Going to the dogs (and snakes)

What the heck is Chris Duncan of the AP thinking?

Rockets agree to send pick, Greene, Jackson to Kings for Artest: NBA front-office sources confirmed to ESPN.com that Ron Artest will be dealt to the Rockets in exchange for Houston's first-round draft pick in 2009, ex-King Bobby Jackson (who arrives with a $6.1 million expiring contract) and the draft rights to Donte Greene.

After wavering for more than two months, Artest elected not to opt out of the final year of his contract for $7.4 million by July 1. But the forward immediately announced he regretted his decision, saying the Kings had misled him on their interest in a long-term contract extension. Artest also said he couldn't see himself playing in Sacramento beyond next season.

Artest apologized to the Kings a few days later but one week after that, Artest demanded a trade, claiming he had been blinded to his career well-being by his friendship with the Maloof family, which owns the Kings.

Joe Maloof responded sharply to Artest, warning the forward to muzzle himself.

Yeah, by all means, let's equate black athletes with dogs whenever possible.

Then again, this is the organization that on at least two occasions has made the same ridiculous spell-check-related mistake:

Gore told the AP he hoped the speech would contribute to "a new
political environment in this country that will allow the next
president to do what I think the next president is going to think is
the right thing to do." He said both fellow Democrat Barrack Abeam and
Republican rival John moccasin are "way ahead" of most politicians in
the fight against global climate change.

Game of inches

ESPN.com has up some anecdotes from days gone by of funny things that happened at Dallas Cowboy training camp; there's one that illustrates what excellence really is.

On his first day as the Cowboys' receivers coach, the meticulous Raymond Berry demonstrated how to run a sideline route to rookies. Berry made his usual precise numbers of steps, cut toward the sideline and landed -- 1 foot out of bounds.

"The field is too narrow, Tom," he announced to Coach Landry.

"No, Raymond," Landry said, "we've been out here forever."

This was the sixth year the Cowboys had practiced on the same field without complaint, yet Berry instinctively found it out of line.

"Either the hashmarks aren't right or the field is too narrow," the former Baltimore Colts star receiver insisted. Landry shrugged, called for a tape measure, and field dimensions were plotted to the exact inch.

Berry's sense of precision was validated. The field was 11 inches too narrow.

Groping for the dragon

So the NYTimes has launched a new blog, Rings, which "covers the 2008 Beijing Games from every angle -- the politics, the arts, the culture, the competition."

Hmm, let's see--so far none of the 14 points are from an Asian or Asian American, and contributor George Vescey's recommended 4 books to read to understand China are all written by Western journalists.

Wonder if they know the Chinese proverb, about the blind men and the elephant.

Sports is politics

From one of my favorite sports columnists, Sports Illustrated's Dr. Z.

From Gene (and incidentally, I know how Toms River got its name... after Dr. John J. River) -- "What the hell is our congress doing spending money looking into past drug use instead of preventing any future abuse?" From Dave -- "Spygate has become a symbol for how to adjust focus on something to avoid 'the something' that truly matters." And he goes on to mention the somethings that truly matter -- price setting by energy conglomerates, the phony war in Iraq, that failure of adequate compensation for indigent NFL veterans, and politicians' lack of the same commitment to these issues.

First the drugs, which I interpret to mean steroids and HGH, which triggered that TV show from the Washington hearing room. Gosh, wasn't it fun, all those politicians pretending they were like something out of Court TV?

Did they have the power to really bring charges? Uh, no. Did they have the power to reach a verdict and impose a penalty? Come on now. So what were they doing there? They appeared at Clemens' request, after he had gone around and personally schmoozed a selected group of them. Somehow there was the vague threat of punishment to Roger for lying to Congress, although the president has gotten away with it for years.

What I saw, though, in the 10 minutes or so that I was able to watch it, was something right out of the old radio show, It Pays to be Ignorant. It was one of my favorites when I was a child. It was a brilliant parody of quiz shows, such as Information Please and The Quiz Kids. This poor old ex-vaudevillian, Tom Howard, would ask his idiot panel a question such as, "Who was buried in Grant's Tomb?" and for 15 minutes or so the most moronic discussion would take place, without the question ever being answered.

The part that I watched of this week's version was Sen. John Tierney trying to get an answer from Clemens to the question, "How do you say three times in your deposition that you never did speak to [Brian] McNamee about steroids and later on acknowledge that, in fact, you had?" And Clemens would bounce this back on one hop... "It was prior."

"What was prior? You contradicted your own deposition."

"It was before that."

"What was before? First you said you didn't, then you admitted you did."

"Not the way you mean it." ...

Enough rabble rousing. Lee of Elma, N.Y., asks, and here we go again, "If Bill Belichick is found to have taped the Rams before the Super Bowl, will he go down as the Richard Nixon of NFL coaches?"

Did you know that Nixon was a wine buff? The story they tell about him is that, when he'd entertain guests on his yacht, Sequoia, he'd have a bottle of 1966 Chateau Margaux wrapped in a towel and served only to himself, while his guests were served an inexpensive Zinfandel. I once did a column about that and interviewed members of the Wine & Food Society for their opinions. My favorite response was from Harriet Lembeck, who taught a wine class.

"Why, the '66 isn't ready yet," she said. ...

A nasty note from Ben of Seattle, advising me to get over my fixation with line play since no one else gives a rat's ... uh, gives a goshdarn about it. Grow up, Ben. Adults follow line play and its intricacies. Children with short attention spans watch only the ball and immediately flip the dial if a team has to punt.

Webwatch: Sports Illustrated goes to sleep

It's the night before the Super Bowl, and what does Sports Illustrated have leading its site?

The Redskins getting two players in the Hall of Fame.

Must be the interns running the site tonight.

Funniest thing this year

Ginormous

Every so often you read an article that makes you go 'wow!' Here's the Houston Chronicle's Jonathan Feigen, Yikes! Yao vs. Yi is huge:

Tonight will bring the first NBA meeting of Yao and the player expected to be the next Chinese NBA star, Yi Jianlian, an occasion that could draw the largest global audience to see an NBA game. ...

"Here we have two gentlemen, from different regions, Shanghai (Yao) and the Guandong Province (Yi), and who mean so much to this enormous country, with an enormous television market and enormous love for basketball," [NBA Commissioner David] Stern said. "Now we have the exclamation point."

The game will be on 19 networks in China, including CCTV-5, Guangdong TV, Guangzhou TV, and ESPN Star Sports in Hong Kong and Taiwan. It also will be available live through two Webcasters.

Though ratings estimates in China are difficult and vary widely, today's game is said to be certain to draw 150 million viewers and could reach 250 million. CCTV-5 alone is available in 210 million households.

Yao's first game against Shaquille O'Neal in 2002 drew an estimated audience of 220 million and the largest cable television ratings in the United States for a regular-season game since the 1995 comeback of Magic Johnson.

"I heard there were close to 200 million people that watched," Yao said. "But come on, in our country, we have (1.3) billion. That's still a small part of it." ...

When the Indianapolis Colts played the New England Patriots last Sunday, the average audience during the game was 33.8 million; 66.4 million saw at least a six-minute portion.

The average audience for Super Bowl XLI was 93 million, with 139.8 million seeing at least six minutes. There have been estimates Super Bowls draw a global audience of roughly 150 million.

The audience for tonight's Rockets game, starting on a Saturday morning in China, could exceed the Super Bowl, Colts-Patriots game and the Friday ESPN NBA games combined.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's Michael Hunt weighs in as well, Young star puts Bucks on global market:

Almost as many people in a faraway land will watch an NBA game as the number of number of people who exist in the country that invented basketball. Such a staggering notion probably wasn't on Dr. Naismith's mind as he drove home that final nail in the peach basket.

Here's another thing to consider: It wasn't that long ago when the Bucks were happy to get a couple of people in outer Waukesha County to watch them play. To think that someone in Inner Mongolia is going to know that our little team even exists seems almost as implausible as Jake Voskuhl dunking on Yao.

That was one of the reasons the Bucks took Yi with the sixth pick in the draft. The most important reason, the one that is making the Bucks look smarter every day, is that Yi is going to be a tremendous player in this league. You can tell after four games, but more on that in a moment.

"I think there were 100 million (Chinese viewers) for our Bulls game," Bucks coach Larry Krystkowiak said. "As long as they're not in my ear yelling at me, it makes it pretty easy.

"It's exciting for us. It's one of the elements of being involved in this. It raises the level of awareness in a lot of ways. I think our guys know they're being watched a little bit closer and it doesn't hurt our effort at all. It creates more of a sense of urgency and accountability for all of us."

Krystkowiak's quote points to the ultimate effect China whill have on all of 'us'--they're so big that for the first time since the end of the Cold War, Americans are becoming aware that there's another country looming behind us.

We're no longer autarchists, competing against the best in each other--we're back in a race again, with a very different opponent; one in which we have a huge lead, but where the other competitor can't help but gain.

How we handle this--whether we use China as a worthy competitor pushing us to our best, whether we turn surly, whether we ignore reality, whether we lose sight of why we're running--will determine whether the 21st century ends with Americans still free to play our own game under our rules, or just another runner jockeying for oxygen.

Although you wonder with numbers like that, how long until the NBA buys into a Chinese network and starts scheduling Rockets and Bucks game for 9 a.m. EST?

AP photo of Yao and Yi by Darko Vojinovic via MSNBC

Amazing play

The perfect marriage of college sports, amateur announcers and YouTube.

When not winning is losing

In sports there's the concept of a team being behind in the game, but actually being ahead.

Like let's say in football, you turn the ball over 4 times deep in your own territory in the first half, but the other team is only up 10-0 on the scoreboard.

Really, you should be losing like 21-0, so the halftime speech from the coach goes something like they've taken their best shot at us and this is all they can do--this game is ours to win.

You'd be surprised at how often the team that's 'down' winds up winning the game in situations like that; you've got to make the most of your chances in sports, and when you don't the other team usually does.

The latest Washington Post/ABC News poll from Iowa has Barack Obama at 27%, Hillary Clinton at 26%, and Johh Edwards at 26%.

I'm shocked. Edwards has practically lived in Iowa the last four years; the state gave him a surprisingly strong second place finish the last time out, and his entire strategy this time around is built around winning Iowa so he's devoted the bulk of his resources to the state.

Clinton's also been running for president for the past four years, has poured money and staff into Iowa, is married to someone who's enormously popular in the state, and has picked up the endorsements of most of Iowa's political heavyweights.

And yet they're both not only not up on Obama, but are actually trailing a man whose only advantage in Iowa is his ads in the Illionois Senate race leaked over the border.

I mean, if four years of concentrated work by Edwards and Clinton in a state that's 94% white can't even give them a lead over someone who's basically just shown up, my gosh, where are they gonna beat him once voters get to know him?

Polls are generally pretty soft this far out--the article notes:

History suggests that these voters are quite willing to change their mind as caucus day approaches and the campaign intensifies with television advertising and more direct engagement among the candidates. In the 2004 Iowa caucus day poll by the National Election Pool, 42 percent of caucus-goers said they made up their mind in the last week of the campaign. Just 30 percent made their final decision more than a month before caucus day.

However, this year is pretty different--the race has started earlier than ever before, and the people polled in Iowa are paying attention:

Americans elsewhere may not be paying attention to the presidential race on a day-to-day basis, but nine in 10 likely Democratic caucus attendees said they are closely following the movements and statements of the candidates. Seven in 10 said they have been contacted by at least one of the presidential campaigns this year, and four in 10 said they have attended at least one campaign event. ...

The poll provides stark evidence of how intense the early campaigning has been. The 71 percent of voters who have already received a telephone call from one of the campaigns is about equal to the percentage of likely caucus-goers who reported getting called in December 2003, the month before the 2004 caucuses.

The portion having already attended one or more campaign events, 40 percent, is up somewhat from that time, and the percentage donating money to one of the candidates is about as high. A third of likely voters have already received e-mails from a campaign, and a third have visited a candidate's Web site.

I don't know; the Iowa caucuses are one of the weirdest things in politics, it's pretty amazing that one of the key events in how a nation of 300 million people chooses the next leader of the free world centers around a few thousand people getting together in living rooms and arguing.

And the people responding to the poll may not be at all the people who are gonna spend hours taking part in the caucus next winter. Plus there's the complicating factor of the built-in bias against black candidates by white voters, vying with the 'Bradley effect' where black candidates generally do about 10 points worse on election day than polls show (a combination of bigots lying to pollsters, and last-minute undecideds often breaking for the default choice).

Nevertheless, this poll result from a state with voters who are paying the most attention in the nation, along with Obama's ability to outraise Hillary, along with the size of crowds he's drawing everywhere, along with the people he's managed to get to run his campaign, are all pretty telling that this game is gonna play out differently.

Scott Morgan photo of Obama from Getty Images via USA Today.

Midseason form

Gilbert Arenas is the king of all blogging. Mark Cuban needs to start taking lessons from him.

There Are No Such Thing as Shark Attacks

I know this is random, but I just want to clear this up for people out there.
There are these things called shark attacks, but there is no such thing as a shark attack. I have never seen a real shark attack.

I know you’re making a weird face as you’re reading this. OK people, a shark attack is not what we see on TV and what people portray it as.

We’re humans. We live on land.

Sharks live in water.

So if you’re swimming in the water and a shark bites you, that’s called trespassing. That is called trespassing. That is not a shark attack.

A shark attack is if you’re chilling at home, sitting on your couch, and a shark comes in and bites you; now that’s a shark attack. Now, if you’re chilling in the water, that is called invasion of space. So I have never heard of a shark attack.

When I see on the news where it’s like, “There have been 10 shark attacks,” I’m like, “Hey, for real?! They’re just running around? Sharks are walking now, huh! We live on the land, we don’t live underwater.”

And, from an earlier post:

I know I said was was afraid of the stingrays and sharks, but I actually got into the water with sharks on my vacation. I was swimming every morning with them. They were little 3-foot long sharks called blackheads. The locals said nobody has ever been bitten by a shark, there haven’t been any shark attacks, you know they’re not aggressive sharks.

So I was like, “All right, let me go in and give it a try.” But that was after I’d seen little kids in there swimming already, then I knew I could go in. I wasn’t going to be the first one in, that’s for sure.

More of my Gilbert posts here (although really, his posts are much more entertaining).

Uncredited image of Arenas from Detroit Bad Boys blog, who got it from who knows where.

Fourth fireworks

It's in some ways appropriate that Wimbledon always falls on the Fourth--even as the Brits are reminded of their biggest loss ever, they can also futilely try to win their own tournament (Virginia Wade was the last Englishwoman to win, in 1977 (on her 18th try); Fred Perry was the last Englishman to win, in 1936).

Oh well, at least the British press can have a field day with Rafael Nadal (who's my favorite player, largely thanks to his French Open blogging the last two years) and his match today:

Nadal Beats Soderling and the Rain at Wimbledon , John Branch in the Times: Rafael Nadal and Robin Soderling took the court eight times. The first was on Saturday. The last was today.

Their five-day, five-set passion play at Wimbledon finally ended after more than 4 hours of tennis on the court and 92 hours of waiting off of it. Nadal beat Soderling and the rain, ending a tedious and testy match, 6-4, 6-4, 6-7 (7), 4-6, 7-5.

Nadal, from Spain and seeded second in the tournament, dropped to his knees in joy, as if he had won something far more meaningful than a third-round match over a 28th-ranked player. Soderling, a Swede, challenged the last point before offering a tepid congratulatory handshake.

“Very happy,” said Nadal, who called it the toughest match of his career. “Very happy with the victory. Very happy about finishing the match.” ...

The drama of the day belonged to Nadal and Soderling, and much of it came after their match ended. Nadal sniped at the perceived slights he felt from Soderling. Among other things, Nadal said Soderling would not say hello to him, even after Nadal greeted him repeatedly.

“After four days, that’s not normal, no?” Nadal said. ...

When the it finally ended, Nadal was relieved to advance to the fourth round, where he will meet Mikhail Youzhny. But he struggled to look forward, not back. He accused Soderling of many discourtesies, on and off the court.

Soderling picked at his shorts between points, imitating a Nadal habit and drawing laughter from the crowd. In the 10th game of the fifth set, Soderling cheered with a fist pump when a ball hit the tape atop the net and trickled over for a point, though it has become custom among players to offer a sheepish apology. Nadal, annoyed by the post-match frostiness, later imitated Soderling’s handshake by sticking out his hand and turning his head away.

He was asked how he thought Soderling conducted himself.

“Really, the truth, maybe worst possible,” said Nadal, who speaks with fractured, but improving, English, and sometimes asks an interpreter for help.

“In the end, we will see what’s happening in the end of life, no?” he added. ...

Soderling did not hear Nadal’s comments, and seemed surprised to learn of the criticism. He said he would not air such laundry in public.

“If he’s complaining about that, that I never say ‘Hi’ to him, what can I do?” Soderling said.

Asked about the omission of a courtesy wave when his ball struck the net and trickled over, Soderling seemed perplexed by the custom.

“Why should I say I’m sorry when it’s the happiest moment of my life?” he said.

European Pressphoto Agency photo of Nadal by Lindsey Parnaby in the Times.

Zebras aren't color blind

One of the reasons why I like sports is that in many ways it serves as a simple model of society. There are clear knowns, and fixed variables; instead of billions of actors there are a few hundred or a few thousand; and via things like box scores and game stories, a high percentage of what happens in this microcasm is documented.

Plus, because of the racial makeup of the major American sports leagues, there are much greater opportunities for racial interaction than tends to hold true in the 'real' world.

I've written a few times about the subconscious bias almost all of us hold when it comes to race; little surprise then that NBA referees are no different.

Study of N.B.A. Sees Racial Bias in Calling Fouls, Alan Schwartz in the Times: An academic study of the National Basketball Association, whose playoffs continue tonight, suggests that a racial bias found in other parts of American society has existed on the basketball court as well.

A forthcoming paper by a University of Pennsylvania professor and a Cornell University graduate student says that, during the 13 seasons from 1991 through 2004, white referees called fouls at a greater rate against black players than against white players.

Justin Wolfers, an assistant professor of business and public policy at the Wharton School, and Joseph Price, a Cornell graduate student in economics, found a corresponding bias in which black officials called fouls more frequently against white players, though that tendency was not as strong. They went on to claim that the different rates at which fouls are called “is large enough that the probability of a team winning is noticeably affected by the racial composition of the refereeing crew assigned to the game.” ...

The three experts who examined the Wolfers-Price paper and the N.B.A.’s materials were Ian Ayres of Yale Law School, the author of “Pervasive Prejudice?” and an expert in testing for how subtle racial bias, also known as implicit association, appears in interactions ranging from the setting of bail amounts to the tipping of taxi drivers; David Berri of California State University-Bakersfield, the author of “The Wages of Wins,” which analyzes sports issues using statistics; and Larry Katz of Harvard University, the senior editor of the Quarterly Journal of Economics.

“I would be more surprised if it didn’t exist,” Mr. Ayres said of an implicit association bias in the N.B.A. “There’s a growing consensus that a large proportion of racialized decisions is not driven by any conscious race discrimination, but that it is often just driven by unconscious, or subconscious, attitudes. When you force people to make snap decisions, they often can’t keep themselves from subconsciously treating blacks different than whites, men different from women.”

Mr. Berri added: “It’s not about basketball — it’s about what happens in the world. This is just the nature of decision-making, and when you have an evaluation team that’s so different from those being evaluated. Given that your league is mostly African-American, maybe you should have more African-American referees — for the same reason that you don’t want mostly white police forces in primarily black neighborhoods.”

To investigate whether such bias has existed in sports, Mr. Wolfers and Mr. Price examined data from publicly available box scores. They accounted for factors like the players’ positions, playing time and all-star status; each group’s time on the court (black players played 83 percent of minutes, while 68 percent of officials were white); calls at home games and on the road; and other relevant data.

But they said they continued to find the same phenomenon: that players who were similar in all ways except skin color drew foul calls at a rate difference of up to 4 ½ percent depending on the racial composition of an N.B.A. game’s three-person referee crew. ...

Mr. Wolfers and Mr. Price claim that these changes are enough to affect game outcomes. Their results suggested that for each additional black starter a team had, relative to its opponent, a team’s chance of winning would decline from a theoretical 50 percent to 49 percent and so on, a concept mirrored by the game evidence: the team with the greater share of playing time by black players during those 13 years won 48.6 percent of games — a difference of about two victories in an 82-game season.

“Basically, it suggests that if you spray-painted one of your starters white, you’d win a few more games,” Mr. Wolfers said.

I'm curious to see what kind of discussion this paper stirs up; as I've said before, it's okay to have a society where almost everyone is racist to some degree, as long as people are aware of their tendencies and take some sort of preventive action.

The problem comes when people stick their heads in the sand and ridicule things like this study, countering with platitudes like can't we all just get along (yes, but not if it's always the same people who benefit).

The kicker to all this, of course, being this:

Mr. Wolfers and Mr. Price are scheduled to present their paper at the annual meetings of the Society of Labor Economists on Friday and the American Law and Economics Association on Sunday. They will then submit it to the National Bureau of Economic Research and for formal peer review before consideration by an economic journal.

Both men cautioned that the racial discrimination they claim to have found should be interpreted in the context of bias found in other parts of American society.

“There’s bias on the basketball court,” Mr. Wolfers said, “but less than when you’re trying to hail a cab at midnight.”

Rare breed indeed

The Times had an brief chat with soccer player Cobi Jones that included these lines which, in combination, cracked me up:

YOU HAVE A SPECIAL VIDEO GAME ROOM IN YOUR HOUSE? I am a kid from the ’70s, when video games first started coming out, so I definitely have to say I am a video game junkie to this day. I am a rare breed of a guy in his 30s that still plays video games.

WHAT ARE YOU READING? I am in the middle of “Fast Food Nation.” That is the main one I am trying to get through. I am also reading “Infidel.”

AP photo of Cobi Jones by Robert Casillas/The Daily Breeze in the Times.

Place in the world

What can't man do....

Run through Sahara more than personal challenge, ESPN.com: Three runners embarked on an epic journey to run across the Sahara Desert, not only for the challenge but also to raise awareness of some of the most impoverished nations of Africa. Three runners -- Charlie Engle, Ray Zahab and Kevin Lin -- ran for 111 days over 4,300 miles through six countries (Senegal, Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Libya and Egypt) and lived to tell their tale. Engle took time to share stories about this incredible journey with ESPN.com contributor Graham Bensinger. ...

When we did the math, we realized that we need to really cover 40-50 miles per day, every single day. It became obvious we couldn't physically train our bodies for that type of stress. What we really did was try to go into the expedition as healthy as possible. Of course, we did a lot of running, hundreds of miles a week in preparation. It was much more of a mental exercise than physical. We weren't going very fast, but we were running 14 hours per day, every single day. It was much tougher on the mind than it was on the body. ...

The average day is very monotonous. We're up at 4 a.m. I was the taskmaster, although Kevin referred to me as the monster. Part of what I did as the expedition leader was focus on getting us going every day. We'd start running at 5 a.m. and take a break around noon for some lunch and even a quick nap on the hottest days. We'd start running again at 2:30 p.m. and not stop until 9:30 p.m. We'd get five hours of sleep and get up and do it again. There wasn't a lot of variety going on in our lives at that point. ...

One of the things that really motivated us was the fact we decided that water was our real focus during this expedition. That sounds obvious for runners, but what I mean by that is we actually aided in setting up a NGO [nongovernment organization] called, "H20 Africa." The goal was to help bring attention to the problem of clean water in Africa. In particular, bring attention to the problem in the Sahara Desert. It was very motivating for us just to run through these towns and villages and see people that were happy, well-adjusted and family-oriented. But almost every place we encountered lacked access to clean water. We're hoping that in phase two of this expedition, happening now, we're able to bring attention to that and solve a few of the problems over there.

Q: I recall reading a story from Don Webster's blog. You all encountered a 7-year-old boy whose parents left him alone for a couple days, with very little food and drink, while they went to search for water. It seemed stories like that were common.

A: Very common. That little boy was incredible. I have children of my own, Brett and Kevin, who are 12 and 14. I couldn't imagine leaving them anywhere in the world. I couldn't imagine leaving them in the house for two or three days by themselves! Just picture this 7-year-old boy who is out there in the desert in his nomadic camp. He's fending for himself while his parents are off with the camels on a two-day journey just to get enough clean water to bring back to camp to last for a week. Then, the process starts all over again.

Photo of Kevin Lin, Charlie Engle, and Ray Zahab pacing their route down a straightaway on the Trans-Saharan Highway in Mauritania by Don Holtz at Running the Sahara.

Don Imus deconstructed

One of the best assessments of Don Imus comes from Sports Illustrated's reliably straight-shooting Dr. Z, who unlike Don is a real journalist.

OK, let's get right into it. Hudson from San Francisco would like my take on the Imus situation. Fine. Here it is:

Imus represents a breed of journalists I call festering boils. They're professional irritants. They continue to fester, causing irritation, occasionally pain. Then, if we're lucky, they pop and they're gone. A couple of years ago Rush Limbaugh, another of this breed, festered on ESPN, a network that, unfortunately, I had to watch. Then he popped, with that Donovan McNabb viciousness, and he was gone. Thank God. Relief all around. At least he wouldn't be part of the football world any more.

The weakness of these people is that their continuing outrageousness gives them a feeling of invincibility and they step over the line and they overplay their hand. Rupert Murdoch's publishing whiz, Judith Regan, who was going to publish that O.J. Simpson book, If I Did It, went over the line and she was canned. She left in her wake another of her brainstorms, another piece of this irritant-type of trash, Peter Golenbock's 7, the Mickey Mantle Novel, detailing a fictitious affair between Mantle and Marilyn Monroe.

That's the book Regan proudly sponsored, and they're all of a piece, Golenbock, Regan, Imus, Howard Stern, Limbaugh. There is little wit or intelligence involved in what they do, very little evidence of work involved or hard research to back up their pronouncements. Be loud, be outrageous, is what their sponsors want, and they oblige.

Now Imus, who has been a professional irritant for years, went over the line and popped.

He's gone from his two major outlets. CBS Radio did an assessment of the balance sheet, which is how corporate people adjust their morality, and decided that whatever financial gain Imus might generate in the future would be offset by the loss of advertising revenue, plus image, when Al Sharpton's activism would be felt. If the network would have canned him right away, I'd have been impressed. But while it was deliberating, I heard the whirl and click of the tumblers, the ring of the cash register. Someone else surely will pick him up, because there are always those who tune in to people such as Imus. Oh, it'll be from a high moral plane, of course, about how he has seen the error of his ways and repented and so forth. It will be the return of a familiar irritant, the same old boil. All we can hope for will be that he'll be even worse next time, that the pop will be louder. And more permanent.

Oden-mite

Ohio State's Greg Oden is in the middle of what may be a game for the ages, if his teammates can give him a little bit of help.

With 13 minutes left in the NCAA championship game against Florida, he's got 17 points and 10 rebounds. Florida's been trying to play him with 3 different players, two of whom have 3 fouls.

The number don't show his full dominance; Florida's just shooting from the outside, and on defense has almost given up guarding him once he's got the ball, focusing instead on trying to prevent him getting the pass.

Since everyone and his uncle (but not me) picked the defending champs Florida in this game, it'll be interesting to see what happens down the stretch.

The Gators have pretty much been in control most of the game; if they hold on, it'll be the first time a school has ever won both the basketball and football championships in the same year.

Oden's played pretty much the entire game except for 2 minutes; just picked up the fourth foul on Florida's star, Joakim Noah. Down by 11, bit over 8 minutes to go.

Now just under 7, OSU's press has cut the lead to 8; Oden's picked up two fouls in the last 5 minutes, though.

22 points, 11 rebounds for Oden; team's down by 6 with 5 minutes left.

Back down by 11 with 3:30 left--Ohio State has missed 10 3's in a row. That's the story of the game, which pretty much is over....

Florida wound up winning, 84-75. NBA-bound Oden finished with 25 points and 12 rebounds. And CBS, of course, ended the night with One Shining Moment.

AP Photo of Oden by Gerry Broome

Mission accomplished?

This is one of the dumbest plays I've ever seen in sports.



The Wizards wound up losing the game in OT--the playoff race in the Eastern Conference is so tight this year this loss may have giant implications down the road.

Makes you wonder if we brought the same kind of fanatical coverage to other fields that sports gets what other kinds of idiocy we'd uncover.

Times in triplicate

Everyone's still abuzz over the forceful dunk attempt by Ohio State's Greg Oden in the national semifinal game against Georgetown.

The Times apparently liked it so much they quoted Oden talking about it--three times. On the same page.

-In Matchup of Big Men, Ohio State’s Oden Comes Out the Ultimate Winner, Joe LaPointe: “I wanted to get in there and just tear the rim down,” Oden said.

-Timing Is Perfect for Oden and Buckeyes, Pete Thamel: “I was out for 17 minutes,” Oden said. “I wanted to get in there and just tear the rim down.”

-It’s Hard Getting to the Final Four, Even if You’re Supposed To, George Vecsey: "Asked how he felt at halftime, Oden said: "I was out for 17 minutes. I wanted to get in there and just tear the rim down, you know."

Uncredited Reuters photo of Oden dunk attempt found in various places online.

Practice makes entertainment

So Rasheed Wallace hit a crazy last-second shot from beyond halfcourt against the Nuggets the other night, to send the game to OT in a game the Pistons wound up winning.

Turns out--in contrast to Nuggets coach George Karl's calling it a "lucky shot"--that Rasheed practices this kind of thing all the time.

We forget sometimes just how good NBA players, for all their zaniness, are; the best make it look effortless, and playing against each other in gametime situations can negate their amazing skills.

But videos like this, where they're just messing around in the gym, make it easier to relate--and see how these guys are on a different planet.

Here's Gilbert Arenas, who made a $20,000 bet with DeShawn Stevenson over who could make more 3-pointers from the college line. Agent Zero won, making 73 out of 100.

One-handed.

Not the bears you should fear

Via Deadspin, this is one of those stories where, really, you just report the straight facts knowing there's nothing you can do to dress it up. There are so many things dropped in there that cracked me up.

AP via ESPN: World cruiserweight champion O'Neil Bell was arrested over the weekend after a sparring partner claimed he heaved a hatchet at him during a training run through the woods, authorities said.

Bell, 32, was booked Sunday on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon, according to a statement by the San Bernardino County sheriff's department.

A telephone listing for Bell was disconnected. He did not immediately respond to an e-mail seeking comment.

Deputies responding to a possible fight off Highway 38 found Bell's sparring partner, 37-year-old Larry Slayton, afraid for his life with cuts from running through the brush, sheriff's spokeswoman Arden Wiltshire said Monday.

Slayton told the deputies Bell had become angry with him during a training session in the woods and threw a hatchet the boxer was carrying for protection against bears. Slayton fled, dodging large rocks Bell threw at him, Wiltshire said.

Bell posted $50,000 bail. Wiltshire did not know whether an arraignment date had been scheduled or if Bell had retained a lawyer.

Bell (26-1-1) was in Big Bear training for a March 17 rematch title fight with Jean-Marc Mormeck in Paris.

Bell defeated Mormeck in January 2006, making him the first undisputed champ in that weight class since Evander Holyfield in 1988. The Jamaican has since lost his IBF title through inactivity.

Big Bear, a popular spot for fighters to train, is located about 90 miles east of downtown Los Angeles in the San Bernardino Mountains.

Getty Images photo of O'Neil via ESPN Deportes.