After a couple of years of jeers and loud guffaws, the Big Ten Conference announced that it was giving up on the division titles “Legends’ and “Leaders.”
With Rutgers and Maryland joining the conference in 2014, the Big Ten will be divided into two divisions: “East” and “West.” On top of that, the conference will also be switching to a nine-game scheduling format after presidents and chancellors approved the moves yesterday.
Indiana, Maryland, Michigan, Michigan State, Ohio State, Penn State and Rutgers will be in the East division. The West will consist of Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, Northwestern, Purdue and Wisconsin. In 2016, the teams will go from playing eight conference games to nine; in 2014 and 15 schools will play all six division games plus two against teams from the other division. In 2016, they’ll play three cross-division games.
Some traditional rivalries will remain intact: Indiana and Purdue will meet on an annual basis. Michigan will play Michigan State and Ohio State every year and the Michigan-Ohio State game will remain in the last week of the regular season.
Personally, the Legends and Leaders names were stupid. They didn’t give any hint of who was in which division, put the obvious hubris that the names implied. While I’m not the biggest fan of the Big Ten expansion, and I certainly do not agree with a Conference Championship game which lessens the impact of the regular season, cuts into class and study time for the athletes, and is nothing but a money grab by the universities from which the athletes get no money, but this finally does make sense.

Never mind says the worst movie director in the world, Michael Bay. One day after apologizing for his film “Armageddon,” he now wants everyone to know that his words were taken out of context and that he is “proud of the movie.”
Yesterday, Bay, out promoting his new piece of cinematic excrement “Pain & Gain,” was quoted by the Miami Herald as saying, “I will apologize for Armageddon, because we had to do the whole movie in 16 weeks. It was a massive undertaking. That was not fair to the movie. “ I wrote yesterday that this was an out of character admission by the director who said after the third “Transformers” movie that he was tired of the bad reviews and he was going to make smaller, more character driven films. Of course, George Lucas said the same thing, and Bay is supposedly in Chicago scouting locations for “Transformers 4.”
No, Michael, you know that Armageddon sucked, and you know that the rest of your films make Ed Wood look like Orson Welles. You’re proud of the box office receipts. Again, commerce trumps art. Bay loved the big checks more than making meaningful cinema. Even the Walt Disney of the late 20th Century, Steven Spielberg has made the leap to adult filmmaking with “Lincoln” – his best film ever (and yes, I include “Schindler’s List” – search for the director or this film or Spielberg and you’ll find out why).
Bay’s films feature epilepsy seizure inducing special effects, nonsensical plots, poor storytelling, horrendous acting, but Bay, sensitive to the negative reviews his films so often receive, always ends up unpleasantly defending the films through how much money they make. Just because you sell films to teenagers, kids, and easily entertained (perhaps not too bright?) adults does not make you a filmmaker – it makes you a successful hack.
Your original comment was right – the studio wasn’t fair to the movie, but the movie wasn’t fair to intelligent moviegoers either Michael. None of your films are.

Long time readers know that I believe that Michael Bay is the worst director currently working, and , he may be the worst director in film history. He is a big budget schlock-meister of the highest order – his direction of actors is nonexistent; his special effects fill the screen, and make my head hurt because I don’t know where to focus on the main action. It’s sensual overload and not in a good way.
Look at the films – the Transformer trilogy was a confused mess. The Bad Boys movies were sound and thunder with no significance. If it weren’t for Will Smith’s likability, the films wouldn’t have done much. The Rock wasted Ed Harris, Sean Connery, Nicholas Cage and my time and money.
Bay has always basically said – look at the money my films make and f#$k off. He knows he’s not making “art;” he’s in the commerce business – get the people, especially kids, to come watch his video game movies. We don’t want or need you to think – just have the images wash over your like the violent images over Alex in “A Clockwork Orange.”
To me, his worst film was Armageddon which made Bruce Willis, Ben Affleck, Steve Buscemi, the late Michael Clarke Duncan, Liv Tyler and so many others play stiff wooden characters is an effects filled mess. In case you have forgotten, this is the story of an oil drilling team that is shot into space to drill a hole in a Earth-destroying asteroid and put in explosives to destroy the asteroid before it destroys the planet. It was my last straw with Bay – I went to the theater to watch it and with all of the space shuttles, asteroids and debris, it overwhelms my visual senses, as the acting made me nauseous in a different way.
But it seems that Bay, in a rare moment of self-reflection agrees. The director told the Miami Herald, “I will apologize for Armageddon.” He explained: “We had to do the whole movie in 16 weeks. It was a massive undertaking. That was not fair to the movie. I would redo the entire third act if I could. But the studio literally took the movie away from us. It was terrible. My visual effects supervisor had a nervous breakdown, so I had to be in charge of that. I called James Cameron and asked ‘What do you do when you’re doing all the effects yourself?’ But the movie did fine.”
Of course, he blames the studio – that’s really stepping up and being responsible, but that doesn’t explain the other crappy movies he’s made. I’d like to see him apologize for all the others while he’s at it.

Sport truly is a barometer of humanity. There are winners; there are losers. Individual sports – team sports; there are spectator sports, and those that don’t lend themselves to attention. Sports gives us something to do, something to think about, something to argue over. It is part of us as human beings. It shows the good in us as in sportsmanship and teamwork; it brings out the worst in us in showoffs, bad sportsmanship, and the “look at me” syndrome.
Which is what also makes sporting events a target. I don’t know that I have much to add to the horror of yesterday’s bombing at the Boston Marathon. Three people are dead including an 8-year-old boy, over 120 people were injured. There has been more than enough coverage of the incident and the investigation. Gladly, there has been a great deal of coverage of the first responders who ran toward the blasts and the whole city of Boston who came together to support those injured and inconvienced by the incident.
Fortunately, already people are coming forward to commit to running in next year’s marathon. Patriot Day is a huge celebration in Boston – the schools are closed, the Marathon is run, the Red Sox play an early game, and the Bruins or Celtics usually play at home. After all is said and done, sport is about hope. Hope that your team or favorite person will win, and hope that if they don’t win today, they’ll win tomorrow. As I’ve said for a long time, sport allows us to vent our competitive spirit without war, which historically been the major way that humans compete. Unlike war, the players get to come back tomorrow and play over again.
Unfortunately, all this makes sporting events targets of terrorists, foreign and domestic. Billions are spent on Olympic security, and that still didn’t stop a white supremicist from planting a pipe bomb at the Atlanta Olympiad. Incoming fans are wanded at most sports stadiums; bags are checked. Of course, the nature of a 26-mile marathon makes security much more difficult than in securing a stadium or enclosed area.
It is sad that, inevitably, civil liberties will be breached in the name of security, but security for marathons will be increased. We must do it to make these events safer (but they will never be foolproof). The more important point is that there will be marathons in the future, especially in Boston. And that is the warm thought that we ultimately take away from yesterday.

Pat Summerall died this afternoon at the age of 82. He came to prominence as an end and a kicker for the NFL New York Giants, but he is best known as a Hall of Fame announcer. His easy going style lent an air of class to any game. He called a record 16 Super Bowls and while many will remember his 21 years with John Madden, Summerall was just as good with Tom Brookshire.
He and Brookshire had fun, probably too much fun as Summerall admitted that he was an alcoholic and underwent rehab. Brookshire was eventually replaced by Madden and the easy cameraderie that the smooth voiced Summerall had with Brookshire was replicated and made better by the excitable Madden.
Pat Summerall was a class act.

In the words of Dickens, last Sunday could be called “the best of times, the worst of times” for the Chicago Cubs. I happened to channel surf into the end of the Cub game against the defending World Series Champion San Francisco Giants, and it was about as ugly as you can imagine. The Cubs blew a 4-1 lead in a four-run fifth inning where Edwin Jackson and Michael Bowden tied a major league record with five wild pitches. The Cubs fought back to take the lead and were one out away from a tough 7-6 win when Shawn Camp gave up a tying home run to Hunter Pence. Camp wasn’t done; Manager Dale Sveum left Camp in the game for the 10th, and he balked in the winning run before giving up two more runs in the extra frame for a 10-7 Giants win.
At the same time in an event that may be more interesting to the owning Ricketts family, a tentative agreement was reached over the weekend between the City of Chicago and the Chicago Cubs that will allow the team to renovate the rapidly deteriorating Wrigley Field, add more night games, allow Sheffield Avenue to be closed on certain game days, and permit the building of gigantic jumbo screens in left and right field. Of course, the latter point does not sit well with the owners of the rooftop bars with views of the field that have been freeloading off the team for decades.
Yes, the rooftop owners do kick back a paltry 15% of revenues to the club as part of the most one-sided business deal against the Cubs since they sent Lou Brock to the Cardinals for Ernie Broglio. The rooftop owners used their profits wisely, owning Alderman Tom Tonney who has stood in the way of progress to pay back the rooftops, but somehow the Cubs and Mayor Rahm Emmanual convinced Tunney to go along and the rooftop owners are threatening to sue. (Of course, this would be like suing a nudist neighbor over putting up a fence to keep people from looking over at the naked people.)
But the point of this piece is more that at a news conference to announce the deal, Tom Ricketts said that the new deal will allow the Cubs to win the World Series. Whoa now Tom, let’s think about this – just getting a new stadium or renovating an old one does not automatically mean World Series victory. Yes, it worked for the Red Sox, but how many World Series Champions have been shared among the Pirates, Brewers, Indians, Mariners, and the team that started the whole “retro-modern” stadium era, the Baltimore Orioles. Yes, financial strength allows you to spend more money on product (and also raise the prices of the already highest average ticket price other than the Yankees), but just having money and spending it are no guarantees of World Series appearances or wins.
So, feel proud of the deal you cut young Tom Ricketts, it should make the stadium better and add more revenue streams to the ball club. You will need it based on the Chicago Sun-Times reporting of a couple of weeks ago that showed that the Ricketts have so much debt on the team that the Cubs will not be able to spend like a big market clubs on talent for a very long time. But promising a World Series? The Cubs? Really?

One of the most positive aspects of today’s society is the growing and long overdue movement to give equal rights to Gay and Lesbian people and couples. Even in sports, greater tolerance is being shown; in the ubër-macho NFL, players are supporting gay rights and marriage, and it is rumored that four or more gay players are ready to come out of the closet.
Of course, other players are showing their homophobia; concerned about undressing in a room with gay men, and GOP and religious bigots are trying to stem the tide of acceptance and equal rights, but like the bigoted whites of the 1950s and 1960s, they are fighting the tide of history. And dinosaurs, like most animals, fight their hardest when death appears imminent, and many of these old ideas are dying like the “fact” that the Sun revolves around the Earth.
One league however, is ratcheting it up a notch. The National Hockey League and the You Can Play sports-oriented anti-homophobia advocacy group announced this week that they are joining forces to provide players with tolerance training and other programs.
The New York-based league will partner with You Can Play to provide formal anti-homophobia training for all incoming players and teams and the players’ union will also work to build You Can Play’s programs into the league’s behavioral health program to give players a confidential outlet to discuss issues of sexual orientation. Commissioner Gary Bettman wants to not only be tolerant of people with different sexual orientations, but be welcoming to them.
For all of its brutality, the NHL has a sportsmanlike side that is one of its more enduring qualities. At the end of a brutal playoff series, the teams shake hands at center ice, a tradition that does back to the earliest days of the league. Maybe it’s the “blue collar” nature of the players; perhaps it’s their upbringings, but hockey players are, in my experience, more personable, more approachable, less aloof than other professional athletes.
And long time readers know that I have no great love for Commissioner Bettman, but I admit that I am proud of the NHL today. Isn’t it time for the other sports leagues to follow suit?