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

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

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!

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

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

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 ...

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

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

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

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

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.