• Detroit Tiger Manager Jim Leyland told his team after they lost in the ALCS this week that he wouldn’t be back. The 68-year-old Leyland says that a younger man should take on the duties. The Tigers won’t be the same team without him. Leyland is a worthy Hall of Fame candidate ranking 14th all time in games managed (3,499), 15th in wins (1,769) and 10th in losses (1,728) ahead of Hall of Famers such as Tommy Lasorda, Dick Williams and Earl Weaver. He spent 22 years at the helm of the Pirates, Marlins, Rockies and Tigers and finished first or second in his division 11 times. He took both Pittsburgh and Detroit to three straight League Championship Series, and won a World Series with Florida in 1997. He has always been a quality manager.
• This past weekend, we lost former Head Coach Oil Andrew “Bud” Philips. Phillips gained notoriety as the coach of the Houston Oilers in the 1970s and 1980s. A bad franchise when Phillips took over, he built the offense around Earl Campbell and the defense around Curley Culp and others to two AFC Championship Games. For me, Bud Phillips will always be remembered for one of the great sports quotes of all time. Asked around 1980 or so about his long time marriage to his wife who also joined him on road trips, he said “I take my wife on road trips because she’s too ugly to kiss goodbye.” He was a “good ‘ole boy in every way, and a good football mind with two sons NFL coordinators.
• If that wasn’t enough for former Houston Oilers, we learned that Titans owner and Bum Phillips’ former boss, K.S. ”Bud” Adams Jr. died in his Houston home at the age of 90. The son of a prominent oil executive, Adams built his own energy fortune and used it to found the Houston Oilers in the old American Football League. Around Houston, however, Adams is not a beloved figure. He moved the team to Tennessee after the 1996 season when he couldn’t get the new stadium he wanted in Houston. The franchise, renamed the Titans, in 2000 reached the Super Bowl. Houston eventually built a new stadium, and got an expansion team – the Texans.

Grambling State’s venerable football program, headed for years by Hall of Famer Eddie Robinson – one of winningest coaches in NCAA history, has fallen into disarray. The historic black college has had an up-and-down record since Robinson retired after the 1997 season after enduring two consecutive 3-8 records.
The team hired alum and former NFL signal caller Doug Williams as head coach and had several more winning seasons including going 10-2 in 2000, 11-0 in 2001, 11-2 in 2002, and 9-3 in 2003. But Williams left (was fired?) and the team had seven winning seasons afterward, but not at the top of the Southwest Athletic Conference.
Williams was brought back in 2011, leading the team to an 8-4 record, but the 2012 team had an overall record of one win and ten losses (1–10, 0–9 SWAC). Williams was fired on September 11th, which is weird – if you fired him because of the previous season, most times coaches are fired right after the season so that a new guy can start fresh in terms of recruiting.
So, with a coach fired, and having gone 0-7, the Grambling State football team revolted last week: walking out of a meeting with the school’s president and athletic director, boycotting practice and finally refusing to travel to last Saturday’s game with Jackson State. Certainly, firing Williams played a part in the revolt, but only a tiny part.
The players are complaining, and appropriately so, about the state of the facilities and level of support. The school’s Stadium Support Building is in horrible condition according to the players and substantiated by reporters. The weight room is falling apart, especially the floor, which is coming up and tripping players. The uniforms are not washed sufficiently and according to the players, contribute to the multiple cases of staph infection.
At so many programs, we see players who get too much in the way of perks, even to the point of cash under the table. Not at Grambling. The players are forced to pay for Gatorade or Muscle Milk additives. Whereas other programs have too much booster money flowing that the facilities are state of the art, Grambling is turning down money raised by its alumni apparently because the organizations stipulate that the money be spent on the football program and facilities rather the university or athletics as a whole.
As stated above, the team walked out and refused to play a game, which the university forfeited. It appears that the players are going to go back and finish the season at the urging of former head coach Williams. The first interim head coach was fired last week and a replacement assistant more to the liking of the team has reportedly been hired.
What has happened here? We know that times have been tough and money hard to come by for people and institutions. Why has Grambling allowed its facilities to be so bad that injuries and sicknesses are rampant? I even understand the need to stress academics, but if you have young men playing a sport, shouldn’t you give them the best possible facilities? If not up to the level of an Alabama or Ohio State, at least not full of mold.

Back when I was attending Northwestern University and covering the basketball team for the campus radio station, I attended a question and answer session with then Head Men’s Basketball Coach Rich Falk. Falk wasn’t much of a coach (nor has anyone in Evanston up to now since the Wildcats are the only Division I school that has NEVER gone to the NCAA Tournament), and he bristled when I questioned his limited use of the underclassmen who had talent.
Falk said “you think you can do better?” I replied “what time are practices and film sessions.” Needless to say, I never heard from the coach after that either at the Q&A or thereafter.
I bring that up because the exact same situation is happening with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. The Bucs’ Head Coach Greg Schiano has already run much talent out of Tampa, most recently quarterback Josh Freeman who will be starting for the Minnesota Vikings Monday night against the New York Giants.
Let it be said that the skin of Bucannerers’ coaches are exceedingly thin right now. The latest to lash out in the press is Tampa defensive coordinator Bill Sheridan, who has been criticized for misusing his players, especially regarding key offseason acquisition Darrelle Revis, who has been featured in zone packages rather than man-to-man defensive coverage.
According to Jenna Laine of Sports Talk Florida, Sheridan finally lashed out against the fans on Thursday: “What I want to invite them to do is join us. I get here about 5:20 [a.m.] every single morning, and they’re more than welcome to hang around here until about 11:00 [p.m.] for the first four nights of the week and they can help us put the whole game plan together.”
Sheridan wasn’t done “We’ve got all the free cokes you want in the building and we’ll be happy to take those suggestions on how we can better use Darrelle. Trust me when I tell you we painstakingly game plan how best to use all of our personnel not just Darrelle.”
The chorus of criticism hasn’t only been from fans. Both Hall of Fame cornerback Deion Sanders and ESPN analyst Ron Jaworski have asked why one of the best cover corners in the league is constantly in zone coverages.
I haven’t watched the Buccaneers very closely this season, but just on the face of it, one does have to ask if you’ve paid millions of dollars for one of the best “cover” cornerbacks in the game today why are you playing zone all the time? If the Bucs were winning, all “conventional wisdom would be silenced, but when things aren’t going well, the “Monday Morning Quarterbacks” are going to be out in force (and in many markets like Chicago, they will be chirping even if the team is winning).
Already, Schiano is on a very short leash, one that could be even shorter if Freeman plays well on Monday night (despite playing the depleted 0-5 Giants). There were stories that he is in the process of losing the team with his reported “my way or the highway” attitude. It sounds like his coordinators may be cut from the same cloth.
But if I was a Tampa Bay Buccaneers fan, I’d be asking the same question I did over 30 years ago “what time do I show up.”

My distain for movie director Michael “Transformers” Bay’s films knows no bounds as my friends and long time readers of this site know, but I never wish anyone physical harm or infirmity (even the Koch Brothers, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Ted Cruz. and Antonin Scalia among many other deserving candidates).
So, I say to you that I had nothing to do with what happened to Bay this week. (I have witnesses that I was in Florida with the Indignant Family earlier this week, and even though I do know a few people in Hong Kong, I have not spoken, texted or e-mailed them in some time.) The director and producer was injured in an attack in Hong Kong during filming for his latest Transformers movie. Two brothers surnamed Mak, aged 27 and 28, approached Bay on the set during filming and the younger brother demanded payment of $12,900, a police spokeswoman told Reuters. It was not immediately clear why the money was requested.
As the altercation ensued in a busy area of Hong Kong, the elder Mak walked up and assaulted the director, then attacked three police officers who tried to intervene. The younger brother was arrested on suspicion of blackmail and assault, while the elder Mak was also arrested on suspicion of assault. Bay sustained injuries to the right side of his face, although he declined to seek treatment, with a spokesperson saying that she did not believe his injuries were serious. Filming continued after the dispute, and neither Bay nor anyone on the film crew made any comment.
This whole thing sounds like a scene from a Johnnie To movie – bad guys coming up with a plan to make lots of money. But why attack Bay on a public street, with security protecting him? How did these two gain access to the set? (When they were filming here recently, even the sets and the builders making the sets had a security guard on duty.)
And what about the “blackmail” payment? Why $12,900 (or 100,027.81 in Hong Kong Dollars, or US$1,663 if they were demanding that amount in Hong Kong currency)? Were they trying to extort money, or were they workers who were fired or felt they were cheated by the production?
They certainly weren’t disgruntled writers – we know that Bay’s films certainly don’t need them…

Rather than take his medicine like a man, Alex Rodriguez once again is trying to fight his way out of the 211-game suspension Major League Baseball issued the Yankee third baseman for violating baseball’s drug agreement and labor contract.
Earlier this week, Rodriguez’s counsel tried to portray his as duped into taking banned substances, and yesterday, Rodriguez sued MLB and baseball Commissioner Bud Selig on Thursday in state court in Manhattan, accusing them of a “witch hunt” to smear his reputation and cost him tens of millions of dollars.
In response, a release from Major League Baseball calls Alex Rodriguez’s lawsuit a “clear violation” of the confidentiality provisions of the league’s drug program. MLB denied the allegations and called the lawsuit a “desperate attempt” to go around confidentiality rules of the league’s drug agreement with the players’ union. In a statement of his own, Rodriguez said his legal team is doing what is necessary to vindicate him.
I am beginning to believe that Alex Rodriguez may be one of the dumbest athletes in recent memory (if not in history). A-Rod tested positive for PEDs years ago (and if he or any other “outted” player wants to sue baseball it would have a case based on how these “confidential” tests became public), which, to me, would make me more vigilant. So, Rodriguez is under more scrutiny, and perhaps baseball investigators were interested in building a case against A-Rod. But if you’re completely clean, you have nothing to fear from zealous prosecutors.
A good example was the vendetta that the NCAA had against former UNLV basketball Head Coach Jerry Tarkanian. The UNLV program was nowhere near clean, but Tarkanian knew the “Feds” were out to get him, so he never left a trail enough to prove it.
Rodriguez could have just stayed clean – like I wrote yesterday, if it were me, I would make sure that I knew the ingredients of everything I ingested to make sure there were no banned substances in it. Unless you are a cheat only trying to save your own skin.
And if you win your lawsuit, what makes you think that baseball will happily just accept you like nothing happened? Do you think that you are just polluting your legacy even more than if you’d just accepted your penalty?
Hey Alex, you’re a cheat. Go away!

Quarterback Josh Freeman lives up to his name today – he is a “free man.” Heralded as the starter in Tampa Bay coming into the season after having been the starting QB there for several seasons, suddenly Freeman is out of a job today. This is as much a result of the toxic relationship between the Buccaneers head coach Greg Schiano and Freeman as wins and losses.
Freeman was a first-round pick in the 2009 draft, earning his a five-year, $26 million contract with over $10 million guaranteed. In part due to this, the owners pushed for a change in the collective bargaining agreement with the players limiting the size of rookie contracts. Freeman started most of the games since coming to Florida, and many people, myself included thought that Freeman would be a key piece of an up and coming franchise this season.
leader of a franchise that appeared on the uptick for 2013.
But something happened. Somewhere along the way, Freeman lost the confidence of his coaches, his teammates or both. The starting quarterback a month ago spent last week as a healthy scratch, buried on the inactive list for the Cardinals loss. Now in their bye week, the Bucs have released Freeman.
Money plays a part – Freeman is in the last year of his contract and was making a healthy $8.43 million salary. Unlike other teams who signed their starting QBs to new contracts or extensions, the Bucs did not secure Freeman for the long term prior to the start of this contract year. Freeman saw extensions this offseason for quarterbacks Joe Flacco, Aaron Rodgers, Tony Romo, Matt Ryan and Matthew Stafford. While certainly not as accomplished as these players, Freeman could have likely been secured for a significantly lower amount. And whereas Freeman is in the final year of his contract, Rodgers and Stafford were extended with two years left on their deals.
Galling also to Freeman would be the fact that the Bucs spent serious money on free agents and trades – Viincent Jackson, Carl Nicks, Darrelle Revis and Dashon Goldson, but they resigned Mike Williams to a $40 million extension, with almost $9 million due this year.
Then of course, there is performance. Although Freeman led an offense ranked in the top 10 in the NFL in total yards and passing yards last season, Tampa Bay Head Coach Gary Schiano apparently was unimpressed. The team drafted quarterback Mike Glennon in the third round of this year’s draft and inserted him into the starting lineup ahead of Freeman. Of course, it didn’t help that Freeman missed the team photo, which is inexcusable no matter what the reason.
Like any disagreement, there are two sides to every story and it sounds like Schiano may be losing the team himself. There are reports of an atmosphere of fear and distrust under the current regime in Tampa. Players have told their agents about coaches roaming through the locker room and staff videotaping players on the sidelines during losses to single out players laughing or horsing around. The players also speak to the influx of multiple Rutgers players from Schiano’s past and the use of the phrase “Schiano Men.”
With his release, Freeman joins Aqib Talib, Dezmon Briscoe, LeGarrette Blount and Kellen Winslow, Jr., Ahmad Black, and Kevin Ogletree as players who land in Schiano’s dog house. Reportedly, there have been directives from Schiano to general manager Mark Dominik to remove them from the roster.
The relationship has continued to deteriorate with a report by FOX Sports that Freeman was told to stay away from a team meeting, which followed an ESPN story Freeman is in Stage One of the NFL’s drug-testing program due to a mistake involving a prescription for Adderall, which is league-approved.
Freeman will find a job elsewhere in the NFL, but at a reduced salary. He may use it as incentive to be a better player, or he may just need to get away from Schiano and Tampa. One has to wonder how long players will put up with Schiano’s antics? The days of the iron fisted coach are almost completely over. Despite the Tom Coughlin’s of the world, even hard asses like Coughlin can’t just run roughshot over players. It is still much cheaper to fire a coach than to replace superstars. Plus, with the reports and the long list of players being given the heave-ho, one has to wonder if any future free agent would consider playing for Tampa Bay.
So, Josh Freeman has been released. How long will it be before Gary Schiano and GM Mark Dominik join him?

The hearing concerning Alex Rodriguez’s 211 game suspension is in full gear, under the radar as the Major League Baseball playoffs are moving along. Rodriguez’s representatives are presenting his case in front of an arbitration grievance hearing. What does he attribute his failed tests? He says that he thought the substances he used from the Biogenesis clinic were legal supplements, according to a New York Daily News report.
Rodriguez and his attorneys are presenting his defense to a three-person panel that will rule on the 211-game suspension given by Major League Baseball. That defense goes against testimony given Monday and Tuesday by the clinic’s founder, Anthony Bosch. The Daily News report says Bosch, a MLB collaborator and main witness, has attempted to validate Biogenesis documents and his own electronic communications with Rodriguez in a dealer-source relationship that challenges his claim of innocence: If the Biogenesis products were legitimate, MLB argues, why were they so expensive and why were the transactions so secretive?
The story says that he was misled or duped by Biogenesis and perhaps others to get him to take the banned substances. Duped? By whom? More important, who is trying to pull the wool over people’s eyes – Biogenesis or Alex Rodriguez?
Rodriguez admitted years ago that he took performance enhancing drugs. He said so on national television and he said that he had learned his lesson. Okay, you lied once, should we believe you again? If I were in A-Rod’s position, I would have my people checking EVERYTHING I ingest, no matter how small to make sure that I couldn’t test positive for anything. Actually, I should have said that this is what I would have done if I wanted to be clean and improve my reputation and place in history. But the self-centered, deluded superstar believes that he is smarter than everyone else. Hey, Ryan Braun got his first suspension overthrown on a technicality. Why can’t I? (Of course, Braun was also caught in the Biogenesis scandal and this year took his suspension like a man.)
What I don’t understand is, doesn’t Rodriguez realize that he is the Holy Grail for the investigators? He got away with his PED use the first time because it was caught at a time when the results weren’t supposed to be made public (MLB has a woeful record on that score), and there was no standard in place for punishment. But after that, you would have to think that A-Rod’s drug tests will be scrutinized harder; assured to not be tainted; in hopes of catching baseball’s richest player?
Personally, I think that the arbitrators will reduce his suspension to one season, meaning he will miss the 2014 season. But Rodriguez’s reputation and place in baseball history is as tarnished as Bonds’, or Clemens’ or MacGwire’s.
Which is how it should be.