“The Longest Movie”?

Oh, those PR-magnet Bucs. Head Coach Jon Gruden has agreed to be a (play-scripting) consultant — with a cameo still possible — for a re-make of “The Longest Yard,” the 1974 classic about a former pro quarterback-turned-prisoner who leads the inmates’ football team. The original starred Burt Reynolds in his prime. This one has Adam Sandler in over his head.

Fortunately after last season, Gruden has a lot of third-and-long calls handy.

But it could have been worse. How about a reprise of “Brian’s Son” starring 50 Cent and Eminem?

Chasing Saginaw

The real estate section of this month’s “Money” magazine carries a feature on “What Makes a Place Hot.” Florida was mentioned prominently.

Richard Florida, that is. He’s the popular author of “The Rise of the Creative Class” and a well-referenced guru to CreativeTampaBay.

Alas, Tampa didn’t make any of the top rankings, including America’s “Up & coming cities” (between 250,000 and 499,999 population) that will be attracting more than their share of creative sorts 10 years from now. The top five were: Saginaw, Mich.; Brockton, Mass.; Salem, Ore.; Charleston, W.Va.; and Madison, Wisc. Saginaw?

In fact, the state of Florida was limited to a lone, drive-by reference to Orlando as an “affordable place” that has appeal to “financial and tech companies.”

Moreover, states “Money,” Dr. Florida also believes that “the most attractive places in the next generation of cities may be Canadian — Toronto and Calgary. Calgary? Ouch.

Elsewhere in the real estate section, however, there was a spread on “Best Places To Live On The Coast.” Mentioned under Gulf of Mexico were Pass Christian, Miss., Rockport, Texas and Dunedin. Rationales for the latter included “a Main Street reminiscent of Mayberry,” proximity to the Pinellas Trail and Honeymoon Island State Park and a “beautiful waterfront” with “far fewer tourist traps” than nearby Clearwater.

A League Of Their Own

Bill Marcum, head coach of the Tampa Bay Storm, on players making the adjustment to the Arena Football League with its midget field and customized rules: “Some players pick it up right away like Freddie Solomon Jr. He played four years in the NFL and still didn’t miss a beat when he joined us. Others, well, we only have one game left, and they still haven’t picked it up.”

Message to Midtown: City Can’t Do It All

It appears that St. Petersburg dodged a bullet a fortnight ago when the civil disturbance in Midtown didn’t morph into a full-fledged riot. That, of course, is small consolation to those merchants who did have their shops broken into and inventory hauled off. And then there were some wrong-time, wrong-place folks who genuinely feared for their lives.

But the big picture is clear; it could have been much worse. It could have been a reprise of 1996’s exercise in wanton destruction and serial torching.

This time the city was better prepared, and more community leaders spoke out against violence as an acceptable reaction to anything — including the run-up to the TyRon Lewis civil-suit verdict. This time the tired Uhuru rhetoric of revolt didn’t get much traction. This time the city had more to lose.

Since ’96, St. Petersburg has poured more than $100 million into the economically disadvantaged area on the city’s south side. The moniker “Midtown” was coined by Mayor Rick Baker to underscore a new beginning for the 5.5-square-mile area. Baker even jettisoned a police chief to appease the storm troopers of political correctness.

But here’s the message that still needs to resonate with Midtown’s 20,000 residents. There is a limit to government spending. Arguably, it has been reached. And it was mostly spent on key public infrastructure and amenities: new schools, a library, and recreation and healthcare centers. The city even spent $4 million to clear out 16 acres by buying rundown homes and businesses.

Here’s what has to happen now: The private sector needs to become the catalytic player. There is already activity afoot, but nothing like the commitment required for a viable foundation for tax-generating commerce and community-stabilizing jobs.

The private sector, suffice it to say, will not be induced to invest in Midtown if the marketing slogan, in effect, is: “Bring your business to Midtown and build your future here. It’s been nearly 8 years between lootings.”

There’s no room any more for bogus priorities such as the lionization of thugs like Lewis. Or for scapegoating the police. Certainly not when the overriding issues are black-on-black crime and community-corroding drug-dealing.

The onus is on Midtown’s residents to mount a zero- tolerance crusade against its self-destructive, loser elements. It’s time to serve notice that not only are the fear-mongering, time-warped Uhurus history — but so also are the tactics of extortion and the practice of generational victimization.

Frankly, it’s time the community seriously partnered with the police, especially when Midtown — representing less than 10 per cent of the city’s population — is responsible for more than 50 per cent of the homicides.

That’s not the sort of statistical beacon that impresses the private sector.

Conventional Wisdom On Hold

Tampa’s mid-sized, 14-year-old convention center is still on hold regarding expansion plans. That’s the latest, more or less, from John Moors, the man who runs it. Last year a task force gave a thumbs down to the idea of replacing the center for more than $300 million. But left open were expansion options with smaller price tags. (The center was built for $72 million in 1990.)

What the center grapples with is this:

*There’s more supply (new and expanded centers and hotels) out there than ever before, and the pressure is on to keep up with the “core competition,” notably Charlotte, Atlanta, Nashville and, increasingly, Orlando.

*As a key part of the city’s economic-development tool kit, the center would like to “layer the business,” explains Moors. That is, be able to run more than one convention/trade show concurrently. As it is, a 3-day convention takes a week, including set-up and tear-down time. That’s 4 days of no economic impact.

*If they build it, will they, indeed, come? Business — especially since Sept. 11, 2001 — hasn’t been gangbusters lately, although bookings for 2006-2009 are looking “very positive,” says Moors.

These are the three scenarios that Moors ponders:

*Expansion with the addition of another headquarters hotel — one that would add about 800 rooms to the inventory. This would be “preferable,” notes Moors. And, no, the 371-room, Embassy Suites hotel that will break ground this summer across from the center, doesn’t count. It’s already factored in.

*Expansion with no such additional anchor hotel. This is “not preferable,” adds Moors.

*Status quo — even as the Sunbelt competition continues to heat up. This is, well, not preferable either.

Brown vs. Board vs. Black Culture

The Supreme Court, as America found out in 1954, had the power to void Plessy vs. Ferguson and end de jure segregation in America’s schools. If only the Court, however, had the wherewithal to mandate learning.

Brown vs. Board of Education was a watershed event, but translating it into meaningful success remains a Sisyphean task.

Undermining Jim Crow by declaring that (racially) “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal” should have been seen solely as a critical means to the ultimate end. But that end — fostering black student achievement as a pivot to equal opportunities — is no where in sight. It’s been a lot easier to bus, to designate magnet schools, to present choice plans, to ask for more money and to offer lame excuses.

Study after study and standardized test after standardized test remind us that a significant, black-white racial gap in learning remains intact. Frustratingly, embarrassingly intact. It is a veritable chasm that represents the prime source of racial inequality in this country.

Where and with whom children go to school are not, as we have seen, the critical determinants in educational success. Neither is poverty, per se, overriding. Or vestiges of “racism,” however defined.

It is more a matter of culture, hardly the purview of the Supreme Court.

An excellent source on this subject is “No Excuses” by Stephan and Abigail Thernstrom. The authors identify key risk factors that can limit intellectual development: “

USF’s New AD Experiences First Challenge

Doug Woolard, USF’s highly regarded, new athletic director, has a formidable set of challenges awaiting him. The former AD at Saint Louis University will oversee USF’s transition from Conference USA to the Big East. He will have to manage an athletic budget that needs ratcheting up. He will take the hit if the Bulls’ basketball program isn’t exhumed. He will ultimately answer for oxymoronic “student-athletes.” And more.

But here’s something he can address — and correct — right away. Seeing to it that on matters athletic the University speaks with one voice. It didn’t when it hired Woolard.

A vice president and a spokeswoman weren’t on the same page when announcing Woolard’s hiring in the context of matters relating to the other finalist, Jon Oliver. At issue, among others, was whether Oliver had received a contractual “draft” or “offer” before Woolard received his offer. The result: The heralding of his hiring was awkwardly undercut by media references to Woolard as USF’s “second choice.” Addressing that kind of embarrassing snafu should be Woolard’s first order of business.

Yellow Ribbon Disgrace

Spc. Jeremy C. Sivits, one of the Abu Ghraib torturers who brought dishonor on his country and further inflamed Iraqi insurgents, didn’t get what he deserved after his guilty plea. But he got as much as a court-martial could dish out. A year in prison, reduction in rank and a bad conduct discharge.

Sivits disgraced himself and his country and further jeopardized the lives of American occupation troops.

And this just in.

In Sivits’ home town of Hyndman, Pa., his guilty plea and sentence prompted a candlelight vigil on his behalf that was attended by some 200 residents wearing yellow ribbons. Apparently that’s what irreparable damage to America prompts in that Pennsylvania burg.

What is it about appalling, disgusting, perverted, horrendous and “aiding and abetting the enemy” that the ostensibly good folks of Hyndman don’t understand?

NBA Reality Check

Kevin Garnett, the All-Star forward for the NBA’s Minnesota Timberwolves has apologized for his sophomoric, military-metaphored rant the other day. His apologia, however, was an exercise in damage control and irony.

First of all, here is what Garnett said — in the context of underscoring the gravity of an upcoming playoff game against the Sacramento Kings:

“This is it. It’s for all the marbles. I’m sitting in the house loading up the pump. I’m loading up the Uzis, I’ve got a couple of nines, couple of joints with some silencers on them, couple of grenades, got a missile launcher. I’m ready for war.”

Of course it was stupidly macho and juvenile, traits that are not mutually exclusive with NBA personnel. In his apology, inspired in no small part by the Wolves’ public relations staff, Garnett specifically referenced veterans and families with loved ones serving in Iraq.

He also acknowledged this: “I was totally thinking about basketball, not reality.”

Finally, something that makes sense.

Rumsfeld Should Take One For Team America

Donald Rumsfeld, a decent man with years of distinguished service to this country, should now do the honorable thing. He should take one for Team America. He should fall on his sword.

Seemingly, it’s not about to happen, no matter what other perverted and humiliating incidents are unearthed from Baghdad’s notorious Abu Ghraib prison. No matter how much collateral damage is caused by America’s PR Weapon of Mass Destruction. The Secretary of Defense, where all Pentagon chain-of-command links lead, only got a dressing down by the president. He subsequently received a vote of confidence from Bush for doing a “superb job.”

It’s Rumsfeld’s call because the president doesn’t want to be seen as scapegoating a trusted true-believer who won’t bad-mouth him in a memoir. Neither does the president want to be seen as wavering from the Administration’s stay-the-course, go-to-the-mattresses, Iraqi policy.

A Rumsfeld resignation is a cure-all for nothing, for this is a panacea-free zone. But it would symbolically complement and buttress the president’s public apology. Certainly more than a surprise visit to Baghdad did. And if a resignation would make life a little less hazardous for American G.I.’s and a little more hopeful for any American hostage, it’s worth it right there.

But there’s a more fundamental principle involved. Whatever happened at Abu Ghraib is a microcosm of the entire occupation in all its incoherent blunder. Nobody, to date, has answered for that. Somebody may in November, but that’s of no consequence now.

Everyone but the Bush Administration seemed to know that winning a war with the most powerful armed forces in the history of the world was never the issue. Winning the post-war peace and stability would be the real crucible. Nation building after infrastructure bombing seemed a Pentagonic afterthought.

Keep in mind that “liberation” is an abstraction in the absence of order. The early looters’ free-for-all presaged all that ultimately followed.

Not enough troops. Not enough training. Not enough speakers of Arabic. Not enough international help. Not nearly enough preparation across the board.

That’s what Rumsfeld would be answering for. His resignation would be an appropriately proportional response — shock, shame and contrition — for the harm done to those detainees and to this nation.

Hardly an exception within the ill-conceived, Pentagon-directed occupation were the prisons. Undermanned, unsupervised, poorly-trained, ad hoc prison guards — who were given license to interpret intentionally ambiguous orders to “soften up” detainees for interrogation — turned Abu Ghraib — and apparently others — into grotesque, inmate-abuse sideshows. The problems appear systemic.

No, it wasn’t Auschwitz, and it wasn’t Bataan. It wasn’t even Iraq under Saddam Hussein. And the sadist-soldiers didn’t decapitate anyone while declaring that “God is great.” Surely, Nicholas Berg would have settled for indignity.

But this debacle of mistreatment and pornography is an awful American nightmare when one of our avowed objectives is to win the minds and hearts of Iraqis and to send the right democratic signals to the rest of the Muslim world. It’s an unmitigated disaster when it further incites insurgents and international jihadists and undermines the security of American troops.

That’s still Rumsfeld’s purview. He’s not a fall guy — unless it’s on that sword. He’s the Pentagon’s point man. He’s accountable.

One other thing. If Nuremberg taught us anything, it’s that merely “following orders” won’t necessarily earn you a reprieve from the gallows. Behavior that devolves into depravity remains disgustingly abhorrent, morally reprehensible and most worthy of courts martial. As Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell, R-Colo., bluntly put it: “I don’t know how the hell these people got into our Army.”

Any of “these people” who are found guilty will be seen to have followed base instincts more than wink-and-nod orders. They should consider themselves lucky if they don’t do time in an Iraqi slammer, awaiting their Kodak moments in their birthday suits.

And one more thing. Imagine how much worse this could be if Rumsfeld hadn’t been doing a “superb job”?