Out of the pool and into the court

Anybody left who still thinks the Olympics are about international good will and the purity of amateur competition?

Gold medalist Laura Wilkinson has sued to gain a synchronized diving spot that would remove Elwood’s 15-year-old Mary Beth Dunnichy from the U.S. Olympic team.

[. . .]

The 10-page filing asks that Wilkinson and Jessica Livingston be placed on the team in the synchro 10-meter platform event, or that another competition be held against Dunnichay and Haley Ishimatsu.

[. . .]

Even though Wilkinson and Livingston had a slightly higher average at a selection camp, 329.88 to 327.32, a panel picked the Ishimatsu/Dunnichay team because it had the highest single score (346.9 of four rounds and a higher “projected competition score,” according to the complaint.

I wonder why nobody’s done a reality show yet in which the contestants try to come up with the most inappropriate things to sue someone over. No, that wouldn’t do — it would threaten the integrity of the criminal justice system, wouldn’t it?

Thanks for helping, now go away

Ah, remember the “family farm,” which politicians regularly praise the virtues of when they’re taking billions from us to give to corporate agriculture? Add another to the list of myths and illusions we’re paying to maintain: the one about the “family of four” that takes a day off to enjoy a leisurely day at the ballpark. From 1991 to 2006, the NFL’s average ticket price jumped 147 percent. It was up 110 percent in the NBA and a whopping 151 percent for major league baseball. In the same time span, the average median household income in Indiana grew 68 percent.

So a lot of families in Indiana are giving up their season tickets for the Colts and the Pacers and even skipping the occasional game. Said a Zionsville couple who gave up seats they’ve had for the Pacers for 15 years, “We’re spending $425 to just get in the door, and nobody has had a snack or dinner and nobody has parked a car.”

And this isn’t some accidental evolution:

Instead of the “family of four,” long the Americana image of game-going fans, experts say teams and leagues are now targeting the single corporate fan, usually male but sometimes female, late 20s or early 30s, with disposable income and more generous spending limits. Also, corporations increasingly are buying up large blocks of tickets with which to entertain clients, often leading to empty seats in prime locations (and undoubtedly irking the families who can barely afford the “cheap seats” up near the rafters).

“It’s about catering to a different market,” said Raymond Sauer, Clemson University economics professor and creator of the online blog The Sports Economist. “They’re pricing that (family) segment of the market out more and replacing it with big money people.”

What’s galling is that the government makes ordinary people pay for this nonsense through taxes that help build lavish new stadiums, and then have the nerve to brag about how much good the politicians are doing for economic development and what a good deal such things are for the quality of life here.

Foul ball

Only in Indiana. People play basketball in the street. Neighbors complain. Police issue warnings. There is mass outrage, and police back off:

Now Town Council President Bill Guarnery admits the town might have overreacted and will curtail strict enforcement of ordinances.

“We will go back to enforcing ordinances when there is a complaint,” Guarnery said.

Yeah, can’t have any of that pesky “strict enforcement” of ordinances, especially when it interferes with the state religion. That might give people respect for the law or something.

Zee deal, she is made

Finally:

Comcast Corporation and the Big Ten Network announced today that they have reached a long-term multimedia agreement for Comcast to carry Big Ten Network programming across television, broadband and video-on-demand in time for the 2008 college football season.

Under the terms of the agreement, Comcast will initially launch the Network as part of its expanded basic level of service to promote it to the majority of its customers residing in states with Big Ten universities (Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, with the exception of the Philadelphia region which will launch on a broadly distributed digital level of service) starting August 15th.

I’m not sure yet, but I may have finally given up on IU basketball, so this is a little late for me.

Attention, sports fans

The News-Sentinel’s Reggie Hayes, writing about the possible name change for the Fort Wayne Wizards baseball team, brings up only to dismiss rather flippantly a worthy suggestion:

Today, we’re talking team names, a topic both frivolous and essential. It’s frivolous because it doesn’t affect the way a team plays and primarily serves as a marketing tool. It’s essential because fans have to feel a sense of pride in their team’s name. No one wants to wear a T-shirt that says Fort Wayne French Impressionists.

But let’s consider the merits of a team called the Fort Wayne French Impressionists. That would marry the most precise of sports — what would the game be without its states? — with one of the most abstract styles of painting. We can show the whole world that Hoosiers can be sports fans and aware of art forms not involving three chords or Quentin Tarantinto. There would be some cool opportunities for colorful uniforms, not to mention team memorabilia. And we shouldn’t have too much trouble coming up with a mascot.

Oh, hey, wait. Let’s go all the way and really impress people: The Fort Wayne Fauvists. Much more colorful uniforms.

Baseball wizardry

A minor league sports team can become a local institution — revered, beloved. The Komets are sort of like that. One way to tell a team has not reached that status:

The Fort Wayne Wizards will play their baseball games next season at a new downtown ballpark, and they’ll likely have a new name, too.

Fans can go online to www.HarrisonSquareFortWayne.com and suggest a new name for the minor-league team that’s been in Fort Wayne since 1993.

Tear down its stadium. Move the team downtown as an economic development strategy. Change the name. How about the Fort Wayne Pawns?

I guess they’re having a naming contest to create a sense of team spirit or something. That didn’t work out too well the last time. More than 20,000 people entered the contest, and the choice of Wizards was instantly and almost universally despised. Better luck this time.

Childhood’s end

At least Indiana University isn’t the only school with a basketball-program recruiting controversy:

Michael Avery’s recent announcement that he will play basketball at Kentucky created quite a stir.

Avery is considered a talented guard with good size at 6-4, but none of that contributed to the buzz.

Avery is in eighth grade.

Outside of college basketball recruiting circles, the commitment seemed ludicrous when Avery’s father told a Web site that covers Kentucky athletics, “We’ve got our college. Now we need our high school.”

Gotta love that — we’ve got our college so now we need our high school. I’m sure whichever high school he picks, the young man will pay complete attention all four years and come out with a fine education.The story’s headline asks a question: “Are 8th-graders fair game?” Gee, let me think a minute on that one. Anything for the alumni association!

On thin ice

It is to laugh – I scoff at your silly hockey cup! It means nothing to me:

It seems Tiger Woods isn’t much of a hockey fan.

Woods, the world’s No. 1 golfer, told reporters Monday that he had no preference when it comes to who captures the Stanley Cup, the Detroit Red Wings or Pittsburgh Penguins.

“I don’t really care,” he said. “Let’s talk about the Dodgers.

“I don’t think anybody really watches hockey any more.”

Well, that last line went a little too far. It is presumptuous to suggest that one’s taste in sports or anything else is shared by the multitudes. But I’m with him in spirit. I don’t watch hockey — never have. I just don’t get it. Do I have to leave Fort Wayne now? But watching golf on TV isn’t exactly the most thrilling thing in the world, either. I’m reminded on the scene from “The Andy Griffith Show” where Andy and Barney sit around for five or 10 minutes talking about walking to the gas station to get a bottle of pop.

The countdown begins

Omigod! Only 1,355 days until Super Bowl XLVI! For those a little rusty on the whole Roman numerals thing, the Indianapolis Star provides this helpful advice:

X = 10

L = 50

V = 5

I = 1

Don’t add the numbers up; 66 is not the correct answer (by the time that Super Bowl rolls around, we’ll be building another new stadium).

There’s a trick: If a letter is placed before another letter of greater value, you subtract the lower-value letter.

So it’s: L–X+V+I = 46. Or, in English: 50–10+5+1 = 46.

I don’t know why the NFL doesn’t use plain numbers. It drove me crazy when I was a kid sitting in a theater, trying to figure out what year a movie was made as the Roman-numeraled copyright date came up with the end credits.

Breaking news

Indianapolis is getting the 2012 Super Duper Bowl. Zillions and zillions of dollars! A world-class city! They like us, they really like us!

Hope the Colts are still there by then.

Rah-rah

Mike Redmond of the Indianapolis Business Journal captures perfectly the “civic rah-rah” needed to initiate and sustain a Super Duper Bowl bid:

The whole community, huh? Maybe they had a referendum. Was it on the back of the primary ballot? Or did they take a survey? If they did, they forgot to call me.

Oh, I know. They went door-to-door, didn’t they? I must have been upstairs when they knocked.

Excuse me for getting all technical about it, but it seems to me you can’t say the entire community wants something unless you first ask the entire community.

But that’s how it is with the civic rah-rah.

It’s the same class of rah-rah that sells every big, expensive idea that’s going to tie up traffic and send restaurant prices to the moon by telling us it’s what Indianapolis must have to be a World Class City.

This is an old gimmick. The Pan Am Games were going to make us a World Class City. The Hoosier Dome, as it was called in the olden days, was going to make us a World Class City. The U.S. Grand Prix was going to make us a World Class City. Well, we had ’em. Aren’t we World Class yet?

And it hasn’t just been sports. It goes for goofy art installations. Buildings, too. I’m pretty sure they said it about Union Station. Then again, that might have been Circle Centre mall (which even uses the World Class spelling for “Center”). Besides, everybody knows you can’t be World Class without a Cinnabon in your downtown.

In all these years, nobody has ever been able to define World Class City to my satisfaction. Are we talking fabled cities like London, Paris, and Omaha? Bustling cities that crackle with energy like Tokyo, Hong Kong and Sarasota (before 4:30 p.m.)? Cosmopolitan centers like New York, Toronto and Kendallville?

As he points out, New York, Philadelphia and Chicago have also never hosted a Super Bowl. Wonder why? Could it be because they’re not warm-weather destinations in winter? Residents of those other cities, though, probably don’t have quite the self-esteem problems of Hoosies. Give us a Super Bowl, please, please, please, to prove we’re worthy.

Nice try

Don’t you wish you were important enough so that you had to trademark your very name to keep it from being exploited?

Larry Bird has filed a lawsuit alleging a couple who bought his former home in southern Indiana are improperly using his name to promote a bed-and-breakfast.

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Evansville, claims Geogianna Lincoln and Christopher Cooke did not have permission to use the NBA Hall of Famer’s name with the property and are profiting off his trademark by stating the home belonged to him.

“The commercialization of Larry Bird’s name in association with this former property is wholly and completely unauthorized and is blatantly being done for the sole purpose of profiting illegally from Larry Bird’s name.” the lawsuit states.

Cooke, an attorney in Alaska, said Tuesday that negotiations had ended in good faith with a spoken permission to use Bird’s name in association with the home.

An attorney. Doesn’t have a written contract. Relied on “spoken permission.” Uh huh. Sorry – even Judge Judy would go with Larry on this one.

Fuzzy logic

Fuzzy Zeller Zoeller hits the ball, and it lands in the rough, and the commentators are bored . . . but, wait, the ball starts rolling again, and … it’s a hole in one! (It’s the video; check it out if you’ve never actually seen one.) We go through life thinking all we have to do is master a  certain set of skills to succeed and get ahead. But i’ts amazing how many things — from hitting a hole in one or bowling a 300 to winning a Pulitzer to getting elected president — are a combination of skill and luck. We have to be good enough to get into the general neighborhood of excellence, but then other factors beyond our control take over.

Happy days

Don’t know about the trains, but the torch was sure on time:

PYONGYANG, North Korea - Assured of a trip free of anti-Chinese protests, the Olympic torch made its first-ever relay run Monday in authoritarian North Korea

An attentive and peaceful crowd of thousands watched the start of the relay in Pyongyang, some waving Chinese flags, footage from broadcaster APTN showed. The event was presided over by the head of the country’s rubber-stamp parliament, who often acts as a ceremonial state leader.

“Attentive and peaceful.” What a nice place it must be.

It’s Miller time

Oh, come on:

For more than 100 college presidents and athletic directors, beer and the NCAA men’s basketball tournament don’t mix.

The college leaders — among them the top officials at Harvard, Abilene Christian and Georgia State — wrote a letter to NCAA President Myles Brand on Wednesday calling beer advertising “embarrassingly prominent” during tournament broadcasts. They asked the organization to reconsider its policies on alcohol advertising.

Sports plus beer ads; what a shock. If the college presidents and athletic directors want to talk about something that’s “embarrassingly prominent,” how about near-professional sports teams that have become the tail wagging the college dog. Oh, wait, this just in: Eric Gordon is going pro after just a year at Indiana Univeristy.

The last last straw

Thank God. Now we can get over this and move on:

Indiana University has reached an agreement with Tom Crean to become its next men’s basketball coach.

IU trustee Phil Eskew confirmed the hiring tonight. Eskew said the Marquette coach has signed a letter of agreement.

I mean, this has been going on for days and days and days, leaving fans in absolute agony. Who did IU officials think they were, for goodness sake, Democratic voters?

I know I’ve sworn off IU basketball “forever” here before, only to backslide and start watching games again. But this time I mean it. Absolutely. I swear.

Think anybody will write a “Crean of the crop” headline? Yeah, me, too.

Silence, please

Good Lord, no — shut up about this before it puts an idea in somebody’s head:

ATLANTA (AP) -Embattled New York Knicks coach Isiah Thomas sidestepped whether he’s interested in talking with Indiana University about its head coaching position.

Thomas, whose Knicks have lost five of six and 13 of 15, has a 53-101 record in two seasons with the Knicks. Though he helped Indiana win the 1981 NCAA championship, Thomas has never coached in college.

Klatu, barada, nikto already.

A one-year trial

No matter what Dan Dakich brings to the table — he knows the IU culture and system — his 3-4 record since taking over for Kelvin Sampson is probably enough to get him passed over:

Now IU has a 10-person search committee, which some call excessive when they’re not ripping the Hoosiers’ timing in announcing it a few days before last week’s one-and-done NCAA tourney debacle.

No matter. The search is on, and interim coach Dan Dakich has made a passionate pitch for the job. Will he get it? Probably not, although it’s unfair to use his 3-4 record after replacing Kelvin Sampson as an indicator of his worthiness, because A) he had to use Sampson’s system and not his own; B) he had to work with Sampson’s players, not his own, and there was a disconnect there; and C) some of the players lacked the maturity to deal with the transition and, in essence, quit.

The uncertainty with Dakich is not if he’s a good enough coach — he is — but if he is a good enough recruiter. He didn’t win big in the Mid-American Conference, which suggests he wouldn’t win big in the Big Ten.

That’s too bad. IU’s reputation is in tatters right now precisely because winning big was placed above all other considerations. The school could go a long way toward restoring that reputation by giving Dakich a one-year contract to prove himself — heck, they did that for Mide Davis. Even if he doesn’t work out, that would give the school an extra year to find the right coach, instead of one with merely a winning record.

No. 8

If your basketball team is behind, it’s obviously because the refs are incompetent or crooked. And if you get a lousy slot in the tournament, something is fishy, too:

Shock and surprise were the initial reactions. Stemler said he thought the Hoosiers would probably be around a No. 6 seed. ESPN.com’s Joe Lunardi in his final bracketology report Sunday afternoon had Indiana as a No. 5 seed.

But there it was: No. 8-seeded Indiana against No. 9 Arkansas in Raleigh, N.C. To the winner, a likely chance to play No. 1 North Carolina, the team rated as the highest of the four No. 1 seeds.

To win the tournament, a team will sooner or later have to beat a No. 1 seed or somebody who was good enough to beat a No. 1 seed. Let’s get over this so we can concentrate on the truly important things, like how well the Colts will do in what will probably be Tony Dungy’s last year.

Game of the year

Gadzooks, what a game! Indiana vs. Purdue, both in the top 15 nationally, the leadership of the Big 10 on the line, Purdue staying close but finally getting beaten 77-68 by Indiana. Easily the biggest game (for us here) of the season, and because it was on ESPN instead of the Big 10 Network, I actually got to watch it.

And it may be the last positive publicity IU gets for a while. Kelvin Sampson is under the NCAA improper-recruiting cloud and may be fired or suspended as early as Friday. That just makes it all the more remarkable that the IU players were able to stay focused on the game and what they had to do.

This is why even those of us who aren’t hard-core sports fans pay attention from time to time. Competitive sports bring together people who have nothing to offer but their talent and drive and their willingness to put them on the line. The ideal is that, with a level playing field enforced, the greater talent and drive will win out.  That ideal works out in sports more often than it does in real life.

And, by the way, if Gordon deserves freshman of the year, D.J. White should be the player of the year, nationally, not just in the Big 10. At least if talent and drive count.

Silly season

Why was Mark Souder so mad? 

Not everyone picked sides. Rep. Mark Souder (R-Ind.) was ticked at everyone. He condemned the sport’s owners and players.

“The wall of silence coming out of baseball is disgusting,” he said, adding it couldn’t be trusted to do its own testing.

Part of me thinks this is awfully sily stuff for Congress to be messing with. On the other hand, if it will keep them away from any more bipartisan mischief, like handing out money they don’t have, then bring it on.

A basketball tail

Kelvin Sampson is in big trouble and, if there’s any justice, so is Indiana University:

Indiana coach Kelvin Sampson and his staff violated telephone recruiting restrictions imposed because of his previous violations at Oklahoma, then lied about it to the school and NCAA investigators, according to an NCAA report released Wednesday.

The report sent to the university Friday accuses Sampson of five major violations, including the allegation of providing “false or misleading information” to university officials and NCAA enforcement staff. The school contended in its initial report that all violations were secondary infractions.

But the NCAA accused Sampson of failing “to deport himself … with the generally recognized high standard of honesty” and failing to promote an atmosphere of compliance within the men’s basketball program, categorized as major infractions.

Nothing’s going to happen until summer, so this season is safe, but who knows about next year? Penalties could even include a ban on post-season tournament play. Does IU deserve anything that harsh, since (the allegation goes), its officials were lied to? Yes. The school hired a coach everybody knew was a risk, just because everybody wanted a return to the old winning ways. And, as the NCAA report shows, those who conducted IU’s own investigation did not exactly go out of their way to find all the dirt. The school permitted this for the same reason it permitted Bob Knight to stay on long after he had become a state embarrassment. College sports have become the tail wagging the education dog.

Just a quitter

Did anybody really expect him to just quietly fade away?

Resigned, not retired. Resigned, not retired.

Bob Knight quit — the correct word — as the Texas Tech basketball coach last week. There’s no reason to pass the hat to get the man a gold watch or a pair of Indiana University candy-cane warm-up pants. The guy who made a career of snarling at microphones was Mr. Sunshine with the media last week, appearing on every show but “Pimp My Ride.”

Which makes me suspect that when Knight says he is tired, he actually means he is tired of losing at a place like Texas Tech.

Which makes me believe that Knight pushed the resigned-not-retired spin into the news cycle quickly — so any school dreaming about hiring a coach with 902 victories, three NCAA titles and no reluctance to go for the throat knows where to find one.

Which makes me realize that “Where’s Bobby (Going)?” will serve as the game’s most fascinating debate until every job is filled this spring.

One of the places being mentioned as a possibility is Illinois, where fans are said to be getting tired of the current coach. Wouldn’t that be fascinating? Of course, it would require a change in culture there. School officials recently felt compelled to apologize to Indiana University because Illinois fans booed Eric Gordon during IU’s double-overtime win. If Bobby were coach, they’d spend so much time apologizing to other teams that it would quickly lose its appeal.

Changing times

I like The San Francisco Chronicle’s Ray Ratto’s take on the departure of Bobby Knight:

But as he leaves, at least for the moment, let’s forget the argument and consider what Knight takes with him - the notion of the coach as the pre-eminent figure in athletics.

Oh, there are still a few holdovers, and all of them are college figures - Mike Krzyzewski at Duke, Pete Carroll at USC, Pat Summitt at Tennessee, a few others here and there. But for the most part, the coach as the sole authority figure, right and wrong, is yesterday’s power structure. In exchange for better contracts and job opportunities outside the business, the coach is now an employee, and given how employees have been devalued in the new economy, that isn’t necessarily a positive development.

[. . .]

Knight as a representative of the coaching fraternity is also one of the last of his kind, because coaches are increasingly considered to be glorified shop foremen. In the pro game, they fall behind the owner and the highest paid player without a troublesome arrest record. In the college game, they fall behind the richest and loudest alum. In the high school game, they fall behind the best player and the most organized unhappy parent.

[. . .]

In short, the power shifted, and Knight didn’t shift quickly enough, or willingly enough. His story in the end is a lot of things, but one of them is that the role of his chosen profession went from all-powerful godhead to cranky shop foreman, no longer the architect of the program but a custodian thereof, a servant to the new power.

When people say Knight was a brilliant coach in his day but he didn’t keep up with the times, they’re usually referring to the game itself, but this is about how the business of the game has changed. If a coach is now just an employee whose best chance of success is to be willing and able to move around a lot, that greatly diminishes the coach’s role as teacher.

Holy cow!

OK, I’m not the greatest sports fan in the world, but does anybody disagree that this was the biggest upset in Super Bowl history? Granted, Eli did not go on “The Tonight Show” and correctly predict the victory the way Joe Namath did. But the Giants prevented the Patriots from having only the second perfect record in NFL history. The 1972 record is still good, Mr. Shula.

And it was back-to-back Manning victories — that’s the real story. Gonna be a heck of a Thanksgiving dinner at Archie’s house.

For a change, the game was more interesting than the commercials.