Weekly Sporties

-As the NBA playoffs continue their slow march towards crowning a champion, obviously more and more cities are going to be eliminated. Which means the NBA needs to keep the fans of those teams which have no more basketball to play interested in the sport, and what better way to do that than to throw out a few preposterous trade rumors with every big name possible? It has almost become as much a part of the offseason as the draft. My favorite insane rumor this week of course involves the Celtics and contends that the Los Angeles Clippers are willing to send Blake Griffin, Eric Bledsoe and Caron Butler to Boston for Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett and... Doc Rivers. Strangely, the biggest fish in this deal is Rivers. Obviously anyone who saw the Clippers lose to the Memphis Grizzlies in the playoffs can see that they are in need of an upgrade at the head coaching position and Doc is the best in the business, which may give the Clippers the best chance to keep free agent point guard Chris Paul, who clashed (briefly) with Griffin, when he thought Paul was riding him too hard. Also, KG and Pierce have said they want to keep playing together and both live in Los Angeles in the offseason and the Celtics are desperate to get younger while staying competitive, which Griffin would provide. Obviously losing Doc would be a blow to Boston but if Vinny Del Negro can get that group into a tough Western Conference playoffs, who says coaching is that important? As you can see, there are a ton of elements to make this trade 5% conceivable, which is enough to get people excited about it. However, I'm going to lean towards the 95% of this which is based in reality and say there is almost no chance this deal gets done. First off, there are too many moving pieces. Secondly, the Clippers may be consistently winning for the first time in the teams history, but that will not change the fact that Donald Sterling is one of the worst owners in sports and refuses to pay coaches what they are worth (which is why they have Del Negro as their coach in the first place). It all adds up to this being nothing more than a rumor someone threw against the wall to see what stuck. But, hey, I was asked about this rumor by people who are just casual fans of the NBA, so I guess it accomplished its goal. It certainly was more interesting than that Atlanta/Indiana series.

-Monday afternoon a story broke which revealed that an adviser and former AAU coach of Kansas freshman Ben McLemore admitted taking money from an agent ($10,000, to be precise) to steer the kid into declaring for the NBA draft and signing with that agent. Everyone's first reaction was to say how bad this was for both Kansas and McLemore, but the more I think about it the less worried I would be if I were him. First of all, no one is saying McLemore took any money, just the coach. It is probably naive to think Mclemore wouldn't at least make a cut of those funds, but so far there is nothing to link him to the funds. Thus there is really no way to prove he had any knowledge that this was taking place, which makes it hard to penalize him or the school. But perhaps more importantly, McLemore did declare for the NBA draft (where he is expected to be a first-round selection), which means there is literally nothing the NCAA can do to him anymore. Kansas didn't win a title and while McLemore had a very good season it was not like he won the Wooden Award (basketball's version of the Heisman Trophy), so it is not like they can strip him of that. In some ways, I find myself enjoying the spectacle of the NCAA looking on helpless to do anything about it. In the last few years I have found myself growing more and more weary of the NCAA for their hypocrisy regarding the idea of "student-athletes" while selling out long-standing college traditions and rivalries in an attempt to make a few extra bucks by switching conferences. On top of that they are only too happy to make example out of smaller schools which have minor violations while ignoring schools which break the rules simply because they are popular. If you want to know what is wrong with college athletics you should look no further than the people who run it, which is why I have no sympathy for them when I see a kid who may have found a way to make the system work for him instead of the other way around. I think we are just one step closer to ignoring the NCAA once and for all, and ironically ditching the people in charge of policing the games may be the one thing which actually cleans them up for good.

-As if to illustrate my point about the people running college athletics really being the people we should be watching, look no further than the Rutgers basketball team. Last month I told you about how their coach had been caught verbally and in some cases physically assaulting members of the team. That coach was eventually fired and the athletic director soon followed him out the door. What they needed was a strong leader with with a good reputation to steady the program while it got back on its feet. That is why I loved the hiring of Eddie Jordan a couple weeks ago. Jordan had a reputation as a straight-forward and well-liked coach while in the NBA and while his teams never had much success, you would be hard-pressed to find someone who didn't like Eddie Jordan the man. On top of that he attended Rutgers and was the face of one of their most famous teams, a squad which reached the Final Four. Everything about this seemed like the program was making all the right moves. That was right up until Jordan's introductory press conference, at which he was identified as being from the class of '77. There is just one problem with that - Jordan never graduated from Rutgers. Now, in the grand scheme of things this doesn't matter. Unlike, say, the high school level, Jordan is not being asked to teach classes at Rutgers, just coach the basketball team and he has more than enough real-world experience to be qualified to do that. The problem is that this is just another thing which makes Rutgers look as though they are being run by idiot who don't know what they are doing. Considering they are about to enter the Big Ten next year and their teams are going to take a pounding for the next couple of seasons they last thing they can afford to do is look unqualified off the course as well. When the scandal went down last month I mentioned I was surprised President Robert Barchi had survived the purge. Well, there is no one left to throw under the bus, so this really should be the end of the line for him. The good news is that if Barchi still wants to work at a college, he doesn't need to update his resume because obviously no one is checking those anymore.

-I don't consider myself overly sensitive to when it comes to team nicknames which relate to Native Americans. I have never thought teams like the Cleveland Indians, Atlanta Braves or Florida State Seminoles were doing anything wrong using those mascots (though I do find the 'tomahawk chop' used by Atlanta and FSU fans to be super-annoying) and thought the people who were fighting to have those names changed were doing it more to get attention for themselves than their cause. All that being said, I continue to be amazed that the name Washington Redskins has been allowed to exist for this long. This controversy comes up every few years and apparently we have reached that section of the calendar again, because in the last few months the nickname has once again become a topic of conversation. The difference is that this time it feels as though the conversation is being taken a little more seriously. As near as I can remember this is the first time actual alternative mascots had been discussed as one DC council member suggested the name could be changed to the "Red Tails". (I never said it was a good suggestion. Hey, every first attempt is awful.) Still, the only voice that really matters in the discussion is that of Redskins owner Daniel Snyder and this week he has emphatically said the team will "never" change their name. The team even released a poll showing how strongly the city supports the nickname, though for all we know the poll consisted of asking everyone who works in the team offices. I obviously don't have a horse in the race, but if the team really does want to keep the name the first thing they need to do is pull Snyder back from the discussion because he is pretty much loathed outside of Washington. He's the kind of owner who nickle and dimes fans and fancies himself a bit of a mini George Steinbrenner, but the difference is that Steinbrenner actually won championships. Therefore, there are a lot of people who would voice their opposition to the Redskin name just because Snyder so vehemently supports it and not because it tries to label an entire race of humans. Yep, hatred of Dan Snyder may actually trump racism. But I guess as long as the team gets a new name the end justify the means.

-One of the most frustrating things about trying to talk to baseball fans is the way they dismiss all the calls Major League umpires get wrong by saying it is just all part of the 'human element' which makes baseball so great. I'm all for cutting people some slack when things are happening in real-time and at full-speed, but somewhere along the way making mistakes stops being cute and starts getting embarrassing and we had two examples of that this week. The first happened in Cleveland where a homerun hit by the Oakland A's was reviewed after being ruled as a ground-rule double and even though the replay showed the ball cleared the fence the play stood as called. Seriously, what is the point of replay if you aren't even going to use it correctly? (I would accuse the umpires of deliberately getting the call wrong even after the review as their protest of having replay looking over their shoulders, but I don't think they are that crafty.) But what happened the next night is even worse. The Los Angeles Angels were in Houston to play the Astros. The Astros were bringing in a relief pitcher late in the game. As so often happens, once the pitcher was announced the Angels made a substitution of their own and brought in a pinch hitter. That was when the Astros brought in yet another pitcher before the first guy could ever throw a pitch. That is supposed to be against the rules (one of the few rules which actually speeds the game up), but the umps allowed the substitution. I have to say, if I were an Angels fan that would blow my mind. I mean, I can forgive someone like me for not knowing that was a rule, but knowing obscure rules is why a baseball umpire exists. They aren't like NFL refs who have Monday-Friday jobs - this is all they do for a living. Fortunately for those umps it didn't impact the outcome and the Angels still won the game. Unfortunately, MLB didn't see it as quite so inconsequential and suspended those umps for a couple games. Funny enough, it appears the 'human element' is only good for the game when there aren't 400 cameras around to see it.

-Last week I told how Vijay Singh had become somewhat of a punchline on the PGA Tour for his admission about taking deer antler spray, when it turned out buying the spray is a waste of money because it doesn't work. I assumed this would be the end of the story and we would all resume our regularly-scheduled lives, apart from Singh who would have to take a little extra ribbing in the locker room. Well, this week we learned Singh isn't laughing because on Wednesday he sued the PGA for defamation of character. Singh contends his reputation was damaged as a result of all the whispers of a suspension and he feels the PGA did him a disservice by leaking the story to the press before testing to see if the deer antler spray even worked. On the one hand, I am totally on Singh's side. The PGA totally jumped the gun on this one and should have taken investigated not only the deer antler spray but the IGF-1 more thoroughly before commenting on the story at all. It definitely would have saved everyone a lot of aggravation. On the other hand, I am curious as to what Singh actually thinks he can gain with this lawsuit because I never thought his reputation was all that great on Tour before this. He's always been prickly with the media, but that is their problem not ours, so I was thinking more about how he is viewed by fans, other players and, most importantly, sponsors. I'm sure their are people out there who are diehard Vijay Singh fans, but they are a decidedly small group. And while Singh is respected on Tour you never hear players talk about how much fun he is to work with on the range. (Filing this lawsuit the week of The Players Championship, the PGA's biggest event all year, and taking all the spotlight on Wednesday certainly won't gain him any friends at PGA headquarters.) Lastly, I can't tell you the last time I saw Vijay Singh in a commercial. That leads me to conclude this has to just be an issue of pride for him. And while I can respect that, at this point I certainly don't think a lawsuit is going to undo any damage which has been done. I can tell you this much, if you want more people to like you, hiring a lawyer and demanding they do is the wrong way to go about it.

-College baseball has always been kind of an intriguing sport for me because I can't quite figure out if these guys are really good or simply the best of what's left. You see, if you commit to play college baseball you have to stay for three years, so a lot of guys sign directly out of high school when the chance presents itself. Plus I don't know why they insist on playing with aluminum bats when they are so dangerous and it hinders a player's chance to transition smoothly to pro ball, which obviously makes you use wood bats. In fact the only way that college baseball prepares players for the majors is in the drug testing. Thanks to the steroid era, college baseball has one of the most stringent drug testing policies in all of college athletics. Still, that doesn't mean a few kids don't try and find the cracks. For as long as their has been drug testing there have been players trying to find away to get around those drug tests. The old adage is "it's our scientists versus their scientists", but for all the advances in both modern science and cheating, there are still a few people out there who like to rely on the oldies but goodies and one of the oldest ways to try and pass the a drug test is to have someone else take it for you. The only thing is that if you do that you should probably make sure your friend is drug-free. This week a player for the University of Texas convinced teammate Cory Knebel to pee in a cup for him so he would pass a drug test. One small problem: Knebel takes Adderall for ADD and Adderall is banned by the NCAA. The test obviously failed and when pressed for details the player fessed up and named Knebel as his source. But, here's the most messed up part of the whole story: Knebel was suspended for having the drugs in his system (even if they are prescription) and so far the teammate who asked him to take the test for him hasn't been punished because technically he hasn't failed a test yet (the school won't even name him). So, let that be a lesson for you kids - if you rope your friend into helping you cheat and the two of you get caught, rat him out before he has a chance to tell his side of the story and he may be the only one who gets punished. Maybe college baseball does prepare kids for life in the majors better than I first thought.