Showing posts with label Washington Redskins. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Washington Redskins. Show all posts
Thursday, October 13, 2011
This week's radio segments (The Mike Wise Show, The Gas Man, The Sports Junkies)
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Here is the link to this week's radio segments, including the new continuing appearance on The Mike Wise Show and The Sports Junkies. Click the permalink below, then the link to the audio links, for the newest available interviews.
Wednesday I joined The Mike Wise Show in my weekly spot at 11am. We spent much of this segment discussing the Washington Capitals in regards to what the team goals could be, and took at look at the pressure on Bruce Boudreau. Then we moved on to baseball and the turmoil going on with the Boston Red Sox, which leads to opinions of the Cubs hiring of Theo Epstein, then finished up on talk about the Eagles' struggles and the Maryland football outlook.
Click here to listen to the segment: The Mike Wise Show
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I joined The Gas Man, out of Seattle, for my weekly spot at 5:35 PT. On a somewhat sore subject, we started out talking about the NBA, David Stern and the lockout situation. We followed that up discussing Steve Spurrier and what is happening at South Carolina this week, and finished off discussing the comments coming out of Boston College about ACC expansion.
Click here for the audio: The Gas Man
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Last Friday I joined The Sports Junkies in my normal slot. This segment we spoke about Tiger Woods and his continued lackluster play and discuss why he doesn't play more before moving into talk about the Tigers and Jim Leland then finished off discussing Skip Bayless and ESPN with Chris Cooley.
Click here for the audio: The Sports Junkies
Thursday, May 5, 2011
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?
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?
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Unfortunately Dan Snyder can not be ignored
When I opened up The Washington Post this morning and saw that Dan Snyder had ‘written,’ an op-ed defending his ridiculous lawsuit against The Washington City Paper I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. I also didn’t know whether to write about it or just ignore it. Perhaps no one on earth has ever deserved to be ignored more than Dan Snyder.
The problem is he can’t be ignored. He is relentlessly annoying and he has access to the media—any and all media in Washington—whenever he wants it. That doesn’t mean that access helps him. In fact, quite the opposite because every time he or one of his flunkies—today his latest overpaid lawyers were writing and talking on his behalf—opens up his or her mouth they just re-prove the point Dave McKenna was making in his now famous City Paper piece of last November.
It is almost pointless to revisit the claims Snyder is making in his bully lawsuit. Here’s what it boils down to: McKenna wrote a lengthy piece making fun of Snyder for being a bad owner and Snyder decided THIS was the guy to pick on. He wasn’t going to pick on The Washington Post because The Post still has plenty of money and lawyers on staff who deal with nuisance libel suits all the time so he decided—as bullies do—to pick on the little guy.
If you go back to the first letter Snyder’s lawyers sent to The City Paper it SAID we have money and you don’t so you better apologize before we spend you into bankruptcy defending yourself against this law suit. That’s the legal version of ‘give me your lunch money or I’ll beat you up.’
After the threats came Snyder’s media tour of radio row at The Super Bowl, complete with claims that he HAD to file the lawsuit because McKenna had attacked his wife, a cancer survivor and he simply couldn’t tolerate that. Of course the story in no way attacks Tanya Snyder, it simply says that she was part of the ‘new Dan Snyder,’ campaign, going on various shows to say he’d learned his lessons and was surrounded now by better people.
Snyder, who is accusing McKenna of making things up, simply made that up. About the only person who interviewed him that day who hadn’t done enough homework to know he had made that up was WFAN’s Mike Francesa, who thought attacking a cancer survivor was simply a terrible thing. He’s right—it is terrible. Except McKenna didn’t come close to doing it.
Then Snyder played the anti-semitic card, claiming the drawing that accompanied the piece depicting him as the devil was anti-semitic. He also said the lawsuit was the idea of his hapless new PR director (of about a year now) Tony Wyllie who took over for the equally hapless Karl Swanson.
Wyllie was responsible for much of the ‘new,’ Dan Snyder campaign: encouraging Snyder to talk to reporters more; doing silly, self-serving TV interviews with clueless interviewers; inviting the media to charity ribbon cuttings to remind people of all the wonderful things Snyder does for charity. He also called reporters who haven’t been nice to Snyder in the past to take them to lunch to convince them of the error of their ways.
My pal Sally Jenkins got a call and lunch. I got a call but no lunch. Damn.
Wyllie’s strategy wasn’t bad—especially after all the years of Swanson and the beyond-hapless Vinny Cerrato playing bad cop to Snyder’s worse cop. Somewhere along the line you need a good cop, especially when your team has been consistently mediocre, except when it has been awful.
A pause here for a quick word on Cerrato, who crawled out from under his rock a few weeks ago to appear on Mike Wise’s radio show. I like Wise, I really do, but why ANYONE would give Cerrato five minutes of airtime (or any space in the newspaper) is seriously beyond me. At one point when Wise, his co-host Holden Kushner and their producer Chris Johnson (a SERIOUSLY aggrieved Redskins fan) were trying to pin Cerrato down on something—anything—one of them asked Cerrato whose decision it was to sign Jeff George.
“I can’t recall,” Cerrato answered.
Jeez, all he had to do was add, “Senator,” to that line.
At one point during his Super Bowl tour Snyder said on one radio station something almost exactly like this: “Tony, who is, as you know, African-American, just felt we couldn’t let the anti-semitism involved here continue without defending ourselves.”
Oh, okay so because Tony is African-American he qualifies as an expert on anti-semitism? Does that mean that I can understand what it is like to be African-American because I’m Jewish? Maybe—MAYBE—one percent because Jews and African-Americans do still face prejudice, even in today’s society. That’s about it.
It is worth noting that the newly re-filed lawsuit makes no references to anti-semitism or McKenna picking on a cancer survivor—the two major reasons Snyder cited in February for filing the lawsuit. It picks on three facts, claiming that what McKenna wrote isn’t true. From what I’m told if McKenna got anything wrong he was technically wrong. For example: Snyder’s company paying a fine for forging documents may not make SNYDER the actual forger.
Here’s LD’s problem: in libel suits technicalities don’t matter. The plaintiff has to prove that the defendant was not only completely wrong but was wrong because of malice. One lawyer I heard on the 106.7 The Fan on Tuesday predicted that Snyder had ‘zero,’ percent chance of winning the suit and, pointing to the original letter, said this is clearly a bully lawsuit.
Then he said something that I thought was very smart: “The right way to do this is to use your access to the media FIRST. Dan Snyder has complete access to anyone and everyone in the Washington media including The Washington Post just by picking up a phone. If all he wants is to make the point that McKenna had it wrong, he can make that point through the media. A lawsuit should be his last resort. In Snyder’s case it was his first resort.”
The lawyer—whose name I can’t remember and can’t find on The 106.7 The Fan website because it is full of headlines about Snyder’s lawyer coming on to try to clear things up (oh please)—is very smart. He knows and everyone knows this has to do with Snyder proving that he’s richer and more powerful than The City Paper and can bully the paper and McKenna into an apology or a retraction and that will somehow prove that he’s RIGHT that the media is out to get him.
Perhaps Snyder should call up his op-ed (written for him apparently by Lanny Davis, who once represented Bill Clinton and has now officially reached the nadir of his career by going to work for Snyder) and read the comments about a piece that carries HIS byline. I only read about the first 100 posts but public opinion, after Davis stated his case for Snyder as eloquently as he could, was running about 100-to-1 against Snyder. My guess is the next 900 didn’t get much better.
So, apparently everyone is out to get Snyder. There’s an old saying: If you think everyone in the world is crazy, maybe you should look in the mirror. Of course there’s another old saying: If no one likes you then at least you know you’re not paranoid.
Congratulations, Dan. You’re not paranoid.
The problem is he can’t be ignored. He is relentlessly annoying and he has access to the media—any and all media in Washington—whenever he wants it. That doesn’t mean that access helps him. In fact, quite the opposite because every time he or one of his flunkies—today his latest overpaid lawyers were writing and talking on his behalf—opens up his or her mouth they just re-prove the point Dave McKenna was making in his now famous City Paper piece of last November.
It is almost pointless to revisit the claims Snyder is making in his bully lawsuit. Here’s what it boils down to: McKenna wrote a lengthy piece making fun of Snyder for being a bad owner and Snyder decided THIS was the guy to pick on. He wasn’t going to pick on The Washington Post because The Post still has plenty of money and lawyers on staff who deal with nuisance libel suits all the time so he decided—as bullies do—to pick on the little guy.
If you go back to the first letter Snyder’s lawyers sent to The City Paper it SAID we have money and you don’t so you better apologize before we spend you into bankruptcy defending yourself against this law suit. That’s the legal version of ‘give me your lunch money or I’ll beat you up.’
After the threats came Snyder’s media tour of radio row at The Super Bowl, complete with claims that he HAD to file the lawsuit because McKenna had attacked his wife, a cancer survivor and he simply couldn’t tolerate that. Of course the story in no way attacks Tanya Snyder, it simply says that she was part of the ‘new Dan Snyder,’ campaign, going on various shows to say he’d learned his lessons and was surrounded now by better people.
Snyder, who is accusing McKenna of making things up, simply made that up. About the only person who interviewed him that day who hadn’t done enough homework to know he had made that up was WFAN’s Mike Francesa, who thought attacking a cancer survivor was simply a terrible thing. He’s right—it is terrible. Except McKenna didn’t come close to doing it.
Then Snyder played the anti-semitic card, claiming the drawing that accompanied the piece depicting him as the devil was anti-semitic. He also said the lawsuit was the idea of his hapless new PR director (of about a year now) Tony Wyllie who took over for the equally hapless Karl Swanson.
Wyllie was responsible for much of the ‘new,’ Dan Snyder campaign: encouraging Snyder to talk to reporters more; doing silly, self-serving TV interviews with clueless interviewers; inviting the media to charity ribbon cuttings to remind people of all the wonderful things Snyder does for charity. He also called reporters who haven’t been nice to Snyder in the past to take them to lunch to convince them of the error of their ways.
My pal Sally Jenkins got a call and lunch. I got a call but no lunch. Damn.
Wyllie’s strategy wasn’t bad—especially after all the years of Swanson and the beyond-hapless Vinny Cerrato playing bad cop to Snyder’s worse cop. Somewhere along the line you need a good cop, especially when your team has been consistently mediocre, except when it has been awful.
A pause here for a quick word on Cerrato, who crawled out from under his rock a few weeks ago to appear on Mike Wise’s radio show. I like Wise, I really do, but why ANYONE would give Cerrato five minutes of airtime (or any space in the newspaper) is seriously beyond me. At one point when Wise, his co-host Holden Kushner and their producer Chris Johnson (a SERIOUSLY aggrieved Redskins fan) were trying to pin Cerrato down on something—anything—one of them asked Cerrato whose decision it was to sign Jeff George.
“I can’t recall,” Cerrato answered.
Jeez, all he had to do was add, “Senator,” to that line.
At one point during his Super Bowl tour Snyder said on one radio station something almost exactly like this: “Tony, who is, as you know, African-American, just felt we couldn’t let the anti-semitism involved here continue without defending ourselves.”
Oh, okay so because Tony is African-American he qualifies as an expert on anti-semitism? Does that mean that I can understand what it is like to be African-American because I’m Jewish? Maybe—MAYBE—one percent because Jews and African-Americans do still face prejudice, even in today’s society. That’s about it.
It is worth noting that the newly re-filed lawsuit makes no references to anti-semitism or McKenna picking on a cancer survivor—the two major reasons Snyder cited in February for filing the lawsuit. It picks on three facts, claiming that what McKenna wrote isn’t true. From what I’m told if McKenna got anything wrong he was technically wrong. For example: Snyder’s company paying a fine for forging documents may not make SNYDER the actual forger.
Here’s LD’s problem: in libel suits technicalities don’t matter. The plaintiff has to prove that the defendant was not only completely wrong but was wrong because of malice. One lawyer I heard on the 106.7 The Fan on Tuesday predicted that Snyder had ‘zero,’ percent chance of winning the suit and, pointing to the original letter, said this is clearly a bully lawsuit.
Then he said something that I thought was very smart: “The right way to do this is to use your access to the media FIRST. Dan Snyder has complete access to anyone and everyone in the Washington media including The Washington Post just by picking up a phone. If all he wants is to make the point that McKenna had it wrong, he can make that point through the media. A lawsuit should be his last resort. In Snyder’s case it was his first resort.”
The lawyer—whose name I can’t remember and can’t find on The 106.7 The Fan website because it is full of headlines about Snyder’s lawyer coming on to try to clear things up (oh please)—is very smart. He knows and everyone knows this has to do with Snyder proving that he’s richer and more powerful than The City Paper and can bully the paper and McKenna into an apology or a retraction and that will somehow prove that he’s RIGHT that the media is out to get him.
Perhaps Snyder should call up his op-ed (written for him apparently by Lanny Davis, who once represented Bill Clinton and has now officially reached the nadir of his career by going to work for Snyder) and read the comments about a piece that carries HIS byline. I only read about the first 100 posts but public opinion, after Davis stated his case for Snyder as eloquently as he could, was running about 100-to-1 against Snyder. My guess is the next 900 didn’t get much better.
So, apparently everyone is out to get Snyder. There’s an old saying: If you think everyone in the world is crazy, maybe you should look in the mirror. Of course there’s another old saying: If no one likes you then at least you know you’re not paranoid.
Congratulations, Dan. You’re not paranoid.
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
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.
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.
Thursday, February 3, 2011
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.
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.
Monday, December 20, 2010
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.
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.
Monday, November 15, 2010
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.
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.
Thursday, November 11, 2010
My thoughts on McNabb and the Shanahan explanations
The incident began, as the police like to say, when ESPN came out with one of its patented, ‘sources say,’ reports last Sunday. This one came from Chris Mortensen, someone I’ve known for years and someone who has absolute credibility when it comes to reporting what he’s been told. Mortensen reported that sources had told him that Mike and Kyle Shanahan had been forced to cut their playbook in half for Donovan McNabb.
That’s when I really got angry.
This came one week after the Shanahans had benched McNabb with 1:45 left in the Redskins game at Detroit with Washington trailing 31-25. They brought Rex Grossman into the game in McNabb’s place. Grossman hadn’t taken a single snap from center all season and isn’t exactly known for his mobility. In fact, McNabb had been dodging Lions all day because the Redskins STILL haven’t fixed their problems on the offensive line.
On his first snap, Grossman got sacked, fumbled and the Lions picked the ball up and ran into the end zone to end any chance the Redskins had to win the game.
Once it became clear that McNabb wasn’t hurt, that the Shanahans had simply decided to bench him, it was just as clear they had made a mistake. Check the results.
But that’s really not that big a deal. Coaches make mistakes all the time, just like players, officials and writers make mistakes. Here’s what you do when you make a mistake: You say, “I made a mistake,” and you move on. If Mike Shanahan had done that it would have been a one-day story.
But football coaches have more trouble saying the words “I made a mistake,” than any group of humans on earth this side of the BCS Presidents. So, instead of coming in after the game and saying, “Hey, I got mad at Donovan for a poor decision on an interception and played a hunch with Rex and it didn’t work,” Shanahan came in with some sort of hooey (a kind word) about McNabb not knowing the ‘two minute terminology.’ As if two minute terminology appears in the playbook in Swahili. I’ve read NFL playbooks. They are NOT that complicated in spite of what coaches try to tell you.
No one bought that story. So, the next day Shanahan tried something different. This time he said he was worried because McNabb had been hurt going into the game—he was the Redskins leading rusher in the game and had a 36-yard run at one point—and (I love this one) he was worried about his ‘cardiovascular,’ because he might have to call two plays in the huddle at once.
My first thought at that moment was that Shanahan must think the average IQ of people in Washington is about 12.
But okay, I wrote it off to Shanahan being one of those God-like football coaches who will do anything to avoid admitting a mistake. He’s like Fonzi in ‘Happy Days,’ when he used to try to say, ‘I’m ssssssssssssssssssssssorry.’
Then I saw Mortensen’s ‘report.’ That’s when I went on Washington Post Live and accused Shanahan of racial coding because I believe if he was Mortensen’s source that is absolutely what he was doing. In the last few days people have suggested to me that there are many, many people who could have fed Mort the information on McNabb’s alleged playbook inadequacies. In theory, I guess that’s true. I don’t buy it. Shanahan (Mike) has a direct pipeline to ESPN through Adam Schefter, who WROTE HIS BOOK. He negotiated with the Redskins through Schefter all of last fall: “ESPN’s Adam Schefter reports Buffalo Bills will offer him ONE BILLION DOLLARS.’ That sort of thing. Drive up the price, make it look as if everyone is after you. If someone told Schefter, ‘exclusively,’ that the moon was made of swiss cheese, he’d report it. Maybe that’s why the Shanahans didn’t go to Schefter this time. Mort certainly has far more credibility in general and especially in a Shanahan-related story. So, someone whispered to Mort that McNabb couldn’t learn the playbook.
I don’t think it was a player and I don’t think it was another assistant—unless he was acting under orders. I believe it was someone named Shanahan.
And if it was, Shanahan is a despicable human being and, yes, I think he’s using racial coding and yes I think he should be fired. If anyone wants to disagree with me about that; fine, just don’t give me the Steve Czaban (WTEM) copout that I’ve, ‘lost my mind.’
Really? Remember this was a week later. It wasn’t postgame frustration or even trying to cover yourself the next day. Shanahan had time to think about it and he decided that rather than continue to listen to people rip him not so much for making the move (everyone agrees he had an absolute right to bench his quarterback if saw fit) but for his ridiculous explanations as to why he made the move. So, somehow, someway, he got word to Mortensen that McNabb couldn’t learn the playbook. If someone was going under the bus it was going to be McNabb.
Now, I have serious problems with ‘according to sources,’ stories that simply allow one guy to rip another. The only time to use a blind quote as far as I’m concerned is if someone’s safety or job would be endangered by going on the record. Check my history you won’t see a lot of blind quotes. If I had a dollar for every time a coach told me NOT FOR ATTRIBUTION that someone was a cheat, I wouldn’t be writing this blog; I’d be sitting on my estate someplace warm deciding whether to start my day with a swim, a round of golf or by sitting by my pool reading a book.
But the way of the world today is ‘sources say.’ If the Shanahans were NOT the source—which I don’t believe—Mort should have called them to say, ‘true or not true?’ If they denied it, there’s no story. If they ‘no commented,’ and you HAD to go with the story—ESPN puts ridiculous pressure on these guys to produce alleged ‘news,’ all the time—you quote Mike Shanahan as saying ‘no comment.’ And then you call Donovan McNabb for a comment or a no comment. (His comment to the media when he came back after the bye week was that the notion that he couldn’t learn the entire playbook was, ‘hilarious.’)
But this isn’t about Mortensen. He’s a damn good reporter almost all the time. I’d like to have his batting average. This is about Shanahan. And if he did what I think he did it means, after giving it a week of thought, he was willing to have it put out there that his African-American quarterback wasn’t smart enough to learn the playbook. One week after FIRST calling him too dumb to learn the two-minute terminology he goes back to the same well.
Inexcusable.
And please don’t tell me he could have said the same thing about a white quarterback. He didn’t. Even in 2010 there are people who are going to instantly buy into the ridiculous stereotype. In fact, many of the e-mails I’ve gotten have been saying, ‘well what if he didn’t know the playbook?’ Let me tell you something: Donovan McNabb hasn’t had a borderline Hall of Fame career because he’s stupid. Let me tell you something else: before he traded a second and third round draft pick for McNabb, Mike Shanahan looked at tape of him running the Eagles offense; running their two minute drill and making decisions. He also talked to people about McNabb and what he could or could not do. And THEN he traded for him. So if McNabb is so damn stupid he can’t learn the playbook, how stupid is Shanahan for trading for him?
The funny thing about all this is Redskins fans will forgive Shanahan for this despicable behavior if McNabb performs well the second half of the season and the Redskins make the playoffs. Of course if McNabb DOESN’T perform well people will say Shanahan was right all along. In a sense, Shanahan can’t lose on this one. And I think he knew that even before Mortensen ‘broke,’ his story.
Trust me, I don’t think he's stupid. But I do think he's a very bad guy.
-------------------
One note: I've been behind reading posts because of baby-duties (Jane, for those who asked was just a name my wife and I liked and I was a big Blythe Danner fan years ago and thought the two names combined were cool) but someone reading my BCS column asked why I don't rip my colleague in the AP for being a part of the BCS conspiracy: Here's the problem: The AP dropped out of the BCS several years ago BECAUSE it didn't want to be part of the system anymore, believing it should not have any influence on the national championship. That said, I DID plead with my colleagues publicly before the final vote last January to vote for Boise State to send a message to the BCS that they don't completely control the sport. I think Boise State got two votes. Ouch.
That’s when I really got angry.
This came one week after the Shanahans had benched McNabb with 1:45 left in the Redskins game at Detroit with Washington trailing 31-25. They brought Rex Grossman into the game in McNabb’s place. Grossman hadn’t taken a single snap from center all season and isn’t exactly known for his mobility. In fact, McNabb had been dodging Lions all day because the Redskins STILL haven’t fixed their problems on the offensive line.
On his first snap, Grossman got sacked, fumbled and the Lions picked the ball up and ran into the end zone to end any chance the Redskins had to win the game.
Once it became clear that McNabb wasn’t hurt, that the Shanahans had simply decided to bench him, it was just as clear they had made a mistake. Check the results.
But that’s really not that big a deal. Coaches make mistakes all the time, just like players, officials and writers make mistakes. Here’s what you do when you make a mistake: You say, “I made a mistake,” and you move on. If Mike Shanahan had done that it would have been a one-day story.
But football coaches have more trouble saying the words “I made a mistake,” than any group of humans on earth this side of the BCS Presidents. So, instead of coming in after the game and saying, “Hey, I got mad at Donovan for a poor decision on an interception and played a hunch with Rex and it didn’t work,” Shanahan came in with some sort of hooey (a kind word) about McNabb not knowing the ‘two minute terminology.’ As if two minute terminology appears in the playbook in Swahili. I’ve read NFL playbooks. They are NOT that complicated in spite of what coaches try to tell you.
No one bought that story. So, the next day Shanahan tried something different. This time he said he was worried because McNabb had been hurt going into the game—he was the Redskins leading rusher in the game and had a 36-yard run at one point—and (I love this one) he was worried about his ‘cardiovascular,’ because he might have to call two plays in the huddle at once.
My first thought at that moment was that Shanahan must think the average IQ of people in Washington is about 12.
But okay, I wrote it off to Shanahan being one of those God-like football coaches who will do anything to avoid admitting a mistake. He’s like Fonzi in ‘Happy Days,’ when he used to try to say, ‘I’m ssssssssssssssssssssssorry.’
Then I saw Mortensen’s ‘report.’ That’s when I went on Washington Post Live and accused Shanahan of racial coding because I believe if he was Mortensen’s source that is absolutely what he was doing. In the last few days people have suggested to me that there are many, many people who could have fed Mort the information on McNabb’s alleged playbook inadequacies. In theory, I guess that’s true. I don’t buy it. Shanahan (Mike) has a direct pipeline to ESPN through Adam Schefter, who WROTE HIS BOOK. He negotiated with the Redskins through Schefter all of last fall: “ESPN’s Adam Schefter reports Buffalo Bills will offer him ONE BILLION DOLLARS.’ That sort of thing. Drive up the price, make it look as if everyone is after you. If someone told Schefter, ‘exclusively,’ that the moon was made of swiss cheese, he’d report it. Maybe that’s why the Shanahans didn’t go to Schefter this time. Mort certainly has far more credibility in general and especially in a Shanahan-related story. So, someone whispered to Mort that McNabb couldn’t learn the playbook.
I don’t think it was a player and I don’t think it was another assistant—unless he was acting under orders. I believe it was someone named Shanahan.
And if it was, Shanahan is a despicable human being and, yes, I think he’s using racial coding and yes I think he should be fired. If anyone wants to disagree with me about that; fine, just don’t give me the Steve Czaban (WTEM) copout that I’ve, ‘lost my mind.’
Really? Remember this was a week later. It wasn’t postgame frustration or even trying to cover yourself the next day. Shanahan had time to think about it and he decided that rather than continue to listen to people rip him not so much for making the move (everyone agrees he had an absolute right to bench his quarterback if saw fit) but for his ridiculous explanations as to why he made the move. So, somehow, someway, he got word to Mortensen that McNabb couldn’t learn the playbook. If someone was going under the bus it was going to be McNabb.
Now, I have serious problems with ‘according to sources,’ stories that simply allow one guy to rip another. The only time to use a blind quote as far as I’m concerned is if someone’s safety or job would be endangered by going on the record. Check my history you won’t see a lot of blind quotes. If I had a dollar for every time a coach told me NOT FOR ATTRIBUTION that someone was a cheat, I wouldn’t be writing this blog; I’d be sitting on my estate someplace warm deciding whether to start my day with a swim, a round of golf or by sitting by my pool reading a book.
But the way of the world today is ‘sources say.’ If the Shanahans were NOT the source—which I don’t believe—Mort should have called them to say, ‘true or not true?’ If they denied it, there’s no story. If they ‘no commented,’ and you HAD to go with the story—ESPN puts ridiculous pressure on these guys to produce alleged ‘news,’ all the time—you quote Mike Shanahan as saying ‘no comment.’ And then you call Donovan McNabb for a comment or a no comment. (His comment to the media when he came back after the bye week was that the notion that he couldn’t learn the entire playbook was, ‘hilarious.’)
But this isn’t about Mortensen. He’s a damn good reporter almost all the time. I’d like to have his batting average. This is about Shanahan. And if he did what I think he did it means, after giving it a week of thought, he was willing to have it put out there that his African-American quarterback wasn’t smart enough to learn the playbook. One week after FIRST calling him too dumb to learn the two-minute terminology he goes back to the same well.
Inexcusable.
And please don’t tell me he could have said the same thing about a white quarterback. He didn’t. Even in 2010 there are people who are going to instantly buy into the ridiculous stereotype. In fact, many of the e-mails I’ve gotten have been saying, ‘well what if he didn’t know the playbook?’ Let me tell you something: Donovan McNabb hasn’t had a borderline Hall of Fame career because he’s stupid. Let me tell you something else: before he traded a second and third round draft pick for McNabb, Mike Shanahan looked at tape of him running the Eagles offense; running their two minute drill and making decisions. He also talked to people about McNabb and what he could or could not do. And THEN he traded for him. So if McNabb is so damn stupid he can’t learn the playbook, how stupid is Shanahan for trading for him?
The funny thing about all this is Redskins fans will forgive Shanahan for this despicable behavior if McNabb performs well the second half of the season and the Redskins make the playoffs. Of course if McNabb DOESN’T perform well people will say Shanahan was right all along. In a sense, Shanahan can’t lose on this one. And I think he knew that even before Mortensen ‘broke,’ his story.
Trust me, I don’t think he's stupid. But I do think he's a very bad guy.
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One note: I've been behind reading posts because of baby-duties (Jane, for those who asked was just a name my wife and I liked and I was a big Blythe Danner fan years ago and thought the two names combined were cool) but someone reading my BCS column asked why I don't rip my colleague in the AP for being a part of the BCS conspiracy: Here's the problem: The AP dropped out of the BCS several years ago BECAUSE it didn't want to be part of the system anymore, believing it should not have any influence on the national championship. That said, I DID plead with my colleagues publicly before the final vote last January to vote for Boise State to send a message to the BCS that they don't completely control the sport. I think Boise State got two votes. Ouch.
This week's radio segments (The Sports Reporters, Tony Kornheiser Show)
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 started out the discussion on Navy's big win at East Carolina, then followed it up with a lot of talk on Shanahan-McNabb-Mortensen and all things Redskins.
Click here to listen to the segment: The Sports Reporters
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On Thursday morning, I joined Tony Kornheiser on his newest The Tony Kornheiser Show in my normal 11:05 ET timeslot. This week we talked about Tony finding ESPNU on his TV to watch College of Charleston vs. Maryland, discussed the upcoming BB&T Classic triple-header and other aspects in college basketball before finishing with the Cam Newton situation.
Click here to listen to the segment: The Tony Kornheiser Show
Click here to listen to the segment: The Sports Reporters
-----------
On Thursday morning, I joined Tony Kornheiser on his newest The Tony Kornheiser Show in my normal 11:05 ET timeslot. This week we talked about Tony finding ESPNU on his TV to watch College of Charleston vs. Maryland, discussed the upcoming BB&T Classic triple-header and other aspects in college basketball before finishing with the Cam Newton situation.
Click here to listen to the segment: The Tony Kornheiser Show
Thursday, November 4, 2010
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.
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.
*Updated* This week's radio segments (The Sports Reporters, The Gas Man, Tony Kornheiser Show)
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. This week the topics included the Redskins situation, including Shanahan's Nixonian posturing along with what happens next with McNabb, then we moved on to Ralph Friedgen and the circumstances at Maryland, before finishing with brief talk on the Duke-Navy football game last Saturday.
Click here to listen to the segment: The Sports Reporters
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I also joined The Gas Man in the normal 8:25 ET timeslot on Wednesday. This week we discussed The World Series, the state of baseball in America including how the start times dictate how many kids watch the games, this weekends golf tournament in Shanghai including Tiger Woods, and various other topics.
Click here to listen to the segment: The Gas Man
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On Thursday morning, I joined Tony Kornheiser on his newest The Tony Kornheiser Show in my normal 11:05 ET timeslot. This week we talked family, Ralph Friedgen's job status, the Notre Dame situations and Tiger Woods at this weeks tournament in Shanghai.
Click here to listen to the segment: The Tony Kornheiser Show
Click here to listen to the segment: The Sports Reporters
-----------
I also joined The Gas Man in the normal 8:25 ET timeslot on Wednesday. This week we discussed The World Series, the state of baseball in America including how the start times dictate how many kids watch the games, this weekends golf tournament in Shanghai including Tiger Woods, and various other topics.
Click here to listen to the segment: The Gas Man
-----------
On Thursday morning, I joined Tony Kornheiser on his newest The Tony Kornheiser Show in my normal 11:05 ET timeslot. This week we talked family, Ralph Friedgen's job status, the Notre Dame situations and Tiger Woods at this weeks tournament in Shanghai.
Click here to listen to the segment: The Tony Kornheiser Show
Monday, October 11, 2010
“How did the other team feel?”
Among the many great ‘Peanuts,’ strip drawn by the immortal Charles Schulz, one of my favorites is the one in which Linus is telling Charlie Brown about the ending of a football game. I’m paraphrasing, but he says something like: “It was amazing Charlie Brown, our team was behind with one second left in the game and we were on the one-yard line and the quarterback threw a pass all the way down the field and the receiver caught it and ran in for a touchdown. Everyone was screaming and yelling and celebrating. You should have seen it!”
At that point Charlie Brown looks at Linus and says: “How did the other team feel?”
That strip ran through my head right after the final play of Navy’s 28-27 victory over Wake Forest in Winston-Salem on Saturday night. Needless to say I was thrilled for Navy and enjoyed watching the players and coaches pour onto the field to celebrate after Wake’s final pass had fallen incomplete ending a wildly entertaining (and, for the record, poorly officiated) football game.
Then I looked at the Wake players, some sitting on the field in shock, others walking slowly across the field to congratulate the Midshipmen. I felt it even more when the Demon Deacons followed the Mids to the far corner of the field to stand at attention for the playing of the Navy alma mater. Wake’s always been a class school and Jim Grobe is a class coach. My guess is his players are the same way. This was their second consecutive loss when the opponent scored in the game’s last 30 seconds.
And so I thought of Linus and Charlie Brown.
Of course endings like that take place in sports all the time. For every Mookie Wilson, there’s a Bill Buckner and for every Bobby Thompson, there’s a Ralph Branca. You feel it more acutely though for non-pros—which might eliminate some big-time college football and basketball programs from the mix. I certainly felt it in Indianapolis last April when Gordon Hayward’s last second shot rolled off the rim and Butler missed beating Duke in the national championship game by exactly that much.
Sure, I was happy for my alma mater and happier for Mike Krzyzewski—my feelings about my alma mater as most people know are decidedly mixed—but watching the Butler players and thinking about what a victory for them would have meant in the basketball and sports pantheon, I couldn’t help but feel some disappointment.
But that’s what makes sports so compelling. We all feel terrible for Brooks Conrad—even a San Francisco Giants fan has to feel badly for him even if he’s happy his team won on Sunday—but the way Conrad got to that moment is a dramatic story in itself. Almost every day and certainly ever week, stories play out across the country and the world that we should care about even if no one involved is going to any Hall of Fame. Athletes who are worthy of our attention, our support and, in some cases, our sympathy when they come up just short, compete because they love to compete; because they want to win but also because they understand that losing may hurt but it isn’t—shouldn’t be—the end of the world.
Maybe that’s why I get so angry at the rich and famous who never take responsibility for their actions—on or off the playing fields. I’m a sucker for underdogs and for those who try like hell even when they know they have virtually no chance of winning. We all are to some degree. Even in Masters swimming, when one of the older swimmers comes chugging in at the end of a long race well behind everyone else, everyone in the pool gives them a round of applause.
Many swimmers call it, ‘the dreaded sympathy clap.’ I got one the first time I tried to swim a 200 butterfly as a Masters swimmer. I almost didn’t finish. My stroke was so bad the final length of the pool that a friend of mine, seeing the stroke and turn judge eyeing me closely said, “he’s still legal.” The stroke and turn judge said to him, “Don’t worry, I’m not going to DQ him, he’s already suffered enough.”
God knows that was true.
So please don’t ask me to lose any sleep over the fact that the SEC might not get a team to the national championship game this year. I might feel some sympathy for the players, but certainly not for the coaches, the administrators or the fans. I don’t feel a lot of sympathy for any of the so-called big-time schools. Alabama losing to South Carolina isn’t a whole lot different than the choking dog Green Bay Packers losing to the Washington Redskins. (Am I bitter? You bet).
Other than the celebrity photos from each of the six Bruce Edwards Celebrity Golf Classics, I have one photo in my office with an athlete in it. It’s from the 1995 Army-Navy game. That was the year that I researched ‘A Civil War,’ and it was taken right after the playing of the two alma maters. In the photo, Andrew Thompson, Navy’s defensive captain that year, is crying on my shoulder. A few minutes later, he cried on the shoulder of Jim Cantelupe—who was Army’s defensive captain that year.
Just in case you think that Thompson wasn’t a tough guy because he shed a lot of tears after Army drove 99 yards to win that game, 14-13, you should know that he is currently a major in The Marine Corps who has served in Iraq. Believe me, you’d want him on your side in any sort of fight. You would also be proud to call him a friend.
My point is this: We all celebrate victories—our own and those of individuals we root for and teams we root for. God knows I will celebrate if the Islanders ever win another Stanley Cup or the Mets ever win another World Series. (Not holding my breath on either). But when we celebrate—especially when the competition involves kids—we should all pause to think about what Charlie Brown said to Linus. On Saturday night, as happy as I was for Navy, I couldn't help but wonder how the other team felt.
At that point Charlie Brown looks at Linus and says: “How did the other team feel?”
That strip ran through my head right after the final play of Navy’s 28-27 victory over Wake Forest in Winston-Salem on Saturday night. Needless to say I was thrilled for Navy and enjoyed watching the players and coaches pour onto the field to celebrate after Wake’s final pass had fallen incomplete ending a wildly entertaining (and, for the record, poorly officiated) football game.
Then I looked at the Wake players, some sitting on the field in shock, others walking slowly across the field to congratulate the Midshipmen. I felt it even more when the Demon Deacons followed the Mids to the far corner of the field to stand at attention for the playing of the Navy alma mater. Wake’s always been a class school and Jim Grobe is a class coach. My guess is his players are the same way. This was their second consecutive loss when the opponent scored in the game’s last 30 seconds.
And so I thought of Linus and Charlie Brown.
Of course endings like that take place in sports all the time. For every Mookie Wilson, there’s a Bill Buckner and for every Bobby Thompson, there’s a Ralph Branca. You feel it more acutely though for non-pros—which might eliminate some big-time college football and basketball programs from the mix. I certainly felt it in Indianapolis last April when Gordon Hayward’s last second shot rolled off the rim and Butler missed beating Duke in the national championship game by exactly that much.
Sure, I was happy for my alma mater and happier for Mike Krzyzewski—my feelings about my alma mater as most people know are decidedly mixed—but watching the Butler players and thinking about what a victory for them would have meant in the basketball and sports pantheon, I couldn’t help but feel some disappointment.
But that’s what makes sports so compelling. We all feel terrible for Brooks Conrad—even a San Francisco Giants fan has to feel badly for him even if he’s happy his team won on Sunday—but the way Conrad got to that moment is a dramatic story in itself. Almost every day and certainly ever week, stories play out across the country and the world that we should care about even if no one involved is going to any Hall of Fame. Athletes who are worthy of our attention, our support and, in some cases, our sympathy when they come up just short, compete because they love to compete; because they want to win but also because they understand that losing may hurt but it isn’t—shouldn’t be—the end of the world.
Maybe that’s why I get so angry at the rich and famous who never take responsibility for their actions—on or off the playing fields. I’m a sucker for underdogs and for those who try like hell even when they know they have virtually no chance of winning. We all are to some degree. Even in Masters swimming, when one of the older swimmers comes chugging in at the end of a long race well behind everyone else, everyone in the pool gives them a round of applause.
Many swimmers call it, ‘the dreaded sympathy clap.’ I got one the first time I tried to swim a 200 butterfly as a Masters swimmer. I almost didn’t finish. My stroke was so bad the final length of the pool that a friend of mine, seeing the stroke and turn judge eyeing me closely said, “he’s still legal.” The stroke and turn judge said to him, “Don’t worry, I’m not going to DQ him, he’s already suffered enough.”
God knows that was true.
So please don’t ask me to lose any sleep over the fact that the SEC might not get a team to the national championship game this year. I might feel some sympathy for the players, but certainly not for the coaches, the administrators or the fans. I don’t feel a lot of sympathy for any of the so-called big-time schools. Alabama losing to South Carolina isn’t a whole lot different than the choking dog Green Bay Packers losing to the Washington Redskins. (Am I bitter? You bet).
Other than the celebrity photos from each of the six Bruce Edwards Celebrity Golf Classics, I have one photo in my office with an athlete in it. It’s from the 1995 Army-Navy game. That was the year that I researched ‘A Civil War,’ and it was taken right after the playing of the two alma maters. In the photo, Andrew Thompson, Navy’s defensive captain that year, is crying on my shoulder. A few minutes later, he cried on the shoulder of Jim Cantelupe—who was Army’s defensive captain that year.
Just in case you think that Thompson wasn’t a tough guy because he shed a lot of tears after Army drove 99 yards to win that game, 14-13, you should know that he is currently a major in The Marine Corps who has served in Iraq. Believe me, you’d want him on your side in any sort of fight. You would also be proud to call him a friend.
My point is this: We all celebrate victories—our own and those of individuals we root for and teams we root for. God knows I will celebrate if the Islanders ever win another Stanley Cup or the Mets ever win another World Series. (Not holding my breath on either). But when we celebrate—especially when the competition involves kids—we should all pause to think about what Charlie Brown said to Linus. On Saturday night, as happy as I was for Navy, I couldn't help but wonder how the other team felt.
Monday, September 27, 2010
Redskins' sense of entitlement leads to ‘overlooking’ the Rams -- gloom again in Snyder-ville
It is a cold, rainy and dreary Monday morning in Washington.
Which is perfect.
There is gloom again in the Snyder-ville. Do I sound a bit giddy? You bet. I’ve said it before and I’ve said it again: Dan Snyder can’t lose enough.
I really don’t have any issues with those who play for The Washington Redskins, other than perhaps Albert Haynesworth who had the nerve to tell a radio show last week that no matter how much money the Redskins paid him he didn’t have to be “a slave,”—his depiction of being asked to show up for offseason workouts like every other member of the team. Next thing you know Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton will be demanding that Haynesworth be freed from bondage.
Actually it is the Redskins who are stuck—with Haynesworth who not only has made a total of two tackles all season in return for the $21 million bonus he was paid in April but continues to act like a complete dope. In the same interview he goes on to say the team ‘can’t buy his loyalty.’ They didn’t pay him to be loyal, they paid him to get into shape and play well; he’s done neither. Then after the game Sunday he said the team had probably overlooked the Rams.
A team that was 4-12 a year ago can overlook someone? Anyone? The Redskins shouldn’t overlook The Fordham Rams right now much less the St. Louis Rams.
All of which gets to a very smart column written this morning by my colleague Tom Boswell in The Washington Post. I tease Boz often about his unabashed loyalty to all of Washington’s teams even though it is perfectly understandable. He grew up here, suffered through the 34 seasons without Major League Baseball and is especially thrilled when the Nationals do anything right.
His enthusiasm is part of what makes Boz great—especially when writing on baseball. It was perhaps best described back in 2005 when The Nationals, in their first year in DC, got off to a very surprising start and actually led the National League East into July. When Tony Kornheiser said to Barry Svrluga, then the Nats beat writer during a radio interview that, “Boz had high hopes for this team early in the season,” Svrluga replied, “Boz had high hopes for this team when the bunting drills went well in February.”
It takes a lot for Boz to truly get down on a local team. A week ago he saw the glass at least half full after the Redskins lost in overtime to Houston. Sure the loss was disappointing he said, but what the game showed was that Donovan McNabb was going to be a productive quarterback in Washington for years to come.
This morning he wasn’t quite as upbeat. And he cut right to the heart of the matter when he pointed out that there is a unique sense of entitlement that surrounds the Redskins; that players seem to think they’re special and fans always think the Redskins simply SHOULD be good because they’re the Redskins.
That’s been true since George Allen took over in Washington but it has gotten worse since Snyder bought the team 11 years ago. We’re talking about a guy who sends out invitations to sit in his box for a FOOTBALL game that look like they’re for a royal wedding. (No, I’ve never received one but I’ve SEEN one).
This off-season, Snyder finally got rid of his bully-boy flak, Karl Swanson, in large part because not enough people bought Snyder’s story that it wasn’t his fault that Jim Zorn bombed as coach. He hired a young guy named Tony Wyllie, whose job is apparently Snyder image-repair. (If this works out maybe Tiger can hire him. That’s my one line for all you Tiger-lovers today). Wyllie spent a lot of the offseason inviting media types to Snyder charity ribbon-cuttings where Snyder would deign to speak to them. This was pretty smart: Snyder speaks—and says almost nothing—and the cameras show or the reporters write something like, “Snyder, speaking at a school where he is contributing x-dollars for scholarships…”
Wyllie has also taken to calling reporters who haven’t bought into Snyder to have lunch with them. Sally Jenkins got a call during pre-season. I got my call a few weeks ago. When I did I said, “Tony, I’d be glad to have lunch with you but why waste your time on me? I don’t even cover the team on a regular basis. You have to have more important things to do than talk to me.”
“Well,” Wyllie said, “you may not cover the team regularly but you certainly don’t mind criticizing Mr. Snyder on Washington Post Live.”
True, I don’t. That’s a local show here in DC that I’m on once a week and I do criticize Snyder—someone has to do it. That particular week I’d criticized the Redskins for firing Zach Bolno, who worked one slot down from Wyllie and who was one of the few people in the Redskins organization universally respected by everyone who dealt with the team. Bolno is bright, hard-working and honest. Needless to say, he had to be fired. That may be just about what I said about the firing on WPL.
I was actually sort of impressed that Wyllie would even bother to call me and talk about breaking bread until he said this: “Have you ever even met Mr. Snyder?”
Come on Tony, at least do some homework before you pick up a phone. “Yes, I’ve met DAN,” I answered. “We’ve spoken on a number of different occasions.”
Long pause. He’d clearly been going for the Snyder, ‘you don’t know me well enough to criticize me,’ line but that wasn’t going to work. He’d come un-prepared. Never good.
“Okay,” he said. “Um, well, why are you so critical of Mr. Snyder?”
“Because I think he’s a terrible owner.”
“Oh.”
“You still want to have lunch Tony?”
“Yes, sure I do. I’ll call you when we get back from Arizona.” (Last exhibition game).
Well, I know Wyllie got out of Arizona because I saw him standing almost on top of Clinton Portis last night making sure Portis didn’t say anything un-toward about his second half benching. Still no phone call. I guess that means I don’t have to buy.
I also don’t have any particular issues with Mike Shanahan. He comes from the secretive, humorless school of coaching and he was willing to give up about 47 seconds of his time to the media after the Redskins embarrassing 30-16 loss to the St. Louis Rams on Sunday. To me, he’s like most NFL coaches—except he does have a track record of success that makes it seem laughable that people here are already wringing their hands and claiming he’s another Zorn after three games.
That’s ridiculous of course. As Boz pointed out people forget how bad this team has been. The Redskins are now 7-20 since starting the 2008 season 6-2, under the now-hated by all Washington fans, Zorn. Shanahan hasn’t bowled anyone over yet—especially with four of his six draft picks getting cut—but you can’t judge any coach after three games. Not only is there a lot of this season left, but Shanahan has a five year contract and even Snyder isn’t going to be arrogant enough to not give a guy with his track record some time to get things turned around.
All of that said, how bad can a morning be when two of my local radio friends Andy Pollin and Kevin Sheehan, each an un-apologetic Redskins lover, play back audio of the opening kickoff in which Redskins kicker Graham Gano kicked the ball out-of-bounds.
“Maybe having to get ready to punt messed up his follow-through on the kickoff and he hooked it,” said play-by-play man/Snyder-Redskins Apologist No. 1 (that’s an official title) Larry Michael. Gano had to punt during the game because of a pre-game injury to the team’s punter. He had not yet actually punted except during those always grueling pre-game warmups.
“Oh come on Larry,” Pollin screamed. “You can’t start making excuses on the opening kickoff!”
Here in Washington you can and you do. Way to go Larry. You set a record that can be tied, but can't be broken.
Which is perfect.
There is gloom again in the Snyder-ville. Do I sound a bit giddy? You bet. I’ve said it before and I’ve said it again: Dan Snyder can’t lose enough.
I really don’t have any issues with those who play for The Washington Redskins, other than perhaps Albert Haynesworth who had the nerve to tell a radio show last week that no matter how much money the Redskins paid him he didn’t have to be “a slave,”—his depiction of being asked to show up for offseason workouts like every other member of the team. Next thing you know Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton will be demanding that Haynesworth be freed from bondage.
Actually it is the Redskins who are stuck—with Haynesworth who not only has made a total of two tackles all season in return for the $21 million bonus he was paid in April but continues to act like a complete dope. In the same interview he goes on to say the team ‘can’t buy his loyalty.’ They didn’t pay him to be loyal, they paid him to get into shape and play well; he’s done neither. Then after the game Sunday he said the team had probably overlooked the Rams.
A team that was 4-12 a year ago can overlook someone? Anyone? The Redskins shouldn’t overlook The Fordham Rams right now much less the St. Louis Rams.
All of which gets to a very smart column written this morning by my colleague Tom Boswell in The Washington Post. I tease Boz often about his unabashed loyalty to all of Washington’s teams even though it is perfectly understandable. He grew up here, suffered through the 34 seasons without Major League Baseball and is especially thrilled when the Nationals do anything right.
His enthusiasm is part of what makes Boz great—especially when writing on baseball. It was perhaps best described back in 2005 when The Nationals, in their first year in DC, got off to a very surprising start and actually led the National League East into July. When Tony Kornheiser said to Barry Svrluga, then the Nats beat writer during a radio interview that, “Boz had high hopes for this team early in the season,” Svrluga replied, “Boz had high hopes for this team when the bunting drills went well in February.”
It takes a lot for Boz to truly get down on a local team. A week ago he saw the glass at least half full after the Redskins lost in overtime to Houston. Sure the loss was disappointing he said, but what the game showed was that Donovan McNabb was going to be a productive quarterback in Washington for years to come.
This morning he wasn’t quite as upbeat. And he cut right to the heart of the matter when he pointed out that there is a unique sense of entitlement that surrounds the Redskins; that players seem to think they’re special and fans always think the Redskins simply SHOULD be good because they’re the Redskins.
That’s been true since George Allen took over in Washington but it has gotten worse since Snyder bought the team 11 years ago. We’re talking about a guy who sends out invitations to sit in his box for a FOOTBALL game that look like they’re for a royal wedding. (No, I’ve never received one but I’ve SEEN one).
This off-season, Snyder finally got rid of his bully-boy flak, Karl Swanson, in large part because not enough people bought Snyder’s story that it wasn’t his fault that Jim Zorn bombed as coach. He hired a young guy named Tony Wyllie, whose job is apparently Snyder image-repair. (If this works out maybe Tiger can hire him. That’s my one line for all you Tiger-lovers today). Wyllie spent a lot of the offseason inviting media types to Snyder charity ribbon-cuttings where Snyder would deign to speak to them. This was pretty smart: Snyder speaks—and says almost nothing—and the cameras show or the reporters write something like, “Snyder, speaking at a school where he is contributing x-dollars for scholarships…”
Wyllie has also taken to calling reporters who haven’t bought into Snyder to have lunch with them. Sally Jenkins got a call during pre-season. I got my call a few weeks ago. When I did I said, “Tony, I’d be glad to have lunch with you but why waste your time on me? I don’t even cover the team on a regular basis. You have to have more important things to do than talk to me.”
“Well,” Wyllie said, “you may not cover the team regularly but you certainly don’t mind criticizing Mr. Snyder on Washington Post Live.”
True, I don’t. That’s a local show here in DC that I’m on once a week and I do criticize Snyder—someone has to do it. That particular week I’d criticized the Redskins for firing Zach Bolno, who worked one slot down from Wyllie and who was one of the few people in the Redskins organization universally respected by everyone who dealt with the team. Bolno is bright, hard-working and honest. Needless to say, he had to be fired. That may be just about what I said about the firing on WPL.
I was actually sort of impressed that Wyllie would even bother to call me and talk about breaking bread until he said this: “Have you ever even met Mr. Snyder?”
Come on Tony, at least do some homework before you pick up a phone. “Yes, I’ve met DAN,” I answered. “We’ve spoken on a number of different occasions.”
Long pause. He’d clearly been going for the Snyder, ‘you don’t know me well enough to criticize me,’ line but that wasn’t going to work. He’d come un-prepared. Never good.
“Okay,” he said. “Um, well, why are you so critical of Mr. Snyder?”
“Because I think he’s a terrible owner.”
“Oh.”
“You still want to have lunch Tony?”
“Yes, sure I do. I’ll call you when we get back from Arizona.” (Last exhibition game).
Well, I know Wyllie got out of Arizona because I saw him standing almost on top of Clinton Portis last night making sure Portis didn’t say anything un-toward about his second half benching. Still no phone call. I guess that means I don’t have to buy.
I also don’t have any particular issues with Mike Shanahan. He comes from the secretive, humorless school of coaching and he was willing to give up about 47 seconds of his time to the media after the Redskins embarrassing 30-16 loss to the St. Louis Rams on Sunday. To me, he’s like most NFL coaches—except he does have a track record of success that makes it seem laughable that people here are already wringing their hands and claiming he’s another Zorn after three games.
That’s ridiculous of course. As Boz pointed out people forget how bad this team has been. The Redskins are now 7-20 since starting the 2008 season 6-2, under the now-hated by all Washington fans, Zorn. Shanahan hasn’t bowled anyone over yet—especially with four of his six draft picks getting cut—but you can’t judge any coach after three games. Not only is there a lot of this season left, but Shanahan has a five year contract and even Snyder isn’t going to be arrogant enough to not give a guy with his track record some time to get things turned around.
All of that said, how bad can a morning be when two of my local radio friends Andy Pollin and Kevin Sheehan, each an un-apologetic Redskins lover, play back audio of the opening kickoff in which Redskins kicker Graham Gano kicked the ball out-of-bounds.
“Maybe having to get ready to punt messed up his follow-through on the kickoff and he hooked it,” said play-by-play man/Snyder-Redskins Apologist No. 1 (that’s an official title) Larry Michael. Gano had to punt during the game because of a pre-game injury to the team’s punter. He had not yet actually punted except during those always grueling pre-game warmups.
“Oh come on Larry,” Pollin screamed. “You can’t start making excuses on the opening kickoff!”
Here in Washington you can and you do. Way to go Larry. You set a record that can be tied, but can't be broken.
Monday, September 20, 2010
Observations from the weekend – Cowboys, Redskins and the rest of the East, Brett Favre, Mark Dantonio, Notre Dame and yes, The Davis Cup
Some quick observations from the weekend:
-- Question one: Am I crazy or has Jerry Jones turned into Dan Snyder? The Cowboys appear to be a fantasy league football team: lots of names and apparent stars but a lousy team. They have a field goal kicker who has trouble, well, kicking field goals. They have a quarterback who puts up lovely stats and never seems to win a tough game. They have 43 running backs but no running game.
I’m not declaring them dead after two games. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if they beat the Houston Texans next week because the Texans are coming off two emotional wins—the Colts and a come-from-behind overtime win in Washington—and have a pass defense that let Joey Galloway (who is 57-years-old) get behind it for a 62 yard catch on Sunday.
So here’s my question: Does Wade Phillips last the season? I mean seriously this guy has become Jerry Manuel: he’s just good enough to keep his job but is guaranteed to never win anything that matters—which used to what you were supposed to do in Dallas until Jones decided face-lifts, selling pizza and building a monument to his ego were the keys to success in life. How much do you think Jimmy Johnson has enjoyed these last 14 years?
-- Question two: Is anyone in the NFC East any good? The Colts made the Giants look like a UFL team Sunday night. That game needed The Little League mercy rule and should have been over at halftime. Not many people would have noticed since the first half took about nine hours to play. (What is it with NBC? Their Notre Dame games take forever and so do their Sunday night games. Maybe they need the extra time so Chris Collinsworth can tell us how great the fall lineup is).
The Giants beat a bad Carolina team last week at home, then got crushed by the Colts. I’m certainly not sold on them. The Eagles, even with Mike Vick’s gaudy numbers, were lucky to get out of Detroit alive even with Matthew Stafford injured. Shaun Hill-yes THE Shaun Hill—threw for 334 yards. Let’s be honest: with all the talk about the quarterback position, the Eagles defense has not been a shadow of its-former-self since Jim Johnson’s death.
And the Redskins? Well, they had the new Mayor planning a parade route at about 6:30 last night and then reverted to their old selves. The local apologists here today are going on about Donovan McNabb’s numbers and the 27-10 lead. Certainly, the team is better if only because it is COACHED and because for the moment Dan Snyder is entertaining all his various sycophants in the owners box and not trying to tell Mike Shanahan what to do. But the game was lost because a chip-shot field goal got blocked and because the defense couldn’t make a play late and because there was NO running game.
Can the Redskins make the playoffs? Sure. Because no one in the division is any good.
-- Question three: What is the over-under on Brett Favre’s next retirement? Favre looked bad, at home, on Sunday against the Dolphins. He and the Vikings may very well bounce back from 0-2 but I think they COULD lose to the Lions on Sunday. If that were to happen things will get chaotic in Minnesota if they aren’t already. The problem with being a great athlete is you never really know when it is time to go home. Favre had a wonderful year in 2009 and that’s why—along with the money—he’s back in 2010. But the margin for error is so small, especially in the violent world of the NFL, that you never know when you are going to step off the cliff. Favre may not be there yet but he can definitely see the posse coming up behind him. It may not matter if he can swim, the fall will kill him.
-- How sad is it that Mark Dantonio’s signature moment as a football coach came only a few hours before he landed in the hospital suffering from a heart attack.
First, thank goodness, he’s apparently okay and was smart enough not to mess around and got himself straight to the hospital. Again though, this makes you wonder about the pressures coaches put themselves under. Dantonio made one of the all-time gutsy calls when he called for a fake 46-yard field goal with his team down 31-28 to Notre Dame in overtime. It was what coaches refer to as a ‘hero-goat,’ call. You’re going to be one or the other, there is no in-between. Dantonio ended up a hero because his team executed the play perfectly and Notre Dame—not surprisingly—never saw the play coming.
The shame is that Dantonio can’t really glory in the moment right now. He’s got to worry about getting himself healthy again and his doctors have to make sure he doesn’t try to go back too soon. This is serious stuff—not Urban Meyer, I’ll resign for 15 minutes and then be back the next day stuff.
-- When will the national media stop moaning about how unlucky Notre Dame is? Someone actually wrote Sunday that Touchdown Jesus should be replaced with a statue of Job because Notre Dame has been so unlucky in recent seasons.
Are you kidding me? The Irish have EARNED their mediocrity with a series of bad coaching hires and some obvious recruiting mistakes. PLEASE do not buy the, ‘our academics are so tough,’ excuse. There may be a few kids Notre Dame can’t take but most of those kids probably don’t belong at Notre Dame anyway. Lou Holtz took some of them and look where that led.
Bob Davie couldn’t coach, Ty Willingham never really got a chance to coach, George O’Leary couldn’t tell the truth and Charlie Weis couldn’t get his ego out of the way for more than five minutes at a time. Brian Kelly may be the answer and he needs time before people judge him one way or the other. But this has nothing to do with bad luck. It has to do with running a bad football program at a place where it is almost impossible—given the money, the scheduling ‘flexibility,’ (as in a total of three road games this season) the tradition and the exposure—to be mediocre. Notre Dame has pulled that off for almost 20 years now. That’s not bad luck.
Finally: Am I the only person who noticed that Patrick McEnroe ended his run as Davis Cup captain with a win—a tough one at that. The U.S. had to go to Colombia this past weekend and play on slow red clay in order to retain its spot for 2011 in The World Group—the 16 teams that play to win the Davis Cup. A loss would have meant playing their way back through the relegation group in 2011 to have a chance to compete for the Cup again in 2012.
Without Andy Roddick, the U.S. won 3-1, Mardy Fish winning two singles matches (8-6 in the fifth to wrap it up Sunday) and the doubles with John Isner. Good for Patrick and the U.S. It’s a shame no one pays attention anymore.
By the way, Serbia plays France for the Cup the first weekend in December. A ratings bonanza no doubt for Tennis Channel.
-- Question one: Am I crazy or has Jerry Jones turned into Dan Snyder? The Cowboys appear to be a fantasy league football team: lots of names and apparent stars but a lousy team. They have a field goal kicker who has trouble, well, kicking field goals. They have a quarterback who puts up lovely stats and never seems to win a tough game. They have 43 running backs but no running game.
I’m not declaring them dead after two games. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if they beat the Houston Texans next week because the Texans are coming off two emotional wins—the Colts and a come-from-behind overtime win in Washington—and have a pass defense that let Joey Galloway (who is 57-years-old) get behind it for a 62 yard catch on Sunday.
So here’s my question: Does Wade Phillips last the season? I mean seriously this guy has become Jerry Manuel: he’s just good enough to keep his job but is guaranteed to never win anything that matters—which used to what you were supposed to do in Dallas until Jones decided face-lifts, selling pizza and building a monument to his ego were the keys to success in life. How much do you think Jimmy Johnson has enjoyed these last 14 years?
-- Question two: Is anyone in the NFC East any good? The Colts made the Giants look like a UFL team Sunday night. That game needed The Little League mercy rule and should have been over at halftime. Not many people would have noticed since the first half took about nine hours to play. (What is it with NBC? Their Notre Dame games take forever and so do their Sunday night games. Maybe they need the extra time so Chris Collinsworth can tell us how great the fall lineup is).
The Giants beat a bad Carolina team last week at home, then got crushed by the Colts. I’m certainly not sold on them. The Eagles, even with Mike Vick’s gaudy numbers, were lucky to get out of Detroit alive even with Matthew Stafford injured. Shaun Hill-yes THE Shaun Hill—threw for 334 yards. Let’s be honest: with all the talk about the quarterback position, the Eagles defense has not been a shadow of its-former-self since Jim Johnson’s death.
And the Redskins? Well, they had the new Mayor planning a parade route at about 6:30 last night and then reverted to their old selves. The local apologists here today are going on about Donovan McNabb’s numbers and the 27-10 lead. Certainly, the team is better if only because it is COACHED and because for the moment Dan Snyder is entertaining all his various sycophants in the owners box and not trying to tell Mike Shanahan what to do. But the game was lost because a chip-shot field goal got blocked and because the defense couldn’t make a play late and because there was NO running game.
Can the Redskins make the playoffs? Sure. Because no one in the division is any good.
-- Question three: What is the over-under on Brett Favre’s next retirement? Favre looked bad, at home, on Sunday against the Dolphins. He and the Vikings may very well bounce back from 0-2 but I think they COULD lose to the Lions on Sunday. If that were to happen things will get chaotic in Minnesota if they aren’t already. The problem with being a great athlete is you never really know when it is time to go home. Favre had a wonderful year in 2009 and that’s why—along with the money—he’s back in 2010. But the margin for error is so small, especially in the violent world of the NFL, that you never know when you are going to step off the cliff. Favre may not be there yet but he can definitely see the posse coming up behind him. It may not matter if he can swim, the fall will kill him.
-- How sad is it that Mark Dantonio’s signature moment as a football coach came only a few hours before he landed in the hospital suffering from a heart attack.
First, thank goodness, he’s apparently okay and was smart enough not to mess around and got himself straight to the hospital. Again though, this makes you wonder about the pressures coaches put themselves under. Dantonio made one of the all-time gutsy calls when he called for a fake 46-yard field goal with his team down 31-28 to Notre Dame in overtime. It was what coaches refer to as a ‘hero-goat,’ call. You’re going to be one or the other, there is no in-between. Dantonio ended up a hero because his team executed the play perfectly and Notre Dame—not surprisingly—never saw the play coming.
The shame is that Dantonio can’t really glory in the moment right now. He’s got to worry about getting himself healthy again and his doctors have to make sure he doesn’t try to go back too soon. This is serious stuff—not Urban Meyer, I’ll resign for 15 minutes and then be back the next day stuff.
-- When will the national media stop moaning about how unlucky Notre Dame is? Someone actually wrote Sunday that Touchdown Jesus should be replaced with a statue of Job because Notre Dame has been so unlucky in recent seasons.
Are you kidding me? The Irish have EARNED their mediocrity with a series of bad coaching hires and some obvious recruiting mistakes. PLEASE do not buy the, ‘our academics are so tough,’ excuse. There may be a few kids Notre Dame can’t take but most of those kids probably don’t belong at Notre Dame anyway. Lou Holtz took some of them and look where that led.
Bob Davie couldn’t coach, Ty Willingham never really got a chance to coach, George O’Leary couldn’t tell the truth and Charlie Weis couldn’t get his ego out of the way for more than five minutes at a time. Brian Kelly may be the answer and he needs time before people judge him one way or the other. But this has nothing to do with bad luck. It has to do with running a bad football program at a place where it is almost impossible—given the money, the scheduling ‘flexibility,’ (as in a total of three road games this season) the tradition and the exposure—to be mediocre. Notre Dame has pulled that off for almost 20 years now. That’s not bad luck.
Finally: Am I the only person who noticed that Patrick McEnroe ended his run as Davis Cup captain with a win—a tough one at that. The U.S. had to go to Colombia this past weekend and play on slow red clay in order to retain its spot for 2011 in The World Group—the 16 teams that play to win the Davis Cup. A loss would have meant playing their way back through the relegation group in 2011 to have a chance to compete for the Cup again in 2012.
Without Andy Roddick, the U.S. won 3-1, Mardy Fish winning two singles matches (8-6 in the fifth to wrap it up Sunday) and the doubles with John Isner. Good for Patrick and the U.S. It’s a shame no one pays attention anymore.
By the way, Serbia plays France for the Cup the first weekend in December. A ratings bonanza no doubt for Tennis Channel.
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
September is special; Snyder talk; Boise State begins possible national championship run; Navy-Maryland
There is something special about the calendar hitting September. Kids complain about going back to school—although I know there are now lots of places where they start in August—but most are excited about seeing their friends again and talking about their summers.
For someone like me, September is right up there with March as a month I always look forward to on the calendar. It isn’t just that football starts, it is that pre-season football ENDS. Honestly, the number of meaningless games and stories that take place during the summer in the NFL could fill The National Archives. Yesterday on Washington Post Live I swear to God we spent five minutes—which in TV-world is the equivalent of five hours in the real world—talking about Malcolm Kelly.
Malcolm Kelly? Seriously? A guy who has about 12 catches in two NFL seasons and is always hurt? He’s finally been put on injured reserve after grabbing his hamstring AGAIN on Monday after returning to practice for the first time in a month. This morning, in The Washington Post there’s a story on the Redskins lost draft of 2008—the one that was run without adult supervision by Dan Snyder and Vinny Cerrato. There’s even a quote from Cerrato—put out through Snyder’s new flak—claiming Snyder had nothing to do with the decision to draft Kelly. Of course Snyder flew to Oklahoma to watch Kelly work out. That, Cerrato said was, “just for support.”
And Tiger still loves Elin.
I know I digress but why do guys like Snyder insist on hanging on to complete untruths? (Also known as lies). Why not just say, ‘yeah, Vinny and I really blew it in the draft that year. If we end up with two guys panning out we’ll be lucky. That’s why Mike Shanahan’s here now.’
In every NFL city there is talk about irrelevancies like Malcolm Kelly and who will be the third string quarterback or the No. 5 receiver. Once the season begins, that goes away and the games have meaning. College football is different because there are no exhibition games although there are some really BAD games played early in the season—power schools lining up against lower Division 1-A (sorry NCAA, that’s still the term I use) teams or 1-AA schools.
The most intriguing game of this first weekend won’t be played until 8 o’clock Monday night in the stadium formerly named for Jack Kent Cooke. That means the 90,000 or so who go to see Boise State and Virginia Tech can expect to get home well after midnight because a national TV game will take close to three-and-a-half hours to play and then it will take about that long to get out of those god-forsaken parking lots.
Still, it is a game well worth watching. Boise State has been begging for games like this in recent years and, of course, very few power schools will play them. That’s why I get annoyed when I hear people like my pal Tony Kornheiser say things like, “well Boise State couldn’t go undefeated if it played in the Big Ten.”
Really Tony? How do you KNOW that? There certainly isn’t anyone in The Big Ten willing to actually PLAY Boise State. Except for a couple of Pac-10 schools NO ONE will play them home-and-home or even coast-and-coast. You think Virginia Tech is going back out west for a rematch? The only reason Virginia Tech is willing to play the game—besides money—is that it has less to lose than Boise. Why? Because the ACC has become a laughingstock nationally in recent years and a win would help restore some luster. A loss merely confirms what everyone already thinks anyway.
If Boise wins and beats Oregon State and runs the table it should play for the national championship. If the power schools whine about their schedule, like I said, PLAY them. Last year the BCS conspired to make Boise and TCU play one another in the Fiesta Bowl because they were so frightened that both would walk in and beat power schools.
Okay, I’m not going to go on one of my BCS rants today—plenty of time for that later.
What I really want to say is that I’m psyched it is September. I’m looking forward to Monday afternoon (Thank God it isn’t a night game too) when Navy and Maryland play in Baltimore. I’d prefer Saturday—ALL college football games should be played on Saturday; sadly we know that ship has sailed—but that game should be a lot of fun. It is very important for both teams: Maryland is coming off a horrific 2-10 season and needs to rebound to save Ralph Friedgen’s job and Navy has extremely high hopes after going 10-4 and crushing Missouri 35-13 in The Texas Bowl.
I’ll be starting my 14th season doing color on Navy radio, which is hard to believe. As I’ve said before there are few things I enjoy more than my association with Navy. I like calling games involving good kids—and they ARE good kids in spite of occasional transgressions and that one angry Navy professor who has made a cottage industry for himself by ripping his employer in any publication that will accept his work—and I enjoy greatly working with (new dad) Bob Socci, Omar Nelson, Frank Diventi and Pete Van Poppel in the booth.
All that said, this Maryland game makes me very nervous. There’s too much hype around this Navy team: Ricky Dobbs Heisman talk (I love the attention the kid is getting, but please let him play a few downs this season first okay?); talk about an un-defeated season (won’t happen—too many tough road games: Air Force, Wake Forest, East Carolina, not to mention this Maryland game and Notre Dame in the Meadowlands with a real coach in charge. Heck, even Duke has a reasonable team) and people acting like the Maryland game is a semi-walk over.
Please. Maryland has two very good running backs, BCS caliber and BCS-size lineman and defenders and a mobile quarterback. I’ve always though Friedgen could coach and the reasons for the team’s recent failures are based on recruiting not actual coaching. Plus, there is nothing more dangerous than a team that has something to prove and Maryland has a LOT to prove and knows it will be 3-0 (it has two cupcakes after Navy) if it can beat the Mids.
Either way, it will be a fun afternoon. Either way, September is always fun. The weather cools, the football gets better and I actually enjoy September baseball. I’m one of those guys who likes going to late-season games even if they don’t involve contenders. I like seeing who is playing as part of the expanded 40 man rosters and I enjoy the relative calm of a September game with nothing except pride and perhaps the long-term future of teams at stake. The pennant race games—and postseason—are fun for entirely different reasons. Of course most of postseason is played so late that I struggle to stay up and rarely go anymore. If there is an early round afternoon or early evening game near me, I might go.
There’s also some interesting golf the next few weeks, the U.S. Open tennis where there’s bound to be an upset (I think) at some point and another month of being able to swim outdoors. So, if we can just keep the damn hurricanes away, this should be a lot of fun.
For someone like me, September is right up there with March as a month I always look forward to on the calendar. It isn’t just that football starts, it is that pre-season football ENDS. Honestly, the number of meaningless games and stories that take place during the summer in the NFL could fill The National Archives. Yesterday on Washington Post Live I swear to God we spent five minutes—which in TV-world is the equivalent of five hours in the real world—talking about Malcolm Kelly.
Malcolm Kelly? Seriously? A guy who has about 12 catches in two NFL seasons and is always hurt? He’s finally been put on injured reserve after grabbing his hamstring AGAIN on Monday after returning to practice for the first time in a month. This morning, in The Washington Post there’s a story on the Redskins lost draft of 2008—the one that was run without adult supervision by Dan Snyder and Vinny Cerrato. There’s even a quote from Cerrato—put out through Snyder’s new flak—claiming Snyder had nothing to do with the decision to draft Kelly. Of course Snyder flew to Oklahoma to watch Kelly work out. That, Cerrato said was, “just for support.”
And Tiger still loves Elin.
I know I digress but why do guys like Snyder insist on hanging on to complete untruths? (Also known as lies). Why not just say, ‘yeah, Vinny and I really blew it in the draft that year. If we end up with two guys panning out we’ll be lucky. That’s why Mike Shanahan’s here now.’
In every NFL city there is talk about irrelevancies like Malcolm Kelly and who will be the third string quarterback or the No. 5 receiver. Once the season begins, that goes away and the games have meaning. College football is different because there are no exhibition games although there are some really BAD games played early in the season—power schools lining up against lower Division 1-A (sorry NCAA, that’s still the term I use) teams or 1-AA schools.
The most intriguing game of this first weekend won’t be played until 8 o’clock Monday night in the stadium formerly named for Jack Kent Cooke. That means the 90,000 or so who go to see Boise State and Virginia Tech can expect to get home well after midnight because a national TV game will take close to three-and-a-half hours to play and then it will take about that long to get out of those god-forsaken parking lots.
Still, it is a game well worth watching. Boise State has been begging for games like this in recent years and, of course, very few power schools will play them. That’s why I get annoyed when I hear people like my pal Tony Kornheiser say things like, “well Boise State couldn’t go undefeated if it played in the Big Ten.”
Really Tony? How do you KNOW that? There certainly isn’t anyone in The Big Ten willing to actually PLAY Boise State. Except for a couple of Pac-10 schools NO ONE will play them home-and-home or even coast-and-coast. You think Virginia Tech is going back out west for a rematch? The only reason Virginia Tech is willing to play the game—besides money—is that it has less to lose than Boise. Why? Because the ACC has become a laughingstock nationally in recent years and a win would help restore some luster. A loss merely confirms what everyone already thinks anyway.
If Boise wins and beats Oregon State and runs the table it should play for the national championship. If the power schools whine about their schedule, like I said, PLAY them. Last year the BCS conspired to make Boise and TCU play one another in the Fiesta Bowl because they were so frightened that both would walk in and beat power schools.
Okay, I’m not going to go on one of my BCS rants today—plenty of time for that later.
What I really want to say is that I’m psyched it is September. I’m looking forward to Monday afternoon (Thank God it isn’t a night game too) when Navy and Maryland play in Baltimore. I’d prefer Saturday—ALL college football games should be played on Saturday; sadly we know that ship has sailed—but that game should be a lot of fun. It is very important for both teams: Maryland is coming off a horrific 2-10 season and needs to rebound to save Ralph Friedgen’s job and Navy has extremely high hopes after going 10-4 and crushing Missouri 35-13 in The Texas Bowl.
I’ll be starting my 14th season doing color on Navy radio, which is hard to believe. As I’ve said before there are few things I enjoy more than my association with Navy. I like calling games involving good kids—and they ARE good kids in spite of occasional transgressions and that one angry Navy professor who has made a cottage industry for himself by ripping his employer in any publication that will accept his work—and I enjoy greatly working with (new dad) Bob Socci, Omar Nelson, Frank Diventi and Pete Van Poppel in the booth.
All that said, this Maryland game makes me very nervous. There’s too much hype around this Navy team: Ricky Dobbs Heisman talk (I love the attention the kid is getting, but please let him play a few downs this season first okay?); talk about an un-defeated season (won’t happen—too many tough road games: Air Force, Wake Forest, East Carolina, not to mention this Maryland game and Notre Dame in the Meadowlands with a real coach in charge. Heck, even Duke has a reasonable team) and people acting like the Maryland game is a semi-walk over.
Please. Maryland has two very good running backs, BCS caliber and BCS-size lineman and defenders and a mobile quarterback. I’ve always though Friedgen could coach and the reasons for the team’s recent failures are based on recruiting not actual coaching. Plus, there is nothing more dangerous than a team that has something to prove and Maryland has a LOT to prove and knows it will be 3-0 (it has two cupcakes after Navy) if it can beat the Mids.
Either way, it will be a fun afternoon. Either way, September is always fun. The weather cools, the football gets better and I actually enjoy September baseball. I’m one of those guys who likes going to late-season games even if they don’t involve contenders. I like seeing who is playing as part of the expanded 40 man rosters and I enjoy the relative calm of a September game with nothing except pride and perhaps the long-term future of teams at stake. The pennant race games—and postseason—are fun for entirely different reasons. Of course most of postseason is played so late that I struggle to stay up and rarely go anymore. If there is an early round afternoon or early evening game near me, I might go.
There’s also some interesting golf the next few weeks, the U.S. Open tennis where there’s bound to be an upset (I think) at some point and another month of being able to swim outdoors. So, if we can just keep the damn hurricanes away, this should be a lot of fun.
Monday, August 23, 2010
Wide-ranging morning ---- Haynesworth, Strasburg, Zack Bolno, US Open tennis, Arjun Atwal, and the last note on rules officials
There was a lot going on this past weekend in sports. Lou Piniella retired. Vin Scully did not. (Thank God). Stephen Strasburg felt a twinge in his arm and everyone in Washington writhed in pain. Roger Federer won a tennis tournament. Serena Williams and defending men’s champion Juan Martin Del Potro withdrew from the U.S. Open. Fred Funk won an alleged major on The Senior Tour. (Are there any events on that tour that AREN’T ‘majors?’). Arjun Atwal, who was involved in a fatal accident in Florida three years ago won on The PGA Tour, the first player since Fred Wadsworth in 1986 to come through a Monday qualifier just to get IN to the tournament and then win.
Oh, and Albert Haynesworth is whining—which was apparently enough reason for the Washington Redskins to fire their PR guy on Sunday.
What a world.
Let’s start with the ridiculous—which is always the NFL team here in Washington. The Redskins should have conceded the folly of signing Haynesworth before training camp even started. It’s not as if Haynesworth was the first god-awful Dan Snyder free-agent signing, he was just the most recent and the most expensive. The minute Haynesworth refused to show up for mini-camps (or OTA’s or whatever the NFL calls them) that should have been a clear sign that he learned nothing from his embarrassing season a year ago, could care less about his teammates and was going to try to battle Mike Shanahan’s authority. Last I looked, Shanahan has pretty good credentials as both an authority-figure and as a coach.
We all know what’s gone on since. Haynesworth couldn’t pass the conditioning test he was required to take when he finally showed up for camp. He finally passed and began working out—occasionally. Then last week he didn’t work out, refused to speak to the media and the team said he had headaches. After he didn’t play until the second half in Saturday’s exhibition game, he whined that the team wasn’t telling the truth about his headaches and that he should have started the game.
I have two words for Haynesworth: SHUT UP. I have two words for the Redskins: CUT HIM. Sure, they’re going to take a huge financial hit but there’s an old saying about being penny-wise (okay in this case $21 million-wise) and pound foolish. The Redskins are trying to be good again; trying to get past all the embarrassments of recent seasons. This guy is a pox, who is likely to be unproductive. The sooner the Redskins get rid of him, the sooner the team can move on and focus on the future.
In the meantime, after Haynesworth mouthed off on Saturday, Redskins PR director Zack Bolno got fired on Sunday. For the past two years, most people who have to cover the team will tell you Bolno has been a voice of reason and (gasp) cooperation in a sea of stonewalling built by Snyder, former GM Vinny Cerrato and martinet-bully PR guy Karl Swanson. Cerrato and Swanson are finally gone but Bolno is being made the scapegoat for SOMETHING and it is clearly the team’s loss. Of course if the team wins, no one other than the people who know Zach (I got to know him when he was the Wizards PR director) will care.
The other Washington story is, of course, Strasburg. When he clutched his arm after pitching 4 and one-third shutout innings in Philadelphia on Saturday, you couldn’t help but go, ‘Oh God no, here comes surgery.’ It is now likely that bullet has been dodged but the Nats are also likely to shut him down for the rest of the season. After all WHY take any risk with him? The team is going nowhere, he’s proven he can pitch very well at the big league level already. The only reason to pitch him at all would be ticket sales and the Nats are smarter than that. If you pitch him now and God Forbid something happens, you will regret sending him out there forever.
On the tennis front: I think there’s a very good chance Roger Federer is going to win another U.S. Open. Del Potro has been hurt most of the year, so his withdrawal is no surprise. Rafael Nadal, as always seems to happen this time of year, is struggling on U.S. hard courts. Andy Roddick has had a so-so summer at best. In fact, the hottest player on tour this summer has been Mardy Fish, who lost a very good three set match to Federer in Cincinnati yesterday after beating Roddick for the second time in the last few weeks in the semifinals. For once, the Open is wide open. Someone like Novak Djokovic could get hot or Roddick could get on a roll in front of the New York fans.
As for the women, I don’t know, I think Chris Evert is the favorite now. Maybe Martina Navratilova or Steffi Graf? With Serena Williams out—foot surgery after she stepped on some glass—Venus Williams having been invisible all summer, Maria Sharapova who-knows-where with her game, Justine Henin out hurt (again) and defending champion Kim Clijsters looking shaky ANYONE can win. Billie Jean King maybe. Now that would be a story.
Arjun Atwal is a remarkable comeback story—sort of. Certainly coming back from injuries that caused him to lose his PGA Tour card and to go through a Monday qualifier—players call it a ‘four-spotter,’ because there are four spots in the field open, often with more than 100 players trying for them—to win his first tour event is remarkable.
But Atwal’s story is a little murkier than that. He had made a very good living playing around the world after leaving India as a teen-ager and had moved to Orlando, where he often played at Isleworth with Tiger Woods. On a March afternoon in 2007, after playing nine holes with Woods and John Cook, he was driving home on county road 535 when a car—driven, as it turned out by another Isleworth resident—fell in behind Atwal.
The police believe to this day that Atwal and the man began racing. Apparently CR 535 was infamous for street racing. Atwal has admitted to going 85 miles per hour. The police say it was more like 94. The other man apparently got up close to 100. Both lost control on a curve. Atwal lived. The other man did not. Police wanted to charge Atwal with vehicular homicide but the Florida attorney general decided that making a case in court that Atwal was the CAUSE of the accident would be difficult.
There seems to be little doubt that Atwal was guilty of stupidity and was incredibly lucky to live and not go to trial—or to jail. He has told other reporters that as bad as he feels about what happened he knows he “did nothing wrong.” Maybe he’s talking—as instructed by his lawyers—about the death of Mr. Park, the other driver. Clearly he DID do something wrong based on the speed he was going so it is difficult to make his win on Sunday as much of a feel-good story as it might otherwise be.
I mean, good for him, hanging in through the injuries and the Monday qualifiers and the guilt he must feel after the accident. But, on a wholly different level, like his friend Woods, Atwal must bear some responsibility for the difficulties he went through after his accident. Totally different story—obviously—in fact one far more tragic.
*****
One final note: I couldn’t help but notice that some posters STILL think that there are waking rules officials only with SOME groups at majors championships. That is flat out wrong: At the U.S. Open, British Open and the PGA every group for all four days is assigned a walking rules official. The Masters does not assign a walking rules official to ANY group because of its tradition that no one goes inside the ropes except caddies, players and TV camera and sound men. Dustin Johnson had NO advantage over anyone on the golf course last Sunday. In fact, he had a disadvantage because David Price, his rules official, failed to warn him he was in a bunker as a good official would have done. I am really tired of hearing the apologists say he wasn’t ‘obligated,’ to do so. No he wasn’t. Often in life what is right is not what you are obligated to do it.
Even if you disagree with that opinion, let’s keep our facts straight. Everyone had a walking rules official that day. Johnson just drew the short straw when he was assigned Price.
Oh, and Albert Haynesworth is whining—which was apparently enough reason for the Washington Redskins to fire their PR guy on Sunday.
What a world.
Let’s start with the ridiculous—which is always the NFL team here in Washington. The Redskins should have conceded the folly of signing Haynesworth before training camp even started. It’s not as if Haynesworth was the first god-awful Dan Snyder free-agent signing, he was just the most recent and the most expensive. The minute Haynesworth refused to show up for mini-camps (or OTA’s or whatever the NFL calls them) that should have been a clear sign that he learned nothing from his embarrassing season a year ago, could care less about his teammates and was going to try to battle Mike Shanahan’s authority. Last I looked, Shanahan has pretty good credentials as both an authority-figure and as a coach.
We all know what’s gone on since. Haynesworth couldn’t pass the conditioning test he was required to take when he finally showed up for camp. He finally passed and began working out—occasionally. Then last week he didn’t work out, refused to speak to the media and the team said he had headaches. After he didn’t play until the second half in Saturday’s exhibition game, he whined that the team wasn’t telling the truth about his headaches and that he should have started the game.
I have two words for Haynesworth: SHUT UP. I have two words for the Redskins: CUT HIM. Sure, they’re going to take a huge financial hit but there’s an old saying about being penny-wise (okay in this case $21 million-wise) and pound foolish. The Redskins are trying to be good again; trying to get past all the embarrassments of recent seasons. This guy is a pox, who is likely to be unproductive. The sooner the Redskins get rid of him, the sooner the team can move on and focus on the future.
In the meantime, after Haynesworth mouthed off on Saturday, Redskins PR director Zack Bolno got fired on Sunday. For the past two years, most people who have to cover the team will tell you Bolno has been a voice of reason and (gasp) cooperation in a sea of stonewalling built by Snyder, former GM Vinny Cerrato and martinet-bully PR guy Karl Swanson. Cerrato and Swanson are finally gone but Bolno is being made the scapegoat for SOMETHING and it is clearly the team’s loss. Of course if the team wins, no one other than the people who know Zach (I got to know him when he was the Wizards PR director) will care.
The other Washington story is, of course, Strasburg. When he clutched his arm after pitching 4 and one-third shutout innings in Philadelphia on Saturday, you couldn’t help but go, ‘Oh God no, here comes surgery.’ It is now likely that bullet has been dodged but the Nats are also likely to shut him down for the rest of the season. After all WHY take any risk with him? The team is going nowhere, he’s proven he can pitch very well at the big league level already. The only reason to pitch him at all would be ticket sales and the Nats are smarter than that. If you pitch him now and God Forbid something happens, you will regret sending him out there forever.
On the tennis front: I think there’s a very good chance Roger Federer is going to win another U.S. Open. Del Potro has been hurt most of the year, so his withdrawal is no surprise. Rafael Nadal, as always seems to happen this time of year, is struggling on U.S. hard courts. Andy Roddick has had a so-so summer at best. In fact, the hottest player on tour this summer has been Mardy Fish, who lost a very good three set match to Federer in Cincinnati yesterday after beating Roddick for the second time in the last few weeks in the semifinals. For once, the Open is wide open. Someone like Novak Djokovic could get hot or Roddick could get on a roll in front of the New York fans.
As for the women, I don’t know, I think Chris Evert is the favorite now. Maybe Martina Navratilova or Steffi Graf? With Serena Williams out—foot surgery after she stepped on some glass—Venus Williams having been invisible all summer, Maria Sharapova who-knows-where with her game, Justine Henin out hurt (again) and defending champion Kim Clijsters looking shaky ANYONE can win. Billie Jean King maybe. Now that would be a story.
Arjun Atwal is a remarkable comeback story—sort of. Certainly coming back from injuries that caused him to lose his PGA Tour card and to go through a Monday qualifier—players call it a ‘four-spotter,’ because there are four spots in the field open, often with more than 100 players trying for them—to win his first tour event is remarkable.
But Atwal’s story is a little murkier than that. He had made a very good living playing around the world after leaving India as a teen-ager and had moved to Orlando, where he often played at Isleworth with Tiger Woods. On a March afternoon in 2007, after playing nine holes with Woods and John Cook, he was driving home on county road 535 when a car—driven, as it turned out by another Isleworth resident—fell in behind Atwal.
The police believe to this day that Atwal and the man began racing. Apparently CR 535 was infamous for street racing. Atwal has admitted to going 85 miles per hour. The police say it was more like 94. The other man apparently got up close to 100. Both lost control on a curve. Atwal lived. The other man did not. Police wanted to charge Atwal with vehicular homicide but the Florida attorney general decided that making a case in court that Atwal was the CAUSE of the accident would be difficult.
There seems to be little doubt that Atwal was guilty of stupidity and was incredibly lucky to live and not go to trial—or to jail. He has told other reporters that as bad as he feels about what happened he knows he “did nothing wrong.” Maybe he’s talking—as instructed by his lawyers—about the death of Mr. Park, the other driver. Clearly he DID do something wrong based on the speed he was going so it is difficult to make his win on Sunday as much of a feel-good story as it might otherwise be.
I mean, good for him, hanging in through the injuries and the Monday qualifiers and the guilt he must feel after the accident. But, on a wholly different level, like his friend Woods, Atwal must bear some responsibility for the difficulties he went through after his accident. Totally different story—obviously—in fact one far more tragic.
*****
One final note: I couldn’t help but notice that some posters STILL think that there are waking rules officials only with SOME groups at majors championships. That is flat out wrong: At the U.S. Open, British Open and the PGA every group for all four days is assigned a walking rules official. The Masters does not assign a walking rules official to ANY group because of its tradition that no one goes inside the ropes except caddies, players and TV camera and sound men. Dustin Johnson had NO advantage over anyone on the golf course last Sunday. In fact, he had a disadvantage because David Price, his rules official, failed to warn him he was in a bunker as a good official would have done. I am really tired of hearing the apologists say he wasn’t ‘obligated,’ to do so. No he wasn’t. Often in life what is right is not what you are obligated to do it.
Even if you disagree with that opinion, let’s keep our facts straight. Everyone had a walking rules official that day. Johnson just drew the short straw when he was assigned Price.
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