Scandals In Sports?

So...whats up with sports and character...and drugs? I don’t know the answer and I do not mean to bemoan the obvious but...Jesus, Mary and Joseph. How did come epidemic? Has it always been epidemic? Have we been idiots to put all these guys on a pedestal for long like the Catholics did with their Priests...only to find that there are more cheaters then ever? I like to think that I am plenty cynical and don’t kid myself about people’s morality and character but once again...Jeez.

Barry Bonds. OK...he has been taking steroids for years and has bulked up not just his chest, arms and legs but...his neck and forhead. His naturally poor disposition has become almost homicidal over the last few years and even as he attains the record he is already become a sad freak whose record for right or wrong will be asterisked and disdained forever. It is very sad but still troubling because we don’t know what to do. Everyone knows that he ingested steroids in some form and bulked up unaturally. It is somewhat less clear to me whether or not it was “illegal” or even against the rules when he started but there is no question that it is now. One question though. Why is it so important that athletes do not artificially enhance themselves to increase performance? Why don’t we mind when an actress gets breast implants or liposuction, tummy tuck, hair implants...what is the difference? What indeed?

So what do we do? We let the guy get the record and wait till the end of the season and then the Commissioner offers him a chance to retire. If he does not he gets banned in the best interests of baseball. Along with that he announces serious drug testing and a zero tolerance policy which will cost us over time some of our best athletes. Teams and fans will be traumatized by the results but over time we will heal and so will the sport. As a public the best thing we could do would be to not talk about it and leave it alone.

The Tour de France. Jeeez! What happened here. We thought that with the Floyd Landis thing we had cleaned this thing up and were going to have a clean tour with clean results. What a nightmare... what a clown show. I am sure a lot of these guys are clean but once again we have no choice but to think that anyone who is succeeding is doping their blood, elevating testosterone or perhaps spending too much time with Vietmamese hookers. All can have the same result and all are equally frowned upon. This ended up in a nice battle on the last days of the tour since Rasmussen and Viokurov and well, so many others were then out. But what about them? I understand so little about drug testing but it seems like it is inexact science at best. Is it important that these guys dope? Is it demeaning that many of us assume that Lance was doping in some way? I don’t know. What do you do for the Tour? Same thing. Kick the bad guys out, strengthen your testing regime and for God sakes stop talking about it.

Tim Donaghy? NBA ref. Fixing games? Now this... this is a real nightmare. There was the Black Sox scandal. In 1994 there was that Northwester point shaving thing and the great City College of New York point shaving scandal but those all involved players. Boxers have taken falls but the dodginess of boxing is well known. But...but...but....we have always counted on the underpaid, very fallable refs to be on the up and up and if they werent it was just because they had lousy personalities, wanted to screw Bobby Knight or were just really and truly legally blind. The idea that one of the zebras was dealing for his own account really does undermine the game. Perhaps it is a wakeup call for everyone that that when you have a group of guys who everyone is counting on to perform, and so many dollars and so many personal and professional lives rely on the outcome that perhaps these guys should get some kind of compensation. Perhaps then we could think about doing the same for teachers.

That leaves us with Micheal Vick. Other then raping and killing someone’s child is there anything else he could of done to ruin his career quicker? No...there isn’t. We have become very accepting of DWI’s, drug arrests, gunplay in clubs, manslaughter related to the above, beaten girlfriends... the list goes on and on. I mean, after all, their athletes right. They get a pass. But not for this. I know, I know, innocent until proven guilty but... this guy is toast. This is an easy call as we can see because it has already been done. Pull his endoresments, ban him from participating in anything while he defends himself and let the law do what it will. He will not do any hard time but seriously...if I were him I would be seriously worried about someone shooting me. Other then his friends and family.... no one would mourn. Very sad. he always seemed like a nice guy.

So...the Diner reviewer believes that...as much as he loves sports... that we have truly, madly and deeply gone off the deep end in regard to athletics. We rely on these guys to distract us from the droll, hum drum and day to day. We live vicariously through them and give them monstrous salaries, possies, sex, drugs, women, no accountability and then we all act shocked when they do not behave like Wally Cleaver. Seriously, where the hell do we get off. these guys are nothing without our dollars and our unending tolerance and adoration. Perhaps it is time to reconsider where we find out heroes and show a little depth... or we can just go to the game, pay 20 bucks to park, 100 bucks for a ticket, 80 more for a jersey with their name on it, 6 bucks for a beer and 4 more for a hotdog so that this fabulous system can just keep on keeping on. I could be wrong.

March Madness

So...again it is time. The complaining of the “bubble” teams...the complaining of the “mid-major” conferences and their teams that did not win their conference tournamant, the complainin g of everyone about Dick Vitale is...well...it’s now. Every college with 18 wins is projecting their future and whether they can make the field of 65. The papers have speculation every day and in St. Louis where we know absent a conference tournament win that neither Mizzou or St. Louis University are going anywhere but the N.I.T. Illinois looks like they have a good shot and the darling of the midwest is the now dreaded SIU Salukis. The talk among the basketball obsessed is regarding The Misouri Valley Conference. I could digress (at length) on the Valley, it’s history and greatness and the stupdity of St. Louis University not being a member and instead playing in the geographically challenged Atlantic 10 conference but that is not why we are here today.


We are here to celebrate March and the the fact that is conference tournament time and soon will be the NCAA’s. Sure the major conferences and big name schools dominate but no where is any sport are we allowed something as beautiful as the all out March melee of the NCAA’s. I know the NCAA sanctions other sports but when you say the NCAA’s everyone knows your talking about the men’s Division I tournement. It is a brilliant spectacle starting out with Bracket day on Sunday March 11, which starts after the close of the final conference tournament game (normally the ACC). On Selection Sunday they pick the seeds and we get “the brackets.”
The brackets used to be the hallowed staple of the Newspaper. Newspaper sales doubled on the Monday after selection Sunday with everyone wanting their own copy of the brackets. At offices they were of course photocopied but now we have downloadable brackets and in a number of pools like our own KUBE Klassik Tournament (TM) you just go on line and point and click and if you want you can print out your picks after they are elctronically submitted. We do not print out the brackets at THE Wagenfeld Levine law firm because we of course paperless. The brackets are a beautiful thing. Their rorschrach like image is artistic and was formerly balanced until they expanded the field to 65. Still there is a perfection to the bracket sheet which cannot be nenied.

A blank bracket, with the teams for the first 32 games listed, number one seeds at the top of each bracket, number two seeds second from the bottom on the bracket are without a doubt a religious experience. Filling in a bracket sheet is an act of faith in no uncertain terms. No less an act of faith then any religious belief. Why did you pick Pepperdine to upset Washington State...because you had a gut feeling, because they are on the rise, because they have cool uniforms, because they have a cool name (the Waves), because Lorenzo Romar used to be their coach, because they have the most beautiful campus in the country, because they have pretty uniforms...because, because, because, because, because...But the inportnat thing is that you had a reason and when they pull the upset you are genius.

When I say it is an act of faith like no other you have to understand faith to understand the comment. The ability to believe in things unseen that you cannot prove. That is NCAA faith. 2/3 of the brackets filled out are by people who did not watch a college game all year. They will tend to do just as well as a seasoned professional. That is primarily because they have the seedings right there on the brackets. With this info anyone can pick the heavy favorites without any basketball knowledge at all. You know that number 1 seeds do NOT lose int he opening round. You know 2 seeds only sometimes do and from there on it is a crap shoot. The reason the 1 and 2 seed rarely lose has less to do with how good they are and more to do with how bad the 15 and 16 seeds are. I would love for someone to print up jumbled first round listings with no seedings and see what teams people picked. My guess would be UCLA, Duke, North carolina and Kentucky, along with Notre Dame (assuming they ever make the tournament again) would get the lions share of votes no matter what game they were playing in strictly on name recognition. Perhpas we will run a pool that way some day just to see.

I made two pre-season bets on LSU and Washington to win it all. Neither of them are currently ranked and it is probable that neither makes the dance but just like the brackets take faith, betting pre season takes even more then that, it takes raw stupidity. I watched about 30 college games on TV and saw the Billikens play 5 times. I will have read every possible thing on line and in the papers and mnarch Madness magazines and I will finish somewhere in the middle of the KUBE pool. Betting is after all what the brackets are all about. From 5-20 dollars and through the years many of us feel obligated to participate in several pools. I will invest about 100 bucks turning in brackets. I have won a few pools throughout the years and that having been said would still say I am way down on return on investment.

So, checkout the KUBE Site at www.kubeklassik.com. Get your money to KUBE Kollektor prior to the first tip off. Sit back and enjoy. KUBE Komments will be appearing at irregular intervals on this site.

Long Bombs...or Nuclear Bombs?

What is more dramatic...watching Rex Grossman (Rex Grossman) toss up air balls in the Super Bowl or watching terrorists nuke Valencia California on 24? Norman Chad might say the Super Bowl. This from the Couch Slouch:

Ask the Slouch
Question: Since the number of people airborne over the United States at any given hour is about 61,000, how many of them are in danger of being hit by a Rex Grossman pass?

DAVE GRESCHNER Rice Lake, Wis.
Answer: Actually, I'd also fear for those still taxiing on a delayed Delta Airlines flight.

For those of you who do not regularly read Norman Chad: http://www.chron.com/content/chronicle/sports/chad/home/

Perhaps it is not fair to pick on Grossman. He is of course only 12 years old and still has not lost the aggressiveness pounded into him relentlessly in the “Pop Warner” league where he recently cut his teeth.


How does Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) do it? How can reasonable people suspend their disbelief for periods of time in order to watch all this shameless, violent clap trap. Unbelievable bull shit. Totally whacko, non sensical hate, violence, torture....and I love it. I think that reflects very poorly on me... and our country and is exactly what I would expect from FOX. Fair and Balanced. Indeed.

We have terrorists on one hand...blowing up Valencia where my friend Tiemann and his family obviously were killed in the conflagration...I cannot pretend that there is anything else in Valencia that would be missed but Tiemann had at least one salvageable child...perhaps even two and a very nice wife. On the other hand we have the neo cons constantly trying to suspend the constitution so that they can take over the government, save us from the terrorists...and the liberals. Then we have Jack and the good guys but on 24 the “good” guys are an ever changing cast where good guys turn out to be deep cover bad guys and then....ohhh...it is not good.

Whenever I think I am having a bad Monday coming home and getting a taste of Jack Bauer’s day...well that my friends is a bad day. here is nice picture of Kiefer and his puppy. I hope the puppy does not know anything about the nukes or he will have to shoot it in it’s little knee.

Super Bowl R.I.P.

Tony Dungy Seen Here Biting Off Mannings Ear! RUB SOME DIRT ON IT!






SUPER BOWL POST MORTEM!
Their is no joy in the Windy City as the Monsters of the Midway started out strong and sputtered and fluttered and ultimately failed against a superior balanced team playing some pretty good football for this time of the year. It was an exciting half of football. Hester’s run back along with 6 or so turnovers made the first half a see saw nightmare that was some of the most entertaining Super Bowl football in a long time. Not good football. Not by a long shot.

It seemed like most of St. Louis was cheering for the Bears. Indy is closer, more polite, less likely to steal your girlfriend, but Chicago is related to St. Louis in a queer and troubling way that no one can explain. We all hate and feel sorry for the Cubs but I think the city would line up behind them if they ever made it past the Redbirds in the playoffs. Chicago has done some horrible things to us over the years. They sent us the Cardinals when they realized the Bidwill family was a cancer that had to be removed from the city. They constantly over shadow us and St. Louisans treat a trip to Chicago like the residents of Mayberry looked at going in to Mt Pilier. They are the senior partner in the relationship, the dreaded “real city” to our tired, road hard and put up wet collection of people. But we like Chicago. We cheer for them because...well because if we could move the baseball Cardinals there we would all happily move there. It is not that much colder...and they have mass trasportation.

The weather was pleasant...for Vietnam. It looked liked the scenes in Forest Gump where Tom Hanks is discussing all the different types of rain. It rained in torrents, it rained it sheets and it never stopped... it never even looked like it let up. It just poured and I could not help to think how sad I would have been to have bucked up 5k to sit in the rain and get soaked watching teams I really did not care about. I think I would have found a nice warm bar or hotel room and called it a night after the 3rd quarter.

The Man...The Couch Slouch, Norman Chad was right about the point spread being “fools gold my friend....fools gold.” So said Chad in late January. He was wrong about when the game would be over since it was still a game at half time. More importantly he was wrong about Prince splitting his pants. Me...I was wrong about everything. I Took the Bears...and the points...I took the "over." I proved why I need to have a regular job and should not be betting money or setting lines. Half time was not a high point for me. The high point was seeing Rex (airball) Grossman toss up footballs for grabs into groups of Colts where they had to fight over who was going to intercept it. Lovey Smith is too good of a guy for this situation and he will probably start Grossman next year on the basis of, “he got us to the Super Bowl.” What a mistake. This guy looked like a deer in the headlights and the balls he threw...were just so bad. He short armed the ball like a drunk at the passing machine at Dave & Busters. Somewhere his high School quarterback coach found it hard to sleep thinking about all those jump balls he threw up at critical times. But...that is nether here nor there. The better team won. They covered the spread handily and Payton Manning (who does seem like one of God’s own nice guys) and Tony (the long suffering) Dungy get their rings. They will likely not be back next year but it is nice to see nice, talented guys win even if they did it at the expense of those lovable Bears.

Wait till next year. In the never ending sports cycle bridged by the draft it is only a few hours till kick off.