Is the Big East too difficult for its own good?

When the final buzzer sounded at the Dunkin Donuts Center in Providence Saturday night, another wild regular season in the Big East came to an end. The last game of the season didn’t feature two of the league’s elite teams, but there might not be anyone better than Providence College and Seton Hall to give you an idea of just how difficult the conference was this year.

If not for DePaul, the Friars would have finished at the bottom of the Big East. They ended the season having allowed more points-per-game than any team in league history. But they were also the sixth highest scoring team in America, which meant that even for a team that went 4-14 in conference play, they weren’t exactly a pushover. A poor shooting night against Providence and it would feel like you were playing Syracuse or Villanova.

Seton Hall is what Providence wishes it could be. The Pirates finished just outside the top ten nationally in scoring, played a little bit better defense, were slightly deeper and probably caught a few more breaks than the Friars this season. Bobby Gonzalez’s team finished .500 in league play and put itself on the NCAA Tournament bubble by beating all the teams worse than them and very few of the ones better than them. They were the most average team in the most exceptional league in the country.

So if a team who finished in 15th place in the conference could beat you on any given night and a 9-9 team featured the league’s third leading scorer (Jeremy Hazell) and top rebounder (Herb Pope), the teams at the top of the conference must be tailor-made for deep runs in next week’s NCAA Tournament, right?

Right?

The answer might not be as clear as it seems. Yes, Syracuse, the regular season champion, Pittsburgh, West Virginia and Villanova all have the talent to reach the Final Four. But after playing 18 games plus a conference tournament in a league where you rarely ever get a night off, the question is, will anyone have anything left in the tank?

Hours before Seton Hall defeated Providence, the top ranked Orange lost to Louisville for the second time this season. The loss wasn’t all that surprising considering it was senior day for the Cardinals and the last game ever at Freedom Hall. Syracuse also had very little left to play for. They were already guaranteed the top seed in the Big East Tournament and most pundits have penciled them in as a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament.

None of that stopped Wesley Johnson from playing 38 minutes in the game. The Orange’s best player was among the league’s leaders in minutes played this season despite concerns about a leg injury he suffered against Providence in earl y February. After his minutes were limited in that game and the one that followed, Johnson played at least 36 minutes in each of his team’s final seven games.

The reason for his overuse was simple: Five of those games were against teams likely heading to the NCAA Tournament; another was against UConn, one of Syracuse’s biggest rivals; and the other one was probably the final home game of his career assuming he declares for the NBA Draft after the season.

Johnson isn’t the only player in the Big East who could see the wear and tear of such a treacherous regular season take its toll at the worst possible time. The league saw more players average at least 34 minutes per game than any other conference in the country this season.

The concern will only get worse at the Big East Tournament in Madison Square Garden this week. Barring a major upset, it is conceivable that any team who survives until Thursday’s quarterfinals will be safe on Selection Sunday. That means winning the Big East Championship will take beating three tournament-bound teams in three days. It has the chance to be one of the most exciting and competitive tournaments in league history, but at what cost?

Making it to Saturday could leave teams running on empty come the NCAA tournament.

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What did Tiger accomplish by speaking?

The following is just a small collection of events that took the place between the night Tiger Woods’ life changed forever and last Friday morning when he spoke to the world and said nothing.

President Obama announced the United States would be sending 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan and in the next breath, accepted the Nobel Peace Prize. Washington Wizards star Gilbert Arenas brought three guns into the locker room, which led to a season-long suspension and possibly jail time down the road. One of the worst natural disasters in history decimated Haiti. We met Scott Brown. The New Orleans Saints won the Super Bowl.

Plenty of major news stories. None of which had a lifespan much longer than your average Paris Hilton relationship.

Woods outlasted everything. The New York Post featured him on its front page for a record 20 consecutive days. 9/11 didn’t even get that type of coverage. He was all anyone wanted to talk about from Thanksgiving weekend on through Christmas and New Year’s and into February. But things were starting to settle down. The story was dying.

And then he decided to speak.

He handled his speech (it was a speech, not a press conference) with the same obsessive-compulsive attention to detail that made him the world’s greatest golfer and also what allowed him to cheat for that long with that many women and not get caught. No part of the day could go unscripted, so if you thought the State of Tiger Address sounded like it had been prepared by the guys from The West Wing, you’re probably right.

Everything was planned. The people in the room. The hug for mom. The two camera angles. Even the part of his speech where he tore into the media for following around his wife and daughter was probably written in all caps so he could remember to sound angry.

The problem is, Tiger really had nothing to say. He basically read a statement similar to the one that appeared on his website in December and he didn’t answer the one question we all had: When will you be back?

“I do plan to return to golf one day,” he said. “I just don't know when that day will be. I don't rule out that it will be this year. “

And the world stopped for that?

He offered nothing new. That may very well have been the goal. If he truly believes he can repair his marriage, his return to golf might not matter to him all that much. Some have speculated that this was one of his 12 steps – making amends. Maybe he just wanted to show the world that his wife didn’t decapitate him on Thanksgiving night. Or maybe he was doing it for his sponsors.

All we do know is that Woods was back at the center of the news cycle without actually delivering any news. He talked about trying to reconcile his marriage and wanting a little privacy, but it’s difficult to believe Friday’s production helped accomplish any of that. How could it? It just puts more pressure on him and keeps all of us wondering when or if we will see him again.

We all knew questions were off limits on Friday.

But we still could have used some answers.

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If Calhoun retires, Geno should step in

A loss to Syracuse last night effectively ended any chance Connecticut had of reaching the NCAA tournament, so now it’s time to focus on the topic everyone has been whispering about for over a month now. What to do about Jim Calhoun.

To be clear, I’m not pushing him out the door. The man deserves to have carte blanche when it comes to his decision to call it quits and I’d be completely content with him pulling a Joe Paterno on us and staying as long as he’s breathing and swearing. But I also recognize that he’s a three-time cancer survivor who turns 68 in May and has nothing left to prove in college basketball. If he does decide to retire, all we can do is throw a parade and thank him for what he did in Storrs.

So how do you replace a legend?

There are two schools of thought when it comes to picking a new coach: 1) Make a splash. Do a national search and throw a lot of money at the hottest young coach out there. 2) Hire from within. Or at least someone with direct ties to the program. Provide continuity.

I say do both.

Hire Geno Auriemma.

There isn’t another coach in the country with the perfect combination of fame, credentials and a built-in knowledge of Connecticut basketball than Auriemma. He’s the John Wooden of women’s basketball, architect of arguably the single most dominant team in the history of American sports. That’s not a stretch either. His team has won 64 games in a row and none of them have come by less than ten points. If you’re one of those tinfoil helmet wearing people who believes the world will end in 2012, then it’s entirely possibile –likely even— that the UConn women will never lose again.

Why would he bother risking his legacy, you ask? Ego. Auriemma is like the best athlete from your hometown who never made it to the pros. Everyone has respect for him, but at the end of the day he’s still looked at as the best from a very small sample size. It’s not so much about coaching women as it is coaching in a sport that only has a handful of great programs. Either Connecticut or Tennessee (or both) appeared in all but one Final Four over the last decade.

Auriemma would never admit it, but for someone as competitive as he is, it has to bother him to know that historians will always place “women’s” in between “best” and “coach ever” when they refer to him. We could say that doesn’t necessarily imply that he couldn’t get it done on the men’s side, but if we’re being honest, it kind of does.

The thing is I think Auriemma could make a seamless transition to coaching men’s basketball. Above all else, recruiting is about selling yourself to players. That’s why we compare coaches today to used car salesmen and not generals. What works for him when he’s recruiting 18 year old girls will work when he’s recruiting 18 year old guys. He’s charming, good-looking and he’s got that same slick New Yorker attitude that made his has friend John Calipari so successful.

Some might say that he wouldn’t be able to coach men the way he coach women. But that’s assuming that he would want run the same offense he has Maya Moore running now. Of course he’d have to adapt, but how could anyone question his ability as a talent evaluator? I’m pretty sure he would know that he can’t go after 6’4 forwards who can’t grab the rim.

Ironically, the person most opposed to this idea might be Calhoun himself. For years, we’ve heard rumors about the intense rivalry between the two. But is there anyone more capable of matching his famous intensity than Auriemma?

The truth is there’s only one way to replace Calhoun whenever he decides to go.

By hiring another legend.

Question of the day:
How would Geno Auriemma fare as a men's coach?

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A classic Super Bowl as NFL braces for the worst

“Just as the Saints had carried the people through their terrible, difficult times, the fans now turned out to carry the Saints. For forty years, through good times and bad, New Orleans had always stuck by its team. Tonight would be no exception. They came together and rallied around these all-too-human beings, their beloved Saints, just when they needed it most.”

Those words were written by Alan Donnes at the end of his 2007 book, Patron Saints. They describe the sentiments of New Orleans Saints’ fans following the team’s heartbreaking loss in the 2007 NFC Championship Game, just a year and a half after Hurricane Katrina destroyed the city.

The final chapter has now been written.


Let’s hope NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell reads the book or gets the picture or whatever it takes to realize just how good he has it and just how much stands to change if the 2011 season is lost due to a lockout.

Goodell got everything he could ask for last night on the world’s largest stage. For once, sports turned out to be everything they’re supposed to be. Even though the 14 point difference was the widest of any Super Bowl since 2003, the game appeared headed for overtime –and a huge controversy— deep into the fourth quarter. In the end, Drew Brees and the Saints proved to be the best Super Bowl story since Joe Namath led another underdog to a championship 43 years ago.

Isn’t it strange to think that such an exciting game had very little buzz over the past two weeks? For awhile, it looked as though this might be the Super Bowl remembered more for a commercial featuring a college quarterback who might never get a chance to play in the big game or for Michael Irvin and Warren Sapp, the two former stars who allegedly can’t keep their hands off women.

But what everyone failed to take into account was just how popular football is. Focus on the Family can’t ruin the Super Bowl. A couple of clowns who still want to live the athlete’s life can’t either.

The only thing that can ruin the Super Bowl is if the game doesn’t get played at all.

And that’s what we’re looking at as we head into an uncapped year. Next season will be fine. But if we’re to believe NFL Player’s Association Executive Director DeMaurice Smith, the following season is seriously in doubt. Asked what the likelihood of a lockout last week, Smith didn’t hesitate to express his concern.

“On a scale of 1 to 10, it's a 14," he said. "I keep coming back to an economic model in America that is unparalleled -- and that makes it incredibly difficult to then come to players and say, on average, each of you needs to take a $340,000 pay cut to save the National Football League. Tough sell. Tough sell."

Indeed it is.

And guess what? Unlike what happened in baseball in 1994, the fans are going to side with the players.

This won’t be a case of greedy athletes just trying to grab every penny they can. Not when you have a leader like Smith, who is willing to tell the world about the demands from both sides. Smith said the league’s owners want players to take an 18 percent pay cut and they want players to accept only 41 percent of applied revenues, down from the current 59 percent.

At a time when everyone is finally starting to open their eyes and realize how dangerous the game of football is, the owners think the player’s deserve less. And they know that even if there is a lockout, they will still make $5 billion from the league’s television contracts.

Goodell can’t allow this to get any uglier. On almost all other fronts, he has been the model commissioner. But if 2011 winds up a year filled with replacement players or –dare I say—no football at all, everything will change.

All he has to do is keep this thing running.

Or he risks becoming Bud Selig.

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Why shouldn't Kobe be considered the best ever?

A group for my old little league recently popped up on Facebook and it’s only a matter of time before the “my generation was better than your generation” argument starts and the entire city begins to weigh in. That’s just how my hometown is. Bar fights break out over things like this. West Haven children memorize City Champions first, and then if there’s time, they get to the Presidents of the United States. In all seriousness, I’m pretty sure the City Council has devoted an entire meeting to discussing the fastest pitchers in history.

(Note: My name wouldn’t appear on that list, but I did have a nice curveball.)

It’s important to note that the debate is never over the best team. If you won a championship, then you won a championship and no one can ever take that away from you. It’s always about the players who were in your league at the time you played. So take the best five players from my time versus the best five players from your time and then we get into it. That’s why fights happen. Because I’m not just defending my honor, I’m defending the honor of guys I haven’t seen in 20 years.

These arguments exist, of course, because no one wants to slight their own generation. It’s not just little league teams, although in small towns that might be the most pressing issue. It’s television shows and music and movies and life in general. I find these debates laughable. It’s not that I hate history, but I’m sorry, I’ll take the advancements in my time over any other era in history. Card catalogs sucked. Newspapers ads sucked. Encyclopedias sucked, and they were heavy. Amazon, Craig’s List and Google win. Every time.

And I haven’t even mentioned DVR and On the Go products yet.

The reason I bring all of this up is because Kobe Bryant just became the all time leading scorer in Los Angeles Lakers history, which has led the sports media to debate whether or not he is the greatest player in franchise history.

Across the board, the answer has been no.

Depending on who you talk to, the top three seems to be some combination of Magic Johnson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Wilt Chamberlain. The old white guys usually put Jerry West in there and Elgin Baylor typically gets thrown in the conversation as well. Only then does Kobe join the party. No matter where he ranks, it’s pretty impressive to be included with those guys at all. But why can’t he be considered the best ever? Why is it so hard to put a guy playing in a far more competitive NBA atop the list?

He’s the best player on the planet at a time when basketball players are the best athletes on the planet. That wasn’t the case 20 years ago, let alone 40. He’s bigger, stronger and faster than his predecessors and he’s playing in a league that is significantly bigger, stronger and faster than it has ever been. The old guard likes to complain about expansion diluting the NBA. I choose to believe $100 million dollar contracts made it more competitive. The money made basketball more desirable to young people over the past two decades, which has made the talent pool that much larger.

Sports, and this goes back to whole little league topic, is one the few places where you can’t even have a civil conversation comparing past to present. It gets too emotional. For example, you might say Happy Days is the greatest show in history, but you have to concede that it would have been nicer to watch in high definition. There is no concession in sports. People will always argue that their favorite player growing up was a lot better than anyone playing today.

Which is why in a column praising Kobe for becoming the all time leading scorer in team history, Los Angeles Times columnist Bill Plaschke still chose to criticize him for being too much of a ball hog. Whatever it takes to put the stars of today down, right?

But guess what?

Kobe is HD. He is the iPod. He is the internet.

Evolution wins.

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Expansion would leave Big Dance overcrowded

If you want to know why the NCAA Tournament should never expand beyond 65 teams, look no further than this season’s Connecticut Huskies.

I didn’t need to watch even a second of the team’s 13 point loss at Louisville last night to tell you this season was a lost cause for the Huskies. That was clear before the team’s recent three game skid. In fact, it was clear long before Jim Calhoun left the team for health reasons. As soon as Stanley Robinson became the focal point of the offense and people started calling the ultra-athletic swingman a potential lottery pick, things fell apart.

Look, it’s not that I have anything against Robinson. Every Husky fan knows how far he’s come. But anyone who has watched him play over the past four seasons knows he is the last guy you want taking a big shot. You know how most teams rally around their star player when he nails a long three or catches an alley-oop? Well the Huskies go in the tank. And it’s because as soon as Robinson makes a jumper, he suddenly thinks he’s Ray Allen and as soon as he slashes to the basket, he thinks he’s LeBron James. He’s not close to either.

He’s just the best player on a flawed, young team that seems destined for the NIT.

But it now appears that in the not-too-distant future, possibly as soon as next year, weak teams with rich basketball histories will never have to worry about settling for the Not Invited Tournament again. That’s the message the NCAA is sending if, as Sports By Brooks first reported, it increases the number of teams playing in March to 96.

It’s not a done deal yet, but NCAA senior vice president Greg Shaheen told Fox Sports’ college basketball writer Jeff Goodman that the organization is considering expansion.

“It’s part of our due diligence,” Shaheen said. “We have to look at what our membership wants. We have to assess everything. Have we talked to people in our membership about expanding? Absolutely.”

Expanding the tournament would just mean adding second and third-rate teams from the major conferences while doing very little for anyone else. Does anyone really think the MAAC sends an extra team dancing if the tournament grows? It would just reward mediocrity and make the regular season even less relevant than it is now.

The only one who stands to benefit from this is the NCAA itself. An extra weekend of March Madness means millions of dollars in additional television revenue and ticket sales.

But at what cost?

College basketball is already considered a diluted product. The NBA’s one year requirement is partially to blame for this. With the exception of the very best teams, most people can’t name more than one or two starters on any team in America. And because there are very few upper classmen, the players tend to be a lot rougher around the edges, meaning the average game can be summed up like this: Dribble, dribble, dribble, three pointer. Dribble, dribble, dribble, three pointer.

Going to 96 teams would just expose the sport even more. Yes the additional games will provide us with more upsets and buzzer beaters. But they’ll also give us more air balls from the Stanley Robinson’s of the world as well as the poor, undisciplined play of teams similar to this year’s Connecticut team.

The NCAA tournament is supposed to feature the very best college basketball has to offer.

Expansion would just leave the dance floor overcrowded.

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Questions surround Tebow's Super Bowl ad

Here’s hoping Tim Tebow turns out to be just another dumb jock who will do anything to market himself and profit from his fame. That he’s just another member of the fraternity of athletes living in an alternate reality where it’s completely acceptable to lie, cheat and screw anyone you want because rules just don’t apply to you. Call it the Manny Being Manny world where athletes are deemed to foolish to even comprehend the consequences of their actions.

That’s the only way he could possibly get a pass for being in a Super Bowl commercial paid for by Focus on the Family, the controversial anti-abortion, anti-gay organization founded by James Dobson. If he were mindless enough to believe that this group just wanted to give his family the opportunity tell their beautiful story to the world or if he were careless enough not to understand exactly what the organization stands for, then he might deserve to be cut a little slack.

But that’s not how Tebow has ever been portrayed. Not by the media, not by Dan Shanoff, the obsessed editor of timteblog.com and certainly not by himself. Tebow is supposed to be everything that’s right in college sports, an eloquent, good-looking kid who puts his faith above all else. He’s the kid who considers the platform he’s been given as a football player far more important than his Heisman Trophy or two national championships.

But his alliance with Focus on the Family changes that perception. Now Tebow comes off as calculating, if not manipulative.

Now he’s the kid who doesn’t just want to spread his faith to everyone, but wants to do it by partnering with an organization that is very clear about what they stand for and what they think everyone else should believe in. That doesn’t just mean being pro-life. It means treating gays as though they have a disease that needs to be cured.

The truth is this has little to do with the commercial that will run on Sunday. CBS wouldn’t air it if they thought it was going to be too controversial. Most people assume it will be much more family oriented than anti-abortion.

This actually has very little to do with the pro-life issue either. It’s about an influential figure using his status to promote a group who, in denouncing a bill in Uganda that would sentence homosexuals to life in prison or the death penalty, recently said, “we respect the desire of the Ugandan people to shield their nation from the promotion of homosexuality as a lifestyle morally equivalent to one-man, one-woman marriage.”

Right. We aren’t saying you should kill ‘em off, but we wouldn’t be opposed if they were cleansed from the earth either. That’s the group Tebow is supporting.

And you know what message he’s agreeing with?

"You know, I hate gay people, so I let it be known. I don't like gay people and I don't like to be around gay people. I am homophobic. I don't like it. It shouldn't be in the world or in the United States."

Tim Hardaway, a former NBA All Star, said that almost three years ago when he was asked how he would deal with having a gay teammate. That’s what this is about. The difference is Hardaway was already retired so it was easy for the NBA and any endorsements he might have had to sever ties with him.

Tebow is probably at the apex of his stardom. If those who cover the NFL are right about how little he’ll do as a player in the league, his value as a spokesperson will never be higher than it is right now. That’s why Focus on the Family focused in on him. Bang for their $2.5 million bucks.

The only question is, does Tebow really buy into this toxic group?

For once, let’s hope he just sold out.

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The ball will always be in Favre's court

For the past few years, the very mention of Brett Favre and retirement has forced us through a gamut of emotions normally reserved for 12 year old girls. He’s the reason we love sports and the reason we hate it wrapped into one. In one breath we praise his childlike approach to football. In the next, we excoriate him for being indecisive. He’s creative. No, he’s manipulative. Carefree. No, careless. The man has single-handedly caused a generation of sports fans to become bipolar.

Even right now, I can’t decide whether Favre is the athlete I’d most like to have a beer with or the one I’d most like to crack over the head with a beer bottle. Sure I could do without the dog-and-pony show for the next six months, but do any of us really have a right to criticize a guy for WANTING to work? It’s easy to sit at the water cooler and blast him for being an attention-craving baby, but that’s because our nine-to-fives don’t require us to take hits from 350-pound linemen. Screw job security. We’ve got life security.

So I don’t blame Favre for playing these games. You know who I blame?

Quarterbacks.

If you haven’t realized this yet, there are only two great quarterbacks in the NFL. Drew Brees is right on the cusp. But right now, Peyton Manning and Tom Brady are the only two guys who could change the fortunes of any team in the league. If Brady was traded to Kansas City instead of Matt Cassel, the Chiefs probably would have made the playoffs. If Manning was running the show in Minnesota, the Vikings would be undefeated and entering the Super Bowl averaging 40 points per game.

Manning and Brady are game changers. The rest find themselves varying from very good to decent to downright awful. To give you an idea, Brees is very good. Jamarcus Russell is downright awful.

Favre is decent. He’ll make a bad team better and he’ll keep a good team from sinking. Basically, he’s not a game changer, but he’s not making anyone worse. He helped the Jets improve last season, but a rookie managed to win one more game and got them to the playoffs this year. This season, he put up the best numbers of his career, but he still only led the Vikings to one more win in the playoffs than the combination of Gus Frerotte and Tavaris Jackson did last year.

The problem is most of the quarterbacks in the league are a lot closer to Jamarcus Russell than they are to Brees. Or Favre for that matter. The position has evolved slower than every other position in professional sports over the past 30 years. Coaches can churn out linemen or running backs like they’re on an assembly line, but Vinny Testaverde still waits by his phone every time a guy goes down because the ever-present demand for quarterbacks is rarely met.

That’s why Favre is allowed to take as much time and play all the mind games he wants. He has all the leverage in the world. Think about that. A 40 year old who will undoubtedly sit out the majority of training camp is a better option than half the teams in the league currently have.

It’s a sad state of affairs but it’s also reality. You don’t know what you’re getting from the majority of quarterbacks in the NFL from week to week.

In some strange way, Favre might be the most predictable one of all.

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A great matchup, but expect a slow two weeks

If you’re going on vacation to some remote island where all you’ll be doing is sipping frozen drinks and relaxing on the beach while staying completely out of touch with the real world for the next two weeks, you should be thrilled with the Super Bowl XLIV matchup awaiting you upon your return.

The rest of us, unfortunately, can only moan about what could have been.

Rather than getting 14 days of Rex Ryan-isms, TMZ following the boy wonder Mark Sanchez’s every move and of course, endless Brett Favre talk, we’ll have the Indianapolis Colts with Silent Jim Caldwell and Peyton Manning talking to us about hard work and discipline on one side and the New Orleans Saints with their standoffish coach Sean Payton and his not-quite-ready-to-be-a-media-darling quarterback Drew Brees on the other. The best chance we have of avoiding an incredibly boring two weeks is if Manning becomes the new Tiger Woods. Of if he slept with Tiger too.

The Jets could have made the buildup to Super Bowl XLIV infinitely more interesting. Last week, I kept comparing the AFC Championship Game to the Massachusetts Senate race. The Jets were the team that came from nowhere, the team that only qualified for the playoffs because the rest of the conference choked over the final month of the season. But they got a little lucky, started to gain some steam and before you knew it, people were actually picking Gang Green to pull off the upset in Indianapolis. The Jets were Scott Brown. Which made the Colts Martha Coakley, although not even Coach Caldwell is as bland as her. They were the traditional powerhouse that paid no mind to the much less established Jets, so much so that they sat their starters in week 14, inadvertently helping them qualify for the playoffs.

Somehow the defense-first Jets became more appealing than Manning and his Colts. I even found myself cheering for them yesterday. I don’t know what it was about the idea of Rex Ryan having to answer questions like, “Tyrannosaurus Rex or Pterodactyl?”at Media Day that made me smile so much. Not to mention, two weeks of Ryan could very well have provided us with twenty years of great beer commercials. Two weeks of Caldwell will only force us to drink beer to excess.

On the other end, we could have had the Bizarro World situation of Favre in a Vikings uniform with the chance to win another Super Bowl ring. Because of all the focus on his many retirements in recent years, I don’t think people really remember just how much Favre meant to Green Bay and what a dagger it must be to see him wearing purple and gold. I mean, how many parents in Wisconsin used to scare their children with threats like, “if you don’t clean your room, Brett Favre will sign with the Vikings” and how many children believed them?

That alone would have made the Vikings a more interesting story than the Saints. Of course, it’s not as though an entire city rallying around a football team following a devastating hurricane isn’t compelling; it’s just that Favre is simply the most polarizing athlete in the world today – maybe ever. Willingly going to Minnesota might make him the biggest traitor in sports since Babe Ruth.

That’s not to say we won’t enjoy the game we have. We will. What’s not to like? For the first time since 1993, the No. 1 seed from each conference we’ll meet in the season’s final game. We get to watch the top two quarterbacks in the league squaring off in a shootout capable of challenging the 49ers/Chargers for the highest scoring Super Bowl of all time. All signs point to this being a classic.

It’s just the next two weeks that concern me.

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All Star Game is Iverson's lifetime achievement award

When Tony Soprano reminded us all that “remember when” is the lowest form of conversation, he clearly wasn’t referring to sports. In sports, nostalgia’s what gets us through our days. It’s why we could go years without accidentally turning on Monday Night Raw, but when Bret Hart makes his return, we become ten years old all over again. It’s why radio hosts can spend hours debating a guy’s Hall of Fame credentials without the conversation ever getting stale. It’s why we always have cared about records and streaks and champions and why we always will.

And it’s why Allen Iverson absolutely deserves to be an All Star this season.

There are people -- albeit ignorant, shortsighted people – who disagree with that statement. They’re outraged because fans have too much say, because the majority of people who vote for the All Star teams won’t watch an entire basketball game all season. They’re whining about how unfair it is that a washed up Iverson is going to make it over any number of guards putting up better numbers than him this season.

Do they have a point? Of course. But no one is voting Iverson to the All Star team this year because they still consider him to be one of the best players in the league. They’re voting for him because he’s earned it. He’s earned it the way veterans in the league earn calls from officials. The way Tony Gwynn earned the benefit of the doubt from umpires when he took a close pitch.

This is Iverson’s lifetime achievement award.

It’s not like this is the first time a guy had made an All Star team based on what he did for his entire career. This is why these games are exhibitions (except in baseball, which is completely foolish). So why doesn’t Iverson get the same respect Magic got when he came back? Why didn’t anyone complain about Gwynn and Cal Ripken Jr. getting picked for All Star Games at the end of their respective careers? If we’re being honest, Iverson was probably a better basketball player than either of those guys were baseball players.

Part of me wants to believe it’s because Tracy McGrady happens to be a leading vote getter as well and so Iverson gets lumped in with him. Let me be clear: McGrady has no business being anywhere near an All Star Game. But the two are completely different cases. When we talk about McGrady, we talk about all what could have been. When we talk about Iverson, we talk about what he actually accomplished.

With the exception of Michael Jordan, no one has a highlight reel longer than The Answer’s. He was the NBA during the late nineties and the early part of the 2000’s. I’ve written this about him before, but it’s worth mentioning again: If you became a sports fan in the mid-late ‘90s, you’ve watched Iverson closer than any other athlete. ESPN’s Rick Reilly once wrote that if there was one player he’d pay twice the ticket price to watch, it would be Iverson, who really makes you think twice about cheering for someone like Manny Ramirez.

This might be the final glimpse we get of Iverson’s brilliant career. He plays on a team going nowhere and there’s a good chance he’ll call it quits when the season comes to an end. Rather than criticizing him or the fans who voted him in, let’s use this All Star Game to send him off in fashion.

Because when you’re as good as Iverson was, you always deserve the benefit of the doubt.

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Inequality still present in sports

The Seattle Seahawks didn’t officially name Pete Carroll their head coach until last Monday, but anyone with even a passing interest in the NFL knew the deal had been in place for at least three days. Both sides just needed to hammer out some last minute contractual details and the Seahawks needed to fulfill one pesky little obligation: The Rooney Rule.

Named after Pittsburgh Steelers owner and U.S. Ambassador to Ireland Dan Rooney, the Rooney Rule requires all NFL teams to interview at least one minority candidate for any head coaching or front office position before making a hire. At its best, the rule gives otherwise overlooked minorities an opportunity to get a foot in the door and has led to a 12 percent increase in African American head coaches since 2003. But most of the time, the rule is nothing more than a façade so teams don’t have Al Sharpton knocking at their doors every time they hire another white head coach.

Most of the time, there are no actual minority candidates. There are just pawns used to let the game play out.

The Seahawks had no intention of hiring Minnesota Vikings Defensive Coordinator Leslie Frazier just as Washington Redskins owner Daniel Snyder had no intention of bringing in anyone other than Mike Shanahan at the beginning of the month. But both teams still made sure to cover themselves by interviewing a minority candidate before moving forward with their first choices.

That’s the way the Rooney Rule typically plays out. For every success story, like Mike Tomlin of the defending Super Bowl champion Steelers, there are ten Leslie Frazier’s, who go into the interview knowing everything is a sham and they have zero chance of getting a head coaching gig. Their best hope is to be impressive enough so teams can tell the media how intelligent and eloquent they were. Then they might have a shot at a job down the line.

Sports aren’t supposed to work this way, of course. The sports leagues like to brag about how progressive they are, how if the civil rights movement is complete anywhere, it’s in football or basketball, where minorities are the overwhelming majority. They love to celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. and all he accomplished, but they do it in a way that says, “Hey look at us. We’ve done the best of all.”

They do have good reason to show off. After all, of the 50 highest paid athletes in the country, 33 are black or Hispanic. To young children in most urban neighborhoods, it still appears that the best way to get rich is through sports.

But what isn’t focused on nearly enough is the number of athletes who make it all the way to the pros and still end up broke. Last year, Sports Illustrated reported that 78% of former NFL players have gone bankrupt or are under financial stress and that 60% of NBA players are broke within five years of being out of the league. You do the math. If the majority of professional athletes are minorities, then how are they doing financially when their playing days are over?

At least part of the reason so money former athletes have money problems is that they don’t have anything to do when their careers are over. Very few will ever get into coaching and even less will have a legitimate chance at a head coaching job. In football, there are just 17 African-American head coaches in the NFL and the Football Bowl Subdivision. In the NBA, there are six African-American head coaches and of the current top 25 teams in Division I men’s college basketball, only three have black coaches.

Here’s what needs to happen: There needs to be a mandatory rule that at least a certain number of minorities must be placed on all coaching staffs in every sport. The Rooney Rule only exists in the NFL and it’s treated more as a formality than anything else. The rest of the professional sports leagues and the NCAA do nothing to promote minority coaching candidates. But putting at least one minority coach on every staff would ensure that they at least get their foot in the door. Maybe then we’ll start to see changes.

Because right now, best of all just ain’t good enough.

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