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Six days into 2011, and already there’s good reason to be outraged

Posted in sports, Uncategorized, tagged , , , on January 6, 2011|

My New Year’s resolution (actually, it just occurred to me) was to be calm and composed in 2012, but I guess that’s not going to happen. Maybe next year.

I apologize to you non-sports fans, but I’ve got to get these outrages out of my system. Then, no more sports for a while…unless The Star does a 180 and hires Jason Whitlock back.    

So, here goes:

:: What is with these bowl games? Will they ever end?

Used to be, all the attention was focused on four big New Year’s Day games — Cotton, Sugar, Rose and Orange bowls and you could sit around and eat your Hoppin’ John, enjoy a nice beverage and then the football season was over.

But not anymore. Oh, no! Now, there are 35 bowl games, which start a week before Christmas and go until it’s time for that clarion call, “Pitchers and catchers report.” Well, that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but the national championship game, Auburn vs. Oregon, doesn’t take place until next week.

The bowl season has become so diluted and strung out that the games have become about as riveting as a flatlined electrocardiogram. I watched a total of about 10 minutes of football on New Year’s Day. Just couldn’t get excited about any of the games. 

And you know what? I’m not even sure that a playoff system, which many people advocate, would be an improvement. It might end up as a big, long slog extending into the pro football playoffs.   

On top of the bowl bog, the Rose Bowl Stadium is going to be renovated. And suites –what else? — will be added. Now that’s a double outrage!

:: On Tuesday, I was reading Sam Mellinger’s KC Star story on new KU athletic director Sheahon Zenger when I came across a passage that had me spluttering over my oatmeal.

Mellinger’s story revolved around the true face of KU athletics, basketball coach Bill Self. It seems that Mellinger had been able to get some up-close and personal  time with Self, so Mellinger found himself driving around campus with Self. He wrote: “His Lincoln Navigator cuts through campus one night, and even in the twilight, at least a few students point and smile.”

What??!! Bill Self driving a Navigator — one of the biggest road and gas hogs of all — in Lawrence, Kansas, one of the greenest cities in America?

Un-believable. The Navigator is a vehicle I would expect to see Lew Perkins driving, or Mark Mangino. And we all know where they ended up driving.

But Self? He seems like a perfect fit for humble, laid-back, non-ostentatious Lawrence.

He’d be much better off driving a hybrid. In fact, he should have the first Volt in Lawrence.

:: Tom Cable is out as head coach of the Oakland Raiders.

Raiders’ owner Al Davis has lost his mind…Well, he lost it a long time ago, he’s just showing it more these days.

Cable

I certainly haven’t been a big fan of Cable, especially when allegations surfaced in 2009, a year after Cable was named head coach, that he had broken an assistant coach’s jaw in an altercation and that he had physically abused a former girlfriend and at least one former wife.

I thought he should have been fired then. But I guess those allegations didn’t bother Boss Davis; he probably thought he’d hired a really tough guy. 

So, Cable managed to weather that storm, and the Raiders have been on the upswing the last two years. This year, they went 8-8, which isn’t great, but a big improvement over last year’s 5-11 record. The main thing, though, is that this year the Raiders won every AFC West Conference game that they played. They beat the Chargers twice, the Broncos twice and the Chiefs twice, including Sunday’s 31-10 demolition of the Chiefs. (I was there, and the Raiders had the distinct look of a team on the rise.)

His firing would be the equivalent, in my eyes, of Turner Gill’s Kansas Jayhawks beating both Missouri and K-State in back-to-back years and Gill getting handed the pink slip.

It’s an outrage, that’s all you can say.

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A magical day on Mount Oread

Posted in sports, Uncategorized, tagged on November 8, 2010|

For years to come, maybe decades, KU fans will tell each other where they were the day of the Mount Oread Miracle, as The Kansas City Star aptly called it.

It will go down as the day the lowly Jayhawks scored five touchdowns — five touchdowns — in the fourth quarter and came from out of nowhere to beat the Colorado Buffaloes 52-45.

Well, I want to be one of the first to tell you where I was and how I spent my day, because I was there. I was there until the very end of that incredible event. 

First, the context.

I have no strong ties to any of the three regional Big 12 schools, other than the fact that my wife Patty is a 1978 graduate of MU. I follow all three schools in football and men’s and women’s basketball, and I root for all three. When they play each other, I vacillate.

Over the years, as you might imagine, I’ve had to mute and moderate my cheering for KU because of my wife’s affiliation with MU. This weekend, though, I had a pass: My wife was out of town on business. Shortly after waking up Saturday morning, following a choppy night of sleep battling a cough and sinus drainage, I began entertaining the idea of driving over to Lawrence for the game.

The idea grew on me, no impediments arose, and about 11:30 I headed west on I-70. Still congested, I felt woozy on the drive and wondered if I had made a mistake in committing myself to an entire afternoon in Lawrence. I pushed on, however, and when I got to Iowa Street, I stopped at The Community Mercantile, known as The Merc, for lunch. Cauliflower and red pepper soup, along with a wheat roll and a big oatmeal raisin cookie, helped lift me out of my fog; things were looking up.

I had to park several blocks west of the stadium, at Harvard and Sunset, and it struck me that there must be a pretty good crowd, despite the fact that both teams were winless in Big 12 play. (The announced crowd was 40,851.)

When I got to the stadium, with the game already underway, I began soliciting other late arrivals, asking if anyone had an extra ticket. After a few minutes, I bought a ticket ($80 face value) for $15  from a Lee’s Summit man named “Don,” whose friend had canceled at the last minute. When we got to Don’s seats, on about the 10 yard line on the west side of the stadium, the score was 7-3 Colorado.

Colorado quickly ran the score to 28-3, however, and Don turned to me and said, “Are you sorry you bought the ticket?”

“No,” I replied, “I made a good deal.” Besides, it felt good, sitting in the sun, enjoying the beautiful afternoon.

By halftime, the score was 35-10, and everybody around me was fairly disgusted with KU’s performance. To his credit, though, Don, a 1971 KU grad, was holding out hope. “It’s still early,” he said.

About the time the half ended, the sun dipped behind the west-side press box and suites, and a chill set in as the shadows began falling over the west-side seats.

One of the things I love about KU football games is watching and listening to the KU band, which is consistently great. The band put on an excellent halftime show, which included a rousing version of Aerosmith’s “Walk This Way,” and then headed back to its east-side seating section, which was bathed in sun.

I took the break as an opportunity to bid so long to Don and headed over to a lower-level section adjoining the band. With the game seemingly out of reach, I decided I’d just sit in the sun and watch the band up close.

When I got to the other side, the stands had thinned out considerably; thousands of people had departed. No one was around me on the aluminum benches, and I focused not on the game but on the band, as it punctuated the atmosphere and rallied what was left of the crowd with horn-blaring, drum-snapping, musical bursts.

As the score reached 45-17, however, my attention began to flag, and the warm sun made me drowsy. I leaned back, rested my shoulders on the bench behind me and soon was almost asleep, chin on chest.

But then I heard a commotion. KU had scored a touchdown with a little more than 11 minutes left in the game. That made it 45-24. I thought, “Well, three touchdowns, with extra points, would tie it, but…nah, isn’t going to happen.”

A minute and a half later, they scored again, cutting the margin to 45-31, and I raised my back off the bench behind me. Two and a half minutes after that, a KU player recovered a Colorado fumble and ran the ball in for another touchdown. 45-38.

By then, some of those who had hung around had joined me down in the lower rows, and we stood cheering and talking excitedly, thinking and hoping we just might be part of something very special.

When KU tied the game at the 4:30 mark, everyone around me was jumping up and down, “waving the wheat” and exchanging double high-hand slaps. KU scored the go-ahead touchdown with 52 seconds left in the game, and, looking across the field into the lowering sun, I took in the beautiful bedlam taking place on the KU sideline and in the chilly-looking, west-side stands.

After a last-ditch Colorado scoring threat, it was over. A delirious, almost incomprehensible victory was in hand.  

I turned my attention back to the band, which played a couple of high-energy songs as the fans headed for the exits. With the stadium emptying, the band took a short break. The student director stepped down from the ladder and turned the elevated spot over to a faculty member, immaculately dressed in white shirt and tie, dark slacks and, of course, crimson sport coat.

As the director raised his arms and held them aloft for several seconds, the band members collected themselves and positioned their instruments. As his arms fell, the band struck the first notes of its traditional finishing song, “Home on the Range.” The arrangement was distinctive and featured a high, extended trumpet note that stood in captivating counterpoint to the recognizable refrain.

When the song ended, the director, using a portable microphone, congratulated the band on an outstanding performance. He reminded them that a rehearsal was scheduled for 10 a.m. Sunday but also reminded them that they would get an extra hour sleep because Saturday was the night to turn back the clocks. The weary band members cheered.

Then, in what must be a ritual, the director turned off the microphone and yelled, “What kind of day is it today?”

In unison, the band members — leaning forward, faces flushed — shouted back, “IT’S A GREAT DAY TO BE A JAYHAWK.”

And, oh, at that moment, how I longed to be a Jayhawk, too!

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The town takes on some air

Posted in journalism, sports, Uncategorized, tagged , on September 14, 2010| 3 Comments »

Now there’s a game that was worth losing some sleep over!

Chiefs 21, Chargers 14. Finish time: about 12:15 a.m.

It might go down in the annals of local sports as the game that put Kansas City back on the NFL map.

Isn’t it amazing how one game can lift the spirits of a town that has seen so many years of frustrating losses for its two primary major-league franchises?  

All that losing, combined with the Chiefs’ relatively poor pre-season play, had a lot of people on edge and gloomy about the team’s prospects. Why, just a few weeks ago, The Star’s Adam Teicher and Chiefs’ head coach Todd Haley had a testy exchange at a news conference, and it looked like bitterness was going to be the season-long tone out at Arrowhead.

I was one of those people who was gloomy about the team’s prospects.  On July 22, I wrote, accurately, in this space that the sun was setting on Jason Whitlock’s career at The Star. (He resigned last month.) I went on to write, terribly inaccurately, it appears, that one of the reasons Whitlock was verging on irrelevance in Kansas City was that “the Chiefs are in a sorry state.”

I went on to say: “…they have a hot-headed, yet dull-as-dirt coach in Todd Haley; they have an egocentric president, Scott Pioli, who hides in his office; and they have a sub-par group of players. So, really, what does it matter what Whitlock might write about this year’s Chiefs?”

Now, clearly, there’s a guy who didn’t know what he was talking about! There’s a blogger — the kind I like to complain about — who was just standing on a soap box and making noise. I could have, and should have, qualified it, as I learned to do in my many years at The Star, and said, “It appears that the Chiefs are in a sorry state.” That would have given me some cover.

At least, however, I was swimming in a crowded pool. And now all of us who were in that pool want out; we want out of the pool of despair and into the waters of rejuvenation because football is back in Kansas City. Once again, the Chiefs own the town…Well, I guess I better say it appears that the Chiefs own the town.

And what about Whitlock? How do you think he feels today? Wherever he’s writing now — Twitter or Foxsports.com — look for him to try to minimize this thrilling victory, to write it off as an aberration. But deep down, where his little heart is beating, I’ll bet he’s sorry that he’s not here writing about this team, with its talented, enthusiastic young players and its new, deeply experienced offensive and defensive coordinators.

If he were here, I’ll bet he’d be calling today on Chiefs’ fans everywhere to “Get on the bandwagon…This team might go undefeated!”

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Club footed but dying to run

Posted in sports, Uncategorized, tagged , , on August 9, 2010|

In this summer of Royals Retrenchment and Waiting for Whitlock, here’s something to cheer about.

It’s not close by. But that doesn’t really matter. It’s a universal story that can be embraced by anybody anywhere.

The heroine is a three-year-old filly named Lisa’s Booby Trap (more about that in a minute), who has surmounted a club foot and blindness in one eye to become, in a matter of weeks, the most closely watched racehorse in America.

The hero is her owner and trainer, Tim Snyder, who bought the horse for $4,500 ($2,000 down, $2,500 if she won a race) after the breeder had given up on the horse.

To give you the gist — and the glory — of the situation, Lisa’s Booby Trap has won four straight races, with the most recent win coming Friday in a stakes race at prestigious Saratoga Race Course in upstate New York. She paid $5 to win on a $2 bet; the jockey was Kent Desormeaux. Earlier, she had won three races in a row at the relatively small Finger Lakes Racetrack in the same state.

The next step will be a much bigger test. She is scheduled to run at Saratoga on Saturday, Aug. 28, in a Grade III stakes race. Graded stakes are the highest levels of racing, with Grade I being the top, followed by grades two and three. But any graded race is a big deal.

New York racing fans were watching Lisa’s Booby Trap before her most recent win, but it was a New York Times story Friday morning (the day of the race) that catapulted her and her owner into celebrity status. Writer Bill Finley summed it up by saying, “Horse racing is the type of sport…where anything can happen, even a stakes victory at Saratoga by a horse that was a lost cause, with an owner and trainer who never had much more than $2,000 rolled up in his boot.”

Now for the backdrop. Snyder, who is in his 50s, has spent a good part of his life working with “claimers,” the lowest level of racing, where horses can be purchased at set prices before a given race. After the race, the new owner (or trainer) leads the horse away to his barn, while the previous owner gets the prize money, if the horse was fortunate enough to finish in the money.

Snyder’s life changed in 2003, when his wife, Lisa, died of ovarian cancer. Snyder, as Finley told it, went off to California, where he worked odd jobs for a few years and tried to regain his bearings. He returned to Finger Lakes to work for another trainer but set his sights on getting a horse of his own.

From a friend, he ended up buying an unnamed horse the friend had obtained from a breeder. Because of the club foot, the horse had an awkward gait. In addition to the blind eye, she had a shoulder problem. In an interesting juxtaposition, Snyder named her for his late wife and also for a chain of strip clubs in South Florida that he patronizes.

Stuck with the horse’s inherent defects, Snyder began experimenting with different shoes, and, lo and behold, he found a combination that worked. Just like that, Lisa’s Booby Trap began her Cinderella-like transformation.

“The big outfits, the big farms,” Snyder told Finley, “they take a horse like that and push her to the end of the line. If she didn’t have those problems, I’d never have gotten her.”

So, chalk one up for a little guy with a lot of perseverance and for a club footed filly who wanted to run and just needed the right shoes.

What a story it would be if Lisa’s booby Trap won on Aug. 28 and then went on to run in a Breeders Cup race, the world championships, at Churchill Downs in November. People from California to South Florida would be watching and rooting.

Lisa's Booby Trap and owner Tim Snyder (right) -- New York Racing Association photo

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The sun is setting on Jason Whitlock’s run at The Kansas City Star

Posted in journalism, sports, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on July 22, 2010| 3 Comments »

With the Chiefs getting set to open summer camp next week in St. Joseph, this is a good time to address a subject I’ve been thinking about lately.

Jason Whitlock.

More specifically, Jason Whitlock and his future at The Kansas City Star, where he’s been a fixture for 16 years.

In my opinion, Jason is effectively finished at The Star. I’m not just basing that on the fact that he hasn’t had a column in the paper – either sports or one of his ridiculous “independent thoughts” op-ed pieces — since June 2. No, the tell-tale sign that he’s effectively finished is that there have been very few inquiries and very little speculation, anywhere, regarding his absence from print.

That tells me that he has essentially become irrelevant, as far as readers of The Star are concerned. At this point, The Star might as well cut his big, fat salary loose and spend the money on some more reporters or copy editors.

In recent weeks, The Star has been running a box, usually on Page 2 of the Sunday sports section, saying that Whitlock is on vacation. A few weeks ago, someone at The Star told me that Whitlock had gone on vacation and then had a death in the family.

But still…seven weeks? Nobody at The Star gets that much time off; I’m pretty sure five weeks is the maximum.

He’s been writing columns for Foxsports.com, and he’s been Tweeting, but, like many a suspect on A&E’s “The First 48,” he’s “nowhere to be found” in the pages of The Star. I haven’t put in an official inquiry to anyone at The Star because if a separation is looming, I won’t get a straight answer. Besides, it’s not particularly material if he does resurface in print because, as I said at the outset, my point is that he’s effectively finished at the paper.

Here are three reasons I say that:

:: During the go-go years, when Whitlock and Joe Posnanski were a solid one-two punch, just about everyone who followed sports couldn’t wait to read what Whitlock and Poz had to say. They had a symbiotic journalistic relationship that worked to the benefit of the readers. With Whitlock often wielding the hammer and Posnanski bringing the lyrical touch, the duo gave the readers a reason to open their papers early. Then, a year ago, Posnanski left The Star to become a senior writer at Sports Illustrated, and the magic quickly disappeared. It was like any great team – Burns and Allen, Martin and Lewis – they were just a lot better together than as solo acts.

:: We came through the entire conference realignment story, which went on for many weeks, without an utterance, as far as I can tell, from Whitlock. It has been, by far, the biggest story in college sports this year, and The Star’s supposed No. 1 columnist never wrote about it. The people who carried the ball for The Star on that story – and ever so capably – were reporters Blair Kerkhoff and Mike DeArmond and columnist Sam Mellinger. Mellinger is Posnanski’s successor. A baseball expert, he has made great strides in his relatively short tenure. He’s like Posnanski in that he’s prolific, but he’s different in that he relies less on turning a phrase and more on insight and keen observation.

:: Finally, the Chiefs are in a sorry state, and, while they still are very popular, they are not nearly as relevant as they used to be under “King Carl,” as Whitlock memorably referred to former Chiefs president Carl Peterson. They have an earnest but unimaginative owner in Clark Hunt; they have a hot-headed, yet dull-as-dirt coach in Todd Haley; they have an egocentric president, Scott Pioli, who hides in his office; and they have a sub-par group of players. So, really, what does it matter what Whitlock might write about this year’s Chiefs?   

Let’s face it…Whitlock’s day in the sun as a columnist for The Star has passed. I wish him luck in the future, but it’s time for him and us to move on.

The king is dead! Long live the king! (Mellinger, that is.)

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Loss and opportunity

Posted in sports, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on June 12, 2010| 5 Comments »

There’s only one thing to do when you’re down, kicked around and feeling sorrow for yourself:

Get out and look for opportunity.

Yes, Kansas City is taking a hit with the impending break-up of the Big 12 conference, and, yes, business is going to be a little slower, at least for a while, at the Power & Light District.

But I think KC Star columnist Sam Mellinger was too bleak — too defeatist — in his assessment of the sporting landscape in Friday’s paper. Mellinger, in case you haven’t read it, called Friday “our darkest sports hour.”

Mellinger wrote: “Right or wrong, sports are a huge part of a city’s identity, and getting punched in the gut is now as familiar as humidity, potholes and bad public schools. If this is the day our college sports scene is forever diminished, how could it not be our darkest sports hour?”

Well, Mellinger didn’t make much of a case for Kansas City, as a whole, being down and out, did he? I mean, humidity, potholes and bad schools? A lot of cities have those drawbacks…and a lot more. In his hand wringing, Mellinger failed to take into account the bigger picture, the overarching reality: Kansas City is a great city and has been for a long time.

Kansas City has endured bad fires, bad floods, ice storms, the collapse of the Hyatt skywalks, the loss of professional sports franchises (baseball, basketball and hockey), the departure of the FFA and the NCAA, many years of  losing Kansas City Chiefs teams, and, now, Mark Funkhouser. And yet, it remains a great city. Why? Because we have a storied history, an indomitable spirit, old and new money, and tens of thousands of young people who are out there scraping and scrapping, determined to succeed and have fun along the way.  

I remember so well how Emanuel Cleaver, after being elected mayor in 1991, almost singlehandedly threw aside the pall of dullness that had settled over Kansas City during the 12 long years that Richard Berkley was mayor. I remember Cleaver standing at the podium in the City Council chamber and, more than once, inveighing the council to push for bigger and better things.

“This isn’t some podunk town along I-70,” Cleaver would say, resoundingly, “this is Kansas City!”

And that brings me back to where I started. Opportunity. Mellinger noted that Kansas City’s chances of landing an NBA or NHL team for the Sprint Center have never been lower. Well, we already had one of each (the Kings and the Scouts in the 1970s), and neither worked out. I don’t think much has changed in that regard, either. So, forget it. It’s too big a roll of the dice.

But there is a professional sport that could easily be in Kansas City’s range: women’s professional basketball. The season is short, running from about mid-May to mid-August. The salaries are relatively low ($803,000 salary cap per team), which makes it relatively affordable for an owner. Plus, women’s basketball is on the rise. 

What we need is someone (or some group) who has fairly deep pockets and loves women’s basketball to step up and take a chance. So, let’s stop the hand wringing over the loss of the Big 12. Now is the time for the Kansas City Sports Commission and Foundation, city leaders and influential commentators like Mellinger to start stirring up interest in something new, something untried in Kansas City but with a decent reasonable for success. I really believe that with enthusiastic and creative ownership and management, the WNBA could do well here.

Hey, Tulsa got a team this year, the Shock. Tulsa…which, in my opinion, is little more than a podunk town along I-44.

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Extra cute conference?

Posted in journalism, sports, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on June 9, 2010| 2 Comments »

Like many other Big 12 fans, I’ve struggled with the question of whether Missouri should switch to the Big Ten Conference, if an invitation is extended. 

In a flash of grammatical and linguistic obfuscation, I found my answer a couple of days ago. In Saturday’s Star, sports writer Blair Kerkhoff reported on e-mail correspondence between two Big Ten officials that shed light on where the Big Ten might be headed in its quest to expand from the current 11 schools. (I know its odd that the Big Ten has 11 schools, but the Big Ten is a brand name that probably won’t change, even if it ends up with 15 members.) 

It was actually the Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch that got its hands on the e-mails, and Kerkhoff properly credited the Dispatch. The e-mails were between Ohio State president Gordon Gee and Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany. In his message, Gee informed Delany that he had spoken to a University of Texas official, who had told him that if Texas was asked to join the Big Ten it would have a “Tech” problem. The problem, seemingly, was that Texas would be hard pressed to pull up stakes and leave fellow Big 12 member Texas Tech in the lurch. 

Jim Delany

Here’s where it gets interesting, and curious. Delany — remember, he’s the Big Ten commissioner — responded like this, and I’m quoting word for word, letter for letter: “We are fast-tracking it but need to know the $ and observe contracts. Also need to make sure we leverage this to increase chances of hr additions. Finally double chess # of moving parts including not harming brand as we executy.”  

The first sentence, which is a sentence, is pretty clear. The second, although not really a sentence because it lacks a subject, is nevertheless decipherable. With “hr,” he apparently was referring to “home run” additions to the Big Ten, and Texas would fill the bill. But that last sentence — lacking both subject and verb — left sports writers throughout the Midwest scratching their heads.  

Teddy Greenstein of the Chicago Tribune had this to say: “Is ‘executy’ a typo for ‘execute’ — or some altered version of ‘extra cutey’? And what’s with the chess reference? Either Big Ten power brokers have their own language, or Delany is all thumbs.” 

Here’s my thought. One of the reasons that Missouri reportedly is interested in the Big Ten — besides an influx of money into its athletic programs — is that the Big Ten schools, which include, among others, Minnesota, Northwestern, Penn State and Illinois, generally are a cut above the Big 12 schools academically. So, you would expect the commissioner to be a pretty sharp fellow, wouldn’t you? 

From his e-mail, however, he looks like a guy who butchers the King’s English and doesn’t edit his writing before hitting the “send” button. As a person who respects the nuances of language and grammar, I’ve always understood the importance of double checking what I write before hitting “send.” Of course, I’ve made mistakes and sent messages that I wish I could have back for further editing, but I don’t think I’ve messed up a message of great sensitivity, like Delany apparently did. It’s best to assume that any e-mail you send could end up in the wrong hands and could come back to embarrass you.   

So, that does it for me: Missouri should stay in the Big 12 and avoid the lure of the league where the commissioner can’t spell and has trouble fashioning a complete sentence.

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Lew Perkins, victimhood and a prayer

Posted in sports, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on June 4, 2010| 1 Comment »

Two things before leaving for our daughter’s graduation on Saturday from Knox College in Galesburg, IL. (Whoo-hoo!)

:: KU athletic director Lew Perkins says, “I’m the victim.”

What a joke.

Here’s the story in a nutshell. Perkins makes $900,000 a year, but he accepted a free loan of $15,000 to $35,000 in exercise equipment for four years in return for prime Allen Fieldhouse seats for the equipment provider.

Then, after the school’s former director of sports medicine threatened to go public with details of the swap unless he was compensated for the cost of storing the equipment the last year or so, Perkins went to the cops.

Not only was Perkins’ acceptance of the loan unethical, it was also illegal, in all probability. The law states that “no person subject to the provisions of this section shall solicit or accept any gift,economic opportunity, loan, gratuity, special discount or service provided because of such person’s official position.”

You know what gets me about situations like this? In many, many cases, those caught on the take are people who could whip out a check and write it for however much is needed to conduct an honest and above-board transaction. Perkins could write the check and forget about it, probably without even having to transfer funds from his brokerage to his checking account. 

But, no, he takes the freebie. I guess Perkins is so used to having people throw gratuities at him in return for low-down, center-section seats that he couldn’t push himself away from the table.

Low-down is the right term, all right. But now I’m not talking about seat location; I’m talking about Perkins’ morals. 

Last week, if you’ll recall, Perkins said, “I accept responsibility” (but not full responsibility) for a multi-million-dollar ticket scam that occurred under his nose. Now, the other shoe has fallen, and I don’t see any way that Perkins can survive. I say he’s gone by Independence Day.

:: Talk about victims.

How about the 25-year-old man and 21-year-old woman who were ambushed behind Charlie Hooper’s in Brookside last Friday morning? Two thugs beat the couple with handguns and kicked them mercilessly, even though the couple handed over their belongings.

The woman suffered a broken jaw and vertebra and three skull fractures. She was initially listed in critical condition. I don’t know what it is now, but from what I read on a KCTV-5 online story, she’s been able to communicate with police. 

The cowardice of the perps is infuriating. There was no reason whatsoever to harm the couple. And to kick and stomp on the woman? Two pieces of space junk named Durrell D. White and Andre D. Valentine have been charged. The victims identified their attackers from photo lineups, according to the KCTV- 5 story. 

I’ve been waking up early in the morning, thinking about this case, thinking mostly about the woman…a girl, really. Thinking about her parents, other relatives, friends, who have to suffer along with her. Thinking about my own, beautiful, 22-year-old daughter and how vulnerable she — and almost any other young woman — would be to such an attack. 

The unfairness of it and the inability of anyone to change what has already happened make me rage against fate…and a little bit against God. And yet, at the same time, I pray. Please, God, let both victims make complete recoveries; help them and their families to cope with the physical and psychological injuries they have suffered at the hands of  unthinking, unsympathetic individuals. I ask You, why does the world have to be like this? I ask You, don’t let anything like this happen again…And yet, I fear, I know, it will. Damn!

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So long, Lew

Posted in sports, tagged , , on May 28, 2010|

In the fourth entry of my career — way back in March — I called for Pope Benedict XVI to resign. I guess the pope didn’t get the message or he just ignored my call, as he ignored similar calls from Maureen Dowd of The New York Times, other columnists and commentators and a Massachusetts priest.

Today, I’m calling on KU athletic director Lew Perkins to resign, and I have to tell you I think the odds of Perkins resigning are a lot lower than the odds of the pope resigning. Back in the thick of the new priest sex-abuse revelations, an Irish bookmaker dropped the odds of the pope resigning from 12-1 to 3-1. Anybody who would make such a bet with the odds that low would be crazy.

With Perkins, though, I think the odds of him resigning are even money. (Personal disclosure here: I’m from Kentucky and did not attend KU, MU, K-State or any other Big 12 school.) If you can get odds of 2-1 or 3-1, jump on it. This might even be an “odds-on” situation. (Quick gambling primer here: Odds on means that if you bet a dollar, you get your dollar back but less than another dollar in actual winnings.)

At the track, I usually avoid making odds-on bets. (There’s on old track-side saying about  favorites that go off at 3 to 5, “If you’ve got the five, you don’t need the three.”) But in this case, I think I’d wager some money, even with “odds on.” Why? Well, look at the situation. Perkins either is a crook himself or he got taken by a bunch of crooked Okies, all but one of whom he either hired or promoted to jobs where they could slather themselves in illicit gains from the misappropriation of thousands of tickets to big-time athletic events.

It’s very clear that the ticket operation was run like a “candy store,” as the university’s internal report said, and it defies logic that six people, at least, who were involved in the high jinks would be able to give the impression that they were running a tight ship. So even if Lew wasn’t benefitting monetarily from the sale of tickets to brokers (also Okies), and even if he didn’t know exactly what was going on with the ticket operation, he had to know something was fishy. After all, one of the main duties of the guy (or gal) at the top of an organization is simply to watch your employees and to know what they are doing.

Did you notice, though, how Perkins tried to distance himself from the situation, even while accepting responsibility? He said, “I accept responsibility, not for any criminal activity, but because I am the athletic director and it happened during my watch.” Take a a closer look at that sentence. What key word is missing in the first phrase? “Full,” as in “I accept full responsibility.” Because if he had accepted full responsibility, as he should have, he would have to resign.

Look at the second part of the sentence…”it happened during my watch.” It’s a common, catch-all phrase that he would like to have people interpret this way: “It happened over there, while I was over here.” Again, if he had said, “The wrongdoing was perpetrated by people whom I hired and whom I oversee and whose job performance I evaluate,” well…..he’d have to resign, wouldn’t he?

Then, he went on to say something truly incredible: “I thought we had just about every safeguard in place, but nobody picked up on it. I certainly didn’t.”

It’s a good thing I didn’t have a mouthful of cookies when I read that, or the dogs would have been scampering all around the room. Safeguards? The Okies are probably the only people who had the combination to the ticket vault.

At this point, we just have to trust that the Chancellor Bernadette Gray-Little and members of the university’s board of trustees and major donors to the athletic program see through the smoke that Perkins blew far and wide on Wednesday and that they will come to the conclusion — if they haven’t already – that it’s time for Perkins to depart. Once that happens, they won’t have to fire him. He’ll leave.

And I believe they will come to that decision fairly quickly — at least by the time criminal charges are filed — and that will be the end of what is turning out to be a most disappointing and dishonorable era in KU athletics.

So, readers, get your bets down now. Don’t get shut out, as the railbirds say. With every day that passes, the odds are dropping.

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