The Winter Olympics begin tonight with the Opening Ceremonies, which I assume will last about eight hours on NBC.
I hate to sound jaded, but to be honest, once you’ve seen one Opening Ceremony you’ve seen them all. The ONLY thing that matters is the entrance of the athletes. The rest is fluff, time-filler and, frankly, boring. If I think about it, I’ll try to tune in near the end when the Canadian team walks in. Seeing the host country’s athletes walk into the stadium is usually a chill-producing moment.
As it happens, I’m one of those guys who still buys in to the notion of the Olympics—especially the winter games where so few of the athletes are stars in the marketing world. More likely, they’ll have 15 minutes of fame if they medal or produce a remarkable performance. Lindsey Vonn, if she can get down the mountain on her injured shin and win a couple of gold medals will be selling a lot of products in the near future, but she may be the list. There are no figure skating stars (at least going in) who are likely to follow in the footsteps of Peggy Fleming, Janet Lynn (still my all-time heart-throb) Dorothy Hamill, Katerina Witt or even the infamous duo of Nancy Kerrigan and Tonya Harding.
NBC will certainly try to create stars. It will spend a lot of time focusing on the snowboarders because they’re trying to pull in a younger audience and the U.S. is very good at snowboarding. We’ll see a lot of skiing and a fair bit of speedskating although there aren’t as many U.S. medal contenders—particularly on the women’s side—as in past years. Of course you never know. Someone could come up with the performance of a lifetime.
Most of my favorite Olympic moments—the U.S. hockey team in Lake Placid aside—involve athletes most people have never heard of or might vaguely remember. When Brian Shimer won a bronze medal in bobsledding in his fifth and final Olympics—his first Olympic medal ever—in 2002, I thought that was a very cool story. I had the pleasure of being there in 1984 when Jeff Blatnick, having beaten cancer, won the superheavyweight gold medal in Greco-Roman wrestling and wept on the mat when it was over.
I remember a lot of swimming moments because of my background as a never-was swimmer. I remember all of Mark Spitz’s swims in 1972 but my most vivid memory is of his last race: the 100 freestyle. There was a Russian swimmer in the lane next to him (I can’t remember his name anymore) who came out of the pack in the last 10 meters to get the bronze medal. At that point in time he might have been the first Russian man to medal in swimming but in any event, no one had expected him to medal and he did. He was so thrilled that he held up three fingers to Spitz, “going ‘three, three, I finished three,’ while Spitz just kind of looked at him as if to say, ‘yeah so what, I’m Mark Spitz and you’re not.’ I thought the guy being that excited was great.
I remember seeing Bobby Hackett, who I’d known a little from local meets around New York (we were in different age groups so I never actually had the chance to get my butt kicked by him) winning a silver medal that same year and being awed that a kid from Gator Swim Club could do something like that. Like everyone, I remember Michael Phelps in Beijing but my most vivid memory is Jason Lezak’s amazing anchor leg in the 400x100 freestyle relay that allowed Phelps’s quests for the eight gold medals to stay alive. THAT was thrilling.
The Olympics have changed completely since I first began watching them as a kid and even covering them as a young adult. Everyone who takes part now is a pro, the old Avery Brundage myth of “amateurism,” having been put away years ago. That’s good in the sense that you don’t have Soviet athletes who are allegedly factory workers when their fulltime job is clearly playing hockey or figure skating or running track. But there’s also a loss of some innocence there: The Miracle on Ice can never happen again because the hockey tournament is an NHL tournament, the players divided by countries instead of by cities. I remember when Dr. Gary Hall was considered a marvel when he qualified for his third Olympics as a swimmer in 1976 because once you finished college in those days you had to go get a job.
Now, swimming is a job for anyone who is world class, which is why Phelps will swim in his fourth Olympics in London in 2012 and that won’t make him unusual at all. Swimmers are like all other professional athletes now: they keep going until they aren’t good enough to get paid anymore.
All of which is fine. And I will still think it is cool if U.S. bobsledder John Napier, whose Army unit deployed to Afghanistan this month (he may follow them next month) can win a medal. If, as people say, this is the year the Americans can add a second Nordic skiing medal to the silver Bill Koch won in 1976, that will be a good story. I’ll watch a lot of the skiing because it is fun to watch the skiers charge down the mountain on the brink of disaster at any given moment.
One thing I do have trouble with is NBC’s approach to the Olympics. Even in Vancouver, where the Pacific Time zone should make it possible to televise a lot of events live in prime time, a majority of the coverage will be taped. You can bet you won’t see Vonn or Bode Miller skiing much before 11 o’clock Eastern Time most nights and it will be on tape. Great sports moments should be LIVE, you should sit there not knowing who won or who lost or what will happen in the next instant.
Even if you do the, ‘don’t tell me who won,’ thing, most of the time you can figure out from the timing who won and who lost while you’re watching. Plus, in today’s world especially, it is almost impossible to resist the urge to find out who won. So, I’ll watch a lot, but the fact that much of it will be on tape will take some of the enjoyment out of it for me—and for others.
The Olympics are still two weeks I look forward to whenever they take place. I’ve had various ideas for books that would have involved the Olympics but never gone through with any, mostly because the books I’d like to do on Olympic athletes would be decidedly un-commercial. I wouldn’t be caught dead writing about figure skating. Speedskating or bobsledding or luge would be more up my alley.
Cue the syrupy music, it’s time for Bob Costas to tell us how spectacular the Opening Ceremonies are. Of course that’ll be live—the one thing that doesn’t need to be live. I’ll check in on Saturday when the competition begins.
Friday, February 12, 2010
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Duke wins the game it had to; Explaining my respect for Ryan Bucchianeri
I guess I have to start this morning with Duke-North Carolina because it is always a game people talk about and because of my obvious connections to the rivalry that date back more than 30 years to my undergraduate days at Duke.
Let’s put aside last night’s outcome for a minute except to say this: It was a game Duke had to win. Carolina is down this year and when your arch-rival is down—especially when it is usually very good to excellent—you have to take advantage. What’s more, the Tar Heels had won three in a row; five-of-seven and seven-of-ten against Duke. The game was anything but pretty, Duke finally pulling away in the last five minutes to win 64-54 in a matchup that certainly won’t be an instant classic anywhere. The Blue Devils were no doubt glad to get out of Chapel Hill with a road win and now face a very tough game Saturday against what will be a rested Maryland team—the Terrapins taking the day off Wednesday after the latest Washington blizzard postponed their game with Virginia until Monday.
All that said and with my usual admission of an anti-ESPN bias, I really am sick of the way the network acts as if every Duke-Carolina game is the next coming of the U.S.-Soviet hockey game of 1980. ESPN hypes everything it televises but it goes to new levels with Duke-Carolina. A lot of it starts with Dick Vitale, who just can’t help himself. To be fair, if Dick was doing Bucknell-American (which I’ll be doing tonight if I can get out of my driveway) he would think IT was the greatest thing he’d ever seen in his life.
At least his hype is genuine.
And look, Duke-Carolina has been a wonderful rivalry through the years. Carolina has had three of the all-time great coaches work at the school in the last 60 years: Frank McGuire, Dean Smith and Roy Williams. Bill Guthridge never got the credit he deserved going to two Final Fours in three seasons. Matt Doherty was a failure—although he DID recruit the key players on Williams’ first championship team in 2005. Duke has also had three superb coaches: Vic Bubas, who made Duke a national power in the 60s; Bill Foster, who rebuilt the program after it had fallen apart in the 70s and, of course, Mike Krzyzewski who won his 853d game Wednesday—putting him 26 behind Smith and 49 behind his old coach Bob Knight for the all-time record.
There have also been truly great players (interestingly there is not ONE Duke player in the basketball Hall of Fame; Carolina has, I believe, 15) and great games and great moments.
So what did ESPN show prior to the game to prove how great the rivalry is?; fights. Instead of showing Walter Davis’s miracle shot in 1974, it showed Doherty and Chris Collins yelling at one another. Oh please. Instead of showing Gene Banks’ buzzer-beater in 1981 it showed a bloodied Tyler Hansbrough. THIS is what makes a great rivalry: coaches yelling at each other and elbows to the mouth?
I’ve said this before and I will say it again: I think the rivalry has been hyped to the point that fans on both sides act stupid. The Duke students lost their spontaneity and humor years ago. All they want to do is paint their faces and get on TV talking on their cell phones. Carolina people are obsessed with Krzyzewski’s success because they feel it somehow diminishes Smith’s accomplishments—which is completely ludicrous. Nothing can diminish what Dean did—on and off the court.
Last year a friend if mine from Carolina grabbed me in a press room and said, “you’ve got to see the FUNNIEST video ever made.” The video was basically some Carolina kids mocking all white Duke point guards and saying they were gay. Maybe I’m just old. I didn’t think it was even a little bit funny—just dumb to tell you the truth.
Anyone who knows me knows how much I respect Dean and Roy (and Bill Guthridge too, one of the best men I’ve ever met) and Mike. I like all of them a lot and think they’ve all done great work building model programs with (for the most part) good kids who graduate. Of course whenever I say something good about Krzyzewski it is because I’m a Dukie. When I say something good about Roy it is because I’m a traitor.
Gee, I wonder why I don’t like being around the rivalry very much. When HBO asked me to be part of their Duke-Carolina documentary I said no. It was a no-win for me. Unfortunately I thought they leaned on some very bad sources—particularly a couple of people on the Carolina side who claim to be journalists but hate Krzyzewski with a passion that defies reason.
So, like I said, it was a good win for a Duke team that I think is far from special and another tough loss in a down year for Carolina. It didn’t come close to being worthy of the hype. But then few things on ESPN can live up to that sort of hype.
By the way, what exactly is Rivalry Week? Other than Pitt-West Virginia on Friday I can’t find a single real ‘rivalry,’ game other than Duke-Carolina on their schedule. Clemson-Florida State? That’s a big rivalry? Georgetown-Providence? Syracuse-Connecticut MAYBE but they don’t even play home-and-home every year anymore because of the silly Big East schedule. You have to love the way the network marketing geeks just make stuff up and throw it out there. Maybe they can have, “Hype Everything Week.” Oh wait, that’s every week.
************
I got a call yesterday from Ryan Bucchianeri. If you read ‘A Civil War,’ you will know the name right away. If you are a football fan, you will know who he is when I remind you. Ryan was a kicker at Navy. He missed an 18-yard field goal as a freshman that would have won The Army-Navy game. The field was soaked, the game was played in a driving rain—there were plenty of excuses available for Ryan after the game.
He took none of them. He just took the blame. “I missed the kick, that’s all there is to it,” he said repeatedly.
For taking responsibility and not making excuses Ryan became something of a national hero. Sports Illustrated did a long piece on him the following fall. Early in the next year’s Army-Navy game he missed another makeable kick. It was the last field goal he ever attempted at Navy.
Many of Ryan’s teammates resented the fact that he was made into a hero—even though he never asked for that status. They thought (correctly) that in accepting blame he had simply done what they are all taught to do: No Excuse Sir is a mantra at both Army and Navy.
I wrote ‘A Civil War,’ during Ryan’s junior season. There was a new coaching staff that basically wanted no part of him. Too many bad memories. He was shunted down to fourth string and got into two games all year—both times to kickoff. He became almost a pariah within The Brigade of Midshipmen and was badly treated—very badly treated—at times. Writing the book, I reported all this. I liked Ryan a lot and appreciated his willingness to talk to me about all that had happened. I thought my version of events was sympathetic to him, which it was meant to be.
Apparently not everyone read the book that way.
Ryan is now running for Congress after a distinguished career in the Navy. He was running in The Democratic Primary in Pennsylvania’s 12th district (that’s in Western Pennsylvania where Ryan grew up) against 19-term incumbent John Murtha. You may know the name: Murtha was well-known for a number of reasons: A marine veteran who served in Vietnam, he came out against the war in Iraq in 2005 after initially voting to support it in 2002. But he also became known as, “The King of Pork,” and was famous for ear-marking bills to give companies whose lobbyists had contributed big money to his campaigns contracts that benefited the companies and, frequently, his district in Pennsylvania. He has been investigated for possible ethics violations more than once.
Ryan’s campaign was a long shot given Murtha’s time in Congress, his contacts and his campaign war chest. On Sunday, Murtha, who was 77, died after complications from gall bladder surgery. Suddenly, Ryan’s campaign isn’t a long shot anymore.
I had seen Ryan in September when he was campaigning outside Heinz Field before the Navy-Pittsburgh game. He still looks 21 even though he’s now 35. The reason for his call was direct: there were people writing and saying that if you read, ‘A Civil War,’ it was apparent that the author (me) didn’t think very much of him.
If so, that was bad writing on my part. I have great respect for Ryan Bucchianeri and it isn’t because he’s a Democrat or that we agree on most issues. He’s just a good PERSON, who has served his country overseas and who I am SURE will work like crazy if he gets to Congress. So, if anyone has any doubts about how I feel about him because of the book, that’s on me. Did his teammates view him as a loner? Yes. A lot of kickers are viewed that way and Ryan took one emotional hit after another and kept coming back.
If you want to know how his teammates REALLY felt about him, I’d read the scene I witnessed in the locker room after the Notre Dame game that year when Andrew Thompson, the team’s defensive captain, told Bucchianeri how much he respected his un-willingness to give up when it seemed everyone at Navy wanted him to give up. Thompson, by the way, is still serving in the marines today and is as tough a guy as I’ve ever met.
So, if you want to know more about Ryan and his campaign, click on: Ryan2010.com. I’m not writing this for any reason except that I like and respect the guy and I feel badly if anyone read ‘A Civil War,’ and didn’t come away knowing that.
Let’s put aside last night’s outcome for a minute except to say this: It was a game Duke had to win. Carolina is down this year and when your arch-rival is down—especially when it is usually very good to excellent—you have to take advantage. What’s more, the Tar Heels had won three in a row; five-of-seven and seven-of-ten against Duke. The game was anything but pretty, Duke finally pulling away in the last five minutes to win 64-54 in a matchup that certainly won’t be an instant classic anywhere. The Blue Devils were no doubt glad to get out of Chapel Hill with a road win and now face a very tough game Saturday against what will be a rested Maryland team—the Terrapins taking the day off Wednesday after the latest Washington blizzard postponed their game with Virginia until Monday.
All that said and with my usual admission of an anti-ESPN bias, I really am sick of the way the network acts as if every Duke-Carolina game is the next coming of the U.S.-Soviet hockey game of 1980. ESPN hypes everything it televises but it goes to new levels with Duke-Carolina. A lot of it starts with Dick Vitale, who just can’t help himself. To be fair, if Dick was doing Bucknell-American (which I’ll be doing tonight if I can get out of my driveway) he would think IT was the greatest thing he’d ever seen in his life.
At least his hype is genuine.
And look, Duke-Carolina has been a wonderful rivalry through the years. Carolina has had three of the all-time great coaches work at the school in the last 60 years: Frank McGuire, Dean Smith and Roy Williams. Bill Guthridge never got the credit he deserved going to two Final Fours in three seasons. Matt Doherty was a failure—although he DID recruit the key players on Williams’ first championship team in 2005. Duke has also had three superb coaches: Vic Bubas, who made Duke a national power in the 60s; Bill Foster, who rebuilt the program after it had fallen apart in the 70s and, of course, Mike Krzyzewski who won his 853d game Wednesday—putting him 26 behind Smith and 49 behind his old coach Bob Knight for the all-time record.
There have also been truly great players (interestingly there is not ONE Duke player in the basketball Hall of Fame; Carolina has, I believe, 15) and great games and great moments.
So what did ESPN show prior to the game to prove how great the rivalry is?; fights. Instead of showing Walter Davis’s miracle shot in 1974, it showed Doherty and Chris Collins yelling at one another. Oh please. Instead of showing Gene Banks’ buzzer-beater in 1981 it showed a bloodied Tyler Hansbrough. THIS is what makes a great rivalry: coaches yelling at each other and elbows to the mouth?
I’ve said this before and I will say it again: I think the rivalry has been hyped to the point that fans on both sides act stupid. The Duke students lost their spontaneity and humor years ago. All they want to do is paint their faces and get on TV talking on their cell phones. Carolina people are obsessed with Krzyzewski’s success because they feel it somehow diminishes Smith’s accomplishments—which is completely ludicrous. Nothing can diminish what Dean did—on and off the court.
Last year a friend if mine from Carolina grabbed me in a press room and said, “you’ve got to see the FUNNIEST video ever made.” The video was basically some Carolina kids mocking all white Duke point guards and saying they were gay. Maybe I’m just old. I didn’t think it was even a little bit funny—just dumb to tell you the truth.
Anyone who knows me knows how much I respect Dean and Roy (and Bill Guthridge too, one of the best men I’ve ever met) and Mike. I like all of them a lot and think they’ve all done great work building model programs with (for the most part) good kids who graduate. Of course whenever I say something good about Krzyzewski it is because I’m a Dukie. When I say something good about Roy it is because I’m a traitor.
Gee, I wonder why I don’t like being around the rivalry very much. When HBO asked me to be part of their Duke-Carolina documentary I said no. It was a no-win for me. Unfortunately I thought they leaned on some very bad sources—particularly a couple of people on the Carolina side who claim to be journalists but hate Krzyzewski with a passion that defies reason.
So, like I said, it was a good win for a Duke team that I think is far from special and another tough loss in a down year for Carolina. It didn’t come close to being worthy of the hype. But then few things on ESPN can live up to that sort of hype.
By the way, what exactly is Rivalry Week? Other than Pitt-West Virginia on Friday I can’t find a single real ‘rivalry,’ game other than Duke-Carolina on their schedule. Clemson-Florida State? That’s a big rivalry? Georgetown-Providence? Syracuse-Connecticut MAYBE but they don’t even play home-and-home every year anymore because of the silly Big East schedule. You have to love the way the network marketing geeks just make stuff up and throw it out there. Maybe they can have, “Hype Everything Week.” Oh wait, that’s every week.
************
I got a call yesterday from Ryan Bucchianeri. If you read ‘A Civil War,’ you will know the name right away. If you are a football fan, you will know who he is when I remind you. Ryan was a kicker at Navy. He missed an 18-yard field goal as a freshman that would have won The Army-Navy game. The field was soaked, the game was played in a driving rain—there were plenty of excuses available for Ryan after the game.
He took none of them. He just took the blame. “I missed the kick, that’s all there is to it,” he said repeatedly.
For taking responsibility and not making excuses Ryan became something of a national hero. Sports Illustrated did a long piece on him the following fall. Early in the next year’s Army-Navy game he missed another makeable kick. It was the last field goal he ever attempted at Navy.
Many of Ryan’s teammates resented the fact that he was made into a hero—even though he never asked for that status. They thought (correctly) that in accepting blame he had simply done what they are all taught to do: No Excuse Sir is a mantra at both Army and Navy.
I wrote ‘A Civil War,’ during Ryan’s junior season. There was a new coaching staff that basically wanted no part of him. Too many bad memories. He was shunted down to fourth string and got into two games all year—both times to kickoff. He became almost a pariah within The Brigade of Midshipmen and was badly treated—very badly treated—at times. Writing the book, I reported all this. I liked Ryan a lot and appreciated his willingness to talk to me about all that had happened. I thought my version of events was sympathetic to him, which it was meant to be.
Apparently not everyone read the book that way.
Ryan is now running for Congress after a distinguished career in the Navy. He was running in The Democratic Primary in Pennsylvania’s 12th district (that’s in Western Pennsylvania where Ryan grew up) against 19-term incumbent John Murtha. You may know the name: Murtha was well-known for a number of reasons: A marine veteran who served in Vietnam, he came out against the war in Iraq in 2005 after initially voting to support it in 2002. But he also became known as, “The King of Pork,” and was famous for ear-marking bills to give companies whose lobbyists had contributed big money to his campaigns contracts that benefited the companies and, frequently, his district in Pennsylvania. He has been investigated for possible ethics violations more than once.
Ryan’s campaign was a long shot given Murtha’s time in Congress, his contacts and his campaign war chest. On Sunday, Murtha, who was 77, died after complications from gall bladder surgery. Suddenly, Ryan’s campaign isn’t a long shot anymore.
I had seen Ryan in September when he was campaigning outside Heinz Field before the Navy-Pittsburgh game. He still looks 21 even though he’s now 35. The reason for his call was direct: there were people writing and saying that if you read, ‘A Civil War,’ it was apparent that the author (me) didn’t think very much of him.
If so, that was bad writing on my part. I have great respect for Ryan Bucchianeri and it isn’t because he’s a Democrat or that we agree on most issues. He’s just a good PERSON, who has served his country overseas and who I am SURE will work like crazy if he gets to Congress. So, if anyone has any doubts about how I feel about him because of the book, that’s on me. Did his teammates view him as a loner? Yes. A lot of kickers are viewed that way and Ryan took one emotional hit after another and kept coming back.
If you want to know how his teammates REALLY felt about him, I’d read the scene I witnessed in the locker room after the Notre Dame game that year when Andrew Thompson, the team’s defensive captain, told Bucchianeri how much he respected his un-willingness to give up when it seemed everyone at Navy wanted him to give up. Thompson, by the way, is still serving in the marines today and is as tough a guy as I’ve ever met.
So, if you want to know more about Ryan and his campaign, click on: Ryan2010.com. I’m not writing this for any reason except that I like and respect the guy and I feel badly if anyone read ‘A Civil War,’ and didn’t come away knowing that.
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
This week's radio segments
Today I joined The Sports Reporters' Steve Czaban and Andy Pollin in the normal timeslot (5:25 ET on Wednesday's). Click the permalink, then the link below, to listen to the segment. This week we spent a great deal of time talking about the Duke-UNC game, as well as the overall state of the Duke program.
Click here to listen to the segment: The Sports Reporters
I also made my regular appearance on Tony Kornheiser's newest radio show during my regular segment at 11:05am. This week we discussed the weather, of course, before moving on to college basketball, including the Duke-UNC game.
Click here to listen to the segment (starts within the 1st minute): Tony Kornheiser Show
Click here to listen to the segment: The Sports Reporters
I also made my regular appearance on Tony Kornheiser's newest radio show during my regular segment at 11:05am. This week we discussed the weather, of course, before moving on to college basketball, including the Duke-UNC game.
Click here to listen to the segment (starts within the 1st minute): Tony Kornheiser Show
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.
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.
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Taking a look at Tom Watson’s comments on Woods
Tom Watson raised some eyebrows last week while playing in Dubai—ironically he was invited because the tournament had a large chunk of extra cash to spend on appearance fees since it wasn’t paying Tiger Woods his annual fee of $3 million—when he talked about Woods’ behavior on the golf course.
Let’s put aside the off-course issues for today because there is going to be MORE than enough written and said about them as Woods moves closer to his return to the PGA Tour, which I still think will come next month either at Doral or Bay Hill.
Watson’s point was this: In golf, part of being a CHAMPION is the way you conduct yourself in public, especially on the golf course. It is worth remembering that Watson was one of the first players to say straight out that he had never seen a talent like Woods and that his presence in the game was nothing but a good thing.
I still remember back in 1998, I drove to the airport in Jacksonville during the week of The Players Championship to meet my family, which was coming to town since Danny was on spring break and Brigid wasn’t in school yet. Watson was there, waiting for the same flight from Atlanta because his son Michael was flying in to meet him for the week.
When the plane landed, Danny—who was four at the time—was the first person to come running into the terminal. He spotted me right away and raced over. When I introduced him to Watson I said, “Mr. Watson is a very famous golfer.”
Danny looked at Watson and said, “are you as good as Tiger Woods?”
“Not in my wildest dreams,” Watson answered.
It was also Watson who said during Woods’ 12-shot runaway at the 1997 Masters that, “he’s a boy among men and he’s showing the men how it’s done.”
But it has always bothered Watson—and many other players—that Woods has absolutely refused to clean up his act on the golf course. Most kids learn early that throwing clubs and using profanity on the golf course is unacceptable. Arnold Palmer often tells a story about playing in a tournament when he was about 13 and tossing a couple of clubs in frustration. His father was there and never said a word throughout the round.
“As soon as we got in the car he said to me very quietly, ‘if you ever throw a club again, that’s the last time you’ll play golf,” Palmer said. “You can believe I never threw a club again.”
Can you possibly imagine Palmer, Watson or Jack Nicklaus throwing a club? You might—MIGHT—hear a “dammit,” from them on occasion but that’s about it. Woods AND his thug caddy are famous on tour for their language. In fact, back in 2000, during his historic performance at the U.S. Open at Pebble Beach, Woods rinsed his ball in the water left off the 18th tee at the end of the second round and dropped a clearly heard on national TV f-bomb for which he was given a hefty fine since it was far from being his first offense.
His response was to have his agent call The PGA Tour and complain that there was a double-standard when it came to fines for Woods because he always had a microphone following him. All the double standards that BENEFIT Woods because of his stardom never get complained about.
Part of the problem, as I’ve written before, lies with the tour. Commissioner Tim Finchem still adheres to the ridiculous notion that covering up fines somehow helps the tour’s image as a genteel place filled only with fine gentlemen. (I think that image may have taken a hit these past 10 weeks). Finchem and his board believe that fines and even suspensions should be covered up to protect the tour’s image.
About the only reason to fine athletes who make the kind of money the stars on the tour make is deterrence. Does anyone think it hurts Woods to reach into his pocket for fine money—even if he is the most fined player in golf history? Of course not. But, prior to the morning of November 27th, the second-most important thing in Woods’ life (his golf swing being THE most important) was his public image. The more he came across as the boy next door, the more valuable he was to his various sponsors.
If the tour made public ALL its fines, you can bet all players, would behave better on the golf course. Instead, the tour is so secretive that several years ago one player who was suspended told his wife he had decided to, “take a break,” from playing and she believed him.
Woods has been un-apologetic about his behavior or his caddy’s behavior. On occasion when the issue has come up he has talked about people not understanding the pressure he and poor Stevie are under. What set Watson off was the sight of Woods bouncing his driver into the gallery during a tournament in Australia and recovering it without so much as a word of apology. His feeling, as with many others, is that if you come on tour at 21 with a temper, fine. By the time you’re 34 you should make some attempt to correct it.
Long time tour players Steve Pate and Dudley Hart were known on tour for years as, “volcano,” and “mini-volcano,” because of their on-course eruptions. Both laughed at the nicknames but didn’t like the reputations that came with it. Both worked—successfully—to clean up their act. The nicknames remain but they are no longer accurate.
Right now, while he’s allegedly taking a long hard look at his life and who he is, would be a good time for Woods to reconsider the way he behaves at the golf course and to think about Watson’s point about the difference between being a great player and being a great champion.
The club throwing needs to stop and the profanity needs to be controlled. (I am not going to be a hypocrite and suggest he STOP all profanity because I’ve never been able to do it although I do try to be conscious of it around my kids and radio microphones). He needs to MAKE his caddy behave and not always be screaming at photographers or anyone in the gallery who breathes incorrectly. He should sign more autographs, perhaps take a page out of new best friend Phil Mickelson’s (ha!) playbook and plan time into each day to just sign autographs. The weak excuse put out by his PR people, “if he signs 100, the 101st person will be upset,” should be put away since those first 100 would be thrilled and that’s at least 99 more than Woods signs most days.
He might even want to quit blaming the media every time it does something awful like report that he failed to win a major in 2009. When I think about Woods telling Golf Digest’s Jaime Diaz this past fall (before November 27th) that he was tired of the way the media treated him, I want to burst out laughing. Woods gives the media less time than any great athlete in the history of sports. He almost never does a one-on-one with anyone except for paid deals (Diaz’s interview for example was part of Woods’ contract with Golf Digest and he refused this year to do it in person) and softball TV interviews that usually last three questions or occur when he’s pitching something. He’s treated with kid gloves because people in golf are afraid of him and because he sends his agent, Mark Steinberg, to bully almost anyone who steps out of line.
Example: Last August when Woods refused to speak to the media for two days during The Barclays event held at Liberty Island (he was pouting because he’d been accurately quoted by one of his pro-am partners making fun of the golf course) I said in my weekly Golf Channel essay that he’d acted like a petulant child. The next week in Boston, Steinberg told several people from Golf Channel that they might, “have trouble,” getting Woods to talk to them that week (these guys had NOTHING to do with what I’d said) because Woods was angry about my essay. The old guilt-by-association trick.
This would be a GREAT time for Woods to stop trying to pass blame for his behavior—on or off the golf course—onto others and look himself in the mirror. There’s a reason why Tom Watson is universally respected. Woods should think about what he’s saying and understand that he is NOT out to get him. (No one is if you think about it). If he cleans up his act on the golf course people will love him even more than in the past. He’s a smart guy. This should be easy for him.
I suspect it won’t happen.
Let’s put aside the off-course issues for today because there is going to be MORE than enough written and said about them as Woods moves closer to his return to the PGA Tour, which I still think will come next month either at Doral or Bay Hill.
Watson’s point was this: In golf, part of being a CHAMPION is the way you conduct yourself in public, especially on the golf course. It is worth remembering that Watson was one of the first players to say straight out that he had never seen a talent like Woods and that his presence in the game was nothing but a good thing.
I still remember back in 1998, I drove to the airport in Jacksonville during the week of The Players Championship to meet my family, which was coming to town since Danny was on spring break and Brigid wasn’t in school yet. Watson was there, waiting for the same flight from Atlanta because his son Michael was flying in to meet him for the week.
When the plane landed, Danny—who was four at the time—was the first person to come running into the terminal. He spotted me right away and raced over. When I introduced him to Watson I said, “Mr. Watson is a very famous golfer.”
Danny looked at Watson and said, “are you as good as Tiger Woods?”
“Not in my wildest dreams,” Watson answered.
It was also Watson who said during Woods’ 12-shot runaway at the 1997 Masters that, “he’s a boy among men and he’s showing the men how it’s done.”
But it has always bothered Watson—and many other players—that Woods has absolutely refused to clean up his act on the golf course. Most kids learn early that throwing clubs and using profanity on the golf course is unacceptable. Arnold Palmer often tells a story about playing in a tournament when he was about 13 and tossing a couple of clubs in frustration. His father was there and never said a word throughout the round.
“As soon as we got in the car he said to me very quietly, ‘if you ever throw a club again, that’s the last time you’ll play golf,” Palmer said. “You can believe I never threw a club again.”
Can you possibly imagine Palmer, Watson or Jack Nicklaus throwing a club? You might—MIGHT—hear a “dammit,” from them on occasion but that’s about it. Woods AND his thug caddy are famous on tour for their language. In fact, back in 2000, during his historic performance at the U.S. Open at Pebble Beach, Woods rinsed his ball in the water left off the 18th tee at the end of the second round and dropped a clearly heard on national TV f-bomb for which he was given a hefty fine since it was far from being his first offense.
His response was to have his agent call The PGA Tour and complain that there was a double-standard when it came to fines for Woods because he always had a microphone following him. All the double standards that BENEFIT Woods because of his stardom never get complained about.
Part of the problem, as I’ve written before, lies with the tour. Commissioner Tim Finchem still adheres to the ridiculous notion that covering up fines somehow helps the tour’s image as a genteel place filled only with fine gentlemen. (I think that image may have taken a hit these past 10 weeks). Finchem and his board believe that fines and even suspensions should be covered up to protect the tour’s image.
About the only reason to fine athletes who make the kind of money the stars on the tour make is deterrence. Does anyone think it hurts Woods to reach into his pocket for fine money—even if he is the most fined player in golf history? Of course not. But, prior to the morning of November 27th, the second-most important thing in Woods’ life (his golf swing being THE most important) was his public image. The more he came across as the boy next door, the more valuable he was to his various sponsors.
If the tour made public ALL its fines, you can bet all players, would behave better on the golf course. Instead, the tour is so secretive that several years ago one player who was suspended told his wife he had decided to, “take a break,” from playing and she believed him.
Woods has been un-apologetic about his behavior or his caddy’s behavior. On occasion when the issue has come up he has talked about people not understanding the pressure he and poor Stevie are under. What set Watson off was the sight of Woods bouncing his driver into the gallery during a tournament in Australia and recovering it without so much as a word of apology. His feeling, as with many others, is that if you come on tour at 21 with a temper, fine. By the time you’re 34 you should make some attempt to correct it.
Long time tour players Steve Pate and Dudley Hart were known on tour for years as, “volcano,” and “mini-volcano,” because of their on-course eruptions. Both laughed at the nicknames but didn’t like the reputations that came with it. Both worked—successfully—to clean up their act. The nicknames remain but they are no longer accurate.
Right now, while he’s allegedly taking a long hard look at his life and who he is, would be a good time for Woods to reconsider the way he behaves at the golf course and to think about Watson’s point about the difference between being a great player and being a great champion.
The club throwing needs to stop and the profanity needs to be controlled. (I am not going to be a hypocrite and suggest he STOP all profanity because I’ve never been able to do it although I do try to be conscious of it around my kids and radio microphones). He needs to MAKE his caddy behave and not always be screaming at photographers or anyone in the gallery who breathes incorrectly. He should sign more autographs, perhaps take a page out of new best friend Phil Mickelson’s (ha!) playbook and plan time into each day to just sign autographs. The weak excuse put out by his PR people, “if he signs 100, the 101st person will be upset,” should be put away since those first 100 would be thrilled and that’s at least 99 more than Woods signs most days.
He might even want to quit blaming the media every time it does something awful like report that he failed to win a major in 2009. When I think about Woods telling Golf Digest’s Jaime Diaz this past fall (before November 27th) that he was tired of the way the media treated him, I want to burst out laughing. Woods gives the media less time than any great athlete in the history of sports. He almost never does a one-on-one with anyone except for paid deals (Diaz’s interview for example was part of Woods’ contract with Golf Digest and he refused this year to do it in person) and softball TV interviews that usually last three questions or occur when he’s pitching something. He’s treated with kid gloves because people in golf are afraid of him and because he sends his agent, Mark Steinberg, to bully almost anyone who steps out of line.
Example: Last August when Woods refused to speak to the media for two days during The Barclays event held at Liberty Island (he was pouting because he’d been accurately quoted by one of his pro-am partners making fun of the golf course) I said in my weekly Golf Channel essay that he’d acted like a petulant child. The next week in Boston, Steinberg told several people from Golf Channel that they might, “have trouble,” getting Woods to talk to them that week (these guys had NOTHING to do with what I’d said) because Woods was angry about my essay. The old guilt-by-association trick.
This would be a GREAT time for Woods to stop trying to pass blame for his behavior—on or off the golf course—onto others and look himself in the mirror. There’s a reason why Tom Watson is universally respected. Woods should think about what he’s saying and understand that he is NOT out to get him. (No one is if you think about it). If he cleans up his act on the golf course people will love him even more than in the past. He’s a smart guy. This should be easy for him.
I suspect it won’t happen.
Monday, February 8, 2010
Washington Post column - ' NCAA tournament expansion would make cents, but not sense'
Here is this week's column from The Washington Post --------
If there is one thing you can absolutely count on from the NCAA, it is an almost unique form of slippery deceit. No one involved in its decision-making ever tells an outright lie. They also never tell an outright truth.
Everything is always being studied. Ask the NCAA its position on March coming after February and you will be told the issue is being studied. This is an organization that spent hours and hours last summer debating the merits of allowing member schools to feed bagels to their athletes. (Not surprisingly, the proposal came from the ACC because, heck, things are going so well in football and basketball, why not spend time on the bagel issue?)
In its infinite wisdom the NCAA came down in favor of bagels -- but against cream cheese to go with the bagels.
Seriously.
Click here for the rest of the column: NCAA tournament expansion would make cents, but not sense
If there is one thing you can absolutely count on from the NCAA, it is an almost unique form of slippery deceit. No one involved in its decision-making ever tells an outright lie. They also never tell an outright truth.
Everything is always being studied. Ask the NCAA its position on March coming after February and you will be told the issue is being studied. This is an organization that spent hours and hours last summer debating the merits of allowing member schools to feed bagels to their athletes. (Not surprisingly, the proposal came from the ACC because, heck, things are going so well in football and basketball, why not spend time on the bagel issue?)
In its infinite wisdom the NCAA came down in favor of bagels -- but against cream cheese to go with the bagels.
Seriously.
Click here for the rest of the column: NCAA tournament expansion would make cents, but not sense
Drew Brees’s tears most memorable to me; On to next slate of sports events
There are a lot of bad things about living in America’s new snow belt. Losing power is no fun. Seeing people losing their minds in the grocery store is comedic but just a little bit scary. But not getting the newspapers in the morning makes me crazy. Sure, I can read online but it’s NOT THE SAME. I spend enough time sitting at the computer most days without having to sit here to read the papers.
Okay, that is today’s whine-du-jour. Suffice to say it hasn’t been a fun winter in these parts and apparently there’s more to come. The roads still aren’t clear (largely because there’s just no place to put the snow) and more snow is expected tomorrow and Wednesday. The only ones who are happy right now are the kids.
I did manage to make it home from West Point last night—although the last 35 miles was treacherous and frightening—in time to see most of The Super Bowl. My first comment on the game and the telecast is this: Have all the smart advertising execs retired? I did not see every commercial and I probably wasn’t completely focused on a lot of the ones I saw, but it certainly appeared that the days of the memorable Super Bowl commercial have gone the way of the low-key postgame celebration.
Enough already with the talking baby.
Onto the game. Most Super Bowls have three or four moments that stand out and are replayed forever and this game was no exception. The Saints recovery of the onside kick to start the second half will be shown a million times along with announcers crediting Sean Payton (correctly) for taking such a bold gamble. The Tracy Porter interception will always be the signature play of the game, not only because it broke the Colts back but because it rendered Peyton Manning human again. Now we’re going to hear over and over again that Manning has won the same number of Super Bowls as Mark Rypien and Brad Johnson, not to mention little brother Eli.
But for me, the most vivid memory will be Drew Brees’s tears, first when he was holding his one-year-old son Baylen during the (overblown) pre-trophy presentation celebration and then as he stood on the podium waiting for Tom Benson to stop blathering so Payton could finally hand him the trophy.
His voice never cracked on the podium or in his postgame press conference but his emotion was apparent and clearly quite genuine. He talked about feeling as if he was meant to land in New Orleans and to be a part of the rebuilding of the team and the city and the region, but there was no Joe Gibbs/Kurt Warner evangelism just a clear picture that this was a man of faith who felt that his presence in New Orleans was part of a plan he didn’t need to understand but had been able to help carry out.
Good for him. Good for the entire city which suffered the modest angst that comes with a consistently bad football team and then the tragedy of Katrina. It’s a little harder to feel good for Saints owner Tom Benson who was ready to yank the team from New Orleans and move it to San Antonio or Los Angeles after Katrina and is now taking bows for all that has gone right the last couple of years, culminating with Sunday’s victory.
You can’t help but wonder how hard Manning will get hit by his critics for this loss. He did not play poorly by any means—he never plays poorly. But the defining moment of the game was the Porter interception. I don’t think there’s anything that can happen that will remove Manning from the pantheon of great NFL quarterbacks. He’s certainly somewhere on the list although the talk that he is THE greatest will quiet now until he wins another Super Bowl.
I have one other question on the subject of great quarterbacks. Whenever people talk about Joe Montana as the best of all time, they talk about his four Super Bowl wins—as they should. Tom Brady’s three Super Bowl wins puts him in the conversation and then names like Johnny Unitas, Bart Starr, John Elway and old-timers like Sammy Baugh and Otto Graham get mentioned. I never hear Terry Bradshaw’s name. Sure, the Steelers of his era were built around a great defense but Bradshaw was awfully good and his teams won four Super Bowls. Shouldn’t that merit at least a mention, regardless of how many bad commercials he’s made?
Just wondering.
For me, there’s always a sense of relief when The Super Bowl is over. The hype is behind us for a while and we don’t have to dodge every single ex-player on earth, “breaking down the game.” What the playing of the game almost always proves is that all the, “breaking down,” is meaningless. The consensus among the experts was that sooner or later Manning would be too good for the Saints defense. I was among those who thought that, the only difference between me and some of the others is that I don’t consider myself an expert. I’m just someone who has been around football a lot and I think I know SOMETHING about the game but I certainly wouldn’t tell anyone to go out and bet his house on what I think about the outcome of a game. I thought Navy was too beat up physically to go into Notre Dame and win this past season. Shows you how much I know.
Now, unless you are an NFL Network geek who can’t wait for The Combine, football is behind us for a little while. The Winter Olympics begin Friday. I can live without the opening ceremonies and ALL the figure skating. But I enjoy things like speed skating, luge and bobsled and Alpine skiing, even if I don’t completely understand them or know any of the athletes. The hockey should be fun and the best thing about it is that the Islanders can’t lose any more games while the Olympics are going on. (The Caps, if you’re paying attention, may never lose another game. I didn’t get to see the comeback on Sunday but if they didn’t lose that game, that’s it, they’re never losing again).
It is also less than five weeks now to Selection Sunday. I went through the conference standings this morning and I have to tell you, coming up with a list of 34 teams that are absolutely, without question deserving of a bid wasn’t easy. Which raises this question: If coming up with 34 teams is tough, how the heck does the NCAA propose to come up with 65 at-large teams with a 96 team field?
This is the worst idea anyone has come up with since New Coke. Even Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delany and I agree on this and we agree on NOTHING. Of course that probably means that it is a lock to happen.
Okay, I have to go and find food for my family before it starts snowing again tomorrow. I wish I was joking.
Okay, that is today’s whine-du-jour. Suffice to say it hasn’t been a fun winter in these parts and apparently there’s more to come. The roads still aren’t clear (largely because there’s just no place to put the snow) and more snow is expected tomorrow and Wednesday. The only ones who are happy right now are the kids.
I did manage to make it home from West Point last night—although the last 35 miles was treacherous and frightening—in time to see most of The Super Bowl. My first comment on the game and the telecast is this: Have all the smart advertising execs retired? I did not see every commercial and I probably wasn’t completely focused on a lot of the ones I saw, but it certainly appeared that the days of the memorable Super Bowl commercial have gone the way of the low-key postgame celebration.
Enough already with the talking baby.
Onto the game. Most Super Bowls have three or four moments that stand out and are replayed forever and this game was no exception. The Saints recovery of the onside kick to start the second half will be shown a million times along with announcers crediting Sean Payton (correctly) for taking such a bold gamble. The Tracy Porter interception will always be the signature play of the game, not only because it broke the Colts back but because it rendered Peyton Manning human again. Now we’re going to hear over and over again that Manning has won the same number of Super Bowls as Mark Rypien and Brad Johnson, not to mention little brother Eli.
But for me, the most vivid memory will be Drew Brees’s tears, first when he was holding his one-year-old son Baylen during the (overblown) pre-trophy presentation celebration and then as he stood on the podium waiting for Tom Benson to stop blathering so Payton could finally hand him the trophy.
His voice never cracked on the podium or in his postgame press conference but his emotion was apparent and clearly quite genuine. He talked about feeling as if he was meant to land in New Orleans and to be a part of the rebuilding of the team and the city and the region, but there was no Joe Gibbs/Kurt Warner evangelism just a clear picture that this was a man of faith who felt that his presence in New Orleans was part of a plan he didn’t need to understand but had been able to help carry out.
Good for him. Good for the entire city which suffered the modest angst that comes with a consistently bad football team and then the tragedy of Katrina. It’s a little harder to feel good for Saints owner Tom Benson who was ready to yank the team from New Orleans and move it to San Antonio or Los Angeles after Katrina and is now taking bows for all that has gone right the last couple of years, culminating with Sunday’s victory.
You can’t help but wonder how hard Manning will get hit by his critics for this loss. He did not play poorly by any means—he never plays poorly. But the defining moment of the game was the Porter interception. I don’t think there’s anything that can happen that will remove Manning from the pantheon of great NFL quarterbacks. He’s certainly somewhere on the list although the talk that he is THE greatest will quiet now until he wins another Super Bowl.
I have one other question on the subject of great quarterbacks. Whenever people talk about Joe Montana as the best of all time, they talk about his four Super Bowl wins—as they should. Tom Brady’s three Super Bowl wins puts him in the conversation and then names like Johnny Unitas, Bart Starr, John Elway and old-timers like Sammy Baugh and Otto Graham get mentioned. I never hear Terry Bradshaw’s name. Sure, the Steelers of his era were built around a great defense but Bradshaw was awfully good and his teams won four Super Bowls. Shouldn’t that merit at least a mention, regardless of how many bad commercials he’s made?
Just wondering.
For me, there’s always a sense of relief when The Super Bowl is over. The hype is behind us for a while and we don’t have to dodge every single ex-player on earth, “breaking down the game.” What the playing of the game almost always proves is that all the, “breaking down,” is meaningless. The consensus among the experts was that sooner or later Manning would be too good for the Saints defense. I was among those who thought that, the only difference between me and some of the others is that I don’t consider myself an expert. I’m just someone who has been around football a lot and I think I know SOMETHING about the game but I certainly wouldn’t tell anyone to go out and bet his house on what I think about the outcome of a game. I thought Navy was too beat up physically to go into Notre Dame and win this past season. Shows you how much I know.
Now, unless you are an NFL Network geek who can’t wait for The Combine, football is behind us for a little while. The Winter Olympics begin Friday. I can live without the opening ceremonies and ALL the figure skating. But I enjoy things like speed skating, luge and bobsled and Alpine skiing, even if I don’t completely understand them or know any of the athletes. The hockey should be fun and the best thing about it is that the Islanders can’t lose any more games while the Olympics are going on. (The Caps, if you’re paying attention, may never lose another game. I didn’t get to see the comeback on Sunday but if they didn’t lose that game, that’s it, they’re never losing again).
It is also less than five weeks now to Selection Sunday. I went through the conference standings this morning and I have to tell you, coming up with a list of 34 teams that are absolutely, without question deserving of a bid wasn’t easy. Which raises this question: If coming up with 34 teams is tough, how the heck does the NCAA propose to come up with 65 at-large teams with a 96 team field?
This is the worst idea anyone has come up with since New Coke. Even Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delany and I agree on this and we agree on NOTHING. Of course that probably means that it is a lock to happen.
Okay, I have to go and find food for my family before it starts snowing again tomorrow. I wish I was joking.
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