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The Last Place Entry In The National Grammar Radio

Nike couldn't wait to wade into the Rutgers-Don Imus scrape. They didn't want another second to pass by with people wondering what side of the debate Phil Knight's company was on. What better way to enlighten America to your feelings than taking out a full-page ad in the Sunday New York Times?

Thank you, ignorance. (For making this ad more than just an ad)

Thank you for starting the conversation. (Just be thankful we didn't transcribe it)

Thank you for making an entire nation listen to the Rutger's team story. And for making us wonder what other great stories we've missed. (Or what other grammar classes, for that matter)

Thank you for reminding us to think before we speak. (But not before we write)

Thank you for showing us how strong and poised 18 and 20-year-old women can be. (And how sloppy 38 and 40-year-old copywriters can be)

Thank you for reminding us that another basketball tournament goes on in March. (Because clearly we didn't see it)

Thank you for showing us that sport includes more than the time spent on the court. (There are also parties, rallies, lunch but no English composition classes)

Thank you for unintentionally moving women's sport forward. (Thank you for unintentionally moving men's and women's grammar backward)

And thank you for making all of us realize that we still have a long way to go. (Amen)

Next season starts 11.16.07 (Summer school starts 06.06.07)

Maybe they should have spent another minute or two proofreading before rushing this thing out to the Times. I guess Nike doesn't Just Do Spellcheck.

Morgan Ensberg Thinks Frank Rich Is The Bomb

Morgan Ensberg is a mass of contradictions. He has the name of a Jewish sorority girl but is a Christian male baseball player and he bats righty but leans left politically. (Can't Stop The Bleeding)

Are you sitting down? Good. Kevin Durant's heading to the NBA. (USA Today)

Warren Moon was a master of the Run and Shoot. He's not so good at the Drink and Drive. (With Leather)

Doc Rivers and Danny Ainge join Isiah Thomas as further proof that those who play the game can't always coach or general manage it. But they can earn unwarranted contract extensions. Atlantic Division basketball: Catch the Fever! (Rumors and Rants)

Hockey predictions by a bona fide Canadian, so you know they're on the money. My money's still on the Whalers. (Out Of Left Field)

It's hard out there for a Pirate. (Teapot Dome Scandal)

Donovan Stays, Everyone Else Goes

The Florida Gators' quest for a third straight championship next season will be an uphill one following today's news that Corey Brewer, Taurean Green, Al Horford and Joakim Noah will all forego their senior seasons and enter the NBA draft. With fellow starter Lee Humphrey wrapping up his senior year that will leave the Gators to find an entirely new starting five come the fall.

At least they will have the same guy doing the picking. Billy Donovan has put an official end to his flirtation with Kentucky by announcing he'll remain the coach in Gainesville. Donovan also needs to replace his top reserve, the senior forward Chris Richard, but Florida returns four freshmen from this year's team and has four signees already headed to town. Nick Calathes tops that list - the McDonald's All-America is a smooth ballhandler and passer with a deadeye shot - but all four will have to be players if the Gators want to three-peat. Two blue chippers remain unsigned as well but only Patrick Patterson has Florida on his list. Jai Lucas, son of John, hasn't had the Gators on his radar but anything can happen.

The four juniors won't leave school immediately because doing so would result in F's across their academic transcripts. NCAA rules allow for penalizing schools with lacking academics so unless Noah's schedule is heavy on English and dance classes they should be able to avoid the loss of any scholarships.

(Streeter Lecka/Getty Images)

Here Comes Huggins

There's a report from Wheeling, West Virginia that Kansas State coach Bob Huggins has accepted an offer to replace new Michigan coach John Beilein as the head coach of the West Virginia Mountaineers. It seems true - you can track a plane flying from West Virginia to Manhattan, Kanasas - and raises two questions.

First up, does this make the Beilein hire look better or worse?

You Could Get A Good Look At A Steak By Sticking Your Head Up A Butcher's Ass But I'll Take The Steer's Word For It

The University of Michigan has itself a new basketball coach. As expected they signed up John Beilein who had been the head man at West Virginia until the Wolverines bought him out and inked him to a million dollar a year contract to replace Tommy Amaker. Mgoblog is watching and blogging the introductory press conference right now.

The buyout cost them $2.5 million on top of that multiyear deal, which the Ann Arbor News says is for six years and calls for $200,000 in base salary and $1.1 million from other streams. That's a lot of bacon to fry up for a guy who never even visited Ann Arbor before agreeing to the job. Since he's also talked of his desire for a National Championship you have to wonder how much time he's spent researching the team he's taking over. I must admit, I'm a little dubious about why he was in such a hurry to leave a program he'd built up from nothing into a Big East contender with so little interest into the place he was headed next.

That said, unless Beilein quits and returns to Morgantown 24 hours from now, the Michigan athletic department did a better job filling their vacancy than their counterparts in Arkansas. Dana Altman, announced yesterday as the new Razorback head man, quit the Arkansas gig and went running back to Creighton and his old job. Emulating former coaching greats like Bobby Cremins and Rick Majerus, Altman cited his family and his connections to people associated with the Omaha school as the reasons why he abandoned his new employers. Arkansas is running pretty short on options and would probably be happy if they could rescind the firing of Stan Heath. John Calipari and Billy Gillespie wanted nothing to do with the job, John Wooden looked out of it at the McDonald's All-America game, Keith Richards' father was snorted up like day-old coke, Eddie Robinson's dead and even Nolan Richardson has a new job lined up. 

The End Of The Billy Packer Era Closer Than We Hoped

It didn't happen when he verbally abused midmajor teams that made the Final Four. It didn't happen when he refused to call games based on the things he saw on the floor right in front of him. It didn't happen when he told an interviewer that he isn't a sports fan. Nor when he called Allen Iverson a "monkey" or spent two straight championship runs mispronouncing Billy Donovan's name. But if you go to the 35:34 mark of the video above, thanks to Good As You for the video, you can see and hear for yourself the moment that every college basketball fan has been waiting for with baited breath.

"You always fag out on that one for me. You always say you're gonna be the runner and then you don't show up."

It's obvious that CBS didn't care that Packer wasn't very good at his job and they obviously didn't care that they had a cadre of more thoughtful, passionate and responsible announcers under contract so perhaps I shouldn't get my hopes up too much that this may finally spell the end of Packer's reign of terror.

Vice-president of Communications for CBS Sports LeslieAnne Wade told Outsports, "I know he wasn't meaning to be insensitive at all.

"While it is a term that is in the dictionary, it was still a poor choice of words," Wade said. "I'm confident that he would agree that it was a bad choice of words."

Maybe he wasn't trying to be insensitive. After all the term "fag out" is defined as meaning "exhaust or tire through overuse or great strain or stress." So maybe he's just an idiot. Or maybe he was using fag interchangeably with pussy, which seems a lot more likely, which makes him an asshole. So he's some combination of asshole, idiot and insensitive jackass. Throw in the fact that this year's NCAA TV ratings cratered what more evidence does CBS need to kick Packer to the curb and bring in somebody likable and good at his job?

This Is The Best Draft Class Ever!

Pretty ridiculous little post up on the Fanhouse that's indicative of how for all the whining and jeering bloggers do about announcers and writers overhyping and overselling players and teams, they are pretty guilty of it themselves. The Big Lead is taking a look at some of the top players from the Tourney and how they project as NBA players.

Joakim Noah - Mark Madsen

Jeff Green - A shorter Tim Duncan

Derrick Byars - Desmond Mason but potentially Josh Howard

Corey Brewer - A combination of Scottie Pippen, George Gervin and Clyde Drexler!

Kevin Durant - A better shooting Kevin Garnett

Sean Singletary - Mark Price

Julian Wright - A better rebounding James Worthy

Al Horford - Karl Malone

Brandon Wright - Kevin McHale

Greg Oden - Hakeem Olajuwon

Brandon Rush - Reggie Lewis

Aaron Afflalo - Michael Cooper

Mike Conley - Kenny Anderson

Nick Young - A better shooting Dominique Wilkins

Josh McRoberts - Juwan Howard

I agree with the writer about Oden, Durant and Noah otherwise I think he's gotta take a couple of weeks and then revisit some of these projections. Corey Brewer is a combination of three of the greatest basketball players in history? Really? Unless you're saying he has Pippen's looks, Gervin's coke habit and Drexler's hairline, wouldn't he have been a little bit more dominant as a college player? Al Horford is Karl Malone? How in the hell did Florida lose three out of four regular season games? Is Big Baby Davis the love child of Willis Reed, Wes Unseld and Jesus Christ?

You know what else is interesting on their home site The Big Lead says that Jeff Green should stay in school. Not fans of Duncan's game, I guess, because when I hear a player compared to Duncan I tend to think he could handle the professional grind. They don't project his teammate Roy Hibbert but I'm assuming he's some sort of Voltron-type amalgamation with Artis Gilmore's hair and shotblocking ability, Patrick Ewing's sweat glands and jump shot and Fred Astaire's dancing ability.

For those of you scoring at home, that means this draft has analogues or improvements on eight of the 50 Greatest Players of All Time, as voted in 1996-97, plus Wilkins, Garnett and Duncan who would be on some people's lists and are all Hall of Famers. Remember kids, stem kills, look what it did to Superintendent Chalmers.

Your 2007-2008 NBA D-League Player Of The Year

I'm really hoping Joakim Noah goes pro because I really don't ever want to see him taking part in a postgame interview ever again. Once he's in the pros that won't be an issue because he'll never do anything worthy of such an interview in a NBA game and I don't watch the D-League, CBA or USBL with any regularity.

(Thanks to Every Day Should Be Saturday for the video)

Thank God That's Over

I can't remember looking forward to something quite so much as I was the end of this year's NCAA Tournament. No Cinderellas, not even a big Round One upset, made for a rather dour first week and overzealous referees seemed deadset on keeping the biggest name in the tournament from making an impact. The best games of the second weekend both featured Georgetown but had denouements that relied on a blown travelling call and some of the worst basketball ever played by a team with North Carolina on its jerseys (yet Roy Williams makes the Hall of Fame yesterday), instead of great plays made by great players.

Florida's four returning starters from last year went from lauded for bypassing NBA riches to exposed as players who have no chance of making a major impact at the next level. Lee Humphrey, the only one of their starters who isn't mentioned as a pro, led them to this title because he understands that there's no easier shot in the world than a college three and has mastered his mid-range stroke. The Gators used an easy draw and that absurd shot to win six straight games and their second straight championship. The last of those wins, last night against Ohio State, was as stark an example of why the three-pointer needs to be made more difficult as a man could want. Greg Oden was dominating Florida's overrated forwards but it didn't matter since the Gators, being a D-1 basketball team, naturally had players who could hit 19-foot jump shots. Actually that's not true. As OSU proved last night being a D-1 school doesn't prove you can make mid-range jumpshots worth a third more points than they should be. So give Florida credit for letting the terrible Ivan Harris and Jamar Butler shoot 3-of-14 from three and spare me the Thad Matta is a good coach BS.

Oden wouldn't be defending the perimeter under any circumstances but the work of refs who haven't seen a big man who could play since Reagan's first term forced him to remain planted underneath the hoop while Florida just shot three after three after three. What anyone but CBS, the NCAA and Matta gained from Oden spending a year of his life as a spectator to college basketball games is lost on me, I can't wait to see him playing in the Association so we can see whether he is or isn't a truly great player. Watching Ohio State lose is always going to be something I enjoy, I just wish I didn't feel like they were actually the better basketball team, while Florida has merely mastered this weird collegiate hybrid of basketball and carnival midway stuffed animal shooting contest.

(AP Photo/Mark Humphrey)

Respect The Game

If David Stern's league took the night off to celebrate his ancestors release from bondage in the land Egypt and not because of some closet deal with the NCAA, Dayeinu. But in what must have been a part of the contract that kept Greg Oden and Kevin Durant from earning serious money this season, the Association took the night off and the only basketball being played was in Atlanta. More on that later because it wasn't a total day off for Association players, coaches and wannabes.

The Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, MA announced this year's inductees and it's a pretty sorry lot. Phil Jackson is the marquee name and is a deserving entry to the Hall because of his nine championships as coach of the Bulls and Lakers. But Roy Williams, Van Chancellor, Pedro Ferrandiz, Mirko Novosel and the 1966 Texas Western NCAA championship team? That's a pretty sorry lot for a Hall that couldn't find room for Chris Mullin.

To the third string point guard for Texas Western you say "come on down!" but a guy who won two Olympic gold medals and averaged 18 points per game on 50% shooting over 15+ seasons after a legendary college career at St. John's isn't worthy of induction? A guy who won four WNBA championships as coach, Chancellor, is enshrined alongside Jordan, Russell and West but Mullin is persona non grata? That's why Cooperstown remains the only Hall of Fame that matters because when they make a mistake it's inducting a very good player instead of a great one. Basketball inducts a coach with one national championship (and a litany of failures) while his career is still going strong instead of one of the great shooters to ever play the game.

(AFP/Getty Images/File/Jonathan Daniel)