Tuesday, July 31, 2007

10 years ago...

I was in my final summer before college. I don't really remember anything magical about it. I worked four 9-hour days every week (Wednesday, Thursday, and Sunday were my days off) and hung out with my high school friends, but definitely less than I had during the school year. And then I went away. I'm the only person from my graduating class who went to college in Philadelphia, so by default the only one who went to St Joe's. I was excited to be so close to being "on my own." The Red Wings had just won the Stanley Cup for the first time in 42 years, so I was pretty jacked about that.

Those first few weeks at school were really liberating. I've always been kind of a loner (I love people, but I need my space, and time to be alone every day), and it was great to set my own agenda. It's been 10 years since OK Computer came out. This, along with Nevermind, Ten/Vs, and Odelay (wow, they're all available for $10 or less at Amazon) are probably the defining albums of my peer group's lives. My memories of this album include buying it from the big Tower Records store on South Street with my AT&T Student Advantage card (15 percent discount - cha-ching!) and listening to it while doing my French homework one cool fall night about a month later.

I listened to it again this morning. It was tough for me to tell at the time why everyone thought it was so ground-breaking and world-changing, and I still don't totally get it. Don't get me wrong, it's a good album. But I've never been a huge Radiohead fan, and my favorite song (My Iron Lung) and album (The Bends) has been out for a couple years already at this point. Nonetheless, this was a landmark moment in the history of alternative rock. It won a Grammy, and was nominated for another. Sonic Youth never won a Grammy. Neither had X, or Social Distortion, or Dinosaur Jr, or Pearl Jam, or even Nirvana. These were basically the bands that had set up this incredible success.

That opening to Airbag is masterful. Paranoid Android waxes and wanes like a Floyd-esque epic. The Karma Police - Fitter Better Happier - Electioneering trio is spectacular. They played Electioneering on Leno in July 97 and it was great. I saw them at the Tibetan Freedom Concert in June 98, and they were really good. Not overwhelmingly great, but really good. College is the best time of your life (for most people), and this is one of the musical experiences I will forever associate with it. Can't believe it's been 10 years.

Conflict of Interest

I don't work for the federal government, but odds are good that someday I will. For the past several years, I've worked as a lobbyist. It's just as important to keep your eyes on conflict of interest in this career as it is when you're a fed. Conflict of interest is something that everyone should be aware of, especially those in senior positions. I took a class on it and had the policy posted on my wall at a previous job. I believe that the great majority of people are very well-versed in conflict provisions, but just choose to ignore them. My NSF funding stopped before I started lobbying on their behalf. I did not give funding to those door-to-door clean water/air groups that lobby for the EPA while I was working on behalf of that agency. It's doubtful that a $25 contribution would have cost me my job or even earned me a reprimand. Honestly, I'm not that important, and the contribution would have been in a grey area. But I didn't want to risk the sanctity of my position, or of the work I was doing to fight for basic research in this country.

So when news breaks about people like David Schwartz, it makes me upset. Disgusted, actually. He deliberately flouted conflict of interest guidelines to fill his own pockets. Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA) brought this up again the other day and it ended up back in the news, which is why I'm all riled up. The June 26 Washington Post article included this:

In a telephone interview yesterday, Schwartz said he made mistakes, which he blamed on "misunderstandings" about institute rules and "poor communication," for which he said he takes "full responsibility."

In most of the world, this would be followed by an HR rep showing you the policy and giving you options for how to announce your resignation. But it's nearly impossible to do that to the director of a federal agency.

It's tempting to just dismiss this as a product of our bureaucracy and say that people should be held accountable for their own actions. But they are. The federal government gets you if you cheat. Eventually. And there's the problem. Agencies like the IRS spend far too much time checking out $75 tax credits and not enough time looking over the books at large corporations. The audit culture started in America after the Enron scandals, companies took it upon themselves to audit their books like crazy. My first job out of college contracted auditors for over 9 months per year. It was probably unnecessary, but better to be safe than sorry, right? This movement seems to have escaped the federal government. Many Congressional subcommittees on oversight were eliminated shortly after the Republican takeover in 1994. This is a microcosm of the larger problem.

Many people who do cheat the system have the word "former" in their title by the time they're caught. It's a lot less scandalous to indict a private citizen who worked for the federal government five years ago than it is to get a current employee. It's also not as interesting to the American public, many of whom would rather spend their time watching "breaking news" coverage of a routine traffic stop turned car chase in Nevada or a dog being rescued from a tree (how do dogs get into trees, anyway) in North Carolina. Congress has spent a lot of time on lobbying reform over the past couple of years. Will it take an even more egregious offense than the ones already committed by federal employees to strengthen oversight at the agency level? One hopes not.

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Monday, July 30, 2007

Thank God for Kevin Garnett

The top 10 reasons you should be really really happy that Kevin Garnett will officially be a Boston Celtic by the time I finish this post:

10. That guy who actually won the Tour de France and the 'roid-hounds who didn't.
9. 10 of Paul Pierce's 24 errant shots per game will fall into the hands of someone who can actually score inside.
8. No more 68-point efforts by the Timberwolves
7. Incessant NFL coverage stops for an hour
6. ESPN can add a team that it cares about and devotes coverage to, bringing the total to 8 (sorry, they were already on the short list).
5. No more lamenting that #21 never gets retired in Boston.
4. KG won't have to deal with Kobe.
3. A solid distraction from Barry getting pelted with sharp objects culled from a local hospital's biohazard bins.
2, 1. I'm out of stuff. But that's a good list, right?

Has it happened... yet?

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Wednesday, July 25, 2007

I Just Sold Out...

...and became an Amazon associate. You could be one too...

http://affiliate-program.amazon.com/gp/associates/join

The End of Sports As We Know Them?

Usually, I don't pay any attention to USA Today. It's the "local paper" (based in Reston) that nobody cares about. It's easy to get the writers as guests on local TV here; that's pretty much what it's good for. But today, The Nation's Newspaper hit paydirt with its attempt to sum everything up in nice, tidy 1000 word articles. Pro sports are in trouble.

Hockey kicked off the crap derby with the lockout and the ensuing idiotic TV contract (no, here's the real one. But that didn't seem SO crazy, did it?). Baseball's steroid scandal has come to a head at what is arguably the most important moment in the sport's history. Michael Vick has drawn worldwide attention to the "discipline" problems in the NFL, and the NBA has referees involved with the mafia.

All three of the latter situations have taken the strongest attributes of their respective leagues and run them into the ground. Baseball prides itself on records, tradition, and the like. The criticism of Roger Maris' record seems insane at this point. The NFL has built its empire on casual fans who know virtually nothing about the game's history, can't identify more than 20 players in the league, and treat Sundays from September-January as a social event.

The NBA is different. It came out of nowhere in the 1980s, and a slew of near-miraculous comebacks in games and playoff series from 1985-1995 led many people to talk of conspiracies within the league. Ironically, as Jordan faded away and the league became less popular again, this talk also faded. Well, it's back. The days following the announcement of the Pete Rose scandal in 1989 were chaotic, but I think this NBA stuff is going to be much bigger. Every call in every game can be questioned now. Monday was probably the happiest day of Rasheed Wallace's life.

It intrigues me when people just walk away from fandom because of a specific action. My dad will watch NHL games when they're at our house or we're there, but that's it. The lockout soured him on the sport. When I was a kid, those were basically the nights I got to stay up late during the school year - Red Wings nights. I have all but walked away from the NFL. Last season's Bears team won me back a little bit, but I think I've seen the Super Bowl 4 times in the last 10 years. A lot of people don't watch baseball anymore for a slew of reasons, including the steroids thing.

It's kind of amazing that nothing like pro sports ever existed in our 10,000 years of civilization. I guess the gladiators were sort of a similar thing, but this is a unique historical experience with no precedent. With problems abounding and other sports like NASCAR, soccer, golf, and the "extreme" sports on the rise in popularity, could we be watching the erosion of North American pro sports as we've known them for the past 100 years?

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Retraction of Words Never Written

Can you retract something you never said/wrote? Retraction/plagiarism/admission of error has been all the journalistic rage over the past few years. Mitch Albom (what a great rundown of the whole "scandal" here), Jayson Blair, Jack Kelley, and so many more.

Anyway, I had this terrific post started the other day about poverty in America - it was going to talk about John Edwards a little bit, give some numbers that are absolutely mind-boggling, and some other stuff too. But I realized I can't post that because I don't think I have any credibility on that issue. I don't particularly do a whole lot to help the poor. We give to our church every week, and give a little more when there's a special collection for a cause we believe in, but that's not doing a whole lot. We donate stuff to Goodwill, but that's not entirely altruistic either.

Although I don't want to get preachy or pretend to be an authority, I do care about this, and it's horrifying to me, as a resident of the richest county in the richest country in the world, that poverty and homelessness exists everywhere. So I will close by saying that you should do whatever you can in your community. It could be the difference in someone's life. And I retract the other stuff.

Thursday, July 19, 2007

Smashing Pumpkins - Zeitgeist

This may be the most worthless blog post you read this week. I'm not going to say anything committal about this album because I'm not sure what I think of it. Pitchfork says it only brought back one aspect of the Pumpkins. Some say it sounds like a Zwan album. Pretty much everyone hates the cover art. But some of the tracks are really good, there's no denying that. Some, however, are not very good. Very not very good. Take United States as Exhibit A of the latter. It's nearly 10 minutes long. Sometimes I think to myself, "Wow, it would be really nice to hear the long version of Drown right now, or Starla, or Rhinocerous, or Geek USA." But I'm never itching to get that 10 minutes of Glass and the Ghost Children. United States = more Glass.

And this leads me to one hard and fast point: I miss James and D'arcy. While people still don't give them credit for what they brought to the band, it's pretty evident now that they were bringing SOMETHING to the table. They kept things in check.

I have been a Pumpkins fan since 1992, when I was 12 and heard Gish for the first time. I used to look forward to getting the singles just for the B-sides. Ugly; ...Said Sadly; Hello Kitty Kat; these were really great songs. Most of the tracks on Zeitgeist are not as good as these. Doomsday Clock and 7 Shades of Black are very good openers - right up there with the Where Boys Fear to Tread/Bodies rockout on Mellon Collie. Starz is cheesy, we've been over United States, and the final three songs are nearly shudder-worthy. That's the Way (My Love Is) and Tarantula are good songs. That's all I have to say about that.

There was a time about a year ago when I contemplated going back to a former employer. Ultimately, I decided against it. You can never go home again, and usually things happen for a reason. Someone should tell Billy Corgan.

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Monday, July 16, 2007

Progress?

40 years ago this upcoming Monday, the 12th Street riot erupted in Detroit. Entire city blocks burned and the whole country watched as they had with Watts just two years earlier and would see in Chicago and DC the next summer. It amazes me that these things happened in our country this recently. While prejudice is not totally absent from my generation, the events that sparked the riots are almost unthinkable today.

Perhaps more amazing to me than the mere happening of the riots is that a lot of things haven't changed in Detroit. People don't go downtown to shop or do anything really; many of the burned buildings were just left for dead. When the national media comments on fires in Detroit on Devil's Night, it's largely these buildings that are getting burned. And yes, there are that many that these arsons can occur every single year seemingly without end.

When I visit Detroit now, it's as a tourist. I'm no longer a resident of Michigan, and as such, I can make more decisions about where to go when I'm there. I'm also much more impressionable. When I was a freshman in college, my grandparents and I went to the North American International Auto Show one night during my winter break. As anyone who knows anything about cars knows, this is the big one. It's a huge auto show. Cobo Hall is packed with people. Literally. And there was a shooting in the foyer outside the convention floor on a weeknight at 9pm. You can't have stuff like that happening during your biggest tourism week of the year. Yet Detroit does.

This article from US News and World Report compares the progress made by Newark, NJ and Detroit, the two cities hit hardest in 1967. This is the article that inspired this post today. While it's done in typical USNWR style (about six vague sentences and some nice graphics all bundled tidily into a two page feature), it did inspire me to find out more about these events. What I knew already was that for people from the Detroit area, particularly the suburbs, the riots were this unbelievable, terrifying part of life in other places that was happening right in front of their faces. For many people, time is still measured relative to these. My grandfather refers to pretty much all events of the 1960s and 70s as being before or after "the riots." And everyone knows exactly what he's talking about.

I wrote at the beginning of the post that I was amazed that these things even happened during my parents' lifetimes. But as I thought more about it, it's amazing to me how many people in Detroit live as if they're in a third world country in 2007. There are, depending on who you talk to, anywhere between 30 and 50 percent of Detroit's residents below the poverty line. Nearly half of adults in Detroit are functionally illiterate. This means they can sign their names, maybe read a street sign or a bus schedule, but that's about it. Only about half of Detroit residents have any sort of insurance, either private or Medicaid/Medicare. Nationally, nearly 85 percent of Americans are covered in some way. Unemployment in the city is nearly 15 percent. Again, nationally, unemployment is less than 5 percent.

So Detroit has never really recovered. And it's not likely to anytime soon. The 40th anniversary of the riots are really an excellent time for the city to look back at where it's been and where it could go. As links pop up over the next few weeks looking back, I'll be sure to put them up. I hope some good comes from this dubious anniversary.

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Thursday, July 12, 2007

The Beginning

So Dave Beckham and family are on their way to loverly Southern California. And the majority of those in the sports community seem to think that little will change for Americans and their relationship with soccer. I don't ALWAYS like to be a contrarian, but I think this is going to be the start of soccer's emergence as our fifth major sport (I only count team sports, and yes, I count hockey, I'm from Michigan, for crying out loud).

Beckham is the one soccer player that every American has heard of. My in-laws, who live outside Philadelphia, where soccer, competitive logging, and jai alai are all equally popular, know Beckham. Pele was a soccer player. Beckham is a legitimate celebrity. People would watch him go grocery shopping. Unlike Pele, he isn't at the tail end of his career, showing up, playing great against horrid competition, and cashing checks. MLS is about 30 steps above NASL. He speaks fluent English, which is a factor I haven't heard anyone mention. This makes a HUGE difference. In 1975, networks weren't exactly scrambling to interview people the majority of their viewers wouldn't be able to understand. No such fears this time. Pele also was not married to a famous person. He was widely viewed as arrogant and self-promoting, and still has that reputation. Beckham is just Beckham, and hey, is that a Cherry Pepsi he's got in his hand? Make sure to pick up some of that on your way home.

So what could go wrong here? Well, see, Beckham isn't going to score a ton of goals. To Americans, this is ultimately the mark of a star athlete. You throw 25 touchdown passes if you're a good football player. You average 25 points per game in basketball. You hit 30 home runs. You score 40 goals in hockey. ESPN is planning to have 19 cameras in use when LA Galaxy play Chelsea in Beckham's Galaxy debut July 17. One will be focused on Dave the whole night. As a soccer fan, this is simultaneously the best and worst idea ever. He might not do a lot in the game. But for more serious fans, it will be a unique opportunity to focus on one player and all the precision that goes into his game plan. But again, he probably won't score. Which will lead to his being dubbed a flop and a failure. But Beckham can take it. He's staying here. This is the coup MLS needed to become legit, and I think America is ready.

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Wednesday, July 11, 2007

Sports Roundup

Billups Signs on Dotted Line for Pistons - 5 years, $60.5 million. Holy cow.

Michigan has signed with Adidas - Apparently this is a far bigger deal than I realize.

Penguins Headline Wings' Exhibitions - The big schedule is out too. The season opens with a two-game series between the two Southern California teams (those would be the Kings and Ducks, for those of you not in the know) in London. England, not Ontario. The Wings open against the Ducks on Oct 3 at JLA. The Ducks' banner will go up (presumably) on VS on Oct 10 against Boston.

Sabres in Line for Outdoor NHL Game - This might be good for the Sabres and the NHL in general. At least it won't be somewhere in the South.

NHL Network news - (crickets) This is pathetic. There has to be some news somewhere.

And lastly:

Ichiro is insane.

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When the Truth Isn't REALLY the Truth

Ex-Surgeon General Says White House Hushed Him

USGS Scientists Object to Stricter Review Rules


Censorship is Alleged at NOAA


The latest of those three articles is the first one, published today in The Washington Post. As you can see by the two other links I placed below it, this is a recurring theme. Some of our nation's most divisive issues right now have been made political by the Bush Administration and the Congress. Not just the Republican members of Congress, but Congress in general. There are a lot of people to blame for this disturbing development. The White House can be blamed for trying to hide these things from the American people. Corporate science (AccuWeather, ExxonMobil and the like) can be blamed for helping further the political goals of those interested in "creating their own science," and Congress can be blamed for excessive oversight and mismanagement of issues they remain (mostly) unqualified to comment/legislate on.

I greatly dislike Chris Mooney. I dislike most things that portray issues as totally partisan with no in between. He tends to blame the Republicans for this trend. But you need look no further than lovable curmudgeon John Dingell (D-MI) for proof that it's not just Republicans who stand in the way of good science influencing policy. The battle over Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFÉ) standards has pitted Dingell's Detroit-friendly politics against pretty much everyone else, it seems. How can you argue that cars and trucks shouldn't have higher fuel economies? it's tough, I know. But there he sits, fighting (maybe literally) to the death on the issue.

A quick search of Yahoo! Answers for the terms "global warming" or "climate change" reveals that a large majority of Americans view this as a political issue. Check out "stem cells" or"stem cell research." Same deal. Even "evolution" has a political undertone for a lot of people. And this is the way it's going to be for quite some time. Once these issues are established in the minds of the public as political ones, that's where they'll stay.

How do we undo this change? Should science be debated in Congress, or should they debate how to enact policies based on sound, peer-reviewed science? I think it should be the latter. A major problem with this is that the majority of Members of Congress don't understand the peer-review system, or the need for federally-funded basic research. The majority of their constituents don't either, and this poses a different problem. Two freshman Members offered amendments to the reauthorization bill for the National Science Foundation (NSF) this spring. These amendments would have eliminated specific research projects, effectively defunding grants based on their titles, which were deemed by these Members as "silly" and "pointless." One study was on eating habits by Native Americans who inhabited Puerto Rico in ancient times. This was support for research on diabetes in Hispanics. To the average American, this looks like a good idea - we don't want the government wasting our tax dollars. But it harms our scientific competitiveness. And that might be the magic word.

A group of lobbyists (not a bad word - if you're interested/involved in ANY cause, chances are extremely good there's a lobbyist working on behalf of that issue) began a push for scientific research in 2005 based on the assumption that China and India, among others, were going to overtake the United States in the science, math, and engineering disciplines. A report published by the National Academy of Sciences, "Rising Above the Gathering Storm," corroborated this point of view and added strength to the movement. A final concentrated effort in January 2006 led to the competitiveness issue being added to the State of the Union address and the American Competitiveness Initiative. This gets the attention of Congress and the Executive branch. America must be number one, and at pretty much any cost. How can we achieve this? By better funding basic research. And the Administration and Congress have done so, to the tune of double-digit or near double-digit increases for NSF, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), and Department of Energy Office of Science (SC) for FY2008.

But what about the National Institutes of Health (NIH), you ask? Or NASA? Or EPA or NOAA or any other federal science agency? Here's where Congress and the Administration revert to their old personalities. NIH's budget was doubled from FY1998 to FY2003, and for many Members of Congress, the agency was "taken care of." The other agencies aren't viewed as filling immediate needs in the race to beat China and the others in the scientific disciplines. Will the federal government regret this? You bet. Will they do anything about it? They'll try. Can they do anything about it? This is not clear.

Most estimates show China graduating about 300,000 engineers annually from their universities; the US graduates about 60,000. Coincidentally, the population of China is almost exactly five times that of the US. There are a few numbers, though, that jump out when you dig deeper. China sends just 21 percent of 18-24 year olds to university/college, compared with 64 percent of Americans aged 18-22. And it's tougher for foreign students to stay in the US than it used to be. Growing numbers are returning home, including to China, after receiving their degrees.

This post could go on and on. Why aren't Americans entering the math, science, and engineering fields the way they used to? There's a lot of specific legislation designed to encourage this. Visit Thomas and search for something like "innovation." It's amazing. So I started on government censorship and ended with competitiveness. Not the most natural segue on the surface, but deep down, it's all interlinked. This Surgeon General thing isn't over. Watch the headlines.

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Tuesday, July 10, 2007

"Social Networks"

This isn't going to be another commentary on the amazing ascent of Facebook, or Myspace, or YouTube. It's also not going to be an assault on the way every person over about 40 uses the names of those sites as verbs and doesn't really know what they are or how they work. Instead, you get a lament about the unwanted changes these can bring to the life of a lurker.

I joined Facebook about a month ago. I don't know why. As I have expressed previously, I have about as close to zero a desire to see anyone from high school as you can have. That's low. And if I hadn't gone to college with my wife and acquired some of her social moxie, I probably wouldn't talk to anyone from there either. So I've been getting those "X McX has added you as a friend" emails. Probably 10 of them. Not exactly a flood (now you know why), but enough that some sort of acceptance/declention policy had to be established in order to properly handle these and maintain my enigmatic/socially disabled state.

I'm still fuzzy on the value of Facebook. Or any "social networking" site. But let me get YouTube's back. YouTube is the best web creation since, well, maybe EVER. Just today, I watched several commercials for Bonkers, that candy from the mid to late 80s that featured giant fruit falling on people in the ads. This would have been impossible just three short years ago. Thank you, YouTube. Nostalgic for the 1997 Stanley Cup Finals? Yeah, me too. Facebook brings me emails from my sister's Grade 11 prom date. Not kidding. I don't want to find coworkers. I find them sometime between 8 and 10am 240 days per year. Maybe I'm about to get in touch with some really great person I've forgotten. But I doubt it. I'll keep you posted.

Monday, July 09, 2007

THIS JUST IN

http://www.cox.com/fairfax/new_channels_2007.asp

Programming changes effective - August 1, 2007 in Northern Virginia!

Channel

Current

Channel

New

Channel

ESPNU is a 24-hour college sports network features event programming, highlighted by approximately 300
live events (regular-season and championships). Action includes a variety of top Division I football and men's
and women's basketball mixed with baseball, softball, volleyball, lacrosse, hockey, wrestling and more. ESPNU offers comprehensive studio programming, replays of ABC Sports, ESPN, ESPN2 and ESPN Regional Television games, plus specials and more. http://sports.espn.go.com/ncaa/espnu/index

-

246

BBC World is an international 24-hour news and information channel, broadcast in English in more than 200 countries and territories across the globe.
BBC World broadcasts a diverse mix of authoritative international news, sport, weather, business, current affairs and documentary programming. http://www.bbcworld.com/Pages/default.aspx

-

252

MBN TV has developed a unique programming structure in Arabic, Aramaic and English languages that caters to the entire family. With MBN TV, every member of the family is guaranteed a segment of interest. Choose from thousands of movies, soaps, documentaries, music concerts, music videos, talk shows, sporting events, educational series, art & culture, international and local news as well as children programming. In addition, they also broadcast live talk shows with representatives from Federal and State agencies, as well as regional and national political organizations and business leaders who are interested in discussing issues related to the Middle Eastern American communities. They also cover sporting events (Soccer, Tennis, Swimming), live coverage of festivals and holiday event

-

478

DYI

246

254

G4/Tech TV

252

258

ESPN HD

708

716

ESPN 2 HD

716

717



BAM!

Additional Big Ten/CCHA games, here I sit!

Coach Hep

Forgive me, Hoosiers, for the time passed since the death of Terry Hoeppner that I haven't said anything about it. I grew up in Michigan, and eventually went to a college with no football team (grad school, too - how'd I pull that one off?), so Michigan has been my team all my life, and the Big Ten has been my conference. I certainly can't root for Michigan State, or Ohio State, or Wisconsin, or Penn State, or even Iowa or Minnesota, but Indiana... well, they're just Indiana. A school that felt like it had to have a football team because it's massive.

Anybody who knows anything about Indiana knows that football is not a big deal there. Now that the Colts have won the Super Bowl, maybe the lukewarm atmosphere will start to change, but in Bloomington, if you say the word pigskin, chances are that people will think you're actually referring to the skin of a pig in raw form.

So you kind of root for Indiana. You know they're not going to beat you, and most years, you'll beat them 35-3 or 42-10 or something lopsided like that. And they have that uphill battle against IU basketball, which three consecutive undefeated seasons couldn't win them. So when a guy like Terry Hoeppner passes, the whole conference feels it.

This guy was Ben Roethlisberger's coach a couple years ago. He left Miami after Ben's first season away (probably knowing things would never get better than 2003), and went to IU. Everyone questioned him for that decision. He could have had his pick of big schools, but he had his roots in Indiana, and he stuck to them. This guy coached after receiving treatment for his brain cancer in summer 2006, and the 06 Hoosiers weren't a bad team. You always get the feeling with IU that they're about to turn that corner, and then they never quite do it. The loss of Coach Hep might be the spark this team needs to get to the next level. He gave them everything he had, even if it was only for two seasons.

Last summer, we mourned Randy Walker, who kept the Northwestern program strong even when people said he couldn't do it. We'll never know what Terry could have done at IU. It's going to be a tough year for that program. We'll miss you, Hep.

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Tuesday, July 03, 2007

Quick takes - NHL free agent mayhem

- First and foremost, let me express my joy that my dislike for Todd Bertuzzi can come back to full strength now. I know the Wings have a long history of rental players, but what a waste.

- Robert Lang is no longer a Wing. His 14 goals and 19 assists will fit in nicely with the rest of that dynamic Blackhawks lineup.

- And completing the trifecta of Red Wings losses, Matthieu Schneider would like to be closer to his home, where he lived when he played for the Kings and actually performed like a top-3 defenseman.

- Jiri Hudler may go play in Russia. I would not approve of that; he has the potential to be a GREAT two-way forward.

Around the rest of the league, it turns out Paul Kariya is just greedy after all. Just a few seasons removed from his altruistic, Karl Malone-esque pay cut to try to win a Cup with Colorado, he goes to tha STL for a 2-year, $18m deal.

And were Ryan Smyth's tears fake? There's suddenly a lot of bitterness around this "good guy." He's made some bad moves. It wasn't all management. Have fun with your 7 seed in the West this year, guys.

The poor Sabres' dynasty is over before it started. I'm unclear as to why anyone would leave a team poised to be a force in the East for the next several years, but I never won a Little League World Series, either.

MR.BRIERE GOES TO PHILLY, a one-act play

Flyers management: Hi Daniel. Welcome to Philadelphia.
Daniel Briere: Hi, I'm excited to be here to try to turn around this once-proud franchise.
FM: Heh. That's great. There are a couple things we need to take care of right away...
DB: Sure! Whatever you need!
FM: These will be your skates. They're made of lead. We don't want anybody on our team outskating the opposition. That's not the Flyer way.
DB: Um, OK. I guess I can deal with that. I'm a sniper. I can get to the wing and hang out there.
FM: Yeah. About that. We don't really go for that kind of thing here. Too exciting. We don't want anyone falling out of their seat and dropping their $8 Miller Lite. The rink guys are busy grooving the ice in the slot right now so you can try it out. It's going to be tough for you to turn, but I think you can tough it out.
DB: (silence)
FM (whispers to other FM): He's built like Manute Bol. You're sure this is the right guy?

Good move, Daniel. I won't get into Chris Drury's stupidity any further than to say that the Rangers should provide another April flameout.

Follow the disloyalty here

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Today's Sports Post - ¿West Coast Bias?

I never thought I would see this, but apparently there's someone in the world who thinks ESPN is actually biased AGAINST the Northeast. To that I say, whoa. I quit watching non-"event" ESPN about two years ago in favor of Yahoo! Sports and Sporting News. If only a few teams existed in sports, I get the feeling it would be OK with ESPN. Those teams are the New York Yankees, Mets, Giants, and Knicks, the Boston Celtics and Red Sox, the New England Patriots, the Philadelphia Eagles, and Duke University basketball. You could fill 24 hours per day with coverage of just those teams, right?

The arguments in favor of this coverage make no sense. "They're the most popular teams." Maybe in number, I guess? the Yankees and Red Sox are probably the two most hated baseball teams as well. The games are on local TV in New York and Boston. That's enough. We do not need to have all 38 or however many games between the two teams shown nationally. And that's when they play each other. I cannot count how many times ESPN has shown a riveting Red Sox-Devil Rays or Yankees-Orioles matchup on a Monday or Thursday when there are other, BETTER, games on the schedule.

"Well, ESPN is based near New York, so it's easier for them to get there." Then maybe ESPN should be a regional network. Don't call yourself the Worldwide Leader if you're going to show 3 hours of poker every night and get the Giants on Monday Night Football 7 times a season.

I think that's enough of a rant on that topic.

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