Who Likes Short Shorts?

Sepp Blatter, that's who. Blatter, the head of FIFA, suggested in an interview that women's soccer players should wear "more feminine uniforms," including, yes, "tighter shorts." This is the sort of amazingly asinine suggestion that sadly comes as no surprise coming from the head of a major sports federation. I remember the head of FIVB, the international volleyball federation, suggesting that women play in tighter clothes a few years ago, and they were later forced to.

Blatter's suggestion has been met with eye-rolling, thankfully. When will these troglodytes who run these federations learn that women's sports don't need sex to sell?

I Wanna Go Home

Maurice Clarett, who was suspended for the season by Ohio State for lying to police and investigators this past summer, says he wants to play for the Buckeyes again next season, even as he is suing the NFL for entry into the draft. I don't know what to think of this. As a fan, both of college football and Ohio State, I'd love to see Clarett back in scarlet and grey, as he's an immense talent. But I've really respected Jim Tressel for following through on running a clean program at OSU, and Clarett blew it last year.

It will be interesting to see what wins out at the university -- sticking to your guns on character, or the chance to have a stud in the backfield.

Deford a Fraud?

Sports Illustrated's Frank Deford has been called the world's greatest sportswriter so many times that he might as well make it part of his name. But in a long feature in the LA Times, Glenn Bunting takes Deford to task for what he characterizes as his many factual mistake and overstatements. The article is a good read, and a fascinating look at a great writer. As for the nitpicking -- I'm of two minds. Having been one of the drones who do fact-checking at SI, it's still astonishing to me the number of mistakes that writers like Deford make, only to have them cleaned up by fact checkers.

On the other hand, the examples in the story really do seem, for the most part, rather trivial. Of course, we'd like to see a perfect record of no mistakes, but that's too much to hope for. Given the level of the mistakes and hyperbole that are outlined in the story, it's hard for me to get too fired up. There are other SI writers, past and present, who are much more liberal with facts.

Yes, another NASCAR Post

As I had posted about before, NASCAR is going ahead with a revamp of their points system. It will be interesting to see how they work out the details of this, as the AP story raises a couple of problems with the proposal.

Supercharged Drivers Kept out on Tour

The PGA Tour is starting to test drivers, to make sure that the clubs fall within the standards set by the United States Golf Federation. The first test are taking place at this week's Mercedes Championships in Hawaii, and the first driver tested was the one belonging to Tiger Woods. That seems fitting, as it was Woods who set off a firestorm last summer when he said that he thought that some players on tour were using "hot drivers," that is, drivers which impart more force to the ball through a trampoline-like action than allowed by the rules. Woods is on the record saying that he thinks the testing should be mandatory, but it isn't.

Instead, it's voluntary program, where players can submit their own equipment for testing. There is apparently an exception where if one player questions the legality of another player's driver, it will be tested, which could lead to some ugly gamesmanship.

Golf is a sport which has long prided itself on honor and a self-policing attitude toward the rules of the game. But the equipment revolution that has transformed the game makes some of those attitudes impossible to sustain. There's no way to look at a driver and tell if it's legal. These tests are a step in the right direction, but I think they should be, and soon will be, mandatory.

Proposed fixes to the BCS

College football coaches are set to recommend changes to the current Bowl Championship Series, which should come as no surprise. What we don't know is what those recommendations are going to be -- that will have to wait until Thursday. Look for them to recommend that teams which don't win their conference title be barred from playing in a BCS game. That's a simple solution which would have prevented Oklahoma from playing in the Sugar Bowl this year, and given us the USC/LSU matchup that we should have had. It also would have solved the problem of Nebraska in 2001, giving Oregon the shot they should have had at the national title.

The coaches will also recommend a fifth BCS game, which will definitely happen. It's a way to head off the potential lawsuit brewing against the six major conferences who make up the BCS.

Is There Any Doubt?

After LSU made Oklahoma look almost completely impotent last night in the Sugar Bowl, we've got our split national title. The game was far from a classic, marred by endless penalties and mistakes, but LSU was clearly the better team. Oklahoma looked lost for most of the game, with the exception of one good drive and a blocked punt. Jason White was horrible, on the whole. Admittedly, this guy is like a walking HMO at this point, but his throws were consistently off the mark. He seemed rattled by the intensity of the LSU pressure, and never found a way to cope.

If you watched both the Sugar and Rose Bowls, I'd love to hear what you thought. In my opinion, USC was clearly the best of the teams in those games, but I think and LSU/USC matchup would have been terrific, especially to see USC's receivers take on the excellent LSU secondary. Unfortunately, we'll never see it.

Breaking the BCS

It's no secret from what I've been writing here that I think the BCS is deeply flawed, and needs to be ditched. But even with as much of a joke as I think it is, I was shocked to see this quote in an AP story about the system, and the AP poll:

"I want to screw up the BCS," said Scott Wolf of the Daily News in Los Angeles. "Hopefully this will force some change to the system. It exposed the shortcomings with a split championship. If LSU had been left out, I'd vote them No. 1."

Wolf is one of the voters in the AP poll of college football writers. It's the AP poll that USC will likely win, setting up the split national title.

But Wolf is just an idiot if that's why he's voting the way he is. Isn't he obligated to vote for what he considers to be the best team, and not to screw with a system he doesn't like? If I were the AP, I'd take his vote away today.

USC Dominates

I hope that any of you out there who like college football watched the Rose Bowl yesterday. USC was simply awesome, beating a very good Michigan team, 28-14, in a game that wasn't nearly as close as the score might suggest. USC made Michigan look silly for most of the game, pounding the Wolverines on defense, and tearing them up with a slick passing game on offense. In fact, one of the things that struck me most was USC's dominance of the line of scrimmage on both sides of the ball, which lays to rest the notion that Pac 10 teams can't be tough in the trenches.

The BCS's dream of a Michigan upset didn't come true, and so we'll have a split national champ. It's a damn shame that we can't see USC play the winner of Sunday's Sugar Bowl, because that would be one hell of a game.

Also, it was really interesting to see all of the announcers on ABC, the network which is partnered with the BCS, proclaiming USC the national champs and the best team in the country. How do you think the BCS folks feel about that? I'd imagine that there were some pretty ticked-off phone calls after the game, asking ABC not to run down their own product.

Sins of the Father

Down in Starkville, Miss. today, there's going to be a news conference to announce that Sylvester Croom has been hired as the new head football coach at Mississippi State University. Croom played under Bear Bryant at the University of Alabama in the early 70s. He was an assistant at Alabama from 1977-86, and since then, he's been an assistant coach with five different NFL franchises. He's also an African-American.

This is the first time that a black man will coach in the Southeastern Conference. The SEC is, in some ways, the beating heart of the South, especially during football season. The battles between schools like Alabama, Auburn, Florida, Tennessee, Mississippi, and Georgia is a secular religion, a stunning example of sport's ablility to captivate, inspire, and thrill us.

But the history of the schools in the SEC also includes much shame. Autherine Lucy being chased off the campus at Alabama. James Meredith registering for classes at Old Miss, with 5,000 federal troops there to protect him. George Wallace blocking the door at Alabama's Foster Auditorium to prevent two black students from registering.

As I write this, I'm listening to the Drive-By Truckers, who have been writing and recording some pretty damn great music about life in the South. I was thinking about a lyric in their song, "The Three Great Alabama Icons"

Racism is a worldwide problem and it has been since the beginning of recorded history, and it ain't just white and black. But thanks to George Wallace, it's always a little more convenient to play it with a Southern accent.

There's a lot of truth in that statement, I think. The South, and Southerners, are convenient targets of scorn and ridicule. Getting back to the issue that started me down this road, it's not as if black coaches have made great strides elsewhere. There were only four black head coaches in NCAA Division I-A football this past season, out of 117.

That's outrageous. The fact that no black man had been a head coach in the SEC until today is shameful. But when Sylvester Croom walks onto the field steps on the field in Starkville on Sept. 4 next year, and the Bulldogs charge out to take on Tulane, one more small step will have been taken away from Wallace's legacy.

The Wild World of Tennis

Just when you think that other sports are in a bad way, you can almost always count on something amusing happening in the never-dull world of tennis. The latest is that Kim Clijsters, the #2 ranked woman in the world, will skip the 2004 Olympics.

Why, you ask? Because she can't wear Fila clothes. Clijsters' contract with Fila stipulates that she can only wear their clothes on the court, but the Belgian Olympic Committee requires that Belgian athletes wear apparel from their sponsor, Adidas.

Right now, you can read the charmingly-poor translation of Clijsters' web posting about this. She makes a fair point -- Fila has been supporting her career for years, and she feels indebted to them.

But someone at Fila needs to take her aside and say that while they appreciate the loyalty, it's more important for Fila to have her at the Olympics, where she would be a favorite for a medal.

One assumes that cooler heads will prevail at some point, like they did when this same issue raised its head with the 1992 "Dream Team" in Barcelona. Maybe someone can get Clijsters a Belgian flag to cover the Adidas logo.

What Happens When a Sports League Thinks

Good AP story today about the NFL and its marketing efforts amongst Spanish-speakers. What the NFL gets is that the Hispanic population of the US is exploding, and that any league that can create fans in Spanish-speaking communities will be in a great position. Major League Soccer has refocused their marketing plan to try and reach out to Hispanic markets where a love of soccer already exists.

This raises the question: What is Major League Baseball doing? I suppose it shouldn't be surprising that they aren't marketing very effectively to Hispanics -- they aren't marketing effectively to anyone. But this is another opportunity that could slip through MLBs fingers if they don't get on the stick. There are more Spanish-speakers playing baseball than any other pro sport by a huge factor. If you can't market to Hispanics with Sammy Sosa, Albert Pujols, Ivan Rodriguez, and Pedro Martinez, you're got a problem.

Battle at the Big House

If you like college football (and if you don't, you should), tomorrow will be a great day. It's the day that many of the classic rivalry games are played, including the Iron Bowl between Alabama and Auburn, the Civil War games in Washington and Oregon, the Harvard/Yale game, USC vs. UCLA, and the "Big Game" between Cal and Stanford out here in the Bay Area. But for me, there's one rivalry that surpasses all the others: Ohio State and Michigan. Of course, I would say that, because I'm a die-hard Ohio State fan.

Some sports teams we get to pick; some are thrust upon us. I was born in Columbus, Ohio two days before the 1971 OSU/Michigan game while my dad was attending school at Ohio State. One of the earliest pictures of me included a small stuffed OSU football. I had no choice--the Buckeyes were my fate literally from the day I was born.

I remember watching them lose in the 1980 Rose Bowl, blowing a shot at a national title by failing to stop a late USC drive. I sat at my parent's friends' house, where we had gone to watch the game on a projection-screen TV, and sobbed.

Last year, I sat in a hotel room in Vancouver, my infinitely-patient girlfriend by my side, watching Ohio State win their first national title in my lifetime. After the game, I was unsure how to act, as no team I root for had ever won a thing. I ended up just walking around with a goofy grin, while the Canadians on the street wondered had put me in such a state.

Tomorrow, OSU and Michigan play for the 100th time. If Ohio State can win in Ann Arbor, they'll get a chance to defend their national title. This is a team that continues to squeak out wins in the most improbable ways. In fact, they're so weak that they're seven point underdogs, even though they're the higher-ranked team.

No predictions from me here. But I know that at 9 AM here on the West Coast, I'll be in front of my TV, living and dying with every play.

More on Steroids and THG

First of all, thanks to Christian for the link over here from Cub Reporter. We've know each other a long, long time, and it's fun to be able to link to his site, which is the best team site that I know of. Now, back to the simmering steroid issue. The IAAF, the governing body of track and field, has announced that a "very low" number of urine samples from the recent World Championships have tested positive for THG. The IAAF is retesting some 400 samples from the Worlds for the genetically engineered steroid.

According to the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, the THG comes from BALCO here in the San Francisco area, which is the subject of an ongoing grand jury investigation. Four members for the Oakland Raiders have reportedly tested positive for THG.

This situation is about to get very, very ugly. Athletes who test positive for THG will be banned by the IAAF for two years. But the smoking gun here could be BALCO, and a) whether they were distributing THG, and b) how many of their clients were taking it. If they were, we could be looking at dozens of high profile athletes facing not only suspension from their sports, but criminal charges as well.

A Case for Sports

Somewhere on the edges of the human psyche lies a need for competition. Perhaps it's an Darwinian remnant buried in us, pushing us to try and foist our genetic superiority upon the world. Maybe it's a simple need to prove oneself against others, to take our own measure. Or maybe we're just drawn, in our craven way, to see who's fastest, biggest, best. Whatever its origin, sports is its highest expression. What those who hate sports, the people who complain about it showing up on the front of their newspaper or on their televisions, don't understand is that there's nothing dishonest about sports. Sure, there's plenty of dishonesty around sports -- just as there's dishonesty involved in anything that humans do. But the act of sports, the fundamental competition, is as honest, as real an activity as we engage in.

The athlete, no matter what level he competes at, is content to be judged on what he does. There's a purity to this -- a way in which the normal ways that we look at ourselves, the millions subjective cues and hints that we pick up on about other people -- all fade away. Instead, you have the objective. Who hit the ball farther? Who ran faster? Who won?

Why are sports important? There's ritual value there, of course. There's something magical about the way sports can unite people across social, racial and economic lines, forging their hopes into one. But there's also the more personal. Sports are important because they ask no more than simply being in the moment, completely.