Earlier this week, I asked why it’s taken so long for teams to rid themselves of Native American nicknames. In the case of Cleveland, Owner Pete Dolan said that he more seriously thought of changing the name after the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis Police and the resulting protests. One must wonder if this is the reason that Major League Baseball decided to consider the Negro Leagues as major leagues?
MLB issued a statement that the statistics and records of the six Negro League of over 3,400 players including Hall of Famers like Willie Mays, Satchel Paige, and Monte Irvin who did play in the desegregated major leagues, along with icons like Josh Gibson who never had that opportunity. MLB will be working with the Elias Sports Bureau to review statistics and figure out how to incorporate the statistics into the rest of the major league stats. As a result, Willie Mays will add some hits to his statistics; Monte Irvin’s lifetime batting average should climb to over .300, and Paige will probably add approximately 150 victories.
There are a number of issues with this; I’ll start with the simplest – the statistics themselves. Unlike Major League Baseball which kept good records, records of the Negro Leagues were often incomplete or nonexistent. I am happy hat Elias will be involved as they are quite excellent as archivists. My other question is why MLB is cutting off records after 1946? Yes, the Negro Leagues’ popularity declined once Jackie Robinson and Larry Doby made the majors, but it’s not like the teams suddenly hired a lot of African-Americans. The influx of Black players in the majors was a trickle. Teams usually had 1 or 2 players per teams with the Boston Red Sox not integrating until 1967. Why are they not including the records up to the end of the Negro Leagues, which was about 1960?
The bigger questions are of course why didn’t they do this before and why now? The Leagues were omitted when a Special Commission on Baseball Records identified six “major leagues” in 1969. It seems that this was just another slight that Black players had to endure. With the large number of Black players in the 1970s and 1980s and as a lot of the Negro stars were still alive, why didn’t they start working on incorporating the records back then?
It is more ironic that this step is made as African-American participation has declined since hitting highs of over 18% in the 1980s compared with the current rate of 7.8%. Was it the overall Floyd/Black Lives Matter effect or was it something else?
Overall, this is a nice gesture, but I think it is definitely too little too late.

There is something about success that leads to losing coaches and staff to other teams. Northwestern has not really had that problem – under Pat Fitzgerald, despite a historic level of success, coaches stayed a long time. It was only after the public and media outcry complaining about the woeful offensive scheme hat led to the former Offensive Coordinator Mick McCall being fired.
Over the past week, it was announced that there were two important members of the athletic administration who were leaving. First, Athletic Director Jim Phillips announced that he was leaving to become the Commissioner of the ACC. Last year, Phillips was expected to be the front runner to becoming the Big Ten Commissioner as long-time commissioner Jim Delaney was retiring. Instead, Kevin Warren was hired.
In Evanston, Phillips was mostly known for not wearing a coat at football games. No matter the weather, Phillips could be seen in suit pants, dress shirt and tie. As it turned out, we season ticket holders were not surprised that Phillips was wearing UnderArmour under his shirt. UnderArmour is a sponsor of Northwestern, so I guess he got the thermal underwear for free.
While Phillips has done a very good job in his 13-year stint, I would say that the more critical loss to the football program will be the retirement of Defense Coordinator Mike Hankwitz. I have long said that the best, most important thing that Head Coach Pat Fitzgerald did before he coached a game was to snap up Hankwitz, when he was surprisingly fired at Wisconsin. After coming to Evanston, the defense improved, and every year, the defense has generally played well. Some years, like 2020, the defense was really a standout unit. Other years, the defense has not been as good, mainly from injuries and inexperienced players after graduations.
Honestly, Fitzgerald is a marvelous recruiter but a mediocre game day coach; the Offensive Coordinator position has improved substantially with the hiring of Mike Bajakian. The one constant has been Hankwitz whose teams could get outplayed, but never outhustled or having a poor scheme. He has been the master of making adjustments between plays and halves.
I wish both these men good luck in their new positive and in retirement. Both men can be proud of their accomplishments.

The first day after the end of the college football regular season could be called “Black Sunday” just as the day after the end of the NFL season is called “Black Monday.” In both cases, head and assistant coaches, and general managers and other front office personnel go down like ducks in a shooting gallery. For fans, it is the release of suffering through disappointing results. Often players are very happy when coaches get fired (although it is usually not public in the college ranks).
I know that its mean to see someone fired when you’ve been fired in the past, but the big salaries these coaches receive means that coaches’ families do not need to worry about starvation any time soon like the rest of us. For example, it was a year ago that Northwestern fired Offensive Coordinator Mick McCall, which worked out very well. In improved offense as helped a great defense to allow the Wildcats to go 5-1 and face Ohio State in the Big Ten Championship Game this Saturday. I was and have been ecstatic even since.
This year, the coaches are starting to get pick slips. Some are surprising, like Auburn firing its Head Coach Gus Malzahn. After leading the team to the National Championship Game in his first year, the rest of his time there was definitely a roller coaster ride. One of the main reasons is the poor play of the offense after Malzahn was considered a genius by playing an up-tempo game. Poor play at the quarterback position and/or the failure to recruit a great QB doomed Malzahn.
On the other hand, there are coaches whose seats are warm to red hot before the season even begins. One wouldn’t have thought that Illinois Head Coach Lovie Smith would have been on that list. The Illini had a resurgent season in 2019, going 6-4 to start the season, with a respectable loss to Iowa in Iowa City, but an almost inexcusable loss to Northwestern 29-10 in the season finale at home. However, they did go to their first bowl game since 2014, the Redbox Bowl. Illinois lost again, 35-20.
As I have written numerous times, sports teams are selling one of two things: victories; or the hope of victories. Hope at Illinois was higher than it had been in some time. Of course, the pandemic, the postponement then reinstatement of the Big Ten football season did not put a damper on the expectations of the fans and alumni for the 2020 team. A first game thrashing from Wisconsin was probably expected, but losses to Purdue and also underperforming Minnesota put them in a hole, but there was a ray of light when the illini beat woeful Rutgers, then shocked Nebraska in Lincoln 41-23. Losing to Iowa and then Northwestern (with still a game left this weekend against Penn State) was just too much for the university, who fired Smith after the NU game.
Again, I usually don’t do a happy dance over the coaches’ graves after they get fired (McCall being a notable exception), but I did one over Smith. When he was first hired, I said that he was an NFL Coach, how well would he be able to recruit kids to come play for him? He added assistants who mostly were his ex-players, they had little experience in recruiting either It was Smith’s rhetoric about Illinois neighbor and resident Northwestern that burned my blood.
Yes, Northwestern started the already lukewarm to warm rivalry between the teams when they stated advertising with the tagline “Chicago’s Big Ten Team.” Smith stepped right into the fray, talking about how much he wanted to beat NU. Every year, no matter the record, Smith would come out with broad statements about how Illinois would beat NU. Unfortunately for him, this has been one of the most successful periods in NU history, Illinois lost every game under Smith’s leadership.
The real surprise was last season. Illinois had shown improvement and were going to a bowl game; Northwestern were 2-9, another year with a decent defense and a horrible, unimaginative offense. Northwestern started their fourth quarterback of the season, Andrew Marty, who is much more of a running threat QB than a passer. Agreed, Illinois had never seen Marty, but they never seemed to adjust to Marty running (he was only 6/10 passing for 55 yards). After upsetting Michigan State in 2019 and gaining bowl eligibility, they lost to Iowa, then NU, then the bowl game. A poor start that never seemed to show much progress was Smith’s end.
Once again, Illinois is looking for a football coach. For years, the administration has done a fairly poor job in football hiring (saved only by being fairly good at hiring basketball coaches). I hope that they continue their mediocre record at best.

One of the most contentious issues in all of sport is whether the nicknames of teams are racist stereotypes for Native Americans. For several years, teams have fought back against the name change. The most strident owner was Daniel Snyder who said that he would never get rid of “Redskins,” but pressure from corporate sponsors convinced Snyder to ditch the nickname, and while it is a little silly that they have not come up with another name, the Washington Football Team is doing something new – playing decent football. Of course, the NFL East is by far the weakest in the league, but the WFT is in the lead at 6-7, but maybe the lawsuits by minority owners trying to get Snyder to sell his interest.
The other team that has been perhaps the most contentious team has been the Cleveland Indians. While the team did get rid of mascot Chief Yahoo in 2007, the racist moniker has remained. So, it was newsworthy that Owner Paul Dolan announced that he had an epiphany when George Floyd was killed by Minneapolis Police that the name was no longer appropriate.
Unfortunately, there is no replacement chosen; they will be the Indians at least through the 2021 season. Dolan did not want to be the Cleveland Baseball Team and, to his credit, decided not to use the name “Tribe,” which has been a short name for the team for decades.
Still, the question is: why has he taken such a long time to come up with another name? The Spiders were the Cleveland Baseball team 133 years ago, but I guess that name is copyrighted by someone (although Dolan is rich, just buy the name). The baseball season ended in October he could have had a contest to come up with a new name and have fans vote for it, but I guess that would have taken too much work (although see previous comment on Dolan being rich).
More troubling perhaps is the fact that Dolan empathizes with a segment of Cleveland fans who will be displeased with decision. There were some angry NFL fans in Washington, and probably still are. For example, there are still people trying to get the University of Illinois to bring back Chief Illiniweck, which was dumped in 2007. I probably shouldn’t but I continue to feel sorry for these people. Being a conservative seems to mean wanting nothing to ever change: slavery, women’s suffrage, LGBTQ rights.
The next question are the other professional franchises with Native American themes? The Atlanta Braves have fought any change. Florida State Seminoles have too. While I love them, it is probably a matter of time before the Wirtz family is forced to get rid of the Blackhawks name, even though it is the group who lived in the Chicago area and members of the tribe say that they have no problem with the name.
It’s going to happen. It should have happened decades ago. We all need to understand that no one can turn back or stop the clock.

As we all know, 2020 has been an unprecedented year. Covid-19, masks, stay-at-hone orders, limited restaurants, no movie theaters, just streaming, and no concerts. The last two have been very difficult for me personally. The Toronto International Film Festival was downsized by 83% from 300 to 50 films, and even then, with the prohibition of Americans going to Canada and streaming limited only to Canada, it’s been a very limited year in media.
A big saving grace has been that there are still artists putting out music this year and I have been about as active as previous years. Here are the Top 10 recordings of the year (actually 11, but it’s my list) based on the amount I listened to each in 2020.
10. (tie) Graham Parker – 5 Old Souls: my old friend released a record on his 70th birthday in November, a live record with the Goldtops (led by Rumour guitarist Martin Belmont) and the Rumour Horns. It is always a treat to hear Graham with the horns, and this collection, pulling a lot for the last full record “Cloud Symbols.” Hearing these songs for the first time live, more expansive than the recorded versions, was truly a welcome end-of-the-year surprise.
10. (tie) Jeff Tweedy – Love Is The King: No one should be surprised that the prolific Tweedy would use the pandemic time to put his latest songs to stream/CD (physical media will be out in early 2021). Using his kids as backup, he put together a straight-ahead set of songs about love. It is not breaking new ground, but considering how great and fertile Tweedy’s songwriting has been over the years, I was happy to go along.
9. Green Day – Father of All Motherf%^&ers: I was bemoaning the lack of real rock music and Green Day and the next band came through. I like Green Day, I’ve never loved them (except for “American Idiot”). However, with the plethora of mid-tempo singer-songwriters, I yearned for something that rocked, and say what you will, Green Day is guitar music.
8. Pretenders – Hate 4 Sale: Reuniting with drummer Martin Chambers, Chrissy Hynde and the other two members of he band have put together a traditional Pretenders album that would not sound out of place in 1985 or 1995. That said, the album kicks from the very start before giving way to more mellow pop/rock with hooks.
7. Bob Andrews – Alone: speaking of former members of Graham Parker’s Rumour, keyboardist Bob Andrew released a streaming only set of piano predominant songs that touch upon his British Invasion start, New Orleans spice which is where Bob lived for some time, and a Taos, New Mexico vibe, where Bob lives now. Bob features a number of guest vocalists who do a fine job, and Bob, always a fine background vocalist with GP, does well when he takes the microphone.
6. Pearl Jam – Gigaton: I have never known why people hate Pearl Jam so much. Yes, the first album is one of the great records of the Seattle grunge period, and while later releases have not been as good, how many bands have actually caught lightning in a bottle twice? After some really mediocre records, this CD is actually quite good and since I am kind of a PJ fan, I liked it enough to rank number 6.
5. Elvis Costello – Hey Clockface: Going into the studio just before the worldwide lockdown, EC put together a number of songs backed by French musicians including the great pianist Steve Nieve. Unlike other releases, it has a greater variety in the types of music on the record. There’s two spoken word songs along with a couple of harder rock songs and a couple of songs that sound right in line with Wake Up Ghost. There are more hits than misses (if not really any “hits” in the radio sense). For years, I complained about the style jumps that Elvis undergoes, but in reading his autobiography a few years ago, the fact that his father sang British versions of American and other country popular songs of nearly every style provides insight into the son’s stylistic wanderings.
4. Morrissey – I Am Not A Dog On A Chain: yes, he’s a right wing near-fascist; yes he has been on cruise-control on his last several records, especially last year’s “California Sun” collection of covers. However, Steven Morrissey released his best record in a very long time this past year. Getting past the silly title, this record returns to the rocking/hook blueprint that was so successful with The Smiths and the early solo records. Not to that quality, but I was pleasantly surprised.
3. Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross – Watchmen Soundtrack: it has been decades since a soundtrack record came anywhere close to a Top 10 list, but the three records that serve as backdrop to the marvelous HBO follow-up series to the comic book series has all of the thought and complexity of the series itself. I admit to being a NIN fan from the beginning and have also enjoyed these gentlemen’s soundtracks for The Social Network. I admit that I am a huge fans of the comic and the television series, but I also enjoyed the soundtrack records also.
2. Bruce Springsteen – Letter To You: Springsteen broke through the writer’s block he had for songs with the E Street Band until he came up with this collection, recorded live in Bruce’s New Jersey studio. The new songs ruminate on aging and loss, and a few songs he’d written back in the 1970s. I admit to missing the rougher, gritty, street theater tableaus from the first four records and they will always be my favorites. The old songs brought back that same feeling, like a faded memory. It is easily Springsteen’s strongest album since The Rising at least.
1. Bob Mould – Blue Hearts: it had seemed that the former Husker Du/Sugar/soloist had mellowed out over the past couple of releases, culminating with last year’s Sunshine Rock. This time, Mould looked at the state of the world and found it wanting. So, he wrote some very serious songs with real bite and power. I am a big fan, and his records usually end up on my best of list when they get released, but this record really grabbed me and made me pay attention (even though, politically, he was preaching to the choir when it came to me).
So, that’s it folks. Several of my all-time favorite artists released records this year, which helped get me through the pandemic with a little more sanity than I would have had without it. I do miss concerts. My last one was about a year ago with another friend Marshall Crenshaw. I had ticket to see Graham Parker in April which was pushed back a year. I really hope that there is an end to the Covid-19 pandemic soon to see a return to live music and the arts.

I have not been much of a fan of bringing college athletics back in light of the Covid-19 pandemic. Unlike the NBA and NHL, it is impractical to sequester all of the coaches, players and administrators in bubble locations. Even with classes being delivered remotely, one has to admit that young people display less self-control than professional players (for the most part). So, I did agree with Duke’s legendary Coach Mike Krzyzewski who questioned whether college basketball consider pushing back the season and NCAA Tournament as vaccines against the virus are being perfected and distributed.
Even the venerable coach saw that there would be jokes and criticisms about his comments coming with Duke being an uncharacteristic 2-2 so far in the season. Mike Krzyzewski was quoted in Dan Wetzel’s Yahoo Sports! Column saying, “anything I say, someone can say, ‘Well, he’s saying that because he got his butt beat.’” He said, “I know somebody will take what I’m saying tonight and make it like I’m making excuses.”
Rival fans, the mainstream media and lots of social media did not disappoint. As Mr. Wetzel’s column pointed out, no one expected another college basketball coach to jump on the bandwagon. Unfortunately (or fortunately for those of us who write about sports), Alabama Head Men’s Basketball Coach Nate Oats decided to speak up.
Oats was asked Wednesday by Birmingham television reporter Christina Chambers about Krzyzewski’s comments. “Let me ask you something,” Oats said. “Do you think if Coach K hadn’t lost the two non-conference games at home that he’d still be saying that?”
“Probably not,” Chambers said.
“OK. I just wanted you to say it, not me,” Oats said.
Mr. Wetzel points out that Mr. Oats is a 46-year-old former Michigan high school coach who parleyed his success at Buffalo where his team made the NCAA Tournament and posted two victories into the top job at Alabama, whereas Krzyzewski has the most victories in NCAA history. Add the five NCAA National Championships, and I’m sure that Krzyzewski isn’t sweating it much. It is the basketball equivalent of the concern that a common housefly provides to the rear end of the common elephant. Still, it is usually a violation of the “Coach’s Code” to openly send a jibe at another coach, much less the NCAA equivalent of Bill Belichick/Pat Summitt/Scottie Bowman.
I just know I wouldn’t want to see the line on the next time Duke plays Alabama, whenever that is…

Football players are not known as the deepest thinkers in the world. Yes, there are some who are doctors and surgeons and lawyers and even astrophysicists. Not many however, particularly the ones who end up on television broadcasting games (although, as I wrote last week, I tipped my hat at former QB Tony Romo who taught me something about the game of football and playing QB). Cris Collinsworth proved this adage this past week.
Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t think Collinsworth is all that bad. Yes, the country drawl is a little cloying at times, but he’s never rubbed me the wrong way like so many others have. During Wednesday’s Pittsburgh Steelers – Baltimore Ravens game, Collinsworth talked with play-by-play announcer Mike Tirico about conversations he had with Steelers fans before the game. “Everybody’s a fan,” Collinsworth said. “In particular the ladies that I met. They have really specific questions about the game. I’m like wow, just blown away. …”
These comments were surprising on a couple of levels. First, Collinsworth has worked for years with respected NFL female reporters like Andrea Kremer and Michele Tafoya not to mention the women behind the scenes on the network broadcasts. These women have faced all kinds of roadblocks and obstacles to get where they are. In general, if you listen to the main women on the networks and ESPN, they are as knowledgeable if not more so than the men.
More surprising is that Collinsworth who played in Cincinnati his entire career and played division rival Pittsburgh on numerous occasions would not know about the passion for the game from everyone – men, women, kids. I worked for a bank and my boss was seated in Pittsburgh, so I went there often, and I had a running joke: it’s a good thing Pittsburgh has the Steelers – no one would have any clothes if the Steelers didn’t exist. It doesn’t matter what the temperature is – black Steeler shirts are everywhere and people are sweating like mad.
In fact, most of the women I worked with know football well especially the Steelers, even if they weren’t especially big sports fans. Not to mention my wife, many women I went to school with and other women I know. I have gotten very detailed, precise and correct analyses from a great number of women.
That said, Collinsworth apologized, actually sending “I’m sorry” message, not the non-apology apology “sorry if anyone was insulted.” The incident should be forgotten now – it was a bonehead mistake, not severe enough to be a fire able or suspension-worthy event, and I actually think he will learn something from it, which is more than can be said for a lot of the talking heads in broadcast booths all over the NFL.