At the end of the 1960s, Dubai was a unknown speck on the Persian Gulf with a population of 58,000 and big dreams. Led by the seemingly unrealistic vision of Sheikh Rashid bin Saeed al Maktoum, the constitutional monarch used an influx of cash borrowed from Kuwait and the discovery of oil on its doorstep to turn the tiny emirate into a playground for the rich and famous, and provide windfall profits for business and family members.

Flushed with an ever-growing pile of cash, Dubai rushed to build ports, private islands, shopping malls and even an 80-story spinning skyscraper, offering drive-in elevators and front-door parking that has 1,100 individuals ready to pony up $3 million to $30 million for the privilege of looking down upon the other 1.2 million residents.

The downside to this explosive growth has been, according to Human Rights Watch (HRW), the creation of state-sponsored poverty and abuse that has forced its mainly migrant work force to live in abject poverty, barely separated from those flying in to shop, purchase sex or to make millions on its premier tennis courts and exclusive golf courses.

The tiny kingdom is trying to establish itself as a premier international sports city. Dubai currently plays host to world-class tennis, golf, sailing, horse racing, rugby, cricket, marathon and soccer, and is using sport as a way to sell its fairy tale community to wealthy visitors and investors, who have little concern about what goes on outside of their protected enclaves of wealth and exclusion.

With such disconnect, it shouldn't have surprised anyone when the government refused a visa for Shahar Peer, an Israeli tennis player, to compete in the $2 million Barclay's Dubai Tennis Championships. The government of Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum, who doubles as the prime minister of United Arab Emirates, said the refusal to allow the woman to compete was a simple matter of security and not based on any anti-Semitic sentiments.

Like most Arab nations, UAE does not have relations with Israel and hasn't exactly flung open the doors to those hailing from the east coast of the Mediterranean.

Officials said they were concerned that anti-Israeli demonstrators would create a dangerous situation for the athletes. Israel's recent military action in Gaza has led to widespread anger in Arab and Muslim communities, and Dubai seems to be unable, or unwilling, to handle such dissidence, even though monarchies are rarely hindered by rules demanding governmental restraint.

Spain recently was confronted with the same problem regarding protesters. But instead of banning athletes, they disallowed fans and permitted the athletes to compete.

Afshin Molavi, in the January 2007 issue of National Geographic, quotes Sheikh Mohammed in discussions about the religious and political peace of the city: "I don't know who's a Sunni and who's a Shia, and I don't care. If you work hard, if you don't bother your neighbor, then there is a place for you in Dubai."

As long as you're not Jewish.

Dubai has softened its stance in the face of tough-as-butter comments from Women's Tennis Association CEO Larry Scott and, more importantly, after the Tennis Channel decided not to air the tournament and the Wall Street Journal European edition removed its sponsorship of the event. The nation of saints has given "special permission" for Andy Ram, a male Israeli doubles player, to take part in the mens tournament, and Scott says he has been assured that the UAE would provide a "special permit" for any athlete wishing to compete in tournaments they qualify for.

Regardless of the decisions of corporations and governing bodies, this is a protest that needs to come from athletes. And it goes far beyond this one tournament.

All sporting events in Dubai must be boycotted until the emirate offers more than lip service. No athlete, in good conscience, can claim concern while cashing in from policies based on discrimination and the labors of immigrant workers who, according to HRW, earn just 8 percent of the monthly per capita income in the UAE.

Roiters reported that Serena Williams said, "In the day and age like this everyone bleeds red blood and everyone to me (should have) an equal opportunity." She's right. But her comments would have meant a lot more coming during a press conference explaining why she removed herself from the tournament instead of at a quick presser between paydays.

"Behind the glittering skyscrapers lies a late-night world of fleabag hotels and prostitutes, Indian and Russian mobsters, money launderers and smugglers of everything from guns and diamonds to human beings," some at very young ages, says National Geographic.

A stand by athletes against such practices will do nothing to hamper Dubai's unprecedented growth or change labor policy, but refusing to participate until its segregationist policies are eliminated is

That collective groan heard from rocky coast to desert sand is the exasperated breath of forlorn commentators and holders of the national consciousness as they struggle to find any remaining elements of lost faith and childhood admiration for those who donned the uniform of athletic battle to wage war against the invading horde. That is until the next "clean guy" proves to be otherwise. For years while Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire and the like were being grilled over the collective coals of disgust and political opportunism, Alex Rodriguez had been portrayed as the saving grace of unaltered competition.

Blessed from birth with every skill the game demands, the quarter-of-a-billion-dollar man was tagged to one day rescue the record books from the stain of tainted athletic ego and return its innocence to a time when achievement was proceeded by hard work, thick steaks and piles of amphetamines. But before we dissect every at-bat or wonder further about which Yankee will be next, can we at least ask how no one came to suspect a person self obsessed with image may just be the personality type to come to the determination that a few extra ribbies would mean even greater acceptance? To begin a program of shock and awe at this point is downright bizarre. Or, as A-Rod kept saying to Peter Gammons in his 30-minute plus interview, naive.

OK. So Rodriguez is, or was, dirty. Strike up the band, attach the standard face of disgust and tell us how he is single-handedly ruining the game. If your a member of the media, don't forget to mention Aaron's saintly race to 715. If a fan, defend your outrage and don't forget your $6 hot dog and your $10 beer on the way to your $100 seat. Settle in, get cozy and drift off with the peaceful bliss that comes from realizing that no one gives a damn.

If the use of performance-enhancing drugs was so outrageous and unforgivable, the turnstiles wouldn't be spinning at unprecedented rates and the funds wouldn't be available to support the ridiculous salaries that put all of our undies in a bunch. Fans want victories and entertainment and they don't really care how they are obtained. So long as it's the home team skirting the rules and decent behavior nearly all sins are forgivable.

This disconnect between fan and on-field conduct is also the reason that Bud Selig has been able to play the ignorant victim to the abuses that have gone on before his very eyes. Selig's a tool. He has no foresight beyond kowtowing to his fellow owners and treats each problem with a mixture of false personal injury and non-committed actions. He said A-Rod's confession brought "shame to the game" but refused to display anything more solid than a jellyfish's backbone in regards to any punishment. But give Bud credit for one thing. He recognized long ago what we in the media have not - that the fans are happy in their ignorance and upsetting the economic base is just bad business.

He's not alone.

Even now, 27 years after he left the reigns of power with the Players Association, Marvin Miller has come to the defense of the players and the union that helped sacrifice health for wealth. Miller feels that the investigation has been unfair and anti-union even though it is the union that is responsible for the samples not being destroyed in the first place. The former spur to management and hero to the rank and file remarked further about how he chastised union leadership for agreeing to testing because, "... you're going to see players going to jail."

In fairness to A-Rod supporters and those who thought he was beyond such foibles, the man has been a unique talent. Rodriguez crawled from the womb an All Star. And unlike many of his performance-enhancing brethren, we have never seen his skills deteriorate from the ache of injury or middle age just to suddenly find a late career resurgence to go along with renewed talk of post-career enshrinement. The Seattle Mariner's scouting report on Rodriguez in 1993 described the young slugger as having an All Star skill set. Outside of his annual post-season failures, nothing he had done in his 15 year major league career has proved those reports in error.

Much like Mark McGwire who burst upon the scene with 49 home runs as a rookie, it wasn't hard to believe the A-Rod hype as he marched along toward the Hall of Fame and the game's most hallowed record.

For his faults, Rodriguez will be forgiven. Factor away any chemical advantage and he still ranks as one of the greatest to have ever played. He may have to sit out a few cycles but he'll get in. Eventually baseball writers will figure out that in a sea of crap one cannot pick out a single turd for prosecution. They'll realize that since fans, owners, agents and the players themselves don't care, why should they? Maybe A-Rod's coming out party is a good thing. Being able to look at sports through the innocence of ignorance was fun for the first 150 years, but it's time to grow up.

smurray@midweek.com

The warm-up to the Super Bowl is typically endowed with pronouncements of greatness and the exploitation of memory in an effort to create public adoration and legend from the merely ordinary. Much like "The Catch," which forever solidified Dwight Clark's place among the pantheon of Sunday superhero worship, the drive to immortalize circa 2009 went out of its way to convince us that a journeyman quarterback with three great years out of 11 was the rebirth of Y. A. Tittle.

Kurt Warner is not a Hall-of-Famer, just as Clark's catch was simply a wide-open pass tossed high for the benefit of the 6-foot- 4-inch receiver, who dwarfed the tailing defensive back and who enjoyed an empty five yards of end zone in front of him.

It's not that Warner is a bad dude. On the contrary, he's one of the few people in the NFL worth giving a damn about. Throughout his career, the winner of the 2008 Walter Payton Man of the Year Award has put his fame and money to great, not just good, use. He stuffs Christmas stockings for foster children with his family, his First Things First program provides free trips to Disneyworld for children with life-threatening illnesses, and his efforts to help victims of Midwest flooding should make FEMA employees everywhere cower in shame. Warner is a Hall of Fame person, not a Hall of Fame quarterback.

Due to injuries and being docked hours in favor of supposedly younger and better quarterbacks, Warner has played a full schedule only three times during his 11-year career. He was magnificent during those seasons, but beyond that, he's Jim Plunkett - a guy who was great early and late and who rode a Super Bowl victory to fame and a lifetime invitation to the Raiders annual rubber chicken roundup.

Since his 2001 Super Bowl season, Warner has been a virtual castoff, hanging on as a backup waiting for his competitors to through their annual bouts of poor play. The two-time MVP was out of St. Louis by 2003 and became the designated clipboard holder for both New York and Arizona. And had it not been for Matt Lianart's inability to run an NFL offense, Warner may have already retired.

One of the biggest flaws in Warner's resume is the success of those who replaced him. It's hard to make a convincing argument about an individual's greatness when his backups accomplish nearly as much, if not more, than their predecessor.

Warner is an accurate passer - second all-time in completion percentage and fourth in QB rating- with a quick release that perfectly fit the offenses in which he played. And that's another problem. Warner is the product of the systems he's played in and the beneficiary of the talent that surrounded him - which has been outstanding: Marshall Faulk, Isaac Bruce, Torry Holt and Az-Zahir Hakim in St. Louis and  Larry Fitzgerald, Anquan Boldin and Steve Breaston in Arizona.

In the five games Warner missed in 2000, Trent Green had a higher quarterback rating and a better interception percentage than Warner. After beginning the '03 season a perfect 0-6, Warner lost his job to Marc Bulger who went 6-1 with a 101.5 rating to go along with 14 touchdowns, 6 interceptions and an invitation to the Pro Bowl. In contrast, Warner finished with a 67.4 rating with three touchdowns and 11 INTs.

Warner does get justifiable credit for getting two teams to the Super Bowl after years of Lion-like success. But outside of those three Super Bowl years, Warner's record is 21-32.

During a Jan. 6 ESPN feature about his charity work, Warner said, "Five, 10 years from now people won't remember the name Kurt Warner. They won't remember that I won this Super Bowl or won that award, but the people we've touched will never forget us and that's the legacy we want to leave, and that's why we get connected and try to give back as much as we can."

No doubt he purposely downplayed his achievements, but he's correct on the impact on things bigger than football. Warner is 39th in completed passes, 59th in attempts, 38th in passing yards and 40th in touchdowns. He touched more lives as an individual than do most teams and that should be his legacy, not the Hall of Fame.
smurray@midweek.com

With the Detroit Lions rushing toward the greatest season of futility in NFL history, team officials would have welcomed any publicity to take attention away from their dismal showing.

At the conclusion of the Lions' Dec. 7 game against the Minnesota Vikings, which ran the team's unwinning streak to an impressive 13 games, Center Dominic Raiola reacted to an unruly fan or fans who, evidently, got so abusive and personal he gave the sideline instigator a single-fingered show of defiance. Needless to say, the reaction hasn't sat well with a fan base that boasts a large number actually hoping for a winless season. The feeling is that after years of front office ineptitude and disassociated ownership, only the embarrassment of historic failure is capable of turning things around.

And unfortunately, Raiola got caught up in the tidal wave of disgust.

Raiola was wrong in his reaction. One of the golden rules of athletics is that players cannot interact outwardly negative toward fans if for no other reason than maintaining a proper relationship with the customer. But anyone who has been on the sidelines of a sporting event knows that fans can get down right nasty, if not boorish, insensitive, rude, and at times cross the line where not even family is safe from painful criticism. According to Raiola, this is exactly what happened.

"You get booed a lot in the NFL, we get booed every week," said Riola to reporters from Mlive.com. "Fans pay a lot of money and times are really hard right now and we understand that they want to see a winner. When they get personal (with) myself and my family ... I'm just not going to put up with that. I'm a human being, I'm just not going to deal with that."

The former Crusader's biggest failure was not in offering up his one-figured review of the criticism, but in his refusal to back away from the uproar through careful post-game comments and to apologize in the face of mounting controversy. Even if the contrition had been no more genuine than Rod Blagojevich's sincerity, it would have quelled the fire for a team that already has too many.

Raiola's defiance was further pushed into the realm of ridiculousness and unnecessary braggadocio when he challenged fans to fisticuffs saying, "I don't take one thing back. I'll say the same thing to a fan that I see in the street. I wish I could give my address out to some fans. But, you know, I can't. Nobody plays with fists. Everybody wants to play with metal." Besides increasing his chances to be referenced in a 50 Cent single, the comment just further irked fans who flooded call-in shows accepting the center's challenge to a manly showdown.

Raiola is obviously frustrated. A career stuck in the most dysfunctional franchise in sport will test even the most even-tempered athlete. But Dom also has to recognize that while he has suffered through nearly a decade of incompetence, the fans, those who have packed the stadium while management squandered their funds and wasted draft picks while refusing to accept any responsibility for the team's failure, have been carrying the burden for five decades.

Dominic Raiola, one of the few Lions worth a dam and perhaps the only one who hasn't mailed it in on a team full of under achievers and Tampa Bay rejects, is the one guy most apt to explode in the face unforgivable comments. This is not his first fine and likely not his last since the team has gone no farther then publishing a typical PR memo regarding the incident as coaches and management remains silent.

Raiola is an aggressive player who, as shown by his pregame barking session with Brian Urlacher, is not inclined to spend much time getting friendly with the competition. He's got that streak of nasty that the job demands and is fueled by desire and repeated seasons of records so bad that simple mediocrity would be a noteworthy goal.

Speaking to reporters in the days that followed, Raiola talked about being frustrated with losing and "tired of being a doormat." Who could blame him. The Lions are awful and no one should feel confident that this will ever change. If Raiola's actions, as some have speculated, are an attempt to be traded to a better organization, one could hardly chastise him for wanting a chance for success.

But while Raiola has been raked over the coals, one unpopular post-finger comment makes sense. If the product is so bad, why do fans bother waste their money on something that brings so much displeasure?

"You know, if you're not happy, why are you coming to the game? I understand that they haven't seen a winner in eight years, so don't come. Don't come until we turn it around," said the 295-pounder.
Makes sense.

smurray@midweek.com

For Notre Dame's nation of loyal fans, the struggles of Charlie Weis has been a two-year odyssey of frustration and disbelief.

For everyone else, the demise of college football's most polarizing program and its self-proclaimed greatest offensive mind has provided nothing but sheer entertainment.

But while the Irish faithful rub their prayer beads in the hopes that the next football messiah will soon come riding in beneath the blue-gray October sky, they need to stow their snowballs and grudgingly admit the school made the correct decision in retaining the embattled coach.

Notre Dame's options are limited. When the school made Ty Willingham the program's first fire, and more importantly when it offered Weis the decade-long extension after only five games into his Notre Dame career, the school became  just another football whore guided by a disconnected pimp more committed to his own ego than taking responsibility for the mess he helped create.

But I digress.

Currently, there are no coaches available who fit the school's new level of unrealistic expectation. After the embarrassment of George O'Leary and the mediocrity of Bob Davie, Gerry Faust and Willingham, just any old hire will not do. Notre Dame needs a star and right now, for better or for worse, the biggest celebrity is the one who has recorded the school's lowest two-season win total since 1962-63.

By most recent reports, the buyout on Weis' contract was of little concern to the school financed by a $7 billion endowment and its own television deal which has not paid its expected dividends to NBC as the Irish's poor play has meant lower ratings and refunds to advertisers.

Money had little to do with Weis' continued tenure in South Bend, and going on a third coaching search in seven years doesn't exactly hint at the job security top coaches look for. Had a hotshot been available and interested, Weis may have already been given the OK to seek other employment.

Cincinnati coach Brian Kelly has been a popular candidate for a number of schools in recent years, but has in effect thumbed his nose at Notre Dame by declaring his allegiance to his current employer.

Kirk Ferentz, always a favorite to leave Iowa for greener pastures in both college and the NFL, will have to win a lot more than 55 percent of his games to calm the ire of Irish faithful.

Skip Holtz? Sure, he coached under his slurring father at Notre Dame and has turned East Carolina from a joke to a conference contender, but living in his father's shadow would be tough, as would convincing Irish fans their best hope lies in the hands of a coach who averaged seven wins a season in Conference USA.

Mike Leach has shown a willingness to talk about new employment but already makes $1.7 million per, and has an AD who is committed to adding to Leach's wallet before the bowl season ends.

Boise State's Chris Peterson, who pulled a reverse Charlie Weis, succeeding after parting with his former successful superior, would be a great hire if they could get him. Peterson has won 35 of 38 games, but he's a quality-of-life guy who may not be convinced that the honor of coaching the Irish trumps the pressures of academic requirement and national expectation.

Had it been anyone else but Charlie Weis, the three-game improvement for a team dominated by freshman and sophomore talent would have been palpable - especially when any complaints regarding talent could be blamed on his predecessor. But when a new coach comes in blind drunk from the corn squeezings of his own ego and self-professed intellect, any stumble on the road to immortality will be met with an equal level of disdain.

Perhaps no coach ever has been greeted with greater adoration than Charlie Weis. After being spurned by Urban Meyer, Weis and his four Super Bowl rings were greeted upon the Notre Dame campus like Odysseus returning to Ithaca while pronouncing, "The whole world talks of my stratagems, and my fame has reached the heavens."

Weis was supposed to follow in the hallowed footsteps of Leahy, Parseghian and, dare we dream, the great Norwegian himself, Knute Rockne. Instead, his .571 winning percentage has put him in line with Davie (.583), Faust (.535), and dare we say, Willingham (.583).

The Irish are loaded with youth, but that doesn't excuse Weis for not making progress. In fact, the team has regressed. Critics and fans were split on whether the school's 4-1 start was a prelude for a return to greatness or a mirage built on sub-par competition. After losing to Pittsburgh in overtime, being blanked by Boston College, barely scraping by Navy and coming up short to a god-awful Syracuse team, the only remaining argument was about how bad they would lose to Southern Cal. Pete Carrol showed  kindness, holding the line to 35 points.

Not even the Commander in Chief's Trophy has been safe under Weis. The academies, which for years had been fodder for easy Notre Dame victories, have suddenly become contenders to the crown with victories over college football's most holy organization by both Navy and Air Force.

Notre Dame will be better next year. For all the hype, Weis is a talented coach and the Irish will get their fair share of talented recruits. But if we can take one lesson from these last two years, it is that college coaching is not just a job for those who can't cut it in the NFL. It is an entirely different type of employment that calls for skills unique to the job.

smurray@midweek.com