Long time readers know that I don’t like Syracuse Head Men’s Basketball Coach Jim Boeheim: he has always been a crybaby of the highest order; recruited players who were going to struggle to remain eligible, much less graduate. Boeheim, with 962 victories and 1 NCAA Tournament Championship in 39 years as head coach at Syracuse, announcers speak about him with reverence, which reminds me of the quote from John Huston in “Chinatown:” “old men, buildings and whores all become respectable if they hang around long enough.”
Every dog has his day, and Boeheim’s program has finally drawn the investigators of the NCAA, who are focusing on allegations of “extra benefits and academic issues, that date back at least 10 years,” according to ESPN. Obviously, the university knows that there is merit to the charges since they announced this week that it has imposed a ban on the team for the upcoming 2015 NCAA Tournament, which will mark the first time in six years that the school will not be in the tournament.
Ordinarily, one might commend a university on such a decision, but I never have. Whenever a university imposes its own penalty, it is a blatant attempt to get the NCAA to go easy on the school when it publishes its ruling and penalty. Penn State did it; Ohio State did it; it’s the university throwing a program on its sword in hopes that the wound in the arm will prevent the NCAA stabbing it through the heart.
However, even more despicable is the fact that while the Orangemen basketball team is 15-7 right now, it is considered by most a long shot to make the tournament anyway, having lost three of its last 4 games. Would the university have been as willing to penalize the program if the team were 21-1? I doubt it.
Plus, what about this year’s team who have worked and played hard? Like every other NCAA penalty, there is some collateral damage when they punish a college program. Now, there are probably players who are the recipients of the illegal benefits on the team, so it is a bit of the chickens coming home to roost, what about the players who are doing the right thing (and are there any)?
As I wrote above, I have always thought that Boeheim was just another college basketball snake oil salesman, just not as slick as John Calipari, or Rick Pitino, and without the apparent integrity of Mike Kryzewski. I have long believed Boeheim ran a dirty program and I’m sure the NCAA will issue their findings and levy punishment. I don’t think they should get a break on punishment because they called an end to a season that was not going anywhere anyway.

Lots of work and lots more snow shoveling has kept me away from the blog the last couple of days, but I have four NFL stories that need to be discussed:

The Super Bowl was everything a football fan would want – exciting, down to the last seconds dramatic. The commercials were mostly lame. The halftime show was okay (at first, I thought that Katy Perry had found a way to animate the Luxor hotel from Las Vegas when she rode in on this lion thing.)
Already everyone has jumped on the last pass play that the Patriots intercepted to win. Yes, it was the dumbest call you could make: ball at the 2-yard line, .28 left on the clock, a great running back in your backfield, and time outs in case he doesn’t make it. Pete Carroll is the goat on this one.
Someone suggested that the Patriot win will be overturned when the NFL concludes its “deflate-gate” investigation. This is just ridiculous; that WILL NOT HAPPEN. Even if there’s video tape of Tom Brady with sandpaper and a inflating pin, the Patriots will remain champions. It is fair; they won the game. There will be punishment, probably monetary against Brady, Belichick and perhaps the team, but that’s as far as it goes. However, the perception of Belichick and Brady, which was vaguely affected by Spygate will now be a permanent impression by everyone. For the rest of his life, Brady, the All American, Fair-haired boy with the supermodel wife and beautiful kids, will be considered by many a cheater. And that stain on his legacy will be punishment enough, I think.
Speaking of cheating, what is up with the Atlanta Falcons? Owner Arthur Blank accepted guilt that the team pumped in crowd noise to try and effect opposing teams’ offenses. I have been in the Georgia Dome and it is so massive and sterile, it is lifeless, but the way the Falcons have played recently, the Seattle 12th Man crowd couldn’t help them…
NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said that the league had a “difficult year” this season with the Ray Rice and domestic violence issues along with the concussion problem and lawsuits. This is all true, but Goodell may have another battle ahead of him. The new chairman of the House Oversight Committee, Republican Jason Chaffetz, said that he will probably haul the commissioner in front of his panel to justify the league’s non-profit status. Chaffetz in an interview with CNN asked, “Was that a nonprofit event going on or was that a for-profit venture? It’s a for-profit venture. You tell people that the NFL is a nonprofit entity and they just start laughing and giggling. But it’s not fair. If there’s another side to that, then let the commissioner come in and make that case.” Chaffetz thinks that the league, which paid Goodell $44 million in 2012, should have to pay taxes, something that could cost the league more than $100 million over a decade.
The NFL has argued in the past that only the league office, which pays the commissioner, is tax exempt, arguing that it pays taxes on income-generating areas such as television rights, game tickets and merchandise. That may be, but there is nothing more important to the Commissioner than to maximize and grow the money coming from the golden goose. (It must be said that it is very interesting to see a Republican looking to get more money from billionaires. I wonder if this will ever amount to anything as a result?)
Finally, I’d like to make a comment on Warren Sapp. Sapp was a Hall of Fame defensive tackle and a delightful personality as a player. He won a championship with Tampa Bay and his outgoing personality in interviews made him a television staple as a player. As one would expect, he was able to parlay that into a television gig, and he did that, becoming a fixture on the NFL Network and Showtime’s “Inside The NFL” program. However, like so many ex-athletes, and despite being on television, he filed bankruptcy a few years ago, but his lack of common sense remains.
Over the Super bowl weekend, Sapp was arrested for solicitation of a prostitute and assaulting two women in Arizona. Now, I don’t know of Sapp’s family situation, but he is well known – didn’t he think he might get caught? I’m not going to discuss the topic of prostitution in general, and I know that hookers from all over the West descended on the Phoenix/Glendale area in the couple of weeks before the game, but come on…
So, Sapp may face financial difficulty again, since the NFL Network dropped him like a hot potato. I hate so say it, but one has to wonder if Sapp has some cognitive problems like CTE? Just askin’…

One of the results of a win at all costs mentality is that one is more then willing to bend, if not break the rules. The upside is that you win; you get all of the rewards, money, fame, glamour of the winner. The only downside (in the short term) is if you get caught. Then you have your awards taken away, the money dries up, you may even go to jail. (The long term effects are on your health, but too many athletes are more than willing to risk a shorter life expectancy for all the benefits of winning.)
We have an NFL Championship Game this Sunday with two coaches and probably a Hall of fame bound quarterback who either have been proven as cheaters, or are under suspicion. What message does that send to the youth of America? Of course, what Pete Carroll, Bill Belichick and Tom Brady have (allegedly) done is relatively minor league cheating. It’s not like the prevalence of steroids and other performance enhancing drugs, and there are few sports that are as linked to PEDs than bicycle racing and track and field. Better drugs give athletes more stamina, allow them to train harder with less consequence, heal faster. Of course, ‘roid rage, and other physical issues come along with it.
So, I guess its not surprising that Athletics Kenya announced this week that it has banned marathon champion Rita Jeptoo two years for doping. Ms. Jeptoo has won the Boston Marathon three times, and won her second Chicago Marathon in October, but traces of the banned blood-booster EPO were found in her out-of-competition test in Kenya on Sept. 25.
This comes a couple of days after former All American boy Lance Armstrong was interviewed and said that if he was still racing, he would be using PEDs. This admission comes after years of aggressively attacking anyone who accused him of doping until he was forced to “come clean” in 2012 by a Federal and US Anti-Doping Agency investigations pointed to the same things: he willingly took PEDs and masking agents, won seven Tour de France titles while lying about his aided performance.
I bring this all up to remind us that the “steroid era” is not over. Baseball fans seem to think that since Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, Roger Clemens, Rafael Palmiero and Sammy Sosa are all retired, the only time we have to think of them is when the Baseball Hall of Fame vote is announced each January. Yes, there’s better testing, but athletes are still trying to find an edge as Ms. Jeptoo shows.
It just never ends…

Yesterday was Super Bowl media day, a day that is a press conference, or actually many press conferences mixed with ants descending on an ice cream bar dropped on the sidewalk in the summertime. Journalists from every published, broadcast, and online outlet in the Western world asking questions both smart (occasionally) and dumb (mostly).
Every player and coach are showcased on little stages where all of the press can take pictures and ask questions. To most players, it is a necessary evil, with the media people viewed with a mix of bemusement, boredom, and weird interest. The only part that probably makes the event palatable is that you only have to be available for a maximum of five minutes. Of course, the big names, Brady, Belichick, Pete Carroll, Russell Wilson are available longer.
However, players can’t miss it; the NFL takes a very dim view on not showing up at media day – huge fines have been levied on players who decided that the whole scene is ridiculous and don’t show up. Which leads us to Seahawk star running back Marshawn Lynch; he is already the poster boy – literally – for crotch grabbing behavior at opposing players and even referees.
He has been fined a couple of times recently, and he and the team have been notified that such antics will draw an immediate 15-yard unsportsmanlike conduct penalty on Sunday.
Lynch has made it more then plainly clear many times he has absolutely no desire to talk to the media. There is no rule that Lynch has to speak to the media, except for Super Bowl media day. So, there he was, in a track suit, dark shades, long dreadlocks under a baseball cap from a non-NFL sponsor, that will probably get Lynch fined yet again. But there he was and to every question, Lynch made the same response: “I’m just here so I won’t get fined,”
As always, there were two schools of thought on Lynch’s behavior. Surprisingly, I saw some PR maven talking about how Lynch was “creating a brand” and, in the world of “any publicity is good publicity,” these people see this as a shrewd marketing ploy. (Lynch supposedly has not one but two commercials to be broadcast during the Super Bowl, so I guess, what he’s really saying is – I only speak when I’m paid. There’s nothing wrong with that of course.)
Of course, since Marshawn Lynch looks like the stereotypical young black man that is being demonized by the right wing media and police departments all over the United States, most of the comment I see is negative. However, while I don’t necessarily agree with the PR maven angle, I say that Marshawn Lynch has an absolute right to give such an answer to a bullsh*t event. In the first 30 years or so of the Super Bowl, particularly the first 10 years, the Super Bowl needed a media push. In the early days, the game didn’t even sell out. In “building the brand,” the NFL wanted to get the word out, everywhere and to everybody.
The strategy worked and now the Super Bowl is the unofficial February national holiday. The pregame show started, I think 2 hours ago, and will go nonstop until kickoff. Football fans are a lock – we will be in front of a television somewhere; casual fans will want to see this game; people who don’t like football at all watch to see the new commercials that companies will be rolling out during the game at $4.5 million per 30 second spot. It’s worked – the NFL has won, and with social media, and online sites like this one, is Media Day a quaint throwback that isn’t really necessary anymore? What piece of miniscule data on the backup center can’t be found on the Internet these days?
Marshawn Lynch is a talented running back but he is one strange guy. Flamboyant on the field, he wants to be left alone off of it. He has asked for more money in the past and held out, a gesture that may have soured the Seahawks on their primary running back. He may not be there next season, and where he ends up will be a topic of speculation in the days to come. But seriously, he runs a football and tries to not let the other team stop him. What more does he need to say? Much of the media is hoping to get a controversial quote – a “gotcha” moment. What’s in it for the athlete except to feed the NFL’s media beast?
As I said before, Marshawn Lynch is unique. I don’t and wouldn’t dress like he does (but then again, I’m not 28 years old as he is). But in this age of Obama, black men, especially young ones are objects of scorn and derision (if not being actually hunted by police and George Zimmerman-wannabe vigilantes). Lynch scares people and Roger Goodell is trying to exert his authority over the league, especially over the black players. So, Lynch went where he was told he had to go, it didn’t mean that he had to play alone with the farce. Good for him!

The “investigation” into the deflated footballs continues by the NFL. A member of the Patriots’ crew has been identified as taking the footballs from the AFC Championship Game into a bathroom for whatever reason. It looks like he is going to be the patsy to take the immediate fall for the Deflate-gate incident, which of course it patently unfair since there is no way in hell a manager would be doctoring the footballs on his own authority.
Meanwhile, Big Chief Sith Lord in a Hoodie, Bill Belichick, says that the team followed the rules to the letter and said that perhaps the cold weather at Foxboro Stadium had something to do with the underinflated footballs.. Belichick’s boss, Patriots’ owner Bob Kraft says that the Patriots are owed an apology once the facts in the case come to light. Quarterback Tom Brady says that he had nothing to do with it, and every retired QB on television immediately doesn’t believe a word of it. DeGrasse Tyson, Bill Nye the Science Guy, and the footballs’ manufacturer dispute the claims scientifically.
Meanwhile, Seattle and New England are practicing for the Super Bowl on Sunday, and I really don’t think the controversy will effect either team. The only thing that will be certain is that the footballs will be properly inflated; the NFL will make absolutely sure of that.
The thing is, no one believes Belichick or the Patriots, especially after the Spygate incident. It has been shown that Belichick will do anything to win (which, by the way, can also be said of Seattle Head Coach Pete Carroll, although Carroll’s cheating has mainly been in conducting more contact practices then allowed). They finally got caught, and even if innocent, their past has finally come back to haunt them. Now, every move that Belichick and the Patriots do will be suspect and subject to increased scrutiny. And they have no one but themselves to blame.
How should the NFL punish the Patriots? Will Roger Goodell, the self appointed NFL Sherriff really drop the bomb on his friend Bob Kraft? Some are saying that Belichick should be suspended at least a year, like Sean Payton was after the Bounty-gate down in New Orleans. I would tend to agree with that; the bounties were horrible, but no one was injured in the game in which Saints were monetarily incentivized to hurt opponents. But that’s not cheating. This affects the integrity of the game and the full weight of the commissioner’s office should land on Kraft and Belichick.
Let’s not forget Tom Brady in all of this. How much Belichick knew about the footballs will probably be debated forever unless Belichick admits he knew. There is no way however that Brady didn’t know – he may have actually ordered the doctoring of the footballs. I know that he’s 38 years old and nearing the end of his Hall of Fame career, but he should be suspended for a year also. He deserves the permanent cloud over his career and all of his accomplishments. I also don’t care if other quarterbacks are doing it; the Patriots have a record for cheating, got caught and should pay the price, if, for no other reason than to send a message to the other QBs in the league that this behavior is not acceptable.
There is little question that if the balls had been fully inflated, the Patriots still would have routed Indianapolis in the AFC Championship game. I think that Seattle will win Sunday, which will be some measure of satisfaction to Patriots haters out there.
If the NFL values its integrity, already harmed in the face of head trauma issues, bowls of pills available in locker rooms at least through the 1980s and 1990s, and violence against women issues, it has to come down hard and fast on the New England Patriots. And the league should n’t come down on some manager making minimum wage taking orders. That would be like trying the Watergate burglars as Nixon goes free.

I wasn’t always a White Sox only fan. In fact, when I was a kid, I loved the Cubs, especially Ernie Banks. My grandmother managed a grocery store on the South Side where Ernie’s first wife shopped (yes, I know, she took and tried to sell a lot of Mr. Banks’ memorabilia). Ernie was Mr. Cub and he was the most recognizable Black athlete in the city.
Unless you live in a cave, you know that Ernie Banks died of a heart attack last weekend. There have been numerous tributes locally and nationally. In fact, he has gotten as many words written on him, it is like a head of state died. But that is what Ernie was to so many of us.
So many have written that they held their bats like Ernie – no gloves, fingering the bat like a clarinet waiting for the pitch. I did that too. The collapse of 1969 was (and remains) as traumatic an event as a kid can have. I still have a baseball with fake autographs of the 1969 team that was a giveaway to some grocery stores. I used to have pictures of all of the Cubs from that era: Banks, Williams, Santo, Don Kessinger, Fergie Jenkins, Glenn Beckert, Randy Huntley. We loved those Cubs (for me until Dick Allen came to town, and finally severed by the Sammy Sosa era “fans” and the Tribune Company scalping their own tickets).
For all the years I worked at Wrigley, I only encountered Ernie Banks a few times. Long after his career had ended, he was always on the field when I worked there, so I never met him then. I played pickup basketball with him in a Near North WMCA in the early 1980s and he was a decent player. Moreover, he was gracious and talked throughout. It was hard not to laugh when he was talking while playing against you.
I met him again at a Sports Illustrated event when the Sportswriters were on; holding court talking about lots of things. A couple of years ago, he came to the branch of the bank where I work and I went in to say hello. He kept asking me if I was nice to my mother-in-law. Hilarious!
I won’t add too much more here; Mayor Emanuel and other dignitaries will speak at the public memorial at Daley Plaza tomorrow, and there will be lots more said at Ernie’s wake and funeral Friday and Saturday respectively. But he was a Hall of Famer in baseball, but a greater Hall of Famer in life.

The NFL has reported that 11 of 12 footballs used at last weekend’s AFC Championship Game between New England and Indianapolis were underinflated by 2 PSI. Considering the fact that Tom Brady has said in the past that he likes his balls underinflated, plus the Spygate scandal, the Patriots, Coach Bill Belichick and now Brady are all under suspicion, and it could be a blemish on the latter two’s Hall of Fame credentials.
Considering Belichick’s excessive need for control, I tend to doubt that Belichick didn’t know that the balls were underinflated. Yes, a case can be made that other teams do it, Super Bowl winning QB Brad Johnson said that he paid “some guys” $7,500 to deflate and scuff up some 100 footballs before Super Bowl XXXVII when he was with Tampa Bay. Of course, the Buccaneers ended up defeating the Oakland Raiders 48-21.
That was one game, a championship game, yes, but still one game. In light of Spygate and this incident, Belichick’s nickname “Beli-cheat” seems well founded and may be as part of his reputation and legacy as his scowl-under-his-hoodie. With all of the attention, you can bet that the footballs for the Super Bowl will be scrutinized, perhaps even sequestered. If the Patriots win, even if the balls are good; people will wonder what underhanded tricks did Belichick pull off. If they lose, people will assume that they lost because they couldn’t cheat.
At first it was just Belichick’s reputation, but now, clean-cut, All American boy Tom Brady’s reputation may be as sullied as his coach’s. Since they have been together Brady’s entire career including six Super Bowls, one has to wonder how many of those wins were as a result of chicanery? When both of them are enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame (and they both will be) will they carry this cloud of cheating into Canton with them?
As I wrote earlier this week, neither Belichick nor Seattle Coach Pete Carroll are strangers to bending rules until they break. With these two coaches on the sidelines, the NFL may need two officiating crews to keep the game honest.