Why Shouldn't Kobe be Called 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. Newspaper ads sucked. Encyclopedias sucked, and they were heavy. Amazon, Craig’s List and Google win. Every time. Not to mention, online sports betting, which you can click here to find.

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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Why I Coach...

Little League season starts soon and I always like to post this right around this time...

Anybody who thinks the Chicago Cubs are the most loveable losers in the world never met my little leaguers. Then again, no one has ever witnessed anyone, anywhere, lose quite like us. We were the Bad News Bears without a happy ending. We made the Washington Generals look first-class. I felt bad watching the runs pile up on my helpless little guys, but the other teams felt worse – you know things aren’t going well when the other coaches are rooting for you.

Winning just wasn’t our thing. Not that any of my little guys knew – once, after an especially bad whooping, one of my nine year olds tugged on my t-shirt and asked if we had won. Won? I gave him a perplexed look, “buddy, we didn’t even make it out of the batter’s box today.”

Such was life for my team during our 0-16 campaign. We struck out, we dodged groundballs, and for a bunch of fourth graders, we had an uncanny ability to remain clean (dirt also wasn’t our thing). But the truth is, I’ll probably remember the losing only slightly more than my team, and that’s only because I actually kept score for every game. It’s everything else, the hilarious stories and the head-scratching ones, the heartwarming and occasionally heartbreaking tales that made this season memorable for me.

Teaching baseball to children is a lot like teaching someone to speak English. Every time they think they’re getting the hang of it, another crazy rule pops up and throws everything off. The “infield fly” rule is just a preposterous as “I” before “E” except after “C.” And why, as my first basemen once asked, can’t you just throw the ball at the runner to get him out? Monkey ball works in kickball.

The key is learning all the positions, but that also means knowing right from left, which can be tricky. Sometimes it can also be hard to pronounce the names of each spot on the field. For example, one kid spent the entire year asking to go to the mountain and I would always say no. I thought he was talking about the big pile of dirt behind out dugout. Turns out he meant the pitcher’s mound, and he took the hill in our final game. Jose hit four batters in a row.

My actual pitcher (we only had one) was a 3’2 seven year old who played right field and batted dead last on opening day and was the starting pitcher and leading off by game three. He was so tiny that our catcher (his brother) would often knock him over when throwing the ball back to him. But Joey knew that pitching was all about intimidation, so he’d wear eye-black to look older and make his “mean face” to strike fear in the hitters. That’s heart.

Of course, every team has an overachiever. Ours was our shortstop. Chris knew how to catch and could throw all the way across the diamond. He liked to dive and slide and even though he had an awful habit of throwing his bat after swinging, he made contact enough to be considered our best hitter. In one already out of reach game, a ball was hit to shallow left field and he made the greatest catch any of my kids had ever seen, so they did what the pros do: They jumped on top of him and celebrated as though it were the game-winning catch. One problem: It was only the second out of the inning and a runner tagged up and scored.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t laugh or smile at everything that happened this season. Sometimes reality hits hard. They old motto is “kids say the darndest things,” but in actuality, they’re brutally honest. Mom drinks too much. Dad’s never around and he doesn’t pay child support. Or we’re going to be homeless. Real life problems that winning in baseball won’t solve. My friends often tease me by comparing me to Keanu Reeves in “Hardball,” but the truth is, real life tends to be a lot less entertaining and a lot more eye-opening.

It’s the tear-jerking stories that make me want to come back and should make you want to get involved. Sometimes we don't realize that kids these days are lonelier than ever. Not every child has a reliable parent to turn to or someone willing to pay attention to them. Too many grow up with John Madden as their male role model and Grand Theft Auto has taught them far more about stolen cars than they will ever know about stolen bases.

It's really sad, especially when you hear from people who have already given up on a generation. Children need coaches and role models in their lives now more than ever. It's so easy too. Spend a couple hours a week with a youth. Mentor them. Coach them. Teach them. Do something.

It's not hard to have an impact on a child's life.

So make it happen.

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MLB needs to promote its black players

At our first Little League practice last week, I asked my players to introduce themselves by stating their name, favorite team and favorite major leaguer. Being from southern New England, the majority of them were either Red Sox or Yankees fans who loved David Ortiz, Dustin Pedroia, Derek Jeter or Alex Rodriguez. No surprise there. What was shocking was when one of my little guys raised his hand and told me Ken Griffey Jr. was his favorite player.

Yes that Ken Griffey Jr. The one whose batting stance I imitated when I was 12 years old. My favorite player. The one whose last 40 homerun season came a full year before any of my current players were born.

Do you realize it’s about time for “The Kid” to legally change his nickname to “The Grandpa?” Griffey is older than all of my players’ parents – by at least ten years.

It just goes to show you how far baseball still has to go in virtually every inner city in this country. And if you want to know just how sparse African-American participation is in baseball, start with Little League. The odds of seeing more than a couple black kids on any roster are slim-to-none, which is why when Connecticut baseball coach Jim Penders calls baseball a “white-collar” sport in this country, he might as well being saying it’s a white-faced game.

Penders isn’t the only one who has expressed concern in recent years. Not even close. In fact, at the beginning of every Major League season, the race issue becomes a major talking point. This season, Torii Hunter said that people don’t realize how bad it is because they see dark-skinned Latin players and assume they’re black. He referred to those players as “imposters.”

Many believe the reason less African-Americans are playing baseball is strictly a financial issue. In 2008, Penders told the New Haven Register that he recruits the best players who can afford to come to school, as opposed to just the best players. But that points to an across-the-board problem, one that affects Americans of all backgrounds and isn’t just happening in sports.

It still doesn’t explain why baseball continues to thrive even in poor white communities while it has become an afterthought in almost every urban area. The sport is becoming as segregated as hockey, golf or tennis in most parts of this country, which basically means an entire generation is missing out on our national pastime.

Like most of Major League Baseball’s problems, it has only itself to blame. The two most well-known black ball players right now are Griffey and Barry Bonds, the same as it was 15 years ago. But Griffey is at the tail end of his career and Bonds has essentially been banished from the game. Bud Selig and company have done an awful job in recent years at marketing any of the current African-American stars, all but passing up Jimmy Rollins, C.C. Sabathia, Prince Fielder and Ryan Howard in favor of guys like Joe Mauer and Tim Lincecum.

It’s not that Mauer and Lincecum don’t deserve to be stars, but when you have a serious lack of interest from the black community on your hands, why wouldn’t you make the effort to reach out using your most valuable assets? Fielder and Howard in particular have the ability to resonate with young fans the way Griffey and Bonds did in the nineties. Last year, Fielder took home the Home Run Derby -an event that is still quite popular with the Little League crowd- and Howard became the quickest ever to reach 200 homeruns, getting there in just 658 games.

It’s not just chicks who dig the long ball; it’s everyone, especially kids.

And Fielder and Howard and now Jason Heyward’s homeruns can reach the inner cities. These guys are young enough to be fan favorites for another decade and baseball needs to take advantage of that.

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Happy Father's Day

I'm never sure how many kids I have. Some days there will be nine and on others, 12. There are upsetting days, like the one recently when I had just four. And then there are days like our first game, when I had 15, which finally convinced me that elementary school teachers should be paid like doctors.

No, I'm not a Travis Henry-type who can't keep up with all his children; I'm just a 21 year old Little League coach of a group of mostly seven and eight year olds, who are fascinated with the dirt in our grassless infield, but want no part of the ball rolling in it. More than once, I've asked my little guys, "what are you doing, picking daisies?" and more than once, they've replied, "No coach, I'm picking worms!" Sometimes coach just doesn't get it.

But what I do know is that I've watched most of them collect their first hit without a tee and all of them learn that it's called "first base" because you run there first. Some fathers have joined me at every single game, rooting for their sons and laughing when they do something ridiculous.

Most have not been there at all.

Considering the wonderful group of parents and guardians who do show up for these children, I'm sure most if not all have okay home-lives. But I can't help but think about what my life would be like without my dad. I never had to wonder why he wasn't at any of my games because he made it to almost all of them – too many if you'd have asked me six years ago.

Today, on his 26th Father's Day, I thank him for never being a question mark.

My dad was there the day I was born and still there this morning to answer my phone call letting him know that I love him. He was there to hug me before my first day of school and around to do the same when I graduated high school. He packed his car with all of my stuff to move me in to college the same way he used to pack my teammates into the car for a long distance trip to our fall ball games.

He saw my first hit, first homerun, first basket, and first soccer goal (he was my coach for that one). He was also present the first and only time I was brought home by the police and he was definitely there to yell when I got an F in Biology one marking period in high school. As easy going as he is, he still has expectations.

He and I will probably remember all of the classic moments forever, but what I think I appreciate about him the most is how he listens to me. Sometimes, my Little Leaguers will come to our games and tell me about their school projects or how their neighbor hits bombs in wiffle ball. I find myself pretending to be so interested that I actually end up asking questions. I picked up that skill directly from my father, who has listened to me relate everything to sports for the past 15 years.

Thanks dad, for always listening, pretending and ultimately caring.

Recently, he has been a little more pessimistic than normal. You could say that life has dealt him a couple consecutive bad hands, but he doesn’t really like gambling. What he does have is a pair of children he loves to talk about, to brag about really, to anyone willing to listen. There are probably hundreds of people in West Haven, CT that know more about me and my sister than some of our friends thanks to him.

He doesn’t know this, but we do the same with him. There are people he has never met all over Boston and Providence and New Jersey and Seattle that think the world of him, just like us.

This post might come because of Father’s Day, but we make sure to tell him we love him every time we speak to him. He wrote a letter my senior year of high school telling me how happy that makes him.

The same letter told me how proud he was of the man I had become.

I can only hope he knows how proud I am to be his son.

Happy Father’s Day.

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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 the 2010 Connecticut Huskies.

We forget now, after watching the team win its third national title in 12 years just how poorly it played a year ago. We knew the season was a lost cause long before a late season three game skid sealed the deal. 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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Tiger might be impossible to root for

The next act of Tiger Woods’ career will be just as dramatic as the first one, but it will have little to do with the number of majors he wins or the amount of money he earns. What the Masters proved over the weekend was that no matter how much success Woods has on the golf course, he’ll never again have the chance to be the heroic sports figure. There will be no more tears shed for him. He can’t have what Phil Mickelson has. He spent the first act nailing everything in sight and now wherever he goes, the media and the public will take great joy trying to nail him.

It’s not just that Woods will never be able to stand near a woman again without the entire world speculating that he’s relapsed; it’s also that he can never swear, never even raise his voice, without everyone calling him a fraud. Just before the tournament began last week, he promised that he was going to try to control his attitude o, the golf course. By Friday, he was back to being the old Tiger, chastising himself after a couple of misguided shots. He’s always been like this. The difference now is that even though his vulgar language has nothing to do with the number of women he slept with, the two will always go hand-in-hand. Every time something negative happens to him, he’ll be treated as though he fell off the wagon and back into bed with another blonde waitress.

That’s how it will be for Tiger in 2010 and beyond. That’s the next act. He might still be the best golfer in the world, but what makes him so captivating is the idea that he could blow up at any minute and chances are a camera will be there to catch it.

There was this false notion on Thursday afternoon that when Tiger approached the first tee, the crowd was cheering for him. They weren’t. They were cheering for themselves. They were cheering because they were a part of a moment that will always be remembered in sports. It had everything to do with Tiger, but it was not a sign of all the fans suddenly forgiving him for his mistakes. Of course it was sold that way. There was even a story on ESPN about a guy who asked another fan to move over so his teenage daughters could watch Woods tee-off. How touching. For some reason, the World Wide Leader decided to follow Nike’s plan and attempted to make Tiger the sympathetic figure.

That all changed as soon as the real sympathetic figure started to charge up the leader board. Right when it became clear that Mickelson might be able to win the whole thing, the focus on Tiger shifted. No longer were we hearing about Woods signing autographs (something he never does) for fans or how relaxed he looked. Now the questions about the pressure being too much took over. And the swearing led to the most important question of all:

Has Tiger Woods really changed?

Obviously, it’s too early to tell. But Woods has no one to blame for this but himself. He was obligated to promise that his behavior off the course would be different. He didn’t have to address anything about his actions off the course. Now, whether he likes it or not, the two will go hand-in-hand.

Which just makes it all the more difficult for anyone to actually root for him.

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If Calhoun retires, Geno should step in

Win or lose in tomorrow's national championship, there is a growing feeling that legendary head coach Jim Calhoun could call it quits following the game. He's a guy who has had nothing left to prove for years and now, with the Nate Miles situation not going away, who could blame him for stepping away?

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 is about to win another national championship and virtually none of their wins have come by less than ten points over the last three years.

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.

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Media deserves blame for Ireland's despicable question

Before castigating Miami Dolphins’ general manager Jeff Ireland for the question he asked former Oklahoma State wide receiver Dez Bryant during a pre-draft interview, think about all that rides on a team making the right choice. It’s not just the millions of dollars in guaranteed money; it’s the jobs of all the scouts and anyone else who had a hand in making the decision. The first round pick, as our Vice President would say, is a BFD.

So if teams want to dig deep and ask questions normally reserved for government or police psych tests, so be it. Given the endless amount of public scrutiny today’s athletes receive, teams need to be sure none of their players are going to throw a fan through a glass window for teasing them, as NBA Hall of Famer Charles Barkley once did. The NFL might not be the CIA, but then again, no one in the CIA is making $10-15 million before they even begin their job.

On Tuesday, Yahoo.com NFL writer Mike Silver tore into the Dolphins’ general manager for asking Bryant if his mother, who was once arrested for drug trafficking, was a prostitute during a pre-draft evaluation. By this morning, Silver’s piece had gone viral and every sports talk show in the country was debating whether or not Ireland should be punished for asking such an insensitive question.

And just like that, Bryant, who was eventually taken in the first round by the Dallas Cowboys, has gone from a villain to a sympathetic figure. The same people who held on to their wallets a little tighter every time he was in sight are now rooting for Bryant to stick it to Ireland, the Dolphins and anyone else who had questions about his character.

But here’s the problem: It was the media –with their labels and their gossip—who started this. Ireland was just asking a question they were scared to ask.

A week ago, the decision to take Bryant in the first round (or at all) was considered questionable, if not downright ludicrous. Bryant, we were led to believe, was a thug. Of course, that word was never used. When a largely white media utters the “T” word, the largely black player base interprets it the way they interpret a much more offensive label. Hint: It begins with an “N”.

Instead, we heard phrases like “character issues” or “personal problems” and the consensus from the majority of the so-called draft experts was that teams should avoid Bryant like he was Pac Man Jones. He was unstable, a liar, a kid who came late to games and sometimes, he even skipped English class. By god, I bet he even chugged Natty Ice from a keg once or twice. If this were sports betting or Apuestas deportivas, I'd bet the online sports odds say he's total thug.

One can only assume that Ireland was testing his extremely vulnerable interviewee, deliberately trying to make him as uncomfortable as possible to see if Bryant would snap under pressure. Why would he do this? Because the media had a label for Bryant before he turned 21. National talk show panels were criticizing a kid most of who had never even seen play.

This is what happens when you have so much air to fill and not enough substance to fill it with. This year’s NFL Draft was longer than a Ken Burns’ documentary and the coverage lasted longer than an entire football season, including the Super Bowl. The analysts needed to talk about something other than Tim Tebow’s likeability, so they often focused on the rumors surrounding Bryant.

Ireland was simply asking about one of those rumors.

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Character means very little in the NFL

Twenty-four states in our country use some form of the Three Strikes Law to prosecute criminals. In the NFL, it usually takes that many incidents for a guy to pop up on anyone’s radar. Until then, players are just labeled as having “character issues” while owners turn their heads and pray no one gets killed.

The greatest farce in sports is that moral makeup matters. It doesn’t. At least not initially. A team won’t give up on a player capable of producing on the field until he’s exhausted the use of his get-out-of-jail-free card, the pass every athlete with any kind of ability receives the minute he goes pro (and usually, long before that).

Even when one franchise decides to sever ties with a player, another one will bite the bullet. They don’t see felons; they see finds. Bargains. That’s why the New York Jets were right there to offer a fifth round pick to Pittsburgh in exchange for Santonio Holmes this week. Holmes, who has admitted to selling drugs as a teenager, has been arrested three times since entering the league in 2006 and was only dealt following accusations that he threw a glass at a woman in an Orlando nightclub in March. Following the trade, the NFL suspended him four games for violating the league’s substance abuse policy.

Holmes isn’t the first player with off-field issues the Jets have acquired this off-season. Last month, the team sent a third round pick in 2011 to San Diego for Antonio Cromartie. Cromartie, who would be even money to get the Virgin Mary pregnant if he were alone in a room with her, has seven children by six women in five different states.

It should be noted that the Jets will be featured on HBO’s “Hard Knocks” series during training camp this year. Maybe the goal is to produce a reality show with more drama than “Jersey Shore.”

Or maybe they just don’t care.

Character flaws aside, the Jets recent additions will almost certainly make the team a trendy pick to represent the AFC in the Super Bowl this season. Holmes will return from suspension to join Braylon Edwards (currently facing assault charges) and Jerricho Cotchery to make up one of the top receiving corps’ in the league. Comartie will be a major contributor in what might already have been the best defense in the league.

Why should it matter if the team is on track to become New York’s sixth crime family by the time the season opens? Winning trumps all.

Of course, the Jets aren’t the only team following that motto. The Steelers may have had enough of Holmes, but it’s clear that quarterback Ben Roethlisberger still has a few swipes left on his get-out-of-jail free card.

Because they have a crush on the Steelers’ do it right persona, some media members decided that the Holmes trade was supposed to serve as some kind of message to Roethlisberger. False. A message to Roethlisberger would be to suspend him even before Commissioner Roger Goodell got involved. Make it clear that if his name so much as appears in the news for anything other than football, his career in Pittsburgh would be over.

That didn’t happen because Big Ben is still worth big bucks in the eyes of the Rooney family.

Now he’ll get yet another chance to correct his behavior.
And that, as we head into the NFL draft, will be the lasting message to everyone entering the league. As long as you can get it done on the field, you can do what you want off it.

It takes an awful lot to strike out in the NFL.

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At Seton Hall and St. John's, a tough task ahead

I never hated anyone until my freshman year of college. That’s not to say I never told anyone I hated them; for Christmas one year my sister bought me the wrong miniature wrestling ring and I’m pretty sure I called her some awful names. But Louis Orr was, for sure, the first person I had ever despised. He was the basketball coach at Seton Hall (now at Bowling Green) and what makes this story sad is that Orr didn’t have an ounce of hate in his entire 6’8, 180 pound body. He was the type of guy who quoted the bible the way his players quoted 50 cent.

None of that mattered to me. I was a punk 18 year old who had but three expectations in life: 1) That my embarrassingly fake id would work at Bunny’s in South Orange. 2) That the Nathan’s on campus wouldn’t serve hot dogs that tasted like Newark. 3) That Seton Hall basketball would be the national powerhouse I expected it to be.

And you wonder why I finished school in Providence.

By the time I got to the Hall, the rumors were already flying around campus. Despite winning a game in the NCAA Tournament in 2004, Orr’s days were numbered. He couldn’t recruit New York and north Jersey effectively and alumni and school officials felt the program wasn’t in a position to compete with the upper tier of the Big East. They were right, of course, and we all bought into it. I remember the very first game of the 2004/05 season (a loss to Richmond) and the crowd was already tearing into Orr (and trust me, it wasn’t just the students who smuggled cheap vodka in Gatorade bottles to the Meadowlands that were chanting “Fire Louie”. Orr was let go a year later.

Everyone in the Seton Hall community felt the program deserved better. They still feel that way today. The same goes for most of the other tiny catholic universities that helped to start the Big East. It seems as though anyone involved with the Hall, Providence College or St. John’s wants to jump in their Hot Tub Time Machine and flash back to the days when their school mattered in the nation’s top basketball conference. That’s why every time the head coaching job opens up in South Orange, people want to make P.J. Carlesimo (who led the Pirates to the Final Four when I was 2) the top candidate. In Providence, it’s Rick Pitino. At St. John’s, it’s whoever has the biggest name and the slickest hair cut.

Recently, both Seton Hall and St. John’s were in the news for firing their respective head coaches. At the Hall, Bobby Gonzalez was let go not because he wasn’t the model catholic, but because he wasn’t successful enough to not be the model catholic. The Johnnies got rid of Norm Roberts mainly because he didn’t want to make nice with the sleaze balls that dominate youth basketball in New York City.

Neither school managed to hire their first, second or even third choices.

Seton Hall fans wanted Carlesimo; they got Kevin Willard, a 35 year old who never led his Iona team past the quarterfinals of the MAAC tournament. St. John’s wanted everyone from Billy Donovan to John Calipari (I think they even offered Phil Jackson the job); they settled on Steve Lavin, whose hearing has to be damaged after spending the last seven years working with Dick Vitale at ESPN.

Almost all of the experts seem to agree that even if they weren’t the ideal candidates, Willard and Lavin were both good choices. But what lies ahead might be too difficult for even the craftiest coaches to navigate. They don’t have to change the fans’ perception of each program. They have to change the recruits’.

High school basketball players in the New York City area don’t view Seton Hall or St. John’s as elite programs because, well, they weren’t alive when these schools were relevant in college basketball. Seton Hall simply doesn’t have the facilities to impress recruits and as far as the Johnnies go, is Madison Square Garden honestly a selling point? The New York Liberty has been the winningest team in that building over the last decade.

Look, I’m rooting for both Willard and Lavin. I wouldn’t know but I’m told there’s nothing like successful New York City-area basketball. But I can’t help but remain skeptical.

The times have changed. At Seton Hall and St. John’s, only the coaches have.

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With little pro talent, Final Four might bore us

Here is the one guarantee I can make about the Final Four: Sportswriters will have no trouble meeting deadlines with this group. The storylines are endless. We’ve got the traditional powers in Duke and Michigan State. Three of the best coaches in the history of college basketball will be there – including Bob Huggins looking for his first National Championship. And of course, there’s always Butler’s Cinderella story as it tries to become the first team from a mid-major conference to win it all since UNLV did so two decades ago.

Only one thing will be missing in Indianapolis.

Talent.

For the first time since the inception of the NBA draft lottery, it’s likely that no one playing in the Final Four will be selected in the first 14 picks of June’s draft. In fact, NBAdraft.net projects West Virginia’s Devin Ebanks and Da’Sean Butler to be the only two guys playing in Indianapolis that will be drafted at all. When you combine the lack of NBA prospects and the amount of upsets that took place earlier in the tournament, this might be the most diluted Final Four in the history of college basketball.

So is it worth watching? Well, if you went to Duke, West Virginia, Michigan State or Butler, then sure. But be prepared for what could be the lowest scoring Final Four since the shot clock was implemented 24 years ago. You’ll see three defensive-minded, fundamentally sound games that should all remain close if for no other reason than none of the four teams have a guy who could take over a game and win it by himself. It will be the type of basketball you’ll want your 8 year-old son to pay attention to; but chances are he’ll want to change the channel to watch something with a little faster pace, like that P90X infomercial.

Me? I’ll keep track of the score, but without Kentucky involved, it’s going to be hard to keep me glued to the television. Any John Calipari-led program has replaced Duke as the most polarizing team in college athletics and something is just missing without him. He’s just so easy to root against. And Thursday night’s matchup with Cornell was the closest thing we’ll ever see to the 1980 USSR/USA hockey game. It was pro versus Joes. Future lottery picks and the guys who will represent them in court someday. Only the bad guys, led by Calipari, won.

It’s too bad those NBA-ordered mandatory minimum essentially become contract years for players, because as good as Kentucky was this season, they would have probably advanced further if they could have dropped that “I gotta get mine” mentality. And no matter how you feel about Calipari, the Final Four would be much more exciting with him in it.

Even without Calipari, this week will still be all about the coaches. Krzyzewski, Izzo, Huggins and the new kid on the block, Brad Stevens. College basketball has always been more about the guys who build programs than the kids who play in them. And this year, with the Final Four so big on heart and little on talent, will be no different.

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