Lorena Ochoa's retirement; Conference expansion – he who has the checkbook has the power

Here’s the first question of the day: Is the NFL draft over yet? The answer, if you include the endless analysis that goes on in every city, is no. Here in Washington you would think the Redskins decision to (finally) draft an offensive tackle was roughly as brilliant as the founders decision to ask Thomas Jefferson to write The Declaration of Independence.

Let’s face it: in April everyone has had a good draft—even the Raiders. Check back in October and things will look a bit less rosy in a few places. Of course by then ESPN’s draft experts will be telling us who is going to go in the first round of NEXT year’s draft. Talk about the circle of life.

Moving on to far more interesting topics. The biggest news of the past few days actually involved golf—but not Tiger Woods or even Phil Mickelson. It involved Lorena Ochoa, who has decided to retire from golf—apparently to start a family—at the age of 28. This is NOT good news for the LPGA; to put it mildly.

The last few years have not gone very well for women’s golf. Some of the issues have been completely out of control of the people in the game: Annika Sorenstam retired, the economy tanked and Michelle Wie, even though she made great strides last year, still has not become the breakthrough star people thought she was going to be when she showed up as a prodigy at the age of 13.

Unfortunately those events happened, for the most part, while Carolyn Bivens was the LPGA’s commissioner. Bivens was to being a commissioner what Dan Snyder has been to owning a football team: she did everything wrong and then tried to blame everyone else. She had lousy relationships with her players, her sponsors and with the media. She tried to make English the official language of the LPGA Tour—speak it or be gone. Other than that, she did fine. She was finally fired by the players last summer but the damage had been done. Tournaments were going under left and right and, even though Ochoa had emerged as a superstar and a number of young players had flashed potential, interest in the LPGA was tanking.

The tour has since hired Michael Whan, who is young and eager and seems to want to rebuild some of the bridges blown up by Bivens. But the key for any commissioner is having a product the public cares about and the best way for any sport to do that is through great rivalries. Maybe Wie or Morgan Pressel or Paula Creamer or Brittany Lincicome (sadly, Natalie Gulbis does not appear to have the game to be much more than golf’s version of Anna Kournikova—a reasonably good player who is a star because of her looks) might have emerged as Ochoa’s great rival.

Now, that’s not going to happen. Does it help, by the way, for at least one of the world’s best players to be an American—yes. That’s not me being Bivens and demanding that everyone on earth learn to speak English, that’s a fact of life in sports. When there was a lull in great American male tennis players between John McEnroe/Jimmy Connors and the emergence of Pete Sampras/Andre Agassi/Jim Courier, Ivan Lendl, among others said bluntly: “We need an American star. We need American television ratings and corporations and American stars drive those things.”

The same is true in golf—men or women. When Tom Watson began to fade as a star and neither Phil Mickelson nor Tiger Woods had arrived yet, golf ratings went down. Greg Norman helped because he was ‘Americanized,’ if not American but Nick Faldo and Seve Ballesteros as the world’s best players didn’t drive ratings.

Neither Sorenstam nor Ochoa is American, but Sorenstam had lived here for a long time and Ochoa is from close to here and has a unique sort of charm that bridges borders. Still, a rivalry between her and one of the Americans would have been terrific for the sport. Now, unless she has a baby, gets bored and makes a comeback at 30 or 31 (certainly possible) it won’t happen.

What’s sad is we may never see the best of Ochoa. Sorenstam didn’t become dominant until she was 30. She had won two majors—the same number as Ochoa—prior to turning 30 and 23 tournaments. After 30 she won eight more majors and 49 (!!!) more tournaments. She became a star who transcended her sport, which was—needless to say—good for the women’s game. There was never more focus on women’s golf than in 2003 when she played against the men at Colonial. The only bad thing about that week was it put the idea that you could make more money by playing against the men into the heads of Wie and her handlers and led to her multiple ill-fated attempts to play against the men BEFORE she had even won a tournament playing against women.

The other story of last week was the growing drumbeat on the issue of conference expansion in the NCAA. There have been almost as many meaningless words spoken and written on this subject as on the NFL draft. Here’s the deal: The Big Ten—unfortunately—holds all the cards here because of the success of The Big Ten TV network.

That means Jim Delany, the Big Ten commissioner, is wielding most of the power and influence right now. I can tell you two things about Delany: he’s smart and he’s ruthless. He could care less about anything other than what’s best for him—and, thus, his conference—which makes him a very good commissioner if not someone you would want to trust to tell you where the sun will rise tomorrow.

A lot of people sneered when he started The Big Ten network but it has, for all intents and purposes, made him the unofficial commissioner of college athletics. Why? Because the success of the network means that every Big Ten team takes home a check for $22 million at the end of every football season. No one else is making half of that, except for the SEC—which is the one conference Delany hasn’t talked (privately, he never says anything that has any meaning in public) about raiding.

Now, if the college presidents cared anything about doing the right thing, conference expansion wouldn’t even be an issue right now. There are already too many conferences that are too big because of the constant money grab going on. Sixteen Big East basketball teams? Twelve ACC football teams? That’s good for competition, for rivalries, for fans? There are Big East teams that don’t visit another Big East home court for two or three years at a time. Round-robin play, the fairest way to decide a championship in basketball? Gone from all the major conferences except the Pac-10. Every team playing every league team in football? Gone—except in The Big East, which is fighting for survival.

Now, Delany may want to make The Big Ten into The Big Sixteen. He may try to entice schools like Syracuse, Rutgers, Pittsburgh, West Virginia (all Big East) and Missouri into his league. He’d love to add Notre Dame—which will NEVER give up its exclusive TV money from NBC—or Texas. If Delany goes on a raiding mission, the leagues raided have to try to raid themselves in order to survive. Why would someone like Syracuse leave The Big East? Again, do the math: $22 million vs. $7 million. Those numbers will trump tradition is any college president’s office any day. The same is true of the other candidates for expansion.

All of this, frankly, sucks. It is also bound to happen. Because he who has the checkbook has the power. And right now, unfortunately for college athletics, no one has a bigger checkbook than Jim Delany.

Discussing the Day-After Talk on Belichick; Wie May Be Turning the Corner

Two names made big news on Sunday—one receiving raves for finally living up to her potential, the other being ripped nationally for a move that was either bold or foolish, depending on your point of view.

Let’s start with Bill Belichick. His fourth-and-two gamble on his own 28 with a 34-28 lead in Indianapolis and a little more than two minutes to go was a mistake. You want to know why? Because it didn’t work. If Tom Brady throws the ball to Wes Welker—who on the replay looked to me to have some space at the 33 yard line or if Kevin Faulk is given forward progress to just outside the 30, which is where his feet were when he was hit, then Belichick made a gutsy, smart move by keeping the ball out of Peyton Manning’s hands in the last two minutes.

That didn’t happen though and the Colts easily drove 29 yards to win the game 35-34. There are some criticizing Belichick for the simple reason that the play didn’t work. I think that’s fair. There are some defending him on the grounds that he and his former mentor Bill Parcells have historically gone for fourth downs that other coaches wouldn’t think about going for. Also fair. There are certainly some people out there who are going to defend Belichick because he’s Belichick and has won three Super Bowls and is probably a couple plays from winning five.

There are also a LOT of people out there reveling in what happened because they don’t like Belichick, don’t like his persona, his secretive nature or, in some cases, can’t stand his success.

As luck would have it—good or bad I’m not sure—I had several meeting in New York yesterday morning and got in the car shortly after 2 o’clock to head home to Washington. As is my habit when in that area, I flipped on WFAN and there was Mike Francesa just about frothing at the mouth. I’ve said this about Francesa before, I will say it again: He hosts a good radio show—though he misses his partner Chris Russo because Russo gave the show much needed levity—and he’s smart. He’s also amazingly arrogant (I’ve never quite figured out who died and made him Edward R. Murrow) an absolute no-it-all who is NEVER wrong and won’t even admit to most of his biases. Even when he conceded that, yes, he’s a lifelong Yankee fan he says it doesn’t color his analysis of baseball at all. Of course it does—biases color all of us who try to analyze anything.

Francesa can’t stand Belichick. For one thing, his best pal in life (at least according to him) is Parcells. Everyone knows Parcells and Belichick had an ugly split after years together when Belichick left the Jets to take over the Patriots. There’s no doubt that Francesa has taken Belichick’s success a lot harder than Parcells has. He can’t stand it. Monday he asked one caller who had the temerity to defend Belichick, “how many Super Bowls has Belichick won without Tom Brady at quarterback?” Here’s a question for you Mikey: how many Super Bowls did your boy Parcells win without Belichick as his defensive coordinator?

It’s a dumb question on any level. How many Super Bowls did Lombardi win without Bart Starr? Who was he supposed to try to win with Zeke Bratkowski? In fact, Belichick won his first AFC championship game with Drew Bledsoe taking over for an injured Brady in Pittsburgh. A year ago The Patriots were 11-5 after Brady went down in the opening game and Matt Cassel came in about as cold off the bench as you possibly can to play quarterback for the entire season.

So, let’s agree on this: you can question what Belichick did on Sunday night but to call into question his coaching resume is either stupid or reeks of jealousy. Since Francesa isn’t stupid, I’ll go with the latter. He was also asked at one point to list the AFC teams he thought might reach the conference championship game. His answer: Colts, Chargers, maybe the Bengals. No mention of the Patriots. So a team he does not consider a serious contender comes one play from beating the best team in the conference on the road and the guy in charge isn’t a pretty good coach?

Francesa even said at one point that, “the result didn’t matter, it was a horrible call no matter what.”

Huh? Now results don’t matter in competition. Wow, that sure takes a lot of pressure off people doesn’t it? John Calipari will be thrilled to know that his failure to call time out to make sure his Memphis players knew they had to foul with a three point lead against Kansas in the national championship game two years ago DIDN’T MATTER even though it cost his team the game. Imagine Grady Little’s delight to learn that even though leaving Pedro Martinez in against the Yankees six years ago cost him his job it also did not matter because the result—Aaron Bleepin’ Boone—really wasn’t the issue.

Let me throw in MY bias here because unlike Francesa I admit to having them: I like Belichick. We share an affection for the Naval Academy—his dad, Steve coached there for 34 years and Belichick still follows Navy’s fortunes closely—and was someone I liked and admired. I think Belichick is not only smart but has a sneaky sense of humor and does genuinely care about his players, even if he rarely shows it. Do I think he’s perfect? No. (who among us is). Video-gate was clearly wrong and there’s no doubt there are times when he goes out of his way to make the media’s life more difficult. I’ll take him over a lot of coaches any day. He doesn’t blame his players for losses and he’s damn good at what he does—period.

Now, more reasonable men than Francesa—like my pal Mike Wilbon—also ripped Belichick, which is fine because it wasn’t personal. Wilbon said none of the great coaches from Lombardi to Shula ever would have gone for the first down in that situation. He could be right, but I’m not so sure. Was Belichick showing a lack of faith in his defense or was he showing a LOT of respect—perhaps even too much—for Peyton Manning? I think it was more about Manning than the defense and people saying that the defense had done a good job most of the night against Manning was irrelevant.

Wilbon said it was arrogant to think the Patriots could pick up the first down. Let’s go down the list of successful people in sports—in life for that matter—who aren’t arrogant about their ability to succeed.

Bottom line: I think Belichick should have punted and thought it at the time. I remember cringing when the offense came back on the field. But you know what? Belichick has won a LOT more football games than I have or ever will.

Okay, I ranted on Belichick and Francesa for so long there’s really no time to give Michelle Wie her proper due for her first win on The LPGA Tour on Sunday. It has been seven years since she first emerged as a 13-year-old phenom so even though she’s only 20 the tendency is to say she “finally,” won a tournament—which is a bit unfair.

On the other hand, her parents and handlers made SO many mistakes with her as a teen-ager it is almost surprising that she’s come out on the other end with a chance to still be the star she was supposed to be when she first showed up hitting the golf ball prodigious distances. Her parents pushed her too hard, chased the money—did a lot of things to her that Jennifer Capriati’s parents did to her 20 years ago in tennis—and Wie behaved very badly on a number of occasions.

Now, she’s acted like a grown woman all year on the LPGA Tour and we can only hope there are more good things to come for her because she has the ability to really make an impact on a sport that desperately needs some help. My only concern is that she and her parents and agents now think she’s Annika Sorenstam and start throwing her into men’s tournaments again next year for marketing and PR purposes. Let her dominate the women’s game and THEN after she wins, say, 50 tournaments, think about competing with the men again.