My Own Greatest Year In Sports

Let’s be honest, 2011 was a lousy year in sports. Just look at all the stories which happened in that twelve-month span which completely  took away the usual uplifting nature of sports. So, as part of moving forward, I thought it was time to take a look back to a year which for me was the opposite of this one most recently and thankfully past.

That year was 1987.

Ironically, as 2011 brought the low point in the history of Penn State football, 1987 brought one of the highs.  The Nittany Lions came into the Fiesta Bowl in 1987 as a prohibitive underdog against the brash, trash-talking Miami Hurricanes. Joe Paterno’s traditional style of football served as the classic antithesis to the wide-open style of Jiimmy Johnson, but the Hurricanes flat-out got beat.  If you were watching college football in 1987, there is no way you can forget Pete Giftopoulous’ game-sealing interception in the 4th quarter; the one that cemented Penn State’s second National Championship.

Later that year came the culmination of the 1986–87 season in NCAA men’s ice hockey.  To most people, that isn’t such a big deal, but when your alma mater prints its diplomas on hockey pucks, North Dakota’s defeat of Michigan State  to capture it’s 6th National Championship was a big deal on that campus.

The end of March means spring is most places, but Grand Forks, North Dakota is not one of them. The average temperature in Grand Forks in March is about 20 degrees Fahrenheit; average of course meaning a great deal of the time it is significantly colder than that. In short, living in Grand Forks in March means nearing the end of a winter where you’ve been trapped indoors, left to three main forms of entertainment: eating, drinking, and fornicating.  Naturally, after a while, you become a fat, drunken hump-meister that needs no reason to party.

The Fighting Sioux were such fun to watch that winter; their dominance of the indoor ice was an antidote to the ever-present outdoor variety; in January in Grand Forks, even the air freezes.  But thanks to a complement of talent such as Ed Belfour, Tony Hrkac, Bob Joyce, and Ian Kidd, the atmosphere around North Dakota Fighting Sioux games on Friday and Saturday nights warmed to a simply sub-arctic Bacchanalian orgy filled with the aforementioned three surrounding activities.  That is why to this day, there is a hockey puck on my desk to remind me of the the hockey season in which I drank more beer, ate more pizza and after-bar food (for those of you who know…who else misses The Red Pepper?), and had more sex than in any other six-month period in my life.

As long as we are on the subject of things that forever combined the concepts of ice rinks and sex, when is there a better time to mention East German figure skating gold medalist Katarina Witt?

After all, when’s the last time you remembered a figure skater for her serious upper-body pride rather than her triple axle?

If a figure skater who doesn’t look like a hockey stick wearing toe-pick blades is rare, then the phenomenon known as Mike Tyson must have been the sporting world’s version of Haley’s Comet.

The boxing world hadn’t seen anything quite like Mike Tyson before, and it certainly hasn’t seen anything quite like him since. The year before, Tyson became the youngest heavyweight champion at just 19 years old. In  March 1987, Tyson nearly (and ironically) crushes several James “Bonecrusher” Smith’s internal organs; a victory which unified the WBA and WBC heavyweight titles. Already the the year before, Tyson became the youngest undisputed heavyweight champion in boxing history.

Over the course of the next year, Tyson left a trail of corpses formerly known as challengers (four in all) to retain his title. Early in 1988, he added the last of the great “old-school” heavyweight champs to his body-count when he separated Larry Holmes from his consciousness; the only time Holmes ended up looking up during a ten-count in 76 career bouts.

1987 marks the apogee in the meteoric orbit of  Tyson’s career; this the last year before the tumult takes over.  The following years will bring his divorce from  actress Robin Givens, after being accused of domestic violence, the firing and subsequent suing of his manager, breaking his hand in an early morning street brawl, two car accidents  (one of which was reportedly a suicide attempt), a rape conviction and related prison sentence, a drug conviction with another stint behind bars, and the Evander Holyfield “ear biting” incident.”  Somewhere in that freight train of fouls, Tyson lost the title to a club fighter named Buster Douglas, never to regain it.

At least Tyson always has being a hip-hop and video-game icon.

Now, let’s go from the rare to the unbelievable.  Those of you under 30 may never swallow this, but there was a time in this country when people were all jacked up over yachting, specifically the America’s Cup.  Remember that in the 1980′s, thanks to the “Miracle On Ice” and two Olympic boycotts in that same decade, international competitions became more of an issue of national pride than they had ever been previously. This was magnified when it came to the America’s Cup, which not only is the pinnacle of the yachting world, but had never been outside the possession of the Americans in it’s entire history, which dates back to just after the Civil War.

That all changed in 1983 when Kookaburra III, a tub from the Royal Perth Yacht Club wrested the Cup from the Newport Yacht Club. Seriously, people went crazy over this loss. Stories came out about how there was talk replacing the Cup’s place in the club’s trophy case with the head of the skipper who lost it.  ESPN got the rights to broadcast the races when the American challenger went to Australia. People stopped in their tracks to watch two hours of boats. Water cooler sports-talk included terms like “jibs” and “tacking.” It was like the Olympics with flat-soled shoes, life jackets, and that white sun-block stuff on your nose.

When skipper Dennis Conner led challenger Stars & Stripes ’87 of the San Diego Yacht Club to a four races to none Cup win over the Australian defender, he literally became a national hero.

Believe it or not, for two weeks in 1987, America went boat-shit crazy.

As far as more conventional sports are concerned, 1987 offered two of the great championship series in sports.

First, there was the NBA Finals. It would be easy to simply say the “Showtime” Los Angeles Lakers which I grew up on (my dad had season tickets) beat the hated Boston Celtics 4 games to 2.  While I loved the outcome, just focusing on that would ignore so many great points of this series.

For example, this series was such a perfect contrast in styles. There is no better word to describe the Lakers than “dominant.” They were a beautiful blend of speed and power, of flash and fundamentals that when they were firing on all cylinders it mattered little who they faced.

Despite that, the Celtics offered the effective foil; not only were they the defending champs, they did it in a way that was a complete opposite of Los Angeles.  The Celtics played high-school half-court basketball, but they played it better than anybody ever did.

Even though they were already a championship caliber club, The Lakers were a team on the way up. Michael Cooper emerged as a guard who offered match-up problems of anybody else in the league,  A.C. Green, James Worthy, Mychal Thompson, and Kurt Rambis offered a mix-and-match option for a front-court that could beat you ant any game you wanted to play. This was augmented guy named Magic Johnson who was a point guard in a power forward’s body, and was better than anybody at either position. Even the grand old man, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar still brought his unstoppable “Skyhook” to the mix.

Meanwhile, even though they were the defending champions, the Celtics were a ship taking on water. The fact they made it to the finals was a major accomplishment, considering the death of Len Bias, the ongoing infirmity of an aging Bill Walton,  and nagging injuries to Kevin McHale and Robert Parish. Boiled down to basics, this meant the Celtics did not the horses to run with the Lakers.

This is why the Lakers were such a prohibitive favorite. It’s also why just zipping ahead to a Laker 4-2 win is a mistake.  Had this series gone seven games, it would be regarded as one of the great NBA Finals of all time.

The Celtics were, for all practical purposes, playing with five players. The Celtics had to play perfectly to win; they did it twice and nearly pulled it off a third time, which is really the only reason this series only went six.  It all started in Game 1, when at one point Larry Bird hit 11 shots in a row.  This showed the younger, faster Lakers that the Celtics were so resilient that if they lapsed even the smallest bit, Boston could capitalize on that slip.

Secondly amongst the “big” sports came the “boys of summer.” In a year packed with basketball, boxing, and bimbos, baseball belted the prize-winning punch.

For openers, there were so many guys who had great “pre-steroid” seasons.  A look at the league leaders in the “Triple Crown Categories” will lead you to that conclusion.

Batting Average:

• American League: Wade Boggs, Boston, .363
• National League: Tony Gwynn, San Diego, .370

RBIs:

• American League: George Bell, 134
• National League: Andre Dawson, 137

Home Runs:

• American League:  Mark McGwire, Oakland, 47
• National League: Andre Dawson, Chicago, 49.

1987 also had a story one might think impossible; a player being traded for himself. Granted, it wasn’t the first time it happened. Thanks to he provision in baseball trades known as the “Player to be named later” (PTBNL),  there have been two times when a player has been named on both sides of a trade.

In April 1962, the expansion New York Mets traded catcher Harry Chiti to the Cleveland Indians for the aforementioned PTBNL.  By June, the Indians discovered why Chiti was on the trading block to begin with; the Indians gave Chiti back to the Mets as the PTBNL.

The same situation arose in 1987 with career bullpen jockey Dickie Noles.  Noles had been ping-ponging around the league as a “have fastball, will travel” type, but in 1987 the last place Cubs offered Noles to the first-place Tigers as one of those trade deadline “bolster the playoff run” moves to which we’ve become so accustomed.  The trouble is that Noles sucked so bad the Tigers didn’t want him either, so he was shipped back to the Windy City as…you guessed it…the dreaded PTBNL was also traded for himself in 1987, in a deal between the Cubs and Tigers.

But the real story of baseball in 1987 is the Minnesota Twins. The magic started in June, when the Twins went 18-9 to capture first place in the American League West. They would never be worse than tied for the lead again that season.  But it was August when the stars really seem to align for the nine of the North Star state

August 3 – In a moment that brings this  team to national attention, Twins pitcher Joe Niekro is suspended for 10 days for possessing a nail file on the pitcher’s mound against the defending division champion California Angels. Niekro claimed he had been filing his nails in the dugout and put the file in his back pocket when the inning started.  He later makes an appearance on the David Letterman show in which he makes light of the incident by showing Letterman exactly how to “doctor” a ball.

August 6 – Later in the same West Coast road trip comes the moment where the Twins never look back.  The Twins are opening a four-game set with another contender, the Oakland A’s. In Bottom of the 4th inning, the Twins have a 3-1 lead and a one-out, bases-loaded chance to blow the game open thanks to an error by A’s shortstop Alfredo Griffin.  The Twins do just that when Kirby Puckett ropes a bases-clearing double off 20-game winner Dave Stewart to put Minnesota ahead for good. The Twins win the game 9-4 to capture sole possession of first place, a lead they would retain until Friday, August 28th…or as I will always call it “The Weekend in Milwaukee.”

August 20 – Even though they’ve just been swept by the Tigers, it dawns on me that the Twins can’t win on the road, but can’t lose at home.  This becomes CRUCIAL as this is in the days when the home-field advantage for playoff series were scheduled in advance; in 1987 the American League West Champion would have home field in the championship series, and the American League would enjoy that same advantage in the World Series. This is when I become a firm believer that all the Twins needed to do in win the AL West, and a World Series title would be coming to Minnesota for the first time.

August 29 – The Saturday of ”The Weekend in Milwaukee. ” The Twins had lost to the Brewers the night before to find themselves again tied for the AL West lead. The Twins have Bert Blyleven pitching, and the feel in the air is this game is a “must-win” for the Twins playoff hopes.

In the top of the first, Gary Gaetti belts a two-run shot to put the Twins ahead early.  Puckett adds a solo shot in the top of the third. By the top of the fifth, the Brewers crept back to 3-2, until Puckett added his second home run of the day. Puckett’s bomb opened the flood gates to a Twin 7-2 lead as it was followed by an RBI single by Tom Brunansky and a 2-RBI single my Steve Lombardozzi. Later, Kent Hrbek blasted a three-run dinger to seal the deal. The Twins capture sole possession of first place and never relinquish it.

"The Weekend in Milwaukee:" The first step in getting a street named after you.

August 30 – The Sunday of “The Weekend in Milwaukee,” otherwise known as the day I accepted Kirby Puckett as my Lord and personal Savior.  Puckett leads the Twins to a 10-6 victory by going 6-for-6, including two more homers, two doubles, and 6 RBIs. This made for a two-day total in a critical series of 10 hits in 11 at-bats, 4 home runs, 8 runs batted in, 7 runs scored, and  24 total bases.  Oh, and somewhere amongst that offense-gasm, Puckett also robbed future Hall-of-Famer Robin Yount of a home run.

There were so many more moments along the way to the Twins World Series Title…the game against the Royals when the Twins rode three first-inning home runs to clinch the division title, or Game 4 of the ALCS where the Tigers’ Darrell Evans became the goat to end all goat, or hometown hero Kent Hrbek’s game-sealing grand slam in Game 6 of the World Series.

There were also many firsts. The Twins were the first team with only 85 regular-season wins. Game 1 of the 1987 World Series was the first World Series game played indoors. It was also the first World Series in which the home team won every game. Most importantly, it was the Twins first Championship since the franchise moved to Minnesota.

The 2011 Dubsy Awards

Every January since this blog was created, we here at Dubsism have given an award for achievements during the previous year in some under-recognized categories in the world of sports. In prior years, the nominations for the awards were done exclusively by an internal committee. This was the first year we allowed nominations from the general public.  Between our committee and our valued readers, we had more quality nominations than we could ever possibly use. However, in cases where we received an outstanding nomination, we made sure to recognize those who submitted it.

With that, and after careful consideration, here are the winners for the 2011 Dubsy awards.

The Mickey Klutts Award for Unfortunate Naming

Winner: Chicago Bears fullback Tyler Clutts

We really had no choice but to go with a guy so closely named as the award’s namesake. After all, whether you are an infielder – or in Tyler’s case, a fullback – you still have to handle the ball, and being named for a ten-thumbed oaf just can’t help.

Honorable Mention: St. John’s forward God’sgift Achiuwa

This may be my favorite college basketball name since God Shammgod played for Providence back in the 90′s. Its gets better when you consider Gods’gift has three brothers named Promise, Precious, and God’swill; and two sisters named Grace and Peace.

How is this unfortunate? Because you just know there is some English Lit major working at the St. John’s campus newspaper dying to make all sorts of poet-geeky John Milton/Paradise Lost jokes the minute the Red Storm lose.

We also have to give a shout out to the many of you who nominated both Doug Fister and Charlie Furbush. If only this had been the “Beavis and Butthead” award…

Previous Winner: Gregor Fucka

The Bobby Knight Award for Achievements in Dramatic Public Meltdowns

Winner: UTEP basketball head coach Tim Floyd

Floyd exemplifies the type of rage that was shown by the award’s namesake.  The February loss by UTEP to C-USA foe East Carolina would normally have been unremarkable except for Floyd’s award winning performance, in which UTEP racked up five…count ‘em, five… technical fouls.. Two coaches were ejected and Floyd himself had to be escorted off the court by the cops.  The video is priceless; things get fun at the 1:23 mark…

Honorable Mention: Coastal Carolina Head Football Coach David Bennett

The ability offer this kind of wisdom explains why Bennett is the reigning Big South Coach of the Year. In an attempt to get his team jacked up for an upcoming game against rival Catawba College, Bennett uncorked a wonderfully deranged theory on the relationship between cats and dogs.

Previous Winner: Former Cubs’ manager Lou Piniella

The Bevo and Ralphie Award for Mascot Buffoonery

Winner:  Scorch, mascot for the Boston Blazers

I had no idea wearing a big, fuzzy head while cheering on an indoor lacrosse team made one a chick skank magnet.  Apparently,  its the prime way to get lap dances during an intermission. Who knew?

By the way, you can’t tell me the expression on the mascot’s face isn’t completely perfect…you can tell inside that suit there’s a Blazer Boner.

Honorable Mention: The University of Minnesota’s Goldy Gopher

Honestly, who amongst us hasn’t wanted to shit-hammer a mascot? Since I can’t really improve on the oddities of this story, I’ll just give you the raw details from from the Minnesota Daily:

An irritated fan punched Goldy Gopher in the face during a men’s gymnastics meet Saturday night at the Sports Pavilion.

During the meet, the University of Minnesota mascot sat behind Douglas Dokken, 60, and started “messing with him,” witness Barry Colthorpe said. Goldy tapped Dokken on the shoulder and ruffled his hair.

First of all, why is a mascot hanging out at a gymnastics event? Secondly, who knew anybody showed up at gymnastic meets? Thirdly, who knew the gymnastics crowd were such ass-kickers?

Colthorpe said Dokken was ignoring Goldy’s antics, but within a couple of minutes, he snapped, turned around and punched Goldy in the face.

Goldy froze, but within moments of the first punch, Dokken wailed another, forcing Goldy to leave the area…Goldy immediately talked to his supervisor and the police officer who was already stationed at the event. He is not reported to have been hurt, but the mask was damaged.

So, it seems somebody did know how dangerous the gymnastics crowd can be since there was already a cop there. But who knew mascots had supervisors? How does one become a mascot supervisor? Don’t you think maybe the mascot supervisor should have stepped in when it became clear his mascot was clearly pissing off somebody’s grandfather?

Security personnel arrested Dokken as soon as the meet finished. Dokken was issued a citation for disorderly conduct and a trespass warning banning him from the Sports Pavilion and Williams Arena for a year, University police Lt. Troy Buhta said.

They should have given him a medal. I hate that freakin’ Gopher.

Previous Winner: Alphie the Wolf (University of Nevada)

The Budd Dwyer Award for Excellence in Career Suicide

Winner: Former Washington Nationals Manager Jim Riggleman

Jim Riggleman felt he deserved better. Perhaps he did; that’s open for debate. But no matter the reason, giving your boss an an ultimatum is never a good idea.

Rigs wanted a contract extension from the Nationals, and general manager Mike Rizzo remained very stand-offish about discussing it, so much so that Riggleman demanded a meeting to finalize such an agreement minutes before they club was leaving for a series in Chicago.

That was bad decision number one.

Riggleman compounded that by forcing Rizzo’s hand – “either schedule a meeting with me or I quit right now.” He may as well just shot himself in the face.

Granted, Rizzo didn’t help matters any, after all  Rizzo didn’t even have the stones to tell him “you’re not our guy” to his face. Not to mention, from an organizational leadership perspective, sending a message to your people that you don’t care about them is far worse than anything Riggleman did. Despite that, Riggleman is the one who brought things to a head at an incredibly inappropriate time, did so in a manner that really didn’t allow his boss any choice other than to be extorted, and placed his own concerns above those of a team with which he was engaged in contractual obligation.

That was bad decision number two; the fatal one.

As badly as Mike Rizzo handled the situation, Riggleman committed career suicide inasmuch as it bodes badly for a man in a leadership role to walk away from a commitment to his team over over what is essentially a disagreement with his boss.  This is why Riggleman will never manage in the major leagues again.

Honorable Mention: Former Chicago Bears Wide Receiver Sam Hurd

This guy screwed up two careers because one of them happens to be rather illegal.

In mid-December, Chicago Bears wide receiver Sam Hurd was taken into federal custody after he tried to set up a huge drug deal with an undercover agent, buying a pound of cocaine from the agent.  The 26-year-old Hurd allegedly was interested in buying 20 pounds  of cocaine and 1,000 pounds of marijuana a week to distribute in the Chicago area. Hurd was cut from the Bears after his arrest, and then was released from federal custody after posting a $100,000 bond.  Hurd faces up to 40 years years in prison if he is convicted and receives the maximum penalty for the alleged crimes.

Previous Winner: Former Colorado head coach Dan Hawkins

The Ed Hochuli Award for the Best Call

Winner: The Signs of the #OccupyGameDay Movement

ESPN sucks. The Dan Patrick Show rules. The signs are awesome.

Honorable Mention: Leslie Frazier, Minnesota Vikings head coach (submitted by Ryan Meehan, who is so freaking funny he writes for more blogs than we can mention)

Frazier gets this Dubsy simply because he was the first credible guy to confirm what the evil little troll known as Mike Shanahan figured out one trade too late. Donovan McNabb is washed up (Andy Reid doesn’t count because he was too wrapped up in the Kevin Kolb/Michael Vick wet dream).

Previous Winner: A guy holding a sign at a hockey game which said “Are you pregnant, Ref? Because You’ve missed two periods!”

The Jason Sehorn Award for Being Completely Overrated

Winner: Kim Kardashian

Kardashian, shown here in a rare instance of only cupping one ball.

If it weren’t for the fact she keeps notching her lipstick case with B-list jocks, we’d have no need to pay attention to her. We’d have no reason to care about those who think she is the hottest thing on two legs.

Forget for a minute that she’s had more athlete meat than every sorority in the SEC combined. If she really were the hottest woman on the planet, what’s she doing marrying some D-list hump like Kris “I Wish I Were The SportsChumphries, Not The HumpDashian” Humphries? Not to mention, if we are to believe the rumor mill, she left that 7-week marriage because she had an itch only Reggie Bush can scratch.

For a C-list guy, Reggie Bush must have some serious trouser magic. After all, so far he’s dicked an entire university, two NFL franchises, and the biggest butt this side of Jennifer Lopez.

But, I digress. Honestly, it’s not like she’s hideous; give Joe Namath a few drinks and he’d probably want to kiss her too.  But let’s be even more honest – I could easily name at least 50 women I’d rather know in the biblical sense than anybody named Kardashian.

Honorable Mention: Dallas Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo

There’s two ways to look at this. You can either believe it took a sham of a marriage to keep a Dubsy out of Romo’s hands, or you can believe this is just another example of Romo not being able to win at ANYTHING.  Either way, you can’t be surprised that Romo’s name pops up here, considering he’s “waiting to live up to his potential” for eight years now. Face it, the guy is 31 years old, which statistically places him the back half of his career. It also means we’ve seen his potential. He’s mediocre at best, he’s not going to get any better. Deal with it.

Previous Co-Winners: Tim Tebow and LeBron James

The Clinton-Nixon Award for Cover-Up Futility

Winner: Former Penn State President Graham Spanier

Spanier with one of this awards namesakes at Penn State landmark The Creamery.

I’ll be honest, there were a ton of nominations for the Penn State and Syracuse sex abuse scandals in some other categories for Dubsy awards. This meant the awards committee had some hard choices to make.

First of all, J-Dub recused himself since he is a Penn State alum. Then it became a question of whose behavior was really award-worthy. Besides, his views on this matter are already on record.

Secondly, the only award child-raping monsters like Jerry Sandusky and Bernie Fine deserve are heavy, blunt ones which are swung into their skulls leaving fatal wounds.

Then it became a question of people who lost their jobs as a result of these situations. The Budd Dwyer Award for Excellence in Career Suicide is really about sticking the gun in your own mouth, not getting fired for the actions of others, even if you covered up those actions. Besides, if you are a dinosaur like Joe Paterno or Jim Boeheim, it doesn’t matter how your job ends; you aren’t getting hired anywhere else because you are OLD.

The Penn State situation unfolded as it did because of two key components. First, there was the prerequisite for this category; the cover-up.  Even if you don’t believe the grand jury testimony which led to the filing of the charges, the Sandusky trial eventually will draw out the details of who knew what and when they knew it; a trail which ultimately ends at Spanier.

Moreover, it is the manner in which Spanier handled this situation when the news broke about the charges being filed against former assistant Jerry Sandusky, athletic director Tim Curley, and vice president Gary Schultz. Simply stated, it was the worst handling of a crisis I’ve ever seen.

If you recall, the news broke about the indictments on a Saturday afternoon. At this point, none of the heinous details were readily known and the news cycle wasn’t really going to pick up any traction with this until the following Monday. That’s the key to all of this; the reason why the Penn State story blew out of the sports section and onto the front page and the story at Syracuse didn’t.

Spanier called a press conference on Sunday afternoon. This was stupid move #1, because it sent up a big, red flare there was a panic breaking out amongst the Penn State administration.  Stupid move #2 came during that presser; the moment when Spanier offered the table-pounding defense of Sandusky, Curley, and Schultz, going so far as to use the now-fatal phrase “unconditional support.” Those two words allowed every news commentator on the planet to portray everybody at Penn State as having not a single interest in the well-being of the victims.  Once that genie was out of the bottle, it was never going back, and an entire university now bears a mark of shame due to the actions of a few stupid self-preservationists.

Honorable Mention: Former Ohio State Head coach Jim Tressel

I hope the irony isn't lost on you, Jim.

The whole reason why this award is named for the two most recent presidents who are arguably most remembered for their cover-ups, because nobody seemed to learn the lesson about the cover-up being worse than the crime. To mix metaphors, the bottom line is that the shit always hits the fan when the cat gets out of the bag.

Don’t forget, this whole thing at Ohio State started over some tattoos and memorabilia. If Tressel had come clean at first, he’d still be wearing red sweatervests. After all, the NCAA didn’t even kick him or the players out of the Sugar Bowl last year when this story first broke. In fact, they only imposed a sanction which didn’t kick in until the following season.

That can only mean that the punishment wasn’t going to be that severe, so Tressel might as well have just bitten the bullet. Even after the fact, Ohio State only loses a handful of scholarships and one year of post-season suspension. He would have never…repeat NEVER…been fired if he had just told the truth.

Previous Winner: Former USC athletic director Mike Garrett

The Charles O. Finley Award for Achievements in Cheap

Winner: The Tampa Bay Rays (submitted by Chris “Don’t Call Me Kris” Humphries from SportsChump, one of the best sports blogs out there that isn’t this one.  In fact, it just won one of those Salvadoran-style web elections).

This one really doesn’t take long to explain. The Rays have been been a contender for the last four season without spending any money.  In fact they were the catalyst for the collapse of the big-money Boston Red Sox despite having the 29th payroll in baseball.

Honorable Mention: Los Angeles Clippers’ owner Donald Sterling

If you ever needed a poster-child for the fact the evidence the NBA Lockout was a screw-job designed to benefit about 10 owners and the top 5% of players in terms of income, Donald Sterling is your poster child.

Sterling bought the Clippers in 1981 for $12.5 million, and today that team is worth somewhere in the $400 million dollar neighborhood. That waaaay outstrips the value indexed against inflation, so Sterling has made a ton of money on a team that has been little more than a league bottom-feeder for three decades.

My favorite example of what a cheap bastard Sterling is: When then-Clippers’ head coach Kim Hughes needed surgery for prostate cancer in 2004, Sterling refused to pay for an out-of-network procedure, leading Yahoo! Sports blogger Kelly Dwyer to brand him the “worst person in the world.” The bill of $70,000 was paid by some current and former Clippers players, including Corey Maggette, Marko Jaric, Chris Kaman, and Elton Brand.

Previous Winner: The Pittsburgh Pirates

The Joe Kapp Award for Being Run Out of Town

Winner: Former Boston Red Sox Manager Terry Francona

Terry Francona is the perfect example of why Boston sucks not only as a sports city, but as a collection of human beings.  Instead of running him out of town over some bullshit about guys misbehaving in the clubhouse, they should have built a statue of him.  After all, this guy did something twice in a few years that NOBODY had done in 86; bring a championship to one of the most undeserving franchises in all of sports.

Never marry a Bostonian. The minute you do, you open your world to a never-ending litany of excuses, not to mention you can spend years providing a lifestyle better than they had before your arrival, then the minute the ebbs flow, you are yesterday’s newspaper. Every single Boston-born sports fan out there has an “ex” they dumped because they got sick, lost a job, or generally did anything that didn’t work to some Bostonian piece-of-crap’s advantage.

Honorable Mention:  Former Kansas City Chiefs head coach Todd Haley (submitted by Bobby Charts, a member of the Sports Blog Movement and a blogger whose work I highly recommend).

Here’s another case of a guy who inherited a team that was a dog-initiated steaming coil on a winter sidewalk, and with veritably no support from management took that coil into the playoffs. The collapse that followed this year had nothing to do with Haley. How did anybody expect this guy to win with this team living through the “digging out from under Charlie Weis” effect, especially after Matt Cassel got hurt?

Previous Winner: Former Maryland head coach Ralph Friedgen

The Bobby Layne Award for Best Performance While Drunk

Winner:  Former U.S. Ski Team Member Robert “Sandy” Vietze

“Former” is the key word here. After all, who knew getting drunk on a flight and peeing on somebody’s kid would get you A) punched in the face,  B) arrested, and C) kicked off the ski team?

Cue “quote gold” in 3…2…1…

“I was drunk, and I did not realize I was pissing on her leg,” he is quoted as saying.

Time for more honesty…who amongst us hasn’t gotten bombed and peed on somebody?

Honorable Mention: The Unnamed Eustis High School football player 

Why do these stories always happen in Florida? From the Orlando Sentinel:

Several Lake County school employees including two coaches are under investigation as to whether or not they allowed a Eustis High School football student to play when he was drunk.

The district would not confirm whether the student was in fact drunk, but said a student was disciplined after a preliminary investigation.

The word is that this unnamed player drank beer before the game, so much so that he was visibly intoxicated, complete with slurred speech and even a barf or two. Despite that, it is alleged that the coaching staff knew he was drunk but put him in the game anyway.

Previous Winner: Indianapolis Colts’ punter Pat McAfee

The Artis Gilmore Award for Achievements in Hair Boldness

Winner: Minnesota Timberwolves forward Michael Beasly

Uhh, Mike, I don’t care if you are 6’10″ and 240 pounds…headbands and braids are for CHICKS. Now, either go get a MAN’S haircut, or get your kibbles clipped and play for the Minnesota Lynx.

Honorable Mention: Oakland A’s Outfielder Coco Crisp

There’s something special about the power of the afro, but we do have to appreciate the sense of tradition in baseball with Crisp’s straight-up shout out to Oscar Gamble.

Previous Winner: Troy Polamalu

The Kyle Orton Award for Achievements in Partying

Winner: Dallas Mavericks forward Dirk Nowitzki

Forget that Nowitzki is about two dribbles from passing out. Forget that he is wearing a woman’s earring.  It’s more important what she’s wearing…his t-shirt. Let’s be honest, women don’t wear the clothes of men from which they haven’t a sampling of his “low post” moves…

Honorable Mention: New England Patriots quarterback Ryan Mallett

It’s called dedication. Forget that you have a reputation for being a party animal. Forget the fact that reputation cost you some serious money when you plummeted  in the draft. A man has to stick by his principles, even if that means getting piss-drunk during your rookie orientation.  According to Jason Cole of Yahoo! Sports, Mallett stayed up “all-night partying” during the NFLPA Rookie Symposium in July.

Previous Winner: San Francisco Giants pitcher Tim Lincecum

The Vasily Alexseyev Award for Plus-Sized Achievment

Winner: New England Partriots defensive tackle Vince Wilfork

This is a new award named for the recently-departed greatest superheavyweight weightlifter the world has ever seen. While many of his records have since been broken, he remains the only competitor to set 80 of them. Despite his 50-inch waistline and proclivity for 36-egg omelettes, Alezseyev is one of the greatest athletes the world has ever seen, and this award will be given annually to another big guy whose done big things.

Wilfork not only did a big thing for a big guy to do, he did it twice within two weeks of each other. First, he gets an interception and returns it 30 yards against the Chargers, then two weeks later does literally the same thing, just with a slightly shorter return. It is a feat for a defensive lineman to get one interception in his career, let alone two in two weeks. But the fact that Wilfork actually piled up close to fifty total return yards without consuming the contents of every oxygen tank in the stadium in nothing short of miraculous.

Honorable Mention: Fox Sports’ Tony Siragusa

Let’s be honest, we have to give props to anybody who breaks down the blow-dried, make-up wearing barriers in sports broadcasting, especially when that guy gets close to four full scale spins and looks so much like an extra from The Sopranos  he actually was one.

The Vinko Bogotaj Award For Epic Failure

Winner: The NBA Owners and the Player’s Union

Seriously, a pox on both their houses. This became an epic failure the minute the league started canceling games.  Make no mistake, both sides were responsible for this train-wreck.

The owners plotted this for two years. Now, you have to give them credit for devising and carrying out an effective strategy, but the fact they were out to recoup the store they so stupidly gave away the last time speaks to their collective idiocy.

Meanwhile, the players spent so much time sitting around with their thumbs up their asses they never bothered to prepare themselves for what was coming. Nobody from the players side seemed to understand they were going to have the weak position in the negotiations, and nobody did anything to fix that. They had more than one opportunity to win the PR war, but they never realized it.

I could go on all day about how both sides acted stupidly on their own, but that takes a lot of delving into details about a war that already over. Instead, lets’ look at how they acted stupidly together.

First of all, there was the Jonestown-like Kool-Aid march into a stand-off. For two sides quibbling about money, don’t you think that strangling the sole revenue source (games people pay to see) is about the dumbest thing they could do?

Then, there’s the complete screw-job both sides laid on the fans. If you got lost in picking sides, you got suckered. Did you ever once hear anybody that mattered in that whole debate say anything about the impact on the fans?

Honorable Mention: The Boston Red Sox (submitted by Lauren from Too Soxy for My Shirt, a wonderful blog for all the angst that comes with being a Red Sox fan)

How can you not mention blowing a nine-game lead in September? This team, which was supposed to be to be-all, end-all for American League baseball, ultimately couldn’t even beat the sorry-ass Orioles with their playoff lives on the line.

Previous Winner: Xavier guard Dee Dee Jernigan

The Gene Mauch Lifetime Achievement Award

Winner: Former Utah Jazz head coach Jerry Sloan

This award is given annually to somebody who has been around forever, but never won anything.

Jerry Sloan resigned as the head coach of the Utah Jazz on February 10, 2011. Before then, he was the longest-tenured head coach in American major league sports with their current franchise once Tom Kelly stepped down as manager of the Minnesota Twins in Major League Baseball in 2001.

Sloan has one of the all-time great resumes for a guy who never won a ring. Sloan is a member of the Basketball Hall of Fame.  NBA commissioner David Stern called him “one of the greatest and most respected coaches in NBA history.” Sloan had a career regular-season win–loss record of 1,221–803, placing him third all-time amongst NBA coaches. He was only the fifth coach in NBA history to reach the 1,000 victory milestone, and he is the only coach in NBA history to record 1,000 wins with one club; the Utah Jazz. He also coached for one team longer than anyone in NBA history, having manned the Jazz bench for 22 seasons.

In all that time,  Sloan led the Jazz to 15 consecutive playoff appearances from 1989 to 2003.  That makes him one of only three coaches in NBA history with at least 15 consecutive seasons with a winning record; Pat Riley and Phil Jackson being the other two. He led Utah to the NBA Finals in 1997 and 1998, but lost to the Michael Jordan-led Chicago Bulls both times. After all that, it isn’t as astonishing that he never won an NBA Championship as it is that he never once  won a Coach of the Year award.

Previous Winner: Former Minnesota Vikings head coach Bud Grant

The Five Fallacies of Hiring a Head Coach: The Challenges Faced by Penn State

A week ago, Tennessee Titans head coach and former Penn State offensive lineman Mike Munchak was slated to be the successor to Joe Paterno. A few days ago, New England Patriots offensive coordinator Bill O’Brien was allegedly getting the job. Now, CBS Pittsburgh is reporting that San Francisco 49ers offensive coordinator Greg Roman “is reportedly on a “short list” of candidates to replace Joe Paterno as Penn State’s next head football coach.”

Penn State needs to look down the road to the situation Pittsburgh found itself in last year. The major danger Penn State faces is that they find themselves in a situation where they may be expecting the act of hiring a football coach to be able to solve some problems which it inherently cannot.

I’m going to do a major quoting of a piece posted a year ago, because it outlines perfectly all the pitfalls a Penn State is facing in its search for a head coach.  Pittsburgh hired Mike Haywood was hired last year, then was fired less than three weeks later when he was arrested on a felony domestic battery charge.

The following two paragraphs describe the problem:

It is crucial to understand what this situation indicates. This is not about whether it is right to fire a guy on that whole “innocent until proven guilty” argument. This is not about how football coaches jump from job to job. This is about what happens when you hire people into jobs based an anything other than that individual’s ability to do the job.

Coaching in college football is such a wonderful example of this. Coaches so easily become the face of so many other things besides football that it becomes monstrously easy to lose sight of what a football coach is supposed to do. The two core competencies of a college football coach are 1) recruit players and 2) lead those players on Saturday afternoon.  The minute you stray away from those two criteria in selecting a coach, you run the risk of disaster. As shown by example below, there are five main fallacies that derail coaching hires.

Obviously, whoever takes the Penn State job is going to face some monstrous challenges.  But more importantly, Penn State needs to understand that it can’t afford to get desperate and make a bad hire. Just revisit the “five fallacies:”

Example #1 – Mike Price

The Fallacy: “Let’s not overthink this decision because nobody could be as bad as the guy we just fired.”

The Story: In order to get this one you need to follow a real halibut. Enter Dennis Franchione. Franchione was a terrible hire at Alabama, and when they finally ended the relationship, Mike Price was just coming off taking Washington State to a Rose Bowl. That was all “Roll Tide” Nation needed to hear; Price was named their new head coach. However, Price would coach the same number of games in Tuscaloosa as Haywood will in Pittsburgh; it took no time at all for Price to get caught paying for lap dances with his University credit card.

The Lesson: Just because a guy is a winner doesn’t mean he isn’t either dumb or have character issues.

In Penn State’s case, this should be self-explanatory. Imagine the public relations nightmare they would have on their hands if they hire a guy who immediately creates another scandal.

Example #2 – George O’Leary

The Fallacy: “We don’t need to check anything. This is our guy.”

The Story: This happens when a major power broker in your program gets to make arbitrary decisions. Some guy who wields an inordinate amount of power picks out the coach he wants, and nobody else has the seeds to challenge the power says anything, and worse yet, nobody bothers with doing the due diligence. That’s how Notre Dame hired a coach, THEN discovered his resume belonged in the Saturday Review of Fiction.

The Lesson: There’s no excuse for not doing the required reading; due diligence exists for a reason.

You can totally see this happening in State College, because it is very clear there is a well-defined power structure within the University and the athletic department, and it’s also very clear they are adept at not seeing things they don’t want to see.

Example #3 – Dan Hawkins

The Fallacy:  “He won there, he can win here.”

The Story: Here’s another example there’s a big difference between the “Big” conferences and the smaller schools. Hawkins is another example of a guy who won small, but had no idea of the difference. For example, if you going to make your kid the quarterback, you can get away with it if your kid is John Elway.

The Lesson: Winning isn’t universal. Hire a coach who can grow beyond the role of a glorified high-school coach.

It concerns me that none of the three names mentioned at the beginning of this article have any real head-coaching experience at the college level…not so much because of what it says about those coaches, but that the search committee may not be able to get an existing college coach to even return their phone calls.

Example #4 – Rich Rodriguez

The Fallacy: “This is the best guy out there, so we better grab him.”

The Story: This one just ended, and it ended badly. We all saw that, but we may not have seen why it failed so badly. Rodriguez is one of those “gimmick” coaches; the kind that has some quirky offense that allowed him to get some success in a place where he had enough time to recruit a base and institutionalize his gimmickry. Urban Meyer got everybody to buy that “spread option” crap, but then again he had this guy named Tebow.  RichRod can’t get a guy like that, so hiring him means losing to MAC teams and Purdue.

The Lesson: The “best guy out there” isn’t the best if he doesn’t fit; you can’t put a Cadillac engine into Ford Taurus.

This is where the Mike Munchak possibility scares me a bit. He is a successful pro coach, but he is also “part of the family; ” being a Penn State alum. Family members don’t do very well when they have to change the family culture, and being part of a major culture change is going to be a major part of this job.

Example #5 – Mike Locksley

The Fallacy: “Our head coach has to be a certain kind of individual.”

The Story: This can be the deadliest of the fallacies listed here, because it can be a three-headed dragon.

1) “We need a guy who excites the fan base.” Please tell me if you have the foggiest notion of what that is supposed to mean.

2) “We need a guy who can move the program in the right direction.” I love it when I hear this one; isn’t it assumed you would want to do that? Does anybody hire the guy who they hope destroys their program?

3) “We need to hire a black guy.”

The Lesson: Let’s cut through the politically-correct crap here. This conversation happens all the time, and terrible coaches get hired all the time because of it. This is because we have a false belief operating in America that any vocation that has a lack of black participation is undoubtedly practicing racism. This is how we get coaches like Mike Locksley.

Last year, it was clear that Pittsburgh fell victim to all five of the above listed fallacies involved in hiring a head coach. That happened because the former head coach had clearly left a bad taste in somebody’s mouth, considering the way he was hastily kicked off the island.

That situation got magnified in the Paterno case, and it also shares the same sense of urgency considering it certainly feels like somebody decided Penn State needed to get a coach in place fast because, amongst other reasons, national signing day was right around the corner.

Like I’ve said before, every hire has at least one of these fallacies. Good ones have only one. Catastrophic hires have three. But when you hit all five, you have clearly hit rock bottom in making hiring decisions, and desperation is the best way to do that.

Does Penn State Have A New Football Coach?

According to USA Today’s Jonny Saraceno, Penn State is set to hire New England Patriots offensive coordinator Bill O’Brien as it’s next head football coach.  Saraceno tweeted early Sunday that the two sides only need to work out contract details before O’Brien is officially named Paterno’s successor.

So, Penn Staters can start asking just who is this guy if in fact he become the answer to the trivia question “Who succeeded Joe Paterno?”  Currently, O’Brien is in his fifth season on Bill Belichick’s coaching staff in New England and is in his first season as the Patriots’ offensive coordinator. He spent the previous two seasons as the quarterbacks coach and called all the offensive plays before being officially named the offensive coordinator. His contract with New England is set to expire after this season.

OK, so he knows how to say “throw it to Gronkowski.” What does he know about college football?

O’Brien began his coaching career in the college ranks. His first coaching job was at his alma mater Brown in 1993.  The next year he moved to coaching inside linebackers.  He spent the next three seasons (1995–1997) as an offensive graduate assistant at Georgia Tech.  In 1998, O’Brien became the Yellow Jackets’ running backs coach until 2000. For the next two seasons, O’Brien served as offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach; being named assistant head coach in 2002 season. In 2003, he moved up the ACC road to become the running backs coach at Maryland. He spent two seasons in College Park before being named the offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach at  Duke in 2005.

So, there you have it. Now we wait to see if this is the guy who takes what promises to be a challenging job. Besides, anybody who has the balls to call out Tom Brady can’t be all bad.

The Dubsism Top Fifteen Sports Stories of 2011

Being that we are at the end of what has proven to be a tumultuous twelve months, why not take a look back at the biggest sports stories of such a year? After all, I’m pretty sure nobody else does these sort of retrospectives…

15) The Establishment of Two All-Time Winningest College Coaches: Paterno and Krzyzewski

Will there again ever be a year in which we see the crowning of two all-time winningest coaches? We may not see either of those records (Paterno, 409 wins; Krzyzewski, 903 and counting) fall in the next half-century, let alone having them both occur in the same year.

14) Kevin Love’s Double-Double Streak

For nearly 30 years, Moses Malone’s record stood at 51 consecutive games, until Kevin Love scored 16 points and grabbed 21 rebounds against the Indiana Pacers for his 52nd straight double-double. Love’s streak ended at 53 three days later at the hands of the Golden State Warriors.

13) Two More Yankees Make The Record Books

Mariano Rivera and Derek Jeter…Get ready for two more monuments behind the center field fence in Yankee Stadium.  Rivera notched his  record-setting 602nd career save, eclipsing Trevor Hoffman’s previous mark. And in the same season,  Yank captain Derek Jeter smoked a long ball to reach the 3,000-hit milestone, becoming only the the 28th member of the exclusive club and the first 3K Yankee.

12) The End of The Peyton Manning Era

The Colts spent two decades as an NFL afterthought before the arrival of the wunderkind Manning in 1998, and now neck surgery may spell the end of the Manning era in Indianapolis. Manning’s surgically rebuilt neck, his back-loaded contract, and the Colts prime real-estate in the upcoming NFL Draft form a perfect storm scenario in which if Manning does ever take an NFL snap again, it may be in a uniform not of Colt blue.

11) The Improbable Run to the Championship

When is the next time you will see such a harmonic convergence of “underdog” champions?

• NFL: The Green Bay Packers make the playoffs as the bottom 6th Seed.
• MLB: The St. Louis Cardinals literally make the playoffs as a wild-card on the last night of the season, then they win what may be the greatest baseball game in a generation, Game 6 of the World Series.
• NHL: Granted, The Boston Bruins were a #3 seed in the East, which isn’t a prohibitive underdog, but nobody gave them a chance in the Stanley Cup Finals against the President’s Trophy winning Vancouver Canucks
• NBA: Like the Bruins, the Dallas Mavericks entered the playoff tournament as #3 seed, but it was their complete domination of the defending champion Los Angeles Lakers which set the tone for the next two series, both of which saw Dallas facing teams which seemingly should easily over-match them in terms of talent on the floor. That was until Dirk Nowitzki decided to become unstoppable.
• NCAA Men’s Basketball: Again, the #3 seed proved magical, as the Connecticut Huskies rode that to the top of the field of 64. The fact they played their way to that seed was only slightly short of a miracle, considering they entered their conference tournament as a #9 and had to play AND win four games in four days to ensure getting into the NCAA tournament. Honestly, the ten-game streak in the Big East and NCAA tournaments pulled off by the Huskies may be one of the great playoff runs of all time.
• NCAA Men’s Ice Hockey: Another #3 seed…are you sensing a theme here? The University of Minnesota-Duluth (which is really the UCLA of hockey) had an improbable run to the championship of the Frozen Four.
• NCAA Women’s Basketball: I know that it is hard to call a #2 seed an underdog, but let’s not forget the womens’ basketball world was dominated by a single goliath at Baylor which Texas A&M  had to slay, but there was the ever-present team dragons in Tennessee, Stanford, and Connecticut.

10) The NBA Lockout

In what may prove to be a Quixotic exercise in abject futility, the NBA owners locked out the  players on July 1st  for reasons I still really can’t understand given what has happened since the lockout ended.  Star players getting big money has been the rule in professional sports for decades; Babe Ruth was the first jock to pocket more than the President of the United States. But when the Samuel Dalemberts of the world world are getting $13 million a year in a league that can’t pull in big-time national TV money, the problem is much larger than a simple collective bargaining agreement.

9) The Death of the Man Who Made the NFL What It Is Today

There’s a certain amount of irony in the fact the world lost Al Davis and North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Il in the same year.  Much like the regime of Kim Il-Sung and his son Kim Jong-Il, the end of the Al Davis Era marks both the end of an era that once made the Raiders a serious factor in the world of the NFL, but now leaves them as an isolated dictatorship viewed as a pariah in contemporary circles.

Kim Il-Sung shaped at least a half-century of world history when he ordered the North Korean army into South Korea in 1950, starting a war that is still technically unresolved to this day. Al Davis forever changed the face of the NFL when he sued the league for the right to move his franchise as he pleased.

Much like Kim Il-Sung left his eternal mark on North Korea beyond the war, the legendary Raiders owner had six decades’ worth of unique impact on pro football. I would be lying if I said that I never criticized Davis.  Just a few months ago, I included him on my list of the 15 Worst Owners in Sports.  However, as I said in that piece, that criticism was reserved for the Al Davis of the past 20 years or so.

For those of you under 30, you may not believe there was a time when Al Davis wasn’t a batshit crazy Cryptkeeper look-alike and the Raiders were not the laughing stock of the NFL. In an 18-year span during the 70′s and 80′s, the Raiders won 13 division championships, made 15 playoff appearances, and took home three Lombardi trophies. This is the era when the Raiders were the winningest team in all of professional sports, and love him or hate him, Davis was a respected and visionary leader who helped build the AFL into a league so successful the NFL couldn’t beat it so they joined with it.

That paragraph only scratches the surface as to what Al Davis meant to the world of professional football.  Davis literally climbed the football ladder, going from college assistant coach to an NFL assistant coach, to head coach,  to owner to AFL commissioner, to Super Bowl champion,  and ultimately to the Hall of Fame.

Perhaps his single greatest honor is having made a record nine presentations of inductees to the Pro Football Hall of Fame.  Al Davis made presentation speeches for  Lance Alworth, Jim Otto, George Blanda, Willie Brown, Gene Upshaw, Fred Biletnikoff, Art Shell, Ted Hendricks, and John Madden. Davis himself was enshrined in Canton in 1992.

Davis changed the game of football through sheer personality; a personality which was a collection of contradictions. At once, he was was loyal and rebellious;  cantankerous and vindictive,  yet sentimental.  Yet through all that, Davis’ name must be included amongst the founding fathers of the NFL; a name that must be mentioned with same reverence in NFL circles as that of George Halas.

His contributions to the league as a whole notwithstanding, there the matter of his success with the Raiders. His trademark slogans weren’t just some words on a banner, it was a philosophy that propelled the three-time World Champion Raiders to the very top of the professional sports world. In the 48 year marriage between Davis and the Raiders, they had 28 winning seasons, including 16 in a row from 1965 through the 1980 World Championship season.

Davis died earlier this year died at age 82 and it’s hard to dispute the Hall of Famer’s place among the most influential of the sport’s history-makers. Davis was controversial. He was a contrarian. But he was also a gift to the game.

8 ) The Ever-Deepening Cesspool That Is The NCAA

This is only layer one of what is wrong with the NCAA. The truly disgusting stuff comes later down this list. This entry is all about the corruption and the hypocrisy of the organization which is supposed to keep these factors out of college sports.

It all starts back in January when the NCAA first found violations at Ohio State, but let the players who committed the violations play in their bowl game.  The theme here is the NCAA clearly values money over integrity. Keep this in mind as you read.

In August, the Miami situation broke,  when it was reported that Nevin Shapiro was pumping thousands of dollars in illegal benefits to past and present Hurricanes players over the past decade.  The tale told by Shapiro from his prison cell (he’s currently parking his ass in a federal cell for his role in a $930 million Ponzi scheme) includes prostitutes, cars, cash,  and paid vacations, much of which he alleges were known of by Miami staff and coaches.  Shaprio dimed out the names of  73 current and former players.

University of Miami president Donna Shalala being presented a check by Nevin Shapiro.

Go back to the Ohio State situation. At first, this was just about tattoos. Then it mushroomed into costing head football coach Jim Tressel and starting quarterback Terrelle Pryor their jobs. In this case, it wasn’t so much the crime, but it was the cover-up which killed everybody. But the fact the NCAA dicked around for months only underscores the fact they are not really than interested in enforcement.

Then there’s the completely laughable finding that Auburn “committed no infractions” in the Cam Newton affair when there were admissions about cash payments totaling $180,000.

The best part is this isn’t just teams who are mired in unethical activity. The Fiesta Bowl committee was exposed in a 276-page report which detailed allegations of Fiesta Bowl employees being reimbursed for donations to state and local politicians (which happens to be a felony), $1,241 spent at a Phoenix strip club was illegally charged to an expense account, and the misappropriation of $33,188 bill for Fiesta Bowl’s president and CEO Junker’s 50th birthday party.  Junker has since been fired, but more stories like this will emerge until the swamp that is the NCAA is drained.

7) The Conviction of Barry Bonds

Another story indicative of what a depressing year in sports this really has been. Again, instead of talking about accomplishments on the field, we are dealing with matters decided in a courtroom.

In April, Bonds became the first player from a “major” sport to be convicted for an issue stemming from the latest round of scandal about performance-enhancing drugs. While he was acquitted of the more serious charges, just this past Friday U.S. District Judge Susan Illston issued a 20-page order refusing to overturn the obstruction of justice conviction handed down by the the jury in her courtroom  nearly eight months ago.

6) The Continuing Tectonic Shift in College football

Texas A&M is headed to the SEC. So is Missouri.  Syracuse and Pittsburgh are bolting from the Big East to join the ACC. West Virginia is trying to ditch the Big East for the supposedly greener pastures of the Big 12; the same greener pastures TCU left the Big East at the altar for.  In return, the Big East extended invitations to at least six teams, and the madness isn’t over yet.

5) The Phenomenon Known as Tim Tebow

I’ve been watching football for nearly 40 years, and I’ve never…repeat NEVER…seen anything like the Tim Tebow story. He’s either loved or hated; he’s either the future of the Denver Broncos or an impostor. Everybody has a strong opinion, and everybody is convinced they are right.

Frankly, I have no idea what to make of the guy, so I’m going to stick with the facts.

• Whether or not the Broncos complete this miraculous run to the playoffs, there is no denying this team was on life-support when they handed Tebow the keys, and that team responded to him.
• The Tebow story is one of the few uplifting stories in a year in sports filled with so many negatives.
• Like it or not, Tebow is the biggest star in the NFL right now. Doubt that? Tell me another NFL player that had an hour-long special dedicated to him exclusively.

4) The Night of the Dueling Collapses

In the last story, I said I have been watching football for nearly 40 years. I can say the same for baseball, and again, I can say I never saw anything like the last night of the regular season.  In what was inarguably the wildest night in baseball I’ve ever seen, the Red Sox and the Rays,  and the Braves and the Cardinals entered the last game competing for the American League and National League wild-card berths respectively.

This set the stage for six hours of baseball that will be talked about for at least as many decades.

In the National League, the Braves blew a ninth inning lead, eventually losing in the 13th inning 4-3 to the Phillies.  This loss opened the door for the Cardinals to capture the wild card by cruising past the Astros 8-0 to complete their amazing late season run; one that found them trailing Atlanta by 10.5 games on August 25th but prevaiiling in the end by winning 23 of their final 31 games.

Believe it or not, the collapse in the American League was even more epic.  The Boston Red Sox  led Tampa Bay Rays by nine games on September 4th, which seemed to be an insurmountable lead. It wasn’t, as the Sox found themselves in need of a win on the last night of the season to keep their playoff hopes alive. The stars seems to be aligning Boston’s way; they seemed on the verge of staving off a historic choke-job, taking an early 3-2 lead over the Orioles while the Rays fell behind the Yankees 7-0.  But then somebody messed with the lenses of the Sox telescope; Boston closer Jonathan Papelbon surrendered consecutive hits to Chris Davis, Nolan Reimold, and Robert Andino to earn a season-ending 4-3 loss.  Meanwhile, the Rays regrouped and mounted a comeback on the shoulders of a pair of dramatic homers from Evan Longoria, including a 12th-inning walkoff game winner.

3) The Fiasco of the Los Angeles Dodgers

We may never know how sordid the details of Frank McCourt’s mismanagement of the Los Angeles Dodgers really are; what we do know is that after the Dodgers began showing signs of financial trouble in 2010, Commissioner Bud Selig made the decision to give the league control over the club’s day-to-day operations starting in April 2011.

Since then, we’ve been treated to McCourt attempting to overturn Selig’s take-over via the courts, then threatening to engage in more legal maneuvering over a proposed television deal with Fox Sports was rejected by Selig. Then since the Dodgers struggled to meet payroll deadlines, the club filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, all during which McCourt was embroiled in what may have been the nastiest divorce in the history of the state of California.

Thankfully, Major League Baseball and McCourt reached an agreement in October under which he will sell the team and the media rights by April 30, 2012.

2) The NFL Lockout

Really, all this lockout proved is that the NFL owners and players really don’t understand the problems they have. They think this new collective bargaining agreement solves all the acrimony we all lived through, but that’s an illusion made of money. Realistically, the NFL and the NBA share some common problems, namely that they have franchises in places they shouldn’t, and those franchises are draining the league’s resources. The difference is the NFL is the country’s most popular sports league, it is literally floating on money, so it can pave over it’s issues with revenue-sharing. When the NFL finally hits the point where it has priced itself out of the market (wait until you see what the new TV deal is going to do to your cable bill), all of a sudden the illusion made of money will disappear. Mark my words, the next NFL lockout (and there will be one) will look and sound just like the NBA lockout we just lived through.

1) The Penn State and Syracuse Sex Abuse Scandals

This is the one story here that transcends sports. We have all heard the allegations, we have all read ad nauseum about all the sickening details; there’s really no need to rehash them here. What matters most is that these stories should serve as a wake-up call to all of us. We all must take a stand in stopping this sort of abuse of our children, and we must do it now. There is no excuse for any other course of action.

To that end, this should serve as the moment of truth for the NCAA. It’s time to find out how many more Jerry Sanduskys and Bernie Fines there are out there, and it’s time to ensure they are stopped. If the NCAA can’t do that, then the NCAA needs to be dismantled.

Despite Mike Krzyzewski’s Accomplishment, I Still Don’t Have Any Respect For Him

Last night, Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski became college basketball’s all-time winningest coach, notching his 903rd career victory. This is a accomplishment worthy of note, and Coach K deserves the accolades being heaped upon him today.

But before you think I am one of those willing to put him on a pedestal, you might want to consider that my view of what Krzyzewski has created at Duke has changed immeasurably five years ago.  For all his success on the court, Krzyzewski has been guilty of a major failure; one that has many similarities with scandal currently embroiling Penn State.

The scandal that enveloped the Duke lacrosse team a few years back served as a very nice “preview of coming attractions” for what’s happeing at Penn State today.

Walk through the following steps if you don’t belieive that.

Mike Krzyzewski himself. I get that he is a disciple of Bobby Knight, but there is a major difference. It is one thing to be an asshole; it is an entirely other thing to spend thirty years hiding you are an asshole.  Naturally, resident ESPN analyst and personal Krzyzewski fellatrix Dick Vitale just can’t understand why there is all this Duke hatred out there.  Let’s see if I can clear this up for Dicky V.

Raise your hand if you are tired of watching Coach K scream unrepentantly at officials until every call goes Duke’s way. Raise your hand if you wonder why the media has never exposed Krzyzewski for being every bit the abusive tyrant his mentor Bobby Knight was. Raise your hand if you don’t get why nobody has ever noticed the Paterno-like ring of sycophants willing to lay down their lives for Coach K. Raise your hand if you wonder when Coach K and Dick Vitale are going to pick out a china pattern together?

Crushing Hypocrisy.  How easy is it to dislike someone who exemplifies the most human characteristics of a rat all while being a two-faced elitist scumbag? This is Krzyzewski’s major contribution to Duke; he is the titular head of the Hypocritical Douchebag Committee. At once, the Duke athletic culture (led by Krzyzewski) has developed a drum-beat, party-line rhetoric about creating scholar-athletes at a private university, which Krzyzewski seems to believe is the sacred ground for all that is holy in college athletics. This becomes more important later.

Complete Elitism. Duke pretends it is a great place to send your sheltered, privileged kids all while it is located in an exceptionally dangerous neighborhood. The aforementioned hypocrisy not only feeds this faux elitism, but allows it to grow into the worst possible kind of elitism, the kind that has no ability for introspection and no proclivity for perspective.

What Duke and Krzyzewski simply don’t get is that they have created a culture which mirrors all of the false idolatry which has gotten so many other people into trouble, yet stick their collective heads in the sand clinging to the “can’t happen here” mentality with the false belief that Duke’s ivory towers have some sort of shielding capability.

Krzyzewski created a culture of false idolatry and denies he did it. Duke and Krzyzewski in many respects have built each other. The Duke campus is rife with things named for Krzyzewski, there’s a tightly knit culture in the program funded by wealthy donors and protected by an unwritten code about “keeping family business in the family.”

Now for the punch in the gut for you Dukies…re-read the previous paragraph and replace the word “Krzyzewski” with “Paterno,” and replace the word “Duke” with “Penn State.”

Now before you take pen to paper and write some sort of bile-spewing invective to which you Dukies are prone telling me how the Penn State and Duke athletic departments have nothing in common, consider the following points:

Krzyzewski said it himself.  In his 2007 book To Hate Like This Is to Be Happy Forever, Will Blythe quotes Coach K  as saying “Let’s say at Ohio State that we did what we have done at Duke. There would be statues. There would never be anybody looking for anything wrong with what you did.”

In retrospect, that’s a chilling statement. While he uses Ohio State as his example of a large, public university with a brobdingnagian athletic department where a “Penn State” style problem can exist, there’s no denying that Penn State completely fits the description he offers. Even worse are the suppositions hidden in that statement. Krzyzewski believes himself, and wants you to believe that such idolatry can only happen in a big, public-school setting, and that it is only because of private-school envy that people begrudge him in his success.

It gets even worse when you stop to consider the timing of these comments. These comments were made in the wake of Duke’s own scandal surrounding the men’s LaCrosse team. Granted, those allegations turned out to be false, but nobody knew that at the time these comments were made, and regardless of the veracity of the allegations, all kinds of Duke dirty laundry got publicly aired, and lots of people’s lives were ruined.

In other words, Dukies and Krzyzewski got lucky their accuser was lying. Despite that, nobody at Duke took this for the warning sign that it was. Nobody in Durham seems to want to remember the first few weeks of the lacrosse scandal played out pretty much like the current situation at Penn State.  For months, you couldn’t pick up a newspaper without seeing a new sordid detail in Durham, and State College will be no different.

Duke ignored it’s warning sign, and Penn State ignored its warning sign as well. This isn’t Penn State’s first go-round with a sexually charged scandal. Back in 2005, the Nittany Lions athletic department fell under scrutiny  when a women’s basketball player accused longtime Lady Lions coach Rene Portland of sexual discrimination by running the player off the team for being perceived as a lesbian.

Naturally, an internal investigation followed, and in 2006 the university found against against Portland. The university issued a written reprimand, a $10,000 fine and a warning to cease a pattern of sexual discriminatory behavior or risk being fired. But on the same day the university announced its actions, Portland responded to the results of the investigation at her own press conference, calling the university findings “flawed,” and that she would return the next season.

Incredulously, the university let her get away with that, and she held on to her job before resigning following the next season.  It shouldn’t really surprise anybody that despite the announced resignation in 2007,  rumors abounded that Athletic Director Tim Curley and President Graham Spanier had actually forced Portland out.  So, not only did Penn State bungle the handling of that situation, they replicated it again a few years later, the irony being the same people willing to throw an anti-lesbian under the bus had no problem protecting a pedophile.

To see the similarities with Duke, all you have to do is look at the culture. University presidents, athletic directors, and players come and go, but when you get facilites and statues named after you, there’s no denying that you control the culture of the athletic department. Paterno built a culture that allowed the protection of a child-raping monster, and Krzyzewski built one that closed ranks in a similar fashion given a similar scandal.

Denying the vibe that allowed the Penn State situation to happen is present in the Duke athletic department is pure denial. Not only have we already seen it in action with the lacrosse situation, its just plain to see if you are looking for it. Check out the irony in this comment I made about Krzyzewski in an article I wrote a year ago about programs I suspected of being dirty.

“I don’t care how much hate mail I get for this, but I’m convinced Mike Krzyzewski is like the church minister who secretly likes little boys. He’s got all the respect of the people who could out him, but none of them do because, after all, he is the minister. Besides, he’s also that hypocritical asshole who preaches about character and discipline, then stomps around on the sideline like the biggest petulant shithead out there.”

In all honesty, this is the part that tipped me off to the whole connection. I can’t deny I’m a Penn Stater, but in light of recent events I refuse to be one of those who is a blind apologist for Joe Paterno. I see in retrospect the warning signs I glossed over, and there’s no way I’m not going to point out these things when I see them.

Paterno used to stomp around on the sidelines in the same way Coach K does, and he never once got called out for it because he had been elevated to an immune status. That immunity allowed him to create and control a culture which eventually digested itself, and the same culture exists in Durham.

Krzyzewski and the “Cameron Crazies” enable each other, just like Paterno and the Penn State fan base did.  On the surface, this may be the most obvious reason America hates Duke. Frankly, it always seemed so self-evident.  It doesn’t require Jim Rockford or NASA supercomputer to figure out why. All you have to do is watch Duke play, watch Coach Krzyzewski on the sidelines, and watch their fans. They are all obnoxious in their own way.

This leaves us with the upscale rabble known as the ”Cameron Crazies.” Somehow, they’ve become the gold standard in fandom over the years, and it’s the most annoying Duke myth of them all. Duke fans are the worst kind; they are impossibly loud, they disappear if the team isn’t winning, and most importantly, what they actually know about basketball you could squeeze into their ass and have plenty of room left for their brains. You know the type; the people who love sports just because it’s an excuse to get dressed up and yell, but don’t actually understand the game (think Minnesota Viking fans and you get the picture).

Rather than being basketball fans, Duke supporters tend to be pompous elitists who love to roll in the delight of their own feces and are hopelessly ultimate superiority. All one has to do is quote the following Duke fan confronting Elton Brand about his decision to leave Duke after his sophomore year, the first underclassmen to leave early during Krzyzewski’s tenure at Duke.

From: Taylor, Jennifer
Sent: Friday, April 16, 1999 2:55 PM
To: Brand, Elton
Subject: Leaving Duke

I graduated from Duke last May and just wanted to express my disgust for your decision to leave the Duke program after only two years. As an alum, not only do I hold the school in high regard, but the basketball program as well, especially since both have deservedly garnered such a great deal of respect for their accomplishments.

As part of our basketball program, you represent Duke as a whole. We are first and foremost an academic school, you clearly did not belong at Duke in the first place if this was the extent of your commitment to Duke and a college education in general. You have not only insulted the current students who are putting in four years at a school they love, but also the thousands of alumni who have realized the value of a Duke education and what an honor and privilege it was to be there for four years.

If you do not realize the opportunity you have in front of you to play for Coach K and at the same time attain a Duke diploma, then that is certainly your loss. I just wish that you has spared us the notion that you were continuing in the tradition of being a Duke student-athlete, in emphasizing excellence in both academics and athletics. You will not be considered part of the Duke family, in my mind as well as many others. You have by no means proved yourself worthy of that title.

Sincerely,
Jennifer Taylor

Now, never mind that Elton Brand was the best player to come through Duke University since Grant Hill. Forget that he was selected first overall in that year’s NBA Draft. It isn’t even important that it took a lifetime of dedication and hard work for Brand to get to that point. What matters is the attitude of this snotty little bitch who is all pissed off because he left her school. To Duke fans, it’s never about great players like Brand; it’s the system that made them successful.

Now compare that to this quote from an anonymous letter I received from a Penn State fan who doesn’t believe I should be criticizing his beloved Coach Paterno.

“You are probably to stupid to realize this, but you are the reason a great university lost a great football coach. You call yourself a Penn Stater, yet you are amongst the ones who forgot about loyalty to the Penn State family. It is at a time like this that families stand together and protect each other. Instead, you chose to take the coward’s route and point fingers at your own kind.”

The rest of that letter becomes both profane and deranged, and ultimately ends with a death threat.  But that quote speaks volumes to the mindset of the respective fan bases.  Everything is about protecting what is “mine” and how the situation in question affects “me.” Both have such a complete inability to see a larger picture that both need to be summarily dismissed. In other words, the people who are willing to remain blind always add to the damage caused strictly to protect the idolatry in which they feel personally invested.

Two weeks ago, I was one of those people. I thought Paterno was above reproach, and I was wrong. But there is no amount of loyalty to a sport that will make me obviate right and wrong. Paterno was an unquestioned ruler, and when the court became corrupt, it was incumbent on him to do something about it, and he did not.

Krzyzewski is also an unquestioned ruler, and we’ve already seen that Duke is not immune to scandal. While it is too soon to see what Penn State will learn from this, it is clear that Duke did not heed the wake up call they recieved five years ago. As the lord of the athletic department manor, it was up to Krzyzewski to show the leadership needed to change the culture he created, and he did not. Much like Paterno, no amount of wins can change that.

The Lesson We Desperately Need To Learn From the Penn State Situation

“If we as a society cannot protect our children, then we are pathetic.” – Matt Millen, Penn State DT 1976-1979

So…this is how it ends. As I wake up today; the first day in my 43 years in which Joe Paterno is not the head coach at Penn State, I can’t help but ask myself how the hell did this happen?

The whole point of this blog from its inception has been to provide a unique view of the world of sports. More often than not, this has been done with a sense of humor, sometimes a thick sense of satire, and sometimes by being completely absurd. However, there are times where I abandon all pretense and speak in a very blunt and direct manner because of the seriousness of the subject matter.

Obviously, my discussion of what happened at Penn State will be one of those times.  Frankly, this has been a time of great personal angst for me; it doesn’t take long reading through the archives of this blog to discover that I have a connection to the university and that Coach Paterno has been a revered figure in my life.  Most obviously, this will be one of those times because there is nothing funny about the sexual abuse of children.

In much of the conversation throughout the media I have seen, there has been much debate over Paterno’s role in this matter. There’s one school of thought that wants to hold Paterno accountable for the entire situation, while another feels he did what he was supposed to do and therefore still deserves the adoration of the fans who have appreciated the two national championships he won in 46 years at the helm in State College.

Both sides have passion for their position, both sides have argued vehemently for their position, yet both sides are missing a terribly important point.  In other words, if you are bent on arguing one side or the other of this discussion, feel free to take that discussion elsewhere. I’m not interested in your soapbox rantings, your righteous indignation, or whatever else you may have to offer that is off the real point of this blog: How do we stop this from happening again?

Stopping this from happening again is the only facet of this discussion in which I’m interested, and it renders all the other aspects of the discussion utterly pointless, with the sole exception of examining them in order to understand the pathology of such horrible events.

That’s really why I didn’t write this piece on Monday as the real ugliness of this story was breaking. But today, I feel compelled.  Once I saw the grand jury report come out, I knew my personal feelings about Coach Paterno no longer mattered in this affair. I knew nobody’s personal feelings mattered anymore, but I also knew those feelings were going to drive the debate. This was going to cause a massive outpouring of those emotions, which I knew would need to be avoided because to get to the bottom of why things like this happen, we as a nation have to take a hard look at our methods of organizational management.

Collectively, we are looking for one figure at which to point a finger so that we can all roll over and go back to sleep.  It is so much easier to point at one factor and say “if for that one thing, event x wouldn’t have happened” than it is to say “perhaps we need to take a hard look at how we handle these situations.”

That is exactly why I don’t want to hear anymore of this pointless argument “who should have done what when” argument. Besides the fact that it doesn’t solve anything, it frames the entire discussion in terms of blaming somebody who wasn’t the one abusing the children.

Not to mention those fingers might end up pointing back at you. I’ll come back to that later…

Until we re-focus our collective anger over such issues back to the appropriate targets, this problem will continue to exist. Penn State is not the first organization to have a problem like this, and it won’t be the last. Paterno isn’t the first middle-manager to have something off-putting reported to him, and he won’t be the last. Penn State senior management isn’t the first such group to bury the report, and they won’t be the last.  All because Jerry Sandusky isn’t the first child-raping monster we’ve had to deal with, but he should be the last.

The trouble is he won’t be.

No matter how you want to frame the discussion, today finds Joe Paterno and Penn State president Graham Spanier cleaning out their offices. The two former PSU officials currently under indictment (Curley and Schultz) will be facing their own legal consequences, and Jerry Sandusky will soon enough be in prison getting a daily diet of what he was handing out.

Not a single one of those facts – not a single goddamn one – will prevent another child from being abused due to an organizational cover-up.

In other words, this whole incident should be about Sandusky being a degenerate pederast. If you can’t bring yourself to blame the obvious, if you feel the need to widen the debate, then at least have the balls to do it in a productive manner. The damage in this case has already been done, so as I’ve said, there’s no point to the “Who knew what and when did they know it?”  debate.

Instead, we as a society need to address the following:

First of all, we need to at least get a grasp as to why human nature draws us to the cover-up. There is almost no better subject than the abuse of children to draw the prototypical “tough-guy” talk; you know, the kind that starts with “if I were the one who saw that” or “if that were my kid.” That sort of talk belongs in the same sort rubbish bin as the Joe Six-Pack in a bar who has a few too many beers and thinks he could take on an MMA fighter.

You don’t want to believe that. In fact, you are reading this and thinking that I’m not talking about you. Right now, you are constructing an argument that will let you believe I’m wrong, that somehow you are different; that somehow the laws of human nature which have remained unchanged since the days of wooly mammoths and cave drawings do not apply to you.

While you are constructing that argument, consider this: blowing the whistle is the decided exception to the rule. If you are taking the grand jury testimony to heart, then you know the Penn State employee (Mike McQueary)  who witnessed an act of abuse in 2002 was an assistant football coach.  Without knowing anything about the man’s personality, I think we could all agree that any coach at the big-time college level is no shrinking violet. He’s a tougher guy than you are, but he didn’t spring into the “tough guy” reaction.

Then there’s Paterno. It’s obvious Paterno is a tougher guy than you. He was running out on the field with his team into his late 70′s; it took a hit from a Wisconsin tight end that would have crippled you to stop him. The fact that he can deal with the rigors of being a big-time head coach at an age when most men his age are in a box speaks to “Chuck Norris level” tough.

Paterno is a guy who has been the gold standard for football coaches for close to 50 years, and the fact that he blanched upon getting the news of what Sandusky was doing speaks volumes to the fact that the reaction to this sort of news is not predictable.

If you don’t want to believe that, ask yourself this: Even if you want to hold Paterno’s feet to the fire, do you really think Paterno made a conscious decision to allow the raping of children? Let’s be honest, Paterno made a terrible mistake, but not the one everybody thinks he made. At the end of the day, nobody really believes Paterno is an evil man, in fact it is quite the opposite.  All the great things Paterno has accomplished in the past 60+ years didn’t suddenly evaporate.

Don’t misunderstand me…this is by no means a defense of Joe Paterno. It is literally killing a piece of me to say this, but this incident showed that it was time for the Paterno era in State College to come to a close.

I beg you to follow along closely to understand where I’m coming from with this. Go back to my original question about Paterno. Before you answer that, stop to remember the whole situation, and more importantly stop to view this not as somebody reading grand jury testimony (which was produced at the end of a lengthy investigation which produced information you would not have been privy to at the time), but in the light as it was presented to Paterno.

According the grand jury testimony, Paterno was told that Jerry Sandusky did things of a “sexual nature” to a child. The make-you-want-to-puke details don’t come out until later.  Meanwhile, consider that Sandusky was Paterno’s colleague and friend for over three decades.

In order to believe Paterno made such a monstrous conscious decision, you have to believe that a man who spent 63 years as a football coach at the same university would turn his back on a decades-long friendship. Say what you want to about Paterno, but the man exudes loyalty.

So, let’s go back to your “if that was me” argument. Are you certain – absolutely certain – that if somebody approached you and said your friend of 30 years was raping a kid in the shower, would you believe it? Would you even want to believe it?

Even if you did believe it, what would you do?

Option number one is to call the police, but remember an important legal point here…you didn’t see it happen, somebody only told you it happened, and didn’t even do that until the next day. That means even if you called the police, they aren’t going to act because they can’t do anything based on third-party information.

Option number two is to confront your friend…Oh, except you can’t in this case, because your friend is also your employee. Don’t forget for purposes of the Penn State organizational chart, Joe Paterno was a middle-manager and the accused Jerry Sandusky as the defensive coordinator was his direct report. That means there are all kinds of rules about how you address such allegations.

Option number three is to tell the Penn State employee who reported seeing the abuse to call the police…Oh, except you can’t do that because because the employee already fulfilled their organizational obligation by informing you.

In other words, you can’t go to the cops, you can’t confront your friend, and since the person who reported the incident also is an employee, you really can’t tell them what to do after they’ve told you about the incident in question.

In other words, Paterno did the only thing he legally could do. So, the argument becomes not what Paterno knew and when he knew it. Rather it becomes a matter of why do we force people in this country into positions where they need to worry more about legalities than moralities?

In other words, when did we become a country of such gutless wimps we worry more about covering our own asses instead of doing what’s right?

The bottom line here is this: Only Sandusky, Curley, and Schultz have criminal responsibility in this affair, which is why they are under indictment. The rest of this fiasco is a result of organizational mismanagement, an astonishing lack of leadership, and the fact that this country has too many “if that were my kid” people.

It isn’t difficult to see this if you break it down. The Penn State situation is horrifying not only for the heinous nature of the crimes alleged to have been committed, but it illustrates the gutless, soulless, and borderline-criminally negligent management we’ve allowed to exist in this country. Think about it. At no point in this this process did anybody show the leadership needed to stand up and scream from the top of Old Main “EXCUSE ME, WE HAVE A CHILD-RAPING MONSTER ON OUR HANDS! WHAT THE HELL ARE WE GOING TO DO ABOUT IT!”

Instead, a collection of football coaches – guys who pride themselves of instilling qualities into young men such as leadership, accountability, and courage – showed absolutely none of those things in themselves.

This is the part that’s tearing my guts out. Of all the people I held as heroes, one thing they all represented was being that “tough guy leader;” the guy that would stand up and say “THIS IS WRONG AND WE ARE GOING TO FIX IT!” For 43 years of my life, Joe Paterno was one of those guys.

Today, it is clear he no longer is. And he must go.

I mention this only because if we have a situation where something so monstrous is allowed to exist in a place that prides itself on leadership, accountability, and courage; in a place led by a living legend who exemplified those qualities, then it is incumbent upon EVERY SINGLE ONE OF US to understand that this can happen anywhere, and that EVERY SINGLE ONE OF US to see that it doesn’t.

Look at the organizational management structures we use in this country. Just about every organization you can think of (Penn State included) has rules about reporting wrong-doing, and several of them (Penn State included) has rules about who is allowed to contact external entities.  Clearly, the rules are in place at Penn State; so much so that a graduate assistant coach didn’t immediately call 911 when he saw a sexual assault in progress.

The fact that nobody – NOBODY – stood up on the several opportunities which presented themselves to take the lead in this matter is an indictment of those individuals only so long as you are willing to contemplate the complete picture. The fact that so many people chose to “pass the buck” suggest they had a reason to do so; that the terms of not “toeing the company line” are grave enough to make them turn a blind eye to the sexual abuse of children. In other words, you must ask the question why did the organization put those individuals in a position forcing them into such a decision in the first place?

Now, back to the “if that was my kid” guy.  First of all, why does it have to be your kid? Does that mean you wouldn’t do anything if it weren’t your kid? Don’t recoil at that question; after all, it wasn’t Mike McQueary’s kid getting raped in the shower, and he did nothing.

Stop and think about why he did nothing. Suppose he breaks up the assault and beats the crap out of Sandusky in the process. The child victim then refuses to testify that he was in fact being raped. Now, McQueary is in the spot of facing a assault charge of his own, and he beat up a guy higher on the food chain than himself. He did the right thing, but now he’s looking a jail time and the loss of his job. He didn’t risk that for somebody else’s kid.

You’ve got to understand that lately we have a track record in this country of people almost always choosing to cover their ass and protect their jobs and friends rather than do the right thing.  If you can read the grand jury report of the Sandusky allegations and a) not get a vivid mental picture that makes you literally sick to your stomach and b) not want to blow his junk off with a 12-gauge, you may be as must of a monster as he is.

But what that rage, bloodlust, and thirst for justice hides is the equally-as-important concept that monsters like Sandusky live with the system we’ve built, and they live there because  ”good” people can be forced to make decisions that ring more of self-preservation than “right” and “wrong.”

If it can happen to a man like Joe Paterno, it can happen to you.

It makes you feel better to think you would have the balls to do the right thing when faced with such a seemingly obvious choice. The truth is, you might not, because when push comes to shove, you are really being forced in such a situation to choose between legal and moral. If you aren’t willing to take the risks, then it does in fact have to be “your kid.”

Matt Millen is right. As a society, that makes us pathetic.

File Dump: The Houston Nutt Edition

For those of you unfamiliar with the concept of our File Dump, we here at Dubsism believe that when we have just too many good jokes about somebody that we haven’t gotten around to using, and then their career is over, we just can’t let all that good material go to waste.

According to several reports, Nutt has been informed by Ole Miss this will be his final season in Oxford. I’m not sure this comes as a surprise, given his 10-20 mark in SEC play, including 12 straight losses. It would seem Saturday’s 30-13 loss to Kentucky will be the proverbial final nail in Houston Nutt’s coffin.

First of all, I don’t think Nutt’s career is over; he’s going to get another job somewhere. But his next gig might be in a place where he doesn’t enjoy the visibility that failing in the SEC provides.  To that end, we must never forget that the Nutt is Blog and Photoshop gold. These very pages drip with Houston Nutt jokes; Francis Ford Coppola won Academy Awards on Houston Nutt jokes.

The beauty is that Nutt’s own biography lends itself to this.

Many people forget about Nutt’s service in Vietnam. Below he is shown leading refugees onto the evacuation choppers during the fall of Saigon.

After his stint “in country,” Nutt explored a career in entertainment; it only really had two moments of note. The first came during his guest appearance on the 60′s NBC cult-hit “Star Trek.”

The other came in Nutt’s riveting performance as the Wicked Witch in a Boise, Idaho dinner theater reproduction of the “Wizard of Oz.”

Another fact about Houston Nutt most people don’t remember is that at one time he was an Olympic contender in men’s gymnastics.

It was after Nutt’s Olympic failure that he moved to Spain and became a premier toreador, until an unfortunate goring incident cut his career short.

Even this failure couldn’t quell the spirit of Nutt, the Renaissance man. He left Spain for the elite art world of Italy, yet Nutt’s proclivity for “Beavis and Butthead” level humor led to yet another unceremonious exit, this time from a position as the curator of an art museum.

This sent Nutt back to the world of college football. Despite what has happened in Oxford in the past few days, Nutt has to resurface somewhere for two reasons. First of all, his resume is simply too good to fade away. Even if you don’t want to accept the things’ I’ve just mentioned, just look at his track record in football.

Don’t forget, he is the guy who started Boise State’s move to the big time.  In the land of the Smurf Turf, Nutt inherited a 2-10 team which had just made the jump to Division I-A football and wanted a recruiter to jump start their program. Before Nutt, Boise State was the lowest ranked of all Division I-A schools; Nutt took them to a  5–6 record in 1997 playing at the Division I-A teams with a roster comprised largely of Division I-AA players.

Despite that, Nutt’s team beat rival Idaho and almost pulled off an upset against Wisconsin. Nutt parlayed that success into a job in the best conference in the country, the SEC.  He became the head coach of the University of Arkansas in December 1997.

During his first press conference as coach, Nutt immediately mentioned a national championship as his goal and felt that Arkansas had the program to do it.  Of course, this resonated in the ears of Hawg Nation one. The Razorbacks had suffered through a long period of non-relevance under a succession of head coaches in the previous years.

While he never won that promised crystal football, he did restore the Razorbacks to some success.  Under Nutt, the Razorbacks were one of three SEC schools to play in three New Year’s Day bowls within five years.  In Nutt’s first six seasons, he led the team to a bowl game each year and averaged eight wins per season.  However, by the end, Nutt was being criticized for his ultra-conservative play-calling.

When the Arkansas days were over in 2007, Nutt moved downriver to Ole Miss. However, in between gigs, Nutt found time to briefly tour with AC/DC.

Once again,  Nutt’s time in Oxford started with a lot of promise, as his Rebels went 9-4 in each of his first two seasons and won consecutive Cotton Bowls.

Trouble was that the Rebs followed those Cotton Bowl wins with a 4-8 record in 2010, including a 1-7 mark in SEC play.  The 2011 Rebel record of 2-7 with the aforementioned  12 consecutive conference losses ended the Nutt regime in Oxford.

Maybe it was better that it ended this way. A prolonged exit may have made have made Nutt flash back to his days as a light-heavyweight contender; the kind who doesn’t know when he’s beat and that it is time to move on to a new fight.

"I WANT PACQUIAO!"

The other reason Nutt must resurface somewhere is purely selfish…the man is a well-spring of material. Like you didn’t already figure that out.  The real beauty is that he doesn’t even require photographic tomfoolery to look 100% batshit crazy. To that end, I offer the following completely unretouched photos.

This begs the question…what’s next for the Nuttiest coach in college football?  He does have a bit of “redneck deputy sheriff in him.”

Of course, the other side of that same coin is the Nutt also has a bit of “Cool Hand Luke” in him.

What if the Nutt went back to his entertainment roots?

But…given the way certain other stories in college football are breaking right now…what if???

 

 

 

 

What We Learned From This Weekend In Football 11/5/2011 – The “I Can’t Believe This Is Happening” Edition

1) The Penn State Situation

I’m not going to get into the minutia of this disgusting affair now, if for no other reason than I want to see if somebody hits the nail on the head about why this played out the way it did. As horrible as this story is, there is also a very stinging indictment of American society contained in all of this. While we should all be foremost concerned with the well-being of the victims, and while we must reserve the hottest fires of hell for the perpetrators of these terrible acts, we must also take a hard look at how the society we’ve collectively created allowed this to happen.

In a few days when the emotion has settled off of this story, I’m going to revisit this point in detail.  Stay tuned…

2) LSU and Alabama are still the two best teams in the country

Don’t believe that? Which team not currently in the SEC could beat either of them? I’m waiting…I’ll be here all day…

3) The Tebow Question, volume 2:

I will be the first to admit that I was wrong about Cam Newton; I said he’d never make an NFL quarterback. To me, this begs a question about another son of the SEC, Heisman-winning signal-caller. What does Tebow have to do to to get all the Tebow-haters to change their minds? I’m suggesting he’s done anything worthy of that yet, but I’m wondering where the line is? I’m looking at a guy who has won two road-games with a team which barely has the talent to win two games period, so I’ve got to ask…

4) Speaking of Rookie Quarterbacks…Have You Seen The Bengals lately?

This begs another question. What does Andy Dalton have to do to get some love? Don’t look now, but the Bengals have won five in a row, led largely by Dalton’s  1,696 yards, 12 touchdowns versus only 7 interceptions.  I don’t know if you knew this, but rookie quarterbacks aren’t supposed to be able to U-turn a team from 4-12 to 6-2.

5) The San Francisco 49ers

The 49ers are 7-1. They’ve won six straight games. The last time that happened, the sex scandals were in D.C., not State College, Jim Harbaugh was quarterbacking the Colts, and the 49ers were still doing that Bill Walsh/West Coast offense.

Then the 49ers were as a “finesse” team. Now with Harbaugh as their head coach, the 49ers are more than willing to kick your ass.

There was that whole incident a while back when Harbaugh had some words with Lions coach Jim Schwartz. This past week, Niner tight end Vernon Davis got into a squabble before the game with several Redskins players, then later wide receiver Kyle Williams felt the need to throw his shoulder into the body of Washington linebacker London Fletcher.  This led to another fight, one that included a few choice words from Harbaugh himself.

Oh, and they’ve abandoned that pass-happy offense as well. Now, the 49ers are ranked 30th in passing yards and winning.

What We Learned From This Week In Football 10/3/2011

With such a full weekend of college and NFL action, let’s just cut to the chase…

1) We still don’t know if Notre Dame is any good

Every year, Notre Dame gets over-rated, and every year, they prove that by the time they get to Purdue. This year, they’ve done nothing but send a mixed message; lost to South Florida and Michigan, and now have won three straight. but honestly, those wins are over mediocre Michigan State and Pittsburgh,  and most recently against West Lafayette Junior High Purdue.  It doesn’t get any better since the Irish start their usual parade of service academies with Air Force this week.

2) Speaking of Purdue…

Yeah, I know Giant Drum A&M gets picked on every once in a while here, but they might get more respect if they quit doing things like this.

3) As long as we are in Indiana…

Memorial services for any hope of the Colts having a watchable season will be held Thursday at noon at Lucas Oil Field. When the most glowing reviews of Colts quarterback Curtis Painter are “not completely horrible,” it’s going to  be a long season in Indianapolis.

4) The Detroit Lions – The Anti-Colts

Let’s face facts, this team has more upside that in all its previous 50 years combined.  The Lions boast an emerging star at quarterback, a dominant weapon in Calvin Johnson, and a defense that is vastly improved, which is why they are the first team in NFL history to make two straight comebacks from 20+ points behind.

5) When is a fumble not a fumble,  part III

First, there was the Rob Lytle “fumble” in the 1977 AFC Championship Game, then there was the infamous Tom Brady  ”Tuck” rule from 2001, now there’s Victor Cruz fiasco this past weekend. Now I know why there is no coincidence between why Ed Hochuli is the best referee in the NFL and he just so happens to be an attorney; you need a law degree to even understand half the rules in the NFL anymore.  Note to the Rules Committee…it is time to start simplifying.

6) Illinois – Your Cup-Check University

If picture is worth a thousand words, you would think an animated GIF would be worth more, yet this one is only worth two…

7) As The Romo Turns

With all the ups and downs, one would think you would find the “Romo-Coaster” at Six Flags over Texas rather than Cowboys Stadium. Week 1, he’s a choke-artist. Weeks 2 and 3, he showed “a rare brand of guts and leadership.”  Now, he sucks again. Even ESPN doens’t know what to do with him.

There’s the “pro” side, as evidenced by Eric Mangini.

“But ex-Jets coach Eric Mangini said a couple of Romo’s picks against the Lions were not his fault. The gutsy Romo has also led the Cowboys to two victories this season despite playing with injured ribs.”

Then’s there’s the “con” side…

“Really, you saw the best of Tony Romo in a brilliant first half as he pushed Dallas to a 20-3 lead that swelled to 27-3 after the Cowboys took the second-half kickoff and drove for a touchdown. Then we witnessed the worst of Romo. He threw three second-half interceptions — two were absolutely awful decisions — providing the catalyst for Detroit’s comeback.”

After all the hand-wringing and gnashing of teeth, NBC’s Bob Costas probably has the best observation…

“Here’s a guy who see-saws between hero’s laurels and goat horns, seemingly game to game. And today, it was half to half. Romo had three TD throws in the first 33 minutes against the undefeated Lions, but then, three picks – two of them returned for touchdowns,” said Costas.”This has been the pattern of Romo’s season, and, as it’s shaping up, his career. At any moment he is apt to rescue his team with feats of daring do, often showing the presence of mind to improvise his way out of one crisis after another. And then, the next week, or maybe the next moment, he’ll turn in a performance or make a decision that sends Cowboys fans to the ledge.”

After all, good Romo or bad Romo doesn’t matter…Cowboys’ fans ripping their collective hair out is what’s important.

8 ) By The Way, Romo’s Not The Only Thing Wrong in Dallas

Remember that crap Rob Ryan was spouting about how Detroit’s Calvin Johnson would “be the third’ best receiver on the team” if he played for the Cowboys. Who else took comfort in watching Johnson pack that bilge firmly in Ryan’s “Head and Shoulders commercial wannabe ass? Did anybody else notice the part where Ryan’ s “vaunted” defense had 12 guys on the field and STILL didn’t double-cover Calvin Johnson?

What has two thumbs, Lynyrd Skynyrd-hair, and a football in his ass from Calvin Johnson? THIS GUY!!!

9) As long as we are in Dallas…

Remember last year when Jason Garrett became the poster-child for uptight, straight-laced white guys everywhere when he was the guy who saved the Cowboys? Remember how this was all supposedly due to Garrett’s being a “disciplinarian?”

So, can somebody explain to me why this Cowboy team looks as undisciplined as ever? Seriously, this team can’t even manage it’s own snap count, half the roster looks like they don’t even know the playbook, and nobody is calling out Howdy Doody Jason Garrett, the supposed Princeton Prince of Discipline.

Forget Jason Garrett...It was Mrs. Garrett who knew how to keep the girls in line.

10) Oh, and before I forget about the other Ryan brother…

Rex, you are one of my favorite guys in all of sports, but…

It’s “put up or shut up” time.  I’ve watched your teams gag two straight AFC Championship games, and now your team is looking suspiciously over-rated. Start winning games you are supposed to win so I don’t have to start bashing you.

11) Speaking of “Time To Prove My Love” – The All-Pennsylvania Edition

The Eagles have managed in four short game to go from “The Dream Team” to “The Nightmare Team.”  Two reasons – the hardest hit the offensive line has made all season was on their own quarterback, and in the immortal words of Jets’ linebacker Bart Scott, the defense “couldn’t stop a nosebleed.”

But the award for the worst offense in the Keystone State goes to Penn State. Don’t get me wrong, as a Nittany Lion fan, I’ve seen some Joe Paterno offenses that literally dated from the Paleozoic era, but this is the worst I’ve seen under the Galen Hall/Offensive Coordinator regime. With all due respect, GET RID OF THAT GODDAMN TWO QUARTERBACK SYSTEM!!!! I get they both suck, but pick one, shoot the other in the head and let’s move on.

12) Cam Newton Is Now A Poster Child

There’s new mentality in the football world…throwing the football is Nirvana, outcomes be damned. Cam Newton exemplifies this. The world is singing his praises as a young quarterback because in four games he has nearly 1,400 passing yard and 5 touchdowns.

But he also has 5 interceptions and more importantly, only one win as a starting quarterback.  This makes him a stud in fantasy football, but not so much in the real game. But, for some reason, we let the fantasy mentality rule the day.

If you doubt that, look at it this way.  This past weekend saw 11 quarterbacks post 300 passing yards, but only 4 of them won their games. In contrast, the running game (which has been relegated to the NFL scrap heap) saw 8 running backs rack up 100 rushing yards , and 5 of them played on winning teams.

13) The Dubsism Simplified College Football Top 25

1. Alabama
2. LSU
3. Wisconsin
4. Oklahoma
5. Everybody else