I know I do this on occasion but the subject of today’s blog is not going to be The NBA Finals (yawn); The Stanley Cup Finals (I plan to watch it all) or even Jim Tressel (I wrote a column you can read on WashingtonPost.com or on this blog).
I will add one thing to the Tressel column that there wasn’t space for (it will also run in tomorrow’s newspaper) because even though it isn’t directly connected to Tressel, it has some relevance in any discussion of big time college athletics.
I have no sympathy at all for Tressel or for Gordon Gee or Gene Smith—who, as I wrote in the column—should both be fired too at the very least for complete incompetence. But I also think we should keep things in perspective a little bit.
Ohio State is getting fried—justifiably—for allowing its program to run amok and then for trying to cover up clear violations. But why is it that almost NO ONE around the country is nailing Notre Dame for the cavalier manner in which it handled the death of Declan Sullivan?
Please don’t tell me you buy into Father John Jenkins blanket, “we’re all guilty,” press release. Really? If everyone is guilty where is the list of those fired or at least disciplined—starting with Jenkins and then going on down to the athletic director (who claimed there was ‘nothing unusual,’ in the weather conditions minutes before Sullivan’s tower came crashing down) to the head football coach who insisted on practicing outdoors on a day when there were wind warnings all over the Midwest; to whoever was responsible for not ordering Sullivan to stay off the tower—even if he was willing, though apparently terrified, to go up there?
No one was fired. Jenkins should have added a sentence at the end of his statement if he was being intellectually honest about how he felt that said: “Now let’s get back to the important work of figuring out how to beat Navy!”
Jenkins strikes me as a complete fraud. Can you imagine him refusing to meet with the family of the girl who committed suicide shortly after filing a report alleging sexual assault against a Notre Dame football player? He was acting on the advice of his lawyers. Where in the vows Jenkins took, I wonder, does it say: “your lawyer’s advice comes before comforting those involved in a tragedy?” Meeting with the family would not have been an admission of guilt; only an admission that he cared about people who were suffering.
Can’t have that. The lawyers told him so.
I can’t wait for the fall when all the TV apologists will tell us what a wonderful, caring place and nurturing place Notre Dame is. I will keep an air sickness bag handy should I happen to encounter a Notre Dame game while flipping channels. You can bet I won’t actually WATCH one. (Go ahead you Irish fans, pile on and tell me how awful I am for criticizing such a wonderful place. Can’t wait.)
Let me move on to a different sort of Irishman. His name was Peter Francis O’Malley. He died suddenly on Saturday at the age of 72 of a heart attack. Peter O’Malley wasn’t a friend of mine but I considered him a worthy adversary.
He was a political power broker in Maryland, a lot of his base being in Prince George’s County, the place that was once home to The Washington Bullets and Washington Capitals and is now home to The Washington Redskins. O’Malley was close friends with Abe Pollin and was an ‘advisor,’ to most of the important Democratic politicians in Prince George’s and to many others throughout the state. One of his many protégés was Steny Hoyer, now the minority whip in The House of Representatives. It was also O’Malley who played a key role in helping push through the legislation that got The Capital Centre built in about 15 minutes back in the mid-1970s.
I first encountered him when I began covering Prince George’s County. One of the first things everyone involved in politics out there told me was, “you have to get to know Pete O’Malley.”
I took their advice. I got to know him. It wasn’t as if he became one of my most valued sources—Laney Hester, the head of the police union was BY FAR my most important source—but he educated me on the county’s political history; told me who was important to know and who wasn’t and always took my calls or returned them quickly.
When I moved up to cover the state legislature he remained someone important for me to know. During the 1983 legislative session, a couple of Prince George’s County legislators decided to introduce a bill that would force Abe Pollin to pay the county’s amusement tax (nine-and-a-half percent if I remember right) from which he had been exempt. The county had waved the tax after Pollin had threatened to fold the Capitals because of red ink a couple of years earlier.
Since the bill directly affected only Prince George’s, it had to be voted on by the county’s delegation before being sent to the floor of The House of Delegates. Early on a Tuesday morning, prior to the weekly meeting of the local delegation, one of O’Malley’s ‘people,’ could be seen going from office to office. He had a message from Pete: kill the bill. They did—that morning. When I began asking questions, several legislators readily said that O’Malley had made it clear he wanted the bill dead so the bill was dead. It would not be introduced again.
I called O’Malley that morning and left a message telling him what I was writing for the next day. It was the first time he ever failed to call me back. The story ran on A1 of the paper, more as an object lesson in how to exert political power than anything else.
That morning, O’Malley did call me. “We’re supposed to have lunch next Monday,” he said. “I’m canceling.”
“Oh did something come up?”
“No. I just don’t have time to have lunch with the likes of you.”
I had heard in the past about O’Malley’s volcanic temper. This was the first time I had been exposed to it first hand. “Pete, was there anything in the story that wasn’t true? Did I call you to comment?”
“That’s not the point. The point is you didn’t HAVE to write the story that way but you CHOSE to write it that way.”
“Yes I did. And I think I wrote the right story.”
“Good. Tell that to the person you have lunch with next Monday.”
O’Malley forgave me, but not until I was out of politics and back covering sports. And he forgave me in his uniquely O’Malley way. After I’d written a story on Jim Phalen, the legendary basketball coach at Mt. St. Mary’s—his alma mater—he wrote me a note about how much he had enjoyed the piece. And then he added: “I think you belong in sports. The better side of you comes out when you are working there as opposed to politics.”
I passed that along to some of his political friends who agreed it was pure O’Malley: I’m going to give you a compliment, but remind you that I’m still smarter than you.
I’ve had the chance to know a lot of people in a lot of different walks of life. As anyone who reads this blog, I tend to be very black-and-white in my feelings about people even though I try very hard to stand back from my biases—or at least recognize them—when I write. At the very least I KNOW the biases exist.
Peter O’Malley was different. He wasn’t a friend and he wasn’t an enemy. I certainly respected him but probably not as much as he thought I should have respected him. He could be difficult and he could be helpful. But he was never, ever un-interesting. I’m truly sorry for his family that he is gone so quickly and so prematurely. He deserved a long retirement. He worked very hard for a long time to get there.
Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Friday, October 22, 2010
Juan Williams and NPR: Juan had the right to be wrong
There isn’t going to be a lot of sports in the blog today. The subject for the morning is Juan Williams, who was fired Wednesday by National Public Radio for saying to Bill O’Reilly on FoxNews that when he gets on an airplane and sees someone dressed in Muslim garb it makes him nervous.
Let me start here with a fairly lengthy double disclaimer. Juan Williams and I have been friends since 1977. We were kid reporters together on The Metro staff of The Washington Post. In fact, I succeeded Juan as the night police reporter when he moved up to write the features for The Metro staff that vaulted him into stardom. We became close. In fact, I’m godfather to Juan’s first child, Antonio.
Lives change and people go in different directions and we don’t see each other that often anymore. But we have the kind of long-standing friendship that if we go a year without getting together and then sit down to have dinner, we pretty much pick up exactly where we left off.
Juan and I frequently disagree on politics. In fact I find it laughable that Roger Ailes refers to him as a liberal. I guess that’s a relative word. He is considerably more liberal than most of the regular commentators on Ailes’s network. He’s also a lot less liberal than a lot of people—myself included.
That said, Juan is my friend—period.
The flip side is National Public Radio. I worked as a sports commentator for NPR for 21 years. To be honest, I stuck with it for that long for two reasons: I loved working with Bob Edwards, the host of Morning Edition and the exposure was great for me. People who listen to NPR are book-buyers. Beyond that, I reached a specific audience very important to an author: women. They do a majority of the book-buying in this country. I can’t tell you the number of women who came up to me through the years and said to me, “I’m not a sports fan but I love listening to you on NPR,” but it was a lot. Many told me that when they needed to buy a book for their sports-loving husband or father or son, they just checked on what I had written most recently and bought it.
Those two things made putting up with people who knew NOTHING about sports worth the annoyances that came with doing it. One example that is not a-typical: On the day Bob Knight was fired I called the desk and said to the editor working that Sunday afternoon, “Hi, it’s John. Look, Bob Knight just got fired so we’re going to need to find some space in the show in the morning to talk about it.”
“Bob Knight? Who’s Bob Knight?”
“Look, trust me on this. He’s the most famous college basketball coach alive for reasons good and bad. Bob (Edwards) can explain it to you when he gets in if you want.”
“Oh did he coach Michael Jordan or something?”
“Yes, he coached Michael Jordan.”(Olympics 1984).
It was like that a lot. Once, after I had talked in a pre-U.S. Open discussion in 2001 about how extraordinary Tiger Woods’ four straight victories in major championships was, I got a call from another editor who said: “Is there anything I can do to convince you to stop sucking up to Tiger Woods and talking all the time about how great he is?”
I laughed and said: “Do me a favor. Call Tiger or if you can’t reach him his agent and repeat to them what you just said to me.”
There was only one another time when I got a call about something I’d said on-air. I had commented that the presidents of the BCS colleges were, “about as corrupt as the mafia, although that may be unfair to the mafia.”
Apparently a couple of presidents took umbrage to those comments and sent Luca Brasi to talk to the senior editor of Morning Edition. Rather than sleep with the fishes she called to say the comment was, “out of line.” I told her I’d apologize to the mafia on-air if she wanted. She didn’t laugh.
I quit NPR this past March. It never felt the same to me after they fired Bob Edwards, who was only the best talk show host in history. What’s more, he was the ONLY person there who knew anything about sports and he was my friend. I got along fine with the new hosts but it was never the same.
Beyond that, because the regime that fired Bob never thought of me as ‘their,’ guy, I had already been marginalized. Getting on the air became more and more difficult. I actually had to FIGHT to get a piece on after the Tiger Woods accident. The editors weren’t really sure it was a story. (Maybe they were afraid I was going to suck up to him).
When I was told this past March that someone named Mike Pesca was going to be ‘their,’ guy for the NCAA Tournament instead of me, that was the breaking point. If they actually believed Mike Pesca would bring more to the table for their listeners than I would, it was time to go. So I went. What was funny was when I sent e-mails to the two top editors of the show saying that I really believed after 21 years that the show was better with me talking college hoops than Mike Pesca the response I got was basically this: “It’s really unfair of you to put down Mike Pesca this way.”
Okay, guilty. I think I’m better than Mike Pesca.
So, now that everyone knows where I’m coming from on this, let me tell you what I think: I completely disagree with what Juan said. I think stereotyping is one of the biggest problems we have in this country. Everyone wants to label everyone else. If someone had gone on FoxNews and said, “When I walk down the street if I see a black teen-ager walking in my direction, I get nervous,” Juan would have (correctly) called that a racist comment. If someone said, “I don’t do business with Jews because I don’t trust them,” a LOT of people would have an issue with that—again, correctly.
But I wonder this: If Juan had said to Bill O’Reilly something like this: “I’m tired of stereotyping in this country. I’m tired of right wing Republicans like you trying to blame everything that’s gone wrong in the history of this country on President Obama,” do you think NPR would have fired him?
I don’t. FoxNews might have but NPR would not have. Look, I don’t think NPR is nearly as liberal as conservatives like to think. There are plenty of moderate and conservative voices on NPR’s air—Juan among them until Wednesday. But for NPR to say Juan had to be fired for voicing an opinion that might be distasteful is ridiculous. Every time someone voices an opinion it is distasteful to someone. This was an absolute cave-in by NPR management. I said things ALL THE TIME on NPR that lots of people disagreed with—it’s just that most weren’t college presidents or the leaders of political groups whose agenda most of the time is to be outraged by anyone who disagrees with them on any level.
It is also worth noting what Juan said right after his comment about being nervous: “We don’t want, in America, people to have their rights violated, to be attacked because they hear rhetoric from Bill O’Reilly and they act crazy.”
NPR is claiming that because Juan was not listed as a “commentator,”—his title was “senior news analyst,”—that he was required to be ‘impartial.’ These people simply don’t live in the real world. (I know this because I’ve spent time in their world). Does anyone think this was the first opinion to come out of Juan’s mouth on FoxNews; on NPR or on the op-ed page of The Washington Post? They wanted to find an excuse to fire him and this was it. By doing so, they have now opened themselves up to a new wave of attacks from the right. Nice going folks.
There’s an old saying that goes like this: “I may think you’re wrong but I will fight to the death your right to be wrong.”
Juan had the right to be wrong. NPR has the right to have people on the air who will say he was wrong and explain why he was wrong. But firing him for being wrong?
Please. Get over yourselves.
Let me start here with a fairly lengthy double disclaimer. Juan Williams and I have been friends since 1977. We were kid reporters together on The Metro staff of The Washington Post. In fact, I succeeded Juan as the night police reporter when he moved up to write the features for The Metro staff that vaulted him into stardom. We became close. In fact, I’m godfather to Juan’s first child, Antonio.
Lives change and people go in different directions and we don’t see each other that often anymore. But we have the kind of long-standing friendship that if we go a year without getting together and then sit down to have dinner, we pretty much pick up exactly where we left off.
Juan and I frequently disagree on politics. In fact I find it laughable that Roger Ailes refers to him as a liberal. I guess that’s a relative word. He is considerably more liberal than most of the regular commentators on Ailes’s network. He’s also a lot less liberal than a lot of people—myself included.
That said, Juan is my friend—period.
The flip side is National Public Radio. I worked as a sports commentator for NPR for 21 years. To be honest, I stuck with it for that long for two reasons: I loved working with Bob Edwards, the host of Morning Edition and the exposure was great for me. People who listen to NPR are book-buyers. Beyond that, I reached a specific audience very important to an author: women. They do a majority of the book-buying in this country. I can’t tell you the number of women who came up to me through the years and said to me, “I’m not a sports fan but I love listening to you on NPR,” but it was a lot. Many told me that when they needed to buy a book for their sports-loving husband or father or son, they just checked on what I had written most recently and bought it.
Those two things made putting up with people who knew NOTHING about sports worth the annoyances that came with doing it. One example that is not a-typical: On the day Bob Knight was fired I called the desk and said to the editor working that Sunday afternoon, “Hi, it’s John. Look, Bob Knight just got fired so we’re going to need to find some space in the show in the morning to talk about it.”
“Bob Knight? Who’s Bob Knight?”
“Look, trust me on this. He’s the most famous college basketball coach alive for reasons good and bad. Bob (Edwards) can explain it to you when he gets in if you want.”
“Oh did he coach Michael Jordan or something?”
“Yes, he coached Michael Jordan.”(Olympics 1984).
It was like that a lot. Once, after I had talked in a pre-U.S. Open discussion in 2001 about how extraordinary Tiger Woods’ four straight victories in major championships was, I got a call from another editor who said: “Is there anything I can do to convince you to stop sucking up to Tiger Woods and talking all the time about how great he is?”
I laughed and said: “Do me a favor. Call Tiger or if you can’t reach him his agent and repeat to them what you just said to me.”
There was only one another time when I got a call about something I’d said on-air. I had commented that the presidents of the BCS colleges were, “about as corrupt as the mafia, although that may be unfair to the mafia.”
Apparently a couple of presidents took umbrage to those comments and sent Luca Brasi to talk to the senior editor of Morning Edition. Rather than sleep with the fishes she called to say the comment was, “out of line.” I told her I’d apologize to the mafia on-air if she wanted. She didn’t laugh.
I quit NPR this past March. It never felt the same to me after they fired Bob Edwards, who was only the best talk show host in history. What’s more, he was the ONLY person there who knew anything about sports and he was my friend. I got along fine with the new hosts but it was never the same.
Beyond that, because the regime that fired Bob never thought of me as ‘their,’ guy, I had already been marginalized. Getting on the air became more and more difficult. I actually had to FIGHT to get a piece on after the Tiger Woods accident. The editors weren’t really sure it was a story. (Maybe they were afraid I was going to suck up to him).
When I was told this past March that someone named Mike Pesca was going to be ‘their,’ guy for the NCAA Tournament instead of me, that was the breaking point. If they actually believed Mike Pesca would bring more to the table for their listeners than I would, it was time to go. So I went. What was funny was when I sent e-mails to the two top editors of the show saying that I really believed after 21 years that the show was better with me talking college hoops than Mike Pesca the response I got was basically this: “It’s really unfair of you to put down Mike Pesca this way.”
Okay, guilty. I think I’m better than Mike Pesca.
So, now that everyone knows where I’m coming from on this, let me tell you what I think: I completely disagree with what Juan said. I think stereotyping is one of the biggest problems we have in this country. Everyone wants to label everyone else. If someone had gone on FoxNews and said, “When I walk down the street if I see a black teen-ager walking in my direction, I get nervous,” Juan would have (correctly) called that a racist comment. If someone said, “I don’t do business with Jews because I don’t trust them,” a LOT of people would have an issue with that—again, correctly.
But I wonder this: If Juan had said to Bill O’Reilly something like this: “I’m tired of stereotyping in this country. I’m tired of right wing Republicans like you trying to blame everything that’s gone wrong in the history of this country on President Obama,” do you think NPR would have fired him?
I don’t. FoxNews might have but NPR would not have. Look, I don’t think NPR is nearly as liberal as conservatives like to think. There are plenty of moderate and conservative voices on NPR’s air—Juan among them until Wednesday. But for NPR to say Juan had to be fired for voicing an opinion that might be distasteful is ridiculous. Every time someone voices an opinion it is distasteful to someone. This was an absolute cave-in by NPR management. I said things ALL THE TIME on NPR that lots of people disagreed with—it’s just that most weren’t college presidents or the leaders of political groups whose agenda most of the time is to be outraged by anyone who disagrees with them on any level.
It is also worth noting what Juan said right after his comment about being nervous: “We don’t want, in America, people to have their rights violated, to be attacked because they hear rhetoric from Bill O’Reilly and they act crazy.”
NPR is claiming that because Juan was not listed as a “commentator,”—his title was “senior news analyst,”—that he was required to be ‘impartial.’ These people simply don’t live in the real world. (I know this because I’ve spent time in their world). Does anyone think this was the first opinion to come out of Juan’s mouth on FoxNews; on NPR or on the op-ed page of The Washington Post? They wanted to find an excuse to fire him and this was it. By doing so, they have now opened themselves up to a new wave of attacks from the right. Nice going folks.
There’s an old saying that goes like this: “I may think you’re wrong but I will fight to the death your right to be wrong.”
Juan had the right to be wrong. NPR has the right to have people on the air who will say he was wrong and explain why he was wrong. But firing him for being wrong?
Please. Get over yourselves.
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Election Day – My Past in Covering Politics
Today is election day—though not in very many places since it is an odd-numbered year—but nevertheless it brings back a lot of memories that have little to do with who won or who lost elections.
When I was a kid growing up in New York City Shelter Island
When we were little, my grandmother would come and spend the day with us. Mom and dad would drive the two hours to Shelter Island
If sports was my passion growing up, politics was second. I actually met President Johnson at a fundraiser in 1964 on my first trip to Washington
I met Bobby Kennedy in 1968, about two months before he was killed, when he came to New York
The first election I was eligible to vote in was 1976, when I was in college. I voted absentee and then drove down to Burlington , North Carolina 5 a.m. on election day to canvas voters coming out of the polls for The Burlington Times-News. My old college roommate, David Arneke, was working there then and he recruited me to help him out. I think I got paid $10 and David bought breakfast at McDonald’s when we took a break.
In 1982 and 1983, I covered Maryland Maryland Montgomery County
Most of us probably were—although, for those who don’t remember, Bob Woodward was a registered Republican when he was working on The Watergate stories—but I can honestly say that never affected the way I covered Pascal. I liked him but it was pretty apparent from the start he wasn’t getting elected. Hughes had done a very good job rebuilding the state government in the wake of the scandal that forced Marvin Mandel out of office and the state leans heavily Democrat most of the time anyway.
Pascal was being pushed hard from the right on the abortion issue. One day, as we were driving in his car to a campaign speech, I asked him how he would deal with a hypothetical: if one of his four daughters got pregnant and told him she just couldn’t deal with having the baby how would he handle it.
“I would try to talk her out of it,” he said.
“But what if she was insistent.”
“Then I would support her decision.”
I wrote that and all hell broke loose in the Pascal campaign. They were demanding a correction saying that Pascal was absolutely pro-life 100 percent of the time. I went back to Pascal and went through the questions again. His answers—to his credit because he was an honest guy—were the same.
I finally said, ‘Bob, this is a pro-choice position. If this is the way you feel, the pro-lifers will consider you pro-choice.’
“Okay,” he said. “But I’m NOT as pro-choice as Harry Hughes.”
None of it really mattered in the end. Hughes got 63 percent of the vote. I was in Pascal’s hotel suite with several other reporters at 8 o’clock on election night when the polls closed. Pascal had been talking all day about how “shocked,” we were all going to be that night. He came bouncing into the room at 8 on the dot just in time to see Hughes’s face on the TV.
“NBC News is now projecting that Maryland Governor Harry Hughes will be re-elected with about 63 percent of the vote,” said the anchor—can’t remember who it was right now, maybe Tom Brokaw.
I still remember the stunned look on Pascal’s face. It occurred to me at that moment that he really HAD expected to somehow win. Politicians always believe there is going to be a miracle no matter what the polling data says. I’ll bet John McCain went into election day last year believing he was going to win too.
Pascal shut himself in the bedroom for about an hour before going downstairs to concede defeat. When he finally came out, we all rode downstairs to the ballroom in a freight elevator. Pascal was on the elevator with his wife Nancy (still one of the nicest people I’ve ever met) his mother, two of his daughters, a couple of state troopers and about five of us who had covered the campaign.
As we rode down, packed in tight, Pascal’s mom was standing directly in front of me. She was very short. She turned around to look at me, pointed a finger straight up in my face and said, “my son would have made a great governor and it’s your fault he lost.”
There was dead silence in the elevator. What was I supposed to do, argue with a 75-year-old woman who was about a foot shorter than I was? “M’am,” I finally said. “I’m truly sorry you feel that way but I don’t believe that’s true.”
“You tell him mom,” Pascal said.
A year later I covered the mayoral election in Baltimore—which was more like a coronation for William Donald Schaefer, who was running for a fourth term. Schaefer was a heroic figure in the city having rebuilt the inner harbor and having completely changed the city’s image. (He was elected governor in 1986). But he was, to say the least, quirky. There were all sort of stories about his temper and, in a lengthy profile I wrote on him which was what people in my business call a puff piece (it was tough to say anything bad about him given the job he had done) I described one of them.
According to his staffers, if The Baltimore Sun wrote ANYTHING critical about him, Schaefer would lock himself in his office and spend an hour watering his plants—and he had a LOT of plants in there. I used that anecdote as an example of how sensitive Schaefer was to criticism.
On election day, I was assigned to be there when Schaefer voted, which he did as soon as the polls opened at 7 a.m. so he could spend the day traveling around the city urging people to get out and vote. That meant another 5 a.m. election day wake up. I didn’t mind. It was fun.
When Schaefer came out of the polling place, about a dozen of us surrounded him. Someone asked him—naturally—whom he had voted for. I asked some harmless question about what percentage of the vote he hoped to get (the final number was, I believe, about 87 percent).
Shaefer looked at me, pointed his finger at me (I seemed to get that a lot on election day) and said, “I’m not speaking to you!”
I thought he was kidding. I was still getting a hard time from people not so much for writing a puff piece on Schaefer but for writing the LONGEST puff piece anyone had seen on Schaefer.
“Not speaking to me Mayor?” I said. “Why in the world not?”
“How dare you,” he thundered, “write that I’m sensitive to criticism!”
Thursday, October 22, 2009
The BCS – There is No Defending the Indefensible
A story in yesterday's Sports Business Journal reports that the BCS is considering hiring someone whose job would be to defend the BCS against people like me--and many, many others--who think it is a complete and utter sham. In fact, John Marinatto, the new commissioner of The Big East, who as of now would be in charge of the BCS next year--the ACC's John Swofford is doing it right now--is quoted as saying that the BCS commissioners believe they have not done a good enough job of "defending the BCS."
Oh please.
This is like saying that Ron Ziegler didn't do a good enough job of defending Richard Nixon during Watergate or that Dan Snyder's problems in Washington right now are the result of lousy PR. You can't defend the indefensible.
It's worth noting that the man who actually runs the BCS day-to-day and tries as best he can to explain it to the rest of the world in terms that will make it sound as if has some semblance of fairness is Bill Hancock. You can't possibly hire anyone better than Bill Hancock to be your out-front guy on something. There isn't anyone who knows Hancock or has worked with him who doesn't respect and like him. He's smart, he's committed and he's always prepared. He worked for the NCAA for years and was one of those people who, rather than citing some arcane reason why the answer to any and all questions was no, always tried to find a way to say yes.
So, if the BCS boys think they're going to find someone who is going to "defend," them better than Hancock, they have completely lost touch with reality.
What is most galling about the BCS other than the fact that it is a completely unfair system that does not NEED to exist other than to feed the pocketbooks of the 66 schools and the egos of their presidents, is that there isn't anyone involved who will even CONSIDER the notion that a playoff is the fairest and best thing--not to mention the most lucrative--that can happen to Division 1-A college football. (You can tell the NCAA what it can do with its fancy new names for Division 1-A and 1-AA by the way).
They won't consider listening to President Obama or perhaps more importantly the players and coaches who compete in the actual games. They keep talking about making improvement and tweaking the system. When your car has four flat tires, changing one of them doesn't do much good.
Last spring the BCS held meetings to allegedly study the system. The guy in charge at the time, Oregon President David Frohnmayer came out of the meetings to tell us that everything was fine that it was those criticizing the BCS who had the problem, not the BCS.
The BCS defense is built, to be honest, on a bunch of lies. Once more time, let's go through them:
--A playoff system would hurt the 'student-athletes,' academically. Lie. Football players taking part in a three round playoff that would begin on January 1 would miss almost no class and would miss far LESS class than the basketball players who take part in the NCAA Tournament smack in the middle of a semester or a trimester, often just prior to exams.
--A playoff system would hurt the tradition of the bowls. LIE. Again, if you had an eight team playoff, you rotate the seven games among seven of the bowls. For argument's sake let's say they are The Rose, Fiesta, Orange Illinois
--Three games would be too much of a financial burden for traveling fans. Lie. Do those fans with the bucks to travel three straight weeks culminating at The Final Four seem to have a problem? Do you think there would be ANY trouble selling out any of the playoff games (Most of the bowls these days play to lots of empty seats? Anyone get a good look at the stands during the Virginia Tech-Cincinnati Orange Bowl last year?). You start a playoff and someone's team is in it, they'll find a way to be there--especially the championship game which would involve only two sets of fans traveling as opposed to the Final Four which (surprise) involves four sets of fans.
--The BCS makes the regular season more meaningful than a playoff would. LIE. The last three weeks of the regular season in college basketball are filled with speculation about who is in, who is out, who is on the bubble, who is going to get the No. 1 seeds--it is endless. Every game is a big game for different reasons. Right now, two undefeated teams--Boise State Cincinnati Utah Florida Penn State Akron Hawaii Utah
I got in trouble a few years ago because I made the comment on NPR that the BCS Presidents were the most corrupt group of people to come along since the mafia. I want to apologize for that comment--to the mafia. You see, from what I know, the mafia never made any pretense about who they were. They didn't go around and pay people to "defend," what they were doing. I doubt anyone ever said in a meeting, "You know, if we hired the right PR firm to defend killing our enemies, it would make us look a lot better."
The BCS guys, on the other hand, strut around talking about doing what is best for the "student-athletes," and acting so self-important you literally cringe. Almost all of them insist on being called, "doctor," because they have PhD’s. My mother got her PhD from Columbia
Then again, my mother wasn't a preening LIAR like these guys are.
I know there are far more important things for The President and Congress to be dealing with right now. But it is worth a little bit of their time to make the BCS go away. It is a pox and there's no reason--not one--for Division 1-A football players to have the same opportunity every other 'student-athlete,' in America has: to compete fairly on the playing field--not inside a computer or based on a bunch of biased people's ballots--for the championship of their sport.
I realize I've said all this before. But as long as these "doctors," and their commissioner flunkies keep trying to spread these lies, I'm going to keep shooting them down.
"We need to do a better job defending the BCS." Please, please just shut up.
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Stories of Press Box Decorum; Favorite Dinner Guests
The other day, after I joked about reminding Furman Bisher that there was, "no cheering in the press box," a number of people wrote asking how strictly that directive was adhered to and if I had stories about moments when it was not.
Overall, I would say there are few breaches of decorum--certainly not many at all like the one that made the rounds on YouTube a couple weeks ago showing former Saints quarterback Bobby Hebert going nuts after his former team recovered a fumble in the end zone--are pretty rare. But they do happen.
My most embarrassing breach of course was in 2005 when Navy played at Duke and I reacted to a string of terrible calls against Navy by saying "f----- referees!" The weird thing about it was when I said it I actually looked around the radio booth to see who had said it. When I saw everyone staring at me I realized I was in trouble. There's no excuse for that kind of thing and I was lucky the Navy people stuck by me.
Of course an enclosed radio booth is different than the press box itself. No one at Duke that day was aware of what had happened until I came out of the booth to tell Eric Ruden, who is in charge of the radio network, what I'd done. I'll always be grateful to him and to Chet Gladchuk, the Navy AD for the way they dealt with the incident. When I asked Eric to let Chet know what had happened because I was willing to resign on-air if he wanted me to, Eric came back and said, "Chet said to tell you he said the same thing on the play."
To which I replied, "Yeah, but he didn't say it on the air." The next week when Chet and Eric got phone calls from the media wanting to know if I would be punished in some way their answer was the same: "John made a mistake, he apologized for it instantly and he feels bad about it. It's over as far as we're concerned."
To this day people still ask me, "did you get through the broadcast Saturday without an f-bomb?" Hey, I made the mistake, I have to live with it and the stale jokes that come with it. Eric once pointed out to me that about 10 times more people knew I'd been doing the games for nine seasons (now 13) after the incident than before the incident.
Inside the press box or on press row at basketball games you rarely see breaches to etiquette. We all have biases and some are more obvious about them than others. There are also times when guys just get caught up in the emotions of a game. Bob Ryan, the great Boston Globe columnist tells a story about the famous Duke-Kentucky game in 1992 when Christian Laettner made the shot at the buzzer in overtime and he was so stunned and amazed that he leaped to his feet. "I thought, "Oh My God, what am I doing I look like a fan," he said later. "Then I looked around and saw that everyone else was standing too. We were just overwhelmed by the whole game and what we'd seen."
I wasn't in Philadelphia that night. I was in Tampa, Florida watching the game in a hotel room with Tim Kurkijian, then of Sports Illustrated, now of ESPN. In spite of that fact, I got a call on Monday from a Charlotte radio station wanting to know if I would come on the air to discuss the fact that I had been seen leaping the press table to run on the court and hug Laettner. I suggested they call Tim to verify where I was at that moment and told them I did not have the ability to beam myself from Tampa to Philadelphia. I later found out that the rumor had been started by a guy I'd known early in my journalism career who blew up his own career and was very bitter about anyone who'd had more success than he had.
There are also times when people assume biases. When Mike Kryzewski was still trying to build his program at Duke, the one local journalist who stuck with him during the first three seasons was Keith Drum, who was sports editor of The Durham Morning Herald. Because Keith--who is now a scout for the Sacramento Kings---was supportive of Krzyzewski many North Carolina people, including Dean Smith, began to label him, "a Duke guy." As it happens, Keither went to North Carolina, but that didn't matter. In 1984, Duke beat Carolina in the ACC Tournament semifinals, one of Krzyzewski's first really important wins since that Carolina team included Michael Jordan, Sam Perkins, Brad Daugherty and Kenny Smith--among others.
Keith and I have been friends since I was in college. We walked down the steps that led to the locker room area and there was Dean, smoking a postgame cigarette. (He gave up smoking a few years later). As soon as he saw us, he made a beeline for Keith, hand out and said, "congratulations, YOUR team played very well."
Keith and I thought that was pretty funny, congratulating the guy who went to Carolina on a Duke victory while the Duke graduate stood there watching (with a huge smile on his face because it WAS pretty funny). I still tease Keith about that to this day,
Actually I lied when I said my only breach of decorum was the Navy-Duke football game. In 1978, Duke played Kentucky in the national championship game. It was my first Final Four. I was a year out of college and knew the players and coaches well. Needless to say I was pulling for Duke. Early in the second half Jim Bain, one of the referees, missed a traveling call. Bill Foster, the Duke coach, got off the bench and, from across the court, made the traveling signal and then held his hands out, palm up, as if to say, "where was the call."
Bain gave him a technical foul on the spot. Al McGuire and Billy Packer, working their first Final Four together for NBC, were stunned by both calls. "That's taking one mistake and turning it into two," McGuire said at the time. I might be wrong, but I don't remember another coach getting teed up in a championship game since then. Good refs give coaches a lot of rope under that kind of pressure and--most of the time--the refs working the final are good ones.
Many Kentucky fans think I blame Bain for Duke losing the game. I don't. Kentucky was the better team and was almost certainly going to win that night whether Bain got the travel right or didn't lose his temper. But those two calls certainly didn't help Duke's cause.
Two years later, I was covering a Virginia-Ohio State game in Columbus. It was Ralph Sampson's freshman year. Jim Bain had the game. During a time out, I found him standing right in front of me. "Hey Jim" I called out. He turned around and said, "what?”
"Remember the Duke-Kentucky championship game two years ago?" He nodded. "That technical on Foster, WORST call I've ever seen."
Bain just stared at me for a second and then said something profane. I was about to respond when the late Barney Cooke, who was then Virginia's SID, grabbed my shoulder and said, "don't say another word." Barney was right of course. I shouldn't have said anything in the first place. But it DID make me feel better. And no one can say that I was cheering in the press box--or on press row--that day.
-------------------------------------------
Just for the record, last night was one of those that's special to me. Three or four times a year I have dinner with three men I got to know well covering Maryland politics: one is Harry Hughes, who as the governor when I covered the state house, one of the best men I've ever had the chance to know. (And it isn't just because he's a Democrat. He's simply a wonderful man, liked and respected by Democrats and Republicans alike). The others in the group are Steve Sachs, the former state attorney general and Tim Maloney, who served five terms in The House of Delegates (he was 22 when he was elected) who left to become a wealthy lawyer.
We usually go down to Easton, on the Maryland eastern shore, because that's where Governor Hughes lives and have a great time talking about today's politics and reliving old stories.
A couple of years ago, I walked into the restaurant where we were meeting to see if Governor Hughes had arrived yet. Traffic had been surprisingly light on The Bay Bridge so we were a few minutes early. I was looking around the bar area when I heard a voice say, "what the hell are you doing down here?"
I turned around and there was Bob Pascal, who had been Governor Hughes' Republican opponent in 1982. I covered that election, which Hughes won in a runaway. Throughout the summer, Pascal kept saying to me, "When I get on the tube (TV advertising) Harry's going to hear my footsteps. He got on the tube and ended up with 37 percent of the vote. I told Pascal why I was there--we were celebrating Gov. Hughes birthday that night--and he laughed and said, "I always knew you were a Democrat." (True, he did, because I told him up front but also told him that some of my best sources in the legislature were Republicans, which was also true).
"Tell you what," Pascal said. "Because I'm a good guy, I'm going to buy Harry a bottle of wine for his birthday."
Sure enough, the governor showed up a few minutes later and we all sat down. I was telling him the story when Pascal walked up behind him. Hearing the footsteps, he turned around.
I couldn't resist. "Bob," I said. "It finally happened! Harry heard your footsteps! It only took 25 years but he DID hear your footsteps!."
Some things, I swear, you just can't make up.
Overall, I would say there are few breaches of decorum--certainly not many at all like the one that made the rounds on YouTube a couple weeks ago showing former Saints quarterback Bobby Hebert going nuts after his former team recovered a fumble in the end zone--are pretty rare. But they do happen.
My most embarrassing breach of course was in 2005 when Navy played at Duke and I reacted to a string of terrible calls against Navy by saying "f----- referees!" The weird thing about it was when I said it I actually looked around the radio booth to see who had said it. When I saw everyone staring at me I realized I was in trouble. There's no excuse for that kind of thing and I was lucky the Navy people stuck by me.
Of course an enclosed radio booth is different than the press box itself. No one at Duke that day was aware of what had happened until I came out of the booth to tell Eric Ruden, who is in charge of the radio network, what I'd done. I'll always be grateful to him and to Chet Gladchuk, the Navy AD for the way they dealt with the incident. When I asked Eric to let Chet know what had happened because I was willing to resign on-air if he wanted me to, Eric came back and said, "Chet said to tell you he said the same thing on the play."
To which I replied, "Yeah, but he didn't say it on the air." The next week when Chet and Eric got phone calls from the media wanting to know if I would be punished in some way their answer was the same: "John made a mistake, he apologized for it instantly and he feels bad about it. It's over as far as we're concerned."
To this day people still ask me, "did you get through the broadcast Saturday without an f-bomb?" Hey, I made the mistake, I have to live with it and the stale jokes that come with it. Eric once pointed out to me that about 10 times more people knew I'd been doing the games for nine seasons (now 13) after the incident than before the incident.
Inside the press box or on press row at basketball games you rarely see breaches to etiquette. We all have biases and some are more obvious about them than others. There are also times when guys just get caught up in the emotions of a game. Bob Ryan, the great Boston Globe columnist tells a story about the famous Duke-Kentucky game in 1992 when Christian Laettner made the shot at the buzzer in overtime and he was so stunned and amazed that he leaped to his feet. "I thought, "Oh My God, what am I doing I look like a fan," he said later. "Then I looked around and saw that everyone else was standing too. We were just overwhelmed by the whole game and what we'd seen."
I wasn't in Philadelphia that night. I was in Tampa, Florida watching the game in a hotel room with Tim Kurkijian, then of Sports Illustrated, now of ESPN. In spite of that fact, I got a call on Monday from a Charlotte radio station wanting to know if I would come on the air to discuss the fact that I had been seen leaping the press table to run on the court and hug Laettner. I suggested they call Tim to verify where I was at that moment and told them I did not have the ability to beam myself from Tampa to Philadelphia. I later found out that the rumor had been started by a guy I'd known early in my journalism career who blew up his own career and was very bitter about anyone who'd had more success than he had.
There are also times when people assume biases. When Mike Kryzewski was still trying to build his program at Duke, the one local journalist who stuck with him during the first three seasons was Keith Drum, who was sports editor of The Durham Morning Herald. Because Keith--who is now a scout for the Sacramento Kings---was supportive of Krzyzewski many North Carolina people, including Dean Smith, began to label him, "a Duke guy." As it happens, Keither went to North Carolina, but that didn't matter. In 1984, Duke beat Carolina in the ACC Tournament semifinals, one of Krzyzewski's first really important wins since that Carolina team included Michael Jordan, Sam Perkins, Brad Daugherty and Kenny Smith--among others.
Keith and I have been friends since I was in college. We walked down the steps that led to the locker room area and there was Dean, smoking a postgame cigarette. (He gave up smoking a few years later). As soon as he saw us, he made a beeline for Keith, hand out and said, "congratulations, YOUR team played very well."
Keith and I thought that was pretty funny, congratulating the guy who went to Carolina on a Duke victory while the Duke graduate stood there watching (with a huge smile on his face because it WAS pretty funny). I still tease Keith about that to this day,
Actually I lied when I said my only breach of decorum was the Navy-Duke football game. In 1978, Duke played Kentucky in the national championship game. It was my first Final Four. I was a year out of college and knew the players and coaches well. Needless to say I was pulling for Duke. Early in the second half Jim Bain, one of the referees, missed a traveling call. Bill Foster, the Duke coach, got off the bench and, from across the court, made the traveling signal and then held his hands out, palm up, as if to say, "where was the call."
Bain gave him a technical foul on the spot. Al McGuire and Billy Packer, working their first Final Four together for NBC, were stunned by both calls. "That's taking one mistake and turning it into two," McGuire said at the time. I might be wrong, but I don't remember another coach getting teed up in a championship game since then. Good refs give coaches a lot of rope under that kind of pressure and--most of the time--the refs working the final are good ones.
Many Kentucky fans think I blame Bain for Duke losing the game. I don't. Kentucky was the better team and was almost certainly going to win that night whether Bain got the travel right or didn't lose his temper. But those two calls certainly didn't help Duke's cause.
Two years later, I was covering a Virginia-Ohio State game in Columbus. It was Ralph Sampson's freshman year. Jim Bain had the game. During a time out, I found him standing right in front of me. "Hey Jim" I called out. He turned around and said, "what?”
"Remember the Duke-Kentucky championship game two years ago?" He nodded. "That technical on Foster, WORST call I've ever seen."
Bain just stared at me for a second and then said something profane. I was about to respond when the late Barney Cooke, who was then Virginia's SID, grabbed my shoulder and said, "don't say another word." Barney was right of course. I shouldn't have said anything in the first place. But it DID make me feel better. And no one can say that I was cheering in the press box--or on press row--that day.
-------------------------------------------
Just for the record, last night was one of those that's special to me. Three or four times a year I have dinner with three men I got to know well covering Maryland politics: one is Harry Hughes, who as the governor when I covered the state house, one of the best men I've ever had the chance to know. (And it isn't just because he's a Democrat. He's simply a wonderful man, liked and respected by Democrats and Republicans alike). The others in the group are Steve Sachs, the former state attorney general and Tim Maloney, who served five terms in The House of Delegates (he was 22 when he was elected) who left to become a wealthy lawyer.
We usually go down to Easton, on the Maryland eastern shore, because that's where Governor Hughes lives and have a great time talking about today's politics and reliving old stories.
A couple of years ago, I walked into the restaurant where we were meeting to see if Governor Hughes had arrived yet. Traffic had been surprisingly light on The Bay Bridge so we were a few minutes early. I was looking around the bar area when I heard a voice say, "what the hell are you doing down here?"
I turned around and there was Bob Pascal, who had been Governor Hughes' Republican opponent in 1982. I covered that election, which Hughes won in a runaway. Throughout the summer, Pascal kept saying to me, "When I get on the tube (TV advertising) Harry's going to hear my footsteps. He got on the tube and ended up with 37 percent of the vote. I told Pascal why I was there--we were celebrating Gov. Hughes birthday that night--and he laughed and said, "I always knew you were a Democrat." (True, he did, because I told him up front but also told him that some of my best sources in the legislature were Republicans, which was also true).
"Tell you what," Pascal said. "Because I'm a good guy, I'm going to buy Harry a bottle of wine for his birthday."
Sure enough, the governor showed up a few minutes later and we all sat down. I was telling him the story when Pascal walked up behind him. Hearing the footsteps, he turned around.
I couldn't resist. "Bob," I said. "It finally happened! Harry heard your footsteps! It only took 25 years but he DID hear your footsteps!."
Some things, I swear, you just can't make up.
Friday, September 11, 2009
8 Years Ago Seems Like Yesterday; Army Hall of Fame Induction Dinner Tonight
There is a story on the front page of this morning's Washington Post about kids who are now fifth, sixth and seventh graders who are learning about the events of 9-11 from history books. When I saw the headline I was briefly stunned, because like most people, I'm sure, I remember the events of that day as if they took place yesterday. But eight years is a long time in the life of a child. My daughter Brigid, who is 11, claims to remember 9-11, but I think she remembers more of what she's read than what she saw or heard. Danny, my 15-year-old, does remember it. In fact, one of my most chilling moments--among many--was going to school to pick him up and hearing him say, "dad, are they going to try to fly a plane into our house?"
One thing that came out of 9-11 was a toning down, at least for a while, of political vitriol. Most of us can still remember the sight of members of Congress--Democrat and Republican--standing on the steps of the capitol that night singing, 'God Bless America.' For once, the country banded together because never had evil been more clearly defined for us. It wasn't a liberal; it wasn't a conservative, it was crazed zealots who steered airplanes into buildings and those who danced in the streets to celebrate.
Now, that's all gone. (Those of you who don't like reading me on the subject of politics should skip the next couple of paragraphs). The scene the other night in The House of Representatives when Joe Wilson of South Carolina shouted, "you lie," at President Obama during his health care speech--and, even worse some of the reaction to it--shows just how far we have slid backwards in eight years. Let's not even debate here (because this really ISN'T a political blog) about whether illegal aliens would be included in the bill even though people on both sides of the aisle reading the bill on Thursday said they clearly would not.
The point is this: under no circumstances do you heckle The President of the United States. The guy who threw the shoes at President Bush went to jail--which is fine with me because he tried to assault him. Wilson shouldn't go to jail, but he should resign. Imagine, for a moment, if, say Barney Frank, had screamed at Bush during a speech to Congress what the reaction on the right would have been. Instead, there were still Republicans trying to claim that Wilson's facts were right--as if that would be a defense--and then the insane right wing pundits were saying he should not have apologized.
Sorry folks. You can completely disagree with any president on any issue. But there is such a thing as respect for the office and decorum. Several years ago, at the height of the Iraq war I was invited to a breakfast at The White House as part of the National Literary Festival. I sent regrets for this reason: I could not, at that moment, bring myself to shake hands with President Bush because I believed he was needlessly putting thousands of young Americans in harm's way and I was very angry about it. I had friends in Iraq and had known several people who had died or been wounded there. But I would NEVER accept the invitation and then be rude to The President in The White House. If I went, I would shake his hand and say, "Mr. President, thank you for the invitation. It is always an honor to be inside The White House."
If Wilson was so emotional on this issue, he should have stayed away from the speech. What's more, his apology was a non-apology. Even after making it he was still insisting he was right about the bill.
(Okay ditto-heads et al it is now safe to return to the blog).
As luck would have it, I will be at West Point tonight, certainly a place that is appropriate on this anniversary. Army is having its annual Hall of Fame induction dinner tonight and I was asked to MC, largely because the best-known of the eight inductees is Mike Krzyzewski. I'm old enough that I saw Krzyzewski PLAY at Army, on Bob Knight-coached NIT teams. In 1969, Army played South Carolina in the NIT quarterfinals. South Carolina had been ranked in the top ten most of the year but had lost the ACC Tournament and since only the tournament champion made the NCAA Tournament back then, the Gamecocks came to New York. Krzyzewski shut down John Roche and Army won the game. Years later, Bobby Cremins told me a story about that night.
"We were down and had to come out of our zone and go man-to-man," he said. "As we came out of the huddle Frank (McGuire) said, 'Bobby, who've you got?' I said, 'I got the kid with the big nose whose name I can't pronounce.'"
I first met Krzyzewski my senior year in college when Duke played Connecticut (not a power back then) in Madison Square Garden. I flew to New York a day early with Coach Bill Foster and Duke's star guard, Tate Armstrong. We attended what was then the weekly New York coaches luncheon at Mama Leone's where Foster--who had coached at Rutgers--spoke to a lot of old friends. By then, Krzyzewski was coaching at Army and Jim Valvano--who had played for Foster at Rutgers--was at Iona. After lunch, Foster introduced me to both of them.
"John does a great Dean Smith impression," Foster said. (Actually to quote Dean's long-time SID Rick Brewer, EVERYONE did a Dean impression in those days). It didn't take a lot of coaxing before I did it, referring often to the importance of seniors.
Krzyzewski and Valvano both laughed, little knowing how important Smith would become in their lives a few years later. Of course I had no idea how important Krzyzewski and Valvano would become in my life.
The funny thing is there seems to be a rule that, because I went to Duke, I'm not supposed to say or write anything good about Krzyzewski because I'm doing it just because I'm a "Dukie." Anyone who knows me at all knows I'm hardly considered a loyal son by Duke people and most people know just how much respect and affection I have for Dean Smith. But just as people in politics like to put simplistic labels on people, those in sports do the same. Heck, if you pick up a Duke media guide on the distinguished graduates page under "journalism," they list some woman who was on 'Survivor." I don't make the cut. Maybe calling the last two presidents a liar (Nan Keohane) and a weakling (Richard Brodhead) has something to do with it.
I don't need to defend Krzyzewski's coaching record on any level so I will leave you with one story about Krzyzewski the person and if telling it makes me a "Dukie," so be it. Three years ago, my father died two nights before Duke played North Carolina in Chapel Hill. The funeral was on the day of that game. Duke won in the final minute. Needless to say I didn't get to watch.
The next morning my phone rang and I heard Krzyzewski's familiar nasal voice. Almost always he will open a conversation with some kind of joke or putdown. He once returned a call I'd made to him on New Year's Day and said, "how does it feel knowing the highlight of your year (his calling) has come and gone and the year isn't even 24 hours old yet?"
This time he just said, "how are you holding up?" I told him I was okay, my dad had been almost 85 and he'd lived an amazing life.
"I want to tell you something," Krzyzewski said. "Last night, during our last time out, I stepped away from the huddle for a second and looked up and just said, 'Martin, this one's for you.'"
The last college basketball team my dad ever cared about was CCNY--where he graduated in 1941. Even so, I got pretty choked up at the thought and the sentiment.
That's why, Dukie or not, I'm honored to be part of the ceremony tonight. And I know that all of us in the room, Democrats and Republicans, will take a long moment to honor those who were killed eight years ago today. I can only hope that most of us will remember how that day felt when this day is over.
One thing that came out of 9-11 was a toning down, at least for a while, of political vitriol. Most of us can still remember the sight of members of Congress--Democrat and Republican--standing on the steps of the capitol that night singing, 'God Bless America.' For once, the country banded together because never had evil been more clearly defined for us. It wasn't a liberal; it wasn't a conservative, it was crazed zealots who steered airplanes into buildings and those who danced in the streets to celebrate.
Now, that's all gone. (Those of you who don't like reading me on the subject of politics should skip the next couple of paragraphs). The scene the other night in The House of Representatives when Joe Wilson of South Carolina shouted, "you lie," at President Obama during his health care speech--and, even worse some of the reaction to it--shows just how far we have slid backwards in eight years. Let's not even debate here (because this really ISN'T a political blog) about whether illegal aliens would be included in the bill even though people on both sides of the aisle reading the bill on Thursday said they clearly would not.
The point is this: under no circumstances do you heckle The President of the United States. The guy who threw the shoes at President Bush went to jail--which is fine with me because he tried to assault him. Wilson shouldn't go to jail, but he should resign. Imagine, for a moment, if, say Barney Frank, had screamed at Bush during a speech to Congress what the reaction on the right would have been. Instead, there were still Republicans trying to claim that Wilson's facts were right--as if that would be a defense--and then the insane right wing pundits were saying he should not have apologized.
Sorry folks. You can completely disagree with any president on any issue. But there is such a thing as respect for the office and decorum. Several years ago, at the height of the Iraq war I was invited to a breakfast at The White House as part of the National Literary Festival. I sent regrets for this reason: I could not, at that moment, bring myself to shake hands with President Bush because I believed he was needlessly putting thousands of young Americans in harm's way and I was very angry about it. I had friends in Iraq and had known several people who had died or been wounded there. But I would NEVER accept the invitation and then be rude to The President in The White House. If I went, I would shake his hand and say, "Mr. President, thank you for the invitation. It is always an honor to be inside The White House."
If Wilson was so emotional on this issue, he should have stayed away from the speech. What's more, his apology was a non-apology. Even after making it he was still insisting he was right about the bill.
(Okay ditto-heads et al it is now safe to return to the blog).
As luck would have it, I will be at West Point tonight, certainly a place that is appropriate on this anniversary. Army is having its annual Hall of Fame induction dinner tonight and I was asked to MC, largely because the best-known of the eight inductees is Mike Krzyzewski. I'm old enough that I saw Krzyzewski PLAY at Army, on Bob Knight-coached NIT teams. In 1969, Army played South Carolina in the NIT quarterfinals. South Carolina had been ranked in the top ten most of the year but had lost the ACC Tournament and since only the tournament champion made the NCAA Tournament back then, the Gamecocks came to New York. Krzyzewski shut down John Roche and Army won the game. Years later, Bobby Cremins told me a story about that night.
"We were down and had to come out of our zone and go man-to-man," he said. "As we came out of the huddle Frank (McGuire) said, 'Bobby, who've you got?' I said, 'I got the kid with the big nose whose name I can't pronounce.'"
I first met Krzyzewski my senior year in college when Duke played Connecticut (not a power back then) in Madison Square Garden. I flew to New York a day early with Coach Bill Foster and Duke's star guard, Tate Armstrong. We attended what was then the weekly New York coaches luncheon at Mama Leone's where Foster--who had coached at Rutgers--spoke to a lot of old friends. By then, Krzyzewski was coaching at Army and Jim Valvano--who had played for Foster at Rutgers--was at Iona. After lunch, Foster introduced me to both of them.
"John does a great Dean Smith impression," Foster said. (Actually to quote Dean's long-time SID Rick Brewer, EVERYONE did a Dean impression in those days). It didn't take a lot of coaxing before I did it, referring often to the importance of seniors.
Krzyzewski and Valvano both laughed, little knowing how important Smith would become in their lives a few years later. Of course I had no idea how important Krzyzewski and Valvano would become in my life.
The funny thing is there seems to be a rule that, because I went to Duke, I'm not supposed to say or write anything good about Krzyzewski because I'm doing it just because I'm a "Dukie." Anyone who knows me at all knows I'm hardly considered a loyal son by Duke people and most people know just how much respect and affection I have for Dean Smith. But just as people in politics like to put simplistic labels on people, those in sports do the same. Heck, if you pick up a Duke media guide on the distinguished graduates page under "journalism," they list some woman who was on 'Survivor." I don't make the cut. Maybe calling the last two presidents a liar (Nan Keohane) and a weakling (Richard Brodhead) has something to do with it.
I don't need to defend Krzyzewski's coaching record on any level so I will leave you with one story about Krzyzewski the person and if telling it makes me a "Dukie," so be it. Three years ago, my father died two nights before Duke played North Carolina in Chapel Hill. The funeral was on the day of that game. Duke won in the final minute. Needless to say I didn't get to watch.
The next morning my phone rang and I heard Krzyzewski's familiar nasal voice. Almost always he will open a conversation with some kind of joke or putdown. He once returned a call I'd made to him on New Year's Day and said, "how does it feel knowing the highlight of your year (his calling) has come and gone and the year isn't even 24 hours old yet?"
This time he just said, "how are you holding up?" I told him I was okay, my dad had been almost 85 and he'd lived an amazing life.
"I want to tell you something," Krzyzewski said. "Last night, during our last time out, I stepped away from the huddle for a second and looked up and just said, 'Martin, this one's for you.'"
The last college basketball team my dad ever cared about was CCNY--where he graduated in 1941. Even so, I got pretty choked up at the thought and the sentiment.
That's why, Dukie or not, I'm honored to be part of the ceremony tonight. And I know that all of us in the room, Democrats and Republicans, will take a long moment to honor those who were killed eight years ago today. I can only hope that most of us will remember how that day felt when this day is over.
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
A Sad Day in American History - Remembering Ted Kennedy; Back to Sports Tomorrow
I truly believe this is a sad day in American history—regardless of your politics.
I know Ted Kennedy was a punchline for many years for conservatives and also a target since, unlike a lot of Democrats, he never hid from the word liberal. But he was someone who was a force in the United States senate for a staggering amount of time—47 years—and, if you ask those who worked with him on both sides of the aisle, became one of the few people in an increasingly polarized political world who could actually get bi-partisan legislation moving in spite of Congressional gridlock.
In all, this has been a difficult summer for American icons (forget Michael Jackson PLEASE): Walter Cronkite, Eunice Kennedy Shriver and now, her younger brother, Teddy. There’s no doubt that all the living presidents from Jimmy Carter to Bush 1 and Bush 2 to Bill Clinton to Barack Obama will attend the memorial service for a man whose personal indiscretions kept him from being president but didn’t prevent him from making huge contributions to American life.
I certainly can’t claim to have known Senator Kennedy well at all. I interviewed him once, when I was researching my book on Red Auerbach. He and Red were good friends and had become very close when the senator’s son, Ted Jr., was fighting cancer as a 12-year-old. He was being treated at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. Every other Friday he had to go in for a chemo treatment and, without fail if the Celtics were in town, Red would show up with at least one of his players to try to distract the younger Kennedy. In those days the Celtics almost always played at home on Sunday afternoons and Red would set the father and son up with tickets for the game.
“I think I can honestly say that a lot of the reason Teddy got through that period were the visits from Red and his players, plus looking forward to the games on Sunday,” Sen. Kennedy said to me. “Red always tried to portray himself as this gruff, tough guy, but he was always great with kids.”
As he talked about those days, Kennedy’s voice broke a couple of times. Obviously remembering his son going through cancer was a difficult memory but there was a poignancy to his memories of what Red had done that was quite genuine. I’m glad that—thanks to Red—I had a chance to meet him and spend a little time with him.
Politics have probably never been more polarized in this country than they are now.
Democrats like me are still taking shots at Bush and Cheney and the Republicans were ripping Obama about 15 seconds after he finished his Inaugural Address. (In the case of Rush Limbaugh that’s literally true). It is worth noting then that Kennedy was probably involved in more bi-partisan legislation than any other member of Congress in spite of his (well-deserved) reputation as one of the senate’s leading liberals. If the right wing gives him credit for nothing else, it should give him credit for being one of the last important politicians to recognize that the opposition party was just that—the opposition—and not the enemy. The enemy flies planes into buildings.
There is a lot to remember about Ted Kennedy. Certainly, Chappaquiddick is part of that. So are his many fiery convention speeches through the years. What I will remember is what was (for me) a very early memory. As a 12-year-old, I stuffed envelopes in Bobby Kennedy’s campaign headquarters at 81st and Broadway during the 1968 election. I remember waking up that June morning and asking my father, who was shaving in the bathroom, who had won the California primary. That was when my dad told me that Bobby had won but had been shot in a kitchen and was in critical condition.
He died, of course, two days later and I still remember his younger brother’s eulogy. “A man who saw suffering and tried to end it. A man who saw war and tried to stop it…” Voice cracking. I got to hear his voice crack again 35 years later sitting in front of him and I flashed back to that eulogy and remembered him as a heartbroken little brother, burying an old brother as a public figure for a second time in less than five years.
Some will, of course, focus on Chappaquiddick, which can’t be ignored. Others will through the liberal word around as if it is a profanity of some kind. I hope that most will be smart enough to understand that a great man, who dealt with more tragedy in his life than most of us would see in 10 lifetimes, lost a courageous battle yesterday.
Last summer, there was a story in The New York Times about Kennedy returning to the floor of the senate after his surgery for brain cancer to cast a key health care vote. His return had been kept very quiet and he was very weak but when the doors opened and he came in—the floor was packed because of the vote—99 senators were on their feet in an instant, cheering. A number of Republicans said afterwards that even though they knew his presence signaled that they were going to lose the vote, they were happy and moved to see him.
That’s the sort of thing people should be remembering about Ted Kennedy today. And this is very much a day to think about his life and his legacy.
We can all turn our attention back to sports tomorrow.
I know Ted Kennedy was a punchline for many years for conservatives and also a target since, unlike a lot of Democrats, he never hid from the word liberal. But he was someone who was a force in the United States senate for a staggering amount of time—47 years—and, if you ask those who worked with him on both sides of the aisle, became one of the few people in an increasingly polarized political world who could actually get bi-partisan legislation moving in spite of Congressional gridlock.
In all, this has been a difficult summer for American icons (forget Michael Jackson PLEASE): Walter Cronkite, Eunice Kennedy Shriver and now, her younger brother, Teddy. There’s no doubt that all the living presidents from Jimmy Carter to Bush 1 and Bush 2 to Bill Clinton to Barack Obama will attend the memorial service for a man whose personal indiscretions kept him from being president but didn’t prevent him from making huge contributions to American life.
I certainly can’t claim to have known Senator Kennedy well at all. I interviewed him once, when I was researching my book on Red Auerbach. He and Red were good friends and had become very close when the senator’s son, Ted Jr., was fighting cancer as a 12-year-old. He was being treated at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. Every other Friday he had to go in for a chemo treatment and, without fail if the Celtics were in town, Red would show up with at least one of his players to try to distract the younger Kennedy. In those days the Celtics almost always played at home on Sunday afternoons and Red would set the father and son up with tickets for the game.
“I think I can honestly say that a lot of the reason Teddy got through that period were the visits from Red and his players, plus looking forward to the games on Sunday,” Sen. Kennedy said to me. “Red always tried to portray himself as this gruff, tough guy, but he was always great with kids.”
As he talked about those days, Kennedy’s voice broke a couple of times. Obviously remembering his son going through cancer was a difficult memory but there was a poignancy to his memories of what Red had done that was quite genuine. I’m glad that—thanks to Red—I had a chance to meet him and spend a little time with him.
Politics have probably never been more polarized in this country than they are now.
Democrats like me are still taking shots at Bush and Cheney and the Republicans were ripping Obama about 15 seconds after he finished his Inaugural Address. (In the case of Rush Limbaugh that’s literally true). It is worth noting then that Kennedy was probably involved in more bi-partisan legislation than any other member of Congress in spite of his (well-deserved) reputation as one of the senate’s leading liberals. If the right wing gives him credit for nothing else, it should give him credit for being one of the last important politicians to recognize that the opposition party was just that—the opposition—and not the enemy. The enemy flies planes into buildings.
There is a lot to remember about Ted Kennedy. Certainly, Chappaquiddick is part of that. So are his many fiery convention speeches through the years. What I will remember is what was (for me) a very early memory. As a 12-year-old, I stuffed envelopes in Bobby Kennedy’s campaign headquarters at 81st and Broadway during the 1968 election. I remember waking up that June morning and asking my father, who was shaving in the bathroom, who had won the California primary. That was when my dad told me that Bobby had won but had been shot in a kitchen and was in critical condition.
He died, of course, two days later and I still remember his younger brother’s eulogy. “A man who saw suffering and tried to end it. A man who saw war and tried to stop it…” Voice cracking. I got to hear his voice crack again 35 years later sitting in front of him and I flashed back to that eulogy and remembered him as a heartbroken little brother, burying an old brother as a public figure for a second time in less than five years.
Some will, of course, focus on Chappaquiddick, which can’t be ignored. Others will through the liberal word around as if it is a profanity of some kind. I hope that most will be smart enough to understand that a great man, who dealt with more tragedy in his life than most of us would see in 10 lifetimes, lost a courageous battle yesterday.
Last summer, there was a story in The New York Times about Kennedy returning to the floor of the senate after his surgery for brain cancer to cast a key health care vote. His return had been kept very quiet and he was very weak but when the doors opened and he came in—the floor was packed because of the vote—99 senators were on their feet in an instant, cheering. A number of Republicans said afterwards that even though they knew his presence signaled that they were going to lose the vote, they were happy and moved to see him.
That’s the sort of thing people should be remembering about Ted Kennedy today. And this is very much a day to think about his life and his legacy.
We can all turn our attention back to sports tomorrow.
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Remembering Bob Novak, a Friend Bonded by Two Passions: College Basketball and The Children’s Charities Foundation
ESPN was so over-the-top (surprise) with its coverage of Brett Favre yesterday that Brian Kenney—one of the good guys up there—jokingly said, “more coming up when we return to FavreCenter in a moment.” Wonder if he got a talking to for that.
But while ESPN and most of the sports work was obsessing about Favre’s latest return—by the way, isn’t it pretty clear that Favre flat out lied to the New York Jets when he told them he was definitely retired in the spring and then began negotiating with the Vikings about 15 minutes later?—there was a truly significant and sad story that broke yesterday.
Robert Novak died.
His death wasn’t surprising: he hadn’t been healthy since his diagnosis with brain cancer last year but it was nevertheless very sad for those of us who were fortunate enough to know him. No doubt it will surprise anyone who knows my politics to learn that Novak and I were friends but we were: bonded by two passions—college basketball and The Children’s Charities Foundation.
Novak was a sports fan but his true love was college hoops. And, even though he was an Illinois graduate, he became a full-throated Maryland fan when Lefty Driesell was the coach there. He never missed a home game and frequently traveled to road, games, often chartering a plane to get someplace just in time for tipoff. That was how I first met him—covering Maryland for The Washington Post when Lefty was in his hey-day in the early 1980s.
He was initially suspicious of me because I was a Duke graduate. “Elitist school for rich kids,” he liked to say. To which I would respond, “You’re right Bob, it’s a place where a lot of the Republicans you support send their kids. You have a lot of loyal readers there.”
It didn’t take long for him to out me as a liberal and when I covered the Maryland state legislature in the mid-80s, he frequently joked that it was the one legislature I could cover because it was about 85 percent Democrat. The funny thing was my best sources back then were the Republicans who, for some reason, were the jocks and knew me from the sports pages.
In 1994, Peter Teeley, who had been George Bush the first’s speechwriter and later ambassador to Canada, came up with the idea of a local college tournament in DC that would raise money for kids at risk. He had read a column I had written on the subject once so he approached me about joining the board and he approached Novak and his friend Al Hunt knowing that Novak was connected at Maryland and Hunt was connected at Georgetown.
To make a long story short, Gary Williams instantly agreed to take part and John Thompson instantly said no. To this day, Maryland is the centerpiece of an event that has raised more than $10 million for charity and Georgetown has never participated. While I had a close relationship with Williams and with some other coaches who agreed to come and play, it was always Novak who bridged the gap when Maryland Athletic Director Debbie Yow started making noise about Maryland not being able to give up home games to play in the event. Teeley would say, “Bob, it’s time to work your magic with Ms. Yow.” And he would.
Whenever I was with Bob, he wanted to debate basketball issues. He was a political reporter whose passion was sports. I wanted to debate politics. I was a sports reporter whose passion was politics. We argued, naturally, non-stop although we agreed on the disaster that was the Iraq war.
Novak was tough to argue with because he was smart, always had his facts and, naturally, had a lot of inside information I didn’t have. I did win one from him once and, to his credit, he always brought it up to me. In 2006, Ben Cardin, who had been speaker of the Maryland House of Delegates when I covered the legislature ran for Paul Sarbanes senate seat. Cardin and I had remained friends after I got out of politics and I actually spoke at a campaign rally on his behalf.
Two weeks before the election, Novak came up to me at a Children’s Charities board meeting and said, “Your guy Cardin is going down. (Michael) Steele has all the momentum.”
Novak saying this made me nervous but I stuck my chin out and said, “no way. Ben will win easily.” We made a friendly bet: if Steele won I had to say something on the radio about Bob being right and me being wrong. If Cardin won, he had to say something nice about Duke somewhere in public.
As luck would have it, Maryland opened its season on election night and we were both at the game. As I walked into The Comcast Center I called a friend of mine who had access to exit polling. “Ben’s winning easily,” he said as I breathed a sigh of relief. “Looks like he’ll get at least 55 percent of the vote.”
As soon as I saw Novak I beelined over to him and reported what I knew. “No way,” he said, grabbing his cell phone. He called someone demanding exit polling from Maryland. Whomever he called didn’t have it. “How in the world can a SPORTSWRITER know this stuff and we don’t!” he yelled.
Before the game was over, he walked over to me, put his hand out and said, “Congratulations. One for your guys.”
I always took great pleasure in telling my Republican friends that their hero Robert Novak was a registered Democrat—which he was. Living in Washington, D.C. there was no point registering as a Republican because all elections are decided in the Democratic primary.
“I registered Democrat so I could vote against Marion Barry,” he liked to say.
Hard to argue with that.
He was a man of great passion on all subjects His work for The Children’s Charities Foundation was hugely important and was critical in helping raise millions of dollars for kids in desperate need of help. He was a great friend to many people, someone with a very big heart that he didn’t like people to know about because it might affect his, “Prince of Darkness,” image.
When I think of him many memories will flood back but none more vivid than the night Maryland won the national championship in Atlanta in 2002. He had tears in his eyes when I saw him after the game. “I’m so happy for Gary,” he said.
I know for a fact that one of the people Gary was happy for that night was Bob. They both deserved it.
But while ESPN and most of the sports work was obsessing about Favre’s latest return—by the way, isn’t it pretty clear that Favre flat out lied to the New York Jets when he told them he was definitely retired in the spring and then began negotiating with the Vikings about 15 minutes later?—there was a truly significant and sad story that broke yesterday.
Robert Novak died.
His death wasn’t surprising: he hadn’t been healthy since his diagnosis with brain cancer last year but it was nevertheless very sad for those of us who were fortunate enough to know him. No doubt it will surprise anyone who knows my politics to learn that Novak and I were friends but we were: bonded by two passions—college basketball and The Children’s Charities Foundation.
Novak was a sports fan but his true love was college hoops. And, even though he was an Illinois graduate, he became a full-throated Maryland fan when Lefty Driesell was the coach there. He never missed a home game and frequently traveled to road, games, often chartering a plane to get someplace just in time for tipoff. That was how I first met him—covering Maryland for The Washington Post when Lefty was in his hey-day in the early 1980s.
He was initially suspicious of me because I was a Duke graduate. “Elitist school for rich kids,” he liked to say. To which I would respond, “You’re right Bob, it’s a place where a lot of the Republicans you support send their kids. You have a lot of loyal readers there.”
It didn’t take long for him to out me as a liberal and when I covered the Maryland state legislature in the mid-80s, he frequently joked that it was the one legislature I could cover because it was about 85 percent Democrat. The funny thing was my best sources back then were the Republicans who, for some reason, were the jocks and knew me from the sports pages.
In 1994, Peter Teeley, who had been George Bush the first’s speechwriter and later ambassador to Canada, came up with the idea of a local college tournament in DC that would raise money for kids at risk. He had read a column I had written on the subject once so he approached me about joining the board and he approached Novak and his friend Al Hunt knowing that Novak was connected at Maryland and Hunt was connected at Georgetown.
To make a long story short, Gary Williams instantly agreed to take part and John Thompson instantly said no. To this day, Maryland is the centerpiece of an event that has raised more than $10 million for charity and Georgetown has never participated. While I had a close relationship with Williams and with some other coaches who agreed to come and play, it was always Novak who bridged the gap when Maryland Athletic Director Debbie Yow started making noise about Maryland not being able to give up home games to play in the event. Teeley would say, “Bob, it’s time to work your magic with Ms. Yow.” And he would.
Whenever I was with Bob, he wanted to debate basketball issues. He was a political reporter whose passion was sports. I wanted to debate politics. I was a sports reporter whose passion was politics. We argued, naturally, non-stop although we agreed on the disaster that was the Iraq war.
Novak was tough to argue with because he was smart, always had his facts and, naturally, had a lot of inside information I didn’t have. I did win one from him once and, to his credit, he always brought it up to me. In 2006, Ben Cardin, who had been speaker of the Maryland House of Delegates when I covered the legislature ran for Paul Sarbanes senate seat. Cardin and I had remained friends after I got out of politics and I actually spoke at a campaign rally on his behalf.
Two weeks before the election, Novak came up to me at a Children’s Charities board meeting and said, “Your guy Cardin is going down. (Michael) Steele has all the momentum.”
Novak saying this made me nervous but I stuck my chin out and said, “no way. Ben will win easily.” We made a friendly bet: if Steele won I had to say something on the radio about Bob being right and me being wrong. If Cardin won, he had to say something nice about Duke somewhere in public.
As luck would have it, Maryland opened its season on election night and we were both at the game. As I walked into The Comcast Center I called a friend of mine who had access to exit polling. “Ben’s winning easily,” he said as I breathed a sigh of relief. “Looks like he’ll get at least 55 percent of the vote.”
As soon as I saw Novak I beelined over to him and reported what I knew. “No way,” he said, grabbing his cell phone. He called someone demanding exit polling from Maryland. Whomever he called didn’t have it. “How in the world can a SPORTSWRITER know this stuff and we don’t!” he yelled.
Before the game was over, he walked over to me, put his hand out and said, “Congratulations. One for your guys.”
I always took great pleasure in telling my Republican friends that their hero Robert Novak was a registered Democrat—which he was. Living in Washington, D.C. there was no point registering as a Republican because all elections are decided in the Democratic primary.
“I registered Democrat so I could vote against Marion Barry,” he liked to say.
Hard to argue with that.
He was a man of great passion on all subjects His work for The Children’s Charities Foundation was hugely important and was critical in helping raise millions of dollars for kids in desperate need of help. He was a great friend to many people, someone with a very big heart that he didn’t like people to know about because it might affect his, “Prince of Darkness,” image.
When I think of him many memories will flood back but none more vivid than the night Maryland won the national championship in Atlanta in 2002. He had tears in his eyes when I saw him after the game. “I’m so happy for Gary,” he said.
I know for a fact that one of the people Gary was happy for that night was Bob. They both deserved it.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)