On AOL Sports, the Heisman Trophy winner did a pre-draft Q&A with Dave Hollander, who is, among other things, a co-author of the Princeton Review's guide to the best law schools. It appears that Hollander is also a big Ohio State fan, and was intrigued with the imbalance of attention paid to Smith and Brady Quinn throughout their college careers and in the weeks leading up to the draft.

It also appears, in this interview, that Smith doesn't care much for people who call themselves "experts'': "It's incredible how many people are literally in the world and how every single person in the world has an opinion as to what's going on. But we choose to listen to somebody who says they are an 'expert' in something but who makes no sense and has no kind of real information on anything they're talking about.''

And, according to the Web site's poll, Smith was drafted lower than expected, by at least two rounds.

Last but not least: I request that you take a look at the previous post, from yesterday. It's been a little hard for the question to get much prominent play on The Sun Web site, so we'll ask it again here, and offer today's column as more to ponder: Does the Patriots' acquisition of Randy Moss scare you, or do you still think the Ravens are as much of a threat to make it past them and get to the Super Bowl as before?

Posted by David Steele at 10:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (9)
                    

Every once in a while, blogging's easy. (Unlike pimping, which ain't easy.)

Ravens fans: are you in full-fledged panic over Randy Moss's arrival in New England? Are you calm? Ready to surrender? Full of faith in the Ravens' ability to overcome that? Less confident about Samari Rolle starting at corner next season than you were last night? Pulling an Uncle Junior from last week's episode of The Sopranos? Appalled that all it took was a fourth-round pick for New England to get Moss? Not caring because you think Moss will implode the way he has on two other teams already, taking the Patriots down with him?

Remember: Tom Brady will now be throwing to Moss, Wes Welker and Donte Stallworth and handing off to Laurence Maroney, instead of, respectively, throwing to Reche Caldwell and Jabar Gaffney and handing off to 54-year-old (in running-back years) Corey Dillon. And New England now has A.D., and the Ravens don't.

Without all of them, the Patriots were separated from the Super Bowl last year by a come-from-behind Colts win at home in the final minute of the AFC championship game.

The Ravens? Lost more from last year to this than they've added.

So. What do ya think?

Posted by David Steele at 12:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)
                    

When the Ravens used the long-awaited 29th overall pick to select Auburn G Ben Grubbs, the sound at M&T Bank Stadium, site of the annual Spring Football Festival, was ... well, there was no sound, except for clean-up crews. The Ravens originally had held out hope that the pick might be made in time for the fans to see it up on the scoreboards, but with the first round dragging, they wrapped things up at the scheduled time of 5 p.m. Thankfully for me (I was writing my column for tomorrow in the stadium), they left the scoreboard on through the pick, then shut it down minutes later.

You get the sense, however, that fans might have been willing to stick around the extra 45 minutes. This event is one of the ongoing amazing phenomena involving the NFL, particularly the Ravens. They announced a turnstile count of 11,582, and my guess is that they either stopped counting at about 2 p.m., three hours after the scheduled start, or stopped letting people in. I know that some people had arrived at 10 to wait until the gates opened, and that the lots were full by noon and that traffic was directed to the warehouse. And they charged $10 apiece to get in, although none for parking. This, as opposed to the training-camp scrimmages against the Redskins, when they admit for free but charge for parking. Either way, they stream in and fill the place up - and concessions are sold throughout the concourse and in the stands. I mean, it threatened rain all day. Imagine if it had been springlike all day instead of for a few minutes at a time.

You all are hardy, fanatic folk.

But, by all accounts, a good time was had by all. How good? Up on the concourse, a line of fans waited patiently an hour before the final autograph session. A team official walking by pointed out to several of them that they didn't actually have to wait in line, because they had been handed color-coded bracelets that guaranteed them an autograph. They thanked the official, then continued to wait. They didn't budge. That's love.

Anyway ... Ben Grubbs, interesting. And well-played, it seemed. Once again, Ozzie Newsome played a little switcheroo with a former colleague; last year, with Phil Savage, now with Mike Nolan. Ozzie did say last week that he figured he knew how the former Ravens personnel people around the league would operate, and sure enough, Nolan and the 49ers jumped ahead of him to snag a player he figured the Ravens were after. Maybe they were, but I'd find it hard to believe they're "settling'' for Grubbs instead of Joe Staley, the way they weren't "settling'' for Haloti Ngata instead of Kamerion Wimbley. By the way, there were a surprising number of Ngata jerseys at M&T today, which tells you the fans are either savvy or diligent, or both, because you can't buy a Ngata jersey off the rack in many places.

Finally, your up-to-the-minute NBA playoff scoreboard (at least up to the minute I post this): at Verizon Center, Cavs 19, Wizards 17, late first quarter. And good night, Orlando, thanks for coming.

Oh, one last thought: I'm glad that when it comes to Curt Schilling, it wasn't just me. The post from the Boston fan was enlightening. You've got to do some real work to grate on a fan who waited 86 years for a World Series win you helped his team finally get. Good job, Curt.

Posted by David Steele at 6:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
                    

Looks like any thoughts about the NBA playoffs are going to have to wait at least half a day. This Gary Thorne-Curt Schilling-Doug Mirabelli sock thing is way out of control. Yes, you'd think it was over, everybody hashed out when and where the misunderstanding took place, and we're now free to ponder how fast the air has gone out of the Orioles' balloon this week.

Nope. Because here's Schilling on his blog. Like you didn't know that was coming. Like you didn't know he'd knock it out after a game, and that he wouldn't find time during a busy season to pound out 1,500 words on it. That's not an unusual length for him and his blog, by the way. As one of the writers who regularly covers the Red Sox pointed out earlier this season, he's managed to do this regularly during the season, to write more in a postgame rush on his blog than the beat writers do on the average day of game stories, notebooks and their own blogs. But if there's one thing Curt Schilling will always find plenty of time to do no matter what the circumstances, it's to talk about himself.

Now, he won't find time to get his facts straight, especially while lecturing others to get their facts straight, because, as you might have seen in his latest posting, he got the name of our former Sun colleague wrong. Back during the '04 playoffs, it was Laura Vescey who wrote her doubts about the authenticity of the sock. Not Karen Vescey. He also misspells Jay Mariotti's last name and jokes about not really knowing the first name of Sports Illustrated's Jon Heyman. Not that blogs are supposed to have credibility or anything. Our writings should, not his.

He's just a honest, straight-talking, team-oriented, stand-up ballplayer. One that will never miss an opportunity to let you know he is.

There's a very basic reason why this story still has legs: because it's Schilling, who has become the all-time leader in public phony selflessness. It's not an easy act to pull off, but some athletes are masters of it. They manage to position themselves as being all about the team and about the game, while cleverly (they think) hiding the reality that they're all about themselves. By not directly speaking about themselves, in either first or third person, they avoid the most obvious characteristics of raging egoism - so he's not comparable to, say, a Chad Johnson. They generally believe that nobody can see through them. That illusion largely comes from their notion that they're smarter not only than the media they manipulate, but the fans they desperately play to.

Schilling is, and always has been, the standard by which all other phony team guys are measured. As they say, there's no "I'' in team, but there are two in "Schilling.''

There seems to be a disproportionate number in baseball, too. A.J. Pierzynski is as good as they come. David Wells is a legend; a few years back, the man who has never been in shape his entire professional career memorably questioned teammate Frank Thomas's desire - days before the reason for Thomas's missing games was revealed to be a torn bicep that knocked him out for the season.

Jeff Kent is a genius; for years, he won over Bay Area media (of which I was one, but not one who bought his act) by positioning himself as the anti-Barry Bonds, largely by always being accessible, usually to talk about what a swell guy he was, not like that selfish, distant jerk in the corner there. No one, however, was more selfish and more of a jerk than Kent - but, as some writers actually said out loud, "he always talks to us.'' He also managed to fashion himself as a good ol' country boy, leaning toward honest, hardworking cowboy, even though he's from southern California. He finally got exposed with that spring-training motorcycle accident in which he broke his wrist - and for a disturbingly long time got a lot of people to buy his I'm-just-a-regular-guy fable about breaking it while washing his truck, because he's not one for fancy high-falutin' car-washing services.

Next in line to inherit Schilling's faux-regular-guy mantle? Wisconsin offensive tackle Joe Thomas. The draft prospect made it well-known that he would not attend the festivities in New York tomorrow, because he had a regular fishing trip with his father on that date. Fine, good enough. But he couldn't let it go there.

"I'm not preparing to have a big celebration on NFL draft day. That's not what I'm all about,'' he told the Detroit News. "I want the transition to be smooth from college to the pros, and not make a big deal about the draft." He said that the big draft blowout "is not what I'm all about'' twice.

What a sweet, pure, unsullied slice of Americana.

Except that the NFL Network is actually going to be there fishing with Thomas and Dad. It will have a camera on hand there to record his reaction when his name is called, quite possibly (depending on cell phone reception out on the lake) to inform him of the news. All, presumably, with Thomas's permission. So being on camera alone, having his solid, homespun ways transmitted all across America and setting him apart from his draft peers appears to also be "what he's all about.''

Not enough people have called "B.S.'' on him, just as they didn't call it on Kent or A.J. or, of course, Schilling.

With guys like him, it's too easy to raise a question of whether that's real blood on his sock. The blood likely is real. But so is the hot air.

Posted by David Steele at 9:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (14)
                    

Jackie Robinson's surviving son, David, was a featured member of the festivities honoring Jackie Robinson in Philadelphia Monday (the Phillies' game on the scheduled day was rained out, the way it was in Baltimore and New York). It's a momentous appearance for a couple of reasons: David spends very little time in America these days because he now runs a coffee collective in Tanzania, and on this rare occasion back on native soil, he expressed the same strong views his father, mother Rachel and sister Sharon have over the years and during this anniversary year.

Check out what he told the Philadelphia Daily News in Tuesday's editions: neither Major League Baseball, its teams or the players are doing nearly as much as they could to support the Jackie Robinson Foundation, founded and operated by Rachel Robinson. That's extremely bad news considering baseball couldn't parade enough foundation scholars onto the various fields a couple of weeks ago to be part of the celebrations. But, said David, less than 40 percent of the teams and less than 5 percent of the players do their part.

Also, here's the full story on how he ended up doing what he does in Africa, courtesy of a 2005 Ebony magazine story. (Note to one reader who previously commented on the theme of several posts and columns: stories like this are why it wasn't an insult for you to ask if I should be writing for Ebony instead of here.) At the time, plans were in the works to have the coffee his company grows sold in major-league ballparks. Which is a pleasant, unique way to honor Jackie's legacy, but pretty weak compared to what David says about the foundation.

Posted by David Steele at 1:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
                    

This is absolutely devastating news for anyone who really loves good journalism and great sportswriting. David Halberstam was killed in a car crash in northern California earlier today.

If you've never read anything by him, you've definitely seen him on dozens of ESPN documentaries, the various Sports Century pieces and Who's Number 1 countdowns and the like. He was a go-to guy for any issue that demanded perspective, clarity and understanding.

And if you've never read any of his classics on American society, like 1969's The Best and the Brightest (about Vietnam) and 2002's Firehouse (about Sept. 11), you should at least check out his great sports books. I've probably got 1994's October 1964 (about the 1964 seasons of the Cardinals and Yankees) memorized. I've been nibbling at 1981's The Breaks of the Game (about a season with the post-championship Portland Trail Blazers) for a couple of years after having found it at a used-books sale in San Francisco. (Yes, these are all on Amazon, too.) He's written about Michael Jordan, about Bill Belichick, about Ted Williams and his old Red Sox teammates. The list of just sports titles is just ridiculously long, and I have yet to hear a negative word about any of them, because he gets his subjects or subjects perfectly and puts them in exactly the right context. Again, the sports books only scratch the surface of what he turned out. He's so good, only he is capable of coming up with the words to describe how good he is.

This really hurts. And it was just a few weeks after Kurt Vonnegut died. A terrible loss.

Posted by David Steele at 7:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)
                    

Oh no. Is it too late to download my brain about the best two months of the year - the NBA playoffs?

It is an hour into the first game of the first best-of-seven first-round series, which means I've probably already missed the sweet, gentle, self-effacing Canadian basketball fans in Toronto ripping Vince Carter a new one in pre-game introductions. There's plenty of time for that, though. That series, Raptors-Nets, is going at least six games, I'd have to think.

I would like to reiterate here, as I did when the season began, that it is KILLING me to be in a town with no NBA team. Even a bad team. I spent nine years in a city with a bad team (the Warriors), and it wasn't as bad as this.

Nevertheless, I will be in front of a TV for at least the start of the next game, Chicago-Miami, even though that seat will be in Camden Yards. The weather's nice enough that there will be baseball tonight, so I'll have to sneaks peaks at Orlando-Detroit, easily the most potentially lopsided series of the first round. And depending on how things go with what I write for tomorrow - barring something spectacular happening, it'll be about Jackie Robinson Day, Take 2 - I should catch some of the last game of the day, Utah at Houston, which also should be something special.

And tomorrow? No budging while Cavs-Wizards is on. Same for Kobe-Suns - er, Lakers-Suns.

At this time last year, it didn't seem as if the playoffs would be anything out of the ordinary, particularly in the first round, which had become tedious ever since it went to best-of-seven. That all changed when the actual games began. Best playoffs in NBA history, maybe the best in any sport, from start to finish. If you're immediately disagreeing, it's probably because you tuned it out prematurely and rebuffed every attempt to draw you in by disbelieving viewers. That's becoming a little too commonplace among the hardened NBA haters in the world.

You'd be crazy to make the same mistake this year. Yes, March Madness is fun, with the whole single-elimination format and the usual (except this year) string of upsets and magic moments. But - and it's a shame I have to keep repeating this - the best basketball in the world is played right now. What stinks about this year is that it could have been even better, except that Gilbert Arenas' and Caron Butler's injuries took one of the most intriguing teams of the postseason right out of contention. The Wizards are still intriguing, since they played really hard and developed a knack for finding new ways to lose by a basket or two in the final minute nearly every night the final two weeks of the regular season. Plus, if you're really sold on the Cavaliers and LeBron walking through them, because they're so mature and playoff-hardened (not), good luck. Still, the postseason landscape could have been so much tastier.

Still, there's nothing wrong with, say, Dallas having to get past a Warriors team that 1) has its number this year and matches up well, 2) is starving after missing the playoffs 12 straight years, or ever since Chris Webber was a rookie and Latrell Sprewell's hands were known for flicking away loose balls, and 3) is coached by former Mavs coach/career unpredictable lunatic Don Nelson.

And Spurs-Nuggets? AI and Melo seeing if this is really going to work out. Melo trying to win his first playoff series (what's up with that?). Steve Blake fitting like a glove. And, you know, the Spurs. Same as always, except probably more shots of Eva Longoria than ever before.

Seriously, did I really need to explain all that to you? I wish I hadn't. I probably missed valuable Vince Carter taunting time.

Uh-oh, almost forgot, predictions. First round: Raptors in 6. Heat in 7. Cavaliers in 5. Pistons in 5. Suns in 5. Mavs in 6. Spurs in 7. Rockets in 7.

Conference semis: Pistons over Heat in 7. Cavs over Raptors in 7. Spurs over Suns in 6. Mavs over Rockets in 6.

Conference finals: Pistons over Cavs in 5. Mavs over Spurs in 7.

NBA Finals: Mavs over Pistons in 6. Finals MVP: Josh Howard, Mavs. It's kind of cliche to call him the X factor anymore, since everyone knows how and why he's dangerous. But of all the Mavs key players - including Dirk - he's the one the Pistons will have the hardest time getting a handle on. There's a better chance that they shut down Dirk, or he shuts himself down.

Time to check in on Vince, to see if he's shot every time he's touched the ball, or run away from it, or writhed in agony on the floor only to rise up and return pseudo-dramatically. Or all of the above.

Posted by David Steele at 3:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
                    

The outpouring of support from the sports world for the anguished Virginia Tech community keeps coming. On Tuesday night, of course, the Nationals wore the "VT" caps for the game against the Braves - and congratulations to the Marylander, Dave Lanham, who came up with the idea and emailed it to the Nationals.

Michael Vick's foundation got together with the United Way and raised $10,000 to support the families and others at his old school - which, to be honest, is largely known as much as it is because of him. This should get him off the hook for the airport fake-water bottle for a while.

Speaking of getting off the hook, Phillies manager Charlie Manuel, who melted down earlier in the week after a loss and challenged a talk-show host to a fight, wore a "VT'' cap at the game at RFK last night.

NASCAR cars and trucks racing for the next three weeks will be allowed to display the "VT" logo. Like Major League Baseball, NASCAR did a nice job getting out of its own way and letting the rules be tweaked to accommodate a generous gesture. Of course, if there is one state besides North Carolina that can legitimately claim itself to be NASCAR country, it's Virginia, especially that region of it. And, as it turns out, several vital members of the Hendricks racing team are Virginia Tech grads.

Last but not least, thanks to the phenomenal NBA blog True Hoop, we learn that there's a student-run website, Planet Blacksburg, that has been an outstanding source of up-to-date information on the campus situation. The faculty adviser is journalism professor Roland Lazenby, who on the side is a prolific author on NBA topics, including tons on the Michael Jordan Bulls and the Shaq-Kobe Lakers. Lazenby talked to the True Hoop creator, Henry Abbott, after the massacre.

There may be more examples out there that I'm missing. If you readers come across then, feel free to send them along.

More often than we want to admit in this atmosphere of nonstop multimedia negativity, the sports world steps to the forefront at times of strife and tragedy.

Posted by David Steele at 10:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
                    

What a shame that the big 60th anniversary celebrations in East Coast ballparks, from Boston down to Baltimore, got rained out today. I wasn't even writing about it for tomorrow, but was going to be there for the festivities at Camden Yards - but word came of the rainout as I was halfway to the ballpark. Worse news: the player who would wear #42 for the Orioles, Corey Patterson, lost his grandfather and had to leave the team, so he wouldn't have played anyway.

Still, there's the sight of all the 42s on the field at the Dodgers' game tonight, where the big ceremonies are to take place. That'll be interesting to see - I don't know if it will look weird, moving or what. I hope it doesn't look stupid when it's trying to look meaningful, the way the end of "V for Vendetta'' looked when all those people wearing the "V'' masks marched to the Parliament building at the end. I feel comfortable spoiling the ending for you, because that movie got spoiled about an hour and 45 minutes before that scene. I have more faith in this gesture than in that scene.

Meanwhile, a nice side note from the NBA game currently on Channel 2 right now: it turns out that current Mav, ex-Tar Heel and ex-Wizard Jerry Stackhouse wears No. 42 because of Jackie Robinson, and he asked the NBA if he could wear the name "Robinson'' on his uniform for this game. The way it was explained, it sounded as if the NBA might have done it had it been requested earlier, to let other players pick ways to honor him too, the way baseball did with its players, but it would have been a logistical nightmare to do it on short notice. It's refreshing, then, to see baseball ahead of the NBA on a topic like that. For once. Maybe for the first time since Robinson broke in.

As for the Wizards game against the Bulls, the less said, the better. They're one injury away from trying out walk-ons. Gini Chukura's available, isn't he?

Posted by David Steele at 4:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
                    

Lately, everyone's been asking, "Al Sharpton is going after Don Imus for his on-air language, but has he ever gone after those foul-mouthed rappers who use the same language or worse?''

My guess is that the people who ask that really don't want an answer, or think they know the answer.

But the answer is yes.

On CNN's "American Morning,'' March 9, 2005 - two years ago - he spoke about a movement to end the depictions of violence in hip-hop music that was being carried out into the public.

" ... If stockholders of advertisers say wait a minute, we didn't realize this is what we're allowing to happen, it would not help their career, which is exactly my point.

If you take the profit out of it, it would not help their careers. If a guy gets into an argument and goes for his gun and thinks, wait a minute, I could lose my airplay, it might make that gun stay in the holster. And that is what I'm saying.

We need to stop helping them make their careers by acting in a violent way. We need to say, say what you want, do what you want. I think some of the music is great. I'm a fan of some of the music. Some I think is misogynist. But that's not the point. The point is we've got to give them an incentive to say no matter what my rap is, I don't have the right nor is it going to be lucrative to me to engage in that activity personally.''

Later in the month, Sharpton called for the FCC to step in:

" 'The outrage of the pattern of violence that has occurred at radio stations requires some action,' Sharpton told the Associated Press. 'What has been absent is some kind of government move to stop these actions happening on federally regulated radio stations.'

The civil rights activist took his fight to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) last week and pressured officials to impose a ban denying airplay for 90 days to artists involved in violent confrontations. Also, Sharpton is asking that radio stations 'that encourage a pattern of this, including allowing employees to do on-the-air inciting of violence' be fined and reviewed by the FCC.''

That report on the incident came from Howard University's newspaper, the only one that came up in a Google search on that topic.

The CNN report might have been easy to miss. "American Morning'' aired at the same time as Imus in the Morning on MSNBC.

And, at James Brown's memorial service at the Apollo Theater in December, Sharpton told the audience that one of the great things about his friend is that he didn't have to use foul, insulting language to make his point, like a lot of the musicians today. You'll have to take my word for it, because in the 10 stories I read about the service, from major newspapers to network websites to entertainment portals, none mentioned this. CNN that day, however, aired the clip every half-hour. I remember that very clearly and wondered then why nobody was talking about it.

I'm still wondering, especially today.

Posted by David Steele at 10:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
                    

Cal Ripken had himself one hell of a day yesterday, one that made him much, much larger than a Hall of Famer and city and franchise icon.

Yes, he threw out the first pitch at the Orioles game, and yes, he made a huge commitment to the Major League Baseball's RBI (Reviving Baseball in the Inner Cities) program on behalf of his family's charitable foundation, putting his money and his name behind something that, ideally, should bring baseball back from life support in areas like the neighborhoods west of Camden Yards and the Inner Harbor.

Best of all, though?

Cal is the first celebrity to officially and publicly back away from appearing on Don Imus's show. He was scheduled to appear on Imus in the Morning this week to promote his new book Get in the Game, but the appearance was canceled yesterday. Said John Maroon, his publicist, in this morning's Washington Post, "I didn't want anyone to have the misconception that Cal condones those comments in any way.''

As of this posting, Ripken is the only notable figure who has taken such a stand. None of the frequent guests from the entertainment, political or media world has done so yet. It seemed pretty easy for him to do, and it makes one wonder why it doesn't seem so easy for others, including all the '08 presidential candidates who have been on or are scheduled to be on.

Maybe if those people saw what the mother of one of the Rutgers women's basketball players Imus insulted last week had to say about it, they might change their minds. Or the former coaches of the players. Or, of course, the current players, coaches and administrators, from earlier today. (UPDATE: Here is the full, one-hour video of the press conference, including head coach C. Vivian Stringer's speech. Don't know if Rutgers is planning to make it available to download. Hope they do.)

At least Cal can go to sleep with a clear conscience on that issue. Which is why the heroic descriptions of him, no matter how out-of-proportion they might seem at times, are totally appropriate. Others might eventually get around to joining Ripken and siding with the objects of Imus's ridicule, ignorance and intolerance - which, as Rutgers coach C. Vivian Stringer said today, are all of us, not just her players and not just young, black women - instead of the abstract ideas and/or selfish priorities guiding them already. But if and when they do, Cal will still be the first to have done it. Congratulations to him.

Meanwhile, a couple of much-needed perspectives, from columnists Gwen Knapp (a former colleague with the San Francisco Chronicle) and ESPN.com's Jemele Hill.

Posted by David Steele at 12:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)
                    

The latest on our favorite morning-drive talk-show host: Don Imus is scheduled to appear on Al Sharpton's national radio show this afternoon. The show airs locally on WOLB-AM 1010 in Baltimore and WOL-AM 1450 in Washington, from 1-4. Appearing with them is National Association of Black Journalists president Bryan Monroe; on Friday, NABJ issued a statement saying Imus's apology was unacceptable and that he should still be fired.

To recap: on his show Wednesday, Imus called the players on Rutgers' women's basketball team "nappy-headed hos.''

This, by the way, follows Michael Richards appearing on Jesse Jackson's talk show post-comedy-club tirade, and Grey's Anatomy's Isaiah Washington going to a rehab center for his repeated use of derogatory language. New rule of thumb: if you're getting invited onto the radio show of a nationally-known civil rights advocate/lightning rod, then you've screwed up pretty massively. This replaces the previous rule, being greeted at your door by Mike Wallace and the 60 Minutes crew. Now, if Imus then has to go to slur rehab, that takes it to a completely different level.

Imus apologized again this morning, expanding his thoughts to more than the 30 seconds or so he spent on it Friday morning. What's interesting here is not so much what he said this time - "Here’s what I’ve learned: that you can’t make fun of everybody, because some people don’t deserve it ... And because the climate on this program has been what it’s been for 30 years doesn’t mean it’s going to be what it’s been for the next five years or whatever'' - but that he was on the air at all. He was on his flagship radio station, WFAN in New York, and on MSNBC, neither of which even saw fit to do as much as put his show on hiatus, even with pay, for a day or so while this was hashed out. Never mind firing, never mind suspension, but run a rerun or a ''best-of'' show or, maybe, put some news content on your all-news cable network, and some sports on your all-sports radio station, for four hours on one broadcast day and let things cool down. Apparently not.

It also turns out that Imus has black friends and has helped black kids at his ranch for sick children. Seems that in both cases, their hair was straight enough and their sexual histories above reproach. You can never be too sure around him, it now appears.

This also was the first time the owners of the radio station had anything to say about it - a spokesperson for CBS radio was quoted, possibly over the weekend or just today, the stories have not made it clear, calling the comments "disappointing'' and "completely inappropriate.'' Slightly less inappropriate: hearing from the station owners five days after the comments were made.

Updates later. Time to head to Camden Yards for the Orioles home opener, where's I'm guessing Roch will keep you informed throughout the day.

Posted by David Steele at 11:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
                    

It's Easter weekend and Passover week, so why not get in the proper mood by checking out how a radio host in the world's largest market used his show, which is simulcast on a national cable news network, to acknowledge Rutgers reaching the women's national championship game?

You may already have heard or seen this. On Wednesday morning, Don Imus, host of "Imus in the Morning'' on WFAN-AM and on MSNBC, called the Rutgers players "nappy-headed hos.'' His producer referred to them as "hardcore hos'' and described the national title game between Rutgers and Tennessee as "the jigaboos vs. the wannabees.'' (That, by the way, is a completely out-of-context reference to the Spike Lee movie "School Daze.'')

This morning, the National Association of Black Journalists (of which I am a member) demanded that Imus be fired or the show boycotted, with the organization president adding, "Has he lost his mind?''

Imus didn't get fired. He apologized. Apparently it was sincere.

WFAN has made no comment so far, probably because they've got a Mets game to do. MSNBC, which has carried his show live for several years and apparently banks heavily on it (since it means it doesn't have to come up with original morning programming of its own) acted as if he'd wandered into the station and started fiddling with knobs without their knowledge: "'Imus in the Morning' is not a production of the cable network and is produced by WFAN Radio. As Imus makes clear every day, his views are not those of MSNBC. We regret that his remarks were aired on MSNBC and apologize for these offensive comments.''

MSNBC isn't apologizing to the point where it says they're going to yank him off the air, though. In their defense and WFAN's, though, if the things he's said before, and some of his "friends'' have said, haven't been enough to get him permanently canceled, then no one should dream that this will. Once, years ago, a U.S. Senator did a nasty imitation of O.J. case judge Lance Ito on this show, and it took a while for anyone to apologize then, too.

The president of Rutgers and the president of the NCAA issued a joint statement condemning Imus. Rutgers coach C. Vivian Stringer also issued a statement, which read, in part:

"To serve as a joke of Mr. Imus in such an insensitive manner creates a wedge and makes light of the efforts of these classy individuals, both as women and as women of color.  It is unfortunate Mr. Imus sought to tarnish Rutgers' spirit and success.''

Give her credit for not responding this way, instead:

"Who is this crotchety dope-addled fool to even make fun of how anyone else looks? How does he even still have a job after decades of slinging around  jokes that should've gone out of style 40 years ago? You think if I, a black woman, had his background and talked the way he does on a national show and tried to pass it off as comedy, that I'd ever work another day in any profession besides swabbing out toilets? Either he used some bad acid back in the '60s or the people who hired him are still using it. If there were any justice in this society, my girls would own that station and he'd be getting paid subway fare to come down there and comb out their 'nappy heads' every morning.''

But if she said that, she'd probably get fired, or boycotted.

By the way, this was originally going to be a post about Imus, Billy Packer (used a term that's derogatory to gays on The Charlie Rose Show the night before the Final Four, and still doesn't think he did anything wrong) and Micheal Ray Richardson (fired as a CBA coach after telling reporters that he figured his contract negotiations would come out well because he has "big-time Jew lawyers).

But the development of the Imus/Rutgers story kind of overran everything.

The bottom line: Imus and Packer are professional broadcasters entrusted to raise and keep raised the standards of mass communications in an ever-expanding universe of information, access, voices and opinions. They apparently stink at it, and the people who hire them apparently stink at that. As for Richardson, at some point someone needs to tell him that he's no longer an out-of-his-depth NBA rookie barely out of his teens, and now is a head coach with all the attendant responsibilities, including interacting with the media and forming coherent, intelligent observations.

Yet Richardson is the only one of the three out of a job today.

Hmmmmmmmm.

Happy Easter and Happy Passover.

Posted by David Steele at 6:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (11)
                    

I'm extremely pleased to be able to say I once got to meet, and talk at length with, Eddie Robinson. It was some 20 years ago, when I was working for the St. Petersburg Times, and he was making an appearance to promote his namesake game at Giants Stadium, the Eddie Robinson Classic. It struck me at the time, as a young reporter, lifelong sports fan and eager student of black history, that it was amazing that an actual game at an NFL stadium would be named for a black coach. It hadn't struck me at that point that not everybody thought it was that remarkable - that it was nothing more than what a legendary coach of any color, at any school and any level of college football, was entitled to.

That's what I've come to understand as the years have passed, and understand now that he has died at age 88. Yes, it was important that he compiled the record and the legacy that he did at Grambling. It was important that he once, and for a long time, held the alltime record for coaching victories, and very important that he passed a record held by Bear Bryant, in the same way it was important that Hank Aaron broke an iconic record held by Babe Ruth.

But what I've seen and heard so far today is that he is being recognized not as a great black coach, but as a great coach, period, and one who is being honored for his impact on the game and society overall, not just on the lives of black people. He reached that position not by taking on society in a confrontational way - and considering the times in which he came into the coaching, the 1940s, he was perfectly entitled to do that - but by promoting this message: this is the land of opportunity, and that means you young black men from the deep South have a right to that opportunity just as much as anybody, and with me, here at Grambling, you will get it, and you will learn how to take advantage of it.

One thing that Doug Williams, his former quarterback and his successor as Grambling coach, said on one of his TV interviews today was that Eddie Robinson was nothing if not a patriot; he loved America and didn't hesitate to tell you. During a time that America regularly denied other Americans opportunities, he reminded everyone that it was going to provide him and others everything this country's ideals promised.

That's all anyone can ask of a coach and an educator. When they talk about great coaches, period - and there's been plenty of reason to talk about them lately, with Billy Donovan and Pat Summitt, and new Hall of Famers Phil Jackson and Roy Williams, and the legacy of John Wooden - Eddie Robinson belongs in that conversation, always has and always will. With no qualifiers.

More on what he said to me all those years ago when I was in St. Pete in my column for tomorrow.

An addendum: as it turns out, contrary to a column I wrote last year, I had met Buck O'Neil, back in 1991 when he was at a Negro leagues reunion at the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. I know this because I have a picture of him with me, that I found a month after that column. I'm sure that then, three years before Ken Burns' Baseball documentary came out, I couldn't distinguish him from the waves of Negro leaguers of whom I was just learning at the time. I also have pictures of Double Duty Radcliffe, Piper Davis and Toni Stone (a woman playing in the leagues), all of whom I also had been unaware back then. Shows what kind of memory I had, or what kind of photo organization.

That's another reason I'm glad my memory of the meeting with Eddie Robinson is so clear.

Posted by David Steele at 4:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
                    

Thanks to CBS, the NCAA and all the student athletes who are going to go pro in something other than sports, there's still almost two hours before tipoff of the national championship game. That gives me time to make my belated prediction, for what that's worth (at least I got one team in the final, although my predicted champ, Georgetown, is gone).

Florida 60, Ohio State 52.

A friend and very close Buckeye observer (still in mourning over the BCS championship game) enacted a couple of scenarios under which Ohio State could win. 1) Mike Conley Jr. could present the one and only matchup that would give Florida fits. 2) Greg Oden, instead of getting in foul trouble himself, gets someone on the Gators' front line in foul trouble. Both plausible. It was amazing to see how much devastation Conley wrought against Georgetown in the semifinal, but it wasn't surprising, because, again, of the Hoyas' many strengths, point guard was not one of them. In fact, how many schools in the country have point guards as good as Conley, especially freshmen?

There was one more: 3) Florida is way overdue for a bad game, unlike Ohio State, which got both of theirs out of their system against Xavier and Florida.

Also plausible, but unlikely. So Atlanta will be in an uproar tonight, because eight out of every 10 people I came across today, in two of the big downtown hotels and in the street, were Gators fans. Short drive. The souvenir stands were stocking up on Florida gear and they were still running out fast.

The buzz in the streets since Saturday, by the way, has been strong. It's good that this city is in the Final Four rotation - it's a football town, but a college town more than that, so everybody's into it. There also were about a jillion free concerts in Centennial Park over the weekend, including Ludacris on Sunday, when it was raining most of the day but him and the crowd was still booming all through the area, meaning that you didn't actually have to fight the crowds to hear him.

Imagine that in Baltimore, except in earlier rounds, because, of course, they'd never hold a Final Four in a regular basketball arena, as it was pointed out to me several times since my plea for a new arena two Sundays ago. Of course, as others have pointed out to me before, if the city had put a roof on the stadium in which the Ravens now play, some event of that magnitude might already have come here. Too late to worry about that, though.

Anyway, none of us media hacks are picking Ohio State, either. USA Today ran the predictions of its staffers this morning, and all but one picked Florida.

Minutes ago, we had the first notable instance of media covering media. A credentialed photographer just climbed atop a chair and took a picture of the media work room on the dome floor. Just what the public has on its mind on the final night of March Madness: how many writers showed up. Can't wait to go out, get a copy of that paper and frame that photo.

OK ... still an hour and a half until tipoff. Time for me to figure out exactly why Roy Williams got into the Hall of Fame so fast - as did Jim Boeheim - while Gary Williams has never even been a finalist.

And: what the Sun's new owners will do first - cut the sports department's travel budget, or give Carlos Zambrano an eight-figure contract extension.

Posted by David Steele at 7:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)