The Joys of Sport

I was recently on vacation in Miami when I stopped by a friend's house who was having a going away party for his brother. My friend is a big sports fan so I was expecting there to be some competition when he told me they were going to be playing pool volleyball and basketball. I told him I'd drop in, and as the day passed by and my wife and I spent the day together, we saw that dark clouds were forming and we could see lightning and hear thunder. I wondered if the barbecue had moved indoors.

Michael Phelps is the greatest athlete I've ever seen. That's all.

In my mind I figured the going away party had been dampened by the weather, and by the time we got to my friend's house, it was pouring rain. We went to his backyard, and to my surprise there was a raucous 4 on 4 pool volleyball game going on. My friend was in the pool, and so were a number of his friends whose faces I recognized from many years before.

In the middle of a thunderstorm, these guys were out there laughing and screaming and playing. It was one of the most joyous sporting events I had ever attended.

Sometimes I feel like the sports I fell in love with as a kid is just an illusion. In fact, it's more than a feeling, I know it's an illusion.  I know that as much as sports have shaped my life, that the mainstream sports that I consume on a day-to-day basis are a ruined version of the innocent vision I once had. That's just part of growing up. I still appreciate amazing athletic performances -- those that come under pressure, those that only a select few in the world can perform, and some that are just outright inspiring.

But I find myself guilty of paying too much attention to sports teams and athletes. These same athletes will say that sports is just a "business." And it's true, but alas, sports are so wonderfully disguised. I certainly am not as moved or inspired by the CFO or CEO of Apple, as I am by watching LeBron James win his first title, or watching an athlete like Michael Phelps not just transcending his sport, but leaving us wondering about the possibilities for all athletes everywhere in every sport. 

So much of what I love about sports now goes along with false role models, sex, drugs, egos, and greed; just to name a few things. I know this because I see it and because I've been in the business. I still love watching sports, but I'm moving to a point where I can truly see them for what they are, and not what I hope them to be.
  
Still, I'm not so cynical to not appreciate the joy I saw when a bunch of guys who had done some growing up were playing pool volleyball in the middle of a rainstorm and nothing seemed more important -- or fun.

Penn State Has Been Hit by the NCAA Atomic Bomb

There used to be statues dedicated to Joe Paterno.

About three years ago I was having dinner in New Orleans with a group of sports administrators who were in town for a volunteer trip. One of them was a retired athletic director for academic advising at Penn State. She asked me, "Do you know what they call Penn State?" I had an idea where she was headed but I replied, "I'm not sure, what?" She said, "They call it Happy Valley. Do you know why?" I said, "No, why?" She said, "The name says it all. It truly is a very happy place." She went on to talk about the university and how wonderful people were there. She talked about how Penn State was one of the first schools to have a Life Skills department for its student-athletes. She even gushed about the football team winning the 1986 national title against Miami. The conversation was a pleasant one, but it left me feeling uneasy. I mean certainly, not everything in Happy Valley could truly be happy, right? Last November we found out that it wasn't, and today we found out that Penn State football as we know it is forever altered.
The sanctions destroyed Penn State's legacy and its future. Penn State football will be irrelevant for what may be up to a decade, if not longer. Joe Paterno is no longer the winningest coach in Division I-A / FBS history. The 60 million dollars that will go to external funds for victims of sexual abuse, which is a great sanction that benefits the victims of this tragedy, will not only take away from the football program, but also from all the other sports programs that football helps fund. The reduction of scholarships means that fewer young adults will have the opportunity to attend college and represent Penn State.
In many ways this was worse than the death penalty, because Penn State football will continue to exist as a shadow of its former self, and we will all be spectators to its fall from grace. We will all see the Michigans and Ohio States of the world demolish Penn State and we won't be left wondering if it was because of poor recruiting or coaching, we'll all know it was because of a child molester who lurked in the shadows of Beaver Stadium. Penn State's humiliation will be a years-long public spectacle.
I hope these sanctions serve as a warning to other schools that football cannot take precedence over an institution's academic purpose. That these sanctions will provide some kind of relief for the victims of Jerry Sandusky, and that administrators will think twice about covering up any crime, especially those as heinous as Sandusky's.
Yet I cannot help but look at the NCAA people as a bunch of hypocrites. It relied solely on the Freeh Report to dole out its sanctions, without conducting any kind of real investigation on its own. The organization harps on the importance of keeping football from becoming an institution's priority, yet year-after-year the NCAA stands to gain billions of dollars from multi-year football contracts leveraged by programs like Penn State. It also continues to punish innocent student-athletes that had nothing to do with crimes committed by men of higher authority who failed them. The NCAA is losing sight of itself. The money in college sports has become too great for the NCAA to keep pretending that there isn't an incentive for programs to cheat and sink to the lowest depths of humanity. The sad truth is that ethics, morality, and virtues don't stand a chance when there is money to be made. Penn State deserved a stiff punishment, but the NCAA needs to take a look at itself and wonder if it has become that monster it aims to punish.
I'm sure that there are people in Penn State who are hurting at their core. Like the athletic director told me a few years ago, Penn State was a happy place for a lot of great people, but now comes the self-reflection and finding out truly, what makes a place "happy?"

Joe Paterno is not Jerry Sandusky

Let me be clear here. Joe Paterno was disastrously wrong for his lack of action in dealing with Jerry Sandusky. It's funny to hear all these talking heads who make a living out of talking about sports all day, suddenly make grandiose statements about really serious matters to the extent that Paterno is as "morally culpable" as Sandusky. On one hand, Sandusky has been found guilty of sexually abusing multiple young boys through such actions as physical touching, oral sex, and anal sex. Joe Paterno did none of that, in fact, he seemed to do very little of anything. But there's a big divide between Paterno and Sandusky.

Paterno isn't around to answer the hard questions.

If Paterno was the kind of man I think he was, I don't think he would do nothing if he had been sat down and told by someone, "Look Joe, Sandusky is raping kids in our locker room, in our showers. He's using our university as his personal stomping ground to molest young boys. We've seen it, we've heard it from other people. He's using his non-profit to groom his next victims. There are kids right this second in danger of being molested by Sandusky. I think this has been going on longer than anyone can even imagine." I could be wrong, but I'd like to think that if the message had been that clear to him, that he'd see the whole thing through.
Even after the Freeh Report came out yesterday, I'm still as unclear about a lot of things as I was at the beginning, and I can't be the only person. There are a lot of questions in that report that have been left unanswered.
For one, Mike McQueary, then a Penn State graduate assistant, was not interviewed in the Freeh Report despite making repeated offers to be interviewed by investigators. This is huge because it is McQueary who first reported to Paterno that he had seen Sandusky molest a boy in the showers. What exactly, and in what terms, did McQueary tell Paterno? Then, from Paterno's discussion with McQueary, what did he tell AD Tim Curley and VP Gary Schultz? Let's stop here. This is the point in which Paterno should have been screaming like a banshee to get Sandusky investigated and prohibited from ever setting foot on the Penn State campus.
Instead, he went up to his "superiors," and let them handle it. In that instance, Paterno was no longer an effective leader. Sure, he could probably still run a football program, but he couldn't properly respond to a situation outside of his narrow scope. It should come as no wonder, but the man was nearly 75 years old at that point. Paterno should have been laying on a beach somewhere in Florida, or playing bingo, or tending to a garden, but not coaching college football.
The most damning piece of evidence is in an e-mail exchange between Schultz and Curley in which Curley says he had spoken to Paterno, and decided against going to the authorities for what McQueary had reported. What was that conversation, and what did Paterno say? Again, the Freeh Report does not make that clear and falls short in answering key questions. It leaves us assuming about many things.
What happened here? I may very well be an idiot, I may very well be a complete and utter fool, but you mean to tell me that four highly educated men all knew that Sandusky had been having sex with a 10-year-old boy in the same locker room where Penn State football players prepare to give their blood, sweat, and tears for their university and they decided to do nothing? It just doesn't make sense.
Listen, if you've read this entire thing it's my hope that you don't think I'm defending these guys. That's not the case, they turned a blind eye to a really horrible situation. My point is, did they know exactly what they were turning a blind eye to? Something happened here, something very tangible happened that resulted in the failure to report Sandusky, and the Freeh Report didn't find those answers. If everyone knew exactly what was happening, then I can't think of anything we can hold as sacred anymore. It just doesn't make sense.

Days Off to the National Title Game

50 off-days until the big stage is a bit much. i.e. 41-14

Building off of my previous post, I looked at the "true" national title games since 1980 to see what impact the number of days off had on the title game participants. What I mean by "true" is the one bowl game that would determine the national title winner, essentially a #1 vs. #2 matchup.

There were instances when if one team lost in a bowl game, then another team had the opportunity to win the title as in 1997 when Nebraska went undefeated and won the national title, and when Penn State also went undefeated but finished 2nd in both polls. Unfortunately, Penn State and Nebraska did not face each other in a "true" title game.

There are also instances as in 1983 when 5th ranked Miami defeated #1 Nebraska in the Orange Bowl and won the national title because of losses suffered by the teams ranked above them. Though the winner of the 1983 matchup resulted in the national title winner, it was not a "true" title game because outcomes outside of the game factored into the national title.

Here's what I found:

1983 Sugar Bowl - Penn State (36 days off) vs. Georgia (35 days off)

1987 Fiesta Bowl - Penn State (41 days off) vs. Miami (36 days off)

1988 Orange Bowl - Oklahoma (41 days off) vs. Miami (26 days off)

1993 Sugar Bowl - Miami (34 days off) vs. Alabama (26 days off)

1994 Orange Bowl - Nebraska (36 days off) vs. Florida State (35 days off) 

1995 Fiesta Bowl - Nebraska (39 days off) vs. Florida (30 days off)

The research was disappointing because dating back to 1980 from the first BCS game in 1998, there were only six instances in which the numbers 1 and 2 teams met for the national title. The data showed that in the six instances when #1 went up against #2, there was an even split between teams with more or less off-days. I would consider the 1983 Sugar Bowl insignificant in that Penn State had just one more day off than Georgia, but I must stick to my requirements.
However, to add on to a previous stat, since 1980 when teams have a difference of seven or more off-days in "true" national title games, the team with fewer days off has an 8-3 record. The sample size is too small for us to consider this significant, but perhaps there is something to having too many off days.
Going back to my first post regarding Ohio State, I still believe Florida was the superior team (I think that was clear considering the outcome). However, the 50 off-days that the Buckeyes had were the most of any team competing in the national title game in the last 31 years, at least. And when we consider our previous stat, it could be that they started the game at a disadvantage. I have to admit while I believe Florida was without a doubt the better team, I don't think Florida was 41-14 better, know what I mean?
I believe that the advent of conference title games for the Big 10 and the Pac 12 will make their elite teams better prepared for bowl games with national title implications. 

Days Off Before the BCS National Championship Game

The BCS Trophy

I'm going to come clean. I am a Florida Gators fan. It's where I went to school and where I did a lot of growing up. This blog isn't about that, but I wanted to let everyone know where I'm coming from. I was in my car the other day when out of nowhere I remembered how people said that the reason Ohio St. lost to Florida in the 2007 BCS title game was because of how many days off the Buckeyes had between their last game and the title game. I have a different hypothesis: the Gators were better.
But the argument some still make to this day sparked some curiosity in me. Does the length of time between a team's last game and the national title game have an impact on that team's performance? Since we are in the BCS era, I looked at BCS national title games in addition to bowl games that figured in split national titles. The numbers are interesting. Of the nine bowl games with national title implications where the teams had different days off between games, six of them were won by teams with fewer days off.
Of the three teams that had more days off and won, the only team that had a difference greater than eight games was.....Ohio State, which had 16 more off-days than Miami leading up to the 2003 title game. For the 2007 title game, Ohio State had 14 more off days than Florida. As evidenced, it seems as if teams that have many more off days tend to not do as well as teams that have played more recently. The data is very limited, however, as it only looks at nine games. I will expand the research in the days to come.
HOWEVER, when it comes to Ohio State, how can you argue one way for one game, but be unable to explain how they beat a potentially all-time great team in Miami in 2003 with many more days off? I'll say this much in Ohio State's defense, the 50 days off is the most - by five days - of any team to compete in the title game, and they did it twice. The average winning team had 35 days off between games, which seems to be about the optimal amount of time between games.
Here's an interesting stat from the research: When teams have a difference of seven or more off-days, the team with fewer days off has a 6-2 record. I will look at other games to increase sample size.

**Teams in bold are the winning teams when there was a difference in off-days
1999 BCS Title Game - Florida State (44 days off) vs. Tennessee (28 days off)
2000 BCS Title Game - Florida State (44 days off) vs. Virginia Tech (38 days off)
2001 BCS Title Game - Florida State (45 days off) vs. Oklahoma (31 days off)
2002 BCS Title Game - Nebraska (41 days off) vs. Miami (32 days off)
2003 BCS Title Game - Ohio State (42 days off) vs. Miami (26 days off)
2004 BCS Title Game - LSU (28 days off) vs. Oklahoma (28 days off)
2004 Rose Bowl - Michigan (40 days off) vs. USC (25 days off)
2005 BCS Title Game - USC (30 days off) vs. Oklahoma (30 days off)
2006 BCS Title Game - Texas (31 days off) vs. USC (31 days off)
2007 BCS Title Game - Ohio State (50 days off) vs. Florida (36 days off)
2008 BCS Title Game - Ohio State (50 days off) vs. LSU (36 days off)
2009 BCS Title Game - Florida (32 days off) vs. Oklahoma (32 days off)
2010 BCS Title Game - Alabama (32 days off) vs. Texas (32 days off)
2011 BCS Title Game - Auburn (36 days off) vs. Oregon (36 days off)
2012 BCS Title Game - Alabama (44 days off) vs. LSU (36 days off)

Dwight Howard is Breaking Orlando's Heart

I very briefly met Dwight Howard at an Orlando Magic charity golf tournament I was volunteering at when I was in graduate school. I was at hole 8, and my job was to greet the golfers and to answer any questions they may have had about the course. I met many different people and saw a few basketball players that day, but I cannot forget the sight of Dwight Howard. I've met many tall people before, but the sight of Howard was something that I had never seen since or before in person. The dude was huge. He was as tall as anyone I'd ever seen but built like a body builder. 

Just recently, I saw New York Knicks center Tyson Chandler at a Whole Foods in New York and he was a sight to behold, but he was nothing compared to Howard.

This guy can fly. 

I'll always remember Howard because he was one of the few people that day who actually took the time to acknowledge my presence by saying a friendly "what's up, man" and waving to me. That went a long way in forming my opinion of him. Since that day I became a fan of his the way we become fans of people we think are decent human beings.

My first job out of graduate school was with the New Orleans Hornets as a salesperson. I was fortunate enough to get tickets for the NBA's 2008 All-Star Game and festivities, and was at New Orleans Arena when Howard put on his Superman cape and electrified the building with his super dunk (it was more like a nasty throw down). I cheered for him and the Magic during the 2009 Finals, when Howard broke out as a legitimate superstar. Like I said, I'm a fan. 

But things change, and people also change. All you ever saw in the media was how lovable and friendly Howard seemed to be. I coupled my one encounter with him and what the media showed and I bought into the persona of Howard being quite possibly the coolest basketball player on the planet. 

A year later, and Howard's reputation has taken a beating. The latest news is that he's demanding a trade to the Brooklyn Nets after he had committed to staying with the Orlando Magic only a few months ago (by the way, New York sports talk is going banana-crazy over the prospect of Howard in Brooklyn). He's been blamed for firing a respected head coach, the resignation of the team's President, and the firing of the team's general manager and six members of the team's scouting department.

It's like he's left a trail of burning, charred debris in Orlando and he's running for the exits. He's made mistakes, but I'm still a Howard fan because I think he's a good person. I hope that as his fame has grown that he hasn't lost his moral compass. I can understand Howard's frustration with the Magic organization. The talent that has been around him will never be enough to compete with Miami, Boston, or a healthy Chicago. 

I could go on and on about what I think he should do, or what I hope ends up happening. But I think Howard is going to force his way out of Orlando, and the city will have its heart broken once again. I can only think about how many titles Orlando would have if Shaquille O'Neal had never left, or what kind of impact Tracy McGrady and Grant Hill would have had if Hill had managed to stay healthy. Shaq left Orlando in 1996 when he bolted for Los Angeles. Howard came along eight years later to try and erase the haunting memory of losing Shaq. Now it seems that rather than helping to heal some old wounds, Howard is going to open new ones. 

The city built a beautiful new arena, with Howard intended to be its crowned jewel. But again, another transcendent talent wants to pack his bags and leave that small market for the glitz of a metropolis. This is sports now at the beginning of the 21st century -- money and fame meant to create a loyalty it could never buy. The result of which is a bitter backlash of unmet expectations from everyone involved that can only be derived from the promises of wealth and fame. Howard was never immune from it all, but we wanted him to be. I'm going to keep cheering for Dwight, cheer for him to come as close as he can to that night in New Orleans when he was Superman.