Insert cleat, shoe, high heel ...

Why, oh why, do they do this? Open their mouths, I mean?

Take Ohio State receiver Roy Small.

Days before his Buckeyes go on the road to take on the University of Southern California — the top-ranked football team in the country — Small rips the Trojans program, describing disdainfully his recruiting visit to Los Angeles, during his senior year of high school.

He ends his rant with, “(It's) a class thing. Here at Ohio State, they teach you to be a better man. There, it's just all about football."

Well, it certainly WILL be all about football Saturday. Most analysts already think USC has the advantage, without the added edge in motivation.

Of course, Small, though he should have known better, is just a player. How does one explain Charlie Weis?

Why did the coach of Notre Dame, which hosts Michigan on Saturday, feel the need to pop off about the Wolverines, a team that embarrassed the not-so-Fighting Irish 38-0 last year?

"I've always been one never to make excuses and blow hot air," Weis claimed before the season started, adding, “… We'll listen to Michigan have all their excuses as they come running in, saying how they have a new coaching staff and there's changes.

"The hell with Michigan."

Weis later tried to backpedal, claiming the “the hell with Michigan” was a kind of tribute to former Michigan coach Bo Schembechler, who once said, “To hell with Notre Dame.” He didn’t explain what the talk about Michigan making excuses was a tribute to.

Last and certainly least, we have Jessica Simpson, paramour of Dallas Cowboys QB Tony Romo, who told Philadelphia Eagles fans, “We’re going to kick your butt — whoo-hoo!”

It’s bad enough when players mouth off and give an opponent bulletin-board material. It’s worse when coaches mouth off. But when girlfriends get into the act ...

Who knows? Maybe Romo likes that. But if I were he, I’d be telling Jessica not to write any checks that someone else — namely, me — has to cash.

With more experience, they'll tell better lies

Let me get this straight.

Darrell Arthur and Mario Chalmers apologize for getting kicked out of the NBA's rookie transition program — but deny using marijuana.

Hmmmm …

How do they explain the fact hotel security was first alerted to a problem by their room smoke detector going off?

How do they explain why they wouldn’t let security into their room, forcing hotel personnel to fetch a key?

How do they explain what was described as a strong stench of pot in the room?

How do they explain the person locked in the bathroom repeatedly flushing the toilet?

Darrell, Mario: If you’re going to feed us lies, at least give us plausible ones — please.

Remembering "The Bear"

Mention should be made of Don Haskins’ passing.

When the Texas Western coach sent an all-black starting lineup against Kentucky’s all-white team in the 1966 NCAA basketball final, even a 15-year-old watching on a fuzzy Zenith could tell the game’s stakes had just been raised.

The Miners’ 72-65 victory spurred the desegregation of sports in the South and the end to unofficial “quotas” in other parts of the country.

Still, Haskins apparently thought of himself not as any kind of a civil-rights pioneer but as a basketball coach, period.

Bob Knight said his friend “got more out of his teams and players than any coach who has ever coached college basketball.” High praise, indeed.

And Haskins, known as “The Bear,” remained sharp in retirement.

Doc Sadler, a former Miners coach who moved to Nebraska, said he spoke with Haskins after Cornhusker games last season, particularly those that were on TV.

"He would see things in a game that I had just coached that I never realized," Sadler said.

Yet, for all of his basketball acumen — and he won 719 games — Haskins will be remembered most for the simple act of putting his best five players on the floor, regardless of their color.

http://sports.espn.go.com/ncb/columns/story?columnist=katz_andy&id=3574928&lpos=spotlight&lid=tab6pos1

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/california/la-me-haskins8-2008sep08,0,2284797.story

Dept. of Self-denial

So.

During the first night of the NBA rookie-transition program, reportedly there was enough marijuana smoke in former Kansas star Darrell Arthur's room — where Arthur and another former Jayhawk, Mario Chalmers, were entertaining young ladies — that the room's smoke detector went off.

Leading to NBA Commissioner David Stern going off, and booting the two out of the four-day seminar, which, yes, they'll have to come back and complete next year.

But Kansas coach Bill Self is not about to question the behavior of two players who helped him win his first national championship.

"We really don't know all the facts yet, and I certainly would never comment publicly on any personal matter concerning any player I have ever coached," Self said. "Beyond that, I can say that both Mario and Darrell were great to coach. They played a huge role in our success the past few years, in large part due to their unselfishness and the sacrifices they made for our program."

Which means what, exactly? They never smoked on game days?

http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/news/story?id=3569725

And Nixon wasn't a crook

In Detroit, the Lions cut Tatum Bell and signed Rudi Johnson, and the incoming running back and the outgoing running back passed each other in the locker room Monday. No big deal; happens all the time.

What isn’t so frequent is the outgoing player stealing the bags of the incoming player.
That’s what Johnson alleges happened while he was meeting with the Lions brass, and a surveillance tape backs him up.

Taken were two Gucci bags, Johnson’s identification, credit cards, about $200 in cash and some undergarments.

Bell admits taking the bags but says it’s all a misunderstanding, that he was asked to pick up a backpack by a former teammate, Victor DeGrate, and took Johnson’s property by mistake.

Eventually the bags were returned by an unnamed woman, without the ID, credit cards, cash — and underwear.

Bell insists he's not a thief. Johnson isn't buying it.

Said Johnson: "If anybody's got some Perry Ellis boxers for sale, you know where they came from."

Of clubs, athletes and early mornings

You have wonder sometimes about the mind-set of coaches and administrators.
Take football coach Bob Stoops, basketball coach Jeff Capel and a couple of suits at Oklahoma University, for example.

Word got out Monday that at least two OU athletes were hurt in a brawl at a Norman nightclub that police said involved guns, knives and tire irons. Naturally, reporters were a mite curious.

Cue Stoops: “I’m not commenting. There was an incident where a couple of our athletes overall were assaulted. Outside of that, there’s an ongoing investigation, so until we know more, I’m not going to confirm or not confirm anything.”

Ah, the old “ongoing investigation” dodge. Beautiful.

Cue Capel, athletic director Joe Castiglione and university President David Boren — actually, why bother, none of them said anything worthwhile, not even providing the names of the athletes involved.

That left it to the police to identify football defensive end Frank Alexander and freshman basketball guard Ray Willis as the OU players, saying the two sustained knife wounds in the brawl.

Did the OU folks really think they could keep the names a secret — in this day and age? Amazing.

Police said the altercation started about 2:30 a.m. when a group unsuccessfully tried to crash a private party at the club, then began attacking invited guests.

No word on whether Alexander and Willis were in the invited group or the crashers, but watch Stoops, Capel and company spin hard the idea the two are simple victims. Perhaps that’s the case, but whatever the facts are, don’t expect them to come from OU.

* * *

Athletes, nightclubs and early mornings continue to prove a bad combination. Witness not only the incident in Norman but Tuesday’s shooting of Jaguar offensive lineman Richard Collier.

Collier was critically wounded about 2:45 a.m. as he and former teammate Kenneth Pettway waited in a car for two women they had met — yes, at a Jacksonville nightclub.
The Jags have passed the Cincinnati Bengals as the NFL’s most troubled team — off the field, at least. Jacksonville has had 11 players arrested in the last two years, including star running back Fred Taylor, charged with disorderly conduct just last weekend.

Head coach Jack Del Rio took issue with any attempt to lump the Collier shooting with the other incidents.

“He was out last night, enjoying himself, having a good time, being responsible,” Del Rio said. “… Listen, a person got shot. The guy who shot the gun is the problem, not the guy who got shot. He’s the victim. He was victimized. You ought to be able to go out and have a good time and go back home and not be worried about being killed or being put in the hospital with bullet holes.”

Maybe you ought to be able to. But when it comes to athletes, more and more it appears as though you can’t.

Contact Jim Gordon at gjames43@msn.com.

Dept. of Not Getting It

The NBA has a rookie-transition program — mandatory for all first-year players — in which the young men are schooled for four days in what to do and not to do as proud professionals.

On the what-not-to-do list is getting caught with drugs.

Mario Chalmers and Darrell Arthur of Kansas had begun the seminar, but before they could digest that particular what-not, they were caught with weed — and women — in their hotel rooms and tossed out of the program.

Unlike the weed, the women were legal, though having them in their rooms violated program rules.

Besides being bounced from the program, Chalmers and Arthur allegedly were fined $20,000 each and might start the NBA season on the suspended list.

Here’s the kicker: since they were booted out of this year’s program, Chalmers and Arthur will have to attend the seminar again — next year.