It had to happen. I’ve been expecting it. Today I read a column that said Jeremy Lin is “just like Tim Tebow.”

Sigh. No, he’s not.

Yes, he’s six foot three and young.

Yes, he’s a devout Christian. But he’s quiet about it. He mentions his faith in interviews, but almost as an aside and usually to deflect praise from himself. He closes his eyes and prays before the tip off, but he doesn’t seek out cameras and kneel dramatically in front of them. In other words, for Jeremy, the Christian thing appears to be part of who he is, not a marketing strategy. (To be fair, Tebow’s parents are evangelists, so to some extent Christianity is the family business. It puts bread on the table.)

Full story »

by Matthew Record

There’s a feeling that’s sat next to me all season as I’ve watch my beloved Giants from strong start to an almost complete meltdown to a rebranding of themselves as tough-as-nails fourth quarter warriors. It’s an odd feeling but I wouldn’t say a negative one. What is this team? I don’t mean these past few weeks or even this season. Going back a few years – what is this team? Full story »

I can’t tell you how many times this week, in listening to radio, watching TV or reading print “analyses” on the upcoming Super Bowl, I have heard “Bill Belichick” and “Hall of Fame” used in sequence. It’s been a lot. The working assumption is that the Patriots’ head coach, who has been to four Super Bowls and won three of them (pending Sunday’s showdown with the New York Giants) is a lock first-ballot HoFer. After all, he has several rings and is widely regarded as the premier genius of the contemporary game.

Fair enough. But before this particular runaway bandwagon crashes the gates of Canton, I’d like to ask a question: is Belichick really a Hall of Famer?

Let’s consider a few brief facts.

• He cheated. Yes he did. Stone cold busted. (Apologists can argue that what he was doing was no big deal if they like. But as bad as I detest the guy, I respect the hell out of his ability. Full story »

Joe Paterno is dead. Lots has been written and more will be added to the pile in the coming days and weeks. So let me add my two cents while the thoughts are fresh in my mind.

Had the last few months not happened we’d now be anointing JoePa for sainthood. As you’ve been told so many times before, and are now hearing all over again, he was all that was good and true in collegiate athletics, a man who did things the right way, etc. The thing is, that’s a woefully simplistic commentary on Paterno and how he did business. Also, the last few months did happen. So we now find ourselves needing to address Paterno’s legacy in two parts. Let’s do the ugly bit first. Full story »

New trouble is brewing at Penn State, though the school is operating within the state’s Right to Know law. ABC News has reported that the five current and former Penn State employees enmeshed in the Sandusky abuse scandal are all still on the school’s payroll.

The five are fired football coach Joe Paterno, former president Graham Spanier (who remains a tenured faculty member, as does Paterno), assistant coach Mike McQueary (who is on paid leave), former vice president for finance Gary Schultz (who resigned), and former athletic director Tim Curley (who is also on leave). The latter two are facing criminal charges of perjury and failure to report alleged sexual abuse. Penn State is reportedly paying for their legal defense, as well. Full story »

In any functioning community there are three different levels of responsibility, namely legal, ethical, and moral. The least of these is our responsibilities as defined by local, state, and federal law. That former Penn State football coach Joe Paterno met this lowest of expectations is not in dispute – Sandusky’s prosecutors have explicitly stated that Paterno met the legal requirements of reporting child sexual abuse to his superiors at Penn State. But when the police were not notified, when Sandusky was not shut out of the athletic facilities, why did Paterno not rise to meet his ethical responsibility as an authority figure, or his moral responsibility to report the abuse to the police? I don’t know, and after Paterno’s interview, I’m not entirely sure that he knows either.

Regardless of Paterno’s reasons, it was his failure to meet his higher responsibilities that resulted in the Penn State Board of Trustees voting unanimously to fire Paterno as head coach of the Nittany Lions. The Trustees are charged with guaranteeing the reputation of the university, and as an alumnus (1995, BSEE), I applaud them for having the courage to fire a Penn State icon. Full story »

“I ain’t got no quarrel with them Viet Cong… No Viet Cong ever called me nigger.” Full story »

It’s over now. The Patriots completely decimated the Broncos last night, 45 to 10, and it wasn’t that close. They eased off the throttle in the third quarter and coasted in. They toyed with the Broncs: at one point Brady quick kicked on third down, a surprise tactic usually used by teams unable to get a real punt off due to defensive pressure on fourth down. In this case, New England was mocking the Broncos, giving them the ball back before they had to. Just for fun.

It was as thorough a beatdown as we have seen. And Timmy was completely overmatched.

So what did the Tebowistas learn? Nothing, probably.

The Tebowistas did not see the same game the rest of of saw. Full story »

In case you missed it, the University of Alabama defeated LSU last night, winning the BCS national championship best-of-two series by a 1-1 margin. Congrats to the Tide.

Yep, the BS BCS fails again. Which it always does. But not everyone hates it. I mean, all the corrupt people who profit from it love the system. But there are regular fans who defend it, as well. I have a friend, for instance – let’s call him Bob – who staunchly believes that a tournament to determine the D1 national football champion wouldn’t be any better than the BCS. I think he’s nuts, but he’s a very smart guy. He points to the flaws in playoff systems (for instance, for those who hated last night’s rematch, he notes that the most recent NY Giant Super Bowl win was a rematch and that the Patriots had won the first meeting). And we can sit Old Chicago with fine microbrew and argue for hours, I’m sure.  Full story »

OK, it’s pretty well documented that I am a non-believer in the Miracle at Mile High. I think he is the second coming all right, but the second coming of Bobby Douglass and much of his success is due to the fact that Bobby Douglasses only come along every fifty years or so, and thus profit from novelty. Look at the old footage of Bobby reading the defensive end, and faking the hand off to the running back, then racing up the middle or throwing a wobbly duck twenty yards down the field, and it looks just like Timmy. Same size, same left-handedness, same same.

And that’s OK. It’s clear now that Tim is a fungible NFL quarterback. He threw for 316 yards (yes, yes, John 3:16 and all that) last week against a pretty good defense. 300 yards is 300 yards. The guy threw for 300 yards against a quality NFL defense. I was wrong. He is an NFL quarterback. A great one? Probably not. Full story »

It goes like this:

Reporter asks question that he/she knows will not get an answer.

Player/coach doesn’t answer question.

Reporter pretends that player/coach answered question, thanks player/coach, kicks it back to the guys in the studio/booth.

Can we just stop with the charade already? Just now, on the Giants/Falcons halftime show, they cut to John Lynch in Denver, where he asked Broncos head coach John Fox about the rumors that backup quarterback Brady Quinn was getting reps in practice this week. How short a leash will Tim Tebow be on, coach? Full story »

Toronto GM Brian Burke misses the good old days. And just the other day, he got all misty about having to send his enforcer down the minors because, well, he couldn’t find a dance partner. Or something.

“If you want a game where guys can cheap-shot people and not face retribution, I’m not sure that’s a healthy evolution,” he said Thursday. “The speed of the game, I love how the game’s evolved in terms of how it’s played. But you’re seeing where there is no accountability.”

According to numbers provided by the NHL, fighting is down significantly this season. Through play Wednesday, there was an average of 0.8 fighting majors per game compared with 1.2 at the same point last year. Full story »

Paul Isom is looking for a new job today. He was the student media director at East Carolina University. Why was he canned?

On Nov. 8, the [student] newspaper published a full-frontal photo of a streaker who ran onto the field during that weekend’s home football game. The decision prompted outcry from some readers and from university administrators who said it was “in very poor taste.”

If this photo was so controversial and in “very poor taste,” why did the university require two months to decide to give Isom four hours to clean out his office and get outta Dodge?

No doubt lawyers were consulted. After the photo was published, the university’s vice chancellor for student affairs, Virginia Hardy, presaged what would come to pass:

We will be having conversations with those who were involved in this decision in an effort to make it a learning experience. The goal will be to further the students’ understanding that with the freedom of the press comes a certain level of responsibility about what is appropriate and effective in order to get their message across.

Learning experience my ass. The goal of the lesson being taught here is to warn student journalists and their advisers to not cross the university when it comes to maligning its image.
Full story »

With apologies to Pete Seger

Where have all the Tebows gone?
Zero passing
Where have all the Tebows gone?
Can’t pass at all

Where have all the Tebows gone?
Corners picked them every one
When will they ever learn?
When will they ever learn?

I know, I know, this is mean-spirited. But I was pretty darn gracious when he was winning, and even posited that maybe he would be successful. Full story »

I’d like to offer up a theory. Tell me what you think.

I’ve written some lately about the NBA, which despite all its flaws is still my favorite North American professional sports league. (My favorite pro league anywhere, of course, is the English Premiership, the greatest soccer league in the world.) In particular, I’ve pondered The League’s structural issues vis a vis its big vs. small markets, and let’s be clear in understanding that the new labor deal did not fix those problems. It merely swept them under the rug for a few years where they can fester, multiply and grow really big teeth. Full story »

Televangelist Pat Robertson doesn’t mince words when it comes to faith and this time is no exception. The outspoken faith-keeper blasted Saturday Night Live‘s recent skit of Denver Bronco’s quarterback Tim Tebow on Monday, calling the parody a “disgusting” attack on Christianity.

 “There’s an anti-Christian bigotry that is just disgusting and I think Saturday Night Live did a parody of that, had Jesus come in,” Robertson said.

Robertson even went on to suggest that if SNL had done a similar parody mocking Muslims, there would be “bodies on the street.”

This morning it was reported that Pat Robertson slammed the SNL skit making fun of Tebow and chalked up much of the anti-Tebow sentiment to “anti-Christian” bigotry. And he’s right.

There are two basic reasons not to like Tebow. First, he’s not a conventional quarterback. His motion takes a week to complete and the resulting throw is pathetic. I’ve seen better velocity on stuff coming out of freshmen’s mouths after a frat party. Full story »

Along the same lines, the University of Mississippi recently fired its football coach, who on the way out noted that Mississippi’s past contributed to problems with recruiting, particularly out-of-state athletes who have the wrong idea about Mississippi due to movies like Mississippi Burning.

Wrong idea, eh?  Were I a talented black athlete, I wonder if all those Confederate flags that still fly along the road side would bother me. Or the fact  that UM has not been particularly successful in retiring  its mascot “Colonel Reb.”  In case you’ve never seen a UM football game, and they’re dreadful so there’s no reason you’d want to, Colonel Reb is a goateed plantation owner. I kid you not. Nah, I am sure as a young black man it wouldn’t bother me one bit to have a plantation owner standing on the sidelines yelling “Run, boy, run!” Full story »

A couple of weeks ago, as I was lamenting what looked (at the time) like the end of the road for the NBA 2011-12 season, I explained that the league was facing an especially nasty confound. You had three factions (players, big market owners and small market owners), and there was simply no common ground between two of them (the players and the small market owners). When all the motivations were factored in, it was simply hard to imagine a long-term accord that served everyone. Now that the parties have settled, I’m looking at the new collective bargaining agreement and trying to understand how it’s anything more than a band-aid on a sucking chest wound.

I see how the players won. They gave back a few percent of revenue but prevailed on several critical structural issues. The big market owners (BMOs) have to deal with some new luxury tax issues but they’re still positioned to spend big and dominate the league.  Full story »

From earlier this afternoon:

• Tim Tebow, late in the first half, finally completes his first pass. Guy at next table, vibrating with excitement, says to friend “they talk about Tebow being a football player, but that’s the great quarterback!”
• Tim Tebow runs for a couple of yards. Nearby fan to companion: “They should let Tebow call his own plays!!”
• In overtime, the offensive line opens a nice hole and Willis McGahee hits it for a big gainer. Broncos fan, as McGahee is running: “TEBOW!!!!!!” Full story »