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SubscribeAs the world goes ‘round – Favre, LeBron back for headlines
Wed, Aug 18 2010 09:29
| NFL, Brett Favre, NBA, Bob Knight, Tiger Woods, LeBron James
| Permalink
So Brett Favre and LeBron James are back in the news today. Sort of.
I mean let’s be honest, Favre deciding to play football this season ranks up there with the sun rising in the east and ESPN trying to claim that tomorrow being Thursday is an exclusive story when it comes to being newsworthy.
The funny thing is I never really pictured this guy as the world’s biggest diva until the past few years. He was always the rugged quarterback who took every hit, got up and kept playing. Now he’s still rugged and takes hit, he just likes to have people fawn over him and plead with him not to retire each offseason. He craves attention the way I crave John’s Pizza. (New York City, the best there is. Okay, now I’ve made myself hungry).
This time three teammates actually had to fly to Mississippi to go to Favre’s farm on bended knee and beg him to come back. Are you kidding me? Look, I don’t blame the Vikings. Favre was a major reason—Adrian Peterson might have been a factor too although that’s often overlooked—they were about two plays from reaching the Super Bowl last year. The other quarterbacks they have on the roster might get them to the playoffs because Peterson’s still there and the rest of the team is very solid, but they aren’t going anywhere in the postseason without a quality quarterback—which Favre probably still is even at 41.
But the diva act really rankles. As with Tiger Woods, Favre clearly isn’t getting very good advice. He’s gone from being one of the most respected figures in football to a punch line (for reasons, obviously, entirely different than Woods). The whole Hamlet thing wore thin a couple of years ago and yet he’s continued it with no sign of any real self-awareness about it. Yes, he did do that commercial where he pokes fun at himself for indecision, I give him credit for that. But, not surprisingly, what did that involve: getting attention and making money. Clearly, that’s what Favre is all about.
Of course as long as he performs few people are going to care. That’s how divas get to be divas. They’re so good at what they do that they’re allowed their foibles because the price paid for putting up with them is worth it. Certainly all the garbage Favre put the Vikings through last summer proved worth it once he got on the field. Clearly they are counting on the same thing happening this fall.
Favre better be aware of one thing though: If he doesn’t perform, whether because of an injury or age finally catching up with him, he’s going to get jumped on. Years ago Bob Knight said this to me: “I know as long as I win, people around here will say I’m eccentric. If I ever stop winning, they’ll say I’m an embarrassment.”
Knight stopped making Final Fours at Indiana in 1992. By 1999, he was vulnerable enough that Myles Brand could get away with firing him. If he’d been to a Final Four in, say, 1998, Brand wouldn’t have dared.
So Favre better crank up the arm and win a bunch of games or he might find himself booed off the stage.
The same is going to be true of James. If by some chance the Miami Heat aren’t dominant, if he gags in the playoffs the way he did the last two years in Cleveland, he will be a laughing stock around the country—except of course on ESPN where Stuart Scott will no doubt still pay homage to The King at every turn—and he won’t be The God of South Beach.
Whether he wins or not, it was certainly amusing to read one quote from the interviewed release by, I think, Gentleman’s Quarterly yesterday. In it, James shoots back at Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert, who ripped him after he left for Miami. Look, James is entitled to shoot back, Gilbert got after him in a way I have never seen an owner go after a player. While I sympathized with Gilbert and everyone in Cleveland, James is certainly entitled to tell his side.
But when James says, “I don’t think he ever cared about LeBron,” how can you not crack up?
There it is folks, the prototype 21st century athlete, talking about himself in the third person and criticizing an owner for not CARING about him? If you want to say, “I didn’t think Gilbert’s comments were fair to ME because of ------“ (you fill in the blank) that’s fine. But owners don’t care about athletes, they pay them to win. I’m always amused when I hear players and owners talk about how close they are to one another. They should talk to Knight because he’ll straighten them out. As long as the player performs the owner will ‘care,’ about them. As soon as he stops, the owner will talk about how much he cares about him while he’s cutting him or trading him. And if another owner wants to show a player how much he ‘cares,’ about him by giving him a better deal, the player will be gone the next day. He may or may not stage an infomercial to announce it. (One question: Has anyone figured out why James put on his act in Greenwich yet? Did he feel safe in a community that has lots of people in his tax bracket? Haven’t figured it out yet).
I wonder how much the Wilpon family ‘cared,’ about Francisco Rodriguez before he tore up his thumb punching out his girlfriend’s father last week? Right now they care so much they’re trying not to have to pay him ever again. They aren’t wrong to be as angry as they clearly are but I don’t think K-Rod should tell someone, “I don’t think the Wilpons ever cared about K-Rod.”
Actually maybe he should—because he’d be right.
I mean let’s be honest, Favre deciding to play football this season ranks up there with the sun rising in the east and ESPN trying to claim that tomorrow being Thursday is an exclusive story when it comes to being newsworthy.
The funny thing is I never really pictured this guy as the world’s biggest diva until the past few years. He was always the rugged quarterback who took every hit, got up and kept playing. Now he’s still rugged and takes hit, he just likes to have people fawn over him and plead with him not to retire each offseason. He craves attention the way I crave John’s Pizza. (New York City, the best there is. Okay, now I’ve made myself hungry).
This time three teammates actually had to fly to Mississippi to go to Favre’s farm on bended knee and beg him to come back. Are you kidding me? Look, I don’t blame the Vikings. Favre was a major reason—Adrian Peterson might have been a factor too although that’s often overlooked—they were about two plays from reaching the Super Bowl last year. The other quarterbacks they have on the roster might get them to the playoffs because Peterson’s still there and the rest of the team is very solid, but they aren’t going anywhere in the postseason without a quality quarterback—which Favre probably still is even at 41.
But the diva act really rankles. As with Tiger Woods, Favre clearly isn’t getting very good advice. He’s gone from being one of the most respected figures in football to a punch line (for reasons, obviously, entirely different than Woods). The whole Hamlet thing wore thin a couple of years ago and yet he’s continued it with no sign of any real self-awareness about it. Yes, he did do that commercial where he pokes fun at himself for indecision, I give him credit for that. But, not surprisingly, what did that involve: getting attention and making money. Clearly, that’s what Favre is all about.
Of course as long as he performs few people are going to care. That’s how divas get to be divas. They’re so good at what they do that they’re allowed their foibles because the price paid for putting up with them is worth it. Certainly all the garbage Favre put the Vikings through last summer proved worth it once he got on the field. Clearly they are counting on the same thing happening this fall.
Favre better be aware of one thing though: If he doesn’t perform, whether because of an injury or age finally catching up with him, he’s going to get jumped on. Years ago Bob Knight said this to me: “I know as long as I win, people around here will say I’m eccentric. If I ever stop winning, they’ll say I’m an embarrassment.”
Knight stopped making Final Fours at Indiana in 1992. By 1999, he was vulnerable enough that Myles Brand could get away with firing him. If he’d been to a Final Four in, say, 1998, Brand wouldn’t have dared.
So Favre better crank up the arm and win a bunch of games or he might find himself booed off the stage.
The same is going to be true of James. If by some chance the Miami Heat aren’t dominant, if he gags in the playoffs the way he did the last two years in Cleveland, he will be a laughing stock around the country—except of course on ESPN where Stuart Scott will no doubt still pay homage to The King at every turn—and he won’t be The God of South Beach.
Whether he wins or not, it was certainly amusing to read one quote from the interviewed release by, I think, Gentleman’s Quarterly yesterday. In it, James shoots back at Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert, who ripped him after he left for Miami. Look, James is entitled to shoot back, Gilbert got after him in a way I have never seen an owner go after a player. While I sympathized with Gilbert and everyone in Cleveland, James is certainly entitled to tell his side.
But when James says, “I don’t think he ever cared about LeBron,” how can you not crack up?
There it is folks, the prototype 21st century athlete, talking about himself in the third person and criticizing an owner for not CARING about him? If you want to say, “I didn’t think Gilbert’s comments were fair to ME because of ------“ (you fill in the blank) that’s fine. But owners don’t care about athletes, they pay them to win. I’m always amused when I hear players and owners talk about how close they are to one another. They should talk to Knight because he’ll straighten them out. As long as the player performs the owner will ‘care,’ about them. As soon as he stops, the owner will talk about how much he cares about him while he’s cutting him or trading him. And if another owner wants to show a player how much he ‘cares,’ about him by giving him a better deal, the player will be gone the next day. He may or may not stage an infomercial to announce it. (One question: Has anyone figured out why James put on his act in Greenwich yet? Did he feel safe in a community that has lots of people in his tax bracket? Haven’t figured it out yet).
I wonder how much the Wilpon family ‘cared,’ about Francisco Rodriguez before he tore up his thumb punching out his girlfriend’s father last week? Right now they care so much they’re trying not to have to pay him ever again. They aren’t wrong to be as angry as they clearly are but I don’t think K-Rod should tell someone, “I don’t think the Wilpons ever cared about K-Rod.”
Actually maybe he should—because he’d be right.
Comments (8)
Favre and ESPN made for each other; Tiger, Rodriguez talk
Fri, Aug 6 2010 09:29
| NFL, Ed Werder, Brett Favre, Tiger Woods, Alex Rodriguez, ESPN
| Permalink
Brett Favre is like the scene of a car accident. You know you shouldn’t look, that you should just keep going, but you find yourself slowing down to see if it really is as bad as it appears to be.
Of course he and ESPN are the perfect team: ESPN will report ANYTHING as long as it can claim it as some kind of news—even embarrassing infomercials like, ‘The Decision,’ which will be parodied for years to come—and Favre craves that sort of attention. Poor Ed Werder and Rachel Nichols must be paying income taxes in Mississippi by now.
Favre has now retired more times than Sugar Ray Leonard, George Foreman and Evander Holyfield. What is most amazing is he has done it without ever missing a GAME. Think about that: he cries in March; waffles in July and shows up in time to play in September. Why anyone—even the poor ESPN drones—would think for one second that he’s not going to play this season is a mystery. Heck, if the Vikings throw in an extra million or two he might fly to Washington en route to Minneapolis and take Albert Haynesworth’s conditioning test for him.
What we know about Favre after all these years and retirements and comebacks is the following: he can’t stand not being the center of attention. When he does finally have to retire in 2027, it’s going to kill him. Because as anyone can tell you, doing games or studio work on TV can’t give you the buzz or the high or the adoration that playing gives you. The one and only exception to that rule might be Dick Vitale.
We also know that this is all about BRETT, not about anyone else. Whatever team he happens to play for is just a tool to add to the legend of BRETT. What he did to the Green Bay Packers, to a town that embraced him and worshipped him, was shameful. Every year he rolled out the Hamlet act, topped in 2008 by the tearful farewell in which he told the Packers it was time for them to get Aaron Rodgers ready to play. Which they did until Brett decided about 15 minutes later he was just kidding and forced a trade to the Jets.
What he did to the Jets would have been worse except he’d only been messing with their heads for one year. He retired—again—this time by conference call and the Jets were naïve enough to take him at his word (If Favre told me the earth was round I would be very careful about sailing very far to the east or west) and put him on the retirement list. That meant he didn’t even have to wait for a trade as with the Packers, he was free to sign with the Vikings and then start his Hamlet routine with THEM.
Why does the guy get away with all this? Simple: he can play. If you can play you can lie, cheat, steal, bully, do drugs—you name it. They cheered Alex Rodriguez in Yankee Stadium the other day, didn’t they? People still cheer for Tiger Woods, whose crimes against his wife and children are not only unspeakable but were repeated over and over again. Why? Because they loved watching him play at his best and they want to see it again. Have you noticed that lately Tiger has been playing the “father card,” claiming he hasn’t been able to practice as much this year because he wants time with his kids?
My God! Do people actually believe this stuff? The answer’s yes—there will be people today who will post on this blog that who am I to question Tiger’s devotion to his kids, that people change, blah-blah-blah and his personal life is none of my business, just let him play golf.
You see, that’s the point. I didn’t bring up his kids—HE did. I didn’t talk at length about how being a father changed my life after my first child was born when I’d just been in Vegas cheating on my wife and my new-born child.
And I haven’t stood tearfully in front of assembled media and retired; then done it again and again when I was just trying to manipulate the system to get to a different team for more money. Look, there is NOTHING wrong with Favre playing until he’s 50 if he can play. Last year he clearly could still play—even though the old Achilles heel, the really dumb pass at the worst possible moment jumped up and nailed him at the end of regulation in the NFC Championship game. Even so, if you didn’t know the background, you’d have watched Favre in that game and been amazed by his guts and toughness: clearly hurt, even wobbly, he limped out there and kept moving his team down the field.
The day after that game, I jokingly wrote that the over-under on the first ESPN report that Favre was going to retire again would roll in about Wednesday. I was off by 24 hours—it came on Tuesday. Favre, ESPN reported, was “leaning towards retiring.”
Yeah, sure and there’s a new Tiger Woods who has embraced Buddhism.
Personally, I look forward to watching Favre play this season. He is a freak of nature and he makes the Vikings a viable contender. To me, the NFC North is football’s most interesting division because of the traditions involved, because a late-season game at Lambeau or Soldier Field is throw-back football (I didn’t say I wanted to go, but watching on TV is always fun) and because each city has a fascinating football culture in its own way. Yes, even Detroit.
But please don’t wake me up to tell me he’s retired again or un-retired or is getting his ankle checked or is talking to Ed Werder on a tractor or is throwing to high school kids or texting teammates. He’ll be in camp in time for the third exhibition game, which is the one the starters play at least a half in. He might play a series or two in the last exhibition game and then he’ll play all 16 games unless someone knocks him into next week at some point—which hasn’t happened since he first came into the league in 1953 so why should it happen now?
And then, 15 minutes after his last snap of the season, ESPN will report he’s leaning towards retiring. ESPN is Charlie Brown. Favre is Lucy holding the football. If you aren’t old enough to get that reference, look it up. Good Grief.
------------------------------
John's new book: "Moment of Glory--The Year Underdogs Ruled The Majors,"--is now available online and in bookstores nationwide. Visit your favorite retailer, or click here for online purchases
Of course he and ESPN are the perfect team: ESPN will report ANYTHING as long as it can claim it as some kind of news—even embarrassing infomercials like, ‘The Decision,’ which will be parodied for years to come—and Favre craves that sort of attention. Poor Ed Werder and Rachel Nichols must be paying income taxes in Mississippi by now.
Favre has now retired more times than Sugar Ray Leonard, George Foreman and Evander Holyfield. What is most amazing is he has done it without ever missing a GAME. Think about that: he cries in March; waffles in July and shows up in time to play in September. Why anyone—even the poor ESPN drones—would think for one second that he’s not going to play this season is a mystery. Heck, if the Vikings throw in an extra million or two he might fly to Washington en route to Minneapolis and take Albert Haynesworth’s conditioning test for him.
What we know about Favre after all these years and retirements and comebacks is the following: he can’t stand not being the center of attention. When he does finally have to retire in 2027, it’s going to kill him. Because as anyone can tell you, doing games or studio work on TV can’t give you the buzz or the high or the adoration that playing gives you. The one and only exception to that rule might be Dick Vitale.
We also know that this is all about BRETT, not about anyone else. Whatever team he happens to play for is just a tool to add to the legend of BRETT. What he did to the Green Bay Packers, to a town that embraced him and worshipped him, was shameful. Every year he rolled out the Hamlet act, topped in 2008 by the tearful farewell in which he told the Packers it was time for them to get Aaron Rodgers ready to play. Which they did until Brett decided about 15 minutes later he was just kidding and forced a trade to the Jets.
What he did to the Jets would have been worse except he’d only been messing with their heads for one year. He retired—again—this time by conference call and the Jets were naïve enough to take him at his word (If Favre told me the earth was round I would be very careful about sailing very far to the east or west) and put him on the retirement list. That meant he didn’t even have to wait for a trade as with the Packers, he was free to sign with the Vikings and then start his Hamlet routine with THEM.
Why does the guy get away with all this? Simple: he can play. If you can play you can lie, cheat, steal, bully, do drugs—you name it. They cheered Alex Rodriguez in Yankee Stadium the other day, didn’t they? People still cheer for Tiger Woods, whose crimes against his wife and children are not only unspeakable but were repeated over and over again. Why? Because they loved watching him play at his best and they want to see it again. Have you noticed that lately Tiger has been playing the “father card,” claiming he hasn’t been able to practice as much this year because he wants time with his kids?
My God! Do people actually believe this stuff? The answer’s yes—there will be people today who will post on this blog that who am I to question Tiger’s devotion to his kids, that people change, blah-blah-blah and his personal life is none of my business, just let him play golf.
You see, that’s the point. I didn’t bring up his kids—HE did. I didn’t talk at length about how being a father changed my life after my first child was born when I’d just been in Vegas cheating on my wife and my new-born child.
And I haven’t stood tearfully in front of assembled media and retired; then done it again and again when I was just trying to manipulate the system to get to a different team for more money. Look, there is NOTHING wrong with Favre playing until he’s 50 if he can play. Last year he clearly could still play—even though the old Achilles heel, the really dumb pass at the worst possible moment jumped up and nailed him at the end of regulation in the NFC Championship game. Even so, if you didn’t know the background, you’d have watched Favre in that game and been amazed by his guts and toughness: clearly hurt, even wobbly, he limped out there and kept moving his team down the field.
The day after that game, I jokingly wrote that the over-under on the first ESPN report that Favre was going to retire again would roll in about Wednesday. I was off by 24 hours—it came on Tuesday. Favre, ESPN reported, was “leaning towards retiring.”
Yeah, sure and there’s a new Tiger Woods who has embraced Buddhism.
Personally, I look forward to watching Favre play this season. He is a freak of nature and he makes the Vikings a viable contender. To me, the NFC North is football’s most interesting division because of the traditions involved, because a late-season game at Lambeau or Soldier Field is throw-back football (I didn’t say I wanted to go, but watching on TV is always fun) and because each city has a fascinating football culture in its own way. Yes, even Detroit.
But please don’t wake me up to tell me he’s retired again or un-retired or is getting his ankle checked or is talking to Ed Werder on a tractor or is throwing to high school kids or texting teammates. He’ll be in camp in time for the third exhibition game, which is the one the starters play at least a half in. He might play a series or two in the last exhibition game and then he’ll play all 16 games unless someone knocks him into next week at some point—which hasn’t happened since he first came into the league in 1953 so why should it happen now?
And then, 15 minutes after his last snap of the season, ESPN will report he’s leaning towards retiring. ESPN is Charlie Brown. Favre is Lucy holding the football. If you aren’t old enough to get that reference, look it up. Good Grief.
------------------------------
John's new book: "Moment of Glory--The Year Underdogs Ruled The Majors,"--is now available online and in bookstores nationwide. Visit your favorite retailer, or click here for online purchases
Comments (13)
Shanahan is loud and clear letting everyone know he is in charge of the Redskins
Wed, Aug 4 2010 09:03
| NFL, Mike Shanahan, Albert Haynesworth, Dan Snyder, Vinny Cerrato, Washington Redskins
| Permalink
As most people know there are few things in life I find more boring than stories about NFL training camps. The other day on Washington Post Live, my friends Ivan Carter and Rick Maese were droning on about the Redskins receiving corps when I snapped out of my slumber and said, “enough already, let’s talk about Buck Showalter.” (Good hire by the way, the guy may be an insane micro-manager but he’s good. Tony LaRussa is insane that way too and he’s had some success last I checked).
Carter and Maese were both kind of stunned that I went completely off the TV-format reservation but I couldn’t stand it anymore. Thank goodness I’ll be out of town next week for The PGA Championship.
That said, it is impossible not to sit back and giggle at the whole Albert Haynesworth fiasco. There may be no one who defines the 21st century athlete better than Haynesworth: He is gifted, spoiled, defiant, could care less about his team and if I were a Redskins fan I would have trouble wanting to see him succeed. Of course those who still care about the Redskins have already sold their souls to the worst owner in sports history so Haynesworth is just another brick in the wall.
Haynesworth signed with the Redskins about 15 minutes after the free agency period began in 2009 for $107 million, $41 million of it guaranteed. The fact that the NFL could find no evidence of pre-free agency tampering (the deal was made at 5 a.m. on the morning when you could begin TALKING to free agents) is proof that their security department must be run by Inspector Clouseau.
Haynesworth proceeded to be an even bigger bust last season than the rest of the team, which was quite a feat given the Redskins 4-12 record that led to the firing of both their coach and general manager., not to mention the beat-up starting quarterback. He was never in shape, constantly exhausted and often-injured. At least for one season he was as bad a signing as Jeff George—another brilliant Dan Snyder move—and that is saying a lot.
But then Snyder decided that 11 years of playing Fantasy Football (badly) was enough. Someone finally got in his ear and told him that he had done the impossible: he had turned Washington against the Redskins in large part because people were sick of his ridiculous football moves; his constant gouging of his fans; the awful stadium experience they had to put up with every week and, perhaps most of all, Snyder’s arrogance.
Snyder’s a bad guy and he has surrounded himself with enough enablers that he no doubt blames the media for everything that’s gone wrong with his team. But he’s not a fool and when his security people had to start removing home-made signs from fans entering the stadium because not all of them were shout-outs to soldiers in Iraq, a bell went off in his head somewhere.
He FINALLY fired Vinny Cerrato, who as a general manager did his best work as a lousy talk-show host. He fired Jim Zorn, who was more an innocent bystander in the Snyder-Cerrato fiasco than anything else but clearly never had the authority or the cojones to lay down the law to slackers like Haynesworth—among others.
Then Snyder hired Bruce Allen, who at least had a legitimate resume in personnel and, finally, to no one’s surprise, he hired Mike Shanahan as the coach and to actually be in charge of the football operation. No more watching tape with the owner; no more comments like, “I’ll consult with Mr. Snyder about what to do next.”
There are some who will note that Shanahan only won one playoff game in Denver after John Elway retired. That’s a little bit like saying Joe Torre never won a World Series until he managed the Yankees. The best coaches and managers need players. It isn’t as if the Broncos were awful post-Elway, they just weren’t as good. Check and see how good the Colts are in the five years after Peyton Manning retires.
Shanahan made it clear from the outset that, if nothing else, the Redskins were going to be run like a real football team. He stopped all the silly talk that the offensive line was fine and used the No. 4 pick in the draft to take a left tackle—something Cerrato and Snyder never quite got around to doing even as their quarterback was getting pummeled on a weekly basis. Prior to that, Shanahan somehow got the Philadelphia Eagles to trade Donovan McNabb for a second round draft pick.
McNabb isn’t Manning or Tom Brady but he’s pretty damn good and a major upgrade from what the Redskins have had at QB in the Snyder era. IF the line blocks for him he will make plays.
Shanahan also made it clear he wouldn’t play any silly games with players who didn’t want to show up for mini-camps or OTA’s. You can call them voluntary all you want, if the coach says be there, you need to be there. Even Joe Gibbs played that game with the late Sean Taylor when he no-showed. So, when Haynesworth no-showed, largely because he was sulking about having to play in a 3-4 defense, Shanahan bided his time—knowing HIS turn would come.
And now it is here. Haynesworth has no choice but to be in training camp. The Redskins could void his $21 million bonus—paid this offseason—if he failed to show up. Shanahan has declared that anyone who missed the pre-season camps has to pass a conditioning test to practice. Everyone knows he made this up to humiliate Haynesworth who, even if he is 30 pounds lighter, can’t run across the street without huffing and puffing. So, Haynesworth failed the test twice. Now he says his knee hurts and he can’t take it again until it stops hurting.
And Shanahan just smiles. He knows Haynesworth is the ideal nose-tackle for a 3-4 defense because he’s huge, takes up space and can occupy two blockers per play. Haynesworth doesn’t like that idea because there’s no glory in taking two guys out of a play while someone else gets a sack or makes the tackle. But he’ll be good at it when he finally starts to play.
And he will play. The whole notion that he missed valuable time is hooey. The only thing more overrated than training camp is ESPN’s ‘exclusive,’ reporting on Brett Favre’s retirements and un-retirements. Even with a new system a player needs about a week to ten days to learn what he’s supposed to do on the field. This is NOT rocket science by any stretch of the imagination. Many veteran players hold out just to miss training camp. In his final season with the Giants, Michael Strahan insisted throughout August he was retired. He came back the week before the season began and helped the Giants win The Super Bowl.
There’s no reason Haynesworth won’t be ready on September 12th, which is the only time it matters if he’s ready. Shanahan knows that. Which is why he’s letting him know loud and clear right now who’s in charge of the Redskins. It isn’t Danny Snyder and it sure as hell isn’t Albert Haynesworth. If nothing else, it’s pretty entertaining stuff for the month of August.
Carter and Maese were both kind of stunned that I went completely off the TV-format reservation but I couldn’t stand it anymore. Thank goodness I’ll be out of town next week for The PGA Championship.
That said, it is impossible not to sit back and giggle at the whole Albert Haynesworth fiasco. There may be no one who defines the 21st century athlete better than Haynesworth: He is gifted, spoiled, defiant, could care less about his team and if I were a Redskins fan I would have trouble wanting to see him succeed. Of course those who still care about the Redskins have already sold their souls to the worst owner in sports history so Haynesworth is just another brick in the wall.
Haynesworth signed with the Redskins about 15 minutes after the free agency period began in 2009 for $107 million, $41 million of it guaranteed. The fact that the NFL could find no evidence of pre-free agency tampering (the deal was made at 5 a.m. on the morning when you could begin TALKING to free agents) is proof that their security department must be run by Inspector Clouseau.
Haynesworth proceeded to be an even bigger bust last season than the rest of the team, which was quite a feat given the Redskins 4-12 record that led to the firing of both their coach and general manager., not to mention the beat-up starting quarterback. He was never in shape, constantly exhausted and often-injured. At least for one season he was as bad a signing as Jeff George—another brilliant Dan Snyder move—and that is saying a lot.
But then Snyder decided that 11 years of playing Fantasy Football (badly) was enough. Someone finally got in his ear and told him that he had done the impossible: he had turned Washington against the Redskins in large part because people were sick of his ridiculous football moves; his constant gouging of his fans; the awful stadium experience they had to put up with every week and, perhaps most of all, Snyder’s arrogance.
Snyder’s a bad guy and he has surrounded himself with enough enablers that he no doubt blames the media for everything that’s gone wrong with his team. But he’s not a fool and when his security people had to start removing home-made signs from fans entering the stadium because not all of them were shout-outs to soldiers in Iraq, a bell went off in his head somewhere.
He FINALLY fired Vinny Cerrato, who as a general manager did his best work as a lousy talk-show host. He fired Jim Zorn, who was more an innocent bystander in the Snyder-Cerrato fiasco than anything else but clearly never had the authority or the cojones to lay down the law to slackers like Haynesworth—among others.
Then Snyder hired Bruce Allen, who at least had a legitimate resume in personnel and, finally, to no one’s surprise, he hired Mike Shanahan as the coach and to actually be in charge of the football operation. No more watching tape with the owner; no more comments like, “I’ll consult with Mr. Snyder about what to do next.”
There are some who will note that Shanahan only won one playoff game in Denver after John Elway retired. That’s a little bit like saying Joe Torre never won a World Series until he managed the Yankees. The best coaches and managers need players. It isn’t as if the Broncos were awful post-Elway, they just weren’t as good. Check and see how good the Colts are in the five years after Peyton Manning retires.
Shanahan made it clear from the outset that, if nothing else, the Redskins were going to be run like a real football team. He stopped all the silly talk that the offensive line was fine and used the No. 4 pick in the draft to take a left tackle—something Cerrato and Snyder never quite got around to doing even as their quarterback was getting pummeled on a weekly basis. Prior to that, Shanahan somehow got the Philadelphia Eagles to trade Donovan McNabb for a second round draft pick.
McNabb isn’t Manning or Tom Brady but he’s pretty damn good and a major upgrade from what the Redskins have had at QB in the Snyder era. IF the line blocks for him he will make plays.
Shanahan also made it clear he wouldn’t play any silly games with players who didn’t want to show up for mini-camps or OTA’s. You can call them voluntary all you want, if the coach says be there, you need to be there. Even Joe Gibbs played that game with the late Sean Taylor when he no-showed. So, when Haynesworth no-showed, largely because he was sulking about having to play in a 3-4 defense, Shanahan bided his time—knowing HIS turn would come.
And now it is here. Haynesworth has no choice but to be in training camp. The Redskins could void his $21 million bonus—paid this offseason—if he failed to show up. Shanahan has declared that anyone who missed the pre-season camps has to pass a conditioning test to practice. Everyone knows he made this up to humiliate Haynesworth who, even if he is 30 pounds lighter, can’t run across the street without huffing and puffing. So, Haynesworth failed the test twice. Now he says his knee hurts and he can’t take it again until it stops hurting.
And Shanahan just smiles. He knows Haynesworth is the ideal nose-tackle for a 3-4 defense because he’s huge, takes up space and can occupy two blockers per play. Haynesworth doesn’t like that idea because there’s no glory in taking two guys out of a play while someone else gets a sack or makes the tackle. But he’ll be good at it when he finally starts to play.
And he will play. The whole notion that he missed valuable time is hooey. The only thing more overrated than training camp is ESPN’s ‘exclusive,’ reporting on Brett Favre’s retirements and un-retirements. Even with a new system a player needs about a week to ten days to learn what he’s supposed to do on the field. This is NOT rocket science by any stretch of the imagination. Many veteran players hold out just to miss training camp. In his final season with the Giants, Michael Strahan insisted throughout August he was retired. He came back the week before the season began and helped the Giants win The Super Bowl.
There’s no reason Haynesworth won’t be ready on September 12th, which is the only time it matters if he’s ready. Shanahan knows that. Which is why he’s letting him know loud and clear right now who’s in charge of the Redskins. It isn’t Danny Snyder and it sure as hell isn’t Albert Haynesworth. If nothing else, it’s pretty entertaining stuff for the month of August.
Comments (11)
All sports need balance, the time has come for MLB salary cap AND floor
On Saturday, as The Major League Baseball trading deadline came and went, the New York Yankees made three trades, picking up Lance Berkman, Kerry Wood and Austin Kearns. None of these moves was earth-shattering or even terribly significant. Berkman is an ex-All Star in the twilight of an excellent career. Woods is a former phenom who is now 33 and was pitching to an ERA of 6.30 in Cleveland on those rare occasions when he wasn’t on the Disabled List. Kearns is a journeyman outfielder who can catch a fly ball and throw out an occasional runner.
The Dodgers picking up Ted Lilly—although they may have made their move too late—is more significant. Certainly the earlier trades that moved Cliff Lee to Texas; Roy Oswalt to Philadelphia and Dan Haren (although that may be too late too) were far more significant than anything the Yankees did.
Of course the Yankees made these moves already having the best record in baseball. They were moves made because perhaps each of the three will win one game in the next two months or get one key hit or one key out in postseason. That would be enough because the Yankees didn’t have to give up an important prospect in any of the three moves. All they cost was money and for the Yankees, buying players like Berkman, Wood and Kearns is like buying one of the railroads on a Monopoly board. They’ll wait until this winter to buy Park Place—Lee—and keep on going from there.
This is not, by any stretch, a rant against the Yankees. Even though I’m a lifelong Mets fan I’ve never hated the Yankees and I actually sort of liked them when Joe Torre was the manager because I like Joe Torre. The current rules of baseball say the Yankees can spend whatever they want to spend and the Yankees business plan, brilliantly executed in recent years, makes it possible for them to spend whatever they choose to spend.
The problem is the system. It needs to be fixed during the next Collective Bargaining Agreement negotiations. For years, the baseball union has been adamant about not agreeing to a salary cap. Of course that same union was adamant for years about drug-testing and we all know now how that worked out for baseball.
I understand the principle of being opposed to a salary cap. I also understand the principle of opposing drug-testing when there is no evidence that someone has used drugs. It is a violation of one’s rights and freedoms. It is also, in 2010, an absolute necessity in the world we live in just as the humiliating experience we all go through anytime we get on an airplane is also an absolute necessity.
There are salary caps in football, basketball and hockey. I don’t see very many players starving as a result of them. The NFL is about to go through what will be an angry, protracted negotiation with its union because for the first time in a long time the union has a leader—DeMaurice Smith—who is more than willing to wade in and do battle with the commissioner and the owners. But no one is going to debate whether the salary cap should continue to exist. The battleground will be what percentage of revenues the players get and what percentage the owners get. Put simply, the owners want more.
Hockey is a better and more balanced sport since Gary Bettman was willing to sacrifice a season five years ago and it can be argued that the salary cap saved the NBA back in the 1980s although it now needs considerable tweaking with a CBA negotiation coming up there too.
The issue has never really reached the table in baseball. That’s because Don Fehr was smarter and tougher than any commissioner, any owner and any negotiator sent forth by ownership for many, many years. Every time the owners tried to play hard ball on any front, Fehr sat back and waited for the courts or an arbitrator to rule in favor of the players because they always did. Whether Fehr was the smartest lawyer of all time or the owners hired some of the dumbest lawyers of all time is hard to say, but Fehr and the union were undefeated.
That’s why they were able to hold off drug-testing until public embarrassments forced them to give in, first to limited testing and, finally, after the 2005 Congressional hearing—the famous Mark McGwire, ‘I’m not hear to talk about the past,’ testimony not to mention Rafael Palmeiro’s outright lying and Sammy Sosa forgetting how to speak English—more frequent testing.
That’s also why there’s never been any serious talk about a salary cap. Revenue sharing was the compromise agreed to years ago and it HAS helped. The Minnesota Twins, targeted for extinction by the owners nine years ago, are now flourishing in a wonderful new ballpark, contending every year and have a payroll of just under $100 million. They’ve even signed Joe Mauer to an extension that should keep him in Minnesota through the peak years of an already-great career.
The Tampa Bay Rays won a pennant in 2008 and are chasing the Yankees with great vigor right now. The Cincinnati Reds have one of baseball’s best young teams. The well-managed small market teams can contend. The poorly managed small market teams (Kansas City, Pittsburgh) don’t. The Orioles and Cubs are just poorly managed.
But it’s not enough. The Yankees can’t buy a championship every year, but they can buy contending. They’ve missed the playoffs once since the strike of 1994 and their payroll just keeps growing and growing—as do their revenues. The Twins can contend but win the World Series? It doesn’t seem likely. The Brewers made the playoffs a couple of years back but can they, realistically, win the whole thing? The Texas Rangers DID rent Lee and will make postseason this year but can they go deep into postseason? Where will they be next year when Lee is pitching for the Yankees and the Angels go out and pick up two key free agents?
All sports need balance. The Saints winning The Super Bowl was great for the NFL and the Chicago Black Hawks—a big market team, sure, but they hadn’t won a title in almost 50 years—winning the Stanley Cup was good for hockey. Change and variety are good.
No one is proposing that the Yankees be crippled or cease being a dynasty. Their popularity is also good for baseball: they sell tickets and move TV ratings, especially when they play the Red Sox, who just happen to have baseball’s second biggest payroll.
But the time has come for both a salary cap and a salary FLOOR. The Yankees should have to think twice not so much before signing Lee but before throwing an extra $10 million or so at three marginal players who might make them just enough better to win again this year. The Royals and Pirates should be forced to plow ALL their revenue-sharing money into payroll—ALL OF IT—and every team should have a minimum payroll that gives it a chance to compete. If an owner can’t afford that payroll, especially when aided by revenue sharing, make him sell the team. Owning a baseball team isn’t an inalienable right.
This is the time for the owners to make this move. Fehr has retired. The union has finally been dinged by the public embarrassment over drug-testing. The owners need to go public with this battle because for once they will actually be right. They will not just be trying to grab more money they will be trying to bring balance to their sport.
The time to talk about a salary cap and ring hands and blame the union is over. The time to do to it is here and now. It can be called, ‘The Austin Kearns Rule.’ Has a ring to it I think.
The Dodgers picking up Ted Lilly—although they may have made their move too late—is more significant. Certainly the earlier trades that moved Cliff Lee to Texas; Roy Oswalt to Philadelphia and Dan Haren (although that may be too late too) were far more significant than anything the Yankees did.
Of course the Yankees made these moves already having the best record in baseball. They were moves made because perhaps each of the three will win one game in the next two months or get one key hit or one key out in postseason. That would be enough because the Yankees didn’t have to give up an important prospect in any of the three moves. All they cost was money and for the Yankees, buying players like Berkman, Wood and Kearns is like buying one of the railroads on a Monopoly board. They’ll wait until this winter to buy Park Place—Lee—and keep on going from there.
This is not, by any stretch, a rant against the Yankees. Even though I’m a lifelong Mets fan I’ve never hated the Yankees and I actually sort of liked them when Joe Torre was the manager because I like Joe Torre. The current rules of baseball say the Yankees can spend whatever they want to spend and the Yankees business plan, brilliantly executed in recent years, makes it possible for them to spend whatever they choose to spend.
The problem is the system. It needs to be fixed during the next Collective Bargaining Agreement negotiations. For years, the baseball union has been adamant about not agreeing to a salary cap. Of course that same union was adamant for years about drug-testing and we all know now how that worked out for baseball.
I understand the principle of being opposed to a salary cap. I also understand the principle of opposing drug-testing when there is no evidence that someone has used drugs. It is a violation of one’s rights and freedoms. It is also, in 2010, an absolute necessity in the world we live in just as the humiliating experience we all go through anytime we get on an airplane is also an absolute necessity.
There are salary caps in football, basketball and hockey. I don’t see very many players starving as a result of them. The NFL is about to go through what will be an angry, protracted negotiation with its union because for the first time in a long time the union has a leader—DeMaurice Smith—who is more than willing to wade in and do battle with the commissioner and the owners. But no one is going to debate whether the salary cap should continue to exist. The battleground will be what percentage of revenues the players get and what percentage the owners get. Put simply, the owners want more.
Hockey is a better and more balanced sport since Gary Bettman was willing to sacrifice a season five years ago and it can be argued that the salary cap saved the NBA back in the 1980s although it now needs considerable tweaking with a CBA negotiation coming up there too.
The issue has never really reached the table in baseball. That’s because Don Fehr was smarter and tougher than any commissioner, any owner and any negotiator sent forth by ownership for many, many years. Every time the owners tried to play hard ball on any front, Fehr sat back and waited for the courts or an arbitrator to rule in favor of the players because they always did. Whether Fehr was the smartest lawyer of all time or the owners hired some of the dumbest lawyers of all time is hard to say, but Fehr and the union were undefeated.
That’s why they were able to hold off drug-testing until public embarrassments forced them to give in, first to limited testing and, finally, after the 2005 Congressional hearing—the famous Mark McGwire, ‘I’m not hear to talk about the past,’ testimony not to mention Rafael Palmeiro’s outright lying and Sammy Sosa forgetting how to speak English—more frequent testing.
That’s also why there’s never been any serious talk about a salary cap. Revenue sharing was the compromise agreed to years ago and it HAS helped. The Minnesota Twins, targeted for extinction by the owners nine years ago, are now flourishing in a wonderful new ballpark, contending every year and have a payroll of just under $100 million. They’ve even signed Joe Mauer to an extension that should keep him in Minnesota through the peak years of an already-great career.
The Tampa Bay Rays won a pennant in 2008 and are chasing the Yankees with great vigor right now. The Cincinnati Reds have one of baseball’s best young teams. The well-managed small market teams can contend. The poorly managed small market teams (Kansas City, Pittsburgh) don’t. The Orioles and Cubs are just poorly managed.
But it’s not enough. The Yankees can’t buy a championship every year, but they can buy contending. They’ve missed the playoffs once since the strike of 1994 and their payroll just keeps growing and growing—as do their revenues. The Twins can contend but win the World Series? It doesn’t seem likely. The Brewers made the playoffs a couple of years back but can they, realistically, win the whole thing? The Texas Rangers DID rent Lee and will make postseason this year but can they go deep into postseason? Where will they be next year when Lee is pitching for the Yankees and the Angels go out and pick up two key free agents?
All sports need balance. The Saints winning The Super Bowl was great for the NFL and the Chicago Black Hawks—a big market team, sure, but they hadn’t won a title in almost 50 years—winning the Stanley Cup was good for hockey. Change and variety are good.
No one is proposing that the Yankees be crippled or cease being a dynasty. Their popularity is also good for baseball: they sell tickets and move TV ratings, especially when they play the Red Sox, who just happen to have baseball’s second biggest payroll.
But the time has come for both a salary cap and a salary FLOOR. The Yankees should have to think twice not so much before signing Lee but before throwing an extra $10 million or so at three marginal players who might make them just enough better to win again this year. The Royals and Pirates should be forced to plow ALL their revenue-sharing money into payroll—ALL OF IT—and every team should have a minimum payroll that gives it a chance to compete. If an owner can’t afford that payroll, especially when aided by revenue sharing, make him sell the team. Owning a baseball team isn’t an inalienable right.
This is the time for the owners to make this move. Fehr has retired. The union has finally been dinged by the public embarrassment over drug-testing. The owners need to go public with this battle because for once they will actually be right. They will not just be trying to grab more money they will be trying to bring balance to their sport.
The time to talk about a salary cap and ring hands and blame the union is over. The time to do to it is here and now. It can be called, ‘The Austin Kearns Rule.’ Has a ring to it I think.
Comments (17)
Colleges have long had problems with agent-player contact -- time for NCAA, NFL and NBA enforcement to change
Thu, Jul 22 2010 02:44
| NFL, Mike Krzyzewski, Duke, NCAA, NBA, David Falk, Gary WIlliams, Maryland, Lefty Driesell, Donald Dell
| Permalink
Back in 1981, I was the Maryland beat writer for The Washington Post. Lefty Driesell had two clear-cut first round draft picks on that team: Albert King and Buck Williams. King was a senior; Williams a junior.
After games, when I was in the locker room talking to players, I frequently saw two men who very clearly weren’t members of the media circling the room, glad-handing the players. Often, they would wait until those of us on deadline finished and then swoop in to tell King and Williams how wonderfully they had played.
The two men were David Falk and Donald Dell. In those days, they were still partners, Falk working for Dell at ProServ, which was then one of the mega-agencies in sports, trailing only IMG for prestige, power and name clients. I remember saying to Driesell back then, “why do you let agents in your locker room?”
Lefty shook his head and said. “If I don’t let ‘em in, the players will be upset. They’ll think I’m trying to keep them away.”
“You SHOULD keep them away,” I said. “Agents shouldn’t be talking to players during the season under any circumstances and you shouldn’t be sanctioning it by letting them in the locker room.”
Lefty didn’t listen to me just as 99 percent of the coaches alive would not have listened to me. Like most coaches, he was afraid that if banned the agents, they would tell the players (which they would) ‘your coach isn’t looking out for your best interests. He’s only worried about what you can do for HIM.’
At the end of that season, Buck Williams left Maryland a year early and turned pro. The agent who guided him through the process of making that decision was—you guessed it—David Falk. (Dean Smith once told me that the first time Dell introduced him to Falk he said to his assistants, “I don’t trust that young one.” Boy did he have the one right).
Years later, agenting had become more sophisticated. The big-shots like Dell and Falk only made their presence felt when they truly needed to do so. Falk spent a lot of time in the 90s traveling to Duke to woo Mike Krzyzewski. He didn’t spend much time with the players. Instead, he would go in to see Krzyzewski after games to tell him what a great job he had done that night. Eventually, Krzyzewski hired him as his agent and a lot of Duke players landed with Falk—just as virtually every Georgetown player has landed with Falk since John Thompson became a client of his thirty years ago.
In 1994 I was on a trip to Hawaii with Maryland. Joe Smith was a sophomore and a lot of people thought he had a chance to be the first pick in the NBA draft if he turned pro that spring. Throughout the trip there was a guy hanging around the team who was clearly bird-dogging for an agent. He was outside the locker room waiting whenever the bus pulled up and would hug most of the players as they walked inside. One afternoon I saw him walking on the beach with Smith.
Later that day, just prior to a game he walked up to Chuck Walsh, who was Maryland’s sports information director and said, “Hey Chuck, my man, you got a media guide for me?”
Gary Williams was standing no more than 10 feet away and his face was chalk white as Walsh went to get the media guide. He said nothing. As soon as the bird-dog walked away, Gary went off on Chuck. “What are you doing?!” he screamed. “Why are you helping him? Don’t you understand—he’s the ENEMY! You don’t help him in any way.”
Gary was exactly right. He WAS the enemy. Smith turned pro at the end of that season and there was nothing he could do about it. If he had told Smith to stay away from the bird-dog or any other agenting types, just as Lefty had said, Smith would have seen the order as selfish and self-serving and the agents would have reinforced that every chance they got.
That’s what makes this latest spate of NCAA investigations into player-agent relationship so difficult to deal with as an outsider. It’s very easy to say, “police the agents,” but how? To begin with, the NBA and NFL would have to work with the NCAA and that almost never happens. Beyond that, most agents are smart enough to not leave a trail behind. As Digger Phelps once said about coaches paying recruits: “it’s tough to prove cash.”
It’s tough to prove anything—especially given that the NCAA has always been monumentally understaffed in enforcement and seems more concerned with not talking to the media than with actually getting anything done.
Look, I’m not making excuses for anybody. The agents and the people who work for them shouldn’t be anywhere near college athletes and if they go anywhere near one, coaches should have the guts to tell them to get the hell away. If a player gets upset about it, you explain to him why he cannot be associated with an agent or anyone who has even been breathed on by an agent. If they don’t understand that, chances are they already have their hand out and you (the coach) have a serious problem.
Any agent caught dealing with a college athlete should be banned. And if it someone who works for him in any way, same thing. By banned I mean he can’t be registered with the NFL or the NBA or negotiate a contract with a team on behalf of an athlete for at least two years. I don’t mean if he’s caught giving a kid money, I mean if he shakes hands with a kid.
Years ago, when Eddie Fogler was still an assistant at North Carolina, I was standing with him on the court at University Hall at Virginia about 45 minutes before a game. All of a sudden, Eddie said, “oh dammit, now I’ve got trouble.”
I looked up and saw a man walking in his direction, hand out, smile on his face. I honestly don’t remember the man’s name but Eddie began waving his arms and saying, “Mr. Jones (made-up-name) nothing personal, but I can’t even shake your hand, I’ll be breaking the rules.”
The man was a potential recruit’s father. The last thing Fogler wanted to do was be rude. But the no-bump rules back then meant even accidental contact could be a violation.
Did Fogler act that way because I happened to be standing there? I don’t think so, but even if he did—fine—those are the kind of rules agents needs to be forced to live under. We all know all these excuses are, to put it in polite terms, hooey. The agents are friends of the family; they’re trying to help a kid out (that’s the biggest lie of them all); they just happened to have a house they could rent to a kid’s parents for $25 a month—and on and on. Just say none of those excuses wash. If it WAS an innocent mistake, well, too bad, you lose.
And the notion that the players don’t know they’re doing something wrong? Oh please. They’re all told the rules and they’re all told to stay away from three groups of people: agents, gamblers and the media. (We’re bad guys too because we ask questions). Here’s what I’ve heard coaches say to players: “If ANYONE wants to give you something for free, come tell me. Do NOT accept it, not even a movie ticket.”
The players know the rules but they’re also taught that they’re above the rules. And most of the time, even when they get caught—see Bush, Reggie; Mayo, O.J. et al—they don’t pay the price, the next generation of players and coaches pay the price. That’s another problem with NCAA enforcement: it moves so slowly that the guilty parties are usually out of dodge by the time the posse gets to town. (See Carroll, Pete and Floyd, Tim—who is somehow coaching at UTEP this coming season with no penalty while USC is still under NCAA sanctions).
The bottom line is this: It’s a hard problem for everyone. But the solution is NOT to do nothing. The solution is to understand that no answer is perfect but try to find one that sends a clear message to players, coaches and agents that this behavior won’t be tolerated. And if that behavior upsets a player—tough. Gary Williams was right—agents (and their surrogates) ARE the enemy. In college athletics it isn’t some of the time that they’re the enemy it is ALL the time.
After games, when I was in the locker room talking to players, I frequently saw two men who very clearly weren’t members of the media circling the room, glad-handing the players. Often, they would wait until those of us on deadline finished and then swoop in to tell King and Williams how wonderfully they had played.
The two men were David Falk and Donald Dell. In those days, they were still partners, Falk working for Dell at ProServ, which was then one of the mega-agencies in sports, trailing only IMG for prestige, power and name clients. I remember saying to Driesell back then, “why do you let agents in your locker room?”
Lefty shook his head and said. “If I don’t let ‘em in, the players will be upset. They’ll think I’m trying to keep them away.”
“You SHOULD keep them away,” I said. “Agents shouldn’t be talking to players during the season under any circumstances and you shouldn’t be sanctioning it by letting them in the locker room.”
Lefty didn’t listen to me just as 99 percent of the coaches alive would not have listened to me. Like most coaches, he was afraid that if banned the agents, they would tell the players (which they would) ‘your coach isn’t looking out for your best interests. He’s only worried about what you can do for HIM.’
At the end of that season, Buck Williams left Maryland a year early and turned pro. The agent who guided him through the process of making that decision was—you guessed it—David Falk. (Dean Smith once told me that the first time Dell introduced him to Falk he said to his assistants, “I don’t trust that young one.” Boy did he have the one right).
Years later, agenting had become more sophisticated. The big-shots like Dell and Falk only made their presence felt when they truly needed to do so. Falk spent a lot of time in the 90s traveling to Duke to woo Mike Krzyzewski. He didn’t spend much time with the players. Instead, he would go in to see Krzyzewski after games to tell him what a great job he had done that night. Eventually, Krzyzewski hired him as his agent and a lot of Duke players landed with Falk—just as virtually every Georgetown player has landed with Falk since John Thompson became a client of his thirty years ago.
In 1994 I was on a trip to Hawaii with Maryland. Joe Smith was a sophomore and a lot of people thought he had a chance to be the first pick in the NBA draft if he turned pro that spring. Throughout the trip there was a guy hanging around the team who was clearly bird-dogging for an agent. He was outside the locker room waiting whenever the bus pulled up and would hug most of the players as they walked inside. One afternoon I saw him walking on the beach with Smith.
Later that day, just prior to a game he walked up to Chuck Walsh, who was Maryland’s sports information director and said, “Hey Chuck, my man, you got a media guide for me?”
Gary Williams was standing no more than 10 feet away and his face was chalk white as Walsh went to get the media guide. He said nothing. As soon as the bird-dog walked away, Gary went off on Chuck. “What are you doing?!” he screamed. “Why are you helping him? Don’t you understand—he’s the ENEMY! You don’t help him in any way.”
Gary was exactly right. He WAS the enemy. Smith turned pro at the end of that season and there was nothing he could do about it. If he had told Smith to stay away from the bird-dog or any other agenting types, just as Lefty had said, Smith would have seen the order as selfish and self-serving and the agents would have reinforced that every chance they got.
That’s what makes this latest spate of NCAA investigations into player-agent relationship so difficult to deal with as an outsider. It’s very easy to say, “police the agents,” but how? To begin with, the NBA and NFL would have to work with the NCAA and that almost never happens. Beyond that, most agents are smart enough to not leave a trail behind. As Digger Phelps once said about coaches paying recruits: “it’s tough to prove cash.”
It’s tough to prove anything—especially given that the NCAA has always been monumentally understaffed in enforcement and seems more concerned with not talking to the media than with actually getting anything done.
Look, I’m not making excuses for anybody. The agents and the people who work for them shouldn’t be anywhere near college athletes and if they go anywhere near one, coaches should have the guts to tell them to get the hell away. If a player gets upset about it, you explain to him why he cannot be associated with an agent or anyone who has even been breathed on by an agent. If they don’t understand that, chances are they already have their hand out and you (the coach) have a serious problem.
Any agent caught dealing with a college athlete should be banned. And if it someone who works for him in any way, same thing. By banned I mean he can’t be registered with the NFL or the NBA or negotiate a contract with a team on behalf of an athlete for at least two years. I don’t mean if he’s caught giving a kid money, I mean if he shakes hands with a kid.
Years ago, when Eddie Fogler was still an assistant at North Carolina, I was standing with him on the court at University Hall at Virginia about 45 minutes before a game. All of a sudden, Eddie said, “oh dammit, now I’ve got trouble.”
I looked up and saw a man walking in his direction, hand out, smile on his face. I honestly don’t remember the man’s name but Eddie began waving his arms and saying, “Mr. Jones (made-up-name) nothing personal, but I can’t even shake your hand, I’ll be breaking the rules.”
The man was a potential recruit’s father. The last thing Fogler wanted to do was be rude. But the no-bump rules back then meant even accidental contact could be a violation.
Did Fogler act that way because I happened to be standing there? I don’t think so, but even if he did—fine—those are the kind of rules agents needs to be forced to live under. We all know all these excuses are, to put it in polite terms, hooey. The agents are friends of the family; they’re trying to help a kid out (that’s the biggest lie of them all); they just happened to have a house they could rent to a kid’s parents for $25 a month—and on and on. Just say none of those excuses wash. If it WAS an innocent mistake, well, too bad, you lose.
And the notion that the players don’t know they’re doing something wrong? Oh please. They’re all told the rules and they’re all told to stay away from three groups of people: agents, gamblers and the media. (We’re bad guys too because we ask questions). Here’s what I’ve heard coaches say to players: “If ANYONE wants to give you something for free, come tell me. Do NOT accept it, not even a movie ticket.”
The players know the rules but they’re also taught that they’re above the rules. And most of the time, even when they get caught—see Bush, Reggie; Mayo, O.J. et al—they don’t pay the price, the next generation of players and coaches pay the price. That’s another problem with NCAA enforcement: it moves so slowly that the guilty parties are usually out of dodge by the time the posse gets to town. (See Carroll, Pete and Floyd, Tim—who is somehow coaching at UTEP this coming season with no penalty while USC is still under NCAA sanctions).
The bottom line is this: It’s a hard problem for everyone. But the solution is NOT to do nothing. The solution is to understand that no answer is perfect but try to find one that sends a clear message to players, coaches and agents that this behavior won’t be tolerated. And if that behavior upsets a player—tough. Gary Williams was right—agents (and their surrogates) ARE the enemy. In college athletics it isn’t some of the time that they’re the enemy it is ALL the time.
Comments (5)
TV programs and ratings I don’t get – NFL and Redskins in the offseason; Duke wins lacrosse national title
Tue, Jun 1 2010 10:10
| NFL, lacrosse, Duke, Washington Post, Dan Snyder, Maryland, Washington Redskins, Washington Nationals
| Permalink
On Monday, I made my weekly appearance on Washington Post Live, which is a daily show broadcast her on Comcast Sports Net in the DC area. I enjoy doing the show because I really like the people involved; because it often gives me a chance to see colleagues from The Post I don’t often see and because doing it Monday works perfectly for me since I need to go into the studio to tape my weekly Golf Channel essay.
So here’s what we led the show with on Memorial Day: the Redskins—or, as it is called on the show, ‘Burgundy and Gold Daily,’—which is code meaning that the bit is sponsored.
The Nationals played on Monday afternoon, trying to get back to .500 (they did), a pretty remarkable feat for a team that lost 103 games a year ago. One week from today, Stephen Strasburg, the most touted phenom to hit baseball in years, makes his Major League debut.
The Maryland women’s lacrosse team had won the national title on Sunday and the men’s national championship game was going on in Baltimore as we took our seats to start the show.
Here’s how much mention those stories got—not to mention Roy Halladay’s perfect game on Saturday and anything baseball—during a one hour show: zip, zero. Nothing. We did manage to talk about the NBA playoffs and the Stanley Cup finals. But the first 20 minutes of the show was all NFL.
Seriously. On Memorial Day.
In fact, the first question host Ivan Carter asked to Rick Maese, one of The Post’s 11 or 12 Redskins beat writers was something like, “I know there’s nothing going on right now but what are the Redskins doing right now?”
Look, it’s not Ivan’s fault. It isn’t the fault of the people putting on the show either. A few weeks ago I asked Scott Taylor, who produces the show and would (like me) do Navy football all the time given the chance (his dad played at Navy) why in the world we had to lead the show with the Redskins in the middle of May.
“The ratings people tell us that everything spikes when we talk Redskins and spikes almost as much when we talk NFL,” he said. “It really doesn’t matter if anything is actually going on. If we’re talking about the Redskins people watch.”
I actually wondered if the reason it was so hard to EVER talk about the Nationals was that their games are televised on MASN and not on Comcast. Scott said that wasn’t the case. “It’s the ratings thing,” he said. “When we talk Nats, unless it’s Strasburg maybe, we lose people.”
I swear to God I don’t get it. Look, I like watching the NFL on Sundays as much as anyone. I spent an entire season hanging out with an NFL team when I wrote, “Next Man Up,” and enjoyed the experience. So this isn’t about me being anti-football. Okay, I may be anti-Redskins because the owner is three of the most arrogant people who ever lived and no amount of spinning to try to convince me there’s a “new,” Dan Snyder is going to make me think differently.
I have no problem talking about or writing about the NFL or the Redskins when there is something going on. But when you open the show by saying, “there’s nothing going on,” and then spend 20 minutes discussing preparations for mini-camp? I mean OMG as my daughter would say. At one point we switched over to talk about the Ravens. You know what we revealed to the audience? That Anquan Boldin was a good pickup. Pretty insightful stuff, huh?
There are certain people in sports and certain teams in sports and I guess certain leagues in sports that completely fascinate people no matter what. Tommy Roy, who produces golf for NBC, once told me that an informal survey of golf fans had shown that more people would rather watch Tiger Woods lean against his golf bag than watch someone else actually hitting a golf ball.
The same is true in this town of the Redskins. There’s a truly awful show that airs on Comcast called ‘Redskins Nation,’ which is a daily infomercial on the wonders of the team. If you were to watch this show—and staying in the same room with it for five minutes is a major challenge—you would think the Redskins were about to begin their quest for a fifth straight Super Bowl title. Anyone—ANYONE—who criticizes anyone or anything about the organization is labeled, “a hater,” by the ineffable host.
I asked once WHY the show was allowed on the air. The answer was simple: It’s the highest rated show Comcast has.
Talk about the apocalypse being upon us.
At least now I have the next six days to watch golf, baseball, hockey and basketball. And to write and talk about them—especially golf with “Moment of Glory,” now out all over the country, Eldrick T. Woods playing this week and The Nationwide Tour coming to DC. Of course next Monday it will be more, ‘Burgundy and Gold Daily.’
Maybe we can talk some more about what the Redskins haven’t been doing.
******
Wanted to thank the poster, ‘Bevo,’ for absolutely proving my point about people in academia on Friday. If I had tried to make up a fictional character to prove what I was saying about the existence of people like him at colleges around the country I couldn’t have done any better. And thanks to those who responded on my behalf. No need for me to add anything to what they’ve already said.
And finally: I felt a little torn Monday when Duke won the NCAA men’s lacrosse championship game. The ending was certainly dramatic and you had to feel good for the players and for Coach John Danowski, who I’m told is a good guy. To say that he took over under trying circumstances is putting it mildly. And there are people out there who still refer to the ‘Duke lacrosse scandal,’ without mentioning that not only were the charges against the three players dropped but the prosecutor who brought them was disbarred.
I’m always hesitant to even bring this topic up because it makes people on both sides SO angry.
That said, I’ve never bought the argument that the players were martyrs as some people have made them out to be. There WAS bad behavior going on that night, including racial slurs that have never been denied. Beyond that though, there were fifth year players on this Duke team granted an extra year by the NCAA because DUKE decided to shut the program down in 2006. While it is impossible not to feel empathy for the young men who weren’t part of the incident at all, you can’t help but wonder why the NCAA felt obligated to bail Duke out after its administration completely mishandled the entire situation.
I guess, in a sense, some things will never be resolved. But Monday should give the school—and more important the players—some kind of closure and a legitimate reason to celebrate.
--------------------------------------
John's new book: "Moment of Glory--The Year Underdogs Ruled The Majors,"--is now available online and in bookstores nationwide. Visit your favorite retailer, or click here for online purchases
To listen to 'The Bob and Tom Show' interview about 'Moment of Glory', please click the play button below:
So here’s what we led the show with on Memorial Day: the Redskins—or, as it is called on the show, ‘Burgundy and Gold Daily,’—which is code meaning that the bit is sponsored.
The Nationals played on Monday afternoon, trying to get back to .500 (they did), a pretty remarkable feat for a team that lost 103 games a year ago. One week from today, Stephen Strasburg, the most touted phenom to hit baseball in years, makes his Major League debut.
The Maryland women’s lacrosse team had won the national title on Sunday and the men’s national championship game was going on in Baltimore as we took our seats to start the show.
Here’s how much mention those stories got—not to mention Roy Halladay’s perfect game on Saturday and anything baseball—during a one hour show: zip, zero. Nothing. We did manage to talk about the NBA playoffs and the Stanley Cup finals. But the first 20 minutes of the show was all NFL.
Seriously. On Memorial Day.
In fact, the first question host Ivan Carter asked to Rick Maese, one of The Post’s 11 or 12 Redskins beat writers was something like, “I know there’s nothing going on right now but what are the Redskins doing right now?”
Look, it’s not Ivan’s fault. It isn’t the fault of the people putting on the show either. A few weeks ago I asked Scott Taylor, who produces the show and would (like me) do Navy football all the time given the chance (his dad played at Navy) why in the world we had to lead the show with the Redskins in the middle of May.
“The ratings people tell us that everything spikes when we talk Redskins and spikes almost as much when we talk NFL,” he said. “It really doesn’t matter if anything is actually going on. If we’re talking about the Redskins people watch.”
I actually wondered if the reason it was so hard to EVER talk about the Nationals was that their games are televised on MASN and not on Comcast. Scott said that wasn’t the case. “It’s the ratings thing,” he said. “When we talk Nats, unless it’s Strasburg maybe, we lose people.”
I swear to God I don’t get it. Look, I like watching the NFL on Sundays as much as anyone. I spent an entire season hanging out with an NFL team when I wrote, “Next Man Up,” and enjoyed the experience. So this isn’t about me being anti-football. Okay, I may be anti-Redskins because the owner is three of the most arrogant people who ever lived and no amount of spinning to try to convince me there’s a “new,” Dan Snyder is going to make me think differently.
I have no problem talking about or writing about the NFL or the Redskins when there is something going on. But when you open the show by saying, “there’s nothing going on,” and then spend 20 minutes discussing preparations for mini-camp? I mean OMG as my daughter would say. At one point we switched over to talk about the Ravens. You know what we revealed to the audience? That Anquan Boldin was a good pickup. Pretty insightful stuff, huh?
There are certain people in sports and certain teams in sports and I guess certain leagues in sports that completely fascinate people no matter what. Tommy Roy, who produces golf for NBC, once told me that an informal survey of golf fans had shown that more people would rather watch Tiger Woods lean against his golf bag than watch someone else actually hitting a golf ball.
The same is true in this town of the Redskins. There’s a truly awful show that airs on Comcast called ‘Redskins Nation,’ which is a daily infomercial on the wonders of the team. If you were to watch this show—and staying in the same room with it for five minutes is a major challenge—you would think the Redskins were about to begin their quest for a fifth straight Super Bowl title. Anyone—ANYONE—who criticizes anyone or anything about the organization is labeled, “a hater,” by the ineffable host.
I asked once WHY the show was allowed on the air. The answer was simple: It’s the highest rated show Comcast has.
Talk about the apocalypse being upon us.
At least now I have the next six days to watch golf, baseball, hockey and basketball. And to write and talk about them—especially golf with “Moment of Glory,” now out all over the country, Eldrick T. Woods playing this week and The Nationwide Tour coming to DC. Of course next Monday it will be more, ‘Burgundy and Gold Daily.’
Maybe we can talk some more about what the Redskins haven’t been doing.
******
Wanted to thank the poster, ‘Bevo,’ for absolutely proving my point about people in academia on Friday. If I had tried to make up a fictional character to prove what I was saying about the existence of people like him at colleges around the country I couldn’t have done any better. And thanks to those who responded on my behalf. No need for me to add anything to what they’ve already said.
And finally: I felt a little torn Monday when Duke won the NCAA men’s lacrosse championship game. The ending was certainly dramatic and you had to feel good for the players and for Coach John Danowski, who I’m told is a good guy. To say that he took over under trying circumstances is putting it mildly. And there are people out there who still refer to the ‘Duke lacrosse scandal,’ without mentioning that not only were the charges against the three players dropped but the prosecutor who brought them was disbarred.
I’m always hesitant to even bring this topic up because it makes people on both sides SO angry.
That said, I’ve never bought the argument that the players were martyrs as some people have made them out to be. There WAS bad behavior going on that night, including racial slurs that have never been denied. Beyond that though, there were fifth year players on this Duke team granted an extra year by the NCAA because DUKE decided to shut the program down in 2006. While it is impossible not to feel empathy for the young men who weren’t part of the incident at all, you can’t help but wonder why the NCAA felt obligated to bail Duke out after its administration completely mishandled the entire situation.
I guess, in a sense, some things will never be resolved. But Monday should give the school—and more important the players—some kind of closure and a legitimate reason to celebrate.
--------------------------------------
John's new book: "Moment of Glory--The Year Underdogs Ruled The Majors,"--is now available online and in bookstores nationwide. Visit your favorite retailer, or click here for online purchases
To listen to 'The Bob and Tom Show' interview about 'Moment of Glory', please click the play button below:
Comments (6)
Lorena Ochoa's retirement; Conference expansion – he who has the checkbook has the power
Mon, Apr 26 2010 11:44
| NFL, PGA Tour, Jim Delany, NCAA, LPGA, Lorena Ochoa, Annika Sorenstam, The Big Ten Network
| Permalink
Here’s the first question of the day: Is the NFL draft over yet? The answer, if you include the endless analysis that goes on in every city, is no. Here in Washington you would think the Redskins decision to (finally) draft an offensive tackle was roughly as brilliant as the founders decision to ask Thomas Jefferson to write The Declaration of Independence.
Let’s face it: in April everyone has had a good draft—even the Raiders. Check back in October and things will look a bit less rosy in a few places. Of course by then ESPN’s draft experts will be telling us who is going to go in the first round of NEXT year’s draft. Talk about the circle of life.
Moving on to far more interesting topics. The biggest news of the past few days actually involved golf—but not Tiger Woods or even Phil Mickelson. It involved Lorena Ochoa, who has decided to retire from golf—apparently to start a family—at the age of 28. This is NOT good news for the LPGA; to put it mildly.
The last few years have not gone very well for women’s golf. Some of the issues have been completely out of control of the people in the game: Annika Sorenstam retired, the economy tanked and Michelle Wie, even though she made great strides last year, still has not become the breakthrough star people thought she was going to be when she showed up as a prodigy at the age of 13.
Unfortunately those events happened, for the most part, while Carolyn Bivens was the LPGA’s commissioner. Bivens was to being a commissioner what Dan Snyder has been to owning a football team: she did everything wrong and then tried to blame everyone else. She had lousy relationships with her players, her sponsors and with the media. She tried to make English the official language of the LPGA Tour—speak it or be gone. Other than that, she did fine. She was finally fired by the players last summer but the damage had been done. Tournaments were going under left and right and, even though Ochoa had emerged as a superstar and a number of young players had flashed potential, interest in the LPGA was tanking.
The tour has since hired Michael Whan, who is young and eager and seems to want to rebuild some of the bridges blown up by Bivens. But the key for any commissioner is having a product the public cares about and the best way for any sport to do that is through great rivalries. Maybe Wie or Morgan Pressel or Paula Creamer or Brittany Lincicome (sadly, Natalie Gulbis does not appear to have the game to be much more than golf’s version of Anna Kournikova—a reasonably good player who is a star because of her looks) might have emerged as Ochoa’s great rival.
Now, that’s not going to happen. Does it help, by the way, for at least one of the world’s best players to be an American—yes. That’s not me being Bivens and demanding that everyone on earth learn to speak English, that’s a fact of life in sports. When there was a lull in great American male tennis players between John McEnroe/Jimmy Connors and the emergence of Pete Sampras/Andre Agassi/Jim Courier, Ivan Lendl, among others said bluntly: “We need an American star. We need American television ratings and corporations and American stars drive those things.”
The same is true in golf—men or women. When Tom Watson began to fade as a star and neither Phil Mickelson nor Tiger Woods had arrived yet, golf ratings went down. Greg Norman helped because he was ‘Americanized,’ if not American but Nick Faldo and Seve Ballesteros as the world’s best players didn’t drive ratings.
Neither Sorenstam nor Ochoa is American, but Sorenstam had lived here for a long time and Ochoa is from close to here and has a unique sort of charm that bridges borders. Still, a rivalry between her and one of the Americans would have been terrific for the sport. Now, unless she has a baby, gets bored and makes a comeback at 30 or 31 (certainly possible) it won’t happen.
What’s sad is we may never see the best of Ochoa. Sorenstam didn’t become dominant until she was 30. She had won two majors—the same number as Ochoa—prior to turning 30 and 23 tournaments. After 30 she won eight more majors and 49 (!!!) more tournaments. She became a star who transcended her sport, which was—needless to say—good for the women’s game. There was never more focus on women’s golf than in 2003 when she played against the men at Colonial. The only bad thing about that week was it put the idea that you could make more money by playing against the men into the heads of Wie and her handlers and led to her multiple ill-fated attempts to play against the men BEFORE she had even won a tournament playing against women.
The other story of last week was the growing drumbeat on the issue of conference expansion in the NCAA. There have been almost as many meaningless words spoken and written on this subject as on the NFL draft. Here’s the deal: The Big Ten—unfortunately—holds all the cards here because of the success of The Big Ten TV network.
That means Jim Delany, the Big Ten commissioner, is wielding most of the power and influence right now. I can tell you two things about Delany: he’s smart and he’s ruthless. He could care less about anything other than what’s best for him—and, thus, his conference—which makes him a very good commissioner if not someone you would want to trust to tell you where the sun will rise tomorrow.
A lot of people sneered when he started The Big Ten network but it has, for all intents and purposes, made him the unofficial commissioner of college athletics. Why? Because the success of the network means that every Big Ten team takes home a check for $22 million at the end of every football season. No one else is making half of that, except for the SEC—which is the one conference Delany hasn’t talked (privately, he never says anything that has any meaning in public) about raiding.
Now, if the college presidents cared anything about doing the right thing, conference expansion wouldn’t even be an issue right now. There are already too many conferences that are too big because of the constant money grab going on. Sixteen Big East basketball teams? Twelve ACC football teams? That’s good for competition, for rivalries, for fans? There are Big East teams that don’t visit another Big East home court for two or three years at a time. Round-robin play, the fairest way to decide a championship in basketball? Gone from all the major conferences except the Pac-10. Every team playing every league team in football? Gone—except in The Big East, which is fighting for survival.
Now, Delany may want to make The Big Ten into The Big Sixteen. He may try to entice schools like Syracuse, Rutgers, Pittsburgh, West Virginia (all Big East) and Missouri into his league. He’d love to add Notre Dame—which will NEVER give up its exclusive TV money from NBC—or Texas. If Delany goes on a raiding mission, the leagues raided have to try to raid themselves in order to survive. Why would someone like Syracuse leave The Big East? Again, do the math: $22 million vs. $7 million. Those numbers will trump tradition is any college president’s office any day. The same is true of the other candidates for expansion.
All of this, frankly, sucks. It is also bound to happen. Because he who has the checkbook has the power. And right now, unfortunately for college athletics, no one has a bigger checkbook than Jim Delany.
Let’s face it: in April everyone has had a good draft—even the Raiders. Check back in October and things will look a bit less rosy in a few places. Of course by then ESPN’s draft experts will be telling us who is going to go in the first round of NEXT year’s draft. Talk about the circle of life.
Moving on to far more interesting topics. The biggest news of the past few days actually involved golf—but not Tiger Woods or even Phil Mickelson. It involved Lorena Ochoa, who has decided to retire from golf—apparently to start a family—at the age of 28. This is NOT good news for the LPGA; to put it mildly.
The last few years have not gone very well for women’s golf. Some of the issues have been completely out of control of the people in the game: Annika Sorenstam retired, the economy tanked and Michelle Wie, even though she made great strides last year, still has not become the breakthrough star people thought she was going to be when she showed up as a prodigy at the age of 13.
Unfortunately those events happened, for the most part, while Carolyn Bivens was the LPGA’s commissioner. Bivens was to being a commissioner what Dan Snyder has been to owning a football team: she did everything wrong and then tried to blame everyone else. She had lousy relationships with her players, her sponsors and with the media. She tried to make English the official language of the LPGA Tour—speak it or be gone. Other than that, she did fine. She was finally fired by the players last summer but the damage had been done. Tournaments were going under left and right and, even though Ochoa had emerged as a superstar and a number of young players had flashed potential, interest in the LPGA was tanking.
The tour has since hired Michael Whan, who is young and eager and seems to want to rebuild some of the bridges blown up by Bivens. But the key for any commissioner is having a product the public cares about and the best way for any sport to do that is through great rivalries. Maybe Wie or Morgan Pressel or Paula Creamer or Brittany Lincicome (sadly, Natalie Gulbis does not appear to have the game to be much more than golf’s version of Anna Kournikova—a reasonably good player who is a star because of her looks) might have emerged as Ochoa’s great rival.
Now, that’s not going to happen. Does it help, by the way, for at least one of the world’s best players to be an American—yes. That’s not me being Bivens and demanding that everyone on earth learn to speak English, that’s a fact of life in sports. When there was a lull in great American male tennis players between John McEnroe/Jimmy Connors and the emergence of Pete Sampras/Andre Agassi/Jim Courier, Ivan Lendl, among others said bluntly: “We need an American star. We need American television ratings and corporations and American stars drive those things.”
The same is true in golf—men or women. When Tom Watson began to fade as a star and neither Phil Mickelson nor Tiger Woods had arrived yet, golf ratings went down. Greg Norman helped because he was ‘Americanized,’ if not American but Nick Faldo and Seve Ballesteros as the world’s best players didn’t drive ratings.
Neither Sorenstam nor Ochoa is American, but Sorenstam had lived here for a long time and Ochoa is from close to here and has a unique sort of charm that bridges borders. Still, a rivalry between her and one of the Americans would have been terrific for the sport. Now, unless she has a baby, gets bored and makes a comeback at 30 or 31 (certainly possible) it won’t happen.
What’s sad is we may never see the best of Ochoa. Sorenstam didn’t become dominant until she was 30. She had won two majors—the same number as Ochoa—prior to turning 30 and 23 tournaments. After 30 she won eight more majors and 49 (!!!) more tournaments. She became a star who transcended her sport, which was—needless to say—good for the women’s game. There was never more focus on women’s golf than in 2003 when she played against the men at Colonial. The only bad thing about that week was it put the idea that you could make more money by playing against the men into the heads of Wie and her handlers and led to her multiple ill-fated attempts to play against the men BEFORE she had even won a tournament playing against women.
The other story of last week was the growing drumbeat on the issue of conference expansion in the NCAA. There have been almost as many meaningless words spoken and written on this subject as on the NFL draft. Here’s the deal: The Big Ten—unfortunately—holds all the cards here because of the success of The Big Ten TV network.
That means Jim Delany, the Big Ten commissioner, is wielding most of the power and influence right now. I can tell you two things about Delany: he’s smart and he’s ruthless. He could care less about anything other than what’s best for him—and, thus, his conference—which makes him a very good commissioner if not someone you would want to trust to tell you where the sun will rise tomorrow.
A lot of people sneered when he started The Big Ten network but it has, for all intents and purposes, made him the unofficial commissioner of college athletics. Why? Because the success of the network means that every Big Ten team takes home a check for $22 million at the end of every football season. No one else is making half of that, except for the SEC—which is the one conference Delany hasn’t talked (privately, he never says anything that has any meaning in public) about raiding.
Now, if the college presidents cared anything about doing the right thing, conference expansion wouldn’t even be an issue right now. There are already too many conferences that are too big because of the constant money grab going on. Sixteen Big East basketball teams? Twelve ACC football teams? That’s good for competition, for rivalries, for fans? There are Big East teams that don’t visit another Big East home court for two or three years at a time. Round-robin play, the fairest way to decide a championship in basketball? Gone from all the major conferences except the Pac-10. Every team playing every league team in football? Gone—except in The Big East, which is fighting for survival.
Now, Delany may want to make The Big Ten into The Big Sixteen. He may try to entice schools like Syracuse, Rutgers, Pittsburgh, West Virginia (all Big East) and Missouri into his league. He’d love to add Notre Dame—which will NEVER give up its exclusive TV money from NBC—or Texas. If Delany goes on a raiding mission, the leagues raided have to try to raid themselves in order to survive. Why would someone like Syracuse leave The Big East? Again, do the math: $22 million vs. $7 million. Those numbers will trump tradition is any college president’s office any day. The same is true of the other candidates for expansion.
All of this, frankly, sucks. It is also bound to happen. Because he who has the checkbook has the power. And right now, unfortunately for college athletics, no one has a bigger checkbook than Jim Delany.
Comments (10)
Thursday’s NCAA decision – why it happened, and what it means; NFL draft
Fri, Apr 23 2010 11:44
| NFL, NCAA, college basketball, CBS, Greg Shaheen, Turner, ESPN
| Permalink
Something important happened on Thursday—and it wasn’t the NFL draft. I’m always amused when I flip to the draft, especially on ESPN, how no matter what happens, the experts claim they knew this was coming and this is a great pick for whatever team is involved. Every once in a while Mel Kiper will question a pick—usually whomever the Oakland Raiders draft because that’s a pretty safe bet—but for the most part every franchise is doing a great job and every player drafted is a wonderful person.
If I had a dollar for every time someone said, “quality kid,” on Thursday night I’d be making almost as much money as the NCAA is going to make on its new basketball TV contract.
Which brings me to the important news of Thursday: The NCAA basketball committee actually did something right. Instead of going forward with plans to expand to a ridiculous 96 team tournament, the committee reigned itself—and the ever-greedy presidents, commissioners and athletic directors—in at least for a while, recommending expansion for next season to 68 teams.
Let’s not pretend for even a second that this was done for any of the right reasons: preserving the integrity of the regular season and the conference tournaments; allowing a tournament bid to continue to have meaning; continuing an event that may have been as good as it has ever been in 2010. This happened for a couple of reasons: there were logistical issues in terms of changing existing rental agreements to add another round of games (two more days in the building) as early as next spring. Plus, the NCAA took a pounding in recent months when the plan to go to 96 teams leaked out and looked especially bad at The Final Four when NCAA vice president Greg Shaheen literally refused to answer a simple question about missed class time that would have been caused by the extra game.
I was the one who asked that question (repeatedly) and the exchange received a lot of attention because Shaheen simply wouldn’t admit in that public forum that OF COURSE there would be more missed class time. A number of people have pointed out—correctly—since then that the issue is a minor one since the players already miss lots of class time and a lot of them have no intention of returning to class once the tournament is over.
I knew that when I brought the issue up. The only reason I did it was to point out the hypocrisy and basic dishonestly of the NCAA dishing out all the ‘student-athlete,’ garbage it dishes out. In fact I got a bit nauseous when I read the canned quote yesterday from acting NCAA President Jim Isch saying, ‘this is a great day for the 400,000 NCAA student athletes.” Memo to Isch: Shut up and cash the checks.
I’ve had a few people say that my exchange with Shaheen in Indy somehow played a role in this. My ego’s big, but not that big. I DO think the drumbeat across the country from people saying that 96 teams was bad for basketball and a CLEAR money-grab did have an affect because the NCAA is, if nothing else, ultra-image conscious. What’s more, even though the new TV agreement with CBS and Turner is for 14 years, I don’t expect the number of teams to stay at 68 for the life of the agreement. I think it will go up either in one fell swoop in a few years or gradually, the way it went from 25 teams in 1974 to 64 in 1985 with stops along the way at 32, 40, 48 and 53.
The addition of three teams probably means four play-in games in Dayton instead of one. Undoubtedly the committee will ship the eight lowest-seeded one-bid league teams there instead of doing the right thing and sending the last eight at-large teams to play. (You seed the four winners as No. 12 seeds). Sending the at-larges means better TV—more name teams—and it is fairer since the tournament is probably the zenith for most of the one-bid league players while the players from the name schools are mostly looking forward to pro careers or being back in the tournament again before their college careers are over. Don’t think for a second the committee does the right thing on this one. Additionally, the adding of the three teams means the one-bid teams get their seedings pushed down a little more: the added three teams will all be seeded ahead of most of the one-bid schools. Consider this: Cornell was NOT seeded ahead of a single at-large team this season. Nice job by the committee there.
The real winner in all this is Turner. CBS could not have outbid ESPN for the rights without a cable partner. What’s more, ESPN was pitching the NCAA on the fact that it had the outlets to televise all games rather than regionalizing the first three rounds as CBS has been doing. Turner’s presence with three networks of its own---TBS, TNT and truTV—will allow the new partnership to do what ESPN was proposing to do.
Clearly, Turner is putting up a lot of the $10.8 billion the contract is worth because beginning in 2016 it will alternate televising the Final Four with CBS. No way CBS gives up any part of that event without a lot of money being involved. Regardless, we should all be happy on two levels: The tournament bubble will not be expanded—at least for now—to include the 12th place teams in The Big East and the ACC—and the ESPN takeover of all sports is slowed at least for a little while. Consider this: if ESPN had gotten the deal your main studio host for the entire NCAA Tournament would have been Chris Berman—guaranteed. He might have brought Mel Kiper and John Gruden with him too.
Speaking of which I did watch some of the draft last night—switching frequently over to watch Johan Santana pitch and the New Jersey Devils flounder. First of all, what’s with the players hugging Roger Goodell? I mean, enough with that. Second, I know it is a live event but is it just me or was ESPN completely out of synch most of the night? There were all sorts of awkward silences on the main set and the kicker came when Goodell introduced all the military folks—which to me, as much as I respect all those people, is nothing but pandering by the NFL—and no one on the set other than Tom Jackson seemed to know what was going on. Steve Young kept rambling, then they showed Goodell briefly and then Young, Kiper and Gruden kept talking to one another as if they were off mike. It was highlighted by Berman—on camera—trying to give them all the ‘cut,’ sign to let them know they were on camera and on mike.
When Berman tried to recover by saying, “this is always the highlight of the first round…” it was pretty much falldown funny. Even so, the worst TV of the night was on the NFL Network. I love Deion Sanders, really enjoyed getting to know him when I did my book on the Ravens a few years ago. But his interviews with the players just drafted were brutal: “Dreams come true, they can expect hard work from me in (fill in the city). Greatest thrill of my life.”
Back to you in the booth. Time for another shot of a player and his posse talking on a cell phone while Goodell waits for him to hug 43 people, put on a cap and come on stage. I think tonight I’ll stick to the Mets.
If I had a dollar for every time someone said, “quality kid,” on Thursday night I’d be making almost as much money as the NCAA is going to make on its new basketball TV contract.
Which brings me to the important news of Thursday: The NCAA basketball committee actually did something right. Instead of going forward with plans to expand to a ridiculous 96 team tournament, the committee reigned itself—and the ever-greedy presidents, commissioners and athletic directors—in at least for a while, recommending expansion for next season to 68 teams.
Let’s not pretend for even a second that this was done for any of the right reasons: preserving the integrity of the regular season and the conference tournaments; allowing a tournament bid to continue to have meaning; continuing an event that may have been as good as it has ever been in 2010. This happened for a couple of reasons: there were logistical issues in terms of changing existing rental agreements to add another round of games (two more days in the building) as early as next spring. Plus, the NCAA took a pounding in recent months when the plan to go to 96 teams leaked out and looked especially bad at The Final Four when NCAA vice president Greg Shaheen literally refused to answer a simple question about missed class time that would have been caused by the extra game.
I was the one who asked that question (repeatedly) and the exchange received a lot of attention because Shaheen simply wouldn’t admit in that public forum that OF COURSE there would be more missed class time. A number of people have pointed out—correctly—since then that the issue is a minor one since the players already miss lots of class time and a lot of them have no intention of returning to class once the tournament is over.
I knew that when I brought the issue up. The only reason I did it was to point out the hypocrisy and basic dishonestly of the NCAA dishing out all the ‘student-athlete,’ garbage it dishes out. In fact I got a bit nauseous when I read the canned quote yesterday from acting NCAA President Jim Isch saying, ‘this is a great day for the 400,000 NCAA student athletes.” Memo to Isch: Shut up and cash the checks.
I’ve had a few people say that my exchange with Shaheen in Indy somehow played a role in this. My ego’s big, but not that big. I DO think the drumbeat across the country from people saying that 96 teams was bad for basketball and a CLEAR money-grab did have an affect because the NCAA is, if nothing else, ultra-image conscious. What’s more, even though the new TV agreement with CBS and Turner is for 14 years, I don’t expect the number of teams to stay at 68 for the life of the agreement. I think it will go up either in one fell swoop in a few years or gradually, the way it went from 25 teams in 1974 to 64 in 1985 with stops along the way at 32, 40, 48 and 53.
The addition of three teams probably means four play-in games in Dayton instead of one. Undoubtedly the committee will ship the eight lowest-seeded one-bid league teams there instead of doing the right thing and sending the last eight at-large teams to play. (You seed the four winners as No. 12 seeds). Sending the at-larges means better TV—more name teams—and it is fairer since the tournament is probably the zenith for most of the one-bid league players while the players from the name schools are mostly looking forward to pro careers or being back in the tournament again before their college careers are over. Don’t think for a second the committee does the right thing on this one. Additionally, the adding of the three teams means the one-bid teams get their seedings pushed down a little more: the added three teams will all be seeded ahead of most of the one-bid schools. Consider this: Cornell was NOT seeded ahead of a single at-large team this season. Nice job by the committee there.
The real winner in all this is Turner. CBS could not have outbid ESPN for the rights without a cable partner. What’s more, ESPN was pitching the NCAA on the fact that it had the outlets to televise all games rather than regionalizing the first three rounds as CBS has been doing. Turner’s presence with three networks of its own---TBS, TNT and truTV—will allow the new partnership to do what ESPN was proposing to do.
Clearly, Turner is putting up a lot of the $10.8 billion the contract is worth because beginning in 2016 it will alternate televising the Final Four with CBS. No way CBS gives up any part of that event without a lot of money being involved. Regardless, we should all be happy on two levels: The tournament bubble will not be expanded—at least for now—to include the 12th place teams in The Big East and the ACC—and the ESPN takeover of all sports is slowed at least for a little while. Consider this: if ESPN had gotten the deal your main studio host for the entire NCAA Tournament would have been Chris Berman—guaranteed. He might have brought Mel Kiper and John Gruden with him too.
Speaking of which I did watch some of the draft last night—switching frequently over to watch Johan Santana pitch and the New Jersey Devils flounder. First of all, what’s with the players hugging Roger Goodell? I mean, enough with that. Second, I know it is a live event but is it just me or was ESPN completely out of synch most of the night? There were all sorts of awkward silences on the main set and the kicker came when Goodell introduced all the military folks—which to me, as much as I respect all those people, is nothing but pandering by the NFL—and no one on the set other than Tom Jackson seemed to know what was going on. Steve Young kept rambling, then they showed Goodell briefly and then Young, Kiper and Gruden kept talking to one another as if they were off mike. It was highlighted by Berman—on camera—trying to give them all the ‘cut,’ sign to let them know they were on camera and on mike.
When Berman tried to recover by saying, “this is always the highlight of the first round…” it was pretty much falldown funny. Even so, the worst TV of the night was on the NFL Network. I love Deion Sanders, really enjoyed getting to know him when I did my book on the Ravens a few years ago. But his interviews with the players just drafted were brutal: “Dreams come true, they can expect hard work from me in (fill in the city). Greatest thrill of my life.”
Back to you in the booth. Time for another shot of a player and his posse talking on a cell phone while Goodell waits for him to hug 43 people, put on a cap and come on stage. I think tonight I’ll stick to the Mets.
Comments (9)
Media access in the NFL and other sports continues to shrink
Wed, Apr 21 2010 09:58
| NFL, PGA Tour, Joe Gibbs, college basketball, Washington Post, NHL, MLB, media, Washington Redskins
| Permalink
This past Monday I was making my weekly appearance on Washington Post Live, which airs here in town on Comcast Cable. Because of some kind of sponsorship deal the show has a segment EVERY day on the Redskins (and then later airs a show called, ‘Redskins Nation,’ which is so god-awful you would fall down laughing while watching it if its presence on the air—ANY air—wasn’t so downright sad).
Anyway, with the draft coming up and the Redskins having just completed their first mini-camp under new Coach Mike Shanahan, we actually did two Redskin segments. One of the other guests was Jason Reid, who does an excellent job covering the team for The Washington Post. Covering the Redskins for The Post is such an awful job I once left sports for two years rather than accept the assignment. (More on that in a moment).
During the mini-camp ‘discussion,’ (what the hell is there to discuss about mini-camp?) Jason casually mentioned that the media was not ALLOWED to be at the Redskins facility on Friday and Saturday. Only on Sunday did Shanahan grant them a few moments with the God-like figures who inhabit Redskins Park.
At first, I was literally stunned. No media at a mini-camp? What are they doing, plotting an invasion into Afghanistan? It then occurred to me that this lack of access, although it varies from team-to-team, is the way the NFL does business. Why does it do business this way? Because it CAN.
Even with a potential strike or lockout looming in 2011, there is nothing bigger in American sports (I throw in American only because of the soccer World Cup which occurs every four years and just about brings the rest of the world to a complete halt) than the NFL. I mean look at all the hype going into the draft, which is now a ‘prime-time,’ event. I mean, has there been enough speculation yet? What amuses me most is that with all the speculation—much of it usually flat out wrong—even after the draft takes place no one really knows what they have, who will be a true impact player and who won’t.
A draft usually becomes a good draft in the third round and beyond. If you blow your first pick—see the Oakland Raiders—then you’re going to be awful because even those guys who never stop talking on ESPN aren’t likely to screw up the first round. Heck, even the Redskins picked a good player in the first round last year. The best teams and general managers do their most important work in the late rounds and in signing college free agents. The teams with the most depth win in the NFL and depth is built in the late rounds of the draft and through free agent signings that usually rate one paragraph. You don’t get good by signing Albert Haynesworth—or for that matter Terrell Owens—you get good by signing Torry Holt and having him catch 70 balls for you on a one-year contract. Things like that.
Okay, back to the NFL and the lack of access the media has. I know most people reading this will say, ‘who cares about your access.’ Well, if you are a football fan YOU should. Look, watching practice or mini-camp doesn’t really matter a lick. I watched most Ravens practices (and mini-camps, which WERE open to everyone in the media) during 2004 and was mostly bored doing so.
Years ago, shortly after I had stopped working at The Post fulltime, I was doing some work for The New York Times. I had a contract with Sports Illustrated but liked keeping my hand in at daily journalism and Neil Amdur, then the Times sports editor, allowed me to do it.
The Redskins were playing the Giants and Neil asked me to go out to Redskins Park to write a couple of features during the week. I was standing on the practice field while the Redskins warmed up talking to Richard Justice, who was then The Post’s Redskins beat writer. Joe Gibbs walked over.
“John, I’m really sorry but we only let our local writers watch practice,” he said. “You’re going to have to leave.”
“Gee Joe, thanks,” I said.
“Thanks?”
“Yeah, thanks. Thanks for thinking for one second that, even if I cared, I’d have any clue what you guys were doing. And thanks for giving me an excuse to go write while you’re practicing.”
Gibbs actually laughed. I happily went off to write.
Nowadays, most NFL practices are shut tight—mini-camps apparently included. When Brian Billick coached the Ravens, he was about as open with the media as any coach that ever lived. All his pre-season practices were open. Once the season started he’d let people watch the beginning but once the team actually started scrimmaging or putting in a game-plan, everyone was shooed inside. Nowadays, ANY access to players on or off the field is extremely limited.
Access in almost all sports—golf is the notable exception—has been cut back greatly in recent years. Hockey locker rooms used to be open pre-game. No more. Baseball clubhouses are still open but for less time and players spend far more time in the off-limits areas, which have been greatly expanded in new ballparks. College basketball is the worst offender: Once, almost every college hoops locker room—even Georgetown under John Thompson the elder—was open postgame. Now, except during the NCAA Tournament (all credit to the NCAA on that one) most are closed and a few ‘selected,’ players come to an interview area. One notable exception? Duke. Maybe some of the coaches who complain so bitterly about Duke getting good publicity all the time should think about that for a moment.
The shame of it from the public’s point of view is that it is so much harder to get to know players when you have almost no access to them. I’ve always found that the best stories usually occur when you’re standing around casually talking to someone. It certainly benefits me in golf where I spend a lot of time hanging out on the range and the putting green just talking to players.
There is no casual time with NFL players for most guys in the media. I had the chance to spend casual time with the Ravens in ’04 and the best stories I found were about guys most people in the public never hear much about: the long-snapper; the punter brought in for a couple of weeks because of an injury; a backup offensive lineman who had played his college football at Williams.
But NFL coaches don’t care if the public hears those stories. They care about controlling everything in their little world on a day-to-day basis and they are allowed to do so by the league, by the media (which has little wherewithal to change anything) and by the public whose only real concern isn’t a good story about a backup lineman but whether last year’s 4-12 team can make itself over into a playoff team.
I get all that. Which is why, back in 1982 when George Solomon, then The Post’s sports editor called me into his office and announced, “congratulations, I’m making you The Redskins beat writer,” I said no. I was very much enjoying myself covering national college football and basketball and I knew that, even then, covering the Redskins beat was basically being a hard-working stenographer: who was injured, who didn’t practice, what did Coach Gibbs think of next week’s opponent? (Greatest team in history every single week).
That’s not to say I wasn’t flattered being offered the most read beat in the newspaper. I just thought life was too short to waste even one season doing that. I told George, with all due respect, I didn’t want the beat. He told me he was the boss—he was right—and I’d do what he said. I walked straight to David Maraniss’s office. He had just been promoted to Metro editor, replacing Bob Woodward. Both had told me I had a standing offer to come back and cover Maryland politics for them anytime I wanted.
“Does the offer still stand?” I asked.
“Absolutely.”
A week later I was in Annapolis. I never covered the Redskins. When I went back to sports two years later it was to cover national college basketball and tennis. I was reminded again on Monday just how lucky I was to never spend one day as an NFL beat writer. Back then, it was lousy. Now, it’s a lot worse.
Anyway, with the draft coming up and the Redskins having just completed their first mini-camp under new Coach Mike Shanahan, we actually did two Redskin segments. One of the other guests was Jason Reid, who does an excellent job covering the team for The Washington Post. Covering the Redskins for The Post is such an awful job I once left sports for two years rather than accept the assignment. (More on that in a moment).
During the mini-camp ‘discussion,’ (what the hell is there to discuss about mini-camp?) Jason casually mentioned that the media was not ALLOWED to be at the Redskins facility on Friday and Saturday. Only on Sunday did Shanahan grant them a few moments with the God-like figures who inhabit Redskins Park.
At first, I was literally stunned. No media at a mini-camp? What are they doing, plotting an invasion into Afghanistan? It then occurred to me that this lack of access, although it varies from team-to-team, is the way the NFL does business. Why does it do business this way? Because it CAN.
Even with a potential strike or lockout looming in 2011, there is nothing bigger in American sports (I throw in American only because of the soccer World Cup which occurs every four years and just about brings the rest of the world to a complete halt) than the NFL. I mean look at all the hype going into the draft, which is now a ‘prime-time,’ event. I mean, has there been enough speculation yet? What amuses me most is that with all the speculation—much of it usually flat out wrong—even after the draft takes place no one really knows what they have, who will be a true impact player and who won’t.
A draft usually becomes a good draft in the third round and beyond. If you blow your first pick—see the Oakland Raiders—then you’re going to be awful because even those guys who never stop talking on ESPN aren’t likely to screw up the first round. Heck, even the Redskins picked a good player in the first round last year. The best teams and general managers do their most important work in the late rounds and in signing college free agents. The teams with the most depth win in the NFL and depth is built in the late rounds of the draft and through free agent signings that usually rate one paragraph. You don’t get good by signing Albert Haynesworth—or for that matter Terrell Owens—you get good by signing Torry Holt and having him catch 70 balls for you on a one-year contract. Things like that.
Okay, back to the NFL and the lack of access the media has. I know most people reading this will say, ‘who cares about your access.’ Well, if you are a football fan YOU should. Look, watching practice or mini-camp doesn’t really matter a lick. I watched most Ravens practices (and mini-camps, which WERE open to everyone in the media) during 2004 and was mostly bored doing so.
Years ago, shortly after I had stopped working at The Post fulltime, I was doing some work for The New York Times. I had a contract with Sports Illustrated but liked keeping my hand in at daily journalism and Neil Amdur, then the Times sports editor, allowed me to do it.
The Redskins were playing the Giants and Neil asked me to go out to Redskins Park to write a couple of features during the week. I was standing on the practice field while the Redskins warmed up talking to Richard Justice, who was then The Post’s Redskins beat writer. Joe Gibbs walked over.
“John, I’m really sorry but we only let our local writers watch practice,” he said. “You’re going to have to leave.”
“Gee Joe, thanks,” I said.
“Thanks?”
“Yeah, thanks. Thanks for thinking for one second that, even if I cared, I’d have any clue what you guys were doing. And thanks for giving me an excuse to go write while you’re practicing.”
Gibbs actually laughed. I happily went off to write.
Nowadays, most NFL practices are shut tight—mini-camps apparently included. When Brian Billick coached the Ravens, he was about as open with the media as any coach that ever lived. All his pre-season practices were open. Once the season started he’d let people watch the beginning but once the team actually started scrimmaging or putting in a game-plan, everyone was shooed inside. Nowadays, ANY access to players on or off the field is extremely limited.
Access in almost all sports—golf is the notable exception—has been cut back greatly in recent years. Hockey locker rooms used to be open pre-game. No more. Baseball clubhouses are still open but for less time and players spend far more time in the off-limits areas, which have been greatly expanded in new ballparks. College basketball is the worst offender: Once, almost every college hoops locker room—even Georgetown under John Thompson the elder—was open postgame. Now, except during the NCAA Tournament (all credit to the NCAA on that one) most are closed and a few ‘selected,’ players come to an interview area. One notable exception? Duke. Maybe some of the coaches who complain so bitterly about Duke getting good publicity all the time should think about that for a moment.
The shame of it from the public’s point of view is that it is so much harder to get to know players when you have almost no access to them. I’ve always found that the best stories usually occur when you’re standing around casually talking to someone. It certainly benefits me in golf where I spend a lot of time hanging out on the range and the putting green just talking to players.
There is no casual time with NFL players for most guys in the media. I had the chance to spend casual time with the Ravens in ’04 and the best stories I found were about guys most people in the public never hear much about: the long-snapper; the punter brought in for a couple of weeks because of an injury; a backup offensive lineman who had played his college football at Williams.
But NFL coaches don’t care if the public hears those stories. They care about controlling everything in their little world on a day-to-day basis and they are allowed to do so by the league, by the media (which has little wherewithal to change anything) and by the public whose only real concern isn’t a good story about a backup lineman but whether last year’s 4-12 team can make itself over into a playoff team.
I get all that. Which is why, back in 1982 when George Solomon, then The Post’s sports editor called me into his office and announced, “congratulations, I’m making you The Redskins beat writer,” I said no. I was very much enjoying myself covering national college football and basketball and I knew that, even then, covering the Redskins beat was basically being a hard-working stenographer: who was injured, who didn’t practice, what did Coach Gibbs think of next week’s opponent? (Greatest team in history every single week).
That’s not to say I wasn’t flattered being offered the most read beat in the newspaper. I just thought life was too short to waste even one season doing that. I told George, with all due respect, I didn’t want the beat. He told me he was the boss—he was right—and I’d do what he said. I walked straight to David Maraniss’s office. He had just been promoted to Metro editor, replacing Bob Woodward. Both had told me I had a standing offer to come back and cover Maryland politics for them anytime I wanted.
“Does the offer still stand?” I asked.
“Absolutely.”
A week later I was in Annapolis. I never covered the Redskins. When I went back to sports two years later it was to cover national college basketball and tennis. I was reminded again on Monday just how lucky I was to never spend one day as an NFL beat writer. Back then, it was lousy. Now, it’s a lot worse.
Comments (12)
Drew Brees’s tears most memorable to me; On to next slate of sports events
Mon, Feb 8 2010 11:23
| NFL, college basketball, New Orleans Saints, Winter Olympics, Drew Brees
| Permalink
There are a lot of bad things about living in America’s new snow belt. Losing power is no fun. Seeing people losing their minds in the grocery store is comedic but just a little bit scary. But not getting the newspapers in the morning makes me crazy. Sure, I can read online but it’s NOT THE SAME. I spend enough time sitting at the computer most days without having to sit here to read the papers.
Okay, that is today’s whine-du-jour. Suffice to say it hasn’t been a fun winter in these parts and apparently there’s more to come. The roads still aren’t clear (largely because there’s just no place to put the snow) and more snow is expected tomorrow and Wednesday. The only ones who are happy right now are the kids.
I did manage to make it home from West Point last night—although the last 35 miles was treacherous and frightening—in time to see most of The Super Bowl. My first comment on the game and the telecast is this: Have all the smart advertising execs retired? I did not see every commercial and I probably wasn’t completely focused on a lot of the ones I saw, but it certainly appeared that the days of the memorable Super Bowl commercial have gone the way of the low-key postgame celebration.
Enough already with the talking baby.
Onto the game. Most Super Bowls have three or four moments that stand out and are replayed forever and this game was no exception. The Saints recovery of the onside kick to start the second half will be shown a million times along with announcers crediting Sean Payton (correctly) for taking such a bold gamble. The Tracy Porter interception will always be the signature play of the game, not only because it broke the Colts back but because it rendered Peyton Manning human again. Now we’re going to hear over and over again that Manning has won the same number of Super Bowls as Mark Rypien and Brad Johnson, not to mention little brother Eli.
But for me, the most vivid memory will be Drew Brees’s tears, first when he was holding his one-year-old son Baylen during the (overblown) pre-trophy presentation celebration and then as he stood on the podium waiting for Tom Benson to stop blathering so Payton could finally hand him the trophy.
His voice never cracked on the podium or in his postgame press conference but his emotion was apparent and clearly quite genuine. He talked about feeling as if he was meant to land in New Orleans and to be a part of the rebuilding of the team and the city and the region, but there was no Joe Gibbs/Kurt Warner evangelism just a clear picture that this was a man of faith who felt that his presence in New Orleans was part of a plan he didn’t need to understand but had been able to help carry out.
Good for him. Good for the entire city which suffered the modest angst that comes with a consistently bad football team and then the tragedy of Katrina. It’s a little harder to feel good for Saints owner Tom Benson who was ready to yank the team from New Orleans and move it to San Antonio or Los Angeles after Katrina and is now taking bows for all that has gone right the last couple of years, culminating with Sunday’s victory.
You can’t help but wonder how hard Manning will get hit by his critics for this loss. He did not play poorly by any means—he never plays poorly. But the defining moment of the game was the Porter interception. I don’t think there’s anything that can happen that will remove Manning from the pantheon of great NFL quarterbacks. He’s certainly somewhere on the list although the talk that he is THE greatest will quiet now until he wins another Super Bowl.
I have one other question on the subject of great quarterbacks. Whenever people talk about Joe Montana as the best of all time, they talk about his four Super Bowl wins—as they should. Tom Brady’s three Super Bowl wins puts him in the conversation and then names like Johnny Unitas, Bart Starr, John Elway and old-timers like Sammy Baugh and Otto Graham get mentioned. I never hear Terry Bradshaw’s name. Sure, the Steelers of his era were built around a great defense but Bradshaw was awfully good and his teams won four Super Bowls. Shouldn’t that merit at least a mention, regardless of how many bad commercials he’s made?
Just wondering.
For me, there’s always a sense of relief when The Super Bowl is over. The hype is behind us for a while and we don’t have to dodge every single ex-player on earth, “breaking down the game.” What the playing of the game almost always proves is that all the, “breaking down,” is meaningless. The consensus among the experts was that sooner or later Manning would be too good for the Saints defense. I was among those who thought that, the only difference between me and some of the others is that I don’t consider myself an expert. I’m just someone who has been around football a lot and I think I know SOMETHING about the game but I certainly wouldn’t tell anyone to go out and bet his house on what I think about the outcome of a game. I thought Navy was too beat up physically to go into Notre Dame and win this past season. Shows you how much I know.
Now, unless you are an NFL Network geek who can’t wait for The Combine, football is behind us for a little while. The Winter Olympics begin Friday. I can live without the opening ceremonies and ALL the figure skating. But I enjoy things like speed skating, luge and bobsled and Alpine skiing, even if I don’t completely understand them or know any of the athletes. The hockey should be fun and the best thing about it is that the Islanders can’t lose any more games while the Olympics are going on. (The Caps, if you’re paying attention, may never lose another game. I didn’t get to see the comeback on Sunday but if they didn’t lose that game, that’s it, they’re never losing again).
It is also less than five weeks now to Selection Sunday. I went through the conference standings this morning and I have to tell you, coming up with a list of 34 teams that are absolutely, without question deserving of a bid wasn’t easy. Which raises this question: If coming up with 34 teams is tough, how the heck does the NCAA propose to come up with 65 at-large teams with a 96 team field?
This is the worst idea anyone has come up with since New Coke. Even Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delany and I agree on this and we agree on NOTHING. Of course that probably means that it is a lock to happen.
Okay, I have to go and find food for my family before it starts snowing again tomorrow. I wish I was joking.
Okay, that is today’s whine-du-jour. Suffice to say it hasn’t been a fun winter in these parts and apparently there’s more to come. The roads still aren’t clear (largely because there’s just no place to put the snow) and more snow is expected tomorrow and Wednesday. The only ones who are happy right now are the kids.
I did manage to make it home from West Point last night—although the last 35 miles was treacherous and frightening—in time to see most of The Super Bowl. My first comment on the game and the telecast is this: Have all the smart advertising execs retired? I did not see every commercial and I probably wasn’t completely focused on a lot of the ones I saw, but it certainly appeared that the days of the memorable Super Bowl commercial have gone the way of the low-key postgame celebration.
Enough already with the talking baby.
Onto the game. Most Super Bowls have three or four moments that stand out and are replayed forever and this game was no exception. The Saints recovery of the onside kick to start the second half will be shown a million times along with announcers crediting Sean Payton (correctly) for taking such a bold gamble. The Tracy Porter interception will always be the signature play of the game, not only because it broke the Colts back but because it rendered Peyton Manning human again. Now we’re going to hear over and over again that Manning has won the same number of Super Bowls as Mark Rypien and Brad Johnson, not to mention little brother Eli.
But for me, the most vivid memory will be Drew Brees’s tears, first when he was holding his one-year-old son Baylen during the (overblown) pre-trophy presentation celebration and then as he stood on the podium waiting for Tom Benson to stop blathering so Payton could finally hand him the trophy.
His voice never cracked on the podium or in his postgame press conference but his emotion was apparent and clearly quite genuine. He talked about feeling as if he was meant to land in New Orleans and to be a part of the rebuilding of the team and the city and the region, but there was no Joe Gibbs/Kurt Warner evangelism just a clear picture that this was a man of faith who felt that his presence in New Orleans was part of a plan he didn’t need to understand but had been able to help carry out.
Good for him. Good for the entire city which suffered the modest angst that comes with a consistently bad football team and then the tragedy of Katrina. It’s a little harder to feel good for Saints owner Tom Benson who was ready to yank the team from New Orleans and move it to San Antonio or Los Angeles after Katrina and is now taking bows for all that has gone right the last couple of years, culminating with Sunday’s victory.
You can’t help but wonder how hard Manning will get hit by his critics for this loss. He did not play poorly by any means—he never plays poorly. But the defining moment of the game was the Porter interception. I don’t think there’s anything that can happen that will remove Manning from the pantheon of great NFL quarterbacks. He’s certainly somewhere on the list although the talk that he is THE greatest will quiet now until he wins another Super Bowl.
I have one other question on the subject of great quarterbacks. Whenever people talk about Joe Montana as the best of all time, they talk about his four Super Bowl wins—as they should. Tom Brady’s three Super Bowl wins puts him in the conversation and then names like Johnny Unitas, Bart Starr, John Elway and old-timers like Sammy Baugh and Otto Graham get mentioned. I never hear Terry Bradshaw’s name. Sure, the Steelers of his era were built around a great defense but Bradshaw was awfully good and his teams won four Super Bowls. Shouldn’t that merit at least a mention, regardless of how many bad commercials he’s made?
Just wondering.
For me, there’s always a sense of relief when The Super Bowl is over. The hype is behind us for a while and we don’t have to dodge every single ex-player on earth, “breaking down the game.” What the playing of the game almost always proves is that all the, “breaking down,” is meaningless. The consensus among the experts was that sooner or later Manning would be too good for the Saints defense. I was among those who thought that, the only difference between me and some of the others is that I don’t consider myself an expert. I’m just someone who has been around football a lot and I think I know SOMETHING about the game but I certainly wouldn’t tell anyone to go out and bet his house on what I think about the outcome of a game. I thought Navy was too beat up physically to go into Notre Dame and win this past season. Shows you how much I know.
Now, unless you are an NFL Network geek who can’t wait for The Combine, football is behind us for a little while. The Winter Olympics begin Friday. I can live without the opening ceremonies and ALL the figure skating. But I enjoy things like speed skating, luge and bobsled and Alpine skiing, even if I don’t completely understand them or know any of the athletes. The hockey should be fun and the best thing about it is that the Islanders can’t lose any more games while the Olympics are going on. (The Caps, if you’re paying attention, may never lose another game. I didn’t get to see the comeback on Sunday but if they didn’t lose that game, that’s it, they’re never losing again).
It is also less than five weeks now to Selection Sunday. I went through the conference standings this morning and I have to tell you, coming up with a list of 34 teams that are absolutely, without question deserving of a bid wasn’t easy. Which raises this question: If coming up with 34 teams is tough, how the heck does the NCAA propose to come up with 65 at-large teams with a 96 team field?
This is the worst idea anyone has come up with since New Coke. Even Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delany and I agree on this and we agree on NOTHING. Of course that probably means that it is a lock to happen.
Okay, I have to go and find food for my family before it starts snowing again tomorrow. I wish I was joking.
Comments (19)
Controversy growing for Super Bowl commercial
Wed, Jan 27 2010 07:20
| NFL, CBS Sports, Tim Tebow
| Permalink
There was a discussion on the radio today while I was in the car about an ad that a pro-life group wants to run during The Super Bowl. The ad involves Tim Tebow and his mom, who was apparently encouraged to get an abortion when she was pregnant with him while doing missionary work in, I think, the Philippines. If my facts aren’t 100 percent correct here, forgive me, I’m going off what I heard on the radio.
Obviously Tim’s mom didn’t get an abortion and the baby turned out to be Tim Tebow and the world is a better place as a result. Not surprisingly, several pro-choice groups are upset about the ad and are urging CBS to refuse to run it. This is going to be a hotly debated issue regardless of what CBS decides.
To me, there’s no issue here: The first amendment guarantees a pro-life group can run an ad like this as long as it doesn’t libel anyone in the ad or perpetrate some kind of fraud. If the ad says that Tim Tebow’s mom chose not to have an abortion and in the opinion of those paying the $2.5 million for the 30 seconds, this is proof that pro-life is the right way to go, there’s not a single reason not to run it.
There would also be no reason not to run an ad paid for by pro-choice advocates that brought forward the mother of a convicted murderer to say that she wanted an abortion when she was pregnant but couldn’t get one or couldn’t afford one and this is proof that Roe v. Wade needs to be broadened or there needs to be more funding for unwanted pregnancies.
Where do you draw the line? Well, if the Klu Klux Klan wanted to take an ad saying that the white race was superior to all others, that ad should be rejected not so much because it is offensive but because there isn’t a shred of evidence to support what the Klan would be claiming is fact.
All of this gets into the two areas where you can’t win an argument: politics and religion. Every time I catch myself getting into a political argument—which I do every single Tuesday at the Red Auerbach lunch with Chris Wallace who might be less conservative than Bill O’Reilly and Rush Limbaugh but not by much—I say to myself, ‘why are you wasting your breath?’
I can’t even count the number of times I’ve argued with people on the issue of gun control and the one thing I can tell you with absolute certainty is this: I have never changed one person’s mind nor has anyone ever changed my mind. On certain issues, probably most issues, we are all so ingrained in the way we think it is almost impossible to make any of us change. Why do you think the smallest percentage of voters in any election are those who are undecided? Most of the time about 90 percent of the electorate has made up its mind—at least in general elections—before a single dollar is spent on a campaign.
Think about it: How many of you switched from Obama to McCain or vice-versa after the conventions last year? Of course the reason so much money is spent on campaigns is that in a close election the 10 or 12 percent that are undecided will decide the election. That’s why The Supreme Court’s decision last week to do away with any limits on campaign financing for corporations is so dangerous. It may mean that corporate America’s dollars will make the difference in many close elections in the future. And don’t—as Wallace tried to claim today—tell me that union money will balance corporate money. That ship sailed years ago (Wallace even semi-conceded the point before the egg rolls had been served while still insisting I was an idiot).
Abortion is not an issue where anyone changes their mind. That’s why, even though I will defend the right of the pro-life group to buy the ad during The Super Bowl, I honestly believe they are wasting their money. Maybe—MAYBE—the ad might convince a few pregnant teen-agers to think twice about an abortion and maybe that is its purpose. But it certainly won’t change the politics of the abortion issue one tiny bit.
That being said, the pro-choice groups are playing right into the pro-life’s group’s hands by demanding that CBS reject the ad. Would anyone have been talking about the ad today if not for the demand that it be turned down? No. Everyone would have been trying to decide when Brett Favre was going to announce his next retirement or un-retirement. Instead, this is now a story and it will continue to be a story and, as a result, the ad will get about 50 times more attention than it would have if the pro-choice groups had kept their mouths shut. Sometimes the best way to win an argument is just to be quiet. (Okay, you can make the case that’s a lesson I’ve never learned)
I feel sorry for CBS on this one. If the network turns down the ad it will catch hell from the right. If it runs the ad it will catch hell from the left.
I have always taken the position that I wish athletes would leave religion out of sports. I don’t like it when athletes claim that God somehow played a role in a victory and I would rather not see them putting biblical passages on their eye black. That said, I think they have an absolute right to do it until and unless someone passes a rule that says NOTHING can be written on your eye black. Of course a very strong case can be made that if you can’t write on your eye black why should players be allowed to display tattoos that have writing on them? Good question.
There’s always been a part of me that wishes athletes would be more politically active. The problem with that is simple: About 95 percent of them care about one issue: money. Their only question is, “which candidate is going to lower my taxes the most?”
When I was writing “Living on the Black,” (which has nothing to do with eye black) a couple of years ago both main subjects, Tom Glavine and Mike Mussina, had been very active baseball union members. In fact, Glavine had been one of THE union leaders during the 1994-1995 strike.
He and Stan Kasten, then the president of the Braves, spent hours screaming at one another about baseball politics even though the two of them are now friends. When I was working on the book, Kasten said to me one day, “Why don’t you ask Tommy how he can be so pro-union, so pro-workers rights and so Republican all at the same time?”
I repeated the question to Glavine who smiled and said, “He makes a good point.”
Perhaps that’s true but the question didn’t change Glavine’s view of the world one bit. In fact, when he and his wife Chris adopted a baby last summer I got a note from Glavine: “The world’s newest Republican has arrived.”
Fortunately for me this was shortly after Arlen Specter had changed parties so I wrote back: “I guess that evens things up for Arlen Specter.”
And the debates—without resolution—roll on and on.
Note from FOTB Staff: We apologize for the downtime this morning....there was an issue with server bandwidth usage, something we obviously didn't pay close enough attention to (yes, we are taking the blame and not passing it off -- cough, cough). From what we understand, it is a good problem having to do with more readers coming to the site. So, we'll pay more attention and thank you for continuing to visit John's blog!
Obviously Tim’s mom didn’t get an abortion and the baby turned out to be Tim Tebow and the world is a better place as a result. Not surprisingly, several pro-choice groups are upset about the ad and are urging CBS to refuse to run it. This is going to be a hotly debated issue regardless of what CBS decides.
To me, there’s no issue here: The first amendment guarantees a pro-life group can run an ad like this as long as it doesn’t libel anyone in the ad or perpetrate some kind of fraud. If the ad says that Tim Tebow’s mom chose not to have an abortion and in the opinion of those paying the $2.5 million for the 30 seconds, this is proof that pro-life is the right way to go, there’s not a single reason not to run it.
There would also be no reason not to run an ad paid for by pro-choice advocates that brought forward the mother of a convicted murderer to say that she wanted an abortion when she was pregnant but couldn’t get one or couldn’t afford one and this is proof that Roe v. Wade needs to be broadened or there needs to be more funding for unwanted pregnancies.
Where do you draw the line? Well, if the Klu Klux Klan wanted to take an ad saying that the white race was superior to all others, that ad should be rejected not so much because it is offensive but because there isn’t a shred of evidence to support what the Klan would be claiming is fact.
All of this gets into the two areas where you can’t win an argument: politics and religion. Every time I catch myself getting into a political argument—which I do every single Tuesday at the Red Auerbach lunch with Chris Wallace who might be less conservative than Bill O’Reilly and Rush Limbaugh but not by much—I say to myself, ‘why are you wasting your breath?’
I can’t even count the number of times I’ve argued with people on the issue of gun control and the one thing I can tell you with absolute certainty is this: I have never changed one person’s mind nor has anyone ever changed my mind. On certain issues, probably most issues, we are all so ingrained in the way we think it is almost impossible to make any of us change. Why do you think the smallest percentage of voters in any election are those who are undecided? Most of the time about 90 percent of the electorate has made up its mind—at least in general elections—before a single dollar is spent on a campaign.
Think about it: How many of you switched from Obama to McCain or vice-versa after the conventions last year? Of course the reason so much money is spent on campaigns is that in a close election the 10 or 12 percent that are undecided will decide the election. That’s why The Supreme Court’s decision last week to do away with any limits on campaign financing for corporations is so dangerous. It may mean that corporate America’s dollars will make the difference in many close elections in the future. And don’t—as Wallace tried to claim today—tell me that union money will balance corporate money. That ship sailed years ago (Wallace even semi-conceded the point before the egg rolls had been served while still insisting I was an idiot).
Abortion is not an issue where anyone changes their mind. That’s why, even though I will defend the right of the pro-life group to buy the ad during The Super Bowl, I honestly believe they are wasting their money. Maybe—MAYBE—the ad might convince a few pregnant teen-agers to think twice about an abortion and maybe that is its purpose. But it certainly won’t change the politics of the abortion issue one tiny bit.
That being said, the pro-choice groups are playing right into the pro-life’s group’s hands by demanding that CBS reject the ad. Would anyone have been talking about the ad today if not for the demand that it be turned down? No. Everyone would have been trying to decide when Brett Favre was going to announce his next retirement or un-retirement. Instead, this is now a story and it will continue to be a story and, as a result, the ad will get about 50 times more attention than it would have if the pro-choice groups had kept their mouths shut. Sometimes the best way to win an argument is just to be quiet. (Okay, you can make the case that’s a lesson I’ve never learned)
I feel sorry for CBS on this one. If the network turns down the ad it will catch hell from the right. If it runs the ad it will catch hell from the left.
I have always taken the position that I wish athletes would leave religion out of sports. I don’t like it when athletes claim that God somehow played a role in a victory and I would rather not see them putting biblical passages on their eye black. That said, I think they have an absolute right to do it until and unless someone passes a rule that says NOTHING can be written on your eye black. Of course a very strong case can be made that if you can’t write on your eye black why should players be allowed to display tattoos that have writing on them? Good question.
There’s always been a part of me that wishes athletes would be more politically active. The problem with that is simple: About 95 percent of them care about one issue: money. Their only question is, “which candidate is going to lower my taxes the most?”
When I was writing “Living on the Black,” (which has nothing to do with eye black) a couple of years ago both main subjects, Tom Glavine and Mike Mussina, had been very active baseball union members. In fact, Glavine had been one of THE union leaders during the 1994-1995 strike.
He and Stan Kasten, then the president of the Braves, spent hours screaming at one another about baseball politics even though the two of them are now friends. When I was working on the book, Kasten said to me one day, “Why don’t you ask Tommy how he can be so pro-union, so pro-workers rights and so Republican all at the same time?”
I repeated the question to Glavine who smiled and said, “He makes a good point.”
Perhaps that’s true but the question didn’t change Glavine’s view of the world one bit. In fact, when he and his wife Chris adopted a baby last summer I got a note from Glavine: “The world’s newest Republican has arrived.”
Fortunately for me this was shortly after Arlen Specter had changed parties so I wrote back: “I guess that evens things up for Arlen Specter.”
And the debates—without resolution—roll on and on.
Note from FOTB Staff: We apologize for the downtime this morning....there was an issue with server bandwidth usage, something we obviously didn't pay close enough attention to (yes, we are taking the blame and not passing it off -- cough, cough). From what we understand, it is a good problem having to do with more readers coming to the site. So, we'll pay more attention and thank you for continuing to visit John's blog!
Comments (11)
This week's Washington Post columns:
Mon, Jan 25 2010 09:22
| NFL, Brett Favre, college basketball, Washington Post, Gary WIlliams, Maryland, Minnesota Vikings
| Permalink
Below are today's, and Sunday's column for The Washington Post - Brett Favre and Gary Williams are the focus of the articles. -------
Perhaps the best way to describe the football career of Brett Favre is to say that he has come to embody Hamlet, Shakespeare's greatest and most famous character.
There is no doubting that Favre is heroic. That was never more evident than in the fourth quarter of Sunday's NFC Championship game, when he hobbled in and out of the Minnesota Vikings' huddle but somehow managed to keep back-pedaling and scrambling away from pass rushers to throw laser beam passes while getting knocked down by the New Orleans Saints again and again.
He is also tragically flawed -- the word "tragic" being limited to the context of football. For all the spectacular numbers Favre has put together during his remarkable career, he has won as many Super Bowls as Mark Rypien and Doug Williams and played in as many as Joe Theismann. Oh sure, Peyton Manning's numbers are exactly the same at the moment, and Dan Marino never won a Super Bowl. But none of them ever failed as dramatically as Favre has the last two times he reached the brink of a Super Bowl.
Click here for the rest of the column: Brett Favre: the hero without the happy ending
-------------------------------
Ninety minutes before he would walk onto the court at Comcast Center on Saturday evening, Gary Williams sat in the coaches' conference room that adjoins the Maryland locker room. As always on a game day, his face was filled with tension even though his dry humor was as firmly in place as his game face.
As he prepared for his 1,000th game as a college basketball coach at the age of 64, he didn't feel all that different than he felt just before coaching his first game in 1978 at the age of 33.
"When you stop looking ahead to the next game, to the next season, to the next thing -- whatever it may be -- that's when you stop coaching," he said. "I think I can honestly say I've never done that. When the day comes that I don't want to do that anymore, then it'll be time to stop."
Looking ahead most of the time doesn't mean he can't look back on occasion, because after 1,000 games there are a lot of memories.
Click here for the rest of the column: After 1,000 games, Maryland coach Gary Williams has plenty of good memories
Perhaps the best way to describe the football career of Brett Favre is to say that he has come to embody Hamlet, Shakespeare's greatest and most famous character.
There is no doubting that Favre is heroic. That was never more evident than in the fourth quarter of Sunday's NFC Championship game, when he hobbled in and out of the Minnesota Vikings' huddle but somehow managed to keep back-pedaling and scrambling away from pass rushers to throw laser beam passes while getting knocked down by the New Orleans Saints again and again.
He is also tragically flawed -- the word "tragic" being limited to the context of football. For all the spectacular numbers Favre has put together during his remarkable career, he has won as many Super Bowls as Mark Rypien and Doug Williams and played in as many as Joe Theismann. Oh sure, Peyton Manning's numbers are exactly the same at the moment, and Dan Marino never won a Super Bowl. But none of them ever failed as dramatically as Favre has the last two times he reached the brink of a Super Bowl.
Click here for the rest of the column: Brett Favre: the hero without the happy ending
-------------------------------
Ninety minutes before he would walk onto the court at Comcast Center on Saturday evening, Gary Williams sat in the coaches' conference room that adjoins the Maryland locker room. As always on a game day, his face was filled with tension even though his dry humor was as firmly in place as his game face.
As he prepared for his 1,000th game as a college basketball coach at the age of 64, he didn't feel all that different than he felt just before coaching his first game in 1978 at the age of 33.
"When you stop looking ahead to the next game, to the next season, to the next thing -- whatever it may be -- that's when you stop coaching," he said. "I think I can honestly say I've never done that. When the day comes that I don't want to do that anymore, then it'll be time to stop."
Looking ahead most of the time doesn't mean he can't look back on occasion, because after 1,000 games there are a lot of memories.
Click here for the rest of the column: After 1,000 games, Maryland coach Gary Williams has plenty of good memories
Comments (4)
Peyton Manning was too good, the Favre Achilles heel; Notes from the last few days
Mon, Jan 25 2010 09:40
| NFL, Indianapolis Colts, Brett Favre, Duke, New Orleans Saints, Drew Brees, Peyton Manning, women's basketball
| Permalink
I’m brooding just a little bit this morning. To be honest, it’s tough to feel THAT bad about the Jets loss to the Colts. Peyton Manning was just too good. I think if his wide receivers were Don Maynard and George Sauer Jr.—today, not 41 years ago when they were catching passes from Joe Namath—Manning would find a way to get them the ball. He’s just that good.
Although I’ve now seen all the highlights, I heard a lot more of the game on the radio than I saw on television. I had to drive to the eastern shore of Maryland yesterday for a funeral. Pat Hughes, the wife of former Maryland Governor Harry Hughes, passed away on Thursday after a long, difficult battle with Parkinson’s disease. They had been married just a little less than 60 years. Governor Hughes gave an emotional, touching eulogy, revealing something that he said even his children didn’t know: he and Pat had secretly gotten married when she was 19 and still in college almost two years before their, “wedding.”
“I have a feeling if her dad had known he wouldn’t have sprung for the party,” Governor Hughes said, drawing laughter in the packed church. He choked up on a couple of occasions, pausing once to say, “I’m going to get through this,”—and did. It was typical Harry Hughes: clever, funny, touching, genuine and classy.
The respect people have for him was evident: Martin O’Malley, the current governor, was there and so were both of Maryland’s U.S. Senators—Ben Cardin and Barbara Mikulski. Steny Hoyer, the Majority Leader of the House was there and so was former Senator Joe Tydings along with—as you might expect—many members of the state legislature, which is where Governor Hughes began his political career. I believe I was the only sportswriter in attendance but there needed to be one since Governor Hughes signed with the Yankees out of college and had a brief minor league career.
“No signing bonus,” he noted in the eulogy.
I had driven down with my old friend Tim Maloney— a former House of Delegates member—and, after we’d stopped by the house for the reception, we headed home. The Hughes house is on The Greater Choptank River (the governor corrected me when I called it The Choptank River) a couple of miles from the Harry R. Hughes Bridge that crosses the Choptank. Pretty cool, I think.
It was halftime by the time we were back in the car and the key moment of the game—the Colts late second quarter drive—had just taken place. With the margin at 17-13 I wasn’t optimistic about the Jets chances. Mark Sanchez had played very well in the first half apparently but I knew the Colts defense was very solid.
We all know what happened in the second half. I honestly don’t believe the Saints can beat the Colts in The Super Bowl but upsets do happen. Maybe the Colts will turn the ball over five times. One thing I’m about 99.9 percent sure won’t happen is Manning making a mistake like the one Brett Favre made at the end of regulation, a mistake so heinous that even see-no-evil ex-quarterback Troy Aikman had to call it, “a cardinal mistake.”
Look, to do anything but respect Favre’s grit is simply stupid. He took a hit on his ankle and knee that would have had most quarterbacks in the locker room and never missed a snap. He could barely walk to and from the huddle, yet every time he took a snap and dropped back, you were pretty certain the ball would be on target. Even after the Saints went up 28-21, Favre brought them back and had them one play—plus a successful field goal—from winning.
I’m not sure who screwed up when the Vikings came out of the time out with 19 seconds left with 12 men in the huddle, but one way or the other, that’s on the coaching staff. My God was this game full of bad plays: the turnovers, the penalties—I didn’t think the officials had such a good day either—the fumbled snap (Drew Brees) on a key third down. Was it just me or did it seem as if every single play of the last hour was a bobbled pass, a questionable call or another dreaded booth review. I’m surprised there wasn’t a booth review of the coin toss before overtime.
And yet, in that final minute of regulation, Favre had the Vikings at the Saints 33—then the 38 after the penalty. There he was, rolling right on third down with acres of yardage in front of him and no reason not to run since he had a timeout left. Maybe it was the pain in his leg that caused him not to run. Worst case, he’s going to pick up five yards and Ryan Longwell is going to have a long, but makeable (especially in a dome) field goal.
But the old Favre Achilles heel kicked in at the worst possible moment and he threw across his body and across the field right into an interception. Like the one two years ago against the Giants, that’s one Favre isn’t going to be able to get out of his mind because it was his last throw of the season. He had talked all week about this opportunity being a chance to redeem himself after that Giants game. He was thatclose to that redemption. Unlike in the Giants game, where he played poorly all day in frigid conditions, Favre was heroic on Sunday until that last pass.
Even if you felt badly for Favre—how could you not?—you couldn’t help but feel the joy of New Orleans. When players and coaches warble on about how great their fans are after a victory I usually roll my eyes: all fans are great when a team is good. But this was different. These were fans who had been to hell and back and almost lost their team after Hurricane Katrina because owner Tom Benson was ready to ride right out of town to San Antonio or Los Angeles. They truly deserved a moment like this. I have a feeling though that it will be their zenith. We’ll see when they play The Super Bowl, which is in about six weeks. At least it will feel that way once all the hype and chatter are finally over.
--------------------
A few notes from the last few days. My friend Bill Brill e-mailed me on Friday to say my “Duke,” blog on Thursday had caused all sorts of talk on the Duke Basketball Report site. I checked it out and found it interesting.
There were, as you might expect, some loyalists who were angry at me: I’m a bitter person because my friend Tom Mickle didn’t get the Athletic Director’s job. (Damn right I’m bitter because he was SO clearly the right choice and Nan Keohane intentionally picked Joe Alleva for just that reason). I have a lot of nerve implying I belong on the list of ‘distinguished Duke journalists,’ over a woman who was a ‘Survivor,’ finalist. (Guilty again, I really do think my resume is a tad better than hers). The most interesting ones were from people who defended Mike Krzyzewski’s decision to coach the Olympic team again. Some sort of missed my point: I didn’t write that because Duke lost to N.C. State—nor have I changed my mind because it beat Clemson—I felt that way last summer and told Krzyzewski that, not that he does care or should care what I think. What’s more I was NOT against him doing it once because it is—and should be—a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. It was the second time around that he didn’t need in terms of time or energy or ego. He’d done all that. (Note to guy who pointed out that Jim Boeheim is an assistant coach and doing fine: Being an assistant is wholly different. Not only is Krzyzewski giving up time, his entire staff is involved in the effort. Plus, coincidence or not, Syracuse missed the NCAA’s two years in a row right after Boeheim became an assistant).
Anyway, the big defense was, “being Olympic coach has energized him.” Really? Being the Duke coach doesn’t provide enough challenge or energy? I would think going 3-7 the last five years against his good friend Ole Roy while not coming close to a Final Four would be enough to energize Mike Krzyzewski…
And finally, from the category of why it is often tough to take women’s sports that seriously: Two Georgetown women’s players and one Louisville player were suspended by The Big East after a pre-game brawl nine days ago. When the league announced the suspensions it refused to identify the players even though it would become apparent who they were the next time the teams played. Okay, that’s just plain ridiculous.
Then, on Saturday, after Kenya Kirkland (a tri-captain) and Tia McBride were absent from her team’s win over DePaul, Georgetown Coach Terry Williams-Flournoy said this: “I think there’s a privacy right that those kids should have. They’re kids. They’re children. Their names shouldn’t be put out there like that.”
Huh? They play COLLEGE basketball and are old enough to vote. People are asked to pay money to watch them play which means anything they do in that public domain is public. Children? They made a mistake, they were suspended. It happens all the time. Claiming some ludicrous right to privacy just makes everyone involved look stupid…
And then there was this: During the Maryland-North Carolina State men’s game Saturday night, the PA Announcer at the corporate-named Center that replaced Cole Field House pleaded with fans to buy tickets for the next night’s Maryland-Duke women’s game. “Come see the best rivalry in women’s college basketball,” he said.
There aren’t many rivalries in women’s college basketball that anyone not in uniform or related to those in uniform cares about. In fact there’s one: Connecticut-Tennessee. That’s the list.
Then, after Duke had won a close game on Sunday, Maryland Coach Brenda Frese said this: “This proves we can play with anyone.”
Really? Her team loses at home to a team that lost at home earlier in the week BY THIRTY-THREE to Connecticut and this proves her team can play with anybody? Sometimes I think coaches—in all sports—just throw stuff out there and figure it will go un-challenged because often it does. If Duke and Maryland combined forces they would lose to U-Conn by 20. NO ONE in the women’s game can play with Connecticut right now—which is a problem for the women’s game.
Maybe Frese should have insisted on not making public the names of the women on her team who missed shots. You know, they’re just children. They have a right to privacy.
Although I’ve now seen all the highlights, I heard a lot more of the game on the radio than I saw on television. I had to drive to the eastern shore of Maryland yesterday for a funeral. Pat Hughes, the wife of former Maryland Governor Harry Hughes, passed away on Thursday after a long, difficult battle with Parkinson’s disease. They had been married just a little less than 60 years. Governor Hughes gave an emotional, touching eulogy, revealing something that he said even his children didn’t know: he and Pat had secretly gotten married when she was 19 and still in college almost two years before their, “wedding.”
“I have a feeling if her dad had known he wouldn’t have sprung for the party,” Governor Hughes said, drawing laughter in the packed church. He choked up on a couple of occasions, pausing once to say, “I’m going to get through this,”—and did. It was typical Harry Hughes: clever, funny, touching, genuine and classy.
The respect people have for him was evident: Martin O’Malley, the current governor, was there and so were both of Maryland’s U.S. Senators—Ben Cardin and Barbara Mikulski. Steny Hoyer, the Majority Leader of the House was there and so was former Senator Joe Tydings along with—as you might expect—many members of the state legislature, which is where Governor Hughes began his political career. I believe I was the only sportswriter in attendance but there needed to be one since Governor Hughes signed with the Yankees out of college and had a brief minor league career.
“No signing bonus,” he noted in the eulogy.
I had driven down with my old friend Tim Maloney— a former House of Delegates member—and, after we’d stopped by the house for the reception, we headed home. The Hughes house is on The Greater Choptank River (the governor corrected me when I called it The Choptank River) a couple of miles from the Harry R. Hughes Bridge that crosses the Choptank. Pretty cool, I think.
It was halftime by the time we were back in the car and the key moment of the game—the Colts late second quarter drive—had just taken place. With the margin at 17-13 I wasn’t optimistic about the Jets chances. Mark Sanchez had played very well in the first half apparently but I knew the Colts defense was very solid.
We all know what happened in the second half. I honestly don’t believe the Saints can beat the Colts in The Super Bowl but upsets do happen. Maybe the Colts will turn the ball over five times. One thing I’m about 99.9 percent sure won’t happen is Manning making a mistake like the one Brett Favre made at the end of regulation, a mistake so heinous that even see-no-evil ex-quarterback Troy Aikman had to call it, “a cardinal mistake.”
Look, to do anything but respect Favre’s grit is simply stupid. He took a hit on his ankle and knee that would have had most quarterbacks in the locker room and never missed a snap. He could barely walk to and from the huddle, yet every time he took a snap and dropped back, you were pretty certain the ball would be on target. Even after the Saints went up 28-21, Favre brought them back and had them one play—plus a successful field goal—from winning.
I’m not sure who screwed up when the Vikings came out of the time out with 19 seconds left with 12 men in the huddle, but one way or the other, that’s on the coaching staff. My God was this game full of bad plays: the turnovers, the penalties—I didn’t think the officials had such a good day either—the fumbled snap (Drew Brees) on a key third down. Was it just me or did it seem as if every single play of the last hour was a bobbled pass, a questionable call or another dreaded booth review. I’m surprised there wasn’t a booth review of the coin toss before overtime.
And yet, in that final minute of regulation, Favre had the Vikings at the Saints 33—then the 38 after the penalty. There he was, rolling right on third down with acres of yardage in front of him and no reason not to run since he had a timeout left. Maybe it was the pain in his leg that caused him not to run. Worst case, he’s going to pick up five yards and Ryan Longwell is going to have a long, but makeable (especially in a dome) field goal.
But the old Favre Achilles heel kicked in at the worst possible moment and he threw across his body and across the field right into an interception. Like the one two years ago against the Giants, that’s one Favre isn’t going to be able to get out of his mind because it was his last throw of the season. He had talked all week about this opportunity being a chance to redeem himself after that Giants game. He was thatclose to that redemption. Unlike in the Giants game, where he played poorly all day in frigid conditions, Favre was heroic on Sunday until that last pass.
Even if you felt badly for Favre—how could you not?—you couldn’t help but feel the joy of New Orleans. When players and coaches warble on about how great their fans are after a victory I usually roll my eyes: all fans are great when a team is good. But this was different. These were fans who had been to hell and back and almost lost their team after Hurricane Katrina because owner Tom Benson was ready to ride right out of town to San Antonio or Los Angeles. They truly deserved a moment like this. I have a feeling though that it will be their zenith. We’ll see when they play The Super Bowl, which is in about six weeks. At least it will feel that way once all the hype and chatter are finally over.
--------------------
A few notes from the last few days. My friend Bill Brill e-mailed me on Friday to say my “Duke,” blog on Thursday had caused all sorts of talk on the Duke Basketball Report site. I checked it out and found it interesting.
There were, as you might expect, some loyalists who were angry at me: I’m a bitter person because my friend Tom Mickle didn’t get the Athletic Director’s job. (Damn right I’m bitter because he was SO clearly the right choice and Nan Keohane intentionally picked Joe Alleva for just that reason). I have a lot of nerve implying I belong on the list of ‘distinguished Duke journalists,’ over a woman who was a ‘Survivor,’ finalist. (Guilty again, I really do think my resume is a tad better than hers). The most interesting ones were from people who defended Mike Krzyzewski’s decision to coach the Olympic team again. Some sort of missed my point: I didn’t write that because Duke lost to N.C. State—nor have I changed my mind because it beat Clemson—I felt that way last summer and told Krzyzewski that, not that he does care or should care what I think. What’s more I was NOT against him doing it once because it is—and should be—a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. It was the second time around that he didn’t need in terms of time or energy or ego. He’d done all that. (Note to guy who pointed out that Jim Boeheim is an assistant coach and doing fine: Being an assistant is wholly different. Not only is Krzyzewski giving up time, his entire staff is involved in the effort. Plus, coincidence or not, Syracuse missed the NCAA’s two years in a row right after Boeheim became an assistant).
Anyway, the big defense was, “being Olympic coach has energized him.” Really? Being the Duke coach doesn’t provide enough challenge or energy? I would think going 3-7 the last five years against his good friend Ole Roy while not coming close to a Final Four would be enough to energize Mike Krzyzewski…
And finally, from the category of why it is often tough to take women’s sports that seriously: Two Georgetown women’s players and one Louisville player were suspended by The Big East after a pre-game brawl nine days ago. When the league announced the suspensions it refused to identify the players even though it would become apparent who they were the next time the teams played. Okay, that’s just plain ridiculous.
Then, on Saturday, after Kenya Kirkland (a tri-captain) and Tia McBride were absent from her team’s win over DePaul, Georgetown Coach Terry Williams-Flournoy said this: “I think there’s a privacy right that those kids should have. They’re kids. They’re children. Their names shouldn’t be put out there like that.”
Huh? They play COLLEGE basketball and are old enough to vote. People are asked to pay money to watch them play which means anything they do in that public domain is public. Children? They made a mistake, they were suspended. It happens all the time. Claiming some ludicrous right to privacy just makes everyone involved look stupid…
And then there was this: During the Maryland-North Carolina State men’s game Saturday night, the PA Announcer at the corporate-named Center that replaced Cole Field House pleaded with fans to buy tickets for the next night’s Maryland-Duke women’s game. “Come see the best rivalry in women’s college basketball,” he said.
There aren’t many rivalries in women’s college basketball that anyone not in uniform or related to those in uniform cares about. In fact there’s one: Connecticut-Tennessee. That’s the list.
Then, after Duke had won a close game on Sunday, Maryland Coach Brenda Frese said this: “This proves we can play with anyone.”
Really? Her team loses at home to a team that lost at home earlier in the week BY THIRTY-THREE to Connecticut and this proves her team can play with anybody? Sometimes I think coaches—in all sports—just throw stuff out there and figure it will go un-challenged because often it does. If Duke and Maryland combined forces they would lose to U-Conn by 20. NO ONE in the women’s game can play with Connecticut right now—which is a problem for the women’s game.
Maybe Frese should have insisted on not making public the names of the women on her team who missed shots. You know, they’re just children. They have a right to privacy.
Comments (7)
This week's Washington Post column (and bonus piece from the weekend)
Mon, Jan 18 2010 07:47
| UVA, NFL, Washington Post, Jets, Tony Bennett, Rex Ryan
| Permalink
The following is this week's column from The Washington Post on the Jets saving the playoff weekend followed by an article on UVA basketball and its coach, Tony Bennett ---------------
If these past two weekends were the best the NFL has to offer, maybe there's a chance for the USFL to make a comeback.
Six of the eight games were enough to make one think about switching to Dick Vitale calling a women's basketball game. Or Dick Vitale talking about calling a women's basketball game.
Wild-card weekend gave us Packers-Cardinals and three games that even fans of the winners would be hard-pressed to watch to the end. The Ravens-Patriots game was over before Bill Belichick had a chance to get his hoodie into position.
Surely the divisional playoff weekend would be better. Except it wasn't: It was worse. The winning teams were ahead by a combined 35 points at halftime Saturday and never looked back, and the only real suspense in the over-hyped Cowboys-Vikings matchup was when the "Can Wade Phillips survive?" talk would begin.
Click here for the rest of the column: Rex Ryan's Jets save NFL playoffs from tedium
--------------------------------
This really wasn't the way Tony Bennett had it planned. It isn't that he didn't love basketball. The game has been a part of his life for as long as he can remember, which tends to happen when you're a coach's son. The gym is as much a part of your boyhood as your mom's kitchen table. Growing up while his dad, Dick, was coaching high school ball, then National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics ball and then Division I ball, he was the classic gym rat, the kid who makes himself a great shooter by spending hours and hours alone with a ball and a backboard.
Bennett would have been something straight out of "Hoosiers," if he had been in Indiana instead of Wisconsin. But coaching wasn't in his blood. Playing was what he was about.
"When I was a kid, the last thing in the world I thought I'd ever do was coach," he said, relaxing in the Virginia coaches' lounge at John Paul Jones Arena on Wednesday after the Cavaliers had upset 20th-ranked Georgia Tech. "I loved being a player. I guess in my mind I was going to play forever -- go from college to the NBA and just stay. I saw close-up what a roller-coaster ride coaching was for my dad and for my sister Kathi [who won a Division III national title at Wisconsin-Oshkosh and later coached at Indiana] and I said, 'That's not for me.' Then I got hurt and things changed."
Click here for the rest of the column: Finding direction on an unexpected path
If these past two weekends were the best the NFL has to offer, maybe there's a chance for the USFL to make a comeback.
Six of the eight games were enough to make one think about switching to Dick Vitale calling a women's basketball game. Or Dick Vitale talking about calling a women's basketball game.
Wild-card weekend gave us Packers-Cardinals and three games that even fans of the winners would be hard-pressed to watch to the end. The Ravens-Patriots game was over before Bill Belichick had a chance to get his hoodie into position.
Surely the divisional playoff weekend would be better. Except it wasn't: It was worse. The winning teams were ahead by a combined 35 points at halftime Saturday and never looked back, and the only real suspense in the over-hyped Cowboys-Vikings matchup was when the "Can Wade Phillips survive?" talk would begin.
Click here for the rest of the column: Rex Ryan's Jets save NFL playoffs from tedium
--------------------------------
This really wasn't the way Tony Bennett had it planned. It isn't that he didn't love basketball. The game has been a part of his life for as long as he can remember, which tends to happen when you're a coach's son. The gym is as much a part of your boyhood as your mom's kitchen table. Growing up while his dad, Dick, was coaching high school ball, then National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics ball and then Division I ball, he was the classic gym rat, the kid who makes himself a great shooter by spending hours and hours alone with a ball and a backboard.
Bennett would have been something straight out of "Hoosiers," if he had been in Indiana instead of Wisconsin. But coaching wasn't in his blood. Playing was what he was about.
"When I was a kid, the last thing in the world I thought I'd ever do was coach," he said, relaxing in the Virginia coaches' lounge at John Paul Jones Arena on Wednesday after the Cavaliers had upset 20th-ranked Georgia Tech. "I loved being a player. I guess in my mind I was going to play forever -- go from college to the NBA and just stay. I saw close-up what a roller-coaster ride coaching was for my dad and for my sister Kathi [who won a Division III national title at Wisconsin-Oshkosh and later coached at Indiana] and I said, 'That's not for me.' Then I got hurt and things changed."
Click here for the rest of the column: Finding direction on an unexpected path
Comments (1)
The Jets move on, stories of this fan as a kid
Mon, Jan 18 2010 10:18
| NFL, Yankee Stadium, Shea Stadium, Jets, Joe Namath, Balitmore Ravens, Rex Ryan, Bart Scott
| Permalink
As luck would have it, the first year my parents let me ride The New York subways on my own (I sneaked onto them to go to games on occasion before that) was 1968. I knew the system cold—at least the part of it that mattered to me. To get to Yankee Stadium I took the IRT number 1 train downtown from 79th street to 59th street and then went downstairs (free transfer) and took the IND D train to 161st and The Grand Concourse. The D was an express so it didn’t take very long.
Getting to Shea Stadium took a little longer. I still started on the number 1 out of 79th street and then made the transfer at Times Square to the number 7, which was a brand new route that had come on line when Shea’s opening in 1964 coincided with The World’s Fair. I knew every stop by heart and loved riding in the front car and watching the train wind its way from stop-to-stop especially after it became elevated in Queens.
You could always get a ticket to the Mets and Yankees—it cost $1.30 to sit upstairs in general admission for a Mets game and $1.50 for a Yankees game—a much better seat since Shea Stadium had an extra deck. You couldn’t buy Giants tickets. Every once in a while a friend of my dad’s who had season tickets would take me but most of my early pro football experiences were at Shea, watching the Jets and Joe Namath,
The Jets should have made the playoffs in 1967 but choked down the stretch and lost the AFL East to the Houston Oilers. I was furious. A year later, even though Namath threw five interceptions in two losses early in the season (I remember smashing a radio when he did it against the Bills) they finally made the playoffs. I saw six of the seven home games (it was a 14 game schedule then) buying $3 standing room tickets and then sneaking into a good seat downstairs. There were always some empty seats, especially once the weather turned cold.
The $3 ticket became a $6 ticket for the AFL Championship game against the Oakland Raiders. In those days the Jets offices were at 57th street and Madison Avenue and two of my buddies and I were there on Monday at lunchtime (we ducked out of school) to get our tickets. Then we watched Namath outduel Daryl Lamonica to get the Jets to the Super Bowl.
I had watched the first two Super Bowls and, being an AFL fan, winced when Vince Lombardi’s Green Bay Packers crushed the Kansas City Chiefs and then the Raiders. I still remember the scores: 35-10 and 33-14. Most people expected a similar result with the Jets taking on the Baltimore Colts, who were anywhere from 17 to 19 points favorites, depending on who you listened to that week.
Here’s what I remember about that Sunday afternoon (in those days The Super Bowl was an afternoon game believe it or not). Earl Morrall threw an interception (on a deflection) on the goal line early in the game to stop a Colts drive. Then the Jets quietly dominated for most of three quarters. Namath was superb, the offensive line kept opening holes for Matt Snell and Emerson Boozer and the defense completely clamped down on Morrall and the Baltimore offense.
The entire time I paced up and down in front of the TV. It had become my habit. Pacing was good for the Jets, sitting was bad. Often I would stop and talk to the TV as if I was Weeb Ewbank coaching the team.
Snell scored on a sweep. Jim Turner kicked three field goals. It was 16-0 in the fourth quarter when two things happened: my dad came back from a concert and Johnny Unitas, who had been hurt most of the season, came into the game for Morrall.
“What’s the score?” said my dad, whose interest in sports never really went past asking for an occasional score.
“We’re up 16-0 I answered.”
“That’s a surprise isn’t it?”
“Um yeah dad, you could say that.”
Curious, he sat down to watch. I paced.
“John will you sit down, you’re making me dizzy with the pacing.”
“Need to pace dad, it’s good luck.”
“They’re winning 16-0, you can sit.”
I sat. About five plays later, Unitas had the Colts in the end zone. It was 16-7.
My dad and I looked at each other. “Go ahead and pace,” he said.
I did. The Jets finished off their historic victory which started a euphoric 16 months for all New York sports fans: The Jets over the Colts; the Miracle Mets over the Orioles and the Knicks over the Lakers in the ‘Willis Reed game,’ in which Walt Frazier had 36 points and a triple-double.
Of course the Jets deal with the devil has been paid off in spades the last 40 years. They lost to the Chiefs in the first round of the playoffs a year later and Namath was never the same again. They have been in a couple of AFC Championship games but never another Super Bowl. They have been through coaches and quarterbacks and owners and have played in a stadium with another team’s name on it in New Jersey. Shea Stadium is gone. Namath failed miserably as a TV announcer after he retired.
But now, here they are again, as unlikely a team to reach a conference championship game as anyone has seen in a long, long time. And there I was on Sunday night pacing again, nervous as a cat after Shonn Greene’s touchdown run made it 17-7. (Actually my cat sat on a chair watching calmly while I paced). You see when you’re a Jets fan a 10 point fourth quarter lead doesn’t mean you have a good chance to win it means you have a good chance of finding a truly miserable way to lose.
But Rex Ryan isn’t a find-a-way-to-lose coach. There was no doubt in mind he’d go for the 4th and 1 on the last series and I was pretty convinced the Jets would pick it up.
What’s really fun about this is I LIKE this team, not just the uniforms. I got to know Rex when I did my book on the Ravens five years ago. Truly a good man with a terrific sense of humor. I still remember sitting in the Ravens draft room on draft day. The assistant coaches were across the hall. When the Ravens turn to draft came up I heard a loud “whooeee,” come from the room where the coaches were.
“Rex,” Brian Billick said. “He’s getting his man.”
Rex knew, looking at the 150 players the Ravens had ranked based on their scouting reports, that the next player on the list when the Ravens turn came up was defensive lineman Dwan Edwards and that Ozzie Newsome never veered away from the list.
When Rex took the Jets job he took Mike Pettine with him as defensive coordinator. Pettine was sort of a coach-in-training, an assistant to all the defensive assistants when I was in Baltimore. He’s certainly come a long way even if he took it kind of hard last year when I asked him how in the world Virginia (his alma mater) could lose to Duke.
“Embarrassing,” he admitted.
“Humiliating is more like it,” I said.
And then there’s Bob Sutton, who was the coach at Army when I wrote, “A Civil War.” There are few better men in sports than Sutton, whose firing by the worst athletic director in history (Rick Greenspan) was the start of Army’s 11 year tailspin, lowlighted by an 0-13 record a few years ago.
My favorite player during my Ravens year? Bart Scott. Back then he was mostly a special teams player, a kid who had come out of nowhere to become an NFL player. I still remember him arguing vehemently with virtually the entire offensive line in the days leading up to the 2004 election about why George W. Bush should NOT be re-elected. At one point he looked at Jonathan Ogden who kept saying, ‘the man (John Kerry) is going to raise my taxes,’ and said, “JO, can you for once stop thinking about your damn money!”
That cracked the room up. Ogden was famously cheap.
Now Bart’s a star. Now Rex is a media rock star in New York. I DID feel bad for Norv Turner because his team making The Super Bowl would have really been a nice payback for him to Danny Snyder, who still hasn’t found the right coach (unless Mike Shanahan is it) to deal with his Napoleonic personality since he fired Norv when he was 7-6 and in playoff contention nine years ago.
But seeing the Jets in the conference championship game with a lot of people I truly like involved is great. I know the Colts will be heavy favorites on Sunday and they should be. But I’ve got a warning for Peyton Manning: I’ll be pacing. That should make him a little bit nervous shouldn’t it?
Getting to Shea Stadium took a little longer. I still started on the number 1 out of 79th street and then made the transfer at Times Square to the number 7, which was a brand new route that had come on line when Shea’s opening in 1964 coincided with The World’s Fair. I knew every stop by heart and loved riding in the front car and watching the train wind its way from stop-to-stop especially after it became elevated in Queens.
You could always get a ticket to the Mets and Yankees—it cost $1.30 to sit upstairs in general admission for a Mets game and $1.50 for a Yankees game—a much better seat since Shea Stadium had an extra deck. You couldn’t buy Giants tickets. Every once in a while a friend of my dad’s who had season tickets would take me but most of my early pro football experiences were at Shea, watching the Jets and Joe Namath,
The Jets should have made the playoffs in 1967 but choked down the stretch and lost the AFL East to the Houston Oilers. I was furious. A year later, even though Namath threw five interceptions in two losses early in the season (I remember smashing a radio when he did it against the Bills) they finally made the playoffs. I saw six of the seven home games (it was a 14 game schedule then) buying $3 standing room tickets and then sneaking into a good seat downstairs. There were always some empty seats, especially once the weather turned cold.
The $3 ticket became a $6 ticket for the AFL Championship game against the Oakland Raiders. In those days the Jets offices were at 57th street and Madison Avenue and two of my buddies and I were there on Monday at lunchtime (we ducked out of school) to get our tickets. Then we watched Namath outduel Daryl Lamonica to get the Jets to the Super Bowl.
I had watched the first two Super Bowls and, being an AFL fan, winced when Vince Lombardi’s Green Bay Packers crushed the Kansas City Chiefs and then the Raiders. I still remember the scores: 35-10 and 33-14. Most people expected a similar result with the Jets taking on the Baltimore Colts, who were anywhere from 17 to 19 points favorites, depending on who you listened to that week.
Here’s what I remember about that Sunday afternoon (in those days The Super Bowl was an afternoon game believe it or not). Earl Morrall threw an interception (on a deflection) on the goal line early in the game to stop a Colts drive. Then the Jets quietly dominated for most of three quarters. Namath was superb, the offensive line kept opening holes for Matt Snell and Emerson Boozer and the defense completely clamped down on Morrall and the Baltimore offense.
The entire time I paced up and down in front of the TV. It had become my habit. Pacing was good for the Jets, sitting was bad. Often I would stop and talk to the TV as if I was Weeb Ewbank coaching the team.
Snell scored on a sweep. Jim Turner kicked three field goals. It was 16-0 in the fourth quarter when two things happened: my dad came back from a concert and Johnny Unitas, who had been hurt most of the season, came into the game for Morrall.
“What’s the score?” said my dad, whose interest in sports never really went past asking for an occasional score.
“We’re up 16-0 I answered.”
“That’s a surprise isn’t it?”
“Um yeah dad, you could say that.”
Curious, he sat down to watch. I paced.
“John will you sit down, you’re making me dizzy with the pacing.”
“Need to pace dad, it’s good luck.”
“They’re winning 16-0, you can sit.”
I sat. About five plays later, Unitas had the Colts in the end zone. It was 16-7.
My dad and I looked at each other. “Go ahead and pace,” he said.
I did. The Jets finished off their historic victory which started a euphoric 16 months for all New York sports fans: The Jets over the Colts; the Miracle Mets over the Orioles and the Knicks over the Lakers in the ‘Willis Reed game,’ in which Walt Frazier had 36 points and a triple-double.
Of course the Jets deal with the devil has been paid off in spades the last 40 years. They lost to the Chiefs in the first round of the playoffs a year later and Namath was never the same again. They have been in a couple of AFC Championship games but never another Super Bowl. They have been through coaches and quarterbacks and owners and have played in a stadium with another team’s name on it in New Jersey. Shea Stadium is gone. Namath failed miserably as a TV announcer after he retired.
But now, here they are again, as unlikely a team to reach a conference championship game as anyone has seen in a long, long time. And there I was on Sunday night pacing again, nervous as a cat after Shonn Greene’s touchdown run made it 17-7. (Actually my cat sat on a chair watching calmly while I paced). You see when you’re a Jets fan a 10 point fourth quarter lead doesn’t mean you have a good chance to win it means you have a good chance of finding a truly miserable way to lose.
But Rex Ryan isn’t a find-a-way-to-lose coach. There was no doubt in mind he’d go for the 4th and 1 on the last series and I was pretty convinced the Jets would pick it up.
What’s really fun about this is I LIKE this team, not just the uniforms. I got to know Rex when I did my book on the Ravens five years ago. Truly a good man with a terrific sense of humor. I still remember sitting in the Ravens draft room on draft day. The assistant coaches were across the hall. When the Ravens turn to draft came up I heard a loud “whooeee,” come from the room where the coaches were.
“Rex,” Brian Billick said. “He’s getting his man.”
Rex knew, looking at the 150 players the Ravens had ranked based on their scouting reports, that the next player on the list when the Ravens turn came up was defensive lineman Dwan Edwards and that Ozzie Newsome never veered away from the list.
When Rex took the Jets job he took Mike Pettine with him as defensive coordinator. Pettine was sort of a coach-in-training, an assistant to all the defensive assistants when I was in Baltimore. He’s certainly come a long way even if he took it kind of hard last year when I asked him how in the world Virginia (his alma mater) could lose to Duke.
“Embarrassing,” he admitted.
“Humiliating is more like it,” I said.
And then there’s Bob Sutton, who was the coach at Army when I wrote, “A Civil War.” There are few better men in sports than Sutton, whose firing by the worst athletic director in history (Rick Greenspan) was the start of Army’s 11 year tailspin, lowlighted by an 0-13 record a few years ago.
My favorite player during my Ravens year? Bart Scott. Back then he was mostly a special teams player, a kid who had come out of nowhere to become an NFL player. I still remember him arguing vehemently with virtually the entire offensive line in the days leading up to the 2004 election about why George W. Bush should NOT be re-elected. At one point he looked at Jonathan Ogden who kept saying, ‘the man (John Kerry) is going to raise my taxes,’ and said, “JO, can you for once stop thinking about your damn money!”
That cracked the room up. Ogden was famously cheap.
Now Bart’s a star. Now Rex is a media rock star in New York. I DID feel bad for Norv Turner because his team making The Super Bowl would have really been a nice payback for him to Danny Snyder, who still hasn’t found the right coach (unless Mike Shanahan is it) to deal with his Napoleonic personality since he fired Norv when he was 7-6 and in playoff contention nine years ago.
But seeing the Jets in the conference championship game with a lot of people I truly like involved is great. I know the Colts will be heavy favorites on Sunday and they should be. But I’ve got a warning for Peyton Manning: I’ll be pacing. That should make him a little bit nervous shouldn’t it?
Comments (4)
This week's Washington Post column:
Thu, Dec 31 2009 09:39
| NFL, Dan Snyder, Washington Redskins, Jim Zorn
| Permalink
Here is my column this week for The Washington Post -----
It was certainly a relief, wasn't it, to learn that the Washington Redskins have complied with the NFL's Rooney Rule by interviewing secondary coach Jerry Gray for the job currently filled by his boss, head coach Jim Zorn.
John Wooten, the president of the Fritz Pollard Alliance, which is charged with monitoring whether teams comply with the rule requiring that minority candidates be interviewed when an NFL head coaching job is open said his group is satisfied that the Redskins are seriously considering Gray to be the Redskins next head coach.
Really? Did Wooten also try to stay awake on Christmas Eve so he could meet Santa when he came down the chimney?
Gray has as much chance of being the next Redskins coach as Mike Krzyzewski has of being voted Man of the Decade on the campus at the University of Maryland.
Click here to read the rest of the column: Redskins make a mockery of Rooney Rule
(Note: When you click the link to read the full article, it may ask for your log in information. We are attempting to fix this glitch for those that haven't completed the free registration at the site)
It was certainly a relief, wasn't it, to learn that the Washington Redskins have complied with the NFL's Rooney Rule by interviewing secondary coach Jerry Gray for the job currently filled by his boss, head coach Jim Zorn.
John Wooten, the president of the Fritz Pollard Alliance, which is charged with monitoring whether teams comply with the rule requiring that minority candidates be interviewed when an NFL head coaching job is open said his group is satisfied that the Redskins are seriously considering Gray to be the Redskins next head coach.
Really? Did Wooten also try to stay awake on Christmas Eve so he could meet Santa when he came down the chimney?
Gray has as much chance of being the next Redskins coach as Mike Krzyzewski has of being voted Man of the Decade on the campus at the University of Maryland.
Click here to read the rest of the column: Redskins make a mockery of Rooney Rule
(Note: When you click the link to read the full article, it may ask for your log in information. We are attempting to fix this glitch for those that haven't completed the free registration at the site)
Comments (10)
I wish everyone a Merry Christmas, Happy Chanukah, Happy Kwanzaa and, of course a Happy Festivus (for the rest of us)
Wed, Dec 23 2009 10:39
| NFL, college football, George Solomon, Family, college basketball, Washington Post, Lefty Driesell
| Permalink
I have written before about how much I detest baseball’s All Star break because it means three days with no baseball—unless you like watching an exhibition game in July—forcing me to watch even more ‘West Wing,’ on DVD than I normally do until the real games start again on Thursday.
Christmas week isn’t much better. Last night there were some good college basketball games to watch and what looked like a good bowl game (Brigham Young-Oregon State which turned out to be pretty much a snooze) but the closer you get to Christmas Day the more your choices dwindle. By Christmas Eve you’re down to one pretty lousy bowl game (I’m just not that psyched for Nevada-SMU) and then on Christmas Day there’s one NFL game—at night—and all those NBA games that, sorry, I just can’t bring myself to care about. Check back with me when the playoffs start. Actually check back with me when The Finals start. Maybe.
There’s also the family issue. People expect you to hang out with kids and in-laws and brothers and sisters. It isn’t that I don’t like any of these people—I love many of them—it’s just that after a while you’d rather watch a ballgame than talk about how cute someone’s dog is or hear about how funny your nephew can be. The other problem for me is I can’t claim on Christmas Eve that I really need to watch that Nevada-SMU game for work.
Christmas has always been an interesting part of my life. Clearly, I’m Jewish. My dad was raised orthodox and completely rejected all religion as an adult. My mom had no religious training at all and thought Christmas was a better holiday for kids than Chanukah (my daughter Brigid might argue differently since she still clings to the idea that she’s owed eight gifts) so we always had a Christmas tree and always celebrated Christmas—albeit in a secular way.
Without sounding glib I can honestly say that the births of Lefty Driesell and my agent, Esther Newburg, on Christmas Day have had more meaning in my life than the birth of Jesus Christ. My friend Ken Denlinger once described Lefty as “God’s unique Christmas present to the world in 1931.”
One of my more vivid Christmas memories involves Lefty. I had traveled to Hawaii with Maryland in December of 1984 for what was then The Rainbow Classic. This was before ESPN had created all these strictly-for-TV events at Thanksgiving and The Rainbow, which started back in 1964, was THE holiday tournament: eight quality teams every year. The schedule called for two games Christmas night; two games the next day and then four games on the 27th and the 28th since everyone played three games.
Maryland was playing Iowa on Christmas night. On Christmas Eve morning, I went with Maryland to practice at the old Blaisdell Arena, an aging mini-dome that seated about 8,000 people. Blaisdell had a certain character to it. You had to walk across little bridges to get inside because the building was surrounded by what would best be described as a moat. There was absolutely no parking for the building but if you knew what you were doing you parked at the bank right across the street.
After practice I went back to the hotel and had lunch with Lefty to get some pre-tournament quotes for my advance the next day. As we were finishing, a Maryland booster who had made the trip approached Lefty.
“Coach we were wondering about some free time for the kids tomorrow after morning shootaround,” he said.
“Free time,” Lefty said. “What for?”
“Well, we wanted to have a little Christmas party for them…”
“Christmas!” Lefty thundered. “Christmas! I didn’t come here to have a Christmas party I came here to win games!”
Take that Bah and Humbug.
Maryland won two games—beating Iowa and Hawaii before losing at the buzzer to Georgia Tech in the finals. Because the championship game was on TV back east it started at 6 o’clock local time. Tommy Stinson of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and I walked into Blaisdell at about 5:59 that night because we were sitting by the hotel pool listening to Al McGuire tell stories and we lost track of the time.
I’ve never really minded working on holidays—again it isn’t because I don’t love my family—it’s just, well, what I do. I’m used to working on weekends when others aren’t working so working on a holiday doesn’t feel strange to me. Of course when I still worked at The Washington Post, I frequently got into battles with George Solomon who would—understandably—assign the Jewish members of the staff to work Christmas Day. I didn’t mind working if I was on the road someplace (especially if it was in Hawaii) but I certainly didn’t want to come into the office to write some kind of advance on the college basketball games being played the next day or get sent out to Redskins Park to hear Joe Gibbs talk about how that Sunday’s opponent was the greatest team in football history.
So, every year I’d check the schedule and there I’d be, penciled in for Christmas Day. I’d go see George.
“I can’t work on Christmas,” I’d say.
George—who, to be fair, always put himself on the schedule on Christmas—would look at me and say, “what are you talking about?”
“My family celebrates Christmas. My mother will be upset if I’m not there to open presents in the morning.”
“What do you mean your family celebrates Christmas?”
George literally didn’t believe me at first. Then, when he did believe me, he decided he had to teach me how to be a real Jew. One year he insisted that I come to break-fast at his house on Yom Kippur. I showed up (having not fasted) and wasn’t eating anything because, to be honest, other than soft kosher salami, I’m just not into that sort of food at all.
George’s wife Hazel, one of the world’s nicest and most patient people, came up to me looking puzzled and said, “John, you’re not eating.”
Without thinking about what day it was I gave Hazel the answer I always used if I was at someone’s house and didn’t like the food being served: “Hazel, I’m sorry, I had a really big lunch very late.”
Whoops. She looked at me as if I was insane and went off to—probably—tell George he needed to fire me. George STILL hasn’t let me off the hook on that one.
Anyway, the bottom line is, I like the holidays. I like the warmth and I really like the music and I especially like the corny movies. 1. “It’s A Wonderful Life.” 2. “White Christmas.” 3. “Miracle on 34th Street” (the original) watched it last night. 4. “Rudolph.” (Burl Ives second greatest performance right behind, ‘Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,”—talk about range). 5. “Elf.”
I enjoy seeing relatives and friends I don’t often get to see. But I’m also really happy on the morning of the 26th because there are LOTS of games to choose from, places to go and people to see—and write about.
So, I wish everyone a Merry Christmas, Happy Chanukah, Happy Kwanzaa and, of course a Happy Festivus (for the rest of us). If something actually happens today, I’ll write a blog tomorrow if only to keep a little bit busy. If it is as quiet as I suspect it will be, I’ll be back Monday after everyone has, I hope, a great holiday.
There will be, no doubt, lots to write about Monday. Thank God for that.
Christmas week isn’t much better. Last night there were some good college basketball games to watch and what looked like a good bowl game (Brigham Young-Oregon State which turned out to be pretty much a snooze) but the closer you get to Christmas Day the more your choices dwindle. By Christmas Eve you’re down to one pretty lousy bowl game (I’m just not that psyched for Nevada-SMU) and then on Christmas Day there’s one NFL game—at night—and all those NBA games that, sorry, I just can’t bring myself to care about. Check back with me when the playoffs start. Actually check back with me when The Finals start. Maybe.
There’s also the family issue. People expect you to hang out with kids and in-laws and brothers and sisters. It isn’t that I don’t like any of these people—I love many of them—it’s just that after a while you’d rather watch a ballgame than talk about how cute someone’s dog is or hear about how funny your nephew can be. The other problem for me is I can’t claim on Christmas Eve that I really need to watch that Nevada-SMU game for work.
Christmas has always been an interesting part of my life. Clearly, I’m Jewish. My dad was raised orthodox and completely rejected all religion as an adult. My mom had no religious training at all and thought Christmas was a better holiday for kids than Chanukah (my daughter Brigid might argue differently since she still clings to the idea that she’s owed eight gifts) so we always had a Christmas tree and always celebrated Christmas—albeit in a secular way.
Without sounding glib I can honestly say that the births of Lefty Driesell and my agent, Esther Newburg, on Christmas Day have had more meaning in my life than the birth of Jesus Christ. My friend Ken Denlinger once described Lefty as “God’s unique Christmas present to the world in 1931.”
One of my more vivid Christmas memories involves Lefty. I had traveled to Hawaii with Maryland in December of 1984 for what was then The Rainbow Classic. This was before ESPN had created all these strictly-for-TV events at Thanksgiving and The Rainbow, which started back in 1964, was THE holiday tournament: eight quality teams every year. The schedule called for two games Christmas night; two games the next day and then four games on the 27th and the 28th since everyone played three games.
Maryland was playing Iowa on Christmas night. On Christmas Eve morning, I went with Maryland to practice at the old Blaisdell Arena, an aging mini-dome that seated about 8,000 people. Blaisdell had a certain character to it. You had to walk across little bridges to get inside because the building was surrounded by what would best be described as a moat. There was absolutely no parking for the building but if you knew what you were doing you parked at the bank right across the street.
After practice I went back to the hotel and had lunch with Lefty to get some pre-tournament quotes for my advance the next day. As we were finishing, a Maryland booster who had made the trip approached Lefty.
“Coach we were wondering about some free time for the kids tomorrow after morning shootaround,” he said.
“Free time,” Lefty said. “What for?”
“Well, we wanted to have a little Christmas party for them…”
“Christmas!” Lefty thundered. “Christmas! I didn’t come here to have a Christmas party I came here to win games!”
Take that Bah and Humbug.
Maryland won two games—beating Iowa and Hawaii before losing at the buzzer to Georgia Tech in the finals. Because the championship game was on TV back east it started at 6 o’clock local time. Tommy Stinson of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and I walked into Blaisdell at about 5:59 that night because we were sitting by the hotel pool listening to Al McGuire tell stories and we lost track of the time.
I’ve never really minded working on holidays—again it isn’t because I don’t love my family—it’s just, well, what I do. I’m used to working on weekends when others aren’t working so working on a holiday doesn’t feel strange to me. Of course when I still worked at The Washington Post, I frequently got into battles with George Solomon who would—understandably—assign the Jewish members of the staff to work Christmas Day. I didn’t mind working if I was on the road someplace (especially if it was in Hawaii) but I certainly didn’t want to come into the office to write some kind of advance on the college basketball games being played the next day or get sent out to Redskins Park to hear Joe Gibbs talk about how that Sunday’s opponent was the greatest team in football history.
So, every year I’d check the schedule and there I’d be, penciled in for Christmas Day. I’d go see George.
“I can’t work on Christmas,” I’d say.
George—who, to be fair, always put himself on the schedule on Christmas—would look at me and say, “what are you talking about?”
“My family celebrates Christmas. My mother will be upset if I’m not there to open presents in the morning.”
“What do you mean your family celebrates Christmas?”
George literally didn’t believe me at first. Then, when he did believe me, he decided he had to teach me how to be a real Jew. One year he insisted that I come to break-fast at his house on Yom Kippur. I showed up (having not fasted) and wasn’t eating anything because, to be honest, other than soft kosher salami, I’m just not into that sort of food at all.
George’s wife Hazel, one of the world’s nicest and most patient people, came up to me looking puzzled and said, “John, you’re not eating.”
Without thinking about what day it was I gave Hazel the answer I always used if I was at someone’s house and didn’t like the food being served: “Hazel, I’m sorry, I had a really big lunch very late.”
Whoops. She looked at me as if I was insane and went off to—probably—tell George he needed to fire me. George STILL hasn’t let me off the hook on that one.
Anyway, the bottom line is, I like the holidays. I like the warmth and I really like the music and I especially like the corny movies. 1. “It’s A Wonderful Life.” 2. “White Christmas.” 3. “Miracle on 34th Street” (the original) watched it last night. 4. “Rudolph.” (Burl Ives second greatest performance right behind, ‘Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,”—talk about range). 5. “Elf.”
I enjoy seeing relatives and friends I don’t often get to see. But I’m also really happy on the morning of the 26th because there are LOTS of games to choose from, places to go and people to see—and write about.
So, I wish everyone a Merry Christmas, Happy Chanukah, Happy Kwanzaa and, of course a Happy Festivus (for the rest of us). If something actually happens today, I’ll write a blog tomorrow if only to keep a little bit busy. If it is as quiet as I suspect it will be, I’ll be back Monday after everyone has, I hope, a great holiday.
There will be, no doubt, lots to write about Monday. Thank God for that.
Comments (6)
Happy talk in Washington Post today, we'll see if things change; Dan Snyder story
Fri, Dec 18 2009 10:05
| NFL, Washington Post, Dan Snyder, Redskins
| Permalink
The Washington Post is full of happy talk this morning—and I do mean FULL, there’s a big front page story and about 10 more stories in the sports section—because Vinny Cerrato is finally gone from Redskins-land. The smartest comment I saw on all this was from a reader: “The wicked witch may not be dead but her favorite flying monkey is gone.”
Bruce Allen, a guy with an actual resume as an NFL personnel guy is in and Cerrato is out. Allen comes armed with something no one has ever had since the wicked witch—Dan Snyder—bought the team in 1999: the title of general manager. Once Snyder ousted Charlie Casserly, he basically ran the team himself with Cerrato as a front man and Joe Gibbs involved in some decisions during his four year return as coach.
Make no mistake about it though: the product that Washington has put on the field for the last 10 years is a Dan Snyder production. He has hired and fired coaches—or driven them so crazy that they left with $15 million left on their contract (Steve Spurrier)—and as recently as a couple weeks ago went to see Texas quarterback Colt McCoy play in person with Cerrato tagging along.
That’s why the essential question about the Redskins future hasn’t been answered yet. Allen has a solid, though not spectacular, record making personnel decisions in Oakland and Tampa Bay. His ties to the Redskins as George Allen’s son are irrelevant since Allen last worked in Washington when Jimmy Carter was a brand new president.
What’s more, it appears likely now that Mike Shanahan will be the next coach—although there are some who think that John Gruden’s Tampa Bay ties to Allen might bring him to Washington. Maybe. More likely though it will be Shanahan for a huge pile of money. The ex-Broncos coach has been positioning himself for the job all season—using one of those ESPN rumor guys to build up the notion that he might go to Buffalo as a bargaining wedge with the Redskins.
One would think a tandem of Allen and Shanahan, or for that matter Allen and Gruden, will work. The elephant in the room, albeit one wearing a pointy black hat and traveling by broomstick, is Snyder. Is he really and truly capable of listening to the football guys and nodding his head when they tell him what they want to do? The fact that Allen got the GM title tells you that Snyder has told him he’ll be the decision-maker. He told Marty Schottenheimer the same thing once upon a time then reneged on the deal after one season.
If I was a Redskins fan here’s the Snyder quote that would make me a little bit nervous this morning: “In terms of the past, I’ve not been as involved as people may have thought. In terms of the future, obviously we’re going to be counting on Bruce to help lead the way and we’re excited about having a seasoned NFL executive with this much experience.”
Translate that into English and here’s what he said: “Don’t blame me for the past, it’s the other guys, the ones I’ve fired.” If you believe that I’d suggest you stay up all night on Christmas Eve because Santa is bound to show up. The notion that Allen will, “help,” lead the decision-making doesn’t sound too firm either does it?
In fact, when he was asked how much autonomy Allen would have, Snyder gave a non-answer: “Obviously Bruce has the authority. When we (note WE) make a decision, when he makes a decision, when the club makes a decision, it’s a Redskins decision.”
Oh boy, a Redskins decision. That sounds a lot like the “Redskins grades,” Snyder said he and Cerrato and the scouts gave players before the draft each year. It’s interesting that so many people in DC are giddy that Cerrato is finally gone—he left in his usual classless fashion, patting himself on the back for “outstanding draft picks,” while completely leaving Coach Jim Zorn out in listing all the people he was proud to have worked with in Washington—the issue was never Cerrato. It was and is Snyder.
Snyder’s a bully and a bad guy. People keep talking about what a great businessman he is. I’ll accept that only because I don’t know a thing about business and the guy made a lot of money. For me to analyze someone as a businessman is a little like Snyder analyzing someone as a football player or a football coach.
There are all sorts of stories about Snyder mistreating (and firing) employees; about his Napoleonic obsession with being called Mr. Snyder and his consistent insistence that he be involved in football decisions—which have proven to be disastrous.
Let me tell you one first hand story about Snyder. We haven’t gotten along since he bought the team because I was critical of the way he treated people and of his breaking up what had been a pretty good team in 1999, a team that went 10-6 and lost at the buzzer in the conference semifinals to Tampa Bay under Charlie Casserly and Norv Turner. Snyder went out and bought a bunch of over-the-hill big name free agents (Jeff George, Deion Sanders, Bruce Smith) the next offseason and fired Turner with a 7-6 record in 2000. Casserly was already long gone. At last look Turner was 10-3 in San Diego after being ridiculed by people in Washington after his firing.
Snyder called me at some point during this period to tell me that I shouldn’t criticize him because (I’m not making this up) he gave a lot of money to Children’s Hospital. I told him I certainly would never criticize him or anyone for giving money to charity but that wasn’t the issue. He continued on, getting angry, demanding to know where the hell I came off criticizing someone who was so charitable. I told him I’d be willing to bet him a lot of money—that I’d give to charity—that I gave a higher percentage of my income to charity than he did and it was STILL a moot point; that if someone didn’t like what I wrote how much I gave to charity didn’t matter.
End of conversation.
A few years later I was sitting in a restaurant in Potomac (Maryland) not far from where I live and also not far from where Snyder lives. I was with my ex-wife, sitting in the back when the restaurant manager came over looking a little flustered.
“John, Dan Snyder is in here having dinner,” he said.
I shrugged. “And?” I said.
“He saw you sitting here. He says he wants to buy you a bottle of wine.”
I really didn’t want to play this game but there was no choice. If I turned the wine down I’d look un-gracious. So, I said to the manager, “Tell Mr. Snyder thanks and I’d like to buy his table dessert.”
When we got up to leave, I stopped at the table. Snyder was with his wife and Bennett Zeier and his wife—Zeier was running his radio stations at the time although, like most Snyder employees, he left soon after.
“Dan, thanks for the wine,” I said, shaking hands. “That was very gracious of you. I asked Enzo to add your desserts to my tab.” I turned to Mary and said, “I don’t think you’ve met my wife…”
Snyder ignored Mary and said to me, “yeah, I really enjoyed buying wine for someone who has been s----- on me for seven years.”
“Hey Dan, if you’ve got any issues with me, I’d be happy to buy you lunch and discuss them. But I don’t think now is the time.”
“No, you wouldn’t would you? You don’t like it when the tables are turned do you?”
“What tables are turned? Look, here’s my number, call me anytime you want.” I grabbed some paper from my pocket and wrote down my phone numbers. Before I could hand Snyder the numbers, he had turned on Mary.
“How does your husband sleep at night, huh?” he sneered. “Doesn’t he have a conscience? How does he sleep?”
“Actually he sleeps fine,” Mary said.
At that moment, Zeier, clearly embarrassed, jumped in and asked me about a mutual friend of ours, Rob Ades. He introduced me to the two wives who were pretty much cowering under the table.
Snyder plowed through the pleasantries. “You have no RIGHT to criticize me,” he said, pointing a finger. “I don’t know who you think you are…”
I held up my hand. Enough was enough. “Dan, there are my numbers. Call me. We’ll discuss this in a non-social setting.”
“I don’t call the media,” he shouted. “Why don’t YOU call me?”
“Because Dan, I don’t have a problem. You do.”
I walked away with Snyder still shouting something at my back. At the front of the restaurant Enzo was waiting with a bottle of wine. “Tell Mr. Snyder to keep it,” I said.
I never heard from him.
So now he’s finally thrown his pal Cerrato overboard and reeled in Allen with Shanahan probably to follow. If nothing else the next chapter should be entertaining to watch. In the meantime, I’m still sleeping fine.
Bruce Allen, a guy with an actual resume as an NFL personnel guy is in and Cerrato is out. Allen comes armed with something no one has ever had since the wicked witch—Dan Snyder—bought the team in 1999: the title of general manager. Once Snyder ousted Charlie Casserly, he basically ran the team himself with Cerrato as a front man and Joe Gibbs involved in some decisions during his four year return as coach.
Make no mistake about it though: the product that Washington has put on the field for the last 10 years is a Dan Snyder production. He has hired and fired coaches—or driven them so crazy that they left with $15 million left on their contract (Steve Spurrier)—and as recently as a couple weeks ago went to see Texas quarterback Colt McCoy play in person with Cerrato tagging along.
That’s why the essential question about the Redskins future hasn’t been answered yet. Allen has a solid, though not spectacular, record making personnel decisions in Oakland and Tampa Bay. His ties to the Redskins as George Allen’s son are irrelevant since Allen last worked in Washington when Jimmy Carter was a brand new president.
What’s more, it appears likely now that Mike Shanahan will be the next coach—although there are some who think that John Gruden’s Tampa Bay ties to Allen might bring him to Washington. Maybe. More likely though it will be Shanahan for a huge pile of money. The ex-Broncos coach has been positioning himself for the job all season—using one of those ESPN rumor guys to build up the notion that he might go to Buffalo as a bargaining wedge with the Redskins.
One would think a tandem of Allen and Shanahan, or for that matter Allen and Gruden, will work. The elephant in the room, albeit one wearing a pointy black hat and traveling by broomstick, is Snyder. Is he really and truly capable of listening to the football guys and nodding his head when they tell him what they want to do? The fact that Allen got the GM title tells you that Snyder has told him he’ll be the decision-maker. He told Marty Schottenheimer the same thing once upon a time then reneged on the deal after one season.
If I was a Redskins fan here’s the Snyder quote that would make me a little bit nervous this morning: “In terms of the past, I’ve not been as involved as people may have thought. In terms of the future, obviously we’re going to be counting on Bruce to help lead the way and we’re excited about having a seasoned NFL executive with this much experience.”
Translate that into English and here’s what he said: “Don’t blame me for the past, it’s the other guys, the ones I’ve fired.” If you believe that I’d suggest you stay up all night on Christmas Eve because Santa is bound to show up. The notion that Allen will, “help,” lead the decision-making doesn’t sound too firm either does it?
In fact, when he was asked how much autonomy Allen would have, Snyder gave a non-answer: “Obviously Bruce has the authority. When we (note WE) make a decision, when he makes a decision, when the club makes a decision, it’s a Redskins decision.”
Oh boy, a Redskins decision. That sounds a lot like the “Redskins grades,” Snyder said he and Cerrato and the scouts gave players before the draft each year. It’s interesting that so many people in DC are giddy that Cerrato is finally gone—he left in his usual classless fashion, patting himself on the back for “outstanding draft picks,” while completely leaving Coach Jim Zorn out in listing all the people he was proud to have worked with in Washington—the issue was never Cerrato. It was and is Snyder.
Snyder’s a bully and a bad guy. People keep talking about what a great businessman he is. I’ll accept that only because I don’t know a thing about business and the guy made a lot of money. For me to analyze someone as a businessman is a little like Snyder analyzing someone as a football player or a football coach.
There are all sorts of stories about Snyder mistreating (and firing) employees; about his Napoleonic obsession with being called Mr. Snyder and his consistent insistence that he be involved in football decisions—which have proven to be disastrous.
Let me tell you one first hand story about Snyder. We haven’t gotten along since he bought the team because I was critical of the way he treated people and of his breaking up what had been a pretty good team in 1999, a team that went 10-6 and lost at the buzzer in the conference semifinals to Tampa Bay under Charlie Casserly and Norv Turner. Snyder went out and bought a bunch of over-the-hill big name free agents (Jeff George, Deion Sanders, Bruce Smith) the next offseason and fired Turner with a 7-6 record in 2000. Casserly was already long gone. At last look Turner was 10-3 in San Diego after being ridiculed by people in Washington after his firing.
Snyder called me at some point during this period to tell me that I shouldn’t criticize him because (I’m not making this up) he gave a lot of money to Children’s Hospital. I told him I certainly would never criticize him or anyone for giving money to charity but that wasn’t the issue. He continued on, getting angry, demanding to know where the hell I came off criticizing someone who was so charitable. I told him I’d be willing to bet him a lot of money—that I’d give to charity—that I gave a higher percentage of my income to charity than he did and it was STILL a moot point; that if someone didn’t like what I wrote how much I gave to charity didn’t matter.
End of conversation.
A few years later I was sitting in a restaurant in Potomac (Maryland) not far from where I live and also not far from where Snyder lives. I was with my ex-wife, sitting in the back when the restaurant manager came over looking a little flustered.
“John, Dan Snyder is in here having dinner,” he said.
I shrugged. “And?” I said.
“He saw you sitting here. He says he wants to buy you a bottle of wine.”
I really didn’t want to play this game but there was no choice. If I turned the wine down I’d look un-gracious. So, I said to the manager, “Tell Mr. Snyder thanks and I’d like to buy his table dessert.”
When we got up to leave, I stopped at the table. Snyder was with his wife and Bennett Zeier and his wife—Zeier was running his radio stations at the time although, like most Snyder employees, he left soon after.
“Dan, thanks for the wine,” I said, shaking hands. “That was very gracious of you. I asked Enzo to add your desserts to my tab.” I turned to Mary and said, “I don’t think you’ve met my wife…”
Snyder ignored Mary and said to me, “yeah, I really enjoyed buying wine for someone who has been s----- on me for seven years.”
“Hey Dan, if you’ve got any issues with me, I’d be happy to buy you lunch and discuss them. But I don’t think now is the time.”
“No, you wouldn’t would you? You don’t like it when the tables are turned do you?”
“What tables are turned? Look, here’s my number, call me anytime you want.” I grabbed some paper from my pocket and wrote down my phone numbers. Before I could hand Snyder the numbers, he had turned on Mary.
“How does your husband sleep at night, huh?” he sneered. “Doesn’t he have a conscience? How does he sleep?”
“Actually he sleeps fine,” Mary said.
At that moment, Zeier, clearly embarrassed, jumped in and asked me about a mutual friend of ours, Rob Ades. He introduced me to the two wives who were pretty much cowering under the table.
Snyder plowed through the pleasantries. “You have no RIGHT to criticize me,” he said, pointing a finger. “I don’t know who you think you are…”
I held up my hand. Enough was enough. “Dan, there are my numbers. Call me. We’ll discuss this in a non-social setting.”
“I don’t call the media,” he shouted. “Why don’t YOU call me?”
“Because Dan, I don’t have a problem. You do.”
I walked away with Snyder still shouting something at my back. At the front of the restaurant Enzo was waiting with a bottle of wine. “Tell Mr. Snyder to keep it,” I said.
I never heard from him.
So now he’s finally thrown his pal Cerrato overboard and reeled in Allen with Shanahan probably to follow. If nothing else the next chapter should be entertaining to watch. In the meantime, I’m still sleeping fine.
Comments (6)
Former Executive Director of the USGA, Frank Hannigan, sends email that rings true; Insider info on the media game
Thu, Dec 17 2009 10:07
| NFL, PGA Tour, Frank Hannigan, CNBC, Tiger Woods, MLB, Tennis
| Permalink
The life of Tiger Woods really has become an accident scene. On the one hand you want to avert your eyes, on the other hand you can’t stop staring. Having Doonesbury spend an entire week lampoon you pretty much means you have gone from being an iconic golfer to an iconic punch line.
I have an absolute case of Tiger-fatigue. And yet, as I sit here this morning I’m thinking, ‘how can I not write about him?’ Are readers going to be more interested in how thrilled I was last night when American University went to DePaul and won? Or do they want my thoughts on the Islanders beating the Rangers in Madison Square Garden and some of my memories of growing up as a kid in the blue seats at The Garden? (Section 406 was the ideal if you could tickets up there. In those days the cost was $4). I could write about the Halladay-Lee trade and just how good the Mariners might be next season with Cliff Lee and Felix Rodriguez at the top of their rotation two years after losing more than 100 games.
No. Like it or not the story on everyone’s minds is Tiger and, regardless of how Charles Barkley may feel, it isn’t going away.
The Doonesbury strip a couple of days ago in which Garry Trudeau had Tiger’s mistresses deciding to unionize was funny. A lot of what’s circulated on TV and on the internet is funny. Of course every time we laugh at this stuff we also pause to think about what Tiger has done to his wife and his kids and then it isn’t so funny.
Having said that, I got an e-mail last night from Frank Hannigan, who was once executive director of the USGA and, even though he is the world’s leading curmudgeon, is still one of the very smart voices out there on any subject but especially on golf.
Hannigan usually weighs in to list all the various crimes I have committed against journalism and golf and the fate of the world in general and this note was no different. As always, a lot of what he said rang true. He told me I should cool it with the notion that Tiger’s fall from grace is some kind of epic disaster for golf. He didn’t go the, “golf was around before Tiger and will be around after Tiger,” route (even though that’s true) but what he did say is that if golf’s revenues go down for a few years life will go on.
“So the 100th ranked guy on the money list makes $800,000 instead of $1,000,000 the next few years—so what?”—he wrote. He went on to say that while there was no doubt the “Tiger golf-fan,” might disappear in his absence or not be quite so enamored of him upon his return, the core golf fans would still be there and there are other guys out there who can play the game pretty well.
He’s right of course. Sure, it’s Tim Finchem’s job as commissioner to try to keep purses going up, sponsors happy and TV ratings high so that he can wheedle more money from the networks the next time the contracts are up. But let’s say none of that happens. So, purses go down and players are unhappy about that. What are they going to do, give up golf and go to law school? (That’s not a Hannigan line but it could be one). Some tournaments might go away and that would be too bad but the tour isn’t going to shut down.
As for the TV networks, well, Golf Channel’s deal runs for something like 11 more years and do you think CBS is going to give up The Masters because Tiger isn’t as beloved as he once was? (There’s a joke in there somewhere about Tiger’s life and ‘a tradition like no other,’ but I’ll pass on that).
Sports go through downturns. Baseball took a huge hit at the box office and in TV ratings after the strike of 1994 and 1995. It came back and flourished not long afterwards. When hockey shut down in 2005 people said and wrote it would never come back. It’s doing just fine—much better than pre-lockout as a matter of fact. Go back to the 1980s before Magic and Bird and no one—NO ONE—was watching the NBA. Even the all-powerful NFL has attendance problems these days. A story in today’s Washington Post reports that The Jacksonville Jaguars are down to 27,000 season ticketholders.
All those sports have survived crises, regardless of what caused them. Tennis is in crisis right now because it has been mismanaged for so many years and hasn’t had a real American star on the men’s side since Pete Sampras and Andre Agassi retired a few years back. In fact, going back to 1993 when I started researching, “A Good Walk Spoiled,” both my editor and my agent expressed some concern that the book might not sell that well because golf had no stars. Remember the term, “faceless clones?” That book, which mentioned Tiger Woods ONCE—a sentence about this teen-age phenom getting a sponsor’s exemption to play in Los Angeles—outsold, “A Season on the Brink.”
So, Hannigan—as usual—is right. If Tiger never plays again, golf will wobble but will be fine in the long run. If, as is far more likely, he comes back a tainted icon but still a great player, golf will take a hit, especially in the short term, but will be just fine when all is said and done.
Having said all that, I don’t know about all of you but I definitely have Tiger fatigue right now even though I know I can’t just say, ‘enough,’ because it is still the story everyone is talking about.
I said last week that I don’t mind radio and TVs calling because I’m flattered that they think what I have to say might matter. It is amusing when producers call and act as if they are the very first ones to come up with the idea of asking me to talk about Tiger. Even more amusing was an e-mail I got yesterday from a producer at CNBC. It began this way: “Hi John—I wanted to let you know about a great opportunity for you tomorrow…” The ‘great opportunity,’ was to go downtown to a studio and spend two or three minutes on-air after Finchem got through talking to the network.
I couldn’t resist. I wrote back and asked her exactly what this ‘great opportunity,’ was for me. She earnestly wrote back that I would be on CNBC’s, “highest-rated,” show and would have the chance to be the, “first person,” to comment on Finchem’s comments. I wonder if she actually believes this sort of stuff or just thinks people are dumb enough to believe it. Remarkably, I decided not to give up two hours of my day for this ‘great opportunity.’ To be fair, she isn’t the first TV person—and no doubt won’t be the last—who has tried to convince me how fortunate I would be to be on their air.
I apologize for the digression. It’s just that after all these years of dealing with TV people (not all but many) I am still amazed by them. I’m not a fool. I understand that TV exposure helps sell books and that a lot of people think being on TV is absolutely the coolest thing one can do in life. I STILL have people come up and tell me how much they love watching me on ‘The Sports Reporters,” (which was great fun to do, especially when Dick Schaap was still alive) even though I haven’t been on the show in almost three years.
We are now almost three weeks into “As The Tiger Turns,” and each day I find myself shaking my head at something new. Yesterday it was Tiger’s agent, Mark Steinberg, climbing out from under the rock he’s been hiding under since this began to put out a statement ripping The New York Times for saying that IMG was involved in setting up Tiger’s sessions with the Canadian doctor who apparently used HGH in treating people recovering from major injuries. The Times wrote the story after the guy was arrested at the Canadian/U.S. border carrying illegal performance-enhancing drugs. In the statement Steinberg took a swipe at all the media reporting on his client.
Steinberg needs to shut-up. Unless he wants to take a polygraph test and tell people what he knew and what he didn’t know and what he told Tiger to do and not do when all this started, he should climb back under that rock.
There’s quite a crowd hiding there right now. My guess is they will be there for a while. But, as Frank Hannigan points out, golf will still be played—without Tiger, with a tainted Tiger, whatever—but it will still be played.
I have an absolute case of Tiger-fatigue. And yet, as I sit here this morning I’m thinking, ‘how can I not write about him?’ Are readers going to be more interested in how thrilled I was last night when American University went to DePaul and won? Or do they want my thoughts on the Islanders beating the Rangers in Madison Square Garden and some of my memories of growing up as a kid in the blue seats at The Garden? (Section 406 was the ideal if you could tickets up there. In those days the cost was $4). I could write about the Halladay-Lee trade and just how good the Mariners might be next season with Cliff Lee and Felix Rodriguez at the top of their rotation two years after losing more than 100 games.
No. Like it or not the story on everyone’s minds is Tiger and, regardless of how Charles Barkley may feel, it isn’t going away.
The Doonesbury strip a couple of days ago in which Garry Trudeau had Tiger’s mistresses deciding to unionize was funny. A lot of what’s circulated on TV and on the internet is funny. Of course every time we laugh at this stuff we also pause to think about what Tiger has done to his wife and his kids and then it isn’t so funny.
Having said that, I got an e-mail last night from Frank Hannigan, who was once executive director of the USGA and, even though he is the world’s leading curmudgeon, is still one of the very smart voices out there on any subject but especially on golf.
Hannigan usually weighs in to list all the various crimes I have committed against journalism and golf and the fate of the world in general and this note was no different. As always, a lot of what he said rang true. He told me I should cool it with the notion that Tiger’s fall from grace is some kind of epic disaster for golf. He didn’t go the, “golf was around before Tiger and will be around after Tiger,” route (even though that’s true) but what he did say is that if golf’s revenues go down for a few years life will go on.
“So the 100th ranked guy on the money list makes $800,000 instead of $1,000,000 the next few years—so what?”—he wrote. He went on to say that while there was no doubt the “Tiger golf-fan,” might disappear in his absence or not be quite so enamored of him upon his return, the core golf fans would still be there and there are other guys out there who can play the game pretty well.
He’s right of course. Sure, it’s Tim Finchem’s job as commissioner to try to keep purses going up, sponsors happy and TV ratings high so that he can wheedle more money from the networks the next time the contracts are up. But let’s say none of that happens. So, purses go down and players are unhappy about that. What are they going to do, give up golf and go to law school? (That’s not a Hannigan line but it could be one). Some tournaments might go away and that would be too bad but the tour isn’t going to shut down.
As for the TV networks, well, Golf Channel’s deal runs for something like 11 more years and do you think CBS is going to give up The Masters because Tiger isn’t as beloved as he once was? (There’s a joke in there somewhere about Tiger’s life and ‘a tradition like no other,’ but I’ll pass on that).
Sports go through downturns. Baseball took a huge hit at the box office and in TV ratings after the strike of 1994 and 1995. It came back and flourished not long afterwards. When hockey shut down in 2005 people said and wrote it would never come back. It’s doing just fine—much better than pre-lockout as a matter of fact. Go back to the 1980s before Magic and Bird and no one—NO ONE—was watching the NBA. Even the all-powerful NFL has attendance problems these days. A story in today’s Washington Post reports that The Jacksonville Jaguars are down to 27,000 season ticketholders.
All those sports have survived crises, regardless of what caused them. Tennis is in crisis right now because it has been mismanaged for so many years and hasn’t had a real American star on the men’s side since Pete Sampras and Andre Agassi retired a few years back. In fact, going back to 1993 when I started researching, “A Good Walk Spoiled,” both my editor and my agent expressed some concern that the book might not sell that well because golf had no stars. Remember the term, “faceless clones?” That book, which mentioned Tiger Woods ONCE—a sentence about this teen-age phenom getting a sponsor’s exemption to play in Los Angeles—outsold, “A Season on the Brink.”
So, Hannigan—as usual—is right. If Tiger never plays again, golf will wobble but will be fine in the long run. If, as is far more likely, he comes back a tainted icon but still a great player, golf will take a hit, especially in the short term, but will be just fine when all is said and done.
Having said all that, I don’t know about all of you but I definitely have Tiger fatigue right now even though I know I can’t just say, ‘enough,’ because it is still the story everyone is talking about.
I said last week that I don’t mind radio and TVs calling because I’m flattered that they think what I have to say might matter. It is amusing when producers call and act as if they are the very first ones to come up with the idea of asking me to talk about Tiger. Even more amusing was an e-mail I got yesterday from a producer at CNBC. It began this way: “Hi John—I wanted to let you know about a great opportunity for you tomorrow…” The ‘great opportunity,’ was to go downtown to a studio and spend two or three minutes on-air after Finchem got through talking to the network.
I couldn’t resist. I wrote back and asked her exactly what this ‘great opportunity,’ was for me. She earnestly wrote back that I would be on CNBC’s, “highest-rated,” show and would have the chance to be the, “first person,” to comment on Finchem’s comments. I wonder if she actually believes this sort of stuff or just thinks people are dumb enough to believe it. Remarkably, I decided not to give up two hours of my day for this ‘great opportunity.’ To be fair, she isn’t the first TV person—and no doubt won’t be the last—who has tried to convince me how fortunate I would be to be on their air.
I apologize for the digression. It’s just that after all these years of dealing with TV people (not all but many) I am still amazed by them. I’m not a fool. I understand that TV exposure helps sell books and that a lot of people think being on TV is absolutely the coolest thing one can do in life. I STILL have people come up and tell me how much they love watching me on ‘The Sports Reporters,” (which was great fun to do, especially when Dick Schaap was still alive) even though I haven’t been on the show in almost three years.
We are now almost three weeks into “As The Tiger Turns,” and each day I find myself shaking my head at something new. Yesterday it was Tiger’s agent, Mark Steinberg, climbing out from under the rock he’s been hiding under since this began to put out a statement ripping The New York Times for saying that IMG was involved in setting up Tiger’s sessions with the Canadian doctor who apparently used HGH in treating people recovering from major injuries. The Times wrote the story after the guy was arrested at the Canadian/U.S. border carrying illegal performance-enhancing drugs. In the statement Steinberg took a swipe at all the media reporting on his client.
Steinberg needs to shut-up. Unless he wants to take a polygraph test and tell people what he knew and what he didn’t know and what he told Tiger to do and not do when all this started, he should climb back under that rock.
There’s quite a crowd hiding there right now. My guess is they will be there for a while. But, as Frank Hannigan points out, golf will still be played—without Tiger, with a tainted Tiger, whatever—but it will still be played.
Comments (7)
A Thanksgiving of Traditions – Swimming, the Lions and the New One, College Basketball
Fri, Nov 27 2009 09:28
| NFL, college basketball, Maryland, Lefty Driesell
| Permalink
Everyone has Thanksgiving traditions. Even now, I try to sit down and watch the start of the football game from Detroit because I remember doing it as a kid. That’s been tough in recent years because the Lions have been so bad and, most of the time, the game has been out of hand by midway in the second quarter. At least yesterday it was competitive into the second half.
I know there has been talk about taking Thanksgiving away from the Lions. I think that would be a terrible decision. Yes, they’ve been lousy for a long time but at some point they will improve and there are some traditions you don’t mess with. They’ve played Thanksgiving football in Detroit since 1934. You don’t blow up a tradition like that so that a TV network can pick up a ratings point or two.
The game in Dallas is the one I don’t understand. I’m okay with the Cowboys hosting it but I wonder what the NFL is thinking sometimes when it chooses the opponent. It isn’t like with the Lions where they’re locked in. Did it come as a shock to the schedule-makers that the Raiders are bad again this year? If this is a year when the NFC East plays the AFC West why not send the Chargers in there on Thanksgiving Day? Or at least the Broncos.
Who would have thought that the highlight of Thanksgiving Day would be ESPN’s decision to create a bunch of college basketball tournaments? My goodness, do I owe the Bristol boys a thank-you note?
Actually my favorite Thanksgiving tradition the last dozen or so years has been getting up to go workout at the pool. Among the holidays, Thanksgiving is usually the best one for a workout because people aren’t feeling guilty yet about too much holiday eating and it isn’t New Years’—worst day of the year—when everyone has made their resolutions to lose weight.
This Thanksgiving workout had a little more meaning than some others. It was my first real attempt to swim since my heart surgery. I’ve been cleared to swim for a couple months but, to be honest, I was so far behind in my work that committing the time was really difficult. It was a lot easier to just walk for an hour than to get in the car, drive to the pool, workout and drive home. So, I made a deal with myself: as a soon as I finished the two books I was working on (one on the ’03 majors; the other the fifth book in the kids mystery series) I would make a serious effort to get back in swimming shape.
I finished the second book on Wednesday. Thursday morning I was in the pool. To say that I’m out of shape is like saying Dick Vitale talks a lot. Actually, my legs aren’t too bad because of the walking and the same is true of my wind. I was able to hold my turns for about as long as normal. The problem is my arms. They felt as if they had 50-pound weights on them. I did a set of 6x50 meters on 1:15 that would normally be an easy warm down set, one that if I was really in shape I’d swim butterfly. I was seriously hurting before I was finished. At the very end I tried to swim ONE length of butterfly. It felt like the end of a 200 fly.
So, I’ve got a long, long way to go. Still, it felt SO good to be back in. I made it through 1,300 meters—a nice warm-up for most of my friends—but was happy I did it. As soon as I finish writing this morning, I’m heading back to the pool. Maybe by spring I’ll be in some kind of shape.
Among all the holidays, Thanksgiving is probably the one I’ve had to work or travel on least often. It is only in recent years that a lot of college hoops has been played at Thanksgiving. I remember flying home on a red eye from the Maui Classic one year when Maryland played in it and getting home on Thanksgiving morning.
Probably my most memorable Thanksgiving trip was way back in 1984 when Maryland went to The Great Alaska Shootout. The games didn’t start until Friday—in those days no one played before Thanksgiving Day—but I flew on the same flight with Maryland on Tuesday since the flight went through Salt Lake City and Seattle before landing in Anchorage.
In Seattle, we were joined by the Kansas team, which had flown from Kansas City to Seattle. Larry Brown was on the flight with his wife. Lefty Driesell looked at Larry’s wife and said, “You decided to make this trip? No way could I get Joyce to come this far especially to go to Alaska.”
“She just can’t bear to be away from me for five days,” Brown said.
“Yeah, that’s my whole problem,” Lefty said. “The only one who can’t bear to be away from me for five days is Feinstein.”
He was probably right about that.
Anchorage was a little bit like a wild west town—lots of bars and guys who were miners or prospectors. Seriously. The sun came up at about 10:30. I remember waking up on Thanksgiving morning to go down and have breakfast so I could be back in my room at 8:30 to watch the kickoff of the Lions game. It was really eerie watching the game when the sun hadn’t come up yet.
A guy named Happy Fine was the Maryland beat reporter for The Washington Times back then and he insisted on making a “pilgrimage,” to the gym on the Air Force base where Patrick Ewing had made his college debut three years earlier. By 1984 the tournament had moved to a brand new 8,000 seat building. Loren Tate, the long-time Illinois broadcaster walked in the first day looked around and said, “it’s just another gym—except this one’s a long way from home.”
UAB ended up beating Kansas in the final after Kansas had come from way behind to beat Maryland in the first game. I still remember a young Kansas assistant named John Calipari who I had met the previous summer at the Five-Star camp grabbing my arm in the locker room and saying, “you aren’t going to believe how good Danny Manning is going to be.”
Manning was a Kansas freshman at the time. We flew home on a red eye on Sunday night. I remember buying an “Alaska,” coffee mug in the gift shop at the airport because I’d forgotten to buy any souvenirs. I still have the mug 25 years later.
A month later, Maryland played in The Rainbow Classic in Hawaii—in those days you could play in two exempt events in the same season—and I interviewed Lefty on Christmas morning sitting on a balcony overlooking the ocean.
“Faahnsteen,” he said. “Think about it. Because of me, you’ve gotten to see the world this year.”
I didn’t argue.
I know there has been talk about taking Thanksgiving away from the Lions. I think that would be a terrible decision. Yes, they’ve been lousy for a long time but at some point they will improve and there are some traditions you don’t mess with. They’ve played Thanksgiving football in Detroit since 1934. You don’t blow up a tradition like that so that a TV network can pick up a ratings point or two.
The game in Dallas is the one I don’t understand. I’m okay with the Cowboys hosting it but I wonder what the NFL is thinking sometimes when it chooses the opponent. It isn’t like with the Lions where they’re locked in. Did it come as a shock to the schedule-makers that the Raiders are bad again this year? If this is a year when the NFC East plays the AFC West why not send the Chargers in there on Thanksgiving Day? Or at least the Broncos.
Who would have thought that the highlight of Thanksgiving Day would be ESPN’s decision to create a bunch of college basketball tournaments? My goodness, do I owe the Bristol boys a thank-you note?
Actually my favorite Thanksgiving tradition the last dozen or so years has been getting up to go workout at the pool. Among the holidays, Thanksgiving is usually the best one for a workout because people aren’t feeling guilty yet about too much holiday eating and it isn’t New Years’—worst day of the year—when everyone has made their resolutions to lose weight.
This Thanksgiving workout had a little more meaning than some others. It was my first real attempt to swim since my heart surgery. I’ve been cleared to swim for a couple months but, to be honest, I was so far behind in my work that committing the time was really difficult. It was a lot easier to just walk for an hour than to get in the car, drive to the pool, workout and drive home. So, I made a deal with myself: as a soon as I finished the two books I was working on (one on the ’03 majors; the other the fifth book in the kids mystery series) I would make a serious effort to get back in swimming shape.
I finished the second book on Wednesday. Thursday morning I was in the pool. To say that I’m out of shape is like saying Dick Vitale talks a lot. Actually, my legs aren’t too bad because of the walking and the same is true of my wind. I was able to hold my turns for about as long as normal. The problem is my arms. They felt as if they had 50-pound weights on them. I did a set of 6x50 meters on 1:15 that would normally be an easy warm down set, one that if I was really in shape I’d swim butterfly. I was seriously hurting before I was finished. At the very end I tried to swim ONE length of butterfly. It felt like the end of a 200 fly.
So, I’ve got a long, long way to go. Still, it felt SO good to be back in. I made it through 1,300 meters—a nice warm-up for most of my friends—but was happy I did it. As soon as I finish writing this morning, I’m heading back to the pool. Maybe by spring I’ll be in some kind of shape.
Among all the holidays, Thanksgiving is probably the one I’ve had to work or travel on least often. It is only in recent years that a lot of college hoops has been played at Thanksgiving. I remember flying home on a red eye from the Maui Classic one year when Maryland played in it and getting home on Thanksgiving morning.
Probably my most memorable Thanksgiving trip was way back in 1984 when Maryland went to The Great Alaska Shootout. The games didn’t start until Friday—in those days no one played before Thanksgiving Day—but I flew on the same flight with Maryland on Tuesday since the flight went through Salt Lake City and Seattle before landing in Anchorage.
In Seattle, we were joined by the Kansas team, which had flown from Kansas City to Seattle. Larry Brown was on the flight with his wife. Lefty Driesell looked at Larry’s wife and said, “You decided to make this trip? No way could I get Joyce to come this far especially to go to Alaska.”
“She just can’t bear to be away from me for five days,” Brown said.
“Yeah, that’s my whole problem,” Lefty said. “The only one who can’t bear to be away from me for five days is Feinstein.”
He was probably right about that.
Anchorage was a little bit like a wild west town—lots of bars and guys who were miners or prospectors. Seriously. The sun came up at about 10:30. I remember waking up on Thanksgiving morning to go down and have breakfast so I could be back in my room at 8:30 to watch the kickoff of the Lions game. It was really eerie watching the game when the sun hadn’t come up yet.
A guy named Happy Fine was the Maryland beat reporter for The Washington Times back then and he insisted on making a “pilgrimage,” to the gym on the Air Force base where Patrick Ewing had made his college debut three years earlier. By 1984 the tournament had moved to a brand new 8,000 seat building. Loren Tate, the long-time Illinois broadcaster walked in the first day looked around and said, “it’s just another gym—except this one’s a long way from home.”
UAB ended up beating Kansas in the final after Kansas had come from way behind to beat Maryland in the first game. I still remember a young Kansas assistant named John Calipari who I had met the previous summer at the Five-Star camp grabbing my arm in the locker room and saying, “you aren’t going to believe how good Danny Manning is going to be.”
Manning was a Kansas freshman at the time. We flew home on a red eye on Sunday night. I remember buying an “Alaska,” coffee mug in the gift shop at the airport because I’d forgotten to buy any souvenirs. I still have the mug 25 years later.
A month later, Maryland played in The Rainbow Classic in Hawaii—in those days you could play in two exempt events in the same season—and I interviewed Lefty on Christmas morning sitting on a balcony overlooking the ocean.
“Faahnsteen,” he said. “Think about it. Because of me, you’ve gotten to see the world this year.”
I didn’t argue.
Comments (5)
Where Do I Begin? For Starters, Pull Me Away from the BCS; ‘Inside Baseball’ on NFL Broadcasts
Mon, Nov 23 2009 11:33
| NFL, college football, BCS
| Permalink
Some days I just don’t know where to begin.
I am absolutely restraining myself because how many days in a row can you hammer the BCS? But the apologists are now telling us that Oklahoma State will get a BCS bid—and deserves one—if it beats Oklahoma this weekend, which at last check was 6-5 and got hammered Saturday by Texas Tech.
But if Oklahoma State wins we’ll hear all about their win over a mediocre Georgia team and how they came from behind to beat god-awful Colorado with a third string quarterback leading the charge. Forget the loss at home to Houston or the 41-14 pounding—also at home—by Texas.
What may be worse is that The Big Ten WILL get a second bid—the only question being can Joe Paterno’s name overcome the fact that his team lost at home to Iowa and they finished with identical 10-2 records. Again, let’s remember that The Big Ten doesn’t have a single impact win outside the conference. The most impressive non-conference win by a Big Ten team might have been Ohio State squeaking out a 31-27 win over Navy in its opener—at home of course.
Some Orange Bowl geek was quoted over the weekend talking about how impressed he was with the 48,000 tickets Iowa bought the last time it was in the Orange Bowl. Yeah, but the TV network—Fox—is going to want Joe Pa. Meanwhile, Boise State rolls along undefeated and it DOESN’T MATTER. Boise could beat The Colts or the Saints next week and these bowl geeks would be talking about how impressed they are with Oklahoma State or how Iowa fans travel or how good Penn State looked in beating Eastern Illinois.
Someone please drag me away from all this before I end up back in the hospital.
Speaking of the NFL—no, this will not be the weekly beat-up-the-Redskins segment. Let me just say this: if the Cowboys are planning on winning their first playoff game since Bill Clinton’s first term, they better improve a whole lot. They were life-and-death to beat a team that has no offensive line and is in complete turmoil from top to top. Forget the bottom, there is none.
Sunday night I actually watched some of the Sunday night game in part because I’m sort of a closet Bears fan. I loved Gale Sayers when I was a little kid although my memories of him are pretty blurry and I was in Indiana in ’85 during The Super Bowl run and read the Chicago papers every day. Plus, Chicago’s a great city, a place I spent a lot of time in my younger days—especially when Ray and Joey Meyer had it going at DePaul.
So, I sat and watched and my mind wandered. I was thinking just how really GOOD Al Michaels is at what he does and how smoothly Chris Collinsworth has stepped into John Madden’s very large shoes. That said, I also thought back to 2004 when I was doing my Ravens book.
If you watch the NFL you will constantly hear the announcers saying, “when we talked to Lovey Smith last night…” or “let me tell you, no one is more frustrated by his lack of production lately than Jay Cutler…” Or whatever. The implication always is that the coaches and players tell them things they don’t tell anyone else.
Which, to some degree at least, is true. You see, part of the massive NFL contracts with the networks makes it a requirement that players and coaches from the two teams meet with the announcers, the producer and director prior to each game. The network submits a list early in the week—usually from four to six players, plus the head coach and occasionally a coordinator—to the team. Sometimes there’s some negotiation because a player is tired of doing the meetings every week or because a team wants to get extra mention for someone coming off a good week.
For a Sunday game, the home team usually meets with the TV guys on Friday; the visiting team as soon as they get to town on Saturday. There are no cameras in the room and the TV guys are looking for a nugget of information that can spice up their telecast.
As part of the book, I wanted to compare how the different networks handled the production meetings. Did the play-by-play and sideline people stick to anecdotal questions while the analyst asked more x-and-o stuff? Who was more aggressive? Who took longer—CBS? Fox? ESPN? ABC? (which was in its last year of Monday Night Football) Fox’s Dick Stockton told me he didn’t WANT stories. “They get in the way of telling people what’s going on in the game,” he said. CBS’s Dick Enberg was just the opposite: he craved little details about the players lives.
Obviously I wasn’t going to steal any information in part because I didn’t think (correctly) the TV guys would get anything I didn’t already have but also because if they did it would be on the air the next day. My book wouldn’t be out until the next fall.
When Kevin Byrne, the Ravens PR guy mentioned to the CBS producer doing the Ravens opener with the Browns that I would be in the meeting, there was a little bit of whining. One self-important CBS producer, Bob Mansbach later objected to me coming to a meeting—it was with a group I’d already seen in action so I didn’t really care though I told Mansbach he was full of you-know-what. Overall, the CBS folks were easy to work with.
So were the people from Fox and, believe it or not, ESPN. Jay Rothman, the lead producer couldn’t have been more gracious and since I knew Mike Patrick and Joe Theisman well there were no problems at all for the two ESPN games the Ravens played in.
And then there was ABC. Thank goodness the Ravens were only on Monday Night football once that year. When Kevin mentioned me to Fred Gaudelli, the producer—I think that’s his name but it isn’t worth looking up to be sure--Gaudelli acted as if Kevin had said that I would be replacing Michaels on play-by-play. (I know this because I was sitting in Kevin’s office at the time).
“That’s OUR meeting,” Gaudelli screamed. “NO outsiders.”
Kevin tried to patiently explain that the other three networks had already cooperated and this was strictly about process and had nothing to do with fact-finding or anything along those lines. “Al and John will go crazy,” Gaudelli said. “He shows up, we’ll go straight to the league.”
I was seriously tempted to show up just to tell Gaudelli what a blow-hard he was and to see if he was telling the truth about Madden who I had always liked. Kevin offered a compromise—he’d take notes so I’d get a sense of the meeting and there would be no confrontations. Kevin was SO good to me throughout the book I didn’t want to cause trouble for him. So, I didn’t go.
Neither did Michaels.
Apparently he didn’t like flying in on Saturday for a Monday night game. He was on a speaker-phone for HIS meeting, one that was SO important he wasn’t even there. That cracked me up.
Look, I think Michaels is one of the all-time great play-by-play guys. He also has—and has a reputation for having—one of the all-time egos. At one point he apparently had a clause in his contract that he ONLY stayed at The Four Seasons when he traveled. I had also heard he went crazy over any criticism at all. Plus, our politics are a little bit different—to put it mildly.
When I wrote the book I made no mention of ABC going nuts at the thought of me being in the production meeting. Inside baseball. Nobody cared. I went on to say that Michaels and Madden were still the best announce team in football even though, “Michaels’ massive ego occasionally tramples on Madden.” Which I had always believed to be true.
Michaels is friendly with my agent, Esther Newberg. When he read that line he called Esther—screaming and calling me names. “Why are you calling me?” Esther said. “Here’s his number, call him—he’ll talk to you.”
Hey, I wouldn’t even have put him on speaker phone.
He never called. What a surprise.
I am absolutely restraining myself because how many days in a row can you hammer the BCS? But the apologists are now telling us that Oklahoma State will get a BCS bid—and deserves one—if it beats Oklahoma this weekend, which at last check was 6-5 and got hammered Saturday by Texas Tech.
But if Oklahoma State wins we’ll hear all about their win over a mediocre Georgia team and how they came from behind to beat god-awful Colorado with a third string quarterback leading the charge. Forget the loss at home to Houston or the 41-14 pounding—also at home—by Texas.
What may be worse is that The Big Ten WILL get a second bid—the only question being can Joe Paterno’s name overcome the fact that his team lost at home to Iowa and they finished with identical 10-2 records. Again, let’s remember that The Big Ten doesn’t have a single impact win outside the conference. The most impressive non-conference win by a Big Ten team might have been Ohio State squeaking out a 31-27 win over Navy in its opener—at home of course.
Some Orange Bowl geek was quoted over the weekend talking about how impressed he was with the 48,000 tickets Iowa bought the last time it was in the Orange Bowl. Yeah, but the TV network—Fox—is going to want Joe Pa. Meanwhile, Boise State rolls along undefeated and it DOESN’T MATTER. Boise could beat The Colts or the Saints next week and these bowl geeks would be talking about how impressed they are with Oklahoma State or how Iowa fans travel or how good Penn State looked in beating Eastern Illinois.
Someone please drag me away from all this before I end up back in the hospital.
Speaking of the NFL—no, this will not be the weekly beat-up-the-Redskins segment. Let me just say this: if the Cowboys are planning on winning their first playoff game since Bill Clinton’s first term, they better improve a whole lot. They were life-and-death to beat a team that has no offensive line and is in complete turmoil from top to top. Forget the bottom, there is none.
Sunday night I actually watched some of the Sunday night game in part because I’m sort of a closet Bears fan. I loved Gale Sayers when I was a little kid although my memories of him are pretty blurry and I was in Indiana in ’85 during The Super Bowl run and read the Chicago papers every day. Plus, Chicago’s a great city, a place I spent a lot of time in my younger days—especially when Ray and Joey Meyer had it going at DePaul.
So, I sat and watched and my mind wandered. I was thinking just how really GOOD Al Michaels is at what he does and how smoothly Chris Collinsworth has stepped into John Madden’s very large shoes. That said, I also thought back to 2004 when I was doing my Ravens book.
If you watch the NFL you will constantly hear the announcers saying, “when we talked to Lovey Smith last night…” or “let me tell you, no one is more frustrated by his lack of production lately than Jay Cutler…” Or whatever. The implication always is that the coaches and players tell them things they don’t tell anyone else.
Which, to some degree at least, is true. You see, part of the massive NFL contracts with the networks makes it a requirement that players and coaches from the two teams meet with the announcers, the producer and director prior to each game. The network submits a list early in the week—usually from four to six players, plus the head coach and occasionally a coordinator—to the team. Sometimes there’s some negotiation because a player is tired of doing the meetings every week or because a team wants to get extra mention for someone coming off a good week.
For a Sunday game, the home team usually meets with the TV guys on Friday; the visiting team as soon as they get to town on Saturday. There are no cameras in the room and the TV guys are looking for a nugget of information that can spice up their telecast.
As part of the book, I wanted to compare how the different networks handled the production meetings. Did the play-by-play and sideline people stick to anecdotal questions while the analyst asked more x-and-o stuff? Who was more aggressive? Who took longer—CBS? Fox? ESPN? ABC? (which was in its last year of Monday Night Football) Fox’s Dick Stockton told me he didn’t WANT stories. “They get in the way of telling people what’s going on in the game,” he said. CBS’s Dick Enberg was just the opposite: he craved little details about the players lives.
Obviously I wasn’t going to steal any information in part because I didn’t think (correctly) the TV guys would get anything I didn’t already have but also because if they did it would be on the air the next day. My book wouldn’t be out until the next fall.
When Kevin Byrne, the Ravens PR guy mentioned to the CBS producer doing the Ravens opener with the Browns that I would be in the meeting, there was a little bit of whining. One self-important CBS producer, Bob Mansbach later objected to me coming to a meeting—it was with a group I’d already seen in action so I didn’t really care though I told Mansbach he was full of you-know-what. Overall, the CBS folks were easy to work with.
So were the people from Fox and, believe it or not, ESPN. Jay Rothman, the lead producer couldn’t have been more gracious and since I knew Mike Patrick and Joe Theisman well there were no problems at all for the two ESPN games the Ravens played in.
And then there was ABC. Thank goodness the Ravens were only on Monday Night football once that year. When Kevin mentioned me to Fred Gaudelli, the producer—I think that’s his name but it isn’t worth looking up to be sure--Gaudelli acted as if Kevin had said that I would be replacing Michaels on play-by-play. (I know this because I was sitting in Kevin’s office at the time).
“That’s OUR meeting,” Gaudelli screamed. “NO outsiders.”
Kevin tried to patiently explain that the other three networks had already cooperated and this was strictly about process and had nothing to do with fact-finding or anything along those lines. “Al and John will go crazy,” Gaudelli said. “He shows up, we’ll go straight to the league.”
I was seriously tempted to show up just to tell Gaudelli what a blow-hard he was and to see if he was telling the truth about Madden who I had always liked. Kevin offered a compromise—he’d take notes so I’d get a sense of the meeting and there would be no confrontations. Kevin was SO good to me throughout the book I didn’t want to cause trouble for him. So, I didn’t go.
Neither did Michaels.
Apparently he didn’t like flying in on Saturday for a Monday night game. He was on a speaker-phone for HIS meeting, one that was SO important he wasn’t even there. That cracked me up.
Look, I think Michaels is one of the all-time great play-by-play guys. He also has—and has a reputation for having—one of the all-time egos. At one point he apparently had a clause in his contract that he ONLY stayed at The Four Seasons when he traveled. I had also heard he went crazy over any criticism at all. Plus, our politics are a little bit different—to put it mildly.
When I wrote the book I made no mention of ABC going nuts at the thought of me being in the production meeting. Inside baseball. Nobody cared. I went on to say that Michaels and Madden were still the best announce team in football even though, “Michaels’ massive ego occasionally tramples on Madden.” Which I had always believed to be true.
Michaels is friendly with my agent, Esther Newberg. When he read that line he called Esther—screaming and calling me names. “Why are you calling me?” Esther said. “Here’s his number, call him—he’ll talk to you.”
Hey, I wouldn’t even have put him on speaker phone.
He never called. What a surprise.
Comments (5)
Discussing the Day-After Talk on Belichick; Wie May Be Turning the Corner
Tue, Nov 17 2009 09:51
| Sports Radio, NFL, Michelle Wie, Bill Belichick, LPGA
| Permalink
Two names made big news on Sunday—one receiving raves for finally living up to her potential, the other being ripped nationally for a move that was either bold or foolish, depending on your point of view.
Let’s start with Bill Belichick. His fourth-and-two gamble on his own 28 with a 34-28 lead in Indianapolis and a little more than two minutes to go was a mistake. You want to know why? Because it didn’t work. If Tom Brady throws the ball to Wes Welker—who on the replay looked to me to have some space at the 33 yard line or if Kevin Faulk is given forward progress to just outside the 30, which is where his feet were when he was hit, then Belichick made a gutsy, smart move by keeping the ball out of Peyton Manning’s hands in the last two minutes.
That didn’t happen though and the Colts easily drove 29 yards to win the game 35-34. There are some criticizing Belichick for the simple reason that the play didn’t work. I think that’s fair. There are some defending him on the grounds that he and his former mentor Bill Parcells have historically gone for fourth downs that other coaches wouldn’t think about going for. Also fair. There are certainly some people out there who are going to defend Belichick because he’s Belichick and has won three Super Bowls and is probably a couple plays from winning five.
There are also a LOT of people out there reveling in what happened because they don’t like Belichick, don’t like his persona, his secretive nature or, in some cases, can’t stand his success.
As luck would have it—good or bad I’m not sure—I had several meeting in New York yesterday morning and got in the car shortly after 2 o’clock to head home to Washington. As is my habit when in that area, I flipped on WFAN and there was Mike Francesa just about frothing at the mouth. I’ve said this about Francesa before, I will say it again: He hosts a good radio show—though he misses his partner Chris Russo because Russo gave the show much needed levity—and he’s smart. He’s also amazingly arrogant (I’ve never quite figured out who died and made him Edward R. Murrow) an absolute no-it-all who is NEVER wrong and won’t even admit to most of his biases. Even when he conceded that, yes, he’s a lifelong Yankee fan he says it doesn’t color his analysis of baseball at all. Of course it does—biases color all of us who try to analyze anything.
Francesa can’t stand Belichick. For one thing, his best pal in life (at least according to him) is Parcells. Everyone knows Parcells and Belichick had an ugly split after years together when Belichick left the Jets to take over the Patriots. There’s no doubt that Francesa has taken Belichick’s success a lot harder than Parcells has. He can’t stand it. Monday he asked one caller who had the temerity to defend Belichick, “how many Super Bowls has Belichick won without Tom Brady at quarterback?” Here’s a question for you Mikey: how many Super Bowls did your boy Parcells win without Belichick as his defensive coordinator?
It’s a dumb question on any level. How many Super Bowls did Lombardi win without Bart Starr? Who was he supposed to try to win with Zeke Bratkowski? In fact, Belichick won his first AFC championship game with Drew Bledsoe taking over for an injured Brady in Pittsburgh. A year ago The Patriots were 11-5 after Brady went down in the opening game and Matt Cassel came in about as cold off the bench as you possibly can to play quarterback for the entire season.
So, let’s agree on this: you can question what Belichick did on Sunday night but to call into question his coaching resume is either stupid or reeks of jealousy. Since Francesa isn’t stupid, I’ll go with the latter. He was also asked at one point to list the AFC teams he thought might reach the conference championship game. His answer: Colts, Chargers, maybe the Bengals. No mention of the Patriots. So a team he does not consider a serious contender comes one play from beating the best team in the conference on the road and the guy in charge isn’t a pretty good coach?
Francesa even said at one point that, “the result didn’t matter, it was a horrible call no matter what.”
Huh? Now results don’t matter in competition. Wow, that sure takes a lot of pressure off people doesn’t it? John Calipari will be thrilled to know that his failure to call time out to make sure his Memphis players knew they had to foul with a three point lead against Kansas in the national championship game two years ago DIDN’T MATTER even though it cost his team the game. Imagine Grady Little’s delight to learn that even though leaving Pedro Martinez in against the Yankees six years ago cost him his job it also did not matter because the result—Aaron Bleepin’ Boone—really wasn’t the issue.
Let me throw in MY bias here because unlike Francesa I admit to having them: I like Belichick. We share an affection for the Naval Academy—his dad, Steve coached there for 34 years and Belichick still follows Navy’s fortunes closely—and was someone I liked and admired. I think Belichick is not only smart but has a sneaky sense of humor and does genuinely care about his players, even if he rarely shows it. Do I think he’s perfect? No. (who among us is). Video-gate was clearly wrong and there’s no doubt there are times when he goes out of his way to make the media’s life more difficult. I’ll take him over a lot of coaches any day. He doesn’t blame his players for losses and he’s damn good at what he does—period.
Now, more reasonable men than Francesa—like my pal Mike Wilbon—also ripped Belichick, which is fine because it wasn’t personal. Wilbon said none of the great coaches from Lombardi to Shula ever would have gone for the first down in that situation. He could be right, but I’m not so sure. Was Belichick showing a lack of faith in his defense or was he showing a LOT of respect—perhaps even too much—for Peyton Manning? I think it was more about Manning than the defense and people saying that the defense had done a good job most of the night against Manning was irrelevant.
Wilbon said it was arrogant to think the Patriots could pick up the first down. Let’s go down the list of successful people in sports—in life for that matter—who aren’t arrogant about their ability to succeed.
Bottom line: I think Belichick should have punted and thought it at the time. I remember cringing when the offense came back on the field. But you know what? Belichick has won a LOT more football games than I have or ever will.
Okay, I ranted on Belichick and Francesa for so long there’s really no time to give Michelle Wie her proper due for her first win on The LPGA Tour on Sunday. It has been seven years since she first emerged as a 13-year-old phenom so even though she’s only 20 the tendency is to say she “finally,” won a tournament—which is a bit unfair.
On the other hand, her parents and handlers made SO many mistakes with her as a teen-ager it is almost surprising that she’s come out on the other end with a chance to still be the star she was supposed to be when she first showed up hitting the golf ball prodigious distances. Her parents pushed her too hard, chased the money—did a lot of things to her that Jennifer Capriati’s parents did to her 20 years ago in tennis—and Wie behaved very badly on a number of occasions.
Now, she’s acted like a grown woman all year on the LPGA Tour and we can only hope there are more good things to come for her because she has the ability to really make an impact on a sport that desperately needs some help. My only concern is that she and her parents and agents now think she’s Annika Sorenstam and start throwing her into men’s tournaments again next year for marketing and PR purposes. Let her dominate the women’s game and THEN after she wins, say, 50 tournaments, think about competing with the men again.
Let’s start with Bill Belichick. His fourth-and-two gamble on his own 28 with a 34-28 lead in Indianapolis and a little more than two minutes to go was a mistake. You want to know why? Because it didn’t work. If Tom Brady throws the ball to Wes Welker—who on the replay looked to me to have some space at the 33 yard line or if Kevin Faulk is given forward progress to just outside the 30, which is where his feet were when he was hit, then Belichick made a gutsy, smart move by keeping the ball out of Peyton Manning’s hands in the last two minutes.
That didn’t happen though and the Colts easily drove 29 yards to win the game 35-34. There are some criticizing Belichick for the simple reason that the play didn’t work. I think that’s fair. There are some defending him on the grounds that he and his former mentor Bill Parcells have historically gone for fourth downs that other coaches wouldn’t think about going for. Also fair. There are certainly some people out there who are going to defend Belichick because he’s Belichick and has won three Super Bowls and is probably a couple plays from winning five.
There are also a LOT of people out there reveling in what happened because they don’t like Belichick, don’t like his persona, his secretive nature or, in some cases, can’t stand his success.
As luck would have it—good or bad I’m not sure—I had several meeting in New York yesterday morning and got in the car shortly after 2 o’clock to head home to Washington. As is my habit when in that area, I flipped on WFAN and there was Mike Francesa just about frothing at the mouth. I’ve said this about Francesa before, I will say it again: He hosts a good radio show—though he misses his partner Chris Russo because Russo gave the show much needed levity—and he’s smart. He’s also amazingly arrogant (I’ve never quite figured out who died and made him Edward R. Murrow) an absolute no-it-all who is NEVER wrong and won’t even admit to most of his biases. Even when he conceded that, yes, he’s a lifelong Yankee fan he says it doesn’t color his analysis of baseball at all. Of course it does—biases color all of us who try to analyze anything.
Francesa can’t stand Belichick. For one thing, his best pal in life (at least according to him) is Parcells. Everyone knows Parcells and Belichick had an ugly split after years together when Belichick left the Jets to take over the Patriots. There’s no doubt that Francesa has taken Belichick’s success a lot harder than Parcells has. He can’t stand it. Monday he asked one caller who had the temerity to defend Belichick, “how many Super Bowls has Belichick won without Tom Brady at quarterback?” Here’s a question for you Mikey: how many Super Bowls did your boy Parcells win without Belichick as his defensive coordinator?
It’s a dumb question on any level. How many Super Bowls did Lombardi win without Bart Starr? Who was he supposed to try to win with Zeke Bratkowski? In fact, Belichick won his first AFC championship game with Drew Bledsoe taking over for an injured Brady in Pittsburgh. A year ago The Patriots were 11-5 after Brady went down in the opening game and Matt Cassel came in about as cold off the bench as you possibly can to play quarterback for the entire season.
So, let’s agree on this: you can question what Belichick did on Sunday night but to call into question his coaching resume is either stupid or reeks of jealousy. Since Francesa isn’t stupid, I’ll go with the latter. He was also asked at one point to list the AFC teams he thought might reach the conference championship game. His answer: Colts, Chargers, maybe the Bengals. No mention of the Patriots. So a team he does not consider a serious contender comes one play from beating the best team in the conference on the road and the guy in charge isn’t a pretty good coach?
Francesa even said at one point that, “the result didn’t matter, it was a horrible call no matter what.”
Huh? Now results don’t matter in competition. Wow, that sure takes a lot of pressure off people doesn’t it? John Calipari will be thrilled to know that his failure to call time out to make sure his Memphis players knew they had to foul with a three point lead against Kansas in the national championship game two years ago DIDN’T MATTER even though it cost his team the game. Imagine Grady Little’s delight to learn that even though leaving Pedro Martinez in against the Yankees six years ago cost him his job it also did not matter because the result—Aaron Bleepin’ Boone—really wasn’t the issue.
Let me throw in MY bias here because unlike Francesa I admit to having them: I like Belichick. We share an affection for the Naval Academy—his dad, Steve coached there for 34 years and Belichick still follows Navy’s fortunes closely—and was someone I liked and admired. I think Belichick is not only smart but has a sneaky sense of humor and does genuinely care about his players, even if he rarely shows it. Do I think he’s perfect? No. (who among us is). Video-gate was clearly wrong and there’s no doubt there are times when he goes out of his way to make the media’s life more difficult. I’ll take him over a lot of coaches any day. He doesn’t blame his players for losses and he’s damn good at what he does—period.
Now, more reasonable men than Francesa—like my pal Mike Wilbon—also ripped Belichick, which is fine because it wasn’t personal. Wilbon said none of the great coaches from Lombardi to Shula ever would have gone for the first down in that situation. He could be right, but I’m not so sure. Was Belichick showing a lack of faith in his defense or was he showing a LOT of respect—perhaps even too much—for Peyton Manning? I think it was more about Manning than the defense and people saying that the defense had done a good job most of the night against Manning was irrelevant.
Wilbon said it was arrogant to think the Patriots could pick up the first down. Let’s go down the list of successful people in sports—in life for that matter—who aren’t arrogant about their ability to succeed.
Bottom line: I think Belichick should have punted and thought it at the time. I remember cringing when the offense came back on the field. But you know what? Belichick has won a LOT more football games than I have or ever will.
Okay, I ranted on Belichick and Francesa for so long there’s really no time to give Michelle Wie her proper due for her first win on The LPGA Tour on Sunday. It has been seven years since she first emerged as a 13-year-old phenom so even though she’s only 20 the tendency is to say she “finally,” won a tournament—which is a bit unfair.
On the other hand, her parents and handlers made SO many mistakes with her as a teen-ager it is almost surprising that she’s come out on the other end with a chance to still be the star she was supposed to be when she first showed up hitting the golf ball prodigious distances. Her parents pushed her too hard, chased the money—did a lot of things to her that Jennifer Capriati’s parents did to her 20 years ago in tennis—and Wie behaved very badly on a number of occasions.
Now, she’s acted like a grown woman all year on the LPGA Tour and we can only hope there are more good things to come for her because she has the ability to really make an impact on a sport that desperately needs some help. My only concern is that she and her parents and agents now think she’s Annika Sorenstam and start throwing her into men’s tournaments again next year for marketing and PR purposes. Let her dominate the women’s game and THEN after she wins, say, 50 tournaments, think about competing with the men again.
Comments (10)
Update II - John's Radio Segments (The Sports Reporters, Tony Kornheiser Show AND The Gas Man Show):
Wed, Oct 14 2009 06:10
| Sports Radio, NFL, Rush Limbaugh, PGA Tour, college basketball, Redskins
| Permalink
Today, I made an afternoon appearance on 'The Sports Reporters' with Steve Czaban and Andy Pollin in my regular spot (5:25 ET on Wednesday's). Click the permalink, then the link below, to listen to the segment on various topics including the Redskins QB situation, the Anthony Kim story, Rush Limbaugh and Maryland basketball, where practice starts this weekend.
Click here to listen to Wednesday afternoon's podcast: The Sports Reporters
Thursday morning I made my regular appearance on the newest Tony Kornheiser Show, and today we talked a great deal about Anthony Kim and late nights on the PGA Tour and the situation of the basketball team at Tony's alma mater, the Binghamton Bearcats.
Click here to listen to the radio segment (I'm the 1st guest of this segment): The Tony Kornheiser Show
I make regular appearances on Seattle's The Gas Man Show on Thursday evenings (5:35 PT), and this week we spent a lot of time on sportwriting greats Furman Bisher and the late Shirly Povich, followed by looking back on the week of Limbaugh.
Click here to listen to the radio segment: The Gas Man Show
Click here to listen to Wednesday afternoon's podcast: The Sports Reporters
Thursday morning I made my regular appearance on the newest Tony Kornheiser Show, and today we talked a great deal about Anthony Kim and late nights on the PGA Tour and the situation of the basketball team at Tony's alma mater, the Binghamton Bearcats.
Click here to listen to the radio segment (I'm the 1st guest of this segment): The Tony Kornheiser Show
I make regular appearances on Seattle's The Gas Man Show on Thursday evenings (5:35 PT), and this week we spent a lot of time on sportwriting greats Furman Bisher and the late Shirly Povich, followed by looking back on the week of Limbaugh.
Click here to listen to the radio segment: The Gas Man Show
Comments (3)
Discussing Limbaugh Bid – Not What You’d Expect; Death Knell of New Year’s Day Bowl Tradition
Wed, Oct 14 2009 09:24
| NFL, college football, Rush Limbaugh, Roger Goodell
| Permalink
Since starting this blog almost four months ago I have tried not to veer into the world of politics too often. It isn't because of the people who write the inevitable, "stick to sports," posts or notes or even because I know my politics are way left of a majority of those who follow sports. I have a friend, Slugger White, who is a rules official on The PGA Tour who is as far right as I am left who likes to say, "John, you're so far left you've almost come all the way around to the right."
That said, there is no way to NOT discuss Rush Limbaugh and his bid to become an owner of the St. Louis Rams. To be honest, my feelings on the subject may surprise people. I really don't care if Limbaugh becomes an NFL owner. It isn't as if we're talking about the United States Senate or The Supreme Court--both entities that have some pretty shaky people among their membership that conduct work and make decisions far more important than whether to go to an 18 game schedule.
The NFL may be the most image conscious entity in the U.S. It is at least as powerful as it is image-conscious. Remember, this is the league that bullied ESPN into dropping a fictional show depicting life in the NFL because it didn't like the way players and owners were being portrayed. The fact that the league cared says a lot about the league. The fact that the TV network, which considers itself all knowing and all powerful folded, also says a lot about the league. That's why I used to refer to Paul Tagliabue as "Don Tags," when he was commissioner.
We all know who Limbaugh is and what he stands for. His Donovan McNabb comment six years ago was simply stupid--although it is worth noting that ESPN didn't fire him for saying it, it fired him because of the reaction to him saying it. Little Mark Shapiro, who is now one of Danny Snyder's henchmen (he's the guy who got Six Flags underwater literally and figuratively) in Washington, initially defended Limbaugh.
Limbaugh has said a lot worse things than that, including recently saying he hoped The President of the United States fails at the job. Look, I don't care whether your politics are right or left or in-between, you don't openly root against the President. I certainly didn't root against George W. Bush. I simply disagreed--vehemently--with him. Limbaugh, as proven by the Michael J. Fox episode and others, is a mean, vicious little man.
That doesn't mean he can't own an NFL team. To begin with, even though most won't publicly admit it, a lot of the owners aren't very far from Limbaugh politically--which actually isn't a relevant part of the conversation anyway. If Keith Olbermann wanted to buy an NFL team he would be less than welcome in the owners club but would be no more or less qualified to own a team than Limbaugh.
Roger Goodell isn't the son of a politician (the late U.S. Senator Charles E. Goodell) for nothing. He knows his constituencies. One is the players union. Although the players have no say in who owns a team and most will play for anyone who waves the right amount of money at them (witness Snyder and the Redskins) he also knows he's got a tough contract negotiation on his hands right now and doesn't need another hot-button issue walking into the room. He is also being consistent: he's said from the start that he wants to hold players to a higher standard of behavior than in the past. He needs to do the same for owners, coaches and anyone who works for the league.
In the end though, it will be the owners who will decide whether Limbaugh's group gets the chance to buy the Rams. No doubt many of them are hoping that someone outbids his group so they don't even have to debate it. It takes 24 of 32 votes to approve the purchase of a team and, with Goodell probably quietly lobbying against Limbaugh (image again) it may be tough to get those votes unless the Limbaugh bid simply blows away the competition financially. Owners do have the right to turn down an ownership bid, that's been long established, and the Phoenix Coyotes court case re-established that point recently.
Here's the irony in all this: owning an NFL team would be a bad thing for Limbaugh. Once he's an owner he would have to muzzle himself on a lot of issues that have made him so popular with his base--the far right wing. You can be sure Goodell and the owners would make it clear to him in the vetting process that he would have to "live up to the NFL standards of behavior." That's not something tangible you can wrap your arms around but some of Limbaugh's past comments would certainly fall outside those parameters. One would guess that screaming into a radio microphone that someone who called the President of the United States a liar during a joint session of Congress should NOT apologize for that act would be an example of behavior not approved by the owners. (even though I guarantee some of them would agree with Limbaugh).
There's part of me that would like to see the Limbaugh bid go forward if only because it will be fascinating to see how the NFL handles it. In the end, the owners and Goodell will probably find some way to squirm out of a Limbaugh ownership and when they do you can bet the rants coming from ole Rush will be a hoot because the guy doesn't deal with any sort of rejection very well. In fact, he might be the one person on earth who can walk into an NFL owners meeting and have the biggest ego in the room. That's saying a lot.
The funniest thing in all this was Limbaugh's quote about how it will make people "nuts," to see him work himself into the mainstream and this is one way for him to do it. Actually Rush, none of us really care if you work your way into the mainstream. If you want to share a room with Dan Snyder and Jerry Jones and be told you have to keep your mouth shut be our guest. You deserve to be an NFL owner. And, in many ways, the NFL owners deserve you right back.
--------------------------------------
There's an item in the paper today that I believe officially signals the death knell for college football as a serious New Year's Day tradition. Remember the old days when the four (then five with the Fiesta Bowl) New Year's bowls were the traditional finale of the college football season? Playing on New Year's Day meant something, you had to be GOOD to make a New Year's Day bowl. That's been watered down severely with the BCS moving it's so--called championship game back a week and taking at least one other bowl off the New Year's Day calendar. Now you have The Gator Bowl (which last year included a five loss Clemson team) and The Citrus Bowl and a bowl named for a steakhouse (albeit one that I like) played on New Year's Day.
And now we are going to have The Dallas Bowl played on New Year's Day. This is it, the end for New Year's Day to matter at all except when The Rose Bowl is being played. Follow me here for a minute: The Dallas Bowl is going to be played IN The Cotton Bowl. The reason for that is that, even though The Cotton Bowl was recently renovated those who run The Cotton Bowl game moved it to Jerry Jones's new palace. So, the people who run The Cotton Bowl stadium decided to create a new bowl. It will match mid-level teams from The Big Twelve and Conference-USA. So, you could have a New Year's Day matchup between, say, Colorado with a 6-6 record and Central Florida at 7-5. Oh joy, just we need to start the New Year.
It's bad enough that the NCAA hands out bowl bids to anyone who has a dozen ugly blazers lying around but can't it at least put some kind of limit on what gets on New Year's Day? Can't we have SOME tiny respect for tradition? Apparently not. I guess I'll watch the outdoor hockey game.
That said, there is no way to NOT discuss Rush Limbaugh and his bid to become an owner of the St. Louis Rams. To be honest, my feelings on the subject may surprise people. I really don't care if Limbaugh becomes an NFL owner. It isn't as if we're talking about the United States Senate or The Supreme Court--both entities that have some pretty shaky people among their membership that conduct work and make decisions far more important than whether to go to an 18 game schedule.
The NFL may be the most image conscious entity in the U.S. It is at least as powerful as it is image-conscious. Remember, this is the league that bullied ESPN into dropping a fictional show depicting life in the NFL because it didn't like the way players and owners were being portrayed. The fact that the league cared says a lot about the league. The fact that the TV network, which considers itself all knowing and all powerful folded, also says a lot about the league. That's why I used to refer to Paul Tagliabue as "Don Tags," when he was commissioner.
We all know who Limbaugh is and what he stands for. His Donovan McNabb comment six years ago was simply stupid--although it is worth noting that ESPN didn't fire him for saying it, it fired him because of the reaction to him saying it. Little Mark Shapiro, who is now one of Danny Snyder's henchmen (he's the guy who got Six Flags underwater literally and figuratively) in Washington, initially defended Limbaugh.
Limbaugh has said a lot worse things than that, including recently saying he hoped The President of the United States fails at the job. Look, I don't care whether your politics are right or left or in-between, you don't openly root against the President. I certainly didn't root against George W. Bush. I simply disagreed--vehemently--with him. Limbaugh, as proven by the Michael J. Fox episode and others, is a mean, vicious little man.
That doesn't mean he can't own an NFL team. To begin with, even though most won't publicly admit it, a lot of the owners aren't very far from Limbaugh politically--which actually isn't a relevant part of the conversation anyway. If Keith Olbermann wanted to buy an NFL team he would be less than welcome in the owners club but would be no more or less qualified to own a team than Limbaugh.
Roger Goodell isn't the son of a politician (the late U.S. Senator Charles E. Goodell) for nothing. He knows his constituencies. One is the players union. Although the players have no say in who owns a team and most will play for anyone who waves the right amount of money at them (witness Snyder and the Redskins) he also knows he's got a tough contract negotiation on his hands right now and doesn't need another hot-button issue walking into the room. He is also being consistent: he's said from the start that he wants to hold players to a higher standard of behavior than in the past. He needs to do the same for owners, coaches and anyone who works for the league.
In the end though, it will be the owners who will decide whether Limbaugh's group gets the chance to buy the Rams. No doubt many of them are hoping that someone outbids his group so they don't even have to debate it. It takes 24 of 32 votes to approve the purchase of a team and, with Goodell probably quietly lobbying against Limbaugh (image again) it may be tough to get those votes unless the Limbaugh bid simply blows away the competition financially. Owners do have the right to turn down an ownership bid, that's been long established, and the Phoenix Coyotes court case re-established that point recently.
Here's the irony in all this: owning an NFL team would be a bad thing for Limbaugh. Once he's an owner he would have to muzzle himself on a lot of issues that have made him so popular with his base--the far right wing. You can be sure Goodell and the owners would make it clear to him in the vetting process that he would have to "live up to the NFL standards of behavior." That's not something tangible you can wrap your arms around but some of Limbaugh's past comments would certainly fall outside those parameters. One would guess that screaming into a radio microphone that someone who called the President of the United States a liar during a joint session of Congress should NOT apologize for that act would be an example of behavior not approved by the owners. (even though I guarantee some of them would agree with Limbaugh).
There's part of me that would like to see the Limbaugh bid go forward if only because it will be fascinating to see how the NFL handles it. In the end, the owners and Goodell will probably find some way to squirm out of a Limbaugh ownership and when they do you can bet the rants coming from ole Rush will be a hoot because the guy doesn't deal with any sort of rejection very well. In fact, he might be the one person on earth who can walk into an NFL owners meeting and have the biggest ego in the room. That's saying a lot.
The funniest thing in all this was Limbaugh's quote about how it will make people "nuts," to see him work himself into the mainstream and this is one way for him to do it. Actually Rush, none of us really care if you work your way into the mainstream. If you want to share a room with Dan Snyder and Jerry Jones and be told you have to keep your mouth shut be our guest. You deserve to be an NFL owner. And, in many ways, the NFL owners deserve you right back.
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There's an item in the paper today that I believe officially signals the death knell for college football as a serious New Year's Day tradition. Remember the old days when the four (then five with the Fiesta Bowl) New Year's bowls were the traditional finale of the college football season? Playing on New Year's Day meant something, you had to be GOOD to make a New Year's Day bowl. That's been watered down severely with the BCS moving it's so--called championship game back a week and taking at least one other bowl off the New Year's Day calendar. Now you have The Gator Bowl (which last year included a five loss Clemson team) and The Citrus Bowl and a bowl named for a steakhouse (albeit one that I like) played on New Year's Day.
And now we are going to have The Dallas Bowl played on New Year's Day. This is it, the end for New Year's Day to matter at all except when The Rose Bowl is being played. Follow me here for a minute: The Dallas Bowl is going to be played IN The Cotton Bowl. The reason for that is that, even though The Cotton Bowl was recently renovated those who run The Cotton Bowl game moved it to Jerry Jones's new palace. So, the people who run The Cotton Bowl stadium decided to create a new bowl. It will match mid-level teams from The Big Twelve and Conference-USA. So, you could have a New Year's Day matchup between, say, Colorado with a 6-6 record and Central Florida at 7-5. Oh joy, just we need to start the New Year.
It's bad enough that the NCAA hands out bowl bids to anyone who has a dozen ugly blazers lying around but can't it at least put some kind of limit on what gets on New Year's Day? Can't we have SOME tiny respect for tradition? Apparently not. I guess I'll watch the outdoor hockey game.
Comments (16)
Continued Redskins Mess, Early NFL Season and MLB Playoffs
I write today from a town in which all the sharp objects have been hidden. The Washington Redskins are now 2-3 and in the last four weeks they have played teams that--putting aside two wins over Washington Penn State
That's really enough on the Redskins because outside of this area, very few people could care less about a franchise that has been uniformly mediocre since the Dan Snyder's Reign of Error began 10 years ago. One local columnist, my friend Tom Boswell, suggested today that Snyder sell part of the team to Joe Gibbs to get him to come back as team president but that misses the point. Gibbs was a great coach, a mediocre general manager. He was better than Snyder and henchman Vinny Cerrato but my cat would be an improvement on the two of them. There will probably be a lot of whining today about what appeared to be a bad call on a fumbled punt but two points need to be made: The Redskins still had 9:21 left to produce at least a tying field goal after Carolina went ahead 20-17 and you are talking about an offense that scored on drives of 13 yards and one yard and went into the season knowing it was one injury from complete disaster on the offensive line and now has two injuries, an aging running back (who ducked the media yesterday) and a bingo-caller (seriously) dragged out of retirement by Cerrato without consulting his head coach (!!) as a consultant. Honestly, if I was Jim Zorn I'd punch Cerrato right in the nose. He's getting fired anyway so why not?
One more thing on the NFL before moving on to the really good stuff--the baseball. This season is turning into a nightmare for Commissioner Roger Goodell. Rush Limbaugh wants to buy a team. (Guess who is one of the most influential people in the players union? That would be Donovan McNabb) He's got serious labor problems on the horizon. Beyond that, look at how many truly bad teams there are in the league. Now fewer than four teams--Kansas City Tampa Bay St. Louis Tennessee Oakland Detroit Buffalo Cleveland Carolina
There are, of course, some good stories, most notably Josh McDaniels who people wanted to run out of Denver Minnesota
Okay, let's pause for a moment and give The Presidents Cup all the time it deserves...
That's enough, now the baseball.
Am I the only one shocked that it's already football season in Boston St. Louis Los Angeles St. Louis Holladay may not be in St. Louis Holladay makes the play Thursday, the game is over.
Just as stunning was the end of the Red Sox season on Sunday in Boston
Now the Angels get the Yankees. No one was surprised the Yankees swept the Twins but it was a lot harder than it looked. For all the talk about the vaunted lineup, the Yankees scored one run in the first eight innings of game two and two runs in the first eight innings of game three. The Twins were a base-running mistake and a horrible umpiring call away from winning on Friday in New York
They did--but the Yankees were better-albeit not by that much. What's more let's not get caught up in his, "A-Rod has put his October ghosts behind him," hype. Not yet he hasn't. Sure, he was great against the Twins but go back to 2004. He was great against the Twins then too before collapsing--along with his team--in the last four games against the Red Sox. Let's see if he can do it against the Angels who have given the Yankees fits for years and have had a similar hold on New York
The Phillies middle-of-the-night (in the east) win in frigid Colorado
Let us end today with a final tribute to The Metrodome--one of the weirdest, wackiest, loudest places where baseball has ever been played. No doubt it is great for the Twins to get a new ballpark--although my guess is Opening Day on April 10th may be a bit brisk--but for a place that had a relatively short history, the Metrodome certainly had a lot of remarkable moments. And, while the ending may have been sad for the Twins fans, they should revel in the way the last regular season ended--with that wonderful victory lap their team took after beating the Tigers last Tuesday.
And let's remember one last thing: the full name of the building was the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome. At the very last that's a far more fitting name for a ballpark--especially in Minnesota--than the corporate name that will be on the new stadium. That, however, is the way of the world these days. "The Hump," as it was often called in its early days, will surely be missed.
Comments (7)
October Transition – Baseball, Football, Basketball and Hockey; Follow-Up to a Question Leads to Another
Wed, Sep 30 2009 10:21
| NFL, college football, college basketball, NHL, MLB
| Permalink
If, like me, you are a fan of just about all sports, this is an interesting transitional time of year. For example, today I will make my way to Nationals Park for the final home game of The Washington Nationals miserable season. As terrible as the Nats have been, the fact that Washington has had a baseball team for the last five years--after 33 years without one--makes life here better. There will be a chill in the air for a late afternoon start today and I'll feel a certain sense of melancholy that baseball's regular season is winding down but it will still be good to sit in the ballpark, keep score and look down at a baseball field. Any of us who can still remember the way it felt the first time they walked into a major league stadium--I was six and it was Yankee Stadium--should be able to take pleasure in watching a ballgame--any ballgame--while at the ballpark.
Of course there will still be a final weekend of the regular season and a month of postseason baseball ahead. I enjoy the postseason but the late starts once you get beyond the division series make it tough for me. I'm an early morning guy and I love 7 o'clock baseball games that are over by 10. Postseason not only starts later but takes longer because of added commercials and all the pitching changes. It's fun, but different.
At almost the same moment that 22 of baseball's 30 teams are packing up for the winter and their on-air pitchmen are trying to sell season ticket packages for next spring, hockey is starting its regular season and basketball is starting pre-season training camp. Not to mention that the alleged college basketball experts are making their predictions. (I saw one top 50 ranking this morning in which every team picked below, I don't know, fifth claimed it was getting, "no respect." With all due respect I'm sick and tired of athletes saying they get no respect.).
As I've said before, I really like hockey, especially when I'm in the building and even more so when the playoffs begin. I love the tension of almost every shift. And there are few things in sports better than an overtime playoff game because no one knows when the game is going to suddenly end. It is true sudden death (or victory) because it happens in an instant and often you don't see it coming.
Here in Washington the expectations for the Capitals are huge. The Caps played a great six game series against the Penguins last year but, unfortunately for them, there was a game seven for which they simply failed to show up. Pittsburgh went on to win The Stanley Cup, fulfilling the kind of promise the Caps appear to have with Alexander Ovechkin leading them along with hot young players like Mike Green, Niklas Backstrom and Alexander Semin. Whether they can surpass the Penguins in the east remains to be seen but it should be fun to watch.
As it happens, I am one of about 12 people who still actually cares about the fate of The New York Islanders. The funny thing is of all the boyhood teams I cared about--the Islanders came into existence my senior year in high school and I immediately adopted them because I have always had an affinity for underdogs and expansion teams (often the same thing). I saw 25 of the 39 home games that year as the Islanders went 12-60-6 which at the time was a record for NHL futility. The Caps went 8-67-5 two years later. By then, the Islanders were good and actually came from 3-0 behind in playoff series twice that season--beating the Penguins in game seven; losing to the Flyers (damn that Kate Smith) in game seven.
I probably was hooked forever when I actually got to cover the team while they were winning their four straight Stanley Cups and found them a remarkably likeable group of men. I didn't have that same experience with my other boyhood teams--Mets, Jets, Knicks--which may explain why, as awful as the Islanders have been, I don't have the same affinity for them as for the Islanders. I pretty much gave up on the Knicks when Pat Riley was the coach because I didn't like him or the team's style of play. I'm still (sadly) a Mets fan even though the teams of the 90s were often difficult to root for and I've come back to the Jets this season not because they're 3-0 but because Rex Ryan is a friend dating to my experience writing about the Ravens five years ago.
The long-winded point is this: the end of one season in sports, disappointing as it may have been, always leads to the beginning of another season. Just when the Islanders are ending another lousy season next April (even with Jonathan Tavares they still aren't likely to make the playoffs) baseball will be starting again. The Final Four almost always is played the same weekend Major League Baseball begins. One of my favorite memories in sports is going to Opening Day in Kansas City in April of 1988 and then watching Kansas beat Oklahoma in the national championship game that night.
October is probably our busiest sports month. Postseason baseball; football in full swing; hockey underway and basketball warming up in the wings ready to crank up at almost the same moment--especially these days--that The World Series ends. I would love to make one more trip to Camden Yards this weekend even though it looks as if the Orioles are going to lose 100 games but I have Navy-Air Force on Saturday and my daughter's birthday party on Sunday. Priorities do come into play.
In the meantime, as much as I regret not having made more trips to the ballpark this summer, I'm looking forward to hockey and to college basketball. (Still tough to get me hooked on the NBA, I'll admit it). For now though, a trip to the ballpark this afternoon for an absolutely meaningless baseball game is something I can look forward to with zest. I consider myself extremely lucky that, even at my advanced age, all sports can give me so much pleasure. What's the old saying: a bad day at the ballpark is still better than most days. That's certainly be true for me going all the way back to that first time my mom took me to Yankee Stadium. The Yankees beat the Indians that day, 5-3.
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I've been meaning since last week to respond to a note someone sent asking me if I had "reconsidered," my position on the Duke lacrosse fiasco, referencing a quote in my Wikipedia which says that, "The Duke players were guilty of something."
I do NOT want to re-open the entire Duke lacrosse debate but the mention of Wikipedia did bring up a somewhat sore subject. To begin with, what I said when all was said and done was, "I think those kids were probably guilty of everything BUT rape." What I meant was that, even though the case was handled inexcusably by the prosecutor (who was, correctly, fired and disbarred as a result) the notion that these kids were martyrs of some kind was ridiculous. This was a group of young men behaving badly who had a reputation for behaving badly. There WERE racial epithets directed at the two strippers according to people in the room and the e-mail subsequently sent out by one player (not one of the three accused) about what he'd like to see done to the two women was beyond horrific. Did Duke mishandle the situation from day one? Yes. Were the accusations proven absolutely false? Yes. Was Coach Mike Pressler's firing premature and unfair? Yes--and he received a hefty judgment as a result as did the three players. But the kids weren't Knights in Shining Armor accused of wrongdoing.
What bothered me most about the question being asked--which was a legitimate one to bring up if you read the Wikipedia--is Wikipedia. It is a helpful tool for someone like me looking for simple facts, but it can be quite misleading. If you read mine--and I'm sure this is true in a lot of cases--you'd think the two most significant things in my career were my, "rush to judgment," on Duke lacrosse and the profanity I used four years ago on a Navy broadcast. I know that's the way life works--ask Bill Buckner, who is a borderline Hall of Fame player remembered by most people for one booted ground ball. (And most people STILL think the Red Sox were winning the game at that moment). I get all that. But that doesn't make seeing things written about you that are wrong any less easy to see or to see more written about five seconds in your life than about 25 books. But, as I said, that's the way it works. And Buckner isn't the only other person who can attest to that.
In fact, let's make that a question for today: Name other athletes or coaches who are remembered for one bad moment who had otherwise sterling careers. Mitch Williams also comes to mind right away. Let's come up with some others.
Of course there will still be a final weekend of the regular season and a month of postseason baseball ahead. I enjoy the postseason but the late starts once you get beyond the division series make it tough for me. I'm an early morning guy and I love 7 o'clock baseball games that are over by 10. Postseason not only starts later but takes longer because of added commercials and all the pitching changes. It's fun, but different.
At almost the same moment that 22 of baseball's 30 teams are packing up for the winter and their on-air pitchmen are trying to sell season ticket packages for next spring, hockey is starting its regular season and basketball is starting pre-season training camp. Not to mention that the alleged college basketball experts are making their predictions. (I saw one top 50 ranking this morning in which every team picked below, I don't know, fifth claimed it was getting, "no respect." With all due respect I'm sick and tired of athletes saying they get no respect.).
As I've said before, I really like hockey, especially when I'm in the building and even more so when the playoffs begin. I love the tension of almost every shift. And there are few things in sports better than an overtime playoff game because no one knows when the game is going to suddenly end. It is true sudden death (or victory) because it happens in an instant and often you don't see it coming.
Here in Washington the expectations for the Capitals are huge. The Caps played a great six game series against the Penguins last year but, unfortunately for them, there was a game seven for which they simply failed to show up. Pittsburgh went on to win The Stanley Cup, fulfilling the kind of promise the Caps appear to have with Alexander Ovechkin leading them along with hot young players like Mike Green, Niklas Backstrom and Alexander Semin. Whether they can surpass the Penguins in the east remains to be seen but it should be fun to watch.
As it happens, I am one of about 12 people who still actually cares about the fate of The New York Islanders. The funny thing is of all the boyhood teams I cared about--the Islanders came into existence my senior year in high school and I immediately adopted them because I have always had an affinity for underdogs and expansion teams (often the same thing). I saw 25 of the 39 home games that year as the Islanders went 12-60-6 which at the time was a record for NHL futility. The Caps went 8-67-5 two years later. By then, the Islanders were good and actually came from 3-0 behind in playoff series twice that season--beating the Penguins in game seven; losing to the Flyers (damn that Kate Smith) in game seven.
I probably was hooked forever when I actually got to cover the team while they were winning their four straight Stanley Cups and found them a remarkably likeable group of men. I didn't have that same experience with my other boyhood teams--Mets, Jets, Knicks--which may explain why, as awful as the Islanders have been, I don't have the same affinity for them as for the Islanders. I pretty much gave up on the Knicks when Pat Riley was the coach because I didn't like him or the team's style of play. I'm still (sadly) a Mets fan even though the teams of the 90s were often difficult to root for and I've come back to the Jets this season not because they're 3-0 but because Rex Ryan is a friend dating to my experience writing about the Ravens five years ago.
The long-winded point is this: the end of one season in sports, disappointing as it may have been, always leads to the beginning of another season. Just when the Islanders are ending another lousy season next April (even with Jonathan Tavares they still aren't likely to make the playoffs) baseball will be starting again. The Final Four almost always is played the same weekend Major League Baseball begins. One of my favorite memories in sports is going to Opening Day in Kansas City in April of 1988 and then watching Kansas beat Oklahoma in the national championship game that night.
October is probably our busiest sports month. Postseason baseball; football in full swing; hockey underway and basketball warming up in the wings ready to crank up at almost the same moment--especially these days--that The World Series ends. I would love to make one more trip to Camden Yards this weekend even though it looks as if the Orioles are going to lose 100 games but I have Navy-Air Force on Saturday and my daughter's birthday party on Sunday. Priorities do come into play.
In the meantime, as much as I regret not having made more trips to the ballpark this summer, I'm looking forward to hockey and to college basketball. (Still tough to get me hooked on the NBA, I'll admit it). For now though, a trip to the ballpark this afternoon for an absolutely meaningless baseball game is something I can look forward to with zest. I consider myself extremely lucky that, even at my advanced age, all sports can give me so much pleasure. What's the old saying: a bad day at the ballpark is still better than most days. That's certainly be true for me going all the way back to that first time my mom took me to Yankee Stadium. The Yankees beat the Indians that day, 5-3.
--------------------------------------
I've been meaning since last week to respond to a note someone sent asking me if I had "reconsidered," my position on the Duke lacrosse fiasco, referencing a quote in my Wikipedia which says that, "The Duke players were guilty of something."
I do NOT want to re-open the entire Duke lacrosse debate but the mention of Wikipedia did bring up a somewhat sore subject. To begin with, what I said when all was said and done was, "I think those kids were probably guilty of everything BUT rape." What I meant was that, even though the case was handled inexcusably by the prosecutor (who was, correctly, fired and disbarred as a result) the notion that these kids were martyrs of some kind was ridiculous. This was a group of young men behaving badly who had a reputation for behaving badly. There WERE racial epithets directed at the two strippers according to people in the room and the e-mail subsequently sent out by one player (not one of the three accused) about what he'd like to see done to the two women was beyond horrific. Did Duke mishandle the situation from day one? Yes. Were the accusations proven absolutely false? Yes. Was Coach Mike Pressler's firing premature and unfair? Yes--and he received a hefty judgment as a result as did the three players. But the kids weren't Knights in Shining Armor accused of wrongdoing.
What bothered me most about the question being asked--which was a legitimate one to bring up if you read the Wikipedia--is Wikipedia. It is a helpful tool for someone like me looking for simple facts, but it can be quite misleading. If you read mine--and I'm sure this is true in a lot of cases--you'd think the two most significant things in my career were my, "rush to judgment," on Duke lacrosse and the profanity I used four years ago on a Navy broadcast. I know that's the way life works--ask Bill Buckner, who is a borderline Hall of Fame player remembered by most people for one booted ground ball. (And most people STILL think the Red Sox were winning the game at that moment). I get all that. But that doesn't make seeing things written about you that are wrong any less easy to see or to see more written about five seconds in your life than about 25 books. But, as I said, that's the way it works. And Buckner isn't the only other person who can attest to that.
In fact, let's make that a question for today: Name other athletes or coaches who are remembered for one bad moment who had otherwise sterling careers. Mitch Williams also comes to mind right away. Let's come up with some others.
Comments (10)
Final Event of PGA Tour ‘Playoffs’---And My Suggestion; Yesterday’s Radio Hosting
Tue, Sep 22 2009 09:37
| Sports Radio, NFL, Tim Finchem, Phil Mickelson, PGA Tour, Tiger Woods
| Permalink
One of the notes that came in yesterday about the blog--I try to read the posts every day and e-mail as often as possible--expressed some disappointment that I wasn't, "telling more stories." To be honest, I was a little surprised because I've wondered from time to time these past three months if I should focus more on the news and less on telling stories about my experiences past and present with some of those I've encountered along the road. I would be very curious to hear from more of you whether you prefer more news, more stories or blogs like yesterday where I combined writing about the weekend's news with a couple of anecdotes about my misadventures on the road to and from Pittsburgh.
I am not going to mimick Ken Beatrice, a long time sportstalk host in Boston and Washington who used to always say, "This is YOUR show." This is my blog but if I'm going to keep doing it you readers have to enjoy it. So, needless to say, input is welcomed.
Now, back to our regularly scheduled blog.
I watched some of The Monday Night Football game last night. I missed the finish because I just can't stay up that late and then get up at 7 to start getting my son ready for school. I noticed Tiger Woods on the Colts sideline. One thing that told me was just how important the upcoming Tour Championship in Atlanta this week is to him. I know he knows the golf course (East Lake) well and I'm not saying he won't win--to quote Lefty Driesell, "I may be dumb, but I ain't stupid,"--but if this FedEx Cup thing really mattered to him do you think he'd be standing on a sideline in Miami less than three days before he tees it up? Don't think so.
That's the problem with these so-called 'playoffs,' they concocted on The PGA Tour three years ago, mostly because Woods and Phil Mickelson told Commissioner Tim Finchem they weren't going to show up for the season ending event if it was still played in early November. It's kind of tough for golf to have a "climactic," event without Woods and Mickelson so Finchem managed to get FedEx to put up big money to sponsor the "FedEx Cup," and tried to create drama with the four tournament "playoffs."
There are problems with this that may be unsolvable because golf just doesn't lend itself to this sort of format. For one thing, how big a deal can 'playoffs,' be when 125 players make it? That makes the NBA and NHL playoffs look elite. No knock on Heath Slocum but he gets in at No. 124--his key points coming at a tournament played opposite a World Golf Championship event meaning none of the top guys were in the field--then wins the first playoff event and goes to number FIVE on the list?
If they want to shorten the season, that's fine. But just throwing more money at a bunch of rich guys in order to get them to tee it up a few extra times--during football season--isn't going to generate interest no matter how much you try to hype the thing, and God knows the tour has tried to hype it. My suggestion is this: Let the first three tournaments that are currently, 'playoff,' events be the last three events of the so-called regular season. Inch the points up as little--but not too much--and then send the top 32 guys to East Lake and have them play MATCH play.
The TV folks might have a heart attack at the thought of a Mark Leishman-Retief Goosen final (no offense to either guy) but the fact is their ratings are nowhere right now anyway. And, if some year you did get Tiger-Phil in the final or Tiger-Ernie Els or how about this: Tiger-Y.E. Yang this year in a PGA rematch, you might get a few people to watch. Plus, it would be far more dramatic.
That's my suggestion for the day. Oh, in case you were wondering why Woods was hanging out on the Colts sideline, it's because he's friendly with Peyton Manning. They played together in the pro-am this year in Charlotte. Like a lot of elite athletes, Manning loves to play golf and is a good player. I was the MC for the pro-am draw party for the tournament and ran into Manning before dinner started. I was curious about how things were going during the offseason with Tony Dungy gone and Jim Caldwell taking his place. Manning wanted to talk about golf--tour golf and his own golf. I got a detailed description of his off-season regimen--on the golf course.
Changing subjects...I hosted Jim Rome's radio show yesterday. I've been an occasional guest host for about 10 years now and Jim has always had me on whenever I have a book out. People have asked in the past how I became friends with Jim. It's a pretty simple story. Twenty (or more) years ago a friend of mine named Judy Carlough was running the new all sports station in San Diego. She called and told me she had a young overnight host she thought was talented and he was hoping I'd go on with him and that he could pre-tape before I went to bed so I wouldn't have to stay up half the night to be on.
I was happy to do it--I never could turn Judy down under any circumstances--and then the young host turned out to be very bright and asked very good questions. We hit it off. I became a semi-regular having no idea that Jim would end up not long after with national shows on radio and then TV. I know Jim can be an acquired taste. To be honest I could live without most of the "clone takes," and when I host I tell the call screeners to tell callers I'm looking for questions and discussion, not takes. Every once in a while someone starts in on a take and someone presses a button in LA and they're gone.
I enjoy hosting although I'm pretty sure I wouldn't want to do three hours a day alone in a studio, five days a week. That's work. If I ever did radio on a regular basis I would want someone in studio with me--preferably someone I liked. In the past I've been approached on a number of occasions about hosting a show and the conversation usually goes something like this:
"We've heard you when you've hosted shows in the past and really like what you do."
"Thanks. It's fun, I just wouldn't want it to interfere with my writing because that's what I like to do the most."
"Oh, of course. We could work something around your schedule."
"Great."
Things usually go well until the forbidden subject comes up: money. Most radio programming guys (not to mention my old friends at ESPN) always count on ego to get them past the money issue. As in: you'll have your own radio show (!!) so you don't need to be paid very much. (Or in the case of ESPN, 'you're on ESPN, that should be honor enough for you.'). I have as much ego as anybody but I also am lucky enough to have a very busy writing life for which I'm well paid. I don't NEED my own radio show (or to be on ESPN) although I'd do it under the right circumstances for reasonable money.
So, it always comes down to this. "We couldn't pay you very much--but you wouldn't be doing this for the money."
"Really? Why else would I do it?"
That usually brings negotiations to a screeching halt. One guy at a national radio network (no, NOT ESPN in fact) must have called me a half dozen times to discuss his philosophy of radio. I listened and listened and finally brought up the subject of money. He said he would get back to me, "within a week."
That was exactly a year ago.
Thank God I didn't sit and wait by the phone.
I am not going to mimick Ken Beatrice, a long time sportstalk host in Boston and Washington who used to always say, "This is YOUR show." This is my blog but if I'm going to keep doing it you readers have to enjoy it. So, needless to say, input is welcomed.
Now, back to our regularly scheduled blog.
I watched some of The Monday Night Football game last night. I missed the finish because I just can't stay up that late and then get up at 7 to start getting my son ready for school. I noticed Tiger Woods on the Colts sideline. One thing that told me was just how important the upcoming Tour Championship in Atlanta this week is to him. I know he knows the golf course (East Lake) well and I'm not saying he won't win--to quote Lefty Driesell, "I may be dumb, but I ain't stupid,"--but if this FedEx Cup thing really mattered to him do you think he'd be standing on a sideline in Miami less than three days before he tees it up? Don't think so.
That's the problem with these so-called 'playoffs,' they concocted on The PGA Tour three years ago, mostly because Woods and Phil Mickelson told Commissioner Tim Finchem they weren't going to show up for the season ending event if it was still played in early November. It's kind of tough for golf to have a "climactic," event without Woods and Mickelson so Finchem managed to get FedEx to put up big money to sponsor the "FedEx Cup," and tried to create drama with the four tournament "playoffs."
There are problems with this that may be unsolvable because golf just doesn't lend itself to this sort of format. For one thing, how big a deal can 'playoffs,' be when 125 players make it? That makes the NBA and NHL playoffs look elite. No knock on Heath Slocum but he gets in at No. 124--his key points coming at a tournament played opposite a World Golf Championship event meaning none of the top guys were in the field--then wins the first playoff event and goes to number FIVE on the list?
If they want to shorten the season, that's fine. But just throwing more money at a bunch of rich guys in order to get them to tee it up a few extra times--during football season--isn't going to generate interest no matter how much you try to hype the thing, and God knows the tour has tried to hype it. My suggestion is this: Let the first three tournaments that are currently, 'playoff,' events be the last three events of the so-called regular season. Inch the points up as little--but not too much--and then send the top 32 guys to East Lake and have them play MATCH play.
The TV folks might have a heart attack at the thought of a Mark Leishman-Retief Goosen final (no offense to either guy) but the fact is their ratings are nowhere right now anyway. And, if some year you did get Tiger-Phil in the final or Tiger-Ernie Els or how about this: Tiger-Y.E. Yang this year in a PGA rematch, you might get a few people to watch. Plus, it would be far more dramatic.
That's my suggestion for the day. Oh, in case you were wondering why Woods was hanging out on the Colts sideline, it's because he's friendly with Peyton Manning. They played together in the pro-am this year in Charlotte. Like a lot of elite athletes, Manning loves to play golf and is a good player. I was the MC for the pro-am draw party for the tournament and ran into Manning before dinner started. I was curious about how things were going during the offseason with Tony Dungy gone and Jim Caldwell taking his place. Manning wanted to talk about golf--tour golf and his own golf. I got a detailed description of his off-season regimen--on the golf course.
Changing subjects...I hosted Jim Rome's radio show yesterday. I've been an occasional guest host for about 10 years now and Jim has always had me on whenever I have a book out. People have asked in the past how I became friends with Jim. It's a pretty simple story. Twenty (or more) years ago a friend of mine named Judy Carlough was running the new all sports station in San Diego. She called and told me she had a young overnight host she thought was talented and he was hoping I'd go on with him and that he could pre-tape before I went to bed so I wouldn't have to stay up half the night to be on.
I was happy to do it--I never could turn Judy down under any circumstances--and then the young host turned out to be very bright and asked very good questions. We hit it off. I became a semi-regular having no idea that Jim would end up not long after with national shows on radio and then TV. I know Jim can be an acquired taste. To be honest I could live without most of the "clone takes," and when I host I tell the call screeners to tell callers I'm looking for questions and discussion, not takes. Every once in a while someone starts in on a take and someone presses a button in LA and they're gone.
I enjoy hosting although I'm pretty sure I wouldn't want to do three hours a day alone in a studio, five days a week. That's work. If I ever did radio on a regular basis I would want someone in studio with me--preferably someone I liked. In the past I've been approached on a number of occasions about hosting a show and the conversation usually goes something like this:
"We've heard you when you've hosted shows in the past and really like what you do."
"Thanks. It's fun, I just wouldn't want it to interfere with my writing because that's what I like to do the most."
"Oh, of course. We could work something around your schedule."
"Great."
Things usually go well until the forbidden subject comes up: money. Most radio programming guys (not to mention my old friends at ESPN) always count on ego to get them past the money issue. As in: you'll have your own radio show (!!) so you don't need to be paid very much. (Or in the case of ESPN, 'you're on ESPN, that should be honor enough for you.'). I have as much ego as anybody but I also am lucky enough to have a very busy writing life for which I'm well paid. I don't NEED my own radio show (or to be on ESPN) although I'd do it under the right circumstances for reasonable money.
So, it always comes down to this. "We couldn't pay you very much--but you wouldn't be doing this for the money."
"Really? Why else would I do it?"
That usually brings negotiations to a screeching halt. One guy at a national radio network (no, NOT ESPN in fact) must have called me a half dozen times to discuss his philosophy of radio. I listened and listened and finally brought up the subject of money. He said he would get back to me, "within a week."
That was exactly a year ago.
Thank God I didn't sit and wait by the phone.
Comments (16)
John's Monday Washington Post Article...
Mon, Sep 21 2009 05:18
| NFL, college football, Washington Post, Maryland, Redskins
| Permalink
Here is my column today for The Washington Post ------
To paraphrase the great Keith Jackson, "there's a whole lot of booing going on around here."
Around here would be the Washington metropolitan area. The Redskins, whose fate is considered by most to be only slightly more important than the health care bill, actually won on Sunday and still got booed. It might have been their failure to beat the spread or -- more likely -- it was that the final score was 9-7 against the woeful St. Louis Rams.
The night before in College Park, the Maryland football team heard some serious booing after losing 32-31 to Middle Tennessee on a field goal as time expired. No, that's not Tennessee; it's Middle Tennessee -- a team Maryland lost to a year ago on the road. Terrapins fans no doubt would have left Byrd Stadium in a bad mood -- much like Redskins fans -- even if the final kick had somehow been blocked or sailed wide to allow the Terrapins to escape the way they did a week ago in overtime against James Madison.
Click here for the rest of the story: Area Football Fans Aren't Afraid to Say 'Boo'
To paraphrase the great Keith Jackson, "there's a whole lot of booing going on around here."
Around here would be the Washington metropolitan area. The Redskins, whose fate is considered by most to be only slightly more important than the health care bill, actually won on Sunday and still got booed. It might have been their failure to beat the spread or -- more likely -- it was that the final score was 9-7 against the woeful St. Louis Rams.
The night before in College Park, the Maryland football team heard some serious booing after losing 32-31 to Middle Tennessee on a field goal as time expired. No, that's not Tennessee; it's Middle Tennessee -- a team Maryland lost to a year ago on the road. Terrapins fans no doubt would have left Byrd Stadium in a bad mood -- much like Redskins fans -- even if the final kick had somehow been blocked or sailed wide to allow the Terrapins to escape the way they did a week ago in overtime against James Madison.
Click here for the rest of the story: Area Football Fans Aren't Afraid to Say 'Boo'
Panic Setting in for Some NFL Cities, Jets Not Among Them; Long Trip to Pittsburgh for Navy
The second weekend of the National Football League season is one of my favorites for one reason: it is when panic officially begins to set in for certain teams and cities. To a large degree, this is understandable. When I did my book on The Baltimore Ravens (Next Man Up) five years ago, I remember the mood at the team's training facility the day after a loss in the season opener at Cleveland.
Kevin Byrne, who I think was the franchise's public relations director under Paul Brown (a slight exaggeration I suppose) made an interesting point: "In this league one loss is the equivalent of a ten game losing streak in baseball."
He's right of course: a baseball season is 162 games, an NFL season is 16 games. Even I can do that math. Which means that 0-2 is the equivalent of starting a baseball season 0-20. There are numbers somewhere on the odds of an 0-2 team making the playoffs since the 16 game season began in 1978. It happens, but not very often.
So, here we sit two weeks in and the Tennessee Titans, who were 13-3 last season and the top seed in the AFC are 0-2. They lost in overtime on the road to The Super Bowl champion Steelers and then lost 34-31 Sunday to the Houston Texans, who were looking at some serious panic in their town if they started 0-2 after all the so-called experts were picking them as the "surprise," team during the offseason. How can you be a surprise team if everyone is saying you're going to be a surprise team?
(Let me pause here a minute to ask another question: how can USC repeatedly get trapped by trap games when everyone is saying, 'this is a trap game?' Oregon State last year was a little bit understandable but Washington? Sure, Steve Sarkisian is an ex-USC assistant and he's clearly brought a new attitude to Seattle but they were 0-12 last year. That's not a typo. All credit to the Huskies and it is pretty clear now why Pete Carroll freaked out when Mark Sanchez decided to turn pro but still, how does that keep happening?).
As they say on ESPN, "more on college football later with an exclusive interview in which Charlie Weis reveals why he's such a genius."
Speaking of Mark Sanchez, I'm not sure which statue is being built first in front of the new Meadowlands Stadium, Rex Ryan's or Sanchez's. The Jets are 2-0 and beat the hated Patriots Sunday at home for the first time since Weeb Eubank was coach and Joe Namath was quarterback. (Okay I'm in an exaggerating mood today). Having grown up a Jets fan I know how crazy they go up there when the Jets have any success at all. When the Jets won in Foxboro last year and then against Tennessee to be 8-3 there were actually stories in The New York Times--not the tabloids, The Times--about a Jets-Giants Super Bowl. Didn't quite work out.
Ryan though is the real deal. I got to know him well while doing the Ravens book. He has all of his father (Buddy's) football knowledge and understanding but he also has a terrific, self-deprecating sense of humor and connects with people--especially his players--as well as anyone I've met. Just to keep things interesting, Rex used to weigh in with his lineman every week--he'd usually show up at training camp weighing about 350 and try to work his way down--and there was always some kind of running bet on how much weight he could take off during the season. To say he kept things loose is an understatement.
Back to panic-towns. It seems pretty likely that fans in Cleveland, Tampa Bay, Jacksonville, Kansas City, St Louis and Charlotte are in for long seasons. In Detroit it can't possibly be as long a season as it was a year ago. At least there's a sliver of hope with a new coach and a rookie quarterback. The Lions WILL win this season--how's that for going out on a limb?
The Browns no doubt hired Eric Mangini on the theory that his ex-mentor, Bill Belichick ultimately failed in his first job (with the old Browns) before becoming a Hall of Fame coach in New England. Mangini, like Belichick, had an early playoff team with the Jets, then floundered. He's going to flounder this year but Belichick was, I believe, 5-11 his first year with the Patriots.
In every one of the above-mentioned cities there are quarterback issues. The most baffling one is in Charlotte where Jake Delhomme has all of a sudden become the Steve Blass of quarterbacks, seemingly losing his touch overnight. He was brutal in the playoff loss to the Cardinals, horrific in the opening loss to the Eagles. He was much better Sunday in Atlanta but threw a game-clinching interception late in the fourth quarter. That made 12 in three games.
Maybe he'll bounce back. Maybe Matt Cassel will eventually be the answer in Kansas City. Then again, maybe not.
Here in Washington where I live the Redskins are 1-1 but the town is very much in a state of panic. The Redskins were fortunate to beat the god-awful Rams on Sunday and, even though they marched up and down the field never scored a touchdown. Their offense has one in two games--and that was against the Giants two minute defense when they were down 23-10 in the opener. Naturally the fingers are being pointed at Coach Jim Zorn and at quarterback Jason Campbell. Here's my question: who hired Zorn? Who drafted Campbell and all those wide receivers who haven't done a thing while the offensive line struggles, a year ago? It was, for those of you scoring at home, owner Daniel M. (call me Mr.) Snyder and his trusty henchman Vinny Cerrato. How they continue to duck criticism is mind-boggling.
Best story so far: the revived 49ers under Mike Singletary. I also got to know Singletary doing the Ravens book and I will freely admit I never envisioned him as a head coach. As great a linebacker as he was, he came across almost gentle as an assistant coach. He's was (and is) very devout, often read the bible in his office during down time and came across very quiet. I simply missed the boat. I remember Mike Nolan, who was the defensive coordinator, telling me he thought Singeltary WOULD make a great head coach. "When he talks to the players, you can hear a pin drop in the room," he said. "He doesn't have to raise his voice to get his message across."
Nolan took Singletary with him to San Francisco and Singletary got the job when Nolan got fired. That's the way sports works. Your friend gets fired, you get a chance. Nolan was right about Singletary. I was wrong.
Back to the colleges for a moment. The most stunning score to me on Saturday was Florida State-54, Brigham Young-28. The BYU defense which looked so good against Oklahoma (even before Sam Bradford was hurt) looked helpless. Maybe the ACC DOES have a few good teams: Miami and Virginia Tech (which play Saturday) also appear to be solid. We'll see. The bottom of the league still looks awful: Maryland lost for a second straight year to Middle Tennessee (talk about panic); Virginia is 0-3 and those revived Duke Blue Devils managed to stay within 28 of Kansas on Saturday.
One final note: Two weeks ago I wrote about what a great day I had when Navy went to Ohio State and almost beat the Buckeyes. This past Saturday was completely the opposite. The traffic getting to Pittsburgh (I drove up on Saturday for a 6 o'clock game) was horrible thanks to construction coming off The Pennsylvania Turnpike. That cost me close to an hour. Then there was construction at Heinz Field and, even though I knew exactly how to make a quick turn to get me to the parking lot I needed to get to, the not-so-helpful Pittsburgh police (where are the guys from Ohio when you need them?) not only wouldn't let me make the turn, one guy shouted at me, "get moving now or I'll arrest you."
Thanks for the courtesy. I barely made it inside to go on the air on time. Then the game began with Pitt fumbling the opening kickoff and Navy’s Ram Vela having a clear shot at scooping the ball at 20 yard line and running in four a touchdown. Vela, who may be the country's smallest linebacker at 5-9 and 193 pounds (seriously) couldn't quite pick the ball up. Pitt recovered, drove 89 yards for a touchdown and dominated most of the game. The Mids offense looked as bad as I've seen it since Paul Johnson put in the triple option in 2002. A long night.
On the way back, I was about 30 miles from home at 1 a.m. driving about 70 in a 65. I'm always careful late at night because I know there are cops with nothing better to do waiting to nail people who sneak up to 10 or more miles over the speed limit. Suddenly, a cop came up behind me, lights flashing, siren going. I thought he was going to swing past me but he came right up on my tail. He wanted me.
Surprised--and a little bit angry--I pulled over. He came up and, as I handed him my license and began searching for my registration he asked the usual opening question: "Do you know why I pulled you over?"
If I've learned nothing else in my old age it is that courtesy to a cop is usually key in how he (or she) deals with you. "Officer, I'll be honest, I really don't know," I said.
"You were going 71 in a 55 mile per hour zone," he said.
Oh God, I thought. I had missed the sign where the limit had gone from 65 to 55 going into Frederick and he'd been waiting. I apologized profusely, said I had missed the sign. In the meantime I was still trying to find my registration. My glove compartment is filled with media credentials, parking passes--you name it--because I know if I keep the stuff there I'm far less likely to lose it. (I am famous for losing credentials. Once I walked into a golf tournament wearing a three year old credential because I hadn't noticed that I pulled the wrong one out of the door. Fortunately, the security guard knew me--yes Tony Kornheiser, he knew who I was!--and it was okay).
The cop finally told me to keep looking while he went back to check my license. No doubt he looked at my plate and called that into the computer. I finally found it and--as instructed--held it out the window for the cop to see. He came back and handed me a warning.
"This is a warning for the speed and for failing to produce your registration in a timely manner," he said.
"For what?" I said, genuinely surprised.
"The law says if you fail to produce your registration in a timely manner you can be ticketed even if you have it," he said. "We're targets out here on the road you know."
I was tempted to say if you didn't pull people over at 1 o'clock in the morning on an empty road for not slowing down in an artificially marked down speed zone, you wouldn't be a target. But he WAS, in fact, cutting me a break so I just said, "I understand."
I must have been smiling because he said, "did I say something funny?"
I shook my head and told him what I was thinking at that moment. "The thought just occurred to me that I was convinced you were going to give me a ticket and that would have been the perfect end to a perfect day," I said. "You messed it up by giving me a break."
This time, he smiled. "I get it," he said. "Have a safe trip home."
I did. But before I did, I put my registration in a spot where I can find it easily in the future.
Kevin Byrne, who I think was the franchise's public relations director under Paul Brown (a slight exaggeration I suppose) made an interesting point: "In this league one loss is the equivalent of a ten game losing streak in baseball."
He's right of course: a baseball season is 162 games, an NFL season is 16 games. Even I can do that math. Which means that 0-2 is the equivalent of starting a baseball season 0-20. There are numbers somewhere on the odds of an 0-2 team making the playoffs since the 16 game season began in 1978. It happens, but not very often.
So, here we sit two weeks in and the Tennessee Titans, who were 13-3 last season and the top seed in the AFC are 0-2. They lost in overtime on the road to The Super Bowl champion Steelers and then lost 34-31 Sunday to the Houston Texans, who were looking at some serious panic in their town if they started 0-2 after all the so-called experts were picking them as the "surprise," team during the offseason. How can you be a surprise team if everyone is saying you're going to be a surprise team?
(Let me pause here a minute to ask another question: how can USC repeatedly get trapped by trap games when everyone is saying, 'this is a trap game?' Oregon State last year was a little bit understandable but Washington? Sure, Steve Sarkisian is an ex-USC assistant and he's clearly brought a new attitude to Seattle but they were 0-12 last year. That's not a typo. All credit to the Huskies and it is pretty clear now why Pete Carroll freaked out when Mark Sanchez decided to turn pro but still, how does that keep happening?).
As they say on ESPN, "more on college football later with an exclusive interview in which Charlie Weis reveals why he's such a genius."
Speaking of Mark Sanchez, I'm not sure which statue is being built first in front of the new Meadowlands Stadium, Rex Ryan's or Sanchez's. The Jets are 2-0 and beat the hated Patriots Sunday at home for the first time since Weeb Eubank was coach and Joe Namath was quarterback. (Okay I'm in an exaggerating mood today). Having grown up a Jets fan I know how crazy they go up there when the Jets have any success at all. When the Jets won in Foxboro last year and then against Tennessee to be 8-3 there were actually stories in The New York Times--not the tabloids, The Times--about a Jets-Giants Super Bowl. Didn't quite work out.
Ryan though is the real deal. I got to know him well while doing the Ravens book. He has all of his father (Buddy's) football knowledge and understanding but he also has a terrific, self-deprecating sense of humor and connects with people--especially his players--as well as anyone I've met. Just to keep things interesting, Rex used to weigh in with his lineman every week--he'd usually show up at training camp weighing about 350 and try to work his way down--and there was always some kind of running bet on how much weight he could take off during the season. To say he kept things loose is an understatement.
Back to panic-towns. It seems pretty likely that fans in Cleveland, Tampa Bay, Jacksonville, Kansas City, St Louis and Charlotte are in for long seasons. In Detroit it can't possibly be as long a season as it was a year ago. At least there's a sliver of hope with a new coach and a rookie quarterback. The Lions WILL win this season--how's that for going out on a limb?
The Browns no doubt hired Eric Mangini on the theory that his ex-mentor, Bill Belichick ultimately failed in his first job (with the old Browns) before becoming a Hall of Fame coach in New England. Mangini, like Belichick, had an early playoff team with the Jets, then floundered. He's going to flounder this year but Belichick was, I believe, 5-11 his first year with the Patriots.
In every one of the above-mentioned cities there are quarterback issues. The most baffling one is in Charlotte where Jake Delhomme has all of a sudden become the Steve Blass of quarterbacks, seemingly losing his touch overnight. He was brutal in the playoff loss to the Cardinals, horrific in the opening loss to the Eagles. He was much better Sunday in Atlanta but threw a game-clinching interception late in the fourth quarter. That made 12 in three games.
Maybe he'll bounce back. Maybe Matt Cassel will eventually be the answer in Kansas City. Then again, maybe not.
Here in Washington where I live the Redskins are 1-1 but the town is very much in a state of panic. The Redskins were fortunate to beat the god-awful Rams on Sunday and, even though they marched up and down the field never scored a touchdown. Their offense has one in two games--and that was against the Giants two minute defense when they were down 23-10 in the opener. Naturally the fingers are being pointed at Coach Jim Zorn and at quarterback Jason Campbell. Here's my question: who hired Zorn? Who drafted Campbell and all those wide receivers who haven't done a thing while the offensive line struggles, a year ago? It was, for those of you scoring at home, owner Daniel M. (call me Mr.) Snyder and his trusty henchman Vinny Cerrato. How they continue to duck criticism is mind-boggling.
Best story so far: the revived 49ers under Mike Singletary. I also got to know Singletary doing the Ravens book and I will freely admit I never envisioned him as a head coach. As great a linebacker as he was, he came across almost gentle as an assistant coach. He's was (and is) very devout, often read the bible in his office during down time and came across very quiet. I simply missed the boat. I remember Mike Nolan, who was the defensive coordinator, telling me he thought Singeltary WOULD make a great head coach. "When he talks to the players, you can hear a pin drop in the room," he said. "He doesn't have to raise his voice to get his message across."
Nolan took Singletary with him to San Francisco and Singletary got the job when Nolan got fired. That's the way sports works. Your friend gets fired, you get a chance. Nolan was right about Singletary. I was wrong.
Back to the colleges for a moment. The most stunning score to me on Saturday was Florida State-54, Brigham Young-28. The BYU defense which looked so good against Oklahoma (even before Sam Bradford was hurt) looked helpless. Maybe the ACC DOES have a few good teams: Miami and Virginia Tech (which play Saturday) also appear to be solid. We'll see. The bottom of the league still looks awful: Maryland lost for a second straight year to Middle Tennessee (talk about panic); Virginia is 0-3 and those revived Duke Blue Devils managed to stay within 28 of Kansas on Saturday.
One final note: Two weeks ago I wrote about what a great day I had when Navy went to Ohio State and almost beat the Buckeyes. This past Saturday was completely the opposite. The traffic getting to Pittsburgh (I drove up on Saturday for a 6 o'clock game) was horrible thanks to construction coming off The Pennsylvania Turnpike. That cost me close to an hour. Then there was construction at Heinz Field and, even though I knew exactly how to make a quick turn to get me to the parking lot I needed to get to, the not-so-helpful Pittsburgh police (where are the guys from Ohio when you need them?) not only wouldn't let me make the turn, one guy shouted at me, "get moving now or I'll arrest you."
Thanks for the courtesy. I barely made it inside to go on the air on time. Then the game began with Pitt fumbling the opening kickoff and Navy’s Ram Vela having a clear shot at scooping the ball at 20 yard line and running in four a touchdown. Vela, who may be the country's smallest linebacker at 5-9 and 193 pounds (seriously) couldn't quite pick the ball up. Pitt recovered, drove 89 yards for a touchdown and dominated most of the game. The Mids offense looked as bad as I've seen it since Paul Johnson put in the triple option in 2002. A long night.
On the way back, I was about 30 miles from home at 1 a.m. driving about 70 in a 65. I'm always careful late at night because I know there are cops with nothing better to do waiting to nail people who sneak up to 10 or more miles over the speed limit. Suddenly, a cop came up behind me, lights flashing, siren going. I thought he was going to swing past me but he came right up on my tail. He wanted me.
Surprised--and a little bit angry--I pulled over. He came up and, as I handed him my license and began searching for my registration he asked the usual opening question: "Do you know why I pulled you over?"
If I've learned nothing else in my old age it is that courtesy to a cop is usually key in how he (or she) deals with you. "Officer, I'll be honest, I really don't know," I said.
"You were going 71 in a 55 mile per hour zone," he said.
Oh God, I thought. I had missed the sign where the limit had gone from 65 to 55 going into Frederick and he'd been waiting. I apologized profusely, said I had missed the sign. In the meantime I was still trying to find my registration. My glove compartment is filled with media credentials, parking passes--you name it--because I know if I keep the stuff there I'm far less likely to lose it. (I am famous for losing credentials. Once I walked into a golf tournament wearing a three year old credential because I hadn't noticed that I pulled the wrong one out of the door. Fortunately, the security guard knew me--yes Tony Kornheiser, he knew who I was!--and it was okay).
The cop finally told me to keep looking while he went back to check my license. No doubt he looked at my plate and called that into the computer. I finally found it and--as instructed--held it out the window for the cop to see. He came back and handed me a warning.
"This is a warning for the speed and for failing to produce your registration in a timely manner," he said.
"For what?" I said, genuinely surprised.
"The law says if you fail to produce your registration in a timely manner you can be ticketed even if you have it," he said. "We're targets out here on the road you know."
I was tempted to say if you didn't pull people over at 1 o'clock in the morning on an empty road for not slowing down in an artificially marked down speed zone, you wouldn't be a target. But he WAS, in fact, cutting me a break so I just said, "I understand."
I must have been smiling because he said, "did I say something funny?"
I shook my head and told him what I was thinking at that moment. "The thought just occurred to me that I was convinced you were going to give me a ticket and that would have been the perfect end to a perfect day," I said. "You messed it up by giving me a break."
This time, he smiled. "I get it," he said. "Have a safe trip home."
I did. But before I did, I put my registration in a spot where I can find it easily in the future.
Comments (6)
Inner Workings of the Redskins; Roundup for the Week – Best College Football Traditions
Fri, Sep 4 2009 08:35
| NFL, college football, Washington Post, Dan Snyder, Washington Redskins
| Permalink
I really don’t want to write about The Washington Redskins this morning. For one thing, I’m pretty sure people around the country really don’t care very much about the team except in those weeks when the Redskins are playing their local team.
In Dallas, they care about the Redskins twice a year even though here in Washington when the Cowboys are next on the schedule everyone starts talking about Dallas Week as if it is the football equivalent of Thanksgiving or Christmas.
That mentality is symptomatic of the obsession with the team here. All cities are NFL-centric these days but, having traveled to a lot of NFL cities, I can tell you none are quite like Washington. I know I’ve told this story before but it bears repeating because it is so symbolic. When I first started working at The Washington Post, the NFL draft was still held mid-week and wasn’t on TV. (Yes, I am THAT old).
On the day of the draft in 1978, the great Ben Bradlee, then the executive editor (he was played by Jason Robards in ‘All The President’s Men,’ if you’re scoring at home) came striding back to the sports section shouting at sports editor George Solomon, “hey George, who’d we get?”
I had only been at The Post for nine months at that point but had already been indoctrinated into the all-that-matters-is-the-Redskins mentality and was already pretty sick of it. So, I couldn’t resist.
“Gee Ben,” I said, “I didn’t realize The Post had a pick in the NFL draft.”
Without missing a beat, Bradlee whirled on me, pointed his finger and said without a hint of a smile, “listen Feinstein, you don’t like the ------ Redskins you can get the ------ out of town. You got that?”
Given the look on his face, my response was swift and to the point: “Yes-sir.”
In those days of course, Bradlee sat in the owners’ box every Sunday with then-team President Edward Bennett Williams, who was also The Post’s lawyers. There’s no need to even get into any possible conflict of interest issues because they didn’t matter: The Post was like the rest of the media in town. As the late Jerry Claiborne, then Maryland’s football coach once said to me, “Every time I pick up your paper it’s nothing but Redskins, Redskins, Redskins.”
Believe me, I felt his pain. And his frustration.
Amazingly, if anything, it has somehow gotten worse over the years. The Post now has three reporters assigned pretty much full time to the Redskins. There’s a god-awful show that runs on local TV here every night ALL year called, “Redskins Nation,” for which the script must be written by the team’s PR department. I think Dan Snyder was awarded The Nobel Peace Prize on the show one night. It is the highest rated show on Comcast Sports Net.
All of that said, a lot of people in this town have gotten pretty tired of Dan Snyder’s act. He’s owned the team for 10 years and, like any owner, would be forgiven pretty much anything if the team was winning. But after being a truly great franchise from 1982 to 1992, the Redskins have won two playoff games since Snyder bought the team. Every year he spends huge money on free agents because he loves having his picture taken with them and bragging about how rich he is to other owners and then, because all the team’s cap money is spent on a half-dozen players, the Redskins usually fold somewhere along the way when the inevitable injuries that hit every team hit them because they have no depth. Hearing Joe Gibbs talk about injuries during his four year return as coach almost moved people to tears. The Redskins, it appeared, were the only NFL team that EVER had an injured player.
While Snyder has spent big money on big names, he has done everything in his power to make every possible dollar. Some call this good business; others call this ripping off a public that adores the team. He’s jammed more seats—many of them obstructed—into the stadium, upped prices every chance he gets, charged outrageous ($35) prices for parking and tried a few years ago to more or less blackmail club seat holders into renewing with years left on their contract at twice the price by threatening to raise prices even more if one didn’t renew instantly. A lot of people—I was one of them—didn’t take him up on it.
At the same time that Snyder was paying $107 million for Albert Haynesworth this winter, he was laying off office employees. Again, fans will forgive that if Haynesworth produces and the Redskins win. Winning will get you forgiven for just about anything.
But now Snyder may have crossed a line that there’s no coming back from. The Washington Post reported this week in a two part series that employees in the Redskins ticket office even with a waiting list that the Redskins claim has 160,000 people on it, bypassed that list for at least two years to sell tickets to brokers—who then re-sell them at profit. The brokers got the tickets, the Redskins got the brokers to buy some of those club seats they can’t sell (I’ve received several letters since dropping mine offering me the ‘opportunity,’ to buy back in at a ‘bargain,’ price).
A nice deal for the Redskins, a nice deal for the brokers. Those on the waiting list, well, too bad. The Redskins claim they learned of this last spring and stopped it. My guess is they got scared they were going to get outed. None of the employees involved have been fired, merely, ‘discipline,’ according to the team.
Apologists for Snyder—one of whom is a friend of mine who is a famous TV star—say that the season ticket waiting list isn’t nearly as large as the Redskins claim and that not that many people were affected. Really? What if the list only has 16,000 people on it—one-tenth of the team’s claim. All those request probably could have been filled if they hadn’t been bypassed to sell a few club seats. My same friend says Snyder is in “private business,” which apparently means he can do whatever he wants—including suing season ticket holders who, in this economy have been unable to pay for their club seats. Instead of just taking back the tickets, they’ve gone to court to sue these people—who it is probably fair to assume were loyal fans when they bought the tickets hoping to see the team play.
A professional sports team is NOT a private business in a moral sense. There is a public trust you take on when you put the name of a city on the uniforms worn by your most important employees. It is the public’s interest in your team—buying tickets, helping jack up TV and radio rights, buying licensed gear—that makes you money. Snyder had a profit on the Redskins (not so much on his other businesses) last year of $90 million. He owes the public something other than bypassing waiting lists, law suits, outrageous prices and remarkable arrogance n return.
My same friend, let’s call him TK, insists the Redskins will win 12 games this season. If he’s right, a lot of people will calm down because that’s what winning does. If he’s wrong and it’s another 8-8 year filled with excuse-making, a lot more people are going to be angry with Snyder and his henchmen. Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.
****
A couple of quick notes based on some comments this week. Someone asked about college football traditions I enjoy other than Army-Navy. A few come to mind quickly: The dotting of the I at Ohio State which I’ll get to see on Saturday; anytime they play the fight song at Notre Dame; the Clemson players being bussed to the opposite end of the stadium so they can run past ‘Howard’s Rock,’ down the hill into Death Valley; the Williams players going into town for their postgame haircuts after the Amherst game and Traveler, the white Trojan horse being ridden around the stadium whenever USC scores a touchdown while the fight song plays. When I was a junior at Duke, the opener was at USC and Ricky Bell ran wild and the final score was, I believe, 35-7. Afterwards Duke Coach Mike McGee was asked if he saw any weaknesses in Southern Cal: “Yeah,” he said, “that horse was looking a little winded in the fourth quarter.”
Would love to hear others that people enjoy and have witnessed through the years.
Finally: There are always going to be people who object when I inject politics into the blog. Sorry. Politics are part of sports at times and vice-versa and I have opinions—just like all of you---on political topics. We can disagree, heck Chris Wallace is a good friend and we NEVER agree as was Bob Novak, but let’s not pretend the issues don’t exist. For example: President Obama is right: there should be a football playoff. Just about all of us can agree on that.
In Dallas, they care about the Redskins twice a year even though here in Washington when the Cowboys are next on the schedule everyone starts talking about Dallas Week as if it is the football equivalent of Thanksgiving or Christmas.
That mentality is symptomatic of the obsession with the team here. All cities are NFL-centric these days but, having traveled to a lot of NFL cities, I can tell you none are quite like Washington. I know I’ve told this story before but it bears repeating because it is so symbolic. When I first started working at The Washington Post, the NFL draft was still held mid-week and wasn’t on TV. (Yes, I am THAT old).
On the day of the draft in 1978, the great Ben Bradlee, then the executive editor (he was played by Jason Robards in ‘All The President’s Men,’ if you’re scoring at home) came striding back to the sports section shouting at sports editor George Solomon, “hey George, who’d we get?”
I had only been at The Post for nine months at that point but had already been indoctrinated into the all-that-matters-is-the-Redskins mentality and was already pretty sick of it. So, I couldn’t resist.
“Gee Ben,” I said, “I didn’t realize The Post had a pick in the NFL draft.”
Without missing a beat, Bradlee whirled on me, pointed his finger and said without a hint of a smile, “listen Feinstein, you don’t like the ------ Redskins you can get the ------ out of town. You got that?”
Given the look on his face, my response was swift and to the point: “Yes-sir.”
In those days of course, Bradlee sat in the owners’ box every Sunday with then-team President Edward Bennett Williams, who was also The Post’s lawyers. There’s no need to even get into any possible conflict of interest issues because they didn’t matter: The Post was like the rest of the media in town. As the late Jerry Claiborne, then Maryland’s football coach once said to me, “Every time I pick up your paper it’s nothing but Redskins, Redskins, Redskins.”
Believe me, I felt his pain. And his frustration.
Amazingly, if anything, it has somehow gotten worse over the years. The Post now has three reporters assigned pretty much full time to the Redskins. There’s a god-awful show that runs on local TV here every night ALL year called, “Redskins Nation,” for which the script must be written by the team’s PR department. I think Dan Snyder was awarded The Nobel Peace Prize on the show one night. It is the highest rated show on Comcast Sports Net.
All of that said, a lot of people in this town have gotten pretty tired of Dan Snyder’s act. He’s owned the team for 10 years and, like any owner, would be forgiven pretty much anything if the team was winning. But after being a truly great franchise from 1982 to 1992, the Redskins have won two playoff games since Snyder bought the team. Every year he spends huge money on free agents because he loves having his picture taken with them and bragging about how rich he is to other owners and then, because all the team’s cap money is spent on a half-dozen players, the Redskins usually fold somewhere along the way when the inevitable injuries that hit every team hit them because they have no depth. Hearing Joe Gibbs talk about injuries during his four year return as coach almost moved people to tears. The Redskins, it appeared, were the only NFL team that EVER had an injured player.
While Snyder has spent big money on big names, he has done everything in his power to make every possible dollar. Some call this good business; others call this ripping off a public that adores the team. He’s jammed more seats—many of them obstructed—into the stadium, upped prices every chance he gets, charged outrageous ($35) prices for parking and tried a few years ago to more or less blackmail club seat holders into renewing with years left on their contract at twice the price by threatening to raise prices even more if one didn’t renew instantly. A lot of people—I was one of them—didn’t take him up on it.
At the same time that Snyder was paying $107 million for Albert Haynesworth this winter, he was laying off office employees. Again, fans will forgive that if Haynesworth produces and the Redskins win. Winning will get you forgiven for just about anything.
But now Snyder may have crossed a line that there’s no coming back from. The Washington Post reported this week in a two part series that employees in the Redskins ticket office even with a waiting list that the Redskins claim has 160,000 people on it, bypassed that list for at least two years to sell tickets to brokers—who then re-sell them at profit. The brokers got the tickets, the Redskins got the brokers to buy some of those club seats they can’t sell (I’ve received several letters since dropping mine offering me the ‘opportunity,’ to buy back in at a ‘bargain,’ price).
A nice deal for the Redskins, a nice deal for the brokers. Those on the waiting list, well, too bad. The Redskins claim they learned of this last spring and stopped it. My guess is they got scared they were going to get outed. None of the employees involved have been fired, merely, ‘discipline,’ according to the team.
Apologists for Snyder—one of whom is a friend of mine who is a famous TV star—say that the season ticket waiting list isn’t nearly as large as the Redskins claim and that not that many people were affected. Really? What if the list only has 16,000 people on it—one-tenth of the team’s claim. All those request probably could have been filled if they hadn’t been bypassed to sell a few club seats. My same friend says Snyder is in “private business,” which apparently means he can do whatever he wants—including suing season ticket holders who, in this economy have been unable to pay for their club seats. Instead of just taking back the tickets, they’ve gone to court to sue these people—who it is probably fair to assume were loyal fans when they bought the tickets hoping to see the team play.
A professional sports team is NOT a private business in a moral sense. There is a public trust you take on when you put the name of a city on the uniforms worn by your most important employees. It is the public’s interest in your team—buying tickets, helping jack up TV and radio rights, buying licensed gear—that makes you money. Snyder had a profit on the Redskins (not so much on his other businesses) last year of $90 million. He owes the public something other than bypassing waiting lists, law suits, outrageous prices and remarkable arrogance n return.
My same friend, let’s call him TK, insists the Redskins will win 12 games this season. If he’s right, a lot of people will calm down because that’s what winning does. If he’s wrong and it’s another 8-8 year filled with excuse-making, a lot more people are going to be angry with Snyder and his henchmen. Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.
****
A couple of quick notes based on some comments this week. Someone asked about college football traditions I enjoy other than Army-Navy. A few come to mind quickly: The dotting of the I at Ohio State which I’ll get to see on Saturday; anytime they play the fight song at Notre Dame; the Clemson players being bussed to the opposite end of the stadium so they can run past ‘Howard’s Rock,’ down the hill into Death Valley; the Williams players going into town for their postgame haircuts after the Amherst game and Traveler, the white Trojan horse being ridden around the stadium whenever USC scores a touchdown while the fight song plays. When I was a junior at Duke, the opener was at USC and Ricky Bell ran wild and the final score was, I believe, 35-7. Afterwards Duke Coach Mike McGee was asked if he saw any weaknesses in Southern Cal: “Yeah,” he said, “that horse was looking a little winded in the fourth quarter.”
Would love to hear others that people enjoy and have witnessed through the years.
Finally: There are always going to be people who object when I inject politics into the blog. Sorry. Politics are part of sports at times and vice-versa and I have opinions—just like all of you---on political topics. We can disagree, heck Chris Wallace is a good friend and we NEVER agree as was Bob Novak, but let’s not pretend the issues don’t exist. For example: President Obama is right: there should be a football playoff. Just about all of us can agree on that.
Comments (7)
Crimes of Stupidity – I Have No Problem with Burress Outcome
Fri, Aug 21 2009 10:51
| NFL, Roger Goodell, Dante Stallworth, Plaxico Burress, Tony Kornheiser
| Permalink
So Plaxico Burress is going to jail, probably for at least 20 months.
Not to sound insensitive, but I'm fine with it. When the announcement of his plea bargain was announced yesterday there was a lot of yammering about how unfair it was because the crime he committed--carrying a gun that wasn't registered in New York into a club and then accidentally shooting himself in the leg with it--was one of stupidity, not one of malice.
That's not the issue here. Most crimes of malice carry heavier sentences--as they should--than crimes of stupidity. There are lots of crimes of stupidity. Driving drunk is a crime of stupidity. Doing drugs is a crime of stupidity. Certainly carrying a gun in your pants into a club jam-packed full of people is a crime of stupidity.
One excuse I heard yesterday was that he needed to carry the gun because he's a celebrity. OH PLEASE. Rule #1: If you are going to a place where you don't feel safe without a gun don't go. Rule #2: If you really believe you are such a big celebrity that you can't go anyplace and feel safe, hire bodyguards. The owner of The Washington Redskins, who most people wouldn't look at twice in public, has about eight of them.
Look, I have no disagreement with people who say New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg was grandstanding when he insisted publicly that Burress would be prosecuted to the full extent of the law after the incident last November. Gee, a politician grandstanding--film at 11. But give Bloomberg this: he has been consistent about gun laws in the city. New York has some of the toughest gun laws in the country and people know it. If Burress didn't know it, well, you know the old saying about ignorance of the law.
I think what got people yesterday was that we're used to jocks with a lot of money finding a way to either get off or get off light when they commit a crime. Daunte Stallworth did about 15 minutes in jail for DUI manslaughter in large part because he paid the victim's family millions along with the fact that police reports indicate the victim jumped in front of the car and he stopped right away and turned himself in. But that's the more typical situation: jock does something horrible, hires expensive lawyers who make excuses, raise doubts and run rings around underpaid prosecutors.
Anyone remember the O.J. case? By the end of the trial, Johnny Cochrane and his dream team had people wondering if the prosecutors actually had law degrees. Jayson Williams has never gone to jail. Michael Vick did but that was because he dug himself a hole so deep by lying to anyone and everyone that even a top lawyer like Billy Martin couldn't dig him out.
Burress hired a big-time lawyer and I will bet serious money figured he'd get off with probation. But he had a problem: there just weren't any holes in this case: he was carrying the gun and he shot himself. Those were the facts and there was no getting around them. Plus, the law says if you are convicted by a jury you MUST serve at least three-and-a-half years in jail. Perry Mason couldn't have gotten Burress off which is why he took the plea.
There's no sense comparing the Burress case to the Stallworth case or any other case. Does two years--he'd get out in 20 months with good behavior--seem harsh for an act of stupidity? Perhaps. But let's remember how lucky Burress was: the gunshot could just as easily have hit someone else. You can say---correctly—“well, it didn't”. Right. That's why it's only 20 months and not more.
Commissioner Roger Goodell has apparently told Burress he won't face a further suspension when he returns for the 2011 season--assuming there's no work stoppage because the owners and players can't reach a contract agreement. You might wonder why Burress doesn't get a suspension while Vick did. The answer's simple: Vick lied to Goodell about what his involvement in dog-fighting. That's what his five week suspension is about. Burress didn't like in all likelihood because how could he possibly lie?
My friend Tony Kornheiser started a segment on his radio show a few years ago called, "jocks in the dock." It seemed as if there wasn't a single day when he didn't have a new story to recount about an athlete in trouble. One week it's Michael Phelps driving without a license--talk about stupidity, especially when the whole bong thing was just calming down--the next it Burress being sentenced and then another NFL player being arrested. It is dizzying.
Of course August really is the month when it is tough to find a lot to talk about in sports if someone isn't being arrested. There is The PGA Championship--which lasts four days--and there's baseball but it really doesn't get to be 'must-see' until September. So we're left with all the pre-season football speculation which I find about as interesting as reading a fashion magazine. My old pal Chris Mortensen, who is as good a football reporter as there is, spent something like a month on a bus going from one NFL training camp to another for the four letter network.
This morning, I happened to catch Mort on radio and the host asked him what his most vivid memory was of the bus trip. Mort had two answers: something about eating too much cheese someplace (I'm guessing in Wisconsin) and breaking records for eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in the bus to avoid stopping in restaurants.
That about sums up how exciting it is to be around the NFL in August.
Hey, has Brett Favre retired again yet?
Not to sound insensitive, but I'm fine with it. When the announcement of his plea bargain was announced yesterday there was a lot of yammering about how unfair it was because the crime he committed--carrying a gun that wasn't registered in New York into a club and then accidentally shooting himself in the leg with it--was one of stupidity, not one of malice.
That's not the issue here. Most crimes of malice carry heavier sentences--as they should--than crimes of stupidity. There are lots of crimes of stupidity. Driving drunk is a crime of stupidity. Doing drugs is a crime of stupidity. Certainly carrying a gun in your pants into a club jam-packed full of people is a crime of stupidity.
One excuse I heard yesterday was that he needed to carry the gun because he's a celebrity. OH PLEASE. Rule #1: If you are going to a place where you don't feel safe without a gun don't go. Rule #2: If you really believe you are such a big celebrity that you can't go anyplace and feel safe, hire bodyguards. The owner of The Washington Redskins, who most people wouldn't look at twice in public, has about eight of them.
Look, I have no disagreement with people who say New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg was grandstanding when he insisted publicly that Burress would be prosecuted to the full extent of the law after the incident last November. Gee, a politician grandstanding--film at 11. But give Bloomberg this: he has been consistent about gun laws in the city. New York has some of the toughest gun laws in the country and people know it. If Burress didn't know it, well, you know the old saying about ignorance of the law.
I think what got people yesterday was that we're used to jocks with a lot of money finding a way to either get off or get off light when they commit a crime. Daunte Stallworth did about 15 minutes in jail for DUI manslaughter in large part because he paid the victim's family millions along with the fact that police reports indicate the victim jumped in front of the car and he stopped right away and turned himself in. But that's the more typical situation: jock does something horrible, hires expensive lawyers who make excuses, raise doubts and run rings around underpaid prosecutors.
Anyone remember the O.J. case? By the end of the trial, Johnny Cochrane and his dream team had people wondering if the prosecutors actually had law degrees. Jayson Williams has never gone to jail. Michael Vick did but that was because he dug himself a hole so deep by lying to anyone and everyone that even a top lawyer like Billy Martin couldn't dig him out.
Burress hired a big-time lawyer and I will bet serious money figured he'd get off with probation. But he had a problem: there just weren't any holes in this case: he was carrying the gun and he shot himself. Those were the facts and there was no getting around them. Plus, the law says if you are convicted by a jury you MUST serve at least three-and-a-half years in jail. Perry Mason couldn't have gotten Burress off which is why he took the plea.
There's no sense comparing the Burress case to the Stallworth case or any other case. Does two years--he'd get out in 20 months with good behavior--seem harsh for an act of stupidity? Perhaps. But let's remember how lucky Burress was: the gunshot could just as easily have hit someone else. You can say---correctly—“well, it didn't”. Right. That's why it's only 20 months and not more.
Commissioner Roger Goodell has apparently told Burress he won't face a further suspension when he returns for the 2011 season--assuming there's no work stoppage because the owners and players can't reach a contract agreement. You might wonder why Burress doesn't get a suspension while Vick did. The answer's simple: Vick lied to Goodell about what his involvement in dog-fighting. That's what his five week suspension is about. Burress didn't like in all likelihood because how could he possibly lie?
My friend Tony Kornheiser started a segment on his radio show a few years ago called, "jocks in the dock." It seemed as if there wasn't a single day when he didn't have a new story to recount about an athlete in trouble. One week it's Michael Phelps driving without a license--talk about stupidity, especially when the whole bong thing was just calming down--the next it Burress being sentenced and then another NFL player being arrested. It is dizzying.
Of course August really is the month when it is tough to find a lot to talk about in sports if someone isn't being arrested. There is The PGA Championship--which lasts four days--and there's baseball but it really doesn't get to be 'must-see' until September. So we're left with all the pre-season football speculation which I find about as interesting as reading a fashion magazine. My old pal Chris Mortensen, who is as good a football reporter as there is, spent something like a month on a bus going from one NFL training camp to another for the four letter network.
This morning, I happened to catch Mort on radio and the host asked him what his most vivid memory was of the bus trip. Mort had two answers: something about eating too much cheese someplace (I'm guessing in Wisconsin) and breaking records for eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in the bus to avoid stopping in restaurants.
That about sums up how exciting it is to be around the NFL in August.
Hey, has Brett Favre retired again yet?
Comments (2)
Insight Into Newspaper Writing and Editors, Covering the Redskins and Gibbs; Newspaper Coverage Bias
Thu, Aug 6 2009 01:26
| NFL, Navy, Washington Post, Redskins
| Permalink
I gave up long ago on the idea that it was possible to convince the world that obsessing over the NFL in July and August was nothing but a monumental waste of time. Back when I worked fulltime at The Washington Post, I knew once the Redskins went to training camp—actually once they got CLOSE to going to training camp—getting space for things I covered like tennis, golf, baseball, even college football, was going to be a battle.
The Post’s approach to covering the Redskins was summed up for me many years ago on an early season Tuesday afternoon. I was in the office working on a feature on a Navy quarterback named Alton Grizzard. If you ever wanted someone to be a role model for your kid, it was Grizzard. He was a very good player, but also the absolute poster boy person for a place like Navy. He graduated and became a Navy Seal—there is nothing tougher in the world than being a Seal—and was tragically murdered in December of 1993 by another officer who lost his mind after his girlfriend broke up with him and murdered Grizzard and the girlfriend before turning the gun on himself.
Grizzard—and the extraordinary influence he still has to this day on ex-teammates AND ex-opponents, is a story for another day.
As I was writing, George Solomon, The Post’s long time sports editor walked to my desk and said, “We don’t have anyone at The Park (that’s what everyone called Redskins Park) today, so can you make a couple of calls and see if anything’s cooking?
I was baffled. The team was off on Tuesdays. If there was an injury follow-up to report, we would hear about it from Charlie Taylor (not the wide receiver) who was the team’s extremely efficient public relations director.
“What could possible be cooking?” I asked. “No one’s there.”
“Make some calls,” George said—that was his answer to almost everything—and he walked away.
Annoyed, I called Taylor, who laughed when I told him the reason for the call. “I promise if we cut anyone or make anything remotely approaching news I’ll call you,” he said.
I went back to working on Grizzard.
A little while later, Solomon was back.
“Anything?” he asked.
I told him about my conversation with Taylor. He nodded and went back to his office. Five minutes later, he was back.
“Why don’t you see if Charlie will get you (Joe) Gibbs?”
“What for?” I asked, really fed up now. “So he can tell me the (0-5) Eagles are the best team since the ’67 Packers?”
It should be noted here that the reasons Solomon was bugging ME not someone else with this was two-fold: I had made the mistake of coming into the office (I was having lunch with a friend) to work AND he was planning to try to make me the Redskins beat writer at the end of the season. I vehemently declined, pointing out that he had promised me when I came back to sports that he would never ask me to cover the Redskins as he had done in 1982 when I had left sports to cover politics rather than take the Redskins beat.
I called Taylor again. Fortunately, he was a patient man who understood Solomon (and The Post’s) obsession with his employer. “Give me an hour,” he said.
Sure enough, within an hour, the phone rang and it was Gibbs. I don’t remember the questions I asked but somehow in the conversation I gleaned two unremarkable facts: Mark Rypien would probably sit out practice on Wednesday as a precaution for some minor injury but would not—NOT—be listed on the injury report Thursday and someone whose name I can’t even remember might—MIGHT—return some punts in practice as an experiment.
That was it. Even Gibbs saw the humor in the whole thing. “George giving you a hard time?” he said, laughing.
I walked back to George’s office, told him I’d talked to Gibbs, told him what I’d learned and offered to write, a couple of paragraphs, for what’s called a “short,”—a story of no more than 3 or four inches in length—if he wanted.
“Go ahead,” he said. “Write it.”
I went to get some coffee, mostly so I could amuse my friends in the newsroom with the story. When I returned, George appeared at my desk again.
“You’ve got 20 inches,” he said.
“Twenty inches!” I screamed. “I’d be stretching to write five!"
“Give me twenty,” he said and walked away.
Gagging, I wrote perhaps the most boring 20 inch story in newspaper history. I rewound every injury Rypien had suffered since pee-wee football and gave a complete life history on the maybe punt-returner-to-be. When I finished, I told George Minot, the day editor, “Bury this as far back in the paper as you can…please.”
I’ll bet you can guess the rest: The story was the LEAD on the front of the sports section.
Then I had to fight like hell to get half the space I needed for the Alton Grizzard story.
I thought about all that this morning reading the five stories in The Post on Redskins PRACTICE. It’s 38 days until they play a real game—I know that because there’s a countdown graphic in the paper—and you would think the future of Health Care was at stake during these workouts.
Which reminds me of one more story: A couple years after I left The Post, I was doing some work for The New York Times. Neil Amdur, then the sports editor, asked me to go to The Park one day to write a Redskins feature of some kind (actually I think it was on Rypien who was a sweet, wonderful guy) because the Redskins were playing the Giants that Sunday.
I was standing on the field before practice chatting with Richard Justice, who was then the Redskins beat writer (poor guy) for The Post. As we talked, Gibbs walked up en route to start practice.
“John, I’m really sorry,” he said. “I know you’re here for The Times and we only let the local writers watch practice.”
I laughed and said to Gibbs, ”Joe, I want to thank you.”
He looked puzzled.
“First, you’ve given me an excuse to not watch practice. Second, I’m flattered you would think for a second I have any clue what you’re doing out there.”
That was almost 20 years ago. I can honestly say that nothing’s changed since—EXCEPT that most coaches nowadays are MORE paranoid (if that’s possible) and the obsession with the NFL has actually grown.
Thank God my main connection to the game is still Navy football.
The Post’s approach to covering the Redskins was summed up for me many years ago on an early season Tuesday afternoon. I was in the office working on a feature on a Navy quarterback named Alton Grizzard. If you ever wanted someone to be a role model for your kid, it was Grizzard. He was a very good player, but also the absolute poster boy person for a place like Navy. He graduated and became a Navy Seal—there is nothing tougher in the world than being a Seal—and was tragically murdered in December of 1993 by another officer who lost his mind after his girlfriend broke up with him and murdered Grizzard and the girlfriend before turning the gun on himself.
Grizzard—and the extraordinary influence he still has to this day on ex-teammates AND ex-opponents, is a story for another day.
As I was writing, George Solomon, The Post’s long time sports editor walked to my desk and said, “We don’t have anyone at The Park (that’s what everyone called Redskins Park) today, so can you make a couple of calls and see if anything’s cooking?
I was baffled. The team was off on Tuesdays. If there was an injury follow-up to report, we would hear about it from Charlie Taylor (not the wide receiver) who was the team’s extremely efficient public relations director.
“What could possible be cooking?” I asked. “No one’s there.”
“Make some calls,” George said—that was his answer to almost everything—and he walked away.
Annoyed, I called Taylor, who laughed when I told him the reason for the call. “I promise if we cut anyone or make anything remotely approaching news I’ll call you,” he said.
I went back to working on Grizzard.
A little while later, Solomon was back.
“Anything?” he asked.
I told him about my conversation with Taylor. He nodded and went back to his office. Five minutes later, he was back.
“Why don’t you see if Charlie will get you (Joe) Gibbs?”
“What for?” I asked, really fed up now. “So he can tell me the (0-5) Eagles are the best team since the ’67 Packers?”
It should be noted here that the reasons Solomon was bugging ME not someone else with this was two-fold: I had made the mistake of coming into the office (I was having lunch with a friend) to work AND he was planning to try to make me the Redskins beat writer at the end of the season. I vehemently declined, pointing out that he had promised me when I came back to sports that he would never ask me to cover the Redskins as he had done in 1982 when I had left sports to cover politics rather than take the Redskins beat.
I called Taylor again. Fortunately, he was a patient man who understood Solomon (and The Post’s) obsession with his employer. “Give me an hour,” he said.
Sure enough, within an hour, the phone rang and it was Gibbs. I don’t remember the questions I asked but somehow in the conversation I gleaned two unremarkable facts: Mark Rypien would probably sit out practice on Wednesday as a precaution for some minor injury but would not—NOT—be listed on the injury report Thursday and someone whose name I can’t even remember might—MIGHT—return some punts in practice as an experiment.
That was it. Even Gibbs saw the humor in the whole thing. “George giving you a hard time?” he said, laughing.
I walked back to George’s office, told him I’d talked to Gibbs, told him what I’d learned and offered to write, a couple of paragraphs, for what’s called a “short,”—a story of no more than 3 or four inches in length—if he wanted.
“Go ahead,” he said. “Write it.”
I went to get some coffee, mostly so I could amuse my friends in the newsroom with the story. When I returned, George appeared at my desk again.
“You’ve got 20 inches,” he said.
“Twenty inches!” I screamed. “I’d be stretching to write five!"
“Give me twenty,” he said and walked away.
Gagging, I wrote perhaps the most boring 20 inch story in newspaper history. I rewound every injury Rypien had suffered since pee-wee football and gave a complete life history on the maybe punt-returner-to-be. When I finished, I told George Minot, the day editor, “Bury this as far back in the paper as you can…please.”
I’ll bet you can guess the rest: The story was the LEAD on the front of the sports section.
Then I had to fight like hell to get half the space I needed for the Alton Grizzard story.
I thought about all that this morning reading the five stories in The Post on Redskins PRACTICE. It’s 38 days until they play a real game—I know that because there’s a countdown graphic in the paper—and you would think the future of Health Care was at stake during these workouts.
Which reminds me of one more story: A couple years after I left The Post, I was doing some work for The New York Times. Neil Amdur, then the sports editor, asked me to go to The Park one day to write a Redskins feature of some kind (actually I think it was on Rypien who was a sweet, wonderful guy) because the Redskins were playing the Giants that Sunday.
I was standing on the field before practice chatting with Richard Justice, who was then the Redskins beat writer (poor guy) for The Post. As we talked, Gibbs walked up en route to start practice.
“John, I’m really sorry,” he said. “I know you’re here for The Times and we only let the local writers watch practice.”
I laughed and said to Gibbs, ”Joe, I want to thank you.”
He looked puzzled.
“First, you’ve given me an excuse to not watch practice. Second, I’m flattered you would think for a second I have any clue what you’re doing out there.”
That was almost 20 years ago. I can honestly say that nothing’s changed since—EXCEPT that most coaches nowadays are MORE paranoid (if that’s possible) and the obsession with the NFL has actually grown.
Thank God my main connection to the game is still Navy football.
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ESPN and the Handling of Andrews, Roethlisberger Stories; Reactions Prove Power and Influence
Anyone who has known me for more than five minutes knows how I feel about the executives who run ESPN. Although a number of the people I had the misfortune to deal with when I was still doing “Under the Boards,” (a title I invented and they kept after I left) and “The Sports Reporters,” the general ESPN approach hasn’t changed. I guess it was summed up best in an e-mail a guy named Mark Shapiro sent me a few years ago when I refused to let him blackmail me into doing things for the network I didn’t want to do.
“You just blew up your entire career,” Shapiro wrote.
He’s now working for the lovely and talented Dan Snyder running Six Flags—the theme park you may have read about recently while they were preparing to file for bankruptcy.
That said, there is no doubting the power and influence of ESPN. Most athletes would crawl through mud to be on ESPN as proven by the number of them who appear on the ‘Sportscenter,’ commercials and perhaps even more by how many of them show up for the God-awful ESPY’s show. When someone in sports is looking for a soft landing in the midst of a major controversy, they go looking for ESPN—the most recent example being Alex Rodriguez. That’s why Bob Knight was so angry years ago when Jeremy Schaap dared to ask him real questions in the wake of his firing at Indiana.
This past week has been another example, if we’re being honest, of the power that ESPN wields even though the two incidents that made news were embarrassing to the network in entirely different ways.
The first story was the Erin Andrews affair. Clearly, Andrews was a victim of some crazy sleaze-ball who made a video of her while she was in her hotel room in, I believe, Omaha for the College World Series. The video made the rounds for awhile and The New York Post (surprise) made it into front page news.
What’s crazy about this—seriously—is who really cares about Erin Andrews? No offense, but to me she’s just another blonde sideline reporter who asks questions like, “Coach what does your team have to do to come back in the second half?” She’s good-looking, but a lot of them are good-looking. Think about this: Has an Erin Andrews interview ever made news? Not that I can remember.
I’m not saying this to put her down. She’s fine, perfectly competent doing a job I don’t think should exist. But the hysteria over this video is remarkable. You would think it was Princess Diana while she was still alive or Michelle Obama that had been photographed, not a sideline reporter.
Sure, the internet is part of it. Everyone and anyone can be famous now for 15 minutes. For once, I don’t really blame ESPN for its reaction to The Post story, which was to ban guys who work for The New York Post from their airwaves, at least for a while. All the guys involved are solid, legitimate reporters who are completely innocent in all this. But you have to stand up for one of your own and that’s what ESPN is doing. I still work for The Washington Post and if The Post blows a story on The President, I feel embarrassed even if I had nothing to do with it. To this day I feel proud to say Woodward and Bernstein were working for The Post when they broke Watergate. So, you take the good with the bad when you represent a news organization—even one that can, at times, be as sleazy as The New York Post.
The other ESPN controversy surrounded Ben Roethlisberger, who was charged with sexual assault in a civil suit in Nevada. For two days, ESPN didn’t report the story and ordered all its various outlets—other than its station in Pittsburgh—not to report the story.
This reaction proves three things:
--------The one sports entity in this country that still wields more power than ESPN (by far) is the NFL. Given a choice between reporting a story embarrassing an NFL star or not reporting it, ESPN opted (initially) not to report. If it had been a player in ANY other league, the story would have been out there—especially a star player.
--------ESPN’s decision-making is, at times, completely ridiculous. If you allow one of your stations to report the story, how can you ban everyone else from reporting it? It’s like a newspaper saying, “we’ll just run one paragraph,” and hope nobody notices. Either it’s a story or it isn’t a story—period.
--------ESPN’s importance is undeniable. Even The New York Times ran a full blown story this morning on ESPN’s decision to not report the story and then the fact that it reversed itself yesterday.
What is remarkable to me isn’t that ESPN made a questionable decision (at best) on Roethlisberger but that the decision is such big news. Again, part of it is the world we live in, part of it is that ESPN is such an omni-present force in sports. The shame of THAT is they so rarely (The V Foundation being a notable exception) use their power to do anything other than try to make themselves rich and powerful.
There’s so much they could be doing with that power besides telling everyone all the time how powerful they are. But then, what do I know? I blew my career up years ago.
I’ll bet though that I can still get into Six Flags.
Comments (5)
Favre Needs to Stop Talking, Playing ‘Hamlet’; ESPN’s Gone Overboard
Wed, Jul 22 2009 05:01
| NFL, Brett Favre, ESPN
| Permalink
Well, here we go again with Brett Favre.
It’s still a week until training camps open and we’ve all got Favre Fatigue again. Seriously, wouldn’t it be great if there was a complete news blackout regarding Favre and if he shows up for the Minnesota Vikings training camp, great. If not, that’s great too. He certainly doesn’t need to announce his retirement if he doesn’t show up. He’s already done that about 14 times.
Look, as far as I’m concerned, Favre can play another 10 years if that’s what he wants to do and if there’s a team willing to pay him to do so. It’s his career, his body, his life and his legacy. It’s not up to me or you or anyone else to tell Favre or anyone else when to retire.
Unless you’ve been a great athlete—which I certainly haven’t been—I don’t think you can understand how hard it is to walk away. It isn’t just the money, it’s The Life. Mike Mussina said it well once when he talked about how much he would miss having a locker when he retired. “As long as you have a locker in a Major League clubhouse you feel like you’re part of something special,” he said. “It makes you feel special.”
Nolan Ryan talked about feeling invisible when he was on the Disabled List and knowing how much that feeling of not mattering anymore would increase when he couldn’t pitch anymore. Peter Boulware, an All-Pro linebacker for the Baltimore Ravens, asked a simple question: “What else can I do in life where 70,000 people are going to stand up and cheer for me when I do my job?”
The answer, of course, is nothing. Favre’s no different. He’s one of the most revered athletes in history and he loves the way that feels. Who among us wouldn’t?
But here’s my problem with Favre: he needs to stop playing Hamlet. For five years in Green Bay he warbled through offseasons talking about retiring. Then he DID retire only to come back. He went through an embarrassing battle with the Packers, landed in New York and was a big part of the Jets collapse last season. Then he retired AGAIN—and the Jets took him at his word and released him—before turning around about 15 minutes later to say he might want to play in Minnesota.
I mean enough already.
Some of this is the fault of ESPN. I truly believe that ESPN is actually to blame for almost everything that is wrong in our society dating back to the kidnapping of The Lindbergh baby. ESPN is obsessed with everything NFL and everything Favre and wants us to believe it breaks every single story even when it doesn’t. If Favre sends back his steak in a restaurant because it isn’t cooked enough, ESPN is going to report it and give four of its reporters credit for breaking the story.
“Brett Favre tells waitress steak is too rare,” ESPN’s Ed Werder reports. “Favre tells ESPN’s Chris Mortensen that steak was only slightly under-cooked and he asked very politely if it could be put back on for, ‘just a minute or two.’ However, according to ESPN’s John Clayton, Favre said steak was, ‘almost raw.’”
That’s not as far fetched as it might sound. It sounds ridiculous for a reporter to say an athlete should talk less but this is an exception to the rule. Favre needs to stop talking until he gets to training camp. And I swear to God if he comes back and plays this year and then announced his retirement again next winter, the media shouldn’t write or say a word about it until he actually isn’t in uniform on the opening weekend of the 2010 season.
Even then you might want to wait another week to make sure someone doesn’t get a quarterback hurt the first weekend and sign him.
We all know that Favre isn’t even close to being the first athlete to retire and then have second thoughts. I’m still not completely convinced that Sugar Ray Leonard and Michael Jordan aren’t coming back again. Heck, Mark Spitz tried a comeback TWENTY years after Munich.
What’s a little different with Favre is the turnaround. It’s not as if he sat out a season and got, as Jordan once put it, “the itch.” It was a matter of a couple of months in Green Bay, hours—or so it seemed—in New York. It makes you wonder what he was thinking when he made the announcements. You even have to wonder if he made the announcement in New York so he’d be able to sign un-impeded in Minnesota, which is where he wanted to go last summer only to be blocked because the Packers still had him under contract. The Jets graciously released him—in part, I’m convinced because new coach Rex Ryan didn’t want to deal with an, “As The Favre Turns,” scenario during training camp.
My guess is Favre will pronounced himself fit and report to training camp next week. Or, let me put it this way: If he DOES say he’s staying retired, the over-under on when the first reports surface that he’s reconsidering is about 10 days. I might take the under.
Comments (2)
Vick Saga Begins Anew, Pressure Abounds; What is Your Personal Reaction?
Tue, Jul 21 2009 04:58
| NFL, Michael Vick
| Permalink
So now the Michael Vick debate will begin all over again.
This is one of those sports stories—sort of like Brett Favre—that just won’t go away although the circumstances are entirely different. Favre hasn’t done anything criminal, he’s just like a lot of great athletes who can’t bring himself to say goodbye.
Vick’s story, as we all know, is a lot uglier than that. He was heavily involved (including providing the financing) in a dogfighting ring and, when first confronted with the issue by NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, looked him in the eye and lied about it. My sense is that any remorse he feels is for getting caught and being forced to spend time in jail, not for the crime he committed.
The whole question about whether he should be allowed to play again in the NFL is one that I have wrestled with for two years now. There’s no doubt that everyone deserves a second chance in our society. He’s served his jail time and he may be suspended for a while by Goodell before he can even contemplate a comeback. Once he’s done all that, it makes sense that he should be allowed to try to play football again.
If you make that argument to me, I can buy it. But there’s also a part of me that says this: there are certain crimes you commit which disqualify you from returning to certain jobs once your time is served. A child molester isn’t likely to be given a job as a teacher; a murderer probably isn’t going to be hired as a police officer and someone with a felony drug conviction on his record isn’t likely to become an airline pilot.
There are other examples. Vick committed a crime of true cruelty. He wasn’t desperate for money or hooked on drugs, he simply chose to participate in an activity in which dogs were killed and tortured for sport. The question then is whether he should be allowed to return to a job in which he will again be a hero.
That’s what successful professional athletes are after all. They are cheered by thousands in the stadium and treated as heroes everywhere they go if their team is doing well. If Vick signed with a team and began leading them to victories there would be almost no fan of that team who wouldn’t forget everything that he has done. There would be a run on Vick jerseys in sporting goods stores and there would probably be a book and a movie: “Redemption—The Michael Vick Story,” not far behind.
I’m not sure Vick deserves that chance, I’m really not. Should he be allowed to come back and coach someplace, work with young quarterbacks? Sure. Play for millions in front of millions in the NFL? I just don’t know.
Of course what I think is moot. Vick will get another chance to play. Goodell might suspend him for four games eight at most, more likely four—but someone’s going to sign him. He’s only 29 and that’s just approaching middle age for a quarterback. While it may take him a full season to get back into playing shape again, the fact that his body hasn’t taken a football pounding the last two years makes him a younger 29 than he would be if he had played the last two seasons.
Whether he succeeds will depend on a lot of things. He will face a kind of pressure unlike any he has faced in the past. If he doesn’t play well, there will be cries right away to get rid of him because the baggage he will carry will appear even heavier if he isn’t the Michael Vick who seemed to be on his way to the Hall of Fame just a few years ago. He can talk all he wants about not wanting to discuss the past and you can bet at some point his agents will negotiate one of those softball interviews with ESPN that the network has made famous. Maybe he can study under Alex Rodriguez: “I was young and stupid.”
You might want to throw in, “unbelievably cruel and insensitive,” while you’re at it, Mike.
So, if we know Vick is going to play somewhere, sometime, the question then becomes, how do you respond to him when he trots onto the field? My personal reaction will be this: I don’t wish him any harm, but I don’t wish him any success either. I know he’s served his time and if the NFL chooses—as it will—to allow him to play I can’t argue, as I said, with the logic of that.
But I’d really rather not see Vick become a hero again. He deserves the chance to move on with his life. But after what he’s done, especially given that I don’t think he’s sorry about anything other than being caught, I really don’t want to see him succeed in the NFL again.
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