Washington Post column: Jim Larranaga’s legacy is Paul Hewitt’s burden

Here is Sunday's column for the Washington Post -----------

After George Mason Athletic Director Tom O’Connor made the decision Friday to hire Paul Hewitt as his new basketball coach, he told his wife Barbara that the response he wanted when he told people was one word: “Wow.”
He got it. That said, once you get past the initial “wow,” there are some concerns. But many of them would come attached to anyone following Jim Larranaga at the school where he had become an icon.

On the one hand, Hewitt has a remarkable resume. He will be 48 on Wednesday (one year older than Larranaga when he arrived in 1997) and has won 255 games as a Division I head coach. He was only 40 when he took Georgia Tech to the national championship game seven years ago. What may have caught O’Connor’s eye at least as much, though, was his three-year record at Siena: 66-27.

Siena is not all that different from George Mason as a basketball school. It plays in a mid-major conference (the Metro Atlantic) that isn’t nearly as deep as the Colonial Athletic Association. Like the CAA, however, it has produced teams — Siena among them — that have gone to the NCAA tournament and produced early upsets.
O’Connor firmly believes that Mason is capable of continuing to play at the remarkable level Larranaga achieved. Clearly he believed Hewitt’s background at both the mid-major level and the ACC level, combined with his relative youth, was exactly what he was looking for.

Click here for the rest of the article: Jim Larranaga’s legacy is Paul Hewitt’s burden

Washington Post column-- 'George Mason scraps its way to a key CAA win over Old Dominion'

From Sunday's The Washington Post -----------

As soon as the halftime buzzer sounded at Patriot Center on Saturday afternoon, Old Dominion Coach Blaine Taylor headed not for his locker room but for the scorer's table.

"Give me the scorebook," he said to official scorer Tim Lander, who complied quickly.

Taylor looked at the book for a moment, found what he was looking for and slammed it down on the table. Lander almost became the first official scorer in basketball history to literally have the book thrown at him. Taylor had wanted to be certain that what he thought to be true was in fact true: his team hadn't shot a single free throw in the first half.

"We took 28 shots from where we shoot and we don't get to the foul line?" he said later. "How is that possible?"

No doubt the lack of free throws bothered Taylor. But what undoubtedly bothered him more was the halftime score: George Mason 24, Old Dominion 21. That's after the Patriots had scored all of four points in the first 11 minutes of the game.

"They missed nine of their first 10 shots and had five turnovers and we were only up five," he said later. "You would have liked to have had more of a margin at that point."

Opportunity lost for the Monarchs, game (perhaps) saved for the Patriots. In the last 29 minutes before a raucous sellout crowd of 9,840, George Mason outscored Old Dominion, 58-36, leading to a 62-45 final score and leaving the Patriots in a first-place tie with Virginia Commonwealth in the Colonial Athletic Association.

Click here for the rest of the column: George Mason scraps its way to a key CAA win over Old Dominion 

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.

Stranded at home; Lesson from Bob Woodward on using the description of weather in stories

This snow thing is now officially out of control. As I sit here the conditions outside my window are pretty close to a white-out. The snow is falling hard and fast and the wind is blowing it all over the place. How long the power holds out is anybody’s guess. Yesterday, when I tried to run errands, I had the sense that people were preparing for the Apocalypse. (the snow-palypse?)

Parking was close to impossible since there weren’t that many spaces to begin with because of piled up snow from the weekend and the whole world was out trying to get any supplies available. What was interesting was that no one was fighting over spaces or over food or even over batteries. It was as if a calm had come over everyone, a quiet acceptance that the next few days (at least) were going to be miserable and all anyone could do was hope for the best.

I’ve lived in Washington for more than 30 years and I’ve never seen anything even close to this. If you live in Buffalo you may have a sense of what this is like (except that snow belt places are far better prepared to deal with this sort of weather than we are) but otherwise you can’t imagine it. I certainly couldn’t.

Last weekend I escaped the first storm by leaving town Friday afternoon to drive to West Point so I could do the Army-Colgate game on TV on Sunday. That turned out to be a wise decision. There wasn’t a drop of snow up there and I saw a bunch of my Army friends and stayed in the Thayer Hotel where there was plenty of heat, plenty of food and no snow to be found. My trip home was a breeze—until I hit Baltimore.

Only then did I have a real sense of what had happened. The interstate was closed because abandoned cars (there had been a trailer-truck accident in the middle of the storm Saturday) were still being removed. I zigged over to The Baltimore-Washington Parkway, which was down to one, snow and ice-covered lane. The rest of the trip home was a nightmare.

We’re being told it will snow all day today. Given that travel was still very difficult yesterday three days after the weekend storm had ended, I can’t see the area being close to dug out before the weekend. It will, of course, be much more difficult this time because there is already so much snow piled up from plowing.

I would have loved to have gone to the VCU-George Mason game last night, which turned out to be a great game—Mason coming from 15 points down to win in overtime. I would have gone to tonight’s Virginia-Maryland game except there is no Virginia-Maryland game because it was postponed by the snow. Now, among other issues, I have to figure out a column for Sunday’s Post since one of those two games would have supplied me with a column of some kind. I’m supposed to do Bucknell-American on TV tomorrow night. Normally, AU is a 15-minute drive from here. I have no idea if the game will be played or, if it is played, if I’ll be able to get out of my driveway, off my street and to the campus. I just have no idea.

Back in 1985, the first time I covered The British Open, Bob Woodward dropped me a note when I got home. I still have it someplace. (I’ve kept any and all notes I’ve ever received from people I admire and Bob is at the top of the list). The note said something like this: “Great job on the British Open. Best thing you did all week was make people understand what the weather was like and how it affected everyone. You can never write too much about the weather: it affects us all and we can’t control it.”

Just as when Woodward told me a few years earlier that the key to any investigative story and most stories of any kind was, “getting the documents,” I remembered what he said. In fact, a year later, when I wrote ‘A Season on the Brink,” I almost always described the weather on a given day. If you go back and look, the first sentence of the book describes the weather.

Jeff Neuman, the editor who (after five rejections from other publishers) who bought my proposal for the book for McMillan and Company, kept trying to get me to take out all the weather references. “People don’t need to know what the weather was every single day you were there,” he said.

“Yes they do,” I said. “Bob Woodward says they do.”

To be honest, I’ve never been a big fan of snow.

I know people romanticize it all the time, “winter wonderlands et al,” and if you watch movies like, “White Christmas,” you’d think there’s nothing better than snow. I just don’t see it that way. It may look pretty on TV and, I’m like everyone else, I remember sledding as a kid (In Riverside Park, right near the 79th street boat basin there was a great hill) and loving it. Now, snow is a nuisance at best and frightening at worst.

I don’t mind cold. The two mornings I was at West Point I happily got up in the morning and walked around the post for an hour in temperatures that never got much above 20 degrees. That’s fine. I also know there are people who will say, ‘hey, what’s wrong with a couple of days at home, sitting in front of a fire, taking it easy.

When I hear stuff like that I think of something Gary Williams said to me a few years ago. Maryland had ended its season with an embarrassing first round loss in the NIT at home against Manhattan. I called Gary that night just to see how he was doing. The next day he called me back.

“Hey, sorry I just got your message,” he said. “I drove right to my beach house (in Delaware) after the game to get away.”

“Good idea,” I said. “A few days just walking on the beach will do you some good.”

“John,” he said. “There are only so many days you can walk on the damn beach before you lose your mind.”

He’d been there 24 hours.

To be honest, I’m the same way. Sitting at home in front of a fire at night watching the Islanders (they finally won a game last night!) is fine. But one night in a row—maybe two—is enough for me. There are games to go to, work to be done, places to go.

I won’t be going anyplace for the next couple of days. No games, no work, nothing. I can’t stand it. And I still need a Sunday column.

This week's Monday Washington Post Column (and bonus column from weekend)

Here is this week's The Washington Post column -----

If Abe Pollin were alive right now, the past week might well have been as painful as any he suffered through during the 45 years that he owned the NBA team in Baltimore, Landover and downtown Washington.

The 10-21 record wouldn't have been anything new for Pollin, especially coming off last season's 19-63 debacle. Anyone who has followed the team now known as the Wizards has seen just about everything when it comes to losing during most of the past 25 years. The team has been mediocre; it has been reasonably good; and it has been truly awful.

But never before last week has the public known that its players are showing up armed. Note that phrase: has the public known. The chances are pretty good that Gilbert Arenas and Javaris Crittenton aren't the first players to show up at Verizon Center with guns.


Click here for the rest of the column: Gilbert Arenas has worn out his welcome in Washington

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From the weekend:

Even before this basketball season began, George Mason Coach Jim Larranaga knew he was in for a bumpy ride. The Patriots are talented but young -- seriously young -- with only one senior, two juniors, three sophomores and seven freshmen. 

"Not only are we going to have good nights and bad nights, we're going to have good halves and bad halves," he said this fall. "We may even go way up and then way down from timeout to timeout."

Larranaga probably never imagined the November and December he and his team would go through. There were close losses to Villanova and Dayton. There were solid wins over Creighton and Indiana.

There was also a health scare: On the afternoon of Nov. 15, Larranaga walked into Patriot Center prior to his team's game against Dartmouth and felt his heart racing. When Mason's team doctor, Patrick Depenbrock, examined him he told him the problem right away -- atrial fibrillation, an abnormal heartbeat. 


Click here for the rest of the column: George Mason Coach Jim Larranaga aims to keep heart, team in check

DC Sports Bog lists decade's top ten events in DC sports – my #1 was Mason’s run; What is most thrilling moment in all of sports over the past decade?

My friend Dan Steinberg, who has done a remarkable job the past few years making his “DC Sports Bog,” a must read for a lot of us, has been doing (like so many others) various “End of the Decade,” rankings this week.

This morning’s list was the top ten events in DC sports. He ranked Maryland’s 2002 national championship No. 1 and George Mason’s run to the Final Four in 2006 second.

With all due respect to Maryland and to Dan—wrong.

The rebuilding job Gary Williams did at Maryland was remarkable. I’ve said that and written that dozens of times, especially when the sharks—led by his athletic director—start to circle every time the Terrapins slide at all. I often re-tell the story about the Maryland alum who came up to me at a game midway through the 2001 season and said, ‘the time has come for Gary to go. The Sweet Sixteen is as far as he can take us. We need to get Mike Brey in here and start over.’

I kid that guy often about what happened next. Brey, by the way, who has done an excellent job at Notre Dame, still hasn’t been past the Sweet Sixteen.

Maryland’s national championship was a wonderful story of redemption, a program rebuilt in the aftermath of Len Bias’s death and the probation brought about by Chancellor John Slaughter’s idiotic decision to hire Bob Wade as the basketball coach. But in the end it was the kind of thing that happens in athletics all the time: a fallen program brings in the right coach, the coach catches a break or two in recruiting—Juan Dixon and Lonny Baxter both being largely overlooked—and it all falls into place.

Dean Smith took over a program that was on probation at North Carolina in 1962. Mike Krzyzewski was 38-47 his first three years at Duke. Georgetown’s President asked John Thompson to “try and make the NIT every few years,” when he hired him in 1972. Most Connecticut fans thought U-Conn needed to get out of The Big East when Jim Calhoun arrived in 1985.

Great coaches build and rebuild. All those coaches are in the Hall of Fame because they rebuilt fallen programs and won a national title. Only North Carolina from that group had previously won a national championship. Someday, Gary should join that group in the Hall of Fame. Maryland cutting down the nets in Atlanta was a memorable story, one that I personally savor. I still remember the first thing Gary said to me on the court that night: “Fort Myer. You’re one of the guys who remembers Fort Myer. I’m glad you were here to see this.”

Gary had started his head coaching career at American University in 1978 and his team played home games at Fort Myer, an Army base in Arlington, Virginia. The gym was cold and drafty every night and the locker rooms were actually weight rooms. My favorite memory from, “The Fort,” as everyone called it, was Gary having to talk the MPs out of arresting an opposing coach after he had kicked a wall walking into the locker room at the end of an overtime win for AU. Part of the wall fell in and the MPs showed up in the locker room wanting to arrest him for damaging government property.

I covered AU a lot back then: I was the kid reporter on The Post staff and it was apparent to me that Gary was a comer in the coaching business. Plus, I liked him and I liked his team---which won 24 games his third season and came within a missed jump shot of making the NCAA Tournament.

So, Maryland’s national championship was a thrill for me. I knew how low Gary had been in his early days at his alma mater.

Having said all that, George Mason’s story was the best in college basketball since Texas Western in 1966. The school didn’t even play Division 1 basketball until the late 1970s. It didn’t even have a FIGHT song until 1987. Seriously. I was there the night they unveiled it. Jim Larranaga had built a solid program after coming in from Bowling Green but that’s what Mason was: a solid CAA program, a contender in a league that hadn’t received a second bid to the NCAA Tournament since 1986. The closest any CAA team had come to a Final Four had been David Robinson’s run with Navy in that 1986 season. The Midshipmen made it to the elite eight before being crushed by Duke. THAT was a once in a lifetime experience since Robinson had come to Navy as a 6-7 kid recruited more for his potential as an engineer than as a basketball player.

He didn’t even start his freshman year, then grew six inches that summer and turned into, well, David Robinson.

Remember that a lot of people—led by Jim Nantz and Billy Packer—didn’t think Mason even deserved a bid. The Patriots had lost in the CAA semifinals to Hofstra, a game in which point guard Tony Skinn sucker-punched a Hofstra player in the worst possible place, causing Larranaga to announce he would be suspended for Mason’s next game, whether it was in the NCAA’s or the NIT.

A lot of people thought that Skinn’s suspension would be the difference between Mason getting in or not getting in. When the Patriots went up on the board that Sunday night, Nantz and Packer spent considerable time grilling basketball committee chairman Craig Littlepage on what they had done to deserve a bid. Nantz read through their schedule and asked, “what is in here that we’re not seeing that caused you to give them a bid?”

We all know what happened next: the Patriots stunned Michigan State (without Skinn); shocked North Carolina; beat Wichita State and then, in one of the most dramatic upsets in tournament history, beat Connecticut in overtime to make The Final Four. To be honest, I thought they’d blown it when U-Conn tied the game at the buzzer in regulation. To be even more honest, I couldn’t believe the game was close.

I still remember the first thing Larranaga said to me when I shook hands with him on the court: “I can’t wait to get to Indy to see Nantz and Packer.”

He got his chance early. On Wednesday night, Mason was having dinner in “St. Elmo’s,” the great steakhouse in downtown Indy when Nantz and Packer walked in. I happened to be in there with some friends and when they stopped to say hello I couldn’t resist saying, “Hey, George Mason’s in the back, I’m sure you guys want to go and say hello.”

To his credit, Nantz made a beeline for the back room. Larranaga told me later he congratulated everyone and said he and Packer had been wrong and they had been proven wrong. Packer lingered at our table, talking.

“Well,” I said finally, “Aren’t you going to go in there and apologize?”

“I don’t have anything to apologize for,” Packer said. “I still think what I said was right when I said it.”

That was one thing I loved about Billy: he always stuck to his guns even when the whole world was saying he was wrong.

Mason’s run inspired a lot of people who had never heard of the school prior to March of 2006. Even Connecticut Coach Jim Calhoun shook his head in the aftermath of what had to be one of the most disappointing losses of his career and said, “this is why basketball’s a beautiful game.”

As it happens I have a fair number of George Mason T-shirts. They’re actually swimming shirts because I’ve worked out through the years at Mason since the swim coach there, Peter Ward, is a friend of mine. A couple of months after the ’06 Final Four, I was in Coral Springs, Florida for the Masters short course national championships. I was wearing a Mason swimming T-shirt one morning when I walked across the pool deck to jump into the warm-up pool.

As I was walking, I became aware of the fact that people were applauding and apparently the applause was directed at me. Maybe they really liked my new book on Q-school? No, not this crowd. Finally I heard a few of their voices: “George Mason, way to go, great job!” They were applauding for my shirt.

I’ve worn a lot of shirts from a lot of different places through the years. Occasionally I’ll get a pat on the back from ONE person someplace if I’m wearing Navy gear. But that’s about it.

Maryland fans were thrilled by Maryland’s national title. The entire country was thrilled and inspired by George Mason.

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Since the question has been raised, let’s broaden it a little: Last ten years, what’s the most thrilling moment you remember in sports? I can honestly say Mason is probably number one for me with Jason Lezak’s anchor swim in the 4x100 freestyle relay in Beijing a strong number two and Paul Goydos’s win in Hawaii three years ago (yes, that one is personal) after all he’d been through in his personal life, probably number three. If Tom Watson had parred the 18th at Turnberry this past July it would have blown everything else away and been number two on my all-time list behind the U.S. hockey team at Lake Placid.

So Much to Write About On Monday Mornings

Monday is always the toughest--and easiest--blog day because there are so many different things to write about. If the Redskins had somehow lost to the horrid Tampa Bay Buccaneers on Sunday I'm pretty sure I would have been ripping Danny Snyder for firing Jim Zorn instead of firing himself. It's amazing to read The Washington Post this morning where the reaction to the 16-13 win would make you think the Redskins had come from 10-0 down at halftime to beat the Steelers or the Cowboys.

Speaking of my newspaper--and it will always be my newspaper for better or worse--there were THREE stories on Sunday about Maryland's win over Clemson. THREE. Forget that Maryland's bad and Clemson's mediocre or that half the crowd was from Clemson because few people in the area seriously care about Maryland football, the fact is it was an ACC football game between two mediocre teams. Most ACC football games are between two mediocre teams, the exception being Virginia Tech-Duke on Saturday which was between a good team and a bad team even if Duke kept the final score close.

While The Post was obsessing about Maryland (I won't even get into the Redskins obsession this morning) the paper all but missed a truly wonderful game in Annapolis between Navy and Air Force. (I know my editor Matt Rennie will point out that the Navy game story was played right next to Maryland's but the Maryland SIDEBAR was longer than the one Navy story). You pretty much have to be in the stadium--which was packed unlike Byrd Stadium where they keep pumping up their alleged attendance figures--to feel the intensity of a game like this one. After Saturday's 16-13 overtime win, Navy has now beaten Air Force seven times in a row by a total of 36 points, 11 of those coming in the game two years ago when Navy scored very late to stretch the final margin. That means six games decided by 25 points. Do the math.

Both defenses were brilliant in this game. You could feel the energy on both sidelines from the radio booth and, no doubt, everywhere else in the stadium. It took a god-awful call--a phantom roughing the passer penalty on a play in which Navy made what should have been a game-clinching interception--to put the game into overtime. (If you think this is my Navy bias talking, check the replay or check Air Force coach Troy Calhoun's quote on the play. He called it, "a gift.") Navy kicker Joe Buckley, who lost his job a week ago and then got it back, made three field goals including a 38-yarder in overtime. Air Force kicker Erik Soderberg, who had made a 33-yarder at the buzzer to tie the game (after the brutal call) missed wide left from 31-yards and Navy had won again.

As happy as I was for Navy, I couldn't help but feel for Soderberg, who not surprisingly was completely stand-up about the miss putting the blame on himself (this is what service academy kids do) and for all the Air Force players who gave heart and soul to winning the game and now must wait 12 months to try again--except for their seniors who will never beat Navy. As many times as I have seen it, the playing of the alma maters after a service academy game still gets to me, the teams standing in front of their respective bands and student bodies--first the losers, then the winners--for the songs. You never see any of the losers sneak out or fail to cross the field after their song has been played to show respect for the winners. It's just a very cool thing. I can't count the number of times I've seen it and I still get chills.

One other football score absolutely jumped off the page at me Saturday. It was NOT UTEP over Houston or Michigan State (yawn) over Michigan or even Notre Dame lucking out again. It was this: Columbia-38, Princeton-0 at Princeton. Look, I know Columbia football. I grew up going to games in Baker Field and watching the Lions roll up one losing season after another even with some guys on the team--Marty Domres, George Starke, Marcellus Wiley (later) who went on to play in the NFL. I don't know the exact numbers but I think Columbia has had (maybe) three winning seasons in forty years. The Lions almost never beat Princeton much less KILL the Tigers. That score is as stunning as any you will see in college football this year.

Back now to our regularly scheduled blog.

As soon as the alma maters had been played and Bob Socci threw our broadcast to a break, I had to race to my car. I was giving a speech at George Mason and the overtime cost me 20 minutes. I HAD to get out before the traffic backed up. As I ran the 200 yards or so from the press box elevator to my car I noticed two things: I wasn't breathing very hard at all and I didn't notice the incisions from heart surgery until I got in the car and realized I hadn't noticed them. Progress. Now I need to lose 20 pounds and get in swimming shape.

I beat the traffic and got to Mason in time. It is amazing what that school has done in the time since I've been in Washington. The Final Four appearance in 2006 was the centerpiece of what has become a truly admirable athletic program. The dinner was packed. (Must have been the speaker). I joked that if I HAD been late they could have had Jim Larranaga introduce me because that would have killed at least an hour. Jim is a reporter's dream unless you're on a tight deadline. Ask him about someone make him a jump shot and he will tell you about James Naismith teaching his players the set shot and move on from there before arriving back in 2009. By the way, the Patriots will be very good this year.

With all the football going on Sunday I was really focused--once I got home from my daughter's birthday party--on one event: The Senior Players Championship in Baltimore. If not for Brigid's party I would have driven up there because Tom Watson had a four shot lead. Watson just couldn't get going on Sunday. Jay Haas did, shooting 66 to beat him by one shot with a brilliant birdie on 18, hitting a 6-iron to two feet on a hole almost no one had even hit the green (23 percent of the field) on all day. Haas is one of the truly good guys in all of sports. Several years ago he was awarded the Golf Writer's Association's annual Jim Murray Award for cooperating with the media. His opening line was, "I guess this should be called the, 'Curtis blew us off so let's go talk to Jay,' Award." For years golf writers never knew what they were going to get when approaching Jay's old Wake Forest teammate Curtis Strange. They always knew what they'd get with Jay.

In his entire career on the two tours--33 years and counting--Jay has been fined once. It happened in Milwaukee about 10 years ago when he was struggling with his game. He managed to play well the first two rounds but was awful on Saturday, shooting something like 77 which on that golf course is like shooting 85. Disgusted, he managed to hit his second shot on the par-five 18th just off the back of the green. He caught a really bad lie though and plunked his third all the way to the other side of the green. As he walked to his ball, steam coming out of his ears, some guy yelled out, "you really suck Haas!" Jay just couldn't take it anymore. "F---- you!" He yelled back.

The next morning, Wade Cagle, the rules official who was running the tournament, called Haas into his office. "Jay someone filed a complaint against you yesterday," he said, looking a little bit pale. "Says here that you said, 'f---- you,' to a fan. I'm sure they misheard. I'm sure you said 'THANK-you.'

Haas shook his head. "Nope," he said. "Guy's got it right; How much (fine money) do I owe you?"

I digress. As much as I like Jay, Watson losing was painful. Think how close he has come to an absolutely historic year: he just missed becoming the oldest man by ELEVEN years to win a major at The British Open and if he had won yesterday he would have been the oldest man to win a major on The Champions Tour. What a double THAT would have been. In fact, had he pulled both wins off I would have made the case that, adding in the remarkable work he has done to raise money for ALS Research, he should be Sportsman of the Year. Now, even though Tom should still be considered, it almost certainly will go to Roger Federer--who is deserving but not as inspiring as Watson on any level in my (biased) view.

Life is never perfect. Especially on a weekend when Dan Snyder and Charlie Weis eek out wins. Then again, Navy-Air Force made up for it--in spades. Not because Navy won but because being in that stadium on a perfect October afternoon was so