Category: Sports

Much has been made of what most observers called excessive force imposed by security after the emotional USF win over Louisville at Raymond James Stadium. Some overly-exuberant Bulls’ fans disregarded warnings and orders to stay off the field. They trespassed and, as a result, were greeted with batons, Tasers and handcuffs – not high-fiving players.

Obviously there was plenty of overreaction to go around, especially on law enforcement’s part. Is Tasering commensurate punishment for the handful of trespassers after USF’s biggest win ever? This was a celebratory crowd, not a Bastille-storming mob.

Probably the best way to avoid repetition, however, is for USF to win more games like this. Then everybody will know the drill.

Do the Devil Rays have a reputation for being cheap? Yes. Do they deserve it? Yes. Is the Delmon Young flap a prime example? No.

Rays’ outfield prospect Delmon Young, who still needs a lot of work in the field, has been adjudged the minor leagues’ best player and a can’t-miss future major leaguer. He expected to be called up to the big club once his minor league season was over.

He wasn’t. That’s because the Rays, with the smallest payroll in Major League Baseball, don’t want to accelerate his service time – which has salary and free-agency implications.

The 19-year-old Young was outraged and called out the parent team for being cheap and inconsiderate. He also intimated his loyalty to the organization was likely negligible at best. It was a prime topic of interest on ESPN.

A footnote: In 2003, the Rays paid the then 17-year-old a bonus of $5.8 million.

By early next season, Young should be in the Bigs to stay. He has the tools to make it big. But nothing is guaranteed. Including growing up.

The countdown is on for the return – and maybe reincarnation – of hockey. The revenue-hungry NHL now has a salary cap, which augurs long overdue financial sanity. On the entertainment front, where hockey must compete with more entrenched sports and other diversions for the consumer’s dollar, the NHL has introduced dramatic shootouts to decide ties and rule changes to speed up the game. The latter is intended to keep its top stars unshackled and showcased for the media.

So why in the name of Marty St. Louis and the defending Stanley Cup Champion Tampa Bay Lightning did the NHL and NBC agree to a national TV schedule that only shows the Bolts once?

The Lightning, with its up-tempo style and talented, telegenic trio of St. Louis, Vinny Lacavalier and Brad Richards, would seemingly be a perfect fit for the new-look NHL. Instead, the Bolts get a lone TV appearance – at Philadelphia on Jan. 28 – while Philly, Detroit, Dallas, Colorado and New York (Rangers) appear four times apiece. Boston and Pittsburgh will be on three times each.

This is smart marketing? This is thinking outside the rink?

With good reason is USF excited about having Penn State and Miami on this year’s football schedule. The credibility curve is further accelerated for a program only in its ninth season. Along with membership in the Big East Conference, the PSU-Miami parlay is further testimony as to how far and how fast USF has come. Plus, the Bulls pick up hefty guarantees, especially at PSU, which accommodates 110,000 live ones.

But in the long run, two other – decidedly less glamorous – games will be even more important to the program: Florida A&M and the University of Central Florida. They’re both home (FAMU-Sept. 10, UCF-Sept. 17) this season, and they both promise what Big East schools can’t: a natural rivalry with a good local draw.

Amid all the talk of being in a BCS conference and the attendant national attention and recruiting boost, the Bulls need to put fans in the stands at the Ray-Jay.FAMU’s loyal alumni travel well, and there’s every expectation that an I-4 rivalry will generate big crowds in Orlando as well as Tampa.

USF President Judy Genshaft and Athletics Director Doug Woolard have been justifiably praised for working to make these two games happen. Their success is critical to USF’s football fortunes. It’s not enough to bring in Rutgers and Connecticut.

Like a lot of Tampa Bay area sports fans, I “looked in” on the recent Baseball Hall of Fame induction of Tampa’s – and Plant High’s – Wade Boggs and former Chicago Cub second baseman Ryne Sandberg.

Boggs and Sandberg were an appropriate Cooperstown tandem.

Both were modern-era players who played the game the old-fashioned way. They never forgot that baseball was a team sport, and a lot of little things have to go right for a team to win consistently. They both respected the integrity of the game – and those who had preceded them.

Moreover, neither was among the more gifted, natural athletes of their time. Their success was a tribute to dogged discipline, uncanny concentration and career-long perseverance. Professionalism wasn’t so much a compliment as a given.

The honorees also said some things at their induction ceremony that obviously resonated with their live audience of family, friends and fans – and hopefully beyond.

Boggs, the hitting machine with the Golden Glove, elevated his remarks from career chronology and inclusive gratitude (despite skipping a page from his speech) to transcend the game. The former Red Sox, Yankee and D-Ray third baseman sagely noted that “Our lives are not determined by what happens to us, but how we react to what happens. Not by what life brings us, but the attitude we bring to life

Speaking of Jon Gruden, he was the subject of a recent front-page story in USA Today. It referenced the consecutive losing seasons in the context of impatient fans and relentless critics of the erstwhile “boy wonder” head coach.

Here’s Gruden’s response to growing “whispers” that he won the big one largely with “someone else’s players”:

“The reality of it was, did you come in here and inherit a team that was accustomed to winning Super Bowls? Or did you come in here and inherit a team that was 9-8 and got their brains beat in (in a playoff loss) to Philadelphia and had rock-bottom chemistry?”

There are sports fans. There are sports fans who gamble. And then there are the compulsively stupid.

Already issued from Las Vegas bookies are point spreads for the opening round of National Football League pre-season games. That heralds the football betting season.What needs to be kept very much in mind is that “pre-season” is really an NFL euphemism. The operative word here is EXHIBITION. These are scrimmage upgrades that feature cameos by established players and try-outs for bunches of players who will be found wanting by NFL standards. All bets should be off.

But some gamblers can’t wait. Bet on it.

Not least among the awesome accomplishments of cancer survivor-cyclist extraordinaire Lance Armstrong is this: He leaves his sport the way few champions of any sport have ever departed. He leaves at the absolute pinnacle.

Think of Hank Aaron not hitting his weight in his last year with the Milwaukee Brewers. Think of Willie Mays staggering under a fly ball as a New York Met. Think of Joe Louis fighting eroded skills to make a dent in his IRS debts. Think of a rope-burned Muhammad Ali looking lethargic against nonentities.

There’s something about a few more fat paychecks. There’s something about leaving center stage.

Armstrong belongs in that tiny pantheon of very special, gifted athletes who didn’t wait to be compromised by time, the ultimate opponent. Think Jim Brown at his peak. Think Sandy Koufax still dominating. Think Rocky Marciano without a loss. Think Ted Williams hitting a home run in his last at bat.

Granted, cycling isn’t football, baseball or boxing. In fact, not even close. But a champion is a champion. And he had to beat metastasized cancer before he could win seven Tours de France.

We’ll not see his kind again.

Former Buc, long-time Oakland Raider and future Hall of Fame receiver Tim Brown retired last season. Last week he made it official.

News that baseball and softball were being dropped from the Summer Olympics – as of 2012 — was not well received in this country. It may be hardball politics as usual, since half of the International Olympic Committee delegation is from Europe, a continent notably indifferent to the two indigenous American sports.

Baseball was tossed ostensibly because big leaguers don’t compete and Major League Baseball’s drug-testing program lacks international credibility. For softball, it might be guilt by association. A softball must look like a baseball on steroids to IOC president Jacques Rogge.

And that’s too bad — for softball. The U.S. is really, really good at it. And it’s the odds-on favorite to retain its (2004) gold medal in Beijing in 2008. And recall that the (’04) softball stands were packed in Athens – as opposed to, say, the venues for badminton, which remains a sport in good standing. Moreover, there are now more than 100 national softball teams throughout the world. But not enough in Europe. C’est la vie.

But sports that are given the IOC heave-ho can apply for readmission. Softball certainly should and doubtless will.

The loss of Olympic baseball, however, shouldn’t be mourned, although it’s never been more internationalized – from Latin America to the Far East. Baseball – with or without MLB players – is not unlike basketball, soccer and tennis. It doesn’t belong.

For these sports, the Olympics does not represent the ultimate. An Olympiad deserves better than inferior status to a World Series, a World Cup, Wimbledon or the NBA playoffs. All the best players will never be available, and those who do, play under a cloud questioning their motivation and conditioning. Anyone ever expect to wax nostalgic over Team Tattoo — America’s ’04 bronze-medal-winning, hip-hop hoopsters?

Sure, badminton is a goofy sport that could be played with a beer in one hand, and who cares enough about team handball to even understand it?

But these sports – more than the likes of baseball, basketball, soccer and tennis – represent the Olympic ideal of athletes competing for the love of a sport and the thrill of competition. These athletes aren’t glamorous; they have real jobs and no agents. Win or lose – in front of a packed house or mainly family and friends – they will earn no endorsements, no lasting fame, no pharmaceutical notoriety. Only memories and respect.

They will have competed fairly and done their best. And they don’t think they’re doing their country a favor by showing up.

As with softball, baseball can apply for readmission. It shouldn’t.