Ray Manzarek lives in an Omaha suburb working part-time as the organ player at the Skate World roller rink.  Manzarek, of course, is old school and is trying to come to grips with the in-line skaters who dominate the rink. 

“Whatever happened to the 4-wheel roller skates, man?” he asks no one in particular, stubbing out another cigarette, announcing a reverse skate into the microphone and starts playing, I’ve got a Brand New Pair of Roller Skates (You’ve Got a Brand New Key).

A kid, maybe 7 or 8 years of age, skates over and tells Ray, “You suck, mister.”

Frantically, Ray slams the keys of his organ like he did at the Fillmore East in 1969, stops suddenly and says to the kid, “I was with The Doors. I don’t suck.” 

The Manager, overhearing the last bit of the exchange says, “Ray, knock it off, will you?” 

Ray knocks it off.  This would never be happening had Jim lived longer.  Jim Morrison promised revolution, but delivered only an early death. 

“The kids don’t get it.  None of them get it.  Our society has bred two successive generations of complete ignorance.  The Doors are timeless.  We wrote Moonlight Drive and People Are Strange and The End, for Christ sake…those compositions are timeless, like the philosophy of Nietzsche and the poetry of Rimbaud. We changed the world.  We were, and this is truth not ego, we were Gods.”

Manzarek landed this job after various attempts at Doors revivals proved commercially unsuccessful.  With little more than a continuing desire to fuel his organ art, Manzarek traveled the country looking for gigs, finally ending up at this suburban Omaha rink. 

“I still have trouble with authority, man.  Nobody will alter or change or dissuade my art, man.  Nobody can move me away from my raison d’ etre.  Now it’s all about Britney Spears and 50 Cent and Clay Aiken and people like that.  But, I told management when I started here there are a lot of Doors fans out there, even 10-year olds love us once they understand us.  I play a lot of Doors, a lot of Big Brother and the Holding Company and Jefferson Airplane in my sets. Jim said, ‘Once you make peace with authority, you become authority.’ I’ll never accept total authority, man. Not now, not ever, you know. At first when I got here and started this gig, man, The Man hassled me, but like all true artists they’re coming to accept my genius.” 

Assistant Manager, Chuck Tracy, said Ray was on the verge of being let go by management until he noticed the owner’s daughter choking on a chicken bone in the rink’s eating area.  Ray - a devout follower of Zen Buddhism, the Maharashi, and Shamanism, also has his life-saving badge and first-aid certification earned at a Los Angeles YMCA - saved the owner’s daughter with the Heimlich Maneuver.

“The owner is always saying, like, ‘My daughter is the apple of my eye’…more like the apple pie with a double scoop of ice-cream with a chocolate shake of his eye. She’s big, dude. Are you going to print my name? Ray was gone until he saved her life.  The kids are sick of hearing Doors songs.  It’s really bad.  I mean it’s no different than making the kids study for and take a test about the Pilgrims.  This is supposed to be fun.” 

Ray views his current job as a test of his resolve and as suffering for his art, 30 years removed from his success with The Doors.

“What I really want is to find someone to replace Jim as a lead vocalist, man, that is my ultimate goal. I’m applying with various NHL and NBA and MLB teams to play the organ at their games.  I could be good with the Sabres, or the Suns, or the Dodgers or any of those teams. The Lakers, man, that would be ideal. I’d be back in the city where it all began for Jim and me. Kobe Bryant, I’m sure he gets it. Can you imagine?  What a more fitting tune than Light My Fire, to get a team fired up. People are always saying that The Doors were done after Jim died, but that’s not true, man. All of us, me, Robbie and John…we’re all out there perfecting our art.”

After two more songs – Break on Through and LA Woman (which Ray also sings) – it will be time for him to clean the urinals. 

 

 

 

 

The car is a 1988 Volvo and my wife recently went from suggesting I sell it to demanding I do so.

My neighbor, an eccentric and eclectic man, who raises pigeons in his backyard and yet hunts pheasants and dove and quail and turkeys and other assorted birds, does not disagree with my wife. 

“You think I should sell it?”  I asked him one afternoon as he was spray-painting his truck’s gun rack in his driveway.

“Yes,” he said. “You should sell it.”

He has a bumper sticker on his truck reading:  “Fear the government that fears guns.”

I asked my wife once, after reading the bumper sticker, “Does that mean we should fear a government that doesn’t have an army or weapons or something like that?

“Are you serious with that question?”  She asked me.

“I guess I was at first, but probably not now.”

“C’mon, now, please. You got to be joking on that.” 

The Volvo is heading towards 200,000 miles and was once burgundy-red in color.  The exterior is aging badly and rusting at an awkward, confused pace making it look like a Jackson Pollack painting.

In a twist of ironic weirdness as far as car sale mythology goes, the only person who answered the newspaper ad was a 55-year old minister who needed a reliable car to get him to and from church on Sundays.

“Is it reliable enough to get me to and from church every week?” The minister asked, not looking at me.

The car had taken me to Alaska, Canada, Mexico, Florida, Arizona, California, Nebraska, Iowa, Utah, Washington, New York City and hundreds of places in between. It had been ticketed for drag-racing and had been to repair shops after being damaged four-wheeling.  It tried to chase down the limousine carrying Red Auerbach and his cigar after an NBA All-Star game when he refused to acknowledge my, “Hey, Red, how’s it going, bra?”  The Volvo drove me to Joe Montana’s retirement party at San Francisco’s Embarcadero Square and to a basketball tournament at Rucker Park in Harlem, but never once had it taken me to a church anywhere.

“I really have no idea,” I answered the minister. 

The day before the minister arrived I cleaned the car out and found a ticket from the 1995 Colorado-Oklahoma football game.  My friend Deke and I drove to Norman for the game and watched Colorado beat Oklahoma. The Sooner Schooner tipped over right before halftime and Deke was slugged in the back of the head before the game by Oklahoma quarterback Cale Gundy’s aunt for loudly questioning Gundy’s gender while in the pocket.  It was an eye-watering punch that brought him to a knee. He recovered, got to his feet, apologized to her and bought her a cold drink.  That’s the way to do it down there.

Unable to get tickets together, we used walkie-talkies as a communication device throughout the game.  Deke purchased a yellow windbreaker and a blue baseball hat the day before at a sporting goods store and managed to get down on the Colorado sideline pretending to be game security. He radioed me, told me where he was, which was directly behind coach Bill McCartney, and waved to me at the same time the real security was escorting him away from the sidelines and off to jail.

While waiting for Deke to be processed and released later that evening, I sat on a barstool next to Barry Switzer drinking Coors.  Switzer was fired a couple of years earlier for running an outlaw program.  He was anything but an outlaw that evening, talking to me for several hours about the best fishing spots in the Southeast.  I have never been fishing, but am an avid reader of fishing magazines and had a few things to say back to Barry, like, “fish flop around for awhile on the shore after you catch them before they die for good.”  I consider him a friend after that night, even though he wouldn’t remember me if we passed on the street.  

A couple of years earlier, Deke and I drove the Volvo to Miami for the Orange Bowl.  We didn’t have enough money for immediate accommodations having run our credit cards to the limit making t-shirts for the Orange Bowl game and had just enough cash to get us back to Colorado.

“We’ll make enough off t-shirt sales to live at a South Beach hotel for months,” I told Deke.

“I want to drink multi-#### drinks out of big glasses with stir-sticks, too,” Deke said, always the Zen optimist.

Deke is generous with his wisdom.  He has told me important things like, “Don’t throw the bottle out of the window in front of the cops.” And, “Don’t be in a hurry unless you need to get somewhere really fast.”  And, “Don’t climb big fences to get something that isn’t yours. If the wire doesn’t get you, the dogs will.” And, “Don’t take a lot of hits of LSD on Fat Tuesday.” 

Four hours into our Miami stay and about 32 minutes into selling our t-shirts, we were busted by an Orange Bowl representative claiming the shirts were not properly licensed by the universities or the Orange Bowl.  We plead ignorance, because we were ignorant about the recent t-shirt legislation.

After the shirts were confiscated, we had $267 in cash and no credit.  We slept in the car for three nights and hung out in Miami during the days.  The Orange Bowl is a game you don’t miss when you’re in Miami on January 1^st and have tickets. We were unshowered and gamey for the game, but this was humid Miami. Everyone has their game face on and their gamey bodies on. 

A newspaper columnist made the mistake of critiquing our hero, John Elway, too often. We found out where he lived and drove by his house to do something to make him understand our position, and saw him laying sod down at his new house.  Later, eight of us crammed into the Volvo, and in the middle of the night, quiet and effective like mute landscape laborers; we rolled the sod up and put it back on the pallets. 

The Volvo took me and three buddies to Tempe for an Arizona State-Nebraska football game.  On the way down we purchased 3 cases of beer and put them in the trunk of the car.  Driving through the desert in 100 degree heat without air conditioning, we started hearing popping sounds coming from the car trunk. 

At first we thought they were gunshots, but when we pulled over we found the desert heat was causing the beer cans to explode.  Not wanting to lose our investment, we began drinking as many beers as fast as we could.  Being more than a few sheets to the wind, probably a mid-sized laundry to a gale, we took off and a few miles down the road, drinking, weaving, and listening to a Guns & Roses CD, Deke, with his arm hanging out of the window slammed it into a mile-marker. 

We found a chain-smoking rural doctor who set the broken arm and asked us, “So let me get this straight. You were arm-wrestling to see who drove the next leg of the trip?” 

“Something like that,” I answered for Deke, knowing that it is always better to lie and maybe get away with it, then it is to tell the truth and face an immediate consequence.

After the Arizona trip, we solved the exploding beer can problem by drilling a hole into the back seat of the Volvo to the trunk so we could carry a keg in the trunk and run the tap through the hole and into the back seat. 

There was a night driving down a highway from Colorado Springs to Denver with my buddies in a blizzard after watching a friend play goalie for the Colorado College hockey team. We were drinking beer from the trunk-keg when the Volvo was stopped by a cop. 

“How fast do you think you were going?”  He asked me, the designated driver at 1:55 AM with a .18 BAC.

“I don’t know…70, 75.” 

“14” 

He made each of us get out of the car and stood facing us jingling coins in his pocket.  He then threw the coins from his pocket and into the snow.

“Whoever can come closest to telling me how much change I threw out is driving.”

This same goalie, after his first year at Colorado College, asked me to keep his goalie pads in the trunk while he spent some time with his new girlfriend. They had a lot of catching up to do, because I didn’t see him the entire summer.

That August, at a drive-in movie theater, his pads combusted and caught on fire.  When the police arrived after the pads were extinguished, the investigating officer told me, “I have a couple of questions for you.” 

“Will you be expecting good answers?” I asked. 

There was the time on my way back to Colorado after my grandma’s funeral I stopped in the town of Alta, Iowa, population 1,865. Curious as to why 1,865 people would live there, I exited the highway and lost the alternator belt on the main street. I pulled into a gas station and asked the owner when he could fix the Volvo.

“Tomorrow.  Tonight is the sectional basketball finals. Alta and Aurelia. They’re big, but we’re better. Get in the truck.”

I think every town member was at the game, and for these people, it was like Game 7 of the NBA Finals. I locked away my cynicism and witnessed a good game of basketball played at Iowa’s lowest high school classification.

Afterward, I ate pot-luck dinner with the fans and the players and the coaches. I never knew you could use Jell-O to make so many different dishes.

I looked at the minister as these thoughts ran through my head and then I looked at the car that had brought so much life to my life.

“You’re really going to take this car to church and back every Sunday?”
“Yeah, and maybe do some church-related errands.”

I thought about the time me and Deke drove the Volvo to Mexico to see a bullfight. We committed felonies, probably, and compromised an international treaty or two, maybe.  All I really remember is we never found the bullfight and the car smelled like a reggae concert for three months afterward.

“I’m sorry.  This isn’t the car for you.”

I made the decision without talking to my wife. I know communication is the key to a successful relationship, but there is a clause in the vows about for better or for worse. I don’t think keeping the car qualifies as a for worse. At least not just yet.

 

EMBRYO, EMBROYO! WHEREFORE ART THOU EMBRYO?

 

Imagine a world where Yale, Harvard, Colgate, Brown, MIT and Oberlin are regular BCS participants. 

Imagine a world where the Final Four consists of Yale, Harvard, Colgate and Brown.

Imagine a world where the Duke Lacrosse team wins a national championship each year and the gene for aggressive behavior towards exotic dancers has been removed, or at a minimum, a gene making them more believable to law enforcement is inserted.

Genetic engineering has progressed from the imagination of science-fiction writers to becoming scientific reality.  

Steroids, prior to becoming a reality, was first imagined by both chemists and cartoonists. The thought of a drug’s ability to create supermen has moved from fake heroes created on comic-book pages, to chemists making and selling the drug to create fake comic sports heroes.

Steroids may soon become the jealous ancestor of technology developed to create “designer babies” by enhancing genetic makeup before birth.

The idea of creating “designer babies” is no longer a pencil-sketch; it is published science, and these “designer babies” may be coming to schoolyards and ball fields and basketball courts very soon.

The Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority, which oversees tests involving human embryos in Britain, ruled last week that fertility clinics may screen out human embryos carrying genes that raise the risk of certain adulthood cancers.  Those in favor of the move view it as a needed step in preventing human suffering, while critics view it as the first step in the age of handpicking babies.

The British Medical Association embraced the decision "to extend the criteria for embryo selection." The Association’s chief of ethics and science, Vivienne Nathanson, calmed critics by stating:

"We do not see that today's decision is moving towards 'designer babies.'  There is a world of difference between a parent not wanting their child to develop breast cancer and someone wanting a child with blue eyes and blond hair."

Nathanson provided the Aryan physical description without an irony addendum.

The Authority stopped short at selecting embryos with genetic markers for eczema and asthma - because they are treatable- and for schizophrenia, a condition without a single gene of causation.

In a foreseeable future, a society of breast healthy, cancer-free, wheezing, scratching people debating politics with imaginary friends is a distinct possibility. In a future a little fuzzier, once genes for various items such as height, obesity, personality, IQ, physical makeup and others are identified and found to be adjustable in a lab, parents will be ordering up offspring as if in a Chinese restaurant:

“I’ll take blonde hair, blue eyes, no cancer, no mental illness, no teenage rebellion, a height gene, a big-bone gene, the speed gene, the vertical leap gene, the strength gene, add 75 IQ points, an outgoing comedy gene, and throw in some personal responsibility as well.”

Altering a human being prior to birth would be cost prohibitive for the masses, but an elite few - an elite few who want to cheer a son scoring 15 goals at a peewee soccer game and then change to a suit and tie in the car to win the national spelling bee, and then later that evening play cello for the Boston Pops Orchestra – will be able to afford a procedure or set of procedures to make this a reality. 

There is an absolute truth about the human being and science is finding the proof.

Nature is an absolute, a fact, and with each scientific discovery concerning genetics, personal experience and environment as dominant factors in human achievement is nothing more than anecdotal dialogue.

Studies indicate two different children can be raised identically in the same household and become vastly different people; and, two nearly identical people can be raised in vastly different households and become almost identical people.

For example, a two-parent family can raise children adhering strictly to the teachings of Dr. Spock and one of the kids may grow up to be a responsible, well-adjusted kid, while the other may dress up like Spock from Star Trek and abuse stray animals in the neighborhood.  Identical twins, separated at birth, and raised in different environs, tend to be indistinguishable people as adults with the same interests, personalities and talents.

Genetics as final destiny is a fallacy, but genetics as a road map is undeniable. Environment can merely prescribe road choice, it cannot determine the pace or make of the vehicle or the distance it will cover.  Our society fears science revealing biological factors over environmental factors, because it removes us as our own ultimate path maker.

Behaviorists point to various studies to improve the argument we can be anything we want to be if we just stick to it and work hard.  John Watson, an American Psychologist, believed he could take any healthy child in his controlled environment and make the child into anything he wanted to make him be regardless of talent, intelligence, tendencies and abilities.  His theory, when viewed through the eyes of modern science, is laughably improbable.  But maybe, had he lived long enough, Watson could have trained, for instance, the hyper-aggressive Charles Manson to be the featherweight champion of the world instead of a serial killer, or trained a Palestinian child seasoned in rock throwing at Israeli tanks to be a major league baseball pitcher. 

B.F. Skinner believed the human could be conditioned to do anything.  He pointed to studies where he taught pigeons how to dance and play tennis.  That’s an interesting experiment as circus sideshow, but he never studied or explained differences in ability levels amongst his tennis playing and dancing pigeons.  Any human being can learn how to dance or play tennis or play basketball or baseball or football.  The gist is that certain people do things much better than others, and not that they simply can do them at all.    

Denying genetic truths for environmental dominant theories is understandable.  It is the way we control our lives and the lives of our children. We want to believe we can do and be anything we want to be. Our society is founded on this belief.  Our system of law, politics and education is founded on this belief, and western religion is wholly dependant on this belief. 

This belief - held by millions of parents - at its tamest, is simply egotistical; and, at worst is a reckless ambition aimed at their children causing lifelong trauma for both child and parent.  This belief has led to athletic performance and enhancement centers for children beginning as early as two years of age.  These centers can make the slow and weak a tad faster and a tad stronger; the average guy a little above average; the above average very good; the very good great; the great elite. But, parents are shoving their kids into these enhancement programs with a false dream their kid will be a professional athlete, when they are better suited for CPAing, or constructing homes, or as career counselors.  

Talent and genius is not manufactured, it is born, and is merely nudged by environment.

We think we can be a John Elway if we put in the time and the effort. 

We think we can be a Michael Jordan if we put in the time and the effort.

We think we can be an Alex Rodriguez if we put in the time and the effort.

We tell ourselves these things as kids, and when we fail, we owe the failings to disadvantageous training, to bad coaching, to the wrong school district, to uncomfortable shoes, to bad teammates, and many other excuses.  Some of these environmental excuses may apply, but science is telling us through continuing genetic advances that our failings in athletics happen well before we even step on a field a diamond or a court.

But science may be coming to the rescue of the athletically challenged very soon, if the critics of the British Medical Association are also prophets.

Imagine an all Ivy League Final Four.

Imagine a BCS where the players are also responsible for creating the computer analysis determining the teams.

Imagine professional leagues comprised solely of the genetically enhanced.

Imagine this could never happen?

Imagine it already has.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

COACH KELVIN CHARACTER

Kelvin Sampson’s Website, twenty years removed from his first head college coaching position, reads like a resume.  His Website details his achievements at every stop in his coaching career, and as an added bonus, Sampson writes a short column entitled Passion and Intensity.  In the piece, Sampson declares he wants players who personify hard work, intensity “character, passion, commitment and a dedication and willingness to work hard and get better.”  His column comes replete with the egotistical observation, “Many friends will comment to me that they are thoroughly impressed with our style of play.”

Kelvin Sampson is all about Kelvin Sampson all the while pretending he is about something bigger than Kelvin Sampson. 

Kelvin Sampson was hired by Indiana University even after the NCAA concluded he and his assistant coaches made hundreds of illicit phone calls to attract potential recruits to play for him at the University of Oklahoma.

He professes to be a man of high character and solid judgment, molding student-athletes into men all under his watchful eye; as his other, more ambitious and self-serving eye, looks for dishonest ways of luring players to his program as his current and past players fail to graduate.  He had one hand on the pulse of his Oklahoma program; the other on his cell-phone making hundreds of impermissible calls to potential recruits begging them to join him in Norman.

Here are the facts:

·        Sampson and his assistant coaches made 550 illegal phone calls to potential recruits from 2000-2004.

·        The NCAA came calling on Sampson.

·        Sampson called Indiana about their coaching vacancy.

·        Indiana called Sampson and offered him the job.

·        Sampson fled Oklahoma after the NCAA came calling.

·        Sampson called his calls “mistakes” and has since “moved on.

·        Moved on, 750 miles away, to be exact, trying to long-distance himself from the mess he created.   

Sampson is no different than a teenager sneaking around with a cell phone stuck to his ear making hundreds of phone calls, and then negotiating his way out of trouble with mommy and daddy when the bill comes due.

Maybe Sampson is a better fit at Indiana A####mp;T than at Indiana University.

Part of the self-imposed punishment by the University of Oklahoma was to create a tracking system to monitor the calls of Sampson and his coaching staff, because their prior monitoring procedures “lacked adequate structure or substance.”  The university-imposed restriction is akin to the punishment meted out to a 15-year old child and not a 50-year old man.  I’m certain Sampson and his staff kept these calls private and away from the university, just as the teenager who hides the phone bill from his parents.  But, Sampson is far more sophisticated and far more practiced in the art of deception than any teenager.  He is a middle-aged man who is not going to learn from his mistakes as a child might, but instead, will learn how to not get caught again. 

Sampson can stand behind a podium in front of reporters and act John Wooden, when in reality Sampson is more Jim Harrick, a used-car salesman masquerading as basketball coach, who perpetuated ongoing scams at UCLA, Rhode Island and Georgia. 

A popular phrase thrown around when athletes cause headaches is: “We can’t let the inmates run the asylum.”  What’s the phrase when the warden is the felon?   

Sampson’s personal punishment for his indiscretions at Oklahoma was to freeze his salary at $1 million per year.  Man, that’s cold.

Sampson orders his players to touch every line when running sprints in practice and a failure to do so results in extra sprints.   This is an obvious metaphor designed to teach his players not to cut corners in basketball or in life.  His 550 illegal calls was a failure to touch all the lines while scorching the telephone lines.  The simple fact of the matter is Kelvin Sampson cheated to gain a competitive edge, got caught and should be made to pay for his indiscretions.

Sampson apologists point to his difficult upbringing in segregated Pembroke, North Carolina as a member of the Lumbee Indian Tribe, and add that his single-minded ambition to better himself is an American success story that explains his need for staying ahead of his competition.  Ambition is a curious and unpredictable traveler.  It will either meticulously prepare for the journey and be packed for every situation, or it will feel vulnerable and steal traveler’s checks in the dark of night. 

The NCAA will decide Sampson’s fate and the fate of the University of Oklahoma basketball program later this month.   The decision is a simple one.  Myles Brand and the NCAA should determine that the illegal activities of Sampson and his staff should follow them and them alone.  But, the decision could be made difficult by the fact that Myles Brand is the former president of Indiana University and a conflict of interest may play a part in the NCAA’s upcoming decision.  Brand, while at Indiana, was the man who fired Indiana legend Bobby Knight. Brand should recuse himself from this case and let those whose pockets have never been lined with Hoosier money make the decision.  Any decision adverse to the University of Oklahoma, and in Sampson’s favor, should be vigorously questioned.  Allowing Sampson to move on to the University of Indiana without being penalized is a joke, and forcing Jeff Capel and the University of Oklahoma to deal with his wrongdoing is the punch line. 

Decisions made by NCAA committees are not always fair. It is an organization run by old school, coach apologists who are far more concerned about the welfare of its coaches than about protecting the young student-athletes who are the NCAA.  It wouldn’t be shocking at all to see the NCAA allow Sampson to walk and then deliver a punishment aimed at the University of Oklahoma players who did nothing more than accept one of Sampson’s illegal phone calls.  The NCAA has had no problem in the past destroying the lives of 18, 19, 20 and 21 year old kids for youthful indiscretions made one time, and in turn, excusing the numerous indiscretions committed by middle-aged coaches who should know better. 

Universities, like the NCAA, are quick to pull the plug on student-athletes for mistakes made while allowing coaches to keep on living.  Ask yourself this question: Would the NCAA, or a public university, allow an athlete to violate an NCAA directive 550 times and then move on to another university without penalty?  Of course not.  In fact, the NCAA and universities collectively decided to penalize student-athletes wanting to transfer by making them sit out of competition for one full year, even if a student-athlete can provide video evidence, for example, from an Indiana University practice session, that he was choked by the coach.

Indiana University Athletic Director, Rick Greenspan, has earned every critical salvo fired his way.  He hired Sampson with the knowledge that the NCAA is on his tail for his misdeeds in favor of interviewing and hiring a qualified former Hoosier, someone like Orlando Magic assistant, Randy Witman, who expressed a strong desire to coach his alma mater.  If his hiring of Sampson isn’t bad enough on it’s own, Greenspan devised a sneaky scheme that would allow Indiana to send Sampson packing, without pay, should NCAA penalties follow him.  That’s a pretty ruthless proposition on Greenspan’s part. Maybe Sampson and Greenspan deserve one another.

A fitting punishment for Sampson would be for the NCAA to rule he has to sit out of coaching for one full year, as a player would have to do if he wanted to transfer schools. Sampson could work for the NCAA making phone calls to the parents of student-athletes whose children were denied scholarships after failing to meet NCAA Clearinghouse requirements.  Sampson could explain to each why the Clearinghouse denied their kids’ futures and advise them how to correct the situation and get back to chasing their dreams. 

It would be a way for Sampson to make good on his self-proclamation as a man of character and would utilize his best skill, which is talking on a telephone.

Sampson called on Indiana University and a new job when the NCAA came calling on him.  It’s time for the NCAA to call Sampson out for his dishonesty and penalize him and him alone.  Indiana University, because of the thorough incompetence of Rick Greenspan should be stuck with Sampson and the penalties that escort him to Bloomington.  By making Sampson own up to his behavior the NCAA can send a clear message to universities across the country that coaches are as responsible for their actions as are student-athletes.  Maybe, with a strong enough message, athletic directors will delete the phone numbers of suspect coaches from their speed dial and start calling on coaches who display character on and off the court and not those who merely profess character on a Website.

THE SOPHISTICATED ART OF SHAMELESS SELF-PROMOTION

Barry Bonds, and his plausible reason for using performance-enhancing drugs, I think, is the appropriate ending for this essay.  We will get to this in due time.

There are sociological and psychological points to tend to before getting to Bonds’ dilemma; a dilemma tethered to the new America’s obsession with fame without substance and achievement without merit. 

I am the dot maker, and it is up to you to connect these dots and color them in once the appropriate connections are finished.  Shameless self-promotion, Andy Warhol, reality TV, Donald Trump, Mark McGwire, Jose Canseco, the United States Congress and others will be part of this connect-the-dots essay to get to Barry Bonds.  It is all connected.  They are all connected.  The butterfly flapping its wings in the Rain Forest setting off the chain of events leading to a typhoon in the Philippines eight days later kind of connected.  Get out your Number 2 pencils and crayons and let’s get busy.

We live in an age of shameless self-promotion; an age where self-promotion is no longer a self-conscious attempt at fame, but is instead treated as art form.  We live in an age where universities and seminars disregard product or talent in favor of teaching the individual how to market the individual.  There are classes and self-help books available to anyone who wants to learn to develop and nurture ambition and make it work for them in the marketplace.  People come to these seminars and classes without any tangible aptitudes, but leave with the idea that they can choose any profession and simply “make it happen.” 

The business marketplace is saturated with these ambitious individuals who have no business being in the business they are in.  Thousands of lawsuits are filed each day in this country claiming legal remedy due to ineptitude, and in many cases, the lawyers representing each side are ambitious types who would be better suited as dry-cleaner managers or video store clerks than lawyers.  But along the way, these people learned about ambition and self-promotion and we now have a messy society of ambitious hacks mismanaging 401(K) accounts, misdiagnosing patients, failing to educate our young, providing incompetent customer service, force feeding us junk entertainment, and other assorted examples of professional ineffectiveness.  

Blind ambition coupled with talent can make us queasy, but blind ambition without talent should force us to the foot of the toilet in stomach-turning revolt.  I’m afraid this isn’t the case.  Not only are we becoming more accepting of the #### ambitious, we’re aspiring to be the #### ambitious. 

In the 1990s, the reality show genre reared its ugly little head promising to fulfill Andy Warhol’s prediction that we will all be famous for 15 minutes.  MTV offered the Real World, and taught Americans you can gain fame by being a second-rate determined cartoonist with a romance Jones, or as an unbathed skateboarder with an abrasive, Borderline Personality.

Author David Eggers, who wrote A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, devoted nearly 60 pages of the book to his ill-fated attempt to get on The Real World San Francisco.  Shamelessly plugging the book around the country, it never dawned on Eggers that his book’s success relied more on a quirky layout and snappy title than it did on literary merit.

Survivor, billing itself as the original reality TV show, taught Americans how to survive the silly little game by cowardly maneuvering to eliminate the person who possesses brains and talent thus paving the way for an #### ambitious to win the game.  The original winner, Richard Hatch, the human dictionary entry for conniving cheat, and who shamelessly won favor in the pseudo competition by streaking, was busted years later for tax evasion.  Unfortunately, the networks did not give us the pilot for his prison stay and name it Survivor: San Quentin.  That might have been must see TV.

The Apprentice, Donald Trump’s version of reality TV, promises victory to the person who can scheme without conscience, or promote without substance.  The Apprentice is viewed as serious drama by millions of people in this country, but people fail to see the irony of the show and that irony is The Donald himself.  Trump inherited billions of dollars and lost most of it, but because of his shameless self-promotion Trump held on to his fame and a fraction of ownership interest in various real estate ventures. People regard him as a “Tower of Power,” when in reality; he is a “Shack of Hack.” 

American Idol promises a recording contract to the man or woman who can sing pop songs to, initially, a panel of three entertainment lightweights who give their opinions on the performance of each before turning it over to the votes of cell-phone America.  The panel consists of a former Laker Girl who uses contrived controversy to self-promote; a pop singer using weight loss methods to self-promote; and a music industry failure and consummate mommy’s boy employing abrasive commentary cloaked in stolen wit to self-promote. 

A person can wife swap, hire a super nanny, go on a worldwide road-trip, attempt to lose weight, choose a husband, ballroom dance, eat disgusting food, or get a makeover on national television to gain notoriety.  It is instant fame without skill or preparation or talent. 

Blame the ambitious without talent, blame those who hire them, blame those who further promote the shameless self-promotion of the #### ambitious, but blame us for allowing it to happen.  Without the drug, there is no user; but without the user, there is no market for the drug…which brings us to drugs, and specifically, performance-enhancing drugs which have helped certain athletes break records and chase records by illegitimate means.

Imagine you could hop in your car, drive down to Tijuana and purchase a hand cream that would make you a better writer, or a scalp tonic that would make you much better at your profession without having to put in additional hours at your craft.  The cream or tonic is of course, illegal, but it is quite easily purchased.  The drug promises incredible short-term gains, but there is evidence that it will cause severe health problems later in life.  Would you do it?  As evidenced by our fascination with fame and the availability of instant fame, the odds are that millions and millions of people would use a cream or a tonic to improve their occupational performance.  The steroid question is really a fable, as much as it is a question, a little fable that goes something like this:

The man used a cream, to capture his dream.

 

The dream promised fame and the knowing of his name.

 

But with the promise of fame came the risk of scorn and shame. 

 

The man weighed his chances, and loved adoring glances.

 

So he took the cream and fulfilled his dream.

 

Many years later the man he got caught,

 

and pondered the worth of the fame he had sought.

 

Moral: Weigh a consequence before taking a serious chance.

Mark McGwire broke Roger Maris’ single-season home run record in 1998. McGwire, during his “Summer of Media and Fan Love,” used his son as a prop to show Americans he can break the single-season home run record and out father any man in the country.  His shameless self-promotion and “aw shucks” persona made us believe he was one of us and all about us as he cranked home runs out of every park in the land.  His most ingenious move - a move that would make any Reality TV Show contestant proud – was to display Androstenedion, a since banned substance, in his locker, to deflect any rumors of his steroid use. 

Jose Canseco, a self-admitted steroid junky, and self-proclaimed shameless self-promotion junky, published his book, Juiced, in 2005, in part, to put himself back into the public eye, and under the guise of shining the light on Major League Baseball’s cockroaches.  Canseco admitted to Mike Wallace on 60 Minutes that steroids made him a Major League caliber baseball player.  The controversial book led to a Congressional hearing about steroid use in baseball.  Congress members, owing their very existence to shameless self-promotion, subpoenaed McGwire.  When questioned directly about his steroid use, McGwire continually avoided answering questions advising the panel to “consider the source.”  Congress did consider the source, and that was why McGwire was sitting in front of our elected officials not answering the questions.  

McGwire’s shameless self-promotion was so polished and accepted over the years that he got away with running the show in front of Congress.  He tearfully began the inquest by saying: “Asking me or any other player to answer questions about who took steroids in front of television cameras will not solve the problem. If a player answers ‘No,’ he simply will not be believed; if he answers ‘Yes,’ he risks public scorn and endless government investigations.” During the hearing, McGwire repeatedly responded to questions regarding his own steroid use with the line, “I’m not here to talk about the past.” McGwire also stated, “My lawyers have advised me that I cannot answer these questions without jeopardizing my friends, my family, and myself.”  When asked if he was asserting his Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate himself, McGwire once again responded: “I’m not here to talk about the past. I’m here to be positive about this subject.” 

 

Congress, the media and fans let McGwire, the master of self-promotion and positive PR on and off the field during his playing days, off the hook. 

If Barry Bonds assumed McGwire’s position, he would end up assuming the position. 

During the course of his career, Bonds consistently went out of his way to not conduct his professional business with a briefcase full of shameless self-promotion.  His business was baseball and not self-serving PR.  Bonds, to the contrary, deliberately created an unlikable, de####able persona continually at odds with the media and fans alike.  Bonds’ acts of disregard and disdain for everyone not Barry Bonds made him a target of hate by the media and the public.  The all out prosecution of Bonds is owed to his salty kiss-off attitude and has absolutely nothing to do with race.  

In defense of Bonds, it wasn’t until he witnessed the false achievement and unabashed personal promotion of the master himself, Mark McGwire, that he went to BALCO for help.  According to the book Game of Shadows, Bonds began using steroids only after witnessing McGwire’s run at Maris’ record.  Convinced McGwire was juicing, he began injecting himself with Winstol in 1998.  Bonds, however, didn’t stop with Winstol.  He escalated his usage to include, among others, a steroid designed to improve the muscle quality of cattle. 

Two ambitious San Francisco Chronicle writers who believe their talent exceeds that of the little Bay Area paper wrote Book of Shadows.  The authors, Mark Fainura-Wada (draw your own conclusion about the hyphenated two-name deal) and Lance Williams, felt they could make better lives for themselves by stretching their series of articles for the Chronicle into a book.  The book goes beyond their investigation into BALCO providing snap-shots of various athletes who used BALCO performance-enhancers, and then focuses solely on Barry Bonds.

Fainura-Wada and Williams, in a stroke of Reality TV-like genius, and in effort to promote and sell their product by the easiest possible means, chose the enemy of the people and one of the least popular athletes in recent American sports history to gain an instant agreeable audience.  Choosing Bonds as subject is no different than choosing to write a book about Iran’s nuclear program in favor of say Brazil’s, to muster up quick and biased support through hate. 

Chasing the steroid-fueled McGwire as motive does not constitute a vindication of Barry Bonds, nor does it justify his use of banned substances to set long-standing baseball records.  What an understanding of his motive does do however, is compel his critics to understand that the players preceding Bonds who used steroids to better their careers are equally culpable and should be made to stand alongside him, answer the same questions and face equal public embarrassment.  Bonds rejected shameless self-promotion and instead fostered an attitude of supreme arrogance.  But, his surly, selfish public ways should not make him Major League Baseball’s fall guy.   

There still may be hope that Bonds will get with the program albeit twenty years too late.  This past spring, Bonds, in the spirit of the new American Dream, stars in his own reality television show. 

 

 

THE ALL-TIME NBA DRAFT  

In his 1974 essay, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Pirsig examines the idea of quality and how to attack the question through logical, systematic and rational thought. Pirsig’s protagonist, Phaedrus, is a rhetoric professor at the University of Montana who is driven mad by his pursuit to define what is best. 

Thirty years later in a parked car high atop the city of San Diego, Ron Burgundy argues with Veronica Corningstone about the origins of the name “San Diego.”  Burgundy is convinced the city was named for a whale’s genetalia, while Ms. Corningstone correctly argues the city is named after the Spanish Saint, Saint Diego.  With a dismissive wave of the hand Burgundy tells Corningstone, “We agree to disagree.” 

 

The first example illustrates the difficulty in defining what is best on an abstract level, while the second example demonstrates the absurdity of arguing a point that has a definitive answer.  At first glance, it appears that there can be nothing in common between Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and the movie Anchorman: Legend of Ron Burgundy, but the two examples come together perfectly when sporting events and athletes are the topic of debate.  Most arguments about athletes and sporting events center on defining what is best and then structuring and defending a particular position.  Most times, no matter how persuasive the argument on either side, the only conclusion is to agree to disagree.  

 

The NBA MVP debate this year is a perfect example of an inability to agree on quality and what is best.  I’m not certain we could reach a unanimous MVP if each of us were to put aside all of our beliefs and prejudices and preconceived notions of how we feel the game should be played.  

 

This June, the NBA draft will lay the foundation for new debate.  Without high school players eligible, this year’s draft is slim-pickings. Adam Morrison, for example, the potential first pick, is the destitute man’s Larry Bird.  The 2006 NBA draft offers little hope of excitement, except for those people who enjoy watching long-term role players.  In its 60 years of existence, the NBA has produced thousands of great players, hundreds of superstars, and about 50-60 legends.  The NBA came out with a list of the 50 best players of all time at the 1996-1997 All Star Game.  A panel comprised of former players and media members took on the arduous task of determining the greatest players in NBA history and their selections were, for the most part, dead-on accurate.

 

As an exercise to ####e up this year’s bland draft, I examined each team’s draft needs, and instead of choosing from this year’s mediocre crop of college kids, any player who has ever played the game is eligible for selection in this fantasy draft. My first-round picks are all guys who made the NBA’s 50 greatest list.  Each pick was selected by using Pirsig’s rational, logical and systematic method of choosing the best player for each team.  As for any disagreements about these selections, my response, unless I can be convinced otherwise, will be to use Ron Burgundy’s “agree to disagree” stance.  

 

1.                  Portland Trail Blazers – The Blazers need help at every position, and in this draft, the Blazers know Sam Bowie is not the answer. Feeling nostalgic, they toy with the idea of drafting Bill Walton.  Cooler heads prevail and the Blazers do what they should have done in 1984.  With the first pick in the 2006 draft, the Portland Trail Blazers select Michael Jordan.

2.                  Chicago Bulls – The Bulls tried to trade their entire roster and this pick to the Blazers, for the chance to again draft Jordan, knowing the Blazers would certainly not make the mistake of the century again.  Having failed, the Bulls keep this pick.  Feeling good about guards Ben Gordon and Kirk Hinrich and looking for size at this pick, the candidates are Kareem, Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain.  The Bulls flirt briefly with making the solid and safe pick in Bill Russell, but in the end select Wilt Chamberlain.

3.                  Charlotte Bobcats – Charlotte needs help at every position and it’s a miracle they won 26 games this year.  Needing a scorer, a rebounder and a playmaker in just this one pick, the Bobcats select the do-it-all Oscar Robertson.

4.                  Atlanta Hawks – The best players drafted in franchise history are Lenny Wilkins, Pete Maravich and David Thompson.  GM Billy Knight thinks long and hard about drafting either Maravich or Thompson until the team psychiatrist provides him the definition of insanity, which is doing what you’ve always done and expecting different results.  This team needs bigs.  This team needs smalls. This team needs miracles. This team needs and gets “Magic.” 

5.                  Toronto Raptors – It’s tough being a professional athlete in Canada with the currency exchange rate. Athletes in baseball, basketball and hockey bolt as soon as they’re eligible for free agency.  The working-day malaise phrase in Canada is: “Another day, another 64 cents.”  A GM could build a championship team with the list of former Raptors. Every player on this current Raptors team is expendable.  The Raptors decide to go franchise and select Kareem Addul- Jabbar.

6.                  Minnesota Timberwolves – Kevin Garnett and a pack of baby wolves.  KG, the 2003-2004 league MVP, led the Wolves to the Western Conference Finals that same year.  They haven’t been back to the playoffs since. Kevin McHale thinks about drafting himself with this pick. He is talked down from the ledge and drafts a player he knows better than anyone. His pick is Larry Bird.

7.                  Boston Celtics – The city mourns the previous pick made by one of their own, of one of their own.  This team needs guards and a center. In an effort to restore Celtic Pride, their choices come down to Sam Jones, Nate Archibald, John Havlicek, Kevin McHale, Robert Parish, and of course, the guy they pick, Bill Russell.

8.                  Houston Rockets – Is Yao the guy they want to continue to build around?   At 25 years of age, the answer is yes.  Jeff Van Gundy, however, isn’t the architect for the project. He’ll be gone and the Rockets will continue with Yao and a guy named T-Mac. With an inside presence and a 25 point a night guy, the Rockets look to the point and take Isiah Thomas.

9.                  Golden State Warriors – The Warrior backcourt is solid with Baron Davis and Jason Richardson. Number 9 in this draft is too high to pick the Warriors’ most famous player, Rick Barry.  Houston’s Hakeem Olajuwan’s athleticism fits in brilliantly with that of Davis and Richardson. Coach Mike Montgomery is a better fit at the University of Houston and won’t be around to coach this guy. Olajuwan is the pick.

10.              Seattle SuperSonics – The Sonics best players are a shooting guard and a small forward.  In the NBA, that combination makes you a perennial lottery team unless those guys are Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen.  Luke Ridnaur will never be an NBA championship point guard, nor will the guy they take at number ten, Washington homeboy John Stockton.

11.              Orlando Magic – This team has several nice pieces, including rookie power forward, Dwight Howard, their franchise player.  The Magic goes backcourt selecting Clyde Frazier.

12.              New Orleans/Oklahoma City Hornets – With two different mailing addresses, the Hornets have a 20-year old point guard who will be dynamite for the next 10 years. The Hornets decide to take a guy who can rebound, get up and down the floor, and knows how to deliver the mail. The Hornets select Louisiana native Karl “Mailman” Malone.

13.              Philadelphia 76ers – Can they get three more productive years from AI?  The Sixers can lengthen his career by taking the bulk of the scoring load from his slight shoulders and take a guy who can effectively slow the pace of every game he plays in. He led the Sixers to The Promised Land in 1983. Can Moses Malone do it again?

14.              Utah Jazz – Average players will give you a .500 team and that’s exactly what the Jazz were this year, .500.  Carlos Boozer and Andre Kirilenko are decent frontcourt players, but the center by committee isn’t working.  The most logical choice here would be to take a big man, a guy like Patrick Ewing, David Robinson, George Mikan or Robert Parrish.  But, Jerry Sloan, who isn’t big on bigs, takes a Jerry Sloan guy who shares his given name. With the 14^th pick, the Jazz select Jerry West.

15.              New Orleans/Oklahoma City Hornets (from Milwaukee) – Chris Paul has a running mate in Karl Malone, who they drafted with their 12^th pick.  P.J. Brown isn’t getting any younger, and the Hornets decide to choose the most athletic center remaining, a guy who knows how to play with other great players and make it work.  The Hornets select David Robinson.

16.              Chicago Bulls – Are they really certain Kirk Hinrich and Ben Gordon are the right guys to play with Wilt?  The Bulls are convinced that they can make it work, but decide they want a pass first point guard and make a move towards becoming the most powerful paint team in the league by trading this pick to the L.A. Clippers for Elton Brand and Sam Cassell.  Elgin Baylor, who loves Elgin Baylor, picks Elgin Baylor at 16 for the Clips.

17.              Indiana Pacers – The Pacers are about Larry Bird and Rick Carlisle.  Tough, hard-nosed and competitive.  Carlisle and Bird decide they can continue to work with Jermaine O’Neal at the power forward position and Jamaal Tinsley at the point. Peja is drugstore cotton soft, but can score the basketball. The Pacers need help at the center spot, and briefly flirt with the idea of unloading O’Neal to Sacramento to re-obtain Brad Miller.  In the end, Bird, Carlisle and the Pacers go Celtic tough taking John Havlicek.

18.              Washington Wizards – Gilbert Arenas is a light it up point guard and Antwan Jamison and Caron Butler are dependable scorers. Centers, Brendan Haywood, Peter John Ramos and Calvin Booth are the league’s most highly paid and ugliest cheerleaders. Now they have the ugliest center in NBA history, besides Paul Mokeski, to go with the ugliest cheerleaders/backup centers.  Georgetown alum, Patrick Ewing, is their pick.

19.              Sacramento Kings – The Kings like their pieces as evidenced by their unwillingness to trade Brad Miller for Jermaine O’Neal. With Mike Bibby, Bonzi Wells and the emerging Kevin Martin in the backcourt and Ron Artest and Brad Miller up front, their need is power forward. The Kings love Kevin McHale at this pick, but are too intrigued by a Barkley-Artest frontcourt to pass on “The Round Mound of Rebound.”  The Maloof brothers, who are chasing Mark Cuban for the most visible owner in the league award, are certain this pick will give the organization more controversial airtime than any team in the history of the game.  The question now is this:  Who will pay more money in fines next season, Artest or Sir Charles?

20.              New York Knicks (From Denver) – The worst team in basketball with some great pieces in place.  The Knicks fire the nagging Larry Brown and attempt to lure Pat Riley back to the Big Apple.  Keeping Starbury and Stevie Francis, the Knicks want Riley and his Laker version of Showtime and not his Knick version of Slowtime.  Riley decides to stay in Miami. Undeterred, the Knicks hire the wacky, unconventional Don Nelson to head up their wacky, unconventional new-look team.  Is there a doctor in the house?  There is now.  The Knicks get Roosevelt’s own, Julius Erving.

21.              Phoenix Suns (From LA Lakers) – The Suns get this pick from the Lakers, a team that has shown them exactly what it is they need during their first round series this year.  Their need is obvious.  They need size. Amare Stoudemire will be back next year, and the Suns like him at power forward. With perimeter shooters at every position, they will continue to light teams up from the outside next year.  Their run and gun brand of basketball is thrilling and fills arenas, but the half-court game wins come playoff time. The Suns, with this pick, automatically become a great half-court basketball team selecting Robert Parish.