There are people who have an impact on your life: your parents, teachers, friends – people that you know. There are people who you meet who have had an impact, good or bad, but directly, personally. Then, there are people who have impacted you who you have never met, or only met in passing. For me, there are tons of those types of people, especially in the arts. For me, one could easily list Graham Parker, Elvis Costello, Bruce Springsteen Pete Townshend and an almost never ending list of people in music; Stephen King, among so many other writers; Stanley Kubrick, Orson Welles, Hitchcock, and Martin Scorsese in film.
As a “comics guy,” the list is just as long, and just as impactful: Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, Gil Kane, Jim Starlin, Howard Chaykin and of course, Neal Adams. No one however has had a bigger impact for as long as Stan Lee. I think my first comics memory was buying comics from a machine in the old Hillmans grocery store that was in the basement of Sears at 63rd and Halsted in my Englewood neighborhood. Comics were 12 cents, and you put a dime on one side and two pennies on the other and you pushed in the money, and out came your comic. I would want to rush home to read my latest adventure; to read it over and over, to savor it; to be absorbed into it. My parents figured I was reading, and the vocabulary was much beyond what the other kids were reading.
At that time, me and my friends thought that DC – Superman and Batman was kind of corny (it got better and I’ve been hooked on them too); but Marvel was too cool. The locales were real; the heroes had real life problems and always, an Achilles heel, a weakness that could be exploited. One of my first comic memories was Fantastic Four #52 – the first appearance of the Black Panther – a black super hero, who was a king – rich, dashing, regal. Sometime around then I saw that this comic was written by this guy Stan Lee. It seemed like this Stan Lee wrote everything from Marvel, which he did along with major help from his artist/collaborators. In the letter’s columns, Stan spoke to all of us about Marvel being like a big club; we were all in a society (The Mighty Marvel Marching Society) of fans. It was cool; it was hip; and our leader was Stan.
Stan Lee, who helped create Spider-Man, the Hulk, the Fantastic Four, the X-Men and thousands of other characters who have brought order to the printed page and now dominates the big screen, died today at the age of 95. Many people will only know him as the old man who made an appearance in every Marvel Studios film, but to many of us, he was our guide into a greater world, a world of heroes and villains and anti-heroes. A simpler world, sure, but one that was impacted by the real world: drugs, violence, racism, xenophobia, sexism, all found their way into those four color comics.
I met Stan only once – at a convention in Rosemont way back. He was a gentle being, signing one comic each for all of us in line. He was slightly tipsy, which was not uncommon back in the day, but he greeted everyone in line, spent a few minutes to speak with us. I had difficulty at first choosing which comic would be signed when my turn came. As it turned out, the choice was fairly easy – Fantastic Four #48, the first appearance of the Silver Surfer, but more important to me, he signed the last page of the issue, the first appearance of my favorite character to this day – Galactus, the world devourer. He signed the issue with a “To Tony” and a lively “Excelsior!”
RIP – to the man born Stanley Lieber, best known as Stan Lee. Join the King, Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko and Gil and so many others, knowing that you brought a lot of joy to a lot of people and I will always be grateful.

Halls of Fame are always controversial. Who should be in, who should be out? Who was overlooked; who was overrated? The problem is that one person’s Hall of fame is another’s trash. Why is ABBA in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame but Todd Rundgren not in (or Graham Parker, or so many others). Add to that the fact that sports has numbers – who has more home runs, touchdowns, baskets, or goals, and should that be the only or most important factor in induction into the “hallowed halls?” that’s the problem – the eye (or ear, or mind) of the beholder. Should critics and writers decide, or should other musicians, or the fans? Most of the time, it makes for friendly bar argument, because ultimately, it does come down to perspective.
Tonight, the Hockey Hall of Fame inducts the latest class and most of the inductees are no brainers: the winningest regular season and playoff goalie of all time – Martin Brodeur; Martin St. Louis, Alexander Yakushev from the time when Team USSR was the most dominant team in the world, and Jayna Hefford, the National women’s Hockey League’s all-time scorer. Unfortunately, there have been some people who question the induction of Willie O’Rea, the Jackie Robinson of hockey – breaking the color line in the late 1950s. He didn’t play many games or score a bunch of goals, but he faced much the same blind hatred that Robinson did. Instead of retiring and leaving hockey behind, Mr. O’Rea has become a beloved ambassador of the sport and a role model for the dozens of black hockey players currently in the NHL, minors, and juniors.
The most controversial inductee is current Commissioner Gary Bettman. To fans, he is the most hated man in the sport and there is reason – he presided over two work stoppages, including the cancellation of an entire season. Fans love to express their distaste too – I believe only NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell is booed as loudly as Bettman is, and it might get worse since the shadow of another lockout linger for next season. I don’t have any sympathy for either of them – both men earn millions of dollars to be booed. I’d take the money too.
Unfortunately for us fans, the only measure is money in the owners’ pockets, and in that regard, Bettman has helped build a league worth approximately $450 million total when he took over in 1993 to a multibillion dollar enterprise today. He has expanded the sport to places as far and wide as Carolina, and Las Vegas and perhaps Seattle. The players have also benefitted greatly financially, but Bettman also stuck his head in the sand on head injuries and CTE like Goodell. However, he is the longest serving commissioner in the sport’s history and with almost all of the other commissioners in the Hall, it was inevitable.
I will be busy tonight, so I probably won’t be checking in on the ceremony, which will be broadcast on the NHL Network. I’m certain that Bettman will be booed, which he deserves, but after a few minutes of it, it becomes boring. Gary Bettman isn’t the first man entering the Hockey Hall of Fame whose induction will be questioned for years to come. He may be the most divisive, and I admit to booing him whenever I get a chance.

A common question that I ask about sports figures is why aren’t they fired? Do they have incriminating pictures of someone? As a person who’s been fired and laid off over the years, I am much more reluctant to call for someone to lose one’s job. In a society in which your personality, your self-esteem, your mental well-being is centered on what you do. It’s tough – I’ve been there. Of course, it is a big difference between you and I being unemployed than coaches and players being out of work. They have one helluva lot more money that you and I do.
One of my long term targets has been Northwestern University Football Offensive Coordinator Mick McCall. He has overseen the least inventive offense in the nation over the past several years. If it weren’t for the superhuman efforts of graduated running back Justin Jackson (now with the NFL Los Angeles Chargers), McCall would have been fired long ago. At games I often yell at Athletic Director Jim “I’m a hardass, I don’t wear a jacket at games” Phillips to fire McCall, sometimes to do it at halftime. My standard response is “does he have naked pictures of someone?”
This is not another anti-McCall diatribe however. This is about Dallas Cowboys Head Coach Jason Garrett. As coach to “America’s (Most Hated?) Team,” Garrett should be on the hot seat for losing his job almost every week. Now in his ninth season with the team, with only two years of playoff appearances, no Super Bowl appearances, much less wins, and the team mired in third place in the NFC East, ahead of the woeful New York Giants, Owner Jerry Jones not only hasn’t fired Garrett, he keeps giving him votes of confidence.
This is VERY surprising since Jones, as owner and GM, is all about winning. Considering that he got rid of Super Bowl winning coaches Jimmy Johnson and Barry Switzer, and has run the likes of Chan Gailey and Wade Phillips (no relation to Jim Phillips) out of town fast, one has to wonder how Garrett remains employed. I don’t necessarily think that Garrett has done a horrible job, just kind of “meh,” which doesn’t usually play well in the NFL, especially not in Big D.
Jones however, as mercurial as his friend Donald Trump, does not have infinite patience (in fact, I would think that the two men’s patience could be measured on the head of a pin, and still have plenty of room left). Considering the reputation Jones has for boorish behavior, bordering at times on sexual harassment (I just finished reading the book Big Game – The NFL in Dangerous Times by Mark Leibovich which told some stories about Jones that were illuminating but not very flattering), one has to wonder how Garrett keeps his job?

One would think that after leading a team to 3 Stanley Cup Championships in 10 years, doubling the total in the nearly 100 year history of the franchise, it would take more than 1 bad year and a mediocre start for you to get fired, but that’s exactly what the Chicago Blackhawks did today. The team fired head coach Joel Quenneville and both of his assistants today, replacing him with the head coach of the Rockford affiliate, Jeremy Colliton.
The Hawks got off to a 6-2-2 start but lost 4 straight including being swept on a three-game West Coast swing through Vancouver, Edmonton and Calgary. This year’s team has been wildly inconsistent, riding on the goals of superstars Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane and the budding star Alex DeBrincat. However, the team’s puck possession numbers have shown the inconsistency, either up on nights they play well, and horrible on bad nights or against teams that can score (St. Louis, Tampa Bay, Toronto).
Now, I’m not in the locker room, so I cannot judge whether Quenneville had lost the locker room. That would be the only way in which I would have fired Q. Over his tenure in Chicago, I fault Quenneville for two things: we have never been able to score on the power play (but perhaps the franchise is snake bitten – they have never been great on the power play, at least since perhaps when Bobby Hull was playing here); and second, his impatience with young players, although he has been much better in this regard over the past 2 seasons.
To be honest, this was a move to try and save GM Stan Bowman’s job. While he did a great job bringing in talent to bolster the core when they were young, he has tried to fill gaps with older players who have not stepped up. Worse, Bowman has brought back players who were big parts of the championship teams, but with nothing left in the tank (Patrick Sharp, Johnny Oduya, among others). His big deal – trading scoring machine Artemi Panerin for former Hawk stalwart Brandon Saad has been a bust. Panarin is a defensive liability, but he can score in bunches, and he was happy in Chicago as he, Kane and Artem Anisimov were one of the most potent lines in the NHL.
Panarin and DeBrincat have shown superstar potential, but the other young players have not amounted to much either. And while it is admirable to reward players that were instrumental in your championships, Bowman overpaid for Brent Seabrook, and now the team is stuck with an A level contract for a third team defenseman. It is fairly evident that Quenneville did the very best with what he was given, but he wasn’t given very much other than aging stars with mediocre youngsters trying to fill the holes and still compete.
Plus, the new coach is younger than Duncan Keith; only a little older than Kane and Toews. Will the old guys listen to a young guy? Will this somehow light a fire under the underperforming young players?
Quenneville won’t be unemployed long. The seats of coaches on bad or underperforming teams just got very hot. There were rumors last summer that Bowman and Quenneville’s jobs were in jeopardy after missing the playoffs for the first time in 10 years, and the prevailing wisdom was that both would be out with another non-playoff performance this season.
Still, this is obviously a last ditch effort for Bowman to keep his job. Quenneville should have been given a chance to finish the season. Honestly, I think the Hawks fired the wrong guy. I’m surprised Rocky Wirtz and John McDonough went along with the plan.

This week, all three defendants in the first college basketball corruption trial were found guilty of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. A jury found James Gatto guilty on all three of his counts and Christian Dawkins and Merl Code were found guilty on both of theirs. Gatto is a former Adidas employee, Code a former consultant. Dawkins is a former aspiring sports agent.
One would think that the revelations disclosed in the trial and the outcome would stand to have widespread impact on college athletics in the coming months and years, be it in the continued reform of NCAA bylaws or by way of punishments against coaches and/or schools down the road. However, the trial has already been pushed to the inside of the sports section and somehow, I think the push for further reform will be muted in the coming months, just like every other money scandal has created a lot of noise at first, but then, nothing tangible or long term.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of New York successfully argued the trio of men defrauded the University of Louisville and the University of Kansas in the process of helping funnel recruits to those schools. In return, the men intended to later signing the prospects to endorsement deals.
“The jury was out three days, so obviously they thought about it, struggled with their decision,” Steve Haney, lawyer for Dawkins, told CBS Sports. “There’s a little bit of comfort knowing that we worked hard and made them think about what their verdict was going to be.” The attorneys representing Gatto and Code opted not to comment afterward. Dawkins and Code also declined comment when approached by CBS Sports.
The three men will report for sentencing on March 5, 2019. Until then, they’ll remain free and out on bond. Dawkins and Code are defendants in a second of three cases in this overarching saga. Each defendant plans to appeal the verdicts, though a timeline for that remains unclear. This case was potentially groundbreaking, as it established a violation of rules against a private organization (the NCAA) could amount to federal fraud. A lingering aspect of this trial was how the jury pool was established. Members of the jury were specifically picked based on their lack of knowledge regarding the NCAA and a general naiveté about the environment of college basketball.
On the other side, Judge Lewis A. Kaplan made it clear throughout the trial that the defense could not bring moral matters regarding NCAA rules on not paying amateur athletes into argument.
This is far from the last case in this wide ranging investigation. The next trial, which involves former Auburn assistant and NBA player Chuck Person, is scheduled to start in February. I hate to be a cynic, but corruption has been a part of college sports, especially football since the 1880s at least. Attempts to rein the rampant cash have been ineffective so far, although the major colleges allowing athletes to earn stipends to cover expenses and other incidentals. Still, that will not reduce the temptation to cash in on the billions earned by the NCAA.
I hope I’m wrong, but I doubt it.

I have never understood why sports leagues and college conferences stand so solidly behind their officials. Yes, officials and umpires and referees are human, and we all make mistakes, but it seems that refs are hardly ever reprimanded and almost never fired.
Long time readers know that I have been a vocal critic of the Big Ten Conference, who, I believe, field the worst football officials in the country. Mistakes are regularly made, and I’d like to see an analysis of the major college conferences as to how many times instant replay is used and how many times calls are overturned. Further, when coaches, players or staff openly blast officials, the conferences and leagues dish out big money and other penalties, as if saying “how dare you question our referees!”
So, it is refreshing to see that the NFL, or at very least Al Riveron, the NFL senior VP of officiating, take a very firm stand on an official who made an egregious error. Last weekend, an obvious, horrendous missed false start call should have nullified a Chargers touchdown against the Browns. It was so wrong, the fans, announcers, players, coaches, everyone screamed foul. (It should be said that the call probably didn’t change the game too much, with the Chargers winning 38-14, but the league has to defend integrity and fair play, otherwise NFL games becomes WWE Wrestling.
The call was the responsibility of the down judge (a position that was renamed from head linesman beginning in 2017), who is positioned at the line of scrimmage on the near sideline. The down judge in that game was Hugo Cruz who has been employed by the NFL since 2015. Cruz has been fired by the league, effective immediately. Sources say that it wasn’t just one call that got Cruz fired; according to a couple of sources to a website called Football Zebras, Cruz was reportedly not “maintaining a very high level of performance over a sustained period,” while another said in March that Cruz’s future with the league was already in jeopardy. This is partially borne out by his lack of postseason assignments for the two seasons he would have qualified for, not counting assignment as an alternate last season.
Cruz is a former Conference USA official, who joined the NFL in 2015. He was assigned to Carl Cheffers’s crew this year, but weirdly, worked on other crews for three of his six games.
Cruz is reportedly the first official to be fired mid-season since the merger, and just two officials have been fired over the last decade. (Those two are side judge Keith Parham, in the 2014 offseason, and side judge Jimmy DeBell in 2015. Though this obviously doesn’t count those officials who have been encouraged to step down or retire than be outright fired.)
One of the old chestnuts that football coaches, commissioners and broadcasters pull out all the time is that sports “builds accountability,” and yes, coaches and players are often instantly accountable for actions on and off the field, and they should be. However, there are a lot of officials drawing paychecks who are inept or incompetent and nothing ever seems to happen to them. They remain on the fields, courts and rinks despite the fact that there are lots of instances where it can be shown that they make bad calls, makeup calls, or calls not based on the game, but on the team or to send a message to a particular player.
To a great extent, instant replay should help umpires and referees and coaches, saving them from themselves. The key is to get the calls correct, no matter what and no matter who the teams or situations are. Let me say here that I am not ranting simply because a team I follow doesn’t a call or appear to hardly ever get calls. When I am yelling at the officials at Big Ten games especially, I complain when Northwestern gets a bad call. My thinking is that these young men are exerting maximum effort to compete, often risking their lives and health; the least the conference should do is make sure the athletes, not to mention the coaches and fans deserve the very best officials.
It is rumored that Cruz’ firing was an attempt by Riverton to exert some control over the officials because the uproar over the roughing the passer calls and catch/no catch rules from previous years places Riverton on the hot seat. Perhaps – whatever it takes.
Of course the NFL Referees’ Union has filed a grievance, but this is one of the things that lowers people’s opinions about unions – they shouldn’t have to stand behind a member if he or she is proven incompetent. This is one call that shouldn’t be overturned.

The NHL season starts tomorrow night, and, as usual, I’m excited with the fact that hockey is back. However, after finishing last in the NHL Central Division, the Blackhawks are no longer the Stanley Cup Contender that they’ve been for the past decade. Age, young players not stepping up, and mostly the fact that the team’s core have played a ton of hockey over that stretch finally caught up to them.
Their birth certificates may say that Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane are 30; Duncan Keith is 35; Brent Seabrook is 33, but in terms of games played, you can probably add some 2-3 years to all of them. It was inevitable – every great team falls to Earth after having success. I thought that it would take longer for the Hawks, but it hasn’t. The retirement of Marian Hossa hasn’t helped, and other than Alex DeBrincat, the other young players have not matured into top level NHL players.
What will be interesting is how the fans react? After years of success and 10 years of sellouts, suddenly there are tickets available for every game almost. I do not think that the sellout streak will end, Chicagoans love their hockey, but Blackhawks fans are spoiled. I saw fans expecting the Hawks to come in and win games just on talent and because they always had. I said to my friends that the fans should appreciate the winning, because it can’t last forever.
Those of us who remember “the bad old days” of the 1990s when the team was an afterthought know how bad it can get. When the team couldn’t give away tickets; when my friend Tom and I were seemingly the only people in our 300 section, right at the blue line; games where we were reading the newspaper during play. It was horrible.
I also am asking myself how I will react? I have been one of the most rabid fans over this period. I spent much money on all kinds of swag after each Stanley Cup title. How will I react to a potentially mediocre team? Time will tell, I guess.
It’s been a helluva run. I hope the young guys mature in a hurry and give us something to cheer for. Either way, they’re my boys.
Go Hawks!