http://thehighcourtofsports.com/thedailyverdict/

5.  Gonzaga forward Josh Heytvelt…The 6-11 sophomore was booked around midnight last Friday for possessing marijuana and psychedelic mushrooms.  He was joined by freshman Theo Davis, who is redshirting this season.  Part of the reason Heytvelt makes the cut is for shrooming like it was the ’60’s, but mostly he’s here for letting his teammates down.  With the Zags already suffering through a bubblicious season, his indefinite suspension robs his team of its second-leading scorer and puts their NCAA bid in further jeopardy.  There’s nothing quite like public embarrassment and potentially throwing away your basketball career.  Let’s hope those were some good drugs.

4.  Nancy Pelosi…Just because I feel like it.  I caught some of the Speaker’s comments the other day, and here’s what I heard: “Bark, Bark, Bark, Bark, Bark.”  And something about listening to the American people.  Here’s a tip, Nancy…you’ll have to shut up long enough to hear the American people…

3.  NASCAR…What the hell is going on at Daytona?  Apparently so much cheating is going on at the 500 that Bud Selig thought they were hosting spring training.  You want to give Mike Helton and company credit for actively policing their sport, but I have to ask, why just throw out crew chiefs?  What does it take to get a driver dismissed.  I realize that crew chiefs are integral to the success of a race team, but kicking crew chiefs out and taking away points does not ensure that a team that has attempted to circumvent the rules won’t win the race.  I’m not a big NASCAR fan; frankly, I’m nothing more than a casual follower of the sport.  But it would appear to me that NASCAR needs to set more concrete and uniform penalties for those that flaunt the rules, and secondly, they need to consider kicking entire race teams out of events if they want to send a serious and consistent message.  I can’t imagine anyone associated with the sport can be happy with the publicity coming out of the Great American Race this week…

2.  Gene Wojciechowski…The ESPN.com writer was kind enough to divide the world into gay advocates, gay bashers, and the enlightened few.  His column had some merit, but his simplistic view of the issue makes anybody who has a problem with homosexuality a villain or an ignorant fool.  And I have a problem with that.  Which I will explain as we discuss the gentlemen at number one…

1.  John Amaechi and Tim Hardaway…Just seems fitting that the homosexual and the homophobe get to occupy this spot together.  If there’s one thing Wojciechowski had right in his column, it’s that nobody should much care about this issue.  But the media does…Wojo does…or the columns and the coverage wouldn’t be spilling out all over the place.  People care.  They do.  How do we know?  We know because Tim Hardaway got asked the question.  How would you deal with a gay teammate?  He did not volunteer his views.  Asked, answered. Were Hardaway’s comments foolhardy, given the public environment they were made in?  Pretty much, yes.  But ignorant or not, Tim Hardaway is entitled to not like gay people.  He is entitled to not approve of homosexuality.  You wish he hadn’t gone as far as hate…and we’re pretty sure he really wishes he hadn’t gone as far as hate…but better to be honest than to lie like so many other public figures have when asked about Amaechi’s coming out.

We are all uncomfortable with things we don’t understand and that we see to be different.  Such was the case with racial tensions that dominated this country for years.  I would be willing to guess that the majority of heterosexual individuals, especially in areas where open homosexuality isn’t prevalent, are still quite uncomfortable with homosexuality.  And there are a great many people who have legitimately held religious beliefs that find homosexuality to be both wrong and offensive.

Amaechi offended me, not with his sexuality, but with his general intolerance of anybody who didn’t understand his orientation.  If you read his book excerpt on ESPN.com, you will find that Amaechi goes out of his way to rip Utah Jazz head coach Jerry Sloan.  Amaechi has an axe to grind with Sloan because he didn’t like being screamed at, and he tries to paint Sloan as an angry homophobe who had him banished from the Jazz because he was gay.  Amaechi doens’t provide any hard evidence that was the case (just comments from ‘unnamed’ Jazz employees).  But it’s clear that he has a real problem with Sloan.  Well…Jerry Sloan has yelled at lots of players, and I don’t imagine their sexuality had anything to do with the yelling.  Gay or straight, you fail to do things Jerry’s way, then you are going to get your ass chewed (hmm…there’s a joke there, isn’t there?)  Amaechi has spent a lot of time, both in this excerpt and in his recent interviews making it clear that he is smarter than the rest of us, and a better human being to boot.  He might be.  But it’s not because he’s gay.  But if he’s truly so enlightened, then maybe he could have been understanding of Jerry Sloan, of the time and the place that Sloan comes from.  Understanding is a two-way street, and Amaechi doesn’t get a pass just because he likes dudes.

We are, it seems, now living in the days of the oppressed majority.  I believe that every person should be allowed to live their life any way that they choose, so long as they don’t infringe upon that same right for everyone else.  So whatever John Amaechi wants to do is fine with me.  But I’m not going to sit around and act enlightened and endorse his lifestyle when it isn’t something I really understand.  And I won’t criticize Tim Hardaway for anything he thinks on the matter, either…except for the fact that he pushed this thing through at least two or three more news cycles.

And cheer up Timmy…you may not be welcome at the All-Star festivities, but you’ll always have a home in Moscow, where officials recently banned a gay rights parade…

Take John Clay for example.  Mr. Clay is a veteran columnist for the aforementioned Herald-Leader, and he has already boiled the ‘Cats troubles down to one simple thing.  Recruiting!  Eureka!  Mr. Clay has used his many years as an experienced observer and figured this one very important thing out:  Kentucky needs better players.  It is a discovery so breathtaking that Einstein himself might sit up in his grave to applaud.

In case Tubby Smith doesn’t read your paper…and really, who reads their toilet paper these days…we’ll let him in on the secret that he needs to do a better job recruiting.  He’s probably not aware of the shortcomings of his basketball team, and frankly, it may be entirely possible that he has gone the entire span of his 27-year coaching career and never noticed how important recruiting is.  It is also entirely possible that neither he nor any member of his coaching staff has noticed the shortcomings of the program the last two years.  So isn’t it their good fortune that the Herald-Leader keeps a writer of such astounding journalistic ability free to provide his basketball expertise to the University of Kentucky program…

Because I’m sure that was Mr. Clay’s intent.  I’m sure that he never intended to criticize the manner in which Tubby Smith does his job, and surely it couldn’t have been his intent to stir up the restless natives of Big Blue Nation.  Journalists, after all, are completely unbiased and they would never stoop to dip a toe into the dangerous water of partisan opinion.  Would they?

Clay is merely working front and center as the Herald-Leader’s hatchet man.  He is a columnist, you see, and they dare to encourage partisan opinions all the time.  The Herald-Leader wants to sell papers, and given the recent struggles of the Big Blue, they know that eviscerating Tubby Smith will sell lots of papers.  Readers, you see, want to read what they want to read.  They don’t want to be subjected to ideas that run counter to their own.  That’s why liberals read papers with a liberal slant and conservatives read papers that lean to the right.  And angry and dissatisfied Kentucky fans don’t want to read a column defending Tubby Smith…which is why they will hate this one.  They want Tubby Smith on the spit and roasting over a fire.  John Clay will be happy to bring the matches…

Here’s the facts folks…This year’s edition of the Kentucky Wildcats, is not, based on results, appreciably better than last year’s edition of the Kentucky Wildcats.  And nobody was satisfied with the 22-13 mark achieved a year ago.  Losing double-figure games and struggling in the SEC is not the sort of thing that any Kentucky fan is accustomed to.  That is perfectly fine, and perfectly understandable.  But let’s take a closer look at Tubby Smith’s work…you might be surprised to see what you find.

In his first eight years on the job in Lexington, Tubby Smith delivered seven SEC titles (outright and shared combined).  Beginning in ’02-’03 (when the ‘Cats went a perfect 16-0 in league play), Smith embarked on a three-year stretch where UK went 43-5 in conference play, including a 14-2 mark just two seasons ago.  All of a sudden, because of a couple of tough years (and this one isn’t even over yet), we are supposed to believe that the wheels have come off the wagon?   Tubby Smith isn’t a different coach than the one who won a national championship in 1998, and he isn’t a different coach from the guy that went undefeated in the SEC four years ago on the way to a 32-4 mark.  And yes, Mr. Clay, the players are different…but let’s take a look at that.

The leading scorers on the ’98 team were Jeff Sheppard, Scott Padgett, Nazr Mohammed, Wayne Turner, and Allen Edwards (and yes, I know they were Pitino guys).  Not one of those players was a sure-fire blue chipper.  Sheppard and Turner were close, with Turner’s schoolboy career probably making him the most highly-rated prospect, but there were questions about Padgett, Mohammed, and Edwards having the ability to play at the SEC level.  The combination of Pitino and Smith molded that bunch into the core of a national championship team.  But that title wasn’t won on the recruiting trail.

The key personnel on the ’02-’03 team featured Keith Bogans, Gerald Fitch, Marquis Estill, Erik Daniels, and a fellow by the name of Chuck Hayes.  Other than the highly-recruited Bogans (and he was deemed a bust for most of his career), Cliff Hawkins and freshman Kelenna Azubuike were probably the most highly-touted bodies on the roster.  Smith took pieces of varying (but not stunning) talent and put together a team that achieved something (the perfect SEC campaign) that was in its own way more improbable than a national championship.

You could make the case that the personnel on each of the last two Wildcat teams (and certainly this year’s) are more talented than either of those teams.  Every Wildcat fan was excited by the recruiting class that featured Ramel Bradley, Joe Crawford, Randolph Morris, and Rajon Rondo, but is has not, as of yet, panned out.  Could it?  Maybe.  And maybe not.  Rondo is already gone.  Morris likely will be (again) this summer.  The class of 2004 may never get any other grade than incomplete.  But anybody who wants to look back now and say, “Well, Chris Lofton and Corey Brewer turned out to be stars and our guys stink” are probably the same people that celebrated the ’04 class when it came in.  It’s pure hindsight.  It is backseat coaching.  And John Clay knows it.

To digress from Clay a bit, but stay on the topic of recruiting, let’s consider North Carolina’s Roy Williams for a moment.  Williams has always had tremendous success recruiting, but never more than he has experienced since his return to Chapel Hill.  Kentucky fans know all to well how successful he has been, often seeing top recruits put UK on their short list only to eventually choose UNC.  That is, of course, exactly what happened with freshman standout Brendan Wright, already a key contributor for the Tar Heels and a piece the Wildcats would have dearly added to their frontcourt.
Part of the reason Williams is believed to recruit so well is the fact that he plays a liberating and entertaining style on offense, seemingly the polar opposite to Kentucky’s seemingly deliberate and sometimes sleep-inducing offense.  Now Williams is a fantastic coach, without question.  And his teams are always a great deal of fun to watch.  But take note of these things.  One, Williams was still a helluva coach when he was at Kansas.  But he NEVER won a championship there.   He did a lot of crying at a lot of press conferences, but for all of his recruiting acumen and his beautiful style of play, no titles for Roy at KU.  Two, when he finally climbed the mountain at UNC, he did so with Matt Doherty’s players.  Not his own.  Three, Williams followed that success up with a second-round exit at the hands of George Mason, and four, while I am sure his phenomenal recruiting efforts will pay off in the near future, his kids have yet to figure out how to beat Virginia Polytechnic.

See, it’s easy to find fault with a coach.  Even one as great as Roy Williams.  I could tell you about how it took Dean Smith two decades to track down a championship, or about how if administrators had listened to overzealous and impatient boosters that neither Smith nor Mike Krzyzewski would have been around long enough to build the fabulous legacies they have at their respective schools.  I could (and actually I did, right here) tell you how the legendary Adolph Rupp had seasons of 16-9, 15-10, and 13-13 (including 8-10 in the SEC).  I wonder if John Clay would have had the stones to write funny lines about ten-loss Adolph…

Are there problems with the men’s basketball team at the University of Kentucky?  Yes.  Absolutely.  Are things up to par, per the expectations of the University of Kentucky?  No.  But most importantly, things aren’t up to par per the expectations of Tubby Smith.  Tubby Smith is a tremendous basketball coach, just as good as Roy Williams or anybody else you care to name in the country.  He knows how to build a program and he knows how to maintain a program.  I believe he knows how to raise a program to greater heights.  And he doesn’t need every broker, banker, and bourbon maker in the state of Kentucky telling him how to do his job…even if you mean well.

The great thing about Kentucky fans is that they love their basketball team almost more than anything.  The awful thing about Kentucky fans is that they love their basketball team almost more than anything.  The passion is a wonderful, albeit dangerous, double-edged sword.  The great thing about basketball is everybody feels like they know something about it.  That’s how we come up with so many armchair coaches and athletic directors out there.  Funny thing is, sports are almost the only topic out there that we treat like that.  You don’t see a lot of message boards out there dedicated to breaking down neurosurgery or nuclear physics.  Maybe that’s because nobody has a passion for those unique specialties, or maybe it’s because there are no columnists out there making it seem like those areas are child’s play.  If you are looking for somebody to thank for giving you the impression that anyone can run a major Division I basketball program, be sure to send a note to John Clay.

I don’t know much, but I do know this: A great basketball man by the name of C.M. Newton once believed that Tubby Smith was the right man to lead the Kentucky basketball program.  I believe that few people have ever had a more vested interest or a better understanding of what Kentucky basketball is all about than C.M. Newton.  So I’ll just close with this…if Tubby Smith was good enough for C.M. Newton, he’s good enough for me.  I hope he’s good enough for Mitch Barnhart (and Mitch, you should listen since I gave you such good advice on Rich Brooks).  I couldn’t care less if he’s good enough for John Clay.

And one last thing to chew on…if Kentucky gets a new basketball coach, how long will it be before we have this discussion about him?  Ten minutes…or five?
     

Our built-in bias must be fought when trying to comprehend the information in front of us, because when we give in to our bias we are bound to learn nothing, and in fact, we are quite capable of making the words on the page say something quite different from what they actually do.  My recent column in support (sort of) of Kentucky basketball coach Tubby Smith is a perfect example.  Say a group of people read the column, and their reaction is something like, “This is bullshit.  Tubby sucks.  Here are the guys who should replace him.”  Well…where exactly does that come from?  When you read the column, you will (correctly) get the impression that I believe Tubby should remain the coach at UK.  But it is not an apologist’s defense of Coach Smith, because it in no way blindly defends him or ignores the current shortcomings in his program.  I even acknowledge that others could probably do better.  What the column is actually about, however, is that the expectations of the Kentucky basketball program are based on myth and perception, rather than on facts and reality.  Is Kentucky one of college basketball’s storied programs?  Yes it is.  Has it always been a dominant program where championships came easily and often.  No, it hasn’t.  It was difficult for Rupp, it was difficult for Hall, it was really difficult for Sutton, and it was even tough for the great Pitino…for all of his brilliance he only won one title.

I don’t mind that people don’t agree with my take on the situation.  It is perfectly natural for Kentucky fans to want the very best, and the last two seasons in Lexington have been particularly trying.  But I would ask two things of my readers…one, be smart enough to know what you just read.  And if you aren’t, read it again.  The column on Smith wasn’t about Smith; it was about the history of Kentucky basketball and the different climates it has competed in during the history of the NCAA tournament.  It might have proved helpful to those armchair athletic directors and coaches who THINK they know what they are talking about, but in reality they haven’t a clue.  Number two…raise your hand, UK fans, if you thought Tubby Smith could coach when he won the national title.  Could he coach in ‘02-’03 when the ‘Cats went undefeated in SEC play and finished 32-4?  Or two years ago when the ‘Cats went 14-2 in league play and were minutes from a Final Four trip?  Seven times in his first eight years the man led the Wildcats to at least a share of the SEC regular season title.  From ‘02-’05, Smith led UK to a 43-5 record in SEC play.  After a stumbling start against U of L, Tubby has even bagged three in a row against Team Pitino.

I’ve seen people that want Bill Self as a potential replacement for Tubby.  Self is a fine coach to be sure, but I wonder how Self’s first-round flameouts to Bucknell and Bradley would have played on the Big Blue message boards?  Billy Gillispie is another outstanding choice, one of the hottest coaches in the business right now.  He sort of reminds you of the guy C.M. Newton turned to as a replacement for Rick Pitino: Orlando Smith.  There are countless outstanding coaches around the country; I mentioned West Virginia’s John Beilein the other day.  But the thing is this: None of them have won more than Tubby Smith.  He has won, he can win, and he will win.  And those that would have celebrated the exploits of the Kentucky teams that have had tremendous success under his direction, each of you should be ashamed of reveling in anything that might lead to his dismissal.

Every fan that works for a living might want to ask himself (or herself) this…Am I as proficient at my job as Tubby Smith is at his?  And if I’m not…why do I still have a job?

It hit the wires last night that Marty Schottenheimer had finally lost his power struggle with general manager A.J. Smith.  Schottenheimer, with 200 wins in his career, was sent packing after a 14-win season.  He and Smith have barely spoken over the last year, and apparently the losses of coordinators Cam Cameron (new head coach of the Miami Dolphins) and Wade Phillips (new lackey for Jerry Jones in Dallas) upset the delicate balance being struck in San Diego.  This isn’t the first time that a power struggle between a coach and a GM has resulted in one of the parties losing their job, but it might be the most ridiculous.  For all of the criticisms of his postseason record, Schottenheimer is a marvelous coach, and despite the fact that Smith seems to be a petty smartass, he has done a fabulous job of building an outstanding football team.  Theirs may not have been a happy marriage, but results would indicate Smith and Schottenheimer could have continued to be successful together.  I suppose if forced to pick a side, I’d pick Schottenheimer.  Personnel isn’t easy, but it’s a hell of a lot easier than winning 200 football games in the NFL.  And Smith should know that.  He should have dropped his ego and done whatever it took to appease one of the great coaches in the NFL.  Sources close to the situation say not to expect Bill Cowher to get a phone call from the Chargers as he and Schottenheimer are very close friends.  Speaking of Cowher, there are many who have speculated that after a year off, he might get a phone call from the Cleveland Browns if they fire Romeo Crennel after the 2007 season.  But here’s a more interesting scenario…how about if the Browns give Marty a call to return to the city where he had his greatest success???…and where his playoff demons first materialized.  Expect the Chargers to pick up the phone and call Ron Rivera, the Bears defensive coordinator, even though he’s not a 3-4 guy (the Chargers base the last few years).  And if that doesn’t work out…somebody call Don Coryell….

As many of you already know, the Dixie Chicks won five Grammys on Sunday night.  It was a coronation of sorts, as they appear to have been martyred into becoming the latest and greatest protest singers in American history.  They were even introduced at the Grammys by Joan Baez.  And somewhere Jane Fonda wept.

I was reading an AP report today about the still-frayed relationship between the Chicks and country music radio, and based on their comments Sunday night, the Chicks aren’t country anymore anyway.  Good to know.  But I’d just like to thank everybody who boycotted the Dixie Chicks and turned them into national heroes for having an opinion.  Nice job.  Look, did I like hearing that Natalie Maines ripped the President at a London concert?  No, I didn’t.  But she is a country music (no matter what she says) entertainer.  I could give a damn what she thinks about anything.  Nobody else should care either.  But since people cared so much that several yahoos issued death threats and the country music establishment (where the hell is this so-called establishment anyway?  Do they have a clubhouse or something?) cut them off entirely, refusing to play their music and leading boycotts of their concerts, they became oppressed darlings of the left.  And now, with popular opinion in the country swinging heavily to their side, they look like political geniuses and true Americans who stood up for what they believed.  Gakkk.  Give me a break.  Maines mouthed off, they got smacked in the head for it, and they hung around long enough to receive credit they don’t deserve.  This is what happens every single time people put any stock into something a ‘celebrity’ says.

I’ll be honest with you.  I enjoy the Dixie Chicks music.  Always have.  I think they are remarkably talented, and I love their last album, including their in your face ‘Not Ready to Make Nice’ that helped them haul in all of the hardware Sunday night.  I could care less that they don’t care for George W. Bush.  They may drive around with Ted Kennedy bumper stickers on their tour bus.  They may revere Hillary Clinton.  They may all have secret crushes on Al Gore.  None of it matters to me.  Just like I wouldn’t care if they loved George W. Bush, went hunting with Dick Cheney, worshipped Rudy Giuliani, and shared diet tips with Mike Huckabee.  They are freakin’ country music entertainers!!!  I don’t turn to Britney Spears for advice on underwear, I don’t seek Paris Hilton for moral fiber, and I don’t look up the Dixie Chicks for political or social direction.  And neither should anybody else.

Finally, two last notes.  One, Huntington High School issued a three-game suspension for OJ Mayo in wake of the RefereeGate saga, forcing me to recognize Huntington principal Greg Webb as an administrator who has forced his star athlete to be accountable for his actions.  I gave Webb and his fellow administrators for doing nothing; now I must acknowledge his action and revoke his contempt status here at The High Court.  You know he will be relieved.  And…I would like to recognize the return of my good friend leftygolfer to The High Court audience.  He just posted a comment on my rant directed at the FedEx Cup a few weeks back, and I believe it is worth a read for everyone.  Good to have you back, lefty…

4. Pro Football Hall of Fame voters…This honor comes belatedly to those who select the newest inductees to Canton each year, and Mr. Huston had them on his radar for once again passing over former Washington Redskins standout Art Monk.  Marvin Harrison is held in high esteem these days for his classy demeanor, but long before Syracuse sent Harrison to the NFL, another product of the Orange was cutting a graceful path across the league, on and off the field.  When you think of Monk, think of the anti-T.O., a man of great humility and compassion, a man just as interested in philanthropic work and making his world a better place.  He rarely played in an offense ideal for putting up huge numbers, as Joe Gibbs’ versatile attacks often favored either the run or multiple-receiver sets, but Monk still managed to haul in 940 passes in a 16-year career.  There will be critics who take issue with the inclusion of Michael Irvin into the Hall before Monk, and I certainly understand their frustration, but I would remind them of this…Irvin was the better player.  It is true that Monk had nearly 200 (190 to be exact) more receptions than Irvin, but he compiled them in 65 more games.  Monk’s candidacy may be hurt by the fact that he had a pedestrian 13.5 yards per catch average over the course of his career, and the fact that he only had 68 touchdown catches (Irvin, by contrast, averaged 15.9 yards per catch and had 65 touchdowns in those 65 fewer games).  But this isn’t about whether or not Irvin deserves to be in…he does (his shitty character notwithstanding).  It is about the fact that one of the outstanding men ever to wear an NFL uniform DOES deserve to be enshrined in Canton.  Art Monk was a three-time Super Bowl champ, an outstanding receiver, and he remains an outstanding example as a human being.  So let’s correct your error next year voters…or you’re back on the list…

3.  The Chicago Bulls…This one also comes from Mr. Huston, who pointed out that the Bulls fined rookie forward Tyrus Thomas $10,000 dollars for saying he was attending the All-Star Game Slam Dunk contest just for the money.  The truth hurts, eh Tyrus?  Especially in the wallet.  I guess we understand why John Paxson and the organization had to slap Thomas hand…the NBA would frown on us getting the idea they do anything for the money.  Say…where’s that All-Star Game being played this year?  Oh yeah.  Vegas.  And it isn’t like the whole point of the All-Star weekend is to make money or anything…right?  We wish you luck Tyrus.  Win the big check.  If you can keep from opening your mouth before the contest gets here, you just might come out ahead…

2.  The Boston Celtics…It’s a good thing Red Auerbach passed before he had to see it.  A sixteen-game losing skid, the longest in franchise history, is still rolling along.  Paul Pierce, the only thing resembling an NBA player on the Celtics roster, has been in the hospital, and while out of the lineup Pierce may have won himself the MVP award.  The Celts are a dismal 2-22 without their star, a number that points out his value in a way that words never could.  Danny Ainge has saddled his organization with a bunch of young talents, all of whom, sadly, would be better off if they were on college campuses across the nation.  Because that’s exactly where Gerald Green, Al Jefferson, Rajon Rondo, and Sebastian Telfair could be.  Instead, their busy getting their brains beat out as their fans sit and pray that they keep losing and can somehow win the lottery and a chance at Greg Oden or Kevin Durant.  What in the name of Bob Cousy is going on?  Celtic Pride indeed…

1.  The Chief Justice, The High Court of Sports…I promised yesterday it would be me for my poor handling of the OJ Mayo case, and here I am.  For those of you who missed it, scroll down to the post below as I revist the Mayo saga with a little more information and a little different perspective.  The fact of the matter is, I deserve the #1 spot for a variety of reasons, not least of which is an overall poor performance.  Truth is, I often find mysef struggling to find consistent inspiration in the world of sports on a daily basis, and I am increasingly discouraged by an audience that has dwindled to a few loyal souls (and I do appreciate all four of you a great deal).  So today The Chief gets top billing as the most contemptible figure of the week, and he promises to raise the level of his work in the future.

As always, I encourage audience participation, both with your commentary and with more suggestions for this week’s or future weeks’ contempt lists.  And finally, for a very good (and lengthy) read about a very successful small-town girls’ basketball program, be sure to read this article by ESPN.com’s Wright Thompson.

If you read the post from last week (Hold the Mayo), you know that I spent most of my time criticizing the adults involved in allowing Mayo to avoid immediate suspension.  And it would seem that some of that criticism was misplaced, at least in this particular circumstance.  It is difficult for me to maintain that anyone involved in the case, from the head coach to the judge whose injunction allowed Mayo to play in Huntington’s next two contests was wrong.  Perhaps Mayo should have been disciplined for taunting and making incidental contact with the official, but there is enough evidence from that fateful night to suggest that the referee was just as culpable in the incident as Mayo.

On a local level, I have always believed that there is a lack of accountability for high school officials, and this saga may shed a more intense light on that fact.  The job of a high school official is one that few people want, and with very good reason.  But they are paid for their work (unappreciated as they may be), and they should be held accountable for egregious errors.  Most high school officials are fair men and women working with the best interests of all the kids involved; as such, they should be applauded for their efforts, and their efforts should not be tarnished by officials who have malicious agendas.  If it is true, as some suggested, that Lazo had it ‘in’ for Mayo throughout that night, then it is Lazo, and not Mayo (who may be looking at as much as a four-game suspension in the aftermath) who deserves a lengthy suspension.

As a guy who was always thirty seconds from an ejection, I should have known better to sit in judgment on the case without having all the facts.  Getting it right, or at least providing a different perspective, has always been the mission here, and I simply dropped the ball on this one.  It doesn’t make OJ Mayo a saint, but I knew better than to make him the devil without a closer examination of what really happened.  OJ, you have my apologies.

For more on the Mayo saga, you can read Yahoo! Sports’ Adrian Wojnarowski and our buddy Pat Forde…and a special thanks to my old buddy, The Powdered Wig, for sending me on a deeper fact-finding mission.

Former NBA player (and former Penn State star) John Amaechi has revealed that he’s gay…and I am completely shocked.  Not.  Amaechi, whose well-traveled career included a stop in Orlando (where I believe he was Darth Reagan’s favorite player), was always known as a very cultured (he was born in America but raised in England) and intelligent fellow…but that isn’t why I wasn’t shocked to hear he was gay.  The reason I wasn’t shocked was because there are several hundred players in the league at a time…based on what we know about society today, some of them are bound to be gay.  And who cares?

There is always going to be some outcry over whether or not there are gays in the shower, and there’s always going to be column space given to analyzing the issue (and that’s analyzing boys…not ANAL-yzing).  ESPN.com’s resident homosexual, LZ Granderson, decried the fact that Amaechi waited until after he was retired to come out, pleading for some young star to be upfront about his sexuality while he was actually still playing.  I’ve dealt with LZ’s gung-ho gay writing before, but this time I’ll give him a pass.  He has an agenda, and he’s entitled to his opinion…and here’s mine…

While I don’t agree with that particular lifestyle choice, if a player is gay, let them be gay.  But let’s quickly get to a place where they can keep their sexuality where I keep mine…behind closed doors.  Because that’s what this is.  It’s about sexuality.  If a power forward wants to have a boyfriend, that’s up to him.  But I don’t want details.  I said this the first time I dealt with a Granderson column.  I don’t want to know if your sexual turn-on’s include girls, guys, farm animals, flashlights, or hot wax.  I don’t want to know.  Ever.  Gay, straight, bisexual, camel-sexual…whatever…keep it to yourself.  I can at least guess at the pressures a closeted athlete lives with, and I would feel sorry for any of them.  But how they choose to proceed is up to each of them.  I just hope that we reach a point and time where the only thing we worry about a player sticking is a fifteen-footer….

Long story short if you didn’t read the article, Remillard challenged his players at Leavitt Area High School (Maine) to reach into their shorts and check their manhood at halftime of a game on January 23, telling them that the contest that evening was about who had the biggest balls (or was it dicks?) in town.  He was, predictably, removed from his coaching position.  But at least his efforts weren’t in vain; his club rallied to win that fateful night.

This should have been held for the contempt file on Friday, but I was oh-for-the week so far and I needed the material.  So here’s the guilty parties here…and none of them are the coach…

The knee-jerk administrators who…ironically…lack the balls (or any other parts of the package) to stand behind a coach.  The inmates run the asylum around schools these days, and that is primarily because administrators lack the toughness to put power where power belongs.

The legal system…Ours is an increasingly litigious society, and we have become a group of whiners (perhaps this would be a good place for the use of some female genitalia slang?) who go running to court to solve our problems.  And guess who is setting on the bench…a bunch of judges with nothing swinging beneath the robe.  Justice is blind…and maybe she wasn’t always a lady.  Maybe she’s just been neutered.

And finally…the little bastard or bastards that went running home and told their parents what the coach did.  The report said one player refused to check his manhood (hey, I remember THAT guy in the locker room)…maybe he was the snitch, and maybe he had lots of company.  Either way, if any of those kids had any manhood at all, they should know that the locker room is just like Vegas.  What happens there, stays there.  I’d love to tell you what happened in some of the locker rooms I was in…but I can’t.  It’s just part of the code.  I can tell you that I had multiple coaches challenge my manhood and I can also tell you that I enjoyed playing more for those coaches than the ones who spent all their time being “appropriate”. 

Where I come from, “appropriate” was usually code for “chickenshit”.  Sometimes a situation calls for a certain motivational style, and while there ARE lines that shouldn’t be crossed, what Remillard did wasn’t even close to the line.  He was merely looking to light a fire under his ballclub (which he apparently did), and not attempting to embarrass, shame, or degrade anyone.  Coaches shouldn’t be afraid to challenge their players.  They should be able to set high expectations for them, and they should be able to use any means within reason to help them become better players and better people. 

And like it or not, there are times in all walks of life when it’s about who has the biggest balls…

In the spirit of the Academy Awards, the envelope please…

5.  Eric Musselman…The first-year head coach of the Sacramento Kings was suspended for two games by the NBA for his DUI arrest in October.  Musselman recently plead no contest to the charges stemming from that arrest, and he was issued his punishment by the NBA.  Musselman took the penalty in stand-up fashion, accepting accountability and responsibility for his mistake.  But it is never a good thing when the head coach of a franchise is arrested for anything, and that arrest, coupled with the fact that Musselman’s Kings are currently last in the Pacific Division has made for a very tough debut year in Sacto.

4.  The Brothers Reid…Andy Reid’s kids make Eric Musselman look like the AllState driver of the year.  With their folks out of town, 21-year old Britt and 23-year old Garret made Mom and Dad very proud by getting in trouble with the law early Tuesday morning just hours apart in separate incidents.  Britt Reid was arrested for allegedly brandishing a gun at another motorist and older brother Garret Reid was arrested after his SUV collided with another vehicle. The elder Reid brother reportedly admitted to using heroin earlier in the day, and law enforcement officials found drug paraphernalia and weapons inside his vehicle.  Not to be outdone, the younger Reid reportedly was found with guns and drugs at the Reid family home when officers came calling with a search warrant.  I don’t know about you, but I’d be willing to guess that whole McNabb/Garcia quarterback controversy might be taking a backseat for a while at Coach Reid’s house…

3.  The good people of Troy, Michigan…Troy is apparently a well-to-do suburb of Detroit, and these fine upscale people don’t want Hooters expanding in their fair city.  The city council has been blocking the liquor license for a new Hooters location in town, so the good folks at Hooters have just started operating two locations, the old and the new, located just two miles apart.  It’s simply wrong, I tell you.  Do these people have something against generously-packed tank tops?  Or orange hot pants?  It boggles the mind, especially given how perfect the fit for the new Hooters seems to be.  The area that this anti-Hooters faction wanted to keep the new restaurant out of is the Big Beaver commercial district.  And I am not even making that up.  People of Troy, Michigan…listen up.  If ever a Hooters was meant to be somewhere…it was meant to be in the Big Beaver. 

2.  The Speech Police…So it seems Joe Biden just isn’t really good at this presidential campaign stuff.  Biden, who famously went down in political flames in pursuing the 1988 Democratic nomination for plagiarizing the stump speeches of other politicians, stepped in it again this week by making Barack Obama out to be the first African-American politician able to speak, read, and bathe.  Seriously…what Biden really meant wasn’t anywhere near that bad, but he got slammed anyway.  He was trying to give Obama a compliment and ended up sounding like an ignorant racist.  I’m no Biden fan, but I have to defend the guy.  We are approaching a critical mass on this whole political correctness thing; there’s a good chance by 2032 politicians won’t even bother to speak at all for fear of getting killed whatever they say.  He chose his words poorly, but so what?  What if he had called Obama a raving baboon’s ass (in fairness, he may have already reserved that for Mrs. Clinton)?  A little sensitivity is a fine thing, but too much sensitivity leads to its own brand of intolerance.  Nick Saban knows how Biden feels (and I can’t believe I’m defending this guy again, either).  Saban recently made what were supposed to be off-the-record comments (and yet he mad them into a working tape recorder…nice…) to a group of reporters (smart move Nicky), telling a salty anecdote about what a Cajun gentleman had said to a LSU trustee who was a friend of Saban’s.  Saban did a couple of things anti-PC…One, he did his best Cajun, which turned out to be offensive (or so we’re told) and two, he threw out a little blue language (including the term ‘coonass’, which is also apparently offensive to Cajuns…at least those that don’t have T-shirts that read, ‘I’m with Coonass’).  Long story short, the Cajun speaking to the trustee had said Saban’s moving to Alabama was like, “the sonofabitch f**king my wife.”  And now Saban’s in trouble for referring to Cajuns as ‘talking funny’ (and I’d guess for that whole Coonass thing) and dropping f-bombs.  But hey, it could be worse.   Because speaking of f**king somebody’s wife…

1.  Meet San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom…Newsom was forced to admit publicly that he had carried on an affair with the wife of his campaign manager (umm…make that FORMER campaign manager) after Alex Tourk confronted him about the relationship.  Strangely enough, the affair appears to have occurred well over a year ago, when Ruby Rippey-Tourk worked for the mayor (or was that UNDER the mayor?…and how about that handle…Ruby Rippey?  Stage name, anyone?).  We have no idea what prompted the affair to come to Tourk’s attention after that length of time, but one applauds his decision to have the mayor stick it, er…shove it…oh never mind.  As for Newsom, we all worry about the character of our politicians, but it would seem sleeping with a valued colleague’s wife would make him a scumbag of the highest order.  But, if you’re looking for a silver lining…it would appear that there are some straight people in San Francisco (Damn…I hear the speech police coming…)…

To his rescue rode Cabell County Circuit Judge Dan O’ Hanlon (Is it an election year, your honor?), who issued an injunction allowing Mayo to play until a February 9 hearing designed to make a decision on the players’ procedural rights to appeal the suspensions.  Well, hooray for the court system.  Mayo played against Artesia, scoring 19 points as Huntington defeated Artesia 73-66.  They say justice is blind; apparently in O’Hanlon’s court it is also stupid.

I applaud the concept of fairness that O’Hanlon used to free Mayo from his suspension (at least in the short term), because I don’t have a problem with there being an appeals process.  Penalties are often arbitrary, and more often than not, they are handed down with little to no consideration for the mitigating cirmcumstances that make each situation unique.  But this is a case where Mayo had clearly crossed a line, and frankly his actions could have resulted in penalties far greater (like a suspension for the remainder of the season) than two games.  By using legalese to get Mayo and his teammates off the hook, Judge O’Hanlon is sending a couple of terrible messages to those young men.  One, if you are talented enough, somebody will always bail you out, and two, a big basketball game is more important than right and wrong.

I don’t blame Mayo or his teammates for wanting to play.  Anybody would.  But I do hold Mayo accountable for his actions, and more importantly, for refusing to take responsibility for his mistakes.  So he made an error in judgment in the heat of battle.  So what?  But recognize that mistake and take your punishment like a man.

But Mayo isn’t the person who should most be ashamed of himself.  There’s a long list of folks at the front of that line, and it is thanks to them that I announce the return of the contempt lists to The High Court of Sports.  This was a long-time staple at the site, something that we used to do every Friday.  I am going to do things a bit differently this time around, though, as I hope to bring my colleagues back into the fray, and as I attempt to encourage more reader participation.  Starting on each Thursday, I’ll be taking nominations for the contempt lists from our readers and staff, and on Friday we will post the lists on the board.  We’ll consider public figures from any walk of life (sports, politics, entertainment, etc.), and the lists may be as few as one or as many as ten.  I also hope that our readers will submit their own lists each Friday, or at least provide commentary on those that make The High Court’s list.  You can post your own list on the comments board, and you can send me nominations for our list at chiefjustice@thehighcourtofsports.com.

So without further adieu, here’s a special Thursday contempt list, O.J. Mayo edition.

5.  O.J. Mayo…Mayo’s the kid, so he just merits the five spot.  But in basketball terms, this kid has been a man for some time.  The USC signee has had a checkered and controversial high school career, often acting as a hoops mercenary, moving from one school to another.  His presence at Ashland’s (KY) Rose Hill Christian prompted a firestorm when he first burst on the scene as a middle schooler, and then he took his show to North College Hill near Cincinnati.  And when his friend and teammate (and current Kansas State freshman) Bill Walker was ruled ineligible to play for North College Hill this season, Mayo returned to his hometown of Huntington.  Mayo has been the darling of the AAU summer circuit and shoe company reps for years, and it is fair to guess that he hasn’t been an amateur basketball player since he was twelve years old.  None of us can be shocked that he doesn’t expect to have to pay the consequences for his behavior.  But it might be wise for Mr. Mayo to read up on the cautionary tale of Maurice Clarett, another young phenom who never heard the word no.  He’d also do well to remember that the adults that keep cleaning up for him probably won’t be there if he ever ends up in an orange jumpsuit next to Clarett…

4. Dwaine Barnes…Mayo’s so-called ‘grandfather’ (I have no idea if he really is or not) appears to be the only constant in his life, and Mr. Barnes has an obligation to give Mayo the direction he needs.  Meal ticket or not, Mayo needs to know the difference between right or wrong.  Dwaine Barnes should care more about the kid and less about the player.

3.  Judge Dan O’Hanlon…I’m going to give him a slight benefit of the doubt and assume that he had at least a thin slice of the rule of law on his side when he issued the injunction.  But this was pure idiocy, plain and simple, and any man in the position of circuit court judge should know better than to endorse irresponsble and consequence-less behavior to teenagers.

2.  Huntington High administrators…Nice job blacking the eyes of your own school system.  Mayo shouldn’t have needed any other ruling bodies to sit him down.  That should have been taking care of within his own school building.  Nice job, guys.

1.  Huntington head coach Lloyd McGuffin and assistant coach (and legal eagle) Mike Woelful…I’d like to give the nod to Woelful, who is pulling the nifty double as assistant coach AND Mayo’s attorney.  I would guess we have this guy to thank for the injunction, since I doubt most high school players would have had the legal expertise to bring the issue in front of a judge.  Woelful is really a credit to the bar.  B ut the scumbag attorney has to ride shotgun to the head coach, McGuffin.  It is his program, and no one further down this list should have had to get involved.  It is McGuffin’s place to control and discipline his players, and by failing to do so, he failed himself, his school, and most importantly, all the young men wearing Huntington High uniforms.

I’ll be taking a look at the media’s strange fascination with Mark McGwire in the days to come, as well as the fact that Jose Canseco wasn’t the only person to out McGwire as a steroid user.  I’ll examine how an investigation well prior to BALCO handled things much differently, and I’ll also be asking you how you’d feel about sports villains if they were somebody you knew.

And on one other note…I’m always on the lookout for more subjects for The Chief Justice’s open email series.  If any of you run across columnists or other media personalities that need to be engaged in debate, feel free to pass them along on the comments board or by emailing me at chiefjustice@thehighcourtofsports.com.

Federer, for all of his brilliance, still needs to win a French Open title to elevate himself into completely rarified air.  He has put himself among tennis legends, and arguably his only company in that pantheon might be Bjorn Borg, Jimmy Connors, Rod Laver, John McEnroe, and Pete Sampras.  But Woods is on the verge of being really lonely at the top, as only Jack Nicklaus remains in the conversation with Tiger as the greatest golfer of all-time.  Golf is not a game that lends itself to one man actually beating another.  In tennis, you stand across the net from the man you are trying to beat.  If you are better, you win.  Golf throws the course into the mix, and there is really very little one man can do to beat another.  One golfer cannot physically stand in the way of defeating another, unless it is a match play situation.  But somehow Woods does just that, with his mere presence becoming a legitimate physical impairment to his foes.  They always know when he is on the leaderboard, and that presence routinely causes outstanding professionals to turn into weekend hackers.  And then Tiger has nothing left but closing the deal…something he does as well as any competitor in any sport ever has.

If you watched any of the Buick Invitational last week on either the Golf Channel or CBS, you may still have a concussion from being beaten over the head with the PGA’s new FedEx Cup.  It was a shameless bit of promotion by the PGA and its broadcast partners, and I have no idea how they were able to get Nick Faldo to speak with enthusiasm on the contrived playoff system.  Faldo’s greatest strength has always been his candor and wit, yet there he was over the weekend, forced to play the company man and endorse this ridiculous concept.  They even had the Cup on hand, as if it was somehow a trophy steeped in tradition and worth having around as anything other than a place to take a crap if the nearest port-o-let was out of order.

People who love golf, love golf.  They don’t need some playoff (cue Jim Mora) system to give them a reason to watch.  And neither do I (at least not as long as Tiger is in the field).  People who don’t love golf, don’t…and they won’t be watching whether there’s a playoff or not.  The entire system is asinine, just like that of the Nextel Cup.  Apparently its only real purpose is to force the best players (Tiger and Phil) to play more often…which is something they won’t do.  Will Tiger try to win the FedEx Cup?  Sure, but only because winning is the only thing he knows how to do.  But not because he needs the $10 million in prize money and not because he’s trying to win as many FedEx Cups as Jack Nicklaus (who thankfully has zero).  He’s not going to change his preparation in pursuit of majors just so he can rack up an arbitrary number of points for a championship created out of thin air.  Mickelson isn’t going to spend less time with his family or less time binging on In and Out burgers because he is so passionate about putting a FedEx Cup on the mantle.  It’ll be nice for some guy to cash the winner’s check for the cool ten million, but in the long view of golf history being FedEx champ isn’t going to rival being the Masters champion or the winner of the U.S. Open.  At least not in my lifetime.

But it was nice of Jim Nantz to try and convince me otherwise…

In an era when professional athletes are often spoiled and socially ignorant and irresponsible, Mutombo is a shining example of how a man or woman can use their athletic gifts for the betterment of others.  His great care and compassion earned him a mention during the State of the Union address delivered by President Bush last night, as well as a seat among the honored guests.  Mutombo is a credit to his homeland and to his profession, and it is his character, rather than his prodigious height, that will always make him a giant among men.

On a serious note…It is a great illustration of how a positive continuity can bring success.  A great deal of credit must be given to the Colts management.  A key member of the management team is Bill Polian, who not coincidentally was instrumental in building the Buffalo Bills teams that came oh-so-close to being a dynasty in their own right in the late 80’s and early 90’s.  Polian also helped the Carolina Panthers hit the ground running when they came into the league before moving on to Indy.  So don’t forget Polian when making a list of guys who deserve a Super Bowl ring.  He and owner Jim Irsay have constantly tweaked the roster, but ever since they brought Tony Dungy in, they have not wavered from their focus, a focus built on the considerable talents of Manning and Marvin Harrison on offense, and the collection of speed on defense.  The Colts have also managed to keep a very underrated (and underappreciated) offensive line together under the tutelage of Howard Mudd, and Tom Moore has been there every step of the way as Manning has become an on-the-field version of his offensive coordinator.  The entire organization has done a tremendous job of holding its core together in the salary cap era, despite the fact that there have been calculated casualties suffered (most notably Edgerrin James).  But they have done an outstanding job in the draft, always mining great young talent, whether it be Reggie Wayne, Joseph Addai, Bob Sanders, Dwight Freeney, or Marlin Jackson.  And, the occasional savvy free agent signing hasn’t hurt, either…see Vinatieri, Adam.

As the next two weeks focus on Dungy and his close friend across the field, you can expect that Dungy will finally begin to receive credit for being a football genius in his own right.  Dungy has long had to endure the criticisms that he is too nice to win championships (you remember Mr. Vander-choke, don’t you?), but the fact of the matter is that Dungy has a toughness few men possess.  A standout quarterback at Minnesota, Dungy had to deal with the typical position change that almost every black quarterback had to deal with when coming into the NFL.  He was a solid contributor with the Steelers for a couple of seasons during the Steel Curtain days, even leading the club in interceptions as a safety in 1978, and he recovered a fumble in the Steelers’ Super Bowl XIII victory.  For all of his contributions, he was traded twice in a year, and he was cut at his last stop by the New York Giants…a move that led to his career in coaching.  Dungy spent fifteen years as a defensive backs coach and a defensive coordinator before he finally got his chance as a head coach with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.  Dungy took the Bucs from a laughingstock to the cusp of the Super Bowl, right before he got tossed over the side…because Tampa needed somebody tougher…

Few could have been tougher, or better said, stronger, than Dungy was last year when his son James committed suicide.  Dungy handled the situation with his typical grace, even in the face of Indianapolis’ frustrating playoff loss to Pittsburgh.  Dungy appears to be one of those rare characters with great character, a man who doesn’t ask…why me?…at least not publicly.  Not when the team he built from the ground up won the Super Bowl without him, not when his Colts suffered one playoff setback after another, and not when he lost his oldest child.  That is why you can root for Tony Dungy, even if we get one too many stories about the Tampa Two and his old coaching staff (another former member of the staff, Mike Tomlin is expected to replace Bill Cowher in Pittsburgh).  Dungy is a true champion, and the fact that he and Lovie Smith have become the first African-American coaches to reach a Super Bowl cannot be applauded enough.

But you do realize that this means another thirty Peyton Manning commercials, don’t you?

In other quarterback news, my proposed Michael Vick deal to Oakland can’t happen.  CBS’ Charley Casserly notes that the salary cap ramifications would be to severe for the Falcons to part with Vick, either by cutting or trading him.  Sorry, Mr. Davis.  I guess you’ll just have to groom one of those young quarterback prospects…if you can ever hire a coach.  Casserly also dropped this bit of knowledge concerning the Raiders…Lane Kiffin (son of Tampa defensive guru, Monte Kiffin…see I told you the Tampa coaching staff story would never die), part of the Sarkisian-Kiffin offensive wonder twins at USC who appeared to be Steve Sarkisian’s choice as offensive coordinator if Sarkisian took the Raiders job, is supposed to interview again with Oaktown to see if HE might be a fit as the Raiders new head man.  Very interesting…And finally, I suppose the Falcons can feel better about their Mr. Vick.  It seems he has been exonerated in the “hey man…is that marijuana in your secret water bottle compartment” case.  And that is certainly a relief.  I guess those were just special marijuana-flavored Altoids he was hiding in the SECRET COMPARTMENT IN HIS WATER BOTTLE!!!  But at least now you know what to get for that friend who has everything…his very own superspy water canteen….thanks, Mike

Even deposed Arizona Cardinals coach Denny Green turned down an interview (although Green might still be interested if a formal offer was made in his direction…it would reunite him with Randy Moss) for the position.  Davis still has current Raider defensive coordinator Rob Ryan and Jim Fassel on the short list, but it would appear that he might have to search further for his next field boss.  So while Al’s trying to con somebody into to coming into the Black Hole…let me make a suggestion as a guest general manager…

It’s time to take a page from your checkered past, Al, and play father figure to the kind of wayward soul that once brought excellence to the field in Oakland.  It’s time to pick up the phone, call Arthur Blank, and bring Michael Vick to Oaktown.  Thanks to Vick’s little ‘my water bottle doubles as the place to hide my pot’ incident and the Falcons recent downturn in the standings, a potential franchise talent could be yours for the picking.  I don’t know about the salary cap implications (Vick’s contract could be a cap stumbling block), but here’s what makes sense in my head: Offer the Falcons the overall #1 pick in the draft and malcontent wide receiver Jerry Porter for Vick and one of the Falcons butterfingered wideouts (Michael Jenkins or Roddy White).  The Falcons have a quality second quarterback in Matt Schaub, and he could keep the seat warm in Hotlanta until Brady Quinn or JaMarcus Russell was ready to run the show for Bobby Petrino.  Or, if Petrino thought Schaub was a viable long-term answer under center, then the Falcons could take a hometown favorite and all-around good citizen in Georgia Tech’s Calvin Johnson.

It’s a beautiful scenario.  The Falcons could either get another franchise talent at quarterback, or they could choose to go with the talented Schaub and build an offensive powerhouse with the newly-acquired Porter, Johnson, Alge Crumpler, Warrick Dunn, and Jerious Norwood.  The Raiders would get a huge (but admittedly, erratic) talent at quarterback, and they would still have the Falcons pick (#10) in the first round, a pick they could use to select talent in the running game (like a Bay-Area standout like Cal’s Marshawn Lynch or OU’s Adrian Peterson) or perhaps a gamebreaking receiving-returning threat (OSU’s Ted Ginn, Jr.) or maybe even some offensive line help.  Their defense was really very good in 2006, and it is entirely possible (if a bit unlikely) that the chronically erratic Vick and the chronically underachieving Moss could bond and become an unstoppable force…a development that could make the Raiders a winner before Davis’ deal with the devil expires.

And at the very least, I can see two very positive outcomes…One, if Vick pulls into Oakland, Moss gets a place to hide his pot…and two, Davis has a reason to change his slogan from ‘Committment to Excellence’ to ‘Committment to Incense’…

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that Darth Reagan’s Florida Gators have climbed back to the top perch in the college hoop polls (say, don’t they play football down in Gainesville, too?), and they already own a #1 seed in ESPN.com’s Bracketology.  Kentucky grabs a six seed, and my kindred spirit, Bob Knight, sneaks his Red Raiders in with one of the last four at-large seeds, with an 11…and Joe Lunardi just couldn’t resist…he provided them a matchup with The General’s favorite crimson and cream squad, the Hoosiers.  If only such a thing could come to pass…give Myles Brand a courtside seat, and we’d be looking at good times…

If you can’t get enough of early bubble talk on March Madness, you might also enjoy Andy Glockner’s initial offering of his Bubble Watch.  And as an additional bonus, if you have any questions about what might be lurking behind any of ESPN’s insider links, feel free to email me at chiefjustice@thehighcourtofsports.com or leave me your query on the comments board, and I will give you the inside scoop.  I finally broke down and paid to be an Insider (gag!) for a couple of reasons.  One, I needed access to archived work so that I might continue to bash their writers, and two, greater access to the whole site gives me more ammunition for…surprise…bashing their writers.  And as a bonus, I get ESPN the Magazine, and I am counting on it to be a great asset in the bathroom.  Because as I have noted before…sometimes you do run out of toilet paper…

Knapp writes that morals should matter when it comes to the Hall vote, and you MUST read her column before reading mine.  Or my column will read like utter nonsense (and it still might, as it turns out).  In what appears to be a brand new and ongoing series, here’s my open letter to Ms. Knapp…

You realize, of course, that the BBWAA has never…NEVER…voted in a player unanimously in all of the years they have been the electorate.  Not once.  Not Hank Aaron.  Not Willie Mays.  Tom Seaver has come the closest to perfection (98.84%), and Tom Terrific could have been passed yesterday by Cal Ripken, Jr., but Ripken was torpedoed by two voters (of the eight who didn’t vote for him) turning in BLANK ballots in protest of players from the ‘Steroid Era’.  Common sense, I suppose, is not enshrined in Cooperstown anywhere, because how the hell could you not vote for Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, Cal Ripken, Jr., or Tony Gwynn (the other member of the ‘07 class) for the Hall?  Ripken and Gwynn embodied everything good about the game of baseball, and the only performance-enhancer Gwynn ever ingested was the post-game buffet (where he was, and is, an addict).

The McGwire Issue (as well as the future referendums on Bonds, Palmeiro, Sosa, et al) is one that requires a column (and an epic one at that) all its own.  And it will be addressed here, to be certain.  But here (again) is my biggest problem with the voters: the treatment of a group of great players from the 1980’s…a group of players, it should be noted, with no steroid stigma attached to them.  What happens to these guys, though?  Their vote totals (with a few exceptions) get lower by the year, as if they have somehow gotten worse with the passage of time.  I realize that Don Mattingly is my personal Hall project, and I may be irretrievably biased where his candidacy is concerned.  But Mattingly has now seen his vote total dwindle (from a high of 128 votes in his first year on the ballot) by 74 votes in the last five years (down to 54).  Two-time MVP Dale Murphy suffers a similar fate, and Murph’s total dropped to 50 votes this year.  All this while some smartass took the time to give Jay Buhner a vote, which at least isn’t as bad as the five votes Hal Morris got last year.

I mean, really.  Do these idiots think they are funny?  And for a bunch of people who act as though their vote is a sacred thing, isn’t spending part of it on guys who have no business even being on the ballot a slap in the face to the entire process?  What goes through the mind of somebody who votes for Bobby Bonilla (and two wise guys did that)?

The announcement of the Hall selections should be a gloriously happy day each year.  But for me, it’ll be a sad day every single year.  At least until somebody is smart enough to take the vote away from a group of people that is largely petty, mean-spirited, and ignorant of what being a ballplayer is all about.

There’s plenty of good stuff out there…but here’s a couple of decent reads on what went down in Cooperstown.  Jayson Stark of ESPN.com breaks down the voting, and Tim Brown of Yahoo! Sports provides commentary on Ripken, Gwynn, and McGwire.

I was fortunate enough to reach Darth via phone last night as his Gators dotted the ‘EYES (both of them) all over the greater Phoenix area and, by extension, all over Ohio.  I found him bunkered down in his very own Swamp-like setting, watching the Gators with a group of die-hards and waiting for Meyer to get the Gatorade shower he so richly deserved.  His first words to me were instructions not to jinx his ballclub, even though Florida led 34-14 at the time.  I assured him the title was locked up, and by the time Tim Tebow plunged into the end zone for a 41-14 advantage, I think he actually believed it too…

So if you see a 6-5 guy bearing a strong resemblance to Magnum P.I. (sadly, minus the fabulous mustache) wandering the highways of central Florida with a cold beer in his hand and a smile on his face, it just might be our man Darth, still basking in the Gators second football national championship.  We hope to hear from the voice of Gator Nation in the days to come, and we will celebrate Gator Week here at The High Court in his honor (much to the chagrin of our good friend, The UT Volunteer).

And by the way Darth…are you ready for next year’s title game…Tim Tebow versus J.D. Booty for all the marbles?

My initial offering here in ‘07 centers around one of my favorite targets, ESPN.com’s Pat Forde.  Forde is actually a pretty good guy, and he is an outstanding writer.  I just seem to find myself on the other side of most issues he writes about.  This time it was his filleting of former Dolphins (and brand new Alabama gridiron boss) head coach Nick Saban that got my attention.  All of us that follow the game know that Saban has always been quick to pick up his suitcase whenever it suited his ambition or his bank account, but I must say that I have been puzzled by the knee-jerk anger directed at Saban because he had the audacity to say that he had no intention of taking the Alabama job as he tried to finish his season in Miami.  His actions spurred Forde to labal Saban ‘liar’, a charge that I believe is more than a bit harsh given the nature of the “lie”.

Here is my open email to Mr. Forde concerning his column on Saban…

As most of you already know, legendary Michigan football coach Bo Schembechler died last week, his death coming on the eve of the titanic showdown between his beloved Wolverines and the Buckeyes of Ohio State.  Bo’s boys fought the good fight in his honor, before finally falling to OSU 42-39 in Columbus.  Schembechler’s passing, and the fact that it came the day before the annual showdown between Michigan and Ohio State, provided something of a cosmic intersection for some of the legendary coaching figures in collegiate history.

Schembechler, you see, while being best known for coaching the Maize and Blue, also once worked on the sidelines in Columbus for his friend and mentor, Woody Hayes.  Hayes had coached Schembechler for a year at Miami (Ohio) University (where Schembechler would have his first collegiate head coaching job…and by the way, Miami had each of these coaches pace their sideline as head coach…Paul Brown, Weeb Ewbank, Sid Gillman, Woody Hayes, Ara Parseghian, and Bo Schembechler.  Not bad, eh?), and Hayes would eventually bring Schembechler to his staff at Ohio State.  Hayes was an exceedingly tough leader who loved to pair a punishing ground game with stout defense.  Schembechler’s great Michigan teams would follow that model closely for the first decade of his tenure in Ann Arbor, and even when Schembechler began to embrace the pass more, his Wolverine teams always stayed with the foundation of the run.

You can’t think of Schembechler without thinking of the controversial Hayes, a man who was as legendary for his sideline blow-ups as he was for his coaching acumen.  Hayes’ career was ended by his infamous punching of a Clemson player (Charlie Bauman) during the 1978 Gator Bowl.  That was just one of many incidents over the course of his career that got just as much attention as his coaching success.  He threw a punch at a sportswriter, tried to fight Iowa head coach Forest Evashevski, and shoved various cameras and cameramen.  So I suppose it isn’t surprising to know that Hayes was revered by a young man who played on Ohio State’s 1960 NCAA basketball national champions (with Jerry Lucas and John Havlicek), a young man named…

…Bobby Knight.  As everyone knows (and has seen), Knight (that’s Coach Knight to you, buddy) is in the middle of controversy again, this time for popping the chin of Texas Tech sophomore Michael Prince.  Prince says everything’s fine, Prince’s parents say everything is fine (publicly, anyway), and Texas Tech Athletic Director (and longtime Knight pal) Gerald Myers says everything is fine.  Ah, but the media…they say everything ain’t fine in West Texas.  Most of the media, that is…including Sports Illustrated’s Seth Davis, who argues the ‘you can’t ever hit a player’ and ‘Knight is a shameless bully’ angle.  Which is truly original, since we’ve NEVER heard that one before.  A much better read on the subject comes (shockingly) from the normally detestable Dan Wetzel.  Wetzel deserves kudos for absolutely killing ESPN and their handling of the Knight coverage, as he points to a glaring double standard.  If you read the column, take note of the fact that ABC/ESPN producers did not use a F-bomb-laden interview with a highly irritated Lloyd Carr, yet consistently ran and re-ran the Knight footage.  Wetzel doesn’t defend Knight, and maybe Knight doesn’t deserve defending, but he does a fine job of taking ESPN out to the woodshed.  That alone is worth the time it takes to read the column.

As a matter of full disclosure, I love Bobby Knight.  I think he is the finest college basketball coach of all time, and I believe that it is fitting that he will soon pass Dean Smith for the mark as the leading winner in men’s NCAA Division I history.  And while I don’t agree with everything he has ever done or all of his coaching tactics, I certainly understand them and the time from which they come.

My first high school basketball coach played for Knight at Indiana.  Let’s just say that the man was VERY influenced by his time in Bloomington.  Playing for him was a very difficult thing to do.  He was highly demanding, and he was even more intimidating.  He was, like Knight, a big man with a physical presence that backed up his tough demeanor.  On more than one occasion I was sent to the scorer’s table almost airborne, flung by my jersey as if I was child’s doll.  I was berated, cussed, and broken down verbally on countless occasions.  He once spent a timeout with thirty seconds left in the game, with our team trailing by 24 points, just to humiliate me as he screamed at me alone on the floor (he had sent my teammates to the bench) in front of five thousand people for giving up a dunk by not trying to take a charge on the opposing team’s 6′7″ center.  To be honest, I would have rather he hit me in the mouth.

But you know what?  He never had to tell me to take a charge again.  He taught me to play defense.  He made me box out.  He made me take care of the basketball.  He added a ton of skills and toughness to the one thing I could already do (shoot the basketball).  He taught me how to study film.  He laid the foundation for everything I know about the game of basketball.  He made me a better player and he made me a better person.  Behind closed doors, he always put back together the pieces he had broken apart in front of everyone.  He explained that if he ever stopped being hard on me it would be an indication that he no longer believed that I could be a contributor.  He always managed to remind me that I was a good player, just not good enough yet.  And he always made it clear that he wasn’t attacking a person, he was building a basketball player.

So it is with Bob Knight.  Bob Knight’s greatest transgression is probably a failure to change with the times.  Saying that isn’t meant to exonerate him of wrongdoing in matters where he truly made a mistake.  But popping a kid’s chin up to get his attention or grabbing him by the jersey isn’t the same as choking somebody or puching someone.  Many of Knight’s critics deride him for the ways in which he attempts to instill discipline, hooting that it seems hypocritical that he bullies and has no self-discipline.  Maybe that is true, and maybe it isn’t, but for my money, Knight has always attempted to teach TOUGHNESS, and the style he employs has always meant to challenge players and winnow the weak from the strong.  Almost without fail, those players that have been able to handle Knight’s personality have gone on to be successful, as either basketball players or members of the professional world.  They are truly battle-tested, and yes, they are disciplined.  Just ask Jarrious Jackson, Tech’s leading returning scorer, who was booted off the team until he got his grades back in order.

Bob Knight has always worked hard to run his program in an ethically-sound way.  He has always worked hard to help his players, whether it be in basketball or getting into graduate schools (because they do graduate) or in getting jobs.  He’s no saint, but he isn’t pure evil, either.  He’s just a very talented, very flawed human being.  And like all of us, he deserves to be graded for his entire body of work, not just his mistakes.

If I say ‘Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’, does that make you yearn for the days of Tip O’Neill?

Our good friend Sammy was back on the comments board yesterday, and he wondered aloud if the never-ending screech of campaign advertising had turned off the American electorate (on almost every level) or if we had simply reached an all-time low for apathetic voting behavior.  He also pointed out that you can make the argument that a mere 25% of the eligible electorate ends up setting the course of the nation.  And that’s a bit shocking, isn’t it?

I would definitely agree that campaign advertising…most of which ends up being negative…has reached critical mass in terms of overkill.  For those of us in the four-state area of Kentucky-Illinois-Missouri-Tennessee, one more Claire McCaskill or Rod Blagojevich ad would have been enough to push us beyond sanity.  An increasingly disturbing trend is the presence of party ads, as the Democrats and Republicans inject themselves as a party into these races.  As if it wasn’t bad enough to have to listen to candidates bash each other’s heads in, now the parties want to join the fray.  Enough is enough, especially when none of the candidates are willing to campaign on their own strengths.  It is a sad commentary on the state of American politics when we are forced to choose between the lesser of two evils, and it is a practice that has no doubt turned some potential voters off from the process altogether.

Based on some early numbers from yesterday’s election turnout, however, I would say that we are not quite as apathetic and turned off as we sometimes appear.  Galvanizing Senate races in Ohio and Virginia brought voters out in relative droves, with Ohioans turning out at 44.3 percent (unofficially), up from 38.4 percent in the 2002 mid-terms.  The numbers were even more striking in Virginia, where 43.7 percent of eligible voters hit the polls, compared to 29.2 percent in ‘02.  Early overall numbers had the national number at slightly over 40 percent, which was nearly indentical to the 39.7 percent turnout in 2002.  While the improvement might not seem significant, the final numbers (certain to be aided a bit with numbers from California and Washington are tallied) from the 2006 election could approach the highest mid-term turnout in recent years, 42.1 percent in 1982.

Unfortunately for my aforementioned Republican pals, Democrats got to the polls at a higher rate than Republicans this time around, outpolling the Republicans for the first time since 1990.  So somebody decided to care more this time around, and the question here is the same as in the title:  Are you OK with that?  It’s a fair question to ask, because frankly, I doubt that everyone is OK with the results of yesterday’s races.  It would be nice if we could all be noble and say that we just want the process to work properly and for democracy to soldier on.  The truth, however, is that many of us are only fans of the process when the party of our choice ends up in power…

The real problem with voter apathy, as I see it, is that our representative form of government makes the common man feel as though they are actually powerless to set the course of the nation.  Sammy suggested that 25% or less of us are setting the course of the nation; I would say the number is signficantly less, along the lines of say, less than 1%.  It is those that we choose to represent us that set the course of the nation, and it is only every two, four, and six years that we have an opportunity to weigh in and change that direction, a direction that we can only change gradually, by a few degrees at a time.  And here is a sad reality: Until we all begin to do a better job, a more diligent job, in educating ourselves as an electorate, you could make the argument that few of us deserve the right to set the course of the nation.

Voting is truly a privilege, and it isn’t one that should be taken lightly or for granted.  The reason that this country needs representative government (along with the fact that pure democracy would be a bit unwieldy, to say the least) is that decision-makers must be well-educated on every issue that comes before them.  We, the electorate, certainly are not.  We rarely know what either party stands for, much less the revolving door of candidates that come before us.  We vote based on ridiculous rationale, things like party affiliation, ‘he’s not as bad as the other guy’, and ‘he has nice hair’.  I don’t mean to say that every voter goes to the polls ignorant of the important issues to be decided within, but most do.  When that’s the case, we might be better off if they had stayed home…

How to change it?  I don’t know.  For starters, we could turn the major news networks off and dig out some information for ourselves.  Read party platforms.  Research issues and candidates.  And here’s a novel idea.  We could change the way in which we look at elections.  Instead of rating their importance based on NATIONAL issues and candidates, we rate them based on LOCAL issues and candidates.  The fact of the matter is, most of us will find our everyday lives changed more by what is going on in our own backyard, as opposed to the grinding of the gears inside the Beltway.  If we can learn to take care of our own business at home, business which is not disturbed in the least by whatever Tim Russert or Katie Couric or Bill O’Reilly thinks, we might eventually be able to go to the polls as an informed and intelligent electorate.

Because if we are going to stay stupid, we might as well stay home…

As a postscript to my buddies who may still be gritting their teeth after a big day for the Democrats, feel free to vent on the comments board.  That’s what it’s there for…

All the commentary is just a bit premature, however, as Hussein has the right to appeal to a nine-judge panel that can take an unlimited amount of time to decide whether or not he should indeed be put to death.  If the panel does uphold the death sentence, Hussein would have to be hanged within 30 days.  So if you’re scoring at home, that’s forever plus 30 days and counting for ol’ Saddam…

The common complaints about Saddam’s sentence range from the usual (the death penalty is cruel and unusual), to the political (this is merely a Bush administration-engineered attempt to garner mid-term votes), and to the strangely ironic (the Vatican said it was a throwback to eye-for-an eye vengeance).  What, they don’t have a copy of the Old Testament anywhere in Vatican City?  There are also those that say Saddam should be held accountable for more of his crimes, which would be fine if the Iraqi justice system had seemed capable of trying him the first time around.  This is why when you find a despicable, murderous tyrant hiding in a hole you put a bullet in him and cover up the hole.  They just aren’t worth the headache…

The sad thing is this…as justice is hopefully close to finding Saddam Hussein, the validity of that justice will be held in question because it was George W. Bush’s invasion that led to Hussein’s removal as dictator and to the capture that placed him in front of an Iraqi court.  And while it is fair to question whether or not the United States should have invaded Iraq, to suggest that the Hussein case has been a miscarriage of justice is ridiculous.  The country of Iraq may or may not be better off without Hussein in power, but this much is certain:  Saddam Hussein is a legendary figure in the annals of tyranny, torture, and murder.  And that legend was well-earned.  If and when Hussein finds himself swinging at the end of the noose, the only question should be this:  Did he deserve worse?

I mentioned my old colleague, Darth Reagan, earlier, and I hope Darth stops by today, because I’m getting around to one of his favorite people, Bill Maher.  Maher, host of HBO’s ‘Real Time with Bill Maher’, is a hard-core left-winger for those of you not familiar with his work.  A comedian and comedic writer by trade, Maher has also dabbled as an actor and producer, and prior to ‘Real Time’ he hosted ‘Politically Incorrect’.  His shtick is pretty much right over the top…he bashes all things Conservative and Republican, most notably George W. Bush.  To be fair, Maher also sticks to his fellow Liberals and Democrats when they don’t get the job done, but mostly he’s going to spend his time killing the Conservative Right.  The mere mention of his name brings Darth’s Conservative blood to a boil, but I have mostly been amused by Maher and his format.

You can see him coming from miles away; he is as subtle on the left as Rush Limbaugh is on the right.  He sets his stage just the same way every Friday night…a prominent Hollywood liberal or two (think Alec Baldwin or Ben Affleck), a well-educated liberal from journalism or academia (like professor and author Michael Eric Dyson), and at least one conservative journalist or member of Congress (maybe say, Ann Coulter).  The presence of the Conservative point of view is meant to say that, hey, this is fair…when in fact the Conservative is merely fodder for the Liberal buzzsaw Maher is about to crank up.  It has never really bothered me, because Maher is funny and he is (believe it or not, Darth) sometimes even insightful.  And it isn’t like he’s trying to sell himself as a non-partisan expert.  So where’s the harm?

Well…that thought didn’t stop him from getting my ire up this week.  Maher was apparently upset that the Bush administration and other Republicans had politicized John Kerry’s so-called ‘botched joke’, a joke that had basically categorized every member of our Armed Forces as academic failures.  Maher was also furious that Democrats had pulled away from Kerry on the campaign trail and that some members of the party had criticized him for his statements (including Hillary Clinton).  Maher then went on to compare Kerry’s comments with some of Bush’s finest malaprops, those brutally painful moments when the President mangles the English language.

It isn’t the same thing, Billy.  You can act like it’s unfair to criticize Kerry for his ‘mistake’ and allow Bush to get away with his linguistic errors all you want, but that is absolutely nuts.  The President has a tendency to use the wrong word; that has nothing to do with his intent.  Kerry used the wrong word, too, but his intention was as clear as day.  His joke wasn’t botched; it was inappropriate.  To suggest that the men and women serving our country in Iraq where there because they had failed academically was ridiculously stupid to think, much less to joke about.  I’m not sure what is worse…the fact that Kerry thinks the harsh criticism is unfair because he mishandled the ‘joke’, or that he isn’t smart enough to realize that even if his intent was to attack the President, using the men and women serving in our military as part of a joke is completely disrespectful.  He was wrong, and a simple apology the day of the comments would have been fine.  Kerry probably didn’t even write the line meant to draw a few laughs in a pro-Democrat audience; it was probably composed by a staff member.  But they came out of his mouth, and he is accountable.  Saying he was sorry would have been the right thing to do, and Bill Maher should know that as well as John Kerry…

Finally, since Maher makes his living writing POLITICAL humor, he should know that in the arena, everything is fair game.  Maher turns every single thing George Bush, Republicans, and Christians do into political humor…whether it is appropriate or not.  When a Republican makes a ridiculous comment (see Allen, George, Senator from Virigina), Democrats are going to make political hay out of it.  The same is true in reverse, as John Kerry can now tell you.  The way any and everything can become a political football might not be right and it may not be fair.  But politics, like life, is a far cry from fair.  Sorry, Mr. Maher…

Seriously though…I read a few different articles and columns wondering if John Kerry’s ‘botched joke’ in which he appeared to be suggesting that every member of our Armed Forces were academic failures would have significant impact on election day next week.  The idea that it could (and I am sure it would) is absolutely insane.  The same is true concerning the Mark Foley scandal, Rush Limbaugh’s cruel and insulting remarks directed at Michael J. Fox, and any other random act of stupidity committed by a Republican or Democrat.  The point is, while I don’t like John Kerry, why should a voter going to their local polling place change their vote because Kerry’s a jackass?  If you live somewhere in New Mexico, why would you let Rush Limbaugh’s buffoonery (the criticism he leveled at Fox, who has Parkinson’s Disease, accusing him of faking or playing up his Parkinson’s symptoms in ads for various stem cell initiatives and the Democratic candidates who support them across the country was both cowardly and ignorant) effect who you would choose to represent YOU in Washington?  Limbaugh may be a leading Conservative voice, but he doesn’t speak for the Republicans in your state or local elections.  He probably couldn’t even speak for Republicans running for office on a national level.  The same is true for Kerry and Democrats around the country.  John Kerry has one agenda: his own.  The Democrat running for a seat on Capitol Hill from your state may be a jackass, too…but you should decide that on his or her merits; not on John Kerry’s.  And Republicans should not be held accountable because of the Foley debacle in Florida.  That was one man’s problem, not the wrongdoing of an entire party or ideology.

But if you are looking for a reason not to vote for either party (Go Bull Moose!), here’s a doozy:  They both think we, the American electorate, are incredibly stupid.  How do I know?  You got electricity in your house?  Because if you do, you are seeing the typical negative attack ads that you always see down the homestretch during election season.  Why not vote for me?  The other guy is an idiot.  I couldn’t tell you one single positive thing about me, but hey, I’m better than that guy.  That’s the bill of goods we are sold every single campaign season.  Democrats can tell you that Republicans have made a mess in Iraq.  Republicans can tell you that Democrats are soft on terror.  Democrats can tell you that Republicans only take care of the rich.  Republicans can tell you that Democrats just want to raise your taxes.  Aarrgh!!!

If that’s all you got, guys and gals, why would we send any of you to Congress?  It was good enough for Richard Pryor in Brewster’s Millions, so it’s good enough for me…On Tuesday folks, vote early and often…for None of the Above.

Tiki Barber’s impending retirement was the jumping off point for Teddy’s email, and he wondered if I had seen Barber’s zinger at Michael Irvin, who had criticized Barber’s decision to retire at season’s end after ten campaigns in the NFL.  On Monday, Irvin said, “To me, in my head, that’s quitting.”  On his Sirius Satellite Radio show Tuesday, Barber blasted critics of his retirement announcement, a group that included New York Daily News columnist Gary Myers, ESPN’s Tom Jackson, and of course, Irvin.  Myers and Jackson had suggested that Barber was a distraction to the Giants, although somebody should tell the Giants that, as they are now winners of three straight and leaders of the NFC East.  Barber referred to the group as idiots, and targeted Irvin specifically by referring to him as, “the ultimate character guy, facetiously speaking, Michael Irvin.”  Barber added, “Please get a clue on how to be a journalist.”

Ouch.  And Michael Irvin, character guy…now that has to be said facetiously, doesn’t it.  The former drug addict, leader of the pimp-suit revolution, and still-active loudmouth has little business calling anyone, much less a true professional like Barber, a quitter.  I will happily give Irvin his due, as he reportedly worked as hard at his craft as anyone in football.  His achievements on the field should overshadow his transgressions off of it; he deserves a spot in Canton.  Calling Barber, who leads the NFL in rushing with 647 yards, a quitter is ridiculous however, especially since Irvin knows better than anyone that you don’t always get to walk off the playing fields in the NFL.  It was October 10, 1999 when Irvin had to be carried off the Veterans Stadium turf in Philadelphia because of a spinal injury, and it was a spinal condition that kept him from pulling the star-clad helmet on ever again.  Irvin spoke eloquently about how lucky he felt to still have the full function of his physical faculties after the frightening injury in Philly, and he should now simply celebrate Barber’s outstanding career, salute his decision to retire, and wish him well in the future.

Teddy asked me if I was surprised that ESPN aired Barber’s criticisms of their employees.  I was not surprised, because ESPN has been killed by critics in the past when they failed to address controversial issues that involved their employees.  When Irvin was stopped and found to have drug paraphernalia in his car last year, ESPN was roundly criticized for lagging on the story and failing to suspend Irvin immediately after the incident.  Irvin claimed that the contraband in his vehicle was not his, but rather that of a friend just out of rehab.  He would return back to work relatively unscathed in the public eye, but ESPN’s eyes got blacked by their handling of the situation.  They seem to have learned their lesson, and it appears that they realize that with every other news outlet reporting Barber’s criticisms, they would be creating a bigger story by failing to report criticism of their network or its employees.

Teddy also wanted to know what I thought about ESPN’s utilization of Dusty Baker on their Baseball Tonight playoff coverage, given that the recently deposed Cub manager would be commenting on the hiring of his replacement, Lou Piniella, as well as the man who will be moving into his old office in San Francisco, former Padres skipper Bruce Bochy.  The situation is a bit dicey of course, and the conflict of interest is obvious, but this is one area where I would temper criticism of ESPN.  Insight like Baker’s is priceless and passing on the opportunity to employ him simply because there might be some uncomfortable moments would be foolish.  No network can employ ‘expert’ analysts without running into these scenarios.  It is no different than Lou Holtz being forced to talk about his replacement at South Carolina, Steve Spurrier, or asking Bob Davie to talk about his (and Holtz’s) former employer, Notre Dame.  Kirk Herbstreit played at Ohio State, Lee Corso at Florida State (and coached Louisville, among others), Todd Blackledge at Penn State.  Steve Phillips is a former general manager of the New York Mets, and Piniella himself worked for Fox while being a candidate for several jobs that were open across baseball, as well as one that wasn’t (hellooo, Joe Torre).  There are always going to be situations that require professionalism from the analysts, and tackling the issue with full disclosure is the best way to move forward.  In Baker’s case, everyone knows he was just sent packing (or politely put, not renewed) as manager of the Cubs.  But he is a professional baseball man, and he realizes that it would not be in the best interests of either his managerial career or his fledgling broadcast career to take shots at the Cubs or Piniella.  The occasional conflicts are a small price to pay for top-flight analysis from men (and women) who have been there, done that.

And yes…defending ESPN was very painful.  Thanks, Teddy…

Eckstein is easily derided for his jockey-esque size and his pop-gun power, but the man plays the game of baseball the way it should be played.  When you watch Eckstein play the game, you know you are seeing a man who would play for nothing other than the sheer joy of playing baseball.  He does all the ‘little’ things well…he bunts, he moves runners, he runs everything out, he makes all the routine plays…and his style is reminiscent of the players of days gone by.  Eckstein is easily forgotten and underappreciated in an era where shortstops are routinely offensive forces, but if he were playing in say, the 1940’s or 50’s, Eckstein might have ranked in the esteemed company of legends like Phil Rizzuto and Pee Wee Reese.  Rizzuto and Reese were not dominant offensive players along the lines of a Miguel Tejada, Derek Jeter, or pre-Yankee Alex Rodriguez.  But they were men, like Eckstein, who did all of the little things that championship-caliber players do, and they were capable of rising to heroic levels when the situation required it.  Just like David Eckstein did with his game-winning hit (one of four on the evening) on Thursday night.

I’m sure it wasn’t lost on Eckstein (or Tiger manager Jim Leyland) that the only reason his eighth inning double fell for a hit was because left fielder Craig Monroe was playing shallow enough to shake hands with shortstop Carlos Guillen.  And while it’s true that the Tiger outfield’s impersonation of cows on ice (plus Fernando Rodney’s chuck down the right field line) certainly aided the Cardinal cause (how many of you Cardinal fans of a certain age thought of Curt Flood’s costly stumble in Game Seven of the ‘68 Series when Curtis Granderson fell down?), nothing could have been more appropriate than Eckstein coming up with the winning base knock because one more person had underestimated him.  Sometimes, as David Eckstein can tell you, having somebody doubt you can sometimes be a very good thing.

As for the fact that he is facing his 34th birthday, well, cheer up big fella…the Viagra is in the mail (and you know what you can do with it…).

So I’m guessing that anybody who watched the NLCS did hear something (around six times a night, perhaps?) about Rolen not speaking to LaRussa after LaRussa failed to inform him personally that the banged-up and struggling third-sacker was out of the lineup for Game 2.  Now maybe that was news for say, Game 2, and maybe even for Game 3.  But after that, who cares?  LaRussa disgusts me; I’d like to punch him in his smug face most of the time.  But the man is a great (micro) manager, and he was doing the smart thing when he sat Rolen for a left-hand bat (Scott Spiezio, the hero of Game 2) against John Maine.  The Cards were scuffling offensively, having been shut out by Tom Glavine in Game1, and Rolen’s physical struggles at the plate have been obvious.  I certainly understand Rolen’s frustration at being out of the lineup, and I agree that LaRussa should have called him in the office and told him about the change before posting the lineup.  Rolen is a terrific player and a stand-up guy; he deserved that respect from his manager.  But Rolen certainly doesn’t do himself any favors by acting like a ten-year old and giving LaRussa the silent treatment.  Rolen has always been a bit of a strange fellow, and his placid demeanor never played all that well in Philadelphia, where he clashed with the constant red-ass of Larry Bowa.  I would guess Rolen didn’t speak to him all that much, either.  Ultimately, though, who cares?  Managers manage, players play.  Half the guys in the clubhouse probably aren’t speaking to each other at one time or another over the course of a six-month season.  Telling us that Rolen had a problem with LaRussa was relevant for a couple of days, no longer.

So what does Myers do when he catches up with Rolen as he tries to celebrate with his teammates on the field after the game?  Here’s what transpired, brought to you by the High Court community’s own Teddy Baseball (with Teddy’s editorial comments included…)

Congrats Cards!  You just surived a tough seven game series and are going to Detroit.  Let’s talk to Scott Rolen. Yeah, Scott, it was a tumultuous year for you and team, yada, yada.  How does it feel?

It was really distasteful, Theodore.  But as you noted, that’s par for the course these days.  I call it Jim Gray Syndrome, since Gray seems to be the Godfather of ‘Watch Me Ruin This Very Special Moment’ and ‘Let Me Twist The Knife’ post-game questions.  The most famous (or infamous) of these episodes unfolded at the 1999 World Series, when Gray grilled Pete Rose after his inclusion to the All-Century Team.  Gray acted like a prosecutorial bulldog, trying to get Rose to admit to betting on baseball, on a night in which the man was being honored for his stellar career.  Yes, Rose was as guilty as the day is long, and yes, Rose is an utter buffoon, but it wasn’t the time or the place.  But limited talents like Gray receive critical praise for their “hard-core journalism” when they pull crap like that, and as a result you have all of these copycats who want to wring some scoop out of a captive interview subject.  I say now, as I did in 1999, that these types of interviews won’t stop until one of these idiots (and I’m still hoping its Gray) gets his ass kicked.

I would agree with critics that the bill isn’t perfect, but I do believe it is very necessary.  I’ll address the concerns of the ACLU and take issue with the argument offered on the Senate floor by Mrs. Clinton in late September in today’s column, and I will suggest that to truly have liberty, we must have safety first.  You can read Senator Clinton’s full remarks from September 28 right here…

But getting back to the fact that we have a strong Conservative and Republican base here…you have seen us do quite a bit of work in recent months on the national political landscape, as well as how the presence of a motivated Christian electorate has influenced that landscape.  Almost all of our work has looked at the scenario from a Conservative point of view, and we have raised the issue (as have many across the country) of whether or not Democrats and Christians are operating out of the same book, much less being on the same page.  And the question stands…Have Liberals hijacked the Democratic Party to the extent that Christians can no longer relate to anyone calling themselves Democrat?

I have a long-time friend who says no.  I first met David Ramey nearly 20 years ago when he began covering local sports for the Murray Ledger&Times, and it was his fortune (who can say if it was good or bad but the man himself) to cover a local hothead shortstop/pitcher/shooting guard named Travis Turner.  We called him Scoop back then, and David always treated us with great respect and provided us with great coverage.  Lo these many years later, Travis Turner is The Chief Justice and David Ramey is now the Democratic Party Chairman for Calloway County (KY), a candidate for the Murray, KY city council, and a man of strong Christian faith who worships with his family at Memorial Baptist Church.  And although it holds no relevance to today’s discussion, David is also an agent for Allstate Insurance, where you can reach him for all of your insurance needs at davidramey@allstate.com (Dave, we can discuss how much that plug will cost you later…).

I prevailed upon my friend to offer us his perspective on several issues as they relate to the Democratic Party, Christians, and politics on every level.  David took a great deal of time out of his very busy schedule to offer us very thoughtful and very profound answers on every question posed to him.  Because his work is so thorough, I have done something unusual…keeping my big mouth out of it.  What you will find is my questions and his answers, with no further commentary from me.  I hope that all of our readers will take the time to show David that you have read his thoughts, not by clogging his email with non-business related correspondence, but by logging onto our comment board to discuss and debate the topics at hand.  I will offer David the opportunity to respond to anything on the comment board if he likes, and I will also keep him up to speed on any email we receive on the subject (which should be sent to me at chiefjustice@thehighcourtofsports.com).  I hope that we will have the sort of lively and informed discussion/debate that these issues deserve.  And without further adieu, here’s my interview with David Ramey…

And buckle up for the beginning of next week, when I sit down to interview a…GASP!!!…DEMOCRAT!!!  That’s right, folks, right here on the pages of The High Court we will have a real life Democrat on display.  I have to warn you…this man is thoughtful, profound, and prepared…and I have no doubt that some of his answers will get the attention of many of the serious Conservatives on our staff and in our audience.  You can look for the interview to be posted by Monday or Tuesday next week…

“While I am aware that ESPN is to be watched only for highlights and scores, I have been flipping it on quite frequently of late and getting the same old crap force-fed to me.  T.O this, T.O. that.  I mean honestly, who cares? (And I am a diehard Cowboys fan).  The big news has been of course the Yankees failures this postseason.  As I watch I am flooded with conjecture about Joe Torre and A-Rod’s future and their blame for this “collapse.”  I understand that A-Rod is being paid far more than any human being should be to play a game.  I also know, however, that he is still one of the best ball players to ever put on cleats.  Yes, his playoff record (with Yankees at least) has been sub-par and disappointing.  But let’s be honest, did A-Rod and Torre lose the series or did the New York Yankees lose the series?  Which team has had the better starting pitching all year?  What team shut down the Yankees high-powered offense?  The truth is this: the team that had the best record in baseball for most of the season played better than the perennial playoff team–the Yankees.  Aside from Jeter and Posada, the rest of the Yankees team looked as if they were just flailing their arms out there unable to match the intensity of the younger Tigers team.  The Tigers looked great.  Randy Johnson and many of the other Yankees were taking injections just so they could go out there.  Furthermore, the Bronx Bombers have not had the team that was fielded last week together for most of the year.  What is the big surprise here?  The Yankees were not challenged all year and Detroit played against the Twins and White Sox in the toughest division.  But all that has been left out.  I am sure there are still many teams that would love to have last season’s  AL MVP playing short or third for them or have a future Hall of Fame manager at the helm.  Chief Justice, surely I am not alone in my sentiments.”

That comes from one of the newest members of our High Court community, a fellow you will come to know on the comment board as Teddy Ballgame.  I can only imagine how pissed off Teddy is today, after having to watch Satan’s Sports Network broadcast updates every fifteen minutes on whether or not Steinbrenner had fired Joe Torre yet.  What’s next?  Details on his last trip to the crapper?  Please.  And by the way, Teddy, ESPN is for watching GAMES…and nothing else.

Anyhoo, let’s get to the questions at hand.  I made my debut as a local high school football analyst (we’ll use that term loosely) on Friday as a favor to one of The Court’s most loyal readers, Harold Huston.  On that broadcast he asked me if A-Rod deserves the treatment he gets in New York, and my answer was….yes.  If you asked me if I thought he was treated fairly, I would say no.  But here’s why he deserves what he gets…He asked for it.  He could still be tucked away in the peaceful tranquility of the Pacific Northwest.  He could still be in the oppresive heat of Texas, hiding in the shadows of football (and by now he would be invisible there thanks to the spectacle known as Big Top T.O.).  But he chose to leave the comfort of Seattle for the megabucks of Tom Hicks, and when that situation wasn’t good enough for him, he gladly joined the ranks of the Pinstripers.  And hey, it could be worse.  The trade to Boston could have gone through.  He’d have been playing through tears for the past four months…

As I mentioned, the way he is treated isn’t fair.  He is a tremendous player, one of the three best all-around players I have ever seen (Bonds, Griffey) in a baseball uniform, and there is little doubt that he is one of the top fifteen or twenty players of all-time.  Right now.  At 31.  So he’s pretty damn good, even when he struggles.  But the big stage swallows up lots of guys, for no good reason at all, and Rodriguez certainly isn’t the first Yankee to be eaten alive by the Big Apple.  Things got so bad for Ed Whitson (a very serviceable starter) once upon a time that Billy Martin could only pitch him on the road.  And Whitson wasn’t rich, or pretty, or biracial.  He just sucked at Yankee Stadium.  Did he deserve to be booed out of the Bronx?  Probably not, but it has long been the law of the jungle, excuse me, zoo in the Bronx…

My point is, A-Rod chose his fate.  He took the money.  I don’t care how much money he makes; but we know that lots of people do.  I know that the guy standing next to him on the Yankee infield has a contract for $199 million, and I don’t care how big a winner Derek Jeter is, that’s a lot of cash.  Rodriguez is surrounded by men making extravagant sums of money on the Yankees, and other than Jeter, you would be hard-pressed to make the case that any of them earn their money as well as Rodriguez does.  He shows up for work every day.  He plays hard.  And he plays well.  His greatest problem, aside from his postseason failures, is the fact that he won’t tell New York to shove it up their ass.  That would be something they could understand.  He’d be speaking their language.  And he would get their respect.  But instead, he gives another canned answer, maybe something with a forced curse word (so that he sounds angry and tough).  Never, ever will he allow raw emotion to flow.  So he comes off as a coolly robotic figure…a figure almost impossible for Yankee fans to embrace.

All that said, were either Rodriguez or manager Joe Torre responsible for the Yankees’ loss to Detroit?  Solely, no.  As contributing forces, of course.  As Teddy noted, plenty of Yankees stunk.  Stand up, Jason Giambi.  You too, Gary Sheffield.  Johnny Damon, where was the spark?  Randy Johnson gave a game effort, but he was so stiff that it seemed as though he was mistakenly injected with Botox.  Jaret Wright…wait a minute, Jaret Wright started a game?  Ok, then…Brian Cashman, you stand up, too.  Nice rotation.  But we have to face facts.  If we are going to sit here and say that A-Rod is an all-time great, it is perfectly acceptable to expect a fantastic performance from him.  While Giambi and Sheffield can be held to high standards, nobody considers them in the same class as Rodriguez.  He is supposed to be great when it matters most.  If he can’t do that, the fact that he is a two-time MVP rings a little false.  He has proven to be the antithesis of valuable in October.  As for Torre, we know that he is an outstanding manager and an even better guy.  But if we are going to heap praise on him for his four World titles, as if he were disproportionately responsible for those championships, don’t we have to also regard him as being disproportionately responsible for playoff losses?

As we face the likelihood that Torre will be fired in the next few days, let me say that I think the idea is nuts.  Torre has done a wonderful job.  But I should also admit that I completely understand that Steinbrenner might want to fire him, and I understand why.  Steve Phillips went berserk proclaiming how it was crazy to think about firing Torre, and he compared him to Bobby Cox, noting that Cox had won only one World Series in his wildly successful tenure in Atlanta, yet never had to face questions about his job security.  Nice job there, Steve.  Maybe since you once served as GM of the NEW YORK Mets (before being canned), you understand that baseball in Atlanta and baseball in New York have about as much in common as football in Texas and football in Alaska.  Torre knows the situation in the Bronx, and after 11 seasons in the hot seat, I would guess that nothing surprises him anymore.

It is important to remember the point that Teddy made about the make-up of the Yankee lineup against Detroit.  Hideki Matsui missed most of the year, then was right back in there in place of Melky Cabrera.  Gary Sheffield got off the DL very late in the year, and he was promptly given a first basemen’s mitt and patted on the ass for good luck. That worked out really well.  Randy Johnson was run out to the mound when he should have been in traction, and Jaret Wright was sent to the mound when he should have been in…Columbus.  Those are moves that Joe Torre made, with an assist from the team’s architect, Cashman.  So while I don’t believe that Torre deserves blame for the postseason failure, I wouldn’t give him a passing grade on the job he did as manager in the loss to the Tigers.

I hope Torre keeps his job, but what I really wish is that he would go to Steinbrenner and tell him to shove it.  But we all have to remember that the Boss is the guy that owns the team, and to his credit, he ponies up the money to keep his franchise at the top of the game.  That gives him the latitude to employ anybody he wants as his manager.

The biggest question, and the heart of Teddy’s rant, is…why does all this matter so much?  Why aren’t we talking about the Tigers and A’s, two fine teams who clearly deserve to be in the ALCS.  Jim Leyland’s turn around of a franchise that had done nothing but lose for years, is the best story in baseball.  The A’s finally won a postseason series, and their young and talented pitching staff is the envy of many in baseball.  You could make the case that every team in the AL playoffs (and Teddy did), plus one that wasn’t (the White Sox) were better than the Yankees, thanks to one thing…pitching.  I suppose the answer to that question is this…it’s baseball’s greatest soap opera.  Is A-Rod soft?  Will A-Rod cry?  Does Jeter hate A-Rod?  Will George explode?  Will George fire Joe?  Will Joe quit?  Will Sweet Lou come back?  As the Bronx turns.  And while we all seem to get our fill rather quickly, the media just can’t get enough.  It’s not quite Billy, George, and Reggie all over again, but the Bronx Zoo is back in business again.

As for the Bronx Bombed-ers, the one thing that was shocking was the meek way in which they exited October.  One poor at-bat followed another, and the worst of them seemed to occur with runners on base.  Few, if any, adjustments were made in the three consecutive losses, and the representatives of baseball’s most proud franchise went down without a fight.  And it was, as is now usual, headlined by the struggles of Alex Rodriguez.

The 1-14 showing by Rodriguez against Detroit made him 5-46 in the postseason going back to Game 4 (which began the historic collapse) of the 2004 ALCS against Boston.  Rodriguez hit a two-run homer in that loss to the Red Sox…and in the 12 games he has played in October since then, he hasn’t driven in a single run.  We are talking about a career .305 hitter here, a man who at only 31 has already passed the 1,300 RBI mark for his career.  It is a truly perplexing thing.  Is the pressure to succeed in New York that great?  Can A-Rod not bear the pressure applied by New York fans and media?  Should he get a new shrink?  And is he done as a Yankee?

It’s not just the pressure…and it isn’t all in his head.  Most of Rodriguez’s problems are mechanical in nature.  Much was made of the fact that Rodriguez struck out in bunches this year.  But his 139 K’s for the season were exactly the same number of strikeouts he compiled a year ago when he was the AL MVP (although he did it in 33 fewer AB’s this year).  The point is, Rodriguez didn’t swing and miss that much more this year than last, and he only walked one time fewer than in 2005.  His average was down appreciably (to .290 from .321), as were his home run (35 from 48), but he only drove in nine fewer runs (121 from 130) in those 33 fewer at-bats.  Perhaps most glaring was the fact that he hit into 22 inning-killing double plays, 14 more than a year ago.  As you can see, however, the year wasn’t a bad one, at least not for mortal ballplayers.  But again, the problems are in his mechanics at least as much as they are in his mind.

Rodriguez has never been a great contact hitter, a bit surprising for a guy that can handle the bat well when he so chooses.  The only full season of his career that he struck out fewer than 100 times was 1997, and even then he fanned 99 times.  The previous year he had struck out only 104 times, when at the tender age of 20 he won the AL batting title by hitting .358.  During that 1996-1997 stretch, Rodriguez still had a swing that was longer than it was compact (leading to the 100 or so K’s), but it was much shorter than it is now, and he did a much better job of keeping his hands inside the baseball.  As a result, he was more of a gap-to-gap hitter who used the entire field; now he has become almost a dead-pull hitter who tries to hook around the baseball in order to hit the ball to left field.  To illustrate the difference in his approach and his results, the gap-hitting A-Rod had 94 doubles combined in ‘96 and ‘97 (with a career-high 54 in 1996).  Now part of that could be attributed to the spongy turf of the Kingdome, but it had more to do with what he tried to do at the plate.  In those same years he hit a combined 59 home runs.  In 1998, Rodriguez came into his own as a power hitter, cracking a career-high 42 dingers.  That season his homer total exceed his doubles by seven; in the previous two seasons he had hit 18 and 17 more doubles than home runs.  From ‘98 to this day, Rodriguez has never come close to hitting as many doubles as home runs.  In fact, from ‘99 through ‘06, A-Rod has 358 round-trippers and only 229 doubles.  There is, of course, absolutely nothing wrong with the home run totals, but the disparity shows us how much more Rodriguez has tried to hit the ball out of the park, and it has manifested itself in lower averages and higher strikeout totals.  This has happened as A-Rod learned to be a more selective hitter, watching his walk totals increase from 41 in 1997 to 91 and 90 the past two years.  It would appear that his eye and patience are better, but again, his stroke most certainly is not.

Because of the length of his swing (and the casting of his hands outside the ball), Rodriguez must begin his swing earlier than players with a more compact stroke, and he is therefore easier to fool with off-speed offerings.  It also makes it nearly impossible to get around on elite fastballs, and Rodriguez’s Game Two at-bat against Zumaya was proof of that.  Rodriguez has simply gotten away from the things that made him a tremendous hitter earlier in his career, and he is now merely a dangerous hitter now.  The difference is much greater than it sounds, and it provides tangible results when the quality of pitching a hitter faces steps up.

Rodriguez is often discussed along with Albert Pujols as the games best player.  Pujols, it is worth noting, struck out only 50 times while hitting 49 homers.  That is amazing, of course, but it provides evidence of how much better Pujols is than Rodriguez as a hitter.  Pujols has a much shorter swing, and despite his prodigious power numbers, Pujols still does a tremendous job of keeping his hands inside the baseball and remains a gap-to-gap hitter who excels at using the entire field.  This is reflected in his career numbers.  Until last year, Pujols had never hit more home runs than doubles in a season.  And despite having 16 more home runs than doubles this year (as he became more of a pure home run hitter attempting to carry a weakened Cardinal offense), Pujols still has 10 more doubles (260 to 250) than homers in his career.  More importantly, Mr. Pujols has never fanned more than 93 times (and that as a rookie), and he hasn’t K’d more than 69 times in a campaign since.  He is a much better hitter than Rodriguez, and his playoff success backs that up.  As Rodriguez has struggled mightily, Pujols has hit nearly .340 in October.

I’m not going tell you that a lot of his trouble doesn’t exist in A-Rod’s head.  It does.  This is the same guy who once hit .409 AGAINST the Yankees in an ALCS.  He is clearly burdened by expectations, and he clearly struggles with his own failures.  You can see the angst in his face, and you know that he knows the numbers on his struggles as well as I do.  Therein lies part of his problem.  Truly great players don’t have any idea what the numbers are…if they are negative.  Michael Jordan said many times that he had missed many more game-winners than he had made…but he didn’t give them much thought.  He only thought about those that went in, and the visual picture in his head was of success.  That’s why he was able to replicate them so many times when it mattered most.

Rodriguez is a truly great talent, one of the finest ever to play the game.  But it is the mechanical flaws and a poor mental approach at the plate that cause him to struggle against the top-flight pitching he sees in October, not the boos of New Yorkers or any demons rattling around in his head.  If he gets back to being a complete hitter, not just a power hitter, he will suceed.  Somewhere…

I have already told friends I think A-Rod would look nice returning to his native shortstop in the uniform of the St. Louis Cardinals.  A lot of Midwestern love and the presence of Pujols might be just what the doctor ordered.  Maybe the Boss would say yes to David Eckstein and Jason Marquis…and A-Rod could continue his march to 800 homers and 4,000 hits.  I do believe it might be best for Rodriguez to get out of the Big Apple, and I would imagine that Steinbrenner wants that, too.  But I have to wonder…if reports that Joe Torre will be fired and replaced by Lou Piniella…would A-Rod find his mojo if he was reunited with his skipper from his best days as a Seattle Mariner?

Hmm…food for thought.  I’ll be waiting by the phone if you need to talk, George. 

A question was posted about yesterday’s entry (Was Dan Duquette Right?) asking if the fact that the affidavit naming Roger Clemens, Andy Pettitte, Miguel Tejada and three others as users of performance enhancing drugs based on the alleged accusations of Jason Grimsley came from a federal investigation would make this case a bigger powderkeg than charges that Barry Bonds perjured himself in front of a grand jury.  I’ll answer that in a minute, but first I want to get us up to speed on the situation.  A federal prosecutor overseeing an investigation of steroids in baseball stated that a report published by the Los Angeles Times contained ’significant inaccuracies’.  Which figures.  As I said yesterday, the L.A. Times should be ashamed of themselves (but at this point the newspaper is probably no longer capable of shame) for a report that might not have the validity of gossip, especially given the amount of damage that it could do the careers and reputation of the players allegedly accused.  What we know now, is literally nothing, except that somebody should probably sue the L.A. Times.  My guess is the line forms behind the Rocket…

At any rate, assuming the report was true, and assuming that Grimsley’s accusations were true, this story could potentially be a bigger powderkeg than the Bonds situation.  We should note, of course, that Bonds’ case was a federal one, too; his perjury charges were for lying to a FEDERAL grand jury.  So it’s feds all around on this one.  In a piece of small world irony, the search warrant affidavit that contains Grimsley’s alleged claims belonged to IRS special agent Jeff Novitzky, the man in charge of the BALCO investigation that put Bonds in front of a federal grand jury to begin with.

As powderkegs go, the BALCO investigation and the grand jury testimony it generated (including Jason Giambi’s admission of intentional steroid use and Bonds’ claims of unintentional use of the ‘cream’ and the ‘clear’) would be hard to top, simply because it was the first real crack in the dam of performance-enhancer use.  Suspicions were finally substantiated, and of course the case made a national pariah out of Bonds.  But if anything could top that, this scenario, if true, certainly would.  Clemens has been a highly controversial figure during his career, but he has sort of turned into baseball’s Grand Old Man, all while pitching at an amazing level.  He is considered by most to be the finest pitcher of the modern era, and if it turned out that he had built the last ten years of his career through artificial means, well, it would be at least as crushing as finding out the man nearing Hank Aaron’s record wasn’t on the up and up.  Pettitte is a guy that has been known as a tremendous role model during his career, and if he was in fact a drug cheat, the hypocrisy of seeing one of baseball’s most public Christians tied to cheating would be enough to choke a horse.  And since the two good friends were teammates of Grimsley’s as Yankees, that would in turn black the eyes of Joe Torre and the most storied baseball franchise in big league history.  Throw in a guilty Tejada, who has been held up as all that is good about baseball in recent years (despite some petulant behavior as the good ship Oriole has continued to sink), and you would have a MLB disaster of Biblical proportions.

And somewhere, Pete Rose would almost feel like a saint…

The rest has been history, as Clemens has piled on Cy Young awards (4), World Series trips (4), World Series titles (2), and wins (156).  The Rocket has appeared ageless, and even in his half-season for the Astros at age 43, Clemens has been outstanding, compiling a 7-6 record (thanks to almost zero offensive support) and a 2.30 ERA, all while holding opposing hitters to a .216 average.  And maybe, in light of reported accusations by former Clemens teammate Jason Grimsley, we can guess what Clemens’ fountain of youth has been.  According to the affidavit of a federal agent, Grimsley (who was pinched in a sting by federal agents on performance-enhancing drug charges) named Clemens and Andy Petttitte (also a Grimsley teammate in New York) and three of his former Oriole teammates, Miguel Tejada (also known as Raffy Palmeiro’s B-12 pimp), Brian Roberts, and Jay Gibbons as users of performance-enhancing drugs.

The entire issue is a mess, to be kind, as we are dealing with another ‘leaked’ document, and we are also dealing with claims that have not been substantiated in any way.  It has been reported that Grimsley has claimed that the feds have attributed statements to him that he did not in fact make, and as far as we know, none of the players in question have failed a MLB drug test.  David Sequi, a retired former Oriole was also included in Grimsley’s alleged accusations, but he had already admitted to using HGH for medical reasons many years ago.  Every current player named in the affidavit has offered vigorous denial of the charge, and on the basis of hard evidence, there is no proof that any of them is guilty of anything.

But where there’s smoke…we do have reason to wonder.  Clemens went from looking out of shape to becoming a workout warrior who continues to undertake legendary training regimens.  Could he have been so chapped from his mid-90’s struggles and his unceremonious departure from Boston that he turned to chemical means to turn back the clock and find his previous level of success?  Perhaps.  Could Pettitte have followed the lead of his mentor, his big brother in baseball?  Perhaps.  Could the persistent elbow problems Pettitte has struggled with in recent years have been caused by performance enhancers?  Perhaps.  Could Tejada’s remarkable production be attributed to something fishy?  Perhaps.  Could the pint-sized Roberts’ power progression of two years ago have been attributed to steroids?  Perhaps.  Could Gibbons, a fringe player whose main asset was his power, have given in to performance enhancers to hang on at the big league level?  Perhaps.

I ask only because if it was good enough for Barry Bonds, it should be good enough for all of these guys.  Bonds was turned on the spit as the dots were connected.  Why did he start?  Either to rehab an elbow injury or because he was jealous of Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa.  Sounds a lot like Roger’s rejuvenation motivation, doesn’t it?  Bonds’ head got bigger.  Have you seen Clemens’ noggin?  That thing should have its own moons in orbit.  Bonds had an elbow injury caused by steroid use.  See Pettitte.  Bonds was performing out of his mind for a man his age.  Cy Young at age 41, Roger?  Bonds has never failed a drug test, either.  But then they don’t have a test for human growth hormone, do they?

The L.A. Times, the paper that put this leaked report in print, should be (but won’t be) ashamed of themselves.  Without any sort of hard evidence or corroboration, this story gets put out there and blacks the reputation of all these men for no good reason.  It will raise (it actually already has) the same kind of questions and conclusions that I have just raised right here.  I hope for everyone’s sake, most of all for baseball’s, these alleged accusations are untrue.  And if they are true, they are.  But we’ll need to see proof of that before we throw Clemens and the rest of the accused under the bus.  They deserve the same fair treatment that Barry Bonds received, at the very least.

Good luck fellas…

Fatherly duties will likely prevent me from posting any new work today, but I hope everybody will be back Monday for what should be an action-packed week.  We should have at least one, if not two, discussions focusing on the role of Christians in the American political landscape, and I also hope to finally get to a column on the saga that unfolded from the death of Pat Tillman.  I promise to write on Cuba next week as well, and I am going to try and entice Darth Reagan into the fray by sending him a new set of questions on Cuba and by giving him an opportunity to comment on Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez.  That should get us caught up on a previously outlined docket, and as always we look forwared to addressing any comments/questions posted or emailed by our readers.

This latest column stems from a comment posted on this board a short time ago, a comment that was actually the text of an email which portrayed Christianity as a superior faith to Islam and suggested that Islam was responsible for directing its followers to kill all non-believers.  Many Americans erroneously believe that Muslims have been directed by their faith to kill us (infidels) to receive passage to Heaven.  And many Americans can’t hear the word ‘Muslim’ without thinking ‘terrorist’.  In today’s column, I will try to dispel that idea, along with suggesting everyone would be better off trying to understand their fellow man, as opposed to buying into perceptions that ultimately prove to be false.

They didn’t just lose it, either…they got destroyed, by what would have been a record margin had it not been for an impressive bit of sportsmanship by Irishman Paul McGinley, who conceded a 25-foot putt to J.J. Henry, allowing their match to be halved.  And it was sportsmanship, camaraderie, and a very special weekend for Darren Clarke that starred at the Ryder Cup.  Golf was just the undercard.  It didn’t really matter that Phil Mickelson stunk so bad that he could have used a tub of Irish Spring, or that he ambled around the golf course in a half-smile while taking his beatings, leaving you with the impression that he could still taste the three dozen Krispy Kremes he had for breakfast.  It didn’t matter that Tiger wasn’t dominant, or that Sergio Garcia was (OK…that’s a damn lie. Watching Tiger dominate is my favorite thing to do, and Garcia makes me want to puke, or at least drive to the PGA event nearest my home and kick his tiny ass.  So I threw lots of things at my TV this weekend…).

What mattered most was how much everyone at the K Club embraced Clarke, a man who had played almost zero competitive golf since the death of his wife, Heather, earlier this summer.  The Irish fans, better than 40,000 strong, serenaded him with song and cheers throughout the three days.  His European teammates rallied around him and seemed to draw strength and inspiration from his marvelous play.  His American counterparts went out of their way to pay their respects and offer their support, including Woods, who is one of Clarke’s best friends.  Watching Clarke soak in the love, support, and appreciation from everyone around him was a wonderful thing, and it was a reminder of the very best things about humanity.  It also provided a glimpse of the more human side of elite athletes, who despite their fame and money, are still very much subject to the pain and suffering of life.

Tom Lehman will no doubt suffer the same kinds of criticism as his predecessor, Hal Sutton, but I will only remember Lehman’s effort as first-class.  Lehman is one of sport’s truly good men, the sort of fellow you would be proud to root for and proud to call friend.  He was supportive of his players, and he was very gracious in defeat.  I was never a good loser, not at anything, and while I am proud of the competitive fire that made that the case, I watched in admiration as the Americans paid due respect to the Europeans…not offering excuses, not failing to give proper credit, and never acting anything less than professional.  Watching the way they handled themselves amidst crushing defeat made me wish that I had done a better job of handling failure as an athlete, and I came away thinking that while many in this country would be very disappointed in the result, I would be nothing but proud of the team that compiled it.

I also came away with admiration for the terrific European team, not only for the tremendous brand of golf they played, but also for the manner in which they played it.  The Euros attacked the competition with a great zeal, an unyielding passion, and they seemed to lift Clarke, just as he lifted them.  And despite the constant annoyance that is Garcia, they treated their opponents with respect, even as they thrashed them beneath their spikes.  It was a wonderful display of team, right smack in the middle of one of our most individual of sports.  It just might have been, as SI.com’s Gary Van Sickle said, the best Ryder Cup ever.

“Hey, something that I would like to read your take on,is…How does # 2 Notre Dame play in a hostile environment against a good Georgia Tech team, get the victory, and drop 2 spots?   #1 Ohio State plays Northern Illinois in Columbus, naturally kills them and maintains their position.  But my biggest issue is with the fact that Texas jumps past Notre Dame by beat ing North Texas in Austin.  Is that a region or a University?  Rankings are ridiculous…What is your take?”

Well, my initial take is that our reader was in a coma for about ten days, since the outrage over the polls following week one action comes a little late (I received the comment last Thursday).  But comatose or not, he is right on the money.  Rankings, especially those that begin with a pre-season ranking BEFORE ONE SINGLE GAME HAS BEEN PLAYED, are ridiculous.  But chalk it up to human nature.  We love to make lists, and we love to talk about polls.  We will list anything, and we almost always put them in order.  Just to give you an example…years ago I had a good friend who had LOTS of success with the ladies.  LOTS.  And of course, we had to rank each and every girl he hooked up with over a two-year period.  From least attractive to passable in the light of day, we ranked every one of them.  It was hardly scientific (and obviously a senseless, immature thing to do) and it meant nothing (nobody got a trophy or anything, although he may have ended up marrying at least one of them…), but we did it anyway.  It’s what we do.

Now what we have learned from hindsight are the following things…Notre Dame might have been a tad overrated.  Or at least it looked that way Saturday when Michigan left town.  Texas was also overrated, but at least we could base their ranking on having finished last year #1 (and as it turns out, North Texas is a university AND a region…who knew?)  Ohio State IS clearly the number one team in the country, if for no other reason than everyone else seems terribly flawed (although Pete Carroll still has enough talent to make the NFL playoffs at USC…and of course Dwayne Jarret’s mom paid for that Lexus herself, silly…).  And Boston College, Virginia Tech, and Miami were wise to get the hell out of the Big East, because West Virginia and Louisville are really, really good.  More on Miami and Louisville in just a sec…

The major flaw in the current poll system is the concept of a pre-season ranking.  Anybody ranked high has an excellent chance to stay there.  Anybody not ranked has a very difficult climb to the top.  When those pre-season rankings are decided by things like last year’s finish, returning lettermen, and reputation…something is very wrong.  Rankings should only be used once games have been played, and yes I said games.  Plural.  There’s no sense having a poll after one game, or even two.  When should we start?  Well, how about this week.  Everybody in the media (and by that I mean ESPN) decided the past weekend was ‘Separation Saturday’ (Lee Corso doll not included), and after three weeks, we do know a little more about the college football landscape.  Not everything we need to know of course (as some contenders still haven’t played ANYBODY), but enough to at least make an educated ranking.  A ranking that would be a damn sight more fair than ones issued while everybody was still in two-a-days.

Another huge problem with the polls is the notion that winning moves you up, losing moves you down.  Take LSU, for instance, who dropped four spots in the coaches’ poll after losing at Auburn, the new #3 in the coaches’ poll.  So let’s see…you go into Jordan-Hare against one of the three best teams in the country, hold them to 181 yards of offense, and potentially get hosed on a picked up pass-interference flag, and barely lose…and your reward is a four spot fall in the polls?  Meanwhile, Texas beats Rice, Virginia Tech beats Puke, er, Duke…and both of them occupy ground above you in the poll.  Pure genius.  And remember, THAT’S the coaches’ (excuse me, SID’s) poll.  Imagine what can happen at the hands of the imbecile writers’…In fairness to the writers in the AP poll, they probably have a better idea than the coaches as to what the national landscape looks like.  Remember, coaches are completely focused on their team and their next opponent, and it is unlikely they get a real good look at anybody that isn’t in their conference or on their schedule.  And it is less likely that they give a damn (although they will lie about it…won’t they, Jim Tressel?).  And that is the main reason that many votes are likely placed by sports information directors.  Polls aren’t the kind of things coaches are going to spend much time worrying about.  At least not til BCS time…

So absolutely, loyal reader…Rankings ARE ridiculous.  Let’s settle it on the field…

Speaking of ridiculous…you can apply for the Miami Hurricanes head coaching position by contacting Paul Dee, athletic director, in Coral Gables, Florida.  It’s hard to say that Larry Coker should lose his job after winning a national title and winning well over 80% of his games at Miami…but we all know the high standards the ‘Canes have set, and the impotent offense and downright embarrassing performance by Miami on Saturday in Louisville will put the bullseye on Coker’s back for the rest of the year.  Much was expected, or at least hoped for, after Coker cleaned out much of his coaching staff during the off-season, but it is clear after losses to Florida State and Lousiville that Miami lacks the offensive weaponry of years past and is completely incapable of protecting their quarterback, a quarterback that has yet to inspire visions of Bernie Kosar, Vinny Testaverde, or Gino Torreta.  And on Saturday their defense, a defense that seemed to be one of the nation’s finest, was riddled by Bobby Petrino’s high-octane Cardinal attack (Coach Petrino, it’s Paul Dee on line one…).  A Louisville offense devoid of Michael Bush, and for most of the second half, Brian Brohm, who will miss a month or more with a dislocated thumb on his throwing hand.

But weep not for U of L, because I believe the young man who will start in Brohm’s stead will be more than capable of keeping the Cardinals at full throttle as they face a fairly pedestrian-looking schedule over the next few weeks.  Hunter Cantwell, a walk-on from Paducah Tilghman High School, showed himself to be a very capable leader with outstanding poise and remarkable toughness in his stint as Brohm’s stand-in at the conclusion of last season.  Cantwell led the Birds to a win over Connecticut in the regular season finale, and then performed admirably in Louisville’s Gator Bowl loss to Virginia Tech, as he absorbed one vicious hit after another from the Hokie defense.  And as folks could see on Saturday, Cantwell can throw the football just a bit, too.  Three of four, for 113 yards and a score, shows you that Cantwell won’t simply be a caretaker and game manager under center.  The kid can make some plays…

Brohm should be back for Louisville’s November 2 battle with West Virginia, and you should mark that date on your calendar.  West Virgina has an electric duo in the backfield, in quarterback Pat White and tailback Steve Slaton (a legitimate Heisman candidate), and they can put points on the board in a hurry.  First team to fifty wins, and whoever emerges victorious could go undefeated and put themselves right in the mix for the national title game.  A word of warning to the Mountaineers when they come to town, thought…DO NOT…DO NOT stomp on the Cardinal logo at midfield inside Papa John’s Stadium.  Bad things happen when you do…Just ask the Hurricanes…