Sometimes, it is just best to keep your mouth shut, especially if you are a celebrity in today’s technologically advanced, cameras everywhere, Orwellian society. There is no privacy anymore, and if you make an offhanded comment, you have to be self aware enough to explain yourself immediately to keep from being misunderstood. So, this week, we have headlines from the musings of a small white man, Don Imus, and a very
large black man, Shaquille O’Neal.
Imus, of course, got into trouble last year for making insensitive comments about the mostly African-American Rutgers women’s basketball team. He was fired, lost much of his syndicated radio audience before being reinstated on WABC-AM in New York. This week, the topic was Adam “Pacman” Jones. Imus asked his sports announcer Warner Wolf about Jones, who has been arrested five times since being drafted five years ago by the Tennessee Titans. Imus asked Wolf what was Jones’ ethnicity, and when Wolf said “African-American,” Imus said “well, there you go.” Imus said that he was defending Jones by saying that African-Americans are targeted by the police, but that isn’t the way I heard it (although I must admit that I only heard the intro and Imus’ comments on ESPN).
Meanwhile, Shaquille O’Neal, who has always fancied himself a rapper, was filmed by TMZ.com putting down his former teammate Kobe Bryant after the Lakers lost the NBA Finals to the Celtics. Shaq rapped around the concept that Kobe “couldn’t win without me.” Bryant and O’Neal won three NBA Championships together with the Lakers before Bryant reportedly felt that the team was more Shaq’s than Kobe’s. The town “wasn’t big enough for the two of them, and Shaq got shipped to Miami, where he teamed up with Dwayne Wade and won another title, while Bryant has lead the league in scoring and this past season, won his first season MVP award, but no championships. Shaq has said that he and Kobe had buried the hatchet and even called Bryant to congratulate him on his MVP award, but in the testosterone fueled world of professional sport, it was probably inevitable for O’Neal to rub Bryant’s nose in it a little bit. And, as Shaq said, rap “throwdowns” are often much cruder, and harsher than Shaq’s relatively gentle prodding.
Both of these men should know better. Imus brought up Pacman Jones to start a conversation, and in the world of shock jock radio, the more controversy he stirs, the higher the ratings. Shaq should have known that there is little that a celebrity can do in public that isn’t recorded, especially if you, at 7-feet tall, 340 pounds, find it hard to hide.
Shaq’s comments will soon be forgotten with his only penalty will be the loss of his Arizona deputy sheriff’s badge for his obscenity laced rap. This is probably fair since this is little more than the game we black kids used to play called “the dozens” in which two kids (usually boys) would trade insults about his opponent’s mother, father, clothes, etc. Imus faces no punishment from his radio station and, in its way, it is also probably fair since it was mild compared with his “nappy headed ho’s” comment from last year. But, I have little doubt that Don Imus is a bigot, and any comment on any subject that has even remotely about race in general and African-Americans and athletes in particular should be dismissed as comments from a warped, frustrated old man who doesn’t have any clue as to what he is talking about.

As a hockey coach, the best thing that can be said about Barry Melrose is that he has great hair. As a television hockey announcer, the best thing that can be said about Barry Melrose is that he has made decent comments, but his most striking feature is that he has good hair and excellent suits. It could be said that he is the Pat Riley of hockey. This must have been one of the primary criteria for the Tampa Bay Lightning in bringing Melrose back from the ESPN booth to replace as coach of the team.
Melrose has not been behind a bench since 1993 when he was fired as coach of the Los Angeles Kings, and Melrose did coach the Kings to the Stanley Cup Finals, but Melrose’s Kings had one thing that the Lightning, a talented club in its own right that won the Stanley Cup in 2003 the final pre-lockout year, does not have. The Kings had this guy playing for them named Wayne Gretzky. Martin St. Louis is a terrific player, but he’s no Gretzky.
To Melrose’s credit, however, since ESPN refused to pick up the NHL television package, there has been little for Melrose to do, and ESPN wouldn’t allow him to go to Versus, the network that holds the U.S. hockey contract. I would imagine that Melrose was bored with limited exposure on ESPN, so this move does two things: gets him back in hockey; and gets him out of a dead end assignment in Bristol.
Still, I have long been a proponent of not reusing the same old coaches, especially ones who are on the bench-TV booth merry-go-round. Give someone who is toiling as an assistant, or has a long minor or junior league career, and give them a chance. But Barry Melrose will be a striking figure on the Tampa bench: terrific suits and great hair

Just as we sports fans were digesting the possibility of cheating among NBA referees, the London Sunday Times reported yesterday that eight matches at Wimbledon, which starts today, have been reported to the tennis authorities on suspicion that the results have been fixed by professional gambling syndicates. The matches have reportedly been named in a dossier compiled by leading bookmaking companies responsible for monitoring suspect betting patterns and players thought to be willing to throw games.
The matches show sudden, huge increases in the money bet, usually on one player compared with similar matches.
Wimbledon is one of the premier sporting events in the world, much less tennis, and the fact that many of the players are young, impressionable, can be somewhat naïve, make them easy pickings for gamblers. Especially if some young man in 500th in the world on the computer rankings and sees Federer in the first round; you might think of making some extra money. You might think about just laying down, since the chances that you will win are infinitesimal at best. Or, if you are a decent player, you could decide to lose that fourth set rather than win and force another set since the money is on a four set victory.
Tennis has been plagued by rumors for months about fixed matches and sets, and the worry is greater in England since gambling is legalized there. Tennis is too wonderful a sport to be hampered by such problems, but let’s face it, it is the 21st Century and temptations have always been there. I only hope that the tennis powers-that-be don’t pull a “David Stern,” and just deny the allegations and do nothing to publicly investigate and come completely clean.

It’s one thing for the Chicago White Sox to lose a series to the dreaded, hated Cubs, but they got swept this past weekend and only the first game was close. After losing 4-3 on Friday, Jose (Up and Down) Contreras gave the North Siders a nine-run fourth inning, which was too much for the similarly inconsistent hitting to match and an 11-7 loss. Then Sunday, the final game, with every Wrigley idiot waiving brooms for the sweep, they Sox imploded again, losing 7-1.
As I’ve said before, I have nothing against the Cub team. I like Lou Pinella, and they have a good team, and it may actually be their year. But their fans…, loud, obnoxious, drunken louts who know nothing about baseball. It is they that deserve a reverse sweep this weekend at U.S. Cellular Field.

Interleague play in baseball has been a mixed bag: often, two teams play each other that have no geographic or historical rivalry, and if those teams are also playing poorly, this means lackluster baseball at its finest. However, where there are natural rivalries, like Chicago and New York, each with two teams, it can bring the cities to a boil in the summer heat.
This is the backdrop for the next two weekends here in Chicago. The Cub-White Sox rivalry has cleaved the town in half for decades: the North Siders rooting for the “Lovable Losers” who also happen to be “celebrating” 100 years since its last World Series championship; and the South Siders cheering on the White Sox. White Sox fans suffer from a bit of an inferiority complex: the Cubs have the quaint ballpark, draw over 3 million fans no matter where the Cubs are in the standings, and the fact that the “rich” owners also own one of the major daily newspapers and the superstation that advertised the Cub “brand” throughout the nation, makes Sox fans more infuriated by the Cubs than they should be. The 2005 World Series Championship won by the Sox only fueled Sox fans’ passion, and made Cub fans take notice that there is another team in Chicago, and one who ended its own 88 year championship draught.
This year, the un-civil war begins this weekend at Wrigley Field and concludes next weekend at U.S. Cellular Field, and this season the battle lines are drawn sturdier than ever. For the first time in some time, both teams are in first place in their respective divisions: the Cubs are 17 games over .500 and hold a 3½ game lead over St. Louis; the White Sox are 10 games over .500 with a 4½ game lead over Minnesota. Cub fans believe that this truly is the year, despite injuries to Alfonso Soriano and a possible shoulder injury to staff ace Carlos Zambrano. Sox fans are reveling in leading a division the team weren’t picked by anyone to finish better than third. The pitching has been consistently good, the hitting streaky, but it’s enough to have them in first.
The silliness is goaded on by the media. The Sun-Times has been running a contest as to which team has the hottest fans (female of course). (I think the Cubs may have more beautiful women in terms of numbers; but there are some stunningly beautiful women at Sox games). Not to be outdone, the Tribune is running a contest as to which team has the fattest fans (I’m not even going to touch that one here).
So, as this is posted, we are less than ten minutes from the first pitch of this year’s crosstown series. I do hope that we meet again in the World Series (although the city might develop a fault line at Madison Street and break in half. Go Sox!

If you hadn’t guessed, my primary job is in the banking business, and as such, I have a wealth of stories (especially in this economic environment) about loans that have gone bad, good ideas that have gone bust, and people the banks are suing or trying to find. One of the basic paradigms of banking is: only lend more money on a deal gone bad only if the new money will almost guarantee that a company’s prospects are improving, meaning repayment of both the new and the old money.
Obviously, the management at NBC never learned that lesson (obviously, not bankers). Despite coming off the worst season in school history, no bowl game in two years, and no national championship since 1988, NBC will continue to earn the nickname “Notre Dame Broadcasting Company.” NBC and Notre Dame announced today that they had agreed to a five-year extension through the 2015 season. The extension continues the usual seven home games per season, but NBC also gets to pick an eighth game, on the road, to telecast.
While the network has never been forthcoming with exact figures, many television industry figures have stated in the press that they believed that NBC has taken losses on the ND package for several years. Why they would want to lengthen the contract is subject to question unless the new agreement allows for the school to share some of the risk by lowering rights fees when the team sucks or at least doesn’t draw the audience it usually commands.
Worse, the contract allows university management and alumni to continue its misguided belief that it is special; one step better, or more important than the rest of college football. It also allows them to continue to fight against the tide of the 21st Century: joining a conference. It should have joined the Big Ten years ago, but since ND won’t share its NBC money, the university and the Big Ten and other conferences have and will continue to go their separate ways. Further, you know that the eighth NBC game is going to be Navy or one of the couple of other pushovers on ND’s schedule. It won’t be Michigan, or Michigan State. So, I wonder if the school ND plays gains or loses on this particular deal?
Meanwhile, the clergy who run ND (don’t Catholic Priests take vows of poverty?) will be laughing all the way to the bank for at least another seven years. In that time, I wonder if the “brain trust” who decided this was a good thing for NBC will still have their jobs?

Just two days after pulling out one of the most exciting, stirring wins in golf history at this year’s U.S. Open, Tiger Woods announced that he was soon undergo the third knee surgery on his left knee and would also allowing himself to heal from a double stress fracture of the same leg. As a result, Woods will miss the rest of the 2008 season.
This is sad of course for golf fans, tournament officials of upcoming events that had planned to have Woods play, and the television networks. There have been studies performed that showed that golf tournaments with Woods significantly outdraw tournaments without him on television, and that is where the largest pain will be felt. Forget about Tiger Woods’ knee, the television networks are going to be crying for months as the large number of very casual golf watchers who usually show up when Tiger is involved find better things to do with themselves on Saturdays and Sundays.
The main winner is the rest of the PGA Tour. The other players now have a chance to win a few tournaments. According to Woods’ website, he hurt his anterior cruciate ligament in 2007 while running, just after last year’s British Open. Since that time, Woods has participated in 13 Tour events, with 10 wins, 2 second place finishes (including this year’s Masters), and 1 fifth-place finish. He earned $13,194,667 for those tournaments, an average of almost $1,015,000 per tournament.
The big question is: what would Tiger have done if he had been healthy? I remember the 1978 Grammy Awards (back when I used to watch such things), and Paul Simon, who won “Record of the Year” for “Still Crazy After All these Years” first thanked Stevie Wonder, who had swept the awards the previous year “for not putting out a record this year.” The most amazing thing about Woods is not his talent, but his insatiable drive to improve his game and win. We haven’t seen that type of will to win since Michael Jordan. Just amazing!