Image by Getty Images via @daylife

So much is up in the air heading into training camp for the Pittsburgh Steelers this year. Of course, they have to deal with the whole giant f*ckmess created by Ben Roethlisberger who, justifiably, is suspended for the first four games of the season

Coach Mike Tomlin will have to deploy either Byron Leftwich or Dennis Dixon in his place (or some combination of the two), to get through the first four games, which means he has to have one of those guys ready to play quarterback, plus he has to find a balance to get Ben ready, too, for when it’s his time to step back in. That’s a tough task. Who gets the reps? How many? How much? Because Tomlin has to do two things – try to win at least two of the first four games without Roethlisberger and then pray that Roethlisberger can play like he did in 2008 and through much of 2009.  It’s a helluva task.

So Tomlin has to deal with all that is unholy coming from the #7 jersey and those offensive players left to clean up after him, plus he has to find a way to hold together a defense that was the best in the league in 2008 and looked aged and decrepit through much of 2009. There is no escaping this:  that Steelers defense is old and one of the most productive young guys is pissed off.

ProFootballTalk.com is reporting that linebacker Lamarr Woodley is unhappy with his contract. Woodley is scheduled to make $550,000.00 next year, a situation he characterizes as “all jacked up.” I kind of agree. But re-negotiating in the current CBA limbo is kind of jacked up, too. Which is to say there is a 30 percent rule, meaning that the Steelers could renegotiate and give another 30% over the $550,000 they are to pay Woodley, which would bring his salary to $715,000.

Of course, there are ways around that. Naturally, the Steelers could give Woodley a big fattie of a signing bonus (as the Eagles did with Kevin Kolb), but with the 2011 season up in the air, they might pay a lot for one year if they did that.

Still, the Steelers need to deal in good faith. Woodley is, in my estimation, the most productive player drafted in the Mike Tomlin era, which means he’s not only good, he’s young and good. This combination is invaluable.

The presumed starting defensive 11 players (as indicated by the Steelers own depth chart) are:

On the line, they’ve got Aaron Smith who is 34 and coming off a devastating shoulder injury. This guy is great and if anybody can come back from injury, it’s him; nevertheless, at 34 and playing such a physically grueling position, he does not have too many seasons in front of him. Casey Hampton is 32.  Brett Keisel is the youngest starter on the line at 31.

At linebacker, the aforementioned Woodley (25) and James Harrison (32) on the outside. Inside, there is the venerable, wily James Farrior who is 35 and who, despite his greatness, looked every bit of 35 during the Steelers dreadful five-game losing streak last year. And Lawrence Timmons, who is 24 and was selected one pick ahead of Woodley in the 2007 draft, but who hasn’t produced as consistently as Woodley. Yeah, I know he was playing on a sprained ankle (or two) last year, but the guy looked lost half the time. Still, he’s young, so we’ll give him that.

In the defensive backfield, there is the wondrous, magnificent, Troy “Better than Jesus” Polamalu, who battled injuries much of last year. He is 29 years old. Seriously, the guy is better than Jesus, if Jesus had played football, that is. When he’s healthy, he’s the best there is in the league and Dick LeBeau has constructed his defense around this sure knowledge. But without him? They are ordinary. It showed last year when they didn’t have him. The other safety is Ryan Clark who is 30 and who, like Jesus, leads with his head, which leads to a few concussions. That does not bode well for a long career.

Then there’s Ike “Swaggin” Taylor who is 30, but plays like he’s 22 and I don’t mean that in a good way. And William Gay who is only 25. He’s young, but you know, he’s just not really very good. Seriously. Not really very good.

If you’re counting at home, that’s four guys on the whole defense under the age of 30. One of those guys is God. One of them has underperformed but still has tremendous potential. One of them kinda sucks. And the last one is Woodley. Combine past performance with the fact that great players like Farrior, Smith and Harrison cannot play forever, and Woodley is, right this second, their best young defensive bet.

How much longer will we see this?

The tragedy of the once-highest paid NFL player (scroll to #14) continues …

The AP reports that gunfire disrupted the wee hours of Mike Vick’s 30th birthday party last week. No, the onetime dogfighting ‘heavyweight’ did not pull the trigger nor receive the bullet; however, the fiasco occurred just outside the Virginia Beach nightclub hosting the soiree, and police identified the wounded man as a co-defendant in Vick’s dogfighting case.

Shucks.

CBS adds that, according to Vick’s attorney, #7 wasn’t present at the nightclub when the bullets started flying. Plus, Vick and his brother Marcus apparently hadn’t even invited the victim, who had “crashed the party” and insulted its hosts.

Worst punishment in the history of party fouls?

The NFL is still investigating the incident. But it appears that the maligned QB is again swimming in hot water after his reinstatement from NFL commish Roger Goodell.

Is this simply a case of Vick being snake-bit, or ought we incite the classic dictate of “fool me once … ” ?

Unfortunately for Vick, I’d guess Goodell suffers from a busted “Give-a-Damn.” When he decided to reinstate Vick last July, Goodell also made explicit certain unbreakable conditions — such as, don’t f@^& with me or the League.

“Whether you succeed is entirely in your hands,” Goodell wrote in the reinstatement letter. “Needless to say, your margin for error is extremely limited.”

The decision was unpopular at the time and surely receive more scrutiny as more details emerge and media attention intensifies.

Whether Vick’s fault or not, ol’ Rog may not like the spotlight shining on his League … and exile the former Atlanta messiah and his shadow of controversy. The actual answer to the question may not matter in the end.

For the last few weeks, I’ve posted stories and updates about the University of Waterloo football steroid scandal. Everybody is weighing in on this.

Chris Cochrane with The Chronicle Herald with his thoughts about the disbanding of the football program:

The real victims in all steroid scandals, and particularly this one at Waterloo, are those student-athletes who don’t cheat. Now, at Waterloo, they’re without a football program due to the knee-jerk reaction of Waterloo administration.

The school could have moved ahead without the cheating players and allowed the clean players to play football again next year. That would have been justice. Now the clean players will have to transfer to another school if they want to play.

On the front lines, the undergraduate students paper at the University of Calgary, The Gauntlet, opines on the hypocrisy of sports culture vis-a-vis PED’s.

Scott Stinson at the National Post, on the role money plays in the management of college athletics and testing for PED’s.

Back in the good ole U.S. of A., Ken Burns, auteur of the mega-American-documentary, will be back with a coda to his 18 1/2 hour “Baseball,” which will deal with the stain of steroids, among other things, per Kevin Sherrington at the Dallas Morning News.

Ray McNulty at the TC Palms interviews former MLB Commissioner Fay Vincent on the efficacy of baseball’s drug testing policy:

“I’ve had a player tell me that a drug test is an intelligence test,” said Vincent, who fired baseball’s first shot in its fight against steroids with a 1991 memo that cited federal law and made them illegal in the game, though he had no authority to punish players who used them. “There is no test for HGH. There are a number of athletes taking steroids with a doctor’s prescription. So I’m skeptical about how much drug use is still going on.”

Ever wonder where the steroids are coming from? Immigration and Customs agent, Sean Patrick Ganley plead guilty to importing steroids on Tuesday, in U.S. District Court in Seattle, Washington.

Then, there’s this pusher:

Richard Andrew Thomas of Lakeland, Fla., will serve eight months in federal prison, a plea his attorneys worked out after Thomas agreed to help investigators’ inquiry of Washington-area chiropractor Doug Nagel. Nagel was arrested by deputies from the Polk County (Fla.) Sheriff’s Department in March on seven counts of solicitation to deliver a controlled substance and a one count of conspiracy to deliver a controlled substance.

Nagel’s case is moving forward in a Polk County court and there was a pre-trial hearing on Tuesday.

Nagel’s attorney, Brian West, said his client has never supplied steroids to anyone, let alone any pro athletes. Nagel did treat a handful of Capitals players at his office located in a mall attached to the team’s training facility. The players interviewed by investigators — including Eric Fehr, Shaone Morrisonn and Matt Bradley — denied Nagel supplied them with any illicit drugs.

And finally in the NFL, Ed Gant, wide out for the Arizona Cardinals, received a four game suspension for a positive test for a banned substance.

Image by AFP/Getty Images via @daylife

Somehow, I neglected to update This Week in Doping last week. Must have been all the excitement of the World Cup and the confusion of the college conference do-si-do. Or maybe I was incapacitated by the vuvuzelas buzzing my head. Be that as it may, neither rain, nor snow, nor sleet, nor scoreless soccer matches will keep performance enhancing drugs out of the headlines.

First, with the most familiar faces — major league baseball players. According to this story in the AP, Roger Clemens’ former trainer and alleged dealer, Brian McNamee, says that he was paid for performance enhancing drugs by the Roger Clemens Foundation. (I am not responsible if you have Elton John’s “Rocket Man” stuck in your head for days if you click on that link. Consider yourself duly warned.)

Does this open a can of IRS- style whup-ass on the Rocket? I really don’t know, but if it does, aren’t those guys the ones who got Al Capone?

In other disgraced former major leaguer news, the ginormous coconut-sized head of Barry Bond’s reared itself this week. As  the San Francisco Chronicle reports, a federal appeals court tossed out key evidence in his perjury case, so Barry could get away cleanly, if you’ll pardon the expression.

Jon Pessah makes his case to let both of these cases drop and it’s pretty compelling. Maybe I’m a more short-sighted, pettier person than Pessah, but it would feel wrong to let Bonds and Clemens fade comfortably into the woodwork when Marion Jones had to go to the slam. What a couple of peaches Bonds and Clemens are, huh?

In the fighting world, after years of dismissing allegations that he used steroids, Mixed Martial Arts and Ultimate Fighting Pioneer, Ken ‘The World’s Most Dangerous Man’ Shamrock, admitted that he doped this week. Ben Cohen had a comprehensive post about Shamrock:

… in some cases it doesn’t require too much imagination to see that an athlete is artificially enhancing their physique. And in Shamrock’s case, you just need to look at him.

To prepare for an MMA bout, fighters need to go through intensive conditioning and sports specific training. You rarely see bulging body builder type muscles because they serve no purpose in real combat situations. Fighters simply don’t have the time to put on extra muscle because it would eat into the precious hours they use to prepare themselves for fighting. To attain an extraordinary physique like Shamrock’s naturally (carrying probably an extra 50lbs of muscle over his natural fighting weight), one would need serious amounts of food, supplements and time dedicated to achieving that level of muscularity. And while Shamrock was most certainly a good athlete, he wasn’t anything special so would never have had the time to train properly for a fight and look like a professional body builder 20 years his junior.

I wonder if MMA athletes would see other benefits from steroid use? Not to get big like Ken Shamrock, but just to come back from injury quicker. Which is not to say that steroid use is rampant in fighting. But wouldn’t there be benefits in the form of a quicker post-fight/post-injury recuperation periods, just like any other sport? MMA Torch did a nice job of covering the Shamrock, too.

Seems like the Shamrock story lead to a bunch of MMA/UFC coverage and, per MMAJunkie, the UFC released the results from the May 29th event in which all 13 fighters who were tested came back clean. Which is good news, of course, but for a really comprehensive look at drug testing and where it’s headed in professional fighting, check out John Morgan’s story at MMA Junkie.

Two weeks ago, I linked to a couple of stories about a steroid scandal in Canadian College Football.

On Monday, according to the USA Today, the University of Waterloo suspended it’s entire football team for a year as a result of the scandal.

Jeremy Grimaldi at the Hamilton Spectator has some good thoughts on why players do it.

And Bruce Arthur at the National Post has some interesting thoughts about the scandal, which would seem to be just the tip of the iceberg for the CIS (the Canadian Interuniversity Sport.)

And, last but not least, Tennessee Titans second year linebacker, Gerald McRath received a four game suspension for violating the league’s drug policy, per NFL’s Fanhouse.

June 3rd, This Week in Doping.

May 27th, This Week in Doping.

May 20th, This Week in Doping.

Image via Wikipedia

Alternately titled, the BCS conference commissioners and the boosters who love them. This story changes every 15 minutes so it’s worth updating my last post about it. I’m exhausted just following the movements.

Looks like the Big 12, in the form of 10 teams, is going to survive. All this because the Texas Longhorns agreed to stay, and, thus, A&M and Oklahoma are staying. We’re not dead yet! says the Big 12. According to the USA Today, Big 12 Commissioner Dan Beebe will speak about the new peace, but here’s how the television money appears to break down:

He is expected to address reports by operators of Texas fans website Orangebloods.com, which cited people familiar with the decision, and other outlets that the schools were induced to stay by projections of increased TV revenue — $20 million a year for Texas, Texas A&M and Oklahoma and $14 million-$17 million for the other seven Big 12 members, a substantial rise from the $8 million-$13 million distributed this year. Beebe did not return a request for comment.

Texas also is free to continue pursuing its own TV network.

Which they no doubt, will do. I wonder, if Texas does establish it’s own network – UTTV or something versus a Big 12 Network (modeled on the Big 10 Network)  - how will that affect the balance of power within the Big 12?

But, for the foreseeable future (i.e., the next seven hours or so), the Big 12 conference looks like this:  Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Kansas, Kansas State, Baylor, Missouri and Iowa State.

I don’t expect them to sit still. Once feeding time at the zoo was announced, all the conferences got ants in their pants.

In the rest of the midwest, the Big 10 now has a dozen teams and they have said that they’re going to remain that way For at least another dozen months.

Here’s the Big 10 lineup:  Michigan, Michigan State, THE Ohio State, Penn State, Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Northwestern, Purdue and Nebraska.

Bear in mind that the Big 10 has never hidden the fact that they very much covet Notre Dame. Who knows how much longer the Golden Domers can hold out with power conferences gathering so much, well, power.

And, in the area of publicly declared lust, the Pac-10 made no secret of it’s desire to poach the Texas-Oklahoma axis from the Big 12 and has a bit of egg on it’s face now that the Big 12 retained the Texas-Oklahoma axis and has resolved to stand firm. But, with the addition Colorado (who they did manage to lure from the Big 12) the Pac-10 is sitting on 11 teams, but are probably not done maneuvering yet. For now, the Pac-10 looks like this:  USC, UCLA, Cal, Stanford, Washington, Washington State, Oregon, Oregon State, Arizona, Arizona State, and Colorado.

It is speculated that the West Coasters will continue to try to put together at least a dozen teams, if not the super conference of 16 teams originally envisioned. Word is that the 12th potential team is Utah, currently of the Mountain West Conference, which conference just poached Boise State from the WAC conference. Of course, by the time I hit the “publish” button, no doubt there will have been even more changes.

Why the push for super conferences? Money. Championship game money. Which is to say, football championship game money. With enough teams, a conference can split into two divisions, a’la the SEC, and then have a conference championship game. That one game can mean kaboodely millions on TV revenue for a conference. The Detroit Free Press estimates that a Big 10 championship game could mean about $15 mil in revenue just for one game, which is a whole lot of motivation for ADs and conference commissioners everywhere.

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

I grew up on comic books. On the back page of most of these comics there was always a cheesy ad. I remember this ad because it dominated my early childhood. It was the Charles Atlas ad featuring a 98-pound weakling being bullied on a beach. Through the miraculous Charles Atlas system, that same 98-pound weakling is transformed into the “Hero of the Beach,” whereupon he vanquishes the bullies and, of course, gets the girls. (Okay, there were also the ubiquitous Sea Monkey ads on the backs of comics that nobody of a certain age can forget, for if you ordered them, what arrived via snail mail was a packet of dried up salted shrimps that never did anything. I viewed it as an early lesson in caveat emptor.)

But this week, I found myself thinking about that particular Charles Atlas ad because I was wondering just when the Big 12 Conference turned into a 98-pound weakling? The Big 10 and Pac-10 moseyed on into America’s breadbasket (and beef basket) like that bully on the beach and kicked sand in the eyes of the Big 12. They cherry-picked them at will, and these raids are likely just the opening salvo.

If you haven’t been paying attention, here’s what’s happened so far.

Colorado is leaving the Big 12 (reducing it to 11 teams) to join the Pac-10, which would make it, unofficially, the Pac-11 (although admittedly that doesn’t have the same sweet ring as the Pac-10.)

Meanwhile, Nebraska is leaving the Big 12 (which departure makes the Big 12 unofficially the big 10.) The Cornhuskers headed to the official Big 10 conference (comprised of 11 teams) which, with the addition of Big Red, would make it a 12 team conference, although not The Big 12. Got it? Great. Moving on, then.

Currently, the Big 12, the original one, now with 10 teams mostly in the square states, is treading water, trying to withstand these raids and not simply disappear into the diaspora. The teams which remain (and yes, we’re talking about teams here because the actual colleges ceased to factor in these types of equations quite a while ago) are:  Baylor, Iowa State, Kansas, Kansas State, Missouri, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, and Texas.) Nothing personal, but in this kind of power grab, many of those teams are at the mercy of the bigger, more powerful players. Kansas has one of the very best basketball programs in the country, but these maneuvers are about football and only football. And the revenue it generates, of course. Which means that Oklahoma, with it’s brand of Sooners football, is in a slightly better position than Kansas, but the prized jewel in all this, of course, is the University of Texas. Ever’thing’s bigger in Texas. Especially, and most importantly, television markets.

According to the Television Bureau of Advertising, Texas has four TV markets in the top 50, with two in the top 10 – Dallas (#5) and Houston (#10). With all those eyes watching the Texas Longhorns football games, Texas is the biggest prima donna in this little dance, so if Texas stays in the Big 12, the conference can make a go of it with 10 teams. Then, down the road, they can raid some other, weaker conference, of course. Or so the thinking goes. According to Sports Illustrated, the Texas Board of Regents meets this Tuesday, so the remaining nine Big 12 teams, including Oklahoma, will just have to wait.

But you didn’t seriously think the SEC was going to sit on the sidelines for this piracy party, did you? According to Orangebloods.com, which has been the go-to source on what they have cleverly dubbed “The Big 12 Missile Crisis,” Texas A & M doesn’t want to join the Pac-10, but is considering a move to the SEC. Which means that Texas might spurn the Pac-10’s advances and go to the SEC, too, because word is that Texas and Texas A & M want to keep their long-standing traditional rivalry in tact.

For the same reason, part of me almost hopes that Oklahoma follows Nebraska to the Big 10. What can I say? I’m a sucker for traditional rivalries. USC v. Notre Dame, Bama v. Auburn, Michigan v. Ohio State, Texas v. Texas A & M, and Oklahoma v. Nebraska. These games make college football vibrate with excitement.

Meanwhile, the Pac-10 still has their eyes on both Oklahoma teams, Texas and Texas Tech. Which would give them 15 teams. They likely want 16 total, so that they can have two divisions of eight teams each. Word via NBC’s College Football Talk is that if Texas A&M doesn’t accept the invite to the Pac-10, but Texas does, the Pac-10 may make overtures to Kansas. Of course, the state of Kansas doesn’t have much to offer in the way of television markets, but that would be a gem of a basketball program to add.

But if it is more television revenue the Pac-10 is after (and why would we assume otherwise), and if the Aggies tell them to take a hike, they may offer that last spot to Utah, and not Kansas, per the Deseret News. Salt Lake City has the No. 31 television market, according to TVB and the Utes, despite not playing in a BCS conference, have a solid football program.

Lost in all of this is just how the Big 12, one of the best football conferences in the country and one of the best basketball conferences (both men’s and women’s) in the country, became such an easy target. It hasn’t been reported and the inside dope on that would be some very welcome reporting. So, for now the Big 12 exists and they hope to exist in some form when the dust settles, but they may not be able to. And until Texas and A&M make up their minds, they just have to wait and pray.

In the meantime, it is becoming more and more apparent that the SEC, the Big 10 and the PAC-10 are determined to become “power conferences” before this is all over and,  if they cannot achieve that through further raids of the Big 12, surely they will turn their eyes elsewhere.

All of which leads me to believe that the Big East and the ACC should start making sweet, sweet love to each other if they don’t want to become the next 98 pound weakling on the beach. Or worse yet, like those dead on arrival Sea Monkeys.

University of Skirting Culpability

“As I read the decision by the NCAA … I read between the lines and there was nothing but a lot of envy. They wish they all were Trojans.”

via Mike Garrett doesn’t back down – latimes.com

Facing some of the hardest reprisals in years — including a two-year bowl ban, four years of probation, 14 vacated football games and 30 football scholarships — one would assume that the University of Southern California would express some, you know, contrition.

Yet you’d be only partly correct.

Prior to last season, the men’s basketball team acted proactively by self-imposing penalties — a ban from postseason play, forfeiture of wins from 2007-08 and elimination of two scholarships and 20 recruiting days — and admitting guilt before the NCAA intervened.

Said coach Kevin O’Neill, “We’re moving ahead in a positive manner. I really admire how our players handled the situation this last year.”

But as suggested by the above complaint bitchfest refusal to admit wrong comment from USC athletic director Mike Garrett, not every Trojan is mature enough to accept their medicine.

USC senior vice president Todd Dickey, while acknowledging the infractions, complained that “the penalties imposed are too severe.”

USC President Steven B. Sample called several sanctions “excessive,” but at least admitted “perfect we will never be.” Um, duh?

But at least those exceed this: Garrett, according to the aforementioned Times piece, “felt invigorated by this stuff” and actually opined, “With the penalty we got today I know we’re bigger than life.”

What arrogance. What audacity. What a poor example: Hey kids, when The Man catches you, just deny everything while counter-intuitively praising yourself!

The NCAA report, while spelling out the penalties, noted that “the general campus environment surrounding the violations troubled the committee.”

With leaders such as Garrett, who supposedly work to develop the bodies and minds of their student-athletes, it’s no wonder investigators are worried.

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This list turned into such a monster, I had to split it into two parts so for Part I, books 6 through 10, click here. On with the countdown:

5. What a Time It Was – W.C. Heinz.
W.C. Heinz, or Bill Heinz, should always be spoken of as the Great Bill Heinz. This is the only book on this list which is a collection of writings, rather than one cohesive narrative story, but Heinz was such a master story-teller, I had to include it. These are wonderful stories, some of which were features and others of which were deadline writing. Deadline writing is a skill that writers work at for the duration of their careers. The best reporters learn to excel at telling the who, what, where, when and hopefully how, concisely and on tight deadlines. A rare few are able to do all of that and also breathe life into the words. Heinz is one of those guys. His newspaper report, Death of a Racehorse, was written on deadline and it is so wonderful, so clean and elegant, I can remember it almost word for word. My favorite story in the collection is Brownsville Bum, about boxer Bummy Davis which Heinz wrote for True Magazine, of all places.
(To read “Death of a Racehorse” click here.)

4. Can’t Anybody Here Play This Game? – Jimmy Breslin.
Okay, this is almost cheating, because Breslin is one of the greatest chroniclers of American character. He also happens to be one of my favorite writers, with a firm seat at the head of the table in my Pantheon of Brilliance. So Jimmy Breslin + Sports is a no brainer for me. But this book is better than simply the sum of its parts. It is laugh out loud funny and captures the characters who made up the inaugural Mets team, nobody more than Skipper Casey Stengel and Marvelous Marvin Throneberry. And since I can’t find a link with an excerpt, I’ll let Breslin do the talking:

“When the Mets came to bat, Throneberry strode to the plate, intent on making up for the whole thing. With two runners on, Marv drove a long shot to the bullpen in right center field. It went between the outfielders and was a certain triple. As usual, Marv had that wonderful running action. He lowered his head and flew past first. Well past it. He didn’t come within two steps of touching the bag. Then he raced to second, turned the corner grandly, and careened toward third. The stands roared for Marvin Throneberry.

While all this violent action and excitement were going on, Ernie Banks, the Cubs’ first baseman, casually strolled over to Umpire Dusty Boggess.

‘Didn’t touch the bag, you know, Dusty,’ Banks said. Boggess nodded. Banks then called for the ball. The relay came, and he stepped on first base. Across the infield Throneberry was standing on third. He was taking a deep breath and was proudly hitching up his belt, the roar of the crowd in his ears, when he saw the umpire calling him out at first.

‘Things just sort of keep on happening to me,’ Marvin observed at one point during the season.

Which they did. All season long.”

3. The Breaks of the Game – David Halberstam.
The late, great David Halberstam wrote about everything. He wrote about important things, like Vietnam, the Korean War and an entire decade in American history. He has wrote about important people like Ho Chi Minh and the Kennedy administration. Generally, Halberstam wrote big important books about big important things. But Halberstam was also a huge sports fans and often turned his talented pen and critical eye to the field of play. He wrote two of the best baseball books ever written (The Summer of ‘49 and October 1964), but it is this book, his book about the Portland Trailblazers basketball team that makes the list, which is astonishing given that I am more passionate about what kind of salt I use (kosher versus sea) than I am about the NBA. This is the gift that is David Halberstam. He followed the Portland franchise post-championship, as the team teetered on the brink of what would be their decline. Halberstam is unflinching in his treatment, bringing his relentless zeal for investigative reporting to the task, but still his genuine affection comes through, too. If a writer can get me interested in a basketball franchise clear on the other side of the country, wow, just wow. Again, I can’t find an excerpt on line, so here is a short one:

Because he was black and from a small town and because he often seemed to use the wrong words, there were those who knew him only peripherally who thought he was dumb and treated him as such. Those who knew him better thought he was quite possibly the shrewdest man on the team. Once during a prolonged painful recuperation from an injury he had told Cook, ‘Maybe I should have been a chess player, it would just be a lot easier.’ But even as he said it, he caught himself. ‘But then it would probably be my brain that hurt all the time.’ He was, in truth, a kind man, a mark for others; his teammates like to tell of Lloyd Neal taking a phone call from his wife in the locker room after a particularly tough practice, ‘No, Marcia, no … I can’t do the shopping … no, goddammit, Marcia, I’m a professional athlete, and I’ve been busting my ass up and down this court for two hours and I can’t move and I’m exhausted and I’ve got to go to the exercise room and I can’t shop … No, Marcia, I refuse to … two quarts of milk, a pound of butter, three boxes of diapers, sugar, two pounds of hamburger … All right, Marcia …’

2. Among the Thugs – Bill Buford.
I don’t care about soccer, or, rather, more to the point, I don’t care for soccer. It is tedious. If I want to watch a bunch of guys running, I’d rather watch a track and field competition. As an astute friend once pointed out, soccer is the sport where something almost happens. Handy then, that Among the Thugs is only tangentially about soccer, or football as the Brits call it. The object of Buford’s attention is really violence. Mob violence, and very specifically, the kind of mob violence associated with soccer hooligans. He describes being in Turin, with “the Lads” before things, “go off.” And then in Sunderland and Cambridge and Sardinia. Buford puts you there, with him, as the crowd increases speed from a walk to a run, the change of pace the turning point between a peaceful march and a dangerous mob. I don’t know how much hard science went into this and I’m not sure that’s the point. Buford was trying to get at what it feels like to be with the lads and learning that the football match isn’t the point; it is the gathering, the creation of a powerful force of young men (mostly), which is the point. It’s strange, bizarre, funny and unnerving all at the same time.
(For an excerpt, click here.)

1. About Three Bricks Shy … And the Load Filled Up – Roy Blount, Jr.
I am not exaggerating when I say that this book is everything a book about a professional sports team should be. It doesn’t hurt that it chronicles my favorite team. Not just my favorite franchise, mind you, but my favorite team of all time – the Steelers of the 1970’s. It’s no surprise that a great writer like Blount pulls it off, but the ease of the read is astounding. This book is so funny and engaging, such a wonderful ride that I find myself re-reading sections of it from time to time. I often revisit his handling of race — this was 1973 after all and it’s not like we’ve fixed all of our race issues in the meantime anyway. Sometimes, I just want to re-read his take on Pittsburgh of 1973 or just get lost all over again in his descriptions of certain players, like Dwight White (my personal favorite Steeler of all time) or Ray Mansfield (Blount’s closest friend on the team). Blount allows himself a first-person narrative, so he’s in the story, but he’s never in the way of it. Simply put, Blount just gets it. Again, because I can’t find an excerpt, here’s one of my favorite stories in Three Bricks:

“Still things happened that were too dumb to laugh off. Dwight (White) and I were eating Mexican food in the hotel at Palm Springs when a small pink man sitting with two white-haired ladies came over and said, ‘Excuse me. Those two boys that stuck their heads in the door a minute ago. Those two black boys. Were they basketball players?”

Dwight said he didn’t know

‘Because they were so tall,’ persisted the man.

‘Maybe they were with the free love convention,’ I said.

‘Oh,’ said the man. ‘You with the free love convention?’ he asked Dwight.

‘Yes,’ said Dwight.

As a matter of fact, the two tall people had been Dwight and Webster. The pink man went back to the two ladies. ‘He’s with the free love convention,’ he reported.

‘Now that man,’ said Dwight gravely, ‘is a fool.’”

What are your favorite sports books? I’m always looking for recommendations, but these are on my nightstand currently:

Only the Ball Was White: A History of Legendary Black Players and All-Black Professional Teams – Robert Peterson;

Sole Influence: Basketball, Corporate Greed and the Corruption of America’s Youth – Dan Wetzel and Don Yaeger;

Curveball: The Remarkable Story of Toni Stone the First Woman to Play Professional Baseball in the Negro Leagues – Martha Ackmann;

The Kansas City Monarchs: Champions of Black Baseball – Janet Bruce;

The Soul of Baseball: A Road Trip Through Buck O’Neil’s America – Joe Posnanski;

Counting Coup: A True Story of Basketball and Honor on the Little Big Horn – Larry Colton;

Why She Plays: The World of Women’s Basketball – Christine A. Baker; and

Odd Man Out: A Year on the Mound with a Minor-League Misfit – Matt McCarthy

Cover via Amazon

It’s not a summer reading list, really, but sports books are light fare, generally speaking. I mean, if you pick one of these up, it’s hardly the same as re-reading Proust or even cracking the spine of “Team of Rivals,” but still, these are some of the best sports books ever written. (I have a bookcase nearly full of sports themed books, so I could have made a list of 20 or 25.) These are my favorites, the ones that stayed with me the most and that I refer to most often. In short, each one changed the lens through which I view sports. Any of these would be the perfect date for a few days on the beach:

10. Paper Lion – George Plimpton.
A truly inside look at an NFL training camp. Admittedly, it is the Detroit Lions training camp but … Plimpton is wry and self-deprecating, candid about the moments when he feels most like an interloper among professional athletes, a stranger in a strange land, play-acting at training. The best parts are the stories he relays about the players hanging out together in the evenings — guys like Dick Lebeau, Night Train Lane, and Joe Schmidt. And also the parts about his helmet, which fit his head like a vise, took some wrangling to get on and off, bent his ears this way and that, and left furrowed grooves in his head, the process of which was so unpleasant that he put it on and left it on for the entirety of practice every day.
(Click here for the 2003 NPR story about this book.)

9. Rammer, Jammer, Yellow Hammer – Warren St. John.
This book makes the list because it sits at one of the most interesting intersections in America – at the crossroads where fans meet the big business of sports. St. John took off, traveling in an RV caravan of rabid Crimson Tide fans, chronicling the University of Alabama football season, the people he met along the way, and his insights into the mind of a deranged fan – his own. It’s been at least five years since I read this and I could give a rat’s butt about ‘Bama football, but the book stays with me because St. John explores the very essence of what it means to be a fan. And why on God’s green earth, people who are otherwise sane, curl up into a fetal position after “their team” loses a heartbreaking game? It’s a great read for sports fans. And the people who love them.
(Click here for St. John’s introduction.)

8. Ladies and Gentlemen, the Bronx Is Burning – Jonathan Mahler.
I almost disqualified this book because of the ESPN mini-series loosely based on it, but thought better of it, because the book is to the television version as Derek Jeter is to Frankie Crosetti. And the book is about so much more than baseball. It’s about New York in the late 1970’s, about ConEdison, crime, labor relations, race relations, New York politics, and just the weirdness that was the 1970’s. Mahler weaves it all together with the Yankees season, the power struggle within the Yankees locker room between Reggie Jackson and Thurman Munson, and the parallel power struggle between Billy Martin and Georgie Steinbrenner.
(Click here for the NYT review.)

7. The Miracle of St. Anthony – Adrian Wojnarowski.
I’m a sucker for stories about overcoming great odds. It is perhaps a distinctly American soft spot, but so be it. Any tale that amounts to the Little Engine That Could sucks me in. This is one of those stories. If you pick it up, the first familiar name you’ll see is coach Bob Hurley. If you are a Duke fan or a Duke hater, yes, that’s the same Hurley — coach Bob Hurley is the father of Bobby Hurley of the 1991 and 1992 Blue Devil championship teams. But this isn’t the story of Bobby or Duke. It is, however, the story of a compelling group of young men who play basketball for St. Anthony, a tiny Catholic school in the embattled city of Jersey City. Sr. Maria Felicia Brodowski and Sr. Mary Alan Barzczewski, who run the school, change lives. They are teamed with coach Hurley who runs the most demanding, most successful, most life-altering basketball program in the nation.
(Click here for an excerpt.)

6. Veeck as in Wreck – Bill Veeck with Ed Linn.
This is a book that I think of more often than any other on this list. The ultimate showman, Veeck usually operated on a shoe-string budget, so if he couldn’t give his fans the best talent money could buy, he was determined that his fans would have a great experience at the ballpark. The financial inequities of baseball — I guess MLB hasn’t changed much. His teams were entertaining, he listened to his fans and, every once in a while, he actually won. He also tweaked a lot of stuffed shirts and sacred cows along the way that that is always, always a good thing. Sure, Veeck is best known as the guy who sent Eddie Gaedel (a 3′ 7″ midget) to bat when he was owner of the St. Louis Browns, but he should be remembered as the most creative sports owner of all time. Mostly, I wish I could sit down to a few beers with Veeck and just allow him to talk, stream of conscious style, about his life in baseball. Short of that, this book is the next best thing. Beer, optional.
(Click here for an excerpt.)

To continue to Part II, Books 1 through 5, click here.

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

It’s Thursday, so it must be time to trip lightly through this week in the wonderful world of performance enhancing drugs:

Brian McNamee testified in front of a grand jury which will decide whether or not to indict Roger Clemens for lying to Congress. You might recall, McNamee was Clemens’ trainer; he claims that he injected the Rocket with steroids and HGH on multiple occasions. According to MLB.com:

… McNamee, Roger Clemens’ former personal trainer, arrived at a courthouse in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday morning to testify before a grand jury that will decide if Clemens will be indicted for lying under oath to Congress …

The grand jury is reviewing Clemens’ testimony before Congress when he denied using PED’s. I find it strange and disturbing that Marion Jones is the only athlete who has paid a price, in terms of jail time, for her transgressions, but if Clemens gets a similar punishment, at least there would be some symmetry.

More Rocket news. Jose Canseco’s testimony in this case has been postponed until June 3rd.  He had been scheduled to testify in April, per Canseco’s series of Tweets:

Omg I just got a subpoena to testify before the grand jury about roger clemens,andrew pettite and others on Thursday april 8 2010 at 100 pm
Its like the godfather when I thought I was out they drag me back in. And now it begins again,bye the way my testosterone levels were
Checked testerday guess what the levels where 400 to 800 being normal
My levels are very low 150

(Thanks for sharing that last part, Jose.)

In other baseball superstar doping news, the Associated Press reports that Slammin Sammy Sosa will not face perjury charges over his testimony to Congress that he never dabbled in PED’s.

Meanwhile, the Tour de France is just around the corner and the fallout from Floyd Landis’ accusations is nuclear. According to the Nathan Vinton at the Daily News, the Feds have put their superstar investigator, Jeff Novitzky on the case.

Vinton also reports that cycling legend, Greg LeMond has come out to publicly support Landis. It’s shocking given that LeMond claims that, in 2007, the night before an arbitration hearing, Landis’ manager threatened to reveal that LeMond had been sexually abused as a child. And of course there is no lack of bad blood between LeMond and Armstrong. This story has more twists and turns than the tightest mountain passes along the Tour’s course.

In Calhoun, Georgia, police busted a group of men with possession and intent to distribute, according to WSBTV2:

Police said the men who sold the undercover officer the performance enhancing drugs also sold them to high school students on campuses in three counties: Gordon, Floyd and Bartow. Those students would in turn sell the steroids to other students, who used them to quickly build muscle mass.

Probably kids at Calhoun High School, where a student was arrested in March for distributing steroids at his high school.

May 20th This Week in Doping.

Image via Wikipedia

5.    The Tip of the Iceberg. Literally in this case. If a Super Bowl can be held in New Jersey, why not Philadelphia? Or, better yet? Boston? Green Bay, anyone? The Super Bowl always runs about 97 straight hours. Imagine sitting outside for that in Jersey. Good times. [Addendum, and you just knew this was going to happen. Now that New York has been promised a Super Bowl, Little Danny Snyder wants one in D.C., or should I say, suburban Maryland. He'll probably have Tom Cruise do the opening coin toss.]

4.   Snow. Sleet. Rain. Ice. The headline story at the Super Bowl should not be the weather. It should be about a player being arrested for DUI or soliciting a hooker, or Brett Favre’s retirement/unretirement, or allegations of rampant performance enhancing drug use, or something along those lines. Not the weather.

3.    Halftime entertainment. Ever since the Great Boob Scandal of 2004, the halftime entertainers have gone from middle-aged to downright geriatric. Old people don’t do well in cold weather. You could look it up.

2.    Beaches. Tampa was in the running for the Super Bowl, so visitors, after a day of  NFL-centered events and activities, could go watch an officially licensed NFL sunset on the beaches near Tampa. But I suppose visitors to New York could go to Howard Beach. In February. What fun

1.    The Super Bowl would not actually be in the Big Apple, but, rather, in East Rutherford, New Jersey, the entertainment capital of the Mid-Atlantic States!

Image by Frank Steele via Flickr

When I was a little kid, long before 24 hours news and sports networks, we got about 5 minutes of sports from the local news and national sports very infrequently, usually just on the weekends. There was a show called “This Week in Baseball,” and it had highlights from around the bigs, including bloopers and one or two short stories about a particular player or coach or something. It ran 30 minutes and I looked forward to it every time it was on. I’m a geek like that and it was a handy way to follow all the MLB teams, not just the one in my backyard. It was the best thing we had back in the Dark Ages.

This week, with Floyd Landis pointing the finger at Lance Armstrong, Texans LB Brian Cushing’s positive test for a banned substance, and the arrest of Dr. Anthony Galea and the ugly web that spins out from him, I started thinking about a quick, handy, weekly round-up of the biggest news in performance enhancing drugs, masking drugs and anything related thereto.

This Week in Doping.

On the Floyd Landis confession, laced with accusation at St. Lance, there is this from Geoffrey Decker at True/Slant.

Houston Texans LB Brian Cushing tested positive for the fertility drug human chorionic gonadotropin, HCG, in September of 2009. HCG is widely taken by steroid users to help restart natural testosterone production. (This was the same substance that triggered Manny Ramirez’s suspension, just to put it in perspective.) This week, the AP re-voted on the defensive rookie of the year award (originally given to Cushing) and it was re-gifted. To Cushing.

Michael O’Keefe at the NY Daily News, reports that Cushing claimed that the HCG was caused by a tumor. Nice.

And Mike Florio, at Pro Football Talk, reports that the NFL would really like it a lot if Cushing and his peeps would just STFU about it all.

To catch you up to speed on the Dr. Galea story, in short, a criminal complaint was filed in U.S. District Court in Buffalo. It charges Galea with smuggling, unlawful distribution of HGH, introducing an unapproved drug into interstate commerce, conspiring to lie to federal agents and conspiracy to defraud the United States.
Galea is not authorized to work in the United States and is accused of repeatedly entering the country from 2007 to 2009 to treat professional athletes from MLB, the NFL and the PGA. His more famous clients include Alex Rodriquez and Tiger Woods.

Per Sean Leahy at the USA Today, Galea’s assistant was arrested and admitted to acting as a drug mule for him.

Howard Bryant at ESPN on the medical end of the PED’s era.

Sally Jenkins at the Washington Post on the ethical conundrum doping presents.

Jason Reid, also at the Washington Post, reports that Santana Moss is implicated with Dr. Galea.

And, finally, courtesy of Nathaniel Vinton and Michael O’Keefe at the NY Daily News, former Raiders LB Bill Romanowski confirms his spot in the A-Hole Hall of Fame. Oh, and also praises Dr. Galea.

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

The Philadelphia Flyers, unholy visigoths adorned in Halloween colors, have added a chapter to the greatest comebacks in sports history with their 4-3 victory at the Boston Bruins, coming back from a 3-0 first period deficit, to complete the comeback in a series in which they were down three games to none. Where does it rank in terms of all time greatest comebacks?

10. 2005 Illinois Illini over the Arizona Wildcats in the Elite 8 of the NCAA Tourney. Channing Frye’s Cats had a 15-point lead going into the final four minutes. The game? It was over. Until Luther Head, Dee Brown and Deron Williams started draining every shot they took and Frye started missing layups. Head created a turnover and then dished to Williams, who hit a three pointer to tie the game. The game went to OT before the Illini won by a score of 90-89. Basketball comebacks are just so much fun. I don’t know that this one has as much historical weight as many of the others on the list, but it’s here because it was just such a wild ride.

9. 1995 Indiana Pacers over the New York Knicks, Eastern Conference Semifinals. Knicks fans hate Reggie Miller with the heat of a 1,000 suns. They hate him so much that ESPN made it the subject of one of their 30 for 30 documentaries. The bad blood wouldn’t be enough to warrant mention on this list, but Miller’s performance in Game 1 of the E.C. Semifinals does. Single-handedly, Miller lead his team to a stunning 107-105 last second victory over the Knicks in the Garden. With 18.7 seconds left, the Knicks lead by six points. Miller kicked into action, hit a three point shot, stole the ensuing inbounds pass, dribbled back behind the three point line, and hit that three-pointer. Miller then hit both free-throws to put the Pacers ahead for the win and up 1-0 in the series. Like I said, basketball comebacks are just so much fun.

8. 1972 Dallas Cowboys Divisional Playoff Victory over the San Francisco 49ers, a/k/a the emergence of Captain Comeback. In the 4th quarter of this 1972 Divisional Playoff Game, the 49ers had built a comfortable 28-13 lead. Pokes coach Tom Landry finally pulled Craig Morton from the game and replaced him with Roger Staubach, who lead the Cowboys to score 17 unanswered points, throwing two touchdown passes with less than two minutes remaining for a 30–28 win. The legend of Captain Comeback is born.

7. 1984 Maryland Terrrapins over the Miami Hurricanes, a/k/a, the Frank Reich game. Bernie Kosar had staked the U to a lead of 31-0. Finally, backup quarterback Frank Reich came into the game for Maryland and completed 12 of 15 passes in the second half, throwing for three touchdowns and running for another. With the score 34-28 Miami, Reich hit Greg Hill with a 68-yard touchdown pass (which deflected off the hands of Miami safety Darrell Fullington) to take the lead. Maryland scored once more to cap an incredible 42-9 second half, and won the game by a final of 42-40.

6. 1975 New York Islanders over the Pittsburgh Penguins, Conference semi-finals. Pittsburgh didn’t merely hold a 3-0 lead over the Islanders, they were abusing them. Through the first three games, the Islanders had never led the Pens for single second. Then they won Game 4 on home ice. No biggie. Then Game 5 in Pittsburgh. Um … nah. Never happen. They won Game 6 easily back in New York. Game 7 was scoreless well into the game, into the third period, as the Pens hit about a hundred posts before the Isles got the game winner from Ed Westfall. Depending on your perspective, it was either the worst choke job of the decade or the greatest comeback. The most colorful part of the story comes courtesy of George Plimpton’s Open Net: ” … the New York Islanders carried around a fifty-pound sack of elephant dung to bring them luck. It has mysteriously arrived special delivery when the club was three games down to the Pittsburgh Penguins. It came with no return address in a big potato sack. Nobody knew who had sent it, or the significance of it being sent. Obviously, it could have been an indication of someone’s extreme displeasure. … So they took the sack to Pittsburgh and it worked. By then a talisman of high value, it disappeared just before the final playoff game with the Philadelphia Flyers.” (which, it should be noted, the Isles lost.)

5. 1972 Olympic runner, Lasse Viren of Finland. Competing in the 10,000-meter final, he tripped and fell while tangling his feet with Frank Shorter. He was done. But he got up and gained on the pack in front of him. Then he passed them. In the bell lap, he just blew away the field and is all alone crossing the finish line. It’s right out of “Chariots of Fire.”

4. 1993 Buffalo Bills over the Houston Oilers Wildcard Playoff Game. The second Frank Reich Game. Things couldn’t have been bleaker. The Oilers led 35-3 early in the second half. Bills QB Jim Kelly was injured. Linebacker Cornelius Bennett was injured. Thurman Thomas played sparingly. The only thing that could have made things more depressing would have been a plague of locusts descending from the sky. The blowout was that biblical. Then Reich drove the team for one touchdown. 35-10. Steve Christie recovered his own on-side kick and Reich hit Don Beebe for a TD. 35-17. The Bills D forced the Oilers to punt. Reich hit another TD pass, this one to Andre Reed. 35-24. And it was still the third quarter. No. Freaking. Way. Henry Jones picked off Warren Moon, setting up Reich at the Houston 23 yard line. Another TD pass to Reed. 35-31. The Oilers missed a FG and the Bills got another TD (again from Reich to Reed). The Bills were ahead for the first time. 38-35. The Oilers tied the game to send it to OT and won the coin toss. It looked like they might avert disaster, but Moon threw an errant pass setting up the Bills in FG range and Christie completed the most ridiculous, unlikely, unbelievable comeback in NFL history.

3. 2010 Philadelphia Flyers Eastern Conference Semifinals over the Boston Bruins. Though the Flyers and the B’s no longer play in the same division, the bad blood between the two goes back generations, at least to the Broad Street Bullies era. But nothing that team ever did will hurt Boston fans like this series will. This will haunt them for the rest of their lives and well into the afterlife. It took a miracle OT win in Game 4 to get the Flyers comeback rolling. Then the Flyers lost netminder Brian Boucher in the Game 5 victory and back-up Michael Leighton stepped up in the Game 6 nail-biter. In a fit of melodrama, the Flyers came back from a score of 3-0 in Game 7, getting the game winner from Simon Gagne, who had come back early from injury (and also scored the OT winner in Game 4.) It is the stuff movies are made of. Bad movies. Unbelievable movies. The kind of movies that are so bad they go straight to video. Philly fans should never whine or complain about their hard luck ever again.

2. 1942 Toronto Maple Leafs over the Detroit Red Wings in the Stanley Cup Finals. Believe it or not, I wasn’t alive to see this one. Though the actual games didn’t seem to be as dramatic as 1975 Islanders, this was, after all, for Lord Stanley’s Cup and all the guacamole it can hold. But since I wasn’t around for this, here’s the take of Joe Pelletier of Hockeylegends:

The year is 1942. The NHL witnesses the greatest comeback in the history of professional sports in North America.

Entering game 4, the Leafs were on the verge of imminent elimination. The Detroit Red Wings had convincing victories in each of the first three contests, and held the series in a 3-0 stranglehold.

Cue the Leafs comeback. Coach Hap Day benches regulars for game four and inserted rookies who responded to win game after game, coming all the way back to take game 7! They were the first team in hockey history to win a series after being down 3 games to none. …

Goaltender Turk Brodawas so good in the final 4 games of the finals that they actually engraved his name on the Cup twice. It was actually an oversight.

1. 2004 Boston Red Sox. Yeah, everybody is beyond their saturation point with the Sox stuff, Sweet Caroline, the Cask & Flagon, the Green Monster, Dan Shaunessy and the Dennis Leary truck ads. But these were New York Yankees we were talking about, a team that had tormented Boston fans for generations and generations, the team that always won in the end, no matter how heroic or beloved the Boston players. The inevitability of the Yankees victory was certain. The history of the match-up, and the fact that the 2004 Sox actually won the World Series, puts this at the top of the list.

Image by permanently scatterbrained via Flickr

I hated watching every second of the Penguins Game 7 loss to the Montreal Habs. And I hated myself for not being able to turn away, but a small voice in my head kept saying: “What if they come back? What if the Penguins stage one of the greatest comebacks in the history of sports? And I turned it off? I’d never forgive myself.”

(Following the 2002 season, the Steelers played the Cleveland Browns in the Wildcard round of the playoffs. My buddy the Deadhead was at the game. With the Steelers down 24-7 in the third quarter, he left in disgust. And then, from the parking lot of Heinz Field, he heard the stadium nearly explode with cheers as Tommy Maddox, of all freaking people, lead one of the greatest comebacks in franchise history. I’ve never let him live that one down.)

I started to think about the Penguins coming back — the alleged, hypothetical, completely imaginary comeback — and what it might have meant. I decided to make a list of the greatest comebacks that never happened. But I needed rules.

First, I limited myself to the pros. There are too many college teams and divisions, conference championships, bowl games, March Madness and on and on. Too much. I was dizzy. And I eliminated the solo sports like golf and tennis, although I think one could do a humdinger of a list with those. I gave myself an arbitrary cut off point of 1974.

Then, I decided that the games would have to be important games – playoffs or championships, no random mid-June game when the Pirates are getting their asses kicked.

The list is a little football heavy, but I think that’s due to the single elimination nature of the NFL playoffs, versus the best of seven series of the NHL, NBA and MLB. Without further ado, the ten greatest comebacks that never happened.

1. Buffalo Bills in Super Bowl XXVI v. Washington Redskins. (Wash. 37 – Buff. 24.)
I went back and fourth on this pick. A Bills loss, it seems to me, is crucial to the list. The problem was, which one? I settled on this one because, if there were any justice in this world, Jim Kelly would never lose to Mark Rypien. Like, never. That just never happens. To say nothing of the relief of splitting up the four year Buffalo reign of futility.

2. San Diego Chargers. 1981 AFC Championship Game v. Cincinnati Bengals. (Cinc. 27 – SD 7.)
Heading into the 4th quarter, the Chargers were down 20-7, but worse, they were frozen stiff, icicles dangled from Dan Fouts’ beard, and players looked like they very much wanted to go back to the warmth and comfort of San Diego. But what if Fouts had mounted a comeback? They needed just two touchdowns and two successful extra points, chump change for Air Coryell under ordinary circumstances. The notion of a southern Cali team engineering a comeback in sub-zero temperatures with the wind whipping through Riverfront Stadium at like 30 miles per hour? Legendary.

3. Chicago Cubs. 2003 NLCS v. the Florida Marlins (Fla 4 games, Cubs 3 games.)
Yes, these are the Bartman Cubs. But that was Game 6 of the series. What if the Cubs weren’t the Cubs, which is to say, if they were able to shrug off the disappointment of Game 6 to win Game 7? What if Kerry Woods hadn’t given up seven runs in five innings of Game 7? What if the Cubs hitters were able to actually score some runs off Josh Beckett? But that’s so unlikely that it might have caused the entire solar system to collapse in on itself.

4. New York Rangers. 1974 Eastern Conference Finals v. Philadelphia Flyers. (Philly 4 games, Rangers 3 games.)
So much would have changed. The Broad Street Bullies would have had their own eyes blackened, which has to be viewed as an absolute good. And the Rangers may have gone on to win the Cup in 1975, which would have spared the world of the melodrama and preening of Messier’s Rangers 20 years later. That, too, must be viewed as an absolute good.

5. Cleveland Browns. 1987 AFC Championship Game v. the Denver Broncos – The Fumble. (Denv. 38, Cleve. 33)
Everybody remembers Byner’s fumble with about a minute left. What is often forgotten was that the Browns had, in fact, mounted one of the great comebacks in NFL history up to that point. Down 21-3 at halftime, Kosar scored four second half touchdowns. And this at Mile High Stadium, the toughest stadium for a visiting team in the 1980’s. What would the sports landscape look like had Byner held on and scored? A Byner TD would have tied the game, so the Browns would have had to have won in the waning seconds (unlikely) or overtime (more likely.) Such a comeback would no doubt be considered one of the 10 greatest in NFL history, given all the circumstances but, instead, Browns fans are waiting for their first trip to the Super Bowl 23 years later.

6. Boston Red Sox. 1986 World Series v. the N.Y. Mets. (NYM 4 games, Bos 3 games.)
No list is complete without the Buckner Sawks. Like the 2003 Cubs, the 1986 Sox were unable to pull their shit together enough to win in the 7th game after the debacle of Game 6. If they had, the Big Papi 2004 Sox wouldn’t have been such a cause celebre, Dan Shaunessy wouldn’t have written “The Curse of the Bambino,” and Dennis Leary’s career might have been cut short. I can almost hear angels singing when I think about it.

7. Oakland Raiders. 2002 Divisional Playoff Game v. New England Patriots. The Tuck Rule. (NE 36, Oak. 33)
The tuck rule, it happened. It remains an abomination of all logic and reason (if it looks like a fumble, then it IS a fumble), but it did happen. But what if, after the heinousity that was the Tuck, Gruden had decided to try to mount a drive with the remaining 27 seconds? Just what if the Raiders had managed to kick a last second field goal instead of playing for overtime? The world just might have been spared the birth of the “nobody respected us” meme courtesy of this New England Patriots squad.

8. Dallas Mavericks. 2007 First Round Playoffs v. Golden State Warriors. (G.S 4 games, Dal. 3 games.)
Dallas entered the playoffs with the sixth best regular season record in NBA history; Golden State got into the playoffs by the skin of their teeth. Can these Mavs be considered anything but choking dogs, as Tony Kornheiser likes to say? After going down 3 games to 1, why couldn’t the Mavs come back to win three of the last four? Instead, they played dead, or should I say, played like they were already dead, in Game 6, depriving the world of one of the great comebacks in recent NBA memory.

9. Buffalo Sabres. 1999 Stanley Cup Finals v. Dallas Stars. (Dal 4 games, Buff. 2 games.)
What if the the Sabres had come back to win Game 5? What if they had put three goals behind Ed Belfour in the 3rd period of that game? Game 6’s controversial No Goal would not have mattered. At least, not much. Had the Sabres mounted a come back in Game 5, perhaps they would have shaken the OT loss in Game 6 and won the series. Oh, who am I kidding, this is Buffalo we’re talking about. They probably just would have lost Game 7. (See the 1986 Sawks and 2003 Cubs, above.)

10. Cleveland Cavaliers. Last night.
Beyond that fact that no professional Cleveland franchise has won a championship in over 50 years, what will this mean for the future of the Cavs, Cleveland’s best chance for a championship? They are nothing without Lebron. That much is clear from the Celtics man-handling of the Cavs in 6 games. Some thought that Lebron would stay had he won a championship, that he would want to keep the team together and try to repeat. But the loss? Will it push him out the door? Cleveland may have just seen the last of the best athlete they’ve had in decades.

And now a really big whopper:  …”due to the distance from shore and the response capabilities no significant adverse impacts are expected”.

That last one was courtesy of British Petroleum company just 14 months ago,  telling regulators and the rest of us that one of its gargantuan oil rigs, aptly named Deepwater Horizon, 48 miles off the Louisiana shore,  was nothing to worry about.

Just tell that to the residents and industries back on land and in the fishing waters who face a “significant adverse impact” which is one way of describing an ecologic and economic calamity.   BP’s response to the runaway gusher thousands of feet undersea has been pathetically inadequate, even with massive government help. Gee. What a surprise.

And now, a  massive oil glob is threatening to smother much of the Gulf coastline and entire industries that employ  thousands upon thousands. It could well be a catastrophe.

Now  the Coast Guard Commandant admits “We’re breaking new ground here. It’s hard to write a plan for…what could never be in a plan, what you couldn’t anticipate”.  Which begs the question why in heavens name were regulators and the politicians so quick to accept BP’s assurances “.

For that matter, why were President Obama and so many of our politicians ready to go along with massive new offshore drilling projects?

It sure didn’t take long for that decision to become a major embarrassment. Now the President has high tailed it down to the area for damage control…as in face saving, because it looks like the damage from the muck run amok may be out of control…what he now calls a “potentially unprecedented environmental disaster”.

This is  being likened to the Exxon Valdez fiasco of 21 years ago, although possibly a much much bigger one. When the President notes that “BP is ultimately responsible”  to pay the costs of all this,  we should not forget it has taken 20 years plus for Exxon to finally run out of courts where its creative lawyers could conjure up legal obstacles and pay most of its obligations.  More than 20 years!!

The games have already begun. British Petroleum P is blaming Transocean,the company from whom it leased the platform. Transocean faults  Cameron, a key valve manufacturer and supplier. . And is anyone surprised Halliburton is part of this confusing act as a subcontractor? ..

There are lessons to be learned beyond the devastated Gulf coast.  For starters we can watch the ongoing debate on the Senate floor.  It is saturated with promises effective regulation is not needed to prevent another financial calamity. Just trust big business.

As for the oil and gas industry, here’s a prediction that’s as close to a sure thing as you can get:  Don’t be surprised if the Deepwater Horizon tragedy will be the newest excuse for a big jump in gasoline prices.  .  We know that Oil Slick is also another name for energy company executives.

Have they or their pliant government officials learned any lasting lesson?  Don’t bet on it.  It won’t be along before we are seduced by the siren song of experts in one vital field or another as they croon “What Could Go Wrong?”

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

If you would have told me three days ago that the Packers would make it through the entire draft without taking an outside linebacker or cornerback, I wouldn’t have believed you. But that’s where we are.

That’s not a terrible thing. It does seem like Ted Thompson overestimated his chances of being able to get a quality OLB in the second round and had to resort to Plan B. But the pick he made, defensive end Michael Neal, was pure Thompson: taking the best player available rather than reaching to fill a need, and when in doubt, scooping up a defensive lineman in keeping with his (well-validated) belief that a deep rotation of big men is the key to a stout run defense.

Overall, everything we did either addressed a need or complemented an existing strength. The only real head-scratcher was using our fourth-round pick on a tight end, Andrew Quarless. Although he sounds like a genuine talent who fell down draft boards owing to personal problems he’s put behind him, Quarless will find himself playing behind a rising superstar in Jermichael Finley (who expressed some displeasure at the move on Twitter, although he later made nice).

Between Finley, Quarless, Donald Lee and Spencer Havner, we’re now as loaded at tight end as we are at wide receiver. I wonder if Thompson picked Quarless with an eye to dealing Donald Lee, whose production over the last couple seasons has been disappointing. Other trade candidates are Daryn Colledge and James Jones. The selection of Brian Bulaga and Marshall Newhouse makes a Colledge trade seem likely. Either Bulaga should be ready to compete for the starting left guard job or else train as the primary backup at tackle, allowing T.J. Lang to shift to guard, where Mike McCarthy apparently sees him landing long term. Either way, at this point Colledge, an established but relatively youthful veteran, probably has more value to another team at this point, and may well benefit from a fresh start. On his own, he may not be worth all that much, but packaged with Lee or Jones, who has never played up to expectations, he might really be enticing enough to net us a linebacker, cornerback or return specialist. (I’m not including John Kuhn on the list of trade bait because few other teams seem to value fullbacks as much as the Packers do.)

Flashy trades aren’t the sort of thing one expects from Thompson, of course. But you have to hope he has a better plan for bolstering the remaining weaknesses in our defense than hoping Brad Jones and Pat Lee both make developmental leaps.

Image by Getty Images North America via Daylife

How do we feel about the Packers drafting tackle Brian Bulaga of Iowa with their first-round pick? Pretty darn good, I’d say.

Maybe the right word is “relieved.” Finally, the question that’s been looming so large for so long over this organization has been answered. Kind of. The snap consensus out there seems to be that Bulaga is a cinch to start at right tackle after a year or two of seasoning but might never be left tackle material.The reason for that consensus is the same one that caused Bulaga to fall all the way to No. 23 after long being viewed as a potential top-15 pick: His unusually short arms. (Unusually short for an NFL tackle, that is; on, say, a 5-foot-8 part-time sports blogger, they would be freakishly long.)

I don’t place a ton of stock in that. Chad Clifton also has shortish arms, and he’s managed pretty well. Details like that get magnified enormously in the atmosphere of the draft, where scouts and general managers are desperate for any respite from the uncertainty that hems them in on all sides. You  can’t know if a guy is going to report overweight or put his off-field issues behind him, but you can be positive Brian Bulaga is still going to have 32-inch arms come September.

The bottom line is the Packers were in the market for a tackle in the high rounds, and one of the four widely considered to represent the elite of the draft class fell into our lap. Ted Thompson would’ve been a fool not to take him. Our need at tackle may not be quite as immediate as our need at outside linebacker or cornerback, but don’t kid yourself: If Clifton and Mark Tauscher are healthy enough to start all 16 games this season, I will gay-marry James Campen.

Speaking of which: Mr. Campen, you are officially on the hot seat. The excuse that your job performance as offensive line coach has been limited by the talent Thompson has given you just went out the window. If you can’t have Bulaga ready to start at right tackle by opening day 2011, and ready to fill in at guard by October, you might want to think about looking for work as a bouncer.

In the interest of full disclosure, I am a Florida Gators fan, and I’ll freely admit that I want Tebow to do well in the draft. But my biases aside, I think there’s an interesting story in all of this worth investigating a bit deeper than simple fan partisanship will allow.  Tebow may be the best example in the history of professional sports of what happens when raw human resolve meets hard-core risk analysis.

Here’s the situation in brief: Tebow is an unconventional QB, by NFL standards, in that he’s more prone to run than stand in the pocket; more effective in shotgun formation than under center; and he has an exaggerated throwing motion that leaves the ball exposed for too long before he releases it. 

Physically, Tebow is the prototypical NFL QB. He’s 6’ 3”, 245 lbs, and as strong as many linebackers.  But the combination of the three pitfalls above are overshadowing his physical prowess, and possibly for good reason.  In college, Tebow was stronger and faster than many of his opponents. He didn’t have to stay in the pocket because he could run as well as any running back, barring a few, against most college defenses.  He didn’t have to take the ball under center because he ran the option effectively or just kept the ball himself and ran headlong into the defense. And his throwing motion wasn’t a huge concern because most defensive lines couldn’t get to him in time to strip the ball. 

All of that will be much different in the NFL.  Pro defensive linemen are extremely fast, extremely strong, and they don’t let quarterbacks run very often. A QB who can’t sit in the pocket and release the ball quickly is going to get hurt, and fast. Add to that Tebow’s throwing motion issue and it only gets worse. 

The risk analysis combines all of the above and, on paper, makes Tebow a poor QB draft pick.  He dominated in college with abilities that are not applicable in the NFL.  People like Dallas Cowboy’s owner Jerry Jones have already come to this conclusion and have openly said (though Jones was allegedly drunk when he said it) that he’d never pick Tebow for his team.  Sloshed or not, I’m sure several owners have thought or said the same thing.

So if that’s all true, why isn’t this the end of the story?  The information available for risk analysis seems to unequivocally result in a NO decision on Tebow for any NFL team.

But this is where we have to check into the rest of the story, which I’m going to call the anti-deterministic position on human risk analysis.  The deficiencies identified in the risk analysis are accurate, but they are also incomplete.  When human beings are evaluated in purely mechanistic terms, the analysis will always fall short—chiefly because humans are not machines, and they are not comprised merely of measurable, material components. 

Your car is.  You might be driving on the highway in heavy traffic and wish that you could deftly weave through the lanes of cars faster than anyone else around you, but if your car doesn’t handle well and isn’t especially fast, forget about it. Same goes for any machine you can think of.  It can be mechanically tinkered with to improve performance, but it will not improve performance itself.  All machines, computers included, are restricted by the boundaries of design, structure and programming.

Humans are not, and Tebow happens to be an especially good example of this fact.  What made him a consistent performer in college football was not simply physical ability, but a combination of physical and mental ability with an intense inner drive—which neurobiologist Robert Sapolsky calls the uniquely human trait of “resolving to do the impossible.”  In terms of risk analysis, that trait is not just a wild card–it’s an observable characteristic just as evident as Tebow’s throwing motion or penchant for running. 

Sheena Iyengar, in her new book “The Art of Choosing”, describes this drive to succeed as “survivorship.”  In its most extreme form, it’s what allows people to make it through the worst conditions—conditions that an on-paper risk analysis could only conclude are insurmountable.  Think of those who surived against the odds in concentration camps, or those trapped in the mountains for days during historic blizzards who live to tell their stories. Human resolve to conquer the unconquerable is quite possibly the most formidable force on the planet.

Bringing this back around to the NFL draft: the same traits that Sapolsky and Iyengar describe are those that Tim Tebow has in spades.  The mechanistic risk analysis that some have pointed to as reason not to draft Tebow at all is just the wrapper on a stick of gum. 

Human resolve has proven this analysis incomplete time and time again, and I have a strong feeling that the same will happen this time.  One forward-thinking team will recognize this and give Tebow an opportunity to prove it. I have little doubt that in time he’ll do exactly that.

Two weeks later, at Pittsburgh’s home opener, she was untouched. Against the Philadelphia Firebirds, quarterback Janice Masters’ stat line read: five plays – three touchdown passes. (The other two plays, it should be noted, were runs.)

That was all in the first quarter. After that, her last play of the game was to hand off to her back ups with her team comfortably up 28-0. The defense added a couple of touchdowns on interception returns, and the offense, in Masters’ absence, added a few more as she watched from the sidelines. The 49-0 shellacking of Philadelphia was a good warm up for Pittsburgh, but presents other challenges.

Talent, ability and organizational stability and structure varies wildly within the world of women’s full-contact football, as the Pittsburgh versus Philadelphia game illustrates. Though the Philadelphia website lists a roster of over 30 players, only 15 arrived to play in Pittsburgh and, against a team like the Passion which has a full-complement of players (by IWFL rule, 45 players can dress, much like the NFL), they are unable to seriously compete, regardless of the ability of those players. But this sort of pairing happens a few times each season — in which teams of such divergent capacities meet on the field. Although it’s not really good for anybody.

The undermanned teams take a pounding. Not to mention that it can’t be any fun and I often marvel at the ability of those players to drag themselves up off the turf to keep going until the final gun. It’s not good for the dominant teams, either. For a team like the Passion, they risk turning off potential fans. Fans may like seeing the hometown team win, but they also like watching competitive football and sitting in the bleachers for such a lop-sided affair, in temperatures more suited to a mid-October night than a mid-April is not the best lure. It’s just another pitfall in a landscape full of unique challenges that the Passion and their owner, T. Conn, have to navigate.

Despite those challenges, the Passion has built a solid fanbase, a brand and a tradition of winning. At the very least, they always hold their own against the best competition and have advanced to the post-season the last three years. That’s always the goal – to make it to the playoffs – but even so, there were serious questions about the Passion heading into 2010.

There are always roster changes due to retirements, injuries and attrition. At least, on the defensive side of the ball, Pittsburgh came into 2010 with the same tough defense. There were plenty of new players, but the core, the heart of the defense was still there: Plex (Michele Brevard), (Beth) Amato and JoJo (Warner), OG (Olivia Griswold) and Tia (Montgomery).

But even with the defensive strength, and even given that teams face turnover every year, it’s not often that a team loses: (a) the entire offensive line, (b) the offensive coordinator, and (c) the starting quarterback. That’s one hell of a rebuilding job for a team to undertake and exactly Pittsburgh was up against heading into 2010.

The quarterback is always in the spotlight, always receives more credit when the team wins, and is generally the most recognizable face on the franchise. This was as true of Lisa Horton as it is of Tom Brady, relatively speaking. The sight of #14 scampering around on the field, dark brown ponytail obscuring the name on her jersey, throwing b.b.’s or scrambling for a first down, was a familiar one for Passion fans. After all, Horton had quarterbacked the team since the beginning in 2003.

Of course, Pittsburgh had the advantage of having somebody like Masters waiting in the wings. She is not new to this, is well known by her teammates and backed up Horton for the last two years. Plus, Masters has a quick mind and is one of the best pure throwers of the ball I’ve seen in the women’s game. But her style is very different from Horton’s and one the team will have to continue adjusting to. Masters’ game is more Peyton Manning than Brett Favre, which is to say that where Horton was more prone to scramble or improvise, Masters is more likely going to progress with her reads from the pocket. And she has the arm strength to hit out-routes and deep post-patterns with accuracy. When she has the time that is.

The offensive line protecting her in front of her is entirely new. Gone were the line standouts who played years in front of Horton. Carol Dennison and Eden Pleva are gone to retirement. Sarah Young and Rhonda Donahoo are out with injuries. Lauren Bracco moved to the defensive line. So the line in front Masters, while not necessarily new to football is new to line play and for such a thankless job, the offensive line is one of the most complicated jobs on the field. There is much to learn and just a moment’s hesitation on the part of a lineman can mean the difference between a completed pass or Masters ending up on her back.

Despite their early foibles against the Erie Illusion, things got better for the line as that game wore on, with Masters hitting on two touchdown passes and completing five passes for more than 20 yards. In her scant time in the Philly tilt, she averaged over 22 yards per completion — all touchdowns.

The learning curve has been good so far, but the team will face it’s first serious test for the new era against the 2-0 Militia on Saturday, April 24th, in Boston. Providing time for their quarterback and opening holes for the running game will be a steep challenge for the line and one that will show just how fast they have mastered those positions.