The "other" side of the NCAA

If you've been reading this blog fairly regularly over the few months that I've been diligently posting, you'll know that one of my recurrant themes is a strong level of cyncism with regards to the NCAA, mainly relating to what would be termed as the "cash cow" sports, that being major college football and basketball. I feel like that cynicism is pretty well supported by the facts, and I've stated as much on many instances.

That being said, those sports constitute only 2 of the sports and only one of the 88 championships that the NCAA sanctions on a yearly basis. However, unless you have a connection to a lower division school with a solid athletic program, you've probably never really encountered the NCAA at the lower levels. For all my cynicism about major college athletics, I've been exceedingly quick to spout praise for the "real" student-athletes of the lower NCAA divisions in the past.

And for all the evils I see in the NCAA in the cash cow sports, I see so much good resulting at the lower levels and the more obscure sports. I've traveled to 3 men's and 2 women's Division III soccer final fours as a fan, 1 Division III field hockey Final Four as a fan/brother of a player, and seen countless other soccer, field hockey, and basketball playoff games over the last decade. And what I've consistently seen at each step of the road is the NCAA providing a first rate championship experience for these student-athletes whom I have so much respect for.

When people think of NCAA sports, they think of the money making machines that are the NCAA basketball tournament, and college football. And yet the reality is those two sports are just a small piece of the puzzle. Virtually ever other championship the NCAA runs operates at a relatively steep loss. That of course, is made possible by the money that comes in from the cash cows. I've certainly had my complaints for the NCAA regarding D-III tournaments in the past, as occasionally financial considerations clearly do stand in the way of what's truly best for the competition. However, I accept the reality of that, and also see them continuing to make strides to limit those kind of situations. I see, for the most part, a truly geninue effort to reward these athletes for the kind of effort they lay out over their seasons, which, in many cases isn't that much less than their D-I counterparts.

So, while you won't ever see me forgive the NCAA for what I see as fairly dramatic abuses at the highest levels, you can know that I'm not ready to throw the baby out with the bathwater by condemning the entire organization as corrupt and money driven. It's become clear to me through the years that the NCAA system benefits far more athletes than it exploits. This, of course, is not a justification for the exploitation, because I'm relatively certain that the students that are currently benefiting from the system could still reap those benefits without the exploitation of the few. It does, however, bring a little bit of balance to the discussion that I often appear to be so one-sided on.

Where were we?

Okay, so it's been a little while, once again. I had a rather busy, but fun, holiday weekend.

The first event, and most certainly the highlight, was Tim, Amanda, and Nathan's visit. I was greatly looking forward to having them at my house Saturday evening through Sunday morning. My anticipation of their visit momentarily turned to horror several hours before their arrival, when I went to take a shower and had no hot water. Now, I've lived in this house for almost 3 years and have never had this happen, and I have overnight guests maybe 2 times a year, so the fact that these things coincided was just bizarre. Fortunately, the pilot was just out on my water heater, so I was able to get it going again well ahead of their visit.

After that momentary stresser, their actual visit was just great. It was so awesome to be able to catch up with old friends, and to get to know little Nathan, who is just about the coolest thing ever. He's really a sucker for anyone who will help him explore by taking him anywhere he points, so I won major points there :) The family also got introduced to my dog, who is uber-hyper around visitors. Chaser was a big fan of Nathan, and Nathan was quite the trooper while Chaser was giving him kisses, until the 2nd or 3rd kiss caused Nathan to lose his balance and bump his head. Needless to say, Chaser was retired to his room for the evening. Thankfully, Nathan was no worse for the wear. He may have learned not to sit on Chaser's pillow, however. Probably not though, it is pretty comfy, after all.

I said goodbye to the Ritters on Sunday morning. Shortly after they left, my new roommate Brad, whose impending presence sparked the remodel of 2 weeks ago in the basement, showed up with all of his stuff, ready to move in. That happened with relative ease, and now we go through the process of adjusting to having 3 guys in the house as opposed to just two. Chaser also has to deal with having a roommate, and I'm not sure he's totally thrilled about the idea at present.

After church in the evening, I treked down the road to Shippensburg to spend the night with my folks, in advance of an early morning dentist appointment. There's no better way to celebrate President's Day than to get a tooth filled, if you ask me. Okay, I might be lying about that. However, I did enjoy the rest of the day, which involved spending time with the folks around the house, and then going out with my sister and brother-in-law to celebrate my sister's birthday. We had been planning on celebrating on her actual birthday last week, but a long standing tradition of bad winter weather occuring on her birthday reared it's ugly head.

So, after all of these various interruptions to my routine, and the corresponding interruption to posting on this blog, I'm pretty sure I'm back for a good long stretch at the helm of the blog. I've got a really awesome commentary on the "other side" of the NCAA that I'm ready to crank out, either later tonight, or tomorrow.

On my night with Carrie.... (and Keith, sort of)

Okay, so I sound terrible today, but I am feeling much, much better. I can take the "playing hurt" designation off of myself.

Anyhow, I had a terrific time at the Carrie Underwood/Keith Urban concert last night. I did underestimate just how bad traffic would be getting to the Giant Center. It's usually a 20 minute trip from my house, I left a little over an hour early, and yet I still wasn't quite to my seat when Carrie sang her first notes. It was a pretty cool feeling when I walked in and handed the guy my ticket and he was like "You're on the floor" and pointed me where I needed to go, and then when the usher down on the floor kept taking me further and further up, till we finally got to the 5th row. Right before we got to my seats she told me "If you go back upstairs for some reason, make sure you keep your ticket stub, because there's no way they are going to let you back up here without it". Awesome. I was probably about 15-20 feet back from the main stage, and similarly far awy from the middle section that led out to a secondary stage in the front. Unfortunately, in my still somewhat ill state, I was foggy enough to believe that when they said "no cameras", they actually meant it, so I didn't get anything in the way of pictures. I tried a few shots with my camera phone, but the lighting just overwhelmed that little camera.

Carrie put on a heck of a show. Not that I didn't know this already, but the girl can flat out sing. There are lots of people that sound awesome on their albums, but she was just incredible live, and I don't know that I had a real concept of just how good her voice is prior to last night. Terrific. And of course, she was rather easy to look at as well. Very classy dress though, which is one of the things I appreciate about her, as opposed to many other female music stars. The crowd was much more subdued for Carrie's set than I would have expected, especially since I was so close to the stage. On a normal night, I think I would have been disappointed by that, but since I was playing hurt, I was grateful that I didn't have to stand for the duration of the concert. I'm sure the woman in my row that was on crutches felt the same way.

I'm not the biggest Keith Urban fan, but the man is a ridiculous performer. The crowd was NOT subdued for his set, and I was on my feet for as long as I stayed. It was interesting being submerged in a sea of middle aged women who all suddenly started behaving like middle school girls when Keith came out. Some people had cut out a ton of construction paper hearts that they wanted everyone to hold up at the end of his first number, for Valentine's Day. I was given a heart, but did not hold it up, because, well, I'm a guy, and I'm not gay. Something about a guy holding up a heart at another guy.... yeah. Lots of people did go along with it though, and Keith was quite amused at the stunt. Like I said though, outstanding performer, seriously rocked the place out while I was there. I left midway through his set, because as I said, I'm not his biggest fan, it was already past ten, I was already feeling tired due to being sick, and I knew if I stayed to the end, it might be close to 1 until I got home between getting out of the arena and the massive traffic jam. Had it been a Friday night show, I would definitely have been there for the duration regardless, but the sensible adult in me took over. By the time I got home, I almost had all of my hearing back.

This was actually the first concert I'd seen at the Giant Center. I'd seen several at the old Hersheypark Arena, and that big concrete silo was just a terrible venue because of how bad the acoustics were. If you didn't know the songs, you were out of luck because you had zero chance of making out the lyrics. Much better experience at the Giant Center.

Overall, a high quality way to spend an evening.

Devean George? Really?

Okay, so I'm still playing a little hurt today. Fortunately for you all, I decided to follow the sage advice of Roger Clemens' mom, and take a B12 shot to keep me going. Can't disappoint my loyal readers, nor can I bring myself to disappoint Carrie later tonight...

As you might imagine, sports radio was hot and heavy with talk regarding yesterday's Congressional hearing with Roger Clemens and Brian McNamee. However, I've already spent enough time on that story for my tastes, so I'm going into a different direction, and will instead hit up the NBA.

There's a week left until the trading deadline, and there's been a flurry of activity by the Western Conference contenders. It all started 2 weeks ago, when the LA Lakers snared forward/center Pau Gasol from the Memphis Grizziles. That move was followed last week by the Phoenix Suns sending Shawn Marion to Miami in exchange for center Shaquille O'Neal. And last night, the Dallas Mavaricks thought that they had pulled off their big splash deal, agreeing to send a package of players to New Jersey for All-Star point guard, Jason Kidd. They thought that, until word came last night that Dallas reserve forward Devean George, one of the players being sent to New Jersey, had exercised his right to refuse a trade. George does not have a no trade clause, however, an obscure rule allows him to veto a trade because he is on a one year contract with the same team he ended last season with. Were he traded, he would forfeit his "Larry Bird" rights, which impact the amount of money he can make on his next contract.

I sincerely hope that for Devean George's sake, this is some kind of posturing for some leverage, and that he will ultimately approve the deal. First of all, this really doesn't make a lot of sense, since George had expressed a desire to be traded if his playing time didn't increase. Secondly, I understand the financial considerations, but does he REALLY want to stay in Dallas and be the guy who stands in the way of the Mavericks acquiring Kidd? Rightly or wrongly, the Mavs fans clearly believe that Kidd is the missing piece they need to contend for a championship. By standing in the way of that, he's dooming himself to playing in front of a hostile home crowd for the rest of the season. I would also imagine he'll face some difficulty within his own locker room and the organization at large. I know this much, if he's intent on holding firm on this, he's gonna need to do something a little better than last night's 0 for 11 shooting performance.

I have a sense that this is probably just posturing, and that he'll eventually sign off on the deal. If not, he'd better pray that the Nets and Mavs find a way to get the deal done without him. Even then, I'm not sure that will allieviate the ire he draws from the fans. I'm also guessing that, if he ultimately stays in Dallas, the Mavs won't exactly be eager to lay out the biggest possible contract for him in a sign and trade, so those precious Larry Bird rights might not be as valuable as he thinks.

Desperate to move on...

I'm feeling a bit under the weather today, so I didn't know if I was going to make it to the blog tonight, but I feel like I just HAVE to post a few thoughts on what went on in DC today with the Roger Clemens hearing.

First of all, from a Congressional perspective, this hearing was utterly worthless. At least in past hearings, while I never thought Congress should have been involved, it was clear that hearing was meant to investigate the larger problem of steroids in baseball. Today's hearing basically boiled down to an investigation into steroid allegations against one player. Such investigations are what we have the Justice department for, and the reality is that even the Justice Department wouldn't typically get involved in investigating one drug user. In fact, in this case, the statute of limitations has already expired, so there really is no place for the federal government to get involved. Or at least there wasn't. Clearly, someone perjured themselves today. To the credit of the committee, their comments indicated that they were prepared to call off the public proceedings, but Clemens' team insisted that they needed this forum. I would advise Congress in the future to not bow to the wishes of a famous baseball player when determining how to spend their time and my money.

Secondly, for as much as Clemens apparently wanted this hearing to go forward, today's developments weren't positive for him. McNamee is clearly a questionable witness, but the depositions and today's hearing brought probably the most believeable figure in the case (Andy Pettitte) in, and he's backing up McNamee's story. No matter how compelling Clemens is (and that's debateable), the case is quickly becoming one where either Clemens is lying, or everyone else is lying. The medical testimony relative to the abcess that Clemens had on his backside at one point in Toronto wasn't particularly helpful to his cause either. One thing that was clear to me is that he has no chance of winning his defamation suit against McNamee, and I would be surprised if that suit even goes forward.

McNamee's image was not helped today either, however. He admitted to several instances of lying, and conceded that he didn't give all the information he had to the investigators at first. At the same time, we've learned that Chuck Knoblauch, the third player McNamee implicated in the Mitchell report, has said that McNamee was telling the truth, which means that in order to believe Clemens, you'd have to believe the McNamee was telling the truth about everyone except him.

Lastly, it seems pretty clear to me at this point that a perjury investigation is coming from the feds, which is the primary reason why I didn't want these proceedings to go forward. It's time to move on, but that just isn't going to happen. Let's remember, Barry Bonds was hit with a perjury indictment 2 1/2 years after his grand jury testimony, so the chances of a quick resolution seem to be pretty slim. Perjury is a crime, but the bottom line in my book is these proceedings should never have taken place, and so I'm fairly certain there are a number of things I'd rather have the Justice Department looking into than whether Roger Clemens lied about steroid use in the context of a pointless Congressional hearing.

I'm strongly considering moving to a remote island until Clemens' seemingly inevitable perjury trial is over.

Give it up, Roger

So, I'm back, and the world is much the same as it was when I last checked in over here on a sports-related topic: a story I really wish would go away continues to dominate the scene. That story, of course, is the Roger Clemens v. Brian McNamee saga. The major development that occured while I was out was McNamee turning in used syringes with steroid residue and bloody gauze, all said to be used on Clemens and to be likely to carry his DNA. A secondary development has been Clemens' PR tour in Washington, as he has arranged one one one meeting with member's of Congress in advance of this Wednesday's hearing, which of course, will get the full barrage of coverage.

All I have to say at this point is: Give it up, Roger. Here's the thing - I believe Brian McNamee. But really, it doesn't matter what I believe. It really doesn't even matter what actually happened at this point, to a large extent. The reality of this situation is that Clemens has already lost in the court of public opinion. The general public overwhelmingly believes McNamee's story, and I'm becoming rapidly convinced that there's nothing Clemens can do to change that reality. He's in a no-win situation. McNamee has been deemed credible by the public, and thus Clemens is left with the impossible task of trying to prove a negative. A good performance at Wednesday's hearing won't change that. Winning a defamation suit against McNamee won't change that. Nothing, short of Brian McNamee standing up under oath and saying he made the whole thing up, is going to remove the "cheater" mark from the Rocket's resume. Seeing as how doing that would lead McNamee to a jail cell, I don't think that'll be happening anytime soon. The damage is done.

Absent any real ability to prove Clemens' innocent, his lawyers are clearly resorting to an attempt at smearing McNamee, hoping to damage his credibility. There's only one problem with that - McNamee worked for Clemens for about 8 years, and was working with Clemens within a week of when the Mitchell report was released, which means that had NcNamee not been caught up in the Mitchell investigation, he'd probably still be working for Clemens. Underlying any attempts to paint McNamee as a troubled, dispicable human being will be met with the obvious underlying question: "Why was he still working for you then?" For instance, Clemens' team informed us recently about how McNamee was once accused of date rape, only to have those charges dropped. Pretty heavy stuff. Of course, that fact didn't stop Clemens from hiring McNamee shortly after the incident. The other problem with any credibility attacks is the fact that the other players that McNamee implicated have admitted his account to be truthful.

It really seems to me like the Clemens' team is feeling desperate at this point. Why else would they try to compare Clemens to the members of the Duke lacrosse team who were falsely accused of rape in 2006, and the victims of gross prosecutorial misconduct by former Durham County D.A. Mike Nifong? Drawing a connection between Nifong and George Mitchell seems to be more than a little bit of a reach, and even if Clemens is being falsely accused, the cases aren't any more similar than that. In that case, the evidence (or complete lack there of, to be more specific) exonerated the accused. There's no similar outcome available for Clemens in this case. We wouldn't expect there to be evidence available (beyond McNamee's testimony) that Clemens did steroids several years ago, and so even if the evidence that McNamee has come forth with wouldn't hold up in court, it's hardly the same as the woman crying rape having been found not to have the DNA of the accused anywhere on her.

So, once again, I say, give it up Roger. Rightly or wrongly, you've been put in a no-win situation. Go to Congress, tell your story one last time, and then walk away. If you didn't it, live with that knowledge absent any vindication from the rest of the world. If you did, pray that no one can ever prove it in a court of law, because you've already lied to the feds, and they've been known not to like that.

How I spent the past week

Construction began last Saturday at approximately 10:00 AM. The "victory" post last night at 8 pm announced the end of major operations. The time in between was spent taking this:

And turning it into my new office/study/exercise room/guest room, which looks a little something like this:

As you might be able to deduce from the pictures, this room also serves as my dog Chaser's primary dwelling. He had a very, very stressful week while work was ongoing back there, and he's been rather confused/nervous about this new room that took the place of his room. He's adjusting pretty well though, all things considered. I'm pretty sure he likes the couch (complete with hide-a-bed for guest room purposes) better than that plain old bed anyhow.

Victory!

Well, I can't say I've given my final brush stroke, as I'll be doing some touch up work over the weekend, but the serious painting is FINALLY done. I'll post some before/after pics tomorrow after tonight's painting drys up and I can put everything back together for true after shots. Very, very satisfied with the finished product, which makes the craziness of this week worth it.

The room I redid is the room where Chaser spends his time when I'm not at home, and I've managed to do this all without him going completely nuts, screwing something up, drinking paint, or getting paint on him, and that pleases me as well.

So, there's a few final items to put in place, but my life, and as a result, this blog, should be returning to normal in the next day or so.

Still painting...

Yup, it continues. I was intentional about not painting all night tonight though, and I was able to put away two of the three paint cans for good and put most other things in order tonight.

Just one door, the trim around that door, and some touching up to do tomorrow, and then life should return to some semblance of normality.

Update

Yeah, tonight's definitely NOT going to be my last night of painting.

Doh.

Is there anything finer...

than Duke v. Carolina?

I say no, at least not in the world of sports. I've been off remodeling the last couple days, and I still have a good bit of work to do on that, but before I pick my paint brush back up (hopefully for the last time on this project), I had to write about tonight's college hoops clash between #2 Duke and #3 UNC.

You see, while my heart truly belongs to Messiah College athletics, in the arena of major college basketball, I'm a Dukie through and through. I'm not precisely sure why I became a Duke fan. My first clear memory of watching college basketball was as an almost 9 year old, crying after Duke lost to Seton Hall in the 1989 Final Four. This, of course, would seem to indicate that I liked Duke prior to that game. I have some very vague recollections of Danny Manning and Kansas in the 1988 Final Four and title game, and Duke was there as well, so perhaps it happened then. I don't know. But I do know what has come since. I remember the disappointment the following year as they reached the title game only to be brutalized by UNLV. There was the jubilation in '91 when they knocked off that same UNLV team, who was #1 and undefeated, in the semis, and followed it up with their first national championship against Kansas. In 1992, my tears of defeat turned into tears of joy in a matter of the 2.2 seconds it took Christian Laettner to hit one of the biggest shots in NCAA tournament history against Kentucky in the Elite 8, as they went on to successfully defend their title. There was Grant Hill taking the team on his back in '94 and falling just short in the title game, and the horrific year after that when Coach K's health forced him off the bench. There was the disappointment of the '99 title game, the agony and then thrill of watching Duke fall behind by 22 against Maryland in the 2001 semis only to rally for an 11 point victory on the way to the 2001 title, the disbelief of watching them surrender a 9 point lead with under 5 to play against Emeka Okafor and UConn in 2004, and any other number of highs and lows in between. I love Duke hoops.

And as a result, I live for Duke v. Carolina, which thankful continues to come around at least 2 times every year, despite the increase in the size of the ACC. If there's a better rivalry in sports, you'd be hard pressed to convince me of it. You have 2 schools whose campuses are seperated by 7 miles, each with their own very storied history of basketball success, who have been at or near the top of college basketball for years on end. As I already mentioned, both schools are in the Top 5 for this matchup, and that's hardly a rarity in the history of the rivalry. There have been years where one team is #1 for the first matchup, the other for the second. It's all too common.

For all my cyncism about the NCAA and major college athletics, one thing I am not cyncial about are college fans. There are no fans anywhere that are more passionate about their teams than college students, and the Duke and UNC fans are among the best in that category. It's that level of passion that, in my mind, seperates a rivalry like Duke v. Carolina from any kind of professional rivarly. It's just absolutely intense in a way that you just can't replicate on a consistent basis. And, as much fun as it was in the late 90s, early 00s when Duke was absolutley dominating the rivalry as Carolina was down, there's just something fundamentally right in the sports world when both teams come into the gym among the nation's elite, locked in a 2 team battle for ACC supremecy.

Tonight's game figures to have a special level of intensity attached to it, due to the events towards the end of the last game these teams played last season. Duke guard Gerald Henderson broke the nose of UNC All-American forward Tyler Hansbrough with a late, wildly aggressive shot block attempt in a game that was pretty much out of hand. It's been argued back and forth whether Henderson actually intended to hurt Hansbrough, but that's ultimately not relevant. We all know that UNC and Hansbrough haven't forgotten, and you can guarantee that the fans in Chapel Hill, where tonight's game is being playing, haven't forgotten it either.

So: 9:00 tonight. ESPN. Be there, set your VCR/DVR, or whatever else you have to do. You don't want to miss this one.

And now, I must go pick that pesky paint brush back up.

Update

Just want to let my loyal readers know that I've been MIA for a couple days, and will likely be so for another couple. I'm in the midst of a "minor" remodeling of the back room of my basement, and that consumed most of my free time over the weekend and will yet tonight and probably tomorrow.

I spent most of that incredible Super Bowl game last night with the game on my small TV in the back room while "partying" with a paint brush and my new cabinets. Gonna be awesome when it's all done, I just need to get to that point!

Here we go again.

Seriously, as I've said before, there's nothing I like better than Congress using their time and my money to grandstand about pro sports. And of course, right before the Super Bowl, here we are again. PA Senator Arlen Specter wants to talk to NFL commissioner Roger Goodell about why the league destroyed the evidence after the "SpyGate" video taping scandal involving the New England Patriots.

I'll be the first to admit I was never totally at ease with how the NFL handled the situation. I felt that the punishment was a bit weak, especially given that Belichick was not suspended. And the fact that all the evidence collected was destroyed (which was widely published at the time) also seemed quite odd to me.

What seems even more odd, however, is that Senator Specter suddenly decided, about 2 months after the fact, that this was a big deal that Congress needed to get involved in. The article notes his first communication with the comissioner as being dated November 15th. Specter was on The Dan Patrick Show this morning and said that he first became aware of the situation when reading the paper shortly before the Eagles (Specter is an Eagles fan) were about to play Patriots. Seriously? A man who is presenting himself as incredibly concerned about the NFL and its integrity hadn't heard of the story that dominated the sports media for almost 2 weeks at the beginning of the season, until 2 months after the fact? I think there's clearly something else at play here besides genuine concern for the integrity of the NFL.

Look, like I said, I think there are a few things fishy around how the league handled everything surrounding SpyGate, but the bottom line is that these remain league matters. There's not even an allegation of anything criminal going on here, Specter's incredible reach to suggest a possible obstruction of justice aside. At least with the steroids issue, Congress had the excuse of steroids being illegal. There's nothing here that Congress needs to concern itself with. The credibility of the league is in the hands of the league, and if they screw that up, they'll suffer the consequences. That's how it works, and how it should continue to work. So, thanks, but no thanks, Senator Specter.

I am Libertarian, hear me rant!

No sports story has drawn my attention today. This probably has something to do with the fact that the sports media has descended on the Super Bowl in force, and is determined to bring me such critical stories as the chick from the Spanish TV station who showed up at Media Day in a wedding dress of sorts and proposed to Tom Brady (which has to be near the top of the list of things you can do to make sure your organization does not get a media credential next year), and the Giants lineman who once castrated lambs with his teeth. So, as a result, you're going to get a rare political rant from me.

I am registered as a Republican, but as I've said before, I lean more Libertarian. In any election discussion, I have been very open about the fact that I have no intention of voting for the Republican nominee for president just because they are the Republican nominee. If the Republicans nominate someone I don't believe in, I'll find a 3rd party candidate I do believe in and vote for that person.

As you might expect, this position often draws a slew of objections from my Republican-type friends. Well, mainly just the same objection over and over again: "You're going to help get Hillary elected!" And on the most basic, practical level, I suppose that is very much true, given that no 3rd party candidate in this election stands a chance of defeating the Democratic nominee.

And yet, there's a bigger picture here that goes beyond the outcome of a single election, one that I didn't see for myself until just a few years ago. People seem to confuse political party affiliation with political ideology. Now, it's clear that at least, on some level, party affiliation reflects ideology, but the fact of the matter is that political parties exist to win elections, not to champion a particular ideology. Individuals certainly have their principles and ideologies, but on the grander scale, parties are only beholden to an ideology to the extent that it offers them the best chance to maintain power. That fact demonstrates the fallacy of continuing to line up to vote for "your" party's nominee, even if you don't particularly like person. "Your" party doesn't care that you don't like their nominee, as long as you'll keep showing up to vote for them. So those who continually grumble about the direction the party is going, while consistently voting for nominees they don't like, are only serving to reinforce that direction. For instance, if the Republicans know that core conservatives will vote for their nominee as long as they are at least marginally better than the Democrat, why would they put up a true conservative who would likely drive away moderates. Better to put up a more moderate candidate.

The objection to this line of thinking is that parties (in general) select their nominees via primaries, and therefore the voters make that choice. That's true, and yet at the same time, the overall party machinery continues to hold a significant amount of sway in those processes, and the party machinery is ALWAYS going to be at work on behalf of a candidate that they feel is the most electable in a general election. Never was this sort of practice more clear to me than a few years back when Senator Arlen Specter faced a heated primary battle against Pat Toomey, a much more conservative opponent. President Bush stumped rather heavily on behalf of Specter, whose votes generally go against the President 2/3 (or more) of the time.

Against that reality, the only way to keep the party from veering completely to the middle is to make it clear that the conservative wing of the party is not a locked in vote. If the party knows that making a serious play for the moderates will result in a large portion of the base either voting 3rd party, or just staying home, they'll adjust their strategy accordingly.

I've been told a number of times that I'll be throwing my vote away, but let's really examine what's going on here. If you and I both dislike "our" party's nominee, we have 2 choices. We can vote for a candidate we don't believe in but who stands a chance of beating the other major party's nominee. Or, we can vote for a candidate that we do believe in. From my perspective, if you do the former while I do the latter, one of us has thrown our vote away, and it isn't me. The fact that the average American believes that I am the one throwing my vote away in that scenario is one of the biggest problems of our political process. Grumbling and groaning about a particular candidate and then lining up to vote for them is just enabling the party to move in the direction you don't want it to move.

If the Libertarians or another conservative 3rd party were to siphon off 5% of the vote nationally, the Republican party would be falling over itself to try and win them back. The problem is that we've got such a short view of the political process, one that can't see past the upcoming election. In terms of this individual election, yeah, I should probably suck it up and vote for the Republican nominee. But I refuse to continue contributing to ongoing major defeat for an increased shot at a minor short term victory. That's just where I'm at these days.

The Problem of Pain

I believe when I announced that C.S. Lewis' The Problem of Pain was going to be the next one I pulled off of my non-fiction stack, my dear friend Amanda told me it was a "toughie". And she was certainly correct, not that I doubted her. I've read Lewis before, he's never the easiest read, and the whole "problem of pain" philosophical issue isn't exactly an easy subject to tackle. Add to that the fact that I'd been reading sports books for the last month prior to picking up The Problem of Pain, and I had a nice challenge before me on this on.

I just finished with the book today, and while I think my head spun around trying to stay with it on a number of occasions, it was definitely a worthwhile experience. I had a fairly good general sense of where Lewis fell on the larger parts of this subject, simply because my favorite contemporary Christian author, Philip Yancey, cites him quite often in dealing with similar subject matter in his books. And since I have a pretty good general agreement with Yancey's views on such matters, I expected to have a similar general agreement with Lewis.

While I certainly don't agree with every point of Lewis (and really, who ever does agree completely with another person on any matter of substance), I clearly do resonate with his overall message and the view of God that his take on the problem of pain illustrates. One of my favorite parts of the book came very early as he discussed God's omnipotence, as he is addressing supposed counterexamples to divine omnipotence, that are really simply intrinsic impossibilities: "... nonsense remains nonsense even when we talk it about God." Creating creatures with free will and then not allowing for the possibility that those creatures would do evil is that kind of nonsense.

I also really appreciate his take on the issue of divine goodness, as it relates to the presence of pain. His assertion that in the normal course of this discussion, people have trivialized divine goodness to mean divine kindness, when what God really is is not kindness, but rather love, makes a ton of sense to me. Love (of the non-trivial form) allows for pain and hurt, in the interest of the greater good of the object of the love.

Definitely a worthwhile read, and I'll probably be adding some more of Lewis' apologetic works to my stack in the near future. For the immediate future, it's back to sports. I'll be starting Meat Market by Bruce Feldmen tomorrow. The book is an inside look at the world of major college football recruiting, as Feldmen shadowed recruiting efforts at Ole Miss for a season. You know if you've read this blog at all that I have some strong opinions on college athletics, so I'm very much looking forward to this one. I should also be wrapping up The Lord of the Rings within the week, and I have The Adventures of Tom Sawyer queued up and ready to go as my next fiction read.

SI goes to the birds...

So, I'm on my 3rd issue of Sports Illustrated this week, and we have an early frontrunner for the "Article I least expected to find in my SI" award: a 6 page feature article on pigeon racing.

That's right, pigeon racing. SI devoted a similar amount of type to pigeon racing in this week's issue as they did to last weekend's NFL conference championship games. Admittedly, it was a fun change of pace, but did it really merit a feature article in just about the most well known sports publication in the country?

I don't really have much more to say about this, except a friendly reminder that, no matter how much fun this article makes pigeon racing out to be, pigeons are evil, and should be eradicated from the face of the planet, along with their beach dwelling buddies, seagulls.

Taking the road less travelled

I was going to post about this story yesterday before the whole Carrie Underwood ticket incident occurred, and I really wanted to make sure I came back to it, because despite it's relative obscurity (I first heard about it yesterday, 2 weeks after it broke), this is probably my favorite sports story of the year thus far.

If you've read this blog for any length of time, you know that (despite my recent anti-cynicism rant) I'm fairly cynical when it comes to the administration of major college athletics. I believe that cynicism is fairly well founded, however. And I've always done my best not to extend that cynicism to the athletes in a blanket fashion. That's fairly easy to do, since for the most part I see them as mostly cogs in a massive machine that isn't exactly designed to look out for them, though they can certainly derive some benefit from it.

Anyhow, seeing a story like that of Jonathan Meyers of Greenwich, Connecticut really makes me smile. You can read the full article for yourself if you choose, but to summarize, Meyers is a blue-chip high school football recruit, and has drawn scholarship offers from the likes of Florida, Michigan, and UCLA. Instead of taking one of those offers (most likely would have been Florida), Meyers has decided to play at Princeton, where he can pursue a great education, play lacrosse (he's an All-American in that sport), and play football on top of that, keeping alive his hopes of playing in the NFL. Oh, and by the way, Ivy League schools don't offer athletic scholarships, so he'll have to pay his own way.

Call me crazy, but I think it's all kinds of refreshing to see a kid who clearly has an excellent head on his shoulders and was able to look past the glitz and glamour of the major college football scene and make such a decision, in the face of any number of voices that would suggest he's a fool for doing so. That is not to say that I think that most blue chip football recruits ignore their education, but I do think you see a lot of players make decisions about their education in the context of a subset of schools that would be the best option for their football career. It's like if you have the option to go and play at a big time football school, you have to exercise it. I feel like a lot of players would be well served to look at the situation more holistically, as Meyers clearly has. This is especially true in a day and age in which lower D-IA programs, and even D-IAA programs are getting their players noticed by the NFL. While he may have not taken the "best" course for his football aspirations, he certainly hasn't abandoned them by going to Princeton.

I'm not sure how thrilled his parents will be about having to foot Princeton's 47k a year tuition, but I'm sure they are quite proud of his decision. I know I personally wish him the best of luck, in all his future endeavors, on and off the field.

Charity rewarded

So, I had an interesting day.

The Harrisbury country station had their annual radioathon to raise money for St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital yesterday and today. I'd been toying with the idea of becoming a "Partner In Hope" with St. Jude the last couple years, and decided yesterday that I was going to finally go ahead and do it this year. I didn't call in yesterday though. As you probably know if you've ever seen a teleathon/radioathon before, there are often incentives offered to those who donate at certain times. I made the decision to donate independant of any "incentives", but since I had made up my mind to donate anyhow, I figured it wouldn't hurt to wait until an hour in which there was an incentive that I was at least mildly interested in.

As you might remember, a few weeks ago while handing out the OBNOTW award, I jokingly declared that Carrie Underwood was "my girl". From 2 to 3 today, the incentive was to be in a drawing to win one of 5th, 4th, 3rd, 2nd, and front row tickets to the upcoming Keith Urban/Carrie Underwood concert in nearby Hershey. Despite my professions of love for Carrie, I wasn't really jumping out of my seat to get into that drawing (not really big into concerts, especially BIG concerts), but it was getting towards the end of the event and I hadn't been even remotely interested in any of the prior incentives, so I figured I'd go ahead and call. Well, when 3 rolled around, they announced that I had won the 5th row tickets. (I'm positive they had the stack of papers upside down and I should have won the front row seats, but what can you do?) First time I can remember winning anything of real significance in a drawing or contest like this.

Anyhow, this rewarding of my charity has left me with a conundrum. For you see, I will have 2 tickets, and the concert just happens to be on Valentine's Day. As a rather single male, I don't have a built in, ready to go date for such occasions as these. I suppose I could attempt to use the lure of Keith Urban to attract a hot date for the evening, but I'm not sure how well I think it would work, as she would likely be spending half the concert gawking at Keith Urban, and I would spend the other half gawking at Carrie Underwood. And not being that into attending the concert, I'm not sure I really feel like just grabbing a random friend to go along with me. Of course, a quick scan of StubHub and eBay has presented me with a 3rd potential option, one which could be quite lucrative.

Decisions, decisions...

Vindicated?

One of the things that has consistently bothered me about the whole steroids issue is that the guy who basically blew the lid off the whole thing was Jose Canseco. In his tell-all book, Juiced, Canseco became the first player to name names, and despite massive outcry about the claims of the book, Canseco has yet to be sued, and a number of the names he named have been proven accurate. The problem I have with that is that Canseco isn't exactly a saint here. He was, by his own admission, a massive drug cheat in his own rights. And even that I could forgive, if he had come forward out of a repentant attitude and a desire to clean up the game. However, he cheated as long as it served his purposes, and then when he couldn't play anymore, he decided (rightly or wrongly is not something I can make a call on) that he was been black listed because of steroid use. He needed money, so he became a rat when it suited his purposes. All that aside, he did prove to be one of the few truly credible voices, at least among players/former players. And, I believed to be dangerous, especially when Canseco began promoting plans for his follow-up book.

For you see, Canseco has proven time and time again that he only cares about Canseco. It suited his purposes to be credible and truthful in the first book, and clearly he had some goods to work with. My gut told me he was going to use the perceived credibility the fallout from his first book had given him for less than credible purposes in the follow-up. Many times I heard in the media over the last months "Say what you want about Canseco, the guy's told the truth on this" As true as that was, the manner in which it was said was disconcerting. I especially did not like the way a number of media figures were ready to assume Alex Rodriguez guilty of something after Canseco announced his surprise that A-Rod was not named in the Mitchell report, and then hinted to revelations in that area in his forthcoming book Let's not forget the reasons Canseco's book and it's claims were initially dismissed. However accurate his first book may have turned out, the guy hasn't earned a basic level of trust, in my opinion.

It would seem my suspicions are beginning to be proven correct. Earlier this month, author/editor Don Yeager, who had planned on working with Canseco on his follow-up book, passed up the opportunity after reviewing Canseco's material. His statement about this was particularly noteworthy: "I don't think there's a book there. I don't know what they're going to do. I don't think he's got what he claims to have, certainly doesn't have what he claims to have on A-Rod. There's no meat on the bones." I for one, am not shocked by this.

And then we come to last night, and the revelation that Canseco may have tried to extort at least one current major leaguer with the threat of being named in the 2nd book. Scott Boras, agent for Maggilo Ordonez, filed a complaint with the FBI after Canseco allegedly contacted one of Boras' employees and told him that Ordonez would be left in the "clear" in the book if he invested in a movie project Canseco was promoting. Canseco denies the charge, and Ordonez has declined to go forward with the complaint, saying that he doesn't want to deal with the problems. So, this isn't exactly an iron-clad case, but clearly no one would be that surprised if it proved true, given the guy we're dealing with. Whether he has the goods on Ordonez and was giving him a chance to keep it hidden, or whether he was threatening to use his new found credibility to point the finger without any actual proof is inconsequential. If he was willing to alter his "revelations" based on financial contributions, that credibility is officially gone.

I don't doubt that he has at least some more credible information on steroid users, though perhaps nothing as groundbreaking as he would like us to believe. I'm sure he'll find a way to get the second book out there, and I'm also sure that at least some of what he alleges in it will prove true. I just pray that those in the media who have portrayed him as a credible, honest source on steroids are willing to take anything he might say in the future with the appropriate measure of skepticism, rather than taking the lazy way out and saying "Well, he told the truth last time." For Jose Canseco, honesty and altruism have been the exception, rather than the rule, and everyone would do well to keep that in perspective.

Say what?

Just a quick shot here, I'll probably do a longer entry about something else later tonight, but I thought it noteworthy that Barry Bonds requested a dismissal of his federal perjury charges yesterday.

Of course Bonds is going to make such a request, though it seems unlikely that it will be granted. What I find interesting is the nature of the request, in which his lawyers argued that "the indictment is 'scattershot' and noted for its 'striking inartfulness.'"

I post this here because I am hoping that someone with a broader vocabulary than I will stumble across this and be able to tell me what scattershot and inartfulness mean. I don't think they are in my dictionary.

Where is the benefit of the doubt?

The sports media and I are having another one of those days where we just aren't getting along very well. Two separate stories have caught my attention, and aside from the fact that they are both football stories, the actual facts of the stories couldn't be more different. Yet, some of the coverage I've seen around both stories leads me to the same question: What do people have to do to earn the benefit of the doubt these days?

The first story stems from Sunday's AFC championship game between the Patriots and the Chargers. As football fans know, San Diego went into that game with their 3 best offensive players banged up. Star running back LaDainan Tomlinson was suffering from a knee injury, as was QB Philip Rivers, and standout tight end Antonio Gates had a beat up toe. The latter two played, with varying limitations based on their injuries. Tomlinson, however, was only in for 3 plays before sitting down for the rest of the game in favor of backup Michael Turner. The Chargers were able to move the ball, but 4 deep drives stalled outside the end zone, and the Chargers managed only 4 field goals in falling by a 21-12 score.

In the two days since the game, Tomlinson has been absolutely killed by a number of national media figures, perhaps most prominently former player Deion Sanders, for a perceived lack of toughness in his unwillingness to gut out his injury and play in the biggest game of his career. That perception hasn't been helped by revelations that Rivers was actually playing on a partially torn ACL which will require surgery and a 6 month rehab, and in fact even had arthroscopic surgery last week just so he could play on Sunday. He also wasn't helped by the fact that, after he returned to practice on Thursday, the Chargers took him off the injury report completely, implying that they felt he was at 100%.

The second story broke yesterday, when Indianapolis coach Tony Dungy ended several days worth of speculation by announcing that he will return to coach the Colts in 2008. Dungy's family had recently moved from Indianapolis back to Tampa, where Dungy had been stationed for 6 years in his first stint as an NFL head coach. As a result, the prevailing notion was that Dungy, a noted family man who has spent years with his All-Pro Dad organization preaching faith and family over football, would retire from coaching and rejoin them.

While nationally there hasn't been a whole ton of commentary on this, I was alerted today to this article by Indianapolis Star writer Bob Kravitz. In it, Kravitz, while stating that he is "uncomfortable" doing so, suggests that by deciding to continue on with the Colts while his family is in Tampa, Dungy has revealed himself to be something of a hypocrite.

Maybe if you just look at these stories on the surface, you don't really see a whole lot for even a noted media critic like myself to seize on. And yet, let's go a step further with both. First, Tomlinson. LT is in his 7th year in the NFL, and prior to this year's playoffs, he had never missed a game due to an injury. His lone career DNP was a coaches decision in 2004 in the last game of the season, which was meaningless to the Chargers playoff postion. And he's done this while logging over 300 carries and more than 50 catches each year. He had 375 combined touches this year, for a career low. You don't do that as a running back in the NFL without playing through an injury or two. It just doesn't happen. LT has never done anything to demonstrate a particularly low threshold for pain. If there's a player in the NFL who has earned the right to be implicitly trusted when he says "I can't go", it's LT. And yet, here we are. What does LT have to do to get the benefit of the doubt? Do I know for sure that LT absolutely couldn't go on Sunday? Obviously not. Really, only Tomlinson knows that for sure. But prior to Sunday, there was zero evidence to suggest he was the kind of player to "wimp out", and what happened on Sunday was hardly conclusive in that regard. So I'm going to give him a pass, and I think the media should be quicker to do so as well. If you want to harp on him, harp on him for his bench-sitting, helmeted, brooding act after he came out of the game. Of course, the sheer irony of Deion Sanders, who I'm fairly certain never actually hit anyone in his NFL career, questioning LT's toughness almost makes the story bearable.

And then there's Dungy's situation. First of all, I think it's rather arrogant of someone like Kravitz to assume the he knows what would be best for the Dungy family, especially so given that we don't have all the various details of the concessions the Colts made to Dungy in order to keep him on the sidelines for another year. And yet I respect the fact that, since Dungy has made his "family first" mantra a public thing throughout the years, he does open himself up for public scrutiny on such issues. Really, I get that. This isn't a "how dare you tell someone else how to raise their family" rant. And yet, Dungy isn't new to life as an NFL coach. 2008 will mark his 13 straight year in an NFL head coaching position. He has been involved with All-Pro Dad for about as long, as I understand it. And in all that time, I'm not aware of any significant suggestion that he was anything but the family first guy he presented himself as. And now you're going to assume that 12+ years down the road he's suddenly done an about face in that area? Again, what does the guy have to do to get the benefit of the doubt? I can't crawl inside Dungy's head, so I don't know what exactly he's thinking. And maybe he has really placed football first in this instance. Obviously, only he and his family know what went into the decision. But still, the man has a track record that merits being taken at his word when he says he believes this is the best choice for him and his family. At the first least, could we keep that word "hypocrite" in the sheath for a little while longer? I have to wonder if this story doesn't come more from Kravitz trying to explain away the fact that he, like the vast majority of the Indy media, guessed wrong on what Dungy's move would be.

So seriously, what does a person have to do to get the benefit of the doubt? Does the benefit of the doubt even exist anymore in a context where it would fly in the face of a more interesting story? I think it does, because I'm pretty sure I saw Randy Moss getting it last week in the face of battery allegations. Maybe that's it - if you win all your games and break records, you get a pass.

Regardless of the answer to the larger question, I think the level of cynicism illustrated here is unfortunate.

On coaches and decision making

A few weeks ago, prior to the match-up between the Patriots and the Giants in the last game of the NFL regular season, I stated that I believed the Giants would be crazy not to rest their players in the game, which was meaningless for them since they were locked into their playoff position regardless of the outcome of the game. (You can see that statement within this entry.) As you might know, the Giants did play their starters the whole way against the Patriots in that game, playing quite well before ultimately becoming the last victim of the Patriots' first ever 16-0 regular season. You are also probably aware that the Giants continued to play well in the postseason, winning 3 straight road games to become the first NFC wild card team to make the Super Bowl in over 30 years.

First, let me pat myself on the back (pat, pat) for bringing this topic back up, unlike many in the sports media who make brash statements and then "forget" about them when they go awry. At the same time, I don't necessarily bring this back up to concede defeat on the matter. It's certainly hard to argue that the Giants made the wrong move, given where they are, and given the number of teams that rested their players only to fall along the wayside - 2 of them at the hands of the Giants.

I am willing to concede that it may have been the best move for this particular team to go out and give the Patriots a game. And yet, I have to say that we constantly deal with this false idea that because a certain decision worked out, it was automatically the best decision to make. The reverse is of course also often assumed - that something that doesn't work out is the wrong decision. However, it's really unfair to view decision making through hindsight this way.

I essentially minored in statistics in college, and while lots of that knowledge has departed from head due to lack of use in the last 5+ years, I do still have a pretty good grasp on probability, or at least I like to think I do. And I know that choosing the option that has the highest probability of success doesn't always bring success when you are only looking at a sample size of 1. Sometimes, making the right decision leads to the wrong result. And sometimes, making the wrong decision still works out well anyhow. But the simple fact is that the guy who is consistently making the decisions that give his team the highest probability for success is going to have more success, in the long term, than the guy who is consistently making decisions that put his team up against longer odds.

I'm speaking theoretically thus far, so let me give some illustrations. First, from college football this year. In the Auburn/LSU game, LSU had the ball at the Auburn 22, trailing 24-23 with less than 10 seconds left, with no timeouts remaining. Rather than kick a field goal, LSU coach Les Miles had the team take a shot at the end zone. It was successful, with the touchdown catch coming with 1 second left. Masterful, gutsy coaching, right? Absolutely not. Anything other than a completed TD pass in that situation ends the game in an LSU loss. Kicking the field goal clearly offered the higher percentage chance to win the game. And we learned later that apparently Miles lost track of the time on the clock, and thought there was enough time on the clock to take the shot at the end zone and still kick the field goal if it didn't work. Miles gets burned on that most of the time, but this time he escaped. An example of a good decision that went bad would be Joe Torre sending Mariano Rivera, the greatest closer in postseason history, in to the game to close out the 2001 World Series. I highly doubt you'd find anyone who would question that decision despite the outcome, and yet there are so many times when people are unwilling to get past a bad outcome when discussing whether the proper decision was made.

So, all of that is to say, just because the Giants made the Super Bowl doesn't mean that playing their starters the whole game against the Pats was the right decision. Let's remember, they lost a few starters for portions of the playoffs in that game, which clearly was a negative outcome of the decision. For my part, while I'm willing to give a little bit on this one, I think the Giants' Super Bowl run says more about just how wide open the NFC playoffs were this year, and how good the Giants have been on the road (10 straight road wins) than it does about Tom Coughlin's decision to play the whole game against the Patriots. Regardless, Coughlin's players went out and got the job done for him, and that's all that ultimately can said with any certainty, because we don't get to play the scenario out 100 different times and see which decision led to more success, we get to see one decision, one outcome. That's why I tend to be fairly easy on coaches when it comes to individual strategic decisions like this, because they don't go out on the field and play. Players can easily make a good gameplan look terrible, and a bad gameplan look good. You really have to look at the big picture when evaluating coaching.

Oh, and in case you were wondering, I definitely think the Giants would be smart to play their starters in their next matchup with the Patriots.

Losing Their Religion

Once again, the last article in Sports Illustrated this week has piqued my interest. The article, Losing Their Religion, by Selena Roberts, gives an interesting take on the hiring of former Hawaii football coach June Jones at SMU.

I don't think I have to restate my views on what goes on surrounding major athletics. Clearly, I resonate with the suggestion of the article that the goals/methods of big time college football are not entirely compatible with the values of a Christian school. Big time college athletic are primarily about the money, and so yeah, I don't see that as a program that lines up with a Christian world view. Even worse, such a pursuit can pretty easily reinforce a negative stereotype of the modern day American church - that what the church is really after is people's money.

And yet, I do understand the point of the SMU AD, who says calls athletics the "front porch of the university". I saw that repeatedly during my time at Messiah College, a rather anonymous D-III school. People get an impression of your school through your athletic programs that would likely never come in contact with it in any other fashion. The image of Messiah College in the region, and indeed, even nationally, gets a tremendous boost from the school's athletic program, both from the conduct and character of the student athletes who represent the school, and from the kind of success that many of the teams have enjoyed.

Obviously Messiah is a D-III athletics program, that doesn't generate income from any of it's teams, so there's something of a case of apples to oranges going on here. At the same time, for a school like SMU to have a high profile program like football in total disarray does speak rather poorly of the school, and on much larger scale than what we're dealing with. All of that is to say, if SMU is going to have a D-IA football program, which they have for quite some time now, it's not good for the school to keep it as a bottom feeder (1-11 in 2007). Basically, they are left with only two viable choices - upgrade the program, or eliminate the program. It's obvious which course SMU has taken. And yet the whole situation does really illustrate the conundrum that the larger "faith-based" schools face when dealing with their athletics programs.

Yet another really bad idea

Okay, so today's topic is a bit more obscure than what I usually cover, but Jim Rome mentioned it on his show today, and I really felt the need to take it and run with it.

So, here's the story. You can read it for yourself, but the bottom line is that the Western Athletic Conference is cracking down on fan behavior at their games, specifically targeting "chants or cheers that contain obscene, vulgar, offensive or threatening language". The new rule is to be enforced with the calling of a technical foul on the home team.

Let me say, first of all, that I don't have a real problem with efforts to cut down the amount of profanity at sporting events. I've got no problem with heckling the opposing team and all the various back and forth that comes with sporting events. My favorite college basketball team, Duke, has fans that are notorious for their heckling and chants. However, in recent years, stuff like this has gotten out of hand in a number of venues, to the point where it's often just not a good environment for people (especially families with young children) to watch a game. And the chants that involve profanity and vulgarity are rarely that clever or amusing. I'm certainly a free speech guy, but I really don't have a problem with rules designed to allow for a certain amount of decorum at a sporting event.

This approach, however, is an absolutely terrible idea. I think you're treading on very dangerous territory when you start punishing the participants in a sporting event for the actions of the spectators. I can see going that route in extreme instances, like when stuff starts getting thrown on the field/court in large quantities. In cases like that, fan behavior is actually interfering with the game being played. But the simple reality is that players and coaches have zero actual control over what the fans do. They can give talks and make requests, but that's the extent of it. The idea that a team could potentially lose a close game because of the words of some obnoxious fans is very problematic for me. And the fact that apparently something as simple as a large group "You suck" taunt is in violation of the rule tells me they are taking things too seriously on top of that. And really, how long will it take in this day and age for a bunch of kids from the visiting school to show up in home team garb and break the rule in an effort to get a T called on their opponents. Not everyone in the home gym is rooting for the home team, after all.

Personally, I think at the college level, these sort of issues should be left up to the individual schools. If they are comfortable with the behavior of the students and others who attend their games, then that should probably be the end of it. However, if the conference feels a need to impose its will in this area, then they should do so in a fashion that doesn't actually impose penalties on the game being played. Fine schools for incidents that occur in their gyms, or something like that. Let's stick to keeping the players on the floor accountable for their own actions, and not the actions of their classmates in the stands.

Calling Cuban to Pittsburgh

Yesterday I completed reading through my first issue of Sports Illustrated, and I'm glad I was resolved to go through it from cover to cover, because the very last article caught my attention: A Changeup for Bud's Boys. In it, SI's Chris Ballard outlines his case for why the famous (even infamous, in some ways) owner of the NBA's Dallas Mavericks, Mark Cuban,, is the right choice as the next owner of the Chicago Cubs. Ballard is very much on point with his argument from my perspective. I think he's absolutely right, that having Cuban in Chicago would be great for baseball. However, I think there's a place where he would be better for baseball - Pittsburgh. That's right, I want Mark Cuban to buy the Pirates.

This is not a random whim, as Cuban has ties to the Pittsburgh area and has been linked to possible purchases of city sport teams in the past. And the reality of this case seems to be that, despite his interest, he won't be buying the Cubs, for the reasons that Ballard cites, which are basically about MLB owners not being comfortable bringing a pot-stirrer like Cuban in when they have another viable option. The Cubs are an attractive purchase, and so MLB is in a position of strength. For the small market Pirates, who haven't had a winning season in 15 years, the market would likely be much smaller, and so the other owners might not be left with much of a choice if Cuban wanted in.

To be fair to the current MLB owners, I understand their hesitations, to a point. I am not a big fan of Mark Cuban, the guy. The NBA certainly could do without his loud-mouth, attention-grabbing, referee berating antics. He's constantly in the news, usually for the wrong reasons, most often getting fined. What the NBA can't do without, however, is Mark Cuban, the intelligent and fan savvy team owner. During Cuban's tenure as owner, the Mavs have gone from one of the NBA's bottom feeders, to one of the marquee franchises, consistently being among the top handful of teams. Whether the NBA brass would admit it or not, Cuban has clearly brought more positive to the league than negative. And, for a number of reasons, it's quite likely that Cuban would not be as ever-present with a baseball team as he has been with the Mavs, so MLB shouldn't expect to deal with those issues as often as the NBA does.

Ballard's article makes a very solid case for why Cuban would be a great owner of the Cubs, and most of those points would translate to any team, so I'm not going to spend much time restating why I think he would be a great owner in Pittsburgh. What I seek to bring to this discussion is a case as to why having Cuban as a great owner in Pittsburgh is better for baseball than having him as a great owner in Pittsburgh. First of all, the Cubs don't need Mark Cuban. The team is a big time revenue generator as is, with a die-hard following that goes well beyond the city of Chicago. Any ownership group that isn't totally incompetent should be able to come in and find success in Chicago. In Chicago, Cuban is just another big market, cash cow owner, like the ones we already have in Boston and New York, among other places. Hardly noteworthy, and not really having any grand significance outside of Chicago.

Pittsburgh, however, is a different animal. It's a pretty small market in baseball terms, and one that has been downtrodden for the better part of the last 20 years. It does, however, have a strong baseball tradition. And the current ownership group has bought into the standard small market "party line" of bemoaning baseball's economic disparities and saying they just don't have enough money to compete with the big boys. Meanwhile, they turn some of the biggest year to year profits as that economic system that they decry takes money from the big boys and lines their pockets, with no formal expectation that they actually invest it in the team.

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that I think baseball's economic structure provides a perfectly level playing field. However, it is markedly improved from the pre-revenue sharing days, even if the small market teams refuse to acknowledge that fact. As long as these teams continued to be owned by groups who are concerned solely about the present day bottom line, they will continue as a group to rack up nice profit margins, while putting a poor product on the field. And, as long as no one "breaks ranks", they can continue to point the finger at the MLB system when their fans complain. However, my opinion is that, at present, there is at most 1 (and that's an extraordinary situation in Florida) team that doesn't have the resources to be consistently competitive, assuming they use those resources well.

This is where Cuban comes in. I understand that baseball is a business. I don't expect owners, who are obviously skilled businessmen, to come in and just lose money year in and year out to put a winner on the field. However, his tenure in Dallas demonstrates that Cuban understands the concept of spending money to make money. Cuban has also demonstrated a strong ability and willingness to invest in and build a fan base and a market. Listening to the fans to the extent that he does is a great way to start that process. In his 7+ years in Dallas, Cuban has almost tripled the value of the franchise (based on Forbes' yearly valuations), and has taken the team from the bottom 1/3 of the league in yearly revenues to the top 1/3 (also according to Forbes). Now, Forbes also shows that the Mavericks consistently lose money annually from the basketball operations, but given their high revenues, the Mavs could clearly be profitable if they chose to do so. Cuban seems to be willing to pour extra money into the Mavs in the name of his competitive spirit.

Now, it generally takes a little longer to turn a baseball team around, for a variety of reasons, so I wouldn't necessarily expect Cuban to be so quickly successful in Pittsburgh. However, I believe within 5 years he could have Pittsburgh in a very competitive position once again, and could keep them profitable, if that was his objective. Whether he was necessarily raking in money on a yearly basis, he would clearly be making out in terms of what would happen to the value of the team.

Instead of just another big market villain, Cuban would be someone that other small market fans can point to when their ownership groups cry poverty. He would blow away the lie that a lot of ownership groups are trying to sell: "We're doing the best we can under the current system." With Cuban putting the model on display in Pittsburgh, these owners would basically be faced with a choice of either putting forth a real effort to compete, or selling to someone who will.

From my perspective, those are better options than the present day, where they cry poverty and try to convince their fellow owners to vote them a bigger share of the big market revenues in the next CBA.

Game of Shadows

So, I just finished reading Game of Shadows, the expose on the famed BALCO scandal that blew the lid off the use of performance enhancing drugs in sports - particularly in baseball, and also in track and field. As BALCO's marquee baseball client, Barry Bonds was, of course, prominently discussed in the book as well. The litany of stinging revelations about Bonds within the book are, primarily, made it noteworthy, and Bonds shares the cover of the book with fellow juicer Jason Giambi of the Yankees.

I said as I was getting ready to start the book that I did not approve of the methods of the co-authors, who were reporters for the San Francisco Chronicle and broke a number of the key developments in the BALCO story. I definitely still stand by that. A number of the key breaks in the BALCO story came as a result of leaked grand jury testament. I'm not up on the law as it relates to leaking sealed grand jury testimony, so I don't know whether they are technically criminals, but I would assume they could at least be prosecuted as accessories if someone chose to do so. The fact that they've won awards for their journalism on the BALCO case strikes me as rather ironic, given that they were reporting on people who cheated to achieve awards and records. I won't call their work "cheating", but there was definitely some shadiness to their methods. I also came away less than impressed with their journalistic abilities, aside from those methods, because at several times throughout the book, a clear, personal, anti-Bonds attitude came through.

That being said, they definitely had the story nailed. I didn't expect to come away from this book with a lower opinion of Bonds the person, figuring I knew pretty much all the major details. However, I do have to say there were a number of revelations that did leave me with a lesser opinion of him. To be fair, many of the characterizations of him came from his spurned ex-mistress, and, as I said, the authors didn't give a real show of objectivity when it came to Bonds.

I've heard it said on a number of occasions that the fact that Bonds hasn't sued the authors of this book for defamation is tacit proof that their claims are accurate. I've always been a bit hesitant to buy into that argument, especially for active players. I could understand a player not feeling it would be worth dealing with during the context of preparing for and playing a long baseball season. I do believe that Bonds' team did actually try and prevent the book from being released, but on the grounds that it contained leaked testimony, not that anything was untrue. All that being said, if the claims made in this book are not at least substantially true, it's hard for me to believe a guy like Bonds (who has never backed up a step on this whole issue) wouldn't come out swinging at the authors.

One final note - I did not appreciate the authors grandstanding towards the end of the book about how baseball needed to go back and address all the records and accomplishment that had been tainted by steroid use. The book is presented as a journalistic work, a detailed accounting of the facts of the BALCO scandal. And yet here at the end we have an opinion which is ultimately passed off as a fact in the context of the book. My stance on dealing with the past has been made clear, and so I won't go into it again in this space. This was just another item that led me to question the kind of journalists we were dealing with here.

All in all, pretty good read, and more informative than I expected. I have a couple other books dealing with baseball and steroids in my pile, but the next book to come off the non-fiction pile is going to be C.S. Lewis' The Problem of Pain. On the fiction side, I should be wrapping up The Two Towers this week and moving on to the third volume of the Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.