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Bar Chat

02/01/2012

Assorted Gar-bage

Note: Posted early, Tuesday, due to travel. Not easy getting to Murray, Kentucky, where I’m headed on Wednesday.

Pittsburgh Steelers Super Bowl Quiz: Name the starters on defense for their first Super Bowl triumph, (1974 squad), 16-6 over Minnesota. Granted, many of you will nail this easily, but there’s one player I know I would not have gotten. Answer below.

--Norman Chad / Washington Post…a few thoughts on watching the Super Bowl:

“Let’s be honest here: Nobody outside of New England – which somehow combines angst and arrogance when it comes to its sporting interests – wants to see the Red Sox or the Patriots take home another World Series or Super Bowl title ever. Nobody. Which forces most of us into the unusual and uncomfortable position of rooting for a New York/New Jersey sports team next weekend.

“I hope at least it’s a great game because, otherwise, the only thing that could make Giants-Patriots a more painful experience would be if they invite Steven Tyler to sing ‘God Bless America’ at halftime….

“This is the biggest pizza day in America. On Super Sunday, we consume more pizza than the nations of Italy, Greece and Romania did from the 15th century to the 18th century….

“Madonna – yes, the ageless Madonna – will be Super Bowl 46’s halftime entertainment. Time always stops on Super Sunday. If Gypsy Rose Lee were still alive, she’d be doing the coin toss at Super Bowl 47….

“If the Patriots win, it will be conclusive evidence that Coach Bill Belichick truly is a ‘genius.’ We might even find out he’s the love child of Stephen Hawking and Marie Currie. Who can question his vast intellect? Against the Broncos two weeks ago, clinging to a 45-10 lead with three minutes to go, Belichick had Tom Brady quick-kick on third and 10. Now, that’s GENIUS….

“Apparently, these Patriots run a no-huddle offense off the field as well. The quarterback (Tom Brady) is married to a supermodel. The wide receiver (Wes Welker) is engaged to a former Miss Hooters International. The tight end (Rob Gronkowski) hangs out with an adult film star. I guess that’s why they’re called ‘skill positions.’

“Frankly, I’m tired of watching Patriots owner Robert Kraft hugging people in the rich-people’s box. Just sayin’.”

--AP Men’s Basketball Poll

1. Kentucky
2. Syracuse
3. Ohio State
4. Missouri
5. North Carolina…unimpressive again in win over Deacs, Tuesday
6. Baylor
7. Duke
8. Kansas
9. Michigan State…then lost to Illinois on Tues., 42-41, as the Spartans shot 14 of 58 from the field, while the Illini went 15 of 46. Eegads. That blows.
10. Murray State
17. San Diego State…no problem…they are still Sweet Sixteen bound
25. Vanderbilt…definitely have their act back together 

--Meanwhile, the “Bracketbuster” round of games have been announced and on Feb. 18, Murray State will host No. 18 Saint Mary’s (21-2). That one will be huge. I just hope the Racers don’t look too far ahead and stumble before then.

Hey, Phil W. You should go to Wichita State at Davidson, also Feb. 18.

--The New York Times’ Joe Nocera commented again on the UConn/Ryan Boatright affair, this time after the NCAA finally announced it was reinstating Boatright, the freshman who had been suspended because his mother accepted airfare for one of his recruiting trips. The NCAA, though, “issued a press release so malicious in its intent that I could not let it pass,” writes Nocera. “Longtime watchers of the NCAA tell me that they have never seen an athlete and his mother thrown under the bus the way Ryan and Tanesha Boatright were on Saturday.”

“In essence, the release says that Ryan and Tanesha received $8,000 in ‘impermissible benefits’ from two people it describes as having ‘improper third-party influence over student-athletes and their families.’ That sounds bad, doesn’t it?

“But what exactly constitutes ‘improper third-party influence?’ When I put this question to Stacey Osburn, the author of the NCAA press release, she said it means someone who takes advantage of an athlete ‘for personal gain.’ One example would be a ‘third party’ paying off an athlete’s family to help steer him to a particular school. Another would be fronting for a sports agent, who hopes to eventually land the player as his client….

“In its release, the NCAA neither names the third parties nor explains what they stood to gain. But one of them is already known: Reggie Rose, Ryan’s former A.A.U. coach and the brother of Derrick Rose, the Chicago Bulls star. According to the NCAA, Rose paid for Tanesha to accompany her son on four recruiting trips. He made some payments on her 2008 Impala. And Rose took Ryan on a two-day trip to California where he got to scrimmage with some top-notch players.

“Why did he do this? Clearly, he wasn’t trying to steer Ryan to a particular school. And he certainly wasn’t fronting for an agent…Ryan is not a sure-fire pro.

“In fact, he did it because he and Tanesha have a longstanding friendship. He became a mentor to Ryan, something teenagers of single moms desperately need.”  [Ed. I did something similar myself involving a guy who once played for a Division I program. I was a friend of the family. Heck, 15+ years later, I’m still helping them. This aspect just hit me.]

Nocera says he’s “heard that the NCAA is deeply suspicious of mentors to disadvantaged athletes. Its working assumption is that men who get close to high school athletes must have nefarious motives. Well, some surely do, but some don’t. The idea that Reggie Rose is not allowed to help Tanesha because the NCAA disapproves of him is, by any measure, offensive.”

--One UConn player now in the NBA, rookie Kemba Walker, had a triple-double the other day in just his fourth start (20 points, 10 rebounds, 11 assists). Walker had gotten off to a slow start this season, as did the dreadful 3-18 Bobcats (as I go to post), but hopefully this game jumpstarts his year.

--In the case of former assistant Syracuse basketball coach Bernie Fine, I’ve chosen to ignore it but now, one of the ball boys who accuses Fine of molesting him, says in an affidavit that Fine’s wife, Laurie, had sex with the players over the years. Another assistant coach’s wife is also named as doing so. From the description in the affidavit, it doesn’t seem possible that the ball boy, Robert Davis, is making it up. What a despicable saga.

--AP Women’s Basketball Poll

1. Baylor
2. Notre Dame
3. UConn
4. Stanford
5. Duke
6. Kentucky
7. Miami (Fla.)
8. Tennessee
9. Maryland
10. Green Bay
12. Delaware!
13. Rutgers

--Orlando Magic superstar Dwight Howard has been a royal pain in the ass, at least if you’re a teammate or fan of the team. All he talks about is going somewhere else at the end of the season.

But in doing so the Magic are suffering as he bitches and moans. In fact their offense is so pathetic, in their five losses in the last six games they’ve scored 56, 83, 67, 85, and 69 points.

--We note the passing of Medal of Honor recipient John F. Baker. He was 66. Baker was all of 5 feet 2, 105 pounds, if you can believe it, and was turned down by the Marine Corps out of high school. But the Army took him and in November 1966, he was serving as private in the 25th Infantry Division in South Vietnam when his company went to the rescue of another company trapped near the Cambodian border.

More than 3,000 Viet Cong lay in wait, including in tunnels, when Baker’s company of 200 arrived. Richard Goldstein of the New York Times:

“As (Baker) told it, the Viet Cong were yelling, ‘Come on, G.I., come and get us.’

“As the company began its rescue effort, the lead man in Private Baker’s column was killed. Moving forward, Private Baker took part in knocking out two enemy bunkers, killed four Viet Cong snipers and then led repeated assaults, killing more Viet Cong. During his forays, he grabbed wounded soldiers and took them to safety. At one point he was knocked off his feet by a grenade.

“In addition to saving the lives of eight comrades, he was credited with knocking out six Viet Cong machine-gun bunkers, killing 10 enemy soldiers.”

For his heroism, Baker was given the nation’s highest award, May 1, 1968, while his company commander, Capt. Robert F. Foley, a 6-foot-7-inch former basketball player at West Point, also received the Medal of Honor the same day from President Lyndon Johnson.

I saw a photo of this day on NBC News and it’s comical; Foley towering over Baker. Baker recalled, “When he put the medal on me, he said, ‘This is Mutt and Jeff.’”

In later years, Baker volunteered to help ease the transition out of combat for those returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.

--A lot of people have asked me, ‘Hey, editor…just what exactly is the forecast for Super Bowl XLVIII, Feb. 2, 2014, at the Meadowlands? After this incredibly benign winter of 2011-2012, you might think I would change my original forecast but I’m not. That Sunday, snow will develop in the morning, we’ll have a period of sleet and freezing rain from about 11:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m., and then it will change back to heavy snow for a period of six hours, though I’m working to further refine this last part of the forecast. Total accumulations, 11 inches in the area of the Meadowlands, 12-16 inches in the northern and western suburbs.

It’s the period of ice, though, that will lead to the real havoc on the roads. 550 will die in accidents getting to the stadium; 4,200 going home. Tragic. And it didn’t have to be that way. More as we get closer.

--I just saw in one of my many magazines that Jan. 28 would have been the 100th birthday of artist Jackson Pollock, who died in 1956. I only note this because I was just surprised to see he was born in Cody, Wyoming. Jan. 30, on the other hand, was the 40th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, when the Brits killed 13 participating in a civil rights march in Derry, Northern Ireland.

--And…as I peruse my BBC History magazine, where I stumbled on the above two items, I see that on Feb. 6, 1952, King George VI died in his sleep at the age of 56. No, I didn’t see The King’s Speech. The day after he died, the Daily Mirror wrote: “This was by any standards, anywhere, a good man.”

--Uh oh…the same BBC magazine has a piece on some of the “most overrated people in history,” according to its panel of experts. One of them is Spartacus. As noted by author Peter Jones:

“(The) slave who in 73 BC masterminded a break-out from a gladiatorial school in Capua has justifiably been celebrated as a hero of the oppressed.

“Like Hannibal, a superb general and leader of men, defeating Roman army after army, Spartacus guided his raggle-taggle collection of slaves to the very borders of Gaul to disperse into freedom. But no. They turned back into Italy. Fatal error.

“Spartacus, a Thracian, had served in the Roman army. He should have known that Romans never gave up. The worse they were beaten, the harder they always came back – as Hannibal also, too late, had found out. In 71 BC Spartacus’ army was trapped and annihilated, the survivors crucified along the Appian Way. All that – for nothing.”

Kirk Douglas, a k a Spartacus, would later attend St. Lawrence University in upstate New York. Kirk, a k a Frank Gorshin, was born Issur Danielovitch, but later used the name Izzy Demsky. Trader George (father of platform tennis superstar Nicki Ross), St. Lawrence alum, tells me Demsky was a great wrestler, which only makes sense. 

For his part, Gorshin was born in Pittsburgh! The actor was later best known as a terrific impressionist, doing the best Kirk Douglas, which is how I tie this all together. Gorshin is his real family name. And now you know…the rest of the story.

--I forgot to mention this last time, but you know how you’re watching a PGA event covered by CBS and it seems someone is always dying? Is there anyone better than Jim Nantz in doing the memorial as the camera pans out into the Pacific, or up into the heavens?

So I’ve decided I want Jim Nantz to announce my passing. Something like this…

“The CBS Family lost a mediocre one this week…The Editor, of Bar Chat fame. He never did use his real name in that column that covered everything from the Paterno scandal to jaguars mauling villagers in India. From ridiculously overpaid athletes to idiots like Paris Hilton. Whenever there was a shark attack, we could always count on the Editor to provide the unvarnished truth, as opposed to that presented by the International Travel Cartel. He will be missed.”

Then have the camera pan down on the water, a great white drawing a bead on a surfer, only to have the panicked cameraman pull up at the last minute, leaving the viewers to wonder if they almost witnessed the 4,300th victim of the PGA winter tour.

--I’ve written a ton on the python situation in the Florida Everglades over the years, but this week there were a slew of new stories with the release of a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences which concludes that with tens of thousands(!) of pythons living in the Everglades, 99 percent of some medium-size mammals have been wiped out. 

It’s time to break down and change the rules of the game. Arm the opossums, raccoons and bobcats, for example. They may turn on us later (a la our initial support for the Afghans against the Soviets), but it’s a risk we must take.

It is still amazing to think that some Burmese pythons can grow to 26 feet in length. The National Park Service has captured 1,825 since 2000.

At least researchers, in their surveys, found a slight increase in Florida panthers, though their numbers are too small to make a difference. Nonetheless, here’s hoping panthers say to each other, “Tastes like chicken!”

But what makes this study even more interesting for your editor is they talk specifically about what happened on Guam, where the invasive tree snake killed off all the birds, along with bats and lizards that pollinated trees and flowers. I’ve been there at least five times over the years and told you how one never goes to sleep without looking under the bed for these incredibly nasty serpents that can swallow babies whole. [OK, at least bite them.]

Top 3 songs for the week 2/7/70: #1 “Venus” (The Shocking Blue) #2 “I Want You Back” (The Jackson 5) #3 “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head” (B.J. Thomas…the older I get, the more I like this one as an all-time favorite)…and…#4 “Thank You Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin” (Sly & The Family Stone) #5 “Without Love” (Tom Jones) #6 “I’ll Never Fall In Love Again” (Dionne Warwick) #7 “Hey There Lonely Girl” (Eddie Holman…awesome) #8 “Whole Lotta Love” (Led Zeppelin…amazing week, know what I’m sayin’?) #9 “No Time” (The Guess Who) #10 “Jingle Jangle” (The Archies…cartoon figures strike it big…questions over whether they actually received the royalties or their stand-in musicians… Charlie Brown, for example, never received any as his illustrator kept them all for himself…One character still fighting violently for his fair share is Calvin, of Calvin and Hobbes fame…He is now estranged from his parents over this issue)

Pittsburgh Steelers Quiz Answer: 1974 Super Bowl starting defense…LDE – L.C. Greenwood; LDT – Joe Greene; RDT – Ernie Holmes; RDE – Dwight White; LLB – Jack Ham; MLB – Jack Lambert; RLB – Andy Russell; LCB – J.T. Thomas; RCB – Mel Blount; SS – Mike Wagner; FS – Glen Edwards. [I would have missed Edwards.]

This Steelers defense limited the Vikings to 119 total yards, including just 17 on the ground in 21 carries. Meanwhile, Franco Harris was rumbling for 158 yards on 34 carries and Rocky Bleier chipped in 65 on 17.

Next Bar Chat, Monday….can one have a good time in Murray, Kentucky? [Of course…I can have a good time anywhere.]

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