Category: Sports

The Outback Bowl has been very good to the Tampa Bay area, with an economic impact – when the Florida Gators aren’t in it – estimated at more than $35 million. It’s an annual 65,600 sell-out with good ESPN TV ratings and chamber-of-commerce-pleasing video of palm trees, sand sculptures and the downtown streetcar. As a bowl game venue – encompassing Gulf beaches, Ybor City pep rallies and Busch Gardens’ outings – the Tampa Bay area is a prime winter draw for hard-core fans and boosters of Big Ten and SEC schools.

This year the Outback lucked out with the Penn State -Tennessee match-up. That meant fan bases that travel well, but it also meant one more appearance by the not yet retired, iconic, media magnet that is 80-year-old PSU coach, Joe Paterno.

Some outtakes from Paterno’s press conferences during Outback week:

* Paterno’s teams have won 363 Division I games, including a record 22 in bowls (three of them in the Outback). He was asked to contrast the bowl experience now (as in more games, more money, more media scrutiny, more ways to use the month-plus layoff, etc.) to his first one in 1967 (against Florida State in the Gator Bowl).

His answer, punctuated by that Joe Pesci delivery: “Aw, you guys keep bringing that (1967) up. OK, it was a lousy call.”

Huh?

Who knew that among the nearly 500 games Paterno has coached, a 17-17 tie in 1967 is still gnawing at him 40 years later? The reason: roiling regret. Ahead 17-0, Paterno goes for it on fourth down and one at his own 25 in the middle of the third quarter. Not only doesn’t he get it, but the play is a catalyst for a 180 shift in momentum. Penn State never regains it, and the Lions pry a tie from the jaws of victory.

*“Should I be coaching at 80?” reflected Paterno, the octogenarian. “Sometimes I’m looking at tape late at night, and I think ‘What the hell am I doing?’ But, overall, it’s still fun. If I didn’t enjoy it, I’d get out.”

*Paterno, who has been the head coach of Penn State for 41 years, acknowledged that the days of one coach having his (or Bobby Bowden’s) kind of tenure are probably history. “The whole environment has changed,” he noted. “There’s a lot of pressure (to win). They’re paying coaches too much, and you have to expect that kind of pressure. I’m not sure how many Athletic Directors and Presidents can handle that. At Penn State, I’ve outlived most of the boosters.”

*Paterno on longevity: “Good pasta, good booze. Seriously, the Greeks had a phrase for it: ‘The glory belongs to our ancestors.’ My mother lived to 93.

“And one other thing: Never let the calendar determine where you are in life.”

*“Good recruiting is about bringing in good players to compete with other good players,” pointed out Paterno. “You don’t get better playing schlemiels.”

*In answer to a question, Paterno was unwilling to accord the ultimate accolade — “best ever” — to his two-time All-American linebacker Paul Posluszny. “When you give to one, you take away from the others,” he reasoned.

*Responding to a query (from a Pennsylvania reporter) about his broken left leg and ligament damage: “No, I don’t wear a brace. But I can still swing my leg. I can still hit a lot of big targets like your rear end.”

*New Year’s resolution: “Lose a little weight; get this leg right; and prove if you’re over 80, you’re not over the hill.”

*And then there was this question from a local scribe — OK, this one — about the cardboard stand-ups and Paterno masks that have been popular items in Pennsylvania the past couple of decades. “What’s it feel like to reach the point in life where your success translates into a marketable visage? In other words, what’s it like to see perfect strangers with your face?”

The media ham then donned a Paterno look-alike mask.

“Maybe I’m in the wrong profession,” Paterno deadpanned, although no one, of course, had ever intimated that his were matinee-idol looks. “Naah, I don’t take it very seriously. But it’s nice for people to identify with you. Makes you think that maybe you’ve had some impact on values and lifestyle.”

Any serious football fan knows the drill.

It’s your job — seemingly by birthright — to root rabidly for your team. Objectivity only counts until kickoff.

The officials’ calls, for whatever reason — incompetence, intimidation, bias, bribery — too often go against YOUR team. They just do. Too often, referees have had more to do with the outcome than the players have. It’s not right, of course; it’s just the way it is – and it’s YOUR team that typically gets shafted.

Now add another subplot. The replay officials. They oversee – literally – the game being called on the field. But they occasionally have to bring the game to a screeching replay halt in the process.

As ESPN analyst and former coach Lee Corso has been heard musing during a game: “Who are those people up there, anyway? Do they understand this game? Are they up there drinking coffee and watching the game or what?”

Well, let’s ask one.

He’s Nick Trainer, 65, now in his second year in the booth – or since the NCAA- mandated instant replay. For the record, yes, he understands the game; he’s played the game; and when in the booth, he’s intensely watching every play, working with digital replay boards, manipulating freeze-frame shots and communicating with producers who feed him multiple camera angles.

He’s smart enough to be the CEO of Sartomer Co. Inc., a specialty chemicals manufacturer near Philadelphia. And unflappable enough to handle serious heat.

He’s also competent enough at his seasonal job to have been an on-field official at a national championship game and a Rose Bowl, among others. He’s been an official for more than 35 years, including more than 20 at the Division I level. Trainer’s been with the Big East Conference since its football inception in 1991.

He knows his stuff, and that’s why he’s now in the booth. The concept is relatively new to the college game, but the replay officials are veteran refs. Trainer – along with his booth “communicator” — and on-field colleagues from the Big East Conference did last week’s Outback Bowl.

There were seven stoppages for replays – resulting in three reversals of on-field calls. The average for the Big East is about two replay stoppages per game – with approximately two-thirds upheld. Stoppages average slightly less than two minutes.

What accounted for the higher number in the Outback Bowl? “It was an extremely competitive game,” said Trainer. “And you had some tremendous, athletic plays made by these kids. And there’s also the luck of the draw. Sometimes you just get more plays that you need to take a closer look at.

“No one wants to stop a game seven times,” emphasized Trainer. “Especially the replay official. You don’t want to draw attention to yourself. But sometimes it happens.”

One other factor: the Outback Bowl featured 17 cameras. Lesser, regular season games may have four or five. They had more wherewithal to get it right.

“Look, it’s not a perfect system,” acknowledged Trainer. “It’s designed to eliminate gross mistakes at critical times that influence outcomes.”

But, no, not every play is “reviewable.” Pass interference or holding penalties, for example, are not. But scoring and change-of-possession plays are.

The key criteria, said Trainer, in considering stoppage for a replay is a three-part rule of thumb: “Is it ‘reviewable?’ Can I confirm the call on the field? Is there a significant impact on the game?”

The bottom line, underscored Trainer, is that ever-improving technology, more uniform hardware and the increasing experience of replay officials continues to reduce the margin of error.

“And with 17 cameras you see almost everything,” added Trainer. “You can see if a player spits.”

So, would Trainer prefer to preside at a game that is an early rout with minimal crucial plays that impact the outcome and, as a result, don’t require many, if any, instant replay stoppages? In effect, an easy game?

No.

“The pressure, the scrutiny, the time constraints, the adrenaline rush – you have to be able to handle it,” explained Trainer. “It comes with the territory. That’s why I do it.”

What Trainer does, he stressed, is in the context of a team, one that he is as much a part of as the referee or the field judge.

“It’s not my job to nit-pick,” he said, “or make anyone look bad. We don’t want to officiate the game. It’s amazing how accurate they are on the field.”

And one other point. Trainer and his cohorts liked the Outback game between Penn State and Tennessee. It was incident free, trash-talk free and relatively foul free.

“We got away without any controversy,” noted Trainer. “We like it that way too.”

The Outback Bowl remains a New Year’s Day winner. It sells out; it garners good ratings; it showcases the Tampa Bay area; and it provides marquee match-ups – witness this year’s Penn State-Tennessee pairing. And in the ever-evolving, naming-rights game, it even sounds like a bowl game.

Which is no gimme these days.

Increasingly, bowl games have been going exclusively with corporate sponsors. As in the Meineke Car Care Bowl, the Chick-fil-A Bowl and the Papajohns.com Bowl.

But Outback works. It connotes athletic and rugged – not just a restaurant chain.

Actually, the first draft – back in 1996 – was “Outback Steakhouse Bowl.”

Sometimes you add by subtracting.

When Plant High School won its 4-A state championship game against defending champ Ponte Vedra Beach Nease two Saturdays ago, it was the first state football championship for a Tampa team since Richard Nixon was a rookie president.

But this wasn’t just a long-awaited win for a Tampa team. It was also an urban “Hoosiers,” a feel-good, vicarious victory for the tight-knit, small-city community within the city that is South Tampa. And it was a well-savored triumph over a stubborn stereotype.

Look at the Plant student parking lot sometime, and you’re reminded that there is affluence here. Look at the higher education track record of its grads, and you’re reminded that academics have always been paramount.

And if you looked at the football team a few years ago, you were reminded that the Plant kids were considered too “soft” to be good at a tough, physically demanding, non-country club sport.

Well, so much for that myth. You don’t even get out of Hillsborough County without being tough enough – let alone skilled enough.

To Plant’s everlasting credit – and the stuff that legacies are made of – the (15-0) Panthers didn’t just run the table in a fanatical football state full of blue-chip college prospects and high-powered programs. They won with class.

No prima donna attitudes and no strutting, “look-at-me” boors. No recruiting, “remuneration” or criminality scandals. No marginal, athlete-luring magnets.

Just a bunch of talented, hard-nosed kids that bought into a philosophy and a value system. The one embraced and embodied by Robert Weiner, 42, the third-year head coach.

Weiner, the long-time Jesuit assistant who had been passed over for the JHS head-coaching job, is known for his uber organizational and motivational skills.

Nobody, he preaches, transcends team. Nothing is more important than loyalty and hard work. Everyone’s contribution – from All Everything, record-setting quarterback Robert Marve to kids whose roles are relegated to the practice fields – is valued and acknowledged.

Weiner’s a disciplinarian and demands that his players improve – on the field, in the classroom and in the community. And he doesn’t just talk a good game; he’s been a counselor at Muscular Dystrophy camp for more than 25 years.

Moreover, Weiner is the perfect role model for impressionable student-athletes. He didn’t let the Jesuit disappointment deter or discourage him. He’s Exhibit A for academic and athletic priorities – in that order. He’s an English teacher/coach. One who writes poetry and can quote Thoreau, Shakespeare or Dylan more readily than Lombardi, Rockne or Paterno.

One who made his players believe they weren’t soft. Who instilled a sense that life was not a spectator sport nor meant to be taken for granted. Who was father figure, big brother, favorite uncle and unabashed humanitarian.

And, lest we forget, one who provided a South Tampa community with its own Hoosiers-like rallying cry, focus of pride and storybook ride for the ages.

Panthers rule.

Remember when bowl games were a combination chamber of commerce coup and reward for teams with successful seasons? There were only a handful of bowls and you could know them all. Now there are 32, including Poinsettia, Popajohns.com, Insight, Meineke Car Care, Music City, Champs Sports, MPC Computers and GMAC Bowls.

That means 64 teams. How do you choose 64 deserving teams? You don’t.

In fact, there are no fewer than seven teams, including (6-6) Miami and (6-6) Florida State, who have to win their bowl game just to avoid a losing season. There’s even a bowl game, the Independence in Shreveport, La., where neither team (Oklahoma State and Alabama) enters with a winning record.

While going “Bowling” has certainly lost much of its luster, imagine how it looks to go uninvited to one.

The BCS Championship game is still more than a fortnight away, but already the University of Florida has topped Ohio State – where it should count more: graduation rates.

The University of Central Florida-based Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport has accumulated graduation data on all teams participating in this year’s bowl games.

The overall rate for student-athletes playing football at OSU was 55 percent, including 32 percent for black players. Corresponding numbers for UF: 80 and 74.

Here’s how some other bowl-bound schools fared:

*Notre Dame: 95 and 90/ LSU: 49 and 37

*Navy: 98 and 91/ Boston College: 96 and 93

*Penn State: 80 and 77/ Tennessee: 58 and 47

*Miami: 68 and 63/ Nevada: 53 and 36

*UCLA: 59 and 39/ Florida State: 52 and 48

*E. Carolina: 78 and 76/ USF: 66 and 67.

And the numbers for defending national champion Texas? Try 40 and 33. Speaks volumes, doesn’t it?

Let’s be fair. A lot of us in the media, including this columnist, have taken our shots at Jim Leavitt, head football coach of the USF Bulls. He was becoming decreasingly accessible and increasingly testy. And he seemed to have more than his share of student-athlete eligibility issues.

But let’s also acknowledge this.

Leavitt turned a daunting assignment into a challenge he met head on. Sometimes — at half time — literally.

He continues to exceed expectations on the field with a program barely a decade old. He has neither the tradition nor the budget of many opponents. Yet the Bulls are already a solid Big East team with on-the-field parity among the Pittsburghs, Syracuses, Louisvilles and West Virginias. This was, of course, dramatically underscored by that stunning, nationally noted 24-19 road win against No. 7 West Virginia.

USF now goes to its second bowl game in as many years – and notice has been served to the rest of this football-crazed state that USF is a player pushing peer status with the “Big 3” – Florida State, Florida and Miami. In the Associated Press poll, USF is tied for 29th with Penn State and a couple of spots in front of Steve Spurrier’s South Carolina Gamecocks.

And USF is top heavy in underclassmen. Next year the Bulls should be even better.

And what shouldn’t be downplayed is the impact of football not only on USF, a “commuter school” that had long craved such a high-profile, rally-around forum and identity enhancer, but on the Tampa Bay area itself. Winners perforce showcase their home base.

Leavitt’s emotional, post-game TV interview after the WVU upset was illustrative. The historic win, he said through misty eyes and a compromised voice, wasn’t just special for the players and the university, but for “St. Pete and Tampa.”

It was revealing. Touching – not testy.

*I was reminded early on why I don’t watch Monday Night Football when the Bucs aren’t on it, which is almost never. Last week’s Bucs-Carolina Panthers game – and its continuity – became subordinate to NASCAR talk for a lengthy stretch in the first half. That’s when race-car driver Jeff Gordon joined everybody else in the ESPN booth for too long. It’s part of ESPN’s show-biz outreach shtick. Thanks for nothing, including Joe Theismann sharing his experience – complete with video footage — of driving a race car.

Too bad such irrelevant intrusions can’t be confined to halftime – but that, or course, would run afoul of the insightful world of Michael Irvin and friends.

*Anyone else of the opinion that football referees increasingly need to be reminded of a basic rule of thumb: Some of the best calls are no-calls. If it’s that close – notably pass interference or a punt-return clip – then don’t call it. Let the players determine outcomes.

*For a while, player celebrations – especially group choreography – was way out of hand, unless you were among those who liked cheap, lounge-act theatrics with your football. What’s now getting out of hand, however, are the penalties being called for same. They give arbitrariness a bad name.

The best way to deal with the sophomoric, look-at-me antics? A crackdown in high school by coaches who must underscore that winning and playing with some class is not some old-school incongruity. Nobody knows the difference between enthusiasm and showing off better than coaches. Then continue that discipline at the university level. And then get the networks on board so that cameras don’t linger on swaggering boors who can’t control themselves.

*Gov.-elect Charlie Crist got some voice time on the telecast of that infamous Florida State-Wake Forest game. That’s because the FSU alum also attended WFU and actually walked on as a quarterback. It was also because that woeful game actually needed some kind of diversion.

ABC play-by-play announcer Brent Musberger eventually piped in with some trivia, saying Crist is known for being wonkish about school mascots and nicknames. Whereupon color analyst Bob Davie inquired: “So, what’s the nickname for Youngstown State?” Crist didn’t know, but faster than you can say “the people’s governor,” he unflappably (and correctly) offered up the “Rockets” as the nickname for another Ohio school, the University of Toledo. Close enough.

Youngstown, of course, is the “Penguins.”

A month ago this column bemoaned the fact that many members of the media had pointed to a loss of “swagger” as a reason why the University of Miami football team was not winning as before. More to the point, there was considerable sentiment in favor of UM regaining that very dubious quality. As if a strutting, obnoxious, insolent air was a reasonable enough price to pay to get good again. As if “swagger” meant confident.

Umbrage was even taken by some to the quote that “watching Miami with swagger was like looking at looters.” At least I didn’t yield to the temptation to apologize to looters.

Now fast forward a fortnight from then – to that notorious UM-Florida International University football game that devolved into a helmet-swinging, sucker-punching, foot-stomping brawl. Before the melee broke out, the “Swagger Bowl” had been punctuated by the usual unsportsmanlike antics – crude “trash talking” and boorish gestures intended to show-off for fans and show-up the opposition. It kept ratcheting – and eventually erupted.

Because of all the exposure and notoriety, there was pressure to do something dramatic and, indeed, collectively there were 29 player suspensions, two dismissals — and one TV-analyst firing. Former Miami receiver Lamar Thomas lost his commentator job when he suggested that the teams meet afterward to finish the fight. But the player penalties should be seen for what they are – quick fixes to appease the outraged and mitigate embarrassing publicity. In reality, only ugly symptoms were addressed.

“There is no place in higher education for the type of conduct exhibited,” grossly understated Wright Water, commissioner of the (FIU-affiliated) Sun Belt Conference.

A better way of putting it would have been: “Higher education and competitive intercollegiate athletics are not incompatible, but we can no longer prostitute ourselves for the sake of big time, money-making basketball and football programs. And for those who think the status quo is beyond repair, well, just watch as we stuff that genie of Hessian jocks back into the bottle of legitimate university priorities.”

That quote, of course, could never come from a commissioner of an athletic conference, unless that person wanted to be content with presiding over a bunch of non-revenue sports played by real student-athletes. There’s no academic artifice, thuggish behavior or recruiting scandals associated with cross country.

A meaningful place to start, arguably, is with university presidents, many of whom are selected, quite candidly, for their fund-raising skills. But filling a stadium or an arena is not the same as outfitting laboratories or building classrooms.

At some point UM President Donna Shalala (as well as her FIU counterpart Modesto Maidique) has to step up and, in effect, say: “We are first and foremost a university. Scholarship should refer more to academic pursuits than pro-prepping internships. We are about learning – not yearning to get to a BCS bowl game.

“And, yes, we are also a community, and to quote the late Coach Bear Bryant, ‘It’s tough to rally around the math department.’ We agree. But having said that, we need to better examine exactly who we are bringing in to ‘represent’ us in athletics and what, if any, standards we are holding them to.”

Instead, she said: “This university will be firm and punish people who do bad things. But we will not throw any student under the bus for instant restoration of our image or our reputation. I will not hang them in a public square. I will not eliminate their participation at the university. I will not take away their scholarships.”

Standards at issue

Obviously Shalala had more help on her spin management than Sen. George Allen did with “macaca.” But it’s obvious she was deflecting attention from core causes and reminding outsiders she wasn’t about to do the merely expedient for image “restoration,” nor was she about to abandon those who had simply done “bad things.” The “hanging in a public square” metaphor was vintage, liberal campus-speak – given that the players involved are black.

Shalala addressed an incident, however repellent, but not an endemic, shameless, hypocritical condition, one that has existed since Miami made its Faustian deal for better players in the 1970s. (It has won five national championships after coming close to folding the program when the Dolphins came to town.) She still doesn’t get it – or want to acknowledge (getting it) in a politically correct, college-sports universe.

And she’s not alone, of course.

But here’s what needs to be addressed. Too many schools with big time athletic programs (read: football and basketball) – with big time expectations, budgets and alumni pressure – are overly reliant on oxymoronic student-athletes. It’s not exactly stop-the-presses news. Miami isn’t unique, just uniquely notorious for its gangsta reputation.

University administrators will tell you that they have flexible admission criteria for all kinds of uniquely talented prospects. They’d love for you to equate the All State wide out (with 4.3 40-yard speed, rap sheet history, awful SATs and a friendly-teacher-skewed GPA) with the budding violinist learning English as a second language.

Often, a majority of these high-profile-sport student-athletes are poor, inner city and black – and academic allowances are made for disadvantaged backgrounds and societal passes handed out for street-culture mores at odds with quaint concepts such as sportsmanship. The process of compromised standards is further muddied by the legitimate, ongoing issue of pro-active, minority recruiting and the political axe that is affirmative action advocacy.

It’s up to college presidents to say enough of the sham. This isn’t “hire” education. There’s no disgrace in a high school athlete, who’s probably been lionized and enabled by coaches and teachers since junior high, not being ready for prime time as a student-student. That’s what community colleges, remediation courses and semi-pro leagues are for.

But somebody has to say enough of the double standards and enough of the swagger-culture resignation – let alone encouragement. Commissioners, athletic directors and coaches won’t. Their jobs are sports – and winning.

That’s why it’s the province of the presidents. But you don’t start by waiting for a disgusting incident and then deciding who might have to be thrown under the team bus. You start by reiterating and re-enforcing what a university is and who actually belongs in one. You acknowledge the difference between a half back and a harpist.

Miami is not the only institution of higher education that has to de-swagger itself. Would that it were.

Apparently Barry Bonds will return for one more Major League season and a final shot at breaking Hank Aaron’s career home run record of 755. Bonds now stands at 734.

As to whether he warrants a supplemental asterisk — or an indictment — is yet to be determined. Surely, at least one of the aforementioned.

But much has been made of what he did this year at the advanced baseball age of 42. He hit .270; muscled out 26 homers; and drove in 77 runs.

For comparison sake, let’s also reference the late Ted Williams*.

When he was 42, Williams hit .316; clouted 29 homers; and drove in 72 runs in (his final season of) 1960. His literal last at-bat was a home run.

Most remarkably, he did it in an era when players still grew hormones the old- fashioned way.

And don’t forget that Williams, a career .344 hitter whose lifetime numbers included 521 homers, was a fighter pilot in both World War II and the Korean War. It cost him the better part of five seasons and more than a few career records. He took one for the ultimate team.

*Now there was an asterisk.