Finally...It's Over

This had to be the longest NBA season of my life and thankfully the NBA Finals ended last night. I had minimal interest at best. I confess to not being either a Laker or Magic fan. As the NBA goes there seem to be more and more teams each year I grow to dislike or am disinterested. But if pressed, I hate the Lakers. The team of my youth were the Russell/Bird Celtic's and since my relocation to the Valley of the Sun, I love the Nash led Suns. I was raised in a basketball family and I love the GAME of Basketball. Maybe that's why I'm having a fallout with the NBA version. I admit being a basketball snob and a bit of a purest and I hate that the best players in the world are held to less of a standard when it comes to the rules of the game. Traveling, palming, grabbing, slapping, flopping, ball at three quarters court late in a game, superstars being protected are just some of the items that cause me to rant. And I have been know to rant. I would recommend the College game but they are close behind in the same tactics. So for now, its down to the high school level for those of us who want to see rules enforced like they were originally written. If only the NBA would see the error of their ways and bring back the the most beautifully played game we have. It would be "Fantastic".

Cheater, Cheater, Cheater

Another John Calipari program is coming under NCAA scrutiny for alleged violations and as usual the "teflon don" of college basketball has already fled. The allegation centers on star player and #1 NBA draft pick Derrick Rose and who may have taken his SAT test. Of course Calipari denies any knowledge of the wrongdoing. Just like when he was at UMass and his star player, Marcus Camby had already signed with an agent. I guess the "man" placed in charge of a major college program is always kept in the dark about important personnel matters. And I'm perfectly sure after checking Rose's high school transcript and having a couple of deep conversations with his recruit, he must of been perfectly satisfied he had the needed intelligence to gain his eligibility into the highly accredited University of Memphis. What's the graduation rate?

Not...Calipari is a scam artist pure and simple. He's a bane of college basketball. He toys with the lives of young men for his financial and egotistical benefit. University of Kentucky basketball, the most heavily sanctioned basketball program in the history of college basketball has been put in his hands and I'd care to wager within a few years, the lights at Rupp Arena will go dark as the NCAA evokes the "death penalty" for his follies.

Some years ago at a NBA draft combine, I had the unfortunate experience of sitting a row ahead of the esteemed Coach Calipari for a session and I found him to be one of the most arrogant, pompous, self promoters I have ever encountered. These are the virtues I'm sure you never hear from the likes of Dickie V or other college basketball promoters. But then again they'll never kick a dog like Calipari until he's down for the count. Well, start counting.

Arlen Specter - Senate Turncoat

News reports tell us the five time elected scumbag senator from Pennsylvania is switching parties from Republican to Democrat. It's been a long time coming that this turncoat shows his true colors and makes a run to the left side of the aisle. I feel sorry for the people of his state who voted for his hypocrisy. But what surely is the reason why this scumbag made the switch might you ask? Because he would be facing a serious primary challenge within his own party that he was sure to lose. So he sprinted into the welcoming arms of Obama,Reid, Pelosi, Schumer and such. It tells you something about the morals and conviction of this guy or any senator for that matter. When push comes to shove, members of Congress will do and say anything to retain membership. To hell with America, it's an all about me attitude. I certainly hope the great people of Pennsylvania in their next election puts this miserable excuse for a public servant out of service for our country's sake.

March Madness...Hardly

The college basketball season came to a close last night in a yawner of a game. I actually turned the channel within the first ten minutes of the opening half. My wife of 34 years was astonished to think she'd see me turn off a national championship game. It has never happened in all the years I can remember. So why, last night?. March Madness has turned into March Badness. Last year all four # 1 seeds made it to the Final Four. This year, two #1's. a #2 and a #3. Cinderella has been only a fairy tale. You can count on one hand the exciting games of the entire tournament. Not one last second shot. Hardly an upset. March Madness has gone stale.
Or maybe the college game itself is what's failing us. Unless you have a astronomical budget(money, money money) and belong to major BCS conference, your dreams of cutting down the nets is the fairy tale. You have "NC" and that doesn't stand for North Carolina. The yucks on ESPN think college basketball starts and end with UNC, Duke, UCLA, Indiana, UConn...etc. No other schools should dare join the elite. My Alma mater, Xavier, who's crafted quite a winning tradition for a small Jesuit university just had their head coach bought by the University of Arizona, for the tune of 2.2 Million reasons per year. And it's not the first time that has happened.
So here's my solution, at least for next year. Send all the top four seeds as far away from playing at home as possible, no home court advantages. They have enough already. Limit the number of selections from the major conferences. No .500 or lower in conference record teams allowed. Finally, let's accommodate them at the local Motel 6 and feed them McDonald's. That should be good for a couple of thrilling upsets for next year.

Let's Pray...there is no Dodd

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/03/20/sen-dodds-political-future-cloudy-aig-bonus-controversy/

March Madness II

State schools dominate. So the real question is, who's the top PRIVATE school in the tourney. Is it:

• Duke
• Gonzaga
• Syracuse
  
• Xavier
• St Anthony's (NJ)

Not many choices.

March Madness

Days BEFORE Selection Sunday, I'm picking the NCAA winners:

Men's Final Four:

• UConn
• North Carolina
• Michigan State
• Pitt

Winner: UConn

Women's Final Four:

• UConn
• There's
• No one
• Else

Winner: UConn

Our Father who art in ... Hartford?

In Connecticut, the ranking members of the Senate Judiciary Committee have proposed legislation aimed at one church. The legislation would require individual Roman Catholic (only) parishes to be structured and governed in a particular way. In its current form, it is called Raised Bill 1098. It won't pass. But you can imagine what this means. Legislators feel free to attack the First Amendment. Anti-religion is on the rise. In (fill-in-the-blank) We Trust? This is what I wrote to my legislators and to the bill's authors:

It is a frightening day when the government acts directly against a religious group. I am adamantly opposed to any intervention by the Legislature into the governance of the
Catholic Church. I urge you to oppose Raised Bill 1098.

On its face, this proposed bill is a violation of the separation of Church and State. Perhaps more importantly, how does such a blatently unconstitutional bill get this far?

I am concerned that the lessons of history are lost on the very people who have been given the authority to write history. One of the core precepts of this country is religious freedom. This right allows individuals to join institutions based on their free will. If the institution is not being governed in a way that makes sense, each of us has the right and ability to choose another institution. If any individual's constitutional rights are being abridged, there are already state and federal laws that can be brought to bear.

That a legislator would use the power of government to attempt to force an organizational change in the Catholic Church is stunning. If this attempt succeeds, the consequences are almost too profound to grasp. Imagine a priest being arrested for carrying out pastoral and episcopal duties. Imagine individual believers having to declare for a 'state-sanctioned' church, with tax levies or other consequences for failure to comply.

"In Germany, they came first for the Communists, And I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist;

And then they came for the trade unionists, And I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist;

And then they came for the Jews, And I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew;

And then . . . they came for me . . . And by that time there was no one left to speak up."

- Martin Niemoller

The issues facing the Church are real and need to be addressed by its membership. The legislature has no role to play.

Barney Frank, Nancy Pelosi,Christopher Dodd, Harry Reid

I can't remember but were these morons on the Presidential ballot last November?
How do we shut this foursome up? They are expects on everything.
Maybe if our supreme "Messiah" wasn't such a rookie and actually took some time away from delivering three or four speeches a day he'd take them to the woodshed to deliver the beating they deserve.

Jim Calhoun, Urban Meyer, Roy Williams, Jim Tressel......

Every state budget in this current financial crisis is drowning in a sea of red ink and I would bet one of those government $Trillions$ the highest paid state employee in all 50 states is some coach at a university. And now you can see and hear the arrogance from someone on the taxpayers gravy train. He's won a couple of National Championships. He brings in Millions of dollars to the university. He sure sounds "Entitled". Sort of like one of those Wall Street types. Maybe President Barack Hussein Obama should come down hard on state government waste just as hard as he's come down on Wall Street salaries. It would at least be consistent.

Annual Events

The annual far-off sighting of spring: "Pitchers and Catchers report to spring training." But there's snow in the forecast. And we all know that it has snowed many times during the opening week(s) of the baseball season in April. So there's at least another month - or more - of winter in the New England.

Plenty of time to speculate on which month the Yankees will collapse this season.

Oh yeah, Yankees collapse. An annual event. Like spring.

Take Your Pick

Jeff Pearlman has it right. Bud Selig is either an idiot or he's full of sh--.

Selig has made barrels of money during the Steroids Era. Which makes him self-serving at best. But no idiot.

So my pick is ....

... he's a total cynic.

Secrets? What Secrets?

Did the world really need to hear this??

Dianne Feinstein has proven once again that any sentence with the words Intelligence and Senator in them is inherently oxymoronic. She stated at a Senate Intelligence hearing that the Predator planes used to launch missile strikes against Islamic militants are based in Pakistan. Something that had not been previously acknowledged by either side.

The age of transparent government has begun.

I've been forced, due to my business, to watch the testimony today of all the major U.S. bank CEO's getting grilled by idiotic Congressmen and Congresswomen. I think if each voter in America watched any part of these congressional proceedings, they would vote all these lame brain representatives out of office.
After watching, I say thank God for these CEO's because at least they know their business, whereas the government knows noting about their business.

First of all, I admit fully without hesitation to being a huge Yankee fan, but much more than that, a huge baseball fan. I'm sick and tired of all the steroid news and accusations the last few years. I've never been a big fan of Barry Bonds or Roger Clemens. And I sure hate to hear that A-Rod is the latest moron to have injected his body with deadly drugs.

But...if in fact you are against steroids in baseball, you are now smack on the side of the U.S. Government and Jose Canseco. And knowing their track record, maybe it's time to re-think our opinion.

As I said earlier, I'm not a fan of Barry Bonds, but boy was I a fan of seeing and hearing the crack of his bat when he connected. And I booed every second he rounded the bases. Or to see the fireball and hear the popping of a catchers glove when Clemens unloaded a high hard one. And as much as A-Fraud would fail in pressure situations, the chance that he connects is why you're there.

We live in a new era for sure and it's hard giving up our past hero's for these impostors. Mickey, Willie and the Babe will always stand the tests of time and will remain in our hearts. And I will argue that both Bonds and Clemens were HOF'ers before their first injection. It's time to forgive and forget.

I was sitting around yesterday watching the Buick Open golf tournament from La Jolla and the thought occurred to me that golf too is guilty of adding steroids to their sport. The difference is that they allowed their illegal injections into their clubs and balls. Think how we shudder to see Tiger scorch a drive of 350 yards. Think Hogan, Snead, Palmer and Nicklaus would have loved to have had the present day technology when they dominated?

And how about the NFL? That league is all about steroids. I mean guys 275-300 lbs with no body fat running sub 4.5 second forties. Jim Brown would have gained double the yards with the Mack Trucks of today clearing holes for him. Just close you eyes and look away. It's entertainment.

Training and workout structure has come along way since the days of Babe, Mickey,Willie, Jack and Arnie. The majority of professional athletes back in the day had to carry a job in the off season to pay their bills. They didn't have time to train and they certainly didn't have the luxury of a personal trainer. Let's face it. Today's athletes are the best conditioned in our history. The competition of their sports demand it. And with a widening appeal of the money sports offer and the increasing number of participants from outside the Unites States, the competition for jobs are at a boiling point. So athletes turn to performance enhancing drugs (PED's) for an edge.

In closing, let me state as emphatically as one can, that I do not and will ever look favorably upon an athlete who has to stoop to PED's as a way to compete. It's a killer as in a death sentence for those individuals. But let's also learn to accept we have a whole new paradigm for sports and its athletes and even it means re-writing record books, who cares. We have much more as humans to care about right now.