BCS Quiz: Who won the first BCS title in 1998 (game played Jan. 4, 1999)? Answer below.
Notre Dame – Alabama…last word
WARNING: If you are a Notre Dame fan you’ll like the first story…but skip the second. If you are not a Notre Dame fan, skip the first and read the second.
“On the event of the national championship game between Notre Dame and Alabama… consider some curiosities of the sports-academia complex. According to Eric M. Leifer in ‘Making the Majors: The Transformation of Team Sports in America,’ in the 1920s, the professional football Maroons of Pottsville, Pa., (population 23,000) drew such large crowds that the New York Giants chose to play them there rather than in Gotham. By the 1890s, Yale’s football receipts ‘accounted for one-eighth of the institution’s total income, an amount greater than its expenditures on law and medicine.’…
“Young men are, in television-speak, a coveted demographic. Why? They buy beer and pickup trucks. But like everyone else nowadays, they tape TV programs and watch them later, fast-forwarding through commercials. The technology that makes this possible has caused the explosive growth of lucrative TV contracts for sports broadcasting rights: Men cannot fast-forward through live sports telecasts.
“Monday night’s game should be sweet satisfaction for Father Theodore Hesburgh, 95, who managed to make athletic and academic excellence compatible. This year, Notre Dame is the first school in the history of the Bowl Championship Series to rank first in football and first in the graduation rate (tied with Northwestern) of its football players. Notre Dame graduates 97 percent; Alabama, 75 percent. In this, Notre Dame benefits from a self-imposed recruiting handicap – the two-semester math requirement for all freshmen that prevents the university from recruiting many blue-chip high school players….
“(In) 1949, when Hesburgh was appointed the university’s executive vice president and athletics chairman, he set out to make Notre Dame ‘the Harvard of the Midwest,’ which required de-emphasizing football. This required bringing to heel the imperious and mercurial (Frank) Leahy, who flouted NCAA rules with illegal practices – and refused to speak to Hesburgh. [Ed. Notre Dame won four national championships under him.]
“Leahy was a national celebrity. In 1956, Leahy would second the nomination of Dwight Eisenhower at the Republican convention. In 1953, however, the steely Hesburgh had fired Leahy – never mind the talk about Leahy leaving because of health problems. Since then, Notre Dame’s football fortunes have varied, but its academic reputation has risen steadily.
“Football has hardly lost its hold on the campus. The large mural on the library that overlooks the stadium shows Jesus with both arms raised and is famously called ‘Touchdown Jesus.’ The statue of Father William Corby – a 19th-century president of the university – depicts him with his right hand held straight up and is known as ‘Fair Catch Corby.’ And the statue of Moses with his index finger pointed skyward is ‘We’re Number One Moses.’”
“Well, since you asked – and many of my friends have, some more than once – no, I will not be cheering for my alma mater, the University of Notre Dame, to win big-time college football’s championship tomorrow night. What’s really surprising me are those who believe as I do that two Notre Dame players have committed serious criminal acts, sexual assault in one case and rape in another – but assumed that I’d support the team anyway, just as they are.
“ ‘Aren’t you just a little bit excited?’ one asked the other day. There are plenty of good guys on the team, too, I’m repeatedly told. And oh, that Manti Te’o is inspiring. I don’t doubt it. But as a thought exercise, how many predators would have to be on the team before you’d no longer feel like cheering?
“Sexual violations of all kinds happen on every campus, I know, and neither man will ever be found guilty in court; one of the victims is dead and the other, according to the Notre Dame student who drove her to the emergency room, in February 2011, decided to keep her mouth shut at least in part because she’d seen what happened to the first woman. Neither player has ever been named, and won’t be here either, because neither was charged with a crime.
“The Department of Education’s civil rights office is well aware of the second case, though; in fact, federal investigators were on campus at the time, as part of a seven-month investigation into the way Notre Dame handles such reports. And as a result, with its Title IX funding on the line, the university marked the 40th anniversary of coeducation in 2012 by changing the way it investigates sexual assault for the second time in two years….
“Two years ago, Lizzy Seeberg, a 19-year-old freshman at Saint Mary’s College, across the street from Notre Dame, committed suicide after accusing a Notre Dame football player of sexually assaulting her. The friend Lizzy told immediately afterward said she was crying so hard, she was having trouble breathing.
“Yet after Lizzy went to police, a friend of the player sent her a series of texts that frightened her as much as anything that had happened in the player’s dorm room. ‘Don’t do anything you would regret,’ one of them said. ‘Messing with Notre Dame football is a bad idea.’
“At the time of Lizzy’s death, 10 days after reporting the attack to campus police, investigators still had not interviewed the accused. It took them five more days after her death to get around to that.”
Well, it’s ugly. It took school officials six months to convene a closed-door disciplinary meeting, and only after the story became national news. The player was found “not responsible” and never sat out a game.
A few months later there was a second case, when a resident assistant in a Notre Dame dorm drove a freshman to a hospital for a rape exam. The RA’s parents met the woman that night, “when their daughter brought her to their home after leaving the hospital. They said they saw – and reported to athletic officials – a hailstorm of texts from other players, warning the young woman not to report what had happened: ‘They were trying to silence the girl,’ the RA’s father told me. And did; no criminal complaint was ever filed.”
Notre Dame president, the Rev. John Jenkins, refused to meet with Lizzy Seeberg’s family on advice of counsel, and as Henneberger (whose comments on Hillary Clinton I’ve noted in my current “Week in Review,” worth reading…) writes, there has been “a deliberate attempt to protect the school’s brand by smearing a dead 19-year-old.”
–Well, I’d say that Johnny Manziel, “Johnny Football,” backed up his Heisman Trophy award with a Heismanesque performance in amassing a Cotton Bowl-record 516 yards of total offense, with two touchdowns rushing (229 yards on 17 carries), and two through the air (22/34, 287) as No. 10 Texas A&M singed No. 12 Oklahoma 41-13.
I forgot that Manziel, Cam Newton (Auburn), Tim Tebow (Florida) and Colin Kaepernick (Nevada) are the only FBS quarterbacks with 20 touchdowns rushing and 20 passing in a season. Not bad company.
–And in his final game as a college coach, Chip Kelly went out a winner as No. 4 Oregon had no problem with No. 5 Kansas State, 35-17, in the Fiesta Bowl. While he didn’t have his best game, Ducks quarterback Marcus Mariota is the spitting image of RG3 in my book. What a group of QBs the NFL will/does already have.
I also have to add that the Duck cheerleaders deserve a lot of credit as well for raising their game during the Kelly era. They were a constant inspiration for the players, as more than one told Bar Chat, anonymously.
NFL Playoffs
–That was a helluva game between Washington and Seattle, until the last ten minutes or so when it was clear Seattle would win after falling behind 14-0 in the first quarter.
Rookie sensation Russell Wilson led the comeback and an eventual 24-14 triumph, sending the Seahawks to Atlanta for the next round.
But I was screaming at the television for Washington to take Robert Griffin III, RG3, out when it was clear he risked ruining his career by playing on his injured knee. There shouldn’t have even been a question, and with Dr. James Andrews there, in person, on the sidelines, the preeminent sports physician on the planet, and a man who didn’t want RG3 playing, you would have thought cooler heads would have prevailed. Alas, they didn’t. By the time Griffin exited the scene it was too late for a comeback.
All football fans hope we hear Monday that RG3 didn’t do further damage. I couldn’t give a rats-ass about the Skins, but I love the sport like you do and love watching the greats.
Washington also has some great sports reporters and I’ll go through all their coming articles and the real truth behind the scenes concerning Griffin’s condition for next chat.
–Earlier Sunday, the Ravens defeated the Colts 24-9 in Ray Lewis’ last home game. I can’t stand Lewis, but admire the hell out of his playing ability and stupendous career. I also have to add that I wrote in this space long ago, 3/8/10, that the Ravens made a great move in getting Anquan Boldin and he paid off again for them on Sunday.
–Yikes…I guess I was very naïve but I thought Joe Webb would do a little better in subbing for the injured Christian Ponder at quarterback for Minnesota. Yeah, I knew he hadn’t thrown a single pass all regular season, thus becoming the first in NFL history to start a playoff game without throwing a prior pass, but after leading the Vikings to an opening field goal on a run-dominated read option attack, Minnesota mysteriously abandoned the scheme and Webb sucked, big time, the rest of the way as Green Bay steamrolled Minny 24-10 in a game that was nowhere near as close as the final score.
Heck, I took a nap around halftime, came back with the game suddenly 24-3, and was told I had missed a horror show, with Webb finishing 11-for-30 for 180 yards, while Adrian Peterson was held to 99 yards on 22 carries.
–I was bored to tears with Houston’s 19-13 win over Cincinnati. Actually, for much of the time I was watching Bucknell-Missouri. See below.
–But as for next weekend, we have a great Saturday coming up…don’t bother me.
4:30…Baltimore at Denver…30 degrees…no snow. Drat!!!
8:00…Green Bay at San Francisco…sunny…[Shoot!]
1:00…Seattle at Atlanta…indoors…blowdom
4:30…Houston at New England…44! Drat!!!
–Am I the only one who doesn’t understand Kansas City wanting former Philadelphia coach Andy Reid so badly? No doubt Reid’s career mark, 130-93-1, is solid. I just thought he was tired and washed up, just like his team.
Las Vegas sports books have had a horrible year.
“The problem…is that many popular NFL teams beat the point spread during the regular season. And with many bettors combining their picks in parlays, $20 wagers turned into payouts of up to more than $1,000, depending on how many winning bets they combined.
“The result is what one Las Vegas sports bookmaker called a ‘staggering’ financial hit from the NFL regular season, as bettors handed Nevada sports books their worst year in memory….
“The damage was particularly bad in Week 9 of the NFL season, when Vegas-backed underdogs finished 2-10 against the point spread, while seven games that day finished ‘over’ the game’s projected total-points-scored line.
“Bettors adore backing the ‘over’ and ‘favored’ teams such as the Denver Broncos, New England Patriots, Atlanta Falcons and Green Bay Packers. As that Nov. 4 perfect storm hit, MGM Resorts, the city’s largest sports bookmaker, was forced to summon emergency stashes of cash to pay off its losses.”
The Packers are the favorite NFL team and were favored by 7 ½ on Saturday. Schwinnnggg!
“Sports books also took a beating Sunday on bets made on total wins by a given team in the regular season…including the line that Manning’s Broncos would win nine regular season games. The Broncos won 13.”
Now, some books are sweating out hundreds of Super Bowl winning bets made on teams such as the Seahawks, who opened at 75-1 odds.
“The Indianapolis Colts were at 200-1 to win the Super Bowl after Manning left town…”
[Well, Vegas doesn’t have to worry about Indy, but they obviously still do when it comes to Seattle.]
The Hall of Fame
At 2:00 PM Wednesday, as Jorge Arangure Jr. of the New York Times puts it, the Baseball Writers’ Association of America “will deliver the most significant verdict to date on baseball’s steroid era.”
2012 results…need 75% for enshrinement…15 yrs. max on the ballot.
Barry Larkin 86.4%…in
Jack Morris (13 years on ballot) 66.7…2011 (53.5) 2010 (52.3)
Jeff Bagwell (2) 56…2011 (41.7)
Lee Smith (10) 50.6
Tim Raines (5) 48.7
Alan Trammell (11) 36.8
Mark McGwire (6) 19.5
Don Mattingly (12) 17.8
Rafael Palmeiro (2) 12.6
Notable newcomers…Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Mike Piazza, Sammy Sosa, Curt Schilling, Craig Biggio
The main focus, of course, is on Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens, the most celebrated hitter and pitcher of their eras, or from an award standpoint, any era, with Bonds a record seven-time MVP and Clemens a record seven-time Cy Young Award winner. Both went through federal trials on perjury charges stemming from their denials of drug use. Clemens was acquitted. Bonds was found guilty of one count of obstruction of justice.
It was over a month ago that an Associated Press survey of more than 100 voters found Bonds with 45% support and Clemens with 43. A separate New York Times survey of 92 voters, roughly one-sixth of the ballots cast last year, revealed 47% said they were supporting Bonds and Clemens. “Notably, not one person in the Times survey reported casting a vote for either Bonds or Clemens but not both. The two players clearly seem to be a package; either you look past their drug links and judge their whole careers and vote for both of them, or you don’t.” [Arangure]
By the way, in the AP survey, Sammy Sosa drew just 18% and in the Times poll, only 12%. That’s a death sentence. As in the cases of Rafael Palmeiro and Mark McGwire, you don’t recover from that level, though you stay on the ballot for 15 years as long as you receive 5%.
Then there is Mike Piazza…
“I grew up right in the heart of a baseball era that featured no-doubt Hall of Famers who became no-shot Hall of Famers. Next time you see an old All-Star Game telecast on MLB network, check out how many times the announcers refer to Steve Garvey, Fred Lynn and Dave Parker – to name three – as a ‘future Hall of Famer’ or a ‘shoo-in Hall of Famer’ or a ‘cinch for Cooperstown.’
“You can extend that list to include a couple of our favorite sons, Don Mattingly and Keith Hernandez, both of whom spent large portions of their career playing under the assumption of immortality, neither of whom ever will get anywhere close to the front door.
“Funny things happen in baseball. Injuries. Drugs. It’s a hard game to play passably. It’s an almost impossible game to play at a forever level across a decade and a half or so. And that’s what makes these players – and there are plenty of others – comparable. These aren’t even fence-sitters, like Jack Morris is, like Bert Blyleven was. There were no lobbying groups for any of them. They were good players. Not Hall of Famers. And we rarely even debate them anymore.
“I wonder if that’s where Mike Piazza is headed. I’ve read the stories, seen the surveys, and it’s pretty clear to me nobody is getting in the Hall of Fame this year: Too many fringe candidates among the clean ones, too many dirty candidates among the shoo-ins, too many look-at-me voters who claim to be turning in blank ballots out of some misguided sense of humor.
“I voted for Piazza. I voted for him because he was the best offensive catcher I ever saw, because he assembled one of the greatest – if not the greatest – offensive resumes of any catcher ever born. And though he has long been caught in the vortex of whispers and rumors about PED use, there has yet to be a credible complaint lodged against him.
“And as I always have felt about others in that boat, like Jeff Bagwell: I’d rather be wrong and include someone who might have been guilty than be wrong and exclude someone who is innocent.”
I love Vaccaro’s work. He’s easily one of the best sports reporters around. But it was Piazza himself who strategically planted the PED stories of his own use with selected reporters. As noted in Jeff Pearlman’s book, “The Rocket That Fell to Earth,” when the subject of PEDs was broached with reporters he especially trusted, Piazza fessed up. “Sure, I use,” he told one. “But in limited doses, and not all that often.”
Pearlman: “Whether or not it was Piazza’s intent, the tactic was brilliant: By letting the media know, off the record, Piazza made the information that much harder to report. Writers saw his bulging muscles, his acne-covered back. They certainly heard the under-the-breath comments from other major league players, some who considered Piazza’s success to be 100 percent chemically delivered. ‘He’s a guy who did it, and everybody knows it,’ says Reggie Jefferson, the longtime major league first baseman. ‘It’s amazing how all these names, like Roger Clemens, are brought up, yet Mike Piazza goes untouched.’
“ ‘There was nothing more obvious than Mike on steroids,’ says another major league veteran who played against Piazza for years. ‘Everyone talked about it, everyone knew it. Guys on my team, guys on the Mets. A lot of us came up playing against Mike, so we knew what he looked like back in the day. Frankly, he sucked on the field. Just sucked. After his body changed, he was entirely different. ‘Power from nowhere,’ we called it.’
“When asked, on a scale of 1 to 10, to grade the odds that Piazza had used performance enhancers, the player doesn’t pause.
The AP survey did not ask the writers about Piazza. The Times survey showed him at 63%.
“I first heard about steroids use from players in 1989, in the clubhouse of the Class AAA Nashville Sounds. Nobody stood up and admitted they were users – players I asked directly always denied it – but they all knew something was going on. General managers, managers all talked about it on background, playing the guessing game about who used. Drugs were like batting gloves: something that some players used for an advantage. Players told me that by 2000, about half the players were taking steroids or something similar.
“ ‘The truth is, we’re in a competitive business, and these guys were putting up big numbers and helping your ballclub win games,’ Diamondbacks GM Kevin Towers once told me. ‘You tended to turn your head on things.’
“Throughout the ‘90s, each team had the authority, technically, to ask for a steroids test. It didn’t happen. Not one time. Instead, players and the game celebrated the accomplishments of McGwire, Sammy Sosa, Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds. Stadiums sold out. A lot of guys made a lot of money. It wasn’t until 2006 that baseball got tough about its drug testing, and only then because it was bullied by Congress.
“Understanding that history and being unable to distinguish nonusers from the generations of users, there is no chance I’ll go back and apply retroactive morality. No team is giving back its cash; neither is Commissioner Bud Selig nor the players – users and nonusers alike. If you want to declare fraud because of drug use, then it goes way beyond the guys on the ballot I’m holding in my hands; you’d have to follow the money trail and disavow almost everything that has happened in the sport over the past half-century, because most of it has been fueled by drugs of some kind.
“This is why Selig has rightly declined to ban Sosa, McGwire, Clemens and Bonds. They weren’t outliers in baseball. They were the best of a time saturated with drug use, a true reflection of what the sport was, whether my fellow baseball writers like it or not. Excluding them is an exercise in ignored reality. So just as I voted for McGwire, I’ll be voting for them.”
Back to Vaccaro, I believe both Jack Morris and Craig Biggio get in this time. I mean there is zero reason not to vote for Biggio, who has flown under the radar of a conversation dominated by Bonds and Clemens.
The New York Times reported that Lance Armstrong is preparing to drop years of denials and admit he used performance-enhancing drugs, however his attorney has yet to reach out to USADA chief executive Travis Tygart nor David Howman of the World Anti-Doping Agency as yet. USADA stripped Armstrong of his seven Tour de France titles last year and issued a scathing report on his activities.
Armstrong faces all kinds of legal challenges, including a potential U.S. Department of Justice suit on possible fraud against the U.S. Postal Service during the years the agency sponsored Armstrong’s teams. And a Dallas-based promotions company is seeking to recover $millions paid to Armstrong in bonuses for winning the Tour de France.
“(Within) the last month, Armstrong’s representative reached out to Tygart to arrange a meeting between Armstrong and the agency. The goal of that meeting was to find out if a confession could mitigate Armstrong’s lifetime ban from Olympic sports, according to several people with knowledge of the situation. (They) did not want their names published because it would jeopardize their access to sensitive information on the matter.
“Tygart welcomed the invitation, and that meeting occurred last month, one person familiar with the situation said.”
“Tim Herman, Armstrong’s Austin-based lawyer, said that talks with Tygart and the anti-doping agency are not on the table. Armstrong has not met with Tygart, Herman said.”
Jonathan Vaughters, a former Armstrong teammate, anti-doping proponent and a current co-owner of a professional cycling team, told Macur:
“They need someone on the inside to tell them how it was done, and not just anyone on the inside, someone on the inside who was very influential. Someone like Lance.”
“Vaughters said that a confession by Armstrong might encourage other riders to say what they knew and encourage a ‘truth and reconciliation’ effort, in which riders would not be penalized for confessing to doping if they detailed how they got away with it. That effort could educate authorities so those entities could bolster drug testing and close any loopholes, Vaughters said.
“ ‘I feel like Lance’s confession could push that effort forward dramatically,’ he said. ‘Right now, we almost have to destroy the sport in order to save it.’”
“Read this quote from Betsy Andreu [Ed. from a Michael O’Keeffe piece on Armstrong], whom Armstrong painted as some kind of bitter shrew because she testified that she heard Armstrong tell his cancer physicians that he had used PEDs:
“ ‘Does (Armstrong) think people are completely stupid? The guy is like a Mafia don. Will he apologize to all the people who wouldn’t lie for him? Will he compensate people for costing them jobs and businesses? How much of a price do you put on lost opportunities?’
“Armstrong went at her, her husband Frankie, another cyclist, and Greg LeMond, and a former masseuse named Emma O’Reilly, another who simply told the truth about him.
“More from Betsy Andreu in O’Keeffe’s piece: ‘Will (Armstrong) compensate Greg LeMond for ruining his bicycle business? Will he apologize to Emma for calling her a prostitute?’
“Lance Armstrong raised a lot of money for cancer research and changed a lot of lives in a positive way, he sure did.
NBA Bits
–Not for nothing, but New Jersey Nets interim coach P.J. Carlesimo is 5-1 since taking over for Avery Johnson, who was fired with the team at 14-14. Does P.J. get the interim tag removed? I think if I was owner Mikhail Prokhorov, I’d let P.J. know he is coach the remainder of the season and that they’ll decide afterward. One thing is for sure, the Nets have stepped up their game.
–Minnesota All-Star Kevin Love re-fractured his right hand on Saturday. Gotta feel for the guy. When he has played this year, he is averaging 18 points and 14 rebounds.
“It’s the guy who is being paid handsomely to utilize his expertise and get the most out of one of the NBA’s top players.
“And so far Coach Mike D’Antoni has been a huge failure.
“Say what you want about Gasol being a baby at times, soft and maybe not handling things on the court as well as a pro should.
“But prima donnas are a part of professional sports and Gasol has already proven himself a worthy NBA competitor.
“It’s the baby sitters like D’Antoni who have to get the very best out of every one of the different personalities they’ve been given.
“When D’Antoni publicly humiliated Gasol for not being needed with the game on the line, it demonstrated a total misunderstanding of how Gasol handles such things.
“It was D’Antoni’s job to know better before pulverizing a fragile Gasol….
“D’Antoni has spent his NBA career as a head coach trying to prove his system works. Many NBA teams have stolen aspects of his philosophy.
“But he has been a failure in proving it a championship success. And when he arrived here the most casual basketball fan understood it was not a good fit.
“But if D’Antoni is as good as so many have said as a coach, shouldn’t he find a way to move the Xs and Os around to accommodate the talent here?
“Will the hiring of D’Antoni go down as one of the Lakers’ all-time blunders because he was too stubborn to bend?”
–The New York Knicks, 23-10, generate more of their points from the three-point line, 33%, than any team in NBA history. This year the league average is 22%. But no team that has needed to make three-pointers for as much as 28% of its points has ever won a championship. [Michael Salfino / Wall Street Journal]
College Basketball
Not a lot of excitement this weekend, except St. John’s gained a much-needed win in upsetting No. 14 Cincinnati 53-52, while some of us watched a lot of Bucknell at No. 12 Missouri on our computers (ESPN3). I made a note to myself a week ago to catch this one because I’ve been reading up on Bucknell and after a very tough 66-64 loss to the Tigers, and assuming they win the Patriot League, where solid Lehigh stands in the way, Bucknell is going to get a 13-seed at worst and be a very tough out, owing to solid center Mike Muscala, who had 25 points and 14 rebounds vs. Mizzou. Muscala is one of those fundamentally perfect post players who needs a lot more muscle and a personalized trainer for coordination drills, but could be a major sleeper at…cliché alert…the next level!
And for fans of Wake Forest and Boston College, Saturday was big for a different reason. Wake lost to No. 1 Duke in Durham, 80-62, and B.C. lost to No. 23 North Carolina State 78-73 at home, but both teams beat their respective spread!!! [25 in the Wake contest, 9 ½ for B.C.]
Immediately, fans and observers of both games wrote Bar Chat’s editor with the same sage comment.
“They beat the spread! And at the end of the day, boys and girls, that’s all that matters.”
So true. I channeled Ronald Reagan later Saturday night (best time to reach him, by the way) and when I apprised him of Wake and B.C.’s wins in Vegas, the Gipper couldn’t help but respond… “Not bad, not bad at all.”
Marquette beat No 15. Georgetown 49-48. No. 11 Illinois whipped No. 8 Ohio State 74-55.
Karen Thorne of the Sydney Morning Herald wrote an invaluable piece on sharks: “Fact and fiction.” To wit:
“Theory 1: If dolphins are around you won’t be attacked by a shark. FALSE… ‘So many people think if there are dolphins in the area there aren’t going to be sharks around. If there are huge schools of fish it is quite common that sharks and dolphins will feed in close proximity of each other. I have seen sharks and dolphins swimming together.’ Michael Brown, researcher for Surfwatch Australia.
“Theory 2: Hitting a shark on the nose or eyes will deter them. TRUE… ‘The snout is the most sensitive area of the shark, it’s full of very delicate organs that detect miniscule electrical impulse – such as the heartbeat of a fish. Great whites roll their eyes back in to their skull – preserving their eyes is important.’ Vic Peddemores, senior research scientist, NSW (New South Wales) Department of Fisheries.
“Theory 3: Swimming with dogs increases the risk of attack. INCONCLUSIVE…
“Theory 4: Bright colors attract sharks. TRUE…
“Theory 6: Sharks can be stared down. TRUE… ‘I find eye contact to be a critical moment in diver/shark interactions. Once you make eye contact they [can] back off. They are looking for a stealth moment, or an opportunity to investigate an unsuspecting quarry rather than an aware one.’ Mark Addison, shark expert and shark film-maker.
“Theory 7: Sharks attack to feed. TRUE…. ‘Most attacks are mistaken identity regarding prey. In NSW a lot are juvenile great whites – changing diet from fish to mammals. There is no mum, and they have to take a chance. Sometimes it’s human.’ Vic Peddemores.
Director of Shark Attacks for Bar Chat, Bob S., notes that what is good about the above is it’s not about “the usual nonsense about how sharks are not a threat from the International Shark Attack File folks.” I agree with Dr. Bob (he was awarded an honorary degree in Sharkology by Harvard over the holidays) that it’s time to do a road trip to the ISAF in Gainesville and investigate their bogus files. I’m thinking Sen. Marco Rubio may be of some assistance on this matter.
Dr. Bob and I also would like to see New Jersey become shark central again this summer, which would be a good way of helping the region heal and would obviously juice Bar Chat’s ratings. The good doctor has volunteered to do shark spotting work, assuming we get proper funding for a plane. I mean I have the funds for a Russian aircraft, but you all know the safety history for them. We need something better.
Meanwhile, there have been a slew of distressing stories on the overall shark population the past few days. The Sunday Times of London reports, “More than a third of the shark species that enter British waters are endangered as a result of foreign fishermen hunting them for their fins, which are sold to markets in the Far East, according to campaigners fighting the trade.”
I had no idea that “Spanish and Portuguese fishing boats have been granted more than 200 special licenses to remove sharks’ fins on board their vessels. According to documents from the European Union, some crews are suspected of discarding carcasses.”
What a bunch of freakin’ bastards. I thought the practice had been banned in the EU! And indeed, in 2003 the EU did introduce a ban on shark “finning,” slicing off the fin and discarding the carcass. But then it granted the permits to ships that slice off the fins at sea, providing the fish meat is also used.
“Conservationists say these permits meant that in practice the ban on finning was unenforceable.”
And what also sucks is a story I know many of you have seen, the image of the Hong Kong factory rooftop covered in thousands of freshly sliced shark fins. One local activist who visited the site estimates there are 15,000 to 20,000 fins being laid to dry in anticipation of a surge in demand over the Lunar New Year holiday in February this year.
Said Gary Stokes of the conservation group Sea Shepherd, “This is the most graphic, brutal and barbaric part of the industry – the element of chopping a shark’s fin off and throwing it back into the water is horrific and inhumane.” [Agence France-Presse]
–Well, it would appear we may yet have an NHL season as a tentative agreement between the owners and players has been reached. I’d love to see it.
—Slovenia’s Tina Maze has been the dominant competitor on the World Cup circuit this season with five wins and 12 top-3 finishes in 19 races. She has a huge 452-point advantage over her nearest challenger, the former overall champion Maria Hofl-Riesch of Germany. As reported by Brian Pinelli of the New York Times:
“Maze, who won two Olympic silver medals at the 2010 Vancouver Games, has always fallen short in her quest for an overall title. She finished second, third and fourth in the standings the past three seasons, losing to Hofl-Riesch and the four-time champion Lindsey Vonn.”
But on Friday night at the historic slalom in Zagreb, Maze screwed up and 17-year-old American Mikaela Shiffrin captured the prestigious Vip Snow Queen Trophy.
The spectacular Shiffrin, by the way, became the first American to capture two World Cup races before the age of 18. The resident of Vail, Colo., earned her first win on Dec. 20 in Are, Sweden. She also earned $55,000 for her win, the biggest payday on the women’s tour and she now has the World Cup slalom lead, 26 points ahead of Maze. Tamara McKinney, 1984, is the only female ski racer from the U.S. to earn the WC slalom title.
—Jan. 5, 1988, was a very sad day in the history of American sports.
“Pete Maravich came to town 25 years ago…No newspaper, local or national, had an obituary prepared. No need, presumably.
“Everything seemed normal that morning in the gymnasium at the First Church of the Nazarene in Pasadena. Maravich had flown in from his Louisiana home to do some radio work with James Dobson. Maravich had become a born-again Christian. Dobson was the nationally known head of Focus on the Family, his spacious headquarters located at the intersection of the 57 and 10 freeways in Pomona.
“Dobson, 6 feet 5, was then 51, loved sports, was once captain of the tennis team at Pasadena City College and put together morning pickup basketball games at Nazarene on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. This was a Tuesday, but it was a special day.
“The guy with the scraggly hair and floppy socks was joining the game. Maravich was 40 then, but only eight years removed from his last season in the NBA, when he made 67% of his three-point shots in limited playing time with the Utah Jazz and Boston Celtics. That 1979-80 season was the first for the three-point shot in the NBA. Had it been around earlier, his legacy in the pro game might have grown considerably. As it was, he averaged 24.2 points in his 10-year career.”
Let alone what the three-point shot would have done to his 44.2 career scoring average in his three-year LSU stint.
Former UCLA center Ralph Drollinger, who was working on various Christian media productions, was invited by Dobson to play in the pickup game.
“They played three-on-three for about 20 minutes and took a break. Drollinger walked to a drinking fountain and then Maravich – standing near Dobson, and just after proclaiming ‘I feel great’ – collapsed. There were a few seconds, Drollinger says, ‘when we all thought he was faking, just joking.’
“You can’t fake foaming at the mouth, and soon, Dobson and Drollinger were doing CPR.
“Drollinger understood the procedure because he had been in dangerous situations before. He is a world-class mountaineer…and is credited as the first man to climb every peak on the main ridge of the Sierra Nevada between Olancha and the Sonora Pass.
“ ‘We worked on him for what seemed like an hour,’ Drollinger says, ‘but it was probably 15 minutes. I think he was dead the minute he hit the ground.’”
It turns out Maravich was “missing a left coronary artery in his heart. His right coronary artery had become greatly enlarged and had given out.”
“It was a stunning story,” writes Dwyre. “For a time in the South, the biggest names and biggest shows were Maravich and Elvis.
–Speaking of Drollinger and his mountaineering feats, there was a freak tragedy the other day on Mount Kilimanjaro when a popular Irish mountaineer, Ian McKeever, who broke the world record for summiting the seven highest peaks in the world in 2007, was struck by lightning and died as he led a group of 23 Irish climbers up the mountain. McKeever’s fiancée, Anna, was among the other climbers, many of whom required medical attention.
–A Honus Wagner T206 card graded Excellent 5 by Professional Sports Authenticator, will be up for sale next month and, according to Goldin Auctions, might fetch more than $2.8 million, which would break the record sale price for a version of the same card sold in 2007. Only 60 authenticated Wagner cards are out there. But only two others have the Excellent 5 grade. The exact same card sold for $1.62 million in 2008.
Speaking of Anson, I’ve seen a few stories in recent months questioning whether the baseball he played qualified as the sport Wagner and everyone who followed played. Clearly, the quality was lacking.
–Good for AC Milan, the Italian soccer club that walked off the field in the first half of an exhibition match with lower division club Pro Patria after fans repeatedly taunted Milan’s black players. This has become a big deal in Europe and it’s about time this crap stopped. The Italian players’ association president Damiano Tommasi applauded Milan’s decision.
–Golfer Rory McIlroy has announced he probably won’t compete at the 2016 Olympic Games to avoid the controversy of who he would represent; Britain or Ireland.
“I just think being from where we’re from, we’re placed in a very difficult position. I feel Northern Irish and obviously being from Northern Ireland you have a connection to Ireland and a connection to the UK,” McIlroy said. “If I could and there was a Northern Irish team I’d play for Northern Ireland.”
McIlroy regrets telling the Daily Mail last year he’d play for Great Britain.
—Six Russians were killed and two others were injured when their snowmobile slammed into a fence and flipped over into a ditch during a night run down an Italian ski slope. Two of the eight worked in the Italian tourism industry, while the six victims were Russian tourists.
And you want an example of how fast time flies? It was in 1998 that a low-flying U.S. Marine jet on a training run accidentally sliced a ski gondola’s cable on Mount Cermis in Italy, sending the car crashing to the ground and killing 20. I would have said that was no more than eight years ago.
–I have the world’s best barber…$20….in and out in ten minutes…but in those ten minutes he updates me on everything I don’t watch on television; like the stuff on the Discovery Channel. So I’m anxious to hear his take on “United States of Bacon,” which debuted on Sunday as part of “Discovery’s Destination America.”
In the show, California chef Todd Fisher travels across the country to visit restaurants where bacon has become a prominent ingredient.
I’m drooling already just typing this, which makes the program appropriate for barber shop talk because you have that smock over you to prevent one from drooling all over your shirt.
In the premiere, Fisher goes to Milwaukee hangout AJ Bombers and eats a Barrie Burger, “a chunky peanut butter and bacon cheeseburger.” [Greg Braxton / L.A. Times]
I’m going to make some myself for next Saturday night’s football game. BYOB.
–Now I hate chimps…chimpanzees…they are violent (no need to cite an obvious recent example) and foul (I’ve seen countless times where chimps throw their own you know what at visitors at a zoo). In a word, chimps blow.
But the gibbon is always top five in my book on the All-Species List and now there is reason to place the Bonobo in at least the top ten.
“Bonobos, together with chimpanzees, are two of modern humans’ closest genetic relatives. Unlike chimpanzees, however, which often violently attack outsiders, bonobos are generally more peaceful and will even travel with bonobos from outside groups for days at a time while foraging.”
But a team of researchers from Duke University has found that bonobos help those from outside groups before helping their own social group.
“When presented with a pile of food and given the option to open a door and let another bonobo in to share the meal, bonobos did so, and – when given the choice between a stranger and a groupmate – preferred sharing with the strangers.
“ ‘Bonobos may be unique among apes in preferring to interact with strangers over groupmates even at the cost of sharing food,’ the study authors write.
“And, in what the authors called a ‘surprising’ twist, if a bonobo chose to let a stranger in to share a meal over a groupmate in an adjoining room, the freed stranger would often go and open the groupmate’s cage even though the stranger would now be outnumbered by two unknown bonobos, and the food would be further split between them.”
Oh, it gets a little more complicated than this, like Bonobos who are both Jets and Mets fans are permanently angry, vs. Bonobos that are Giants and Yankees’ fans are extremely selfish, but we’ll let the above speak for itself and place the Bonobo No. 6 on the All-Species List, behind Dog, Elephant, Gibbon, Tiger and Great Whitey. The Beaver, still on double-secret probation, will become eligible again in the spring and is likely to be slotted fourth; a role model for rodents everywhere.
Top 3 songs for the week 1/4/60: #1 “El Paso” (Marty Robbins…brilliant…all-time fave) #2 “Why” (Frankie Avalon) #3 “The Big Hurt” (Miss Toni Fisher)…and…#4 “Running Bear” (Johnny Preston…hasn’t aged well…) #5 “Way Down Yonder In New Orleans” (Freddie Cannon) #6 “Heartaches By The Number” (Guy Mitchell…great tune…) #7 “It’s Time To Cry” (Paul Anka…he did better ….) #8 “Among My Souvenirs” (Connie Francis) #9 “Pretty Blue Eyes” (Steve Lawrence…another excuse to say… Steve Lawrence was/is an underrated entertainer!) #10 “Go, Jimmy, Go” (Jimmy Clanton)
BCS Quiz Answer: Tennessee won the first BCS title game, 23-16, vs. Florida State.
Next Bar Chat, Thursday. Since you know my pattern, due to other obligations this particular Wednesday, including my nightly newscast and a dinner, I will be posting late Wednesday PM in order to get the Hall of Fame vote details in.
