CAUGHT IN THE "WEBB"

My own personal Editorial: The Best Ever!!

Sports Federations: Faceless, toothless, secretive, inept ... the men who run global sport

Commentary by Nicole Jeffery

INTERNATIONAL sports federations are like referees - they only hit the headlines when they blunder.

To most of the world's sports followers, the men who run international sport are faceless and often toothless.

Conservative, political, reactive, secretive, Eurocentric, male-dominated - these are some of the observations made this week about the major international federations by those who have experience with them.

It is a week in which both the international soccer federation (FIFA) and the International Cricket Council (ICC) have been dragged blinking into the spotlight to deal with crises assailing their respective domains.

FIFA sat on its hands for days after the refereeing controversies that enveloped two of its second round matches at the World Cup in South Africa (a legitimate goal disallowed to England and one allowed to Argentina that should not have been), before belatedly announcing that it had apologised to the two countries disadvantaged and would consider introducing video technology for goal-line decisions in future.

The ICC, meanwhile, has ignored its own protocols to reject former prime minister John Howard as the next president of the organisation, despite his position as the preferred nominee of the two countries (Australia and New Zealand) charged with selecting the next leader in a rotating presidency system. These two incidents have raised questions about the fitness of these bodies to govern, and they are not alone.

Most international sports federations have shown similar ineptitude in their management of major issues in recent times.

Almost a year after the Berlin world championships, the International Association of Athletics Federations is still unable to resolve the issue of South African Caster Semenya, whose gender was queried after she trounced the world's best women to win the 800m title. She remains in limbo.

The international swimming federation (FINA) did more backflips than its leading divers last year as it wrestled with the issue of performance-enhancing swimsuits technology, banning them, then allowing them for the world titles before banning them again.

For decades, the international cycling union (UCI) refused to address the problem of rampant doping in its ranks, only taking stern measures to clean up the sport under current president Pat McQuaid.

The practice of failing to acknowledge a problem until it becomes a crisis is commonplace in international sports federations.

One international sports observer noted this week that sports frequently succeed despite the efforts of their ruling bodies rather than because of them.

"They can be staggeringly inept and still succeed because of the attractiveness of their product," he said.

Former ICC chief executive Malcolm Speed, who has also served as a senior basketball administrator, is well qualified to explain how these bodies tick.

Speed, who now lectures in sports law and management at Melbourne and Deakin Universities, was ousted from his ICC position for trying to call the Zimbabwe cricket board to account. He describes the current ICC board as "dysfunctional".

"The ICC strategic plan says that it should be transparent and well-governed," Speed said.

"But what happened this week is that seven countries got to together the night before the meeting, wrote a letter opposing John Howard, refused to give Howard the opportunity to speak at the meeting and didn't give him any reason for rejecting him.

"There's a lot of rhetoric about transparency and openness and accountability in these bodies but in practice it rarely applies."

Technically, international federations are accountable to their member countries, but, practically, few of them face their membership directly more than once a year. Speed argues that it is "the media and public" who are in a position to hold the governing bodies to account.

But this tends to happen only once the integrity of sport is threatened and there is an outcry.

"The problem with most of these sports is that the system promotes longevity in its officials," he said.

"You have to work your way up the ladder from state, to national to international, so it doesn't necessarily promote ability. You end up with male-dominated boards who have survived the system. They have a lot of stake-holders and that makes it very difficult to make quick decisions. In cricket we had a 10-year battle to get in technology to assist umpires."

Melbourne barrister Paul Hayes, an expert in international sports law, agrees that the archaic structures of international federations frequently prevent them from acting promptly in the best interests of their sport.

"The reality is that an IF is a coalition of up to 200 national federations and its make up is determined by politics," Hayes said.

"At the top their decision-making is clouded by commercial concerns and political imperatives. They are reactive rather than proactive because they are intensely conservative. That's probably why FIFA is paralysed by what looks like an obvious reform.

"The UN is a good model to compare with because it has similar difficulty pulling all states into line."

Like Speed, he identifies the base problem as accountability. Few sports employ the level of corporate governance required by a public company, despite the overwhelming public interest in effective leadership of popular sports.

Kristine Toohey, of Griffith University, believes those federations that are the most successful commercially often have the worst management.

"The more money there is, the more stake-holders there are, the more difficult it becomes," Toohey said. "They are self-perpetuating political entities that need to maintain their position and not put their factions offside, lest they become like the former Australian PM."

Toohey also uses the UN comparison.

"To be democratic you have to include everyone, and once you do that the decision-making process is not going to be streamlined, but we should still expect clear and transparent decision-making," she said. "They are being held to high standards but then what other events hold the world's attention like a World Cup or Olympic Games?"

Speed believes the AFL's management structure, whereby the stakeholders give their decision-making power to an independent commission with professional skills, is the most effective model for good governance in sport.

"The key characteristics of a successful organisation revolve around authority, responsibility and an appropriate level of control," he said.

For Nike, It's a Matter of Profit Over Class

Commentary by Greg Couch

I'm not buying, and you shouldn't either. We can't let Tiger Woods and Nike fool us again.

One day before Woods returned to golf for the first round of the Masters, he and Nike have combined on a new TV commercial, and let me give you a one-word review of it:

Disgusting. Woods is using his dead father to bail him out of his image problem. Nike has dropped to a new low, too.

How dumb do Woods and Nike think we are? They are banking -- and that's the exact right word -- on the idea that we will fall for their act again.

In the commercial we hear words spoken by Earl Woods:

"Tiger, I am more prone to being inquisitive, to promote discussion. I want to find out what your thinking was. I want to find out what your feelings are. And did you learn anything?"

Meanwhile, Woods stands there staring at the screen in a close-up in black and white, blinking.

We're supposed to think that Woods' father is scolding him for his recent scandal. The implication is that his father would be "inquisitive," not judgmental.

The defense for Woods throughout the revelations of all his girlfriends, from porn stars to pancake waitresses, is that he didn't create that image. The marketers did. The media did.

The truth is, we are all in on this together. Whoever the seller is, someone has to be the buyer, too. We were all duped before somehow by the image that's been created about Woods.

See, it's not just about Woods. It's about us, too. It's about how we want to turn great athletes into superheroes. We want to believe, so we participate in the illusion.

But companies like Nike take advantage of our need to admire. This commercial is the perfect low-class example, proof of a mean-spirited campaign to treat us like fools again. Nike and Woods are taking the sympathy factor of a dead father to capitalize and profit from Woods' scandal.

They are trying to build him up again out of nothing, repackage him. And it was a false packaging in the first place. Remember when you believed in Tiger? Well, here it is, believe again. All you have to do is close your eyes and try.

How slimy Nike is. This marketing behemoth is way too important in our lives.

Take a look at this commercial. Woods and Nike were in on this together. If Woods didn't want it to happen, didn't want his father used in this way, then he could have stopped it.

Nike did not run a commercial with Earl Woods' words without running it by Tiger first.

It's such a good and perfect look at the seed of the trouble.

Nike says it made this commercial to show support for Woods. Uh, no. It wanted to make money from the scandal. From all the hard feelings and personal pain, Nike saw opportunity.

On Monday, Woods sat and talked to the media in Augusta, trying to rebuild the image. I'll admit I was duped. I was. I always thought it was none of our business which consenting adults Woods had sex with. He did not owe the public an apology for his sex life.

Yes, he's a public figure, but our business does not extend into his bedroom. Or, in Woods' case, into the backseat of his car.

Or God knows where else.

When he gave his formal apology weeks ago, that was the first time he had done anything to the public. When he decided he owed an apology, it had to be real and honest.

Instead, it was fake and robotic. And a fake apology is an insult.

The only time he showed real emotion was when he scolded the media, which uncovered the true Tiger and ruined the fake one.

He came back Monday and tried again, this time taking questions. He talked about how poorly he had behaved, how much therapy had helped him. Since then, he has been signing autographs and smiling and trying to make up for it.

Well, I thought that's what he was doing, a humbled hero. But this commercial makes it fake again.

It has all been choreographed, hasn't it? It is all for show, for image.

So Woods is going to save an endorsement deal. That's what these past few days were about.

Apparently, that's all that Woods is about.

Maybe he didn't sway from his principles. Maybe there was nothing there in the first place. The image comes from dust.

But it sure did pay off.

He's a great golfer, and fun to watch. Let's just stick with that. It's real.

But anything else?

Not buying.

(by Greg Couch)

Tennessee Coach, Bruce Pearl speaks to media on 'Gun-Culture' at his school.

Gun-Culture in Sports Causing Alot of Headscratching

Commentary by Mike Strange

The room for Bruce Pearl's weekly media chat was considerably more crowded than usual Monday. Big win at Memphis to discuss, of course. And - duh! - No. 1 Kansas coming to town.

Only neither of the above topics ever came up, really.

"I would have preferred coming in here today and have about half of you here,'' Pearl said somberly.

For the second time in less than two months, University of Tennessee athletes and guns are in the headlines.

In November, it was three of Lane Kiffin's football players. Now, it's four of Pearl's basketball players.

In either case, marijuana is involved but takes a back seat to a bigger issue.
Not to minimize marijuana. It is illegal, a violation of team and NCAA rules. But we're used to marijuana stories.

Are we going to have to get used to gun stories, too?

I sincerely hope not.

College athletes packing guns? I don't get it. I'm betting a majority of troubled Vol fans are with me on that one. Pearl is.

"The gun culture is something I don't understand at all,'' he said Sunday night after he practiced what was left of his squad after four indefinite suspensions. "It's all so new to me.

"I've been coaching in college for 31 years and this will be the first gun incident.''

Confession: I'm not a gun guy. Never had one. Don't want one. But I enjoy Clint Eastwood movies and fully respect your constitutional right to bear arms. I'm not looking for a fight with the NRA.

So I'm trying to get my middle-aged head around what Tyler Smith, Cameron Tatum, Melvin Goins and Brian Williams were up to, cruising through town at midday New Year's Day with a couple of handguns in the car.

Presumably, they were not on their way to a half-baked stickup like the one footballers Nu'Keese Richardson and Mike Edwards allegedly perpetrated in November.
On the other hand, these weren't pellet guns. They were the real thing. With a clip of real bullets.

Handguns are quite in vogue among professional athletes. I read where NFL veteran Jabar Gaffney estimated "90 percent" of NFL players had a gun.
That figure is probably overstated, at least a bit. But pro athletes are high-profile guys with high-profile salaries and, in some cases, flashing high-profile bling. They are targets and feel they need protection. From each other, even.

The Vols don't even take the prize for the most publicized gun incident over the holidays. NBA teammates Gilbert Arenas and Javaris Crittenden are alleged to have drawn on each other in the locker room.

College athletes may be famous but they're not rich. Thus, if they're minding their own student-athlete business, from whom would they need protection?

But, they love to emulate pro athletes in almost every way. Is packing a piece just a misguided form of hero-worship?

Is a gun a status symbol among young males? Is it an accessory stylized by the rap or hip-hop culture? Just grasping here, folks. If it's going to become an issue in college sports I'd like to get a handle on it.

At UT, all of a sudden, it already is an issue.

Pearl, on Monday, was asked how he thought his team would fare on the court without the suspended players.

"The task at hand is formidable,'' he said. "But we have got weapons. We have still got weapons.'' Then he stopped and grimaced, realizing his untimely choice of words.
"That's terrible,'' he said. "I apologize.''

Tiger Woods Getting Little Support From The Black Community

Commentary by Terence Moore:

The revelations went from every day to every hour after Eldrick Tont Woods slammed his Escalade into that fire hydrant and tree during Thanksgiving Weekend. Now there isn't a nanosecond that passes without something else happening in the suddenly endless soap opera called As The Tiger Goes From Roaring to Purring.

This feels like that O.J. thing.

Not only that, the coverage of Michael Vick's dogfighting issues was in the vicinity of white Broncos, bloody gloves and Johnny Cochran.

To a lesser extent, there were those controversies for the Keeping It Real King named Allen Iverson, otherwise known as A.I., or The Answer, or just plain trouble, especially since he wasn't practicing. There also was that other initials guy, T.O., and his messes, combined with those of other NFL knuckleheads of yore, ranging from Randy Moss to Chad Whatever He Wishes To Be Called These Days.

Oh, and Barry Bonds was heavily scrutinized after word surfaced that he ripped home runs by doing more than just eating all of his vegetables.

Here's my point: During the early and intense stretches when the media continued to spend every news cycle exposing the personal flaws of O.J., Vick, Iverson and the rest, there was a different response inside the African-American community to those athletes who happen to be black compared to its response to Woods who happens to be, well, I'll get to that in a moment.

Those other athletes had one of the world's most supportive casts. They had an overwhelming number of folks in the African-American community standing firmly and loudly behind them -- no matter what. They had Jesse and Al waiting to pounce in the background, if they hadn't done so already. They had black ministers across the country asking for special prayers in their name. They had folks in barbershops throughout African-American communities talking about conspiracies.

Mostly, despite everything those in black America had seen or heard about the events surrounding O.J., Vick, Iverson and the rest, they had unconditional love.

For Woods, not so much.

Actually, not at all, and Woods has nobody to blame but Woods.

It goes back to April 1997 when he famously took a nine-iron to the face of blacks by telling Oprah Winfrey on her couch that he wasn't black. He said he wasn't white, either. He said, given that his father is black and that his mother is Asian, he spent his youth inventing a word for himself called "Cablinasian."

Just like that, in the hearts of many African-Americans, Woods was on his own. They still cherished his splendid journey in search of becoming more prolific than Bobby Jones, Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus. That's because they still viewed Tiger as black, whether he liked it or not. It's just that, despite O.J. and Bonds, for instance, who joined Woods in having mixed marriages to the chagrin of some, and despite O.J. and Bonds going to extremes to project colorless images throughout their careers, they never pushed away their African-American heritage in a dramatic way.

Tiger did. In fact, he did so by mentioning that Cablinasian silliness with his black father smiling by his side on national television.

I was among a slew of African-Americans who weren't amused back then, and I wrote as much as a sports columnist for the Atlanta Journal-Journal Constitution. The headline said everything you need to know about the tone of my column: "Wake up, Tiger. This is America and that means you're black."

Needless to say, television and radio airways sizzled over my Tiger comments deep in the heart of Dixie. This was before e-mail became popular, so the newspaper was flooded with phone messages, letters and faxes.

In the midst of it all, I got a call at home from Chicago.

Somebody named "Oprah" was on the other line.

"Yes, this really is Oprah," said THAT Oprah, adding that she was a frequent reader of my column. She wanted me to appear on her show the following week to discuss, not only what I wrote about Tiger's "Cablinasian" statement, but about Fuzzy Zoeller's remarks after Woods won the first of his four Masters that spring. Let's just say that Zoeller wasn't exactly gracious after he bombed in Augusta, Ga., back then while the upstart Woods crushed his competition.

As Zoeller headed for the clubhouse, somebody asked his opinion of Tiger's rout. "He's doing quite well, pretty impressive," Zoeller said. "That little boy is driving well, and he's putting well. He's doing everything it takes to win."

Then Zoeller thought about the Master's Club Championship Dinner that features the previous year's winner selecting the menu. Zoeller said, "So you know what you guys do when (Woods) gets in here? You pat him on the back and say congratulations and enjoy it and tell him not to serve fried chicken next year. Got it?"

Afterward, Zoeller smirked, snapped his fingers and added while walking away from the cameras, "Or collard greens or whatever the hell they serve."

To translate: Zoeller thought Woods was black -- you know, whether Woods liked it or not, and that's what I said on Oprah's show. In addition, I repeated what I wrote for the Atlanta newspaper, "Tiger Woods is fooling himself to think that just because he's Tiger Woods, he has transcended everything else in society. This is the real world, and in the real world of America, the one-drop rule still applies.

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"In the old days, there used to be laws on the books that said, if you have one drop of black blood in you, you are black. Well, that's still unofficially the case in the minds of many in America. One drop of black blood, and you're black.

"Tiger, you're not green. You're not yellow. You're not purple. You're not Asian. You're not Cablinasian. You're black."

Now, 12 years after I delivered those remarks to Tiger, Oprah and the nation, Tiger still is black. That said, whether he views himself as black, Asian, Cablinasian or Martian, it doesn't matter. He is in trouble. He is getting pounded by legitimate and illegitimate reports about everything you can imagine. His slew of mistresses (almost exclusively blondes, just like his wife). The possibility that he was under the influence of alcohol and prescription drugs when he crashed his SUV near his home nearly two weeks ago and several non-Tiger news conferences ago. The fact that the image that he carefully nurtured as Wally Cleaver was a fraud.

He really was Eddie Haskell.

It's all a shame, really. So is the fact that most of black couldn't care less, because that's the way Woods wanted it.

Tiger Woods: Anatomy of a Scandal

Commentary by Alex Altman:

To borrow a timely euphemism, athletes "transgress" so often that when it comes time to calculate the damage, the candor of the confession usually trumps the severity of the sin. Tiger Woods shanked his apology, waiting several excruciating days to state that he had "let his family down" and was "far short of perfect." Alleged mistresses are popping up to dish details of late-night trysts, fans are aghast and the pitchfork-wielding pundits are bloodying their former hero with barely concealed glee. But instead of demonizing a star who was worshipped by millions, it's worth pausing to consider why so many people feel let down by his behavior.

Groomed for greatness from infancy, Woods is the rare phenom to fulfill his promise. He's a multiethnic star with a megawatt smile and what was a clean-living image — qualities he harnessed to become the consummate corporate pitchman, the world's richest athlete for eight years running and the target of unending idolatry. When athletes meet the stratospheric expectations heaped upon them, we have fewer incentives to unwrap their shiny packaging. Now that Tiger's brand has been dented, fans who bought Nikes or quaffed Gatorade at his urging may be channeling their disillusionment into moral outrage. They're less likely to give Tiger a mulligan for his behavior after having spent countless afternoons watching him stalk the course and trounce competitors.

Woods missed a real chance to cushion his fall. His apology was vague and defensive, the feigned surprise at the harsh glare of "tabloid scrutiny" an approach that missed its mark. "I have not been true to my values," he told us. Probably so, but the statement was unverifiable; Woods calibrated his image as carefully as any man alive. Burned by a brash, freewheeling interview in GQ early in his career, he shrank from the spotlight even while courting it to augment his fortune. He shut out the press, cloistered his family in ritzy enclaves, abhorred distractions. This is a guy whose $20 million yacht is named Privacy. For years his interviews have been as scripted and predictable as his Sunday tournament garb, so aggressively bland that those of us who prefer our superstars a little grimy embraced his profane outbursts and predilection for hurling clubs on the course as a welcome dash of humanity. Fans may have loved Tiger, but they never really knew him. They simply knew they were backing a winner, and they basked in the reflected glory.

That same success is the key to his resurrection. As much as we love tearing down our idols, we're suckers for tales of redemption, and for athletes, that story arc bends through the winner's circle. We never forgave Mark McGwire for the fiasco of his congressional testimony because he was done clubbing home runs. Were Pete Rose still hustling around the basepaths, the stain of his wagers would've long since faded. But history shows that had they been able to atone on the playing field, they might've earned back their pedestals. Kobe Bryant, whose jersey is again the NBA's most popular, has buried his legal troubles in the confetti of his latest championship. When the New York Yankees captured their 27th title in November, Alex Rodriguez's steroid use — a scandal botched as badly, from a p.r. standpoint, as Woods' mysterious car accident — took a backseat to story lines about how the revelation liberated him to focus on connecting with his teammates.

Right now it may be hard to muster much sympathy for Tiger, who could comfortably bandage his wounds in $100 bills and still have a few hundred million to spare. But history's best golfer will undoubtedly seize the chance to repair his reputation the way he earned it in the first place. One Sunday next year, Woods will catch fire, tear past the competition and hoist another trophy. When that happens, let's hope fans remember that public prowess does not equal private virtue, and that we should reserve our adulation for those whom we know are actually deserving.

Was it Really Worth It?

Commentary by Mike Hurst

CASTER Semenya has started a bizarre daily ritual in which she relives the best and worst moment of her athletics career.

The sexually ambiguous South African teenager plays a recording of her run to victory in the women's 800m at the world championships in Berlin, watches as she receives the gold medal.

Then she repeats the commentator's words: "But is she a man or is she a woman? But is she a man or is she a woman?"

The confronting routine, reported by South Africa's Weekend Argus, is believed to be part of therapy to help the 18-year-old cope with the fallout from her win.

So it has come to this.

A young person's life is in disarray at best, danger at worst because the adults - most of them self-appointed - who presumed to guide her thought more of the glory which would be reflected on them than they did of the giant burden Semenya would be left to carry.

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Athletics South Africa president Leonard Chuene and his equally ruthless retinue had devised a plan with their coaching consultant Ekkart Arbeit, the former East German doping expert and former Stasi spy, that their intersex superstar would win a gold medal in Berlin and the burden of proof that she was anything other than a "normal" female would be on the International Association of Athletics Federations.

Chuene denied Semenya was intersexual, denied gender verification tests had been conducted on her, denied (still to this day) the IAAF any access to Semenya and accused the IAAF of being "racist" and "sexist" towards her by questioning her gender.

The Daily Telegraph exposed his fraud when we revealed in a world exclusive on September 11 that Semenya was a hermaphrodite, or intersexual, with no womb or ovaries but internal testes which generated three times the testosterone of a "normal" female and are a major cancer risk.

Chuene's bluff had been not only called, but broken down as a few honest men, such as former South African coach Wilfred Daniels, found the courage and further evidence to accuse the ASA chief of lying.

It was a charge Chuene confessed to at the weekend, although he still has yet to tell the whole truth.

Daniels told The Telegraph last night he did not know whether Semenya even now has been informed of the findings and possible health implications of the sex tests conducted on her on August 7 in Pretoria.

"Of course it's important she knows," Daniels said.

"That's why it's sad the IAAF (which has its own results of tests conducted in Berlin) can't contact her. In the meanwhile there might be a medical condition she needs to know about."

The IAAF results are being reviewed by a panel of experts and the executive council will make a decision about Semenya's future in the sport at their next meeting on November 20-21.

But a sombre Daniels, the most knowledgeable person on athletics at ASA until he resigned early this month, believes she has no future in the sport.

"For all intents and purposes, no matter what the IAAF says on November 21, I don't believe she can step on the track again as a woman," he said yesterday.

"The other competitors in the race will withdraw."

Daniels added: "The most amazing thing was that nobody at Athletics South Africa took the trouble to speak to Caster about this, to talk her through all the options and the consequences of competing and let her decide.

"But they needed the medal at all costs."

"Man" Just Ain't What He Used To Be

Editorial Book Review
by Deborah Smith


IF YOU think Usain Bolt is a fast runner, consider an Aboriginal man who was chasing kangaroos or waterbirds barefoot on a lake edge in south-western NSW about 20,000 years ago. Footprints he left in the mud reveal he was sprinting at 37 kilometres an hour, and still accelerating.

While this is less than the 42 kilometre an hour peak that Bolt, now the world’s fastest man, reaches in his 100-metre race, the Jamaican has the advantage of spiked shoes, a special track, a strict training regime, and money and glory to spur him on.

Bolt was also selected from a pool of the millions of men alive today, says Peter McAllister, author of a new book, Manthropology, the Science of the Inadequate Modern Male. Yet the ancient NSW athlete was one of only about 150,000 Aboriginal men on the continent then, and running on soft mud, so ‘‘it seems likely there were many prehistoric Australian males who could, if they trained, have regularly clocked 45 kilometres per hour and taken out every Olympic sprint in which they competed’’, he says.

The Australian palaeoanthropologist is out to ‘‘puncture some pretensions’’ and make the case that all is not well with modern males, that ‘‘as a class we are, in fact, the sorriest cohort of masculine Homo sapiens to ever walk the planet.’’

Today’s men are not only slow, they are weak, says McAllister, who has calculated the upper arm strength of La Ferrassie 2, a Neanderthal girl unearthed in a cave in France in 1909. His conclusion? ‘‘Any Neanderthal woman could have beaten Arnold Schwarzenegger in an arm wrestle’’.

Modern Olympic archers would also be no match for Mongol bowmen in the 12th century who shot with higher accuracy over distances six times as great and from galloping horses. And even in the metrosexual stakes, David Beckham, with his primping and preening, pales beside the nomadic Wodaabe men of Niger.

For hundreds of years they have competed for women in beauty contests in which they wear make-up, beaded costumes and ostrich-plume headdresses, fluttering and rolling their eyes and striking elegant poses to impress.

Nor would many men today be as sympathetic to their wives during childbirth as the Huichol Indian fathers of Mexico who tied strings to their testicles so the mothers could pull on them during labour to share the pain.

McAllister was a journalist and graphic artist before studying palaeoanthropology and archaeology at the University of New England and the University of Queensland. His scientific specialty is prehistoric tool use and what this reveals about the cognitive development of ancient people.

Learning about the extraordinary eyesight of a part-Aboriginal whaler, Tom Chaseland, sparked his interest in comparing the prowess of modern men against their ancestors. Chaseland astounded European sailors in the early 19th century with his ability to identify whales in the far distance and spot land from 50 kilometres away. ‘‘We tend to assume that in modern civilisation everything we do is better than how it has been done before,’’ McAllister says.

It took 18 months to write the book but it is based on years of collecting a vast array of data about ancient customs. Men over the millennia have endured countless gruesome practices, including unanaesthetised open skull surgery, which appears to have been surprisingly common; initiation rites involving gloves full of biting ants and genital swabs with stinging nettles; as well as multiple varieties of penile mutilation, including a rather mild Japanese tradition of inserting pearl-like beads permanently into the foreskin.

The horrors of the past overwhelm some of today’s events, from which the author makes some contentious conclusions. The Mongols were very successful terrorists, he says, killing 30 million to 60 million people in a 90-year history. ‘‘Without making light of the evil that modern Islamic jihadists have inflicted on the world, comparisons like these make it plain that Osama bin Laden wouldn’t have made noyan [captain] in any army of Genghis Khan.’’

But it was not just savagery, violence and machismo that ancient men excelled at. McAllister, whose next book will be about the mythology of Australia’s lost pygmy tribes, also dwells on the lifestyle of the Aka Pygmies of Western Congo. Dubbed the ‘‘best fathers in the world’’, the men spent most of their time raising the children, going so far as to offer their nipples for the babies to suck on.

In an evolutionary sense, life for the males of our species has mainly been about surviving long enough to have sex and pass on their genes, and the Mongols, again, were the world champions. DNA studies show that 16 million Eurasian men today are direct descendants of Genghis Khan and his close male relatives.

This drive also helps explain why some daredevils take extraordinary risks, such as train surfing. While research shows men who display bravery for altruistic reasons are attractive as heroes to women, the daredevils grossly overestimate their appeal to females. But by displaying their bravado to other men, which is usually the case in this kind of reckless behaviour, they may be indirectly increasing their chances of getting sex, by proving their right to associate with men who are more successful with women.

Anecdotal reports of roadies who score with the female groupies who hang around rock stars tallies with this idea, McAllister says.

Many men in the past, of course, simply took their women by force, and genetic studies of herpes suggest they did not have time for the niceties of oral sex. But when it came to understanding women, even the ancient Greeks, Indians and Chinese were aware of female ejaculation, something some sex researchers today still do not accept exists, he says.

Men in the past may have been faster, stronger and more physically skilled, but they were not superhuman. Modern men are genetically much the same. If they really wanted to, they could emulate these feats with some lifelong gruelling effort.

Aboriginal hunters of the Willandra Lakes region, for example, would have run tens of kilometres a day, chasing food, and Mongol archers trained from age two. Few men now get a chance to test their courage. ‘‘Everyday opportunities to face real peril have almost evaporated,’’ McAllister says.Many comparisons of past and present are obviously flawed. Would Japanese ninja really be better at finding bin Laden? How would they dodge bullets?

McAllister also ignores the many successes of modern society, including the rule of law and scientific inquiry. But in his own defence, he says his book is meant as ‘‘a prosecutor’s brief’’ against modern men, and one aim is to get people to think about how demographic factors, such as the large number of affluent people alive today, rather than some superior human intelligence, underpin modern achievement.

(Manthropology, published by Hachette Australia)

The Fans and The Players Don't Care..So Welcome Back Manny!

Commentary

Thanks to Manny Ramirez, I have seen the light.

When Ramirez becomes eligible for the Hall of Fame, he gets my vote. Same with all the other roiders.

Players, fans don't care about steroids so ... welcome back, Manny!

No longer will I try to hijack the game of baseball from its rightful owners - the fans and players.

Ramirez has provided the final proof that nobody cares if a player has more needles stuck in his butt than a porcupine. If the fans don't care, and the players don't care, who am I to care?

What am I? A knucklehead?

Ramirez returns to the Dodgers on Friday in San Diego, and it could get brutal out there at Petco. Who knows what might happen when those Padres' fans get all hopped up on microbrew and fish tacos?

"You may have a few knuckleheads that throw some disparaging comments his way," said Dodgers pitcher Scott Linebrink, formerly a Padre.

There you have it. Anyone who doesn't welcome Manny back to baseball as if he went away for two months to build an orphanage for war refugees is a knucklehead.

So I welcome Ramirez back - as a great slugger, fun guy, cool teammate and the man who has provided the final proof that steroids are OK, at least for professional baseball players.

During Ramirez's recent mini-tour of the minor leagues, shaking off the rust, he played a game at Lake Elsinore, home of the Padres' Class A affiliate. During pregame intros, he received a few boos, drowned out by wild cheering.

In five minor-league appearances, Ramirez drew five adoring SRO crowds. At one game the gate was 8,099. So intense was the love that Manny apparently feared for his safety. When 100 fans waited for him after one game, to grovel for the autograph of a man suspended 50 games for cheating, Ramirez used a police escort to escape through the mob to his car.

Ladies and gentlemen, Manny has left the building.

I'm not being critical. I'm not so heartless that I would come down on a man who has been dealing with the anguish of an unplanned pregnancy.

Ramirez didn't talk to the media during his whirlwind tour of the bushes. He said to one group of reporters hoping to interview him, "No thank you. Go to YouTube."

YouTube? Maybe on YouTube there's a video of Ramirez saying he's sorry for cheating, compromising his team, setting a bad example for kids and copping out with a lame excuse. Or maybe there isn't.

You can bet there won't be any knuckleheads in the Dodgers' clubhouse when their wayward son returns Friday. Baseball players are remarkably (and suspiciously) nonjudgmental of teammates who get busted for steroids. Joe Torre couldn't be more supportive of Ramirez if the skipper were to wear a dreadlocks wig.

When the Dodgers return to Dodger Stadium, you know how the fans are going to be. Oh, the love, especially in Mannywood, the section of seats near Ramirez's leftfield position where fans wear Mannywood T-shirts. (No, the T-shirts don't have faux-pregnancy belly padding.)

Ramirez will be more popular than ever in Los Angeles because his suspension has made him even more of a celebrity.

I learned a lesson many years ago when I worked in L.A. and wrote a column critical of Vin Scully for not reporting bad news, such as an impending players strike. I got a ton of mail, exactly 100 percent of it explaining what an idiot I was. Baseball is our escape from the real world, the writers wrote.

And if Los Angeles celebrities happen to be drugged up or artificially enhanced, hey, the deeper the mystique. If you can perform, all is forgiven. See: Kobe Bryant.

Ramirez has inspired outrage and indignation, but only among a few media people. L.A. Times columnist Bill Plaschke was spitting mad when he went to one of Manny's minor-league games and experienced an outpouring of unqualified love for Manny.

Plaschke might as well rail against the evils of Dodger Dogs.

And it's not just Dodgers' fans who are willing to embrace a fraudulent superstar. Right, San Francisco?

Anyway, if you're scoring at home, here's who has benefited from Manny being flim-flammy:

-- The Dodgers. They reacted to the loss of their slugger by rallying together and proving that they're not a one-man show.

-- Juan Pierre. Stepping in for Ramirez, Pierre rediscovered his chops.

-- Manny. He's well rested, pumped up from the adulation, ready to rip.

-- Me. I've seen the light. Seriously, give me my HOF ballot and get out of my way.

(by Scott Ostler)

Performance-Enhancing is No Laughing Matter

STEROIDS AND illegal performance-enhancing drugs are nothing to joke about, and the fact that an athlete like Danica Patrick could try to pass off an ill-conceived comment about drug use as a joke is the whole problem with the athletic/drug culture.

In an interview published in Sports Illustrated on Monday, Dan Patrick asked Danica Patrick if she would take performance-enhancing drugs if she would not get caught and it would lead to her winning the Indianapolis 500.

Danica, who finished third at Indy last month, said, "Well, then it's not cheating, is it? If nobody finds out?

"Yeah," she added. "It would be like finding a gray area. In motorsports, we work in gray areas a lot. You're trying to find where the holes are in the rule book."

After being criticized by U.S. Anti-Doping Agency CEO Travis Tygart, who said Patrick had "undercut what millions of parents try best to teach their kids every day in this country, that winners never cheat and cheaters never win," Danica went into spin control.

She told USA Today that her answer was a "bad joke," mentioned the sensitivity to PED usage in our society and said, "It's a shame kids think they have to do this to get ahead. It's very dangerous."

Yes, it is dangerous, and in some cases we've seen PED use by kids turn out to be deadly.

But the biggest shame in kids thinking that they have to use illegal drugs to get ahead is that they see repeated examples of it working every day in the world of professional athletics.

Major League Baseball suspends Manny Ramirez 50 games for violating league drug policy. But he still has a 2-year contract worth $45 million - less the games he misses because of the suspension.

Alex Rodriguez has already earned $230 million during his time in the majors and still has 9 years remaining on the 10-year, $275 million contract he signed before the 2008 season.

A-Rod has admitted that some of his $500 million performance was fueled by illegal performance-enhancing drugs.

The bank will still cash his checks.

Marion Jones lived a life of luxury, fame, fortune and adulation by cheating her way to the top of track and field and to Olympic glory by using illegal designer drugs.

Yes, she eventually fell, not because she cheated, but only because she lied to government law-enforcement agents when confronted about her drug use.

A complete list of drug-tainted athletes would fill not just my column but also likely the entire sports section, possibly the whole newspaper.

Football, basketball, hockey, soccer, cycling, track and field, swimming, gymnastics - virtually every sport, some more than others, have incidents of athletes reaching the highest level of achievement through the use of performance-enhancing drugs.

So really, tell me how we realistically expect impressionable kids with dreams of becoming famous athletes to shy away from performance-enhancing drugs when they have so many examples of it working for the greats they strive to emulate?

I'm not trying to pick on Danica Patrick because she just happens to be the flavor of the day. But she probably doesn't realize the worst part of her statement.

She apologized for the reference to illegal performance-enhancing drug use, but the motivation for doing it was ignored.

The excuse that it's not cheating if no one finds out goes against the basic core of competition, yet over time it has become the prevalent belief in sports.

The "gray areas" and "holes" in the rule book that Danica Patrick says everyone is trying to find are called "cheating."

Rule books aren't written in gray. The are written in crystal-clear black and white.

Looking for loopholes and gray areas to bend, flex or stretch is called "cheating."

Unfortunately, we've accepted that as how things are.

Instead of cheating, we refer to it as "gamesmanship" or "getting one up."

The use of performance-enhancing drugs is simply the natural extension of our laughing off the spitball to the extent that Gaylord Perry, an admitted cheater, could be voted into the Baseball Hall of Fame based on numbers achieved primarily through breaking the rules.

But that's where we are as a society - cheating isn't cheating unless you get caught. Sportsmanship is for losers, not champions.

Cheaters do prosper, and a lot of us are OK with that.

Danica Patrick was right. It was a joke, a joke on anyone who still held the belief that integrity, honor and fair play still have any meaning in sport. *

(by John Smallwood)

Swimsuits Making Record-Book a Mockery

(Commentary by Philip Hersh)

How I love it when events conspire to underscore a point made here previously.

Last week, I noted the absurd mess international swimming leaders have allowed hi-tech swimsuits to create in their sport.
And here is the latest evidence:

Friday at the French Swimming Championships, Alain Bernard set a 100-meter world record (46.94, first under 50 seconds) in an Arena suit that apparently will no longer be legal in competition after Jan. 1, 2010.

Saturday, Frederick Bousquet set a 50-meter world record (20.94, first under 21 seconds and a ridiculous .34 faster than the previous record, also set in high-tech apparel last year) in a Jaked suit that also will be illegal after Jan. 1.

Both suits were covered in polyurethane panels. The international swimming federation, (whose French acronym, FINA, obviously stands for Foolish Imbeciles and Nattering Asses), has ruled that suits can include no more than 50 percent polyurethane covering after Jan. 1.

And what about the world records set in them? FINA has no answer yet for that, even though there should be no question about chucking Bernard's record, since his suit had not yet received the necessary FINA approval for competition.

"It's totally out of control," Mark Schubert, USA swimming's national team director, told me by telephone Monday. "Now we're into speedboat driving."

You have to give the FINA pooh-bahs credit for achieving the impossible, though: they have managed to make the sport's current world records even more meaningless than all the track and field records that stand more than a decade after evidence surfaced to show they were set by doped Eastern Bloc athletes (and some westerners who obviously were doping to keep up with the competition).

The Italian coach who last year called the high-tech swimsuits "technological doping" was 100 percent right.

"It would be pretty unfair if a record was set in a suit that becomes illegal and was determined to give a decisive competitive advantge," Schubert said. "But the saddest thing is we no longer are able to compasre generations. Swimming should be about the swimmer, not the suit."

And while the suit may not account for all the difference in these two performances, it should be noted that Bernard swam more than a half-second slower in the final Saturday while wearing his old (and legal) suit than he had in Friday's semifinal.

The most pathetic part of this aquatic farce is not only is it ruining the sport but it also is blowing up in the faces of athletes.

Take backstroker Pierre Roger. His Jaked suit cracked at the start of the French Championships final, when Roger finished fifth in a time five seconds slower than the national record he set in the semifinal. That snafu cost him a place on France's team at the July World Championships.

My only question now is this: how long will the International Olympic Committee sit idly by while one of the premier sports on the Olympic program becomes a laughingstock?

The IOC always hides behind the mantra that each federation makes its own rules. But it was quick to intervene during the pairs skating affair in Salt Lake City, forcing the International Skating Union not only to award a second gold medal but to completely revise its judging process.

The IOC needs to step in and stop an arms race that is making equipment manufacturers rich and the sport poorer. FINA has let the manufacturers set the agenda (and wouldn't you love to know about the money being tossed around sub rosa?)

Of course, maybe no one at the IOC gets the irony that swimming is drowning itself in suits that make it too easy for swimmers to float.

Paris' Promise May Overshadow Her "Accountability" On The Court

Commentary by Ray Holloman:


Oklahoma's Courtney Paris will put her money where her promise is.
One month, and one season-ending Final Four loss to Louisville after saying she'd pay back the full cost of her scholarship if the Sooners
failed to win a national title, Paris affirmed that a guarantee is a guarantee.

"I do make good on the guarantee," Paris said. "Not today, though. Obviously, I don't have $64,000 waiting, but I do make good on it."

And in the name of Joe Willie Namath, this couldn't be any more ridiculous.

Paris' heart was certainly in the right place when she said made the original guarantee in March after the Sooners locked up the regular
season Big 12 title. But short of your occasional SEC football recruit, this isn't a pay-for-play enterprise. And even if it was, Paris more than paid the school back with this year's Final Four berth. In four seasons, she's put so many entries in the NCAA and Big 12 record books they may as well put her face on the cover.

In the loss to Louisville, she scored 16 points and pulled down 16 rebounds, her NCAA record 128th double-double, 112 of which were consecutive.

And her guarantee probably did more to market the University of Oklahoma women's basketball team than anything in the history of women's basketball.

Thanks to her guarantee, everyone knows who Paris is and that the Sooners are a pretty good team. Go ahead, name another Sooner women's player before Paris. We'll make a sandwich while
waiting.

But the idea that paying for her scholarship was in some way taking accountability for losing is nonsense.

Basketball is a team game. Joe Willie needed plenty of help in Super Bowl III. He didn't throw a single touchdown while his defense picked off the Colts four times.

Put Courtney on UConn, who is currently running amok through the field, and she lives up to the promise.

The only thing Paris had to be accountable for was that she represented the university well every night, and I'm sure we'd all agree that she did.

And unless Isiah Thomas becomes a GM again and decides to draft her in the NBA, she won't be paying it back anytime soon by playing
basketball.

According to the WNBA collective bargaining agreement, Paris will make $44,064 in base salary next year if she's a top-four
selection and a little more than $49,000 by her third year. The current maximum for WNBA contracts is just under $100,000.

Even if she doubles her salary by playing in Europe in the offseason, finding a way to
clear $64,000 and pay it back to the Sooners anytime in the near future is a financial feat that could land her a job with Warren Buffett.

Maybe a league sponsor will decide it's worth the publicity to drop a relative pittance even in this economy toward repaying her scholarship,
or perhaps there's family money heading to the cause as her father is former NFL lineman Bubba Paris. But neither is much of a lesson in
accountability.

And that's ignoring the simple fact that Oklahoma has already said it won't accept her money.

So in the end, it's a nice gesture turned just as empty as her lone trip to the Final Four. And maybe even worse, Paris will be remembered
for the promise of her scholarship and not the reality of her talent.

When Honor Meant True Victory: Ten Glorious Moments in Sports History

1. Lutz Long
Long jump, Olympics (1936)
German long jumper Lutz Long was hoping to win gold at the Berlin Games, where his main rival was the black American Jesse Owens. With Hitler watching, Owens foot-faulted twice in the qualifying round and was at risk of disqualification when Long suggested that he mark out his run again. Owens won gold, with the German landing silver. "You can melt down all the medals and cups I have won," Owens said afterwards, "and they wouldn't be worth the plating on the 24-carat friendship I felt for Lutz Long at that moment."

2. Jack Nicklaus
Ryder Cup (1969)
"I didn't think you were going to miss that putt, but I didn't want to give you the opportunity," - Jack Nicklaus's words to Tony Jacklin at the final hole of the 1969 Ryder Cup at Royal Birkdale have entered golfing folklore. At the 18th, in the most competitive tournament the decade had seen, the young Englishman was left with a two-foot putt to tie the match, knowing that if he missed it, the Cup would once again go to the US. To the fury of his team-mates, Nicklaus conceded the putt.

3. Andrew Flintoff
Second Test, the Ashes (2005)
The 2005 Test at Edgbaston was one of the most nerve-shredding cricket matches ever played, ending in a two-run victory for England - the narrowest margin in Ashes history. As the crowd celebrated, Andrew Flintoff spotted Brett Lee - who had withstood a barrage of brutish deliveries from the bowler - slumped in defeat, and offered him a consoling handshake. The TV cameras missed the moment, but it is commemorated in one of the most famous of sporting photographs.

4. John Landy
1500m, Australian championships (1956)
Roger Bannister's long-time rival, Australian distance runner John Landy had come agonisingly close to running the first four-minute mile two months before Bannister's feat in 1954. He was targeting the world mile record again, in 1956, when Ron Clarke, who was heading the field, stumbled and fell. As the other runners streamed past, Landy stopped, jogged back to help the other man to his feet, then won the race, finishing just six seconds outside the world record.

5. Stirling Moss
Portuguese Grand Prix (1958)
Acknowledged as the greatest racing driver never to have won the world drivers' championship, Stirling Moss would have won the 1958 title but for an act of gallantry during the Portuguese GP. His rival Mike Hawthorn was about to be docked points after his car spun off the track; Moss, who had witnessed the incident, insisted at the post-race disciplinary tribunal that Hawthorn had done nothing wrong. Hawthorn was reprieved and beat Moss to the world title by a single point.

6. Paolo di Canio
West Ham v Everton (2000)
Football bad boy Paolo di Canio, who famously said "I'm not a racist, I'm a fascist", was on the side of the angels when playing for West Ham against Everton in December 2000. The score was tied at 1-1 and the match was drifting into injury time when Di Canio had the chance to shoot into an empty net as a cross came in from the right wing. Many other Premiership players would have headed the ball home, but he caught the ball, having spotted that the Everton goalkeeper, Paul Gerrard, was lying on the ground injured. The game ended 1-1.

7. Mark Taylor
Australia v Pakistan (1998)
In a Test in Peshawar in 1998, Australian captain Mark Taylor stood on the threshold of greatness. He was 334 not out at the end of the second day, equalling the best Test score by an Australian batsman, set by Don Bradman in 1930. On a flat pitch, Taylor had the opportunity not only to overtake The Don but also to challenge Brian Lara's world record 375. But he declared overnight, more interested in pressing for an Australian victory than chasing personal glory. As it was, the game was drawn.

8. Judy Guinness
Fencing, Olympics (1932)
At the 1932 Olympics in Los Angeles, Judy Guinness stood to become the first ever Briton to win fencing gold. She was just 21, so it would have been a remarkable feather in her cap. But she was too young to have become streetwise in competition: after a closely contested final against Austrian Ellen Preis, Guinness was declared the winner by the judges, but she pointed out to them that they had missed two hits by her opponent. Guinness's honesty cost her the gold medal.

9. Bobby Jones
Golf, US Open (1925)
The great American golfer Bobby Jones won 13 majors between 1923 and 1930, and would have won 14 but for an incident in the 1925 US Open. In the first round, having hit his drive at the 10th into the rough, Jones was addressing his ball when it moved fractionally. Nobody else had noticed, but Jones called a one-stroke penalty on himself. He lost the tournament by the same margin. Congratulated afterwards on his honesty, he replied: "You might as well praise a man for not breaking into banks."

10. Irene Tidball
Wales v Germany (2008)
Welshwoman Irene Tidball, 73, enjoyed her 15 minutes of fame in October 2008, when she dropped everything to drive her son-in-law 500 miles to a football match. Gwilym Rees was planning to travel from Cardiff to Mönchengladbach to watch Wales play Germany in a World Cup qualifier, but missed the supporters' coach. As he could not afford a plane ticket, Mrs Tidball gallantly drove him all the way to Germany via Dover - kicking mother-in-law jokes into touch.

Max Davidson defends his selection
I wanted to choose the acts of good sportsmanship that were either gallant, generous, heart-warming or a mixture of the three. Jack Nicklaus's concession to Tony Jacklin at the end of the 1969 Ryder Cup is probably the most celebrated of all sporting gestures - pure class from one of the gentlemen of the game. But I think, for displaying courage as well as generosity, Lutz Long shades this contest. How many athletes pursuing Olympic gold have gone out of their way to offer tactical advice to their principal rival? The fact that Long extended the hand of friendship to Jesse Owens under the disapproving gaze of Adolf Hitler - who had made public his contempt of black athletes and expected the Games to justify his white supremacist manifesto - makes the humanity of his gesture all the more striking.

It's Not the Winning that Counts, by Max Davidson, is published by Little, Brown on 2 April.

Fascination With Collegiate Sports a Mystery To Foreigners

SPORTS COMMENTARY by Lawrence Donegan(Great Britain)

FedEx, Allstate Sugar, Tostitos, Konica Minolta, Gaylord Hotels, Bell Helicopter and on and on, all the way down to the San Diego County Credit Union.

To the uninitiated the names read like random selections from the Yellow Pages but to some people the link between them all is obvious.

If you are one of those people in the know, then you are probably American and you will almost certainly be aware that tonight sees the climax of the US college football season in Miami, where the University of Florida will play the University of Oklahoma in the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) National Championship game, televised by Rupert Murdoch's Fox Network, sponsored by FedEx.

Over the last 18 days there have been 33 such bowl games, pitting college teams from across the country against each other – all of them televised live, all of them sponsored by one of the aforementioned corporations, all of them avidly followed by those people for whom college sport is a religion.

When it comes to American socio-cultural mysteries the popularity of college sport is right up there with the popularity of Martha Stewart. We – by which I mean anyone who is not American – cannot understand it. Sure, the Boat Race might make a vaguely intriguing diversion in London on a cold spring morning but the idea of watching students play sport is bizarre, unless you happen to be related to one of the players. For one thing, the standard is poor. For another, Arsenal kick off at three o'clock.

Americans do not think like that, partly because they are not emotionally invested in club structures to the extent that we are. They have professional teams and leagues, and supporters are enthusiastic, but the spread of professional sport in the US is geographically narrow, confined in the main to the biggest urban centres. Vast swaths of the country – particularly the southern states – have no rooting interest. It is here that college sport really is elevated to the status of religion. It is a cultural thing.

But it is also a commercial thing. Stanley Eitzen, in his brilliant study of US college sports, Fair and Foul, points out that popularity of college sport was localised until the 1970s, until television embraced some of the bigger institutions, such as the University of Notre Dame.

Since then interest in college sport has increased exponentially. So, too, has the financial commitment of sponsors and television companies. For instance, Notre Dame currently receives $9m (£6m) from the NBC network for broadcast rights to its eight home football games – a lot of money, you might think, but loose change when measured against the investment of ESPN, the world's most profitable broadcast network, which last month announced it had agreed to pay $125m (£83m) a year for the rights to broadcast the five most prestigious college bowl games.

"With the new source of funds, university athletics departments became quasi-separate entities,'' writes Eitzen. "What was once a student-run activity has been transformed and now students have no voice in athletics policies. In the process college sport changed from an activity primarily for the participant to full-time commercial entertainment with large monetary payouts."

Where there is money there is greed and where there is greed there is bad behaviour. In order to secure a share of the money, colleges need to be successful on the field of play and in order to be successful they need to recruit the best athletes coming out of American high schools. Needless to say, this commercial imperative has in many cases swamped the primary purpose of any educational institution, which is to identify the most academically promising undergraduates, nurture them when they enrol and then send them out into the world equipped to make a contribution.

But when it comes to athletes, says Eitzen, such grand missions are abandoned. He writes about a college which recruited a student with an IQ of 86, simply because he was a terrific basketball player. Indeed, the story of college recruitment is the story of underhand behaviour, illegal payments and an attitude towards educational standards that might generously be described as "loose".

Last week the New York Times carried a fascinating piece about the recruitment of Jamarkus McFarland, an 18-year-old high school football player from Texas who was targeted by some of the country's top college teams. At the University of Texas he was taken to a party hosted by fans during an official recruitment visit to the campus. "Alcohol was all you can drink, money was not an option,'' he wrote afterwards. "Girls were acting wild by taking off their tops and pulling down their pants. Girls were also romancing each other. Some guys loved every minute of the freakiness some girls demonstrated. I have never attended a party of this magnitude." In the end he signed on the dotted line with Oklahoma.

As it so happens, McFarland is academically gifted but if he had been a dunce the chances are he would still have found a college willing to accept him because of his athletic abilities. College football players are six times more likely to receive special treatment – admitted despite not having achieved the required academic standard – than normal students, according to one study.

There is a small band of academics who have long railed against this obvious abuse of the system. "Athletes are the only students recruited for entertainment purposes and the only students who get grants not based on their educational aptitude but on their talent and potential as entertainers,'' says Professor Murray Sperber, one of the most prominent critics. "If colleges searched for and gave grants to up-and-coming rock stars so that they could entertain the university community and earn money for the school through concerts and tours, the educational authorities and public would call it a perversion of academic values."

Sperber makes an excellent point, not that anyone will pay attention to it on this night of all nights, when a nation will come to a stop for the BCS National Championship Game, sponsored by FedEx.

Mariotti On "The Round Mound of Clown"

Sports Commentary by Jay Mariotti:

He stood in the corner of a Scottsdale bar, our Round Mound of Clown, grinning as a procession of female admirers angled to meet him. When each of these strangers moved forward, Charles Barkley leaned over and responded with either a swarming hug or a full-blown makeout kiss. Particularly odd about his impromptu game of Spin The Bottle was the timing: It was dead-smack in the middle of the NBA Finals, his only legitimate chance at a championship as a basketball legend.

So when Barkley and the Phoenix Suns withered in Game 6, missed critical shots in the final minutes and lost to Michael Jordan's Bulls, I was left to ponder the effects of the Chuckster's public partying those two weeks.

What if he had been getting his rest instead of his jollies? Might he have nailed the game-winning shot, a hero's role left for journeyman shooter John Paxson?

Might the Suns have gone on to win the title at home in Game 7?

Would Charles not go to his grave with a Grand Canyon-sized crater on his Hall of Fame/Dream Team resume?

I'd like to say Barkley simply was an immature guy who eventually grew up. But 15 1/2 years later, only a few blocks from the same tavern location, he was busted last week on drunk driving charges after a night of partying at the Dirty Pretty Rock Bar, where his companions included Jaleel White, better known as Steve Urkel of TV geek infamy.

When questioned why he ran a stop sign in his black Infinity SUV, Barkley said he was in a rush to have oral sex with his female passenger, according to the police report. He also told a civilian employee that he would "tattoo my name on your ass'' if it helped him avoid a DUI arrest, the report said.

Almost 46, Barkley is less mature now than when White was still Urkel. He is stuck in permanent adolescence and has become a perpetual circus onto himself, which wouldn't be a societal concern if:
1. He wasn't one of America's more influential voices.
2. He wasn't running for governor of Alabama in 2014.

3. He wasn't, quite possibly, the most visible ambassador of his sport.

"I'm disappointed that I put myself in that situation,'' Barkley said after the DUI bust, in a statement to the Associated Press.

I'm disgusted that he never learns.
In a country undergoing historic change, Barkley is a tragicomic waste of potential leadership.

One day, he comes off like a great unifier of humankind, ready to attack racism and bond the masses with his perspective and humor. Then, without warning, he morphs into a national buffoon, dropping gratuitous obscenities on TNT's "Inside The NBA" and firing provocative opinions with no regard for his glaring hypocrisy and contradictions.

In his most disturbing professional sin, he has admitted to having a gambling problem, which should deeply bother an NBA commissioner, David Stern, who has spent his recent tenure battling an officiating gambling scandal and long-held perceptions that his league is susceptible to game-fixing.

If Barkley is allowed to be the preeminent TV voice of that league, how can he go on gambling sprees that contradict the Stern's values? While he says he doesn't gamble on NBA games, how do I know that to be true? This is the man who told ESPN in 2006 that he'd frittered away $10 million on gambling. This is the man who says he made the wrong wager on last year's Super Bowl, owed a $400,000 debt to a Las Vegas casino and didn't repay it for months until he faced criminal charges. This is the man who has been in denial about it all, once saying on his TV show, "It's not a problem. If you're a drug addict or an alcoholic, those are problems. I gamble for too much money. As long as I can continue to do it, I don't think it's a problem. Do I think it's a bad habit? Yes, I think it's a bad habit. Am I going to continue to do it? Yes, I'm going to continue to do it."

See, he plays by The Charles Rules, which mock the sport as much as The Jordan Rules -- part of the shimmering legacy of his close friend -- brought intrigue.

He has the gall to trash LeBron James for being "disrespectful to the game'' because James hasn't ruled out signing with New York in 2010, which pales in comparison to Barkley's relentless disrespect for the game for the better part of two decades.

He tells James to "shut the hell up," when obviously, Barkley has made a fine living as a blowhard who can't shut up.

He is critical of players who aren't loyal to their teams when, of course, Barkley moped his way out of Philadelphia and Phoenix and let dissension overwhelm his last chance in Houston.

Every time his lips move, he seems to lose more credibility, yet Barkley is shamelessly enabled by sports media friends who enjoy his quote-ability and company, fans who love his freewheeling commentary and a league that overlooks his issues because he sells the game.

The time has come to stop protecting the Round Mound of Clown.

He must be saved from himself so we can like him, not loathe him.

For that to happen, the bosses at TNT must chart a drastic course that isn't in the DNA of most TV programmers: They have to prioritize responsibility over ratings. With Stern's encouragement, they should summon Barkley, cite the accumulation of his misdeeds and suspend him for a lengthy period.

Too often, he has slipped away with mere wrist slaps, typical of a "Charles Being Charles'' forgiveness pattern. This time, how about suspending him until the playoffs in late April? Can you do that, TNT? How about you, HBO? Can you keep him off the roundtables with Bob Costas?

Peter Vecsey, a veteran basketball columnist with an extensive history in network TV, says it won't happen. He says Turner Sports President David Levy doesn't have the guts to punish his meal ticket.

"Do not, I reiterate, do not, expect Levy to take any action -- other than a token scolding, complete with Barkley's normal insincere apology -- in the wake of his latest incident", Vecsey wrote in the New York Post, adding that Levy "protects, excuses, enables and overlooks."

Stern could push the network to expedite the disciplinary process, yet for all his flowing opinions about his league and the media who cover it, he is curiously quiet on the Barkley front.

"We take these matters very seriously,'' TNT said in a statement. "Obviously, there's a legal process and we have to wait for that to play out, so we won't have any comment at this time."
Barkley will have his day in court.

"Mr. Barkley, who has no prior DUI convictions, believes wholeheartedly in the court system and is cooperating fully with the court's process," attorney Scott Maasen, who is representing Barkley, said Monday.

"Mr. Barkley wishes to thank family, friends and his ardent fans for their tremendous outpouring of support during this difficult time ... Our firm has begun an independent investigation into the facts of the case and charges against Mr. Barkley."

But the bleary-eyed mugshot and damning police report -- along with a couple of issues in the 1990s, such as the night in Orlando when he was charged with heaving a bar patron through a glass window -- don't paint an encouraging backdrop.

There is a how-to model in full showcase, of course.

Have Stern and TNT noticed how the PGA Tour dealt with John Daly? Tired of his alcohol-fueled antics, the Tour suspended the problem child last week for six months. One could argue that Daly, an active pro golfer, should be disciplined more severely than Barkley, who is merely a commentator. I would respond that Daly doesn't want to run for governor and be a regular social spokesman on numerous platforms.
Charles Barkley does want to be that guy.
Which is impossible when he's acting like a friggin' idiot.

(Jay Mariotti is a national columnist and commentator for AOL Sports.)

Controversy For a Sport On The Brink Amid a National Climate of "Change"

(COMMENTARY BY COACH Brooks Johnson, USATF)

In a couple of days USA Track and Field will host its national convention in Reno, Nevada. There are at least two extremely important actions and activities that will take place:

1. Review and perhaps action on restructuring of USATF governance

2. Election of officers

Both of these activities are fraught and filled with smokey political power plays by several entities who have their own self-serving agendas to institute:

1. The USOC (Jim Scheer, Jay Warwick); Doug Logan (USATF CEO); Bill Roe (USATF president); Lynn Cannon (USATF Secretary); Ed Koch (USATF treasurer); and David Greifinger (counsel to the board), all want to see a unitary form of governance where most of the power and authority is centered in the hands of the CEO, at the greatly reduced influence and decision-making authority of volunteers and athletes.

This would be a mistake even if we had a C.E.O. that was knowledgeable about the history, legacy and nuances of the sport, but given the self-declared ignorance of the C.E.O. and lack of experience upon which we can make a judicious assessment of his fit for the job, it is sheer lunacy to concentrate that much power into such untested hands.

Much of what is being proffered ranges from the ill-advised to the illegal.

For example, The Amateur Sports Act (Ted Stevens Act), mandates that USATF represents and is governance for: Disabled Athletics, Youth Athletics, Masters Athletics, Long Distance Running, and Elite/Emerging Elite Athletes.

At present, except for disabled, these different constituencies all have direct representation on the Board of Directors in the form of a seat and voting power. The new restructure plan would greatly reduce their number and representation on the Board. In some instances they would not have a direct voice and influence in matters that directly impact what they do, and how they do it. This is ill-advised and contrary to the intent of the Amateur Sports Act.

Gratuitously disenfranchising some of these constituencies that USATF is mandated to serve, in order to meet some sort of arbitrary USOC approved number, is in direct violation of the tenet that legislation should be the result of fair, equal and proper representation.

The USOC is mandating a smaller board because they have been convinced by certain officers on the board, that the current board is too large and dysfunctional.

Further, they would like to see a board more along the lines of their own.

It should be noted that at last year's national convention, Jim Scheer, executive director of the USOC, spoke to the board of USATF about what he saw as the needs, possible time lines and demands of USATF restructuring.

The board, that had no prior notice that Scheer would be on the agenda...and that is supposed to be so divided and dysfunctional...spontaneously voted (virtually unanimously) to reject the demands made by Scheer.

2. The second area of grave concern centers around the idea that the president, elected by the duly representative body of delegates at the convention, would have to be elected again by the board in order to serve as chair of the board. Up until this very date, the president has always chaired the board meetings. But when it became more and more apparent that Stephanie Hightower was going to win the election, a new restructuring caveat was inserted. Under the amended restructure plan the elected president would be a member of the board, but would have to run for the chair. The meatless bone thrown to mitigate this break with tradition and broad representation, was that if the president did not win the election for chair, then she/he would automatically be the vice-chair. This all too transparent attempt to pre-empt Stephanie Hightower from automatically enjoying the same status and influence as past presidents, is a shameless ploy to strip her and the assembly voters of having an automatic voice in governance at the highest level of the federation. The new restructuring calls for approximately 20% " outside/independent " seats on the board. That means that people who have even less credibility, connection and understanding about the sport than Doug Logan, could/would have more voting power than volunteers and committees that have run their affairs and ably supported the sport for years.

It has been said that in a democracy, you get exactly what you deserve because you have the ability and capacity to elect the people you want to represent you. Make no mistake about it, there are malicious, sinister, and self-serving efforts a foot to take that right away from too many people who have devoted a significant portion of their lives learning and supporting the sport.

Within the past couple of weeks we lost two such people, Dr Harmon Brown and Larry James.

Between the two of them, there is more than 100 years of affiliation and affinity for the Sport.

They have just about as many years of service in the sport as our CEO has official days in office.

Larry James was on a USATF conference call the very night before he died... still trying to be of service to this sport.

I was personally in touch with Dr Brown within weeks before he passed. He was still concerned and offering up advice.

Will our legacy be to people like this, and thousands others, that their voices and hard won expertise within the sport and elsewhere will not be directly heard and/or severely limited at the decision-making levels of our sport? Just the thought of such a tragic travesty should fill honest and clear thinking people with disgust.

At the end of the day it is rather prophetic that this convention is in Reno, Nevada. It is the home of quickie divorces, where people lie in order to get the outcome they want. It is also a legal gambling site and that is exactly what the voting delegates at the convention are being asked to do.

They are being asked to gamble on some changes that in some instances have been rushed to print based upon certain people's disingenuous and dastardly designs on power and who should or should not wield it. The deck is stacked because many are going to be stampeded into feeling they have to act because of the USOC threat of de-certification.

The fact of the matter, as long as USATF is making good faith efforts at reform, the USOC has no legitimate grounds for de-certification. No judicial process would support a serious process like this being deliberately and prematurely forced on a legally instituted and properly functioning organization.

It is hoped that the board and the voting assembly will take note of what is really being done and raise up, like the board did a year ago, and resist being stampeded into something that serves no general interests. As the Supreme Court once stated, we ought move forward, "..with all deliberate speed.". The operative word is "deliberate". That will allow for sufficient and in-depth discussion on all the critical issues and concerns in a non-coercive atmosphere that most definitely does not exist at present.

Debate Topic: Should a Sport Be Dropped From Olympic Competition for Repeated Drug Violations?

Pro Opinion by:

Craig McLean, Former world champion track cyclist and Olympic silver medallist.

I would be in favour of taking road cycling out of the Olympics if only so that the kilometre time-trial, which was dropped after the Athens Games, could be added back in. It seems unfair that although road cycling has been tarnished by so many doping scandals, it was track cycling that had to lose an event to make way for BMX when it was added to the Beijing Games.

As far as tackling doping is concerned, I'm not sure whether dropping road cycling from the Olympics would make a significant difference, but I do think that the only deterrent is to exclude people from the biggest events. In that sense, I'd be in favour of dropping road cycling from the Games. The trouble is, the Olympics is not the biggest event for road cyclists - unlike for track cyclists, for whom it is the absolute pinnacle; the be-all and end-all.

In fact, you could argue that the Olympics aren't really that big a deal for road cycling which only makes it more frustrating for track cyclists when some road cyclists use drugs and drag the whole sport through the mud. Of course people make the assumption that there is a drugs problem throughout cycling; they just see cyclists, and read stories about them taking drugs, and don't differentiate between the disciplines even though track cycling has been relatively free of scandals. It is frustrating because our branch of the sport is just not the same - there aren't the same financial rewards, and there is not the same drugs culture.

But what has been happening with road cycling, and its repeated doping cases, is having a massively detrimental effect on the sport in all disciplines and at all levels. While the sport is very strong at the moment in Britain, and the British programme - which has so far focused on track cycling - is untainted by doping scandals, elsewhere it is a big problem.

In Germany big sponsors have pulled out. The national federation has lost sponsorship and funding, meaning that riders have to buy their own kit and clothing. It was a series of drugs scandals in road cycling that created that situation, but the knock-on effects are huge and affect everybody, including track cyclists. Even my professional team, Plowman Craven, which is British, was affected when Audi was forced to pull all its cycling sponsorship. Last year, they supplied the team with cars.

Everybody suffers through the doping scandals, so I'm all in favour of introducing bigger deterrents. In principle, I think it's a good idea to consider dropping or suspending sports which discredit the Olympics through doping. If dropping road cycling from the Olympics could act as a deterrent then I'd support it; but I'd worry that it might only make the situation worse, since that branch of the sport would no longer be under the International Olympic Committee umbrella.

Then again, I've sometimes thought that the answer might be for road cycling to form a breakaway organisation - just let them get on with whatever they want to do rather than drag us all down. I can't say I even
watch the Tour de France much any more. I followed it this year because my British team-mate Mark Cavendish was riding, but when he dropped out I stopped watching.




Descenting Opinion by:

Michele Verroken, Former director of ethics and anti-doping at UK Sport.

I understand why people might think that a solution is to ban a whole sport from being represented at an Olympic Games, but that misses the real point that arises out of positive drugs tests. It is the individuals themselves who have made the decision to cheat and compete or have become involved in doping. I still ultimately believe the best solution for the serious perfomance-enhancing drugs is a life ban for anyone associated with doping. The focus has got to be on the athlete and his or her entourage. Responsibility must be taken by medical officers, coaches and by the whole team management over their expectations for what athletes can physically achieve.

I don't think we achieve a great deal by kicking a sport such as road cycling out of the Olympics. It doesn't stop the problem of doping outside the Olympic sphere of influence and we could end up with such a small number of sports in international competitions if we cut out all of those where doping is an issue. Perhaps, instead, one deterrent would be a system where medals are not awarded in sports where doping is rife, so achievements will not count towards the final medal tally of a country.

The real question is whether competitors in sports such as road cycling really care about Olympic participation when they can earn significant prize money in events outside the Games. An Olympic sanction would have little impact if they could still earn money and cheat. One way to challenge this would be to link prize money and sponsorship that comes into the sport with doping offences, in effect a doping tax. Doping offences should require sanctions on a portion of prize money or sponsorship to pay for improvements to the testing system.

Other measures that could be used would be a limit to television coverage given to sports and events which have doping problems. Cut off the lifeblood of publicity and there will be more of an incentive on athletes and others to change a culture of doping. That culture is a significant part of the problem. There have to be clearer contracts about the conduct of athletes, coaches and doctors involved in sport, renewed on a regular basis - written commitments from athletes, coaches and management to participate in sport drug-free. They must then take responsibility if something happens. Everyone must be accountable to change a mindset that winning is the only thing that matters and doping is a way to achieve this.

Let's have far more clarity on the testing programmes of countries and sports, create a league table by sport and by country of the number of positive tests set against the number of tests carried out. We should be publicising those countries and sports with a high number of negative tests, to encourage good behaviour all the time.

Weightlifting has a very interesting approach. The international federation fines a country with more than three positive drugs tests in a year and suspends it from international competition for a year. However, countries can pay more money to lift the suspension and what started out as a good idea has been weakened. There must be no going back once a suspension is in place. Similarly, a life ban from the Olympic Games should be the consequence for any cheats using performance-enhancing drugs.

2007 Was a Very Bad Year For The "Black Athlete"?

Sports Commentary by William Blackburn

It started a few hours into the new year when NFL player Darrent Williams was gunned down in Denver. It has ended, I hope, with the recent death of another NFL player, Sean Taylor.

In between their deaths, two more NFL players died, another one suffered paralysis, baseball's all-time leading home run hitter was indicted for possible cheating and an Olympic track and field great confessed to cheating, thus tainting her entire career. Numerous other crimes, tragedies and misfortunes occurred.

Throw in a dose of Michael Vick and it's not stretch to say that the character of black athletes has taken a mind-boggling hit in 2007. You'd be hard-pressed to find me another year where four active NFL players died and all were black.

Since the days of Jack Johnson, Jesse Owens and Joe Louis, sports have played a significant role in the black community. Its elite athletes were treated like heroes. Owens' 1936 Olympic victory in Germany was not just about a gold medal but was also a statement about racial equality.

You could say the same about the weight Jackie Robinson, Bill Russell, Venus and Serena Williams and countless other black athletes have carried through the years. Willingly or unwillingly, they were made advocates for the social and economic injustices that plagued our communities.

Competition for respect

Throughout the years, many black athletes have accepted the responsibility and become social activists for their community. Muhammad Ali, as well as Tommie Smith and John Carlos at the 1968 Olympics, might be the most famous faces of protest by black athletes.

For many, athletics is about wins and losses -- but many times in the black community it's also about a right to be respected and championed.NBA players are respected because they put the ball in the basket better than any of us, and they get paid millions to do it.

Same goes for other athletes in other sports, but in the black community basketball and football usually get the biggest amount of esteem and reverence. Vick was arguably the most popular black athlete in the NFL, and his downward spiral all the way to a Virginia jail cell was a shock. And yet other cases rival its magnitude.

Cheaters as role models

Marion Jones was the face of track and field during the last decade, and she shattered every record in her way. A black woman dominating her sport in record fashion was historic and awe-inspiring, and we embraced her in every way. Now we find out the hero was cheating the whole time.

The year just couldn't get any worse for big-name black athletes. But it did. After chasing Barry Bonds for years, the Feds finally ran him down. Now he's indicted and charged with lying about cheating. He breaks one of the most sacred records in baseball, and he's rewarded with federal charges.

Charles Barkley said some years ago that athletes shouldn't be looked at as role models. Obviously Barkley was out of touch with his community, because the posters that hang in many young black males' bedrooms are not of presidential candidates, doctors, lawyers or parents.

They are posters of black athletes, and the young spend many a night dreaming of one day becoming one. They proudly wear jerseys with the names of their favorite ball players on them because they have a high level of admiration for them.

Black athletes rank at or near the top of the list of icons in our communities, and the significance they carry is enormous. Their appeal to such a broad segment of the black community provides them with an opportunity to influence that most are not afforded.

Bigger burden for blacks

People will buy a pair of expensive shoes because LeBron James, Kobe Bryant or Allen Iverson says so. Their faces and images are used to influence our buying habits in such a tremendous way that it would only seem natural that they would achieve a surreal status.

Is it fair? Depends on how you look at it. Our spending habits produce the million-dollar salaries that athletes receive, and so it's like one hand washing the other. You get to wear products endorsed by your favorite player, and they get paid handsomely for your fanatical respect.

Except for the black athlete, the equation is a little different.

Because history has long tied their existence to the struggle for political, economic and social equality, black athletes carry a bigger burden. Their bulls-eye is bigger and the expectations for them even greater. The media will showcase and exploit their every move, good or bad, and will destroy their image as easily as it has built them up. ESPN is as naughty as it is nice.

Today's black athlete is paid more than at any other time in history, and with such increase in fame and wealth comes increased scrutiny. Expectations are higher, and failure -- inside and outside the arena -- is not looked upon lightly.

A large percentage of black athletes understand and appreciate their importance to their profession and their community. Unfortunately, in 2007 they were overshadowed.

(William Blackburn is a community columnist for the Charlotte (N.C.) Observer who works for Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools. He can be reached via e-mail at williamhblackburn@yahoo.com)

L.A. Times At Odds With Olympian Over Steroid Legalization

Kate Schmidt, twice an Olympic javelin bronze medalist and a former world-record holder, made an earnest case in The Times' Opinion section Sunday (Oct. 14th) for allowing athletes to use performance-enhancing drugs that are now banned.

She began by saying it is unfair to demonize Marion Jones, who last week admitted to having used steroids, for having done something everyone does. Athletes are pressured into doping to meet the expectations of fans, Schmidt said, to the extent that "success seems to require steroid use for any sport requiring speed, power or a combination of the two."

It's impossible to stop the use of steroids, she contended, so why not decriminalize performance-enhancing drugs and educate athletes, parents and coaches on the safe use of those substances?

Here's why.

Because steroids are dangerous if not properly prescribed, used and monitored, and they can have devastating effects on young, growing bodies.

Because allowing the use of what Schmidt would call training supplements would be grossly unfair to athletes who choose to avoid the risks of steroid use and take pride in competing without chemical aid.

Schmidt suggested declaring certain levels of substances within the body to be acceptable and punishing athletes who exceed those levels. But cheating wouldn't end -- it would probably escalate as athletes sought drugs to mask the amount of other drugs they were taking and stay within these limits.

Nor would setting acceptable levels address the stigma currently attached to drug cheats such as Jones. The definition of cheating would change, but the offense would remain. Nothing gained there.

If a small amount of the steroid known as "the clear" helps a little, the logical leap for an athlete is to think that a little more -- or a lot more -- will add inches to a throw or shave a hundredth of a second off a runner's time. If a doctor won't prescribe higher doses, that athlete might look elsewhere for substances with greater potency but unknown provenance and assume health risks that might not be immediately apparent.

As for the theory that everyone is using them, to borrow a line everyone's mom has uttered at least once, if all of your friends jumped off a cliff, would you follow them?

Finally, decriminalizing substances that are now banned is a terrible idea because it would minimize the importance of talent, discipline and competitive strategy and would maximize the value of having access to a good chemist.

It wouldn't even the playing field -- which has never truly been even because of cultural, economic and genetic differences. It would perpetuate all of those discrepancies and could enlarge them.

These substances don't come cheap, giving a great advantage to athletes who have financial resources. Athletes who can't pay could easily become beholden to drug companies, unscrupulous doctors or black-market sellers, with all the menacing possibilities that would entail.

The fight against performance-enhancing drugs seems a futile battle. Chemists too often remain ahead of the ability of testers to detect new substances. Testing is expensive.

Those are not reasons to stop. For track and field, it's a reason to increase education and vigilance against such substances.

Schmidt said that when she competed, in the 1970s, some athletes used performance-enhancing drugs but most didn't. Those were some of track and field's best days, an era when indoor and outdoor meets routinely drew huge crowds from coast to coast.

That has changed in the steroid age.

The venerable Millrose Games nearly went under a few years ago. The L.A. Invitational indoor meet vanished after featuring 105 Olympic gold medalists over 43 years. Attendance has dropped at many meets besides the Olympic trials and the Penn and Drake relays. Maybe that means people don't want track to become a contest of my steroid is better than yours.

Schmidt said that taking synthetic testosterone and its derivatives out of baseball and football would result in "far fewer home runs, smaller, slower, less muscular athletes and no new records for the next few decades until human development and equipment technology compensated for the absence of these drugs."

The problem with that is what, exactly?

Major league baseball has had banner years at the box office and on the field since Mark McGwire retired. The game is more than a test-tube-generated home run derby.

Maybe the answer for track and field is to create two parallel leagues and let the public decide which it will support.

One league would permit use of performance-enhancing substances and the other would ban it. Of course, they'd have separate record books.

In the former, each entry would include the name of the chemical that athlete used to achieve that mark.

Ten years later the notation would be expanded to include whether that athlete is alive and healthy.

(by Helene Elliott)

Time For Bonds To Call It a Quits?

Sports Commentary

The Giants are finishing another lost season this weekend, having limped into Dodger Stadium to go through the motions one last time. Not because they want to, because the schedule maker says they have to.

At least they won’t have to face any more questions about Barry Bonds. Like all those BALCO-aided balls he used to hit, he’s long gone.

Bonds played his last game as a Giant the other night. The moment was so magic a few reporters actually tried to talk to him before the game. He said something about his toe hurting before balking at the next question.

"This is turning into an interiew," Bonds told the assembled wretches. "God forbid."

And then he walked away. Six innings later, he walked away for good. His line in the box score: two groundouts, one flyout, one sellout.

As expected, he didn’t go quietly, waving to the crowd during one last curtain call before disappearing into the dugout. After the game, they staged a video tribute to him, with each home run flying out of the park to the sounds of Frank Sinatra’s "My Way."

Not that Bonds saw any of it. He cleaned out his corner of the clubhouse, including his name plate and what’s left of his legacy, and bolted before the game was finished. No good bye, no comment, no class.

OK, everybody, on cue. Ready? Good riddance!

Bonds did it his way, all right. Well, his way and his -- wink, wink -- personal trainer’s way. The one who’s sitting in prison for refusing to testify to the BALCO grand jury about Bonds' habit of playing with needles.

Before you get all hot and bothered about this column, know this about Bonds: He brought all of this, every bit of it, on himself. No, he isn’t any more guilty than all the other ballplayers of this generation who’ve sold their souls. But he’s the one who broke the most sacred record in the book, so he’s the one who has to take the most heat.

He could have gone away quietly a couple of years ago. In fact, while we’re on the subject, the Giants wanted him to do just that. The truth is, their general manager, Brian Sabean, never wanted him around to break Hank Aaron’s record. The Giants’ owner, Peter Magowan, insisted on it for three reasons: money, money and more money.

And now that Bonds has filled the seats and broken the record, they couldn’t wait to get rid of him.

"We’ve been through a lot together these 15 years," Magowan said in announcing his divorce from Bonds. "A lot of good things have happened. Unfortunately a lot of bad things have happened."

Each of which Bonds and Bonds alone must be blamed. It’s simple, really. He had a choice and he took the low road. Question, where will it take him next season?

Bonds says he still wants to play. Trouble is, he can’t. At 43 -- in our years, that is; I’m not sure how that translates in BALCO years -- his days as a four-tool player are a distant memory. He never could throw, but now he can’t run, hit or field, either. All he can do is launch the ball out of the yard and hobble around the bases.

Apparently, some of his supporters, many of whom receive paychecks from him, are seeing a different player than the one I’ve been watching. His agent, Jeff Borris, last week answered a question about Bonds with a question of his own: ‘"What GM wouldn’t want Barry as his cleanup hitter?"

Every one in the National League for starters. If he played in the non-DH league, he would have to venture into the field, where Bonds has all the range of the Willie Mays statue outside the ballpark.

That leaves the American League. What, the Angels or A’s are clamoring to throw bails of bills at Bonds? I don’t think so. Or maybe you’ve forgotten Angels owner Artie Moreno calling out his own player after Gary Matthews Jr.’s name was associated with an internet steroids ring.

The media have spent much of the past week speculating which team might sign Bonds, but I’ve got their answer: none of the above.

Why? Because the Giants were the only team who had a financial stake in Bonds. They were willing to carry his baggage for one last hollow hurrah so they could sell out the house, not to mention the rest of the franchise. Now that Bonds has the home run record*, there’s no motivation for another team to sign him.

But then, it shouldn’t be about how much Bonds could help some team as a DH. The game needs him gone. No, not Bonds alone. All the other shameless cheats need to be shown the door, too. But Bonds is the poster boy, the face of baseball’s steroids era, the constant reminder of how the game lost its way.

Bonds playing yet another season? In the words of the man himself, God forbid.

(by Jim Armstrong,Denver Post)

Drug Busts Need To Have More "Bite"

Sports Commentary

Have you ever heard of Redacted? He's everywhere in the sports world, according to federal agents. In fact, there appear to be dozens of him, and quite a few hers, as well. They could probably fill a baseball clubhouse, or even an entire Olympic team.

For a while, Barry Bonds was Redacted. So were Jason Giambi and Gary Sheffield. The government gave them all the same alias, inking out their real names in affidavits and other documents describing the BALCO doping case. Redacting is the legal term for it.

In the language of common sense, it's a farce. The dopers have been protected like informants risking their lives to bring down the mob. The government not only lets the superstars escape prosecution; it tries to shield them from a shame they richly deserve.

This week, Operation Raw Deal shut down 56 underground synthetic-hormone labs and arrested more than 120 people in four days. The feds crowed about the roundup, which was impressive, but they were vague about the labs' customers and whether, once the client lists had been deciphered, they would ever be exposed.

Then there was the coy news release about a $10.5 million fine levied last week against a St. Louis firm distributing human growth hormone illegally. It said the company supplied "certain well-known athletes and entertainers, including a well-known athlete in Massachusetts."

What is this, a federal investigation or a 1950s gossip column?

If the goal is to stifle the use of performance-enhancing drugs, it's not enough to go after the flunkies cooking up this stuff in suburban basements or glorified mules like former Mets batboy Kirk Radomski and Bonds' personal trainer, Greg Anderson. Athletes are the root of this conspiracy, and the government is only cutting off the branches.

It continues to treat performance-enhancing substances like street drugs. The dealers, not the users, are targeted, on the theory that cutting off the supply will kill demand. But in the steroid trade, the users can make far more money than the dealers.

The only way to halt the demand is to convince athletes that they will be caught and exposed if they juice -- and not just by sieve-like testing or through leaks to the media. The government has to go the distance; otherwise it shouldn't be in this fight.

After the BALCO raid in 2003, prosecutors resisted attempts to reveal evidence of doping against athletes who had the potential to represent the U.S. at the Athens Olympics. U.S. Sen. John McCain had to intervene.

When the feds finally got around to searching a baseball player's home and publicly humiliating him, they went after Jason Grimsley, a journeyman pitcher near the end of his career. The homes of Giambi and Bonds, MVP Award winners, were never searched. They were questioned only as secret witnesses, and then their grand jury testimony was sealed, ostensibly to protect the rights of the four men charged with distributing drugs to them.

It was up to the media to reveal what the ballplayers had admitted. The feds had no interest in outing them. (If Bonds had told a plausible truth under oath instead of resorting to flaxseed-oil obfuscation, the government would be off his back by now.)

When Anderson and his co-defendants pleaded guilty two years ago, they quite pointedly did not identify their clients. The prosecutors and the judge were happy, even eager, to leave things that way. For some reason, though, the judge absolutely had to hear the name of a seventy-something grandmother who was described as Anderson's landlady and bookkeeper. Apparently, she once cashed a check for the trainer, and the government considered her an unwitting accomplice. So she was slimed in open court.

What kind of message does this nonsense send? It reeks of the permissive attitudes that surround big-leaguers all the time.

Teenagers are familiar with this special treatment. They see it anywhere they play sports. They hear about the schools that dole out bogus C's to keep the varsity academically eligible. Why would they respect the efforts of authority figures who chase down ex-batboys and let sluggers stroll?

The government argues that its primary interest in pursuing steroid cases is protecting the younger generation. It has certainly made acquiring the drugs a riskier proposition. But ultimately, teenagers will still consider doping an option, because when kids fantasize about their lives, they don't see themselves as the low-profile fall guys. They see themselves as big-timers, the government's untouchables.

After the most recent busts, spokesmen for Operation Raw Deal said that any athletes' names might ultimately be turned over to sports leagues or the Olympic-level anti-doping agencies. The feds have already briefed the NFL and MLB on a similar investigation. But that way, the public has to wait for the people making billions off these athletes to expose them, or for the information to dribble out from the news media. If a commissioner wants to cover for someone, he can.

Meanwhile, this information remains in files generated at taxpayer expense. Federal prosecutors did eventually -- more than a year after the raid -- release some BALCO documents with actual athletes' names in them, including Bonds'. But it wasn't the best material available. The grand jury testimony of baseball and football stars and Olympians such as Marion Jones is the most compelling stuff. None of them was promised absolute secrecy; they all were told that their testimony could be made public if the cases went to trial. The plea bargains protected them.

Still, the feds are holding back. They won't release the 23 major-leaguers' names that Radomski provided, either. They have their reasons. None of them is as strong as the argument in favor of exposure. The government doesn't get that. It is like a player who hits a home run, then forgets to touch first base.

Maybe the feds are afraid that the public won't stomach a more aggressive campaign against famous athletes. Or perhaps they're just stuck in an old playbook that considers simple possession a misdemeanor, too petty a crime for federal attention. But that doesn't preclude a handoff to local authorities, who are rarely shy about busting and embarrassing the consumers of illegal goods and services. Just ask anyone who has been caught soliciting a prostitute.

Somehow, the current game plan has to change. It has produced some exciting plays, but in the end, it will be a loser. The government can only win if it takes Redacted out of the lineup.

(by Gwen Knapp,San Francisco Chronicle)

Is OJ Simply Addicted To The Limelight?

Sports Commentary

The sight of O.J. Simpson in handcuffs should have lost the power to shock a long time ago. In the 12 years since his acquittal on double-murder charges, the Juice has descended further and further into pathetic caricature, squabbling with police and building publicity stunts out of the gruesome deaths of his ex-wife Nicole and her friend Ron Goldman.

The last shards of Simpson's dignity disappeared somewhere between the trial and the pay-per-view TV show in which he posed as a salesman trying to peddle his white Ford Bronco as the ideal getaway car. Now, at age 60, he stands accused of a criminal caper that could be a plot for "Naked Gun Meets Grumpy Old Men."

Simpson's name has become so synonymous with degradation that the early news reports brought mostly a weary sense of deja vu. Then pictures of him flashed up on the screen. He was smiling at a Vegas wedding, either blithely impervious to his fresh infamy or perversely enjoying it, and the effect was jarring.

This was the face, albeit slackened by age, of the quintessentially dashing athlete, breathtaking both on and off the field. When the mantle of respectability came off -- and nobody wore it better than Simpson -- the loss wasn't his alone. His fall from grace, probably the longest and hardest on record, coarsened the sports world. It embedded an age of cynicism.

A trend was already in the works before then. The seven years leading up to Simpson's trial had produced a scandal trifecta. The all-time hits leader in baseball was banished for gambling. The Olympic champion in the 100-meter dash, the premier event at the Summer Games, tested positive for steroids and returned his gold medal. The former heavyweight champion of the world went to prison for rape.

Oh, and then there was the figure skater whose friends conspired to whack her rival's knee just before the Olympics.

But none of those miscreants had ever possessed Simpson's charisma. Pete Rose had a great relationship with the media; he was once the best man at a sportswriter's wedding. But Rose was plainly a vulgar person, with a fondness for dirty play. Only a few illusions burst when he went to prison for tax evasion connected to his gambling habit.

Imagining Simpson as a violent bully, knocking around his wife, was much harder. His genial image was so well-cultivated that it became part of Hollywood lore. The story says that when James Cameron was casting for "The Terminator," he chose Arnold Schwarzenegger over Simpson, the studio's first choice, because he didn't think audiences could see the Juice as a robotic killer. The tale may be urban myth, but the attitude behind it is not.

A retired colleague of mine at the Chronicle, Dwight Chapin, covered USC for the Los Angeles Times when Simpson won the Heisman Trophy there, and he remembers a mesmerizing young man. He says the gracious side of Simpson couldn't have been entirely an act. This is not a naive reporter, mind you. Chapin co-wrote "The Wizard of Westwood" and dared to include criticism of the sainted John Wooden.

When Simpson retired from the 49ers in 1979, Dwight received a handwritten letter of thanks for the stories he had done over the years and the time they had spent together. Simpson should have been too big for such gestures; virtually all modern athletes are. Dwight wonders if there was an agenda, but he can't think of one. He wasn't covering sports at the time, and besides, Simpson was retiring from the NFL and going to Los Angeles.

"There was really nothing I could do for him anymore," Dwight says.

There's nothing that anybody, except talented defense attorneys, can do for Simpson now. One has to wonder why, after the acquittal, he didn't just go away, cash his generous pension checks, play golf and rear his children. But he couldn't. Apparently, he found anonymity more intolerable than disgrace.

So he volunteered for interviews when it would have been wiser to stay silent. He wrote his hypothetical confessional, "If I Did It," and money couldn't have been the only motivation. Someone must have warned him that the proceeds from the book would end up in the hands of Goldman's relatives, who are incrementally collecting the $38 million they won in a wrongful-death suit after the acquittal in criminal court.

One of the most disturbing elements of the confrontation at a Las Vegas hotel was that the accusations came out just after the book, now property of the Goldmans, came out. Could Simpson be that much of an attention junkie?

If he really was, as he contended, trying to regain memorabilia taken from him, he should have assumed that the recovered goods would ultimately end up in the Goldmans' possession, as well. They already have staked a claim. (Simpson's home and pension are exempt from the judgment in the lawsuit.)

The footage from the weekend wedding, where his eyes seem to be seeking out the camera, suggests a chilling possibility.

When Dwight and I talked this week, we agreed that the young Simpson epitomized a Baby Boomer vision of upward mobility. He worked for his fame and wealth, for a place in the world better than the ones his parents had occupied. Then he went to trial, winning his freedom but losing the person he had always been.

So he became a more modern celebrity, always willing -- even eager -- to be outrageous. He became famous for being infamous. At 60, one of the greatest running backs in NFL history is just another Britney Spears.

(by Gwen Knapp,San Francisco Chronicle)

Cheating: An Ancient Element of Sport

A Sports Commentary

Maybe we shouldn't ask athletes to live up to ideals that, let's face it, are unsupported by the chronically weak performance of human nature. Maybe it's time to decriminalize performance-enhancing drugs, in view of the fact that the first drug cheat was an ancient Greek and runners brought sport-doping into the modern age in 1904 by dosing themselves with strychnine.

Our Air Force gives fighter jocks "go-pills" to get them through long missions, but we don't refuse to call them heroes because they're on speed. So what's this strange amnesia that causes us to seek purity in athletes? Why should they have to meet a higher moral standard than soldiers? Call me naive.

Many of us are cringing at the prospect that Barry Bonds will break Hank Aaron's home run record, starting with yours truly, because of allegations he used performance enhancers. A record should be joyful, but this one makes us regretful. Why should Bonds's personal health choices matter to us so much? Because he forces us to address head-on the possibility that sports have become utterly riddled with doping. If so, then legalizing performance enhancers may be the most honest thing we could do. But it doesn't make anyone happy to say so.

What's the job of an athlete really? It is to seek the limits of the human body, for our viewing pleasure. Athletes are astronauts of the physique, explorers. Some of them choose to explore by making human guinea pigs out of themselves. So maybe we should quit assigning any ethical value to what they do, and simply enjoy their feats as performance artists. Virtue was another notion dreamed up by the Greeks, only they were a lot less confused about what they meant by the term. Their word for virtue could also be accurately translated as simply "excellence." As for the word "amateur," it didn't exist to them at all.

The ancient Olympic champions were professionals who competed for huge cash prizes as well as olive wreaths, lived on the public dole and were sometimes recruited by competing cities seeking status. Most forms of what we would call cheating were perfectly acceptable to them, save for game-fixing. There is evidence that they gorged themselves on meat -- not a normal dietary staple of the Greeks -- and experimented with herbal medications in an effort to enhance their performances. Olympic scholar William Blake Tyrell, author of "The Smell of Sweat: Greek Athletics, Olympics, and Culture," has observed: "Winning was everything. If they thought a rhinoceros horn would help them win, they would have ground it up."

According to Charles Yesalis, professor of health and human development at Penn State and a longtime scholar of performance enhancement, the ancient Greek athletes also drank wine potions, used hallucinogens and ate animal hearts or testicles in search of potency. "We've never had clean sport," he says.

Doping is not a modern art. It's just the medicine that's new. As a recent story in National Geographic pointed out, performance enhancement grew with chemistry in the mid-19th century. Athletes choked down sugar cubes dipped in ether, brandy laced with cocaine, nitroglycerine and amphetamines. In that context, the current scourges of steroids and blood boosters are merely a sequential progression.

Opponents of legalizing performance enhancers argue against it on two main grounds: 1) it would open up a doping arms race in which athletes who could afford the best drugs would have an unfair advantage, and 2) doping is injurious to the health of the athletes. But the arms race is already on -- and it has been for centuries. That genie is out of the bottle, and there's no putting it back. As for the ill effects of performance enhancers, there is a very strong argument to be made that legalization would actually help in risk reduction, make it easier to control the types of risks athletes are taking.

Furthermore, it's impossible to draw the line any more between what is an artificial enhancement and what is a natural one. Is there a real difference between voluntary LASIK eye surgery, a small controlled dose of testosterone or EPO, or sleeping in an altitude tent that produces the same effect of EPO only without the needle?

The next step in the sequential progression is gene therapy -- athletes will be able to inject genes that build muscle. At which point steroids will seem as crude as sugar cubes soaked in ether.

The stark truth is that great athletes are fundamentally very different from you and me. They are freaks of nature, with uncanny hand-eye coordination or peripheral vision randomly assigned in the gene pool. They can seem nearly a different species. And they are quite often profoundly cold elitists whose moral code is different from ours, too. To many of them, the performance is all and what they find unnatural is to leave some physical possibility untapped. "They're highly paid entertainers, and they get paid to win and that's what they're trying to do," Yesalis says.

In an odd way, legalizing performance enhancers might restore some candor to what we're watching. It would end a charade and help us sort out truly criminal behavior from that which merely offends our idealism. But personally, every time I come to that conclusion, I find myself backing away from it, reluctant to say it's the definitive answer.

The price of legalization is that we give up our ideals about athletes once and for all, and that's a painful prospect. We gave up our ideals about actors, singers and politicians and various other kinds of professionals a long time ago, but that doesn't mean we enjoyed doing it. "If there was drug available for journalists, professors or lawyers, they would take it," Yesalis theorizes. "Why do you think it would be just athletes?" That's true. But it's a sorry fact.

Legalization is not likely to happen, because most of us prefer illusion to reality. Games are stories we tell ourselves, and as such, we seem to need some moral content in them, as opposed to the capricious traumas, sad erosions and ambiguities of every day reality. Yesalis likens performance enhancers to the special effects in a film.

"When you go to a movie, you don't want to see how the movie was made, or the special effects are done," he says. "The drama plays out and it has a black or white ending. You just want to be entertained and happy or sad your team won."


(by Sally Jenkins)

Love It, or Hate It...Fans Wedded To Sports

COMMENTARY

Imagine Lawrence Taylor rushing the passer. Or Bill Clinton chasing a skirt. Or Las Vegas strippers sprinting after $80,000 from Pacman Jones’ petty-cash account.

Such was the case Saturday when fans in Nashville stormed the box office to snap up single-game tickets to see the Titans, your basic playoff wannabes in the rough, tough AFC. Within minutes, the team sold enough ducats to ensure a 93rd consecutive sellout, as in every game since the franchise moved to Music City in 1999.

Think about that. The Titans’ offseason has been defined by negative stories about Jones and his wandering ways, yet fans would sell their dogs, their TV remotes and their teenagers for a shot at tickets.

This is where I’m supposed to pose the question: How can that be? But frankly, I’ve stopped wondering about people’s fascination with sports. For whatever reasons, we love this stuff.

We love it despite the Pacman Joneses of the world, despite the money, the attitudes, the cheating, the DUIs, the wife beaters and the me-me-me end-zone dances.

It’s more than that, though. A lot more. We must love this stuff because of something, not despite it. There must be something inherent in sports that we can’t get enough of, that makes us beg for tickets for the privilege of paying seven bucks a beer on Sundays.

Which brings us to AOL’s first-annual (and last, if it bombs) list of the 10 Best Things About Being A Sports Fan. We’re not going to give you the list. We want you to give us your list to see if we can come up with a consensus, if a lot of people share the same passion for the same things.

Here’s the drill. Take a few minutes (beer is optional) and write down the stuff you love most about sports. It could be a team or player or tradition. It could be a ballpark or stadium or rivalry. It could be the Cowboys cheerleaders or the Charger Girls or the Stanford band.

Or maybe it’s the Green Monster at Fenway. Or the dotting of the ‘‘i’’ at Ohio State. Or the Raiders’ storied silver and black uniforms, the ones that now hold more mistakes than mystique.

Whatever aspect of sports rings your chimes, let us know. Start from the bottom to the top, with No. 10 on your list signifying your 10th-favorite thing about being a sports fans. And give us a sentence or a paragraph to explain why you like it so much.

When you’re done, send your list to the e-mail address below and I’ll forward them to our professional polling firm, Me, Myself & I, Inc. In a month or so, I’ll let you know what we like most about sports.

Here’s my list, but let the record show it’s more shooting from the hip than a definitive list. Which is to say, I reserve the right to change my mind if I say something stupid.

10. Steve Spurrier. Whether he’s throwing down his visor in disgust or smirking on the sideline while running up the score, the Ol’ Ball Coach is always worth watching.

9. Watching Sidney Crosby skate. This kid may be the best since Gretzky. And I mean kid. Dude looks like he’s 14.

8. Bad-ball hitters. Oh, for the days when Roberto Clemente would hit a neck-high fastball into the right-field seats. Today’s best bad-ball artist? Vladimir Guerrero. The guy might as well carry a 3-wood to the dish.

7. Peyton Manning threading the needle. Marvin Harrison has caught 122 touchdown passes. Of those 122, how many times do you figure he was tightly covered, only to have Manning put the ball an inch over the defensive back’s fingertips? Not only that, Manning gets bonus points for his TV commercials.

6. The vines at Wrigley. The Cubs are missing out on a great marketing opportunity. I know a lot of people, myself including, who would pay just to sit with a cold beer on a hot day and soak up the vines and their history -- with the home team on the road.

5. Auburn-Alabama. Memo to Nick Saban: If you want to be successful at ’Bama, beat Auburn. The rest is just details.

4. Johan Santana’s changeup. Who knew the most unhittable pitch of the 21st century could barely break a window?

3. The band at college football games. It doesn’t get any better than hearing the Wisconsin band crank out the Bud ‘‘When you say Wiiii-sconsin, you’ve said it all!’’ song.

2. Mid-majors knocking off the big boys in the NCAA Tournament. Waiting on the next Valpo or George Mason has surpassed cheating on our taxes as the nation’s pre-eminent rite of spring.

1. Tiger Woods charging from behind on Sunday in a major. Oh, wait, he’s never done that. Then Tiger compiling a big lead from Thursday through Saturday in a major. The guy is the most dominant figure in sports since Babe Ruth used to out-homer the entire American League.

(by Jim Armstrong)

Is Kobe Watching?

Sports Commentary

Four weeks after his team's offseason began oh so early with another first-round playoff exit,Kobe Bryant found a way Wednesday to upstage LeBron James at the moment of his greatest NBA achievement.

Capturing the Moment

Leave it to Bryant, the league's poster guy of ego and selfishness, to overshadow a young superstar who actually is determined to make his teammates better and is dragging them through a conference final without a behemoth center or even the requisite sidekick.

If only Bryant -- really, we ought to spell it BrIant, with a capital "I" -- had fussed and fumed and demanded a trade from the Los Angeles Lakers (before backtracking a few hours later) a week or so ago, he would have provided the Cleveland Cavaliers' franchise player with some much needed media cover from the big controversies of Games 1 and 2 in the Eastern Conference finals against Detroit .

Last week, James was vehemently and incessantly second-guessed and criticized for (a) passing the ball to Donyell Marshall near the end of Game 1 for a three-point attempt to win rather than taking a layup that would have tied the score, and (b) forcing an awkward shot late in Game 2 that missed and, most likely, was affected by physical contact that didn't earn a foul.

It all got pretty ridiculous, frankly, with too many grown men and women wasting embarrassing amounts of time and energy on topics that didn't contribute much to the national debate. Especially since James did what they wanted, only not in the right order.

But then he dominated in Game 3, a moment that even the 22-year-old conceded was the biggest basketball test of his young life. James scored 32 points with nine assists and nine rebounds in the Cavaliers' 88-82 victory Sunday, rising to an occasion in a way many felt still was beyond him.

On Tuesday he did it again, with 25 points, 11 assists and seven rebounds in the 91-87 victory that pulled Cleveland even at 2-2 in the best-of-seven series. James made the fourth quarter his own, scoring 13 points in that period and sinking all five of his free throws -- including the clinchers with four seconds left,hushing not only the critics but also Pistons guard Richard Hamilton,hoping to unsettle the star.

Now all James has to do, to shut them up for good, is do it one more time. He has to find a way to take his relatively ragtag crew into The Palace of Auburn Hills and beat the home team there just once. He can do it in Game 5 Thursday night or he can wait until Game 7 (assuming the Cavaliers take care of business on their home court in Game 6), but he'll have to do it somehow, some way, sooner or later.

Frankly, the "later" might have to wait until next spring. Carrying his club one more time, in barely a week, to a level lofty enough to beat the Pistons in their building might be too much, too soon, even for a guy whose leadership and command has grown game by game.

Which would be fine. Michael Jordan was 28 years old by the time he got the Bulls to the NBA Finals for the first time. Larry Bird was 24, with at least three future Hall of Famers as teammates, when he helped the Celtics win the first time. Julius Erving didn't earn an NBA ring until he was 33. Wilt Chamberlain was 30.

Magic Johnson ? Nah, great as he was, he doesn't count here, because he won all five of his with Kareem, an upgrade even near the end over Zydrunas Ilgauskas .

All of which is simply a historically based way of cutting James some slack. He has nothing to apologize for, not yet, not even close. He's one year older than rookie Daniel Gibson, his out-of-nowhere backcourt partner. He's three years younger than Dwyane Wade who, like Bryant and Johnson, had a dominant big man anchoring his championship club.

James is on track with a supporting cast that, if we're really being honest, is inferior to what Tracy McGrady loses with every year in the first round. The other Cavaliers are not markedly better, maybe no better at all, than what Bryant has struggled with in L.A. or Kevin Garnett has had alongside him while missing three straight postseasons in Minnesota.

Yet James has managed, with his last two performances, to put a sheen on Drew Gooden 's shaved dome, a little extra oomph in Gibson's shot, a spring in the step of Cleveland fans and an uneasy tightness in the Pistons and their Detroit faithful.

James challenges himself, then rise to the challenges. He includes and involves his teammates, to the point that he trusts them with games on the line. He passes when others want him to shoot, not because he's afraid of the moment but because that's the right basketball play. He shoots with a man draped on him and expects to hear a whistle, not because he's king but because he got fouled.

He doesn't score 40 or 50 as the only way to win, and there's a bluntness, a forcefulness, to his game that doesn't always dazzle or delight. His passes are deft without oohs or aahs, his shots -- save for the dunks and that crazy step-back from 23 feet with 3:19 left Tuesday night - are often routine.

But LeBron James is right where he should be, playing wise beyond his years and acting older than his age.

Especially when measured against the 29-year-old on the West Coast who caused such a stir, then an attempted unstir, Wednesday.

That's one sort of drama. The Cleveland kid is the better sort.

(by Steve Aschburner)

Jason Whitlocks' Top Story of The Week

A Sports Commentary

Hang with me over the next several columns. I'm going to try to define how the overwhelming flood of television and gym shoe money has damaged professional/college football/basketball, their participants and fans and offer my strategy for fixing this problem.

It might take two columns or it might take five for me to make all of my points.

In this first column, I'm going to mostly discuss what I think is wrong with basketball and its participants. Understanding what's wrong, in my opinion, will help you understand the solution I'm going to offer.

In future columns, I'll limit the discussion to football and basketball because the sports are unique in that the NFL and NBA turn young men into instant celebrities and millionaires far more quickly than baseball and hockey, sports with established, off-Broadway minor league systems. Also, college baseball and hockey are not true TV sports.

It's my belief that in order to correct what ails football and basketball and their participants we have to accept that TV sports are totally different from non-TV sports. College athletes participating in sports that are primarily controlled and financed by television networks need to be governed by a different set of rules from a wrestler or a swimmer or a gymnast.

Women's basketball won't be a part of this discussion, either. The sport is not yet a major revenue generator, the WNBA is a weak television force and there are still only a handful of women's college basketball programs that have become as ethically/academically bankrupt as men's programs.

Men's basketball and football are rotting on the inside. March Madness, no matter how much the media fawn, doesn't cover the stench. The players are mercenaries who rarely get properly educated. At the professional level, the lawlessness of the players is an embarrassing turnoff to fans. In the NBA, it's widely accepted that the players don't play hard until the postseason and the pro game has been exposed as inferior by international competition. The professional leagues are overrun by immature players who are completely unprepared for the money and spotlight the NFL and NBA provide.

The rules need to be dramatically changed. For the most part, they were established long before the NBA and the NFL turned 19 to 22 year olds into overnight millionaires.

Let's start specifically with basketball. Right now all the hubbub is about whether Kevin Durant should leave Texas after one year. The media conversation focuses on whether Durant should be the top pick over Greg Oden, another freshman star. Because of the instant millions that await Durant and Oden as the top two picks, it's considered foolish to even discuss whether either would benefit from another year or two in college.

NBA executives, people presumably intelligent enough to know that Durant and Oden will stunt their intellectual and basketball evolution by entering the NBA at 19, have been breathlessly jockeying for Durant and Oden to leave college. Everybody, it seems, has this foolish belief that a large sum of money acts only as a problem-solver. It multiplies problems just as quickly.

Strictly from a basketball standpoint, the current NBA-eligibility system damages the game of basketball. Kevin Durant is a great kid. If left to develop in college, he could one day become one of basketball's all-time great players and winners.

If he leaves Texas now, it's almost a certainty he will never reach his full potential as a basketball player. Kevin Durant doesn't know the first thing about winning.

His Texas team, although young, underachieved this year, losing 10 games and bowing out of the NCAA Tournament in the second round after an embarrassing performance against USC.

Basketball players learn how to win and how to prepare to win in college. It's not a coincidence that the greatest NBA players over the past 25 years -- Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, Isiah Thomas and Hakeem Olajuwon -- were all huge winners in college.

Kobe Bryant is the only straight-from-high school NBA superstar to win multiple championships. Of course, Shaquille O'Neal was the true star of those Lakers teams, and Kobe's snotty, child-star-spoiled attitude tore apart that Lakers dynasty.

You realize it's nearly impossible to control or even reason with the average know-it-all teenager? Imagine trying to coach a relatively uneducated, unsophisticated 18 to 22-year-old with several million dollars in his bank account. It's impossible.

NBA players don't want to be coached. They grow up playing winning-doesn't-really-matter AAU ball and being "coached" by professional butt-kissers who are far more interested in a payoff than bending young minds to team concepts.

Michael, Magic, Larry, Isiah and Hakeem all benefited from participating and succeeding in college. Had they not attended college and instead been given multi-million-dollar contracts at 18 or 19, I contend they would not have been as successful as professionals.

Here's another downside to a significant number of players leaving college after one or two years: It prevents the players from evolving socially.

It used to be that 95 percent of NBA players spent at least three years in college. What happens to most people when they're in college? They develop a totally new social group. The friends you thought you couldn't live without in high school get replaced by the friends you make in college.

So what happens now? Your boys in grade school and neighborhood opportunists identify a high-profile athlete as a possible lottery ticket and dig their hooks in deep. Guys carry their high school posses right into the NBA.

Some of the athletes call it "keeping it real." For the most part, it's keeping it real stupid. The hangers-on are leeches, people determined to prevent the star athlete from seeing the big picture or evolving past street culture.

Big-time athletes rarely say or do anything important now because a Dr. Harry Edwards never gets a chance to get inside their head. The athletes visit college campuses for a year or two, but never experience what's really happening on those campuses because their entourages won't allow it.

They're also less likely to develop friendships with people who don't have a financial interest in them. They don't develop peers -- young people their age who are headed for professional careers.

It used to be that the NBA drafted 21- and 22-year-olds who entered the league with relatively well-developed fundamental skill sets, an understanding of what it takes to win and a passionate fan base. The players were marketable. Beyond potential, a bad attitude, a sense of entitlement, a tattoo-graffiti-stained body and a posse, what does the typical American-born, early-entree basketball draftee bring to the NBA?

The players are a lot less valuable, but they're being lavished with far more money than Magic Johnson received when he entered the league. Magic and Bird had to elevate the entire league and become ultimate winners to earn millions.

Kevin Durant just finished 25-10 without elevating the performance of one of his college teammates, and he'll be seduced with a shoe contract from Nike or Reebok that will dwarf the 25-year, $25-million "lifetime" contract the Lakers once offered Magic after he'd made the Lakers and the NBA the rival of the Cowboys and the NFL.

Yeah, the game has changed and the rules that govern the game must dramatically change.

The current setup is failing the game. We play an inferior brand of basketball. The NBA is virtually unwatchable in the regular season. Shaquille O'Neal won't be the last NBA star to get in the habit of skipping the first half of the regular season and deny season ticket holders of what they paid for in November, December and January.

The setup is also failing the athletes. Their educational opportunities are compromised the moment they enter high school and are identified as a prospect. By the time they enter college, almost no one in authority over them has a genuine interest in their education. The interest is in their eligibility and their ability to meet the demands of TV networks.

The money and fame are turning out the athletes the way Hollywood and the music industry turn out their child stars. Dennis Rodman = Michael Jackson. The problem is sports fans have different expectations from music/movie fans and child entertainment stars don't have to go to high school or college.

Also, actors don't perform live. Producers work around their bad habits (drugs, poor work ethic, gigantic egos, etc.). We see the finished product. If they sold tickets to watch a star make a movie or television show and invited the media to write about what transpired on the set every day, we'd be repulsed by the behavior and snotty attitudes of Johnny Depp, James Gandolfini and Sandra Bullock. The same would be true if we watched Madonna or Usher record an album.

OK, this a good place to stop. I have lots more to say. Check back.

HIP HOP, A Failing Culture

Sports Commentary

What to do? That's the only thing left to ponder now that the hot mess that was NBA All-Star Weekend has left us with no choice but to deal with a problem that has been fomenting for 20 years.

Under Hip Hop's Hold

Prison culture swallowed hip-hop culture, turning party music into a celebration of violence, hostility, disrespect and drug-dealing.

Prison culture created the Black KKK and negated much of the progress won by the civil-rights movement.

We can no longer afford to live in denial of these realities, and we must formulate a game plan to combat the self-destructive culture that is influencing too many young black men and women.

I offer no apologies for putting these issues on the table publicly. If anything, I apologize for waiting too long.

Prison culture is winning. It has corrupted a form of music that once gave us great joy and/or offered inspiration. Prison culture -- with its BET and MTV videos, popular movies, acceptance in the mainstream media and false gods -- Jay-Z, 50 Cent, Snoop Dogg -- has perverted the American dream for black youth.

The blueprint for black success painted by pop culture and the mainstream media goes something like this:

Step 1: Four to five years posted up on the block, building a small drug-dealing empire.

Step 2: Three to four years shuffling in and out of prison on drug-trafficking charges.

Step 3: Write and perform rap songs about dealing drugs, killing niggas, running from the police and bad-mouthing black women.

Step 4: Sign with a major record label that is anxious to make money off prison culture.

Step 5: Start your own record label and find other drug-dealers-turned-rappers or wannabe-drug-dealers-turned-rappers to exploit.

Step 6: Buy a small percentage of a pro sports franchise, run around with NBA and NFL players and allow black and white members of the mainstream media to kiss your pinkie ring.

What to do about all of this?

Hip-hop/prison culture must be destroyed and remade. In its present, N-word-reliant, violence-promoting form, nothing good can come from hip hop. Just like the prison system, hip hop's popular music is another vehicle to imprison the minds and bodies of the youth who devour it.

Our children think they're participating in a culture that is meant to empower them. Hip hop -- disguised in low-hanging platinum chains, 24-inch rims, platinum grills and other flossy material possessions -- cripples black youth and infects them with a prison mindset that even NFL and NBA dollars can't seem to shake.

I don't hate hip hop. I hate what it has become. I hate what it has done to the minds and values of young people.

You think you're going to be the next Jay-Z. The reality is if you follow the principles celebrated in hip hop, you're far more likely to be the next Tookie Williams. Big Tigger and other hip hop groupies won't tell you that.

Hip hop is filled with hostility and disrespect, the tools needed to survive while incarcerated. Hip hop cares little about family and knows nothing of the rewards of parenting. You don't parent in prison; you baby-daddy in prison. Hip hop judges love by your willingness to embrace evil -- ride (kill) or die.

Just like the Ebonics language, the tattoos and cornrows are straight from the prison playbook. So are the sagging pants, which started as a way for gay prisoners to signal their availability for action.

The rappers love to tell you they're keeping it real, but they leave out so much to the hip hip/prison culture story. "Gangbanging" and being a "rider" is glorified. They don't tell you that much of the violence played out on the streets is directly related to the love affairs that play out behind bars.

You've heard that there's a thin line between love and hate. Well, when two people lay down, at least one person is getting up with feelings. It's easy for those feelings to turn hard and lethal when one person is forced to lie down.

But they don't rap about that. They don't tell you what's at the foundation of the most self-destructive culture in American history.

Prison values are being popularized through hip hop. Men who don't expect to or care whether they live past age 30 are passing on their values to kids. That's why hip hop is an instant-gratification movement. The civil-rights movement took a long-term approach; it was about sacrificing for the next generation.

America, with its repressive drug laws and get-tough-on-non-violent-crime political maneuvering, has incarcerated 25 percent of the black men from the "next generation."

Art is often born from pain. Should we be surprised that a culture has been born from the pain of black incarceration?

A white critic of my All-Star columns, Dave Zirin, asked me Monday: "If black men weren't in prison, don't you think they'd rap about something else?"

It was a great question. What came first, the explosion of American prison building or the explosion of gangsta rap? California, Ronald Reagan's state, was at the forefront of both explosions. They're both byproducts of the war on drugs.

They all need to stop -- gangsta rap, prison building and the fruitless war on drugs.

We need to reject prison culture. Take it off our black-owned radio stations, BET and MTV. Refuse to support it at movie theatres. Make Kanye West pay a price for telling black kids they're stupid for pursuing an education. (To give you an indication of how screwed up things are, Time Magazine put Kanye on its cover and hailed him a genius.)

And we need to fight for sweeping reforms to America's drug laws. We probably need to legalize recreational drugs and eliminate drug dealing as an extremely lucrative occupation. If it was legal, there would be less violence associated with the sale of drugs. If it was legal, there would certainly be far fewer non-violent drug users headed to Black KKK laboratories/prisons.

There also needs to be serious prison reform. We have this lust to see criminals severely punished. We seem to take delight in the fact that they brutalize each other while incarcerated. We want them thrown in the hole, denied the right to education.

We want them caged up like animals, and then we wonder why they act like animals when their mandatory-minimum sentences run out and they're set free to rejoin society. These black and brown, formerly non-violent offenders don't come home to our lawmakers' neighborhoods. They don't attend the same parties or frequent the same nightclubs as our lawmakers. They don't join Joe Biden's posse.

We have to deal with them. They're family. They're cousins, uncles, nephews, best friends from fifth grade. Ideally they need to come home to us more civilized than when they left. At the very least, we can't build prisons that specialize in manufacturing predators.

Our drug laws snatch them. Our prisons rape them of whatever humanity they had. And hip hop culture installs them as role models. The whole vicious cycle needs to be blown up or we're going to lose the next-next generation at an even more alarming rate than the previous one.

One Man's Opinion On Performance Enhancers

A grumbling has made its way out of South Florida and it raises, I think, a good point.

Miami Dolphins defensive end Jason Taylor, one of the leading candidates for the NFL’s Defensive Player of the Year award, was critical of San Diego Chargers star linebacker Shawne Merriman Wednesday during a conference call with Indianapolis media.

In the conference call, Taylor stated that Merriman’s selection to the Pro Bowl and his possible winning of other postseason awards after being suspended four games for violation of the NFL steroid policy sets a dangerous precedent for the NFL.

In the AP story, Taylor was quoted saying, “A performance-enhancing drug is, obviously, what it is. You enhance your performance by doing that. You fail that test, I think it’s not right. It’s against the rules and ultimately I think it’s sending the wrong message to the youth in America and the people who look at this game not only as entertainment, but also to learn lessons from it.”

Merriman claims his positive test was the result of a tainted supplement and was poised to right the league on the issue until it became evident that he might hurt his team more by dragging out the suspension.

Merriman sat out his four games against Cleveland, Cincinnati, Denver and Oakland. His team did not suffer, as the Chargers went 4-0 during the suspension, but come on, two of the teams they played were the Browns and the Raiders, two teams who stink worse than Christmas dinner leftovers served New Year’s Day.

Despite sitting out those four games, heading into today’s action, Merriman still has some of the better defensive numbers in the league. In his second year in the league, he leads the NFL in sacks with 16 in 11 games and has four forced fumbles and one interception.

Has Merriman completed his punishment? Yes, he served his suspension. Was it really a tainted supplement? Maybe. We may never know. But we all agree that professional sports are flooded with performance-enhancing drugs. The recent struggles in track and field, cycling and Major League Baseball have brought the performance-enhancing drugs problem to the forefront of the national consciousness.

For the record, I agree with Taylor. For this year, Merriman should not be in the running for any postseason awards, including a trip to the Pro Bowl. Some disagree, including ESPN’s Mel Kiper, Jr., stating that Merriman’s body of work in the 11 games he has played in this season still merits the achievements that will come Merriman’s way.

But let me ask this question. Major League slugger Mark McGwire is up for nomination to the Baseball Hall of Fame. Many voters have stated they won’t vote for McGwire on the first ballot due to the swirling steroid talk following McGwire since his testimony in front of Congress in 2005. Some have even said they will never vote for McGwire. Much of the same talk will come up again in a couple of years when players like Rafael Palmeiro, Sammy Sosa and Barry Bonds come up for nomination to the hall of fame.

The argument is that we don’t know if the statistics they have accumulated are legitimate or propped up from the end of a needle or smoothed onto the record books by various creams.

Now, does not the same argument apply in this case. It is hard believing Merriman took a tainted supplement because excuses for failing steroid or other performance-enhancing drug tests have become much like the little boy who cried wolf.

We have heard it before‚ way too many times.

You can deny you took these type of drugs until you are blue in the face, but there still are consequences, some far more reaching than a four-game suspension.

Too many players have incentives built into their contracts now to rake in the big money. Making the Pro Bowl or being named Defensive Player of the Year could equal big bonuses, not to mention the future leverage it gives a player for the bigger contract the next time around.

Wait a minute. It is the baseball argument all over again, just in a different sport.

Some may think that just because it did not happen in either cycling, track and field or baseball that the situation is different. Wrong. And the fact some people feel it is different maybe the biggest travesty of all.

(by Jimmy Ivey)

Everybody Loves A Good Conspiracy

Sports Commentary

Almost 20 years later, Ben Johnson wants the world to know that he didn't cheat to win that gold medal in the 1988 Seoul Olympics. If anything, says Johnson, he was the one who was ripped off.

Conspiracy or Not?

Johnson said this week that his positive test at Seoul was due to a - key word here - conspiracy to discredit him. And who was behind the alleged conspiracy? None other than Carl Lewis, who was given the gold medal in the 100-meter dash after Johnson tested positive for steroids.

Johnson says he was drinking beer with Lewis and a friend of Lewis' in the drug-testing waiting room and that his beer was laced with stanozolol.

Makes sense if you think about it. Why just the other day, I slammed down a quick six-pack in the waiting room at my doctor's office. I mean, doesn't everybody? For the life of me, I don't know how corner taverns can stay open, what with all those hospitals and clinics out there. And you thought that was really rubbing alcohol in those bottles.

I know this will come as a shock, but I'm not altogether sure I believe Johnson's account of the clandestine caper. I will, however, give him credit for getting with the program. He is, after all, an athlete, and athletes love a good conspiracy, real or otherwise.

Like Tom Hanks said in that movie, there's no crying in baseball. Unless, of course, somebody is crying conspiracy. Then they pass the Kleenex in the dugout.

Take Barry Bonds for instance. He admitted to the BALCO grand jury that he used steroids, but claimed that it was all a conspiracy. He certainly wouldn't have knowingly taken steroids. That would have been, you know, dishonest. Instead, he was duped into believing those creams he was using were flaxseed oil.

For the record, I believe Bonds' story. But then I've always been a sucker for a good conspiracy. My theory is that it was Colonel Mustard in the observatory with the syringe.

Bonds was simply carrying on a long tradition of baseball conspiracies. The 1951 New York Giants, for example, hid a mole above the center-field bleachers at the Polo Grounds. Armed with a telescope and a phone, he would steal the opposing catcher's signs and relay them to the bullpen, whereupon a sign would be flashed to a Giants hitter so he would know what pitch was coming.

That particular conspiracy is documented, as are several others in the sports world. Giants players fessed up years ago about their sign-stealing service. Just like Tonya Harding and her bonecrushers admitted they conspired to rough up former Olympic figure skater Nancy Kerrigan's knees with a baseball bat.

Then there's the case of the French figure-skating judge who admitted she conspired with a Russian mobster to fix the pairs competition at the Salt Lake Games. Or soccer teams in South America that have admitted to fixing matches. Or Isiah Thomas conspiring with other members of the Eastern Conference All-Star team to keep the ball away from a young Michael Jordan.

Most conspiracy theories in the sports world, however, are just that - theories. We love them because we can't prove them. They're unsolved mysteries. Riddles wrapped inside enigmas. They exist in shadows, in rumors, in innuendo. Most have never been proven and never will be, yet they've become the stuff of legends.

Al Davis, for instance, insists that former NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle conspired to douse a trade Davis had made with the Colts for the draft rights to John Elway. Rozelle denied it till the day he died, but there are those who believe Davis. Which, let's face it, is no small feat.

Floyd Landis tested positive for a banned substance after winning the Tour de France. His reaction? It was a conspiracy, a trumped-up charge, a bogus test. Lance Armstrong? He says he’s innocent of any doping charges, that it's all one big conspiracy among the French media to discredit his legacy.

The list goes on and on. Perhaps the most famous alleged conspiracy of them all involves Patrick Ewing. Legend has it that the NBA fixed the 1985 draft lottery to ensure that the Knicks were able to select Ewing with the first pick.

I don't believe it for a minute, even if it comes complete with details. Several envelopes, each containing a team logo, were placed in a hopper at the lottery. According to legend, the envelope containing the Knicks' logo was frozen overnight. Thus, when commissioner David Stern reached into the hopper, he was able to pull out the magic envelope to ensure the Knicks of their future franchise center.

Right. David Stern, one of the classiest commissioners that ever was, conspired to fix the draft lottery. He and his co-conspirators committed fraud, risked jail time, compromised the integrity of the league so one player could land with one team. Horsefeathers!

But here were are, more than 20 years later, and the story still is making the rounds, as if there's some credibility to it. Kind of like, all these years later, people still journey to Roswell, N.M. just in case.

That's the way it goes with sports conspiracy theories. Just a few weeks ago, Chargers linebacker Shawne Merriman was suspended for four games for violating the NFL's steroids policy. But Merriman, needless to say, claims he's innocent, that it's all a conspiracy, that he took a supplement that shouldn't have gotten him in trouble.

Who knows? Maybe he's being honest. Maybe he didn't know. That's the other thing about conspiracy theories in the sports world. When we hear them, we don't know if they're true or not. That's why they captivate us, keep our attention, sometimes for years, if not decades.

Sometimes they're proven beyond a shadow of a doubt. Other times we're left to wonder. Take the case of the HBO Real Sports report on former Iowa running back Ronnie Harmon. The report quoted some shadowy gambling figure as saying he had Harmon "in his pocket" because of gambling debts.

Yeah, right. A big-name college running back being played for a puppet by gamblers. Trouble is, the normally sure-handed Harmon went out and fumbled four times in the first half in the Rose Bowl.

Was the fix on? Who knows? Did the on-field NFL officials conspire to keep the Raiders out of the Super Bowl with their infamous "tuck rule" a few years ago? I don't believe it for a minute, but then again, I can't prove they didn't.

Legend has it that former Colts owner Carroll Rosenbloom bet $1 million on his team to win the 1958 NFL championship game versus the Giants. I suspect it's true, but I can't be sure. All I know is the Colts were in position to kick an easy game-winning field goal, but elected to keep driving until they scored a game-winning touchdown.


The point spread on the game? Four points. Sure enough, legend has it that Rosenbloom called down to the bench and ordered coach Weeb Ewbank to eschew a field goal. Did it happen? Don't know, but a whole lot of people claim it did.

That's the beauty of conspiracies in the sports world. They're best left unanswered, hanging in the balance between fact and fiction. Once they're proven true or false, nobody talks about them anymore. They become yesterday's news.

Which reminds me. O.J., we know you did it, but don't tell us. We'd rather keep wondering.

(by Jim Armstrong)

John Feinstein Weighs-in On The BCS System

They played a great college football game Saturday, a memorable No. 1 vs. No. 2 match-up that more than lived up to the pre-game hype.

When the dust finally cleared, Ohio State was in the national championship game and Michigan was left hoping that USC and Florida would lose, and that the convoluted BCS system would not somehow deem that Notre Dame - a team that Michigan beat 47-21 at Notre Dame, somehow merited a chance to play Ohio State on the basis of a victory over USC and a great fight song.

Of course, no one mentioned Boise State as a possible opponent for the Buckeyes. The Broncos are just as unbeaten as the Buckeyes but, of course, we all know they don’t belong in this conversation because, well, who have they beaten?

Good question.

Before we answer it, let's move about 500 miles south of Ohio Stadium and flash back again to Saturday afternoon. Just a few minutes after Ohio State-Michigan kicked off, there was a brief, sweet ceremony held in the Patriot Center on the campus of George Mason University.

Mason beat three teams that have combined to win eight national titles and have played in 20 Final Fours. On the day the NCAA brackets were unveiled, CBS' Jim Nantz and Billy Packer pilloried basketball committee chairman Craig Littlepage for selecting so many teams from the so-called "mid-major" conferences. Nantz went so far as to read from George Mason’s schedule and asked Littlepage to identify the victories achieved by the Patriots that caused them to merit a bid.

In other words, who had they beaten?

To its ever-lasting credit, the committee, which may be the only entity on earth to get as many things wrong in recent years as the Bush administration, got it right last year. It finally told schools from the power conferences who made the conscious decision to load up on early season pushover games, that they were sick and tired of it and weren’t going to take it anymore.

They recognized that it is a lot harder to climb onto the NCAA Tournament bubble from the Missouri Valley Conference or Colonial Athletic Association than from the ACC, Big East or Big Ten.

Pilloried one day; praised to the skies on another. Not only did Wichita State and Bradley make the Sweet 16, but Mason wrote the sweetest, most improbable college hoops story since Texas Western made history in 1966. The Patriots were able to write that story for one reason: They were given a chance.

Boise State will never get that chance, just as Utah didn't get that chance and Tulane didn’t get that chance. They were non-BCS schools that finished undefeated and were told by the system, "you didn't play anybody." Tulane went to The Liberty Bowl. Utah got to play in the Fiesta Bowl against a three-loss Pittsburgh team (which it mauled), meaning it had no chance to prove it could play against the real big boys. Boise State will be told it had a nice season and it can go play in one of the 412 bowls televised by ESPN before the power schools play in January.

Does Notre Dame Deserve a BCS Bid?
Here's a question: Who among the power schools do you think wants to play Boise State -especially on a neutral field? The hypocrites posing as college presidents voted last year to allow schools to add a 12th game to the regular season. These paragons of virtue and all that is right, after claiming for years that a playoff system would damage their "student-athletes," and hurt the, "tradition of the bowls," (who among us doesn't live for the great tradition that is the Meineke Car Care Bowl) added a 12th game for one reason: to make more money.

And look at some of the great matchups those 12th game have produced: Florida-Western Carolina; Wisconsin-Buffalo; Penn State-Temple and, of course that college football classic, Miami-Florida International. That one certainly turned out well for both schools.

Anyone call Boise State to start a home-and-home?
The BCS has so many flaws it would be completely impossible to cover them all here. Come December 3 there will be fans at power schools screaming. It may be Michigan’s fans or Florida’s or Arkansas’ or even Notre Dame’s. (It won’t be USC because if the Trojans win out, they’re going to play Ohio State). They’ll all be right. A bunch of sportswriters and coaches and computers shouldn’t decide who plays for the national title. They shouldn’t throw three one loss teams in a hat and pick one out.

But that’s not the real crime of the BCS.
The real crime of the BCS is that George Mason can't happen. Boise State can’t get its shot to be George Mason. Nor can Utah or Tulane or any other non-power schools that finish undefeated in the future. You see, one of the things that is supposed to make sports fair and right and worthy of our attention is that the scoreboard never lies. If the scoreboard says you haven’t lost, you should still be playing - for a championship. You get your shot and lose, that’s fine. But you deserve your shot.

In college basketball, the little guys get their shot every year. They get a chance to play with the big guys and prove they belong. Often, they do just that. Mason did it in a way last spring that will be remembered forever. There just aren’t better stories than Mason.

The time has come for all the blathering from the BCS Presidents to stop. The NCAA isn’t going to do anything - Myles Brand is as culpable as the presidents - so maybe it is time for Congress to step in. Normally, it says here that Congress has better things to do than worry about anything sports-related and most congressional hearings on sports are nothing more than photo-ops for some P.R.-starved committee chairman.

But this is different. The BCS is an illegal cartel run by bad people. It needs to go away. It should be replaced by a six team playoff. Why? So the regular season will still matter: Two teams get byes; two teams get to play at home the first week in December and two teams are happy to make the field. Every game matters. No one misses any more school. The tradition of the ESPN bowls continues and the big bucks bowls rotate hosting the semifinals and the championship game.

This year, for the sake of argument, let’s say Southern Cal wins out and Florida beats Arkansas in the SEC Championship game. Boise State is undefeated. West Virginia finished 11-1. Here’s your tournament: Ohio State and USC get first round byes. Michigan hosts Boise State in one first round game and Florida is home to West Virginia or Louisville. Arkansas and Notre Dame are disappointed but both lost with a chance to make the field. Like in basketball, someone’s upset but everyone truly deserving gets their shot - including Boise State.

And what if the Broncos somehow go into Michigan Stadium and wins? Then they get to play USC on New Year’s Day for a chance to play in the title game.. Who knows what might happen.

What a story, huh? Right up there with George Mason. Only it can’t happen in college football.
That needs to change. Not soon. Now.

(by John Feinstein)

ARE WINNERS "MADE", NOT BORN?

People who run marathons or climb mountains are universally admired for their ability to push themselves beyond the limits of what others would consider themselves capable.

Richard McGuire, head coach of the MU track and field team and assistant professor of education and counseling psychology, said the type of people who achieve these kinds of unique feats are made — not born.

“We all have the qualities of risk-taking and the delusion of invulnerability to some degree,” McGuire said. “Highly achieving athletes typically exhibit those qualities to a very high degree compared to other people.”

Athletic contests are ultimately about evaluation, and, for many, the world consists solely of winners and losers, McGuire said.

“Society has sent the message that if you want to be someone, be an athlete, be a winner, be a champion,” McGuire said. “All others are losers.”

Although McGuire said he thinks sports are given too much importance in society, there is a reason why newspapers have a sports page but no math page. McGuire said that this is the same reason why 80,000 people will come out to watch sporting events every weekend: It is the desire for adulation and the pride that comes with overcoming great obstacles.

“People who possess the desire to take great risks and believe that they are invulnerable go into high-risk sports,” McGuire said. “Marathon runners, triathletes, mountain climbers and bicyclists in the Tour de France are all people who want the challenge and the recognition that comes with overcoming that challenge. They convince themselves that they are tougher than the challenge and that the risks don’t apply to them.”

However, these traits also have a dark side. McGuire said that the same beliefs that lead to great achievement can also lead to risky behaviors like drug and alcohol abuse. What makes some people great athletes can sometimes make them bad role models, he said.

McGuire said that there is a formula for success but that success is not the same as winning. Success, he said, is the combination of ability, preparation, effort and will; in other words, success is doing your best. If you do less than your best, you allow the possibility that you might lose. However, if you do your best and lose anyway, then you are still a success.

Of all these factors, will is the most important, McGuire said.

“These people develop the will to go on, to get up again. They ignore weakness,” he said. “They look for the moment where everyone else quits. The essential pivot point is that these people have chosen ahead of time that they will go on, they are committed to achieving their goal. Pride comes from investing yourself and overcoming challenges. Fun is the joy of overcoming a great challenge, and it is that feeling that drives these people to want to do these things.”

McGuire said that these “I did it” moments have a high value because they come at a great cost.

Richard Cox, professor and chair of the MU Department of Educational, School and Counseling Psychology, said the most important motivations for high-achieving athletes are internal.

“It is primarily a function of intrinsic motivation and not external rewards,” Cox said. “Intrinsic motivation is very complex and comes from many sources, but the most important are (a) confidence, or the belief you can be successful, and (b) perceived personal control or autonomy (who is in charge). Intrinsic motivation can be undermined by external rewards that are perceived as being controlling (external reason for doing things).”

(by Mark Esser)

IS SPORT NEARING APOCALYPSE?

COMMENTARY

In case nobody has noticed, the Sports world has officially spiralled out of control. Once the last bastion of delight, hope and encouragement,found usually in the bowels of a newspaper (another rapidly disintegrating artifact of a past-life), or cheerfully presented near the end of a television newscast, Sports was truly thought of as life's "Toy Department". It was the place where parents didn't have to worry about placing "parental-control" devices into effect.

I guess we've been coming to this end for some time. But, it seems that like the proverbial snowball, its' downhill trip is gaining speed and there seems to be no stopping it now.

Fueled, unmistakeably, by money and power, the world once inhabited by the most sculptured among us; the best trained among us; the most dedicated and committed among us, and in most cases, the most honest among us, is now just another sad example of what happens when we lose sight of our origins.

Take any scenario being played-out in Sports today and ask the question..."What would so-in-so have thought of this situation twenty-five, thirty-five, fifty years ago?" Things have been so bad lately that you probably could start with even fifteen years ago.

Take, for example, the situation with the Lakers. Four potential "Hall of Fame" players decided to play together for a common goal, an NBA Championship. One begins by, at the very least, committing adultery. One decides that he doesn't like the Offense, and pouts his way through the season like a child. One honors the grit and determination displayed by yester heroes like Willis Reed by recoiling on the bench when the team needed him the most. And One disdains working to overcome his achilles-heel weakness (Free-Throws)that will surely cost him any chance of truly being thought of as the "Best-ever" at his position.

And then there was the coach...
Prancing around with the Boss's daughter, sitting motionless through run after run by opposing teams with less-than .500 winning percentages. Either unable to match wits with coaches who have zero Rings, or unable to articulate to his players just what it is they're doing wrong at any-given time on the floor.

A General Manager who goes year-after-year, bringing in either washed-up Power Forwards, or miniature point guards who can't shoot over anyone, or guard anyone. This same GM makes an off-the-cuff remark about possibly making the worse trade in the city's history (remember Mike Piazza and Gary Sheffield?), and triggers an even worse response by a guy who is paid the equivalent of a multi-week old Super Lotto every year.

Now, take this scenario to the Late Chick Hearn, who has only been gone a couple of years, and just ask what he would have thought. Poor Chick is spared the indignity.

Forget, if you want, the 'Felon-of-the-Week' syndrome we've fallen into. Excuse the 'It's all about ME' attitude of players too young to vote. Overlook the assholes on the periphery. You know, the attorneys, agents, promoters, shoe-company executives, and other "Yes-Men" that the modern athlete is told he/she can't do without. Put-up with, if you will, the Alphabet-soup of organizations who are supposed "Govern", but who more often engage in cover-ups, mishandling of funds, muddling of rules and regulations, and exhist in an inverted pyramid pay-structure where the people who do the least get paid the most.

And tolerate what passes for the media these days. "Unethical" is a good word to start with in describing most of today's reporters. "Ambulance-chasers" is another one that comes to mind.

The greatest Baseball player of today is suspected of being "Juiced". As are the world's fastest men and women on foot or bike. A Hockey star is going to jail for assaulting another player on the ice. And one of the aforementioned Basketball ingrates may be his cellmate.

Yeah, those of us who grew-up smuggling the Sunday Sports section into math class are undergoing a culture-shock that our fathers and grandfathers could never have imagined. And just when I thought we'd forever crossed the line between the harsh reality of life and the frivolity that is athletics, I'm reminded that in "The Real World" people are severing the heads of completely innocent strangers in the name of Religion and insurgence. Our political leaders are either trying to get "F--ked" or telling each other to "F--K" themselves. I recently returned home to Los Angeles, gleefull to find $3.50 per gallon gasoline after spending $1.50 per litre (almost $6 a gallon) for the stuff in Europe. The woman who teaches the country lessons on proper edicate and what thread-counts in bed linen means is, herself, an ex-con. The former governor of one state was a wrestling chump, and the current leader of the "Golden State" is a Silver Screen "Super-hero" who always promises "I'll be back."

The Police still can't seem to arrest People of Color without first administering an ass-whipping. And,People of Color still can't seem to escape the tenacles Victocracy by playing the "race-card" inappropriately.

The clergy is trying to keep their hands off of our children. And, our children are trying to keep their hands off of each other.

Come to think of it, Sport is still a much better place in which to reside. So, for better or worse, let's keep on playing!

(by Len Webb)

(Click on "Seal" to Start or Stop the music)