When you don't score a goal for 6 games ...

your fans do this:

The big white thing. Aim for the guy in the middle of it.

Erin Andrews moves to FOX. So What?

Erin Andrews, ESPN

"Erin Andrews Moves On From ESPN To FOX Sports" the headline yelled.

Sometimes, it's time to move on. For Erin Andrews, that was the case. After eight years in the fishbowl that is ESPN, the Lewiston, Maine-born Andrews finished up her contract at the Worldwide Leader last weekend, and was immediately brought on at FOX Sports, which jubilantly announced her hiring in a gushing press release.

What an amazingly dumb thing to say.  If she thinks ESPN is a "fishbowl", where everyone is looking at her, then what does she expect at FOX? At least ESPN only sorta sold the titillating aspect of what is Erin Andrews.  I think FOX is going to market the hell out of her body and her looks but downplay the sports knowledge. She might be as knowledgeable as Suzy Colber and Rachel Nichols but FOX is gonna make this woman into a spectacle.

Poster girl for Title 9¾

Rules are rules. Especially for Coaches.

Yahoo News has a short piece decrying the horrible tactics of some high school league:

With his stepfather in jail, Brown spent a year at South Kent School in Connecticut, then decided he needed to start over, so he moved to Southern California. After a season at Simi Valley (Calif.) Stoneridge Prep, where the Brooklyn native was a boarding student, Brown was left with nowhere to go when Endres learned of his precarious situation. Without thinking twice, the coach did what he thought was right: He took in a teen in need, regardless of who he was on the court. Now, both the player and coach are being punished for what is virtually universally recognized as a truly samaritan act.

Well, actually, the kid is a pretty good basketball player and they transferred him after the residency deadline and the coach expected everyone to happily go along with it because, of course, he wouldn't have an ulterior motive. It's just a coincidence the kid would be the best one on the team, right?

Here's a thought: If you really want to help the kid, give him a home and send him to school. Next year, his residency requirements will have been met and he can become whatever player he was destined to be. The education he gets will be worth far more in the long run than a single season on the basketball team in the hands of a fool who can't figure out why this "truly Samaritan act" might look a little sketchy. And why can't this genius think of anything good that might happen except for the kid's being able to play?

As reported by the Times, the Marmonte League principals didn't even let Endres speak at the hearing set up to decide whether or not to approve a waiver of CIF residency requirements which would allow him to play for Thousand Oaks.

Maybe this video helped them decide:

Ray Allen wins again.

Funny guys, those Boston Celtics. Winning on an awesome Ray Allen shot and immense Shaquille O'Neal shoulders.

And yes, that tweet makes total sense.

BTW,
Reggie Miller: 2560 three-pointers.
Ray Allen: 2533 three-pointers. 13-21 shooting threes for the last five games. When's the record gonna be?
Data below the jump.

Rules? Who needs those?

Not the kid in question. I just felt you all
needed a visual to fully appreciate how
"rules governing the length of players' hair
violate their son's right to wear his hair
the way he wants."

So the basketball team has some rules. You have to wear a uniform. You can't be paid for playing. You need to be passing your classes. You need to attend at least 10 practices before being allowed to play. Lots of things all made clear up front in the extracurricular policy handbook (something set up and decided on LONG before the season). Oh, and you need a haircut.

This is too much for the kid so he sues on the grounds that girls don't have to have their hair cut to the same length, or as the story puts it so approvingly, "Obviously, the player and his parents decided to fight for his rights rather than acquiesce to the extracurricular policy's claim that a player's hair be above his eyebrows, collars and ears."

Then, they asked a few geniuses for opinions:

"I just think he should be stipulated to tie his hair up or something like that," said Anthony Johnson. "To cut it off, I think that's taking away a person's mind, body and soul sometimes."

Yup, can't fix stupid.

I had to laugh, too, when the story identified the parents as "Patrick and Melissa Hayden" but wouldn't breach confidentiality of the kid, saying "Their 14-year-old son, identified as A.H. in the lawsuit" like that protected his identity.

Tuesday Morning Quarterback on NCAA

"TMQ hates the celebration penalty. As long as there is no taunting, and there was none by Kansas State, why shouldn't players dance happily after a touchdown? Nearly all football fans, players and coaches hate the celebration penalty. Why does it exist?

The current NCAA stance seems to be that football players not graduating is a minor matter, athletes who break rules will be overlooked whenever bowl revenue is involved, but don't you dare act happy! Especially bizarre is the NCAA notion that celebration fouls should be a "point of emphasis." Punishing players for jumping around happily is a point of emphasis, while helmet-to-helmet hits are rarely flagged? Even considering the NCAA's reputation for hypocrisy, this is a bit much."

Awards for all?

Joanne Jacobs has a piece about a parent complaining that only some kids were recognized for their performance on state testing. I actually agree with the parent on this one.

This, he said, was unfair to students who traditionally score lower on standardized tests and might not reach proficiency no matter how hard they try — mainstreamed special education students, for example.

Some kids will never reach proficiency. It's just a fact of life. If you make your standards low enough for all, then the achievement is meaningless and all of the kids know it and blow you off.The better response, for me, is to simply thank everyone publicly, en masse, and announce the barbeque for all. Then, reward or thank the good students separately.

Really, the "Always Praise in Public" rule isn't always your best course of action. I am against, for example, the tactic of an academic assembly during the first two periods of the day for which every class trudges down to the gym and sits by class.

"Everyone is sure to be a winner
with these fun 4" trophies."

What happens next is the whole point and is also the most excruciating part: the Guidance counselor, feeling all very important because she gets to "honor" the "good" students and bask in the reflected glory, reads the names of the high honor roll (20 kids), honor roll (140 kids), and merit (15 kids). She asks them to stand while this endless list is being read. Do you know how long it takes to read 175 names?

A little subtraction shows that there's maybe 30 kids in that grade who couldn't manage to get anything ... administration is proud that they didn't publicly shame any of them by saying their names. Except that they are still sitting down while everyone around them is standing up. Is it any wonder that they feel like shit? Most memorable student quote about the assembly (in informal geometry afterward): "Here are all the smart people in the school and none of them are YOU."

Back to the fun. Guidance has them sit ... and does the 11th grade. And repeats for the 10th. And the 9th. Can't have anyone left out, can we? An hour and something later, you've managed to humiliate as many people as possible, so you send the school back to class. "Don't make any comments to the Dweeb in the hallway, now."


Maybe the proper response is to not require everyone to recognize them. Give them their own awards night and invite them and their parents to come or not, as they choose.  You know, like the sports awards night, where the non-athletic can avoid having to sit through endless coaches' attempts at public speaking.

God knows there is nothing worse than a coach with limited vocabulary and no experience speaking to a crowd who's attempting to appear smart, clever, witty and interesting ... for each of his 54 football players, naming and praising the "spectacular work ethic" of every member of the 1-6 team, including the kids who lost eligibility for drinking and fighting.


It was also interesting that the rest of the fall teams had much better seasons, one winning a state championship, but the football team spent the most time congratulating itself.  But I digress ...

Maybe the takeaway from all this is simple:  The people who attend an awards night should be the ones who were there to watch the achievement itself.  Anyone else is excused. Those who wish to attend can do so.  I'd much rather have an awards night with the rest of my team and the spectators who were at the games. Everyone else feels like "Johnny come lately" hangers-on.  The same is true for academic awards:

If you weren't there when we did it, why would you want to be there to celebrate it?

If you can answer that question, then you can come to the ceremony and we'll all have a blast. If you can't, then you shouldn't be required to be there and we probably would feel uncomfortable if you did show up.

Reggie Miller on Ray Allen

On RA's hitting 7 of 7 from 3-pt distance ... "I'm done. I'm taking my record and walking over to the Celtic bench and handing it to him."

Worst Play in Football

Catch. Kneel. End Rivalry game with WIN!
Or Not.
Really, the choice is yours.

Vermont ... Number One in Some Things.

What I did on my Summer Vacation

Someone asked. You can't see me in this clip -- I'm on the other side of the field. Still, it's a blast.

Sports and Pay-to-Play

Coach Brown is talking about the ACLU going after pay-to-play in schools. Snarky political commentary aside, his points are the usual ones and deserve repeating because the current climate of cost-cutting is driving schools to make some tough decisions.

First, PTP is illegal in California (specifically mentioned in law) because it prevents equal access to education. I'm not so sure equity applies here but we Americans have always had trouble with the decision of whether sports (as opposed to PE) are an integral part of school for every student or not.

BYU women's soccer team.

PTP changes the game to "support the GOOD teams." Freshmen sports will go first and then any sport whose attendance is "parents only." Football is way too important because of the "We need to beat Westside" factor and long term psychological investment of the fans in the team.

Parents and lawyers will pit girls against boys with the high-school version of the Title IX conflict. You can't cancel the 9th grade softball if you don't cancel the 9th grade baseball, even if one is undermanned and the other is full. Tournaments are out. Travel monies? Ha! (Forgetting that the travel costs are roughly the same as the cost of officials for home games - but home means you keep the gate. Decisions need to be made, but lawyers always suck cash and influence choices.

For many participants, sports provide "some of the most influential lessons they might learn in school." Very good point, bringing us back to the question of whether sports or PE is integral to education. I find that PE classes are pretty lame. Sports coaches talk about academics, morals, attitude, sportsmanship. Team building is important. PE teachers run classes that kids stand around in and tune out. 

You can make any number of correlations between the rise in importance of PE classes and the increasing emphasis on health education to the expanding waistlines of American schoolchildren, but I think there are confounding factors here. We need to overcome those confounding factors, though, and having the kids do half-assed archery, bowling, walking, pickleball, dodgeball isn't having much long-term effect.

I agree with Coach when he suggested that "physical education needs to reprioritized near the top," but I disagree that it should be "classified as an Advanced Placement style course." That's too much for PE. I can make a case (and have) for allowing a full season of a sport (including cheerleading) to count as a 1/2 PE credit. That makes sense in terms of time and effort.

That'll mean a loss of PE enrollment and at least one PE teacher would go. I'd be okay with that, but the Union wouldn't. It would also mean that the sports teams would experience a boom enrollment since most kids hate the standard pickle-ball games and would do most anything to get that PE credit playing a real sport.

That may be the real difference. The PE games and exercises are too varied and scattered and feel as if the teacher pulls something out of his butt for the day. No one has a chance to get truly good at anything and you have the ultimate in heterogeneous grouping. Sports, on the other hand, are "tracked." Contrary to most educational current demagoguery, students like homogeneous grouping and thrive in it.

Besides, coaches are cheaper than teachers. If it's just about the money, of course.

Basketball, politics and a little Sketchiness

So Arne Duncan (at right, practicing his Oh-so-Superior "White Boy Intellectual Who Knows Better than You" look) is still making noise about the basketball players who don't graduate from college and ruin the US Way of Life because they aren't focused on an education, like he was.

I'm sorry that his dream of "College is an Academic Utopia" and of "Amateur Athletics" is being kicked in the shins, but to pick on basketball is silly. College athletes are not all academically inclined, but they ARE getting the "real-life" training they need to be successful in life. Isn't that the point?

It's time the Education Secretary stopped being so idiotic. These basketball players, at least the "One-and-Done" players, wouldn't be there if the NCAA and NBA and NFL didn't force them to pretend to getting an education.
more below:

Make the Super Bowl a National Holiday

Something we can all support is an acknowledgment of the current reality?

When you think about the Super Bowl--it's hard not to, this week--you have to wonder whether maybe it's time that we formally recognized it for what it is: a national holiday. Switch the game to Monday (Americans have become conditioned to watching football on Monday night) and make it a three-day weekend. Congress could pass the usual proclamations, the Postal Service could design a commemorative stamp, and the president could issue a pronouncement about what this day means to the American spirit.

I'm getting chills just thinking about it ... but maybe that's just the weather.

Winter Classic in a few Hours

The folks who run hockey got it right two years ago and they're keeping the new tradition alive. It's just special.

Happy New Year!


Bruins win!

Football for College Credit.

Everyone seems to be all up in arms about this but I don't agree. I think the football players should be able to legitimately get a credit in football.

One credit. Two. It doesn't really matter.

I got a credits for athletics when I was in college - kayak was 1 and archery was another. We had to have two PE credits. You showed up. You learned a few terms, shot a few flights, took a silly multiple choice exam. It was a nice break from the 18-21 mechanical engineering credits per semester (on top of the ROTC and the stuff for commissioned officers).

What's the big deal? I like it that the rest of the school can have its courses without the lunkheads slowing everything down. They would never have made it to college other than for football, so it's not like they're being deprived of anything. Any players who do have brains will get their education regardless of what the lunkheads do.

With all the people majoring in FillinTheBlank Studies or some other touchy-feely joke, I can't think that 100 football players is going to skew the median all that much.

And Now ... the Ugliest Ring Ever Made

What the title said:

Okay, maybe I'm being unfair.  They photographed it on cheap purple plastic astroturf and that NBA logo is so wrong.  Let's try another view:

Meh.  Could be worse, I suppose.  Blocky, garish, heavy as hell (but that's the point), loaded with way too many mini-diamonds (bling!).  I remain unconvinced.  How about a side view?

Ooooooh.  Isn't that clever?  They laser-etched the player's face into the ring.  This is possibly because the players can't read their names and will need to identify the ring if lost?  No, that can't be it.  The team has super-duper secretly etched a tiny "L" into the ring somewhere to identify it with a ultra-secret password-y id number written down on a piece of magic paper in a vault somewhere.  Why?  Because you might mistake it for another ring just like it? 

Did you notice the special detail? The shape of the upper part is exactly like the Staples Center roof.  Can't you hear it?  "Look, ma ... this is where I play ... and this is my face."

Like anyone would steal this thing and not instantly melt it down in horror.  Shudder.

Because the NFL is against selling a product ...

A player struck the Captain Morgan pose in the Eagles game. The NFL fined him because they didn't get a cut ...

The NFL will likely be a little more sensitive with this latest promotion, since it would have benefited Gridiron Greats, and the post-career struggles of players has been a paramount hot-button topic. While the league welcomes charitable donations to Gridiron Greats, it doesn’t want those contributions to be used as a carrot to influence the on-field antics of players – particularly when the antics center on selling a product.

God knows, you wouldn't want crass commercialism to get in the way of a football game, would you?

I think it was hilarious. The players should pose anyway and Captain Morgan should pay the fine AND pay the $50,000 to the retired players fund.

Climate change - baseball game cancelled by snow

The chattering class is upset because a baseball playoff game was cancelled by snow. Not only is Global Warming officially declared false and misleading but the world is ending.

Hold on, Bucko. It's Colorado. It snows in Colorado. Wait two hours and you'll have 65 degrees and gorgeous. Besides, haven't we noticed that we've been pushing the playoffs further and further into October so the owners can grub for money? Sooner or later, fall becomes winter.

Let's Recap a few dates for the World Series ...

1950 Dates 10-04, 10-05, 10-06, 10-07
1975 Dates 10-11, 10-12, 10-14, 10-15, 10-16, 10-21, 10-22
1990 Dates 10-16, 10-17, 10-19, 10-20
2008 Dates 10-22, 10-23, 10-25, 10-26, 10-27
2009 Dates 10-28, 10-29, 10-31, November 1, 2*, 4*, 5*

What the hell did anyone expect in Colorado's mile-high city?

Everyone gets a trophy ... But Rudy earned his.

Sometimes I really hate the "touchy-feely" stuff and the vast complex of delusions that usually go towards sustaining it despite what should be obvious. I hate the tendency to want a prize for everything all the way through life, regardless of the circumstances.

Situation: Football team is getting shut out 46-0 and the losing coach calls timeout with 6 seconds to go, calls the number of his Downs player, runs to the other side to ask if they'll let him get a free touchdown. The winning team agrees. Both teams fake the play and let him score. Final: 46-6.

I like that the one team of players, taken completely by surprise, so quickly agreed to the crazy notion that they let a shutout go and let the kid with Downs Syndrome score his touchdown.

• I don't like that the coach called the "Matt Play" BEFORE he set off to ask the winning team about it. What if they had said "No?" Do you tell Matt "Too bad, sit down?"
• I don't like that the coach ran to the defensive huddle and sprung it on the opponent in the last seconds of a game. The opposing coach and team should have been given a graceful way to back out of this if they felt it unnecessarily dangerous, wanted to keep the shutout, or simply felt it a bad idea.
• He didn't tell the refs about it. It would have been nice to be sure that Matt wasn't flagged for illegal motion, illegal formation, or a lineman called for holding.
• "To minimize the danger, Matt doesn’t take part in full-contact drills at practices" -- You're going to put him in a real game with 21 players who don't have a good idea of what they're supposed to do? If you can't take a chance in practice, why take one in a real game? This isn't about overcoming a disability. Some Downs Syndrome kids can and do play football for real, and they play well if well-coached. If he's so delicate that he can't take a hit in practice, he should not be on the field.
• One of the parents wasn't there because they knew it was the third game of the season - he'll never be put in.
• The winning team lost their shutout. Shutouts are special and usually have meaning down the road when rankings and standings are decided. The winning team can know in their hearts that they won 46-0, but the official score says 46-6.
• I don't like the precedent. Is this a tradition about to start? If they're being beaten by enough, does a losing team automatically get to trot out it's hard-luck cases for a free score? How much is that margin? Will this become a part of the "mercy rule?"

It also aggravates me that the Coach is calling it "understanding that winning isn't everything." Bullshit, Coach. You were getting spanked 46-0. You approached the other team and asked that they make an exception for a kid who isn't normally allowed on the field. They showed magnificent composure and true sportsmanship. You took advantage.

You didn't teach anyone about winning or the value of playing the game in an honorable fashion because the win was already in the bag. If you were down by 3 points, and they acceded to the request and allowed your team to win the game on the play, THAT would have shown that "winning isn't everything."

No to be all curmudgeonly about it, but this rings a little false to me. I can feel this guy coming up with this to ward off complaints that he got shut out by the cross-town rival. Who's going to point out that he hadn't prepared his team properly for this game? Certainly not the athletic director - coincidentally, Matt's father.

McCamy could just as easily have talked to the other coach ahead of time and planned this out. First, the game is played to completion. Then the announcer, knowing his role in all this, says "The refs have put 6 seconds back on the clock." The refs do so, knowing their role - they also know to swallow the whistle. The clock operator puts the time up. Then, you run the scripted play against the other team who knows the game is over but have agreed to the stunt, and you achieve your goal of lying to your player.

The game would then have been honest and both teams would have been clear about their roles. The kid would have been safe and you'd still be a hero.

Of course, a cynic will wait to see if Coach uses this again this season. Matt won't know he's been conned and he'll expect to go in every game now. Coach can play the beneficent mentor and the team will never have to suffer another shutout.

The problem is, it's never a good idea to blatantly lie to your player.

The scrub who never plays has at least the satisfaction of knowing that he practiced hard and worked, that his few minutes of play were against an opponent who played just as hard, i.e., the other team's substitutes who just as desperately want to prove themselves. You know, the Rudy thing.

The softer side of me hopes that Matt will understand and be able to forgive his coach and his fellow teammates when he does find out that the whole thing was a sham. My experience with similar kids tells me that will be especially hard for the boy - this will chew at him. The sense of betrayal will not be assuaged by the thought that they did it for his sake. It will take him far longer to get over it.

Will the entire school be able to keep the secret? No. I figure it will be less than a week before some jerk tells him it was all a joke. Then the real problems will start. It's a 50% chance he'll stay on the team and a 0% chance he'll trust them again easily.

Maybe this will all work out. I hope so, but I have this sinking feeling.

---

Video:

---

Rivals cooperate on touchdown for player with Down syndrome
By RYAN YOUNG
The Kansas City Star
ST. JOSEPH | Matt Ziesel doesn’t stray far from coach Dan McCamy on the sidelines during St. Joseph Benton High School’s freshman football games. He likes to stay within earshot.
“I’m ready, Coach. … Coach, I’m ready,” Ziesel says.McCamy says he hears it about 10 times a game, and also at practices, from Ziesel, his 5-foot-3, 110-pound running back.
So in the final stages of Benton’s third game of the season on Monday at Maryville, McCamy decided it was time for Ziesel — a 15-year-old freshman with Down syndrome — to make his season debut.
With about 10 seconds left in the game, and Benton trailing 46-0, McCamy called his final timeout, told an assistant coach to organize the team for the “Matt play” and ran across the field to the Maryville defensive huddle — and to some puzzled looks from the opposing players.
“I’ve got a special situation,” McCamy remembers telling Maryville freshman defensive coach David McEnaney. “I know you guys want to get a shutout. Most teams would want a shutout, but in this situation I want to know if maybe you can let one of my guys run in for a touchdown.”
Several days have passed since Ziesel chugged more than 60 yards down a sideline for his first high school touchdown — but the buzz hasn’t.
The YouTube clip McCamy posted Tuesday morning had received more than 1,500 hits as of Thursday night. The e-mails and messages of support also have been rolling in all week — to McCamy as well as the Ziesel family.
“It’s just amazing how one play can mean so much to one kid and then to a team and then to a community,” McCamy said Thursday after practice. “And now it’s spread not just to the community of St. Joseph, but now it’s spread across the region. How something so simple can impact so many — to me, that’s the amazing part about it.”
Mike Ziesel, Matt’s dad, a longtime high school coach and the athletic director at Benton, was standing near the top of the bleachers Monday when a spectator told him it looked like Matt was about to enter the game. His wife, Patty, was at home. She hadn’t planned on Matt actually getting on the field Monday.
Neither had McCamy. As he headed across the field to talk to McEnaney, McCamy wasn’t sure what the reaction would be. He asked the players to avoid physical contact with Ziesel but to make it as real as possible for him.
“The (Maryville) players, they didn’t hesitate at all,” McEnaney said. “They jumped right on board.”
And so Matt Ziesel ran a sweep to the right and just kept going. This time, it was McCamy making sure he was close enough to be heard — running down the sideline alongside Matt, yelling as loud as he could.
“Come on, Matty! They’re coming!” McCamy yelled, making the play as real as possible for Ziesel.
Benton lost Monday’s game 46-6, but those six points made a bigger impact than McCamy could have ever imagined.
“It’s not necessarily about winning or losing,” said McCamy, a second-year coach who played college football at Missouri. “Obviously up in Maryville we lost the game. The end result, we lost the game, but when we went away, we were all kind of winners.”
After he posted the touchdown video on YouTube on Tuesday morning, McCamy sent the link to the Ziesels, so Patty could see her son’s first high school score, and to five fellow Benton coaches.
From there the highlight and the emotions it stirred just kept spreading.
“I don’t know that I (have) gotten one comment from somebody who said they didn’t cry” after watching the video, Patty Ziesel said.
Mike Ziesel, who coached boys basketball for 19 years, said what made him most proud was the way the rest of the players embraced the opportunity.
“It was just a good thing to see people realize that the value of winning is not (as) important as it is to participate and enjoy the game,” Mike Ziesel said.
Said McEnaney, who co-coaches the Maryville freshman team with Jordan Moree: “It just kind of takes you back to what it all really should be about.”
The truth is, Patty Ziesel had reservations about Matt joining the football team. And after she had taken him for the mandatory physical, she received a call from his pediatrician.
“When they got the report that said he was playing football, the pediatrician’s office said, ‘We just want you to know that (the doctor) doesn’t approve of him playing football,’ ” she recalled. “I said: ‘Well, neither do I, but here’s the deal: He wants to be part of the team, and he will be part of the team.’ ”
To minimize the danger, Matt doesn’t take part in full-contact drills at practices, and on his touchdown run he raced untouched as players from both teams trailed along.
Standing next to Matt on Thursday after practice, Patty said she hoped the players on both teams understood how important Monday’s touchdown — and their roles in it — were for her son.
McCamy is sure they do.
“Some of them get it now, but in due time all these kids who were a part of it will have a better understanding,” McCamy said. “When they grow up and they get older, everybody will realize the impact that maybe that play (has) had — not just on that kid’s life, because Matt will remember that forever — but on some of these other kids and what they may have been a part of.”

In the Bucket

Rick Reilly's Bucket List of Sporting Events to see:
7. Yankees vs. Red Sox at Fenway -- There's no better place in baseball than Fenway, which is like playing in your grandmother's attic. The Green Monster isn't an architect's precious quirk; it was the only way to shoehorn the place onto the available land. And Fenway is filled with people who don't need giant clapping hands on the scoreboard to know when to cheer.

Oh Yeah.