Weekly Sporties

-A couple weeks ago I told you about all the crazy rumors surrounding the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and their quarterback, Josh Freeman. First he was stripped of his captaincy in what some called a rigged vote executed by head coach Greg Schiano, then news began to leak out questioning Freeman's leadership abilities, citing the fact he slept through the official team photo. When Freeman was benched following an 0-3 start I was willing to bet the two sides probably felt more relief than anything and that it signaled the end to Freeman's tenure with the Bucs. I thought Freeman would quietly ride out the rest of this season and then be released around next year's draft. Turns out I was way off on the timeline because Freeman was released in the middle of this week, but it is what happened in the days leading up to his release that everyone is talking about. Because they would still owe Freeman a lot of money even if he were to be released, the Bucs started calling around to see if there were any teams out there interesting in trading for him. Given the way Freeman has played this season no one in their right mind was going to give up anything to get him, so there were no takers. And the task of selling his upside got just that much harder early in the week when someone leaked news that Freeman was in Stage 1 of the NFL's drug testing program. This is the lowest rung of the program and means you are still two violations away from getting suspended, but it does mean you are tested more. Freeman said he is in the program because he has a prescription for adult ADD medication and simply took a different kind of medication which resulted in a positive test. The big question now is who leaked the news. A lot of people think it was the Bucs, but I can't see why they would do that. If they wanted to get something back for him this news killed any bargaining leverage they had. Others think it was a team who was thinking about trading for Freeman. While I agree leaking the news would lower his price it also would make fans question why you were bringing him in, so I don't think it was them. The NFL Players Association has said they will look into the leak, but I don't suggest they dig too deep because I think Freeman was the source. If you think about it, he is the one who benefits from them. Yes, he takes some a public hit in the moment but as we discussed last week no one cares about drugs in the NFL, so it wouldn't be too damaging and now he gets his money and to pick his next team. He is the only one who wins in this scenario. Ironically, it may be the only time a Tampa Bay Buccaneer can claim a victory all season.

-Speaking of media leaks, Alex Rodriguez's appeal of his record 211-game suspension has begun and if the first few days are any indication we'll be able to act like we are in the court room from the comfort of our own homes as many details of the case were on ESPN before the close of business that day. According to reports, Alex is going with the tried and true, "I didn't know that what I was taking was a banned substance/blame the trainer" defense. I can't say that I fault him because while it certainly doesn't work in the court of public opinion, Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds managed to escape from the game without ever getting suspended for taking PEDs. As I said when those two were hiding behind this defense, I don't believe for one second that Rodriguez didn't know what this guy was injecting him with. These guys makes their (very lucrative) living by staying in tremendous shape. When being in good health is the main job requirement I would imagine you double and triple-check every label you come across, so the only way these guys were ignorant of what was being put into their bodies is if they didn't want to know so they could have plausible deniability. The juicier part of the story came later in the week when A-Rod, perhaps reading the tea leaves that things were not going his way, went to court and filed suit against Bud Selig, the rest of Major League Baseball and the Yankee team doctors for defamation of character and orchestrating a witch hunt to get him out of baseball. The weird part is, I am kind of on his side. From the second this BioGenesis deal started I felt like baseball was too focused on Rodriguez and thought his 211 game suspension was a gross over-reach considering Alex had never failed a drug test in the past. He may have admitted to taking banned substances after the fact, but by skipping the 50 and 100-game bans MLB was circumventing their own collectively-bargained rules. Still, I can't help but feel like this is just another careful-crafted strategy to negotiate a smaller suspension. Everything Rodriguez does feels like it has been pre-approved by some marketing firm, so why should this be any different? That is why I won't be surprised when Rodriguez's suspension is reduced to 120ish games and he drops his lawsuit in return. The only annoying part is that we all know that will be the end result of this little dance, so why not just get it over with now? In some ways it is a very good summation of how poorly MLB has handled this whole issue, allowing this story to come out during the first week of the playoffs when people should be focusing on the games. But then again, given his level of play this season, it could be the last time Rodriguez ever makes news in October.

-If Alex Rodriguez ever finds his way back to the Yankees next season it appears there is an above-average chance he will be playing for a different manager when he gets there. Joe Girardi's contract is up and reportedly the Chicago Cubs (who just fired their manager, Dale Sveum - who I bet is wishing he had taken the Red Sox job right about now), are very interesting in him. Girardi has history with the team having gone to school at Northwestern and played for them once upon a time. The Yankees have vowed they will pay whatever it takes to keep Girardi around, but they could have some competition from the Washington Nationals, who are also in the market for a new skipper and have what some consider the best young roster in the game. The only team who probably won't make a play for Girardi will be the Cincinnati Reds, who also fired their manager, Dusty Baker, this week. I have to say that every year there is at least one mildly-surprising job opening and this year I would say that is the Reds. Baker just finished a 90-win season, his third in six seasons in Cincinnati. I know that record only landed him in third place but he certainly can't be blamed for playing in one of the hardest divisions in all of baseball. I get that you can criticize him for not having a good record in the postseason but considering where the Reds where when he first took over, the fact he made the postseason so many time should have bought him another season. He changed the culture of that clubhouse, which can be the hardest thing to do in sports. A common theme on the Sporties is that I feel like a lot of times teams forget who they are or their eyes get too big. I understand that winning a World Series is the ultimate goal for every team, but I am just not sure the Reds are going to be able to find a manager who is quite as high-profile as Dusty Baker to get them there. Like I said, if they made this move expecting Joe Girardi to come beating down their door they are going to be sorely mistaken. Also, I always say that if you fire a guy and his is immediately hired by another organization it is a pretty good sign you made a mistake. Considering I expect Baker to be out of work only as long as he wants to be, I would say it is safe to believe the Reds will come to regret this decision.

-Of course, most of these baseball firings were somewhat expected due to the fact that baseball season is over. The firings which really catch people by surprise are the ones which happen in-season, especially in college athletics because colleges still like to pretend it is about education more than sports so they will ride out one bad year rather than try and salvage a season with a coaching change. Of course, as we know colleges are starting to emulate the pros more and more every day, so once everyone accepted the fact Southern California head coach Lane Kiffin would be fired as soon as the season was over the idea he would be fired during the season got a little easier to fathom. Still, I don't think anyone saw this ending coming: Kiffin had just gotten on the bus after the team flight following a loss to Arizona State. It was about 3 AM when athletic director Pat Haden asked Kiffin to get off the bus to speak with him, which was when he let Kiffin know they had decided to fire him in the third quarter of the game. Reports are that Kiffin tried to lobby for his job but wasn't convincing enough. Now, as if getting fired wasn't bad enough, Kiffin then wasn't allowed back on the team bus for a ride back to campus. He couldn't even go back on to get his luggage, which he had left there because he assumed the discussion would be brief (as would you or I at 3 AM). I admit that I don't particularly care for Lane Kiffin or USC, but this seems unnecessarily cold-blooded. I can only assume the administration was worried that if they had a night to sleep on it they would change their minds and they didn't want to do that. Still, that fear speaks to Kiffin's prowess as a recruiter, which is why I really don't expect him to be unemployed for too long. He'll end up either as a coach at a lower-level school which would be happy to have him or a recruiting coordinator for a major program, ironically working his way back up the coaching ladder in a way he never had to the first time around. What I am more interested in is where USC goes next. It is one of the rare jobs an NFL coach would leave the pros to take. Still, I have to wonder if they shoddy way they fired Kiffin will do anything to hurt their reputation. Then again, considering the spectacular way Kiffin flamed out when he was the head coach of the Raiders it could just as easily make them more popular.

-Of course, picking a new head football coach is just one of the duties USC Athletic Director Pat Haden has on his plate at the moment. This week it was revealed that Haden was chosen as one of the members of the College Football Playoff selection committee, the governing body which will pick which four teams who ultimately compete for the National Championship as well as where that game should be played starting next season. The full committee will be unveiled next month but from the names leaked it appears Haden is being joined by a former players and coaches such as Archie Manning and Tyrone Willingham as well as several other athletic directors, sportswriters, former conference directors and at least one person representing each conference which receive an automatic bid for a BCS bowl game. It does appear to be a very good collection of savvy football minds, but there was one name which that was leaked which jumped out at me - former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. I have to say I am not quite sure what she is doing in this group. Rice has always been known as a rabid sports fan but being a fan of sports doesn't necessarily make you qualified for a job like this. Currently she teaches political economics at Stanford which explains her college connection but she has never worked in athletics at any level. There is a case to be made for having an unbiased football observer on the committee but at the same time you at least want someone who has worked in college athletics somewhere and knows their way around the NCAA. Besides, when was the last time someone who counted themselves as a rabid sports fan was also described as "unbiased"? Sports fans are often the most passionately biased people on the planet, especially when it comes to colleges where the rivalries can be inherited. I get that Rice has more experience with politics than anyone else on the committee but for all the similarities people like to draw between sports and politics there really aren't that many connections. Look, I know Rice is much smarter than me, I'm just saying that if I ever needed someone to be involved in drawing up a peace treaty Condoleezza Rice would be on my short list of people to call but if I was trying to pick between a 1-loss SEC team or an undefeated ACC squad I have to admit I don't think her opinion would carry that much weight.

-The NHL season got underway this week though I don't think a lot of people noticed because of the baseball playoffs and football season. Honestly, the lockout pushing the season down to 50 games which started in January may have been the best thing for the NHL last year. Instead the league is back to its usual marathon of 82 games, but it doesn't appear anyone told new Colorado Avalanche coach Patrick Roy that. Towards the end of Roy's first game against the Anaheim Ducks he took exception to a hit one of the Ducks laid on a Colorado player, feeling it was low and knee-to-knee. He started flipping out, yelling at Ducks players and coaches, nearly knocking down the partition which separated the two teams and getting into a fight with Ducks coach Bruce Boudreau. Roy was given a game misconduct penalty and fined $10,000 by the NHL a couple days later. Look, I get that when Roy played he was known as a fiery player and given Colorado's poor play over the last couple of years he probably feels the need to change the players's attitude as well as show them that he has their backs at all times. But as admirable as that is, someone needs to pull Roy aside and tell him that he needs to slow down a little. He has a lot more of these things and he's going to burn himself out if he attempts to keep the intensity at that level for an entire season. Plus, at some point you have to worry that he will start to lose those same players he is trying to motivate because they will just start tuning him out. Yelling and screaming to get your point across stops being effective when it is your default setting. Plus, it makes casual observers wonder if the stage is just a little too big for you. If you are freaking out every time something goes against you the team is going to become very high strung, which is not a good thing. Hell, there wasn't even a penalty called on the play which had Roy so angry. The good news is that the next game he coached passed without incident, but it is not a stretch to assume another explosion is bubbling just below the surface. Having your players walking on eggshells around you is no way to go through a long season. Plus, I don't know what Roy's salary is for the season, but so far he's spent an average of $5,000 per game coached, which is not a pace you want to be on. The Avalanche may want him to teach the young players how to play the game of hockey but I can assure you they don't want him as their financial adviser.

-I think the only sport I like to needle more than soccer is running. Considering most people figure out how to run before they learn to speak, I often say excelling at running is like excelling at breathing and refer to it as the one sport you do when you aren't coordinated enough to do two things at once. Runners also don't help their image by doing things like complaining about their times when the marathon is cancelled for something like, oh I don't know, a bombing. I know running can be an incredible test of endurance but it certainly doesn't seem like a very hard sport to master and stories like this one are not going to change my mind: a couple weeks ago Meredith Fitzmaurice, a grade school teacher by day, was running a half-marathon in Ontario as part of her training regiment towards ultimately running the Detroit marathon, where she hoped to get a time which would be good enough to qualify for the Boston Marathon. The problem started when she misread some signage, took a wrong turn and found herself running the full marathon route. She figured it would be no big deal and actually provide her with a measuring stick of where she was in terms of preparation so she decided to just keep on running. She talked to a race official who told her family to go to the correct finish line as well as mentioned that since she was running the full route they would arrange it so that her time would count for the full marathon. It was a good thing they did, because she won. Apparently because she only thought she would be running a half marathon she set a faster pace and found herself too far out in front for any of the other runners for them to catch her. Now, she doesn't even need to run the Detroit marathon because this win automatically qualifies her for Boston. I'm not going to claim this woman was some amateur off the street because she had been working towards this goal but she doesn't do this for a living and the simple fact is that if someone can win one of your signature events by accident it doesn't exactly make me view your sport as very hard. So stop saying running is the only true sport and everything else is just a game because football may be 'just' a game but you certainly won't see a flag football champion lining up for the Jaguars this weekend (and they could use all the help they could get),