I have yet to say anything on the Erin Andrews civil suit against a stalker and the hotel she stayed in when the stalker took nude video of the sideline analyst and posted it on the internet. Before we get to the ugly details of the case, let me give my own biases.
First, I believe that the sideline reporter is the worst invention in football broadcasting history. First, they are generally superfluous, giving injury reports mere seconds before the team gives it to the rest of the press. Generally, their interviews of players and coaches add very little to understanding or enjoyment of the game. That said, I have always said that I have nothing against women sports broadcasters as long as they are knowledgeable. Yes, attractiveness is fine, but Suzy Kolber and studio hosts like Linda Kohn know their sports and I respect them as much as any man on the air.
Yes, Erin Andrews is very attractive, but I’ve never considered her particularly knowledgeable. She’s a talking head, and I always get the impression that she is well aware of how attractive she is, and is more than a bit condescending as a result. Still, she does not deserve to be treated the way she was in this incident.
First of course is the invasion of privacy and feelings of being violated. For that, the stalker should be liable for all of the $75 million Ms. Andrews is asking for, if that is, he had the money to pay. Ms. Andrews however, has been violated on all sides here – by the Nashville hotel she is suing and even her employer, ESPN. The hotel’s “defense” such as it is, is that didn’t she get more publicity from the incident, which she has turned into a greater role on broadcasts for more money and more money from endorsements. In the age old pattern of victim-shaming, the hotel is blaming Ms. Andrews for being violated.
If that wasn’t sickening enough, her employer, “the Worldwide Leader in Sports” wouldn’t allow she to go back on the air until she had granted the network an exclusive interview about the incident. I guess we shouldn’t expect too much from ESPN since according to “These Guys Have All The Fun: Inside The World of ESPN” by James Andrew Miller, childish behavior has been the norm at the network for years, including putdowns, words, and actions towards women straight out of Animal House that came very close to sexual harassment. Instead of getting the young women help, they played it up for ratings.
I find myself writing “there are no winners” very often on this page, and here is another situation in which this fits. I had hoped that Ms. Andrews got more than the $75 million she’s suing for; The jury

Rumors have been floating around Peyton Manning ever since he quarterbacked the Broncos to victory in Super Bowl 50 – would he return and would he be returning to Denver? The likelihood of returned to the Broncos was considered a long shot since John Elway and the team seem confident in last year’s backup turned starter in Manning’s absence Brock Osweiler. Making this even more urgent – Osweiler is a free agent and the Houston Texans are making a competitive bid in both guaranteed money and per-year average salary as Denver.
And Manning, just shy of 40 years of age, did not play up to his Hall of Fame level – in 10 regular season games, he completed 59.8% of his passes, compared to the 65.3% career average for 2,249 yards or 6.8 yards per completion, almost a yard below his average. Worst of all, he threw 9 TDs and 17 interceptions for a QB rating of 67.9 compared to his 96.5 career average. Despite this, there were rumors that Manning wanted to play one more year, and the St. Louis/Los Angeles Rams were said to be interested. Even a depleted Peyton Manning would be better than many QBs, plus, he would be excellent as a QB coach to a young player.
Peyton Manning has an ego though and the performance issues are probably too great to continue, but there are other things that will end with Manning’s retirement.
There will be no real need for the NFL to continue its investigation of allegations that Manning took PEDs. Yes, the Al Jazeera investigation was roundly denounced with even the main source recanting his comments. But the way Manning threw his wife under the bus was unseemly. Also, Manning hopes that this will bring to an end the reinvestigation of a sexual assault, scandal, cover-up and smear campaign that occurred while Manning was at Tennessee. Manning, his father, Hall of famer Archie Manning and the school tarnished the good name of Dr. Jamie Naughrigh, a respected professor and trainer of some of the best athletes in the world.
It has been rumored that when the rumors of Manning’s retirement surfaced, many of the television networks have been clamoring for his services. I don’t think Manning would be a very interesting analyst, but moreover, I wouldn’t be able to stomach him as a result of the allegations as well as his well known financial and personal relationship with Papa John’s pizza CEO John Schnatter. I have long railed against this piece of human excrement who fights against giving his worker a living wage and health care, and with Manning owning over 20 franchises, I don’t see him being an advocate for anyone other then Peyton Manning.
Manning has had a Hall of Fame career, there’s no doubt about that. His enshrinement in Canton is guaranteed. Like many public figures however, there’s another side of Peyton Manning – one that’s not too flattering. If he remains in the public eye, the extremely ugly Tennessee situation and the PED rumors will always dog his memory. With his retirement however, the PED investigations at least by the NFL will end. For some of us however, the stink will always be there.

Months ago, I stated that the University of Illinois was making a mistake permanently hiring Bill Cubit as its head football coach after the school fired Tim Beckman. I don’t know Cubit and I think he did a decent job last season, but amidst the allegations of racial inequality on many of the school’s athletic teams and the investigation that proved that Beckman, besides fielding non-winning teams, tried to keep injured players from getting medical attention and tried to get players to play through injuries that were serious.
I said in December of last year that the school needed a clean sweep of the athletic department. The school had been searching for some time for a new Athletic Director and last week, they hired a young one – 37-year-old Josh Whitman, a former player at Illinois. Whitman didn’t waste any time – firing Cubit and moved quickly to hire former Chicago Bear head coach Lovie Smith.
Smith, who was surprisingly fired by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers after two seasons during which the team showed significant improvement, spent nine years as coach of the Bears during which time, the team went 81-63 and made three playoff appearances and one Super Bowl appearance, losing to the Indianapolis Colts.
Smith has never been a college head coach – he was an assistant at Tulsa, Arizona State, Tennessee and Ohio State among others from 1983 until becoming an NFL assistant with Tampa Bay in 1996. Automatically, Smith’s hiring brings a big name to Champaign-Urbana, at least in the Midwest. A big selling point is the fact that a player with NFL ambitions gets a chance to play under a former NFL head coach. (There are stories that Smith wants to bring former Bear standout player and Vikings head coach Leslie Frazier with him as defensive coordinator – this would bring even more credibility to the program.)
However, Smith comes off as laconic, which could hurt him in recruiting. A lot of coaches are “rah-rah” guys- upbeat, high energy. Plus, the facilities are poor and need a major upgrade. Often the external look of the facilities has a major impact on young athletes, and Illinois’ is among the worst in the Big Ten (a spot that had been held by Northwestern for too many years, but ground has been broken on a new state of the art athletic center).
Still, Smith stands to be a huge upgrade over the coaches Illinois has had over the last couple of decades. Of course, this isn’t the first Bear coach to be hired at Illinois. Ron Turner was Bear offensive coordinator who lead the Illini to a 20-44 record from 1997-2004. Obviously, it remains to be seen if Smith will do better or worse than his predecessors. I wish Smith a lot of success except for the games Illinois plays against Northwestern.

At first, when I heard that tennis star Maria Sharapova was having an “important” press conference today, I thought the 28-year-old top 10 player was announcing her retirement. It would not have been too surprising considering that players often burn out of the grind at Ms. Sharapova’s age (Bjorn Borg walked away at 27 for example). Besides, she has numerous businesses that should support the young woman for a very long time. Moreover, she has suffered numerous injuries over the past few years that has limited her ability to play and may help keep her from beating the very top players in the sport, especially Serena Williams who seems to own Sharapova. The true reason is more surprising,
Ms. Sharapova announced that she failed a drug test at the Australian Open. Sharapova said she tested positive for meldonium, which she has been taking for 10 years for health issues, but she says that she was unaware of its recent addition to the banned-substance list generated by the World Anti-Doping Agency. Meldonium only became a banned substance this year. So far, the WTA has not announced a penalty.
Ms. Sharapova said she has been taking it since 2006 for a magnesium deficiency, a family history of diabetes, and an irregular EKG. Earlier today, Russian ice dancer Ekaterina Bobrova announced she had also tested positive for meldonium at the 2016 European Figure Skating Championships.
Not knowing or having heard of this drug, I looked it up and Wikipedia had the following entry: “Meldonium is a clinically used anti-ischemic drug that is currently manufactured and marketed by Grindeks, a pharmaceutical company based in Latvia. It is used in Lithuania and the Russian Federation, but is not approved by the Food and Drug Administration for use in the United States.”
Meldonium is clinically used to treat angina and myocardial infarction The first clinical trial testing the efficacy of using a combination of meldonium and lisinopril, an angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitor, to treat chronic heart failure was reported in 2005. Ok – my next question is: what advantage would one get from a heart drug? Wouldn’t it speed up your heart and cause harm? Well, the 2005 report demonstrated that the combined treatment of meldonium and lisinopril may improve the quality of life, exercise capacity and mechanisms of peripheral circulation of patients with chronic heart failure.
There it is – increased exercise capacity. If you can practice harder and have greater circulation during a match, you may be able to pump more oxygen to the body, you would perform better. Now, it is not my place to investigate Ms. Sharapova, using the old quote about Richard Nixon, “what did she know and when did she know it?” That’s for the authorities to determine. Since the substance was only recently banned, I don’t think much of a punishment is warranted. And Sharapova is once again sidelined, this time with a forearm injury, and she hasn’t competed since losing to Serena Williams in the quarterfinals of the Australian Open in January.
Still, it may be an example of athletes trying to gain any advantage possible.

You may remember that, upset that Northwesten Head Coach Pat Fitzgerald retained all of the assistant coaches including the incompetent (in my opinion) Offensive Coordinator Mick McCall, I posted here, wrote on Facebook, and even called Fitzgerald’s office to complain.
After he commented about the faceless complainers, I decided to use snail mail to make my comments known. (I posted the letter in its entirety here last week.)
I thought that the letter would get thrown in the circular file, but I did give him my address, phone numbers, e-mail – every possible way to contact me, even though I didn’t think he would.
Well, to my surprise and to his credit, I got a card from Fitzgerald today. I am posting it here in its entirety…

Tony,

Thank you for your note and sharing your thoughts! I appreciate and respect your opinion – but I believe in our people and our plan! We will be improved in the future and I look forward to you enjoying it! Your season tickets support the best student athletes and program in the country!

Thank you!

Go Cats!
PF

Again, I give credit to Fitzgerald for replying. Still, I have no faith that the offense will improve under McCall and if it’s doesn’t, Fitzgerald’s job should be in jeopardy also.
Time will tell.

Derrick Rose is from Chicago. He grew up less than a mile from where I grew up. If you grow up in Chicago, you know that for all of the capital markets and Magnificent Mile, and North Shore suburbs, Chicago has a blue collar, lunch-bucket, work hard mentality. Especially in their sports, Chicago fans revere hard work and sacrifice. Giving one’s all, no matter what, is what fans cherish more than anything. That includes playing injured. Dick Butkus playing on bad knees for years; Duncan Keith getting hit in the mouth with a puck in a Stanley Cup playoff game and coming back and playing in that game; Michael Jordan playing a crucial NBA Final game with food poisoning.
Which brings me back to Derrick Rose. Rose’s injury history is well known – three serious knee surgeries which caused him to lose over two full seasons and has caused him and the team to be very careful with his playing time. Of course, the injuries started after Rose earned an NBA MVP award and signed a $94 million + contract, which, fortunately for the Bulls, expires after this season.
Rose, the local kid from Englewood, already caught flak from the fans over his brittleness, earlier this season said that his main focus was to play well in order to get another big contract. Now, even if this is true, there are times when brutal honesty is not the smartest thing to say publicly. Since the Bulls have finished just short of an NBA Finals berth over the past few years, with the emergence of Jimmy Butler as a second All Star player on the roster, die hard Bulls fans who have had nothing but bleak years interspersed with hope since Michael Jordan left town, are hungry for another championship.
The Bulls have always been centers of controversy – the old team vs. then-GM Jerry Krause, the soap opera that was the current Bulls’ front office vs. old coach Tom Thibodeau, and now new coach Fred Hoiberg at first being weak on defense, which was a strength under Thibodeau, and now inconsistent play and a team that was expected to contend for a championship is fighting for a playoff berth.
An injury to Butler has not helped, but Rose, the former MVP was supposed to step up and lead the team, but it hasn’t happened. Difficulties between Butler and Rose, holders of the biggest contracts on the team was to be expected over who’s the true leader on the team. Rose’s quiet demeanor make Butler the natural choice, but Rose is the more senior veteran.
Over the last two weeks however, Rose’s absences have been sudden and a PR nightmare. Rose pulled himself out of a game a couple of weeks ago due to “general soreness.” A sleight hamstring injury has made Rose a “game time decision” every time out. Meanwhile, the Bulls are barely above .500 at 30-28, but only 3 games out of fourth position in the NBA Eastern Conference. This is important because the top four teams get home court in the first round of the playoffs.
Yes, the Bulls have 24 games remaining, and while Golden State appears to be running away with this entire season, anything can happen. With Butler injured, Rose is more important than ever. No one wants him to play hurt, but fans want players to at least act like they care. Rose’s injuries are obviously not serious enough for him to go on injured reserve, and the Bulls need victories. Jordan certainly had small injuries and dings, but he played every game except when seriously hurt. Hockey players are hurt all the time and keep playing, but Derrick Rose is showing his selfishness.
Rose says that he is only concerned for his next big contract – between the injuries and his behavior and attitude a team would be foolish to sign him to any deal that isn’t based on performance goals and targets. Either way, he sure isn’t going to get another big contract in Chicago.

So, we have seen the show and it’s the day after. Those who were at the show might now just be waking up, or they’re still partying. First, the show: I thought Chris Rock did a very good job of hosting the show in the midst of the Oscars So White controversy. It stated the case very well while also taking swipes at the stars who boycotted the awards, My only complaint was that the Girl Scouts bit wasn’t that good; good cause however. Some of the filmed pieces were funny like the black people who didn’t know any of the nominated movies, and the Black History Month tribute to Jack Black was hilarious. The Stacey Dash appearance was awkward and unfunny.
The rest of the show was OK, especially the appearance of Vice President Joe Biden, his remarks about saying no to sexual abuse by pledging to step in when it is seen and to stop blaming the victims. Then Lady Gaga’s rendition of her nominated song about victims surrounded by people who had been attacked was stirring and emotional. I also liked the “Thank You” scroll at the bottom of the screen so that people could thank who they wanted and rarely go over the .40 limit. (One winner thought that it would be projected on the screen somewhere so that people could see they were thanked in person. An improvement for next year perhaps?)
Now the awards; last week I posted my predictions and preferences and, as usual, I did fairly well, but far from perfect.
The first sign that it was going to be a relatively unpredictable night was when Alicia Vikander won Best Supporting Actress for The Danish Girl. As I wrote before, despite being an Anglophile, this movie just didn’t interest me. I have nothing against transgender people, but this story didn’t catch my interest. I preferred Jennifer Jason Leigh for The Hateful Eight, but didn’t think she had a chance and I was right. I predicted that Rooney Mara of “Carol” would win.
Like most people, I thought that Sylvester Stallone would win for “Creed.” The Academy loves to reward older actors who have never won in the supporting actor category. I wrote that only Mark Rylance in “Bridge of Spies” had any chance of beating Stallone, and on that, I was right. I thought Stallone would win, but my favorite performance won the day.
Inside Out was the big favorite in the Best Animated category: I picked it and so did the Academy. Same can be said for Brie Larson, who won Best Actress for Room. It was cool that she thanked the Sundance and Toronto Film Festivals for building the buzz for the film – the first time I can remember TIFF mentioned. Leonardo DeCaprio won for The Revenant as expected. I thought that the Academy wouldn’t choose Alejandro G. Inarritu fort he second year in a row, but I should have known, since the film was made in the toughest of conditions, that he would win. I said it was a toss up between Mr. Inarritu and Tom McCarthy for Spotlight. I was still rooting for George Miller, but I guess we will have to settle for six technical awards for Mad Max: Fury Road.
With the Best Actor and Best Director awards, I thought that it was fait accompli that it would win Best Picture, but I admit I was big time surprised when Morgan Freeman announced the film I picked: Spotlight. I think I gasped out loud – I was waiting for the REAL auditors from PWC (there was an earlier bit where three kids played the auditors) would run out, tell Mr. Freeman to stop with his Steve Harvey imitation and proclaim DiCaprio and Inarritu the winners, but it never happened, so I guess it was legit. It was the better film, in my opinion.
So, a few surprises, and the Academy generally did pretty well in picking “the White People’s Choice Awards,” as Mr. Rock called them. Let’s see what the films are like this year – hopefully there will be some Oscar worthy parts for minorities in 2016 (notice I said parts, because I’m sure given the opportunity, the actors will be great).