Category: Sports

I am, I’ll acknowledge, a rabid football fan.

Especially college, most notably alma maters Penn State and South Florida, as well as regional favorites Florida State and Florida. I like marching bands, pep rallies, famous fight songs, “Knute Rockne, All American,” “Rudy,” Hail Mary touchdowns and homecomings.

I was lucky enough to see Freddie Solomon play for the University of Tampa. I want Joe Paterno to go out a winner — not a whiner. I like it that Army and Navy still recruit solid student-athletes who aren’t prepping for the pros. They have linemen who don’t belong in stockyards — or on Sumo mats. I just wish they’d win some games.

Saturday rituals include all the scoreboard shows; Sundays kick off with sports pages chronicling games I’ve already seen or saw the highlights of. I’ve got strong opinions on the Heisman Trophy (Penn State’s Larry Johnson) and the BCS (Iowa getting hosed.)

A couple of years ago, I flew out to Northwest Missouri to watch my nephew play in a Division II national semi-final for Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Loved the color, enthusiasm and hospitality, if not the weather and outcome.

I cared that Chamberlain nearly won a state championship last year. Hassan Jones of Clearwater High (and then FSU and the Minnesota Vikings) remains the most dominant high school player I’ve seen. I fondly remember those few years Plant High did a fun, funky-white-boy imitation of FAMU’s renowned marching band.

I also root for the Bucs, as only someone with first-hand recollection of the franchise’s infamous 0-26 beginning can. From Johnny Carson monologue staple to serious Super Bowl contender. Who would have thought? Especially when the franchise was in a race with Cleveland to relocate to Baltimore.

But each season, I’ll also concede, I’m a little less rabid, a little more irked.

I can’t pinpoint it precisely, but it was some time between the awesomely talented, yet refreshingly unassuming Gayle Sayers of Kansas and the awesomely talented, yet annoyingly arrogant Dion Sanders of Florida State. In the pros, that would be about when Billy “White Shoes” Johnson did his first celebration dance for the Houston Oilers — and not nearly enough fans found fault with it.

After that, as the cameras zoomed in for the juvenile gyrations and home fans seemingly reveled in the antics, there was no bottling the genie of look-at-me, boorish behavior. In fact, the NFL would eventually market these sorry excuses for “showmanship,” “exuberance” and “personality.” And the aptly named “trash talking,” mind you, wasn’t just an extension of a hip-hop culture. It was, according to the usual apologists and hucksters, pure psychological gamesmanship. Just another gambit among “warriors,” those Pattons in pads. And, of course, all the jock jabberwocky is worth mike-ing for one of those interminable NFL promotional sideshows. Argot ergo sum .

As we’ve all too frequently seen, players now strut and preen as frequently as they run, block and tackle. Great plays, good plays, average plays and accidental plays all can warrant Second Coming rejoicing and gesturing — as well as an immediate trophy. Players just run off the field — after pounding their chest and pointing toward the heavens — without giving the football back. And what happens when they get to the bench? Cameras are in their faces to induce more mugging. Thanks for sharing.

It said it all when erstwhile no-nonsense, task-master Dick Vermeil overlooked bush- league behavior with his Super Bowl champion Rams three years ago. And remember how the Bucs’ Tony Dungy, a paragon’s paragon of discipline, used to tolerate the bump-and-grind antics that would accompany Reidel Anthony’s annual catch? You knew the ghost of Vince Lombardi wasn’t just buried. It had been exhumed for desecration.

But it’s not just the NFL. Would that it were. The league is merely the catalyst. Thanks to the NFL, the ranks of colleges and high schools have been infested for years. The challenge now is to limit the choreography in Pop Warner Leagues and hope to discourage the next Terrell Owens.

There are, of course, rules prohibiting “taunting” and “excessive celebration,” but that’s just appeasement. Within the context of a mainstream, Eminemed culture, you can only crack down so much.

Some things just can’t be mandated. Class is one. Sayers had it; Sanders didn’t. The latter, alas, is much more the norm now — under the euphemistic cover of being “entertainers.” Wasn’t the XFL enough?

But there is something we can do. Let’s, at least, not be enablers.

If you exultantly high-five somebody while Warren Sapp is waddling around flapping everything that will flap, you are part of the problem. And you know you didn’t like it one bit when the Philadelphia Eagles’ Duce Staley crawled around on all fours simulating a dog in search of a fire hydrant against the Bucs last month. If nothing else, let’s at least not condone such “exuberant” demonstrations in our own. We should at least be able to control that.

But I doubt it.

There’s good reason for all the euphoria that surrounded the Devil Rays’ hiring of Lou Piniella. He’s arguably the best manager in baseball, not just the best candidate available.

Piniella’s track record of success prominently — and pertinently — features Seattle. Before his 10-year tenure there, the Mariners had been a hauntingly familiar, sad-sack, dome-homed loser. So bad, so poorly supported that the franchise seriously considered relocating — to St. Petersburg.

Piniella knows talent — and how to motivate it. He also can teach, a skill invaluable for the youth-dominated Rays.

He also brings uncommon passion to a franchise too accepting of laid-back losing.

Then there’s Lou the marketing coup and all the promotional promise inherent in the return of the native hero. The Malio’s crowd alone could be a major attendance spike. If there’s a St. Pete Times Forum in downtown Tampa, why not a Tampa Rays’ identity in downtown St. Pete?

But most of all, Piniella means credibility. The bedeviled Rays have become synonymous with losing and a go-to line for David Letterman. Piniella’s a winner. Big time.

In addition to the roots-and-family factor, something else clinched the deal for Piniella besides wads of money. He apparently likes what’s in the Rays’ talent pipeline. And he obviously got the right answers from Vince Naimoli and Chuck LaMar to no-nonsense questions about how this show will be run.

There is also this. Piniella, who is financially flush and hardly without prospects outside baseball, is a proud man. He doesn’t need to tack on a lot of losing at the end of one of the most successful managerial careers in major league annals.

But he also loves a challenge. Turning around the hometown Rays would be the ultimate, crowning achievement. He doubtless thinks it’s doable. He’s not the sort to pull a Casey Stengel and become a Met-like “Come See Lou Explode” promotional mascot for a bad baseball team.

Still, there’s no dearth of expert skeptics, not all of whom are in New York, who say he’s embarking on an ill-advised, legacy-skewing venture. Piniella, however, has never been known to make career decisions based on such consensus.

In fact, he’s already disproved Thomas Wolfe by going home again.

This is a prediction. But, more importantly, it’s also a preference.

Circle Saturday, Oct. 19. Penn State hosts Northwestern. It will result in a 330-something victory for Joe Paterno.

After the game, which should be one-sided, Paterno will make a dramatic announcement. He will end all the speculation about his status. He’ll announce that he is stepping down after this season.

The timing will be propitious. And not just because he will be doing the university a recruiting favor by giving them a head start to find a successor — and end all the speculation.

Consider that college football’s all time winningest 1-A coach is coming off of consecutive 5-6 seasons. For a coach who transcends the game and the prevalent win-at-all-costs ethic, it’s sad. It’s not right that his last years are marred by un-Paterno-like records.

He deserves better than the college football counterpart of Willie Mays stumbling after a fly ball as a Met or Hank Aaron not hitting his weight for the Brewers. Ted Williams hitting a home run on his last at-bat is more like it.

Paterno has embodied winner in his three-plus decades as Penn State head coach. His “noble experiment” of succeeding without compromising principles long ago secured his place in the pantheon of American sports icons.

An Ivy League grad, Paterno’s educated far beyond game plans and recruiting strategies. He expects his players to be more than one-dimensional extensions of the football program.

He has been good for — and to — the game, and he will be missed. But the nostalgic emotion of Paterno leaving shouldn’t be undermined by dispiriting days at the end. He must go out a winner. This is that season.

After the Northwestern victory, Penn State will have at least five — maybe more — victories to its credit. The remainder of the post NW schedule includes three more, eminently winnable, home games against Illinois, Virginia and Michigan State. Plus a road game against a relatively weak Indiana squad.

Interestingly enough, after Northwestern is a trip to Columbus to play Ohio State. Why not pump up the players a little more and, in effect, exhort them to win one for “Joepa?”

After its impressive start, Penn State is now a lock for a winning season, maybe a major bowl. Next year and those beyond are all wild cards. More 5-6’s could await. Or the pressures not to lose could impact Paterno’s health.

There are too many variables now associated with college football to guarantee more glory years for Penn State under Paterno.

The gradual decrease in the number of scholarships has resulted in a parity of talent nationally. And those prized blue-chip recruits, many of them black kids from inner cities, increasingly see an old guy who looks more like a shoemaker than a legendary coach who’s now supposed to help prep players for the pros.

Even more challenging, however, is a society that condones — and often encourages — boorish on-field behavior that is the antithesis of teamwork, sportsmanship and class. Paterno remains a notable holdout to such a self-congratulating, tasteless, in-your-face culture. But it gets tougher every year.

Go out the winner that you are, Joe. This is the year. Say it’s so, Joe.

And just do it.

First the good news. For now, the Tampa Bay Devil Rays have dodged the contraction bullet.

Now the bad news. Managing General Partner Vince Naimoli and General Manager Chuck LaMar, the folks most responsible for such an eminently contractible franchise, are still in charge.

As we now know, baseball’s strike-averting labor agreement will infuse the Rays with additional millions from revenue sharing, a luxury tax and a national television package. But after four years, all bets — and contraction bans — are off. In 2007 the owners will be free to rid the game of two loser franchises, and the players won’t contest it.

This means the Rays, saddled with the wrong owner in the wrong facility in an area that offers so many leisure alternatives to indoor baseball, will have four years to be competitive — or be gone.

Having a cache of cash won’t necessarily save the Rays from themselves. Not when there’s a track record of having ladled too much of it out to the Vinny Castillas, Greg Vaughns, Juan Guzmans and Wilson Alvarezes. Or trading prospects for the Danny Clyburns and Kevin Stockers. Only in a perverse D-Rays context, would Ben Grieve and Esteban Yan look like veritable bargains.

The Rays will never be the Yankees, but neither will any other George Steinbrenner-less franchise not located in New York. But there are models in Oakland and Minnesota. Emulating those efforts, however, requires prudent investment in the product, astute personnel decisions and aggressive marketing. And luck. And then winning.

But there are no guarantees — except that absent winning, this franchise is history in four years.

Among the more pointless exercises in all of sportsdom is the publishing of point spreads for pre-season NFL games. Why bother? Do people actually bet on this stuff? These are exhibitions featuring cameo performances by frontline players and lots of playing time for those not good enough to line up on Sundays. The only thing real is the ticket price.

And this just in. The Bucs are 3 1/2-point favorites against the Miami Dolphins in the exhibition opener Aug. 12. With or without Warren Sapp on offense.

When WFLA-TV axed Sports Director Chris Thomas after a 14-year run, it was making a statement on several levels. To wit:

* Thomas made too much money for too little air time.

* Not unlike the Devil Rays, News Channel 8, which already features uncommonly long-term, veteran co-anchors Bob Hite and Gail Sierens at 6 and 11 p.m., wanted to get younger and cheaper.

* The station wanted nothing more than the market norm — a generic, pleasant-faced news reader/reporter — not a “personality.”

* The station didn’t care that in the case of the iconoclastic Thomas, “personality” meant having the only sports-broadcast professional well-informed and talented enough to make it in bigger markets.

So the days of Wilson Alvarez, the oxymoronic “free” agent pitcher, are officially numbered. He’s near the end of the last year of his five-year contract. For those scoring at home, the portly southpaw has been paid $2,058,824 per win — all 17 of them. That also figures out to $100,000 per inning.

Officially, Alvarez now has left elbow tendinitis. Unofficially, the pain is lower on the team’s anatomy — right where the wallet fits.

Moreover, Alvarez passed on his chance to actually give something tangible back to the Rays after five years of masquerading as a prime time starting pitcher. He could have done that by retiring. Then the Rays would be off the hook for money still owed for this year’s bad pitching and ineffectual rounds of rehab, which obviously never included any sit-ups.

But he won’t.

“Whatever they think is best for the organization, I say do it,” disingenuously remarked Alvarez, who would still be obscenely paid should the Rays release him.

Let me state this up front. I really don’t like soccer THAT much.

It has, I’m certain, everything to do with never having played the game. Nor wanting to. Not being eye-foot oriented. Not understanding the game well enough to transcend “1-nil” scores, autocratic referees, red-card expulsions, the science of shirt-grabbing, Second Coming goal celebrations, running clocks and stoppage-time approximations.

But thank you, U.S. World Cup team, for a fortnight of escape and healthy nationalism.

In the aftermath of 9/11, we’ve become a society obsessed with security. Understandably so. There’s this strong correlation with survival. There was also that mushrooming melodrama between India and Pakistan.

Our media “diversions” have been pedophile priests, stock analysts, auditors, western wild fires and a Utah kidnapping. Locally, there’s pubic access TV, FCAT reactions, USF subplots, fast food stickups and the win-friends-and-influence-waterfront-folks campaign of Don Connolly.

And then there’s soccer. Of all things. Imagine feeling (almost) guilty about not getting up — or staying up — for those 2 a.m. games with Portugal and South Korea.

But even on replay, what was not to like about the U.S. team and its feisty, underdog effort?

Never was it more important for such a high profile U.S. team to look so good and look so much like, well, America. It was black and white and brown. Players of African, European and Hispanic descent. Mohawks, dreds, ponytails and buzz cuts.

More important was the deportment department. Was there ever a better time for a team on the ultimate world sports stage to properly act the part? Exuberant, articulate, polite and proud to be representing the U.S. No arrogant attitudes or boorish behavior. No trash talking in victory; no bad mouthing in defeat. No self-indulgent posturing.

They were sons and brothers and nephews and buddies and boyfriends and members of an extended American family that now includes more than 25 million soccer-playing kids. They acted like they wanted to make all of us proud, and they did. They acted like they were honored to be there — not like they were doing their country and their sponsors a favor between endorsements, court appearances and rehab stints.

Talk about a “dream team.”

The Tampa Bay Devil Rays won’t make the playoffs this season — nor should they be expected to. That much has already been decided by the skewed economics that now define Major League Baseball. The Rays are Third World baseball have-nots. At $34 million, their payroll is a quarter that of the New York Yankees.

But to be a baseball “have” also means having prudent judgment, as in whom you choose to overpay. Otherwise, the Dodgers and Orioles would have been in some recent World Series.

Part of the Rays’ “have-not” status is not having better ways to spend half that $34 million. The half that goes to Designated Out Greg Vaughn and perpetually rehabbing, current Disabled Listee Wilson Alvarez. And speaking of “Another Taco, Please” Alvarez, since when does he have muscles to pull?

It’s the Final Four — but nothing like March Madness. And refreshingly so.

Instead of a collegiate sport that is all about television money and bad graduation rates, the Final Four of Chess, which this year featured the University of Texas at Dallas, the University of Maryland-Baltimore County, Stanford and Harvard, is about skilled players who are great students. What an intercollegiate concept.

“Chess is a way of making a name for a strong university that doesn’t have a 300- or 400-year history like Harvard,” explains Tim Redman, the director of the chess program at UTD, this year’s national champion.

“Recruiting is good for schools because chess players are bright,” points out Frank Niro, executive director of the U.S. Chess Federation. “It automatically brings good students to the schools.”

It won’t, however, bring ESPN, Nike and NBA lottery picks. Which is the point.