NFL: If Jim Zorn can teach Jason Campbell to throw left-handed, then his hiring makes sense.
NHL: Sadly, if you ask me what's been going on in hockey lately, I'll say players are purse-snatching, Sidney Crosby's still injured and some guy almost got decapitated by another player's skate. That's about it.
NBA: Word is the Knicks are shopping Zach Randolph and Eddie Curry. They should send them to the Lakers for an autographed copy of "Fletch Lives," and send Gregg Popovich a wheel of Jarlsberg cheese, to enjoy with his whine.
NBA 2: Watched "Little Children" with Kate Winslet yesterday. Steve Nash should have won an Oscar for his role as the child molester.
Golf: "A tradition unlike any other...January commercials for April's Masters."
Sportswriting: I think it's official: Bill Simmons has completely crossed over. When he first arrived at ESPN early this decade, he provided a unique perspective -- the fan's perspective. It was something of a public trust. We could relate to him (or, I could anyway) because he rooted for teams that sucked. Now his teams are all successful and (this is the capper) he actually planned to spend the Super Bowl after-party hanging out with Brady and Gisele, whom he knows through mutual friends. Um, what? Who can relate to this? Sorry, Bill, but you've lost the public trust. ESPN needs to start over here. They need to replace Simmons with a writer whose teams mostly suck and who'll never get invited to hang out with celebrities. In short, they need to replace him with me. And then, as soon as Vanderbilt wins a bowl game (which should happen in the next 10-25 years), they should replace me with someone else. Say, a sportswriter from Cleveland or Seattle?
NASCAR: This is only the 50th running of the Daytona 500? Perhaps by the 75th I'll understand the attraction.
MLB: My question is not for Roger Clemens or Brian McNamee, but for Clemens's wife, Debbie. If it's true that McNamee injected her with HGH, it stands to reason that she knows that McNamee injected her husband as well, and that her husband will be lying to Congress. If he does that, he might be facing jail time, which will not only ruin the family's reputation, but make holiday plans a bit dicey for the foreseeable future. Given that, I'd love to know," What advice, Debbie, do you have for your husband in advance of tomorrow's hearing?" Really, if she knows he's lying, and she knows the consequences, then what's that say about her?
Apropos of nothing (?): God makes 'em and he matches 'em.
College hoops: I wrote about this a few weeks ago in my blog, and zero commenters were good enough to leave their thoughts, but does anyone really expect Memphis, a team that shoots under 60 percent from the foul line collectively, to go undefeated this season? That's like expecting a football team to go undefeated when it can't make field goals from more than 45 yards. Eventually, your weaknesses are going to be exposed.
* The New England Patriots are the only NFL team to lose Super Bowls in two different helmets. No matter what happens Sunday, that'll still be true, because the Giants have the same logo they had in 2001.
* I hope to hear a "Yankees suck" cheer at University of Phoenix Stadium, even though I'm rooting for the Giants.
* Jason Kidd should be traded to the Knicks. Then he'll be the first person in American history to realize how good they had it in New Jersey.
* Roger Clemens looks more desperate and pathetic with every passing day. Now he's trying to deflect criticism of his late-career surge by comparing it to the careers of Nolan Ryan, Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling. I'm sure they love being lumped together with a guy who calls his ex-trainer on the phone, feigns interest in the kid's ill son, then secretly tape records the conversation, all in the unrealized hopes of getting the guy to recant his story that Clemens took steroids. Roger, the court of public opinion already made its decision: You and Floyd Landis should go bowling together.
* The Red Sox are reportedly going to wait until after the season to exercise Manny Ramirez's 2009 option ($20 million), which makes perfect sense. Last year the Sox irked Curt Schilling by waiting to see what kind of season he'd have, and so did the Yankees with Mariano Rivera, letting them play out their walk years without future job security. Both Schilling and Rivera stomped their feet, said they'd play out their last years and then test the free-agent market. So what happened? They performed like motivated pitchers playing for their next contracts, and ultimately re-upped with their respective teams.
In Ramirez's case, the Red Sox hold $20 million options on him for 2009 AND 2010. Considering Ramirez will be 37 in May of 2009, the $40 million he stands to make with Boston in those two years is much better than any long-term deal he can reasonably expect to sign somewhere else. Consider, if Ramirez replicates his un-Manny-like numbers from last year -- 20 home runs, 80 RBIs, and less than 140 games played for the second straight season -- the Red Sox won't be eager to pay $20 million to a 37-year-old slugger who plays terrible defense.
Most players would use this kind of situation as motivation, but there's no telling how Ramirez will react. Perhaps he'll sulk. Perhaps he'll ask to be traded. Or perhaps he'll realize that playing with incentive -- actually, 20 million incentives -- will bring out the best in him, and help him revert to his Hall of Fame-caliber numbers.
* Word is Hal Steinbrenner (the sane one) and Yankees GM Brian Cashman have convinced Baby 'Brenner (the smoking one) not to overpay with prospects for Johan Santana. While that's probably the wise choice, you just get the sense that Baby 'Brenner is gonna go ballistic in the press (probably on Cashman) if Santana lands in Boston or Flushing.
* Pitchers and catchers report on February 14, so wives of rabid baseball fans should expect sex, chocolate, and due dates around Thanksgiving. Let's make it a fecund year for baseball fanatics, shall we.
I remember the exact moment I became a New York Knicks fan: The first-ever NBA Draft Lottery on June 18, 1985, when commissioner David Stern pulled the Pacers' envelope from George Jetson's dryer, meaning Indiana would pick second in the upcoming draft and the Knicks would pick first -- and undoubtedly select Georgetown center Patrick Ewing, my favorite player.
If you're 12 years old, a basketball junkie, and most of your family either graduated from Georgetown or attends the school in 1985, it's hard to overstate your excitement when the local NBA team lands Ewing. Sure, he and the Hoyas had stabbed me in the heart by losing to Villanova in the NCAA title game that spring, but he'd led the school to 3 title games in four years, including one championship. In the annals of college big men, how many outside Westwood, California, could unabashedly pit their resume against his? Not Shaquille O'Neal or Tim Duncan or Ralph Sampson or Akeem Olajuwon, because none of them won NCAA titles.
Before Pat Ewing (and remember, he was "Pat" before arriving in NYC), I had no firm NBA allegiance. The early to mid-80s was an exciting time in pro basketball, but living in Fairfield County, Connecticut, my only NBA-viewing option was the Rory Sparrow-led New York Knicks. Sure, the Celtics, Sixers and Lakers played exciting ball on the nationally televised weekend games, but none of them corralled my loyalty. In retrospect, it now seems I realized (albeit subconsciously) that NBA basketball was 8 months of waste and one month of wonder.
When Ewing arrived in New York, however, I started watching Knicks games regularly. Unfortunately, the team didn't transform overnight. Sure, Ewing won the NBA Rookie of the Year award in 1985-86, but he missed more than 30 games due to injury and the team limped through another lackluster season, finishing 44 games behind Larry Bird and the champion Celtics in the Atlantic Division. If I'd been a cynical pre-teen, I might have wondered, "Why couldn't my entire family have gone to Indiana State?"
Over the next decade-plus, Patrick Ewing and the Knicks couldn't get past the Celtics, Pistons and Bulls in the East; and when they finally did, in 1994 (when Jordan was off flailing at change-ups), the Knicks fell to the Houston Rockets in the NBA Finals. In the ensuing years, Ewing turned into something of a farce, boldly predicting victories but never delivering. In 2000, he was abducted by aliens and never heard from again. In the meantime, I've tried to maintain my allegiance to the Knicks, if only to honor his memory. But the drunken uncles in charge at Madison Square Garden make it impossible right now.
Here, in short, is what needs to happen for me to become a New York Knicks fan again:
1. James Dolan needs to go to prison and lose ownership of the team. If the clever, conniving Martha Stewart can get caught for insider trading, then James Dolan is living on borrowed freedom. He must have done something illegal. The fine folks at TMZ need to find out what, embarrass the hell out of him (ya know, to prove it's actually possible), then let the law take over. I'm not averse to framing him.
2. Isiah Thomas needs to relinquish the compromising photos of James Dolan and that rare Chinese panda. If Dolan goes to prison, hopefully for something utterly humiliating, it stands to reason that Thomas's blackmail photos will lose their influence, opening the way for Thomas's dismissal and his public stoning.
3. The Knicks need to draft Georgetown center Roy Hibbert. I confess, I like symmetry. Am I saying he's the next Patrick Ewing? No, he's the first Roy Hibbert. At least I think he is. He might have ancestors named Roy.
4. The Knicks need to pay Stephon Marbury to go away. Listen, I'm sorry about the deaths in his family this season, but he was a selfish, pouting lout well before those happened. Besides, people die every day, and his inability to deal with the reality of that -- like everyone else in the world -- just underscores his self-absorption.
5. The Knicks need to re-hire Jeff Van Gundy. Come on, we've all seen "The Lion King," so we all know the song, so sing it with me: "In the Circle of Life/In the wheel of fortune/It's the leap of faith/It's the band of hope." (Don't kid yourself; you sing along when no one's around.)
6. The Knicks need to hire current Orlando Magic (?) assistant coach Patrick Ewing, in some capacity, any capacity, to infuse the organization with some semblance of excitement, not to mention throw a bone to the fans who were last excited by the Knicks when Ewing was their leader. If Michael Jordan can get a job as "Managing Member of Basketball Operations" for the Carolina Bobcats, and Isiah Thomas -- a freaking Detroit Piston! -- can become general manager of the New York Knicks, then Patrick Ewing can find a job at Madison Square Garden. My god, on-air dilettante Walt Frazier has been getting paid to ab-lib fake words for the last 20 years. I say we let Walt Clyde go prowl for cougars with Keith Hernandez, and let Ewing call games with Marv Albert. Is he qualified? Are you kidding me? He has a fine arts degree from Georgetown, of course he is.
So, if ALL six of these criteria are met, I will start rooting for the New York Knicks again. In June anyway. After all, NBA basketball is eight months of waste and one month of wonder.
*If Eli Manning leads the Giants to victory in Lambeau, in the kind of weather they're predicting, Peyton automatically becomes the soft one in the family.
* Have you ever actually seen someone thrown under a bus? In fact, has there ever been a recorded case in transportation history? Then where's this term come from? I don't understand how this particular phrase became sports speak for "pinning the blame on someone else." Why a bus? Why not a Mack truck, a Ford pick-up or the #### of Rosie O'Donnell?
* It sounds rather #### when a sportscaster like Sean Salisbury says, "I'm a Rich Rodriquez guy." You hear that kind of thing all the time. "I'm a Parcells guy." "I'm a Larry Brown guy." You're a wienie, is what ya are.
* I hope Billy Volek has to save the day for the Chargers.
* I hope the Super Bowl goes into overtime.
* The Jeopardy online contestant test is next Tuesday, January 29. I'm spending already, anticipating my cash windfall.
* The country is not worse off because TV writers are out of work. Read a book, play Tetris, have sex: Use this down time to do something productive. Don't worry, TV writers will back soon enough, and the country can return to its passive consumption of regurgitated ####.
* Baby Boss is a great name for Hank Steinbrenner.
* Roger Clemens will not go gently into that good night.
* Andy Roddick is a dink. In fact, every A-Rod is a dink.
* Donald Fehr is an obstructionist. Take blood, store blood, get a reliable rest for HGH. Citing Lance Armstrong is fear-mongering. Besides, we all know that's how the French roll.
* Jim Rice got rooked.
* The Knicks could win 38 games in a row and I still wouldn't root for them.
* Goose Gossage is a megalomaniac. "I got out of situations that God couldn't?" Yeah OK, pal. Trim the 'stache already; the Village People are no longer cool.
Cameron Martin. Finalist in Fox Sports Next Great Sportswriter contest. I cover the Red Sox for Comcast SportsNet New England and Major League Baseball for
Bugs & Cranks
