Splinters From the Bench

• "Being the best second baseman of a particular era is like being the cutest squid in the litter." --Rick Morrissey, in a January 8, 2003, Chicago Tribune column about the baseball Hall of Fame candidacy of former Chicago Cubs second baseman Ryne Sandberg. (January 8, 2003)

Packin' Heat At ET State

• Nolan Richardson III, is lookin' more and more every minute like a chip off his old Dad, the former University of Arkansas coach who told his boss he could fire him if he didn't like the way he, Nolan II, was running the show, and after the boss said OK and fired him, sued for billions and billions claiming discrimination. Young Trey resigned--rather than be fired--his coaching job at East Tennessee State January 8 following several weeks of most unfortunate national publicity. Richardson III was accused of threatening an assistant coach with a .38 caliber pistol (and, what irony, Richardson is 38 years old!) in the gym following an argument. Richardson III admitted getting the gun--he chose it rather than a crow bar--from the trunk of his car and going inside the gym. The school suspended Trey. The county district attorney said the offense was a felony but that no charges would be pressed, and the university said it would seek no further action. This incident caused me to reflect fondly back to the days of my youth on the hardscrabble plains of Scorched Corners, Indiana, where all the coaches and faculty packed heat, and indeed, where no self-respecting citizen would even think of going anywhere without a loaded weapon. (January 9, 2003)

Good!!!

• The pile of made-up charges against NBA star Chris Webber, a former University of Michigan Fab Fiver, grew higher January 17 when a new indictment was filed accusing Chris, his Dad, Mayce, and his aunt, Charlene Johnson, with nine counts of lying to a grand jury and conspiracy to obstruct justice. In September of 2002 the trio were named in a four-count indictment. The charges relate to the Big Booster Ed Martin Unpleasantness Said to Involve More or Less $660,000 of Cash and Gifts Given to Webber and Some University of Michigan Teammates from 1988-1993. Everyone has denied everything, and repeatedly, but the prosecutors and grand juries keep filing indictments, anyway. (January 18, 2003)

• The Indianapolis Star, apparently believing it was being helpful, printed what it advertised as IU and Purdue individual basketball statistics this morning. However, the effect--for me, anyway--was supremely unhelpful. For the Star, when it came to field goals and free throws attempted and made, provided only those raw numbers, but no percentages. I could be wrong about every last syllable of this, but my lifetime experience as a sports fan leads me to believe that a typical reader-fan wants to see percentages and regards them as a crucial statistic. It does us piddly small good to know that Walter Trepling made 113 of 343 field goal tries; what is far more meaningful is to know that Walter's success rate at field goals was 32.9%, or .329. The percentage makes it far easier to evaluate how Trepling and the Mad Hatters are doing. Perhaps the Star regarded its presentation as a self-help project for readers. By forcing us to manually calculate each percentage, it was helping us improve not only our manual dexterity, but our math and calculator skills as well. I don't understand how the Star's sports drones could put together these statistics and either not know that percentages were important or willfully leave them out. Am I just being curmudgeonly about this? (January 24, 2003)

Great Minds Running Along Parallel Tracks Department

• The Indianapolis Star topped its sports page the morning after the Super Bowl (in which the Tampa Bay Buccaneers defeated the Oakland Raiders, 48-21) this way: "No Stopping Bucs" while up the road 150 miles or so, the Chicago Tribune opted for "The Bucs Stop Here." (January 27, 2003)

UM, The NCAA And The College Sports Corruption Industry Catch A Huge Break

• Big Booster Ed Martin died February 15 at age 69. He was the central figure in the University of Michigan's basketball recruiting scandal of the 1990s and was convicted of funneling some $660,000 in cash and gifts to UM recruits and players. Martin was said to have been squealing to prosecutors in exchange for a reduced prison sentence. His death was attributed to a pulmonary embolism. That huge sigh of relief we hear comes from the University of Michigan, the NCAA (which is no more interested in facing the corruption problem than the UN is interested in facing reality in the world) and the entire industry of corruption and sleaze that's built up around college sports, for Big Ed no doubt took a boatload of secrets to his grave. (February 16, 2003)

• Wright State University has hired an Ohio State assistant, Paul Biancardi, as its head basketball coach. One of Coach's two begotten sons, Pat, had applied for this job. (April 6, 2003)

• The most interesting sports story of the spring may turn out to be the unceremonious dumping of icon god Michael Jordan by Washington Wizards owner Abe Pollin. Jordan's three years as president of basketball operations were a disaster on the court, though the Jordan name sold a lot of merchandise and filled the stands. The firing, at the beginning of a meeting Jordan thought was to discuss future plans, has to be the first time in Jordan's adult life that somebody humiliated him and got away with it. The event seemed to embolden the press and teammates alike. Unflattering stories surfaced quickly. The story is not unlike the firing of Bob Knight at Indiana. Most everyone was intimidated while the king was on the throne, but once he was off and wounded, people began to tell the truth. (May 9, 2003)

Spin Continues In Michigan Booster Scandal

• The biggest lie of the spring came May 8 in an NCAA press release announcing additional penalties for the University of Michigan in the Big Booster Ed Martin Unpleasantess. "Michigan acted on its best intentions as soon as it got a hint of booster Ed Martin's involvement with its basketball program," the NCAA statement said. This is preposterous. Michigan dissembled and ignored and lied and deceived and denied and spun and obfuscated for years after stories of Big Ed and his big checkbook surfaced in the 1990s. It stayed in the bunkers denying until mountains of evidence and admissions were splattered all over the press and indictments were prepared. Only then did UM give ground and concede that something might, just might, have happened. This is one of college sports's biggest scandals in decades and UM disgraced itself in the way it handled it. (May 8, 2003)

Mike Priceless

• Mike Price, the $10 million coach who never coached a game at Alabama, denies every last syllable of the spicy account of Certain Shenanigans Said To Have Involved The Coach Who Never Was, Mike Price, in the current edition of Sports Illustrated. Price concedes, though, that he was too drunk to remember anything which might have happened during the hours in question. Priceless. (May 8, 2003)

Well, Jim, How Do We Feel?

• The upheaval involving the Atlantic Coast and Big East conferences has caught the Big Ten's eye, and Big Ten commissioner Jim Delaney confirmed to eager reporters that, indeed, league expansion would be discussed at the conference's annual meetings running through this weekend. "The question is," Delaney said (seriously, you just know), "does this change the landscape. . .change how we feel about ourselves?" (May 16, 2003)

• Forty years ago this afternoon, on May 22, 1963, Mickey Mantle plastered one off the facade of the right field upper deck at Yankee Stadium, 18 inches short of the top. Ah, sweet memory. . .(May 22, 2003)

• Nike has outbid everyone and signed a high school basketball player, Lebron James, to a $90 million shoe endorsement contract. Should James have spurned that and gone to college instead? Nope. With $90 million he can buy a college. The really amazing thing is that there are countless millions of us out there who will actually take James's advice on what brand of shoes to buy. (May 23, 2003)

• James has a new nickname: King (the King James Version--Get it? Get it?). Where is the ACLU when we need it?

• The NCAA's new president, Myles Brand, is declining to intervene in the embarrassing spectacle unfolding between the Atlantic Coast and the Big East conferences. Three schools may be ready to bolt the Big East and five Big East schools are suing everyone in sight for billions and billions and billions. The legendary Murray Sperber, the Indiana University professor who is a nightmare for college sports because he speaks the truth about them, noted dryly that perhaps the reason Brand is mum is because the NCAA isn't paying him to intervene, it's "paying him to put an academic face on a commercial enterprise." Murray, some recall, got to spend a semester or two on leave at Indiana's Elba Campus in Canada a couple years ago, following critical remarks he made about Coach which enraged the Kool-Aid Crowd, some of whom then made death threats to Sperber. (June 11, 2003)

Reason Enough To Get And Stay Stoned At Anaheim

• A beer costs $8.50 if purchased in the bleachers an an Anaheim Angels major league baseball game. (June 12, 2003)

• A brief and single sentence buried in the Chicago Tribune's Sports Briefs notes that federal obstruction of justice charges in the University of Michigan's Big Booster Ed Martin Unpleasantness case have been dropped against Chris Webber and his dad, Mayce Webber, Jr.; however, perjury charges against the pair are still standing. (June 13, 2003)

• Miami (Florida) and West Virginia have decided to bolt the Big East for the ACC. Might be tied up in court for years trying. Money talks, lawyers rule. (July 1, 2003)

Mozart? Didn't He Play For The Fort Wayne Zollner Pistons In The 1940s?

• "Every now and then a genius comes along. I'm sure this is what it was like when Mozart was 13. But Mozart didn't have a shoe deal." --Pat Williams, vice president of the Orlando Magic, commenting on the crowd of 15,123 which showed up in Orlando for the first summer league game of the already-legendary-at-age-18 Lebron James, who also has a $90 million contract to wear Nike shoes. (July 10, 2003)

• "They'd better utilize him fast. Boykins was listed at 5-8 in high school, 5-7 in college, and now he's 5-5. If the trend continues, bobblehead dolls will be posting this guy up." --Scott Ostler, writing in the San Francisco Chronicle, about the Golden State Warriors' little fella, Earl Boykins. (July 11, 2003)

• Here are the career statistics on Larry Doby, voted in 1998 into baseball's Hall of Fame: 13 seasons (10 with Cleveland, plus short stints with Detroit and The White Sox), 1,515 career hits, 253 home runs (high of 32 in 1952 and 1954), 970 runs batted in (five seasons with more than 100 RBIs), career batting average .283 (high of .326 in 1950, and two seasons over .300), and batted .237 in two World Series. Hall of Silliness is more like it. (July 14, 2003)

Chris Skates

• On the eve of his perjury trial and a possible conviction which could have sent him to prison, former University of Michigan basketball star Chris Webber cut a deal with prosecutors and skated out of town (Detroit) with no prison time and some modest slaps on the wrist to be announced later. Webber admitted to a federal judge that he'd lied for over six years, and lied to a grand jury in 2000, when he denied taking "anything of value" from now dead Big Booster Ed Martin. The feds agreed to drop related charges against Chris's dad, Mayce Webber, Jr. Convicted of giving over $600,000 to UM players in the 1990s, Martin was cooperating with prosecutors when he died suddenly in February, 2003. Young Webber agreed to plead guilty to "criminal contempt." With Martin dead and Webber off the hook, UM poohbahs can relax and breathe easy. Its decade of lies and denial paid off handsomely, too. Time to move on, get on with the really important business of this great nation, like racial preferences for minorities applying to the University of Michigan. (July 15, 2003)

Packin' Heat At Northwestern

• A fascinating sidebar erupted mid-month in the Rashidi Wheeler Unpleasantness at Northwestern University. Wheeler collapsed and died on a practice field in August 3, 2001, and the University and its football staff have been sued by the family. Attention has focused on medical records which were destroyed by a school official (former student health services director, Dr. Mark Gardner) who claims he doesn't know why he did it, and the claim that Wheeler was taking stimulants and "diet supplements" including ephedra, which may have caused or contributed to his death. The mother of the dead athlete has accused the head football coach of being a "murderer." Feelings have run high in the matter. The sidebar is this: it's now been discovered that Northwestern officials sent armed undercover campus police officers to attend a deposition. When word leaked that that the officers had been packing heat, Judge Kathy Flanagan was quoted by the Chicago Tribune saying she was "absolutely appalled." and calling it a "wild, wild overreaction." Only if the other side doesn't start shooting first. (July 16, 2003)

Piece On Earth, Goodwill Toward Men

• Indianapolis Star sports editor Bob Kravitz, in a column about Colts kicker Mike Vanderjagt, reported that when the outspoken player arrived at the team's Terre Haute pre-season training camp, he emerged from his car in the Rose-Hulman University parking lot and immediately "spoke his peace" to eager reporters. (August 10, 2003)

• Hugo Lindgren, an editor of the New York Times Magazine, uses the arrival of a new ESPN television series, "Playmakers" and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban's brutally honest comments about the NBA's Most Recent Unpleasantness Said To Involve Kobe Bryant, The League's Anointed Successor to Michael, to frame a short article In the August 31 Times on something sports fans have known in their gut for years--our cherished illusions about "the purity of the games" are long gone, washed away in a tidal wave of violence, depravity and corruption. (Cuban is in big trouble with NBA poohbahs for noting that the Bryant sexual assault trial would be "great for the NBA. It's reality television. People love train-wreck television."). Lindgren even reports on a website offering a Fantasy Criminal League for sports fans, complete with rules, a draft, an elaborate point system, even "Idiot Points" for surpassingly stupid criminal acts. (September 1, 2003)

• The new boss of Indiana Pacers basketball operations, Larry Bird, closed out August by firing Coach Isiah Thomas. Local race-mongers immediately said the firing was racist. Here's hoping Bird still has a middle finger on either hand. (August 31, 2003)

Gee Whiz!

• Vanderbilt University has announced it's disbanding its athletic department and merging it into other programs over which the school president has direct control. Vandy will continue to field Division 1 teams as before, but no longer under an athletic department. President Gordon Gee, who obviously dipped deep to find the courage he needed, offered this quote for the ages: "There is a wrong culture in athletics, and I am declaring war on it." His is a small act, admittedly, but highly symbolic. May it inspire other college presidents to grab hold, and behead the monster. (September 12, 2003)

• The second public opinion poll in less than a year on how Indianapolis should deal with the Colts has produced the same results: essentially, two out of three residents polled oppose taxpayer funding of a new stadium for the team, and a majority don't care much whether the Colts stay or leave. Once all the polling is done and the citizenry has vented, the city will do what it's been going to do all along--do and pay whatever it takes to keep the Colts. (September 15, 2003)

• Some clever fine-tuning of the Maurice Clarett Unpleasantness is taking place before our very eyes by Ohio State poohbahs. This began as a charge that the university had kept Clarett eligible via possible academic fraud. A former tutor or faculty member went public with this allegation months ago, if memory serves. Clarett has now been charged with lying on a theft report in an unrelated incident and a suddenly compassionate Ohio State University is offering him a chance to leave school, be freed of any obligations to the university, and get on with his wonderful life. Where did the academic fraud matter go? It's disappeared in a clever shell game. It will be fascinating to see where this story goes.

• Cheers to the Chicago Tribune sports staffer who wrote this sparkler of a headline over the story about the Cubs fan who reached for a foul ball in the stands and deflected it away from the Chicago Cubs left fielder in the fateful 8th inning of the sixth playoff game against the Florida Marlins: "The Mitt Hits The Fan." (October 15, 2003)

• Cubs fans are the only group of people on our planet who can truly know what it's like to be an Indiana University football fan.

• Second baseman Alfonso Soriano is my early nominee for the Spittin'est Player Award in the World Series. Soriano spat five times during his second at-bat in last night's Series opener between the Yankees and the Florida Marlins. He kept it up throughout the game, but the camera failed to hover lovingly on the rest of his at-bats, so viewers were unable to get a full-game tally. Five was the best I saw all night on a single at-bat, though. (October 19, 2003)

• The cover on the latest issue of Sports Illustrated magazine features a picture of precocious teen-ager (and newly-anointed NBA icon) Lebron James and a headline heralding The Importance Of Being LeBron. (October 25, 2003)

• The Boston Red Sox's firing of manager Grady Little is ridiculous. And if the damn Gerbil (Don Zimmer) wants to quit as Yankees bench coach, let him. All he is or ever was is a mediocre clown with a steel head. (October 28, 2003)

• Oscar Robertson is out with a new book, "The Big O: My Life, My Times, My Game." He was in Indy yesterday to sign copies. He's still surly about the discrimination of his youth. Who can blame him? A photo caption with the newspaper article says he once averaged a triple double for a whole season. Players nowadays puff up when they do that in a single game. I still wish he'd gone to IU. (November 20, 2003)

• Must be sumpin' in the water down in Nashville. There, only two months ago, it was announced that Vanderbilt University was dissolving its athletic department and placing athletics under the direction of the university president, Gordon Gee, a move long urged by the reform-minded for intercollegiate sports. Vanderbilt may be the first university in the country to take this step. Now, Vanderbilt's vice-chancellor, David Williams II, has announced that next year's Vanderbilt-University of Tennessee football game, long scheduled in the huge (about 80,000 seats) downtown stadium of the city's pro team, the Tennessee Titans, in order to make more money, is being moved back to the Vanderbilt campus where the seating capacity is 39,973, about half the pro stadium's. Why such insanity? Williams told the Nashville Tennesseean that "we want to keep the campus atmosphere. The team would prefer it, the coach would prefer it. We want our students in there." Vandy coach Bobby Johnson added that "We want our guys to experience (the game) in their own stadium. It will be better for our students and our home fans." (November 26, 2003)

• Three University of Illinois basketballers (Luther Head, Aaron Spears, and Richard McBride) who were suspended while police investigated a campus burgary (a possible violation of team rules, according to athletic department spokespeople), have been reinstated to the team. The prosecutor decided not to file charges at the request of the break-in victims (who no doubt knew the price they'd pay if they went ahead), whose property was returned by the perps. Illinois officials reminded us that no harm was done, no charges filed--though perhaps an error in judgment was made--and that the players had chosen not to speak to the media about anything unpleasant including--but not limited to--the burglary, and that it was time to move on with our lives, move on to more important things. (December 3, 2003)

Yeah, Like Good Enough Players

• "There's been something amiss all year." --Jerry Colangelo, owner of the Phoenix Suns NBA team, commenting on the firing of Suns coach Frank Johnson. (December 11, 2003)

Trust Us On The Blacked-Out Parts

• Ohio State University has completed a five-month investigation of itself in the wake of academic fraud charges in the football program and determined that absolutely nothing unsavory occurred, not a thing at all. This despite a public admission by a faculty member that she gave a star football player (Maurice Clarett) oral examinations in place of written ones and another teacher admitted giving a receiver (Chris Vance) a passing grade despite the lad's score of 55 on a midterm exam, 35 on the final exam, having 11 unexcused absences and missing four of eight quizzes. OSU president Karen Holbrook told the Dayton Daily News that "Our university's academic integrity is sound." The University handed out copies of its report to the media, but, the News reported, "much of it was blacked out, including eight pages in a section labeled, ‘Results of the Investigation.' " (December 18, 2003)

I Say Terrell's Been Watching Too Much IU Football

• "(in the fourth quarter, Chicago quarterback) Chris Chandler hit (receiver David) Terrell over the middle for a long gainer. There was no defender near him, but Terrell inexplicably cut right and headed straight for (Chiefs) safety Shaunhard Harts, who tackled him on the 17." --From the Indianapolis Star's wire service accounts of the December 28 NFL game between the Chicago Bears and the Kansas City Chiefs. (December 29, 2003)

'Student Athlete' Farce Roars On

• Oklahoma's top-ranked football team's graduation rate is 36 percent. Only two teams of the other 55 playing in holiday bowl games have lower rates: Fresno State and Arkansas, both 26 percent. Syndicated columnist Derrick Jackson notes 26 of the 28 bowl games this season would have to be canceled if Knight Commission recommendations on graduation rates (50 percent minimum) were enforced. Arkansas (16 percent), Pittsburgh (23) and Miami of Ohio (25) have the lowest graduation rates for black players. (December 31, 2003)

No. . .We Ain't

• "At the end of the day, we're all grown men." --Al Harrington of the Indiana Pacers, talking about teammate Ron Artest's latest troubles with officials, his coach, and team management. (December 31, 2003)

Unfinished Business

• CBS Sports ran a program in 2003 called the "10 Greatest Coaches" in college basketball. I got to watch only sporadically. They ran them backwards, starting with Lute Olsen (Iowa and Arizona) at No. 10. Moving upward the list included Phog Allen of Kansas at No. 9; Georgetown's John Thompson (8); Pete Newell (California) at No. 7; Hank Iba (6); Kentucky's Adolph Rupp at No. 5; Bob Knight (Army, Indiana, Texas Tech) at No. 4--and about whom the CBS narrator inexplicably and inaccurately stated that "his standards are as high for his players as they are for himself." And then I never got to see another program. Presumably Johnny Wooden of UCLA, Dean Smith (North Carolina) and Coach K at Duke would have been the remaining three. I'd pay money (a dollar or two) to have the complete list. (December 31, 2003)

How'd Texas Slip In There?

• Nine of the 10 largest high school gymnasiums in the United States are in Indiana. New Castle's Chrysler High School fieldhouse is the biggest in the nation with a seating capacity of 9,325. Next are: Anderson (8,996); East Chicago (8,296); Seymour (8,110); Richmond (7,929); Loos High School, Dallas, Texas (7,500), Elkhart (7,373); Michigan City (7,304); Gary West (7,217), and Marion (7,054. (List published in USA Today) (December 31, 2003)

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