About four years ago, I wrote a piece online at Indignant Online about Maurice Clarett, and the way his situation was handled at Ohio State University. I questioned whether Clarett ever deserved to be admitted to the university, but I was also hard on the school and it’s coach Jim Tressel, because it appeared that many rules had been at least bent, if not broken, to keep Clarett in school, and all was well when Clarett was helping the Buckeyes to the national championship. But once he got into trouble, Tressel and the university distanced themselves from him so fast, I think they were hiding in Ann Arbor, Michigan, the last place anyone would look for Ohio State staffers.
I called the program the dirtiest in the Big Ten, and boy, did I get e-mails. Many said that I was jealous, having gone to Northwestern; others weren’t as nice. Few were grammatically correct; many with numerous misspelled words.
This time, I have no proof that the university is running a dirty program, but I will say that my opinion of Jim Tressel hasn’t changed: he’s still a low life, classless individual. Let the next round of e-mails begin.
This past weekend, Ohio State defeated my alma mater Northwestern, in cold, windy Dyche Stadium (I refuse to use it’s other name), and Ohio State, with the game clearly in hand, ran up the score, eventually winning 45-10. It was a travesty.
It was clear that NU was unable to stop Chris “Beany” Wells or Terrelle Pryor. Wells’ 55 yard run in the second quarter after numerous NU tacklers were unable to wrap him up, pretty much deflated the Wildcats. And Pryor showed why he was the top QB recruit in the nation last year; fighting off tacklers and still throwing on target passes on a day when the conventional wisdom said that this was a day where passing would be difficult.
On top of that, the Wildcats gave the ball again to Mike Kafka at QB who ran for 217 yards against Minnesota. Except for the first drive of the game, Ohio State’s defense stopped the ‘Cats cold, especially with experienced running backs Tyrell Sutton and Omar Conteh injured. The one-dimensional offense was unable to compete against a high scoring offense.
In the fourth quarter, with approximately 8:30 minutes left and the score 31-10, NU was able to stop the offense at the OSU 45-yard-line. Lined up to punt, instead OSU faked the punt and the punter rushed for a first down. Back in business, the drive ended with a Pryor 34-yard TD pass. OK, the score’s 38-10; that’s enough right? Not for “Classless” Jim Tressel. With .06 left on the clock, instead of taking a knee to end the game, Tressel sent in a running play from the NU 16, and Daniel Herron ran in for another touchdown making the final 45-10.
Obviously, Tressel has a “hard on” for Northwestern ever since we beat them 4 years ago. Saturday’s score was actually an improvement as OSU had outscored NU 160-24 in the three years since the upset. Of course, we do have academic standards; graduate athletes; run a clean program; and still field a decent football team, albeit not national championship caliber.
So, as I said earlier, let the e-mails begin Ohio State fans. I’m a big guy; I can take it. Which I think is more than can be said for your football coach.

The Chicago Sun-Times, reporting from baseball’s General Manager meeting, printed today that Mark Cuban’s bid to buy the Chicago Cubs has almost no chance of succeeding. You think?
“There’s no way Bud and the owners are going to let that happen,” a baseball source told the paper. “Zero chance.” Tribune Company owner Sam Zell hasn’t even “culled the herd” of the five potential bids to a final two as was expected to be done by now. According to the Sun-Times, Commissioner Bud Selig and other Major League Baseball owners won’t even let Cuban make the final cut.
One would think that money talks, and a few months ago, Comcast SportsNet reported that Cuban was the highest bidder for the Cubs at $1.3 billion. But Major League Baseball must approve the sale of any team, and there is little sentiment that the old guard (many of whom are really old) want the young, flamboyant, outspoken, dot-com billionaire who also owns the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks, in their little club.
In addition to Cuban, the bidders include the Ricketts family, which founded the brokerage that is now TD Ameritrade Holding Corp.; and a group led by Sports Acquisition Holding Corp. that includes former baseball home run king Henry Aaron and former Republican congressman Jack Kemp.
Reportedly, Selig has his own preference for the ownership group led by a friend of his, but doesn’t baseball have the responsibility of getting the highest return for the seller? And, since Selig no longer is a managing partner/owner of the Milwaukee Brewers, why is he still commissioner? And why does he still have any say in these things? He may have a contract, but the elderly Selig needs to step aside, but he other owners, many in the same age range, feel comfortable with the former used-car salesman.
There has been no word whether the bids have declined as a result of the troubled economy, although Chicago Tribune.com is reporting that the Tribune owners are considering retaining 50% of the team. But if Cuban is the highest bidder, shouldn’t he get the team? No matter what, if Cuban’s bid fails, doesn’t this situation have the word “Litigation” written all over it? I can see Tribune shareholders suing the league, and I can see Cuban suing the league.
I don’t have any strong feelings about Mark Cuban; he probably is the real life picture of my inner child if I had billions of dollars. Cuban sits at courtside at Dallas games, yells at the officials, gets fined thousands of dollars by the league, and can act like a brat. On the other hand, fans can e-mail him directly on their concerns about the team; and he seems to genuinely want his team to win, tries to make the team more fan friendly, and he appears to be a good corporate citizen in the areas where he does business. But he is young and brash, and Baseball’s powerful are old, sedate, and, dare I say it, boring. No, they won’t like one of their own upstaging them. They lived with Ted Turner, and won’t let that happen again.

For all of the joy we are rightly showing to the Obama victory in the Presidential Election, there is one, very troubling, dark cloud. In three states, propositions to ban gay marriage won. We probably shouldn’t be too surprised that the measure lost in Florida and Arizona, “red” states where such a proposition would be hard to pass in the best of circumstances. The California proposition is more troubling.
Of course, California is one of the three states where gays have been allowed to marry, and as a result, millions of dollars were spent on both sides of the issue to try a sway the populace. Considering the broad melting pot that is modern California, I’m surprised that the measure wasn’t defeated by a wide margin much less won.
As a younger person, my insecurities led me to be as homophobic as anyone. Part of it was the stupidity of youth; part was ignorance and fear of “the other.” I hope that I’ve gotten wiser as I grown older; I’ve met and know a number of gay people and, no surprise, they are just like the rest of the world. They want to live, prosper, and love whom they wish. And any law that would stand in the way of love between responsible adults is absurd, anti-Christian, un-American, and racist.
Of course, the old joke is that gay people have the right to be as miserable as we heterosexual married people. Until we REALLY believe in equal rights for EVERYBODY: black, white, Asian, Hispanic, Arab, Jew, Hindu, Christian, gay, straight; Obama’s victory is tainted slightly.

If all of the polls are correct, tomorrow may be a day that many of us, myself included thought that we would see only much later in our lives, or not at all. By late tonight, we should know whether Barack Hussein Obama will become the 44th President of the United States. In addition, it is possible that the Democratic Party may have a nearly unstoppable advantage in the Senate and House of Representatives.
Those of us liberals, progressives, should be reminded that all will not be perfect tomorrow, nor will things improve on January 20th, inauguration day. The country faces challenges at home and abroad that will take ever bit of skill, determination, and courage of the leaders of our country, and we, the citizenry. We may face sacrifices. Things may get worse before they get better.
However, this election turns a page in this country’s history. In January, for the first time in 233 years, the President of the United States will not be a white male. It doesn’t mean that white men are no longer important, or pushed aside. It is going to take every man, woman and child of every ethnicity, of every religion (including atheists and agnostics) to make this country and yes, this world, better.
Today (and certainly tomorrow), I will be thinking of all of those people who fought to allow African-Americans to vote, much less run for President. I am thinking of the black men and women who were sprayed with fire hoses in Mississippi. I am thinking of the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X, both of whom dreamt of this day but were cut down by assassins’ bullets. And I think of the two Jewish kids and one black kid who were found in a river, killed by people who didn’t want them “stirring up trouble” trying to overturn the rules and restrictions that stopped people of color from voting.
And today, I think of family. Like President-elect Obama, I lost my grandmother some time ago. To me, she was the greatest person to ever walk the earth. She was political; she was smart; she paid attention to what was going on around her until her death at the age of 90 in 2000. However, despite seeing segregation first hand; living through the depression and the civil rights movement; she never showed animosity toward anyone on account of race, sex or religion. She was Dr. King’s biggest fan; she held an annual breakfast with the late Mayor Harold Washington. She would probably be crying today.
And I look to the future. I see this intelligent mixed race man about to become the leader of the free world, who has two daughters, and I worry just a little less about my two mixed race girls, 3½ years old and 3 weeks old. I can allow myself to believe that it isn’t an empty promise when I tell them to aspire to greatness. They can be whatever they want to be.
As I said, there are serious challenges in the world, and in many ways, I don’t envy the work that lies ahead for our new President-elect. But I can say that progress has been made in this country; change for the better.

On my way to work tomorrow morning, I think I have to play “Chocolate City” by Parliament. Just a thought.

There was a newspaper writer who used the title as a segment in his articles (I don’t remember the writer’s name.)
As you might know, I’m not a fan of marathons. I think that it inconveniences too many people for a sport that is designed to boost people’s egos, but, at the heart of it, isn’t really good for one’s health.
AP reported yesterday that a second runner died after completing the New York City Marathon. A marathon spokesman says the man died several hours after last Sunday’s race but did provide details. Meanwhile, the medical examiner was conducting an autopsy on the other runner who died. Fifty-eight-year-old Carlos Jose Gomes of Brazil had complained of feeling ill after crossing the finish line and died at a hospital. At least two other runners became ill during the race and had to be hospitalized, which is not a bad percentage, considering that more than 38,000 runners took part.
I’m just surprised that someone’s family doesn’t sue New York, or Boston, or Chicago after one of their loved ones dies because they shouldn’t have run 26 miles. That might end marathons for the “recreational” runners out there.
Second, I don’t want to use the term redneck, but you knew that someday this was going to happen. A NASCAR fan in her recreational vehicle at Texas Motor Speedway was wounded by a stray bullet on Sunday.
A 62-year-old woman was struck in the right arm after a bullet pierced through the woman’s motor home’s roof Sunday morning before the Dickies 500 race. The woman was taken to a nearby hospital with a “significant wound” and was listed in stable condition, police Lt. Paul Henderson said Monday. The bullet is believed to be a rifle round and appears to have been fired from a long distance because it penetrated the roof at a slight angle, according to Henderson.
So, we have people who should run dying in marathons, and people shooting rifles in the air and hurting people before NASCAR races. Where are the people who pass out the Darwin Awards? Or can we even use Darwin anymore in the Jesus States of America?

I saw a disturbing story in Sunday’s New York Times. African-Americans are voting in tomorrow’s election in record numbers, but one guy was quoted saying that he had never voted before, believing that his vote didn’t matter, and that “they” (the omnipresent they) would “put in whoever they wanted to anyway.”
Based on the manipulation of the Republican Party over the past two Presidential elections, one does have cause to worry. However, it is clear that the people interviewed for the article didn’t know their history. Many blacks and whites died so that today’s African-American person can cast his/her ballot. I know that the possibility of Barrack Obama becoming president is exciting; but in light of the tremendous sacrifices that our parents and grandparents made, don’t you think that they need to be repaid with the simple act of citizenry? I tell people all the time that given the chance, I vote for President, but I also vote for mayors, and judges, and referendums. Hell, I’d vote for dog catcher if it were an elected position. I owe my forefathers and mothers that much.
So, if you are African-American, you should vote tomorrow, if you haven’t already. By that token, Caucasians, and Asians, and Hispanics, and every citizen should take part in the grand American experience of democracy.
Make sure that you vote; your life depends on it.