Weekly Sporties

-On Monday my worst sports fears came true as quarterback Tim Tebow signed with the Patriots. This had been rumored for a little while, but I had been holding out hope it was just a negotiating tactic by Tebow and his agent to get another team to up their offer. Sadly, that was not the case. Now, it is not that I have a dislike for Tebow the person, I simply find the amount of coverage he gets in relation to the amount and quality at which he actually plays to be very annoying and I just would rather that be someone else's headache. Even worse? Tebow on the Patriots makes a ton of sense. If there was ever going to be a coach who could squash the media crush around Tebow, it is Bill Belichick. He is not going to feed the beast and hint about getting him into the game as a change of pace - if anything he will get annoyed when the media asks about him too many times in a row. (The team has already designated Tebow as one of its two 'star' interviews, meaning he is only required to speak to the media once a week.) Plus, this move reunited Tebow with offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels, who drafted Tim in Denver and clearly likes the kid. But, where this really makes a ton of sense is from a football perspective. Most football experts agree that if Tebow is going to have any chance to grow into an NFL quarterback he needed to go somewhere and essentially act as an apprentice for the position. Well, he will have that in New England. The Patriots are unlikely to mess around with Tebow and put him into all sorts of strange formations so he can concentrate on working out his mechanical problems and because they have both Tom Brady and Ryan Mallett they are unlikely to play him much at quarterback which means he will be under no pressure to start at all. Plus, unlike the Jets no one in New England will be clamoring for him to take over every time Brady throws a bad pass. It will really be like red-shirting in college and give Tebow to rehab his image with NFL coaches, who think he is not worth the distractions. The Patriots represent the best chance to extend his stay in the NFL. So, this truly is the best possible scenario for Tebow, I just really wish it was happening somewhere else.

-This has been a crazy year for coaching decisions in the NBA. I can honestly not think of a year in which more coaches who made the playoffs were fired or allowed to leave when their contract expired. This week we added Grizzlies' head coach Lionel Hollins to the list of guys looking for work after the Grizzlies let him walk. Hollins was in the last year of his deal and wanted to stay in Memphis, but after taking the Grizzlies to the Western Conference Finals he probably wanted a significant pay raise (not a terribly unreasonable request) and ownership was not willing to meet his price. Much like last week when the Denver Nuggets fired George Karl, I wonder if Memphis is truly aware of where they stand in the NBA's hierarchy. Yes, for the first time in years the Grizzlies have a solid roster and could contend for a high playoff spot for the next several years. But apparently they want a big name coach to go with those big expectations and don't think Hollins carries enough name recognition to mobilize the fanbase. However, if Memphis thinks high-profile coaches with championship pedigrees will be lining up to patrol their sidelines they are in for a big shock. This is not like normal offseasons in which there are only a couple of jobs open - the demand for high-profile coaches is much higher than the supply and for once their are open jobs where the team is not in the middle of rebuilding. That means those few coaches everyone wants can be a bit picky and of all the job openings this offseason, I would put Memphis far down the list if we were ranking them by how desirable they are. Nothing against the city, it is just that ownership hasn't proved they will spend the money to keep this team together. The good new for Hollins is that when you win at Memphis it is catches a lot of people's eyes because many coaches have tried and failed there, so it shows he knows what he is doing and he should be able to get a job very quickly. (He is already being mentioned for the Clippers position.) That just makes it worse for the Grizz, because I said this last week but when you fire your coach and 20 other teams in the NBA think about ditching the guy they currently have for the chance to hire your ex-coach, it is a pretty good sign you made a bad decision.

-One place Hollins won't be landing is in Brooklyn with the Nets. Just a couple weeks after retiring as a player, former Nets great Jason Kidd was hired as Brooklyn's new head coach. I have to say, when I first heard Kidd was lobbying for this job I thought he was never going to get it because he has never coached at any level before. It is not that there haven't been good players who can jump right in to coaching provided they are surrounded by the right staff (Larry Bird springs to mind), but it was the circumstances around that team which I thought would prevent Kidd from getting a serious look. The Nets are still trying to establish themselves as one of the glamour franchises in the league. Between moving to Brooklyn, aligning with Jay-Z and re-branding themselves with new uniforms and team colors, every decision they have made for the past two years has been about raising their profile. And with a Russian billionaire owner who has shown he is willing to spend the money I thought they would go after a veteran coach rather than give a rookie his first crack at being a coach on any level. It seems like every high-profile coach that has been looking for a job has been linked to the Nets at one time or another. I mean, Brooklyn is one of the landing spots which was always brought up as a legitimate possibility to lure Phil Jackson out of retirement. Suddenly, we're going from the guy who has coached the most championships in NBA history to a guy who has never coached a day in his life? (Even stranger, Kidd wants to bring back former Nets head coach Lawrence Frank as an assistant. That should create a pretty interesting dynamic, don't you think?) I don't care if he is one of the greatest players in franchise history, that doesn't mean the Nets should have hired him over a guy like George Karl, who hasn't had a losing record since I was 6 years old. You know if the Nets really want to wrestle the spotlight away from the Knicks, I think all future transactions should be done after the following question is asked: is this something the Knicks would do? If the answer is no (and keep in mind the Knicks keep re-hiring Isiah Thomas, so they aren't exactly well-run themselves), perhaps talking to one more candidate wouldn't be the worst thing in the world.

-Pretty much my favorite thing about college athletics is the traditions. I love it when everyone on campus feels they have to do something before a big game even though deep down they know it won't really help the team just because it was good enough for past generations, so it is good enough for the current one. (One piece of advice - never investigate how the traditions got started, because most of them were started for completely stupid reasons. Honestly, this is one of those situations in which knowledge will just ruin the mystique.) Anyway, it is because of this admiration for silly rituals I was a little disheartened to hear vandals broke into Clemson's football stadium (nicknamed Death Valley) and broke off a piece of Howard Rock, the Tiger's good luck charm. The rock, transported from Death Valley in California, sits in the tunnel between the locker room and the field and all players are encouraged to touch the rock before the game. Apparently a few nights ago someone broke into the stadium, got around the Plexiglas case the rock is usually protected by (How did they break through such amazing defenses? They had to have expensive tools... like a pair of scissors. Seriously, Clemson, you couldn't afford something better?) and cracked the rock, stealing a big chunk of it. But, here is the good news for any Clemson fans who think this signals the downfall of their season before it even has a chance to begin - it's a rock and short of stealing the whole thing you can't really vandalize a rock. There is still plenty to rub before big games. In fact, if no one had said anything to me I would have had a hard time telling the before and after pictures apart. Clearly this falls short of the rivalry between Alabama and Auburn in which a deranged Alabama fan poisoned a line of 100 year old trees on the Auburn campus out of spite after Auburn won the National Championship and the trees had to eventually be cut down. It just goes to show you that even when it comes to messing with each other's traditions the ACC falls well short of the SEC.

-Not quite sure if there was something in the air this week but it appears that people in baseball are feeling quite aggressive, as there were a number of fights and bench-clearing shoving matches across MLB during the last few days. The worst one took place in Los Angeles, where the Dodgers and Diamondbacks started exchanging beanballs before benches cleared and even the coaches got in each other's faces. As you would expect, the Commissioner's office was quick to hand down punishments for these actions, mostly in the form of fines and suspensions. But as I was reading the list of names and how long they would be sitting, it showed just how silly the idea of a suspension is for starting pitchers. Every other player or coach gets exactly as many games as baseball thinks they should sit out, but when it comes time to penalize guys who only play every 5th day it becomes a guessing game. The general rule is that if you want them to miss one start you suspend them for 6 games, however it is entirely possible that it would just push them back a couple days and they would get close to their normal turn in the rotation. In other words, their punishment for hitting another human being with a baseball thrown at nearly 100 mph is to get a couple days extra rest. Considering their lack of control was probably what lead to the fight in the first place it certainly doesn't seem like the punishment is fitting the crime. That is why I think baseball needs to start going to extremes when it comes time to suspend starting pitchers. I'm talking double-digit games because that is the only way to ensure they will miss as much time as the rest of the players who took part in the fights. Also, remembering that managers are just as much at fault because they insist their pitchers retaliate as some sort of absurd unwritten rule of baseball, lets make their suspensions longer as well. Maybe if they miss significant time they will finally stop sending players out to do their dirty work. I know baseball is probably desperate to get some attention away from what has been a very entertaining NHL postseason, but trust me when I tell you this is not the way to do that.

-One of the reasons I don't like politics is because I don't like the thought of having to campaign to make people like you. Call me crazy, but I think you should be able to stand on the weight of your accomplishments and let people judge you from those. The only thing I find sadder than people begging to get total strangers to like them? Begging to make people like you concerning something which is totally useless. This year's MLB All-Star Game will be held in New York at the Mets' Citi Field. Because of this the Mets would really like it if third baseman David Wright was voted to be a starter by the fans. Last year Wright held the lead for most of the voting, but was passed at the last moment. Determined not to let that happen again, the Mets have launched an aggressive campaign to get Wright voted in and have even begun reaching out to non-baseball fans. Specifically, they want to talk to older ladies who just find Wright cute. After someone working for the Mets discovered Wright was voted as the cutest baseball player on a cougar-themed dating site, the team contacted that site and wondered if the members of that site would mind stuffing the ballot box for Wright to win another online election. (Funny enough, in my mind being voted a starter for an All-Star Game and cutest baseball player on a cougar dating site are equally prestigious.) It wasn't until the dating site started asking if they could get some cross promotion that the Mets started to see the error of their ways and backed away from the idea. (I have to wonder if they ever ran the idea passed Wright, because I doubt he would have been on-board.) Again, it wouldn't have been that big a deal, except someone had to go and mentioned the story to the papers. It is one thing to do something embarrassing, but broadcasting that mistake to the world actually makes it seem worse. Much like the Nets to the Knicks, it just makes the Mets look petty because it is something the cross-town Yankees would never have to lower themselves to doing.

-I think we all know being a celebrity is weird. Constantly having your picture taken, never having a quiet moment in public and having 'relatives' come out of the woodwork looking for money would be enough for me to never want to get famous. Still, I think the weirdest part of being in the public eye is the idea that everything you touch suddenly becomes valuable. People will buy anything if they think it was touched by their hero. I mean, hearing about super-fans spending tens of thousands of dollars on items like used gum just because it was chewed by someone famous makes me worried about the future of humanity. That is why I was not surprised to hear that an auction house was thrilled to have a new glut of Kobe Bryant memorabilia to sell, including random things like high school trophies and his first Championship ring. There was just one problem - Kobe never gave anyone permission to sell these items. They had been in storage at his parents' house and his mother, who wanted to buy a new house, had decided to sell them to the auction company. Kobe contended the items were gifts and if his mother didn't want them she should have returned them instead of selling them. This lead to the very awkward position of Kobe Bryant having to sue his own mother to get his stuff back. Fortunately the matters was cleared up before things got too ugly as Kobe got some items back, the auction house was able to keep enough items that they should be able to make a profit and Kobe's mom got to keep the money she made. (Kobe has earned hundreds of millions of dollars in his career. You mean to tell me he couldn't give his mom $500,000?) I may not like the guy, but I just feel sorry for everyone involved because this just goes to show you that money has the power to come between family. Oh, and if you ever plan on becoming famous you may want to make sure you claimed all your belongings out your parents' basement first. Otherwise that spelling test you failed in first grade could end up the centerpiece of someone's collection.