Weekly Sporties

-You can always tell that a sports story has crossed over into being an actual news story when the national programs gets involved. So when every network had a reporter outside the Verizon Center in Washington, you could see how big the story that Washington Wizards' center Jason Collins came out as the first openly gay male playing a major team sport on Monday truly had become. However, the story faded from the spotlight almost as quickly as it appeared and I have to say I was actually kind of proud of the muted response in the sports world because it shows that stuff like this isn't nearly as big of a deal as it used to be. In fact most sports fans were disappointed in the news simply because Collins isn't big star but a guy end the end of the bench. Still, I think this was the next logical step. We've had a few players come out after their career is over and now we have one who is at the tail end of his career. Next it will be a mid-level player with a few years left and then it will be the big star. This stuff has to have its own natural evolution (I use that word on purpose, considering the people most likely to have a problem with Collins are the kind of people who also have a problem with concepts like evolution). The only question left now is whether or not Collins is an active NBA player next year. Unlike some people I do expect him to catch on somewhere. He's too good of a bench guy and too good in the locker room, plus he comes cheap. (I know the Celtics would take him back.) The simple fact of the matter is that the NBA isn't like the NFL where coaches would loathe the distraction - given how big the personalities in the NBA are you almost have to expect some kind of drama from them all at some point. In this age of Twitter beefs and camera phones capturing every bad decision a player coming out as gay is actually one of the less-controversial things a head coach would have to deal with all year. I would say that should be considered progress.

-I have to be honest, the fact that there was a gay NBA player was far less surprising to me than the news that the NBA relocation committee voted that the Kings should remain in Sacramento instead of be allowed to move to Seattle. Once the Maloofs, who currently own the Kings, announced that they had a buyer from that area I expected it to be nothing more than a formality, especially since the fact there is no franchise in that area is a major mark on outgoing Commissioner David Stern's record, the community has already proven it can sustain an NBA team, the city is ready to build a team an arena and Seattle is a much bigger television market than Sacramento. On top of all that the bid from the group who wants the team to remain in Sacramento is less than the offer from the Seattle group and you would expect NBA owners to want to jack up the prices of their own teams. I can only assume the rest of the NBA owners hate the Maloofs as much as the residents of Sacramento. Plus, if I were an NBA conspiracy theorist I would be concerned that Clay Bennett, the man who moved the Sonics to Oklahoma City in the first place, is on the committee deciding the fate of the Kings. Now for the first time I'm actually slightly worried that Seattle isn't going to get a new team. I mean, it could become something like the NFL with Los Angeles - they are more valuable as a tool to threaten any city which doesn't give it's current NBA team money for stadium upgrades than it would be to actually have a team there. But while LA has so many transplants from other cities around the world they don't see the need to have their own NFL team (and don't seem to want one), Seattle was very loyal to the Sonics and deserves to have them back. I hate to see any fanbase lose their team and I know two wrongs don't make a right, but since the NBA doesn't plan to expand any time soon someone is going to have to move for Seattle to get a new NBA team. I hope Charlotte hasn't gotten too attached to the Bobcats.

-Last Thursday night, as he slowly slipped out of the first round West Virginia quarterback Geno Smith was on display for a national television audience. Leading up to draft night there was a lot of talk Smith would be the first quarterback off the board but when that didn't happen he began free-falling due to a combination of a weak crop at that position and the fact a lot of teams had addressed quarterback issues through other means. I imagine Geno had to be terribly embarrassed about slipping as far as he did and watching as team after team passed on him you couldn't help but feel bad for the kid. Even when he was finally drafted by the Jets early the next night he didn't seem very happy - more relieved than anything. Watching his free-fall I couldn't help but wonder why he hadn't been better advised on how the draft might unfold. Apparently Smith was wondering that same thing, because he fired his agents within a couple of days. Smith says it has nothing to do with where he was drafted, but it is hard to come up with any other scenario which makes sense and now the agents are taking potshots at Smith, saying he was unrealistic about the draft, aloof during certain team interviews and was mad that he wasn't the first player taken. (Wow, I can't believe their relationship didn't work out.) Still, the main thing I take from all of this is that this is exactly why it is just better to stay home and wait for a phone call out of the view of ESPN cameras. Because I'm not saying NFL GMs lie, just that their job prevents them from telling the whole truth. Sure, they may like you as a player but they also like a dozen other guys and have no idea who is going to be available when their spot comes up. No, you won't get that moment of walking across the stage to shake the Commissioner's hand, but you can suffer in the comfort of your own home. NFL careers are notoriously short, so you may as well have the few memorable moments not be awful.

-The only person less enthusiastic about Smith being a Jet is his former teammate Tim Tebow, who was released by the Jets a couple days after the draft due to the fact they now had an overabundance of quarterbacks. Now, you would be hard-pressed to find an athlete who has received more attention in contrast to the amount of time he is actually on the field and normally I wouldn't think this was even worth mentioning, but this story was still noteworthy due to the fact ESPN still insists it is a story. The Worldwide Leader went all in on Tebow from the moment he became a Jet and while it is not uncommon for a news organization to decide something is a more important story than the rest of the world thinks it is (this is who outlets like MSNBC and FoxNews stay in business), ESPN's love affair with Tebow became particularly annoying once they started playing both sides of the fence, with people on their own network complaining about Tebow getting so much attention. Even worse is they kept beating a dead horse. For example, "SportsCenter" spent hours talking about Tim Tebow on the same day that the Jason Collins story came out. They devoted much more time to Tebow, a fact which is both laughable and a little sad. The day he was released the producers kept bringing on analyst after analyst, all of whom said the same thing - no one is really interested in signing him. After a while it started to feel like they were going to keep asking people until they got an answer they liked and were going to run with it after that. The thing is this isn't helping either side. Not only does ESPN look like a psycho ex-girlfriend who can't let go, Tebow has been experiencing a backlash far beyond anything he would have created on his own. (He may have liked it at first, but I think even he would like it to dial back.) However, there is good news for Tim in one respect - I don't think they get ESPN in Canada.

-I've always had a high level of respect for people who want to become referees and umpires. Just based on the fact that you never have a home game and every decision you make is going to make at least 50% of the people in the game hate you, I fail to see the upside. That is why I am usually willing to cut those guys a lot of slack, but there are a few umpires who need to be reminded that no one came to see them. I think baseball umps are the worst. While guys like basketball referees simply don't take any crap and toss a player or coach, for some reason baseball umpires feel the need to shout at guys first and some of them could be accused of instigating the conflict. That is allegedly what happened this week between Tampa Bay pitcher David Price and the home-plate umpire Tom Hallion got into a shouting match during a game. It apparently started when Price felt like he got squeezed on a pitch and let Hallion know it when the inning was over. Hallion responded by telling Price to, "Throw the ball over the fucking plate." They then started swearing at each other back and forth and Hallion threw out a couple of Rays before it was all over. That would have been bad enough, but because this is 2013 the feud continued when the two couldn't agree on what actually caused the incident and began calling each other liars through Twitter. (Both were eventually fined by the league.) While I have no doubt that Price is telling the truth, I have to say I don't think this was very smart on his part. Sure, Hallion was the one out of line because he should be the more responsible one, but who do you think his fellow umpires are going to side with? Going forward I don't think Price should expect a very generous strike zone from any of the crews working his game and that will cause him way more aggravation than winning in the court of public opinion is worth. After all, there is a reason umpires have acted this way since baseball first started - because they can.

-There was actually a second non-player/player feud that started this week. Red Sox pitcher Clay Buchholz is having a bounce-back season after a very down 2012. A lot of people have attributed that to the fact that John Farrell, his former pitching coach, is now his manager and Clay simply has more confidence in what he is doing. Toronto Blue Jays color commentator Jack Morris has a more clear-cut answer: he thinks Buchholz is cheating. Based one witnessing Clay's habit of touching his forearm between pitches and noticing a white patch on that part of his arm, Morris contends that Buchholz is doctoring up baseballs and putting some kind of substance on the ball. Buchholz claims it is just rosin, which is allowed (actually, Red Sox analyst Dennis Eckersley seemed way more upset about the accusations than Buchholz, making this more of an announcer-on-announcer crime). Putting my Boston homerism aside for a second I side with Buchholz for a much more practical reason - you would like to think that if Morris saw this people in the Toronto dugout would have noticed it as well and if they were really concerned they would have brought it to the umpire's attention. The fact the Blue Jays didn't say anything makes me think they didn't feel it was anything worth complaining about. Still, I find it amusing that this is even an issue because I thought this was another one of those unwritten rules of baseball which says that if you ain't cheating you ain't trying. Then again, that logic leads me to wonder if the Blue Jays were keeping their mouths shut because the last thing they wanted was for someone like John Farrell, who managed them last year, to point an umpire in their direction. It's one of those situations in which the inmates are running the asylum and the only thing which keeps them from turning each other in is they all know where the bodies are buried. Because nothing says "America's past time" like organized blackmail.

-Right before the Super Bowl Sports Illustrated had a lengthy article on the deer antler supplement that Ray Lewis had taken to be able to play in the game. The product markets itself as helping to heal injuries faster thanks to a chemical extracted from deer antler, which is one of the fastest natural regenerating substances on the planet. As you can imagine, the article also raised questions about whether or not the spray was legal for use since it was supposed to contain the banned chemical IGF-1. Since Lewis was retiring right after the game there wasn't much people could do about it (not like they could suspend him), but in that article golfer Vijay Singh also admitted to using it but claimed not to know it contained a banned substance. Because Singh is still active many people thought his admission would result in a temporary ban from golf, but as the months dragged on nothing happened. After a while the silence was becoming deafening. That was until this week when the PGA Tour ruled Singh was in the clear and would face no suspensions. While you may think that is normally good news, the reason behind letting Singh off the hook doesn't make him look so good. You see, in the last couple of months deer antler spray has come off the banned substance list. It was not removed because IGF-1 is no longer banned but the spray was cleared because, to put it simply, it doesn't work. After the hoopla of the Sports Illustrated article scientists tested the spray and found that there is almost no IGF-1 in it and even with the low levels which were found, spraying it into your mouth is one of the least-effective ways to take the drug. So, by buying and using the spray Singh is nothing more than the victim of a scam and while he may have been trying to cheat, you can't actually be punished for intent. To be truthful, I'm not sure if I would rather have everyone think I was cheater or an idiot. Unfortunately for Vijay, now everyone thinks he's both.