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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On my mouse problem & NFL picks

One of my best friends is ready to move out of his parents’ house and it’s all my fault. For the past three years, I’ve taken every opportunity to glamorize living on your own. You can drink as much beer as you want. You can cook whatever you want (or order out, in my case). And most importantly, you can bring a nice girl home without having to warn her that your father sleeps naked on the couch. To borrow a phrase used all too often in sports, moving out has a ton of upside.

Except when you have a mouse.

I can proudly say that I’ve met most of the challenges of living on my own head on. One might even call me a grownup. The bills get paid on time (thank you advertisers). I now understand that layering as opposed to blasting the heat up to 85 degrees is a savvy move. I’ve never turned any of my shirts pink while doing laundry. And I’ve figured out how to go grocery shopping and not just come home with bags of chips and fruit snacks. So the basics are covered.

But when I see a mouse, I become more useless than Snooki at a spelling bee. One night in September, I was watching a Red Sox game when I happened to look over and see one of those furry devils hanging out on my brand new rug. My first thought was to e-mail my landlord and tell him to get his ass over here and take care of the problem, but I decided to handle the situation like a man. So I called my dad. His advice: “Remember, if it comes down to fighting, you’ve got the reach on the little bugger.”

The strangest part of the whole ordeal was that the mouse never moved from my rug in the fifteen minutes it took for me to consider attacking my landlord and to call my father. I realized that this thing was on its last legs. I considered this a victory. It must have been so hungry that it came into my place expecting that the kid living in a basement studio must have left a few crumbs on the floor.

Well guess what, sucker? It just so happens that I had gone out to both lunch and dinner that day and I hadn’t been to Stop & Shop in two weeks. There wasn’t a bite in the house for me to eat, let alone some silly rodent. I considered this a moral victory. My place was so clean that a mouse starved to death on my floor. The Red Sox lost that night, but Dan McGowan won.

I remained on my high horse until about 4:00 A.M. this morning. That’s when I woke up to this awful scratching sound against my wall. A mouse was stuck too one of my glue traps. I had won again. But when I got up to get a broom and sweep away the little bastard, it disappeared. Somehow it managed to get away and now it was on the loose in my apartment. I went back to bed, vowing that I would take care of this when I woke up.

I’ve now woken up and I’m blogging instead of mouse hunting. Here’s why: When I got up, I noticed that another on my glue traps had been turned over while I was sleeping. This thing is antagonizing me now. It’s almost like the mouse is saying, “I know what you did last September.” And now I’m kind of freaked out.

If you never hear from me again, you’ll know why.

I’ll have moved back to my parents’ house and I’ll be too busy doing chores to blog.

Playoff Picks for the weekend
New Orleans 41-27
Indy 24-17
Dallas 30-27
San Diego 17-6

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Blood testing would open up a whole new can of worms

Like every family, mine has its issues. I’m pretty sure that I’ve been predisposed to about six different forms of addiction, a few kinds of cancer, a heart condition here or there, diabetes and just for good measure, most people who know him would agree that my father could replace Danny DeVito on It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia and the transition would be seamless. And while I’ve been fortunate to lead a relatively normal life for my first 23 years, it’s safe to say that god only knows how I will eventually turn out.

And it should stay that way.

I promise I’m not going to get all religious on you. That’s definitely not my style. I’m the guy who brings a flask to Midnight Mass. My point here is that I don’t want anyone on this earth, especially any future employers, to have access to information about health problems that could pop up for me down the line. My family’s public record already ended any dreams of running for public office. I don’t want my DNA to prevent me from earning a paycheck.

So what does this have to do with sports, you ask? More than you think. Recently it appeared as though two of the world’s greatest boxers, Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao, were finally going square off in what Yahoo Sports’ Kevin Iole called “the most anticipated boxing match in at least 25 years.” For the record, Iole is one of the only people in the world who could actually name 25 fighters from the past quarter century, but you get the picture. This was going to be big, big enough for me to actively seek out a feed of the fight on the internet.

But it won’t happen. Some have speculated that the unbeaten Mayweather is running scared. Others have blamed the sport itself, citing that boxing as it is today it too flawed to ever get such a break. Of course, that’s all conjecture. All we do know is that the Mayweather camp’s request for blood testing before and after the fight infuriated Pacquiao, so much so that he filed a defamation lawsuit stating that Mayweather falsely accused him of taking performance-enhancing drugs.

Now obviously there is a much easier way for Pacquiao to prove he’s clean. He could just submit to a blood test and everything would be solved right there. But he won’t and he shouldn’t. Blood testing in sports is the next step to blood testing in the real world, and while the cynic in me doubts that Pacquiao’s refusal is his way of standing up to Big Brother, I appreciate that he is holding firm.

It’s easy to say we want sports to be drug free at all costs, but that’s because we aren’t paying attention to what it might cost us. In 2005, the Chicago Bulls asked their then-22 year old center Eddy Curry to take a DNA test to see if a heart condition he was suffering from could be fatal. Curry refused over concern that the team might find other pre-existing conditions and not want to re-sign him.

What if a similar situation occurred in your workplace? What if blood testing revealed you had a weak heart and a healthier person got a promotion over you? Recent legislation actually prohibits companies from using genetic information to hire, fire or promote, but have far more serious threats from the government stopped businesses from discriminating based on race or gender yet? When it comes down to investing a lot of money in an employee, the maximum $300,000 penalty will probably seem well worth it to some companies.

Blood testing would open a whole new can of worms that we do not want to deal with. On Wednesday, New York Mets’ star third basemen David Wright told WFAN’s Mike Francesa he would support a stricter drug testing policy in baseball, including blood testing for HGH.

"Obviously it would be tough to test with the blood samples,” Wright said. “But anything to clean this game up, I'm all for it. I would love to say that 100 percent of the guys in this game are 100 percent clean."

We all would.

But not if it means having to give up 100 percent of a person’s personal information.

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Before criticizing Kiffin, you have to question yourself

There are two sides to every story and we should look at both when it comes to analyzing Lane Kiffin’s decision to leave Tennessee for USC after only one season as head coach.

On one hand, Kiffin is turning his back on a program that brought him in despite claims of insubordination at the NFL level, that gave him free reign to do whatever it took to get back to contending for national titles and that embraced him even as he caused firestorm after firestorm throughout his 14 month tenure in Knoxville. Volunteer Nation has every right to be furious today.

And don’t forget about the recruits. Poor things. Kiffin, the young, fiery head coach, charmed them over with stories about what he accomplished as an assistant at USC and if that didn’t work, he always had his secret weapon --the beautiful undergraduate hostesses known as Orange Pride -- to help with the process. Everyone knows how impressionable high school seniors can be; I picked Seton Hall because it had a Nathan’s on campus. Most of these kids committed to play for Kiffin, not Tennessee. So of course you feel bad for them.

But what about Kiffin’s perspective? For a guy who went to school at Fresno State, USC is probably his dream job. It’s the only place he’s ever shown any allegiance toward. His six years as an assistant there is the only prolonged job he’s ever had. It’s a program he knows inside and out which means he’ll have very little trouble adjusting and he’ll provide continuity for the current roster.

That and it’s a better job. It’s being the face of the elite team in the PAC 10 every single year versus the third or fourth best team in the SEC. Recruiting is easier at USC than it is at Tennessee which makes Kiffin far more likely to win a national championship in his new job. You also can’t dismiss the star factor either. Pete Carroll was probably the most recognized sports figure in Los Angeles not named Kobe Bryant. If Kiffin can win, he’ll be a major celebrity even for Hollywood.

Whenever a controversy in sports pops up, we tend to philosophize over it and compare it to our own lives. If you could take an illegal pill or injection and it would make me infinitely better at your job, would you do it? If I were blogging’s version of Tiger Woods, would I be able to remain faithful or would I be a walking tabloid?

Those are much more difficult questions than the one we have to ask ourselves in regards to Lane Kiffin’s situation.

If a significantly better job in a bigger city for more money was offered to you, would you take it?

Or perhaps more appropriate, why wouldn’t you take it?

Yes, part of me wants to believe Kiffin is just as much of a con man as Carroll, John Calipari, Nick Saban, Bobby Petrino and every other scummy coach who goes into a recruit’s house and makes a vow that he’ll be around for the entire four years and then runs off at the first sign of trouble or a better job. But at the same time, my ambitious side says you should never be content with your current position and always be striving for something bigger and better.

USC is Kiffin’s bigger and better.

So maybe the real question is, how can we fault him?

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McGwire failed to tell us the whole truth

Why is it that these guys lie even when they try to tell the truth?

There is no way a pill or an injection helped with all those homeruns? Really Mark? Really? I believe that about as much as I believe he came up with that walking M.A.S.H. unit line all by himself. He did everything else right. He sniffled for the cameras, admitted to using steroids and HGH for virtually his entire career and he sounded genuinely sorry for the decisions that he made.

But when it came time to talk about his numbers, he went right into arrogant athlete mode. He was too proud to admit that at least some of his 583 career homeruns probably came from the extra strength he gained from using steroids. Instead he praised his hand eye coordination and talked about genetics and his god-given ability because even though he eventually had to come clean, he still refuses to let anyone diminish his accomplishments.

Just once I wish a professional ballplayer would be honest about the benefits of steroids. We all know they work. Everyone has seen the guy in the gym with muscles bulging in places muscles aren’t supposed to exist. Ask a bodybuilder or a professional wrestler or someone who runs track what steroids can do. That’s why they’re called performance-enhancers. Why can’t someone like McGwire or Barry Bonds just look into the camera and say, “Did they work? Have you seen my numbers? Do you know how much money I made? Hell yes steroids worked.”

At least then we’d be getting the whole truth.

Our moral outrage today shouldn’t be directed at McGwire because he used steroids. Honestly, who, aside from maybe Roger Maris’ family, has he really let down? American children? Trust me, my little league team wouldn’t recognize Mark McGwire if he were starting at first base for us. And me? I’m certainly not going to stop watching baseball because McGwire cheated and I grew up one of his biggest fans. We all knew steroids were prevalent back then. I accused at least three kids who hit puberty faster than me of being on the juice. So I think I can safely speak for all 23 year olds and say we aren’t shocked by McGwire’s revelations.

If anything, we should be upset that McGwire tried to pull a fast one on us. He wants to be recognized in a separate light than guys like Bonds or Roger Clemens so he came forward and copped to using. He admits making mistakes, but he still wants us to believe steroids didn’t help, which would be like Tiger Woods admitting that he slept with multiple women at once, but assuring us that he didn’t have any fun.

At its core, McGwire’s confession was no different than anyone else's. He was just fortunate to have a lot more time to come up with his story than Alex Rodriguez or Andy Pettitte had with theirs. He managed to tell us everything he wanted us to hear, which wasn’t quite the same as what we wanted to hear.

We wanted a glimpse of what the entire culture in baseball was like from someone not as slimy as Jose Canseco. But McGwire said he never talked about steroids with other players. We wanted him to tell us that steroids did help and maybe apologize to the guys who were ejected from the game because they didn’t want to inject themselves with steroids. Those are the guys we should feel sorry for. Instead, he just gave us a version of the same quote over and over.
 
"I wish I had never touched steroids."

But in the end, he never told us why.

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Con man Carroll gets rewarded as USC prepares to be punished

A friend of mine works as an insurance salesman and he breaks the business down like this: The people who succeed are the people you hated in high school. They’re the loudmouths who seemed to always be causing trouble but usually managed to talk themselves out of it. It takes that kind of personality. You have to be assertive. You have to be an effective communicator. But more than anything, you have to have no conscience.

In other words, most great salesmen would make great con men.

Which means they’d make great college coaches as well.

To that end, one of the best salesmen/con men/college football coaches in America is packing his bags, leaving sunny southern California for gloomy Seattle. Pete Carroll heads to the NFL now after winning a BCS National Championship, coaching three Heisman Trophy winners and rebuilding USC into an elite football program. But he also leaves just before the bottom falls out for the program, just as the NCAA completes an investigation which dates all the way back to Reggie Bush’s playing days.

It appears likely the NCAA will drop the hammer on USC Football, which, depending on the number of players who were receiving gifts from marketing representatives, could lead to the Trojans being stripped of their 2004 National Championship.

But that’s neither here nor there, right? After all, the NCAA can alter the record books and force USC to remove any banners from the Carroll era, but no one is going to forget the dynasty he built. Not when we can watch it all on YouTube. So maybe we give him a pass. Maybe we should choose to only remember him for all the winning he did in his nine years as head coach.

I’m fine with that. As long as we all go back and do one thing. Forgive John Calipari.

The two are no different. One might be California cool and the other New York City slick, but they both could have been cast in the movie Boiler Room and fit right in. They’re salesmen first and foremost. They tell kids and their parents anything they want to hear and they make promises they don’t have to keep.

And when that doesn’t work, they cheat.

They do it by conning themselves first. They know there are dozens of other coaches willing to do whatever it takes to out-recruit them, so they’re convinced they have to take that extra step too. It’s not about gaining a competitive advantage. It’s about leveling the playing field. So maybe they look the other way when a 19 year old is wearing a chain that’s more expensive than a Honda or they convince themselves that no, it’s not at all odd that a recruit who couldn’t break 700 on the SAT all of sudden has MIT scores.

Many college football and basketball coaches operate on the same premise that Major League Baseball players operated on in the late nineties. It’s not cheating if everyone is doing it. And just like in baseball, a code of silence exists. Carroll would never turn another program into the NCAA for bending or breaking a few rules. He’d much rather beat them at their own game.

Don’t expect much to change either. Not when the end result of having two final four appearances erased from the record books for Calipari was the best job in all of college basketball at Kentucky. And certainly not when Carroll can leave USC in shame and get $35 million from the Seahawks.

Until the punishment fits the crime, the con men will keep conning. And winning.

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Forget guns, Stern needs to address gambling

Let’s put aside, for a moment, the fact that Gilbert Arenas’ contract is the only reason anyone ever found out about his brainless decision to bring his unloaded guns to the Verizon Center. This is obvious. As I wrote on Wednesday, if Arenas were leading the league in scoring and not an injury plagued $100 million disaster, this story never leaks.

Now let’s focus on the real issue brought to light by Arenas’ situation: gambling. Oh, guns are a problem too. But they aren’t going anywhere. NBA Commissioner David Stern can ban them from the locker room (he probably assumed his players weren’t foolish enough to be packin’ at the arena already) and he can enforce stricter punishments for those caught in illegal possession of a gun. But he can’t stop players from legally owning any kind of weapon.

Guns are constitutional.

Gambling is cultural. And it’s more popular than ever.

It’s not just taking place among rich athletes on charter planes late at night either. It’s happening at your dining room table, where you think you like the idea of your kids staying in on a Friday night, but you don’t realize that they’re developing a habit that will make you wish they were playing pong instead of poker.

At some point, right around 2003, gambling became the new pickup basketball. I saw it firsthand. I was a junior in high school and you would very rarely find my group of friends hovering around a keg in some open field on a given weekend. Nope, we were hovering around a table in some older guy’s basement trying to make a quick buck. It started with a game called Acey-Deucey --which was probably rigged – and then morphed into various forms of Black Jack and poker until we all settled on no-limit hold ‘em.

We had a regular game for years. Were we addicted? That depends. None of us, at least, none that I know of, were stealing from our friends or families. We weren’t skipping school to play online. We didn’t quit the baseball team. But we definitely played pickup basketball a lot less, we always had a bad beat story to whine about and I think we would all agree that it was easier to find eight guys to play cards than it was for most of us to find a girlfriend.

And over the course of four years, we saw a number of friends exhibit one of the first signs of problem gambling: a bruised ego. That’s what comes long before fists or guns ever enter the equation. But arguments and fights and yes, in Arenas and Javaris Crittenton’s case, even guns can be the end result to a person feeling cheated or angry over losing a little too much.

That’s what people are missing when they’re comparing the NBA to The Wire. Should uneducated, naïve kids from any background, but particularly one that promotes violence, be allowed to own a gun? I say no. But the laws of the land say yes and not even Stern can change that.

What he can do is ban any kind of gambling from anything team-related. No poker or dice on the plane or in the locker room or even in the hotel rooms. He can let that dream of ever having a team play in Las Vegas go(can you imagine what would happen?). And he can make sure that if players don’t follow through, they’ll run the risk of having their contract voided. Believe me, given the currently economic state of the NBA, teams will strictly enforce Stern’s new rule.

And the league and its players will be better for it.

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As it turns out, the BCS worked again

Part of the BCS’ brilliance is that it keeps college football at the center of the sports world for the better portion of three months, which is far longer than the NBA, college basketball and NHL can combine to do. But every year, the critics have a field day attacking the system. Last year, it was Barack Obama leading the charge. This year, a Political Action Committee against the BCS raised enough money to run a commercial just ahead of tonight’s championship game.

But what everyone, including our President and anyone foolish enough to donate money to Playoff PAC, seems to forget is that the system we all love to complain about has been right the majority of the time. In its first 11 years, you can really only find two years where it truly went wrong. In 2003, LSU and USC split the polls because the Trojans were left out of the BCS Title Game and in 2004, Auburn went undefeated but didn’t finish in the top 2 of the BCS ratings.

Think about it: Florida (2006) and Texas (2005) would never have won National Titles under the old system because they would have been given the opportunity to play the top ranked teams from those seasons (Ohio State and USC). In the past, the Buckeyes and the Trojans would have been contractually bound to the Rose Bowl and would have probably cruised to wins against inferior opponents. The system also worked in 2002, when Miami was the unanimous No. 1 team heading into to the BCS Title game, and lost to Ohio State.

What is it they say about the CIA? Their failures start wars while their success goes unnoticed. The same goes for the BCS. Over 80 percent of the time, the system has been right. If Obama were that good, we’d put him on Mt. Rushmore.

And this year is no different. With all due respect to Boise State, Alabama and Texas provide the most compelling matchup possible, which will draw great ratings and help expand the sport’s popularity. The Broncos and TCU couldn’t beat wrestling in the TV ratings Monday night and those who did tune in saw a boring, second rate football game.

The Broncos were better than every team on their schedule this season -- there’s no arguing that -- but stick them in any of the major conferences (even the ACC or Big East) and there is no chance that team goes undefeated. They aren’t big enough or deep enough to handle a BCS conference schedule and while they have been a nice story, no one can make the argument that they would have a chance again the Crimson Tide or the Longhorns.

Of course, as with anything else, there are flaws. But the system before it was much worse and there’s no guarantee that a playoff would put the top two teams from the regular season in the championship game. Look no further than college basketball to prove that.

Tonight we get two programs with a lot of history, the two best coaches in America, a Heisman winner on one side and a legendary college quarterback on the other. While no one would ever mistake either ‘Bama or Texas as one of the great college teams ever, both did manage to go undefeated in major conferences, including winning conference championship games.

In the end, the two best teams in the country this season will play for a National Championship, proving once again that for those like to play the percentages, the BCS clearly gives the best return.

Prediction: Alabama 27 - 17

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Bad guys with bad contracts beware

He was a media darling. Someone even the most cynical writers in America couldn’t help but root for. He was different. He was a breath of fresh air. Behind the natural athletic ability there was a compelling story of hard work and sacrifice that made him a fan favorite, not just locally, but throughout the country.

Now he’s no different than the rest of ‘em. The same people who got a kick out of his style, the ones who called him good for the game, are saying he’s a thug. Now he’s just another rich, coddled superstar who thinks he can get away with anything because of who he is.

No, not Tiger.

Gilbert.

Gilbert Arenas’ fall from grace is different from Tiger Woods’ because it has been gradual, not all of a sudden. But other athletes should be paying a lot closer attention to what happens with Arenas because his situation is a lot more likely to happen to them. And it has nothing to do with guns in the locker room either.

It’s about bad contracts, and there are plenty out there in every major sport.

The decline of Arenas began long before he ever thought about bringing his guns to work to either A) hide from his children, B) play a joke on teammate Javaris Crittenton, C) intimidate Crittenton, or D) some combination of the three. It started as soon as he signed a six year, $111 million contract with the Washington Wizards in the summer of 2008. The deal was heavily criticized because of his persistent injury problems, which cost him the end of the 2006/07 season, virtually all of the following season, and most of his first year with the new contract.

It didn’t help that shortly after Arenas signed, our country began to feel the wrath of a financial meltdown that is still hurting us today. Suddenly just being the most loved athlete in the blogosphere wasn’t enough for the Wizards. Arenas was quickly labeled as having one of the worst contracts in the league, with many writers comparing it to the similarly disastrous deal the team gave Juwan Howard a little over a decade ago.

So when the team officials learned that Arenas stored unloaded guns in his locker at the Verizon Center, they saw this as the perfect opportunity to get out of a contract that would haunt them for the next five years.

That’s the part of the story that has been underreported. But it’s also the most relevant to all athletes who have signed huge contracts and are either not producing or playing for a franchise that happens to be losing money. The Wizards immediately reported Arenas’ indiscretions to the league not because they thought it was the right thing to do, but because they want to be able to invoke the morality clause which appears in all NBA contracts. Do you think this ever makes the news if the Wizards were in first place and Arenas was the league’s leading scorer?

How do you think rumors of a card game gone awry leaked anyway? It was no mistake that the New York Post had the most scandalous --and incorrect-- version of the story, claiming that Arenas and Crittenton actually drew guns on each other. The Wizards knew the Post would have no problem running a story with no facts behind it.

They also knew there was no way the public would side with Arenas if they tried to void his contract. Gilbert Arenas with three guns in the locker room in Washington D.C. might sound more like some sports version of Clue, but the people of Washington know guns are no game. That’s why the region has the strictest gun laws in the country.

Arenas is far from innocent here. But it’s also wrong to label him a typical NBA thug. The truth is, he’s guilty mainly of being an idiot, which some might argue is enough to cancel the remainder of his contact. I would disagree, but I guarantee this won’t be the last time you hear about a team attempting to invoke the morality clause.

If the Wizards are allowed the sever ties with Arenas, you can bet that every team in sports will try to do the same with their problematic players.

Just the rich ones, of course.

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TMZ Sports is going to change everything

As of this post, the lead story on TMZ is about what one of the Olsen twins was wearing during a morning jog. It’s not speculating that she was on an acid trip or that she was running to a new lover’s house. It’s just a picture with a short critique of her out-of-date workout ensemble. This is an example of why there are smart people who don’t think the preeminent celebrity gossip site in this country will ever be able to make the transition to covering sports. The average sports fan just doesn’t care about what Dustin Pedroia was wearing when he rolled out of bed this morning.

And they’re probably right. But that’s assuming Harvey Levin is going to run TMZ Sports exactly the way he runs the mothership. He won’t. Levin knows that, with the exception of only a few elite stars (Tiger, Tom Brady, ARod), simply sending paparazzi to snap photos of athletes living their lives isn’t going to cut it.

What will work is scandal, which is even easier to find in sports than it is in Hollywood. TMZ generates its best traffic when it breaks a celebrity death story like it did with Michael Jackson last summer. Obviously, tragedies like that are less likely to occur among athletes –they tend to be a healthier group—but controversy in sports can be created by much less significant stories. In other words, an athlete doesn’t need to be found dead to make news.

TMZ Sports will have people in every trendy night club in every major city and it won’t be long before they starting running pictures of athletes partying too hard or even just in attendance. That’s the thing; TMZ won’t even need to speculate on what was happening. It will leave that up ESPN and rest of the media to analyze whether a player’s performance the following day was hindered by spending too much time hitting the town the night before.

Just like that, we’ll have a scandal on our hands.

In a lot of ways, the people working for TMZ Sports will have it much easier than those at TMZ. Catching a random celebrity drunk on a Saturday night isn’t hurting anyone. In fact, it might make them seem cooler, more like a regular person. But the minute someone takes a picture of Chad Ochocinco getting sloshed the night before a big game, we’ll want him kicked out of the league, owners will want to void his contract and people in Vegas will want him whacked.

And it will happen. A lot. Athletes have largely been given a pass by the people covering them for the past century. Grantland Rice, widely considered the greatest sportswriter ever, admitted not just to protecting Babe Ruth, but also being a paid staff member of The Great Bambino’s. The list goes on forever. Only long after they were finished with sports did we hear about the trouble Mickey Mantle and Muhammad Ali got into in their respective hey days. Only now are we hearing about Michael Jordan --who has to be thanking god that he just missed the 24/7 media era -- and his late night casino trips before playoff games.

In October, every sports talking head in the country blasted Detroit Tigers’ slugger Miguel Cabrera after he was taken into police custody following a dispute with his wife. But it wasn’t the domestic violence claims that shocked anyone. It was the fact that his blood alcohol level was .26 and the following day he went 0-4 in the Tigers’ biggest game of the season. How could he let his team down like that?

TMZ Sports is going to have stories like this on a regular basis simply because of the nature of the people they’re covering. So many professional athletes go from having very little as kids to being rich beyond belief by their early twenties. But money doesn’t always change their mentality. More often than not, it only makes them think they’re more indestructible.

For the first time, we’re about to get a glimpse of how athletes really live.

And it’s going to change everything.

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Maintaining the integrity of the game may have cost Pats, Bengals

Everyone has been around the fraudulent liberal. The type of person who quotes the Kennedys in everyday conversation and loves the idea of President Obama, but then turns into Glenn Beck the minute they hear about the slightest tax increase. I’m convinced there are more of these people in this country than anyone else. They’re the people who feel bad for the starving children they see in commercials, but will never contribute a penny to help them eat. In general, these aren’t bad people. They like progressive ideas. They know we need big changes. But when reality sets in, they realize they don’t want to do with being effected in the short-term.

We’ve got a version of these people in sports too. They’re easiest to spot during the final two weeks of the NFL regular season. Usually they’re ticket holders upset about paying all that money only to see second stringers get the majority of the playing time or they’re fans enraged over losing a fantasy football championship because their best player sat out. Typically the media jumps aboard, claiming any team who chooses to rest its players is damaging the integrity of the game. This week, some writers even compared it to the NBA teams who tank for draft lottery purposes.

They’ve got a point, of course. I would be pissed off too if I paid to see Peyton and got Curtis Painter instead. This year was particularly controversial because Indianapolis Colts head coach Jim Caldwell chose to rest his starters for the second half of week 16 against the New York Jets and it cost the team a shot at an unbeaten season. The ethical debate over Caldwell’s decision was only magnified by the fact that it put the Jets in the driver’s seat to reach the playoffs.

The uproar lasted the entire week. We were finally talking about something other than Tiger Woods. It seemed like everyone agreed that it’s bush league for a team not to put forth its best effort. Even NFL commissioner Roger Goodell seemed concern, suggesting that the league will look into finding a way to reward a team who plays its starters when it doesn’t have to.

Everyone was on board. Everyone liked the idea of playing all out no matter what.

And then reality set in.

Now someone should ask a fan in New England or Cincinnati how they feel about how hard their teams played in meaningless games to end the year. ESPN is reporting that Wes Welker suffered the same injury that cost Tom Brady his entire season in 2008 and Chad Ochocinco needs an MRI after a knee injury forced him to leave Sunday’s game in the third quarter.

Just like that, the Patriots’ chances of winning the Super Bowl have vanished. Mr. Reliable is gone –probably for some of next season too—and now Tom Brady has to hope the anti-Welker, Randy Moss, will show up ready to become the main contributor again. The Bengals face a similar situation. They are unlikely to put up much of a fight against the Jets if Ochocinco isn’t 100 percent next week.

Following the Patriots loss to Houston, the players who did talk to the media (Brady was not made available) gave the standard “this is football; this is what happens” statements. But how can they not be troubled by Bill Belichick’s decision to play his starters?

The fans certainly are.

Now we have to ask if maintaining the integrity of the game was worth it. Because it sure doesn’t seem like it. The bottom line is that because they chose to play their starters, both the Patriots and Bengals are weaker than they would have been had they rested everyone.

And the Colts?

Well, they’re just fine.

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