Bleacher Report - Articles by Mordecai Browner

Can We Get Back To The Present, Please?

Mordecai Browner — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 01:34:25 -0400

Talking with some fellow Illinois fans not that long ago, they mentioned that they were hoping the Illini basketball team could land recruits Jabari Parker, Thomas Hamilton, Jr., and Alex Foster, each of whom, one fan assured me, has a "ridiculous upside potential."

I'm sure they do. I'm also sure that a Google search shows them to be incoming high school freshman who have never played a second of high school basketball.

It's by no means an isolated situation, nor a new one. Routinely, we're finding athletes at younger ages, especially in basketball, always on the look out for the next LeBron, the next Kobe, or the next Garnett.

It's not just there. Sidney Crosby, Justin Upton, Bryce Harper, and Freddy Adu come to mind. So do the drafts every year, and the joke that when two athletes spawn a shoe company cuts the umbilical cord.

Sports hypersters find themselves writing in the future tense. Whereas writers of great fiction, history, and the sciences write in the past and journalists in the present, the sports pundits flood their sentences with "will," the expletive that makes Mel Kiper sound like Nostradamus every year.

Jason Smith will plug a Pace-sized hole and fit on the Rams for years to come. Terrelle Pryor will be a Heisman Trophy candidate. Ronnie Fiels will be an NBA All-Star.

We do build quite a few expectations for young men who have been treated like gods their entire post-pubescent lives, don't we?

It's nothing new. Tiger Woods was winning majors before he was actually winning majors. The imaginary green jackets hang behind Mark Prior's Cy Youngs in a very swank trophy case.

Largely, looking to tomorrow is human nature. In a zero-sum game like sports, the only way to cope with not being a champion is to pray next year will be better. Betting on tomorrow may have a horrible track record, but it certainly trumps living with .450 winning percentage.

Even if one's team is depleted of prospects or draft hopes, the thought of the next MJ or Unitas or Mantle is enough to buy season tickets another year.

I bring up this obsession with tomorrow that seems embedded into humanity not to make sports fans ponder the effect upon sports or on the sporting culture, but rather that of the athletes in question. Like cast-off child starts, we ridicule the names of "busts" like Ryan Leaf, Cherno Samba, and Darko Milicic for not living up to the expectations we placed upon them.

Filling anyone's head with the idea that they'll be great sets a dangerously high standard for just breaking even. For Todd Marinovich, just making the NFL was a huge disappointment. Stop and think about that for a second.

Factor in that these many of those being told they'll play in the "big show" are teenagers and the potential problems should become readily apparent. Handlers spin the myths new heights and the suddenly the kids believe in destiny, they come to plan two, three, four years down the road. Heck, Bryce Harper thinks he's going to the Hall of Fame.

Dreams are wonderful, but they were meant to be individual, not societal, shared, or taken as prediction. When one considers that males between 16-20 undergo radical shifts in maturity, priorities, and attitudes, it seems outrageous we pack so much emotional baggage on their shoulders.

Do I think there needs to be changes to the system as a whole? Yes. If we keep a 15-year old from working in jobs that would build strength and character, we should certainly keep them out of Sports Illustrated. And I also think college coaches should be barred from talking to anyone who hasn't started their junior year in high school. The fact that 14-year-olds are being contacted now to spend one year when they're 18 at school x is unbelievably silly.

The problem, of course, goes beyond sports. A high school kid who has a great GPA, 99th percentile test scores, and Ivy League admission letters often gets told he's "set for life." Of course, this is complete bull.

The thing we need to tell that kid is the exact same thing we need to tell our prodigies as we turn off the cameras and microphones. "Enjoy the present, develop as a person, and we'll see you in the big time if and when you get there."

I'm not saying we as sports fans have to check our hope at the door, or that athletes shouldn't plan for the future, dream, or use the pros as motivation. I'm just saying in a world where 14-year-olds will be must-get recruits, we all need to just step back and live within the present a bit.

I write this article because when I was a senior in high school, I had been admitted to one of the top engineering programs in the country and people told me I was set for life. Not to bore anyone with egoistic crap, but I wasn't, and, frankly, no one is at 18.

Not that much of the specialized or here-and-now crowd cares, but this will be the last column I write for BR for a while. I thought it best to write a temporarily final article given that I actually have some fans and that people may wander onto the site. I'm continuing my formal education and need to devote full energy to that.

I'm sure I'll check in periodically, but I've become ever more skeptical of Internet writing and I can't make any promises about the future. I don't know where I'm going to be or what job I'll have in nine months, much less three years, but you know what? I'm going to stay as much in the present as possible, and I think it might be fun.

LeBron, You Really Should Have Studied More

Mordecai Browner — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 06:42:47 -0400

So, LeBron, you got dunked on. So you got dunked on by a kid from Xavier barely known to college fans.

Did you really need to act all "Big Brother" and destroy the videotape?

You've had a horrible time since the buzzer sounded on your '08-'09 season. Immediately, you refused to shake hands with the victorious Magic, since apparently during your lifetime of sports participation no one taught you sportsmanship.

Now you've given conflicting media reports regarding Trevor Ariza within hours of each other and confiscated a video to suppress an event with numerous witnesses.

LeBron, you've had six years to prepare for this time, of being in that small pantheon of basketball heroes whose personal merchandising and media attention outstrips that of many regions on the planet.

But yet, you know nothing. You know nothing of the value of sportsmanship and humility towards boosting a public image, know little of how to manipulate a network that kneels before your golden shoes, and you seemingly feel entitled to being the flawless Nike poster-child, just naturally having a Jordanesque synergy of Championships and marketing prowess.

Your real-world age peers, LeBron, are 24. Most of them have matured and realized that life isn't just handed to them. Many of them have master's degrees, have gone through full career training, or served multiple tours in the military.

For the average Joe and Jane, the years between 18 and 24 show a striking level of development. Drunken, confused wrecks of humanity as fresh high school graduates turn into half-drunken, half-confused valuable citizens. It's called "growth."

When His Airness was 24, he had just finished his third year in the league, only playing two full seasons. In his first all-star game, his teammates refused to pass him the ball because they were envious of the attention he had received during the first half of the season.

By 24, he had played a total of 10 playoff games and would not win an NBA title for another four years.

Could you, LeBron, even live with the thought of—gasp—not winning an NBA title until 28? Could you handle a group of your peers rejecting you at 22 simply for being what you are?

At some point in his young career, Jordan realized it took more than mad skills and a dopey grin to become Michael Jordan. It took a mind that understood image management was about much more than simple appearances.

Your ego, LeBron, is truly out-of-whack if you think it bigger than Jordan's, but Jordan knew how to tame the narcissist within when in public, knew how to spin it before media figures and at public appearances to his advantage.

Self-deprecation, sarcasm, a well-placed sly smile, a quotable line that appears off-the-cuff: the tricks of world leaders like Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton are, in the end, no different than those of sports superstars.

LeBron, these last six years should have been a time to learn these things, to develop a pleasant media personality.

But while many Class of '03 Johns and Janes went to college or trade school or the army and developed not only useful skills but also a manageable human personality, the Jameses apparently remain stunted as petulant 18-year-old ego-centrics.

In short, LeBron, grow up. Manhood is about more than putting on 30 pounds of muscle. It's also, in a curious way, about realizing your limitations and infecting your life with the humility and emotional skills necessary for public survival.

Jordan never second-guessed his godly basketball skills, but he knew not even He was big enough to suppress truth. On the court, he may have been the alpha and omega, but off the court he was at the mercy of other gods, ones with microphones and pens.

LeBron, everyone loses. When greats lose, they have the confidence to shake the hands of their opponents because they know that in the future meetings they will triumph with vengeance. Jordan shook the hands of the Celtics and Pistons.

Why? Because he was mature enough to know it wasn't the end, that with hard work he would triumph.

LeBron, everyone who picks up a basketball gets shown up at some point. If you really want to by MJ, forget about the video cameras. Or, better yet, use them to your advantage.

Jordan would have said nothing, picked up the basketball, and school the guy who dunked on him to where he would never think of dunking on the great Michael Jordan again.

The true greats don't have to suppress truth. Instead, they always turn whatever reality is before them to their advantage with nothing more than the skills within their flesh.

That's how legends are born, LeBron. That's what you might have learned in the last six years, had you studied.

Clint Hurdle's Rocky Tenure: A Scapegoat for Poor Upper Management

Mordecai Browner — Sun, 31 May 2009 10:38:13 -0400

Most write-ups regarding the firing of Clint Hurdle can't help but focus immediately on the improbable great baseball the Rockies played in September and October of 2007, and who could blame them considering it's his only accomplishment in seven years. They also talk about how unpopular and duplicitous he was with his players.

But such emphasis is dishonest. The real story of Hurdle's tenure isn't that he was fired 18 months after a World Series, or disgruntled players, but rather how he was still managing in 2007 after five years of atrocious baseball.

An axiom many in the game believe is that a great manager cannot really improve a team, but a lousy one can make a great team bad.

It's true in business, and it's true in baseball. Ultimately, the product is measured in results.

And for most of the last decade, the Rockies have produced a dismal product.

The recipe has been simple: four or five solid everyday players, a respectable pitcher or two, and a bunch of hopefuls and cast-offs.

In the Associated Press' article about Hurdle's departure, the truth of the situation emerges deep into the prose, as often happens.

"Hurdle was never one to complain about the club's cost-conscious ways...'We're an organization that values stability more than we value change,' [General Manager Dan] O'Dowd told The Associated Press."

Translation? They were going to suck.

Upper management knew they were going to suck and hiring Connie Mack's ghost wouldn't have fixed it, so they stuck with the loyal foot soldier, who they now want to put in their front office.

I know Hurdle's players generally disliked his ways and felt they made the World Series in spite of his leadership. That might be true.

But what's also true is he never really had a good product to sell, and they still don't. Hurdle was nothing more than a mask, a fall-guy for inept upper management.

In the decade of Dan O'Dowd's service as general manager, the Rockies' attendance has dropped from first in the league (as it had been for seven years) to being in the bottom half for the last 10 years.

The highlight was a World Series appearence in a year when no National League team dominated by any stretch of the imagination and they made the playoffs by the skin of their teeth.

Hurdle probably deserved to be hired, but who else would have performed better over the last seven years? Don Baylor? Buddy Bell?

The truth is the guy who really needs to be reviewed is the one who hired him, the one who assembled the pitching staff with the .282 batting average against and the 4.85 ERA and the one who appears to have overseen a severe decline in Denver's love of baseball.

Men's College Basketball: Sometimes, Recruiting Should Be a Felony

Mordecai Browner — Sun, 31 May 2009 00:07:15 -0400

If you give your 15-year-old a beer or if you do nothing to ensure said teen goes to school, you can be charged with contributing to the delinquency of a minor, which at that age is a felony in many states.

If you set up a convoluted system where teenagers are taught cheating and altering numbers is OK if their jump shot is the golden ticket to millions for friends and family, you're apparently qualified to coach basketball at one of many fine educational institutions.

Derrick Rose should be presumed innocent until proven guilty of having someone take the SAT for him and having a teacher alter his transcripts, but let's not mince words: It doesn't look good for the vaunted '07 class.

Earlier this month, there was speculation that Tim Floyd indirectly paid O.J. Mayo, who already lived with a Reggie Bush-like cloud of suspicion around him after agent gift-giving allegations.

Eric Gordon's college coach, Kelvin Sampson, is barred from the NCAA for five years after serious recruiting violations. Gordon himself chose Indiana over a few other schools and reneged on a verbal commitment to Illinois shortly after Sampson became the head coach.

And then there's Michael Beasley. Some still wonder how he wound up—and stayed—in Manhattan, Kan.

If the attention devoted to Brandon Jennings or John Wall is any indication, it seems the NBA's age limit has only made the spotlight on that top crust of prospects all the more glaring; in turn, college coaches have become ever more desperate to land their golden ticket.

It's as if we've cycled back to that golden age of Eddie Sutton's Kentucky, or perhaps we never really left.

Rose, Mayo, and Gordon may not be the last players to leave their colleges investigated and disgraced. In fact, they might be merely the first wave.

I don't think every program cheats, but I'm not naive. Heck, even if they do all cheat, they surely don't cheat equally.

Turning a blind eye to corruption, or spouting hackneyed remarks of passivity and apathy isn't just ignorant, it's irresponsible—even in the pursuit of a national championship.

Society, through its laws regarding delinquency, gives every citizen a responsibility over the youth they oversee. Corrupting a youth is corrupting a youth, whether it's by giving them pot or sending them 10 text messages a day that they don't need mathematics because they'll be in the league in two years.

College coaches now recruit younger and younger. High school freshmen and sophomores now regularly commit to play basketball years before their classmates choose where to go for academics. Outside of basketball players, most seem to realize one can't make a rational, mature decision about college until later on.

But the recruiters and scouting experts persist, securing scholarship charts three years in advance that never pan out the way they intend while evaluating eighth-graders for prospective size.

In such an atmosphere, coaches take an enormous amount of responsibility, as would any citizen interested in mentoring a teen.

Why are coaches not held up to the same standard as average citizens?

Why are people not charged with contributing to delinquency when they conspire to forge a 17-year-old's test scores or when they're allowed to harass 14-year-olds about basketball all day long?

Wait, the callous fans ask, can he bring us multiple top recruits and a national title run next year?

I know it's a stretch, and I know no politically astute DA would even dream of charging anyone, but it's obvious that the system is promoting imprudent behavior and attitudes in minors with college coaching staffs as possible causes.

We need the real police, not the NCAA's gutless version of the Hardy Boys who generally slap major powers on the wrist while giving the death penalty to mid-major programs.

And before arguing that these guys are millionaires so there's obviously no delinquency, look deeper into some of the "can't miss" guys who did.

In fact, every argument that endorses ill behavior from college coaches is either a tautology or marbled with stupidity, like many of those currently formed in Lexington defending the hypothetical misdeeds of John Calipari.

The NCAA could take several simple steps to combat this general issue, but given their history of inaction, they would rather let the situation fester. And fester it will, making the game uglier along the way.

Until coaches are reasonably held responsible for the teenagers with whom they interact —either by the real police or the wanna-be bureaucrats in the Association—the high-pressure system the NCAA helps reinforce will only produce more situations like those of Mayo and Rose.

Dallas Morning News Irresponsible in Practice Facility Over-Coverage

Mordecai Browner — Sun, 24 May 2009 12:16:00 -0400

In this recession, it's been hard to miss newspapers closing down. It's been even harder to miss self-important journalists belly-aching about the newspaper industry. Given all the expenditure slashes, one would think shoddy, over-the-top, trifling investigative journalism might be gone.

Not at the Dallas Morning News.

As published today and reprinted on ESPN's hit-mongering site, Brooks Egerton (Dallas' version of Carl Monday?) tells the world the shocking, appalling, and devastating truth that a consultant who worked on the Dallas Cowboys' practice facility had a criminal record and fudged the resume he sent to the paper.

The newspaper industry is dwindling in resources while the country is in the middle of two wars, a multifaceted financial crisis, and pressing issues that will affect the nation for generations and the Dallas Morning News is paying someone to check resume lines on former consultants to the Cowboys.

Articles like this one are exactly the type of disproportionate, unnecessary crap that removes sympathy from the slow death of investigative journalism.

The consultant in question was convicted of a felony in 1995. He served his time and was hired at the firm with whom the Cowboys did business.

Why blacklist his name in print by calling attention to his "ex-con" status? It is not illegal to hire ex-convicts or to be an ex-convict seeking a job. If Egerton finds it immoral, why not focus on the hiring policies of the Cowboys and the people with whom they do business?

In singling out the individual (which Egerton does in the first line of paragraph two), the writer only creates another victim in an already-tragic situation, shamelessly trying to create a scapegoat because he did something stupid fifteen years ago.

Worse, Brooks Egerton makes false accusations against "a man who has falsified his educational credentials."

Did he actually falsify his educational credentials, as normally is assumed to mean "to try and attain employment on a fake resume?" Nope. A close reading of the article shows that all the man did was send the Dallas Morning News an outdated summary that fudged a little.

For those unfamiliar with the business world, a majority of people "spruce up" their accomplishments in unofficial circumstances, ex-felons or not.

However, in Brooks Egerton's world, giving him technically incorrect information is a high crime and misdemeanor worthy of being accused of document falsification in a major newspaper.

I'm all for investigating tragedy, but let's have some perspective. This particular collapse injured affected about 60 people directly, injuring 12 and severely injuring two. Devoting a month investigating every possible lead is ridiculous unless one is representing one of the latter in their suit against the Cowboys.

High winds knocked down a cheaply-built structure. It's not uncommon to have unfriendly weather severely damage the most poorly-constructed building on the block while leaving sturdier structures intact. The Cowboys made a cheap choice that the City of Irving approved. An act of nature tore it down.

Milking the story a month later because an apparently faultless consultant had a record does a disservice to the public by potentially damaging the reputation of another individual without cause.

Sports journalism is nothing without perspective. No matter how much fans love the Cowboys or the Crimson Tide or the Yankees, it comes second to major issues.

Turning the microscope on such a high power as to find a former consultant who spent time in jail does just the opposite. It gives one the impression Egerton is digging so deep solely due to the logo on the helmets, which is neither a public service nor good for journalism's reputation.

Generally, investigative journalism is about finding an outrageous issue that's escaped the public eye and exposing it, enacting a "proper" response. The Cowboys practice facility is a known issue being actively investigated by OSHA and the Texas Board of Engineers.

There's no need to pull a guy's criminal record into the limelight or even call attention to the issue aside from wanting to negatively muckrake.

The Cowboys have never had many qualms associating with ex-felons, or even instituting criminals in their Ring of Honor. Why bother bringing it up here, Brooks?

Unless the man was more responsible for the facility's collapse, bringing up his record and blasting his character for lying to a newspaper only distorts the story, tarnishes investigative journalism, and adds fuel to public stereotypes about ex-felons.

"Branch Rickey's Bojangles," Or Good Writing, Good Business, and B/R

Mordecai Browner — Mon, 11 May 2009 15:25:00 -0400

Jackie Robinson was no noble pioneer. Rather, he was complicit in the continual subordination of the African-American for white male profits, each day working the sun-drenched dust in a manner repulsively similar to his ancestors, their plows replaced with a glove and a Slugger as the hypocrite Branch Rickey sang along to "Did You See Jackie Robinson Hit That Ball" and the ca-ching of windfall profits...

Sure gets attention, doesn't it?

It's really easy getting hits on the internet. The potential of the above, if written with any intent of seriousness (or not, given the popular inability to read sarcasm), is virtually endless if a link were dropped in the right places or spread by the right information loci.

Of course, it's also categorically awful, undoubtedly disingenuous, and potentially dangerous.

But damn, it would get hits and comments, right?

It's tempting as a writer in the information age to publish digital trash, to go straight towards baseless criticism, sex, drugs, violence, vulgarity, gore, and—perhaps the biggest offense of all—writing with search engines, blogrolls, facebook, and message boards in mind.

It's tempting because that's where the instant gratification is, both in terms of internet advertising norms and raw page hits, where quantity indubitably signals quality. Viva democracy, viva capitalism, and instant gratification and the average internet sports fan seem to go hand in, well, baseball bat.

But let me ask a simple question: when you take these angles, when the words you write are nothing more than conveyor belts of softcore pornography, hatred, and puerile humor, or if they're produced with search engine optimization in mind, are you really marketing yourself as a writer?

Or are you just a factory-built machine pumping out search-friendly terms and attractive themes for the internet crowd?

After all, the average prostitute is great at getting hits. She's not so good at selling herself as a human being.

Good writing, ultimately, is about communication, and subjective in most cases. Every great writer has a style of their own, a voice that sounds unique amidst a tidal wave of societal babble.

Great writers can be imitated often, but never wholly duplicated. It's not just our fiction greats like Hemingway and Faulkner, but also our common sports writers; say what you will about the man, but a Rick Reilly column is easy to pick from a lineup and a struggle to duplicate.

To be a great wordsmith, to rise above the Internet equivalent of Pauline Kael's "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang" (say, Pat Forde or Gregg Doyel) one needs to communicate ideas and complex thoughts and emotions, a definitive point of view where the reader can see both a real human writer and the lively subject material at hand.

That's writing.

It's what Ryan Alberti does on a weekly basis, mixing a liberal arts curriculum with consistent observations on humanity through the lens of a current hot topic in sports.

It's what LJ Burgess does on occasion when his tolerance threshold has been breached, as seen in the splendid and passionate Joe Namath article he wrote awhile back.

It's what makes B/R's college football community a successful place, where we have multiple opinionated contributors who have developed themselves as passionate individuals whose output goes beyond "the Pac Ten sucks!" or Charlie Weis donut jokes.

BabyTate, for example, infuses his presence with nostalgia and history for all us young whippersnappers who don't know about Pete Dawkins or the Bluebonnet Bowl.

It's what Jameson Fleming does from a more journalistic perspective for college basketball. His work is rarely, if ever, emotional in any extreme, but a reader leaves his articles more objectively informed about college basketball while still being subjected to his rational opinions.

There are, of course, others on the site, but I point to these four because they all have built brand recognition and have gained regular readership.

They didn't do it with spamming bulletin boards.

They didn't do it with lurid pictures.

They did it by putting out a consistent, high-quality product under their own name. It works in business. It works in writing.

It's that simple (and that hard).

Another feature they all had was perseverance and patience. In this age of instant gratification we all think we can be overnight stars, swept up by electrocurrents into the top echelon by nothing other than being ourselves.

The populism of the Internet has put ego-centrism on crack, and rankings and top writer spots give the cocky start-up a target to attain in a brief amount of time.

"OMG I was totally like a top writer within two months, I'm sending my resume to ESPN!"

The problem is that building genuine brand name recognition takes time, even for the best writers. Kurt Vonnegut took over a decade to build a devoted audience worth keeping. Grabbing a bullhorn and telling people you're a good writer is no substitute, nor will it speed up the process.

In business, repeat customers are infinitely valuable and preferable over short-term gains. If a hundred people read your articles and walk away remembering who you are, it trumps a thousand people reading your articles and having no clue who wrote it.

This is because remembrance is the key to building brand name recognition and essential to long term success. A month later, the "writer" who relies on stupid humor and breast shots is no more than just another witless idiot passing along stupid humor and breast shots.

The "writer" who structures their craft around SEO is nothing more than another blip on the landscape writing faceless articles for the machine.

The writer who publishes thoughtful, opinionated prose is slowly building a readership, a customer base if you will.

How does the difference between high-quality writing that can build brand recognition and cheap shot articles that generate instant advertising hits apply to Bleacher Report?

It's simple. Bleacher Report must promote the former and discourage the latter.

B/R can never compete with other sites on the internet for the "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang." Its (proper and necessary) user guidelines preclude it from ever being a long-term competitor with the lurid and the vulgar. Solely because of what it is, it can never compete with blogs and specialized message boards for mediocre humor or gimmicky writing.

B/R can be the go-to leader for sports writing and analysis. Because of the democratizing structure of the internet, B/R can be a legitimate competitor in the marketplace.

Unfortunately, featuring sloppy writing because it garners thousands of instant hits gets in the way of that goal. Bleacher Report does well in managing its own brand name with its sophisticated editing system, but it could do a better job in managing its front page to appear more attractive to new readers.

Above all else, the B/R community collectively needs to realize that hits are no indicator of quality or long-term value to the site or to the writer. Some of my own best articles are still under 500 hits. A few of my worst, including my AOTD pick, are well into the thousands.

That's the nature of the beast and it's a beast B/R needs to contain rather than roam free.

I have little commentary on rankings, AOTD, POTD, top writers, etc. because these are all things that can be corrupted by puerile trash. Whether writing can be long-term brand recognition outside of the "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang" is a decision best settled outside of raw numbers, machines, and algorithms.

As Potter Stewart said of pornography, "I know it when I see it." We need actual human editors to mark articles that may damage B/R's image as a great place for sports writing, articles that would drive away more prudent or educated readers (a gigantic segment of the population, even for a sports site).

This site's growth to date has been fueled by a passion for sports. It cannot promote dispassionate trash articles merely for short-term hits.

If you're a writer who wants to pen serious sports journalism but feel like hits give you motivation to go forward, that's okay. Look up what teams are popular on B/R (Kentucky, Man Utd, Oakland Raiders, etc.) and write about them. Market your work in rational places and, above all else, put quality into your prose.

If you just want to ogle at half-naked women, why do it on a sports site? This is the internet for goodness sakes.

If you want to quickly write mediocre, bland articles and spam your way to a superficial number one, understand that it will be short-lived, that your confidence will be over-inflated, and if you leave the site no one will know who you are because your "articles" were nothing more than dots being spit out by an android.

Because in the end, that is what it boils down to.

If you write crap, you're replaceable with a hundred thousand interchangeable parts with crappy minds, nothing more than an appliance generating advertising revenue, usually for someone else, and your own name and identity become lost in the sea of the hundred thousand drones all tap-dancing like Bojangles for his movie bosses and drowning in an endless stream of boobs, photoshopped jpgs, lame puns, and hot topics.

Bleacher Report's user base was built on not being a cookie-cutter website. For it to achieve the maximum possible long-term success, it must be overly aggressive in preventing its image from blurring with the rest of the juvenile, cheap, instantly-gratified sports internet, even if it means risking a hundred thousand hits.

Sleaze Has No Offseason: Pearl Devoid Of Ethics in APR Criticism

Mordecai Browner — Thu, 07 May 2009 21:42:02 -0400

March Madness may have faded from our collective rear-view mirrors, with the Tennessee Volunteers even further behind, but that does not stop Bruce Pearl from continuing his solemn trek to being college basketball's biggest tool.

When he's not paying teenagers to spy on their friends, getting kicked out of high school basketball games, revoking promised scholarships, lying to the NCAA, or scouting women on the beach, Pearl likes defending appallingly low academic standards.

Pearl, according to the Associated Press*, is now complaining about the Academic Progress Rate instituted by the NCAA to uphold some modicum of academic achievement in college athletics. Under Pearl's warped ethical standards, the APR "discourages schools from giving opportunities to athletes who struggle academically."

No, it doesn't, and such a statement is almost as perverted as writing the NCAA a demonstrably false memo that an 18-year-old and his family are dirty while claiming no intention to harm said 18-year-old.

While the words themselves may seem innocuous, the intent oozes slime: Bruce Pearl is upset because it's become harder for him to severely bend (most of us with moral pulses would say "break") the rules.

College is no place for those who continue to "struggle academically," regardless of vertical leap or quickness with the dribble. The integrity of the entire university system is corrupted when those who "struggle academically" are given free passes at the university level. Accredited schools in the United States, especially public ones like Tennessee, have a duty not to admit, retain, or graduate students who are well below academic par, all to the chagrin of used car salesmen like Bruce Pearl.

The APR is a great thing to help keep the integrity of college basketball in check, even if it came 25 years too late.

Of course, coaches can still take chances on guys who underperformed in high school, provided their admissions boards say yes. Only now, with the APR, they actually have to do well in college. Bruce doesn't like this one bit, as it counters his former strategy of taking academic risks and letting them do whatever they wanted.

The difference between Bruce Pearl and great coaches like Bobby Knight is that players under Knight, even if they weren't the greatest academically in high school, generally developed emotionally and academically while under a good coach's leadership. To Pearl, however, young men are just pawns in a chess game where he writes the rules.

The APR does not discourage schools from taking kids; it discourages them from neglecting their duty to mold youth into productive, intelligent adults.

"Pearl...thinks colleges will pass over athletes who are more likely to hurt their APR scores in the future." No, Bruce, that's only you. Coaches who serve as real mentors like Coach K, Tom Izzo, and others, know that athletes can change and academic risks in high school can graduate college if they have work ethic and the right attitude. You, on the other hand, view maturity and intellect as a static, immutable quality, probably because your said traits haven't increased since age sixteen.

Pearl may phrase his criticism in line with looking out for innocent high school kids, but in reality he's only looking out for number one while completely abnegating his duty as a leader. He's no better than an irresponsible parent who argues for lower standards to pass their child to the next grade.

It continues to baffle me why anyone would send their son to play for Pearl. Granted, I'm biased, but given his infantile behavior and ethical shortcomings, it's hard to imagine a responsible parent sending their boy to Knoxville, especially now knowing Pearl views athletes whether they can graduate or not with no intention to academically develop those who may rest on the borderline.

Look, I know big-money NCAA athletics doesn't fit its own ideals, but with the APR the NCAA has made an honest effort to maintain educational integrity. It cannot have vocal coaches like Pearl using their marketing gimmicks and linguistic legerdemain to undermine the system for their own ends.

It's bad enough one University sees fit to employ a man who is the antithesis of what a great college basketball coach should be, a win-at-all-costs louse whose epidermis is so coated with despicable slime no amount of orange body paint can cover it up.

*Associated Press. "Pearl: NCAA Academic Progress Rate discourages opportunities for students who struggle." 6 May 2009. Accessed 7 May 2009, here: http://www.whnt.com/news/sns-ap-tn--ncaa-academicreport-tennessee,0,2462140.story

Reducing Baseball to Numbers Is an Insult to The Game Itself

Mordecai Browner — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 01:33:07 -0400

It's no secret that baseball fans are obsessed with numbers. It seems 3000, 500, and 300 are benchmarks for automatic fame, while the numbers 61, 70, and 73 have caused an outpouring of controversy, news, and debates over punctuation additions.

The difference between .299 and .300 is much greater than the tenth of a percentage point it actually is, practically speaking. In his autobiography, Mickey Mantle actually lamented batting .298 for his career. Good lord, the man has the 19th best all-time on base percentage; he's by far the highest switch hitter in OBP and he's fourth amongst retired switch-hitters in batting average. Yet, the power we've given that stupid numeric plateau gave him regret over missing what comes down to 16 total hits over an 18-year career.

While data and statistics are often useful things, we, as baseball fans, have become numbers-drunk, and it's badly affecting the way some of us see the game.

When looking at a career like Rafael Palmeiro's, we wind up talking about what 500 home runs means, and if it's still an elevated benchmark instead of Palmeiro the actual ballplayer.

When we defend our Hall-of-Fame choices, we fall behind these ridiculous walls of numbers. Andre Dawson and Willie Mays are the only two players who meet some arbitrary statistical criteria I'm sure Dawson's backers could rattle off. Mark Grace, surprisingly, had the most hits in the 1990s.

Not only are baseball fans intoxicated on raw data, but we have to drag the Gregorian calendar in as well.

The last twenty years have seen the proliferation of two horrible catalysts for number-obsession: video games and fantasy baseball.

I enjoyed hitting 500-ft home runs in games like Ken Griffey Jr.'s for SNES as much as anyone, but when manufacturers put a game on steroids, overemphasizing and easing the ability to hit home runs so much that kids start putting Rob Deer (guilty, thank you, RBI Baseball 3) or Matt Stairs at absurd positions in the field, they're helping to reduce the game to simple offensive numbers and neglecting the intangibles and fundamentals. Granted, later games have added a broader realism to baseball simulation, but they still, by nature of what they are, distort the game.

However, the worst culprit of all is fantasy baseball. Fielding, throwing, running: this 60 percent of the standard baseball toolset barely matters in the fantasy game. Worse, situations are non-existent. A home run in a 10-1 blowout is better than a walk in the bottom of the ninth. A six-hitter and a leadoff-hitter are always evaluated by the same criteria. A center fielder, usually, is the same as a right fielder.

This disfigured way of looking at the game produces a range of absurdities.

For example, using ESPN's scoring system, Hanley Ramirez gave a team a 50 percent increase in points over Jimmy Rollins and a 111 percent increase over Michael Young. Hanley Ramirez is an outstanding ballplayer, but any rational look at the game tells you that's disproportional, if not crazy. Especially since Rollins and Young have won gold gloves—with 7 and 11 errors, respectively—while Ramirez posted 22 errors last season.

Who would I rather have, Ramirez or Rollins? In fantasy, the answer is clear. In real life, however, the answer depends entirely on who else is on the team.

Fantasy systems also overvalue closers. Don't get me wrong, I think long-term stable closers are undervalued by baseball in general (Gossage should have been in the Hall sooner, and Lee Smith should be in there now), but last year Kevin Gregg—a poor closer on an average baseball team who blew 23 percent of his save opportunities—somehow wound up with a higher fantasy score than Mark Buehrle, Kyle Lohse, Jamie Moyer, Cristian Guzman, Garret Anderson, Ryan Doumit, Placido Polanco, and a host of others.

Maybe it's just fun to play more simple games, or baseball becomes more digestible and easy to talk about when we reduce it to these basic raw data points, but in the end it robs the game of much of its essence and long-term attraction.

I'm a believer in numbers —heck, I'm one of the few people who defend computer rankings come college football bowl season —but even the best sabermatic inventions (like Total Player Rating or Bill James' Win Shares) have serious flaws that prevent them from being definitive.

Maybe baseball is a game where we've given numbers great significance, but it also has, I would argue, more nuances that numbers cannot define than other sports.

Lineup composition, crafty pick-off moves, heads-up baserunning, Clemente-like throws from right field, a perfect sacrifice bunt, keeping the double play intact: these things add so much to the game of baseball—and winning the game of baseball—that cannot be quantified.

In the end, the fan must see the forest for the trees, or rather the player and team for the statistics. Far too often in the modern, get-answers-quick media, entire arguments and ballplayers with 20-year resumes are absurdly decimated to a single stat line.

Pee Wee Reese is in the Hall of Fame and given who else has been admitted, he undoubtedly belongs there, as does Bill Mazeroski. Palmeiro however, does not. Failure to understand the categorical difference between the two is what drives GMs to make head slapping trades, fantasy owners to shed tears on their keyboards, and fans to wonder why a team that wins 88 games one year and signs Miguel Cabrera the next winds up in last place, behind even the Royals.

The baseball gods are a fickle bunch, and they become quite testy when their beautiful creation is slashed into a quantitative playground for those drunkenly fixated on the home run leader board and third starter ERAs. Inevitably, they reward and punish the two numbers that should matter above all else: the one next to W and the one next to L.

Ignore all the intangibles that go into that non-numerical equation at your own baseball peril; just don't try and tell me Steve Finley is a Hall of Famer because he had 2500 hits, 300 home runs, and 300 stolen bases.

Libel, or the Relevance of the RIck Pitino Soap Opera

Mordecai Browner — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 15:27:23 -0400

I don't have a bleeping idea what's going on in Louisville, and unlike many other electro-fabulists, I'm going to refrain from connecting the dots how I see fit.

What I do know is that a few simple details have spawned a wealth of crazy deductive leaps only possible by a culture feasting on poorly written television.

Thoreau wrote that "the world is just a canvas to our imaginations." In contrast to his optimism about the human mind, this budding Rick Pitino extortion story illustrates that we can paint some repulsively stupid pictures in a very quick space of time.

Three notable ones I've seen so far while looking over some message boards:

(a) Pitino is a filthy recruiter; woman involved has dirt on him, wanted an extravagant amount of money; Pitino called the FBI.

(b) Pitino is gay with her soon-to-be ex-husband; she demanded money to keep quiet; he called the FBI.

(c) Pitino possibly raped her and forced her to get an abortion; she threatened to talk; he made up a bogus extortion claim.

Option (c) is especially notable because I found it right here on this site, with over 11,000 reads (significantly more than many small-town newspapers).

It doesn't take an Einstein, or even a Thoreau, to see that at least one of these must be indisputably false. In fact, there's a good chance that all three are false.

Would-be Internet journalists should find this result notable, for someone amongst these three is likely guilty of libel.

Libel in the American courts requires five elements: publication, identification, words that defame character, falseness, and demonstrated authorship.

The landmark Supreme Court case Times v. Sullivan (1966) added a necessary criterion for public figures (like Rick Pitino): actual malice (plaintiff has to show an intent to damage someone beyond emotional distress).

Higher-level courts in the United States have yet to truly hash out the issue of Internet publication, but the cases on the books have not gone in favor of the random idiots (see, for example, Wagner v. Mishkin, 2003 North Dakota 69).

How does this all apply to you, Internet journalist, and how does it apply to Bleacher Report in general?

I don't pretend to understand all the nuances of defamation law, nor can I predict where the law is going in the future.

But I do posit that at some point in the near future, someone in the sports world is going to realize how much this ball of wires drives opinion. Someone with the resources will be mad enough to quantify their damage and go after a random Internet idiot.

I sincerely believe we're a test case away from significantly changing the attitude of many non-mainstream Internet writers and publishers.

Someone of Pitino's stature would have an incredibly hard time winning a libel case. But often neglected is that these matters often involve non-public figures, in this case the woman and Louisville's equipment manager.

No amount of conjuring can make them public figures, and if you make knowingly false claims about them, you're guilty of libel.

As for Bleacher Report itself, the law is extremely ambiguous, as its mission statement and service seem to wedge it between that of a traditional publication and of a provider clearly given immunity under the Communications Decency Act.

Either way, it might be fun to play make believe that you're the Woodward or Bernstein of the Internet sports world, meeting insiders in parking lots and getting the real inside scoop.

It probably provides a nice little endorphin release telling everyone the "whole sordid ordeal" just before getting back to your World of Warcraft game.

But when you pass damaging non-truth as truth, it doesn't matter if you have some silly Internet moniker or not; legally speaking, you're swimming in shark-infested waters.

That result, to me, has become the real story of this weekend. Thousands of idiots make up their own Rick Pitino stories, searching for Derby pictures of the woman in question, a few dumb enough to post with "...I know a credible source..." or a "...the media isn't saying this because..." just waiting for something to bite them.

The shark may not come for a while, but I'll have no sympathy when he gets here.

John Calipari and Kentucky: A Marriage Made in Basketball Heaven

Mordecai Browner — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 00:03:27 -0400

I, John Calipari...

John Calipari is a good basketball coach, not a great one. The Kentucky basketball program right now is a good one, not a great one. They're perfect for each other.

On the surface, Calipari is an outstanding catch for the Wildcats. It's hard to beat a .762 winning percentage, NBA ties, and the ability to yank blue-chip recruits from all over the country.

Dig deeper and gaps develop. Not a single thing this man has done in college basketball has been free of blemish. Not one. Marcus Camby accepting 40k and hookers over a 16-month period from a lawyer in Connecticut isn't the entire story, either.

There's also Donta Bright and Lou Roe, whose academics were so questionable other major schools passed on them while Calipari flaunted UMass' options for students with learning disabilities.

...from this day forward, for better or worse, or until stuff starts hitting fans...

Then he bolted to the NBA shortly after the Camby situation started unravelling.

At Memphis, he's developed a nice stable of recruiting side stories, from World Wide Wes to DeJuan Wagner's dad to Reggie Rose to Lord knows what else will emerge.

More importantly (well, at least to Kentucky), on the court Calipari has actually underperformed against expectations in the NCAA tournament. Memphis was upset in '03, '06, and '09.

They equalled their seed in '04 and '07, and only (arguably) did better than their seed in '08. His '93 and '94 UMass teams were also upset. In fact, not one Calipari-coached team has demonstrably done better than expected in the NCAA Tournament. Not one.

And he's never won a game in a top six conference.

...for richer or poorer, mostly richer since you're paying me an exorbitant amount of money...

Play in a weak conference, rack up the wins with Yankees-level talent for your second-tier conference, and disappoint in March. Wake up one day and you'll making championship vows as the highest-paid coach in college basketball.

The only school right for him is Kentucky, a school whose fans live in 1968 and think it's the center of the college basketball universe, the only place to offer everything a college basketball coach could want. "The coach is bigger than the Governor," they say with all the hubris entitled to a team mentally living in a Ruppian utopia.

They're prefect for Calipari because they're the basketball equivalent of Notre Dame and Alabama football.

Drunk on history and self-righteousness, they often ignore reality, decorum, and any pesky roadblocks in the return for glory, discarding the common rules other programs live by. "This isn't just another coaching job," indeed!

...to love and to cherish, because that means drinking from the same giant cauldron of hallucinogenic blue liquid...

Truth is, Kentucky is just another coaching job. It's probably one of the top fifteen in the country, but there's nothing special about it aside from maybe kissing some more butt in the media and booster circles (which is a negative to prospective coaches).

However, try explaining this to a Kentucky fan, and they'll think you're from Mars, which makes the Calipari hire a perfect fit. Like Kentucky, Calipari sees himself in an echelon above his peers.

Kid no one can touch? He'll get him. He's Italian and he looks good on TV. Hookers for 20-year olds? He didn't know about it. NBA players? He could handle them, right?

...'til death, or premature contract termination at your massive expense because I've failed to live up to the ungodly expectations set before me, do us part...

The list of coaches who have disliked Calipari is quite an impressive gallery: Calhoun, Chaney, Pitino, Pearl, Martelli, et cetera. Only through Calipari can they be linked.

Likewise, Kentucky finds enemies from all over the basketball sphere merely because of the unwarranted swagger they bring to basketball season.

Given their pasts, the marriage of Calipari and Kentucky is an NCAA scandal and a feast of postseason underachieving waiting to happen. It's like the marriage of Sampson and Indiana on Lexington-style crack cocaine.

Overrated coach, you may now take this overrated program...

Got That Kentucky-Davidson Score? A Call To Expand the Tournament to 96 Teams

Mordecai Browner — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 01:19:01 -0400

I never thought I'd say this, and in fact I've suggested the opposite in the past, but give me 96 teams in the NCAA Tournament.

Essentially, there are two distinct consumer values of the NCAA tournament. The first is the last-second, nail-biting chaos that can ensue during the first four days of the tournament. The second is the actual quest for the championship.

Rarely do the two reasons converge in one single contest or team.

George Masons are fun for two or three games, but neither CBS nor the average seasoned fan find any satisfaction when a "little guy" cracks the Elite Eight.

Given the shift in consumer satisfaction from the first weekend to the second—from wanting chaos and upsets, to wanting to see the best basketball teams win—a move to 96 teams actually makes a lot of sense.

The worst games of the first round are inevitably the 1-16 matchups, followed closely by those involving two and three seeds. In fact, of the top 16 seeds this year, only one (Wake Forest) crapped itself and lost in the first round.

More often, the lower-seeded teams collapse, as American and East Tennessee State did this year.

Since we know the four-games-at-a-time format not only works, but works exceedingly well, a 96-team tournament would be ideal, with six teams per "pod" instead of four.

Not only would the extra round add two more days of revenue, but the overall caliber of basketball, and upset potential, would actually increase. Pundits often speak of diluted talent, but this is absurd.

With 330+ Division I teams, and a healthy amount of parity, the tangible difference between a current 12 seed (Wisconsin, for example) and a hypothetical 18 seed (say, Miami) is negligible. It would be much less than the difference between a six seed and a 12 seed.

The worst first-round pairings would be the nine seed playing the 24 seed, but Tennessee-Chattanooga, Butler-Morehead, and Siena-Radford have far more promise to be interesting than the ritualistic slaughter of the 16 seed, not to mention the audacious stupidity of the "play-in" game.

Here is a hastily-composed list of possible pairings for this year's hypothetical first round in a 96-team model:

9. Tennessee vs. 24. Chattanooga
9. Siena vs. 24. Radford
9. Butler vs. 24. Morehead St.
9. Texas A&M vs. 24. Alabama St.
10. Minnesota vs. 23. East Tennessee St.
10. USC vs. 23. CS-Northridge
10. Michigan vs. 23. Morgan St.
10. Maryland vs. 23. Robert Morris
11. VCU vs. 22. Binghampton
11. Dayton vs. 22. Cornell
11. Temple vs. 22. Akron
11. Utah St. vs. 22. North Dakota St.
12. Wisconsin vs. 21. Portland St.
12. Arizona vs. 21. American
12. Western Kentucky vs. 21. Stephen F. Austin
12. Northern Iowa vs. 21. Houston
13. Mississippi St. vs. 20. Northwestern
13. Creighton vs. 20. Cleveland St.
13. St. Mary's vs. 20. Washington St.
13. Penn State vs. 20. Nevada
14. Auburn vs. 19. Wisconsin-Green Bay
14. Florida vs. 19. Nebraska
14. San Diego St. vs. 19. Duquesne
14. New Mexico vs. 19. Kansas St.
15. South Carolina vs. 18. Miami (FL)
15. Davidson vs. 18. Kentucky
15. Georgetown vs. 18. Rhode Island
15. UNLV vs. 18. Notre Dame
16. Illinois State vs. 17. Virginia Tech
16. Niagara vs. 17. Baylor
16. Tulsa vs. 17. George Mason
16. UAB vs. 17. Providence

That list should speak for itself to the college hoops fan. There's more than enough talent and intrigue to sustain two days of basketball here.

What would be wrong with giving Eric Maynor or Stephon Curry additional opportunities on the national stage?

How would adding Kentucky, Georgetown, Nebraska, Florida, and Auburn hurt ratings?

How would showcasing the sport two more days, while everyone checks their brackets, be bad for the game?

Given that there are now four postseason college tournaments, I see no reason not to fold another round into the Big Dance by finding room for the Niagaras and Illinois States.

This could make the 1-16 games reasonably competitive, and put another barrier between the sub-eight seeds and the Final Four.

The litmus test for a coach would no longer be making the tournament, but instead snagging that first-round bye. Schools like East Tennessee State may run out of gas against Pitt, but they would likely be able to seal the deal against Minnesota, USC, or Arizona.

From every angle this works. Schools, players, fans, and, of course, the almighty eye at CBS. Most importantly, it would be democratic in the loosest sense of the word.

After all, what better way to celebrate an event that causes basketball-dumb co-workers to cast their ballots against the experts, and often prevail by including a few more worthy teams?

Randy Johnson: Shadow Of a Giant

Mordecai Browner — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 14:42:07 -0500

Roger Clemens, David Wells, Gaylord Perry, Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, and even going back to Warren Spahn, in every case it was gone by 44.

It, that thing that made them a quality leader in a rotation for two decades, had disappeared and left behind a vestigial body that looked like a formerly-great pitcher.

The durable Nolan Ryan saw it leave at 44. For Steve Carlton and Tom Seaver it vanished at 40. Phil Niekro somehow made it to 47. He is the exception, not the rule.

Seeing Randy Johnson carry on in a Giants uniform, trudging towards his 46th birthday in September, is one of those disgusting sports sights that should be withheld from the eyes of children and senior citizens.

He had a respectable year last year, but it's a Shakespearean tradegy, sports style, waiting for its final acts, the cruel game that put Mays in the Mets uniform and Ruth in a Braves jersey.

The Big Unit should have taken a page from Mike Mussina, who has retired after his first 20-win season. It's hard to let go of the ball, but it's a much better option than putting on an alien jersey and waiting for the inevitable 2-8 season and the ballooning ERA.

He might well have a good season this year, but the odds are against him and he's pushing his luck to unforeseen boundaries.

While many want Randy Johnson to reach 300 wins, it simply does not matter in his case. He means more than a silly benchmark.

He was an icon of baseball for 15 years, the epitome of the menacing pitcher, unattractive in either appearance or four-seam fastball. To left-handed batters, he was unhittable, a Sandy Koufax-like legend who transcends longevity statistics.

Unfortunately, he's chosen to risk his image and reveal his mortality for a number that means nothing to a man with five Cy Young awards and the highest K/IP ratio of all time.

Like many tragic heroes who wantonly risk and discard valuable items, sports heroes generally realize the value of their iconic image long after it's gone.

While he may put on a Giants jersey, Randy Johnson, sadly, will most likely be a giant no more.

Bud Selig, Or, A Better Way To Spend Eighteen Million Dollars

Mordecai Browner — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 23:57:20 -0500

“I will make this prediction to you: by the time I leave, you won’t recognize this sport,” he said a year ago. “It’s going to be that much more popular and we’ll have branched out into so many other things." - Bud Selig[1]

The timing could not have been more perfect.

The very day that President Obama announced his intention to cap salaries for executives who take "bailout" funds at a meager $500,000, reports surfaced that Commissioner Bug Selig pocketed over $18,000,000 in fiscal year 2007.

That's 36 times what Dustin Pedroia made. Selig's $880,000 expense package was almost what Ryan Howard made that season ($900,000). According to MLB, 79.5 million people went to games in '07. In other words, you and I gave Bud Selig a quarter for every game we attended.

I'm not opposed to ridiculous salaries for executives. If a business has wild success and wants to keep its top talent in place, they might have to splurge a bit. As long as they stay profitable, who am I to say anything?

It's not the number that bothers me, but the car salesman they're giving it to. For all Bud Selig wants to boast about expanding baseball and how we're living in a "golden age" (I'm not joking, he actually said this [2]), the truth remains as crystal-clear as an HDTV broadcast:

World Series Television Viewers, 1975: 36 million
World Series Television Viewers, 1980: 42 million
World Series Television Viewers, 1985: 35 million
World Series Television Viewers, 1990: 30 million
World Series Television Viewers, 1995: 29 million
World Series Television Viewers, 2000: 18 million
World Series Television Viewers, 2005: 17 million [3]

Selig took over as acting commissioner in 1994 and on a permanent basis in 1998.

Under Bud, the World Series has not only moved to FOX, but it has also been demoted from a significant event to a water-cooler afterthought. And it isn't because of the markets involved, either. The thrilling Twins-Braves series of '91 brought in almost 36 million viewers.

In 2008, only 13.6 million tuned in.

"You won't recognize the sport."

No, I won't, Bud. People used to talk about baseball. Once upon a time, it would have mattered when Philadelphia had their Phillies winning their first title in almost 30 years.

The annals of acerbic talk radio have well-cataloged additional Bud Selig criticisms:

He allowed the All-Star game to end in a tie, that communist mechanism reserved only for soccer and old-school college football.

He sold advertising on the bases to a Japanese company.

He stood smiling over a homerun infused steroid era, subsequently allowing continued moral clouds to develop around the national pastime through complete inaction, thereby allowing Congress to parade some of his legends to a hearing and casting doubts on many other 90s greats.

He brought forth the World Baseball Classic in an attempt to expand baseball's fan base while damaging his own domestic product in the short-term.

He was instrumental in demolishing individual league offices, a move that weakened baseball's character strength of having two separate leagues (personal opinion, I know).

He tried to contract two teams in a completely botched behind-the-scenes move.

I'm sure there are many more if I sat and thought for a longer period of time, but the end-result is that during his decade of power, Bud Selig has yet to expand the game internationally at a pace more significant than any other sport, and there's ample proof the game's popularity has fallen domestically.

In his defense, he often cites raw attendance figures, which have increased during his reign. But a closer look reveals the increase is not as great as it seems. In terms of capacity, the number of teams at 75 percent or better in 2002 were 12. In 2008, the number was 13.

The bulk of the attendance increase has come from a small sample of teams. Yankees' attendance has risen by almost 13,000 per game over the last six years. The Cubs have seen a 5,000 person per game increase. The Angels have boosted attendance an additional 16,000 per game between '02 and '08.

Yet, in many metropolitan areas, baseball is on the decline. Dallas, Atlanta, Seattle, Pittsburgh, San Francisco, Phoenix, Cleveland, Oakland, Houston, Denver, Baltimore - all of these places saw declines, many significant. Much of this has to do with how good the local team is, which is a variable MLB doesn't weigh, but should.

When our beloved pastime continues to fail in Miami despite two World titles, when the Reds' attendance only increases by 2,000 per game after building a gorgeous stadium, and when Colorado can't get as many people to show up for the reigning league champions as they did when Coors Field was a novelty.

I'm not sure we're in a "Golden Age."

Baseball, for what is most likely stagnant growth (or, rather, re-energizing popularity in Boston, New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles and calling it growth), paid Bud Selig a cool $18 million.

You can do better, owners.

As I'm writing this, a slew of top business minds are looking for alternate career paths.

With Obama's salary cap, I guarantee more top-notch CEO's may be looking for a new office if they see the red ink on the balance sheet growing. They aren't all Alan Mullalys or Dick Fulds, either. There's some sharp minds who could certainly be had for as much money as you're currently paying a used car salesman.

George W. Bush has suggested that MLB commissioner is his "dream job." I wouldn't pick him, but there's likely a selection of former politicians and organizers out there up to the task of truly expanding the game.

There's always Bob Costas.

Rod Blagojevich is currently looking for a job, and I can assure you he'll use at least some of that expense fund on hair upkeep, unlike Mr. Selig.

And then there's me.

I'd work for nothing. Half the expense account ($400,000) will be just fine, thank you very much. With the remainder I'll invest in expanding baseball in South America, Africa, and Southern Asia.

I'll ban News Corporation (FOX) from bidding on baseball. I'll demand individual franchises take more active roles in their metropolitan youth leagues.

I'd heavily penalize teams for empty seats and strongly suggest they sell their remaining tickets for cheap if game time neared without a sell-out. I'd cut inning breaks to a two-minute maximum.

And that's just off the top of my head.

Above all else, there would never be a tie at the All-Star game, just as there wouldn't be if you were spending almost $20 million wisely.

There's good business moves, and then there's bad business moves. Some CEOs are worth $18,000,000. Some are worth far more. Bud Selig is worth about $180,000. Of course, what else could I expect from the group of men who kept paying Chan Ho Park well into 2007.

Unfortunately, baseball's elite feel Bud is worth it, despite shrinking domestic popularity. Just like Wall Street's elite two years ago, they may come to learn their golden age was quite gilded.

In the meantime, MLB, I'm waiting for your call. I'm even willing to lower my expense account to $300,000, leaving more to fund youth leagues and directly ensure the game's future. I'm sure Bud Selig would agree this is an admirable move, even as he cashes his next paycheck.

[1] Spurrier, Guy. "Selig's Salary Outpaces Most of the Players He Oversees." 3 Feb 2009. Sourced here: http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/postedsports/archive/2009/02/03/selig-s-salary-outpaces-most-of-the-baseball-players-he-oversees.aspx

[2] MLB.com "MLB Shatters Attendence Record." 10/2/2007. Sourced here: http://mlb.mlb.com/news/press_releases/press_release.jsp?ymd=20071002&content_id=2245590&vkey=pr_mlb&fext=.jsp&c_id=mlb

[3] Figures taken from ESPN: http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/attendance

Desperate Times: The Dark Side of Tim Tebow Worship

Mordecai Browner — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 13:59:56 -0500

"If you are fortunate enough to spend five minutes around Tim Tebow, your life is better for it."

It's a certain nominee for the best broadcast fellatio in a very young 2009.

While Thom Brenneman normally strikes me as a good broadcaster, his love-fest with the Florida quarterback has become a springboard for internet jokes and commentary—and rightly so.

But there's something deeper in his comment that warrants exploration. To many, Tim Tebow really does live on a pedestal. Words like "grounded," "mature," and even "saintly" fly off the silver tongues of former interviewers.

You see, in modern America, image is everything and Tebow's currently lives in that special class of the All-American unblemished leader alongside the likes of Lou Gehrig and Roger Staubach, George Washington, and a host of John Wayne characters.

It's an anthropological reality that societies need their legendary heroes, and the probing criticism of our modern media age has made them hard to create.

We're literally starving for icons.

Our recent baseball stars, save a few from the 80s like Tony Gwynn or Cal Ripken, have the slight taste of steroid-laden dishonesty. The NBA has tarnished the reputation of its all-time great and now features a troupe of narcissists. The NFL has Tom Brady and Peyton Manning, both of whom have lost that magic around their image due to negative exposure in the media (Brady through his personal life; Manning through his clumsy commercials), and a criminal-of-the-week feature on ESPN's Bottom Line.

But then there's Tim Tebow.

In Tebow, our media seems to see a bright, shining starlet of humanity, a young man all want as their son or son-in-law, a leader and energetic achiever with humility, that commodity so rare in high-achievers.

And so, they've made him college football's favored son.

But then there's First Baptist Church of Jacksonville. One of those mega-super-churches that sprung up in the 80s that has swallowed local churches to gain in mass since, FBC Jacksonville is one of the largest Southern Baptist congregations in America with 28,000 members.

Tim Tebow happens to be one, and a rather devoted member at that.

In 2002, FBC Jacksonville pastor Jerry Vines called Mohammed (you know, the key prophet in Islam) "a demon-possessed pedophile." Tebow, for the record, spoke at Vines' retirement service and signed Bibles.

FBC Jacksonville is the type of Falwellian church that often draws satire or anger. Its current organization, led by Mac Brunson, has apparently turned neofascist. Brunson himself claims that God's Sacred Will is the reason for the bad economy and high gas prices.

According to Brunson, we should all be thankful to Jesus that we don't make more money, because it would put us more into debt (I swear I'm not making this up). All while telling parishioners the value of economic humility and—in a down economy, mind you—that they're "robbing God" by not paying back 10% of their income to his church, Bruson continues to live in a $970,000 house. He is, to the South Park-inclined, Eric Cartman as a minister, 40 years later.

What does this have to do with Tebow?

I'm not going to begrudge a man for his religious choice. I was raised in a conservative Christian church and my intent isn't to call out "cannibals" or "kool-aid drinkers" or whatever other dribble the vitriolic atheist sect uses these days.

The problem isn't with Tim Tebow. It's with the media.

Here's three names for you: Barack Obama, Reggie White, and Troy Smith.

Obama was called out by many, including many of those Sunday-goers in Jacksonville, for sitting in a church with Jeremiah Wright at the helm. While being leader of the free world and All-American quarterback have different standards, why does Tebow get a complete pass for his membership in a crazy church?

Reggie White was, like Tebow, a devout Baptist. While being so genuine that he became a minister and wrote a book on faith, White was often looked at as a pariah in the media, especially after he was quoted calling homosexuality a sin.

Outspoken, sure, but there's no difference between the fervent nature of White's faith and Tebow's, and to glorify the one who nods while scoring the one talking is hypocritical at best.

And then there's Troy Smith. In 2006, Smith won the Heisman Trophy, capping a fantastic rags-to-riches story. The whole story was under-followed that year, save for maybe Pat Forde's excellent write-up on ESPN (and it's rare that I use "Pat Forde" and "excellent" in the same sentence).

Tim Tebow has gotten more positive coverage than all of these men, and for what? For being a humble, devout Christian with a pretty smile?

A simplistic mind would chalk this up to racism—that college football fans and the media decided to push the white hero and find faults with the prospective black ones.

But that's too easy. We've had charismatic black heroes who've had positive images developed in the media that gloss over faults—Jackie Robinson and Hank Aaron, Magic Johnson and Jerry Rice.

What's happened, instead, is that modern college football reporting (and sports in general) has become so rife with hackneyed criticisms and microscopic evaluations, lame jokes and personal-life reporting, that we have, in essence, become hungry for a genuine hero.

In Tebow, the media found someone with childlike innocence in a sea of money and late-night partying. Desperate to have someone who can live up to the imaginary standards of old, they've collectively decided not to even ask questions.

They've wrecked so many positive illusions they'll now do anything to keep one that won't destroy itself.

Find a college football coach who hasn't been stained with harsh words or acts. It's damned near impossible. It's rare for a player to gain national prominence, and even rarer for one to do so with no baggage, real or imaginary.

Adrian Peterson had a jailed father and two-year-old illegitimate daughter. Matt Leinart, too, had a child under circumstances much of the nation disapproves. Joey Harrington had Phil Knight paying his bills. Carson Palmer underachieved for two years. Reggie Bush has an NCAA investigation. Troy Smith had a criminal record.

In Tebow, they found a pure, hyped high school recruit who has delivered exactly what he was supposed to for three seasons. He also happens to be a devout Christian who keeps his mouth shut off-the-field.

Translation? Football Jesus.

Keep the myth alive. Everyone else has been "crucified" and we need it.

Must embrace a hero who doesn't destroy himself.

Kindly ignore the man behind the green curtain, the preacher who makes less sense than Jeremiah Wright, in the church that borders on cult-like behavior.

Because in the end, image is everything, and if you pretend the blind, happy nodding to the irrationality isn't there, it won't be, and meeting Tebow will still change your life, even if his Jesus hates Muslims and causes General Motors to go bankrupt.

Such is the power of the gilded pedestal—that we have to ignore things to keep someone up there.

Enjoy it, Tim.

Just don't ever change, or speak publicly on exactly what Lord and Savior you believe in.

You would crush the spirits of far too many admiring reporters.

Utah, Boise State, and the Arrogant Mythology Behind Deja Vu

Mordecai Browner — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 10:14:01 -0500

Can we please stop calling them David-and-Goliath upsets?

Four years ago, the Utah Utes thrashed Pitt 35-7 in the Fiesta Bowl. Two years ago, Boise State beat an 11-1 Oklahoma squad in the very same stadium. And then this year, the Utes returned to the BCS and knocked off Alabama in the Sugar Bowl.

David only slew Goliath once.

Cinderella's fairy godmother only showed up to one girl.

Non-BCS conference teams have won three of their four BCS bowl appearances. The Big Ten is 0-5 in their last five. Prior to Virginia Tech's Orange Bowl win, the ACC hadn't won a BCS bowl since Florida State won the BCS Championship in 2000.

We need to stop calling them stunning upsets. We, the collective sports viewing public, need to change our perceptions and expectations. We need to evaluate teams fairly and objectively so we can stop being "stunned" when this happens.

And when I say "we" I generally mean "you:" You, the hypocritical over-bloated sports network whose concocted baloney seems to have no expiration date; you, the insecure Southerner whose lingering bitterness with "them derned Yankees" has been translated into football arrogance; you, the lazy graduate assistant who fills out ballots for the Coach Weises of the world; and you, the armchair economist hellbent on convincing the world the little guys have no place at the table out of some fear the game will suffer financially.

Utah was ranked higher in Wes Colley's computer poll. They were ranked higher in the rankings Jeff Sagarin presented to the BCS. They were ranked 2nd in Jeff Anderson's poll, only behind Oklahoma. They were ranked higher in Massey's and Wolfe's. The only computerized poll that didn't rank them higher was Richard Billingsley's, which uses the tainted factor of past seasons.

Yet, to many, computers are just mythical boxes of random numbers that mean nothing, so they discarded them and decided Alabama would be a 10-point favorite, and framed most discussion around such.

Brilliant.

Two years ago I wrote about Boise State being my national champions. The same reasons therein can now be applied to Utah in a sobering case of deva ju.

For worse, and not better, we're going to have an "officially" crowned national champion with a glaring blemish on their record, either a home loss or a neutral loss to a rival with a better resume.

Utah has no such blemishes. They won at Ann Arbor when everyone thought Michigan was still Michigan. They beat TCU and BYU, both of whom made the top 15 at one point in the season. They beat as many bowl teams on the road as Southern Cal and took care of the Sun Bowl champions.

How can they not get a share of the national title?

Because of their schedule? Give me a break. They went on the road to Ann Arbor, a game that was scheduled well before anyone knew Michigan would suck, a game few schools like Texas or LSU would ever think of scheduling. Alabama, Texas Tech, Southern Cal, and Penn State all had schedules in the lower half of all D-1 strength of schedules and not one of them would have been kept from the title game for that reason.

Because they play in a weak conference? The Mountain West beat the Pac-10 in head-to-head match-ups this year. And while the bottom half of the Mountain West sucks, TCU, BYU, and Air Force are nothing to sneeze at. A good team is a good team, regardless of what conference subheading they live under.

Prior to their thumping of Alabama, Utah had three wins against top 30 teams. That's the same number as USC, Alabama, Texas, Texas Tech, and Florida. Yet one is different, isolated, and forgotten because of some imagined inferiority.

How fitting that our two main references for an upset, David/Goliath and Cinderella, come from the realm of legends and mythology, stories that might have roots in history but whose real value comes in the morals shown to listeners of embellished tales years later.

The power of lore runs strong through college football. "We" have constructed all sorts of myths we keep telling our gullible selves. Notre Dame being strong is essential. The ACC and Pac-10 are way down. Computers are worthless. There's something special about SEC speed. Lesser known schools are worse than Baylor and Mississippi State. Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.

It's fun to pretend, I suppose, until suddenly a "no-name' quarterback torches your revered team for 300+ yards in the Sugar Bowl and a mormon outcoaches your suitcase-living multimillionaire and you have no clue what just happened.

Unfortunately, certain media types got this image in their heads that college football began and ended with the Big XII and SEC this year, that three top fifteen teams meant nothing to the national picture, despite what every single objective measure of college football told us.

I prefer not to live in fantasy-land. What I know is that Utah has beaten every team it has played, including two that will rank among the top fifteen in the country. I know no other team can say that.

National titles should not be deferred based on imagined hypotheticals. Hypothetically, USC should be the national champion and Alabama should have smoked Utah by 10.

Realistically, Alabama should have been a 3-point favorite with the "home field" advantage, and the media should have treated it like such. The Utes deserve better than the "out of their element" (I'm not making this up - it's the first line of the AP write-up) crap that's being spewed. Realistically, Utah has proven as much this season as USC, who's being thrown as a "shoulda-been" national title contender despite their glaring loss to Oregon State, a team Utah beat.

And realistically, the Utes deserve at least a share of the title, and they will be the National Champions to at least this one fan. Congratulations, Utah, you earned it, despite what the mythology says.

Breathing Under Water: The Need For Revolution In College Football

Mordecai Browner — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 06:12:51 -0500

Our purpose is to govern competition in a fair, safe, equitable and sportsmanlike manner, and to integrate intercollegiate athletics into higher education so that the educational experience of the student-athlete is paramount. NCAA "Core Purpose" and/or Comedy Bit

In one of his better-known short stories, the Polish writer Stanislaw Lem depicted a land where the government dictated that all citizens shall breathe under water. In a blatant parody of communist tendencies, its inhabitants sing about breathing under water and argue over what constitutes breathing.

The moral of the story should not be lost on college football fans.

I don't wish to beat dead horses. It's blatantly obvious the BCS is a failure, a product of collective stupidity under ridiculous guidelines. The notion of the student-athlete in big-time college football is a transparent fallacy, and has been for decades. And the NCAA's definition of "govern...in a fair...manner" is to go soft on Indiana basketball and USC football while nailing Ball State and Coastal Carolina for textbooks and golf coaches, respectively.

But what few discuss is a simple fix to much of what ails college football: stop breathing under water and overthrow the NCAA.

To playoff or not to playoff is question that distracts the public from the main issue.

A playoff isn't happening under the status quo. Jim Delaney gets paid handsomely to keep it from happening so that the Big Ten can protect its revenue stream. Not even Barack Obama can change the fact that Delaney was instrumental in renegotiating the Rose Bowl television deal through 2014.

What needs to happen for the sport to truly thrive is for the entire power structure to be undercut. Even if college football went to a playoff, the game would still be tarnished, damaged like an old car boasting a decade of ad hoc duct tape repairs.

College football doesn't need reform; it needs a revolution, a coup against Delaney and his suit-wearing peers.

What if, tomorrow, the eleven Big Ten schools formally disbanded their football programs concurrent with establishing eleven corporate entities that took over operations? Free from the NCAA's oppressive rule, they could engage in a bidding war for the nation's top recruits and it would unfathomable to think other schools would resist following them.

What would the NCAA be able to do in response? Censure or ban the gymnastics teams?

What people like Florida President Bernie Machen need to realize is that the value in college football is ultimately in the fan, the consumer who pays money to support their team. Fans inevitably follow their team, not the NCAA or a conference or the game as a whole. Just as Lem and other dissident writers understood power ultimately lies with individuals and not with system under which they live, Machen and his peers need to grasp the power they have against the Delaneys of the world.

There would be a few disadvantages with privatizing profitable college football. Unless profits from the new corporate entities were directed back to the universities, many schools with self-supporting athletic programs would suddenly show a department in the red, which would raise the ire of academic administrators prone to disliking sports. The legal battles regarding contracts would be merciless, expensive, and time-consuming, as well, and the NCAA would surely find some recourse to prevent privatization.

But in the end, it makes fiscal sense. Schools like Oklahoma turn ridiculous profits from their football programs under an oppressive system; with freedom from the complex NCAA rule book, the big-time schools could boost profits even more. Instead of being governed by the warped justice of the NCAA, football programs would be judged against the actual law like ordinary companies.

Furthermore, removing football from a University's sanctioned sports list allows for broader participation by male athletes as a whole given the constraints of Title IX. Real, actual want-to-be student athletes who may have been denied a wrestling team so as to keep in step with gender equality legislation would be able to gain access to those resources previously allocated to men's football.

Bowl games would likely not go away under this hypothetical reality. The reason bowls still exist is that they usually make money and that, frankly, the consumer wants them. Without the NCAA, teams might be free to play in more than one bowl game. If a new institutional hierarchy is established, they could theoretically create an 8-team playoff AND keep bowl games.

The NCAA, of course, could allow this to happen. They could eliminate regulations on when and how teams play. They could give more leeway to individual schools to pursue income-generating activities. They could sanction a playoff while still allowing schools to hear overtures from the bowl committees.

Instead, the NCAA would rather live by ideals its member institutions left behind long ago.

The value of college football lives in approximately sixty schools. At most of these schools, football reaps nice profits, and it's a continual violation of capitalist belief to place arbitrary limits on their ability to maximize profits on specious moral grounds. Furthermore, it prevents the consumer from getting the product they want (namely, a true champion).

A new institutional hierarchy could protect the game by limiting players' ages and setting limits on players' contracts just as other sports bodies do.

Crazy delusional fantasy? Perhaps, but it's obvious that college football needs something else. Fear keeps people like Machen from acting unilaterally, fear that he would lose money and fear that no one would follow him. But when a University's privatized booster organization can raise millions by itself, isn't fear of starvation or loneliness a sign of paranoia?

Money can't buy happiness, but it can buy a place in a shiny new organization, and the money ultimately rests with the fans and, transitively, the teams.

The current system is broken beyond repair, neither consumer nor business gains what they wish from the current arrangement, and ardent supporters of such a hypocritical umbrella government are merely trying to breathe under water.

Unfortunately, we won't evolve into fish and as long as our favorite teams operate under the conditions of the NCAA, we'll continue the annual griping, playoff or not. Listening to orthodox ideals instead of the average consumer's wishes has never worked in business, and the average consumer wants a true champion, a fair system of justice, and opportunity for their favorite team.

The only way to achieve these ends to is to eradicate the archaic institution, and it might only take one intrepid soul to begin the dominoes.

You reading, Bernie, or do you still have your head under water?

Responsibility: It's Not Just for Iowa Fans and Bathroom Stalls

Mordecai Browner — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 05:11:33 -0500

A story rumbling around the message boards concerns two Iowa fans who were caught having adult relations in a Metrodome handicapped stall last Saturday, an event that has probably garnered more reaction than the lackluster 55-0 game itself. The punchline of the story, as it's usually reported, is this: "the woman was released to her husband, the man to his girlfriend."

Hilarious, right?

Right, and, as a side note, really just an insignificant footnote, it shows the blackened moral abyss into which we've descended.

I don't mean sex. No matter how pious or amoral a society, alcohol doesn't mix well with inhibitions and intoxicating scents often create lustful air. Hook-ups are virtually inevitable, be it in the taverns of Shakespeare's England or in the dark corners of swank Atlanta clubs.

And I'm certainly not opposed to personal responsibility. The two were clearly in violation of Minnesota law and, surely more embarrassing, have to own up to their behavior with their significant others.

But that, you see, is about as far as the stone-throwing should go, for most of those criticizing or causing additional pain for the woman in question live in houses far more fragile than glass. What's worse is that while straddling their own high horses about personal responsibility, most of the Internet jockeys tacitly refuse to take responsibility for their own actions.

Because there's more to any story than the two-sentence blurb I posted in the opening paragraph. On Wednesday, the woman in question was fired from her job during a recession. She continues to have her name and photograph plastered over the Internet and has received numerous prank calls.

For a misdemeanor and an act that is better dealt between husband and wife than by internet pontification.

And yet they persisted. Despite the scant known facts, the geniuses of the Internet started throwing out their scholarly theories, some suggesting she has an alcohol problem, others supposing she is a skank, a swinger, and a lousy mother, and most using it as a springboard for jokes even after the follow-up story came out.

Are these twits going to take responsibility for the woman's unemployment? For her name permanently etched in the Internet stone of Google searches? For the embarrassment her family has to suffer? For the harassment?

Or what about journalist Douglas Burns of her local newspaper, who published her home address in his story?

Where's his apology for giving the sharks directions to their feeding frenzy?

Equally disturbing is that she suggested possibly being drugged in her follow-up story and the claim was instantly universally dismissed, not so much because it lacks merit, but rather because judgments about the situation and the character of the woman involved had already been made.

I doubt she was drugged. Given the police report, it seems unlikely, but I freely admit the possibility that the man slipped something in an open drink, offered it to a drunken woman, and had his way in the bathroom. Highly unlikely, but it's a possibility, and in America, traditionally, we've had a dictum of reasonable doubt before conviction.

But in Internetland, we shoot to kill and any whimpers from the corpse are only a sign to shoot again. Reasonable doubts are for her lawyer to prove against the harsh winds of conclusions already reached, namely that a 38-year-old mother of three was analogous to a drunken sorority whore, and it's downright hilarious, future information irrelevant.

MILF jokes can't be retracted. Can't delete hours of amateur Photoshopping, can we?

And then there's the blatant sexism. If you've followed this story on a message board or elsewhere, at some point you've probably seen a photo of the woman involved. Some outlets seemed quite happy to find one, even.

But where are the photos of the man? A simple Google search revealed a newspaper article about him, and a two-second Myspace search gave me a whole host of photos, all coincidentally involving alcohol.

Did any of these so-called media outlets even search for his photograph? No, instead they dug deep and found a photo for the masturbatory masses. After decades of reevaluating gender and sexuality, we still make men into our sexual champions, winners no matter how they score, and women our ignorant sexual conquests, worthy of scorn regardless of whether they submit to sexual advances or reject them, instigate them or receive them.

And doesn't the fact that there were a dozen men cheering the act on bother anyone, given the slim chance that it might have been a date rape?

In the end, the moral vacuousness of the situation isn't the infidelity or the alcohol consumption, but the reaction it garnered. In a former time, it would have been reported and charges would have been filed, and perhaps even a few men would have pointed and laughed. But at no time before this massive ball of wires would the incident have swept across the nation so quickly as to cause a misdemeanor charge to ruin an average person's life in a matter of five days.

The internet might have democratized and enabled grassroots politics, but it also democratized idiocy. Addicts looking for their schadenfreude get it; no matter how bad a crumbling marriage or a company's balance sheet, the fact that in the middle of Iowa there's a guy who's married to some drunken whore eases the pain. Better yet, let's see how hot she is and call her up for a quickie.

No big deal, just tack another onto the list of Katharina Blums.

This has clearly become an example of one of the many stories that would be better left to idle discussion in coffee shops and bowling alleys, not broadcast through a series of servers. Perhaps the Internet has made our reaction to sex more infantile, or perhaps it fully let loose the infantile reactions of the Vulgarian masses.

Sex is often legitimately funny. This isn't one of those cases, and the fact that the Internet has made many of us numb to the difference is truly frightening.

Either way, a slew of hypocrites have crucified a woman for a misdemeanor, something far less severe than a DUI or larceny, things that often go completely unnoticed by the message board population. An issue that directly affects the private lives of a mere four people has become a call for moral finger-pointing while entertaining frat guys. Many armchair college football fans have gotten a lot of mileage out of this one while perpetuating its severity on the Internet.

A simple act of drunken infidelity has gained a woman horrible imfamy that will leave scars long after the public forgets the event, and long after the event normally would have been put fully in the past, so when are they, those media propagators, going to accept responsibility for their actions?

Overachievers, Underachievers: Recruiting and Performance in 2008

Mordecai Browner — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 09:14:11 -0500

Every February, we make a big deal about recruiting rankings as the next college football class signs with their prospective schools. But rarely do we look back in time to see who did the best with the recruits they got.

After all, a slew of five-star signees means nothing without five-star results on the field.

In short, I wanted to know which programs have overachieved this season given their recruiting results and which programs have underachieved. It's easy to say Northwestern for the former or Notre Dame for the latter, but how about the rest of the Division?

The first step in finding out which programs are most efficient with their recruits is finding a way to gauge recruiting classes that would affect the current roster. No single year can define a roster that includes players across years, nor can a simple aggregate sum.

For simplicity sake, I derived a simple formula that accounts for two factors: 1) that seniors contribute more than sophomores or freshman and 2) that 5th-year seniors exist, but aren't normally as prominent in a team's success as juniors or seniors.

I opted to weigh recruiting class rankings accordingly: 4th-year players at a multiple of 4, 3rd-year players at a multiple of 3, 2nd-year and 5th-year players (as most of the 5th-year class is gone) at a multiple of 2, and 1st-year players at a multiple of 1.

Using Scout.com's team recruiting rankings, I assigned a value of 100 for the top-ranked recruiting class, 99 for the 2nd class, and so on. With the formula above, this gives a maximum 1200 points for any team ranked first every year.

To keep matters simply, I only calculated BCS-conference teams. Though it may seem complicated, it isn't. In short, here are the top ten recruiting programs affecting 2008 rosters:

USC (1170 points)
Michigan (1141 points)
Georgia (1133 points)
Florida (1132 points)
Texas (1109 points)
LSU (1094 points)
Ohio State (1087 points)
Miami-Florida (1087 points)
Oklahoma (1084 points)
Florida State (1082 points)

Seems fairly accurate when it comes to recruiting, right?

Once I'd figured all these out for all 66 BCS-conference teams (plus Notre Dame), I ranked them compared to the current BCS rankings (using Rich Tellshow's numbers for all 120 teams). Again, for simplicity sake, I cut the BCS down and considered only BCS-conference teams (so instead of being 117th, Washington is only 66th).

Then, to answer my question about efficiency, I found the difference between the general recruiting ranking for 2004-2008 and the current BCS ranking.

So who is the most " efficient" or "overachieving" college football team? Cincinnati, and it's not really close. The Bearcats rank 16th in the current BCS even though their recruiting for this year was 64th out of 66 BCS teams.

The worst should surprise no one. The Michigan Wolverines, whose recruiting rankings are inflated by guys like Ryan Mallett (as well they should be, if we're looking for program efficiency), had the second-best recruiting numbers and the sixth-worst performance out of BCS schools.

(Full list on the next page)

Here is the entire list, with the differential between their recruiting rank and performance rank in parenthesis:

Cincinnati (+52)
Northwestern (+37)
Oregon State (+34)
UCONN (+34)
Missouri (+33)
Boston College (+33)
Vanderbilt (+30)
Wake Forest (+29)
Oklahoma State (+28)
Texas Tech (+25)
Michigan State (+24)
Georgia Tech (+23)
Kansas (+21)
Kentucky (+16)
Rutgers (+16)
Minnesota (+14)
South Florida (+13)
Alabama (+11)
West Virginia (+11)
Penn State (+10)
Baylor (+9)
Oregon (+7)
Oklahoma (+6)
Duke (+4)
Indiana (+4)
Texas (+3)
North Carolina (+3)
Colorado (+2)
Maryland (+1)
Florida (0)
Ohio State (0)
Pittsburgh (0)
Wisconsin (-2)
Louisville (-2)
Kansas State (-2)
South Carolina (-3)
Virginia Tech (-3)
Florida State (-4)
Virginia (-4)
USC (-5)
Iowa State (-5)
Georgia (-6)
Mississippi (-6)
Iowa (-6)
Stanford (-7)
Nebraska (-8)
Louisiana State (-10)
Purdue (-10)
Syracuse (-10)
NC State (-11)
California (-13)
Clemson (-13)
Illinois (-13)
Miami (-14)
Arizona (-16)
Washington State (-17)
Mississippi State (-18)
Arkansas (-20)
Arizona State (-26)
Notre Dame (-28)
Washington (-29)
UCLA (-38)
Auburn (-39)
Texas A&M (-41)
Tennessee (-45)
Michigan (-59)

Some key points:

I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the possibility that recruiting rankings are biased. If you look at the list, it appears there's a slight southern bias, especially with respect to schools that recruit the south or California heavily.
It's easy for us (fans, media, boosters) to forget a school's actual position in the college football world given success the previous year. Despite having "disappointing" seasons, schools like Missouri, Kansas, Wake Forest, and Rutgers are actually doing better than they "should" be.
Yes, Indiana really is outplaying its recruiting relative to BCS conference schools. This is because Indiana had the worst recruiting score at a paltry 340. The next lowest were Vanderbilt (353), Cincinnati (361), UCONN (444), Baylor (454), and Wake Forest (462). If your recruiting is completely inadequate and you take the field in a BCS conference, winning just a few games pushes you past expectations the way the rankings work.
Schools like Boston College and Wisconsin traditionally play much better than their recruiting, so it becomes easy to lump them in with their conferences and assume they're recruiting as well as the others.
Aggregate conference efficiencies are as follows: Big East 114, Big XII 71, ACC 44, Big Ten -1, SEC -90, Pac-10 -110. This further suggests a possible recruiting bias towards the west coast and southeast.
For the curiosity of the statistics geeks out there, the statistical correlation between the raw recruiting score I calculated and current BCS ranking is 0.35.

For all the fuss the gurus make about recruiting, it's equally important to have a staff that can cultivate that talent into a special football team. After all, who would you rather have take the field for you, the two-star players at Northwestern or the four-star players at Michigan who lost to them on their home field?

That, to me, is how you determine the merits of one program versus another long after the hoopla surrounding letters of intent is gone.

Illinois Football 2008: The Big Orange Waste

Mordecai Browner — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 13:39:50 -0500

For the second time in my life, Illinois, fresh off a BCS Bowl, has pushed itself right back into the mediocrity pit.

In 2002, the Illini posted a 5-7 record after going to the Sugar Bowl the prior year. This season, Illinois finished with a similar 5-7 whimper after their performances against Ohio State and Northwestern. One can't help but wonder about the connection.

Step forward, fall back.

Oh, but this season was supposed to be different. Linebacker Brit Miller told us so: "We don't want to be that class that's remembered for a 6-6 year."(1) Well, congrats, Brit, you won't be.

This year was supposed to be it, the year Illinois as a program would finally sustain long-term Big Ten success, to nose their big orange nose back in with the top of the conference.

Junior quarterback Juice Williams was finally coming into his own and started - gasp - Heisman buzz after overshadowing Chase Daniel in the opener. Martez Wilson, 5-star recruit, was supposed to light up the Big Ten as a sophomore. Will Davis? Leader on one of the best defensive lines in the country. Safeties, offensive linemen, running backs? More than enough talent to replace what departed, they told us.

A funny thing happened on the way back to Pasadena.

With a Swiss-cheese defense and a running game that intimidated nobody, Illinois beat only four Division I teams, only three from the Big Ten, and only one that will go bowling this year, a close-cut win over rivals Iowa at home.

They lost to Western Michigan.

They lost to a Wisconsin team that had lost four straight and beat Cal-Poly by one point. In overtime.

They gift-wrapped a game to Minnesota at home.

Even with the blessing of Michigan's worst team since Bo Schembechler arrived in Ann Arbor, Illinois finished 5-7. They're the first Big Ten Rose Bowl squad not to go bowling the next year in decades.

Martez Wilson? Big Ten doesn't know he exists. Juice Williams? Interception-crazy and inconsistent in his leadership. The lines? Let's just say no one's going to be writing about them next preseason, and don't even get me started on the pass defense.

Aside from Miller, WR Arrellious Benn, S Donsay Hardeman, and perhaps CB Vontae Davis, no one impressed with any kind of consistency. The running-back-by-committee approach couldn't hold a candle to one Rashard Mendenhall. The coaches, likewise, lost many admirers with another season of questionable decisions and fundamental gaffes.

This was supposed to be the year that Ron Zook's superior recruiting was supposed to shine, with seniors who've known no other coach and his first renowned class entering their third years. It wasn't just with the top-ranked studs like Wilson, either, but also with the lower-ranked players Zook brought in, heralded as diamonds in the rough.

Instead, it appears we might have some dull, Ron Turner-style duds.

No one in 2002 wanted to chase Turner from the program. Everyone said that he deserved a chance and his superior coaching skills would turn the ship right back towards the top of the Big Ten. Instead, we sank to the bottom.

I don't think that will happen with Zook, but there's certainly little sign that the program is anywhere near where we thought.

In the end, Illinois fans must come to terms with the fact that last season's team was a 7-5 team who went 9-3 while this year's team was a 7-5 team that went 5-7. Unfortunately, that puts a downward trend on recruiting; and indeed, today, highly-sought-after LB Hiawatha Bell announced he would attend North Carolina instead of Illinois.

The Fighting Illini still have plenty of top recruits lined up for next year. They're currently 5th by most evaluations among Big Ten schools for '09 recruiting, and many expect them to move ahead of the crumbling Michigan program. Guys like DE Craig Drummond and QB Nathan Scheelhaase look to be promising prospects for the future, and younger players like DT Corey Liuget, WRs AJ Jenkins and Fred Sykes, and RB Jason Ford have already made a positive impact on the field.

But for now, we as fans have no choice but to declare the season an absolute waste of everything. Momentum? Gone. The claim to be an on-the-rise program? Vanished. Returning All-Big-10 players on defense? Good-bye. Legitimate Rose hopes? Not for a few years now. First Illinois team to go bowling in back-to-back years since Makovic? Here's looking at you, 2010.

Perhaps it was just a bad year to wear orange. Tennessee, Syracuse, Clemson, and not even Texas are where they want to be right now. Perhaps there were off-the-field issues that haven't come to light, struggles between coaches and players, or emotional cancers in the locker room. Perhaps the filming of The Journey distracted the team from their task on the field.

I just feel it was a wasted season, to be on the threshold of turning the corner, complete with a beautifully renovated stadium and a self- proclaimed "Illini Renaissance" only to run and hide from even the desperate Motor City Bowl Committee.

Step forward, fall back.

Illinois football.

It'll be a long offseason.

(1) Daniel Johnson "Illini Senior Linebacker Brit Miller Talks Rantoul, the Big Ten, and Belly Flops." Daily Illini. 7/29/2008.

If Minorities Can Be President, Why Not Head Coach?

Mordecai Browner — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 16:06:10 -0500

Three nights after Barack Obama became the first minority President-elect of the United States, I'm left wondering about one of the most tried-and-true topics in college football: the scarcity of black head coaches. If an African-American can be president, why not coach football?

Indeed, feeding off the election and the departures of Ron Prince and Ty Willingham, numerous media outlets have reported the number of African-American head coaches at FBS schools dropping to four. FIU's Mario Cristobal adds the lone Hispanic and Ken Niumatalolo at Navy, a Samoan-American, brings the grand minority count to six.*

That would be roughly 3.3% black coaches and 5.0% minority, an apparent disparity against the 55% of players who are minorities.

Why, in a world where an African-American can rise to the highest office on the planet, do minorities have such a hard time getting head coaching positions in a sport they dominate at the player level?

The answer to the apparent paradox is a conclusion that might startle some: it takes more qualifications to be a head football coach at the FBS level than it does to be President.

To move James Carville into the sporting realm (against the wishes of sports fans everywhere): it's the candidate pool, stupid.

The only absolute requirements to be President are an age over thirty-five, natural-born citizenship, and residence in the States for fourteen years. There's also a variety of practical requirements: no jail time, respectable education, service record, and, most importantly, the ability to raise ungodly heaps of cash.

To be a head football coach, one first has to have a bachelor's degree to even be in the candidate pool. On the practical front, most fan bases, boosters, and administrators require a lengthy resume of football exploits. I would estimate ten years of coaching experience to get a head job at a lower-tier school, while most upper-crust jobs require proven head coaching experience at a sizable school.

Consider Brian Kelly, current head coach at Cincinnati. Kelly won two Division II national titles en route to compiling a 118-35-2 record at Grand Valley State. He then turned the Central Michigan program from 4-7 to 6-5 and then to 9-4, a bowl game, and continued success atop the conference. At the beginning of 2007, Kelly was entering his 20th year of football coaching.

Could he have been named the head coach at Alabama? Heck no. Miami? No. Boston College? Probably not. Michigan State? Perhaps, but not as a first choice.

Meanwhile, Obama, with a mere twelve years of elected public service (only four of those at the national level and zero in an executive capacity) was found to be more than qualified for the highest office in the land by a majority of voters.

I point these things out merely to show the resistance inherent to college football. The way we flippantly speak of head coaching vacancies, we act as if it should be easy to find an African-American to coach.

But do a quick hypothetical. Say Urban Meyer leaves Florida, or Pete Carroll leaves USC. Name one African-American who those schools would happily accept as head football coach.

Found one yet? Don't worry if you haven't; there isn't one, at least not if we're being honest with ourselves** (and frankly there's very few white men who would qualify either).

In truth, there are only two logical ways to improve the minority ranks at the head coaching level:

1. Lower expectations and qualifications for head coaches.
2. Increase minority presence in the actual candidate pool.

The first is an impossibility in the high-stakes world of college football.

The second takes far more effort than most administrators actually want to exert.

Consider two alternate ways of looking at the destruction of the Presidential race barrier. The first is as the success story of a single charismatic politician. The second is as the systematic result of forty-four years of genuine electoral freedom and integration from the bottom-up.

Before a minority could become President, there really needed to be enough minorities in the political system to where the odds of one attaining the highest post increased in probability to the point where it was likely to happen. While Obama is certainly a political savant, he comes from a pool that includes 42 other black congressmen and numerous other minorities constantly gaining strides at lower levels.

Why should college football be any different?

Instead of actively working to increase the minority candidate pool at all levels, college football critics point solely to head coaching positions, often demanding that African-Americans be interviewed for positions regardless of intent to hire or even, in some cases, legitimate merit, a spin-off of the NFL's "Rooney Rule."

Sadly, this approach, like many well-to-do affirmative action schemes, completely ignores the root problems that cause a shortage of black coaches at the top level.

It's the candidate pool, stupid.

A bachelor's degree is an often-forgotten first requirement towards being a college coach. And the sad reality is that black student-athletes more often leave college without degrees than white student-athletes.

In 2004, Black Issues in Higher Education*** found that while 56% of LSU's white players graduated, only 34"% of their black student-athletes did. They are by no means alone. The disparity was 30% for Ohio State (58% to 28%), 35% for Georgia (86% to 51%), 52% for Tennessee (78% to 26%), 27% for Minnesota (58% to 31%), 24% for Washington State (71% to 47%), 28% for Nebraska (69% to 41%), and on and on and on. All parts of the country, all sizes of school, same big, glaring problem.

Anyone who really wants to see more African-American coaches in college football must solve this issue first. The difference in who walks away with a degree is not only striking (and in my opinion appalling), but it also completely undercuts anyone who throws out the participation numbers.

So what if the players are 50% black if only a third of them even gain the simplest qualification to be a head coach? Until African-Americans graduate in numbers equal to their white peers, college football will continue to be run by white men.

Those who ignore this vital facet, instead focusing solely on the interviewing process at one segment of the food chain, sadly underrate the severity of the issue by removing it from its broader context. A lack of minorities isn't just an issue at the head coaching level, but also at the level of university presidents, athletic directors, conference commissioners, and even those working support functions in athletic departments.

This isn't an isolated issue of an imbalance between a high number of black players and a low number leading them. Rather, it's a segment of a systemic issue. The NCAA is not the NFL and demanding an extra interview for each vacancy will not solve a darned thing.

Rather, to genuinely fix the disparity, more black athletes need to be finishing their degrees. This will naturally increase African-American presence in the candidate pool.

But we also must remember there are crucial spots on the chain between graduation and head coach. The most important of these are the two coordinator positions.

In the vaunted Big XII, currently the best conference in college football, three of the twenty-six coordinator and co-coordinator positions are held by African-Americans by my count (Ruffin McNeal, Texas Tech Defensive Coordinator; Brian Norwood, Baylor Defensive Coordinator; and Trooper Taylor, Oklahoma State Co-Offensive Coordinator). While that's more than 10%, it's still relatively small considering the number of black players.

How can we reasonably expect more black head coaches when the number of coordinators is not as high as one would expect?

You want more black head coaches? Get more black coordinators.

Want more black coordinators? Get more black position coaches.

Want more black position coaches? Get more black graduate assistants.

Want more black graduate assistants? Get more blacks to graduate.

It's a simple chain fed by roughly the same candidate pool, and not enough African-Americans are getting in the pool in the first place.

Again, the whole system falls on something bigger than football: racial disparity in the education system. While I have no immediate answers to solve that crisis, I think it's important to realize it, and not some other concocted reason, is why we don't see more black head coaches.

Guaranteeing interviews to qualified African-Americans might be a respectable start, but in the end it returns to meaningless lip service if the overall imbalance in the educational system remains intact.

Though no topic has been hashed and rehashed in American academia more than race relations, few, if any, athletic departments would ever want to take steps to do its part to close the racial gap in education.

However, one thing the NCAA can, and should, do is penalize schools with excessive disparities between black athletes and other football players, schools who, for lack of a better term, "use" black athletes as mere devices for athletic gain. Programs would have to think twice before admitting a student-athlete who they didn't think could graduate, even if he did have a world-beater 40-yard dash.

Such a scheme would do more to promote genuine academic investment in African-Americans and consequently allow more to graduate and potentially coach. But in the end, it all comes down to starting at the bottom, with the student-athlete getting his diploma and possibly becoming a graduate assistant.

Until that starts happening on an equal scale to whites, the sports polemicists will still write their yearly half-baked articles bemoaning the dearth of African-American coaches that blame the NCAA or "racist" athletic departments for what is, at root, a societal problem, in which they are most certainly a part.

* - source: "Study: Black Coach Numbers Lowest in 15 Years." http://www.sportsline.com/collegefootball/story/11087476/2

** - I'm eliminating Charlie Strong due to the fact that much of the criticism directed at Ron Zook was that he had never had success as a head football coach prior to Florida and that the U of F deserved someone who was a proven winner, which he isn't. I'll admit I'm not a Gator fan, but I can't imagine Turner Gill going over well there as a head coach choice, either, at least not now.

*** - source: "Graduation Rates of America's Top-Ranked College Football Teams." http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0DXK/is_/ai_112409398

John Amaechi: The Big Gay Barrier Got Bigger

Mordecai Browner — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 20:48:08 -0400

Quick: What's the difference between John Amaechi and the wide receiver formally known as Chad Johnson?

John Amaechi has a little bit more brains; Ocho Cinco has a ton more talent and relevance.

It's been over a year and a half since John Amaechi forced himself into relevance by grabbing a bullhorn and proclaiming his homosexuality to a world that had ignored him as a basketball player. Suddenly, a man with an NBA impact similar to Tellis Frank and Jake Tsakalidis had become a household name—and, to many, a "martyr" for gay rights.

Yet I would argue that precisely because of John Amaechi, the forces keeping gay athletes in the proverbial closet are stronger than ever. Rather than tearing down any invisible walls, he added an entirely new layer of bricks.

Amaechi, first and foremost, is an outsider to the NBA, independent of his sexuality. A British man with an intellectual sheen, he would seem out-of-place with virtually any NBA clique.

He's also a shameless opportunist who has never viewed sports as his primary concern. In his own words: "I am not particularly passionate about sports themselves. I am deeply invested in what I can do using sports."

Had Amaechi merely published a book about being a gay athlete in a team sport—which is more or less what Billy Bean did in 1999—he would certainly be helping the cause of gay athletes. Instead, Amaechi became the self-appointed leader for all things gay basketball. Not only was he part of the story, but he also anointed himself journalist, cultural critic, marketing manager, and quotation source.

Let's focus on four specific incidents:

1. An oft-cited passage in Amaechi's book talks about male behavior in the NBA locker room, him finding the grooming and styling almost paradoxical for the image of the straight male athlete.

2. Three months after his name burst onto the national sports scene, Amaechi reported back that the reaction to his coming-out was significantly less abrasive than he expected, but that there were former NBA teammates who should have called but hadn't yet.

3. In May of this year, Amaechi made the following comments to a British magazine concerning race and homosexuality: "The juxtaposition of being gay and black in sports is especially powerful. Because if people were to guess who the gay people in sport were, they’d pick the white folk....because you’ve got this one stereotype of black people, that automatically means they can’t be gay."

4. During the Olympic games, Amaechi again thrust himself into the spotlight (and provided the inspiration to write this) by reporting "tense" relations with the USA Basketball contingent and a conspicuously ambiguous interaction with Kobe Bryant:

"I ran into Kobe, and he was surprised to see me,'' Amaechi said. "It didn't go well.''

These four passages or instances show a complete lack of understanding for American culture and a startling amount of egocentric thought.

Male style has been a hallmark of heterosexual behavior since the dawn of time, and not just with humans. Just as a bird's bright plumage signals health and strength to his female targets, male humans use fashion and accessories to showcase their wealth or power to potential mates. It's the biological mechanism that connects a teenager's Mustang with Michael Irvin's pimp suits.

Ignoring this basic tenet of evolutionary behavior, Amaechi chose to utilize a stereotype that fails even the loosest test of scrutiny. For someone who wished to destroy stereotypes, that appears fairly hypocritical.

And I sincerely question why he thought an NBA journeyman would face "the wrath of a nation under God." People traditionally have to care to expend the energy necessary for wrath, and it must take an extreme amount of self-aggrandizing to see oneself as Hank Aaron, or to take a small sample of Americans as the whole country.

The truth is, Glenn Burke came out of the closet in the United States in 1982. He was also black and an outstanding athlete who wound up as a journeyman-level baseball player. Despite being black, gay, and spending most of the '80s on cocaine, Burke never received the "wrath of a nation." Instead, when news broke that he was dying of AIDS, he received sympathy from his former teammates while inadvertently raising awareness for his devastating disease.

The fact that the reality of Burke completely contradicts the preconceptions John Amaechi had (or has) makes me question the latter's ability to comment on American life. Gay athletes don't really have a color in America, nor is there some massive pent-up wrath waiting to pour upon them that's any different than normal sports-related anger.

In light of his poor perception and love of the spotlight, I have to question the authenticity of the "tension" at his appearance. I don't know what happened, but I do know that if Tellis Frank or Jake Tsakalidis had walked up to Kobe Bryant, I wouldn't expect him to pay either the time of day unless he developed a relationship with them during their brief stay.

John Amaechi shouldn't be any different, and that's exactly a reality that John Amaechi hasn't yet wanted to face.

Instead of just being a former athlete who's gay, Amaechi has expected people to pay attention to him precisely because he's gay. While other gay athletes have come out of the closet and even published books, none placed themselves on a higher pedestal than John Amaechi.

And that's precisely the problem.

When Jackie Robinson was about to break baseball's color barrier, Branch Rickey insisted that he not respond angrily to the insults he would surely face. Rickey knew this would be an extremely hard thing for Robinson to do, but he understood something fundamental to breaking societal barriers, a tactic adopted by Thurgood Marshall during the legal battles of segregation when selecting litigants for test cases:

The person breaking the barrier must come off as a sympathetic figure, and not in any way reflect inherent anger, or anything but pure intentions.

Jackie Robinson was an athlete's athlete, an All-American football player who thrived on competition. Having served in the military and lived his whole life in the States, he was every bit as American as the game itself. His actions came across not as someone who wanted to break a racial barrier for his own gain, but rather a guy who just wanted to play ball and live his life.

Amaechi is a foreigner who shoots barbs at the NBA from the safety of retirement while selling books. He actually wanted a Tim Hardaway to come along precisely so he could rebut him and move back into the spotlight: "People said that I should just shut up and go away—now they have to rethink that."

Yet it's becuase Amaechi is so different, so atypical of athletes in general, that he would've helped his cause so much more by choosing a different course of action.

Most athletes, gay or straight, are about competition first and foremost, winning championships, medals, games, playing time, what have you. Very few athletes will do anything to jeopardize their ability to compete for these things.

In Robinson's case, he wanted to break the color barrier in order to have a competitive opportunity, and his competitive fire was one of the most significant factors in his success.

In contrast, competitive spirit does not help gay athletes break any barriers. As comments by various NBA players pointed out, there is a latent trust issue at work in team sports. Managing team chemistry can be harder than alchemy, and few true athletes on championship-aspiring teams want to risk that.

Furthermore, most true athletes want to be known as athletes first. Karl Malone, for example, was an NBA player who happened to drive a truck, not a truck driver who happened to play in the NBA.

John Amaechi comes across as a gay man who happened to play in the NBA a long time ago. His alliance with ESPN has virtually ensured that any athlete who chooses to come out of the closet during his prime will face an intensified spotlight that will make anything previous players faced looked dim.

While Burke or Bean's revelations may have inspired athletes to believe that a solid player could be gay without fully disrupting their team, Amaechi's firestorm stifled such thoughts. Hope that a player would be evaluated on his merits as an athlete and not because of his sexual status is gone. The slightest misstep by a fellow player or coach will have their reputation tarnished like Shavlik Randolph's or destroyed like Tim Haradway's.

Most of these barriers are inherent to homosexuality and team athletics. Amaechi made them worse, and even though I'm neither gay nor a professional athlete, I have to think the inhibiting factor is greater now than it was two years ago.

Unfortunately, many progressive-minded individuals suffer the delusion that any forward move is a wise move, even in the minefield of changing a culture.

Homosexuality and sports is still a big issue. In the Beijing Olympics this past summer, held a year after Man in the Middle had been thrown in our collective cardboard box with Moneyball and Jose Canseco's scandalous diatribe, over 10,000 athletes participated. One was an openly gay male.

Even with conservative statistics, at an absolute minimum 50+ athletes (1%) should have been gay males.

There's a serious issue here, and I'm pretty sure John Amaechi actually made it worse.

Gay athletes need someone in their prime who is good enough to contribute on a big-time club, someone who by his skill alone forces general managers, teammates, and coaches to confront and accept the athlete, and someone who can play with the humility and honesty necessary to truly break barriers.

Social change isn't easy. Helping the high school quarterback who worries about his sexuality can't be done sipping tea and reading the New York Times while waiting for an uneducated player to use the wrong word.

It can't be done with pithy quotes or continually popping onto blogs and into magazines to comment on gay affairs.

It can't be done by selling books and it can't be done through endless soundbites and elaborated conceptions of hatred by a league that didn't like you too much when you were "straight."

"The narcissism and vanity is remarkable," Amaechi once said in response to NBA players imaging scenarios of a gay teammate hitting on them.

You know, John, I couldn't agree more.

Quote Sources and Consulted Works:

http://www.voice-online.co.uk/content.php?show=13449
http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/news/story?id=2861621
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21224200-23769,00.html
http://hoopeduponline.com/2007/02/16/john-amaechi-speak-out-about-hardaways-comments/
http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/news/story?id=2766213
http://blogs.rockymountainnews.com/nuggets/archives/2008/08/openly_gay_amae.html
http://www.outsports.com/os/index.php/Olympics/2008/In-Beijing-Olympics-only-5-openly-gay-athletes.html
http://www.beijinglegacyblog.com/Johns_Blog/Entries/2008/8/27_Entry_1.html

Joe Dumars and the College Degree Fallacy

Mordecai Browner — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 14:11:21 -0400

Joe Dumars went back to school recently and earned his diploma from McNeese State. After years of putting off those lingering last few credits in favor of winning NBA basketball games and running the best franchise in the Eastern Conference, Dumars finally has his degree.

Upon hearing this, two quotes from culturally ubiquitous movies hit me instantly:

"You dropped a hundred and fifty grand on a (expletive deleted) education you could have got for a dollar fifty in late changes at the public library." (Good Will Hunting, 1997)

"Back where I come from, we have universities, seats of great learning, where men go to become great thinkers. And when they come out, they think deep thoughts and with no more brains than you have. But they have one thing you haven't got: a diploma." (The Wizard of Oz, 1939)

As much as our sports media likes to constantly ladle support upon those who attain their college degrees while pushing scorn (often passive) upon those who leave school early, here, between these brackets, is exactly what Joe Dumars' (or any major athlete's) degree means: { }.

That's right, nothing. A void. A nihilistic chasm of meaninglessness. Okay, perhaps that's a little strong, but what does Dumars gain from having a bachelor's degree?

Increased job prospects? No.

Erudition? Highly, highly doubtful.

Sense of personal accomplishment? Perhaps.

But if he does it's not because earning a college degree posed any difficulty to him (finishing off a low-difficulty bachelor's doing online courses when time and money aren't issues is easier than putting 20 on the Clippers). It is, rather, because of a society's completely warped priorities and beliefs.

My issue here is not so much with Dumars wasting his time to get a worthless sheet of paper. It is more with the myth he's unintentionally perpetuating. I don't mean to single Dumars out, he just happens to be the name du jour who upholds one of our most sacrosanct beliefs with regards to collegiate athletics.

Degree? Good. No degree? Bad.

We hear it all the time in college sports. "The important thing is the degree." "Our kids graduate." Blah blah blah.

We hear it in the worthless unfiltered statistics: College graduates make so much more than non-college graduates!

Of course, what many learn on their intellectual pathways is a reality check against these platitudes.

College athletic status often means more than having any degree, at least in the big-money programs. Play basketball for Kentucky or football at Oklahoma, and the paychecks will write themselves.

For most major NCAA programs, not necessarily the behemoths, the last guy on the bench or a walk-on kicker has better job prospects than a music major.

That raw statistic about college graduates having significantly higher incomes? It's weighed heavily by doctors, lawyers, accountants, and business executives—occupations most money-program athletes and recreational studies majors have completely closed to them.

It took some time, but I've finally come around to Mark Cuban's position than college athletes should be allowed to major in their sport of choice. Future coaches could major in football or basketball and study the game, for example.

Drama schools realized long ago that there's nothing wrong with kids leaving early to be paid and that a drama degree is really only useful to future teachers.

Why do we persist in pushing this myth of athletes picking up urban studies or taking completely generic courses of study? Why does a multimillionaire like Joe Dumars feel any kind of pressure or guilt to return and complete his arbitrary requirements for a sheet of paper?

In the last 20 years, the increase in the cost of undergraduate education has strongly outpaced the inflation rate and increases in the Consumer Price Index.

The only thing Dumars' return to school accomplishes is that it continues to artificially inflate the value of the bachelor's degree as something it just isn't.

Let's stop the garbage and the non-stories.

If you're 18 and looking to make more money, find a good trade school. Fixing automobiles, having basic medical knowledge, or learning how to work computers will make you more money much faster than earning an uninspiring four-year degree.

If you've already made a fortune and/or have multiple NBA championship rings and you think finishing a diploma does anything for you, seek psychiatric help immediately.

If you want to be an erudite individual and learn everything you can about the world, put away the admissions forms and start reading books. They cost less, will probably teach you more, and don't have the condescending sneer of most PhDs.

Above all else, always remember that Abraham Lincoln was entirely self-taught. George W. Bush graduated from Ivy League schools.

It's too bad more of our sports commentators and NCAA administrators can't see these fundamental truths and the meaningless, if not harmful, nature of famous athletes finishing their diplomas (or, for that matter, leaving school early). Instead, they blather on about "tremendous accomplishments" that "send the right message."

A tremendous accomplishment would be a single mother working full-time while earning her degree, not a millionaire studying at his own pace. The right message would be what is right for the individual, and often getting a degree simply is a waste of time and resources.

I have a bachelor's degree from a school consistently rated as one of the top 20 or so in America. If things go well, in a few short years I'll have a postgraduate degree from a solid school as well.

I would trade them both for a jump shot and enough quickness to earn a paycheck playing basketball in Europe.

Every player who comes out and talks about how important his degree is makes me want to vomit at the bold-faced, depressing naiveté (or perhaps dishonesty) from a fresh college graduate.

Even if athletes like Dumars wanted to teach a valuable lesson to their children, wouldn't the proper lesson be that spending tens of thousands on an unneeded certificate merely for superficial reasons is an economically unwise decision?

Instead, they reinforce the myth that above all else, a college degree is the most important thing, that some stupid sheet of paper has some inscrutable meaning even when financial and intellectual success comes elsewhere.

My own education gave me a word to describe that long before I entered college: dumb.

Illini A Mystery No More, Belong In Top 25

Mordecai Browner — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 13:00:42 -0400

Until this past weekend, the Illinois football team had befuddled even its most ardent fans. Despite giving Missouri and Penn State competitive games on the road, Illinois had squeezed by Louisiana-Lafayette by an unexpectedly slim margin and built doubts in its supporters' minds with subpar defensive play.

A pervading question developed: would this season be a retreat in quality after last year's Rose Bowl squad, just as the 2002 team made a quick return to the cellar after the Sugar Bowl blowout the year before?

Thankfully, Saturday's 45-20 win over Michigan proved this team is a legitimate New Year's Day Bowl contender.

While this year's Michigan team isn't exactly a typical Michigan team, a few important factors require attention.

It's probably hard for non-Big Ten fans to understand the importance of winning at The Big House. Illinois and Michigan have a minor rivalry dating back to the 10s and 20s, when both schools were national powerhouses. For whatever reason, beating Ohio State over the years has come much easier for the Illini than beating Michigan.

The Illinois run defense played much better than expected. Illinois held Michigan to 2.0 yards per carry on the ground. Michigan was able to gain 5.1 against Wisconsin in the previous week's upset.

Putting Illinois' margin of victory in some context, Wisconsin lost to Michigan on the same field by two, and Utah beat them by only two. If we assume Michigan adapts to Rich Rodriguez' schemes more as the season progresses, Illinois' twenty-five point win looks far better by comparison.

In fact, it was the biggest win by a Michigan Stadium visitor in seventeen years.

The Illini defense finally showed up to play, made adjustments after a poor opening, and shut the Wolverines down in the second and third quarters.

The Illini offense had a game where all cylinders clicked and they were able to profit from both running and throwing the ball. Juice Williams had his second eye-popping Heisman-worthy game of the season, further establishing himself as a legitimate top quarterback in the conference and, looking towards next year, the nation.

Given that Illinois has played slightly above expectations thus far, one must ask themselves, then, why Illinois is not even ranked right now.

The Associated Press had Illinois ranked twentieth in their preseason poll.

The Illini have since lost to what are now number three and number six in the country, both effectively road games and neither by a blowout. Even Louisiana-Lafayette, the team Illinois squeaked by at home, has shown itself somewhat worthy with the number one rushing offense in the country in terms of yards per game.

For comparison's sake, Auburn is ranked twentieth currently. They've lost twice as well, to the number four team at home and the number thirteen team on the road.

While that alone doesn't quite seem right, Wisconsin received more votes than Illinois. Wisconsin lost to number twelve at home and lost to the same Michigan team Illinois pummeled.

Explain that one, and the BCS gods will give you a gold star.

Also ranked are a Ball State team who has beaten up on bottom feeders, a Wake Forest squad that lost to Navy at home, and a North Carolina team that lost to Virginia Tech at home.

Oklahoma State, Tulsa, Kansas, South Florida, Pittsburgh, Utah, Boise State—I have no reason to believe any of these teams would have done better with Illinois' schedule thus far than the Illini.

There's no shame in dropping two neutral/road games to probable top five teams.

There is in losing at home to non-contenders.

The message sent by the rankings-makers is that, simply put, a softer, unproven 4-0 team is better than a 2-2 team who has lost to only top-notch teams. Home and road don't really matter. Beating overrated Big East and ACC teams? That does, apparently.

While this concept is generally bad for college football, perhaps being underrated and under-appreciated can do the Illini some good. After all, it's a role they thrived in last year en route to the Rose Bowl.

Looking ahead, Illinois will be favored to win their next two games and looks to be 5-2 heading into Madison. Given Wisconsin's vulnerabilities this year, a rare win at Camp Randall is a greater possibility than usual.

At the very least, Illinois has three "tough" games left on the schedule: at Wisconsin, Ohio State at home, and at Northwestern. Should they win just one of these three and take care of business against Iowa, Minnesota, Western Michigan, and Indiana, the Illini look destined for an 8-4 year.

And after last week's performance, an 8-4 or 9-3 season looks more and more plausible by the minute, just one week after many fans felt they would be lucky to make a bowl game.

With their hardest two games behind them and Wisconsin and OSU showing weaknesses, many fans suddenly even feel that 10-2 is a legitimate possibility again.

Perhaps, by that point, they'll find a spot back in the top 25, eh, writers and coaches?

Intervention For a Cub Fan

Mordecai Browner — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 09:19:27 -0400

I expected a bachelor party. Ain't nothing like an Old Style too many and a parade of strippers to forget what just happened. Instead, there sat my family and some hippie chick with a psychiatry degree.

"We're here to help you, J.C."

They locked the doors and suddenly I had to face my lose-lose addiction to a baseball team head-on.

Millions of Americans suffer from addiction. Most need help to quit.

I sat down and buried my head in my hands. My mother removed my Cubs hat and set it on her lap. "It's okay, son."

Many Cub fans become addicted due to a phenomenon known as Cubs Optimism Addiction. COA produces a "high" of hope throughout the baseball season followed by a fit of depression, hopelessness, and self-constructed existential crisis. COA can cause an individual to express extreme irrationality, both in placing expectations and relieving the anger.

"I don't understand why I'm here. I'll be fine."

"J.C.," my brother Alex said, "you spent three hours this morning staring at preprinted World Series tickets and crying."

"I just don't understand!" I yelled, straining to hold back hysteria.

J.C. has been a fan of the Chicago Cubs since birth. His mother would often dress him in Cubs clothing while his father and older brother taught him to say "Dernier."

"We're all here today because these people have seen what this baseball team is doing to you and they want it to stop."

"Where's dad?" I asked.

"Dad is..." my sister Gwen fumbled for the words.

"Your father," said the hippie, "has agreed to a recovery stint at the local country club."

J.C.'s father would sit for hours and watch the Cubs with his son. WGN would often be left on, even between games. It served as an important "bonding" element between the father and his children.

"Your mother has something she would like to say. Do you want to hear it?"

I said nothing. I knew what was coming and I didn't want to hear it. I quickly tried to find consoling thoughts: brilliant rainbows arching over verdant Spring fields and the fact that the Cardinals and Mets didn't even make the playoffs. Such comforts have their limits.

She pulled out a stack of paper handwritten and smeared with 30 years worth of anguish. She rattled off the moments one by one and images of goats, black cats, Steve Garveys, and avid 26-year old fans haunted my conscious.

Many Cub fans suffer from delusional thoughts which cause them to redirect their ire at items unrelated to the actual game of baseball in order to rationalize their pain. Often they will go through ridiculous rituals, such as blowing up a baseball in public, in order to "cleanse" the franchise of its "curse."

"Well, what's this year's excuse?" inquires the hippie.

I struggled to make something up. "You just don't understand!" I said.

"Yes, I do," said the hippie. "I was a Cubs fan for twenty-six horrific years. I watched a complete meltdown with three Hall-of-Famers on the roster."

"Four, and it was nothing compared to what happened in '03."

"Stop!" my sister Gwen screamed and cried. "Don't you see what you're doing? It's just one endless cycle of misery, year after year."

"Face it bro'," my laconic brother Will added, "You need to find a new team."

"That's easy for you to say!"

Unlike his other siblings, J.C. has never found a convenient escape from the dreadful throes of COA. Alex wisely said no to baseball years ago, instead opting for high-flown magazines, restaurant ownership, and men. Will moved to Baltimore and became an Orioles fan, which isn't nearly as habit-forming as Cubs sorrow. Gwen married a White Sox fan and paradoxically found a healthy balance for her household. J.C. was left to talk to his father and thus the two fed off each others' habits and thoughts.

"It's just every year, you think is the year. Every time you go back to the park you think this is the one, this is going to be when they end it and they start laughing at the rest of baseball. Hell, it happened for Boston, why not us, right?"

J.C. was dating a die-hard Red Sox fan in 2004. Fully trusting in the notion of curses, he hoped to reap physical benefits when the inevitable breakdown happened and she looked for comfort. He tried repeating the gesture in 2005, when he somehow found a White Sox fan. His sense of optimism has since boomed for the Cubs.

"You need to face the facts," said Alex. "The Cubs are not a good baseball franchise. You can't go pinning your hopes on them every year. This isn't healthy."

"But they were 97-64!"

We rambled on about the differences between healthy and dangerous fan behaviors. I had never realized the line was so thin, and that maybe our obsessing over jinxes and curses had placed a self-fulfilling prophecy upon us as a group, that maybe we spun ourselves into crises to arouse pity and all sorts of other psychiatric voodoo baloney.

"You've tried to quit the team before, your family tells me." I sat there in silence.
"Twice," Gwen said. "Once in '99 and again in '04."

"So you knew you had a problem?"

"I think I realized that the team was flawed and that it was bad to support them with this continual hope that I have, that I needed to look at things more rationally."

Cub fans have a continual slogan, "Wait 'til next year," which constantly justifies losing while providing justification for their continued involvement.

We talked it over and I realized that the three-game collapse this year wasn't entirely fate biting the Cubs in the proverbial behind yet again.

They convinced me there's nothing necessarily wrong with liking the Cubs, just that sometimes it promotes an unhealthy building of emotion and optimism that extends beyond rational boundaries only to be crushed again, sinking lower than normal lows and manifesting enemies.

I needed to step out of the Cubs box and watch baseball for the game it is, they said.

"The other day you were yelling at a copy of Sports Illustrated for putting the Cubs on the front cover."

"I know," I conceded.

I agreed to a recovery plan to free me of my addiction to COA. I would be forced to go two months with no baseball media whatsoever. Slowly, the game could be reintroduced to me, but only if I disassociated myself from any potentially harmful agents.

"You could have hit rock bottom," the hippie said. She explained horror stories of Cubs fans burning all their memorabilia to rid the curse, addicts looking up Steve Bartman, and people breaking into Wrigley to use in shrines to Frank Chance.

Any "wait 'til next year" utterings have to be reported immediately. No more moping. No more reading of literature the sole existence of which is communal moaning and groaning. My Harry Carey "CUBS WIN!" clock had to go.

I had to be rational in my thoughts about the Cubs or baseball in general.

We just can't take it anymore, they explained to me, the year-in-year-out vicious cycle of mania and depression caused by COA. Be a Pirates fan and be morose all the time, or be a Cardinals fan, win and overachieve. Just end this monster, they said.

The Cubs needed to a regular ol' baseball team and not an experiment in communal manic depression, they said.

Perhaps I really should try.

J.C. has been free of any irrational words of optimism or doom regarding the Cubs for twenty-two hours and three minutes.

A full-blown relapse is expected sometime next March.

Yankees And Cashman: Why Do Sports Teams Strain To Keep Mediocre Leaders?

Mordecai Browner — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 16:11:55 -0400

Six days ago, the Lions finally relieved Matt Millen of his duties as General Manager and Team President after seven very long and anguishing years for the Detroit faithful.

Most in sports—myself included—started laughing at the joke years ago, the punchline lying somewhere between Charles Rogers and the 31-84 cumulative record. Yet in 2005 he received a five-year contract extension and in 2006 received a guarantee he'd be back another year after a hilariously foul 3-13 performance.

While fans in Chicago, Green Bay, and Minneapolis rejoiced in the Ford family follies—much the way the Japanese do when they see Ford's non-truck offerings each year—Lions fans were left to wonder: why is the 0.1 percent of the sports world who thinks Matt Millen is worth a damn RUNNING MY FAVORITE SPORTS TEAM?

It's not just poor business on William Clay Ford's part, nor is it relegated to the Detroit Lions, a hapless football franchise living on eternal hope that someday someone who actually understands the game will arrive in Motown.

Look at Syracuse University. The Orange have an outstanding athletic program across the board and have a solid football tradition, yet currently they serve as a doormat in the poorest excuse of a BCS conference. While Philip Fulmer and Tommy Bowden have drawn deserved ire at a major football schools, no one in Division I is more anemic than Syracuse Head Coach Greg Robinson.

Since arriving at Syracuse in 2004, Robinson has led his squad to an 8-32 record. That's sub-Willingham. And it isn't like the previous regime left the cupboard entirely bare, either; Syracuse had actually gone to a bowl game the year prior.

Robinson has been an unmitigated disaster, and his recruiting for 2009? Nonexistent. Why does he still have a job? Why is Syracuse making their legions of followers sit in agony and wait until the inevitable postseason chopping block? What does this accomplish? A false impression of loyalty? The chance to let him coach his own players?

Frankly, most players would rather be associated with the ground floor of a winning program than the remains of a lost one.

In such a tense sports environment, it boggles the mind that administrators and owners allow obviously losing coaches continued, hopeless opportunity while resisting the urge to pull the trigger and install new blood, often even offering below-average figures ridiculous and unwarranted extensions (college football fans see Ferentz, Kirk).

Executives really should look at national opinion before offering a contract extension. Often the outside provides a perspective the biases of the insiders drive from sight. Currently we're facing an economic meltdown where seven major banks have crashed due to bad contracts and it appears the world of sports is no different in its short-sightedness.

And that brings me to today's news that the Yankees have resigned Brian Cashman as their General Manager until 2011. As a person who can't stand the Yankees, I couldn't be happier.

Brian Cashman sucks as a GM. There, I said it.

Despite having the highest payroll in baseball by a ridiculous margin, the Yankees have not won the World Series in eight seasons. They have not won the pennant since 2003. Their prime competitors have overtaken their position as the best team in the American League.

If the Yankees' stock were publicly traded, it would have taken a drastic nosedive since 2000's ho-hum World Series win over the New York Mets. On Wall Street, that's what continued underperformance wins. In baseball, apparently, it secures a three-year contract extension.

The New York Yankees payroll this year is 209 million. The combined sum of the Brewers and Angels payrolls? A little over 200 million. For a little over 150 million, one could pay the rosters of the Phillies, Rays, and Twins—three teams who decisively did better than the Yankees this year.

Blame it all you want on Joe Girardi or whatever other reasons you wish, in the end the Yankees slow decline into third place comes down to a fundamental fault in Cashman's managerial philosophy.

Instead of looking long-term and developing a core roster of players in their relative primes—like the way the 1996-2000 Yankees were built around Jeter, Williams, Posada, Pettite, Rivera, Nelson, etc., along with Roger Clemens and Paul O'Neil, who seemed to have never-ending primes—Cashman has opted for the cheapest thing a general manager can do: signing players on the downturn of their careers for over market value.

Seven of the eight everday players on the '00 Yankees were between 26 and 33. In 2008, only three regulars were under 32 (Robinson Cano, Melky Cabrera, and Xavier Nady).

Instead, the Yankees have seen a nice cavalcade of fading talent: Jason Giambi is somehow still kicking it at 37; Johnny Damon was signed at 32 and though he had a strong '08 season is ripe to go the way of Jim Edmonds; Bobby Abreu has seen a 12 percent drop in his on-base percentage in the last two seasons; and let's not forget this season's praised deal for Ivan Rodriguez, who hit .219.

Signing twilight guys like Wade Boggs works when Pettite and Clemens anchor the rotation. It doesn't when the top starter is 39 and Sidney Ponson and Carl Pavano both wind up taking the hill.

What are Cashman's highlights as GM? Trading for the twenty million dollar MVP? Continually signing an endless stream of overrated players to hefty, ten-million-a-year contracts? Where is the skill in this? Where is the business sense?

With the resources at his disposal, Cashman's performance is inadequate. If I lost to four competitors who had half the resources in the real world, I would be fired. It's that simple. Cashman, miraculously, gets an extension.

The truth is that almost any idiot with any baseball acumen could take 210 Million dollars and coast into third in the AL East. With twice the budget of any other team, a truly respectable goal is 110 wins and the pennant, year in and year out. With baseball's strong correlation between money and success, fiscal dominance should lead to either on-the-field dominance or a canning.

Unfortunately, Cashman and the current Yankees brass seemingly fail to realize that their World Series wins have always been won by stable, devoted Yankees in their primes far more than by imported 35-year old free agents. Garbage in, garbage out.

And Cashman's amateur drafts have been mostly garbage in terms of actual results.

His 2002 amateur draft of 48 players had produced one major league ball player, pitcher Brad Halsey. Their 2003 draft? Twenty-three at-bats total, no innings pitched. In contrast, most other teams have produced two-three stable big league players from those years.

While the Yankees' records kept them out of the stakes for BJ Upton or Prince Fielder, those are absolutely pathetic draft results for the wealthiest franchise in baseball, and the Yankees farm system—and their future—suffers as a result.

There are signs things might be getting better. Recently the Yankees' retooled farm system has ranked as high as fifth in Baseball America's rankings, and their June draft in 2008 received favorable reviews. However, until they somehow produce a stable of big league talent analogous to the golden years of 1996-2000, they will continue to under-perform with their bloated budgets and declining big names.

But don't worry Yankee fans, instead of asking why you couldn't have a GM who understands relative value (like Kenny Williams, Dave Dombrwoski, or Theo Epstein) and why your team pays double for another disappointing season, celebrate Cashman's likely targets in the offseason.

According to ESPN, Cashman plans to use the cash freed up by expired contracts to go after guys like Derek Lowe or Ben Sheets. I can hear the celebrations in the Bronx from here.

Unless the Yankees can reel in actual in-their-prime players like C.C Sabathia or Mark Teixeira while plugging holes with solid under-33 Major League players, expect more of the same under-performance for the foreseeable future.

It's too bad the in-house loyalty will blind the Yankees from their completely unspectacular management.

So it goes in sports, complacency over potentially finding the next great GM, even with so much at stake. Instead, fans are forced to see where their ceiling is, knowing they won't exceed that until a management shift takes place.

Hope you like staring at the Red Sox from behind, Yankees' fans, because that's mostly what you're going to see with Brian Cashman at the helm without some fundamental shifts in how he approaches player acquisitions and relative value.

At least Yankee crappiness, unlike that of Syracuse or the Lions, still finishes with a chance at the playoffs.

The Inevitable Bowl Crisis: Four Undefeated No-Names and The Bowl System

Mordecai Browner — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 13:21:24 -0400

Currently, some board room hotshots are sweating bullets over bad contracts, and I'm not talking about Wall Street.

Boise State is 3-0 and ranked 19th in the AP Poll. They won their toughest game of the year by pulling off a road upset against Oregon last weekend. On the remainder of their schedule, every team has at least two losses already except for the mighty Aggies of New Mexico State and Fresno State. They get the latter at home.

The Mountain West Conference has three teams that are currently undefeated. While BYU, Utah, and TCU all play each other, and TCU has to go through Norman, Oklahoma, a reasonable chance exists that one of them will emerge undefeated. They're currently ranked 11th, 17th, and 24th, respectively.

Ball State is coming off a dominant win over a Big Ten team on the road. They're 4-0, have hung at least 35 on every opponent, and play nothing but MAC teams the rest of the way. While they're currently garnering few votes in either poll, they have a bigger representation in the media than most non-BCS schools (read: David Letterman and Jason Whitlock).

Tulsa, the best college football team no one talks about, has scored 157 points in three games. While I don't think their defense is strong enough to hold off even a woeful Arkansas squad on the road, there's a respectable chance they'll run the table.

What if four of these teams go undefeated?

Should a Mountain West team or Boise State go undefeated, they're practically guaranteed a BCS appearance this year. Where it gets interesting is in the selection of the other bowl participants.

With this season being "lopsided" in terms of conference dominance, it appears at this point that two teams from the SEC and Big XII will deserve BCS berths with one each coming from the Big Ten, ACC, Big East, and Pac-10. Even assuming BYU or Utah runs the table and makes the BCS, that's only nine slots accounted for.

What this scenario means is that the Orange Bowl might have a very interesting choice to make. Do they take an undefeated Boise State or, if they sneak high enough, a Ball State or Tulsa? Or do they select a "less deserving" big-name team from the Big Ten, Big East, or Pac-10?

Either scenario proves debilitating to the BCS, especially with legitimate top ten teams from the Big XII and SEC sitting on the sidelines.

The only way to save the Orange Bowl committee from a lose-lose dilemma is if Notre Dame runs the table here on out or a second Big Ten, ACC, or Pac-10 team proves themselves worthy of BCS contention. But given what has happened thus far in the football season, it looks like the BCS contract is going to bite the Orange Bowl in the butt to the Cotton Bowl's benefit.

But where the Mountain West teams and the non-BCS undefeated teams are really causing committee regret are in the non-BCS bowls. Contractual tie-ins, usually seen as a sign of a stability in a bowl, are going to cause major headaches.

At this point, Tulsa looks to be a sure bet to wind up in the Liberty Bowl, which is an extremely good fit for them.

But if one of the top Mountain West teams make the BCS, what happens to the other two? The Las Vegas Bowl, the Armed Forces Bowl, and the New Mexico Bowl are possibilities. I'm sorry, 11-1 teams deserve better.

Which bowls find themselves regretting their tie-ins? The Sun Bowl, and it's middle-of-the-Pac-10 tie-in, would probably love to bring BYU instead of the mediocre Arizona State or Oregon squad they'll wind up with. The Humanitarian Bowl in Idaho will likely land Fresno State or Boise State - but they have to pair them against a lower-half ACC team. The Emerald Bowl, played in San Francisco? A middle-of-the-pack ACC team against a middle-of-the-pack Pac-10 team. Borrrrring.

If Utah's prospects are looking slim, don't even bother checking out where Ball State might be headed. GMAC and Motor City Bowls, start rooting for the Cardinals. Alamo Bowl and Champs Sports Bowl? Too bad you made those commitments to ho-hum Big Ten schools. Ball State has a fairly large alumni base, and given the choice between a Purdue fan-base entirely uncaring to a mid-level bowl or a Ball State fan-base hungry for the spotlight, I'd take the latter every time.

Above all else, BCS supporters and the various bowl committees should learn three crucial lessons from the '08-'09 season, which are already apparent:

1) The BCS maximum of two teams per conference needs to be raised to three. It's flat-out stupid to leave the wealth of good SEC and Big XII teams out.

2) In an age of college football parity, bowl administrators would be well-advised to leave more at-large positions open, as having a high-quality team can be guaranteed without pandering to a conference for their 6th-best member. Back when Penn State was an independent school, they still played in a variety of top-notch bowl games. It's ridiculous to force the 2nd-best MWC school to a crappy bowl game merely because they aren't in the Pac-10 or Big XII.

3) A system needs to be set up whereby conferences can take over the place of other conferences. If USC loses one conference game, the Mountain West becomes an objectively better conference than the Pac-10. The MWC certainly has played comparable or better than the Big East. Yet, their three ranked teams still face a bias that the Pac-10's nine unranked teams do not. The BCS, if it is to survive, needs to build-in a function whereby conferences can rise and fall.

While fixing these problems will not assure aversion of a bowl crises in the future, they would have gone a long way towards alleviating what I imagine is a troubling time for many bowl administrators right now.

Like it or not, non-BCS football keeps improving and not all conferences are created equal. For the BCS to function well, it must allow integration into the system by the "outsiders" like Boise State as well as a means to account for conference imbalance and years when multiple non-BCS schools are undefeated.

In previously choosing to give the BCS "rigid" rules to protect everyone's interests while locking every bowl with a very specific tie-in, college football's elite businessmen might have protected their interests, but they sure as heck didn't help the game or its potentially-great match-ups.

With parity and a diverse number of teams shooting for banner years (unlike, say, having only one Hawaii), one might expect this bowl season to be incredibly interesting. Unfortunately, the men who suits who planned it all out five years have seemingly prevented that from happening.

For shame. Happy New Year, everyone, and enjoy that GMAC Bowl, Ball State fans. Mobile, Alabama. What a great town for an 12-0 team, right?

One Nation Under Me: The NBA's Crisis Of Viewpoint

Mordecai Browner — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 13:33:11 -0400

It goes so much deeper than Josh Howard. While I'll never begrudge a man for what is, at root, expressing a political opinion, the content of Howard's flippant remark is, sadly, the tip of an iceberg that seems to run much deeper in the National Basketball Association.

While no one else has openly called The Star-Spangled Banner "s***," many actions have been taken recently that raises concerns about what message the NBA sends its players.

Take, for example, the National Team. In 2002, a team completely lacking of our top talent finished sixth in the World Championships. Kobe Bryant, Tim Duncan, Kevin Garnett, Jason Kidd, or countless others led to complete embarrassment for the world's greatest basketball nation. We settled for bronze at the 2004 Olympics and the 2006 World Championships; at the latter, many of our players put a slam dunk fest before losing to Greece.

What drove that total lack of commitment to a national team in a sport where other nations had serious set-ups and teams that played disciplined basketball and team defense?

Why did it take the United States of America—the land of Larry, Magic, and Michael—eight years to "redeem" themselves? Why did many of the stars of the '08 team seem guilt-tripped into playing in the games?

Contrast the attitude of those who turned down proudly wearing the navy blue to Hakeem Olajuwon, who, at age 36, put on the American jersey with a broad smile after becoming a naturalized citizen. What a difference from Shaq's "I might play if I get my way" stance.

The difference in attitude becomes even more apparent when one considers the case of Chris Kaman. Kaman, a farm boy from Grand Rapids who plays professionally for the Los Angeles Clippers, decided to play for the Germans in 2006.

Kaman is not German; his great-grandparents were, the ones who died before he was born. He didn't even have a German passport—he had to get one before being cleared.

I have German blood. Lots of it, actually, and I have two years of German under my belt (die Sprache des Beckenbauers!). But I would feel like a perverted fraud wearing their colors. I would feel dirty playing against the United States, trying to beat the country that, for better or worse, is my home.

And now Josh Howard has been caught blatantly disrespecting the national anthem. And what is his owner's response? It's a "publicity" problem, says Mark Cuban: "I have explained to him that cellphone cameras are not your friend."

According to Cuban—himself an oddball made filthy rich by the American dotcom bubble —the problem with Howard's remarks is not the underlying belief that all America stands for and has given him is mistaken, but rather that he needs to learn how to hide those beliefs.

It's obviously not merely an issue of black or white, rich or poor, owner or player, but rather it seems to be festering under the surface in a way it just doesn't in Major League Baseball or the National Football League. While those sports have their John Rockers and Ocho Cincos, neither seems to be rife with fundamental issues of understanding the way the NBA is.

And in perhaps the most truly unpatriotic thing about the NBA? Forty percent of them have criminal records according to Jeff Benedict's Out of Bounds. Words are one thing; a systematic history of supporting those who violate our legal system is another.

What causes this seemingly underlying attitude, not just with the players, but also with the league owners and executives?

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the bad side of the Michael Jordan revolution.

It was the slogan everywhere: Be Like Mike. They all grew up wanting to wear the Hanes and be on the Wheaties box, grace Upper Deck boxes and soar over the Nike swoosh. They didn't just want to be like Mike in Dallas or Boston, but they wanted to be like Mike in Bangkok, Cairo, and Oslo.

With Michael Jordan at the helm, basketball ripped around the world in popularity. Stagnant leagues became solid and basketball sprang in places like Israel and Angola. Josh Howard wanted to be him. So did Chris Kaman—it's just Chris Kaman's "Mike" played for Germany.

Why be a star for the city's second-fiddle when you can start for the German national team and gain the admiration of 80 million?

Not only did kids want to be Mike, but their parents and handlers started pushing them to Be Like Mike, too. Josh Howard's certainly did, giving him permission to be a complete and utter moron while hoping—praying to a shoe-company Jesus, even—that he would become the next Mike.

Basketball is more of an egoists game than baseball or football. An NBA Hall-of-Famer can virtually account for 50+ wins by himself. See, for example, Kevin Garnett's career. In baseball, a Hall of Famer wins about 12-15 games a year (according to Bill James, anyway), and in football one player guarantees virtually nothing.

David Stern and company have pushed the NBA to go global over the last twenty years with tremendous profits. However, with as much success as they've had, they seem to have forgotten to instill a sense of American or community pride in these players. NBA Cares, the NBA's community service branch, launched in 2006 to the praise of many sports writers. The problem? They were about twenty years too late.

There's a certain responsibility that comes with running a sports league that youth will invariably imitate. Even with the Pac-Man Jones' and OchoCincos, the NFL has done an outstanding job of presenting its image as a community-building force, and this in turn apparently promotes positive attributes in both current players and prospects.

Even while it became a hit overseas, the NBA has had nothing short of marketing disaster domestically. And it isn't necessarily a matter of backgrounds. Many NFL players come from lower-income homes in undesirable places, and the NFL remains popular across economic and racial boundaries.

In the end, Josh Howard is a total idiot, but I don't think the investigations should stop at him, a twit who scored "roughly in the 500s" on the SAT. Instead, we need to look at Stern and his posse, evaluate Mark Cuban and his leadership techniques, and ask why the NBA focused so much on their global image while letting their domestic one rot. The problem, Mark Cuban, is not that the players don't know when and how to say things, but rather they've had their opinions formed in a completely warped environment.

I'm not saying Michael Jordan reading at a library would have changed the world, I'm just saying you get what you ask for and the NBA asked for a league of narcissist self-aggrandizing demigods and not a league of humble winners who value the communities that stand behind them.

The reason that Howard, Kaman, O'Neal, Garnett, and so many others have a completely neutral feeling towards their home country is that they serve a greater land: themselves. Service? Nope: people serve Josh Howard, who by virtue of skill is entitled to his legions of toadies. Citizenship? Malleable: Chris Kaman allies with who wants him. Integrity? Ron Artest doesn't even know what that means. Literally.

It's not just Josh Howard and it's not even restricted to patriotism. The NBA, in its rush to capitalize on its popularity, forgot that community-building makes for hard work, especially when many the workers one hires have disreputable pasts or never went to a decent high school, much less college.

This Josh Howard flap? It's just part of the Mephistophelean accord's uincomfortable, drawn-out second part. Don't expect it to be the last incident of its kind, no matter how hard the stones get thrown.

The Bright Future of Big Ten Football: 2008 as a Conference Nadir

Mordecai Browner — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 15:49:09 -0400

There's a lot of gloom-and-doom floating around after yesterday's dismal performances from the Big Ten's top two programs.

It's population shifts. The talents all in the south and west these days.

It's the cold weather. That's it!

They just don't play good football up around the Great Lakes anymore. They're bland and boring, three-yards-and-a-cloud-of-dust.

That there's SEC SPEED, Y'ALL!

Yesterday, Ohio State had their clocks cleaned by consensus No. 1 USC, and Michigan looked nothing short of awful in their rivalry game against previously struggling Notre Dame.

Illinois and Michigan State had significant struggles against Sun Belt teams at home. Purdue blew a double-overtime game against Oregon.

Michigan lost to Utah at home. Illinois couldn't beat Missouri. Michigan State couldn't hang on against California.

Until Wisconsin's 13-10 win over Fresno State late last night, the most impressive Big Ten victory all season had been Penn State shellacking Oregon State.

While the Big Ten still has four ranked teams, this is the absolute worst the Big Ten has seemed in my lifetime in terms of competing on a national scale, a conclusion many are agreeing with across the media, especially in the south and west.

And it's the lowest we're ever going to see the Big Ten.

REALITY CHECK: MICHIGAN AND OHIO STATE

Contrary to the wishes in Texas or California, this year is not a pit-stop on the road to Big East/ACC irrelevance for the Big Ten. Rather, it's a year where, by pure chance, half the league finds itself in flux or having relatively poor teams.

For better or worse, the Big Ten is graded by Michigan and Ohio State. Michigan is in a state of transition between two coaches (and, for that matter, fundamental philosophies) and finds itself without a quarterback of any experience or repute.

Ohio State is being evaluated solely by its performance in three key games over the last three seasons: the losses to Florida and LSU in the national title games and the recent loss to USC.

Is it Jim Tressel's preparation abilities? I don't think so. This is the same coach who triumphed over an NFL-stocked Miami for a national title and racked up 600 yards against Notre Dame in the '06 Fiesta Bowl.

What most commentators miss about both OSU and Michigan is that they have a distinct lack of raw talent this year, at least by OSU and Michigan standards.

Ohio State had a complete catastrophe of a recruiting class in 2003, Todd Boeckman's incoming year, a group that saw double the arrests, transfers, and injury cases than actual contributors (such as David Patterson, Kirk Barton, and Anthony Gonzalez). From 2004-2007, the Buckeyes had respectable top 15 classes, but nothing in the echelon of USC or Florida.

They were a step behind in their recruiting compared to what they were used to, and they finished a clear step behind on the field. Why anyone outside of Columbus was surprised to see them lose to Florida, LSU, or USC is beyond me.

But where are they going in the future? Right back up to the top echelon. In 2008, Tressel scored a class ranked fourth overall by rivals.com, garnering as many five-star players as his '04-'07 classes combined.

In 2003, all but two of Tressel's recruits came from Ohio, while 2008 saw him bring in top talent from Texas, Florida, D.C., Pennsylvania, and Chicago in addition to keeping his Ohio base.

In 2009, they currently have the top-ranked class overall.

In Michigan's case, it's a matter of having improper raw talent for the current coaching scheme. While the Wolverines have consistently done well on the recruiting trek, Lloyd Carr was recruiting for his offense.

This caused Ryan Mallet and 2008 recruit John Weinke to bail at quarterback, leaving Rich Rodriguez with virtually no one at the most important position on the field.

But Rodriguez has proven himself an able recruiter — it's just a matter of matching the talent to his system, which has a much greater chance of happening than failing.

THE OTHER NINE SCHOOLS

As for the rest of the conference, Wisconsin is playing perennial top 15 football. While recruiting may be a long-term concern, the Badgers seem to have built a blue-collar system that allows them to get every ounce out of their players, and it hasn't stopped them in the past.

Illinois and Michigan State have programs in place that will allow them the greatest chance for consistent, on-the-field success since about 1990.

Minnesota looks to be on the road back to respectability after taking care of business in their first three games. Brewster is already a better recruiter than Glen Mason, and taking steps on the field with the addition of a new stadium in 2009, fortunes are certainly up for the Gophers.

Pat Fitzgerald of Northwestern and Bill Lynch of Indiana have their programs headed in the right direction. Today, Northwestern landed its highest ranked recruit since 2002 and will likely head into Big Ten play 4-0.

Similar to the situation Fitzgerald inherited taking over for the late Randy Walker, Bill Lynch has rallied the Hoosiers to a Bowl Game in '07 and a solid start in '08 after taking over for Terry Hoeppner after his tragic death from cancer.

Though Purdue's recruiting for 2009 is currently nonexistent, they don't stand to lose much with the retirement of Joe Tiller. Despite Tiller's success, Purdue has become the epitome of Big Ten mediocrity the last five seasons and without a Kyle Orton or Drew Brees-caliber quarterback, he's a below-average coach.

Purdue already has put a succession plan with Eastern Kentucky's Danny Hope in place. At the very least, the Boilers should see the talent level stay steady from what they've had over the last few years.

In fact, the only two football programs who look to drop over the next five years are Penn State and Iowa. The former will have major succession issues when Paterno finally leaves the field one way or another. They've seen a slight recruiting drop from '06 on that will affect them in two or three years as well.

As for Iowa, they just keep sinking from their number 13 ranking two seasons ago, and the once-immaculate Kirk Ferentz will be lucky to see 2010 wearing Hawkeye gold.

In summary, nine of the eleven programs have situations that bode for a higher level of football from 2009 onwards, especially at Michigan and Ohio State.

RECRUITING AND TALENT BASES

This isn't to say the critics are entirely wrong. Though Ohio, Michigan, and northern Illinois are still fantastic places to find high school talent, the bulk of the nation's better players come from the South, and Big Ten schools outside the "big two" have responded by consistently building recruiting connections in other parts of the country.

Ron Zook at Illinois has built himself steady pipelines to northern Florida and the D.C. area. Tim Brewster at Minnesota has used his connections to make inroads into California and Texas. Even Wisconsin has started to gain recruits from Texas and Florida.

Fitzgerald, Brewster, Zook, Mark Dantonio, and Bret Bielema all look to have stable, long-term futures ahead of them, and as they build their recruiting connections, more and more talent will come to these schools from diverse parts of the country.

Throw in the fact that the talent level at Ohio State and Michigan will soon be back to where it has been in the past, and there should be no reason the Big Ten can't compete with the SEC or Pac-10 at both elite- and high-level competition levels.

Furthermore, Notre Dame — a traditional rival for three Big Ten schools (with a minor rivalry against Penn State) — is enjoying a resurgence in its talent level and should be a factor on the national scene in the 2009 and 2010 seasons.

While Notre Dame recruits nationally, they still pluck recruits from Big Ten hotbeds, especially Chicago. Strong showings by Notre Dame, both off-the-field and in recruiting, means that Big Ten teams will be (and have been) forced to recruit nationally.

A strong Irish team can actually be good for the Big Ten in many regards, much the way that local, top-tier competition often improves businesses by forcing them to find new strategies and raise efficiency (and in the Big Ten, no one goes out of business; mediocre coaches just get the boot).

MEDIA, FACILITIES, AND HISTORY

Additionally, a Notre Dame team worth watching guarantees three more Big Ten teams will have prime television exposure. The Big Ten Network has also pioneered the ability of fans and potential recruits to see the conference at its best. While many markets still do not have the Big Ten Network, its effect of pushing the conference as a whole in the Midwest cannot be denied.

The Big Ten still has the largest and best college football stadiums in the country. Beaver Stadium, the "Big House," and the "Horseshoe" rank third, fourth, and sixth, respectively, in a list of the world's largest stadiums.

The athletic budgets are still comparable to (or exceed) anything else in the country and the Big Ten has just as much pageantry and tradition to sell as the SEC, and more than the Pac-10 or Big XII.

Given this favorable conference set-up, and the fact that at least seven of the 11 Big Ten schools have the necessary components in place for long, high-caliber success on the football field, with the "big two" making the necessary corrections to be truly back in the elite echelon by 2010, there's no reason to not see a bright future for the Big Ten.

CONCLUSION

This year is the nadir, the lowest of the low, absolute zero. And the optimistic truth about hitting personal rock bottoms is that the only way to go is up. Even in this bleak moment of apparent darkness, there's a whole lot of light in the Midwest.

Give them a few years, and you'll see an OSU team that somehow relearned how to prepare for big games (it's called "elite talent"), a Michigan team back with the best, and a conference worthy of its glorious history again.

Football's Crazy Uncle Strikes Again: Al Davis Close To Firing Kiffin

Mordecai Browner — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 06:46:33 -0400

They're the crazy grandpas and uncles that most American families are quite blessed to have.

There they sit, at the Thanksgiving tables and in the beat-up recliners, telling ridiculously exaggerated stories about the 60s and their close calls with greatness—the same stories, year in and year out, always met with the same subversively ironic "Really?" as if it were the first listen.

"Really, Grandpa? You saw Rock Hudson in a bathroom?"

Time has made them extremely particular in their tastes, so much so that if Grandma dares to try a new recipe for apple pie, she's in for a stern lecture with a rationality level only open to curmudgeons.

Al Davis is football's crazy uncle, always skeptical of the new generation, always thinking he can do better himself merely by following some mystical laws of football success.

Unfortunately, like most crazy olden men it's flown past the point of quirky fun and sunken into the realm of sadness.

Today, news has surfaced again that Davis is thinking of firing Lane Kiffin. While Kiffin's results have been less-than-stellar, Davis hired the young man a mere eighteen months ago. Few with any football acumen had any faith in the Raiders doing significantly better than 4-12 last season.

In Mid-August, Davis was quoted in multiple sources as saying, "He's not the guy I hired."

Really, Al? I'm pretty sure that Kiffin is exactly who everyone thought he was eighteen months ago—except you. Pretty much everyone thought he was a young, talented coach who might have long-term NFL potential but would get no such opportunity with your older self holding the leash.

Since Tom Flores left the Oakland sideline, the Raiders' head coaches have averaged less than two and a half years on the job. Prior to 1987, the Raiders had had two head coaches (Flores and John Madden) over the previous nineteen seasons.

The results of that stability? Three Super Bowl wins, eight division titles, and a record that made them one of the winningest franchises in sports history.

What happened to the Al Davis who won?

He's still there, same as he's always been, and that's exactly the problem.

Just as Grandpa Joe may sit around and complain that gasoline used to be 87 cents and that women shouldn't be working as much as they do, Al Davis still thinks he can plug in respectable, offensive-minded coaches and garner instant success every time.

He thinks 10-6 is immediately attainable regardless of actual on-the-field talent.

Like an old basketball coach who refuses to play zone defense, he dislikes blitzing from the linebackers and secondary, instead creating pressure with only the front four. He rarely sees the advantage of being malleable with defensive schemes to take advantage of personnel.

Worse, he continually involves himself in the defensive gameplan with the same basic precepts that won football games in 1976, even refusing to let Kiffin fire defensive coordinator Rob Ryan.

He just doesn't realize it's a different league today, and it's getting sadder to watch with every new hire. Each takes the Oakland job with the blind optimism that he can reverse the team's course only to continually crash.

Kiffin, just like Turner, Shell, Shanahan, and others has realized you can't change course with a ship that's stuck in time and guided by tautologies and crazy uncle-thought.

It now appears Kiffin has tried to get himself fired given his recent comments about having no control over the defense and his outspoken remarks about his owner, a distinct change of tone from his optimistic words about restoring the Raiders to glory just eighteen months ago.

In that respect, Davis is correct: Kiffin isn't the man he was eighteen months ago. He's grown and realized that, no, you really can't teach an old dog new tricks.

He's like the grandaughter's intellectual boyfriend who shows up at Thanksgiving and thinks he can take an older crazy male to task for his fallacies and scorn him for his bygone modes of thinking.

Yet, who's back at the table, year after year, eating the same dinner and serving the same anecdotes? Crazy Uncle Al. Instead of leaving everyone to do their part, he actually becomes more hands-on in his codger state because he's been in the world so long he knows everyone's jobs better than they do.

Callahan was mildly funny, since he actually did lose control of his team. The Norv Turner years were predictable in every conceivable way. Kiffin?

It's gotten boring and mildly sad.

"There used to be MEN coaching football games..."

Really, Al?

Ron Zook Cheated? A Retrospective on Illinois' 2007 Class

Mordecai Browner — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 15:43:27 -0400

"I've never seen anything like it in 28 years." - Notre Dame/hyperbole fan Tom Lemming after signing day in 2007, concerning Illinois' class.

"Where there's smoke, there's probably fire." - John L. Smith on the likelihood of Illinois recruiting violations in 2007.

Go way back, reader, hurdling over countless Internet controversies, to the frigid February of 2007.

Remember how every major fanbase in the Midwest had a contingent swearing vociferously that Illinois and head coach Ron Zook were—gasp—cheating? Remember that controversy, with Charlie Weis calling out Arrelious Benn and Michigan supposedly drafting letters to the Big Ten offices?

Of course, most ignored that the anemic North Carolina Tar Heels went 3-9 that year and had an equally solid recruiting class. Forgotten was Ole Miss, where the year prior Ed Orgeron had scored a Top 20 class in between three-win seasons. And completely ignore that few people raised eyebrows in 2006, when Zook built an impressive class as well.

No, many in the late winter of 2007 ignored these simple facts of recruiting life and claimed up and down that Ron Zook and the Fighting Illini were dirty without any credible evidence, outside of a two-win team nagging a class ranked—gasp—barely in the consensus top 20.

Well, where is that particular class today?

Four-star WR Anthony Morris? Never enrolled, possibly playing in JUCO somewhere.

Four-star DT D'Angelo McCray? Lining up for Eastern Illinois now; he transferred out on apparently good terms.

Four-star OL Mark Jackson and three-star S Brian Gamble? Off the team at the end of camp this year due to academic issues.

Mercurial, talented back Deries Hodge? JUCO in Kansas.

QB Phil Haig? Playing baseball full-time. Three-star talents Steve Matas and Enrique Robertson? The former never came, and the latter went to prison. Darius Purcell, too, departed earlier this year.

While attrition is a part of any major college program, over the last 18 months the Illinois roster has lost at least half of what garnered the class of '07 its stellar reviews.

So what's left? The two Notre Dame-coveted gems, Martez Wilson and Arrelious Benn, both hold starting spots for the Illini. The other four-star talents, Josh Brent and Craig Wilson, have scarcely played in 2008. Wilson is buried on the depth chart, and Brent has missed the last two games for personal reasons.

After those four, there are seven players who fill spots in the Illini two-deep. Out of those remaining players, only offensive lineman Jack Cornell, cornerback Marcus Thomas, and defensive lineman Daryle Ballew had respectable offer sheets.

In sum, what's left of the class that Zook supposedly cheated to build? Six players who had reasonably contested recruitments. Six.

If Ron Zook actually has been cheating the last few years, he really must suck at it. Who recruits dirty only to drive away half the talent within 18 months? Isn't that a surefire recipe for NCAA sanctions, with a side of ignominy and permanent unemployability for dessert?

For all those recruiting aficionados who claimed up and down that Zook—who uses words like "doggone" and in his free time listens exclusively to Christian radio—was a walking piece of recruiting filth, take a look at what has happened since February of 2007. Nine of the 21 Zook signees are completely gone, with only two of the "key" recruits making any current contributions.

Ask yourselves if Zook had actually been cheating what would have happened, because it would have been markedly different. Ask yourselves how much sense it makes in college football to pay a mere three or four players a year. Ask yourselves how brain-dead someone would have to be to recruit dirty with Cordale Scott, coached by Ted Ginn, Sr., in high school.

No, what Zook did was not magic, nor was it cheating. He did what coaches of 2-10 teams have to do. He used personal connections to his favor and offered scholarships to teammates who were good enough for Illinois but not good enough for Ohio State or Florida.

He widened the scope of who they could offer in order to take risks on kids like Gamble and Jeff Cumberland, both outstanding athletes who missed getting Ohio State offers due to academics. Sometimes those situations work—often they do not.

In the end, the only smoke any rational person can see emanates from the smoldering embers of John L. Smith's career.

If anyone still believes, in the face of sound reasoning and without credible evidence to the contrary, that Ron Zook cheated to land his "stellar" recruiting classes after his early mediocre seasons, I've got some Notre Dame BCS title game tickets to sell you.

As to the rest of those anonymous nethawks who called—and sometimes still call—Ron Zook a cheater, maybe they should all get on their blogs and message boards and complete the stories the started in February 2007 about that fishy recruiting class at Illinois, refute those old allegations with a reasonable write-up of what's happened sense.

"Naw," they say. "That Calipari just got another stud to play ball at Memphis... Got to write about him. He's dirrrty..."

Quotations at the onset come from Thamel, Pete and Thayer Evans. "Illinois Has Rivals Fuming About Its Recruiting Coup." New York Times. 7 February 2007.

Rankings within the article come from rivals.com. Scholarship offer lists come from scout.com.