Feet of Clay: Did Elias Make a Mistake??

Statistical geeks such as myself generally bow down to the words “Elias Sports Bureau,” since that oft-cited agency is the gold standard for statistical accuracy and omnipotence in the world of sports. This is especially true where baseball is concerned. If you want to know the last time an Oklahoma-born second basemen named Fred with shin splints and a stubbly beard hit into a force play in five consecutive games batting lefthanded in the month of August, the guys at Elias will find that stat for you.

Sometimes it’s even annoying the stats Elias comes up with, their obscurity and/or irrelevance so remote that it bears recalling that presumably someone is actually getting PAID to look that stuff up. (Those of us who toil in a similar sports vineyard but hardly get paid much at all to exercise the same statistically geeky impulse can only imagine what an Elias statistician brings home every week. Besides a head full of useless but sometimes still very interesting information and factoids.)

As the esoteric facts get revealed in baseball game accounts with increasing regularity, it has occurred to me that the Elias folks at some point must have lurched headlong into the computer age with sophisticated metrics and search enginery that makes looking up the improbable oh so very possible. The other possibility--that there’s a small army of bespectacled, socially awkward and hermitlike nerds sitting in little cubicles at an office in New York City constantly looking up the facts using PCs and books and only their brains--just can’t be right.

But last night, in ESPN.com’s reprinted Associated Press account of the game between the Indians and Orioles, we read this:

According to the Elias Sports Bureau, [Zach] Britton is the first Orioles pitcher to allow just one earned run in his first two starts since Tom Phoebus, who did it in 1954 when the franchise was still in St. Louis.

Hmmm, thinks I... I remember Phoebus, but he played in the ’60s. Then I thought, was there ANOTHER Tom Phoebus, and was he on the 1954 St. Louis Browns, which the Orioles were before they moved to Baltimore?? As Miss Clavell used to say in the Madeline books, “Something’s not quite right...”

So I looked it up at Baseball-Reference.com. Sure enough, there was--and is--only one Tom Phoebus, and he played major league baseball from 1966-72, with the Orioles, Padres and Cubs. Phoebus was a decent pitcher, mainly a starter--56-52 lifetime, 3.33 ERA, 11 career shutouts, and he picked up a World Series ring with the 1970 Orioles. As for the 1954 reference, in fact that was the first year the Orioles played in Baltimore, so they were no longer in St. Louis by then. Needless to say, there was also no one named Tom Phoebus on the 1954 roster.

Which means that a) ESPN made a huge series of improbable misprints or mis-types; b) the AP reporter working on this item was hugely incompetent (not outside the realm of possibility); or c) the Elias boys released incorrect statistical information.

If it’s the latter, I think there should be a major press conference. I mean, if Elias & Co. got this wrong, how many other bits and bites have they fed us through the years that also were incorrect? Who knows, maybe those guys have just been making stuff up. How would we know they weren’t, since their word is accepted as gospel all the time?

Makes ya wonder. (Well, makes ME wonder.)

Anyway, hello to Tom Phoebus, 69 years old, wherever you are.

National Obsession: Are Washington's Nats Moving Up or Down?

The Washington Nationals are off to yet another stellar start. Not. At the moment, the team shows early signs of good pitching being undermined by impotent hitting.

Of course, I don’t know why a team that ought to be building with youth added to its roster Jerry Hairston, Jr. (34), Laynce Nix (30), Alex Cora (35) and Matt Stairs (43). Sorry, but none of these guys was a star in his prime anyway. (Stairs is a pinch-hitter only. And the Nats have that luxury why??)

Plus there’s new starting center-fielder Rick Ankiel, who makes for a good baseball story--former pitcher who lost his mojo then resurfaced as a position player with legit power--but is 31 and has declined with the bat since his impressive comeback in ’07-’08.

Even high-priced off-season free-agent signee Jayson Werth is 31, and the team will be spending--take a deep breath now--$126M over 7 years on the guy. That’s $18M a year, folks. Ya think Werth’s gonna be worth that when he’s 35? Or 36? How about when he’s 38? It's nuts, I tell ya.

In the meantime, Nats management dumped or traded proven slugger Adam Dunn and decent power guy Josh Willingham, who are 31 and 32, respectively. (Both hit homers in their opening day games for their new teams, by the way.)

I guess all these moves have to do with money and stuff--or presumably someone’s incredibly brilliant assessment of talent. I’d still rather have Dunn than Werth. But whatever.

Just for fun, let’s track management’s team-building by following the former Nats they’ve let go to other rosters in the past few years. Did they show foresight in these moves? Or folly? Hard to know, but the names below certainly could be comprised by someone’s major league roster.

Where Are They Now?

Luis Ayala--The right-hander’s promise of 2003-5 had never been fulfilled. Was with the Nats organization up to 2008, then went journeyman. He’s with the Yankees now, though.

Miguel Batista--Journeyman starter/reliever had his best ERA in seven years with the Nats in 2010. He’s 40, and signed with the Cards in the off-season.

Emilio Bonifacio--Briefly with the Nats in ’08 after a trade with Arizona, he’s now with Florida. He has skills as an infielder, but his bat is off and on. Still only 25.

Marlon Byrd--Let go by the Nats in ’05, Byrd has established himself as a quality ballplayer and was an All-Star in 2010 for the Cubs.

Matt Capps--Acquired from Pittsburgh in 2010, Capps had a career year as a reliever, posting 42 saves, but not before the Nats traded him to Minnesota to acquire catching prospect Wilson Ramos.

Jamey Carroll--Since the Nats gave up on him in 2005, Carroll has carved out for himself a very nice niche as a dependable utilityman and sometime starter. A late-bloomer, he’s now 37, but the career .276 BA is legit, and he’s played well with Colorado, Cleveland and now the Dodgers.

Adam Dunn--Signed with the White Sox as a free agent, after the Nats wouldn’t sign him as a free agent. Should have a monster season as a DH with Pale Hose.

Alberto Gonzalez--Traded to Padres at start of 2011 season. Decent fielder, versatile, .253 career hitter. Not yet 28, but never established himself as a first-stringer.

Joel Hanrahan--Nats kept waiting for this guy to do something really great with his fastball, as a starter or reliever. They gave up and traded him to Pittsburgh. Jury’s still out, but he’s 29 already.

Willie Harris--A semi-fan-favorite for three seasons, Harris never hit better than .251 for the Nats. They expected more. Occasional power, a versatile guy in the field, Harris is now a Met. He’ll probably exact his revenge sometime this season.

Austin Kearns--Starting left-fielder in the home opener for the Indians. In truth, if Kearns is your starting anything, your team is in big trouble. No one misses him.

Adam Kennedy--Unknown by many: Kennedy is a career .275 hitter and has a World Series ring. Spent 2010 with the Nats, then signed a free-agent deal with Seattle.

Ryan Langerhans--It may be a mystery how Langerhans has managed to have a nine-year MLB career, but when you’ve spent the past five years with the Nats and the Mariners, never hitting more than .234, some clarity emerges. Langerhans hasn’t looked promising since 2005 with the Braves. But he’s getting a pension, and that’s nothing to sneeze at.

Mike MacDougal--Another journeyman pitcher, he actually had a strong ’09 for the Nats. He just keeps moving from pillar to post, and the Dodgers like him currently.

Lastings Milledge--Nats dumped him off on the Pirates a couple years ago, claiming he was a head case. He put up respectable batting averages for the Bucs (.277, .291), and earned a roster spot with the expected-to-contend White Sox this year. Still only 25.

Nyjer Morgan--When the Nats acquired him from the Bucs in ’09, it was presumed that the team had found a centerfielder and leadoff hitter for a solid five years. Morgan has some speed but no power, and he didn’t draw that many walks for a leadoff man, and he had some weird adventures in the outfield. Suddenly he looked expendable. So right before the 2011 season, he was traded to the Brewers for a minor leaguer named Cutter Dykstra plus some cash. Hope it was a LOT of cash, ’cause Dykstra’s .274/.374/.383 aggregate line in the low minors, plus his anemic power numbers and tons of Ks, reek of bad prospect. He’s only 21, though. And he’s versatile, having played six positions in his three years. Alas, that probably means he’ll never anchor one single position. If only he were Lenny Dykstra.

Wil Nieves--A catcher who can’t hit, Nieves signed with the Brewers in the off-season.

Pete Orr--Had stints with the ’08 and ’09 Nats. It’s always interesting when a team that went 69-93 finds useless a guy who hooks on with a team that went 97-65 (Phillies). Orr’s a journeyman infielder, sorta like Alex Cora or Jerry Hairston, Jr. Only younger.

Jon Rauch--The 6’10” former Morehead State Eagle is 32 now, pretty much a journeyman, but has had a solid career as both a long and short reliever. With the Blue Jays currently.

Brian Schneider--With the Expos/Nats for parts of eight seasons, the journeyman catcher was a Met and is now a Phillie. He’s a .250 career hitter with occasional power and is a reliable receiver. At 34, you can at least say he’s a lot younger than Pudge Rodriguez.

Alfonso Soriano--He hit 46 homers for the ’06 Nats, who couldn’t (or wouldn’t) pay the price to sign him in free agency. Now he’s a gazillionaire with the Cubs battling age (35) and occasional injury. He’s still a step up from Roger Bernadina.

Josh Willingham--When healthy, a solid bat with consistent if unspectacular power, and a run producer. Traded to the A’s this past off-season, and he’s hitting cleanup for them.

A Pearl for a Byrd in Hand

By Henry Nichols
Special to Sports Media America

By any reasonable measure, when you subtract the emotions and moral relativity, you can’t escape the impending reality that Bruce Pearl is being weighed for the gallows this March at Tennessee.

When whispers of impropriety were first directed toward Tennessee over the past year or so, it initially looked as if a series of impermissible calls could garner Pearl the reputation of Kelvin Sampson Lite. A spot of bother? Sure. But probably not enough to buy a ticket to the ballpark of fireable offenses.

After all, if there was ever an obvious target of the NCAA’s microscope in the SEC East from the outset, it was John (“The Teflon Don”) Calipari. If Cal spent as much time teaching his players how to shoot free throws as he did corralling inexplicably-cobbled-with-blue-chips recruiting classes, he would probably have just vacated a national title before arriving in Lexington.

But at least Cal knows the 11th Commandment: “Don’t get caught.” Since last summer, Pearl has accomplished the unthinkable by cementing his legacy as a bigger cheat than even Vol fans could have retroactively dreamed Lane Kiffin to be.

Pearl (left) not only knowingly broke major NCAA recruiting rules, but he was stupid enough to deliberately entice the families of unsigned recruits, as well as his own staff, to break them with him. We’re talking about a faux pas so obvious that NCAA investigators already knew the damning truth, holding the photo of Aaron Craft at the illicit cook-out, before entrapping Pearl into his now-infamous lie.

Credit Craft’s family for at least having the common sense to back away from the train wreck while they still could. When Pearl cried like a bitch on national TV for his foibles (or rather, for getting caught), Big Orange Nation would have liked to believe the man had to have been humbled at rock bottom.

Not so. The straw that will likely break his program’s back was his improper contact with a recruit just a few days later. While technically a small infraction, it incontrovertibly showed he had zero remorse for his ways. That he would do what it took to win at all costs, to recruit at all costs just like always.

Under new NCAA prez Mark Emmert, college athletics, like Wall Street, faces a virtually unprecedented culture of corruption in the modern era. But from lowly bloggers to ESPN’s thorough Dana O’Neil, there can surely be no precedent found for a school terminating a coach’s contract but not his employment, but that is where Tennessee stands with lame-duck AD Mike Hamilton and his “Artful Dodger” of hoops.

By August, Pearl will likely have fallen on his sword or the NCAA, with Emmert playing the Robespierre role in the Terror of the collegiate rule-breaking elite, not only issuing Pearl at least a two-year show-cause penalty but also likely punishing the Vols program further for every day, week, month that Hamilton doesn’t drag Pearl out to the guillotine himself.

As for the wantonly delusional faction on Rocky Top that wishes to see Pearl remain chief of their bastion of anarchy under a shroud of competitively apologetic relativism, a popular hypothesis is that UT’s newest assistant, Houston Fancher, could stick around as interim coach for a year or two while Pearl and his other assistants sustain their inevitable NCAA suspension for their respectively complicit roles in the scandal. (Ironically, Fancher was the ill-fated successor at Appalachian State to Pearl’s predecessor at UT, Buzz Peterson, when Peterson left Boone, N.C., to take over as head coach at Tulsa a year prior to his move to Knoxville.)

Otherwise, if a regime change is indeed in the cards, conventional wisdom via popular local punditry is that the university (likely without Hamilton calling the shots) will seek a Pearl clone as best it can, complete with a dynamic recruiting flair, an up-tempo system, a defiant swagger and youthful vigor above all other criteria. But it would be a mistake.

The perfect candidate at this point in time is a UT alum who has been coaching in the state for three decades, tallying over 600 wins in that time frame. He would return respectability to Rocky Top both on and off the court, churning maximum production out of an inevitably rebuilding roster while jettisoning Pearl’s bad eggs. His track record suggests he would certainly perform a 180 on graduation rates at a program which has long been a laughingstock where student-athlete character and integrity are concerned.

Rick Byrd (left) has punched Nashville's Belmont University’s Big Dance ticket four of the past six seasons and currently has the Bruins rolling at a program-best 30-4 clip, with half of his team’s losses this season coming by single digits to his alma mater. But while Pearl seems to eschew off-court discipline lately in favor of on-court success at all costs, Byrd has consistently run a tight ship over the years with lesser known recruits and made it work to his advantage. An astounding 11 players in Belmont’s rotation play more than 10 minutes per game while none plays more than 25. Think he catches much flak from his leaders?

While Byrd has been more than comfortable at Belmont and could probably reach 800-900 wins there if he stayed through the end of the new decade, Tennessee might be the only job for which he’d leave. A Knoxville native, Byrd’s dad Ben served as a sports editor/writer for the Knoxville Journal for 40 years. Upon matriculating to UT, Byrd tried out for legendary coach Ray Mears’ varsity squad only to make JV.

Shortly thereafter, Byrd got his start in coaching under Mears as a graduate assistant in 1976. Other than being a vastly successful head coach, one of the few things he has in common with Pearl is that he spent his early years as a head coach patrolling the sidelines in college basketball’s wilderness: first at Maryville College in ‘78, then onto Lincoln Memorial in ‘83 before taking the reins at Belmont in ‘86, all gigs being at the NAIA level or lower before he finally, gently guided Belmont into provisional Division 1 status as an independent in ‘96.

Byrd knows all too well what it’s like to build a program completely from scratch and Lord knows whether he still has the energy to personify the phoenix that raises UT from the impending ashes of crippling sanctions. Besides his entrenched comfort in Nashville going on 58 years old, an obvious con to taking the Vols’ reins would be making an in-state, intra-conference rival out of best bud and Vanderbilt coach Kevin Stallings. The two already dread playing each other twice a decade as is.

For the average UT fan, the anxiously obvious question about Byrd would be, Can he recruit well enough at the SEC level?

If Byrd can be convinced to end his career where it started, his groomed successor at Belmont, associate head coach Casey Alexander (Belmont ’95), would no longer be by his side to inject a youthful enthusiasm on the recruiting trail or in practices. It’s also likely that fellow assistant Roger Idstrom, an Atlantic Sun Conference lifer at both BU and Gardner-Webb before that, would stay behind to ease Alexander’s transition to the head coach’s chair at his own alma mater. Belmont’s retention of those two would effectively dismantle the longest-tenured coaching staff in the nation.

But one need not be a great recruiter as a head coach to have program-wide recruiting success. Rather, Byrd would simply need to harvest some of the many contacts he has cultivated over the course of his coaching career. Longtime assistant Brian Ayers, an ex-Vandy assistant for two years in the late ‘90s, would be a logical resource to help Byrd adjust to the ‘Big Six’-conference level.

And what kind of student-athlete could Byrd recruit to Knoxville that would be SEC-caliber on and off the court? Someone like Gonzaga assistant Ray Giacoletti might be persuaded to help carry out that task. Connected to Byrd through Stallings, Giacoletti alerted the Vandy staff a few years ago to an under-the-radar Australian center that he couldn't accommodate himself while still serving as Utah’s head coach. Just over a year later, A.J. Ogilvy set a program scoring record for a freshman, was named second-team All-SEC as a sophomore and helped the ‘Dores reach two NCAA tourneys in three seasons before going pro after his junior year and playing the past year in Turkey alongside Allen Iverson.

Part of the dilemma facing Tennessee coaches in all revenue sports is that the state sustains a shallow well of D-1 athletic talent within its borders. So in many cases--since they can’t appeal so often to a recruit’s pride in playing for the in-state school, nor can they offer as highly ranked a nearby in-conference education as Vanderbilt or Georgia--they are forced to take on out-of-state players with more baggage relative to SEC powerhouses like Florida or Kentucky in order to compete.

Since-dismissed or disqualified Pearl signees like Daniel West, Duke Crews and Ramar Smith are a testament to this. Meanwhile, nerdy Vanderbilt has reaped more in-state blue-chippers between the two in recent years, from current SEC scoring leader John Jenkins to 2011 signee Kedren Johnson.

Like many schools with similar structural recruiting dilemmas before them, an international approach to recruiting could be the answer. Non-American players likely don’t know anything about a program’s past other than someone has taken the pains to recruit them long-distance and has a system where they can thrive, and the inside-outside, interchangeable emphasis of Byrd’s offense provides a desirable impetus for internationals to buy in to the program, like St. Mary’s of late. Like their foreign counterparts, Byrd’s big men like to face the basket as much or more than having their back to it.

It’s unrealistic to expect Byrd to coach for more than another decade wherever he is, and such a transition would likely come with an eventually designated heir. That could be someone like Giacoletti. But whoever it is, it would be a younger coach who can recruit and bring the same fire Byrd has demonstrated for most of his career.

In essence, a Bruce Pearl without the baggage.

So as Pearl and Hamilton shed the last of their crocodile tears in a far-fetched attempt to prolong their tenures, UT and new president Joe DiPietro should continue revamping their athletic department--as they have started with football coach Derek Dooley--with leaders who will bring honor to Rocky Top instead of making their uniforms look like jumpsuits.

Convincing Byrd to come home for his swan song would do just that.

Henry Nichols is a Nashville writer and pundit. He has worked locally for WNSR-AM sports radio, CBSSports.com and Athlon Sports Publishing.

C-SPAN: Home of the Thinking Man’s Foxes

When you don’t have money for a big exciting TV package, you have to settle for what you can get in Comcast basic limited cable. That’s what I do, anyway.

As my career as a journalist dwindles, and as my career as a musician never takes off, I am stuck making do with many things. Hence, my brain gets addled by watching awful network TV, which occasionally redeems itself with sports programming or the Thursday night NBC comedy lineup. Or the late-night re-runs of “South Park” on WGN. PBS also offers decent documentary stuff and “Antiques Roadshow” and the occasional British police procedural, usually very well-made, often putting to shame its American counterparts. (Honest, I only watch the execrable David Caruso on “CSI Miami” when I am absolutely hard-up for something to watch. Even then, I’m just waiting for Emily Procter to enter the screen.)

But I also feel very blessed that I can get C-SPAN, which I have come to watch pretty religiously. I mean, why watch a bad sitcom when you can see our actual legislative representatives and national leaders doing hilarious things in real time? And there’s hardly ever a re-run!

You can see the Brits and Canadians trying to manage a country too. Plus, C-SPAN delivers good interviews, mobile programming from around the country and the proceedings of political confabs of every stripe, not to mention the actual workings of the U.S. Congress, votes and all.

So there is much to learn watching C-SPAN, and I’d venture to say that I am better informed via my TV regimen than the average person with a fabulous cable package, mainly because a person with many choices would never opt for bland-looking, almost sepia-toned C-SPAN.

But here’s the dirty secret about C-SPAN: It has foxy ladies doing interviews and talking-head stuff on its “Washington Journal” early morning call-in show.

C-SPAN may be the last place in the world you’d expect to see hotties, but there they are: sexy chicks for news junkies.

Take Libby Casey. A correspondent for Alaska Public Radio, Casey moonlights with C-SPAN, and she’s a smoking hot babe in the Sarah Palin tradition. (Must be something about the air in Alaska.) I’m guessing Casey wears those Tina Fey/Palin glasses to distract us from the fact that she’s beautiful. But the fact is, that by wearing the glasses, we are compelled to look

beyond them, and then imagine what it would be like to be behind closed doors with her when she seductively removes them (the glasses, I mean). Casey is very prim and precise and calm and cheerful in her anchor duties, but it’s hard to avoid imagining the potential for smoldering sexuality that must lie within.

Then there’s Greta Wodele Brawner. She’s been on C-SPAN for about five years, but she still looks like she’s fresh out of college. If Libby Casey is the C-SPAN sexbomb, then Greta is their girl-next-door. She’s pretty and petite--really petite--and she looks great in pastels.

She also made the cover of the Jan. 2010 Washington Life magazine, looking slinky and sparkly and sophisticated. Greta has well swallowed the C-SPAN Kool-Aid: She is poised and almost hypnotically controlled on-set, quietly eliciting answers from guests and sweetly saluting phone-callers nationwide. Greta’s the girl you wanted to marry. And, in all likelihood, didn’t.

Which brings us to the grand dame of C-SPAN, veteran reporter/interviewer and C-SPAN executive Susan Swain. Swain’s an interesting case. She’s in her mid-50s. She’s a Catholic school girl all grown up who has excelled as a journalist and C-SPAN boss, yet she also performs with grace and control. She’ll be a little more aggressive in her questioning of guests as need be, but obviously that’s because Susan has been around and can sling it with the big boys. Nevertheless, she has that characteristic C-SPAN understatedness that bespeaks blessed civility, where a citizen can believe that productive discourse still really exists.

Of course, we can’t overlook that Susan is a pretty cute lady. Categorizing her as a cougar would be going a bit far, I guess, but Susan apparently likes Shakespeare, and I’m sure there are plenty of guys--young or old--who’d love to do a balcony scene with her.

So next time you zap the remote control past C-SPAN, on your way to HBO or ESPN 2 or TV Land or the Food Network or the thousands of other cable options you’ve got--just remember that there are hidden treasures of brains and beauty you might be missing.

Viva the C-SPAN babes! Long may they...uh...interview.

Bearing Up Under NCAA Injustice: Why the “Tourney System” Sucks

It happened again on Sunday. A regular season conference winner got beat in its league end-of-season tourney, and in so doing all but scuttled its chances for a berth in the NCAA basketball tournament.

Why does this totally suck? Because Missouri State’s 25-8 record should be good enough. Because the fact that the Bears were the regular season champions of the Missouri Valley Conference (15-3 record) should already have been enough to get them into the NCAA tourney. They were their league’s BEST team.

Oh, it’s quaint and all that--for Indiana State (20-13, 12-6) to receive the Big Dance automatic berth by virtue of winning the MVC tournament yesterday. Indiana State is Larry Bird’s alma mater, so there’s that. And no one can diminish the efforts of the Sycamores, who are gutty, scrappy and [insert your own adjective here to describe a mostly white, gym-rat-style college b-ball team]. (If the Sycs advance in the dance, I’ll be surprised, but of course stranger things have happened.)

The Sycs are a nice story, but so are the Bears, who went from last to first in the MVC this year and clearly posted the superior league and overall records. And where is justice--not to mention logic--when Missouri State now has to sweat out the tourney system in order to gain an at-large spot in the NCAAs?

The current scuttlebutt holds that the Bears won’t be selected, with teams from larger, older and more highly regarded leagues already in the hunt for at-large berths. Unfortunate, since the MVC is a good (if under-publicized and -rated) league. In the past they’ve sent teams to the NCAAs who have pulled upsets and made some impressive runs. Schools like Bradley, Northern Iowa, Wichita State, Southern Illinois and others in the 10-team league. Apparently, the 16-team Big East will be sending at least nine teams to the Big Dance. Anyone see the justice here?

Here’s my bugaboo: If the regular season records don’t mean anything, then why bother keeping ‘em? If there’s no reward for posting the best record in your conference--i.e., the automatic league berth in the NCAAs--then what does it matter? Presumably, they give you a trophy--or a banner to hang in your fieldhouse rafters--for winning the league regular season, but where the NCAAs are concerned, why not sit on your ass all year, and just start to hustle in the end-of-season league tourney, since that’s the only thing that counts? (Okay, that’s facetious, but the point still holds: there’s no reward for being good all year long.)

It’s time to change the system. Regular season league winners should get the automatic NCAA berth. After that, the NCAA Tournament Selection Committee can use league tourney results to factor into their at-large decision-making along with all the other criteria like RPI, out-of-conference record, road victories, etc.

I really don’t know how or when things got to this bizarre point. But telling teams they aren’t good enough after they’ve proved it all year long? That just seems dumb to me.

Stalling Out: Vandy’s NCAA Tournament History Plagued by Misfires

Incredibly tell-tale stat: 1-11. That’s Vanderbilt head basketball coach Kevin Stallings’ record in season finales since he signed on with the Commodores in 1999.

The latest such event was last night’s 86-76 loss to Florida in Nashville. While the Gators have proven to be surprisingly strong in 2010-11, the ’Dores were looking pretty good themselves a little less than two weeks ago, with a 20-6 overall record (8-4 in SEC play).

But the ’Dores are at it again, looking like a talented, well-coached team most of the year and then flagging, their seeming lack of mental toughness once more promising an early end to their post-season. Vandy is guaranteed a slot in the NCAA basketball tournament, but after losing three of their last four games, including home games to Tennessee and Florida, you gotta start asking questions. For instance, Why can’t this program develop a killer instinct?

Now, don’t get me wrong. Stallings (left) is a successful coach. He’s had only one losing season out of 12 with Vanderbilt. He’s won 20 or more games six different seasons. He’s earned four berths in the NCAAs, twice advancing to the Sweet Sixteen. But that’s as far as it goes.

Now, at 21-9 (9-7), they’ve missed a chance to draw a bye in the upcoming SEC year-end tourney, and they’re faced with the prospects of either 1) Losing in the first round, and diminishing their record even more (not a bad idea, actually, since they can rest up for the NCAAs); or 2) Playing at least two games in the league tournament and possibly more, padding their record--even though doing so means a grueling four-day schedule possibly facing lesser schools desperate to exploit the one last chance to possibly grab an NCAA berth by adding to their win totals or winning the tourney outright for an automatic bid.

In fact, Vandy gains nothing by winning a tournament game. No strategic advantage within the conference. No boost to their seeding in the Big Dance. And, really, if they aren’t practiced enough by now for postseason play, then it’s probably too late for them anyway, and all they do is risk injury by competing against, say, a fired-up Alabama squad trying to get off the bubble.

And come to think of it, the ’Dores’ resume suddenly doesn’t look that great. There was the win over North Carolina (in November), plus wins over Belmont, Marquette and St. Mary’s, but only two of those schools were ranked in the top 25. Plus, the ’Dores’ road record is not impressive. Their biggest non-conference road foe, Mizzou, beat them 85-82 in OT on Dec. 8.

Versus main SEC rivals Kentucky, Tennessee and Florida, Vandy is 1-5. Stallings has pointed to “moral victories” of late, but who wants to hear about moral victories come tournament time? A better team--a tougher-minded team--would be able to point to a stronger league record, bigger wins, and would have momentum on its side.

In seasons past, good players like Matt Freije, Derrick Byars and Shan Foster have led the Commodores into the NCAAs with high hopes. This year’s team MVP, John Jenkins, faces a similar scenario. But the team appears to have peaked, and who can forget 2008, when 13th-seeded Siena ousted #4 seed Vandy in the first round.

Looks like deja vu all over again.

Postseason Tournaments Still Seem Like a Waste

Also on the local beat, Belmont University, Nashville’s other NCAA entry, completed a fabulous 30-4 (19-1) season with an 87-46 victory over North Florida in the Atlantic Sun tournament championship game.

Clearly the class of its league, little Belmont heads to the postseason with visions of repeating, or surpassing, its stunning 2008 near-upset of Duke. (The Bruins lost that first-round game 71-70, but served notice that veteran coach Rick Byrd knows what he’s doing with less than blue-chip talent.)

But here’s what’s messed up: It wasn’t enough for Belmont to go 30-4. In order to grab the NCAA bid, they still had to win the league tournament. So, if North Florida had gotten lucky--if a fluke had occurred, which is always possible--the A-Sun would have been sending a 16-18 team into the Dance.

Does that make sense to anybody? What’s the incentive to dominate at 30-4 when you could lose in the league tourney and be done for the year? (Or maybe take an NIT bid. Meh.)

Yep. Have a league tourney and risk sending a mediocrity to the NCAAs. All for a little more money. Stupid.

The Devil You Don't Know--Until Gwen Ifill Tells You About It

The definition of Muslim Brotherhood, according to Wikipedia: “The Society of the Muslim Brothers (often simply, The Brotherhood or MB) is an Islamic transnational movement and the largest political opposition organization in many Arab states. The group is the world's oldest and largest Islamic political group, and the ‘world's most influential Islamist movement.’ The Brotherhood has as its slogan, ‘Islam is the solution.’ It was founded in 1928 in Egypt by the Islamic scholar and schoolteacher Hassan al-Banna.”

Wow. Really?

Now, I ask you: Until all this Egypt stuff started, had you EVER heard of the Muslim Brotherhood? I hadn’t, and I consider myself a fairly media-savvy individual. It’s been more than 30 years since the Iranian Revolution, and since then there’ve been numerous international events that have heightened our exposure to all things Islamic, including the Gulf War and many terrorist events before that and since, not least of all 9/11.

In fact, in the U.S., in the modern age, we have been pretty much obsessed with Islam, Muslims, Arabs, etc., not only because of the terrorist aspects that affect our country, but also because the U.S. maintains a cozy relationship with Israel--a relationship that is forever in danger of being stressed by our need to deal with the Arabs. (We need their oil and Arab countries essentially surround Israel, whom historically they don’t like.)

But really, folks, why is it that only fast on the heels of Egyptian upheaval are we learning about the Muslim Brotherhood--”the world's oldest and largest Islamic political group, and the ‘world's most influential Islamist movement.’ ”? What the--??

I’ve been watching PBS news and news programming for decades. I catch “Meet the Press” fairly often. I’ve watched the cable news wars. And never once did I hear Gwen Ifill, John McLaughlin or the late Tim Russert or the current David Gregory or anybody else say a single word about the MB. Not even after 9/11, when everyone was rushing to their computers to research Al Qaeda, was there any common profiling of this group. And whatever there was must have been pretty sketchy.

Now, the MB are (is?) this supposedly hugely influential group in the Arab world. All of a sudden. Just like that.

Well, no, they’ve been around a long time, apparently. But it’s very interesting to me that it’s only now that the average American citizen is learning of them.

I must say, their name doesn’t exactly inspire a warm, fuzzy feeling. The Muslim Brotherhood. It seems closer to organized crime than to thoughtful, measured Middle Eastern political policy. Presumably, it’s not a sisterhood, either. So that would exclude the thousands of Egyptian females that kept popping up on American news programs--the ones in Tahrir Square who kept saying they wanted to become doctors and lawyers and teachers and scientists.

All we really know is that the MB is Muslim, and while we’re trying to be openminded and all--support your local mosque, either at Ground Zero or in Murfreesboro, Tennessee--whatever we're feeling presently doesn't exactly smack of peace of mind.

At any rate, now we know who’s calling the shots for Middle East governments. We can use that information--as one Arab nation after another collapses under the weight of its newfound desire for “freedom” and “prosperity.” Hmmmm...

We can only hope the MB play fair. And have a vision characterized by progressive thought and good intentions. But if I’m an Israeli, I’d be a little more nervous than I already am.

OC/DC: Munchak Announces Appointments to Key Titans Coaching Slots

Caught this afternoon on The Zone, radio 104.5 FM: The Tennessee Titans’ press conference where head coach Mike Munchak presented new defensive coordinator Jerry Gray to the media. Gray sounded, uh, like a mediocre mind. Hate to say it, but that’s the vibe he transmitted. He even seemed to struggle with his cliches. Gray is a veteran position coach and former DC with the Buffalo Bills, where he actually had some statistical success. Let’s hope his performance on the field surpasses his rather halting responses at the podium.

The bigger news on the Titans front, however, is the announcement that former NFL coach Chris Palmer has been appointed offensive coordinator. Palmer, most recently a coach in the UFL, has been an assistant many places but also was head coach of the Cleveland Browns, whom he “led” to a dismal 5-27 record in 1999-2000.

Neither of these hires inspires any immediate confidence, but then the promotion of Munchak didn’t do that either. The Titans look to be in trouble, and with Jeff Fisher gone, we may be reflecting often in 2011 on just how important his leadership and decisionmaking were to the team’s past success.

Not that we don't wish "Munchie" well. Life goes on. But the season ahead could be a really long one.

MediaNotes
According to 104.5 FM “3 Hour Lunch” co-host Brent Dougherty--the guy with the meathead voice who actually does a good job as the 12 noon-3 p.m. show’s point man--local Channel 2-WKRN news anchor Christine Maddela Tweeted an ageist remark about the 60something Palmer. Something about his bedtime, thus necessitating an earlier-in-the-day scheduling for the Titans press conference.

Uh...that’s pretty interesting, if not downright shocking, since you’d think that a Hispanic female news lady--of whatever age--would be sensitive to bigoted remarks. You’d also think that a product of the famed Mizzou journalism program would be smart enough not to be posting ageist statements in a public forum. Which just goes to prove that there are more insidious bigotries out there than the racial kind. (We further note with no little irony that male hormone replacement providers are regular sponsors of 104.5 sports programming.)

Come to think of it, I saw Maddela last year at a TPAC theatrical event, and I was surprised at how, er, big-boned, she looked in person. Just being forthright and honest. Right, Christine?

I’m coming to the conclusion that Twitter is the refuge of the emotionally immature. It’s kind of like writing on the bathroom walls. Except attributed. Eeeesh...

Gaga Over Gaga

Monday is the worst television night of the week--for those of us who are cable-challenged. And so it was with great joy that I ran into Lady Gaga last night as a guest on “The Tonight Show” on “free” TV NBC.

I’m here to say it publically: I love Gaga. No, wait: More than that, I might even march with her into hell. What’s more, I’m unable to properly explain why those feelings are so strong, though I’ll try.

I certainly loved “Poker Face.” Great song. It’s catchy, quirky and lovably weird, and the arrangement is great. Plus you can dance to it. (Really: I don’t care what it’s about!) I give it a 99.

Now, what I’ve heard of Gaga musically since then has been totally vague and scattershot. I couldn’t even name you another one of her songs. (“Just Dance”?? How does that go again?) But, really, I don’t care about that. If Gaga’s goal was to make her very walking being an appealing art form, then she has succeeded.

My admiration is particularly surprising to me because in my “real life” I’m an entertainment critic, gifted at dissecting theatrical performance and backing up my opinions. I tend to “be critical.” I tend to formulate specific reasons why I like or dislike something/anything/anybody.

Yet even through the TV screen, Gaga--not yet 25 but so self-possessed--communicates something so personally likable that I find myself simply smiling and enjoying her. Without any questions at all.

Let’s look at some conventional gauges. She’s an attractive gal--but she’s not a great beauty. She has a decent figure--but she’s not really voluptuous or overtly sexy. She can and does sing and dance--but I’m not sure she’s going to challenge for top skill honors in either category.

Frankly, I wouldn’t care if Gaga never recorded another song. It is, in the end, her PERSONHOOD I celebrate. She seems like a truly decent and honest (enough) human being, that rare celebrity who actually doesn’t seem to take her celebrity that seriously.

Sure, I could be wrong. It might all be a plausible misperception. Maybe, since she made it big early in life--what a relief THAT is, right?!--there’s no way to really be sure of Gaga’s personal integrity. But for now, and with all my heart, I think Lady Gaga--nee Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta--has character, and that’s something you don’t see much anywhere, but especially not in show business. Because show-biz makes whores of everybody, and the lure of the easy buck makes character a negotiable commodity.

I don’t know why, America, but I trust Lady Gaga. I think she’s intelligent, inherently kind and blessed with a wonderfully winking sense of humor.

She makes me laugh. And that’s what I like in a lady.

Viva La Gaga!

Santa Anita--The Horse Palace in Arcadia

I recently paid a visit to California--to get out of the dark and coldness of the Southeast in an attempt to rejuvenate a flagging spirit. I was moderately successful. It was 60s and 70s in the Los Angeles area with general sun, though chilly in the mornings and at night, as deserts can be. I never got to a beach. Mostly I hung with my brother, visited with a long-lost cousin, and spent ample time in internet cafes on a laptop and on my cell phone, and also reading LA Weekly cover to cover. (Nice rag.)

The only really big thing I did, on Saturday, Jan. 29, was go to Santa Anita Park, for the running of the Sunshine Millions, where, in selected races, Cal-bred horses squared off against Florida-bred. I placed a bet on the first race, $2 on Joe Ja (below, in the paddock with handlers) to win at 6-1, and sure enough the three-year-old descendant of Birdonthewire hustled to the finish line with a dramatic victorious flourish. The bet returned me about $14--the $12 I'd won plus my bet of $2.

At the pay window, I was handed $13 plus some change. Not bad for beginner's luck. I never won money on another single race the rest of the entire day. Such is gambling at the track.

Yet the thoroughbreds are beautiful and powerful, and each race is a joyous series of protocols, where fans can view the pre-race preparations at close quarters, then watch the jockeys mount up, ride the horses out near the statue of Seabiscuit to greet their owners, and from there parade onto the track.

Learning about Santa Anita is interesting and fun. But there's no substitute for being there. Among other things, it's the air. (Or the iPhone dolls, left.) The track turned 76 this past Christmas Day. She remains an elegant art-deco beauty, attracting the most eclectic crowds you'll ever see anywhere, everyone in thrall to the horses. (Something I learned on the way to looking up other things: From 1942 to 1944, Santa Anita was suspended from racing and was used as a Japanese American internment center. Some 17,000 people resided there.)

I ate a fantastic fresh turkey sandwich at Santa Anita, prepared by a gentleman who had to be well into his 60s. Maybe he was 70. There were a lot of older folks at the track--WORKING! It crossed my mind that an older fellow could do worse than to end up amid the hubbub of a major American race track on a sunny Saturday afternoon, making good hot sandwiches and earning an honest buck while thousands--all ages, ethnicities, shapes and sizes--bustled about keeping an eye on the nags and their wagers.

If someone hasn't done it yet, they should write a mystery novel that begins at Santa Anita with the murder of... a horse?? Uhm, scratch that? I dunno. But the place is so damn atmospheric--with the majestic San Gabriel Mountains proudly backdropping the sport of kings.

Next time I go to Santa Anita--and I suspect I will--I intend to take a lot more pictures. Of the horses. Actually running the races. My first time through this horse palace of all horse palaces was distracting--too much to think about. But I wouldn't have missed it for the world.

100K Run: Sports Media America Avoids AOL Buyout, Settles on Milestone

Interesting. Sports Media America and Huffington Post were both founded about six years ago. Both were aiming to change the world. I can’t imagine why, but for some reason Arianna Huffington recently parlayed her venture into a huge, rich-beyond-all-dreams buyout by AOL, while we still sit here unnoticed by the big money. But who can really understand the strange workings of the new-media world? Some of us are meant, I suppose, to go about our brilliance on the relative QT. (Cold, hard truths: I suck at marketing, and I have no budget or friends in high places.)

And yet, sometime in the past week or so--completely unnoticed by me, I might add shame-facedly--Sports Media America passed the 100,000 hits mark. There were no bells or whistles to alert me, and I’ve been so busy or distracted or traveling that I had not paid attention to the site for a while. When I went to do the editorial on new contributor Henry Nichols’ story on the Tennessee Titans’ recent search for a head coach, I vaguely looked down at the SMA hit-counter and exclaimed (in my own head), “Eureka!”

Launched late in 2004, SMA was a means to indulge my serious interest in, and vast knowlege of, sports, particularly football and baseball, but potentially anything else sporting or non-sporting that could fit within our loose-ish parameters, i.e., those determined by the word media.

Happy little things happened along the way. For instance, my brother Steve became a seriously knowledgeable horse player in California, and it turned out that he was also a serious talent writing about the sport of kings. His stories on Triple Crown events have been special additions to the SMA lineup.

Sports media has exploded in the past decade, so I am ever sure that the site concept is a valid one. Sometimes it’s to the point where those reporting the news are as central to our interests as those performing on the playing fields. So I guess we’ll just keep muddling along here, posting interesting, well-written opinion pieces, sending them out into cyberspace, hoping we continue to grab our little piece of the action.

We’re very grateful to you, the mighty 100K, who have seen fit to take the time to read, and appreciate, our humble little efforts.




Sincerely,

Martin Brady
Editor/Producer

Coaching Carousel: Titans Seek Quick Fix in the Wake of Fisher’s Sudden Departure

By Henry Nichols

After two of the more disastrous seasons in a 17-year coaching regime spanning four home venues, Jeff Fisher and the Tennessee Titans finally reached their breaking point--and not a few weeks after it appeared Fisher had finally triumphed in the greatest coach-player (Vince Young) power struggle of an otherwise streamlined tenure.

To say it has been an epic offseason so far for the original AFC Oilers/Titans would define “understatement.” Truth be told, one may have to go back so far as then-new Cowboys owner Jerry Jones’ unceremonious dismissal of coaching icon Tom Landry in 1989 to find a starker break from a decorated-but-stale tradition of NFL franchise functionality.

The savvy observer might expect an upstart NFL owner like Jones or Washington’s Daniel Snyder to make a clean break with the past, however glorious, with hopes of building superior pillars upon the foundations of his predecessors’ success. But when the 88-year-old creator/owner of a franchise decides to completely revamp the fabric of his long-standing house so far into the twilight of his years, that’s a different story.

Titans octagenarian owner K.S. (“Bud”) Adams Jr., his top brass and Fisher mutually agreed on an official “parting of ways” Jan. 27, but to let such a presumably coveted coaching free-agent get away seems a dubious course for an old man who dreams desperately of another Super Bowl before his passing.

It is widely speculated that the real final straw in the soap opera between Adams and Fisher was the coach’s recent string of clandestine contracts/extensions aimed at retaining his favored assistants, allegedly made without the blessings of Adams, club president/general counsel Steve Underwood and general manager Mike Reinfeldt. This revelation explains why embattled defensive coordinator Chuck Cecil was re-signed immediately after the season only to be fired a week before Fisher stepped down.

So, for the first time in Nashville major-revenue pro sports history, a coaching change is afoot. (Fisher was hired in 1994 as the Houston Oilers’ interim coach before being promoted full-time that offseason.) But will the new hire constitute a regime change? Not necessarily.

Adams is famous for his tight-fisted ways, even if it seemingly leads to ham-fisted outcomes. With Fisher allegedly due $4 million through his contract buy-out, plus hundreds of thousands owed on assistants’ contracts that have since been terminated, you can take it to Bud’s bank that the next hire will be penny-wise rather than dollar-foolish.

More specifically, the consensus scuttlebutt is that Adams will simply look in-house for a short, quick, cost-cutting promotion process between a few loyal lieutenants.

While conventional wisdom might suggest that an outside choice is prudent--to bring a fresh voice and direction to the organization--that doesn’t seem to be the kind of gamble that Adams wants to make when he might be able to count the number of years he has left on one hand. Instead of a “Hail Mary,” he’ll likely hope that a couple of internal tweaks with the right candidate will get him to one more Super Bowl.

THE INSIDER CANDIDATES

• Mike Munchak, Fisher’s longtime offensive line coach, interviewed this past Monday for the head-coaching job. The factors that led many to believe Munchak is the frontrunner include “favored son” status with Adams and a relationship with Reinfeldt that goes back to their days as Oilers teammates circa the “Love Ya Blue” era of the late ’70s/early ’80s.
  
  Though he lacks coordinator experience, Munchak is reputed as a key cog in Fisher’s success through his underrated influence in the Titans’ run schemes and steadying influence on a usually solid group in the trenches. The biggest pro of promoting Munchak would obviously be focused around streamlined organizational continuity and offsetting the price of Fisher’s exit for Adams. The biggest drawback, just as with the other Titans assistants being considered, is the question of where he will assemble his new staff from and how long his contract will be. If he is afforded a cheap contract with little more than an interim status attached to it, then the realistic best-case scenario he could hope for would be convincing the few assistants still on staff to stay and hustling to fill in the remaining gaps with the best available candidates, many of whom won’t think Munchak is being put in a position to compete in the AFC South. In an eerie way, a Fisher-to-Munchak torch passing would very closely mirror the Bobby Johnson/Robbie Caldwell switch at Vanderbilt almost exactly half a year ago.
  
  
• Another logical choice for coach/caretaker (as the NFL heads into relatively uncertain times during the new collective bargaining agreement) would be linebackers coach Dave McGinnis. Also Fisher’s assistant head coach, McGinnis first earned his stripes as head coach of the Arizona Cardinals (2000-03), where he went 17-40 with one of the NFL’s more inept rosters. McGinnis’ elevation could easily be validated through his past experience in directing a rebuilding franchise that’s recently fallen from performance peaks; before his promotion to head coach at Arizona, he was the defensive coordinator for the 1998 team that reached the playoffs for the first time since the franchise moved to Phoenix. However, McGinnis is 59 years old, relatively old for a pro coach to begin such a massive undertaking and his hire would be equally met by media, prospective coaches and free-agents with long-term skepticism and questions about the short-term upside of the Titans. Like Munchak, McGinnis would have a hard time hiring a competitive AFC staff.
  
  
• Fisher’s longtime offensive coordinator Mike Heimerdinger, in a vacuum, would easily be regarded as the most innovative and pedigree-strong in-house candidate. However, even as a potential caretaker, Heimerdinger’s hire would be regarded as the shakiest of the in-house candidates due to his ongoing cancer treatment and chemotherapy. In fact, had Fisher stayed, it was questionable as to whether ’Dinger would ultimately be well enough to carry on in a coordinator’s role through 2011 since he indefinitely relinquished his play-calling duties Nov. 24. Once a burgeoning candidate for several NFL skipper openings, his candidacy for the Titans or anyone else right now might be a non-starter, though he did interview for the job Tuesday.
  

DARKHORSES

• Like Fisher, Jim Mora Jr. is a successful former San Francisco 49ers defensive coordinator and was the victim of a “coach-killer” star quarterback during a somewhat successful tenure as Atlanta’s head coach (2004-06), where he went 26-22 and advanced to the NFC Championship Game in his first year. He also shares some “Six Degrees” familiarity with the AFC South through his dad, Jim E. Mora, whose 13-3 Colts squad lost an AFC divisional round home playoff game in 1999 to the Titans, 19-16, during Tennessee’s Super Bowl run. Reinfeldt, previously the Seahawks’ VP of Football Administration, worked with Mora Jr. in Seattle, albeit very briefly for half a month in early 2007 (just after the Seahawks hired Mora as assistant head coach and just before the Titans hired Reinfeldt). Few know what impression Mora left on Reinfeldt during that sliver of time, but there is no doubt he is a promising young coach with a wealth of coaching connections and personnel resources. He was fired after going 5-11 during his only season as Seahawks coach in 2009 following Mike Holmgren’s coaching retirement, but his dismissal was more a function of a general manager switch than judgment of an overall body of work.
  
  
• Alabama coach Nick Saban was rumored to have met with the Titans this week as part of their search, and believe it or not, he has an organizational connection that goes back longer than Fisher or Williams. Saban served as the Oilers’ defensive backs coach in 1988-89 before spending the 1990 season as Toledo’s head coach. Apart from Saban’s abbreviated stint as head coach of the Dolphins, where he went 15-17 from 2005-06, he also served as Bill Belichick’s defensive coordinator with the Browns from 1991-94. After winning a national championship at Alabama in 2010, the itinerant taskmaster may feel his batteries are properly re-charged for another shot at the big-time in an organization where he already has a comfort level. Oh, and he probably wouldn’t have to sell his house. If hired, Saban could and would likely push for significant control over personnel matters and be able to hire a stellar staff. Hey, there’s certainly worse PR moves than hiring a “Belichick disciple.”
  
  
• Former Titans wide receivers coach Ray Sherman is talking with the brass in Tennessee this week about the gig, but it is likely only a token interview to fulfill the NFL’s Rooney Rule requiring the interviewing of at least one minority candidate for a vacant head-coaching job. Like McGinnis, Sherman is nearly 60 and hasn’t served in a coordinator’s role since 1999 (as the offensive coordinator of the Vikings). He has been out of coaching this month since the Cowboys decided not to bring him back for the 2011 season.
  
  
• Former Colts coach Tony Dungy seems to me like a perfect match on paper for the Titans. His newfound celebrity as a Christian author would play well deeper into the Bible Belt and his defenses are always solid regardless of the personnel available to him. He has one Lombardi Trophy under his belt (two if you count the 2002 title Jon Gruden won with his staff and players in Tampa Bay) and might feel re-energized enough to try again at the helm of his old AFC South rival. And while he is a defensive match for Fisher as a coach, his schemes would bring something new and exciting to Nashville and he could probably reel in virtually any available assistant he wants on staff. Then again, the former University of Minnesota quarterback and ex-Vikings defensive coordinator may feel compelled to wait and see what happens with Minnesota’s coaching position after the 2011 season, where Leslie Frazier’s coaching security is relatively tenuous.
  
  IN THE MIX: Also reportedly in consideration are former Buffalo head coach Mike Mularkey and Giants defensive coordinator Perry Fewell.

Contributor Henry Nichols is a Nashville-based sports reporter, writer and radio personality. He has worked for WNSR-560 AM and CBSSports.com.

End of an Era: Young Texts and Tweets His Way Out of Music City

Remember about a month or so ago, when Titans quarterback Vince Young texted an apology to his coach, Jeff Fisher? That was weird.

Vince tweets also, and, of course, that’s what people do nowadays. The texters and tweeters have helped mightily to fulfill philosopher/social critic/communication theorist Marshall McLuhan’s prescient statement of 47 years ago: “The medium is the message.” See, it doesn’t matter what you say anymore, it’s what cool gizmo you use to say it with that counts.

I dunno. Probably the last thing VY should do is tweet. Instead of relegating his thoughts and feelings (such as they are) to an emotion-less, iPhone-generated electronic mouthpiece, VY might want to “man up” and “get real.” Addressing his “fan base” with pat responses to big issues just seems lame. And immature.

Alas, electronic gadgetry--however it may mask immaturity--cannot mask failure. Young, 27, was at it again Wednesday, tweeting with typical blandness, after getting his ass kicked off the Tennessee Titans, a team that waited five years for its first-round 2006 draft choice to learn the system, mature as a leader, and then translate his vast physical tools into postseason NFL success.

That never happened. But Vince thanked everyone for his opportunity. In a tweet. Way to go, Vince. (To be fair, Young was quoted in the Tennessean, the local paper of record, expressing some sense of disappointment. So he did apparently talk to a fellow humanoid. Keep that up, Vince. Very therapeutic.)

Young had a penchant for the occasional blockbuster play, and he actually posted a very respectable W-L percentage (.638) in games he started (30-17). Which certainly makes the average Titans fan wonder if the former University of Texas demi-god won’t re-surface somewhere else in the league, where maybe an older but wiser Vince can eventually harness his athleticism and merge that with on-field savvy.

Fact is, sometimes, reflecting on Young’s performance the past five years, it’s tempting to wonder what things might’ve been like if the Titans had simply let the stallion run wild on the field, exercising the improvisational skills that made him a hero in Austin.

Instead, head coach Jeff Fisher and his assistants spent all of their time trying to re-make Vince into a conventional NFL quarterback. That’s pretty much what always happens to athletes like Young. Because NFL history teaches us that conventional quarterbacks, operating from the pocket--poised and absent of panic--win Super Bowls.

Maybe Young will get another chance. Maybe he’ll find success after hooking on with another team, where the karma might be more welcoming. Where he’ll be older but wiser.

Seems unlikely, though. In five years, VY never even came close to running an offense like Brady or Manning or Brees. Neither did he do it in Roethlisbergian fashion, with uncanny strength and absolute determination. And, unlike Michael Vick, Young never found a way to utilize his assets with discernible consistency. (Oh well. At least he didn't get involved in a dog-fighting scandal.)

Young did have his moments, though. He looked capable of making the throws and, for one brief series of shining moments, he even used his athleticism to tantalizingly run the option attack in tandem with fleet running back Chris Johnson. Those possibilities just seemed to die on the vine.

There was some genuine excitement in the Young Era, but--unlike Vince when his protection broke down--things just never took off.

Now there’s really nothing much left to say. Or text. Or tweet. Vinny, we hardly knew ye.

THE BOYS OF ’06

Way too often, big-time (and small-time) college quarterbacks don’t pan out in the NFL. Here’s a rundown of the QBs drafted along with Vince Young in 2006, including brief commentary on their whereabouts.

#3 (1st Round) Vince Young/Texas/Tennessee Titans--Currently unemployed

#10 (1st Round) Matt Leinart/USC/Arizona Cardinals--Mediocre results with the Cards; now a backup with the Houston Texans

#11 (1st Round) Jay Cutler/Vanderbilt/Denver Broncos--Strong arm in evidence but stint with Broncos proved disappointing; now heading into his first-ever playoff game with the Chicago Bears

#39 (2nd Round) Kellen Clemens/Oregon/New York Jets--Had some opportunities as a starter, but now a backup with Jets

#64 (2nd Round) Tarvaris Jackson/Alabama State/Minnesota Vikings--On and off starter; still with Vikings, but maybe not for long

#81 (3rd Round) Charlie Whitehurst/Clemson/San Diego Chargers--Benchwarmer for the Chargers, and now a backup for the Seattle Seahawks, who, surprisingly, he led to a key victory and a playoff berth last weekend

#85 (3rd Round) Brodie Croyle/Alabama/Kansas City Chiefs--Never took advantage of starting opportunities; now a backup for Chiefs

#148 (5th Round) Ingle Martin/Furman/Green Bay Packers--Former Montgomery Bell Academy (Nashville) multi-sport standout did the practice-squad and backup thing for several NFL teams; now out of football

#164 (5th Round) Omar Jacobs/Bowling Green/Pittsburgh Steelers--Former NFL practice-squader was later a star in the American Indoor Football Association

#194 (6th Round) Bruce Gradkowski/Toledo/Tampa Bay Buccaneers--Little-known MAC product has shown some skills while bouncing from Tampa to Cleveland to Oakland; currently an erstwhile starter for the Raiders, but hampered by injuries

#223 (7th Round) D. J. Shockley/Georgia/Atlanta Falcons--Former Falcons bench-warmer and practice-squader suffered bad knee injuries in 2007; last seen playing in the United Football League

Brady on Brady; or, Why the Titans Aren’t the Patriots

I watched the Tennessee Titans lose to the Miami Dolphins yesterday afternoon, 29-17. The Dolphins lost their first- and second-string quarterbacks—the two hanging Chads, Pennington and Henne—to injury during the game, yet the Titans couldn’t take advantage of the situation. Miami’s last QB standing, Tyler Thigpen, finished off the victory, looking savvy and determined and making me wonder—after the Chads return—if possibly the Dolphins could lend us Thigpen. See, the Titans have quarterback issues: the play of Vince Young and Kerry Collins is erratic, and injuries have set them back.

The Titans also have arguably the finest runner, Chris Johnson, in the NFL. When he gets loose, Johnson is as dangerous as they come, but alas, despite good numbers this season, he too has been erratic. Too often, Johnson gets bottled up, tending to spin his wheels in the backfield or at the line of scrimmage. His play has also given rise to suspicions that maybe the Titans’ offensive line isn’t maybe as good as everyone supposed.

The Titans’ defense also has some problems, but lack of effort doesn’t seem to be one of them. It can be fairly stated that if the Titans’ offense were more consistent, the defense would probably look a lot better.

Later yesterday, I watched the New England Patriots dominate the Pittsburgh Steelers, 39-26 (it wasn’t that close, really). They beat them in Pittsburgh, no less, and once again America saw why Patriots head coach Bill Belichick is the greatest coach of his generation.

He may seem surly and manipulative and ego-maniacal, and doubtless Belichick has his personal foibles and tics, but his ability to re-tool his team—dumping older players and finding rookies and youngsters and the occasional free-agent pickup to replace them—is simply uncanny.

Belichick is in his 11th season as Patriots coach. His first year, 2000, he was 5-11. He hasn’t had a losing record since. He hasn’t even had a .500 record since. From 2000 through 2009, Belichick’s regular season record is 112-48, with seven postseason appearances and three Super Bowl victories (plus one SB loss). The team is 7-2 in 2010. The only constants in this run of success are Belichick’s brain and the guts and right arm of Tom Brady, who, no matter what Peyton Manning supporters might say, can rightfully claim the title of best pro quarterback of his era.

Belichick and Brady proved it yet again Sunday evening. Belichick’s defense started four rookies. There’s almost no one left recognizable from their previous successful defenses. Those guys either retired or were let go or traded. A few of the down linemen—Wilfork, Warren—were familiar veterans, but otherwise, Belichick plugs in defenders, especially defensive backs, like new ecologically friendly light bulbs. Suddenly, a third-year linebacker like Jerod Mayo is playing like Mike Singletary in his prime. The D-team was all over Steelers QB Ben Roethlisberger, the original immovable object, sacking him five times.

On offense the Pats are the model of efficient system play. No Chris Johnson in the backfield? No problem. Just use instead a three-headed monster comprising the immortal BenJarvis Green-Ellis, Danny Woodhead and Sammy Morris, who together gained 100 yards on 23 carries. Brady also does something that might seem downright innovative in Tennessee: He uses his running backs as pass receivers! All the time! (In their confusion this year, the Titans apparently forgot that Chris Johnson on the move, taking swing passes and screen passes, could be hugely dangerous and tough to predictably defend.)

Even after the Pats dumped receiver Randy Moss—who ironically is now a Titan—Brady just finds others to throw to. He still has Wes Welker, who is the best possession receiver in the game, and has somehow miraculously returned after blowing out a knee at the end of last season. After Moss left, the Pats reacquired Deion Branch, who played on two of their SB teams. They are also developing second-year man Brandon Tate, who didn’t catch a single pass in 2009 but seems to have a knack for getting open deep. (Hey, why pay Moss millions to do that when you don’t have to and can get the same results?)

And then there’s Brady, who, after rebounding in ’09 himself from knee surgery that scuttled his ’08 season, takes advantage gladly of an offensive line hellbent on protecting him. Whereupon he stands back there, smartly surveying the field and finding his open man. Sunday night was vintage Brady: 43-30, 350 yards, 3 TDs, 0 INTs and a QB rating of 117.4.

And it’s not just Brady’s accurate arm that matters. Like a truly great QB, he also handles the ball flawlessly, faking to his runners convincingly—Ever see Vince Young try that? No one is ever fooled—and operating the play-action to perfection, maximizing his options and unrelentingly moving his team down the field.

I don’t know if the Pats are the very best team in football in 2010. Certainly they will have their challengers. But if the Pats are the template for success, then the Titans, now 5-4, surely are NOT a viable contender for the Super Bowl crown. As Brady and the Patriots have proven for a decade, without reliably consistent and deftly executed quarterbacking, it’s almost impossible to move into the NFL’s upper echelon.

For Titans fans, that means more of the same: watching the physically gifted Young have his exciting moments, rise to occasional wondrous feats, win a few games...but falter as soon as he meets a first-rate defense, and just when it matters most.

Nats Win! Nats Win! (Sort Of): Rangers Offer Redemption for Aging Senators Fans

My brother Steve has a baleful saying: “We’re gonna die just in time...” It is his commentary on being a certain advanced age—older than 40, at least—while experiencing the absurdist, wrongheaded and presumably irretrievably corrupt sociopolitical state of the world in general and the U.S. in particular. In other words, things are so bad that death looks good.

Normally, I agree with this deliciously cynical observation. Except now that the Texas Rangers have made it to their first World Series, I’m going to have to pray for a definite reprieve. (Dear Lord, get me through at least to Nov. 1, after the World Series is over...)

No, it didn’t happen the way it could have, but there’s a twisted kind of joy that can be experienced now by anyone, like me, who, in the 1960s, rooted seriously for, and lived and died with, the Washington Senators, one of the worst baseball teams in history, but a team with an interesting, if somewhat offbeat, pedigree, and who, as of this morning, are the champions of the American League.

Quick history: Following the 1960 baseball season, Calvin Griffith, owner of the Washington Senators, longtime league doormat, took his team and moved them to Minnesota, where they became the Twins, and, just five years later, made it to the World Series, led by former Senators like Harmon Killebrew and Zoilo Versalles and Bob Allison.

In the wake of Griffith’s cruelty to longtime Senators fans, and in acknowledgment that it’s best not to piss off the political types in the nation’s capital, the American League granted Washington a new franchise, an expansion team made up of castoffs from everywhere else, plus marginal minor league prospects and fading demi-stars.

The expansion Senators, colloquially known as the “Nats”—borrowed from an old nickname, the Nationals, and easier on the newspaper headlines, e.g., “NATS LOSE AGAIN”—were terrible. You could look it up. Myself and thousands of local D.C.-area kids rooted for ’em, and so did foolish grown men and women.

Each of their first four years, the new Senators lost at least 100 games. Then they improved slightly when the late Gil Hodges took over as manager. He didn’t exactly spin gold out of straw, but Hodges took a very mediocre talent pool and squeezed some life out of them. They never hit the .500 W-L mark, but they were especially fun to watch in 1967, after which Hodges went to the Mets and won them a legendary World Series in 1969.

Meanwhile, the Senators tanked in 1968 under former outfielder and local fan favorite Jim Lemon, who didn’t get a second season at the helm, because new team owner Bob Short had the brilliant idea to recruit the great Ted Williams as manager. Ol’ Teddy Ballgame, full of piss and vinegar, came to D.C., and showed a somewhat talented club how to be better, how to draw more walks, how to choose pitches carefully, and flat-out how to get better results at the plate.

Eureka! Career ciphers like good-fielding shortstop Ed Brinkman batted .266 with 153 hits. Unreal. Free-swinging first baseman Mike Epstein hit 30 home runs. Wow. The wonderfully freakish Frank Howard hit a career-high 48 homers and actually drew 102 walks, and for the first time in his career did NOT strike out 100 times.

Williams handled a rather patchwork pitching staff pretty well also, and the team finished 86-76. What might be a disappointing season for other teams was near Nirvana for us Senators fans. Oh happy day!

Nothing lasts forever, of course. And in Washington baseball lore, nothing apparently lasts for more than even one season. Team owner Short started making bad trades, and the Williams magic wore off quickly. By 1971, when the team was trying to make reclamation projects out of pitcher Denny McLain and outfielder Curt Flood—both of them baseball bad boys, but for very different reasons—fans had a disaster on their hands, to the tune of a 63-96 record. A team batting average of .230 said it all. So did McLain’s 10-22 W-L record. So did the unruly mob that interrupted the final game at RFK Stadium, forcing the Senators into forfeiting to the Yankees. Ugly.

The near-riot was evoked by Short’s announcement that he was moving the team to Texas, where they began life as the Rangers for the 1972 season. Nothing like getting slapped in the face hard twice in 11 years. Bye-bye baseball in D.C. Again.

Yet this is where it all comes full circle. Though the Rangers struggled for years, they actually got pretty respectable, and in the ’90s made fairly regular appearances in the playoffs, though greater success always eluded them.

Now the Rangers/Senators have defeated the Yankees, and they are going to the World Series. What little kid in Washington, D.C., in the ’60s could ever dream that the lineage of Coot Veal, Don Lock, Fred Valentine, Bob Saverine, Willie Tasby, Dave Stenhouse, Marty Keough, Jim Hannan, Chuck Cottier and Paul Casanova could ever lead to offspring Vladimir Guerrero, Josh Hamilton, Michael Young, Nelson Cruz, Ian Kinsler, Cliff Lee and a journeyman pitcher named Colby Lewis, who prior to this season’s mediocre 12-13 record had a career record of 12-15 and had spent the past two years prior to 2010 playing in Japan? Yet Lewis shut the Yanks down twice in the ALCS with a 1.98 ERA—and that smacks truly of destiny.

(Colby, with those regular-season numbers, you might’ve been a Washington Senator once upon a time. Now, you are the MAN!)

So go Rangers!! Go old Senators!! Maybe there is, after all, redemption. Or something somewhat close to it. If only we live long enough to experience it.

Sucking Their Way to Respectability

It’s been a long time since this blog has seen any action. Let’s skip the whys and wherefores. Instead, let’s get right down to engaging in our favorite sport: knocking sports media.

There’s always so much to dissect and ridicule, but some tidbits from Saturday’s TV coverage should suffice.

It’s hard to know who to begin with: Cornball has-been Dick Enberg or super-weenie, speech-impedimented Josh Lewin.

It’s a toss-up, so let’s start with the venerable Enberg. At least, everyone else seems to consider him venerable, since he’s been broadcasting sports for about 50 years. Like politicians, old buildings and whores, sports broadcasters tend to achieve respected status if they’re around long enough. Even if they suck. (Remember Harry Kalas?)

Enberg—hold on to your uppers—is 75. (No wonder younger guys can’t get a leg up in the lucrative world of sportscasting. Between moronic ex-jocks who can’t talk and old farts like Enberg and Brent Musberger, both past 70, how would a recent broadcasting grad ever get a job?)

Check Enberg out on Wikipedia, and you’ll find a dude who is an achiever (it says he holds a doctorate in health sciences). Whatever. He’s also probably a millionaire many times over, after breaking in to TV and radio sports in the ’60s. He was with NBC-TV for years and years, doing football, and he’s always had gigs doing California pro and college teams in various sports. Enberg’s resume is impressive and long, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t probably the luckiest SOB alive.

Currently, he’s the main dude for CBS-TV’s broadcast of the U. S. Open tennis championship—and boy does he suck. Who else but cornball old Enberg would display his “eloquence” by referring to finalist Vera Zvonereva as “the 26-year-old Muscovite.” Or to women’s finals winner Kim Clijsters as “the 27-year-old mom from Bree, Belgium.” (Hard to know what to make of this style; it’s as if Enberg’s auditioning to do the play-by-play for a beauty pageant.)

Enberg is Mr. Pollyanna, and his make-no-waves, ultra-saccharine approach to sports is tough to take. Always has been. He’s a corporate shill masquerading as a fan, and he’s been pulling off this charade for decades.

Occasionally, Dick’ll show up wanting to do one of his “commentaries,” which qualify as the tofu of sports reporting—just godawful blandness and cheerleading and homerism, with Enberg never truly making an incisive point about anything or anybody, presumably for fear he might offend.

Many was the moment during the current U. S. Open telecast when one had to wonder what the heck Enberg was doing there, besides waxing faux-rhapsodic and pseudo-poetic about the New York setting, the weather, the enthusiastic crowds, and the little “heart-rending” tidbits he’d boned up on regarding the players and their loved ones, etc., etc., etc., ad nauseam.

Enberg is less a play-by-play guy than he is a publicity agent. He might be what is termed “obsequious.” Synonyms might be, courtesy of the Mac dictionary, “servile, ingratiating, sycophantic, fawning, unctuous, oily, oleaginous, groveling, cringing, subservient, submissive, slavish; informal brown-nosing, bootlicking, smarmy; vulgar slang ass-kissing.” Yep, those all work.

Enberg wrote a book once about himself. He called it Oh My!—after his big “catchphrase.” Eeeesh... I cringe whenever Enberg says, “Oh my!” I’m pretty sure the South Park kids would agree that that’s really gay.

Then there’s the strange case of Lewin, whom we have written about previously. If the Enbergs of the world won’t move over to let younger talent get a crack at the big jobs, even more worrisome is the fact that Lewin stays gainfully employed—perhaps the only play-by-play man in the history of broadcasting who has a speech impediment.

Honestly, no one wants to poke fun at anyone’s affliction. So I won’t do that. Instead, I’ll just pose a question: Under what circumstance would a professional sports franchise or major sports network hire a play-by-play guy with an oh-so-noticeable lisp? Lewin, who seems to go from pillar to post, a bona fide broadcasting whore, currently has a gig doing San Diego Chargers football and also Texas Rangers baseball, but he turns up nationally on FOX’s Saturday baseball broadcasts, too. (Ka-ching!)

Lewin is also really corny, as he attempts to cozy up to sidekicks like Mark Grace, who both know each other from their days with the Cubs. Lewin calls Grace “Gracie.” I guess a lot of people call Grace that, but when Lewin does it, it sounds really gay.

Lewin has an unpleasant, unmodulated tenor-y voice to begin with, and he uses it to pepper his narrative with phrases that sound memorized from The Gee-Whiz Phrases and Colorful Terms You Can Use When Doing Your Own Backyard Baseball Telecast Handbook. (Today, Lewin told us that Nate McLouth “hightailed it into third.” Wow. Colorful.)

But really, Lewin does have a lisp, and it sounds more pronounced now than it did 10 years ago. Coupled with his other failings, I can’t listen to the guy for more than about a minute, especially when he gets on a roll and likes to start speculating about stuff that he probably doesn’t really know anything about. And especially if what he’s saying has a lot of s’s and diphthongs in it.

He’s also one of those guys who comes prepared with stats, so he can find unnatural moments to throw them in to the broadcast, so he sounds “premised.” (Sorry, Josh, you just sound fake.)

What can I say...Lewin the broadcaster is as phony as a three-dollar bill. And he’s got this awful lisp, which ought to disqualify him from an on-air job. Why he continues to work is a mystery.

But don’t worry. Give it some time, and eventually Lewin will also reach the status of an old whore: Respected as a survivor, even if he’s been sucking for decades.