There’s an item in The Sports Business Journal this morning reporting that the NCAA has opened preliminary talks about a new TV contract. This isn’t news. Everyone knows ESPN is dying to swoop in with its Disney money and steal the tournament away from CBS, which has televised it since 1982. Anyone who thinks loyalty will play a role in this negotiation—CBS has literally spent billions helping to build the tournament into the mega-event that it now is—also thinks that there’s no football playoff because of concern about the ‘student-athletes.’

The important part of the story concerned the make-up of the tournament. Apparently the NCAA is looking into expansion—going from the current 65 teams to 96 in order to add a week of TV that would add more money to the new contract.

I can’t call this the worst idea I’ve ever heard because the BCS still exists. But it is a solid No. 2.

The perfect number for the NCAA Tournament is 64. The only reason a 65th team was added was (surprise) a money grab by the BCS commissioners who didn’t want to give up an at-large spot when The Mountain West Conference became eligible for an automatic bid, upping the number of automatic bids from 30 to 31.

Unfair as the play-in game is, it is a minor kink in an otherwise smooth-running machine. With a 65-team field, making it into the bracket is an accomplishment. Sure, there are always a handful of coaches screaming that a horrible injustice was done when they get left out but that’s kind of the beauty of Selection Sunday: who will get in and who won’t. The committee doesn’t always get it right and occasionally a team is left out unfairly. But more often than not, the deserving teams get in and when they do they feel as if they’ve actually done something.

Compare that—for example—to the bowl system where 68 of the 120 teams playing Division 1-A football make postseason. All you have to do—literally—is be mediocre and you can play in a bowl someplace. In basketball, the only time a team that hasn’t played well all season gets in is when someone comes from the depths of a conference to win a conference tournament and get an automatic bid. Even when that happens, the team in question has to be playing well when it matters most to pull off that sort of an upset.

(The football-basketball talk reminds me of a story. If I’ve told it on the blog before, forgive me but I think it bears repeating. Years ago, during an ACC coaches meeting Georgia Tech Coach Bobby Cremins was complaining to Commissioner Gene Corrigan about the extra pressure on basketball coaches to make the tournament.

“But Bobby,” Corrigan argued. “There are 64 bids out there. That’s a lot.”

“Sixty-four bids out of how many teams?” Cremins asked.

Corrigan shrugged. “About 300,” he answered.

Cremins turned to Dean Smith and said, “Dean, you’re the math major, what’s 64 into 300?”

“A little more than 21 percent,” Smith answered.

“Okay,” Cremins said turning back to Corrigan, “how many football teams make bowls?”

“Well, there are 26 bowls right now,” Corrigan said. “So that’s 52 teams.”

“Out of how many?” Cremins said.

“About 100,” Corrigan said.

Cremins turned back to Smith. “Okay Dean, 52 into 100, what percentage is that?”)

Back to our story for today.

So now the NCAA, which went to the 64 team bracket in 1985 is talking about expanding to 96 teams. If it happens they will claim this is being done in the name of fairness which is, of course, a lot of hooey. It will be done to up the TV money and to appease all the whining coaches who think expanding the field will help them keep their jobs.

You see, Cremins wasn’t wrong. There IS tremendous pressure on coaches, especially those at the big-time schools, to make the tournament every year. Jim Boeheim went two straight years without a bid and heard sniping all around him. Gary Williams missed three years out of four and if his team hadn’t rallied last season to make the tournament you can bet his AD would have been trying really hard to find a way to force him out at Maryland.

But the theory that more bids means more job security doesn’t really work. You see right now an NCAA Tournament bid MEANS something. If you expand to 96 teams and the ACC gets nine bids every year instead of six or The Big East gets 12 instead of eight then you’ve got the bowl system—except that a real champion does eventually get crowned.

Making a bowl does not guarantee these days that a coach keeps his job because AD’s know that it is often meaningless. In the BCS leagues, you can schedule three home games against weak opposition and go 3-5 in league play and presto! You are on your way to the Insight Bowl or the Independence Bowl or the fabulous St. Petersburg Bowl where you get to go to Florida—to play indoors.

If there is one thing the NCAA gets right every year (except for the play-in game) it is the basketball tournament. It hit on 64 as the right number 25 years ago and—with good reason—has kept it (almost) right there.

That reminds me. Apparently my good friend Bill Hancock, who is now executive director of the BCS (it is sad when a good man goes to work for the forces of evil) is trying to defend the BCS by talking about ‘bracket-creep,’ in the basketball tournament. Bracket creep? The tournament has expanded by ONE team in 25 years and he calls it bracket creep? Bill also claimed that if there was an eight team playoff this year there would be terrible controversy because two of the four two-loss teams in the major conferences would have been left out of the field. Think about what he’s saying: It is okay to leave three UNBEATEN teams out of the national title picture but really awful to leave out a couple of two-loss teams.

For his next trick, Bill will tell us that if unemployment went down it would be unfair to those still unemployed so maybe it would be better for unemployment to go UP.

I love Bill, I really do. He’s coming to dinner with us Friday night in Philadelphia before Army-Navy. Maybe I can perform an exorcism and save him.

Meantime, the NCAA needs to NOT expand the basketball field. If money is the issue do this: Tell the BCS schools that beginning in 2010 there will be an NCAA Football Bowl Sub-Division Tournament. If an invited team declines to play, none of its other teams can participate in any other NCAA postseason tournament. The NCAA would make more than enough money by having a football tournament to make the dumb idea of expanding the basketball tournament go away. The BCS would go the way of The Edsel, New Coke and pet rocks. And Bill Hancock’s soul would be saved.

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One clarification on yesterday’s blog: I was NOT implying that the replay official got it wrong when he put one second back on the clock in the Texas-Nebraska game. Some hysterical Texas fan claimed that by saying he put one second back on the clock I was implying he got it wrong. I was simply saying he put the second back and almost certainly got it right but wondered if he would have gotten it right if the second had belonged to Nebraska. I stand by that statement. The same fan also went into a long diatribe about why Texas deserves to play in the national title game. I’m not saying Texas does NOT deserve to play in the game. I’m saying under this ridiculous system NONE of us knows who deserves to play in the game. That’s why the question should be resolved through actual competition rather than hysterically bleating that MY TEAM is the best. If your team is the best, it should get the chance to prove it on the field. Period…

One more note: Several people asked last week how I feel about Billy Packer. I like him both personally and professionally. We agreed on almost nothing but arguing with him has always been great fun and I always believed he broke down a basketball game better than anyone. I missed him during last year’s tournament especially during the Friday practices at The Final Four. We had an unofficial tradition of sitting together and arguing about everything while the practices were going on. My favorite year doing that was 2006 when I waved Jim Larranaga over during George Mason’s practice and said, “Billy wanted to be sure he had a chance to congratulate you.” Billy never missed a beat. “Great playing,” he said. Then he turned to me as Larranaga walked away and said, “It still doesn’t mean I was wrong you know.”

Actually it did. But that’s okay.

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

I’m not sure what the best part of the BCS bowl lineup announcement on Sunday night—which had all the suspense of the electoral college vote for President—was: the shocking news that Texas, even though it was more-than-fortunate to beat Nebraska on Saturday night will play Alabama for the national championship or the equally stunning news that Boise State will play TCU in The Fiesta Bowl.

On the face of it, the BCS boys allowing two non-BCS schools into their little club is good news. But let’s take a closer look at what they did and why they did it: To begin with, they simply ran out of options. TCU had to be invited because it was the highest-ranked non-BCS school and it was in the top six in the rankings. The question all along had been Boise State, which beat Oregon early in the season and dominated league opponents at the end of the season. (Those of you who are BCS-league fans and want to get on your high horse about the WAC not being a strong league, I would point out that most of your teams would never, ever consider scheduling a game against Boise State).

Up until a week ago, The Fiesta Bowl was trying to make a case to take a two-loss Oklahoma State team whose most impressive win was over a five-loss Georgia team. That scenario got blown up when the Cowboys were embarrassed by Oklahoma, another five loss team. There was really nowhere for the BCS to turn. By rule it couldn’t take three teams out of The Big Ten—which had exactly zero impressive non-conference wins this season. You can bet if the rule didn’t exist, Penn State would be in The Fiesta Bowl, no doubt on the strength of its impressive non-conference schedule.

USC had four losses after losing at home to Arizona on Saturday so that wouldn’t work. As well as Nebraska played (more on that later) against Texas on Saturday it had four losses and no wins of consequence. The ACC? No way. The Big East? Well, if Pittsburgh had beaten Cincinnati you MIGHT have seen some stirring to give the Bearcats The Fiesta bid but that didn’t happen either. The SEC’s two bids were used up by Alabama and Florida. Notre Dame? No, not exactly although Charlie Weis might be signed up as the halftime entertainment somewhere. (Seriously folks, he’s giving Dan Snyder a run for his money as WGIS—Worst Guy In Sports—and that’s saying a lot).

So there was no choice in the end but to take Boise State. If the BCS boys had to take two minorities into the club for a year they weren’t going to take any chances. It was bad enough when Boise beat Oklahoma a couple years back and worse when Utah dominated Alabama a year ago. It still bothers me that my colleagues who vote in the AP poll didn’t have the guts to vote for Utah No. 1 over Florida last January, partly on principle but just as much on the theory that if Utah wasn’t going to get a shot at the title game the ONLY way to measure them against Florida was by common opponent: Florida had to rally in the fourth quarter to beat Alabama; Utah controlled the Crimson Tide for 60 minutes. Utah should have been an easy choice but there are a lot of gutless guys voting in the AP poll—and too many guys with ties to the BCS for that matter, including the ESPN apologists.

Given past history when non-BCS meets BCS: three wins for the little guys, one for the bullies, the BCS wasn’t going to take any chances this year. No way was TCU going to get a shot at Cincinnati or Florida or even Georgia Tech. The same went for Boise State. You guys just go play one another and leave us alone was the message. We’ll suck it up and send you both the big check but don’t bother us anymore. Here’s a memo to my AP brethren again: You’ve been given a second chance: vote the Fiesta Bowl winner as the national champion even if Alabama beats up on Texas—which it very well might. Just show some guts and say, ‘I’m sick and tired of it and I’m not going to take it anymore.’

Of course most of them won’t do it. I have a friend who has continued to vote five ACC teams in the top 25 every week even though I honestly don’t think the ACC could win a “challenge,” with the CAA if it ever had the guts to play one, even with 22 extra scholarships per team.

Think about this for a minute: who eliminated Cincinnati and TCU from national title consideration? Not any of their opponents, that’s for sure. It was, in fact, the replay official in the Texas-Nebraska game who put one second back on the clock after it had hit zero and gave Texas the chance to kick a game-winning field goal to win 13-12 on the game’s final play. If the replay official decided the call on the field was correct or that it was too close to reverse (which is supposed to be the rule) then TCU or Cincinnati is in the championship game. Texas ought to take that guy on the trip to Pasadena. I’m not saying the call was wrong but it was certainly close enough that it could have been left in place. In fact, I’m enough of a believer in those who theorize that conference officials know which team winning benefits the conference most to think that if the situation had been reversed and Nebraska had needed the extra second it might not have happened.

But it did. Isn’t it amazing how the undefeated team—regardless of BCS conference—always seems to get the key call that it absolutely must have?

As most people know the BCS recently hired ex-White House press secretary Ari Fleischer to be its official spinner, the theory now being that defending the BCS is a better idea than simply getting rid of it. Fleischer proved during his years working for George W. Bush that he can spin with the best.

Here then is my suggestion for his first assignment in his new job: Fly to TCU, Cincinnati and Boise State. Walk into each of those three locker rooms, look those players in the eye and explain how each of them went undefeated this season and don’t get to play for a championship. Then list for them all the other sports in which such a thing can take place. Then tell them that the bowl system must be preserved so that all those 6-6 teams can tell their fans that they made a bowl game. (He can also add, I suppose, that the fact that the bowl system would be completely unharmed by a playoff is irrelevant).

Maybe, given his past experience, Fleischer can look those kids in the eye and say to them: “Mission Accomplished.”

If you are the BCS your mission is always accomplished as long you say it is. The whole thing really is sickening. Spin THAT Mr. Fleischer.

Amidst all the continuing speculation about what Tiger Woods’ fall from grace will mean to his golf, his endorsements and his legacy, there was a note in the paper this morning about Dick Enberg signing on to do 110 to 120 games on TV for The San Diego Padres this coming season.

I’m really not sure how to take that news. I sincerely hope Dick is happy about it because he’s one of the absolute good guys that I’ve met through the years. What I know is good is that he lives in the San Diego area so this will cut down his travel considerably and I can remember talking to him years ago about constant travel being the one downside of what we all do. Of course back then he had young children so it was tougher, I would guess, than now.

He doesn’t look it on or off camera but Dick is going to be 75 next month.

The first time I laid eyes on Dick Enberg was in December of 1968 when I was a kid trolling the stands at Madison Square Garden for autographs during the Holiday Festival. He was sitting with the UCLA players watching the third place game and, after I’d gotten Lew Alcindor, Curtis Rowe and Sidney Wicks to sign, someone told me that the guy in the front row did the play-by-play for UCLA. Since Marv Albert was a hero of mine I figured it was worth asking him to sign too. I still remember that he asked my name and wrote, “To John,” before signing his name.

I became more familiar with him when I watched the old TV show, “Sports Challenge,” in the 70s, a show which seemed to somehow get every big sports star you might imagine to come on to answer—or in most cases not answer—sports trivia questions. I liked watching for that reason but also because I knew the answer to most of the questions. One thing I DIDN’T like about the show was that when they showed replays of historic moments in sports, Enberg had re-voiced them—no doubt because the technology made it difficult to get a lot of the actual calls. It was nothing against Enberg, it just didn’t feel real to me.

I first really got to know Dick covering college basketball for The Post during the golden era of Enberg, Packer and McGuire on NBC. There was really nothing like watching a game with Packer and McGuire screaming at one another and Enberg playing traffic cop—which he did brilliantly. Back in those days the three of them did a Sunday game-of-the-week and their PR guy, Tom Merritt, would frequently invite writers who were covering the game out to dinner on Saturday night. That was how I first got to know both Al and Dick (I already knew Packer from covering the ACC).

Al was, of course, the star—at dinner and on-the-air—but there was a warmth to Enberg that was, at least to me, clearly genuine. He often joked that he always knew what his future was because Al was seven years older than he was and would always tell him what was in store for him. Whenever Al would crack up a room with a story he would turn to Enberg and say, “Still got it Dixie.”

The break-up of that trio when CBS got the NCAA broadcasting rights prior to the 1982 tournament is still one of the bigger disappointments of my life. Enberg and McGuire stayed together to do regular season games on NBC but Packer moved to CBS. They were briefly re-united in the 90s when all of them landed at CBS.

I got to know Enberg better covering tennis since Bud Collins took me under his wing and often brought me along to various NBC-related events. One of my more vivid memories had nothing to do with NBC: Bud and I and Bob Basche, who worked with Bud at NBC forever, went out for a lengthy dinner in Paris one night and ended up back at the bar at the Hotel Crillon—where NBC stayed in those days—drinking something called Armanjac—not sure if I can spell it and I sure as hell couldn’t drink it. We were all on another planet when Enberg made the mistake of walking past the entrance to the bar, heading to bed with his wife Barbara.

“Monsieur Enberg!” Bud screamed in a bad French accent. “Monsieur Enberg!” He got up and chased Enberg down the hall, demanding he come have a drink with us. Enberg knew—KNEW—he shouldn’t go anywhere near us but he bravely walked into the bar, had a drink AND bought. The fact that I remember any of this is a miracle.

Dick and I were also witness one night to one of Al’s greatest calls. Duke and Arizona had played a game in the Meadowlands in 1989—a showcase for player-of-the-year candidates Danny Ferry and Sean Elliott. Duke was down two in the final seconds when Christian Laettner—who was a freshman—got loose, drove to the basket and got fouled with no time on the clock.

Everyone cleared the floor while the entire crowd—it was a sellout that included Richard Nixon—stood to watch Laettner. He missed. Game over. As soon as the shot rolled off the rim, Mike Krzyzewski raced onto the court, grabbed Laettner and pointed a finger in his face. “Don’t think for one second you lost that game for us,” he said. “You gave us a chance to win.”

That night, Dick, Al and I went to dinner in New York. “I’m gonna tell you something,” Al said. “I’ve seen a lotta things in basketball. What K did right there (he never tried to pronounce his name on or off the air) was one of the best coaching moves I’ve ever seen. I guarantee you—I mean guarantee you—that kid will never miss a big shot the rest of his career.”

If you follow college basketball, you know the rest.

Watching Dick the last few years has been a bit melancholy for me. CBS has treated him well and he was still their number one play-by-play man on tennis but he was reduced to small roles at The Final Four and The Masters (he’d be the first to tell you golf was never his strength) and fell behind Jim Nantz in the football pecking order.

I felt worse for him during the U.S. Open awards ceremony this past September. When Juan Martin del Potro asked if he could say a few words to the crowd in Spanish, someone in the truck was CLEARLY screaming in Dick’s ear something like, “no, no time, get to the corporate sponsors.”

Even at my level of doing TV I know what it’s like when someone is yelling in your ear, sometimes telling you to stop in mid-sentence because, “Pete has Coach so-and-so.” Or when you’re in the middle of telling a story about someone (something Dick always did superbly) and the producer says, “we’ve got a replay of the last foul,”-and throws it on the screen forcing you to break off in mid-sentence and say, “yeah, that’s a foul.”

This was worse. Del Potro had just won the U.S. Open and was very sweetly asking if he could say a few words to the Spanish fans who had cheered him on and some dope in a truck (I suspect I know who it was) is telling the great Dick Enberg to flack for a car rather than give the kid 60 seconds.

Awkwardly Dick said, “Sorry, no time,” and began doing the car schpiel. To Del Potro’s credit he listened and then asked again if he could speak in Spanish. “Okay,” Dick said. “Very quickly.”

Oy. It came off badly. Dick was SO caught in the middle there I really felt for him. CBS later “defended,” him saying it had contractual obligations to mention the sponsors. Fine. The broadcast had already gone past 7 o’clock on a Monday, the producer or director should have let Del Potro have his 60 seconds. What CBS should have said was, “there was a bad call made in the truck that made Dick look bad.”

Now Enberg is leaving CBS—at least for college hoops and the NFL. My bet is he’ll end up not doing tennis even though that possibility was left open. I know he loves baseball so I hope this new gig goes well for him. I’m just sorry I won’t see him on the road—or on CBS—anymore. At his best, he was the best. And he was—and is—always a class act.

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One comment from yesterday’s comments: Gordon, a regular poster, made the point that Bill Clinton was not impeached because of his post-Monica Lewinsky attitude but because he lied under oath. Of course that was technically the reason for his impeachment but my point was Congress never would have had the nerve to do it had it not sensed that the public was very angry with Clinton about his approach to the whole mess. It will be interesting to see how the public reacts to the Tiger Woods, “I was wrong but the media is (always) more wrong,” apology. Time will tell.

Okay, I’ve had enough.

In fact, I can tell you the exact moment when I knew I’d had enough of ‘Tiger-gate.’ It was last night at halftime of the George Mason-George Washington game, which turned out to be a disappointing blowout because Mason Coach Jim Larranaga suspended two key players after they stole pillows from a hotel last weekend for the plane ride home.

Pillow-gate?

I was sitting with GW Athletic Director Jack Kvancz and his wife Janis (one of the world’s great people) and Bob Zurfluh, who has been tournament director for the BB+T Classic (which is this Sunday at Verizon Center) since we first started the event 15 years ago. (I say we because I’m on the board of The Children’s Charities Foundation which has raised about $10 million for kids at risk in the DC area through the BB+T).

We should have been talking about the game, the BB+T, the obvious improvement GW has made this season with a sterling freshman class. Nope. It was all Tiger, all the time. Look, I understand completely. There are two stories dominating the news at all levels right now: Afghanistan and Tiger. For many, it isn’t in that order.

But I’d been talking Tiger almost non-stop, or so it seemed, since last Friday. I’m not complaining: I’ve always said I would rather have too many phone calls to return than no phone calls to return. If I get to go to The Masters every year then this story is part of what I do too. What’s more when there is breaking news I understand that a lot of the shows that call me are the same ones my publicist calls when I have a book out. So I try not to say no to people who have always said yes to me in the past. Nightline doesn’t sell books for me but it is, well, Nightline.

(Let me digress here to tell one story about Nightline because I know I have to get to the Tiger apology eventually. In 1991, just as my tennis book, “Hard Courts,” was coming out Jimmy Connors did me a great favor by getting to the semifinals of the U.S. Open at the age of 39. My media appearances—and the quality of them—soared thanks to Connors and the book was No. 3 on the New York Times bestseller list the week after the Open.

I got a call from a Nightline producer. They were going to do a show focusing on tennis and Connors the night before the Open semis if Connors got that far. Would I be interested in being a guest since I’d written the book and Connors had been prominently featured in it? You bet.

On Thursday the producer called to do what’s called a pre-interview. This is one of the most worthless exercises in the history of the world: You answer a bunch of questions on the phone and, almost without fail NOTHING you discuss comes up in the actual interview. But, as I found out the hard way, there’s a reason for them.

The guy asked me this question: Why are people so enamored of Connors who was once one of the real bad boys of tennis? My answer, almost word-for-word, was this: “Because he’s defying mortality. You aren’t supposed to be able to play tennis at this level at 39 and he’s doing it. Who among us can’t identify with the notion of defying mortality?”

The guy thanked me and asked me if I would need a car to get me to the studio. No, I knew where it was I could actually walk there from where I was staying. Fine. The next afternoon the guy called me again: “Well, I’m sorry, you didn’t make the cut,” he said.

“What cut?” I asked.

“Well, you were one of several candidates for the show…”

“Hang on, that’s not what you said to me when you called. You asked if I’d like to be on the show.”

“That’s right. I didn’t say you WOULD be on the show.”

I won’t repeat my response here.

“We decided to go with Robert Lipsyte from the New York Times. We prefer journalists to authors if we have a choice.”

I won’t repeat my response to that either.

It gets better. I guess because I’m a masochist I turned the show on that night. Here’s how Ted Koppel opened the segment: “What James Scott Connors has done these past two weeks at the U.S. Open tennis championships is defy mortality. Who among us can’t identify with that?”

I used to run into Koppel on occasion at a local Italian restaurant near where I live. He and I frequently picked up take-out there on Sunday nights. For years I was tempted to say something but never did. What the heck, he didn’t know the producer stole the line, why bother? But I have never—ever—done a pre-interview since then. And never will.)

Okay, back to Tiger.

There’s no sense rehashing the whole thing here again. The people I feel worst for in all this are his wife and—even more so—his children. When they get older they’re going to know this was something their father did.

Tiger will play great golf again and he’ll still break Jack Nicklaus’s record in majors. The golf media will still fawn on him constantly and his sponsors will, “stick by him,” because they have too much money invested in him to dump him and because they want to be there with new ads trumpeting his redemption when he wins again.

In a sense, this is much like Bill Clinton. When he was finally forced to admit to his involvement with Monica Lewinsky he said he was “sorry but…” Remember him saying that his personal life was no one’s business? Of course it was. He was President of the United States. I really believe that attitude rather than just saying, “I’m sorry,” is the reason the House of Representatives was able to impeach him—he turned a lot of the public, including Democrats like me against him with his attitude.

Today, Bill Clinton gets $250,000 for a speech and is treated with the respect that ex-presidents get when they leave office. He has a presidential library, the whole thing. But Monica Lewinsky will ALWAYS be part of his life’s resume. Her name will always appear in his biography.

Tiger isn’t the President and he’s not going to be impeached. He’ll continue to make millions and win golf tournaments. But, as with Clinton, this will be on his life’s resume. He did the same thing yesterday that Clinton did eleven years ago—“I’m sorry, but…”

In this case the but-line made the media the fall guy—what a surprise. It reminded me a little of the old Peanuts cartoon in which Peppermint Patty is asked by the teacher why she didn’t do her homework. “Well,” she says. I spent some time watching TV…I read a magazine…Then there was something on the radio…I BLAME THE MEDIA!”

That was Tiger yesterday: I let my family down, I acted badly, I’m very sorry…I BLAME THE MEDIA!”

Oh well, it’s the way of the world.

The good news—I sincerely hope—is that we can now move on. Tiger can go into character-rehab mode along with his spinners and sponsors. There will still be some dirt on the internet or in the tabloids and there will be LOTS more jokes. But it won’t be on the front page of The New York Times and The Washington Post and my phone will probably stop ringing after today. (That’s me being selfish, yes).

It will crop up again when Tiger plays next—probably San Diego unless he decides to delay the start of his season until Florida—but it isn’t going to be THE subject everyone is talking about.

This is one time when Tiger and I are in full agreement: enough is enough. He messed up and he’s going to pay a big price. As I said to a friend at Golf Channel yesterday, “tell everybody on air to stop looking like they’re covering a funeral. Nobody died.”

Of course I wasn’t completely right about that. No one died but something did die: Tiger’s carefully crafted image. That’s gone forever.

I made my regular appearance on The Sports Reporters with Steve Czaban and Andy Pollin in the normal timeslot (5:25 ET on Wednesday's) this evening. Click the permalink, then the link below, to listen to the segment which focused on Tiger Woods.

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


I also made my regular spot with The Gasman that has moved to Wednesday's at 5:25 PT during the NFL late season. This week we talked about the retirement of Bobby Bowden and the Tiger Woods incident.

Click here to listen to the segment: The Gas Man


Thursday morning during my regular 11:05 spot, I had a segment on the newest The Tony Kornheiser Show.  Of course, we talked about the hot topic of the week, along with the BB+T Classic, which is being played Sunday.

Click here to listen to the segment: The Tony Kornheiser Show

Bobby Bowden announced his retirement yesterday—sort of. He showed up on some kind of video with reporters not allowed to ask questions. No doubt Florida State wanted it that way because the school was afraid that, under questioning, Bowden might break the golden rule of big-time college athletics and tell the truth.

As in this truth: the man who made Florida State football matter got shoved out the door by an impatient president, board of trustees and fan base when all he wanted was to coach one more year. He said just that on Saturday, that he’d like to coach in 2010 and then turn the job over to Jimbo Fisher, who FSU put right up against Bowden’s back a couple of years ago hoping he might take the hint and allow himself to be shoved out the door.

Great coaches are great competitors. They don’t just say ‘thanks for the memories,’ the first time things go wrong and ask someone to shut the lights out in their office for them. Five years ago when the president of Penn State and the chairman of the board of trustees went to Joe Paterno’s house to talk to him about stepping down after going 26-33 over a five year stretch he threw them out of his house. He’s 50-13—that’s not a typo—since then.

The great ones should orchestrate their own exit. Bowden certainly earned that right.

There’s no need to recite his record here; the national titles, 10 win seasons, bowl trips. Or the fact that Florida State was absolutely nowhere in college football before he arrived and grew to be one of the four or five truly elite programs under Bowden. Was his reign perfect? Of course not. Even now, FSU is appealing an NCAA ruling that would take away 14 of Bowden’s 388 victories because of an academic scandal that football players were involved in. He’s had players in trouble—so has Paterno and every other college coach who has coached in the big time for longer than 15 minutes.

That’s the reality of the big time game: the pressure to win and win and win sometimes causes even the best coaches to take great athletes who may not be great people. The ugliest incident I ever saw at a Final Four involved a player recruited by Dean Smith, who coached with more class and dignity for 36 years than anyone I’ve ever met in the college game. Even the best make mistakes.

There’s no doubt Florida State has slipped in recent years. It certainly hasn’t slipped to 3-9 the way Notre Dame did under Charlie Weis or below .500 the way in-state rival Miami—the once vaunted U—did a few years back. Bowden will coach in his 27th straight bowl late this month. But 6-6 is a long way from all those consecutive 10 win, top-five seasons. FSU lost about three games in the ACC in the 90s after it joined the league. I used to say the ACC consisted of Florida State, the seven dwarfs and Duke—which aspired to be a dwarf. Now it’s pretty much 12 dwarfs. THAT Florida State is long gone.

What made Bowden special went beyond winning. He was—is—a good man, a very good man. He was always accessible to the media. Nowadays, getting time alone with a big-time college coach in-season is all but impossible. If you jump through 18 hurdles and promise to be nice or if you bring a cameraman with you there’s a chance you can get 10 minutes.

When Bowden began to build FSU into a power, you could pick up a phone and call him almost any time. I remember years ago when he took his team to play Pittsburgh, which was ranked No. 1 with Dan Marino at quarterback at the time. (Bowden played more tough road games in those days than anyone. Heck, even this year he played—and won—at Brigham Young. How many BCS schools will schedule THAT game?). I was covering the game and arrived in Pittsburgh on Friday afternoon for FSU’s walk-through hoping to grab a few minutes with Bowden. It had been a last minute decision to send me up to the game so I just showed up. No one stopped me. I just walked in.

When I told Bowden what I needed he said, “look, unless you’re in a big rush, why don’t you come back to our hotel and we can talk in my room. It’ll be more relaxed back there.”

Which it was. Bowden wrote my whole story for me. I still remember George Solomon, the Post sports editor back then (a Florida grad) saying after reading the story, “God Bless Bobby Bowden, he makes us all into good reporters.”

Bowden deserved a better ending than this. He deserved the ending HE wanted, not the ending some suit with a title wanted because it will take some pressure from the alumni off him. Serious question: Does anyone think that Jimbo Fisher is going to make THAT big a difference next season? As for the long term—recruiting—Fisher can tell every recruit that he’ll be in charge beginning in 2011, that Coach Bowden has already announced that 2010 will be his last season.

Back in 1980 I was sent to Alabama to do a story on Bear Bryant. Believe it or not, Bryant wasn’t that old—66 at the time I think—but he had lived a hard life and looked more like 100 when I sat in his conference room with him. It was pretty clear to me that he didn’t know the names of too many players and wasn’t terribly involved in planning for that week’s game against Notre Dame.

“My coaches do the coaching,” he said. “I’m pretty much the CEO around here.”

It’s harder to do that when your bosses have told your number one assistant that the minute you are out the door, he’s in charge. I’m not implying that Fisher is disloyal to Bowden, I’m just saying that the term used is ‘coach-in-waiting.’ Is there anyone out there who ENJOYS waiting?

Bobby Bowden deserved a lot better than he got from Florida State. He certainly gave them a lot better than the people in charge deserve.

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Different school, different situation: Maryland announced yesterday that Ralph Friedgen would remain as coach even after going 2-10 this season. The reason for Friedgen surviving is simple: Maryland hasn’t got $4 million on hand to buy him out. Governor Martin O’Malley made it clear last week he didn’t want state funds spent on a buyout and there’s no big-time booster who is going to step up to spend that kind of money on football, which just doesn’t matter all that much at Maryland as long as the basketball team is playing well.

Maryland AD Debbie Yow named James Franklin as coach-in-waiting last year—which was a mistake for the same reason it is always a mistake to name a coach-in-waiting. Yow gets all bent out of shape when anyone says she made a mistake (on anything) but she did. She’s tried to paint the picture of Friedgen practically begging her to name Franklin because he is (according to Yow) the greatest recruiter of, oh, the last 100 years. One local columnist here in DC today said Friedgen was Yow’s first big hire, that she went out on a limb to hire him nine years ago. Wrong on two counts: Yow’s first big hire was Ron Vanderlinden who she was pretty much forced to fire after five years. And she hired Friedgen because a group of Maryland football alumni, led by Boomer Esiason, pretty much threatened to withdraw support from the program if she didn’t. She loved taking bows when Friedgen was winning but was more than ready to throw him overboard when things began to slide.

Yow probably would have liked to have pushed Friedgen out the door but couldn’t—not because he’s a big guy but because he has a big contract. Personally, I’m glad. I think Friedgen (and the great James Franklin) have made some recruiting mistakes that have brought about four losing seasons in the last six but he’s a good guy and a good coach and I’m glad he gets another chance with a more experience team next year.

Yow did the right thing for the wrong reasons. Florida State did the wrong thing for the wrong reasons.

As I’ve said before, some mornings it is hard to know where to begin.

The biggest story in sports continues to be ‘Tiger-gate.’ Yesterday, to no one’s surprise, he announced he was pulling out of his own tournament—it is really an exhibition since every player collects a big check—because of the injuries he suffered last Friday morning. What’s interesting about that is that his spin-doctors rushed out with a statement on Friday claiming his injuries were, “minor.” Now, four days later he’s too badly hurt to get on a private plane to, at the very least put in an appearance on behalf of the tournament sponsor who is putting up $5.5 million in prize money alone.

Methinks he’s not ready to let anyone see him public.

Let me pause a moment here to go back to yesterday and some of the comments that were posted here. I’m always very curious to see what readers write, especially because they frequently raise questions or issues I hadn’t thought about. Since I started the blog five months ago very few of those who have posted or sent e-mails have been especially negative or angry. In fact, one of the things that has made me happy is the thoughtfulness and, well, smartness of so many of the posts. It isn’t like reading some other blog posting areas where people scream cyber-profanities at one another and toss anonymous cheap shots around.

Yesterday, a lot of the posts were pretty much the norm: smart people agreeing to perhaps disagree on a complicated topic which very much involves how much privacy a public figure is entitled to have. But there were also some that were angry—angry with me for suggesting that Woods owes the public some kind of an explanation because there are so many un-answered questions about what happened last Friday. I also wrote that it would be best for HIM to give some kind of explanation and I think the fact that he had to pull out of his own tournament is more evidence of that. At the moment he is, for all intents and purposes, a prisoner in his own home.

What I realized reading the posts is something I hadn’t thought about in the past. I’ve always known that fans of a TEAM don’t care at all about the off-field behavior of their stars as long as they perform. Right now fans of the Yankees could care less about Alex Rodriguez’s steroids admissions last spring. All they know is he (finally) performed in postseason and the Yankees won The World Series. Fans of college football and basketball teams could care less about whether their players graduate: they want them to perform, win games, make them feel good. If you graduate, that’s fine, but it doesn’t matter. No coach—repeat NO coach—has ever been fired because he had a low graduation rate.

Woods is such a transcendent figure that many fans look at him as THEIR golfer. As a number of posts said, “as long as he entertains me with spectacular golf, I don’t care what he does off the course.” (At least one poster spelled it coarse, but that’s okay). A couple of others went the kind of tired route that those of us who report on athletes transgressions are essentially ambulance chasers and we should leave the guy alone, mind our own business, yata-yata-yata. My suggestion to them is that they not waste their time with this blog because what I write here for the most part is about people I know and have known in sports, the good and the bad. If you are looking for happy talk, go to TigerWoods.com.

Here’s the larger point: In the end most fans just want athletes to perform, to make them feel happy by winning and, in Tiger’s case, often winning spectacularly. I get all that, I have a better understanding of that today than I did yesterday because I hadn’t thought of it in those terms for an athlete in an individual sport.

I will say this: Golf Channel had a crisis-management expert on the air yesterday, a guy who clearly has no vested interest in this at all. He basically said what I had said: the longer Tiger stonewalls, the worse it gets for him—because there are LOTS of people who see a carefully cultivated image and wonder now if it’s real. That’s not going away regardless of what I say, write or think. I would add one more thing for those of you who care only about what Tiger does on the golf course: He’s not ON the golf course entertaining you this week. It may be because he’s more beat up than his people let on last Friday or it may be because he’s hiding out. Either way, it’s really too damn bad for everyone—including Tiger.

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On to happier topics: Charlie Weis got fired yesterday. That wasn’t even a little bit of a surprise to anyone but it always amuses me how guys in suits think they can spin things just by claiming they’re true. Notre Dame Athletic Director Jack Swarbrick, who does look good in a suit, talked about how difficult the decision was because Weis is really such a good guy. “I have never met anyone for whom there was a larger gulf between perception and reality than Charlie Weis,” he claimed and then went into all the hoo-ha about how much Weis loves Notre Dame—as if that qualifies ANYONE to coach. I love the New York Islanders. That doesn’t mean I should coach them.

Here’s some Weis reality: he swaggered into Notre Dame telling people he was going to out-scheme other coaches and bullying the media, using his opening press conference to “lay down the law,” on what would and wouldn’t be allowed and threatening reporters with banishment if they failed to follow all his rules.

More reality: he never once took responsibility for his failures. It was always the players who failed to run a route right, didn’t make a block or a tackle. The old, “I coached good, they played bad,” routine. When Notre Dame won it was because of some brilliant offensive scheme he came up with. (See last year’s Hawaii Bowl).

A bit more reality: Weis ducked the media after the Stanford game last Saturday, wasn’t man enough to stand there and accept that he had failed. Actually, it may be a good thing: no doubt he would have blamed the players for his failures. Then he went out and started leaking about all the NFL teams that were interested in him.

THAT’s the reality of Charlie Weis.

What was almost as amusing was to hear the two morning guys on ESPN apologizing for him today. Of course one has two sons recruited by Weis and is an apologist for all things Notre Dame. The other is simply an apologist for anyone who has ever appeared on-air so it really isn’t surprising.

Weis got what he deserved—except for the fact that Notre Dame still has to pay him $18 million. That part is just sad.

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One last note for the day: In a major non-surprise the folks who run the tennis Grand Slams yesterday fined Serena Williams $82,500 for her outburst at a lineswoman during the U.S. Open and gave her a stern talking to: as in, ‘do this again and you could be suspended.’

Yeah, right.

Let me allow my pal Mary Carillo, who is more worthy to comment on this than I am (or anyone else) explain exactly what happened. This is what she wrote in an e-mail yesterday to The Washington Post’s Liz Clarke:

“Serena Williams physically threatened and verbally assaulted an official during one of the most watched tennis matches of 2009 and after three months of considered cogitation the Grand Slam Committee came up with ‘Grand Slam Probation and a ‘suspended ban?’ And half of what was deemed to be her fine? Boy, that ought to show everyone.”

Carillo’s summation: “It was a cockamamie decision.”

Mary grew up in Queens with John McEnroe. She knows a “you can NOT be serious,” situation when she sees one. I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: Mary should be the commissioner of tennis. She’s smarter than every person with authority in the game—smarter than all of them combined.

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

I was really hoping to write this morning about the Division 1-AA playoffs—or as the NCAA likes to call them the, “Football Championship Sub-Division,” playoffs—that began last Saturday. I even scheduled a trip to Philadelphia Saturday to see Villanova play Holy Cross in one of the eight first round games.

Holy Cross is a wonderful story, the kind that doesn’t get enough attention. Six years ago the Crusaders were 1-11 while their coach, Dan Allen, was dying of ALS. Tom Gilmore arrived in 2004 and, with considerable help from a quarterback named Dominic Randolph, went 9-3 this season and won The Patriot League Championship to qualify for the tournament.

Villanova won an entertaining game 38-28 but I knew by the time I made the drive to Philly that I wasn’t going to be writing today about players who compete in college football for an actual championship.

My phone began ringing sometime around 3 o’clock on Friday afternoon. Tiger Woods had been in a “serious,” car accident. That sounded scary although it didn’t take long to find out he had already been released from the hospital and his spin-doctors were putting out a statement that the accident was, “minor,” and he was already home in “good,” condition.

Okay, I thought, maybe this will pass in a few hours. I understood that a Tiger Woods fender-bender is a 50-car pileup in the golf world but even those are usually cleared in a few hours when they occur. The police said there was no evidence that alcohol played a role in the accident. End of story.

Not exactly.

Details began to emerge that raised questions. Detail 1: the accident took place at 2:28 a.m. on Black Friday a few yards from the front door of Woods’ house and he was LEAVING when it happened. Question 1: Why was he leaving his house at that hour of the night/morning? The odds are pretty good it wasn’t to get to Walmart to beat the crowds and buy discounted golf clubs.

Detail 2: His wife, Elin, pulled him from the car after smashing the back window of the car so she could get to him. Question 2: Why would one smash the BACK window of an SUV to get to someone in the front seat?

Detail 3: Elin used a golf club to smash in the window. Question 3: Did she run all the way down to the accident scene, then back to the house to grab a golf club and then back to the car? Or, did she have the wherewithal to grab a golf club after hearing the crash? Or, was neither of those the correct answer?

These were questions that needed answers. The best and smartest thing Tiger could have done was talk to the police as soon as possible—it probably would have taken five minutes: one car accident, no one else hurt, no sign of alcohol being involved—and let them write their report and perhaps charge him with careless driving and send him a bill for the hydrant.

Soon after that he should have held a press conference during which he could have explained that, yes, he and Elin had an argument. Say something like, “Any of you guys been married? Ever had an argument with your wife? Sometimes the best thing to do is just get out of the house for a while. I was frazzled and wasn’t paying attention to what I was doing and here I am.”

No need to go into any further details. If the tabloid/cyber-space rumors making the rounds are brought up, just smile and say, “come on fellas, I’m not going to dignify that sort of thing with an answer, you know me better than that.”

Talk about the football games you watched on Thanksgiving and move on. Revel in Stanford’s win over Notre Dame. You see, that’s the way you move on in these situations. You don’t move on by making the police asking routine questions into a story by avoiding them for three days and brining in some lawyer to stonewall on your behalf. It makes you look like you have something to hide.

You don’t move on by playing the “this is a private matter,” card either. It ceased being a private matter once he hit the fire hydrant. He’s a public figure and something put him in that car and on that road and out of control. He owes the public—which has helped make him wealthy beyond his wildest dreams—more than the privacy card. Privacy stops at the front door.

Beyond that, supplying some kind of explanation is the best thing for WOODS. He may be able to intimidate most of the golf media but he isn’t going to intimidate the tabloids or the gossip web sites or TV joke-writers. They could care less if he cuts them off or stops calling them by name during his press conferences.

Woods is a control freak—like most hugely successful people—and he can’t stand being in a situation in which he loses any control. That’s why he gets SO angry when he hits a wayward shot. At that moment, he’s lost control of his golf game. It’s why he has fired caddies and agents who have dared speak up without his permission and why those who work for him live in fear of saying or doing anything that might make him angry.

Up until now Woods has done as good a job as any mega-celebrity has ever done in keeping his life under control. There has been nothing really serious to criticize him for. Sure, he throws clubs and uses profanity on the golf course and, a month shy of turning 34, most people think he needs to outgrow those habits. He’s let his caddy, Steve Williams, behave very badly far too often and he should sign more autographs than he does. But that’s about the list of things you can criticize him for—unless you count blowing off the media on occasion after a bad round which I know almost no one in the public could care less about.

I’ve had my battles with Tiger and his people but I have great respect for him, certainly as a golfer (it would be insane not to) but also for the way he has dealt most of the time with his fame. I’ve often said that he’s as bright as any athlete I’ve ever met and perhaps as bright as any person I’ve met.

Of course because I have been critical of him at times dating back to his rookie year I’ve been viewed by Tiger and his team as a bad guy. The fact that I wrote early on that I believed he had succeeded in spite of his father rather than because of him earned me a permanent spot on his bad list. Which is fine. As I said to him once, I’d never put a guy down for defending his dad.

I’d like to think the fact that we aren’t pals and he doesn’t use a nickname when addressing me the way he does with some other writers doesn’t affect the way I judge him. I remember doing a U.S. Open preview for National Public Radio in 2001 soon after he had completed his, “Tiger Slam,” in which I called it the greatest feat in golf history given the competition and the media pressures he’d had to deal with. Later that day I got a call from the producer of the show I was on saying, “Is there any way I can get you to stop sucking up to Tiger Woods?” I suggested she call Tiger’s agent (she wasn’t like to reach Tiger) and repeat that comment if only so we could all have a good laugh.

I’m the last person to sit in judgment of what goes on inside someone’s home and inside someone’s marriage. None of us knows the truth from the outside. But Tiger—for Tiger’s sake—needs to stop hiding out behind statements and lawyers and end this by saying SOMETHING. Until he does he’s going to be a punch line. And I know him well enough to know just how much he has to hate that idea.

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One more note from the weekend that begs for a comment: Did anyone notice that on Sunday one of those ESPN hacks who will put out any bit of information he’s fed “reported,” that Charlie Weis has been contacted by six NFL teams about a job as a coordinator next season?

Who do you think the guy’s source was—Ara Parseghian? This is so typical of Weis. Rather than just accept his likely firing at Notre Dame as his responsibility—which it is—he has to get it out there that NFL teams are just dying to hire him. No doubt someone will hire him—he’s a fine coordinator—but it really is a shame that he has no shame or dignity at all. It’s all about him all the time, which is a big part of the reason why he failed so utterly as a head coach. Record the last three seasons once Ty Willingham’s players were just about gone: 16-21. Number of times he took responsibility for those losses: zero.