In a surprise move (at least publicly) my least favorite sportswriter, Jay Mariotti resigned from the Chicago Sun-Times yesterday. He reportedly said that when he saw the number of reporters covering the Olympics for Internet outlets, he realized that the print newspaper is dead and he will be looking to write for these outlets. (Unfortunately, Mariotti is not giving up his television jobs.)
This shows the kind of stupid logic that this little man brought to his column every day. Yes, newspapers are in serious trouble; all one has to do is look at the layoffs coming from media conglomerates, particularly the rival Chicago Tribune. But, how much money does he think is out there for the writers? The ones that have both an internet and print following make money, but most bloggers do so for little money; for the love of sport, the need to be heard, and potentially making money like the big blog sites do (like yours truly).
For the wind-sock, who hardly ever attended a live game, just sat on his ass and made up inflammatory columns, often contradicting the previous day’s column/opinion, who does he think will pay money to read his feeble meanderings? (And I promise you, Gentle Reader, that he would have to pay me a sum close to the Gross National Product of the U.S. to post on my site.)
I remember when Skip Bayless left his Dallas paper and was going to write on his own blog site that people would subscribe to; before too long, he was back writing for newspapers, and reporting on ESPN. Maybe one of the major sites will want to pick up Mariotti’s column, but more likely, he will just fade back into the shadows, the print version of a sports shock jock whose station just changed its format to Country and Western. In other words, I won’t miss him, and the Sun-Times just became a classier paper overnight.

Golf doesn’t have the greatest history of being inclusive, but usually, it’s the men’s game that is primarily known for excluding people for race, religion and gender. But, in this equal-opportunity 21st Century world, the women are showing that they can be as exclusive and short-sighted as anyone.
On the same day that the Republican Party platform committee announced that one plank in the platform would be for English to be established as this country’s official language, the LPGA announced that it will require players to speak English starting in 2009. Players who already have had their tour cards for two years face suspension if they can’t pass an oral evaluation of English skills, and the rule is effective immediately for new players.
“Why now? Athletes now have more responsibilities and we want to help their professional development,” deputy commissioner Libba Galloway told The Associated Press. “There are more fans, more media and more sponsors. We want to help our athletes as best we can succeed off the golf course as well as on it.”
Yeah, right. It really makes a lot of difference which language you speak while hitting a little white ball with a stick to drive it into a little cup. There are 121 international players from 26 countries on the LPGA Tour, including 45 players from South Korea who are particularly worried despite attending a mandatory meeting last Wednesday. The South Koreans are worried that rather than being suspended, failure to pass the English test will mean that the LPGA will take away their cards.
Angela Park, born in Brazil of South Korean heritage and raised in the United States, said the policy is fair and good for the tour and its international players. “A lot of Korean players think they are being targeted, but it’s just because there are so many of them,” Park reportedly told Golf Magazine.
Seon-Hwa Lee, the only Asian with multiple victories this year, works with an English tutor to improve her English. She is quoted as saying “The economy is bad, and we are losing sponsors,” Lee said. “Everybody understands.” However, the LPGA has not officially given a reason for the new policy. Ms. Galloway denied that the move was based on sponsors and said interest in the tour has never been stronger.
So, which is it? Is the LPGA worried about losing sponsors, or is it just bigoted and racist? Should it matter what language a person speaks as long as they can play the game? Basketball has learned this lesson. Baseball has certainly learned. Why can’t golf?

Get over it! Hillary Clinton ran a sloppy, unorganized campaign for president this year and lost to a better organized Barrack Obama. And yet, all I hear are polls saying that only 50% of Clinton supporters are ready to back the Democratic nominee, with 21 % defecting to McCain and the rest undecided.
Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face! Senator McCain has a 0 rating from proponents of reproductive freedom, and today the Republican National Committee released its platform which takes an even harder line on abortion than before. Senator Obama has high marks from pro-choice groups; has openly supported gender equity in pay and benefits. This is much more that Senator McCain or any Republican has ever done, but many of the Clinton supporters, many of them women, are ready to support a man who clearly doesn’t have their best interests at heart or worse, sit out the election entirely because they are in the midst of a hissy fit.
Obama won the nomination, and he chose Senator Joe Biden. I’ve always liked Biden, but I’ve always felt that he was too honest for the electorate. But he has more foreign policy experience than McCain (truth be told), and helps make Obama more palatable to working class white families. Too many of them dislike Mrs. Clinton, and after the way the Clintons’ not-so-subtly played the race card when it was obvious that she was losing the race, I don’t trust her. One of the things that make Senator Obama so appealing is the prospect of real change in Washington. Sen. Clinton is too entrenched in the old way of doing things, that I don’t think she would be an agent of real change. Some say the same of Sen. Biden, but I think he can change much more easily than Mrs. Clinton.
So, Senator Clinton takes the stage tonight at the Democratic National Convention, and many pundits are saying that her speech will make a big difference on how her supporters vote in November. Well, I hope it’s one helluva speech, but realistically, if Hillary’s supporters are that shallow, the country’s in deeper s@$t than we think. People are saying that we Obama supporters are blinded by the cult of personality, but if the roles were reversed, most of Sen. Obama’s supporters would back Mrs. Clinton because she is more progressive in her views than Old Man McCain.
So, like a small child, let’s end our tantrum and support and vote for the person who has our best interests at heart. If they don’t do that; I have a feeling that Susan B. Anthony is going to be twirling in her grave.

No matter who it is, there are always good and bad things that can be said when someone dies. Most of the time, we push back the bad and accentuate the good, if nothing else than as respect for the deceased and his/her family. However, I guess that this is much more difficult when the person in question has had a large and profound impact on something. That is certainly the case with Gene Upshaw.
Upshaw died this morning as a result on pancreatic cancer at the age of 63, and it can truly be said that he had an impact on football on and off-the-field. He truly lived in a time of great change: he graduated from Texas A&I and was drafted by the Oakland Raiders with its first round pick in the first combined AFL-NFL draft. Upshaw anchored the Raiders’ offensive line at guard from 1967 until his retirement in 1981. Along with tackle Art Shell, Upshaw protected Raider QBs all those years, from Daryl “The Mad Bomber” Lamonica and George Blanda to Ken Stabler and Jim Plunkett. Raider teams with Upshaw went to three Super Bowls, winning two of them, and once his career ended, he was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1987.
But it was off the field where his shadow was greatest. Upshaw took a keen interest in the business of the sport, participating as a member of the bargaining committee for the NFLPA throughout his playing days. After his retirement, he took over as NFLPA executive director in June 1983. Upshaw led the players union through a strike in 1987 and years of anti-trust litigation against the league, including a brief period in which the NFLPA became a professional association rather than a union. The union eventually accepted a salary cap in return for free agency. Ultimately, the Union got a bigger share of league revenues because of the deal.
In fact, the deal was so good that the owners opted out of the deal last season, and the coming labor strife was a rare black cloud over the NFL. Over the next 16 months, the union and the league had some very serious negotiation to do, a situation that will be hampered by the loss of Upshaw.
However, Upshaw has been under fire for some time with some 325 retired players from the AFL and NFL came forward with accounts of being given minimal disability benefits. Chicago legend Mike Ditka was one of the leaders in trying to get the NFLPA and league to provide more support to former players, but Upshaw, despite being a former player himself, copped out, saying that the former players weren’t his constituency sine they no longer had voting power within the union. In light of this and concern for the future negotiations, Baltimore Ravens kicker Matt Stover had been leading an effort to oust Upshaw as the NFLPA executive director, even e-mailing a plan last April to fellow player representatives to have a new union boss in place by March 2009.
How does one look upon such a man at the end of his life? A man who took his talent off the field, and parlayed it into a position of authority in the game itself. Here is a man who helped the NFL grow into the monopolistic, multi-billion dollar cash machine that it is today, and the players have benefited to multi-million dollar salaries. But, on the other hand, here is a man who may have willfully neglected those same players once their playing days were over.
Gene Upshaw was a multifaceted man who lived and impacted the events in a turbulent era. We certainly will not see his like again: good or bad.

After much legal wrangling and boycotting, major league baseball umpires and management signed an agreement Wednesday that will allow for the use of instant replay to help determine calls on the field. While no date has been given as to the start of the use of instant replay, the league has been gearing up, installing equipment at the ballparks, and officials had stated that they hoped to use the replay this month.
The agreement calls for replay to be available only for “boundary calls,” - determining whether fly balls were fair or foul, or whether they went over fences. The deal was signed by management lawyer Dan Halem and World Umpires Association attorney Brian Lam one day after a WUA spokesman went public with complaints over negotiations. The WUA had decided to boycott a conference call scheduled for yesterday, in which crew chiefs were to go over replay with MLB officials. Eventually, MLB canceled the call.
The problem, of course, is in the details. According to the agreement, umpire crew chiefs will determine when replay will be used and will make the final decisions on calls. Up to three umpires will be able to look at the replays, which will be provided from a “war room” at Major League Baseball Advanced Media in New York. (A “war room?” Why do I keep thinking about the scene in Dr. Strangelove when George C. Scott (playing U.S. General “Buck” Turgidson) and Peter Bull (portraying the Russian Ambassador) are told by Peter Sellers’ U.S. President “you can’t fight in here, this is the war room.”)
So, the replay will be going to this “war room” which I guess will be an umpire’s version of “Big Brother.” If there is a dispute, the war room will have to make the replay available to the umpires; the umps will have to decide to use it, and three of the four umpires can look at the replay and make the call.
Now, unlike football, baseball is pastoral and has no time limit, but there have been complaints for years that games, particularly American League games were too long. Average games have been over 3 hours for years, and have approached four hours recently. How will this impact the game? I see it taking another 10 minutes for all of this back and forth from the “war room” and for the umpires to review the tape. Meanwhile, fans at home will channel surf to something else and may not return, and in the stadiums, the fans will have little to do other than look at one another. In other words, boredom will reign supreme.
I think that replay should be used only in the playoffs and World Series. Umpires make the huge majority of calls correctly, and having replay for regular season games just slows things down. Besides, who cares if a ball is fair or four for example, in a game tomorrow between the Padres and Pirates or in the AL, a game between the Orioles and Royals; all teams so far out of playoff contention that they couldn’t see the playoffs with a map?
Message to Bud Selig – nice agreement, now leave replay for the postseason; the games are long enough as it is.

I cannot be called a “gamer.” I only own one video game, and it’s the Sony PlayStation Portable. I like being able to play on airplanes, while waiting for the family to come out of the museum, wherever I happen to be at the time. I also admit that I have no interest in role playing games of alien landscapes, monsters and demons, and unbridled carnage. Maybe if I was 16, I’d be into it, but these games do nothing for me now.
What I do enjoy are, big surprise, sports games. And the leading purveyor of sports games is Electronic Arts (television tagline: “EA Sports – it’s in the game!”) Every year, I buy two games: Major League Baseball, and the NHL Hockey game (I don’t usually get the Madden NFL game – it’s too complex for me and my big fat fingers). That is, until last year, when EA decided to make its NHL 08 game for every platform except for the PSP (and alternate handheld game, the Ninetendo DS). I searched all over for the game, but eventually, I was told that EA wouldn’t be making the game for the PSP. I e-mailed the company, suggesting that if it were a profitability issue, I and many people I spoke with in Canada, would be willing to spend $5-$10 more per game to make it profitable for them to release the game on PSP. It’s not like they can’t: Madden, Tiger Woods Golf, MLB The Show, and even FIFA Soccer are on PSP from Electronic Arts.
Reportedly, the company responded, but the link in the e-mail with the response didn’t work. Further requests from the company went unanswered. So, I hoped that perhaps this would be a one year layoff, and EZ would find a profitable way to make NHL 09 for the PSP. Personally, I’m tired of playing the 2007 version of the game, when, among other things, Dominick Hasek played for Ottawa.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t appear to be the case. Amazon is listing the NHL 09 game for PlayStation home console; Wii, Xbox, PC, but again, not for the PSP. What is the deal? So, this time, instead of writing the company, I e-mailed the NHL asking them if they had any influence over the company. (I still await their response.) I also e-mailed Sony, maker of the PSP. If anyone has a real interest in defending people who buy the PSP platform, it would be Sony. And, if there is anyone who has the clout to get EA to listen, it would be them. (I have received the automated response from them, but they promise to respond within 48 hours.)
So, if you’re a hockey fan with a Sony PSP game the new tagline should be: “EA Sports – It’s Not In The Game” or, “PSP Owners, you’re not important.”

The Chicago Bears announced that Kyle Orton will be the starter when the regular season opens on September 7th against the Indianapolis Colts. His play in the preseason has been marginally better than Rex Grossman’s, which probably brings his Bear career to a close.
Realistically, however, it really is not going to make much difference who is at center; the Bear offense is going to suck. Without Grossman, there will be fewer turnovers, but the plain fact is, the line is horrible; and there aren’t any great playmakers at wide receiver or running back. And, last but not least, offensive coordinator Ron Turner’s second tenure with the team is making Bear fans long for his horrible time as head coach at the University of Illinois.
First, let’s discuss wide receiver. Marty booker is the only man in Bear history to catch 100 balls in a season. Of course, that was six seasons ago, and Booker, never that fast to begin with, hasn’t gotten any faster, only slower in his stint in Miami. Yes, kick returner extraordinaire Devin Hester is trying to play wideout, but he is still learning the position. It seems like brains is more important than speed at the wide receiver position in today’s NFL.
The Bears are definitely better off without first round bust Cedric Benson, but at least Benson was a name that defensive coordinators had heard of, and had a right to be wary of, even if it was looking at old footage from the University of Texas. Second round draft choice Matt Forte, could be a fine back, but he has been thrust into the starting lineup after the Bears gave Benson his walking papers. In other words, the jury is out. Of course, it appears that the days of the superstar running back are over – just plug in anyone in Green Bay, or Denver, and watch them run for over 1,000 yards. Only LaDanian Thomlinson is the exception.
The biggest problem is the line. It was expected to be better with just the addition of 6 foot-6 inch, 320 pound tackle Chris Williams, first round draft choice from Vanderbilt. Then, aged John Tait could move to right tackle where there’s less pressure and help from the tight end. Well, that didn’t work – Williams is out for at least nine more weeks after undergoing back surgery. John St. Clair, the current right tackle, was beaten like a drum by the Seahawk defense last weekend and should probably be at guard. Both of the Bear quarterbacks are immobile; and Orton is going to be standing back there getting killed.
But he still makes fewer mistakes than Grossman, who needs a change of scenery and may never be the franchise quarterback the Bears envisioned when they drafted him out of the University of Florida. He has the big arm and can make the big play; but he also makes the bad play, and with a defense that has struggled and teams finding ways to kick the ball away from Hester, it could be a long season for football fans. It’s good that the Cubs and White Sox are in first place and the Blackhawks are returning to respectability, maybe we can avoid the football season entirely.