Here is my column for the Washington Post today....covering the Calipari/Memphis situation and Plaxico Burress case------


It is almost eerie sometimes how major news stories break on the same day. Years ago, Rickey Henderson became Major League Baseball's all-time stolen base leader -- and modestly declared himself, "The greatest of all time." That night, Nolan Ryan pitched the seventh no-hitter of his career and most people around the country decided Henderson's feat was the second greatest of that day.

On June 25, Farrah Fawcett died after a long, sad battle with cancer. A few hours later, Michael Jackson died after a long, sad battle with life. Fawcett gets mentioned now as part of jokes told about Michael Jackson.

And then there was last Thursday. On the same day that the NCAA melodramatically stripped the Memphis men's basketball team of 38 victories during the 2007-08 season and its status as the runner-up in the NCAA tournament, former New York Giants wide receiver Plaxico Burress took a plea bargain after bringing a loaded gun into a New York nightclub last November and shooting himself in the leg.

Click here for the full story....Bad News Day

It was an emotional weekend for me. No, not because Ryan Moore won his first event on The PGA Tour or because the tour's 'playoffs' are about to begin. It wasn't Brett Favre appearing in a Minnesota Vikings uniform or even another weekend of Yankees-Red Sox.

I went back to my boyhood this weekend.

There is no sports memory I have that is more vivid than the 1969 New York Mets--aka The Miracle Mets. They were part of an extraordinary 16 month run in the history of New York sports--the Jets shocking upset of the Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III in January of 1969, followed by the Mets World Series win in October of that year and, finally, the Knicks world title in May of 1970. All were remarkably dramatic. In fact, I can still remember the exact date each time won its title: January 12; October 16th; May 8th. Seriously, I did not look that up.

I remember Namath and the Jets because no one gave them a chance. I was a Jets fan as a kid because there was no way to get Giants tickets in Yankee Stadium and you could actually walk into the Jets offices at 57th and Madison on Monday and buy a standing room ticket for $3. Then you'd find an empty seat somewhere. I'd gotten into the habit of pacing in front of the TV whenever the Jets played for good luck. On the day of The Super Bowl I paced and paced as the Jets built a 16-0 lead. My dad came home from a concert early in the fourth quarter and actually sat down to watch.

"Stop pacing," he said. "You're making me dizzy."

It was 16-0. Okay, I sat down. Johnny Unitas came in for Earl Morrall and took the Colts straight down the field to make it 16-7.

"Okay, pace," my dad said.

I will skip the Mets for a moment. I was a huge Knicks fan. My friends and I used to go to Madison Square Garden in the middle of the night to line up to be sure to get playoff tickets. We always tried for either section 406 or 430--they were at halfcourt in the blue seats, the only tickets we could afford. I was there on May 8th, wondering like everyone else if Willis Reed could play game seven against the Lakers with the championship on the line. Wilt Chamberlain had gone off in game 6 in LA with Reed sidelined.

During warmups, I heard a huge cheer go up and looked down to see Cazzie Russell walking out. Russell always came out late for warmups and, from a distance, some people had mistaken him for Reed. Finally, Reed did come out. The place went nuts. He hit his first two shots of the game and then Walt Frazier took over. The Knicks won 113-99 and it wasn't that close. I still remember hearing the tape of Marv Albert counting down the final seconds while Dave DeBusschere simply stood holding the ball. "Pandemonium in the Garden!" he screamed when the buzzer sounded. He was right.

But there was nothing quite like the Mets. They were my first love in sports--a truly awful expansion team my friends laughed at me for adopting as my team at the age of six. I'm old enough to have seen them play in The Polo Grounds and I suffered through those first six truly awful seasons. I started riding the subway to Shea Stadium--I knew every stop on the No. 7 train by heart--when I was 11--and paid $1.30 to sit in the upper deck. I loved the Sunday doubleheaders best if only because the Mets often won the second game against the other team's backup players.

In that sixth season--1967--hope began to arrive. Tom Seaver was clearly a rising star. The next year Gil Hodges became the manager and Jerry Koosman and Nolan Ryan showed up. I remember Ryan pitching a one-hitter against the Phillies on a day he didn't have blisters and doing Kiner's Korner with his wife Ruth, who wore a mini-skirt on the show. Talk about first love.

And then came '69. I remember being discouraged on Opening Day when the Mets lost for the eighth straight year even though Seaver was pitching and the opponent was the expansion Montreal Expos. The final was 11-10. But sometime in late May they went on an 11 game winning streak. I remember Jack DiLauro coming up from the minor leagues and beating the Dodgers 1-0. Of course there were the two July series with the Cubs--including Seaver's imperfect game (I still hate Jimmy Qualls). I remember reading a story in which Buddy Harrelson, who was on reserve duty that week, was watching in a bar trying to convince people that he KNEW Seaver. Then the incredible rally from mid-August on. I was there for the black cat and the (Randy Hundley) rain dance and then on September 10th for a twi-night doubleheader with the Expos when the Mets went into first place for the first time.

It was a joyride from there. The clincher on September 24th--Joe Torre hit into a double-play to end the game at 9:07 p.m.--as Lindsey Nelson kept shouting--and then the sweep of the Braves and the amazing five game win over the unbeatable Orioles.

In all I saw 66 games in person. A few times we splurged for big games and bought seats in the mezzanine for $2.50 and my dad loaned me money for the postseason tickets. I remember everyone hugging one another when Cleon Jones made the last catch (on a ball hit by Davey Johnson who later managed the Mets only other World Series win) and it was one of those perfect moments in time.

Forty years later, the Mets celebrated that team again. Some of them are gone--McGraw, Agee, Clendenon and, of course, Hodges who had a heart attack less than three years later. Some others didn't make it back. But there was Seaver and Ryan and Koosman and Gentry and Harrelson and Ron Swoboda and Dr. Ron Taylor and Jerry Grote and Wayne Garrett and, of course Cleon, who may still be the best hitter the Mets ever had with apologies to Mike Piazza. Not to mention Ed Kranepool, who I remember seeing at the tail end of 1962 when he came up straight out of high school. In a God-awful season for the team, there was real joy in the new stadium. All of us old enough to remember had to get choked up as the players were introduced and the highlights montage was shown.

It would be very easy to feel old looking at all the over-60 Mets but I didn't feel that way. I felt warm and happy that it had all happened the way it did and that I had the chance to see as much of it as I did. When I got older and became a reporter, I more or less stopped rooting for teams and started rooting for good guys--regardless of who they played for. I couldn't stand the '92 Mets and I'm not so crazy about the current group, not because they've been injured or mediocre but because I'm not sure how much they care.

But the '69 team happened when I was still innocent--a year before I read 'Ball Four’ and my view of athletes changed forever. To me, they're all still great guys and always will be. Steroids can't change that; Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens can't change that--nothing can change that.

They gave me joy then and they still give me joy now. There aren't a whole lot of things in life about which your feelings do not change even a little bit in 40 years. The '69 Mets are an exception--and, for me, they always will be.

So Plaxico Burress is going to jail, probably for at least 20 months.

Not to sound insensitive, but I'm fine with it. When the announcement of his plea bargain was announced yesterday there was a lot of yammering about how unfair it was because the crime he committed--carrying a gun that wasn't registered in New York into a club and then accidentally shooting himself in the leg with it--was one of stupidity, not one of malice.

That's not the issue here. Most crimes of malice carry heavier sentences--as they should--than crimes of stupidity. There are lots of crimes of stupidity. Driving drunk is a crime of stupidity. Doing drugs is a crime of stupidity. Certainly carrying a gun in your pants into a club jam-packed full of people is a crime of stupidity.

One excuse I heard yesterday was that he needed to carry the gun because he's a celebrity. OH PLEASE. Rule #1: If you are going to a place where you don't feel safe without a gun don't go. Rule #2: If you really believe you are such a big celebrity that you can't go anyplace and feel safe, hire bodyguards. The owner of The Washington Redskins, who most people wouldn't look at twice in public, has about eight of them.

Look, I have no disagreement with people who say New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg was grandstanding when he insisted publicly that Burress would be prosecuted to the full extent of the law after the incident last November. Gee, a politician grandstanding--film at 11. But give Bloomberg this: he has been consistent about gun laws in the city. New York has some of the toughest gun laws in the country and people know it. If Burress didn't know it, well, you know the old saying about ignorance of the law.

I think what got people yesterday was that we're used to jocks with a lot of money finding a way to either get off or get off light when they commit a crime. Daunte Stallworth did about 15 minutes in jail for DUI manslaughter in large part because he paid the victim's family millions along with the fact that police reports indicate the victim jumped in front of the car and he stopped right away and turned himself in. But that's the more typical situation: jock does something horrible, hires expensive lawyers who make excuses, raise doubts and run rings around underpaid prosecutors.

Anyone remember the O.J. case? By the end of the trial, Johnny Cochrane and his dream team had people wondering if the prosecutors actually had law degrees. Jayson Williams has never gone to jail. Michael Vick did but that was because he dug himself a hole so deep by lying to anyone and everyone that even a top lawyer like Billy Martin couldn't dig him out.

Burress hired a big-time lawyer and I will bet serious money figured he'd get off with probation. But he had a problem: there just weren't any holes in this case: he was carrying the gun and he shot himself. Those were the facts and there was no getting around them. Plus, the law says if you are convicted by a jury you MUST serve at least three-and-a-half years in jail. Perry Mason couldn't have gotten Burress off which is why he took the plea.

There's no sense comparing the Burress case to the Stallworth case or any other case. Does two years--he'd get out in 20 months with good behavior--seem harsh for an act of stupidity? Perhaps. But let's remember how lucky Burress was: the gunshot could just as easily have hit someone else. You can say---correctly—“well, it didn't”. Right. That's why it's only 20 months and not more.

Commissioner Roger Goodell has apparently told Burress he won't face a further suspension when he returns for the 2011 season--assuming there's no work stoppage because the owners and players can't reach a contract agreement. You might wonder why Burress doesn't get a suspension while Vick did. The answer's simple: Vick lied to Goodell about what his involvement in dog-fighting. That's what his five week suspension is about. Burress didn't like in all likelihood because how could he possibly lie?

My friend Tony Kornheiser started a segment on his radio show a few years ago called, "jocks in the dock." It seemed as if there wasn't a single day when he didn't have a new story to recount about an athlete in trouble. One week it's Michael Phelps driving without a license--talk about stupidity, especially when the whole bong thing was just calming down--the next it Burress being sentenced and then another NFL player being arrested. It is dizzying.

Of course August really is the month when it is tough to find a lot to talk about in sports if someone isn't being arrested. There is The PGA Championship--which lasts four days--and there's baseball but it really doesn't get to be 'must-see' until September. So we're left with all the pre-season football speculation which I find about as interesting as reading a fashion magazine. My old pal Chris Mortensen, who is as good a football reporter as there is, spent something like a month on a bus going from one NFL training camp to another for the four letter network.

This morning, I happened to catch Mort on radio and the host asked him what his most vivid memory was of the bus trip. Mort had two answers: something about eating too much cheese someplace (I'm guessing in Wisconsin) and breaking records for eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in the bus to avoid stopping in restaurants.

That about sums up how exciting it is to be around the NFL in August.

Hey, has Brett Favre retired again yet?

I was reading The Sporting News late last night and I came across one of those brief Q+A’s that everyone likes to run these days—even The New York Times which does one in the sports section every Sunday.

This one was with Peter Karamanos, who is the owner of The Carolina Hurricane. Reading it I couldn’t help but think about The Hartford Whalers, since it was Karamanos who pulled The Whale out of Hartford and moved it to Raleigh—after spending a couple of years in Greensboro waiting for the arena to be built.

The fact that Hartford no longer has its hockey team still makes me a bit melancholy. I read a story last year about the fact that there is still some kind of Hartford Whalers fan club and it reminded me of The Baltimore Colts marching band, which continued to play at The Preakness every year long after Robert Irsay had stolen the team and moved it to Indianapolis.

The people of Baltimore finally got a football team back in 1996 after a 12 year gap but I doubt Hartford will have a similar happy ending. The arena is still there—now called the XL Center I believe—and it is used for minor league hockey an University of Connecticut hockey games. Only real hockey fans will remember that Gordie Howe played his final games for The Whalers and that there really was a serious fan base before Karamanos snatched the team from the town.

My connection to the Whalers is simple: the first story I ever wrote in Sports Illustrated was on a Whalers player. Blaine Stoughton was a 50 goal scorer on three different occasions but, because he played in Hartford, he received very little attention. I was actually covering politics in 1982 when SI asked if I’d be interesting in doing some hockey pieces for them and I said sure. Off I went to Hartford to write about Stoughton.

I liked him. I really liked his wife Cindy (I think that’s the correct spelling but I can’t swear it because my copy of the story is buried in a box someplace) who Blaine had met when he was playing in the old WHA for the Cincinnati Stingers. She was a Playboy bunny and Stoughton and his two linemates all dating bunnies and became known—surprise—as “The Bunny Line.”

“One year in the playoffs all three of us went to a game in Indianapolis wearing our boyfriends’ uniform tops with names and numbers on the back,” Cindy told me. “We were jumping around and cheering, getting a lot of attention as you might expect. A lot of the fans starting yelling at us, ‘hey, f---- the Stingers!’ I looked back at them and said, ‘we do and it’s great!’

Funny story but not one you’d expect to get into Sports Illustrated, especially in 1982. But I had to at least give it a shot. So, I put it in the story and waited. Bill Colson, who would later edit the magazine, was editing the story. He called and said, “We all like that story so much we’re tracking Gil Rogin (then the managing editor) down on vacation to see if he’ll approve it. Rogin was sailing in the Bahamas or something like that and tough to find. But they found him and he approved it. I was quite proud.

For years after that whenever I ran into Bruce Berlet, who was the hockey writer for The Hartford Courant at the time, his opening comment to me was always, “F----the Stingers!”

And, I still have my Hartford Whalers coffee mug, purchased on that trip. It is one of the last vestiges of a lost franchise.

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Every once in a while I’m going to try to respond to questions and comments that come in. What I’m NOT going to do on a regular basis is argue with those who disagree with me. As far as I’m concerned, you’re entitled to disagree all you want. Having said that, Vince wrote something the other day about my comment that Jack Nicklaus played against better players than Tiger Woods did. He said that I had written that Arnold Palmer, Gary Player, Lee Trevino and Tom Watson won, “something like 35 or 38 majors.” What I wrote was that they won 30. Just so there’s no doubt, here’s the breakdown: Player 9; Palmer 7; Trevino 6 and Watson 8. I’m not great at math but I’m pretty sure that’s 30. He also wrote that most of Nicklaus’s majors were not won during the prime of the others. Huh? I specifically cited Palmer beating Nicklaus at the Masters in ’64. That WAS Palmer’s last major but he was in contention often (blowing the Open in ’66 with a seven shot lead on Sunday) until the Open at Oakmont in ’73. Watson, as mentioned, beat Nicklaus head-to-head three famous times and Trevino twice. Vince concluded by saying that “Catherine,” should have hired reporters who did a better job on there research. I can only assume he was referring to Katherine Graham, the late, great Washington Post publisher whose track record on hiring editors—she didn’t hire reporters—was, I think, pretty good…

Someone also wrote in yesterday asking why the BB+T Classic, the charity tournament in Washington that Bob Novak and I have been involved in for 15 years can’t get an NCAA exemption, which would make it about a million times easier to get teams to commit to playing two games each year. That is a GREAT question. We have been asking the NCAA for a way to get an exemption for our visiting teams almost since day 1. The host teams, Maryland and George Washington, cannot be exempt because—except for teams in Alaska and Hawaii—the NCAA does not allow exemptions for teams that play in an event annually. We have received hundreds of excuses from the NCAA but never once has anyone stepped forward and said, “let’s see, you raise millions for charity as opposed to all these ESPN-run events we give exemptions to that exist strictly to make money for corporate entities, maybe we should do something here…”

Why would they want to do that? Why would they want to help kids who desperately need the help when they can stay busy helping people who put money in THEIR pockets?

Not that I’m upset about it or anything.

ESPN was so over-the-top (surprise) with its coverage of Brett Favre yesterday that Brian Kenney—one of the good guys up there—jokingly said, “more coming up when we return to FavreCenter in a moment.” Wonder if he got a talking to for that.

But while ESPN and most of the sports work was obsessing about Favre’s latest return—by the way, isn’t it pretty clear that Favre flat out lied to the New York Jets when he told them he was definitely retired in the spring and then began negotiating with the Vikings about 15 minutes later?—there was a truly significant and sad story that broke yesterday.

Robert Novak died.

His death wasn’t surprising: he hadn’t been healthy since his diagnosis with brain cancer last year but it was nevertheless very sad for those of us who were fortunate enough to know him. No doubt it will surprise anyone who knows my politics to learn that Novak and I were friends but we were: bonded by two passions—college basketball and The Children’s Charities Foundation.

Novak was a sports fan but his true love was college hoops. And, even though he was an Illinois graduate, he became a full-throated Maryland fan when Lefty Driesell was the coach there. He never missed a home game and frequently traveled to road, games, often chartering a plane to get someplace just in time for tipoff. That was how I first met him—covering Maryland for The Washington Post when Lefty was in his hey-day in the early 1980s.

He was initially suspicious of me because I was a Duke graduate. “Elitist school for rich kids,” he liked to say. To which I would respond, “You’re right Bob, it’s a place where a lot of the Republicans you support send their kids. You have a lot of loyal readers there.”

It didn’t take long for him to out me as a liberal and when I covered the Maryland state legislature in the mid-80s, he frequently joked that it was the one legislature I could cover because it was about 85 percent Democrat. The funny thing was my best sources back then were the Republicans who, for some reason, were the jocks and knew me from the sports pages.

In 1994, Peter Teeley, who had been George Bush the first’s speechwriter and later ambassador to Canada, came up with the idea of a local college tournament in DC that would raise money for kids at risk. He had read a column I had written on the subject once so he approached me about joining the board and he approached Novak and his friend Al Hunt knowing that Novak was connected at Maryland and Hunt was connected at Georgetown.

To make a long story short, Gary Williams instantly agreed to take part and John Thompson instantly said no. To this day, Maryland is the centerpiece of an event that has raised more than $10 million for charity and Georgetown has never participated. While I had a close relationship with Williams and with some other coaches who agreed to come and play, it was always Novak who bridged the gap when Maryland Athletic Director Debbie Yow started making noise about Maryland not being able to give up home games to play in the event. Teeley would say, “Bob, it’s time to work your magic with Ms. Yow.” And he would.

Whenever I was with Bob, he wanted to debate basketball issues. He was a political reporter whose passion was sports. I wanted to debate politics. I was a sports reporter whose passion was politics. We argued, naturally, non-stop although we agreed on the disaster that was the Iraq war.

Novak was tough to argue with because he was smart, always had his facts and, naturally, had a lot of inside information I didn’t have. I did win one from him once and, to his credit, he always brought it up to me. In 2006, Ben Cardin, who had been speaker of the Maryland House of Delegates when I covered the legislature ran for Paul Sarbanes senate seat. Cardin and I had remained friends after I got out of politics and I actually spoke at a campaign rally on his behalf.

Two weeks before the election, Novak came up to me at a Children’s Charities board meeting and said, “Your guy Cardin is going down. (Michael) Steele has all the momentum.”

Novak saying this made me nervous but I stuck my chin out and said, “no way. Ben will win easily.” We made a friendly bet: if Steele won I had to say something on the radio about Bob being right and me being wrong. If Cardin won, he had to say something nice about Duke somewhere in public.

As luck would have it, Maryland opened its season on election night and we were both at the game. As I walked into The Comcast Center I called a friend of mine who had access to exit polling. “Ben’s winning easily,” he said as I breathed a sigh of relief. “Looks like he’ll get at least 55 percent of the vote.”

As soon as I saw Novak I beelined over to him and reported what I knew. “No way,” he said, grabbing his cell phone. He called someone demanding exit polling from Maryland. Whomever he called didn’t have it. “How in the world can a SPORTSWRITER know this stuff and we don’t!” he yelled.

Before the game was over, he walked over to me, put his hand out and said, “Congratulations. One for your guys.”

I always took great pleasure in telling my Republican friends that their hero Robert Novak was a registered Democrat—which he was. Living in Washington, D.C. there was no point registering as a Republican because all elections are decided in the Democratic primary.

“I registered Democrat so I could vote against Marion Barry,” he liked to say.

Hard to argue with that.

He was a man of great passion on all subjects His work for The Children’s Charities Foundation was hugely important and was critical in helping raise millions of dollars for kids in desperate need of help. He was a great friend to many people, someone with a very big heart that he didn’t like people to know about because it might affect his, “Prince of Darkness,” image.

When I think of him many memories will flood back but none more vivid than the night Maryland won the national championship in Atlanta in 2002. He had tears in his eyes when I saw him after the game. “I’m so happy for Gary,” he said.

I know for a fact that one of the people Gary was happy for that night was Bob. They both deserved it.

Sometime this afternoon I will arrive at Sedgefield Country Club and I suspect a lot of memories will come flooding back to me. Sedgefield is the site for The Wyndham Classic---which to me will always be The Greater Greensboro Open (GGO). The GGO at Sedgefield was the first PGA Tour event I ever attended or covered. I was a Duke junior and I applied for credentials to the event figuring the worst that could happen was that I'd get turned down. The pass, which looked like gold as far as I was concerned, arrived in the mail about two weeks before the tournament--which was held in April back then.

I drove down on Saturday morning and spent a few holes following Arnie's Army, then picked up the tournament leader, Al Geiberger. My goal though was to interview Doug Sanders because I'd read he was a real character and I knew was a very good player. People forget that Sanders won 21 times on The PGA Tour although his career and life were changed forever when he missed a three-foot putt on the 18th green at St. Andrews that would have won the 1970 British Open. He lost in a playoff the next day to Jack Nicklaus.

I walked back to the clubhouse as Sanders was finishing but, being new to how golf worked, somehow lost him as he came off the 18th green. I walked into the locker room--stunned that no one tried to stop me--and found Sanders standing at the bar in the grill with several people. Gingerly I introduced myself and asked if it might be possible to talk.

"Who do you work for?" Sanders asked, sounding incredulous.

"The Chronicle," I said (we never called it The Duke Chronicle, the proper name was just The Chronicle). "It's the student newspaper at Duke."

I was fairly convinced he was going to laugh at the thought of talking to me and I was going to find myself back outside trying to think of another column idea in about five minutes.

"Would you like a beer," he said. "Pull up a seat. We can talk here."

So we did. He was funny and honest and didn't bridle at all when I brought up the putt at The British. "Don't think about it much," he said. "No more than three, four times a day."

That was my first foray into golf writing. A year later I went back to The GGO and interviewed a player named Gary Groh. He had won The Hawaiian Open earlier that year and Bob Green, the veteran golf writer for The AP had written, "Arnie lost again," as his lead. Groh had beaten Arnold Palmer by two shots and Green knew the story was more about Palmer losing--just like Sunday when Y.E. Yang beat Tiger Woods--than it was about Gary Groh winning.

"I made $40,000 for winning that tournament," Groh said, sitting at almost the same spot at the bar where I'd sat with Sanders a year earlier. We were drinking sodas, not beer. "If not for Arnold Palmer I probably wouldn't have won half that much. I have no problem with him being the story. He IS the story."

The interesting thing is I liked both Sanders and Groh even though they could not have been more different. I also enjoyed the fact that, with my media credential, I could go almost anywhere on the grounds without being hassled by anyone. I didn't even realize at the time that I could request an armband in the media room that would have allowed me to walk inside the ropes. Those GGO experiences stayed with me after I went to The Washington Post and I always wanted the chance to cover more golf. I didn't get many opportunities early on but eventually I did and found that my initial instinct--that golfers were good guys to deal with--had been correct.

The GGO left Sedgefield a few years after I graduated and moved to Forest Oaks Country Club. By the time I began covering golf on a regular basis that's where it was held. But it's moved back to Sedgefield now--and to this stifling August date--and today I'll be there for the first time in (gasp!) 32 years. I wonder if I'll remember the place at all.

I'm going there to do my last long interview for the book I'm doing on the winners of the '03 major championships. Interestingly, '03 was a year not unlike this year. Tiger Woods didn't win any of the majors. The four winners--Mike Weir, Jim Furyk, Ben Curtis and Shaun Micheel--were all first time major champions and in the case of the latter two, first time tournament winners. Curtis, like Y.E. Yang, had been at Q-School the previous September. The only real difference is that Cabrera won his second major when he won The Masters this year. The book is about sudden fame and how it changes your life--for good and bad.

I'm supposed to talk down here with Shaun Micheel, who has been through major shoulder surgery and is dealing with his mom's cancer right now. As of this moment, Micheel isn't even in the field--third alternate--and is fighting to keep his exempt status on the tour for next year. Golf is really a hard game--even for major champions, even, as we saw on Sunday, for Tiger Woods.

Tonight, before I leave the clubhouse, I'm going to walk down to the grill room--which probably doesn't look at all like it did in 1976. But I'm going to stop in there anyway and have a beer and drink a toast to Doug Sanders.

Here is my column for the Washington Post today......


The next eight months will not be a lot of fun for Tiger Woods. Until the Masters next April, he is going to be subjected to questions about his failure to win a major championship in 2009. Every time he turns on the Golf Channel -- which he does a lot -- he's going to see some kind of panel wondering if he's lost a little bit of his edge because of fatherhood and knee troubles. His swing and his putting stroke will be replayed in super slow motion about a zillion times.

Nothing's Wrong With Tiger; Everything's Fine With Golf

So now the answer is Ed Fiori AND Y.E. Yang.

The question is: name all the players who have come from behind no a Sunday in a PGA Tour event to beat Tiger Woods.

Until Sunday, Fiori wore that title the way Sir Nick Faldo wear his knighthood. Fiori hung around on tour for a lot of years but nothing he ever did came close to the fall day in 1996 when he beat the then 20-year-old phenom to win what was then known (I think) as The Hardees Classic. In any event it was at Quad Cities, it was Woods’ third tournament as a pro and those who were there say Tiger made an 8 early and went into an angry tailspin and never recovered.

There were, by the way, quite a few media present. I still remember being at the second President’s Cup that weekend and watching guys making plane reservations on Saturday when Woods took the lead. You could see the PGA Tour staffers looking pale because people were leaving their almost-new event to go see the kid perhaps win for the first time.

After The Grip (Fiori’s nickname) won that day, Tiger led tournaments after 54 holes 36 times over the next 13 years. And he never lost once. Until Sunday.

While all the people you might have thought could challenge him were doing disappearing acts all over Hazeltine National Golf Club, there was Yang hanging with him. To be honest, the thought that Tiger might lose never crossed my mind until Yang chipped in for eagle at the 14th hole. Even then the thought was a brief one. We’d all seen this show before, right? Bob May at The PGA in 2000; Rocco Mediate at The Open last year. Every once in a while a not-so-famous player with nothing to lose would not be intimidated by Tiger and it still wouldn’t matter: if the opponent didn’t find a way to lose, Tiger would find a way to win.

Only this time he didn’t. When Yang three-putted 17, I thought he had come out of his trance and would now bogey 18 (or Tiger would birdie it) and Tiger would win in the playoff. I even said to my brother, who had been in the car all afternoon and was almost home, “you’ll be able to watch the playoff.”

Not so much. Yang hit one of those second shots that will be replayed forever, forcing Tiger to fire at the flag—he missed the green-and, amazingly, it was over before Tiger holed out. Did anyone else notice Stevie Williams nowhere in sight during the handshakes? Can’t figure out if he stalked off ala LeBron or if Tiger turned to him as he was lining up the last putt and said, “you’re fired.”

Hey, I can dream can’t I?

In a way this scenario was perfect for golf. CBS’s ratings for Saturday were up—according to CBS—390 percent from last year. Of course that stat is deceiving because it rained last year on Saturday. But I guarantee, with Tiger in the last group, they’re going to be way up for Sunday too. Combine that with an ending that was DIFFERENT than what we’re used to and it was all good.

Except for Tiger. And for The Grip.

This will now go down as The Year That Wasn’t in golf. Kenny Perry didn’t become the oldest man in history to win a major at The Masters. Instead Angel Cabrera won. Phil Mickelson had a chance to finally win the U.S. Open with his wife facing cancer surgery in two weeks. Instead, Lucas Glover won. We all know how historic a Tom Watson win at The British Open would have been. Stewart Cink has the claret jug. And now Y.E. Yang moves into history not only alongside Fiori but next to Jack Fleck, the club pro who stunned Ben Hogan to win a playoff at the 1955 U.S. Open.

Yang is clearly a smart man. When someone asked if he would like to go head-to-head with Tiger again he shook his head and said (through an interpreter). “No. No rematch, no-redo. I will take this one. It’s enough.”

Reminded me of the last round scene in Rocky 1 when Apollo Creed says, “Ain’t gonna be no rematch,” and Rocky answers, “Don’t want one.”

There will be a lot made of Tiger not winning a major in 2009. Certainly it makes the year disappointing for him, even though he’ll probably roar through the FedEx Cup playoff events and end up with seven or eight wins and another Player-of-the-Year Award.

But anyone who reads anything more into this than the fact that he’s occasionally human is being ridiculous. He is still the co-most-dominant athlete in the world (Michael Phelps) and this simply delays the inevitable slightly, that being him passing Nicklaus’s all-time record of 18 for professional major wins.

Let me also say this: People think I’m hard on Tiger and, sometimes I am. During one of our very few one-on-one talks years ago I told him that I tend to be harder on people I think are smart because they should know better and I put him at the top of that category. He handled a very tough day well yesterday. I didn’t see a club slam (lots of angry muttering, but who could blame him?) and he was gracious in defeat—and let’s remember he’s NEVER been through a loss like this one.

So good for him.

And good for Yang. He doesn’t want a rematch.

I don’t blame him.

The biggest story in sports today is, of course, Michael Vick signing with the Philadelphia Eagles. I certainly get why it is a big story but, to be honest, I’m sort of one with it. I really don’t care how much they use him or whether they put in the ‘wildcat,’ to get him some snaps behind Donovan McNabb.

Like a lot of people I’ve said what I have to say about him. If he gets back on the field and is productive and stays out of trouble, good for him. He’s a relatively low-risk signing for the Eagles because they have an established quarterback who isn’t going to be worried about losing his job to Vick. If he doesn’t behave or doesn’t perform, they can just cut him and say, ‘oh well we tried.’

I’m actually more interested today in a report someone sent me from Scout.com that lists the access policies college football teams have to their practices. I know that this is something fans really don’t care about and, to be honest, I don’t care that much either. It’s not as if being unable to watch Nick Saban’s practices has any affect on my life.

In fact, as I wrote recently about an incident years ago with the Redskins, I’m just as happy most times to not watch practice. Years ago, shortly after I had made the decision to give up covering politics to cover sports again, I was up at Holy Cross writing a story about a coach named Rick Carter.

To be fair, the story was my idea. I was going up to cover the Hall of Fame tip-off game in Springfield between North Carolina State and Houston and I suggested to my boss that I stop en route to see Carter. He was, at the time, a hot young coach who people thought might someday coach the Redskins since he was a friend/protégé of then Redskins GM Bobby Beathard.

Carter seemed like a very good guy and, after we had talked awhile, invited me to watch practice and then finish our interview afterwards. That sounds good to me. Holy Cross’s practice field is right at the top of the campus, essentially on top of a mountain. It was mid-November and the sun set about 30 minutes in to the practice. It then started to snow. I honestly can’t remember ever being colder but I couldn’t leave - I’d been INVITED by the guy I was writing about to watch.

All I could think standing there was: “I could be in a bar in Annapolis right now having a drink with a politician. Instead I’m standing here freeing to death. WHAT was I thinking?”

I made it through practice and finished the interview. Of course I couldn’t know that behind his friendly smile, Carter was a very troubled man. Not long after I wrote the story he had a chance to get the North Carolina State job but, as I recall, Holy Cross wouldn’t let him interview. The program slipped a little bit and a couple years later, Carter committed suicide.

If you are a beat writer—which I haven’t been for a long time now—you need access to practice. That’s because you have editors breathing down your neck wanting to know how a quarterback looked or if someone hobbled off the field and went straight to the training room.

What’s more striking about it all is the continuing—and escalating—paranoia—of coaches. If someone is putting in a trick play for a specific game and doesn’t want it on tape or reported in a newspaper or online, I get that. But generally speaking there are no secrets in football—or any sport really—anymore. Do you think Ohio State is going to be surprised on September 5th when Navy comes out and runs the triple option?

It’s interesting to note that Pete Carroll at Southern California, who has been as successful as anyone in the game for the past 10 years, runs what are essentially open practices. One might think—MIGHT think—that other coaches would look at that and say, ‘well, somehow the Trojans have overcome the presence of the media at their workouts.’ Having really good players tends to be more important than closing practices.

I couldn’t help but get a laugh when I noticed that Duke—my alma mater—allows TV crews to tape ‘B role,’—I think that means they can’t show live plays, just show players stretching and talking and warming up—for the first 20 minutes of practice.

Duke won four games last year and people acted as if David Cutcliffe was Bear Bryant reincarnated. Certainly the four wins were a major improvement over the four wins in four years prior to 2008 but let’s not get carried away here. Right now, Duke should be sending a stretch limo to the home of anyone who wants to publicize the program in any way. It basically takes a court order these days to get into one of Mike Krzyzewski’s practices—unless you’ve known him for 100 years as some of us have—but he’s won THREE national championships. Let’s see four WINS vs. three NATIONAL TITLES. Yeah, I’d say their access standards should be about the same.

One other note before we all go off to watch Tiger Woods win The PGA this weekend: I wrote the other day that the reason Tiger reacted badly to being put on the clock is that last Sunday in Akron is that he doesn’t like anyone telling him what to do. Someone put up an angry post demanding to know how I knew Tiger didn’t like being told what to do. The answer’s simple: I’ve watched him in action for 13 years now. He’s a control freak—and I say that as a complete control freak myself—and it’s part of what makes him great. Why do you think he’s fired caddies, agents and plenty of others in the past? Why don’t you think his current caddy plays the role of attack dog for him? Since his dad was brought up, the fact is Tiger, who loved his dad without any doubt, asked his dad to back off and give him some space to make his own decisions after he turned pro.

I don’t dislike Tiger and my respect for him as an athlete knows no bounds, but unlike a lot of people who cover him I’m not going to roll over and write and say that he’s always right so he’ll call me ‘Johnny,’ in press conferences (he tends to add a ‘y’ to the names of people he likes).

He was wrong last Sunday. The pace of play he and Padraig Harrington were moving at all day was ridiculous. Athletes ask officials to be one thing in sports: consistent. That’s what John Paramour was doing—being consistent. Tiger didn’t like that. Doesn’t make him a bad guy, just means he was wrong.

He’s also the greatest player in the history of golf.

I was traveling most of the day Wednesday so I only heard snippets of the Rick Pitino story throughout the day. Some of the details made me wince. Others were just, well, shocking--if in fact they are true. None of us has the right to sit in moral judgment of others but it just strikes me as downright STUPID--especially as a major celebrity to end up having sex with someone you just met on the table of a restaurant. What's remarkable is that such a story stayed secret this long.

Hearing the lurid details, I thought about a number of things, one a line I heard years ago from a prominent basketball coach who was describing some of his own escapades. "The problem with drinking," he said, "is that it makes you think you’re invisible."

I also remembered another coach who often explained to other coaches that his policy was to walk into a bar and look for the most unattractive woman he could find. His logic was simple: “It’s easier that way."

Look, it's sad but true that basketball coaches, like men--and, let's face it women (this woman in the Pitino story sounds like a real charmer)--do things like this every day. That's not a defense of Pitino, I'm not a believer in the, "everybody does it so it's okay," defense but we all know people who do things late at night and then wake up the next morning saying, "Oh My God, what have I done?" That doesn't mean, however, that they don't do it again.

We all know divorce is the American Way. I speak first hand. On the PGA Tour, divorce is so frequent that second wives are called, "mulligans."

This, however, is the kind of story that is going to be hard to escape.

Whether Pitino can survive this is hard to say. One thing is for sure: if he was just an average coach or a good coach, he'd be gone this morning. But he's a Hall of Fame coach who won 31 games last year and has taken three different schools to five Final Fours and won a national championship at Kentucky in 1996. That means Louisville isn't going to be eager to get rid of him. Winners are frequently far less guilty than non-winners. Already I have read one column this morning saying that this shouldn't hurt Pitino's recruiting. I'm not sure what's worse, the fact that the question is raised or that it's going to be an important factor in whether he survives.

My own experiences with Pitino have been all over the map. I first met him when he was coaching at Boston University and, like everyone in basketball, knew this was a coach on his way up. I remember his run to The Final Four at Providence which, tragically, coincided with the death of his infant son. We fell out--big time--when he was at Kentucky. I've never been a big fan of Kentucky basketball as an entity because I don't like the idea of, "basketball as religion," the way it is embraced there.

That wasn't what really turned me on Pitino. It was an incident in 1994 when, after a second round loss to Marquette in the NCAA Tournament--a game in which Rick stubbornly refused to back off his press against a point guard who was shredding it--he sat next to his three seniors at the postgame press conference and said of a team that had won 28 games, "this Kentucky team lacked leadership, chemistry and drive."

In other words, "I coached good--they played bad."

I can't stand coaches who do that and I wrote that and said that even as Rick did a stunning job the next few years at Kentucky. Still, I was pretty tough on him. After North Carolina beat Kentucky in the 1995 regional final I wrote, "The numbers for Rick Pitino remain the same: two autobiographies, no championships."

Accurate, but pretty mean.

A year later when Kentucky won the title, someone sent me a Pitino interview in a Kentucky basketball magazine in which he was breathlessly asked if he was going to write another book. "I said I wasn't going to write one until we won a title," he answered. "Because I wasn't going to give guys like John Feinstein the chance to rip me again. Now, I'm going to write one."

I dropped him a note saying, "NOW you should write one." You'll be shocked to learn he didn't write back.

Then he went to the Celtics and demanded the title of team president even though Red Auerbach had been team president forever. Red had no intention of interfering with Rick--he was retired by then and was there as a sounding board for anyone who came to him, but he wasn't going to tell anyone in Boston what to do--but Rick had to have the title. Needless to say I came down hard on him for that and his subsequent failures with the Celtics.

It was Ralph Willard who played peacemaker between us. I got to know Ralph well while researching, "The Last Amateurs," in '1999-2000. He had come to Holy Cross after coaching at Western Kentucky and Pittsburgh but was close to Rick--they are both from Long Island and Ralph worked with Rick in New York and then for him at Kentucky.

"You guys don't get along because you're exactly alike," Ralph told me. "You're both ball-busters."

One afternoon during a summer camp Ralph was sitting with Rick and waved me over to sit with them. I did, for about an hour. Pitino was at Louisville by then. He was willing to let bygones be bygones--I'd certainly ripped him a hell of a lot more than he'd ripped me--and we went from there. He even came and played in 'The Bruce Edwards Celebrity Pro-Am,' a couple years ago, which was a really nice thing for him to do.

Let me say this: I'd have felt badly about this if we HADN'T smoked the peace pipe. This is a sad state of affairs for a great coach who I know has impacted a lot of people's lives in a positive way. Of course what's really sad is that his future won't ultimately be decided by adding up how much good he's done, how much charity work he's been involved with (a LOT) or any testimonials from coaches or past players about his character.

It will be decided by whether the school thinks he can still win basketball games. That doesn't make Louisville any different from anyone else in Division 1 basketball.

And that really IS a shame.