Happy Sports Year

We’re barely into the new year and already there has been enough sports activity to fill a whole season. College football wound down with a major dispute over who should be national champion. The NFL post season is underway and the first weekend of wild card matchups didn’t disappoint. Teams are still searching for head football coaches. In the NBA the previously woeful New York Knicks now look formidable, and two baseball legends were in the news, neither for happy reasons.

PRO FOOTBALL

I was three for four in my NFL playoff picks last weekend, with the only wrong one the Denver - Indianapolis game. I expected Clinton Portis to have a better game and I still remain a Payton Manning doubter. But you have to hand it to him, he lit up the scoreboard, completing 22 of 26 passes for 377 yards and 5 touchdowns on the way to a 41-10 win.

I was happy to see the Titans beat the Ravens 20-17 largely because I feared the Ravens. They have a defense that reminds me of their Super Bowl winning team. I don’t really like Baltimore–I want the Patriots to win the AFC–and thought they could be trouble if they got past Tennessee.

Here are this week’s divisional games, with my picks in bold:

NFC
Panthers (12-5) at Rams (12-4)
Saturday, 4:30 p.m. ET on FOX

AFC
Titans (13-4) at Patriots (14-2)
Saturday, 8:15 p.m. ET on CBS

AFC
Colts (13-4) at Chiefs (13-3)
Sunday, 1 p.m. ET on CBS

NFC
Packers (11-6) at Eagles (12-4)
Sunday, 4:45 p.m. ET on FOX

My Giants ran true to form in picking Tom Coughlin as their new head coach. Not only did they not pick a Black head coach, but like 11 previous Giants head coaches, they picked someone who has worked for the organization before. Coughlin who was out of the game the past year and previously head coach at Jacksonville, had been receivers coach under Bill Parcells when he led New York.

Playing devil’s advocate, some of the Black coaches under consideration for several openings, Romeo Crennel of New England, Lovie Smith with the Rams, even Maurice Carthon with Dallas, may be victims of their own success. Some teams want to hire their coaches now, and the farther their teams go into the playoffs, the less room they have to negotiate. There are limitations on how much a still active coach can interview, and most don’t want the distraction of a new contract negotiation while they try to plan for a game.

I do hope Smith and Crennel get an opportunity because they’ve earned it.

COLLEGE FOOTBALL

Why is it Division II and III can find a way to decide their champions through a playoff system, but Division I can’t? Because the whole system of bowl games gets in the way. They are a heavily entrenched old guard that doesn’t want to give up their prestige and revenue by knuckling under for the sake of a tournament system. That’s the game’s loss.

USC and LSU should go head to head to settle this thing on the field the way everyone wants. LSU should never have been playing Oklahoma anyway, after the Sooners got skunked in their final game against Kansas State. Were they to meet, I’d put my money on USC.

PRO BASKETBALL

I could shoot Scott Layden. He’s the Knicks former general manager who assembled such a mediocre team over his entire tenure that fans stayed away in droves and they failed to make the playoffs every year. Isiah Thomas takes over the job and in ten days, shakes up the team, putting some talent on the floor and casting off the dead weight. Stephon Marbury and Penny Hardaway are now in the fold and while it will take awhile for the new team to mesh, you can already sense a new excitement around the Garden.

What agenda Layden had is anybody’s guess, but it wasn’t winning basketball games.

BASEBALL

After 14 years, Pete Rose has finally admitted he bet on baseball games. For 14 years, he looked everyone in the eye and swore up and down he didn’t. So that makes him a gambler and a natural born liar. Sorry, but I don’t have any sympathy for him.

Pete is a dumb jock who doesn’t know how to do anything but play baseball, and deprived of that, he’s lost. The cheering stopped and he can’t really function. He needs a 12 step and a job retraining program, but he doesn’t deserve another shot at managing a baseball team, because he can’t be trusted not to bet again, and he doesn’t belong in the Hall of Fame, because he has violated baseball’s most sacred trust.

People will argue that the Hall is full of drunks (Babe Ruth) and racists (Ty Cobb) and that Rose isn’t any worse. I disagree. Gambling, and betting on your own team, is the worst offense any athlete can ever commit. When fans buy a ticket to a game, they have a right to know the outcome has not been predetermined or deliberately affected for the benefit of any outside parties. A manager, as Pete was, has the power to change lineups, move players around, change pitchers at inopportune times, and affect the outcome to cover his own bets. That is an unpardonable sin.

Someone who played the game during Rose’s era has left us. Tug McGraw, the always upbeat and happy go lucky relief pitcher for the Mets and later Phillies, succombed to cancer. I remember Tug as a member of the World Series Champion 1969 Mets and NL Champion ‘73 team, where he rallied the team with his “Ya Gotta Believe” battle cry. Tug and those Mets teams were some of the heroes of my youth, and I am sad to see him go.

It is the inevitable passage of time.