apology for anyone who ever doubted him, a unanimous, first-ballot entry into the baseball Hall of Fame and milk and cookies for life.

Just asking

2011-08-04T11:18:00.004-06:00

They say, “set a thief to catch a thief?”

But do you set a coach with a drinking problem to rehabilitate a player with a drinking problem?

You do, if you’re South Carolina.

Tuesday, head coach Steve Spurrier reinstated quarterback Stephen Garcia, recently suspended for the fifth time in his Gamecock career. Most incidents have involved alcohol.

Watching over Garcia will be quarterbacks coach G.A. Magus.

If that name sounds familiar, it’s probably because of Magus’ recen
t arrest for allegedly urinating in the street outside a Greenville, S.C. bar.

According to the police report, Mangus was urinating on the curb and roadway. When officers questioned Mangus, he appeared "unsteady on his feet and he had a strong odor of alcoholic beverage coming from his person.”

The report said that Mangus’ eyes were dilated and glazed over, his speech was slurred and “he was uncooperative in proving straight answers.”

He was scheduled to appear in court Aug. 26. Like Garcia, Magus had been suspended. Like Garcia, on Tuesday, he was welcomed back to the fold.

“We insist that those in the athletics department who work with our student-athletes on a daily basis are held to a higher standard of conduct,” athletic director Eric Hyman.

Is not getting blasted and not urinating in public really considered a “higher standard” at South Carolina?

Friday column: Integrity questions? Heaven forbid ...

2011-08-04T11:14:00.004-06:00

It’s an unfortunate but illuminating choice of words.

“No one likes a cloud of accusations and questions about integrity,” new Pacific 12 commissioner Larry Scott said at the conference’s recent media day. “That’s not the Pac-12 brand.”

Use of brand, of course, suggests the word commodity — that, after all, is what you brand — which would refer not only to the competition college football sells but also to the people who do the competing, the players.

In college sports, branding and selling are what matters, in spite of the NCAA’s mission statement, which in part burbles that the organization’s purpose is to “integrate intercollegiate athletics into higher education so that the educational experience of the student-athlete is paramount.”

The educational experience of the student-athlete is not paramount in any of the NCAA’s member institutions. Winning (and making money) is. And to win, you need a superior commodity, which is why, it appears, the University of Oregon paid talent scout Willie Lyles $25,000 to deliver running back Lache Seastrunk — to whom Lyles had close ties — to Eugene.

Unfortunately for Oregon, paying for players is a rules violation, which is why once word of the transaction got out, the Ducks coaching staff quickly contacted Lyles, asking for some actual scouting material — player evaluations and game tape — that would justify the 25 large.

Again, unfortunately for the Ducks, what Lyles hurriedly put together included useless and outdated material that, once released, made Oregon coach Chip Kelly an object of ridicule — and investigation.

Which is why Kelly recently was peppered with questions about the scandal, questions he said he wasn’t at liberty to answer — much to his chagrin.

“I’d love to talk about it,” he said. “There are a lot of answers I’d love to make sure we get out there.”

Sure, Chip, you’d just love to answer questions about your apparent duplicity. Well, good news, my friend! The NCAA is coming to Eugene, and you’ll get all the opportunity to talk you could possibly want.

The NCAA is also heading to Baton Rouge, La., home of the LSU Tigers, who also paid money to Lyles for services not rendered.

Yes, there were “scouting reports” that came from Lyles. Unfortunately for head coach Les Miles, they were of the same caliber as those sent to Eugene — worthless.

Asked for specifics about the material, Herb Vincent, LSU senior associate athletic director, said, “I do not have this information and cannot provide this information at this time.”

But you’d love to provide it, wouldn’t you, Herb?

Cutting through the … uh, bunkum … it looks as though both Oregon and LSU paid Lyles to try to deliver players to their institutions of higher learning.

Which is why it’s particularly appropriate that the first big game of the first big Saturday of the season features none other than, yes, the Ducks and Tigers, on national TV.

Call it the Willie Lyles Bowl.

That would be proper branding.

Fair comment

2011-08-04T10:46:00.006-06:00

Now, I like Tim Tebow. From my perspective, in fact, what’s not to like?

But that doesn’t mean he shouldn’t be touched by honest criticism of his game.

LeBron James feels differently, tweeting of ESPN analyst Merril Hoge’s recent negative analysis of Tebow’s abilities:

“Listened to Merril Hoge today on SC and he was just blasting Tebow. The man hasn't even play a full season and its only his 2nd year in. Guys get on that TV and act like they was all WORLD when they played. How bout encouraging him and wishing him the best instead of hating!!"

Here’s what Hoge said on SportsCenter:

"(Tebow) is awful as far as accuracy goes and what's kind of even more disturbing, he's probably worse moving and running around with the football and throwing than he is from the pocket. Can you get better there? A little bit. If everything is perfect, the pocket, your feet are good, all your fundamentals come into place, the coverage is what you want it, you can be successful. But that doesn't happen at the National Football League. Rarely does that happen."

Newsflash for LeBron: As a fellow athlete, if you want to encourage Tebow, good for you. If a fan wants to encourage Tebow, good for him or her.
But encouragement isn’t Hoge’s job — analysis is.

Dept. of What the …?

2011-08-04T10:42:00.004-06:00

Darius Miles is an NBA bust, a high-schooler taken third in the in 2000 draft by the Clippers (need we say more?). In eight years he bounced around with four teams, averaging 10 points and 5 rebounds a game.

He had his moments of acting like a child, most notably during the 2004-05 season when he insulted Portland coach Mo Cheeks with a racial epithet (Cheeks and Miles are shown above), and in 2009 when he was arrested for possession of a small amount of marijuana and driving on a suspended license.

But it wasn’t until this week Miles, 29, did something truly stupid.
According to authorities, Miles tried to bring a firearm through security at Lambert-St. Louis International Airport.

A loaded firearm.

It was unclear if the weapon was found in his carry-on luggage or if Miles was carrying it on his person.

The St. Louis County prosecutor's office will review the case and decide whether charges will be filed.

I’m guessing the answer will be yes.

Friday column: A question of context Not really

2011-07-21T23:41:00.000-06:00

James Harrison wants us to know that context is important.

“I did make comments about my teammates when I was talking about the emotional Super Bowl loss,” the Steelers linebacker said in reference to a controversial Men’s Journal story. “But the handful of words that were used and heavily publicized yesterday were pulled out of a long conversation and the context was lost.”

Hmmm.

So, what context would make calling Rashard Mendenhall a “fumble machine” sound better, I wonder.

Or what frame of reference are we lacking to correctly assess Harrison’s words about his quarterback, Ben Roethlsberger: “Hey, at least throw a pick on their side of the field instead of asking the D to bail you out again. Or hand the ball off and stop trying to act like Peyton Manning. You ain’t that and you know it, man; you just get paid like he does.”

Then there’s the anti-gay slang word Harrison used to describe NFL boss Roger Goodell, whom he also called “a crook” and “the devil” and whom said he “hated.” There was worse, actually, but you get the picture.

Harrison teammate Lawrence Timmons doesn’t. According to Timmons, James is a really great guy who’s just … wait for it … that’s right — misunderstood.

The misunderstanding is all Harrison’s.

At 33, Harrison’s no child. If he lets resentment and ego open his mouth and says stupid things to a national publication, he should expect as much “understanding” as a receiver gets going across the middle of the Steelers defense.

* * *

Harrison teammate Rashard Mendenhall wants us to know the importance of free speech.
Free speech is why he’s suing the parent company of Champion, the sports apparel maker; the cool million he’s seeking in damages has nothing to do with it.

Mendenhall, you see, lost his endorsement gig with Champion after tweeting offensive nonsense about the killing of Osama bin Laden.

“For Rashard, this really is not about the money,” his lawyer said. “This is about whether he can express his opinion.”

Well, yes, Rashard, you can express an opinion, and so can Champion — by ending your employment.

* * *

North Korea wants us to know that sometimes things happen beyond our control.
Its loss to the U.S. in the Women’s World Cup, for instance, was the result of five of its players being struck by lighting at practice.

Really.

Oh, and so was the fact that several of its players tested positive for steroids. It has to do with musk deer and glands and traditional Chinese medicine but it all started with that darned lightning strike.

Lightning strike — the sort of thing usually referred to as an Act of God, a legal term for events outside of human control. But as North Korea imposes atheism on its people and doesn’t believe in God, I wonder how they …

Must be a contextual thing. Perhaps James Harrison can explain it.

Friday column: A touch of class breaks out in sport

2011-07-21T23:39:00.001-06:00

Abby Wambach first came to my attention three years ago.

In July 2008, Wambach broke her leg in the United States’ final tune-up match before the Beijing Olympics — a devastating blow to an elite athlete.

Yet, instead of bitching and moaning, the then-28-year-old soccer player was the epitome of class, turning the focus away from herself and onto her teammates.

“Yes, I know I’m a very important player for the team,” Wambach told the Los Angeles Times. “But (the injury) made me realize even more how insignificant one player is in a team environment. It really does take a team to win championships.”

Wambach could no longer play, but she still could contribute, and she did by encouraging Natasha Kai, Lauren Cheney and Amy Rodriguez — the three players called upon to replace her.

“So many more people are getting involved. And I’m excited to see how it all turns out,” she said.

As you might remember, it turned out rather well, the Americans taking home the gold medal.

And as for her personal loss, Wambach said, “I don’t feel sorry for myself. I’m not going to cry victim. I’m a moving part on this team. I do not encapsulate the whole. I am a part.”

Sunday in Germany, Wambach, working as part of her team — as always — took a pass from Megan Rapinoe and headed it into the net in the 122nd minute of the match.
The latest goal ever scored in a Women’s World Cup match tied the showdown with Brazil at 2, forcing a shootout, which the Americans won to stay alive in the tournament.
This Sunday, they play Japan for the championship.

To the surprise of no one, Wambach credited a teammate.

“Megan Rapinoe just put that ball on my head. Luckily I didn’t miss and the rest is history,” Wambach said. “It was a perfect ball.”

Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter shares Wambach’s propensity to deflect praise and preach team, but doing that Saturday proved impossible.

That’s because Jeter, needing two hits to become the first Yankee to reach the 3,000-hit plateau, went 5-for-5 with a stolen base and the game-winning RBI.

In the midst of a .257 season and talk that the 37-year-old veteran is no longer carrying his weight, Jeter responded with a magical performance that included a home run — his first of this season at Yankee Stadium — for hit No. 3,000.

Like Wambach, Jeter is an athlete who embodies effort and class. Players like that, regardless of the uniform they wear, are worth noting and emulating.

Christian Lopez apparently agrees.

Lopez, the 23-year-old fan who caught Jeter’s milestone home run ball, a man with $100,000 in student debt, didn’t even think about holding onto the ball to gain a big payday. He simply gave it to Jeter.

Why?

“Mr. Jeter deserved it,” Lopez said. “It’s all his.”

Mister Jeter. Ms. Wambach and, sure, for doing the right thing, let’s call him Mister Lopez.

If you’re a fan of class in sport, last week was a very good week, indeed.

Friday column: Roger Clemens beat rap? Fat chance

2011-07-21T23:35:00.000-06:00

Narrow-faced men: Rejoice — you are trustworthy and true.

Or more likely to be, anyway.

Fat-faced men: Rejoice, too.

Yes, you're more likely to lie than your slim-faced brethren but, on the other hand, you're probably more successful in business.

This according to a study reported in The Independent.

The British newspaper said that the study, which tested 192 business students to see how readily they were prepared to lie or cheat in order to gain an advantage, showed "that the width of a man's face relative to his facial height is an indicator of how powerful he feels and of his willingness to surreptitiously break social rules to achieve his goals."

Why? Well, according to the director of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee study, "Men with larger facial ratios feel more powerful, and this sense of power then leads them to act unethically."

Said The Independent: "The findings suggest that the width-to-height ratio of the face could be an ancient evolutionary signal of a man's aggressiveness when dealing with competitors."

Willingness to bend the rules and to lie might be a selective advantage in Darwinian terms, but it's got to have its drawbacks.

Witness the plight of one William Roger Clemens, whose aggressiveness on the mound helped propel him to 354 big-league wins over a 23-year career. If you believe Major League Baseball's Mitchell Report, many of those wins were also the result of Clemens' willingness to bend the rules when it came to using performance-enhancing drugs.

Was all this good for business? You bet — to the tune of $150 million in career earnings.

On the other hand, Clemens' aggressiveness and sense of power led him to inexplicably charge before Congress and make a number of bald statements — under oath — about never having used steroids or human growth hormone.

His performance was, to put it charitably, a little less than believable, and this week resulted in Clemens being put on trial for perjury.

To a large degree, Clemens' likelihood of becoming a guest of a federal institution depends on the believability of his main accuser, former trainer Brian McNamee, who presented prosecutors with syringes that connect Clemens' DNA with steroids and HGH.

Clemens has an explanation, and of course, it's just possible the pitcher could be telling the truth when he claims that McNamee doctored the syringes in order to blackmail him. We'll wait to see the evidence presented.

In the meantime, let's check the evidence we already can see, keeping the UWM study in mind: Look at Clemens' melon, and now McNamee's.

Hmmm ...

Is it too late for a plea deal?

Don't miss it

2011-07-16T09:32:00.004-06:00

Recommended reading: Today's article by the L.A. Times' David Zucchino on a Libyan, Salah Fatour, who cares for the graves of Allied soldiers who died in his country in World War II.

I repeat: Do not miss it.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-libya-military-cemetery-20110716,0,674939.story

Soul searching? We don’t need no stinking soul searching

2011-07-01T00:20:00.006-06:00

Well, give Ohio State trustee Jerry Jurgensen credit — he tried.

"We have a lot to look at in sort of the soul-searching of what is most important in the game of life," Jurgensen said in the wake of the football scandal that cost coach Jim Tressel his job and certainly will cost the school something in the way of NCAA penalties.

"The cracks here weren't really cracks of rules and procedures," he said. "They were cracks in a value system."

How well did that fly in Columbus? You may easily imagine.

"I don't think we have a lot of soul-searching to do, not at all," blurted board chairman and major donor Lex Wexner. "We have a lot of heart-celebrating to do for the good that this university does."

What a clown.

Speaking of clowns, OSU President and Main Bozo Gordon Gee quickly echoed the sentiment of Booster Boy:

"The university is moving forward,” he said, “and we feel very strongly about the fact that we have much to celebrate today."

A little Three Dog Night anyone?

Cel-e-brate … Cel-e-brate … dance to the sanct-ions

An agent lied? My nitrate! My nitrate!

2011-07-01T00:15:00.004-06:00

So.

When ESPN last month asked Terrell Owens’ agent, Drew Rosenhaus, if Owens had been injured, the answer was no.

Now word has leaked that the aging Owens — hoping to hoodwink some team into giving him one last, lucrative contract — had surgery to repair a torn anterior cruciate ligament in one of his knees after suffering an injury while taping a reality television show.

And now Rosenhaus is confirming Owens was, indeed, injured, and while he won’t say how it happened, he vigorously denies it was during the taping of a TV show.

And we should believe him … why?

Friday column: What’s in a name? Osama knew

2011-06-30T22:48:00.006-06:00

Before his recent departure into other realms, Osama bin Laden had thought that what his struggling terror corporation really needed was a good rebranding.

Al-Qaida al-Jihad — The Base of Holy War — was OK as far as it went; the problem was, it usually didn’t go that far. Lazy journalists with no respect for the difficulty of selecting a proper company moniker would stop with al-Qaida, so the godly rationale for wholesale slaughter of innocent people — The Base of Holy War — was entirely lost on an ignorant public.

Bin Laden had other problems, of course, not least the unhappy fact that most of al-Qaida’s victims were fellow Muslims.

As his company’s recent incendiary transactions have had much more success in Muslim lands than in the West, changing that reality would be most difficult.

Fortunately, there was a better option, one that any number of American CEOs could have recommended.

Just change the name.

When tobacco giant Philip Morris’ name became odious — also for killing people, incidentally — overnight the name became “Altria.” Philip Morris had come to be equated with lying and dying. But Altria not only is a meaningless, pleasant sound, it shares its first four letters with “altruistic.”

Good company. Nice company.

When Anderson Consulting was sadly linked with the corrupt accounting firm Arthur Anderson, from which it had spun off, it suddenly became “accenture.” Which also doesn’t mean anything but sure sounds swell.

So, bin Laden clearly would have been in good name-change company had he been able to pull the trigger, so to speak.

Alas, as SEAL Team Six beat him to it, we’ll never know if he would have gone with “Taifat al-Tawhed Wal-Jihad” (Monotheism and Jihad Group) or “Jama’at I’Adat al-Khilafat al-Rashida,” (Restoration of the Caliphate Group), two of the names he was brainstorming.

I would have suggested something like Beneficorp or Amiaco. In any case, I think it’s clear that the late “Sword of God” could have used a little marketing advice, no?

Now, admittedly, Dodgers owner Frank McCourt is not a terrorist, though I’m not sure you could convince most Los Angeles baseball fans of that. It is clear, however, that he, too, needs marketing help.

In seven years, he’s taken one of the premier names in all of sport and turned it into a laughingstock. After siphoning off at least $100 million from the team for his personal use and that of his equally profligate former spouse, McCourt’s credibility, like his team, is bankrupt.

The bad odor emanating from Chavez Ravine could take years to disperse, which means only one thing:

It’s time to rebrand.

In Brooklyn, before they became the Dodgers, the team was known as the Grooms, the Robins and the Superbas. McCourt could go back to one of those. Or, banking on popular player names from the past, he could call them the Koufaxes or the Robinsons.

But I’m afraid that wouldn’t do it either. Truth is, the only rebranding that will remove the stench attached to the name “Dodgers” is by changing two other words: those next to the word “owner.”

Contact Jim Gordon at gjames43@msn.com.

Friday column: Players who compete to the very end

2011-06-30T21:39:00.004-06:00

It may be my favorite Jackie Robinson story.

On Oct. 3, 1951, at 3:58 EST in New York’s Polo Grounds, Giants outfielder Bobby Thomson hit the most famous home run in baseball history.

His three-run, ninth-inning shot erased a 4-2 Brooklyn lead and gave the New York Giants the rubber game of their playoff series with the Dodgers and, with it, the National League pennant.

Well, it did — but not until Thomson had touched all the bases.

As the Giants celebrated wildly and their fans began to rush onto the field, the Dodgers hung their heads, then began trudging toward the visitors clubhouse.

All, that is, but one.

Robinson, the Dodgers second baseman, followed Thomson’s progress around the infield, making sure he hit every bag and home plate. Then, and only then, did Robinson leave the field.

The man who broke baseball’s color line was the ultimate competitor, and even if there was only one chance in a thousand, or ten thousand, of Thomson missing a base in all the excitement, Robinson was not going to stop competing until the game was over — officially.

If Robinson were alive today — he would be 92 — he would have smiled at hearing the story of one Cole Bryant, pitcher for the Newington High baseball team that this month reached the finals of the Connecticut state tournament.

In the bottom of the eighth (high schools play a regulation seven innings), the score 2-2, Bryant gave up a double down the left-field line to Southington’s Sal Romano. Matt Spruill, who had started the rally with a single, took off at the crack of the bat, hitting second, rounding third and heading home.

He easily beat the throw, and his Southington teammates rushed out of the dugout and began celebrating, for Spruill had just given the team its first state crown in 12 years.

Seemingly.

But like Robinson before him, instead of hanging his head, Bryant watched carefully as Spruill neared the plate; the key word is neared.

Distracted by onrushing teammates, Spruill missed home plate and never went back to touch it. Bryant called for his catcher, Tyler Barrett, to hold the ball, step on the plate and appeal the play.

He did and Spruill was ruled out. The game remained tied. Two innings later, Newington won it. Appropriately, it was Bryant who scored the winning run, making quite sure he touched home.

On the game, Bryant pitched all 10 innings, threw 176 pitches, allowing just six hits and fanning 16. For all that, the most impressive thing he did was keep his eyes open and not give up.

Praised his coach: “He’s got so much heart, he’s such a competitor.”

Bryant kept competing, even when the game appeared to be over.

Yes, Robinson would have smiled.

Contact Jim Gordon at gjames43@msn.com.

Tell us more ... oh, do!

2011-06-17T00:01:00.011-06:00

We do so love sports agents.

Folks like Drew Rosenhaus.

“Terrelle Pryor will be a great -- not a good quarterback -- a great quarterback in the National Football League,” Rosenhaus burbled this week. “He is going to be a star. This experience that he has gone through will galvanize him and make him a better person, a stronger person.”

The experience of helping cost his college coach his job? The experience of helping embarrass Ohio State and probably hamstringing the school’s football program for years?

Yes, yes, bound to galvanize him. Bound to.

Then there’s Rosenhaus' insistence that Pryor is a first-round draft pick, when most draft experts have him no higher than a fourth-rounder.

Reality check: Rosenhaus' newest client isn't going in the first round of the draft. And if he sticks in the NFL at all — no sure thing — it won't be as a quarterback.

Other than on those two things, Super Lips is dead on

Class and location

2011-06-16T23:07:00.003-06:00

So.

DeShawn Stevenson claims the Miami Heat lack class.

DeShawn Stevenson, the man with the $5 bill tattoed on his neck.

DeShawn Stevenson, who was arrested for public intoxication the other night.

According to ESPNDallas.com, police in Irving, Texas, were called to an apartment complex at 10:30 p.m. Tuesday night. Stevenson, who doesn’t live at the complex, reportedly had no idea where he was.

The Heat may or may not lack class, but I’m guessing that every one of them knows their current location.

Friday column: A player, and man, to remember

2011-06-16T22:10:00.006-06:00

I had forgotten Joe Delaney.

Then I learned that on Saturday the Kansas City Chiefs’ Leonard Pope saved a 6-year-old from drowning. Pope had jumped fully clothed — “cell phone, wallet and everything” — into a pool when he saw the boy go under.

“He saved my son’s life,” Anne Moore, the child’s mother, told a reporter.

“My heart dropped,” Pope, the father of two young girls, told ESPN. “It could have been any child … I just knew I had to do something. I wasn’t waiting on anyone else … to try to pull him out.”

The story I read mentioned another Chief who had made a similar decision 28 years earlier — to the month.

Like Pope, Delaney was a father of young girls. Unlike Pope, Delaney was an uncertain swimmer, at best. Yet when he saw three boys sink in a Louisiana pond with a sharp fall-off, he dove in anyway.

Delaney helped bring one boy to the surface and safety, then went after the other two. Neither they nor he came up alive.

Eleven days after Delaney’s July 4, 1983 funeral, his wife, Carolyn, and their three daughters were presented with his Presidential Citizens Medal.

“He made the ultimate sacrifice by placing the lives of three children above regard for his own safety,” wrote Ronald Reagan. “By the supreme example of courage and compassion, this brilliantly gifted young man left a spiritual legacy for his fellow Americans.”

Undersized as a youth, Delaney nonetheless dreamed of playing college football, and worked diligently to make it happen.

In college at tiny Northwestern State, a Division I-AA school, he dreamed of making the jump to the NFL, and worked diligently to make that happen.

Did he make it? Did he ever.

In his rookie year, Delaney, drafted as a “situation back,” set four team records and made the Pro Bowl, earning this encomium from future Hall of Fame defensive end Elvin Bethea:

“I’ve played against the best — O.J. Simpson, Gale Sayers, Walter Payton — and he ranks right up there with them. … He is great with a capital G.”

But there was more to the man than his football ability.

There was his humility, there was his ability to make friends with anyone he came across, there was his love of family, his love of kids. He spent summers following his first two pro seasons back in tiny Haughton, La., rounding up youngsters for pickup basketball and football games, then taking them out for ice cream.

A 2003 newspaper article about Delaney said that even at that early stage of his career, he was looking beyond his playing days to a time when he would become a counselor or teacher, “something working with kids.”

So his decision to risk his life for three youngsters he didn’t know didn’t come as a surprise to those who knew him, certainly not to his college coach, A.L. Williams.

At Delaney’s funeral — attended by 3,000 mourners packed into a broiling high school gym — Williams recalled getting a phone call from Les Miller, the Chiefs’ director of player personnel.

“He said, ‘I want to talk to you about one of your players.’ I thought something was wrong. But then he said. ‘I just wanted to tell you that Joe Delaney is the finest young man and the hardest worker we’ve ever had here.

“People ask me, ‘How could Joe have gone in that water the way he did?’ And I answer, ‘Why, he never gave it a second thought, because helping people was a conditioned reflex to Joe Delaney.’ ”

The line of cars from the gym to the cemetery stretched 2 miles. Not everyone got close enough to the headstone to read the words at its base: “Greater love hath no man than to lay down his life for another.”

I’m glad Leonard Pope saved that boy’s life Saturday — glad for the boy, glad for his family and glad for me.

For I had forgotten Joe Delaney.

Contact Jim Gordon at gjames43@msn.com.

You tell them, Coach ... I mean, Ex-Coach ...

2011-06-09T13:44:00.003-06:00

A group of fans — some 200 or so — recently trotted over to Jim Tressel’s house to confess their undying love to the no-longer-employed football coach.

There were cheers and signs in support. Pictures were taken. Hands were shaken.

And the man of the hour himself addressed the throng, pointing to Ohio State’s next game with Michigan and saying, "Don't forget: Nov. 27th we're going to kick their ass!"

Because of what Tressel’s players have done, apparently for years, and because of his turning a blind eye to the infractions and then lying about them, OSU’s program is in free-fall.

And all he can come up with is, “We’re going to kick their ass!”

Good for you, Jimbo, good for you. Actually, the school that’s really getting kicked in the rear is Ohio State.

Class acts

2011-06-09T09:08:00.005-06:00

I was going to write a nice column this week. Really.

A sweet uplifting paean to sportsmanship.

Then Anthony Weiner’s story imploded, I started thinking about Roscoe Conkling, the Thane of Cawdor, Folgers coffee crystals and all things instant, and well, goodbye sportsmanship.

But it’s still worth mentioning here.

Men's tennis has seen its share of bad boys: Ilie Nastase, John McEnroe, Jimmy Connors. et al. But its current crop of male stars — Rafael Nadal, Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic — is largely commendable.

In Sunday’s French Open final, Nadal conceded a point to Federer after a shot by the Swiss star was wrongly called out. Years ago, Federer gave Nadal a lift on his private jet to the next tournament after learning the Spaniard was having trouble finding a commercial flight. In his comments about Nadal and Federer, Djokovic has proven that he belongs with those two not only on court but off as well.

Nadal, Federer and Djokovic prove you can have a great rivalries, intense rivalries without those rivalries turning nasty.

GOOD for them.

We have your answer

2011-06-09T08:54:00.003-06:00

So.

Sepp Blatter, potentate of what appears to be the most corrupt organization in all of sport — no small honor — wants to form a "commission of the wise" to help clean up FIFA, the world soccer governing body.

And for members he wants Henry Kissinger, Johan Cruyff and Plácido Domingo.

But Domingo has a question — no, not why is an aging opera singer asked to help clean up soccer? Another question: What might the duties of a member of such a commission entail?

Two letters, Placido: PR.

Friday column: When it’s hot off the synapses, watch out

2011-06-09T08:45:00.007-06:00

This week — for some reason — I’ve been contemplating the drawbacks to all things instantaneous, and a line from Macbeth comes to mind. At one point in the play, having decided he’s been a tad too reflective, Macbeth says, “From this moment/The very firstlings of my heart shall be/The firstlings of my hand.”

In other words, “If I think it, I should do it — now!”

As I recall, that approach doesn’t work out all that well for the king.

Why?

Nothing “instant” is good.

Not instant oatmeal, not instant coffee, not instant mashed potatoes.

Not instant messaging. Not instant photos. Certainly not instant messaging combined with instant photos.

Take Anthony Weiner.

Actually, don’t take Weiner. Take another New York congressman, from another era, a politician with similar … urges, say.

Roscoe Conkling will do.

In 1860, Conkling, like Weiner, was a politician on the rise. Like Weiner, he was married but had a wandering eye. Now, imagine Roscoe getting a letter from a female admirer from Texas telling him that he was “hottt” (or the 19th-century equivalent).

Now imagine Roscoe entering the studio of Matthew Brady and asking the famed photographer to take a daguerreotype of him — as quickly as possible. A Pony Express rider is leaving for the Lone Star State in just a few hours.

“You’re in luck, Congressman. I just had a cancellation. Sit right down. Is this a head shot or full-body?”

“Actually, I’d like you to make an image of my … ”

“Yes … ”

“An image of … ”

“Yes?”

“Never mind.”

Even if Roscoe had somehow gotten his desired photo, he’d still have to package it, address it, and hand it to the Pony Express rider, having in each step a moment to reflect if really — deep down — he continued to think this was all such a good idea.

No such moments of possible reflection for Anthony Weiner. Snap, attach and send. Bim. Bam. Boom.

(Especially Boom.)

In the world of sis-boom-bah, any number of sports stars have experienced the pain of TWiTing (Tweeting Without Thinking). Brett Favre, amateur photographer, knows all about it. So does political philosopher Rashard Mendenhall, to name just two.

And so do sports columnists, most notably The Washington Post’s Mike Wise, suspended for a month last year after fabricating and tweeting a “scoop” on Pittsburgh’s Ben Roethlisberger.

(Must have seemed like a good idea at the time.)

Still, more and more journalists are tweeting these days and actually have followers.

So, you ask, when will The Anti-Fan open a Twitter account and start letting fly with unedited thoughts?

Not. Going. To. Happen.

Why?

Nothing instant is good.

Contact Jim Gordon at gjames43@msn.com.

Friday column: Gee’s joke may turn out to be prophetic

2011-06-02T22:51:00.007-06:00

A Division I football coach has a single job requirement.

Win.

OK, there is a proviso — without embarrassing the university.

All right, there’s an addendum to the proviso — in a way that precludes plausible denial.

Jim Tressel fulfilled the first clause of the job description: a record of 106-22-0 and one national championship. He found the second clause a little harder to negotiate, but largely succeeded in spite of incidents involving Maurice Clarett and others.

It’s the addendum that finally got him.

The administrative stuffed shirts in Columbus who love to mouth platitudes about integrity and winning “the right way” loved Jim Tressel.

They loved the image he projected and they loved the title of the books he wrote (Life Promises for Success: Promises from God on Achieving Your Best). Most of all, they loved all the wins and all the green the wins generated.

They loved Tressel’s gravy train so much that they didn’t even mind being lied to. Remember the news conference following the revelation that Tressel had known about his players’ rules violations all along but had kept mum, deceiving both the NCAA and his bosses?

Remember school president Gordon Gee’s attempted witticism when asked if he had considered firing Tressel? “I just hope the coach doesn’t dismiss me,” the little man laughed.

Make no mistake: If the empty suits at OSU thought they could have ridden out the storm with Tressel, they would have. You don’t fire a coach who beats Michigan nine of 10 times unless you absolutely have to.

And when the muck gets deep enough that your jobs are in jeopardy, you absolutely have to.

In announcing Tressel’s departure, Gee barely mentioned his coach’s name — the first time in months, wrote ESPN’s Ivan Maisel, that Gee had spoken “publicly about Tressel without sounding like a tween gushing over Justin Bieber.”

As recently as two weeks ago, athletic director Gene Smith still supported Tressel. This week, Smith suddenly went from “You’re still our coach” to “Hate to see you go — here’s your hat.”

For that, we can thank Sports Illustrated, which demolished the last fig leaf Ohio State had: the idea that the five players suspended for trading memorabilia for tattoos and cash were involved in an isolated incident.

Five players and a coach cover-up, that’s one thing, albeit pretty bad. Sixty players? During eight years? Involving memorabilia, school property and possibly drugs? That’s quite another thing. Then there’s the other recent reports that as many as 50 Buckeyes got special deals on cars.

NCAA no likey.

The Buckeyes are going to get hammered and when they do — perhaps even before they do — expect a broom to sweep through Columbus. It will bring a touch of irony with it.

Gee joked about being dismissed by Tressel. When he leaves, that, in essence, will be what has happened. And Gee will have deserved his canning just as much as Tressel deserved his.

Contact Jim Gordon at gjames43@msn.com.

Wheels within wheels

2011-05-27T10:14:00.004-06:00

The latest FIFA corruption scandal has increasingly interesting layers.

You not only have the organization looking at vote buying allegedly conducted by presidential candidate Mohamed bin Hammam, you have another probe into the actions of current president Sepp Blatter, who allegedly overlooked said bribes.

Why would he do that?

Well, two reasons come to mind: 1) Bribery is just business as usual for FIFA jefes and 2) if the bribes went forward, Blatter would have something he might be able to use against bin Hamman when it counted.

But, this is silly talk. Blatter's reputation is unimpeachable. Don't believe me? Well, I call Seth's main character witness, one Vladimir Putin. Yes, that Vladimir Putin, who calls allegations against Blatter "complete nonsense."

Putin was a major player in Russia's uh ... surprising ... winning of the 2018 World Cup (no money changed hands ... no money changed hands .., no money ...) and if the former KGB operator says it's nonsense, I'm sure you can, well, take it to the bank.

Driving takes nerve, reflexes. Brains? Maybe not

2011-05-26T18:40:00.007-06:00

So.

Kyle Busch thinks he can go 128 mph in a 45 mph zone and not be noticed.

In a $400,000 Lexus.

A yellow, $400,000 Lexus.

Or at least he did until he was busted Thursday in Concord, N.C.

In his NASCAR races, Busch may move like a rocket but clearly, he's no rocket scientist.

Here's good advice (please don't take it)

2011-05-26T10:41:00.003-06:00

Bryan Stow’s family is suing the Dodgers over his parking lot beating.

The suit says Stow was “inappropriately exposed to the aggressive acts of third parties" because the Dodgers "failed to take reasonable steps to prevent the attack on Stow.”

"It's fairly simple," said attorney Thomas Girardi. “The Dodgers have shown a total disregard for public safety. They've gotten rid of security people, they've had all these incidents at their games, more than other teams, there's also a known gang presence. What did they think was going to happen?”

Considering the suit is filed in L.A., where Dodger owner Frank McCourt is about as popular as rabies …

Considering information from his recent ugly divorce from Jamie McCourt indicated the then-couple let stadium security slide while they siphoned off money to support a lavish lifestyle …

Considering that since Stow’s beating, the team has greatly increased security — even engaging the former chief of the LAPD — thus essentially proving part of the Stow family’s case, I offer a word of advice to McCourt:

Settle.

As of today, the Dodgers were planning on fighting the suit in court. Just like the Frank fought Jamie in court. One more word of advice, Frank:

SETTLE.

Still, it won’t bother me if you don’t. Like your divorce case, these court proceedings promise to be most interesting.

Well, THIS is a surprise

2011-05-26T10:39:00.004-06:00

Recommended reading: An Associated Press story on drinking and sports. You’ll be shocked, I’m sure, to learn the two are rather closely linked.

"I hear from people who'd been going to games their entire life, they say, 'I don't go to games anymore,'" said Darin Erickson, who worked on some of the studies quoted in the story. "They tell stories about people swearing blatantly, throwing things and fights. It's not always actual assaults, but some of the people I talk to just aren't comfortable with the environment. And it seems that they're often saying it's attributable to general drunkenness."

You’ll also be shocked that pro teams, while giving lip service to closely monitoring excess drinking, largely do jack about it.

Why?

Too much money involved, not only in the sales of the booze, but in sponsorship green (think Busch Stadium, Coors Field, Miller Stadium).

The thugs who put Bryan Stow in a coma, by the way, were said to be drunk.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5i9X8UHXnjfpI4W749m0dlQT8dwbg?docId=12a9c919f1e940589a8791b45459adcf

Another shocker: Corruption at FIFA (gasp!)

2011-05-26T10:35:00.007-06:00

An American on FIFA’s executive committee, is claiming that Mohamed bin Hammam of Qatar — running against Seth Blatter as head of the organization was offering cash on the barrel ($40,000) in exchange for votes. (That's the happy couple above.)

The headline for the New York Times story reads:

“FIFA can’t ignore insider’s charges of corruption”

To which I reply: Sure it can.

Now, Blatter may not want to ignore the charges, for sheer political reasons. Bin Hammam, after all, is his opponent. But could he? Could FIFA? Sure. An organization that riddled with corruption can pretty do anything it wants — without a single blush.

Friday column: A question of belief

2011-05-26T09:53:00.005-06:00

Ah, Harold …

Here I was, exhaling a ginormous sigh of relief that the world didn’t go boom May 21 as you predicted, when you go and move the goal posts.

Now, I have to wait in terror five more months to Oct. 21?

Not fair, Harold.

Still, I think I’ll manage.

Somehow.

I’d give Harold credit for being light on his feet, but it’s rather a job requirement for a false prophet. In honor of Camping’s latest fizzle — he first predicted the End of it All in 1994 — The Christian Science Monitor ran a look back at some other apocalyptic busts.

My favorite was the 1954 prediction by a Chicago housewife and Dianetics follower involving aliens from the planet Clarion. Some of her followers, like Camping’s, quit jobs and sold possessions, then gathered at her house to await The Big Event.

When the appointed time came and went, her followers became increasingly agitated, whereupon the housewife announced she’d heard from the Clarions once again: God was so impressed by her group’s faithfulness, he had decided to spare Earth, after all!

Now, that’s being light-footed.

Lance Armstrong and his lawyers are not nearly as nimble on their toes. Perhaps they can’t be. Or perhaps they don’t have to be. It’s hard to tell.

To former associates’ accusations of the use of banned substances comes Armstrong’s mantra: “Never failed a drug test.” To former teammates’ allegations of cheating comes his lawyers’ mantra: “Liars out to sell a book.”

Armstrong doesn’t claim to be a prophet, but he does have followers, believers who have a stake in his story and his veracity.

Many of those have cancer, or have loved ones with cancer, and want very much to believe that the founder of the Livestrong Foundation won all those Tours de France riding clean.

One of them is Jennifer Floyd Engel, who writes for the Star-Telegram in Fort Worth, Texas. Her mother died of a hereditary form of cancer, a fact that, she says, “skyrockets my odds into an ugly place.”

Engel wrote this week about the importance of Armstrong’s Tour de France victories:

“The yellow jersey provided inspiration for everybody fighting cancer and everybody who may one day lock horns with this insidious disease. This was proof that doctors are not always right, that not everybody they say is going to die does and those who do win can come back stronger and better.”

Engel is shaken by the latest allegations but is hanging on to her belief in Armstrong’s innocence.

So is a friend of mine, who can marshal an impressive array of facts to support the view of Armstrong and his lawyers.

I would not dispute a single sentence of his litany; he knows the material much better than I.

And perhaps he is right; I would like him to be so.

And yet.

When there’s this much smoke, usually there is fire — somewhere.

It’s difficult for me to believe that all who have accused Armstrong have done so from ulterior motives, and even if they have, it doesn’t mean their charges don’t carry some truth (see Canseco, Jose).

It’s hard for me to believe that Armstrong — as fierce and driven a competitor as I’ve ever seen — would not avail himself of the same “edge” as did many of his competitors (and many of his teammates). Not if it meant victory instead of defeat.

Do I know he cheated? No, I don’t.

And I don’t know the world isn’t going to end Oct. 21.

But I’m not quitting my job.

The limits of knowledge

2011-05-19T23:04:00.004-06:00

I’m always amazed at what people claim they know.

Not think. Not believe. But know.

As, for instance, in the recent death of Kenyan marathon champion Sammy Wanjiru, who fell from the balcony of his home following a domestic dispute involving his estranged wife and another woman.

One police official called it suicide; another said he jumped to prevent his wife from leaving the house after discovering him with the other woman.

His agent, Federico Rosa, was certain it wasn’t the former.

"I talked to him yesterday and the day before," said Rosa, who claimed the runner’s his training was proceeding smoothly. "It was going well and smoothly and he had no problem at all.

"This I can guarantee, it was not a suicide at all," Rosa said.

Well, sometimes the word “suicide” come with the word “surprise” before it. Two relatively recent ones in the sporting world are Erica Blasberg and Denver Broncos receiver Kenny McKinley. No one saw those suicides coming either. Nobody knows for certain what’s in another person’s mind and heart.

Now, Rosa may be right that it wasn’t suicide. But can he guarantee it? Can he really know?

No.

Yes, I'm sure he's right, and yet ...

2011-05-19T22:54:00.006-06:00

In La Belle France, a Socialist leader is also certain about something:
Former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn may have used seduction to have sex with the hotel maid accusing him of rape, “but no way would he use constraint or violence.”

No, no, of course not. Out of the question.

Still, one wonders.

After all, he was arrested on a jet, seemingly trying to get out of Dodge. And there are reports he phoned his wife to tell her he was in some trouble. Then there’s the fact that a French writer and journalist, Tristane Banon is claiming she once had to fight Strauss-Kahn off, saying she is coming forward with her story now because after his arrest, she is finally confident she’ll be heard.

France, of course, is famously relaxed about the private behavior of public figures.

"Politicians and artists enjoy a particular tolerance on this subject," wrote Nicolas Demorand, editor of the Liberation daily newspaper. "Part of the shock comes also from the unusual scene, until now unthinkable here: police arresting a top-level politician on a matter of morals."

Correction: Guilty or innocent, Strauss-Kahn wasn't arrested on a matter of morals. He was arrested on a matter of crime.

Friday column: Recalling day-to-day graciousness

2011-05-19T10:13:00.007-06:00

Treating people well — especially those who can’t do anything for you — is a mark of character.

Harmon Killebrew, who died this week at 74, demonstrated that mark.

The adage that it’s impolite to speak ill of the dead hardly deters anyone in this Internet age, but I’ve yet to read something negative about the Twins’ Hall of Fame slugger.

Instead, there are stories about his kindness — nothing spectacular, just account after account of his day-to-day graciousness. How he surprised a family by sending them a personal letter in response to a get-well card they sent him. How he went out of his way to make people feel welcome.

“He was a consummate professional who treated everyone from the brashest of rookies to the groundskeepers to the ushers in the stadium with the utmost of respect,” former teammate Rod Carew said. “I would not be the person I am today if it weren’t for Harmon Killebrew.”

Once asked why he was unfailingly nice to everybody, Killebrew said, “You never know. That might be the only time a person sees you play or meets you. I always tried to remember that.”

I never met Killebrew, but I did meet Chuck Tanner, who preceded Killebrew in death by three months.

In the early 1980s, Tanner was a few years removed from winning the World Series as manager of the Pittsburgh Pirates. I was the UCLA beat writer for a small Pasadena newspaper and occasionally subbed for our baseball writer.

One night after a Pirates-Dodgers game, I spent too much time in the L.A. locker room, and by time I got to the Bucs’ side, everyone was gone.

Everyone, that is, except for Tanner and his coaches, who were busy plotting next-game strategy in their cramped office.

I had missed the interview session, and Tanner had every reason to brush me off or grudgingly answer a question or two before shooing me on my way.

Instead, he invited me in and acted as though he had all the time in the world, as though nothing was more important to him than giving me whatever I needed to make my story complete. “Are you sure you have enough?” I remember him asking as I backed out the door.

Tanner may have heard of our small daily, but we didn’t mean anything to him in terms of coverage. We certainly couldn’t do anything for him.

But with Tanner, as with Killebrew, that wasn’t the point.
Both Killebrew and Tanner will be missed not so much for what they did — and they did plenty — but for who they were.

Retired Twin Paul Molitor summed up Killebew in words that also apply to Tanner:

“He didn’t differentiate how he treated other people based on their status or social standing,” Molitor said. “Whether you were an 18-year-old minor-leaguer or a clubhouse worker, you got the same Harmon. And that was a pretty good Harmon to get.”

A more critical question

2011-05-05T09:23:00.006-06:00

Atlanta pitching coach Roger McDowell has been suspended for two weeks without pay for his odd, homophobic outburst recently in San Francisco.

McDowell, who has issued a public apology, also will have to apologize directly to the fans involved — Justin Quinn and his family — and complete sensitivity training. McDowell is fortunate — very fortunate — he wasn't fired. As it is, I don't believe he likely boosted his chance to have his contract renewed.

According to The Associated Press account of the incident, “Quinn said he was in the stands with his wife and 9-year-old twin daughters before the April 23 game at San Francisco when he noticed McDowell ask three men, ‘Are you guys a homo couple or a threesome?’

“Quinn said McDowell made crude sexual gestures with his hips and a bat. Quinn said he shouted, ‘Hey there are kids out here.’

“According to Quinn, McDowell said kids don't belong at a baseball park, picked up a bat, walked up to Quinn and asked him, ‘How much are your teeth worth?’

The perfect comeback to that question, of course, would have been this:

“How much is your job worth?”

'This could happen to you'

2011-05-05T09:19:00.004-06:00

Frank and Jamie McCourt may have taken a proud franchise — the Dodgers — and run it into the ground, but that’s not to say they haven’t done some good.

In Los Angeles divorce court they serve as examples.

A Los Angeles Times story by Bill Shaikin quoted Lisa Helfend Meyer, a family law specialist who has kept up with the nasty McCourt divorce case, who noted that the McCourts “were so focused on destroying each other that they destroyed themselves," Meyer said.

Writes Shaikin:

“Meyer said she was in court last week, working on a case in which the judge felt compelled to remind a divorcing couple to focus on dividing a substantial marital estate rather than attacking one another. The judge held up a newspaper and pointed to a story about the McCourts.

" 'See what happened to the McCourts?’ the judge said. ‘This could happen to you.’ ”

Ah, commerce

2011-05-05T09:17:00.003-06:00

Praise of Alex Rodriguez doesn’t flow from my keyboard very often, but I give the Yankees third baseball credit for his take on the killing of Osama bin Laden. Rodriguez put the focus on America’s military:

"I think that the word 'heroes' are (sic) used far too often when you talk about athletes and actors. The real heroes are out on the battlefields, protecting our well being, allowing us the opportunity to play baseball or take our daughters or kids to the park. They're the real heroes."

On the other hand, in Oakland, A's public address announcer Dick Callahan asked fans to “Raise their Budweisers” in appreciation for those who serve the country.

Yes, let’s support the troops — but get in a commercial plug at the same time.

Lovely.

Friday column: What kind of person tweets nonsense?

2011-05-05T09:16:00.006-06:00

“What kind of person celebrates death?"

If Rashard Mendenhall’s tweet had stopped there, he would have been OK.

I have my own questions about the rah-rah nature of the reaction to the killing — the justified killing — of Osama bin Laden. Two Tao Te Ching lines from my Eastern mysticism days came to mind:

“Go to war as if conducting a funeral” and “the victory celebration is a funeral service.”

After watching TV coverage of the story, the Los Angeles Times’ James Rainey wrote that the reaction to bin Laden’s killing was “in inverse proportion to how closely 9/11 touched their lives.

“Those closest to the hijacked jets — victims’ families, surviving New York City firefighters, colleagues of flight attendants who died — greeted bin Laden’s death with solemnity. Those who came to know the terrorist mastermind mostly as a symbol — the young who grew up under the terrorist threat but didn’t suffer personal losses — tended to holler, preen for cameras and carry on as if they were watching a ballgame.”

A Roman Catholic priest, Howard Beck, made a related point on Fox News, saying that even when deadly force is justified, it remains “a necessary evil” and shouldn’t be celebrated “like a Super Bowl win.”

Mendenhall, who has played in two Super Bowls with Pittsburgh, knows something about that atmosphere. Using that experience, he might have made a similar point as the priest, then gotten off the stage — in this case, Twitter.

Alas.

Referring to the man who orchestrated the Sept. 11, 2011 attacks that killed thousands, Mendenhall opined, “It’s amazing how people can HATE a man they have never even heard speak. We’ve only heard one side … ”

I don’t know where Mendenhall’s head is when it’s not in a Steelers helmet, but Al-Jazeera has been broadcasting bin Laden tapes for a decade, his writings have been published, and his biggest statements — those written in the blood of others — are rather hard to misinterpret.

“We’ve only heard one side” is bad enough. But Mendenhall’s tweet got worse.

“We’ll never know what really happened,” he wrote. “I just have a hard time believing a plane could take a skyscraper down demolition style.”

Lest we think this conspiracy babble outrageous, Mendenhall went on to tell us he was just encouraging us to think, adding, “There is not an ignorant bone in my body.”
Look again, Rashard.

After a predictably negative reaction by his employers, Mendenhall tried a little damage control, apologizing for “the timing as (sic) such a sensitive matter” and trying to get back to his original point — all the while ignoring the most inflammatory of his posts.

In this Internet world, good luck with that, Rashard. Like herpes and extinction, tweets are forever.

Mendenhall styles himself a “conversationalist and professional athlete.” If he wants to continue being the latter, he might want to rethink being the former.

Contact Jim Gordon at gjames43@msn.com.

Oh, woe is him

2011-04-29T09:32:00.005-06:00

So.

Big Ten commish Jim Delany moans, “If only we knew then what we knew now,” the conference would have handled the suspension of five Ohio State Buckeyes differently.

Well, yes. If they had known that Jim Tressel — the most prominent and successful of their coaches — was a blatant liar, and that that fact would come to light, and that the NCAA would be positioning itself to come down on the Buckeyes program like the Wrath of God, then sure, I imagine they WOULD have done something different.

But, in fact, they HAD enough knowledge to do something different. The knowledge that five players had violated NCAA rules should have been enough for the conference to refuse to support OSU's request to delay suspending the five until this season.

Of course, that stand for integrity would have cost the Buckeyes the services of 5 key players in the Sugar Bowl, which would have cost interest in the game and — more importantly — money. Money, not knowledge, is the reason the conference didn’t act with more propriety.

Delany can spare us the “Oh, if we only knew …”

As American as they come

2011-04-28T19:59:00.003-06:00

Frank McCourt says baseball commissioner Bud Selig’s appointment of a representative to oversee the day-to-day operations of the Dodgers is “un-American.”

Actually, judging from recent corporate history, a person in authority acting to prevent a business train wreck IS rather un-American. So, from one perspective, McCourt is right.

On the other hand, getting irresponsibly leveraged in order to buy a business you can’t afford? American.

Putting relatives on you payroll but not asking them to work? American.

Siphoning money from your company to support a lavish lifestyle? American.

Causing more financial instability by pursuing a very dirty and very public divorce? American.

All of which makes Frank McCourt very American, indeed.

A no-brainer? No, a brainer

2011-04-28T19:56:00.002-06:00

In Friday’s column in The New Mexican, I facetiously search for signs of intelligent life in the Universe of Sport.

Surprisingly (not), I find none.

IF I had more room to write in the print edition, however, I would have ended the column in a different manner.

I would have pointed to Texas pitcher Colby Lewis, who had to decide whether attending the birth of Elizabeth Grace Lewis, his second child, was more important than making a routine start for the Rangers.

Let’s see: a one-time, unrepeatable event vs. something that happens every fifth day in a starter’s baseball career?

Lewis chose the birth.

If I had had the space in my “search for intelligent life,” I would have referenced Colby and written:

"Ah, there we are."

Leaders of men

2011-04-28T19:52:00.004-06:00

Let’s talk weasels.

Weasel No. 1 is Jim Tressel, who, in case anyone has forgotten, covered up NCAA violations by his players, in part by flat-out lying.

Then when caught, offered a lame excuse.

Then offered a lame apology.

Now that the NCAA has indicated to Ohio State that it didn’t appreciate Tressel’s prevarication and may be coming to Columbus with a hammer, The Vest is avoiding the press more than usual, recently ducking out the side door at an awards banquet and escaping into a waiting car.

(Engine running? The account I read didn't say, but I wouldn't be surprised).

With the pressure rising on OSU, athletic director Gene Smith — Weasel No. 2 — is using a familiar dodge, saying the school would have "no comments until the case is resolved."

And once the case IS resolved — especially if it’s resolved by Tressel’s firing — watch Smith try to duck questions by saying “it’s time to move forward.”

Friday column: SETI better get more funding

2011-04-28T17:53:00.006-06:00

Now that budget woes have forced the SETI Institute in California to shut down the efforts of its Allen Telescope Array to find intelligent life in the universe, what are we going to do?

Well, I'll do my bit by looking for demonstrable cerebral function in my particular bailiwick, the Universe of Sport.

Let's start with a peek at America's entrepreneurs, who have been called the "proverbial wellspring of innovation" and "the key building blocks of our nation." Let's start specifically with the geniuses of Kage Games, who have developed a smartphone application that glorifies dogfighting.

Yes, dogfighting,

The app, Dog Wars, allows players to feed, water, train and fight their virtual dogs against other canines. Why in the name of Michael Vick would anyone think this a good idea?

Vick has condemned it, as have the Humane Society and others. Kage Games is undaunted. A Kage Games website essentially says, Hey, it's just a game.

"Perhaps one day we will make gerbil wars or beta fish wars for people who can't understand fantasy role play games," the site says.

And speaking of fantasy role-play games, how about a domestic-violence game or a bullying game? Wait, I've got it. How about a game called Rampage, where people can dynamite companies that make offensive apps?

Hey, it's just a game.

OK, I guess that search failed. Next, I'll try ... well, why not that repository of timeless wisdom — parents?

Such as Robert Rodriguez.

Rodriguez, perturbed that his sophomore spawn was left off the playoff roster of Miami Springs Senior High School in Florida, discussed the decision with coach Jason Moris in a cool, respectful manner that demonstrated not just intelligence but restraint.

Just kidding.

What he actually did, according to reports, was hit Moris in the face, repeatedly.

As if that were not enough to demonstrate his acumen, he then called the cops to try to have Moris arrested.

Problem: Rodriguez is 6 feet, 300 pounds; Moris is 5-3, 140 pounds. Another problem: Rodriguez's face was unmarked; Moris' face looked like it had been through a meat grinder.

Next problem for Rodriguez: Finding bail money and a creative lawyer.

No sign of intelligent life in the gamer or the parent; let's try an athlete.

Such as Florida Gator star cornerback Janoris Jenkins.

Jenkins, arrested and charged with fighting and resisting arrest in 2009 (police felt obliged to use a stun gun on him) was nicked again early this year on a marijuana charge. In both cases, he accepted plea deals.

Saturday, the senior was spotted smoking a marijuana stogie — in public — and arrested again.

Now, he is a former Florida Gator. Furthermore, you can expect his NFL draft prospects to tumble — along with the value of his first pro contract, assuming he gets one.

That was one expensive cigar. That was one dumb move.

SETI, please come back.

How's that again?

2011-04-22T11:09:00.005-06:00

Steve Soboroff, the Dodgers' newly hired vice chairman for ... uh .. flackery, apparently, not only blasts Major League Baseball for taking control of the financially shaky team, but says — and I quote — "We need more people like Frank McCourt."

This is the same McCourt, I take it, that let Dodger Stadium go from family friendly to an environment more fitting an Oakland Raiders game. The same McCourt that diverted $100 million from the team to support the lavish lifestyle for him and his now-former wife.

We need more people like Frank McCourt?

Sure we do.

And we need more investment advisers like Bernie Madoff.

Friday column: Karma, some twits and tweets

2011-04-22T11:02:00.003-06:00

So.

The Tampa Bay Rays knew Manny Ramirez was a two-time offender of baseball's policy against performance-enhancing drugs, but decided to sign the aging slugger anyway.

And they profess surprise when he's busted a third time?

"He was disappointed in himself," Rays manager Joe Maddon said.

Really? Exactly how did he disappoint himself? By injecting himself in spite of all the Juicers Anonymous meetings he attended? By getting caught?

Ramirez, who retired at 38 rather than accept MLB's 100-game suspension, phoned Maddon — but not to say he was sorry.

"I wasn't looking for an apology necessarily," Maddon said. "I wasn't. He spoke to me kind of like, man to man, person to person, manager to player. So I didn't think he owed me an apology."

Maddon's right. The Rays weren't owed an apology — they got precisely what they deserved.

• • •

So.

Reds pitcher Mike Leake was arrested and charged with shoplifting six shirts worth $59.88 from a Cincinnati Macy's.

Yes, this is the same Leake who got a signing bonus of $2.3 million just two years ago and now makes $425,000 a season.

Ah, but we have an excuse — or at least a story.

A report has emerged claiming that what Leake did wasn't theft — just a clumsy attempt at an exchange, an "exchange" that reportedly included cutting the price tags off the shirts.

Well, if the latest story is true, there's a word for Leake: dumb.

If the latest story is false, there's another word for him: pathological.

• • •

So.

A trio of high-schoolers from Columbus, Ga. — including top prospect Deion Bonner — are invited on a recruiting visit to the University of Georgia.

They get the usual recruiting royal treatment and are allowed to roam the school's football complex — including the locker rooms — un-chaperoned.

Why not? It's not as though you have to worry about high school kids pilfering from a program they might soon play for. Right?

Wrong.

Bonner, Marquise Hawkins and an unidentified juvenile were arrested by police and charged with theft. They're accused of stealing iPods and iPhones — oh, and a pair of Nike slippers — from the lockers of seven Bulldog football players. Estimated value: $1,330.

While the police are sure they have the culprits, they don't have all the stolen merchandise. Apparently the items were peddled rather quickly. And why not? In the Twitter age, it doesn't take long to find buyers for your ill-gotten gains.

But Twitter ... Twitter ... something about that ...

Oh yeah: It's not exactly secret communication. Police who nabbed Bonner and the others credit social media for the quick arrest.

Apparently, then, not only was Bonner unprincipled enough to steal from possible future teammates, he was clueless enough to advertise the fact by tweeting.

Some are saying this indicates Bonner's unsuitability to attend a major college program.

I don't know — he looks like prime student-athlete material to me.

The best policy

2011-04-08T00:00:00.004-06:00

In an HBO Real Sports report, four former Auburn football players said they were paid thousands in cash, and two of them said that the money they received swayed them in their choice of schools.

As a junior college player, defensive end Raven Gray, pictured above, received $2,500 to $3,000 to ensure he would attend Auburn.

“Loyalty is the key,” Gray told Real Sports. “I believe in that a whole lot. This man give me money. I’m going to be loyal to him and go up to Auburn.”

Stanley McClover committed to Ohio State, but changed his mind when a lot of Auburn cash crossed his palms.

"I literally almost passed out; I couldn’t believe it was true,” McClover said. “I felt like I owed them.”

Ah, yes, loyalty. The tale of these two “honest” former student-athletes reminds me of Ambrose Bierce’s definition of an honest politician: “An honest politician,” he said, “is one who when he is bought will stay bought.”

My savings account didn't look like that when I was 10 (heck, it doesn't look like that now)

2011-04-07T23:56:00.004-06:00

So.

Ten-year-old Cliff Forrest Jr. took $8,500 out of his savings account to buy William "The Refrigerator" Perry's Super Bowl XX ring — which the financially strapped Perry sold years ago — and give it back to him.

The Pittsburgh lad decided to give Perry the ring after learning the former Bear lineman suffers from Guillain-Barre syndrome, an autoimmune disease that can cause paralysis.

"He only played in one Super Bowl," Cliff explained in an interview. "I thought he would want it more than I did."

I’m not sure what’s more surprising: Cliff’s generosity or the fact the 10-year-old had a savings account with at least $8,500 in it.

Keeping his options open

2011-04-07T23:53:00.006-06:00

Ron Artest didn't like Dallas owner Mark Cuban saying he wanted the Lakers forward to have the ball in his hands more and be forced to make decisions in the triangle offense.

"He said too much," Artest said. "We'll probably see them in the playoffs. He's a smart man. Let's see if he's right. He's got confidence in his team. I don't feel as if they can beat us."

Still, Artest said he's willing to work with the billionaire, who owns — among other things — HDNet.

"I'm going to go into his office to see if I can get a show on his network," Artest said.

Let’s see: Cuban expressed an interest doing a show with Charlie Sheen. Now Artest wants to work with Cuban. Is it possible? Sheen and Artest ... together?

That’s either can’t-miss TV or can't-watch TV. Not sure which.

Friday column: Violence mystifies; not so words that follow

2011-04-07T22:43:00.005-06:00

Where does random violence come from?

Fear, ignorance, pride, deprivation, our so-called “reptilian” brain?

Search me.

There are instances where, to my simple mind, instances of violence are just inexplicable.

The multiple killings in Afghanistan in the wake of a Florida pastor’s burning of the Quran, for instance.

Or, closer to home, the severe beating of a Giants fan on Opening Day in Los Angeles.

On March 31, following L.A.’s 2-1 victory, Bryan Stow of Santa Cruz was jumped on the way to his car by two men wearing Dodgers clothing. Knocked to the ground, the 42-year-old paramedic hit his head on the pavement, suffering a severe skull fracture and bad bruising to his frontal lobe.

In hopes of relieving pressure because of brain swelling, doctors placed Stow in a medically induced coma, and a piece of his skull was removed. Now, Stow is said to be showing signs of “brain injury and dysfunction” and faces a long recovery process, at best.

The only apparent motive for the attack on Stow was the Giants gear he was sporting. Think about that. Two men pummel a man they don’t know — in this case, a father of two — changing forever not only his life, but also the lives of all those close to him because he’s wearing another team’s colors.

Are there other factors? Bound to be — here’s guessing that alcohol is one of them — and perhaps they’ll come to light if the attackers are arrested. A reward of $100,000 has been offered.

The Dodgers contributed $25,000 to the offer; that was the good part of the team’s response to the incident. There was also a poor one.

“It is extremely unfortunate that this incident took place on what was otherwise a great day at Dodger Stadium for tens of thousands of fans,” said Josh Rawitch, the Dodgers’ vice president of communications.

Yes, Josh, by all means, put the savage beating in perspective for us. We’ll all feel better.

Rawitch may be paid to bleed Dodger blue, but it’s Stow’s red blood we’re concerned about; Rawitch is just trying to sidestep the fact that there have been questions about security at Dodger Stadium, including the amount of alcohol served.

It reminds me — in a way — of “Pastor” Jones’ response to the stupid, senseless but all-to-predictable violence that followed his burning of a Quran.

Jones called the killings “very tragic” but accepted no responsibility for them, even though he had been warned that such incidents would certainly follow a burning.

“As we say, we live in America and people are free to do as they please within the confines of the law,” Jones blogged.
Well, bully for Pastor Jones’ standing on his rights — a stand that other people paid for with their lives.

As I said, violence often is inexplicable to me. Not so comments that follow violence. They’re frequently, as in these cases, manifestly self-serving.

Contact Jim Gordon at gjames43@msn.com.

Silence is (Al) Golden

2011-03-31T23:41:00.005-06:00

Ah, football coaches. God love ’em.

I sure don’t.

Such control freaks.

Take new Miami coach Al Golden, who refuses to comment on reports that six players have been suspended for the Hurricanes’ season opener against Maryland.

Asked directly about the reported suspensions, Golden said, “If players are suspended you will be notified from our office and (spokesman) Chris Freet and me as the head coach. Right now we are not discussing any matters that are internal externally."

Yes, the “we’ll handle this internally” ploy.

Unfortunately for Golden, linebacker Ramon Buchanan’s little go-round with police is a bit too large to hide under the blanket.

Buchanan, you see, is facing felony charges after allegedly spitting on and attempting to head-butt a police officer; he’s also facing three misdemeanor charges following an incident last week.

Buchanan, 21, is said to have caused a disturbance in a restaurant bathroom in the Coconut Grove section of Miami at about 1:30 a.m. Friday. According to the cops, he was told to leave three times before being placed under arrest.

When finally arrested, Buchanan allegedly said, "I'm a UM football player and I don't give a f--- what you do. I'll get out of it. F--- the police."

Golden called it all an "unfortunate misstep.”

But he did suspend Buchanan. Had to. Even told the press about it. Had to.

Must have hated that.

Speaking of control freaks ...

2011-03-31T23:39:00.002-06:00

Then we have Auburn coach Gene Chizik, who’s absolutely mum on off-season arrests of several Tigers and the dismissal of five players from last season’s national championship team.

Chizik responded to questions about off-field incidents by saying he would only answer “spring practice and our football team and guys that are currently on our team.”

Way to man up, Coach. Way to give your kids a good lesson in accountability.

More Tigers trouble

2011-03-31T23:37:00.002-06:00

In an HBO special, four former Tigers admit they received thousands of bucks from boosters.

The four — Chaz Ramsey, Troy Reddick, Stanley McClover and Raven Gray — say they received cash as part of a pay-for-play scheme during their time at Auburn.

The four played for the Tigers pre-Chizik, but if any of you think the culture at Auburn has changed, well … think Cam Newton.

McClover — that's him above — said that when he was being recruited out of high school, boosters from Auburn, Michigan State and Ohio State arranged for him to get money and other inducements such as — ahem — sexual services.

McClover was set to go to Ohio State, but after receiving a wad cash from Tigers boosters, switched to Auburn. "I felt like I owed them," he said.

The NCAA already is looking into possible Auburn violations and while these four players’ admissions might be too far in the past to act upon, they’re not likely to make the NCAA ease up any on its current probe.

Friday column: Bryant and Junker — bling and fling

2011-03-31T22:23:00.005-06:00

Dez Bryant and John Junker would seem to have little in common.

The first is a 22-year-old wide receiver for the Dallas Cowboys; the second is a middle-age-plus bowl game executive — or was until Tuesday, when the Fiesta Bowl sent the CEO and his $600,000 salary packing.

Bryant’s difficult childhood is well-known; personal information about Junker was hard to come by after his bio was scrubbed from the Fiesta Bowl website, but I don’t believe Junker’s mother birthed her son when she was 15, as did Bryant’s, or spent time behind bars for selling crack.

But the two men apparently do share something — a fondness for playing fast and loose with money not their own.

While still at Oklahoma State, the talented Bryant clearly was headed for a pro payday, but he didn’t want to wait.

A year and a half before inking an $8.5 million deal with the Cowboys, he set up a line of credit through an adviser and begin to make purchases here and there.

Necessities, really.

Like diamond dog tags set in white gold. Like a $60,000 custom charm. Like a $65,000 diamond cross made of white gold. Like nine expensive watches and other assorted goodies.

What’s wrong with that, you ask? Well, nothing, I suppose — if you pay back what you borrow. Bryant didn’t, and now two entities are suing him for $861,350, plus interest and attorney fees.

Junker, as far as we know, isn’t into bling. Instead, his style runs to treating the Fiesta Bowl’s nonprofit funds like his own personal piggy bank. A scathing 276-page investigative report found that Junker benefited from “excessive compensation, nonbusiness and inappropriate expenditures and inappropriate gifts.”

How much are we talking about? At least $360,000 that Junker received was cited, delicately, as being “potentially personal” or “potentially inappropriate;” another $2.26 million was called “undetermined,” meaning more information was needed to determine whether those expenditures were hinky.

Among the more egregious expenses were a $33,000 birthday bash for Junker, a $110,000 Celebrity Fight Night spree, and a $1,200 strip club tab that Junker defended this way: “We are in the business where big, strong athletes are known to attend these types of establishments. It was important for us to visit, and we certainly conducted business.”

I bet they did.

To be fair, Junker did try to spread the wealth around, specifically to local politicians — reportedly hatching a scheme to buy influence by having Fiesta Bowl employees contribute to campaign coffers, then secretly (and illegally) get reimbursed through bogus bonuses.

Bryant and Junker — citizens from different sides of the track, yet both experiencing the ultimate American dream: living large on other people’s cash.

Greed — America’s great social glue.

Contact Jim Gordon at gjames43@msn.com

Friday column: Here's 3 down, but also 3 up

2011-03-31T10:02:00.002-06:00

At times, it seems as though the sun's always setting in the world of sports. Just in the last few days, we've seen:

• Hall of Fame linebacker Lawrence Taylor positing that his sexual-misconduct conviction — for patronizing a 16-year-old prostitute — isn't really his fault but that of the "world of prostitution."

• Cowboys wide receiver Dez Bryant acting like a angry toddler when he and his posse are informed by off-duty police officers that the mall they were cruising with pulled-down pants doesn't appreciate their, uh ... overexposure.

• The beginning of a long and expensive trial to determine whether — try not to giggle — Barry Bonds knowingly took steroids.

But even in Toyland, the spherical, hot plasma ball our globe circles also appears to ascend, as Hemmingway said (not quite in those words). Thus:

• British marathon star Mara Yamauchi and coach Martin Yelling have launched a website, runforjapan.com, to mobilize the running community to help relief efforts in Japan.

The idea is for runners from every nation to dedicate one of their runs to Japan, and make a corresponding donation. Collectively, the runners would cover a distance equal to the earth's circumference — 24,901 miles.

As of Thursday, 497 people had dedicated a race — covering a combined 8,682 miles — and made a donation. Athletes from several others sports also have banded together to help the Japanese.

• NBA players' generosity saved a life, a story that has just came to light.

In September 2004, L.A. Clippers assistant coach Kim Hughes was diagnosed with prostate cancer. A surgeon covered by team insurance told him he could safely wait several months to have surgery. Hughes, a former premed student, didn't think so, and found another doctor who could operate within a week.

But that surgeon's services weren't covered by the team's insurance. The Clippers — the organization — said it couldn't help. The Clippers — the players — said they could. Several, including Corey Maggette, Chris Kaman, Elton Brand and Marko Jaric, paid for the $70,000 operation out of their own pockets.

As it turns out, Hughes' cancer was aggressive and was threatening to spread. Says Hughes: "Those guys saved my life."

• As life-savers go, it's hard to beat the story of John Shear, a beloved paddock guard at Santa Anita race track in Arcadia, Calif.

About a fortnight ago, Shear threw his body between a runaway horse and a 6-year-old girl. The girl was physically unscathed; Shear suffered multiple pelvic fractures, a fractured cheekbone, and gashes above his left eye and down his left arm.

Shear has been hospitalized ever since; it's hoped he'll be able to walk again in two months or so.

"Could have been worse," Shear told the Los Angeles Times' Bill Plaschke. "Something could have happened to the little girl."

Quite a story — worth reading in full at lat.com. Oh, by the way, the body Shear put between the girl and the 1,000-pound animal is 90 years old. Shear has worked at Santa Anita for half a century.

That IS better

2011-03-18T09:35:00.004-06:00

Now, Jim Tressel says he wants the same punishment as his players — a suspension of five games, instead of the two-game suspension handed out by his university.

Now, says, "I am very sorry for the mistakes I made," not just for the inconvenience to the program and the Ohio State faithful.

That, finally, is owning up. Better late than never.

We'll see if it will be enough for the NCAA.

Friday column: They said (and didn't say) what?

2011-03-18T00:26:00.001-06:00

Ah, this week in words:

What Jim Tressel said was inadequate.

What Notre Dame didn’t say was disappointing.

What Cappie Pondexter said was bizarre.

According to The Associated Press, Tressel, Ohio State football coach, on Tuesday “apologized several times during his first public speaking engagement since being suspended and fined for violating NCAA rules.”

Here’s what The AP quoted Tressel as saying to a group of Buckeye fans:

“I sincerely apologize for what we’ve been through. I apologize for the fact I wasn’t able to find the ones to partner with to handle our difficult and complex situation.

“I also apologize because I’m going to have some sanctions.”

Now, The AP may call that an apology, but it appears to me that Tressel — who violated NCAA rules by lying about the violations committed by his players — apologized for everything except for doing something wrong.

Notre Dame has made it clear that the university did something wrong, accepting responsibility for the Oct. 27 death of a student videographer killed when a hydraulic lift blew over as he filmed football practice.

But the school is hardly clear about who made the decision to send up Declan Sullivan on that windy day.

“I don’t (know) a specific person,” athletic director Jack Swarbrick told the Indiana Occupational Health and Safety Administration. “It is done on the administration side of the football program.”

What does that mean? Or, rather, who does that mean? What about head football coach Brian Kelly?

No, Kelly said, he wasn’t in charge of the photographers.

Perhaps video coordinator Tim Collins is the man. After all, when Sullivan reported to practice the fatal day, Collins reportedly told him that practice would be outdoors “contrary to his judgment.”

But when asked by an OSHA investigator if he thought at the time that the lifts shouldn’t be used because of the conditions, Collins said, “No.” This despite the fact Collins balked at sending up a novice videographer — because of the conditions.

Notre Dame, it appears, is obfuscating.

Cappie Pondexter, on the other hand, is … well, you pick a word.

This is what the WNBA player tweeted on the devastation occurring in Japan:

“What if God was tired of the way they treated their own people in there own country! Idk guys he makes no mistakes.”

As if that weren’t enough, the former Rutgers star later added, “u just never knw! They did pearl harbor so u can’t expect anything less.”

After a discussion with her employer, the New York Liberty, Pondexter eventually tweeted, “I wanna apologize to anyone I may hurt or offended during this tragic time. I didn’t realize that my words could be interpreted in the manner which they were.”

In other words, the problem wasn’t so much what she said but how it was interpreted.

On the sincerity meter, her apology moves the needle about as much as Tressel’s. Which is to say, not at all.

Friday column: He's selling, but I'm not buying

2011-03-18T00:22:00.003-06:00

Ohio State head football coach Jim Tressel is all about character.

He preaches it to his players.

He talks about it in inspirational speeches.

He writes books about it.

In fact, he was on a book tour to promote his latest tome, Life Promises for Success: Promises from God on Achieving Your Best, when an unfortunate thing happened.

He was outed.

No, not outed like that; outed like this:

Remember when the NCAA busted five Buckeyes for selling Big 10 championship rings, shoes, jerseys and other memorabilia to the owner of a tattoo parlor? That was in December.

When the news broke, Tressel expressed disappointment in his players. He didn’t express surprise; what we didn’t know at the time was that he couldn’t have. Turns out Tressel had been tipped off to the violations in April.

He told the tipper, “I will get on it ASAP.”

Then he did ... nothing.

Didn’t tell his athletic director, didn’t tell his school president, didn’t tell the NCAA — a violation of his contract, by the way.

On Monday, Yahoo Sports broke the story about what Tressel knew and when he knew it. On Tuesday, an embarrassed Ohio State called Tressel back from his book tour so he could lie to the nation’s press.

Whoa! That’s harsh. Maybe Tressel really believes the self-justifying claptrap he offered to explain his failure to tell anyone that star quarterback Terrelle Pryor and four others were committing NCAA rule violations, and that those violations involved an alleged drug dealer.

Maybe he believes it.

I doubt it.

Tressel said he stayed silent because he didn’t want to “interfere with a federal investigation” into drug trafficking. By staying silent, Tressel said, he was trying to protect his players.

He was trying to protect his players, all right — or rather, protect their eligibility — and his chance to get to and win a lucrative BCS bowl game, which the Buckeyes did. Tressel thereby validated his commercial value; he and his program are worth millions upon millions to OSU, which pays him $3.5 million a year in return.

For their actions, the players were suspended for five games in the upcoming season. For covering up their actions, Tressel was suspended two games and fined $250,000, essentially a slap on the wrist.

Asked if he considered firing Tressel for this eminently fireable offense, E. Gordon Gee, the little man who is OSU president, attempted a little humor: “No, are you kidding? Let me be very clear. I’m just hoping the coach doesn’t dismiss me.”

HAHAHAHAHAH.

Actually, Gee’s tiny jest isn’t funny; it’s pathetic, and only too close to truth.

There is something amusing in all this, though — that’s Tressel’s attempt all these years to sell the idea he’s a different breed of Division I football coach.

I wish him luck with his latest book.

We'll find out draft day

2011-03-03T22:17:00.005-07:00

So.

Former Arkansas quarterback Ryan Mallett, confronted by a story that said "heavy rumors of drug use and possible addiction kept him from coming out for the 2010 draft," refused to answer questions about the piece, which was written by former NFL executive Tony Softli.

Well, that's his right, of course.

Here's what Mallett did say: "Obviously somebody did it for a reason, right before the combine, right before the draft. That's the last I'm going to talk about it, though. I've talked to the teams. It's all good."

First of all, I have to admit I cringe every time I hear anyone say, "it's all good" about anything.

Second of all, with character questions in the air and the memory of Ryan Leaf — to whom Mallett has been compared — still hanging on, I'm guessing it's really not all that good.

That's on the outside ...

2011-03-03T22:03:00.005-07:00

OK — it's an obvious question, but somebody has to ask it.

Regarding fashion "provocateur" John Galliano, who recently said, "I love Hitler" to two women he thought were Jewish: Exactly how long would Galliano have lasted in the Third Reich.

I'm guessing about ... six seconds.

Friday column: Crazy week, but it’s BYU that makes it memorable

2011-03-03T21:57:00.005-07:00

So.

Fidel Castro and Hugo Chávez blame the U.S. for the uprising in Libya while Moammar Gadhafi himself points the finger not at America — the usual villain of choice in much of the Arab world — but at America’s arch-enemy, Osama bin Laden.

Makes sense.

At least as much as anything emanating from the speaking orifice of one Charlie Sheen, who despite having “tiger blood and Adonis DNA,” wasn’t able to stop his 2-year-old sons from being removed from his custody Tuesday. He did, though, later summon the chi to tweet, “My sons are fine. My path is now clear. Defeat is not an option!”

Apparently neither is sanity.

But Sheen hardly has the market cornered on the bizarre — not even with Castro, Chávez and Gadhafi thrown in.

How crazy is our world recently? Crazy enough that Bernie Madoff’s insistence that he’s a “good person” (he learned that from prison psychiatric sessions — your tax dollars at work) hardly makes a ripple in the news cycle.

But for a story that’s off-the-charts unusual we have to turn to the world of sports, specifically to Brigham Young University basketball.

BYU on Tuesday suspended starting forward Brandon Davies — the Cougars’ leading rebounder — for the rest of the season. Yes, that includes the NCAA Tournament, which BYU was given a fair chance of winning.

Before the suspension, I mean. In the Cougars' first game after the suspension they were clobbered by the Lobos 82-64.

I know what you’re thinking: That must have been some violation to get a key player booted off a team so close to tourney time.

So what are we talking about with this miscreant? Attempted murder? Dealing drugs? Knocking over a 7-Eleven?

No, actually; according to the Salt Lake Tribune, Davies had premarital sex.

Yes, you ask, and then what?

And then, nothing.

Premarital sex is a violation of the school’s honor code, a code that’s in place for all students — 98 percent of whom are Mormon, including Davies. The code “requires students to live a chaste and virtuous life, be honest, abstain from alcoholic beverages, tobacco, tea, coffee and substance abuse, and attend church regularly.”

One may or not want to argue aspects of the code, but it’s one that all BYU students know about and are subject to.

Thus, a contender for the NCAA basketball trophy and all the cash that kind of success can bring cripples its chances over a player violating an honor code?

That honor code?

Well, yes.

See why it’s the story of the week?

It’s one thing for a school to profess any honor code of any kind; it’s another to actually expect student-athletes to comply with it; it’s yet another for a school to deal out consequences that will hurt it in the pocketbook.

As entertaining as they might be, drug-fueled rants by celebrities are a dime a dozen. So are pronouncements by tin-horn dictators losing their grip.

Universities living by what they profess? As a story, that’s something we in the news business call man-bites-dog.

Contact Jim Gordon at gjames43@msn.com.

Great moments in education

2011-02-17T23:48:00.004-07:00

So.

You’re Jordan Spriggs, an Auburn football player not exactly into academics (hard to believe, I know, but play along).

You have an assignment coming up that you’d just as soon not complete — hey, who wants anything cutting into their Xbox time? You obviously need to procure schoolwork from another source.

Do you:

a) Request a little academic ... uh, help from a low-level football assistant;

b) Ask another scholar-athlete at Auburn where he gets his papers?

c) Tweet, “Who is good at writing papers? I pay”?

If you’re actually Jordan Spriggs, you actually Tweet, “Who is good at writing papers? I pay”?

Mr. Spriggs, NCAA for you on line one …

But wait, there’s more

2011-02-17T23:46:00.006-07:00

Meanwhile, also this week, NCAA investigators traveled to Thibodaux, La., to meet with Auburn recruit Greg Robinson, Robinson’s mother Lydia, Robinson associate Sean Nelson and Robinson’s former Thibodaux High School coach, Dennis Lorio.

According to Sports by Brooks, the NCAA, following up on an investigative piece by Thayer Evans at FOXSports.com, is most interested “about the role Nelson played in the recruitment of both players and the nature of Nelson’s relationship with the Auburn coaching staff.”

Considering the NCAA is still looking at the recruitment of Cam Newton, perhaps the organization should just go ahead and open a satellite office in eastern Alabama.

If it’s not an alcohol problem, it will do till one comes along

2011-02-17T23:35:00.004-07:00

Detroit Tigers slugger Miguel Cabrera, spring training 2010, to reporters: “You guys write in the paper ‘alcoholic.’ That's not right. I don't know how to explain, but it's not an alcohol problem.”

Detroit Tigers slugger Miguel Cabrera, spring training 2011, to police: “Do you know who I am?” before being arrested and charged with driving under the influence of alcohol and resisting an officer without violence.

According to St. Lucie County Sheriff's Office, Cabrera refused to take a breathalyzer test during the early Wednesday incident. On the other hand, he reportedly took a swig from a bottle of scotch as a deputy watched.

You have to admit, though, for someone in the process of completely messing up his career, Cabrera sure takes a happy mug shot.

Friday column: For a con man, one hell of a question

2011-02-17T23:08:00.005-07:00

As I read the latest accusations against Art Schlichter — a swindler whose latest alleged con is said to have led a 68-year-old widow to the brink of suicide — I find myself wondering what particular area of hell is appropriate for the former Ohio State quarterback.

In The Inferno, Dante reserves the eighth circle of perdition for practitioners of various types of fraud. Those guilty of theft — of stealing other people’s substance in life — are not only bitten by snakes, they find that the bites cost them their humanity.

They are transformed into serpents.

Reptilian is as good a word as any to describe Schlichter’s character in the here-and-now.

To feed his longstanding gambling addiction, the 50-year-old former jock — whom a prosecutor called “the best con man I’ve ever seen” — has committed more than 20 felonies, stealing an estimated $1.5 million from both friends and strangers.

That doesn’t include the $1 million Schlichter is formally charged with stealing from Anita Barney, who befriended Schlichter after his latest release from prison when he spoke at a church to peddle both his book and his tale of contrition.

“I listened to his story in church, and I felt sad for him,” Barney told the Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch. “I read his book and thought he was serious about helping people. I was a Christian, and I felt sorry for him.”

Sorry enough to loan Schlichter $100,000. Not only did he not pay her back but, according to Barney, he soon pressured her into giving him more money. Then, when her funds ran low, she says, he intimidated her into asking friends for “loans” under various pretexts. Many friends gave her money, which reportedly went to Schlichter.

Former friends suing her, her life in chaos, a distraught Barney drove to her husband’s grave with a loaded handgun. A call from her son — “That guy is not worth killing yourself over, Mom” — kept her from pulling the trigger, according to the Dispatch.

Which brings us back to hell — and another question.

Edward T. Oakes, an expert on the controversial theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar, defended Balthasar’s provocative idea that sinners in hell might still have a repentant encounter with God and thus be saved. But Oakes wrote that in assessing that notion, one must consider the accumulation of sin in a person’s lifetime — he uses Hitler as an example — acting like a force at death “so that one is hurled, so to speak, into defiance” — even in the face of an encounter with the Almighty.

If I understand Oakes, he’s saying Balthasar’s theology may leave open the possibility of a sinner exiting hell, but the way a particular person lives his or her life could make such an exit very unlikely, nearly impossible.

Which sounds to me like an interesting long-shot gamble, action that would attract the interest of a certain former quarterback seemingly headed back to prison.

Schlichter being Schlichter, if he could lay a wager on the fate of his own soul in hell, I have no doubt that he would.

But which way, I wonder, would he bet?

Friday column: Brewing up a little wisdom

2011-02-17T22:52:00.005-07:00

So.

Lindsay Lohan just borrowed a $2,500 necklace.

Well, sure; why not? After all, the rich are different from you and me. And the celebrity rich? They’re in a completely different universe. So a swank store allowing a celeb to prance out the door with such an ornament is not beyond the realm …

Therefore, I’m with the defense. Up to a point. And that point is reached when an anonymous member of Lohan’s entourage says the following:

“Lindsay doesn’t understand how the store can file a police report when they let her borrow the necklace. She’s used to getting gifted items that are worth way more than that. And why would (Lindsay) steal a necklace? She has tons of jewelry and doesn’t need anymore.”

Why would she steal a necklace?

Has the source forgotten the subject in question? Anyone who can pose a question beginning with the words, “Why would Lindsay … ” is detached from reality.

Seemingly, one might more profitably ask, “Why would a 46-year-old congressman with a wife and a young son and, presumably, a political future try to pass himself off as a divorced, 39-year-old lobbyist — and e-mail a photo of his flexing, shirtless self to a woman he met on Craigslist?”

That’s a question now-former Rep. Christopher Lee, R-NY, will be asking himself for — oh, let me see — the rest of his life. As will his family. As will anyone who voted for him. As will many who did not.

(Quick aside: As we learned in the Brett Favre fiasco, texting photos of your naked self is generally not a good idea.)

Frankly, I doubt the congressman or anybody else will arrive at a definitive and edifying answer.

But if anyone does, that person might move on to the question of why Albert Haynesworth in his Ford F-150 pickup last week allegedly felt the need to chase down a man in a 1994 Honda, get him to roll down his window, then punch him in the nose.

Haynesworth, it would seem, has little reason to be angry with the world, let alone a poor schlub in an aging Civic who may have cut him off. After all, in two years in Washington, the pouty Haynesworth has played like a dog but still collected about $500,000 per tackle, thanks to an embarrassingly hefty contract.

Of course, one might also ask why Haynesworth, upon signing a $100 million deal with the Washington Redskins, would suddenly turn into a complete jerk?

(Ha ha — trick question: Haynesworth was a jerk way before he inked that 2009 contract.)

Seeking a clue to mankind’s inexplicable nature (and looking for a way to end this column), I did a Web search for quotes on human behavior.

After plodding through the wisdom of the ages, I found myself preferring the simple sagacity of a 1990 beer ad:

Why ask why?

Contact Jim Gordon at gjames43@msn.com.

Friday column: Even the gullible will think twice about these

2011-02-04T00:30:00.003-07:00

Thank God for the credulous.

You know, the folks who believe our president wasn’t born in America, the moon landing was faked, and certain powerful lizard humans secretly run the world (oh, they’re out there, people).

If it weren’t for the credulous, who could O.J. Mayo possibly be talking to?

Mayo, guard for the Memphis Grizzlies, recently was suspended by the NBA for 10 games after testing positive for the steroid DHEA. He immediately went to what is usually Plan A in such situations — blaming the test result on something he inadvertently ingested.

In this case, Mayo put the onus on an unnamed energy drink, thereby showing a distinct lack of imagination. (Cyclist Alberto Contador blamed tainted meat; sprinter Ben Johnson, spiked ginseng; distance runner Dieter Baumann, nandalone toothpaste.)

As for his trustworthiness, this is the same Mayo who denied receiving cash and other goodies at Southern Cal even though the school — in the wake of its investigation — vacated all of its wins for the season Mayo was a Trojan and surrendered $206,200 in NCAA Tournament money.

I wouldn’t say Mayo and truth are strangers; let’s just say they’re not exactly roommates.

Sometimes, sports figures don’t talk to the credulous — they are the credulous.

Take Mets principal owner Fred Wilpon and team president Jeff Katz, who for years believed that Bernie Madoff produced 18 percent returns on their investments because, in their words, “he was smarter than everyone else.”

They believed that until the day the Ponzi scheme purveyor was hauled off to jail.

That belief — which, to be fair, no small number of investors shared — has resulted in financial instability for the New York franchise, leading to the Mets having to seek minority partners to ease their budget woes.

This might prove a difficult sell, even to their fellow credulous: “The ship is sinking — hop aboard!”

For another tough sell, I give you the words of Harvey Bruner, lawyer of record for one Chris Carter, a top Ohio State football recruit and a recent guest of the Cleveland City Jail.

Carter, 18, was arrested Tuesday and charged on suspicion of fondling as many eight high school girls while pretending to measure them for JROTC uniforms. One of the alleged victims is 15.

According to news reports, Carter not only admitted his guilt to police, he gave them the book he used to record the measurements.

Yet after his first visit with Carter, Bruner declared him to be a “fine, young man” who is innocent of any wrongdoing.

To the credulous, I would point out that in Bruner’s trade — criminal-defense attorney — an “innocent person” and “paying client” are synonymous.

Considering Carter’s admission and the “measurement book,” it will be interesting to see what defense Bruner employs for the “fine, young man.” I suspect it will have something to do with a conspiracy of the lizard humans.

(Oh, they’re out there, people).

"The Florida way"

2011-01-27T12:30:00.003-07:00

When new Gators football coach Will Muschamp pledged to have his players represent the school “the Florida way,” I know what you were thinking:

Uh-oh.

And you were right.

After all, under previous coach Urban Meyer, representing the university “the Florida way” meant 30 arrests involving 27 players in six seasons.

Now, “the Florida way” under Muschamp has its first arrest — star cornerback Janoris Jenkins, busted on a marijuana possession charge, his second arrest in the past 20 months.

On the positive side, Jenkins’ first arrest involved the police use of a stun gun. This time he apparently surrendered peacefully.

That’s progress.

One to learn by

2011-01-27T12:27:00.006-07:00

Undoubtedly, there are some who will call Gil Meche a fool for turning his back on $12 million of the Kansas City Royals’ money just because he knows he wouldn’t actually earn it.

But for spurning the cash, Meche is not foolish; he’s honorable.

Explained Meche, who has an injured right elbow that he’s certain will prevent him from ever pitching effectively again:

“When I signed my contract, my main goal was to earn it. Once I started to realize I wasn’t earning my money, I felt bad. I was making a crazy amount of money for not even pitching. Honestly, I didn’t feel like I deserved it. I didn’t want to have those feelings again.”

Rather than engage in a game of charade and collect the dough, Meche retired. He noted the Royals had already paid him $40 million. By stepping on a baseball field, Meche provided financial security for his three children. By stepping off one, he’s provided an amazing lesson.

Just don’t expect Meche to be asked to speak to a gathering of the Major League Players Association anytime soon.

Speaking of teaching one’s children …

2011-01-27T12:22:00.002-07:00

I give you one Michael Todd Forrest, who apparently became upset with his son’s high school hoops coach in North Stanley, N.C. The nature of the unhappiness is unknown, though in these types of cases it often has to do with the son’s playing time.

In any case, Mr. Forrest apparently expressed his displeasure with Bobby Staley by attacking the coach as he was putting equipment away following a game.

Mr. Forrest also apparently involved his son in the fracas, which is not the sort of father-son bonding activity one would hope to see.

Unfortunately for Mr. Forrest and his son, the — uh, alleged — assault happened in front of a police officer.

Mr. Forrest has been arrested; the fate of his son, Logan, 17, is up in the air. Undoubtedly, though, he’s benefited by the paternal example.

Friday column: A changed man? Only time will tell

2011-01-27T12:20:00.007-07:00

Let us now praise famous men.

Especially quarterbacks who have managed to go a full 10 months without being accused of sexual assault.

Yes, the re-deification of Ben Roethlisberger has begun.

After the Pittsburgh Steelers held off the New York Jets 24-19 Sunday to earn a Super Bowl berth, a writer for SI.com purred, “This effort illustrated the entire palate (sic) of greatness Roethlisberger possesses … He improvised, extended plays and showed the will of a champion.”

He gave Roethlisberger an “A” for his performance.

Pretty high mark for a quarterback with a passer rating of 35.5.

But Roethlisberger’s team won, and winning is the all-powerful deodorant, strong enough to lead team president Art Rooney II to gush, “I’m proud of the way he picked himself up and acted like the man he really is.”

The man he really is.

As if Rooney knows.

Rooney’s comment, of course, wasn’t — ostensibly — about Roethlisberger’s play on the field but his actions off it, specifically his keeping his nose clean since the March incident in Milledgeville, Ga., in which he was accused of buying alcohol for a group of young women, then assaulting one in a bar bathroom while his creep cop friend guarded the door.

The district attorney, you might recall, didn’t prosecute Roethlisberger — but not because he believed the incident didn’t happen.

This was the second time in recent years Roethlisberger had been accused of rape. Less-serious black marks on his character also surfaced, painting a portrait of a rich, boorish athlete with a serious case of entitlement-itis.

Asked if the Steelers had considered dumping their franchise quarterback in March, Rooney said, “You go through a lot of different thoughts at times like that. But, at the end of the day, I knew Ben and I knew his parents. I just believed that if he got back to being the type of person he really is deep down inside, he is still the type of person we want to be around. He hasn’t disappointed us.”

He certainly hasn’t disappointed his handlers, staying out of trouble and saying the right things, which shows he has some brains. Good for him.

But for his being a changed man, in 10 short months?

I’m a believer in repentance, and I hope Roethlisberger’s purported turn-around is genuine. But his cleaning up his act during one season isn’t enough to convince me. Like with Michael Vick and his story of regeneration, time will tell.

But part of repentance is facing up to what you’ve done wrong.

Which brings me to an exchange Roethlisberger had with a reporter following the Steelers’ victory Sunday.

Asked if he thinks about what he did in Milledgeville, Ga., Roethlisberger said, “I don’t. I don’t. I’ll stop you now. Not at all.”

Not at all?

Contact Jim Gordon at gjames43@msn.com.

Friday column: A tactic is cheesy but effective

2011-01-20T23:27:00.005-07:00

Decades ago, covering a high school baseball game in Southern California, I saw a diamond tactic I’d never before witnessed: At one point in a middle inning, every member of the home team stood on their dugout bench, looked at their opponents on the field and screamed, “I hate you.”

Over and over and over.

I don’t remember the name of the molder of young men who came up with such a brilliant stratagem, but I can tell you this about him: He was in the wrong sport.

He should have been a football coach.

Like Rex Ryan.

Now, to be sure, the New York Jets’ head man is a top defensive mind with more than a single skill, but in a recent column for ESPN, Gene Wojciechowski quoted an NFL team executive who knew Ryan well. “His No. 1 ability,” the exec said, “is to get his players to identify hate in the week (before a game).”

Ryan does this, in part, by using a related tried-and-true artifice: getting his team into an “us vs. the world” mentality. Also known as “no one respects us.”

The effectiveness of this flimsy contrivance can be seen in the Jets’ upset of the Patriots on Sunday, and also in New York linebacker Bart Scott’s on-field rant following the game:

“To all the nonbelievers, to all the nonbelievers!” Scott screamed at an interviewer. “Disrespect us. Talk crap about the defense, and we’re the third-best defense in the league.”

I don’t recall anyone running down the Jets defense before the game, but that hardly matters. It was enough that Ryan got his players to believe it. And getting players to believe such tripe has been a Ryan staple for years, even at such a modest football program as New Mexico Highlands University.

Wojciechowski quotes West Las Vegas head coach Mike Ulibarri, who played for Ryan when Ryan was an assistant at Highlands in 1989. Ulibarri still remembers a speech Ryan gave before the Cowboys played Mesa State.

“Nobody’s your friend on the field. You want friends? You can have friends after the game. Right now, it’s you against everybody, and you have to prove yourself every time.”

Ah yes, you against the world.

(Sigh.)

Ryan’s motivational skills — “his ability to get his team to identify hate” — impress even players of other teams. This week, New York Giants safety Antrel Rolle openly admired Ryan’s approach, and said of the Jets, “That team is going to war for him.”

The war reference may be odious, particular in a time of actual combat and loss of life, but it’s also apt in that nations have sought to demonize the enemy — and thereby work up a good hate in their soldiers — for millennia.

Why? For the same reason Ryan does. It works.

And what does it say about us as a species that it continues to work so well, even in our games?

Nothing good.

Friday column: She found meaning everywhere she looked

2011-01-20T15:34:00.002-07:00

Published: January 14, 2011

The person who ended the life of 9-year-old Christina Taylor Green was said to be a nihilist — someone who contends that there's no meaning in life, no meaning in anything, anywhere. From what we know about her life, Christina Taylor Green found meaning everywhere.

She found meaning in sport, playing for her Little League baseball team and following in the footsteps of her grandfather, former major league pitcher Dallas Green.

She found meaning in school, where she not only learned, her teachers say, but helped others do so.

She found meaning in service, recently being elected to her school's student council.

She found meaning in family.

She found meaning in faith, having just received her first Holy Communion.

"She was interested in everything," her mother said.

A Washington Post story noted, "The girl was already aware of the "inequalities" of the world, Roxanna Green said. Christina often repeated the same phrase to her mother: 'We are so blessed. We have the best life.' "

A violent act put an end to Christina's life — along with the lives of five others — and damaged beyond measure the lives of many, including that of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, the killer's main target. Yet, in Christina's faith tradition, it is the bedrock belief that such violence does not have the last word.

That belief was on display Thursday inside St. Elizabeth Ann Seton church, where her funeral was held.

Surprisingly — but thankfully — in this voyeuristic age, television cameras were not allowed inside. But still-photographers were.

Traditionally, in Roman Catholic funeral rites, clergy wear purple or black for mourning, understandable for any loss, let alone one as tragic as this one. In some parishes, though, those colors have given way to white — considered more appropriate for a service where the underlying theme is not burial, but resurrection; not death, but life.

White was the color of the day at

St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, the same color worn by many of the mourners who lined the way to the church.

White also is the funeral color worn in the tradition I'm more familiar with, that of the Episcopal Church, where mourning is acknowledged but the resurrection theme predominates -- in word as well as color.

Perhaps the most beautiful words of the funeral service are heard in the commendation, a place where the priest, quoting Genesis, reminds all in attendance that "Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return."

Then the liturgy -- emboldened by faith in resurrection and thus defiant in the face of death -- continues: "All we go down to the dust; yet even at the grave we make our song: Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia."

For Christina Taylor Green, a 9-year-old who found meaning in so many places, though she goes down to the dust, we, too, make our song: "Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia."

The face of ... well, you call it

2010-12-30T23:24:00.006-07:00

At the very close of 2010, Tucker Carlson made a strong big for Cretin of the Year. Which isn't that surprising. Carlson's ability to continue to find employment on one cable news network or another speaks to the content of the 24-hour news cycle (not favorably).

Saying that Michael Vick should have been executed for the killing of dogs may not be the dumbest thing he’s ever said, but it’s certainly in the top 5.

I would explain why it’s dumb, but if you really need an explanation, you most likely wouldn’t understand it.

The color of the sky in Tressel's universe?

2010-12-30T23:22:00.009-07:00

So.

Ohio State coach Jim Tressel insists that Terrelle Pryor and four other top Buckeyes will return to school to face their NCAA-mandated five-game suspensions rather than turn pro.

Sure they will. Every one of them.

(Suppressed laughter).

According to news reports, “Tressel said he wanted to make sure that the players wouldn't ‘skirt the consequences’ by playing in the Sugar Bowl, then declaring for the NFL draft and avoiding any punishment.

" ‘We told them they would have to make the decision on the NFL prior to leaving for the bowl game,’ Tressel said at his first Sugar Bowl news conference. ‘It wouldn't be fair to not face the consequences down the road.’

(Not-so suppressed laughter).

Here’s something you can bet the farm on — if some of the players are given first-round status by the draft prognosticators, they’re turning pro. Period. And they’ll justify it the same way they justified selling championship rings and memorabilia — they're just helping their family.

On this matter, Tressel is either disingenuous — or a rube.

Friday column: What was 2010 about? Take a guess

2010-12-30T23:08:00.005-07:00

So, Boss, you say you want a quick review of Toyland in 2010? Can do:

Sex.

Money.

Ego.

There you go, Boss; now I’ll start on next Friday’s col — … what’s that? You need more? You want it fleshed out, so to speak? Really?

OK.

Well, for sex we have Tiger Woods, whose addiction to the amorous cost him his reputation, his wife and his game — in that order.

We have Lawrence Taylor, whose attempted tryst with an underage paramour — the entrepreneurial kind — has cost him his reputation (what was left of it) and oodles of green. It also may cost him his freedom.

We have French soccer stars Franck Ribery and Karim Benzema, who’ve been charged with soliciting an underage prostitute (I’m sensing a theme here).

That’s just the tip of the iceberg, sex-wise. As for money, where do we start? Or end? Let me give you just one story — two, actually, that are linked by — what else? — dollars.

In June, the NCAA fell like a ton of bricks on Southern Cal because Reggie Bush’s family took hundreds of thousands of dollars in freebies in his Trojan days. In December, the NCAA admitted Cam Newton’s father did everything to shop his son except list him on eBay — but still it allowed the star quarterback to continue playing for Auburn, maintaining there was no reason to think the son was in on the deal.

The real difference between the two cases? Bush’s college career is over, while Newton still has money to make for his school, his conference and the BCS. The NCAA pulling the plug on the Heisman Trophy winner before Jan. 10’s national title game would cost the BCS and its sponsors a bundle.

Wasn’t. Going. To. Happen.

By the way, Boss, there were some nice stories this year.
We had Detroit’s Andres Galarraga showing amazing self-control and sportsmanship when an ump’s blown call cost him a perfect game and a ticket to Cooperstown. We had Santa Fe Little Leaguers accepting sure defeat rather than have their team broken up. We had Grant Desme, a young Oakland prospect, giving up a promising baseball career to pursue the priesthood.

What’s that? Forget the sweetness and light and give you the ego angle?

I can do that in two syllables: Brett Favre.

Favre began his last ride (please, Lord) on the Ego Train by making Vikings teammates trek to Mississippi to beg him to play. Then he squeezed the team for more millions. Finally, he embarrassed the NFL — if that’s possible — by stonewalling an investigation into charges he sexually harassed a twenty-something Jets employee.

What? That’s more than just ego? Right you are, Boss. With just one player in one sport, you have the essence of Toyland in 2010:

Sex.

Money.

Ego.

Like I said.

Contact Jim Gordon at gjames43@msn.com.

Credibility problem? What credibility problem?

2010-12-23T14:37:00.006-07:00

So.

In Columbus, Ohio, football players — including Terrelle Pryor, the Buckeyes’ best and most marketable player — are found to have taken improper benefits that will cost them five-game suspensions.

But not until next season.

Too much money involved in the Buckeyes’ Sugar Bowl appearance to suspend them now.

Greed and hypocrisy, thy name is NCAA football.

Yes, Bret, we know you're special ...

2010-12-23T14:36:00.007-07:00

In Minnesota, Vikings quarterback Brett Favre spent some time after possibly his last NFL appearance patting himself on the back: “It's been a 20-year career; not too many guys can say that. I took one day off and a half, but again not a lot of guys can say that.”

Oddly enough, he didn’t add, “And I sexually harassed a sideline reporter.” He probably didn’t add that because he couldn’t — not with a straight face — finish with, “not a lot of guys have done that.”

Friday column: In trial, no surprises — just pain

2010-12-23T14:35:00.003-07:00

Christmas is a season for the unexpected; for some, the unbelievable.

Unfortunately, in sportsland the last few days, we’ve seen nothing but the expected and the believable. I discuss a couple of incidents today in my blog.

But of the expected, nothing was more tragic this week than the end of the trial of Andrew Thomas Gallo.
An athlete? No, a killer of one.

Last year, Gallo — driving with a blood alcohol content of 0.19 percent after a night of drinking with his stepbrother — blew through a red light in Fullerton, Calif., and hit a car carrying Nick Adenhart, a 22-year-old pitcher for the Los Angeles Angels.

Adenhart was killed, along with friends Courtney Stewart, 20, and Henry Pearson, 25. Jon Wilhite, 24, survived, but sustained major injuries.

The trial played out along predictable lines. The state charged Gallo with second-degree murder; the defendant pleaded not guilty.

Gallo, with a previous DUI conviction and at least two stints in rehab on his record, was defended by his family.
“It was an accident,” his mother, Sandra Sagahon, said.

The jury said it was murder, leading to the penalty phase of the trial, which also moved along predictable lines.

In emotional testimony, the families of Stewart, Pearson, Wilhite and Adenhart understandably pressed for the longest possible incarceration.

“Andrew Gallo, the night you killed my daughter you killed me,” Stewart’s mother said. “I will never be the same.”

Wilhite’s mother discussed the excruciating pain her son had been in and his difficult recovery. “Mr. Gallo, you put my son through hell,” she said. … I hope you enjoy your new address.”

The Adenhart family sent a letter that said, in part, “There is no justice as long as Mr. Gallo is drawing a breath.”

While families of the victim asked for the maximum, Gallo’s family asked for leniency.

Gallo didn’t get it, the judge sentencing him to 55 years to life. Gallo, 23, will be eligible for parole when he’s 72. As he handed down the sentence, the judge put it bluntly:

“Mr. Gallo, you have devastated four families — really five families, with your own.”

If there was any hint of grace, it came when Gallo’s father, after asking for leniency for his son, turned to the victims’ families and said, “My family prays for you all the time. We also pray that someday you’ll forgive us.”

Forgive us.

That’s the father including the family in the sins of the son.

Then, there’s someday.

In the courtroom Tuesday, just four days before Christmas, there was nothing unexpected, nothing unbelievable. Which doesn’t mean there won’t be — somewhere, someday.

Transcendence can take time.

An impressive lineup

2010-12-16T16:45:00.003-07:00

Good thing Albert Haynesworth makes so much money. He just might need every dollar.

The big-earning-but-not-so-hard-working Washington linesman is facing a few legal challenges. According to a Thom Loverro story in The Washington Examiner:

* He’s being sued by a woman who claims Haynesworth’s reckless driving caused the accident that left her disabled.

* He’s being sued by a Tennessee bank for not paying back a $2.38 million loan.

* He’s being sued by an exotic dancer for $10 million for allegedly impregnating her.

* And his former wife has been in court charging him with not paying her health insurance or their children's bills.

On top of that, his current team reportedly is considering going after the $21 million bonus they paid him earlier this year.

Haynesworth has made his employers very unhappy; but it appears he’ll make his lawyers very happy — assuming, of course, he actually pays them …

Blame game

2010-12-15T22:14:00.003-07:00

So.

Terrell Owens has unloaded not on his quarterback — his usual target — but on his coaches.

“I think there's underachieving from the top down,” Owens said of the 2-11 Bengals. “You start with the owner, you start with the coaches. And obviously we as players, we are a product of what the coaches are coaching us throughout the course of the week.”

Cincy is an undisciplined team, so the coaching probably isn’t first-rate. But perhaps the bulk of the blame should go to the Browns — President Mike and Vice Presidents Pete and Paul — the player personnel people who keep bringing in players such as … well, Terrell Owens.

Friday column: Long-term plans? Don't bother

2010-12-15T19:59:00.005-07:00

Hamlet: What’s the news?
Rosencrantz: None, my lord, but that the world’s grown honest.
Hamlet: Then is doomsday near.
Hamlet — Act II, Scene 2

Last time I looked, the world hadn’t grown honest. But I have my own way of judging the nearness of the end times, and I’m getting a bit concerned. I wrote a positive column about three sports figures less than a month ago — and now I’ve done it again.

Starting with the Terrence Williams.

Williams, sent to New Jersey’s Development League team in Springfield, Mass., after consistently being late to Nets games and practices, was upbraided by the D-League club’s eighth-grade ball boy.

Carlos Gonzalez Jr. told Williams he was one of his favorite players, then asked, “Why would you blow it?”

Recalled Williams: “I was like, ‘What are you talking about?’ He said, ‘Why would you want to have an attitude, and be late — the simplest things you can control? And you get to be in the NBA? I would die to do that, so don’t blow it.’ ”

More amazing than a 13-year-old talking to a 23-year-old pro that way is the fact that the pro listened, changed his ways, and is now back in the NBA — albeit with Houston.
“There definitely was an awakening,” Williams said. “It woke me up a lot.”

* * *

Some would say that Keith Fitzhugh must have been asleep when the New York Jets asked the 24-year-old to join the team to shore up their secondary.

The gig probably wouldn’t have been for long, but hey, it still was the NFL, and a chance.

Fitzhugh said no thanks. Why?

He was afraid he would lose his regular job — as a trainee with the Norfolk Southern railroad.

Fitzhugh, it turns out, loves trains. He also loves his aging parents, with whom he lives in Hampton, Ga.

His decision has given Fitzhugh more notice than he ever garnered as a player.

But, Fitzhugh said, “I’m not doing this for fun or publicity or any other reason. I’m doing this because this is who I am.”

* * *

It remains unclear who Ron Artest is, exactly, but for the second time in a month he’s caught my attention. This time, it’s for refusing to allow a reporter to entice him into grousing because his minutes with the Lakers are down this year.

Said Artest: “I don’t be analyzing it, you know what I mean? I don’t be analyzing, analyzing, analyzing.”

I don’t be either.

But if I were, two columns praising Artest within a month of each other would make me think that while the world hadn’t grown honest, perhaps the sports world was beginning to grow wise.

In which case, doomsday definitely is near.

Contact Jim Gordon at gjames43@msn.com.

Just a thought ...

2010-12-10T00:03:00.006-07:00

So.

Cam Newton's dad says he won't attend the Heisman Trophy award ceremony.

Why?

Because, he says, his presence might "rob Cam and the event of a sacred moment."

Well, that could be the reason.

Or maybe the Downtown Athletic Club couldn't come up with the requisite appearance fee ...

Getting it done, on and off the field

2010-12-09T23:31:00.009-07:00

Recommended reading: Greg Bishops’s New York Times piece on former running back Curtis Martin.

Martin not only had the requisite talent and toughness to play the position, he also had — and has — perspective and smarts.

Writes Bishop: “Even when he played, Martin did not want to be a scout or a coach or a broadcaster afterward. He wanted to own part of a team.”

Martin on his Hall-of-Fame candidacy:

“When I think of the Hall, what’s most satisfying is this really wasn’t something that I wanted. But I’m proud of that fact. I made the most of that situation. I maximized my opportunity.”

That's not something every athlete — or non-athlete, for the matter — can say.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/03/sports/football/03martin.html?adxnnl=1&ref=football&adxnnlx=1291964403-wBMltZdsV48nlbjwR4Weyw