Yup, I cried.
I cried when I saw Ryan Miller crying. I cried when they played ‘Oh Canada,’ and the entire arena belted out one of the great anthems ever written. I cried at the looks on the faces of the American players who should feel nothing but pride.
The National Hockey League is thinking of not taking part in the 2014 Olympics? Are you kidding me? Let me tell you something: SPORTS doesn’t get any better than what we saw on Sunday afternoon in the Olympic gold medal game. Sure, the Hollywood ending didn’t happen; the Ottawa ending happened. This would NOT have been Miracle on Ice II for the U.S. (actually Miracle on Ice II was 1980; Miracle on Ice I was 1960) but it would have been an extraordinary achievement.
Playing in front of a rabid pro-Canada crowd, falling behind 2-0 early, coming back to tie the game with 25 seconds left in the third period and then sending it into overtime was simply amazing. An overtime goal for a gold medal would have been one of the most memorable moments in recent sports history—certainly in recent AMERICAN sports history.
But Sidney Crosby wouldn’t let it happen. You can say a lot of things about Sid the Kid. He’s reviled here in Washington because Capitals fans believe Alexander Ovechkin is a better player than he is but—in their minds--the Canadian/American media (outside of Washington) won’t give him his due because he’s Russian and Crosby is Canadian.
Ovechkin is the more spectacular player. He’s likely to have the goal-of-the-year just about every year. He’s extremely physical—maybe too physical. The only truly great player who was comparable when it comes to getting his elbows up was Gordie Howe. His numbers are better than Crosby’s and he’s less prone to injury—although he did miss some time early this season. And he’s won back-to-back MVP’s.
There’s just one problem. Crosby has his name on The Stanley Cup. In fact, his team has reached The Cup finals two years in a row. And now he has scored arguably the most important goal in his country’s history—the overtime shot, off a gorgeous pass from Jerome Iginla—that beat Ryan Miller and won the gold medal for Canada.
There is no way to understate how important that goal and this game were to Canada. Hockey is THEIR game. The country went into a near-panic a week ago Sunday when the U.S.—thanks to a remarkable performance by Miller—beat the Canadians 5-3 in group play. That meant Canada had to play Russia in the quarterfinals—that would be a Russian team led by Ovechkin. The Canadians routed the Russians then slipped past Slovakia in the semifinals to set up the rematch with the young American team.
The only U.S. player who is considered a big-time star in the NHL is Miller, the Buffalo Sabres goalie who many think is the best goaltender in the game right now—especially with Martin Brodeur finally showing signs of wear because the New Jersey Devils insist on playing him EVERY single night at the age of 37.
Canada made a rousing comeback the second week of these Olympics after a slow start. Even though the U.S. set an all-time record for medals in a Winter Olympics (37—a somewhat deceiving mark because there has been such an increase in events in the past several Olympiads) the Canadians roared past everyone to set an all-time record for gold medals with 14.
But all of that would have seemed hollow to many Canadians if not for the 14th gold—and Crosby’s shot. The memory of Zach Parise’s tying goal after goalie Roberto Luongo (who replaced Brodeur in net for Canada after the first game against the U.S.) couldn’t handle a shot with the U.S. net empty at the other end, might have haunted the country for years. To lose to the U.S.—whose previous Olympic successes were generally considered home-ice flukes around the world—on Canadian ice might never have been lived down.
That’s why you couldn’t help but feel good not so much for the Canadian players as for their fans when Crosby scored in overtime. But when you saw the faces of the American players, so spent, so drained, so STUNNED that they had lost after they had tied the game, you couldn’t help but feel awful for all of them but especially for Miller, who clearly felt responsible for the loss.
The great ones always feel that way. Miller was brilliant the entire tournament. He was voted the MVP even though his team didn’t win. But you can bet he won’t remember the dozens of saves he made but the one that he didn’t make. If anyone deserves some kind of happy ending in the future it is Miller, who in addition to being a superb player, is about as bright and thoughtful as any athlete you are likely to meet anywhere.
As for Crosby and Ovechkin, well, the one score that matters is now Crosby-2, Ovechkin-0. Crosby has a Stanley Cup and an Olympic gold medal. Ovechkin has never been past the conference semifinals and has no Olympic medal of any kind. Of course that can all change since both players are so young.
The next Olympics will be played in Russia. The favorites should be the Russians, led by Ovechkin, who will not yet be 30. What’s more, his Capitals appear to be a better team than Crosby’s Penguins this season. They’ve beaten them in both games they’ve played, coming from behind both times. They are well ahead of them in the Eastern Conference and appear likely to be the No. 1 seed in the east. Of course the trading deadline can always change things. Last year the Penguins acquired Bill Guerin at the deadline and he was a big difference-maker in Pittsburgh’s Stanley Cup run.
I wrote a column in The Washington Post at about this time a year ago saying the Caps needed to make a trade for a goalie if they wanted to win The Stanley Cup. I just didn’t think Jose Theodore had what it took to get through four rounds of postseason. A lot of Caps fans posted comments basically saying, ‘what the hell does this basketball writer know about hockey?’
Maybe nothing. But Theodore got yanked after one playoff game and was replaced by Semyon Varlamov, who played very well but, in the end, not well enough. He is still the Caps future in goal—if he can stay healthy. I’ll say what I said a year ago: George McPhee needs to make a move this week for a goalie. A solid defenseman wouldn’t hurt either: check the Caps goals-against numbers recently.
That’s for later. This weekend was about one of the most dramatic hockey games every played and even if the outcome was disappointing for the U.S. it was still absolutely brilliant—the whole thing. And ‘Oh Canada,’ can make you cry, well, BEFORE a hockey game much less after one as heart-wrenching as Sunday’s.
Hockey absolutely belongs in the Olympics with the world’s best players on the ice. Unlike basketball and tennis where the pros are dragged kicking and screaming to play more often than not, these guys WANT to be out there. Which makes it even better to watch—the joy and the heartbreak. I’m exhausted.
*****
There was one other great Olympic moment this weekend and that was Steve Holcomb and his three teammates winning the four man bobsled—the U.S.’s first gold medal in bobsled in 62 years. Holcomb looks more like your UPS guy than an Olympian but who the heck cares? He and his ‘Night Train,’ teammates beat the seemingly unbeatable Germans to win the gold medal. Seeing their coach, Brian Shimer, leaping into the sled after they finished brought back another cool Olympic memory—Shimer, in his fifth and last Olympics in 2002, winning a bronze medal in his very last Olympic event…
Finally, one brief comment on Mr. Anonymous who actually ripped me Friday for NOT having satellite radio after I had already made fun of myself for it and then claimed I should be ashamed for standing up for a CHARITY event (yo dude, the point isn’t that I’m involved in the charity it’s that the charity raises lots of money for kids who need it). So here’s my question: Why are so many Georgetown fans ALWAYS angry? They need to be calm and laid back…like me.
Showing posts with label Winter Olympics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Winter Olympics. Show all posts
Monday, March 1, 2010
Friday, February 26, 2010
Would U.S. Olympic hockey success affect the NHL ratings?; More ‘comments’ talk
The other day one of the posters on the blog expressed surprise—and I guess a little bit of delight—that I still spend time in the car flipping around on the AM radio to find different stations and different games.
It’s true. I know I should have satellite radio but I should also probably have a blackberry and I don’t have one of those either. I can text if I have absolutely need to but I’m more likely to just dial the phone because it’s a lot easier.
The radio has been an important part of my life for as long as I can remember. When I was a kid and the Mets or Yankees played late at night on the west coast, I’d take my transistor, put it under my pillow and listen to the game until I fell asleep. There was only one FM radio in my parent’s apartment and, as I mentioned yesterday, I’d use it frequently to listen to college basketball games—especially when my parents were out at night and I could sit on the bed with pretzel sticks and a coke while I listened. That was heaven—until my dad found the crumbs.
My car radio is always set—even during the offseason—on stations that I know carry baseball teams. At night, more often than not, I can pick up the Mets and Yankees; the Red Sox; the Phillies; the Indians; the White Sox and, on a clear night, the Cubs and Cardinals. I used to be able to pick up the Orioles and Tigers but they moved away from the clear AM channels they were on in recent years.
Even though I listen to hockey on the radio—bringing back boyhood memories of Marv Albert doing Ranger games—it isn’t the same as baseball. Even college basketball isn’t the same as listening to a baseball game. Life in the car just wouldn’t be the same if I could pick up every single baseball game for a price. I have the baseball package on TV; love the baseball package, especially because it saves me from having to watch the Nationals and Orioles every night (one can only take hearing Rob Dibble call the Nats, “we, us and our guys,” while complaining about every ball and strike call for so long) but there will always be a part of me that misses my boyhood when the NBC game of the week on Saturday was a big deal because it gave you a chance to see teams from other cities play.
All of this is a lead up to talking about hockey. The other day—evening actually—I was in the car and picked up WFAN coming out of New York which has as strong a 50,000 watt signal as any station in the country. I have, at times, picked it up loud and clear in Florida.
Mike Francesa was on. I’ve said before that there is a lot I don’t like about Francesa. He’s arrogant beyond belief, frequently rude to his callers, can’t interview anyone without interrupting and screams at anyone who has the nerve to disagree with him on any subject.
That said, he’s good radio a lot of the time. Because of WFAN’s power, he gets good guests, aided by the fact that the station pays so many coaches and athletes to make regular appearances. He’s also bright, though not nearly as bright as he thinks he is.
The subject was Olympic hockey. A caller brought up the fact that the U.S.-Canada game Sunday night had gotten huge cable ratings and that if the U.S. makes the gold medal game, especially if it plays Canada (he mentioned Russia too at the time) the ratings should go through the roof. My guess is NBC will find a way to show a figure skating exhibition between periods, but so be it.
The caller wondered if the NHL would get a boost from the success the U.S. was having and because the hockey was drawing viewers it doesn’t normally draw. Francesa immediately cut him off (surprise) and said the success of the hockey wouldn’t help the NHL’s ratings on NBC one bit and that Olympic hockey, including 1980, had never helped ratings.
In fact he’s wrong about that. Interest in hockey soared after Lake Placid. Youth hockey grew tremendously, attendance went up in non-original six cities where it had been lagging and the NHL actually over-expanded because it was so encouraged by what it was seeing. There was also a spike after the U.S. played well in the 1994 Olympics, so much so that Sports Illustrated ran a cover story labeling hockey as the next ‘it,’ sport. Then the owners locked the players out at the start of the next season and hockey ceased to be ‘it,’ pretty much before it got started.
It is hard to say how the American success in Vancouver will manifest itself going forward. Hockey is always going to be a tough TV sport. Even if you’ve watched the game all your life, it can be difficult to keep track of the puck, especially in the scrums around the net. Someone takes a shot from the point, the puck ends up in a gaggle of bodies and you aren’t sure if the goalie has it, it’s in the net or it’s gone wide or high. Often it takes replay to see what actually happened on a goal.
What’s more, the NHL’s national package on weeknights is on Versus, which still isn’t in enough homes to make much of a ratings dent. Still, I’ll bet there will be progress, particularly with NBC games on the weekends. The NHL has two superstars: Sidney Crosby and Alexander Ovechkin. For some reason, when their teams, the Capitals and Penguins, met in the conference semifinals last year, NBC made no attempt to get their games on the network. I’m betting that doesn’t happen this year if they meet again. You can also be sure the Buffalo Sabres will see a lot of air time, especially if Ryan Miller proves to be the key guy (as he surely will be) if the U.S. wins any medal, but especially if it’s the gold.
Most people will tell you this: If you go to a hockey game, especially a playoff game, you’re hooked. Hockey in person is as good as it gets and I’m not sure there’s anything more dramatic in sports than a playoff game that goes to overtime—especially a seventh game. The tension is amazing.
But the game is always going to be something of a niche sport on TV. That doesn’t mean it can’t grow. In fact, hockey ratings have improved on NBC since the new rules that were put in place after the lockout and since the arrival (at the same time) of Ovechkin and Crosby. The now-annual outdoor game on New Year’s Day has also brought in new viewers. Even ESPN, which basically sent the NHL packing several years ago, is now talking about wanting to bring it back to the network.
The Olympics will help hockey and the sport will become more popular. It isn’t going to become baseball, football or basketball—no one is claiming that. But to brush it off as some know-it-alls will do, is just silly. And if you DON’T take a look at the game—even with its TV weaknesses—then you’re missing out.
*****
Some of you may have noticed that a post from yesterday was removed by the guys who run the site for me. The removal had nothing to do with it being critical of me—that’s fine as everyone who reads the blog and posts on it or e-mails knows, I have no problem with people disagreeing or critiquing or correcting my mistakes; in fact I enjoy almost all of it. Profanity though, whether directed at me or anyone else, is off-limits here. Because I write books for kids, I know a fair number of kids read the blog. So, we’re going to keep this, as Ben Bradlee might say, a family blog. We've only had to remove posts a couple of times in eight months which speaks to the quality, I think, of those who take the time to post.
As for the non-profane specifics of that post (and I’m pretty sure I know who the poster was) the claim was made that when I said it was, “a matter of record,” that Georgetown was responsible for there being only one scheduled game with Maryland in more than 30 years (there have been a couple of pre-season and postseason tournament games) I was wrong. He said there had been no game because Gary Williams insisted Georgetown return the 1993 game played at Capital Centre to College Park.
In fact, that’s not true. Here’s how I know: I’ve talked to Gary about it in my role as the scheduler for the BB+T Classic. (I’m on the board of the children’s charities foundation that runs the tournament). As long as Verizon Center was set up the way it is set up for the tournament—tickets divided among the teams—he was okay with playing Georgetown. That’s a FACT my angry Georgetown-loving friend. What’s also a FACT is that it was John Thompson (the elder’s) decision to divide the tickets up for the Cap Centre game so that his pal Russ Potts would run the game and the ticket and corporate sales. If you have an issue with that decision, ask Big John about it.
I’ll say it one more time: Georgetown’s absence from an event that has raised more than $8 million for kids at risk in the DC area in 15 years is something that should make anyone associated with Georgetown ANGRY because it’s embarrassing to the school. And if you want to take cheap, profane shots at me for saying that, so be it. I’m quite comfortable with what I’ve said and what I’ve done through the years.
It’s true. I know I should have satellite radio but I should also probably have a blackberry and I don’t have one of those either. I can text if I have absolutely need to but I’m more likely to just dial the phone because it’s a lot easier.
The radio has been an important part of my life for as long as I can remember. When I was a kid and the Mets or Yankees played late at night on the west coast, I’d take my transistor, put it under my pillow and listen to the game until I fell asleep. There was only one FM radio in my parent’s apartment and, as I mentioned yesterday, I’d use it frequently to listen to college basketball games—especially when my parents were out at night and I could sit on the bed with pretzel sticks and a coke while I listened. That was heaven—until my dad found the crumbs.
My car radio is always set—even during the offseason—on stations that I know carry baseball teams. At night, more often than not, I can pick up the Mets and Yankees; the Red Sox; the Phillies; the Indians; the White Sox and, on a clear night, the Cubs and Cardinals. I used to be able to pick up the Orioles and Tigers but they moved away from the clear AM channels they were on in recent years.
Even though I listen to hockey on the radio—bringing back boyhood memories of Marv Albert doing Ranger games—it isn’t the same as baseball. Even college basketball isn’t the same as listening to a baseball game. Life in the car just wouldn’t be the same if I could pick up every single baseball game for a price. I have the baseball package on TV; love the baseball package, especially because it saves me from having to watch the Nationals and Orioles every night (one can only take hearing Rob Dibble call the Nats, “we, us and our guys,” while complaining about every ball and strike call for so long) but there will always be a part of me that misses my boyhood when the NBC game of the week on Saturday was a big deal because it gave you a chance to see teams from other cities play.
All of this is a lead up to talking about hockey. The other day—evening actually—I was in the car and picked up WFAN coming out of New York which has as strong a 50,000 watt signal as any station in the country. I have, at times, picked it up loud and clear in Florida.
Mike Francesa was on. I’ve said before that there is a lot I don’t like about Francesa. He’s arrogant beyond belief, frequently rude to his callers, can’t interview anyone without interrupting and screams at anyone who has the nerve to disagree with him on any subject.
That said, he’s good radio a lot of the time. Because of WFAN’s power, he gets good guests, aided by the fact that the station pays so many coaches and athletes to make regular appearances. He’s also bright, though not nearly as bright as he thinks he is.
The subject was Olympic hockey. A caller brought up the fact that the U.S.-Canada game Sunday night had gotten huge cable ratings and that if the U.S. makes the gold medal game, especially if it plays Canada (he mentioned Russia too at the time) the ratings should go through the roof. My guess is NBC will find a way to show a figure skating exhibition between periods, but so be it.
The caller wondered if the NHL would get a boost from the success the U.S. was having and because the hockey was drawing viewers it doesn’t normally draw. Francesa immediately cut him off (surprise) and said the success of the hockey wouldn’t help the NHL’s ratings on NBC one bit and that Olympic hockey, including 1980, had never helped ratings.
In fact he’s wrong about that. Interest in hockey soared after Lake Placid. Youth hockey grew tremendously, attendance went up in non-original six cities where it had been lagging and the NHL actually over-expanded because it was so encouraged by what it was seeing. There was also a spike after the U.S. played well in the 1994 Olympics, so much so that Sports Illustrated ran a cover story labeling hockey as the next ‘it,’ sport. Then the owners locked the players out at the start of the next season and hockey ceased to be ‘it,’ pretty much before it got started.
It is hard to say how the American success in Vancouver will manifest itself going forward. Hockey is always going to be a tough TV sport. Even if you’ve watched the game all your life, it can be difficult to keep track of the puck, especially in the scrums around the net. Someone takes a shot from the point, the puck ends up in a gaggle of bodies and you aren’t sure if the goalie has it, it’s in the net or it’s gone wide or high. Often it takes replay to see what actually happened on a goal.
What’s more, the NHL’s national package on weeknights is on Versus, which still isn’t in enough homes to make much of a ratings dent. Still, I’ll bet there will be progress, particularly with NBC games on the weekends. The NHL has two superstars: Sidney Crosby and Alexander Ovechkin. For some reason, when their teams, the Capitals and Penguins, met in the conference semifinals last year, NBC made no attempt to get their games on the network. I’m betting that doesn’t happen this year if they meet again. You can also be sure the Buffalo Sabres will see a lot of air time, especially if Ryan Miller proves to be the key guy (as he surely will be) if the U.S. wins any medal, but especially if it’s the gold.
Most people will tell you this: If you go to a hockey game, especially a playoff game, you’re hooked. Hockey in person is as good as it gets and I’m not sure there’s anything more dramatic in sports than a playoff game that goes to overtime—especially a seventh game. The tension is amazing.
But the game is always going to be something of a niche sport on TV. That doesn’t mean it can’t grow. In fact, hockey ratings have improved on NBC since the new rules that were put in place after the lockout and since the arrival (at the same time) of Ovechkin and Crosby. The now-annual outdoor game on New Year’s Day has also brought in new viewers. Even ESPN, which basically sent the NHL packing several years ago, is now talking about wanting to bring it back to the network.
The Olympics will help hockey and the sport will become more popular. It isn’t going to become baseball, football or basketball—no one is claiming that. But to brush it off as some know-it-alls will do, is just silly. And if you DON’T take a look at the game—even with its TV weaknesses—then you’re missing out.
*****
Some of you may have noticed that a post from yesterday was removed by the guys who run the site for me. The removal had nothing to do with it being critical of me—that’s fine as everyone who reads the blog and posts on it or e-mails knows, I have no problem with people disagreeing or critiquing or correcting my mistakes; in fact I enjoy almost all of it. Profanity though, whether directed at me or anyone else, is off-limits here. Because I write books for kids, I know a fair number of kids read the blog. So, we’re going to keep this, as Ben Bradlee might say, a family blog. We've only had to remove posts a couple of times in eight months which speaks to the quality, I think, of those who take the time to post.
As for the non-profane specifics of that post (and I’m pretty sure I know who the poster was) the claim was made that when I said it was, “a matter of record,” that Georgetown was responsible for there being only one scheduled game with Maryland in more than 30 years (there have been a couple of pre-season and postseason tournament games) I was wrong. He said there had been no game because Gary Williams insisted Georgetown return the 1993 game played at Capital Centre to College Park.
In fact, that’s not true. Here’s how I know: I’ve talked to Gary about it in my role as the scheduler for the BB+T Classic. (I’m on the board of the children’s charities foundation that runs the tournament). As long as Verizon Center was set up the way it is set up for the tournament—tickets divided among the teams—he was okay with playing Georgetown. That’s a FACT my angry Georgetown-loving friend. What’s also a FACT is that it was John Thompson (the elder’s) decision to divide the tickets up for the Cap Centre game so that his pal Russ Potts would run the game and the ticket and corporate sales. If you have an issue with that decision, ask Big John about it.
I’ll say it one more time: Georgetown’s absence from an event that has raised more than $8 million for kids at risk in the DC area in 15 years is something that should make anyone associated with Georgetown ANGRY because it’s embarrassing to the school. And if you want to take cheap, profane shots at me for saying that, so be it. I’m quite comfortable with what I’ve said and what I’ve done through the years.
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Possibility of Ovechkin vs. USA, will fans of the Capitals be torn at all?; Rooting for individuals vs. laundry
I was making my weekly appearance yesterday on “Washington Post Live,”—which is a pretty good show except for the fact that there has to be a Redskins segment EVERY DAY—when this question popped into my head: If the United States makes the gold medal game in Olympic hockey (which is now distinctly possible after the remarkable 5-3 upset of Canada on Sunday) and it faces Russia, will fans of The Washington Capitals be torn at all?
After all, Alexander Ovechkin may be the most popular non-Redskin in the history of the town. The only person I can think of who might have been as beloved as Ovechkin is Wes Unseld. Frank Howard was certainly popular years ago with the Senators but they were a bad team throughout his years in Washington.
You can’t walk 100 yards in downtown DC right now without encountering someone wearing an Ovechkin jersey. People here are firmly convinced the Caps are going to win The Stanley Cup this spring and if they do Ovechkin is going to be the main reason. It can be argued that Ovechkin is the first athlete to represent Washington since, I don’t know, Sammy Baugh? Who was THE best player in his sport. (Save your Sidney Crosby argument for another day. The point is he is 1 or 1-A at worst).
So, I wondered aloud on the air if Ovechkin—and fellow Cap Alexander Semin—are out there representing Russia, do Caps fans root for their guys or for their country?
Based on text messages sent to the station the verdict was overwhelming: USA-USA-USA. Naturally some people wondered if I was “crazy,” for even thinking there was a debate.
All of which reminded me how doing what I do gives you a different perspective than most people. When I was a kid I rooted ardently for the Mets, the Jets, the Knicks, the Rangers and, after I had bought my first car and could drive to Long Island as a high school senior, the expansion Islanders. I even rooted for the Nets while they were in the ABA and never hated the Yankees or the Giants. My instinct has always been to pull for underdogs so I was drawn to the expansion Mets. With the Jets it was more basic: I could get into the games.
I loved my teams. Like any fan there were individuals I picked out as my favorites: Tom Seaver, Jerry Koosman, Cleon Jones and Tommie Agee with the Mets; Joe Namath, Matt Snell and Verlon Biggs with the Jets; Willis Reed, Walt Frazier, Dave Debusschere and Bill Bradley with the Knicks; Brad Park and the GAG (Goal-a-game) line with the Rangers: Vic Hadfield, Jean Ratelle, Brad Park and, later, Billy Smith, Denis Potvin, Brian Trottier and Mike Bossy with the Islanders although I always had a warm spot for Billy Harris even though he was traded before the team started winning Stanley Cups.
But in the end, I was a typical fan. To quote Jerry Seinfeld, I rooted for laundry.
I was furious with the Mets when they traded Seaver in 1977 and never stopped being a Seaver fan. In fact, one of my great thrills was covering the game in Yankee Stadium in 1983 when he won his 300th game while pitching for the White Sox.
But I was still a Mets fan—even after the Seaver trade.
I can’t pinpoint exactly when I stopped rooting for laundry and started rooting for individuals. It might have been while standing in the Red Sox clubhouse in 1986 watching Bill Buckner answer question after question without blinking or complaining after his infamous boot of Mookie Wilson’s ground ball in game six of The World Series. As a Mets fan, I was thrilled with the way they had come back to win the game. Watching Buckner handle the situation with such grace made me feel awful for him. During game seven, even as I rooted ardently for the Mets, I couldn’t help but think about what this would do to Buckner.
To this day, when that World Series comes up, I point out to people—many of whom don’t remember—that the score was already tied when the ball went through Buckner’s legs. He did NOT lose the World Series for the Red Sox.
When Pat Riley became the coach of the Knicks, I stopped being a Knicks fan. I just didn’t like him and I hated his style of play. I’ve never gone back to the Knicks. In fact, I became a Celtics fan—a team I DESPISED as a kid—because of my friendship with Red Auerbach.
Other than being consistently lousy, the Jets never did anything to make me dislike them but when I did my book on the Ravens in 2004, I couldn’t help but want to see the Ravens do well since I got to know almost everyone in the organization. As luck would have it, the Ravens and Jets played that season, in the Meadowlands.
Darin Kerns, who was one of the Ravens equipment managers, had mentioned to the Jets equipment guys that I had grown up a Jets fan. So, before the game, Darin marched me to the Jets locker room where the Jets guys gave me a box of equipment—most of it for my kids. I walked back to the Ravens locker room carrying the box. When I walked in, Brian Billick said, “what’s that?”
“It’s a box full of Jets gear.”
“So let me get this straight, you’re in our locker room, you’re on our sideline, you’re in our meetings and you’re carrying a box of Jets gear around to take home to your kids.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Okay. Just so I’m clear on where you stand.”
Billick knew where I stood which was why he gave me a hard time about it. Now that Rex Ryan, who was an assistant on that Ravens team, is running the Jets I find myself pulling for the Jets again. If the Jets and Ravens played today, especially since a lot of the guys I knew back in ’04 are gone, I’m honestly not sure whose side I’d be on. I’d probably root for the team that needed to win the game more.
I AM still an Islanders fan. I covered the team in the 80s when they were still great and was thrilled to find that the players I’d loved watching play were, almost to a man, really good guys. (Of course hockey players in general are good guys). Al Arbour, the coach, was terrific to be around and, in addition to the big names, guys like Bob Bourne, Bobby Nystrom, Clark Gillies (who was actually a pretty big name) and Ken Morrow, made the job easy and fun. Even though the team has been mostly awful since it last played in The Stanley Cup Finals in 1984, I still have warm memories of that group that make me occasionally shout at the TV when the current team, still very young but (finally) with some potential, blows a 3-1 lead in the third period the way it did in the last game before the Olympics.
As for Duke, my alma mater, I’ve discussed my relationship with the school here in the past. I still pull for Mike Krzyzewski, because he’s been a friend for a long time but so have a lot of coaches including Gary Williams and Roy Williams and Oliver Purnell and Leonard Hamilton—just to name a few guys in the ACC. The games I get most into these days usually involve Patriot League teams. In fact, I think the most emotional I’ve been watching a game in recent years was the night Bucknell stunned Kansas in the 2005 NCAA Tournament. I still get chills thinking about that game. George Mason beating Connecticut to go to the Final Four in 2006 is right up there too, not because I don’t like Jim Calhoun (I do) but because it was one of the great underdog stories EVER and I got to cover it.
When Jim Larranaga raced over to where I was standing shortly after that game had ended and said, “I can’t wait to see (Jim) Nantz and (Billy) Packer in Indy,”—both had dissed the committee for putting Mason in the tournament—it was a truly sublime moment.
As luck would have it, I was having dinner in St. Elmo’s, the great steak house in Indy on Wednesday night that week when Nantz and Packer walked in. I’d already run into Larranaga because he and his team were eating in a private room in the back of the restaurant. When Jim and Billy stopped to say hello, I couldn’t resist.
“The George Mason kids are eating in a room in the back,” I said. “They can’t wait to see you guys.”
Nantz immediately headed back there to deliver his official apology. Packer never moved. “You aren’t going to apologize?” I said to him.
“I don’t have anything to apologize for,” Packer said.
That’s one reason I loved Billy—he always stuck to his guns even when they were empty.
So, if the U.S. does play Russia in the gold medal game, I’ll be no different than most Americans, I’ll be pulling for the U.S. But it will have more to do with my affection for underdogs than with the letters on the front of the sweater.
After all, Alexander Ovechkin may be the most popular non-Redskin in the history of the town. The only person I can think of who might have been as beloved as Ovechkin is Wes Unseld. Frank Howard was certainly popular years ago with the Senators but they were a bad team throughout his years in Washington.
You can’t walk 100 yards in downtown DC right now without encountering someone wearing an Ovechkin jersey. People here are firmly convinced the Caps are going to win The Stanley Cup this spring and if they do Ovechkin is going to be the main reason. It can be argued that Ovechkin is the first athlete to represent Washington since, I don’t know, Sammy Baugh? Who was THE best player in his sport. (Save your Sidney Crosby argument for another day. The point is he is 1 or 1-A at worst).
So, I wondered aloud on the air if Ovechkin—and fellow Cap Alexander Semin—are out there representing Russia, do Caps fans root for their guys or for their country?
Based on text messages sent to the station the verdict was overwhelming: USA-USA-USA. Naturally some people wondered if I was “crazy,” for even thinking there was a debate.
All of which reminded me how doing what I do gives you a different perspective than most people. When I was a kid I rooted ardently for the Mets, the Jets, the Knicks, the Rangers and, after I had bought my first car and could drive to Long Island as a high school senior, the expansion Islanders. I even rooted for the Nets while they were in the ABA and never hated the Yankees or the Giants. My instinct has always been to pull for underdogs so I was drawn to the expansion Mets. With the Jets it was more basic: I could get into the games.
I loved my teams. Like any fan there were individuals I picked out as my favorites: Tom Seaver, Jerry Koosman, Cleon Jones and Tommie Agee with the Mets; Joe Namath, Matt Snell and Verlon Biggs with the Jets; Willis Reed, Walt Frazier, Dave Debusschere and Bill Bradley with the Knicks; Brad Park and the GAG (Goal-a-game) line with the Rangers: Vic Hadfield, Jean Ratelle, Brad Park and, later, Billy Smith, Denis Potvin, Brian Trottier and Mike Bossy with the Islanders although I always had a warm spot for Billy Harris even though he was traded before the team started winning Stanley Cups.
But in the end, I was a typical fan. To quote Jerry Seinfeld, I rooted for laundry.
I was furious with the Mets when they traded Seaver in 1977 and never stopped being a Seaver fan. In fact, one of my great thrills was covering the game in Yankee Stadium in 1983 when he won his 300th game while pitching for the White Sox.
But I was still a Mets fan—even after the Seaver trade.
I can’t pinpoint exactly when I stopped rooting for laundry and started rooting for individuals. It might have been while standing in the Red Sox clubhouse in 1986 watching Bill Buckner answer question after question without blinking or complaining after his infamous boot of Mookie Wilson’s ground ball in game six of The World Series. As a Mets fan, I was thrilled with the way they had come back to win the game. Watching Buckner handle the situation with such grace made me feel awful for him. During game seven, even as I rooted ardently for the Mets, I couldn’t help but think about what this would do to Buckner.
To this day, when that World Series comes up, I point out to people—many of whom don’t remember—that the score was already tied when the ball went through Buckner’s legs. He did NOT lose the World Series for the Red Sox.
When Pat Riley became the coach of the Knicks, I stopped being a Knicks fan. I just didn’t like him and I hated his style of play. I’ve never gone back to the Knicks. In fact, I became a Celtics fan—a team I DESPISED as a kid—because of my friendship with Red Auerbach.
Other than being consistently lousy, the Jets never did anything to make me dislike them but when I did my book on the Ravens in 2004, I couldn’t help but want to see the Ravens do well since I got to know almost everyone in the organization. As luck would have it, the Ravens and Jets played that season, in the Meadowlands.
Darin Kerns, who was one of the Ravens equipment managers, had mentioned to the Jets equipment guys that I had grown up a Jets fan. So, before the game, Darin marched me to the Jets locker room where the Jets guys gave me a box of equipment—most of it for my kids. I walked back to the Ravens locker room carrying the box. When I walked in, Brian Billick said, “what’s that?”
“It’s a box full of Jets gear.”
“So let me get this straight, you’re in our locker room, you’re on our sideline, you’re in our meetings and you’re carrying a box of Jets gear around to take home to your kids.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Okay. Just so I’m clear on where you stand.”
Billick knew where I stood which was why he gave me a hard time about it. Now that Rex Ryan, who was an assistant on that Ravens team, is running the Jets I find myself pulling for the Jets again. If the Jets and Ravens played today, especially since a lot of the guys I knew back in ’04 are gone, I’m honestly not sure whose side I’d be on. I’d probably root for the team that needed to win the game more.
I AM still an Islanders fan. I covered the team in the 80s when they were still great and was thrilled to find that the players I’d loved watching play were, almost to a man, really good guys. (Of course hockey players in general are good guys). Al Arbour, the coach, was terrific to be around and, in addition to the big names, guys like Bob Bourne, Bobby Nystrom, Clark Gillies (who was actually a pretty big name) and Ken Morrow, made the job easy and fun. Even though the team has been mostly awful since it last played in The Stanley Cup Finals in 1984, I still have warm memories of that group that make me occasionally shout at the TV when the current team, still very young but (finally) with some potential, blows a 3-1 lead in the third period the way it did in the last game before the Olympics.
As for Duke, my alma mater, I’ve discussed my relationship with the school here in the past. I still pull for Mike Krzyzewski, because he’s been a friend for a long time but so have a lot of coaches including Gary Williams and Roy Williams and Oliver Purnell and Leonard Hamilton—just to name a few guys in the ACC. The games I get most into these days usually involve Patriot League teams. In fact, I think the most emotional I’ve been watching a game in recent years was the night Bucknell stunned Kansas in the 2005 NCAA Tournament. I still get chills thinking about that game. George Mason beating Connecticut to go to the Final Four in 2006 is right up there too, not because I don’t like Jim Calhoun (I do) but because it was one of the great underdog stories EVER and I got to cover it.
When Jim Larranaga raced over to where I was standing shortly after that game had ended and said, “I can’t wait to see (Jim) Nantz and (Billy) Packer in Indy,”—both had dissed the committee for putting Mason in the tournament—it was a truly sublime moment.
As luck would have it, I was having dinner in St. Elmo’s, the great steak house in Indy on Wednesday night that week when Nantz and Packer walked in. I’d already run into Larranaga because he and his team were eating in a private room in the back of the restaurant. When Jim and Billy stopped to say hello, I couldn’t resist.
“The George Mason kids are eating in a room in the back,” I said. “They can’t wait to see you guys.”
Nantz immediately headed back there to deliver his official apology. Packer never moved. “You aren’t going to apologize?” I said to him.
“I don’t have anything to apologize for,” Packer said.
That’s one reason I loved Billy—he always stuck to his guns even when they were empty.
So, if the U.S. does play Russia in the gold medal game, I’ll be no different than most Americans, I’ll be pulling for the U.S. But it will have more to do with my affection for underdogs than with the letters on the front of the sweater.
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Ups and downs of Lindsey Jacobellis
I really want to feel sorry for Lindsey Jacobellis this morning. Most of you probably don’t know who she is unless you are watching a lot more of The Winter Olympics than I am.
So here’s a little background: Four years ago when snowboarding was introduced as an Olympic sport, Jacobellis had a chance to become a star—at least in the way most Winter Olympians become stars. She wasn’t going to be Shaun White, who I guess has become some kind of snowboarding icon or Lindsey Vonn, who has yet to win an Olympic medal but is now being treated by the American media as if she’s Peyton Manning with a sprained ankle on the eve of The Super Bowl.
Update: Lindsey stepped in and out of the shower this morning pain free. Her husband, the ever-present Thomas Vonn, reports that if the women’s downhill is delayed until June—as now seems likely—Lindsey should be ready to ski pain free. Unless she’s not. More in about 15 minutes.
Four years ago in Turin, Jacobellis was leading an event called the snowboard cross, which is, essentially, a race down the mountain on snowboards with various gates and jumps along the way. Watching it can be very entertaining and there’s no doubting the remarkable skill of the competitors. She was cruising in the four-woman final when she came to the last jump. Whether out of excitement or ebullience or cockiness, she came out of the jump and did what other boarders (they’re not skiers right?) described as a hot-dog move, leaning forward to grab the front of her board as she came off the jump.
If you’re out for a romp on a mountain and you’re good, there’s nothing wrong with such a move. When you are competing for an Olympic Gold Medal, it probably isn’t such a good idea because it’s not easy to do and, well, the goal at that moment is to get to the finish line, not look cool. If you want to really look cool you stand on a medal stand with gold around your neck and hear your national anthem played. Now THAT’s cool.
Jacobellis fell. By the time she scrambled to her feet the only remaining boarder who hadn’t fallen yet, Tanja Frieden, whooshed by her. Since no one else was following her, Jacobellis got up, stumbled across the finish line and won the silver medal.
Look, an Olympic silver medal is an amazing accomplishment. I’ve had the chance to HOLD Olympic medals won by others and that’s as close as I’ll ever come to an Olympic medal. I would be thrilled right now to win a medal in a Masters swimming meet. But when you are the best in the world at an Olympic sport and all you have to do is not screw around for another five seconds and you opt to screw around and you turn gold into silver, that’s just foolish.
What Jacobellis did was the competitive equivalent of Michael Phelps thinking his lead in the 200 freestyle at the Beijing Olympics was so huge (which it was) that he could flip on his back and backstroke to the wall. Except he miscalculated and someone passed him on the last stroke.
Jacobellis—and a lot of snowboarders—didn’t see it that way. Her reaction was, basically, “whatever, it happens. I was having fun.”
Old people like me weren’t so much horrified as stunned. You train like crazy in a sport where the only event anyone but friends and family care about is the Olympics and decide to “have fun,” a few yards from a gold medal? The flip side were people who said, “hey, the snowboarders and X-games types were brought in to breathe new life into the Games. This is what you get.”
Okay, we’re all different. And, since all Olympic athletes are pros nowadays, Jacobellis would—barring injury—get another shot in four years. Well, her shot came on Tuesday. She didn’t make the final. On what was apparently a slushy and difficult course, she boarded (is that what you say?) off the course during the semifinals, missing a gate. That disqualified her.
Here’s where I have trouble feeling sorry for her—which I want to do, the way I feel for Tod Lodwick, the Nordic skier who JUST missed a medal on Sunday in the Nordic combined, finishing in fourth place in his fifth and almost certainly last Olympics. There’s nothing worse than finishing fourth in the Olympics. It’s much worse than finishing second. You “win,” silver. No one ever says you “win,” fourth. Lodwick’s got one more shot in the relay next Tuesday. I, for one, will be pulling for him and the American team big-time.
Jacobellis has apparently been complaining about the condition of the course all week. She’s apparently not wrong but, last I looked, everyone was boarding on the same course. Then, Tuesday, after her flame-out she walked past reporters in what’s called the “mixed zone,” which is where reporters can lean over a barrier and try to talk to the athletes as they walk by—if the athletes decide to and stop and talk. To this day, working a “mixed zone,” may be the most humiliating thing I’ve done as a reporter. Jacobellis just kept going when reporters tried to get her to stop and talk.
Whatever happened to, “I’m just having fun,” or “it happens?” Maybe it’s a good sign that she was upset about her performance. Maybe she figured out that the Olympics are, in fact, a competition. Or maybe she’s another spoiled athlete who can go stand in line with most of the world’s tennis players.
Either way, it’s too bad. As I said last week, what I like about the Winter Olympics is that most of the athletes aren’t hyper-marketed stars who we learn to dislike almost as soon as we get to know them a little. (Figure skaters, of course, are the exception. We’ll go back to the figure-skating competition in a minute, but first we have another update from Thomas Vonn: Lindsey ate breakfast with no visible discomfort. She’s planning to eat lunch. We aren’t ready to commit to dinner yet. More to come after Bob Costas introduces the next four hours of figure skating).
Lindsey Jacobellis had one chance to win a gold medal and blew it. She got a second chance and was unlucky. The first time around she shrugged it off. This time she was clearly upset.
Maybe that’s progress. Maybe she’ll get another chance in four years. Or maybe she’ll spend the rest of her life staring at that silver medal and saying to herself, “what was I thinking?”
So here’s a little background: Four years ago when snowboarding was introduced as an Olympic sport, Jacobellis had a chance to become a star—at least in the way most Winter Olympians become stars. She wasn’t going to be Shaun White, who I guess has become some kind of snowboarding icon or Lindsey Vonn, who has yet to win an Olympic medal but is now being treated by the American media as if she’s Peyton Manning with a sprained ankle on the eve of The Super Bowl.
Update: Lindsey stepped in and out of the shower this morning pain free. Her husband, the ever-present Thomas Vonn, reports that if the women’s downhill is delayed until June—as now seems likely—Lindsey should be ready to ski pain free. Unless she’s not. More in about 15 minutes.
Four years ago in Turin, Jacobellis was leading an event called the snowboard cross, which is, essentially, a race down the mountain on snowboards with various gates and jumps along the way. Watching it can be very entertaining and there’s no doubting the remarkable skill of the competitors. She was cruising in the four-woman final when she came to the last jump. Whether out of excitement or ebullience or cockiness, she came out of the jump and did what other boarders (they’re not skiers right?) described as a hot-dog move, leaning forward to grab the front of her board as she came off the jump.
If you’re out for a romp on a mountain and you’re good, there’s nothing wrong with such a move. When you are competing for an Olympic Gold Medal, it probably isn’t such a good idea because it’s not easy to do and, well, the goal at that moment is to get to the finish line, not look cool. If you want to really look cool you stand on a medal stand with gold around your neck and hear your national anthem played. Now THAT’s cool.
Jacobellis fell. By the time she scrambled to her feet the only remaining boarder who hadn’t fallen yet, Tanja Frieden, whooshed by her. Since no one else was following her, Jacobellis got up, stumbled across the finish line and won the silver medal.
Look, an Olympic silver medal is an amazing accomplishment. I’ve had the chance to HOLD Olympic medals won by others and that’s as close as I’ll ever come to an Olympic medal. I would be thrilled right now to win a medal in a Masters swimming meet. But when you are the best in the world at an Olympic sport and all you have to do is not screw around for another five seconds and you opt to screw around and you turn gold into silver, that’s just foolish.
What Jacobellis did was the competitive equivalent of Michael Phelps thinking his lead in the 200 freestyle at the Beijing Olympics was so huge (which it was) that he could flip on his back and backstroke to the wall. Except he miscalculated and someone passed him on the last stroke.
Jacobellis—and a lot of snowboarders—didn’t see it that way. Her reaction was, basically, “whatever, it happens. I was having fun.”
Old people like me weren’t so much horrified as stunned. You train like crazy in a sport where the only event anyone but friends and family care about is the Olympics and decide to “have fun,” a few yards from a gold medal? The flip side were people who said, “hey, the snowboarders and X-games types were brought in to breathe new life into the Games. This is what you get.”
Okay, we’re all different. And, since all Olympic athletes are pros nowadays, Jacobellis would—barring injury—get another shot in four years. Well, her shot came on Tuesday. She didn’t make the final. On what was apparently a slushy and difficult course, she boarded (is that what you say?) off the course during the semifinals, missing a gate. That disqualified her.
Here’s where I have trouble feeling sorry for her—which I want to do, the way I feel for Tod Lodwick, the Nordic skier who JUST missed a medal on Sunday in the Nordic combined, finishing in fourth place in his fifth and almost certainly last Olympics. There’s nothing worse than finishing fourth in the Olympics. It’s much worse than finishing second. You “win,” silver. No one ever says you “win,” fourth. Lodwick’s got one more shot in the relay next Tuesday. I, for one, will be pulling for him and the American team big-time.
Jacobellis has apparently been complaining about the condition of the course all week. She’s apparently not wrong but, last I looked, everyone was boarding on the same course. Then, Tuesday, after her flame-out she walked past reporters in what’s called the “mixed zone,” which is where reporters can lean over a barrier and try to talk to the athletes as they walk by—if the athletes decide to and stop and talk. To this day, working a “mixed zone,” may be the most humiliating thing I’ve done as a reporter. Jacobellis just kept going when reporters tried to get her to stop and talk.
Whatever happened to, “I’m just having fun,” or “it happens?” Maybe it’s a good sign that she was upset about her performance. Maybe she figured out that the Olympics are, in fact, a competition. Or maybe she’s another spoiled athlete who can go stand in line with most of the world’s tennis players.
Either way, it’s too bad. As I said last week, what I like about the Winter Olympics is that most of the athletes aren’t hyper-marketed stars who we learn to dislike almost as soon as we get to know them a little. (Figure skaters, of course, are the exception. We’ll go back to the figure-skating competition in a minute, but first we have another update from Thomas Vonn: Lindsey ate breakfast with no visible discomfort. She’s planning to eat lunch. We aren’t ready to commit to dinner yet. More to come after Bob Costas introduces the next four hours of figure skating).
Lindsey Jacobellis had one chance to win a gold medal and blew it. She got a second chance and was unlucky. The first time around she shrugged it off. This time she was clearly upset.
Maybe that’s progress. Maybe she’ll get another chance in four years. Or maybe she’ll spend the rest of her life staring at that silver medal and saying to herself, “what was I thinking?”
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Racing, Olympics and ESPN-ABC Announcers; Goydos keeps his sense of humor
I apologize for not having written a blog yesterday. On my way home Sunday from the Holy Cross-Bucknell game I kept having to pull over because there were potholes on Rte. 15 that I was afraid to go through at 200 miles per hour.
Sorry stock car fans, couldn’t resist. But seriously, the biggest event in racing delayed for more than two hours because the track has potholes in it? Who was in charge of track maintenance, the NCAA? Look, I know nothing about auto racing—I covered the Indy 500 once; thought the start was about the most thrilling thing I’d ever seen and then had little idea what was going on for the rest of the race. To be fair, that was the year when officials had to go back and look at the tape to figure out who finished second to Rick Mears. So it wasn’t just me.
But I don’t think you have to be a racing fan to understand that two delays caused by potholes is not exactly great theater nor is having the race finish when it is already dinnertime in the east. Apparently Dale Earnhardt Jr. finished second. Where was Danica Patrick? Oh, that’s right she was in the race Saturday that only the real racing geeks pay any attention to at all. She’s the biggest star in the sport—at least based on how often she’s on TV—and she runs in the equivalent of the NBA rookie game.
She got more attention for finishing 32nd in that race than all the other drivers combined did for the entire week. Gee, I wonder why. Couldn’t have anything to do with her looks could it?
Meanwhile, back at sports I know something about…(which means there isn’t going to be too much talk about the Olympics although I got a kick out of Bode Miller caring enough to win a bronze medal in the downhill and an American with a great name—Johnny Spillane--winning the first U.S. medal in Nordic skiing since Bill Koch in 1976. Seeing Koch’s name reminded me that when he won his medal (a silver in the 30 kilometer cross country race) I was in college and avidly reading The Washington Post. One American writer had thought to show up for the race—Lenny Shapiro from The Post—who was my hero then as he is now. He talked to Koch and wrote a great story about him and his solitary quest to be a Nordic skier in a country that had zero interest in Nordic skiing.
I swear I’d watch more of the Olympics but every time I switch over it seems that NBC is either in commercial or Bob Costas is saying, “let’s return now to figure skating….” Bring back Janet Lynn and I’ll return to figure skating. I finally figured out last night as I clicked back to college hoops as two more figure skaters graced my screen why I simply can’t stand it anymore: it’s not a sport, it’s a reality show. All it lacks are early tryouts with people who can’t stay up on their skates and Simon Cowell telling them that they suck).
Okay, now you are looking live at today’s blog. Sorry, I spent some of last night listening to Brent Musburger and Bob Knight. Talk about memories. Brent is now 70 and Knight is 69 but they both clearly love being in places like College Station, Texas doing a game on a Monday night in February. Hey, good for them. I wish I had that kind of energy sometimes.
Brent sometimes sounds like he’s doing an imitation of Brent but who cares? If ABC-ESPN gets the NCAA Tournament contract this summer, there’s going to be a battle royale over there about who gets The Final Four games. Dick Vitale HAS to do color because he’s Dick Vitale and he’s been waiting more than 30 years to go to The Final Four and not sell pizzas all week. I’d pair him with Knight because Knight’s sarcastic presence might tone Dick down a little and they could be the sort of Odd Couple that Al McGuire and Billy Packer became.
The smart betting on play-by-play would have to be Dan Schulman, who is the company’s rising play-by-play star and works most of the time with Vitale. Nothing against Schulman but I’d stick Brent right there in-between Vitale and Knight. It would be the climax to a comeback that began 20 years ago when CBS unceremoniously fired him on the eve of the 1990 national title game. And the guy still gets it done when the red light goes on.
Okay, I’m rambling. Some day I’ll tell the story about Brent and I almost getting into a fight about 10 minutes before the national championship telecast went on in the air in 1989 in Seattle. Billy Packer was standing there preparing, as he said later, to open the telecast himself. The whole thing has a happy ending. Brent and I have gotten along fine for years now.
The downer of the weekend for me was my buddy Paul Goydos coughing up the lead on the back nine at Pebble Beach. Anyone who knows me at all knows that Goydos and I have been friends since 1993 when I first began researching “A Good Walk Spoiled.”
I was at the Buick Open on the first day killing time in the afternoon before going to meet Billy Andrade for dinner. Larry Mize had shot 64 in the morning and the only player in the afternoon wave who had gone low at all was a rookie named Goydos, who had shot 66. After a lengthy debate, Chuck Adams and Mark Mitchell, the two on-site PGA Tour PR guys, decided to bring Goydos into the interview room.
“There’s no one else to bring in this afternoon,” Mitchell said. “Plus, it’ll be good experience for Paul.”
With nothing else to do, I wandered into the back of the interview room to see if there was any reason at all to listen. The first thing I heard Goydos say was, “I’m sure none of you have ever heard of me. There’s a reason for that: I’ve never done anything.”
Hang on, I thought, this guy might be worth listening to for a few minutes. He launched into a 10-minute monologue that was supposed to be a recap of his round but was more like a standup routine. “At 17 I hit 7-iron. When I’m playing well it’s because I get my slice going. I know if you’re on the PGA Tour you’re supposed to call it a fade but when you hit a 7-iron and it goes 20 yards to the right, that’s a slice.”
I needed to meet this guy. I introduced myself as he was walking out, said I was doing a book on life on tour and wondered if we could talk at some point. “Sure, I’ll talk to you all you want,” he said. “But you’re wasting your time writing a book on the tour. No one’s going to buy it.”
Fortunately Paul is better at golf than predicting book sales. He became the character in the book few people had heard of but continued to follow long after it was published. We became good friends. He’s won twice on tour and pieced together a pretty good career for someone who likes to describe himself as, “the worst player in the history of the PGA Tour.”
He had a great chance to win on Sunday, but came undone on the back nine with a couple of bogeys and then, disastrously, a quadruple-bogey nine that sent him spiraling to a disappointed tie for fifth. Talk about hitting a pothole.
On Monday I sent him an e-mail offering condolences. Typical Paul, this was the answer I got back: “Well, when I made my back-nine 9 on Sunday at The Hope it was on a par-three. This time it was on a par-5. I guess that’s progress.”
You have to love a guy who NEVER loses his sense of humor. There aren’t many people you can say that about.
Gotta go. I think Costas is about to introduce some more figure skating.
Sorry stock car fans, couldn’t resist. But seriously, the biggest event in racing delayed for more than two hours because the track has potholes in it? Who was in charge of track maintenance, the NCAA? Look, I know nothing about auto racing—I covered the Indy 500 once; thought the start was about the most thrilling thing I’d ever seen and then had little idea what was going on for the rest of the race. To be fair, that was the year when officials had to go back and look at the tape to figure out who finished second to Rick Mears. So it wasn’t just me.
But I don’t think you have to be a racing fan to understand that two delays caused by potholes is not exactly great theater nor is having the race finish when it is already dinnertime in the east. Apparently Dale Earnhardt Jr. finished second. Where was Danica Patrick? Oh, that’s right she was in the race Saturday that only the real racing geeks pay any attention to at all. She’s the biggest star in the sport—at least based on how often she’s on TV—and she runs in the equivalent of the NBA rookie game.
She got more attention for finishing 32nd in that race than all the other drivers combined did for the entire week. Gee, I wonder why. Couldn’t have anything to do with her looks could it?
Meanwhile, back at sports I know something about…(which means there isn’t going to be too much talk about the Olympics although I got a kick out of Bode Miller caring enough to win a bronze medal in the downhill and an American with a great name—Johnny Spillane--winning the first U.S. medal in Nordic skiing since Bill Koch in 1976. Seeing Koch’s name reminded me that when he won his medal (a silver in the 30 kilometer cross country race) I was in college and avidly reading The Washington Post. One American writer had thought to show up for the race—Lenny Shapiro from The Post—who was my hero then as he is now. He talked to Koch and wrote a great story about him and his solitary quest to be a Nordic skier in a country that had zero interest in Nordic skiing.
I swear I’d watch more of the Olympics but every time I switch over it seems that NBC is either in commercial or Bob Costas is saying, “let’s return now to figure skating….” Bring back Janet Lynn and I’ll return to figure skating. I finally figured out last night as I clicked back to college hoops as two more figure skaters graced my screen why I simply can’t stand it anymore: it’s not a sport, it’s a reality show. All it lacks are early tryouts with people who can’t stay up on their skates and Simon Cowell telling them that they suck).
Okay, now you are looking live at today’s blog. Sorry, I spent some of last night listening to Brent Musburger and Bob Knight. Talk about memories. Brent is now 70 and Knight is 69 but they both clearly love being in places like College Station, Texas doing a game on a Monday night in February. Hey, good for them. I wish I had that kind of energy sometimes.
Brent sometimes sounds like he’s doing an imitation of Brent but who cares? If ABC-ESPN gets the NCAA Tournament contract this summer, there’s going to be a battle royale over there about who gets The Final Four games. Dick Vitale HAS to do color because he’s Dick Vitale and he’s been waiting more than 30 years to go to The Final Four and not sell pizzas all week. I’d pair him with Knight because Knight’s sarcastic presence might tone Dick down a little and they could be the sort of Odd Couple that Al McGuire and Billy Packer became.
The smart betting on play-by-play would have to be Dan Schulman, who is the company’s rising play-by-play star and works most of the time with Vitale. Nothing against Schulman but I’d stick Brent right there in-between Vitale and Knight. It would be the climax to a comeback that began 20 years ago when CBS unceremoniously fired him on the eve of the 1990 national title game. And the guy still gets it done when the red light goes on.
Okay, I’m rambling. Some day I’ll tell the story about Brent and I almost getting into a fight about 10 minutes before the national championship telecast went on in the air in 1989 in Seattle. Billy Packer was standing there preparing, as he said later, to open the telecast himself. The whole thing has a happy ending. Brent and I have gotten along fine for years now.
The downer of the weekend for me was my buddy Paul Goydos coughing up the lead on the back nine at Pebble Beach. Anyone who knows me at all knows that Goydos and I have been friends since 1993 when I first began researching “A Good Walk Spoiled.”
I was at the Buick Open on the first day killing time in the afternoon before going to meet Billy Andrade for dinner. Larry Mize had shot 64 in the morning and the only player in the afternoon wave who had gone low at all was a rookie named Goydos, who had shot 66. After a lengthy debate, Chuck Adams and Mark Mitchell, the two on-site PGA Tour PR guys, decided to bring Goydos into the interview room.
“There’s no one else to bring in this afternoon,” Mitchell said. “Plus, it’ll be good experience for Paul.”
With nothing else to do, I wandered into the back of the interview room to see if there was any reason at all to listen. The first thing I heard Goydos say was, “I’m sure none of you have ever heard of me. There’s a reason for that: I’ve never done anything.”
Hang on, I thought, this guy might be worth listening to for a few minutes. He launched into a 10-minute monologue that was supposed to be a recap of his round but was more like a standup routine. “At 17 I hit 7-iron. When I’m playing well it’s because I get my slice going. I know if you’re on the PGA Tour you’re supposed to call it a fade but when you hit a 7-iron and it goes 20 yards to the right, that’s a slice.”
I needed to meet this guy. I introduced myself as he was walking out, said I was doing a book on life on tour and wondered if we could talk at some point. “Sure, I’ll talk to you all you want,” he said. “But you’re wasting your time writing a book on the tour. No one’s going to buy it.”
Fortunately Paul is better at golf than predicting book sales. He became the character in the book few people had heard of but continued to follow long after it was published. We became good friends. He’s won twice on tour and pieced together a pretty good career for someone who likes to describe himself as, “the worst player in the history of the PGA Tour.”
He had a great chance to win on Sunday, but came undone on the back nine with a couple of bogeys and then, disastrously, a quadruple-bogey nine that sent him spiraling to a disappointed tie for fifth. Talk about hitting a pothole.
On Monday I sent him an e-mail offering condolences. Typical Paul, this was the answer I got back: “Well, when I made my back-nine 9 on Sunday at The Hope it was on a par-three. This time it was on a par-5. I guess that’s progress.”
You have to love a guy who NEVER loses his sense of humor. There aren’t many people you can say that about.
Gotta go. I think Costas is about to introduce some more figure skating.
Friday, February 12, 2010
Winter Olympics -– I still buy into the notion of the Games
The Winter Olympics begin tonight with the Opening Ceremonies, which I assume will last about eight hours on NBC.
I hate to sound jaded, but to be honest, once you’ve seen one Opening Ceremony you’ve seen them all. The ONLY thing that matters is the entrance of the athletes. The rest is fluff, time-filler and, frankly, boring. If I think about it, I’ll try to tune in near the end when the Canadian team walks in. Seeing the host country’s athletes walk into the stadium is usually a chill-producing moment.
As it happens, I’m one of those guys who still buys in to the notion of the Olympics—especially the winter games where so few of the athletes are stars in the marketing world. More likely, they’ll have 15 minutes of fame if they medal or produce a remarkable performance. Lindsey Vonn, if she can get down the mountain on her injured shin and win a couple of gold medals will be selling a lot of products in the near future, but she may be the list. There are no figure skating stars (at least going in) who are likely to follow in the footsteps of Peggy Fleming, Janet Lynn (still my all-time heart-throb) Dorothy Hamill, Katerina Witt or even the infamous duo of Nancy Kerrigan and Tonya Harding.
NBC will certainly try to create stars. It will spend a lot of time focusing on the snowboarders because they’re trying to pull in a younger audience and the U.S. is very good at snowboarding. We’ll see a lot of skiing and a fair bit of speedskating although there aren’t as many U.S. medal contenders—particularly on the women’s side—as in past years. Of course you never know. Someone could come up with the performance of a lifetime.
Most of my favorite Olympic moments—the U.S. hockey team in Lake Placid aside—involve athletes most people have never heard of or might vaguely remember. When Brian Shimer won a bronze medal in bobsledding in his fifth and final Olympics—his first Olympic medal ever—in 2002, I thought that was a very cool story. I had the pleasure of being there in 1984 when Jeff Blatnick, having beaten cancer, won the superheavyweight gold medal in Greco-Roman wrestling and wept on the mat when it was over.
I remember a lot of swimming moments because of my background as a never-was swimmer. I remember all of Mark Spitz’s swims in 1972 but my most vivid memory is of his last race: the 100 freestyle. There was a Russian swimmer in the lane next to him (I can’t remember his name anymore) who came out of the pack in the last 10 meters to get the bronze medal. At that point in time he might have been the first Russian man to medal in swimming but in any event, no one had expected him to medal and he did. He was so thrilled that he held up three fingers to Spitz, “going ‘three, three, I finished three,’ while Spitz just kind of looked at him as if to say, ‘yeah so what, I’m Mark Spitz and you’re not.’ I thought the guy being that excited was great.
I remember seeing Bobby Hackett, who I’d known a little from local meets around New York (we were in different age groups so I never actually had the chance to get my butt kicked by him) winning a silver medal that same year and being awed that a kid from Gator Swim Club could do something like that. Like everyone, I remember Michael Phelps in Beijing but my most vivid memory is Jason Lezak’s amazing anchor leg in the 400x100 freestyle relay that allowed Phelps’s quests for the eight gold medals to stay alive. THAT was thrilling.
The Olympics have changed completely since I first began watching them as a kid and even covering them as a young adult. Everyone who takes part now is a pro, the old Avery Brundage myth of “amateurism,” having been put away years ago. That’s good in the sense that you don’t have Soviet athletes who are allegedly factory workers when their fulltime job is clearly playing hockey or figure skating or running track. But there’s also a loss of some innocence there: The Miracle on Ice can never happen again because the hockey tournament is an NHL tournament, the players divided by countries instead of by cities. I remember when Dr. Gary Hall was considered a marvel when he qualified for his third Olympics as a swimmer in 1976 because once you finished college in those days you had to go get a job.
Now, swimming is a job for anyone who is world class, which is why Phelps will swim in his fourth Olympics in London in 2012 and that won’t make him unusual at all. Swimmers are like all other professional athletes now: they keep going until they aren’t good enough to get paid anymore.
All of which is fine. And I will still think it is cool if U.S. bobsledder John Napier, whose Army unit deployed to Afghanistan this month (he may follow them next month) can win a medal. If, as people say, this is the year the Americans can add a second Nordic skiing medal to the silver Bill Koch won in 1976, that will be a good story. I’ll watch a lot of the skiing because it is fun to watch the skiers charge down the mountain on the brink of disaster at any given moment.
One thing I do have trouble with is NBC’s approach to the Olympics. Even in Vancouver, where the Pacific Time zone should make it possible to televise a lot of events live in prime time, a majority of the coverage will be taped. You can bet you won’t see Vonn or Bode Miller skiing much before 11 o’clock Eastern Time most nights and it will be on tape. Great sports moments should be LIVE, you should sit there not knowing who won or who lost or what will happen in the next instant.
Even if you do the, ‘don’t tell me who won,’ thing, most of the time you can figure out from the timing who won and who lost while you’re watching. Plus, in today’s world especially, it is almost impossible to resist the urge to find out who won. So, I’ll watch a lot, but the fact that much of it will be on tape will take some of the enjoyment out of it for me—and for others.
The Olympics are still two weeks I look forward to whenever they take place. I’ve had various ideas for books that would have involved the Olympics but never gone through with any, mostly because the books I’d like to do on Olympic athletes would be decidedly un-commercial. I wouldn’t be caught dead writing about figure skating. Speedskating or bobsledding or luge would be more up my alley.
Cue the syrupy music, it’s time for Bob Costas to tell us how spectacular the Opening Ceremonies are. Of course that’ll be live—the one thing that doesn’t need to be live. I’ll check in on Saturday when the competition begins.
I hate to sound jaded, but to be honest, once you’ve seen one Opening Ceremony you’ve seen them all. The ONLY thing that matters is the entrance of the athletes. The rest is fluff, time-filler and, frankly, boring. If I think about it, I’ll try to tune in near the end when the Canadian team walks in. Seeing the host country’s athletes walk into the stadium is usually a chill-producing moment.
As it happens, I’m one of those guys who still buys in to the notion of the Olympics—especially the winter games where so few of the athletes are stars in the marketing world. More likely, they’ll have 15 minutes of fame if they medal or produce a remarkable performance. Lindsey Vonn, if she can get down the mountain on her injured shin and win a couple of gold medals will be selling a lot of products in the near future, but she may be the list. There are no figure skating stars (at least going in) who are likely to follow in the footsteps of Peggy Fleming, Janet Lynn (still my all-time heart-throb) Dorothy Hamill, Katerina Witt or even the infamous duo of Nancy Kerrigan and Tonya Harding.
NBC will certainly try to create stars. It will spend a lot of time focusing on the snowboarders because they’re trying to pull in a younger audience and the U.S. is very good at snowboarding. We’ll see a lot of skiing and a fair bit of speedskating although there aren’t as many U.S. medal contenders—particularly on the women’s side—as in past years. Of course you never know. Someone could come up with the performance of a lifetime.
Most of my favorite Olympic moments—the U.S. hockey team in Lake Placid aside—involve athletes most people have never heard of or might vaguely remember. When Brian Shimer won a bronze medal in bobsledding in his fifth and final Olympics—his first Olympic medal ever—in 2002, I thought that was a very cool story. I had the pleasure of being there in 1984 when Jeff Blatnick, having beaten cancer, won the superheavyweight gold medal in Greco-Roman wrestling and wept on the mat when it was over.
I remember a lot of swimming moments because of my background as a never-was swimmer. I remember all of Mark Spitz’s swims in 1972 but my most vivid memory is of his last race: the 100 freestyle. There was a Russian swimmer in the lane next to him (I can’t remember his name anymore) who came out of the pack in the last 10 meters to get the bronze medal. At that point in time he might have been the first Russian man to medal in swimming but in any event, no one had expected him to medal and he did. He was so thrilled that he held up three fingers to Spitz, “going ‘three, three, I finished three,’ while Spitz just kind of looked at him as if to say, ‘yeah so what, I’m Mark Spitz and you’re not.’ I thought the guy being that excited was great.
I remember seeing Bobby Hackett, who I’d known a little from local meets around New York (we were in different age groups so I never actually had the chance to get my butt kicked by him) winning a silver medal that same year and being awed that a kid from Gator Swim Club could do something like that. Like everyone, I remember Michael Phelps in Beijing but my most vivid memory is Jason Lezak’s amazing anchor leg in the 400x100 freestyle relay that allowed Phelps’s quests for the eight gold medals to stay alive. THAT was thrilling.
The Olympics have changed completely since I first began watching them as a kid and even covering them as a young adult. Everyone who takes part now is a pro, the old Avery Brundage myth of “amateurism,” having been put away years ago. That’s good in the sense that you don’t have Soviet athletes who are allegedly factory workers when their fulltime job is clearly playing hockey or figure skating or running track. But there’s also a loss of some innocence there: The Miracle on Ice can never happen again because the hockey tournament is an NHL tournament, the players divided by countries instead of by cities. I remember when Dr. Gary Hall was considered a marvel when he qualified for his third Olympics as a swimmer in 1976 because once you finished college in those days you had to go get a job.
Now, swimming is a job for anyone who is world class, which is why Phelps will swim in his fourth Olympics in London in 2012 and that won’t make him unusual at all. Swimmers are like all other professional athletes now: they keep going until they aren’t good enough to get paid anymore.
All of which is fine. And I will still think it is cool if U.S. bobsledder John Napier, whose Army unit deployed to Afghanistan this month (he may follow them next month) can win a medal. If, as people say, this is the year the Americans can add a second Nordic skiing medal to the silver Bill Koch won in 1976, that will be a good story. I’ll watch a lot of the skiing because it is fun to watch the skiers charge down the mountain on the brink of disaster at any given moment.
One thing I do have trouble with is NBC’s approach to the Olympics. Even in Vancouver, where the Pacific Time zone should make it possible to televise a lot of events live in prime time, a majority of the coverage will be taped. You can bet you won’t see Vonn or Bode Miller skiing much before 11 o’clock Eastern Time most nights and it will be on tape. Great sports moments should be LIVE, you should sit there not knowing who won or who lost or what will happen in the next instant.
Even if you do the, ‘don’t tell me who won,’ thing, most of the time you can figure out from the timing who won and who lost while you’re watching. Plus, in today’s world especially, it is almost impossible to resist the urge to find out who won. So, I’ll watch a lot, but the fact that much of it will be on tape will take some of the enjoyment out of it for me—and for others.
The Olympics are still two weeks I look forward to whenever they take place. I’ve had various ideas for books that would have involved the Olympics but never gone through with any, mostly because the books I’d like to do on Olympic athletes would be decidedly un-commercial. I wouldn’t be caught dead writing about figure skating. Speedskating or bobsledding or luge would be more up my alley.
Cue the syrupy music, it’s time for Bob Costas to tell us how spectacular the Opening Ceremonies are. Of course that’ll be live—the one thing that doesn’t need to be live. I’ll check in on Saturday when the competition begins.
Monday, February 8, 2010
Drew Brees’s tears most memorable to me; On to next slate of sports events
There are a lot of bad things about living in America’s new snow belt. Losing power is no fun. Seeing people losing their minds in the grocery store is comedic but just a little bit scary. But not getting the newspapers in the morning makes me crazy. Sure, I can read online but it’s NOT THE SAME. I spend enough time sitting at the computer most days without having to sit here to read the papers.
Okay, that is today’s whine-du-jour. Suffice to say it hasn’t been a fun winter in these parts and apparently there’s more to come. The roads still aren’t clear (largely because there’s just no place to put the snow) and more snow is expected tomorrow and Wednesday. The only ones who are happy right now are the kids.
I did manage to make it home from West Point last night—although the last 35 miles was treacherous and frightening—in time to see most of The Super Bowl. My first comment on the game and the telecast is this: Have all the smart advertising execs retired? I did not see every commercial and I probably wasn’t completely focused on a lot of the ones I saw, but it certainly appeared that the days of the memorable Super Bowl commercial have gone the way of the low-key postgame celebration.
Enough already with the talking baby.
Onto the game. Most Super Bowls have three or four moments that stand out and are replayed forever and this game was no exception. The Saints recovery of the onside kick to start the second half will be shown a million times along with announcers crediting Sean Payton (correctly) for taking such a bold gamble. The Tracy Porter interception will always be the signature play of the game, not only because it broke the Colts back but because it rendered Peyton Manning human again. Now we’re going to hear over and over again that Manning has won the same number of Super Bowls as Mark Rypien and Brad Johnson, not to mention little brother Eli.
But for me, the most vivid memory will be Drew Brees’s tears, first when he was holding his one-year-old son Baylen during the (overblown) pre-trophy presentation celebration and then as he stood on the podium waiting for Tom Benson to stop blathering so Payton could finally hand him the trophy.
His voice never cracked on the podium or in his postgame press conference but his emotion was apparent and clearly quite genuine. He talked about feeling as if he was meant to land in New Orleans and to be a part of the rebuilding of the team and the city and the region, but there was no Joe Gibbs/Kurt Warner evangelism just a clear picture that this was a man of faith who felt that his presence in New Orleans was part of a plan he didn’t need to understand but had been able to help carry out.
Good for him. Good for the entire city which suffered the modest angst that comes with a consistently bad football team and then the tragedy of Katrina. It’s a little harder to feel good for Saints owner Tom Benson who was ready to yank the team from New Orleans and move it to San Antonio or Los Angeles after Katrina and is now taking bows for all that has gone right the last couple of years, culminating with Sunday’s victory.
You can’t help but wonder how hard Manning will get hit by his critics for this loss. He did not play poorly by any means—he never plays poorly. But the defining moment of the game was the Porter interception. I don’t think there’s anything that can happen that will remove Manning from the pantheon of great NFL quarterbacks. He’s certainly somewhere on the list although the talk that he is THE greatest will quiet now until he wins another Super Bowl.
I have one other question on the subject of great quarterbacks. Whenever people talk about Joe Montana as the best of all time, they talk about his four Super Bowl wins—as they should. Tom Brady’s three Super Bowl wins puts him in the conversation and then names like Johnny Unitas, Bart Starr, John Elway and old-timers like Sammy Baugh and Otto Graham get mentioned. I never hear Terry Bradshaw’s name. Sure, the Steelers of his era were built around a great defense but Bradshaw was awfully good and his teams won four Super Bowls. Shouldn’t that merit at least a mention, regardless of how many bad commercials he’s made?
Just wondering.
For me, there’s always a sense of relief when The Super Bowl is over. The hype is behind us for a while and we don’t have to dodge every single ex-player on earth, “breaking down the game.” What the playing of the game almost always proves is that all the, “breaking down,” is meaningless. The consensus among the experts was that sooner or later Manning would be too good for the Saints defense. I was among those who thought that, the only difference between me and some of the others is that I don’t consider myself an expert. I’m just someone who has been around football a lot and I think I know SOMETHING about the game but I certainly wouldn’t tell anyone to go out and bet his house on what I think about the outcome of a game. I thought Navy was too beat up physically to go into Notre Dame and win this past season. Shows you how much I know.
Now, unless you are an NFL Network geek who can’t wait for The Combine, football is behind us for a little while. The Winter Olympics begin Friday. I can live without the opening ceremonies and ALL the figure skating. But I enjoy things like speed skating, luge and bobsled and Alpine skiing, even if I don’t completely understand them or know any of the athletes. The hockey should be fun and the best thing about it is that the Islanders can’t lose any more games while the Olympics are going on. (The Caps, if you’re paying attention, may never lose another game. I didn’t get to see the comeback on Sunday but if they didn’t lose that game, that’s it, they’re never losing again).
It is also less than five weeks now to Selection Sunday. I went through the conference standings this morning and I have to tell you, coming up with a list of 34 teams that are absolutely, without question deserving of a bid wasn’t easy. Which raises this question: If coming up with 34 teams is tough, how the heck does the NCAA propose to come up with 65 at-large teams with a 96 team field?
This is the worst idea anyone has come up with since New Coke. Even Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delany and I agree on this and we agree on NOTHING. Of course that probably means that it is a lock to happen.
Okay, I have to go and find food for my family before it starts snowing again tomorrow. I wish I was joking.
Okay, that is today’s whine-du-jour. Suffice to say it hasn’t been a fun winter in these parts and apparently there’s more to come. The roads still aren’t clear (largely because there’s just no place to put the snow) and more snow is expected tomorrow and Wednesday. The only ones who are happy right now are the kids.
I did manage to make it home from West Point last night—although the last 35 miles was treacherous and frightening—in time to see most of The Super Bowl. My first comment on the game and the telecast is this: Have all the smart advertising execs retired? I did not see every commercial and I probably wasn’t completely focused on a lot of the ones I saw, but it certainly appeared that the days of the memorable Super Bowl commercial have gone the way of the low-key postgame celebration.
Enough already with the talking baby.
Onto the game. Most Super Bowls have three or four moments that stand out and are replayed forever and this game was no exception. The Saints recovery of the onside kick to start the second half will be shown a million times along with announcers crediting Sean Payton (correctly) for taking such a bold gamble. The Tracy Porter interception will always be the signature play of the game, not only because it broke the Colts back but because it rendered Peyton Manning human again. Now we’re going to hear over and over again that Manning has won the same number of Super Bowls as Mark Rypien and Brad Johnson, not to mention little brother Eli.
But for me, the most vivid memory will be Drew Brees’s tears, first when he was holding his one-year-old son Baylen during the (overblown) pre-trophy presentation celebration and then as he stood on the podium waiting for Tom Benson to stop blathering so Payton could finally hand him the trophy.
His voice never cracked on the podium or in his postgame press conference but his emotion was apparent and clearly quite genuine. He talked about feeling as if he was meant to land in New Orleans and to be a part of the rebuilding of the team and the city and the region, but there was no Joe Gibbs/Kurt Warner evangelism just a clear picture that this was a man of faith who felt that his presence in New Orleans was part of a plan he didn’t need to understand but had been able to help carry out.
Good for him. Good for the entire city which suffered the modest angst that comes with a consistently bad football team and then the tragedy of Katrina. It’s a little harder to feel good for Saints owner Tom Benson who was ready to yank the team from New Orleans and move it to San Antonio or Los Angeles after Katrina and is now taking bows for all that has gone right the last couple of years, culminating with Sunday’s victory.
You can’t help but wonder how hard Manning will get hit by his critics for this loss. He did not play poorly by any means—he never plays poorly. But the defining moment of the game was the Porter interception. I don’t think there’s anything that can happen that will remove Manning from the pantheon of great NFL quarterbacks. He’s certainly somewhere on the list although the talk that he is THE greatest will quiet now until he wins another Super Bowl.
I have one other question on the subject of great quarterbacks. Whenever people talk about Joe Montana as the best of all time, they talk about his four Super Bowl wins—as they should. Tom Brady’s three Super Bowl wins puts him in the conversation and then names like Johnny Unitas, Bart Starr, John Elway and old-timers like Sammy Baugh and Otto Graham get mentioned. I never hear Terry Bradshaw’s name. Sure, the Steelers of his era were built around a great defense but Bradshaw was awfully good and his teams won four Super Bowls. Shouldn’t that merit at least a mention, regardless of how many bad commercials he’s made?
Just wondering.
For me, there’s always a sense of relief when The Super Bowl is over. The hype is behind us for a while and we don’t have to dodge every single ex-player on earth, “breaking down the game.” What the playing of the game almost always proves is that all the, “breaking down,” is meaningless. The consensus among the experts was that sooner or later Manning would be too good for the Saints defense. I was among those who thought that, the only difference between me and some of the others is that I don’t consider myself an expert. I’m just someone who has been around football a lot and I think I know SOMETHING about the game but I certainly wouldn’t tell anyone to go out and bet his house on what I think about the outcome of a game. I thought Navy was too beat up physically to go into Notre Dame and win this past season. Shows you how much I know.
Now, unless you are an NFL Network geek who can’t wait for The Combine, football is behind us for a little while. The Winter Olympics begin Friday. I can live without the opening ceremonies and ALL the figure skating. But I enjoy things like speed skating, luge and bobsled and Alpine skiing, even if I don’t completely understand them or know any of the athletes. The hockey should be fun and the best thing about it is that the Islanders can’t lose any more games while the Olympics are going on. (The Caps, if you’re paying attention, may never lose another game. I didn’t get to see the comeback on Sunday but if they didn’t lose that game, that’s it, they’re never losing again).
It is also less than five weeks now to Selection Sunday. I went through the conference standings this morning and I have to tell you, coming up with a list of 34 teams that are absolutely, without question deserving of a bid wasn’t easy. Which raises this question: If coming up with 34 teams is tough, how the heck does the NCAA propose to come up with 65 at-large teams with a 96 team field?
This is the worst idea anyone has come up with since New Coke. Even Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delany and I agree on this and we agree on NOTHING. Of course that probably means that it is a lock to happen.
Okay, I have to go and find food for my family before it starts snowing again tomorrow. I wish I was joking.
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
Updated -- This week's radio segments (Sports Reporters, Gas Man, Tony Kornheiser Show):
Today I joined The Sports Reporters' Steve Czaban and Andy Pollin in the normal timeslot (5:25 ET on Wednesday's). Click the permalink, then the link below, to listen to the segment. This week we spent a great deal of time talking about the PGA Tour controversy around Mickelson and McCarron and touched on Tom Watson's recent comments on Tiger Woods and his on-course behavior.
Click here to listen to the segment: The Sports Reporters
----------------------
I also made my regular appearance on The Gas Man at 5:25 PT on Wednesday. In this segment, we spoke spent most of the time talking about college basketball and the NCAA's apparent move to expand the tournament.
Click here to listen to the segment: The Gas Man
---------------------
On Thursday I joined the newest The Tony Kornheiser Show in my normal Thursday slot (11:05am). We had the usual banter with maybe just a little extra thrown in, and talked about the 'star-power' in the upcoming Olympics and goings on in the PGA Tour...with too many details on the square groove controversy.
Click here to listen to the segment (starts within 1st minute): The Tony Kornheiser Show
Click here to listen to the segment: The Sports Reporters
----------------------
I also made my regular appearance on The Gas Man at 5:25 PT on Wednesday. In this segment, we spoke spent most of the time talking about college basketball and the NCAA's apparent move to expand the tournament.
Click here to listen to the segment: The Gas Man
---------------------
On Thursday I joined the newest The Tony Kornheiser Show in my normal Thursday slot (11:05am). We had the usual banter with maybe just a little extra thrown in, and talked about the 'star-power' in the upcoming Olympics and goings on in the PGA Tour...with too many details on the square groove controversy.
Click here to listen to the segment (starts within 1st minute): The Tony Kornheiser Show
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