No matter what happens on Saturday at the Wimbledon Women’s Singles Title between Serena Williams and Garbine Muguruza, it is long past time for everyone to marvel at the career of the youngest Williams sister. At 33, an age when athletes in many sports are on the downside of their careers, Ms. Williams is one match away from winning all three of the Grand Slam Tournaments in 2015: Australia, the French Open and now Wimbledon; leaving only the U.S. Open between her and a calendar year Grand Slam, the first woman to do so since Steffi Graf did it in 1988 and only the fourth woman to do so in history (the other two being Maureen Connolly Brinker and Margaret Court). Serena already owns a Career Grand Slam many times over).
At 20 Grand Slam Titles (potentially 21 depending on what happens on Saturday), she trails only Ms. Graf (22) and Ms. Court (24) for most Grand Slam Singles Titles all time.
Serena started in the shadow of her older sister Venus, blasting on the scene in 1995, but the two prevailed over poverty, playing on hard public courts in Houston, and an “interesting” family dynamic to shoot to the top in the tennis world, a world which has always been elitist and predominantly white. Back at the beginning, father Richard Williams and other said that the shorter, more muscular Serena would be a better player than the lanky, angular Venus. At first, this looked like a long shot as Venus won more Grand Slams early in their careers. Then the younger sister matured and became the better player with a dominant base line game with powerful ground strokes and perhaps the best serve in women’s tennis all time.
We should also marvel at Serena’s ability to overcome many trials and tribulations. Celebrity attention, a powerful sex symbol off the court, and numerous injuries including a nearly life threatening hematoma and pulmonary embolism in 2011 were just some of the things that Ms. Williams faced over the years.
The smart money is not to be against Serena on Saturday morning, especially after fighting back in two matches where she was two points from losing, ending the Slam bid. But fight she did, and after dispatching Maria Sharapova for the 17th consecutive time 6-4, 6-2 in the semi-finals, it appears that it will take a superhuman effort from Ms. Muguruza or a total collapse to stop Serena.
Often, it takes a very long time to appreciate what we have, even among sports stars. Someone from the past was better, especially someone idolized in one’s youth, blind you of the here and now. This may be particularly true of African-Americans in “traditionally non-African-American” dominated sports. The Williams family is far from the Huxtables: rougher, more street wise; very unapologetically “black.” Ms. Williams has had famous partners and lots of rumored boyfriends, but she has kept her private life private. Her one passion outside of tennis has been fashion, designing many of her outfits: sometimes nice, sometimes a bit garish.
So, if we haven’t done it yet, it is long past time to appreciate Serena Williams and proclaim her as one of the top 3 players of all time if now the GOAT (Greatest Of All Time). Better than Martina (who recently said that Serena was the best), Chrissie, Billie Jean perhaps even Ms. Graf and Margaret Court.
So, if you, like me, watch the Wimbledon Final this Saturday morning, realize what we’re watching and appreciate truly one of the greatest athletes of our time, perhaps of all time. Let’s do it before she is gone from the scene.

I have spent much of my time following the NHL draft and free agent saga, especially involvign the defending Stanley Cup champion Blackhawks. At the same time however, the NBA has been going through a similar turmoil: who will play where; which teams will be going from pretenders to contenders and vice versa. For the first time though, we see a real sell job to a free agent.
Los Angeles Clipper forward DeAndre Jordan was one of the prize unrestricted free agents on the market. The long suffering Clippers played through the Donald Sterling controversy and team sale to come within just a few wins from the team’s first NBA Championship. One of the main issues to the team was to keep the team’s core: Chris Paul, Jordan, Blake Griffin, J.J. Redick and Paul Pierce together to make another run at a title.
Jordan however agreed to terms with the Dallas Mavericks on July 3: a four year deal valued at $80 million. However, unlike the other major sports, free agents can be approached and negotiated with but no one is allowed to sign a contract until midnight tonight, giving other teams, including the player’s original team a chance to pitch them. This is exactly what happened, with a Clippers contingent consisting of head coach Doc Rivers, owner Steve Ballmer, Paul, Griffin, Redick and Pierce all traveling to Jordan’s Houston home to meet with the center. So, reports are that Jordan changed his mind and will sign with the Clippers for the same four years, but at $88 million. (It was also said that Jordan’s agent steered him toward the Mavericks, which is in Jordan’s home state, but this cannot be substantiated.)
Reportedly, Mavericks’ outspoken owner and “infant terrible” Mark Cuban isn’t happy about the full court press to what was his prized free agent acquisition. It was important for Dallas to get younger with future Hall of Famer Dirk Nowitszki on the downside of his career. (Of course, there will be many people happy to see Cuban come up empty.) In Los Angeles, however, with few players willing to sign with the Lakers anymore, the Clippers are the hot ticket in town and it looks like they will be in position to make another run at a championship.
If they do win, it sounds like it took a plot from Ian Fleming or Robert Ludlum or John Le’ Carre to get their man.

I haven’t written much here on the Bill Cosby saga, mostly because there’s very little that I felt I could add. I never doubted the women at all; many of them were telling their stories with no financial upside and no possibility of criminal charges because the statue of limitations had past. Cosby, always most eloquent in comedy routines and lectures on what black people should be doing to improve their lot in life, gave illogical and nonsensical explanations, some himself and others through his attorneys.
Still, the court of public opinion could not fully convict without a smoking gun, but the released testimony that Cosby gave in 2005 saying that he had bought Quaaludes to give to women to drug them for sex was exactly that smoking gun. This testimony had been part of a previous lawsuit whose proceedings and final dispensation had been sealed since that time, but was uncovered as part of current litigation against Cosby. It pretty much closes the door on Cosby’s career and legacy. Already one cable network has pulled the plug on reruns of “The Cosby Show.” I’m sure more will follow. Stand-up tours are over since he will (and should) be confronted with protesters at every location. There is already the one lawsuit; more will follow. Cosby’s fortune will shrink, especially if wife Camille, who has been openly supportive of her husband in the past, changes her tune now that testimony has been presented in open court (but previously sealed) of his misdeeds.
When I was growing up, comedy albums were a staple of entertainment. Richard Pryor, Franklin Ajaye, Monty Python, Firesign Theater and Cheech and Chong, were staples of my collection. I have had many laughs as a result of these records. And I have five Bill Cosby albums; what do I do with them now? As the father of two girls, I cannot ignore his actions. I can ignore his television shows since I watch little television anyway. What positive things Cosby has done are now reduced to rubble.
I haven’t listened to albums in years, the Cosby albums are in the basement. I am a pack rat; I throw away things sparingly. I don’t have time to go looking for them, so they will stay n the basement for the foreseeable future. But what will be my reaction when I do uncover them? Will revulsion eliminate the nostalgia of those old albums?

In this country, people actually paid attention to women’s soccer as a result of the run by the U.S. team. In a record-shattering World Cup final, the U.S. Women’s soccer team beat Japan 5-2 last Sunday, and even I, soccer ignoramus, watched the first 15 minutes in which the U.S. women blitzkrieg’d Japan with four goals in that period including a hat trick by Carli Lloyd. The victory avenged a loss to Japan on extra kicks at the last Women’s World Cup. They were able to get the monkey off their backs from the 1999 winning team, to whom every team had been compared to prior to now.
I’m not here however to talk about the tournament. I would like to take a moment to mention that for their win, the U.S. team will earn $2 million. This is a goodly sum, but a pittance with compared with what the men earned. At the 2014 Men’s World Cup, Germany received $35 million, and the U.S. Men’s team won $8 million after losing in Round 16. Last year, $576 million was set aside for Men’s World Cup rewards. This year, a total of $15 million in prizes was available for the Women’s World Cup.
Why the paltry sum for FIFA’s female champions? Internationally renowned corrupt organization FIFA has argued that the Women’s World Cup doesn’t pull generate as much revenue as the men. In December, the soccer organization’s secretary general Jerome Valcke told The Guardian: “We played the [20th] men’s World Cup in 2014, when we are now playing the seventh women’s World Cup. We have still another [13] World Cups before potentially women should receive the same amount as men. The men waited until 2014 to receive as much money as they received.”
What nonsense? Because there have been fewer women’s tournaments, they shouldn’t get paid the same until they have played as many World Cup’s as the men? So, when the women are playing their 20th World Cup, they should then get paid what men are getting paid? For the 20th Men’s Cup or the 33rd Cup?
But this isn’t the only way in which women are treated as second class citizens by FIFA. Much of the tournament was played on artificial turf, despite the fact that the grass seed exported to Brazil for the Men’s World Cup final came from Canada. And reportedly, it was nearly impossible to figure out the Women’s World Cup schedule ahead of its start. Days before, FIFA featured information about the 2018 Men’s World Cup in Russia, rather than highlighting the Women’s World Cup.
Of course, the leadership of FIFA have much bigger issues to confront, like staying out of jail for the $150 million already under investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice and the Swiss government. Still, FIFA’s 19th Century attitude about money, women, and corruption has come to the fore. Of course, no one is being forthcoming with the actual revenue figures, and while it’s probably true that the men generate more revenue, exactly how much more we may never know.
Besides, in American colleges and universities, the revenue sports subsidize the non-revenue sports, so why can’t the men’s game help subsidize the women’s game?
I congratulate the U.S. Women’s Team on their victory and all of the other teams as well. I just shake my head once again at FIFA. Are there mousetraps big enough to catch all of the rodents that infect that organization?

I am going to take a couple of days off from the site, but I would like to wish everyone a safe and happy July 4th holiday. With the Confereate Flag going away, the Affordable Care Act standing the test of a frivolous lawsuit that went all the way to the Supreme Court, and of course, the legalization of same-sex marriage, there is a lot to be proud of this year. The forces of inertia, the status quo, bigotry, hatred, ignorence and violence remain, but like dying animals fighting desperately for life in the face of certain death, the road looks darkest before the dawn.
Dawn is coming.

The tight end position has evolved over my lifetime. When I first started watching football, the tight end was mostly a blocker whose very presence formed the “strong side” of the offense. The 1960s tight end caught passes occasionally, usually as a safety valve as the rush started getting to the quarterback.
Jump cut to now, when the tight end position is split between catching tight ends, who can’t or don’t block much, and blocking tight ends, who are much more like the tight ends of old. The receiving tight ends run like big wide receivers, speedy with good hands and excellent route runners. The best tight ends create nightmares for the defense: too fast to be covered by linebackers and too big and strong to be covered by strong safeties.
Like anything in this life, change takes time, but we can never forget the people who brought change forward. In the tight end ranks, one of the pioneers in pass receiving has to be Charlie Sanders. He played 10 years for the Detroit Lions and when he left, he held the Lions pass receiving record. As a Bear fan, I hated to see the Lions come in, because Sanders would just kill us. Big with great hands, Sanders would run in the middle of the field and when the defense focused on the wide receivers, the ball would find its way out of the quarterback’s hands in into Sanders’.
Mike Ditka, John Mackey and Jackie Smith were the prototypes: men who could block like a tackle, but could come out of the backfield and catch passes. Charlie Sanders was in the next wave, playing from 1968-1977, catching 336 passes for 4,817 yards and 31 touchdowns. Today, that doesn’t sound like much, but in those days, before Kellen Winslow and Ozzie Newsome opened up offenses even more, leading to today’s Jason Wittens and Ron Gronkowskis, that was a lot of passes.
And Mr. Sanders was a quiet, unassuming man. There was no chest pounding, “look at me” stuff going on, but everyone knew his worth. He was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2007. We lost Charlie Sanders yesterday to cancer at the age of 68. He was an incredible player and competitor.
One of Mr. Sanders’ descendents is the San Diego Chargers’ Antonio Gates. Big, strong, fast – he is one of today’s best tight ends. Last season, he caught 69 passes for 821 yards and 12 touchdowns, and in his 12 season career thus far,, he is the Chargers’ all-time leader in receptions (788), receiving yards (10,014) and receiving TDs (99).
In a pivotal season for the Chargers as the team is at a crossroads: perennial contenders who have mostly underachieved, another non playoff season may force the team to make hard decisions on the team’s future and its current nucleus, especially quarterback Phillip Rivers.
The NFL announced that the Chargers will have to do without Gates’ services for the first four games of next season as he tested positive for a banned substance. The 35-year-old tight end is entering the final year of his contract with San Diego, and now this will be a shortened season.
Gates probably will enter Canton one day, and if he does, he should give credit to Mackey and Ditka and Sanders for lighting the way.

No one could have foreseen that the election of Barack Obama six years ago would have brought out the absolute worst in a great number of people in this country. I thought that people would get on with their lives and while there would be some opposition, the country would come to accept it. Unfortunately, the bigotry is so deep in this country, that the two time election of the first African-American Chief Executive would create a divide so deep, so scarring, and so polarizing that everything the president has accomplished has been despite the efforts of other people.
And I think that the police shootings and beating of unarmed black men, the murder of the nine churchgoers in Charlotte, the black churches being burned are all part of this push by the privileged and most bigoted to resist the inevitable change that has to occur to move this country forward.
It is in that light that I view the latest incident of alleged wrongdoing. This week, seven former Illinois women’s basketball players filed a $10 million federal lawsuit against the university, alleging coach Matt Bollant and former assistant Mike Divilbiss created a racially hostile environment. The suit also names athletic director Mike Thomas for not addressing the issues.
The suit was filed in federal court in Urbana by former players Amarah Coleman, Alexis Smith, Taylor Tuck, Nia Oden, Sarah Livingston, Taylor Gleason and Jacqui Grant and alleges that the university violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The allegations include: Coaches holding segregated practices and travel accommodations. The coaches reportedly calling black Illini players and opponents derogatory names such as “West Side ghetto,” and describing them as “undisciplined” and “unintelligent.” The coaches used more severe discipline for black players than white players, and calling black players “crabs,” describing them as dragging each other down much like crabs trying to crawl out of a bucket.
The lawsuit is the second filed against Illinois in the last month, including a case brought by former soccer player Casey Conine alleging the coaching and medical staff mishandled her concussion. The university has also faced scrutiny after football player Simon Cvijanovic and other former players alleged Coach Tim Beckman and the medical staff mistreated players. However, it should be noted that the other allegations do not appear to have a racial motivation.
According to the story in the Chicago Tribune, last April, three basketball players’ parents sent letters to the university alleging the misconduct. The university launched another of those “internal investigations” which are actually attempts to clean up the mess/absolve the university/corporation of any liability. Of course, this kangaroo court reported that it found no violations of law or NCAA rules, but, as if by magic, Divilbiss left the program shortly after the investigation.
The university received another letter in May from the seven plaintiffs expressing their disappointment with the investigation. The university then hired Chicago law firm Pugh, Jones and Johnson to externally review claims of racial discrimination, but this week, the seven former players sued.
As I alluded to in the introduction to this piece, the only thing that makes me feel better is that there is nothing more aggressive than a dying animal. Forced with obvious death, an animal will fights its hardest just to survive. That, hopefully, is what we are seeing in the backlash over gay marriage, the open disrespect of the President of the United States; the uproar over the Confederate Flag; police finally being indicted for beating and murdering unarmed people of all races.
If the coaches did what is cited in this suit, they should never be allowed near students ever again, and if the University of Illinois is condoning abusive coaches (even just in silence) the university and its administration should be held accountable.