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Bar Chat

01/30/2012

Potpourri for $400

Super Bowl Quiz: Name the first five losing starting quarterbacks. Answer below.

NFL Bits

--If you didn’t see it, HBO’s “Namath: Beaver Falls to Broadway” is superb, particularly if you were living in the New York area during his Jets years. The archival footage is priceless, including his high school and college years at Alabama. It’s easy to forget that at one time Namath was a fantastic all-around athlete. It’s also sad to look back on a career that could have truly placed him among the top 3 or so quarterbacks of all time had he stayed even remotely healthy, or that he had the advantages of today’s sports medicine. As it was he was fortunate to be under the care of Dr. James Nicholas most of the time, he being the best in his day. More than one interviewed marveled at Namath’s “ability to play with pain.”

Joe Willie’s reminiscences of his ‘Bama days are terrific, as are the looks back at his playboy years. What a time in America and New York…the 60s. You forget sometimes just what a pioneer Namath was…a celebrity athlete in the mold of today’s so-called superstars, only decades before them.

New York sportscaster Sal Marchiano, who covered Namath extensively, best summed up Broadway Joe in the 60s. “He was Mick Jagger in a football uniform, not Pat Boone, and that’s what America wanted.”

To HBO’s credit, in return for Namath’s home movies, photographs and other materials, and some cash, he received no editorial control.

--Those earlier 50-1 and 100-1 bets on the Giants to win the Super Bowl have Vegas sweating bullets. A story by Ellen J. Horrow in USA TODAY says “some as high as 80 to 1,” but I wrote weeks ago of the 100-1 opportunities available when the Giants were 6-6 on the regular season.

Jay Kornegay, the director of the sports book at the Las Vegas Hilton, told the New York Times:

“I remember we opened them at about 20 to 1 last February, right after last year’s Super Bowl. But when they hit that losing streak, it went up. I mean, they lost to Vince Young and the Eagles! We were lucky the bets didn’t come our way, but there are some tickets out there…Even at the start of the playoffs we had them at 30 to 1 to win the Super Bowl. They had a very hard road.”

Horrow writes, “Only a few months ago, Vegas sports book faced a similar scenario with baseball’s St. Louis Cardinals. When the Cardinals were 10 ½ games out of the playoffs with 32 games remaining in the regular season, their futures odds were extremely steep. Kornegay told the Times that he listed the Cardinals at 250 to 1 to win the World Series and 100 to 1 to win the National League pennant. ‘And we had action on both,’ he said.”

--Peyton Manning told an Indianapolis newspaper that when it came to new GM Ryan Grigson he would face a vast overhaul at team headquarters with everyone “walking around on eggshells.” Colts owner Jim Irsay replied that Peyton is “a politician.” 

March 8 is the day the Colts either pay a $28 million bonus or let Manning go. New coach Chuck Pagano would certainly love to have a healthy Manning back, as well as presumed No. 1 pick Andrew Luck.

But after this uncomfortable episode between the two, Irsay and Manning issued a joint statement.

“We would like to dispel any misperception that there might be any hard feelings between us.”

--New York Jets cornerback Darrelle Revis said problems in the locker-room went “real deep” and that a clearing of the air when the team returns for offseason training is in order.

But this is what pisses off us Jets fans. Revis, who was too upset to talk after the season finale, said he talked to coach Rex Ryan in private afterwards.

“Basically, he didn’t know a lot of things that were going on behind the scenes. It was just so much stuff. I’m really not going to get into it because some of the stuff is real deep, but he didn’t know a lot of the things. He wanted people to say things to him. But obviously it didn’t come out. It came out on the field.”

Incredibly frustrating that Rex, by his own admission, was clueless. And with Revis’ above response, you get the idea that there are more stories to be told…real ugly ones.

1. New England Patriots
2. Dallas Cowboys
3. Miami Dolphins
4. Houston Texans
5. Denver Broncos
6. Philadelphia Eagles
7. New York Jets

I’d move the Eagles and Jets girls up a few notches, being partial to…you know, I better stop it right there. I really don’t want the International Web Site Association to come down on me more than it already has. [Remember, always look for the IWSA label for your assurance of website quality, which is why you don’t always see it at the bottom of Bar Chat, come to think of it.]

--Speaking of the Eagles, Boston College has the most players in the Super Bowl, six [Mark Herzlich, Will Blackmon, Mathias Kiwanuka, Chris Snee, Ron Brace and Dan Koppen]. Rutgers is next with five.

--Stephanie Ogbobu, a groupie expert, tells the New York Post that if you want to pick up a Giant, Patriot or former NFLer in Indianapolis this week, you should patrol the Conrad Hotel & Resort or the Downtown Marriott where the two teams are staying at either 10:30 p.m. or 3:00 a.m. Or, find a way to get into the hotel pool area and wear skimpy, expensive-looking bikinis, high heels, and have wet hair. A classic black swimsuit ought to do it with a wrap just covering the butt.

Super Bowl Groupie tips…another free feature of Bar Chat.

--According to a Harris poll, Americans favorite sport is pro football, 36%, followed by baseball and college football, each with 13%. Auto racing is next at 8%, then pro basketball and hockey at 5% each. 

But this gives you a sense of how the NFL has taken over in terms of fan interest. In 1985, its lead over baseball was just 24-23.

College Basketball

--You know, this has really been a boring regular season thus far and it’s not just because my Wake Forest Demon Deacons suck once again. There’s just nothing to grab you, except maybe Murray State, but they’re not a Butleresque story just yet.

However, having said that, last year’s March Madness was one of the best ever so let’s hope that’s the case again this year.

No. 4 Syracuse eked out a win over West Virginia, 63-61, as the Mountaineers failed to get a goaltending call that would have sent the game into overtime. It was an incredibly obvious call as well.

Pitt, after their hideous and unexplainable 8-game losing streak, 0-7 start in Big East play, has now won two in a row, including Saturday’s upset of No. 10 Georgetown, 72-60. 

St. John’s started five freshmen and hung in there against No. 6 Duke at Cameron but still came up short, 83-76. I mention this one because the other day I disparaged Miles and Mason Plumlee of Duke and since then Mason has responded with two double-doubles…15 points, 17 rebounds against the Johnnies, after a 23-12 effort in a win against Maryland. His problem, and the team’s come March, is the fact he is .468 from the free throw line.

[You know who’s not developing for Duke? Seth Curry. The one guy I do like on the team (understand, going to Wake, I could be fined for saying I like any Dookie) is Ryan Kelly.]

Speaking of Wake, we continue to blow, losing to Clemson, 71-60. I am so uninterested, I watched other games rather than catch a single minute of the Deacs on ESPN3…though I was following the score and would have tuned in were there a reason to do so.]

Moving along, No. 5 Kansas lost at Iowa State, 72-64.

Colorado State defeated No. 12 San Diego State, 77-60, as I forgot to put my Aztecwear on. I take full responsibility for the loss. Their guards shot 6 of 36 from the field, including 1 of 12 from downtown. [Jamaal Franklin plays more like a small forward, for those of you doublechecking me.]

No. 9 [ESPN/USA] Murray State did what it had to do for yours truly, beat Eastern Illinois, 73-58, to go 21-0. So I head there on Wednesday for Thursday’s contest against Southeast Missouri State, who is second in the Ohio Valley Conference. I’m pumped. It helps the Racers big time that top rebounder Ivan Aska has returned. 

Finally, Towson won! Towson won! They stopped their Division I record losing streak at 41 with a win over UNC-Wilmington, 66-61. I caught the last few minutes of this one. UNCW was down 62-61 with about 20 seconds to go when their player promptly bricked two foul shots to help Towson seal the deal. UNCW is coached by former Tar Heel Buzz Peterson, who looked like he was dressed for a shopping trip to Staple’s. Show some dignity, lad! If you’re a coach, there’s a way to dress casual and a way not to. Only Bill Belichick and Bob Huggins can get away with looking like crap.

--Gregg Doyel / CBSSports.com [on attending games at Cameron Indoor Stadium]

“I remember my first game…It was December 1997. It was Villanova. And Duke. Duke won, of course. I don’t remember how big Duke won, but it was big. That’s the only detail from the game I remember.

“The details from Cameron? Those, I remember. The students chanting mean chants and making silly sound effects. The band playing Devil With a Blue Dress On and Rock Lobster. The crazy towel guy waving his crazy towel.

“That was my first game at Cameron. It was also my second game at Cameron. And third. Over the years I covered close to 100 games at Cameron, and you know what? That was every game at Cameron.

“No wonder Duke can’t get students to go to the game anymore.

“That’s my theory, anyway, and it’s a pretty good one. It’s nothing I’ve ever wanted to write – Hey, did you know Cameron Indoor gets boring after awhile? – but it seems relevant this week, after Duke’s student newspaper broke the news that Duke students don’t go to games anymore.

“Shocking, but true. The Cameron Crazies can’t be bothered to go to Cameron anymore, even though their tickets are free and Duke has been ranked in the top 10 all season. And it’s not like Duke asks its students to fill the 9,314 seat arena. Duke students are allotted just 1,200 tickets in Section 17, which sounds painfully small until you consider this: Duke can’t give away much more than half of them.

“The Duke Chronicle reports that 650 undergrads are attending games on average, and while many theories were espoused – competition from the fraternity rush for some games, weak opponents in others, the ease of watching games on TV or online, even the wait students fear they’d have to endure to score one of those 1,200 free seats – I have my own theory about Duke students, and why they’re turning down what used to be the hottest ticket in town:

“They’ve been there. They’ve done that. And they’re bored by it….

“Over time, everything gets old. That’s Cameron Indoor, and that’s why – if you ask me – Duke students aren’t going to games anymore. The atmosphere at Cameron is a great song, but it no longer feels like classical music. It’s Top 40. And after a while, Top 40 gets on your nerves.”

College Football

--Around these parts, everyone is talking about Rutgers coach Greg Schiano bolting the Scarlet Knights to take the head coaching job with the NFL’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers. As the New York Post’s Mike Vaccaro summed it up, whenever you see a move like this it has a lot to do with one thing…recruiting. For a college football or basketball coach, it’s a royal pain in the pass.

“(Watching) Greg Schiano chat with the media in Tampa, where he just left Rutgers for the open arms of the Buccaneers, (he) looked like a man who had just taken his first deep breath in years. Some speculated it was because he had a five-year lottery, but Schiano was making plenty of coin already at Rutgers and was the undisputed king of the sport in New Jersey.

“I suspect it’s something else. I think however daunting the task before him at Tampa Bay might be, he realizes that for as long as he has this job he will never have to worry about kissing the butt of kids young enough to be his children (for now) and grandchildren (soon enough). I suspect that even he understands that the track record of college coaches in the NBA and NFL isn’t good, Jim Harbaugh notwithstanding, and that he doesn’t care.

“No more home visits. No more suck-up text messages. No more hand-written notes. No more squirming as an 18-year-old brings three hats to a press conference podium, teasing two poor saps (who see their contracts roll before their eyes) as he puts the third one on his head. No more fretting mid-term grades. No more handwringing about whether that booster has an envelope in his jacket pocket, whether this fat-cat is dangling temptations…

“Yeah. The money’s good. But it’s not the priceless part. When a college coach takes the leap, they never do it for a pay cut, it’s true. But the other benefits are just as enticing. And we don’t mean the dental plan.”

“This is nothing personal against Greg Schiano, so please don’t take it this way, but the Tampa Bay Buccaneers making him their head coach is one of the worst coaching moves of the past 10 years, if not longer.

“To borrow a phrase: There’s a mistake, then a joke, then six feet of sludge, then below all of that is this hire.

“Greg Schiano? That’s the best the Buccaneers could do? Schiano? Really? Brad Childress wasn’t available? Somewhere Jim Zorn is saying: ‘Hell, I shoulda dropped my name in there.’

“Shiano: fine man. Good human being. Not ready for this kind of move. Not in any way. Not even close. I don’t blame Schiano for that. It’s a chance at the big time, but going from Rutgers to the pros is like going from Rafael Nadal to a club pro. No, I don’t blame Schiano – this is all on the Bucs, who continue to experiment with their head coaching position by hiring unproven men on the cheap….

“This is a panic move by the jilted Buccaneers, who just got smacked in the face by Chip Kelly, who said he was going to Tampa, then he wasn’t, then he was…or something like that. This is a franchise that stays in a perennial state of jilted – remember Bill Parcells? – and they might be a tad sensitive. So they went for the sure thing, a guy they knew wouldn’t turn them down….

“The positives some are pointing out are laughable. The most NFL ready college coach? If he was so pro ready, why didn’t any other team hire him before now? If that was indeed the case, why did the Bucs try to hire Kelly first?

“Schiano did turn around the Rutgers football program, but there was no place to go but up….

“Most of all, the problem with this move is the history of college coaches with little or no professional coaching experience: They have failed miserably. I mean, great college coaches. The best of the best, who left college with national titles and sparkling reps, then went to the pros and self-imploded. Some of these men didn’t leave pro football. They were chased out. They ran away at trans-warp speed.

“Bobby Bowden once told me: ‘The NFL was always too professional for me.’ It was Bowden’s typically funny way of making a point. College coaches used to the luxury of control, of almost built-in loyalty from the players, don’t get that at the professional level. They actually have to work at it; and pro players inherently don’t trust coaches who come right from college.

“Can Schiano buck the trend? It can happen, but Steve Spurrier likely thought the same. He burned out quick in Washington. Nick Saban is the best coach in college football today. He left the Dolphins in disgrace. Remember Bobby Petrino in Atlanta? Just two years of pro experience, went to the Falcons, lasted one year. Players thought he was a joke. Lane Kiffin was a disaster.

“Don’t give me Jim Harbaugh. He had a long career in the NFL playing 15 seasons. That buys you a great deal of respect in an NFL locker room. And don’t give me Pete Carroll, who took Seattle to the postseason. Carroll was a one-time NFL head coach before USC.

“You want to see my Saban and raise me Jimmy Johnson? Maybe. But Johnson had the benefit of the Herschel Walker trade, perhaps the dumbest in league history. It was fuel for the Cowboys and as big a factor in Johnson’s success as Johnson was.

As for Schiano and Rutgers, boy did he leave the school at the worst possible time.

“Greg Schiano kept his cards close to the vest until the very end.

“On Tuesday, he was giving his best recruiting pitch to Ian Thomas during a visit to the wide receiver’s home just outside Baltimore.

“The next day, the Rutgers University football coach landed one of the state’s top prospects – adding to a recruiting class that was already shaping up as the best in school history – by getting a commitment from Long Branch High School offensive lineman Paul Brodie.

“All the white, though, Schiano was in talks with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and today he delivered a stunning announcement: He was leaving the Scarlet Knights to take over as coach of the National Football League team.”

It appears most of the 17 non-binding commitments reopened the recruiting process, this as the national letter of intent day comes Wednesday. Again, the timing is awful.

Schiano took a program that had been rock bottom and certainly brought it back to respectability, going 68-67 in 11 seasons, though just 28-48 in the Big East. He never won a conference title and while they went to six bowl games, none of them were big ones. He had five years left on a contract that paid him $2.3 million annually. His five-year deal with the Buccaneers is for a reported $15 million. This whole thing is stupid. He’s already making oodles of money, on top of enormous checks he cashed over the prior 11 seasons. And you see the highly mediocre record he’s accumulated.

Plus the school has spent gobs of money on the program, including a $102 million stadium expansion at a time when academic programs are being cut. Rutgers football is one of the country’s biggest money losers.

As for the people of Tampa, you can imagine what they are thinking. Greg who? The Tampa Tribune’s Martin Fennelly wrote: “If any of you had to drive around people dancing in the streets Thursday night, call us. We’d like to know where it happened, because we don’t believe you.”

The Star-Ledger’s Steve Politi asked Bucs GM Mark Dominik “how he took a leap of faith that a coach who couldn’t win the Big East could outwit proven coaches like Sean Payton, John Fox and, yes, Tom Coughlin next season.

“ ‘I understand that, yeah, he didn’t win a Big East title,’ he said.

“ ‘That’s not how, to me, how you choose a football coach. You choose a football coach on what he can do and what he’s been able to maximize with what he’s got, and I feel that Rutgers football is very impressive where it is right now.’

“So Dominik was either not watching or not concerned about that 40-22 loss to a far less talented Connecticut team that ended the regular season. But he did say ‘what he did there with the graduation rate at Rutgers is amazing,’ so if veteran safety Ronde Barber needs to retake geology this semester, the Bucs are in good hands.”

--Nike founder and chairman Phil Knight harshly criticized Penn State’s trustees at a public memorial for the late Joe Paterno.

“(It) turns out (Paterno) gave full disclosure to his superiors, information that went up the chains to the head of the campus police and the president of the school. The matter was in the hands of a world-class university, and by a president with an outstanding national reputation….

“This much is clear to me. If there is a villain in this tragedy, it lies in that investigation and not in Joe Paterno…

Knight picked the wrong venue for such remarks. Meanwhile, CBSSports.com fired Adam Jacobi after he wrote a story on the website that prematurely reported the death of Paterno, a story that was triggered by a tweet from a Penn State fan site. I remember then seeing stories of his death on overseas news sites I was checking out at the time, about nine hours before Paterno actually passed away. Jacobi accepted the firing, knowing it was the only thing CBS could do. You feel sorry for the guy, but it’s also why I have my own “24-hour rule.”    I’d rather be right than be first, though I’m not sure what I’d do if, say, I was about to post Bar Chat and I had seen Jacobi’s piece.

--ESPN The Magazine surveyed 45 of the ESPNU top 150 college football recruits on their recruiting experience. For example:

59.1% No…40.9% Yes… “The 40.9% isn’t buying the naysayers’ answers. ‘If anybody tells you that stuff isn’t around, they’re lying,’ says one linebacker. ‘Nobody ever pushed it on me. But nobody ever said ‘no way’ when I asked about it either.’”

Did you ever feel that hostesses were being used by schools to influence your decision?

62.2% Yes…37.8% No… “On about my third official visit, I finally noticed that I was the only recruit who was being taken around by three hot girls,” says one uncomplaining defensive lineman. “That’s when it dawned on me that everybody seemed like they were bringing in their best talent to try to get me to commit to that school…I have to say, pretty girls never hurt.”

After this fall’s scandal, would you still consider Penn State as an option?

24.4% Yes…75.6% No… “Every recruit I’ve talked to agreed that they wanted no part of Penn State,” says a running back recruit. “Why would you go there unless you have no other offers?”

--I was going to report on a New York Times story concerning Yale quarterback Patrick Witt, he of the withdrawn Rhodes scholarship application, but then I saw a piece a day later from Kathleen Parker of the Washington Post. It is yet another example of ‘wait 24 hours.’

“A New York Times story on Friday that essentially indicted and convicted a 22-year-old star football player on an alleged sexual assault charge by an anonymous accuser should have begun as follows:

“ ‘We know absolutely nothing about this rumor except what six people told us anonymously about this guy who they say sexually assaulted this girl. We don’t know who she is or what she said, or really anything, but here’s HIS name and what ‘they’ say about him.’”

“Instead, with throat-clearing authority, the story begins with the young man’s name – Patrick J. Witt, Yale University’s former quarterback – and his announcement last fall that he was withdrawing his Rhodes scholarship application so that he could play against Harvard. The game was scheduled the same day as the scholarship interview.

“Next we are told that he actually had withdrawn his application from the scholarship after the Rhodes Trust had learned ‘through unofficial channels that a fellow student had accused Witt of sexual assault.’ And there goes the gavel. Case closed.

“But in fact, no one seems to know much of anything, and no one in an official capacity is talking. The only people advancing this devastating and sordid tale are ‘a half-dozen [anonymous] people with knowledge of all or part of the story.’ All or part? Which part? As in, ‘Heard any good gossip lately?’

“A statement Friday afternoon on Witt’s behalf denied any connection between his withdrawal from the Rhodes application process and the alleged assault. Moreover, when Witt requested a formal inquiry into the allegations, he says, the university declined. ‘No formal complaint was filed, no written statement was taken from anyone involved, and his request…for a formal inquiry was denied because, he was told, there was nothing to defend against,’ according to the statement.

“The Times apparently didn’t know these facts, but shouldn’t it have known them before publishing the story? It’s not until the 11th paragraph that readers even learn about the half-dozen anonymous sources. Not until the 14th paragraph does the Times tell us that ‘many aspects of the situation remain unknown, including some details of the allegations against Witt; how he responded; how it was resolved; and whether Yale officials who handle Rhodes applications – including Richard C. Levin, the university’s president, who signed Witt’s endorsement letter – knew of the complaint.’

“Translation: We don’t know anything, but we’re smearing this guy anyway….

“If the young woman believes that she was assaulted, one hopes that she gets the help she needs. This is no apology for bad behavior – and no indictment of Witt’s accuser. It is a plea for due process for Witt and others similarly accused. By anyone’s understanding of fairness, Witt has been unjustly condemned by nameless accusers and a complicit press.”

Ms. Parker earlier noted readers have drawn “the inevitable association to the infamous Duke lacrosse case,” while I would add that here in the New York area, we have the case of Fox morning anchor Greg Kelly, son of Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, who was accused of rape by a 30-year-old paralegal. Among the many problems in this instance (Kelly, single, hasn’t been charged as yet), is the fact the two exchanged a reported 17 texts after the supposed rape occurred. Just sayin’.

“As we enter the second month of this haphazard, abbreviated season, the NBA today looks very much like it did yesterday, only with a month’s fewer games. The caste system of the pretty and the ugly is still in place. The Wizards and Bucks are awful, as they were before, and the Heat and Bulls are as strong and destined as a year ago. The Thunder are still on the verge of being a championship-level team. The Knicks and Lakers will always be the preferred destination for players for the same reason the Timberwolves and Cavaliers will never be: New York and L.A. are the pretty; Minneapolis and Cleveland are not.

“There is one key difference. The boss of the new season – David Stern – is not the same as the old Stern, the Stern once considered the most player-friendly of all commissioners, the one credited with understanding both Main Street and Madison Avenue better than his peers, resulting in a boomtown NBA. Today’s Stern has presided over two lockouts in a dozen years, with a referee fixing games in between. More important moving forward, he’s been exposed as the enabler of the hopeless cadre of small-market owners who shut the game down, such as Cleveland’s Dan Gilbert. Instead of demanding that these owners reform their economic system and become better businessmen or die, Stern aligned with them in the recent CBA negotiations, then blocked a great young player, Chris Paul, from being traded to the NBA’s signature team, the Lakers.

“Stern escaped any real blowback for his mishandling of the Paul trade or for interjecting himself into the deal in the first place. Parts of the reasons are understandable: Fans wanted basketball and were happy it was back. At the same time, Stern exploited the anti-player, anti-union sentiment in this country that always gives institutions the advantage in winning over the public – and he did so without much scrutiny, as it would be easier to ask sports journalists to cover the Iditarod than labor issues.

“Still, Stern’s moves will come back to haunt the league. After killing the Paul-to-Lakers deal, the commissioner said the NBA was ‘better served’ with the All-Star point guard in a Hornets uniform – then allowed him to be traded to the Clippers, one of the worst-run teams in pro sports, who play in the same megamarket (the same building, no less) as the Lakers. While the Hornets are owned by the league, both the Lakers and Rockets (who also were part of the original Paul deal) are among the top five highest-valued teams in the NBA, according to Forbes. Stern sent a clear signal that the Lakers needed curbing, the way baseball for years tried to rein in the Yankees….

“Stern, who rose to power during the Bird-Magic-Jordan years, shouldn’t’ need a history lesson to know the NBA has been at its most profitable when people care enough to love or hate the superteams in Boston and Chicago, New York and LA – and Miami today. (Just ask the Spurs.) That Stern would position himself the champion of the small- to midmarket teams at the expense of the elites either suggests runaway hubris or the recognition that the NBA lacks enough strong teams to thrive. Neither says much about the future of the league.”

--And there isn’t much of a future when it comes to the New York Knicks, losers of 9 of their last 10 and 7-13 overall. Carmelo Anthony has about fourteen different injuries and the team has no point guard. Plus Anthony, when he is playing, is shooting .397 from the field ( compared to .457 career) and the other supposed superstar, Amare Stoudemire, is at .428 from the field (.533 career). Anthony, in fact, is 40 of his last 126 from the field…32%!   Oh, and the Knicks so-called savior at point, Baron Davis, who is still rehabbing from injury, evidently looks awful in scrimmages.

[The pathetic Knicks attack is averaging 12 points per game less than last season, while scoring around the rusty league is down five points.]

--Minnesota star forward Kevin Love, who was seeking a five-year deal, signed for four years, including a clause that allows him to opt out after the third season if he doesn’t like the direction of the team. Not exactly the best situation for the T’Wolves, but assuming they hold onto Ricky Rubio, Minnesota’s future is a good one. I told you the T’Wolves would be the most “intriguing” story of the NBA season. After going 17-65 last year, Minnesota is 9-11 and getting better by the day as Rubio meshes his game with the rest of the team. Love was the first player since Moses Malone in 1982-83 to average 20 points and 15 rebounds when he did so last season.

Australian Open

Victoria Azarenka routed Maria Sharapova 6-3, 6-0 to win her first Grand Slam event. In the process, the 22-year-old Belarusian secured the No. 1 ranking. Grunt Grunt. During their match, someone shouted from the stands, “turn the volume down.” Azarenka finished it off in 1 hour 22 minutes.

As opposed to the men’s final…Novak Djokovic vs. Rafael Nadal…which went a record 5 hours 53 minutes! Holy Toledo! 5-7, 6-4, 6-2, 6-7 (5), 7-5. It was the longest Grand Slam final in the 44 years of the Open era. As noted by Greg Garber of ESPN.com, the longest previous final was a full 59 minutes shorter. [1988 U.S. Open, Lendl vs. Wilander, winner Wilander]

Djokovic has thus won his third straight Grand Slam event and can capture the slam by triumphing at the French Open in June. He has also beaten Nadal seven consecutive times.

I mean it’s really amazing how Sampras passed the torch to Federer, who passed it to Nadal, who has passed it to Djokovic. I’m not an expert on the sport but I’m thinking these are four of the 5 or 6 best in the entire history of the game. After all, they are the only ones in the modern era to win three in a row aside from Rod Laver, who won the Slam in 1969. 

--In one of the more shocking collapses in recent memory, 24-year-old Kyle Stanley, an up and comer on the PGA Tour, blew a 7-shot fourth-round lead in the Farmers Insurance Open at Torrey Pines on Sunday. Even worse, Stanley was up four as he stood on the 18th tee, only to get a triple bogey 8 on the par-5. Earlier, Brandt Snedeker birdied the hole and found himself in a playoff when it was obvious to 100% of those watching he was destined to finish second minutes earlier. Snedeker then proceeded to win his third tour title on the second hole of sudden death. Every golf fan now can’t wait to see Stanley win one.

--Tiger Woods fell short over in Abu Dhabi and the HSBC Championship, losing by two to Robert Rock. But a nice leaderboard.

Rock -13
McIlroy -12
Woods -11
Bjorn -11
McDowell -11

Tiger had driver problems in the fourth round hitting just two fairways.

--I subscribe to all the golf magazines and while I previously commended Bill Clinton for his role in the new Humana Challenge that replaced the Bob Hope Desert Classic, all the magazines then came in and, as you’d expect, Clinton was tireless during the event; a non-stop P.R. machine. The event had suffered big time since Bob Hope’s death in 2003 and what shined through during the Humana is Clinton’s genuine love for the game of golf.

The Humana Challenge is also about good health, and as noted in Golf World, Clinton is an extremely effective messenger.

“ As Linda Hope said about her father, ‘Dad would be absolutely thrilled to see that the energy has come back to this tournament.’ And as Clinton was quick to point out, Bob Hope lived to be 100, in part because he walked an hour every day of his life and played lots of golf – the messenger never missing an opportunity to deliver the message.”

--The New York Times’ Tyler Kepner writes of the serious identity fraud issue involving major league ballplayers from the Dominican Republic, such as the recent case of Cleveland Indians hurler Fausto Carmona, who was arrested in Santo Domingo the other day, charged with using a false name and birth date. Carmona is actually Roberto Hernandez Heredia and is 31, or three years older than he had claimed. It’s why some of us joke that Albert Pujols is really 34, not 32, Pujols also being from the D.R.

“ ‘These are like time bombs,’ Mark Newman, the Yankees’ senior vice president for baseball operations, said by telephone from the Dominican Republic while scouting there last week. ‘But people are absolutely getting the message. Major League Baseball, the consulate and the major league clubs are all committed to this, and it will get better.’”

Current Mets GM Sandy Alderson did an investigation of the problem for MLB in 2010 and he’s convinced the government is now more vigilant.

“I think they have come to realize that baseball is an important contributor to their economy in a variety of ways; you can kill the golden goose,’ Alderson said. ‘I think they understand that it’s important for them to create an attractive environment for baseball to continue to invest in their country – an environment where clubs can rely on what’s represented to be the case.”

--I saw where shortstop Orlando Cabrera announced his retirement in his native Colombia. You know, this guy had a very nice career. .272 hitter over 15 big league seasons. 2,055 hits. 123 home runs, 854 RBI. Two Gold Gloves. A World Series ring with the 2004 Boston Red Sox, where he played a key role in Boston’s historic comeback from a 3-0 deficit against the Yankees in the ALCS, Cabrera having 11 hits in the series. And he collected over $50 million in salary. Alas, he played for nine different clubs and never made an All-Star team, though many a season he was deserving of the honor.

Delaney and Ross

Over the years I’ve written of the tale of the spectacular junior platform tennis duo of Nicki Ross (daughter of a good friend of mine) and Corey Delaney of Chatham, New Jersey. In 2010 they were featured in Sports Illustrated’s “Faces In the Crowd.” On Saturday they did something no one has ever done in their sport. Break their own record to win their 6th American Platform Tennis Association Junior National Title. The two girls won one 12-and-under crown, one 14-and-under, and four 18-and-under championships.

Last year, after they won their fifth, I said they were the greatest paddle duo of all time.

So what do you say now?! I’ve been wracking my brain to come up with a better duo in just about any profession. Seriously, you have great comedy teams, like Burns and Allen, Stiller and Meara, or Burns and Schreiber. Let’s see. Jordan and Pippen. Koufax and Drysdale. There aren’t any tennis doubles partners that roll off the tongue. Hockey? Orr and Esposito would work. Gretzky and Messier, perhaps. Football? It would have to be a defensive duo. Eller and Page? I don’t know. Nicklaus and Palmer? That doesn’t work…they were competing against each other.

But in terms of number of titles or championships, I can only come up with Ruth and Gehrig.  

Yup, I’m declaring the duo of Corey Delaney and Nicki Ross the greatest American sports duo, period, since Ruth and Gehrig. As Ronald Reagan would have said, not bad…not bad at all.

--Lindsey Vonn continues her amazing run, winning two more World Cup races, this time at St. Moritz, to take a seemingly insurmountable lead at the halfway point of the season for the overall Cup title, which would be her fourth. After winning the downhill, she has 8 victories in the current campaign and 49 overall [24 in the downhill].

--After watching the Namath documentary, I quickly switched to the U.S. Women’s Figure Skating Championship and caught the last three in the long program, who ended up being our medalists. Ashley Wagner took her first title, only because she didn’t make any major mistakes, while second went to Alissa Czisny (who was kind of bitchy afterwards) and third, Agnes Zawadzki, my new fave. Both Czisny and Zawadzki flopped all over the ice like an NBA defender perfecting his Best Actor presentation.

What was really funny, though, was listening to Scott Hamilton describe Czisny’s routine. He’s going, ‘Watch the height on the triple lutz!’ only to see Czisny totally muff it.

Ah yes, two more years ‘til Sochi. I wonder if the athletes will even brave going to terror central. “You want to go to Sochi?” “I don’t want to go to Sochi. I hear there are all kinds of terrorists just over the mountains.” “Yeah, my parents are saying it’s not real smart to go.” “I was reading StocksandNews and the guy writing there said….”

--ESPN The Magazine got hold of the ticket revenue figures for the NHL last year and four of the top five were Canadian teams.

1. Montreal…$82 million total
2. Toronto…$82
3. Vancouver…$69.7
4. New York Rangers…$65.6
5. Calgary…$61.5
26. Florida…$18.8
27. Tampa Bay…$18
28. Phoenix…$17.2
29. New York Islanders…$16.1
30. Atlanta…$13.5

So you can see the decision to move the Atlanta franchise to Winnipeg was an easy one. Phoenix doesn’t have an owner and there is talk of Quebec City or the suburbs of Toronto picking up that franchise. The Islanders are another obviously struggling and they haven’t been able to get a new arena approved.

--Boston Bruins goalie Tim Thomas, who led the team to last season’s Stanley Cup, is in major hot water for boycotting the Bruins’ visit with President Obama at the White House. In a statement on his Facebook page, Thomas, whose political views were not really known until now (except among his teammates), wrote, “I believe the Federal government has grown out of control, threatening the Rights, Liberties, and Property of the People.” After a firestorm of criticism, except from Tea Party/Glen Beck types, Thomas stated, “I followed my conscience. Everything I said in my statement I believed to be the absolute truth.” Thomas has gripes with the Bruins as well and he could be gone. 

--So you think Greece’s austerity plan is rough? As the New York Times’ Ken Maguire points out, there is another aspect of the Greek crisis involving the world of sports. Greece’s Olympic athletes are going months without their stipends; the coaches go months without being paid. The government is forced to scrap a plan to spend $10 million a year on Olympic preparation. Greece will field a team for the London Games, but it could be a pathetic one. For starters, the stress must be unreal. The athletes are just trying to find money to live.

--We note the passing of actor Robert Hegyes, who died of a heart attack at the age of 60. Hegyes played Juan Epstein on the 1970s TV show “Welcome Back Kotter,” which was one of my favorites growing up. Looking back, it really was an entertaining ½ hour, helped in no small part by one of the top theme songs in the history of television, John Sebastian’s hit, which since learning of Hegyes’ death I can’t get out of my mind.

--I can’t say I’ve watched “Wheel of Fortune” in decades, but I always felt Pat Sajak was underrated as an entertainer so it was fun hearing him reveal that in the early days of the show, going back to 1982 (good gawd!), when Vanna White joined him, that the two used to hit a nearby restaurant for “two or three or six” margaritas during a break in taping. Sajak joked he had “trouble recognizing the alphabet” for shows taped after the margarita stops, but no one ever said anything to them. He backtracked the next day after the initial comments were made public, but not too much. Don’t worry, Pat. Your legacy is secure.

--Director of Shark Attacks and Assistant Sec. of State for Bar Chat, Bob S. (he was clamoring for more responsibility and something to add to his resume) relayed the terrifying story of the 16 to 18 foot great white shark spotted off the coast of San Diego. Said Lifeguard Capt. Robert Stabenow, “We haven’t seen anything like this since the 1950s.”

But the beach remained open. Bob and I haven’t been able to ascertain a death toll as yet but we suspect it’s high. The ITC (International Travel Cartel) will of course do their best to cover up the carnage.

--A story in the New York Daily News (via the AP) addresses a new issue in Thailand. Elephants are being killed not just for their tusks, but for their meat. 

“The poachers took away the elephants’ sex organs and trunks…for human consumption,” Damrong Phidet, director-general of Thailand’s wildlife agency, told the AP. Some meat was to be consumed without cooking, like “elephant sashimi,” he said.

Poaching elephants and possessing animal parts is illegal. A full grown pair of tusks can be sold for $31,600 to $63,300; while an elephant penis is said to fetch about $1,000.

Man plummets to No. 193 on the All-Species List, just above the Stink Bug.

--Actually, Man probably deserves to be ranked about No. 196 after the recent ticket scalping incident involving Bruce Springsteen’s upcoming concerts at the Izod Center in East Rutherford, N.J. Ticketmaster said its website was attacked by scalpers “using sophisticated computer programs that generated 2.5 times the traffic it had seen for any major sale during the past year.”

“Minutes after yesterday’s sales [for April and May concert dates] began, thousands of the $98 tickets – which cost $114 once service fees were added – were listed at prices up to $6,600 on multiple secondary market websites.”

One woman from my old neighborhood of New Providence, N.J., summed it up.

“It’s so unfair and so frustrating. You know that these tickets are being siphoned off, somehow, some way. How is it possible that in one or two minutes, the venue is sold out?”

I’d give ringleaders ten years in prison without parole. That would put a stop to it right quick.

Top 3 songs for the week 1/25/69: #1 “I Heard It Through The Grapevine” (Marvin Gaye) #2 “Crimson And Clover” (Tommy James and The Shondells) #3 “I’m Gonna Make You Love Me” (Diana Ross and the Supremes & The Temptations…have a signed album of this one including all the participants…don’t think about breaking into my place to get it…I have a moat with crocodiles and a bull shark)…and…#4 “Soulful Strut” (Young-Holt Unlimited…love this one) #5 “Everyday People” (Sly & The Family Stone) #6 “Hooked On A Feeling” (B.J. Thomas) #7 “Touch Me” (The Doors) #8 “Worst That Could Happen” (Brooklyn Bridge…the one and only…all together now…out of your cubes…Girrrl, I heard you’re getting married, Heard you’re getting married, This time you’re really sure…) #9 “I Started A Joke” (The Bee Gees) #10 “Son-Of-A Preacher Man” (Dusty Springfield…unreal she died almost 13 years ago)

Super Bowl Quiz Answer: First five losing quarterbacks…

I – Len Dawson, Kansas City…lost to Green Bay, 35-10
II – Daryle Lamonica, Oakland…lost to Green Bay, 33-14
III – Earl Morrall, Baltimore…lost to Jets, 16-7
IV – Joe Kapp, Minnesota…lost to Kansas City, 23-7
V – Craig Morton, Dallas…lost to Baltimore, 16-13

Next Bar Chat, Wednesday…due to travel, a brief one and a little early.

Copyright 2012. All rights reserved…Approved by the IWSA.

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