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The Greatest

I was watching PTI at the gym this afternoon and in the first four stories Wilbon and Kornheiser called something the greatest of all time. First up were the Patriots, who Tony said would go 19-0 and were the best football team of all time. Then came Devin Hester, the greatest kick returner of all time. Finally, after a brief respite during a college football discussion that flirted with calling South Florida the greatest something or other of all time, up came the Colorado Rockies who are on the greatest hot streak of all time.

Cris Collinsworth did the same thing during halftime of last night's Sunday Night football game when he referred to New England as the best team he's ever seen. There's been scuttlebutt here and there that Tom Brady is having the greatest season of any quarterback ever, during last year's NCAA Tournament we heard that Greg Oden was the best Freshman to ever play college basketball. Unless it was Kevin Durant.

Elsewhere there are articles proclaiming Brett Favre, Joe Torre, the USC football program, Roger Federer, San Diego State kicker Parker Douglass, Floyd Mayweather, motocross racer Ricky Carmichael , high school running back Jerandon Bussey and Roger Clemens the Greatest ______ of All Time. Appalachian State's win over Michigan was called the greatest upset of all time until that USC football program was defeated by a Stanford team that ASU would probably handle with ease.

What's all the fuss about the greatest of all time? I think it has more to do with us than with anything these teams or players do in their chosen fields. We're obsessed with thinking that we are witnessing the absolute height of human achievement rather than just admitting that every era has its standouts, that its impossible to truly compare sports performances from one era against another except in the mind's eye. Sure, statisticians can create formulas that put things on an equal playing field but can anyone say with any degree of real certainty what would happen if Clemens took on Babe Ruth or if Tim Duncan's Spurs played the Knicks of Reed and Frazier?

I'd love to see both matchups but until someone harnesses 1.21 gigawatts it's going to remain a fantasy. These mythical titles seem to exist just to start the next debate - If the Patriots are the greatest team of all time and the Colts beat them does that make the Colts the greatest team of all time? - and in that next debate no one is going to be more inclined to temper their remarks.

I'm not saying any and all of these people are being mislabeled, except for the San Diego State kicker thing which is just hyperbole out of control. I'm just saying that our need to feel like we live in interesting and amazing times trumps any and all perspective about the length and variety of history.

They called World War I the "war to end all wars" and as you'll note by the ongoing muck of Iraq that was more than a little premature. The generation that won World War II, the "greatest generation," went on to get us into Vietnam, presided over Jim Crow and helped create divides in this country that are still being fought over. And those are things that actually matter. Wouldn't it be both easier and more accurate to say that huge things and magnificent individuals exist in every era and just celebrate them that way instead of resorting to hyperbole that only serves to make us feel better about ourselves?

Disaster

I'm several days late on this and several dollars short since the game wasn't televised in New York, although it's on Fox Sports tonight, but I'll throw my thoughts in nonetheless. There's never been a bigger upset in college football, not in my memory, and it could only be more surprising if it happened to a team that wasn't coached by Lloyd Carr. He's been cruising on the memory of 1997 for years now, building teams that lose games that they shouldn't and/or losing games that they have to win to make the season worthwhile. I saw some comments he made after the game about starting over to try and win the Big 10 and to that I say who gives a fuck? Who cares about winning the Big 10? Michigan is content to be a semi-big fish in that pond without challenging for the national title even though they have every advantage in the world at their disposal to challenge for bigger prizes.

When they scheduled the game with Appalachian State I criticized the Blue for scheduling the game because I thought it was beneath them to have a game at Michigan Stadium against a non-D1 opponent. It wasn't so much that ASU was a bad team, I had barely heard of them let alone seen them play and they were back-to-back champions, but because I thought Michigan should only be playing teams that were on their level. I was wrong, obviously, because not only was ASU of a high caliber but the Wolverines weren't up to the task. Mountaineer fans deserve to do all the gloating in the world, check out Popcorn Dreams for a nice roundup, and Michigan fans and boosters deserve better answers from Carr than the team wasn't prepared to play. Why weren't they? What steps are being taken to assure that it doesn't happen again against Oregon and Notre Dame?

I think Carr was already retiring when this season was over, now there's really no chance he's back for another go. Big 10 title or not, there's nothing to gain from more Carr on the sidelines in Ann Arbor. He's used the lack of preperation excuse so many times that it boggles the mind to consider that he still has a job. After all, when your job is about preparing a team how is it okay for the excuse to be that the team isn't prepared. The same problems crop up every single year, MGoblog has a depressing review, Carr refuses to make the changes necessary to build a better, more consistent program and the future needs to be in the hands of a different man.

If You See The Moose Coming, You Best Get Running

Not since the Zapruder film has a video done more to explain a tragic situation and make me feel like a fool at the same time. I was convinced Oswald acted alone and I was sure that the Moose was guilty. So very wrong...Let the Moose loose! (Shakedown Sports)

Finally someone in Boston pays some attention to Brian Scalabrine. (Epic Carnival)

Is someone at work calling you Herban and you don't know what it means? It's not a compliment. (Loser With Socks)

No pitcher deserves the infamy of giving up #756 more than Jose Canseco. (The Extrapolater)

I wonder what problem the venerable Southern Christian Leadership Conference could have with honoring Michael Vick? (Nation of Islam Sports Blog)

Can we make August 7th Butch Hobson Day? (One More Dying Quail)

Erik Morales was a helluva fighter. Good to see he's getting out of the game before his brain gets scrambled. (Rumors and Rants)

Only 88 days until Michigan destroys the Spartans. (The Ghosts of Wayne Fontes)

The world needs fantasy track. (Shot to Nothing)

Matt Vasgersian will be paying for drinks in St. Louis for the near future. (Awful Announcing)

Neon Deion Intercepts Logic

Deion Sanders should probably keep his thoughts about Michael Vick to himself.

What a dog means to Vick might be a lot different than what he means to you or I. Hold on, don’t start shaking your head just yet. Listen to me. Some people kiss their dogs on the mouth. Some people let their dogs eat from their plate. Some people dress their dogs in suits more expensive than mine, if you can believe that.

And some people enjoy proving they have the biggest, toughest dog on the street. You’re probably not going to believe this, but I bet Vick loves the dogs that were the biggest and the baddest. Maybe, he identified with them in some way.

I believe Vick had a passion for dogfighting. I know many athletes who share his passion. The allure is the intensity and the challenge of a dog fighting to the death. It’s like ultimate fighting, but the dog doesn’t tap out when he knows he can’t win.

The reason this is turning into a three-ring circus is that baseball is boring, basketball is months away, football is around the corner and we in the media don’t have a thing interesting to write about.

Honestly, I started shaking my head even before Deion told me not to start just yet. What Vick is accused of is a felony and a particularly cruel crime. That's both why people are turning it into a circus and why it is, in fact, interesting to people. (The FanHouse)

Elsewhere on the internets of sport:

Mike Piazza's spent a good deal of his career squatting which raises the question of why he didn't just duck. (The Postmen)

Why do sports bloggers always hurt the ones they love? (Larry Brown Sports)

Ah, Yankee Stadium, the Walden Pond of the Bronx. (Home Run Derby)

Not the best week for commissioners. (Epic Carnival)

Getting to know the guy with the longest last name in baseball. (The Extrapolater)

Barry Bonds finally speaks to the reporters. If he gets a little more self-confidence he might really make something of himself. (Nation of Islam Sportsblog)

How's Jack Cust doing? It's the fall that kills ya. (Rumors and Rants)

Too soon for an ACC preview? Not at all, judging from the response of one proud West Virginian.(Strike Zones and End Zones, Losers With Socks)

Miami Football Just Got More Interesting

Last season was a rough one for the University of Miami football program. Defensive tackle Bryan Pata was shot and killed, the team brawled with Florida International during a game and, worst of all, they only went 7-6. It's long been the policy in Coral Gables that anything goes so long as the team wins but when they don't heads must roll. Larry Coker was let go and defensive coordinator Randy Shannon was elevated to head coach this winter. When he was hired, Shannon promised that he was "going have a lot of fun with" his new job. He's not wasting much time in making that prediction come true.

Shannon has invited Luther Campbell back into the program's fold. The 2 Live Crew frontman was a fixture during the Jimmy Johnson/Dennis Erickson years when he allegedly ran a "pay for play" program that rewarded Hurricane players with cash whenever they made a big play. Cambell denied the accusations but several players said Luke hooked them up and when Butch Davis took over the program, he threatened to go public with an admission if Ryan Collins wasn't named the team's starting quarterback. Once a fixture on the sidelines, Campbell became a persona non grata under the Davis and Coker regimes. But now he's back.

"Randy called the first recruiting day and said, `Luke, I want you to come down here.' And I said, 'You sure?' He said, 'Yeah.' Whatever I can do to help him out, I'm here for."

Campbell, aware UM had tried to distance itself from him, said, ''I understand they were trying to clean up their image, but I wasn't part of the problem. All I ever did was tell Jerome Brown, Melvin Bratton, Darrell Fullington to go in the right direction.'' But Campbell won't ask for a sideline pass: "It's too hot.''

Shannon played with Bratton and Brown as a linebacker for the 'Canes in the late '80's so he may well know Campbell by more than reputation. It's tough to argue with the idea. Miami used to be on the top of the college football dogpile when Campbell was a friend of the program. Teams around sports are always talking about trying to model their franchises after the Spurs and Patriots because of how successful those organizations have been. It's about time somebody realized just how good those old Hurricane teams were and tried to replicate their success.

I'm sure many of you are wondering how Luke's been spending his time since his exile from the U. He's been running an Optimist's Club in the Liberty City area of Miami. According to their website, Optimist's Clubs are about "bringing out the best in kids." Who better to do that than the man who once asked "What's wrong, baby doll, with a quick nut?" He can explain to them that nothing at all is wrong with it and then introduce them to a Hurricane football player.

Don't Believe Your Eyes

Remember Rhett Bomar's tremendous performance at the 2005 Holiday Bowl? Do his 229 yards passing and one touchdown in a 17-14 Oklahoma win over the 10-1 Oregon Ducks still give you chills? Do you find yourself stopping in the middle of a meeting and replaying C.J. Ah You's two sacks in your mind's eye?

The answer to all of those questions is no because they never happened. The NCAA vacated Oklahoma's 2005 season yesterday because Bomar and two other players took no-show jobs at a Norman car dealership. The school loses all eight of its wins, including the Holiday Bowl win against Oregon, and will also lose two scholarships for the 2008-2009 and 2009-2010 seasons. What they aren't required to do, however, is miss any future postseason games. They also won't have to return the $2 million-plus they were paid for playing in the bowl game. At the very least they should be subject to penalties on each of those fronts.

That's the very least because this is the second time in two years that Oklahoma's been found guilty of violating NCAA rules. In April 2006 the school announced they were investigating recruiting improprieties under former basketball coach Kelvin Sampson, now at Indiana. In that case, as well as the football issue, the NCAA found the school guilty of "failing to monitor" their athletic programs instead of the more severe loss of institutional control crime that cost SMU their football program for a while in the 80's.

Merely waving a magic wand and saying that the 8-4 Oklahoma season didn't happen isn't enough because the Sooners, who have the gall to appeal a punishment for violations they reported themselves, go about their business with their coffers full and their future just as bright despite breaking the rules. They were already on probation for the basketball violations, shouldn't that have made for a more severe penalty than eight less wins on Bob Stoops's career record? The NCAA said yesterday that the Sooners won eight games by using players who were ineligible and forced other teams into lower-paying bowls. The rest of Division I should get something more than retroactive wins for being cheated by an opponent.

But I Don't Wanna Be A Wonder Boy

There have been a spate of college teams that have changed their nicknames recently. Most of them have switched from names that referenced Native Americans, e.g. the St. John's Redman became the Red Storm and the Southeastern Oklahoma State Savages became the Savage Storm. We particularly liked that last one because of the impossibility to wrap the name as a respectful nod to the aggrieved. Still unchanged are the hateful Syracuse Orangemen, an affront to the fake-tanned residents of our proud nation. Just another reason why we can't elect Arnold Schwarzenegger President soon enough. Sometimes, though, colleges have to change their names for other reasons. Reasons like being much too weenie to recruit athletes with a modicum of self-respect.

Arkansas Tech is one of those latter schools. The Division II school has formed a committee to discuss changing the team's monikers from the Wonder Boys and Golden Suns. The committee voted 9-3 in favor of a new nickname and cited the need for a gender-neutral, all-encompassing name that would help unite the student body. Wonder Boys is gender-neutral, we'd say, in that it gives no impression of manliness whatsoever but, hey, it's their school. They'd also like a name that keeps them from being taunted by the other kids.

The school also cited concern by the committee over evolving connotations of the term Wonder Boy. "These connotations include slurs about an individual's manhood or race, and the slurs have been used against Tech when recruiting," the release said.

When asked to elaborate on that, (An assistant to the university spokesman Sam) Strasner said that concern came up within the committee.

"I know one thing that was said by one of the student-athletes in the committee meeting — one of the things that I've heard repeated several times — was that once they leave Russellville and go back home, they don't really like to associate themselves with that name because of some ribbing they take from their friends," Strasner said.

Another part of the problem is that students don't know how to dress up in support of their teams. Wonder Boys and Golden Suns, it seems, "do not lend themselves to a visual identity suitable for printed materials and other marketing initiatives." They also said that when students dress up like superheroes, which actually seems like the closest approximation of a Wonder Boy, it "is not consistent with the spirit or the proud history of the name." Maybe if they dressed up like Michael Chabon? Or Tobey Maguire?

The University is considering names like Copperheads, Comets, Terrapins, Atomic Wedgies and Brady Quinn's Photo Album in an effort to minimize the abuse suffered by their students. When they do come up with a new nickname we hope they'll also enlighten us why Arkansas needs a technical university.

Saying Goodbye To Dan Patrick, Homer Bailey And, Maybe, Don Nelson

Dan Patrick is leaving ESPN which makes us remember his partnership with Keith Olbermann fondly. The last decade or so? Not so much. (Chuckie Hacks)

Kwame Brown may have had two surgeries in the last five weeks but that doesn't stop him from checking out the ladies who like ladies. (You Been Blinded)

The Home Run Derby is tonight but unless you love hearing Chris Berman say "Back Back Back" (and we're guessing you don't) there's nothing to see here. (Winning the Turnover Battle)

Don Nelson's playing a little game of "Look what I've done for you lately" with the Warriors. (SFgate)

Mark Buerhle left a lot of money on the table. (Rob Neyer)

A comprehensive look at the Rock Paper Scissors championship. (Joe Sports Fan)

First sneakers, now childrens books...pretty soon all our children will belong to Starbury. (Can't Stop The Bleeding)

Will Les Miles leave LSU, and those pesky 11-year old girls, and replace Lloyd Carr at his alma mater? (The Wizard of Odds)

Everything's coming up Phillies. (Umpbump)

Homer Bailey, we hardly knew ye. (Rumors and Rants)

This Just In: Texas Cares About Football

Do you notice the difference in the two logos displayed above? If you do you're making lawyers for the University of Texas very happy this morning after they forced the owner of three College Station clothing stores to make a change to a t-shirt they sold to mock the Longhorns.

It cost more than $200,000 in legal fees, a $25,000 settlement and the addition of nostrils and a tuft or "blaze" of hair between the eyes of their longhorn logo for Texas A&M graduate and College Station resident Fadi Kalaouze and his wife to continue selling "Saw Em Off" T-shirts parodying UT's prominent logo.

The logo on the left was too close for comfort for UT lawyers even though you'll notice that the horns are pointed down on the Kalaouze design. It's the other way on football helmets and whatnot in Austin, of course, but attorneys need to eat too so the lawsuit commenced. It was filed 10 days after A&M knocked off Texas in their annual Thanksgiving weekend game and seems like more than a little bit of sour grapes on the part of Texas. It's hard to imagine that many people in Aggieland Outfitters would be shopping for a product that came directly from their biggest rivals.

Texas A&M is no stranger to frivilious football lawsuits themselves. They tried to get the Seattle Seahawks to stop using the phase "The 12th Man" to refer to their fans and ended up getting themselves a licensing fee from the NFL team for use of the phrase. The conclusion drawn in each case is that people in Texas should probably take a step back from football now and again.

Mickey Mouse Hates Black People But Miguel Cabrera Loves Quarter Pounders

The Florida State Seminoles can sit on top of the world just as long as they don't sit in Disney World 'cause there's no black men allowed in there! (SportsbyBrooks)

Haven't the people of Blacksburg suffered enough? (Awful Announcing)

A ranking of the personnel men of the NBA. There's a lot of bad in those ranks if Isiah Thomas only ranks 25th. (SI.com)

It's never too early for a NFL mock draft. Except it's much too early for a NFL mock draft. At least the Jets are picking 24th, which means they had a heck of a mock season. (Walters Football Site)

Don't fuck with Norweigian soccer moms. (The Offside)

It's no surprise that the greasy teen moustache Greg Maddux used to wear won him the Rookie Card Challenge. (Babes Love Baseball)

Miguel Cabrera cares not for your petty concerns about his obesity. (Bugs & Cranks)

Gilbert Arenas wants to be just like Marvin Brando. We assume he means Marlon Brando which we assume means he wants to spread VD across Tahiti the way Brando spread butter on that chick in Last Tango in Paris. (DC Sports Bog)

A new basketball court for Indiana University. (Rumors and Rants)

Who would have ever thought racing sausages would create so many copycats? (Home Run Derby)