BALTIMORE - It ended exactly as Navy Coach Ken Niumatalolo might have drawn it up - the quarterback sneaking for one final yard as the offensive line surged to help him get there.

There was just one problem as far as Niumatalolo was concerned. The quarterback with the football was Maryland's Jamarr Robinson, not Navy's Ricky Dobbs. It was the unheralded junior making his third college start, not the senior whose name has been mentioned throughout the preseason in the same sentence with the words "Heisman Trophy."

And that was exactly the right ending for this game. Maryland earned its 17-14 victory at M&T Bank Stadium Monday afternoon. Navy earned the defeat.

In a sense, this game was a perfect setup for Maryland. All the Terrapins heard throughout preseason was that their coach's job was on the line, that the bottom had dropped out on Ralph Friedgen during a disastrous 2-10 season a year ago and that incoming athletic director Kevin Anderson's first crucial decision was going to come in November when, the pundits said, he would need to fire Fridgen.

They also heard and read that Dobbs wasn't just a Heisman candidate; he would someday be a candidate for president - of the United States. They were told that Navy was talking about going undefeated and playing in a BCS bowl. Dobbs may well run for president someday but he isn't going to win the Heisman Trophy. And, as of right now, Navy's biggest goal this season is to be 1-1 after Saturday's game against Georgia Southern.

Click here for the rest of the article: Mids don't live up to hype

There is something special about the calendar hitting September. Kids complain about going back to school—although I know there are now lots of places where they start in August—but most are excited about seeing their friends again and talking about their summers.

For someone like me, September is right up there with March as a month I always look forward to on the calendar. It isn’t just that football starts, it is that pre-season football ENDS. Honestly, the number of meaningless games and stories that take place during the summer in the NFL could fill The National Archives. Yesterday on Washington Post Live I swear to God we spent five minutes—which in TV-world is the equivalent of five hours in the real world—talking about Malcolm Kelly.

Malcolm Kelly? Seriously? A guy who has about 12 catches in two NFL seasons and is always hurt? He’s finally been put on injured reserve after grabbing his hamstring AGAIN on Monday after returning to practice for the first time in a month. This morning, in The Washington Post there’s a story on the Redskins lost draft of 2008—the one that was run without adult supervision by Dan Snyder and Vinny Cerrato. There’s even a quote from Cerrato—put out through Snyder’s new flak—claiming Snyder had nothing to do with the decision to draft Kelly. Of course Snyder flew to Oklahoma to watch Kelly work out. That, Cerrato said was, “just for support.”

And Tiger still loves Elin.

I know I digress but why do guys like Snyder insist on hanging on to complete untruths? (Also known as lies). Why not just say, ‘yeah, Vinny and I really blew it in the draft that year. If we end up with two guys panning out we’ll be lucky. That’s why Mike Shanahan’s here now.’

In every NFL city there is talk about irrelevancies like Malcolm Kelly and who will be the third string quarterback or the No. 5 receiver. Once the season begins, that goes away and the games have meaning. College football is different because there are no exhibition games although there are some really BAD games played early in the season—power schools lining up against lower Division 1-A (sorry NCAA, that’s still the term I use) teams or 1-AA schools.

The most intriguing game of this first weekend won’t be played until 8 o’clock Monday night in the stadium formerly named for Jack Kent Cooke. That means the 90,000 or so who go to see Boise State and Virginia Tech can expect to get home well after midnight because a national TV game will take close to three-and-a-half hours to play and then it will take about that long to get out of those god-forsaken parking lots.

Still, it is a game well worth watching. Boise State has been begging for games like this in recent years and, of course, very few power schools will play them. That’s why I get annoyed when I hear people like my pal Tony Kornheiser say things like, “well Boise State couldn’t go undefeated if it played in the Big Ten.”

Really Tony? How do you KNOW that? There certainly isn’t anyone in The Big Ten willing to actually PLAY Boise State. Except for a couple of Pac-10 schools NO ONE will play them home-and-home or even coast-and-coast. You think Virginia Tech is going back out west for a rematch? The only reason Virginia Tech is willing to play the game—besides money—is that it has less to lose than Boise. Why? Because the ACC has become a laughingstock nationally in recent years and a win would help restore some luster. A loss merely confirms what everyone already thinks anyway.

If Boise wins and beats Oregon State and runs the table it should play for the national championship. If the power schools whine about their schedule, like I said, PLAY them. Last year the BCS conspired to make Boise and TCU play one another in the Fiesta Bowl because they were so frightened that both would walk in and beat power schools.

Okay, I’m not going to go on one of my BCS rants today—plenty of time for that later.

What I really want to say is that I’m psyched it is September. I’m looking forward to Monday afternoon (Thank God it isn’t a night game too) when Navy and Maryland play in Baltimore. I’d prefer Saturday—ALL college football games should be played on Saturday; sadly we know that ship has sailed—but that game should be a lot of fun. It is very important for both teams: Maryland is coming off a horrific 2-10 season and needs to rebound to save Ralph Friedgen’s job and Navy has extremely high hopes after going 10-4 and crushing Missouri 35-13 in The Texas Bowl.

I’ll be starting my 14th season doing color on Navy radio, which is hard to believe. As I’ve said before there are few things I enjoy more than my association with Navy. I like calling games involving good kids—and they ARE good kids in spite of occasional transgressions and that one angry Navy professor who has made a cottage industry for himself by ripping his employer in any publication that will accept his work—and I enjoy greatly working with (new dad) Bob Socci, Omar Nelson, Frank Diventi and Pete Van Poppel in the booth.

All that said, this Maryland game makes me very nervous. There’s too much hype around this Navy team: Ricky Dobbs Heisman talk (I love the attention the kid is getting, but please let him play a few downs this season first okay?); talk about an un-defeated season (won’t happen—too many tough road games: Air Force, Wake Forest, East Carolina, not to mention this Maryland game and Notre Dame in the Meadowlands with a real coach in charge. Heck, even Duke has a reasonable team) and people acting like the Maryland game is a semi-walk over.

Please. Maryland has two very good running backs, BCS caliber and BCS-size lineman and defenders and a mobile quarterback. I’ve always though Friedgen could coach and the reasons for the team’s recent failures are based on recruiting not actual coaching. Plus, there is nothing more dangerous than a team that has something to prove and Maryland has a LOT to prove and knows it will be 3-0 (it has two cupcakes after Navy) if it can beat the Mids.

Either way, it will be a fun afternoon. Either way, September is always fun. The weather cools, the football gets better and I actually enjoy September baseball. I’m one of those guys who likes going to late-season games even if they don’t involve contenders. I like seeing who is playing as part of the expanded 40 man rosters and I enjoy the relative calm of a September game with nothing except pride and perhaps the long-term future of teams at stake. The pennant race games—and postseason—are fun for entirely different reasons. Of course most of postseason is played so late that I struggle to stay up and rarely go anymore. If there is an early round afternoon or early evening game near me, I might go.

There’s also some interesting golf the next few weeks, the U.S. Open tennis where there’s bound to be an upset (I think) at some point and another month of being able to swim outdoors. So, if we can just keep the damn hurricanes away, this should be a lot of fun.

I was in my car on Sunday morning en route to my first swim meet since the heart surgery (I was very pleased with my butterfly swims; not so happy with my god-awful freestyle) and I happened to come upon a local golf show here in Washington hosted by Steve Czaban, whose weekday show I appear on once a week.

As luck would have it, Czaban and his co-hosts—local golf pros—were interviewing a guy from The Middle Atlantic PGA about—you guessed it—the ending of The PGA. If I remembered his name I’d used it, but I don’t. The guy was basically blathering The PGA’s company line about how David Price did nothing wrong in not making sure Dustin Johnson knew he was in a bunker on that fateful 18th hole at goofy Whistling Straits nine days ago.

I’m not here to go over that whole mess yet again. I’ve made my position—which is backed up by most professional rules officials—clear and I’ve tried to clear up a lot of the factual inaccuracies that have been bandied about since the incident occurred: that rules officials aren’t supposed to give players warnings about potential rules violations (wrong); that not all groups at the PGA have rules officials walking with them (wrong) and that there was no change in the PGA of America’s approach to those bunkers in 2010 from 2004 (wrong, many were designated waste areas in 2004. That was a mistake repeated by this rules guy on Sunday).

My point here is this: Why is it so hard for people in sports—and in life—to simply say, “I blew it?” I make mistakes all the time. I have a bad habit, because I have a good memory, of not double-checking facts I THINK I know and sometimes I get it wrong. But that’s not really the kind of mistake I’m talking about. You CAN’T argue when you get the facts wrong. If I say Alfonso Soriano hit the home run to put the Yankees up 2-1 in game seven of the 2001 World Series in the ninth inning when he hit it in the eighth inning (as I once did, I would have SWORN it was the ninth) I’m wrong—no ifs ands or buts.

The kind of mistake I’m talking about is the one Price made. Or, on a much broader level the kind Roger Clemens made—not just screaming he’d never used steroids but swearing under oath he’d never used steroids. You see umpires in baseball do it all the time: they blow a call, they KNOW they’ve blown the call and so they overreact when someone argues and toss the guy from the game—making their mistake even worse. Recently I saw an umpire toss Ryan Zimmerman for throwing his bat down after striking out swinging. Zimmerman never looked back so he didn’t ‘show up,’ the umpire but got tossed anyway. Why? Because the ump, apparently reading Zimmerman’s mind, knew Zimmerman was upset about a 3-1 pitch he thought was ball four.

I still remember when I was researching, ‘Living on the Black,’ seeing an umpire named Tony Randazzo miss a call at first base by a full step—a much worse call than the one Jim Joyce made earlier this year to cost Armando Galarraga a perfect game. When Mets manager Willie Randolph came out of the dugout, largely to keep Tom Glavine from getting tossed from the game (Glavine, who might have argued five calls in 23 years) he said to Randazzo, “look Tony, just tell me you missed it and I’ll go back in the dugout.”

Randazzo began screaming at Randolph that he had NOT missed it and ended up ejecting Randolph. The next day, knowing Randazzo would have had the chance to see the replay, I knocked on the door of the umpires room and asked to speak to Randazzo. He wouldn’t even come to the door to talk to me.

That’s the opposite, as we all know, of the approach Joyce took. He saw the tape and instantly said he’d blown it, even went to find Galarraga to apologize. So what happened? Joyce almost became a heroic figure for simply saying, “I got it wrong, I’m sorry.”

Sure it’s tough to look in the mirror and know you’ve screwed up—especially in public—but admitting it is always the best way to go. My worst public mistake, as many if not most people know (God knows I get reminded about it enough) came during a Navy-Duke football game five years ago. The officiating was brutal—so bad that Navy Coach Paul Johnson after WINNING the game chased the officials off the field) and I—inexcusably, regardless of the circumstances, muttered ‘f------ referees,’ after an especially bad call, somehow forgetting I was on the air.

As soon as I realized what I’d done, I pulled myself off the air, found Eric Ruden, who runs the Navy radio network, told him what happened and offered to go on the air and resign. Both Ruden and Navy AD Chet Gladchuk said absolutely not, so I compromised and went back on and apologized. That was not—as Eric and Chet had said—‘the end of it;’—they had to fend off calls from some in the media that week wanting to know why I wasn’t going to be suspended.

“John made a mistake, he offered to resign and then he apologized on the air within minutes of the incident,” Eric told the AP that week. “We don’t need to do anything more.”

For the most part, people said and wrote that I should be given credit for instantly apologizing. To me, it was the only thing to do. Saying the refs were brutal would have just been excuse-making. It didn’t matter. I was un-professional.

How would people have reacted if Clemens had admitted what he’d done and said he was sorry the day after the Mitchell Report came out in 2007? They would have ended up cheering him for being man enough to admit he had behaved badly. Heck, look at how Andy Pettitte and Alex Rodriguez have been treated for ‘confessing.’

In 1993 a freshman Navy kicker named Ryan Bucchianeri missed an 18-yard-field goal in a driving rain at the buzzer that would have won the Army-Navy game. He didn’t hide from the media when the game was over, he stood up and said, ‘I lost the game.’ He refused excuses offered him—wet field, wet ball, rain in his face. He became a national hero to the point where Sports Illustrated did a nine-page story on him the next fall.

On the other hand there’s the newly-single Tiger Woods, who stalled and hid and then refused to take questions when he finally made a public appearance almost three months after he piled his car into a fire hydrant. Everything he’s done this year in public has been part of a strategy to get sponsors back. If you think you’ve seen any genuine remorse or sorrow, you’re just wrong. He’s sorry he got caught and that’s it. The public knows that which is why there might be many who want to see him be a great golfer again but there are few who sympathize with him on any level. If he’d REALLY been sorry and said so and acted that way—rather than blaming everyone else most of the time—people would not have condoned what he did but would have been more forgiving.

The same goes on a totally different level for David Price and The PGA of America. If Price had said when it was all over, “you know hindsight is 20-20 but I wish I’d said something to Dustin—especially given what happened,”—that would have been pretty much the end of it. The mistake would still be there, but Price would be remembered for grace under pressure (like Joyce) after an officiating mistake. Now, as the PGA and guys like the Middle Atlantic PGA guy continue to make mealy-mouthed excuses, the entire PGA looks bad.

From bad can come good. But not until you admit to your mistake.

I was going to write today about Memorial Day weekend—what it is now and what it used to be when I was a kid and you could count on doubleheaders on the holiday.

But I think I need to say something about the ongoing controversy at The Naval Academy that centers on a professor named Bruce Fleming—someone I’ve never met but who I feel I know because I have met academics like him throughout my life.

Let me begin by saying a couple of things. I have been, at least technically, a college professor. I taught journalism—not sports journalism; journalism—at Duke for three years. I think my title was ‘visiting professor.’ I told my students to call me John because (among other reasons) I figured if Ben Bradlee wanted me to call him Ben when I was a 21-year-old intern at The Washington Post, there was no reason for anyone to call me anything other than John.

I enjoyed teaching. I really enjoyed the kids and I’m proud of what many of them have accomplished in journalism since graduating. I stopped teaching for two reasons: After the birth of my first child the extra travel became an issue and the leadership at The Duke School of Communications changed. The guy who took over—honestly I don’t remember his name and don’t know if he is still there—told a student of mine, Beth Krodel, that he wanted to get rid of me because I was influencing too many students to go into journalism instead of advertising.

Gee, I feel bad about that.

I’d like to teach again someday if I can do it locally here in Washington. The closest I came to that was several years ago when Bob Chernak, a vice president at George Washington, asked me if I had any interest in teaching there. I told him I would love to teach at GW: my mom had once been a professor there (music history) and I had taken two summer school courses in journalism there once upon a time since Duke (then as perhaps now for all I know) didn’t offer any journalism classes.

Bob said he would talk to the head of the journalism department and be in touch. Two weeks later he called back. “This is a little embarrassing,” he said. “The head of our journalism department has never heard of you. But she says you can submit a resume if you want.”

Actually I’ve never had a resume since I got hired by The Post right out of college. Plus, if the woman had never heard of me my guess was that my resume if it existed wouldn’t impress her.

There are lots of great teachers at the college level. I certainly encountered many of them as an undergraduate and have met many others through the years. There are also those who think that anyone who is involved in sports in any way is stupid. Every school has them: professors who object to athletes missing a class to play in a game or swim in a meet or do anything jock-related. They resent the attention successful coaches receive. They clamor all the time about academic standards being lowered for athletes.

You know what? They’re right: EVERY school lowers its standards for athletes from Harvard to the lowest-ranked D-3 school you can find. The military academies do it too. The rationale given by the schools is that athletes make the student body more “diverse.” That’s garbage. Athletes with lower grades and SATs are admitted for one reason: they help teams win games.

The question isn’t lowering standards it is HOW MUCH do you lower standards relative to the rest of the student body. To me the test has always been simple: If you start admitting athletes who simply can’t do the work and have no chance to graduate, you’ve gone too far. What’s more, if you bring in too many athletes who get into trouble—whether it’s through cheating or getting arrested or, worst case scenario, committing acts of violence—you have gone too far.

Professor Fleming, who has taught at Navy for 23 years, has been hammering the school publicly (he’s tenured) for years now. His main complaint (although there are others) is this: the school lowers its academic standards for athletes, especially football players, too frequently.

Let me pause to give my disclaimer here: Most people know I’m about to enter my 14th season as color commentator on the Navy radio network. I wrote a book in 1996 called, “A Civil War,” about the uniqueness of the Army-Navy football rivalry and how special the kids who play football at the academies have to be to play Division 1 football and graduate (which almost all of them do) from schools that are as difficult academically and militarily as West Point and Annapolis. I feel the same way, even though I don’t know people there the way I do at Army and Navy, about the Air Force Academy. So, I’m biased.

But the reason I’m biased is the quality of person I’ve met on the football teams at the two schools. Are there bad eggs? Of course. There have been Navy football players caught cheating and I disagreed this past winter with Admiral Jeffrey Fowler (the outgoing superintendent) when he did not follow the recommendation of his commandant, Matt Klunder, in the case of Marcus Curry.

Curry was a sophomore and easily the most talented returning slotback on the football team. He tested positive for marijuana during a periodic drug test that all Midshipmen take. His excuse was that he’d been given a cigar at a party laced with marijuana. (The dog ate my homework). The academy’s policy on all drug use is zero tolerance. Even if one believed Curry’s story, policy said he should be separated (expelled). Fowler let him off the hook.

Everyone connected to the academy knew Curry wasn’t going to be back for his junior year one way or the other (he was later tossed from the football team for an un-related offense and ‘resigned,’ from the academy and has transferred to Texas State) and Fowler just gave critics like Fleming a chance to pile on. In fact, when Fleming was criticized for having his piece—which suggested that all the military academies have become so mediocre they should perhaps be shut down—run in The New York Times a week before graduation, his defense was that he had been “shopping,” the piece since March—right after the Curry incident became public.

Shopping is an appropriate word. Fleming has been shopping his writing as the anti-Navy-establishment guy for years. He’s written at least one book and likes to tell people he has another one coming out.

I don’t think Fleming is anti-football or anti-jock (He uses one player, Craig Schaefer, as proof that he likes football players) or anti-Navy. I think he’s pro-Fleming. He knows he can’t be fired and if anyone at the academy says boo to him he can scream, ‘they’re out to get me because I criticized them.’

There’s nothing wrong with fair criticism. I think there have been times when Navy has pushed athletes along who had to cut too many corners to stay in school. Kyle Eckel’s dismissal from The Navy (he DID graduate) has never really been explained and just recently two more football players who graduated (including another star fullback, Adam Ballard) were thrown out of the Marines for cheating on an officer-training test.

Navy needs to look at all of these cases and figure out where it went wrong and try to do better. Let me say this though: I have met lots of Navy football players through the years. Almost all are exactly the type of person you would want representing your country and defending your country. They’re bright and tough and I would put them up against the football players from anyplace as human beings—forget the wins over Notre Dame.

It’s easy to find a couple of jock failures at any school and harp on them as proof the school is going down the tubes because of the evils of jockdom. If Fleming really wanted to make Navy a better place, I’d respect him for that. Every college in the country has weaknesses and could use some improvement.

I don’t think that’s what Fleming is about. I think he’s about calling attention to himself and making a few bucks while he’s at it. We all try to make money. To do it by publicly attacking the kids who play football at Navy is not—in my mind—an honorable way to go about it.



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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:

I guess I have to start this morning with Duke-North Carolina because it is always a game people talk about and because of my obvious connections to the rivalry that date back more than 30 years to my undergraduate days at Duke.

Let’s put aside last night’s outcome for a minute except to say this: It was a game Duke had to win. Carolina is down this year and when your arch-rival is down—especially when it is usually very good to excellent—you have to take advantage. What’s more, the Tar Heels had won three in a row; five-of-seven and seven-of-ten against Duke. The game was anything but pretty, Duke finally pulling away in the last five minutes to win 64-54 in a matchup that certainly won’t be an instant classic anywhere. The Blue Devils were no doubt glad to get out of Chapel Hill with a road win and now face a very tough game Saturday against what will be a rested Maryland team—the Terrapins taking the day off Wednesday after the latest Washington blizzard postponed their game with Virginia until Monday.

All that said and with my usual admission of an anti-ESPN bias, I really am sick of the way the network acts as if every Duke-Carolina game is the next coming of the U.S.-Soviet hockey game of 1980. ESPN hypes everything it televises but it goes to new levels with Duke-Carolina. A lot of it starts with Dick Vitale, who just can’t help himself. To be fair, if Dick was doing Bucknell-American (which I’ll be doing tonight if I can get out of my driveway) he would think IT was the greatest thing he’d ever seen in his life.

At least his hype is genuine.

And look, Duke-Carolina has been a wonderful rivalry through the years. Carolina has had three of the all-time great coaches work at the school in the last 60 years: Frank McGuire, Dean Smith and Roy Williams. Bill Guthridge never got the credit he deserved going to two Final Fours in three seasons. Matt Doherty was a failure—although he DID recruit the key players on Williams’ first championship team in 2005. Duke has also had three superb coaches: Vic Bubas, who made Duke a national power in the 60s; Bill Foster, who rebuilt the program after it had fallen apart in the 70s and, of course, Mike Krzyzewski who won his 853d game Wednesday—putting him 26 behind Smith and 49 behind his old coach Bob Knight for the all-time record.

There have also been truly great players (interestingly there is not ONE Duke player in the basketball Hall of Fame; Carolina has, I believe, 15) and great games and great moments.

So what did ESPN show prior to the game to prove how great the rivalry is?; fights. Instead of showing Walter Davis’s miracle shot in 1974, it showed Doherty and Chris Collins yelling at one another. Oh please. Instead of showing Gene Banks’ buzzer-beater in 1981 it showed a bloodied Tyler Hansbrough. THIS is what makes a great rivalry: coaches yelling at each other and elbows to the mouth?

I’ve said this before and I will say it again: I think the rivalry has been hyped to the point that fans on both sides act stupid. The Duke students lost their spontaneity and humor years ago. All they want to do is paint their faces and get on TV talking on their cell phones. Carolina people are obsessed with Krzyzewski’s success because they feel it somehow diminishes Smith’s accomplishments—which is completely ludicrous. Nothing can diminish what Dean did—on and off the court.

Last year a friend if mine from Carolina grabbed me in a press room and said, “you’ve got to see the FUNNIEST video ever made.” The video was basically some Carolina kids mocking all white Duke point guards and saying they were gay. Maybe I’m just old. I didn’t think it was even a little bit funny—just dumb to tell you the truth.

Anyone who knows me knows how much I respect Dean and Roy (and Bill Guthridge too, one of the best men I’ve ever met) and Mike. I like all of them a lot and think they’ve all done great work building model programs with (for the most part) good kids who graduate. Of course whenever I say something good about Krzyzewski it is because I’m a Dukie. When I say something good about Roy it is because I’m a traitor.

Gee, I wonder why I don’t like being around the rivalry very much. When HBO asked me to be part of their Duke-Carolina documentary I said no. It was a no-win for me. Unfortunately I thought they leaned on some very bad sources—particularly a couple of people on the Carolina side who claim to be journalists but hate Krzyzewski with a passion that defies reason.

So, like I said, it was a good win for a Duke team that I think is far from special and another tough loss in a down year for Carolina. It didn’t come close to being worthy of the hype. But then few things on ESPN can live up to that sort of hype.

By the way, what exactly is Rivalry Week? Other than Pitt-West Virginia on Friday I can’t find a single real ‘rivalry,’ game other than Duke-Carolina on their schedule. Clemson-Florida State? That’s a big rivalry? Georgetown-Providence? Syracuse-Connecticut MAYBE but they don’t even play home-and-home every year anymore because of the silly Big East schedule. You have to love the way the network marketing geeks just make stuff up and throw it out there. Maybe they can have, “Hype Everything Week.” Oh wait, that’s every week.

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I got a call yesterday from Ryan Bucchianeri. If you read ‘A Civil War,’ you will know the name right away. If you are a football fan, you will know who he is when I remind you. Ryan was a kicker at Navy. He missed an 18-yard field goal as a freshman that would have won The Army-Navy game. The field was soaked, the game was played in a driving rain—there were plenty of excuses available for Ryan after the game.

He took none of them. He just took the blame. “I missed the kick, that’s all there is to it,” he said repeatedly.

For taking responsibility and not making excuses Ryan became something of a national hero. Sports Illustrated did a long piece on him the following fall. Early in the next year’s Army-Navy game he missed another makeable kick. It was the last field goal he ever attempted at Navy.

Many of Ryan’s teammates resented the fact that he was made into a hero—even though he never asked for that status. They thought (correctly) that in accepting blame he had simply done what they are all taught to do: No Excuse Sir is a mantra at both Army and Navy.

I wrote ‘A Civil War,’ during Ryan’s junior season. There was a new coaching staff that basically wanted no part of him. Too many bad memories. He was shunted down to fourth string and got into two games all year—both times to kickoff. He became almost a pariah within The Brigade of Midshipmen and was badly treated—very badly treated—at times. Writing the book, I reported all this. I liked Ryan a lot and appreciated his willingness to talk to me about all that had happened. I thought my version of events was sympathetic to him, which it was meant to be.

Apparently not everyone read the book that way.

Ryan is now running for Congress after a distinguished career in the Navy. He was running in The Democratic Primary in Pennsylvania’s 12th district (that’s in Western Pennsylvania where Ryan grew up) against 19-term incumbent John Murtha. You may know the name: Murtha was well-known for a number of reasons: A marine veteran who served in Vietnam, he came out against the war in Iraq in 2005 after initially voting to support it in 2002. But he also became known as, “The King of Pork,” and was famous for ear-marking bills to give companies whose lobbyists had contributed big money to his campaigns contracts that benefited the companies and, frequently, his district in Pennsylvania. He has been investigated for possible ethics violations more than once.

Ryan’s campaign was a long shot given Murtha’s time in Congress, his contacts and his campaign war chest. On Sunday, Murtha, who was 77, died after complications from gall bladder surgery. Suddenly, Ryan’s campaign isn’t a long shot anymore.

I had seen Ryan in September when he was campaigning outside Heinz Field before the Navy-Pittsburgh game. He still looks 21 even though he’s now 35. The reason for his call was direct: there were people writing and saying that if you read, ‘A Civil War,’ it was apparent that the author (me) didn’t think very much of him.

If so, that was bad writing on my part. I have great respect for Ryan Bucchianeri and it isn’t because he’s a Democrat or that we agree on most issues. He’s just a good PERSON, who has served his country overseas and who I am SURE will work like crazy if he gets to Congress. So, if anyone has any doubts about how I feel about him because of the book, that’s on me. Did his teammates view him as a loner? Yes. A lot of kickers are viewed that way and Ryan took one emotional hit after another and kept coming back.

If you want to know how his teammates REALLY felt about him, I’d read the scene I witnessed in the locker room after the Notre Dame game that year when Andrew Thompson, the team’s defensive captain, told Bucchianeri how much he respected his un-willingness to give up when it seemed everyone at Navy wanted him to give up. Thompson, by the way, is still serving in the marines today and is as tough a guy as I’ve ever met.

So, if you want to know more about Ryan and his campaign, click on: Ryan2010.com. I’m not writing this for any reason except that I like and respect the guy and I feel badly if anyone read ‘A Civil War,’ and didn’t come away knowing that.

If there is one thing I am thankful for as I head into my dotage it is that I am no longer under the control of an editor who can say something like, “I need you at The Super Bowl.”

That happened to me once, back in 1980, when I was happily covering college basketball for The Washington Post and George Solomon announced to me that, since I had done such a good job covering a number of Philadelphia Eagles games during the season, he was sending me to The Super Bowl.

This was the way George did things: he always wanted you to believe that he was doing YOU a favor when he gave you an assignment. All of us knew that and understood it so it wasn’t a big deal. Very early in my tenure at The Post, George walked up to me in the newsroom on a Friday afternoon and handed me a credential for that Sunday’s Redskins game.

“Listen,” he said. “You’re doing a hell of a job covering Maryland, you deserve a treat. Go to the game Sunday, sit with (Paul) Attner (the Redskins beat writer at the time) and (columnist Ken) Denlinger and have a good time.”

I was very happy that George had noticed how hard I was working. I was also exhausted. I had to cover a Maryland game at Pittsburgh the next afternoon and wouldn’t get home until late Saturday. On Sunday, I would have to write what was called, “the follow,” on the Maryland game but that meant a phone call to Coach Jerry Claiborne and maybe an hour writing. The rest of the day was mine.

So, I thanked George for the offer but said I was really looking forward to a quiet day (almost) off.

“You should go,” George said. “It’ll be fun.”

I’d gone to Redskins games before. They weren’t really my idea of fun. In the press box during Maryland games we joked and had fun throughout. The press box at a Redskins game was more like going to church or temple. The only one who ever seemed to crack a joke was Mo Siegel, the long-time Washington Star columnist.

“Maybe another time,” I said finally. “But thanks for thinking of me.”

George’s face went from friendly to all-business in about 2.4 seconds. “Look,” he said. “I need a sidebar.” He stuck the credential out. “You can park in lot 10. Easy walk from there.”

The Super Bowl assignment was pretty much the same deal. I tried—briefly—to tell George I’d really rather cover Ohio State at Virginia (Herb Williams vs. Ralph Sampson) on Super Bowl Sunday but I knew it was a done deal. So, off I went to New Orleans (which wasn’t a bad thing) to spend a week writing stories about how excited the two teams were to be there. In those days The Super Bowl was a smaller event, there was no “radio row,” as there is now and the coverage, while saturated, wasn’t around the clock.

Even so, I was glad to get home and return to college hoops. Nowadays, Super Bowl week has become little more than a corporate bazaar. The flaks walk up and down radio row pitching their products, which come in the form of athletes and coaches. Kurt Warner is pitching milk; Mark Sanchez and DeMarcus Ware are selling a soft drink and Sam Bradford, who isn’t even in the NFL yet, is pumping one of the phone companies. The list is endless. They’ll all go on anytime, anywhere as long as they get to make their corporate pitch.

On Wednesday, I happened to be in the car midday when one of the DC stations had Bradford on. It was clearly a hastily arranged interview because Bradford was somewhere on South Beach and on the phone, not on radio row. Still, the station took him because there’s been talk the Redskins might draft him.

So, one of the hosts asked him about The Big Game. “It’s going to be great,” he revealed exclusively. “It’s going to be exciting.”

Gee Sam, thanks for that.

“Who you picking?” the host asked, trying to keep some kind of conversation going.

“I think I’ll keep that to myself,” he said.

Huh? Did he think he was being asked his position on Health Care or Afghanistan? Does he honestly think anyone is going to remember or care on Monday if he said Saints or Colts? It is amazing how today’s jocks are trained in non-speak. Ask them what day it is and they’ll say, “Can’t really tell you but I’m sure it’s going to be great and you can bet my teammates and I will step up and give 110 percent.”

Bradford, who is part Native American, also refused to answer a question about whether he had any problem with the nickname of the Washington football team. The host, Kevin Sheehan, a really good guy who can go from zero to Redskins in a matter of seconds, took that as a good sign. “He has no problem with the nickname,” he concluded when the interview had mercifully ended.

Actually he had said he didn’t want to express his opinion. The only thing he had an opinion on was the great deal on the phone he was pitching.

You pick up the newspapers and while (thankfully) there’s no one pitching products, you are reading the same stories day after day. Who will make history, Manning or Brees? In Washington, which may be the most parochial alleged big city in America, today’s column was about Saints defensive coordinator Gregg Williams. Why? He was once the Redskins defensive coordinator. There will, of course, be a story on Mark Brunell, now a backup quarterback and holder for the Saints who Joe Gibbs brought to town as the savior a few years back. It didn’t exactly work out.

People ask me if I’m interested in The Super Bowl. “Sure,” I answer. “As soon as the game starts, I’ll be interested. Until then I don’t really need to hear another word or read another word because the chances are I’ve already heard or read all the words before.”

Of course this is exactly what the NFL wants. That’s why they stick the bye week in there even though no one involved in the game—players, coaches, media, fans---has any need for it. It gives the league a full week to be front and center with all of its various pitches and products. People talk about the game and all the hype surrounding it because they feel like they have to talk about it.

I understand that the guys sitting on radio row have a hard time turning down almost anyone with a name who wanders by trying to get his sales pitch on the air. After all, why be in the host city if not to get “names,” on the air. My God though it is numbing.

Someone please call me at 6:30 Sunday night and remind me the game’s starting. Once it is over (four hours later) we can all turn our attention to something important: Selection Sunday will only be five weeks away.

*****

Two comments today on posts from yesterday. First, to the indignant Ray F. defender of all women in athletics: You’re right I DID say that the silly comments made by two women’s basketball coaches were an example of why it is SOMETIMES tough to take women’s sports seriously. I make similar comments about coaches and athletes who talk in jock-speak, about lawyers and agents never caught in a truth and about people in my profession (no doubt including me at times) who take ourselves too seriously.

Your refusal to simply admit what the coaches said was ridiculous is exactly what I’m talking about. A lot of people in women’s athletics take themselves much too seriously. Most women’s sports—tennis, gymnastics and figure skating are notable exceptions—aren’t nearly as popular as the men’s version of those sports. And yet a lot of people act as if they are or should be simply because they say it should be.

A few years ago when I still worked for ESPN I was taping, “Under the Boards,” (my name for the segment by the way, ESPN stole it after I left) at Cole Field House one day shortly after the Maryland women finished practicing. I started my first item with a reference to Massachusetts, calling the Minutemen, “the top basketball team in the country,” (they were ranked number one).

As I finished I noticed Chris Weller, then the women’s basketball coach at Maryland, whispering in the producer’s ear. Then she left.

“What was that about?” I asked.

“She said you should say the top MEN’S team in the country,” the producer said.

I was seriously tempted to shout after Weller: “Really, are there women’s teams out there BETTER than U-Mass?”

Please people, get over yourselves.

I will admit to being a wise guy about it on occasion. Years ago I was walking with my then-wife through Cameron Indoor Stadium on a Sunday afternoon. We were standing at one end of the floor. The women were practicing. A manager raced up and said, “Sir, I’m sorry, this is a closed practice.”

To which I responded: “Oh My God, does that mean I can’t get OUT?”


Second topic: The vitriol back and forth between loyalists of different military branches yesterday. Hey folks, we’re all on the same side, remember? I know there are rivalries and jealousies between branches and academies, but my goodness, let’s not get nuts here.

There were also comments that were plain stupid—which is unusual for this site. Someone claimed Marcus Curry was being protected by the academy because he was a “black football player.” Please. Ask Lamar Owens, an African American quarterback and team captain who was thrown out of the Navy for drinking and having sex with a female midshipmen (rules violations at Navy, the norm at civilian schools) if black football players are protected. Ask Nate Frazier, who was separated for an honors violation last August—and would have been BY FAR Navy’s best defensive player this season—if black STAR football players are protected.

As I said, based on the information that we have, I think Admiral Jeffrey Fowler needs to separate Marcus Curry unless there is some mitigating circumstance (besides his football ability) we don’t know about. But the bleating directed at the academy and the Navy is ridiculous. And the guy who claimed the academies have lowered their academic standards in a “pathetic,” attempt to play Division 1-A football should ask Missouri and Houston just how pathetic Navy and Air Force were in their bowl games. They could also ask Notre Dame how pathetic Navy has been in recent years. They should also get to know some of the kids who play football at the academies.

Okay, time to go back to listening to Kurt Warner sell milk.

I know I’ve said this before but one of the things about the blog that I’ve truly enjoyed is reading the posts and the e-mails. With few exceptions they’re smart and they often raise good questions or make me think about an issue in a way I hadn’t previously thought about it.

An example: Someone reminded me yesterday that in writing about the Phil Mickelson-Scott McCarron square grooves controversy I had failed to point out occasions when golfers had bent the rules to their advantage.

Years ago in Phoenix, Tiger Woods claimed that a boulder blocking his path to the green was a moveable object—even though it took about a dozen people to actually move it. By rule, he was allowed to have a bunch of fans move the boulder for him even though that sort of thing clearly was not the intent of the rule.

In 2004 at The Masters, Ernie Els hit a ball dead left on the 11th hole and found himself under branches and rocks and pebbles to the point where he needed to take an unplayable lie. He called for a rules official believing he had the right to a free drop because that sort of debris is almost always removed before play begins at Augusta National. The rules official, Jon Brendle, who has been with the tour forever told him that there was nothing in the rules requiring the debris be removed and thus, he had to deal with it. Els then requested—as is allowed—a second opinion. This time the rules official was an Augusta member—not a professional but someone who had passed a rules test although he didn’t work on tour week in and week out the way Brendle did. He overruled Brendle, saying the INTENT was to remove the debris and therefore Els was entitled to a drop.

In essence, he made up a rule on the spot. Brendle was so angry about the incident he’s never gone back to work at Augusta.

There have been other moments: Greg Norman accusing Mark McCumber of using his club to improve his lie in the rough at The World Series of Golf in 1995. Norman was so angry he refused to sign McCumber’s scorecard. Mark O’Meara was once accused by a Swedish player (I forget his name) during a tournament in Europe of moving his coin up on the green, which infuriated him—and no doubt still does. And, of course, there are still tour players who will never forget that Vijay Singh was once banned from The Australasian Tour for signing for a wrong (lower) score. I once asked a long-time tour player if perhaps Singh’s three major titles and the fact that he was in the golf Hall of Fame might mitigate in Singh’s favor. The player looked at me, shrugged and said, “once a cheater always a cheater.”

People still talk—almost 30 years after it happened--about the Tom Watson-Gary Player incident at the first Skins game when Watson accused Player of removing an imbedded root in a bunker. Last year, Sandy Lyle caused a stir at The British Open by saying Colin Montgomerie had taken an illegal drop at a tournament in Indonesia in 2005.

That’s sort of the point about golf I was making: incidents like this are so rare that they are still remembered and talked about years later. Players were angry about Tiger and the boulder because clearly someone playing without a huge gallery—or playing in a Saturday morning foursome—wouldn’t be able to move the boulder. Many—MANY—players thought the Golf Gods got it right in ’04 when Phil Mickelson caught Els from behind at Augusta. That’s why McCarron raising the specter of “cheating,” got so much attention. I’m not saying the spirit of the rules is NEVER violated but it’s pretty rare.

Now onto some posts that I really disagree with or, in one case, I have no problem with the issue just the tone in which it was raised.

That would be the guy who referred to Navy slotback Marcus Curry as a “pothead,” and called Navy an “elite bastion of lower learning.” Here’s betting he couldn’t last a day at Navy. (On the other hand, neither could I). He also accused me of “situational outrage,” because I hadn’t commented yet on Curry. Two things: I’ve been a tad busy and, beyond that, I’m not going to get outraged about a college kid smoking pot. I do have an opinion on the case though and here it is:

Curry tested positive, according to numerous sources, for marijuana recently. Navy, as most people know, has a zero tolerance policy when it comes to drug use. Curry claimed the marijuana got into his system because he had smoked a cigar at a party that was laced with the stuff. I’m guessing most of you are like me: everyone has a story when they test positive for anything.

Apparently the commandant of the brigade, Matthew Klunder, recommended separation (expulsion) for Curry. Admiral Jeffrey Fowler, the superintendent, has—at least thus far—not followed through on Klunder’s recommendation.

Curry’s a very important member of next year’s football team. He is by far Navy’s best slotback, dangerous as a runner and a receiver and he’ll only be a junior next season. I’d hate to see him gone. That said, I don’t think Fowler has a choice: zero tolerance doesn’t mean zero tolerance unless you’re a star football player with an excuse. The ONLY way Fowler can justify such a decision is if there is precedent; if there are other Mids—non-athletes—who have been given a second chance because Fowler or the disciplinary board has found some credibility in their explanation. Marijuana isn’t a steroid or cocaine or heroin but it is against the law and against academy rules. My guess is—and that’s all it is—that one way or the other, it will be difficult for Curry to return next fall. That, sadly, is as it should be based on what I know.

Post number two was from a guy upset because I wrote yesterday that Gilbert Arenas’s lawyer wrote his Washington Post op-ed. He somehow saw the comment as racial—referring to Tony Kornheiser and I as “old white guys,” who didn’t think Arenas’s remorse was completely genuine.

Good God, this has nothing to do with race. In fact, the example I used of famous people in jockworld not ever believing they were truly wrong was Bob Knight. I would expect anyone—including a politician—to have his lawyer or lawyers or lawyers and a speechwriter, put together something like this. My point was that even with a lawyer putting it together Arenas (and the lawyers) STILL tried to point the finger at the media. As for the guy writing in about the initial, overblown New York Post story—yup, that was inaccurate. Gilbert’s response though was to the whole notion of him bringing guns in the locker room: it was no big deal, something to be laughed at. Sadly, he got that wrong.

Finally, someone wrote in claiming I was being unfair to women’s athletics when I made fun of two women’s basketball coaches a week ago. The first was Terri Williams-Flournoy, who tried to defend The Big East’s ridiculous decision to not release the names of three players (two from Georgetown, one from Louisville) suspended for a pre-game fight. Putting aside the fact that anyone with eyes could see who was suspended, she claimed the players were, “children,” and thus entitled to privacy. College students aren’t children. They can vote, they can go into the armed forces and they better be able to act like adults or they won’t get through college. What’s more, the incident took place in a public forum—an arena where tickets had been sold and TV cameras were present.

The poster, in claiming the “double-standard,” pointed out that Georgetown had refused to let any players talk to the media after its men’s team lost at Syracuse. I don’t doubt that for a second. That said, I think if anyone checks my record on the subject of Georgetown basketball, they wouldn’t exactly accuse me of protecting the Hoyas on any level. Remember the phrase, “Hoya Paranoia,” back in the 80s? That was me. One reason I generally avoid Georgetown games is because access to the players is so ridiculously guarded.

John Thompson (the elder) and I had more than a couple of screaming matches about access to players years ago. I remember saying to him one night, “if I could, I’d look you right in the eye and tell you that you’re full of s----.” Thompson’s 6-10. Fortunately he thought the line was pretty funny.

The other comment that upset this poster was me making fun of Maryland Coach Brenda Frese for saying, “this proves we can play with anybody,” after her team had lost at home to a Duke team that had lost by THIRTY-THREE to Connecticut a few days earlier. More double standard said the poster, I’d never make fun of a men’s coach that way. Go back and read what I wrote. I said, “It seems to me that coaches in all sports do this, throwing things like this out on the assumption that no one will challenge them on it.”

Sorry pal, no double standard here, just two coaches—regardless of sport or sex—being called for saying dumb things.

Keep those posts and e-mails coming everybody!

At last, the college football season is over.

It ended with a thud, Alabama, after almost falling asleep at the wheel in the second half, pulling away to beat Texas, 37-21. Texas deserves credit for hanging in after being down 24-6 and after losing quarterback Colt McCoy on the first series. I have no doubt Texas fans will claim forever their team would have won if McCoy had played. In the end, we’ll never know. Maybe if McCoy had been hurt in a first round playoff game the Longhorns would have survived and advanced and McCoy could have come back and played. But, as we all know, that’s not the way college football is structured.

My pal Bill Hancock was at it again on Thursday, giving his “state of the BCS Address,” in his new role as executive director of America’s most corrupt organization. It was pretty clear that Bill had been prepped thoroughly by Ari Fleischer, who knows a thing or two about simply throwing out untruths from a pulpit of power and getting the public—or at least some of the public—to swallow them.

Bill made four claims Thursday that are, put simply, 100 percent untrue. Not 99 percent, 100 percent. Let’s review.

1.   A college football playoff would lead to more injuries. This isn’t just wrong, it’s absolutely hypocritical. The BCS Presidents (Bill and Fleisher’s employers) are the ones who voted several years ago to add a 12th regular season game for one reason: more money. Three of the six BCS conferences play a conference championship game with the Big Ten soon to follow. That’s a 13th game followed by a bowl game. That’s 14 games—two fewer than an NFL regular season. If an eight team playoff existed with an 11 game regular season no one would play more than 14 games and only two teams would play that many. So claiming the BCS Presidents care at all about injuries is absolutely untrue.

2.   A playoff would affect the exam schedules for players. Oh please Bill, don’t trot out that tired argument. Everyone knows that basketball players miss FAR more class during the NCAA Tournament in March and April than football players would miss if there was a playoff system. Let’s go through this one more time: You play quarterfinals on New Year’s Day, making it an absolutely spectacular college football day instead of making people watch The Outback Bowl or The Gator Bowl with five and six loss teams playing on New Year’s. You play the semifinals the next week. At that point six teams will have been eliminated without missing a day of class. Then you play the championship game two weeks later—the same weekend as the NFL conference championship games so there are no NFL games on Saturday. Depending on the school players from TWO schools might miss two or three days of classes at the very beginning of a semester. NO FINALS missed—none, zero.

3.   The bowl system would be damaged. Not only is this wrong, the opposite is true—the bowl system would be enhanced. Instead of having one game that has meaning to everyone across the country you would have seven. The four bowls that are currently BCS hosts would be joined by three more bowls—let’s say The Cotton for tradition; The Citrus (or whatever it is called now) for location and The Gator (tradition and location). They rotate games each year although if I’m in charge the championship game is always at The Rose Bowl because it is still the best setting there is for a football game. The 29 other bowls (two more come on line next year) continue exactly as they are EXCEPT they are all played before New Year’s Day to clear the stage for the playoff. The 6-6 teams still get to go play a bowl game and the boys in the ugly jackets can still parade around in their ugly jackets. Nothing changes. Bowls can still take a 6-6 Iowa State team over an 8-4 Missouri team because Iowa State sells more tickets if that’s what they so desire.

4.   The regular season has more meaning under the current system. Really? I’d love for Bill to walk into the locker rooms at Cincinnati, TCU and Boise State and explain how much meaning their undefeated regular seasons had. Only in the BCS can teams not lose a game and not have a chance to play for a championship. It’s absolutely ridiculous. Basically, those teams’ regular seasons had no meaning at all. If Boise State had beaten the Dallas Cowboys in their bowl game instead of TCU there are people out there who would say, ‘yeah but how would they do in the Big 12?’ Here’s the answer: who knows since no one from The Big 12 will play them and the criminals making the BCS matchups (thankfully that’s not Bill) put TCU against Boise State to make sure those two schools wouldn’t (again) embarrass BCS schools by beating them.

So Bill went four-for-four yesterday—aided by his new best friend Ari. He made four assertions and none of them was even close to true. My guess is he’ll get a bonus in his next paycheck for keeping a straight face while saying all this stuff.

A couple of other things are worth noting: NONE of the five BCS bowls provided a really dramatic finish. Perhaps it was coincidence, who knows? The best game was TCU-Boise State, which at least turned on a fake punt but the rest of the games were really duds. Here’s a stat for you: In five games there were three lead changes: Oregon briefly taking the lead on Ohio State before the Buckeyes took it back and pulled away and Alabama going ahead 7-6 in the championship game. Florida, Iowa and Boise State took the lead in their games and never trailed although TCU did tie Boise State at 10-10.

There were second tier bowl games that had that many lead changes in the last three minutes. In fact, the second tier bowls were great this year: Idaho’s 43-42 win over Bowling Green was spectacular; Arkansas’s overtime win over East Carolina was excruciating and so was Auburn thinking it had won three times after blowing a two touchdown lead before finally beating Northwestern in overtime. There were others: Central Michigan over Troy in overtime; Wyoming beating Fresno State, also in overtime.

Here’s one thing I guarantee: If you had a playoff, if every game played was a step towards a championship, you would have far fewer dud games and more great ones because there would be no doubt that everyone involved was playing for something.

Which reminds me of one more thing: Bill also made the claim that as exciting as the Division 1-AA championship was, the attendance at home sites (except Montana) wasn’t very good. Two things: December football in cold weather places isn’t usually much of a draw (including in the NFL where no-shows abound in December) and, did he check the attendance at a LOT of the second tier bowls? And that’s with virtually every bowl forcing the schools to buy thousands of tickets and then give them away if they can’t sell them. If there were a seven game, eight-team playoff as I suggested there would not be one unsold ticket. Not one.

Sorry Bill, I love you but, as you might put it, gee whiz are you kidding me?

And finally a note on the polls: My colleagues in the AP poll completely ignored me (and others) and not only didn’t vote Boise State first, they voted them FOURTH. Craig James of ESPN voted Boise SEVENTH and TCU 14th! Who does he think he’s kidding? His partners, Chris Fowler and Kirk Herbstreit were a little less blatant in their BCS sellout, voting Boise fourth. Still. Those guys should not be allowed to vote.

At least the AP publishes the individual votes. The coaches poll, run by (surprise) ESPN and USA Today, keeps the individual votes secret except for the final regular season poll. I’m really disappointed that my friends at USA Today continue to participate in this farce. That said, the coaches did better by Navy (26th) than the AP boys and girls (28th). Here’s a shocker: none of the ESPN-three voted for Navy. Maybe that’s why Mark Jones thinks the future marines at Navy are going to Quan-TEE-co and Bob Davie keeps talking about “chop blocks.” God forbid anyone should do any homework over there it might interfere with their ability to read 10,000 promos per telecast.

Okay, I promise not to rant on the BCS for a while. As long as Bill and his pals promise not to say anything they know isn’t true. My guess is they won’t be able to do that.

This has been said before by me and many others but it continues to amaze me just how bad a sports town Washington, D.C. is except on the high school level.

I realize as I write this that a lot of you who live around the country are starting to yawn—although you should find Letterman’s list on Gilbert Arenas’s 10 excuses because it is fall down funny—but it really is remarkable how often things go wrong and how consistently poorly they are handled by the people allegedly in charge.

The town’s obsession is with the Redskins. The way the local media kowtows to the team is remarkable. On Tuesday I was doing a local cable sports show and Redskins rookie Brian Orakpo was scheduled to appear. Five minutes before air time we were told that Orakpo was balking at doing the interview because it was too cold outside.

Let’s be honest, Orakpo wasn’t going to say anything newsworthy: he was going to say Jim Zorn was a good coach but gee Mike Shanahan is a great coach and we’re just SO close to being a really good team. Rather than lose those five minutes with him the producers agreed to let him SIT IN HIS CAR with a mike on while the cameraman shot him through the window of the car.

It was Saturday Night Live parody TV and Orakpo was every bit as predictable as you might expect.

And Orakpo is one of the GOOD guys on the Redskins.

What is most remarkable though is the way every new coaching hire is treated as the second coming. (Of course Joe Gibbs WAS the second coming). People do everything but dance in the streets. No doubt there are Redskins fans checking out flights to Dallas for February 2011 and next year’s Super Bowl, now that Mike Shanahan has been announced as the next second coming.

Is Shanahan a good coach? Based on his track record, absolutely. He won two Super Bowls and I really don’t buy the nay-sayers who say “how many did he win without John Elway?” Okay, how many did Vince Lombardi win without Bart Starr? Bill Belichick without Tom Brady? Chuck Noll without Terry Bradshaw? Don Shula without Bob Griese? Last I looked they were pretty good coaches. The only real exception to that rule might be Gibbs who won Super Bowls with Joe Theisman, Doug Williams and Mark Rypien at quarterback. Only Theisman was much better than ordinary and he wasn’t exactly a Hall of Famer. There are others but for the most part you don’t win Super Bowls unless your quarterback is better than ordinary. The Super Bowl winners in this century have been The Rams (Kurt Warner); the Ravens (Trent Dilfer); the Buccaneers (Brad Johnson); the Patriots (three times with Brady); the Steelers (twice with Ben Roethlisberger) the Colts (Peyton Manning); and the Giants (Eli Manning).

That’s seven wins for quarterbacks who either will be in the Hall of Fame or will come very close to it; one for a young quarterback who may yet become special (Eli) and two for guys considered competent—Dilfer and Johnson. Dilfer was working with arguably the greatest defense in the history (at least statistically it was) and Johnson, who many believe was very underrated) was helped by having his counterpart, Rich Gannon, throw five interceptions.

But I digress. Shanahan can coach—no ifs ands or buts. And let’s all stop with the, “he wasted a pick taking Maurice Clarett,” in the third round. So what? Third round picks flame out all the time—so do first round picks for that matter. He took a gamble and it didn’t work. Big deal.

Shanahan’s not the major issue with the Redskins. The owner is the major issue the same way he’s been the issue since he bought the team in 1999. There seems to be an assumption that because Shanahan and Bruce Allen signed on that Snyder is finally going to stop meddling in every football decision.

I’ll believe it when I see it. So far, Snyder is still acting like Snyder.

He completely humiliated poor Jim Zorn, who handled a ludicrous situation with total class, in his final weeks as coach. Forget stripping him of play-calling duties, that was bad enough. He then “interviewed,” one of Zorn’s own assistants with the season still going on in order to subvert the Rooney Rule so he could hire Shanahan as soon as the season ended. It’s a shame NFL commissioner Roger Goodell didn’t step to the plate and call the sham interview of Jerry Gray a sham, because that’s what it was.

Gray was obviously told by Snyder that if he wants to be considered for employment on the new staff he better keep his mouth shut. Gray initially lied when he was asked if he’d been interviewed; then the Redskins staff put out a written, “he meant to say no comment,” release and then he simply refused to answer questions even after John Wooten, who runs the Fritz Pollard Alliance announced that Gray’s interview had satisfied the parameters of the Rooney Rule (which was a joke in itself).

Snyder is paying Shanahan an outrageous amount of money--$7 million a year for five years according to today’s Washington Post. What’s more, he simply HAD to get on his plane and fly to Denver to pick Shanahan up and fly him to DC.

Why? Because he has to be in the middle of all this. He has to show off his wealth every chance he gets. This is an organization that laid close to 100 people off earlier this year citing the need to cut costs. How much did it cost to fly that jet back and forth to Denver? Snyder couldn’t have sent Shanahan a first class ticket and said, “We’ll have a car meet you at the airport?”

No, he had to play his silly game with “Redskins 1,” (oh please) knowing that the DC media would run out to the airport to cover the airplane’s landing. He LIVES for this stuff.

So what makes anyone think he’s not going to be sitting in the draft room talking about, “Redskin grades,” or trailing along with Shanahan and Bruce Allen on scouting trips the way he did ONE MONTH AGO with Vinny Cerrato. Maybe Shanahan and Allen have told him that’s over as a condition of their employment. Maybe.

And maybe Snyder made that pledge like he did with Marty Schottenheimer nine years ago and it will stick for about 20 minutes. We’ll see. The Redskins have the fourth pick in the draft. If they do anything other than draft a left tackle (especially if they take a quarterback instead) then you’ll know Snyder’s still involved in the decision-making and, if you’re a Redskins fan, you better dig in for even more disappointment.

Of course these days—remarkably enough—there is actually a team in Washington in more disarray than the Redskins and that’s the Wizards. Everyone now knows about the Gilbert Arenas guns saga. On Monday, when someone explained to him that he could actually go to jail, Arenas stopped joking about the situation and put out a lawyer-written statement saying he was sorry. That appeared to be a step in the right direction until Tuesday in Philadelphia when Arenas, upon being introduced by the PA announcer, jokingly pointed his fingers at his teammates as if he was shooting them.

My God Gilbert when will you learn? This isn’t funny (okay, Letterman was funny but that’s because he was saying Arenas was a joke not that Arenas’s joke was funny) and every time you act as if it is you look like a dope AND you send a terrible message to every single kid who has ever worn your jersey top—and in DC that’s a lot of kids.

You know what Flip Saunders should have done at that moment? He should have said to Arenas, ‘go sit on the end of the bench and watch the game.’ But the Wizards management has been virtually silent since this whole thing began, only putting out statements about waiting for the investigation to run its course. The given excuse has been that the collective bargaining agreement doesn’t allow a player to be punished twice for a violation of the CBA (which carrying a gun into the arena very much is) and they don’t want to suspend Arenas when clearly Commissioner David Stern is going to suspend him at some point.

You know what, that’s crap. Pick up a phone, talk to Stern and find out what he’s thinking. The facts in the story are clear here. There’s no he said/he said, Arenas has admitted he did it. His guns weren’t even registered in Virginia where carrying a gun is akin to carrying a wallet in most places as long as you register the gun. Even gun-owners will tell you that one of the responsibilities that comes with owning a gun (or guns) is following the laws of your jurisdiction and other jurisdictions if you carry a gun out of state.

If Stern says, “I’m going to suspend him for the season,” the Wizards should go ahead and do that NOW. If he says 20 games, same thing. You can’t just keep sending him out there when he’s admitted his guilt but clearly has no real remorse about it. And let’s not even get into the, “well they could still make the playoffs even at 11-21 because the East is so lousy,” argument. Forget being the eighth place team in the conference with a 37-45 record and take a look at your long-term future—which right now doesn’t look any better than the short term.

Things aren’t a lot better on other DC sports fronts: Tom Boswell, The Post’s superb baseball columnist who may be the all-time Nationals optimist, thinks the moves made so far this winter MIGHT get them to 75 wins. Maryland football is awful. The basketball team looks like it will be fighting for an NCAA bid—again. Navy football is terrific but not enough people understand why they SHOULD be paying more attention—including the editors at my newspaper. Georgetown basketball is very good but it’s hard to wrap your arms around a team that keeps itself shrouded in secrecy all the time.

There are lots of good college basketball programs locally but Georgetown won’t even play in a charity event that has raised almost $10 million for kids-at-risk in the DC area and hasn’t played George Washington in more than 30 years. DC could have local rivalries every bit as much fun as Philadelphia’s Big Five but no one wants to do anything about getting it done.

Heck, even DC United has been so mediocre recently that their fans can’t scream, “what about United?” when someone does a breakdown of sports in DC.

At least the Capitals have a very good team that is filled with appealing people. Fans here have jumped on their bandwagon since they started winning.

Overall though, this is a pretty bleak place. Have no fear though Redskins fans: March isn’t far away and that’s usually the best month of the year for your team. One hint: the less free agents you see Danny having his picture taken with, the better it is going to be for you and for the future of your team.

If 2010 turns out to be as enjoyable as the last day of 2009, I am really looking forward to the New Year.

I got all my work done yesterday by noon, built a fire in my office fireplace (best thing about this house) and sat down to watch Air Force-Houston followed by Navy-Missouri.

You may ask why I wasn’t in Houston with Navy doing the game on radio. Believe me, there’s part of me that would have loved being there. But, as I’ve said before, I really despise the entire flying experience and that ratchets up during a holiday week. I could have flown down with Navy but they left last Saturday and I really didn’t want to spend six days in Houston during the holidays—especially when I had a family trip planned—and then fly back home on New Year’s Eve, landing sometime after midnight.

So, I stayed here and watched on TV.

Let me explain first how I feel about Air Force. I root against the Falcons twice a year: when they play Navy and when they play Army. In every other game I’m an Air Force fan. Obviously I’m closer to the programs at Army and Navy because of “A Civil War,” and my years now doing Navy on radio (13) and my close association with Army. This past September I was honored when I was asked to MC Army’s Hall of Fame banquet when Mike Krzyzewski was inducted. Plus, I have all those boyhood memories of going to games at West Point.

That said, I have great respect for Air Force and like the people I know there very much. Even though the Army and Navy people insist that life at Air Force isn’t as tough as at their schools—they call it, “the country club academy,”--I know that being a cadet at Air Force is about 100 times harder than going to any civilian school. I always respected Fisher DeBerry and I feel the same way about Troy Calhoun, who has done a remarkable job reviving the program the last three years. What’s more, his No. 1 lieutenant, Tim DeRuyter—also an Air Force grad—was at Navy for four years and became a friend so there’s an extra bit of personal connection for me.

So it was that I watched with both surprise and happiness as Air Force absolutely crushed Houston. The Falcons were up 14-0 in the blink of an eye and, although Houston threatened for a while, eventually pulled away to win 47-20. Wow. This was a Houston team that won at Oklahoma State and was 10-2 going into the Conference-USA championship game. Case Keenum was considered a Heisman candidate at one point during the season. Not yesterday: he threw six interceptions—the most in a bowl game since a guy named Bruce Lee threw six for Arizona in the 1968 Sun Bowl.

Keenum had written, “Jesus Saves,” on his eye black for the game. For some reason as the Falcons picked off one pass after another I thought about a famous billboard in Boston years ago when Phil Esposito was setting goal-scoring records for the Bruins. It said: “Jesus Saves….But Espo puts in the rebound!”

There was one disappointment at the end of the game: Instead of staying in Fort Worth for an extra 90 seconds to watch the Air Force players stand at attention for their alma mater, ESPN just HAD to throw it back to the studio so we could hear Lou Holtz and Mark May blather for a few extra minutes. It scares me a little that I actually agree with Holtz on something: he said the Mountain West should get an automatic BCS bid. Of course it should. My God, is there anyone out there who thinks the ACC is as good a league as The Mountain West right now? Or, for that matter, The Big Ten? How did Oregon State, which almost won the Pac-10, look against Brigham Young in the Las Vegas Bowl? Anyway, May, who is always scripted to disagree with Holtz tried to say the bottom of the league was weak. Really? How about the bottom of the ACC Mark? The Big Ten? Or, for that matter the Pac-10 and The Big 12? If TCU beats Boise State in the Fiesta Bowl the Mountain West will be 5-0 in bowl games this season. That’s a pretty deep league if you ask me.

Anyway, I digress.

Just as Navy-Missouri was kicking off, the plumber who had come to the house to fix a broken toilet came in to announce he was finished and—surprise—would like to be paid. I walked into the kitchen, wrote him a check, wished him a Happy New Year and came back in to find Navy trailing 7-0. Whoo boy, this might be a long afternoon. I later saw the replay of Danario Alexander’s 58 yard catch-and-run touchdown.

Then Ricky Dobbs fumbled on Missouri’s 20-yard line on Navy’s first series. I can think negative thoughts faster than almost anyone alive: Missouri was going to score again, make it 14-0 and it was going to get bad. I cursed the bowl system which sent Missouri to the Texas Bowl even though it had finished ahead of both Iowa State and Texas A+M in The Big 12. This was a big-time team, with a future pro quarterback…

I forgot two things: I forgot that the kids playing for Navy are a lot tougher than I am and NEVER think negative thoughts and I forgot about Buddy Green.

ESPN—more on them later—focused about 99 percent of its attention during the telecast on Dobbs. That’s fine. He’s a terrific player and a wonderful kid. Bob Davie did manage to give some credit to the slotbacks and at the very end of the telecast mentioned Green. With all due respect to everyone else at Navy, I’m not sure the MVP of this team wasn’t Green.

Two years ago, his defense, torn up by injuries and wracked by inexperience, got hammered week after week. It gave up 62 points in a WIN against North Texas State. Joe Flacco and Delaware sliced it and diced it for 59 points. There were freshmen all over the field and Paul Johnson even started spending time on the defensive practice field which you know didn’t make Green happy at all.

He never complained, never whined about the injuries or the inexperience. He just kept saying, “Hey, it’s our job to keep coaching them every week and hope they get better.”

They did. Last year the defense was solid. It made plays when it had to—a late interception to seal a game against Rutgers; an amazing fumble recovery in the final minute to steal a game from Temple. It finished the regular season with back-to-back shutouts.

This year though would be harder. Two weeks before the season began, Nate Frazier, by far the team’s best defensive player, a guy who had to be double-teamed on every play at nose tackle, was separated from the academy on an academic honors charge. There’s no messing around at the academies with stuff like that. There was no stalling until after the season; no one game suspension—he was gone.

The schedule was brutal: at Ohio State; at Pittsburgh; Wake Forest; Temple (which won 9 games); at SMU; at Notre Dame; Air Force; at Hawaii. Plus there was the matter of playing 11 weeks in a row without a bye with a team that is always smaller than every civilian opponent it plays.

Every week the defense made key plays. It gave up yardage—Green knows he can’t attack on every play so he sets the opposition up to make mistakes. Notre Dame never punted—but Navy kept stopping it inside the red zone and won the game. In a driving rainstorm with Dobbs hurt, Navy didn’t throw a single pass against Wake Forest—and won the game because the defense made plays. Did you see Air Force roll up more than 500 yards in offense against Houston? That same offense didn’t score a touchdown against Navy’s defense.

Yesterday, facing a team that he knew wanted to throw on every down, Green came out with two down linemen on most plays. Davie was literally open-mouthed. (He also kept referring to Navy’s legal cut blocks as chop blocks, which are illegal. Was that a little bit of the old Notre Damer coming out?) And Missouri kept falling into Green’s trap. It moved up and down the field almost at will but couldn’t score inside the red zone. In fact, Alexander’s touchdown—30 seconds in—was the only touchdown the Tigers scored all day. Final: Navy-35, Missouri-13.

“We’re like 11 hyenas out there,” Niamatalolo said. “Sooner or later we’re going to bring an elephant down.”

Naturally, ESPN didn’t stick around for the playing of the alma mater. It had to show its bowl week promo for the thousandth time. It was also ill-prepared for the broadcast: both Mark Jones and Davie kept mis-pronouncing names and confusing players—without every getting corrected by the truck apparently. It was annoying but didn’t matter.

A word about Niamatalolo: He’s an amazing guy. He’s as genuine as he appears on TV and he stepped into a brutally difficult situation following Johnson, who had become a legend in Annapolis. He’s now 18-10—playing tougher schedules than Johnson did—in two seasons, with a 4-0 record against Air Force and Army, a win over Notre Dame and a bowl win. He’s had to use five different quarterbacks during the two seasons because of injuries.

And he never complains about anything. You see, that’s not the way they do it the academies. I may complain but the players and coaches don’t. You want to talk about the best and the brightest, go talk to some of those young men (they’re not kids) and the men who coach them.

Like I said, it was a great day. Happy New Year to all.

I was going to take the day off—and give all of you a day off—to contemplate the holidays and the joys of the season.

Then this morning someone told me I needed to check the comments from my appearance yesterday on Tony Kornheiser’s radio show (which you can listen to here on the blog if you so desire).

It seems I’ve upset some Rutgers people by saying bad things about the school’s football coach and athletic director. The irony is, if you listen, I started my response to Tony’s question about a long simmering controversy at Rutgers about the importance of—and the money spent on—athletics by saying, “look, Rutgers is a very good school.” Tony instantly challenged that because he believes the only institution of higher learning in the United States that is any good is Binghamton, his alma mater.

I then said that there had been an ongoing battle between the academic side at Rutgers and the jock side over how much should be invested in trying to have a good football team. One angry poster conceded that was true but said the battle was, “completely un-necessary.” Perhaps true but there’s no doubting its existence.

I then said that Greg Schiano was a good coach and a bad guy. That set Rutgers people off and they demanded I ‘back up,’ those comments. Okay, here goes.

• Schiano is not (as you point out) the only coach who runs up scores. But he constantly insists he’s NOT running up the score. A few years ago, up 42-0 in the SECOND quarter against Norfolk State (Norfolk State?) he used all three of his time outs to score again before halftime. He then insisted the move was justified because you never knew if a team might rally in the second half. Please.
• The first time Schiano took a team to play at Navy he was sent—as is customary—a pre-game itinerary. Navy’s is a little different than most schools because the Brigade of Midshipmen marches on before the game, which means the teams (BOTH teams) need to leave the field a few minutes earlier than normal. Coaches are always alerted to this and know it is part of playing a game at Navy. Schiano not only objected, he kept his team on the field while the brigade began its march-on. Then he insisted after the game he hadn’t been informed about the march-on. Sorry Rutgers folks, that just wasn’t the case.
• Schiano (like a lot of coaches) is an absolute control freak. Did any of you watch the bowl game? Even the ESPN sideline reporter was frustrated by the fact that he couldn’t get anything resembling a semi-honest answer—or any answer at all—about Rutgers players who came out of the game hurt. What was Schiano doing, hiding an injury from next week’s opponent? Oh wait, the next game isn’t until September. Again, he’s certainly not unique in doing this but it gets old with all these guys.
  

As for Athletic Director Tim Pernetti, as it happens, I have had direct, unpleasant dealings with him dating back several years. Without going into too much detail—we’ve all got better things to do—this is what happened: Pernetti was program director (or something) at CBS College Sports and they picked up the rights to The Patriot League basketball package, which I had done since its inception as the color commentator. Pernetti had cut a deal with the league that the network would pay the production costs for the Army-Navy game (usually it is the other way around) but HE wanted control of the so-called ‘talent,’ for that game.

If there’s one game in that package I always want to do and believe I should do it is Army-Navy. I got a call from Billy Stone, who worked then as now for CBS College and is a friend of Pernetti’s. “If you want to do Army-Navy you’re going to have to send Tim an e-mail and ask him to let you do it,” he said.

“What?”

“I’m telling you, this is the way Tim is. He likes to feel in control of things.”

I was tempted to say the heck with it (or something worse) but I decided to play the silly game. I wrote Tim a note, pointed out my connection to the two schools (in case he didn’t know) and said it was important to me to do that game. I always asked Carolyn Femovich, the league’s executive director, to let Tim know that the league wanted me to do the game. Tim wrote back and said he would be happy to have me do the game.

Okay, fine. A ridiculous ritual but I swallowed my pride and dealt with it. That was in August. A week before the game I received an e-mail from Pernetti. It said that Steve Lappas would be doing color on the game and he would like to “invite,” me to “play a role in the telecast.”

I wrote back and said, “no thanks.”

His response was to write back and ask me, “what the problem was.” I said that when we had agreed in August I would do the game it certainly wasn’t as a sideline guy or something like that. I happen to like Steve Lappas a lot but having him do color on Army-Navy instead of me would be like having me do color on Villanova-U-Mass over him. I told him I was going to let Carolyn know she’d need a color guy for the rest of the package (Army-Navy was the opener) since if I didn’t do that game I would pass on the rest. My feeling was that I had played Pernetti's power game in the summer and now he was still trying to stick it to me--I honestly don't know why other than his power thing--and two could play at that game.

The league’s athletic directors and coaches weren’t happy when they heard this news. I’ve known most of them a long time and I believe they think I know and understand their league quite well—better than Steve Lappas. They made it clear to Carolyn that she needed to get this fixed. She called Pernetti and told him I had to do the game.

So, I got another call from Pernetti. “I just wanted to close the loop on this Army-Navy thing,” he said.

“Close the loop?” I said.

“I’ve decided to put Steve Lappas on another game.”

HE had decided. Rather than call him on it, I just said, fine, I’d be happy to do the game. Then he said, “I just want you to know I don’t appreciate the way you handled this.”

I won’t repeat my entire answer here but I told him if he didn’t like the way I’d handled him big-timing me in the summer; lying and then trying to bully his way through the whole thing, I really was okay with it.

Since then, Tim and I haven’t been close. I do believe he’s a bad guy and his relationship with Schiano got him the AD’s job. If you were to ask people who worked with him at CBS College I think you’d find there were few tears shed when he left.

So, Rutgers fans, we can agree to disagree on how I feel about Schiano and Pernetti but I didn’t make those statements without having reason to make them. I do NOT think the 11,000 seat expansion was needed—sellouts are better than empty seats. I DO think Rutgers is a very good school no matter what Tony says and there are few people I admire more in sports than Rutgers alum David Stern.

So, as I said, let’s all disagree and try—in the holiday spirit—to get along. For the record, one of my favorite college basketball teams as a kid was the Rutgers team that finished third in the 1967 NIT with a coach named Bill Foster and guards named Bobby Lloyd and Jim Valvano. I have nothing but respect for the school. I just don’t especially like the football coach—who has done an excellent job—or the athletic director.

Happy holidays.

I’m off to Philadelphia today for Army-Navy.

If there is one day every year I truly look forward to it is Army-Navy. At this point I’ve said and written about a million times that there is nothing like Army-Navy. Every time I say it there are people who roll their eyes and say, ‘come on it can’t be like Ohio State-Michigan; Alabama-Auburn; USC-UCLA or any of the other traditional rivalries that involved teams that often play for the national championship or at least high national rankings.’

They’re right: Army-Navy isn’t like any of the others. That’s why I enjoy it so much. It’s unique. Almost none of the players in this game will ever even think about playing in the NFL or, for that matter, the UFL. They will be wearing uniforms next fall: Army uniforms; Navy uniforms; Marine uniforms. All of them committed to the academies in the middle of two wars and all of them re-committed again at the end of their sophomore years. Any cadet or midshipmen can leave after two years without any penalty. Once their junior year begins they are legally committed to the armed forced for five years after graduation.

I’ve had the good fortune to know a lot of football players from Army and Navy dating back to covering Navy in the 1980s and to a lengthy piece I wrote for The National Sports Daily in 1990 on the rivalry. Since I wrote “A Civil War,” in 1995 and then started broadcasting Navy games in 1997, I have gotten close to a lot of players and coaches at both schools and many others connected to the two schools.

Every year, this is a week during which everyone is looking for the story that explains why this rivalry is so special and it is often a story about a non-star whose attitude defines the kind of people who play in this game. My friend Camille Powell at The Washington Post is working on a story for Saturday’s paper about a senior at Navy who has NEVER played in a game but has stayed with the team because he would never quit on his teammates. There are stories like that every year on both sides. Often those are the guys who go on to be three-star generals or neuro-surgeons or just very important people in the world beyond football.

The players aren’t the only people in this rivalry who are special. When I first began researching “A Civil War,” two of the first people I met at Army were Tim Kelly—the head trainer—and Dick Hall—the equipment manager. While a number of the coaches (on both sides) weren’t initially thrilled with the presence of a reporter in the locker room, on the sidelines, on the team busses or in the team meetings, the players—and guys like Tim and Dick—went out of their way from the beginning to make me feel welcome.

Tim is a quiet Midwesterner, an Iowa graduate with a sharp, low-key sense of humor. He rarely shows emotion on the sidelines, which is hard to do when you are as closely connected to the players as he is. When an Army player gets hurt, the first person he looks to for help is Tim Kelly. The same is true at Navy with Jeff Fair, who has been there for almost as long as Tim has been at Army—though not quite.

Tim loves to tell the story about the night I lost it on the sideline at Rutgers. It was during the second year of the disastrous reign of Todd Berry. Navy had the week off so I drove up to see Army play and stood on the sideline as I had done throughout the book and whenever I had the chance to see an Army game with Tim and Dick Hall and Dean Taylor, who had replaced the great Bob Arciero as team doctor when Bob retired from the Army.

Midway through the second quarter, Rutgers was ahead something like 31-0. It was VERY evident to me that Berry was leading Army down a path to nowhere with the ridiculous spread offense he had put in. What was worse, my sense was the players had given up. You can’t fool smart kids: they knew they had no chance. I pretty much lost it, screaming at Tim, Dick and Dean, “What the hell is going on here? Who hired this guy? (Rick Greenspan, the worst Athletic Director hire in history) They’ve given up! How can Army players give up!”

Tim put his arm around me and kind of walked me down the sideline to calm me down. Later he told me, “I knew you were right, that just wasn’t the time to announce it to the world.”

Of course he was right.

On another occasion in Michie Stadium when the officials clearly missed a fumble that Army recovered, I stood about five feet from the side judge and said, “how can 40,000 people see something clearly and ALL SEVEN of you missed it?” This time it was Dick’s turn to walk me away. Bobby Ross was the coach at the time and I doubt he would have liked it if the side judge had thought I was a coach or something and threw a flag. (I did once have a basketball referee threaten to tee me up during a Bucknell-Penn State game when I was researching ‘The Last Amateurs.’ I was sitting on the Bucknell bench and during a time out I said, “You know there’s nothing in the rules that REQUIRES you guys to be sure The Big Ten team wins.” It was an official I know pretty well and I didn’t think he’d get that angry. He didn’t seem to see the humor in the comment and said, “There’s also nothing in the rules that REQUIRES me to NOT tee you up since you’re sitting on the damn bench.” I shut up).

Let me tell you some more about Dick Hall. He grew up near West Point and fought in Vietnam. He has been at Army since 1975 and has had a close relationship with just about every Army football player since then. Bob Sutton, who coached at Army as an assistant and as the head coach for 17 years used to say, “When our ex-players come back, some of them make it by the football office to say hello. They ALL make it by the equipment room to see Dick.”

Soon after Sutton was gracelessly fired on a Philadelphia street corner by the graceless Greensapan, Dick had a bout with depression brought on by 9-11. He kept having recurring dreams about firefights he’d taken part in during Vietnam and also worried constantly that his players who were overseas fighting were going to die. During the period that he was out of work players streamed by Dick’s house to see him. Most of West Point went to see him. Neither Todd Berry nor Rick Greenspan ever contacted him. In fact, their response was to bring in Berry’s equipment manager from Illinois State and push Dick out of his job.

Dick of course never batted an eye and never complained. He came back to his new role working with football and some of the other sports and acted as if nothing had ever happened. A lot of us were upset, including many ex-players, but there was nothing to be done while the Greenspan/Berry circus was still in town. Next year Dick will celebrate his 35th year working at Army. They should throw him a big party. I guarantee you a lot of people will be there if they do.

As for the game itself, it’s nice that both teams have a lot at stake. Navy’s trying to win a seventh straight Commander-in-Chief’s Trophy and Army is trying to get to a bowl game for the first time since 1996 and break a seven game losing streak to Navy. The Midshipmen have totally dominated for seven straight years, winning by an AVERAGE margin of 39-10. Last year it was 34-0 and really not that close.

I’m glad Army finally has the right coach in place. After the Berry disaster (5-35, topped by an 0-13 when he was finally fired midseason) Army hired Bobby Ross, a superb coach in his prime but a coach past his prime at 67. Then came Stan Brock who was an offensive line coach in a head coach’s headset. Rich Ellerson is none of the above. He gets Army—which is critical—because his father and two brothers are graduates. He gets option offense: first learned it from Paul Johnson while both were on the staff at Hawaii. He’s innovative—he moved Ali Villaneuva, a 6-10, 300 pound tackle to WIDE RECEIVER—and he’s smart. He will bring balance back to the rivalry, which is good.

I know the Navy people have loved the last seven years and why not? But for a rivalry to be a rivalry the games need to end with tears on both sides. That will start happening again with Ellerson at Army and Kenny Niumatalolo picking up where Johnson left off at Navy—which he’s done.

Some time shortly after dark on Saturday when the game’s over the players on both teams will stand at attention together for the playing of the alma maters. Regardless of who wins there will be 70,000 people standing with them, knowing what the seniors on the field—and in the stands—will face in a few months.

That’s just one more reason why there's nothing like Army-Navy. It isn't a football game, it's an experience. One I love being a tiny part of every year.

Okay, I don’t want this to turn into the “GoMids.com,” blog but it is impossible not to comment on some of the bleatings coming out of Notre Dame in the wake of Navy’s win out there last Saturday.

It certainly doesn’t come as a shock to anyone that Charlie Weis would react to the loss the way he did—claiming he would take responsibility, then throwing everyone but Touchdown Jesus under any bus he could find.

Two years ago, when Navy finally broke its monumental 43 game losing streak against Notre Dame, Weis barely uttered one word of credit to the Navy kids, talking—as usual—about the mistakes his team had made because, as we all know, when Notre Dame wins it is because he coached good but when it loses it is because the players played bad.

That’s the Weis mantra.

After Navy won the game Saturday, Navy Coach Ken Niamatalolo made the point that he thought his team had done better offensively in 2009 than in 2008 because it had seen Notre Dame’s defensive schemes in the game in Baltimore a year earlier. Niamatalolo made a point of saying, “I hope this isn’t misconstrued,”—in other words, he was NOT criticizing Notre Dame’s coaches, he was just saying his team had been better prepared because it had seen the defense the year before.

In fact, when I spoke to Niamatalolo before the game he had made a similar point. “Last year I think we were a little too amped up,” he said. “We made some mistakes, didn’t carry out some assignments. I hope today, because the kids have seen what we did wrong on film, we’ll be a little better.”

They were a lot better. Let me add this: I’ve known a lot of people through a lot of years in sports. I haven’t met anyone who is a better person than Niamatalolo. He’s the anti-Weis: When Pete Medhurst, who does the sideline reporting on the Navy radio network asked him postgame what it meant to him to come into Notre Dame Stadium as the head coach and win his answer was direct: “This isn’t about me Pete, it’s about the kids. Talk about them.”

When Navy does lose, here’s Kenny’s first comment: “We got out-coached today.”

Like I said, the anti-Weis.

Niamatalolo and his coaches very clearly out-coached Weis and his coaches on Saturday. Buddy Green’s bend-but-don’t-break defense made key plays against an offense littered with first round draft picks, all day. The offense kept picking up yards when it had to—including two fourth-and-one pickups when quarterback Ricky Dobbs simply plunged straight ahead because Notre Dame left the center un-covered. Brilliant coaching there.

Let’s go back to one basic principle here for a minute: there is NO WAY Navy should ever beat Notre Dame. The Irish are going to be bigger, stronger, faster at just about every position on the field. The only way Navy competes—or wins—is by being smarter, tougher and better-coached. End of discussion.

One Notre Dame player, Ian Williams, admitted as such, saying he though that Navy’s offense had perhaps, “out-schemed,” Notre Dame’s defense and that, “they were tougher than us.”

That’s a pretty stand-up position to take—note he did NOT blame the coaches alone, he said Navy’s players were tougher than Notre Dame’s. Kyle McCarthy, the defensive captain, stood up for the coaches by saying the players were in the right spots, they just didn’t execute. Okay, that’s the right thing to say and I don’t blame the kid for saying it, but anyone with a cursory understanding of football could see that Notre Dame’s defense was NOT in position on a number of critical plays. How else do you account for Navy’s fullbacks averaging ELEVEN yards a carry on 19 carries? Was Navy’s offensive line SO dominant that Vince Murray and Alex Teich, neither of whom are likely to ever get a carry in the NFL, ran roughshod over the Notre Dame defense?

Of course Weis couldn’t wait to rip Williams and praise McCarthy. “That’s why one kid’s a captain and the other one’s not,” he said.

You know what Charlie, that kind of comment is why you deserve to be an ex-coach pretty soon. How about saying, “Look, we’re ALL responsible for the loss—and so is Navy. They were better than us—playing, coaching—everything.”

No, that’s not Weis’s style. He rips his own player for not being in lockstep and agreeing the players played bad but the coaches coached good. What a first class jerk.

Of course he wasn’t finished. Next, he sent co-defensive coordinator Corwin Brown to rip Niamatalolo for gently saying his team might have known what Notre Dame was going to do. Why wouldn’t Notre Dame do what it had done a year ago? The other defensive coordinator John Tenuta not only said during the week that’s what they were going to do but bragged about having seen “every option offense known to man.” Really? So what happened out there on Saturday?

Brown also railed against Navy’s “illegal cut blocks.” Let’s get this straight: cut blocks aren’t illegal, CHOP blocks are. A cut block is a block below the waist, a chop block is a block below the waist when the defender is already engaged with another blocker. It is a 15 yard penalty. Brown called the play on which Navy wide receiver Nick Henderson took down Notre Dame defender A.J. Blanton after the play one of the dirtiest plays he’d ever seen.

Please. It was an absolutely stupid, dumb play by Henderson that cost his team—rightly so—15 yards. I’ve watched the tape. If Henderson makes the block during the course of the play, there’s nothing illegal about it. It was away from the play and after the whistle—a clear, dumb personal foul, the kind players make trying to impress their coaches by “playing to the whistle.” But dirty? No. Stupid, yes. No one was hurt. The Notre Dame defender jumped right to his feet and began pointing—correctly—at the official to throw the flag, which he did.

There’s no doubt in my mind that Weis sent Corwin Brown out there to be his hit man, to try to divert attention from the fact that he’s just become the first Notre Dame coach in almost 50 years to lose to Navy twice. Trying to make the Navy coaches and players into bad guys is one of the all-time stretches in bad-guy history. Someone might point out to Weis that next year, wherever he’s coaching and throwing his players under the bus and whining that nothing is his fault, the 32 seniors on Navy’s team will be Naval and Marine officers and will be helping to ensure that he can have the freedom to be the complete and utter crybaby that he is.

Am I overreacting? Probably. But unlike Weis and Brown, I have some sense of who these kids are and of how remarkable that victory on Saturday truly was. For these two losers to try to take away from that accomplishment is infuriating. If they had any pride, any soul, any sense of what’s right and wrong, they would be ashamed of themselves.

As they should be.

One of the reasons I consider myself lucky is that I’m still passionate about sports. I’ve been around games for my entire life, I’ve had the chance to cover just about every major sporting event and a lot of not-so-major ones that I found just as intriguing or thrilling in their own way and I still care.

But I don’t get EMOTIONAL, choked up, teary-eyed very often at this point although the McLean Mustangs winning the fifth-to-eighth grade league championship in girls volleyball last month was pretty cool.

Saturday was different. You see I wasn’t there two years ago when Navy beat Notre Dame for the first time in 43 years. I was in my house screaming profanities at the TV set when the official threw the bogus pass interference flag in the third overtime and then completely losing my mind when Navy got the stop a moment later on the two point conversion to win the game, 46-44.

I’ve been around Navy football since I first went to work at The Washington Post. The first Navy football game I ever covered was in 1978 when the Mids play at Connecticut. The late Tom Bates was the SID back then, a truly great man. When I called Tom to tell him I was going to be covering the game he said to me, ‘aren’t you about 14-years-old?’ I told him I was 22. “Listen,” he said. “This is important. Don’t screw it up.”

Since I was actually on The Metro staff at the time and had almost gotten arrested at the scene of a quadruple-murder drug-deal-gone-bad (the cops weren’t too happy when I started asking two suspects in handcuffs questions) earlier that week I thought I could handle the pressure of Navy-UConn football.

Years later, I wrote ‘A Civil War,’ and I’ve done Navy radio the last 13 years. So, I’m absolutely, totally biased when it comes to Navy and, for that matter, Army. I also root for Air Force, even though I don’t know the people out there as well as I know the people at Army and Navy.

I drive people crazy constantly telling them just how HARD it is to play football and play it well at the Division 1-A level at the academies. Doing the book, I not only came to like the kids I was writing about but also to admire them. I feel that way perhaps even more strongly today because the young men at the schools today signed up in the middle of a war.

What Navy has accomplished the last seven years is, well, just about impossible. In the three year prior to 2003, the Mids were 3-30, two of those wins coming in 2002, Paul Johnson’s first year as head coach. Most of the losses weren’t close. I still remember Georgia Tech scoring 70 and North Carolina State 65, neither opposing coach caring very much about how humiliating the final score might be. Those were some long broadcasts.

Johnson turned it around with his option offense, his remarkable offensive mind and his sheer chutzpah. He believes he’s the best coach going, he sells that to his players in recruiting and on the practice field and they buy in. He also hired a truly GREAT defensive coordinator in Buddy Green, a move that has been critical to Navy’s success.

The Mids have now gone to seven straight bowls. They have beaten Air Force (which dominated them for years) seven times in a row and Army seven times in a row—NONE of those games close. And, in 2007, they finally, finally beat Notre Dame.

There had been other close calls during the losing streak, notably 1999 when a line judge named Perry Hudspeth absolutely blew a spot—moving the ball up a full yard—to give Notre Dame a first down by an inch when Navy should have gotten the ball back on down at that point with a four point lead, a minute to go and Notre Dame out of time outs. At halftime this past Saturday a friend of mine left a message on my cell phone: “I just hope Perry Hudspeth isn’t in the stadium today,” the message said.

People ask me why I won’t forgive Hudspeth ten years later. Here’s my answer: the day he admits he screwed up is the day I’ll forgive him.

Last Saturday, I finally made it back to Notre Dame after boycotting the games out there for years, partly because I knew Navy was going to lose one way or the other. If the Irish didn’t beat them, the officials would. Plus, the weather was always terrible—“it’s just lake effect snow,” they always told us as if that didn’t count—and Navy had to stay in a dreary motel in Michigan because the South Bend hotels will only give you a room if you guarantee a two night stay on Notre Dame football weekends. So, I took a pass on a long trip, a bumpy plane ride and an almost certain Navy loss.

That’s why I missed the win in ’07. I was okay with it—they won the game, I was thrilled. This year though, when I accepted the speaking engagement in Phoenix and saw Notre Dame on the calendar two days later, I decided to go. I flew to Chicago and drove from there to South Bend.

Amazingly, the weather was spectacular on Saturday—the temperature in the mid-60s in bright sunshine. I got to campus early enough to walk around, buy a very good hamburger on the quad (Notre Dame for all its NBC millions serves only hot dogs in the press box and I don’t like hot dogs at any hour, much less 11:30 in the morning) and sort of revel in all those fired up Irish fans. Everyone was very nice, even though I had on a Navy shirt although I did get a glare from one couple when they heard me explain to a friend on the phone that I thought a helicopter passing overhead was delivering Charlie Weis's ego to the stadium.

You see, I LIKE Notre Dame. I respect the school and I have a lot of friends from there, including Roger Valdiserri—the man who turned being an SID into an art-form years ago—who is one of the world’s all time good people; John Heisler, his successor, who is now one of those senior, associate, senior again AD’s; Digger Phelps (who still lives in South Bend) and current basketball coach Mike Brey. I love the fight song (who doesn’t) although I don’t need the long-winded PA guy to say, “the greatest fight song of them all," when the band comes on the field. Let the music speak for itself pal.

I don’t like Charlie Weis. I think he’s a preening, blow hard and not a very good coach. He’s got a top ten draft pick at quarterback (Jimmy Clausen up-close is VERY impressive) and two wide receivers who are a lock first rounder (Michael Floyd) and a possible first rounder (Golden Tate). Five years in, he still has a mediocre defense and firing coordinators hasn’t made them better.

Honestly, I don’t care if he’s fired. As a Notre Dame friend said after the game Saturday, “Navy may beat us quite a few more times if this guy (Weis) is still the coach.”

What matters is that Navy won Saturday and I was right there to see it. It was a great, back-and-forth game, the Navy kids making plays when they absolutely had to. Ram Vela, the 5-foot-9, 193 pounds linebacker (seriously, that’s how big he is) recovered a fumble and had an interception. Quarterback Ricky Dobbs and the two Navy fullbacks ran wild. Weis made some weird calls in the red zone and, after the usual almost four hours thanks to the endless NBC commercials, Navy WON 23-21.

“All I want to say,” I said on the air when it was over, “is that I’m very glad I lived to see this.”

Bob Socci, my co-partner on-air along with Omar Nelson said, “Your heart held up well.”

It did—barely in that final minute. Watching the Navy kids belting out ‘blue-and-gold,’ I had chills. I will say one more time that people can’t possibly understand how remarkable it is for Navy to compete against Notre Dame, much less win in Notre Dame Stadium.

And this time I got to see it. Wow. I’ve got chills again just writing about it.

So here I am in Phoenix, having made it through a plane flight to get here. I’m giving a speech to a corporate group tonight and the hardest part of the day is the flying part. I’m writing this late Thursday afternoon since I have to get up at 5 a.m. in the morning to catch a flight to Chicago. I’m going to see some friends there and then drive over to Notre Dame Saturday morning to do Navy-Notre Dame on the radio.

I’m not terribly optimistic: Navy’s playing for the 10th straight week and is very beat up. Notre Dame is getting wide receiver Michael Floyd back to what is clearly a very good offense. It will be very tough for Navy to make this one of those years where the refs have to intervene for Notre Dame to win.

Am I biased? Of course. I can honestly say I have great respect for Notre Dame and have a lot of friends connected with the school—notably Mike Brey, the basketball coach. But, as you’ve probably gathered, I’m not a fan of Charlie Weis and I really believe Notre Dame has more advantages than any school playing football in America. The fact that it hasn’t won a national championship since 1988 and has barely been a blip on the national radar in recent years is mind-boggling.

Now, of course, people are saying if Notre Dame wins out it will get a BCS bid. You know what, they’re probably right because one of the bowls is going to want the name and the TV ratings, regardless of the quality of the team. If Notre Dame keeps winning, they’ll keep moving up in the polls so a BCS bowl can pick them.

The best team the Irish will have to beat to do that is Pittsburgh, which is pretty good, but hardly a power at this point. Their wins to date are over Nevada, Michigan State, Purdue, Washington, Boston College and Washington State. There’s not a ranked team in the bunch and Washington State is about as bad a team as Division 1-A has to offer. Their losses are to a Michigan team that will be lucky to finish in the top half of The Big Ten and Pete Carroll’s worst USC team in eight years. Ask Oregon how tough the Trojans are this season.

And yet, when we all know that Boise State will not get a BCS bid even if it wins out unless TCU loses a game, Notre Dame is in the mix.

Ridiculous.

But I’m not here today to rail about Notre Dame or even the BCS. I do that enough and I might do it again Monday if Navy somehow stays close.

Actually I’m looking for help. Seriously. I HATE to fly—hate everything about it from dealing with security to wondering about the weather to the flight itself. When I was younger, I flew all the time. I flew big planes and small planes. I was always a little bit nervous—lack of control, which is what scares most of us—but still got on planes whenever I needed to.

I still remember flying on a private plane 21 years ago from Clemson to Chapel Hill with Lefty Driesell. He was doing TV for Raycom that year and someone had gotten sick so Lefty had to do an afternoon game at Clemson, a night game in Chapel Hill. The only way to get him to Chapel Hill in time was a private plane. I hitched a ride since I was writing about Lefty for my second book, “A Season Inside.”

The day was beautiful and the flight was smooth. Lefty was white-knuckling the whole way. “Coach, these little planes are safer than the big ones,” the pilot said.

“Might be so,” Lefty said. “But they don’t FEEL safer.

He told me a story during that trip about flying to New York a few years earlier on a recruiting trip. There had been some kind of a problem with the plane’s hydraulic system and the oxygen masks had dropped down. “This flight attendant was showing me how to put it on,” Lefty said. “I remember thinking, ‘I’m gonna die and the kid I’m going to see ain’t even that good. Now if I’d been going to see Moses (Malone) that would have been okay. Moses was worth dyin’ for.”

I’ve gotten worse as I’ve gotten older. It started when my son was born. All of a sudden, every time there was turbulence I thought about Danny. When Brigid came along, I thought about both of them. I also had some bad flights. I landed on a foamed runway once in London because the pilots weren’t sure the landing gear would come down. We circled for about 45 minutes while we were shown the crash position.

On another flight, the pilot went right through a thunderstorm. I’ve been told by pilots that the one thing that makes a pilot nervous is flying through a thunderstorm. We were in this one for a solid 30 minutes. You know how sometimes when you fly and it get bumpy you look around and you see people sound asleep? Not on this flight. Everyone was wide awake, sitting up, staring straight ahead.

We finally got through the storm and when we landed everyone on board applauded. As we waited for the jetway, the pilot came out from the cockpit.

“Can I ask you a question?” I asked.

“Sure,” he said.

“On a scale of one to ten, how scary was that?”

He shook his head and smiled. “I’d say it was a solid seven, maybe an eight,” he said.

“When do you get nervous,” I asked.

“About six,” he said.

Great.

Back then I had what I called, “the four hour rule.” If I could drive someplace in four hours, I drove because it was just as fast as flying and almost always easier. After 9-11 it became a seven hour rule and it has risen through the years. Now, if I have the time I will drive as far as Chicago and Orlando. I’ve learned not to even mind it: I listen to tapes, talk on the phone, listen to a ballgame at night.

Phoenix though is a bit far. San Antonio for The Final Four was a bit far too. Friends have suggested drugs: I tried Xanax because Tony Kornheiser said it would knock me silly. It knocked me nowhere. I had three glasses of wine, even though I wasn’t supposed to drink and THAT helped. Problem is you can’t really start drinking on a flight that leaves at 7:30 in the morning and it worked. Today I tried valium. Nothing. I mean NOTHING. I felt every bump and sweated through a bumpy landing. So if anyone has any suggestions, I’m open to them. The shame of it is, I’m actually a good speaker and I turn down a lot of offers because unless the money is really, really good I’m not getting on an airplane.

So, as you read this, say a little prayer that I make it to Chicago in one piece. And then cheer, cheer for…The Midshipmen.

I made my regular appearance on 'The Sports Reporters' with Steve Czaban and Andy Pollin in my regular spot (5:25 ET on Wednesday's) yesterday. Click the permalink, then the link below, to listen to the segment on a multiple topic day -- Navy and Duke football, Andre Agassi's book revelations and of course, brief Redskins talk.

Click here to listen to Wednesday afternoon's segment: The Sports Reporters


This morning I was back at the regular time with the newest The Tony Kornheiser Show (Thursday's, 11:05 ET) while at the Patriot League Media day for basketball.  It was a typical segment with Tony, and we discussed everything from dinner to a Sally Jenkins article, but spent most of the time on the Agassi talk (which led into a good discussion on tennis players vs. golfers).

Click here to listen to the radio 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 started off talking the Seattle Sounders (I covered the original team a couple times back in my earlier days) then led into Redskins talk - what is the endgame for Snyder and this team?

Click here to listen to the radio segment: The Gas Man Show

Yesterday (Tuesday) I made an early week appearance on the newest Tony Kornheiser Show, as my schedule precludes me from doing the regular Thursday segment. Click the permalink, then the link below, to listen to the segment on a variety of topics, including Navy football and GT's Paul Johnson.

Click here to listen to the radio segment (my segment starts around the 16:00 mark): The Tony Kornheiser Show


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). As expected, much of the talk centered on the Redskins situation.

Click here to listen to Wednesday afternoon's podcast: The Sports Reporters


I make regular appearances on Seattle's The Gas Man Show on Thursday evenings (5:35 PT), and this evening we spent a lot of time on the situation with referrees and umpires.

Click here to listen to the radio segment: The Gas Man Show

The other day, after I joked about reminding Furman Bisher that there was, "no cheering in the press box," a number of people wrote asking how strictly that directive was adhered to and if I had stories about moments when it was not.

Overall, I would say there are few breaches of decorum--certainly not many at all like the one that made the rounds on YouTube a couple weeks ago showing former Saints quarterback Bobby Hebert going nuts after his former team recovered a fumble in the end zone--are pretty rare. But they do happen.

My most embarrassing breach of course was in 2005 when Navy played at Duke and I reacted to a string of terrible calls against Navy by saying "f----- referees!" The weird thing about it was when I said it I actually looked around the radio booth to see who had said it. When I saw everyone staring at me I realized I was in trouble. There's no excuse for that kind of thing and I was lucky the Navy people stuck by me.

Of course an enclosed radio booth is different than the press box itself. No one at Duke that day was aware of what had happened until I came out of the booth to tell Eric Ruden, who is in charge of the radio network, what I'd done. I'll always be grateful to him and to Chet Gladchuk, the Navy AD for the way they dealt with the incident. When I asked Eric to let Chet know what had happened because I was willing to resign on-air if he wanted me to, Eric came back and said, "Chet said to tell you he said the same thing on the play."

To which I replied, "Yeah, but he didn't say it on the air." The next week when Chet and Eric got phone calls from the media wanting to know if I would be punished in some way their answer was the same: "John made a mistake, he apologized for it instantly and he feels bad about it. It's over as far as we're concerned."

To this day people still ask me, "did you get through the broadcast Saturday without an f-bomb?" Hey, I made the mistake, I have to live with it and the stale jokes that come with it. Eric once pointed out to me that about 10 times more people knew I'd been doing the games for nine seasons (now 13) after the incident than before the incident.

Inside the press box or on press row at basketball games you rarely see breaches to etiquette. We all have biases and some are more obvious about them than others. There are also times when guys just get caught up in the emotions of a game. Bob Ryan, the great Boston Globe columnist tells a story about the famous Duke-Kentucky game in 1992 when Christian Laettner made the shot at the buzzer in overtime and he was so stunned and amazed that he leaped to his feet. "I thought, "Oh My God, what am I doing I look like a fan," he said later. "Then I looked around and saw that everyone else was standing too. We were just overwhelmed by the whole game and what we'd seen."

I wasn't in Philadelphia that night. I was in Tampa, Florida watching the game in a hotel room with Tim Kurkijian, then of Sports Illustrated, now of ESPN. In spite of that fact, I got a call on Monday from a Charlotte radio station wanting to know if I would come on the air to discuss the fact that I had been seen leaping the press table to run on the court and hug Laettner. I suggested they call Tim to verify where I was at that moment and told them I did not have the ability to beam myself from Tampa to Philadelphia. I later found out that the rumor had been started by a guy I'd known early in my journalism career who blew up his own career and was very bitter about anyone who'd had more success than he had.

There are also times when people assume biases. When Mike Kryzewski was still trying to build his program at Duke, the one local journalist who stuck with him during the first three seasons was Keith Drum, who was sports editor of The Durham Morning Herald. Because Keith--who is now a scout for the Sacramento Kings---was supportive of Krzyzewski many North Carolina people, including Dean Smith, began to label him, "a Duke guy." As it happens, Keither went to North Carolina, but that didn't matter. In 1984, Duke beat Carolina in the ACC Tournament semifinals, one of Krzyzewski's first really important wins since that Carolina team included Michael Jordan, Sam Perkins, Brad Daugherty and Kenny Smith--among others.

Keith and I have been friends since I was in college. We walked down the steps that led to the locker room area and there was Dean, smoking a postgame cigarette. (He gave up smoking a few years later). As soon as he saw us, he made a beeline for Keith, hand out and said, "congratulations, YOUR team played very well."

Keith and I thought that was pretty funny, congratulating the guy who went to Carolina on a Duke victory while the Duke graduate stood there watching (with a huge smile on his face because it WAS pretty funny). I still tease Keith about that to this day,

Actually I lied when I said my only breach of decorum was the Navy-Duke football game. In 1978, Duke played Kentucky in the national championship game. It was my first Final Four. I was a year out of college and knew the players and coaches well. Needless to say I was pulling for Duke. Early in the second half Jim Bain, one of the referees, missed a traveling call. Bill Foster, the Duke coach, got off the bench and, from across the court, made the traveling signal and then held his hands out, palm up, as if to say, "where was the call."

Bain gave him a technical foul on the spot. Al McGuire and Billy Packer, working their first Final Four together for NBC, were stunned by both calls. "That's taking one mistake and turning it into two," McGuire said at the time. I might be wrong, but I don't remember another coach getting teed up in a championship game since then. Good refs give coaches a lot of rope under that kind of pressure and--most of the time--the refs working the final are good ones.

Many Kentucky fans think I blame Bain for Duke losing the game. I don't. Kentucky was the better team and was almost certainly going to win that night whether Bain got the travel right or didn't lose his temper. But those two calls certainly didn't help Duke's cause.

Two years later, I was covering a Virginia-Ohio State game in Columbus. It was Ralph Sampson's freshman year. Jim Bain had the game. During a time out, I found him standing right in front of me. "Hey Jim" I called out. He turned around and said, "what?”

"Remember the Duke-Kentucky championship game two years ago?" He nodded. "That technical on Foster, WORST call I've ever seen."

Bain just stared at me for a second and then said something profane. I was about to respond when the late Barney Cooke, who was then Virginia's SID, grabbed my shoulder and said, "don't say another word." Barney was right of course. I shouldn't have said anything in the first place. But it DID make me feel better. And no one can say that I was cheering in the press box--or on press row--that day.

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Just for the record, last night was one of those that's special to me. Three or four times a year I have dinner with three men I got to know well covering Maryland politics: one is Harry Hughes, who as the governor when I covered the state house, one of the best men I've ever had the chance to know. (And it isn't just because he's a Democrat. He's simply a wonderful man, liked and respected by Democrats and Republicans alike). The others in the group are Steve Sachs, the former state attorney general and Tim Maloney, who served five terms in The House of Delegates (he was 22 when he was elected) who left to become a wealthy lawyer.

We usually go down to Easton, on the Maryland eastern shore, because that's where Governor Hughes lives and have a great time talking about today's politics and reliving old stories.

A couple of years ago, I walked into the restaurant where we were meeting to see if Governor Hughes had arrived yet. Traffic had been surprisingly light on The Bay Bridge so we were a few minutes early. I was looking around the bar area when I heard a voice say, "what the hell are you doing down here?"

I turned around and there was Bob Pascal, who had been Governor Hughes' Republican opponent in 1982. I covered that election, which Hughes won in a runaway. Throughout the summer, Pascal kept saying to me, "When I get on the tube (TV advertising) Harry's going to hear my footsteps. He got on the tube and ended up with 37 percent of the vote. I told Pascal why I was there--we were celebrating Gov. Hughes birthday that night--and he laughed and said, "I always knew you were a Democrat." (True, he did, because I told him up front but also told him that some of my best sources in the legislature were Republicans, which was also true).

"Tell you what," Pascal said. "Because I'm a good guy, I'm going to buy Harry a bottle of wine for his birthday."

Sure enough, the governor showed up a few minutes later and we all sat down. I was telling him the story when Pascal walked up behind him. Hearing the footsteps, he turned around.

I couldn't resist. "Bob," I said. "It finally happened! Harry heard your footsteps! It only took 25 years but he DID hear your footsteps!."

Some things, I swear, you just can't make up.

Monday is always the toughest--and easiest--blog day because there are so many different things to write about. If the Redskins had somehow lost to the horrid Tampa Bay Buccaneers on Sunday I'm pretty sure I would have been ripping Danny Snyder for firing Jim Zorn instead of firing himself. It's amazing to read The Washington Post this morning where the reaction to the 16-13 win would make you think the Redskins had come from 10-0 down at halftime to beat the Steelers or the Cowboys.

Speaking of my newspaper--and it will always be my newspaper for better or worse--there were THREE stories on Sunday about Maryland's win over Clemson. THREE. Forget that Maryland's bad and Clemson's mediocre or that half the crowd was from Clemson because few people in the area seriously care about Maryland football, the fact is it was an ACC football game between two mediocre teams. Most ACC football games are between two mediocre teams, the exception being Virginia Tech-Duke on Saturday which was between a good team and a bad team even if Duke kept the final score close.

While The Post was obsessing about Maryland (I won't even get into the Redskins obsession this morning) the paper all but missed a truly wonderful game in Annapolis between Navy and Air Force. (I know my editor Matt Rennie will point out that the Navy game story was played right next to Maryland's but the Maryland SIDEBAR was longer than the one Navy story). You pretty much have to be in the stadium--which was packed unlike Byrd Stadium where they keep pumping up their alleged attendance figures--to feel the intensity of a game like this one. After Saturday's 16-13 overtime win, Navy has now beaten Air Force seven times in a row by a total of 36 points, 11 of those coming in the game two years ago when Navy scored very late to stretch the final margin. That means six games decided by 25 points. Do the math.

Both defenses were brilliant in this game. You could feel the energy on both sidelines from the radio booth and, no doubt, everywhere else in the stadium. It took a god-awful call--a phantom roughing the passer penalty on a play in which Navy made what should have been a game-clinching interception--to put the game into overtime. (If you think this is my Navy bias talking, check the replay or check Air Force coach Troy Calhoun's quote on the play. He called it, "a gift.") Navy kicker Joe Buckley, who lost his job a week ago and then got it back, made three field goals including a 38-yarder in overtime. Air Force kicker Erik Soderberg, who had made a 33-yarder at the buzzer to tie the game (after the brutal call) missed wide left from 31-yards and Navy had won again.

As happy as I was for Navy, I couldn't help but feel for Soderberg, who not surprisingly was completely stand-up about the miss putting the blame on himself (this is what service academy kids do) and for all the Air Force players who gave heart and soul to winning the game and now must wait 12 months to try again--except for their seniors who will never beat Navy. As many times as I have seen it, the playing of the alma maters after a service academy game still gets to me, the teams standing in front of their respective bands and student bodies--first the losers, then the winners--for the songs. You never see any of the losers sneak out or fail to cross the field after their song has been played to show respect for the winners. It's just a very cool thing. I can't count the number of times I've seen it and I still get chills.

One other football score absolutely jumped off the page at me Saturday. It was NOT UTEP over Houston or Michigan State (yawn) over Michigan or even Notre Dame lucking out again. It was this: Columbia-38, Princeton-0 at Princeton. Look, I know Columbia football. I grew up going to games in Baker Field and watching the Lions roll up one losing season after another even with some guys on the team--Marty Domres, George Starke, Marcellus Wiley (later) who went on to play in the NFL. I don't know the exact numbers but I think Columbia has had (maybe) three winning seasons in forty years. The Lions almost never beat Princeton much less KILL the Tigers. That score is as stunning as any you will see in college football this year.

Back now to our regularly scheduled blog.

As soon as the alma maters had been played and Bob Socci threw our broadcast to a break, I had to race to my car. I was giving a speech at George Mason and the overtime cost me 20 minutes. I HAD to get out before the traffic backed up. As I ran the 200 yards or so from the press box elevator to my car I noticed two things: I wasn't breathing very hard at all and I didn't notice the incisions from heart surgery until I got in the car and realized I hadn't noticed them. Progress. Now I need to lose 20 pounds and get in swimming shape.

I beat the traffic and got to Mason in time. It is amazing what that school has done in the time since I've been in Washington. The Final Four appearance in 2006 was the centerpiece of what has become a truly admirable athletic program. The dinner was packed. (Must have been the speaker). I joked that if I HAD been late they could have had Jim Larranaga introduce me because that would have killed at least an hour. Jim is a reporter's dream unless you're on a tight deadline. Ask him about someone make him a jump shot and he will tell you about James Naismith teaching his players the set shot and move on from there before arriving back in 2009. By the way, the Patriots will be very good this year.

With all the football going on Sunday I was really focused--once I got home from my daughter's birthday party--on one event: The Senior Players Championship in Baltimore. If not for Brigid's party I would have driven up there because Tom Watson had a four shot lead. Watson just couldn't get going on Sunday. Jay Haas did, shooting 66 to beat him by one shot with a brilliant birdie on 18, hitting a 6-iron to two feet on a hole almost no one had even hit the green (23 percent of the field) on all day. Haas is one of the truly good guys in all of sports. Several years ago he was awarded the Golf Writer's Association's annual Jim Murray Award for cooperating with the media. His opening line was, "I guess this should be called the, 'Curtis blew us off so let's go talk to Jay,' Award." For years golf writers never knew what they were going to get when approaching Jay's old Wake Forest teammate Curtis Strange. They always knew what they'd get with Jay.

In his entire career on the two tours--33 years and counting--Jay has been fined once. It happened in Milwaukee about 10 years ago when he was struggling with his game. He managed to play well the first two rounds but was awful on Saturday, shooting something like 77 which on that golf course is like shooting 85. Disgusted, he managed to hit his second shot on the par-five 18th just off the back of the green. He caught a really bad lie though and plunked his third all the way to the other side of the green. As he walked to his ball, steam coming out of his ears, some guy yelled out, "you really suck Haas!" Jay just couldn't take it anymore. "F---- you!" He yelled back.

The next morning, Wade Cagle, the rules official who was running the tournament, called Haas into his office. "Jay someone filed a complaint against you yesterday," he said, looking a little bit pale. "Says here that you said, 'f---- you,' to a fan. I'm sure they misheard. I'm sure you said 'THANK-you.'

Haas shook his head. "Nope," he said. "Guy's got it right; How much (fine money) do I owe you?"

I digress. As much as I like Jay, Watson losing was painful. Think how close he has come to an absolutely historic year: he just missed becoming the oldest man by ELEVEN years to win a major at The British Open and if he had won yesterday he would have been the oldest man to win a major on The Champions Tour. What a double THAT would have been. In fact, had he pulled both wins off I would have made the case that, adding in the remarkable work he has done to raise money for ALS Research, he should be Sportsman of the Year. Now, even though Tom should still be considered, it almost certainly will go to Roger Federer--who is deserving but not as inspiring as Watson on any level in my (biased) view.

Life is never perfect. Especially on a weekend when Dan Snyder and Charlie Weis eek out wins. Then again, Navy-Air Force made up for it--in spades. Not because Navy won but because being in that stadium on a perfect October afternoon was so

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.

I just don't understand why it is so difficult for people--especially famous ones--to say two little words: "I'm sorry."

Every single one of us makes mistakes in life. No one knows that better than I do. When you write as often as I do, you're going to make mistakes--sometimes from a faulty memory; sometimes from a pure mind block; sometimes from not doing enough research. The other day in this blog I somehow wrote that the Yankees last won a World Series in 2001. How that happened I don't know but it did. I'm sorry.

Four years ago, doing a Navy radio broadcast of a game at Duke I became so frustrated with the incompetence of the officials that, after a clear push-off by a Duke player on a two-point conversion try that tied the game I heard someone say, "------ referees!: There was no seven second delay and when I looked around the booth to see who had lost their composure and realized everyone was staring at me. What a sick feeling that was. I took myself off the air, told the Navy people what had happened and offered to resign on the spot. Both Chet Gladchuk and Eric Ruden--the athletic director and senior associate AD--said absolutely not. We agreed I would go back on and apologize. I remember Eric saying, "you're right to apologize. Do it and that will be the end of it."

"I'll apologize Eric," I said. "But I guarantee you that won't be the end of it."

I apologized--no, "if I offended anybody," clauses; nothing about how lousy the officiating had been (Paul Johnson, the WINNING coach in the game was so angry when it was over he chased the officials off the field) or anything like that. Just, "I'm sorry," which I was. There was no excuse for what had happened.

The Navy people were amazing about the whole thing. I was right that my apology wasn't the end of it. There were calls from the media all week. Would I be suspended? No, said Ruden to all callers. "John made a mistake. He took himself off the air and apologized instantly. That's enough."

I have now done Navy football games for 13 years. To this day I get cracks about, "did you get through the broadcast without using profanity this week?" I've written 25 books and there is more in my Wikipedia bio on the incident at Duke than on the books. The other day when Serena Williams lost her mind at the U.S. Open some clever guy e-mailed my friend Tony Kornheiser's radio show asking if I had given Serena lessons in how to use profanity. To be honest, the fact that Tony read it on the air annoys me. But you know what? It's my fault because I did it. No one else is responsible.

Which leads me back to Serena Williams. I have no idea what the lineswoman was thinking at such a crucial juncture when she called a foot-fault (and thus, a double-fault) on Williams when she was down a set and 5-6, 15-30 against Kim Clijsters in the U.S. Open semifinals Saturday night. The fact that the USTA is refusing to release her name is ridiculous. She's out there on court, she's being paid (not quite as much as the players) she should take responsibility for all her calls and explain what she was thinking--or not thinking--at that moment.

But that's not what's important. Williams' reaction to the call is what's important. She lost her mind. Look, bad calls happen in sports. You can argue, you can ask the umpire to overrule (in tennis) or to ask the lineswoman if she's absolutely sure or ask to play a let. But once you lose the argument you can NOT threaten the umpire while screaming profanities at her. You can't say ------ referees and you can't threaten to shove a tennis ball down someone's throat.

In fact, if the incident had happened earlier in the match the officials would have been justified in calling "gross misconduct," on Williams and defaulting her on the spot. As it was, they gave her a point penalty since it was her second violation of the match (smashed racquet earlier) and that meant game, set, match to Clijsters who was probably the most stunned person in the stadium.

Okay, Williams made a mistake. I can certainly relate. She's going to be subjected to replays of that moment forever. There's nothing she can do about it. But she could have made life a lot better for herself by coming in to the interview room and saying, "I don't know what happened out there. I just completely lost it for a moment and I'm truly sorry."

That would NOT have been the end of it--as I can attest--but it would have toned down the criticism quite a bit. Things do happen in the heat of the moment and we all blow it on occasion. But Williams pulled a LeBron James. On Saturday night she talked about how her "passion," for what she did had caused her to get so angry. No apology. The next day she issued a statement. Still no apology--much like James saying the day after his team's loss to the Orlando Magic that "winners," don't shake hands after losing. Dig the hole a little deeper.

Maybe if Williams' agent, Jill Smoller, hadn't been so busy trying to stick her hand in front of cameras on Saturday night, she would have had time to do her job and sit her client down and tell her, "you made a mistake--a bad one. Apologize, REALLY apologize right now."

It took until Monday for people to get to Williams and convince her to "amend," her apology. (Her word) It was an apology for the apology. Carefully written and worded, with all sorts of references to how great SHE is, Williams did finally apologize to everyone involved. When poor Patrick McEnroe asked her during the doubles award ceremony why she had amended her apology, HE was booed. What are people thinking? He was doing his job asking the exact right question. Venus Williams grabbed the mike and said, "let's just move on."

That's fine. But moving on--especially after botching the first two attempts to admit a mistake--isn't always that easy. There won't be any suspension for Serena--you think the USTA, CBS or ESPN want an Open next year without her?--and, fans being fans, it won't be her fault before all is said and done. Sort of like that chair back in 1985 that got what it deserved when Bob Knight tossed it across a court.

We seem to live in an era where no one is every responsible for their actions. Joe Wilson said he was sorry--sort of--for yelling 'you lied,' at The President of the United States during a joint session of Congress. In the same breath he claimed (incorrectly) that he was right about what was in the Health Care bill. No doubt Kanye West will be sorry for his reprehensible behavior at the country music awards but will note that Beyonce still should have won.

I call it living in the Land of Never Wrong. Famous people are constantly surrounded by enablers who tell them that they're never wrong regardless of what they do. The year I was working on "A Season on the Brink," I sat and listened to people rationalize Knight's behavior--including the chair throw--until it became laughable. One night, after a dramatic overtime win over Purdue, Knight walked into his postgame press conference and went on and on about how beautiful the day had been and how he had paused to try to put basketball into perspective that afternoon. Then he said he didn't have time for any questions and that the Indiana locker room was closed.

When I asked him a few minutes later why he had done that he said, "just my little victory." His friends thought that was really great--really nailed the media. Maybe it did. It also nailed all the Indiana fans who would have liked to have heard what Knight thought about the comeback and it nailed his players--especially Steve Alford, whose heroics pulled the game out and went largely ignored because Knight made himself the story (again) with his behavior. When I tried to point that out to Knight (pretty brave I thought) I was shouted down even before Knight could look at me and say, "aah, you're just one of them when it's all said and done."

Guilty.

And for that I do NOT apologize.

It isn't at all surprising that most of the attention following Friday's Hall of Fame Induction ceremony in Springfield would be on Michael Jordan. Most people agree he was the greatest basketball player of all time--and if you want to argue about Wilt Chamberlain or Bill Russell or Kareem Abdul-Jabbar or Oscar Robertson, that's fine. If you put it to a vote, Jordan is almost certainly going to win.

Sadly though, the reason most of the attention was focused on Jordan was the tone of his speech. Most of it--and it went on for quite a while--was angry. Instead of being grateful to all those who helped him become MICHAEL JORDAN, he kept coming back to how he was motivated by slights and putdowns. He even moaned about Dean Smith not allowing him to be on the cover of Sports Illustrated as a freshman.

Jordan could be the subject of a psychological study that might take years to put together. What was too bad about the way he 'stole,' the show on Friday was that the other inductees were more or less lumped together. As in, "also inducted were David Robinson, John Stockton, Jerry Sloan and C. Vivian Stringer." All four were extremely deserving, but the one who truly deserved a special spotlight is Robinson.

I have to admit to a bias here. I first met Robinson when he was 6-foot-7 inch freshman at Navy who wasn't starting. His coach, Paul Evans, introduced me to him after Navy had lost a game at George Mason and said, "you need to watch this kid, he's gong to be a player for us."

Evans had no idea at the time that Robinson was going to grow six inches to 7-1 before the start of his sophomore season and lead Navy to three straight NCAA Tournaments--including a final eight appearance in 1986. He had no idea Robinson would become the national player of the year as a senior or the No. 1 pick in the NBA draft or that he would go on to a remarkable career in San Antonio that would include three NBA titles and a lock on the Hall of Fame induction that took place on Friday.

What always struck me about Robinson when I began to cover him and talk to him on a regular basis during his sophomore year was his sense of humor, his thoughtfulness and the fact that he was just as interested in engineering (his dad had been a Naval engineer) as basketball. He and his classmate, Doug Wojcik (now the coach at Tulsa) were as good off the court as they were on the court.

“Hey Doug," Robinson yelled at Wojcik in the locker room one day. "There's a reason you're the point guard, you know, and it isn't because of your shooting."

Wojcik never blinked, pointing a finger at Robinson and saying, "David, never bite the hand that feeds you."

During their four years at Navy, Robinson and Wojcik never lost to Army. But four of the five games were decided by four points or less largely because Army had a 5-11 guard named Kevin Houston who could hit shots from just about anywhere. Houston only got to play one season with the three point line. If he had played with it for four years he might have doubled his points since he almost never shot from inside 20 feet. The last time Army played Navy when Robinson, Wojcik and Houston were seniors, Houston scored 38 and Navy needed overtime--at home--to win the game. Wojcik still remembers the day vividly.

"He was just lighting me up," he said. "Every time down court, he'd take on dribble and release--from like 25 feet--swish. I was pleading with him, 'my whole family is here, (it was senior day) my friends, everyone in my company--please stop, you're humiliating me."

The three men remained in touch after graduation. All went into the service, although as everyone knows, Robinson got out after two years and went on to stardom. Wojcik got into coaching after getting out of the Navy, Houston into business, marrying his childhood sweetheart, Liz, having three children and settling down not far from West Point.

The year after they all graduated, I was working on my second book, "A Season Inside." I spent some time with Robinson and Houston, contrasting their lives--Robinson was in the Navy, Houston in the Army. Robinson was a lock to be on the '88 Olympic team; Houston was just hoping to get invited to try out. I went to visit Robinson at a submarine base in south Georgia where he was stationed. We went out to lunch and all we could find was a McDonald's. When we walked up to the counter, the manager recognized Robinson immediately--he probably didn't get too many 7-foot-1 inch African Americans in a Navy uniform coming through the place.

"I know who you are," he said. "You just signed a contract for $26 million to play in the NBA when you get out of the Navy."

Robinson kind of nodded, pretending to be confused about whether he wanted a Big Mac or a double hamburger.

"Tell you what," the manager said. "When you're rich and famous, you come back in here and I'll give you your food for free."

That got Robinson's attention. "Sir, when I'm rich and famous I won't need my food for free. Right now, I'm making $590 a month and I could really USE getting my food for free."

The guy, of course, missed the point.

Robinson not only became rich and famous but has used his money and his fame to build a school in San Antonio and has done as much important charity work as any ex-athlete alive. He is as comfortable in retirement as Jordan is clearly uncomfortable in retirement. He has also remained one of the warmest and most likeable people you are ever likely to meet.

Houston's life has not been as easy. Six years ago, his wife Liz was diagnosed with scleroderma, an extremely rare auto-immune disease mostly found in women between the ages of 30 and 50. In January, Liz Houston passed away at the age of 44. When Robinson heard that he was going into the Hall of Fame, he called his old rival and asked him to come to the induction ceremony as his guest. That says a lot about David Robinson and about the unique nature of the Army-Navy rivalry. Then again, David Robinson doesn't need to justify to anyone who he is or what he has accomplished in his life.

And he doesn't need any free food from McDonald's.

--------------------------------

A quick note on the Serena Williams episode on Saturday night at the U.S. Open. The line judge was probably wrong to call the foot-fault: the only time you make a call like that, especially at a crucial moment is if it is absolutely blatant and it wasn't. Questionable perhaps, but not blatant. That being said, the officials had no choice but to call the point penalty that ended the match after the way Williams responded. You simply can't threaten officials and saying, "You're lucky if I don't shove this ----- ball down your throat," is threatening. Williams may have known she didn't mean it, but the line judge did not. The fact that Williams was un remorseful afterwards--talking about her passion for the game leading to her tantrum--and STILL didn't not apologize on Sunday in a prepared statement, makes it even worse. One more thing: for all the posturing by the International Tennis Federation about perhaps suspending her from next year's Open, you can forget about that happening. The USTA isn't going to let the biggest draw in the women's game sit out the Open. Here's what will happen: Williams will, at some point, perhaps as early as today after the women's doubles final, agree to apologize and the ITF will say, 'apology accepted,' but she better not do that again. Will Williams learn a lesson from the incident? Sure. Check the score before you lose your temper.

Saturday was one of those days that remind me just how lucky I am.

I started my 13th season doing color on the Navy football radio network, which is remarkable in itself. When Eric Ruden first asked me about joining the network prior to the 1997 season, I thought it was something I’d probably do for a couple of years and then my schedule would make it too tough to continue.

There have been years where my schedule HAS been too tough—especially when my kids first started playing soccer—and I’ve missed some games, but I’ve kept doing it for the simple reason that it’s so much fun. I enjoy the people at Navy—all of them—so much that it’s become an important part of my life.

I had very mixed emotions about what Saturday would bring. Navy was opening with Ohio State and while going to Ohio Stadium would certainly be fun—I hadn’t been there in 18 years—I was afraid that the Mids would struggle. The statistic that I thought summed the matchup best was this: Ohio State has 48 players currently on NFL rosters. Navy has one. The Buckeyes probably had a dozen or so players who will someday play in the NFL suiting up. Navy has, well, none.

For all the brave talk from the Navy players about going up to Columbus to win the game, I had visions of Terrelle Pryor running roughshod over the Navy defense. The guy is bigger (6-6, 235) than almost all the Navy defenders and lots faster. There was also this: Navy had lost its five best offensive players, all at key positions—quarterback, center, fullback, slotback, wide receiver—to graduation. It had lost by far its best defensive player two weeks prior to the game to an honors code violation. At Navy, there’s no hemming and hawing about things like that. You aren’t just off the team, you’re out of school.

Even so, the day had promise. The weather was perfect. The Ohio State people could not have been more gracious—not just with their pre-game on field tribute to Navy but the way they acted. As we walked into the stadium—all of us who do the broadcasts wear a Navy shirt on game day—people welcomed us, wished us luck—the whole bit. When I parked the car, the attendant said, “you want to get out of here fast after the game?” I did. I was dreading the postgame traffic, especially since the highway that runs past the stadium was closed because of construction. “Park here,” he said. “At least you’ll be right out of the lot in a hurry.”

As nice as all that was, as enjoyable as it was to see all the Navy people again, the first half was pretty much as expected. Ohio State led 20-7, one key fumble had really hurt the Mids and Pryor had been virtually unstoppable. When Matt Klunder, the Academy’s commandant, came up to the booth as the halftime guest he delivered a real fire and brimstone speech about never quitting and guaranteeing the Mids would rally.

“Matt,” I said. “We’re all fired up, but you need to get downstairs and say this to the team.”

Apparently Coach Kenny Niamatalolo took care of that. The Mids pieced together an amazing 99 yard drive to close to 20-14. Then, more mistakes and the Buckeyes built the lead to a comfortable 29-14, with the ball on the Navy 15 and eight minutes to play. On the air, I wondered if this wasn’t going to be a game with a deceptive final score that made it look as if Ohio State had won far more easily than had been the case.

I got that one completely wrong. The Mids held on fourth and one when Jim Tressel—as he said later—foolishly passed on a chip shot field goal. One play later, quarterback Ricky Dobbs hit brand new slotback Marcus Curry in stride for an 85 yard touchdown. It was 29-21. An interception of Pryor by Emmett Merchant and then a Dobbs touchdown run. Oh My God. It was 29-27 with 2:23 to play, the Mids were lining up to go for two and you have never heard 105,000 people so silent in your life.

But it wasn’t meant to be. The Mids ran the same two conversion play that had helped them beat Notre Dame two years ago. The Buckeyes had done a good scouting job and were looking for the play. Dobbs’s pass was intercepted and returned for a two point play. End of dream. The final was 31-27.

Sure it was disappointing. But how could you feel bad? Navy had given Ohio State the scare of its life. I felt nothing but pride in what the coaches and players had done—even though I had absolutely nothing to do with it.

The day wasn’t over. After we got off the air, I ran into Steve Snapp, who has been part of Ohio State for about 35 years. Steve is in a hell of a battle right now. He’s been through a stroke and is in his second bout with cancer. I had hoped to see him but didn’t know if I would.

Steve and I first met at the 1980 Rose Bowl game. It was hardly like at first sight. Ohio State, undefeated and ranked No.1, lost a great game to USC and Charles White, the great running back. After the game, Ohio State Coach Earle Bruce closed the locker room to the media. This wasn’t good, especially after a game like that.

I was trying to decide whether to give up and go back to the press box and start writing—it was getting close to deadline on the east coast when I saw Ohio State quarterback Art Schlichter, standing by himself in the tunnel near the team bus. I walked over and introduced myself and starting asking questions about the game. Schlichter, who I later got to know well while doing a magazine piece on him before his life fell apart because of a gambling addiction, was friendly and talkative.

Suddenly, someone appeared at Schlicter’s side, tugging on his arm. “Come on Art, time to go,” he said.

There was no sign of anyone getting on the team bus at that moment. “Excuse me,” I said. “Where does he have to go?”

“Team meeting.”

“Team meeting? The season’s over. You don’t have another game for nine months.”

“Look,” the guy said, eyeing my credential. “I’m doing what I’ve been told to do. Art’s got to go NOW.”

We were fairly close to nose-to-nose at that point. (Not hard when I’m involved). I got angry and started yelling about how ridiculous that was. You may be stunned to know that a profanity or two slipped out of my mouth. The Ohio State guy got angry at that point too. If not for Art Spander, then of the San Francisco Examiner, stepping in, I’m not sure what would have happened.

Furious, I went upstairs to write. A few minutes later, someone tapped me on the shoulder. It was the Ohio State guy. “My name is Steve Snapp,” he said. “I owe you an apology. You were just trying to do your job. I’m sorry.”

I was a young hothead (now I guess I’m an old one) in those days, but I’d like to think I recognized someone being a class act when I saw it. “Thanks,” I said. “I know you were just doing your job too.”

He smiled. “I appreciate you understanding that. I’m not saying it was right, it was just what I was told to do.”

We shook hands and were friends from that moment on. When I was researching “A Season on the Brink,” it was Steve who dug into the files from Bob Knight’s undergrad days at Ohio State and pointed me to people who had known him then. I never went to Ohio State without Steve going out of his way to help at all times. Two years ago, when the NCAA first and second rounds were in Columbus, the first thing out of his mouth when I arrived was, “you want me to set you up tomorrow to work out in our pool?” (Ohio State has one of the best pools in the country).

I got to spend a few minutes with Steve after the game and, to be honest, it made me smile, laugh and cry all at once. Oh, one other thing: Steve was a marine. If he had wanted to kick my butt that day in The Rose Bowl I suspect he could have done it with one hand tied behind his back.

As I finally made my way out of the stadium, expecting to spend at least an hour clearing traffic, I came to an intersection and asked a cop if I was headed the right way based on the directions I’d been given.

“Where you going?” the cop asked.

“I-70 East,” I said.

“Listen,” he said. “First, your team played great today. Second, turn right here, then make another right, you’ll be right on SR-315 with no traffic.”

“But it’s closed,” I said.

“No, it’s not,” he said. “We just opened it for a little while but no one knows. Go that way.”

Five minutes later, I was flying down SR-315. Like I said, it was one of those days when I remember just how lucky I really am.

So here we stand on the doorstep of another college football season. The games begin on Thursday and then just about everyone plays on Saturday.

I'm like most people: I get fired up this time of year. I love doing Navy games on the radio because the kids who play there really do stand for something that goes way beyond trying to win football games. I feel the same way about Army and Air Force--often to the chagrin of my friends at Navy. This year, the Mids have a brutal start to their schedule: they open Saturday at Ohio State and, while I think the notion of playing in Ohio Stadium is a cool thing for the players, it could be a long afternoon.

It's nice that the Ohio State people are asking their fans to greet Navy with a standing ovation when the players come onto the field. Personally, I've always felt that should be the case anywhere the academies play and I'm an absolute zealot about opposing teams waiting for 60 seconds at the end of games to show respect during the playing of the alma maters. Many teams now do this. Last year, Rutgers Coach Greg Schiano, after a brutal loss in Annapolis, literally chased one of his players down when he started to leave the field before the Navy band had played, 'Blue and Gold,'--which, if you've never heard it is one of the most spine-tingling alma maters you'll ever hear. Army has the better fight song (although Anchors Aweigh isn't bad) but Navy has the better alma mater if you're scoring at home.

The contrast to Schiano was the sight of the players from my alma mater jumping and down and completely ignoring the playing of 'Blue and Gold,' in Durham. The Duke people were upset when I ripped them for that behavior. Let's see if they get it right when they play at Army in a couple weeks.

Okay, enough ramblings about the academies even though they are the teams I care about most. To be honest, I really don't get all that excited about who is going to play in the BCS Championship game because half the time the system coughs up a fraudulent championship game. Texas beat Oklahoma on a neutral site last year and didn't even get to play in The Big Twelve title game because it lost a tiebreaker after losing at Texas Tech in what was probably the best college football game of the year. I won't even get into what happened to Utah--which went undefeated, hammered Alabama in The Sugar Bowl and was not given the chance as (let me make this clear) ANY UNDEFEATED TEAM IN ANY OTHER SPORT would get to play for a championship. Things like this happen every year and there won't be a legitimate championship game until someone sends the BCS Presidents into solitary confinement and tells them they'll be released when they come off their high horses and take the 15 minutes that would be needed to organize a playoff.

President Obama has said a couple of times that there should be a playoff and most sane human beings know that to be truth. All the old arguments have been shot down long ago. A playoff would NOT affect players academically--far LESS in fact than the basketball tournament--and it doesn't render the regular season less meaningful. In fact it would make it more meaningful because more teams would have something serious to play for into December. But the BCS hypocrites went into a meeting last spring and came out with their usual garbage about how well the system was working. I won't even go over it again because it is too boring and so ridiculous it doesn't even merit comment. The BCS Presidents are a bunch of arrogant hypocrites who should all be made to watch Dick Cheney speeches the rest of their lives because he's clearly their role model: "If I say it's true, it IS true no matter how much evidence there is that I'm lying."

Okay, enough of the BCS rant--for now.

There are all sorts of fun games that will be played over the next few months. I happen to be a big Division 1-AA fan (or whatever the NCAA calls it now) in part because there's a real national championship but because there are so many different stories to be told at that level that don't focus on who is going to be a No. 1 pick in next April's draft. Personally I could care less right now whether Tim Tebow is going to be a good NFL quarterback. Let him be a great college player until January and then come talk to me about the draft. Actually, come talk to me next September when he puts on an NFL uniform for real. Then I'll be interested.

Richmond was a great story last year making its late run to the national title under ex-cop Mike London. Montana always plays great football that none of us in the east notice before December--if then. I love The Ivy League although I'm not a real big fan of their presidents either who keep insisting that their players can't participate in postseason in football even though they do it in every other sport. Why is it that Cornell's lacrosse team can come within seconds of a national championship just before exams start in the spring but the football players at Harvard--which has dominated the league in recent years under Tim Murphy, one of the best little-known coaches anywhere, can't play in the 1-AA playoffs? You know what the answer is if you ask The Ivy Leaguers: because we say so. Oh, okay thanks. Why don't you go give that answer to your players who are denied the chance to test themselves against the best. Isn't education supposed to be about learning to be the best at whatever you choose to become?

As my mother used to say to my father: Stop being logical.

Saturdays in the fall are still great fun in spite of it all; in spite of the hypocrisy of the BCS; the constant investigations of big-time programs and the fact that some people just make it a much bigger deal than it should be. I love the weather and the changing leaves and the atmospheres--from the 100,000 seat stadiums (not crazy about the traffic) to the 15,000 seat stadiums and on down. I still want to get to see Amherst play Williams someday and Harvard play Yale again, which I haven't done for more than 20 years. Every school has its own niche and its own big rival and its own traditions--many of them unknown to most of the country but known to those who care about them. I can't stand the weeknight games but that ship has sailed. The schools will never say no to the money or the exposure. I'm just glad Army has signed a contract with CBS College Sports that will ensure all its home game starting next year are on Saturdays. That's as it should be.

So, I'm psyched. I'm looking forward to seeing John Glenn dot the i on Saturday and to the reaction of the Ohio State fans when Navy takes the field. The game I'm a little more apprehensive about. But there will be more games and more Saturdays after that and for a few hours each weekend I will pretend there are no BCS Presidents--or college presidents, period now that I think of it--that there are no out of control boosters or control freak coaches. I'll just sit back, take it in and know that on December 12th sometime before dusk the players from Army and Navy will stand shoulder-to-shoulder when they play the alma maters.

All that other stuff ceases to matter or exist at a moment like that. And there will be others along the way.

It was Frank Chirkinian, the man who basically invented the art of producing golf on TV (among other things he came up with the idea of showing a players score relative to par, rather than his total score) who years ago made a very smart and insightful comment about why the sport is different than others.

"For some reason, golf fans don't want the underdog to win," he said. "They don't mind if he contends, he can even lead after 54 holes, but on Sunday afternoon they want the stars to win--the bigger the star the harder they pull for him. In other sports, people tend to root for the underdog."

Chirkinian made the comment to me in 1994. He was talking soon after John Daly had won in Atlanta, beating my friend Brian Henninger down the stretch. Henninger might as well have been invisible that day. Chirkinian was baffled. "Skinny little kid just trying to get a chance to play on tour against a millionaire who has been given a dozen chances by the public already," he said. "Nothing against Daly. He's great for us. But I don't get it."

I don't either. Chirkinian was right then and he's right now. The only player golf fans MIGHT pull for in a battle against Tiger Woods is Phil Mickelson. When Mike Weir, who was then a skinny kid trying to find his way on tour, was paired with Woods in the last round at the 1999 PGA Championship, he felt invisible too.

Almost 30 years ago, a couple months after beating Bjorn Borg at Wimbledon, John McEnroe played his first match at the U.S. Open against a qualifier who was ranked, I think, 187th in the world. He was South American and I don't remember his name but he won the first set. The stadium went nuts.

"An hour ago no one in the place had even heard of the guy, now they're cheering for him like he's a relative," McEnroe said after winning the next three sets. "I like underdogs too, I'm a Mets fan, but that was ridiculous."

You can say some of it was anti-McEnroe sentiment but it really was more pro-underdog sentiment. When Andy Roddick pushed Roger Federer to five sets at Wimbledon last month, most folks were for Roddick--and Federer is one of the most popular champions in tennis history. The reason was simple: Federer's won Wimbledon five times (now six) Roddick none. Give the 'little guy,' his day in the sun.

The invisible thing happened again on Sunday at Firestone. Padraig Harrington winning the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational would have been a lot better story than Woods winning it AGAIN (seven times now). Harrington won two majors last year when Woods was hurt and he's won three altogether. He's struggled this year trying to change his swing--something Woods had gone through a couple of times himself. He also happens to be one of the nicest men you'll ever come across in any walk of life.

The fact that Woods threw a 30 at him on the front line and Harrington didn't blink and came back to lead should have made him a more compelling story. You would think people would like to see the man bites dog story (or Tiger loses lead, which is the same thing) every once in a while. And yet, it was all about Tiger for the fans. I get CBS wanting him to be there, he doubles, maybe triples their ratings. I even get fans pulling for Mickelson after what he's been through this summer with cancer scares involving both his wife and his mother.

Is it because Woods is American and Harrington is Irish? Don't think so, this isn't The Ryder Cup is it? And I suspect it would have been roughly the same if, say, Steve Stricker would have been one shot up with three holes to play. Maybe the only time a crowd wasn't 99 percent for Woods was at the '08 U.S. Open where--finally--on Monday some fans came around to the idea that a 45-year-old with a history of back troubles winning his first and only major MIGHT be a better story than a multi-millionaire with a golden life winning his 14th. Even then, the crowd was split.

It isn't because Woods exudes warmth--he doesn’t, photogenic smile or no photogenic smile. It's because he WINS and golf fans like guys who WIN even more than fans in other sports do. It's as if all golf fans were born to be Yankee fans; Notre Dame football fans or Dallas Cowboys fans

The worst--to me--are Notre Dame fans who didn't even go to Notre Dame. Do they think all the players are Irish or something? Years ago, when I was researching "A Civil War," I was on the Navy sideline at Notre Dame Stadium. The game had been close for three quarters before Notre Dame--aided by a couple of those mystery calls that often happen in that place (do NOT get me started on the '99 game) pulled away. In the final couple of minutes, Navy was trying to drive for a consolation touchdown when Ben Fay, the Mids quarterback, was sacked.

Two security guys, allegedly there to protect the Mids from the fans behind us, who started jumping up and down and high-fiving one another and yelling at Fay as he went down. I'd had enough.

"Hey, are you guys here for security?" I said.

"Yes we are," one of them said.

"Then shut up and do your job," I said. "If you want to be fans, go sit in the stands."

One of them took a step towards me. "Who are you?" he said.

Before I could answer--I was planning to say I was the Secretary of the Navy--Kent Owens, who was then Navy's officer representative, grabbed me and pulled me away. "They have guns John," he said. "Calm down."

I did. The security people kept quiet the last two minutes.

Anyway, the point is I simply don't get people who revel in Goliath winning and, as Chirkinian pointed out all those years ago, it happens in golf more than any other sport.

So, while all the TV guys and the fans are pulling this week for Tiger--or Phil (on TV, neither one of them has a last name) I'll be hoping someone like Rich Beem wins The PGA. Or Padraig Harrington. He's not exactly David, but he is my kind of guy.

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.