Once again, it is college football season. Let us all say together, "Hallelujah," because there are few things better than Saturdays in the fall, and the atmosphere in and around the sport's great rivalry games, ranging from Williams-Amherst to Army-Navy to Michigan-Ohio State.

While we do that, let us also pause to give thanks for the fact that even as the Big Ten pursues even more power and dollars by expanding to 12 teams, it has decided not to carry through with the folly of moving Michigan-Ohio State from the season's final weekend. If you have any doubt at all about how foolish such a move would be, simply grab your college history books and turn to the page marked, 'Nebraska-Oklahoma,' in the chapter entitled, 'Great Rivalries Flushed by Greed.'

Greed is the word that powers college football. Those who control the sport - the commissioners of the Bowl Championship Series conferences and the presidents of those conferences' schools - would have you believe that tradition is the word that matters most. Sadly, many of college football's most cherished traditions are going the way of the wing-T.

You can start with football Saturdays. Check this week's schedule: Among those opening their season on Thursday was Ohio State. When you think of tradition, you certainly think of Thursday nights inside the Horseshoe, don't you?

College football is now played every night of the week at some point during every season. Two of the best games - Navy-Maryland and Boise State-Virginia Tech - will be played Monday in NFL stadiums.

Tradition indeed.


Click here for the rest of the article: Greed is the new tradition in college football

The indictment of Roger Clemens on Thursday for lying to Congress about alleged steroid use isn't the end of this saga. It's just another sad chapter.

Every few weeks, it seems, baseball is embarrassed yet again by news that a superstar cheated the game and lied about cheating the game. The news emerges in different ways: Alex Rodriguez, who recently became the seventh player in major-league history to hit 600 home runs, was outed in a book in the winter of 2009, then went on television to explain. Mark McGwire, the first player to hit 70 home runs in a season, tearfully admitted his drug use this past winter because he wanted to work again in Major League Baseball (as the St. Louis Cardinals hitting instructor). Pitcher Andy Pettitte, winner of 240 games in the major leagues, fessed up before spring training in 2008 after being named in the Mitchell Report on steroid use.

And so the list goes on.

Click here for the rest of the column: Roger Clemens: Another fallen giant

One of the many pleasures about being on the eastern end of Long Island at this time of year is that I’m not bombarded every time I turn on a radio or a TV with talk of The Washington Redskins.

To be fair, Washington has improved as a sports town since the arrival of The Nationals, because a baseball team—even a bad one—gives people something to talk about and write about every day from March to October. This year, with signs of hope and the arrival of Stephen Strasburg, there has been interest in the Nats that goes beyond the hard-core baseball fans. Even the usually Redskins-obsessed sportstalk radio hosts in D.C. are willing to talk baseball on occasion.

That’s a major improvement. I still remember going on vacation to Boston in September of 1978. That was the year, of course, of the classic Yankees-Red Sox race that culminated in the Bucky Bleeping Dent one-game playoff won by the Yankees. Being in Boston that week was thrilling. Reading The Boston Globe every morning was fabulous. One Sunday afternoon a friend of mine and I drove to Salem and Gloucester. Along the way we switched back and forth between the Red Sox game and the Yankees game—picking up the Yankees signal on a Connecticut station. I think BOTH teams won in extra innings that day.

When I went back to Washington I walked into sports editor George Solomon’s office. He asked how my week off had been. “It was great,” I said. “The baseball writing in Boston is SO good. You know, it’s sad, you can’t really be a good sports town without a baseball team to write about.”

George went ballistic, told me I didn’t know what I was talking about and banished me from the office. I went back to my desk, picked up the sports section and counted EIGHT Redskin stories. There were brief wire stories on the Yankees and Red Sox. Case closed.

How important were the Redskins then—and now? My friend Terry Hanson was the publicity director in those days for The Washington Diplomats, the NASL soccer team—which was my first beat at The Post. Needless to say ANY publicity from The Post was a big deal for the Diplomats. The Diplomats offices were in RFK Stadium, a few yards away from the press box that was used for both soccer and football. It was just a little bit more crowded on football game days.

One morning Terry was in his office when his secretary came in to say George Solomon was on the phone. Terry practically jumped out of his chair. Maybe The Post wanted to do a long story on new coach Alan Spavin? Whatever it was, this was BIG—the sports editor of The Washington Post was calling HIM.

Hanson picked up the phone. George was almost breathless. This really was BIG he thought. “Terry I need a favor,” George said.

Trying to sound cool, Hanson said, “Well George, if I can arrange something, I’ll certainly try to help. What is it?”

“The Redskins play their first exhibition game tonight. I need to be sure our phone in the press box is working. Can you walk out there and check it for me?”

It was at that moment that it occurred to Hanson that George had probably never HEARD of Alan Spavin.

Even though I’ve lived in Washington since graduating from college, I’ve always felt somewhat adrift because I’ve never been able to wrap my arms around the local teams. I have come to like and enjoy the Capitals even though the Islanders will always be my hockey team—unless they move to Kansas City because the politicians on Long Island refuse to cooperate on a desperately needed new building—and I enjoy any success the Nats have unless it involves beating the Mets. I’m ambivalent about the Wizards because the last time I really cared about the NBA, Willis Reed and Walt Frazier were still suiting up for the Knicks.

Nowadays, with the internet and TV packages, someone like me can easily keep track of the Mets and the Islanders even while living in DC. What’s different being here (Long Island) versus being in DC is simple: the Redskins. Being in DC there is no escaping from them 12 months a year. They are a monolith and they know it, which is one reason why owner Dan Snyder can treat the media with disdain 90 percent of the time and get away with it.

Snyder came onto my radar—sadly—yesterday when I was in my car after hosting Jim Rome from a studio in Southampton and flipped on WFAN, expecting to hear talk about whether the Mets were going to trade for a starting pitcher. Instead, for some reason, the hosts were interviewing new Redskins coach Mike Shanahan.

I was about to hit a button to change the station when one of the hosts asked Shanahan about his decision to go work for Snyder. Look, there are about eight million reasons (a year) why Shanahan went to work for Snyder. Nothing wrong with that. Of course Shanahan wasn’t going to say that so he reverted to the old, “you know no one wants to win more than Dan Snyder,” line.

Almost all owners want to win. Some don’t have the kind of money Snyder has but they all want to win. Snyder wants to win for Snyder; for his ego and for no other reason. Clearly he has no respect for his fans because he has gouged them every chance he’s gotten since day one and last year, when they finally turned on him after 11 years of mis-management, he had his security people treat them like suspicious-looking characters trying to board an airplane.

The Redskins will be better this year—they pretty much have to be after last year’s 4-12 debacle. Donovan McNabb is a clear upgrade at quarterback; they finally drafted a left tackle and made improvements in the offensive line and Shanahan is an upgrade at coach. It finally occurred to Snyder that being the most hated man in Washington wasn’t really a good thing and he has been trying to rehab his image this offseason—staying in the background during free agent signings; talking to the media on occasion (almost always at a charity event so people HAVE to mention that a billionaire is doing charity work as if that somehow makes him a good guy) even jettisoning his long-time pit-bull PR guy who loved threatening the media members with banishment from Redskins Park if they didn’t behave properly.

I know if the Redskins start to win this fall, people in DC will jump back on their bandwagon so fast it will make heads spin. George Steinbrenner went from constantly booed to canonized in New York not so much because he changed—although he clearly did—but because the Yankees became winners. Snyder has none of Steinbrenner’s charm OR his sense of humor. But if his team wins this fall, few in Washington will care.

Maybe I’ll take another vacation in Boston in September.



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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

There's a very old joke about a funeral. The rabbi stands in front of the congregation and says, "I know you all have something you want to say about our dear departed friend. So instead of a eulogy, I'd like you each to stand up and tell us what you loved best about him."

Complete silence.

"Don't be shy," the rabbi says. "I know this is hard. Who's going to go first?"

More silence.

Finally, the rabbi says, "Okay, I'm going to get this started. You, Adam, in the first row, you start us off."

Adam reluctantly gets to his feet, shrugs and says, "His brother was worse."

That joke came to mind Monday when the NCAA men's basketball committee finally got around to revealing how the new and un-improved 68-team tournament will work next March.

It could have been worse.

Of course, it could have been a lot better.

And because the NCAA is the NCAA, we still don't know all the details. One can only hope that by Selection Sunday, the committee will figure out exactly where it is going to send teams to begin the tournament.

Here are the basics:

Click here for the rest of the column: New NCAA 68-team tournament format could have been worse

The first time I ever laid eyes on Paul Goydos was at the Buick Open in 1993. He was a 29-year-old PGA Tour rookie, and he had shot 66 on Thursday afternoon. Because he was the only player to go low in the late wave, he was brought into the interview room. I was about to leave, but for some reason -- kismet? -- I wandered into the back of the room on my way out the door.

The first thing I heard Paul say was this: "I'm guessing none of you have heard of me. There's a reason for that: I've never done anything."

He certainly can't make that claim anymore.

Goydos has had a very solid career. This is his 18th year on tour. He has won twice (Bay Hill in 1996; Sony Open in Hawaii in 2007) and been a very consistent money-winner. He's one of the game's most respected people: Corey Pavin asked him to be an assistant captain on the Ryder Cup team this fall, and he was just elected by his peers to the PGA Tour's policy board.

On Thursday, though, Goydos went beyond all that. Teeing off early at TPC Deere Run in the first round of the John Deere Classic, he shot a 12-under-par 59. To put the round into some perspective, here is the list of players who have shot 59 in the history of the PGA Tour: Al Geiberger, Chip Beck, David Duval -- and now, Paul Goydos.

"Most people try to shoot their age," he said afterward. "Today, I shot my height."
Paul is, in fact, 5-9.

A 59 is -- obviously -- a remarkable round of golf under any circumstances, but this one is perhaps more amazing because Paul has been playing lousy golf since February. Back then he had a chance to win at Pebble Beach before a quadruple-bogey 9 at the notorious 14th hole blew him back into a tie for fifth.



Click here for the rest of the column - Eighteen-year tour veteran Paul Goydos shoots a 59 in first round of PGA John Deere Classic

The best moments in sports are almost always those we least expect: The U.S. hockey team stunning the Soviet Union in the Lake Placid Olympics 30 years ago; Boris Becker winning Wimbledon 25 years ago when he was too young -- 17 -- to claim the world's most important tennis title; Tom Watson coming within inches of winning the British Open when he was too old -- 59 -- to compete for a major golf championship.

And then there are those moments that involve athletes most of us have never heard of and may never hear of again; moments that come out of nowhere and hold us spellbound. That's what John Isner and Nicolas Mahut did the past three days. They began a routine first-round match at Wimbledon on Tuesday, a long way -- literally and figuratively -- from historic Centre Court. They were sent out to play on Court 18, which is tucked into a corner of the Wimbledon grounds and has seats for a mere 782 people.

When they finally shook hands at the net on Thursday after playing five sets and 183 games -- the last 138 of them in the final set -- millions of people around the world were watching and wondering when one of them would finally crack or simply collapse. To put what these two men did into perspective, consider: Before this epic match, the longest fifth set in the history of Grand Slam tennis lasted 48 games -- 90 games fewer than Isner and Mahut played. The longest match in Grand Slam tennis history before this one lasted six hours and 33 minutes. The last set between Isner and Mahut took eight hours and 11 minutes.


Click here for the rest of the column: Hitting themselves into history

There’s a fascinating story in Sunday’s Washington Post on John Wall, the Kentucky freshman guard who will be the No. 1 pick in the NBA draft tomorrow night. Eric Prisbell, who does an excellent job covering college hoops for The Post, spent a week in Raleigh interviewing Wall, his mom, his old coaches and some of his friends. Since Wall is about to become the face of The Washington Wizards it was a natural story to do.

The story Eric wrote paints a shattering picture of Wall’s early life: his father was in jail almost from the time he was born until he died of cancer just prior to John’s ninth birthday. The only time John Wall saw his father outside of jail was the last month of his life when he was released from prison because his cancer was terminal.

After his father’s death, Wall became—by his own description—a very angry kid, constantly in trouble, thrown off basketball teams in spite of his talent, often benched, moving from school to school while his mother, raising three kids as a single parent worked multiple jobs.

Then came the intervention of a high school coach, an understanding of his own potential and, now, superstardom. It is a well-reported, well-written story. In return for a job well done, Prisbell is being criticized by a number of people for the story. Here’s why: During his research, Prisbell learned that John Wall Sr. had been to jail more than once and not just on the armed robbery charge that his son knew about. He had been convicted prior to his son’s birth of second degree murder for shooting a woman in the head. (Click here for Eric Prisbell's column)

John Wall Jr. was apparently unaware of this. His mother had never told him. He had never asked for more details about his dad’s incarceration—certainly understandable, especially given how young he was at the time. Prisbell and his editors had a choice to make: leave the detail about his dad committing murder out of the story completely or tell Wall about it before writing the story. Simply writing it without telling him wasn’t an option. Imagine how Wall might have felt picking up the newspaper or, worse, having someone say to him, “hey I read in The Washington Post your dad committed murder.”

I know there will be some people who see the notion of telling someone their father committed murder as cruel and un-necessary. But Wall’s father and his relationship with him and the way he behaved after his death were all a crucial part of the story. Leaving out the fact that he had been convicted of murder would be hiding a crucial—and once you know something and don’t reveal it you are hiding it—fact. What’s more, it was going to come out at some point. Prisbell may have been the first person to check the legal records, he would not have been the last. As Wall’s star continues to rise, there will be other long pieces written about him and his past and his father’s past will be part of those stories.

John Wall was going to find out about his father whether Prisbell told him or not. What’s more he did it as delicately as possible and, if you read the story, the revelation is near the bottom of a very long piece and is dealt with in about three paragraphs. It’s not as if there was a blaring headline that said, “No. 1 Pick’s Dad a Murderer.” If you think some outlets on the internet or among newspaper wouldn’t have handled it that way, think again.

Prisbell is uncomfortable being part of the story, which is understandable. There are also some dopes out there who are somehow connecting the reporting he did here to the reporting he and Steve Yanda did 16 months ago on the Maryland basketball program. Then, with all sorts of (accurate) rumors floating that Athletic Director Debbie Yow was trying to find a way to ease Gary Williams out of his job after 20 years, Prisbell and Yanda did a three part series on Maryland basketball. The single most important thing that they reported in detail was this: Gary Williams had steadfastly refused to get down in the mud with coaches in the slimy world of AAU basketball and that had cost him some superstar players. He had also refused to be blackmailed into giving one star player’s “trainer,” a job and had decided, after wrestling with it for a long time, not to recruit a star player who had a criminal record.

Although Gary got bent out of shape about the series and Maryland fans tried to make Prisbell and Yanda into the bad guys in the scenario, the fact is that the series HELPED Maryland by giving a clear picture of why the program had slid from its peak in 2001 and 2002 when it reached back-to-back Final Fours. Some fool called a local radio show yesterday claiming The Post had to run a ‘correction,’ after the series ran which was simply wrong. Prisbell is a very good reporter who I’ve been fortunate to work with for nine years now. He was dealing with a very tough story once he found out about Wall’s dad and he handled it as well as it could be handled. The notion that he could have just walked away from what he found is ludicrous.

I’ve become part of the story myself on more than one occasion. The two that were most significant were entirely different. One was on a series I wrote along with another Post reporter, Gene Meyer, while I was covering cops and courts. It involved a group of police officers in Prince George’s County who had set-up black teen-agers in the 1960s to be killed. They became known as, “The Death Squad,” and when Gene and I got a number of people—including one of the cops involved—on the record we had to go to the other cops involved, one of whom had risen to No. 2 in the police department, to hear their side of the story.

Since I had been the initiator of the story—having stumbled into the phrase, ‘Death Squad,’ while working on another story—the cops involved HATED me for asking the questions we were asking. One threatened to kill me—on tape—in the middle of an interview. Was I shaken up? No, not a bit. And if you believe that you believe in The Easter Bunny too.

The other time was quite different: When ‘A Season on the Brink,’ came out Bob Knight insisted I had promised him I’d leave his profanity out of the book. At first I thought he was joking when he said it because who in the world didn’t know Knight used profanity? But he was serious and I had to spend a lot of time explaining that I had told Knight that writing a book about him without profanity would be like writing a book about him without the word basketball. I loved the way the book sold; I hated having my integrity questioned knowing that some people would automatically believe Knight.

No one should question Eric Prisbell on this story. He did his job. And he did it very well.



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John recently appeared on The Jim Rome Show (www.jimrome.com) to discuss 'Moment of Glory.' Click here to download, or listen in the player below:



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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

Through the years, there have always been milestones in sports thought to be untouchable. Once, Lou Gehrig's string of playing in 2,130 consecutive baseball games was on that list. Then Cal Ripken Jr. came along. Jack Nicklaus's record of 18 professional major golf championships was thought to be completely out of reach since no one else had won more than 11. The record still stands, but Tiger Woods now lurks just four behind. Joe DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak is considered sacred, but Pete Rose did get within 12 of the magic number.

There's one men's college basketball record, though, that not only will never be broken, the likelihood is it will never even be threatened: 10 national titles. That's how many NCAA championships John Wooden won at UCLA. No other coach -- not Mike Krzyzewski, not Adolph Rupp, not Bob Knight, not Dean Smith -- has even gotten halfway to that mark. In fact, those four, generally considered the four greatest college basketball coaches in the game's history not named Wooden, have won 13 titles combined. Perhaps even more remarkable: Wooden won those 10 championships during a 12-season span, beginning in 1964 and ending in 1975, when he retired after UCLA beat Kentucky in that year's national championship game.
He was 64 when he walked away -- younger than Rupp, Knight or Smith were when they retired and the same age Krzyzewski will be next February. He was 99 when he died on Friday, the unquestioned best in the history of his sport. Some may talk about how Wooden won his titles in such a different era. Others will bring up the whispers about UCLA players being taken care of by the famous booster Sam Gilbert in ways that ran outside of NCAA regulations.

Either argument misses the forest for the trees. Wooden won in 1964 and 1965 with a small team that pressed all over the court. He won from 1967 through 1969 with center Lew Alcindor (later Kareem Abdul-Jabbar), the greatest player in college basketball history. He won the two years after that with Steve Patterson, very decidedly not the greatest player in college basketball history, replacing Alcindor. Then he won twice more with Bill Walton in the middle, and he won his last title with a team that probably should have lost to Louisville in the national semifinals and easily could have lost to Kentucky in the championship game.

He also saw to it that almost all of his players graduated, and if freshmen had been eligible when Alcindor was a UCLA freshman in 1966, he might easily have won 10 straight national titles instead of nine in 10 years, from 1964 through 1973.

Click here for the rest of the story: John Wooden column

On Monday, I made my weekly appearance on Washington Post Live, which is a daily show broadcast her on Comcast Sports Net in the DC area. I enjoy doing the show because I really like the people involved; because it often gives me a chance to see colleagues from The Post I don’t often see and because doing it Monday works perfectly for me since I need to go into the studio to tape my weekly Golf Channel essay.

So here’s what we led the show with on Memorial Day: the Redskins—or, as it is called on the show, ‘Burgundy and Gold Daily,’—which is code meaning that the bit is sponsored.

The Nationals played on Monday afternoon, trying to get back to .500 (they did), a pretty remarkable feat for a team that lost 103 games a year ago. One week from today, Stephen Strasburg, the most touted phenom to hit baseball in years, makes his Major League debut.

The Maryland women’s lacrosse team had won the national title on Sunday and the men’s national championship game was going on in Baltimore as we took our seats to start the show.

Here’s how much mention those stories got—not to mention Roy Halladay’s perfect game on Saturday and anything baseball—during a one hour show: zip, zero. Nothing. We did manage to talk about the NBA playoffs and the Stanley Cup finals. But the first 20 minutes of the show was all NFL.

Seriously. On Memorial Day.

In fact, the first question host Ivan Carter asked to Rick Maese, one of The Post’s 11 or 12 Redskins beat writers was something like, “I know there’s nothing going on right now but what are the Redskins doing right now?”

Look, it’s not Ivan’s fault. It isn’t the fault of the people putting on the show either. A few weeks ago I asked Scott Taylor, who produces the show and would (like me) do Navy football all the time given the chance (his dad played at Navy) why in the world we had to lead the show with the Redskins in the middle of May.

“The ratings people tell us that everything spikes when we talk Redskins and spikes almost as much when we talk NFL,” he said. “It really doesn’t matter if anything is actually going on. If we’re talking about the Redskins people watch.”

I actually wondered if the reason it was so hard to EVER talk about the Nationals was that their games are televised on MASN and not on Comcast. Scott said that wasn’t the case. “It’s the ratings thing,” he said. “When we talk Nats, unless it’s Strasburg maybe, we lose people.”

I swear to God I don’t get it. Look, I like watching the NFL on Sundays as much as anyone. I spent an entire season hanging out with an NFL team when I wrote, “Next Man Up,” and enjoyed the experience. So this isn’t about me being anti-football. Okay, I may be anti-Redskins because the owner is three of the most arrogant people who ever lived and no amount of spinning to try to convince me there’s a “new,” Dan Snyder is going to make me think differently.

I have no problem talking about or writing about the NFL or the Redskins when there is something going on. But when you open the show by saying, “there’s nothing going on,” and then spend 20 minutes discussing preparations for mini-camp? I mean OMG as my daughter would say. At one point we switched over to talk about the Ravens. You know what we revealed to the audience? That Anquan Boldin was a good pickup. Pretty insightful stuff, huh?

There are certain people in sports and certain teams in sports and I guess certain leagues in sports that completely fascinate people no matter what. Tommy Roy, who produces golf for NBC, once told me that an informal survey of golf fans had shown that more people would rather watch Tiger Woods lean against his golf bag than watch someone else actually hitting a golf ball.

The same is true in this town of the Redskins. There’s a truly awful show that airs on Comcast called ‘Redskins Nation,’ which is a daily infomercial on the wonders of the team. If you were to watch this show—and staying in the same room with it for five minutes is a major challenge—you would think the Redskins were about to begin their quest for a fifth straight Super Bowl title. Anyone—ANYONE—who criticizes anyone or anything about the organization is labeled, “a hater,” by the ineffable host.

I asked once WHY the show was allowed on the air. The answer was simple: It’s the highest rated show Comcast has.

Talk about the apocalypse being upon us.

At least now I have the next six days to watch golf, baseball, hockey and basketball. And to write and talk about them—especially golf with “Moment of Glory,” now out all over the country, Eldrick T. Woods playing this week and The Nationwide Tour coming to DC. Of course next Monday it will be more, ‘Burgundy and Gold Daily.’

Maybe we can talk some more about what the Redskins haven’t been doing.

******

Wanted to thank the poster, ‘Bevo,’ for absolutely proving my point about people in academia on Friday. If I had tried to make up a fictional character to prove what I was saying about the existence of people like him at colleges around the country I couldn’t have done any better. And thanks to those who responded on my behalf. No need for me to add anything to what they’ve already said.

And finally: I felt a little torn Monday when Duke won the NCAA men’s lacrosse championship game. The ending was certainly dramatic and you had to feel good for the players and for Coach John Danowski, who I’m told is a good guy. To say that he took over under trying circumstances is putting it mildly. And there are people out there who still refer to the ‘Duke lacrosse scandal,’ without mentioning that not only were the charges against the three players dropped but the prosecutor who brought them was disbarred.

I’m always hesitant to even bring this topic up because it makes people on both sides SO angry.

That said, I’ve never bought the argument that the players were martyrs as some people have made them out to be. There WAS bad behavior going on that night, including racial slurs that have never been denied. Beyond that though, there were fifth year players on this Duke team granted an extra year by the NCAA because DUKE decided to shut the program down in 2006. While it is impossible not to feel empathy for the young men who weren’t part of the incident at all, you can’t help but wonder why the NCAA felt obligated to bail Duke out after its administration completely mishandled the entire situation.

I guess, in a sense, some things will never be resolved. But Monday should give the school—and more important the players—some kind of closure and a legitimate reason to celebrate.


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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:

They announced the United States World Cup soccer team yesterday. This was a big deal on ESPN, which has decided to try to convince Americans to see in soccer what the rest of the world sees and in The New York Times and The Washington Post, each of which carried two major stories on the naming of the 23-man roster. One thing I couldn't help but notice in looking at the roster: Only FOUR of the 23 players on the U.S. roster are currently playing professionally in this country on teams that compete in The Major Soccer League. That's just not enough.

I have said this before and I will say this again: I am not one of those people who rip soccer just because there are times when it seems that no one ever scores. In fact, I watched a chunk of the U.S.'s game--or 'friendly,' as these exhibitions are called--against the Czech Republic and there were plenty of goals to watch in the Americans' 4-2 loss. On the other hand I am not someone who is going to sit here and claim there is nothing like the artistry of a 0-0 tie that has 14 corner kicks or that those who don't see the beauty in the game simply don't understand the game.

I will certainly watch The World Cup. Whether I will watch very many entire games is another question although the U.S. opener against England on June 12th is one I'm curious about on several levels: England should be one of the better teams in the tournament so we'll probably find out a lot about the U.S. in that first game. Beyond that, I've probably watched more World Cup soccer FROM England than anyplace else, dating back to the long-ago days when I spent a lot of time there every summer covering Wimbledon and The British Open.

In fact, I was in a London pub with my friend Tom Ross--who in spite of being an agent is a good guy--for Maradona's infamous Hand of God goal. The reaction to the goal and to its being allowed and to Argentina winning the game is one of my most vivid sports memories. If you were in that pub that night you would never again call The World Cup boring.

As I've mentioned here before soccer was my first beat at The Washington Post when I started there as a summer intern 100 years ago (okay, 1977). In fact it was soccer that allowed me to meet Bob Woodward for the first time. I was covering The Washington Diplomats, then Washington's team in The North American Soccer League. I had taken over the beat from Donald Huff, who was going on vacation and the first two games I covered the Dips--as they were called--were shut out. That made three straight games without a goal.

As I was leaving RFK Stadium that night I said to Terry Hanson, then the Dips PR director, "geez, I wonder if Dennis (Viollet who was then the coach) might be in trouble." Hanson, who has now been my friend for more than 30 years, looked at me and said, "If I were covering the team I'd make some phone calls tomorrow."

Eager young intern, I did just that. No one would take my calls, a pretty good clue something was up since normally soccer people would come to your house to get publicity. Finally, I got Steve Danzansky, the team president on the phone at about 9 o'clock at night. Even though I didn't know Danzansky well I had found him to be extremely outgoing and friendly. When he picked up the phone that night the first thing he said was, "you've got a lot of nerve calling my house at this hour."

Now I KNEW something was up. I apologized for the intrusion and said I wondered if Viollet might be in any kind of trouble given the team's goal drought. "Well," Danzansky said, "he isn't exactly a candidate for coach of the year right now is he?"

Whoops. By the time I hung up the phone with Danzansky I knew Viollet was done. Soon afterwards I reached him on the phone and he told me there was a press conference the next morning and that assistant coach Alan Spavin would be there--without him. I had enough to write.

George Solomon, the sports editor, stripped the story across the top of the sports page because it was late June and nothing else was going on. Washington had no baseball team and the Redskins hadn't opened training camp yet. The next morning I was sitting at my desk--which, as luck would have it, was only a few yards away from Woodward's desk. Being in The Post's newsroom was a thrill for me at that point in my life; being a few yards from Bob Woodward made me feel slightly faint. This was not long after "All The President's Men," had come out in theaters. I had read the book and had gone to see the movie three times--in one day.

So, when Woodward approached me with a smile on his face, I wondered if he had me confused with someone else.

"Hi John," he said. "I'm Bob Woodward. (no kidding). Great job this morning on the soccer coach."

If I had been able to find my voice to say something other than, "t-t-t-t-thank you, it's g-g-g-g-great to meet you," I might have said, "yeah thanks. Nice job on Watergate."

Soccer coach, Watergate--about the same thing, right?

Anyway, covering soccer was great for me. The players were always cooperative and Steve Danzansky apologized for barking at me on the phone and we became good friends. I've always had a warm spot for the sport and whenever Steve Goff and I cover a basketball game together I ask him about D.C. United and about the MLS.

Here's the bottom line though: You can't FORCE people to like soccer just by telling them they should like it. You can't sit back and hope the U.S. gets the World Cup again in 2018 or 2022. And you can't have your best players playing overseas all the time. Imagine if the best college basketball players all played in Europe. What would that do for the NBA--and basketball is OUR sport, it isn't a game in which we are learning as we go.

So if people like my friend George Vecsey, who has written so enthusiastically on soccer in The New York Times for so many years, really want to see the game grow here--and I don't mean grow to NFL or NBA or Major League Baseball levels--they should focus on telling the people who run MLS that they MUST invest in keeping American stars at home. Freddy Adu bombed in Washington and Landon Donovan DOES play in L.A. There needs to be more effort to keep the top Americans home--PAY them to stay home.

Build the MLS rather than telling us we must watch the MLS. The same with The World Cup. The niche fans will want to watch England and Italy and The Ivory Coast. The mainstream fan wants to see the Americans compete. And they want to see the best Americans playing regularly on American soil in an American-based league.

So, let's look forward to the World Cup and let's see how this U.S. team does. But as we do so remember this: back in the days when I covered the Dips and the NASL the league's motto was this: "Soccer, the sport of the 80s." That was thirty years ago. We're still waiting for the revolution to take place.

*************

Answers to a couple of questions from recent days: My name is pronounced Feinsteen--since my family was from the Ukraine it is not pronounced Feinstine, which is usually the way it is pronounced for those with a Germanic background...I have NO intention of attempting the Bay Swim, I will leave that to my much braver swimming friends. I get nervous DRIVING the 4.4 miles across that bridge much less swimming under it...And to the poster from yesterday who referred to the "shoddy reporting," of the Detroit Free Press, two points: That reporting led to the Michigan investigation which MICHIGAN now says uncovered rules violations and in the blog yesterday most of my references were to the Michigan report--not to the Free Press...


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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:

There was a very good story in this morning’s New York Times about the fact that today is the 30th anniversary of The New York Islanders first Stanley Cup victory. (Note: Click here for NY Times article) A lot of the piece focused on the fact that many hockey fans don’t credit the Islanders enough for their four straight Stanley Cup wins from 1980 to 1983 or the fact that they won 19 straight playoff series—a record that still stands.

I give the Islanders lots of credit since—as I’ve mentioned here before—I was one of their first fans. In fact, that day 30 years ago remains an indelible memory for me. I was in a hotel room in Atlanta, getting ready to cover a North American Soccer League game that night between The Washington Diplomats and The Atlanta Chiefs when Bobby Nystrom scored the winning goal on a cross-ice pass from John Tonelli at 7:11 of overtime to beat the Philadelphia Flyers. For those of you who might not remember, it was Lorne Henning who started the play, feeding Tonelli as he steamed down the right side.

That was a fun period in my life. I was a young reporter at The Washington Post which happened to have a sports staff that only had one other person who had much interest in covering hockey: That was Bob Fachet, who had been the beat writer for the Capitals from day one of their existence. The approach taken by the rest of the staff when it came to hockey was best summed up by something Ken Denlinger, who along with Dave Kindred, split the column-writing at the time. After being sent kicking and screaming to a hockey game one winter night, Ken walked into the newsroom and announced, “I have built an insurmountable 1-0 season lead on Kindred in hockey columns.”

Turned out he was right.

Every April I would come home from The Final Four and would be sent to cover the hockey playoffs as the second guy, backing up Fachet on Caps games and often covering whatever series Bob wasn’t covering once the Caps were eliminated. Sadly for me, the paper only sent one guy to the finals in 1980—Bob—leaving me to cover what was my true second beat in those days, the Dips. That’s why I was in Atlanta and not on Long Island 30 years ago today.

It didn’t really matter. As soon as Nystrom poked the puck past Pete Peeters, I leaped off the bed, arms in the air and began celebrating. My greatest moments as a sports fan had all come within 16 months of one another: The Jets in January of 1969; The Mets in October of 1969 and the Knicks in May of 1970. So, it had been a while. It is worth remembering that in my college years Duke’s best record in football was 6-5 (turned out those were the golden years) and its best record in basketball (I swear I’m not making this up) was 14-13—and that was my senior year. So, I hadn’t done a lot of celebrating.

The Islanders had come into existence during my senior year in high school—shortly after I’d bought my first car. Since I had always been a fan of expansion teams (in one form or another) I was already a Mets, Jets and Nets fan. Since the Nets were still in the ABA in those days I could also be a Knicks fan. (If you don’t believe I was a Nets fan quick tell me who did their radio broadcasts during their first year of existence when they were the New Jersey Americans and played in the Teaneck Armory. Answer: Spencer Ross. If you got that one right here’s a bonus question: How did the Americans miss the playoffs that year? Answer: They tied for the last playoff spot with (I think, not 100 percent sure) the Pittsburgh Pipers and were designated the home team for a play-in game for the last spot. But the Armory was rented to the circus the night of the game and the Americans had to forfeit. Seriously).

So, with my new (very old) car I decided to make the trip to the brand new Nassau Coliseum to see both the Nets and Islanders on a regular basis during that first Islanders season. As luck would have it the Islanders went 12-60-6, the worst record in NHL history. Al Albert, younger brother of Marv, did the games on radio.

I stuck with the Islanders and they got better fast—making the playoffs in 1975 and upsetting the Rangers in a best-of-three mini-series in the first round when J.P. Parise scored 11 seconds into overtime in the third game. They went on from there to come from 3-0 down to beat the Pittsburgh Penguins and then came from 3-0 down to tie the Flyers at 3-3 before The Flyers brought out their (not so) secret weapon, Kate Smith for game seven. Flyers-5, Islanders-2.

The next few years, the Islanders were good, but not good enough, the low point being a loss in the semifinals to the Rangers in 1979. But the next spring made up for all that had come before. The Islanders were the No. 5 seed but blew into the finals to play the Flyers, who earlier that season had set a record by going 28 games without a loss. I covered the game in which they broke the old record (I think it had been 23) in The Boston Garden.

Of course Nystrom’s goal was just the beginning for the Islanders. They won the Cup again the next three years and I got to cover them quite a bit during that time. What made it so cool for me was that they were a fun group of people to be around: Al Arbour, the coach, was a wonderful story-teller. The superstars were all cooperative: Denis Potvin, Brian Trottier, Mike Bossy and Billy Smith but the best guys were Nystrom and Tonelli and Bob Bourne (still perhaps my all-time favorite person among the athletes I’ve met through the years) and Clark Gillies.

Those were innocent times when you’d show up at practice on an off-day or at a morning skate and just wander into the locker room and talk to whomever you needed to talk to. I remember going to the old ice rink where the Islanders practiced on off-days during the playoffs and walking into the locker room without so much as showing anyone a pass of any kind. Even though I was from Washington and never covered the team during the regular season a lot of the players knew me (and most of the guys who covered the team at all) by name.

The streak ended in the finals in 1984 when The Wayne Gretzky-Mark Messier-Grant Fuhr Edmonton Oilers started THEIR run (five Cups in seven years) by beating the Islanders in the finals in five games. There hasn’t been much glory since then—the last real run was 1993 when the Islanders upset the then two-time champion Penguins in the conference semis before losing to the Canadiens in the conference final.

Still, unlike with a lot of the New York teams, I’ve never wavered from the Islanders. I pay for the hockey package mostly to watch them. There was some hope this past year, especially with the young players, but the Rick DiPietro contract continues to haunt the franchise as does the lack of a viable arena with no sign of an agreement between the town of Hempstead and team owner Charles Wang anywhere in sight.

But I still haven’t given up. And I still have a lot of fond memories—both as a fan and as a reporter. That Saturday afternoon 30 years ago is still vivid in my memory. Which, in the end, is what makes being a sports fan worthwhile, right? I’m sure every person reading this has a memory just as vivid. Good for all of us.

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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:

The stories this weekend about the University of Virginia’s victories in the NCAA lacrosse tournaments—men’s and women’s—were all touching and entirely believable. The grief still being felt by those involved with the two teams and at the school is clearly genuine and, especially when watching the women, one can’t help but feel sick about what happened to Yeardley Love.

That said, there was a story this past weekend in The Charlottesville Daily Progress that is disturbing. It has nothing to do with any of the kids currently playing on either team. It’s about, really, the behavior of the administration at Virginia.

As I said before, I have mixed emotions about the men’s team playing in the NCAA Tournament but I’m willing to buy into the idea that the other players on the team, even if they did know that George Huguely was an absolute jerk, had no way of knowing he was capable of doing what he did. We all knew bullies who drank too much when we were in college (and since college) but we didn’t think, ‘that guy is going to kill someone.’ We just thought he was someone worth steering clear of, especially when he was drinking.

According to The Daily Progress (Note: article found here), Virginia has issued a report in which it says that Coach Dom Starsia did nothing wrong in handling a situation that occurred in 2009 when Huguely slugged a sleeping teammate for committing the crime of kissing Love—apparently a chaste between-friends kiss, but enough to set Huguely off.

This story was initially reported by The Washington Post. Everyone knows I am a contributor to The Post and have been associated with the paper for more than 30 years. So, if you want, call me biased. I don’t think that’s the case. UVA at first demanded a correction of The Post story, saying it implied that Starsia somehow ‘covered-up,’ the incident when he didn’t. When outgoing UVA President John Casteen (who no doubt wishes he retired a year ago) was asked about the story a week ago, he called it, ‘hearsay.’

Apparently not. According to the UVA report, Huguely and the un-named teammate went to see Starsia after the incident. They said there’d been a scuffle but everything was okay. Starsia—still according to the report—asked the kid who had gotten slugged to stay after Huguely had left and asked him what had really happened. The kid told Starsia there was nothing more to tell and Starsia let it go.

Okay, I’m not here to say Starsia failing to pursue it was a firing offense or the tragedy would have been avoided if he had pursued it. Let’s be clear on that.

But let’s go back a minute and be Starsia. Two kids walk in, one of them sporting a shiner. They tell you they scuffled. It is pretty clear one kid is a lot worse off post-scuffle than the other. They HAD to come and talk to you because you’re going to notice the injury at practice so let’s not give them any brownie points for, ‘coming forward.’

Starsia asked the kid who is injured to tell him what happened—alone. Did he do this because he thought the kid was intimidated by Huguely’s presence? Did he, after three years of coaching Huguely have a sense that Huguely had a violent streak in him? He sensed SOMETHING but didn’t pursue it.

What SHOULD he have done? There’s one thing athletes respond to: the threat of lost playing time. “Look, I’m not going to necessarily do anything but I want to know what happened. If you want to play this weekend, tell me.”

If the kid refuses, bench both players until they tell you the truth. In the meantime, maybe you check and see if Huguely has been in trouble you didn’t know about before? Maybe you ask the UVA police to run a check to see if he’s had any problems with the police before? (Which would have turned up the incident in Lexington that no one at Virginia knew about before Love’s murder.)

Is all of this a second-guess? Yes. But it isn’t as if Starsia had never had kids in trouble before. It isn’t as if SOMETHING in his gut didn’t tell him there was more to the incident than they were telling him. But he didn’t pursue it. Can we at least agree that was a mistake? Again, no one is saying it was a life-and-death decision.

That said, it takes a lot of nerve on the part of UVA’s officials to demand a correction from The Post. The story is right: the incident took place and Starsia didn’t pursue it. That’s the crux of it and the important part of it. Virginia should apologize to The Post and should probably NOT be going around on a high horse about this.

Starsia is walking a very fine line when he claims on the one hand that he didn’t talk to his team about the incident but seems to remember talking to them about not fighting and the importance of, ‘being a family.’ There’s also the Virginia spokeswoman who says if Starsia HAD known the specifics of the incident he would have handled it in an “entirely different way.” Well, whose fault is it that Starsia didn’t know the specifics. He just took the two players at their word—even though he was clearly concerned something untoward had taken place—and never tried to pursue the truth.

There’s a big gap between making a mistake you wish you could correct and criminal negligence. Being innocent of criminal negligence doesn’t mean you handled a situation correctly. The people at Virginia need to understand something: THEY aren’t the victims in this any more than they are the perpetrators. Yeardley Love was the victim. Her family and friends were the victims. Dom Starsia sure as hell wasn’t the victim. The people he’s working for need to understand that.

*******

I wanted to throw some kudos today in the direction of the people who ran The Gaithersburg Book Festival on Saturday. I am always leery of book festivals and book fairs, in part because there is no guarantee anyone will show up, in part because they often are very poorly organized.

This one—first time out of the box—was run with precision timing; lots of volunteers who knew what they were doing and good crowds—helped no doubt by a perfect weather day. The audience I spoke to had plenty of people and enthusiasm, which was terrific.

It was a little different than my first book fair experience—which was in Miami in 1988. When I showed up I was directed to, “The Children’s Alley.” The guy said, “yeah, sports book, we put you there.”

So, I sat down to do a book signing with six other authors alongside—each having written a book on about the same level as, “Good Night Moon.” Along came various moms and their four-year-olds, none especially interested in a book about college basketball. Thirty minutes went by; I had signed zero books.

Finally—FINALLY—a guy came up and said, “Hey, are you John Feinstein?” Thank God, I thought, at least I’ll sell one book. Maybe I can get this guy to stand here and talk to me for the next 20 minutes.

“Yes, I am,” I said gratefully.

He looked at his program then looked at me. “So you’re the Miami Heat mascot?”

“WHAT?”

“Right here in the program, it says, ‘4 o’clock—John Feinstein, Miami Heat Mascot.’”

He showed me the program. That’s exactly what it said. Apparently I was speaking at the same time the Miami Heat mascot was performing. But the program made it look like I WAS the Miami Heat mascot.

“Sorry,” I said. “I’m not the Miami Heat mascot.”

“Too bad,” he said—and left.

Never did sell a book that day.

Saturday was a LOT better. Not a mascot in sight.

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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:

This past Monday I was making my weekly appearance on Washington Post Live, which airs here in town on Comcast Cable. Because of some kind of sponsorship deal the show has a segment EVERY day on the Redskins (and then later airs a show called, ‘Redskins Nation,’ which is so god-awful you would fall down laughing while watching it if its presence on the air—ANY air—wasn’t so downright sad).

Anyway, with the draft coming up and the Redskins having just completed their first mini-camp under new Coach Mike Shanahan, we actually did two Redskin segments. One of the other guests was Jason Reid, who does an excellent job covering the team for The Washington Post. Covering the Redskins for The Post is such an awful job I once left sports for two years rather than accept the assignment. (More on that in a moment).

During the mini-camp ‘discussion,’ (what the hell is there to discuss about mini-camp?) Jason casually mentioned that the media was not ALLOWED to be at the Redskins facility on Friday and Saturday. Only on Sunday did Shanahan grant them a few moments with the God-like figures who inhabit Redskins Park.

At first, I was literally stunned. No media at a mini-camp? What are they doing, plotting an invasion into Afghanistan? It then occurred to me that this lack of access, although it varies from team-to-team, is the way the NFL does business. Why does it do business this way? Because it CAN.

Even with a potential strike or lockout looming in 2011, there is nothing bigger in American sports (I throw in American only because of the soccer World Cup which occurs every four years and just about brings the rest of the world to a complete halt) than the NFL. I mean look at all the hype going into the draft, which is now a ‘prime-time,’ event. I mean, has there been enough speculation yet? What amuses me most is that with all the speculation—much of it usually flat out wrong—even after the draft takes place no one really knows what they have, who will be a true impact player and who won’t.

A draft usually becomes a good draft in the third round and beyond. If you blow your first pick—see the Oakland Raiders—then you’re going to be awful because even those guys who never stop talking on ESPN aren’t likely to screw up the first round. Heck, even the Redskins picked a good player in the first round last year. The best teams and general managers do their most important work in the late rounds and in signing college free agents. The teams with the most depth win in the NFL and depth is built in the late rounds of the draft and through free agent signings that usually rate one paragraph. You don’t get good by signing Albert Haynesworth—or for that matter Terrell Owens—you get good by signing Torry Holt and having him catch 70 balls for you on a one-year contract. Things like that.

Okay, back to the NFL and the lack of access the media has. I know most people reading this will say, ‘who cares about your access.’ Well, if you are a football fan YOU should. Look, watching practice or mini-camp doesn’t really matter a lick. I watched most Ravens practices (and mini-camps, which WERE open to everyone in the media) during 2004 and was mostly bored doing so.

Years ago, shortly after I had stopped working at The Post fulltime, I was doing some work for The New York Times. I had a contract with Sports Illustrated but liked keeping my hand in at daily journalism and Neil Amdur, then the Times sports editor, allowed me to do it.

The Redskins were playing the Giants and Neil asked me to go out to Redskins Park to write a couple of features during the week. I was standing on the practice field while the Redskins warmed up talking to Richard Justice, who was then The Post’s Redskins beat writer. Joe Gibbs walked over.

“John, I’m really sorry but we only let our local writers watch practice,” he said. “You’re going to have to leave.”

“Gee Joe, thanks,” I said.

“Thanks?”

“Yeah, thanks. Thanks for thinking for one second that, even if I cared, I’d have any clue what you guys were doing. And thanks for giving me an excuse to go write while you’re practicing.”

Gibbs actually laughed. I happily went off to write.

Nowadays, most NFL practices are shut tight—mini-camps apparently included. When Brian Billick coached the Ravens, he was about as open with the media as any coach that ever lived. All his pre-season practices were open. Once the season started he’d let people watch the beginning but once the team actually started scrimmaging or putting in a game-plan, everyone was shooed inside. Nowadays, ANY access to players on or off the field is extremely limited.

Access in almost all sports—golf is the notable exception—has been cut back greatly in recent years. Hockey locker rooms used to be open pre-game. No more. Baseball clubhouses are still open but for less time and players spend far more time in the off-limits areas, which have been greatly expanded in new ballparks. College basketball is the worst offender: Once, almost every college hoops locker room—even Georgetown under John Thompson the elder—was open postgame. Now, except during the NCAA Tournament (all credit to the NCAA on that one) most are closed and a few ‘selected,’ players come to an interview area. One notable exception? Duke. Maybe some of the coaches who complain so bitterly about Duke getting good publicity all the time should think about that for a moment.

The shame of it from the public’s point of view is that it is so much harder to get to know players when you have almost no access to them. I’ve always found that the best stories usually occur when you’re standing around casually talking to someone. It certainly benefits me in golf where I spend a lot of time hanging out on the range and the putting green just talking to players.

There is no casual time with NFL players for most guys in the media. I had the chance to spend casual time with the Ravens in ’04 and the best stories I found were about guys most people in the public never hear much about: the long-snapper; the punter brought in for a couple of weeks because of an injury; a backup offensive lineman who had played his college football at Williams.

But NFL coaches don’t care if the public hears those stories. They care about controlling everything in their little world on a day-to-day basis and they are allowed to do so by the league, by the media (which has little wherewithal to change anything) and by the public whose only real concern isn’t a good story about a backup lineman but whether last year’s 4-12 team can make itself over into a playoff team.

I get all that. Which is why, back in 1982 when George Solomon, then The Post’s sports editor called me into his office and announced, “congratulations, I’m making you The Redskins beat writer,” I said no. I was very much enjoying myself covering national college football and basketball and I knew that, even then, covering the Redskins beat was basically being a hard-working stenographer: who was injured, who didn’t practice, what did Coach Gibbs think of next week’s opponent? (Greatest team in history every single week).

That’s not to say I wasn’t flattered being offered the most read beat in the newspaper. I just thought life was too short to waste even one season doing that. I told George, with all due respect, I didn’t want the beat. He told me he was the boss—he was right—and I’d do what he said. I walked straight to David Maraniss’s office. He had just been promoted to Metro editor, replacing Bob Woodward. Both had told me I had a standing offer to come back and cover Maryland politics for them anytime I wanted.

“Does the offer still stand?” I asked.

“Absolutely.”

A week later I was in Annapolis. I never covered the Redskins. When I went back to sports two years later it was to cover national college basketball and tennis. I was reminded again on Monday just how lucky I was to never spend one day as an NFL beat writer. Back then, it was lousy. Now, it’s a lot worse.

INDIANAPOLIS - Arguably, there has never been a better NCAA men's basketball tournament than the one that ends tonight. From the very first games on the very first day there was one upset after another, one remarkable finish piling on another.

The championship game will be straight from "Hoosiers," the 1986 film based on the 1954 Indiana state championship won by tiny Milan High School over powerful Muncie Central. One finalist on Monday night in (naturally) Indianapolis is Butler. The other is Duke.

Duke is college basketball royalty, having competed in 15 Final Fours and winning three national championships. Butler had never been in the Final Four and came -- like Milan -- from virtual anonymity to compete for the championship. As luck would have it, Butler plays its home games on its campus at Hinkle Fieldhouse, which is six miles from the massive domed stadium where the Final Four was played but, more important, is the place where Milan won its title and where the movie was filmed.

In short, this NCAA Tournament is about as close to a perfect sporting event as happens in the jock pantheon.
So why is it almost certain that the NCAA will blow up a system that has worked so well for 25 years and completely change the landscape of college basketball?

Click here for the rest of the column - A basketball tournament only the NCAA would love

There may not be such a thing as a perfect Final Four, but the one that will begin on Saturday in Indianapolis comes pretty close.

It has a Cinderella practically playing on its home court.

It has a team that hasn't been to the Final Four in 51 years but is going back after a prodigal son came home.

It has a team whose coach always seems to find a way this time of year, playing in its sixth Final Four in 12 seasons.

And it has a villain, the team people love to hate, whether because it wins so often or because people have to have someone to root against once their team has gone home.

Those four teams, in case you spent the weekend wondering who the Redskins are going to draft, are Butler (Cinderella), West Virginia (prodigal son); Michigan State (coach who finds a way) and Duke (villain). Butler and Michigan State, both No. 5 seeds going into the tournament, will play the first game and Duke and West Virginia, a No. 1 and a No. 2, will play in the second game.

Before looking at those games, let's not forget who isn't going to be playing in the Lucas Oil Stadium. To begin with, three of the four No. 1 seeds -- Kansas, Syracuse and Kentucky. Each went out a round apart: Kansas losing to Northern Iowa in the second round, Syracuse in the round of 16 to Butler and Kentucky to West Virginia in the Elite Eight.

Anyone who has seen West Virginia play could not have been surprised by the outcome in Syracuse on Saturday night. The Mountaineers play exactly as they are coached to play by Bob Huggins -- always intense, always angry, never satisfied. Whether they are playing the 1-3-1 zone that completely baffled Kentucky or man-to-man, they are in the opponent's face on every defensive possession. They have an absolutely fearless shooter in Da'Sean Butler. They are mature -- juniors and seniors are the core of this team -- and they aren't likely to be shaken by a close game or the need for a big basket or a big stop. 

Click here for the rest of the column: This Final Four has it all

If last weekend is my favorite part of the NCAA basketball Tournament this weekend is my least favorite.

I’m looking at it, mind you, from a purely selfish standpoint. It has nothing to do with the potential quality of the basketball to be played; in fact, this is as good a Sweet Sixteen as we’ve had in years because so many non-power schools have made the second week. Here’s my dream Final Four: Cornell, St. Mary’s, Northern Iowa and Butler—which gets the nod out west over Xavier because it is located IN Indianapolis and because it plays in Hinkle Field House, still one of the most historic places in basketball. (Think ‘Hoosiers,’ if you don’t know what I’m talking about).

For me though—and for my writing brethren—this weekend is a nightmare. On Thursday and Friday the first games don’t start until almost 7:30 which means at the pace tournament games are played these days it is close to 10 o’clock before that game ends. With all the NCAA rules about cooling off periods and the clunkiness of taking players to interview rooms it can take 45 minutes to an hour to get enough in your notebook to think about writing. That means even someone who is fast like me isn’t going to finish writing anything off the first game before 11:30, which is fighting deadline for the home edition of the newspaper (we still care about stuff like that believe it or not) and means that you pretty much miss the first half of the second game because you’re writing.

There’s no chance to write anything that’s going to make any editions off the second game since it won’t tip until at least 10:15—why the NCAA lists “9:57,” I have no clue because there’s no way the game is starting then—and will end about 12:30. So you go to the locker rooms hoping to get a column to write for the next day while the guy writing the game story—here in Syracuse it is Zach Berman for The Post—tries to write a running story (written during the game with a quick lead that goes on top at game’s end) that makes some semblance of sense.

There is nothing worse than trying to write during a game. For one thing you MISS a lot. For another, something that seems critical and worth three paragraphs at one point can be meaningless 10 minutes later. My worst experience with a running column—which is different than a game story because it doesn’t need to contain that much play-by-play--was the national title game in 2008. With a 9:22 tipoff and the game ending after 11:30 I needed to hit the send button within two minutes of the buzzer or the column would miss more than half the newspapers printed that night.

I had written my entire column on Memphis winning the national championship, on how it had proved that its record coming out of Conference-USA was not the result of a weak schedule and that it had beaten two of the great traditional programs of all time in The Final Four: UCLA and Kansas, to finally exorcise the ghosts from its Final Four losses in 1973 and 1985.

Then Memphis’s Achilles heel—free throw shooting—kicked in, Mario Chalmers hit the three just before the buzzer when John Calipari decided not to foul and the game went into overtime. Every word I had written was worthless. I instantly began rewriting on the premise that Kansas was going to win the game. I kept the ‘Memphis-wins,’ column as backup, figuring I’d go back to it if Memphis won, but I was pretty convinced Kansas was going to win at that point.

Of course it did and the paper pushed the deadline for all of us writing to midnight and we just got in under the wire. The screaming and cursing directed at Chalmers and Calipari from press row that night wasn’t personal on any level. We were all just followed the first rule of journalism as explained by the great Dave Anderson, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his columns in The New York Times: “You are always allowed to root for yourself.”

So tonight, here in Syracuse, I will be rooting for Cornell—how can you NOT root for Cornell if you aren’t a Kentucky fan?—and I will be hoping that something happens in the West Virginia-Washington game that will give me a column of some kind I can write QUICKLY so that I can watch most of the Cornell-Kentucky game.

The other thing about covering the regionals is there’s too much time to kill. I got up here yesterday afternoon in time for the practices and press conferences so I could write a column for today (Column: In NCAA Tournament, Cornell's Big Red and Kentucky's 'Blue Mist' are miles apart on the spectrum). It’s nice that the NCAA opens the locker rooms during the press conference period but it didn’t help anyone that during the time that Steve Donahue was on the podium, the NCAA pulled Ryan Wittman, Jeff Foote and Louis Dale—Cornell’s three best players—out of the locker room and had them sit and twiddle their thumbs in a holding area next to the interview room.

As it was, people were falling over one another in the Cornell locker room, which is about as big as my hotel room, even with Wittman, Foote and Dale not in there. In a dome like this they can’t find four reasonably-sized locker rooms?

Anyway, as soon as I finish this I’ll go swim. That will take me to noon and then….we wait. The first weekend you have afternoon games so you get up, swim (I hope) grab something to eat and go to the arena. That’s fine. Some guys don’t mind down time in a hotel. I go nuts. I like to be doing SOMETHING.

Those who are going to stay for the regional final—not me, I’m out of here tomorrow after I write my column for Saturday’s paper—have TWO days to sit around and do nothing. They can go to the dreary off-day press conferences—no access to practice or the locker rooms—and find something to write and then they SIT until tipoff on Saturday at either 4:30 or 7. Brutal. One year at the Meadowlands I drove home on Thursday night and then drove back for the final on Saturday at 7. Life’s too short to sit around. If we were in Florida or a big city it might be different. But we’re not.

So, I’ll hope for the best tonight, knowing I’ll be lucky if I write something mildly passable. It’s like Bob Woodward said to me years ago when I was wrestling with a lead: “Johnny (he’s one of three people on earth, my mother and David Maraniss being the other two, who ever called me Johnny on a regular basis) some days you just have to fill the space.”

Tonight, unfortunately, is probably about filling the space—and filling it fast.

Let us begin today, after one of the great weekends in the history of college basketball with this question: Why would anyone want to change this tournament? It is about as close to perfect as a sporting event can get -- if you forget the endless timeouts, the 20-minute halftimes and the absolutely ridiculous late night tip-offs. And still the NCAA and the WCA (Whining Coaches of America) want to change it?

To quote the great basketball maven John Patrick McEnroe Junior: You can not be serious!

If the tournament were expanded, teams such as Northern Iowa, St. Mary's and and Cornell would have fewer opportunities to create memories against Nos. 1, 2, 4 and 5 seeds. Please, for the love of basketball, let someone with a grain of sanity intervene before it's too late.

Then again, it may already be too late. For college presidents, conference commissioners and NCAA administrators, nothing starts the morning like the smell of money. Ask the ACC power brokers, who thought conference expansion was such a swell idea. That's worked out so well that over the past five seasons, the ACC has sent one fewer school to the round of 16 (Duke, North Carolina and Boston College) than the Missouri Valley (Wichita State, Bradley, Southern Illinois and now Northern Iowa.)

Read the rest of the column: A level of march madness that can't be expanded

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SALEM, VA. The ball was in Alex Rubin's hands but there was nothing more he could do with it. The buzzer had just sounded, the confetti was already falling from the rafters of Salem Civic Center on Saturday afternoon and the players from Wisconsin-Stevens Point were charging the floor.

Rubin and his teammates from Williams had come into the Division III national championship game with a record of 30-1. With 11 minutes to go they led, 54-44, and appeared to be on their way to the national championship. But the Ephs went cold and the Pointers got hot. A 22-5 run gave Stevens Point a 66-59 lead with five minutes to go, and with about 1,000 fans who had made the trip from the Midwest going crazy, the Pointers held on for a 78-73 victory.

And so, a split second after classmate Blake Schultz's futile final shot had rimmed out, Rubin found himself standing helplessly with the ball in his hands. He looked at the ball for a moment and then flung it as far as he possibly could. Then, like his teammates, he collapsed in tears.

"It occurred to me that was the last buzzer I'd ever hear as a player," he said about 30 minutes later. "I knew it was the last time all seven of us [seniors] would be together as teammates." He forced a smile. "Tough moment."

If you think there is any difference at all in the emotions that run through basketball at the Division III level and the big-time level, you're right: For the players on the 404 Division III men's basketball teams, the final buzzer is almost always the final buzzer. Rubin, a Landon graduate, is majoring in psychology and Spanish. If he ever shakes hands with David Stern he will be wearing a suit, but not a baseball cap.

Click here for the rest of the column: At the Division III basketball championships, emotions run just as strong

West
 
While you are writing Syracuse into the second round without even a second thought, remember this: The last time the Orange played Vermont in the NCAA tournament, the Catamounts won. That was five years ago in Worcester, Mass. Then again, if Dean Smith were here, he would say Syracuse has a huge psychological advantage because of that game.

Click here for the rest of the West analysis: In Salt Lake, BYU could hold court vs. Orange

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East

Let's start with the matchup that disproves any selection committee's claims of even-handedness: Temple-Cornell. Both teams are under-seeded: Vanderbilt a fourth seed out of the SEC? Oh, please. And Cornell just a No. 12? Ridiculous. The Big Red played a tougher nonconference schedule than almost anyone in the country. Two of their four losses were at Syracuse and at Kansas. Whom exactly did California, a No. 8 seed, beat? The Bears couldn't even win their conference tournament in a miserable Pacific-10.

Click here for the rest of the East analysis: Despite some strange seeding in the East, it's Kentucky's region to lose

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South

For all the TV blather about Duke getting the third overall seed in the tournament over Syracuse, who cares? If you're a No. 1 seed, you're a No. 1 seed. That said, committee chairman Dan Guerrero added to the nonsense by saying, "Well, Syracuse is still playing close to home" in the first two rounds in Buffalo. Syracuse was going to Buffalo regardless and couldn't have played in the East Region final because those games will be in . . . Syracuse. So what's the difference between playing in Houston and playing in Salt Lake? 

Click here for the rest of the South analysis: Duke's drought may end, but watch the Big 12 duo

***

Midwest

A lot of people seem to think that Kansas has a cakewalk to Indianapolis through this region. Not so.

There are at least four teams that are capable of beating the Jayhawks: Ohio State, Georgetown, Maryland and, believe it or not, No. 10 seed Georgia Tech. If you were thinking Tennessee was the fourth team that can beat Kansas because it did beat Kansas earlier in the season, forget it: The Vols will be fortunate to get past San Diego State in the first round.

Click here for the rest of the Midwest analysis: Jayhawks may be No. 1, but they can't take it easy


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This week's AP Top 25 Ballot:

1 Kansas
2 Kentucky
3 Syracuse
4 Duke
5 West Virginia
6 Ohio State
7 Temple
8 Butler
9 Kansas State
10 Villanova
11 New Mexico
12 Purdue
13 BYU
14 Wisconsin
15 Pittsburgh
16 Gonzaga
17 Texas A&M
18 Tennessee
19 Michigan State
20 Baylor
21 Richmond
22 Georgetown
23 Maryland
24 Cornell
25 Georgia Tech

When Herb Magee first walked onto the campus of Philadelphia Textile University as a 5-foot-9, 150-pound, jump-shooting freshman, Dwight D. Eisenhower was president of the United States. There have been 10 presidents since Eisenhower and Philadelphia Textile is now Philadelphia University. The basketball landscape has changed in ways almost impossible to describe.

Back in the fall of 1959 when Magee was a freshman, his nickname was "the King." More than 50 years later, after scoring 2,275 points as a player and turning down a chance to go to training camp with the Boston Celtics in 1963 as a seventh-round draft choice, Magee is still at Division II Philadelphia U. Tuesday night, he won his 903rd game as a college coach, one more than Bob Knight, setting off a wild celebration on the tiny campus tucked into the East Falls section of Northwest Philadelphia.

"Once the King always the King, " said Temple Coach Fran Dunphy, one of many Philly hoops luminaries who showed up for Magee's latest coronation. With the victory, Magee set a new record for wins in men's NCAA-sanctioned basketball games. Don Meyer, the coach at Northern State in South Dakota, had 923, entering Saturday night's game, but many of those victories were at an NAIA college.

Click here for the rest of the column: By passing Bob Knight, Herb Magee truly became 'the Kind'

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My ballot for this week's AP Top 25 poll

1 Syracuse
2 Kansas
3 Kentucky
4 Duke
5 Kansas State
6 New Mexico
7 Ohio State
8 Butler
9 Purdue
10 Gonzaga
11 Villanova
12 Michigan State
13 Tennessee
14 Temple
15 West Virginia
16 Maryland
17 Vanderbilt
18 Pittsburgh
19 Wisconsin
20 Baylor
21 Northern Iowa
22 BYU
23 UTEP
24 Georgetown
25 Cornell

Okay, let’s start this morning with the disclaimer: Most people know that I like Tony Kornheiser and I don’t like ESPN. So, when I discuss Tony’s two week suspension from the network, specifically from Pardon The Interruption, I do so being fully aware of the biases I bring to the table.

Tony and I have been friends for 30 years. I began reading him while in college when he was still at The New York Times and thought he was about as good a writer as anyone going. When he came to The Washington Post we became friends quickly: both of us were (and are) wise-guy New Yorkers and Tony became someone I sought out when I needed advice or guidance. When the idea of trying to do a book on Bob Knight came to me in 1985, Tony was the very first person who said, “you should absolutely do this. It can be a great book.”

He was pretty close to a lone voice (there were a handful of others) because most of my friends and family thought I was crazy to take a leave of absence from The Post to do the book. Fortunately for me I followed my gut instinct and Tony’s advice.

We’ve been through lots of ups and downs. We’ve had periods where we didn’t speak to one another over fights I swear to God I can’t remember anymore. Tony can be an absolute pain-in-the-butt (as can I)—which may be one reason why we’re still friends. He’s lectured me on my behavior and decision-making at times and I’ve done the same to him.

Now, there are some people who love Tony’s work, in print and on-air and think he’s the funniest, smartest guy going. There are others who think he’s a whining curmudgeon and can’t understand why anyone would want to listen to him, much less hire him.

I can tell you one entity that loves Tony’s work: ESPN. That’s why the network bought his local radio show years ago and took it national. (For the record it was Tony who opted to go back to local radio because he got tired of having dull ex-jock, ESPN-talent shoved down his throat as guests). That’s why it built PTI around him and Mike Wilbon. That’s why it chose to put him on Monday Night Football, it’s FLAGSHIP property for three years. ESPN pays Tony a lot of money because it likes who he is on-air. YOU might hate him. ESPN loves him.

Part of what makes Tony Tony is the fact that he’s constantly making fun of people. God knows he makes fun of me all the time, whether about my clothes, my waist-size (still 36 but not with much margin these days) the stupid nickname he stuck on me when I was 23-years-old or my opinions, which often differ from his.

That’s Tony. It is who he is. When he trashed Marv Albert years ago during Albert’s troubles, I said to him, “how can you do that, you’ve been friends with him for years.” Tony shrugged and said, “it’s what I do. It’s my job.”

We disagreed on that one. We often disagree. He defended Mitch Albom when Mitch made up the column about the two Michigan State players at The Final Four five years ago. I thought it was a disgrace and that Mitch’s reaction to the whole thing was worse than that.

Part of what Tony does on the radio is sit and watch TV monitors during the show and make comments about what he’s seeing or sometimes hearing. He kills Ann Curry from The Today show regularly. A few weeks ago he talked about the fact that Jim Nantz had put on weight. Actually that’s not what he said. He said Nantz had gotten fat. It’s worth remembering that Tony refers to himself often as, “bald, fat and old.” The e-mail address for his show is: This Show Stinks. That’s Tony.

ESPN certainly didn’t mind Tony trashing Ann Curry or Jim Nantz or me. But criticizing ESPN is simply not allowed. Remember last summer when all ESPN affiliates were banned from discussing the networks’ unpardonable decision to not mention that Ben Roethlisberger was being sued in a civil suit for assault? The affiliates were told they could NOT bring up the case or ESPN’s decision not to report the law suit.

The last time anyone tried to exert control like this was the old Soviet Union. Misbehave at ESPN and they send you to the Gulag. That’s why I’m not on Sports Reporters anymore. I made a crack to a reporter about ESPN’s desire to own and operate all of sports—and the fact that it appeared to be succeeding. That was it, I was sent to The Gulag, where life has been fine actually. People ask me if I miss The Sports Reporters and my answer is this: I miss the people I worked with on the show. I do NOT miss dealing with ESPN even a little bit.

Tony’s been given a two week Gulag sentence—suspension—because he made a couple of wise cracks about Hannah Storm’s outfit on sportscenter last Thursday. Let’s not even get into the question of whether the outfit was or was not tasteful. It IS ridiculous that people constantly judge women on TV based on their looks and what they’re wearing. Tony does it but he also does it to guys. He’s not trying to be sexist, he’s trying to be funny.

So let’s say he swung and missed on this one. I didn’t see the outfit but even if I did, I’m willing to accept that the comment about looking as if she was “wrapped in a sausage,” was over the line. I’m not even entirely sure what that means.

When Tony started getting nailed on the internet for the line, ESPN, ever-vigilant, sprung into action. Tony instantly agreed to apologize to Storm and did—on the phone and on his show the next day. That should have been the end of it.

Look, I have some experience with this. When I uttered my infamous profanity during the Navy-Duke game five years ago, I apologized right away on the air after first offering to resign. The Navy people, specifically Athletic Director Chet Gladchuk and Eric Ruden, who oversees the radio network both said the same thing: “You made a mistake, you acknowledged the mistake, you apologized. We’re done. See you next week for the Air Force game.”

Most people took the same approach: apology accepted. To this day I still have clever people occasionally say to me, “think you can get through the broadcast without saying ----- today?” That’s the price you pay. Just as a guy came up to me at a basketball game last night and said, “Hey, how’s your pal Bobby Knight?”

To quote Tiger Woods and Peppermint Patty, I blame the media.

The TWO apologies should have been enough. But ESPN couldn’t resist the opportunity to try to let people know that it is America’s great defender of women. That’s because in the past it has been anything but that. So, after Tony apologized to Storm both privately and publicly, he was told he was going to be suspended. At first it was going to be three days but clearly someone up high decided this was a great time to REALLY jump on a high horse so the suspension became 10 days. Then there were predictable self-righteous statements from Bristol about how the network simply couldn’t allow this.

Oh please.

ESPN is, for the most part, a celebration of mediocrity. I was reminded of that this morning when I heard the various taped paeans from sports people to ‘Mike and Mike’s,’ 10th anniversary. (Question: Does Greenberg think that every single coach or manager alive is named, ‘coach or skip?’ Question: Is Golic capable of asking a single non-football question not written for him by a producer?)

There are exceptions to the mediocrity rule, some people who are very good and some shows (notably PTI) that are smart and funny. Actually, now that I think of it, PTI is the ONLY daily show on TV or radio (unless you are an insomniac and listen to Bob Valvano which I do when driving home very late at night) that is consistently smart and funny. Take Tony off the show and it becomes a less loud version of ‘Around The Horn.’ That show is occasionally saved by the presence of Bob Ryan (or at least made less unbearable) and Wilbon, when he isn’t sucking up to famous athletes, brings smarts and experience to PTI. But there’s no show without Tony.

So here’s what ESPN did: It subjected Tony to public humiliation so it could take a phony bow and claim to be a great defender of women. It did this to punish Tony for being Tony. The guy they hired because they liked who he was. What complete hypocrites.

Then again, this is about as surprising as Dick Vitale screaming or the NCAA making a grab for money. It is who ESPN is. And, no doubt, always will be.

Here is this weekend's column on Bobby Cremins for The Washington Post ------------

Bobby Cremins looked like his head was on a swivel. His College of Charleston basketball team was about to meet Saturday morning in a hotel conference room to go over the scouting report for the game it would play against George Mason at Patriot Center, and Cremins wanted to make sure everyone had a place to sit.

"Carolyn, take my chair, I'll get another one," he said to his wife, even while someone was grabbing a chair for Carolyn Cremins.

He looked around again and pointed to another chair nearby that Athletic Director Joe Hull could use. He waved a couple more people into the room, looking more like a cruise director than a coach with 537 victories on his coaching résumé before Saturday night's 85-83 win at George Mason. He clearly was completely at home, doing what coaching friends call the "Bobby Cremins thing."

Only Bobby Cremins can do the Bobby Cremins thing. He's done it successfully now for 29 years -- including a six-year break after he left Georgia Tech, where the court is named for him -- in a manner that may be unique in the pantheon of big-time coaches: He's never made an enemy.

Click here for the rest of the column: Bobby Cremins is still doing his thing at College of Charleston

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The following is my ballot for this week's Associated Press Top 25 Poll:

One of the things that make an athlete great is extraordinary arrogance. The best of the best always believe they will find a way to overcome adversity, to pull off the shot that can't be pulled off, to find a way to win when losing appears inevitable. No one has defined that arrogance more clearly over the past 14 years than Tiger Woods, who has dominated golf since he turned pro in 1996.

On Friday morning, Woods came out of hiding. Exactly 12 weeks after the early-morning accident that led to revelations that he had repeatedly been involved in extramarital affairs, Woods appeared in public for the first time to say he was sorry.

He apologized to almost everyone he had ever crossed paths with. He looked sad and choked up at times. He said that he had learned from his mistakes and is still learning after spending 45 days in a rehabilitation center -- though he never specifically mentioned where he had gone seeking help. He tried very hard to sound humbled.

He didn't pull it off.


Click here for the rest of the story: Tiger Woods's half-apology

My hope is everyone is off for this President's Day, though all the recent snow may have changed everyone's holiday plans (school snow days?!?). For me, I'm in the throws of finishing a few large projects. In the meantime, here is a column on Cornell basketball, who went 1-1 over the weekend.

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Basketball coaches talk all the time about the importance of team chemistry. When a team is winning, it is always about work ethic and great kids and desire and, of course, team chemistry. Players on winning teams love one another. Players on losing teams transfer or, in the NBA, demand to be traded.

Cornell Coach Steve Donahue doesn't have to talk about team chemistry. His players live team chemistry. "If you tried to get your players to do this, ordered them to do it, no way would it happen," he said this week. "Our guys just did it. It was their idea. That's why it works."

Their idea, hatched two years ago, was to live together. All of them. In one house -- 14 college basketball players under one roof in an old house near the Cornell campus.

"The good news is it's a really big house," starting center Jeff Foote said. "We've all got our own rooms. Even so, the place does get pretty dirty a fair amount of the time."

No doubt. Donahue really doesn't care that much about his players' skills as housekeepers, though, especially given the results they've produced as basketball players the last three seasons. The Big Red has won back-to-back Ivy League titles and was 21-4 after Saturday night's 48-45 win over Princeton. It has road or neutral-site wins over Alabama, St. John's, Massachusetts, Saint Joseph's, Toledo, Davidson and La Salle. And its losses were to Seton Hall, at Pennsylvania in a slip-up Friday night, and at Kansas and Syracuse -- currently ranked No. 1 and No. 2 in the nation.

The final score of the Kansas game was 71-66, and it was closer than that. Cornell led most of the game and leading scorer Ryan Wittman had a crack at a three-point shot in the final seconds that could have tied the score.

"Because of who we were playing and where we were playing and the fact that the last six or seven minutes were on national TV [ESPN switched to the game], I think I've had more feedback on that game than on all the other games I've coached here combined," Donahue said. "I think it surprised some people to see how good we are."

Cornell is good, even though it doesn't have a single national TV appearance scheduled this season. But no one is going to call the Big Red or Donahue an overnight success. This was a long time coming.

Donahue came to Cornell in the fall of 2000 after 10 seasons as an assistant coach under Fran Dunphy at Penn. The popular thinking then, as it has been throughout most of the Ivy League's history, was that third place was about as good as any Ivy League team not named Penn or Princeton could hope for most years. Columbia shared the league title with Princeton in 1968, Brown won it in 1986 and Cornell won it in 1988. In the other 37 seasons from Columbia's co-title through 2007, Princeton or Penn won or shared each championship.

"I knew in a place like this you don't build quickly," Donahue said. "You have to get kids who fit Cornell, not just kids with talent, because if they don't like the place, their talent isn't going to matter. We were lucky we got some kids to come who went out and convinced better kids to follow them, and they convinced better kids than that to come. By the time we got this senior class [high school class of 2006] we thought we had something going.

"And then we got Foote."

The key player in that 2006 recruiting class was Wittman, the son of former Indiana star and NBA player Randy Wittman. "I liked everything about the place when I visited," he said.

It was during that season that Foote transferred from St. Bonaventure. He was not, in any way, a typical transfer. Donahue had seen him play briefly in a high school tournament at Cornell. "He was probably 6-9 or 6-10 and might have weighed 170," he said. "I remember thinking he could pass the ball but he was so gangly and awkward. There were D-3 coaches watching him that day and none of them thought he was good enough for them." 

For the rest of the article from the The Washington Post site: Cornell basketball gets an 'A' in chemistry

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.

Here is this week's column, which ran Sunday, for The Washington Post---------

Dan Bonner has been involved in ACC basketball since 1971, the year he enrolled at Virginia as a gawky, 6-foot-7 forward. He became a solid player for the Cavaliers and has gone on to work as an analyst at CBS, ESPN, Raycom and Fox -- always with a number of ACC games on his schedule every season.

Several years ago, Bonner was working a killer schedule for ESPN. "I was like the referees are now," he said recently. "Different city every night. Monday I'd do a Big 12 game, Tuesday [a Southeastern Conference] game, Wednesday an ACC game and Thursday I could be anywhere. What I remember vividly is whenever I walked into an ACC gym -- it didn't matter who was playing or what place the teams were in -- the place was rocking. Other leagues you had that for big games, but for a lot of games it wasn't so. Now, the ACC is more like the other leagues.

"You go to a game at Boston College, if Duke or North Carolina aren't playing, there are empty seats. The same at Miami and Florida State. A couple of weeks ago I did the Duke at N.C. State game and there were empty seats there. For Duke-N.C. State? How can that happen?"


Click here for the rest of the article: Don't count ACC basketball out yet in 2010

On Friday, I didn’t have time to write because I had to go to Philadelphia. This afternoon, I head to Florida for four days. The reason is Bruce Edwards.

It is difficult to believe that almost six years have passed since Bruce died of ALS—Lou Gehrig’s disease—after a remarkably brave fight that began only 15 months earlier when he was diagnosed at The Mayo Clinic in January of 2003.

Bruce, who caddied for Tom Watson for most of 30 years beginning in 1973, was literally the first person I ever talked to at a golf tournament. It was at The Memorial in 1981 when I had been sent there for the week to, “find some stories,” (to quote my boss George Solomon) to write the next week when The Kemper Open came to Washington.

The first afternoon I was there I spotted Bruce sitting on the putting green. Watson was the No. 1 player in the world at the time so I instantly recognized him, the guy with the easy smile who was always stride-for-stride with Watson walking down the fairways, Watson’s bag looped easily over his shoulder. I introduced myself and we sat and talked for more than two hours about his life, about other caddies and other players. A friendship that lasted until the day he died was born that afternoon.

If you’ve read, ‘Caddy For Life,’ you know that the story I just recounted is how the book begins, so forgive me if some of this seems familiar.

Soon after he was diagnosed, I talked to Bruce at The Masters. The disease was already beginning to ravage his body: he was thin, he admitted that walking the hills at Augusta was tough on his legs and his speech was slurred. He told me that a number of people had suggested he do a book on his experiences as one of the first truly professional caddies on the tour; on his relationship with Watson and on what he was going through. He asked me if I would do the book.

As I’ve said before, I was hesitant at first for a purely selfish reason: I didn’t want to watch a friend die from up close. Make no mistake about ALS. It kills you and it kills you in an awful way, your body collapsing while your mind stays intact. But after about 60 seconds of trying to think of a way to say no, it occurred to me that I had to say yes. Bruce had been a good friend for 22 years.

What’s more, this wasn’t the kind of vanity book people often brought up to me. I swear to God every coach who has ever been fired believes his life story is the next, ‘Season on the Brink.’ I had a coach call me once who had been involved in a major recruiting scandal. I didn’t think his story was close to being a book but, trying to be polite, I said to him, “There might be some interest in your story regionally and there are guys who could write it for you that I know. But if you tell the truth about everything that went on, it might make it impossible for you to coach again.”

There was silence on the phone. And then: “You’re misunderstanding me John. I’m not going to talk about any of that. I just want to write about the highlights of my career.”

The highlight of his career had been reaching ONE sweet sixteen.

Bruce had a real story to tell. I saw it as a three part love story: his love affair with caddying and golf; the love between he and Watson that had grown through the years and the love he and his wife Marsha had for one another. They had dated in the 1970s, gone separate ways for almost 25 years and then re-united shortly before Bruce was diagnosed.

I wrote the book and I’m very glad I did as painful as it was. Bruce and I were scheduled to do a book-signing together in Augusta on April 3rd, 2004 but he never made it there. He died the next morning—the first day of The Masters.

The book ended up being a bestseller and there was a lot of talk about a movie. In fact, ABC was fired up enough about doing it that it commissioned a script. David Himmelstein wrote it and I can tell you it was GREAT. When I read David’s opening scene, which was a description of Bruce and Marsha’s wedding in Hawaii, that was attended by—among others—Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer and Gary Player (Watson was the best man)—I called David and said, “This first scene pisses me off.”

“Why?” he asked.

“Because I didn’t think of the idea to start the movie with it.”

To make a long story short, the head of ABC Entertainment loved the script. Matt Damon’s production company was going to produce the movie with Damon (a huge golf fan) as executive producer. The movie was going to be co-paid for by ABC and my pals at ESPN, since they would re-run it early and often after it aired on ABC.

But it never happened and, if it wasn’t so damn sad, the reason would be funny: At the start of 2007, Disney slashed ESPN’s movie-making budget because the movies made by ESPN Original Entertainment had been so bad and had lost so much money. The first movie ESPN had made? ‘A Season on the Brink,’ which was absolutely god-awful. When I said it was god-awful at the time the ESPN people went nuts. I got a letter from one guy saying the reason the reviews were so terrible was because I had ripped the movie. If only I had such power.

So, ‘Caddy For Life,’--the movie--never happened.

But now, The Golf Channel is planning to turn it into a documentary, one that will air the week of this year’s U.S. Open—which is at Pebble Beach, the site of Tom and Bruce’s greatest moment, the 1982 Open.

I am, of course, thrilled. TGC has pledged to make a large contribution to, “The Bruce Edwards Foundation,” and after the movie airs Watson will come on to talk about ALS and the desperate need for research money.

That’s why I was in Philly Friday, to interview Bruce’s sister Gwyn and his old caddying buddies, Neil Oxman and Bill Leahey. On this trip I will do on-cameras with Bruce’s parents and his beloved Aunt Joan in addition to Watson, Gary Crandall (another caddying pal) and finally, Marsha, who still lives in the house that Bruce built with the money he made during his brief time caddying for Greg Norman. He always called it, “The Norman House.”

Friday had a number of emotional moments and I know the next few days will too. But hearing Bruce stories always makes me smile and the cause is certainly a worthy one. Plus, I think the documentary can be very, very good and it would be nice to see one of my books turned into something on screen I can be proud to have taken part in.

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Two notes on recent postings: Someone pointed out yesterday that Brett Favre answered every question postgame on Sunday and ducked no one and no issue in the wake of the Saints win over the Vikings.

I have mentioned in the past how much I respect athletes who do that after a crushing defeat, the best example in my experience being Bill Buckner after game 6 of the 1986 World Series. Favre deserves a lot of credit for being a stand-up guy when standing up literally wasn’t easy for him. A lot of athletes in his situation would have used their injury—in this case his left ankle—as an excuse to, “get treatment,” in the training room and duck the media or at least squeeze them since most guys were on tight deadlines with the game ending so late.

So, good for Favre. And, has anyone noticed it took about an hour for ESPN to come out with its first, “ESPN has learned that Brett Favre says, ‘it is highly unlikely,’ he will return next season.

First of all you don’t ask ANY athlete about retiring in the wake of a loss like that because they just aren’t thinking straight. And Favre? What do you think the over-under on the, “ESPN has learned,” updates between now and March 1 is. If you make the number 12, I’ll take the over.

Someone else asked recently if I had any stories about Katherine Graham, the legendary publisher of The Washington Post, who was still very much running the paper when I first got there.

I have quite a few but for now, here’s the most memorable. In 1985, I was sent to Europe to cover The French Open and Wimbledon for the first time and spent that summer covering a lot of tennis. On the morning of the U.S. Open men’s final between Ivan Lendl and John McEnroe, I was in the press box at the National Tennis Center when I heard Bud Collins say, “John, you have a guest.”

I looked up and here came Mrs. Graham, who played a lot of tennis and was a big tennis fan—one reason why the tennis beat was a big deal at The Post.

“John, I just had to come up and see you before the match,” she said. “I wanted to tell you how much I have LOVED your tennis writing this summer.”

“Well, Mrs. Graham, thank-you, I’m really glad you like it…”

“And what I especially like is the way you write about John McEnroe. I can tell you like him. I do too. Deep down, I think he’s a good guy.”

(I had written a long McEnroe profile during the Open).

“Well, thanks. I agree. If you get to know John he really IS a good guy.”

We talked for a few minutes. Needless to say I was thrilled that Katherine Graham (!!!) had taken time to find me and compliment me on my work.

A little while later the match was ready to start. I was sitting downstairs near the court with my pal Pete Alfano, then of Newsday, later The New York Times. Everyone was seated. McEnroe was getting ready to serve. The umpire called, “play.”

There was one small problem. There was one spectator who hadn’t quite made it to her seat courtside just yet. McEnroe was giving her, “the glare,” which meant he was just about to say something that would no doubt not be polite. I looked at the spectator and gasped: It was Mrs. Graham.

My entire career passed before my eyes. “Yes Mrs. Graham, John’s really a good guy…”
I grabbed Alfano’s shoulder. “Oh my God, I’m done, I’m finished,” I said.

McEnroe was now bouncing a ball off his racquet, waiting and glaring. Mrs. Graham had no clue what was going on. The crowd began to murmur. Finally, after what felt like about an hour, she got to her seat. A few people clapped sarcastically. John—God Bless him—never said a word.

Then he lost in straight sets. A few years later I asked him if he remembered that moment. He did. “If the match had already started I probably would have said something,” he said. “You’re lucky I wasn’t in a bad mood yet.”

Oh God was I lucky.

Below are today's, and Sunday's column for The Washington Post - Brett Favre and Gary Williams are the focus of the articles. -------

Perhaps the best way to describe the football career of Brett Favre is to say that he has come to embody Hamlet, Shakespeare's greatest and most famous character.

There is no doubting that Favre is heroic. That was never more evident than in the fourth quarter of Sunday's NFC Championship game, when he hobbled in and out of the Minnesota Vikings' huddle but somehow managed to keep back-pedaling and scrambling away from pass rushers to throw laser beam passes while getting knocked down by the New Orleans Saints again and again.

He is also tragically flawed -- the word "tragic" being limited to the context of football. For all the spectacular numbers Favre has put together during his remarkable career, he has won as many Super Bowls as Mark Rypien and Doug Williams and played in as many as Joe Theismann. Oh sure, Peyton Manning's numbers are exactly the same at the moment, and Dan Marino never won a Super Bowl. But none of them ever failed as dramatically as Favre has the last two times he reached the brink of a Super Bowl.

Click here for the rest of the column: Brett Favre: the hero without the happy ending

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Ninety minutes before he would walk onto the court at Comcast Center on Saturday evening, Gary Williams sat in the coaches' conference room that adjoins the Maryland locker room. As always on a game day, his face was filled with tension even though his dry humor was as firmly in place as his game face.

As he prepared for his 1,000th game as a college basketball coach at the age of 64, he didn't feel all that different than he felt just before coaching his first game in 1978 at the age of 33.

"When you stop looking ahead to the next game, to the next season, to the next thing -- whatever it may be -- that's when you stop coaching," he said. "I think I can honestly say I've never done that. When the day comes that I don't want to do that anymore, then it'll be time to stop."

Looking ahead most of the time doesn't mean he can't look back on occasion, because after 1,000 games there are a lot of memories.

Click here for the rest of the column: After 1,000 games, Maryland coach Gary Williams has plenty of good memories

The following is this week's column from The Washington Post on the Jets saving the playoff weekend followed by an article on UVA basketball and its coach, Tony Bennett ---------------

If these past two weekends were the best the NFL has to offer, maybe there's a chance for the USFL to make a comeback.

Six of the eight games were enough to make one think about switching to Dick Vitale calling a women's basketball game. Or Dick Vitale talking about calling a women's basketball game.

Wild-card weekend gave us Packers-Cardinals and three games that even fans of the winners would be hard-pressed to watch to the end. The Ravens-Patriots game was over before Bill Belichick had a chance to get his hoodie into position.

Surely the divisional playoff weekend would be better. Except it wasn't: It was worse. The winning teams were ahead by a combined 35 points at halftime Saturday and never looked back, and the only real suspense in the over-hyped Cowboys-Vikings matchup was when the "Can Wade Phillips survive?" talk would begin.

Click here for the rest of the column: Rex Ryan's Jets save NFL playoffs from tedium

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This really wasn't the way Tony Bennett had it planned. It isn't that he didn't love basketball. The game has been a part of his life for as long as he can remember, which tends to happen when you're a coach's son. The gym is as much a part of your boyhood as your mom's kitchen table. Growing up while his dad, Dick, was coaching high school ball, then National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics ball and then Division I ball, he was the classic gym rat, the kid who makes himself a great shooter by spending hours and hours alone with a ball and a backboard.

Bennett would have been something straight out of "Hoosiers," if he had been in Indiana instead of Wisconsin. But coaching wasn't in his blood. Playing was what he was about.

"When I was a kid, the last thing in the world I thought I'd ever do was coach," he said, relaxing in the Virginia coaches' lounge at John Paul Jones Arena on Wednesday after the Cavaliers had upset 20th-ranked Georgia Tech. "I loved being a player. I guess in my mind I was going to play forever -- go from college to the NBA and just stay. I saw close-up what a roller-coaster ride coaching was for my dad and for my sister Kathi [who won a Division III national title at Wisconsin-Oshkosh and later coached at Indiana] and I said, 'That's not for me.' Then I got hurt and things changed."

Click here for the rest of the column: Finding direction on an unexpected path

Here is this week's The Washington Post column -----

If Abe Pollin were alive right now, the past week might well have been as painful as any he suffered through during the 45 years that he owned the NBA team in Baltimore, Landover and downtown Washington.

The 10-21 record wouldn't have been anything new for Pollin, especially coming off last season's 19-63 debacle. Anyone who has followed the team now known as the Wizards has seen just about everything when it comes to losing during most of the past 25 years. The team has been mediocre; it has been reasonably good; and it has been truly awful.

But never before last week has the public known that its players are showing up armed. Note that phrase: has the public known. The chances are pretty good that Gilbert Arenas and Javaris Crittenton aren't the first players to show up at Verizon Center with guns.


Click here for the rest of the column: Gilbert Arenas has worn out his welcome in Washington

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From the weekend:

Even before this basketball season began, George Mason Coach Jim Larranaga knew he was in for a bumpy ride. The Patriots are talented but young -- seriously young -- with only one senior, two juniors, three sophomores and seven freshmen. 

"Not only are we going to have good nights and bad nights, we're going to have good halves and bad halves," he said this fall. "We may even go way up and then way down from timeout to timeout."

Larranaga probably never imagined the November and December he and his team would go through. There were close losses to Villanova and Dayton. There were solid wins over Creighton and Indiana.

There was also a health scare: On the afternoon of Nov. 15, Larranaga walked into Patriot Center prior to his team's game against Dartmouth and felt his heart racing. When Mason's team doctor, Patrick Depenbrock, examined him he told him the problem right away -- atrial fibrillation, an abnormal heartbeat. 


Click here for the rest of the column: George Mason Coach Jim Larranaga aims to keep heart, team in check

I have written before about how much I detest baseball’s All Star break because it means three days with no baseball—unless you like watching an exhibition game in July—forcing me to watch even more ‘West Wing,’ on DVD than I normally do until the real games start again on Thursday.

Christmas week isn’t much better. Last night there were some good college basketball games to watch and what looked like a good bowl game (Brigham Young-Oregon State which turned out to be pretty much a snooze) but the closer you get to Christmas Day the more your choices dwindle. By Christmas Eve you’re down to one pretty lousy bowl game (I’m just not that psyched for Nevada-SMU) and then on Christmas Day there’s one NFL game—at night—and all those NBA games that, sorry, I just can’t bring myself to care about. Check back with me when the playoffs start. Actually check back with me when The Finals start. Maybe.

There’s also the family issue. People expect you to hang out with kids and in-laws and brothers and sisters. It isn’t that I don’t like any of these people—I love many of them—it’s just that after a while you’d rather watch a ballgame than talk about how cute someone’s dog is or hear about how funny your nephew can be. The other problem for me is I can’t claim on Christmas Eve that I really need to watch that Nevada-SMU game for work.

Christmas has always been an interesting part of my life. Clearly, I’m Jewish. My dad was raised orthodox and completely rejected all religion as an adult. My mom had no religious training at all and thought Christmas was a better holiday for kids than Chanukah (my daughter Brigid might argue differently since she still clings to the idea that she’s owed eight gifts) so we always had a Christmas tree and always celebrated Christmas—albeit in a secular way.

Without sounding glib I can honestly say that the births of Lefty Driesell and my agent, Esther Newburg, on Christmas Day have had more meaning in my life than the birth of Jesus Christ. My friend Ken Denlinger once described Lefty as “God’s unique Christmas present to the world in 1931.”

One of my more vivid Christmas memories involves Lefty. I had traveled to Hawaii with Maryland in December of 1984 for what was then The Rainbow Classic. This was before ESPN had created all these strictly-for-TV events at Thanksgiving and The Rainbow, which started back in 1964, was THE holiday tournament: eight quality teams every year. The schedule called for two games Christmas night; two games the next day and then four games on the 27th and the 28th since everyone played three games.

Maryland was playing Iowa on Christmas night. On Christmas Eve morning, I went with Maryland to practice at the old Blaisdell Arena, an aging mini-dome that seated about 8,000 people. Blaisdell had a certain character to it. You had to walk across little bridges to get inside because the building was surrounded by what would best be described as a moat. There was absolutely no parking for the building but if you knew what you were doing you parked at the bank right across the street.

After practice I went back to the hotel and had lunch with Lefty to get some pre-tournament quotes for my advance the next day. As we were finishing, a Maryland booster who had made the trip approached Lefty.

“Coach we were wondering about some free time for the kids tomorrow after morning shootaround,” he said.

“Free time,” Lefty said. “What for?”

“Well, we wanted to have a little Christmas party for them…”

“Christmas!” Lefty thundered. “Christmas! I didn’t come here to have a Christmas party I came here to win games!”

Take that Bah and Humbug.

Maryland won two games—beating Iowa and Hawaii before losing at the buzzer to Georgia Tech in the finals. Because the championship game was on TV back east it started at 6 o’clock local time. Tommy Stinson of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and I walked into Blaisdell at about 5:59 that night because we were sitting by the hotel pool listening to Al McGuire tell stories and we lost track of the time.

I’ve never really minded working on holidays—again it isn’t because I don’t love my family—it’s just, well, what I do. I’m used to working on weekends when others aren’t working so working on a holiday doesn’t feel strange to me. Of course when I still worked at The Washington Post, I frequently got into battles with George Solomon who would—understandably—assign the Jewish members of the staff to work Christmas Day. I didn’t mind working if I was on the road someplace (especially if it was in Hawaii) but I certainly didn’t want to come into the office to write some kind of advance on the college basketball games being played the next day or get sent out to Redskins Park to hear Joe Gibbs talk about how that Sunday’s opponent was the greatest team in football history.

So, every year I’d check the schedule and there I’d be, penciled in for Christmas Day. I’d go see George.

“I can’t work on Christmas,” I’d say.

George—who, to be fair, always put himself on the schedule on Christmas—would look at me and say, “what are you talking about?”

“My family celebrates Christmas. My mother will be upset if I’m not there to open presents in the morning.”

“What do you mean your family celebrates Christmas?”

George literally didn’t believe me at first. Then, when he did believe me, he decided he had to teach me how to be a real Jew. One year he insisted that I come to break-fast at his house on Yom Kippur. I showed up (having not fasted) and wasn’t eating anything because, to be honest, other than soft kosher salami, I’m just not into that sort of food at all.

George’s wife Hazel, one of the world’s nicest and most patient people, came up to me looking puzzled and said, “John, you’re not eating.”

Without thinking about what day it was I gave Hazel the answer I always used if I was at someone’s house and didn’t like the food being served: “Hazel, I’m sorry, I had a really big lunch very late.”

Whoops. She looked at me as if I was insane and went off to—probably—tell George he needed to fire me. George STILL hasn’t let me off the hook on that one.

Anyway, the bottom line is, I like the holidays. I like the warmth and I really like the music and I especially like the corny movies. 1. “It’s A Wonderful Life.” 2. “White Christmas.” 3. “Miracle on 34th Street” (the original) watched it last night. 4. “Rudolph.” (Burl Ives second greatest performance right behind, ‘Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,”—talk about range). 5. “Elf.”

I enjoy seeing relatives and friends I don’t often get to see. But I’m also really happy on the morning of the 26th because there are LOTS of games to choose from, places to go and people to see—and write about.

So, I wish everyone a Merry Christmas, Happy Chanukah, Happy Kwanzaa and, of course a Happy Festivus (for the rest of us). If something actually happens today, I’ll write a blog tomorrow if only to keep a little bit busy. If it is as quiet as I suspect it will be, I’ll be back Monday after everyone has, I hope, a great holiday.

There will be, no doubt, lots to write about Monday. Thank God for that.

The following is this weeks article for The Washington Post -----------

While most people who didn't have to be outside were content to watch it snow Saturday, Rob Ades got in his car and attempted to drive from his home in the Watergate to Baltimore: to see the Loyola basketball team play Howard.

Ades makes his living as a union lawyer. He represents, among others, the DC police and whenever there is a shooting involving a police officer in the District, Ades is called to the scene, regardless of the hour of the day or night.

But his true love is basketball, especially the college game. So more as a sidelight than anything else, Ades has represented various coaches though the years. Some have been big names: Gary Williams, Jim Boeheim, Digger Phelps, Jeff Van Gundy, Mike Jarvis, Leonard Hamilton. Of all the coaches Ades has represented, he is closest to Jimmy Patsos, the former Maryland assistant who is in his sixth season at Loyola.

Click here for the rest of the column: Union lawyer Rob Ades is a true college basketball fan, case closed

The good news this morning is that there was a newspaper at the end of my driveway. The New York Times didn’t make it; The Washington Post did after neither paper had any chance of being delivered Saturday or Sunday in the midst of The Blizzard of ’09. (No mail on Saturday either. What happened to, “neither wind, nor rain, nor snow…”)

The bad news is that the lead story in The Post sports section was—I swear to God—a feature on Ron Jaworski in which he revealed that he thought, having watched hours and hours of tape, that the Redskins looked better the last few weeks. Oh my God. What next? Mike Tirico’s 10 favorite Redskins moments of the decade? Also on the front was a lengthy story on the Maryland women beating American on Sunday afternoon.

Okay, it WAS a slow news day. And at least I had SOMETHING to read at the kitchen table so I’m grateful.

Having grown up in New York I frequently make fun of the absolute panic that hits this area anytime there is a HINT that there might be snow coming. In fact, my first front page—as in front page of the newspaper—story in The Washington Post was about an impending snowstorm. I was the night police reporter on the Metro staff and I was assigned to write a story about how big the storm might be and what preparations were being made. I made all the requisite phone calls and wrote about a 20 inch story—18 inches longer than I thought necessary, but I never complained about extra space.

I went down to the police station to spend the evening after I’d written the story and, as always, the first edition of the paper showed up in the press room at about 10:30. At that point in time The Post was the only news organization in town that sent staffers to police headquarters on a daily basis. Al Lewis, the man whose byline appeared on the first day Watergate break-in story, worked the day shift. Whoever was the lowest person on The Metro staff totem poll worked the night shift—that winter it was me. One of my assignments was to take the 25 papers delivered at 10:30 and walk around the building handing them out to the cops—homicide, robbery, sex (which had some euphemistic name I can’t remember) and perhaps most important, communications. A good source there could give you a major jump on a story.

The free newspapers were a big deal to the cops. If there was any delay at all in their arrival my phone would ring. I’d pick up the phone and there would be a homicide detective on the other end, not telling me there’d been a murder somewhere but wanting to know where the hell the papers were.

On this particular night I picked up the paper before making my rounds and flipped to the Metro section to see if my snow story had made the Metro front. It hadn’t. Disappointed I paged through the section—nothing. I was about to call the desk to demand where the hell my story was when it occurred to me that it had been stuck inside the ‘A,’ section. As I picked it up, my eye picked up a headline at the top right corner of the front page: “Area Girds For Snow—Up to Eight Inches Expected.”

I started to laugh. This was it, my big moment, a front page story—a LEAD front page story and it was on a possible snowstorm. Not the stuff you call your parents about to make sure they notice. By the way, it didn’t snow an inch; it didn’t snow AT ALL. My good friend and mentor Marty Weil, the night rewrite guy then as now, shook his head the next day and said, “Just goes to show what happens if you can’t trust your sources.”

Those sources got this weekend’s storm right. They said it might be up to two feet and it was. I actually did the Washington thing of over-preparing: shopped on Friday; bought a new flashlight because I couldn’t find the old one; bought plenty of logs for the fireplace; got gas for the car--the whole deal. I had a weekend project: clean-up my office, which hadn’t been touched in six months and looked like a storage room.

That worked out fine (I’m still not finished but I can see the floor again) and I took turns working and watching games and then taking a break and watching games. The only two games I DIDN’T get to watch were UCLA-Notre Dame and Duke-Gonzaga. Why? Because the people who run the CBS affiliate in Washington-_WUSA-TV—went to round-the-clock coverage of the snow.

You can’t make this stuff up. It isn’t as if they were telling people stuff they needed to know, like closings—EVERYTHING was closed. It isn’t as if they were reporting injuries or accidents. They just kept saying over and over that it was SNOWING. Then they would show someone standing in their parking lot—they called it a “snow terrace,”—to confirm that it was snowing. They spent several minutes talking about one female reporter’s cute little snow outfit. “Bought it today,” she gushed. “Look, it fits.” They interviewed two people who had skied to the store and showed a dog wearing snow boots.

I kept flipping over in part because I was convinced that at some point they would go back to the games (wrong) and also so I could write today about the inanity of what I was watching. My always-helpful brother, who was able to get some kind of out-of-town feed on his cable system kept calling me with updates. At one point in the second half of the Duke-Gonzaga game he said, “You know you’re missing one of the great defensive performances in history.”

Shut up Bobby.

I DID watch most of The New Mexico Bowl, which was actually a fun game with Wyoming winning improbably in overtime against Fresno State. As silly as it is to play 34 bowl games and include all those 6-6 teams and force schools to buy (and eat) thousands of tickets, I kind of enjoy seeing the little guys have a moment in the sun (or in the case of The St. Petersburg Bowl—brought to you by beef-a-Roni or something, their moment in a dome) and occasionally you will get a game worth watching.

I didn’t even mind when Terry Gannon (who was a great shooter once upon a time) and David Norrie (I have no idea who or what he was) went on about how it was a “great way to start the bowl season.” But when Gannon, no doubt prompted by someone in the truck said, “Wow, what a great beginning to Capital One Bowl Week on the ESPN family of networks,” that was enough for me. He sounded almost as silly as Andy Katz (wait, this just in, Andy Katz reports that North Carolina won last season’s national title) actually referring in WRITING to the ESPN family of networks. If ESPN is a family in any way it is The Simpsons.

Oh, one more note while we’re being silly: Did anyone else notice during the Villanova-Montana Division 1-AA national title game Friday night—which was a terrific game—that it was being referred to as, “The Division 1 National Championship Game.” Why? Because Division 1-A doesn’t officially have a national championship game sanctioned by the NCAA. Where does this insanity end?

By Sunday I had to get out of the house one way or the other. I struggle to watch entire NFL games unless there’s something truly compelling about them. I love Rex Ryan but Jets-Falcons wasn’t getting it done for me. I finally decided to see if I could get down the driveway (it’s pretty long) to our street, which had been plowed just enough to create one lane. My son Danny came out to help and I got almost down the driveway before getting stuck. Danny shoveled for a while and then our neighbor, Pete Henry, rode to the rescue. He keeps a snow-blower in his house for these occasions and he dug me out and got me to the street. It wasn’t easy getting to the main roads from there, but we made it.

Everyone has a snow story of some kind. Mine goes back a long, long way. It was my senior year in college. By then I was covering Duke basketball road games for just about every newspaper in North Carolina as a stringer. Duke wasn’t good enough (seriously) to be staffed on any non-conference road trip so I would write game stories for Durham, Charlotte, Winston-Salem and Greensboro. I’d write a different lead for each and a different ending mixing in different quotes depending on the newspaper. (Greensboro, for example, liked player quotes over coaches quotes). They were all fully aware that I was being shared and didn’t care. At 25 bucks a story I was getting rich.

Duke had a two day road swing in late January to West Virginia on Saturday night and Duquesne on Monday night. I drove to my parents’ house in Washington on Friday (by my senior year classes were something I attended when I had free time) and heard that a major storm was approaching. The interstate in West Virginia was closed so I left early Saturday morning to take Route 50 through the mountains in Virginia to get to Morgantown. It was slow going but I was almost there mid-afternoon when I came upon a truck that had turned over and was stuck in the middle of the two-lane road.

Two hours later it was still stuck and there was no way to get past. I was running out of gas, periodically turning off the engine until I got too cold, then turning it back on. FINALLY, several tow trucks manage to move it just far enough so that we could all get by—10 cars from one direction; ten from the other, at a time.

I got to Morgantown just before tipoff, still shaken and cold. The building temperature was set at 56 degrees because of the energy crisis and there might have been 3,000 people there. Duke lost a really bad game. As soon as I walked out of the locker room, I noticed that the heat had been turned off. I could see my breath. I had four stories to write.

Tom Mickle, then the Duke SID and, as it turned out, one of my best friends in life, stayed with me in the press room. He wore a coat, a ski cap and kept taking off his gloves long enough to send one page at a time on the old telecopier (six minutes per page) that was used then to file. He stayed with me for two hours in a completely empty, un-heated building until I finished (my fingers cramping in the cold) all four stories.

We made it to Pittsburgh at 2 a.m. Never in my life was I happier to see a hotel.

Tom died suddenly of a heart attack three years ago. I have lots of memories of him but none more vivid than that one.

The Washington Post is full of happy talk this morning—and I do mean FULL, there’s a big front page story and about 10 more stories in the sports section—because Vinny Cerrato is finally gone from Redskins-land. The smartest comment I saw on all this was from a reader: “The wicked witch may not be dead but her favorite flying monkey is gone.”

Bruce Allen, a guy with an actual resume as an NFL personnel guy is in and Cerrato is out. Allen comes armed with something no one has ever had since the wicked witch—Dan Snyder—bought the team in 1999: the title of general manager. Once Snyder ousted Charlie Casserly, he basically ran the team himself with Cerrato as a front man and Joe Gibbs involved in some decisions during his four year return as coach.

Make no mistake about it though: the product that Washington has put on the field for the last 10 years is a Dan Snyder production. He has hired and fired coaches—or driven them so crazy that they left with $15 million left on their contract (Steve Spurrier)—and as recently as a couple weeks ago went to see Texas quarterback Colt McCoy play in person with Cerrato tagging along.

That’s why the essential question about the Redskins future hasn’t been answered yet. Allen has a solid, though not spectacular, record making personnel decisions in Oakland and Tampa Bay. His ties to the Redskins as George Allen’s son are irrelevant since Allen last worked in Washington when Jimmy Carter was a brand new president.

What’s more, it appears likely now that Mike Shanahan will be the next coach—although there are some who think that John Gruden’s Tampa Bay ties to Allen might bring him to Washington. Maybe. More likely though it will be Shanahan for a huge pile of money. The ex-Broncos coach has been positioning himself for the job all season—using one of those ESPN rumor guys to build up the notion that he might go to Buffalo as a bargaining wedge with the Redskins.

One would think a tandem of Allen and Shanahan, or for that matter Allen and Gruden, will work. The elephant in the room, albeit one wearing a pointy black hat and traveling by broomstick, is Snyder. Is he really and truly capable of listening to the football guys and nodding his head when they tell him what they want to do? The fact that Allen got the GM title tells you that Snyder has told him he’ll be the decision-maker. He told Marty Schottenheimer the same thing once upon a time then reneged on the deal after one season.

If I was a Redskins fan here’s the Snyder quote that would make me a little bit nervous this morning: “In terms of the past, I’ve not been as involved as people may have thought. In terms of the future, obviously we’re going to be counting on Bruce to help lead the way and we’re excited about having a seasoned NFL executive with this much experience.”

Translate that into English and here’s what he said: “Don’t blame me for the past, it’s the other guys, the ones I’ve fired.” If you believe that I’d suggest you stay up all night on Christmas Eve because Santa is bound to show up. The notion that Allen will, “help,” lead the decision-making doesn’t sound too firm either does it?

In fact, when he was asked how much autonomy Allen would have, Snyder gave a non-answer: “Obviously Bruce has the authority. When we (note WE) make a decision, when he makes a decision, when the club makes a decision, it’s a Redskins decision.”

Oh boy, a Redskins decision. That sounds a lot like the “Redskins grades,” Snyder said he and Cerrato and the scouts gave players before the draft each year. It’s interesting that so many people in DC are giddy that Cerrato is finally gone—he left in his usual classless fashion, patting himself on the back for “outstanding draft picks,” while completely leaving Coach Jim Zorn out in listing all the people he was proud to have worked with in Washington—the issue was never Cerrato. It was and is Snyder.

Snyder’s a bully and a bad guy. People keep talking about what a great businessman he is. I’ll accept that only because I don’t know a thing about business and the guy made a lot of money. For me to analyze someone as a businessman is a little like Snyder analyzing someone as a football player or a football coach.

There are all sorts of stories about Snyder mistreating (and firing) employees; about his Napoleonic obsession with being called Mr. Snyder and his consistent insistence that he be involved in football decisions—which have proven to be disastrous.

Let me tell you one first hand story about Snyder. We haven’t gotten along since he bought the team because I was critical of the way he treated people and of his breaking up what had been a pretty good team in 1999, a team that went 10-6 and lost at the buzzer in the conference semifinals to Tampa Bay under Charlie Casserly and Norv Turner. Snyder went out and bought a bunch of over-the-hill big name free agents (Jeff George, Deion Sanders, Bruce Smith) the next offseason and fired Turner with a 7-6 record in 2000. Casserly was already long gone. At last look Turner was 10-3 in San Diego after being ridiculed by people in Washington after his firing.

Snyder called me at some point during this period to tell me that I shouldn’t criticize him because (I’m not making this up) he gave a lot of money to Children’s Hospital. I told him I certainly would never criticize him or anyone for giving money to charity but that wasn’t the issue. He continued on, getting angry, demanding to know where the hell I came off criticizing someone who was so charitable. I told him I’d be willing to bet him a lot of money—that I’d give to charity—that I gave a higher percentage of my income to charity than he did and it was STILL a moot point; that if someone didn’t like what I wrote how much I gave to charity didn’t matter.

End of conversation.

A few years later I was sitting in a restaurant in Potomac (Maryland) not far from where I live and also not far from where Snyder lives. I was with my ex-wife, sitting in the back when the restaurant manager came over looking a little flustered.

“John, Dan Snyder is in here having dinner,” he said.

I shrugged. “And?” I said.

“He saw you sitting here. He says he wants to buy you a bottle of wine.”

I really didn’t want to play this game but there was no choice. If I turned the wine down I’d look un-gracious. So, I said to the manager, “Tell Mr. Snyder thanks and I’d like to buy his table dessert.”

When we got up to leave, I stopped at the table. Snyder was with his wife and Bennett Zeier and his wife—Zeier was running his radio stations at the time although, like most Snyder employees, he left soon after.

“Dan, thanks for the wine,” I said, shaking hands. “That was very gracious of you. I asked Enzo to add your desserts to my tab.” I turned to Mary and said, “I don’t think you’ve met my wife…”

Snyder ignored Mary and said to me, “yeah, I really enjoyed buying wine for someone who has been s----- on me for seven years.”

“Hey Dan, if you’ve got any issues with me, I’d be happy to buy you lunch and discuss them. But I don’t think now is the time.”

“No, you wouldn’t would you? You don’t like it when the tables are turned do you?”

“What tables are turned? Look, here’s my number, call me anytime you want.” I grabbed some paper from my pocket and wrote down my phone numbers. Before I could hand Snyder the numbers, he had turned on Mary.

“How does your husband sleep at night, huh?” he sneered. “Doesn’t he have a conscience? How does he sleep?”

“Actually he sleeps fine,” Mary said.

At that moment, Zeier, clearly embarrassed, jumped in and asked me about a mutual friend of ours, Rob Ades. He introduced me to the two wives who were pretty much cowering under the table.

Snyder plowed through the pleasantries. “You have no RIGHT to criticize me,” he said, pointing a finger. “I don’t know who you think you are…”

I held up my hand. Enough was enough. “Dan, there are my numbers. Call me. We’ll discuss this in a non-social setting.”

“I don’t call the media,” he shouted. “Why don’t YOU call me?”

“Because Dan, I don’t have a problem. You do.”

I walked away with Snyder still shouting something at my back. At the front of the restaurant Enzo was waiting with a bottle of wine. “Tell Mr. Snyder to keep it,” I said.

I never heard from him.

So now he’s finally thrown his pal Cerrato overboard and reeled in Allen with Shanahan probably to follow. If nothing else the next chapter should be entertaining to watch. In the meantime, I’m still sleeping fine.

Here is this week's column from The Washington Post --------------

Let us begin today by turning to John Swofford, the commissioner of the ACC, a football conference that might -- might -- have one good football team. As it happens, this is Swofford's year to be the spokesman (read: spinner) for the BCS because the six commissioners who run the so-called power conferences take two-year turns trying to defend their indefensible system.

After Sunday night's BCS "selection show," -- which had all the suspense of the tallying of the electoral college -- Swofford said this about the fact that undefeated Texas Christian and undefeated Boise State had been so graciously included in the BCS bowls -- actually one BCS bowl, since they will play one another in the Fiesta Bowl.

"I think it certainly shows that there's more access than before in terms of the BCS system," Swofford said. "If you look back in recent years, there's a consistency in that access that is evident and very healthy for college football."


Click here for the rest of the article - BCS again proves its worthlessness

Here is this weeks column from The Washington Post -----

Most very successful people, particularly athletes, have one trait in common: the desire to control everyone and everything around them.
There is no better example of this than Tiger Woods. No one on Team Tiger speaks for or about him except in the form of an occasional statement made on his Web site. Woods himself rarely speaks publicly on any subject other than birdies, bogeys or a product he's promoting, his charity foundation being one of them. About the only times Woods shows his true feelings is on the golf course: a fist pump after making an important putt or a club slam after hitting a wayward shot. It is not an accident that he named his 155-foot yacht "Privacy."

Perhaps no mega-star athlete in history has done a better job of keeping his private life under tight control. Six years ago, when his intention to ask Elin Nordegren to marry him was leaked 48 hours in advance, Woods was furious. There have been few such breakdowns since. 

Click here for the rest of the column: In a rarity, the World spins out of Woods's control

Abe Pollin died yesterday. I realize to most of the country his death is not that big a deal. He was 85 and he had been sick for a long time. He was the owner of an NBA team that hasn’t been a serious factor in the league for most of the last 30 years. His Wizards, in fact, have won ONE playoff series since 1988.

Here in Washington though, Pollin’s death was a huge story—which is as it should be. It was Pollin who brought the NBA and the NHL to Washington in the 1970s and Pollin who spent $220 million of his own money to build Verizon Center in downtown. To look at the thriving area around the building now you would be hard-pressed to understand that it was completely burnt-out, practically a ghost down before Pollin opened the arena 12 years ago.

So, it is fair to say that Pollin was responsible for changing the quality of life in his hometown. When he brought the (then) Bullets and Capitals to suburban DC in the 1970s the nation’s capitol had ONE professional sports team—the Redskins. Baseball didn’t come back until 2005 and by then the Redskins were in control of arguable the worst owner in the history of sports.

Pollin made plenty of mistakes and he has to take at least some of the responsibility for the Wizards mediocrity (he changed the name in 1997 when the team moved downtown because he didn’t like the connotation of the word, ‘Bullets,’ in the city which, at the time, had the highest murder rate in the country). But he really did try to do the right things—he worked tirelessly for numerous charities and, unlike the owner of the Redskins, never tried to take bows for doing good.

(Let me pause here to explain that a bit further. Not long after Dan Snyder bought the Redskins he called me, upset because I had been critical of him for firing long-time employees left-and-right after taking over the team, including a public relations assistant who had been there for about 30 years.

“Do you have something against Children’s Hospital?” he asked me.

“WHAT?” I said. Children’s is one of the best pediatric hospitals in the country and, in fact, my son had gone through hernia surgery there and the people in the hospital had been fabulous from start to finish.

“I just thought maybe you were attacking me because I give a lot of money to Children’s Hospital.”

“First of all Dan, I would never attack someone for giving money to any charity. Second, I’m attacking you—if that’s what you want to call it—because I think you’ve treated people badly. Third, did you really just ask me that?”

He changed tactics—slightly. “You don’t know me well enough to criticize me. You don’t know how much money I give to charity.”

“Dan, I don’t CARE how much money you give to charity. Rich people SHOULD give money to charity. I know people a lot less wealthy than you who I bet give a much higher percentage of their income to charity than you. But that doesn’t matter. The fact that you would even bring it up makes me think less of you, not more.”

We have not been good friends since.)

The point is, Pollin would never in a million years have done that. He might pick up the phone to tell you he hated something you wrote. In fact, he bought full page ads in The Washington Post criticizing Post columnists for criticizing him. He once call me FURIOUS because I had called The Capital Centre, “the worst building in the world.” He got me to admit that perhaps I hadn’t been in every building in the world. There was no mention during the conversation of his charity work.

I actually got to know Abe while I was covering Maryland politics. The Cap Centre was in Prince George’s County in Maryland and Abe and his political cohort Peter O’Malley had twisted a lot of arms to get the building up and running and to get the tax breaks they felt they needed to make it work. A lot of the local pols didn’t like O’Malley and thus didn’t like Pollin.

I liked Pollin. Actually my dad knew him better than I did because he and his wife Irene spent a lot of time at The Kennedy Center when my dad was running it and were major patrons of all the arts in town. In the mid-80s, I was asked to do a piece on Pollin for The Washington Post Magazine. He agreed to talk to me at length and we had a long session over dinner in his private dining room at Cap Centre one night.

I wrote what I thought—and what most people thought—was a very favorable, though fair piece. It talked about all the good he had done and all that he had accomplished but also talked about some of the controversies he’d been involved in.

On the Sunday that the story ran I was at a Caps playoff game and ran into Steny Hoyer, who is now the House majority leader. Hoyer is a Prince George’s County guy and O’Malley was his political mentor so he was close to Pollin.

“Jeez, why didn’t you warn me that Abe was so angry at you,” Hoyer said.

“Angry?” I said. “What in the world is he angry about?”

Hoyer shrugged. “I’m not sure. But I just saw him and I said, ‘hey, great piece in The Post magazine today.’ He practically bit my head off and said, ‘it baffles me that a great guy like Martin Feinstein could have such an SOB for a son.’”

To be fair, a lot of people said that. My father loved that story. But that was Abe—never afraid of criticism but very sensitive about it. He was also forgiving. The next time I needed to talk to him he took my call, we talked at length and we moved on. He played a major role in the start-up of what is now The BB+T Classic by giving us The Cap Centre and later Verizon Centre at a very reduced rental rate. (The people we now negotiate with there haven’t been as generous).

When Abe, urged on by Ted Leonsis who had bought the Capitals from him, hired Michael Jordan as President of the Wizards, it was hailed in Washington as a master stroke. After all Jordan brought nothing but credibility to a franchise that desperately needed it.

The problem was the only good personnel move Jordan made in three-and-a-half years was hiring himself to play. Even at almost 40 he was still a good player but he certainly wasn’t Michael Jordan. And he was a lousy CEO: he was rarely at games, he hired all his cronies and gave them unlimited expense accounts; he drafted Kwame Brown with the No. 1 draft pick and he never really seemed to care if the team got better as long as he had his cigars and his luxury suite when he did bother to come to town.

At the end of the 2003 season, Pollin fired him, a difficult and gutsy move because he knew he would get hammered for it. Which he did. A lot of people pointed out how much money Jordan had made for him by selling the arena out during the two years he played. That was true. But here’s the question: Did Abe ask Michael to play or did Michael tell Abe he wanted to play? It was, of course, the latter. Was Abe supposed to turn Michael down? Would any owner in sports have turned Michael down?

Of course not. Abe fired a lousy executive. If his name had been Joe Smith no one would have even taken note of it. But because it was Jordan, because Jordan stormed out of Pollin’s office it was a huge deal. Two of Pollin’s major attackers were John Thompson and my friend Michael Wilbon. Both implied there were racial undertones to the firing.

They were wrong on every level. Pollin did the right thing for the right reasons. Hiring Ernie Grunfeld turned the franchise around—the Wizards ended a 17 year playoff drought in 2005 and made the playoffs four straight seasons before injuries devastated them a year ago.

It would be nice to report that in the smart, sweet column Wilbon wrote in this morning’s Post that he did a mea culpa and said Pollin had been right six years ago. Instead, he said he wished Pollin and Jordan could have forged the kind of friendship that Pollin had with Magic Johnson, who Pollin helped guide into the business world. That, of course, misses the point: if Johnson had been as incompetent an executive as Jordan was in Washington, Pollin would have fired him too. Michael should have said, “I made a mistake.” Hell, we all make them.

I have a box here in my office in which I keep letters I want to be absolutely certain I never lose. One is from Abe, written shortly after the book I did with Red Auerbach, ‘Let Me Tell You a Story,’ came out. Red and Abe went to the same high school, though Red was several years ahead of Abe. He joked in the book that had he known Abe was going to get so rich he’d have been nicer to him.

Abe sent a handwritten note saying how much he enjoyed the book and how much he always respected Red—even if the Celtics had tortured his team for years. At the bottom of the note he wrote. “Actually, you aren’t such a bad guy. I know your dad is very proud of you.”

I took that one out and looked at it last night. That’s one I’m glad I didn’t lose.

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

I’m going to take tomorrow off to give everyone—including David Stewart and Terry Hanson who do all the heavy lifting for the blog—a day to enjoy their turkey, their families and some football—and basketball. I wish everyone—and I mean everyone—a Happy Thanksgiving. I’m not a big believer in clichés but boy do I have a lot to be thankful for this year.

Here is this weeks Washington Post column, this one focusing on the football programs at Maryland and Virginia -----


Football fans aren't restless at Maryland and Virginia; they're relentless. And that means both Ralph Friedgen and Al Groh are spending this week preparing to coach games that could very well be their lasts in charge of their alma maters.

The Post has reported that Maryland is prepared to swallow a considerable financial burden if it decides a change is necessary. That would entail about $4.5 million to buy out the remaining two years on Friedgen's contract and another $1 million if it wants to get rid of designated successor James Franklin as well. That's before spending a penny to hire a new coach and, presumably a new and better-paid staff.

At Virginia, Al Groh is in his ninth year (like Friedgen) and apparently on his ninth life because Cavaliers fans have been calling for his dismissal since a 5-7 season in 2006 ended a run of four straight bowl games. Groh saved himself by going 9-4 and getting to the Gator Bowl in 2007, but last year's 5-7 record followed by this year's 3-8 will probably mean the end.

Life as a major college football coach is very simple: Win and you're the toast of the town; lose and everyone wants you out of it.

Click here for the rest of the column: In College Park and Charlottesville, football fans lack a sense of place

Here is this week's Washington Post column, on the college football season ----

Barring something unforeseen, college football's so-called national championship game is going to match Texas against the winner of the SEC championship game between Alabama and Florida.

This is an outcome that has seemed pre-ordained since August. Those three teams have been at the top of the polls all season, and even if some SEC coaches think the Gators and Crimson Tide have received some timely officiating help, all three remain undefeated. Next week, Florida plays Florida International, and Alabama plays Chattanooga. Seriously. Texas plays a real team -- Kansas -- but the Jayhawks are spiraling and will be fortunate to lose by anything less than three touchdowns.

Three other teams are currently undefeated: TCU, Cincinnati and Boise State. None has any chance to compete for the national championship unless Texas stumbles in the next three weeks or Alabama or Florida somehow lose their regular season finales against Auburn and Florida State, respectively.

Click here for the rest of the article: College football gives us a season to forget

Here is this week's Washington Post article, discussing the inspirational Navy team --------



One of the more overused terms in sports these days is "inspirational," which is sometimes used to describe anything from a golfer making a putt to a millionaire athlete playing despite a minor injury. But real inspiration could be found on a football field this past weekend, in South Bend, Ind., where Navy again beat Notre Dame.

Inspiration is a division I-A college football team with a 5-foot-9, 193-pound linebacker and exactly zero future NFL players beating a team that has a quarterback who will go in the top 10 of the 2010 draft, one receiver who is a lock first-round pick and another who won't be far behind.

Inspiration is a team filled with players who weren't offered scholarships or even recruited by any division I-A schools -- kids who are up before dawn most mornings, who spend their summers on ships and who will someday soon be sent overseas to fight and perhaps die for their country -- beating a team that has its very own TV network, more money than any of us can imagine and a coach who thinks Knute Rockne might have qualified to be one of his coordinators.

Click here for the rest of the column: Navy football retains the power to inspire

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

When we last left college basketball, North Carolina was cutting the nets down in Detroit, Tyler Hansbrough was ending his collegiate career having won the national title he craved, and Michigan State was the story of the 2009 NCAA tournament, giving the city of Detroit and the state of Michigan a much-need emotional lift by reaching the championship game.

Since then, UNC Coach Roy Williams has written a book, Memphis Coach John Calipari has signed a contract worth $32 million to coach at Kentucky while a second of his Final Four coaching appearances was being vacated (one more and he retires the non-trophy), and most of the usual suspects have appeared in the preseason top 25. Wait, there's more: Isiah Thomas came back to college basketball (at Florida International) and began screaming about unfair treatment before coaching his first game. And Mike Krzyzewski signed up to coach the Olympic team again in 2012, no doubt making his book publishers almost as happy as it made Roy Williams.

So what can we expect from this season, one that began Monday night because going more than four days between the end of the World Series and the start of college basketball would no doubt be more than ESPN could bear.


Click here for the rest of the article: Books, contracts prospects and suspects: The madness is upon us

He stormed off. I can’t imagine where I ever got the notion that he was sensitive to crit

Here is my column today for The Washington Post ------

This column is going to be written in a very calm tone. There will be no calling the BCS presidents liars because their veracity really isn't a relevant issue at this point. There will be no calls for a congressional investigation or even for President Obama to follow up on his comments of a year ago calling for a college football playoff.

The president has other issues on the table and, to be honest, short of threatening the tax-exempt status of the big-bucks schools, even his presence probably won't force the heads of the 66 BCS schools in question to end their hypocrisy.

Let us look factually at the college football landscape with five weeks to go before BCS bids are handed out.

At this moment there are seven teams in the college football bowl subdivision -- as it is now called by those nice people at the NCAA -- with undefeated records. Five of those teams -- Florida, Texas, Alabama, Iowa and Cincinnati -- play in conferences where the champion receives an automatic bid to a BCS bowl, regardless of record. The other two, TCU and Boise State, play in non-BCS conferences where it is possible to go undefeated and not play in a BCS bowl and impossible to play for the national championship under any circumstances.

Click here for the rest of the column: BCS is busy trying to fix its image, but nothing else

This is Monday' Washington Post column, bringing to light the call for officials to be as accountable as players.  The following is the article:

October may be a great month to be a sports fan, but it most definitely has not been good month to be a sports official.

Let's just do a quick review of the most blatant officiating screw-up that have occurred so far this month:

-- Umpire Randy Marsh fails to see the ball hit the uniform shirt of Detroit's Brandon Inge in the 12th inning of the Tigers-Minnesota Twins American League Central Division playoff game. Because the bases were loaded the Tigers would have, at worst, taken a one-run lead into the bottom of the inning.

-- Umpire Phil Cuzzi somehow calls Joe Mauer's slicing line drive foul in the top of the 11th inning of Game 2 of the Twins-Yankees series when the ball was clearly fair by a foot. The call costs the Twins at least one run, and the Yankees win in the bottom of the inning on Mark Texeira's home run.


-- Officials in the LSU-Georgia game call "excessive celebration" on Georgia receiver A.J. Green after his late touchdown catch put the Bulldogs up 13-12. That helped give LSU superb field position after the ensuing kickoff. In a clear make-up call, the officials then flagged LSU running back Charles Scott for excessive celebration after he scored the winning touchdown. The Southeastern Conference admitted two days later that both calls were wrong.

-- The referee in the Navy-Air Force game made a ridiculous roughing-the-passer call on Navy, wiping out a Navy interception and allowing Air Force to tie the score as time expired. Air Force quarterback Tim Jefferson was scrambling when he was hit an instant after releasing the ball. His coach, Troy Calhoun, described the call as " a gift." Fortunately for Navy and the referee, Navy won in overtime.

Click here to read the rest of the column: Everyone Answers for Mistakes -- Except Officials

Here is my column today for The Washington Post ------

The Capitals made a mistake Saturday night, albeit a minor one.

It wasn't giving up three late goals to the Toronto Maple Leafs in a game that was over after 14 minutes. That's something a good coach such as Bruce Boudreau can harp on in practice for a couple of days, but in the course of an 82-game season, letting up with a 6-1 lead in the third period isn't something to really worry about.

The mistake actually came before the puck was dropped: Rather than slowly raising its 2009 Southeast Conference championship banner to the rafters, the team decided to merely unfurl it. It was almost as if the Caps were saying, "This isn't good enough, so we'll just unfurl it fast and move on." That position is defensible but still wrong, for a couple of reasons.

Click here for the rest of the story: Capitals Should Revel in Every Banner Night

Here is my column today for The Washington Post ------

Remember back in school when you were doing footnotes for a term paper and you would simply write: "ibid," when you were referencing the same source material and didn't need to repeat that which you had already written.

That would probably work well today, re: Redskins, Washington and Terrapins, Maryland.

Except now full panic has broken out.

A week ago, the Redskins got booed en route to a less-than-impressive victory over the St. Louis Rams. The Terrapins received similar treatment while somehow losing for a second year in a row to Middle Tennessee.

Both coaches -- Jim Zorn, after 18 games, and Ralph Friedgen, after 103 -- were being questioned and doubted.

Click here for the rest of the story: Seasons of Discontent in Ashburn and College Park

Here is my column today for The Washington Post ------


To paraphrase the great Keith Jackson, "there's a whole lot of booing going on around here."

Around here would be the Washington metropolitan area. The Redskins, whose fate is considered by most to be only slightly more important than the health care bill, actually won on Sunday and still got booed. It might have been their failure to beat the spread or -- more likely -- it was that the final score was 9-7 against the woeful St. Louis Rams.

The night before in College Park, the Maryland football team heard some serious booing after losing 32-31 to Middle Tennessee on a field goal as time expired. No, that's not Tennessee; it's Middle Tennessee -- a team Maryland lost to a year ago on the road. Terrapins fans no doubt would have left Byrd Stadium in a bad mood -- much like Redskins fans -- even if the final kick had somehow been blocked or sailed wide to allow the Terrapins to escape the way they did a week ago in overtime against James Madison.

Click here for the rest of the story: Area Football Fans Aren't Afraid to Say 'Boo'

Here is my column today for The Washington Post ------

It is tempting to begin any review of this past weekend's sports events with the Washington Redskins' loss to the New York Giants on Sunday. After all, the coverage of the Redskins in The Post and the local media is so understated. Just in case you missed it: Giants 23, Redskins 17.
Okay, enough about that.

Let's move on to the Serena Williams debacle. Rarely is there a perfect storm quite like this in sports: Everyone involved managed to get this wrong (with the exception of Kim Clijsters, Williams's opponents and an innocent bystander).


Click here for the rest of the story: Williams Tirade Indefensible; Weis's Team Has No Defense

I know the NFL season begins tonight. Actually, it is impossible NOT to know the NFL season begins tonight because the hype-machine that surrounds the league has been in full force since training camps opened in July. From February until June it only goes at about 90 percent.

Okay, fine, I know most of the country will be obsessing about the NFL from tonight until The Super Bowl is finally played on the first Sunday in February. My guess is there will come a day soon when The Super Bowl is played on President's Day weekend at the end of an 18 game regular season.

My mind tends to work in mysterious--and not always efficient--ways. This morning I've been thinking about Zanedogs. Bear with me a moment while I explain.

In yesterday's Washington Post, in addition to a special section ostensibly on the NFL but really on all things Redskins there was a column about some player's aunt who loved him so much that she kept making phone calls to see if he had made the team this weekend. I only got a few paragraphs into the story and I honestly can't tell you the player's name. But I found myself laughing at a memory as I read it.

Years ago, Dave Kindred, one of the best sports columnists to ever grace a sports page, wrote a lengthy piece about John Thompson, who was still coaching at Georgetown at the time. In the piece, Kindred wrote movingly about how Thompson had cared for his aging mother near the end of her life. There was lots of detail: how he bathed her, sang to her, kept her company for hours at a time.

The next morning, George Solomon, then The Post sports editor got a call from Lefty Driesell, then the coach at Maryland and an often bitter rival of Thompson's. "Hey George," Lefty said, "Aah got a momma too you know."

To say that line has been oft-repeated among people at The Post is like saying Rush Limbaugh has bashed President Obama on occasion. So, a few paragraphs into the column I couldn't resist sending Solomon and some of my old Post colleagues a note. It said, "aah got an aunt too you know."

At almost the same moment, an e-mail popped up from my friend Doug Doughty, who has covered Virginia football and basketball for--I'm not making this up--35 years. Doug says he was 12 when he first got the beat. The long and short of the e-mail was that it now costs $15 if you want to eat in the Maryland football press box.

Which brought up Zanedogs and one of my funnier memories.

Jack Zane was the sports information director at Maryland forever--and then the ticket manager forever and a day after that until he retired a couple of years ago. Jack was, to put it mildly, a big guy. (He's lost a lot of weight in recent years but he's still big). He was best described in 1976 when he walked around at The Cotton Bowl (Maryland was playing) wearing a red, ten gallon hat. Mark Whicker, then of The Winston-Salem Journal said, "he looked like TWO Hoss Cartwrights." (That's Bonanza for you younger folks).

I started covering Maryland football and basketball in 1979. Jerry Claiborne was the coach and, we were, to put it mildly, just a little different. Claiborne was a classic southern football coach. He tolerated, but didn't especially like the media. Practice was always open in those days but one day when the players were on a water break I made the mistake of trying to ask him a quick question.

"Son," Claiborne said (I was 23) "I don't talk to the media on the practice field--EVER."

I was a wise-guy Jew from New York. Claiborne was a son of the south who refused to open the weight room on Sunday mornings to encourage players to go to church. He didn't like to answer any questions about individual performances until he had looked at the film--it WAS film then--which was delivered to his house promptly at 5 a.m. on Sunday. Stories about Claiborne going nuts if the film was five minutes late were legendary at Maryland.

Claiborne was a very good coach and a very good man. Maryland had dominated the ACC under him from 1975 to 1978 but was starting to slip a little when I arrived on the beat. The Terrapins just couldn't beat truly good teams. Then, as now, the ACC was a mediocre football league and a team had to beat someone good outside the conference to be taken seriously nationally. Maryland couldn't do it and, in '79 and '80, it lost badly to Penn State and Pittsburgh and even lost a couple of ACC games.

Solomon decided a series about Maryland's fall from grace should be done. I started calling ex-players--you could never get a current player to talk honestly for the record and the consensus was pretty direct: Claiborne was a really good coach but Maryland just played too conservatively to beat really good teams.

"I remember Coach saying in a quarterbacks meeting that the ideal way to play the game would be to punt on every play and win with defense and special teams," Bob Avellini, who was then with the Bears told me. That summed it up.

So did a very funny Claiborne line, delivered after a too-close Maryland win at Duke in which tailback Charlie Wysocki carried the ball 55 times. I asked Claiborne in his postgame press conference if he worried about Wysocki getting worn out carrying the ball so often.

"John, that football's not very heavy," Claiborne snapped.

I'm now getting to the Zanedogs.

When my three part series came out, labeled, "Maryland Football: At The Crossroads," in The Post, all hell broke loose. Several players called me that week to warn me I might not be safe in the Maryland locker room after the N.C. State game. Claiborne had told the players in a meeting that, "John Feinstein doesn't know if the football is stuffed or pumped up."

Jack Zane had called my friend Ken Denlinger, then a Post columnist, to tell him that I was "through," at the University of Maryland.

And remember, this was BEFORE Maryland people hated everyone and everything associated with Duke.

So, that Saturday, George came to the game to stand up--if needed--for his young reporter. Sure enough, Jim Kehoe, then the athletic director--and a guy I always liked a lot--came into the press box demanding to speak to us. I stood back out of the way while George and Kehoe went nose-to-nose. It was an impressive display of anger on both sides. Kehoe finally concluded by waving a hand and saying, "It's people like you that make the world a bad place to live," and stalked off.

I went to watch the second half. George went to get a hot dog--which were affectionately known to all that covered Maryland as Zanedogs, the theory being that Jack cooked them himself before the season began and they were still sitting there waiting to be eaten by those who didn't know better in November.

George sat down in the press box next to me. Seconds later, Kehoe walked back in to tell Jack something. The first thing he saw was George taking a bite out of his Zanedog. Without missing a beat he SCREAMED for the entire press box to hear, "You see that, you see that--they come out here and eat all our food and then try to destroy our program!"

Off he went. I was almost on the floor laughing. George was not. He slammed down the Zanedog and screamed at me, "I don't want you to ever eat their food again!"

"ME eat their food?" I screamed almost crying I was laughing so hard. "I wouldn't be caught DEAD eating one of those things."

At the end of that football season, Maryland received a check from The Washington Post to cover food expenses. From that day forward, George sent checks to all the local teams in case he ever felt like a hot dog or a Zanedog--or more importantly to me if I felt like eating Ledo's Pizza at one of Lefty's press conferences.

The trend began there. Now, almost all press boxes at the pro level and many on the college level charge the media to eat.

And to think, it all started 29 years ago with one bite of a Zanedog.

Here is my new column for the Washington Post today.....

Here we go again.

As in here we go with another fall of hearing the spinners from the Atlantic Coast Conference tell us how balanced the league is. Sure, the ACC is balanced -- apparently no one (again) is really any good.

Oh, sure, Virginia Tech played respectably in losing to Alabama. The Hokies may very well be the class of the league again and can play in the Orange Bowl against someone like Cincinnati or Rutgers in a game watched by dozens.

For all the preseason hype about all the returning quarterbacks and how this was going to be the year the ACC became important again -- although when exactly was the ACC important nationally outside of Tallahassee? -- it took exactly one week for the league to once again be exposed for what it truly is: a basketball league. Except for the fact that, outside of Chapel Hill, it hasn't been much of a basketball league since the now infamous football expansion of 2005.

Click here for the rest of the article: ACC Football Leads the Nation in Irrelevance

I really don’t want to write about The Washington Redskins this morning. For one thing, I’m pretty sure people around the country really don’t care very much about the team except in those weeks when the Redskins are playing their local team.

In Dallas, they care about the Redskins twice a year even though here in Washington when the Cowboys are next on the schedule everyone starts talking about Dallas Week as if it is the football equivalent of Thanksgiving or Christmas.

That mentality is symptomatic of the obsession with the team here. All cities are NFL-centric these days but, having traveled to a lot of NFL cities, I can tell you none are quite like Washington. I know I’ve told this story before but it bears repeating because it is so symbolic. When I first started working at The Washington Post, the NFL draft was still held mid-week and wasn’t on TV. (Yes, I am THAT old).

On the day of the draft in 1978, the great Ben Bradlee, then the executive editor (he was played by Jason Robards in ‘All The President’s Men,’ if you’re scoring at home) came striding back to the sports section shouting at sports editor George Solomon, “hey George, who’d we get?”

I had only been at The Post for nine months at that point but had already been indoctrinated into the all-that-matters-is-the-Redskins mentality and was already pretty sick of it. So, I couldn’t resist.

“Gee Ben,” I said, “I didn’t realize The Post had a pick in the NFL draft.”

Without missing a beat, Bradlee whirled on me, pointed his finger and said without a hint of a smile, “listen Feinstein, you don’t like the ------ Redskins you can get the ------ out of town. You got that?”

Given the look on his face, my response was swift and to the point: “Yes-sir.”

In those days of course, Bradlee sat in the owners’ box every Sunday with then-team President Edward Bennett Williams, who was also The Post’s lawyers. There’s no need to even get into any possible conflict of interest issues because they didn’t matter: The Post was like the rest of the media in town. As the late Jerry Claiborne, then Maryland’s football coach once said to me, “Every time I pick up your paper it’s nothing but Redskins, Redskins, Redskins.”

Believe me, I felt his pain. And his frustration.

Amazingly, if anything, it has somehow gotten worse over the years. The Post now has three reporters assigned pretty much full time to the Redskins. There’s a god-awful show that runs on local TV here every night ALL year called, “Redskins Nation,” for which the script must be written by the team’s PR department. I think Dan Snyder was awarded The Nobel Peace Prize on the show one night. It is the highest rated show on Comcast Sports Net.

All of that said, a lot of people in this town have gotten pretty tired of Dan Snyder’s act. He’s owned the team for 10 years and, like any owner, would be forgiven pretty much anything if the team was winning. But after being a truly great franchise from 1982 to 1992, the Redskins have won two playoff games since Snyder bought the team. Every year he spends huge money on free agents because he loves having his picture taken with them and bragging about how rich he is to other owners and then, because all the team’s cap money is spent on a half-dozen players, the Redskins usually fold somewhere along the way when the inevitable injuries that hit every team hit them because they have no depth. Hearing Joe Gibbs talk about injuries during his four year return as coach almost moved people to tears. The Redskins, it appeared, were the only NFL team that EVER had an injured player.

While Snyder has spent big money on big names, he has done everything in his power to make every possible dollar. Some call this good business; others call this ripping off a public that adores the team. He’s jammed more seats—many of them obstructed—into the stadium, upped prices every chance he gets, charged outrageous ($35) prices for parking and tried a few years ago to more or less blackmail club seat holders into renewing with years left on their contract at twice the price by threatening to raise prices even more if one didn’t renew instantly. A lot of people—I was one of them—didn’t take him up on it.

At the same time that Snyder was paying $107 million for Albert Haynesworth this winter, he was laying off office employees. Again, fans will forgive that if Haynesworth produces and the Redskins win. Winning will get you forgiven for just about anything.

But now Snyder may have crossed a line that there’s no coming back from. The Washington Post reported this week in a two part series that employees in the Redskins ticket office even with a waiting list that the Redskins claim has 160,000 people on it, bypassed that list for at least two years to sell tickets to brokers—who then re-sell them at profit. The brokers got the tickets, the Redskins got the brokers to buy some of those club seats they can’t sell (I’ve received several letters since dropping mine offering me the ‘opportunity,’ to buy back in at a ‘bargain,’ price).

A nice deal for the Redskins, a nice deal for the brokers. Those on the waiting list, well, too bad. The Redskins claim they learned of this last spring and stopped it. My guess is they got scared they were going to get outed. None of the employees involved have been fired, merely, ‘discipline,’ according to the team.

Apologists for Snyder—one of whom is a friend of mine who is a famous TV star—say that the season ticket waiting list isn’t nearly as large as the Redskins claim and that not that many people were affected. Really? What if the list only has 16,000 people on it—one-tenth of the team’s claim. All those request probably could have been filled if they hadn’t been bypassed to sell a few club seats. My same friend says Snyder is in “private business,” which apparently means he can do whatever he wants—including suing season ticket holders who, in this economy have been unable to pay for their club seats. Instead of just taking back the tickets, they’ve gone to court to sue these people—who it is probably fair to assume were loyal fans when they bought the tickets hoping to see the team play.

A professional sports team is NOT a private business in a moral sense. There is a public trust you take on when you put the name of a city on the uniforms worn by your most important employees. It is the public’s interest in your team—buying tickets, helping jack up TV and radio rights, buying licensed gear—that makes you money. Snyder had a profit on the Redskins (not so much on his other businesses) last year of $90 million. He owes the public something other than bypassing waiting lists, law suits, outrageous prices and remarkable arrogance n return.

My same friend, let’s call him TK, insists the Redskins will win 12 games this season. If he’s right, a lot of people will calm down because that’s what winning does. If he’s wrong and it’s another 8-8 year filled with excuse-making, a lot more people are going to be angry with Snyder and his henchmen. Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.

****

A couple of quick notes based on some comments this week. Someone asked about college football traditions I enjoy other than Army-Navy. A few come to mind quickly: The dotting of the I at Ohio State which I’ll get to see on Saturday; anytime they play the fight song at Notre Dame; the Clemson players being bussed to the opposite end of the stadium so they can run past ‘Howard’s Rock,’ down the hill into Death Valley; the Williams players going into town for their postgame haircuts after the Amherst game and Traveler, the white Trojan horse being ridden around the stadium whenever USC scores a touchdown while the fight song plays. When I was a junior at Duke, the opener was at USC and Ricky Bell ran wild and the final score was, I believe, 35-7. Afterwards Duke Coach Mike McGee was asked if he saw any weaknesses in Southern Cal: “Yeah,” he said, “that horse was looking a little winded in the fourth quarter.”

Would love to hear others that people enjoy and have witnessed through the years.

Finally: There are always going to be people who object when I inject politics into the blog. Sorry. Politics are part of sports at times and vice-versa and I have opinions—just like all of you---on political topics. We can disagree, heck Chris Wallace is a good friend and we NEVER agree as was Bob Novak, but let’s not pretend the issues don’t exist. For example: President Obama is right: there should be a football playoff. Just about all of us can agree on that.

Here is my column for the Washington Post today....covering the Calipari/Memphis situation and Plaxico Burress case------


It is almost eerie sometimes how major news stories break on the same day. Years ago, Rickey Henderson became Major League Baseball's all-time stolen base leader -- and modestly declared himself, "The greatest of all time." That night, Nolan Ryan pitched the seventh no-hitter of his career and most people around the country decided Henderson's feat was the second greatest of that day.

On June 25, Farrah Fawcett died after a long, sad battle with cancer. A few hours later, Michael Jackson died after a long, sad battle with life. Fawcett gets mentioned now as part of jokes told about Michael Jackson.

And then there was last Thursday. On the same day that the NCAA melodramatically stripped the Memphis men's basketball team of 38 victories during the 2007-08 season and its status as the runner-up in the NCAA tournament, former New York Giants wide receiver Plaxico Burress took a plea bargain after bringing a loaded gun into a New York nightclub last November and shooting himself in the leg.

Click here for the full story....Bad News Day

Here is my column for the Washington Post today......


The next eight months will not be a lot of fun for Tiger Woods. Until the Masters next April, he is going to be subjected to questions about his failure to win a major championship in 2009. Every time he turns on the Golf Channel -- which he does a lot -- he's going to see some kind of panel wondering if he's lost a little bit of his edge because of fatherhood and knee troubles. His swing and his putting stroke will be replayed in super slow motion about a zillion times.

Nothing's Wrong With Tiger; Everything's Fine With Golf

Here's my column for the Washington Post today....


Every time another baseball player is unmasked as a steroid user, three things are guaranteed to happen:

• the player will say he is shocked -- shocked -- to learn he has ingested a banned substance;
• the players' union will get in a snit about the test results being leaked;
• most people in baseball, fans and media and officials alike, will roll their eyes and say, "Please make this story go away."

Click here for the rest of the story - First Step for Baseball: Admit You Have a Problem

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.