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February 2006
Olympics did nothing to boost NHL
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
The NHL shut down for 15 days so its players could go off to Italy for a tournament that ended with Scandinavian nations meeting for the gold medal. “Even though there were NHL players involved [in the Olympic final], we don’t get any boost from [such a matchup],” said Don Waddell, the general manager of both Team USA and the Thrashers. And once again a struggling league must ask: Are the Olympics worth the hassle?
“In a roundabout way, I’m going to say yes,” said Waddell, but his need to take the circular route tells us all we need to know.
To peddle its product to a TV audience far greater than it ever draws, the NHL wants USA-Canada in the gold-medal game. (That’s what it got in 2002, Canada winning in Salt Lake City.) Neither of the North American teams earned a medal this time. The Americans won only once in six games on a trip punctuated by Mike Modano’s gripes about travel arrangements, while Canada’s presence was undercut by questions about Wayne Gretzky and gambling. Forget a big bounce. Off Turin 2006, the NHL didn’t even garner a crow-hop.
“Media-wise, TV-wise, the experience was very average [for the NHL],” Waddell said. “The NHL is hoping that in 2010, with the Games being back here [in Vancouver], there’ll be more exposure.”
The NHL, which resumed play Tuesday even though some celebrating Swedes were believed to be still in transit, has committed itself to the 2010 Olympics. Beyond that, the future of pros in the Games is hazy. Many league owners hate the notion of a hiatus. Even Waddell, who assembled Team USA, isn’t certain the NHL experiment needs to continue.
“If you told me we needed to go back to using amateurs, I would be in favor of that,” he said.
No other professional league halts operations for a fortnight to accommodate the Olympics. Then again, few other professional leagues are so starved for exposure. The NHL still hasn’t solved the mystery of TV, and it keeps hoping some Olympic moment will do for hockey in the U.S. what the league has been unable to do for itself. So it dispatches its best players on a working holiday, unsure what the result will be, certain only that a hockey regular season in an Olympic year now lasts nearly as long as the 162-game baseball season. And that doesn’t count the Stanley Cup playoffs.
“I’ve talked to a lot of our guys [who didn’t play in the Olympics], and they loved the break during the season,” Waddell said.
But the NHL needed a stoppage in 2006 like it needs another Sun Belt franchise. Owing to the lockout, the NHL didn’t play a game for 16 months, and now, just as its rule changes are taking hold and a playoff chase — one that, for the first time, involves the Thrashers — is taking shape, the league blunts any measure of momentum it might have accumulated.
That’s what happens when you’re hockey and you’re desperate. Waddell again: “It’s a Catch-22.”
The NHL decided to stop for the 1998 Olympics because it saw the buzz generated by the NBA’s Dream Team and it hoped to conjure up another Lake Placid moment. But the NBA doesn’t actually stage its season during the Summer Games, and the maddening thing about miracles is that they can’t be scheduled. What happened in Nagano that year was that disgruntled U.S. players tossed furniture off a balcony, and Russia and the Czech Republic played for the gold medal. Salt Lake City was much better, yes, but Turin was a washout. From eight years of trying, exactly what has been proved?
Answer: That the Olympics aren’t going to save the NHL. Only the NHL can save itself, and that’s looking iffier all the time. But waiting for another Miracle On Ice isn’t a business plan. It’s a pipe dream. It’s a waste of time.
Permalink | Comments (8) | Categories: Mark Bradley, Thrashers / NHL
Hawks not dead (yet)
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
They should have traded a guy that they still have. The old-school coach often clashes with the knuckleheads in his locker room with hip-hop attitudes. Their starting center was third on the depth chart for somebody else. They haven’t a point guard, but only because they refused to snatch a nice one in the draft. An estranged owner is threatening to spank his slew of colleagues in courts. Plus, folks come to their games with invisible skin.
Not only that, they spent most of the season declining to use a creaky but competent point guard for unspecified reasons. When they finally decided to fire the poor dude, they did so when they needed anybody who could breathe on what was a short-handed roster.
What a mess, or is that redundant when you’re talking about the Hawks?
Anyway, since we’re in the midst of another forgettable NBA season around town, I didn’t come to a mostly empty Philips Arena on Monday to praise a franchise that still spends most of its time looking more lost than found. Even so, before I could bury it, somebody kept snatching the shovel from my hands.
Somebody named Michael Gearon Sr., among the hidden men of wisdom in Atlanta sports history. Once, he was a Hawks president during their building years toward prominence in the 1980s. Now he is among those colleagues of Steve Belkin, the estranged owner who is trying to win a bundle during his divorce from what was a nine-person marriage.
“We’re all impatient. We’re all basketball fans,” said Gearon, before adding with a chuckle, “And we’re all looking at each other at times and saying, ‘How could we possibly lose THAT game?” Then Gearon turned serious, adding, “But I think that we all see that we’ve made great strides by bringing in a substantial number of exceptional young players. We are the youngest team in the NBA. Nobody’s delighted not to be winning more than we are, but Billy Knight (the Hawks’ general manager) only has been on the job (two years), and you have to remember he was starting at ground zero.”
I remember. We all remember the dark days of Pete Babcock (Isaiah Rider, Priest Lauderdale, Ed Gray, Cal Bowdler) that set the foundation for the Hawks’ current stretch of seven consecutive years without a trip to the playoffs. It’s just that blowing up that foundation is the easiest of the two difficult tasks for Knight. The hardest task is constructing a team that is consistently decent beyond just a tease.
So what if the Hawks beat Indiana thrice, along with shocking Detroit, San Antonio and Cleveland? They also spent Monday night with much of that youth giving New Jersey fits, and the Nets lead the Atlantic Division. In the end, the two Joshes (Smith and Childress) nailed enough clutch shots down the stretch to send the Hawks to a 104-102 thriller in overtime.
Shaky teams do such things. That’s because solid teams have a tendency to take shaky teams for granted. That’s also because shaky teams have a tendency to play out of their minds against solid teams.
“Yeah, but if you look at the Braves during the year before they became pennant contenders, I don’t think they were as far advanced as we are, but all of a sudden their young talent began to have an impact,” said Gearon, of the Braves going from losing 97 games in 1990 to their current string of 14 consecutive division titles. “They got one or two pieces to help their youth, and all of a sudden, the transformation was there. We’re very much analogous to that development of the Braves.”
Uh, well, hmmm. The Braves never had their equivalent to Al Harrington, the Hawks’ veteran forward in the last year of his contract. He should have been moved long ago to give talented rookie Marvin Williams more time to grow. Braves manager Bobby Cox is old school, too, but unlike the Hawks’ Mike Woodson, in his second year as a head coach, Cox has the credentials to make the knuckleheads not even start whining. Except for a shaky bullpen, the Braves rarely are without pieces they need in their lineup, and they haven’t a Steve Belkin.
That said, although it is easier to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq than for even the owners to pry Knight’s exact game plan for the Hawks from his lips, Gearon says all is well with Knight acquiring people and Woodson coaching them. Since I trust Gearon, I’ll put the shovel away.
For the moment.
Permalink | Comments (17) | Categories: Hawks / NBA, Terence Moore
These Games were lost in translation
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
Turin, Italy — For the true Olympic experience, there is nothing quite like being in Italy, listening to a young Asian translate a Czech hockey coach’s injury analysis into English, and somehow coming up with this: “He has a problem with his ill.”
I hate it when that happens.
This was Day One of the hockey competition at the Olympics. Czech goalie Dom- inik Hasek appeared to suffer a lower-abdominal injury. He spoke to reporters about it immediately after the game, although that also never quite made it through in translation. (“Our goalie is in the hospital.”)
The Czech translator, presumably plucked from a shallow pool in Italy, never made it to Day Two. The Winter Olympics, unfortunately, somewhat remained lost in translation.
Turin is a relatively large city as Winter Games sites go. The people are nice, the restaurants accommodating, the venues adequate. But there were a few too many ills. Competition, particularly from the U.S. perspective, was touched by too many crash-and-burns. There were enough headaches with the transportation system — buses not showing up, breaking down or going in the wrong direction — that some believed it worse than Atlanta. It was generally assumed that “worst ever” distinction was retired with Billy Payne.
But the most significant concern was the generally tepid response to the Olympics by the locals. Venues were seldom at capacity. The stands often were half-empty, looking like a friends-and-family turnout.
U.S. Alpine skier Lindsey Kildow went as far to say, “It doesn’t really feel like anyone cares it’s the Olympics. I don’t feel like there are a lot of people here. Maybe it’s just we’re in Italy in the [athlete’s] village. It’s not an ideal environment. It’s really bad. The best nutritional thing I’ve found is a chocolate ice cream bar.”
Granted, Kildow’s review could have been tainted by her performances. She failed to medal and was hospitalized after crashing in practice for the downhill. But she accurately contrasted the Turin scene with some loud crowds in Salt Lake City four years ago.
“I just think people should care more,” she said. “There are a lot of dedicated fans here. What it’s lacking is the Italians. There are no public Italians here. There are fan clubs and families and that kind of thing, but you haven’t seen the public coming out to support. That’s a bummer.”
Too many bummers. Michelle Kwan parachuted in and crawled out. The women’s figure skating finals, a signature event of the Olympics, devolved into Buns on Ice. Bode Miller made all previous winners of The Ugly American award look like Shirley Temple. (Almost made you forget about Mike Modano. But not quite.) Speedskaters Chad Hedrick and Shani Davis were Moe and Curly in news conferences, except not funny.
The Olympics should not be about creatures like Miller, Modano and Hedrick. They should be about athletes like U.S. women’s hockey goalie Chandra Gunn, who overcame epilepsy. Or speedskater Joey Cheek, who won a gold and silver medal and vowed to donate his $40,000 in bonus money to “Right to Play,” a charity that helps youth athletics in war-torn countries like Sudan.
Amid the glare of Miller, most also missed the Olympics’ greatest sportsmanship: Norway cross-country ski coach Bjoernar Haakensmoen. When Canada’s Sara Renner’s ski pole broke in the team sprint event, Haakensmoen handed her a replacement. The gesture allowed Renner and her partner to win the silver medal — and ostensibly knocked Norway into fourth.
Haakensmoen has become a national hero in Canada. “Some countries don’t give poles to their opposition — that’s bull,” he said. “We are a country which believes in fair play.”
That translates. Curling still doesn’t. But the U.S. team won a bronze medal, and it turns out the best stories revolved around shuffleboard on ice. Canada’s Christine Keshen overslept and missed the first two ends (think innings) of her match. Then there was that whole drug-testing thing. “I didn’t do very well,” she said. “I peed all over my hands.”
There was a streaker at curling.
There was a mother breastfeeding her baby at curling.
Check that: There was a competitor breastfeeding her baby at curling. Glenys Bakker, a 43-year-old mom on Team Canada, nourished her four-month-old daughter during a match.
Bakker also offered this when asked the perception of curling: “It’s that we’re a bunch of beer-swilling partiers. Here, it’s wine.”
Bakker won a bronze medal. Curling apparently is a more conducive sport for drinking than Alpine skiing.
Maybe Miller should try curling.
Permalink | Comments (8) | Categories: Jeff Schultz, Other
Here’s the point: Hawks blew their No. 1 pick
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Even if Marvin Williams grows into the All-Star the Hawks presumably still believe he’ll be, he was the wrong choice. All Williams has done as a rookie is become the eighth-leading scorer on the league’s third-worst team. Had the Hawks picked more astutely, they wouldn’t be the league’s third-worst team.
Believe it or not, the Hawks have talent. As Terry Stotts, who once worked here and who now coaches Milwaukee, said Saturday: “They’ve got all those 6-foot-8 guys.” And that’s the trouble. That’s all they have.
The Hawks went into the 2005 draft knowing they needed a point guard and believing two really good ones — Chris Paul and Deron Williams — were available. Instead they chose Marvin Williams, another swingman. Deron Williams, taken two picks after Marvin, starts for Utah and averages 9.5 points and 3.7 assists. Paul, taken immediately after the Hawks selected, averages 16.3 points and 7.7 assists for the Hornets and will be the rookie of the year.
The Hawks are 17-37. Substitute Paul for Marvin Williams and they might be 24-30, which would put them 10th in the Eastern Conference, within hailing distance of the final playoff berth. When you’re a franchise that hasn’t reached the postseason since the last millennium, just being in the hunt would stir some interest. Being the Hawks, they flubbed their chance to become a civic talking point and, not coincidentally, they rank 29th among 30 NBA teams in attendance.
By drafting another wing, Billy Knight kept his similar-sized Hawks from taking wing. Their losses tend to track the same numbing path. They hang tough for a while but lose at the end because they have nobody to get the ball to the right guys in the right spots.
Saturday’s game was vintage. The Hawks drove hard and made every shot early, flying to a 14-point lead against an opponent that had lost four in a row. Then Stotts had the Bucks press, and that was essentially that. “We’ve got a lot of athletic guys who can get up and down the court,” said Josh Smith, lamenting his team’s failure against the press. But the athletic Hawks lacked the one man who could dribble through the traps and turn Milwaukee’s pressure against it. (Yeah, Tyronn Lue is hurt, but he shouldn’t be mistaken for a first-rate point guard.)
The Bucks pressed for the final three quarters. When the Hawks did advance past midcourt, they were blunted by the 2-3 zone Stotts ordered up in the second half. Again, that’s what happens when you play without a distributor. (It happens at all levels of basketball. Ask Georgia Tech.) Put Paul — or even Deron Williams — in a Hawks jersey and the Hawks would have won by 15. They lost by 10. Same as it ever was.
And Marvin Williams? He had an OK night — 24 minutes, 10 points, five rebounds, three turnovers. But there were long moments when you forgot he was on the roster, let alone on the floor. The Hawks needed their highest draft pick in 30 years to be an impact player, and Williams, who’s averaging 7.3 points on 42.7 percent shooting, simply isn’t ready to make a splash. And now his team will approach the 2006 draft seeking to fill the spot they should have filled last summer but with a lesser group of guards — Kentucky’s Rajon Rondo can’t shoot, and Villanova’s Randy Foye and Daniel Gibson of Texas are more hybrids than true points — to consider.
Someone asked Smith what the Hawks should do this offseason. Josh Childress, having apparently appointed himself room monitor, said: “Don’t answer that. You’ll get in trouble.”
“I won’t answer,” Smith said. Then, to the questioner: “I’m not the GM. You’ll have to ask Billy Knight.”
Surely the Hawks know what they need. Surely they’ve looked around the locker room and seen a lot of guys who do the same things but nobody capable of doing the essential thing. Surely a few among them might like to ask Billy Knight just how this happened.
Permalink | Comments (60) | Categories: Hawks / NBA, Mark Bradley
Miller takes doesn’t-get-it to new level
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
Sestriere, Italy — It’s one thing to abhor the spotlight and shy away from fame. It’s another to squeeze the world for dollars and publicity, set the lips to turbo for national publications and news shows, then show yourself to be a petulant 6-year-old trapped in a 28-year-old man’s shot glass.
This could have been Bode Miller’s Olympics.
Unfortunately, Bode Miller will tell you this was his Olympics.
“I just did it my way,” he told The Associated Press Saturday. “I’m not a martyr, and I’m not a do-gooder. I just want to go out and rock. And man, I rocked here.”
Fifth.
Disqualified.
Did not finish.
Sixth.
Did not finish.
Oh yeah. He rocked.
“Me, it’s been an awesome two weeks,” Miller said. “I got to party and socialize at an Olympic level.”
The Austrian Alpine ski team won a record 14 medals. Sure. But did they party at an Olympic level? I don’t think so.
Bode Miller grew up in the woods. Bode Miller belongs in the woods. Look, I am as anti-establishment as the next guy. Dude, you can’t anti-establish me. I grew up in California. I went to a George McGovern rally. Jerry Brown, my governor. Now, he rocked. He dated Linda Ronstadt.
Bode Miller isn’t anti-establishment. He is certainly anti-lucid. He is borderline anti-American. He came to these Olympics representing the United States. The Olympics, Bode. Look at the flags. Look at your warm-up suit. Remember who you’re representing. This isn’t some ski-and-booze weekend with your buddies in the Berkshires. It’s OK to go fifth-DQ-DNF-sixth-DNF. Just do it with some class. Some dignity. Some effort. Remember effort, Bode?
“Look at what happened to [Daron] Rahlves,” Miller said. “He was holed up in his RV, he’s probably the fittest guy out here and he made a point of talking about how important the Olympics were to him. And then look — a little bad luck and he’s got nothing to show for the whole thing.”
That’s it. Dump on your teammate for professionalism.
Bode Miller doesn’t get it. He takes doesn’t-get-it to a new level.
He won two silver medals in Salt Lake City. He skied into these Winter Olympics as its potential biggest star, flaws notwithstanding. He skis out as a confirmed coward, the flaws even greater than we imagined.
No athlete in the history of Olympic competition — given talent, exposure, marketing, expectations, theater and the stage of Alpine skiing — has ever been a bigger or more embarrassing bust.
Saturday was a microcosm of Miller’s Olympics. Just a few seconds into his first run in the men’s slalom, he straddled a gate. But as teammate Ted Ligety said Saturday, “Straddling for Bode is a normal thing.”
What isn’t normal, or shouldn’t be normal, came afterward. When a TV camera focused on him, he raised his arms in mock excitement. As if, “Yeah, my Olympics are over.” Are you satisfied, Nike? Is this when we’re all supposed to join Bode? Miller then skied off the slalom course on a trail that runs along the side of a mountain to avoid coming to the bottom, where he would have had to encounter the media. He eventually conceded to the AP interview.
This is pretty much the way things have gone the entire Olympics. Miller skis poorly, then takes refuge in his RV, which is parked at the base of a mountain, then he parties. “You guys have probably had as many opportunities to talk to him as I have,” said Ligety, who won the gold medal in the combined as the U.S. men’s only Alpine medalist. “He’s in his motor home most of the time.”
To Miller, the Italian Alps represented the Delta House. He was spotted in Sestriere bars drinking beer and tequila shots. His actions and declining performances, presumably connected, have not sat well with skiing officials. U.S. Skiing and Snowboard Association president Bill Marolt said he would speak to Miller after the World Cup season.
“Within certain boundaries, we want the kids to be individuals,” Marolt said. “We need to make sure we stay focused on the targets and we have a certain level of discipline.”
Miller said, “I had an awesome Olympics.” Whoever knew that “awesome” could be such a subjective term. He didn’t win any medals. That’s fine. He fit right in with most of the U.S. team. Other than the golds by Ligety in the combined and Julia Mancuso in the women’s giant slalom, the Alpine ski team was a bust. (Ligety was running third in his first run Saturday until it was ruled he too had straddled a gate, leading to a disqualification.)
But this isn’t all about results. Chip Knight, a 31-year-old, finished 15th in the slalom. The U.S. ski team considered him a borderline team member. They even told him that if he really wanted to stay on the team, he would have to foot $8,000 in training expenses. Fortunately, he found some supporters in his hometown of Stowe, Vt.
There was Knight after his first run, flashing a wide smile.
“It’s awesome. It’s the Olympics. It’s what we live for as athletes.”
There’s a concept. Knight actually thought competing in the Olympics was awesome.
Bode, meanwhile, seemed more focused on the “Irish Igloo,” a tavern that sits just across the street from the base of the slalom course. He defended the drinking by saying: “My quality of life is the priority. I wanted to have fun here, to enjoy the Olympic experience, not be holed up in a closet and not ever leave your room. People said, ‘Why can’t you stay in for the two weeks, three weeks? You’ve got the rest of your life to experience the Games the way everybody else does.’ But I like the whole package. I always have.”
Let’s hear it for the red, white and booze.
Miller said he was “comfortable” with his accomplishments here. We’re not certain if he was talking about skiing or chugging contests.
Fifth place — that was his best finish. Appropriately, it came in something called the downhill, which looks to be the direction he’s heading.
Permalink | Comments (24) | Categories: Jeff Schultz, Other
Sweden-Finland: The Georgia-Florida of Olympic hockey
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
Turin, Italy - Let’s put this in a way you could understand. Four years ago in Salt Lake City, the peaceful residents of neutral Sweden took an Olympic-elimination loss to Bulgaria about as well as Georgia fans would take a loss to Arkansas State.
The “Expressen,” a Stockholm newspaper, ran mug shots of every Sweden player, listing their names and NHL salary. The headline screamed: “Skyldiga: De svik sitt land.” Which roughly translates to “Guilty: They Betrayed Their Country.”
Sweden and Finland will play for the Olympic hockey gold medal Sunday. It’s not what most expected. It’s certainly not what anybody who draws a network paycheck wanted. (At least Latvia-Switzerland would have had humor value.) We tend to think more along the lines of: “Clash of the Titans,” not, “Clash of the Scandinavians.”
But there are no two more deserving teams to reach the final than Sweden and Finland. The Swedes scored five goals in the first 28 minutes on former Thrashers goalie Milan Hnilicka and pounded the Czech Republic, 7-3, Friday. This was the same Czech team that stunned Slovakia two days earlier.
Finland, with the most bland of NHL roster, has yet to lose. It methodically dismantled Russia, 4-0, so frustrating the opponent that Ilya Kovalchuk (roughing, cross-checking) and Darius Kasparaitis (boarding, roughing) both took double-minors in the third period. The Finns go into Sunday 7-0, with five shutouts and a goal differential of 27-5.
“This is big,” said Finland and Florida forward Olli Jokinen. “You’re in the Olympics. You’re playing a different country every game. It’s a little bit different than playing in South Florida on a Tuesday night.”
Sweden and Finland. No, it’s not any combination of U.S., Canada, Russia. Helsinki vs. Stockholm. Just not sexy. But it’s amazing what little things like effort, sacrifice, teamwork get you. NHL players on the two sides of North America might want to examine the game tape. “We know everybody is willing to take a shot or block a shot, and play hard for their country,” Finland’s Jarkko Rutuu said. “That’s what we’re proud of. That carries us when we’re [killing] the five-on-three [penalties]. There’s nothing better than winning as a team.”
Sweden-Finland. Think: Georgia-Florida. They hate each other. Always have. Asked if he was told a young age that he had to hate Swedes, Finland’s Antti Laaksonen said: “No. I think it comes naturally.”
Finland has done it with simple play, great goaltending from Anti Nittymaki (who somehow wasn’t knocked unconscious on a first-period slapshot by Kovalchuk) and forechecking that didn’t allow the skilled Russia to gain speed through the neutral zone.
It’s only the second time Finland has made it to the Olympic gold medal game, having lost to the Soviet Union in 1988 in Calgary. The country also has won only one World Championship (1995). But in that game, at least it beat Sweden.
But they have other memories to exorcise. They lost to Finland, 2-1, in Nagano in 1998. Then came the 4-3 “betrayal” in 2002 against Belarus. The deciding goal came when a Belarus player fired the puck from the neutral zone and it bounced off the mask of goalie Tommy Salo, dropped down rolled into the net. Salo was never same. He was an NHL goalie. Now he’s playing in the Swedish Elite League, presumably under an alias.
The Swedes, who appeared to defeat a worn down Czech team, have won Olympic gold once. They beat Canada in 1994 in Lillehammer. They have won just one World Championship in the last 13 years, losing five times in the finals.
“It’s disappointing when you get so close,” Chris Backman said. “You don’t get too many chances to play in an Olympic final. I think I never played a bigger game in my life. You never know if it will happen again. Maybe you don’t make the team, or maybe the team doesn’t make it back.”
Veteran Mats Sundin added, “We knew this [Olympics] was a great opportunity for us. A lot of us are getting older and this might be our last big tournament together. We want to make the most of it.”
It’s nice when it matters. Sweden-Finland. It won’t be one for the ratings books. But the U.S. and Canada may want to take notes.
Permalink | Comments (7) | Categories: Jeff Schultz, Other, Thrashers / NHL
Jordan stays busy, with or without baseball
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
Lake Buena Vista, Fla. - No question, given the leadership skills of this classy outfielder with the strong safety mentality, Brian Jordan should make the Braves’ roster this spring. Then again, given the recent aches and pains of his nearly 39-year-old left knee, along with his tendency to acquire other bumps and bruises courtesy of his ferocious style, he might not.
Whatever the case, all of us who believe in truth, justice and the American Way can rejoice. That’s because one of the most likeable athletes (or entrepreneurs or authors or humanitarians or speakers or fill-in-the blank regarding Jordan) that you’ll ever meet will be just fine, thank you.
Consider this: Even if Jordan never hits, fields or throws another baseball for pay, you’ll still hear about him. Such especially will be true around Atlanta, where Jordan’s legend only will expand through the years beyond the memory of his impressive career with the Falcons from 1989-91. There also were his clutch ways seven years ago that got the Braves into their last World Series during his first stint with the team.
Take it from James White, Jordan’s personal trainer who also deals with world-class track stars. “Brian is constantly doing something from 6 in the morning to around nine o’clock at night, and you just have to wait to get on his schedule,” said White, easing into a chuckle inside the home dugout of the Ballpark at Disney’s Wide World of Sports, while his client spent another long day hustling and impressing as a 13-year veteran.
During the off-season, when Jordan isn’t operating at his Alpharetta home as a hands-on father for his two daughters and two sons, he is everywhere. He is running his technological company. He is dealing with the Brian Jordan Foundation that helps underprivileged youth. He is delivering speeches at schools, churches, playgrounds, street corners. He is finishing the development of Le Jardin, the posh community that he envisioned to sit on an old horse farm in South Fulton. He is working out, too. “Oh, man, I’m constantly ripping and roaring, and that’s Monday through Friday,” said Jordan, always with a smile as brilliant as the Florida sun.
If all of that isn’t enough, Jordan also writes books. I mean, literally. “I woke up at four in the morning, and it was just in my head, and I started writing on some file cards for 1 1/2 hours, and the next thing you know, the book was published,” said Jordan, laughing. Then he thought about the first thing that he did after writing the book that morning. “I called my mom, because she’s an English teacher, and I said, ‘Mom, how does this sound?’ ” Jordan said, referring to Betty Jordan, who still lives in their native Baltimore.
“She would tell me, ‘No, that’s not right,’ and, ‘You should change this part, and put a punctuation mark after that.’ She really stays on me,” Jordan added. “That’s why, when I speak, I’ve got to be careful, because she’ll be all over my case.”
The book, by the way, is called “I told you I could play,” and Jordan’s target audience is his obsession in life: Children. From page to page, the book stresses that you always should believe in yourself, that you should ignore outside forces that say that you can’t do something, that you should never give up no matter what. The book is essentially about Jordan’s childhood, and in case you’re wondering, it is selling at a Barnes & Noble near you.
A couple of more books by Jordan already are on they way. While one will involve how parents should treat children, the other will be entitled, “The protector,” and it will instruct youngsters how to deal with the worst of bullies.
“When I was young, I always had good size, and that’s why the kids looked at my as being a bully, even though I hated bullies,” Jordan said. “That’s why I always picked the nerds and pencil heads to be on my team. For one, I knew we would win since I was one of the better athletes around, and second, I always learned a lot from the nerds and the pencil heads. They started me to work harder in school, and they, in turn, got confidence for themselves from being on a winning team with me.”
The Braves will continue as a winning team with Jordan. Without him, well, let’s just hope his knee is all right.
Permalink | Comments (14) | Categories: Braves / MLB, Terence Moore
GT gauntlet thrown down
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
The choice has been made, and while in some corners it is headlined as much a defeat for Bill Curry as a victory for Dan Radakovich (you say it “Radda-KO-vich”), the deed is done. I must say that when President Wayne Clough escorted the new athletics director into the conference center at Georgia Tech, and he clattered in on titanium walking sticks, some gasped silently “Ye gods, he’s hired a casualty.”
(After an extended period of dealing with a recurring Achilles tendon condition, the man from Baton Rouge had resorted to surgery four weeks ago. “The crutches go away in two weeks,” he said.)
The “old guard,” a term I created myself, referring to veteran Georgia Tech alumni with a vested interest in affairs on The Flats, had been dealt a blow, so it was interpreted. Let’s look at it this way in cold logic: Curry, with no previous administrative experience, was a calculated risk. It would have been a case of on-the-job training. But those with Old Gold and White loyalty running deep had preferred one of their own, willing to endure Curry’s orientation perfiod, assuming he knew where to go to find the money; one to rally around, one who knows every word to “Ramblin’ Wreck,” as rousing a college fight song as there is, raised in bistros from Alaska to Zanzibar.
Well and good, but the truth is, Dan Radakovich is the man whose credentials fit the job description. He has been doing this kind of work for 20 years, from American University to South Carolina to Long Beach State to Miami and more lately at LSU. Curry had played and coached at Georgia Tech, worships the image of Bobby Dodd, for whom the football stadium is named, but there was one hitch in the minds of some detractors. He had committed the mortal sin of leaving to coach the enemy at Alabama. “Traitor,” as some of the more virulent e-mail correspondents branded him. But in the long run, that had nothing to do with his rejection.
Perhaps the most reliable appraisal of Radokovich came from one who had him in his hire at an earlier stage of his career, one step removed from LSU. Mike McGee was athletics director at South Carolina when Radakovich joined his staff as chief financial officer. The years were 1994 to 2000. Now retired and living in Colorado, McGee had hired him from Long Beach State. “He was my chief financial officer, but he wasn’t very involved in fundraising,” McGee said. “Georgia Tech is hiring a fellow who is bright, energetic, has integrity and is smart as a whip. I know that sounds like a lot of platitudes, but they fit him. He’s a really good fellow.”
Radakovich came out of as hotbed of athletes in western Pennsylvannia. “From Aliquippa,” he said, though his biography identifies his hometown as Monaca. It’s steel mill country, “Quarterback USA,” as someone branded it, for from that area came Joe Montana, Joe Namath, Babe Parilli, Johnny Unitas and you could go on. Radakovich was an end who played in the obscurity of a school whose name confuses a lot of geographers, Indiana University of Pennsylvania.
Now, back to the case at hand. He is given high marks for a vast montage of projects contributing to football success at LSU, especially a $90 million renovation of Tiger Stadium, and the national championship of 2003 is reflected in his resume’. True, he had a broader constituency and a larger stage to work with, a 70,000-seat stadium compared to 55,000 at Georgia Tech. His major challenge will be digging into that $108 million deficit the athletics department now faces.
When it became apparent earlier in the week that Curry would not be the choice, angry vows came from several heavy donors that Georgia Tech would not be as high on their gift list. That was a reflection on the presence of Clough as president. There are as many who would like to see him go out with the departing athletics director, Dave Braine.
He has a pleasant face, and can without stretching the imagination, be likened in that respect to Mel Gibson, the actor. And true to the colors, he wore a gold tie with horizontal white stripes.
Now comes the moment of truth: The gauntlet has been thrown down. Radakovich is the man who will represent athletics at Georgia Tech. He has this animosity to deal with — not so much toward him as to Clough, the “old guard” to win back, and these Georgia Tech people now must look themselves in their mirrors. Clough did try a bit of humor in his presentation, referring to a bogus application from that bogus campus character, “George P. Burdell.” Good try.
A lot of wounds to heal here. I’m not certain all that assuaging was as effective as advertised.
Permalink | Comments (19) | Categories: Furman Bisher, Tech / ACC
No American heroes at these Games
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
Turin, Italy — Second place went to the girl who fell twice. Third place went to the girl who fell once. So it follows that first place had to go to the only girl who didn’t look like she was wearing fins.
“I definitely didn’t think I was going to get any medal when I finished skating,” Sasha Cohen said Thursday. “So it was a nice surprise.”
No surprise here. Actually, what unfolded Thursday night perfectly punctuated the last two weeks. This has been the Oakland of all Winter Olympics. Gertrude Stein wrote of that city, “There is no there there.” We can’t be certain if there’s a there here, either. But whatever it is, it looks a lot like Macon.
The free skate of women’s figure skating finals is the signature event of the Winter Olympics. It is the toughest ticket. It draws the highest ratings. It means a possible supply of Campbell’s soup to the winner. But, waiter, there’s a fly in the Olympics.
This was the last best chance for an athlete to save the Games of Turin. Didn’t happen. Nothing against Shizuka Arakawa, who skated gracefully. She made it through four minutes without rump and ice becoming one. She won and deserved the gold medal. But she basically won by process of elimination.
Sasha Cohen fell twice in warmups, then, proving practice pays off, fell twice on triple jumps to open her routine. Russia’s Irina Slutskaya, a silver medalist four years ago, also went splat on a triple. It was like picking the prize pumpkin after watching the other two fall off the back of a pickup and onto the highway, only to get run over by a Winnebago.
What makes the Olympics a wonderful thing is it creates fresh and special moments. Summer or Winter, every Games has an athlete or team that grabs the spotlight and screams, “Mine!” It might be a gymnast from Romania or a ski jumper from Finland.
This is where Mark Spitz becomes a legend, Nadia Comenici becomes a global sweetheart and Jamaican bobsledders become a movie.
Michael Phelps creates unrealistic expectations, then surpasses them. Kerri Strug brings a Willis Reed moment to gymnastics. Ben Johnson flashes, OK, then crashes. We watch because they represent something spectacular (or amusingly catastrophic). We watch because this is an every-four-year exercise, with athletes we might never have heard of before, and possibly never will hear from again.
But that hasn’t been the case here. These Olympics have been the Shrug of Turin.
Bode Miller, the biggest potential star, is 0-4 in his four Alpine ski events. He has run into a gate, been disqualified for missing a gate and twice finished out of medal contention.
Miller warmed up for the slalom Wednesday by turning his ankle playing basketball. His final calamity is scheduled for Saturday. He isn’t headed for the Wheaties box. He is headed for the cover of National Lampoon.
The women’s hockey team shockingly failed to reach the gold-medal game. The men’s hockey team shockingly failed to register a pulse. I would say that when it came to expectations, both fell. But then if they were figure skaters, that would qualify them for silver medals. (Two of the three medal winners in men’s figure skating also fell in the finals).
Apolo Ohno wiped out. Michelle Kwan was a quick photo op. Speedskaters Chad Hedrick and Shani Davis each have won a pair of medals, but neither duplicated an Eric Heiden haul, and any great athletic moments they’ve achieved have been smothered by a slap fight not nearly as entertaining as Tonya and Nancy.
Cohen seems like a sweet kid. She’s certainly an honest one.
She was so convinced she wouldn’t medal after her skate that she couldn’t bring herself to watch the competitors that followed. Instead, she went back into the dressing room to change clothes.
She could’ve been a great story. She had fired coaches, only to reunite with her first one. She had battled through injuries.
After all of the long-skate fizzles that have plagued her career, she could’ve pulled a Mickelson and actually finished first once.
Instead, she fell twice.
She talked about two treatments and two drugs (“a nice combination”) that were needed to ease her pains. Addressing the whole collapsed-under-pressure theme, she said: “I wasn’t nervous, but I was a little bit apprehensive, knowing I had missed the flip and the lutz in warmup. When people are watching … it’s kind of hard to go out there like you’re getting churros at Disneyland.”
Nobody said being center stage was easy.
Right now, center stage is empty.
Permalink | Comments (13) | Categories: Jeff Schultz, Other
Duke. Ehhh…
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
After seeing them in person, I don’t know about the Dookies. I’ve thought all along they were going to win the national championship, but now I’m beginning to wonder. If a bad team like Georgia Tech can make 70.8 percent of its first-half shots against you, that doesn’t say much for your on-the-ball defense. Something else that doesn’t: Despite the presence of Shelden Williams, who leads the ACC in blocks, Duke is 10th in the ACC in field-goal percentage defense.
I wonder, too, about Duke’s ability to run its offense against big, quick defenders. Would Williams score 20 points against the massive UConn front line? Would Greg Paulus get the ball past halfcourt against Villanova’s pressure? Would a team that goes 10-deep wear out the Devils, who use only seven players and who count on Redick playing 40 minutes every time out?
I know, I know. Other good teams have issues of their own. (Example: Can any UConn man save Rashad Anderson make a 3-pointer?) But the more I see of the ACC, the more I’m convinced it’s no better than the third-best league in the country this season — behind the Big East and the Big Ten, respectively — and I’m not certain that Duke’s unbeaten run through the conference tells us much about the worth of this team.
Bottom line: J.J. Redick will have to score 30 points six times in a row against NCAA tournament competition for Duke to win it all, and at least four of those games should be against better competition than anything the ACC has thrown up. I think J.J. Redick is a great player. I’m not sure he’s great enough to manage that.
Permalink | Comments (13) | Categories: Mark Bradley, Quick Hit
Jones in peak shape, commitment
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
Lake Buena Vista, Fla. — So there I was, amidst the morning dew, walking with a strikingly fit and thick Andruw Jones across the outfield grass of The Ballpark at Disney’s Wide World of Sports. We were moving from the extra practice diamonds behind center toward the home dugout, and along the way I kept thinking to myself that this guy finally gets it.
I mean, he really does. How else can you explain Jones doing even more this spring to improve his game than he did last year when he famously increased his offseason workouts by a bunch?
“Yes, I am stronger now, starting with the bottom part of my body, and I work hard on my legs, because kind of near the end of last season, I got a little tired with them,” said Jones, walking while referring to his season that produced a Braves-record 51 home runs and an eighth consecutive Gold Glove. Not only that, he continued as baseball’s iron man. Nobody has played in more games over the past nine seasons than Jones. As a result, he was pleased with his 2005, which earned him player of the year honors from his peers, but he wasn’t awed by it.
Thus Jones’ heightened conditioning that began with another winter of frequent batting practice inside the cages in the basement of his Duluth home. Then came his 7:30 a.m. workouts at The Ballpark last week after he arrived in camp with Braves pitchers and catchers for the first time in his decade in the major leagues.
By this week, still days before the Braves’ first full-squad workout today, Jones had done something else unique for himself. “I already had 100 at-bats against live pitching,” he said, grinning, as we stopped in shallow right. “My second day here, I faced 13 pitchers, and I had two or three at-bats against each of them. It’s just good, and I like it.”
You should, too, if you’re among the choppers and chanters. If you thought Jones played on the other side of the solar system last season, just wait. Grab a powerful telescope. Then prepare to get a sore neck from shaking your head over the Braves’ center fielder leaping from Jupiter toward the farthest black hole. His home runs could go farther than that, because Jones is huge these days. And, no, he hasn’t gotten that way by lifting forks, but by doing so with weights. He has turned what normally is considerable fat this time of year around his 6-foot-1 frame into solid muscle.
Which brings us to the question: What’s up with this? The answer is that it’s a team thing and a personal thing.
First, Jones is obsessed with doing whatever he can to shake his trauma of helping the Braves implode last October for the fifth consecutive year in the first round of the playoffs. Second, he is equally obsessed with trying to match or surpass the potential of that 19-year-old wonder who slammed home runs during his first two World Series at-bats.
As for that team thing, a visibly upset Jones sat at his locker forever in Houston last year after the Braves blew a silly lead and watched their season end after 18 innings. “No doubt that was the toughest loss I’ve ever had, because my hopes were so high for the season,” Jones said. “We were getting a chance for another National League championship. I was looking forward to getting that series back to Atlanta and having a shot at [Astros pitcher] Andy Pettitte. I think that after that first game, we had a good idea of what to do against him, but we just couldn’t come through in that Game 4.”
As for that personal thing, Jones hasn’t wavered from his goal of reaching Cooperstown someday. “Before his injuries, Ken Griffey Jr. always was hitting 40 home runs and within the top five for the MVP award,” Jones said of his idol. “That’s what you mean when you’re talking about an elite player.”
Then, with dry grass finally beneath our feet to signify that the late morning portion of Jones’ full workout day was about to start, he added, “I had a good season last year, but when you put four, five, six good seasons under your belt, and you’re in the top 10 for MVP every year, that’s when you consider yourself on a different level. I still have a little ways to go.”
He gets it, all right.
Permalink | Comments (34) | Categories: Braves / MLB, Terence Moore
On ‘Miracle’ anniversary, a debacle
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
Turin, Italy — Nice to know that on the anniversary of the U.S. hockey team’s upset of the Soviet Union, the Olympic life forms could morph into something so low on the food chain 26 years later. This is where we are now: south of Lake Placid, north of plankton.
It’s one thing to enter the world stage short of goal scorers. Those are circumstances general manager Don Waddell and coach Peter Laviolette couldn’t control. But to play in the Olympics floating in and out of consciousness is inexcusable. To seemingly be so devoid of effort that a coach has to call a timeout 10 minutes into the game is embarrassing.
U.S. players didn’t need a timeout Wednesday. They needed a mirror held under their nose.
Six games, one win. Thanks, guys, and have a pleasant flight home. You can keep the warm-up suits. Yours came with embalming fluid.
The U.S. lost to Finland, 4-3, Wednesday night. So much for the Olympic hockey tournament. This team went 1-4-1, the lone win coming over Kazakhstan. Throw in a couple of trashed dorm rooms and you have Nagano.
We can’t be certain all chairs in the athletes village made it through the night Wednesday. But the leader in the juvenile clubhouse became fairly clear. Mike Modano, a three-time Olympian, alternate captain and media guide coverboy, was benched for most of the third period and then whined about life in general in the post-game, showing significantly more spunk than he did on the ice.
Modano ripped Laviolette, one of the game’s premier coaches, for using the early timeout (when Finland led 1-0): “We probably could’ve used it at the end of the game to get some guys some rest. [We needed] a little more composure, a little less panic. There’s 50 minutes left in the game.”
He ripped USA Hockey: “Maybe they need some new blood in there to run things a little differently.”
He ripped whoever should have made his family’s flight arrangements so he could have more time to “focus on hockey.”
As to the economy and Al-Qaeda, Modano refrained from comment.
Funny thing — none of Modano’s teammates echoed his sentiments. Even Brian Gionta, when asked about the travel rant, winced and said: “That was all set before we got here.”
What happened when the U.S. got here is not easy to analyze. The team’s skill level wasn’t equal to the Russians, Canadians, et. al. But neither could anybody anticipate losing four straight games before its exit. The performances of the players did not sit well with either Laviolette, whose Carolina team is one of the hardest-working in the league. It seemed to crush Waddell, who had waited for this Olympic moment since missing it as a player in 1980.
“Well. It’s disappointing, for sure,” Waddell said after a long pause, during which he got choked up. “But we’ll learn from it and find a way to move forward.”
He also vigorously defended USA Hockey and said he “would not change anything,” in terms of his player selection. “We said we would use the season as a tryout period. The players here had all played well.”
The U.S. was fortunate to be tied at 2-2 early in the second despite being outshot 20-9. But two power play goals by Olli Jokinen gave Finland a 4-2 lead. Laviolette benched Modano and some of the team’s other older players for most of the third. Gionta scored with 4:27 left, but the rally ended there.
“To be honest it wasn’t about Mike Modano,” Laviolette said when asked about his decision. “It’s never been about one player on the team. It’s about trying to get the players on the ice going. The third period was clearly our best period. We wanted guys who had jump. Some players had jump and some didn’t, and it varied from game to game. We lost the game in the first 40 minutes.”
In 1980, Herb Brooks helped will the Americans to a 4-3 win over the Soviets. The U.S. then trailed in the gold medal game against Finland, prompting Brooks to say between periods: “If you lose this game, you’re going to regret it for the rest of your life.” The team rallied for gold.
Twenty-six years later against Finland, Laviolette could have tried the same speech. But it wouldn’t have made a difference. The only question is whether any U.S. players feel regret.
Permalink | Comments (19) | Categories: Jeff Schultz, Other
Clough engineers a management coup
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Who knew the civil engineer was such a slick politico? Wayne Clough took a ticklish situation and triangulated the heck out of it. He managed to assuage the tender sensibilities of a goodly percentage of Georgia Tech’s old guard without actually choosing the old guard’s favorite son. The president paid Bill Curry the respect he was due, and then he went and hired somebody else.
And then, having introduced the outsider Dan Radakovich as Tech’s athletics director, Clough addressed that segment of the old guard that had demanded the hiring of a Tech Man, saying: “It’s your institution. If you’re mad about this, you’re mad at the institution you love.”
Bill Curry is a fine and clever fellow, but that doesn’t mean he’d have been the right man to run a 21st Century athletics department. Radakovich, Clough noted, has “20 years in management,” and Georgia Tech prides itself on being managed deftly. (That’s why the mass flunkouts of 2003 and the subsequent NCAA eligibility snafu embarrassed the Institute so deeply.) Radakovich is neither as glib nor as famous as Curry, but he’s the better choice for this job.
Said Radakovich, with consummate grace: “[Being Bill Curry] is a great door-opener. I’ll need to knock.”
Being an AD isn’t an entry-level position. (Said Clough: “It’s as complicated as being president of an institution.”) Radakovich was the AD at American and has apprenticed at four bigger schools. Curry often speaks of the shock of being welcomed to the NFL by being hit in the mouth by Dick Butkus, and surely his first attempt at building a football schedule would have carried a similar jolt. Radakovich has already been making schedules for a school in Baton Rouge that takes football rather seriously.
“Dan had better overall characteristics [as an AD],” said Clough, who nonetheless spent part of Wednesday’s announcement lavishing praise on the runner-up. And that’s the part that was, from a tactical standpoint, truly inspired. In modern headhunting, nobody wants to be seen as a runner-up. (At worst, a failed candidate is allowed to “withdraw his name from consideration.”) By keeping Curry in the mix until the very end, Clough cannot be accused of ignoring the wishes of his constituency.
But by listening to his alumni and choosing someone else instead, Clough proved he can’t be buffaloed. Indeed, the president said he was buoyed in the final days of this process by e-mails — as we know, Tech people love their computers — from alums saying, “I’m old-guard, too, but I know you’re working hard to do the right thing.”
In this instance, the right thing involved looking beyond Georgia Tech. If the Jackets are to ascend to the “next level” Clough mentioned, it won’t be with recycled gold-and-white notions. They’ll require new ideas, an outsider’s global perspective. For all the talk of needing a Tech Man as AD, it should be noted that the most revered administrators in school annals graduated from Tennessee (the sainted Bobby Dodd) and Centre College (the innovator Homer Rice).
Radakovich comes to Tech from LSU, a place that expects to win big in football every single season, and nothing he said Wednesday carried the resignation expressed in Dave Braine’s Tech-will-never-win-nine-or-10-games-consistently declaration. “That’s not in my persona,” Radakovich said. “That may be Pollyannish on my part … but I expect to be the best we can be.”
He’s not a Tech Man by background, but Dan Radakovich should serve all Tech people well. “Let’s rally around our AD,” said Clough, and the bearded president knows full well that, whatever the initial disappointment might be, his alums really don’t have a choice. What else are they going to do? Root for Georgia?
Permalink | Comments (31) | Categories: Mark Bradley, Tech / ACC
Publicity = publicity
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
Just when you thought it couldn’t get any better for NASCAR, it just did.
First, Chad Knaus, the crew chief for Jimmie Johnson, got banned from the Daytona 500 for cheating. Then Johnson won the race with Knaus’ replacement. Then NASCAR decided to ban Knaus for three more races.
I’m guessing that the Powers That Be who run the sport aren’t exactly threatening to bang a monkey wrench against their heads over the situation. Not only is cheating part of NASCAR’s birthright, but you also have those Powers That Be continuing their tradition of living by that old saying that goes, “I don’t care what they say about me; just spell my name right.�
Good publicity. Bad publicity.
It’s publicity.
And get this: Sunday’s Daytona 500 received the highest television ratings of any NASCAR race ever.
Stay tuned. With an assist from this Knaus situation, I’m sure you will.
Permalink | Comments (11) | Categories: Quick Hit, Terence Moore
There’s no gold for Flowers but big silver lining
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
Cesana, Italy — The twins were back in the hotel with their grandmothers, sipping hot chocolate and watching mom ride in a sled on television.
Don’t all moms ride in a sled on television?
“The boys think all moms are on TV,” Johnny Flowers said Tuesday night, as he sat in the stands waiting for another Olympic moment by his wife, Vonetta. “She’s racing every other week, so they’re used to it by now.”
This is where we tell you that the TV star failed to win a medal Tuesday. Somehow, that became an afterthought.
Vonetta Flowers, the former college track star from Alabama-Birmingham who four years ago hit bobsled gold in Salt Lake City, did not climb the podium at these Winter Olympics. But it didn’t matter. She was floating above it.
“I feel like I won my gold medal earlier this year when my son had surgery and it was a success,” she said.
Flowers, serving as brakeman for driver Jean Prahm in the USA-2 sled, had a strong second day in the two-person competition but fell short. Flowers and Prahm started the day in ninth place after two heats, but they finished in sixth with a total time of 3:51.78, just .77 of a second out of a medal spot.
Now, this is where you might think Mommy Reality TV pulls the plug. Two Olympics, a gold medal, two 3-year-old sons, a husband — it’s all pretty satisfying stuff. But Flowers said Tuesday she isn’t done yet. She also is done taking a back seat.
“After the race, I went down to the crowd, and I said that was my last time pushing a sled,” she said. “Hopefully I’ll go back to Lake Placid and start driving. That’s my next goal. I took some trips down a couple of years ago, and it was an exciting feeling to be in front and in control. Hopefully, I’ll enjoy it and you’ll see me in four years as a driver.”
Hearing this, Prahm cracked, “She’s going to be my competition. But if she chooses to do that, I’ll hook her with a brakeman, maybe teach her some strategy.”
Jorden and Jaden, Flowers’ 3-year-old twins, already have more stamps on their passports than most people accumulate in a lifetime. That’s not about to change. And if Jorden’s health continues down its current path, he’ll be hearing words in several different languages between now and 2010 in Vancouver.
The medal Flowers had referred to was something more valuable than the element. In December, Jorden, who was born deaf, had surgery in Italy to insert an auditory brain stem implant. After a month to heal, doctors turned on the device in January, and for the first time in his three years on earth, Jorden began to hear.
“Think of him as a baby hearing for the first time,” Flowers said. “It’s like he’s four weeks old.” The family plans to stay in Italy for another few weeks so Jorden can have two follow-up appointments with doctors.
What Flowers didn’t know was that the Olympics would be a stopover for Jorden and Jaden. She had been all smiles since her husband surprised her by bringing the twins with him to Turin. The couple had decided that the expense of an extended stay in Italy would prevent the twins from watching their mother race a bobsled. But Vonetta didn’t know that one of her sponsors, Kleenex, agreed to underwrite the cost. The tearfest took place on the Today Show.
“This is what she wanted when she decided to come back — she wanted her family to be here,” Johnny Flowers said.
The boys were in the stands Monday but, “They were a little cold,” Johnny said. So they were left in warmth with their grandmothers Tuesday.
Prahm said, “There’s no question seeing the boys gave Vonetta a lift here.”
Given her speed and strength from track days, there’s little reason to doubt Flowers will make it to Vancouver. Then, everybody can get their passports stamped at the Canadian border.
“I had to get my mom a passport for the first time for this trip,” she said. “The boys have already been all over. Obviously, they won’t remember all of this. But we’ve taken tons of pictures.”
Permalink | Comments (2) | Categories: Jeff Schultz, Other
The more NASCAR changes, the more it’s the same
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
You don’t find stock car racing fans at Augusta National. Or Wimbledon, or the Westminster Dog Show, or at the Figure Skating Championships. Stock car racing fans go to stock car races, where they cheer for a brand name automobile as much as they cheer for the man at the wheel. They hate as much as they love. If you love Tony Stewart, you hate the rest of them.
It started off less a sport than a brawl on wheels. Racers drove their cars to the track, backyard mechanics in Unionalls (a brand name), grease up to their elbows, and in one way, it hasn’t changed a lick. The first official NASCAR race was run on a dusty track outside Charlotte on June 19, 1949, and they didn’t play any favorites. The guy who won the race was disqualified when the official inspector declared he’d cheated. He was a hometowner, but the race went to some guy from Kansas. Jim Roper never won again in his career, which wasn’t much to speak of.
After the Daytona 500 the other day, Jimmie Johnson’s winning machine was stripped to the frame to make sure he hadn’t been cheating. (His crew chief had been suspended during the week.) The car came clean, and Johnson collected his $1,556,501 prize. The guy who finished last won more than Jim Roper got for winning.
NASCAR raced on in the dust and grime of podunk tracks for years, “folksy, simple and fairly obscure,” as Ed Hinton describes it in his book “Daytona.” Hardly folksy, for you had to have a tough hide to survive, and it wasn’t a place you took the family. Ed also takes the liberty of calling it “the most truly American sport of all,” though I’d say basketball might have a word about that.
But this is what I’m getting at: You turned on the television set Sunday afternoon and the screen was full of screaming machines going round an egg-shaped track at Daytona International Speedway. More people came to watch than saw the Super Bowl in Ford Field. Some lolled about in suites. Food was catered. Others watched from mansions on wheels in the infield. This is what has become of that red-neck scuffle at what was called Wilkinson Boulevard Speedway in 1949.
NASCAR didn’t come on like a tidal wave. It has sweated and cussed and boozed and cut every corner it could get away with to get here. Bill France and family created their own private dynasty. You played by their rules, or you didn’t get on their track. A couple of mutineers tried to break the monopoly and got their rears handed to them in a basket.
Fans had their folk heroes in those times, Fireball Roberts, David Pearson, Cale Yarborough, and the hero of them all, Richard Petty, “The King.” Petty set the one sports record that will never be broken. He won 200 races, but he had to run 13 years before he made two-thirds as much as Jimmie Johnson made for winning Daytona last Sunday. They had a celebration for Petty when he became the first million dollar man of stock cars.
They created another, but he had to die for it. Amazing, the icon Dale Earnhardt has become in death. Somone referred to him the other day as “beloved,” a bit of a stretch. I’d say. He was hard-nosed, crusty, growled and cussed, and drove to be feared. “The Intimidator,” they called him. He intimidated one time too many, and it cost him his life.
Now the stars of NASCAR come along well-manicured and tailored, make real sentences, fly their own jets, live in luxury and take refuge in motor homes. Some have movie star glows and fan clubs. You could take Jimmie Johnson, Jeff Gordon, Kasey Kahne, Elliott Sadler — stock car racer or symphony conductor? – to the club and never be embarrassed.
It’s just amazing. Stock car racing started at a level lower than a West Texas rodeo. NASCAR even does it bass ackwards – runs its main event of the year right out of the box, and it booms, and goes on booming. They drive faster and take more chances, but they live longer. I’ll say it again – it’s amazing. Nothing has taken such a grip on sporting America as stock car racing. A few huzzahs to NASCAR, if you will!
Permalink | Comments (8) | Categories: Auto Racing, Furman Bisher
Career ends but contributions continue
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
Turin, Italy — As a player, Uwe Krupp was too broken down to contribute to Atlanta’s hockey team. The back, the shoulder, the knee — the trick was finding a body part that didn’t ache and could function for a day.
“It’s like an old car,” he said. “You replace the break pads but the clutch goes out.”
An athlete’s world often crumbles when the body goes. If anybody was set up for a fall, it was Krupp. He went from an All-Star defenseman with Colorado to an HMO’s worst nightmare to four games with the Thrashers in 2002-03. “I never considered myself a hockey player in Atlanta, but I got to know their medical people real well,” he said.
Krupp is at the Olympics as Germany’s hockey coach. When this ends, he will return to Atlanta and contribute in ways far more important than he did as a player.
Since August, Krupp and his wife Valerie have housed, fed and help provide schooling for two 14-year-old boys whose families lost their homes and livelihoods in New Orleans in Hurricane Katrina. The Krupps also brought Ryan Wainwright and Joel Kern, along with their own teenaged son, Bjorn, to the Olympics for a week. (Their parents provided airfare.) They attended several events, including the Opening Ceremony.
They were easy to spot. They were the only Americans waving German flags.
Krupp’s world didn’t crumble. It grew.
In August, he was in Nashville coaching his travel youth hockey team, which draws teenagers from around the south, including two from New Orleans, Ryan and Scott. That’s when Katrina hit. Krupp suggested the “no-boys,” as they’re called, return to Atlanta with Scott Wainwright, Ryan’s father. From there, they could monitor the storm and fly home. It figured to be a few days. But on Tuesday, the levees broke. On Wednesday, they learned the schools would be closed until March.
The boys’ families evacuated to Baton Rouge. The Krupps offered to keep Ryan and Joel for a while, and enrolled them in the same private school as their son, the Atlanta International School. The arrangement had expected to last until December. They’re still there. The Krupps even recently moved into a larger home to accommodate four teenaged boys (including another youth player from North Carolina they have been housing).
Krupp: “That house is like a locker room.”
It’s also like a dream. This past weekend, the two boys’ families and Valerie reunited in Miami for a hockey tournament.
“I was on the beach with Joel,” Tim Kern said, “and I told him, ‘Look, we wouldn’t be disappointed if you want to come home. Whatever you want to do, it’s OK.’ He said, ‘Are you out of your mind? I’ve got it made.’ The storm has devastated so many people, but some of us have come out of this OK.”
The families are now giving the Krupp’s a stipend to help support the boys, similar to the “billet” system in Canadian junior hockey. Because of Krupp’s hockey program, Joel has decided to stay in Atlanta. Ryan is “leaning in that direction,” said Scott Wainwright.
But they have not forgotten those first few months. Homes and businesses were lost. The Krupps were there. The two teenagers wore Bjorn’s clothes.
“It’s a tough situation when the families are [next to] you and you’re seeing the pictures of New Orleans,” Krupp said. “You’re hearing them say, ‘That’s my school.’”
Krupp made millions as a player. He “wanted to give something back. I needed a positive thing in my life. Seeing those kids, coaching youth hockey, it’s been great. I’m in a very fortunate situation that I can do this. I don’t have to run and do something that pays my bills. Hockey has allowed me to do this.”
Germany will not reach the next round. The team is 0-2-2 and closes play today against unbeaten Finland. But it hasn’t dulled the experience for Krupp. He was supposed to be an assistant coach, but the would-be head coach quit six weeks before the Olympics. He loves the teaching, but he has been away from Atlanta too much for too long.
“My wife is by herself in Atlanta,” he said. “She’s the one who deserves the medal here. She’s in the mom hall of fame.”
Parents miss their sons and sons miss their parents. They see each other monthly at tournaments. But out of tragedy came this intersection of lives. Joel Kern called Krupp a “great mentor,” adding, “You get to play hockey, you live with your coach, whose an ex-NHL player. It’s so cool.”
In fitness tests in training camp, Krupp exceeded every other Thrasher. “But I didn’t make it out of camp,” before the injuries hit. A career ended, but not the world. That got better.
Permalink | Comments (3) | Categories: Jeff Schultz, Thrashers / NHL
Old guard polarizing Tech on AD
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Unlike Michael F. Adams, who never met a photo opportunity he didn’t squeeze to death, G. Wayne Clough tries to live off-camera. During the run to the 2004 Final Four, Georgia Tech’s greatest sports achievement of his tenure, Clough walked the back hallways of the NCAA tournament venues, no entourage in tow, no profile to enhance. For a time, the favorite parlor game on The Hill — the seat of Tech academic oversight — was to try to distinguish the bearded president from the bearded band director Bucky Johnson.
But now the low-key Clough faces a high-profile hire. He has to replace an athletics director who was both successful and disliked. The Tech old guard sees this vacancy as an opportunity to undo the damage it believes Dave Braine wrought. The old guard has sent word to The Hill that it demands a Tech man, preferably Bill Curry, who technically isn’t an old guard but an old center.
True to his nature, Clough has been secretive about the hiring process, though it’s believed an announcement could come this week. By being so adamant about its preference, the Tech old guard has put Clough in a polarized position — however he moves, he’ll be seen as having kowtowed to Big Money or having thumbed his nose at a powerful and vocal alumni base.
How vocal? Well, to hear his detractors, Dave Braine was an unmitigated disaster. Yeah, he hired Paul Hewitt, but he also hired Chan Gailey, whom the old guard views as an only slightly lesser disaster than Braine — never mind that Gailey hasn’t yet had a losing season — and he allowed himself to be snookered into handing baseball coach Danny Hall a new contract, and isn’t $400,000 a lot to be paying a guy who keeps losing the super regional on his home field?
The old guard made Braine’s life so miserable that, in announcing an extension of Gailey’s contract, the athletics director essentially offered a refutation of old-guard beliefs. “Some people who graduated from Tech in the ’50s and ’60s and ’70s [read: the old guard] have no idea what it’s like today … Georgia Tech can win nine or 10 games, but they will never do it consistently.”
Naturally, the old guard took that as a concession speech. Said Taz Anderson, the Atlanta entrepreneur who played under Bobby Dodd and who has emerged as the de facto spokesman of the old guard: “Will people continue to pay for mediocrity?”
It’s no secret that Anderson wants Curry, the handsome white knight. Curry played at Tech and coached Tech — though some of his backers concede he wasn’t the greatest tactician — and is a public speaker of rare eloquence. Contrast Curry’s famous we-will-bring-the-cheaters-to-their-knees stem-winder of 1984 (which was universally taken as an indictment of Georgia, further endearing the speaker to his constituency) with Braine’s tepid endorsement of Gailey.
Hiring Curry would score maximum points for Clough with the old guard, but here’s the thing: Curry might not be the best hire. He has never run an athletics department, and the days are long past when a school can simply install a former football coach as a figurehead. Like him or not, Braine is a professional AD — he’d done good work in that position at Virginia Tech before coming here — who knew how to oversee a big-budget operation. Where’s the assurance that Curry does?
And it’s unclear if the lobbying on Curry’s behalf will leave a positive or a negative imprint on Clough, who, it must be noted, is an old Tech man himself. (B.S. in ‘64, Masters in ‘65.) Nobody likes being told what to do, and college presidents like it less than most. Surely Clough is clever enough to realize that winning the introductory news conference will count for nothing if his new athletics director isn’t up to the task. If Clough hires Curry, it won’t be because of alumni pressure. It will be because the bearded president sees managerial material in the old center.
Permalink | Comments (36) | Categories: Mark Bradley, Tech / ACC
Cox springs eternal
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
Lake Buena Vista, Fla. — Every February in this land of pixie dust, a miracle happens for the Braves, and those of us among the witnesses have a tendency to take it for granted. With eyes dancing, Bobby Cox keeps showing up to camp. That’s amazing enough in this era of revolving coaches and managers. Not only that, he keeps coming with more perkiness than those 18 rookies that he used to win a 14th consecutive division title last season.
Let’s start with The Speech, a Cox tradition that will occur before the first gathering of the full squad on Wednesday in the home clubhouse of The Ballpark at Disney’s Wide World of Sports. Every face will be riveted to the nearly 65-years-young icon, who always stresses with high emotion during these things that winning the World Series should be their obsession. “I try to vary the speech a little bit,” said Cox, eyes still dancing before chuckling. “Hard to do after 40 something years.”
Nineteen-Sixty. It was the year when Ricky and everybody else still loved Lucy, JFK was only a president elect, and Cox was beginning the first of his 47 consecutive seasons of visiting spring training as either a player, coach or manager.
This is the same Cox who likes to pinch himself each year for having another chance to enjoy this lovely mix of sunshine, baseball and spring. “It’s always fresh, you know?” Cox said. “Spring training handles itself. Everybody’s upbeat, because it’s always something that you want to do. Plus, you always want to see the old faces that you’ve missed, but you especially want to see the new faces. We’ve got a lot of those in camp again. A lot.”
Moments later, Cox did what he often does, whether it is the Braves of spring, summer or autumn. He became a bubbly soul around the clubhouse to make the team’s youth glow instead of shiver in the midst of a legend. The Baby Braves cherish Cox, and so do the few senior citizens on the roster. Eddie Perez is among the latter, especially since he has spent much of his decade in the major leagues watching this miracle up close and personal.
“I can’t wait to see this team trying to operate without Bobby one day,” said Perez, the old catcher, frowning, before easing into a smile. “It’s going to be hard, and I really don’t want to see it. But I do want to see it happen, because I just want to see the reaction from the players to the whole organization when it happens. Bobby is the one who makes this all work. He makes everybody feel really good.”
Just so you know, when Perez says “everybody,” he means the slew of different players and personalities that Cox has encountered during his 24 years of managing the Braves (twice) and the Toronto Blue Jays. In contrast, of the six managers with more victories than Cox, only Tony LaRussa has spent the bulk of his managerial career during Cox’s era in which teams are constantly changing due to free agency. In other words, Cox has perfected that miracle every season by doing the impossible: While not compromising his old-school principles that require his players to dress and act professionally, he still relates to “everybody” on his constantly changing roster. Players love his honesty and that enthusiasm.
Thus another reason why I’ll continue to tell the truth that Cox is the greatest manager ever. Here’s another: The ghosts are everywhere for the Braves, and Cox sees them. He just doesn’t dwell on them.
“When Tom Glavine wasn’t here that first spring, and then Greg Maddux, you know, you’d look at their lockers and walk in that first day and their names weren’t there, it felt funny,” said Cox, blinking to fight moisture in his eyes. “We talked about Otis Nixon for an hour this morning. Lonnie Smith. You miss them. Their names always pop up. It’s strange not having Leo (Mazzone, the Braves’ departed pitching coach for all of their current run).”
The Braves have Cox, though, and to the delight of “everybody,” he shows no signs of going anywhere soon. Perez shook his head, adding, “But it’s going to happen that he’ll leave someday. That’ll be something coming in here without him.”
Then again, Cox is a miracle, and the Magic Kingdom is only a couple of fungoes away, so who knows?
Permalink | Comments (40) | Categories: Braves / MLB, Terence Moore
Earnhardt’s chances go poof with late goof
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
Daytona Beach, Fla. — The thrills were plentiful on Sunday inside Daytona International Speedway, and so were the spills. Thus the constant roaring throughout Volusia County. Actually, that noise had a tendency to increase to slightly louder than the racket produced by one of those Navy fighters that flew over the place before the start of the 500, but only whenever Dale Earnhardt Jr. did anything.
He did a lot. It’s just that he didn’t do enough at the end. His No. 8 Chevrolet went from threatening to earn a place today in the nearby museum to driving toward the NASCAR equivalent of a mausoleum with a dreary eighth-place finish. When he couldn’t find enough juice to catch eventual winner Jimmie Johnson, Earnhardt told his crew chief, Tony Eury Jr., that his engine lacked the fountain of youth.
Or something like that. “It’s like an old man,� said Earnhardt, of his engine over his two-way radio. “It will wake up for a while, and then fall back asleep.�
Good thing Earnhardt could joke at a time like that. He did more to lose this one than whatever wasn’t happening underneath his hood. With 18 laps to go in what was developing into a classic shootout, Earnhardt goofed. That’s when he dropped out of the top 10 to 20th within a couple of seconds after getting shuffled out of the draft. He never recovered. It all contributed to the circuit’s first and biggest race of the year going to one of its least popular drivers instead of to the guy who ranks as the people’s choice.
About Johnson: Suddenly, he is drifting toward the edge of Jeff Gordon territory when it comes to likeability among NASCAR fans, and that isn’t good. Johnson spent his post-race news conference on the defensive, especially since his crew chief, Chad Knaus, was suspended before the race for continuing his habit of treating the rule book as reverently as a blown tire.
As for Earnhardt, there were about 198,000 of the 200,000 folks at the speedway who wanted him to win or who wouldn’t have cared if he did. Among other things, it was written on the legendary walls.
Literally. You even could see as much through the grayness created by an afternoon of heavy clouds that eventually began leaking into a mist.
“Go No. 8.�
“We love you, Jr.�
“Please don’t leave your mark here, Dale Jr., No. 8.�
Fortunately, Earnhardt’s ride didn’t smack one of those walls, but he knows about such things. In fact, Daytona International was the site of his greatest moment in racing and his worst moment in life. There was two years ago, for instance, when he held off a charging Tony Stewart near the end for a signature victory in the race that his father helped make famous. You probably heard of daddy Earnhardt, the sainted Dale Sr., who pushed his No. 3 car into the wall of the fourth turn and perished.
That was five years ago. Since then, the younger Earnhardt has recovered from the trauma of it all to admit that he wishes to become as prolific as his father. Along the way to the 500 last week, he spent a press gathering becoming a low-key combination of Muhammad Ali and Joe Namath.
Not only did Earnhardt predict that he’d win this race, but he said that he’ll qualify for the same Chase for the Nextel Cup at the end of the season that he missed last year. He had reason to boast.
For the first time since 2004, when Earnhardt finished the best of his seven years on the tour with six wins, he has first cousin Tony Eury Jr. returning for a full season as his crew chief. They always were a wonderful team, but the geniuses at Dale Earnhardt Inc. lost their minds last season by having Dale Jr. switch crew chiefs with Michael Waltrip, then one of Earnhardt’s teammates.
Although Earnhardt and Eury were reunited near the end of last season, it was too late then, but all things are possible now — even after Sunday’s finish.
“I’m so proud of my team. They gave me a good car, and we ran great, and that’s all I wanted to do,� Earnhardt said. “It’s been a long week. We’re real happy to be able to come out of here, because a lot of guys weren’t so fortunate. We’re happy with a top 10.�
Yeah, but the Top One is where an Earnhardt is supposed to be.
Permalink | Comments (17) | Categories: Auto Racing, Terence Moore
U.S. hockey stuck between generations
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
Turin, Italy — There is little question that Don Waddell put together an Olympic hockey team capable of winning a gold medal. Maybe not in Turin, but four years ago.
The U.S. will advance to the next round of the men’s hockey tournament. It’s the residue of a generous playoff system and the good fortune of being grouped in the same pool with Latvia and Kazakhstan. So lap it up.
The Americans will advance despite Sunday’s 2-1 loss to Sweden, which left them with one victory in four games. They will advance despite scoring only two goals in the past two nights and handling the puck on the power play like it has a contagious disease.
Win the gold medal? Well, it depends. How many games can you win 1-0?
“If you look at the top-scoring Americans in the league, they’re all here,� said the Thrashers’ and U.S. general manager after Sunday’s game. “We have what we thought was the best team we could put together. We just have to find a way to score some goals.�
Here’s the problem: Doug Weight, Keith Tkachuk, Bill Guerin — they used to be NHL centerpieces. Now, more often than not, they are NHL relics. Mike Modano is hanging on, but he’s not the same player. Brett Hull is retired. Jeremy Roenick wasn’t good enough to make the team, although he’s the last to realize that.
It’s not Waddell’s fault. You can second-guess a selection here or there, but for the most part this really is as good as it gets. The U.S. was caught between generations. The group that followed the aforementioned players just weren’t exceptional goal-scorers.
“We had such a good group of forwards for so long, but we had the same guys in tournaments for seven years,� Waddell said. “Now we have new guys coming like [Brian] Gionta and [Erik] Cole, but they’re not ready yet. We’re in a transition period.�
The 2-1 loss to Sweden was a near carbon copy of the 2-1 loss to Slovakia the night before. The U.S. created scoring chances; it just couldn’t do anything with them. Worst of all, they had 5-on-3 power plays in the first and second periods for a total of 3:38 and couldn’t convert. The best scoring chance actually came from the Swedes. An errant pass by Scott Gomez was picked off by P.J. Axelsson, who was stopped on a breakaway by goalie Rick DiPietro.
Modano scored the U.S.’s only goal late in the first period off a nice feed from Craig Conroy, but it was the only shot of 25 that got past goalie Henrik Lundqvist. Sweden’s Mikael Samuelsson broke a 1-1 tie just 8 seconds into a power play early in the third. And a 2-1 deficit tends to be insurmountable these days.
“We’ve got some of the greatest goal scorers who ever played the game in our dressing room,� defenseman Mathieu Schneider said.
Well, that’s true. And if some of them weren’t still putting on an Olympic uniform, it wouldn’t be a problem. In contrast, DiPietro has played three strong games in goal. It’s ironic because he wasn’t picked to start the first game, and before the Olympics most of the nervousness seemed to be about the U.S.’s goaltending, not offense.
“We felt we put a great team together,� Modano said. “But it’s not going to come easy, and when it doesn’t come you can’t get frustrated.�
But problems won’t keep the U.S. out of the next round. With three points (two ahead of Latvia) and a game left against Russia, the worst the U.S. can do is be tied in the standings. The Americans and Latvia tied in their meeting. The next tiebreaker is goal-differential. The U.S. is plus-one and Latvia is minus-15. Even if the U.S. loses to Russia Tuesday and Latvia beats Kazakhstan, the odds of their being a 16-goal differential in the two games are remote.
The built-in comfort level led somebody to ask Weight on Sunday if U.S. players have lacked a sense of urgency in their attack. Weight said, “We have an urgent feeling. You don’t score goals because you’re not playing urgent. Maybe it means you’re playing too desperate.�
Or, you’re just not what you used to be.
Permalink | Comments (6) | Categories: Jeff Schultz, Other
Braves start ‘06 more auspiciously than ‘05
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
The Braves, kings of division baseball, begin their new season already leading the pack in one category before the first pitch is thrown — bridegrooms. Macay McBride, Ryan Langerhans, Pete Orr and Anthony Lerew all got hitched in an outbreak of matrimony during the offseason, and there’s an indication of family solidarity there. You may remember that a year ago Schuerholz & Co. began the season with a patchwork outfield, Andruw Jones flanked by Brian Jordan on one side and Raul Mondesi on the other. It was no time at all before Schuerholz had to send to the warehouse for new parts, and all the way down to the second level.
What transpired was a kind of a kid-next-door team that gave us exceeding exhilaration that comes only with fresh, unshaven youth. Names like Davies, McCann, Boyer, Johnson and Francoeur began cropping up in the lineup, several of them from just around the corner. And Francoeur, for that matter, more prominently remembered as a football hotshot.
As the season turned, Jeff Francoeur played right field as if he’d invented it. Ryan Langerhans made his home in left field, embellished with a fine arm and exciting defense. Jones’ work in center field took on a new shine. When John Smoltz anointed Brian McCann as his catcher of choice, and the lad began peppering the ball, it was obvious Johnny Estrada’s future was elsewhere.
That brings up the tongue-twisting name of Jarrod Saltalamacchia. You may as well get used to it, probably not this year, but down the road. Salty is big, 6 feet 4, strong and has an arm. He hits home runs, 19 last year at Myrtle Beach, where the outfield is as vast as a prairie. Makes no difference, he can hit them from either side. Todd Pratt is a one-year insurance policy, and he’s only passing through. When Saltalamacchia takes his place at Turner Field, the Braves will have an enviable backstopping inventory.
All the offseason changes have been registered, and there was little to mourn. Rafael Furcal and $13 million in Los Angeles sounds dangerous to me. Edgar Renteria is not exactly a poor man’s shortstop. He’s a larger body than Furcal, hits home runs, steals bases, knows the pressure of playing on a World Series winner and has a good off-track record. Rather puzzling is the situation of Wilson Betemit — remember, this fellow hit .305 last year — but I’d guess this is it: Trading Andy Marte pretty much says that Betemit is Chipper Jones’ heir apparent, and until that time, he’ll be doing a lot of utility duty and pinch hitting.
Julio Franco is gone, and shed no tears for him. The Mets are paying a 47-year-old part-timer $2 million; meanwhile, consider the good fortune of the Braves. James Jurries is 20 years younger, swings from the right side, hits the long ball, and at Richmond last season had 21 home runs and drove in 72 in 363 times at bat. The season before, he hit 25 home runs between Greenville and Richmond. Jurries gives Bobby Cox platooning possibilities at first, Adam LaRoche from the left side, Jurries from the right.
Jurries is a Tulane University alumnus, out of Texas, and swings a good bat. He’s also competitive, as witness this: He was suspended two games last season for his part in a fight. You like the looks of this guy’s batting action.
Pitching? You know, Leo Mazzone’s gone, and now that he’s out of hearing, you begin to pick up little snippets of back-biting. He was gruff to rookies, he was a tough communicator, a tyrant.
Well, he had a tough situation to deal with last year. The closer was a disaster. Horacio Ramirez was out of action a good deal. So were John Thomson and Tim Hudson, who instead of winning 20 won 14. But some genius turned Jorge Sosa into a 13-3 starter. And it was Mazzone’s mission to deal with all the kids who came up from the kindergarten. Now it’s up to Roger McDowell to see what he can get done. We know he’s a jolly good-timer, but what kind of major league pitching coach is he?
That’s about it at this stage. Doesn’t look too bad, considering what Cox starts with this year against what he had on hand last spring. And I’ll say this, there’s nothing like blossoming youth to brighten up a spring.
Permalink | Comments (27) | Categories: Braves / MLB, Furman Bisher
‘Phony’ Bode a skiing, marketing dud
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
Sestriere, Italy — Join Bode. Where? Any place other than a medal stand.
Phone Bode. Somebody tell him that when you’re the first American to win the World Cup in 22 years, and you blanket Time and Newsweek the same week, and you’re a zillionaire but you somehow can still pull off that I’m-too-cool-and-anti-establishment-to-become-one-of-THEM, going 0-for-snow just doesn’t play well.
Moan Bode.
The downhill: Finished fifth.
The combined: Missed a gate and was disqualified.
The Super G: Miscalculated a tight left turn, rammed into a gate with his shoulder, lost his balance and slid off course while navigating on one-ski to the side (possibly qualifying him for a new freestyle event in 2010).
Miller’s Nike-created website, JoinBode.com, tells us to, “Join the bold, the brazen, the unintimidated. Join not having excuses. Join the idea that fun is the source of all joy.” So we’ll just have to assume he’s having fun. Confirmation isn’t possible, however, because Miller — we can only assume just too giddy to function — declined to pass through the “mixed zone” at the bottom of the hill. (The “mixed zone” is the Olympics’ walk-while-you talk interview area. There where maybe 300 journalists there prepared to quiz Miller in 27 languages about not having excuses.)
A fifth. A DQ. A DNF. So he gets a gold for variety.
Miller has two events left, the slalom and giant slalom. It would be unfair to suggest that should he whiff in his medal quest, he could be cast as marketing-fluff of Kournikovian proportions. The man has won World Cup races. He won two silver medals in the pre-overkill days of Salt Lake City. He knows how to ski. Or at least used to.
Groin, Bode?
There have been questions about his conditioning, commitment and focus leading into the Olympics. Despite all of the attention paid to Miller’s 2004-05 World Cup success, the fact is that he won only one of his first 25 races this season.
His late-night partying exploits have been well documented. As world-class athletes go, he’s not exactly sculpted. The question now is whether everything has caught up to him at the worst possible time.
“It’s not something I’m going to get into,” U.S. ski coach Phil McNichol said Saturday, when asked if the nightlife has affected Bode. “Bode’s a big boy. He’s an adult.”
McNichol said Miller has been to all of the team-related training sessions, adding that he has been “engaged and energetic.”
He also affirmed: “He’s fit enough to win Olympic medals.”
So maybe Miller’s head is the problem. McNichol, speaking for all of mankind said, “I would never, ever attempt to say I know what he feels.” But the fact is that Miller has more commitments to sponsors than ever before. The Olympics represent a structure he claims to detest. And that whole pressure to win thing that society forces on us — it’s so not him.
Teammate Daron Rahlves came to Miller’s defense when asked if this qualified as a huge letdown after all of the pre-Olympics hype. “He didn’t say he was going to win gold, not that I know of,” Rahlves said. “There wasn’t much buildup from his corner.”
All-righty then. Miller could take a lesson in focus from Norway’s Kjetil Aamodt, who won his record eighth Olympic medal by taking gold in the Super G at age 34. Don’t know how many races Aamodt has skied hung-over, but probably not many.
Own Bode?
That would be the mountain. His mishap Saturday seemed typical fallout of his all-out sometimes-reckless brand of skiing. McNichol said, “He didn’t express anything to me that he took too much risk… . He seemed the same as any other day he doesn’t finish.”
He then praised Miller with a heavy dose of qualification: “When he’s skiing, he’s skiing really well. But he obviously hasn’t put a race together.”
Coin, Bode?
Not necessary. Money isn’t a problem. It won’t be for a long time, if ever. But notwithstanding Miller’s stated position that medals aren’t that big of deal _ not everybody thinks that way. Not the people who pay him. Not the people who watch him.
Should he go 0-for-5, watch how few will want to join him.
Permalink | Comments (10) | Categories: Jeff Schultz, Other
Silence greets Mazzone’s departure
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
Lake Buena Vista, Fla. — This Leo Mazzone thing is strange, unfortunate, disgusting. Rarely in the history of sports has somebody done so much for a franchise only to produce this amount of shrugging after his departure. “Just because you don’t talk about the devastation, that doesn’t mean you’re glad he’s gone,” said John Smoltz on Friday before the Braves’ pitchers and catchers started workouts for the first time this spring.
With apologies to Smoltz, the Braves’ ace who ranks among the all-time elite at putting anything into perspective, well, um, how should I say this? Don’t be surprised if more than a few Braves pitchers decide to march with Mickey, Minnie and Goofy at nearby Magic Kingdom during one of those daily parades. They’ll be celebrating Mazzone opting to coach and rock with the Baltimore Orioles this season instead of with the Braves for a 16th straight year.
After a pause, Stockbridge’s Kyle Davies reflected on last season, when he spent his first and only time under Mazzone, the pitching coach with the football coach mentality. “I didn’t DISLIKE him,” Davies said, before adding, “I didn’t get a whole lot of time to get to know the guy. Maybe if I’d been with the Braves a couple of years and he was still around, then maybe it would have been different.”
Probably not, especially if you go by what the majority wasn’t saying around the home clubhouse inside The Ballpark at Disney’s Wide World of Sports. The majority wasn’t saying they’ll miss the balding perfectionist who evolved into the greatest pitching coach ever by leading a staff that finished first or second in the majors in team ERA for 12 of the last 14 consecutive seasons that the Braves have made the playoffs. And, yes, Mazzone had Cy Maddux, Cy Smoltz and Cy Glavine for much of that stretch. Or should we say those future Hall of Fame pitchers had Mazzone?
Whatever the case, they had each other, and Braves starter Tim Hudson said, “The one year [2005] that I was with Leo, I liked him. He’s pretty, uh. Well, uh. When you get to know him, you get to like him, but it’s tough to get to know him.”
To which I say: So what? Bobby Knight isn’t cuddly, but he has three NCAA basketball titles, an NIT championship and an Olympic gold medal. Contrary to popular belief, Vince Lombardi’s players only tolerated the guy along the way to a Green Bay dynasty. Leo Durocher wasn’t speaking of coaches and managers when he said, “Nice guys finish last,” but he could have been. That doesn’t mean you must be nasty to be effective. It means there isn’t anything wrong with Mazzone operating as what Braves reliever Chris Reitsma described as “a loud and boisterous man.”
Still, Davies spoke for many of the 13 of 18 pitchers on the Braves’ 40-man roster who have spent three years or less in the major leagues. “I was kind of intimidated by Leo at first, you know?” Davies said. “It’s like, ‘This is Leo Mazzone, the best pitching coach in the game,’ and I think that’s why people began to say that he’s really tough on you. But he’s just intimidating to begin with.”
Now the Braves have Roger McDowell, a noted funny man during his pitching career in the majors. Never mind that his stint as a coach at any level doesn’t extend beyond the last four years he spent in the minors with the Los Angeles Dodgers. He’s the anti-Leo, so he’s the people’s choice. Unlike Mazzone, he isn’t obsessed with delivering down-and-away pitches, or throwing between outings, or scaring the “A” off the cap of his students who don’t adhere to his teachings. When it comes to each of his pitchers, he’s more adaptable, and he’s definitely more affable.
“You don’t start missing any kind of coach or a manager, if he’s been successful, until two or three years down the road,” said Bobby Dews, the Braves’ wise bullpen coach, who has spent more than three decades in the franchise in various capacities, usually with Mazzone. “If we would have lost the manager [Bobby Cox] and the pitching coach, it would be tough. But Bobby’s philosophy and Leo’s are so close. And so is my philosophy. So Roger coming in can only be a plus for us.”
Here’s the negative: While McDowell might become pretty good, Mazzone already is pretty great.
Permalink | Comments (22) | Categories: Braves / MLB, Terence Moore
Hughes skating beneath the radar
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
Turin, Italy — A week after the Opening Ceremonies, Emily Hughes finally arrived at the Olympics. The good news is, she’s still tied in the medals count with Bode Miller and Johnny Weir — and I’m assuming even if she does bomb, she won’t borrow a page from Weir’s soul (“I didn’t feel my inner peace. I didn’t feel my aura. I was black inside.”).
There is nothing wrong with Hughes’ aura. The forces that seemed against her when Michelle Kwan backdoored her way onto the Olympic figure skating team pulled a 180 when fate caught up with Kwan’s groin. (Kwan: Most definitely black inside.)
So it’s no surprise that when Hughes met with the media and practiced for the first time Friday after arriving in Turin the previous afternoon, she was all smiles.
Her Olympic highlights so far?
“I got to go to the men’s event last night. And I got these cool clothes.”
Now, official threads don’t make the Olympian, just as the helmet doesn’t make the quarterback and the Braves uniform doesn’t make the closer. But this much is certain: If Hughes actually wins a medal after taking such a bizarre route to get here, it would be the single biggest story of these Olympics.
“I never would have thought by finishing third at the nationals that I would get this much attention,” Hughes said. “It’s pretty cool.”
She just turned 17. She seems younger. But sometimes being young and dumb plays in your favor. It worked for a hockey team in Lake Placid. Hughes finished third in the U.S. nationals, but her greatest international experience was a bronze in the World Junior Championships. She has never been on anything remotely close to the Olympic stage. Hughes isn’t quite the longshot that the men’s hockey team was, but she could thrive on that same, no-pressure, let’s-just-play fuel.
“I feel like I don’t have any expectations,” she said. “I can just go out there and attack everything.”
Hughes is already ahead of Kwan. She made it through her 40-minute practice session at the Palaghiaccio practice rink without an injury. She even landed a triple-triple.
“I thought it went great,” said her coach Bonni Retzkin, before giving a thumbs-up sign and declining further comment. (I guess she figured the thumb spoke volumes.)
Another coach was more expansive. Robin Wagner, who coached Sarah Hughes, Emily’s sister, to a gold medal in 2002, watched the younger Hughes take her turns. She said the two sisters share a similar situation going into the Games. Sarah also had finished third in the nationals before Salt Lake City and, even though she had skated in far more international competitions than Emily, expectations were similarly low.
“So much attention was put on Sasha [Cohen] and Michelle [Kwan] and [Irina] Slutskaya that I don’t think Sarah had the sort of pressure to place,” Wagner said. “You always want to perform as a competitor. You always have the pressure to perform as a competitor. You want to be at your very best. But there was a lot of buzz going on outside of Sarah, which enabled her to keep her focus and do what she needed to do. So it is possible that Emily will come and she’ll probably skate a very good performance.”
No Olympic alternate has ever won a medal. But then, no Olympic alternate has ever actually made the team, either. Hughes was sitting in a Japanese restaurant eating sushi in Long Island last week when her father got the call about Kwan pulling out. They were told to keep it secret until the next day, so basically they couldn’t scream until they left the restaurant.
She stayed in town for a few days and even went to school. The high school junior even brought some homework with her to Italy. If she gets too far behind, the IOC will be happy to provide a note for the teacher.
Hughes seemed to be soaking it all in Friday, and she did so calmly. Suffice it to say, she was more focused than the journalist who called her “Sarah” in a news conference.
“Actually, I’m Emily,” she said.
Then, regarding the comparisons to her sister, she added: “I’m definitely a different person than Sarah. But she is my sister, and everyone eventually will compare us. And I don’t think it’s too bad to be compared to a gold medalist.”
Permalink | Comments (6) | Categories: Jeff Schultz, Other
Memories of father inspire Kovalchuk
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
Turin, Italy — His father would have liked this. The Olympics, when everybody back home is watching. A team of Russian-grown NHL stars dominating another country, as if this was still the Soviet Union in 1972. The son, in an all-red uniform with Cyrillic writing on it.
“Hockey was my father’s favorite sport, even though he played basketball,” Ilya Kovalchuk said Thursday. “He watched the Olympic games and World Championships, always. He talked about the old guys like [Valeri] Kharlamov and [Vladimir] Petrov and [Boris] Mikhailov.”
Four years ago, Valeri Kovalchuk watched Ilya play in the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake City. He died seven months ago, and it’s a subject the son still has difficulty discussing.
Valeri bought Ilya his first pair of skates at the age of five. The two often watched videotapes of the old Soviet national teams, tapes the son still has. The father’s favorite player was Kharlamov, who wore No. 17. He also was Ilya’s favorite player, so he wears No. 17 with the Thrashers. He has transposed that in Turin to 71, because the Russian hockey federation.
Yes, Valeri Kovalchuk would have liked this. Russian hockey is being taken seriously again, by a younger generation of players that appeared to be lost in capitalism.
Russia bounced back from a 5-3 opening loss to Slovakia to pound medal favorite Sweden, 5-0, Thursday. It suddenly has cast itself as a contender for gold.
That element had pretty much disappeared with the fall of Communism. The Soviets won gold in eight of 10 Olympics (1956-92), the last as the transitional “Unified Team” after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
But in the last three Olympics, Russia had been hurt by defections to the NHL, turmoil within its federation, a chasm between the old guard and new guard and possible indifference. Russia failed to medal in 1994. In the first two Olympics with NHL players, they won silver in Nagano and bronze in Salt Lake City.
“I think it’s coming back,” said defenseman Darius Kasparaitis, a member of the ‘92 team, “They’re bringing good hockey back to the Russian people. You could sense before that [players] used to come and just coast around. Now I think guys want to be here and work hard.”
Kovalchuk can’t claim Kasparaitis’s perspective — he is only 22, Kasparaitis is 33 — but he never had any sense of apathy.
“When you win everybody in your country is excited,” he said. “I got 28 phone calls after [the Slovakia] game. Tonight everybody celebrated. I don’t know how many calls I’ll get.
“The Olympic games are played for your country. Millions of people want to celebrate with you. Everybody dreamt of this growing up.”
Kovalchuk remembers watching the Olympics in 1992. He likened this team to that one.
“We’re going to show results on the ice, and after that everybody can respect us,” he said. “I remember the ‘92 team was really young like us. It had just a couple of old guys. Nobody respected them, and they beat Canada in the final.”
The late Kharlamov, a Hall of Famer, played left wing, like Kovalchuk. He still holds career Olympic records for assists (21) and points (36), including 16 points (nine goals, seven assists) in 1972 in Sapporo, Japan. The only interruptions of Soviet gold between 1956 and 1992 were U.S. titles in ‘60 and ‘80.
“They would dominate in the World Championships and Olympic games,” Kovalchuk said. “The last 10 or 12 years we didn’t win anything. But in the last two Olympics it hasn’t been too bad.”
This Russia team is loaded with young talent up front: Kovalchuk, Alexander Ovechkin (20), Evgeni Malkin (19). The team actually is missing several established players, either because of injuries or rejections (goalie Nikolai Khabibulin, Sergei Federov and Alexei Zhamnov among them). But it hasn’t mattered.
“We have great young players — that’s Russia’s hockey future,” Kovalchuk said. “In a couple of years, these young guys are going to dominate.”
That would make both father and son happy.
Permalink | Comments (17) | Categories: Jeff Schultz, Other, Thrashers / NHL
Exit Davis, Sutton
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Mike Davis took Indiana to the 2002 NCAA title game. He’ll leave IU after the season ends, but essentially Davis gave up the ghost on Monday, when he said Indiana needed “one of its own” as its basketball coach. An Alabama man, Davis couldn’t qualify on that front.
Eddie Sutton took Oklahoma State to the 2004 Final Four, and now he, too, is all but gone. He crashed his car last weekend, and the minute you heard the news you thought, “Uh-oh. Must be drinking again.” Late Wednesday night, Sutton admitted he had been. So now, six victories shy of 800, the best coach never to win a national championship is on a leave of absence, a leave almost certain to become permanent.
Two big-name coaches. Two high-profile jobs. Widely differing circumstances. Davis was belittled in Bloomington because he wasn’t Bobby Knight. (Although Davis, who has the knack for saying the wrong thing at the wrong time, never really helped himself. Remember how, on the eve of the 2002 championship game, he said coaching the NBA had always been his dream? IU fans hated that.) Sutton was beloved in Stillwater for taking the Cowboys to two Final Fours and making them one of the nation’s best programs.
Coming after Knight (who, as we know, has issues of his own), Davis was always on borrowed time. His strange actions — remember him running on the court as play was ongoing at the end of a game against Kentucky? — made that time even shorter. Sutton could have stayed as long as he’d liked, but his recurring trouble with alcohol — he’d sought treatment while coaching Kentucky in the ’80s, another job he was forced to exit after the scandal over the Emery envelope containing $1,000 — undid him.
Coaching college basketball is a hard enough job, but if you persist, through personality quirks or chemical dependencies or whatever, in making it even harder, you’ll wind up exiting under circumstances not of your choosing. Coaching college basketball is tough. Real life is tougher still.
Permalink | Comments (6) | Categories: Mark Bradley, Quick Hit
It’s time to lay off the refs and enjoy the game
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
There is an epidemic in sports that has to stop. Whether we’re talking about the big leagues or pee wee, our favorite pastime isn’t baseball or football. It is blasting the stripes off the officials whenever they have the audacity to do more than breathe during a game. Such venom also has been spewed at umpires, who suddenly are viewed as more despicable at ballparks than cold hot dogs and warm beer.
So, if you’re among those wringing their hands over a problem that really doesn’t exist, what’s your solution? Extending the use of instant replay? Mass firings and hirings by leagues when it comes to those calling games? Robots? How about a select committee from Congress making a decision on every play?
Well, here’s my humble advice to all of those who don’t realize that officiating and umpiring never has been better in most leagues and at nearly every level:
Shut up and play.
Shut up and coach.
Shut up and watch.
No question, officials and umpires have produced dramatic gaffes, exemplified during this college basketball season when the refs wouldn’t reverse an erroneously called technical on University of Houston coach Tom Penders after he dropped to the court due to heart problems. You also have those other botched calls of lore, ranging from the Immaculate Reception to Don Denkinger snatching a world championship from the St. Louis Cardinals to Colorado’s fifth down in college football.
Those were flukes, though, which means the longest and the loudest of grumbling over umpiring and officiating is misplaced more often than not. Take Super Bowl XL, for instance. Contrary to popular belief, the Pittsburgh Steelers did more to defeat the Seattle Seahawks than the zebras.
“It’s because people see the replays in a big game like that, but they really don’t know the rules,” said Frank Glover Sr., who really does. He worked 17 years as an accomplished football official in the SIAC without missing a game before he did the same for 17 more years in the NFL through the late 1980s. He also is a member of the Georgia Sports Hall of Fame.
Since retiring from the field, Glover has worked for the league as a talent evaluator of officials. I’m limited in space, so you’ll have to trust me on this: He found something in the NFL rulebook to support each of the supposedly controversial calls against the Seahawks during the Super Bowl. Said Glover, who has spent the past 58 of his 74 years in Atlanta, “I think that NFL officiating is at its best now. It’s because of instant replay. We really didn’t like it at first, but it has helped the credibility of all officials. It shows that they are way more right than wrong.”
Such is the case in every sport and at every level. So is the whining. You have the NBA, for instance, where Phil Jackson is exposing himself as a guy who needs the likes of a Michael or a Shaq to prosper. As a result, Jackson is inventing conspiracies involving referees and his shaky Lakers. Elsewhere, umpires supposedly helped the Braves win those division titles by giving Cy Maddux, Cy Glavine and Cy Smoltz strikes within a couple of zip codes of the outside corner. Plus, we all know that Duke continues to dribble near greatness every year in college basketball because of whistles instead of talent.
What a joke. At this rate, a blown call (or a perceived one) might get you something just shy of capital punishment. The truth is that teams always have lost more because of what they didn’t do than what an official, referee or umpire actually did. And, yes, I’m biased. The job that I enjoyed the most behind the one I’ve had for nearly three decades was umpiring youth baseball throughout my teenage years. The stomping and the screaming that I encountered back then as an umpire prepared me for what I occasionally face now as a columnist. You need toughness for both jobs.
That’s why I have softness for officiating and umpiring. That’s also why I nodded when Glover told the truth by saying, “Now they [officials and umpires] might commit an error sometime. They might be inconclusive sometime.” Then Glover added after a pause, “But not too often.”
Permalink | Comments (53) | Categories: Braves / MLB, Falcons / NFL, Hawks / NBA, Tech / ACC, Terence Moore, Thrashers / NHL, UGA / SEC
Plucky Latvia beats U.S. in 3-3 tie
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
Turin, Italy — If this is going to be a medal run, then give the U.S hockey team points for performing the ultimate deception Wednesday night.
Because it’s not every day you have to frantically rally for a goal in the third period to tie a small Eastern European country playing in only its second Olympics.
Latvia was not supposed to be a problem for the U.S. in the opener of the Olympic men’s hockey tournament. Latvia’s goalie, former NHL veteran Arturs Irbe, played only 10 games in the league in 2003-04. He couldn’t land a deal this year. So he’s playing in Salzburg, Austria, which is mostly famous for the hills being alive with the “Sound of Music.”
Latvia? Latvia used only two players Wednesday night who are in the NHL. One of those, defenseman Sandis Ozolinsh, just finished a six-week stay in a substance abuse program. He received approval to play in the Olympics just the other day.
Latvia? Latvia had the go-ahead goal Wednesday night scored by Herbert Vasiljevs, who played seven games with the Thrashers in 1999, when, well, everybody played seven games with the Thrashers. Latvia 3, U.S. only 3. Exactly what that means depends in part on how the Americans play Thursday night against Kazakhstan. Also how they play when they actually start facing good teams.
“The naysayers had their way tonight,” said forward Mike Knuble, referencing the low expectations by some for this Olympic team. “They can point a finger at us and say, ‘I told you so.’ But there’s still a lot of hockey to be played. It’s probably a little bit of a wakeup call for us. I think we all walked away and learned something really fast.”
For starters, the U.S. learned a 2-0 lead is not safe against Latvia. The fast start on goals by Brian Gionta and Craig Conroy in the first 10 minutes turned out to be an aberration. Whether it was jet lag or focus, the team appeared to hit a wall the last half of the period and in the second, and Latvia rallied with three straight goals. The last came from Vasiljevs, who whizzed a shot over John Grahame’s glove 15:44 into the second.
Suddenly, Palasport Olimpico looked and sounded like the capital of Latvia, whatever the capital of Latvia is.
Look, here’s all you need to know. The U.S. just lost to a country that roughly covers as much earth as West Virginia and has less than half the population of Atlanta.
Maybe we should just forget about playing Russia next week and focus on small former Soviet pieces, like Estonia.
“Obviously this is disappointing for us,” coach Peter Laviolette said. “But [Thursday], we’ll wake up, and I’m sure we’ll feel better. Every day, we’ll get a little more adjusted and, hopefully, we’ll be a little sharper with our game.”
As much as players like Derian Hatcher pointed to the team “feeling out of sync,” the U.S. roster — while not star-laden — shouldn’t need a lot of chemistry to beat an undermanned Latvian team. But a third-period goal by Jordan Leopold and the fact the U.S. carried the play down the stretch (outshooting Latvia 19-6 in the third period) at least suggests there’s some hope for this team.
“We don’t have a lot of time to get together, so it better be now,” Knuble said.
The scoreboard may have read 3-3. But when time expired, U.S. players slumped and Latvia players raised their sticks in celebration. At the center of it were two unlikely participants. One was Ozolinsh, who arrived only Tuesday from rehab. He said little of the past six weeks, saying only, “I was pretty excited and a little bit nervous. Just the usual feelings.”
The other was Irbe. He carried the Latvian flag into Olympic Stadium during the Opening Ceremony. He is revered in his country for helping lead the drive to end Communism in the 1990s. Now if he wanted to, he could be president.
“Look at the crowds, look at the sea of burgundy and white,” he said. “It’s a very special day for us.”
Well. That makes one country.
Permalink | Comments (9) | Categories: Jeff Schultz, Other, Thrashers / NHL
WBC should be DOA
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
The closer we get to the new World Baseball Classic, the worse it sounds. That is, if you want your favorite team to have its best chance to do something this season.
In other words, there still is hope that the Braves can win their first world championship in 11 years. Pitchers John Smoltz and Tim Hudson had the good sense to decline this thing.
Seven other Braves players didn’t, and they include the two Jones (Chipper and Andruw), Chris Reitsma and Jeff Francoeur. That means they’ll be among those involved in this craziness during spring training of practicing with their teams on occasion and with Team USA, Team Canada or Team Whatever on many other occasions.
In addition to Anaheim, Phoenix and San Diego, WBC games are scheduled for Tokyo and San Juan, both sort of a long way from the Cactus and Grapefruit leagues.
Then you have that matter of somebody likely getting hurt.
Crazy. Just crazy.
Permalink | Comments (6) | Categories: Quick Hit, Terence Moore
Veil of time obscures Vaught’s greatness
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
Ole Miss football devotees had no idea what they were getting for $12,000 a year when John Vaught decided he’d rather coach their team than be an assistant at Alabama in 1947. What would follow was like striking a football Spindletop in Oxford, six championships in the Southeastern Conference, three of the whole wide nation (by at least one rating system), and total dominance of the state of Mississippi, then verdant with talent.
Time has a way of eroding memories such as these. Long before Bryant at Alabama, before Spurrier at Florida, but running concurrently with Dodd at Georgia Tech, there was Vaught at Ole Miss. Dodd wouldn’t schedule the Rebels. “Who wants to spend a weekend in Oxford, Miss.?” (Well, right now who wouldn’t?)
If there has ever been a coach more athletic in physique than Vaught, I never saw him. He was raised on a farm near Olney, Texas, one of 11 children. Tonto Coleman, when at Georgia Tech, told a yarn of how he and Vaught met, “running the highway in the morning looking for roadkill,” he said.
Well, when I checked the map of Texas and found that Olney was about 150 miles from Roscoe, Tonto’s hometown, I realized I’d been spoofed. Truth is, though, I think Vaught could have made it.
Vaught was an All-America guard at Texas Christian, in a time when it was 11 players to a team. When he came to North Carolina as an assistant to Bear Wolf, I was a manager, and came to know, respect and sometimes fear him. A kind but hardy man who would match dropkicks with me after practice, but never kind enough to allow me to win.
It was on a recruiting trip to Allentown, Pa., that he came across a likely prospect, “walking out of this coal mine with a sack of coal on his back,” a story he liked to tell. The prospect’s name was Walter Palanuik, a tackle who thought he was a fullback. When his coaches didn’t agree, he quit the team and turned to acting. You know him as Jack Palance.
What Vaught did at Ole Miss was establish a football kingdom. He had been a lieutenant commander in the Navy, returned to Chapel Hill as the pre-flight school instructor, and caught on as an assistant to Red Drew at Ole Miss. When Drew left, he tried to take Vaught with him, until at the last minute Vaught changed his mind. Ole Miss won the conference championship right out of the box and the rush to glory was on. Kids with names like Bobby Ray, Billy Ray, Rex Reed, Eagle, Bookie, Showboat got in line from Moss Point to Corinth to play for the Rebels. Ole Miss had its pick. A string of all-star quarterbacks followed in lock-step, from Charlie Conerly to Archie Manning.
Ole Miss had linemen that appeared to have come off the pages of a fitness magazine. Tall, about 240 — large for those times — and swift, as if ordered by conscription. They were merely biding time on the way to the NFL, Jim Dunaway, Gene Hickerson, Johnny Brewer, Larry Grantham, and on they came. Still, when talk starts up about great games Ole Miss has played in, it nearly always includes a rainy night at LSU in 1959, when Billy Cannon returned a punt 89 yards and upset the Rebels.
It cost them a perfect season, but what has washed away with time is a lot of history. Though Ole Miss played an unbeaten season in 1962, Vaught always said the ‘59 team was his best. That bunch allowed only 21 points, scored 329 and shut out seven opponents. When given a second chance with LSU in the Sugar Bowl — “LSU’s biggest mistake,” Vaught said — Ole Miss tarred and feathered the Tigers, 21-0. But who remembers rematches?
Vaught finally had to give up coaching after 1973, when doctors told him he was a candidate for a heart attack. He played golf until he was 94, usually three times a week. After the death of his wife, someone tried to interest him in taking up residence in a retirement home.
“Who wants to be around all those old people?” he said, 86 at the time.
Some great football coaches have strode across this planet, and too many have been swallowed up by time. This one who should never lose his place among those inhabiting the halls of the famed. Maybe at 96, he lived too long.
Permalink | Comments (22) | Categories: Furman Bisher, UGA / SEC
Despite denials, perceptions still dog Gretzky
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
Turin, Italy — From the time he was a 6-year-old, when Canadians started wondering if Wayne Gretzky fell from the heavens like a solar-powered snow-blower, perception has been reality.
He looked like he would be a special talent, and he was.
He projected like hockey’s next great ambassador, and he was.
He appeared to be the NHL’s best hope for planting roots in the Sun Belt and he was.
See, that’s the thing about perception. It so often is reality, and when it’s not, something is very wrong.
Wayne Gretzky wants us to believe that he is not a major gambler. He also wants us to believe that he was completely oblivious to the fact his wife of 17 years and a long-time friend and associate were involved in a major illegal bookmaking operation.
His wife. His friend. He didn’t know?
Let’s forget perception for a moment, because there are only two possible realities here: 1) He’s lying. 2) He’s the dumbest individual to ever walk the face of the earth. Either way, he’s an enabler. Either way, he has a problem.
Wayne Gretzky and less significant members of the Canadian Olympic hockey team arrived in Turin on Tuesday. To understand why every Canadian media outlet was represented in multiples at a press conference, you have to understand what Gretzky represents. He is to Canada what air is to the rest of us.
Word broke a week ago about charges against three men, including Phoenix assistant coach Rick Tocchet, for allegedly financing a gambling operation that took in $1.7 million over five weeks leading up to the Super Bowl. Tocchet is on indefinite leave from the team. Gretzky’s wife, former actress Janet Jones, has not been charged with a crime. But she has been subpoenaed to testify before a grand jury about her involvement.
Suddenly, bonfires about the Gretzkys’ gambling habits are breaking out everywhere. The Las Vegas Review-Journal reported the couple plays blackjack at the MGM Grand, where guests must risk $250,000 over three days to stay in high-roller suites. Another story cites “inside sources” that Gretzky has lost $2 million in casino.
Yet other stories have suggested Janet Jones is the bigger gambler. The Newark Star-Ledger quoted law-enforcement sources saying she placed $500,000 in wagers in recent weeks, including $75,000 on the Super Bowl ($5,000 on the coin toss). Jones released a statement absolving her husband of any involvement in gambling “other than the occasional horse race.” Gretzky used to own horses with former Los Angeles Kings owner Bruce McNall (who later served a four-year term in federal prison for fraud).
That’s the reality. You can figure out the perception.
Gretzky is coach and managing partner of the Coyotes. He also is executive director (general manager) of Team Canada. So this story effectively damages both a professional sports league and an Olympic team.
Under the circumstances, it probably would have been best if Gretzky stayed away from Turin. But he maintains he won’t be a distraction. That’s somewhat like standing in the rain and saying it’s not raining.
Gretzky’s press conference in Toronto on Monday lasted 4-1/2 minutes. In Turin on Tuesday, he stuck it out for the duration. But he pretty much has shut it down on the subject. He took three questions about it but said little.
“As I said seven days ago, it doesn’t involve me,” Gretzky said in a packed conference room. “I’m not involved. I called Bob Nicholson to say I’m not involved. It’s over and done with. The concern is about playing hockey. The concern is for these athletes and all the other athletes who are here at the Olympics. Quite frankly, it’s the last time I’ll talk about it.”
He added, “If we don’t win a gold medal, I’ll get blamed. But I’ve been blamed for things all my life.”
Gretzky acknowledged the possibility that this cloud has overshadowed other Olympic stories, particularly in Canada. And, “I don’t like ever overshadowing anybody.”
This makes everybody uncomfortable: The NHL, the international hockey federation, the IOC. It makes supporters unhappy. One Toronto columnist actually likened this to a crucifixion.
But there’s a reason sports leagues have long taken gambling charges more seriously than drugs. Drugs wreck a career. Gambling wrecks a league. Ask baseball about Pete Rose. Ask the NBA about Michael Jordan. Perception and reality. Here we are again.
Permalink | Comments (38) | Categories: Jeff Schultz, Other, Thrashers / NHL
America’s best here are totally stoked
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
Bardonecchia, Italy — So it hit me sometime after Hannah Teter got some amazing amplitude on her frontside 900 stalefish, and before Gretchen Bleiler just killed it with her “Crippler� 540 spin with an inverted flip.
Our days of getting punked in the Winter Olympics by small Norwegian countries — over! All we need is to push the IOC for a few more winter sports we might be dangerous at. Drive-by snowball fights. Trashcan lid slide match races. Vice-presidential hunting trips.
Look at what the halfpipe has done for us. There was a point Monday when the U.S. team had won five medals, and four were in snowboard halfpipe. Two golds and two silvers came from four young anti-conformists zig-zagging down a shoot while performing various acts of insanity (except to other young anti-conformists).
The U.S. went gold-silver in the men’s finals Sunday, then gold-silver in the women’s finals Monday. In both cases, a third American finished in fourth, narrowly missing sweeps.
Norway’s Kjersti’s Buaas, the women’s bronze medal winner, said, “They told me at the top of the hill, ‘You’re the last one who can split the Americans.’ I thought, whoa, all of Europe is depending on me.â€?
See? Now they’re ganging up on us.
Here’s your non-halfpipe, partial U.S. Olympics report: Michelle Kwan pulls out. Bode Miller finishes fifth (and is pleased). Apolo Anton Ohno slips and doesn’t even make it to the finals. Downhill favorite Lindsey Kildow slips and does make it to the hospital.
Fortunately, as Gretchen Bleiler said, “The Olympics is trying to catch on to what the X-games has.� (That should go over well at the IOC.)
Shaun White (a.k.a. “The Flying Tomato�) and Danny Kass took first and second for the men. Hannah Teter and Gretchen Bleiler won gold and silver, respectively, Monday, with defending Olympic champion Kelly Clark getting squeezed out by Buaas for the bronze.
On her first run, Teter watched teammate Gretchen Bleiler jump into first with a score of 41.5, navigated her IPod to a song from the group, Strive (“a roots-infused power gruv� according to its Web site) and took off. Between the dancing, clapping and hand-raising at the top of the hill, it was clear stress is not in her vocabulary.
Quoth Teter: “Gretchen threw down so hard, I thought she had me. But then I thought, OK, I had to step it up. Do my thang. Totally representing.�
Yeah. So, anyway, she took the lead with a 44.6. Eleven other competitors couldn’t match that in their second runs. Thus, Teter had clinched the gold even before her second turn.
Just what you need — a snowboarder with no pressure. Teter obliterated her first score, this time with a 46.4. (Her run: A frontside 540 melon, backside air, frontside 900 stalefish, backside Indy, frontside 360 with a grab, cab 540 with a switch stalefish. If you understood any of that, please translate for others.)
Teter admitted she had been having knee problems before she came to Turin, but said, “So I iced it, did my yoga, lit some candles at night. That was it. Ain’t no thang.�
See, snowboarders are not, like, normal Olympic athletes. Thirty minutes before the final, Teter and Bleiler took the chairlift up, then found themselves with time to kill.
So they snowboarded.
For fun.
Before competing for an Olympic medal.
“We didn’t realize before we got up there that everything was blocked off, so we had to go under the ropes. Sorry,� Bleiler said. “We found some sweet powder.�
And they weren’t fearful of getting injured before the finals?
“No. This is snowboarding,� Bleiler said.
The two girls and Teter’s brother had a blast — even though Bleiler wiped out. “Toward the bottom it cut a little crusty, and I caught my nose and did a full front flip. So that wasn’t real good,� she said. Teter, a 19-year-old from Vermont, said the gold medal wouldn’t change her.
“I’m still going to do my yoga,� she said. “Maybe I’ll get my teeth whitened. Get my hair crimpled.�
Her plans for the medal?
“I don’t know — maybe staple it to a wall. With a real staple gun.�
Moments later, an official whispered something to the three medalists. “We’ve got to go pee in a cup, guys!� Teter announced.
Don’t wince. They’re all we’ve got.
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Kwan’s performance wins gold for egotism
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
Turin, Italy — The last thing this melodrama needed was another mutant soliloquy. But Peter Ueberroth just couldn’t help himself Sunday.
“Michelle Kwan means more to the United States Olympic Committee than maybe any athlete who’s ever performed,� the USOC chairman said.
I’m assuming five minutes with a history book, particularly the chapter on Jesse Owens, isn’t a prerequisite for Ueberroth’s job. Either that or he’s as lost as she is.
Michelle Kwan pulled out of the Winter Olympics on Sunday. The move comes two weeks after her groin warned her it was all over. But Kwan did what all great self-centered athletes do under the circumstances: She told the groin to shut up, went to lunch and left her ego in charge.
This must go down as one of the most pathetic affairs in Olympic history, even by figure skating standards. Granted, we didn’t see a knee-whacking. But it’s kind of like the difference between “partial nudity� and “adult themes� in a movie. Similar impact. Kwan orchestrated an assault, and it backfired. She made it to Turin by whacking skating officials with her Q-rating. You try fending off a ratings-hungry TV network and a pack of sponsors. It leaves a mark.
Kwan cried Sunday when asked about probably losing her last chance at a gold medal. Now how can that be? It was just moments later when she said, “It’s not about the gold for me. It’s about the spirit of it.� It sounded good. Except that everything Kwan said and did leading up to Sunday screamed, “Me, me, me.�
She hadn’t competed in any — any — competition of note since the World Championships last March — 11 months ago. In that, she finished fourth, hardly foreshadowing Olympic gold. She didn’t go to the nationals because of injuries. She petitioned for a spot on the Olympic team, based on the fact that, well, she was Michelle Kwan.
Of course, U.S. Figure Skating stepped on Emily Hughes (who finished third at the nationals). Hughes was young. She could wait. She’ll play nice. So they knighted Kwan a three-time Olympian. But then, skating officials have the moral fiber of nougat.
Hughes was having dinner with her family at a Japanese restaurant on Long Island late Saturday night when her father’s cellphone rang. It was then she was informed that Kwan was going to pull out of the Games and she was in. At the time, Hughes was eating sushi. “A Sarah Gold Roll,� she said, named for her sister, who won a gold medal in the last Winter Olympics.
Kwan finished third in those Games. Her desire to get back to the Olympics apparently caused a malfunction in her conscience. She never called Hughes before petitioning for an Olympic spot. She never called after the mockery of a tryout two weeks ago before U.S. skating officials — in her home rink, with no TV cameras, no crowd, no competitors, no judges.
As of Sunday afternoon, Hughes said she still hadn’t heard from Kwan, but the younger skater excelled at diplomacy: “I wish her a speedy recovery.�
Hughes,understandably excited about coming to Turin this week, also said: “I watched the Opening Ceremonies on TV, so I don’t think I missed out on much.�
Kwan owes this girl an apology and then a thank you. Chances are, she’ll give neither.
Maybe Kwan really believed she was healthy. Maybe she figured, “Well, I’ll be healthy by the time I really have to skate.� Regardless, there seems to be some justice to all this. It’s logical to conclude that Kwan didn’t suffer a new injury, as U.S. officials announced Sunday. She merely aggravated an old one. Groin and abdominal strains can take months to heal.
U.S. skating officials should have known better. Kwan should have acted better. But after weeks of pointing to Turin and defending her actions, she walked into a news conference Sunday suddenly looking about three feet tall.
“I think the best thing for me is to go home and get better,� she said. “I don’t want to be a distraction here.� It’s a little late for that now.
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Yellow Jackets finally play up to their talent
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Give Paul Hewitt credit. When a team loses eight in a row, most coaches would say to themselves, “I’m working like crazy, but my players just aren’t good enough to win.� Significantly, Paul Hewitt did not. And Sunday, the losing streak finally broken, he said this: “I’ve undercoached them, but I haven’t overrated them.�
See, Georgia Tech has enough players. What it has lacked is a mesh. Its shooters don’t guard hard enough and its ballhandlers don’t handle the ball all that well, and it never knows from game to game which of its members is apt to go in the tank. On Sunday we saw what happens when everybody stays out of that tank. On Sunday we saw a group that hadn’t won an ACC game in five weeks beat the No. 16 team in the land.
“When you watch Georgia Tech play,� said Herb Sendek, the losing coach, “[you see] they’re a talented team.�
Yes. The incongruous part of Sunday wasn’t that the Jackets could win such a pressurized game but that they’d lost so many already. Not many teams in the ACC or in any league can put five more gifted players on the court at the same time. Said Ra’Sean Dickey, the skilled center: “We’re one of the most talented teams in the nation.�
And normally you’d hear such a thing from a 10-12 aggregation and you’d laugh out loud, but the promise inherent in these Jackets stifles the giggling. Tech played the ACC’s second-best team Sunday and seemed the better side, which says a lot. True, North Carolina State possesses what the Jackets don’t — a sense of purpose, a consistency of style — but there are games when the Wolfpack could use an inside presence on the order of Dickey or a solo creator like Zam Fredrick.
Yes, Zam Fredrick. He has been asked to play point guard this season, and as a pure distributor he’s not terribly adroit. But that doesn’t make him a bad player.
Two games ago, Hewitt pulled Fredrick from the starting five, and the result is that Tech has another scoring option. Not a real point guard, no, but a guy capable of taking defenders off the dribble with the clock winding down and making the kind of shots that sort winners from losers.
Tech scored eight baskets in the game’s final 14 minutes. Fredrick had five of them and assisted on the three others. With the table set for one of those standard State soul-sapping comebacks, Fredrick kept the Jackets from falling behind. And it was the usually resourceful Wolfpack who froze at the end, Gavin Grant unaccountably driving to the basket with his team three points down inside the final three seconds.
“One thing we’ve always brought up is that we have physical talent,� said Jeremis Smith, another Jacket now playing as a sub. “We need to be mentally talented.�
The Jackets who won five excruciating tournament games en route to the 2004 NCAA final weren’t always crunch-time killers. In 2003, essentially that same team had been 0-7 in the ACC before winning seven of its last nine regular-season games. As wild as it sounds, Hewitt won’t dismiss the possibility of this team fashioning a similar grandstand finish. “Why can’t this group do the same thing?� he said.
Why? Well, Tech’s next three games are against North Carolina, Maryland and Duke, and there’s a good chance the good feeling spawned Sunday will die a sudden death. But the Jackets haven’t given up on this season, and a team stout enough to face down N.C. State can’t be totally dismissed.
“We don’t talk about [qualifying for the NCAA tournament],� Fredrick said. “We figure we can beat any team in this league. And if we win the ACC tournament, we’ll be in the NCAA.�
Go ahead and laugh. But you’ll have to pardon the chastened Herb Sendek if he doesn’t chuckle along.
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Felton losing standing in conference, at home
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
Athens — For most of Saturday afternoon, the tomb that often has been Stegeman Coliseum during basketball season was loud, crazy and barking. Just the way Georgia coach Dennis Felton wants it. Even so, relentless Tennessee used its Final Four potential down the stretch to muzzle the Bulldogs and their supporters.
Not good for Georgia, which also was relentless. Still, there are no moral victories when you’re the Bulldogs and you’re trying to complete an improbable run within a year from 8-20, courtesy of that mess by the Harricks, to beyond the bubble of the NCAA tournament. This 83-78 loss nearly sticks a pin in Georgia’s already-slim hopes, especially with the Bulldogs dropping to 14-9 overall and 4-6 in the SEC. But at least Felton made his point about his home crowds, and he got a response.
Whatever that means. The game ended with the loudest noise coming from the thousands of folks jumping and screaming in orange while carrying “Rocky Top” on their lips. They got louder when Tennessee players plunged a knife into the Bulldogs and twisted by rushing into the stands to celebrate with their fans. That said, consider this: If you’re a coach, and if you wish to stick around a while without having to drive home a different way every night, there are a couple of “don’ts” in your life. You don’t say anything to tick off your fans, and you don’t do the same regarding those who sign your checks.
That means Felton is 0-for-2. For instance: Just before the opening tipoff, his boss was smiling to keep from clenching his teeth. Something about Felton grumbling earlier this week about everything from the size and the sound of the average crowd at Georgia home games to the backing that Felton suggested that his program does or doesn’t get from his bosses.
To which Georgia athletics director Damon Evans eased into that smile after I mentioned the bizarre timing for Felton’s remarks. They came during the same week in which the university broke ground on a $30 million practice facility for basketball and gymnastics. Evans also has spent Felton’s three seasons with the Bulldogs upgrading the coach’s office and the locker room. Stegemen even has a sparkling new scoreboard, along with cushioned seats in the lower half of the coliseum to replace the hard-backed ones that were around since the 18th century. That’s when the university was founded by the Georgia state legislature or Vince Dooley.
So, Damon, your basketball coach sounds as if he isn’t pleased with what you’ve done thus far for his program.
Evans smiled. Then he paused, and then he said after trying to show as many teeth as possible, “I don’t want to talk about that in the paper, and that’s just something that I need to discuss with him.” Does that mean you were upset when you saw Felton’s comments in the AJC? (Editor’s note: In response to a question about whether he was getting the support that he needs from his bosses, Felton paused for 17 seconds before telling our Chip Towers, “We’re working on it. It’s just one more area that we’re working on.”)
With another smile that flashed a lot of teeth, Evans said, “I’m going to talk to him about it.” Then Evans said emphatically, “I definitely will talk to him about it.”
Good. That’s because it’s always been like this in the history of sports: You win, and they’ll come. Such even has been the case on occasion during basketball season at Georgia, where the ball of choice among those in the Bulldog Nation is oblong instead of round.
When Tubby Smith first arrived to coach basketball at Georgia for the 1995-96 season, he did his share of complaining about tiny crowds. He also placed action with his words. Before every home game, he spent time walking through the stands shaking hands and conversing with the spectators. Plus, he did something more dramatic: He took his first Georgia team to the Sweet 16, and they were calling the place “The Tub.”
Maybe they’ll call it “The Den” someday, but the Bulldogs have to keep winning, and winning, and Felton has to stop whining and whining. He said after the game that he was misunderstood. Well, if so, then all he has to do is, you know, win.
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Gen-Xers halfpiping, vibing way to prominence
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
Turin, Italy — The most popular commercial leading into these Winter Olympics depicts a 20-year-old female snowboarder, whose nerves at the top of a hill are suddenly comforted by the security of her Visa card.
Skiing off air bumps into flips and rolls, NASCAR-worthy crashes in short-track speed skating (swapping Spandex in Talladega?), four-man snowboard races with a forearm shiver — when did the Olympics get high-jacked by MTV?
“I think it’s great,” said Eric Heiden, a five-time gold medal winner in just plain old boring speedskating in 1980 at Lake Placid. “I used to do short-track speed skating when I was a kid.”
So did he stop?
“I broke my arm and my leg,” he said. “At the age of 14, my dad said, ‘That’s enough.’ “
Somebody apparently felt the Winter Olympics needed something more than a Vitamin E shot. The IOC has all but put snowboarders like Nate Holland on the board of directors. New sports have infiltrated. It’s like an army of fluorescent green pants have executed a hostile take over of a Men’s Warehouse.
This is not to say that figure skating or the downhill are going away. They just don’t dominate the scene any more.
We have gone from giggling figure skaters to this: “I think I was 12 years old when I won my first event and I was, like, yeah, right on, man,” said Holland. And then he had to rush off to Mr. Hand’s house for a mandatory oral history exam because otherwise, like, he wasn’t going to be allowed into the senior prom. (Kidding.)
Lindsay Jacobellis (ladies halfpipe and SBX) has three major endorsement deals (Visa, Dunkin Donuts, Frosted Flakes). “Snowboard cross,” in which four competitors race down a hill and often collide, is debuting as an Olympic sport. NBC has gone X Games in its planned coverage. There’s enough evidence of a changing wind direction.
It almost makes a snowboarder stop and think, “Dude. Have I gone mainstream?”
“I’ll just say it’s a little bizarre to see where we’re at now,” said Seth Wescott, a medal favorite for snowboard cross.
“I grew up snowboarding at a time when it just wasn’t popular or accepted. I had adults spitting at me off chairlifts in the late ’80s because they didn’t want us on hills. Here I was, a 10-year-old kid feeling prejudice from adults. All I wanted to do was participate in something I had a passion for.”
Few athletes are typecast more than snowboarders: Spicoli in mittens. It follows that in 1998, the new Olympic sport became a global punchline when inaugural gold-medal winner Ross Rebagliati tested positive for marijuana — and, I assume, nacho cheese flavored Doritos.
The IOC stripped Rebagliati of his gold medal, but then reversed its decision after concluding the obvious: ganja is not a performance-enhancing drug.
“Rebagliati’s drug test overshadowed the sport in ‘98, and even in 2002 it only got attention because of the success of the U.S. athletes,” Wescott said. “But this year the Olympics has taken on an X Games type persona.”
Snowboard cross, much like the roller-derby-infused short-track speed skating, often leads to flared tempers between competitors.
As Holland neatly summarized: “There’s four guys on a course and sometimes there’s only room for two. So something’s gotta give. There’s some sharp elbows out there and people go down hard, and sometimes in the heat of competition there’s words exchanged.”
But no trash-talking at the top of the hill, at least not by Holland. “I just go through my routine, man,” he said. “I’m not vibing anyone up there.”
Of course not.
Holland used to ski. But he had this thing about blending.
“I got into snowboarding because it was the rebel thing to do,” he said. “So one day I left my ski pants at home and put on my ’80s acid-washed jeans, because I was just too cool for ski pants and went out there. I can’t believe it’s come this far.”
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Perceived bias for Duke still haunts ACC
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Through the magic of satellite radio, it was possible to hear the Boston College broadcast team’s take on the Eagles’ game with Duke 10 days ago. After a night spent lavishing praise on the Blue Devils, the crew wound up wailing about the refs. To the stricken ACC newbies, there seemed only one thing to say:
Welcome to the club.
Against Boston College, Shelden Williams clocked a driving Tyrese Rice in the waning seconds of a three-point game. No foul was called. Naturally, BC’s best big man, Craig Smith, had already fouled out on a night when the Devils took 24 more free throws than their hosts. Naturally, Duke won.
Three days later, Florida State went to Durham, was awarded 11 free throws to Duke’s 43 and lost by a point in overtime. Worse, center Alexander Johnson was handed a disqualifying technical foul for the sin of backing away after being bumped by the aforementioned Williams. Two suspicious Duke wins in a single week — business as usual, right?
Apparently not. On Monday, the ACC suspended officials Mike Eades, Ray Natili and Ed Corbett for their next game, admitting they’d missed the call on Johnson’s technical. Refs are usually docked for misinterpreting a rule, as opposed to a simple misjudgment, but the air around Duke has become so charged that John Clougherty, in his first year as the league’s director of officiating, felt moved to act.
See, the nation’s flagship basketball conference has a problem. The feeling exists that Duke gets every call. Coaches grouse and writers joke about the perceived imbalance, but when the public starts to believe there’s something rotten along Tobacco Road, somebody has to act. And Clougherty — who succeeded Fred Barakat, viewed as a friend of the Devils — acted in a disproportionate but pointed way.
To mollify the growing legion of Duke-haters, three refs took the fall. And perhaps it was only coincidence that the crew for Tuesday’s Duke-North Carolina game included Jim Burr and Tim Higgins, two of the best, and that the Heels took more free throws than the Dookies. Not that it made a difference. The deserving Devils won a tight game in Chapel Hill, which is precisely the point.
Duke is good enough to win any game without being aided and abetted. The Duke-gets-all-the-calls talk doesn’t just hurt the ACC; in a weird way, it hurts the Devils themselves. They’re seen as connivers and wheedlers, and when they hit the NCAA tournament and are subject to the whistles of non-ACC refs, they seem suddenly vulnerable.
Twenty-two years ago, Mike Krzyzewski griped — the “K” in Coach K stands for “king of all gripers” — that “a double standard” existed in the ACC, his assertion being that Dean Smith got the benefit of every doubt. Last March, the shift in perceived power was made official. With Duke playing in the arena named for the sainted Smith, the son of Carolina coach Roy Williams was ejected by Larry Rose for suggesting the ref was in Krzyzewski’s pocket. (Along with, one assumes, an American Express card.) When even the blue-blooded Heels see themselves as the wronged party, that’s a sign Duke’s sway has grown too vast.
Saturday the Devils play at Maryland, and the madman Gary Williams is credited, if that’s the word, with birthing this whole conspiracy theory. As Maryland was losing to Duke in the 2001 Final Four, Williams was heard asking NCAA observers how much CBS had paid them to put the Devils in the title game. (A horrendous fifth foul had been called against the Terps’ Lonny Baxter.) Two nights later, the mood in the Minneapolis Metrodome was significantly anti-Duke, and the watching world has since been alert to any hint of Dookie bias. Sure enough, the hints keep on coming.
When John Clougherty was reffing, people used to wonder how he could handle the strain of working four or five TV games a week. Now he has an even tougher task: He has to convince a doubting public that Duke gets treated no differently than any other school. Good luck with that.
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Turin shrouded by indifference to Games
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
Turin, Italy — Given its unmatched trail of graft, corrupt judges and drug scandals, it’s only logical that the IOC doesn’t sway as much influence as it used to. But how bad is it when you give a city the Winter Olympics and you can’t even get somebody to open its biggest tourist attraction?
“The shroud is shown only for very important people,” Jovanna Florio said Friday, as she stood inside the Museo Della Sindone. But, it’s the Olympics. It’s Jacques Rogge. It used to be some guy from Korea until he got caught taking a bribe (which actually turned out to be illegal). It’s Atlanta!
“The next time the shroud will be on exhibition is in 2025,� Florio said. “I do not decide. Only the pope has the authority to make an exception. In 2002, the son of the last King of Italy was allowed to see it. He comes to Turin and they make an exception for him.�
The Winter Olympics opened Friday night. The Pope must not be big on the figure skating, curling or, like, the half-pipe.
The “Sacra Sindone,� or the “sacred� Shroud of Turin, is housed in the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist. It is believed by some to be the sheet that was wrapped around Jesus following the crucifixion, although various skeptics, curators at Ripley’s and I’m assuming my rabbi are readily available for debate.
Problem is, visitors can only view images of the shroud because it goes on tour only every 25 years, or far less often than the Rolling Stones. Which brings me back to Jovanna. She, like many in Turin, seem oblivious to the notion that the Olympics might be a big deal. This is the largest city to ever host the Winter Games, with an area population of 2.2 million. But as of a week ago, there were over 300,000 tickets still available for various events and Friday’s Opening Ceremonies.
There might be many people in Turin excited that the Olympics are here. But they haven’t really shown it yet. Neither streets nor residents appear decorated.
“We are very calm people,� explained Giuseppe Cavallo, a Turin volunteer. “We are not like your typical Mediterraneans. We are so close to France and Switzerland, so we are more like them. We take our time. We breathe some Swiss air. We have kind of an interior joy, but we do not show it.�
NBC, of course, is hoping for more than scenes of people breathing. Jovanna Florio is excited, but only because she is talking about the shroud. My personal tour guide takes me through the museum, which sits about a five-minute walk from the Cathedral.
“This building originally was hospital for crazy, mad people,� she said. And then she gave me a strange look.
“What state you from?� she asked.
“Georgia.�
“I know Georgia,â€? she said. “I read book. Scarlett. Um. I read the Gone … Gone…â€?
Gone with the Wind?
“Yes! I like book. I read one time every year. It’s good book for history of United States. I like to read. But now I can’t because my eyes not good. I see movie. But I like book.â€?
Turin lit the torch Friday night. Now we’ll find out if it lights a fire under the city. It’s appropriate that the first medal today will be awarded in biathlon, which includes shooting. Turin originally was created by the Romans as a military camp. It grew into an industrial city but was destroyed in World War II. It’s the original capital of Italy but has sort of been knocked off the map by Rome, Florence and Venice.
Today, Turin is known for three things: The birthplace of chocolate, the home of Fiat and the shroud. Two you can have. The other only comes out for really special occasions.
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This Bowl officially tainted
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
It’s better late than never, I guess. I’m referring here to the work of the crew that officiated the Super Bowl, a subject still very much alive in the minds of many. Biggest game of the year, biggest audience of the year, yet it shall be forever tainted by plays that cost touchdowns, and in the long run, cost the Seattle Seahawks their chance at winning No. XL.
That having been said, let me make it clear that this comes from a guy whose prediction was that Pittsburgh would win the game by a margin of 13 points. No bias here, just disappointment that it wasn’t clean-cut, no knockout but like a prize fight awarded on points.
Here’s the Steelers quarterback, Ben Roethlisberger, telling a national television audience that, no, he did not get the ball across the goal line until he nudged it forward after he was obviously downed. The play was called for review by the Challenge Crew in the upstairs booth — which, by the way, was in command of Bob Boylston of Atlanta, a longtime NFL official who had worked three Super Bowls. Bill Leavy, the referee, upheld the touchdown, though he couldn’t have been watching the play I saw on the screen.
That crew had already taken a touchdown away from the Seahawks on a flimsy interference call. Darrell Jackson, the receiver, and Chris Hope, the defender, had exchanged pushes along the goal line, both of light force. But Jackson pushed last, and last culprit always gets punished.
One rule applies here as to no other game: You don’t take a touchdown away from a team in a game of such magnitude on a borderline call (and one that can’t be reviewed). Then award one to the other team even when the quarterback so awarded confessed that the ball never crossed the line. You could say what you wish about the holding call on Sean Locklear that nullified the Seahawks pass to the 1-yard line, for holding is a disease that breaks out on about every play, but was this one so flagrant? Many a football critic has said that one was too tame to be called, and I join the throng.
That preceded the interception that Matt Hasselbeck threw, then tackled the interceptor himself — and was penalized for tackling him below the knees. What ho here? A quarterback is not allowed to tackle below the knees? (I know, they called it a “block.”)
You expected the NFL to defend its blundering bunch, but a big disappointment to me was that Jim Tunney did as well. Tunney is a man I deeply respect. He refereed over 30 years in the league, including three Super Bowls, and I expected him to give this bunch a blast. There were two calls he didn’t understand, but when he gave Leavy and associates a “grade of A, or B,” I nearly choked. Which was it, A or B, or how about C, Jim?
Well, nothing will change. I do staunchly defend the right of Mike Holmgren saying, “I knew we were playing the Steelers, but I didn’t know we were playing the men in stripes, too.”
One belated note that reflects to the glory of Georgia was overlooked, not that it was important only to our precinct. When Hines Ward was awarded the prize for Most Valuable Player, it was the second year in a row that the MVP has been a pass catcher from a small town in Georgia. Ward comes from Forest Park. Last year in Jacksonville, it was Deion Branch of the Patriots. He comes from Albany.
Ward even had a beef of his own: “the touchdown pass that I dropped.” It might have been a TD, but I thought it was a little high. So be it.
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Witty will carry flag, message
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
Turin, Italy — For years, she hid. Friday night, she will be out front.
One moment, she hates herself and distrusts others. She can’t bring herself to even get out of bed for a week. The next moment, she is carrying her country’s flag into a stadium and using her platform to speak out against sexual abuse.
We don’t celebrate the Olympics because of athletes who star in burger commercials. We celebrate the Olympics because of people like Chris Witty.
She is a speedskater from Milwaukee. If this were merely about sports priorities, Witty would rank a few steps below Bucknell women’s basketball.
But athletically, this 5-foot-6 30-year-old is in select company. She is one of only nine Olympians to compete in both the Winter and Summer Games (speedskating and cycling). She becomes only the 25th to compete in five Olympics, having already hit the metallic trifecta (gold-silver-bronze).
But Friday night, Witty will carry the U.S. flag and lead Americans into the Opening Ceremony for reasons other than mere longevity and success. She personifies all that we strive for in courage and resilience.
We hear Witty skates around an oval really fast, we yawn. We hear she overcame the pain and humiliation of being abused for seven years, that she achieved athletic greatness and set a world record despite hiding a dark secret for 25 years, we care.
“This is sort of a release for me,” Witty said Thursday.
Witty was 4 years old when she was first abused by a neighbor. Clarence Platteter was in his 60s and a close friend of the Witty family. He had a key to their house. It wasn’t unusual for him to be visiting the day Walter Witty was rushing to take a shower after mowing the lawn because he had to rush to his job as a welder.
Witty remembers it being a sunny day. Her father was in the shower and her mother was on the way home. After a small window of five minutes, her life would never be the same.
“[My father] thought he could trust me with this neighbor, a good friend of his, a nice guy,” she said. “[Platteter] wants you to believe he’s a nice guy and great with kids.”
The abuse lasted until she was 11. Witty remembers the “mind games” Platteter played with her. She would go to his basement and stare in awe at the dollhouse he carved out of wood. “It even had these little rocking chairs,” she said. “I thought it was the greatest thing and I’d love to have it. But he would tell me, ‘I have this other little girlfriend, and she’s so good to me, and you’re not. She’s getting this dollhouse ‘cause she’s a good girl and you’re not.’ “
Witty was 11 when Platteter approached and she finally said, “No!” She had seen a video in school, titled “Good Touch, Bad Touch,” and it gave her the courage to speak up. But she kept the nightmare buried for several years. In 1996, Platteter was convicted of second-degree sexual abuse of another girl. Witty felt tremendous guilt for not speaking out earlier. The girl was 4. Witty was her baby sitter. She sank into deeper depression.
Witty’s turning point came before the 2002 Olympics when Platteter was paroled. She heard from her family that his wife had died and he was moving back into the house next door. Emotions bubbled to the surface. That’s when Witty revealed her story to a few family members and team sports psychologist Keith Henschen. He advised her to see a therapist after the Salt Lake City Games. Witty felt some sense of relief. She set a world record in the 1,000 meters. She went into therapy for three years, then went public with her story in late 2004 in a Salt Lake City newspaper.
She has been overwhelmed by the response. Friends and strangers have opened up about past abuses. Witty has spoken to schools. She is now the national spokesperson for the “Good Touch/Bad Touch” program, which is based in Cartersville, Ga., and designed for children in preschool through sixth grade.
Witty e-mailed Pam Church, the executive director of the program, Wednesday night when she learned she would be the flag-bearer.
“To have Chris speak out like this is huge, not just for us but for the children,” Church said. “We all need heroes. She’s a great example for kids about what you can do and for them to know that if this happens to you, it’s not your fault. There’s a lot of scary stuff that goes on in the world. But Chris obviously has taken that and turned it into something positive.”
Witty will increase her involvement with the program after the Olympics. “Abuse of any kind exists because of secrecy,” she said. “If I use this platform, maybe other people will start talking about it and break the silence.”
She is out front on the issue and will be out front to night, where she belongs.
(More information on the Good Touch/Bad Touch program is available at goodtouchbadtouch.com, or by phone: 770-607-9111; 800-245-1527.)
Permalink | Comments (4) | Categories: Jeff Schultz
Maysville’s man
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Not many famous people have come from Maysville, Ky. The late Rosemary Clooney qualified, but her very-much-alive nephew George doesn’t quite. George Clooney was born and raised in Augusta, Ky., which is eight miles down the Ohio River and which remains the site of my one and only speeding ticket. In the summer of 1974, I was ticketed for going 47 in a 35-mph zone. Tiny Augusta, you should know, is a big fat speed trap. But I digress.
I am, as some of you might know, from Maysville — born there, raised there, the whole nine yards. My mom and my brother live there still. Heather French, Miss America 2000, is from Maysville, but she kind of lost me when she married a guy even older than I am. (He happened to be the state’s lieutenant governor.) But Chris Lofton… of this young man, I’m a fan forever.
Chris Lofton played basketball at Mason County. (Full disclosure: I grew up hating the Mason County Royals because I went to Maysville — they were “farmers,” we were “river rats” — but Maysville High no longer exists. It consolidated with Mason County, and to this day it’s hard from me to think of Mason County as “my” school. Because it never was. But I digress again.) Lofton led Mason County to the 2003 state championship, and as you might know high school basketball in the Bluegrass has always been huge.
Lofton scored 39 points in the title game, making nine 3-pointers in, of all places, Rupp Arena. Like pretty much every Kentucky kid, Lofton wanted to play for the Big Blue. (I couldn’t play a lick, but I would have been the exception. I grew up a Louisville fan because my dad graduated from U of L’s dental school.) You’d have thought that the Wildcats, who’ve struggled to find a shooter in recent years, would have snapped up such a talent. You’d have been wrong.
Tubby Smith — one of my favorite people in the world — decided Lofton wasn’t quick enough and didn’t recruit him. So Lofton, who grew up 64 miles from Rupp Arena, went to Tennessee. And Tuesday night, in his second visit to Rupp as a Volunteer, he scored 31 points and beat Tubby and the Wildcats on their own floor (and on national TV to boot).
That part was pretty cool. This was even cooler. Asked by reporters after the game how he felt about coming home, Lofton said: “This [Lexington] isn’t my home. Maysville is my home.”
And that sealed it. Chris Lofton is my favorite player ever. (With the possible exceptions of my former schoolmates James Smith, nicknamed Skeet, and Fred Walker, nicknamed Bubbles, who led the Maysville Bulldogs to an epochal upset of No. 1 Louisville Central in the quarterfinals of the 1972 state tournament. But I digress yet again. Sorry.)
Permalink | Comments (8) | Categories: Mark Bradley, Quick Hit
Sports world craves, fears gambling
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Two days after the biggest betting event of the year - the Super Bowl, duh - it was learned that Wayne Gretzky’s assistant coach faces charges for bankrolling a gambling ring believed to have ties to the Mob. This case has the potential to be the most damaging sports scandal since the Black Sox, and it serves to underscore the thin line the American sporting world seeks to walk.
On the one hand, the sporting world harrumphs that gambling on games is unconscionable. At the same time, the sporting world winks as betting lines are published in nearly every newspaper (this one included) and an estimated half-billion dollars is wagered on the Super Bowl through online (and offshore-based) sites and in Las Vegas. And that doesn’t count the illegal action being handled by your friendly neighborhood bookie.
The sporting world - this includes colleges and high schools as well as the professional realm - wants to assure us that everything is above-board, but common sense and a knowledge of human nature tells us that not everything could possibly be. There’s too much money being thrown about, too many games being played. Surely somewhere one or two of them is being fixed. The sporting world has gotten incredibly lucky in that its links to gambling have come to light so seldom.
We’ve read of the Black Sox, who threw the 1919 World Series. We remember Pete Rose, who finally admitted he’d bet on baseball. We know NFL stars Paul Hornung and Alex Karras were suspended for the 1963 season after placing bets on pro football. We might even remember the basketball point-shaving tempests at Kentucky (late ’40s to early ’50s) and Boston College (late ’70s). But that, as far as gambling scandals go, is roughly the extent of public knowledge. Are we so naïve as to believe that no other funny business was ever done?
If so, Tuesday’s news delivered an icy slap of reality. Rick Tocchet, a respected former NHL ruffian, was accused of financing a multimillion-dollar bookmaking ring, which, given that he’s also a Phoenix Coyotes assistant coach, makes him quite the multi-tasker. The Coyotes are coached by Wayne Gretzky, the most revered figure in his sport. Gretzky is married to the former actress Janet Jones, who is reported to have placed bets with Tocchet’s operation. How that’s for a combo platter - stars, sleaze and sex appeal?
No current NHL player has been accused of betting on hockey, though it’s alleged that a handful of them bet on something. (More than 1,000 bets totaling $1.7 million were uncovered by the New Jersey State Police’s felicitously named Operation Slapshot.) No sport can afford to appear as if it’s condoning any sort of illegal gambling. Why? Because if we can’t trust the results of games, pretty soon we’ll stop buying tickets.
That’s the party line, anyway. The reality is somewhat more complicated. Would the Super Bowl be the most-watched event of every year if not for “friendly” wagering? Would the NCAA tournament have such broad-based appeal without the existence of office pools? (Ask Rick Neuheisel, fired as the Washington football coach after winning $12,000, about the lure of such pools.) If the sporting world deigned to look hard into its relationship with gambling, would the sporting world still exist?
There are those who believe Michael Jordan’s first retirement was actually an accommodation with the NBA, which had grown uneasy about reports of the great man’s love of gambling. There are those who believe that’s how the sporting world chooses to mask its unholy alliance - by sweeping everything under an expensive rug. But once in a great while, outside authorities take it upon themselves to do a little digging. Operation Slapshot could wind up throwing dirt on all of sports, not just the NHL. Operation Slapshot could make an unholy mess.
Permalink | Comments (10) | Categories: Mark Bradley, Thrashers / NHL
One happy ending
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
Talk about a storybook beginning, middle and end to a football season. No, this isn’t about those Jerome Bettis chapters, which were nice. Maybe you heard that the Pittsburgh Steelers running back ended his Hall of Fame career on a winning note with his homecoming to Detroit.
This is about those Hines Ward chapters, which kept getting better and better. I mean, after holding out for parts of training camp, he became a significant force during the regular season and a primary one throughout the Steelers’ playoff run to a world championship.
Then, to punctuate matters, Ward did more than enough at wide receiver against the Seattle Seahawks to earn most valuable players honors in the Super Bowl.
Here’s the part of that storybook that I like the most: The final chapter. We’re talking about a guy who has this captivating smile nearly every second of his life. We’re also talking about a guy who has owned a tattoo of a smiling Mickey Mouse on his right bicep since his days at Forest Park High School.
In other words, Ward was the definitive person to do the “I’m going to Disney World� commercial that comes with becoming the Super Bowl MVP. I mean, it was Mickey on his biceps meeting Mickey in the flesh. And Ward even included that other storybook guy be proclaiming, “And I’m taking the Bus (Bettis), too.�
Perfect. Just perfect.
Permalink | Comments (11) | Categories: Falcons / NFL, Quick Hit, Terence Moore
To pros, national pride is (yawn) amateur stuff
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
Some stability was welcomed into the World Baseball Classic the other day when Cuba announced its provisional roster. The good news about Cuba’s inclusion in anything is it’s never going to be followed by a player’s statement that reads: “After careful consideration, it pains me to withdraw so that I can rest my groin before what I expect to be my final season with the Dodgers, after which I plan to sign a $47 million contract in free agency. But my heart is with you, Fidel.”
Not surprisingly, several major league players, who have more to worry about than losing their Lada, have dropped out of the WBC.
Not surprisingly, several NHL players, coming off the most illogical work (and income) stoppage in pro sports history, have withdrawn from the Winter Olympics in Turin.
A closer from Panama (Mariano Rivera) and a goalie from Finland (Mikka Kiprusoff) wouldn’t seem to have much in common. But they do share one trait: paychecks with several digits to the left of the decimal point.
Pro athletes have different priorities than amateurs. They usually involve a house, a car and a boat — not a team warm-up suit and standing for an anthem.
The Winter Olympics open Friday in Turin. The World Baseball Classic is in March. The former is a diversion we see every four years. The latter is a start-up venture by baseball. But both have suffered self-inflicted damage from marketing departments.
The Olympics should be about athletes we’ve never heard of, from countries we’ve never been to, competing in sports we’ve seldom seen. The hockey shouldn’t be a collection of NHL all-stars, divided up by country, whose strongest current desire is to win a Stanley Cup and pay the rent.
All Olympic athletes should have one thing in common: Nothing is more important to them than a gold medal. But the NHL was determined to sell T-shirts, and suddenly nobody cared that arguably the greatest moment in Olympic history was a bunch of obscure kids beating the Soviets in Lake Placid.
NHL players have rediscovered what they were missing during the lockout: groin injuries. Many have withdrawn because of an injury, hint of injury or fear of an injury. They include goalies Kiprusoff (Finland/Calgary) and Kari Lehtonen (Finland/Thrashers), forward Marcus Naslund (Sweden/Vancouver) and defenseman Ed Jovanovski (Canada/Vancouver). Two banged-up all-stars, defenseman Scott Niedermayer (Canada/Anaheim) and forward Peter Forsberg (Sweden/Philadelphia), haven’t pulled out yet but may decide to. Three NHL Russians — Alexander Mogilny, Sergei Zubov and Sergei Fedorov — also have this thing about playing for their native country. It’s not a good thing.
Lehtonen felt pressure, both internally and indirectly from the Thrashers, to withdraw. It wasn’t an easy decision. He was named Finland’s goalie before he had even returned to the Thrashers from a groin/abdominal injury.
When asked a month ago if he would decline the Olympic invitation, Lehtonen said: “It’s like playing in the Super Bowl. That’s how it feels for the Finnish guys. If we decided I’m not going, I’d have to get a USA passport because I wouldn’t be allowed to go back.”
Withdrawing doesn’t make him selfish. It makes him a smart guy with new priorities. But college players and amateurs in Canada and Europe don’t have the same concerns. It’s the Olympics — you go.
The World Baseball Classic seems doomed to failure regardless. It’s barely registering a pulse with the public, and players (and owners) don’t like the conflict with spring training. An international tournament of amateurs wouldn’t have the same star power, but the star power in this one is falling quickly. The Braves’ John Smoltz and Tim Hudson have declined invitations. So have Rivera, Jorge Posada, Gary Sheffield, Hideki Matsui and Nomar Garciaparra, who said: “I wish the Mexican National team great success … and I will be supporting them enthusiastically.”
Of course he will.
Barry Bonds pulled out. He cited health concerns. Didn’t mention the Olympic-level drug testing (which includes screening for HGH) that all players will be subjected to. But I’m certain it’s just a coincidence.
The “Classic” opens March 3. It may not mean much, but the Cubans don’t have much to look forward to after this. I think I found my sentimental favorite.
Permalink | Comments (31) | Categories: Braves / MLB, Jeff Schultz, Other, Thrashers / NHL
Ward takes his place in Steelers lore
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
Detroit — If only for a while, those in charge of such things in Pittsburgh should put a bronzed image of Hines Ward next to the one of Steelers icon Art Rooney at Heinz Field. Suddenly, it’s like this among the Black and Gold faithful: Many are glowing over Willie Parker’s run for the ages. Others are glowing over Deshea Townsend’s sack in the clutch, or the successful homecoming for Jerome Bettis, or Bill Cowher doing what he should have done before — not blowing a world championship.
Well, they’re all glowing over Ward, the former University of Georgia standout via Forest Park. Against the pesky Seattle Seahawks on Sunday at Ford Field, he kept saving the Steelers from themselves in the biggest game of his life. You could tell that he knew as much after he did the most to wake up the Steelers’ dormant offense in the second quarter of Super Bowl XL with an end-around sprint of 18 yards before running with a shovel pass for 12 more yards. That was before he put the Steelers in position for the game’s first touchdown when he ignored the grip of Seattle’s Michael Boulware on the ball and leaped to complete a 37-yard pass play at the 3-yard line of the Seahawks.
When The Ward Show was over, the undisputed star had more than his five catches worth 123 yards and the touchdown that he caught after fellow wide receiver Antwaan Randle El heaved a 43-yard pass his way on a reverse. He even had more than the keys that he received to a 2007 Cadillac Escalade for earning the Most Valuable Player award.
He had immortality, which is why he never lost his smile while swinging those car keys on his fingers after the Steelers’ 21-10 victory.
“Lynn, of course, he was here tonight,� said Ward, referring to Lynn Swann, the Steelers’ Hall of Fame wide receiver who is so popular among The Faithful that he is running for governor of Pennsylvania. “You look back through Steeler history, I mean, Swann and [John] Stallworth, those are the guys who made the spectacular catches in Super Bowls, and I wanted to be compared to those guys.�
There was a pause, before Ward’s smile grew while telling the truth: “I think you can put me on the list now with those guys, and I never thought I belonged on that list, because they had Super Bowl rings.�
Now Ward has at least one in his eighth NFL season, and so do the rest of the Steelers from his generation. Finally. The last time the Steelers fulfilled their birthright by winning a Super Bowl, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and the rest of the Rolling Stones actually were relevant. So, 26 years later, with the old guys of rock still trying to sing young at this Super Bowl, the pressure was on Cowher’s latest group to make The Faithful not even think about claiming that they can’t, well, you know, get no satisfaction.
Actually, the Steelers had to win for a reason bigger than trying to pacify all of their fans who have spent recent decades worshiping Franco, Terry and Mean Joe more than Hines, Ben and Jerome. The Steelers had to win for the good of mankind. Just the thought of saying “Seattle Seahawks� and “world champions� in the same sentence is enough to knock the earth off its axis and send us spinning toward the other side of Jupiter.
The Earth is just fine now, because Ward is a perfectionist who even preferred to remember what he didn’t do as much as what he did. For instance: With the Steelers still sputtering along late in the second quarter, he allowed a catchable pass from Ben Roethlisberger to slide through his hands in the corner of the end zone. “I was too worried about my feet, trying to stay in bounds,� he said. “I took my eyes off the ball, but I really don’t get too caught up in drops, which is why I went out to try and redeem myself.�
Exhibit A: Ward’s 37-yard gem occurred two plays later.
By the end of the night, amidst the slew of Terrible Towels swirling through the air, the Steelers had a fifth Vince Lombardi Trophy for the franchise and the Super Bowl ring that Cowher had lacked despite 10 trips to the playoffs during his 14 seasons with the Steelers. Plus, this was the classic sendoff for hometown hero Jerome Bettis, who said this was his last game.
“We were winning this for a lot of people,� Ward said, with his smile growing wider below twinkling eyes. “It’s also for my hometown of Forest Park, Georgia. I won it for those guys who helped support me my whole career.� Then he added, with emotion in his voice, “We all won.�
Permalink | Comments (30) | Categories: Falcons / NFL, Terence Moore
Ward keeps his pledge to Steelers
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
Detroit — He worked at Chick-fil-A and saved enough money to buy a Ford Escort. Now he can drive out of Detroit in a Cadillac. Super Bowl XL was supposed to have been Jerome Bettis’ week, but Hines Ward turned it on in the second half and put the cap on a season with the Pittsburgh Steelers that didn’t start out that smartly.
He had been a holdout. His stubborn stand lasted 15 days, and when it was over, he had signed a contract that tied him to the Steelers for five years at $27.5 million. He apologized to his teammates, and he told his employer, Dan Rooney, “You’re not going to regret this.�
Sunday evening, between the glaring sounds and the various interruptions that butted it on this aging American classic, Ward put his signature to the pledge. He came to the Steelers out of the University of Georgia in 1998, a third-round draft selection, not one widely pursued, and he has pulled himself up by his bootstraps. He is not a physically impressive fellow, even at 6 feet and a well-packaged 210 pounds.
The Steelers came here favored over the Seattle SeaÂhawks, though they had gone into the playoffs seeded sixth. Seedings, I’d always thought, were for tennis and basketball, games played in male lingerie. But the bullish gang from the Steel City paid no attention to seedings. And, frankly, the way this game began, it was beginning to look as though they might use those thousands of “Terrible Towelsâ€? that filled the stands like a sea of buttercups to wipe the egg off their face. The Seahawks had had one touchdown taken away by penalty and had moved the ball with military skill, but the Steelers led, 7-3.
Ward had dropped a pass that might have been a score. Of that, he said, “I was trying to get my feet in. Great players don’t drop passes. And I want to be considered among the great ones.�
And he put on his charge after the intermission, though it was not he but Willie Parker who fired the first shot. Willie Parker, the running back unappreciated in North Carolina but adored in Pittsburgh. Ken Whisenhunt, who makes the offensive Steelers’ calls, punched Parker’s number on the second play of the third quarter, and he squirted through a gap on the right side of the line and never stopped until he had finished a 75-yard touchdown sprint, the longest run from scrimmage in Super Bowl history.
The Steelers were moseying along smoothly until all of a sudden Ben Rothlisberger flung a pass that Terry Herndon picked up near the goal line and ran it back 76 yards — to add his name to the record book with the longest interception return in these 40 bowls. The Seahawks converted that blunder into a touchdown, and the Steelers lead was cut to 14-10.
So that left the door open for some more heroics, and this is where Ward came awake. Here Whisenhunt went to his book of tricks and called on a play that has been a winner this year. A handoff went to Antwaan Randle El, who flung a pass downfield to the speeding Ward, who pulled it in about the goal line and scored. Ward had picked up 18 yards on an end-around earlier.
It was pretty clear now. The issue was settled, all but the matter of the MVP. It clearly would not be Bettis, for “The Bus� had made one good run and that was about it. The sentimental choice had made it back to his hometown for biggest moment of his life, and that was about it. The Steelers turned the last series over to him, run after run, and when it was done, he had gained 43 yards on 14 carries for the evening.
Then he walked off the field, into the arms of his teammates, and later made it official, “I have to bid it farewell.�
Bill Cowher behaved like a fan on the ceremonial podium, waving one of those towels and hugging anybody in sight, especially Dan Rooney, who carries on the family colors in blue-collar Pittsburgh. He’s about the same age as was his father when Art Rooney was riding a championship stretch of his own in the ’70’s. Cowher had done this with a quarterback still wet behind the ears. Rothlisberger is still just 23 years old, and is surrounded by more of his kind. But none more valuable than MVP Ward, who has a five-year contract and a new Cadillac to build on.
Permalink | Comments (45) | Categories: Falcons / NFL, Furman Bisher
Thrashers’ Waddell ‘guarantees’ playoffs
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
Given that the NFL playoffs somehow missed the bus to Atlanta this season and the NBA and NCAA tournament don’t figure to be making any connections here, isn’t it nice to know that at least one individual remains confident of a postseason come April?
“We’ll be in the playoffs,” Thrashers general manager Don Waddell said Saturday night.
What? No, “I guarantee,” as punctuation?
“If you want to write ‘guarantee,’ ” Waddell said, “I have no problem with that.”
It’s worth noting that these words from the head of the 0-for-life Thrashers came before Saturday’s opening faceoff against Florida. At the time, the local hockey franchise was mired in perhaps the most baffling slide in its largely inglorious history: a seven-game losing streak that followed a 13-2-3 stretch that didn’t figure to be an aberration.
The Thrashers went on to win the game over the Panthers 6-4, at least somewhat restoring hopes that this wasn’t the season’s final home game as a playoff contender. They have three road games leading into the Olympic break and won’t actually play another game at Philips Arena for a month (March 4). Trying to predict what personality they bring that night is futile.
“It’s like we are on a road,” Marian Hossa said. “You know, we go uphill, we go downhill, up, down.”
The Thrashers aren’t a hockey team. They’re a whiffleball in a windstorm.
When a team loses seven games in a row, there is never one reason, there are several. The defense has gotten sloppy. Forwards have become lazy and selfish. Kari Lehtonen has been just average in the nets. The players in general have been pressing, and the coach, Bob Hartley, who is known to squeeze hard in times like these, has not helped matters any.
Then, of course, there has been Ilya Kovalchuk, the Capt. Hook of wingers and his ever-illegal stick. The Thrashers haven’t lost a game because of Kovalchuk’s stick; they have merely been embarrassed and irritated by him.
To what extent? Well, Waddell implied Saturday that any Thrasher caught playing with an illegal stick will be suspended by the team.
“It will be more than just [a fine],” he said. “Your choice is: play with a legal stick or don’t play at all. I think that [threat] is more effective than just money.”
But Kovalchuk’s stick isn’t the biggest problem with the Thrashers. This is: They have become soft, both mentally and physically. They miss Bobby Holik, the rugged center whose signing was meant to prevent slumps. He wasn’t brought to the team to score 25 goals but rather to stop opponents, win key faceoffs and on occasion grab a teammate by the collar and scream, “Wake up!” But Holik has been out with a broken foot and may not return before the break.
“He has the biggest influence because of the Cups he’s won,” Waddell said.
Holik thinks he knows what the problem has been but is hesitant to say because he is injured and somewhat on the outside. But he said: “When I get into my first game, I’ll say something — or do something.”
He then reminisced about his former New Jersey teammate, hard-hitting defenseman Scott Stevens, whose jersey was retired Friday. “He was the best at doing something in a practice or an optional practice or a game,” Holik said. “He was such an inspiration. He had something to say, but he was more like, ‘Do it on the ice first, then say it.’ “
In times like these, everybody wants somebody fired. But to fire Hartley would be shortsighted. Did he go 13-2-3, then wake up the next morning and think, “I feel dumber today”?
Waddell has heard charges that he is too preoccupied with building the U.S. Olympic team and not his own. But he said he talked to four general managers about potential trades Saturday and says scouting players for Turin actually has enabled him to see 74 non-Thrashers games this season, not the usual dozen, giving him a better feel for the league.
“I hear the criticism, but it’s unfair,” he said.
Actually, if the Thrashers don’t make the playoffs, any criticism can be justified.
But they’ll make it. It has been somewhat guaranteed.
Permalink | Comments (23) | Categories: Jeff Schultz, Thrashers / NHL
Tougher Steelers will come out on top
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
Detroit — Here’s why the Pittsburgh Steelers instead of their worthy but mentally softer opponents will have their fingerprints all over the Lombardi Trophy Sunday night: While the Seattle Seahawks would like to win, the Steelers have to win.
Just study the determined looks and words from Hines Ward. “We’re playing with desperation,” said the Steelers wide receiver. “If we lose, we go home. That’s the mentality that we’ve had for the last seven or eight weeks.”
By comparison, the Seahawks barely struggled while becoming the representative of the weaker NFC in the Super Bowl, but don’t get me wrong. They’d rather win than lose today. It’s just that the urgency isn’t there for the Seahawks, and not only because they haven’t anybody close to Joey Porter, the Steelers’ explosive linebacker on and off the field. Among other things, he fumed over a perceived slight by Seahawks tight end Jerramy Stevens, and he barked that the Steelers will “send as many [Seahawks] to the sideline as we can. Every chance we get to tap somebody out, that’s what we’re going out there to do.”
Stevens responded with shrugs between low-key replies. Such was the case throughout the week for members of a Seattle franchise that hadn’t won a playoff game in more than two decades. Nobody noticed, because the Seahawks operate in the obscurity of the far Northwest. They’re about to go before their biggest audience. “We’re looking at each other like, ‘Wow. This is a great opportunity that we have,’ ” said quarterback Matt Hasselbeck, smiling, suggesting that the Seahawks are a bunch of Gomer Pyles finally leaving Mayberry for Raleigh. “We’re very excited to be here, and we feel really good.”
Not good if the Seahawks wish to become world champions. They’re facing those who comprise a wired Pittsburgh bunch that wants the world to know they are obsessed with being here, and that they plan to do something about it.
Everything about this Super Bowl is flavored gold and black. Take the weather, for instance, which was a tribute to Seattle much of the week with rain dripping from gray skies. Then along came an epidemic of snowflakes Saturday. By today’s opening kickoff, the ground outside of the domed Ford Field is expected to have a heavy dose of white stuff. In other words, the Steelers and their overwhelming following in town from the wintry shores of the Ohio, Allegheny and Monongahela rivers will feel right at home.
Elsewhere, Bill Cowher is determined to end the annoying habit of his teams imploding just shy of giving the Steelers a fifth world championship. You also have Jerome Bettis, and this is the homecoming for the Steelers’ future Hall of Fame running back in what he says could be his last game. Given the popularity of Bettis among his teammates and those waving Terrible Towels, the Steelers are obsessed with turning this former Notre Dame star into their Gipper.
To paraphrase, they want to go out there and win one for The Bus.All of that is secondary to what folks should consider most about the likely direction of Super Bowl XL. With apologies to the 1968 Baltimore Colts, the best team always wins the Super Bowl, and the Steelers are this year’s best team.
About those 1968 Colts: They were favored by nearly three touchdowns over the New York Jets in Super Bowl III during January of 1969, but only because the prognosticators lacked hindsight, which says those Jets’ 16-7 victory wasn’t an upset. They had the same number of Hall of Famers (three) as those Colts. In fact, those Jets had 10 Pro Bowl players to those Colts’ eight.
As for the current Steelers, hindsight isn’t necessary to see that they are the scariest No. 6 seed ever. That’s why oddsmakers made them the Super Bowl favorites. Their defense is relentless and ferocious. In addition to Porter, they have Troy Polamalu, the omnipresent safety who isn’t called “The Tasmanian Devil” for nothing. The offense finesses you with Willie Parker and pounds you with Bettis behind a superb offensive line. Then the Steelers have Ward, who is among those catching a slew of passes from Ben Roethlisberger, owner of a 124.8 passer rating in the playoffs in his second NFL season.
The Seahawks can’t win. The Steelers only can lose, but they won’t.
Permalink | Comments (12) | Categories: Falcons / NFL, Terence Moore
Choices challenging for Hall of Fame
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
Detroit — Well, the “doofus from Daly City” had said he was in shock. Repeated it. For once, it seemed that John Madden had been shut down, but not for long. In a few minutes, the newest coach member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame broke out in his giggly television monologue.
“I’m not going to make a lot of sense,” he said, which hardly seemed a break from the norm. He had a .759 coaching percentage and won one Super Bowl the 10 years he was in Oakland, but it seemed that it was his “contribution” to the NFL on television that put him over the top with the Selectors Committee this Saturday morning at our meeting in the Marriott Renaissance.
In all my 29 sessions as a member of the group, no Pro Football Hall of Fame class has been such a challenge as this one. Sometimes it never seems fair. This was one class of 15 you’d like to have put in in one fell swoop, but we 39 guys don’t have such leeway. Madden was a nominee of the Veterans Committee, and so was another inductee, much nearer to Georgian hearts than Madden — Rayfield Wright, the Dallas Cowboy from Griffin and Fort Valley State. A tackle, not that prominent on your television screen, unless he gets whistled for holding or recovers a fumble. The other four who made the list were Troy Aikman and Reggie White, no surprises there, Warren Moon and Harry Carson.
The latter two require some reacquainting, I guess. Moon played five championship seasons in the Canadian Football League before coming to Houston and establishing his NFL credentials. Carson was a Giants linebacker out of South Carolina State who finally got the call after 12 rejections, and a politically oriented remark of despair — “I’ll not be a candidate, and if selected, I do not choose to run” — so they say.
Claude Humphrey, the only Falcon who ever reached such a lofty height, advanced to the second round but stalled there. His specialty was devouring quarterbacks, but the beef was that he came up short defensing the run. It was during a noisy debate over his credentials that Tommy Nobis’ name hit the board when one delegate said he’d had a letter from a former Falcon who’d said, “If any Falcon other than Tommy Nobis gets into the Hall of Fame, it will be a disgrace.” By this time, Nobis’ fate is in the hands of the Veterans Committee.
Strange, the exchange over a player who didn’t make it for the ninth time ate up more of the clock than any nominee who did, and this was a vigorous but sporting convocation. Strange that a receiver with Art Monk’s numbers can’t crash this hard-line body. He caught more passes than any player before him in the history of the league, nearly four times more than Lynn Swann, who got in with 336, but there just didn’t seem to be room for him. Search me.
There were a couple of shoo-ins — Reggie White, who died young, went in by virtual acclamation, as did Aikman, whose numbers were moderately impressive, but who quarterbacked champions for Dallas. Suffice it to say Russ Grimm’s weekend in Detroit has not gone well so far, no reference here to the swirling snow. Grimm is a former Redskin who coaches the Pittsburgh Steelers’ line, and who was one of the candidates up for consideration who didn’t make it, but safe to say that hardly weighs heavily on his mind just now.
On that subject, the Steelers go into Super Bowl XL Sunday mildly favored by four points. From my seat, that’s a bit too mild. See, this isn’t Seattle, and the “12th man” had to stay home. There will be a blizzard of “Terrible Towels,” for Pittsburgh is a drive away, not that that makes that much difference. Thus, my hunch is that the Steelers win about 30-17, grateful to be under the hood of a Ford, not exposed to the wretched elements. Now, if I can survive the yowling at halftime of four guys who look as if they survived a train wreck, it will be the second time I’ll have made it through a Super Bowl blizzard in Michigan.
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Floundering Jackets have no excuses
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Yeah, they’re young, and no, they don’t have a point guard. But those failings don’t excuse this. Nothing excuses this.
The Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets just assured themselves of going a calendar month without winning an ACC game. They’ve lost seven consecutive games without having yet run into Duke or North Carolina. They’ve lost three in a row at home, all three by 10 or more points. There was bad luck involved at Virginia Tech on Tuesday, but mostly this has been bad basketball. This has been the sort of basketball that a big-time program, which Tech believes itself to be, should never play.
On Saturday the Jackets turned a halftime tie into a 17-point loss to an unranked visitor. Think about that. Think about a team that has Anthony Morrow, Ra’Sean Dickey and Jeremis Smith, a team that managed but seven points in the first 12:50 of the second half. Think about a team that deployed eight men, only four of whom could make a basket. (Smith was a lamentable 0-for-8.) Think about a team that was flummoxed by Miami’s 1-3-1 zone, of which Paul Hewitt said, “We weren’t prepared for it.”
Was this the first time the Hurricanes had used such a defense? Uh, no. “The last game against Wake Forest, we played it exclusively,” said Miami coach Frank Haith. Somebody at Tech might want to watch a little more tape.
But there’s a greater issue than simply being outmaneuvered. There’s the dire matter of getting outhustled. Under Hewitt, Tech has almost always defended well and played hard. It did neither against Miami. It allowed the Hurricanes to penetrate and pound the ball underneath from the opening possession on. Miami made 48.3 percent of its shots on a day Haith said, “We didn’t have a good [game] shooting the ball.” Imagine if the ‘Canes had been hitting. What would the margin have been then? Thirty? Forty?
One sequence said everything. Inside the final eight minutes, the Jackets down by 13, Miami’s Robert Hite had his layup blocked by Smith. The ball bounced loose in the lane. Any of four Jackets could have fallen on it, but none could be troubled to bend over. The Hurricanes’ Guillermo Diaz finally grabbed the ball and got fouled. Miami inbounded. Anthony Harris hit a trey. Killshot.
Hewitt said afterward that he’ll make lineup changes — Mario West will start against Florida State on Thursday, primarily because he hustles — but why exactly has it taken this long? The Jackets are getting worse the more they play, which is the opposite of how it should be. Stout enough to beat Boston College on Jan. 8, they’ve been too flimsy to beat anybody but Centenary since. Hewitt complained Saturday that his weakside shooters kept scooting close to defenders in the 1-3-1 — the idea is to elude the defense — and that’s bad playing. And it’s not the greatest coaching, either.
“Georgia Tech is very young, but they’ve got good talent and Paul is a [heck] of a coach,” said Haith, and there have been seasons — his first one here and the splendiferous run to the 2004 NCAA title game — where Hewitt seemed as smart as anybody in his industry. But he faulted himself for last year’s disappointment, and it’s hard to see how anyone could describe this sub-.500 record as a job well done.
Maybe the arrival of next year’s recruits will change things. Until then, this team seems so lost that even an official took pity. Near the end Saturday, Harris stopped dribbling out the clock and flipped the ball to referee Karl Hess along the sideline. Thing was, three seconds still remained. Hess should have let it go out of bounds and given Tech one last possession. Instead Hess caught the pass and, in an act of mercy, let the game end.
Permalink | Comments (82) | Categories: Mark Bradley, Tech / ACC
Press hits bottom in Corporateville
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
Detroit — Bear with me. Detroit again.
The Major League All-Star game was no more than a hiccup during the baseball season. Here today, gone tomorrow. This time the Motor City was ready, lit up like 10 zillion Christmas trees, mainly because all the big-time auto corporations are in this thing together. Super Bowl 40, all for one and one for all. The NFL Lions are owned by the Ford family, who built the playroom where the game is played. The media center is in the General Motors Global Headquarters, which is wrapped around the Marriott Hotel where we stay, and the official car of the game is Cadillac.
Not only that, but chairman of the whole works is Roger Penske, who has an empire of racing machines and wheels for rent. And get this, he doesn’t even live here. Penske came from Shaker Heights, Ohio. He’s into this production to the point he has been seen driving about town supervising garbage pickups. He’ll do anything for you, short of changing your oil.
I’ll have to guess that the most read item in the Detroit Free Press Friday morning was the weather forecast. Snow was in it, and Penske, when asked what he feared most, said, “A snow dump on Saturday,” such as happened on that Sunday in 1982, when the game was last in the neighborhood.
All has gone well up to now, to the point that the visiting press has been scraping bottom, and reached it the other day. Now, the two biggest celebrities in Detroit right now are Jerome Bettis, a native, known as “The Bus,” and his mama, Gladys. They have even done a television soup commercial to be shown sometime Sunday. So, when Jerramy Stevens, Seattle tight end and a placid fellow, said it would be a sad day when Bettis has to leave town without the trophy, Joey Porter, Steelers linebacker, snarled out in rebuttal, and snarling is something he does well.
The hungering press leaped all over it, like a bird on a June bug. “Word War XL” was the headline in the Free Press. Something at last to raise the hackles on the neck, they hoped. Frankly, it was little ado about nothing, and right now, the huntsmen are on the prowl again.
So bland has it been that some interviews turned into an inspection of faith. Seattle’s Mike Holmgren, when asked how a coach balances this game of violence with his Christianity, said, “People do look at it as a contradiction at times, think you can’t be a devout Christian and coach or play, but that couldn’t be further from the truth.”
Mack Strong is the Seahawks fullback from Georgia, and playing in the Northwest for 13 years, may as well have been on another planet until he was rediscovered in the Super Bowl. He has a strong religious base, and spoke of it as it relates to football. “I just look at it as an opportunity to glorify God. I feel like God has given me the talent and blessed me with the ability to play a long time and do the best with what He has given me.”
He and his wife have settled firmly in the nearby town of Kirkland, and created a family foundation there. Columbus has seen the last of him, except for visitation.
Just another little sidelight here, with an area touch. In 1972, Georgia Tech recruited a receiver named Steve Raible. After a good, solid career at Tech, Raible was drafted in the second round by Seattle. As one might suspect, he drifted off the Southern radar, but he played six seasons as a Seahawk, caught 68 passes for 1,017 yards, then broke into sports broadcasting, and to end the suspense, he became the news anchor at station KIRO-TV but still does play-by-play of Seahawks games. And will Sunday from Ford Field. Just thought you’d like to know what had become of Steve Raible.
Friday was more of the same. Both coaches performed. Holmgren was more entertaining than Pittsburgh’s Bill Cowher. The commissioner, Paul Tagliabue, did his state of the union act, but unlike the president, he invites questions. He didn’t get the one I wanted to ask, that Atlanta was turned down as a Super Bowl site on account of “unpredictable weather,” so how on earth did it wind up in Detroit again? Had it slipped his mind that there’s a roof in Atlanta, and it snows in Detroit?
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Emotional Starr pays homage to Lombardi
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
Detroit - They were all there, an impressive collection of former Super Bowl most valuable players, sitting around various parts of a ballroom of the Marriott Renaissance Center on Friday and telling stories. The most riveting ones came from Bart Starr, but what else is new? He always has the definitive subject.
Vince Lombardi. Not Pete Rozelle, the famous commissioner who married professional football with television forever. Not Red Grange, the Galloping Ghost, or Johnny Unitas, the ultimate competitor, or Jim Brown, the greatest running back, or Joe Montana, Mr. Comeback, or any of those other names that conjure up visions of excellence between goal posts.
What Starr preferred to mention often and dramatically before a captive audience gathered around his still finely tuned 72-year-old body was Lombardi, Lombardi, Lombardi. How appropriate, especially since the NFL championship game will take place on Sunday within this notoriously rough city that was a member of Lombardi’s Black & Blue division. Not only that, the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Seattle Seahawks will play in the 40th edition of this game that featured the Green Bay Packers of Starr and Lombardi winning the first two editions. Plus, the trophy is named after the late coach who still sends his old quarterback to tears.
This time, Starr was in mid-sentence when his eyes became a river. His story for the moment involved the summer of 1969, when Lombardi ran the Washington Redskins after retiring from the Packers, and when Lombardi visited Starr and his wife, Cherry, in Green Bay. “He said, ‘I’m really happy for the two of you. This is a beautiful home,” recalled Starr, now a Birmingham resident, pausing to collect himself. “(Cherry) said, ‘We owe all of this to you.’ He actually walked over to her and gave her a great, big hug. Then he gave me a big hug, and he walked right out the door. We always wondered if he, at that time, knew that he had the cancer.”
In a stunner to many, Lombardi died by the end of the next year, but his memory still lives. No, it still dominates professional football through the eternal magic of the Frozen Tundra of Lambeau Field, through the sights and sounds of NFL Films — mostly, through Paul Hornung, Forrest Gregg, Fuzzy Thurston and all of Lombardi’s others boys who also love to tell the stories. It’s just that none among those Packers of lore can do so with the zeal or the credentials of Starr.
At the end of his 16 years with the Packers, he was a Hall of Famer after five NFL championships (including those two Super Bowls in which he was the MVP after both of them), four trips to the Pro Bowl and a league MVP award. At the beginning of all of that, he was the struggling quarterback and punter from the University of Alabama who the pitiful Packers made the 200th selection of the 1956 draft.
Two years later, Starr was starting for a Packers team that won just once in 12 games. Then along came that voice for the ages before the 1959 season. That was back when the Packers management had the audacity to give its head coaching and general manager jobs to some offensive assistant coach from the New York Giants, but he had that voice. He also had that message on his first day with his new team, and the nearly verbatim memory of it all caused Starr’s river to flow more. With face glowing, Starr said of Lombardi’s speech, “He quickly turned to us, and he said, ‘Gentlemen, we’re going to relentlessly chase perfection knowing full well that we will not catch it, because perfection is unattainable.’ He said, ‘But we are going to relentlessly chase it, because, in the process, we will catch excellence.’ “
Then Starr paused, because he remembered how Lombardi paused back then before the late coach said, “I’m not remotely interested in being good.”
Between chuckles over that story and a slew of others involving those opening Super Bowl victories for the Packers, the evolution of the NFL through the years and more Lombardi, the old quarterback snatched a handkerchief from his back pocket. He needed something to dry up that river, but it didn’t work.
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Dogs improve, but pay the price
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Athens — They’re far better than they were, but deep down Dennis Felton wonders if these Bulldogs, or any Bulldogs to come, will ever work as hard as last season’s motley crew. That overmatched lot was the least talented SEC aggregation since the league started taking basketball seriously, but somehow those untalented Dogs never allowed themselves to become truly hangdog.
“They kept up their effort against very discouraging odds,” said Felton, Georgia’s demanding coach. “I don’t know whether those players would ever admit it, but there had to be nights when they thought they had no chance.”
Most nights they didn’t. Georgia did well to finish 8-20 last season. Because Felton has developed the players he had and has added five gifted freshmen, the Bulldogs have a chance in most every game now. They beat Georgia Tech by 16 points in December and beat Alabama, the preseason choice to win the SEC West, by nine Wednesday night. They’re 13-8, which Felton believes puts them in the NCAA mix, though the NIT seems a more likely destination. This seems a program on the clear rise. Thing is, no program rises without turbulence.
“We’ve taken some steps backward,” Felton said, and those retreats have been in the only area in which the 8-20 Bulldogs actually excelled, and that’s effort. And that’s the way of the basketball world.
A team strapped for resources will play defense because it has no choice. A more talented team will be tempted to cut a corner. Even a coach as forceful as Felton can’t always persuade his men to defend if some of those men believe their true calling lies at the offensive end. Yes, Georgia has started to score points at a major-college rate — it had 46 points in the first half against Alabama, against which it managed 47 in a game last season — but the all-court ferocity Felton tries to foster sometimes goes missing.
“We have not defended with the tenacity I want,” he said. “We’ve been soft on defense and in rebounding more nights than I would have imagined.” He smiled. “Last year we dreamed of scoring like this.”
With an eye toward ramping up intensity, Felton changed his lineup for Alabama — freshmen Mike Mercer and Terrance Woodbury started ahead of Steve Newman and Channing Toney — and the revamp achieved the desired effect. Four days after a deflating loss at Auburn, Georgia played hard and well.
When nine of a team’s top 11 men are freshmen or sophomores, there will always be inconsistency in production. What Felton seeks is a benchmark for sheer will. When Georgia achieves that, it will have something.
Felton can really coach, and more than a few of these guys are learning to play. Witness Younes Idrissi, the Blockin’ Moroccan. As a freshman, he managed 38 baskets in 27 games. As a sophomore, he has developed a hook shot and scored 14 baskets against Nevada’s Nick Fazekas and Alabama’s Jermareo Davidson, two of the nation’s better big men. Witness Dave Bliss, who infamously was called for five fouls in four minutes against Tech last season but who whirled around Davidson for the biggest basket of Wednesday’s victory.
“Alabama’s a pretty good team,” Bliss said, “and to be able to beat them really says something. We’ve got enough guys now.”
There will be wobbles ahead. Georgia could lose six of its last eight regular-season games, which would render even the NIT problematic. Mercer could decide he needs to shoot even more — he already leads the team in shots — or the Bulldogs could figure that a team capable of scoring 88 points on Alabama doesn’t need to guard all that hard. Felton sees the potential, but he also sees the potholes.
“We’ve traveled some distance,” he said, “but we’ve got so much more distance to travel. I feel pressed to continue to move forward.”
He’s a coach. That’s what he’s supposed to say. But the most talented Bulldog since Jarvis Hayes senses, correctly, that a corner has been turned. “One of the reasons I came here was to be part of building something special,” said Mercer, and he’s on track.
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This Super Bowl controversy is contrived
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
Detroit — This isn’t Joe Namath doing what he did, or Eugene Robinson getting caught while failing to do what he was trying to do. This isn’t the constantly flapping tongues of Shannon Sharpe, Ray Buchanan or Jim McMahon. This isn’t John Matuszak terrorizing the French Quarter after curfew or Stanley Wilson and Barret Robbins finding their Super Bowl highs without the use of adrenaline.
This thing between Pittsburgh Steelers linebacker Joey Porter and Seattle Seahawks tight end Jerramy Stevens is wonderfully ridiculous. In fact, speaking for all of us who have spent the past few days yawning over what has become Super Bore Week, we’re thrilled to have this controversy that really isn’t.
It’s a start. It’s a contrived one, but who cares when No-Doz sales are on the rise throughout Wayne County? As a strikingly calm Stevens mentioned Thursday at the Seahawks’ team hotel in nearby Dearborn, where he sat high on a podium before slightly more than half of the media in the free world, “I was pretty sure there would be a backlash from what I said on Tuesday and a great deal of coverage, because there seems to be a lack of stories.”
Yeah, well, until this came along (whatever this is), you only had that increasingly tired stuff about Jerome Bettis’ homecoming and that vehicle carrying a few Seahawks players to a press conference hitting a security barrier. Now you have Porter claiming that he was forced to hate the Seahawks. Something about Stevens saying nothing worth repeating on Tuesday during Media Day.
If you must know, Stevens said Bettis’ homecoming was “heartwarming,” but that it will be a “sad day” when he leaves Sunday without a trophy. I mean, is that different than Bettis telling 30,000 folks waving Terrible Towels in Pittsburgh that the Steelers would return home with one for the thumb — as in a fifth world championship for the franchise? Nope, and that was even worse on the scale of guaranteed victories. Stevens also claimed that Porter will have trouble coming off the blitz against the mountain that is Seattle left tackle Walter Jones, and Porter will. So where’s the problem?
There isn’t one, but Porter likes to invent controversies in his sleep. Two years ago, he sprinted across the field before a game in Cleveland to give his opinion to an opponent jawing with a teammate. While his teammate played in the game, Porter was in the locker room after he was thrown out before the opening kickoff. He also spent this postseason blasting the Indianapolis Colts for suggesting that they thought they were more physical than the Steelers. That was before Porter saw a grassy knoll at the RCA Dome by accusing the officials in that game of conspiring against the Steelers in favor of the great Peyton Manning.
So Porter is fuming these days, or he says he is. He spent long stretches on Thursday at the Steelers’ team hotel in nearby Pontiac with enough sizzling words to heat up the chilly breezes outside. Said Porter of Stevens, “I am not going to personally sit there and stand for anybody to show disrespect to any of my teammates. Now the true feelings are out, and they’re going to hear my true feelings, and we don’t have to play the game about, ‘Oh, yeah, they’re great over there.’
“It’s official. I don’t have to hold any punches anymore. It is what it is. They are looking for a fight. I have been ready for a fight.”
Even though it’s a phony fight, Porter is throwing real punches. He said of Stevens, a former No. 1 draft pick who has spent much of his career on the bench, “Personally, I think he’s soft. That’s just me. This is his fourth year in the league, and you have never heard anything about him until right now. He is just starting to play.”
Porter said his team would make the Seahawks quit. “We’re going to try to tap out as many people as we can, I’m going to put it like that. We’re going to try to send as many people to the sideline as we can.”
Folks have heard of Stevens in the past, but for the wrong reasons. In addition to a couple of DUIs, he once drove his car through the front window of a convalescence home. Now, to hear Porter tell it, Stevens is near Sharpe, Buchanan and McMahon territory. Said Stevens, sounding like he already is in Sharpe, Buchanan and McMahon territory, “I hope this isn’t my Super Bowl lore. I plan to make the game my Super Bowl lore.”
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Signing Day? Eh…
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
I’m of two minds about Signing Day. It’s important, yes, but it’s not quite as important as the tonnage of coverage suggests it is. And yet we at the AJC, which provides a goodly chunk of that tonnage, would be derelict in our duties if we didn’t address an issue that is so clearly of interest to our readers.
I’ve done a lot of Signing Day columns over the years, and I’ve tried about every angle there is. I talked to two recruiting mavens who’d never actually met but who corresponded via e-mail every day during the recruiting period. I’ve done the fans-in-the-lobby-watching-the-big-board thing. I’ve done the local guy who got away — J.R. Lemon, who signed with Stanford. I’ve done the scene in Athens and the scene at Georgia Tech, and I’ve made the usual column-type pronouncements, one or two of which might actually have come true. But every time I cover Signing Day, I feel I should attach a big fat asterisk to every word I write.
- Who really knows?
Who knew David Pollack, a middling prospect, would be the best Georgia defender since Terry Hoage? (Who was himself the recipient of Georgia’s last available scholarship in 1980.) Who knew Sterling Boyd and Odell Collins and Jasper Sanks would be utter disappointments? Who knew P.J. Daniels (a walk-on) would lead the ACC in rushing? Who knew Derrick Steagall (remember him) wouldn’t be half as good as advertised?
You have to recruit well — which isn’t necessarily the same thing as being ranked in Tom Lemming’s or Max Emfinger’s top 10 in a particular year — to sustain a program, but recruiting without coaching is… well, it’s exactly what Steve Spurrier said after he beat Georgia and Ray Goff in 1991. Remember? “Georgia gets all these recruits, but I don’t know what happens to them.”
Signing Day is fun for the zealots, but it’s important to note the nickname that was pinned to Mack Brown before his guys actually went out and won themselves a national championship. Before the night of Jan. 4, 2006, Brown was known as Coach February. And it wasn’t meant as a compliment.
Permalink | Comments (59) | Categories: Mark Bradley, Quick Hit, Tech / ACC, UGA / SEC
Bettis family practices togetherness
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
Detroit - The old house is tucked in the middle of a block on this city’s rugged west side, and when you’re standing at the front of the brick structure with the triangular look near the roof, it has the feel of a rural church. This was the loving home where the gospel according to Johnnie and Gladys Bettis was preached to their three children, including the eventually famous Jerome of the Pittsburgh Steelers.
As for Jerome’s siblings, they’re not so famous, but they joined Jerome in living their parents’ commandments:
Thou shalt work hard.
Thou shalt support the activities of everybody in the family.
Thou shalt bowl.
You have Kimberly, 39, a student who works for a local staffing company. You also have John, 37, a mortgage banker in nearby Troy who sauntered over to a telephone pole at the curb facing the old house that has been abandoned and crumbling for 13 years. He stopped to motion from that pole to another one a few yards away. “We used to play football between both of these poles,” said John, before losing the joy in his face after he glanced back to what remains of the old house. “It’s an eyesore, and you almost hate to see it still standing back there,” he added. “My parents, my sister, all of us, we’re in a different part of the city now, and I try not to come down this way anymore. Jerome doesn’t come here at all.”
That is, when Jerome makes one of his many trips to Detroit between relaxing at his home in Pittsburgh during the season and his one in Lawrenceville afterward with his fiance from Atlanta.
Speaking of Atlanta, John attended Clark Atlanta University. He shook his head as we walked around the old neighborhood, now dominated by stray cats, blowing garbage and drug dealers. “It was on the edge of turning like this when we left in 1993 after Jerome used money from his first contract with the Los Angeles Rams to buy my parents the house that they have now,” John said. “But at the time when we still were living around here, we were almost sheltered from it all.”
We’re back to that gospel according to Johnnie and Gladys. Courtesy of frequent and mandatory nights at the bowling alley for the whole family, the kids stayed out of mischief. Jerome laughed when I mentioned as much this week, because he recalled how he still caught the wrath of his father. It had much to do with John.
“He’s my big brother, and he’s always been there for me, but when I was coming up, he was leading me, but sometimes it was in the wrong direction,” said Jerome, laughing some more about John who is four years older. “He made me get a lot of whippings, because I followed him. I learned at an early age to listen to what he says, but that I shouldn’t necessarily do what he says.”
In case you’re wondering, John never was a prolific athlete, and he is Jerome’s “big” brother only in age. For one, Jerome is 5-foot-11 and 255 of the thickest pounds that you’ll ever see. He was known as “The Bus” even before he used his powerful legs to push the Steelers into Super Bowl XL for his homecoming that has netted Jerome the key to the city and the retirement of his high school jersey. They’ll play the Seattle Seahawks at Ford Field, located a kickoff or three from the old house.
Anyway, John is so much shorter and lighter than Jerome that you might refer to John as “The Van.” Which would be appropriate. Consider that Johnnie and Gladys never have missed any of Jerome’s football games, and that spans from his all-everything career at Mackenzie High School through his 13 seasons in the pros along the way eventually to the Hall of Fame. In between, John drove his parents and his sister in his aunt’s van 3 1/2 hours each way to South Bend, Ind., to all of Jerome’s home games at the University of Notre Dame. John also was the chauffeur for away games that didn’t involve air travel.
This was long before John used his privilege as Jerome’s older brother to destroy the little guy in pickup games between those telephone poles. “Wherever I went, my mother would always say, ‘Take your brother,’ and if we didn’t let him play, she would take the football from us,” John said. Then he chuckled, while pointing to a spot near the telephone pole at the front of the old house. “It was right here, when he was 12 years old. That’s when I knew he was rising to a different level.”
With more pointing, John said emphatically, “Right here, that’s where he turned around and ran me over. I was the last guy between him and a touchdown. He knocked me over and scored, and you know the rest of the story.”
Moments later, a middle-aged man staggered toward the familiar face that belonged to John. “You need to tell your brother that he should come around here so we can see him more,” said the man, still staggering, with John giving the definitive response: He eased into a smile, and then he gave no response.
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Jackets again lack ‘wow’ factor
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
Given the dart throwing and somewhat demented backdrop in the world of college football recruiting, there are a few comforting things about national letter-of-intent day at Georgia Tech.
Sweat over the school “rankings� on SuperGeek.Com? Never. With the Yellow Jackets, you relax because you already know the Yellow Jackets will rank behind almost everybody, as well as Hargrave Military Academy.
Tech will never have one of the top recruiting classes in the United States. Or the South. Or the state. As institutes inside I-285 go, they kick butt.
So it wasn’t surprising Wednesday when the Jackets’ sanction-shrunk classette of 15 was ranked by some “experts� as the 11th best in the ACC. Mom used to say 11th place isn’t so bad. Except when there are only 12 teams. (Thank you, Wake Forest.) The good news was, Tech’s recruiting class ranked ahead of those of UTEP, all three insignificant Louisianas (Tech, Monroe, Lafayette), Toledo, Hawaii, Buffalo, Colgate, Crest and Pepsodent.
Some, like those who buy tickets at Tech, still struggle with these small victories. Others, like coach Chan Gailey, who doesn’t pay for his tickets, fail to see the problem.
“I never have worried since I’ve been here about rankings and [rating] stars and things like that,� Gailey said Wednesday. “We just go out and try to find the best guys that fit our program. I don’t worry about what I tell fans, to be honest with you. The only thing anybody worries about is what you do on Thursdays and Saturdays during the season. [Signing day] creates a lot of excitement. But the bottom line is how we do in the fall.�
He is right about that. Recruiting is slightly less scientific than the Viva challenge. As Steve Spurrier so adroitly pointed out, it didn’t matter that Georgia had better recruiting classes than Florida because the players evolved in opposite directions after arriving on campus.
Problem is, these are special circumstances at Tech. People are looking for something to cheer about. NCAA probation and resulting sanctions cut Tech’s signing class by six players. Gailey’s contract was extended to five years at a time when he wasn’t exactly riding a wave of popularity. A season that started 3-0 and included an upset at Miami nonetheless ended with a familiar fizzle: a loss to Georgia, a dismal performance in a no-name bowl (38-10 to Utah in the Emerald) and a 7-5 record (again).
If you were hoping for whoop-de-doos Wednesday, it didn’t happen. Blame academics.Blame the status of the program or Gailey or sanctions or moon phases, anything you want. They seldom get Parade All-Americans on The Flats. As a rule, they get good kids who can play a little and never were pursued by Texas.
The Calvin Johnson wow factor is rare even in normal circumstances. You can imagine what the odds were this winter. Of course, Gailey would never say anything to suggest recruiting has become more of a chore. Having fewer scholarships hurts, yes, but as to the shadow cast by probation, he said: “I don’t think it hurt us otherwise.�
Tech’s commitment to Gailey was timed to put recruits at ease. Cynics might suggest it led some to cross the Jackets off their list. Suffice it to say, the coach believes the former: “I think it gave them a sense of stability in the program.�
It’s all relative. Georgia’s class is ranked in the top five in the nation. Tech’s is 11th in the ACC. If Tech is stable, what’s Georgia? The flip side is that Gailey has managed to win seven games every year. If we’re going to bash him for low-profile recruits, he must be doing something right just to get to any bowl game.
Signing day comes down to this for Tech fans: Expect little, then hope everybody else was wrong.
Permalink | Comments (69) | Categories: Jeff Schultz, Tech / ACC
Richt’s ultimate goal not far away
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Athens — Mark Richt has done almost everything he set out to do. He has won the SEC (twice). He has taken Georgia to BCS bowls (two of them). He has owned Tech and beaten Tennessee (four times) and Auburn (twice) and even Florida (just once, but hey). He has won 10 or more games in each of the past four seasons, and he has made the Bulldogs a top-10 fixture and he has aced every signing day, and now there’s but one thing left to do.
“You’re talking about winning the national championship,� Richt said Wednesday, taking the hint. Or just playing for one. How far is Georgia from doing that?
Not far at all.
“I believe any given year it can happen,� Richt said. “In 2002, even if we had won every game, it might not have happened. [Georgia finished 13-1, while unbeatens Ohio State and Miami met for the BCS title.] But Ohio State was like us, winning every game close, so we might have made it. And even last year, we’re close — a four-point loss [to Florida], a one-point loss [to Auburn], a three-point loss [to West Virginia]. How many points is that?�
Eleven points from being unbeaten, and still Georgia wouldn’t have made the Rose Bowl ahead of Texas or Southern Cal. Often a national championship is a function of timing. A year after Georgia finished ranked No. 3 with its one loss, once-beaten LSU played for (and won) the BCS crown. The year after that, unbeaten Auburn didn’t get a sniff of the title game.
The point being: You can’t target your exact date of arrival. You can only keep putting yourself in position. Toward that end, Georgia rounded up its most heralded class of recruits under Richt on Wednesday, and the biggest name among them — quarterback Matthew Stafford of Dallas — made it clear he hadn’t signed with Georgia and enrolled in school early with the aim of playing for third place in the SEC East.
“We’re not far [from a national championship] at all,â€? Stafford said. “We’re beating on the door… We’ve got as good a chance as anybody.â€?
All coaches hype their recruiting classes. (When last did you hear any school proclaim, “Frankly, none of these guys can play deadâ€??) True to his low-key nature, Richt hypes less than most. But this latest bunch inspired him to come near gushing: “This class right here could really do some special things. … We ought to be special three or four years down the road.â€?
It might not take that long. Stafford could start as a true freshman, and a handful of these guys — Asher Allen, Reshad Jones, Knowshon Moreno, NaDerris Ward, Tony Wilson — shouldn’t be far behind. Having cherry-picked in-state talent the past few years, Georgia went wide this time. And that’s another sign of growth.
“It excites us that national blue-chip players are interested in us,� Richt said. “There were certain guys we signed or got visits from that we wouldn’t have five years ago.�
Mark Richt arrived here in January 2001 with the intention of modeling his new home after his old one, and he has. Georgia in the new millennium has come to resemble the Florida State of the late ’80s and early ’90s. But it took Bobby Bowden a run of Wide Right near-misses finally to break through in 1993, and that year the Seminoles needed a bit of providence — a week after FSU lost to Notre Dame, the Irish were upset by Boston College — to finish the drill.
“We thought we could do it a lot of those years,â€? Richt said. “We think that here. … I don’t think we’re too far away.â€?
With a new quarterback, next season might not be that season, but 2007 could be, or 2008 or 2009. It took the master recruiter Mack Brown eight years to claim a title for Texas, and Mark Richt seems on a similarly slow-burning fast track. There’s only one thing left for him to do, and he’ll do it soon.
Permalink | Comments (55) | Categories: Mark Bradley, UGA / SEC
Goodbye, Super Bore Week
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
Detroit –- It’s early Wednesday morning. Maybe they’re just lulling us to sleep. Surely something will happen to wake up this snoozer of a Super Bowl Week before the game on Sunday.
So far, nothing. No inflammatory quotes on guaranteeing victories or quarterbacks mooning passing helicopters or John Matuszak clones terrorizing local bars in the middle of the night.
The epitome of it all is Joey Porter, the usually gregarious linebacker for the Pittsburgh Steelers, who suddenly is choosing his words very carefully. “The bigger story is what (I’m) going to say next,� Porter told reporters. “That’s the only reason why I have people waiting for me right now. They feel like their going to tug and tug and tug until he breaks. But it’s not going to happen.�
Nothing is happening, even beyond Porter’s quiet lips. Even the usually wacky Media Day on Tuesday was a relatively subdued affair. The most interesting thing to occur so far was when a van carrying the Seahawks to a press conference was damaged by a descending gate.
Just wait, though.
What’s that? Porter’s lips are suddenly moving –- and rapidly?
Soon after Seattle tight end Jerramy Stevens sort of guaranteed a Seahawks victory later on Wednesday, Porter jumped out of hibernation. “I’ve been asleep all week, but now I got woke up,� Porter said. “I’ve got my first taste of blood, and now I’m thirsty for more. Until now, It was ‘Watch what I say,’ ‘I can’t say this,’ ‘I can’t say that,’ ‘Don’t do anything silly,’ but I’m ready now.
“You look for the guys that say something that aren’t supposed to say nothing, and I feel like he definitely was out of pocket to say what he said. I’m going to make sure he owns up to those words.�
Now we’re talking, and it’s just the middle of the week. Remember? It wasn’t until the wee morning hours on the day of the Falcons’ trip to the Super Bowl in 1999 that Eugene Robinson visited that little street corner in Miami.
This could get interesting.
Finally.
Permalink | Comments (54) | Categories: Quick Hit, Terence Moore
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