No Brett, Don’t Go! Give Marinelli A Chance In Green Bay!

Is he looking for a life after football?

Well, nuts.

He says he’d leave today, quit on the spot, if a decision had to be made forthwith. He says he can still play, can still perform at a high level, but hey — maybe he just doesn’t feel like it anymore.

Brett Favre contemplates retirement today. Actually, he isn’t so much contemplating it as he is considering it. Seriously. So seriously that he says if Packers management needed an up or down vote this morning, it would be “down”.

“I still know I can play,” Favre said in an ESPN interview. “I still love to play. But there’s just so much more to it than that now. I never thought it would be complicated, never thought mentally I would give out before I did physically.”

Favre’s off-the-field worries have been well-documented: his father’s death, his wife’s bout with breast cancer, his family members’ displacement by Hurricane Katrina. And toss in the Packers’ 4-12 2005 season, marked by Favre’s career-high 29 interceptions, and you can see where the only man to win the NFL MVP Award three times might be looking longingly at a post-playing career.

But Brett — listen up: you have to stay one more season. You have to give our Detroit Lions one more chance to beat you in Green Bay. We haven’t done it, you know. You became the Pack’s quarterback in 1992 and since then you’ve beaten the Lions 15 straight times in Wisconsin, including one playoff game. Even 2005’s stinker team came back and won — on ESPN no less.

So I figure it would be only fair to strap it on for one more season, at least thru the next Detroit game at Green Bay. Give our new coach Rod Marinelli a crack at the apparently uncrackable nut that is Brett Favre -vs- the Lions in Green Bay.

For it will not be nearly as gratifying to win in Green Bay if Brett Favre is not the Packers’ quarterback. It’s like beating the Bulls without Michael Jordan. Or the Eagles without Donovan McNabb’s mother serving Chunky Soup. In fact, if you do hang ‘em up, and the Lions do in fact win at Lambeau Field in 2006, it will forever be viewed as the reason why they were able to win.

Don’t let the Lions go 0-for-Favre in Green Bay, Brett.

Besides, I want to try our new staff out, especially if the Lions hire Mike Martz as their new offensive coordinator. The Packers have been the beneficiaries of popgun Lions offenses for too long now. Time to give them more to think about than a draw play on 3rd-and-8, or a screen pass on 3rd-and-12. Maybe the team will even throw on first down every now and then.

But all joking aside — was I joking? — the Packers won’t be nearly as fun to watch without Mr. Favre leading the charge. I don’t even remember who the Packers’ QB was before #4. Don Majkowski? That was when Tony Mandarich was being shoved into the backfield as a bust offensive tackle. Anyhow, you always want to beat the great ones, and though Favre has slipped — he’s 36 after all — he is still the second best QB in Packers’ history, behind Bart Starr. So if the Lions beat anyone else at Lambeau….well, what’s the fun in THAT?

We’ve been tormented by our share of villains in the Motor City: Favre, Patrick Roy, Larry Bird, Claude Lemieux, the Minnesota Vikings, Manu Ginobili and Robert Horry — to name a few. However, in most instances, you eventually gain a healthy respect for those bad guys (Lemieux, of course, excluded). This is because you realize, in the end, the reason they’re villains — most of the time — is because they are pretty damn good players.

As Isiah Thomas once said, “People don’t boo the benchwarmers.”

So Brett Favre can’t retire — not just yet.

All we are sayyyying…is give Rod a chance!

MONDAY FEATURES: QUOTE OF THE WEEK, OBSCURE FACTOID

QUOTE OF THE WEEK


Little Freddie Patek

“I’d rather be the shortest player in the big leagues than the tallest player in the minor leagues.”

– Former shortstop Freddie Patek, who stood 5′5″ and who was almost always the shortest player in MLB in any given year

OBSCURE FACTOID


Lindsey Nelson

The very first use of instant reply in a sports telecast was during the 1963 Army-Navy football game. As announcer Lindsey Nelson said, ”Here it comes,” viewers got an immediate second look at Army quarterback Rollie Stichweh’s 1-yard touchdown.

”This is not live!” Nelson screamed into the microphone. “Ladies and gentlemen, Army has not scored again!”

Zorn Comes Full Circle With Seahawks

Thirty years ago, the Seattle Seahawks joined the National Football League, hatching out of a blue, white, green and silver egg — a football Easter of sorts. Their quarterback was, as far as I am aware, the only QB whose last name began with a “Z” — Jim Zorn. The guy with the funny last name played at a school with a funny name: Caly-Poly Pomona. Good luck finding it on a map.

Zorn, that ole lefty gunslinger

But speaking of maps, that’s exactly where Jim Zorn put the Seattle Seahawks. Zorn was a gunslinger who was cut from the same cloth as Daryle Lamonica — “The Mad Bomber” of the Oakland Raiders, whose philosophy was “If it’s 3rd-and-six, let’s go for SIXTY, not six.” In other words, 180 degrees from Steve Mariucci’s pop gun offense. Zorn heaved it, and heaved it often — and deep. He liked to look for Steve Largent, the Hall of Fame receiver. In 1978, ‘79, and ‘80, Zorn threw for over 10,000 yards combined and 52 touchdowns. The fact that he also threw 48 interceptions was largely due to his fearless style of quarterbacking.

Zorn also led the ‘Hawks to their only previous appearance in a Conference Championship Game — in 1983-84 when Seattle fell to the eventual Super Bowl champion Raiders.

Now Zorn comes full circle with the team with which he has been so closely associated. Zorn, 52, is the Seahawks’ quarterback coach. His tutelage of Matt Hasselbeck has been a huge part of the Seattle quarterback’s success. Head coach Mike Holmgren, himself a professor of quarterbackdom, says Zorn has “drills I’d never even heard of. He has way more drills than I do.”

Zorn is a big believer in proper footwork. He wants his quarterbacks square and balanced, and always ready to skidaddle out of the way. Zorn practiced what he now preaches. Jim Zorn could scramble with the best of them.

“Some quarterbacks, the young ones, like to fade back and plant their back foot firmly into the turf,” Zorn says. “That puts them in a bad position if they need to pop up and look for check off receivers. I want my quarterbacks to be light on their feet and not plant that back foot so much.”

It must be working. Hasselbeck, in his fifth year under Zorn’s watchful eye, has now thrown for over 3,000 yards four seasons in a row. The last Seahawk QB to do it even three times in a row? Jim Zorn.

Hasselbeck also can move in the pocket, a la his teacher. In five Zorn years in Seattle, Hasselbeck has rushed for nearly 700 yards.

When Zorn and the Seattle Seahawks entered the league together, the team took an “Oh, what the hell” attitude and introduced a wide open offense. The Seahawks knew, as an expansion team, that they were going to lose some games. So they may as well lose them in an exciting fashion. Again, 180 degrees opposite from our Lions’ philosophy.

So Zorn chucked it, Largent more often than not caught it, and the Seahawks soon became a team with which to reckon. Zorn is not a Hall of Famer like Largent, but if there was a Hall for southpaws, he’d be in it. Zorn might have been, in fact, the second best lefty QB ever to play in the NFL, behind Steve Young — with apologies to Kenny Stabler. And Todd Marinovich. Certainly he’s the best ever to come out of Cal-Poly Pomona, no?

Jim Zorn is not the head football coach of the Seattle Seahawks. But he has, in a very real, tangible way, helped bring his team all the way from expansion chicks to Super Bowl hawks. He is the man who has propped up Matt Hasselbeck for five years, culminating in an appearance in Super Bowl XL.

Maybe the Lions could give Greg Landry a call? Oh — they tried that already.

See how memorable it was?

No ‘News’ Was Good News For Pistons When It Came To Marvin Barnes

(note: some quotes and facts for the following came from Jerry Green’s book “The Detroit Pistons: Capturing A Remarkable Era”)

Watching the Pistons win with monotonous regularity, piling up wins like pancakes on a serving plate at the IHOP, got me to thinking of the team’s rather inglorious past. I’m big on contrasts. I like remembering the good times during the bad, and the bad times during the good when it comes to our teams. It’s much more fun, of course, to do the latter.

And when you’re talking Pistons Basketball, throwback style, it’s just as well to do just that: throw it back. Before the Bad Boys, the Pistons really were the bad boys. Mostly they played basketball court jesters in a theater of the absurd, and before gaggles of empty seats. They were the Broadway show that got shut down after one night, but kept playing anyway.

The follies weren’t confined to the hardwood, however. The Pistons, before Bill Davidson bought out his partners in 1974 and began to right the ship ever so slowly, practiced an interesting approach toward winning: they constantly walked around with pistols, and aimed them squarely at their basketball shoes.

What else can you say about a franchise that once employed, at various times, the following as its general manager: its radio announcer, an accountant, the Lions’ former GM, and a lawyer. But that’s okay, because it also employed as coach a 24 year-old player, a liquor salesman, a man who met his future wife in the army brig and who loved steam baths, a man who loved to wear leisure suits and no socks, and a one-eyed sheister from the college ranks.

So when the American Basketball Association decided it had had enough and deflated its red, white, and blue basketballs for good, announcing that four of its teams would survive and merge into the NBA in the summer of 1976, it was announced there would be a dispersal draft. Basically, the cream of the crop of players not on those four surviving teams would be put into a hopper of sorts, available for selection by NBA clubs in a certain predetermined pecking order.

There was, without question, some highly attractive talent in that pool. The ABA could play some ball. They just couldn’t get enough paying customers to witness it in person. Hence the deflation of basketballs.

The Pistons had their eyes on big, strong, young Moses Malone, from the Virginia Squires. Moses didn’t go to college, but he made the transition from high school to the pros with wonderful seamlessness. Of course, Moses was coveted by many teams. Still, the Pistons would have a shot at him, based on their draft position.

But there was another player, another huge talent, that made the Pistons’ feeble, woefully basketball knowledge-deprived front office drool. He played for the St. Louis Spirits.

When Marvin Barnes was selected by the Pistons in the ABA dispersal draft in the summer of 1976, it was the perfect completion to the statement, “Just when you thought it couldn’t get any: a) worse, b) more bizarre, c) funnier.”

Marvin “Bad News” Barnes


Barnes had a nickname, gathered from his time at Providence University and his years with the Spirits. It was “Bad News”. That’s what they might tend to call you, too, if you threatened a teammate with a tire iron, as he did in college, and missed practices and showed up late for games, as he did in the pros.

But the Detroit Pistons, once again pointing that pistol at their feet, pulled the trigger when they selected Marvin “Bad News” Barnes over Moses “Future Hall of Famer” Malone.
Barnes, legend has it, had 13 telephones in his two-bedroom apartment so he wouldn’t have to reach any further than arm’s length to answer a call. But eccentricities aside, Marvin “Bad News” Barnes had a message for the basketball fans in Detroit.

*************************************
All season, Barnes tried the Pistons’ patience. He was late for practices. He was late for games. He complained that he wasn’t playing enough.
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“I’m going to get my game together. I think we have a great team. I can imagine the championship banner now. What do they call that place? Cobo?”

And then Marvin probably answered a phone call in the bathroom.

But he had another message, and it was about his relatively unflattering nickname.

“Call me ‘News’,” Marvin implored the good people of Detroit — especially those with pens and notebooks and newspaper columns. “Not ‘Bad News’ — just ‘News.’”

And then Marvin probably answered a phone call in his closet.

The Pistons, in the fall of 1976, were coached by Herb Brown, Larry’s not-as-famous older brother. He was in lockstep with his bosses when he declared publicly that the selection of Marvin Barnes instead of a huge manchild like Moses Malone in the dispersal draft was a good thing for his basketball team. Herb Brown, after all, knew that upper management read the papers — even the sports section.

But when training camp started, and when the players gathered around Brown on the first day, guess who was missing?

Marvin Barnes!

The Pistons suspended him. Before he suited up for even one practice.

And that was just the beginning. All season, Barnes tried the Pistons’ patience. He was late for practices. He was late for games. He complained that he wasn’t playing enough. But then he did something that couldn’t possibly remove the word “Bad” from his sobriquet.

Already on probation for the tire iron incident, Barnes was caught with a loaded gun while going through the metal detectors at Metro Airport. Providence must not be a very good school. They apparently don’t teach their students not to do such a thing, especially while one is already on probation.

There would be jail time for Marvin Barnes, a judge said, and it would begin in May — conveniently after the NBA season would be concluded. Judges read sports pages, too, you know.

So the ‘76-77 campaign rolled along, and as it got closer to the end of the regular season, Marvin Barnes had another surprise for Herb Brown and the Pistons brass.

“I don’t want to play in the playoffs. I want to start my prison time. I just want to get it over with. My contract doesn’t say I have to play in the playoffs for them.”

Marvin may have been right about the contract thing, but it’s doubtful the Pistons felt they had to add a clause that said, “Player agrees to play in the playoffs — if we make it!”

After some cajoling and ego stroking, Barnes finally agreed to play in the 1977 playoffs. It was much ado about nothing. The Pistons were blasted out in the first round, two games to one. Marvin then traipsed off to prison, leaving his apartment and his telephones behind.

Marvin “Bad News” Barnes lasted into the beginning of the 1977-78 season before being traded to the Buffalo Braves. It closed a deliciously goofy chapter in franchise history.

So when you are witness to the basketball ballet that today’s Pistons perform nightly, be mindful that before the pirouettes, there were pratfalls and slapstick.

“News”, indeed!

Thomas’ Uneven Post-Playing Career Now Tragicomic

This blog is entitled “Out of Bounds” because it is, I think, an accurate, sports-related term to describe my sometimes offbeat take on this wacky world of sports.

It is not, however, usually a space for me to speak on issues that are not only “out of bounds”, but “out of my comfort zone.”

I write about sports. It’s not all I know, but it’s what I write about. Because I know the subject matter, and it’s fun as hell. As George Puscas, one of my idols, once wrote, “I don’t know why anyone would want to write about anything other than sports.”

But I need to get a little out of that comfort zone because Isiah Thomas won’t let me stay comfortable.

I wasn’t going to touch the latest Isiah story — the allegations by a female former New York Knicks executive that Thomas sexually harassed her — because I normally don’t get into that kind of stuff. It’s not a sports story, per se. Thomas is retired as a player, and instead of stealing basketballs on the court, he is stealing money as the brutally inept president of the Knicks.

But it’s not going to go away, and Isiah is ratcheting up the denials, so here goes.

The former employee is a woman named Anucha Browne Sanders, who had been the Knicks’ senior vice president of marketing and business operations.

According to the Associated Press, Browne Sanders filed a lawsuit Tuesday, saying she was fired last Thursday “for telling the truth” while going through internal channels to stop the harassment. She has accused Thomas of telling her he was “very attracted” to her and “in love” with her and tried to kiss her.

Did he or didn’t he?


I guess whenever I read stories like this, I try to look at them pragmatically. I inevitably end up struggling to come up with reasons why a woman would put herself through the baloney that she has to endure in such an instance, if what she says happened didn’t.

Money!

Really? This was a woman, Browne Sanders, who held a very high title with the Knicks. She was one of the highest-ranking black female executives in sports. It’s doubtful money was something she was lacking, though I suppose anything is possible.

Smoke tends to portend fire. I must admit, whenever one of these stories boils to the surface, I tend to side with the woman. Have women made up these sorts of tales for some sort of personal gain, or for vengeance? Sure they have. There are always exceptions. But I have a hunch the percentages would be on my side if someone were to research how many were blatantly false and how many had a good deal of merit. Again, why put yourself through a legal and emotional and personal nightmare if what you’re alleging is completely baseless?

Thomas, and he obviously isn’t alone in this regard, has a dark side, folks have told me. Browne Sanders says that dark side can be downright abhorrent and a 180 degree opposite from the smiling cherub he purports to be.

In court documents, Browne Sanders said Thomas often berated her and made crude comments about her to Knicks officials, telling them not to listen to any of her directions. She also charged that last month, he hugged and tried to kiss her, and when she pulled away, he said, “What, I can’t get any love from you today?”

Thomas, for his part, is vehemently denying the allegations, which turned into a lawsuit claiming the Knicks — Thomas especially — fired her when she tried to funnel her complaints through the proper channels. But what else is he going to do? You always deny — right, guys? Right up to the bitter end.

Thomas apparently has support from others inside Madison Square Garden.

MSG chairman James Dolan, through spokesman Barry Watkins, said he has “total confidence in the long-term strategy of the management team.”

Whatever the hell that means. Funny how he didn’t say he has “total confidence that these allegations are false and without base for truth.”

Again, where there’s smoke….

Leyland Knows He’s On A Rapidly Ticking Clock As Tigers Manager

I like Jim Leyland as Tigers manager already.

He speaks with urgency, which I suppose is easier to do when you’re in your 60’s and getting another manager job after being fired from your last one, a job in which you admittedly didn’t give it your best shot.

“We better get better quick. Mr. Ilitch is running out of patience. The fans are running out of patience,” Leyland said as the Tigers winter caravan loaded up its diesel fuel and set out to roam the state, beating the bushes looking for fans who will buy the propaganda once more.

Leyland: no time for five-year plans

But there is no propaganda, in the brainwashing sense, when it comes to Jimmy Leyland. He may shoot it from the hip, but he shoots it straight. A refreshing change from the “Gee whiz” saccharin that came from the Tigers dugout the last three seasons.

“I’m going to have fun with the players. I’ll never slam them publicly. But behind closed doors, there will be accountability,” Leyland says. “We got good players, so let’s go out and perform.”

But back to the urgency. Leyland sees the need for it, has it, and wants to transfer it to his players. He hasn’t managed in the American League, and he admitted at his introductory press conference that he didn’t know all that much about his new team. But he hasn’t been living in one of Saddam Hussein’s spider holes, either. He knows the Tigers haven’t compiled more wins than losses since 1993.

“Alan Trammell isn’t here because the players didn’t perform,” Leyland says with perhaps a bit too much of a nod to professional courtesy. “And if the players don’t perform for me, I’ll get fired.”

Yes, it’s all about the players, Sparky Anderson always use to say. You have good ones, you’re a good manager. If you don’t….

Speaking of wins and losses, Jim Leyland has an overall record that is below .500. But his resume includes three straight divisional titles with the Pirates, a World Series win with the Marlins, and two Manager of the Year Awards. Being on the wrong side of .500 as a manager is easier to forgive when you’ve done that kind of winning in the process.

Early indicators are that his new players are buying into the Leyland administration, although there’s not really a choice for them at this point. But it’s always good to have them on your side, I suppose. Makes the medicine go down easier if there’s some sugar in the clubhouse.

“He’s a throwback. He’s a no-nonsense guy,” third baseman Brandon Inge says.

No-nonsense? Good! There’s been plenty of that stuff around Michigan and Trumbull first, then Brush and Madison second, during the past 12 years.

Longevity in the managerial/coaching positions is a dying commodity in professional sports. Gone are the days when men managed or coached teams as if they were Supreme Court justices: as long as they damn well wanted. Now, a guy who is in place for three or four years is a “dean” of his brethren. Look no further than Joe Louis Arena to the south, the Palace to the north, and Comerica Park and Ford Field in between, to understand that coaches get the ziggy at dizzying rates nowadays. Mike Babcock, in his first season as coach of the Red Wings, is the senior guy in town. And he was hired in early July 2005. Detroit performed a quadruple coaching bypass — all four of them getting the ziggy within four months and some change.

So it’s no surprise that when a legend leaves, the rock of consistency leaves with him. The Dodgers were managed first by Walter Alston for 20+ years, then Tommy Lasorda for another 20. Since Tommy resigned, no man has been able to keep the job for longer than five years. Sparky’s last season in Detroit was 1995. Since then, the Tigers have spirited five men in and out of the dugout. Jim Leyland will be the sixth.

The Tigers are in dire need of a firm hand on their ship’s wheel. Last season the clubhouse was a disaster. Alan Trammell isn’t not here just because the players didn’t perform. He didn’t perform, either. The Tigers, toothless on the field, need a manager with teeth. Jim Leyland blows into town with that reputation. This is a man who took on Barry Bonds, don’t forget, in a very public display one spring.

Jimmy Leyland talks of getting better quickly and everyone’s lack of patience when it comes to Detroit Tigers baseball. He knows his honeymoon is going to be short.

The Tigers should have been hiring older dudes as soon as the Sparkster left, after all.

Party Hearty, Pistons Fans — But ‘84 Tigers’ Start Was More Impressive

Sorry, Sheed — but ‘84 Tigers trump your 35-5 getaway

It’s almost unbelievable, really, to consider that anyone over 25 in this town has seen two Detroit teams begin a season with a record of 35-5 after 40 games.

The Pistons joined the 1984 Tigers last night, working overtime to escape the Milwaukee Bucks, 106-102 at the Palace.

I promised myself I would write this piece if the Pistons successfully made the climb to professional sports’ stratosphere, causing our ‘84 Tigers to make room in that penthouse. It may ruffle some feathers and maybe this isn’t the best time to do it, but it’s also the perfect time, because the comparisons are so tempting.

So which is more difficult, anyway — going 35-5 in major league baseball, or in the NBA?

Sorry, Rasheed — the (base)ball don’t lie.

It might not be a popular viewpoint this morning, but it says here that there are simply more land mines through which to navigate during a baseball season than during an NBA campaign. And that’s why the 1984 Tigers’ 35-5 record is more impressive — albeit slightly more impressive — than this season’s Pistons version.

If you think about all a major league schedule has to offer in any given 40-game stretch — three-game series with the same team, hot pitchers, fluke plays, defensive miscues, the sudden death of a walk-off homer against, hitting slumps — I think it’s simply bewildering that a team, no matter how good, could win 35 of its first 40 games. Or 17 straight road games. Or 18 of its first 20 — another record. But the Tigers did all of that in 1984, and I truly wonder if we’ll ever see anything close to it again.

The following season, in 1985, some friends and I ventured to Cleveland to watch the Tigers play the Indians in the cavernous Municipal Stadium. We sat behind these obnoxious dudes who were razzing us about the Indians, who were actually winning the game. The Indians were miserable in ‘85. The talk turned to the ‘84 Tigers, because Obnoxious Dudes took great delight in the fact that the ‘85 Tigers weren’t all that.

“The only reason they (the Tigers) won the division is because they started 35-5,” one of them said through his wimpish beak.

“Do you realize how HARD it is to go 35-5?,” I countered.

If it was legal, I’d still be beating him now, as you read this.

Look, what the Pistons have done this season is amazing — no question. The fact that there is still serious talk — at the halfway point — of them reaching 70 victories is testament to that. They are chomping through the NBA schedule like PacMan. They seem, really, to be able to turn on their afterburners at will, leaving their opponents gasping in the dust. History may place them among the top five greatest teams of all-time, as far as single seasons go.

But their feat does not surpass that of the 1984 Detroit Tigers.

In those first 40 games, the Tigers lost consecutive games only once: games 22 and 23, to “fall” to 19-4. They had winning streaks of nine (twice), and seven (twice). That’s 32 wins right there, just in streaks. They won those 17 straight on the road, including a west coast swing. They plowed through the league, avoiding all those pitfalls I outlined earlier — those bugaboos that befall major league baseball teams on a weekly basis.

And they did it all to the tune of an .875 winning percentage through one quarter of a 162-game season.

The Pistons, bless their blue collar hearts, have an advantage that the ‘84 Tigers didn’t possess: there are more cupcakes on an NBA schedule than there are in big league baseball. It’s true. There are winning percentages in the NBA that look like MLB batting averages, sprinkled throughout the league. The Tigers didn’t get to beat up on teams who were on pace to lose 100 games, over and over again. There are many have-nots in the NBA, and the Pistons have been able to pad their record with wins against such impostors.

This may be one of those great barroom discussions. It’s always fun to compare apples to oranges in sports. We like to do that in this country. To compare the uncomparable provides shelter in the wake of heated arguing.

So you know we’re going to do it, starting today in earnest, now that the Pistons have matched the Tigers, in record at least. But they have only done just that: match them in terms of records.

The 1984 Tigers can relax. Theirs is still the greatest achievement.

Red Sox Front Office: Dr. Phil Meets Musical Chairs, And Then Some

What in the world is going on at Fenway Park?

The Boston Red Sox are playing musical chairs in their front office — except in this game, names and titles are changing faster than the music.

Theo Epstein, the Boy Wonder general manager, is back in — as general manager, after quitting last Halloween, making vague references to “philosophical differences.”

I wish I could stop right there, with Epstein’s reclaiming of his title, in prizefighter fashion. But the Boston Red Sox front office, since the end of the 2005 season, has resembled a combination of a “Dr. Phil” episode with a little bit of “The Apprentice” thrown in. Hell, there’s even some “The Bachelor” in there, if you look hard enough.

Left holding the bag after Epstein’s resignation, the Red Sox announced on Dec. 12 that Jed Hoyer and Ben Cherington, two of Epstein’s former lieutenants, would serve as co-GMs. Ben and Jed — sounded too much like the famous ice cream, I guess, because last week, the team said Epstein would return to baseball operations full-time, in a capacity to be determined.

Yeah, like Theo was going to come back as the clubhouse attendant, or chief ticket taker.

“Can you hear me now? Good — I want my job back”

It was clear that there was only one role Theo Epstein would fill with the Bosox: GM. And Epstein’s resumption of the GM title was first reported Tuesday by the Boston Herald on its Web site.

So here’s where the top-heavy Red Sox get the boombox out and set up the chairs:

Jed Hoyer’s new job will be assistant general manager, and Ben Cherington was given the title of vice president of player personnel. Bill Lajoie stays on as a special adviser for baseball operations and Craig Shipley was named vice president for international scouting and special assistant to the general manager.

Forget player payroll — is there enough dough in Red Sox Nation to pay all these brass?

But the fun doesn’t stop with names and titles. Once you listen to team president Larry Lucchino and Epstein speak, that’s when you realize it gets Dr. Phil-ish.

“Walls have crumbled, perceptions of one another have changed, and appreciation of one another has grown,” Lucchino said. “As an enhanced sense of ‘team’ has emerged, we have rediscovered that, whatever our differences may have been, baseball is at the center of our operations and our lives, and working toward the success of the Red Sox is a commitment which all of us share.”

Cue the applause and the moist eyes.

But there’s more. Here’s Epstein:

“There were fundamental disagreements among members of upper management” about organizational priorities, Theo’s statement said.

“This lack of a shared vision, plus the stress of a far-too-public negotiation, strained some relationships, including mine with Larry Lucchino,” he said. “Gradually, with the benefit of time and greater perspective, we tackled not only our personal conflicts but also the differences regarding our thoughts for the organization. We emerged, 10 weeks and many spirited conversations later, with the comfort of a shared vision for the future of the organization.”

Please….I need a moment.

I wonder when the Epstein-Lucchino hug will be shown on ESPN The Deuce.

All of those words are swell, but it really boils down to this: Theo got into a snit, took his ball and went home, and the Red Sox made nice and talked him into coming back.

Dr. Phil, we don’t need you after all.

My heavens, remember when front office types chomped cigars and made some trades and ran the ship with an iron fist? Those guys would say, in a variation from the movie “A League of Their Own”, “There’s no group hugs in baseball!”

So when’s the support meeting for “Johnny Damon Lovers Anonymous”?

300 Posts? Doesn’t That Get You Into The Blogger Hall Of Fame?

Practicing for my 300th last summer

Well, it’s not Al Kaline’s 3,000th hit, or Steve Yzerman’s 600th goal or Barry Sanders’ 10,000th yard, or even the Tigers’ 120th loss, but your friendly neighborhood blogger — that would be me — just imprinted onto your computer screen his 300th post since “Out of Bounds” started in April 2005.

Actually, this is post #301. The 300th was my diatribe about Kobe Bryant’s 81 point game.

I know you haven’t read all 300 of them — man, that would be a sad life if you did — but even if you’ve read just one, and this is the one, thank you.

And as far as the Hall goes, I actually have to be retired for five years to merit consideration, don’t I?

Guess I’ll go back to work.

Here’s to at least 300 more, eh?

***********************************************
Also wanted to welcome a new sponsor to the “OOB” family: Coast to Coast Tickets.

They can be your source for all tickets, and not just those of the Detroit teams.

Their ad is on the left side of this page, beneath this blog’s description.

Check them out at www.coasttocoasttickets.com.

Blame Kobe’s 81 Points On Boredom

When Isiah Thomas, that point guard nonpareil, was drafted by the Pistons in 1981, he had a concern. And it was a legitimate concern, considering the Pistons were coming off a 21-61 season.

“I don’t know who I’m going to pass the ball to there (in Detroit),” Zeke told some reporters shortly after the draft.

Thank goodness the Pistons had also selected Kelly Tripucka in that same draft. Ole Kelly was never one to shy away from a shot.

Kobe Bryant took Isiah Thomas’ concern about the 1981 Pistons to the nth degree Sunday night. He took 46 shots in 42 minutes, and scored 81 points in the Lakers’ 122-104 win over the Toronto Raptors.

After all, who is he going to pass the ball to on the Lakers?

Must not be Lamar Odom, who can play the game but not in Kobe’s stratosphere. Apparently not Smush Parker, because Smushie is a point guard and it’s his responsibility to pass to Kobe, not the other way around. Not Chris Mihm, who’s never been much of a scorer. Not Kwame Brown, who is still a babe yet. And certainly not anyone from the bench. The Lakers’ reserves scored a whopping five points in 59 combined minutes against the Raptors.

Get outta my way!
(teammates included)

I’d say Kobe Bryant is simply doing these days what bored superstars do, when they don’t feel anyone else on the court wearing the same colored jersey is worth a hoot.

There’s been some talk — boy, has there been some talk — about Bryant’s 81-point explosion, and most of it isn’t good. The words “selfish” and “ball hog” and “that’s not how you win championships” have been bantied about.

But here it is, folks, plain and simple: Kobe Bryant is bored.

Earlier this season he scored 62 points in a game in which he sat out the entire fourth quarter. That’s an 81-point pace, too, if you want to do the math. He is averaging almost 36 points a game. And the Lakers play at not much above a .500 clip in the meanwhile, despite Kobe’s astronomical scoring numbers.

But that’s okay with Kobe. He’s just a guy who loves to shoot the basketball and have some fun, and since there’s no one with whom it is worth sharing the ball, why not jack it up nearly 50 times and let the chips — and the records — fall where they may?

You see, there it is: boredom. The team is so-so, the teammates aren’t going to make people forget Magic Johnson, James Worthy, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and the rest, and a championship isn’t in the offing this season. So what else is there to do but score a bucketful of points and make people forget things like feuds with Shaq or rape charges?

Lakers GM Mitch Kupchak better get on the phone and find his superstar a playmate, or else Kobe is going to keep shooting and shooting and shooting, while the team keeps winning, then losing, then winning, then losing. It is readily evident that Kobe Bryant finds nary a person on his own team in whom he can entrust the basketball. So to break the monotony, if nothing else, Kupchak needs to secure another scorer.

Or maybe not. One of the reasons the Lakers lost the 2004 NBA Finals to the Pistons, I am convinced, was Bryant’s reluctance (refusal?) to get Shaquille O’Neal more involved in the offense. Maybe the worst thing that could have happened to the Lakers was having Kobe’s long three-pointer beat the Pistons in Game 2 of that series. After that, Bryant became downright incorrigible on the court. And the Lakers fell meekly in the next three games. Shaq had had enough, and fled to the southern Florida coast, a hop, skip and a jump away from Cuba, for goodness sakes.

Sometimes in the NBA, when a player is spot-on and his scoring totals for a particular game spike, it is because the shots just happen to fall or the flow of the game sends the ball and scoring chances in that player’s general direction. In those instances, it is wise to feed the “hot hand” and even rely on that strategy to gain victory. But with Kobe Bryant, as with Michael Jordan in his early, Baby Bull years, it’s not that way. Instead, it’s a simple matter of “I’m better than anyone else on my team so just give me the damn ball and get out of my way.”

Or something like that.

Again, send slings and arrows Kobe Bryant’s way, if you must. Grumble all you want about his ballhogging or his selfishness. Puff out your chest and declare that championships can’t be won with one player scoring 81 points and the other 11 players scoring 41 combined.

Kobe knows all that. He’s just bored.

And who’s to blame for that, really?

MONDAY FEATURES: QUOTE OF THE WEEK, OBSCURE FACTOID

QUOTE OF THE WEEK


The King (and not Elvis)


“I ran scared. When I was a kid my mother would send me to the store for a loaf of bread and I would run back home because it was a tough neighborhood. So that’s how I carried the football — like a loaf of bread, and scared as hell.”

–Hall of Fame running back Hugh “The King” McElhenny

OBSCURE FACTOID

Al Downing (center) as a Yankee rookie

Pitcher Al Downing was in attendance during two of baseball’s most celebrated homeruns: he was a Yankees rookie in the dugout when Roger Maris hit his 61st homer in 1961, and he served up Hank Aaron’s 715th as a Dodger in 1974.

Fitting, In A Way, That Seahawks Make A Super Debut In Detroit

So yet another team that joined the National Football League after the Lions — in this case, 42 years afterward — has made it to a Super Bowl. Fitting that it should be played in the Lions’ own building. That’s a slap in the face and a kick in the teeth, for good measure.

The Seattle Seahawks, born in 1976, qualified for their first ever try for Vince’s trophy with a resounding 34-14 beating of the Carolina Panthers in the NFC Championship yesterday. It might be appropriate to mention that the Panthers, too, are one of those teams who entered the NFL long after the Lions but reached a Super Bowl long before them. In fact, in their 11-year history, the Panthers have already played in three NFC title games. The Lions, in 36 seasons of NFC play, have participated in one.

All the rage around town, as well it should be, is the homecoming of Pittsburgh Steelers running back Jerome Bettis. Detroit Mackenzie High School is about to be mentioned about 15,000 times between now and the Big Game, it being the alma mater of Bettis, who is soon to be 34 years of age and headed for almost certain retirement, whether the Steelers beat the Seahawks or not.

I’m very happy for Bettis — I semi-boldly predicted this would happen in Saturday’s post — and he absolutely will be the story, at least around these parts, as we prepare for two weeks of mostly meaningless drivel. And you should be happy, too — as long as you do realize you are going to be absolutely sick of the man by kickoff.

But it is the appearance of the Seahawks, I am telling you, that should be the issue. I think it is wonderful for Detroit to have two of its own in town for XL: Bettis, and the tough, blue-collar town of Pittsburgh. But to have the Seahawks here, with their 30 year-old, whippersnapper selves and their matinee idol quarterback and their incongruous history, isn’t so wonderful.

When XVI came to the Silverdome in 1982, both teams were making their Super Bowl debuts: the San Francisco 49′ers and the Cincinnati Bengals. But the game was that much younger itself, so having two newbies wasn’t all that big a deal.

But Super Bowl first timers, now that the game is XL years old, aren’t as easy to come by. When you look at some of the squads that have actually made the big one — Tennessee, Baltimore, Tampa Bay and, yes, Carolina — you realize that a franchise has to be pretty cocked up for a pretty long time to not get at least one try at Vinnie’s silver football.

The Buccaneers, for example, were about as slapstick as they come when they joined the league in ‘76, along with Seattle. But they made the NFC Championship Game in 1979, in just their fourth year in existence. Then they veered off into various other dryspells, before returning to glory in the late 90’s, resulting in a world’s title in 2002-03.

The Titans were the old Houston Oilers, a franchise known mainly for losing, save a few years of success in the late 70’s and late 80’s. The Ravens were the old Cleveland Browns and mostly miserable when they fled for Crab Country. The Panthers joined the league in 1995 and were already in a conference championship game in their third year.

The Lions, a member of the NFL since 1934 and the NFC since 1970, keep getting stranded at the station, watching train after train leave, their fellow league members hopping on an off.

And now another team, the Seahawks, who until two weeks ago hadn’t won a playoff game in 21 years, gets to hop on that train after their own lengthy period of dysfunction.

So what happens when a train collides with a Bus, anyway?

Pedigree, Law Of Averages Say Marinelli Will Get It Done With Lions

M&M redux — again

Well, at least Rod Marinelli was alive the last time the Lions won a world championship.

Of course, he was only seven years old, and if you look at and listen to Marinelli, the Lions’ new head coach, with his bald head and old school, military toughness in his voice, you know he is very far removed from age seven. Forty-nine years removed, in fact.

But he was alive, which is more than you can say for the kids they’re making head coaches nowadays. No less than six men, most of them in their 30’s or 40’s, have snagged their very first NFL head coaching gig since the end of the 2005 season. Which means none of them were around, not even in diapers and holding rattles, when the Lions were last kings of the football jungle, in 1957.

Since Bill Ford became sole owner of the team in 1964, only two men have been able to coach the team with enough spirit and moxie to end his career in Detroit with more wins than losses: Joe Schmidt, who lasted six seasons, and Gary Moeller, who lasted seven games. Apart from them, Ford has tried just about every personality — Type A, B and, usually, F — every age bracket, every experience level, every degree of popularity and name recognition. He has promoted from within, snatched supposed hot properties, selected complete no-names, hired men with Super Bowl exprience, and plucked guys from college. He has paid small money, big money, and medium money. He has done it all. He has done it all, except for one thing: he has not won.

But believe it or not, there is one thing Ford hadn’t tried, until now. He hadn’t tried a man such as Marinelli, 56 years of age and never before a head coach. He had never tried hiring a man who should be planning his retirement instead of planning for the Bears on a Sunday. He had never tried entrusting his football team to a man with 30 years coaching experience, split between the pro and college levels. He had never tried a man who served a turn in Vietnam. He had never tried a man who was described by one of his former players, himself a perennial Pro Bowler, with these words: “He is like a coaching Socrates.”

Rod Marinelli comes to town with a long resume, yet it is short. He has never, ever been a coordinator at any level, let alone a head coach. But he has been a coach since leisure suits were in style. A more mean-spirited person would say, because of his age, that when Marinelli was a player, leather helmets were all the rage. But I wouldn’t dare say it to his face, lest he make me drop and give him a hundred.

I have been to my share of press conferences, and never can I recall the speaker addressing the media as “men.” But that’s what Marinelli did, beginning with a no-nonsense, “Good morning, men,” as if he was about to give a briefing on the goings on in Iraq. A more mean-spirited person would say that the “men” word was technically inaccurate, because there were some women in the group. But I wouldn’t dare say it to his face, lest he put me on latrine duty.

Because Bill Ford, through team president Matt Millen, has actually stumbled onto something new here with the hiring of Rod Marinelli, and because of the new man’s coaching pedigree, and because good old fashioned mathematics — read: odds — say so, I am telling you that the league’s blind squirrel has finally found its nut.

At first glance, there is nothing to suggest that Rod Marinelli is “the one”. There is nothing that would make very many Lions fans giddy with delight. He is not Bill Parcells, for one. And he is not Vince Lombardi, for two. Nobody other than that pair would truly make a Lions fan warm and fuzzy. And they both had the same chance of coming to Detroit to coach football: slim and none — and slim just left town. So Marinelli has lots and lots of experience coaching defensive positions. Fine. He is highly regarded among the coaching circles. Fine — although when was the last time you ever heard a football coach bad mouth another?

“Boy, you guys just got a stinker of a coach! Rod Marinelli — he couldn’t coach his way out of a paper bag!”

No, you never hear or read those words coming from a fellow football coach.

****************************************
…the next time the Lions possess an actual football philosophy that is bought into by the entire organization, top to bottom, it will be the first.
****************************************

But it says here the Lions finally have found the right man, because never has a coach swooped into town and spoken of toughness and accountability and discipline and being physical in quite the manner that Marinelli did in his introductory press conference this past Thursday. Sure, talk is cheap. But I got the feeling that the Rod Marinelli we saw at the podium in Allen Park is basically the Rod Marinelli you get. You see, it wasn’t so much what Marinelli said that impressed me — it’s what he didn’t say. He didn’t talk of Super Bowls or some imaginary bar or five-year plans or one-way tickets out of town. He didn’t try to con us with smoothe double-speak, like some of the duds who have stood before us as brand new Lions coaches. All he did was talk about his football philosophy. And, to be honest, the next time the Lions possess an actual football philosophy that is bought into by the entire organization, top to bottom, it will be the first.

Marinelli seems to have an actual
football philosophy — what a concept


Marinelli refused to talk about the Lions’ past, which may have been partially due to pre-press conference coaching by Millen, but it was as if he was dropped onto this planet moments before the proceedings began. Whenever one of the inquisitors tried to talk about Lions life pre-Marinelli, the new coach steadfastly refused to look back. He was all about the present and the future. If you didn’t know any better, you would have thought that either a) the Lions were a brand new expansion team and Marinelli was their first coach, or b) someone fiendishly erased Marinelli’s memory of the past, oh, 40 years. Come to think of it, choice b) might be desirable to Lions fans.

But perhaps the best part of Rod Marinelli is the coaching lineage under which he’s worked. From college to pro, from Joe Kapp to John Robinson to Tony Dungy to Jon Gruden, Marinelli has been a lieutenant for some of the best, brightest coaching minds of their time. And, better yet, he has played integral roles for those names. He was no wallflower.

There is a false impression that one must be a coordinator — offensive or defensive — before presuming to success as a head coach. That’s not always mandatory. What sometimes matters more is what kind of motivator, teacher, organizer and leader you are. And those qualities aren’t uinique to coordinators, and Rod Marinelli, according to those who should know, possesses those qualities.

Bill Ford hasn’t had much success with picking head coaches for his football team. Maybe the greatest indictment is that no man — not a one — has left the Lions’ head coaching job and landed another one in the NFL. Rod Marinelli has what it takes, though, to be a winner in Detroit.

Sir, yes sir!

The Bus Will Make Ford Field Its Final Stop — I’m Pretty Sure

When the Red Wings were gunning for the Stanley Cup in 1995, just before they geared up to face the New Jersey Devils in the Finals, I thought, “Oh, this is perfect — you couldn’t have written a better script.”

The Red Wings, at the time, had hit year number 40 of their Stanley Cup drought. A nice, round figure. Defenseman Mark Howe was 40 years old. A nice, round number, and he was the son of Mr. Hockey to boot. And he had never won a Cup. Game One was on Father’s Day — a fitting time to start a Finals series for the Howes. Everything seemed in place.

The Devils swept the Red Wings — broomed them in four straight. The drought would last two more years. And Mark Howe never would win a Stanley Cup — as a player.

The same kind of script is being played out right now in the NFL playoffs.

Jerome Bettis has never won a Super Bowl. He is from Detroit. He is considering, very heavily, retiring after this season. The Super Bowl is being played in Detroit.

Get where I’m going here?

I want to think — Lord, do I want to think — that this script is being played out for a reason. I want to think that it is all designed so The Bus can make its final stop at Ford Field, festooned with confetti and covered in champagne. I want to think it is because we will see Jerome Bettis holding aloft the Vince Lombardi Trophy, surrounded by teammates, friends and more importantly, family.

So it is, damning the torpoedoes of what happened to the Red Wings in the ‘95 Cup Finals, that I semi-boldly predict a Steelers win Sunday in Denver, in the AFC Championship Game.

Nothing else, frankly, spurs my prediction. Nothing that is truly football savvy is whispering into my ear. I’ve not broken down the film, delved into matchups, checked out tendencies, or rounded up a panel of ex-jocks to tell me what they think — as if they know any better than I do anyway.

No, all I’m going on is this gut feeling, this inner hope, that Jerome Bettis will be playing for the Pittsburgh Steelers in Detroit for his first pro football championship.

But if you absolutely have to talk football here, I will tell you that the Steelers are a damn good team with a damn good defense who have already won two road playoff games. I will tell you that Ben Roethlisberger makes me feel safer at quarterback than Jake Plummer. I will tell you that the Steelers’ receivers and kick returners excite me more than what the Broncos are offering up. I will tell you that they are coached by Bill Cowher, another one who I think the football gods just might be smiling upon. Cowher is in his 14th season replacing the legendary Chuck Noll, and he, too, is looking for his first mother of all Gatorade showers.

I’m not a predictions type. I don’t use this blog to tell you what teams I think will win each week, because frankly, you could use any random method of selecting that you wish and it would probably be pretty close to my rate of success anyway. The supposedly esteemed Paul Zimmerman — Doctor Z. — of Sports Illustrated incorrectly picked three of the four divisional games last weekend. And he is SI’s hotshot prognosticator. I’m thinking I could have gone 25%, too.

So there you have it. The Steelers will upset the Broncos and land in Detroit for Super Bowl XL.

Just don’t ask me for a score. You’re lucky you got the prediction itself out of me.

Davis Needed Suspending, But Not Five Games

New York Knicks coach Larry Brown rightfully bristled Wednesday night when one of the hangers-on with a microphone and tape recorder started to compare Antonio Davis’ sojourn into the United Center stands with Ron Artest’s brawl precipitation at the Palace in November 2004.

“Oh come on,” Brown said, shaking his head in disgust. “That’s totally different. Tony thought his wife was in trouble.”

It’s true. Davis’ venture into the stands, according to the Knicks’ forward, was initiated by what he perceived was a threat to his wife’s safety. According to Davis, he thought he saw his wife being physically accosted, or about to be such. So without hesitation, he climbed several rows into the expensive seats to take matters into his own hands.

Davis on his way out of United Center stands

It was hardly the momentary dementia to which Ron Artest fell victim in Auburn Hills.

Yet I saw such headlines on the Net as “Davis charges into the stands.” If you watched the video, which as usual nowadays is quickly ascending to Zapruder film-like screening frequency, Antonio Davis didn’t charge anywhere. He didn’t dawdle, either. But he wasn’t a raging lunatic. He made his way into the stands, one step at a time, and once he got to his destination, he listened to his wife and other supporters who assured him that the situation was under control. By that time, security happened on the scene. He then calmly left, being escorted away.

He didn’t throw a punch. He didn’t so much as raise a hand. Frankly, I think the mere presence of a 6′9″, 245 pound man was enough to quell whatever trouble a fan may have wanted to cause. Needless to say, because Davis showed such restraint, the situation did not escalate. And it could have, because this was a player from the opposing team entering the seating area.

Yet despite being mostly defended in NBA circles and in the court of public opinion, the league suspended Davis, the president of the Players Association, for five games.

This is where it gets dicey. But the NBA did the right thing, albeit a tad excessively.

Since everyone says sports is a bottom line business, here’s the one in this instance: the NBA had no choice but to levy some sort of punishment on Davis. It would set a dangerous precedent if the league slapped him on the wrist, because then you’d be saying, in essence, “It’s okay to go into the stands under certain circumstances.”

Can you imagine what sort of Pandora’s box that would open?

What were the circumstances? What was the intent of the player? What did he do once he was in there? Yadda, yadda, yadda.

I’m sorry, but something as admirable as Antonio Davis coming to the defense of his wife cannot be separated from any other situation in which a player leaves the court and enters the crowd. It simply cannot be tolerated. It still is a lighted match in a room full of gas.

But what you can do is make the punishment phase subjective. The amount of fine, or length of suspension, is where the league can separate the Goofuses from the Gallants.

So was five games the proper suspension length?

I would have been more comfortable with anywhere from one-to-three games, in all honesty. Something about five, which can be tantamount to almost two full weeks of play, makes me squirm a bit. Davis, 37, is a veteran who doesn’t have, as far as I know, a history of trouble with officials or the league. Perhaps his position as president of the NBAPA holds him at a higher standard, but again, consider the circumstances and the player’s history.

Five games was too much. But there should have been some retribution.

What was Davis to do?, folks would ask who think he shouldn’t have been suspended at all.

Well, there are security people crawling all over NBA benches, especially in light of what happened at the Palace in November ‘04. There are police. There were plenty of folks nearby that Antonio Davis could have grabbed, and then he could have pointed out what has transpiring in the stands. It may not have been quite as quick as Davis himself investigating the matter, but the results would most likely have been the same.

But, please — to even suggest that Antonio Davis’ incident is on par with the Ron Artest debacle is wayyy off base.

Maybe they should check out more thoroughly to whom they issue those microphones and tape recorders.

Another "M", But This Time Millen May Have Gotten It Right

When Steve Mariucci was introduced as Lions head coach in 2003, he was escorted onto the Ford Field turf by Bill Ford Jr. and Matt Millen. The three of them made the long walk to the dais, which was adorned with a Lions helmet and an official NFL football. There was even a cheering section, in the stands behind the ink-stained wretches and the TV and radio people.

Mariucci, in his Italian suit and flashing his baby blues, smiled broadly. Then he looked around him and said, with genuine amazement, “Wow.” He was like a kid on Christmas morning. That introductory press conference, that latest initiation into the Honolulu Blue and Silver world of football pratfalls and follies, was a precursor of things to come in the Mariucci administration: style over substance. Or rather: style, NO substance.

There was no such pomp this morning when the Lions introduced Rod Marinelli as their new head coach. Just a quiet gathering in the team’s Allen Park annex, the usual Meijer/Lions logos sitting in the background in their one-dimensional plainness. No embracing — just a handshake between Marinelli and team president Matt Millen as the new coach stepped to the microphone. No cheering section. Nothing to cause the new man to say in awe, “Wow.” It was clear that the goal was more substance and less style this time.

Marinelli: Less hair, less good looks; more wins?

Instead, Rod Marinelli said, curtly, “Good morning, men.” And that wasn’t even his football team to which he was talking.

Was he addressing the media or the troops in Iraq?

Marinelli, 56, was most recently the defensive line coach/assistant head coach for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. He was the dark horse who came from several lengths back, along the outside, to snag the Lions job, when supposed favorites like Russ Grimm and Jim Haslett hugged the inside rail. A more cynical person wouold say he lost by a nose.

But not Rod Marinelli. He thanked former coaches from his high school playing days, coaches he worked under in the college ranks, coaches he worked with and under in the pros, along with players he himself has coached. He thanked the Fords and Millen. He thanked his wife and family. All of this thankfulness was, presumedly, because of the good fortune that he considers himself to now possess, leading a football team that has won exactly one playoff game in 48 years. Over 30 years of coaching has prepared him for the Detroit Lions head coaching job. How many years would he have needed if he was taking over a winner?

But Marinelli is all right, on first inspection. He appears to be, if you can make such assertions after one 20-minute press conference, the type of coach the Lions need: tough, passionate, and a believer in physical football and conditioning and the ability to run the football, even deep into the fourth quarter.

“It all starts up front,” the new coach said almost right off the top. “I want to have a great offensive line and a great defensive line.”

Well, he has neither in Detroit — the defensive line is a reverse doughnut: solid in the middle with holes on the outside — so maybe that’s the first order of business. Or maybe it’s the quarterback situation. Or the coaching staff. To say Rod Marinelli has his work cut out for him in Detroit is like saying Noah had a slight water problem.

One of the first things Marinelli said was, “The time for talk is over. Football is a ’show me’ game.” But, ironically, it was what Marinelli indeed said that should make Lions fans take heart.

“I’m not interested in Pro Bowl players. I’m interested in championship caliber players,” he said, a refreshing change for a franchise that has always gloated over its few Pro Bowlers and alternates. “Everyone has talent in the NFL,” Marinelli said. “Every team has good players.”

“You just got to get good players to play good.”

Okay, so he’s not an English major, but the message is brilliant in its simplicity. And yes it’s always easier to diagnose the problem than to repair it, but hasn’t the diagnosis itself been lacking a bit around here when it comes to pro football?

Here’s the other thing Marinelli said that should be embraced: “There’s one voice of discipline: mine.” But it was the way he said it — with conviction and an extreme lack of bovine feces. There WILL be accountability, Marinelli promised. He said that goes from the coaching staff on down to the players. And with the way he said it, I’m not so sure the ticket takers and the popcorn vendors are omitted from that edict.

So yes, the time for talk is over. Has been over for decades, truthfully. But they don’t hold these press conferences so they’ll be performed in mime. Words must be spoken, and even though they often are designed to be words that the denizens wish to hear, you can pick through those and find some that aren’t garden variety. Rod Marinelli said some of the usual, but he also said enough of the extras that makes me think he might be the right man.

But it’s also what he didn’t say. When Rob Parker of the Detroit News tried to nail Marinelli down with a supposed “yes” or “no” question — Will the Lions make the playoffs in 2006? — the ex-Army man who served in Vietnam didn’t take the bait. It was an asinine question, which isn’t unusual for Parker. Earlier, Parker asked why it took so long for Marinelli to become a head coach when the league is “hiring 35 and 40 year-old guys left and right.”

“I’d say Matt is a pretty smart guy,” Marinelli said, eliciting laughter.

But the knuckleheads in the media aside, Rod Marinelli acquitted himself well in his first official appearance as head coach of the Detroit Lions. He isn’t the sexy hire that Mariucci was three years ago, but neither is he the Beaver Cleaver that was Marty Mornhinweg. He is somewhere in between. He does, however, boast a longer and some would say more impressive resume than both of his predecessors in the Millen era.

“The key is to coach every player like a starter,” Marinelli said.

Rod, with this team, you might want to coach every one of them like the Pop Warner rejects they so frequently impersonate.

Welcome to Detroit.

Solution For Rabid Steelers Fan: Move To Detroit

While Terry O’Neill recovers in the hospital, I’d like to offer a goodwill gesture.

Come on over to Little D, Terry — our football team is easier on your heart.

O’Neill, 50, is the gentleman who suffered a heart attack moments after his beloved Jerome Bettis fumbled near the goal line late in the Pittsburgh Steelers’ 21-18 win over the Indianapolis Colts in an AFC Divisional game Sunday. He is currently recovering in a hospital. He will have a pacemaker implanted to control an irregular heartbeat and he was prescribed medication to deal with the hypertension.

Here’s another way to deal with football hypertension, Terry: shift your allegiance to a team whose bar is far lower than your Steelers.

So Bettis fumbles, nearly blowing the game for his team, and this guy O’Neill blows out an aorta? Pleeeease! Here in Detroit, such a play would be cause for another swig of beer, maybe a curse word, but never, ever anything remotely resembling surprise, let alone enough stress to provoke a heart attack.

O’Neill told the Associated Press Bettis is his hero.

“I wasn’t upset that the Steelers might lose,” he said. “I was upset because I didn’t want to see him end his career like that. A guy like that deserves better. I guess it was a little too much for me to handle.”

Again, Terry, move to Detroit. You’ll see, on a weekly basis, enough fumbles, dropped passes, questionable play calling to harden your heart — but not your arteries. You’ll experience brand new ways to lose football games that you never dreamed were possible. You’ll be so insulated from the rigors and anxiety of the playoffs that you would get a new lease on life, to go along with your new pacemaker.

I’m sorry, but I just can’t imagine any Lions fan having a heart attack if he saw the football squirt out of Kevin Jones’ arms and onto the turf near the goal line. In 2004, the Lions lost to the Vikings because they could not execute a proper snap for an extra point. And did anyone drop off their barstool, or keel over on their sofa? No! We are toughened here in Lionstown. Such folly — we sniff at it. We stare football death in the face and laugh, if you want to know.

O’Neill, for his part, credits two firefighters with saving him.

“The Steelers won the game and I’m still alive, so I guess I’m doing pretty good,” he said.

But not nearly as good if you pulled a switcheroo and became a Lions fan, Terry. We can guarantee you a long, full life.

Now if the Lions ever make it to a Super Bowl, all bets are off. THAT’S when you’ll see your heart attacks in this town.

Ex-Wing Potvin’s Death A Head-Shaker

Marc Potvin is dead, and we don’t know why. We don’t know how.

Marc Potvin is dead and just because he was a not a coach at the NHL level, it doesn’t mean hockey’s loss is any less significant.

Marc Potvin, 38, was found dead in his hotel room in Kalamazoo Friday morning. He was the coach of the Adirondack Frostbite, a lower level minor league club. He was also a former Detroit Red Wing, playing for the team in the early 90’s.

Hockey, I think more than any other team sport, is a sort of throwback to the old days, when people cared for each other and there was a tightness of community. Many of the players still come from small towns, whether it’s Canada or the United States or any other country. I have found them to be, by far, the most approachable, down-to-earth athletes of the four majors. You can go up to a hockey player and he’ll actually talk to you. He’ll give you something to write. He’ll be courteous, and thank you when you’re done.

If you think that goes for baseball, basketball and football players just as much, then you’re lving on the planet Lovetron with Darryl Dawkins.

So in Glens Falls, New York, where the Frostbite call home, Mayor Le Roy Akins ordered flags at city buildings lowered to half staff Saturday in honor of Potvin.

“We’re a hockey town. When the hockey team grieves, we grieve,” said Mike Mender, the mayor’s assistant.

Potvin’s death has reverberated around the hockey world, and no doubt into the NHL, where he played several seasons and doubtless still has many relationships. He was a tough guy on the ice, and not considered a skill player, but he obviously had enough acumen about the game to be given a coaching job. Who knows what future he may have had in coaching?

For their part, the police say they have a good handle on what led to Potvin’s death, but they are being tight-lipped until the official autopsy results are made public. They have, however, ruled out foul play. That opens up Pandora’s box of speculation, of course. I’m sure you might draw your own conclusion. Or you might not care enough. That’s okay too.

Potvin was separated from his wife, and left behind two young children.

“Obviously, we’re devastated,” his wife said, sobbing, to a reporter who reached her. “I’m not ready to say anything to the newspaper right now.”

Potvin was to have coached the Frostbite Friday night against the Kalamazoo Wings. That game, of course, was postponed and the stunned team rode the bus back to upstate New York. Air travel isn’t in the budget for lower minor league teams.

Marc Potvin is dead, and even when we do find out why, we’ll still wonder. That’s what you do when a 38 year-old man passes, in a motel room, alone.

MONDAY FEATURES: QUOTE OF THE WEEK, OBSCURE FACTOID

QUOTE OF THE WEEK


Yogi Berra, always at
a loss for the right words


“Better make it six. I don’t know if I can eat eight.”

– The inimitable Yogi Berra, when asked whether he wanted his pizza cut into six slices or eight. However, this may be apocryphal, although his teammates maintain he said it.


OBSCURE FACTOID

Falcons helmet, circa Dave Hampton ‘72

In 1972, Atlanta Falcons running back Dave Hampton reached the 1,000 yard mark in the season’s final game. Because he was the first Falcons running back to do so, the game was halted and Hampton was presented with the game ball in a brief on-field ceremony. The game was resumed, and moments later Hampton was handed the ball and promptly lost five yards. He had no more carries, and finished the year with 995 yards.

Bettis’ March To Detroit Kept Alive By A Quarterback’s Tackle

The best thing the Indianapolis Colts can do is lose the first game of the season in 2006. Lose it deliberately, if you have to, but only if you can keep the investigators’ noses out of it. Just go to 0-1 right out of the gate. It can’t hurt, can it?

Then there wouldn’t be all this nonsense about going 16-0, which I am convinced took its toll yesterday in the Colts’ 21-18 loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers in an AFC Divisional game. That, and the fact that the Horseshoes hadn’t played a meaningful game in about a month, which led to an extremely rusty offense. Peyton Manning and the gang made Oz’s Tin Man look positively lithe in the early going.

If you think, as a Lions fan, that you can’t possibly comprehend what Colts fans must be going through today, I ask you to toss aside your football helmet and put on your hockey version.

Remember the 1995-96 Red Wings? They went through the regular season like a hot knife through butter, setting league marks with a mind-boggling 62-13-7 record. All season the talk was whether the team could best the 1977 Canadiens’ record of 60 wins. Kind of like hockey’s Roger Maris. Or this season’s Indy Colts.

Anyhow, the ‘96 Wings were most people’s prohibitive favorites to at least reach the Stanley Cup Finals. But they struggled the entire postseason. They needed six games to eliminate a far inferior Winnipeg Jets team. They barely survived the St. Louis Blues, needing to come back from a 3-2 series deficit, including the famous double overtime win in Game 7, courtesy Steve Yzerman’s mega blast from the blue line.

Then came the Colorado Avalanche.

The Avs bumped the Wings out in six games, winning the first two in Detroit and cruising to the upset. The Red Wings, possessors of those 62 regular season wins against 13 losses, were sent to the golf courses with a very pedestrian 10-9 playoff record.

You remember that lousy feeling, don’t you?

High hopes, a feeling of invincibility, chasing a league record?

So you see? You CAN relate to Colts fans today.

But this feeling of emptiness, this rotten, another-year-wasted feeling, would have been secondary to the awful taste in the mouths of Jerome Bettis and his legions of fans had it not been for Ben Roethlisberger.

Bettis lives for one more game — at least

It was the Steeler quarterback’s tackle on Colts DB Nick Harper, just when it appeared he was racing to the game-winning touchdown after scooping up Bettis’ fumble near the goal line, that most likely saved not only the Steelers’ season, but Jerome Bettis’ legacy. Who in the football world would want to see his great career remembered for a fumble that ruined his and his team’s chances for a possible championship? What must he have been thinking when he saw Harper running away with his fumble — his first bobble since December 2003? He may have been the Bill Buckner of pro football, at least for a time.

Now a word about Manning. Seems he is already taking some flak, from talking heads like Sean Salisbury to the folks who play at journalism via the Internet, about his postgame comments, specifically about his offensive line.

“I’m….trying to be a good teammate here,” Peyton said, choosing his words carefully. “But…we had some protection problems.” He spoke the truth, folks. The Steelers sacked Manning five times, and harrassed him all day.

Funny how the media will ask asinine questions, like “What happened?,” when they all just saw the very same game. And when a player doesn’t answer candidly, he’s dismissed as being a double-talker or — gasp! — boring. Yet when the player actually says what everyone knows to be true — in this case, the fact that the Colts’ pass protection stunk — he’s vilified and called out. Salisbury of ESPN actually said Peyton Manning would have to “correct that” this offseason.

What a lot of hooey.

If you don’t want your silly little questions answered, then don’t ask them. Believe me, having attended those postgame press conferences, I can say that you — the reader — would not be missing much if those questions were disposed of. Most of the time they are formulaic and as tasty as dried cardboard. But they will be asked, of course. It’s the media’s job, you know.

What was Peyton Manning supposed to have said?

“We were pass protection challenged”?

“Five sacks aren’t THAT many”?

“It was my fault — I kept hitting their defensive linemen in the arms with my body”?

Mama mia!

Manning was taken to task for honest answers to stupid questions

So the Colts’ season is over, as is that of the defending champion Patriots. Two teams who were supposed to meet in the AFC Championship game — Dynasty Current and Dynasty Next. But here’s the difference: New England QB Tom Brady’s playoff record fell to 10-1 with his loss, while Manning’s tumbled to 3-7 in the postseason.

In the end, after the dust settles following a chasing of immortality (read: a perfect season), here it is: Peyton Manning is just another quarterback who will be watching the Super Bowl on television. See what lousy pass protection can do?

I can say that, you see.

Here — Pull My Goalie

Be still my heart

I have a secret. I have kept this secret for about 30 years now. Only a few of my childhood friends know about this secret, and maybe even they have forgotten about it.

I have a fascination with pulling the goalie.

It is not easy to admit to fetishes, lest you get cross-eyed looks from folks. Even today, when more and more things “go”, you’re not sure if your “thing” will be accepted by mainstream society. But I am now finally comfortable that here, in this place we like to call “Hockeytown,” it is acceptable to admit to my fetish of pulling the goalie.

It started in my adolescent years. My friend Bob Davis and I, especially (eventually we brought a few more pals into this inner circle of empty netdom) were the ones that fueled this fascination. We would actually hope that tie games were broken late in the third period so one of the teams would have to pull its goalie. And here’s when I knew it was getting bad, when I knew my desire to see empty nets had crossed some imaginary line into something perhaps in need of therapy: I didn’t even care if the Red Wings were the team who fell behind by a goal in a shattered tie game. As long as it meant a netminder would have to skate like the dickens to his bench, to be replaced by an extra attacker, that was fine with me.

We really started to jones for empty nets, boy. Even our tabletop hockey games, those wonderful inventions with the players who “skate” up and down the “ice” through the miracle of steel rods with rubber tipped handles, were brought into our sick preoccupation. If someone was trailing by a goal, the losing player would announce, “pulling the goalie!”, and not only would he literally removes his netminder — the little metal or plastic goalie would be popped free of his metal stub and tossed aside — the player who was winning the game would have to remove one of his players. You know, to simulate the scenario of an extra skater. And if the big wooden puck landed near the vacated position, it was simply given to the team whose netminder was missing. Ah, good times.

I don’t know how this whole thing started — this feeling of excitement I would get when the goalie was pulled. But I think it held me because there was nothing quite like it in any other team sport. In no other sport was the makeup of the participants on the field, or the diamond, or the court, so vastly altered as in hockey, with its strategic option of removing your goalkeeper in order to replace him with an extra skater late in games in which you are trailing. You can’t bring in an extra player in basketball. You can’t “pull” your quarterback in football for an extra running back. You can’t take the catcher out of the game so you can have an extra outfielder. But in hockey you could actually make such a substitution. Even now I think it’s kind of cool, and I wonder who first came up with it.

“Okay, boys, look: I’m going to take Denny out of the net so we can have an extra skater on the ice to try to tie this game,” the first coach may have said to his 100% Canadian group of players.

“Is that legal?,” one of them was sure to have said. Heck, maybe even the referee asked the same question. Doubtful it was in the rulebook back then, either way.

Or how about this possibility: maybe the groundbreaking coach didn’t know any better, and simply had his goalie vacate the net and join the fray, as an attacking forward. They didn’t wear all that much extra padding back then, those netminders, so he wouldn’t have looked all that out of place. Then maybe a second coach saw that and refined it. Who knows. But in either instance, can you imagine the thoughts of the perplexed 100% Canadian fans at that very first empty net game?

“Hey, our goalie isn’t in the net any more, eh?”

“Yeah! Like what the heck are they doin’, eh?”

“I don’t know. Hand me another beer, eh?”

But actually removing the goalie is only half of the fun of my fetish. The very existence of the empty net itself opens a whole new world of excitement. I mean, the net is unattended, after all, and that means any puck that is fired toward it will elicit either screams of anquish from the fans whose team is losing, or yells of hope from the fans of the winning side who hope to see their team salt the game away. Meanwhile, the action around the non-vacated net is often fast and furious, with the losing team throwing everything but the kitchen sink at the opposing goalie. Fans of both sides watch the action unfold, one eye on the ice and one eye on the game clock. Those of us watching on television do a similar visual exercise, putting our peripheral vision to the utmost test by trying to watch the action on the lower third of the screen while also keeping track of the time remaining on the handy-dandy TV graphic at the top of the screen.

A TV director’s fetish, too


Speaking of television, another one of my memories in the early days of goalie-pulling was the obligatory camera shot of the actual empty net itself. Even if the action was dramatic around the other goal, and the puck could be scored at any moment, TV directors back in the day felt it incumbent upon themselves to show, albeit briefly, an image of the abandoned net, lonely and as wide open as Don Cherry’s mouth, completely defenseless against even the wimpiest of shots. I actually saw — no joke — a case in which the viewers were treated to a shot of the open net while the announcer screamed, “And they scorrrre!”. Yes, we actually didn’t see the game-tying goal because the TV people were too busy showing us an empty net. I wanted to strangle the director with his headset cord.

************************************
…as my dad used to say, “What’s the difference if you lose by one or lose by two?”
************************************

I also discovered, in college, that not everyone was down with the whole pulling-the-goalie notion. At a Red Wings game once at the Joe, my girlfriend at the time furrowed her brow and narrowed her eyes as she saw the Red Wings goalie skating feverishly to the bench, to be replaced by the requisite extra attacker.

“What are they doing?,” she said, in a voice combining annoyance with perplexity.

“They’re pulling the goalie, for an extra skater,” I said, thinking that would be all the explanation I would need. Now, let’s watch the action unfold, sweetie. Wrong.

“But that’s stupid. Now we have no goalie!” The mixture was now 100% annoyance and 0% perplexity. All I had done, in her mind, was confirmed the fact that the Red Wings now had no goalie to mind the net.

“But they’re trying to tie the game. They need that extra skater.” I found myself in unchartered territory. I never had to defend the strategy for this long.

“That’s stupid,” she repeated.

Just as I was about to shake her, the other team flipped the puck down the ice and square into the Red Wings’ open goal.

My ears are still hurting from her diatribe. And I just sat there and took it, because how can you defend the undefendable?

I don’t what the percentages are — and I’m sure someone knows them — of the success rate of teams who pull their goalie in hopes of tying a game. I’m sure they’re not very good, but as my dad used to say, “What’s the difference if you lose by one or lose by two?” In other words, what is there to lose? But when a goal is actually scored by the team with the extra skater, even if it’s against your team, there is a definite uptick of excitement. The whole complexion of things have changed in a heartbeat. The game is tied. Overtime looms. A sure victory is no more, a certain loss averted. And the goalie skates back into his previously undefended net, almost in a mocking manner: “You had your chance, boys! And now I’m back in the net!”

The very first Red Wings game I attended — January 21, 1973 — featured an empty-netter. The Red Wings trailed the old Minnesota North Stars 4-3 late in the third period. Out went the goalie, and on went the extra skater. But, unfortunately, down the ice went the puck, and despite the efforts of one of the Wings defensemen, who dove valiantly, the puck crossed the goal line and went into the net. The Wings lost, 5-3. The box score the next morning, doubtless, had this little addendum following the goalscorer, assist(s), and time scored: (ENG). Yes, those three little letters that tell folks around the globe who didn’t attend or see the game that an Empty Net Goal was scored.

I even have empty net trivia to share. Bet you didn’t know there was actually an occasion when a team pulled its goalie — and it was winning. It’s true. On the final day of the 1969-70 season, the Red Wings were in New York to play the Rangers. The Wings were already in the playoffs, but the Rangers could only qualify through some odd tiebreaker in which the number of goals they scored in that final game was of a certain amount. Anyhow, the Rangers beat the Wings, 9-5. But what makes this wonderful trivia is that the Rangers pulled their goalie with several minutes remaining in order to try to score more goals. Not sure how many they scored that way, but the Red Wings scored two ENGs, in a losing effort. And the Rangers made the playoffs, by the way.

The Rangers once pulled Terry Sawchuk –
and they were WINNING!


Now I must confess that my fascination with pulled goalies isn’t quite as strong today. I don’t get as much bounce in my step when it happens, but it’s still, to me, a unique type of strategy, and whomever came up with it is brilliant. I wonder if it worked the very first time it was used. If it did, maybe it was because the other team was too stunned to know what to do.

But still, when there is a one goal differential, and the clock ticks under two minutes remaining in the third period, my heart flutters a little bit. When will the goalie be pulled? How long will the coach wait? And I have one message for my old college girlfriend, if she’s reading this:

“It’s NOT stupid.”

Been waiting 22 years to get that off my chest.

When 80 Year-Olds Want To Coach Pro Football…..

If I could guarantee the health of Marv Levy, which I obviously cannot do, I would be fine with it. I’d say, go for it, you rockin’ octogenarian — teach those young 60 year-old whippersnappers how to properly coach an NFL team! I would love to see the 80 year-old Levy prowling the sidelines once more, coaching the team to which he took four Super Bowls.

But something about this notion frightens me.

In case you know not of what I speak, here’s the dealio: former coach Levy, recently hired as a Bills executive, has been rumored to be the team’s next head coach, now that Mike Mularkey has unexpectedly resigned. What’s fueling the buzz is that Levy himself has not exactly gone out of his way to discourage such talk.

This is becoming a sort of hot button topic around the sports world. That sound you hear is click-clacking of bloggers’ keyboards everywhere, debating whether it is wise for an 80 year-old man to take over an NFL team.

I say it is not.

Frankly, I am amazed that no coach has dropped dead of a heart attack in the 80 year-plus history of the NFL. Well, one did actually, but not during a game. Leave it to the Lions. Head coach Don McCafferty died in training camp of 1974, collapsing somewhere on the grounds of the Cranbrook campus, preparing for his second season as Lions head coach. But never in the course of a game has an NFL head coach so much as fainted or had dizzy spells or admitted to chest pains, at least not of which I am aware. And these are guys who routinely torture themselves through 18-hour days and who probably don’t eat all that well and who absolutely live and die with each play. They rant and rave and march up and down the sidelines and their veins pop out of their necks at the referees and it floors me that not a one of them has been carted off the field and into a waiting ambulance.

He’s even older now, you know

And we would have 80 year-old Marv Levy return to that life?

Look at Joe Paterno, defenders of that notion say. He’s in his late 70’s and still kicking it with Penn State. Yeah, and so what? As much as this thought creeps me out, what if Joe Pa keels over next season? And not every man is the same. Just because Paterno has been able to do it doesn’t mean Marv Levy, years removed from the sidelines by the way, can also handle it.

This may sound like I am advocating age limits. I am not, at least not formally. A 55 year-old can have health problems just like an 80 year-old, theoretically. So I’m not saying the league should bar Levy and others who follow based solely on age. I am just appealing to common sense here, and the law of averages, which surely must put an octogenarian at greater risk than someone a generation his junior.

The Tigers, back in the early 1960’s, wooed Casey Stengel, the deposed Yankees manager, to be their new pilot. And they darn near pulled it off, too. Stengel went so far as to name the coaches he would like to assist him in his new job as Tigers skipper. But then Casey’s wife entered the discussion and insisted her husband have a doctor’s clearance before accepting the job, which was his for the taking. Stengel’s doctor advised against it. Yet he took the New York Mets job a couple years later, and if that didn’t put an old man’s health to the test, I don’t know what would have done it.

There is no question that Marv Levy, at 80, still has the mental accumen to handle the strategies and game planning and preparation. But I maintain there should be serious concerns as to whether he can physically handle the rigors of that job. I may sound like a wet blanket here, but I hope cooler and less nostalgic heads prevail here.

Stay in the front office, Marv. Things don’t get you as physically ill up there.

Right, Mr. Millen?

Pistons’ Manhandling Of Spurs Seals Everyone Else’s Fate

“We want to get back what’s ours”
– Rasheed Wallace

Plan the parade, make sure Woodward Avenue is cleaned up after the Super Bowl, book Hart Plaza, make sure the big video screens are working for that day. Clear the mayor’s schedule, find a XXXXXL jersey for him to wear, and be sure Mason has plenty of throat lozenges.

First there will be those annoying two months of playoffs, preliminaries to the inevitable. Maybe there will be a loss or two along the way, just to keep the players’ edge, but not enough to create any hand-wringing in Motown.

The Pistons will win the NBA title in June.

I suppose the identity of the Finals MVP is the only thing we have to look forward to, the only uncertainty. Maybe we should run an Internet poll. I might even toss one into MCS Magazine and give away some prizes.

The rest of this NBA season officially became something you have to complete, a task that needs to be done, a journey that you have to finish, but nothing more, in the wake of the Pistons’ systematic destruction of the San Antonio Spurs, 83-68 last night in Texas.

Normally I don’t put a whole lot of stock into regular season games, especially between two teams who will only meet twice in a season. But the Pistons spanked the defending champion Spurs by 15 each time they played, then sent them to bed without any dinner. Manu Ginobili even played this time — he missed the Christmas Day beating — and the Spurs still lost by those 15 points. Guess he wasn’t worth a single point of difference to his team. So even though these were regular season games, they were far from meaningless. In fact, you could even make the argument that because the Pistons and Spurs only tangle twice, each game takes on that much more meaning and can be that much more of a barometer of things to come.

Well, here’s what’s to come: a second Pistons championship in three seasons, exactly what the Spurs accomplished by taking the crown from the Pistons last June. Now I am even more convinced, after watching these two Pistons-Spurs games, that had Rasheed Wallace not had cerebral flatulence — that would be a brain fart to you lay people — at the end of Game 5, leaving Robert Horry alone to drain a game-winning triple, the Pistons would have won their second straight championship. And maybe they wouldn’t be on the mission they are on today.

Oh, their will to win would certainly be there, gunning for a third straight Larry O’Brien trophy, but I have the feeling the Pistons have a tad more vinegar to go along with their vim this season. As Sheed said after last night’s victory, “We want to get back what’s ours.” He did his part in the win, scoring 27 points and snagging 10 rebounds.

The current defending NBA champions, if you ask the Pistons, are wearing rings that should be on the fingers of men such as Billups, Hamilton, Prince and the rest — not Parker, Duncan and Ginobili and that ilk. So they have set out this season to terrorize the rest of the league, being shot out of the start like a cannon ball. They are 28-5 and show absolutely no signs of being slowed down, let alone stopped. The Spurs were 17-1 on their home floor prior to last night’s tussle. And the Pistons handled them — easily.

What’s even more mind-numbing is there are many folks who follow the league — Internet writers and even some real journalists — who believe the Pistons, amazingly, have not yet hit their stride. Even now, after 33 games played, there is doubt whether the players are 100% in tune with new coach Flip Saunders’ offense. Even Billups, the point guard who plays in a sphere of his own nowadays and is a sure fire league MVP candidate, has said recently that he feels the Pistons can get even better, become even more efficient on offense. And that’s what’s so impressive about these Pistons. The “Goin’ to Work” slogan is not just a marketing campaign. They truly are taking this season, more than any other, as business as usual and they are completely unified in one common theme: We’re not satisfied until we win back our rings. They don’t get caught up in their glittering won/lost record. They become steely and unrattled in close games down the stretch. They put their boots on your throat and asphyxiate you, almost at will.

The Pistons have five losses this season, and two of those came in overtime, when their fatigue and the opponent’s energy may have come into play. They play at an .848 clip, the pace of thoroughbreds. They cannot, frankly, be caught. The rest of the league’s teams are lengths and lengths behind the leaders.

Having fun in the Palace, Larry Brown — wish you could be here.

If The Lions Hire A Hog, I’ll Be A Pig In Slop

If the Lions do what NFL and team sources say they’re going to do, I’ll be in Hog Heaven.

The Lions reportedly are going to talk to Pittsburgh Steelers offensive line coach Russ Grimm, maybe as early as this evening, about being their new head coach. The buzz is that Grimm may be hired as soon as the Steelers’ season ends, which may not be until February 5 in Detroit.

Grimm was one of the Washington Redskins “Hogs”, those offensive linemen who played smashmouth football and opened gaping holes for various runners in the 1980’s and early 90’s. Whether the ball carrier was John Riggins or Kelvin Bryant or George Rogers or Earnest Byner, it didn’t matter. In fact, you probably could have suited up your Aunt Gertie and she could have made four or five yards with the amount of real estate The Hogs cleared.

Grimm was taught offensive line play from Jim Hanifan in Washington, who was a sort of a guru in things such as pancaking your man and driving him backward. Grimm’s head coach for most of his career was Joe Gibbs. He won Super Bowls and went to Pro Bowls. Of course, so did Lions president Matt Millen, but Grimm isn’t being asked to be team president. He is a candidate for head coach.

Grimm as a Redskin Hog

Grimm intrigues me because one of the greatest frustrations in watching the Lions try to master the game of football recently has been the ineptitude of the offensive line. Their front five couldn’t push a rolling chair backward, frankly. This utter inability to create even the tiniest of holes has contributed greatly to the team having records such as 5-11 and 6-10, or worse. That and the lack of creativity in the play calling, of course. I have never worn a silver whistle around my neck or written plays on a chalkboard for a living, but it seems to me that if your offensive line is that weak, wouldn’t you try more quick passes or roll your quarterback out on plays inside the opponent’s five yard line? Apparently nobody on the Lions staff possessed such acumen. And that’s why they all have to go — Dick Jauron included.

The knock on Grimm is that he didn’t interview well — whatever that means — in his two previous head coaching candidacies: Chicago in 2004 and Cleveland last year. He has never been a coordinator, as if that is the only job that qualifies you as a head coach. But he has been the Steelers offensive line coach since 2000 — six seasons under Bill Cowher. That shows me that: a) you must know what you’re doing to remain in one role for six years, especially when you’re sending players to the Pro Bowl, and b) you probably have learned a thing or two about head coaching, hanging around Cowher that long.

Let me tell you something about Bill Cowher. He has done something nothing short of extraordinary: he has replaced a legend and stuck around. Cowher took over the Steelers in 1992 after Chuck Noll retired, and is now finishing his 14th season as head coach in Pittsburgh. So if Russ Grimm comes from that lineage, he’s okay in my book.

I have said repeatedly that I would like the Lions’ next head coach to be an offensive guy, which flies in the face of conventional wisdom, according to people who seem to think you have to go defense when you pick a head coach. But to me, that’s why God, or George Halas (I can’t remember which) created defensive coordinators. And if the Lions’ new guy is someone who knows a thing or two about driving people off the ball and creating some running room and providing pass protection, then all the better.

Grimm even looks like a Detroiter. This is a shot-and-beer, blue collar town. Gritty. Not much finesse. And these recent Lions teams have fit the image of the city like a frilly tutu on Hulk Hogan.

Speaking of the Hulkster, maybe Grimm can bring him along as his Intimidation Coach.

The Lions might hire a Hog. You know what I say?

Suuuuueeeeyyy!

Sutter’s Hall Election A Sign Of The Times

Bruce Sutter

Well, they finally went ahead and done it. They caused the graves of Cy Young, Walter Johnson and Christy Mathewson to turn over, forthwith. Some would say they besmirched the art of pitching, the very being of a hurler.

“They” are the folks who vote on who gets in or left out of the Baseball Hall of Fame. Yesterday the votes were tabulated, and only one player qualified for induction this summer in Cooperstown: Bruce Sutter. A reliever. A man who never so much as took the hill to throw a pitch in the first inning of any game in which he appeared. That’s right — no starts. Zero. Zilch. Nada.

But that’s okay by me. What others may think, I don’t know.

Sutter represents, more than any inductee ever, the evolution of the game. Sort of like when Bill Clinton was elected president in 1992 — the first president born after World War II. Makes you stop and think for a moment, doesn’t it, about where we’ve been, and where we’re headed?

Yes, Bruce Sutter represents this, and the only way he wouldn’t have been the first to do so is if the committee voted in a guy who was mostly a designated hitter, and that hasn’t happened yet.

Sutter received 76.9% of the votes counted, which is 1.9% more than the minimum necessary for induction. Jim Rice was next with 64.8%, or 337 votes, which was 53 votes shy of the minimum needed.

Sutter had 300 saves, a career ERA of 2.83, and a losing record. He was 68-71, but that’s hardly an indicator of a closer’s effectiveness, of course. But again — changing times. Before Sutter’s generation of pitcher, the idea of making the Hall with a record below .500 would have been folly. Sutter also led the National League in saves five times, was a six-time All-Star, won the Cy Young Award in 1979, and was the World Series MVP in 1982. Not bad for a guy who could have arrived in street clothes by the seventh inning of every game and not missed anything.

But good for him. As Sutter said after the vote, “I hope more closers get in. I think the voters try to compare us to starters, but we can’t compete with their innings or strikeouts. We play a different position — but without us, it’s tough to win.”

Indeed it is tough to win without a decent closer nowadays. Long gone are the days of 20+ complete games and 300+ innings from the starters. But like Sutter says, try winning without the short relievers. Kind of like trying to win a golf tournament with no putter.

It wasn’t always like that, of course, but that’s where the symbolism of Sutter’s career enters the picture. He started in in the mid-1970’s, when closers were known as “firemen.” He continued throughout the 80’s, and in the beginning of the decade he was known as a “stopper.” By the time he finished in 1988, he had become the current sobriquet, the “closer.”
And in doing so, Bruce Sutter, along with contemporaries such as Rollie Fingers, Lee Smith, Dennis Eckersley and Goose Gossage, firmly placed a stamp of approval on the role of the closer from even the most traditionalist of baseball fans and media. It was impossible to ignore the contributions to a team’s success a competent closer could make.

Sutter’s importance coincided with the switch to five-man starting pitching rotations, and the trend of managers to baby their starters’ arms beyond even that change. Before long, bullpens were set up with guys specializing in the 7th and 8th “setup” innings, followed by the closer in the 9th. But Sutter threw more than 100 innings five times in his career, which means he wasn’t just a ninth inning man, like today’s closers. Nowadays, managers rue bringing in their closer in the 8th inning. And the 7th? Forgettaboutit. But Sutter, along with his colleagues, acted often times as their own “setup men,” entering games in the 7th inning or even earlier if necessary to stop the bleeding. In those days, managers wanted their best reliever in the game, regardless of inning. If you weren’t a closer in the bullpen, and you weren’t a starter, you were just another interchangeable part. Now the bullpen is specialized, and I wonder how long it will be when coaching staffs in baseball resemble those in football: a closer coach, a setup man coach, and even a coach for the dreaded “long reliever,” which is the lowest man on the bullpen totem pole.

But hold the phone. Bruce Sutter goes into the Hall with his 300 saves, and that’s great. But Gossage, who fell 54 votes shy, had 310 saves, and pitched much longer — 22 seasons to Sutter’s 12. He was a World Series champ, too — twice. His career ERA was 3.01, not all that much worse than Sutter’s. Yet Goose is on the outside looking in once again. But you know those voters don’t always think straight.

The rejection of guys like Rice and pitcher Bert Blyleven is, in my mind, another victory for those like me who would save the Hall for only the outstanding, not the very good. It’s the same thing with Jack Morris. My view isn’t popular around these parts, but I agree with Morris’ exclusion, too. Too many in Detroit would put him in simply because of his brilliant 10-inning performance in Game 7 of the 1991 World Series. But Don Larsen isn’t enshrined, and he pitched a perfect game in a World Series game, for crying out loud.

It’s always fun to debate who should and who should not be in any of the major sport’s Halls of Fame. It’s a sure way to start a lively barroom discussion, even before the drinks have been consumed.

Congratulations to Bruce Sutter — baseball’s first non-starting pitcher to be so enshrined. Who knows what’s next? Maybe Charlie Brown will get to kick the football out of Lucy’s hold?

So You Wanna Coach In The NBA? Better Double Think That

I once asked Earl Cureton, the old U-D Titan and two-time NBA Champion, why in the world Isiah Thomas was bringing John Long and him out of retirement and onto the end of the Toronto Raptors bench. This was in 1996 — has it been nine years already? — and Thomas was looking for his two former Pistons teammates to provide some sort of stability to a young and unrefined roster.

“Isiah needs people to help coach (Darrell) Walker police the kids,” Cureton explained over the phone to his caller — me — who was wondering, “What the hell?” At the time, Cureton was 39 and retired for three years, and Long was 40 and hadn’t played in the NBA in almost six years. Yet Isiah signed them both — Twin Leaning Towers.

But Cureton’s explanation about being dragged out of retirement — that the Raptors needed greybeards to help the coach make certain the players minded their p’s and q’s — didn’t really surprise me. Young coaches like Walker can be chewed up and spit out by the modern NBA player, if the right hand isn’t there to guide him. And that right hand means it must be tough yet respectful, disciplined yet tolerant, and tutorial yet open to freelancing. No easy path to travel. It’s like trying to walk a straight line after one too many tequilas.

Today’s NBA coach doesn’t have to be so much a coach as he has to be a chaperone. He has to know when his troops need guidance, but he also must realize that no matter how experienced he is or how impressive his resume, it’s still a player’s game, baby. And they will absolutely make you or break you — sometimes breaking you if they simply don’t like you.

So how was Darrell Walker doing handling the kids?, I asked Cureton shortly after he was signed with Long to provide veteran stability, that ancient term. “I think he’s (Walker) glad we’re around,” Cureton said. “Things were getting out of control. Today’s players don’t appreciate what they have sometimes.” I grinned. Here was Earl (The Twirl) Cureton, all grown up from his days as the B.M.O.C. on U-D’s campus, waxing parental about life in the NBA.

The Pistons twice have had teams police themselves, needing only the deft, understated tweakings of a veteran coach to steady them: the Bad Boys of ‘89 and ‘90, and today’s team, those Goin’ To Work fellas.

Daly (left) and Saunders: Two Pistons coaches,
two perfect fits

Chuck Daly was the perfect coach for those Pistons of yore. Thomas himself has said so. Daddy Rich, the Prince of Pessimism — call him what you will, Chuck Daly simply knew how to work those reins better than anyone. There was no questioning who was in charge, but Daly didn’t let that power go to his head. Instead, he allowed his players freedom — on and off the court — and their respect for him grew exponentially each season as the team rose to championship caliber.

Flip Saunders, it appears, might just be the best person on this planet to coach today’s group of Pistons, who are pumping with deadly precision. They play at a gaudy 26-5 clip, grinding teams into dust slowly and painfully in the fourth quarters of games. Or, they simply kick your ass. Whichever you prefer. Regardless, 2006’s point guard, Chauncey Billups, has spoken glowingly of Saunders’ offensive philosophy, which goes something like this: Do whatever you want, within reason.

Okay, so maybe it’s not that loosey-goosey, but the truth is, Flip Saunders has taken the shackles off the Pistons, offensively speaking, and has encouraged them to get creative. But the offense does indeed have structure, and Billups sees to it with what some people are saying is MVP-like success.The offense, with its constant movement without the ball by the players, also fits Richard Hamilton like a glove. It’s no surprise that Hamilton, too, is having a stellar year. You get the feeling the Pistons truly enjoy playing for Flip Saunders, having fun on the basketball court. After two seasons of playing for Larry Brown, this must feel like a prison break for these dudes.

Not every team has a Chuck Daly or Flip Saunders, of course. There’s Scott Skiles over in Chicago, whose team recently suffered through a nine-game losing streak a season after making the playoffs. There’s Maurice Cheeks in Philadelphia, an old 76′er returning to his promised land, finding that two stars do not a team make. There’s Jeff Van Gundy in Houston, who has Yao Ming and Tracy McGrady (although T-Mac has been hurt off and on), yet can’t make that team amount to a hill of beans this season. But here Flip Saunders is, albeit with the best starting five in pro basketball, coasting along because he operates with the magic dust necessary to keep the players on your side. The Pistons lead the league in chemistry, if they keep such a stat.

You have to be so much to be a coach in the 21st Century NBA. It ain’t like it was in the late 50’s, when then-Pistons coach Charley Eckmann said, “Hell, you don’t have to coach these big lunks.” Eckmann also said his two favorite plays were “‘South Pacific’ and ‘put the ball in the basket’.”

Now THAT’S loosey-goosey coaching for you.

MONDAY FEATURES: QUOTE OF THE WEEK, OBSCURE FACTOID

QUOTE OF THE WEEK


Gates Brown

“In high school I took some english, some science, some hubcaps and some wheel covers.”

– Former Tigers outfielder/DH William “Gates” Brown, who got his nickname for having spent some time in prison.

OBSCURE FACTOID

Under Bill Ford’s ownership, the Lions have only worn their road white jerseys once at home: Thanksgiving Day, 1970, when the visiting Oakland Raiders’ silver numerals on their white jerseys were deemed to not be vivid enough for that day’s national telecast. So the Lions wore white and the Raiders wore black. The Lions won, 28-14, despite falling behind 14-0 after the Raiders’ first two possessions.

Coaching Searches In Detroit Not Always On The Up-And-Up

Lions president Matt Millen says he will be a good boy this time and not hire his next head coach impetuously. He will not become enamored with the next man after one dinner and a late night film session (Marty Mornhinweg), and he will not become starry-eyed by a misleading won/lost record (Steve Mariucci). He promises to take his time and weigh all his options.

Head coaching searches are never ironclad in terms of guaranteed to be successful, of course. Sometimes all you can do is pick from your gut and hope. It’s how people are hired in the real world everyday. It’s easy to be fooled in interviews, as an employer. I’ve been fooled, and more than once.

But Matt Millen is supposedly going to be doing the kind of due diligence that is hardly done when you’re hiring an $8/hour stock boy, or even a $15/hour sales assistant. He has described his sojourn for the next coach as him being “practically patient,” whatever that means. After observing his first two whiffs, I’d say if he waited 30 minutes to make a decision he’d be “practically patient.”

If you hang around the Detroit sports scene for as long as I have — 35 years and counting — you’re bound to see and hear about things. And when it comes to choosing coaches in this town, two incidents come to mind: one I was told about, and one I read about.

The late Mark “Doc” Andrews, one of Dick Purtan’s radio chuckleheads, was also a very accomplished sports announcer, both of the public address and play-by-play varieties. For years he hung around the Pistons, going back to their days at Cobo Arena. For a time he was Mason before there was Mason, announcing baskets and fouls and phony attendance figures at Cobo. Then he was the Pistons’ radio guy.

In 1978, once the Pistons decided that a new coach was needed to replace GM Bob Kauffman, who was moonlighting on the sidelines, the local ink-stained wretches and TV blabbermouths started pumping for former U-D coach Dick Vitale. Of course, that’s exactly what Vitale wanted them to do, because he had several months prior launched a campaign to be the next Pistons coach — whispering his intentions into their ears. They, in turn, became his own personal marketing and sales team. Only they didn’t know it.

Anyhow, Andrews told me years ago a story that proved how much owner Bill Davidson was taking the bait that Dickie Vitale was selling — hook, line and sinker.

“Davidson was presented a list with possible candidates,” Doc told me. “The list didn’t include Vitale. Davidson said, ‘That’s not the right list. I don’t like that list. Show me another.’”

Several days later, the very same list was presented to Davidson — with Vitale’s name added to it. It was the only change. The list was presented as such to prove something: that Bill Davidson wanted Dickie Vitale as much as Dickie V. wanted the Pistons.

When he saw the “new” list with Vitale’s name added, Davidson said, “That’s a much better list.”

Dickie Vitale would get hired, talk nonstop about “Piston Paradise” and the team being “ReVitaleized”, trade away draft picks like they were bubble gum cards, and systematically ruin one franchise while boosting another to championship heights (read: Boston Celtics, enabling them to acquire Robert Parish and Kevin McHale), then fired, all within 18 months.

And Bill Davidson never got his money back. Maybe he didn’t keep his receipt.

Vitale (left) should never have been hired by Pistons;
Lloyd (right) should never have been disregarded

The other incident also involved the Pistons, but I read about this one.

Jerry Green, in his wonderful book “The Detroit Pistons: Capturing A Remarkable Era,” wrote of a deep snub that was heinous in its occurrence and shameful in its lack of reporting.

Earl Lloyd, a former Piston player, was working in the team’s front office in 1964 when he was approached by the team’s general manager, Don Wattrick. The Pistons were at the time coming apart at the seams, as usual. They were looking for a new coach — as usual. Earl Lloyd was experienced, qualified, and very wise to the ways of the NBA. He was also African-American.

“You’d be the answer to all my problems,” Wattrick told Earl Lloyd, “if only you weren’t black.”

That racial snub went unreported, unchallenged. The civil rights movement hadn’t gained enough momentum, apparently, in 1964.

So Matt Millen marches his candidates in and out of Detroit. He even travels, when he has to, going to Denver reportedly to chat with Broncos offensive coordinator Gary Kubiak. He is going to take his time this go around.

He might be working the count, but he still has two strikes against him.

Murray’s Leg Betrayed Lions At The Worst Time

Eddie Murray

The fact that Eddie Murray, the old placekicker, has a Super Bowl ring and his former Lions teammates do not is both ironic and stinging. For if one of Murray’s Lions kicks had been positioned 18 inches to the left, names like Gary Danielson and Doug English and Billy Sims might have replaced those of Joe Montana, Roger Craig and Dwight Clark, at least for one year, in the minds of pro football fans everywhere.

It’s playoff time again in the NFL, which means it isn’t here in Detroit. Wayne Fontes is gone, after all, and gone with him are those frequent postseason visits, though they mostly ended after one game. To this day Fontes is the only Lions coach in the past 48 years to navigate his team through 60 minutes of playoff football and, at the end, have scored more points than the opposition. It was January 5, 1992 — a 38-6 win over the Dallas Cowboys. America’s Team got drilled, but then went on to win three of the next four Super Bowls. Being the Lions’ only playoff victim since 1957 must have made them cranky.

But eight years earlier — December 31, 1983 — the Lions, our Lions, were oh-so-close to appearing in the NFC Championship. One game removed from the Super Bowl. But Eddie Murray’s right leg went crooked at the most inopportune of times.I think about that game from time-to-time, always around this time of year it seems, because even though the San Francisco 49′ers, winners of that New Year’s Eve ‘83 playoff tilt, had already won one Super Bowl by then, they were nowhere near being the dynasty they became by the end of the decade. Had the Lions beaten them in Frisco that day, who knows? Maybe they, and not the 49′ers, would have gone on to bigger and better things in the 1980’s.

The Lions of ‘83 were a team full of hope when the season began, that ancient mantra when it comes to pro football in Detroit. But this time there appeared to be genuine reason for high expectations. The ‘82 club had made the playoffs, a first for the Lions since 1970. And even though 1982 was a strike-shortened NFL season, and the Lions had qualified for the playoffs with an unsightly 4-5 record, the team was still considered up-and-coming. There were pieces in place. Danielson at quarterback. Sims carrying the ball. English anchoring a fierce, pass-rushing defensive line. Keith Dorney at tackle, the heart and soul of an offensive line that was in the league’s upper echelon.

Yet the team started 1-4, and after that fourth loss, on the road against the Rams in southern California, head coach Monte Clark stood in front of the doomsaying reporters and said with gallows humor, “See you at the cemetery.” The coach didn’t expect to last more than another day or two. But then the Lions caught fire, and finished the season on an 8-3 run, to borrow basketball vernacular. Their 9-7 record, while not stupendous, was enough to win the NFC Central division. Their prize? A flight to the Bay Area to face the 10-6 49′ers. Typical of the Lions to have to play a postseason game on the road, even as divisional champions.

The 49′ers, winners of Super Bowl XVI in Detroit two seasons earlier, fell flat in 1982, perhaps a victim of post-championship hangover. They were 3-6, one game worse than the Lions. No playoffs for them. But they rebounded in ‘83, and got the home game thanks to being one game better than the Lions. And so it was that the two teams, who were both 2-14 in 1979, would do battle in Candlestick Park, New Year’s party hats and bottles of champagne awaiting the winner.

*********************************************
…in Murray’s own words, he failed to “kick the stuffing” out of the ball.
*********************************************

Danielson was, in a word, awful that day. He threw five interceptions. Sims, on the other hand, was brilliant, rushing for 114 yards on 20 carries, including two touchdowns in the fourth quarter that turned a 17-9 deficit into a 23-17 lead with under seven minutes to play. But the Lions, even with their decent defense, couldn’t hold the advantage. Montana threw a 14-yard strike to Freddie Solomon to put the 49′ers ahead 24-23. There were only a few minutes left, but the Lions would only need a field goal for victory. It would be the lack of one that would haunt them for years.

Danielson, despite his rotten performance up to that point, used steely determination and his right arm to march the Lions downfield. “All I knew was, I was going to get us into field goal range one way or another,” Danielson said after the game. And that he did. With seconds remaining, the Lions made it to the San Francisco 26 yard line.Their playoff fate would rest on the leg of Eddie Murray.

Murray, in his fourth season as Lions kicker, was perhaps at the time not in the league long enough to have garnered a reputation for making clutch kicks. But at the same time, Eddie Murray hadn’t been known as a choke artist, either. He was, frankly, somewhere in between. And now he trotted onto the field at Candlestick, 43 yards away from lifting his team to the conference championship game.The field was muddy and torn up after 59+ minutes of football. Because of the conditions, Murray began thinking too much. “What I should have done was what I usually do,” Murray said afterward. “And that is, just kick the stuffing out of the ball.”

Murray babied the crucial kick

Lining up on the right hashmark, Danielson knelt to spot the ball as the holder. Murray went through his usual routine — right foot tamping down the area where the ball would be placed, taking the requisite number of steps back, and then to his left. Left hand resting on left leg just above the knee. Head down, awaiting the snap and hold. Just like every other kick. But, in Murray’s own words, he failed to “kick the stuffing” out of the ball. He babied the kick, and it pushed to the right. For a moment it looked as if the ball might draw left, between the uprights. But it stayed frustratingly right, and the 49′ers crowd going insane with delight in the end zone told Detroit TV viewers all they needed to know. The kick was wide right, and the Lions had lost.

I didn’t need to see the actual kick, however, to know the Lions’ goose was cooked. What sealed it for me was the now infamous camera shot of coach Clark on the sidelines, hands clasped together in prayer, face looking skyward. As soon as I saw that image, I said a four-letter word that is another way of intimating you have to use the little boys’ room — sitting down. I guess the Lions’ history of ineptitude ingrained in me the Pavlovian reaction of assuming the worst when someone from the Lions hopes — or prays — for the best.

Eddie Murray got his Super Bowl win a decade later, as a member of the Cowboys. He kicked three field goals in Dallas’ 30-13 victory over Buffalo. None of them, of course, was of the clutch variety. But guaranteed, Lions fans watching that Super Bowl flashed back, every time Murray entered the game, to what might have been on December 31, 1983 — if only Eddie had kicked the stuffing out of the ball.

Chiefs’ Snatching of Herm Edwards Child’s Play Compared To Tigers-Indians Deal Of 1960

So the Kansas City Chiefs have stolen head coach Herm Edwards away from the New York Jets. Oh, the Jets will say they were “compensated”, having received a fourth round draft choice. But that’s a steal in my book, for Herm Edwards is certainly worth more than that. The Jets must not have wanted to retain him very badly.

Herm Edwards for a fourth round draft choice is an interesting little set up, but it has nothing on what the Tigers and Cleveland Indians pulled off in 1960.

On August 10, 1960, the dog days of the baseball season in full swing, the Tigers and Indians swapped managers. That’s right — even-Steven, tit-for-tat, yours-for-mine.

Gordon (left) was traded to the Tigers for Dykes (right) — and they were managers!

The Indians were probably the more desperate of the two teams. They had contended for the pennant in 1959, a year in which the Yankees were down and the “Go-Go” White Sox took first place. The Tribe felt good about their chances headed into 1960. They were managed by Joe Gordon, the old Yankees second baseman.

The Tigers were a so-so ballclub at the time, finishing around .500 in ‘59 and stumbling along in 1960, 44-52 under Jimmy Dykes, a fiery, high-strung fellow.

Cleveland general manager Frank Lane conceived the idea of trading managers and sold it to Detroit’s Bill DeWitt. The contract of Jimmy Dykes was transferred to Cleveland, while Joe Gordon was moved into Detroit. Having not been around at the time, I don’t know what the media coverage was like, but suffice it to say had such a thing happened nowadays, with all the TV and Internet going on, including blowhard bloggers like me, the Dykes-for-Gordon swap would have been all the rage for weeks.

But the novelty of trading managers turned out to be just that — a novelty. It was not a rousing success. Detroit stayed in sixth place and fired Gordon at season’s end, which was fine with Joe, who didn’t truly want to be in Detroit in the first place. Dykes could not move the Indians out of fourth place that season, and slid to fifth the following year. That sealed his fate and closed his career as a major league manager.

BIll DeWitt, the Tigers’ GM at the time, was a flamboyant, shoot-from-the-hip guy cut from the same cloth as eccentric owner Bill Veeck. DeWitt often liked to make trades for the sake of making them. But despite all of his impetuosity, DeWitt authored one of the best trades in Tigers history. He dealt little-used infielder Steve Demeter to the Indians for first baseman Norman Cash. That deal turned out pretty well for the Tigers, as you know.

Will two ballclubs ever trade managers again, in midseason? It’s been 45 years and counting, so I wouldn’t hold my breath, especially with today’s button-downed, conservative owners and GMs.

Where have you gone, Bill DeWitt and Frank Lane? A baseball nation turns its lonely eyes to you……..

When A League MVP Can’t Even Make The All-Star Team…..

Hey Chauncey: It’s cool — you’ll be an All-Star

When was the last time you saw a team sport’s potential league MVP buried in All-Star voting like last year’s trash in a landfill? Has there ever been serious talk about an MVP guy who is summarily dismissed by fans year after year?

The National Basketball Association makes it easy — maybe too easy — for fans to vote for the All-Star teams. You can do so in NBA arenas, in 19 languages on the NBA.com Network, in approximately 130 Loews Cineplex Entertainment movie theaters in the United States and through mobile phones using T-Mobile service. You might even be able to vote for the NBA All-Star teams in 15 minutes if you call Geico, but that has not been confirmed.

So despite all of those venues and chances to vote, the Pistons’ Chauncey Billups remains a bottom feeder in the latest ballotting numbers among Eastern Conference guards. In the latest results, Billups has 125,000+ votes, good for fifth place but light years behind the two guys who will most likely start: Philadelphia’s Allen Iverson (639,000) and Miami’s Dwyane Wade (480,000). Billups is even more than 200,000 votes behind New Jersey’s Vince Carter (363,000). Heck, he even trails New Jersey’s Jason Kidd by 30,000+, and Kidd is so 2000-01, ain’t he?

Oh, I know it’s all a popularity contest, and Billups will, in all likelihood, be selected to the team — finally — but only because the Eastern Conference coach stands to be the Pistons’ Flip Saunders. Still, to see Chauncey Billups that far behind the leaders is puzzling, because who exactly is doing more with the basketball, who is helping his team achieve success, more than Chauncey Billups at this point in the season?

I have seen Isiah Thomas break teams down with his penetration and dish-off ability, and drive stakes into their hearts with his jumpshooting. I have seen Magic Johnson lead deadly fastbreaks, make mind-numbing passes, and play like a power forward or center in the biggest games in the world. I know what Bob Cousy did for the Celtics, running that Parquet Floor Show.

Maybe Chauncey Billups isn’t, yet, in that circle of great point guards. But what he is doing for the Pistons right now — hitting clutch shots, scoring almost at will, finding the right man constantly, overpowering other point guards with his size and strength, rebounding and playing hard-nosed defense, is more than any guard has done in Detroit in years.

The thing is, Billups has actually been doing all those things for a few years now, but this season he is doing them to the nth degree. Never before has he been this dominant, this confident, this much of a terror to opponents. But then again, never before has he played for Flip Saunders in Detroit. When Billups played for Saunders in Minnesota, he was unrefined, still trying to find his game. When he played for Larry Brown in Detroit, he was more refined but tethered still. But Flip Saunders has unleashed this moster on the rest of the NBA with his more wide open offense. If this was football, Flip Saunders would be Air Coryell to Larry Brown’s Steve “West Toast Offense” Mariucci.

All of this outstanding play, night after night, is causing whispers of “MVP” into people’s ears throughout the league. In fact, the growing consensus is that Billups was, indeed, the league MVP during the first third of this season. And that feeling is only going to grow if the Pistons keep winning at the white hot clip they are currently. A run at 70 wins wouldn’t harm Billups’ chances at MVP, either.

But despite all this, there Chauncey Billups sits, an also-ran in All-Star voting. Never has he, unbelievably, been an All-Star — not even of the chosen-by-the-coach variety. Yet he has been MVP of the NBA Finals. And now, he may be the league MVP the same season he makes his first All-Star team.

If Flip Saunders picks him, that is.

Come on, Flip — get loose.

Pardon The Interruption….For A Soft (For Now) Sell

I don’t like to use this blog for grandstanding or self-aggrandizement, so I’ll make this post quick and to the point.
Yours truly is the new Editor-in-Chief of Motor City Sports (MCS) Magazine. Or editor-in-chief. However much importance you choose to place on such a position. Anyhow, I will now assume the role of the person who will make sure everything you read in MCS is sharp, edgy, accurate and at times humorous. It is a responsibility I do not take lightly.

MCS Magazine, for those who don’t know, is a monthly publication that means to tell stories about Detroit and Michigan sports that the reader can’t find anywhere else. I suppose if we were to create a mission statement, that would be it. Along the way there will be some fun stuff, some nostalgia, and we want to make you laugh, too. We might even make you shed a tear here and there.

MCS Magazine is set to go to press with its fourth issue, the February book, which will be available February 7. Currently, you can find MCS Magazine at all Kroger’s and Barnes and Noble bookstores, along with independent retailers throughout the state of Michigan. Or, you can also subscribe, by browsing over to www.motorcitysports.net.

The February 2006 issue features our 2005 Awards, including Unsung Hero, Performance of the Year, Game of the Year and, of course, 2005 Sportsperson of the Year. There are also fun awards like The Webber — which I will leave you to figure out on your own accord. And I would tell you who the MCS Magazine 2005 Sportsperson of the Year is, but then I’d have to kill you, and I don’t have time for all that drama.
Anyhow, I hope you check out the magazine, and also the website.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled blog.

Dammit, Jim — I’m A Coach, Not A Miracle Worker!

“You can’t make chicken salad out of chicken feathers.”
–Oft-said line about talent-challenged teams.

Sparky Anderson, Hall of Fame manager, once piloted the Tigers to 103 losses, in 1989. Most of his last years in Detroit were spent well under the .500 standard. Casey Stengel, another member in good standing in Cooperstown, managed some of the most wretched teams in baseball history, while with the New York Mets. Chuck Daly, a Hall of Famer in his own right, once had a won/loss mark so hideous as coach of the Cleveland Cavaliers I’m sure he wishes he could erase it from the record books permanently. John McKay, a brilliant college coach, needed his 27th game before he got his first victory as head coach of the expansion Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

Today, Larry Brown, coaching legend, has on his permanent record a 8-21 mark as leader of the New York Knicks. It’s the kind of record even a legend can have, when the players dribble the ball off their feet, clang shots off the iron, and pass the ball to the wrong team, or the patrons in the expensive seats.

It’s all about the horses, baby. You have them, you can win. If you don’t, you have nary a chance.

If only LB had listened to me. I wrote on this very blog last summer that the notion of Larry Brown coaching the New York Knicks was a side-splitting, tear-inducing laugh. He didn’t have the roster, he has as his GM the NBA equivalent of Mr. Magoo, and he is performing before fans who are about as patient as Refrigerator Perry in a buffet line.

Great coaches can make a difference — no question. But the talent level needs to be at a serviceable level, or else you get Casey Stengel — Mets version. When the roster is full of ragtags and ne’er do-wells, then you’re going to suffer — regardless of who is coaching it.

So the fact that Larry Brown coaches at a .276 clip one-third of the way through this NBA season can hardly be surprising. His players are either young and unproven or older and set in their ways — bad habits and all.

Bill Parcells is one of those coaches from whom miracles have been expected. He has a reputation of being a franchise “doctor” — someone who can come in, diagnose the problem, and work to correct it. It sometimes takes longer than expected, but it always gets better. But not before a near purging of the roster he has assumed. He doesn’t work his miracles quite as fast as our creator.

As rumors swirl that Bill Parcells might be considering moving his practice to Detroit to see if he can cure the Lions, it must be pointed out that whomever comes to town is essentially inheriting an expansion team. Team president Matt Millen will disagree, but the Lions are not a football team that is a mere handful of players away from contending for the whole enchilada — or Tuna, to be more appropriate. They are not a quick fix. Because what ails the Lions isn’t just the talent on the field. It’s attitude. It’s an inglorious history. It’s a mindset.

Isiah Thomas once said of the Boston Celtics, when they were the Pistons’ nemesis in the playoffs, “To beat the Celtics you have to beat more than just a team. You have to beat their history. You have to beat their minds. You have to beat their mystique.”

So it is with the Detroit Lions, only they have to beat themselves in those categories.

If Parcells comes to Detroit, it will turn this town on like no other coaching hire in recent memory. You thought there was a buzz when Steve Mariucci hit town in an Armani suit and those baby blue eyes? That ain’t nothing compared to what will happen in Detroit if Bill Parcells is introduced at a press conference.

But it must be understood that even Parcells — NFL Franchise Doctor — is no miracle worker. Even Bill Parcells is going to need time — maybe three full seasons — to pump the Lions full of football antibiotics and get the franchise back on its feet. He needed about that long to resuscitate the New England Patriots, a motley group indeed when he took them over in 1993. And he’ll need that long, guaranteed, to declare the Lions fit for battle.

It is said coaches get too much blame for the losing and too much credit for the winning. True enough, and a team’s roster doesn’t get enough blame or credit. Not even when Franchise Doctors become in charge of them.

Parcells To Detroit Might Not Be A Pipe Dream After All

Was talking to Muneesh Jain, publisher of Motor City Sports Magazine, last night about the Lions’ latest coaching search, and we bantied about some candidates. The talk turned to Kansas City Chiefs offensive coordinator Al Saunders. There are reports that Saunders is soon to be interviewed. But Muneesh stuck a big old caveat emptor into our discussion.

“Saunders makes me nervous, because I heard Matt Millen likes him,” Munie said.

The dig there, of course, is that anyone Millen likes, we better not. It’s hard to argue. Millen is 0-for-2 in his coaching searches, both of which were first-swing popouts that didn’t get out of the infield.

Matt says he has learned this time — lessons are never learned easily or cheaply in the NFL — and that he will take his sweet time picking the next sacrificial lamb to lead his football team.

But there is one man that Millen likes — everybody likes — that should not cause us to run scampering in the other direction, screaming like banshees: Bill Parcells.

It may be a bunch of hogwash, but the idea of Parcells chucking it in Dallas is growing legs, and Detroit keeps getting mentioned as a possible destination. Millen and Parcells are old buddies, apparently, and Parcells has publicly voiced his respect and admiration for Lions owner Bill Ford.

Is Parcells eyeing Motown?


Yes, Parcells is still under contract to the Dallas Cowboys — one year is left on a four-year deal — but the written word has never meant all that much in the world of sports. As former Pistons coach Butch van Breda Kolff once said of contracts, “Hell, you can always quit. And they can fire you if they want.”

Speaking of the contract, that’s sort of the crux of the Parcells-to-Detroit rumors. There is an extension to that contract on the table from Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, and The Tuna hasn’t signed it yet. The fact that he hasn’t done so is causing football folks around the country — okay, maybe just in Dallas and Detroit so far, and some writer types at FoxSports.com — to speculate that Parcells is mulling over wiggling out of the written word in Dallas so that he may bail out his friend Millen in Detroit. Big D to Little D.

There is even further speculation that if Parcells comes to Detroit, he will take quarterback Drew Bledsoe with him. That may not be a bad package deal for the Lions, if the price was right.

I at first dismssed talk of Parcells as the next Lions coach as mere hopeful blather of Lions fans who will latch onto just about anything to inject hope into their football team. They are like barnacles that way. I thought Parcells’ health was a concern and his desire to coach might be waning. Turns out neither of those things are true, according to those lovely “close sources” to the coach.

Bill Parcells is, frankly, exactly the kind of coach the Lions need right now. He isn’t necessarily the offensive innovator that I would like, but he is also smart enough to bring those types along with him. He is the master of getting the most out of his players and turning organizations around and pointing them in the proper direction. He is no-nonsense and has a glittering resume. His name is the first off people’s tongues around here when they are queried, “What kind of coach do the Lions need?”

Forget Mike Singletary. Forget Jim Haslett. Both of these men are reportedly destined to arrive any day now for interviews. Go ahead and talk to them, but neither fits the bill — Parcells or no Parcells. I’ll say it once again: the new coach better make this football team exciting again and not be afraid to stretch defenses with something called the forward pass. You remember those, don’t you? They’re the ones that travel further than five yards in the air.

But the new coach must also possess the toughness and demand for accountability that has never truly been here under Bill Ford’s ownership. For too long the Lions have been coached by “player’s coaches”, i.e. Wayne Fontes and Steve Mariucci types.

Matt Millen says he wants the new coach to reflect the city of Detroit, which he calls “tough” and “straightforward” and that “knows its football.”

You could do far worse than Bill Parcells, if that’s how you choose to define the next coach.

Just Another Manic, Black Monday — Especially If Your Name Was Mike

It was a bad day to be an NFL head coach named Mike yesterday.

No less than three Mikes got the ziggy — that Detroit-born word for “fired” — from their respective teams: Sherman at Green Bay, Tice at Minnesota, and Martz at St. Louis.

Listening to the press conferences announcing these cannings, I had to chuckle. First of all, every one of the men wielding the axe said the same thing: “We decided to go in a different direction.” In typical “Black Monday” fashion — the day after the final regular season game that traditionally rains ziggies on NFL coaches — coaches were being offed at breakneck speed, which meant GM’s and owners were going in so many “different directions” that it was amazing they didn’t bang into each other.

Second, it amuses me how Black Monday, in a paradoxical way, seems to bring out the most flowery of words from those rendering the ziggy to those who are on the receiving end. If you listened to these grim reapers talk, not knowing what the situation is, you’d think they were delivering a testimonial for their victims.

“I can’t say enough about the job he did for us.”

“He is a great guy and a good football coach.”

“This has nothing to do with the kind of football coach he is.”

And then, of course, “We just decided to go in a different direction.” So despite the kind words, the ziggy still got rendered.

Perhaps the words which rang most true were these, spoken by one of the hatchet men — I’m not sure who it was: “This is not a fair business.” No, it must not be, if despite how great a guy or wonderful a football coach he is, the pink slip awaits nonetheless. But yet it’s what the Mikes and the others who got the ziggy — Jim Haslett of the Saints and Dom Capers of the Texans, with others soon to follow — signed up for when they became head coaches. As former Pistons coach Earl Lloyd once said, “This is a funny job. When you sign on as coach, you are signing your own walking papers.” Lloyd, of course, got the ziggy himself eventually, after having replaced Butch van Breda Kolff, who committed a self-ziggy — quitting early in the 1971-72 season. Lloyd’s words are about as true as they get, as well.

The one good thing about Black Monday is it means none of its victims have to twist in the wind, wondering about their fate. Lions president Matt Millen, who hasn’t shown himself to be much of a coach hirer, also proved to be a bad firer, with the way he treated Marty Mornhinweg. After Marty went 3-13 in 2002, for a two-year record of 5-27, Millen announced on New Year’s Eve that Mornhinweg would return for the 2003 season, after several wind-twisting days. But then Steve Mariucci got the ziggy in San Francisco a couple weeks later, and Marty was back on the hook, twisting as speculation ran rampant that Mooch would be headed to Detroit. Millen gave Marty the ziggy after all — something better coming along, in his mind: Mariucci. Quite frankly, it was a poor way to treat someone, regardless of what one might think of Marty Mornhinweg’s coaching talents. Millen, it is thought, is probably going to deliver another ziggy soon — replacing interim head coach Dick Jauron. “Interim” just means that you are a ziggy waiting to happen. So let’s see how Matt handles the transfer of coaching power this time.

The Vikings, though, took the “I don’t want you to twist in the wind” theory to another level. Owner Zygi (I’m not making that up) Wilf waited about one hour after the Vikes’ 34-10 rout of the Chicago Bears to deliver his first name to Mike Tice. It was hasty and sloppy; Tice said his wife heard of the firing on the radio. One wonders how that cashiering went.

“Coach, great game. Nice win.”

“Thanks.”

“Clean out your desk.”

Such is life in the NFL, which Jerry Glanville once told an official stands for Not For Long. He was, of course, referring to making bad calls on the field. But it is also an appropriate way to describe the window of a head coach — specifically, how long it remains open.

MONDAY’S FEATURES: Quote of the Week, Obscure Factoid

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

Tim McCarver

“Bob Gibson is the luckiest guy in the world. He always pitches on the days when the other team doesn’t score any runs.”

–Former Cardinals catcher Tim McCarver, offering a supreme compliment to his future Hall of Fame teammate.

OBSCURE FACTOID

In the last game of the 1969-70 NHL season, the Red Wings lost to the New York Rangers 9-5, but actually scored two empty net goals in the loss. Why? Tiebreaker rules dictated that the Rangers would qualify for the playoffs based on goal differential, so even though they were winning handily, they pulled the goalie with several minutes left in order to score as many goals as possible.

Press Conferences Often The Last Places To Get Decent Information

The young hockey player stood awkwardly in front of the garishly bright lights. He gazed out among the throngs of folks who would hang on his every word, if only he would speak, and if only they would ask him a question that was worth him answering. Ink-stained wretches, and TV people like me, shared the large room with the man-child with all the comfort of two strangers stuck in an elevator together.

The hockey player, then-teenager Eric Lindros, was in Detroit as a member of the OHL’s Oshawa Generals, his team in town to play the Detroit Junior Red Wings. He was, at the time — 1991 — considered the hottest NHL prospect to come down the pike in years, since a fellow by the name of Gretzky, it was said. So it was declared that he would be the focus of a press conference, although I’m not sure what the reasoning was. And judging by the look on Lindros’ face, I don’t think he was all that clued in, either.

But down to Joe Louis Arena we trudged, a herd of media cattle, tape recorders and cameras and notepads at the ready, wondering just what sort of enlightenment a teenaged hockey player would be providing us. Not much, as it turned out. The p.r. flacks announced the press conference was now beginning, Lindros stood at the podium, and all that was missing was a director to yell “Action!”

The silence was deafening.

After several seconds of….nothing, I asked the first question. It was known that Eric Lindros had an affinity for the Red Wings and the Toronto Maple Leafs. It was also known that neither team had a prayer of drafting him, barring a trade. Still, I asked anyway.

“Would you like to play here more often?,” I said, coyly referring to his supposed desire to perhaps wear a Red Wings sweater one day.

Lindros looked right at me and said, “Sure….that would be great, to be a Red Wing.”

Then more silence.

It wasn’t the greatest of press conferences.

Eric Lindros

But that’s also typical. If you want to find juicy tidbits of information about the subject of a press conference, then don’t bother attending the press conference. You’ll have the same amount of success if you simply read the release they hand out and call it a day.

Press conferences, at least when it comes to the world of sports, are to journalism what saltine crackers are to haute cuisine. They are dry and mostly tasteless. A big part of this blandness can be blamed on those of us who attend these choreographed affairs. For some reason, media types check their creativity and cahoonas at the door and put on their interrogative dunce caps. Because the questions that they ask have all the zing of mayonnaise and the toughness of Wonder bread.

Journalism 101 teaches you, or so I thought, not to ask questions that can be answered with a simple “yes” or “no”, unless the situation requires it. Yet that’s mainly what is asked, even by the supposedly cream of the media crop. Or if not “yes” or “no,” the questions are the usual, formulaic queries that almost ensure no light will be shed on the subject matter.

********************************
…nowadays, folks are having press conferences at the drop of a hat.
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When the Tigers hired Randy Smith as general manager after the 1995 season, we were trumpeted to an annex near Tiger Stadium to hear the new GM spout his theories of acquiring baseball talent and what changes are necessary when the players cannot throw straight or run the bases or hit their weight. The functionaries handed out a prewritten press release to us, prior to Smith’s appearance. Then Smith arrived, tanned and not much past 30 years of age. All of the answers to the routine questions could be found in the press release. Apparently satisfied with those, the media in attendance didn’t stray from formula at all. It was turning out to be another of those dud press conferences. Finally, I asked Smith, whose first task was to find a manager to replace Sparky Anderson, “Does the next manager have to have major league managing experience?” I didn’t see that answer anywhere in the prewritten release.

Smith blinked through the lights and at the same time looked like a deer caught in them. He fumbled through an answer, unmemorable in its verbage. Apparently he wasn’t very good at going off of script, either.

Some coaches have a blast with the press. The late John McKay, the first coach in the history of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, had some dandies. “I won’t be serious with them (the press),” McKay once said. “This is their job and they want to be serious, but I won’t be serious with them, because some of the questions they ask me are…asinine.”

Once, after another miserable loss, a reporter asked McKay what he thought of his team’s execution.

“I’m all for it,” McKay replied dryly.

The late, great John McKay

Of course nowadays, folks are having press conferences at the drop of a hat. It used to be that a press conference meant some sort of huge announcement, sometimes unexpected, and always with the fun of speculation attached to it. Jerry Green wrote, in his book “The Detroit Pistons: Capturing A Remarkable Era,” that he and his colleagues were bugled to the Silverdome on a dreary November afternoon in 1979. As he and his fellow reporters walked into the dome, Pistons owner Bill Davidson’s private helicopter was quite visible in the parking lot.

“None of us could miss seeing it,” Green wrote.

Inside the Silverdome, as the press types were arriving, Davidson was giving coach Dick Vitale the ziggy, that ancient Detroit word for a coach getting fired. Today, the firing would be leaked, probably all over the Internet, and the shock value of the press conference would plummet, dissolving into an anticlimactic announcement with the usual boring sound bites.

Today, you have clods like Terrell Owens holding “press conferences” in his driveway, as he works out on some sort of exercise machine, reporters surrounding him as if he were to have something truly important to say. That’s not a press conference — that’s a photo opportunity. And everyone knows pictures tell thousands of words, so why bother with the tape recorders at those affairs?

Eric Lindros, as we all know, went on to become a pretty decent NHL player. It is presumed he got better at answering questions from the media. What isn’t so certain is whether those asking the questions have improved at all.

My Wish For 2006: Get The Broom Out In Allen Park

My friend Ian Casselberry, over at www.sweatymen.blogspot.com, recently wrote that if the Lions were to bring Dick Jauron back as head coach, he would finally sever his ties with the team and never again be a member of its fandom.

Ian, ya got it all wrong, buddy.

This is a new year, right? Time for those resolutions, and promises to one’s self to improve and be kinder to others and reduce the waistline and all that rot. But what Ian and others should know is that this time of the year can be so much juicier if you make resolutions for OTHER people. After all, the kind you make for yourself rarely pan out, so why not change it up?

So I hereby resolve that the Lions not bring back Dick Jauron as their head coach in 2006. And not only Jauron, but anyone else in whose title includes the word “coach.” Broom them all, I tell you, from the offensive offensive coordinator to the quality control coach, from the linebackers coach to the strength and conditioning coach. The only true way to blow this team up — and it is in expansion team status at this point — is to do a complete housecleaning. Absolutely no one should be retained from the current staff, and the last one to leave should shut the lights off when they depart. Save on the electric bill for a few weeks until president Matt Millen calls another press conference to introduce what he hopes is the guy who won’t cause him to strike out on three straight pitches. Our old pal Matt is 0-2 when it comes to hiring head coaches. Maybe he’ll get lucky and pull a Rob Deer.

Deer, a Tigers outfielder in the early 90’s, had a fetish for striking out. He would do so about 150-175 times per year, to show you. But once I went to a ballgame with my girlfriend-now-wife — a chilly night at Tiger Stadium in May 1991 — and Deer defied all the odds. It was the bottom of the ninth, two outs, the Tigers trailing, and we started to pack up our blanket once Mr. Deer fell behind 0-2 — he and the Tigers down to their last strike. It looked like we were going to be rescued from the night’s cold air, albeit at the cost of a Tigers loss.
But Deer cracked a homerun on the next pitch, tying the game, and the Tigers won in extra frames. It was all so improbable, but it just goes to show you — the game is never over until that final out is made.

Maybe Matt Millen will be wise enough — or lucky enough — to drive the next pitch, at least into the gap, so the Lions can run around the bases a little bit. Maybe the team should hire a consultant, or an assistant for Millen who can advise him on this whole picking-a-head-coach thing. Lord knows he could use the help.

He can start by actually interviewing some people this time around — taking his time and doing all due diligence necessary to ensure the new man is not only supremely qualified, but is determined to at least make this team more exciting to watch (re: a man with an offense-heavy resume). At least that’s what I would do if my next coaching hire was destined to make or break me.

Speaking of the Lions, someone asked me the other day what team Joey Harrington might play for if he is cut by them. I said the Raiders, for reasons I’ll explain shortly, but I must add that after seeing da Raiders drown in their own ineptitude Saturday night against the Giants, it makes me feel devilishly good that there is a Lions version of football being played in the AFC.

Did you see the Raiders take leave of their senses late in the fourth quarter? Trailing by nine, they were the beneficiaries of a pass interference call in the end zone, which placed the ball on the one-yard line with nearly four minutes to play and all three timeouts remaining. Then the Raiders went into Lions playcalling mode, much to the horror, I’m sure of Raiders Nation and owner Al Davis.

Three times they tried to drive the ball into the Giants’ strong defensive front, and three times the Raiders failed. In the process they burned two timeouts. Then it was fourth down, around two minutes to play. And with eery similarity to Jeff Garcia — he even wears #5 — quarterback Kerry Collins tried a sneak on fourth down. He didn’t make it. The Raiders challenged the call. They lost the challenge. They lost their third and final timeout in the process.

So here’s what the Raiders did with their golden opportunity to pull within two points with over two minutes remaining: they failed to score, AND they lost all three of their timeouts. To make matters worse, the slim hope that the Raiders could somehow force the Giants into a safety and get the ball back — a distinct possibility since the Giants had the ball on their own one-foot line — was dashed when, on the very next play, the Raiders jumped offsides, putting the ball just past the five yard-line. It was like watching the Lions in silver and black. And that sequence is why the Raiders are 4-12, and why Norv Turner is probably out as head coach in Oakland after two unremarkable seasons.

Now, back to Joey Harrington. If Harrington goes anywhere, I think Oakland would be a perfect fit for him. The Raiders usually like to throw downfield, and Joey can chuck it. I’m sure he’d have fun tossing the pigskin to Randy Moss and company. Plus, the Raiders are a team that traditionally takes other teams’ outcasts and welcomes them with open arms. Finally, an almost certain coaching change might mean the end of Collins’ time in Oakland as well, creating an opening for a new chucker. It all adds up, if it goes down like that, to a Harrington-to-Oakland scenario. Don’t laugh.

Oh, and while we’re at the business of making resolutions for other people, here’s one for Dick Jauron: I hereby resolve that you update your resume and keep your hopes down for another head coaching gig in the NFL.

Happy New Year.