Back from among the missing, all for the wonderful Super Bowl week

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I figure I should write something before I start showing up on the side of milk cartons. No, I haven’t been missing, just buried under all sorts of personal matters that make me wish I could move to Cabot Cove, Maine (even if it is fictional) and be Jessica Fletcher’s neighbor. (Remember, the regulars never got killed on ‘Murder She Wrote,’ just the guest stars.)

So, it is Super Bowl week.

Oh joy.

Did you hear that Rob Gronkowski, like the rest of us, is day-to-day? Did you hear the Giants say the 2008 Super Bowl doesn’t matter regardless of how often the question is asked? Oh, and Peyton Manning is just fine. Or not fine. Without doubt, it’s one or the other. If only I had Rob Lowe’s cell phone number I could find out.

I almost went to this Super Bowl. If Lee Evans had held onto the ball in the end zone in Foxboro 10 days ago I would have gone. If Billy Cundiff had known what down it was and hadn’t rushed onto the field and hooked a 32-yard field goal attempt wide left, I might be there right now. (Question for those who pay more attention than I do: Did ANYONE from CBS notice or mention how late Cundiff came on the field or that the Ravens didn’t use the timeout they had either at that moment or in the endless postgame festivities? If they did, I missed it, but it was certainly clear that Cundiff arrived late and was rushed from where I was sitting).

I would have gone to The Super Bowl if the Ravens had been there and because I love Indianapolis. I obviously have great affection for the place because of the time I spent in Indiana 25 years ago (sales of the 25th anniversary edition of ‘Season on the Brink,’ have been remarkably brisk I’m happy to report) and because it is a very underrated city. Very good restaurants—including St. Elmo’s, the best steakhouse in the country as far as I’m concerned. It is also the perfect place for any major event because everything you want or need is walking distance.

Understand, I have nothing against either the Giants or the Patriots. As I’ve said before, I like Bill Belichick (hey, he even said something funny when his team got to town, saying he became a lot more popular in Indy after he went for it one 4th-and-two a few years back) and, even though I grew up a Jets fan and will continue to suffer with them (and the Mets and Islanders; hey, has anyone noticed that John Tavares has become an out-and-out STUD?) forever, I don’t hate the Giants. In fact, I pull for them at least twice a year. This season, they lost both those games.

But the Ravens presence would have made all the hype and bluster and logistical difficulties of Super Bowl week worth the effort. It also would have been a nice escape from all the fun of the last month. (Note: everyone in my family is healthy. This is about stuff less important but amazingly annoying and exhausting).

I’ve never been big on going to The Super Bowl. As a reporter, it is a waste of time. You’re basically a professional stenographer for a week. I’d rather watch the game at home on TV and go to bed as soon as it’s over. No doubt this is a sign of age. I’m actually starting to feel that way about the Final Four and years ago I would have told you if there was one event I’d go to forever that would be it. Now, not so much, especially since it has been so corrupted by the basketball committee and TV.

So, I’ll go to a college basketball game tonight; go to another one on Saturday; spend time with my family; keep plugging away at this other stuff and be grateful that the winter has been so mild so far. It’s warm enough to play golf. I wish I had the time.

Speaking of golf, I heard a rumor that Tiger Woods played last week. He went to Abu Dhabi, apparently because he likes to see new places. That’s what his website said anyway and Tiger would NEVER say something that was insincere in any way, shape or form. The $2-$3 million appearance fee he got had nothing to do with it. The fact that he has a new contract with Rolex and the tournament in Dubai, where he USED to get a $2-$3 million appearance fee is sponsored by Omega, had nothing to do with it.

(Tiger lovers, I write this just so you can yammer on about how unfair I am to your hero. God forbid anyone should, you know point out who the guy really is.)

Switching to a more pleasant topic: one of my former employers is making a mistake and I’m truly sorry to see it happen. Navy is joining the Big East in 2015, meaning it will be locked into eight conference games a season instead of having the flexibility that has allowed it to schedule itself (along with very good coaching) into eight bowls in nine years.

That means, in theory, Navy will have ONE game to play with on its schedule since it initially said it would keep playing Army, Air Force and Notre Dame. So, those of you who enjoyed those games against Ohio State, South Carolina and Stanford—along with next fall’s game at Penn State—you can forget about that. Navy will HAVE to schedule an automatic win in that slot. What’s more, I saw today where Coach Ken Niumatalolo is already hedging about continuing to play Air Force. He said Army and Notre Dame are absolute musts but Air Force, not so much.

Seriously, Kenny? The best game in college football every year if you care at all about tradition and the quality of the people on the field is Army-Navy. The second and third best games, in no special order, are Navy-Air Force and Army-Air Force. The fact that Navy would even CONSIDER not playing Air Force (and please Navy fans don’t say they didn’t always play pre-1972, that’s ancient and irrelevant history) is proof that this Big East move is a bad idea.

But then, no one asked me what I thought. At least the Army people DID ask me what I thought before their disastrous move to Conference-USA in 1998. They ignored me of course but at least they asked.

I wish Navy nothing but good things but I think, no matter how their various apologists/paid bloggers might rationalize it, this is a mistake. I hope I’m wrong.

My newest book is now available at your local bookstore, or you can order on-line here: One on One-- Behind the Scenes with the Greats in the Game 

The NFL is back from nowhere

Hey, did you hear, the NFL lockout is over. Hallelujah, football is back! Now, instead of meaningless updates every 10 minutes on the lockout we can get almost as many meaningless updates on player signings. Someone at ESPN must be en route to Brett Favre’s farm as we speak.

My question is this: Where has it been? Were any games missed? Did anyone lose any money—or, in fact did the teams save money by not holding those fabulous OTA’s we’ve all come to know and love?

Here’s the real question: Did any of you out there REALLY think a deal wouldn’t get done before people starting to actually lose money?

Of course not. The NFL isn’t like The National Hockey League where losing an entire season probably saved the owners money or even like the basketball where losing half-a-season would be, at worst, a break-even proposition for many NBA owners. The NFL is unique in American sports because EVERYONE is getting rich.

Understand this: The lockout occurred not because the owners were losing money or even because they weren’t making money. It occurred because they decided they weren’t making ENOUGH money. They wanted to make MORE money. So, they opted out of their contract and, as soon as The Super Bowl was over and all the checks for last season from the TV networks had cleared, they locked the players out.

There is a tendency when these so-called ‘work-stoppages,’—or in this case a non-work-stoppage—occur for a lot of fans to moan about greedy, millionaire players. For some reason, at least in the past, no one every blames the greedy, billionaire owners. Many people don’t even understand the difference between a lockout and a strike.

Some of the time the blame should be split 50-50. Other times it might be 75-25. In the case of this lockout it was 100-0, the owners having the 100. The good news is, for perhaps the first time in history, a lot of people understood that was the case. Here’s the simplest way to explain this lockout: If the owners had walked into a meeting room at any point and said, ‘look, we’ll just keep the financial terms that were in the last deal in place,’ there never would have been a problem. The players would have said, ‘done,’ and then they would have figured out all the details. It might have taken a little while to work out the rookie salary cap and things like paying retired players and drug-testing rules and new guidelines on practice time and time in pads—but that’s all stuff that you just go into a room and hammer out.

The holdup issue—as it always is—was the money. The owners wanted more and they wanted to give the players less. In a major upset, the players weren’t thrilled with that idea.

Here’s another thing you should understand: If Judge David Doty hadn’t ruled early on that the owners could NOT collect their TV money (through insurance) if there was no season, this might have dragged on for a lot longer. Only when it occurred to the owners that they were going to start losing real money did a deal get done—just in time to open training camps and play those god-awful exhibition games.

The players wanted a deal too. In fact, you can make the case that they NEEDED a deal more than the owners. More athletes than you can imagine live from check-to-check and there is only a small window during which football players can make big money. Like the owners though, they make their money during the season—not during the offseason. Missing a bunch of OTA’s was hardly a big deal.

Which is why it was entirely predictable from day one of this whole thing that it was going to end the way it did and, more important, end WHEN it did.

What’s funny now is to hear all the speculation about how the missed offseason will affect the season. The so-called experts on TV and sportstalk radio are going on about how teams with new coaches have no chance this season because they couldn’t put in their offensive and defensive schemes and because of the loss of ‘reps.’

Oh please. Do you know why the teams with new coaches will be bad this season? Because they were bad last season. That’s why they have new coaches. Bill Belichick had all the offseason OTA’s you could possibly want prior to his first season in New England. The Patriots went 5-11. Then, after two drafts, after finding Tom Brady in the sixth round, after making a few smart free agent signings, the Patriots became world-beaters. Trust me it wasn’t the OTA’s that made the difference.

You know how long it takes for players to learn schemes? (Another of my favorite football terms). About two days. Why do you think rookies who hold out show up in camp on Wednesday and play that weekend? Reps? Sure, they help but what helps more is, you know, talent. I heard one guy going on about how the Carolina Panthers were now going to have to play Jimmy Clausen at quarterback all season because Cam Newton didn’t have a chance to learn the offense during the lockout. Write this down: Unless Clausen has improved about 1,000 percent since last season Newton will start as soon as game three, no later than game five.

And if the Panthers go 1-15 so what? Peyton Manning and Troy Aikman were1-15 as rookie starters (with OTA’s or, as they were called back then, ‘mini-camps,’) and their careers turned out okay. Kyle Boller was 5-4 as a rookie starter when he got hurt in 2003. He was 9-7 a year later. Last I looked he isn’t going to the Hall of Fame anytime soon.

The point is this: Football coaches—and everyone else around them—really want you to believe this is rocket science. Do you know why OTA’s exist? For the reps? No. They exist to market teams during the offseason. “Hey, we were awful last season but you should see how we’re looking in OTA’s! Our quarterback is really establishing a rapport with his receivers! Renew your season tickets RIGHT NOW!”

The media falls for this the same way almost everyone fell for Tiger Woods, wife, kids and a dog act for years (there’s a nice Tiger shot for you Tiger lovers out there). I remember when Joe Gibbs came back to the Redskins in 2004 and one local columnist on the first day of mini-camp wrote about the fact that the first PLAY in mini-camp scrimmage was absolute proof of why Gibbs would take the Redskins back to the Super Bowl.

Seriously.

You know who got hurt by the lack of an off-season? The undrafted free agents who didn’t get a chance to show teams they could play in OTA’s or rookie mini-camps. Now they’ll only have a few days in training camp to make an impression.

The fans didn’t get hurt because they didn’t miss anything that mattered. In fact, they would have been better off if this had gone on another couple weeks so that season ticket holders wouldn’t have been forced to pay extra for exhibition football.

Now that training camps are opening and free agents are being signed there will be complete football-mania again. I just heard a local radio announcer here breathlessly report that the Redskins have signed the immortal Kellen Clemens.

Spare me. I’m going to watch baseball tonight. I’ll check back in on September 8th.

Reflecting on the week, and the sports element in healing

It has been a while since I checked in for a number of reasons. A lot on my plate would be one, Osama bin Laden would be the other. I simply didn’t want to write a jock blog so soon after his death on Sunday. Only one thing matters: he’s dead and, for once, there isn’t a single American who doesn’t feel exactly the same way about a political/military event. I know what my response was: Thank God we finally got him.

Thinking more about Bin Laden and 9-11 though I realized there is a sports element to his death. For many, many Americans, sports played a major role in our healing after that horrific day. When the games began again, they gave us a place to go—not just physically but mentally and emotionally—an escape from the reality that was still there on our TV screens every day as the grim search for bodies continued and ground zero continued to smolder.

I still remember the chills I got when the New York Yankees were cheered in Chicago; when fans everywhere the Navy football team traveled that fall cheered the Midshipmen from the minute they got off the bus until the bus pulled away at the end of a game. I remember President Bush tossing the coin at Army-Navy that year on a cold, bright December day and a future marine named Ed Malinowski calling out for everyone to hear: “Head’s SIR!” while the coin was in the air and a chill ran through the entire stadium.

It was a tragic but remarkable fall. A friend of mine who worked for The Secret Service and worked on a task force with the FBI and the local police in Washington in the immediate aftermath of 9-11 told me that incidents of road rage dropped almost to zero. Democrats and Republicans stopped attacking one another. There seemed to be a recognition in all worlds that the ‘enemy,’ didn’t wear an opponent’s uniform or vote differently than you. We had seen the real enemy all too clearly.

Of course it didn’t last—that’s human nature. A new normal settled in to our lives, complete with long airport lines (and me all but giving up flying) and lengthy security checks at most sporting events. Metal detectors became a familiar part of our lives in jock world. No one complained because, as much as we hated the fact that there was no choice, there was no choice.

Fast-forward 10 years and there’s no doubt all of us will remember where we were when we heard the news that bin Laden was dead. I was getting ready to go to bed when my son called me from his room down the hall. Usually at that hour it’s to ask me to close his door because he doesn’t want the cats to wake him by jumping on his bed after he’s gone to sleep. This time was different.

“They got bin Laden,” he said. “They killed him.”

I was stunned. Like a lot of people I think I had gotten to the point where I just figured he had too many people—and governments—protecting him for us to ever get him. Happily, I was wrong.

The fact that it was Navy Seals who got him wasn’t surprising. There is no group more elite in the world. I’ve had the chance to know a number of football players who have gone on to become Seals and, to say you have to be special is a vast understatement. The best description I ever heard of Seals came from Doug Pavek, an Army football player who went on to become an Army Ranger—another elite group.

“They do everything that we do,” Pavek said. “Except they do most of it underwater.”

Or in helicopters or on the ground or wherever they are most needed. The shots of the celebrating at the Naval Academy that night were chill-worthy and brought me back again to 2001 when I stood on an almost silent practice field and watched the players try to prepare to play Boston College 10 days after the towers came down. There was no chatter that day; no fake cheerleading. It was still too soon for any of that.

Now when the 10th anniversary of 9-11 is commemorated—I’m amazed at how often I read each year that people are, ‘celebrating the anniversary,’—we can mix our silence and our grief with cheers for those who hunted the man behind the murders down.

I do wonder this: the first Sunday of the upcoming NFL season falls on 9-11. Would it not behoove Roger Goodell and the owners, who are the ones who started this labor battle and appear ready to go to the mat in search of a legal victory, to find a way to make sure stadiums are full on that day and that football is played?

Is it entirely out of line to suggest that the NFL—which does more flag-waving and playing on patriotic themes than almost anyone in sports or outside of sports—should declare a moratorium on the lockout and work under the old CBA for this season while still trying to negotiate a new deal going forward?

I’m sure Goodell and his lawyers will give all sorts of legal reasons why that can’t be done but there are certainly instances of employees continuing to work with a collective bargaining agreement in place. Surely, legal language could be worked out to allow the games and the negotiations to go on at the same time. Aren’t there moments in life when—especially when you are rich beyond all reasonable expectations—that you STOP playing hardball for a little while and simply do the right thing?

That may be an extraordinarily naïve notion but it was once naïve to think the Yankees could get cheered on the road or that getting players and coaches to come out of their locker rooms for the national anthem would ever be possible again. Sometimes what seems naïve is just the right thing to do. I think this is one of those times.

*****

On far more mundane topics: I cannot believe that the Washington Capitals completely flamed out in the playoffs AGAIN. The 4-0 sweep at the hands of Tampa Bay was embarrassing. I can’t help but note that the goalie who beat the Caps, Dwayne Roloson, is someone I suggested they trade for back in December. I was pilloried by many fans and my colleague at The Washington Post, Tracee Hamilton, for even suggesting a veteran goalie on hand might be a good idea.

Roloson was traded by the Islanders soon after that to the Lightning for a middling prospect. I’m not saying goaltending was the reason for the Caps demise—Michal Neuvirth played well though not brilliantly—but having Roloson in the room as a calming influence, whether he was playing or not, would have helped. And, he would NOT have been playing for the Lightning…

You have to feel a little bit sorry for The PGA Tour. It tries SO hard to convince people that The Players Championship is a really big deal; spends huge money to promote it and on prize money and what does it get? No Lee Westwood; no Rory McIlroy and, in all likelihood, no Tiger Woods who I suspect is still going to be taking care of his injured knee next week. For the record, if I’d had four knee surgeries I would be ultra-cautious too. But let me also say this for those of you who monitor this blog strictly for Tiger-shots: If he was supposed to play for a $3 million appearance fee this week, I suspect he’d find a way to play. (insert, ‘Feinstein, you suck,’ posts here).

And finally on the subject of those of you who hate me so much you can’t stop reading this blog: A friend pointed out during the NFL draft a couple of posts from last fall demanding I ‘apologize,’ to Mike Shanahan for ripping him for the handling of the Donovan McNabb benching (NOT, you Rick Reilly fans, for the benching but for the way he handled the benching) because McNabb’s ‘new contract’ proved that Shanahan had nothing personal against McNabb. How’s that turning out? You expecting to see McNabb under center if/when the NFL season begins? Or do you think the ‘contract’ with almost zero in guaranteed money, but a signing bonus, wasn’t hush money?

This week's radio segments (The Sports Reporters, The Gas Man)

Wednesday I joined The Sports Reporters in the normal timeslot (5:25 ET on Wednesday's). Click the permalink, then the link below, to listen to the segment from this week. We spent the majority of the show discussing what we don't know about the upcoming NFL lockout, comparisons to what the NHL did, contraction for the various sports and various different angles of all the labor dealings.

Click here to listen to the segment: The Sports Reporters
 
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Also, Wednesday evening I joined The Gas Man in my weekly spot. This week's discussion came from the Honda Classic, so we discussed the PGA Tour and its strong start in terms of TV ratings, players changing mentalities as the Florida swing indicates The Masters is near, then moved onto NCAA basketball and how it uses technology with in-game officiating.

Click here to listen to the segment: The Gas Man

I’m not a fan of the prediction making business; Dan Snyder’s radio row blitz

The best news about waking up yesterday morning was knowing I could safely turn on the radio or the TV without hearing the words, “Who do you like in The Super Bowl?” I really and truly don’t care who you like or who anyone on radio or TV likes or, to be honest, who I like in The Super Bowl—or any event—before it is played. If I make a prediction and I’m right it is usually because I had a 50 percent chance of being right. Same if I’m wrong.

I thought the Packers would win on Sunday. Whooeee I’m an expert. I also thought they’d lose to The Atlanta Falcons. Whoops, I’m an idiot.

Years ago, when Annika Sorenstam was getting set to play at Colonial against the men, her appearance was getting almost as much attention as a Super Bowl. Then again, The Super Bowl probably got more column inches and more TV time than what’s going on in Egypt so maybe Annika v. the boys didn’t quite rise to that level.

As luck would have it I was promoting a golf book that month—my book on the U.S. Open at Bethpage. A number of national shows wanted me to come on and talk about Annika and my publicist spent a lot of time cutting deals: John will talk about Annika but you have to ask at least one question about the book. One show that had asked for me PRIOR to Annika announcing she’d play Colonial was a CNN show that was on in those days at 11 p.m. The booker wanted to have me on the day the book was published and insisted we not book any other national shows that day. In return, she promised an entire segment on the book. Since The Today Show was otherwise occupied with cooking segments, we accepted.

The host, I think, was Aaron Brown. To make a long story a little shorter, he completely pissed me off by ignoring the book throughout the entire segment. He even promo’d the segment by saying I was coming on to talk about Annika. When I was hooked up to him by satellite while the show was in commercial I said to him, “You promo’d Annika, I’m glad to talk about her but you know I’m here to talk about the new book.”

“Yeah, yeah, we’ll get to it,” he said, leaving me very close to walking out because I knew I was about to get screwed.

The entire segment was Annika. Finally he said, “So John, what’s your prediction on how she’ll do?”

I’d been well-behaved until then but the ‘who do you like in The Super Bowl,’ question put me over.

“Aaron I think making predictions is silly,” I said. “What does it matter what I think? Let’s just wait until Thursday and we’ll find out then. I can’t think of anything more boring than so-called experts making predictions.”

“Well I think a lot of the fun in sports is making predictions,” he answered in a pouty tone.

“Fine then, you make a prediction.”

At that point his producer DID finally throw the book cover on-screen and Brown grumpily mentioned it. As soon as we were in commercial he said, “What the hell kind of answer was that on the prediction?”

I said, “what the hell kind of segment ON MY BOOK was that?”

I took the earpiece off without waiting for an answer. The next day, “Mr. Brown’s assistant,” called my publicist demanding my phone number for, “Mr. Brown.” The publicist already knew what had happened so she held out on the phone number (I’d have been glad to talk to him). When the publicist offered e-mail, the assistant said—according to her—“Do you realize who Aaron Brown is?”

Speaking of which, just to show I’m consistent on the subject the one week a year I don’t do Tony Kornheiser’s show is the first week of the NCAA Tournament. He insists everyone who comes on goes through a bracket. I find this at least as dull as, “who do you like in The Super Bowl,” so I pass on it which annoys Tony no end.

I digress. The game was excellent and my colleague Sally Jenkins has a great column in today’s Washington Post on how out-of-control everything that surrounds the game has gotten. It won’t change. The NFL defines the word excess in every way. The game was the most watched TV show EVER. So why would they change anything?

One of the more amusing sights in Dallas had to be Dan Snyder and his little entourage making the rounds on radio row on Friday afternoon. Apparently, having been ripped from stem-to-stern after the announcement of his bully lawsuit against The City Paper, Snyder and his genius PR guy Tony Wyllie (who Snyder says suggested the lawsuit; if so he should be fired for coming up with the single stupidest idea since indoor baseball) decided to go on the offensive AGAIN so they could dig the hole a little deeper.

Of course every radio show was more than willing to have Snyder on. He came with a scripted message: HE HAD to file this lawsuit because The City Paper’s Dave McKenna had ‘gone over the line,’ when he had ‘made fun of my wife who has been battling breast cancer.’ Go back and read the story. There are two sentences about Tanya Snyder and they refer ONLY to her going on TV to talk about her new-and-improved husband as part of the Danny-over-DC PR campaign to convince Redskin fans who were completely sick of the guy that he was a brand new man.

That’s IT. No mention of breast cancer and certainly no making fun of Tanya on any level. Snyder simply made that up. In doing so, he used his wife, who no doubt has been through a lot fighting the disease, as a human shield against his own critics. That’s beyond cynical.

Step two was playing the Jew card again. At one point he said, “You know, Tony, who is African-American, called this Rabbi in LA….” First, who cares that Wyllie is African-American? What relevance does that have here? Second, the quote from the Rabbi was beyond offensive to people who really have dealt with anti-Semitism and invoking the Holocaust in any way to defend the actions of a billionaire bully-boy (I realize the Rabbi didn’t see it that way but that’s the way it came out) is beyond shameful.

Throw in the fact that Snyder owns a team that he insists on continuing to call The Washington REDSKINS and the notion of him complaining about any bias is either laughable or completely hypocritical or both. When Chad Dukes went on the local non-Snyder-owned radio station in DC had the temerity to bring that up, Snyder bristled.

“Obviously you don’t know the history of the Redskins,” he said. “We’ve won lawsuits. Even bringing that up is silly.”

Really? So now you, Danny Snyder, are judge and jury on what is offensive to Jews AND what is NOT offensive to Native Americans. Do you get elected to that job or do you get it by acclamation? By the way, winning a lawsuit doesn’t make anything right, it just makes it legal. It is legal for private clubs to discriminate against people. That doesn’t mean it is right. As for history: most of us know the history: The Redskins were founded in Boston and nicknamed ‘Redskins,’ in honor of the colonials who dressed up as Indians on the night of The Boston Tea Party.

That was a LONG time ago. Back then it was also okay according to society to call African Americans, ‘coloreds.’ This is 2011. What was right eighty years ago isn’t right now and that’s not political correctness.

The funniest bits were Snyder going on about his father having been in the media—“I love the media,”—and then taking one gratuitous shot after another at anyone and everyone in the media: “You know how The Post is, they love taking shots at me. That’s the way a lot of old media is. But you know we’re doing great in radio.” (Shades of the morning pitchmen at ESPN here; I half expected him to tell us who the next cheap shot was sponsored by). There was more: To Mike Wise, who actually tried to ask him a couple of follow-up questions that went beyond his script, “I know how you media guys are, you defend one another all the time no matter what.”

Yes, he loves the media.

I was about to write the words, ‘enough about Snyder,’ but what’s the point. He’s going to force me to write about him again soon because he’s going to continue to simply make things up to justify who he is. And, unlike some of my good friends, I’m going to respond when he does.

Lawsuit vs. Washington City Paper and McKenna is just who Dan Snyder is; Sporting News column gets cut

Ever since Dan Snyder decided a year ago that he needed to change his image, people who know him have waited for him to crack under the pressure of trying to behave rationally while not thinking he could run an NFL team anywhere but into the ground.

Well, now it has happened.

Snyder spent most of 2010 going through intense image-rehab. He hired Mike Shanahan to run his football team and insisted that Shanahan would have total control: no more having to watch tape in the owner’s office; no more players running to the owner to complain about the coach; no more melting ice cream on the defensive coordinator’s desk if Danny didn’t like the play calling.

Snyder hired a new PR guy who began telling the media that “Mr. Snyder,” would be available to talk if they showed up at some charity function where Danny was writing a check and taking bows. The guy called reporters who had ripped Snyder in the past (including me) to take them to lunch and tell them that there was a New Danny in town. (My lunch never happened; I guess I wasn’t pliant-sounding enough when I got the phone call).

Danny started appearing in TV commercials. Even his wife gave interviews about The New Danny. The PR guy managed to con ESPN—okay not that hard—into doing one of the all-time puff pieces on the owner. Snyder was new and improved was the message.

Maybe not so much.

Wednesday, Snyder and his lawyers proudly announced that they are suing Washington’s ‘City Paper,’ for defamation. They’re asking for $2 million in damages. But that’s not really what Snyder’s after: he’s after Dave McKenna’s job. Period.

Dave McKenna has worked at The City Paper for 25 years. He is one of many reporters here in Washington who has watched Snyder’s behavior with dismay through the years and chronicled it. Last November, McKenna wrote a lengthy piece that was more a very thorough research paper than a newspaper story, giving chapter and verse on Snyder’s transgressions as an owner and a human being.

To be honest, reading the piece, there’s nothing shocking in it. Just about everything in it has been previously reported or is well known around Washington. What makes it impressive is the sheer volume of it; the number of times Snyder and his cronies have behaved badly. There was also a cartoon that ran with the story depicting Snyder as the devil.

The story caused little stir. In fact, I hadn’t heard anything about it until this week. When The Post ran a story on Tuesday about Snyder’s lawsuit, I went and read the story—like a lot of people did.

Which is why I am amazed at the utter stupidity of Snyder and minions. I don’t know what The City paper’s circulation is—it’s always been a well-written paper and I read it when I get the chance—but we’re not talking the Post or The New York Times here. What the Snyderistas have done is shine a spotlight on a story that was almost three months old and never generated much buzz when it came out. After all, ‘Dan Snyder is a Jerk,’ isn’t exactly film-at-11 stuff anymore. It’s like reporting that Bob Knight uses profanity.

Now, Snyder is back to doing his bully routine. This time he’s not suing season ticket holders or banning TV reporters who don’t pay him or charging people $20 to watch practice or taking away all signs coming into the stadium or charging a $4 ‘security surcharge,’ in the wake of 9-11. (All of these things were brought up in the piece).

This time he’s trying to get a guy fired because he thinks he can do it. The letter sent from Snyder’s lawyer to The City Paper makes it clear that’s where they’re going with this. The lawyer, some guy named Donovan (Artie perhaps?) points out how rich Snyder is and says that defending such a lawsuit might cost more money than The City Paper or its parent company has. It doesn’t specifically demand McKenna’s firing but that’s clearly what’s going on here.

After all, there is NO CHANCE for Snyder to win a lawsuit like this one. He’s a public figure and people have the right to criticize him. The only way he can win a lawsuit would be to (A) prove that the facts in the story are wrong and (B) that there was malice involved in reporting whatever is incorrect. Given that almost all of all of McKenna’s piece involves stories already told, even if he DID get something wrong it would be awfully hard to prove he did it with malice.

This isn’t a nuisance suit it’s a bully suit. It is Danny Snyder trying to bully a small paper into firing someone. It is disgusting and it is proof—again—of who Dan Snyder really is. It is also proof that the people around him (again) are dumb or have absolutely no power to talk him out of doing things that are not only beyond mean-spirited but are flat out stupid.

Snyder is even playing the Jew card on this one. He and minions found a Rabbi at The Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles who was willing to call the cartoon anti-semitic. Oh please. A newspaper ran a cartoon depicting Mike Krzyzewski as the devil during last year’s Final Four. Was it in poor taste? Sure. But was it anti-Polish? Of course not. No one is anti-semitic here. They are anti-Dan Snyder. Period.

A friend of mine, David Sanders—a lifelong Redskins fan—said to me yesterday that he believes the Redskins are 20 years into a 60-year drought. Snyder is only responsible for the last 12 but David’s point is clear: Snyder is 46-years-old and he’s not going to sell this team unless the fans in this town somehow marshal their forces and simply STOP going to games and STOP buying Redskins-gear and scream at the top of their lungs that they’re sick and tired of this little bully and they aren’t going to take it anymore.

Of course that won’t happen. Snyder will find a big name quarterback this spring or summer once the new CBA is signed; he’ll kiss a few babies at a charity event’ he’ll do Lunch with Lindsay or grant ESPN an ‘exclusive,’ interview talking about how much he’s learned and The Stadium Formerly Named For Jack Kent Cooke will be packed on opening day next September.

That’s a tribute to the loyalty and optimism of Redskins fans. It is NOT a tribute to the owner. Except he won’t see it that way. He’ll sit in his royal box with his suck-up friends and honestly believe he’s doing all the right things.

This lawsuit is who Dan Snyder is. Even if he someday hoists a Super Bowl trophy and proves David Sanders wrong, Dan Snyder will still be a mean little man. And that’s not a reference to his height.

*****

One other note today: A lot of you have generously written to me about how much you enjoy my column in The Sporting News and I'm grateful for that. Well, my last column appears in the next edition of the magazine.

I got a phone call Tuesday from some bean counter in a suit who told me that now that Sporting News has acquired AOL Fanhouse, the company wants to, "maximize our assets," by using the fulltime columnists working at Fanhouse in the magazine. I love the way these guys talk don't you? I said, "so you're firing me to save money."

"Well, we really appreciate everything you've done for the magazine."

"No you don't," I said. "If you did, you wouldn't be firing me to save money."

My guess is the guy has never once read anything I've written. He's been too busy counting beans and buying suits.

Am I upset? Sure I am. I liked writing the column and I thought I did it well. If someone fired me because my work wasn't any good, it would be disappointing. Being fired by some guy (I swear I can't remember his name and I'm not going to bother looking it up) who thinks Sportscenter is great journalism is a little bit hard to take.

I'll get over it. But I will hold a grudge. If nothing else, I'm good at that.

Playoff weekend, including focus on Rex Ryan and the Jets, analysis on Cutler too quick; Update on new book

The New York Times had a perfect headline at the top of its sports front this morning: ‘Bluster Busters.’ That’s exactly what the Pittsburgh Steelers were on Sunday.

That said, reading and hearing all the comments about how Rex Ryan needs to shut up, made me laugh. First of all, Rex isn’t shutting up anytime soon. It just isn’t who he is and I’ve never met anyone in any walk of life who is successful trying to be someone who they aren’t. Hell, I’ve tried to do it on a few occasions and failed miserably.

I like Rex and it isn’t because the Jets were my boyhood team. I got to know him well in 2004 when I wrote, ‘Next Man Up,’ and liked him from day one. I still remember sitting in the Ravens war room—much to the horror of GM Ozzie Newsome who to this day shudders when he thinks of my presence in his draft room—when the Ravens turn finally came up on the draft board. (They had traded their No. 1 pick a year earlier to get Kyle Boller, a rare Newsome move that didn’t pan out). As soon as the team ahead of the Ravens made their pick, I heard a loud ‘WHOOEE!’ come from the room across the hall where all the assistant coaches were located.

It was Rex. The Ravens had a list of 150 players ranked from 1-150 and the highest player left on the board at that moment was Dwan Edwards, a defensive lineman. Always ‘true to the board,’ he would be Newsome’s pick. That meant two things to Rex: he had gotten a player he thought could help his line and he had beaten out the other position coaches to get his player chosen first. Yes, coaches on the same staff DO compete with one another at times.

Edwards never turned out to be much of a player—Bob Sanders, who the Ravens would have taken if they’d been able to move up six picks, which they came within seconds of doing, DID turn out to be pretty good—but that was my first exposure to Rex’s genuine enthusiasm. Without doubt he was the best-liked coach on the staff and there was no doubt he would become the defensive coordinator when Mike Nolan left at the end of the season to become the head coach in San Francisco.

So, Rex is going to be Rex. Of course there an old saying in sports, ‘it ain’t braggin’ if you can do it.’ The Jets haven’t done it—win the Super Bowl—in Rex’s two years and I have no doubt he’s going to be hammered in some quarters for not delivering on his promise. There’s also no doubt that something went wrong between warmups and kickoff on Sunday because the Steelers kicked the Jets butt in every possible category for the first 29 minutes of the game.

Let me step back for a second though and put on my Jets-fan cap: Does anyone want to bring back Eric Mangini? Even when the team was good during the Mangini –‘era,’ there wasn’t a whole lot of fun going on was there? Mangini makes Bill Belichick look like Rex. Two years; no playoff victories (one appearance) and zero laughs. Rex? Two years; FOUR playoff victories and about a million laughs.

Even if I’d never met him, I’d take Rex in a heartbeat. Herm Edwards was (is) a terrific guy but he got to how many conference championship games? If you want, I can go back through the whole sad history. The only Jets coach you can POSSIBLY make a case for being better than Rex since Weeb Ewbank retired is Bill Parcells and he fled after a couple of years to write the eighth installment of his ongoing series, ‘My Final Season.’ I think the 12th installment comes out in another year or so.

As for the NFC game, was it just me or did it feel a little bit like the JV game? Don’t get me wrong, I think the Packers have a great chance to win The Super Bowl. Any team in any sport that plays lousy and still advances is very dangerous. Aaron Rodgers was awful on Sunday. The only reason the Packers won was because Jay Cutler was worse before he got hurt and the Bears were never all that good to begin with. Lovey Smith did an amazing job to coax 12 wins from that team.

One note on Cutler: I’m not a fan of his. I think he’s arrogant and obnoxious and he’s an interception waiting to happen at any key moment. That said, to question his knee injury is unfair. Unless there’s real evidence that he was faking it, people should shut up. None of us knows how someone ELSE feels when they get hit or are in some kind of pain—especially playing in zero degrees with Clay Matthews bearing down on you. Those who question someone for saying they’re hurt should try doing that one time in their lives.

I do have one question on the Packers: Am I the only one who continues to be amazed at how players risk disaster by show-boating? B.J. Raji made a great play when he intercepted Caleb Hanie and went in for a touchdown but what was he thinking holding the ball out before he got to the goal line? If Hanie had arrived a step earlier he might have knocked the ball loose from him on the one-yard line. Ridiculous? Really? As in it has never happened in the past?

And when will defensive backs learn that when you make an interception with the lead and the other team is out of time outs in the last two minutes you GO DOWN. And yet, there was Sam Shields running around after the last interception with everyone screaming at him to get down—which he finally did. Again, the only way you can lose the game at that point is if you fumble while being tackled. Again, tell me it has never happened in the past and I’ll withdraw the comment.

I have no idea who will win The Super Bowl. But if the Steelers win there had better be a lot more people putting Mike Tomlin in the same sentence with Bill Belichick and Bill Parcells than with Tom Coughlin and Bill Cowher. The guy is really good at what he does and often doesn’t get credit because he’s, well, no Rex Ryan.

You have to be yourself, right?

*****

One note on the book I’m currently working on about my 25 years of writing books. A number of people have asked if who I’m writing about is a secret. Not at all. You can probably guess if you’ve read my work at all in the past. The book begins with Bob Knight because that’s where my book-writing career began. It also ends with Bob Knight. In between I write about some of the famous people I’ve known: Dean Smith, Jim Valvano, Mike Krzyzewski, David Robinson, Steve Kerr, John McEnroe, Ivan Lendl, Martina Navratilova, Tiger Woods (there’s a Tiger story that MAY surprise you) Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer, Greg Norman, Joe Torre, Bobby Cox and others. There are also lots of stories about not-so-famous people I’ve known but who I’ve liked and found fascinating. Have I spoken to everyone mentioned: almost. Have I spoken to Knight? Yes. As I said, the book ends with him—just don’t read it expecting hugs, kisses or tears when you get to the finish line. They come earlier.

NFL wildcard weekend at its finest; Looming labor issues; Plead to AP football voters

I am not the biggest NFL fan in the world by any stretch of the imagination. I pay attention—you can’t do what I do and not pay attention—and I think the season I spent with The Baltimore Ravens in 2004 has left me with a pretty decent understanding of what players and coaches go through during a season and how the league works.

But it isn’t as if I build my fall Sundays around being at a game or making sure I’m in front of the TV from 1 p.m. until midnight. I still make it to Baltimore when I can to see the Ravens play and to stay in touch with the people up there. I wouldn’t be caught dead going to the stadium formerly named for Jack Kent Cooke because getting in and out is so painful and because sharing a stadium with Little Danny Snyder just isn’t something I need to do at this point in my life. (Note to Redskins fans: I am awed by your loyalty. Many of you showed up for the completely meaningless finale against the Giants and when I was picking my son up two hours after the game ended I heard a traffic report that said, ‘it’s still pretty heavy getting to the Beltway on Arena Drive and Central Avenue.’ TWO HOURS! You people really deserve much, much better than you are getting).

All of that said, it is impossible not to acknowledge just how damn good the NFL is to watch. Once you wade through the un-ending hype and build-up and expert projections and all that other garbage that is dispensed during the week, the GAMES are fabulous—even with the never-ending barrage of TV timeouts. Serious question: How do YOU occupy yourself when a team scores, TV goes to three minutes of commercials, the scoring team kicks off and then TV goes to another three minutes of commercials? If Tony Kornheiser was here he’d say I write a book. He exaggerates. Maybe a chapter or two.

This past weekend the NFL began its playoffs with four wild card games. One produced a stunning upset of The Super Bowl champions; one produced an amazing finish; one was compelling until the final seconds. Only Ravens-Chiefs was a dud and as someone who likes the Ravens, I was fine with that.

My pal Kornheiser—yes Tony this is your day to appear in the blog—was chortling on the radio last week about the fact that the Seahawks making the playoffs at 7-9 is proof that the BCS isn’t as bad as people like me saying it is. Bad teams shouldn’t play for the championship and in the BCS that never happens. Talk about missing the point. To begin with, there’s almost no way a sub-.500 team would get into an eight team playoff in college football or even a 16 team playoff. There are 120 teams in Division 1-A, not 32.

But let’s just say for the sake of argument that The Sun Belt champion got into the playoff with a 5-7 record. So what? Even if they somehow won a game, so what? There have been sub-.500 teams in the NCAA Tournament and last I looked it was a pretty good event. There have been sub-.500 teams in the NBA playoffs and—until they changed the rules on doling out points in overtime games—in the NHL playoffs too. The Mets made The World Series in 1973 with an 82-79 record.

Maybe—maybe—the NFL should tweak the system so that the team with the better record always gets home field. You can certainly make the case that the 7-9 Seahawks should have played AT New Orleans and the Saints almost certainly would have won playing at home. But two other road teams with better records managed to win this weekend so it certainly isn’t entirely unfair.

The point is that the magic of postseason is the underdog who gets a second chance. You think it’s BAD for the NFL that the Seahawks won on Saturday? I don’t. Is it BAD for college football that TCU went 13-0 and had no chance to play for the national title? Of course it’s bad. It’s a joke. (Note: This is the part in the blog where I annually plead with my brethren who vote in the AP football poll to PLEASE vote for TCU regardless of who wins tonight to send a message to the frauds running the BCS. Like last year with Boise State I will be ignored. What ever happened to the days when reporters were willing to take a stand or go out on a limb? Nowadays everyone just wants to play along with the power brokers so they can get hired someday by ESPN).

Back to the NFL: The long-winded point here is there has never been a sports gold mine in history like this league. For all its faults and issues, it has put together a product that the public finds irresistible. That’s why, in spite of all the sabre-rattling on both sides, I do not think there will be a serious work stoppage next summer or fall. Maybe a few days of pre-season camp or even an exhibition game or two—losing two exos might be Roger Goodell’s way of proving they are un-needed in his bid for an 18-game season.

Goodell has become a lightning rod because, unlike Paul Taglaibue who never met a serious decision he couldn’t find a way to run from, Goodell has been out there since he became commissioner. People may not like everything that he does and he’s clearly management-oriented (why not, they pay his huge salary) especially when it comes to doling out punishments.

But he’s a very smart guy. So is DeMaurice Smith, the new head of the player’s union. Both men have exchanged some fairly strong rhetoric in public but I honestly believe when they get into a room together and the golden goose is in any kind of serious jeopardy, they’re going to find a way to keep the golden eggs coming. Management will find a way to get richer while the players will find a way to stay rich and save face.

That’s the interesting thing about all these collective bargaining disagreements. It is ALWAYS management that wants to rewrite the rules, that insists it needs more money while the players make less. You see, for all the talk about how selfish and greedy players are, what they really want to do is PLAY. Sure, they want to play for as much money as possible and they will always take the best deal—which they should. Their window to make huge money is a small one—especially in football.

Owners always want more. In most case that’s how they got so impossibly rich in the first place, by always wanting more, by always getting the best deal for themselves. After that first billion you really MUST make the second billion. Whenever there’s a work stoppage—and more often it is a lockout and not a strike—the public screams about the selfish players. More often than not, the players are just trying to hang on to what they’ve got. It is the owners crying poverty and screaming for cutbacks. Have you listened to David Stern moan about how much money his owners are losing and how contraction is possible? You think that’s NOT sabre-rattling at its finest?

The NBA might have a work-stoppage simply because it wouldn’t cost the owners that much money and might (ala hockey in 2005) save them some money. That would not be the case in the NFL. Everyone would lose if any part of the regular season was lost.

I don’t see it happening. I think Goodell and Smith know that they’ve been given a license to print money. My guess is they won’t stop the presses when it really matters anytime soon.

Redskins, Wizards, Capitals and Maryland all make noise this week

You certainly can’t say that living in Washington is boring these days—and I’m not talking about the repeal of, ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.’

Think about the events of the last week:

--The much ballyhooed coach who was hired last January to (again) bring back the glory days of The Washington Redskins—remember the ‘are you in?’ marketing campaign—benches the much ballyhooed quarterback he brought in last April to lead those who decided they were in. He does so in favor of the immortal Rex Grossman who will be 31 by the time next season starts and is not exactly an untested rookie.

Grossman throws two interceptions and fumbles the ball away once in Dallas on Sunday. But he also throws four touchdown passes, including two in the fourth quarter to lead a comeback from 30-14 down to a 30-all tie before the Redskins (naturally) find a way to lose against a bad team that has also shown a knack for losing close games all season. These teams are basically mirror images of one another: Run by egomaniacal owners who have screwed up once-proud franchises almost beyond recognition.

So now, the Washington media is PRAISING Mike and Kyle Shanahan for benching McNabb in favor of Grossman. Really? Seriously? Did I miss the part where the Redskins won the game? Did I miss the part where they were playing the 12-2 Patriots and not the (now) 5-9 Cowboys? Does anyone in their right mind think that REX GROSSMAN is going to lead the Redskins to anywhere but (maybe) 8-8 if he’s the starting quarterback next year? Is that the goal now?

Here’s what the Shanahans and their out of control egos have done: They’ve taken away their flexibility to wait a year or two to draft a quarterback or sign one as a free agent. Now they’ve got to make a move right away. They’ve only got six draft picks as it is and now—when they probably need at least three offensive linemen—they’re going to have to spend one on a quarterback.

Brilliant. Still, what’s even better are the fawning media who think this was a good move. The only GOOD thing about Sunday for the Redskins was that they lost the game. Winning can only hurt them now since it moves them down in the draft.

--The man who was once the most popular athlete in town is gone. And almost no one is sorry to see him go.

With barely a whimper, Gilbert Arenas packed his bags on Saturday and left for Orlando. It is to the credit of Washington Wizards general manager Ernie Grunfeld that he was able to find someone—anyone—to take on Arenas’s contract, which calls for him to be paid more than $60 million through the 2014 season. In return the Wizards got back Rashard Lewis, who was a very good player once upon a time but seems to be fading into the NBA sunset at the age of 31. No matter. His contract will go off the books a year sooner than Arenas’s and could save the team as much as $30 million in cap space.

Arenas was once the biggest part of the Wizards solution. Ultimately though, he became the biggest problem they had.

He led the team to the playoffs for three straight seasons and was the key component in the only playoff series they have won since the 1980s. Then he started getting hurt—a lot. The Wizards managed to make the playoffs a fourth straight year but went downhill quickly after that. They hit rock bottom a year ago when Arenas brought guns into The Verizon Center locker room to settle some kind of disagreement that had sprung up during a card game on a chartered airplane with equally knuckleheaded teammate Javaris Crittendon. Arenas managed to make the situation worse by not understanding how serious it was and thinking he could laugh it off and joke about it.

That was pretty much the end for him in Washington even though he came back this season to play reasonably well—although he played his best when star rookie John Wall was hurt; not a good sign for the future.

My friend Tony Kornheiser coined the phrase, ‘curse of Les Boulez,’ years ago to describe the constant syndrome of injuries, bad draft picks and trades that seemed to follow the franchise. The curse appears to still be alive and well with Wall already missing multiple games with injuries and the team a train wreck yet again at 6-19. Losing by 100 to Orlando on opening night was probably not a good sign. Not having won a road game with Christmas looming is also probably not a good sign.

Arenas is gone. The curse of Les Boulez lives on.

--Ralph Friedgen is fired as Maryland’s football coach a little more than a month after it was announced he would return for at least one more season. What is it Lee Corso says?—not so fast my friend. When Athletic Director Kevin Anderson saw a chance to get Mike Leach and jump start interest in his football program, he pushed Friedgen out the door about as fast as you can push someone the Fridge’s size out any door.

A year ago, then Athletic Director Debby Yow wanted to fire Friedgen—who she had once taken so many bows for hiring her back must have been sore. She couldn’t come up with the $4 million it would have required—not to mention the extra $1 million she would have needed to buy out ‘coach-in-waiting,’ James Franklin who she inexplicably put in that position a year earlier.

Actually, there was an explanation: Yow was trying to get the Fridge gone without actually firing him. Fridge didn’t take the hint and told people HE would decide when he would retire. The 2-10 record in 2009 changed that and put him on the hot seat. The 8-4 record in 2010 seemed to put him back in control.

Then two things happened: Franklin got the Vanderbilt job, removing the $1 million Yow-created albatross from Anderson’s neck and he found out that Leach could be had as his next coach. Baggage or no baggage, Leach can coach AND he can sell tickets, something Friedgen simply couldn’t do anymore.

Out with the Fridge, in with the Pirate.

Look, the move makes sense. It is also pretty damn cold but college athletics is a cold world. Personally, I would have liked to have seen Friedgen ride off into the sunset under his own terms but I’m not responsible for the athletic budget at Maryland.

The irony in all this is that, in the end, Yow probably got Friedgen fired. It was her decision to push for an expanded stadium and over-priced luxury boxes that put so much pressure on Friedgen. For years, when Byrd Stadium seated 45,000 people, winning eight games and going to a second tier bowl was just fine for the football team. Most Maryland fans were just waiting for basketball season to start anyway.

But with the expanded stadium and all those empty boxes, people—notably potential recruits—noticed that Maryland football fever wasn’t exactly a contagious disease. Anderson is new to Maryland and has no reason to be loyal to Friedgen—Maryland grad or not. His loyalty is to the bottom line. Leach can probably make that look better.

--And finally: The Winter Classic is now 10 days away and part 2 of the HBO 24/7 four part series on the Capitals and Penguins airs Wednesday night. I saw the first part and I thought it was excellent. What strikes me about all the HBO documentaries is how well written they are. Sure, they have plenty of access but ESPN gets all sorts of access (did you see any of that truly AWFUL stuff on Duke’s pre-season; My God I WENT to Duke and it made me gag, I can imagine how other people felt) and never knows what to do with it. HBO knows what it’s doing.

Of course some people here in Washington were upset with all the f-bombs that were picked up coming out of Coach Bruce Boudreau’s mouth. What do people expect when a team is losing 8 straight? Hearts and flowers? My friend, Post columnist Mike Wise, decided HBO was making the Caps into the bad guys, the Penguins into the good guys. Um Mike: The Penguins had won 12 straight—who did you expect to come off as the happier-go-lucky team at this point? In fact, the end of part 1 makes the point about the rhythms of a season, the ups and downs that are part of it. Exactly right. I can’t wait to see part 2. Don’t worry DC fans it will be better: The Caps WON on Sunday night.

And Alex Ovechkin isn’t being traded, benched or fired anytime soon. Hallelujah.

Favre’s act has overshadowed what may be the most remarkable iron man streak in sports history; Comments on the comments

Here’s what is really a shame about the way Brett Favre’s extraordinary streak of 297 consecutive starts ended on Monday: It was greeted by a lot of yawns. Part of that is because of the way this season has gone for Favre: Bad team, all the questions about his text messages to the former Jets hostess; the firing of his coach; the interceptions.

But it goes beyond that. I said on a TV show on Monday about an hour before it was announced that Favre was going to be inactive that I thought he’d play. Why? Because how many times has he cried wolf before? How many times has ESPN ‘learned,’ that Favre doesn’t think he’ll play on Sunday. Or that he’s going to retire? Or that he’s REALLY going to retire?

All the drama queen stuff just got old for everyone and people almost stopped paying attention. Did you hear Favre may not play on Sunday? Oh wait, here’s another scoop, the sun is going to rise in the east tomorrow.

By sheer coincidence I was at Camden Yards the night Cal Ripken Jr. finally ended his streak. After playing 2,632 games in a row and breaking—by a wide margin—what many people considered the most unbreakable record there was in sports—Ripken just decided it was time. On the last Sunday night of the 1998 season with the Orioles playing their last home game, Ripken walked into manager Ray Miller’s office and just said, “it’s time.” Miller wrote Ryan Minor’s name into the lineup at third base and The Streak came to an end.

Ripken didn’t whisper to anyone in the media that he was thinking about ending the streak or that he was hurt or that he might or might not play on a given night. In fact, Ripken was just the opposite. He preferred to NEVER talk about the streak. I still remember in 1992 when I was working on my first baseball book, I had breakfast with Ripken one morning in Milwaukee. Ripken was, I thought, very open and honest with me that season. But when I started a sentence by saying, “you know, if you stay healthy you would get to 2,130 in 1995…” he literally clapped his hands over his ears.

“Please,” he said. “I’m really superstitious. If you talk about it too much it may never happen.”

Of course it did and the night Ripken broke the record, September 6, 1995 is still one of the most memorable evenings I’ve ever had in a ballpark. The night he ended the streak wasn’t as dramatic—no presidents in attendance; no 22 minute pause in the game for Ripken to take a victory lap; no speeches afterwards. But I will always remember the sight of the entire ballpark coming to its feet after the first out of the game when it became official that Ripken wasn’t in the lineup to applaud for him. And I’ll never forget the sight of the Yankees all coming out of their dugout to join the ovation and pay tribute to Ripken.

Ripken always wanted the streak to end quietly. Favre wanted to MAKE SURE EVERYONE WAS PAYING ATTENTION. Of course it will be interesting to see now how the NFL handles the whole texting issue now that the streak is over. You can bet no one was more relieved than Commissioner Roger Goodell that he now doesn’t have to worry about being the one to end Favre’s streak with a suspension or be concerned that if he doesn’t see fit to suspend Favre that people will say he’s ruling that way to keep the streak intact.

The saddest part of Favre’s whole act is that it has overshadowed what may be the most remarkable iron man streak in sports history. I know you can make arguments for Ripken’s because it was over so many years and he had to go out there day after day. He never continued the streak by playing one inning or coming up once and then coming out of the game. In fact, throughout most of the streak he never missed an INNING.

That said, to play almost 19 years as an NFL quarterback without missing a game—and most of the time Favre played the entire game—is amazing. There’s some luck involved certainly, but the number of times Favre hobbled out there on days when standing up to walk out of the locker room was probably a challenge, is almost uncountable. I know from my experience spending a season with an NFL team that EVERYONE on an NFL team is hurting the last half of the season. The way Favre put himself out there and took the pounding he did time after time, year after year is a stunning feat of toughness and grit.

And yet, he will end his career more as a punch-line than as an icon. That’s not the way it should be. But it is of his own doing. He’s all but replaced ‘Hamlet,’ as the all-time ‘to be or not to be,’ character. Good night tough quarterback.

I only wish you’d given yourself a better ending.

*****

A couple of notes to a few of my big fans…First, Caps fans: Look, I understand about hockey fans (soccer fans too). On the one hand, you get upset because your team and your sport doesn’t get enough attention. On the other hand you get apoplectic when someone who doesn’t go to 82 games every season, writes or says something about your beloved team and sport. Many of you think I’m a moron for saying the Caps could use an experienced goalie. Many of you said the EXACT same thing a year ago when I wondered if Jose Theodore was good enough to win a Stanley Cup. How’d that work out? I did NOT say that Michal Neuvirth and Semyon Varlamov will never be good, very good or even great goalies in the NHL. The question I raised was this: Are they good enough to win a Cup THIS YEAR? That’s what George McPhee must decide.

This notion that other teams have ‘figured out,’ the Caps based on last year’s Montreal series is ridiculous—with all due respect to my colleagues at The Washington Post. Check the shots-on-goal in that series. Check the serious scoring chances the Caps had vs. the serious scoring chances the Canadiens had. Those of you who said, “Hey did (Jaroslav) Halak take the Canadiens to the Cup?” the answer is no, he didn’t, just through the Caps to the conference finals as a No. 8 seed. Those who pointed out that the goalies for the Blackhawks and Flyers weren’t exactly immortals are right too. But folks, you don’t need a great goalie to win the Cup, you need a goalie playing great.

I’m old enough to remember Ken Dryden against the Bruins in 1970. A great goalie doesn’t mean you win, but it sure as hell enhances your chances. Sure, another defensemen or center would help the Caps. But to be dismissive of the notion that maybe they don’t have the goalie in place to win THIS YEAR is short-sighted—no matter how defensive Bruce Boudreau gets on the subject.

And finally, my friends who love their Hoyas: Look, I’m really not going to engage in a debate with you about why Georgetown is where it is (or isn’t) week-to-week in my poll. I will say this: Obviously, as with other voters, my view of Temple changed after it lost both California and Texas A+M in Orlando. (BTW, I wasn’t the only one who liked them pre-season; one entire POLL had them No. 8—CBS Sportsline). If anything, Temple fans might have a case I’m biased against THEM since I still had them behind Georgetown this week after they beat the Hoyas. Maybe San Diego State fans think I hate them too since I ranked them three spots beneath where they are in this week’s poll.

Here’s the larger point Hoya fans: Rather than spending time obsessing about where I (or anyone else) voted your team in a meaningless poll—Thank God, unlike in football the polls mean nothing—you should spend all that time writing to the people running Georgetown asking them how it is possible their school has categorically refused to participate in a local charity basketball tournament that in 16 years has raised more than $9 million for kids at risk in the DC area. Ask them why they have not only refused to play Maryland (yes, Gary Williams said he would play on Georgetown’s home floor as long as the building wasn’t set up ticket-wise as if it was a Georgetown home game) but at least a half-dozen other opponents including HOLY CROSS for crying out loud, that they have been offered.

Rather than spending your time ranting at me about my vote in a stupid poll (for the record, I’ve always like JT III and get along fine these days with JT Jr. we just all disagree on the charity tournament issue) you should spend your time demanding that your beloved school stop embarrassing YOU with its refusal to step up to the plate for charity in its hometown the way Maryland, George Washington, Navy, American, George Mason and Howard all have done in the past—16 straight years for Maryland and GW. You might also point out that Maryland has gone 2-8 in its last BB+T games and Gary still has his job and Maryland, last I looked, was still playing college hoops.

That is an issue that matters, not the AP basketball poll.

The Rick Reilly Column

I wrote the blog on Thursday in the hope that a more detailed explanation of what I was trying to say about the Mike Shanahan-Donovan McNabb issue would put an end to it—or at least my involvement in it.

To a large degree it did. The posts and e-mails that came in were close to what I expected: Some people didn’t really read what I said; they just had a knee-jerk reaction to even raising the specter of race. (BTW, James Brown, Tom Jackson and Michael Wilbon have all raised it too but because they are African American people tend to not pay attention or say, ‘so what?’ They’re ignored when they bring it up because they’re black; I’m pilloried—by some— for bringing it up because I’m white). What was gratifying though was the fact that quite a few people completely understood the point I was making: that Shanahan raising issues about McNabb’s intelligence brings back some bad memories for a lot of people about the racial stereotyping that went on for years when it came to African Americans playing the quarterback position. That was why I found it unforgivable. A lot of people got that.

Of course some people—many in the media—didn’t or chose not to. Rick Reilly absolutely torched me in his ESPN column. What was upsetting about the column wasn’t that Reilly disagreed with me. I’m perfectly comfortable being on the opposite side from Reilly on almost any issue. What did bother me—as I said in a note I sent him on Friday—was that he accused me of committing a crime I didn’t commit and then ripped me for it. If you read Reilly, he goes on about how ridiculous it is to think Shanahan’s benching of McNabb was racially motivated.

He’s right. Of course I never said it was. Like most people I saw it as a coaching temper tantrum after McNabb made a bad play. The issue came up after the game, first with the ‘he didn’t know the terminology,’ comments; then with the ‘cardiovascular,’ comments—that was about his conditioning not his intelligence—and finally with the Chris Mortensen, ‘sources,’ story that the poor Shanahans had to cut their playbook in half to accommodate their dumb African-American quarterback.

One argument being made is that the Shanahans might not have been Mortensens’s source. I don’t buy that for a second but let’s play along here for a moment and pretend they weren’t. If Mortensen is half the reporter I think he is and someone whispers that to him what’s his next move? I would think it is to call Mike Shanahan, who you can bet is on his speed dial and say, “someone just said this.” And Shanahan, UNLESS he wants his quarterback lying in the road with tire tracks on his back, says something like: “Come on Mort, the guy is a six-time Pro Bowler, of course he knows the playbook.” If Shanahan doesn’t say that then he’s guilty of not protecting his quarterback—even if there’s truth in the leak, which I’m not buying either. If Shanahan did say that I don’t believe Mortensen would still go with the story.

Anyway, Reilly pilloried me for saying McNabb was benched because Shanahan’s a racist. One example he cited as proof that Shanahan’s not a racist is that Shanahan cried on the phone when he learned one of his African American players had died. Wow, what a humanitarian! Even so, the argument’s moot because I don’t think Shanahan’s a racist. I do think he’s absolutely capable of throwing out racial stereotypes to defend an indefensible decision he made. Which is what I said and what I wrote. Reilly, in his return note to me, asked me if I really thought Shanahan could be that Machiavellian. Are you kidding? I think Machiavelli studied Shanahan somewhere along the way.

Two points here: Reilly and I aren’t friends but I’ve never considered him an enemy. We’ve known each other a long time and I thought he should have picked up a phone and called me before he hammered me—especially since he might have gotten his facts straight had he done so. Then again, that might not have suited his purposes. Rick defended not calling me by pointing out that I publicly nailed him twice in the past. Once was seven years ago when we appeared on Bob Costas’s old HBO show together and, in discussing the Riggs-King match, he said that Riggs had only had one serve and King had been allowed to play the doubles alleys. He was wrong. I said he was wrong and he insisted he was right. I offered to bet him $100 and he took the bet. To his credit he sent me a check when he found that he—or his researcher—had it wrong. According to Rick I went, ‘three stops past the exit,’ that night. Really?

My second crime was different. When Rick left Sports Illustrated for ESPN, someone asked me if I was surprised. I said I wasn’t; that I knew ESPN had thrown a lot of money on the table but to me leaving SI for ESPN was a little bit like, “checking out of a Ritz-Carlton to move over to a Hampton Inn.”

Yup, it was a shot—at ESPN. Rick apparently took it as a shot at him even though I said I understood he’d been offered a lot of money. As I said in my return of his return note: “I’m guessing now you might think what I said was probably right—but I certainly don’t expect you to confide in me about THAT.” And I don’t. All I know is the guy was a GREAT take out writer at Sports Illustrated and now he’s hosting 2 a.m. sportscenters with some fourth string talking head at ESPN. Yes, that was a shot.

In all though, I’ve been gratified by the number of people whose opinions I respect who have understood what I said and why I said it. I also have a little clearer understanding of why REAL public figures (I consider myself a semi-public figure) get frustrated when they say something and it morphs into something completely different. But hey, that’s life.

There was one thing though that really did upset me. On Thursday night Rich Eisen described me on the NFL Network as the, “venerable Washington Post columnist.”

Venerable? Now THAT hurts.

Touching on the elections, Shanahan-McNabb, Randy Moss and Tiger Woods before moving to the sad news on Sparky Anderson

I had all sorts of topics to write on this morning ranging from the elections—I know some of you don’t like it when I write about politics but, what the heck, you can take the day off and it is MY blog—to the continuing Mike Shanahan/Donovan McNabb fiasco to (yawn) Randy Moss to how remarkably un-important Tiger Woods losing the number one ranking to Lee Westwood truly is.

Then I saw an item in this morning’s New York Times—if it was in The Washington Post I missed it. It said that Sparky Anderson had been placed in a hospice by his family. It also said that he was suffering from dementia at the age of 76.

Reading that made me think the other subjects weren’t quite as important. NOT that the election is un-important. It is and I happen to believe as disturbing as some of the results are and as tough as it is to listen to the crowing of my Republican friends, this will be a good thing for President Obama, much the way getting beaten up in midterm elections helped Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton. I’m also one of those who thinks that history shows the country runs better when the parties share power. I happen to think this is especially true now since The Republicans can no longer sit back and blame President Obama for everything that has gone wrong dating back to The French and Indian War. And good luck to the Republican leadership controlling those tea party types who got elected. They will be more trouble for The Republicans than for The Democrats when all is said and done.

That ends today’s political message. As for Shanahan and McNabb, well, I’m actually not completely finished with politics because Shanahan really does sound like Richard Nixon when he tries to explain benching his quarterback with under two minutes to play on Sunday in Detroit.

Shanahan is a very good football coach and, in fact, the Redskins are clearly better this year in large part because of his presence. They’re also better because of McNabb’s presence; PLEASE don’t cite statistics to me. McNabb’s a player. Is he an elite quarterback ala Peyton Manning or Tom Brady or Brett Favre when healthy and not sending text messages he shouldn’t be sending? No. Those are first ballot, no-brainer Hall of Fame guys. Drew Brees may get there or he may not. McNabb is a full level down but he’s been very good and he’s still in the top half of NFL quarterbacks—which is why I thought Andy Reid was nuts to trade him within the division. It’s already cost him one game and may cost him another a week from Monday.

Shanahan took McNabb out because he was angry that he’d made a poor decision when throwing an interception and he was hoping Rex Grossman might, somehow (having not taken a snap all season) get lucky and put together a drive so Shanahan would look like a genius. Instead, he looked like a dope because the immobile Grossman was instantly sacked, fumbled and gave up a game-clinching touchdown. One play, end of story.

All Shanahan had to do afterwards was say, “I got upset with Donovan, I took a gamble and it backfired. I made a mistake.”

If he says that it’s a one-day story. Coaches make mistakes in the heat of the game all the time just like players do and officials do. They’re human. But Shanahan isn’t built to admit mistakes. He’s MIKE SHANAHAN and he’s never wrong. So, he first came out with some hoo-ha about McNabb not knowing the two minute terminology. No one bought that for a second. The next day it was about his cardiovascular ability to call two plays at once. Oh, and he was injured too; might not have played Sunday. Except he’d spent 58 minutes dodging the Lions rush because the Redskins offensive line STILL isn’t any good and all of a sudden he was injured? Please. Shanahan did everything but say, “I am not a crook.”

He’s not. But he IS a liar and a raging egomaniac. That said, if McNabb plays well enough for the Redskins to beat the Eagles, everyone in Washington will forgive him. If I’m McNabb, regardless of what happens the rest of the season, I’m on the first bus (okay, chartered airplane) out of town when the season’s over.

Moss doesn’t really deserve any space here because he’s a jerk and, at this point in time, he’s not that good a football player anymore. That’s why Bill Belichick was willing to let him go—talk about a steal, he got a third round pick for him and the Vikings got an embarrassing tirade aimed at some poor guy feeding the team in return—and why the Vikings didn’t put up with his insufferable behavior.

What got me this morning was hearing Chris Carter—or “CC,” as he’s known to the morning pitchmen—saying this: “Randy Moss is a man of principal.” Really, seriously? Here’s what’s more accurate: He’s a jerk who once upon a time could REALLY play. “CC,” also said Moss just can’t tolerate coaches who are ‘wishy-washy,’ and ‘don’t take responsibility when things go bad.’ You can say anything you want about Bill Belichick but wishy-washy? Doesn’t step up when things go bad? One of the morning PM’s (guess which one) acted like Carter had just found a cure for cancer after this, ‘analysis.’ My God. While I’m at my ESPN-bashing it was amazing to see one of the Hasselbeck’s (Elizabeth perhaps?) actually claiming that ‘the Shanahan’s,’ weren’t happy with McNabb’s practice habits. Gee, wonder where he heard that—as if it is at all relevant. Is there ANYONE in the NFL these ESPN guys won’t be apologists for?

And, briefly on Tiger Woods and number one: It REALLY doesn’t matter. The World Rankings are bogus the way they’re calculated and all that matters is when Woods wins his next major. If he wins in Malaysia this week and goes back to No. 1, that’s fine. There should also be a rule that you can’t be No. 1 in the world unless you’ve won at least one major.

Last, but certainly not least: Sparky Anderson. I won’t claim to know him well but I spent a lot of time with him in 1992 when I was writing my first baseball book, “Play Ball.” Sparky was a modern-day Casey Stengel: a great manager; he won World Series in both leagues and managed two of the great teams of the last 50 years: the ’75 and ’76 Reds and the ’84 Tigers who started 35-5 and never looked back.

Sparky loved to tell stories, one of the things that makes it even sadder that he’s dealing with dementia at the age of 76. He was funny and he loved having people sit around his office so he could entertain them. In that sense he was a bit like Tommy Lasorda but Lasorda had a mean streak Sparky never had. In fact, Sparky liked going out of his way to point out good things about people.

Early in the ’92 season the Tigers came to Baltimore for a four game series and got swept, which turned out to be the beginning of an awful season. I had met Sparky during spring training and we had agreed to get together that weekend. When I walked in to his office Friday night, I wondered if he’d remember. He did. “How about two o’clock tomorrow,” he said. That early for a 7 o’clock game I asked.

“Yeah,” he said. “You said you wanted some time, right?”

He was there right on the dot of 2 o’clock and talked for almost three hours. One person he brought up during the conversation was Johnny Oates, who was managing the Orioles.

“That kid, (Sparky called almost everyone kid) is a hell of a manager and a hell of a guy,” he said. “He had us way down last night. He’s got a young team, they probably want to pile it on. He wouldn’t do it. He’s up 8-1, he’s not running anybody, he’s just playing to get the game over. That’s a pro. He’s one of the good ones.”

I was lucky enough to get to know Johnny Oates quite well that season. He WAS a hell of a guy. And a good manager. Sparky was also a hell of a manager and one of the true good guys.

NFL cracking down on the ‘kill shot’ - fines mean nothing, suspensions mean everything; Quick correction from Monday

So now the National Football League has sent a message to its players: If you don’t stop trying to hurt one another, we’re going to get really angry. After three hits in games this past weekend that could have resulted in serious injury—to EITHER player—the NFL announced major fines for the three players and wagged its finger and said, ‘do this again and you will be severely punished.’

Has Roger Goodell hired the NCAA Enforcement Committee as consultants? Fines, even one as high as $75,000, mean little to the players these days. The glory they get from being thought of as tough guys by fans and the fawning media more than makes up for any financial loss they might suffer. As Rodney Harrison, the ex-Patriot now working for NBC said last week, “fines mean nothing.”

Suspensions mean something. They can cost a team games and that upsets the owner, the general manager, the coach and the other players. If you do something that might jeopardize your team’s ability to make the playoffs or get home field advantage in the playoffs, that gets everyone’s attention.

So let’s see what the NFL does with the next ‘kill shot,’ as Tony Kornheiser eloquently called them on his radio show today. (I wonder if he’ll be allowed to use that phrase on ‘PTI.’).

There’s a much more urgent issue though than whether the next guy who launches himself at someone like a human missile gets suspended. It is this ridiculous macho notion that if the league puts a stop to this sort of thing it will take the violence and anger and emotion out of football that players and fans love—and that the league and TV networks have spent years promoting.

Already players and a lot of the ex-jock talking heads are screaming that you might as well rename the league the NFFL (National Flag Football League) if they crack down on this sort of violence.

What garbage.

The fact is that, more often than not, the sort of tackle that we’re talking about here—one where a player launches himself at another player—is BAD FOOTBALL. A good tackle is usually made by not leaving your feet; by wrapping a player up and by gaining control of his legs. Sometimes you aren’t in position to do that, so you dive or lunge at a player. But when you’re close enough to someone that by launching yourself at him you’re going to hit him in the head or up high, that’s just lousy tackling. More often than not, when a player does that he either misses the tackle completely or the ball carrier bounces off him because he sees him coming and moves in such a way that the tackler doesn’t get a clean shot at him.

No one is saying you can’t go after the guy with the ball. You do it the way Ray Lewis does it, driving your body—arms first—into the player while running at him at full speed. On the college level, Navy has a safety named Wyatt Middleton. He’s been a four year starter. I promise you I can count on my hands the number of times he has left his feet to make a tackle. I have never seen him make a tackle where he drives his head into someone and jumps up celebrating because his victim is lying on the ground in pain.

I’ve also almost never seen him miss a tackle. He is as good a one-on-one tackler as I’ve seen in college football in years. He doesn’t have great speed or size, he just knows how to play the game and that’s what’s made him a great player.

The flip side to that is a game Navy played against Maryland five years ago. Late in the game, Maryland had a fourth-and-ten on a last-chance drive. The Terrapins were forced into a swing pass and Navy had TWO tacklers waiting for the runner. All they had to do was stay on their feet, line up the runner and bring him down and the game was over. Both wanted to be heroes—I’m not protecting them by not naming them I just don’t remember who they were—so they dove at the runner. He side-stepped them both, went down the sideline and picked up the first down. Maryland won the game.

Have you ever been to an NFL practice? I have. And I promise you I have never heard or seen a coach teaching players how to tackle that way. Just the opposite in fact. Now, I know there are bad coaches on the lower levels of the game who might encourage that sort of play but they do it because they think it is somehow cool or because they think the kids will like it.

They are idiots. Not only are they teaching their players how to play the game dangerously, they are NOT teaching them how to play the game well. I have never heard a coach I respect say anything like, “let’s go out there and knock someone’s head off; let’s hurt someone.” What I have heard is, “be sure on your tackles, get low whenever you can and WRAP UP.” The other thing they repeat over and over is, “do not put your head down making a tackle.”

Not only is that a good way to miss a tackle, it can lead to tragedy. On Saturday, Eric LeGrand, a good and experienced Rutgers football player, for some reason put his head down trying to make a tackle on a kickoff. He ended up on his back not moving and has not moved since. In an instant, his entire life changed. We should all be focusing a lot more attention on what he is going through than screeching about how unfair it might be to try to put a stop to helmet-first tackling.

So let’s stop all the hand-wringing and whining about how the game won’t be the same if these sorts of hits are treated more harshly in the future. We aren’t talking about rules changes—the rules governing these hits already exist. Let’s not talk about the good old days because in the good old days we didn’t know what we know today about head injuries.

Might there be times when officials go too far and call what could be a clean hit a penalty? Sure. No rule is going to be perfect or enforced perfectly. But I’d rather see them err on the side of caution and good health than go the other way. And if the league looks at the hit on tape on Monday and decides it was clean, then the only bad thing that has happened is a 15-yard penalty that shouldn’t have been called. Those happen all the time. If an official is CERTAIN a player was trying to hurt another one he should have the ability to go to replay (heck, they do it on half the plays nowadays anyway) and make a decision on ejection. That’s what they do now with fights in basketball.

The NFL is very publicity conscious. That’s why it is clucking this week about how concerned it is about what happened on Sunday even though—Thank God—no one was seriously hurt. But it needs to take this issue very seriously. And it needs to NOT listen to players; NOT listen to fans and NOT listen to the macho ex-jock media brigade. It SHOULD listen to one ex-player—Steve Young who said, “I don’t want to see someone die during a game.”

None of us do. So let’s teach everyone at every level how to play hard, tough and GOOD football and leave the ‘kill shots,’ where they belong: in the past.

*****

My pal Tom O’Toole, who is the colleges editor at USA Today, called yesterday to make a correction to something I wrote Monday: Apparently after announcing that the final coaches balloting would be secret this year, the coaches—under some pressure from USA Today and others—reversed themselves. Their ballots will be available for public scrutiny—which might make it tougher to keep Boise State or TCU out of the national title game. Which is good. Good for them and USA Today for un-doing a poorly thought out decision.



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No innocents in the story of the ex-agent paying college football players; Prediction on Goodell’s outcome of Favre investigation

There are two stories going on today in sports that can only be categorized as sad—though neither is all that surprising.

The first involves the former agent, Josh Luchs, who in a Sports Illustrated story this week put together by George Dohrmann, one of the magazine’s truly gifted reporters, goes into painful detail about his years paying college football players. What makes the story credible is that Luchs names names—lots of them. He doesn’t portray himself as some kind of victim of the rules or a do-gooder. He simply explains how he got into the business and how he started paying players. Then he explains how he STOPPED paying players when he went to work for Gary Wichard, whose name has become a part of the ongoing debacle at North Carolina.

Is it a shock to anyone that there are dozens of guys like Luchs out there, working either on their own or for agents, who are giving money to players? No. What makes the story important is the detail. Luchs not only names the players he paid, he describes how he did it and how much he paid them. He also names players who turned down money when he offered it to them. Some players have confirmed the story; most have either refused to comment or ducked calls from the magazine. Ryan Leaf, a centerpiece in the tale, admits knowing Luchs and hanging out with him but doesn’t remember taking any money for him. Read the story and decide who you believe on that one.

A lot of agents and the NFL and the NFLPA are going to claim that Luchs is tainted because he was suspended for turning a check from a player over to his lawyer rather than to Wichard, who he was in a dispute with at the time. The check was for a little more than $5,000 and Luchs quit being an agent after his suspension because he thought the incident tainted him in a way that would make it impossible for him to recruit players in the future. He makes the point that he was never investigated or suspended or disciplined in any way for paying college players but was suspended for putting a check into trust with his lawyer during a legal dispute.

At the end of the piece Luchs says he came clean because he has two daughters and when they go on line and read about him in the future he doesn’t want them to only find the stories about his suspension. That may sound like a stretch. I believe him. I believe every word of the story. It has an absolute ring of truth to it.

One small part of the piece is Luchs describing a pre-arranged phone call with Mel Kiper Jr. in which Kiper just happened to call while Wichard and Luchs were sitting in their office with a big-time college player.

“Hey Viper,” Wichard said, according to Luchs. “I’m sitting here with the best defensive end in the country.”

“Well,” Kiper said, “That must be (I forget the guy’s name).

The player signed with Wichard and Luchs.

Kiper’s defense is that being friends with agents helps him get to know players. Here’s my question, why does someone who is supposed to be analyzing players need to know them? And, if Kiper wants to taIk to a player for some reason, you’re telling me they won’t talk to him? They all think he’s a star, a very important guy. That’s a complete copout. He doesn’t NEED agents to do his job.

I’m a reporter, I NEED to know players. I do everything I can to avoid dealing with agents. In fact, sometimes when a player tells me I have to talk to his agent in order to talk to him, I say thanks, but no thanks.

In 1993, when Wayne Grady was still an important player—having won the 1990 PGA—I approached him about talking to him for ‘A Good Walk Spoiled.’ Grady was very pleasant and polite but said, “I’ll need you to talk to my manager.”

For Jack Nicklaus I might talk to an agent. Not for Wayne Grady. On the rare occasions when I have taken a deep breath and dealt with an agent, it has led me to—nowhere. I was interested a couple years ago in doing a hockey book involving Sidney Crosby and Alexander Ovechkin. I made the mistake, on the advice of Gary Bettman, of talking to Crosby’s agent. (I should have just walked into a locker room and introduced myself to Crosby and taken my chances that way. In the past when I’ve done that I’ve succeeded even with guys I don’t know about 90 percent of the time). The agent and I talked back and forth several times about setting up a meeting for me with Crosby. It never happened. “Sidney doesn’t want another distraction this season,” he said.

The point of the meeting was to explain how I could do the book without being a distraction—which I could have. I’ve done it before. Agents are paid to say no 99 percent of the time unless someone is paying—then the answer might be yes.

Of course the apologists are already coming out of the woodwork to attack Luchs. The morning pitchmen on ESPN had Luchs on today. Throughout the morning they referred to him constantly as, “this guy,” or “this agent.” They wondered if he was a snitch. Then Chris Mortensen came on and said, “this guy was decertified by the NFLPA.” No he wasn’t. He chose to leave the profession after the suspension. You may say that’s a technical point but Mort throwing it out as absolute fact—almost casually—sums up what the establishment’s approach to Luchs is going to be.

During the interview Greenberg asked Luchs if he felt badly about, “throwing people under the bus.”

Huh?

These players knowingly took money, in many cases asked for money. They knew they were breaking the rules just like Luchs knew he was breaking the rules. There are no innocents in all this—including Luchs. The difference now is Luchs isn’t claiming to be innocent.

After Luchs, Kiper came on and blustered about how important it was to know players and how, “we all do it,” (become friends with agents). Actually Mel, we don’t. Do I know some agents? Of course. I get along with some better than others but I sure as hell don’t ever talk to them while they’re recruiting a player. Luchs makes the point that Kiper never said, “Hey, you should sign with Gary Wichard.” What he did was give Wichard an extra level of credibility because college football players DO know Mel Kiper and what he does.

The one guy who stood up for Luchs was Kirk Herbstreit. Good for him.

Some are comparing Luchs to Jose Canseco—whose charges in his book on steroids in baseball ended up being 99 percent verified when all was said and done. Here’s the difference: Luchs wasn’t paid for this story. He didn’t do it to make money. He says he did it for his daughters. I believe him.

On to Brett Favre. The NFL is ‘investigating,’ charges that Favre sent texts and phone messages and pictures of himself—not ones you would want your kids to see—to a former employee of the Jets while he was playing with them. Favre has refused to talk about the story, which makes him APPEAR guilty. It doesn’t make him guilty but even the apologists are having trouble wrestling that one to the ground.

Here’s one prediction: Roger Goodell is not going to be the one to end Favre’s consecutive games streak. If the charges prove true he may reprimand him, he may fine him. He isn’t going to suspend him. He will point out—correctly—that Favre has never been in trouble with the league before. If guilty, Favre will pay a heavy price. You can bet he won’t be seen in too many jeans commercials down the road and it might even affect Favre’s ability to get a network TV job—at least for a year or two—if he ever does retire. Oh wait, silly me, ESPN is still in business. Forget that last thought.

All of which is fine with me. If he did this, he’s a boor and he’s stupid. That said, I don’t think it quite makes him Tiger Woods. Or is that my anti-Tiger bias? Or is it racial? My friend Michael Wilbon apparently thinks it’s racial. Here’s what he wrote in today’s Washington Post:

“We’ll see if the hypercritical morality police officers who sentenced Woods to damnation for his philandering ways are as heavy-handed with a fair-haired quarterback and the face of America’s favorite sport…or if Tiger’s transgressions are deemed to be somehow, ‘different.’ We’ll see.”

Look, Wilbon and I have been down this road before. He likes Woods, I don’t. But seriously? What Favre is accused of doing somehow falls into the same category as what Woods has admitted to doing? “Hypercritical morality officers?” One had to be hypercritical to think Woods was, you know, not exactly the best guy in the world to do what he did?

Favre has been lampooned (correctly) time and again for his Hamlet act on retirement. Everyone—even ESPN—is reporting this story as it moves along. So how does race or people being ‘hypercritical,’ factor in here? Seriously Mike, I know you consider Tiger a friend, but the time to start claiming he’s been unfairly treated hasn’t arrived yet.

And probably never will.




(Note: Click here for George Dohrmann's article-- Confessions of an agent)