And if it’s Super Bowl week, there’s lots of NFL stories being reported that ordinarily would be found in the back of the sports section. Today, there’s two:

• We sports fans tend to think of current players in terms of having numerous “baby mamas” out there, but it appears that retired players are out there being fathers too. Former Dolphins QB and current CBS NFL Today analyst Dan Marino admitted to fathering a child in an extramarital affair with CBS Sports colleague Donna Savattere. The two reportedly had a daughter Chloe in June 2005, and Marino reportedly paid Savattere millions to help support Chloe and move them to Texas. This wouldn’t be news except Marino is a married man: he has been married to his wife Claire for more than 20 years; they have six children together. For Dan, make that seven (and who knows how many more may be out there).
• Speaking of women and sports, a Baltimore Ravens cheerleader, Courtney Lenz, 23, says she has been barred from the Super Bowl because she weighs too much. “They said that I had quote, unquote, a rough year,” Lenz told television tabloid program “Access Hollywood”. “I’d been benched earlier in the season for a little bit of a weight gain. We do get weighed every week during the season, and you can’t fluctuate at all. I gained, I think it was 1.8 pounds. I had been consistent and they let me cheer previously and then I gained 1.8 or 1.6 pounds and they said because I had gained weight and they wanted me to be consistent or they wanted me to lose, they benched me for a game and because it was a disciplinary action, that was the reason.”
Lenz has been a Ravens cheerleader for five years, and of course, the team had their own response: “As set by the NFL, we are permitted to bring 32 cheerleaders to the Super Bowl. Our selection process was based upon three criteria: seniority, performance ability and personal conduct throughout the season. As much as we would like to take the whole team, we are unable to do so, due to parameters set by the NFL.” In other words, while we don’t weigh our players regularly, we do weigh our cheerleaders every week, because we can’t have slightly heavier cheerleaders.

All told, it hasn’t been a great week for the NFL: Ray Lewis’ past and present have made as many headlines as the Super Bowl; one player is standing up for same-sex marriage; another one, from San Francisco yet, says that he wouldn’t welcome a gay teammate. Commissioner Roger Goodell is probably under armed guard because the Super Bowl is being held in New Orleans, where Goodell’s ruling in the Saints’ bounty case has made him persona non grata. Then President Obama makes a comment that football has to change in light of what’s being learned on head trauma.
The league’s PR people probably deserve a raise.

I have a mixed attitude when it comes to the NCAA. They have the unenviable job of policing college sports, usually with an insufficient staff, but the encyclopedia of rules they are trying to enforce are complex and often contradictory. On top of that, they are policing a group of colleges that essentially hires and funds them – the colleges and universities. In certain ways, it would be like the mob hiring the local District Attorney.
One of the most heinous issues that preclude any sympathy for the organization is the fact that athletes sign away their likenesses IN PERPETUITY. In other words, the NCAA can use any current or past player’s likeness on jerseys, and especially video games for ever and the player gets no money for it, nor can he/she sue for damages since they signed away the rights to their image in fine print in standard documents all athletes are required to sign.
This dishonesty was brought to my attention by a story that I believe was on HBO’s “Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel” (forgive me if the story was on another program); the story was about former UCLA basketball standout Ed O’Bannon, who did sue the NCAA challenging the organization’s ability to get players’ rights and not pay them for it. O’Bannon sued the NCAA, Collegiate Licensing Company and EA Sports over the commercialized use of athletes’ image, name and likeness.
I hadn’t heard anything about the case until today when Sports Illustrated posted a story online that the NCAA has not been able to get the suit thrown out. California judge Claudia Wilken ruled that the NCAA cannot prevent football and men’s basketball players from legally pursuing a portion of live broadcast revenues. Judge Wilken rejected the NCAA’s motion that players in the anti-trust suit led by O’Bannon should be precluded from advancing their lawsuit on procedural grounds. ruled
The NCAA probably spent a great deal of the money they earn from the football bowl games and the men’s and women’s basketball tournaments on lawyers; their legal counsel filed a 33-page motion last October asking the court to strike the class action certification motion. A certification hearing has been set for June 20, and Judge Wilken ordered the NCAA to make arguments against class certification on the merits rather than procedural objections.
The story quotes attorneys from both sides, and they basically what you would expect: the plaintiff’s lawyer was quoted that the ruling sets up the possibility of millions of dollars being distributed to the athletes; the NCAA’s counsel says that while disappointed by the ruling, they still believe that there are no grounds to class-action litigation.
The dirty not-at-all secret is that the colleges and universities and the NCAA get to generate billions of dollars each year from unpaid (or nearly unpaid since the NCAA now allows stipend money to be included in athletes’ scholarships) labor. The NCAA says the kids are getting an education in return, and at my alma mater Northwestern, they are; at the SEC, not so much. They may be getting degrees, but what are they worth?
I have never been comfortable with the NCAA making money off the athletes, but the education for play argument has some merit while they are in school. The NCAA’s overreach is that they are making money off video games with long ago graduated/left school athletes. That they have the right and the audacity to profit from these men and women who are no longer in school and have moved on, and they can justify not reimbursing them for their rights is ludicrous.

NFL’s Pro Bowl is over. (Did anyone watch? I didn’t.) {Actually the Pro Bowl got a 7.2 rating which was higher than Game 1 of the World Series, which goes to show you that there’s a lot of people with nothing better to do.} So it’s on to the final chapter to the season. The San Francisco 49ers and Baltimore Ravens are in New Orleans; as always, New Orleans residents are in a party mood except if they catch a glimpse of NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, and today is media day when the thousands of reporters get to ask every possible question to all the players and coaches.
Both teams are very good and it should be a good game. Of course, it is the Harbaugh Bowl – the first time that brotehrs will be Head Coaches on opposing teams in the Super Bowl. Football fans must wonder which Joe Flacco will show up, and will the elderly Raven defense be able to stop quarterback phenomenon Colin Keapernick? The 49ers are 3½ point favorites, and that sounds about right to me. Beyonce will be the halftime show; will she be singing live or Memorex? (To most of the men who’ll be watching, all they care about is that she shows lots of skin.) So, let’s have no more talking until 6:00 PM Eastern, just before kickoff….

I hardly ever read Chicago Sun-Times columnist Rick Morrissey mostly because I don’t like his style, but I did read today’s column and it hits home. One of the major stories of this Super Bowl is that it will be the last time middle linebacker Ray Lewis ever straps on pads in an NFL game. The 17-year veteran is one of the best and most feared middle linebackers in NFL history. (I’ve had a Facebook discussion as to who was better: Lewis or Dick Butkus, but are they 1 and 1A?) And Ray Lewis WILL be enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, OH.
But Ray Lewis’ story is not a feel good, by the book, NFL Films heartwarming story of a great player. No matter how many people avoid the subject, to many of us Ray Lewis and his posse were somehow responsible for the deaths of two men outside of an Atlanta nightclub in 2000.
Richard Lollar and a friend Jacinth Baker were stabbed to death almost exactly 13 years to the day of this weekend’s Super Bowl (January 31, 2000 to be precise).
Lewis pled guilty to obstruction of justice – a misdemeanor, but he escaped two counts of murder by striking a deal with prosecutors to testify against two of his companions. However, Lewis never directly linked his friends Reginald Oakley and Joseph Sweeting to the murder and they were eventually acquitted. The murders remain unsolved to this day. There was physical evidence against Lewis – blood was found in his limousine and the white suit Lewis was wearing that night, ironically it was Super Bowl Sunday) was never found. Having fled the crime scene, Lewis reportedly told the limo’s passengers to “keep their mouths shut.” They did. Other than the plea deal, Lewis’ punishment was one year of probation and a $250,000 fine by the NFL.
Lewis and the league would rather you remember Lewis’ performance in the 2001 Super Bowl; he refused to answer questions about the incident at Media Day today. Lewis would rather have everyone forget that incident and concentrate on his on-field warrior dance and his play, which has been stellar.
It’s not like Hall of Famers have to be altar boys; Wes Welker’s wife Tweeted about Lewis’ 6 children by four different wives, later apologizing. That is the world of professional athletes in the 21st Century – baby mamas all over the place often leading to eventual financial woes and bankruptcy. But criminal activity is a different story. It is costing some very high profile guys spots in Baseball’s Hall of Fame, but none of them to our knowledge has blood on their hands (literally and figuratively). Will the Pro Football Hall of Fame voters “punish” Lewis by not voting him into the Hall in his first year of eligibility, or will they conveniently forget about “the incident?”
As stories in the USA Today and elsewhere are reporting, the relatives of the two men killed don’t forget. They want justice, delayed 13 years. But here we have another example of a rich and famous man’s word versus some previously anonymous young men. Further complicating the situation is the fact that it’s another African-American on African-American crime; murders of this type are solved at a much lower percentage than other murders. Does anyone other than Richard Lollar’s and Jacinth Baker’s relatives even remember or care?
Win or lose, the NFL, the media and Ray Lewis would like us to forget. The Pro Football Hall of Fame will want us to forget in five years. Most people will, but this will forever tarnish Ray Lewis in my mind.

Long time readers know that I have very little respect for Commissioner of Baseball Bud Selig. Despite all of the revenue gains, which is the only thing the owners care about, any positives that the sport has made under Selig’s watch are greatly overshadowed by his cowardice in dealing with performance enhancing drug situation in the sport in the 1990s and early 2000s.
Admittedly, Don Fehr and the Players’ Union are equally liable for the damage to the sport that will play out every year as players from that era are eligible for enshrinement in the sport’s Hall of Fame, and it has to be noted that the sport currently has one of the most rigorous testing and punishment programs in professional sports, but it is nowhere near foolproof, as The Miami New Times reported this week.
The newspaper obtained from a former employee of a Miami “wellness” clinic what it said are the personal notebooks of Anthony Bosch, the director of the since-closed “Biogenesis” clinic, who was not licensed to practice medicine in Florida. The notebooks contain the names of customers, either in code name or by recognizable names, and their detailed doping regimens. The baseball names are the Yankees’ Alex Rodriguez, Toronto outfielder Melky Cabrera, Padres catcher Yasmani Grandal, Rangers outfielder Nelson Cruz, Nationals pitcher Gio Gonzalez and former Padres pitcher Cesar Carillo.
Of course, this is not the first time PEDs and A-Rod have made the papers – he admitted to using steroids after being “outed” by Sports Illustrated. However, the notebooks show that Rodriguez was using well after the 2002 time frame reported by SI. In fact, it shows that Rodriguez could be considered a serial doper. And let’s not forget that Cabrera tested positive last year and served a 50-game suspension from the league.
This is yet another black eye on the sport, and again involving one of the sports highest paid, highest profile stars. A-Rod already is known as a sex-oholic; a known doper, but one with 600 home runs. That he may miss the season with hip surgery is overshadowed by what he may be doing to get through the surgery and recovery period. And as we all know, the chemists who are looking to enable cheaters are working to come up with substances that can’t be detected, which is keeping other chemists busy getting the tests to play catch-up with the cheaters.
As noted on SI.com today, the latest “evidence” if true would allow Selig to take action against these and any other players who may be implicated in Bosch’s notebooks even without positive tests. Cabrera is already under scrutiny as a result of already testing positive. The other players are not big name stars, so punishing them is no big deal or deterrent.
But what about A-Rod? Already tainted by admitted use of PEDs, he does have 647 home runs and is still young enough to make a run at the all time records of Aaron (unaided) and Bonds (drug-assisted). Does Selig wimp out and apply a suspension on Rodriguez on a season in which he may not play anyway? Does he risk the ire of the richest franchise in the sport by throwing the book at their third baseman?
As much as Bud Selig and the sport would like to believe that the steroid era is over and that the sport has moved on past this disgraceful period in its history, the stench remains.

I have written for sports since 1990; I have watched sports for as long as I can remember (I vividly remember watching Dick Butkus and Gale Sayers on television in their rookie year with the Bears and that was 1965). I thought that I had seen just about everything in the world of sports. I was wrong.
Since I don’t follow Notre Dame football, I didn’t read any stories on linebacker Manti Te’o’s personal life. I knew he was a very good linebacker, which he proved to me in the game footage and small amount of time I spent watching ND games. I believe that I heard about his grandmother dying during the season and may have picked up on him having a girlfriend die on the same day. Sad stories, but it didn’t change my impression of the young man one way or another because, mostly because I try not to get an impression of athletes from news stories or interviews because both of these sources are edited and I don’t have access to the raw footage. Is a Manti Te’o nice? I don’t know. Is another kid Satan incarnate? I don’t know. So I don’t judge.
So, I guess Te’o reportedly had a girlfriend he met online. OK – people do that all the time. According to stories, which the mainstream media gobbled up hook, line and sinker, the girlfriend, Lennay Kekua died of leukemia on September 12th, the same day that Teo’s grandmother died. The heartrending story went everywhere, even being reported on the network evening news broadcasts.
Except, finally, someone did some fact checking (usually not required unless you are running for office. Deadspin apparently did some digging and found out that there was no girlfriend named Lennay Kekua. There was no woman named Lennay Kekua at all. She was a hoax.
Obviously, the media had the wool pulled over their collective eyes. Often the story is so good, who cares if it’s true? In light of the criticism that the news media received after the Newtown school massacre when some reporters put cameras in the faces of kids who had just been traumatized beyond belief, there should be a line of decorum when it comes to talking to survivors and loved ones after tragedies. So, perhaps the media was being considerate to not find the girl’s family (who we now know don’t exist)?
In an odd twist, Notre Dame officials got in front of the story, saying that their senior linebacker was the one who had been duped by an online prank. Irish athletic director Jack Swarbrick said Wednesday night: “I don’t want to confuse this at all. Manti Te’o was the victim of this scam.”
I would believe this except for the fact that Te’o spoke in interviews about meeting his “girlfriend” and times they spent together. Deadspin seems fairly confident that Te’o was not duped and was, in fact, part of this conspiracy.
Swarbrick says Te’o found out in December that Lennay Kekua was not real. But he kept talking about her. If he knew it was a hoax, why not come clean about it? I know that people are embarrassed when they get fooled, or ripped off. I know that this is probably harder to do for a young man and All-American linebacker to admit someone got one over on him.
Technically, when asked about his girlfriend, Te’o did not lie, but he did tell a lie of omission – somebody would ask him about his dead girlfriend, and he declined to tell the truth: That she did not exist. This was a pattern – everybody assumed he met her in person, and he certainly indicated that he did. Swarbrick says when Te’o said “met” he included online communication. By that standard, most men in this country have spent time alone with Eva Mendes, Emma Stone, Halle Berry and Zoe Saldana.
In the overall scheme of things, does this really matter? Only if, like the Sun-Times’ Rick Telander wrote this morning, it was that Te’o and his father were in on the fake story to help him win the Heisman Trophy. If this was a cynical attempt to help him win the award, that would suck. I don’t know if that can be proven. But, I’m sure that Manti Te’o is going to be drafted by the NFL and he should be a fine pro linebacker. I’m sure that this will pass over eventually.
Of course, I can guarantee that Te’o will be a Hall of Fame linebacker if Te’o is drafted by the new expansion franchise from Oz, and he is allowed to play with Tyler Durbon (Brat Pitt’s imaginary character from “Fight Club”); the coach is Parcher (Ed Harris’ character in “A Beautiful Mind”), and the franchise makes sure he stays away from waiter Delbert Grady and Lloyd the Bartender in “The Shining.” And, as long as he remembers to feed Harvey the rabbit.

There are so many football stories this week. Let’s take them in brief…

• First, we have to discuss the Chicago Bears hiring Marc Trestman as the 14th Head Coach in the team’s history. Trestman was surprising to some since he has been out of the NFL for eight years, spending the last five years as Head Coach of the Montreal Alouettes of the CFL, but he spent 17 years as an assistant coach, especially good at working with quarterbacks. Trestman also won back-to-back CFL titles in Montreal. I commend GM Phil Emery for not just taking one of the re-tread coaches whose names always surface when there’s an NFL coaching vacancy. Now, the tough part begins…
• AFC Playoff this weekend: Baltimore at New England – ordinarily one would consider New England a prohibitive favorite, but the Ravens have an emotional wild card in the retiring Ray Lewis. They want to send Lewis to retirement and eventually the Hall of Fame with another Super Bowl ring. New England will be without all-world tight end Rob Gronkowski also. Unfortunately for Bill Belichick haters like myself, the game will be in Foxboro, and the Ravens still have Joe Flacco at quarterback. I know that Flacco had a very good season, and hasn’t shown the mental errors that have doomed him in the past, but I have to say that with this defense, Ray Rice in the backfield, Flacco will never get credit as one of the best signal callers in the sport until he wins a Super Bowl. Unfortunately, Mr. Hoodie and Tom Brady, who IS an elite quarterback stand in the way.
• NFC Playoff: San Francisco at Atlanta – I know that the Falcons have had the 49ers’ number for awhile, but they haven’t played them in such an important game. The Falcons know that they shouldn’t have gotten past Seattle last week, and I know lots of people were saying that quarterback Matt Ryan and the Falcons got the playoffs monkey off their backs by winning, I think the monkey is still hanging around. Ryan has been very good during the regular season, and mediocre in the playoffs. I’m still not sold – I think the 49ers and their young quarterback Colin Kaepernick and the number 2 ranked defense in the league will end the Falcons’ run. So, that leaves us with 49ers vs. Patriots? I think that’s what will happen.
• The Chiefs weren’t good enough for University of Oregon Head Coach Chip Kelly to leave the Pacific Northwest, but the Eagles, with a decent defense and quarterback Michael Vick? That’s different. Kelly’s up-tempo offense would fit Vick’s maneuverability and strong arm – the question is whether Vick’s problems last season were temporary or signs of a career downslide?
• Have the trade talks for Alex Smith and Matt Flynn, replaced in San Francisco and Seattle respectively and getting starting QB dollars, begun yet?