There's a very old joke about a funeral. The rabbi stands in front of the congregation and says, "I know you all have something you want to say about our dear departed friend. So instead of a eulogy, I'd like you each to stand up and tell us what you loved best about him."

Complete silence.

"Don't be shy," the rabbi says. "I know this is hard. Who's going to go first?"

More silence.

Finally, the rabbi says, "Okay, I'm going to get this started. You, Adam, in the first row, you start us off."

Adam reluctantly gets to his feet, shrugs and says, "His brother was worse."

That joke came to mind Monday when the NCAA men's basketball committee finally got around to revealing how the new and un-improved 68-team tournament will work next March.

It could have been worse.

Of course, it could have been a lot better.

And because the NCAA is the NCAA, we still don't know all the details. One can only hope that by Selection Sunday, the committee will figure out exactly where it is going to send teams to begin the tournament.

Here are the basics:

Click here for the rest of the column: New NCAA 68-team tournament format could have been worse

I knew the day would come when I would have to write about Dean Smith’s health. I made the decision last fall that I would not be the first one to write about it or talk about it because I felt my understanding of the situation had come about because of Dean’s willingness to cooperate with me on a biography. We had started working on the book last August.

I had known before then that Dean wasn’t Dean anymore. By that, I mean he no longer had the most remarkable memory of anyone I had ever met. As far back as 2005 he had commented to me when I was researching ‘Last Dance,’ that he knew his memory wasn’t what it had been. Back then though it was still better than most.

There were plenty of stories that he was struggling after he had knee surgery three years ago, that the surgery had not gone that well and there had been neurological issues. A number of people I knew at North Carolina had said to me at times, ‘it’s not good.’ It really hit me that he must not be well when he didn’t come to The Final Four in Detroit to watch the Tar Heels win the national title in 2009.

That was when I sat down with Rick Brewer, who has been one of Dean’s confidants at Carolina for almost 40 years and told him I thought the time was now or never if I was going to do the book on Dean I had always wanted to do. Rick agreed and that led to the meeting I had with Dean in May of 2009. Was it apparent he wasn’t the Dean Smith I had covered dating to my days in college, someone who remembered everything, had an answer for anything and who was always the smartest guy in the room but never felt the need to prove it?

Yes. But he was still Dean; still smart and still funny even with the memory lapses. I was absolutely convinced there was still time for me to do the interviewing I needed to do to write the book, especially since I had spent so much time with him in the past and knew so many of the people who had played important roles in his life. When Dean said yes to the book, I was thrilled.

The sessions I had with him in August were difficult—more difficult, to be honest, than I anticipated. There were still moments when he was classic Dean. His description of the night he met his first wife, Ann, was hysterical: “It was the graduation dance. She came with a football player I didn’t like. The guy was really cocky. I decided to ask her to dance and we hit it off right away.”

Typical Dean; his competitiveness led him to the altar.

But there were other moments when he simply couldn’t remember things. When I asked him to talk about Bob Spear, his first boss at the Air Force Academy, he said, “you tell me about him. Maybe it will come back.”

I left knowing two things: I was going to need more time with him than I’d thought because, unlike in the old days when the only thing that slowed down an interview was Dean asking you something like, ‘why would you ask that question? I don’t see why that’s important,’ there were now long stretches where he simply couldn’t remember details that once came easily to him. And second, I was going to need more help from his friends than I had initially thought.

I talked to both Roy Williams and Bill Guthridge about the sessions I’d had with their old boss. Neither was surprised. “It’s an important book to do,” Bill said to me. “People down here understand what he accomplished that has nothing to do with basketball but I’m know there are a lot of people who don’t understand. It should be done. He’s such a remarkable person.”

Roy, of course, felt the same way. They both said they’d help in any way they could and told me that if I was patient, they were convinced it could get done. That was exactly what I planned to do.

Dean, through his long time assistant Linda Woods, had provided me with phone numbers for all his family members. It was when I started contacting them that I realized I had a problem. They were, understandably, concerned with how the time involved would affect Dean’s health.

I had a long talk with Dean’s son Scott, who at one point offered to sit in on the sessions. That would do two things: it would allow him to make sure his dad was doing okay and not getting too fatigued and it might help him jog his dad’s memory on certain things. I thought it was a great idea. One thing was clear in my dealings with Scott and with Linnea, Dean’s wife: they understood why those who cared about Dean wanted to see the book done and, I think they knew that Dean trusted me to do the book the right way. But I think their concerns about his health out-weighed all of that.

Which I completely understand. After a number of conversations with them and with Rick Brewer and Roy Williams and Bill Guthridge I came to the conclusion that I would be pushing an envelope, which, since I’m not a doctor, I really didn’t completely understand if I kept trying to move forward. I thought briefly about suggesting that I do the project without interviewing Dean any further. Given all the past interviews I had done with him, if I had the cooperation of everyone else involved, I could still write the book. But that didn’t feel right: the agreement Dean and I had was to work together on the book. It was what I had always wanted to do. Going forward with him only being peripherally involved felt wrong.

So, regretfully, I decided not to go forward.

Naturally I’ve been asked about the progress of the book by a lot of people since then. I’ve simply said that Dean’s health became an issue—an honest, but incomplete answer. As I said, it has hardly been a secret in North Carolina for a long while but it wasn’t until last week when The Fayetteville Observer published a story about Dean’s memory problems that it was really talked about in the public domain.

As I said, this was one time when I had absolutely no interest in breaking a story. That’s in part because of how and why I knew the story but also in part because the story is so sad. The Fayetteville story said Dean has good days and bad days. At the very least he had some very good moments last August.

And there was one moment I will always cherish. At one point we took a break. While I was waiting for Dean to come back, my cell phone buzzed. I wasn’t going to answer it but when I looked at it I saw Lefty Driesell’s number come up. I thought Dean would get a kick out of talking to Lefty. When Dean came back, I told him I was talking to Lefty and handed him the phone. (I then had a brief notion that I’d screwed up because he might not remember Lefty. But he did).

While they were talking I could hear Lefty say, clear as a bell, “Dean I can’t believe you’re gonna do a book with a Duke guy.”

Dean laughed. “I don’t think of him as a Duke guy,” he said. “I just think of him as a good guy.”

It only took me 32 years to get him to say that. It was worth the wait.


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John's new book: "Moment of Glory--The Year Underdogs Ruled The Majors,"--is now available online and in bookstores nationwide. Visit your favorite retailer, or click here for online purchases

It was just too hot to be outside yesterday, even on Shelter Island where the temperature is usually about 10 degrees cooler than in New York. The thought of playing golf, or even just hitting golf balls, made me feel slightly ill. No one in my family disagreed.

So we holed up inside—Thank God the air conditioning was working—and everyone did something different. I worked for a while but, having worked out in the morning and having been out in the heat for some time doing errands, I ran out of gas around 4 o’clock.

I plopped down on the couch and turned on our newly installed TV—its an old TV but the first time I’ve ever had one outside my office in this house for a number of reasons—and began flipping around. Nothing. If I heard one more report about where LeBron James or Dwyane Wade might or might be going I was going to throw a rock through my beloved new TV.

I flipped over, finally, to ESPNU. To be honest, I’ve appeared on ESPNU (Patriot League basketball) more often than I’ve watched it. I won’t pay the extra money it costs back home and I didn’t even know it is part of my basic service out here until recently.

The U (that’s what they call it, right?) was showing the entire NIT over the course of the day. Hey, it’s July. There isn’t even spring football to ruminate about. I’ve said this before and it remains true: There is almost no basketball I won’t watch. Years ago, I had some time to kill in New York one afternoon and wandered down to the park where I grew up. I found myself sitting on a bench next to the old basketball courts I had played on as a kid.

There was only one full court in the playground and that was always the game you wanted to be in because that’s where the best kids played. The court was nowhere near regulation size—maybe 70-feet—but the thrill of going up-and-down, trying to beat the defense back or make a steal and going the other way, was about as good as it got when I was about 12-years-old.

Nothing had changed. The best kids were playing on the full-court. As I watched, I noticed one kid who reminded me of a kid I’d grown up with. All I remember is his name was Moey. He wasn’t necessarily the best player we had, but he was the toughest. He always won, in part because he’d cheat if he had to. He’d grab you and deny it; call a foul when there was none; call his when the ball had clearly gone off his hand. No one challenged him.

This kid must have been Moey’s son. As I watched—and I sat there for a solid hour and watched—I got ANGRY. I came thisclose to telling Little Moey to knock it off before I remembered how old I was and how stupid I’d look.

Back to yesterday. When I flipped to the U, they were showing the Virginia Tech-Rhode Island game, a quarterfinal in Blacksburg that I knew Rhode Island had won late to advance to Madison Square Garden. I sat there transfixed, watching a game that had taken place more than three months ago, one where I knew the outcome. Didn’t matter. It was basketball—pretty good basketball at that—so I watched.

As the game wound down, two things ran through my mind. Tim Welsh was doing the color on the game. I like Tim Welsh but we had a bad falling out a few years back. He was coaching at Providence and had a very good team, led by Ryan Gomes. He committed to come play in the next year’s BB+T Classic, then backed out—in late March when finding a team was going to be, to put it mildly, extremely difficult.

Maybe I take the charity work I’m involved with too personally—but I’m really not going to apologize for that. Welsh handled the whole thing badly: first his scheduler began ducking calls from our tournament director (the deal had been completely agreed to on both sides and we’d sent out the contract) and then when I tried to call Tim to find out what the hell was going on he ducked my calls. When I finally got him on the phone he tried to claim some assistant AD was forcing him to blow off the event, which I didn’t believe for a minute. He was better-dealing us for a bigger payday, taking advantage of Gomes’ decision to return for his senior year.

I began referring to Welsh every chance I got as, “the aptly named Tim Welsh.” He wrote me a note asking what he could do to make up for the, “awkward position,” he had left me in. I told him not to bother. Welsh was fired a few years later and, like most fired coaches, ended up doing games on ESPN.

And, like most fired coaches, Welsh wanted to coach again. He got that chance this past spring when he was hired at Hofstra—a good job in a good league for good money. Then he made a bad mistake: getting stopped for DUI within a week of his hiring. Within 72 hours he had resigned.

None of us condone DUI. There are also very few of us who haven’t made the mistake of getting behind the wheel at some point when we shouldn’t have and been fortunate enough not to be stopped. Welsh was both dumb and unlucky. Now, he’s out of coaching—and probably untouchable—and who knows if ESPN will take him back. God knows the four-letter folks have brought back people who have done worse, but Welsh isn’t a big star. So, with his first child due next month, Welsh is out of work.

As I watched the game, feeling badly for Welsh, I saw something on ESPN’s crawl—which may be the most annoying thing every created since 90 percent of the time it gives you information you absolutely don’t need while you wait around for the 10 percent you do need. The crawl note was about Bobby Gonzales, the recently fired coach at Seton Hall.

Gonzales has apparently been charged with shoplifting some kind of expensive satchel from a high-end clothing store. I have no idea if there’s any truth to it—his lawyer, as you might expect says it was all a misunderstanding—but, again, I feel badly.

I know there are LOTS of people who can’t stand Gonzales. I was, to be honest, stunned when The New York Times ran a piece on him in March quoting people at Manhattan College talking about how they couldn’t stand Gonzales when he was there. He’d been gone FOUR years and, by the way, completely rebuilt the program, going to back-to-back NCAA Tournaments in 2003 and 2004; beating Florida in the first round in ’04.

Gonzales came very close to turning Seton Hall around. His team was on the NCAA Tournament bubble all season and had some heartbreaking losses in The Big East. But close doesn’t count in coaching and Gonzales was fired with people at Seton Hall saying, ‘good riddance, he was nuts.’

I’m not prepared to argue with that but I always liked Gonzales. I’m affected, no doubt, by the fact that he always treated me well dating back to his days as a Virginia assistant coach. Early in his Manhattan tenure I was at a Manhattan-Army game while researching, “The Last Amateurs.” Bobby knew I was there to see Army and write about their kids but he sought me out after the game. “I just want you to know how much guys like me appreciate the fact that you try to stand up for the little guys in this game,” he said.

Naturally, I was flattered by the comment and I was pleased for his success and the fact that he got a shot at The Big East. It didn’t work out. Now, whether these charges have merit or not, he’s been publicly disgraced.

It’s remarkable how quickly you can go from hero to bum in coaching—or, I guess any job where you’re in the public eye. Chances are it will be very difficult for either Welsh or Gonzales to coach again—or even get TV work. There’s no doubt they both made mistakes. There’s also no doubt in my mind they deserve another chance somewhere, someplace, sometime.



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John recently appeared on The Jim Rome Show (www.jimrome.com) to discuss 'Moment of Glory.' Click here to download, or listen in the player below:



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John's new book: "Moment of Glory--The Year Underdogs Ruled The Majors,"--is now available online and in bookstores nationwide. Visit your favorite retailer, or click here for online purchases

Some time later this week the suspense will finally be over.

No, believe it or not, I’m not talking about LeBron James or any of the other NBA free agents. I’m talking about the new NCAA basketball tournament format.

I know this because last week I received an e-mail from the NCAA announcing that the basketball committee had, in fact, reached a decision on how to deal with the new 68 team format. The press release basically said this: the committee has reached a decision but we’re NOT telling you what that decision is until next week. It went on to add that none of the committee members would DISCUSS the decision or what went into it until next week.

Full radio silence.

Imagine if the committee had been making a decision on something that was actually important. They might have been locked in hotel rooms with no access to TV, cell phones or the internet until the announcement was made.

What’s strange about the remarkable self-importance of the committee through the years is that I’ve had the chance to know most of those who have served on it dating back thirty years. I LIKE most of them individually—there have been notable exceptions, led by Jim Delany, college athletics’ answer to Darth Vader—but when they gather as a group it gets almost scary.

Years ago, after the committee had done an especially horrific job seeding the tournament I said to Tony Kornheiser on his radio show: “They should all be lined up and shot.” (Okay, I get a bit carried away sometimes).

Noting this Tony said, “But Jack Kvancz (the AD at George Washington and then a committee member) is a good friend of yours.”

“You’re right,” I said. “Just shoot him in the leg.”

Jack, who was listening, told me later he was grateful.

Now, I’m all for giving credit where it is due. The committee did NOT decide to expand the tournament to 96 teams beginning next year as most of us believed they would this past spring. I think when they realized they could still get huge money from CBS/Turner for a new long term contract without getting pilloried—as they knew they would—for rewarding mediocrity by going to 96 teams—they backed off. How long that back off will last none of us knows but at least they held off for now.

But seriously folks, a press release announcing that you’ve made a decision on a minor issue but you aren’t announcing it for a week? Is there some curiosity among those of us who love college hoops about the new format? Sure. But there really aren’t that many options out there.

The committee will either make the last eight automatic bid qualifiers play-in against one another to reach the round of 64 as No. 16 seeds or it will make the last eight at-large teams play-in to the round of 64 as No. 12 or No. 13 seeds—which is the right thing to do. You might wonder why not compromise and have four at-large teams play four automatic bid teams. That really can’t work because you can’t say if the at-large teams win they’re No. 12 seeds but if the automatic bid teams win they’re No. 16 seeds. It just makes no sense.

The committee then has to decide where to play the four games. It can send all eight teams to Dayton, which has been an excellent host for the dreaded play-in game for nine years or send the eight teams to first and second round sites. My guess is eight automatic bid teams to Dayton, but we’ll see.

My other guess is, if I’m right, the committee will try to make the announcement the same day James makes his, in the hope that it will be completely buried in the James hype. No doubt it will be. Then again, if it had made the announcement last week, it probably would have been a five-paragraph story most places rather than a four-paragraph story. I’m surprised the committee didn’t also announce that it had decided to designate the coming weekend as The Fourth of July.

As I said, I like most of these people individually although I did almost gag out loud last April when Texas San-Antonio Athletic Director Lynn Hickey tried to explain during the annual Final Four meeting between selected committee members/NCAA staff and the U.S. Basketball Writer’s Association that we writers needed to understand that everything the committee did was, “for the good of the student-athlete.”

And it don’t rain in Indiana in the summer time. I realize that a lot of people don’t have much respect for the media but did she really think we were THAT stupid. Apparently so.

Anyway, I’ll wait to see what the committee announces this week. Maybe it will announce that it has decided to make a final announcement next month.

*****

I know most people were focused this weekend on Wimbledon (exciting finals, huh?); World Cup soccer, the announcement of the baseball All-Star teams (Omar Infante?) and the pennant races but I was on the edge of my seat waiting for Ilya Kovulchuk to make a decision.

For those of you who aren’t hockey fans, Kovulchuk is a perennial 40-goal scorer still in his 20s traded by Atlanta to New Jersey last winter. On Saturday, Newday reported that The New York Islanders might have a shot at Kovulchuk. On Monday, the Los Angeles Kings dropped out of the bidding. By late morning, I was hearing Kovulchuk might actually be headed to Long Island, giving them the kind of scorer they haven’t had for years, the star they desperately needed to take some pressure off John Tavares.

I almost got excited. Then a few hours later The New York Post reported Kovulchuk was going back to New Jersey. The Post doesn’t get hockey stories wrong. It didn’t when I was a kid, it doesn’t now. Of course Kovulchuk’s agent would only say he had “narrowed,” his choices. Maybe he’s angling for a spot on the NCAA basketball committee.

Having read that several other free agents backed away from the Islanders because The Nassau Coliseum is so outdated and there is no sign that a new building is coming along anytime soon—it is completely mired in political muck in Nassau County and the Town of Hempstead—I am completely and utterly discouraged.

I’m amazed at my age and having seen what I’ve seen through the years that I still care about a hockey team, but I do.

I also still care about the Mets and I’m encouraged by what they’ve done the first half, especially without Carlos Beltran, but I’m still skeptical. If they actually pull off a deal for Cliff Lee, then we can talk.

Maybe they’ll announce that they’re going to make an announcement about a deal. If it is next week, that’ll be fine. In the meantime, I’ll sit here on the edge of my seat waiting for the basketball committee to share its wisdom with the rest of us.


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John recently appeared on The Jim Rome Show (www.jimrome.com) to discuss 'Moment of Glory.' Click here to download, or listen in the player below:



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John's new book: "Moment of Glory--The Year Underdogs Ruled The Majors,"--is now available online and in bookstores nationwide. Visit your favorite retailer, or click here for online purchases

Fred Barakat died last night. He had a heart attack at a hospital in Greensboro where he had just undergone knee surgery. He was 71 and had dealt with all sorts of health issues for the past several years.

Unless you are a big-time ACC basketball fan you probably have no idea who Fred was. But he played an important role in changing the college game. He came to the ACC in 1981 as the supervisor of basketball officials after 11 years as the coach at Fairfield University. His hiring was an out-of-the-box move by the ACC. Until then, almost without exception, the men in charge of basketball officials had been former officials. They had a tendency to be very defensive about the guys who worked for them, often because they were former colleagues and friends.

There was an aura of secrecy that surrounded college basketball officials. When I was in college, I did a story on officiating in the ACC—a controversial subject then as now—and I was able to talk to all seven conference coaches. (To be fair, I got Dean Smith to call me back by saying I wanted to give him the chance to respond to what Lefty Driesell had said and I got Lefty to return my call by saying I thought he should hear what Dean had said about him. When Lefty asked me what Dean had said, I fessed up and said I’d just told his secretary that to get him to call. Lefty said, “that’s pretty good son, you got me.”).

I couldn’t get anyone from the ACC to comment on officiating. No one. That was the norm until Fred arrived. From day one, he took every call he got—from coaches, from the media, from just about anyone. “I let them talk,” Fred once told me, talking about the coaches. “I knew how they felt because I’d been a coach. Sometimes when they were done I told them why they were wrong. Other times I had to tell them they were right and we’d try to do better. But I think they always felt better because I let them talk.”

According to the coaches he was right. “You always knew Fred would listen,” said Gary Williams, who has complained about ACC officiating as much as anyone through the years. “Sometimes you’d get pissed at him because he’d defend someone you thought shouldn’t be defended but he never cut you off, he never got impatient and you knew he wanted his guys to do better the next time. That’s really all you can ask.”

When Rick Barnes was at Clemson he got so frustrated with what he saw as Duke-Carolina bias in the officiating that he flew to Greensboro armed with tapes to show Barakat what he was talking about. Barakat sat and watched all the tapes with him, then showed him some tapes of his own. “I still wasn’t happy when we were done,” Barnes said. “But I left there knowing that Fred was conscious of what I was talking about. He gave me an entire morning and never flinched.”

“I let him vent,” Fred said later.

Fred was the same way with the media. He always returned phone calls. Sometimes he called YOU if he thought what you’d written was unfair or not entirely correct. He defended his guys but he also knew they weren’t perfect. He was disliked by a number of officials because he stopped giving them ACC assignments. Officiating was very much a good old boy network into the 1980s. Fred began working with younger officials, bringing them along so they could work bigger games. Occasionally they were put in over their heads and couldn’t swim. Others did swim and became very good refs.

Fred and I had our battles but it was more over the way he ran the ACC Tournament than his work with the officials. Fred thought the tournament needed more discipline. He hired a thuggish security company run by a thug and pretty much gave them the run of whatever building the tournament was in. Sadly, that company is still working for the ACC. Two years ago in Atlanta, the guy who runs the company decided the hallway that led to the locker rooms and the interview rooms should be off-limits to the media—it’s about 100 yards wide—until the players and coaches had reached the interview room after a game. That created a five-to-seven minute delay in starting postgame interviews with people scrambling on deadline. When I asked him why he needed such a rule in such a large building he said, “I don’t, I just decided to do it.”

When I told him that was a ridiculous and arbitrary decision he looked at me and said, “What does arbitrary mean?” He was serious.

That disagreement aside, I always liked Fred. He and I had an annual routine at The Final Four (now it can be told I guess) where he would tell me on Friday who the nine referees were for the weekend. The NCAA always tries to keep the names of the refs a secret (I think it has something to do with the way the games are bet on depending on who might be calling them) and it always gave me great pleasure to tell Hank Nichols, who was then the officiating supervisor, who his nine officials were for the weekend. Fred didn’t think Nichols ever selected enough of his guys. This was one little payback for him.

It also helped me to know who the officials were when writing my advance stories: certain guys were going to ref the game one way; others in a different way.

Fred was a gentleman—always. You could disagree with him, argue with him, even tell him his security company buddy was a thug and he’d tell you why you were wrong and when it was over you’d always shake hands and vow to have a drink together soon. Coaches respected him because he’d coached and he understood their frustrations. The media respected him because he never ducked a question and those he worked with him respected him because he worked hard and was fun to work with and work for. My old friend Tom Mickle nicknamed him, The ‘Cat,’ early on and it stuck because Fred was quick and smart and sly.

I always looked forward to seeing him, especially in recent years. He had retired but still had his hand in and knew what was going on in college hoops. He was a good resource to get an expert’s honest opinion on officials, especially those he had NOT worked with because he was completely unbiased. And he always had a good story to tell, one he would tell with a big smile on his face.

I’ll miss him. So will a lot of people.

******

Two notes to some recent posters: For those of you who are bothered by my criticisms of Tiger Woods—seriously—just don’t read the blog anymore. There are enough people out there willing to kiss Tiger’s butt for anything and everything that he doesn’t need me to do it and you don’t need to get all bent out of shape reading what I think about him. As one poster said: “Tom Watson good, Tiger bad, what a surprise.”

Yup, that’s the way I feel. I don’t think Tiger’s changed even a little bit since his fall from grace—one reason he will start winning majors again soon—and I do like and respect Watson. Has he lived a perfect life as one angry e-mail pointed out? No. Neither have I and I suspect neither have you. But he’s learned as much as anyone I’ve ever met from his failings and changed considerably through the years.

Am I biased? Of course I’m biased. As I’ve written before, we’re ALL biased. I’m just more willing than some of my colleagues to admit my biases and try to be aware of them. I’ve always recognized Tiger’s brilliance as a golfer (tough to miss) and thought of him as bright and someone with great potential to do good. His failure to do that—and please don’t tell me about his foundation, that exists for PR purposes as with so many athletes—with his money, power and platform disappoints me. Sorry if you don’t like that. Again, there are plenty of places to go to read about what a great guy Tiger is.

And, as for the one comment that when I wrote “a lot of guys,” thought Tiger was acting like a baby last Thursday that I got that from other media members or The Golf Channel people? Are you kidding me? Do you watch Golf Channel? My God, Tiger walks on water there most of the time to the point where I tease people there about it. And I do NOT quote other media members. I should have written “a lot of players.” I thought that would be understood. But believe me it was players who thought he was being a baby.

So, as I said, if my being critical of Tiger is that bothersome, go on his website and find comfort there.

Second: To the poster who wondered how much I got paid for the rights to ‘A Season on the Brink.’ Let me answer that this way: If giving back the money would have kept the movie from ever being seen, I would have done it in a heartbeat.


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John recently appeared on The Jim Rome Show (www.jimrome.com) to discuss 'Moment of Glory.' Click here to download, or listen in the player below:



------------------------------
John's new book: "Moment of Glory--The Year Underdogs Ruled The Majors,"--is now available online and in bookstores nationwide. Visit your favorite retailer, or click here for online purchases

Last night was a bit melancholy for me. The hockey season ended. Don’t get me wrong, I was happy for The Blackhawks and for long-suffering fans in Chicago who went almost 50 years between Stanley Cups. There are few things in sports more dramatic than any overtime playoff game in hockey but when the Cup is decided in overtime it is quite a sight and a scene. That said, you had to feel something for The Flyers and their fans, seeing an unbelievable run end on what has to be considered a soft goal.

If it sounds like I’m Billy Martin on this—feeling strongly both ways—I am. I don’t have any special feelings, either yay or nay for either franchise. I like both cities a lot. I love going to Chicago, especially in the spring or fall. One of my favorite days in recent memory was last November when I flew in (yes, I actually flew) there from a speaking gig in Phoenix the day before Navy played at Notre Dame. I spent the afternoon just walking around The Magnificent Mile and over to Lake Michigan before meeting friends for dinner. The next morning I drove over to South Bend—the weather both days was spectacular, it was 67 (!!) at kickoff inside Notre Dame Stadium—and saw Navy beat Notre Dame. It was a great two days.

I also have a warm spot in my heart for Philly. I laugh when people here in Washington put down Philadelphia. There is no comparison between the two as sports towns. For one thing, all of Philly’s major sports venues are right in the same place in South Philadelphia. The politicians there managed to get it right rather than fighting with one another so that the football stadium ended up in a cow pasture somewhere out in Maryland the way it did here.

Wachovia Center and Verizon Center are similar. Lincoln Financial Field is about 100 times nicer than the stadium formerly named for Jack Kent Cooke because almost any stadium is 100 times nicer than that place. Nationals Park is a fine facility but Citizens Bank Park is magnificent, built so that one can see the Philadelphia skyline from almost anyplace inside the park.

Washington is a transient town and a Redskins town. Philadelphia is a SPORTS town. Oh sure we hear the stories about the drunks who makes fools of themselves at ballgames but I’d rather deal with that than an owner who has signs confiscated from fans trying to send out a message to their husband who is serving overseas.

There’s also The Big Five. While most of Washington’s college basketball teams play silly games to avoid playing one another, Philly’s five major D-1 teams (and you can add Drexel too) play each other every year—many of those games in college basketball’s best arena, The Palestra.

But I digress. Hockey. I love hockey and always have. This winter I actually saw some hope for my long-beleaguered Islanders and my schedule fell in such a way that I got to watch the team play on the hockey package a lot. The Olympics were spectacular—and, in my mind part of the reason the ratings for the finals have been so high. The NHL did a brilliant thing starting the Winter Classic and these playoffs, with the No. 7 seed facing the No. 8 seed in the Eastern Finals and one of the sport’s truly classic franchises ending up with the Cup, have been fabulous.

So here’s to the Blackhawks—present and future. Given the youth of their best players, they should be contenders for a while. Just hearing The United Center rocking again after several miserable years did my heart good.

So why melancholy? It’s something that dates to boyhood. I always feel a little sad when a season ends. I have this distinct memory of watching game seven of The Blackhawks-Canadiens final in 1971. It was a tough series to watch because the Rangers were my team then (no Islanders until ’72-’73) and they had lost to the Blackhawks in seven games—even though they had won game six in triple overtime on a goal by Pete Stemkowski.

I remember that game vividly because it was a school night (Thursday) and a lot of fans came with signs to Madison Square Garden that said, “Let there be Sunday.” I brought my radio, as I always did, to listen to Marv Albert during the game and remember him saying at one point during the overtime something like, “I just want to let our babysitter (can’t remember her name) know we’ll be home as soon as possible.”

There was Sunday, but the Blackhawks and Bobby Hull were too good. In the meantime, Ken Dryden had announced his arrival as a hockey force by single-handedly beating the defending champion Bruins. When the Canadiens then forced a game seven on a Sunday afternoon in Montreal during the finals, I was bereft: I wouldn’t get to see game seven because CBS only did Sunday games. Except CBS made arrangements to televise game seven—first hockey game on network TV in primetime I believe. The Canadiens came from 2-0 down in Chicago to win.

What I remember most about that game—besides Jacques Lemaire’s goal from about 80 feet—is feeling sad that hockey season was over. When did training camp begin? When could I go and buy tickets in the blue seats for early season Rangers games?

As much as my life has changed through the years, I STILL feel that way. The Islanders start camp when?—heck it’s a little more than three months away. Who will they take with the fifth pick in the draft? How good will the Caps be coming back from their disappointment in the playoffs? I’m PSYCHED.

Of course I feel the same way at the end of The World Series and The Final Four. I saw a story in the paper yesterday about the fact that college hoops season will begin on November 8th (I will get into the bogus nature of The Coaches vs. Cancer season-opening event another day. Put simply: Even if Maryland, Illinois, Pittsburgh or Texas LOSE one of their first two games they will still ‘advance,’ to the semifinals in New York. What a joke). And did the math in my head: five months until college hoops starts.

I’ll admit I don’t get as sad about the end of the NFL season or the NBA season in part because the NBA season never ends. (Note to Michael Wilbon: those of us who don’t love all things NBA as you do are not ‘meatheads.’ Come on, quit selling the product so hard all the time). I fall in the middle on college football because it SHOULD end on New Year’s Day and night. In the old days, when the Orange Bowl ended, I would get up after 10 hours of football, sigh and wonder what the best games would be of the first weekend in September. I’m willing to give that up for a true PLAYOFF but not for the ridiculous BCS. By the way, this coming season’s so-called national championship game is on January 10th. January 10th! You could have a full-blown eight-team playoff and the season would last exactly ONE week longer than it does now. What a joke.

Anyway, I was happy for the Blackhawks when Patrick Kane’s shot went in the net last night but a bit sad there would be no game 7. A game 7 in The Stanley Cup finals is about as intense and cool an event as there is in sports. On the other hand, the draft is in two weeks and the Islanders report to camp in, by my calculations, 93 days.


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John recently appeared on The Jim Rome Show (www.jimrome.com) to discuss 'Moment of Glory.' Click here to download, or listen in the player below:



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John's new book: "Moment of Glory--The Year Underdogs Ruled The Majors,"--is now available online and in bookstores nationwide. Visit your favorite retailer, or click here for online purchases

The Golf Channel will be airing a documentary based on the book "Caddy for Life: The Bruce Edwards Story," with the premiere showing Monday, June 14 at 9 p.m. ET.
I can’t wait.

When I got the phone call on Thursday night that John Wooden was in the hospital and not expected to live much longer, the first thing I did was go and dig out the folders I have that contain the transcripts of the interviews I did seven years ago with Red Auerbach when I wrote, “Let Me Tell You A Story.”

I knew there were some great quotes from Red about Coach Wooden and I wanted to use some of them in the column I was going to write for The Washington Post—in The Post when someone dies they call it, ‘an appreciation,’—whenever the sad time came.

As I read through the quotes, I had two thoughts. The first was a funny one, a memory of running into Coach Wooden at The Final Four in New Orleans when I was working with Red on the book. He was 93 at the time, but still sharp as a tack. When I saw him one morning and went over to say hello, he asked me what I was working on.

“Well coach,” I said, “I’m actually doing a book right now on a dear friend of yours, Red Auerbach.”

“Oh that’s wonderful,” Coach Wooden said. “Red is such a nice young man.”

Red was 86 at the time. Everything in life is relative.

The other thing I thought about was how remarkably fortunate I’ve been to know—I would argue—the greatest basketball coaches who ever lived on the pro, college and high school levels. With all due respect to Phil Jackson, I would make the case that Red was the greatest NBA coach because he did more than just coach: he put together 16 championship teams. From 1950 to 1966 he WAS the Celtics: the coach, the general manager, the scout, even the marketing director. He had no assistant coaches. The Celtics kept winning after he stopped coaching because of the work he did as the GM.

I will readily admit to a bias here because of my friendship with Red but I suspect a lot of people will come down on my side of the argument.

With Wooden, there are no ifs, ands or buts. His 10 national titles is more than double the number won by any other college coach. Mike Krzyzewski and Adolph Rupp each won four; Bob Knight won three and then a handful of coaches, led by Dean Smith, won two.

As for Morgan, his record at DeMatha High School over 44 years was something ridiculous like 1,204 and 137. I’m probably off a little bit in those numbers but not by much. His most famous victory was against Power Memorial High School and Lew Alcindor in 1964, ending what was (I think) a 71 game winning streak. The story always told about that game—which was played in front of a sellout crowd of 14,500 at Maryland’s Cole Field House—was Morgan having his players use tennis racquets in practice to simulate what it would be like to shoot over Alcindor.

Working at The Washington Post, I had the chance to get to know Morgan well, which was a pleasure because he is about as nice a human being as you will meet in any walk of life. I’ve always joked that the meanest thing I ever heard Morgan say to anyone was, “how’s it going today?”

Of course when he was coaching it was different. He rarely raised his voice and, like Wooden, profanity wasn’t part of his repertoire. (Red may have used it once or twice). Years ago, I did a lengthy profile of Morgan. As part of my research for the story, I sat in on his history class—he never stopped teaching the entire time he coached.

I was a history major in college and I was lucky enough to have some outstanding professors. Morgan was the best teacher I’ve ever seen. He had a unique way of conveying the information to the students that made you want to just sit in his classroom all day. He was smart and funny, informative and sounded more like a great storyteller as he spoke than someone teaching a class. If I could have afforded the tuition back then, I might have enrolled at DeMatha just to take his class.

All three were great communicators. They had a way of connecting with their players that went well beyond teach x’s and o’s. All understood that you do NOT treat every player the same because every player isn’t the same person. Some need coddling, others need to be pushed—or shoved—to get better.

All knew when to make a point—and how to make a point. Shortly after Red made Bill Russell the Celtics player-coach, there was a snowstorm in Boston. Russell didn’t make it to the game until the start of the fourth quarter. The Celtics, with Red coaching, were leading when Russell showed up and went on to win the game—without Russell.

Afterwards, Red was furious. “Red, there was a snowstorm in case you didn’t notice,” Russell said. “I got stuck. I couldn’t get here. How can you get on me about that?”

“Because,” Red said, “Eleven other guys figured out a way to get here on time. If anything, you should have been the one guy who got here, not the one guy who didn’t.”

It was Morgan who opened the door to my friendship with Red. I had heard about his Tuesday lunches at a downtown Chinese restaurant but never dreamed there was any way to get invited—especially since Red was close to Bob Knight, who, after “A Season on the Brink,” wasn’t the president of my fan club. But I ran into Red one night doing a local TV show and he couldn’t have been more gracious. I wondered if there was any way to go to the lunch once to write a column about it.

I called my friend Jack Kvancz, who was (and is) the athletic director at George Washington and a regular attendee. “If I ask him, I’m not sure what he’ll say,” Jack said. “If Morgan asks, he’ll say yes.”

So I called Morgan. He asked and, as Jack predicted, Red said yes. I went the next week, was invited to keep coming back and never stopped going. I have lots and lots of stories about the lunches but one stands out in my memory. Red always liked to tease me about Krzyzewski, knowing we were friends.

“You know Mike never let Tommy Amaker shoot,” Red said one day, talking about Krzyzewski’s first great point guard, who is now the coach at Harvard. “The kid was a great shooter. He would have been a great pro if Mike had let him shoot.”

I loved Amaker, but he’d always been more of a passer than a shooter. I told Red I didn’t think Amaker was a shooter. Red turned to Morgan. “You saw the kid in high school, what’d you think of him?”

“You couldn’t stop him,” Morgan said. “He could score almost at will.”

I was shaking my head, saying I just didn’t see it that way when Rob Ades, another of the lunch group jumped in. “John,” he said. “You have here the greatest NBA coach ever and the greatest high school coach ever. You think YOU know more about basketball than they do?”

At that point I shut up. My guess is if Coach Wooden had been there he’d have told me I was wrong too.



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John's new book: "Moment of Glory--The Year Underdogs Ruled The Majors,"--is now available online and in bookstores nationwide. Visit your favorite retailer, or click here for online purchases

To listen to 'The Bob and Tom Show' interview about 'Moment of Glory', please click the play button below:

Through the years, there have always been milestones in sports thought to be untouchable. Once, Lou Gehrig's string of playing in 2,130 consecutive baseball games was on that list. Then Cal Ripken Jr. came along. Jack Nicklaus's record of 18 professional major golf championships was thought to be completely out of reach since no one else had won more than 11. The record still stands, but Tiger Woods now lurks just four behind. Joe DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak is considered sacred, but Pete Rose did get within 12 of the magic number.

There's one men's college basketball record, though, that not only will never be broken, the likelihood is it will never even be threatened: 10 national titles. That's how many NCAA championships John Wooden won at UCLA. No other coach -- not Mike Krzyzewski, not Adolph Rupp, not Bob Knight, not Dean Smith -- has even gotten halfway to that mark. In fact, those four, generally considered the four greatest college basketball coaches in the game's history not named Wooden, have won 13 titles combined. Perhaps even more remarkable: Wooden won those 10 championships during a 12-season span, beginning in 1964 and ending in 1975, when he retired after UCLA beat Kentucky in that year's national championship game.
He was 64 when he walked away -- younger than Rupp, Knight or Smith were when they retired and the same age Krzyzewski will be next February. He was 99 when he died on Friday, the unquestioned best in the history of his sport. Some may talk about how Wooden won his titles in such a different era. Others will bring up the whispers about UCLA players being taken care of by the famous booster Sam Gilbert in ways that ran outside of NCAA regulations.

Either argument misses the forest for the trees. Wooden won in 1964 and 1965 with a small team that pressed all over the court. He won from 1967 through 1969 with center Lew Alcindor (later Kareem Abdul-Jabbar), the greatest player in college basketball history. He won the two years after that with Steve Patterson, very decidedly not the greatest player in college basketball history, replacing Alcindor. Then he won twice more with Bill Walton in the middle, and he won his last title with a team that probably should have lost to Louisville in the national semifinals and easily could have lost to Kentucky in the championship game.

He also saw to it that almost all of his players graduated, and if freshmen had been eligible when Alcindor was a UCLA freshman in 1966, he might easily have won 10 straight national titles instead of nine in 10 years, from 1964 through 1973.

Click here for the rest of the story: John Wooden column

Some days it is hard to know where to begin. Yesterday, a number of people I know with ties to Seattle and the University of Washington urged me not to be my usual judgmental self (me, judgmental?) on the subject of Mark Emmert, the newly-named President of the NCAA. Emmert was the President of Washington and apparently did an excellent job of fundraising (always a college president’s primary job) and was well-liked by people out there.

That’s fine. And I will try to reserve judgment until I see what sort of action he takes on various issues going forward. I was encouraged to read this morning that he plans to contact NBA Commissioner David Stern about the one-and-done rule. Maybe he reads the blog.

Then again, maybe not.

Emmert was quoted two years ago as saying that a college football playoff was, “inevitable.” It took him about 15 minutes to start back-pedaling from that comment once he was named to succeed Myles Brand. All of a sudden he’s saying that the NCAA has no say in the BCS and that his personal views aren’t really relevant as NCAA President.

Really? They’re not? Why in the world is he about to be paid something like $1.7 million a year (Brand’s annual salary) if his views on critical issues aren’t relevant? What’s he being paid to do, look good in a suit? Excuse me for being judgmental but I am pretty sick and tired of people being paid big bucks to allegedly be leaders who claim that it isn’t their job to lead. If the President of the NCAA, who is on record as saying that a playoff is the right thing to do, won’t try to do something about it, who will?

One almost wonders if Emmert was told he wouldn’t get the job if he didn’t back off on the playoff issue because he couldn’t wait to stake out the, ‘we have no say in this,’ position.

That’s one of the great copouts in history. In fact, after the NCAA’s Final Four press conference a few weeks back when Greg Shaheen and I had our now famous (or infamous depending on your point of view I guess) exchange on the 96-team basketball tournament, I made a point to Shaheen that it was ridiculous for the NCAA to try to shove a 96-team tournament down people’s throats when it could make all the extra money it wants or needs by creating a football playoff—which would NOT cause, ‘student-athletes,’ to miss any more class time.

“But we have no authority in football,” Shaheen said.

Oh please. If the NCAA wanted control of football it could acquire it in about a 15-minute meeting with the BCS commissioners and presidents. Here’s how it would go:

NCAA: “We are starting a football tournament next season. We are going to sell the rights to corporate America and the TV networks the way we sell the rights to the basketball tournament.”

BCS goons: “We have the BCS. We won’t participate.”

NCAA: “No problem. You can turn down the invitation to the football tournament. By the way, any school that doesn’t participate in the football tournament can’t participate in or receive revenue from the basketball tournament.”

Now, the BCS will scream and yell and threaten legal action. Fine. To begin with, the NCAA already set this precedent years ago when it told basketball teams it had to play in the basketball tournament if invited. It’s known as the, ‘McGuire rule,’ because it was put in place after Al McGuire took Marquette to the NIT in 1970 because he thought his draw in the NCAA’s was unfair.

What’s more, the NCAA is a private organization. Membership is voluntary. It can make any rules it wants (and does) and any member has the right to drop out if it doesn’t like the rules. Aha, you say—the BCS schools will drop out and form their own organization. Not as easy as it sounds. For one thing, the basketball contract for the next 14 years is with the NCAA. And, even if they formed their own superpower tournament the magic of the tournament would be completely lost. Butler makes the NCAA Tournament a must-see event. So does Cornell. The superpowers are semi-pro teams with zero romance attached to them other than by their own fans. The BCS would be cutting off its nose to spite its face if it went rogue. The easiest and best way would be to go kicking and screaming into an incredibly lucrative—for all—football tournament.

Emmert seems to have no stomach for that battle. So, my friend Bill Hancock and his PR goon Ari Fleischer will continue to put out disinformation on how the bowl system would be hurt by a playoff (bologna, to use a polite word Bill might use) and how the regular season would be devalued by a playoff. (Hooey, to use another Bill word). By the way, how ironic is it that the NCAA, which uses the regular season argument as much as the BCS folks do, was thisclose to throwing the entire basketball regular season overboard?

Anyway, I’ll wait and see what Dr. Emmert does going forward before passing judgment. But my gut feeling is he’s going to spend a lot of time looking good in a suit. Business as usual in Indianapolis.

*****

I would be remiss as someone who has lived in Washington for more than thirty years if I didn’t take a moment to bemoan the stunning defeat of The Washington Capitals Wednesday night in the opening round of The Stanley Cup playoffs.

My hockey team, as people know, is the New York Islanders but when the Islanders are a non-factor (as they have been for the past 17 years except for an occasional blip of being a tad better) I do pull for the Caps. Like everyone else in town, I like and respect owner Ted Leonsis. I also like general manager George McPhee and have enjoyed watching their climb from a non-playoff team to having the best record in the league this past season.

The Caps have a history of playoff collapses. Give them a 3-1 lead and you have them right where you want them. This one was different though and worse than anything in the past. Not only did they have a 3-1 lead but they were the top seed in the playoffs and they were playing the bottom seed. After winning two games in Montreal to get that 3-1 lead, they came home for game five and came out as if they were out for a morning skate.

The Canadiens, who haven’t won a Stanley Cup since 1993, jumped to a 2-0 lead that night and basically let Jaroslav Halak do the rest. He made 131 saves on 134 shots over the next three games—meaning the Caps averaged just under 45 shots per game but only scored once in each of those games—and the Canadiens somehow won the series. In fact, the Caps never led during the last three games and Halak held the Caps scoreless on Wednesday for almost 58 minutes and kept the puck out of the net with the Caps playing six-on-four during the last 1:44.

As my mother might say ‘ov-vah.’

Washington is a town that doesn’t get to cheer a lot. The Redskins were good during Joe Gibbs Era 1—three Super Bowl wins in 10 years—but have been decidedly mediocre since Dan Snyder rode into town on his constant wave of bad feeling. The Wizards won their only NBA title in 1978 and were a national laughingstock this season when they became—literally—The Gang That Shot Empty Guns. There was a 34 year gap between baseball seasons and only now, in their sixth season, are the Nationals starting to show some potential. The Caps had the worst record in NHL history in their first season (breaking the record set by my Islanders two years earlier) and have been to one Stanley Cup Final—in 1998 when they were swept by the Red Wings. Heck, even the once powerful soccer team, D.C. United has fallen to the bottom of MLS.

This was supposed to be a spring of celebration ending in a parade. It ended in embarrassment and frustration Wednesday night. No knock on the Canadiens, who played their hearts out to beat a team that finished 33 points in front of them in the regular season, but this was inexcusable. For now, the Alexander Ovechkin-Sydney Crosby argument is off the table. Crosby has one Cup, one Olympic Gold medal—and counting as the Penguins take on the Canadiens in the conference semifinals. Ovechkin has scoring titles. Last I looked, no one engraves the name of the scoring champion on The Stanley Cup.

It was 17 years ago today that Jim Valvano died after a bout of a little less than a year with cancer. I can still remember the day vividly. I was teaching at Duke back then and I’d flown down early in the morning (in those days I still flew regularly) and I was in a rental car driving to campus when I heard the news on the radio.

It wasn’t a shock. I had last seen Jim when Duke played North Carolina in Chapel Hill in early March and you could almost feel the life seeping out of his body. By then, he had made the two speeches that came to define his last days—one at a 10-year reunion for his 1983 NCAA championship team at North Carolina State (click here: reunion speech); the other at the ESPY’s (click here: ESPY speech), the first and last moment that the ESPY’s had any value at all—and had clearly made peace with what was to come.

Jim and I had been close for a long time. I had seen him play at Rutgers (he was part of a superb backcourt along with a great shooter named Bob Lloyd) and had first gotten to know him when he coached at Iona. I had spent many late nights sitting with him after games when he was coaching at State. Like most coaches, Jim couldn’t sleep after games—he was never much of a sleeper to begin with—and he would always head up to his office after doing his postgame press conference in Reynolds Coliseum and order pizza, wine and beer. His coaches would come in and hang out and so would various friends. I always stayed until the end because I knew when the room cleared out, Jim would stop telling stories and get serious. As hysterically funny as his stories were—I still re-tell some of them when I speak—the best parts of the evening always came well after midnight.

Jim would put down his wine glass and often stretch out on the couch in his office and say things like, “I need to figure out what I want to do when I grow up.”

He was constantly restless. He had spent his life dreaming about winning a national championship and then when he won one at the age of 37, in the most dramatic fashion possible, he felt unfulfilled. You could almost hear the famous line from the old Peggy Lee song, ‘Is that all there is?” playing in his head on a constant loop.

He chased The Next Thing for a while, flying to New York on Monday mornings to appear on CBS’s ‘Early Morning,’ Show; doing color on occasional games IN season; hosting that awful sports bloopers show; doing a pilot for a variety show in Hollywood (seriously); selling memorabilia; becoming the athletic director at State. Anything to avoid being JUST a coach.

Everyone knows what happened: he stopped paying enough attention to his program and enough bad kids seeped bad kids seeped in to bring the program down. A book, written with the (paid) cooperation of a former manager, helped bring about an NCAA investigation—even though there were so many in-accuracies in it on simple things like what day of the week Thanksgiving fell on (I’m not joking) that it should not have been taken seriously. Still, the investigation led to probation and to Valvano being forced to resign after the 1990 season. Twenty years later I think it is fair to say that State still hasn’t recovered from that episode.

Valvano quickly rebuilt his life through TV, which wasn’t surprising. He was smarter and quicker and funnier than anyone who had been given a microphone in a long time. He was a more direct version of Al McGuire: very smart, very funny but you didn’t have to unravel what he was saying to see the genius in it. It was right there in front of you.

As close as we had been—I was the first writer Jim talked to about the various accusations in the book—and I think it is fair to say someone he confided in often, he wasn’t happy with what I wrote when things fell apart at N.C. State. Basically I said I was disappointed because he seemed to be taking the route most coaches took when they had let standards slip in the program: It’s not my fault. It’s the administration’s fault or my assistant’s fault or the players fault or the NCAA’s fault.

Jim certainly wasn’t alone in doing this. And I wasn’t inconsistent in writing what I wrote: If you take the credit for success, you take the blame for failure. He and I were both working a game in St. Petersburg the year after he stopped coaching (I was doing radio, he was doing TV) when we had it out in a back hallway of what is now known as Tropicana Field.

Basically he said this: How could YOU of all people do this to me. YOU are my friend. He was in a place I hate going: raising the issue of where the line is drawn between a professional relationship and friendship. Years ago I believed you should NEVER be friends with people you covered. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized that’s impossible. How can you know someone for 20 or 30 years, watch their families grow up, see them go through joy and tragedy and not have feeling for them? Similarly, when they are there offering help when you have issues in your life, how can you not be grateful?

I told Jim exactly that: I considered him a friend and I did not think I had violated any trust in what I’d written. But as someone covering college basketball, how could I not write about what had happened? As someone who KNEW he’d neglected his coaching job how could I say I didn’t know it? And, if I simply covered up for him, what credibility did I have when I defended him—as I had done when the book came out because it was so clearly full of mistakes on issues big and small.

We agreed to disagree—loudly.

The next summer he was diagnosed and it was apparent quickly that what he had was terminal. We had exchanged letters that never referenced our disagreements. On the early March afternoon when Duke played at Carolina, Jim was sitting at the broadcast table with Brent Musburger, who was on headsets taping some pre-game billboards. Jim was surrounded by security because so many people wanted to stop and wish him well. As I walked by, heading for my seat, I heard Jim’s voice: “John, come sit with me for a second.”

I turned in that direction only to be shoved backward by an over-zealous security guard (they breed them, I think, in Chapel Hill). “Hey pal, let him go,” Jim said. “Let my friend go.”

I smiled when I heard the word friend. I sat down in an empty chair next to Jim, the one where the floor manager would sit in a few minutes.

Jim was direct. “I don’t know when I’ll see you again,” he said. His voice was soft, very un-Valvano-like. “I was hoping you’d be here. I owe you an apology.”

“No you don’t.”

His hand was on my arm. “YES, I do. I was mad at you because I wanted you to be my apologist and that’s never been who you are. What you did, really, was an act of friendship because you wouldn’t let me off the hook. I needed more of that back then.”

I didn’t know what to say. I was certain—certain—this was going to be the last time I talked to Jim. I wanted to go back to his office, have him lie on the couch again and explain to me why ‘Perestroika,’ was a brilliant book as he’d done one night a few years earlier. That wasn’t going to happen.

“It means a lot to me you’d say that,” I said.

“I’m glad I got the chance,” he said.

I hugged him and could feel just how much his body had shrunk. I remember shuddering. He must have sensed it.

“Pretty scary isn’t it?” he said.

“There’s about a zillion people pulling for you,” I said.

He smiled. “I know,” was all he said.

I patted him gently on the shoulder as I stood up and he put his hand on my hand for a moment. I never spoke to him again.

Seventeen years later, thanks in large part to the millions of dollars raised by ‘The V Foundation,” which Jim started in his final days, people remember Jim. I remember him too. And, especially on days like this one, I miss him a lot.

You may or may not have noticed this but the deadline for underclassmen to declare themselves eligible for the NBA draft was Sunday. The list of players who put their names into the draft was officially released yesterday.

There were 61 names.

There are two rounds in the draft. A total of 60 players will be drafted. I understand that some players will withdraw between now and May 8th when they find out they aren’t going in the first round—where the money is guaranteed—or that they may not be drafted at all. But most of the big-name players whose names are on the list will stay on the list. And quite a few players will leave their names in, not get drafted and then begin nomadic lives that may take them overseas; may take them to the NBA’s Development League and, in a few cases, will land them in the NBA.

I will grant you that this year is not a good one to use as an example because some players have been convinced by agents that they MUST get into this June’s draft because a player strike or lockout is a virtual certainty in the summer of 2011. Even so, I have reached a conclusion that isn’t based solely on the number of underclassmen who have put their names into the pool, but was crystallized when I read the list yesterday morning: The one-and-done rule doesn’t work. It has to go.

I say that not for the reason that some people do: that it makes a mockery of the term, ‘student-athlete.’ That shipped sailed so many years ago that I’m not sure Columbus had learned to sail yet. In fact, in some ways the one-and-done has cut DOWN on the hypocrisy. Now, when someone who is clearly in college only because the rules say he must be there for a year, doesn’t go to class and makes little or no attempt to even stay eligible in his second semester, there’s no faking involved.

Years ago, the work that went into keeping players eligible for three or four years often involved things like having others take tests and write papers for them; getting grades changed and sometimes sending them to bogus summer school classes so they could keep playing—among other things. With one-and-done, it’s a whole lot neater because you don’t have to keep someone afloat academically for more than a semester. Sure, there’s still cheating going on, but less of it involves the very best players.

They’re in, they’re out and then they’re replaced by the next group. John Calipari won 35 games at Kentucky this season with four freshmen whose names are in the draft pool. He’s gone out and signed a brand new crop, most of whom will probably be in next year’s draft pool after Kentucky wins another 30+ games next season. If you don’t like it, don’t blame Calipari. He didn’t make the rules, he just taking full advantage of them. He’s well worth the $4 million a year Kentucky is paying him. My only request is that he not use the term, ‘student-athlete,’ when talking about his players.

Here’s why I initially thought one-and-done was a good idea: In my own naïve way, I believed it was better for kids to be exposed to college for a year, regardless of how many classes they actually took part in. I thought it was better for them to spend a year on a campus as opposed to a year on charter airplanes. I thought exposing them to other teen-age kids was better than exposing them to 30-year-olds who had been bouncing around basketball for 10 years or more.

I still think that’s all true. But I don’t think this is the way to do it. The NBA and the players’ union—remember these are NBA rules, not NCAA rules—need to fish or cut bait in the next collective bargaining agreement. The old CBA has one year left. Sadly, getting this done appears not to be a priority. NBA commissioner David Stern has been pleading owner poverty since the All-Star Break and, naturally, the players don’t want to hear it. So, a money war—which may or may not lead to a work stoppage; my bet is it won’t—is going to break out. The issue of when a player may try to enter the NBA is likely to be an afterthought.

It shouldn’t be, especially for the union, which is supposed to protect basketball players--past, present and future. Basketball needs to put in the same rule that currently exist in baseball: When a player graduates from high school he can put his name into the draft. If he is drafted he can sign with the team that drafts him or he can go to college. If he DOES go to college though, he can’t go back into the draft for three years.

What that does—especially in a two-round draft—is ensure that an NBA team must REALLY want a player to draft him. It should be the player’s option to choose between the NBA and college rather than forcing players to commit to the draft without knowing whether they will be drafted or not. If, however, he makes the decision to go to college, he can’t jump back in the pool again after one year. He has to stay in college and has to pass enough courses to stay eligible through his junior year.

Will there be some fraud involved in keeping some players eligible? Sure. No system is ever going to be perfect. In many cases though, players will at least be somewhere close to a degree if they leave after three years or if they stay for four. What’s more, they will have a much better idea of their real NBA potential after three years in college. Some will find out they weren’t quite as good as they thought they were in college and might even understand that they NEED a degree.

What’s more, it will put a stop to colleges being revolving doors, one-year way stations en route to the NBA. If a player is good enough to be drafted coming out of high school and that’s his dream, why delay it for one year of college he will see only as a burden? In the case of the occasional kid who really wants to continue his education after turning pro, no one will stop him from enrolling in summer school classes and he’ll certainly be able to afford to pay his own way. In most cases, the kids will end up in college and, like their brethren in football and baseball, will stay at least three years. In 95 percent of cases, that will be a good thing. And, if the players and owners sign off on that sort of rule, it will almost certainly stand up to any court challenge.

I thought one-and-done was a step forward when the rule was passed. It was, in fact, a step sideways. It is time for the players and owners to put an end to the current charade and at least attempt to take a step forward.

*****

A couple of notes based on posts and e-mails from yesterday: A few people asked if The Big Ten’s money per school would go down if it went from 11 to 16 teams. Probably not because the revenues would go up so much: More schools will mean more people paying for The Big Ten Network; more ad revenues; more cable systems taking on The Big Ten Network; a more lucrative national TV contract. It will mean The Big Ten can hold a championship game if it so desires. All that will probably double the gross revenues, which will almost certainly mean more than $22 million net per school each year.

As for Notre Dame, it makes far more than that on football each year between NBC, the BCS—remember it doesn’t have to split any BCS or bowl revenue it makes with other conference members--and neutral site games. Plus, it can control its schedule so that if Brian Kelly is even a decent coach it is almost impossible not to win at least nine games a year.

And finally on the Anna Kournikova-Natalie Gulbis comparison: If anything I was being hard on Kournikova, kind to Gulbis. Yes, Gulbis has won an LPGA event, but Kournikova was a Wimbledon semifinalist who was ranked in the top ten on a number of occasions. If Gulbis goes on and wins a major, I’ll change my assessment. As of now, I think the comparison is more than fair.

Something important happened on Thursday—and it wasn’t the NFL draft. I’m always amused when I flip to the draft, especially on ESPN, how no matter what happens, the experts claim they knew this was coming and this is a great pick for whatever team is involved. Every once in a while Mel Kiper will question a pick—usually whomever the Oakland Raiders draft because that’s a pretty safe bet—but for the most part every franchise is doing a great job and every player drafted is a wonderful person.

If I had a dollar for every time someone said, “quality kid,” on Thursday night I’d be making almost as much money as the NCAA is going to make on its new basketball TV contract.

Which brings me to the important news of Thursday: The NCAA basketball committee actually did something right. Instead of going forward with plans to expand to a ridiculous 96 team tournament, the committee reigned itself—and the ever-greedy presidents, commissioners and athletic directors—in at least for a while, recommending expansion for next season to 68 teams.

Let’s not pretend for even a second that this was done for any of the right reasons: preserving the integrity of the regular season and the conference tournaments; allowing a tournament bid to continue to have meaning; continuing an event that may have been as good as it has ever been in 2010. This happened for a couple of reasons: there were logistical issues in terms of changing existing rental agreements to add another round of games (two more days in the building) as early as next spring. Plus, the NCAA took a pounding in recent months when the plan to go to 96 teams leaked out and looked especially bad at The Final Four when NCAA vice president Greg Shaheen literally refused to answer a simple question about missed class time that would have been caused by the extra game.

I was the one who asked that question (repeatedly) and the exchange received a lot of attention because Shaheen simply wouldn’t admit in that public forum that OF COURSE there would be more missed class time. A number of people have pointed out—correctly—since then that the issue is a minor one since the players already miss lots of class time and a lot of them have no intention of returning to class once the tournament is over.

I knew that when I brought the issue up. The only reason I did it was to point out the hypocrisy and basic dishonestly of the NCAA dishing out all the ‘student-athlete,’ garbage it dishes out. In fact I got a bit nauseous when I read the canned quote yesterday from acting NCAA President Jim Isch saying, ‘this is a great day for the 400,000 NCAA student athletes.” Memo to Isch: Shut up and cash the checks.

I’ve had a few people say that my exchange with Shaheen in Indy somehow played a role in this. My ego’s big, but not that big. I DO think the drumbeat across the country from people saying that 96 teams was bad for basketball and a CLEAR money-grab did have an affect because the NCAA is, if nothing else, ultra-image conscious. What’s more, even though the new TV agreement with CBS and Turner is for 14 years, I don’t expect the number of teams to stay at 68 for the life of the agreement. I think it will go up either in one fell swoop in a few years or gradually, the way it went from 25 teams in 1974 to 64 in 1985 with stops along the way at 32, 40, 48 and 53.

The addition of three teams probably means four play-in games in Dayton instead of one. Undoubtedly the committee will ship the eight lowest-seeded one-bid league teams there instead of doing the right thing and sending the last eight at-large teams to play. (You seed the four winners as No. 12 seeds). Sending the at-larges means better TV—more name teams—and it is fairer since the tournament is probably the zenith for most of the one-bid league players while the players from the name schools are mostly looking forward to pro careers or being back in the tournament again before their college careers are over. Don’t think for a second the committee does the right thing on this one. Additionally, the adding of the three teams means the one-bid teams get their seedings pushed down a little more: the added three teams will all be seeded ahead of most of the one-bid schools. Consider this: Cornell was NOT seeded ahead of a single at-large team this season. Nice job by the committee there.

The real winner in all this is Turner. CBS could not have outbid ESPN for the rights without a cable partner. What’s more, ESPN was pitching the NCAA on the fact that it had the outlets to televise all games rather than regionalizing the first three rounds as CBS has been doing. Turner’s presence with three networks of its own---TBS, TNT and truTV—will allow the new partnership to do what ESPN was proposing to do.

Clearly, Turner is putting up a lot of the $10.8 billion the contract is worth because beginning in 2016 it will alternate televising the Final Four with CBS. No way CBS gives up any part of that event without a lot of money being involved. Regardless, we should all be happy on two levels: The tournament bubble will not be expanded—at least for now—to include the 12th place teams in The Big East and the ACC—and the ESPN takeover of all sports is slowed at least for a little while. Consider this: if ESPN had gotten the deal your main studio host for the entire NCAA Tournament would have been Chris Berman—guaranteed. He might have brought Mel Kiper and John Gruden with him too.

Speaking of which I did watch some of the draft last night—switching frequently over to watch Johan Santana pitch and the New Jersey Devils flounder. First of all, what’s with the players hugging Roger Goodell? I mean, enough with that. Second, I know it is a live event but is it just me or was ESPN completely out of synch most of the night? There were all sorts of awkward silences on the main set and the kicker came when Goodell introduced all the military folks—which to me, as much as I respect all those people, is nothing but pandering by the NFL—and no one on the set other than Tom Jackson seemed to know what was going on. Steve Young kept rambling, then they showed Goodell briefly and then Young, Kiper and Gruden kept talking to one another as if they were off mike. It was highlighted by Berman—on camera—trying to give them all the ‘cut,’ sign to let them know they were on camera and on mike.

When Berman tried to recover by saying, “this is always the highlight of the first round…” it was pretty much falldown funny. Even so, the worst TV of the night was on the NFL Network. I love Deion Sanders, really enjoyed getting to know him when I did my book on the Ravens a few years ago. But his interviews with the players just drafted were brutal: “Dreams come true, they can expect hard work from me in (fill in the city). Greatest thrill of my life.”

Back to you in the booth. Time for another shot of a player and his posse talking on a cell phone while Goodell waits for him to hug 43 people, put on a cap and come on stage. I think tonight I’ll stick to the Mets.

Yesterday I joined The Sports Reporters' Steve Czaban and Andy Pollin in the normal timeslot (5:25 ET on Wednesday's). Click the permalink, then the link below, to listen to the segment that takes a look at the Ben Roethlisberger suspension along with college basketball topics including Kyle Singler returning to Duke and the potential CBS/Turner bid for the NCAA tournament.

Click here to listen to the segment: The Sports Reporters

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And once again on Thursday, I joined Tony Kornheiser's newest The Tony Kornheiser Show in my normal slot at 11:05 am ET Thursday morning.  This week the topics included Bob Woodward, the World Cup, Tiger Woods and college basketball.

Click here to listen to the segment (starts within the 1st minute): Tony Kornheiser Show

This past Monday I was making my weekly appearance on Washington Post Live, which airs here in town on Comcast Cable. Because of some kind of sponsorship deal the show has a segment EVERY day on the Redskins (and then later airs a show called, ‘Redskins Nation,’ which is so god-awful you would fall down laughing while watching it if its presence on the air—ANY air—wasn’t so downright sad).

Anyway, with the draft coming up and the Redskins having just completed their first mini-camp under new Coach Mike Shanahan, we actually did two Redskin segments. One of the other guests was Jason Reid, who does an excellent job covering the team for The Washington Post. Covering the Redskins for The Post is such an awful job I once left sports for two years rather than accept the assignment. (More on that in a moment).

During the mini-camp ‘discussion,’ (what the hell is there to discuss about mini-camp?) Jason casually mentioned that the media was not ALLOWED to be at the Redskins facility on Friday and Saturday. Only on Sunday did Shanahan grant them a few moments with the God-like figures who inhabit Redskins Park.

At first, I was literally stunned. No media at a mini-camp? What are they doing, plotting an invasion into Afghanistan? It then occurred to me that this lack of access, although it varies from team-to-team, is the way the NFL does business. Why does it do business this way? Because it CAN.

Even with a potential strike or lockout looming in 2011, there is nothing bigger in American sports (I throw in American only because of the soccer World Cup which occurs every four years and just about brings the rest of the world to a complete halt) than the NFL. I mean look at all the hype going into the draft, which is now a ‘prime-time,’ event. I mean, has there been enough speculation yet? What amuses me most is that with all the speculation—much of it usually flat out wrong—even after the draft takes place no one really knows what they have, who will be a true impact player and who won’t.

A draft usually becomes a good draft in the third round and beyond. If you blow your first pick—see the Oakland Raiders—then you’re going to be awful because even those guys who never stop talking on ESPN aren’t likely to screw up the first round. Heck, even the Redskins picked a good player in the first round last year. The best teams and general managers do their most important work in the late rounds and in signing college free agents. The teams with the most depth win in the NFL and depth is built in the late rounds of the draft and through free agent signings that usually rate one paragraph. You don’t get good by signing Albert Haynesworth—or for that matter Terrell Owens—you get good by signing Torry Holt and having him catch 70 balls for you on a one-year contract. Things like that.

Okay, back to the NFL and the lack of access the media has. I know most people reading this will say, ‘who cares about your access.’ Well, if you are a football fan YOU should. Look, watching practice or mini-camp doesn’t really matter a lick. I watched most Ravens practices (and mini-camps, which WERE open to everyone in the media) during 2004 and was mostly bored doing so.

Years ago, shortly after I had stopped working at The Post fulltime, I was doing some work for The New York Times. I had a contract with Sports Illustrated but liked keeping my hand in at daily journalism and Neil Amdur, then the Times sports editor, allowed me to do it.

The Redskins were playing the Giants and Neil asked me to go out to Redskins Park to write a couple of features during the week. I was standing on the practice field while the Redskins warmed up talking to Richard Justice, who was then The Post’s Redskins beat writer. Joe Gibbs walked over.

“John, I’m really sorry but we only let our local writers watch practice,” he said. “You’re going to have to leave.”

“Gee Joe, thanks,” I said.

“Thanks?”

“Yeah, thanks. Thanks for thinking for one second that, even if I cared, I’d have any clue what you guys were doing. And thanks for giving me an excuse to go write while you’re practicing.”

Gibbs actually laughed. I happily went off to write.

Nowadays, most NFL practices are shut tight—mini-camps apparently included. When Brian Billick coached the Ravens, he was about as open with the media as any coach that ever lived. All his pre-season practices were open. Once the season started he’d let people watch the beginning but once the team actually started scrimmaging or putting in a game-plan, everyone was shooed inside. Nowadays, ANY access to players on or off the field is extremely limited.

Access in almost all sports—golf is the notable exception—has been cut back greatly in recent years. Hockey locker rooms used to be open pre-game. No more. Baseball clubhouses are still open but for less time and players spend far more time in the off-limits areas, which have been greatly expanded in new ballparks. College basketball is the worst offender: Once, almost every college hoops locker room—even Georgetown under John Thompson the elder—was open postgame. Now, except during the NCAA Tournament (all credit to the NCAA on that one) most are closed and a few ‘selected,’ players come to an interview area. One notable exception? Duke. Maybe some of the coaches who complain so bitterly about Duke getting good publicity all the time should think about that for a moment.

The shame of it from the public’s point of view is that it is so much harder to get to know players when you have almost no access to them. I’ve always found that the best stories usually occur when you’re standing around casually talking to someone. It certainly benefits me in golf where I spend a lot of time hanging out on the range and the putting green just talking to players.

There is no casual time with NFL players for most guys in the media. I had the chance to spend casual time with the Ravens in ’04 and the best stories I found were about guys most people in the public never hear much about: the long-snapper; the punter brought in for a couple of weeks because of an injury; a backup offensive lineman who had played his college football at Williams.

But NFL coaches don’t care if the public hears those stories. They care about controlling everything in their little world on a day-to-day basis and they are allowed to do so by the league, by the media (which has little wherewithal to change anything) and by the public whose only real concern isn’t a good story about a backup lineman but whether last year’s 4-12 team can make itself over into a playoff team.

I get all that. Which is why, back in 1982 when George Solomon, then The Post’s sports editor called me into his office and announced, “congratulations, I’m making you The Redskins beat writer,” I said no. I was very much enjoying myself covering national college football and basketball and I knew that, even then, covering the Redskins beat was basically being a hard-working stenographer: who was injured, who didn’t practice, what did Coach Gibbs think of next week’s opponent? (Greatest team in history every single week).

That’s not to say I wasn’t flattered being offered the most read beat in the newspaper. I just thought life was too short to waste even one season doing that. I told George, with all due respect, I didn’t want the beat. He told me he was the boss—he was right—and I’d do what he said. I walked straight to David Maraniss’s office. He had just been promoted to Metro editor, replacing Bob Woodward. Both had told me I had a standing offer to come back and cover Maryland politics for them anytime I wanted.

“Does the offer still stand?” I asked.

“Absolutely.”

A week later I was in Annapolis. I never covered the Redskins. When I went back to sports two years later it was to cover national college basketball and tennis. I was reminded again on Monday just how lucky I was to never spend one day as an NFL beat writer. Back then, it was lousy. Now, it’s a lot worse.

Walking into Augusta National this morning a number of people asked me what I thought about the national championship game on Monday. My answer was simple: “It was one of the greatest championship games ever played and if Gordon Hayward’s shot had gone in, it would have been THE greatest game and THE greatest moment in the history of college basketball.”

Yup, it was that good.

I’ve heard a few people say the game was exciting but not that well played—they say that looking at the shooting percentages. They also say that because they don’t understand basketball. Go back and look at the tape. I’m not sure there more than a half-dozen shots in the entire game that were uncontested. Every single possession was an absolute war. Throwing a simple perimeter pass was difficult. Both teams had help waiting for anyone who tried to drive the ball to the goal. There were almost no transition baskets because the teams changed ends of the court so quickly.

It is almost 36 hours since Hayward’s 45-foot shot hit the backboard and the rim and rolled off and I can still see it in the air and I can still remember thinking, ‘that has a chance.’

If it had gone in I would have been thrilled to have been there for the greatest moment in college basketball history. When it missed I was delighted for Mike Krzyzewski and all the people I know at Duke.

Let’s deal with Krzyzewski for a moment. Let’s start with this: He proved me wrong this season. I thought he made a mistake taking the Olympic job for a second time, especially at a time when Roy Williams had just won his second national championship in five years.

I forgot a lesson I learned—or thought I’d learned a long time ago—never underestimate The Captain. That’s the nickname my pal Keith Drum and put on him when he first came to Duke. Since Bob Knight liked to call himself ‘The General,’ we started calling Krzyzewski ‘The Captain,’ since that was his rank in the Army—unlike Knight who was actually a private.

Drum, who has been an NBA scout for almost 20 years, was the sports editor of The Durham Morning Herald in those days and was probably the only member of the local media who didn’t jump off the Krzyzewski bandwagon—not that there was one—when Mike went 38-47 his first three years at Duke. He was vocal enough in his belief that Krzyzewski was going to be a successful coach that Dean Smith noticed.

In 1984, after Krzyzewski’s first good team had stunned North Carolina (with Michael Jordan, Sam Perkins and Brad Daugherty among others) in the ACC semifinals, Drum and I walked down the steps in The Greensboro Coliseum into the hallway where the locker rooms were. Dean was standing outside his locker room and when he spotted us, he walked across the hall, making a beeline for Keith.

“Congratulations,” he said. “Your team played very well.”

It was a funny line since Drummer went to North Carolina. Dean was making a point about his support of Krzyzewski.

Turns out Drum had it right. Turns out I had it wrong this season. Here are the numbers: Four national championships, behind only John Wooden (10) and tied with Adolph Rupp. Eleven Final Fours—one behind Wooden and tied with Dean. Twelve ACC championships—one behind Dean. And, last but not least, 868 victories—11 behind Dean and 34 behind Knight.

Of course there are people out there who will say about 800 of those wins came because Duke gets all the calls. There are also people—just about all of whom have never met Krzyzewski or talked to him—who think he’s a bad guy, who make up things about him (like the columnist in Miami who claimed last week he ‘faked,’ his back injury in 1995) and who simply can’t stand to see him win.

Sorry folks, the guy is just good at what he does. And he’s a good man. The work he does very quietly for charities, for people who are sick, for friends—is endless. He just doesn’t make a big deal of it. For that matter, neither did Dean, who has always been that way too. That’s why I wrote a column Saturday saying they are a lot more alike than either would probably care to admit. If you want to say I’m saying these things because I went to Duke—fine. I’m saying these things because I’ve known the guy since 1977 and I know that they’re true.

He did a great job coaching this team, the key moment coming when he made Brian Zoubek a starter. Until then, this was another nice Duke team that probably would have lost in the Sweet 16. Zoubek changed everything. He gave the team an inside presence it hadn’t had since Shelden Williams graduated. He made Lance Thomas more effective because he knew he had help behind him and could be aggressive on defense. He made the Plumlee brothers better because they could play limited minutes and just buzz around when they were in the game.

As Bob Ryan said on Saturday night after Duke had dismantled West Virginia, “they have three piano players and three piano movers and they all know their roles.”

And, as Krzyzewski said, they became a very good team that did a great thing even though they didn’t have anywhere close to the pure talent many of his previous teams have had. And if Kyle Singler comes back next year—probably 50-50—they’re going to have a chance to do it again.

So will Butler if Hayward comes back. If there’s anyone left who didn’t think this was a wonderful team, they should find another sport. The only team I saw all year that played half court defense at Duke’s level was Butler. Hayward is superb; so is Shelvin Mack and the players around them all knew their roles. Matt Howard played as smart and as tough a game on Monday as I’ve ever seen.

And Brad Stevens proved he can coach with anyone. He beat Jim Boeheim, beat Frank Martin, beat Tom Izzo and missed beating Krzyzewski by two inches. He matched Krzyzewski move-for-move most the entire night. Every time out he called worked. So did his rotation, especially the way he went defense-offense the last few minutes.

It would be nuts for him to leave Butler for any second tier job in a BCS conference. His next job should be one of the BIG ones: Krzyzewski isn’t going to coach forever; neither will Roy Williams or Ben Howland and you never know when someone at a big school might be tempted by the NBA. (Forget The Captain to the Nets. He’d never coach a game if he even thought about it because his wife Mickie would kill him first). That’s where Stevens belongs. Butler right now is a better job than any of those other jobs anyway.

The only sad thing about Monday Night, especially one like this one, is that someone loses and has to live with the ‘what-ifs,’ the rest of their lives. To be honest, the Butler kids deserve better than that because they gave us memories we’ll all keep with us for a long, long time.

You see, Monday Night in college basketball is about forever. And this one was one worth savoring for at least that long.

******

Quick note on the ‘new,’ Tiger Woods. He’s not playing in the par-3 tournament at Augusta today, which is by far the most fan friendly event of the week. The excuse from his camp is that he hasn’t done it for years and if he did and played poorly tomorrow someone would say (not me for the record) that it was because he’d played the par-3. He should have just played. He should have auctioned off caddying for him and given the money to a charity of the winner’s choice—NOT his own foundation.

But no, he’s not doing that. He IS, I’m told, signing a lot more autographs than in the past. Good for him. But he should have played in the par-3.

Monday is the longest day at The Final Four.

It is really all about waiting since the championship game doesn’t start until 9:21—why the heck it can’t just be 9:20 I’m not sure—but regardless there is a lot of time to kill.

The USBWA has its awards brunch in the morning and then the Hall of Fame announces its inductees right after that. I refuse to go to the Hall of Fame press conference (although I’m glad that long-time St. Anthony’s Coach Bob Hurley is going in) because I object to the secretive nature of the Hall’s voting system and the fact that the NBA has completely taken over the process and the Hall of Fame itself.

This year not a single college coach is going in. No Lefty Driesell, no Guy Lewis, no Jim Phelan—among others. It’s a joke and you can’t complain to the 24 voters because their identities are a deep, dark secret. The Hall says it is so they won’t be lobbied—which is garbage. If you have the privilege of voting you should be able to withstand any lobbying if you think someone isn’t worthy. And, under any circumstances, you should have to publicly stand behind your vote.

So, I have no interest in the Hall of Fame or its press conference. On the other hand I guess I could go and ask them embarrassing questions but I’ve already done that once this week in a press conference and that’s enough for me.

We can also kill some time today watching The Tiger Woods press conference. The only reason I’ll be watching is because I have to on ‘Golf Channel,’ afterwards and talk about it. I expect another lecture on Buddhism and meditation and someone in a green jacket to jump in and say, ‘golf questions only please,’ if someone strays into a question deemed ‘personal,’ in any way. (Maybe someone can ask Tiger if he thinks the NCAA Tournament is really about the ‘student-athletes,’ or if he’s as sick of that tired song as the rest of us. Heck, we might even agree on something for a change).

When the title game does finally begin tonight, I expect a great game. If people haven’t figured out yet how good Butler is then they’re missing the boat entirely. Was the Bulldogs win on Saturday over Michigan State pretty to watch? No. But this isn’t about style points and Butler, even with point guard Shelvin Mack and center Matt Howard both missing most of the last few minutes, managed to hang on and win. I’m hoping both are okay to play tonight. The last thing you want in a championship game is either team missing a key player.

The Butler kids are having fun and they ARE fun. Saturday night, when guard Ronald Nored—who made two critical free throws with six seconds left—was asked about the team’s tradition of patting the REAL Bulldog mascot on the head after being introduced he said this: “It’s part of what we do. Sometimes he barks, sometimes he bites but you gotta play through it.”

How good a line is that?

When Gordon Hayward, who plays the role of Jimmy Chitwood in this version of ‘Hoosiers,’ was asked if he had gotten a piece of the ball on Draymond Green’s last shot that came with Butler leading 52-49, he smiled the perfect ‘aw-shucks,’ grin and said. “I might have gotten a piece of the ball. Or I might have gotten a piece of his arm.”

The Duke kids aren’t nearly as fun or as funny—at least not in public—as the Butler kids. Combine that with their reputations as college basketball’s bad guys (which in most ways other than the fact that they win a lot isn’t deserved) and it is easy to understand why everyone in the country who doesn’t have a Duke affiliation will be pulling for Butler.

It also explains why CBS is over-the-moon about this matchup. It’s ‘Hoosiers,’; it’s a Cinderella story; it’s the white hats vs. the black hats; it’s the team you have to love against the team people love to hate. Ratings gold.

Duke is playing very well right now. It has gotten better, much better, since the start of the season. The Blue Devils play airtight defense—so does Butler—and if they have a night like Saturday when all of their so-called Big Three are on, they are very tough to beat. Saturday, Kyle Singler, whose shot was MIA against Baylor (zero-for-10) was eight-of-16, had nine rebounds and played superb defense on West Virginia’s Da’Sean Butler until Butler went down with a knee injury with 8:59 to go. Duke was up 15 at the time and Butler’s injury basically ended any thought that West Virginia might come back.

I just hate to see a kid end his college career like that. Butler, who is an absolute class act, sat in the locker room and answered questions after the game was over. Let me tell you something, if you didn’t like this West Virginia team, you were missing something.

That’s the nice thing about this Final Four: these are four very likeable teams. Oh sure, the Duke-haters have to do their thing and that’s par for the course. There was a lot of hoo-ha about a silly cartoon that appeared for one edition in The Indianapolis Star on Friday that depicted Mike Krzyzewski as ‘the devil,’ but that really wasn’t close to the dumbest thing said or written. That came from some guy in The Miami Herald who wrote a column claiming (among other things) that Krzyzewski, ‘faked,’ his back injury in 1995. No doubt he has access to the medical records that prove Krzyzewski ‘faked,’ the surgery he had for the back. I also know for a fact that the only thing that got him to go to the hospital and stop coaching was his wife Mickie telling him she was ready to leave him because he was killing himself by not getting medical help.

You see, it’s fine to criticize Krzyzewski. I wrote a column in The Post Saturday kind of lampooning his one-time animus for Dean Smith and how that’s changed over the years. Everyone knows I’m not exactly tight with my alma mater—in fact the Duke basketball website sometimes makes fun of me for being critical of Duke.

But the sometimes-crazed hatred of Krzyzewski makes no sense. It comes 99.99 percent of the time from people who’ve never met him. As Mickie once eloquently said, “I know the life my husband’s led and he doesn’t deserve the hatred that’s been aimed at him.”

She’s right. Tonight though, Duke will be wearing a black hat in a way it has perhaps never worn it before. Butler would be America’s Sweethearts regardless of the opponent tonight. They deserve to be in that role but let’s remember one thing: They aren’t here because they’re nice kids or because their 33-year-old coach (Brad Stevens) doesn’t look old enough to shave. They’re here because they’re a damn good basketball team that has already beaten Syracuse, Kansas State and Michigan State.

If the Bulldogs win it will be the best story we’ve seen in this tournament since Texas Western won in 1966—although for entirely different reasons. Those who shrug off the notion that Butler is Cinderella simply because it has been good for many years and was a No. 5 seed miss the point entirely.

Duke, like Michigan State and West Virginia, has all the advantages that schools from the power conferences have: money to recruit; money for top-notch facilities; money from TV; exposure from TV; a highly-thought of conference to pitch to players and the ability to buy eight-to-10 wins a year playing guarantee games at home.

Butler has none of that. It has a great old gym with an amazing history but that’s about it. The Bulldogs play in The Horizon League. Quick, name four Horizon League teams. They ARE Cinderella and if they win tonight you can throw every melodramatic cliché you can think of in their direction and you will be right.

I expect a very dramatic night. And to say I can’t wait for it to get started is a massive understatement.

I swear to God when I walked into the NCAA’s annual press conference yesterday I had no intention of asking any questions or, for that matter, staying very long. The only reason I even wandered in was that the NCAA sort of trapped us by putting an hour break into the schedule between the time the players and coaches from Butler were available to talk and the time the players and coaches from Duke showed up.

So, if anyone from the NCAA was unhappy with what took place, they should blame themselves. Schedule the teams one after another the way you should and you won’t have me hanging around while you publicly congratulate yourselves on all the great work you’re doing for ‘student-athletes.’

What happened was this: Greg Shaheen, who is the NCAA vice president in charge of—for all intents and purposes—this basketball tournament, began outlining how a 96 team field would work. We all know the tournament is going to 96 teams, the only question is if they’ll make the leap all at once next year—that’s my guess—or ease into it over a two or three year period.

Shaheen knows that cat is out of the bag. Back in January when I wrote that it was a done deal and said that ESPN was going to put so many Disney Dollars on the table that the NCAA wouldn’t be able to resist, he wrote me an angry e-mail, not denying the expansion, but that I had implied that CBS wasn’t being treated fairly in the negotiation process. Now that CBS has partnered with Turner, the NCAA is bound to be very nice to them since the worst they can do is get into a bidding war with ESPN and drive the price higher—regardless of who ends up with the rights.

As Shaheen was describing how a 96 team tournament would play out in terms of schedule he made one completely ridiculous statement: that ‘student-athletes,’ would not miss any more class time under the new format than they already do now. He carefully outlined how the first week would work, emphasizing the fact that while the 64 non-bye teams would arrive at sites at the same time as in the past, the 32 bye teams could arrive a day or two later.

Fine. Let’s not even get into the fact that the first week of the tournament is often spring break for a majority of schools. Let’s just give the NCAA that one.

Then, having made that point a couple times, Shaheen simply stopped. He said nothing about the second week, which is when the extra round of games will have to be played. Since the round of 64 will now be played on Saturday-Sunday, the round of 32 has to be played the first half of the next week to get to the Sweet 16. Shaheen acted as if that round didn’t exist.

I couldn’t resist. I asked for the microphone—at NCAA press conferences you have to ask for a mike and for reasons I’ve never understood, “identify,” yourself before asking a question. I once identified myself as Bob Woodward and no one batted an eye.

So, I asked Greg exactly when the round of 32 would be played. He said most likely on Tuesday-Wednesday. That would mean the winners would play regionals on Thursday-Friday, meaning that teams that played on the weekend and then played the round of 32 and then the 16s would miss an entire week of school.

When I made that point, Greg referred back to the first week. I told him I wasn’t asking about the first week. He AGAIN started talking about the first week. I finally said something like, “well you just aren’t going to answer the question about the second week are you?”

He then claimed something about not understanding the ‘nuance,’ of my question. I could have said, “Oh come on Greg, you’re a smart guy, you get the question you just don’t want to answer it in this forum; don’t want it on the record that OF COURSE everyone will miss a full week of class—in addition to whatever they miss the first week and the four days the two teams in the championship game miss this weekend (Thursday, Friday, Monday, Tuesday).”

Afterwards, no longer at the podium, Shaheen admitted they’d miss the entire week although he claimed, “some teams,” could go home between their weekend game and their round of 32 game. Quick quiz: How many coaches do you think will play a game on Saturday night, fly home, maybe have the kids go to class Monday and then fly back to play Tuesday? How about none.

What bothered me about it, what caused me to jump in, were two factors: One, Shaheen was simply trying to bulldoze past the fact that there will be MORE missed class during a press conference in which the NCAA had been bragging about improved graduation rates. (A story for another day). Second, here’s an organization that runs screaming from the room whenever a football playoff is brought up because it doesn’t want to take on the BCS Presidents or the bowl lobby and then claims it is worried about MISSED CLASS TIME for football players (who would miss almost zero class time with a football playoff) and it is shrugging off MORE missed class time for basketball players as no big deal.

“Wouldn’t be that many teams affected,” Shaheen said later.

So apparently it is okay as long as the ‘student-athletes,’ from 16 schools are affected but not okay if ‘student-athletes,’ from eight schools are affected—though almost not at all—in football.

My point in asking the questions I asked wasn’t to embarrass Shaheen. I like him. He’s very bright but he is also one of those administrators who thinks if he says it then it must be so. Maybe that comes from hanging around the basketball committee for so long. When someone asked Dan Guerrero, the UCLA AD who is the committee chairman this year if he was concerned about how a 96 team field would affect attendance at the Pac-10 Tournament which already doesn’t draw very well, Guerrero said, “That’s not something we’ve addressed as a conference yet.”

Honestly, I think if you asked Guerrero where the sun’s going to rise tomorrow he would tell you that the committee had studied a lot of options: east, west, north and south and all were very worthy of hosting sunrise.

I have to admit I was a little surprised at the reaction to my exchange with Shaheen. I sometimes forget how fast information goes out on the internet and on TV these days. It’s a sign of age. But the reaction was swift and I guess what it shows is that a lot of people are pretty fed up with the NCAA’s constant filibustering on any real question.

This morning I presented Jim Boeheim with the US Basketball Writers Coach-of-the-Year Award at a breakfast. I noticed that a lot of the committee members were in the room when I got up to the podium. I was tempted to say that the USBWA had decided to expand breakfast to include lunch next year but we believed it wouldn’t cost those who came any extra money because, well, because we said so.

I decided to pass on the line and make fun of Boeheim instead, knowing he was going to nail me when it was his turn. (He did—he said the only thing that could ruin being named coach-of-the-year was having me present the award. Then he said he hadn’t worn a tie because he didn’t think he needed one with a bunch of writers. I took my tie off and gave it to him. Without missing a beat he pretended to look at the label and said, “JC Penney.” He was very funny).

One thing I like about coaches like Boeheim is that they don’t take themselves too seriously most of the time. Then again, he was the first guy to suggest expanding the tournament. All of which just proves that no one's perfect.

INDIANAPOLIS - If there was any doubt about the NCAA's intention to expand the men's basketball tournament to 96 teams, it went away on Thursday afternoon.

That's not to say anyone gave any straight answers during the NCAA's annual Final Four news conference, which isn't really a news conference but rather a chance for the suits to come in and tell everyone that all is right with their world.

They made sure everyone knew that more "student-athletes" are graduating -- that's counting all 347 Division I programs, many of whom have no chance to compete on the basketball court, but let's not go there. They also reminded everyone that the selection committee (again) did a fabulous job putting together the tournament, even if it insists that everything it does be kept top secret.

But that was all just the warmup act for Greg Shaheen, who is an NCAA vice president but also, far more importantly, the guy steering the expansion ship from inside NCAA headquarters. Shaheen is a bright, capable guy who has done a lot of good things since the late Myles Brand brought him to the NCAA as his right-hand man six years ago.

His assignment Thursday was to explain how the 96-team field will work and then try to convince people that no decisions have been made. "This could all be a discussion about nothing," he said at one point.
Right. And coaches get fired for not graduating enough players.

Here is how the tournament will play out in case you haven't, like the NCAA, been "studying models."

Click here for the rest of the column: On men's basketball tournament expansion, NCAA talks a big game

In all likelihood, they will play the last game in the history of The National Invitation Tournament tonight in Madison Square Garden. That makes me quite sad. I understand that the NIT has become an almost forgotten tournament because the NCAA Tournament has become such a national phenomenon but there was a time when it meant a great deal to college basketball and—as a kid growing up in New York—a great deal to me.

My first live college basketball game was the 1965 NIT championship game between St. John’s and Villanova, which was Joe Lapchick’s last game at St. John’s. The Redmen won 55-51 and I was thrilled because the New York team won. The winner of the consolation game that day—11 a.m. tipoff—was Army. That was Tates Locke’s last game as Army coach. He left for Miami of Ohio and was replaced by his assistant, a young coach named Bob Knight.

The NIT became the one time all year my dad actually took me to games. He was never a sports fan but had a warm spot for college basketball having gone to CCNY during the glory years when Nat Holman was the coach. Dad and I had a deal: I would use my GO student card to buy $2 tickets upstairs for the first round games and the quarterfinals and he would get tickets for the semis and finals and take me. Because dad did business with the Garden, he could get REALLY good seats—usually in the third row or so right behind press row. I remember thinking how cool it must be to sit on press row and have stats brought to you at halftime.

In 1968, dad couldn’t make the final on Saturday afternoon. So, he took me to the second night of quarterfinals and the semis and set me up to go with a buddy to the championship afternoon doubleheader. (I was always one of about 27 people in the building when the consolation game started).

There were two local teams in the Tuesday night quarterfinals that year: Fordham was playing Dayton and St. Peter’s was playing Notre Dame. I had always been a big Fordham fan—I went to games in Rose Hill Gym and listened on WFUV-FM when I couldn’t go—and I knew Coach John Bach was leaving for Penn State. Back then there were only 25 teams in the NCAA’s so there were very good teams in the NIT.

One was Dayton, which had been the NCAA runner-up under Coach Don Donoher a year earlier. As the game progressed, I noticed that the ladies seated next to use were rooting VERY hard for Dayton. “I’ll bet those are the coaches wives,” my dad said. At halftime, the lady sitting next to me turned to me and said, “you’re quite a fan aren’t you?”

I commented that SHE was quite the fan and she laughed and said, “Well, I have a reason to, I’m Sonia Donoher.”

My dad had been right. She introduced the other wives and the rest of the game we engaged in a friendly back-and-forth as the game ebbed and flowed. Dayton won when Frank McLaughlin, now Fordham’s AD, missed a jumper from the left elbow at the buzzer. I think it was 61-60. We congratulated Mrs. Donoher and the other wives and promised to pull for the Flyers in the semifinals, which we did—a win in overtime over Notre Dame. Then my friend and I were completely in the Dayton camp during the final against Kansas.

By then I was practically part of the Dayton entourage. Mrs. Donoher took me into the locker room outside the hallway after the championship game so I could meet her husband and get introduced to Don May. Given that I had heard the Knicks might draft him (which they did in the second round) it was like meeting a God. A couple weeks later I got a note from Mrs. Donoher with an autographed photo of Don May and a photo of the team with the trophy—again autographed. I wish I could say I knew where they were.

In a sense, Dayton became my team after that and Coach Donoher became my coach. I wasn’t in touch with the Donoher’s but certainly followed what they were doing. Unbeknownst to me, they were following me—sort of. In 1981 I was at the Final Four in Philadelphia when I spotted Coach Donoher in the stands before the first semifinal getting ready to watch his friend Bob Knight coach Indiana against LSU.

I walked over and said, “Coach, I know you don’t remember this but back in 1968 your wife introduced me to you after you won the NIT and…”

“John Feinstein!” he said. “Sonia and I wondered if that was you when we read your byline in The Post. She said, ‘it must be him because I always knew he’d be involved with basketball someday.’”

I was thrilled—and stunned. Coach Donoher asked if I wouldn’t mind giving Sonia a call. There were no cell phones back then but The Post had a phone on press row and I went right to it and called her. When I started to say hello and re-introduce myself she said, “I knew it, I knew it—I told Mick (which is what everyone has always called Coach Donoher) it had to be you. We are SO proud of you.”

As it turned out they had a relative living in Annapolis—I believe it was one of their sons—and saw The Post fairly regularly.

Honestly, it was thrilling for me that they actually remembered the little kid who had become a Dayton fan in 1968. We re-connected and I visited them several times in 1986 when I was doing ‘Season on the Brink,’ since Dayton isn’t far from Bloomington. Coach Donoher retired in 1989 but he and Sonia are still the first family of Dayton. They are, without question, two of the great people I’ve had a chance to meet along the way.

And, as luck would have it, Dayton will play in the last game in NIT history—against North Carolina in the championship game tonight. I really wish I could be there because of all the memories and because Dayton is playing but I have to be here in Indianapolis. And, of course, I had no idea Dayton would make it this far.

Still, maybe it is better that I’m not there. I know seeing the last game in a tournament that started in 1938 and is now being put out to pasture so the NCAA can make more money on a 96 team field would make me very sad. And watching Dayton without my dad on my left and Mrs. Donoher on my right wouldn’t be the same.

Time marches on. But you hang on to the memories.

Late tomorrow night I will arrive in Indianapolis for The Final Four. This will be sixth time The Final Four has been played in Indy and the third different venue it has been played in there. In 1980, which was my second Final Four but my first as the lead writer for The Washington Post—in 1978 I was the newspaper’s night police reporter and George Solomon sent me to St. Louis to write sidebars because I’d covered college hoops in my free time during the season—the games were played in Market Square Arena, which is now long gone.

By the time The Final Four returned in 1991, the games were being played in The Hoosier Dome. Now THAT building is gone and they will play in Lukas Oil Stadium, which I haven’t seen yet but looks absolutely huge on television.

Market Square seated maybe 16,000 people. It was a really nice basketball arena and your sense was that everyone who came to The Final Four was there because they loved basketball. That changed years ago, sort of like The Super Bowl. Now a lot of people are there just to be there and the NCAA is insistent on getting 70,000 people into the dome even though it means playing on a raised court in the middle of the football field.

Look closely at your TV set on Saturday night and you will see Jim Nantz, Clark Kellogg and their statistician sitting on raised chairs so that they have a normal view of the court. The two head coaches will be sitting on little stools up on the court—or standing—while everyone on their benches sits below court level looking straight at the feet of those who are playing.

The worst seats in the building belong to the CBS PR people who get to sit directly behind Nantz and Kellogg and can’t see a thing. Everyone else just comes out of there with a strained neck.

The NCAA went to this set-up last year in Detroit and it isn’t going away because it means about 20,000 more tickets it can sell even if most of the seats are in the next county. The REALLY rich fans will be fine. Everyone else will have a better view by watching the message boards—or whatever they call them these days. Of course the NCAA will try to spin this to tell the world they’re doing this for, ‘the student-athletes.’

Here’s an idea for you to pass the time if you’re at home watching on TV this weekend: If you watch the press conferences count how many times the moderator says, ‘student-athletes.’ Last week in Syracuse at one point the moderator said it three times in one sentence. That, I believe, is a new record. I’ve said to different guys, “why not just call them players—what’s WRONG with being a player?” They all shake their heads, look around and say, “I’d get in trouble for that.”

I believe them. Big brother NCAA is always watching.

As with all old people, I find it hard to believe that my first Final Four was 32 years ago. It was a thrill to go then and, you know what, it is still a thrill. I’m jaded and cynical and I hate how late the games start—in the good old days they actually played on Saturday AFTERNOON—and how long they take once they start.

But I still get a kick out of seeing the entire basketball community in the same place for a few days. That’s not to say there aren’t members of the community who shouldn’t be in jail or something close to it. I have a basic theory: If you see a guy standing in the lobby of the coach’s hotel on a cell phone, he’s probably up to no good. If a guy comes up and acts like he’s your best friend and gives you a 70s soul shake run for your life. And if a coach you haven’t heard from for years who is out of work wants to buy you a beer, buy HIM the beer and get out of Dodge because he’s going to ask you to help him get a job.

For the most part though, it’s fun. People stand around the lobby and tell old stories. Old enemies sometimes hang out together laughing and joking. I remember one year bumping into John Chaney and John Calipari who were absolutely cracking one another up. This was not that many years after Chaney burst into a Calipari press conference at U-Mass wanting to fight him on the spot. (I would have bet on Chaney in an instant in that one).

Star coaches don’t like coming to The Final Four without their teams these days. Bob Knight only comes now because ESPN pays him. Prior to that he only came on occasion. Same with Mike Krzyzewski, although he’ll be there this weekend since he gets to bring his team along.

In the old days, they all went. I still remember seeing Dean Smith on the rent-a-car line in Seattle in 1984. “You need a car for the week?” I asked.

Dean shrugged. “I didn’t think I did,” he said. “I thought I’d be coming with my team.”

That was the year Indiana upset North Carolina when the Tar Heels had Michael Jordan, Sam Perkins, Kenny Smith, Brad Daugherty and Joe Wolf on the team.

Dean always went. John Wooden always went, even after he retired. I know I’ve told this story often but it bears repeating. At that same Seattle Final Four in 1984, Coach Wooden was there with his wife Nell, who was very sick and in a wheelchair. One night, after they’d spent time in the coach’s lobby, they said their goodnights and Coach Wooden began wheeling his wife across the lobby to the elevators. It was late and relatively quiet though the place was still crowded. Someone spotted them and just began to clap. Others picked up on it. By the time they reached the elevator bank everyone in the lobby was clapping for the Woodens.

That’s probably my favorite Final Four memory, right up there in a different way with N.C. State beating Houston; Villanova beating Georgetown; Kansas beating Oklahoma; Duke beating Vegas and George Mason just being there.

Actually the games are only part of The Final Four for me. Seeing lots of old friends, hanging out in the media hospitality room late at night with the other old guys like Hoops Weiss and Bob Ryan and Malcolm Moran is still great fun. A lot of the stories begin with, “remember back in …”

I guess I should consider myself lucky that I can still remember most of the stories. I DO remember Jim Valvano running in circles looking for someone to hug and the look on Danny Manning’s face when he pulled down the last rebound—among other things.

The Final Four isn’t the same by any stretch of the imagination. But it’s still The Final Four and I’m lucky I still get the chance to go.

There may not be such a thing as a perfect Final Four, but the one that will begin on Saturday in Indianapolis comes pretty close.

It has a Cinderella practically playing on its home court.

It has a team that hasn't been to the Final Four in 51 years but is going back after a prodigal son came home.

It has a team whose coach always seems to find a way this time of year, playing in its sixth Final Four in 12 seasons.

And it has a villain, the team people love to hate, whether because it wins so often or because people have to have someone to root against once their team has gone home.

Those four teams, in case you spent the weekend wondering who the Redskins are going to draft, are Butler (Cinderella), West Virginia (prodigal son); Michigan State (coach who finds a way) and Duke (villain). Butler and Michigan State, both No. 5 seeds going into the tournament, will play the first game and Duke and West Virginia, a No. 1 and a No. 2, will play in the second game.

Before looking at those games, let's not forget who isn't going to be playing in the Lucas Oil Stadium. To begin with, three of the four No. 1 seeds -- Kansas, Syracuse and Kentucky. Each went out a round apart: Kansas losing to Northern Iowa in the second round, Syracuse in the round of 16 to Butler and Kentucky to West Virginia in the Elite Eight.

Anyone who has seen West Virginia play could not have been surprised by the outcome in Syracuse on Saturday night. The Mountaineers play exactly as they are coached to play by Bob Huggins -- always intense, always angry, never satisfied. Whether they are playing the 1-3-1 zone that completely baffled Kentucky or man-to-man, they are in the opponent's face on every defensive possession. They have an absolutely fearless shooter in Da'Sean Butler. They are mature -- juniors and seniors are the core of this team -- and they aren't likely to be shaken by a close game or the need for a big basket or a big stop. 

Click here for the rest of the column: This Final Four has it all

That was a long night.

It wasn’t just that the best games were in Salt Lake City and the two games in Syracuse had little suspense down the stretch. I have no complaint at all with the Kentucky-Cornell game or, for that matter, West Virginia-Washington which was best summed up by WVU assistant coach Billy Hahn: “We play ugly don’t we?” he said when it was over.

Maybe. But as I pointed out to Billy, they’re still playing and right now that’s all that matters.

The Cornell kids, after jumping to an adrenaline-rush 10-2 lead looked overwhelmed by Kentucky for the rest of the first half, outscored 30-6 the last 14 minutes. At halftime there was a lot of, “men against boys,” talk which, to be honest, I couldn’t really rebut at the time. But somehow, Cornell didn’t go away. The Big Red got Kentucky to settle for jump shots against their zone—which was their only chance—and they stopped turning the ball over which had led to a Kentucky dunk/layup fest in the first half.

When Louis Dale, who was Cornell’s best player on the night with 17 points and only two turnovers against Kentucky’s pressure, buried a three to make it 40-34 with 5:42, The Carrier Dome was rocking and everyone was looking at one another as if to say, “could it be possible…”

I was sitting between Bob Huggins—who may be the last big time coach who actually scouts opponents himself; I can’t think of another off the top of my head—and Hahn and they both glanced at each other for a moment as if this thought had crossed their minds: Play Cornell to go to The Final Four?”

No. Kentucky wouldn’t let it happen. The Wildcats scored the next six points to make it 46-34 and even though Cornell hung around, still trailing 54-45 with 1:11 to go, Kentucky was going to win the game. The Wildcats, who can miss free throws, made them all in the last minute and the margin (with apologies to my friend Hoops Weiss) was a deceiving 62-45.

I apologize to Hoops because he’s a long time friend of John Calipari and gets a bit defensive when people rip Calipari or don’t give him his due as a coach. As I’ve said before, I like Calipari too and I’ve known him since I met him at Five-Star in 1984 when he was an assistant to Larry Brown at Kansas. But he does come with some baggage when he pulls into town.

After the game, while we were waiting ENDLESSLY for the NCAA to bring coaches and players in for a game that ended at 12:15 a.m. Hoops and I had the following conversation.

Me: “You know they (Cornell) hung in there, gave everyone a little bit of a thrill at 40-34.”

Hoops: “They were never winning the game.”

Me: “I didn’t say that, but it was closer than a lot of people thought it was going to be.”

Hoops: “The story of this game was 32-16 at halftime.”

Me: “Hoops, the game is 40 minutes long. You can’t say the second half didn’t count.”

Hoops: “Okay then, what was the margin after 40 minutes—17, right?”

He had me there because Kentucky did bloat the margin a little by making its late free throws. Still, it was clear he was sensitive to the fact that people were going to somehow question Kentucky and Calipari because the margin had melted to six and was still only nine with 71 seconds to play. Actually what really matters is simple: Kentucky, like West Virginia, is still playing. And, if there is one area where I think the Cornell kids and Hoops are in 100 percent agreement it is this: The Sweet 16, at least right afterwards, isn’t about moral victories or getting the margin to six.

“We didn’t come in here just to play a good game or keep it close,” Cornell center Jeff Foote said. “There was no doubt in our minds we could play with them or anyone in the country. They were better than us and that’s all that matters.”

Or, as Jim Valvano famously said all those years ago, “survive and advance.”

West Virginia and Kentucky both did that and their game Saturday should be wildly competitive. Perhaps not pretty but very competitive.

Obviously I did not get to see the games at Salt Lake City but Brad Greenberg, the coach at Radford sent me a post-midnight e-mail during the second overtime of Kansas State-Xavier that simply said: “I’m not sure I can remember the last time I saw clutch shooting like this.”

Clearly that was a great game. I wish Xavier had won because that would have guaranteed at least one team from a non-major conference making The Final Four. What’s more, Xavier and Butler played one of the best and most controversial games of the season early on, Butler winning on a Gordon Hayward bucket after a 10 minute delay for the officials to figure out what had happened because of a clock malfunction. I’m not sure they’ve figured it out yet.

Syracuse losing, as you might expect, took a lot of life out of The Carrier Dome. The upper deck was surprisingly full at the start of Washington-West Virginia. There had been some fear the game would be played with almost no one in the building because Syracuse was on TV at the same time but the real fans—not the rich guys downstairs—showed up for the tipoff. That made me feel good about Syracuse as a basketball town. I know how big The Orange are up here—walking around yesterday I was convinced there was a city ordinance requiring that everyone wear a Syracuse sweatshirt and/or cap—but these are clearly BASKETBALL fans not just bandwagon fans like so many fans of so many teams are. For example, there was almost no one in Kentucky blue in the place when game 1 started.

One other little bit of inside baseball: For about the one-thousandth time the NCAA’s wireless system didn’t work. The NCAA Tournament is about the only sports event that I cover—and I’m told by colleagues this is a universal—where you have to pay for wireless ($16.50 per day) and then it almost never works. There’s always a different excuse, including last year at The Final Four in Detroit when it went down allegedly because of the placement of some CBS camera. Last night it was supposed to be three computers on press row sending out some kind of wrong signal plus overload on capacity.

What, they didn’t know there would be a lot of media there? It wasn’t until almost the end of game one with people frantic because it was 10 o’clock and everyone was on deadline or past deadline, that they got press row hard-wired so people could file.

Last year in Detroit when I asked during a meeting with the basketball committee why in the world we were still getting charged for a system that DIDN’T work the answer was, “well we have this contract…”

Fine. You guys are about to re-open your TV contract so you can make a couple billion more dollars. How about re-opening your wireless contract and find a company that’s competent enough to figure out how to make the system work. I’d say this isn’t rocket science but apparently it is.

Let us begin today, after one of the great weekends in the history of college basketball with this question: Why would anyone want to change this tournament? It is about as close to perfect as a sporting event can get -- if you forget the endless timeouts, the 20-minute halftimes and the absolutely ridiculous late night tip-offs. And still the NCAA and the WCA (Whining Coaches of America) want to change it?

To quote the great basketball maven John Patrick McEnroe Junior: You can not be serious!

If the tournament were expanded, teams such as Northern Iowa, St. Mary's and and Cornell would have fewer opportunities to create memories against Nos. 1, 2, 4 and 5 seeds. Please, for the love of basketball, let someone with a grain of sanity intervene before it's too late.

Then again, it may already be too late. For college presidents, conference commissioners and NCAA administrators, nothing starts the morning like the smell of money. Ask the ACC power brokers, who thought conference expansion was such a swell idea. That's worked out so well that over the past five seasons, the ACC has sent one fewer school to the round of 16 (Duke, North Carolina and Boston College) than the Missouri Valley (Wichita State, Bradley, Southern Illinois and now Northern Iowa.)

Read the rest of the column: A level of march madness that can't be expanded

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SALEM, VA. The ball was in Alex Rubin's hands but there was nothing more he could do with it. The buzzer had just sounded, the confetti was already falling from the rafters of Salem Civic Center on Saturday afternoon and the players from Wisconsin-Stevens Point were charging the floor.

Rubin and his teammates from Williams had come into the Division III national championship game with a record of 30-1. With 11 minutes to go they led, 54-44, and appeared to be on their way to the national championship. But the Ephs went cold and the Pointers got hot. A 22-5 run gave Stevens Point a 66-59 lead with five minutes to go, and with about 1,000 fans who had made the trip from the Midwest going crazy, the Pointers held on for a 78-73 victory.

And so, a split second after classmate Blake Schultz's futile final shot had rimmed out, Rubin found himself standing helplessly with the ball in his hands. He looked at the ball for a moment and then flung it as far as he possibly could. Then, like his teammates, he collapsed in tears.

"It occurred to me that was the last buzzer I'd ever hear as a player," he said about 30 minutes later. "I knew it was the last time all seven of us [seniors] would be together as teammates." He forced a smile. "Tough moment."

If you think there is any difference at all in the emotions that run through basketball at the Division III level and the big-time level, you're right: For the players on the 404 Division III men's basketball teams, the final buzzer is almost always the final buzzer. Rubin, a Landon graduate, is majoring in psychology and Spanish. If he ever shakes hands with David Stern he will be wearing a suit, but not a baseball cap.

Click here for the rest of the column: At the Division III basketball championships, emotions run just as strong

Finally, they’re playing basketball.

No more bracket conversations. No more asking who is going to pull a first round upset. No more of me hammering the committee. Well, less of it anyway.

I know one of the most fun aspects of the NCAA Tournament is people filling out brackets. I think it’s great when eight-year-old kids beat their dads in the office pool and when someone who fills out a bracket based on colors they like gets all 16 of the Sweet 16 teams correct. One of the great stories four years ago was when Tony Kornheiser’s producer’s mom—known to one and all as ‘Phil’s Mom,’—did a bracket on Tony’s show and picked George Mason to get to The Final Four. She became a national celebrity and still does a bracket for Tony even though Phil is no longer Tony’s producer.

I just don’t like filling out a bracket myself. Why? Because I’m terrible at it. No matter how hard I try to divorce myself from my biases—which, as discussed everyone has—they still creep into my picks. No Hoya fans that doesn’t mean I’d pick Georgetown to lose in the first round and I’m not picking Lehigh to win the national championship. Usually it’s subconscious I don’t even realize I’ve done it until later. I’m going to want to see the Temple-Cornell winner advance not because I have anything against Bo Ryan—really good guy in fact—but because I think those two schools weren’t treated right by the committee. (Whoops, slipped, there’s a shot at the committee).

I can tell you exactly when all of this started: In 1989 my then-wife did a bracket for a pool involving a bunch of her friends. I stayed far away but couldn’t help but notice she had picked Seton Hall over Indiana in the round of 16. “I’m not telling you what to do,” I said. “But if there’s one team I know something about it’s Indiana. Knight’s not losing that game.”

“But my dad went to Seton Hall.”

“Fine. But Indiana’s winning.”

Of course Seton Hall won by 20 and went to the championship game. Instead of the bracket being a runaway winner, it was a not-so-runaway second.

After that, I retired from mouthing off when people were filling out brackets. In fact, I try very hard to stay away from answering any questions about brackets. I never pick a Final Four when asked on radio or TV shows and I enter one pool that involves a handful of friends who have sworn not to reveal just how poorly I do almost every year.

I help three people with their pools because they refuse to quit bugging me about it. One is Chris Wallace, the condition being that he can’t complain to me if he doesn’t do well. The other is my brother under the same condition. And this year my brother’s 10-year-old son Matthew, who is as big a sports freak as I was when I was a kid asked me to help him with his bracket.

Which was a delight because every time Matthew told me who he had picked in a game and I said, “Gee Matthew, I’m not sure about that one,” he said, “here’s why you’re wrong.”

Good for him. I probably AM wrong.

Today, I’ll be at the practices in Jacksonville. I actually enjoy the practice days almost as much as the games themselves. People are relaxed, still elated—for the most part—about being in the tournament. The players are loose because their real practice takes place someplace else rather than at the practices that are open to the public at the game site. They are most there to get a feel for the shooting backgrounds, the rims and the arena itself. It will all feel different the next day when the place is full, but it gives them a chance to get a feel for where they will be playing.

Usually I go back and forth between sitting on press row watching the practices or chatting with people and the press room where there is always a TV tuned to the on-going games. When a game gets good, people gather around the TV and try to analyze what’s going on and why an upset may or may not be happening.

I still remember being in Boston in 2003 on Friday night of the first week. I had finished writing and joined a group watching the finish of the Maryland-UNC-Wilmington game. UNC-W was trying to hold on to a lead and upset the defending national champions. I was catching some flack from some of my friends about the fact that my pal Gary Williams was about to go down in the first round. The Seahawks missed some free throws down the stretch and Maryland pushed the ball downcourt, the clock heading for zero, down two.

Steve Blake found Drew Nicholas on the wing and Nicholas, in full stride stepped into a three-point shot just before the buzzer expired.

“That’s good,” I said as he released the shot. To emphasize my point I walked away from the TV set in the direction of a coke. I didn’t even see it go in.

“How’d you know?” my friend Hoops Weiss said later.

“Karma,” I said. “Those guys were giving the game to Wilmington. If I’ve learned two things it is that an NCAA Tournament game is never over and you never give up on Gary.”

So I got that one right. I think that makes my record about 2-105. After all, I’m the guy who had an entire column written on Georgetown winning the national championship in 1985 before the game started. (Tight deadline).

That was a fast rewrite. Not the first time and not the last.

While most of you are focused on the start of NCAA Tournament play on Thursday, the first game of the 64 that will decide the national champion is actually tonight.

Yes folks, it’s the dreaded ‘play-in,’ game—a gift from the basketball powers-that-be to the one-bid conferences, courtesy of the absolute greed of the basketball committee.

If you know this story, forgive me but I think it bears re-telling. In 1999, The Western Athletic Conference split in half—eight teams staying in the WAC, eight forming The Mountain West Conference. For one year, while it was awaiting official certification, the MWC did not get an automatic NCAA Tournament bid. Beginning with the 2001 tournament it did get an automatic bid

That meant the number of automatic bids went from 30 to 31. In order to maintain a 64-team field the number of at-large bids would have to drop from 34 to 33. Hardly a big deal, right? Except it was a big deal, notably to the men in charge of the power conferences who didn’t want to risk being the one to lose that 7th bid or 6th bid in a given year. Every bid is worth money—big money these days—that is divided among the conference members. What’s more, every win in the tournament is worth money too. That means the more bids you get, the more chances you have to pile up the cash.

And so the power conference commissioners proposed that the number of at-large bids stay the same and the two lowest-ranked automatic-bid teams would be sent to Dayton—which was chosen because it is a superb college basketball town—to play their way in to the 64-team bracket.

Naturally, the committee bridled when it was dubbed (correctly) the ‘play-in,’ game. Always ready with a euphemism (see, ‘student-athlete,’) it started calling the game the ‘opening round,’ game. In fact, only after a number of people loudly objected did the committee even agree to count the victory financially for the winning team. As I said, every NCAA Tournament victory is worth money—each win is counted as a financial ‘unit,’—except the play-in winner didn’t receive a unit until four years ago when the committee finally gave in on that.

Tonight, Winthrop, which upset Coastal Carolina to win The Big South title, will play Arkansas-Pine Bluff, the SWAC champion. This is the 10th and—probably—last play-in game since some kind of expansion next year is inevitable. In nine of the 10 games one of the two schools representing the conferences made up of historically black colleges and universities has been in the game. Even if the SWAC champion and the MEAC champion were the two lowest-rated teams in the tournament there is NO WAY the committee would send them both to Dayton—they wouldn’t risk the wrath of the PC police.

In truth, if the big boys HAVE to have their 34th bid neither the SWAC champion nor the MEAC champion nor Winthrop should be playing. Tonight, UTEP and Utah State—the two-lowest seeded at-large teams—should be playing, the winner to get a 12th seed. Actually, to take it a step further, the two lowest seeded teams from the BCS conferences should play. Those conferences have the biggest budgets; the highest-paid coaches; the ability to schedule guarantee games to pad their record and the most TV exposure. With all those advantages, if they just sneak in as bubble teams, two of them should go play in Dayton.

More often than not, the players on those teams will have other chances to play in the NCAA Tournament if they stay three or four years in college. They’ve probably been on national TV a dozen times already this season. The little guys may never get another chance to go to an actual tournament site, to go through the practice day, to walk into a packed arena dreaming they’re going to be the first No. 16 seed to win a tournament game. They deserve that chance. Every year the committee denies one of them that shot—all because of greed.

I’ve brought up the notion of sending the at-large teams to Dayton with committee members through the years. I get the same answer every time: “We could do that.”

Yes and I could pass on the ice cream after dinner. But I don’t. So, I’m fat and they’re a bunch of hypocrites.

To me, the best solution to all this and all the coaches whining about expansion is to expand the tournament by THREE teams. If the field had 68 teams this season, Virginia Tech, Mississippi State and Illinois would have all gotten in and there would really be no one complaining about being left out—at least not with any serious reason to complain.

With 68 teams you take the last eight at-large teams selected and you send them all to Dayton. You have four games on Tuesday, a real made-for-TV extravaganza with some compelling matchups: Virginia Tech-California; Mississippi State-Wake Forest; UTEP-Illinois and Minnesota-Florida; how does that sound? The four winners advance to the first round as 12th seeds.

Simple.

You take away the stigma of the one play-in game and you let all the little guys have their guaranteed moment in the first round sun. And you don’t blow up the magic of Selection Sunday or the first weekend by expanding to 96 teams, something that will be done for only ONE reason: money. That’s the entire list of reasons why it will happen if it happens no matter what anyone tells you.

Thursday, the first 16 first round games will be played. There will be upsets, there will be close games and there will be a few blowouts. The same thing will occur on Friday. One team, either Arkansas Pine-Bluff or Winthrop, will not have the chance to experience what all of that feels like even though both earned their spot in ‘The Dance,’ by winning their conference tournament.

The loser only gets to go to, ‘the dance.’ It’s not fair. The people who have done this the last 10 years should be ashamed of themselves. One thing I can guarantee you is this: they’re not even a little bit ashamed. Which is really a shame.

West
 
While you are writing Syracuse into the second round without even a second thought, remember this: The last time the Orange played Vermont in the NCAA tournament, the Catamounts won. That was five years ago in Worcester, Mass. Then again, if Dean Smith were here, he would say Syracuse has a huge psychological advantage because of that game.

Click here for the rest of the West analysis: In Salt Lake, BYU could hold court vs. Orange

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East

Let's start with the matchup that disproves any selection committee's claims of even-handedness: Temple-Cornell. Both teams are under-seeded: Vanderbilt a fourth seed out of the SEC? Oh, please. And Cornell just a No. 12? Ridiculous. The Big Red played a tougher nonconference schedule than almost anyone in the country. Two of their four losses were at Syracuse and at Kansas. Whom exactly did California, a No. 8 seed, beat? The Bears couldn't even win their conference tournament in a miserable Pacific-10.

Click here for the rest of the East analysis: Despite some strange seeding in the East, it's Kentucky's region to lose

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South

For all the TV blather about Duke getting the third overall seed in the tournament over Syracuse, who cares? If you're a No. 1 seed, you're a No. 1 seed. That said, committee chairman Dan Guerrero added to the nonsense by saying, "Well, Syracuse is still playing close to home" in the first two rounds in Buffalo. Syracuse was going to Buffalo regardless and couldn't have played in the East Region final because those games will be in . . . Syracuse. So what's the difference between playing in Houston and playing in Salt Lake? 

Click here for the rest of the South analysis: Duke's drought may end, but watch the Big 12 duo

***

Midwest

A lot of people seem to think that Kansas has a cakewalk to Indianapolis through this region. Not so.

There are at least four teams that are capable of beating the Jayhawks: Ohio State, Georgetown, Maryland and, believe it or not, No. 10 seed Georgia Tech. If you were thinking Tennessee was the fourth team that can beat Kansas because it did beat Kansas earlier in the season, forget it: The Vols will be fortunate to get past San Diego State in the first round.

Click here for the rest of the Midwest analysis: Jayhawks may be No. 1, but they can't take it easy


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This week's AP Top 25 Ballot:

1 Kansas
2 Kentucky
3 Syracuse
4 Duke
5 West Virginia
6 Ohio State
7 Temple
8 Butler
9 Kansas State
10 Villanova
11 New Mexico
12 Purdue
13 BYU
14 Wisconsin
15 Pittsburgh
16 Gonzaga
17 Texas A&M
18 Tennessee
19 Michigan State
20 Baylor
21 Richmond
22 Georgetown
23 Maryland
24 Cornell
25 Georgia Tech

AT THE ACC TOURNAMENT—Tony Kornheiser asked me this morning why I was sitting in The Greensboro Coliseum getting ready to watch a basketball game between two teams—Virginia and Boston College—who are going absolutely no place this season. In other words, why exactly am I here?

Habit is the best answer I can give. The simple fact is this tournament isn’t close to what it used to be when I first started covering it as a college undergraduate. There are too many teams and too many games. Thursday is almost always a long day’s journey into night with at least half the teams playing in the midst of awful to mediocre seasons. The building—regardless of the city—is never close to full because most of the fans from the four teams that have a first round bye aren’t even in town yet.

I know all of that. And yet, there are so many memories—especially here—that I always want to come back for at least a couple of days. Since I don’t spend that much time covering the ACC anymore I see a lot of people that I don’t see the rest of the year. Plus, much like The Final Four, it is still a gathering of people who care about basketball and love to sit around and tell stories about basketball and people in the game.

Last night I went to dinner with my old friend Dan Bonner who told several stories about his senior year at Virginia when Terry Holland took over as coach. “Terry made Andrew Boninti and I the captains,” Dan said. “He told us the first day to get out in front of the team and lead the other guys in calisthenics. Andrew and I stood there and said, ‘okay, let’s start with jumping jacks.’ We did TWO and Terry said, ‘STOP.’ Then he explained to us that when he told us to DO calisthenics he meant that we were supposed to DO them, not just act like we were doing them. Right there we knew he meant business. Of course what he didn’t know was that he had a lot of guys on that team who didn’t mean business.”

Holland got that straightened out pretty quickly, winning the ACC Tournament in his second season.

Walking back into the hotel, Dan and I encountered Florida State coach Leonard Hamilton who was telling stories about his team’s trip to Europe last summer.

“I wanted to try to get them to play up-tempo so I told them if they scored 120 points in a game the coaches would all wear speedos on the beach the next day. The team we were playing was awful. We got to like 112 with three minutes to go. I started screaming at the refs, ‘call travelling, call an offensive foul, call anything.’ We scored 120.”

Did the coaches wear the speedos?

“No way. I’d have ended up on Facebook.”

Several of the league’s referees were there too, including Mike Wood, who is retiring at the end of the season. Wood would actually rather talk about golf—HIS golf—than anything else but he’s been around forever and has, as the refs like to put it, ‘worked for,’ just about every coach you can name.

“First time I ever worked for (Bob) Knight I was standing right in front of him,” Wood said. “Now he’s only about a foot taller than I am but he starts screaming at me, ‘Wood ------- you’re in my ----- way, I can’t see.’ I said to him, ‘you know coach, I kinda need to see too.’ So Knight picks me up and moves me about a foot to the left so I’m out of his way. I said, ‘okay, I can see from here too.’”

That’s the way the ACC Tournament is. You turn around and you see someone you know and invariably the story-telling begins. Years ago, a group of us would always go to dinner the night before the tournament began. It was probably about a dozen guys from different papers and different schools. The leader of the pack was Bill Brill, who worked in Roanoke for 40 years after graduating from Duke in 1952.

One night Brill, after a few drinks, started to tell a story in which Lefty Driesell had been hired as the coach at Duke in 1969—apparently for about 15 minutes—before Bucky Waters got the job. “I’m telling you,” Brill insisted (loudly). “the assistants were told that Lefty was getting the job, that it was done. I know it happened because I was right there in the middle of the room.”

“What room?” someone asked.

“It was my hotel room, The Holiday Inn next to the old Charlotte Coliseum,” Brill said. “Duke had just lost in the ACC Tournament and the assistants were all in my room waiting to hear from Vic (Bubas) who was going to replace him as coach. They got a call saying it was Lefty—which meant they were all probably out of work. Then Vic called again and when I came back, Bucky was the coach.”

“What do you mean, when you came back?” asked Doug Doughty, who then worked with Brill in Roanoke—and is still there, now in his 35th year of covering Virginia football and basketball.

“Well, when Vic called, they made me leave the room.”

“But it was YOUR room!”

“I know, but they made me leave.”

“So to this day, you don’t know how the job went from Lefty to Bucky because you got kicked out of your own room.”

“Um, yes.”

Okay, there was alcohol involved but if you were THERE, the idea of Brill—who is often wrong but never in doubt—insisting he was in the MIDDLE OF THE ROOM—when Lefty got the job and then KICKED OUT OF THE ROOM when he lost it was just too funny to deal with. I vividly remember Rick Brewer, who was the SID at North Carolina for about 100 years, literally falling out of his chair laughing. Okay, I may have done the same thing.

For years after that, the pre-tournament dinner was known as, “the middle of the room dinner.” Brill was always asked to re-tell the story and without fail REFUSED to re-tell it. So the rest of us would cross-examine him until the entire story was re-told and we all ended up on the floor laughing again.

Maybe you had to be there. But I was there and even writing the story right now brings back a lot of fond memories of a lot of people. Which is why I’m here today—to relive a lot of those memories. The basketball may not be very good, but the friends and the memories certainly are.

Of course as I drove in this morning I was reminded just how long it had been since my first ACC Tournament in 1975. That year, after driving over from Duke for the first day, I paid 50 cents to park. This morning, as I drove past that same lot I saw a sign that said, “Parking $15.”

Okay, so it isn’t the same as the old days. But it is still fun to be here.

Here is this week's column from The Washington Post ----------

About two hours after Brad Greenberg's Radford basketball team lost to Winthrop in the semifinals of the Big South basketball tournament on Thursday night, his phone rang.

"You guys couldn't make a shot," Virginia Tech Coach Seth Greenberg told his big brother. "Tough to win -- even if you play good defense -- if you can't shoot."

The two brothers talked for a while about their mom and their families, and then -- inevitably -- more basketball.

"The difference between Brad and me is when he loses I wait a couple hours and call and he's fine," Seth Greenberg said. "When I lose he just texts me. Then he calls me the next day."

Brad and Seth Greenberg have been bonded as brothers and as basketball lifers since they were kids growing up on Long Island. Brad, who is 55, was a star at John F. Kennedy High School in Plainview, N.Y. Seth, two years younger, was his back-court mate when he was a sophomore and Brad was a senior.
"I was his inbounder," Seth said. "He did the rest."

"I would give him the ball back to dribble for a while if I got tired," Brad said. "Of course, I never got tired of shooting."

Almost 40 years later, they coach 15 miles down the road from each other: Seth in the Big Time -- the ACC -- Brad in the Big South. Brad has climbed the basketball mountain -- he was the general manager of the Philadelphia 76ers and drafted Allen Iverson in 1996 -- and is now happy and comfortable coaching in a one-bid conference far from the bright lights of the NBA or, for that matter, the ACC.


Click here for the rest of the article: Seth Greenberg, Brad Greenberg maintain brotherly bond

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Here is my ballot for this week's Associated Press Top 25 poll:

1) Kansas
2) Kentucky
3) Syracuse
4) Ohio State
5) Purdue
6) Duke
7) West Virginia
8) New Mexico
9) Butler
10) Temple
11) Michigan State
12) Villanova
13) Maryland
14) Pittsburgh
15) BYU
16) Kansas State
17) Tennessee
18) Baylor
19) Wisconsin
20) Northern Iowa
21) Texas A&M
22) Richmond
23) Xavier
24) Cornell
25) Siena

Yesterday I joined The Sports Reporters' Steve Czaban and Andy Pollin in the normal timeslot (5:25 ET on Wednesday's). Click the permalink, then the link below, to listen to the segment.  This week we talked about the Duke-MD game that was to be played Wed night (and as we now know, Maryland squeezed by), Maryland's best players in history, the Patriot League and the PGA Tour's disciplinary system.

Click here to listen to the segment: The Sports Reporters

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This morning, I was on my regular time on Tony's newest version of The Tony Kornheiser Show at 11:05et. This week we talked about the rumored return of Tiger Woods to action including expectations going forward, Maryland basketball and various other topics.

Click here to listen to the segment: Tony Kornheiser Show

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Afternoon update -- John was caught in a busy morning, and long day at this week's PGA Tour event, and as such he's not getting a new daily post out today, but will be back to normal tomorrow (Friday).

While the big-name college basketball teams are sorting themselves out over the next 12 days—the top teams trying to pin down high seeds; the mid-level teams in the power conferences trying to play their way from the dreaded bubble into the NCAA basketball tournament—this is also the time when the little guys get their moment in the sun.

March Madness actually begins tonight. The Big South starts its postseason tournament. By the end of the weekend, if you count The Ivy League, five automatic bids will have been handed out.

For me, the one bid tournaments are about as much fun as anything that takes place during the basketball season. Very few of the kids playing are going to be one-and-done and you aren’t going to hear a lot of speculation about their pro futures. All they care about at that moment is the game they are playing because most are one loss away from the end of their season. A majority of the seniors are one loss away from the end of their careers.

That’s what makes these tournaments so much fun. When Mike Brey was coaching at Delaware he often said that winning The America East Tournament was the equivalent of getting to The Final Four for Duke—which was where he had coached prior to moving to Delaware. “And winning a game in the NCAA Tournament is like winning the national championship,” he added.

We all know that on rare occasions one of the little guys will slip through to the sweet sixteen. George Mason’s Final Four run in 2006 belongs in a different category but it is worth remembering that the Patriots didn’t come out of a pure one-bid league. In fact, they got into the tournament as an at-large team, much to the chagrin of Jim Nantz, Billy Packer and others.

The real one bid leagues are the one where no one even discusses an at-large bid, where the committee has already penciled the champion in as a No. 15 or No. 16 seed most years. Of course there can be exceptions going in either direction. In 2006, coming off a first round upset a year earlier over Kansas, Bucknell came out of The Patriot League as a No. 9 seed—and promptly lived up to it by beating Arkansas. This year, the opposite is true in the league. The only conference team likely to avoid being sent to the dreaded play-in game in Dayton is top-seeded Lehigh. Anyone else wins the PL Tournament—which begins tomorrow but doesn’t end until March 12th because of (you guessed it) television—and they’re probably headed for Dayton. At the moment that teams cuts the nets down though, it won’t be thinking about Dayton. It will be nothing but pure joy.

That’s why Brey’s description is so apt. When you watch these teams play for their championships you can see how much it means to them. None of them are thinking about the fact that they may face a first-round game against Syracuse, Kansas or Kentucky. Or that they might be going to Dayton. It doesn’t matter. They want to be champions and they want to see their name go up on the board on Selection Sunday and they want to be part of The Dance.

Sure, it is all cliché but it is real. I remember being in Lafayette’s locker room after the Leopards beat Navy 10 years ago to win The Patriot League title when I was researching, “The Last Amateurs,” and it was about as joyous a place as I’ve ever been. A week later, as a No. 15 seed, the Leopards were beaten badly by Temple but that didn’t change the memories or the feelings they had for one another after beating Navy.

The little guy that no one wants to play this year is Cornell. It will be interesting to see how the committee seeds The Big Red. They have one bad loss—at Penn—but their other three losses are to Seton Hall and at Kansas and Syracuse. They’ve won road games at Alabama, at Massachusetts and at St. John’s. They played a tougher non-conference schedule than most schools in the BCS conferences play.

Jim Boeheim has said Cornell should be a No. 4 to a No. 6 seed. That won’t happen. I think if they had run the table in the Ivy League they might have sneaked into a No. 9 seed ala Bucknell four years ago. Now, I think they’ll be more like a No. 11. One thing about the committee—they hold a bad loss against a little guy against it more than they do a big guy.

That’s all for a week from Sunday. For now, the next 10 days are about the little guys having that moment they will all remember forever. If you think the U.S. hockey team looked heartbroken, check the faces of some of the losers in these conference tournament finals—especially after a last-second game-decider. The Olympians all believe they’ll get another shot in Sochi in four years and many will. Most of the kids who lose one-big finals know they won’t get another shot. Most teams that rise in these conferences are led by seniors so this may be their last chance.

ESPN has done a lot of bad things through the years but ‘Championship Week,’—giving the one-bid kids their moment in the sun—was brilliant. It also wasn’t a coincidence. It was the brain-child of Tom Odjakian, who worked at ESPN then and works at The Big East now. Odjakian is a Lafayette graduate. He wanted his school and others like it to have a chance to play their championship game on national TV. This is what he came up with. Good for him. This will be fun.

The money teams will be everyone’s focus soon enough. For now, let’s get fired up for a potential Coastal Carolina-Radford final in The Big South. Or Stony Brook-Vermont in The America East.

Let the you-know-what begin.

*******

Okay, I had a number of people contact me yesterday about comments Michael Wilbon made about me during an online Washington Post chat yesterday. Wilbon’s angry with me because we have a fundamental disagreement about Tiger Woods—and, I guess it is fair to say star athletes in general.

This though is about Woods. He defends him. I don’t. There’s really no need to go through the details: What we’ve both written and said is out there if you want to find it.

Wilbon got mad two weeks ago because I joked on Tony Kornheiser’s radio show that he had put aside his professionalism when it came to Tiger. As he proudly told The Post in his chat he called my cell phone and left a profanity-filled message. I responded by leaving him a message that was, I think he’d agree, considerably calmer but sticking to the essential point: we disagree on Woods. He isn’t going to back away from his position; I’m not backing away from mine.

I don’t know if the question during his online chat yesterday was a setup. I do know the person I’m really mad at is some guy I’ve probably never even met calling me, ‘Junior.’ Anyway, Wilbon responded by saying on the one hand he didn’t ‘give a damn,’ what I thought but on the other hand said he’d called and screamed profanities at me. If nothing else, the profanities let me know he cared. I was touched. He also said something about not being ‘subservient,’ to me. I don’t think I’ve ever asked Wilbon or anyone I’ve worked with to be subservient to me. In fact, I’ve never written these words: “As I was being driven from Bristol to New York on Sunday.” (Nor will I).

The only thing Mike said that’s just untrue is that I confuse my opinions with facts and legitimacy. Having been a columnist for a long time now I not only know the difference between opinion and fact I’m accustomed to people disagreeing with my opinions—sometimes angrily. It’s part of the job. As for legitimacy, that’s clearly up to the readers too.

Wilbon also says he’d put his journalistic credentials up against mine any day. That’s fine. Mike’s been very good at what he does for a long time. I feel pretty comfortable with my journalistic credentials though and here is where we differ (in my opinion): Guys like Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan, Charles Barkley, Shaq—the rich and famous guys Wilbon thinks of as friends—have public relations machines that tell the world how great they are. If they do something good, it should be reported. But when they screw up, they don’t need us taking a bullet for them. The people in sports who maybe need a boost every now and then (when they do something good) are the kids in The Patriot League; the football players at Army and Navy; the golfers who end up in Q-School.

Those are the stories I enjoy doing the most and the people I tend to gravitate towards. That doesn’t mean the big names don’t have stories to tell—I think I’ve told my share of those stories too. And gotten to know many of them along the way. WIlbon loves hanging with big names and telling people about it. I'm looking forward to dinner with Paul Goydos this week. Neither one of us is right or wrong. We're just different.

Let me close by saying this: When Abe Pollin fired Jordan several years ago Wilbon was one of many in Washington who ranted against him for doing it. Pollin’s decision was proven correct when Ernie Grunfeld came in, hired Eddie Jordan as coach and rebuilt the Wizards into a playoff team—four straight years—before Gilbert Arenas’s injuries and stupidity brought the team down again. When Pollin died, instead of simply writing the words, ‘I was wrong,’ about Pollin’s decision (hell, we all get it wrong sometimes; I thought Tiger would be playing golf this month) he went off on some tangent about how it was a shame Abe never forged a better relationship with Jordan.

Come on Mike, you’re better than that.

In conclusion? Wilbon and I have been friends for 30 years. We’re pissed at one another right now. I hope we’ll sit down and agree to disagree and move on at some point in the future. In the meantime though I guarantee this: I will NOT criticize his clothes. He dresses VERY well.

Final note of the morning to poster Case: Not sure if you were joking but I was never scheduled to work The Patriot League quarterfinals. I’m in Florida right now—it’s raining dammit—to do some golf this week and some baseball. The league’s known since August I was going to miss that game. I’ll be back for the semis on Sunday. But thanks for paying attention!

Last night I hosted a radio show that will continue through The Final Four. It is being syndicated by WFAN in New York and it is strictly a college basketball show. Having grown up in New York, I find it dismaying what a wasteland the city has become for college hoops.

When I was a kid, believe it or not, Columbia had good teams. NYU and Manhattan were also pretty good and played doubleheaders in Madison Square Garden a couple of times a month. St. John’s wasn’t a national power but Lou Carnesecca had very good teams. Rutgers and Army were good too. Fordham was almost always competitive and had that one spectacular season under Digger Phelps when it beat Notre Dame in the Garden, lost in overtime to No. 1 ranked Marquette (both in front of sellout crowds) and eventually reached the sweet sixteen.

Yup, Fordham. I like to tease Digger sometimes by saying, “You know Digger, you were a great coach…at Fordham.”

If you liked college hoops there was plenty to watch—and listen to. I was such a junkie that I would LISTEN to games on the student radio stations: WKCR for Columbia; WSOU for Seton Hall; WFUV for Fordham.

Now, as with all things, it’s a lot different. St. John’s has played a majority of its home games at the Garden instead of Alumni Hall in Queens for years now. NYU dropped basketball and then came back as a Division 3 school. Manhattan has had some blips, most recently under Bobby Gonzales, but never plays in the Garden anymore. Fordham has changed leagues twice and is currently buried at the bottom of The Atlantic-10 (winless in league play, two wins all season) and Columbia was last good when, well, when I was a kid. Rutgers and Seton Hall are in The Big East. At least the Pirates are showing progress this season and have a shot to make the NCAA Tournament. Army has had ONE winning season since Mike Krzyzewski left to coach at Duke THIRTY years ago. Ouch.

As a result, especially since the city’s signature team—St. John’s—has been down for 10 years now—I wondered if the show would get ANY calls—since the only place it was broadcast live last night was in New York. (Other cities like DC and Boston for example aired it on tape-delay). When I listen to WFAN, which I often do especially in the car at night and when Steve Somers—easily their best and most entertaining host—is on, I NEVER hear a college hoops call. I mean never.

One of the reasons I enjoy the station is because I can tune it in driving through a snowstorm in January and hear a solid hour of debate on the Mets. Or the Yankees. I can live without the Knicks talk and enjoy the hockey talk—99 percent of it Rangers—and the pro football talk is fine too. There is also ZERO college football talk because New York simply doesn’t have college football, even if you count Rutgers, which is an hour from the city (with no traffic) and people just aren’t going to get that fired up by trips to The St. Petersburg Bowl. Army last had a winning season in football in 1996.

And yet, the phones were lit up throughout the show and there was a good range of questions from the predictable, ‘how far can the ‘Cuse go,’ to people responding to my thoughts on a 96 team tournament to questions about how to fix the one-and-done rule which currently afflicts the sport.

Sadly, no calls about Columbia or Army. There was one about St. John’s. The caller said Lou Carnesecca was under-appreciated. I pointed out that Lou is in the basketball Hall of Fame and was about as beloved as any coach I’ve ever known.

In all, it was fun although the short segments (LOTS of commercials) made me feel rushed at times.

I had two guests: Dan Bonner, who in my opinion is the most underrated college hoops analyst going. Bonner, who played at Virginia under Terry Holland, really gets basketball because he was one of those guys who had to work very hard and learn to understand the game in order to be any good. He’s bright, works extremely hard to prepare and has a great feel for the ebb and flow of a game. (Yes, we’re good friends but if I didn’t think this I’d just keep my mouth shut). The only thing that keeps Dan from being a big star is he doesn’t have shtick. He doesn’t make up words (Clark Kellogg) or scream like a maniac (you-know-who) or repeat the same pet phrases over-and-over (Bill Raftery). He’s just good. Billy Packer without the edge.

My second guest was Mike Krzyzewski. Did I ask him to come on because I’m a Duke grad? No, I asked him to come on because he coaches Duke. (This is a take off on a Jim Valvano line: “Did I recruit Vinny Del Negro because he’s Italian. No, I recruited him because I’M Italian).

Actually I asked Krzyzewski to come on because his team was off last night, because he’s the winningest active Division 1 coach out there and because his opinions are always interesting—whether we agree or disagree.

One subject we got on to was the Hall of Fame. Krzyzewski has been instrumental in setting up a College Basketball Hall of Fame the last five years and yesterday, Christian Laettner, the best player he ever coached, was voted into the new Hall of Fame. That raised the issue—at least with me—about the Naismith Hall of Fame, the one in Springfield.

The politics of the Hall of Fame are shameful. The names of the 24 voters are kept secret, ostensibly because the Hall doesn’t want them lobbied---if you’re qualified to vote for a Hall of Fame you should be able to withstand lobbying—but really because the Hall doesn’t want them to have to stand behind their votes. What a joke.

Ironically, Mike brought up Lefty Driesell and Gary Williams as two people who should be in the Hall of Fame who aren’t. I agree on both and my opinions on Lefty not being in there have been made clear on numerous occasions. It’s a joke. The irony, of course, is that Mike brought up two Maryland coaches and Maryland people absolutely revile him. Trust me when Duke plays at Maryland next Wednesday it will not be a pretty sight. (The game may be great, the fans not so much).

The next show is Tuesday night. I may open it by ripping the Hall of Fame (again) for its ridiculous voting procedures and for keeping Lefty out. He won’t be going in this year either: none of the nominees are college coaches. That’s because the NBA now controls the Hall. Lefty, Gary, Jim Phalen, Herb Magee (who just broke Bob Knight’s all-time record for NCAA coaching victories on Tuesday with his 903d win at Philadelphia University) all come to mind right away.

What a joke. Seventeen days to Selection Sunday.

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A couple of notes from yesterday’s posts—many of which were both smart and fascinating.
To my old buddy Poncho: You’re right, I did take shots a couple of Northwestern guys. But you, being the smart Northwestern guy you are know they were NOT cheap shots, just shots…

To the guy who hacked into my Wikipedia—usually something my teen-age son likes to do to mention how cool he is—to claim I applied to Georgetown and didn’t get in and that’s why I have a bias against Georgetown: If I had applied to Georgetown I might not have gotten in; it’s a great school. But I didn’t apply.

I have one problem with Georgetown. It is not John Thompson the elder, with whom I had many battles but always respected and get along fine with now. It isn’t John the third, who I’ve known since he was at Princeton as a player. I like him and think he’s a terrific coach. My problem is simply this: Georgetown has consistently refused to play in a local charity basketball tournament for 15 years that raises an average of $500,000 a year that goes to kids at risk in the D.C. area.

We (the board of directors of the charity) have tried everything to get Georgetown to play: we’ve offered them potential opponents ranging from Maryland (a game that should be played every year in my opinion) to Texas to Holy Cross—with plenty of others in-between. John the elder wouldn’t meet with us at all. Craig Esherick did meet with us but his first demand was that we throw George Washington, which has been involved since day one, out of the event. John the third has met with us and keeps coming up with different reasons not to do it.

So yes, I’m guilty, I have a bias there. But that has NOTHING to do with my AP ballot this week. I’ve had Georgetown as high as, I think, seventh during the course of the season. Until their win at Louisville Wednesday they had gone through a stretch where they lost to an awful Rutgers team; a mediocre South Florida team (at home) and were lucky to beat Providence. Their best wins—Duke and Villanova—were at home. So, for one week when they weren’t playing very well, I gave some smaller schools a nod because I always do that when given the chance. Since my vote—and the polls in general—has absolutely no affect on who gets into the tournament or where they’re seeded—I see no reason not to throw a vote to Cornell or consistently underrated teams like Old Dominion (which, as you recall beat Georgetown in December) or some of the teams in the Atlantic-10 or Missouri Valley Conference. I had a total of TWO ACC teams in the poll last week (I think Maryland is a lot better than people know) and four Big East teams in the top 13.

Here’s my advice: Get over it. And tell the powers-that-be at Georgetown you want your school in The BB+T Classic.

Finally: Thanks to the poster who caught my slip on the GAG line with the Rangers. Brad Park obviously played defense. (I was such a sick fan as a kid I sometimes argued he was as good as Bobby Orr. Okay, fine, I know better now. But Park was great). The GAG line was, of course, Hadfield, Ratelle and Gilbert. I still haven’t completely recovered from Ratelle and Park being traded to the hated Bruins.

Here is this weekend's column on Bobby Cremins for The Washington Post ------------

Bobby Cremins looked like his head was on a swivel. His College of Charleston basketball team was about to meet Saturday morning in a hotel conference room to go over the scouting report for the game it would play against George Mason at Patriot Center, and Cremins wanted to make sure everyone had a place to sit.

"Carolyn, take my chair, I'll get another one," he said to his wife, even while someone was grabbing a chair for Carolyn Cremins.

He looked around again and pointed to another chair nearby that Athletic Director Joe Hull could use. He waved a couple more people into the room, looking more like a cruise director than a coach with 537 victories on his coaching résumé before Saturday night's 85-83 win at George Mason. He clearly was completely at home, doing what coaching friends call the "Bobby Cremins thing."

Only Bobby Cremins can do the Bobby Cremins thing. He's done it successfully now for 29 years -- including a six-year break after he left Georgia Tech, where the court is named for him -- in a manner that may be unique in the pantheon of big-time coaches: He's never made an enemy.

Click here for the rest of the column: Bobby Cremins is still doing his thing at College of Charleston

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The following is my ballot for this week's Associated Press Top 25 Poll:

I apologize for not having written a blog yesterday. On my way home Sunday from the Holy Cross-Bucknell game I kept having to pull over because there were potholes on Rte. 15 that I was afraid to go through at 200 miles per hour.

Sorry stock car fans, couldn’t resist. But seriously, the biggest event in racing delayed for more than two hours because the track has potholes in it? Who was in charge of track maintenance, the NCAA? Look, I know nothing about auto racing—I covered the Indy 500 once; thought the start was about the most thrilling thing I’d ever seen and then had little idea what was going on for the rest of the race. To be fair, that was the year when officials had to go back and look at the tape to figure out who finished second to Rick Mears. So it wasn’t just me.

But I don’t think you have to be a racing fan to understand that two delays caused by potholes is not exactly great theater nor is having the race finish when it is already dinnertime in the east. Apparently Dale Earnhardt Jr. finished second. Where was Danica Patrick? Oh, that’s right she was in the race Saturday that only the real racing geeks pay any attention to at all. She’s the biggest star in the sport—at least based on how often she’s on TV—and she runs in the equivalent of the NBA rookie game.

She got more attention for finishing 32nd in that race than all the other drivers combined did for the entire week. Gee, I wonder why. Couldn’t have anything to do with her looks could it?

Meanwhile, back at sports I know something about…(which means there isn’t going to be too much talk about the Olympics although I got a kick out of Bode Miller caring enough to win a bronze medal in the downhill and an American with a great name—Johnny Spillane--winning the first U.S. medal in Nordic skiing since Bill Koch in 1976. Seeing Koch’s name reminded me that when he won his medal (a silver in the 30 kilometer cross country race) I was in college and avidly reading The Washington Post. One American writer had thought to show up for the race—Lenny Shapiro from The Post—who was my hero then as he is now. He talked to Koch and wrote a great story about him and his solitary quest to be a Nordic skier in a country that had zero interest in Nordic skiing.

I swear I’d watch more of the Olympics but every time I switch over it seems that NBC is either in commercial or Bob Costas is saying, “let’s return now to figure skating….” Bring back Janet Lynn and I’ll return to figure skating. I finally figured out last night as I clicked back to college hoops as two more figure skaters graced my screen why I simply can’t stand it anymore: it’s not a sport, it’s a reality show. All it lacks are early tryouts with people who can’t stay up on their skates and Simon Cowell telling them that they suck).

Okay, now you are looking live at today’s blog. Sorry, I spent some of last night listening to Brent Musburger and Bob Knight. Talk about memories. Brent is now 70 and Knight is 69 but they both clearly love being in places like College Station, Texas doing a game on a Monday night in February. Hey, good for them. I wish I had that kind of energy sometimes.

Brent sometimes sounds like he’s doing an imitation of Brent but who cares? If ABC-ESPN gets the NCAA Tournament contract this summer, there’s going to be a battle royale over there about who gets The Final Four games. Dick Vitale HAS to do color because he’s Dick Vitale and he’s been waiting more than 30 years to go to The Final Four and not sell pizzas all week. I’d pair him with Knight because Knight’s sarcastic presence might tone Dick down a little and they could be the sort of Odd Couple that Al McGuire and Billy Packer became.

The smart betting on play-by-play would have to be Dan Schulman, who is the company’s rising play-by-play star and works most of the time with Vitale. Nothing against Schulman but I’d stick Brent right there in-between Vitale and Knight. It would be the climax to a comeback that began 20 years ago when CBS unceremoniously fired him on the eve of the 1990 national title game. And the guy still gets it done when the red light goes on.

Okay, I’m rambling. Some day I’ll tell the story about Brent and I almost getting into a fight about 10 minutes before the national championship telecast went on in the air in 1989 in Seattle. Billy Packer was standing there preparing, as he said later, to open the telecast himself. The whole thing has a happy ending. Brent and I have gotten along fine for years now.

The downer of the weekend for me was my buddy Paul Goydos coughing up the lead on the back nine at Pebble Beach. Anyone who knows me at all knows that Goydos and I have been friends since 1993 when I first began researching “A Good Walk Spoiled.”

I was at the Buick Open on the first day killing time in the afternoon before going to meet Billy Andrade for dinner. Larry Mize had shot 64 in the morning and the only player in the afternoon wave who had gone low at all was a rookie named Goydos, who had shot 66. After a lengthy debate, Chuck Adams and Mark Mitchell, the two on-site PGA Tour PR guys, decided to bring Goydos into the interview room.

“There’s no one else to bring in this afternoon,” Mitchell said. “Plus, it’ll be good experience for Paul.”

With nothing else to do, I wandered into the back of the interview room to see if there was any reason at all to listen. The first thing I heard Goydos say was, “I’m sure none of you have ever heard of me. There’s a reason for that: I’ve never done anything.”

Hang on, I thought, this guy might be worth listening to for a few minutes. He launched into a 10-minute monologue that was supposed to be a recap of his round but was more like a standup routine. “At 17 I hit 7-iron. When I’m playing well it’s because I get my slice going. I know if you’re on the PGA Tour you’re supposed to call it a fade but when you hit a 7-iron and it goes 20 yards to the right, that’s a slice.”

I needed to meet this guy. I introduced myself as he was walking out, said I was doing a book on life on tour and wondered if we could talk at some point. “Sure, I’ll talk to you all you want,” he said. “But you’re wasting your time writing a book on the tour. No one’s going to buy it.”

Fortunately Paul is better at golf than predicting book sales. He became the character in the book few people had heard of but continued to follow long after it was published. We became good friends. He’s won twice on tour and pieced together a pretty good career for someone who likes to describe himself as, “the worst player in the history of the PGA Tour.”

He had a great chance to win on Sunday, but came undone on the back nine with a couple of bogeys and then, disastrously, a quadruple-bogey nine that sent him spiraling to a disappointed tie for fifth. Talk about hitting a pothole.

On Monday I sent him an e-mail offering condolences. Typical Paul, this was the answer I got back: “Well, when I made my back-nine 9 on Sunday at The Hope it was on a par-three. This time it was on a par-5. I guess that’s progress.”

You have to love a guy who NEVER loses his sense of humor. There aren’t many people you can say that about.

Gotta go. I think Costas is about to introduce some more figure skating.

While individual voter selections for the weekly AP Top 25 College Basketball Poll are published on various sites, they aren't often easy to find. And with it being that the ballots are a hot discussion topic from time to time, I thought I'd share mine here.  We'll attempt to remember to make this a weekly occurrence if it's of interest.

My AP Top 25 ballot (2/15/10 poll)

1 Kansas
2 Kentucky
3 Villanova
4 Purdue
5 Syracuse
6 Duke
7 Kansas State
8 Ohio State
9 West Virginia
10 Gonzaga
11 Michigan State
12 Butler
13 New Mexico
14 Temple
15 Vanderbilt
16 Georgetown
17 BYU
18 Texas
19 Baylor
20 Wisconsin
21 Richmond
22 Pittsburgh
23 Wake Forest
24 Northern Iowa
25 Old Dominion

Click here to see the official AP Top 25 published today:  AP Top 25

My hope is everyone is off for this President's Day, though all the recent snow may have changed everyone's holiday plans (school snow days?!?). For me, I'm in the throws of finishing a few large projects. In the meantime, here is a column on Cornell basketball, who went 1-1 over the weekend.

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Basketball coaches talk all the time about the importance of team chemistry. When a team is winning, it is always about work ethic and great kids and desire and, of course, team chemistry. Players on winning teams love one another. Players on losing teams transfer or, in the NBA, demand to be traded.

Cornell Coach Steve Donahue doesn't have to talk about team chemistry. His players live team chemistry. "If you tried to get your players to do this, ordered them to do it, no way would it happen," he said this week. "Our guys just did it. It was their idea. That's why it works."

Their idea, hatched two years ago, was to live together. All of them. In one house -- 14 college basketball players under one roof in an old house near the Cornell campus.

"The good news is it's a really big house," starting center Jeff Foote said. "We've all got our own rooms. Even so, the place does get pretty dirty a fair amount of the time."

No doubt. Donahue really doesn't care that much about his players' skills as housekeepers, though, especially given the results they've produced as basketball players the last three seasons. The Big Red has won back-to-back Ivy League titles and was 21-4 after Saturday night's 48-45 win over Princeton. It has road or neutral-site wins over Alabama, St. John's, Massachusetts, Saint Joseph's, Toledo, Davidson and La Salle. And its losses were to Seton Hall, at Pennsylvania in a slip-up Friday night, and at Kansas and Syracuse -- currently ranked No. 1 and No. 2 in the nation.

The final score of the Kansas game was 71-66, and it was closer than that. Cornell led most of the game and leading scorer Ryan Wittman had a crack at a three-point shot in the final seconds that could have tied the score.

"Because of who we were playing and where we were playing and the fact that the last six or seven minutes were on national TV [ESPN switched to the game], I think I've had more feedback on that game than on all the other games I've coached here combined," Donahue said. "I think it surprised some people to see how good we are."

Cornell is good, even though it doesn't have a single national TV appearance scheduled this season. But no one is going to call the Big Red or Donahue an overnight success. This was a long time coming.

Donahue came to Cornell in the fall of 2000 after 10 seasons as an assistant coach under Fran Dunphy at Penn. The popular thinking then, as it has been throughout most of the Ivy League's history, was that third place was about as good as any Ivy League team not named Penn or Princeton could hope for most years. Columbia shared the league title with Princeton in 1968, Brown won it in 1986 and Cornell won it in 1988. In the other 37 seasons from Columbia's co-title through 2007, Princeton or Penn won or shared each championship.

"I knew in a place like this you don't build quickly," Donahue said. "You have to get kids who fit Cornell, not just kids with talent, because if they don't like the place, their talent isn't going to matter. We were lucky we got some kids to come who went out and convinced better kids to follow them, and they convinced better kids than that to come. By the time we got this senior class [high school class of 2006] we thought we had something going.

"And then we got Foote."

The key player in that 2006 recruiting class was Wittman, the son of former Indiana star and NBA player Randy Wittman. "I liked everything about the place when I visited," he said.

It was during that season that Foote transferred from St. Bonaventure. He was not, in any way, a typical transfer. Donahue had seen him play briefly in a high school tournament at Cornell. "He was probably 6-9 or 6-10 and might have weighed 170," he said. "I remember thinking he could pass the ball but he was so gangly and awkward. There were D-3 coaches watching him that day and none of them thought he was good enough for them." 

For the rest of the article from the The Washington Post site: Cornell basketball gets an 'A' in chemistry

I guess I have to start this morning with Duke-North Carolina because it is always a game people talk about and because of my obvious connections to the rivalry that date back more than 30 years to my undergraduate days at Duke.

Let’s put aside last night’s outcome for a minute except to say this: It was a game Duke had to win. Carolina is down this year and when your arch-rival is down—especially when it is usually very good to excellent—you have to take advantage. What’s more, the Tar Heels had won three in a row; five-of-seven and seven-of-ten against Duke. The game was anything but pretty, Duke finally pulling away in the last five minutes to win 64-54 in a matchup that certainly won’t be an instant classic anywhere. The Blue Devils were no doubt glad to get out of Chapel Hill with a road win and now face a very tough game Saturday against what will be a rested Maryland team—the Terrapins taking the day off Wednesday after the latest Washington blizzard postponed their game with Virginia until Monday.

All that said and with my usual admission of an anti-ESPN bias, I really am sick of the way the network acts as if every Duke-Carolina game is the next coming of the U.S.-Soviet hockey game of 1980. ESPN hypes everything it televises but it goes to new levels with Duke-Carolina. A lot of it starts with Dick Vitale, who just can’t help himself. To be fair, if Dick was doing Bucknell-American (which I’ll be doing tonight if I can get out of my driveway) he would think IT was the greatest thing he’d ever seen in his life.

At least his hype is genuine.

And look, Duke-Carolina has been a wonderful rivalry through the years. Carolina has had three of the all-time great coaches work at the school in the last 60 years: Frank McGuire, Dean Smith and Roy Williams. Bill Guthridge never got the credit he deserved going to two Final Fours in three seasons. Matt Doherty was a failure—although he DID recruit the key players on Williams’ first championship team in 2005. Duke has also had three superb coaches: Vic Bubas, who made Duke a national power in the 60s; Bill Foster, who rebuilt the program after it had fallen apart in the 70s and, of course, Mike Krzyzewski who won his 853d game Wednesday—putting him 26 behind Smith and 49 behind his old coach Bob Knight for the all-time record.

There have also been truly great players (interestingly there is not ONE Duke player in the basketball Hall of Fame; Carolina has, I believe, 15) and great games and great moments.

So what did ESPN show prior to the game to prove how great the rivalry is?; fights. Instead of showing Walter Davis’s miracle shot in 1974, it showed Doherty and Chris Collins yelling at one another. Oh please. Instead of showing Gene Banks’ buzzer-beater in 1981 it showed a bloodied Tyler Hansbrough. THIS is what makes a great rivalry: coaches yelling at each other and elbows to the mouth?

I’ve said this before and I will say it again: I think the rivalry has been hyped to the point that fans on both sides act stupid. The Duke students lost their spontaneity and humor years ago. All they want to do is paint their faces and get on TV talking on their cell phones. Carolina people are obsessed with Krzyzewski’s success because they feel it somehow diminishes Smith’s accomplishments—which is completely ludicrous. Nothing can diminish what Dean did—on and off the court.

Last year a friend if mine from Carolina grabbed me in a press room and said, “you’ve got to see the FUNNIEST video ever made.” The video was basically some Carolina kids mocking all white Duke point guards and saying they were gay. Maybe I’m just old. I didn’t think it was even a little bit funny—just dumb to tell you the truth.

Anyone who knows me knows how much I respect Dean and Roy (and Bill Guthridge too, one of the best men I’ve ever met) and Mike. I like all of them a lot and think they’ve all done great work building model programs with (for the most part) good kids who graduate. Of course whenever I say something good about Krzyzewski it is because I’m a Dukie. When I say something good about Roy it is because I’m a traitor.

Gee, I wonder why I don’t like being around the rivalry very much. When HBO asked me to be part of their Duke-Carolina documentary I said no. It was a no-win for me. Unfortunately I thought they leaned on some very bad sources—particularly a couple of people on the Carolina side who claim to be journalists but hate Krzyzewski with a passion that defies reason.

So, like I said, it was a good win for a Duke team that I think is far from special and another tough loss in a down year for Carolina. It didn’t come close to being worthy of the hype. But then few things on ESPN can live up to that sort of hype.

By the way, what exactly is Rivalry Week? Other than Pitt-West Virginia on Friday I can’t find a single real ‘rivalry,’ game other than Duke-Carolina on their schedule. Clemson-Florida State? That’s a big rivalry? Georgetown-Providence? Syracuse-Connecticut MAYBE but they don’t even play home-and-home every year anymore because of the silly Big East schedule. You have to love the way the network marketing geeks just make stuff up and throw it out there. Maybe they can have, “Hype Everything Week.” Oh wait, that’s every week.

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I got a call yesterday from Ryan Bucchianeri. If you read ‘A Civil War,’ you will know the name right away. If you are a football fan, you will know who he is when I remind you. Ryan was a kicker at Navy. He missed an 18-yard field goal as a freshman that would have won The Army-Navy game. The field was soaked, the game was played in a driving rain—there were plenty of excuses available for Ryan after the game.

He took none of them. He just took the blame. “I missed the kick, that’s all there is to it,” he said repeatedly.

For taking responsibility and not making excuses Ryan became something of a national hero. Sports Illustrated did a long piece on him the following fall. Early in the next year’s Army-Navy game he missed another makeable kick. It was the last field goal he ever attempted at Navy.

Many of Ryan’s teammates resented the fact that he was made into a hero—even though he never asked for that status. They thought (correctly) that in accepting blame he had simply done what they are all taught to do: No Excuse Sir is a mantra at both Army and Navy.

I wrote ‘A Civil War,’ during Ryan’s junior season. There was a new coaching staff that basically wanted no part of him. Too many bad memories. He was shunted down to fourth string and got into two games all year—both times to kickoff. He became almost a pariah within The Brigade of Midshipmen and was badly treated—very badly treated—at times. Writing the book, I reported all this. I liked Ryan a lot and appreciated his willingness to talk to me about all that had happened. I thought my version of events was sympathetic to him, which it was meant to be.

Apparently not everyone read the book that way.

Ryan is now running for Congress after a distinguished career in the Navy. He was running in The Democratic Primary in Pennsylvania’s 12th district (that’s in Western Pennsylvania where Ryan grew up) against 19-term incumbent John Murtha. You may know the name: Murtha was well-known for a number of reasons: A marine veteran who served in Vietnam, he came out against the war in Iraq in 2005 after initially voting to support it in 2002. But he also became known as, “The King of Pork,” and was famous for ear-marking bills to give companies whose lobbyists had contributed big money to his campaigns contracts that benefited the companies and, frequently, his district in Pennsylvania. He has been investigated for possible ethics violations more than once.

Ryan’s campaign was a long shot given Murtha’s time in Congress, his contacts and his campaign war chest. On Sunday, Murtha, who was 77, died after complications from gall bladder surgery. Suddenly, Ryan’s campaign isn’t a long shot anymore.

I had seen Ryan in September when he was campaigning outside Heinz Field before the Navy-Pittsburgh game. He still looks 21 even though he’s now 35. The reason for his call was direct: there were people writing and saying that if you read, ‘A Civil War,’ it was apparent that the author (me) didn’t think very much of him.

If so, that was bad writing on my part. I have great respect for Ryan Bucchianeri and it isn’t because he’s a Democrat or that we agree on most issues. He’s just a good PERSON, who has served his country overseas and who I am SURE will work like crazy if he gets to Congress. So, if anyone has any doubts about how I feel about him because of the book, that’s on me. Did his teammates view him as a loner? Yes. A lot of kickers are viewed that way and Ryan took one emotional hit after another and kept coming back.

If you want to know how his teammates REALLY felt about him, I’d read the scene I witnessed in the locker room after the Notre Dame game that year when Andrew Thompson, the team’s defensive captain, told Bucchianeri how much he respected his un-willingness to give up when it seemed everyone at Navy wanted him to give up. Thompson, by the way, is still serving in the marines today and is as tough a guy as I’ve ever met.

So, if you want to know more about Ryan and his campaign, click on: Ryan2010.com. I’m not writing this for any reason except that I like and respect the guy and I feel badly if anyone read ‘A Civil War,’ and didn’t come away knowing that.

Today I joined The Sports Reporters' Steve Czaban and Andy Pollin in the normal timeslot (5:25 ET on Wednesday's). Click the permalink, then the link below, to listen to the segment. This week we spent a great deal of time talking about the Duke-UNC game, as well as the overall state of the Duke program.

Click here to listen to the segment: The Sports Reporters


I also made my regular appearance on Tony Kornheiser's newest radio show during my regular segment at 11:05am.  This week we discussed the weather, of course, before moving on to college basketball, including the Duke-UNC game.

Click here to listen to the segment (starts within the 1st minute): Tony Kornheiser Show

Here is this week's column from The Washington Post --------

If there is one thing you can absolutely count on from the NCAA, it is an almost unique form of slippery deceit. No one involved in its decision-making ever tells an outright lie. They also never tell an outright truth.

Everything is always being studied. Ask the NCAA its position on March coming after February and you will be told the issue is being studied. This is an organization that spent hours and hours last summer debating the merits of allowing member schools to feed bagels to their athletes. (Not surprisingly, the proposal came from the ACC because, heck, things are going so well in football and basketball, why not spend time on the bagel issue?)

In its infinite wisdom the NCAA came down in favor of bagels -- but against cream cheese to go with the bagels.

Seriously.

Click here for the rest of the column:  NCAA tournament expansion would make cents, but not sense

There are a lot of bad things about living in America’s new snow belt. Losing power is no fun. Seeing people losing their minds in the grocery store is comedic but just a little bit scary. But not getting the newspapers in the morning makes me crazy. Sure, I can read online but it’s NOT THE SAME. I spend enough time sitting at the computer most days without having to sit here to read the papers.

Okay, that is today’s whine-du-jour. Suffice to say it hasn’t been a fun winter in these parts and apparently there’s more to come. The roads still aren’t clear (largely because there’s just no place to put the snow) and more snow is expected tomorrow and Wednesday. The only ones who are happy right now are the kids.

I did manage to make it home from West Point last night—although the last 35 miles was treacherous and frightening—in time to see most of The Super Bowl. My first comment on the game and the telecast is this: Have all the smart advertising execs retired? I did not see every commercial and I probably wasn’t completely focused on a lot of the ones I saw, but it certainly appeared that the days of the memorable Super Bowl commercial have gone the way of the low-key postgame celebration.

Enough already with the talking baby.

Onto the game. Most Super Bowls have three or four moments that stand out and are replayed forever and this game was no exception. The Saints recovery of the onside kick to start the second half will be shown a million times along with announcers crediting Sean Payton (correctly) for taking such a bold gamble. The Tracy Porter interception will always be the signature play of the game, not only because it broke the Colts back but because it rendered Peyton Manning human again. Now we’re going to hear over and over again that Manning has won the same number of Super Bowls as Mark Rypien and Brad Johnson, not to mention little brother Eli.

But for me, the most vivid memory will be Drew Brees’s tears, first when he was holding his one-year-old son Baylen during the (overblown) pre-trophy presentation celebration and then as he stood on the podium waiting for Tom Benson to stop blathering so Payton could finally hand him the trophy.

His voice never cracked on the podium or in his postgame press conference but his emotion was apparent and clearly quite genuine. He talked about feeling as if he was meant to land in New Orleans and to be a part of the rebuilding of the team and the city and the region, but there was no Joe Gibbs/Kurt Warner evangelism just a clear picture that this was a man of faith who felt that his presence in New Orleans was part of a plan he didn’t need to understand but had been able to help carry out.

Good for him. Good for the entire city which suffered the modest angst that comes with a consistently bad football team and then the tragedy of Katrina. It’s a little harder to feel good for Saints owner Tom Benson who was ready to yank the team from New Orleans and move it to San Antonio or Los Angeles after Katrina and is now taking bows for all that has gone right the last couple of years, culminating with Sunday’s victory.

You can’t help but wonder how hard Manning will get hit by his critics for this loss. He did not play poorly by any means—he never plays poorly. But the defining moment of the game was the Porter interception. I don’t think there’s anything that can happen that will remove Manning from the pantheon of great NFL quarterbacks. He’s certainly somewhere on the list although the talk that he is THE greatest will quiet now until he wins another Super Bowl.

I have one other question on the subject of great quarterbacks. Whenever people talk about Joe Montana as the best of all time, they talk about his four Super Bowl wins—as they should. Tom Brady’s three Super Bowl wins puts him in the conversation and then names like Johnny Unitas, Bart Starr, John Elway and old-timers like Sammy Baugh and Otto Graham get mentioned. I never hear Terry Bradshaw’s name. Sure, the Steelers of his era were built around a great defense but Bradshaw was awfully good and his teams won four Super Bowls. Shouldn’t that merit at least a mention, regardless of how many bad commercials he’s made?

Just wondering.

For me, there’s always a sense of relief when The Super Bowl is over. The hype is behind us for a while and we don’t have to dodge every single ex-player on earth, “breaking down the game.” What the playing of the game almost always proves is that all the, “breaking down,” is meaningless. The consensus among the experts was that sooner or later Manning would be too good for the Saints defense. I was among those who thought that, the only difference between me and some of the others is that I don’t consider myself an expert. I’m just someone who has been around football a lot and I think I know SOMETHING about the game but I certainly wouldn’t tell anyone to go out and bet his house on what I think about the outcome of a game. I thought Navy was too beat up physically to go into Notre Dame and win this past season. Shows you how much I know.

Now, unless you are an NFL Network geek who can’t wait for The Combine, football is behind us for a little while. The Winter Olympics begin Friday. I can live without the opening ceremonies and ALL the figure skating. But I enjoy things like speed skating, luge and bobsled and Alpine skiing, even if I don’t completely understand them or know any of the athletes. The hockey should be fun and the best thing about it is that the Islanders can’t lose any more games while the Olympics are going on. (The Caps, if you’re paying attention, may never lose another game. I didn’t get to see the comeback on Sunday but if they didn’t lose that game, that’s it, they’re never losing again).

It is also less than five weeks now to Selection Sunday. I went through the conference standings this morning and I have to tell you, coming up with a list of 34 teams that are absolutely, without question deserving of a bid wasn’t easy. Which raises this question: If coming up with 34 teams is tough, how the heck does the NCAA propose to come up with 65 at-large teams with a 96 team field?

This is the worst idea anyone has come up with since New Coke. Even Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delany and I agree on this and we agree on NOTHING. Of course that probably means that it is a lock to happen.

Okay, I have to go and find food for my family before it starts snowing again tomorrow. I wish I was joking.

Today I joined The Sports Reporters' Steve Czaban and Andy Pollin in the normal timeslot (5:25 ET on Wednesday's). Click the permalink, then the link below, to listen to the segment. This week we spent a great deal of time talking about the PGA Tour controversy around Mickelson and McCarron and touched on Tom Watson's recent comments on Tiger Woods and his on-course behavior.

Click here to listen to the segment: The Sports Reporters

----------------------

I also made my regular appearance on The Gas Man at 5:25 PT on Wednesday. In this segment, we spoke spent most of the time talking about college basketball and the NCAA's apparent move to expand the tournament.

Click here to listen to the segment: The Gas Man

---------------------

On Thursday I joined the newest The Tony Kornheiser Show in my normal Thursday slot (11:05am).  We had the usual banter with maybe just a little extra thrown in, and talked about the 'star-power' in the upcoming Olympics and goings on in the PGA Tour...with too many details on the square groove controversy. 

Click here to listen to the segment (starts within 1st minute): The Tony Kornheiser Show

Here is this week's column, which ran Sunday, for The Washington Post---------

Dan Bonner has been involved in ACC basketball since 1971, the year he enrolled at Virginia as a gawky, 6-foot-7 forward. He became a solid player for the Cavaliers and has gone on to work as an analyst at CBS, ESPN, Raycom and Fox -- always with a number of ACC games on his schedule every season.

Several years ago, Bonner was working a killer schedule for ESPN. "I was like the referees are now," he said recently. "Different city every night. Monday I'd do a Big 12 game, Tuesday [a Southeastern Conference] game, Wednesday an ACC game and Thursday I could be anywhere. What I remember vividly is whenever I walked into an ACC gym -- it didn't matter who was playing or what place the teams were in -- the place was rocking. Other leagues you had that for big games, but for a lot of games it wasn't so. Now, the ACC is more like the other leagues.

"You go to a game at Boston College, if Duke or North Carolina aren't playing, there are empty seats. The same at Miami and Florida State. A couple of weeks ago I did the Duke at N.C. State game and there were empty seats there. For Duke-N.C. State? How can that happen?"


Click here for the rest of the article: Don't count ACC basketball out yet in 2010

Below are today's, and Sunday's column for The Washington Post - Brett Favre and Gary Williams are the focus of the articles. -------

Perhaps the best way to describe the football career of Brett Favre is to say that he has come to embody Hamlet, Shakespeare's greatest and most famous character.

There is no doubting that Favre is heroic. That was never more evident than in the fourth quarter of Sunday's NFC Championship game, when he hobbled in and out of the Minnesota Vikings' huddle but somehow managed to keep back-pedaling and scrambling away from pass rushers to throw laser beam passes while getting knocked down by the New Orleans Saints again and again.

He is also tragically flawed -- the word "tragic" being limited to the context of football. For all the spectacular numbers Favre has put together during his remarkable career, he has won as many Super Bowls as Mark Rypien and Doug Williams and played in as many as Joe Theismann. Oh sure, Peyton Manning's numbers are exactly the same at the moment, and Dan Marino never won a Super Bowl. But none of them ever failed as dramatically as Favre has the last two times he reached the brink of a Super Bowl.

Click here for the rest of the column: Brett Favre: the hero without the happy ending

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Ninety minutes before he would walk onto the court at Comcast Center on Saturday evening, Gary Williams sat in the coaches' conference room that adjoins the Maryland locker room. As always on a game day, his face was filled with tension even though his dry humor was as firmly in place as his game face.

As he prepared for his 1,000th game as a college basketball coach at the age of 64, he didn't feel all that different than he felt just before coaching his first game in 1978 at the age of 33.

"When you stop looking ahead to the next game, to the next season, to the next thing -- whatever it may be -- that's when you stop coaching," he said. "I think I can honestly say I've never done that. When the day comes that I don't want to do that anymore, then it'll be time to stop."

Looking ahead most of the time doesn't mean he can't look back on occasion, because after 1,000 games there are a lot of memories.

Click here for the rest of the column: After 1,000 games, Maryland coach Gary Williams has plenty of good memories

For some reason Wednesday was one of those days when I couldn’t seem to escape my alma mater.

My relationship with Duke is, to put it in polite terms, an interesting one.

Let’s start with the good: I’ve known Mike Krzyzewski since 1976. I met him when I was a Duke senior and the basketball team played in New York against Connecticut in Madison Square Garden. The day before the game I flew in with then-Duke Coach Bill Foster and then-Duke star guard Tate Armstrong to attend the weekly basketball writer’s lunch at Mamma Leone’s Restaurant. I’d always read about the lunch as a kid so actually getting to go was a thrill.

Foster was kind of a returning hero at the lunch since he had coached at Rutgers. Afterwards, he introduced me to three young New York area coaches I was familiar with: Tom Penders of Columbia; Jim Valvano of Iona and Mike Krzyzewski of Army. He made me do my Dean Smith imitation for them and I told Penders and Krzyzewski how much I’d enjoyed going to games at their schools as a kid and Valvano how vividly I remembered Rutgers’ run (with Foster as the coach) in the 1967 NIT.

Obviously I got to know all three much better as they moved up in the business after I graduated from college. Often, when I talk about what a good guy Krzyzewski is or even what a good coach he is (gee, he’s only won 848 games) people start claiming I’m a “Duke apologist.”

That’s where the story gets funny. You see, even as an undergraduate, I was extremely critical at times of the school and the athletic department. My senior year Athletic Director Carl James only scheduled four home games in order to make the football team into a cash cow—the first three non-conference games were at Tennessee, at South Carolina and at Miami. The next year it was at Tennessee, at Michigan. I wrote a column prior to the first home game in the fall of 1976 (game 4 of the season) in which James flew to Pittsburgh—that was the first home opponent led by Tony Dorsett—to protest the actual playing of a home game. I also had Coach Mike McGee going to the campus police department asking for directions to Wallace Wade Stadium.

The administration loved me for that.

But I was also a big fan of Foster’s and was delighted when he turned the program around and took the team to the national championship game in 1978 after four straight last place finishes in the ACC during my undergraduate years. And I’ve always admired Krzyzewski as a man and a coach. I make no apologies for that.

That said, he and I had a minor falling out and Duke and I had a major falling out when Duke President Nan Keohane named Joe Alleva to succeed Tom Butters as athletic director. I’m not going to go through the details AGAIN but this was one of the all-time stupid decisions made by any college president—which takes in a lot of ground. Anyone and I mean ANYONE who has been around college athletics for more than 15 minutes knew that Tom Mickle should have gotten the job. Keohane didn’t hire Tom for one reason: he had IDEAS, real ideas, about how to fix football and how to fund under-funded non-revenue sports better.

Let me quote Gene Corrigan, the former commissioner of the ACC, also a Duke grad who hired Mickle as his No. 2 man in the conference office: “I was the beneficiary of Tom Mickle’s brilliance. I never met anyone smarter in collegiate athletics.”

Keohane didn’t want Mickle because Mickle was too smart. She wanted Alleva because she knew he’d just ride Krzyzewski’s coattails and never bother her with an idea. She thought sports were too important at Duke and Krzyzewski too powerful. She didn’t want sports to get better, she’d have been happy if they got worse. (Which, amazingly, football did under Alleva’s watch).

I was angry at Krzyzewski in the aftermath of the Alleva hiring because he kept quiet during the hiring process. He played racquetball with Alleva and felt he owed it to Alleva to not line up against him. I’ve always admired Mike’s loyalty but I told him back then: “your loyalty is misplaced here. It should be to DUKE. You owe it to Duke to make Keohane pick the right guy and you know it’s Mickle.”

Years later he finally admitted that of course it should have been Mickle. But by then it was too late. Tom died in 2005 of a heart attack at the age of 55.

To say I was critical of Keohane—who told me in a phone conversation that if she hired a “Duke person,” (the school had hired one of those dopey headhunters that had no interest at all in recommending the best person, just someone it could take a bow for ‘finding.’) it would, “of course be Tom Mickle,” is an understatement. When I publicly called her a liar my relationship with the school sort of went downhill.

As in, I ceased to exist. The alumni office ordered local alumni groups to NOT ask me to speak—in fact it forced the local chapter here in Washington to cancel an appearance I’d been asked to make by (of all people) Tate Armstrong. The President of the club at the time called me to say, “well, um, we can’t get a room the right size.” I told the guy not to worry, I understood, but next time he should come up with a better story.

Keohane mercifully left and was replaced by Richard Brodhead, who appears to be a perfectly nice guy. Unfortunately, Brodhead has the leadership skills of an amoeba. He completely blew the entire lacrosse situation and in spite of one embarrassment after another actually gave Alleva a new contract a couple of years ago. When I sent him an e-mail saying, “WHAT were you thinking?” he wrote back and said, “Joe has some weaknesses, yes, but he also has strengths.”

I replied: “Can you please name ONE for me?”

I’m still waiting on an answer.

The Alleva era finally came to an end when a different dopey headhunter actually recommended him to LSU. Kevin White, a nice guy who seems perfectly competent (but is no Tom Mickle) was hired in his place. I’m still pretty much persona non grata at Duke outside the basketball office perhaps because I keep calling Brodhead, “Mr. Chips,” perhaps because I ripped the football team for failing the basic courtesy test of shutting up while the Navy band played its alma mater after the game in Durham two years ago.

If you think I’m exaggerating pick up a Duke media guide and look under “distinguished journalism alumni.” My classmate, Sean McManus, President of CBS Sports, is listed—as he should be. So is one of my mentors Bill Brill and several other distinguished journalists—Judy Woodruff being another. There’s also a woman who was a finalist on ‘Survivor.’ Seriously. Me? Nowhere to be found. Does that make me laugh? Yes. Does it piss me off? Being honest, of course it does.

All of which brings me (finally) to yesterday. I got a call from a woman on behalf of my friends at the alumni office. Apparently I was invited to some cocktail party in town next week—gee, think they’re asking for money?—and hadn’t RSVP’d. She was hoping I could come. Actually I COULD come but, no thanks, I’ll take a pass. Maybe they could invite the woman from ‘Survivor.’ Did I get a kick out of that?

Yes, guilty.

Then, during my regular radio appearance on WTEM here in town one of the hosts, Andy Pollin, accused Jim Calhoun of “abandoning his team,” because he’s taking a medical leave of absence. I told Pollin that was patently ridiculous and he shouldn’t make a comment like that without knowing any of the facts.

At which point his co-host, Steve Czaban—who comes from the view of a Maryland fan, Krzyzewski is the root of all evil club—asked about the ‘rumors,’ that Krzyzewski had left his team in 1995 because it wasn’t any good and he didn’t want to be saddled with a bunch of losses.

As it happens, I know how sick Krzyzewski was that year and I know his doctors practically had to strap him to a bed to keep him out of the gym and told him if he tried to coach again that season he might not ever coach again. I also know where the ‘rumor,’ started—two North Carolina grads who more or less posed as journalists for a long time who hated Krzyzewski for making Duke good again. So, I did my, “Duke apologist,” thing and defended Krzyzewski.

Then I watched N.C. State blow Duke out later that night and couldn’t help but think—again—what I’ve thought since this summer: Mike shouldn’t be coaching the Olympic team again. He’s won his gold medal, he’s done his bit for the country, he’s proven he can coach NBA players. He needs to hunker down and make his last run at Duke and not have his apologists—not me in this case—running around saying, “30 and 7 and the sweet sixteen is a very good year.”

For a lot of teams, most teams, it is a very good year. It just isn’t up to the standards Mike Krzyzewski set. I remember in 1997 when he was still rebuilding after the ’95 disaster when his team lost a close game at Maryland. A couple days later with Carolina in town, Dick Vitale came into the locker room prior to the game and was giving a Vitale pep talk: “You guys’ll be fine,” he said. “You’ll win your 20, you’ll be in the tournament.”

When Vitale left, Krzyzewski turned to me. (I was there working on my book on the ACC that season). “I don’t care about winning my 20 or being in the tournament. We’ve let the standards slip around here. I want this team and this program to play to MY standards, not anyone else’s.”

During the next seven years, Duke went to three Final Fours and won a national title. Since then: no trips beyond the sweet sixteen. The standards have slipped. Mike needs to re-think HIS standards again.

Of course he doesn’t need me to tell him how to coach that’s for sure. He can always consult with the woman from, ‘Survivor.’

Can we talk this morning about how long it takes to play games these days?

As someone who has spent most of his adult life dealing with deadlines while covering games I’m always aware of how long a game is taking even when I’m sitting at home half-watching while I’m reading something.

It’s truly gotten ridiculous.

I kind of went around the bend on this eight days ago when Louisville and Villanova played a game in which something like 90 free throws were shot and a 7 o’clock tipoff ended (in regulation) at 9:45. Even Brent Musburger, who was doing the next game in the doubleheader couldn’t resist commenting when he was doing an update that, “I hope your game ends before ours does fellas.”

There were about two minutes left in the first half of Oklahoma State-Oklahoma by the time Louisville-Villanova finally ended.

Last Saturday I spent the day at home with games going on from 11 a.m. on. Not one game I watched all or part of ended inside the two -hour window that TV plans for a college basketball game. Most didn’t come close. There are now NINE TV timeouts in every game—and by the way is there some way to stop calling them, ‘media timeouts'? I have never asked for nor been given a time out in my life. They exist for TV and, occasionally, for radio. One of those timeouts is the first called time out of the second half, which is “technically,” a 30 second time out but “becomes,” a full timeout.

Utterly ridiculous. Here are some other things that delay games: the mindless halftime interviews with the coaches. Understand that when the breathless sideline reporter is asking the coach what went wrong/right in the first half and usually getting gems like, “we have to rebound better,” or “I thought we shot the ball very well,” the halftime clock isn’t moving. It’s frozen until the coach pulls free—which Wake Forest’s Dino Gaudio almost literally had to do on Sunday night because the reporter insisted on asking him what he planned to do to rebound better (gee, I don’t know go out and recruit taller players the next 15 minutes?)—and gets to the locker room.

There are also times—especially on ESPN—where coming out of commercial the producer will insist on getting the ‘talent,’ on camera for 30 seconds to say something brilliant like, “What a great atmosphere here tonight,” while play is held until they’re finished.

Wait, I’ve got more: There are two rules changes that need to be made: 1. Once a player is handed the ball to shoot his first free throw he can’t have contact with his teammates until the second shot is out of his hands. All of this slapping hands after the first free throw— they do it make or miss nowadays—is silly and if you add it up over a course of a game adds five to ten minutes. 2. When a player fouls out this bit with both teams running to the bench for an impromptu time out needs to stop. Coaches do not need 30 seconds at that point to decide who to sub. They know who they’re subbing and if they don’t—tough. Give them 10 seconds and tell the players to get lined up at the free throw line in the meantime.

Another thing: Officials need to be far more vigilante about getting teams out of their huddles. This deal with coaches having to stand on the court and talk to one another before they talk to the players is ridiculous. To quote Red Auerbach: “You’re getting paid millions to be the head coach you damn well ought to know what to say to your players during a time out.”

The other night I was at a game (honestly I don’t remember which one) and one team was lagging coming out of the huddle. When the official went in to get the players, the coach actually held up his hand to say, “give me a minute here, I’m not quite done.” The response to that should be simple: Signal the official who has the ball to start the 10 second clock and then put the ball on the floor and start counting to five. Remember when officials did that? People got out of the huddle then.

I know these are all little things but they add up. College basketball games shouldn’t be taking two-and-a-half hours. When we get to postseason they get longer: halftime on CBS goes to 20 minutes instead of 15 (plus the time for the silly coaches interviews); 30 second time outs become 45 seconds to get in extra commercials. At this rate it won’t be long before the national championship game ends at midnight on the east coast.

It’s also worth noting that the 20-minute halftime came about in 2003 when the war in Iraq started on the first day of the tournament. CBS asked for the extra five minutes to do war updates. Fine. But the next year the time outs were still 20 minutes and they’ve remained that way ever since, which certainly isn’t good for the players. I’ve been in locker rooms. By about the eight minute mark, everyone is getting antsy to get back on the court. When I brought this up with the NCAA basketball committee a few years ago someone said, “Well, you know when you’re in a dome it takes longer to get to and from the locker room.”

Five minutes longer? How about 10 seconds longer—if that.

This problem isn’t unique to basketball. College football is a joke. I’ve said for years the first down rule should be changed to stop the clock ONLY in the last two minutes of each half. The notion that you need to stop the clock on a first down with 13:47 left in the first quarter is ludicrous. Four hour games are just too long even if they have dramatic finishes. They may not seem so bad watching at home where you can keep clicking around to other games during the endless commercials but if you’re in the stadium those commercials are torture. Nothing is worse than a Notre Dame on NBC where some commercials last longer than the careers of a lot of college basketball players.

Baseball, especially in the American League or if Tony LaRussa is managing, can take days to play. There are two rules changes that need to be made: Trips to the mound should be limited not to one per inning per pitcher but to one TOTAL for the starting pitcher and one more TOTAL after he leaves the game. A catcher shouldn’t be allowed to go out to the mound more than once per batter. Learn how to change signals with a runner on second base in spring training.

Far more important is keeping batters in the box. We now have a generation of hitters who routinely step out after EVERY pitch. They re-adjust their gloves, tug on their helmet, kick at the dirt, take a deep breath and step back in. PLEASE. Simple rules-change: You can step out one time during an at-bat. The only way you can step out more than once is if you’re hurt or knocked down. While we’re at it, make umpires ENFORCE the 20-second rule on pitchers with the bases empty.

The NFL has gotten better although it is maddening when TV takes back-to-back time outs after a touchdown or field goal: team scores, extra point is kicked—commercial. Kickoff—commercial again. As I said, at home it isn’t so bad. In the stadium, especially when it’s cold—brutal. The NBA needs to make two rules-changes: teams get one time out in the last two minutes and no more and get rid of the move-the-ball-to-midcourt after a time out rule. In what other sport are you allowed to advance the ball half the playing field as a reward for calling time out?

Hockey’s pretty good overall although having the hockey package this year I’ve noticed there are a number of linesmen who think fans come to the arena to watch them drop the puck. I know they want it to be fair and get it right but for God’s sake drop the thing and let’s move on.

The biggest change though is still college basketball. I know I sound like I’m 100 when I harken back to my days as a kid when games were played in 90 minutes. Those days are gone and aren’t coming back but it is completely out-of-hand. I know TV needs its time outs but NINE—seriously NINE? Throw in a couple more commercials at halftime. We can live without the yammering studio shows anyway. Throw in a couple of simple, sensible rules changes and for the love of God get rid of the halftime interviews. The coaches hate them, the fans hate them, please tell me who likes them?

I’m guessing it must be some of the same people who, at the “urging,” of John Calipari are planning to fill Rupp Arena one Saturday to jump up and down in front of the cameras for ‘GameDay.’ My God, The Apocalypse really is upon us.

Boy this Lane Kiffin thing is a mess. Anytime a coach leaves a big-time job with big-time expectations after one season it is going to cause havoc. I’ve been to football games at Tennessee and I know how seriously they take it. Of course that’s true of the entire Southeastern Conference. It’s sort of like what football would be like if it had existed in the wild-west years ago.

Back then, Kiffin and Urban Meyer probably would have met up at the OK Corral one night at sundown. Meyer probably would have shot Kiffin cleanly through the heart and he would have jumped up and said, ‘nice shot Urban, guess I’ll just mosey on down the road to a better deal than I’ve got here.”

Actually, I don’t blame Kiffin for taking the job. It isn’t his fault that Pete Carroll decided to beat the NCAA posse out of town—and anyone who thinks that wasn’t a major factor believes in Santa Claus and the BCS—to take the job in Seattle. Kiffin has coached at USC and I’m betting his wife wasn’t exactly upset about moving from Knoxville to Los Angeles. She may be on The View before 2010 is over. (or is that taped in New York, I have no idea. So maybe she’ll play Elin Woods in a TV movie.)

I DO blame Mike Garrett although he technically did nothing wrong since Kiffin had an out clause in his contract. What I blame him for his hiring a guy who was 5-15 as a head coach in the NFL and 7-6 in one season at Tennessee. Putting aside The Look that Kiffin (and his wife) have, exactly what did Kiffin have on his resume that leads Garrett to believe he’s just hired the next Joe Paterno? Or, for that matter, the next Pete Carroll?

People talk about Kiffin’s coaching pedigree but let me make two points: Monte Kiffin made his reputation as a defensive coordinator. As a head coach at North Carolina State he pretty much washed out. My second point is this: Does the name David Shula ring a bell? One’s last name is not a reason to make a hire.

Maybe Kiffin DOES turn out to be Pete Carroll. It is difficult to judge anyone yay or nay based on two years of working for Al Davis and one year in a college job—any college job. Clearly though, Garrett was looking for some kind of a big hit, someone who would win the press conference That sounds a lot like Dan Snyder and we all know how THOSE press conferences have worked out the last 11 years once they were over.

There’s also the issue of recruiting. We all know how cutthroat it is and that coaches who change jobs routinely try to take players who have made commitments to play for them to their new school. (See Calipari, John et al). That said, for Kiffin to stand up at his press conference in LA and say he would only recruit kids who had committed to Tennessee if they contacted him is about as disingenuous as you can get. EVERY kid who made a commitment to Kiffin is going to contact him at some point. This isn’t even taking into account the fact that Ed Orgeron, the recruiting coordinator at Tennessee until Tuesday who now has the same job at USC said he DID contact kids (which technically means Kiffin did not) although he (and Garrett) refused to go into any detail about what was said.

The whole thing FEELS so smarmy. One coach fleeing because an NCAA investigation is about to conclude, another bolting from a job after one year and then trying to recruit kids away from the school he pledged body and soul to a little more than a year ago.

I’m really sorry to see Carroll leave USC because I always thought he was a breath of fresh air in the college game. His practices were open, his players were accessible and he didn’t act as if winning football games was more important than world peace. (Remember Nick Saban once mentioned 9-11 when discussing a loss to Louisiana-Monroe so I’m not exaggerating). It seems clear though that his program had gotten too big in LA and had run amok and now there will be a price to be paid. It isn’t anything that’s going to kill the program because the NCAA never really brings the hammer down on the glamour programs in either football or basketball. But it will probably make Lane Kiffin’s new job a little bit tougher for a while.

I doubt if many people will lose much sleep worrying about him. Maybe he can hire Ari Fleisher to put together a PR campaign for him.

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As I mentioned yesterday I went to Charlottesville last night to see Virginia play Georgia Tech.
It was pretty close to a perfect afternoon and evening. The drive down Rte. 29 has changed very little (except that it now bypasses Warrenton) since I first made it when I was in college and when I was a young Washington Post reporter frequently sent to cover Virginia since it was a secondary beat and I more or less volunteered to go down to football and basketball games.

The last 50 miles, on a sunny winter afternoon, is about as pretty as any you’ll find, the mountains rising up to the south of you as the sun sets almost directly in front of you. (Bring sunglasses).

I had dinner at The Aberdeen Barn, another place that hasn’t changed since I first went there. Same breadsticks, same menu, same great steaks. (Please don’t tell my cardiologist). My old pal Doug Doughty, who I first met when he was a hot-shot young reporter covering his alma mater (he was, as he likes to point out Phi Beta Kappa at UVA. I KNEW some people who were Phi Beta Kappa at Duke) and I was an undergraduate doing stringing work for papers in North Carolina, met me for dinner as did Gene and Lena Corrigan—one of my all-time favorite couples.

I first met Corrigan when he was the AD at Virginia and I was the kid reporter, as I mentioned, at The Post. On one of my first trips to Virginia I had spent some time with football coach Dick Bestwick and came back down the hall to the office of the late, great Barney Cooke, who was Virginia’s SID back then. (Barney was the first SID to ever offer me a drink while I was writing a game story. He did this when I was still working for The Duke Chronicle and not old enough to buy hard liquor. I had gin. I don’t know if it helped me write but it really was cool.)

When I walked into Barney’s office, Corrigan was sitting there. I was about to introduce myself when Corrigan said, “young man I’m sure Barney’s got a lot for you to do but would you mind getting me a cup of coffee? (I was about to go get the coffee when Barney said, “Um, Gene, this is John Feinstein from The Washington Post. He’s down here working on a football story.”)

Gene was horrified. He jumped up from his chair and said, “John, I’m so sorry, I didn’t recognize you.” (That would have been tough since we’d never met). I was 21 at the time and no doubt looked like the student assistant he initially thought I was. We still joke about that to this day.

Corrigan of course went on to be the AD at Notre Dame and then the commissioner of the ACC. He was always one of the class acts in college athletics: he might disagree with you but he always told you just how he felt; he never tried to hide anything and if you called him you could bet he’d call you back.

He was the AD at Notre Dame during the ill-fated tenure of Gerry Faust as football coach. (He didn’t hire Faust but he had to fire him. Then he hired Lou Holtz). In 1984 I was out there doing a story on how badly things were going for Faust and I talked to Digger Phelps who shook his head and said sadly, “it’s gotten so bad we can’t even bring our recruits to football games anymore.”

When I repeated that line from Corrigan—who wasn’t Digger’s biggest fan—he said (through clenched teeth) “we’ve had years when we couldn’t bring football recruits to basketball games!”

I liked UVA’s new arena but I miss old University Hall. I like the intimate old gyms without all the bells and whistles and screaming scoreboards and PA guys. The good news is the parking is still very good and my seat—since there was no TV—was right at midcourt. It was nice seeing a lot of UVA people I hadn’t seen for a while.

Seeing them all still there after all these years reminded me (as so many things do) of a Dean Smith story. When I was doing my ACC book, “A March to Madness,” back in 1997 I was standing with Dean outside his locker room about an hour before tipoff. That was always a good time to talk to him (as with many coaches) because he was just killing time.

One of the old ushers who worked in the building walked up to say hello to Dean. “John, you need to meet this gentleman,” Dean said. “He’s been working here at Virginia forever.” He turned to the usher and said, “How many years have you worked here now?”

The man puffed out his chest and said, “Coach, I’ve been in charge of this hallway for 21 years.”

Dean looked at me and said, “He’s been here 21 years. Isn’t that something?”
“Yes Dean,” I said. “That’s really something. Do you realize you’ve been coming here for THIRTY SIX years?”

Dean somehow didn’t think that was as impressive. I saw the man last night, still patrolling the hallway in the new building. He’s now been there for THIRTY FOUR years.

Which is still two years short of Dean.

I made my regular appearance on The Sports Reporters with Steve Czaban and Andy Pollin in the normal timeslot (5:25 ET on Wednesday's) this evening. Click the permalink, then the link below, to listen to the segment on a variety of topics, including the Mark McGwire confession and the story lines of the college basketball season.

Click here to listen to Wednesday afternoon's segment: The Sports Reporters

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I also made my regular appearance on The Gas Man at 5:25 PT on Wednesday. In this segment, we spoke about the college basketball season and the greatness of conference games and rivalries, preferences of doing analysis of games on radio vs. tv, and the Pete Carroll and Lane Kiffin moves.

Click here to listen to the segment: The Gas Man

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Once again, I was on Tony Kornheiser's newest radio show this morning (Thursday) at 11:05am.  It was as fun as always as we talked Gilbert Arenas, Mark McGwire, the college basketball season and the football coaching mess.

Click here to listen to the segment: The Tony Kornheiser Show

Last night was one to put the remote to heavy use. There was all sorts of college basketball going on, not to mention the Islanders absolutely smoking the once-vaunted Detroit Red Wings. I can’t wait to talk to Matt Rennie (aka Mr. Detroit who is my editor at The Post) this morning. Rennie is apt to duck my call after that performance.

The college hoops I saw had a myriad of story lines. Purdue lost for a second straight game—at home no less—blowing a late 13-point lead to Ohio State. What does this prove? Nothing we don’t already know: once you get in to conference play no one is going to win every night. Texas is going to lose at some point and so is Kentucky although it is impossible not to be impressed with the Wildcats. I made my first trip ever to Florida’s O’Connell Center last year and it is a VERY tough place to play. Kentucky made it look easy, taking the lead midway in the first half and looking to be in control from that point on.

The other game that caught my eye was North Carolina State winning at Florida State. It’s the road wins you notice this time of year. Wake Forest escaping Maryland in overtime only means the Deacons held serve and Maryland missed a chance for a bonus victory. Baylor losing at Colorado is the same thing. Teams lose on the road. When you win on the road, especially against a ranked team or even a good unranked team, that’s something to hang your hat on.

There may not have been a team or a coach more in need of a win than N.C. State and Sidney Lowe. Two Sundays ago, the Wolfpack had Florida beaten until a 70-foot shot at the buzzer went in and the Gators won by one. Because I always connect Billy Donovan in my mind to Rick Pitino (since he played for him at Providence and coached under him at Kentucky) I remembered a game years ago in Hawaii when a Kentucky player grabbed a rebound in the final seconds, went the length of the court and scored to beat Arizona at the buzzer.

“We call that play explosion,” Pitino said after the game. Back then Rick always had to take a bow. Now I think he would just say, “the kid made a hell of a play.” Donovan simply said his kid hit an amazing shot and left it at that.

After that brutal loss, State beat Holy Cross (yawn) but then blew a nine point lead last Saturday AT HOME to Virginia, which is still learning how to play Tony Bennett slow-ball. So to go TO Florida State and win was a very big deal.

Lowe will always be a hero at N.C. State for his role in the 1983 national championship. He was a superb point guard on that team. One of my favorite (among many) Jim Valvano stories is about Lowe dribbling the clock down late in a game (there was no shot clock). He came over near the bench and said, “Coach, I need a blow.”

Valvano nodded and said, “You’ll get one Sidney—just as soon as your eligibility is used up.”

This is Lowe’s fourth year at State and he hasn’t made the NCAA Tournament yet. He had an unlikely run to the ACC Tournament final his first season but that’s been about it for excitement. State fans more or less ran Herb Sendek out of town even though he had gotten State into the tournament five years in a row and reached the sweet sixteen. Sendek didn’t beat Duke or North Carolina enough and his dry personality wasn’t enough to overcome that defect. Lowe has plenty of personality and that State pedigree but he hasn’t beaten State or Carolina very much and hasn’t won nearly as much as Sendek did. It seems unlikely he’d get run off after four years but we live in an era where Ivy League coaches are getting jettisoned (two of them now—Glenn Miller at Penn, Terry Dunn at Dartmouth) in midseason. So nothing is a certain in coaching.

Ask the Tennessee fans who spent the last year learning to love Lane Kiffin.

Kentucky’s continuing success is going to continue to raise the issue of John Calipari’s move to UK from Memphis; the players he ran off and his history at Memphis and Massachusetts. Everyone knows the Kentucky people could care less about Calipari’s past, they care only about his present and future. They may already be erecting a statue to him by now.

In a very real sense they are no different than other fans—only there are more of them and they do tend to go a little bit nuts in both directions. I still remember being in a car during Tubby Smith’s first season at the school (which ended in a national title) and hearing a fan call into his show. “Coach,” he said, “I just want you to know I haven’t given up on this team yet.”

Kentucky was 25-4 at that moment.

One coach I know who knows Calipari well and has recruited against him for years said this about him: “He’s the most dangerous guy in the game right now. Why? Because he’s a good coach and a good guy and people like him. But he’s going to do whatever it takes to win—whatever it takes. You think it’s a coincidence he’s had two Final Fours vacated? Sure and Mark McGwire took steroids because of injuries.”

That sums up the way a lot of coaches feel about Calipari. Some of that is jealousy but some of that IS his past. I fall into the category of people who like John. I first met him in 1984 when he was a 25-year-old assistant coach at Kansas and was working at The Five Star camp. We were close in age and hit it off right away. John liked to talk. My job is to listen.

Ten years later, when John had taken U-Mass from nowhere to a No. 1 ranking, Peter Teeley—who had been Bush 1’s speechwriter when he was vice president—came to me and asked if I could help him put together a charity basketball tournament in Washington. Gary Williams said yes right away on behalf of Maryland; John Thompson said no right away on behalf of Georgetown. We needed a glamour team to come in and play Maryland the first year. I called John. “Let me see if I can move some things on my schedule,” he said. He did and the U-Mass-Maryland game gave the event credibility that has helped carry it through 15 successful years.

(Note to Georgetown fans who keep asking me why we have “kept Georgetown out,” of the event. Nothing could be further from the truth. We’ve negotiated with Craig Esherick, with John Thompson III and with Bernie Muir and Adam Brick when they were AD’s and gotten nowhere. I still believe Big John Thompson is pulling that string).

So it is hard for me to not like Calipari for a number of reasons. But there’s no doubt the more his team, built in large part around two kids he brought with him when he left Memphis who are likely to be one-and-outs, will continue to be a source of controversy as it continues to win.

Tonight, I’ll be I Charlottesville for my first in-person look at both Georgia Tech and Virginia, with new coach Tony Bennett. UVA had a good win on Saturday when it won at N.C. State but tonight will be a much bigger test against a Tech team with one of the better young frontcourts in the country.

Remarkably, this will be my first game at The John Paul Jones Arena. I’ve seen it because Craig Littlepage gave me a tour a couple years ago when I went down to speak to some UVA students, but haven’t been there for a game. I know it is a marked upgrade for Virginia over creaky old University Hall, but I for one will miss the old place. Not only did it have excellent press seating it had the best media parking—like 10 yards from the back door to the building—in the country. If you think that’s not a big deal to someone like me you’re wrong. Parking, especially in winter, is always key for me. My guess is I’ll spend a lot of time moaning tonight about the good old days. But getting to have dinner at The Aberdeen Barn with a bunch of my old friends in the UVA media will make it worth the trip. Oh, and the game should be good too.

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I have to admit I was surprised yesterday that some posters and e-mailers seemed to think I let Mark McGwire off the hook. I admitted up front that I liked him. Then I went on to say he clearly hadn’t told the entire truth when he claimed he only used steroids to deal with injuries and to stay on the field. I also said he did not belong in the Hall of Fame and that I wouldn’t vote for him if I had a vote. I don’t think that’s letting him off the hook. I would have said the exact same thing about Barry Bonds—who I can’t stand.

Oh well, can’t please everyone.

Here are this week's articles The Washington Post, both focused on college basketball.  Today's column was on George Washington, and over the weekend I wrote about Connecticut's Jim Calhoun.

The following is today's article --------

With 8 minutes 24 seconds left in the game Sunday at Smith Center, George Washington's Hermann Opoku had just made two free throws to give the Colonials a 60-50 lead over Xavier. GW had finished the first half strong to take a 41-30 lead and the margin had stayed between seven and 11 points throughout the second half.

That's not enough, Colonials Coach Karl Hobbs thought as he glanced at the scoreboard.

"I knew at some point in the second half we had to get the lead to 14," he said after the game. "I knew Xavier was too good and too experienced a team for us to keep stopping their offense the whole day. After we got to 60, I kept looking up and we were still on 60. It felt like we were there a long time."

They were there for more than five minutes. By the time Aaron Ware made a free throw with 3:04 left, Xavier had the lead and the Musketeers never looked back, cruising to a 76-69 win. In all, Xavier outscored GW 20-1 over a stretch that last nearly eight minutes.

Click here for the rest of the column: GW has spice, needs seasoning

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Some losses are tougher to take than others. As the celebration began Saturday afternoon at Verizon Center in the seconds after Georgetown's stunning 72-69 victory over Connecticut, Jim Calhoun walked through the handshake line, a blank look on his face, probably not even seeing any of the players or coaches he was congratulating.

"I've just never gotten to the point where a loss doesn't tear me up," he said. "I still feel as if I've failed whenever we lose. My friends will say to me, 'Don't you know how much you've done?' My answer is, no I don't. Not when I've got Georgetown to play at noon today. I stay in the present."

Calhoun actually said those words about three hours before Saturday's tip-off. As he spoke, he easily might have passed for just another visitor to the nation's capital, someone looking to stay inside on a frigid morning. He already had worked out and was sipping a cup of coffee while his players sat quietly around him eating their pregame meal.

Click here for the rest of the column: Connecticut's Jim Calhoun still loves coaching

My friend Dan Steinberg, who has done a remarkable job the past few years making his “DC Sports Bog,” a must read for a lot of us, has been doing (like so many others) various “End of the Decade,” rankings this week.

This morning’s list was the top ten events in DC sports. He ranked Maryland’s 2002 national championship No. 1 and George Mason’s run to the Final Four in 2006 second.

With all due respect to Maryland and to Dan—wrong.

The rebuilding job Gary Williams did at Maryland was remarkable. I’ve said that and written that dozens of times, especially when the sharks—led by his athletic director—start to circle every time the Terrapins slide at all. I often re-tell the story about the Maryland alum who came up to me at a game midway through the 2001 season and said, ‘the time has come for Gary to go. The Sweet Sixteen is as far as he can take us. We need to get Mike Brey in here and start over.’

I kid that guy often about what happened next. Brey, by the way, who has done an excellent job at Notre Dame, still hasn’t been past the Sweet Sixteen.

Maryland’s national championship was a wonderful story of redemption, a program rebuilt in the aftermath of Len Bias’s death and the probation brought about by Chancellor John Slaughter’s idiotic decision to hire Bob Wade as the basketball coach. But in the end it was the kind of thing that happens in athletics all the time: a fallen program brings in the right coach, the coach catches a break or two in recruiting—Juan Dixon and Lonny Baxter both being largely overlooked—and it all falls into place.

Dean Smith took over a program that was on probation at North Carolina in 1962. Mike Krzyzewski was 38-47 his first three years at Duke. Georgetown’s President asked John Thompson to “try and make the NIT every few years,” when he hired him in 1972. Most Connecticut fans thought U-Conn needed to get out of The Big East when Jim Calhoun arrived in 1985.

Great coaches build and rebuild. All those coaches are in the Hall of Fame because they rebuilt fallen programs and won a national title. Only North Carolina from that group had previously won a national championship. Someday, Gary should join that group in the Hall of Fame. Maryland cutting down the nets in Atlanta was a memorable story, one that I personally savor. I still remember the first thing Gary said to me on the court that night: “Fort Myer. You’re one of the guys who remembers Fort Myer. I’m glad you were here to see this.”

Gary had started his head coaching career at American University in 1978 and his team played home games at Fort Myer, an Army base in Arlington, Virginia. The gym was cold and drafty every night and the locker rooms were actually weight rooms. My favorite memory from, “The Fort,” as everyone called it, was Gary having to talk the MPs out of arresting an opposing coach after he had kicked a wall walking into the locker room at the end of an overtime win for AU. Part of the wall fell in and the MPs showed up in the locker room wanting to arrest him for damaging government property.

I covered AU a lot back then: I was the kid reporter on The Post staff and it was apparent to me that Gary was a comer in the coaching business. Plus, I liked him and I liked his team---which won 24 games his third season and came within a missed jump shot of making the NCAA Tournament.

So, Maryland’s national championship was a thrill for me. I knew how low Gary had been in his early days at his alma mater.

Having said all that, George Mason’s story was the best in college basketball since Texas Western in 1966. The school didn’t even play Division 1 basketball until the late 1970s. It didn’t even have a FIGHT song until 1987. Seriously. I was there the night they unveiled it. Jim Larranaga had built a solid program after coming in from Bowling Green but that’s what Mason was: a solid CAA program, a contender in a league that hadn’t received a second bid to the NCAA Tournament since 1986. The closest any CAA team had come to a Final Four had been David Robinson’s run with Navy in that 1986 season. The Midshipmen made it to the elite eight before being crushed by Duke. THAT was a once in a lifetime experience since Robinson had come to Navy as a 6-7 kid recruited more for his potential as an engineer than as a basketball player.

He didn’t even start his freshman year, then grew six inches that summer and turned into, well, David Robinson.

Remember that a lot of people—led by Jim Nantz and Billy Packer—didn’t think Mason even deserved a bid. The Patriots had lost in the CAA semifinals to Hofstra, a game in which point guard Tony Skinn sucker-punched a Hofstra player in the worst possible place, causing Larranaga to announce he would be suspended for Mason’s next game, whether it was in the NCAA’s or the NIT.

A lot of people thought that Skinn’s suspension would be the difference between Mason getting in or not getting in. When the Patriots went up on the board that Sunday night, Nantz and Packer spent considerable time grilling basketball committee chairman Craig Littlepage on what they had done to deserve a bid. Nantz read through their schedule and asked, “what is in here that we’re not seeing that caused you to give them a bid?”

We all know what happened next: the Patriots stunned Michigan State (without Skinn); shocked North Carolina; beat Wichita State and then, in one of the most dramatic upsets in tournament history, beat Connecticut in overtime to make The Final Four. To be honest, I thought they’d blown it when U-Conn tied the game at the buzzer in regulation. To be even more honest, I couldn’t believe the game was close.

I still remember the first thing Larranaga said to me when I shook hands with him on the court: “I can’t wait to get to Indy to see Nantz and Packer.”

He got his chance early. On Wednesday night, Mason was having dinner in “St. Elmo’s,” the great steakhouse in downtown Indy when Nantz and Packer walked in. I happened to be in there with some friends and when they stopped to say hello I couldn’t resist saying, “Hey, George Mason’s in the back, I’m sure you guys want to go and say hello.”

To his credit, Nantz made a beeline for the back room. Larranaga told me later he congratulated everyone and said he and Packer had been wrong and they had been proven wrong. Packer lingered at our table, talking.

“Well,” I said finally, “Aren’t you going to go in there and apologize?”

“I don’t have anything to apologize for,” Packer said. “I still think what I said was right when I said it.”

That was one thing I loved about Billy: he always stuck to his guns even when the whole world was saying he was wrong.

Mason’s run inspired a lot of people who had never heard of the school prior to March of 2006. Even Connecticut Coach Jim Calhoun shook his head in the aftermath of what had to be one of the most disappointing losses of his career and said, “this is why basketball’s a beautiful game.”

As it happens I have a fair number of George Mason T-shirts. They’re actually swimming shirts because I’ve worked out through the years at Mason since the swim coach there, Peter Ward, is a friend of mine. A couple of months after the ’06 Final Four, I was in Coral Springs, Florida for the Masters short course national championships. I was wearing a Mason swimming T-shirt one morning when I walked across the pool deck to jump into the warm-up pool.

As I was walking, I became aware of the fact that people were applauding and apparently the applause was directed at me. Maybe they really liked my new book on Q-school? No, not this crowd. Finally I heard a few of their voices: “George Mason, way to go, great job!” They were applauding for my shirt.

I’ve worn a lot of shirts from a lot of different places through the years. Occasionally I’ll get a pat on the back from ONE person someplace if I’m wearing Navy gear. But that’s about it.

Maryland fans were thrilled by Maryland’s national title. The entire country was thrilled and inspired by George Mason.

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Since the question has been raised, let’s broaden it a little: Last ten years, what’s the most thrilling moment you remember in sports? I can honestly say Mason is probably number one for me with Jason Lezak’s anchor swim in the 4x100 freestyle relay in Beijing a strong number two and Paul Goydos’s win in Hawaii three years ago (yes, that one is personal) after all he’d been through in his personal life, probably number three. If Tom Watson had parred the 18th at Turnberry this past July it would have blown everything else away and been number two on my all-time list behind the U.S. hockey team at Lake Placid.

I have written before about how much I detest baseball’s All Star break because it means three days with no baseball—unless you like watching an exhibition game in July—forcing me to watch even more ‘West Wing,’ on DVD than I normally do until the real games start again on Thursday.

Christmas week isn’t much better. Last night there were some good college basketball games to watch and what looked like a good bowl game (Brigham Young-Oregon State which turned out to be pretty much a snooze) but the closer you get to Christmas Day the more your choices dwindle. By Christmas Eve you’re down to one pretty lousy bowl game (I’m just not that psyched for Nevada-SMU) and then on Christmas Day there’s one NFL game—at night—and all those NBA games that, sorry, I just can’t bring myself to care about. Check back with me when the playoffs start. Actually check back with me when The Finals start. Maybe.

There’s also the family issue. People expect you to hang out with kids and in-laws and brothers and sisters. It isn’t that I don’t like any of these people—I love many of them—it’s just that after a while you’d rather watch a ballgame than talk about how cute someone’s dog is or hear about how funny your nephew can be. The other problem for me is I can’t claim on Christmas Eve that I really need to watch that Nevada-SMU game for work.

Christmas has always been an interesting part of my life. Clearly, I’m Jewish. My dad was raised orthodox and completely rejected all religion as an adult. My mom had no religious training at all and thought Christmas was a better holiday for kids than Chanukah (my daughter Brigid might argue differently since she still clings to the idea that she’s owed eight gifts) so we always had a Christmas tree and always celebrated Christmas—albeit in a secular way.

Without sounding glib I can honestly say that the births of Lefty Driesell and my agent, Esther Newburg, on Christmas Day have had more meaning in my life than the birth of Jesus Christ. My friend Ken Denlinger once described Lefty as “God’s unique Christmas present to the world in 1931.”

One of my more vivid Christmas memories involves Lefty. I had traveled to Hawaii with Maryland in December of 1984 for what was then The Rainbow Classic. This was before ESPN had created all these strictly-for-TV events at Thanksgiving and The Rainbow, which started back in 1964, was THE holiday tournament: eight quality teams every year. The schedule called for two games Christmas night; two games the next day and then four games on the 27th and the 28th since everyone played three games.

Maryland was playing Iowa on Christmas night. On Christmas Eve morning, I went with Maryland to practice at the old Blaisdell Arena, an aging mini-dome that seated about 8,000 people. Blaisdell had a certain character to it. You had to walk across little bridges to get inside because the building was surrounded by what would best be described as a moat. There was absolutely no parking for the building but if you knew what you were doing you parked at the bank right across the street.

After practice I went back to the hotel and had lunch with Lefty to get some pre-tournament quotes for my advance the next day. As we were finishing, a Maryland booster who had made the trip approached Lefty.

“Coach we were wondering about some free time for the kids tomorrow after morning shootaround,” he said.

“Free time,” Lefty said. “What for?”

“Well, we wanted to have a little Christmas party for them…”

“Christmas!” Lefty thundered. “Christmas! I didn’t come here to have a Christmas party I came here to win games!”

Take that Bah and Humbug.

Maryland won two games—beating Iowa and Hawaii before losing at the buzzer to Georgia Tech in the finals. Because the championship game was on TV back east it started at 6 o’clock local time. Tommy Stinson of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and I walked into Blaisdell at about 5:59 that night because we were sitting by the hotel pool listening to Al McGuire tell stories and we lost track of the time.

I’ve never really minded working on holidays—again it isn’t because I don’t love my family—it’s just, well, what I do. I’m used to working on weekends when others aren’t working so working on a holiday doesn’t feel strange to me. Of course when I still worked at The Washington Post, I frequently got into battles with George Solomon who would—understandably—assign the Jewish members of the staff to work Christmas Day. I didn’t mind working if I was on the road someplace (especially if it was in Hawaii) but I certainly didn’t want to come into the office to write some kind of advance on the college basketball games being played the next day or get sent out to Redskins Park to hear Joe Gibbs talk about how that Sunday’s opponent was the greatest team in football history.

So, every year I’d check the schedule and there I’d be, penciled in for Christmas Day. I’d go see George.

“I can’t work on Christmas,” I’d say.

George—who, to be fair, always put himself on the schedule on Christmas—would look at me and say, “what are you talking about?”

“My family celebrates Christmas. My mother will be upset if I’m not there to open presents in the morning.”

“What do you mean your family celebrates Christmas?”

George literally didn’t believe me at first. Then, when he did believe me, he decided he had to teach me how to be a real Jew. One year he insisted that I come to break-fast at his house on Yom Kippur. I showed up (having not fasted) and wasn’t eating anything because, to be honest, other than soft kosher salami, I’m just not into that sort of food at all.

George’s wife Hazel, one of the world’s nicest and most patient people, came up to me looking puzzled and said, “John, you’re not eating.”

Without thinking about what day it was I gave Hazel the answer I always used if I was at someone’s house and didn’t like the food being served: “Hazel, I’m sorry, I had a really big lunch very late.”

Whoops. She looked at me as if I was insane and went off to—probably—tell George he needed to fire me. George STILL hasn’t let me off the hook on that one.

Anyway, the bottom line is, I like the holidays. I like the warmth and I really like the music and I especially like the corny movies. 1. “It’s A Wonderful Life.” 2. “White Christmas.” 3. “Miracle on 34th Street” (the original) watched it last night. 4. “Rudolph.” (Burl Ives second greatest performance right behind, ‘Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,”—talk about range). 5. “Elf.”

I enjoy seeing relatives and friends I don’t often get to see. But I’m also really happy on the morning of the 26th because there are LOTS of games to choose from, places to go and people to see—and write about.

So, I wish everyone a Merry Christmas, Happy Chanukah, Happy Kwanzaa and, of course a Happy Festivus (for the rest of us). If something actually happens today, I’ll write a blog tomorrow if only to keep a little bit busy. If it is as quiet as I suspect it will be, I’ll be back Monday after everyone has, I hope, a great holiday.

There will be, no doubt, lots to write about Monday. Thank God for that.

The following is this weeks article for The Washington Post -----------

While most people who didn't have to be outside were content to watch it snow Saturday, Rob Ades got in his car and attempted to drive from his home in the Watergate to Baltimore: to see the Loyola basketball team play Howard.

Ades makes his living as a union lawyer. He represents, among others, the DC police and whenever there is a shooting involving a police officer in the District, Ades is called to the scene, regardless of the hour of the day or night.

But his true love is basketball, especially the college game. So more as a sidelight than anything else, Ades has represented various coaches though the years. Some have been big names: Gary Williams, Jim Boeheim, Digger Phelps, Jeff Van Gundy, Mike Jarvis, Leonard Hamilton. Of all the coaches Ades has represented, he is closest to Jimmy Patsos, the former Maryland assistant who is in his sixth season at Loyola.

Click here for the rest of the column: Union lawyer Rob Ades is a true college basketball fan, case closed

The good news this morning is that there was a newspaper at the end of my driveway. The New York Times didn’t make it; The Washington Post did after neither paper had any chance of being delivered Saturday or Sunday in the midst of The Blizzard of ’09. (No mail on Saturday either. What happened to, “neither wind, nor rain, nor snow…”)

The bad news is that the lead story in The Post sports section was—I swear to God—a feature on Ron Jaworski in which he revealed that he thought, having watched hours and hours of tape, that the Redskins looked better the last few weeks. Oh my God. What next? Mike Tirico’s 10 favorite Redskins moments of the decade? Also on the front was a lengthy story on the Maryland women beating American on Sunday afternoon.

Okay, it WAS a slow news day. And at least I had SOMETHING to read at the kitchen table so I’m grateful.

Having grown up in New York I frequently make fun of the absolute panic that hits this area anytime there is a HINT that there might be snow coming. In fact, my first front page—as in front page of the newspaper—story in The Washington Post was about an impending snowstorm. I was the night police reporter on the Metro staff and I was assigned to write a story about how big the storm might be and what preparations were being made. I made all the requisite phone calls and wrote about a 20 inch story—18 inches longer than I thought necessary, but I never complained about extra space.

I went down to the police station to spend the evening after I’d written the story and, as always, the first edition of the paper showed up in the press room at about 10:30. At that point in time The Post was the only news organization in town that sent staffers to police headquarters on a daily basis. Al Lewis, the man whose byline appeared on the first day Watergate break-in story, worked the day shift. Whoever was the lowest person on The Metro staff totem poll worked the night shift—that winter it was me. One of my assignments was to take the 25 papers delivered at 10:30 and walk around the building handing them out to the cops—homicide, robbery, sex (which had some euphemistic name I can’t remember) and perhaps most important, communications. A good source there could give you a major jump on a story.

The free newspapers were a big deal to the cops. If there was any delay at all in their arrival my phone would ring. I’d pick up the phone and there would be a homicide detective on the other end, not telling me there’d been a murder somewhere but wanting to know where the hell the papers were.

On this particular night I picked up the paper before making my rounds and flipped to the Metro section to see if my snow story had made the Metro front. It hadn’t. Disappointed I paged through the section—nothing. I was about to call the desk to demand where the hell my story was when it occurred to me that it had been stuck inside the ‘A,’ section. As I picked it up, my eye picked up a headline at the top right corner of the front page: “Area Girds For Snow—Up to Eight Inches Expected.”

I started to laugh. This was it, my big moment, a front page story—a LEAD front page story and it was on a possible snowstorm. Not the stuff you call your parents about to make sure they notice. By the way, it didn’t snow an inch; it didn’t snow AT ALL. My good friend and mentor Marty Weil, the night rewrite guy then as now, shook his head the next day and said, “Just goes to show what happens if you can’t trust your sources.”

Those sources got this weekend’s storm right. They said it might be up to two feet and it was. I actually did the Washington thing of over-preparing: shopped on Friday; bought a new flashlight because I couldn’t find the old one; bought plenty of logs for the fireplace; got gas for the car--the whole deal. I had a weekend project: clean-up my office, which hadn’t been touched in six months and looked like a storage room.

That worked out fine (I’m still not finished but I can see the floor again) and I took turns working and watching games and then taking a break and watching games. The only two games I DIDN’T get to watch were UCLA-Notre Dame and Duke-Gonzaga. Why? Because the people who run the CBS affiliate in Washington-_WUSA-TV—went to round-the-clock coverage of the snow.

You can’t make this stuff up. It isn’t as if they were telling people stuff they needed to know, like closings—EVERYTHING was closed. It isn’t as if they were reporting injuries or accidents. They just kept saying over and over that it was SNOWING. Then they would show someone standing in their parking lot—they called it a “snow terrace,”—to confirm that it was snowing. They spent several minutes talking about one female reporter’s cute little snow outfit. “Bought it today,” she gushed. “Look, it fits.” They interviewed two people who had skied to the store and showed a dog wearing snow boots.

I kept flipping over in part because I was convinced that at some point they would go back to the games (wrong) and also so I could write today about the inanity of what I was watching. My always-helpful brother, who was able to get some kind of out-of-town feed on his cable system kept calling me with updates. At one point in the second half of the Duke-Gonzaga game he said, “You know you’re missing one of the great defensive performances in history.”

Shut up Bobby.

I DID watch most of The New Mexico Bowl, which was actually a fun game with Wyoming winning improbably in overtime against Fresno State. As silly as it is to play 34 bowl games and include all those 6-6 teams and force schools to buy (and eat) thousands of tickets, I kind of enjoy seeing the little guys have a moment in the sun (or in the case of The St. Petersburg Bowl—brought to you by beef-a-Roni or something, their moment in a dome) and occasionally you will get a game worth watching.

I didn’t even mind when Terry Gannon (who was a great shooter once upon a time) and David Norrie (I have no idea who or what he was) went on about how it was a “great way to start the bowl season.” But when Gannon, no doubt prompted by someone in the truck said, “Wow, what a great beginning to Capital One Bowl Week on the ESPN family of networks,” that was enough for me. He sounded almost as silly as Andy Katz (wait, this just in, Andy Katz reports that North Carolina won last season’s national title) actually referring in WRITING to the ESPN family of networks. If ESPN is a family in any way it is The Simpsons.

Oh, one more note while we’re being silly: Did anyone else notice during the Villanova-Montana Division 1-AA national title game Friday night—which was a terrific game—that it was being referred to as, “The Division 1 National Championship Game.” Why? Because Division 1-A doesn’t officially have a national championship game sanctioned by the NCAA. Where does this insanity end?

By Sunday I had to get out of the house one way or the other. I struggle to watch entire NFL games unless there’s something truly compelling about them. I love Rex Ryan but Jets-Falcons wasn’t getting it done for me. I finally decided to see if I could get down the driveway (it’s pretty long) to our street, which had been plowed just enough to create one lane. My son Danny came out to help and I got almost down the driveway before getting stuck. Danny shoveled for a while and then our neighbor, Pete Henry, rode to the rescue. He keeps a snow-blower in his house for these occasions and he dug me out and got me to the street. It wasn’t easy getting to the main roads from there, but we made it.

Everyone has a snow story of some kind. Mine goes back a long, long way. It was my senior year in college. By then I was covering Duke basketball road games for just about every newspaper in North Carolina as a stringer. Duke wasn’t good enough (seriously) to be staffed on any non-conference road trip so I would write game stories for Durham, Charlotte, Winston-Salem and Greensboro. I’d write a different lead for each and a different ending mixing in different quotes depending on the newspaper. (Greensboro, for example, liked player quotes over coaches quotes). They were all fully aware that I was being shared and didn’t care. At 25 bucks a story I was getting rich.

Duke had a two day road swing in late January to West Virginia on Saturday night and Duquesne on Monday night. I drove to my parents’ house in Washington on Friday (by my senior year classes were something I attended when I had free time) and heard that a major storm was approaching. The interstate in West Virginia was closed so I left early Saturday morning to take Route 50 through the mountains in Virginia to get to Morgantown. It was slow going but I was almost there mid-afternoon when I came upon a truck that had turned over and was stuck in the middle of the two-lane road.

Two hours later it was still stuck and there was no way to get past. I was running out of gas, periodically turning off the engine until I got too cold, then turning it back on. FINALLY, several tow trucks manage to move it just far enough so that we could all get by—10 cars from one direction; ten from the other, at a time.

I got to Morgantown just before tipoff, still shaken and cold. The building temperature was set at 56 degrees because of the energy crisis and there might have been 3,000 people there. Duke lost a really bad game. As soon as I walked out of the locker room, I noticed that the heat had been turned off. I could see my breath. I had four stories to write.

Tom Mickle, then the Duke SID and, as it turned out, one of my best friends in life, stayed with me in the press room. He wore a coat, a ski cap and kept taking off his gloves long enough to send one page at a time on the old telecopier (six minutes per page) that was used then to file. He stayed with me for two hours in a completely empty, un-heated building until I finished (my fingers cramping in the cold) all four stories.

We made it to Pittsburgh at 2 a.m. Never in my life was I happier to see a hotel.

Tom died suddenly of a heart attack three years ago. I have lots of memories of him but none more vivid than that one.

Let me begin today by trying to explain how in the world I left Jackie Robinson off the most important athletes list yesterday—before realizing on my way to lunch, ‘Oh My God I Left Jackie Robinson out!’ Here’s my explanation: I have none. Sometimes you just mind-block. Usually I do it at the grocery store—‘what the heck did my kids tell me to get?’—or on Christmas shopping—“Is today the 16th, jeez maybe I ought to do something about gifts.”

This one I just screwed up. Curt Flood and Jesse Owens should have been on there too and I somehow mentioned Muhammad Ali as an example of someone whose influence went well beyond his ability to box and then left HIM off the list. That may have something to do with the fact that I almost never think about boxing anymore. Ali was just about the last boxer I really cared about because even though I covered Sugar Ray Leonard a little bit I never really bought into his act.

The other person who was mentioned by posters yesterday who I don’t consider an automatic but deserves serious consideration is Bobby Orr because he did change the way defensemen played hockey. The notion of a defenseman scoring 20 goals, much less leading the league in scoring was unheard of before Orr.

I’m not going to go through the entire list today, maybe I’ll just do one guy at a time over the next few weeks so that I can go into a little more detail than a sentence or two on each. What is interesting, as some people pointed out, is that I had 20 people even with the omissions which means there are about 25 who seemingly HAVE to be on the list. To try to pare that list to say, 10, would be virtually impossible. And all of us can think of others who deserve consideration: Did Cal Ripken save baseball in 1995? Should all the steroid stars—Bonds, McGwire, Sosa, Clemens et al—be mentioned because they certainly changed the way their sport was viewed. Althea Gibson? John McEnroe and Jimmy Connors—both of whom certainly changed tennis?

Plus, I didn’t even try to include coaches or managers on the list and trying to pick just ten of THEM would be almost impossible. Let’s just say you were doing Mount Rushmore for those guys: John Wooden, right? Vince Lombardi? Red Auerbach? Scotty Bowman? That would mean leaving out (among others) Dean Smith, Bob Knight, Mike Krzyzewski, Phil Jackson, Casey Stengel, John McGraw, Toe Blake, Al Arbour, Chuck Noll, Don Shula, Bill Walsh, Joe Paterno, Bobby Bowden, Bear Bryant and Knute Rockne. That’s just in the four major sports and no doubt I’m mind-blocking on someone right now.

In short, there’s plenty of room to discuss this more in the future.

This morning though I feel I have to weigh in on this Roy Williams controversy because I keep getting asked about it—which is actually a little bit of a relief because it means a few minutes less of being asked to psycho-analyze Tiger Woods.

Ole Roy—as he often calls himself—had a fan of the Presbyterian Blue Hose removed from the Dean Dome last Saturday during a North Carolina rout of a badly overmatched team. Apparently the guy stood up as Deon Thompson was shooting a free throw and yelled, “Don’t miss Deon!”

My guess is his major crime was waking up what was left of the crowd from a nice nap. Since he was sitting in the section reserved for FOR (Friends of Roy) and since Roy and others could clearly heard him, Roy got upset and had the guy removed.

Okay, let’s not make this into a big deal because it’s not. Did Roy overreact? Yes—even if some of his loyal supporters have jumped in claiming the fan in question was drunk, was rude, didn’t have a ticket (or should NOT have had a ticket) in that section, had used profanity prior to his crack AND was involved in the conspiracy to kidnap the Lindbergh baby. Deon Thompson, by the way, somehow shook off the ‘heckling,’ to make his free throw.

The fact is Roy didn’t have him thrown out for any of that—whether it was true or un-true as the fan in question and others sitting around him have said. Roy had him thrown out for yelling, “Don’t miss Deon.” Roy should just apologize and let that be the end of it.

Let me say this about Roy Williams right here: I really like the guy, which galls some of my Duke friends. If you question his abilities as a coach, you’re insane, just check the record. And I know people roll their eyes at times about all the ‘aw shucks, I’m just an ole country boy stuff,’ but most, if not all of it, is genuine. If some of it is put on because it helps recruiting guess what?—it works.

In 1991 when I was working for the late, lamented National Sports Daily I wrote a column about Dean Smith after the ACC Tournament basically saying that some of the little feuds he picked were beneath him. The freshest example I used was his refusal to go on the Raycom ACC Tournament telecasts either pre-game on tape or postgame live, in part because he was upset that they hadn’t hired any ex-Carolina players to do color commentary and in part because he thought that Dan Bonner (by far Raycom’s best analyst) had defended what he (Dean) perceived to be dirty play by Virginia. Bonner—surprise—played at Virginia so Dean saw a conspiracy.

The column set off a firestorm. Even though I had always had a good relationship with Dean and with almost everyone I knew at Carolina this was proof—absolute PROOF—that I was a Duke apologist and I was out to get Dean. Frank Deford, who was the editor of The National, showed me some of the letters which accused me of being guilty of most crimes committed in the 20th century, virtually all in the name of embarrassing Carolina and Dean.

Eddie Fogler, who I’d been friends with for years, walked up to me at The Final Four and said, “You are the worst sportswriter in America.”

“Coming from you Eddie,” I answered, “I consider that high praise.”

Duke ended up winning its first national championship that year—no doubt because of my efforts—beating Kansas, coached by Roy Williams, in the final.

A couple of weeks after the Final Four I got a lengthy handwritten letter from Roy. He talked about how much he had always valued our friendship and how much respect he had for me. Then he began to talk about Dean—“Coach Smith,”—and how much he meant to him. At the end of the letter he wrote: “John, I know a lot’s been said that’s unfair to you but I think you know not a word of that has come from Coach Smith. He may disagree with you on this but I know he respects you just as I know how much you respect him. I think the two of you should talk at some point this summer. If need be I will fly into Chapel Hill to make the meeting happen. This is that important to me because of how I feel about you and because there is no one in the world more important to me than Coach Smith.”

Dean and I did talk and agreed to disagree on Bonner and who should or should not be doing color on ACC games and on several other topics. I remember him saying, “At least concede this: when you and I argue it’s usually because I’m standing up for my players.”

I told him I knew that he ALWAYS stood up for his players. I also told him about Roy’s letter. There wasn’t anything phony in that letter and I could tell you a half dozen other stories that would illustrate why Roy is a good guy.

The only thing as silly as Duke fans trying to make Roy out to be a bad guy is when Carolina fans try to make Mike Krzyzewski out to be a bad guy. BOTH are Hall of Fame coaches and BOTH are outstanding men. They have very different styles on and off the court and I enjoy them both.

Do they make mistakes? Of course they do—who among us doesn’t? Theirs are just made in public a lot of the time. So Roy overreacted and it set off a minor firestorm. He ought to shrug his shoulders and say, “Ole Roy is probably a little bit sensitive sometimes.”

Because he is. Which doesn’t make him a bad guy by any stretch of the imagination.

I was all set to write today about the most important 10 or 12 athletes in sports history since a lot of people reading yesterday’s blog raised the question. I’m going to save that for another day---although I’ll give you my list at the end of this blog and then discuss it in detail later. I will also say that the poster who objected yesterday to the notion of me describing Tiger Woods as, “one of the most important athletes in sports history,” on the grounds that sports isn’t important enough to be part of history, needs to jump off his high horse and do a little more research.

Certainly the actual playing of games has little to do with history. But the simple fact is sports touches millions of lives in more ways than can be counted. The poster mentioned Jesse Owens. How about the hockey team in 1980 at Lake Placid? Arthur Ashe and Billie Jean King? Muhammad Ali? I could go on but that’s also for another day. Sports is an important part of life around the world—often for good and sometimes for bad—and if you don’t get that you aren’t nearly as smart as you think you are.

Anyway, just before I sat down to write about the most important athletes—notice I didn’t say BEST athletes because that’s a different story—I came upon a story in The Wall Street Journal. There are times when The Journal does very good stories on sports because it takes a different tack than the rest of us, often digging up facts that others (myself included) wouldn’t think to seek out. Where The Journal gets into trouble is when it allows guys who don’t know anything about sports to express their opinions on sports—which are often based on talking to those in power since they can usually get them on the phone by saying, “Wall Street Journal.”

So today, a guy named Darren Everson writes a story in which he insists that expanding the NCAA basketball tournament to 96 teams should be a “no-brainer.” He’s right. Anyone with a brain who doesn’t have a vested interest in expansion—as in the NCAA, ESPN and most major conference coaches—knows it’s a ridiculous idea. Everson was taken in by Greg Shaheen from the NCAA carefully explaining that the NCAA is merely doing “due diligence,” by raising the possibility; by coaches who want to protect their jobs claiming that too many good teams get left out of the 65 team field and by commissioners looking for more bids for their conferences.

What a bunch of malarkey.

What makes the NCAA basketball tournament unique is that you actually DO have to be good to make the field. It isn’t like the bowls where more than 50 percent of Division 1-A gets to play in a bunch of bowls who change corporate names the way George Steinbrenner used to change pitching coaches. It isn’t like the NBA or the NHL where more than half the teams make the playoffs. Or even like the NFL where only 12 of 32 make postseason but the divisional system occasionally lets 8-8 team in the door and often allows 9-7 teams into postseason. It is a lot closer to baseball where eight of 30 teams make postseason and it is rare for an un-deserving team to advance.

Everson bought into the notion that expanding to 96 teams would give more mid-majors the chance to make the tournament. Really? If 31 bids are added how many do you think WON’T go to the big six conferences? Five, six? If that? And you can bet those five or six will be No. 22 or No. 23 seeds in a 24 team regional while the 10th place team in the ACC gets a 13th seed. Have you paid any attention to how the committee seeds the field? Almost all the automatic qualifiers from non-power leagues are consigned to the 13-to-16 ghetto. For a while there was a sub-committee whose job it was to take those teams and seed them as if putting together a separate tournament.

Oh sure, every once in a while someone will pop up a few spots after going 27-2 and beating a couple of power teams in early season tournaments—usually the only time a power team will play anyone who is any good outside their conference—and the occasional at-large team will sneak in from the non-power conferences but they REALLY have to work hard to overcome all the talking heads who usually want every single team from the Big East and the ACC to make the field. Frequently teams that finish under .500 in their own conference get in on the basis of quality LOSSES.

With all the bleating by the BCS hypocrites about how much meaning the football regular season has, it is basketball that has the most meaningful regular season. You can play your way into the tournament with a strong finish or you can play your way out with a poor one. Getting a bid actually has meaning, which is why CBS always shows us those shots of teams sitting in their (very comfortable) lounges waiting to get word on whether they’re in or out. Can you imagine the suspense next year if CBS shows us 16-15 Providence waiting to get word on whether it has been chosen over 17-14 Indiana or 15-14 North Carolina State while 23-7 Bradley hopes someone notices that even though it finished fourth in The Missouri Valley it had wins over both Indiana and Providence?

God, I can’t wait.

Let’s not even get into an argument about what a fourth week on the road will do for the ‘student-athletes,’ whose teams come from a lower seed (meaning no first round bye) to make The Final Four because we know that’s a moot point. Everson quotes Baylor’s Scott Drew as saying players would rather play an extra round of games than go to class. Ya think? At least Drew’s honest.

The sad part of all this is it’s going to happen. The NCAA has floated this because it wants the extra money that ESPN or CBS (more likely ESPN) will pony up for an extra week and to give the NCAA the excuse to opt out of the last three years of its CBS contract this summer. The decision has already been made and now the NCAA is using guys like Everson to spread the gospel. He actually wrote that expanding to 96 teams was more important than getting rid of the BCS. Yeah sure, watering down a system that DOES pick a national champion is more important than getting rid of a system that does not pick a national champion, but the champion of the six power conferences.

As someone wrote in a post here last week, “Leave it to the NCAA. It’s motto is, ‘if it ain’t broke fix it.” Truer words were never spoken.

------------------

Okay then, here’s my tentative list—because I’m open to suggestion—of the most important athletes in history. This is not in any order, I’m just sort of going by sport: Babe Ruth and Henry Aaron with apologies to Willie Mays; Jim Brown; Bill Russell, Wilt Chamberlain, Magic and Bird; Michael Jordan; Wayne Gretzky; Jesse Owens, Carl Lewis, Mark Spitz, Michael Phelps, Jean-Claude Killy, the U.S. hockey team at Lake Placid; Arnold Palmer and Tiger Woods (remember important is the key word, not great—Palmer was more important than Jack Nicklaus); Billie Jean King and Arthur Ashe and Pele.

Okay, that’s actually 20 and I haven’t included any coaches or managers—that’s a separate list—and I’m sure I’ve left deserving people out. The list probably has too many basketball players but who would you leave out in that group?—and not enough football players. I’ve left out all the great quarterbacks—Graham, Unitas, Starr, Montana, Brady and Manning because I see them as great but not as changing their sport. In fact, if a quarterback belongs on the list it is probably Joe Namath for Super Bowl III even though his body of work isn’t comparable to the others mentioned.

There’s one other person I didn’t mention: Ed Brennan. He was my swimming coach in high school. I probably wouldn’t have gone to college if not for him. That’s what I meant before about sports touching lives—at all levels.

[Update/Note: I had a mind block this morning and left out Jackie Robinson, who might very well be #1 on the list. I can't believe I did this, and will talk more on it tomorrow.]

If you want to know why I love college basketball, consider the following: In the calendar year 2009, Harvard University has a record of 2-0 against crosstown rival Boston College. In that same calendar year, North Carolina coached by hard-working Hall of Famer Roy Williams was 0-1 against Boston College. Duke, coached by two-time Olympic coach and Hall of Famer Mike Krzyzewski was 1-1 against the Eagles.

Think about that: Harvard, which last played in the NCAA Tournament in 1946 (its only appearance) has beaten BC twice—once last January a few days after the Eagles had won AT North Carolina—and once last night, 73-67. Both Harvard victories took place (surprise) at BC.

Now you may say I have a bias here—and I do—because I’ve known Harvard Coach Tommy Amaker since he was a high school junior. In this case though my bias has very little to do with it, especially since Frank Sullivan, the man Amaker succeeded at Harvard, is a good friend whose firing three years ago was grossly unfair.

In fact, I would say this: if any Ivy League team beat an ACC team two seasons in a row I would get a big kick out of it. It just isn’t supposed to happen. And yet, in college basketball, results like that DO happen. Already this season Cornell has won at Alabama and in seasons past my friends in The Patriot League have pulled off some decent sized upsets as in Bucknell over Kansas and Arkansas in back-to-back NCAA Tournaments and Holy Cross going into Notre Dame and beating the Irish in the NIT.

Let’s go back to Amaker for a moment. I remember the first time I saw him play because it’s a funny story. I was doing a magazine piece on Mike Krzyzewski, who had just finished his first season at Duke and had more or less washed out in recruiting—finishing second for players like Chris Mullin, Bill Wennington, Uwe Blab and Jim Miller. In recruiting, finishing second and $4 will get you a latte at Starbucks.

Krzyzewski was in Washington to see Johnny Dawkins play in the old Jelleff League, which was up Wisconsin Avenue in northwest DC. The league was a Washington tradition, with games played indoors and outdoors and was most famous for a game in the early 1970s when DeMatha was supposed to play St. Anthony’s for the championship. Because DeMatha Coach Morgan Wootten had refused to schedule St. Anthony’s during the regular season, St. Anthony’s Coach John Thompson played his cheerleaders in the game.

“If he won’t play me in the winter, I’m not playing him in the summer,” Thompson said at the time.

When Thompson was the coach at Georgetown he refused to recruit any of Wootten’s great players. I asked him about that once and he said to me, “there are some people on this earth who you can live away from.” Of course now that Wootten and Thompson are both retired and in the Hall of Fame they joke when Wootten appears on Thompson’s radio show about how the media created their alleged feud.

Sure. And Thompson and Lefty Driesell were buddies back then too.

Anyway, on this particular night, Krzyzewski was sitting in the stands watching Dawkins play when Red Jenkins, then the coach at W.T. Woodson High School in northern Virginia stopped to say hello to him. “You need to stay for the next game,” Jenkins said. “You need to see my point guard. He’s only going to be a junior and he’s little but watch him play.”

Krzyzewski figured he didn’t have much else to do so he decided to stick around at least for a few minutes to see what Jenkins was talking about. “Red’s a good coach,” he said. “I don’t think he’d tell me to watch this kid unless he was pretty good.”

By halftime, Krzyzewski was like a teen-age kid in love for the first time. He couldn’t take his eyes off of Amaker, who probably weighed about 140 pounds at the time. Someone had pointed Amaker’s mother out to Krzyzewski and at halftime he walked over and said (probably breaking about 14 NCAA rules) to her: “Your son is going to look great in Duke blue.”

The funny thing is Amaker really wanted to go to Maryland because John Lucas had been his boyhood hero. But Lefty had recruited a kid named Keith Gatlin so he didn’t pursue Amaker, who was only 6-feet-tall, that hard. A few years later when Amaker was a junior at Duke and Gatlin was a sophomore at Maryland, Gatlin sat out a game at Duke with a bad back.

That was the year I was in Indiana doing ‘Season on the Brink.’ Two days after the game at Duke, Maryland played at Notre Dame. I drove up to South Bend to see the game and my friend Sally Jenkins, who was covering the Terrapins at the time. When I walked into the arena the first person I saw was Driesell.

“Hey Lefty, how’s Gatlin feeling?” I asked.

Lefty looked at me quizzically. “Gatlin?” he said. “He’s fine.”

“Really? I saw where he didn’t play at Duke because something was wrong with his back.”

“Oh that was nothing,” Lefty said waving his hand. “He just had a case of Amaker-back.”

Any guard knowing he was going to be guarded by Amaker for 40 minutes began to feel back pain. Gatlin was no exception.

Amaker seemed destined for stardom when he became a college coach. In his third year at Seton Hall he took the Pirates to the Sweet Sixteen and he had a big time recruiting class on the way including Eddie Griffin, who was supposed to be a superstar. But Griffin proved to be a troubled kid and at the end of the ’01 season he left for the NBA and Amaker left for Michigan. There, he constantly seemed on the verge of turning the program around after taking over in the wake of the revelations about The Fab Five, but never made the NCAA Tournament in six seasons. He was fired after the ’07 season—a stunning turnaround for someone who had appeared to be a lock for coaching stardom.

He landed at Harvard but not without controversy, although it wasn’t his doing. Frank Sullivan had done remarkable work keeping Harvard competitive for 16 years working with one hand tied behind his back in recruiting because Harvard’s admissions standards were far more difficult than any other school in the Ivy League—not to mention the entire country.

When Amaker got the job, Harvard agreed to loosen the admissions standards to bring them in line with the rest of The Ivy League. Naturally, other Ivy League coaches instantly noticed that Amaker was recruiting kids that Sullivan couldn’t have touched and they talked about it to Pete Thamel of The New York Times. Harvard’s response should have been simple: “Yes, we decided to give our new coach a level playing field to recruit just as we do in football and hockey.” Instead, some blowhard in admissions insisted the standards hadn’t changed and Bob Scalise, the athletic director, tried to claim Amaker was just a better recruiter than Sullivan.

Whether that’s true no one will ever know because the two men were working under completely different sets of rules. Regardless, Amaker’s done a good recruiting job with a more level playing field and his third Harvard team appears to be behind only Cornell right now in The Ivy League. The Crimson play at Cornell on January 30th and host the Big Red on February 20th. Both those games will probably be worth seeing.

Maybe next year there can be an ACC-Ivy League Challenge Series. As of right now, The Ivies appear to have the edge. Come on, even if that’s not close to true, you have to love it. I wonder when the BC folks will let Harvard know that they won’t be playing anymore. My over-under is sometime this morning.

It snowed here in Washington this past weekend. This morning it was cold and rainy when I woke up and, even yesterday when the temperature warmed into the 50s at midday the sun was long gone by 5 o’clock.

That’s why they call it December. Of course it won’t even officially be winter for 12 more days. After that, ever so slowly the days will start to get warmer.

No, I haven’t decided my future is as a weather blogger.

It’s funny what happens to me this time of year when I go out in the lousy weather, especially in the morning when I walk down the driveway to pick up the newspapers. I think about baseball a lot. I don’t really care about all the rumors that get thrown out that, if you believe them, Roy Halladay would have been traded 47 times since last July. When Halladay is actually traded, tell me and I’ll be interested. But the real news—trades, free agent signings, radio and TV guys changing jobs even—I love to soak up.

It isn’t that I don’t love college basketball season. I do and I really enjoy walking into a hot gym brimming with noise and anticipation prior to a game on a cold night. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve found that I get a bigger kick out of games like George Mason-George Washington or Navy-Penn than the big time games. The other day Dick Vitale called me about something I’d written a while ago on the blog and he said to me, “I just don’t see you at games very much anymore.”

He’s right. It isn’t that I don’t go to ACC games or Big East games—I do. To be honest, part of it is that I’m just too damn spoiled after all these years to sit in the end zone at Maryland or Georgetown or someplace upstairs at Virginia. A lot of the big time schools—most in fact—have moved the media off press row in order to put in “Spike Lee,” seats and put some more cash into their pockets. I don’t question their right to do it, I simply don’t enjoy it. As I said, I’m spoiled. Plus, I just get a kick out of seeing teams battle who don’t think of the NBA or playing on national TV as a birthright. It’s just more fun—at least for me.

But even though I love college basketball season and tracking the teams in the non-major conferences closely to see who has a chance to play postseason, I still find myself regularly counting the days until spring training.

It isn’t as if I’m one of those baseball guys who heads to Florida or Arizona on February 15th and rents a condo for six weeks. I did do most of six weeks in Florida—with two trips to Arizona thrown in—back in 1992 when I wrote “Play Ball,” my first baseball book. It was fun, but I was also shuttling north for basketball and to get home a couple times. It was also before I had kids.

Nowadays, I usually spend one week in Florida and make it what I call a combo trip. Last year, for example, I stopped in Gainesville to see a Tennessee-Florida basketball game, spent three days at The Honda Classic in Palm Beach and threw in three baseball games before I had to go home to do a basketball tripleheader: Patriot League semifinal in Washington, then a fast trip to Richmond for The CAA semifinals that night.

You see, my life doesn’t suck.

This morning I picked up the paper and read with interest that the Yankees had given up three highly-rated prospects to get Curtis Granderson. Because I like Jim Leyland and Dave Dombrowski and—like a lot of people—have a warm spot in my heart for Detroit, I really hope some of the five prospects the Tigers got in the three team (Diamondbacks) deal pan out. The best baseball story of 2009, with due respect to the eight playoff teams, was the Tigers return to contention at a time when the city so desperately needed something to feel good about.

The best baseball line of the year as reported by (I think) Lee Jenkins in Sports Illustrated was what Leyland said to his players in spring training: “Fellas, this is not the year to not run out a ground ball.”

Here in Washington there was another big winter meetings story: The Nationals signing Pudge Rodriguez. A lot of baseball people questioned it because Rodriguez is 38 and has slowed down a LOT since the years when he earned his place in the Hall of Fame. The Nationals, not exactly big spenders on the free agent market most of the time, coughed up $6 million in a two-year contract for Rodriguez. The standard thinking in baseball is that he could have been had—should have been had—for one year.

One of the critics was radio analyst Jim Bowden who called it “another bad signing by the Nationals,” citing the bad signings of Dmitri Young and Paul LoDuca as examples. The irony of that comment being that Bowden was the one who made those two signings when he was the Nats GM.

I think signing Rodriguez was close to brilliant. His on-field numbers can’t begin to tell the full story of his potential value to the team. The Nationals have a 25-year-old catcher named Jesus Flores who, if he can ever stay healthy, has a world of potential. Flores is really smart and will no doubt learn every single day he’s around Rodriguez. Plus, the Nationals have nothing but young starting pitchers, including No. 1 draft pick Stephen Strasburg and who better to nurture them than a guy who has 13 Gold Gloves?

Great move as far as I’m concerned even if the Nats overspent. Did the Yankees overspend on Mark Texeira and CC Sabathia last winter? The Nats can afford to gamble $6 million, I think.

The other news that caught my eye was that Peter Gammons is leaving ESPN to join the MLB network. I think this is a big deal but it may just be because I’ve admired and liked Gammons for so long. He was one of the first true reporters to make the fulltime jump to TV and he brought real resonance to ESPN’s baseball coverage. Tim Kurkijian and Buster Olney are the real deal as reporters too but both would tell you they learned from Gammons—as did we all. Without Gammons, ESPN is a step closer to being just a bunch of ex-players reading off teleprompters and telling us the obvious. Obviously this is a coup for MLB TV.

Right now as I sit here looking outside at a slate gray sky, it is 68 days until pitchers and catchers report; 82 days until exhibition games begin and 84 days until my planned Florida trip. I’m actually fired up.

You see, as you get older it is funny the memories that stick with you. Three years ago, I had to drive to Bucknell on a Saturday for a first weekend in March basketball game. It was a noon game, so I was in the car heading home by about 2:30 and as I fiddled with the radio I picked up an Orioles-Mets exhibition game. I remember steaming down Rte. 15 in Pennsylvania as David Wright hit one out against an Orioles prospect named Hayden Penn.

I have no idea why I remember that moment but when I do, thinking about the snowy road, the stop for coffee in Harrisburg at Dunkin’ Donuts (okay, I may have had a donut too) and seeing in my mind’s eye Wright’s shot carrying out of the ballpark in Port St. Lucie, I smile.

Even now, with all that’s gone on in the game through the years, baseball makes me smile. Even in December.

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Several people asked yesterday about sending me questions to ask Bill Hancock from The BCS on Friday at dinner. I have warned Bill that I may be coming armed with questions from college football fans. So, ask away and I’ll see what Bill comes up with on Friday night. For the record, he doesn’t drink wine. He drinks beer—with ice. Which may explain a lot.

There’s an item in The Sports Business Journal this morning reporting that the NCAA has opened preliminary talks about a new TV contract. This isn’t news. Everyone knows ESPN is dying to swoop in with its Disney money and steal the tournament away from CBS, which has televised it since 1982. Anyone who thinks loyalty will play a role in this negotiation—CBS has literally spent billions helping to build the tournament into the mega-event that it now is—also thinks that there’s no football playoff because of concern about the ‘student-athletes.’

The important part of the story concerned the make-up of the tournament. Apparently the NCAA is looking into expansion—going from the current 65 teams to 96 in order to add a week of TV that would add more money to the new contract.

I can’t call this the worst idea I’ve ever heard because the BCS still exists. But it is a solid No. 2.

The perfect number for the NCAA Tournament is 64. The only reason a 65th team was added was (surprise) a money grab by the BCS commissioners who didn’t want to give up an at-large spot when The Mountain West Conference became eligible for an automatic bid, upping the number of automatic bids from 30 to 31.

Unfair as the play-in game is, it is a minor kink in an otherwise smooth-running machine. With a 65-team field, making it into the bracket is an accomplishment. Sure, there are always a handful of coaches screaming that a horrible injustice was done when they get left out but that’s kind of the beauty of Selection Sunday: who will get in and who won’t. The committee doesn’t always get it right and occasionally a team is left out unfairly. But more often than not, the deserving teams get in and when they do they feel as if they’ve actually done something.

Compare that—for example—to the bowl system where 68 of the 120 teams playing Division 1-A football make postseason. All you have to do—literally—is be mediocre and you can play in a bowl someplace. In basketball, the only time a team that hasn’t played well all season gets in is when someone comes from the depths of a conference to win a conference tournament and get an automatic bid. Even when that happens, the team in question has to be playing well when it matters most to pull off that sort of an upset.

(The football-basketball talk reminds me of a story. If I’ve told it on the blog before, forgive me but I think it bears repeating. Years ago, during an ACC coaches meeting Georgia Tech Coach Bobby Cremins was complaining to Commissioner Gene Corrigan about the extra pressure on basketball coaches to make the tournament.

“But Bobby,” Corrigan argued. “There are 64 bids out there. That’s a lot.”

“Sixty-four bids out of how many teams?” Cremins asked.

Corrigan shrugged. “About 300,” he answered.

Cremins turned to Dean Smith and said, “Dean, you’re the math major, what’s 64 into 300?”

“A little more than 21 percent,” Smith answered.

“Okay,” Cremins said turning back to Corrigan, “how many football teams make bowls?”

“Well, there are 26 bowls right now,” Corrigan said. “So that’s 52 teams.”

“Out of how many?” Cremins said.

“About 100,” Corrigan said.

Cremins turned back to Smith. “Okay Dean, 52 into 100, what percentage is that?”)

Back to our story for today.

So now the NCAA, which went to the 64 team bracket in 1985 is talking about expanding to 96 teams. If it happens they will claim this is being done in the name of fairness which is, of course, a lot of hooey. It will be done to up the TV money and to appease all the whining coaches who think expanding the field will help them keep their jobs.

You see, Cremins wasn’t wrong. There IS tremendous pressure on coaches, especially those at the big-time schools, to make the tournament every year. Jim Boeheim went two straight years without a bid and heard sniping all around him. Gary Williams missed three years out of four and if his team hadn’t rallied last season to make the tournament you can bet his AD would have been trying really hard to find a way to force him out at Maryland.

But the theory that more bids means more job security doesn’t really work. You see right now an NCAA Tournament bid MEANS something. If you expand to 96 teams and the ACC gets nine bids every year instead of six or The Big East gets 12 instead of eight then you’ve got the bowl system—except that a real champion does eventually get crowned.

Making a bowl does not guarantee these days that a coach keeps his job because AD’s know that it is often meaningless. In the BCS leagues, you can schedule three home games against weak opposition and go 3-5 in league play and presto! You are on your way to the Insight Bowl or the Independence Bowl or the fabulous St. Petersburg Bowl where you get to go to Florida—to play indoors.

If there is one thing the NCAA gets right every year (except for the play-in game) it is the basketball tournament. It hit on 64 as the right number 25 years ago and—with good reason—has kept it (almost) right there.

That reminds me. Apparently my good friend Bill Hancock, who is now executive director of the BCS (it is sad when a good man goes to work for the forces of evil) is trying to defend the BCS by talking about ‘bracket-creep,’ in the basketball tournament. Bracket creep? The tournament has expanded by ONE team in 25 years and he calls it bracket creep? Bill also claimed that if there was an eight team playoff this year there would be terrible controversy because two of the four two-loss teams in the major conferences would have been left out of the field. Think about what he’s saying: It is okay to leave three UNBEATEN teams out of the national title picture but really awful to leave out a couple of two-loss teams.

For his next trick, Bill will tell us that if unemployment went down it would be unfair to those still unemployed so maybe it would be better for unemployment to go UP.

I love Bill, I really do. He’s coming to dinner with us Friday night in Philadelphia before Army-Navy. Maybe I can perform an exorcism and save him.

Meantime, the NCAA needs to NOT expand the basketball field. If money is the issue do this: Tell the BCS schools that beginning in 2010 there will be an NCAA Football Bowl Sub-Division Tournament. If an invited team declines to play, none of its other teams can participate in any other NCAA postseason tournament. The NCAA would make more than enough money by having a football tournament to make the dumb idea of expanding the basketball tournament go away. The BCS would go the way of The Edsel, New Coke and pet rocks. And Bill Hancock’s soul would be saved.

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One clarification on yesterday’s blog: I was NOT implying that the replay official got it wrong when he put one second back on the clock in the Texas-Nebraska game. Some hysterical Texas fan claimed that by saying he put one second back on the clock I was implying he got it wrong. I was simply saying he put the second back and almost certainly got it right but wondered if he would have gotten it right if the second had belonged to Nebraska. I stand by that statement. The same fan also went into a long diatribe about why Texas deserves to play in the national title game. I’m not saying Texas does NOT deserve to play in the game. I’m saying under this ridiculous system NONE of us knows who deserves to play in the game. That’s why the question should be resolved through actual competition rather than hysterically bleating that MY TEAM is the best. If your team is the best, it should get the chance to prove it on the field. Period…

One more note: Several people asked last week how I feel about Billy Packer. I like him both personally and professionally. We agreed on almost nothing but arguing with him has always been great fun and I always believed he broke down a basketball game better than anyone. I missed him during last year’s tournament especially during the Friday practices at The Final Four. We had an unofficial tradition of sitting together and arguing about everything while the practices were going on. My favorite year doing that was 2006 when I waved Jim Larranaga over during George Mason’s practice and said, “Billy wanted to be sure he had a chance to congratulate you.” Billy never missed a beat. “Great playing,” he said. Then he turned to me as Larranaga walked away and said, “It still doesn’t mean I was wrong you know.”

Actually it did. But that’s okay.

Amidst all the continuing speculation about what Tiger Woods’ fall from grace will mean to his golf, his endorsements and his legacy, there was a note in the paper this morning about Dick Enberg signing on to do 110 to 120 games on TV for The San Diego Padres this coming season.

I’m really not sure how to take that news. I sincerely hope Dick is happy about it because he’s one of the absolute good guys that I’ve met through the years. What I know is good is that he lives in the San Diego area so this will cut down his travel considerably and I can remember talking to him years ago about constant travel being the one downside of what we all do. Of course back then he had young children so it was tougher, I would guess, than now.

He doesn’t look it on or off camera but Dick is going to be 75 next month.

The first time I laid eyes on Dick Enberg was in December of 1968 when I was a kid trolling the stands at Madison Square Garden for autographs during the Holiday Festival. He was sitting with the UCLA players watching the third place game and, after I’d gotten Lew Alcindor, Curtis Rowe and Sidney Wicks to sign, someone told me that the guy in the front row did the play-by-play for UCLA. Since Marv Albert was a hero of mine I figured it was worth asking him to sign too. I still remember that he asked my name and wrote, “To John,” before signing his name.

I became more familiar with him when I watched the old TV show, “Sports Challenge,” in the 70s, a show which seemed to somehow get every big sports star you might imagine to come on to answer—or in most cases not answer—sports trivia questions. I liked watching for that reason but also because I knew the answer to most of the questions. One thing I DIDN’T like about the show was that when they showed replays of historic moments in sports, Enberg had re-voiced them—no doubt because the technology made it difficult to get a lot of the actual calls. It was nothing against Enberg, it just didn’t feel real to me.

I first really got to know Dick covering college basketball for The Post during the golden era of Enberg, Packer and McGuire on NBC. There was really nothing like watching a game with Packer and McGuire screaming at one another and Enberg playing traffic cop—which he did brilliantly. Back in those days the three of them did a Sunday game-of-the-week and their PR guy, Tom Merritt, would frequently invite writers who were covering the game out to dinner on Saturday night. That was how I first got to know both Al and Dick (I already knew Packer from covering the ACC).

Al was, of course, the star—at dinner and on-the-air—but there was a warmth to Enberg that was, at least to me, clearly genuine. He often joked that he always knew what his future was because Al was seven years older than he was and would always tell him what was in store for him. Whenever Al would crack up a room with a story he would turn to Enberg and say, “Still got it Dixie.”

The break-up of that trio when CBS got the NCAA broadcasting rights prior to the 1982 tournament is still one of the bigger disappointments of my life. Enberg and McGuire stayed together to do regular season games on NBC but Packer moved to CBS. They were briefly re-united in the 90s when all of them landed at CBS.

I got to know Enberg better covering tennis since Bud Collins took me under his wing and often brought me along to various NBC-related events. One of my more vivid memories had nothing to do with NBC: Bud and I and Bob Basche, who worked with Bud at NBC forever, went out for a lengthy dinner in Paris one night and ended up back at the bar at the Hotel Crillon—where NBC stayed in those days—drinking something called Armanjac—not sure if I can spell it and I sure as hell couldn’t drink it. We were all on another planet when Enberg made the mistake of walking past the entrance to the bar, heading to bed with his wife Barbara.

“Monsieur Enberg!” Bud screamed in a bad French accent. “Monsieur Enberg!” He got up and chased Enberg down the hall, demanding he come have a drink with us. Enberg knew—KNEW—he shouldn’t go anywhere near us but he bravely walked into the bar, had a drink AND bought. The fact that I remember any of this is a miracle.

Dick and I were also witness one night to one of Al’s greatest calls. Duke and Arizona had played a game in the Meadowlands in 1989—a showcase for player-of-the-year candidates Danny Ferry and Sean Elliott. Duke was down two in the final seconds when Christian Laettner—who was a freshman—got loose, drove to the basket and got fouled with no time on the clock.

Everyone cleared the floor while the entire crowd—it was a sellout that included Richard Nixon—stood to watch Laettner. He missed. Game over. As soon as the shot rolled off the rim, Mike Krzyzewski raced onto the court, grabbed Laettner and pointed a finger in his face. “Don’t think for one second you lost that game for us,” he said. “You gave us a chance to win.”

That night, Dick, Al and I went to dinner in New York. “I’m gonna tell you something,” Al said. “I’ve seen a lotta things in basketball. What K did right there (he never tried to pronounce his name on or off the air) was one of the best coaching moves I’ve ever seen. I guarantee you—I mean guarantee you—that kid will never miss a big shot the rest of his career.”

If you follow college basketball, you know the rest.

Watching Dick the last few years has been a bit melancholy for me. CBS has treated him well and he was still their number one play-by-play man on tennis but he was reduced to small roles at The Final Four and The Masters (he’d be the first to tell you golf was never his strength) and fell behind Jim Nantz in the football pecking order.

I felt worse for him during the U.S. Open awards ceremony this past September. When Juan Martin del Potro asked if he could say a few words to the crowd in Spanish, someone in the truck was CLEARLY screaming in Dick’s ear something like, “no, no time, get to the corporate sponsors.”

Even at my level of doing TV I know what it’s like when someone is yelling in your ear, sometimes telling you to stop in mid-sentence because, “Pete has Coach so-and-so.” Or when you’re in the middle of telling a story about someone (something Dick always did superbly) and the producer says, “we’ve got a replay of the last foul,”-and throws it on the screen forcing you to break off in mid-sentence and say, “yeah, that’s a foul.”

This was worse. Del Potro had just won the U.S. Open and was very sweetly asking if he could say a few words to the Spanish fans who had cheered him on and some dope in a truck (I suspect I know who it was) is telling the great Dick Enberg to flack for a car rather than give the kid 60 seconds.

Awkwardly Dick said, “Sorry, no time,” and began doing the car schpiel. To Del Potro’s credit he listened and then asked again if he could speak in Spanish. “Okay,” Dick said. “Very quickly.”

Oy. It came off badly. Dick was SO caught in the middle there I really felt for him. CBS later “defended,” him saying it had contractual obligations to mention the sponsors. Fine. The broadcast had already gone past 7 o’clock on a Monday, the producer or director should have let Del Potro have his 60 seconds. What CBS should have said was, “there was a bad call made in the truck that made Dick look bad.”

Now Enberg is leaving CBS—at least for college hoops and the NFL. My bet is he’ll end up not doing tennis even though that possibility was left open. I know he loves baseball so I hope this new gig goes well for him. I’m just sorry I won’t see him on the road—or on CBS—anymore. At his best, he was the best. And he was—and is—always a class act.

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One comment from yesterday’s comments: Gordon, a regular poster, made the point that Bill Clinton was not impeached because of his post-Monica Lewinsky attitude but because he lied under oath. Of course that was technically the reason for his impeachment but my point was Congress never would have had the nerve to do it had it not sensed that the public was very angry with Clinton about his approach to the whole mess. It will be interesting to see how the public reacts to the Tiger Woods, “I was wrong but the media is (always) more wrong,” apology. Time will tell.

Everyone has Thanksgiving traditions. Even now, I try to sit down and watch the start of the football game from Detroit because I remember doing it as a kid. That’s been tough in recent years because the Lions have been so bad and, most of the time, the game has been out of hand by midway in the second quarter. At least yesterday it was competitive into the second half.

I know there has been talk about taking Thanksgiving away from the Lions. I think that would be a terrible decision. Yes, they’ve been lousy for a long time but at some point they will improve and there are some traditions you don’t mess with. They’ve played Thanksgiving football in Detroit since 1934. You don’t blow up a tradition like that so that a TV network can pick up a ratings point or two.

The game in Dallas is the one I don’t understand. I’m okay with the Cowboys hosting it but I wonder what the NFL is thinking sometimes when it chooses the opponent. It isn’t like with the Lions where they’re locked in. Did it come as a shock to the schedule-makers that the Raiders are bad again this year? If this is a year when the NFC East plays the AFC West why not send the Chargers in there on Thanksgiving Day? Or at least the Broncos.

Who would have thought that the highlight of Thanksgiving Day would be ESPN’s decision to create a bunch of college basketball tournaments? My goodness, do I owe the Bristol boys a thank-you note?

Actually my favorite Thanksgiving tradition the last dozen or so years has been getting up to go workout at the pool. Among the holidays, Thanksgiving is usually the best one for a workout because people aren’t feeling guilty yet about too much holiday eating and it isn’t New Years’—worst day of the year—when everyone has made their resolutions to lose weight.

This Thanksgiving workout had a little more meaning than some others. It was my first real attempt to swim since my heart surgery. I’ve been cleared to swim for a couple months but, to be honest, I was so far behind in my work that committing the time was really difficult. It was a lot easier to just walk for an hour than to get in the car, drive to the pool, workout and drive home. So, I made a deal with myself: as a soon as I finished the two books I was working on (one on the ’03 majors; the other the fifth book in the kids mystery series) I would make a serious effort to get back in swimming shape.

I finished the second book on Wednesday. Thursday morning I was in the pool. To say that I’m out of shape is like saying Dick Vitale talks a lot. Actually, my legs aren’t too bad because of the walking and the same is true of my wind. I was able to hold my turns for about as long as normal. The problem is my arms. They felt as if they had 50-pound weights on them. I did a set of 6x50 meters on 1:15 that would normally be an easy warm down set, one that if I was really in shape I’d swim butterfly. I was seriously hurting before I was finished. At the very end I tried to swim ONE length of butterfly. It felt like the end of a 200 fly.

So, I’ve got a long, long way to go. Still, it felt SO good to be back in. I made it through 1,300 meters—a nice warm-up for most of my friends—but was happy I did it. As soon as I finish writing this morning, I’m heading back to the pool. Maybe by spring I’ll be in some kind of shape.

Among all the holidays, Thanksgiving is probably the one I’ve had to work or travel on least often. It is only in recent years that a lot of college hoops has been played at Thanksgiving. I remember flying home on a red eye from the Maui Classic one year when Maryland played in it and getting home on Thanksgiving morning.

Probably my most memorable Thanksgiving trip was way back in 1984 when Maryland went to The Great Alaska Shootout. The games didn’t start until Friday—in those days no one played before Thanksgiving Day—but I flew on the same flight with Maryland on Tuesday since the flight went through Salt Lake City and Seattle before landing in Anchorage.

In Seattle, we were joined by the Kansas team, which had flown from Kansas City to Seattle. Larry Brown was on the flight with his wife. Lefty Driesell looked at Larry’s wife and said, “You decided to make this trip? No way could I get Joyce to come this far especially to go to Alaska.”

“She just can’t bear to be away from me for five days,” Brown said.

“Yeah, that’s my whole problem,” Lefty said. “The only one who can’t bear to be away from me for five days is Feinstein.”

He was probably right about that.

Anchorage was a little bit like a wild west town—lots of bars and guys who were miners or prospectors. Seriously. The sun came up at about 10:30. I remember waking up on Thanksgiving morning to go down and have breakfast so I could be back in my room at 8:30 to watch the kickoff of the Lions game. It was really eerie watching the game when the sun hadn’t come up yet.

A guy named Happy Fine was the Maryland beat reporter for The Washington Times back then and he insisted on making a “pilgrimage,” to the gym on the Air Force base where Patrick Ewing had made his college debut three years earlier. By 1984 the tournament had moved to a brand new 8,000 seat building. Loren Tate, the long-time Illinois broadcaster walked in the first day looked around and said, “it’s just another gym—except this one’s a long way from home.”

UAB ended up beating Kansas in the final after Kansas had come from way behind to beat Maryland in the first game. I still remember a young Kansas assistant named John Calipari who I had met the previous summer at the Five-Star camp grabbing my arm in the locker room and saying, “you aren’t going to believe how good Danny Manning is going to be.”

Manning was a Kansas freshman at the time. We flew home on a red eye on Sunday night. I remember buying an “Alaska,” coffee mug in the gift shop at the airport because I’d forgotten to buy any souvenirs. I still have the mug 25 years later.

A month later, Maryland played in The Rainbow Classic in Hawaii—in those days you could play in two exempt events in the same season—and I interviewed Lefty on Christmas morning sitting on a balcony overlooking the ocean.

“Faahnsteen,” he said. “Think about it. Because of me, you’ve gotten to see the world this year.”

I didn’t argue.

One story that I think most people noticed in Monday’s paper was the announcement that Northeastern University is dropping football after 87 years. It is always sad—very sad—when these things occur, when players who have given heart-and-soul, regardless of the team’s record, are told they no longer have a team to play for anymore.

In recent years, schools have dropped sports because of economic pressures all over the country. In fact, another Boston school—Boston University—dropped football several years ago. The day will come—mark my words—when a Division 1-A school has to drop football and then it will be a huge national story.

Whenever something like this happens, two of the great myths of American life come into play: the first is that football is a money-making venture for many colleges. It is not. A handful of schools—perhaps 30 to 35—make money, some of them very big money playing football. Most Division 1-A schools struggle to break even because the scholarship costs are so huge and because for all the gurgling about being ‘bowl eligible,’ very few teams make money and most LOSE money going to second-tier bowl games. The payout doesn’t balance the costs of travel for the team, band and cheerleaders not to mention that all those bowls require every school to buy a certain number of tickets—many of which frequently go untouched by the team’s fans and alumni.

That’s myth number one. Myth number two is far more dangerous: The reason for teams being disbanded is Title IX. Every time a men’s team is dropped at a school—swimming has been nailed as much as any sport so I’m very aware of this trend—people start saying this is all the fault of Title IX. I heard it again yesterday when the Northeastern story came up on the radio: that damn Title IX went and did it again.

No, it didn’t. In most cases when schools kill off minor sports it is because they are spending so much money on a non-money-making football program that something has to go. Occasionally it is about compliance numbers but if a school is in the black financially it can ADD a women’s program to be in compliance rather than drop a men’s program. Most schools that give out 85 scholarships to compete in Division 1-A or 63 to compete in Division 1-AA are bleeding money.

Here’s what should change: the number of allowable football scholarships. Why in the world do 1-A schools need 85 scholarships? The answer is simple: to allow coaches to cover up their recruiting mistakes. That’s why you’re allowed to sign up to 25 players in a year. Do the math - 25x5 (most big schools redshirt some, most or all of their freshmen) equals 125. You can’t have more than 85 scholarships in play at any one time. Even if you account for natural attrition through injuries, kids deciding not to play or transferring because they want to play more, that still leaves a bunch of kids who need to be run off every year.

Remember, an NCAA scholarship is a ONE year commitment. It’s ironic with all the hand-wringing that goes on about athletes walking out on their ‘commitment,’ early to turn pro, that no one ever says anything about the fact that a coach can pull a kid’s scholarship at the end of any school year—without a reason. Usually it is because the kid isn’t as good as he was supposed to be when he was being recruited. And, more often than not, coaches aren’t dumb enough to say to a kid: “I’m pulling your scholarship, get out.” There’s too much potential bad publicity in that. So, they tell the kid he’s not likely to play, that he’s called a coach at another school and he has him lined up for a soft landing someplace else. Most kids want to play: if they get the message that isn’t going to happen, they leave willingly without making a federal case out of their scholarship being pulled.

Football doesn’t need 85 scholarships at the 1-A level or 63 at the 1-AA level. The numbers should be more like 60 and 40—maximum. Imagine how much money that would save schools that could be used on non-revenue sports for men and women and on the facilities schools constantly claim they don’t have. Northeastern Athletic Director Peter Robey claimed it was an inability to pay for better facilities that drove his decision to drop the football team. If a scholarship at Northeastern costs $30,000 a year—probably a conservative number—and the school could pay for 23 fewer scholarships each year and still compete with it’s D-1AA brethren, that would be a savings of about $700,000 a year—minimum. That’s a pretty good start, no?

Title IX remains one of the most important pieces of legislation ever passed. Is it perfect? No. For example, the notion that the Maryland women’s basketball team should have the exact same facilities as the men’s basketball team is foolish: the men’s team, for all intents and purposes, funds the women’s team which—in spite of great recent success—costs about $3 million a year to operate.

That said, Title IX has done FAR more good than bad. It has changed the way girls growing up in this country look at the world. My daughter Brigid is a perfect example. She plays golf and tennis, swims and was on her volleyball team and is trying out for the fifth-sixth grade basketball team this week. Prior to 1973 few if any of those opportunities existed for her. She could have been a cheerleader and that was about it.

In fact, it was Brigid who pointed out a flaw to me in my most recent kids mystery, “Change-Up,” which is set at The World Series. On a number of occasions during the book people express amazement that the female protagonist, 14-year-old Susan Carol Anderson, knows as much as she does about sports.

Brigid, who just turned 12 and has been smarter than me since she was about two, said to me one day: “You know dad you shouldn’t say all the time that it’s so amazing that Susan Carol knows sports. I know in your day (I love that phrase) girls didn’t do sports very much but now we ALL do sports.”

She’s right of course. And that’s a very good thing at all levels. So when a football team goes away or a swimming team or a wrestling team disappears, let’s not point the finger at Title IX. There may be the occasional case where it has something to do with the end of a team—though NEVER football, that’s just about costs being out of control—but the good that it has done FAR outweighs any bad.

Tell the NCAA to bring football spending under control a little bit. That would do a lot more good than complaining about the existence of a women’s field hockey team.

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Just in case you missed it, Texas played Iowa in Kansas City last night in another of those exempt events with about 14 corporate names on it. Iowa was there even though it LOST in the so-called tournament to Duquesne. Like with the Coaches vs. Cancer event in New York, the “semi-finalists,” were pre-determined by the group running the event and by TV. (Like the world is dying to see Iowa play, right?)

There are a couple of things that really bother me about this in addition to the fraudulent nature of it all. First, the National Association of Basketball Coaches is one of the sponsors (and I would guess beneficiaries) of both the New York and Kansas City events. How can the NABC sanction a so-called competition in which a loser advances and a winner does not? The coaches should be ashamed. For the record, I dropped a note last week to Jim Haney, the executive director of the NABC asking him if he could tell me how much money had actually been turned over to cancer research groups the past few years by the Coaches vs. Cancer event. I’m still waiting for a response.

The other factor in this is that Duquesne is a terrific story. Ron Everhart took over a program in turmoil four years ago and then the entire school had to deal with the shootings two years that involved several players. Everhart got Duquesne to the NIT last year—it’s first postseason appearance in forever—and appears to have a very solid team this year. But heck, what does that matter? Iowa is in The Big Ten.

This smacks of the BCS—and that’s no compliment.

Today’s blog is about corruption in college athletics. Oh My God, I may end up writing my next book before I’m done.

Let us begin with one of my favorite people on earth: Bill Hancock. For many years, Bill was a voice of reason and calm and kindness at The NCAA. When he took over the basketball tournament’s media operations along with Jim Marchiony (another very good man who is now at Kansas) everything changed after the Reign of Terror/Error of the late Dave Cawood—not a good man.

Several years ago, Bill was persuaded to go work for the BCS in large part because the NCAA’s move from Kansas City to Indianapolis had been tough on his family. He is the one person connected with the BCS with whom I refrain from using profanity when discussing how corrupt and god-awful the whole thing is. You simply can’t get mad at Bill. It is a little bit like convincing yourself that there’s something inherently wrong with Sesame Street. Bill is just all good.

Last week, the criminals posing as commissioners and presidents and athletic directors who run the BCS did a very smart thing: they made Bill the face of the BCS, naming him as their executive director. Remember a few weeks ago when some of the BCS Dons announced that they had decided their biggest problem was that they hadn’t defended their system well enough? Well, this is their solution: send Bill out to defend it because even people like me aren’t going to want to jump on Bill Hancock with both feet.

Bill is a man of substance defending something that has no substance. But he will do it well. In one of his first radio interviews since being promoted Bill talked about how great the bowl system is because so many teams get to end their season with a win; so many teams get to be rewarded for their seasons and get to travel to places they wouldn’t otherwise get to see.

As always, Bill told the truth. And I know he meant every word. Of course his argument is completely specious. To begin with, blowing up the BCS and replacing it with a playoff doesn’t mean changing the bowl system even a little bit. All those deserving 6-6 teams will still get rewarded with trips to Shreveport, Toronto, Detroit, Birmingham and Houston—to name a few of the high points on the bowl system world tour. Half of those teams will still get to win their final game. Knowing Bill, he would probably like it if there were some way to ensure they could ALL win their final game.

What’s more, the second-tier bowl system is as corrupt in its own way as the BCS, we just care less about the corruption. All the so-called bowl “tie-ins,” are ridiculous. Why should every team in a BCS conference that goes 6-6—often by scheduling three cream-puff non-conference home games be “rewarded,” with some kind of postseason trip? There are too many bowls—the NCAA hands out bowl certifications like candy at a Halloween party—and then all these self-important yahoos walk around in their ugly jackets acting like they’re saving the world with their bowl games.

I’ll give you an example of what I mean. In 1996 Army was 9-1 and Navy was 8-2 going into the Army-Navy game. The bowl game in Shreveport—I forget what corporate name was slapped on it at the time—announced it would invite the winner of the game to play. Since Army and Navy didn’t have bowl tie-ins at the time this was something of a relief that at least one of them was guaranteed a spot in a bowl. During Army-Navy week though it began to look as if one of the conferences tied into the bowl in Hawaii wouldn’t produce enough bowl eligible teams and word was if that happened, the bowl would invite the Army-Navy loser since Army and Navy had already agreed to send the winner to Shreveport because it was the only sure thing on the table.

On the night before the game I was standing around at a party with a group of people. The Shreveport bowl people were there being squired around like royalty by the athletic directors, which I found kind of amusing. I made the comment to some people that something had to be wrong when the WINNER of the game got to go to Shreveport and the LOSER got to go to Hawaii. One of the Shreveport guys overheard me.

Pointing his finger in my face he said, “you don’t like Shreveport maybe we won’t invite either one of you, how would you like that? We’ll go find someone else who WANT to come to Shreveport, who appreciates getting the bid to our bowl.”

I looked at the guy and said. “To begin with, I don’t represent either school, so feel free to NOT invite ME to Shreveport. Second of all get over yourself—you’re running a fifth rate bowl and anyone who thinks going to Shreveport in December instead of Hawaii is a good idea needs serious therapy.”

Cooler heads prevailed before Mr. Shreveport and I could really get into it but seriously folks this is the way a lot of these guys think. Every time I encounter one of them at a game—they’re easy to recognize because of the silly jackets—you would think they were the U.N. Ambassador from someplace, not the bowl rep from Memphis or Fort Worth.

So, long story short, no one is saying those bowls need to go away. They can stay just as they are and everyone who doesn’t make the NCAA football tournament can continue to play in them the same way teams play in the NIT in basketball. What’s more, as Bill well knows, if the four BCS bowls became part of the tournament rotation they would all be a big deal as opposed to now when one of them is a big deal.

One more BCS note: according to at least one of the many ‘bowl prognosticators,’ if Oklahoma State beats Oklahoma next week it will get a BCS bowl bid over Boise State. A team that was life-and-death to beat Colorado (at home) last night would go over an undefeated team. Seriously, other than my pal Bill (who knows better deep in his heart) is there anyone out there who doesn’t think the BCS makes the guy in Afghanistan who took the $30 million bribe look like a fairly decent guy?

Onto basketball corruption: two items today. Someone asked in a post the other day what my problem was with the “I won’t-mention-the-corporate-name/Coaches vs. Cancer Tournament.” There’s a couple things: First, the semifinalists were Syracuse, California, North Carolina and Ohio State. That’s a good field. My problem with it is that their presence last night in Madison Square Garden was decided in AUGUST.

I call it the “Gardner-Webb rule.” Remember a few years ago when Gardner-Webb beat Kentucky and went to the Garden? The corporate geeks running the event and, I guess, ESPN decided they didn’t want to take any chance on an upset. So, even if one of the other 12 teams in the tournament had upset one of the big four, it would not have been playing last night. Last I looked in a real competition you win, you advance, you lose you go home. Not in this event. Don’t call these guys semi-finalists. It implies they had to do something to get that far. The fact is—even though the four teams DID win their games on their home courts—there was no chance for them not to advance.

The other thing—and this goes on everywhere—is that for all the trumpeting about this being a charity event, the corporate logo is slapped in giant letters at mid-court and all over the court. There is ONE “Coaches vs. Cancer,” logo--if you look carefully under one basket. Here’s a question I would love answered: how many NET dollars from this event actually go to cancer research? Coaches vs. Cancer must be a tax-exempt 501C3 organization so it should be required to answer that question.

Last thing on corruption: Did anyone see the story on AOL the other day on the apparent myriad violations committed at South Florida (okay, ALLEGED myriad violations) by this guy named Terrelle Woody, “personal trainer,” to Gus Gilchrist? Woody basically got thrown off campus at Maryland in the spring of 2008 when Gilchrist was enrolled there so he and Gilchrist landed at South Florida where—surprise—Coach Stan Heath put Woody on the payroll.

Now there are all these allegations about illegal workouts and Woody coaching guys up in the locker room during games even though he wasn’t a coach. Heath’s responses to the charges sound a lot like Ron Ziegler during Watergate. The best one is when asked about Woody coaching players he’s says, “any bozo can tell guys, ‘play hard.’” He’s right. But most of those bozos aren’t on the payroll and don’t have access to the locker room during games do they?

Maybe Heath can sign on as Bill Hancock’s assistant at the BCS. Then again, maybe not. Bill will do just fine on his own—or at least better than anyone else can do in an absolutely impossible job.

Last night was what my son Danny describes as, “a big night for my dad.”

I cooked dinner after picking him up from school, started a fire in the fireplace in my office (the main reason I bought this house) and sat down in front of the TV.

On nights like this—which are too rare as far as I’m concerned—it doesn’t bother me that much if there isn’t anything to watch on TV. I basically gave up on watching network shows years ago: I will watch the occasional ‘Seinfeld,’ rerun although I’ve even become selective about that. Festivus for the rest of us I’ll watch every time and the one where Steinbrenner goes to George’s house to tell his parents that George is dead and Mr. Costanza’s response is, “what were you thinking trading Jay Buhner for Ken Phelps!” I’ll watch every time. Some of the later episodes not so much.

Anyway, the way it works, I’ll surf around. If the Islanders are playing—especially these days now that I have the hockey package again (hallelujah!)--I’ll probably watch them. Is there someone on Long Island who can tell me what is going on at The Nassau Coliseum that they are currently on a two week, seven game road trip? During baseball season I can usually find a baseball game to watch and now that college hoops is underway there is almost always a college game I’m interested in for one reason or another.

If all else fails, I press two buttons and go to my ‘West Wing,’ DVD. I’m watching season two again right now.

Last night was what most would consider a slim pickings night. But two things drew me in—one briefly, almost like gazing at the scene of a car accident—the other for almost the entire game.

The car accident was a football game between Central Michigan and Ball State. It wasn’t that matchup that caused me to pause on the game. At 1-9, Ball State is a shadow of the team it was the last two years with Nate Davis at quarterback. Central Michigan is the MAC’s best team at 8-2, including a win over Michigan State. The game figured to be—and was—a mismatch.

What caused me to pause was ESPN showing a couple of The Ball State seniors being greeted pre-game because it was, “senior night.” The play-by-play guy—they really DO sound all alike don’t they—was talking about Ball State only having 11 seniors and how that really boded well for next year and Trent Dilfer, who I guess was trying out as a color man, went on about the team’s potential for 2010 so much I was wondering if Ball State might be ranked in the top ten preseason.

What got me though was this: the rain was pouring down as the seniors and their families walked onto the field. The far side of the stadium was just about empty—I mean EMPTY—because who is coming out on a miserable Wednesday night to see a bad team play football?

This was the memory those seniors and their families would take with them of their last home college football game. Look, it might have rained on Saturday—it’s November in Indiana. I lived there for a year, I get it. But a day game on a Saturday, you’re going to get a better crowd. Maybe the sun will come out for a while. There were no students in sight, they had better things to do no doubt on a school night with exams approaching. I just thought it was sad.

I know the genie is out of the bottle on these weeknight college football games but can’t there be SOME limits. Can’t the presidents intervene and say—no weeknight games after Halloween? The answer of course is no but I wish the president of Ball State would look at that tape and at least wonder if that was the way a bunch of kids who gave the school four—or five—years of hard work playing football wanted to go out. There’s nothing that can be done now about the 1-10 record. It would have been nice though if those seniors—who were a part of two bowl teams and a 10-0 start last year—could have gone out with a little more dignity than on a Wednesday night, in a pouring rain with literally almost no one but friends and family watching.

I watched one Central Michigan drive because their quarterback is supposed to be a pro prospect. Dilfer at one point said he was every bit as good a football player as Tim Tebow or Colt McCoy. I’m so glad no one on TV goes in for hyperbole.

Having heard enough of that I switched over to the Loyola-UMBC basketball game. As people know, this is one of my quirks—I love games like this. I know both coaches well—Randy Monroe at UMBC first gained national attention for throwing his team out of the locker room for a week, then built the team into an NCAA Tournament team a couple years ago. I wrote a column about him after the locker room incident and he said, “I know Knight has done it, I know Krzyzewski has done it. I figured they were pretty good role models.”

I’ve know Loyola’s Jimmy Patsos since he survived—the correct word to use—12 years as an assistant to Gary Williams at Maryland.

Patsos has worked tirelessly to get Loyola to the top of the MAAC since taking over a team that had been 1-27. He won 18 games two years ago but has never been able to get over the Siena-Niagara hump at the top of the league. Last year he got national attention for the wrong reasons—leaving his bench to sit in the stands during a game because he was upset with the officiating; holding Stephen Curry scoreless in a game by double or triple teaming him all night but losing the game by 30.

Is he nuts? He worked for Gary for 12 years, of course he’s nuts. He’s also a very good man who tries very hard to make playing college basketball more than just about basketball for his players. He makes them go to museums on the road. During one pre-game talk last year he quoted Harvey Milk, Shakespeare and Clarence Thomas (okay, no one is perfect).

He also has a pretty good team this year. He’s got a smart little point guard who can really pass and some experience up front, plus Shane Walker, a Maryland transfer who clearly has some potential. The game was back-and-forth the entire second half with both coaches screaming (and I do mean screaming) at their players on almost every possession. Loyola pulled it out late, running really good offense when it had to and getting the ball inside after settling for quick shots while blowing a 10 point lead.

My old pal Hoops Weiss (two mentions in a row for him this week) who knows every coach ever born frequently walks out after games saying, “I’m vurry, vurry (he’s from Philly) pleased for (fill-in-the-winning-coach’s-name) but vurry, vurry disappointed for (fill-in-the-losing coach’s-name. They’re both good friends of mine.”

I felt like Hoops last night. Vurry, vurry pleased for Jimmy, vurry, vurry disappointed for Randy. Once I finish the kids book I’m working on (it is set at Army-Navy and will be done by, I hope, Thanksgiving) I’ll get out and see their teams play in person.

I was going to write about Al McGuire this morning in response to a post yesterday after the Dick Vitale blog but he merits an entire blog—and more. Just too many Al stories to tell. He was a good friend—who wrote the introduction to ‘A Season on the Brink.’

I will leave you with one quick story because there really are a million. Al had instincts about people like no one I’ve ever met. During the year I was in Bloomington he came out to do a couple of games for NBC. Whenever he did, Knight would put together dinner the night before the game. On the night before the last game Al was working, he looked at Bob and I at one point and said, “this is kind of a sad night for me.”

Why, we asked.

“Because this is the last time I’m going to see the two of you together.”

Again we asked, why?

Al laughed. “Because once this book comes out, you’ll never speak to one another again.”

Like I said, he really knew people. More to come—a lot more—about Al on another day. Let me add one more thing: I really miss him.

I didn’t watch very much of ESPN’s 24 hours of college basketball on Tuesday. I actually thought it might be fun to get up at 6 a.m. to watch a basketball game but then realized I had to get up at 6:45 anyway to get my son to school. I was out for most of the afternoon though I caught snippets of the Temple-Georgetown game and then watched Duke-Charlotte until it became a route (which was about five minutes in); a little bit of Louisville-Arkansas and a lot of Gonzaga-Michigan State. I didn’t stay up for Kansas-Memphis because, well, I had to get up at 6:45 again.

Maybe that was the game Dick Vitale did because I didn’t see him or hear him on any of the other games and there’s no way ESPN would televise 146 games on the same day without Vitale. Then again, maybe they sent him to New York for that bogus, ‘Coaches vs. Cancer,’ thing where the four teams advancing to the semifinals were pre-ordained by the promoters regardless of whether they won or lost their early round games. The network, believe it or not, doesn’t consult with me on these things.

It’s remarkable to think about how popular Vitale is and how IMPORTANT he has become to college basketball. I remember 20 years ago some people saying that his act was bound to wear thing, that 10 years was probably about enough and that he would be yesterday’s news soon.

Not exactly. Vitale’s been at it for 30 years now and if there is one guy that ESPN really can’t afford to lose its Vitale. Seriously. If the network decided tomorrow to tell Bob Knight he had to wear a jacket-and-tie like everyone else and he took a walk people would hardly notice. My friend Jay Bilas is very good at what he does but at ESPN it really doesn’t matter if you’re any good. They just put you on the air, promote you and promote you and promote you and eventually people actually think you’re good. Quality doesn’t really matter. ESPN is all about quantity.

But I digress. I know there are people out there who insist they can’t watch a Vitale game without turning down the sound. There are moments when he goes off on one of his tangents or starts promoting every assistant coach alive for a head coaching job or defends guys who are indefensible that you shake your head. I get that and I know there are those out there who would be happy if Dick retired tomorrow.

But here’s what you need to understand about Vitale: it’s all real. The enthusiasm, the love of the game, of the coaches, the players, the settings, the fans and of just getting to be DICK VITALE. He loves every second of it and, unlike a lot of guys who have become rich and famous, he truly appreciates it. He never moans about how tough his life is because he knows he’s been remarkably lucky even though he has had some serious health scares in recent years.

Let me say this: I didn’t always feel this way. Dick and I battled a lot years ago because I really did think it was an act and he was a shameless, self-promoter. We had a few shouting matches, most notably one night at Duke when he came out before the game and began throwing copies of his (first) book to the students (I refuse to call them the Cameron Crazies, they need less publicity these days not more) while they dove on one another to grab it because it was free and because it was from Dicky V.

I was standing at the end of the court watching all this when Vitale tossed the last book and walked over to me.

“Hey John, why don’t you do that with your books?” he said.

“Because people BUY mine Dick.”

It was a cheap shot and Dick correctly took it that way. We had a pretty good shouting match right there during which I probably said some things I shouldn’t have said and he probably did too. But I started it.

We also did the Larry King (radio) show together once—a booking neither of us was thrilled about—and that became a shout-fest too. I was on him for his association with Nike and he was on me for being on him all the time. King said it was great radio. I’m not so certain.

Fast forward a few years to 1993 when my mother died very suddenly. I had written a cathartic piece in Basketball Times about her and not long after it was published I received a lengthy, handwritten note from…you guessed it, Dick. He talked about my mom and how proud she must have been of me and said that even though he and I disagreed often he had great respect for my work and for my passion. “That’s one thing we share John,” he wrote. “We’re both passionate about basketball and what we do and I will NEVER not respect someone like you who brings those things to the table.”

I sat there and one thought ran through my head: he’s a bigger man than I am. I wrote back and told him that. We’ve been friends ever since. In fact, Dick came and spoke—for free, he usually gets huge fees to speak—at my charity golf tournament three years ago.

So while I still understand those who say their ears hurt after a Vitale game, let’s all be honest: if there weren’t Vitale games college hoops wouldn’t be the same. A lot of joy would go out of the game and if there’s one thing big time college sports needs more of it is joy. Everyone is SO serious about things (myself included a lot of the time) most notably coaches who take THEMSELVES so seriously.

Not Dick. Can you imagine Knight or any of the other ex-coaches who fill the airwaves being passed up through the stands in student sections around the country? The passion is genuine but so is the joy, the fun he is so clearly having. I know Dick loves being on the air, loves being at the big games (we all do) but I also know he loves standing around in a press room before a game arguing about teams and players and staying up long into the night doing the same thing.

So, I missed him last night. I thought maybe he’d have Michigan State-Gonzaga but it was Steve Lavin who definitely has better hair than Vitale but is no Vitale.

Actually no one but Vitale is Vitale. You can make fun of him, you can joke about him, you can hold your ears. In my first kids mystery, “Last Shot,” which is set at The Final Four, the boy protagonist, Stevie Thomas, is about to be introduced to Vitale by my real life pal Dick (Hoops) Weiss.

“Does he bite?” Stevie asks Hoops.

Actually there’s almost no bite in Dick Vitale. Just a lot of love and a lot joy. It isn’t a college basketball season without Dicky V. And if you disagree with me, that’s perfectly fine, but you’re missing out on a slice of Americana.

Long live—and long talk, shout, scream, revel in it all—Dick Vitale.

As I'm sure is apparent to anyone who reads this blog, I love doing Navy football games on the radio. There is only one drawback and that's the fact that I don't have the flexibility to go to games involving other teams, especially this time of year. Every week I look at the schedule and, while I look forward to the game I'm doing that Saturday, I see games I'd really like to be able to go to that week.

More often than not, these aren't the games the TV talking heads are analyzing and re-analyzing 47 times during the week. This Saturday, I would love to be at the Williams-Amherst game. I've never seen one although I know all about the traditions--thanks in large part to a superb piece my pal Larry Dorman wrote in The New York Times years back--and I know that just about every year the game decides the league title. This year is no different: Amherst is 7-0, Williams is 6-1. In their conference the schools play eight games, none outside the conference, so it is pretty easy to figure out who is in first place. To give ESPN credit, it did take its self-important College Game Day show up there a couple years ago, a rare acknowledgment from the BCS apologists that there is football outside the six major conferences.

There is also Penn at Harvard this Saturday which will pretty much decide The Ivy League title. Al Bagnoli has coached at Penn for 17 years, Tim Murphy at Harvard for 16. They have been the league's dominant coaches during that time, each winning multiple league titles and putting together undefeated seasons. Penn, by the way, has played more games than any college football program in history--it just went past 1,300 last month. In the 1890s, John Heisman played there. Later he coached there. That game would be a lot of fun to see.

The other game I'd really like to see on Saturday won't be played very far from Harvard: Lafayette at Holy Cross. I have an affinity, as people know, for The Patriot League because of the book I wrote a few years back, "The Last Amateurs," about Patriot League basketball and because I continue to do the league's basketball TV package. (It is on CBS College Sports this year for those of you who need to sign up to get that network). But because of my friendships with people in the league, I follow the football programs pretty closely too.

When I was working on the book, Lehigh was the dominant program in the conference. Now, the Mountain Hawks have fallen off and Lafayette, Holy Cross and Colgate--which reached the Division 1-AA national championship game a few years back--have come on to the class of the league. Holy Cross is a remarkable story. Six years ago, Crusaders Coach Dan Allen was dying of ALS, trying to coach from a wheelchair. He died not long after the 2003 season ended and was replaced by Tom Gilmore who has done a remarkable rebuilding job.

The key though for the Crusaders has been their quarterback, Dominic Randolph, who didn't even start in high school and is now getting serious looks from NFL scouts. Pete Thamel wrote a great piece in The New York Times on Randolph a few weeks ago which included quotes from his high school coach. One of them was, "Someday when Dom's an NFL quarterback people are going to say, 'so who's the dope who didn't start him in high school?" I love coaches like that. The final score of this game might be 70-63 because both teams can score but can't, as my old pal Bob Knight used to say, "guard the floor." Lafayette beat Colgate 56-39 last week. Holy Cross's only loss was to Brown in a game in which the two quarterbacks threw more than 100 passes and gained close to 1,000 yards.

Of course next week is Harvard-Yale, The Game as it is called. It's in New Haven this year. Navy is off. Maybe, if I can get a hall pass, I'll take a drive up there. I saw Harvard-Yale once, way back in my early days at The Post, in Boston. At either place, it is a unique experience. The only problem this year is that Yale isn't very good, although it does have a good defense.

I'm not saying the big time games aren't worth seeing or that I don't care about them. I do. I would probably care more if the games were leading to a playoff rather the silly BCS, but they are still worthy of attention. I've never been to USC-UCLA and would like to do that someday. I'd like to see Boise State play and I'd like to see TCU play. I know Gary Patterson from his Navy days and couldn't be happier for the success he has had since taking over at TCU. I'd like to spend some time at South Carolina and hang out with Steve Spurrier. He may not be the coaching superstar he was in his Florida days but he's still as entertaining and interesting as anyone in the sport. I'd like to see West Virginia play Pittsburgh, regardless of the team's records in a given year. There are plenty of other traditional games worth seeing and maybe someday I'll have a chance to do that. At least I get to see Army-Navy every year. That's one game I would never miss under any circumstances.

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I finally watched The Len Bias ESPN documentary the other night. I had avoided it, in part because I'm really not into the self-aggrandizing ESPN series which pop up as self-celebrations every five years, but more because I know the story, I lived the story and I didn't think I needed to see someone else's version of the story. But, I was flipping around the other night, missing baseball, with no hockey to watch and came upon it being rerun, so I stopped on it because my pal Mike Wilbon was on the screen at that moment.

I'm almost hesitant to write about this because every time I write about ESPN I know my bias against the suits who run the place is probably in play. But I sat there and watched and waited for someone to say something like, "Len Bias did this to himself." Instead, it almost sounded as if Len Bias was a martyr. One person after another came on screen to say what a great guy Len Bias was and then--this was the best part--how he had saved lives by dying as if he had run into a burning house to rescue people and died after carrying people to safety.

Look, I knew Len Bias well. I covered Maryland during his sophomore and junior seasons and saw him emerge as a star. I liked him and spent considerable time with him. Check the clips on the stories I wrote about him. He was bright, a talented artist, almost a mama's boy when I covered him. He admitted to me once that he took his laundry home for his mother to do whenever he had the chance. I also know during his senior year, when everyone knew he was going to be a very high draft pick, a lot of people who knew him became concerned about the hangers-on who had come into his life. I heard it from a number of people second-hand because that was the year I was in Indiana doing "A Season on the Brink."

Bias's death was stunning and it haunted Maryland for years and years. It was one of the reasons Bobby Ross fled as football coach and it led to Lefty Driesell being forced out as coach by the self-righteous chancellor John Slaughter. Slaughter then hired a high school coach, Bob Wade, who promptly got Maryland into an NCAA investigation that led to major sanctions. In 1997, when I was doing my book on ACC basketball--11 years after Bias's death--Maryland lost a game at Duke. Afterwards, I sat with alone with Gary Williams, who was in the process of rebuilding from the rubble left after Bias and after Wade. Gary was disconsolate and emotional at that moment. He later told me regretted saying what he'd said but at that moment I know it was what he felt.

"When a player comes to Duke," he said, "he expects to play in The Final Four. There are times when I think all our players want to do is get out of here (Maryland) without dying of an overdose of cocaine."

An over-reaction to a tough loss? Perhaps. But it symbolized just how much Bias's ghost continued to stalk the Maryland campus. I believe it was only after Gary took Maryland to the Final Four in 2001 and won the national title in 2002 that it was finally exorcised.

There's almost none of that in the ESPN documentary. There are just excuses: people didn't know how serious cocaine was in 1986 (they may not have known it could be instantly fatal but they certainly knew it was dangerous and illegal). The notion that Bias had never used before is repeated by almost everyone except the county prosecutor who says, "recreational users don't use that pure a form of cocaine."

Many, if not most of the people interviewed barely knew Len Bias. The exceptions of course, are his parents, Lefty Driesell and some of his ex-teammates. Understandably, they want to protect his memory. Even Brian Tribble, the guy who was doing cocaine with Bias that night, is portrayed as someone who just made this one horrible mistake--even though it was seven years later that he was convicted for drug possession.

Clearly a lot of money was spent on this thing and, since ESPN can self-promote better than anyone, it will get a lot of attention. I would like to think if it was any good, if it shed any new light on the tragedy, that I would say so and give credit where it was due. To me though, it came off as an infomercial. No one doubts that Bias's death was a tragedy and there's no questioning that it had a deep, long-term affect on many, many people. I liked Len Bias, enjoyed the time I spent with him. But he was no martyr regardless of how many people the director lined up to lionize him.

The summer that Bias died, Bob Knight spoke at The Five Star camp. He talked about the dangers of drug-use to the campers. "A lot of people think that using drugs is cool," Knight said. "Len Bias thought it was cool. He was so cool that now he's cold."

That may sound cold and harsh. Sadly, Knight spoke the truth--unlike most of the people on camera during the documentary.

Abdul-Jabbar has leukemia; the college basketball season began last night. Abdul-Jabbar, when he was Lew Alcindor, was the greatest college basketball player I’ve ever seen.

There might be some who saw Bill Russell at San Francisco in the 1950s or Oscar Robertson at Cincinnati a few years after that who might argue that one of them was in Abdul-Jabbar’s class. Bill Walton was certainly great and so was David Thompson. But Abdul-Jabbar, who was Alcindor until changing his name in 1971, was—to me—in a class by himself.

I actually first saw him play when I was a kid growing up in New York. In those days, high school teams played in Madison Square Garden in preliminary games prior to Knicks home games. Alcindor played at Power Memorial and was a phenomenon that anyone who followed basketball in the city knew about. He was 7-foot-1 and he was unstoppable. I can remember getting to The Garden at 6:30 for the 6:45 high school starts to see Alcindor play.

When he chose UCLA and not St. John’s, everyone in New York was crushed. His UCLA teams were 88-2, one of the losses coming in The Astrodome when Alcindor played with a scratched eyeball against Houston and Elvin Hayes during his junior year. That was one of the first nationally televised college basketball games and helped put college hoops on the map. A couple of months later Houston and UCLA met in the Final Four in Los Angeles. I think the final score was 101-69.

I actually got Alcindor’s autograph—which I wish I’d kept because it would probably be a big deal nowadays—during his senior year when UCLA played in The Holiday Festival in the Garden. It was an eight-team tournament back then and St. John’s upset No. 2 ranked North Carolina to get to the final. During the third place game between Princeton and Carolina, the UCLA team came out and watched some of the first half. I scurried among the players—Curtis Rowe, Sidney Wicks, Lucius Allen among them—to get autographs and planted myself right in front of Alcindor as he got up to walk to the locker room. He was so tall my neck hurt to look up and ask him to sign. He did—and kept walking.

UCLA won the game easily and went on to a third straight national championship in March. Alcindor went on to lead the once-terrible Milwaukee Bucks to a championship in his second year and ended up winning six NBA titles and retiring as the league’s all-time leading scorer.

Of course there’s so much more to Alcindor than basketball. He did some acting (“Airplane,” among other movies); he’s written books and produced movies. He became very involved in the Muslim religion after his conversion and was also victimized by an agent late in his pro career which forced him to play a couple of years longer than he should have played. He tried television but wasn’t very good at it. He’s coached—including on an Indian reservation—and is now coaching with the Lakers.

I had one up-close experience with him. In 2001, when I was writing, “The Punch,” on the 1977 incident in which Kermit Washington almost killed Rudy Tomjanovich with one punch during an on court fight in Los Angeles, I had to talk to Abdul-Jabbar. He had been involved in a skirmish with Rockets center Kevin Kunnert that led to the fight that led to The Punch. I had tracked down everyone else involved in the incident, including Kunnert, who wasn’t thrilled about talking even 24 years later because he felt that Washington had unfairly made him into the bad guy. But I couldn’t get to Jabbar.

He had a movie production company at the time and I kept leaving messages there to no avail. Finally, I got lucky. One of Kermit’s close friends while he was in college at American University had been Josh Rosenfeld, who had gone on to be the Lakers PR guy during Abdul-Jabbar’s career there. What I didn’t know was that Rosenfeld was one of a handful of people in the world Jabbar trusted implicitly.

When I talked to Josh for the book he asked if I’d talked to Kareem yet. I told him I was having a hell of a time getting him to return my calls. “Let me take a shot at it,” Josh said. “I’ll give him a call.”

The next day the phone rang and a voice said, “Mr. Feinstein, this is Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. I’m told you need to talk to me.”

If you read the book, you’ll know the interview could not have gone better: Jabbar was, as you would expect, articulate and analytical. What I didn’t expect was his willingness to talk in detail about the incident, about what led up to it, about Kermit and about how he felt about what had happened. To be honest, I thought it was pretty gripping stuff.

Not long after the book came out, the phone rang again. The introduction was the same: “Mr. Feinstein, this is Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.”

My first thought was “uh-oh.” Athletes and coaches do not pick up the phone and track down a reporter after something has been written unless they’re upset. I took a deep breath and waited for the complaint. I had already gotten an angry call from Kunnert who had been very generous with his time and felt that—again—a member of the media, this time me, had “bought,” Kermit’s version of events even though I had quoted both sides of the story at great length.

“I read your book,” Abdul-Jabbar said....

Oh boy, here it comes…

“And I wanted to tell you that I thought you did an excellent job. I thought it was balanced, it was fair and it gave a thoughtful picture of how the incident affected all of us.”

I was stunned, not so much that Jabbar had thought I’d done a reasonable job on the book, I always hope that everyone I write about feels that way, but that he had taken the time to pick up the phone to tell me he felt that way. As I’ve said before, the number of athletes through the years who have done something like that can probably be counted on both my hands with a couple fingers to spare.

As always, I’m looking forward to college hoops season. Already freshmen like Derrick Favors and John Wall are being made out to be The Next One by all the various pundits. I can tell you this right now: they may be great, they may end up being very rich and very famous but I guarantee you they won’t touch Kareem Abdul-Jabbar as a player and I’m pretty damn sure they won’t touch him as a man either.

Here’s to your health Kareem. And thanks for a lot of memories, dating back to Power Memorial.

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I’m sure it was apparent how much I enjoyed writing yesterday’s blog about Navy’s stunning win over Notre Dame on Saturday. (BTW, did anyone notice Charlie Weis absolutely proving one of yesterday’s posters right by throwing the kid who dared to question the defensive schemes right under the nearest bus?).

I think I enjoyed yesterday’s posts about as much as I enjoyed writing the blog. It was great to hear from Randy Bogle, who was the commandant at the academy when I was writing, “A Civil War,” and also hearing from people who clearly got how special Navy’s win was.

So here’s my question for today: what’s your all-time favorite upset, specifically one you witnessed in person. It might involve two junior high school teams but I’ll bet, regardless of what it was, it is one of those moments in your life that always makes you smile when you think about it.

Navy-Notre Dame in 2009 will be high on my list I can promise you that.