1. The Bulls offered the head coaching position to Vinny Del Negro, a decent shooting guard with San Antonio and now (possibly) former assistant GM for that team. Of course, Del Negro has no coaching experience, which does not bode well for a young team. It appears a desperate and cheap move from a franchise that has never been desperate, and only rarely cheap. Despite not having coached very effective defensive teams, even Avery Johnson would have been a better choice.
2. As expected after the Tank Johnson debacle, the Bears cut running back Cedric Benson after his second arrest for drinking while operating a vehicle. I already wrote that Benson would have gotten more slack if he had run for 4.5 yards per carry instead of 3.5, and so, his performance on-the-field led to less patience from the Bears with his off-the-field problems. Already many media outlets are asking whether Benson was the biggest bust in Chicago Bear history? Yes, he was a higher pick, but for my money, Cade McNown is the biggest bust of all time coming from Halas Hall.
3. Finally, some may wonder that with the seven game winning steak, with 19 home runs, a .343 batting average, and scoring an average of 8.7 runs per game over that stretch if I would like to take back my call for White Sox hitting coach Greg Walker’s firing. Obviously, I have to say yes, but the seat is still warm. If the entire team goes back into the hitting funk that plagued the squad for all of 2007 and the first two months of 2008, it may be time for a new approach.

I have a very close friend who lost his job last week and I wondered, would he like to coach the Bulls? Last week, it looked like the search was over and the Bulls were going to bring back Doug Collins to the bench, but indecision by the Bulls, especially managing partner Jerry Reinsdorf led Collins to turn the position down.
Reinsdorf reportedly told Collins that he loved him like a son, but did he want to strain the relationship by putting him in the coaching position? Collins took the indecision as less than warm welcome and removed himself from consideration. So, you have a Bulls team with nowhere to go but up: some young, talented players like Ben Gordon and Lual Deng, and the top pick in the NBA Draft.
So now the lead candidates are Vinny Del Negro who has no head coaching experience, former Minnesota coach Dwayne Casey, and Kings assistant coach Chuck Person. Not exactly the marquee names one would expect for one of the premiere franchises in the league? It’s not like Reinsdorf to take a long time to make a decision, so one has to wonder what unseen problems there are in the front office or among the personalities on the team that makes the decision so difficult?
It’s too bad Larry Brown isn’t available….

The late Warren Oates was one of the true bright spots of a small 1982 action film called Blue Thunder. In it, Roy Scheider played a Vietnam vet on the Los Angeles Police force’s helicopter squad as a rogue military group tried to introduce a military helicopter into use for the 1984 Olympics and were willing to kill anyone who stood in their way. Anyway, Scheider was constantly getting into trouble, and Oates, as the grizzled boss (his last performance) told Scheider, “when you’re walking on eggs, don’t hop.”
Someone should have relayed this advice to Chicago Bear running back Cedric Benson. Less than two months after being arrested for drunkenly driving a boat in Texas and resisting arrest, Benson was arrested again for DWI last Friday. Benson, the number 4 overall pick in the 2004 NFL Draft has been a bust for the Bears, averaging a mediocre-at-best 3.6 yards-per-carry for his career; and many people were suggesting that the Bears cut the running back after the first incident. The calls for his release are now even louder.
Reportedly, today Bears officials, perhaps even GM Jerry Angelo will be talking with Benson, and this may help decide the issue. Even I was willing to give the back benefit of the doubt on the first incident because, according to another person on the boat, the Texas officers were harassing Benson and spoiling for a fight (and you may only have to be guilty of being in the vicinity if you are a black man in Texas when some cop has a mad-on). Benson, reportedly said that he wasn’t drunk this time, but this seems a bit far fetched; why refuse to take a breathalyzer test if you aren’t drunk, especially if you have a previous arrest and your job potentially on the line? Sealing the guilt issue to many people is the mug shot of Benson, with a sh@#-eating grin on his face, looking like he is either inebriated or high on something.
I would like to say that the Bears and Chicago fans have a history of drawing the line on bad off-the-field behavior, but the reality is – if Benson was an All Pro running back as expected when he was drafted out of the University of Texas, we would be finding some way to support him. We would find some reason to believe his story, or we would be clamoring for the team to get him help or into some rehab program. But because he is tackled very easily, rarely breaks tackles, and has only run once for over 20 yards last season, Chicago fans are ready to drop him like a bad habit. Maybe he deserves another chance, but that silly smile ranks up there with the worst mug shots in history: Nick Nolte and James Brown come to mind. That’s the picture that come to my mind, and I wonder if he’s smart enough to know that he may not get a second chance.

I know that you never meet people in the media for real. I’m lucky; I’ve met many of my sports heroes and famous people over the years, but there are so many more that I never met, but they still meant a lot to me. One of those people was Jim McKay who dies over the weekend at the age of 86.
He’s been off television for a while, but McKay was the narrator/journalist for ABC’s Wide World of Sports and the anchor for 12 Olympic Games. And in those days when there weren’t 500 satellite channels, only 3 major networks, and sports was a weekend only spectator sport, McKay was my guide to the rest of the world. I don’t remember if I even understood how far away Iceland was, or skiing events in Sweden, but I watched, as Mr. McKay and the other broadcasters showed us sports from the other side of the world and the other side of the country.
Mr. McKay’s sincerity was the selling point. He was never phony. He gave every event its play, whether it was the Olympics, or barrel jumping in Wisconsin, or cliff diving, or surfing. He allowed the analysts to explain what was going on, being as colorful as they liked, while he kept on with the facts.
Like so many people, his greatest moment was in tragedy. We watched him all day on the fateful day in 1972 in Munich when armed Arabs took 11 Israeli athletes hostage. We watched with McKay as ABC (stupidly? Naïvely?) showed the police’s attempts to charge the building, not understanding that the terrorists had televisions and were watching too. Eventually, the Germans tried to ambush the terrorists at the airport, which ended up with the deaths of all 11 athletes. And I will always remember McKay’s final comment “they’re all gone.” McKay was always professional, but he was genuine in his concern for the athletes, his hope that they would be saved, and his disappointment and anguish in telling the world that they were no longer with us.
Mr. McKay showed us professional journalism; he showed us the world; he showed us that athletes were human, just like us. He shares with us his sense of wonder, and I, for one, will always appreciate it.

This may be the first time in history that you’ll see the names Evander Holyfield and Ed McMahon in the same article, unless we are talking about a Tonight Show rerun or a guest spot on Star Search. Both of these men are facing the foreclosure of their multi-million dollar homes.
McMahon, 84, former sidekick of Johnny Carson on the Tonight Show, is reportedly $640,000 delinquent on the $4.8 million mortgage on his home in Beverly Hills. McMahon has been upfront on his woes, telling Larry King on CNN last night that he and his wife have tried to sell the house, but there have been no offers. And he is behind on the payments because he and his current wife “spend more than (they) make, you know what happens. And it can happen. You know, a couple of divorces thrown in, a few things like that.” On top of that McMahon broke his neck a couple of years ago and hasn’t worked as much since then.
In the case of Holyfield, it’s funny: I used to have a personal award called “Father of our Country” which would be bestowed on the personality that had the most kids by the largest number of women, and Holyfield always won. He has at least nine children by six different women. Now, his $10 million estate in suburban Atlanta is under foreclosure, and he has reportedly missed two payments already to the mother of one of his children and the former champion’s “people” have her that he will no longer be able to make court ordered $3,000 per month child support payments. That young lady, Toi Irvin is suing for unpaid child support. If that weren’t enough, a Utah consulting company has gone to court claiming the boxer failed to pay more than a half million dollars for landscaping.
According to CNN.com, there was a legal notice in last Wednesday’s newspaper that said Holyfield’s estate will be auctioned off at the Fayette County courthouse on July 1. Interested parties shouldn’t come down with just a few bucks either: the house has 54,000-square-feet with 109 rooms, including 17 bathrooms, three kitchens and a bowling alley.
Now, the first impression is that these men thought with the wrong head several times and are getting what is due to them; but this shows that the recession (yes, I don’t care what the economists say, THIS IS A RECESSION) is hitting everyone (except the richest 0.1% of the populace or shareholders of Haliburton and the oil speculators). As far as McMahon, I can’t say I was ever a fan of his, but I certainly don’t wish for this type of thing to happen to him; but I’m sure that someone in the entertainment industry will come to his aid.
In the case of the boxer, Holyfield is far from the only boxer who suffered financial difficulties. Joe Lewis, Sugar Ray Robinson, and of course, Mike Tyson, Holyfield’s contemporary who bit Holyfield in the ear in the famous “Bite of the Century” fight. Holyfield, by the way, earned $34 million for that fight. So, like those others, Holyfield has continued to get into the ring at age 45 even though the purses are considerably smaller, but this is all he knows. Unlike the other sports, boxing is the ultimate one-man against the world sport. No one “blocks” for you like football; no one takes any punches for you and no one throws any. Unlike McMahon, there won’t be any help from his profession; too many fighters are just trying to keep their own money and as much of their brain function as they can.
For a long time, I have said that there will be a number of athletes who will eventually squander their huge salaries in house cars, women and drugs. As a long-time observer of sport, it saddens me to think that some of the few young men who do make it to the pinnacle of their sport, white, black, and Hispanic see it disappear. And there is also the perception by many women that bedding an athlete and bearing a child is like hitting the lottery. So, you have kids out of wedlock to famous men who want little to do with them because they feel the mothers “trapped” them. What about these children? Besides the financial support, what about the lack of a father? Fatherhood has been devalued to such an extent that in the hospital what The Indignant Daughter was born, information on me was like an afterthought, after a full page on the mother. But I want to give her better. I am the result of a broken marriage and my father was nonexistent, so I am doing my best to show her that she has a father that loves her.
I can tell you that even in former married relationships, illnesses and divorces are a couple of the major causes of financial difficulties in all walks of life, and in this, Evander Holyfield and Ed McMahon are brothers in arms.

A friend of mine was in Chicago from Canada just a few weeks ago and while we didn’t really talk politics, he said to me “I don’t think America is ready for a black man as President.” My wife, also originally from Canada has said the same thing to me for many months. Well, I guess we will really see since Barack Obama has earned enough delegates to the Democratic Convention in August to be the first African-American nominee for President in American history.
I am very proud today, and proud of the country (or at least segments of the country) to reach this point. I’m sure that my late mother, grandmother, and the rest of my family may not have been surprised to see a black Presidential nominee after they were dead, but probably not in my lifetime (or much later in my lifetime). Representative Jesse Jackson, Jr. blogged on Huffington Post yesterday that Obama may be giving his acceptance speech on the 45th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech at the March on Washington in 1963. This would be another step in the realization of Dr. King’s dream.
Unfortunately, I keep thinking about what my wife and our friend said. I wonder if enough there are enough white people fed up with the current administration that they will “hold their collective noses” and vote for a black man. A lot of women are very disappointed in Hillary Clinton’s loss and have said that they would rather vote for John McCain than Obama. This makes no sense to me unless they want to continue the American populace’s stubborn trend to vote in complete opposition to their own best interests. We can summarize the ways in which John “The Maverick” McCain is George W. Bush’s third term:
• McCain’s warlike manner and willingness to wage war in Iraq for 100 years. How many people will lose their lives in such an endeavor and how much more will we lose in world wide esteem?
• McCain wants to make Bush’s tax cuts permanent; a stance that will be popular to the top 0.1% of the populace, but will do nothing but increase the divide between rich and poor in this country.
• McCain believes in less governmental oversight of big corporations. How much more can people lose in jobs, rights, benefits as corporations move jobs abroad and pollute people from their factories and in their products?
• At least two of the progressive Supreme Court Justices are over 70 and holding on until a more progressive administration is in place before retirement. McCain has said that he will eliminate a woman’s right to choose.
I can understand women’s disappointment with not having a woman president, but are they really willing to vote for McCain or not vote at all because they didn’t get their way – like petulant children? And, it needs to be asked, how many of these women who have taken this stand due to closet racism?
Paraphrasing the tag line for the film Jaws 2, “Just When you thought it was safe” to be proud of this country, Robert Feder of the Chicago Sun-Times reported this morning that Channel 11 was under “lockdown” last night during the premiere of “Out & Proud in Chicago” a locally produced documentary about gays and lesbians . Apparently, a gutless, low-life, coward called the station with a bomb threat during the program. Unfortunately, America can signify the very best, and the very worst in people. I’m not sure they’re ready for acceptance of everyone, no matter their race, sex, religion (or lack thereof), or sexual orientation. I hope I’m wrong, but I just fear that there are some “good ‘ole boys” getting their high powered rifles ready.

I used to be an avid Los Angeles Lakers fan. I loved to watch the Lakers back in the Jerry West/Gain Goodrich/Wilt Chamberlain years. I was also a big fan of the “Showtime” Lakers with Magic Johnson, James Worthy, and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.
By the same token, I hated the Celtics. They were “white America’s basketball team.” Even the black players had a mixed attitude about the city of Boston, a hotbed of segregation and racial unrest. When asked about the city, Bill Russell reportedly said “I play for the Celtics, not Boston.” Red Auerback was a jackass, and the team always seemed to draft the “best white player available.”
This opinion didn’t change when the Celtics drafted Larry Bird and Kevin McHale. I watched McHale live when I was at Northwestern and he was at Minnesota and loved his style of play, but he went to Boston, so I had to hate him. When Bird and company battled Magic’s troops, it got so bad that a co-worker of mine and I at the time almost came to blows on several occasions.
Over time, I grew bored with basketball, especially NBA basketball. Auerbach died. The Celtics sucked; which takes all of the fun out of a good case of sports hatred (and is the reason that the Celtics don’t have a prominent place on the “I Hate” scroll on this site). Also, the Celtics have returned to the top as a result of acquiring Kevin Garnett, the superstar originally from Chicago, and Ray Allen; two players of great talent and appear to be good sportsmen and citizens.
In addition, the Lakers do nothing for me anymore, probably on account of Kobe Bryant’s trial and acquittal for rape, and his continued calls to have players traded (like Shaquille O’Neal) or for himself to be traded when the Lakers didn’t do exactly what he wanted.
So, I find it interesting that the Lakers and Celtics meet this week once again for the NBA Championship. I may even watch a little bit, but it will be a lot harder to get me into a fight.