Opinions to go Online

• Whether the Tampa Bay Lightning make the playoffs or not this year, this much is certain: Either General Manager Brian Lawton or head coach Rick Tocchet will be gone. That was assured after Lawton fired Tocchet’s assistant – and close friend – Wes Walz without consulting – merely informing – Tocchet. Lawton then brought in his friend, successful, minor league (Norfolk) coach Jim Johnson. Disagreements happen — and can be worked through. An undermining, public act of disrespect can’t. New owner Jeff Vinik didn’t need this subplot.
• Word is that New York is now the favorite for the 2014 Super Bowl. It’s part of the NFL’s strategic habit of rewarding markets with new stadiums. But a football game — let alone this one — in an open-air stadium in East Rutherford, N.J. in February?
• And smooth move by that Tampa Bay Bucs’ staffer who, during a Senior Bowl player interview, asked former Florida State safety Myron Rolle if he felt he had “deserted” his teammates by leaving school after his junior year. Rolle, a pre-med major with designs on being a neurosurgeon, spent his senior year as a Rhodes scholar at Oxford. Would that the Seminoles — and the NFL — had more such Rolle models.
• Oh, Canada: Congratulations to the Canadian hockey team on its thrilling, sudden-death, Olympic gold-medal win over the U.S. on Sunday. Too bad Marty St. Louis or Steve Stamkos couldn’t have been part of it to ease the nationalistic disappointment back home. But that just tells you how many talented players were available to Canada.

But here’s another thought. Why not make Olympic hockey a double elimination tournament, as is done with NCAA baseball? That way, when the two bracket winners meet in the final – and one is undefeated and the other has a loss (to its gold medal opponent) — the one-loss team has to win two in a row to earn gold.

• Almost overshadowed by hockey on the Olympics’ last weekend was the impressive performance of Steve Holcomb, who piloted the four-man U.S. bobsled to a gold-medal. The U.S. hadn’t won the event since 1948. Moreover, the portly Holcomb, who had given up chasing his dream because of a degenerative eye condition, had made a remarkable comeback after successful surgery.

      Only one downside, and I’ll be delicate. Bobsledders wear really, uh, snug, skin-

      tight uniforms. It helps to be ripped. It hurts to be flabby. If there’s a next time,

      Steve, work in a salad. If not, work in a girdle and a cup.

It’s now a quadrennial happening: not just the Winter Olympic Games — but their increasing spectator-sport appeal.

Through the first week of the Vancouver Games, NBC reports that more than 160 million Americans – or more than half the country – have watched the Olympics. And I know I’m not the only viewer seduced by a confluence of unlikely sports – from ones I can barely identify, let alone explain — such as biathlon and curling — to the marquee staples of alpine skiing and figure skating. And none of those sleds are named “Rosebud.”

The reasons are multiple – and manifest.

The novelty. Our mass-culture, spectator sports are football, baseball and basketball. With allowances for golf, tennis and soccer. And apologies to NASCAR. Soaring ski-jumpers and acrobatic snowboarders and aerialists are either foreign or fringe. We don’t identify with such participants; we simply watch in wonder.  For once, the word “awesome” actually fits.

And because the Games come during basketball season, it provides, frankly, a welcome respite – as well as a societal juxtaposition. From Lindsey Vonn and Shaun White to Apolo Ohno and Shani Davis to Kevin Lysacek and Bode Miller, the athletes are uniformly engaging and well spoken. And seemingly tattoo-challenged behind those cover-all uniforms. And how refreshing to see winners who know the difference between triumphant celebration and look-at-me boorishness.  

The nationalism. I still experience a visceral jolt when I hear Al Michaels’ rhetorically ask if we “still believe in miracles?” That’s sports shorthand for the ultimate, unfathomable upset: that of the Soviet Union’s Big Red Hockey Machine by a bunch of amateur Americans in 1980 at Lake Placid. “The Miracle on Ice” is enough to evoke nostalgia for the simpler, geopolitical dynamics of the Cold War.

And while we all want to — and do — appreciate the best in the world, we can’t help rooting for fellow Americans. It makes the viewing that much more compelling. All those Canadians — who mortgage all their emotions on hockey and who shouted “Bleep USA” after the Americans upset Canada last Sunday — would obviously understand.

And by the way, shouldn’t figure skater Evan Lysacek be awarded a second medal, this one for grace under fire – by a fusillade of Russian sour grapes? Major plaudits for how he handled the classless controversy surrounding his gold medal margin over Russian legend-in-the-making Yvgeni Plushenko.

The Ultimate. With the possible exception of hockey (see Cup, Stanley), Winter Olympic events represent the various sports’ ultimate forum. There’s nothing more prized than Olympic gold. The same can’t be said for the Summer Games – where the basketball, soccer, baseball, tennis — and now golf — competitions, for example, are not their sports’ pinnacle events.

The motivation. The aforementioned curling is a prime example. As a hybrid of shuffleboard and billiards, it hardly excites. I mean, could darts, foosball and liar’s poker be looming? But I still find myself looking in on it. That’s because it’s as much about metaphor as medals.

Although the sport is growing, nobody’s getting rich over curling. And, yet, it embodies an Olympic ideal that more glamorous events can’t. It’s not about fame and fortune. It couldn’t be. There are no marketing bonanzas and sponsorship coups awaiting. There’s some local celebrity status, but not enough to obviate the need for a real job.

Curling is what participants do on their own. They do it because they love it, and because it’s doable that they can be among the very best in the world at something – if they are dedicated enough. They obviously are.

The back stories. The up-close-and-personal accounts are interesting and often moving. From the Chicago inner city black kid who grew up to be speed skating gold medalist Shani Davis to Bode Miller, the outrageously talented, bodacious skier who redeemed himself and grew into an Olympic champion.  

The Vancouver Games are now in the homestretch. It will be another four years before they resume in Sochi, Russia.

But, hey, next month is “March Madness.” Seems more aptly named than ever.

At some point, key St. Petersburg officials will surely see that when it comes to finding a permanent home for the Tampa Bay Rays, Hillsborough County interests aren’t so much meddling – as they are engaging on an issue of overwhelming regional importance. Surely.

St. Petersburg Mayor Bill Foster and the City Council should, along with the Rays and the ABC Coalition, be part of the creative, pragmatic brain-storming aimed at keeping the home team in the Tampa Bay market. Instead the irrational, head-in-the-sand St. Pete officials have behaved as if that 2027 Trop lease is sacrosanct and Hillsborough County Commission Chairman Ken Hagan is a saboteur because he invited the ABC Coalition to make a regional stadium-site presentation. And ABC, it should be noted, consists largely of Pinellas-county based executives – and was formed by former St. Petersburg Mayor Rick Baker.

This need not — indeed, must not — be a zero-sum game: downtown St. Petersburg – take it or leave it. An out-of-state market would take it. The “San Antonio Rays” would be the most likely legacy of such an exercise in provincial ego, obstinacy and stupidity.

That the regional Rays are ill-served by a (downtown St. Petersburg) facility on the western fringe of a demographically skewed marketplace is manifestly evident. That the Rays will not remain where they are through 2027 is a foregone reality to everyone but St. Pete operatives who still won’t even meet with ABC.

Two recent quotes are illustrative of the Rays’ situation.  

• “And I stated since the very first day I came in to anybody who would ask, and I was asked quite often, we’re not going to be there (Trop) through 2027. It just can’t happen. Baseball won’t allow it. Our partners in baseball won’t allow it. The other teams won’t allow it. And it’s just not the right thing for our organization, and quite frankly it’s not the right thing for our population.” – Rays’ owner Stuart Sternberg.
• “It boggles my mind that there is room for debate. They need a new stadium.” – Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig.

Obviously there will be no Trop-based Rays in 2027. Obviously there will be no Trop-based Rays well in advance of that. And common sense, let alone the findings of the ABC Coalition, are graphic reminders that downtown St. Pete, Trop scenarios notwithstanding, is not an acceptable stadium site in this challenging, hybrid market.

What also is unacceptable is an ongoing, cavalier approach by St. Petersburg officials that pits their perverse, parochial pride against the vested interest of the entire region. Everyone benefits if the Rays remain; the most conservative estimate of the franchise’s economic impact on the area is in excess of $160 million annually. Nobody wins if all that remains from a relocated franchise is the blame game.

Sure, the financial scenarios inherent in any viable plan to keep the Rays in Tampa Bay are more than problematic. Whether the sites are Channelside, the Florida Fairgrounds or St. Pete’s more politically palatable Gateway area. But all the more reason that narrow, counterproductive thinking cannot be countenanced. 

Amid the recriminations and post-mortems in the aftermath of that tragic luge accident at the Vancouver Olympics, one question was notably not asked. Is this event necessary?

Forget for now the relative inexperience and strategic mistakes made by the 21-year-old victim from the Republic of Georgia. Or that red flags were unfurled all week long in practice runs about the $105-million course designed to push speed to ever-outer limits.

Put it this way: Do the Olympics really need an event that turns an athlete — in a feet-first supine position — into a human projectile?

Not that luge is a glamorous, cornerstone event. Up until 1964, the winter games managed without it. Perhaps they could manage to do so again.